Chapter Text
2008
Though she’d always had her suspicions, Shiv received confirmation that Kendall was gay when she was twenty.
It was almost a nice memory actually. She was home from college for Christmas break, sitting in her childhood bedroom and smoking a joint. Until high school, every piece of furniture had been pink and cream, until a rebellious teenage phase had her hiring her own interior designers. Everything was black metal, dark wood, or glass, even her attached bathroom, save for the pink walls. She couldn’t part with the warm shade, far from bubblegum and closer to red in low light. The room was crimson now, lit only by her blunt and a tiny desk lamp. She distantly wished the solid color of the walls was replaced with an abstract pattern to find a metaphor in or, at the very least, go crazy gazing into.
Shiv didn’t smoke all that often, always socially, but her mother was arriving early the next morning to visit while Logan was in the office for the day, and Shiv wanted her to smell the stench clearly, rub it in her mother’s fucking nose that she’s no longer a purse dog to be dressed and prodded. She’d even laid the clothes she planned to wear the next day out nearby for her smoke sesh.
When the door creaked open, Shiv jumped in her seat.
“What the fuck?” she hissed to herself; then she called, “Naked! I’m naked!”
“Jesus, sorry!” That was Kendall’s voice. The door closed quickly, and Shiv put her joint on her makeshift ashtray (an old, blown-glass ring holder) to stand.
“Dressed now,” she said as she approached the door and opened it just a crack. “What do you want?”
Kendall smiled, saying, “What, I can’t say hi to my baby sister after she’s flown in?”
“I flew in, like,” Shiv said as she checked her watch, “five hours ago, dumbass.” She got stuck for a moment staring at her watch, entranced with the tiny red second hand. How could something be so small? Did you need tiny hands to make something so small? Oh, shit. The high had just hit her.
“Well, I was at work ,” Kendall said mockingly. “Some of us have very, very important jobs . I have a lot of power over a lot of people there, Shiv.”
“Whatev’r, Prince Hamlet,” she said, starting to mumble her words just a bit. “King of—Prince of Denmark. No-one cares. It’s fucking…spreadsheets and reach-arounds.”
“Have you seen the Mel Gibson ver—” Kendall joked. “Holy shit, you’re fucking high. ”
“Guh to hell,” Shiv said, starting to close her door.
“Wait, lemme in on that!” Kendall said. Somewhere down the hall or upstairs, someone repeatedly knocked their fist into their wall or floor to say, Shut the fuck up!
“No way,” Shiv said. “Like you don’t have your own stash somewhere ‘round here. You probably have coke in, like, the top of the toilet… Wha’s’it called?”
“I don’t, honest. Housekeepers threw it out years ago,” Kendall said, eyes pleading. “Shiv, I’m—I’m going through some shit, and I came straight here after work, and it would be really fucking nice to smoke weed with my favorite sister.” That wasn’t saying much obviously, but Shiv knew he meant favorite sibling as well.
Shiv finally opened her door fully. What could she say? Kendall was her favorite sibling too.
Kendall spotted the joint and took a seat on the floor. He snatched the lighter off the table and re-lit it.
“So,” Kendall said, smoke escaping his mouth with each word, able to speak clearly through the biggest lungful of smoke Shiv had ever witnessed someone inhale. She couldn’t try that; she’d cough her lungs out. “What’s up with you? Boyfriend? How’s Alana?”
Shiv scoffed and held her hand out for the joint. After a small, slow puff, she spoke.
“Haven’t seen ‘Lana since, like, 2006,” Shiv said. “She went to study abroad, remember?”
Kendall had Stewy, and for years, Shiv had Alana. Oh, well. Friendships die. Apparently not all of them, but the vast majority.
“Sorry,” Kendall said, though he didn’t sound very apologetic. “Boyfriend?”
“Pshh,” Shiv scoffed. She was seeing this one guy named Tom, but he was, like, super fucking lame and not Roy material, so Kendall didn’t have to know about him. Maybe she’d talk if she was dating some famous actor or corporate heir, but…the guy got his undergraduate at fucking Michigan. No, she knew her family wouldn’t see what she saw in him.
“Well, shit, Shivvy,” Kendall said. “Have you been studying 24/7 since you left for college? No parties? No drama?”
“Why’re you such a drama whore anyways?” Shiv asked. Kendall was reaching for the blunt, to which she said, “Fuck off,” and took another hit.
“Sorry for asking about your life,” Kendall said with an annoyed edge and a scoff.
“Since when have we talked about our lives?” Shiv asked.
“I dunno,” Kendall said with a shrug, suddenly solemn. Shiv handed him the joint as consolation. “Just thought it’d be nice.”
Shiv knew her brother well, and even in her weed-addled brain, she recognized what this was. Kendall wanted her to bring something serious up, lean on his shoulder and cry a bit, just so that he could justify doing the same. He wanted comfort, and he was too much of a pussy to go to his wife for it. Maybe if Shiv was twelve, she would’ve fallen for it—and she did once or twice. She couldn’t help but feel swindled when she recognized the pattern though.
Her voice was more gentle than she intended when she asked, “What’s up?”
Kendall took a large inhale. His eyes were starting to get red and watery, but Shiv didn’t know if it was from the weed or something else.
“Do you know where you can—” Kendall spoke, interrupting himself with a deep, forlorn sigh and placing the blunt on the ring holder, “—can get, like, STD tested, and not, like, get a dozen paparazzi—”
“What the fuck, dude?” Shiv asked. Though her body still felt heavy, her mind was slightly knocked out of her high. It was certainly unpleasant, almost sickening. “What the hell are you talking about, you have an STD?”
Kendall put his finger to his lips and shh ’ed her.
“Fuck, Shiv!” he hissed. “I don’t have an STD. I might, maybe have an STD. Maybe. I’m just being safe.”
“Where the fuc—”
“Just some fucking club.”
“You didn’t notice the fucking clap while you were—while you were up in there?”
“It was dark,” Kendall said mournfully. Maybe there was an edge of pleading, something saying, Please, please, don’t be mad. I’m sorry.
Her head high was completely gone. Figures.
“You need to find out before, like,” Shiv said quietly. “Before you give it to Rava.”
Kendall hung his head, and Shiv suddenly felt awful for freaking out.
“Hey, don’t, like, get too hung up about it,” Shiv said. “We’ve all fucked around in clubs. I mean, it’s not like it’s sexually-transmitted pigsties in there. You’re probably fine.”
“It wasn’t…” Kendall trailed off.
“What?”
Kendall was silent.
“Kenny?”
“It wasn’t one of the usual spots,” Kendall said slowly, mouth forming every word perfectly annunciated, as if he was speaking to Shiv as a toddler. He wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at the dead joint lazily effusing the rank smell Shiv had bought the weed for. Typical fucking Kendall, doing other people’s drugs and ruining the fun too.
Shiv didn’t speak, expecting him to continue, but that seemed to be all he wanted to say on the topic.
“Well, where?”
“There’s something wrong with me.”
“C’mon,” Shiv said with a scoff. There were a lot of things wrong with Kendall, but unsafe sex and cheating on his partner barely made the top ten. Not even worth mentioning, in her opinion.
“No, I’m serious. There’s something very wrong with me,” Kendall said.
“What are you talking about?” Shiv said. “Who cares if you cheated on Rava? As if she doesn’t already know.”
“It’s not that I’m cheating,” Kendall said, words slow and calculated again. “It’s with whom .”
Shiv’s first thought was something very illegal, and Kendall could see it on her face, because it finally, finally fucking came out.
“ Men. ” And that was all he had to say.
…
The first time she’d suspected it, she was fifteen. She’d been the flower girl at Kendall and Rava’s wedding, stuffed into a pink dress with delicate, ornate frills to match Rava’s infant niece. She was pissed.
Rava’s hair was short at that time, short enough that Roman tried to bet money on if she was a “bulldyke” or not. Shiv remembered it clearly; she’d been so fucking mad because her stupid fucking cunt mother told her that she could tell Shiv had gained weight, and in another teenage rebellion, she’d started to tear at the guipure butterflies dancing at the neckline of her dress. It was the night of the wedding rehearsal, and Rava, practical as always, was wearing jeans. However, it seemed she was testing out the veil’s length, and her hair and makeup had been done. She wore baby’s breaths on her right temple, her short bangs tucked behind it.
“Shiv, we nee—” Rava said as she approached. “Christ, what are you up to?”
Shiv felt embarrassed, caught, scolded. So, she apologized the only way Roys knew how.
“It’s my mom’s fault,” she said.
“You’re just like him, you know that? Your brother, I mean,” Rava said. “Here, I—” She was interrupted by one of her bridesmaids passing by and tapping her on the shoulder.
“Can I get a ride with one of your guys?” the bridesmaid asked. “I can’t find my damn phone.”
“To the bachelorette party?” Rava asked. “Yeah, of course. But it’s not until ten; you’ll probably find your phone by then.”
“We’ll see,” the friend said with a laugh. She walked away, leaving Rava and Shiv alone again.
“Anyways,” Rava said. “Here.” She took the baby’s breaths from her head and clipped the miniature bouquet over the spot Shiv had destroyed. “Well, that almost looks purposeful,” she said with a little smile.
Rava pinched her cheek, and Shiv frowned, reaching up to slap her hand away.
“I’m kidding , jeez,” she said. “Lighten up. It’s a wedding. I’ll even sneak you some champagne.” Shiv visibly brightened up a bit at that, and inwardly, her heartbeat picked up. It felt like, no matter how old she was, she was still treated like a toddler. Kendall probably drank from the liquor cabinet in fucking middle school with a pat on the head from Dad, but everyone freaks the fuck out when Shiv gets her hands on something.
“Can I come to your bachelorette party?” Shiv asked.
Rava made a face. “I don’t know…” she said. “It’ll probably be a little old for you.”
Shiv felt a hot magma plume swell inside of her, a burning, torrid rage.
“What, afraid I’ll rat if you cheat on my brother?” she asked.
“Jesus, Shiv, no,” Rava said. “But—I don't know—it’s just not a place for a kid.”
Shiv stood and roughly pushed past Rava after being called a child, storming inside. She skipped the rehearsal, because how fucking hard is it to carry a basket of flowers down a straight path? They could teach the baby to do it.
Roman, eighteen, was enjoying the open bar and swaying to “Take My Breath Away”, blasé to his role as one of Kendall’s groomsmen. He’d been beaten in the running for best man by Stewy, so he was bitterly throwing back cognac.
“Roman,” Shiv said, poking him. He turned to her, eyes at the exact same height. “Sneak me into Kendall’s bachelor party.”
“What, you wanna see some strippers?” Roman asked. “You could probably go to the butch’s party for that.”
“Fuck that dyke,” Shiv said. “She’s not family. Why the hell would I want to hang out with her?” For some reason, she thought about the way Rava’s bangs fell in her face when she took the flowers out of her hair.
“Nah, don’t think so,” Roman said. “No girls allowed if they aren’t naked, and I’m not catching a pedo charge over you flashing me.”
“You’re so fucking disgusting,” Shiv said. Roman rolled his eyes and started to turn away from her.
“You’re fucking mad at Kendall, and I’m fucking mad at Kendall, so why don’t we ruin his bachelor party?” she proposed.
“Why’re you mad at Kendall?” Roman asked.
She wasn’t, was the thing. She was mad at her mother, she was mad at Rava, she was always mad at Dad. She was mad at Roman for being a sleazeball, and she was mad at whoever created lace, embroidery, stitching, or any other textile art. But she wasn’t mad at Kendall, at least not at that moment.
“He’s a druggie who cheats on his fiancée,” Shiv said. “And he called me a bitch the other day.” He definitely had before, but not recently.
Roman wasn’t at all convinced, but he shrugged.
“You can ride with me if you want, I guess,” Roman said. “It’s not at a strip bar; it’s at a country club, so you could probably, you know, sneak in through the back door.”
When Shiv had changed into real clothes and a push-up bra, she was just as convincingly an adult as Roman was. She knew she never could’ve pulled off sneaking in—they had security everywhere—but you can get into a lot of usually locked doors being Shiv fucking Roy.
It was a huge party, but she kept her eyes out for anyone she knew, someone who would realize she wasn’t supposed to be here. Chief among these hypothetical rats was Kendall himself. Kendall wouldn’t tell Dad, but he might tell Mom, which would almost be worse. She stayed near the walls, slinking around corners to avoid bumping into attendees. If she knew Kendall, he would want to be at the very center, basking in attention.
Also, fuck Roman, because there were fully-clothed women everywhere.
She dipped into a small room with huge windows and a bijou kitchen. There was a pool table in the center of the room, along with plush sitting chairs in the corners. A few attendees were doing coke off of a makeup mirror. Shiv felt her heart rate pick up as she approached.
She didn’t say a word as she kneeled down in front of the table the group was snorting from. She was added to the rotation, and the mirror was slid into her arm reach. Someone handed her a credit card, probably saying something, but her heart was beating so loudly in her throat and ears that she couldn’t hear a word.
She actually had some self-control, some fear. She divided off half of what she’d seen the others do with the credit card, opting for a (hopefully) small dose. She felt high before she even started to snort, as soon as her nostril touched it.
Leaning back after doing her line, she almost lost her balance and tumbled onto her back. It felt as if all of the blood in her body had pooled in her front half when she leaned down to the mirror, and now it was sloshing her around and fucking her balance. She groaned audibly.
The guy next to her said, “First time?” but she barely heard him. He asked again, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She was dizzy. Royco roller coasters. Lift hills, and pre-drops, and on-ride cameras snapping. One of the women near her was snapping in her face.
Suddenly, all at once, she was extremely aware, and that man’s hand was making its way down her back. She lurched away and fell on her face, screaming, “Fuck off!” At the very least, some of the attendees recognized what was going on. Someone picked her up—though she fought them tooth and nail—and someone else made an excuse to get the guy to leave.
“Are you here with someone?” a woman asked. She was the person who picked her up. In a panic, Shiv pushed away from her and stumbled out of the room. She pushed through a pair of double doors to discover the kitchen. Cooks were hard at work, but she brushed past to find an exit. She needed fresh air.
The Italian air was clement, both in climate and in mercy. Dry, but warm. She walked for a moment towards the golf fields nearby but was stopped by a voice.
“Shiv! Is that you?”
She looked around for the source. It was definitely a voice she recognized, but in her high, she was having trouble placing it. Finally, her eyes found an awning window on the second floor with Stewy peeking out of it. He was putting on a shirt as Shiv saw him.
She considered running. She didn’t know why. She just felt like she could run, like she could run forever. She’d be like a mare tearing up the golf course with her heavy footfalls, like a dog digging his overgrown talons into the earth.
Instead, she collapsed to the ground, sitting cross-legged. She’d been defeated. This is what being an adult was, and Stewy would tell Kendall who would tell Dad, and she wouldn’t be let out of the apartment again until she turned eighteen.
And she was scared. She was very scared.
She could hear Stewy talking to someone, but she didn’t know who. She had to do something with her hands. She tried to braid her hair after taking it from its ponytail, but her fingers twisted it into knots. There was limestone-clay on her Coach platform sandals.
When she looked up again, Stewy and Kendall were very literally running through the back door.
“What the fuck? What are you doing here?” Kendall asked. He was mad. That thought bounced around like a DVD screensaver in Shiv’s head, echoing and becoming louder. Kendall’s mad. Kendall’s mad. Dad is—Kendall’s mad.
Stewy hissed something at Kendall, and after a moment, he squatted down to look at Shiv.
“Shivvy, what’s wrong?” he asked. He reached down to touch her shoulder, and she slapped his hand away. “Wait. Are you high?” he asked accusingly, as if he had any fucking right.
“ Kendall, ” Stewy hissed, and Shiv could hear it this time. “ Shut the fuck up. ”
Stewy held his hand out to Shiv, waiting for her to take it or slap it away. She took it and rose to her feet.
“Fucking—” she felt fired up again. Ups and downs. Roller coasters. “Some fucking dickhead just, I don’t know, wanted to cop a feel.” She dropped Stewy’s hand and looked up at their faces with what she hoped was a furious expression, daring them to say anything.
No-one moved an inch. Kendall and Stewy’s faces barely changed, Kendall’s more than Stewy’s. His mouth was hanging open a bit, his eyebrows started to furrow as realization dawned on him.
“Let’s go back to your hotel,” Stewy said, obviously careful not to word it as if he was sending her off to her room for misbehaving. “Yeah?”
Shiv didn’t want to sit in a hotel room alone. She wanted to run. She wanted to do more coke, kinda. She wanted to steal Kendall’s keys and take his Porsche Carrera for a joyride, wrap it around a tree or kill a pedestrian. Instead, she said, “Fine.”
When they got back to the hotel room, Kendall didn’t leave. He flipped through channels while Shiv sat at the vanity trying to unknot her hair and eventually ordered room service. Shiv crashed (hard) and fell asleep in the plush chair she’d pulled up to the vanity. When she awoke in the morning, she was under the sheets and her shoes had been removed.
Waking up alone in the hotel room, she put together the puzzle pieces of the previous night. She felt shame—so much shame, but a month or so later, when the wound had somewhat closed—or, at least, she’d convinced it to close—she recalled that, when Stewy had spotted her red hair like a beacon, he’d been shirtless and in a room with Kendall.
Shiv Roy wasn’t stupid.
They didn’t really talk about that night again, but he never told anyone, and she let her side remain a suspicion.
…
“So, you got fucking AIDS at some gay bar?” Shiv barked in 2008, smoking weed with her brother in her room.
Kendall wilted more, if that was even possible. He didn’t even have the energy to shush her. She suddenly remembered being fifteen at Kendall’s bachelor party. The situations were barely comparable; what was she thinking?
She kneeled to the floor. She wasn’t like Kendall; she didn’t need an outside party to temper her and show her how to be kind. She was a complete human being, unlike Kendall.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Listen, I’ll call my gyno. She’ll know someone.”
Kendall nodded.
Shiv touched his head. Dad hated when he shaved it, but it was as short as possible while remaining professional, pricking her fingertips. Kendall didn’t slap her away. Instead, he leaned forward and buried his head into Shiv’s shoulder. Shiv’s first thought was exasperated, like, Jesus, dude, get a grip, but her internal dialogue softened into a warmth in her chest. She pet the short hairs on the back of his neck as he sobbed. It just kept getting worse, Kendall’s sobs growing louder and his grip on her shoulders growing tighter. Shiv didn’t know what to do.
She tried shushing him like a frightened mare, but it just made him snort and whinny louder.
“This—Shiv, this cuh- can’t get out,” Kendall wept. “It would kill me.”
Sure, they’d been talking about paparazzi the whole time, but that was the first moment Shiv truly considered the possibility that it could get out, especially if Kendall did have an STD.
In imagining that scenario, her heart rate picked up. Her pulse pounded in her head. Secret, secret, secret, she thought. I’ve got a secret.
She couldn’t. She was a political science major, and she was planning on going into blue politics, so it definitely couldn’t get out that she outed her brother. She didn’t want to go full red; she couldn’t.
The iron tang of the CEO position filled her mouth.
…
As it turns out, Kendall didn’t have an STD, which was, of course, great news. This was awesome news. Shiv was jumping for joy and giggling when he called her.
So, she started sneaking it into conversations.
Subtly, of course, in a way that was just innocent enough, liberal enough to get away with it.
“You know, I’m really worried about Kendall,” she said to Tom. “I think he caught something.” When Tom, naive and somehow cheerful, asked, “What?” she whispered, “AIDS.”
When the family was having dinner with a politician running for President in a year, Shiv pulled one of his aides aside. “Hey, keep this on the down low, but,” Shiv said, “if my dad suddenly croaks—heh, knock on wood—and Kendall is CEO, ATN is going in a completely different direction. A…coming out coup d’etat, if you will. I’m excited about it, personally, you know—representation at the top of the ladder—but I thought Elmer should know.”
When she (rarely) spoke to her mother, she was more outright about it. “Do you think Kendall is queer?”
“Well, yes, but which one of you isn’t?” her mother said indifferently over the phone. “I’ve been wondering when you’re getting a boyfriend yourself honestly.”
Shiv hung up on her.
She knew she’d won when the rumor got back around to her. Connor approached her at a dinner party they were having with a rival family company. Small news channel, but rapidly growing. Worth keeping an eye on.
“Have you heard the rumors about Kendall?” Connor asked her as she put out most of her cigarette on the stone railing overlooking Lake Erie.
“Which ones?” Shiv asked innocently.
“Bad ones, Shiv. Really bad,” Connor said. “I heard the Donnell kids talking about it.”
“That’s bold of them, gossiping about a guy in the room,” Shiv said. “We’re a pretty big dick to get into a pissing contest with. Can’t we sue them out the ass for slander?”
“Libel,” Connor corrected (incorrectly), “It’s libel when it's spoken.” He looked over the lake as he spoke, as if the fish cared how smart he was.
“Either way,” Shiv danced around his slip-up without hurting his feelings, “they must have something serious if they’re being so brazen.”
Connor glanced at her through a side-eye for a moment, mulling over every element of her word choice probably. Roys were known to speak in tongues, even to each other.
He left her alone with a shake of his head and a command. “Look out for him. Snakes everywhere, sis.” She hated when he called her that.
Shiv passed in and out of conversations as she sauntered back inside. Plenty of people were talking about Kendall, though they softened their words when Shiv passed by. A few distant cousins didn’t have any idea who she was and completely blabbed, excited to share gossip. She had given Kendall what he wanted; everyone in the room was talking about him. He was the center of attention, and she wanted to watch him squirm.
Kendall was her favorite brother, so she knew exactly where he would hide. Sneaking up the Donnells’ gigantic wooden staircase, she looked for closed doors, searching for a bathroom. She eventually had to poke into one of the bedrooms with an attached bath before finding him, but the sound of the tap running to hide his snorts was unmistakable.
Shiv opened the door to Kendall doing a line. At the sound of the door, he turned to her. His hands were bloody from his bad habit of picking at his fingernails until the quicks bled—his face as well, probably a nosebleed. The whites—pinks—of his eyes seemed to shine in the harsh bathroom light, bloodshot and on full display. His teeth were bared, and his lip was upturned. When he registered that he was looking at Shiv, his hands tightened into fists at his side, and he slowly closed his mouth, wiped the blood off his upper lip with the sleeve of his shirt.
“Fuck off,” he said quietly.
Shiv could hide that she was the source of the rumor from everyone but him.
She considered lying, saying she only told Tom or Mom or maybe Connor, and it was their fault. So desperately she wanted to stomp and pout like a child, whining, “Not my fault! Not my fault! Daddy, Kendall started it!”
She grabbed Kendall’s wrist and pulled it under the running faucet.
“What the fuck?!” Kendall yelled. He retched his wrist from her grip, sending droplets of pink water across every inch of the bathroom.
“I’m trying to help you ,” she said. “You can’t go back down there with blood all over your shirt, dumbass.”
“Yeah, big fucking help you’ve been,” Kendall growled. “Hope your future demographic fucking—I don’t know—rises up against you and cuts your two-faced head off.” He added a quick “Cunt.” for good measure.
“What do you want me to say?” Shiv asked. “I got worried. I told a few people. Family. Someone else must’ve leaked it. Have you told Roman or Connor?”
“The rumor is that I have AIDS , Shiv. I know who the source is,” Kendall said quietly. “I mean, I don’t know what I fucking did to you, but…”
Shiv was tempted to mention every bad thing Kendall had ever done to her. He broke her dolls during his wild, manic teenage years just to watch her cry. He pushed her off a horse one time. He was Daddy’s little princess, and a shoe-in for CEO, and—
“Now you know what it’s like to be a fucking outcast in this fam—”
“An outcast ?!” Kendall yelled. “You think you’re a fucking outcast ? Pinkie? Never-even-fucking-spanked Pinkie? The world bends to you!”
“You think it’s all about hitting?” Shiv asked. “You would respect me if Dad hit me?”
“I would respect you if you weren’t such a fucking Judas ,” Kendall spit. That night in her bedroom—had that been an elaborate Kiss of Death? A marker burned into his cheek to be identified by those who would take him away?
“But, yeah, bet you can’t take a fucking hit either,” Kendall added.
“Punch me then, f—”
Kendall actually punched her.
She didn’t expect him to actually punch her.
She was actually planning on saying “fucker”, not “faggot”, but who could blame the guy?
Now on her ass, Shiv scrambled back out into the hardwood floors of the adjacent bedroom. Kendall had a gleam in his eye and a snarl on his face and—
Shiv kicked Kendall’s legs out from under him, and his chin hit the floor with a deafening crack. For a moment, he was still and silent, and Shiv wondered if she’d killed him.
And then he was up again, coked out and digging what was left of his nails into Shiv’s face, threatening to scratch her eyes out. She’d never fought anyone before, nothing like that at her private Catholic girls’ school, but the few people she would fight in her life would be forced to acknowledge that she had a good right hook naturally. Droplets of Kendall’s blood—even her blood on Kendall’s hands, on her face—splattered against her white blouse in a Rorschach inkblot commonly interpreted by the abused as Cain killing Abel.
She scuttered on her hands and knees, trying to find the bed she knew was nearby. Kendall was stirring where she’d knocked him over again. Like a starved, beaten dog, she couldn’t tell the difference between what preyed on her and what she was predator to, but she at least knew how to bite.
She knocked his head back into the floor, and he flailed, grabbing a handful of her blouse in the scuffle. She twisted his face away from her, burying his cheek into the floor, holding him in that position. When she went to lurch his hand off of her, it just fell away.
She’d won. He’d given up. Shiv had beat her big brother in a fist fight. As her heartbeat in her ears softened, she expected to hear Kendall sobbing, like he was so wont to do. Instead, there was silence except for the murmurs of a party going on downstairs.
She couldn’t have. She couldn’t imagine it. She couldn’t look.
Kendall was completely lax—lifeless—against the blood-splattered floor. Blood was lazily oozing out of his misshapen chin in two places. There was a small puddle of blood below Kendall’s head.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Shiv panted. “Kendall. Kenny, c’mon.” She slapped his face lightly, trying to get a response. Remembering the basics of human life, she held her hand up to Kendall’s nose and mouth. Faint as a whisper, he was breathing. Relief washed through her bones.
He couldn’t hear her anyways, so she babbled as she gathered towels from the bathroom to press to his wounds. (She was smart enough to stick his coke mirror and credit card into her pocket before anyone came looking for them.)
“I’m sorry, fuck, I’m sorry,” she rambled. “You’re going to be alright, okay? I’m going—I’m gonna take care of you.” Kendall groaned and his head shifted under the towel Shiv had pressed to him. “Can you hear me? I’m sorry. …Hey, you know I love you, right? I’m so… Fuck.” He’d gone still again, his distorted, bloody mouth falling open. “Fuck. Fuck. Shit. Kenny, what do I do? What do I—w-who do I call?”
She considered just screaming for help, but what the fuck would she say to the Donnells? If it’d just been Kendall, she could’ve said he fell down the stairs or something, but she could feel tacky dribbles of blood sticking to her face and the lazy flow of blood from her nose. Fuck, the scratch marks too. She probably looked like she’d murdered him. Maybe she had.
“Kendall, please, ” she sobbed. She felt like she was going to be sick, stumbling towards the bathroom in case she vomited. The smell of blood was so, so strong; she could feel it sloshing around in her fucking lungs from inhaling it.
She managed to avoid throwing up and decided to try to find her purse. Finding its contents scattered across the floor at some point in the scuffle, she finally spotted her flip-phone laying underneath a dresser.
“Connor!” she barked into the phone. “Get up here! Upstairs! Find us—Kendall, he—Connor, it wasn’t my fault .”
“Fuck, um,” Connor said to someone on the other end, “I’ll be right back.” Shiv heard some shuffling, then Connor asking, “Where are you?”
For a moment, Shiv considered locking the door and smothering Kendall, getting the fucking job done.
“Upstairs,” Shiv said again. “Lying—lying bloody on the fucking floor. Can’t miss us.”
She heard Connor’s breath pick up.
He was there a minute later, bursting through the cracked door. First, his eyes landed on Shiv, taken aback by her state, then to Kendall. The look of pure shock morphed into fear.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, dropping to his knees and roughly pushing past Shiv to inspect Kendall. “What happened?”
“Dad,” Kendall said, a little twitter of a man’s voice accented by the gurgle of blood in his mouth. His eyes weren’t even open.
“Yeah, Ken,” Connor said. “It’s Dad.” He turned to Shiv. “Get my phone out of my pocket, call Angela, and put her on speaker.” Shiv did as she was told.
“We’ve got a Code Kendall over here, Ang,” Connor said. “Get some security up to the second floor, and—and create a distraction or something.”
“A distraction?” his assistant asked.
“I don’t fucking know! My brother is bleeding out on the floor for Christ’s sakes, you coldhearted—” Connor snapped. “—just figure it out or you’re fired.”
Angela figured it out. Just minutes later, the entire family was outside looking for a meteor someone swore was tonight, and in a car parked in the grass near a back door, Connor and a security guard were loading Kendall into an unmarked, black SUV, one with the two back rows facing each other. Kendall lay lifeless draped across the seats, and Connor and Shiv took the opposite side, facing him, watching him. The divider between them and the driver was already up, and the car lurched far above the speed limit as soon as the door closed, before Shiv and Connor got a chance to fasten their seatbelts. People with more knowledge of backroads and back entrances to hospitals could take it from there.
Connor didn’t speak, watching Kendall for a minute. Then, he said, “Couldn’t have tried to kill him somewhere closer to a hospital?” Venom was injected into his words, picking a fight, but Shiv, instead of yelling at him, was chilled to the bone by the realization of where they were. The drive—Jesus fucki—the drive from the airport to the Donnells was at least an hour. Surely that wasn’t the closest city. They would’ve fucking, like, called a helicopter in or something, right? If the nearest hospital was that far away?
“How far?” Shiv’s voice came out in a whisper.
“Twenty minutes,” Connor said. That was much more manageable. That was much less time Kendall had to spend bleeding out in an impersonal, unremarkable SUV.
“What happened?” Connor asked again. This time, his tone was cold, disappointed. Once again, Shiv was a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.
“He was coked out and punched me,” Shiv said. “We got into a fight.”
Connor was silent for a moment.
“See, what I struggle with is, Kendall doesn’t really do that,” Connor said. “He gets high, he yells, he slams doors, he cheats, but I don’t remember him hitting anyone.”
“He’s hit Roman before!” Shiv shouted. She was furious, because she technically told the truth.
Connor still wasn’t meeting her tone, her desperate gaze. Connor had to get her out of this; Connor had to believe her.
“Con,” Shiv said with a tiny sob.
“Don’t.”
Shiv didn’t know who the tears she shed were for. Connor wasn’t looking at her, and Kendall wasn’t conscious.
She wiped her tears and snot on her sleeves, and they came away bloody. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could feel Connor looking at the splatters of blood on her white blouse, the smears on her sleeves.
Connor reached into his jacket pocket and handed Shiv his handkerchief. Old fucking geezer.
“Shirt’s ruined anyways,” she said with a pathetic snort. “No reason to…”
She accepted the olive branch.
As she wiped her nose, Connor pulled a hair tie out of her purse. Carefully, he repositioned her hair, matted with blood, so that it was out of Shiv’s eyes and bound it up at the base of her skull.
“Were you the one telling the Donnells that Kendall caught something?” Connor asked, staring straight into her eyes. Shiv was looking at a gray tuft of hair above his forehead.
“No,” she said, technically the truth.
Connor seemed to give up, going back to watching Kendall instead of looking at her. So, she spoke up.
“Con, if I told anyone, it wasn’t at this stupid fucking party,” she admitted. “Why would I give a shit about the Donnells?”
Connor waited a few seconds before whispering forlornly, staring at Kendall, “He didn’t tell me .”
“What?”
“That he was…sick,” Connor said. “I just knew he was queer.”
Shiv saw red for maybe the millionth time that night. She wasn’t fucking special; Kendall practically shouted it from the rooftops that he was a giant fruit.
“He isn’t sick,” she said roughly, voice cracking.
Connor let out a long, pensive sigh. Then, he collapsed in on himself. Connor—fucking Connor —stupid, happy-go-lucky Connor was sobbing as if he was the one getting pap-swabbed for the gay disease.
So, Shiv cried too. She’d seen her mother cry; Roman and Kendall too, plenty of times. But she couldn’t recall ever seeing her father or Connor cry. Her oldest brother was twenty years older than her, moved out before her birth; she hadn’t even seen him get choked up at a movie.
She wondered if her father would cry if Kendall died. Yeah, absolutely, if he didn’t hear the rumors beforehand. Maybe that would change his mind. She couldn’t picture her father shedding tears no matter how hard she tried.
At some point, every seemingly-immovable column of support she had cracked underneath her. First it was her mother, after the old hag got bored of her once she reached preschool age. Then, her father—who knows when—and Kendall when he picked up coke, and—
But not Connor, not until then.
“You may have ruined his life,” Connor said. “I think you ruined his life.”
Shiv tried to be angry. She tried to summon the fight to battle those allegations. He would be fine, she told herself. It was just a rumor to twist Dad’s panties. But she simply couldn’t muster the energy. Maybe Connor was right.
It wasn’t silent when Shiv and Connor stopped speaking. The dirt and gravel roads rushing underneath the car whistled and cracked, and Kendall would occasionally shift or whimper.
Kendall opened his eyes for a moment. They were glassy, unfocused, darting around the car. When he looked at her, she wondered if he even knew who she was.
His eyebrows furrowed, just slightly, before his eyes rolled back into his head and his features went lax.
Connor unbuckled his seatbelt and folded his long legs to sit on the floor. The SUV had a mini-fridge with bottled water, and after retrieving his handkerchief from Shiv, he poured one of the bottles out onto it—as well as his legs, Shiv’s shoes, and the floor.
Kendall was shocked into consciousness when the cold, damp silk touched the blood on his chin. He was suddenly panting wordlessly and trying to sit up, eyes darting around again.
“Conna,” he said simply when his eyes landed on something familiar. His mouth couldn’t quite form the words, or—Shiv dispelled the thought.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Kendall let out a whimper and let his head fall back against the seat. He sobbed when Connor tried to wipe his absolutely-broken jaw, so Connor instead cleaned the blood off his brother’s hands until his handkerchief was stained a shade or two darker than Shiv’s skin tone. Pink.
The driver pulled down the divider for just a moment to inform, “Five minutes!”
Shiv couldn’t believe only fifteen minutes had passed. She felt as if she’d lived a lifetime in this stupid SUV.
When Connor disconnected the cold fabric from Kendall’s skin, he quickly fell back into unconsciousness. Still, Connor stayed sitting on the floor, eyes intently trained on the rise and fall of Kendall’s chest as he took shallow, stuttering breaths.
“Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?” Shiv asked miserably, trying not to renew her tears.
Connor turned his head to her and opened his mouth to speak. Then, he closed it, blinked twice at her, then turned back to Kendall. They didn’t speak for the final five minutes.
The next day, Shiv woke in a hotel, demanding to be released as soon as the doctors determined there was nothing broken. She could take care of a few scabs and bruises herself.
She called Tom, and that helped a bit. Tom didn’t know anything, of course, hundreds of miles away with his most famous contact being a local wrestler/mayor. He didn’t know anything besides what she told him, but she found herself being mostly honest. Tom didn’t hate her—and she knew he wouldn’t, because he was too fucking nice to her—which was nice at the very least. Her brothers probably hated her, but at least her boyfriend didn’t. Yippee.
They had to put Kendall’s whole fucking face in a cast, so he would have to disappear from the public eye for two months. Shiv realized in a panic upon seeing him bandaged up and asleep in the hospital bed that rumors about a guy being sick are pretty easily substantiated by him suddenly vanishing from the limelight.
She was in the second half of her sophomore year, nowhere near prepared to mitigate the PR disaster she’d created.
She figured if rumors got Kendall into this, rumors could get him out.
This time, she was much less subtle, much less coordinated. She was desperate to make it right; she had to. Kendall was family. You didn’t do this to family.
“You know my brother?” she asked in a lull of conversation at a club, music muffling her words. Unsubtly, she added, “He’s in Sweden right now.”
“Cool,” a tech company’s CFO had said with a scoff. She ignored him.
“It’s because he, like, got a girl pregnant, and she’s trying to get child support, but, you know, the funny part—the reason I’m telling you—the lawyers have translators, and they’re just incompot —” Shiv realized no-one was really listening.
She tried the same rumor with her mom. No dice; Caroline saw right through it. She’d heard the rumors, maybe believed them.
At an art gala, some nobody asked her straight-up if her brother was gay. She’d responded with, “Dude, no, that’s just what his PR team is shilling because he got some Swedish chick pregnant.”
She realized belatedly that her wording implied that she was talking about a teenager , but in all fucking honesty? It was a better look than being gay in their world.
The second rumor was tepid compared to the first—like, who fucking cares—but over the two months Kendall stayed inside, she’d mentioned it at maybe fifty parties/galas/dinners. She flew into New York to skip class every other week and reintroduce the rumor to the mill. Most people were convinced but couldn’t hide their disappointment in no longer being in on a naughty secret. Maybe it was enough.
She was in town when the bandages were due to come off, and she visited his apartment the day after. It would’ve probably been a good idea to wait longer, but she couldn’t.
The worst part was that Kendall’s face was just the tiniest bit different. The plastic surgeons had tried their best to perfectly recreate his old structure, but Shiv could tell. She could also tell it would haunt her every time she looked at Kendall’s face.
Kendall’s first words when he answered the door were, “I heard the new rumor.” He let out one breathy chuckle. “That was the best you could come up with?”
“You’re a son of a bitch,” Shiv said with no bite.
“Same bitch,” Kendall said.
They both made heh sounds, pathetic attempts at laughs.
“You can come in if you want,” Kendall said.
She sat on his designer sofa. Kendall hovered a bit before finally sitting down himself across the coffee table from Shiv.
“I spent, like, a week in the hospital imagining killing you,” Kendall said.
“Aw,” Shiv said flatly. “So sweet.”
“I might not come back from this. You know that, right?” Kendall was sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at Shiv. “I haven’t heard from Dad in two months.”
Shiv’s stomach lurched. Jesus, it was that bad?
Maybe for the first time to a conscious Kendall, Shiv said, “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say it, but he forgave her. She knew he did. He had to. She was his favorite sibling.
Though she’d always had her suspicions, Shiv received confirmation that Kendall was gay when she was twenty, but she told anyone who would listen that he was straight.