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It starts when Roman is a child.
He doesn’t remember the start of everything- He doesn’t remember the first time they played Bitey or the first time he was hit or the first time he was in New York or the first time he saw his baby sister-
But he remembers the beginnings of some things.
He remembers the feel of the cold kitchen floor under his knees when he was in the dog cage.
And he remembers the taste of plastic doll hair in his mouth.
At the time he doesn’t understand the impulse, and even later on it’s not something he dwells on, even as he absorbs it to be a part of himself.
He is standing in Shiv’s room, his blunt teeth scraping the fabric of the doll’s dress before returning back to chewing on the hair. He glares at the door and a part of him wishes Shiv would walk in.
Or Ken.
Both of them, holding hands-
Roman remembers the two of them, playing house, putting the doll in the crib, Kendall petting its hair before tucking it in. Shiv reading the doll a bedtime story.
Mommy and daddy.
Roman chews on the hair, pulling out strands, swallowing them, gagging a bit.
No one walks in.
The next time he plays Bitey with Shiv he tries to draw blood. His teeth fail to break the skin but he licks the sweat off Shiv’s arm and swallows greedily.
”Dude, why are you asking me that?” Stewy says.
Kendall looks up from the sofa he’s sitting on. ”It’s not weird. I don’t know, I don’t want it to be- Stupid, right? Uncool. So I wanted your opinion of like- And- And you know what girls like-”
Roman pauses for a bit on the doorway, but the two older boys turn to look at him.
Sometimes, Roman listens in, collecting little tidbits of gossip.
But both Kendall and Stewy turn to look at him, now.
Kendall gives him an annoyed look. ”What?”
”Oh, are you talking about girls?”
Ken gives an odd look to him. ”No, like- It’s just- Christmas gifts. Okay, it’s just Shiv, right? I wanted to get her something nice, since I am an adult now-”
Roman lets out a laugh. Kendall sits a bit straighter in his chair, pouting a bit.
”Oh yeah?” Roman says. ”You should give Shiv a big fart. Just Bbbbr in a perfume bottle so she can smell like a fart.”
Kendall sneers at him. ”Shiv is not a baby.”
Roman feels like he is punched in the gut. ”She wouldn’t like some stupid-” he struggles to think of an adult gift- ”A car. Or a watch.”
”I’m not gonna give her a watch.”
”What are you gonna give her, then?” Roman demands to know.
”I will write Santa and tell him to pick- You still believe in Santa, Rome?”
Roman flips him off.
The gift turns out to be a small sapphire necklace.
Shiv pulls it our of the package and turns it around in her hands.
”Do you like it?” Kendall asks. His gaze is fixed on Shiv. His lips twitch into a nervous smile.
Shiv looks at him. ”It’s nice.”
”I uh- thought- It goes really well with your eyes. I- Yeah.”
”Help me put it on.”
Roman watches as Shiv lifts her long red hair and turns so Ken can slip the golden chain around her neck.
Roman looks around the room. No one seems to care. No one except him.
He watches as Ken’s fingers brush against Shiv’s nape of neck.
Roman sneaks into Shiv’s room the next day and goes through her jewellery box. When he doesn’t find the necklace he turns his attention to Shiv’s clothes on the chair. There he finds the necklace in her pocket.
Roman pulls it off the chain and runs his nail on the sapphire, hoping to scratch it.
Before he has time to think he puts it in his mouth. The sharp edges scrape the inside of his mouth as he rolls it around before swallowing. For a moment it feels like it gets stuck in his throat and he wonders if he’ll choke. But it passes. He imagines the edges of it drawing blood, scarring his insides, marking him in secret.
The next day Shiv notices it’s gone.
Roman doesn’t directly accuse the Au-pair, Mia or Emma, one of those. He plants the idea of it, and then when he’s asked he tells them he saw her going through Shiv’s jeans when she was probably taking them to laundry.
Roman smiles. He wonders if a piece of rock like that could get eternally lodged into your digestive system.
Roman arrives at the hotel, a few days late. He sighs, deciding to stretch his legs a bit before heading to his room. He doesn’t even like skiing, but this is ‘fun sibling bonding time’, supposedly. He heads towards the hotel bar.
Roman stops to take in the sight. He can see ski slopes outside, lit in the winter night, even thought it’s too late to go skiing.
It takes him a while to realize who the two people sitting at the bar are.
A man and a woman.
A couple. The man’s arm moves downwards from the woman’s hip to her ass. She laughs and turns her face to the light.
It’s Shiv.
Kendall removes his hand, but pulls his sister into a kiss.
It’s nothing like the chaste pecks on the cheek they give each other at family gatherings. Shiv breaks the kiss, laughing. She lifts a shot glass at her lips and says something to Kendall.
Something bubbles in Roman’s stomach.
Anger? Disappointment? Hunger?
He walks to the bar. ”Hey, what’s up?”
Kendall turns to him, eyes wide. He sets his glass of Whiskey on the bar. ”R-Rome? You’re here?”
Roman smiles. He feels like he has walked into a room full of powderkegs and he’s holding a packet of matches.
He could ruin this for them.
He could ruin them.
Instead, he lets out a bark.
Shiv raises an eyebrow. ”Are you fucking dumb?”
”Oh, you’re drinking? Is the cool older bro letting you drink?”
Kendall’s head snaps towards the bar. It’s late, and most people have retired to their rooms. The bar is almost empty.
”It’s fine, Rome. She’s an adult. This is Europe.”
He gets up. ”I think it’s late. I think I will- Shiv, Rome? You wanna head to bed too?”
Shiv gets up. Roman takes the seat Kendall left unoccupied.
”I think I will take advantage of the Europe of it all a bit before heading to my room.”
”Okay. Well. Take care.”
”Don’t drink too much,” Shiv cautions. ”Can’t afford you losing any more brain cells.”
”I won’t, Mom.”
The two of them leave, keeping a distance between themselves. Roman wonders if they’re sharing a room.
Roman looks at the table, at the drink Kendall left unfinished.
He takes the glass and lifts it to the light. He finds the faint traces of Kendall’s lips and places his on them. He downs the drink, coughing a bit.
He thinks of Kendall’s lips against Shiv’s.
He thinks of the same warmth in Kendall’s stomach that gave him the courage to kiss his sister in public like that.
He imagines the alcohol in Kendall’s breath that Shiv tasted.
Roman can hear yelling from the garden. He can’t make out the actual words, but he recognizes the tone and who it is.
How even when he’s letting his anger flow out he manages to sound indecisive and apologetic.
”Liar,” Shiv’s higher voice comes out clear, full of venom.
Kendall pauses.
Roman wonders what this is about. He wonders if they are still fucking.
Yesterday Roman stood up at Kendall’s wedding and raised a toast. He talked about how he was so surprised that Kendall ever managed to get married, poked some gentle fun at the groom.
When he drank the champagne he locked eyes with Shiv, trying to puzzle out what she was thinking.
It is a relief, oddly, that Kendall is married now. It leaves Shiv to Roman, in a way. They can watch Kendall try to be normal and laugh at his failures.
Shiv comes inside and walks past him, without sparing a glance.
Roman gets up and walks to the garden.
Kendall is sitting on the patio, his shoulders sagging. He gets up, hurriedly wiping his tears.
”Rome, bro-”
”Hey, if it isn’t the happy groom.”
Roman pulls him to a bro-hug and gives a quick peck to his cheek.
He tastes the salt on Kendall’s cheek.
It was him who made Roman this way.
Him and the dog pound and the way Kendall held Shiv’s hand being one of Roman’s earliest memories.
Roman smiles.
Roman is not sure if they stop fucking after Kendall has kids and Shiv moves to Washington. Roman moves to LA, sees less of them.
But in the lone moments in his bedroom he moves his hand onto his stomach and imagines every piece of Kendall and Siobhan and Shiv and Ken that he has taken custody of over the decades.
He has a mental image of dying in an accident and the coroner’s knife cutting into his stomach, rupturing his innards and all the secrets pouring out…
One night, as he is doing that, staring at the ceiling, his phone rings.
“Roman.”
Shiv. But there is something odd about her tone. Hoarse, like she has a flu.
“Did you know?”
Roman sits up. “Did I-”
“Kendall.”
Before Roman can speak, she continues. “That- He’s in rehab.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Did you know?”
“What? About the rehab? Like-”
Shiv cuts him off. “He fucking almost died.”
“No. Right? That’s not.” Roman runs his fingers on his forehead. “When? Is he okay?”
“You didn’t know? He almost died, and is- he’s been in rehab for two weeks and no one told me, and the divorce is going through- They’re going through with it-”
“Divorce? Shiv, what the fuck are you- Are Ken and Rava divorcing? Is Kendall okay?”
“You didn’t know? Yes, he is all right. Now. Apparently.”
“I didn’t know. Shiv, are you okay?”
Shiv ends the call, leaving Roman alone.
Roman rocks in the boat, leaning back. He takes a long drag of his joint and offers it to Shiv.
She shakes her head. ”No, I’m good, I got shit to do.”
Something to do with her wedding, Roman supposes. He turns to Kendall. ”What about you, you wanna smoke my J?”
”No, I got shit to do too. A lot cooking.”
”What the fuck? Really?” Roman thought this was going to be- Like the good old times.
”Okay, one hit.”
Roman reaches out to give it to Ken. Shiv snatches it from his fingers instead, laughing.
”Ooh, stolen.”
Roman laughs as the joint passes between them. He savors the feel on it on his lips.
He feels like something is about to change. It’s silly. This isn’t even the first marriage, although Kendall fucked it. But Roman never really thought Shiv would-
But of course she would try to be normal.
An amusing thought occurs to Roman.
”So listen, guys, um…” He tries to look serious. ”I do have something I need to tell you. Um... I was at Mom's earlier, she had me going through her papers and stuff, sorting through some shit, and it turns out, uh, Shiv... you're adopted.” He points at her. ”And Ken? You're adopted.” He points at him.
”And so all that shit's coming to me, so you can fuck off.”
They laugh.
Roman wonders if that thought is something that has occurred to Shiv or Ken, before. The hope, or an idea, that maybe they weren’t quite as fucked up.
He looks at Kendall. The fallen prince. If he had never been a part of the family to begin with, would this wedding be between him and Shiv?
Something twists in Roman’s stomach.
The thought feels unnatural.
”Look at us, having a dinner party,” Roman pokes the contents of Shiv’s soup bowl with his spoon. ”Like real adults.”
”Real adult table manners, there.”
Roman puts his spoon in her soup and lifts it. He brings it to his mouth and licks it.
Shiv makes a face. ”Ew.”
”It’s a polite gesture, Shiv, I am proving there’s no poison. It’s table manners.”
”It is?”
”Too high-level table manners. Table manners for kings, not peasants.”
Tom and Tabitha got up some time ago and disappeared somewhere into the apartment. It’s just Shiv and Roman now. The lighting… This looks almost like a date.
”So, Ken’s fucked, right?” Roman says. ”He’s not getting back from this.”
”He does look like a walking corpse these days,” Shiv admits.
”So, like. This is crazy, right? But it might actually be me- And- And if Kendall is as good as dead- It might be me.”
The world is spinning off its axis.
Roman looks at Shiv. ”And, well. If- When I will ever get the chair, would you consider coming in and working for me?”
Shiv raises an eyebrow.
”C’mon. You and me. We get married and rule the kingdom forever.” No response. ”Padlock the gates, banish Kendall to Shanghai.” It’s easier to say this than he thought. ”I mean, we wouldn’t have to fuck. Although we could.”
Shiv laughs. ”Let’s see what happens.”
Roman has a sudden image of himself in the CEO chair, with Kendall and Shiv outside, world flipped upside down.
Both Kendall and Shiv out of the company, together, out of Roman’s reach-
He snatches Shiv’s spoon, ignoring her protest.
He makes a show of running his tongue on the spoon, slowly.
”Ew, you’re so gross!” Shiv gets up. “What, you can’t marry mommy so you decided to try your luck with me?”
Roman laughs. He wonders if Kendall saw Caroline in Shiv when they used to fuck.
No, the other way around… Kendall had always been the one who looked like Caroline.
Shiv does not look at him as he walks out of the dining room, presumably to find Tom.
Everything is broken. The sacrificial lamb bit the executioner and ran off to spout lies on talk shows.
Ken is out. Shiv is in, as is Roman. But it turns out to be all about Shiv and Ken again.
Shiv is so angry with Ken she doesn’t even notice Roman following her through the building.
And Kendall’s office’s glass walls do not shield Shiv as she steps inside and walks to the desk.
Roman watches from the outside as she pulls out Kendall’s planner and spits into it, like a cobra.
Roman waits for her to leave, before slipping into the office. He pulls out the planner and opens it.
Turning his back to the office to hide what he is doing, Roman runs his tongue on the page.
He tastes her anger and fury.
Her poison aimed at Kendall.
Logan Roy is dead.
Roman stands in the cold. The wind cutting into his being, draining the warmth of his siblings’ bodies, all too quickly.
He thinks of the hug, the feeling that for a moment they were perfectly in sync, melting into one being.
But now he is alone.
He lifts his finger to his lips and bites down. He tears at his cuticle, pulling at the skin, swallowing it, tasting the blood, licking at it.
Hoping he could bite into his wrist and puncture the skin, and drink deep, his blood warming his stomach.
His own recycled, looped-in, blood mimicking the warmth of his brother and his sister.
He takes a step towards the gurney.
He doesn’t turn back to look at what Kendall and Shiv are doing.
Roman watches Shiv’s spit tangle from her lips as she spits into their concoction.
But her attention is on Kendall.
The moment of Shiv and Roman swimming to the platform to anoint Kendall is gone. Kendall drinks the meal fit for a king, and Roman crowns him.
But afterwards, he thinks of the baby, and he thinks of the looks they shared and he thinks of the way Shiv and Ken have always felt a deep need in their bones, a yearning for the CEO seat and for each other. The way they can knife each other, hurt each other in a way Roman never could.
Roman thinks of Kendall and Shiv, becoming intertwined, Shiv pulling Kendall’s heart out of his chest and raising it to her lips like a poison apple.
Roman thinks of the board meeting tomorrow.
He thinks of them walking in to the room as an united front, as a trio.
But he feels it in his stomach. The decades of their collected sins twirling inside of him.
He thinks of Shiv’s stomach, and the baby inside, and what sins its bearing before even being born.
He wonders why it couldn’t be him.
It will come down to Kendall and Shiv, in the end.
Roman drops on his knees and kisses the floor, licking at the concoction they had made. Vomit rises to his mouth but he pushes it back down and swallows, making it a part of him, just like all the other stolen things he has added to his being before.
Whatever will happen, he will be there to see it through.