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Vermouth is dry and bitter.
For all that Roman can't stand a martini, premium liquid dogshit that it is, dry and bitter seems terribly appropriate given the circumstances.
Oh, and it's all dripping with deliciously Shakespearean poeticism and tragedy. Boo fucking hoo. Daddy dies. The misfit toys crown their king. Little Miss Fucks It At The Last Second fucks it at the last second. And now he's here, sucking on the chosen drink of his lost unrequited lover like it's his thumb. A wan smile flickers across his face every so often, when it burns as it slides down his throat, because it's all so bizarre and grand and trivial. Because it was the best it's ever been last night, the worst today. Because Shiv made the right fucking choice, for herself and for the rest of them. Because there's suicide glass on the top floor of the godforsaken Waystar building so Ken's going to have to get creative about offing himself. Because they're all bullshit.
God, and it's such a relief, Roman thinks. To have it blissfully ripped away from him. He never wanted any of it, not from the start. He's always been the kid eating chocolate cake in the dog cage - he snorts into the martini - and yippee, now the door's locked! How fucking epic for him. He got the infinite money glitch and now he can be a canary for the rest of his life, singing obscenities from the sweet safety of a gilded enclosure. His only regret is that he only got to send one dick pic to his father before he had a heart attack on a plane. What he'd give to send just one more.
And then he swallows, and the burn of the drink is replaced with that hollow, egg-sucking feeling in the bottom of his throat, and he has to expend effort to keep tears from slipping down his cheeks. Roman is absolutely certain that all of this is temporary. In a few months, Connor will shit his pants and then force everyone to look at it - Roman's money is on him unwittingly recreating either Jonestown or Fyre Festival - and he will invite all the siblings, and Ken will make something up about accidentally killing a member of the proletariat to create an adorable sibling bonding moment, and it'll break the silence and the gears will turn again. It will never be the same as it was, but they can be them again, surely.
The thing is, he is so fucking lonely. He takes another sip of his martini, scrunching his nose at the vermouth, feels the burn in his throat, smiles. The loneliness is eating him alive, always has, and now he can't outrun it. He'd clung to Logan, to his siblings, to -
He couldn't quite bring himself to think her name, just takes another sip of the martini. He'd clung to them, but all the time, they were in the game. When you're in the game, none of it can be real. None of it lasts or means enough. It's all a ploy, a tactic, a move. The din of the bar rings in his ears, the throng of people pulsing around him. Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
Another sip of the martini. He can admit now, she was the closest he'd ever come. He'd never been competing with her so much as playing alongside her, most of the time. And she was so beautiful. Stone cold killer bitch, sharp and lethal, always boring into him, always reading him like she'd gotten a brief that morning.
He sighs, delicately swirling his glass of crystalline bile. A laugh bubbles up, high and keening, and he closes his eyes and throws back his head. Now that he's unemployed, rolling in it, and desperately lonely, maybe he could take a few pointers from Con. Ask for directions to Mail-Order Wives R Us.
The seat next to him creaks.
The fuck? The people in this bar know who he is. They know, on some level, what has gone down.
"Hey, fuckwad, I can tell that your dick is majorly hard right now, but I'm solidly flaccid on the friendship boner front at the moment. There's plenty of horny muppets elsewhere, if you -"
He stops, having looked up. Having seen her. She's waving the bartender over. "Martini," she says, hands the guy her card. Begins turning her head to look at him. Roman can't stand it; eyes darting to the counter, head bowed. The lights above the bar are reflected in the marble.
"Don't lie, Roman. You're definitely hard right now."
Of all the things, he had not expected that. He looks up at last, eyes blown, deer in headlights.
"Nuh-uh," he blurts, then silence.
"What is the equivalent of talking in this grotesque analogy? Is it cumming? Will you cum with me, Roman?"
"Dear God."
Roman puts his head in his hands. "You cannot say shit like that to me, Gerri. For so many reasons. You cannot say shit like that. You hate me. I need to be done with you so I don't, like, fucking, feel you hating me, all the time. I can't talk, right now, Gerri. Or, like, fucking ever. We can never talk."
She pauses a moment, lets him breathe. "I don't see why not," she says quietly, raising her glass to her lips. She rubs the rim of the glass, thinking. If he didn't know better, he would think she was nervous. That freaks Roman out even harder. He's seen Gerri flustered, uncomfortable, angry. Never nervous. Never vulnerable, like he's beginning to see in her now.
There's a moment of pregnant silence. Roman has nothing to say. Roman has everything to say. Why is she here? This fucking sucks. This is the worst. Being horrifically, soul-decimatingly lonely was so much easier than this. This, he's going to have to navigate. This is giving him hope, and that hurts worse, because it'll be his fault if he fumbles.
"I don't hate you," she says at last. "I'll tell you what. I am so - I am furious with you. You took everything right out from under me. Everything I've worked for, my whole life. You have been rude and disgusting and mean. You have done stupid things. For God's sake, you put a fascist at the helm of this country." She stops, takes a breath. "And I do not and cannot hate you." She says it like it surprises her, even as she places utmost conviction behind the words.
She begins again. "And we both lost, didn't we? You perhaps harder than I. It's all razed now. No more moves." Her gaze flicks toward his martini, mouth twisting strangely. "It all feels pretty much even. At least, I can't decide who got the shorter end."
Roman swallows. "My father died face-down in an airplane toilet and I didn't even tell his unconscious body that I loved him."
She laughs, and a pleasant warmth roils in his gut. He's missed this. He hates this. Every second that passes in another second closer to him inevitably fucking it all up again. She's right, it's all over, so why is she here? Why can't she let him lose in peace? Why does she have to force him to lose all over again?
"My boss and longtime friend died face-down in an airplane toilet moments after his son, who was my lover, made me guess that I was being fired from my lifelong career."
Roman freezes. He's not sure she knows exactly what she just said.
Gerri takes a long swig, blows air out of her nose, laughs gently. "Like I said, I'm not sure who got the shorter end."
Neither says anything for a while. The silence returns, but it is lighter this time. They drink. Gerri orders another martini. Roman is still nursing his first.
He's not sure what to feel. For one, he's a bit giddy. For another, profoundly sad. For one, "lover." For another, "was." But this is nothing new, he reminds himself, reprimanding. He lost her, and that pain was still fresh, but it was not new. Another layer of horror is developing, though - that he just maybe could have had her, really had her. He'd never considered that, but she had said "lover." Just maybe it was requited. Just maybe he'd fucked it worse than he could have imagined. A piercing sense of belated mourning hits him in the chest as he is instantly haunted by scores of long-dead possibilities, moments that could have gone differently, moments he hadn't known were losses till now.
Gerri clears her throat. "Penny for your thoughts? There's grey matter leaking out of your ears."
Roman blinks, downing the rest of the martini in one fell swoop. He coughs and scrunches his nose. Her smile crinkles in the corners of her eyes, which shine with fondness, and amusement is legible in her lovely face, and he wishes somebody would just shoot him so that he'd at least fucking die from pain so acute.
"I can't get behind no-kill dog shelters," he replies. "Murder thousands of puppies. Light a fire under people's asses. Get the fucking dogs adopted, Jesus. I should totally pitch this to Kendall after he finally realizes his threshold is too high to fucking overdose."
It falls flat. Not his best material. Worse, it's now oober fucking obvious that he's avoiding saying something. Excellent.
"Fuck off," she sneers. "If I wanted to have a facetious pseudo-conversation I'd talk to Stewy. I'm talking to you, Roman. Talk to me."
"Don't order me around, Ger-Bear, you know how that goes," Roman bites, intonation more acetic than he had intended. "I might get hard after all."
Oof. That outburst settles between them, forming a palpable rift. There it is, Roman thinks, the inevitable fuck-up. At least it's over, the anticipation no longer weighing heavy inside him. Yet somehow it still feels just as bad on the outside, his eyes stinging with shame.
"Jesus, are you incapable of being serious for five seconds?"
Roman just looks at her. He cracks a weak smile. Gerri scoffs.
"I don't know why I came here," she snaps. "Of course you'd fucking be like this. I'm trying to be honest with you, Roman, and you as usual are utterly incapable of reciprocating. As per usual, I am trying to give you what you want, and you are absolutely fucking it."
She slides the remainder of her second martini toward him. His eyes are wet, his heart has plunged into his stomach. He's full to bursting, desperate to say something, completely incapable. He knows if he speaks up now, maybe he could have it. For the first time in his life, he could have what he wants, not what his father has chosen for him, not what he knows he should have. He could have his cake and eat it too.
But he can't. He watches Gerri stand, her seat creaking again. She looks down at him, shaking her head. Walking away. She calls back, "Order something off my tab! Something you actually like."
He can't do that either. He draws the abandoned martini towards him. There's a lipstick mark on the side of the glass. He stares, memorizes its shape, and then carefully places his mouth directly on it as he sips. It burns going down. Roman doesn't smile.
What an astoundingly effective method of shitting the bed. Roman was impressed with himself.
Couldn't he be serious for five seconds? He wanted to. There was so much he wanted to say. Where moments before, he'd been semi-pleasantly resigned to it all, now it just feels like shit. He was incapable of being CEO, incapable of winning, incapable of being honest, incapable of being serious for five seconds. Incapable of reaching out and getting what he wanted. Even what he really wanted, the only thing he really wanted.
Fuck, this was miserable. He was a miserable dopey fuck-up.
She was halfway across the bar now, back turned to him. He hated to see her go. Loved to watch her walk away.
There's still time, he thinks suddenly. But for what? He's incapable. If she didn't hate him before, she does now.
But then again, what else is there? He's lost everything. With all the money in the world, there's nothing he'll ever want more than this.
A familiar thought crosses his mind. What would his father do?
Easy. His father got every woman he ever wanted. But Roman wasn't his father. Which made it hard.
His father didn't even want him to have this woman. He wanted him to have someone younger, hotter, more appropriate.
Roman had never wanted what his father wanted for him. Not the job, not the women. The perfect fuck-up.
Now, he was a fuck-up in his father's eyes, and in his own.
Something about that struck him as off. He was a fuck-up in his father's eyes, permanently, and he was fine with it, actually? Relieved not to have the job, didn't give a shit about the women. Now, he felt real disappointment, a true sense of having lost it all. He'd fucked up independent of his father's ideals, and that felt much worse.
She was all the way across the bar now. Hand reaching for the door. Pushing it open. Walking out.
All of a sudden, there's a fire under his ass. He's totally right about the dog thing: when there's something to lose, really lose, it's a whole lot easier to buck the fuck up. Maybe he really will pitch it to Kendall when Connor drags the lot of them to, like, a Scientology meet-n-greet in three months. Maybe he could get Tom Cruise to invest.
He bolts toward the door, slams it open. Gerri startles and turns back toward the noise.
"I fucking suck," he offers, "and I'm mega-sorry. I'm, like, the CEO of sorry. And I'll never be the CEO of anything else."
She looks at him, lips tight, but there's a spark of something there, he knows it.
"I say things dumb but I'm being serious," he tries, desperate, and her face softens.
"What do you want, Roman?"
"What do you want, Gerri?"
She's flustered.
"I'd - I'd like to discuss, um. Courses of action."
"Courses of action? Maybe I can't be serious, but you can't not be corporate."
"What can I say? I was good at my job."
"Yeah," he says meekly. "Sorry about that."
"No need to say it. You're the CEO of sorry. It's innate."
"Yup."
Silence again, awkward this time. Roman tries again.
"What do you want, Gerri? Don't fuck with me here. I came out here because I like you. I, like, would like you, like to have, or something. Yeah. Deal with it, yo," he tacks on, confidence dwindling. "Sorry. You make me like this, you know that. I'd like you to keep making me like this. I'd like to have something I want, for the first time, maybe."
"You could have anything," she points out.
"Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Don't take this fucking lightly. I'm at a breaking point here."
She takes a deep breath. Calculating. Unsure.
"I'm still going to be with Laurie," she says.
That stings a little, but it wasn't unexpected. He can work with that.
"I can deal with that later. For now, we can do threesomes."
"We cannot do threesomes."
"I'm going to fuck Laurie."
"No," she says, bringing her up hand to touch Roman's cheek. It lights on fire. He stifles a noise.
"We have been over this," she coos. "You're not fucking Laurie."
He steels himself, which is difficult considering he's melting.
"What do you want, Gerri?"
"I think we could have an arrangement."
"Beneficial for both parties?" Roman jeers.
"Beneficial for both parties," she counters, sentiment evident in her voice. "I'm a hard, cold person, Roman, it's hard for me to even be talking about this. But I'd like to work it out with you. I do care about you."
She seems to spit all of this out. He knows it goes against her nature. It makes him feel fuzzy.
"Did you print out the contract? Can I read the fine print?"
"No fine print. No rules or moves. We're just going to - to figure it out."
"No prenup?"
"Prenups are for serious people. I'm tired of being serious all the time."
He considers this. They're standing against a wall, leaning back with their heads ducked toward one another like they're sharing a cigarette. They're certainly sharing something. Roman isn't quite sure what. Whatever it is, it feels nice, and after feeling nothing for days, he's starved for it.
Gerri's looking at him like if she poked him, he would collapse and shatter. Maybe he would. But he'd like her to do a lot more than poke, so he's willing to risk it.
He leans nearer, hair falling down over his eyes, shifting nervously. She tilts her head up at him and smiles again, this time in a satisfied and childlike sort of way, like she's getting away with something she hasn't dare to allow herself before. It's beguiling.
"Can I get a little sugar, mamas?"
She turns up her nose at that, shaking her head. "Gross," she says. And kisses him.
He's more than happy to figure it out.