Work Text:
This was about as peaceful as your evenings could get. You’d checked your email inbox as much as you wanted to. You’d wriggled out of whatever debauched shitshow Roman had planned for you all, on the pretense of work or food poisoning or whatever the fuck. You rarely had tolerance for the brothers’ shenanigans when Shiv was around, being out with them on your own sounded genuinely intolerable. No, you were at home, on your own couch, with your own music on, enjoying a nice bowl of pasta and a nice glass of wine and doing some odd remaining wedding task.
You knew the peace would be short-lived, though. Meetings with Logan, especially alone, always did something to Shiv that she would end up bringing back. She could come home bruised or fired up, or more often a mix of both. Whatever the case, Shiv’s relationship with her father never made her happy in the way you’d hope that kind of bond could, and she brought it home to you, someone who could give her that. You were ready, but also deeply sad about the situation, and always knew to brace yourself before you heard her key scraping the lock.
You’d managed to distract yourself trying to absorb some inane text thread from Willa when Shiv slipped into the apartment like a little grey raincloud, earlier than even you had expected. She’s cried in the car – you can see it in her eyes and can taste it in the welcome home kiss that was so quick it barely even happened – and it tears you open like it always does. She’s closed off and clearly hurt and you’re back in that place where you have to balance comfort and curiosity, the couples’ therapy talk that will help her, and you, go to sleep feeling like a human tonight. You have your careful in when she looks at your half-finished bowl hungrily.
“Not quite dinner?” You say, offering it up to her. She declines with an attempt at a smile and crosses into the kitchen.
“Not fucking quite, no.” She opens the fridge, leans heavily into it. Eventually pulls the rest of the pasta and sticks it straight in the container.
“I’m sorry. What was it this time?” She looks up at you coolly, but still you push, trying to make it light. “Jedi mind tricks? Legal ambush? Trying to get you to sign for Marcia again?”
“He wants me to tank Gil and come, I don’t know, fuck around at Waystar.”
“Jesus.”
“I said no.” It’s quick, defensive.
You nod, consider whether she’d let you come over and soothe her, rub her back or something. “You’re your own woman, baby, and he should respect that, but we both know how much he loves the word no.”
She scoffs, digs her fork in like she’s grinding out a lifetime of rage, “He didn’t even say anything. Didn’t even say goddamn anything. He just sat there, so fucking disappointed, just a sad old man, until I had to leave. Another fucking power play. You say respect, his respect is bullshit. Just utter bullshit.” The fork clangs into the sink at a toss and she’s standing there, hands on her hips and staring into the middle distance, red in the face and clinging desperately to the deep breathing techniques you were both so willing to roll your eyes at. You must have tried to respond at least five times before she flicks her glance over to you, clearly wondering if she should be waiting for something.
“I wish he loved you.” She frowns a bit. “I wish he showed it, was consistent about it. I wish it translated into something that fulfilled you. Wish it always had.” She was gaping at you at this point, the tears starting to flow again. You wrestled with that, with how hard you felt you were pushing, before continuing. “I wish I could be enough love for him and myself, but I know it’s apples and oranges.”
She’s fully sobbing now, tears rolling down her cheeks and onto the marble countertop. You move to hug her, you’ve been hard enough on her, but when you do she flinches initially before reverting to looking apologetic, and it makes you back off an inch.
“You know I know you love me. And vice versa.”
“Yeah, honey, I do,” you smile sadly, try to lighten the mood. “Me and the old albatross. I try to be easier to carry.”
In a rare move she crosses to you, wraps her hands up in the front of your top and tugs you in. “You are. I’m sorry that you get me after him. After any of them.” She pulls you in closer, shrugs her shoulders in tiny increments until you wrap her in your arms.
“You don’t need to be sorry.”
You kiss the top of her head as she sobs into your chest, which is growing increasingly wet. For a while you two just stand there together, her cradled and you cradling, rubbing her back and rocking her slowly. It’s not every day that you get this version of Shiv – this soft girl, cuddly if melancholic – and never around other Roys. In these quiet moments you wonder if this is was something that survived in her, the influence of childhood sibling hugs or one of the better nannies, or if it grew, maybe even from your being present. Whatever the cause, it makes you feel warm, useful.
“You know you can never leave me now, right?” she mumbles without moving from where her head’s buried in your cleavage. “After how you’ve seen me. I mean, I know I said that after you saw me with the flu but I’m so serious.”
“I don’t want to.”
She squirms a bit in your arms, unsure of what to do with that. Wrings her hands deeper into your shirt. “I understand –“ she begins, and the ‘if’ hangs in front of her.
“No, I want to love Shiv Roy,” you continue, and she cranes her head up to look you in the eye for perhaps the first time all night. “I want to love Shiv Roy. For as long as she’ll have me, like I have for years now. I want to love her when she’s the hardass who makes sure my order’s right, I want to love her when she cracks dumb jokes, I want to love her at her most sexy, I want to love her when she’s vulnerable –“
“When she’s a fucked up mess, you mean,” she mumbles, tone a touch brighter. You tug lightly, pull her head back so she’s looking you in the eyes.
“That’s my fucked up mess, thank you very much.” There’s a genuine smile. You start wiping tears away gently.
“Well at this point you should pretty much know what you’re getting yourself into.” You hum and smile in agreement and she glances over your shoulder, drama and rage relieved. “Do you want any help with –“
“We have plenty of time.”
Hours later you’re both warm in bed when she takes the call. The contrast between the snuggly pjs you’d bought her several Christmases ago as a gag gift and her falling, sobering face as Marcia drones on, all fake apologies, is striking. In the first few months you’d dated you’d never imagined Logan would be willing to attend when you thought of the outside possibility of marrying Shiv. That was before you realized how hypocritical the old man was capable of being. Now, seemingly getting confirmation that he was declining, you burned with irritation for the old fuck and his nosy wife.
“Well I hope we get some margin on the catering,” Shiv sighs as she hangs up.
“Honey, I’m sorry.” You shake off sleep and then you’re holding her for the second time that night, rubbing soft circles on her arms. She seems even smaller than she did earlier, and it makes you want to fucking eviscerate the two of them.
“You’d better be there.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”