Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Roman hopes the elevator doors will close on him. Literally. Perhaps cut him clean in two and end his misery. 

Gerri is standing inside. Gerri, who had looked him dead in the eye and asked how helping him would serve her interest. The very same who has subsequently watched him trip over himself, his thoughts on turbo-spin as he left the room.

He couldn’t do it. This was too soon. Waystar should have been empty at this hour. No one sane would come in at half five in the morning. 

Of course, Roman was there for that exact reason. His desk was still cluttered with legal documents and general shit he needed to collect. His plan was to avoid all eye-contact and be in-and-out as quick as possible, much the same as his tried and tested approach to sex. But there Gerri is, looking all pinched and unimpressed.

Not wanting to look a coward, he enters the elevator, pressing his back against one of the side walls, ensuring that he keeps the entire space in his sights, lest she decide to deck him while he isn’t looking. She remains facing ahead, however, not sparing him a glance. Their destination is, unsurprisingly, the same, so the doors slide closed, and the lift begins its ascent, trapping them both.

He allows himself a brief moment to take her in. She’s wearing her hair in that familiar French twist, with the usual corporate dress and those fucking pearls that some part of him always wants to chew on, all perfectly put together, unlike himself who has eye bags the size of the Mariana trench.

He feels ill, like he’s seconds away from spewing his guts. He doesn’t think it would impress Gerri much though, an arm covered in sick this early in the morning, so he tries his best to take deep, silent breaths to settle his nerves. 

He slides closer to the operating panel and begins picking at the plastic of floor 10. Maybe it’ll come clean off, cause some confusion for the corporate fucks when they arrive. His finger slips and suddenly the ring around the button is lit up. He presses it again and, of course, it doesn’t undo anything, so the doors are soon opening to an empty floor, elongating the uncomfortable silence. 

Only Gerri gives him a look. Just the flick of her eyes, but it’s an acknowledgement, and he finds himself moving to pick at the plastic of floor 17.

After another bout of quiet, they arrive again at an empty floor. This time there’s no look, but a slight frown pulls at her lips. 

Floor 24 next. The doors open and close. Her brows are now furrowed. 

Before he can press the next button, she finally snaps, “Roman, will you stop that?” 

He does. His hands instantly settling beside himself as he steps away from the panel. But with the ice now shattered, he gains the confidence to speak. 

“How have you been?” He rubs his nose, twitchy. “Keeping Waystar afloat? All fat and juicy for the takeover?” 

She nods, so minutely he’s unsure if he’s seeing things. Imagined or not, it encourages him to continue. 

“You got more breathing room now that us scrappy kids are out of the way? We’re thinking of fucking off and starting our own company. Me, Kendall, Shiv. We’ve got this new family trauma to bond over, of the corporate flavour, y’know? So hopefully there’ll be less stabbing of backs this time around.” 

That line got him a sideways glance. He struggles to catch what it was laced with, annoyance? boredom?

“Are you mad at me?” he asks, tentative but somewhat incredulous. He knows they’re on rocky ground but getting next to nothing is a slap in the face. “Feels like it should be the other way around, with Italy and all, cutting me out of my legacy. You know that was fucked, right? It’s like going against destiny, fate, or, I don’t know. It’s like my birthright.” 

“It’s too early in the morning for this, Roman.”

Finally.

“But like, why did you do it?” he pushes.

“Why did I do it?” she retorts. “Aside from the fact it was my job?” 

“You could have told me, Dad wouldn’t know it was you, wouldn’t have suspected it either, not after…” I’d sent him my cock instead of you, he finishes internally.

“What reason had you given me to do so? Do I need to remind you, you repeatedly betrayed my trust and then did the one thing I feared happening the most? Mess.” 

She definitely didn’t look unfazed now. Her voice was tight, each word said with enough force to make him shrink back in guilt. It wasn’t even the kind of berating that made his dick hard. He wonders whether she had wished to say something like this to him since becoming interim CEO, tell him to properly fuck off, only now that he was no longer part of the company, could she finally lay into him. 

“You jeopardised my position, Roman, and not that I had wanted to, but any scheming between us would have seen me out in the cold. You know that, so don’t ask.”

He goes quiet. Still fidgety, he gravitates to the panel once more. Gerri’s voice stills him, yet again, “I thought I told you to stop doing that.” 

“Fuck, okay,” he says, hands held up in surrender. He scratches the back of his neck before letting them drop. 

A thick silence settles over them again. Roman takes to tapping incessantly on the wall behind him. He can’t take it, being this close to her after however long it has been and not saying anything. So, he tries again, this time allowing a hint of earnestness to slip into his words. 

“I just- I want to go back to how things were.” He hates how small his voice sounds. “I know it was me who fucked it, but things were good between us, the working together? Rockstar and molewoman.”

This time when she nods, he can’t mistake it for anything else. 

“We could do it again?” he continues, “The dream ticket.”

“And how does that work, exactly?” she asks, carefully. 

“Fuck, I don’t know. I’m not asking for the keys to the kingdom or, like, the secret recipe to busting business balls. Just you know… keep me in the know and I’ll do the same.”

“Seems like you’d benefit a lot more than me, since I’m the only one still with the company.” 

“I’ll let you know of our… happenings, y’know, our business movements, whether Dad contacts us, all of that.” She doesn’t look impressed, so he adds, “You never know what info you may need to keep stashed under your blouse.”

She pauses and Roman gives her space, allowing her to rapid-fire calculate five thousand scenarios of how it could crash and burn.

“You’d listen to me, would you? Keep the more depraved thoughts inside your own head? You wouldn’t resort to sending me items like before?” 

“No, nope, that ship has sailed. I’ll be a good-” the word ‘boy’ dances on his tongue, but he thinks better of it. “I’ll be good.” 

Gerri goes quiet again, more thinking. The elevator doors open and this is it, the last time he may see her. 

She glances at him one more time. “I’ll think about it.” 

Roman doesn’t even realise he’d been holding his breath until she’s walking away.

He knows it wasn’t a good pitch, especially for Gerri, who has a boner for a well thought out plan. It basically boiled down to ‘I miss you’. He at least hoped that it came across in a corporate kind of way, that he misses her scheming mind, and not in a gooey, sappy way in which he’s begging for a scrap of attention. 

Fuck, he doesn’t even really know what he wants, what could come of them, but he wants to be near her. To slip into that familiar in-ness they had. The shared glances across a boardroom table. The imperceptible nods of hers that gave him the confidence to back himself. He just wants her in some way, even without the taunting down phone line, for her to look at him as though he’s more than a speck of dust clinging to one of her blazers. 

•••

A few weeks later, Roman gets his answer.

He’s slouched against one of Nan Pierce’s wicker settees listening to Shiv try to psych out her apparently soon to be ex-husband when his phone buzzes. Kendall is too focused on the current phone call to glance over, so Roman swipes it off the table with no notice.

He’s in. She’s tossed him a bone, and he thinks he might nurture it until the day he dies.