Archive of Our Own ^beta

Roman would never have come to this fucking charity gala, somebody something memorial dinner that all the old, rich New York Catholics go to—barely three months after the sale of Waystar, he’s just not in the fucking mood to go out and be seen by anyone. He knows his siblings probably are, and that makes it worse. He also knows it’ll be the first time he’ll go to one of these without his dad there, and that makes it agonizing.

But then three days ago, he got that text from Mencken.

You coming to this thing? I’ll have to, so, hope to see you there.  

Of course, Roman said yes.

Walking into the big grand ballroom, oak-panelled walls and gaudy crystal chandeliers, far too many people milling around in the low light with champagne flutes in hand, there’s already something electric in the air just knowing that he’ll be here too, somewhere. Knowing what follows from that, knowing that they’ve already agreed to meet afterwards in one of his hotel rooms. The one Roman is paying for. They’ve been careful in these past few months not to let their paths cross too deliberately, preferring to let serendipity guide their encounters. Still, they make the most of it whenever possible.

Eventually, not seeing anyone he really cares to speak to, he finds his way to his table. Just as he suspected, and feared, he’s seated with Kendall and Shiv, accompanied by Tom and (for some fucking reason) Greg, along with a few randoms. Both Tom and Greg greet him cheerfully, as though they’re genuinely happy to see him. He sort of shrugs in their general direction, not in the mood for it at the best of times.

“Great,” Roman mutters when he sits down, “gang’s all fucking here.”

“Hey,” Shiv says, trying to dispel the awkwardness—none of them have talked much at all these past few months. “Your face is looking—better.”

She’s glowing like all the pregnancy clichés would suggest, looking pretty with her green dress and strawberry hair, but there’s grim unhappiness in the set of her mouth. Something’s broken in all of them these days. Kendall too seems jumpy and manic, the way he gets when things are falling apart. The difference from before is the distance that Roman feels, the deadness—before there was always warmth in him for these two and Connor, if nobody else. Now being near them feels cold, that numb and unfeeling midwinter night cold that’s just fucking lonely. Something crucial has died, some era of their life permanently over. Like the end of childhood all over again but worse.

“Oh.” Roman self-consciously brushes the now mostly-healed scar on his forehead. “Thanks. You are looking, um, fatter.”

“Fuck you.”

“Come on, you guys,” Kendall chimes in, half-heartedly. “Be civil, yeah?”

Since that fight, he can’t really credibly play peacemaker, but it’s still a deeply-rooted instinct.

Some more conversation goes back and forth among the others, but Roman busies himself in his phone so he doesn’t have to look at Kendall or say anything else, engage in the how’ve you been, what are you up to of it all. He’s not up to anything and he doesn’t want to fucking talk about it. Scrolling through it looking for something to do to make it look like he’s got some urgent business going on, he sees the texts from Mencken again and then—remembering the entire reason he’s subjecting himself to this in the first place—looks up so fast it physically hurts him, craning his neck around to see if America’s favourite presidential hopeful is anywhere to be seen.

“Who’re you so eager to see?” Shiv says. “Gerri’s not coming.”

“Hmm?” Roman, distracted, mishears ‘Gerri’ for ‘Jeryd’ for a moment and swivels around sharply to face her before realizing what she’d said. “Shut up, I’m just looking around.”

Soon enough, he catches sight of Mencken with his wife and kid, flanked by Secret Service, but he doesn’t look Roman’s way. He’s in a strange grey area, Mencken, with the Wisconsin courts still working through the unprecedented ballot issues. It seems like no inauguration is going to happen next month – the country grows restless, he can tell that the stress of it all is getting to the usually unflappable Mencken in some ways, but Roman himself is detached from all of it. In some way, it’s a mess he created, but the person he was that night seems not at all real anymore. The memory of feeling smart, sure of himself, respected—that all died the day Logan was interred and the crooked world that molded him into this twisted thing closed in on him for good because it didn’t like seeing the deformity it created so up close and personal. He’s been listless, aimless, ever since. There’s clarity in knowing how fucked up and nothing all of it ended up being, but clarity is hardly comfort. He’s tried to talk to Gerri, but that hasn’t really worked, and now, there’s this whole thing with Mencken that he doesn’t want to think about, talk about, but has become the only centre of gravity his life has left.

He floats in and out of conversation with his siblings, not saying much, picking at the salad that gets served as remarks by unremarkable people are made. Out of both habit and hope, he glances towards Mencken – Jeryd. Something jumps in his stomach when he sees that Jeryd is looking right back at him intently, the slightest of smirks playing around his mouth. When their eyes meet, Jeryd raises an eyebrow and jerks his head in the general direction of the staircase leading to the private bathrooms upstairs. Roman times it so that he leaves his table about three minutes later, a respectable amount of temporal distance from Jeryd’s exit.

“You called, sire?” Roman says, closing the door behind him and locking it. It’s all so very ostentatious and grand just like the hall downstairs, gold trim and marble countertops, framed art on the walls. They always seem to end up in places like these. Layers of fake luxury in phony places but there’s something so unbearably real here, tiresome fucking cliché that it is, realer than anything else that’s probably ever happened to him.

Jeryd looks at him like he’s going to say something witty in return for a moment, but the next second there’s a hand at Roman’s neck squeezing and he’s being shoved into the wall with such force that his head hits it hard, dizzying and painful. Jeryd’s lips are on his just as suddenly, all the way, no build-up, tongue pushing into his mouth. Jeryd seems to like it better when there’s less reciprocity, something he’s more than happy to comply with—so he lets him take the lead, one hand still firmly threatening Roman’s throat.

This part is newer. They’d fucked a fair few times before they’d ever kissed—Roman lets Jeryd do what he wants to do, so it wasn’t really up to him. He figured it was some sort of masculinity or dominance thing that allowed him to be comfortable with sticking his dick in Roman but not letting them be on level ground, lips touching, something immovably, homosexually romantic about it that seemed to disgust him. So it makes sense that once he had been able to cast this as another inherently penetrative act, he’d gotten more enthusiastic about it. And Roman is fine either way. It’s always violent and short-lived, acting only as a helpful bridge between being the politely standing around part and the debauched sodomy part rather than something to be savoured or enjoyed.

Sure enough, Jeryd pulls back after only a few moments. “Fuck,” he says, looking at Roman, some halfway realm between frustration and reverence.

Roman raises his eyebrows. “Couldn’t wait until the thing ended? Wife in the next room and everything? Poor impulse control does not a good president make.”

“Ah, shut up,” he says. “Like you wouldn’t have been all weepy-eyed at me after if I’d ignored you the whole night. You fucking love this.”

Roman shrugs, even though they both know it’s true, running his finger and thumb slowly down Jeryd’s tie hanging between them. “I dunno, seems like it’s you that can’t get enough of me.”

“Yeah?”

His voice goes deep and slow, purring the word out in a way that makes it sound obscene, so entirely the precise opposite of what he wants to appear to be, black suit and necktie, grey hair and fake smiles and appeals to our good Lord, outside of these four secret walls. Roman’s the only one that gets to see this side of him, and it’s not a privilege he takes lightly.

“Yeah.”

Jeryd grabs a fistful of Roman’s hair, and uses it to slam Roman’s head into the wall behind him again. Roman breathes in, the dull throb of it setting in—in his skull and elsewhere too as he can feel himself start to get hard, slip behind that dark curtain in his mind where nothing matters except doing what he’s told and doing it well, that place where things are simple and attainable and indistinct and unreal and the memory-wires cross and bad things become good things because he’s choosing them for himself this time. He grins up at Jeryd, raising his eyebrows as if to say is that all you got? But he can’t make Roman bleed the way they both really want—they have to go out in public again soon.

“Alright,” Jeryd says, unbuckling his belt, “Enough bullshit. We’ve got about five minutes before our absence gets potentially, ah, conspicuous. Get to work, kiddo.”

Hearing him speak to Roman like that is like touching a live wire, something unnameable and destructive coursing through every part of him. Kiddo.

He doesn’t need to be told twice, certainly not like that: Roman gets on his knees promptly, in this almost trance-like state of lust where he doesn’t need to think about the nature of the act itself, get stuck in his head and self-conscious and neurotic and paralyzed and flaccid. Jeryd needs this and only Roman can give it to him and that’s all there is in the world. (A sense of sureness he only used to get what Dad told him to do something and trusted him to do it right.) More than that, there is something so deeply, degradingly submissive about this that Roman craves, the prostrated position and the mouth unable to speak in its use for something more worthwhile and the giving pleasure but getting none. So he puts his hand around the base of Jeryd’s cock and gets to work  with such immediate enthusiasm that even Jeryd is clearly not expecting it, if his sharply murmured “fuck” is any indication.

 Every reaction that Roman is doing a good job goes straight to the fucking wildfire in the pit of Roman’s stomach and lower, and he gets more and more eager. Jeryd has a hand on the back of his head, loosely holding it in position – less about forcing Roman’s movements and more about making sure he knows he can’t stop until it’s over. The principle is illustrated soon enough as Roman gets too turned on to stay focused and lets it slip out of his mouth while he tries to catch his breath. But before he gets so much as a single reflexive exhale out, Jeryd raps him sharply on the cheek and forces it back in again almost all the way, too quickly so that Roman nearly starts choking on it.

“Jesus, can’t even do one thing right yourself, huh?”

Roman’s cock stands raptly at attention from both the wound and the rubbing salt in it, a one-two punch of pure fucking arousal.

“Sorry.” The word comes out completely muffled and unintelligible, obviously, but he feels a deep need to say it anyway. “I’m sorry.”

He tries earnestly to recreate the rhythm that had just been giving Jeryd so much pleasure, to reclaim his goodwill, his approval. It feels so delightfully obtainable compared to what Roman is used to. Being the most loyal, the most subservient, the most devoted and still coming up short in that battle he was born to lose—still being disdained and punished for a bone-deep weakness he couldn’t name and could never cure, pouring out blood sacrifice after blood sacrifice in vain until the day the man died. This is so, so much better. He gets to prove that he can be good, and it matters that he is good.

“Fuck,” Jeryd gasps out suddenly after a few minutes and then it’s over, hot and salty liquid filling Roman’s mouth. He swallows it, of course he does, looking up to Jeryd’s face to get his own hit of pleasure in the look of satisfaction that he knows he put there.

“Fine?” he asks, clearing his throat.

Jeryd claps him on the shoulder in response, but it’s all he needs.

Roman’s hands go to his own belt automatically after Jeryd zips ups and makes to leave, beyond craving his own release, but Jeryd sees and tuts. “No, no. Don’t do that.”

“But—”

“Just wait til tonight. My guys booked us a suite like you said – St. Regis, I think. You’d just make it too obvious what we were doing.”

Roman lets out a string of varied expletives but he’s not going to not obey. Not when he says it like that.

Jeryd knows and relishes the power his every word has here and so he winks at Roman as he leaves to rejoin the world outside this filthy room. “Good boy.”

*

They don’t talk again until the thing is more or less over, and the early departers are gathering in the warmly lit foyer outside the event – Roman and Jeryd both among the throng. He sees Jeryd a few paces away and starts to slowly make his way over, figuring that a polite(-ish) hello in the middle of a crowd is hardly conspicuous.

Too late, he sees that Jeryd is with his son, a well-behaved boy of around twelve, who’s showing his dad something on his phone excitedly. Jeryd is leaning down to look at it, fully attentive and smiling at the kid. It’s picture-perfect in a way that makes Roman’s stomach knot up with unease, and he wishes he hadn’t seen it.

“Very cool. Hey,” he says, seemingly sensing Roman’s approach, “why don’t you go show your mom too, eh? Just gotta say bye to some people and then we can all go back to the hotel.”

He smiles and pats the kid on the back, who scurries off presumably in search of his mother.

Roman walks up to him, trying to shake the bad feeling. “So, is he a good kid or is he one of the shitty ones? Oh come on, you know how some kids just, like, suck. I’m not wrong.”

“Too early to tell,” Jeryd says, sardonically, but he glances at the kid’s retreating back with a flicker of genuine warmth. “I think he’ll turn out okay, though.”

The thought of Jeryd being a good or kind father continues to not sit at all well with him, a weird truth that if acknowledged threatens to collapse this house of cards he clings to as his last and best lifeline. He mostly just tries to forget the existence of his family entirely, but it’s hard when it’s right in front of you.

“Do you hit him?” Roman says instead, flippant and joking on the surface. “I hear that’s the way to go. Spare the rod, spoil the, blah, blah.”

The fun, secret third option is to both beat and spoil your children so that everything under the sun is wrong with them, but best not get into that.

Jeryd smiles, but he clearly doesn’t find any mirth in the question—and probably sees right through Roman’s reasons for asking, too. “Wouldn’t dream of it, thanks very much for your concern.”

“Right,” Roman says, uncertain—he’s clearly not lying.

“Besides.” Jeryd stands up and claps Roman on the shoulder, just a little too forceful to be pure camaraderie, giving him a wink. “I’ve got my outlets for all that already, don’t I? New York City’s finest whipping boy at my disposal.”

Roman shrugs, ignoring the rush of nausea he doesn’t know how to explain, blood rushing in his ears, his mind threatening to leave his body the way it sometimes does, but he fights against it.  

“…But like I was saying yesterday, I really could find a place for you in my team,” Jeryd is saying. “Roman Roy takes the White House, could be fun, you know. Media liaison or some shit that’s up your alley.”

The earnestness of the suggestion isn’t fully hidden, though he tries to couch it in a casual, ironic manner.

“Yeah, no fucking thanks.” Roman swallows, his mouth dry, trying to be fucking normal. This should be fun, seeing Jeryd should be fun. It is fun. “Last time you promised me something you welched like a fucking asshole and left me high and fucking dry. Anyway, I’d cool it on those White House dreams if I were you. Shouldn’t you be giving a deposition in Wisconsin right about now?”

“Come on.” Mencken flashes him a smile. “Get over it already, will you? On to better and brighter things than Waystar, is all I’m saying. Your brother and sister would be so jealous, too.”

He glances around the room out of habit and sees Shiv looking at him, a strange look on her face. He looks away quickly, not wanting to talk to any of them.

“You fucking ruined my life, you know that?” Roman tries to sound offhand but they both hear that fractured sincerity in there. “You fucking just—yeah.”

It haunts him still, the question of what he did wrong. It was almost in his grasp, the thing he’d lusted for his whole stupid, sorry life, and then everything just taken in an instant. Beaten and humiliated so that he can’t even lie to himself that it was just some small mistake he made, not something that he inherently and incorrigibly is. Logan’s long buried, but the sickening sense of failing him one last time, of never, ever being the man he so badly needed his father to see that he was – it lives under his skin in a way that makes him want to tear at it and cut himself bloody to try and get it out, to figure out how to feed it in a way that’ll make it stop eating him from the inside out. But it lives on in him as a constant, keening, screaming need to be punished—more potent than hunger, even thirst. Nothing even comes close to satiating it except, well. 

“And yet.” Without missing a beat, Jeryd leans down so that his breath tickles Roman’s ear when he says it, a bullying sort of sing-song cadence to his drawl, “look at all the things you let me do to you anyway.”

“Well,” Roman says, just as quick himself, “might as well make it fun if I’m going to get fucked. Call me when you inevitably need to take that approach with Mattson, by the way, you’ll need permission. It’s a patented maneuver.”

Jeryd smiles again, straightening up again and speaking at his normal volume. “Sure, sure, fuck you.”

Roman thinks that Jeryd couldn’t understand the correlation between the betrayal and the permission to let him have his way with Roman in all senses of the term. It’s the only thing that makes it better, both the punishment itself and the knowledge that his weakness and stupidity was not so abhorrent to him that he couldn’t still be suitable for something. Even if it’s not quite what he originally foresaw—it’s not nothing. His reality gets bound and blinkered again, confined by cage and leash and boot, a new master, and his purpose becomes again clear. It’s as comforting now as it always has been since childhood: nobody, he’s reasoned, would want to use something that isn’t at least a little useful.

*

Not much later that night, Roman meets Jeryd in his suite at the St. Regis—that second, secret suite that Roman has bankrolled for them. Within twenty minutes of crossing the threshold, he’s face down on the king-sized bed, naked from the waist down and getting fucked roughly from behind. It’s only here in the quiet cacophony of heavy breathing and the obscene slap of skin-on-skin that he can finally get some fucking peace and quiet in his head, nothing but a deliriously empty white-noise buzz, and he finds himself nearly addicted to it. Jeryd grunts, changes position slightly, but doesn’t seem to be in the more vicious mood yet, when the most vile and demeaning words pour from him as naturally as breathing, but Roman’s holding out hope that he’ll get there – he usually does. He hasn’t bothered to undress at all, the jangling of his belt buckle audible. This is the way they always do it, half-clothed and detached and spine-tinglingly nasty.

Jeryd’s got surprising stamina for an older man (Roman likes how he bristles when Roman calls him that, I’m fifty-four, not dead)—they’ve been going at it for some time now, but it's just before the part where it starts to really, really feel good for him. Though, the whole thing is enough to keep him horny, enough to make him like this so much more than he ever has before: the inherent debasement of the role he’s playing here partnering wonderfully with the metric tons of shame around the entire of idea of wanting sex like this that he’s had to swallow down like poison and bile his entire life, that has made him sickly and weak and so corroded through with shame that he didn’t even know what he was ashamed of anymore, could no longer articulate it, forced to live with this vague, shadowy, sickening sense of self. But this is different, this feels nice, dragging it half-out in the open—still under the cover of night but of course some things should never be looked at in the daylight—and saying hey, it just is what it is. It’s—not happiness, it’s too fucked up on every level, but it works. It works because Roman doesn’t have to be present or reciprocate much of anything – he’s not doing anything, not really, so he can retreat into his head if he must. And if he does want to be present, he doesn’t have to think about anything except doing what he’s told and being good for his daddy.

Suddenly Jeryd grabs Roman by the hips, where he’d been holding him steady to fuck him, and pulls his ass up higher so that it gets fully impaled on his cock. Roman loses balance from where he’d been propping himself up on his forearms, thrown flat face-down on the bed.  It’s just so different with him compared to anyone that came before, because he’s a man, because he’s possibly a sociopath: those big, rough hands on his body don’t feel like judgment or measurement, no expectation of tenderness or reciprocity or masculinity—just the hands of an owner on a thing that belongs to him, matter-of-fact manipulating its position and doing what he wants with it to maximize his own pleasure and stake his claim.

Jeryd forces Roman’s legs farther apart, twisting and moving his pliant lower body around experimentally until he finds the angle that he’s looking for, ignoring the little noises that emanate from Roman reflexively as he does—with fucking military precision, apparently, because the minute he settles Roman into position and thrusts into him, it’s game fucking over.

“Oh,” he yelps out, voice already trembling and breath catching from the sudden, always-overwhelming sensation when Jeryd hits that fucking spot inside him, again and again, faster and harder. “Oh, oh, fuck…”

“Wow,” Jeryd marvels, sounding amused like he’s reading the comics section of the Times—but for the fact that his own breathing has started to get heavy, probably from the exertion of fucking Roman absolutely relentlessly. “God really made you wrong—could cut your dick right off and you’d be none the worse for it. Are you gonna come like this? Like a girl?”

It’s not even a question: it’s already too much, he’s already right there. His leg’s cramping but he barely feels it, the white-hot everything building inside him to a burning crescendo. Roman dimly realizes he’s been fucked twice in the matter of a few hours and hasn’t had his cock touched once – Jeryd may well be right about its utility, and that fact just brings it all bubbling over even quicker.  

He means to say something affirmative, but it comes out in a strangled moan as another brutal thrust hits him where it counts and shakes his entire frame, and he hears Jeryd laugh, meanly. The sound coupled with the way he’s just mercilessly going at it, jackhammering into him like whatever Roman is feeling is irrelevant next to Jeryd getting the most enjoyment possible out of his tight hole is the thing that pushes him into that altered state of mind, makes him give up on thinking, speaking, being anything other than a body for his cock to sink into.

That’s the other thing—when it’s like this, he’s not the one in charge of when it stops. Even if it’s something he wouldn’t want to do or a place he wouldn’t want to go, his anxiety forcing things to a grinding halt ordinarily, here he just has to take it and it keeps going. The walls he always builds up come tumbling down because he can’t defend them via his neurosis-induced boner-death when he’s the one getting fucked. It doesn’t sound healthy when put into words, but it does help. He doesn’t know if it makes him gay, or if he’s just defaulting to the team that more typically has the equipment and inclination to let him play this role instead of the other—he doesn’t much care to unpack that, either. There’s been a forceful discovery that he doesn’t hate it as much as he thought he did, that severe vulnerability of showing sexual pleasure in front of another person. Jeryd helps too by being detached emotionally but passionate physically, not seeming to care what Roman says or does unless he can use it to demean or humiliate him a little, or a lot—that part they both like.

“God, look at you. Your brain’s leaking out of your ears.”

Whatever some latent part of his brain is trying to say comes out unintelligible again. He feels like he’s in the middle of an hour-long mind-shattering orgasm showing no signs of stopping because Jeryd keeps going faster and harder, loving the way Roman is coming on his cock, coming undone on his cock. His legs start to writhe without his conscious control in a bid seemingly to escape, but of course he’s powerless to get away from the overstimulation. Of course he doesn’t want to.

“You can’t even count to five in this state, can you?” He pauses, waiting for Roman to prove him wrong, but he can’t, of course he can’t—his brain is, in fact, jelly. The way Jeryd talks is intoxicating, not angry or mean, just quiet, slow, measured, almost disinterested if you didn’t know him better, if you couldn’t hear that purring hum of desire just under his words. “Jesus. That’s embarrassing. Everyone knows you’re the stupidest one in the family, but all that fucking opportunity, all the times your dad tried to teach you something, anything, worth learning, it just all got wasted on you, didn’t it? More money that you could ever spend and you’re being fucked stupid by another man in a hotel room you paid for just to have this done to you. No work, no accomplishments, not one worthwhile thing to your name except money you didn’t earn and a couple of good holes. What do you have to say for yourself, Roman? Hmm?”

When Jeryd slaps his ass, sharp and hard, Roman realizes he’s looking for a response and groans out, “Sorry. I’m sorry.” Sorry for being like this, sorry for existing, sorry, sorry, sorry.

No more words are forming, let alone sentences.

“Sorry, what?”

Sharp breath but no hesitation. “Sorry, daddy.”

“Good.” He hopes Jeryd didn’t see his cock twitch at this, but he’s also sure that he did. “Always so fucking polite with a dick inside you. Bet you wish you could say that to your real daddy, huh?”

Another hard slap.

“Yeah,” Roman manages, “yeah. Please, yeah.”

“What would he fucking do if he saw you like this, I wonder.”

He’s now completely past speaking, letting out a low, loud moan that graduates into a series of them in rhythm with the thrusts, each one squarely hitting that spot that’s going to make him scream, Jeryd continuing to plow into him at exactly the right angle and at a pace that has become genuinely punishing, his whole body shaking with the force of it.

“Do you think he’d want a piece for himself? I can’t imagine he wouldn’t—would be more useful than anything else you ever did for him. Tighter than his usual whores too, no disrespect to your mother.”

The moans have turned into a shaky, whimpered chant of “fuck, fuck, fuck,” every sound coming out of him utterly involuntary, including the fact that he sounds like he’s about to start crying from how overwhelming all of this is. No, not about to—a tear squeezes out of his eye, mingling with the sheen of sweat on his face. He doesn’t know where it comes from, except that no cell in his body knows how to process this feeling, and he will just not fucking end. It physically can’t subside since he isn’t stopping – in fact, he’s going at it harder – so it’s like one long, protracted orgasm, or a series of immediately successive ones, seeming to ebb but then abruptly reaching full force again, his cock beginning to sputter out liquid in fits and starts, over the next few minutes, completely untouched. It’s not like a regular one when it’s like this, either, it’s full-fucking-body and white-hot, brain-melting shit: reverberating waves of pleasure coursing through every organ over and over again, pleasure so overpowering that it turns the corner right back into fucking agony.

“Enough mewling, Jesus,” Jeryd says, but he sort of sounds like he loves it, the tears he can no doubt hear in Roman’s voice.

He hits Roman on the back of the head, hard, a couple of times, then something between a slap and a punch, with the heel of his hand, to Roman’s cheek. It’s forceful—it fucking hurts. Jeryd keeps his hand there and roughly shoves Roman’s face into the pillow. It’s at such an angle, thumb pressing against nose, that he very much literally cannot breathe. It’s utterly incomprehensible, the pleasure-pain, the suffocation, neurons unspooling themselves and electrifying each other to death. He tries to indicate somehow that he literally might die if Jeryd doesn’t let up, but any minor movement of his body is unnoticed given how his entire frame is being shaken—after a few seconds he finally, desperately tries to pry Jeryd’s hand off his face. The message is received, but he gets another hard backhand for it. Jeryd roughly yanks Roman’s head up by his hair so that he can grab his neck instead before Roman can even fully inhale more than once – cutting off his air again but only halfway.

“This better, you fuckin’ princess?”

“Thank you,” Roman chokes out, and what he wants to say is you should hit me again, and Jeryd says Jesus, you’re something else  in that way, carried on a sharp intake of breath, that means he likes it. 

Jeryd doesn’t hit his wife or his kid, but he hits Roman. Dad didn’t hit Kendall or Shiv, didn’t hit Mom or Marcia, but he hit Roman. It’s good not only because he should be reminded what he is, but in a real way it means he’s special, it makes him special. The exclusivity of it thrills him. He’s the one they want to do their favourite thing to, every red mark and split lip a sign that he should be the one they should love the most because he can take anything they can give.

He has never felt more outside his body, while still feeling good and right about what’s being done to the thing, toeing the line between toe-curling ecstasy and abject, disgusting humiliation in a way that in that moment feels like it must be the very Platonic ideal of sex but the moment it’s over will feel like a sick and sadistic game that he always seems to be losing. They both know he’ll take everything he’s given.

After what feels like another hour but was probably closer to seven seconds, Jeryd finally climaxes with a groan and a shudder, hot and wet all the way inside Roman, and finally it’s over. An indescribably degenerate noise comes out of his mouth as Jeryd pulls out and rolls over onto his back, breathing hard, leaving Roman lying there face down next to him. Lot of exertion for an old man, is what Roman would say if he had the capability of speech at the moment.

“You good?” Jeryd checks, still with that unflappable lazy drawl, after they’ve lain there for a few minutes, silent save for heavy breathing on both their parts.

Roman wants to tell him yes, but he still finds he can’t make his body do anything right now, his limbs liquefied, his mind empty.

“Rome?” Jeryd props himself up on an elbow, turning towards Roman in what sounds like mild concern. He reaches over, smooths away some sweat-soaked hair from his forehead, an uncommon tenderness—but the concern is less for Roman’s wellbeing and more for the fact that fucking the late Logan Roy’s youngest son straight into major brain damage would be an administrative headache to say the least.  “You good?”

Something about that touch grounds him, brings him back to the world. His throat is sandpaper-dry, but he manages to raise his hand in a shaky thumbs-up. “Yup. Peachy.”

“Okay.” Briskly, he gets off the bed. “I’m gonna go rinse off – unless you want to first? The other bathroom doesn’t have a shower.”

“Aren’t you a fucking gentleman,” Roman mumbles, his eyes closed again. “Yeah, let me go first, if you don’t mind? And next time if I’m paying get your people to book a proper suite, yeah? No need to be fucking cheap. One shower. Fuck’s sake.”

“Noted,” he says, sounding amused, and only then does Roman realize that this is the first time he’s just assumed that next time will happen – that this has become an actual thing, not just a series of one-offs. Too tired to really deal with that fact while he can feel a certain substance beginning to trickle down the back of his leg, he escapes to the shower to drown this and other thoughts.

*

“Can I ask you something? Like, just if we can be serious for a fucking second?”

It’s been long enough since the deed, everything cleaned up and distanced from that moment, that they can sort of speak to each other normally again. They hardly ever talk about the thing itself after the fact. Roman remembers terms from when he tried to learn from the Internet what the fuck was wrong with him about a decade ago – safe words, aftercare – but he doesn’t think anything like that could ever work here. He just hopes the unspoken understanding between them won’t ever push this further than he can take, because he himself doesn’t know how far that is. He doesn’t know if his limit even exists, or if he’ll be happy letting Jeryd taking it as far as he wants until something bad happens again, or until the hands squeeze his throat too hard and forget to let up in time. He’ll only know if it breaks him, and by then it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

Roman scrolls through Twitter listlessly, not actually reading anything he’s looking at, lying on his side of the bed and occasionally wincing and gingerly touching the scar on his temple—it fucking hurts after his near-suffocation earlier that night. Jeryd—just exited the shower, dressed for bed—dries his hair with a white fluffy towel, and looks at Roman weirdly for a moment before asking the question.

“What, are you gonna ask me to go steady with you?” Roman says, not really looking up from his phone.

“Christ, you’re fucking annoying.”

“Certifiably. Yeah, uh, go for it.”

Jeryd hesitates for a fraction of a second—rare, for him. “Why do you like being treated like that?”

Roman’s stomach turns immediately, uneasiness taking over. He knows he won’t answer, can’t answer, can’t even look at him. His response sounds like a witty retort, a rhetorical question aimed at deflecting, but in its own way it’s just as genuine as what Jeryd asked him.

“Why do you like treating me like that?”

Sick with the same disease, taken opposite courses. The thought is chilling: the darkness in himself is as deep and vast as it is nauseating. He doesn’t want to think about what kind of creature could feed it so perfectly, as easily as breathing.

Jeryd raises his eyebrows, not at all expecting this. He opens his mouth for a second, but also says nothing. Roman finally looks at him, shrugging a little as if to say, not that easy, right? And so both questions hover in the stagnant air around them, unanswered and unanswerable; tomorrow Jeryd will leave in the morning for D.C. probably before Roman wakes up, and Roman will head back to his empty apartment, but they’ll sleep next to each other for tonight, not touching. 

Sure enough, they don’t talk much more after that, settling into the king-size bed on their politely opposite sides. Roman looks over at Jeryd and finds it, for a few moments, hard to look away. His hair is still wet and pieces of it are falling onto his forehead, ever so slightly in need of a haircut. The usual silvery-grey looks darker when waterlogged, compounded by the fact that the only thing illuminating the room is white moonlight and the twinkle of city lights streaming through the window, Manhattan in all its decadent glory. The effect it has is that Jeryd, half-shadowed in the darkness, looks for just a moment a lot younger than he is. Roman’s looked up pictures of him online from when he was just starting out in politics, age thirty or so, the same swagger, the same single-minded adherence to unpleasant ideals manifesting as a dark twinkle in his pale eyes, the same slightly off-beat but intense handsomeness, tall and dark-haired and with that aquiline nose and shark-like smile. Roman would be fifteen—fifteen, fresh-faced, small for his age, and so fucking good for him, Roman knows, they always used to say how fucking good he was. Jeryd’s never once suggested he likes them young but Roman figures they all must. He doesn’t know why – all those things, they didn’t happen. Dad said so. But God, he’d love Roman so much more if only they’d met then, he just knows it. The thought of it, of a younger, stronger Jeryd fucking his teenage self would make him hard again if he was in that moment capable—but he isn’t, so it makes him nauseous instead.

“What?” Jeryd says, having felt Roman’s gaze lingering on him.

“What? Nothing. Leave me alone.”

He shakes his head, but accepts it, turning over to turn off the bedside lamp. “O-kay.”

Roman had looked away quickly, but not before their eyes met, just for a flicker of a second. In the darkness, it feels burnt on his corneas. The old god is dead, and he’s nothing but an empty cathedral, having been built from the ground up only to devote himself entirely to something that no longer exists, whose loss has left him hollow and abandoned. He wasn’t created to belong to himself. It feels like the dirtiest kind of sacrilege against his father, but he needs it—it’s all he’s made for, and so maybe, maybe, there can be a new god after all, a tall Jupiterian messiah with mercurial grey eyes that shine like pieces of silver in the moonlight. One that’s all his, and he doesn’t have to share him with the others and come up with the short end of the stick no matter what he did and how hard he tried. He gets to have god all to himself, gets to be the favourite, needing only to spill a few drops of his blood at the altar to keep him. It’s a better deal than before, less blood, but the ghost of the old one still visits him in his grief-sickened dreams like he has for months.

*

A few weeks pass by uneventfully – for Roman, at least. The country is teetering on the nervous edge of something sinister, but he’s long since sold all his stock in that particular brand of discord and turmoil. It doesn’t do anything for him now, and it certainly doesn’t affect him, locked high in his penthouse tower above it all.

Mencken splits his time between New York and D.C. as the court battles over the election continue to rage, favouring the latter, of course. He doesn’t want Roman visiting him there, paranoid about people finding out about them. So Roman sits here and waits for him to come back to the city like a military wife, going to useless meetings to talk to people who want to move his money around, knowing that no matter what he does it’s too much for him to spend for the next eight hundred or so lifetimes. Clarity is sort of a bitch that way. Kendall and Shiv still seem to care about things, Waystar or otherwise. He hopes he can get back there, someday, but isn’t banking on it. It was just too, too many years, too much fucking misery and hope and pain—to have it all amount to absolutely nothing, to humiliation and the realization that he was never ever going to be enough, is not a blow he thinks he can come back from. He misses Logan like a phantom limb, his entire life unraveled at the seams without him. He wishes Jeryd were around more, wishes—almost, sometimes, stupidly—that it could be the sort of real thing it will never, ever be. That he knows he wouldn’t even be able to stomach if it was, anyway. It only works this way.

The late-December morning dawns frigid and grey in Manhattan, like the one before, and the one before that—the streets below are barely visible from his apartment windows, wispy clouds of fog rolling in and obscuring the huddled masses. But today, Roman wakes up to a text that means something good is about to happen, finally.

WI Supreme court decision out in about an hour. Might need your input in situation room – We’re set up at the Carlyle.

 Five seconds later: If you’re available.

Jeryd has been bleeding anxiety for days leading up to this. It’s his whole life on the line, and it’s uneasily far from a sure thing. A defeat at this stage would be a humiliation he won’t be able to recover from, doomed to be a congressman with wasted potential and a slightly familiar name for the rest of his political career. He doesn’t quite talk about it when he texts or calls Roman, dancing around the issue, it but its palpable in every weighted syllable that he speaks, and each one that he doesn’t. He has no idea what kind of input Jeryd might want from him, and he doesn’t dare think the next likeliest thing, for fear of overstating his own importance in Jeryd’s life: that he just wants Roman there.

Reading the texts over again and thinking of what to say, it dawns on him that Jeryd is, among other things, sort of his friend. Worse, he’s sort of his only friend. That’s too fucked up to think about, but he’s not going to say no – when does he ever? Yeah, fine. I’ll prepare my finest inputs for you m’lord. 

There’s a stupid RECNY event tonight too, even though the annual ball isn’t for a couple of months—a memorial fundraising gala to pay tribute to Logan’s passing three months ago. It wasn’t his idea, nor was it Ken’s or Shiv’s or Connor’s, though the latter seems to be the only one quite excited about it. He has to show face, but he’s hoping he can leave early and see what he might get out of Jeryd being in town tonight.

The reply: eye roll emoji, middle finger emoji.

Roman smiles, despite himself, and starts to look for something nice to wear.

*

“You made it.”

Jeryd’s voice carries over the din of about ten staffers talking in low voices to each other, accompanied by several mostly silent Secret Service members. The boardroom at the hotel is more like a ground-floor suite with an baroque mahogany conference table in the middle of it—at the moment strewn with papers and laptops—and cold winter sunlight streaming in from vintage windows. He’s over by one of said windows on the other side of the room, cracked open as he puffs on a cigarette and blows the smoke outside.

Roman approaches him, noticing the way the room shifts when he walks in. From the mire of dark and unpleasant thoughts he’s been trapped in since the funeral, he had forgotten that people still view him as someone at least somewhat important, a minor celebrity in their fucked-up world – that nobody will question his presence here except to wonder why he deigned to join them, rather than the other way around.

“Didn’t know you smoked?” Roman says, walking up to where he’s ashing the cigarette on the windowsill.

“I don’t.” He’s doing that thing where people speak louder when they’re cold, as if it’ll help. The air coming in from the open window is frigid, the pavement and courtyard outside covered in grey, slushy snow and patches of dark and dangerous ice. “Usually. Quit fifteen years ago for all intents and purposes.”

The stress is obviously getting to him – he seems the smallest amount fragile today, when he’s usually about as moveable as the face of a mountain. He’s in his best worsted grey suit, jacket taken off and strewn over a chair somewhere, sleeves of the white dress shirt rolled up. Red tie, of course. The perfect uniform of the down-home, hard-at-work, fiscally conservative, bring-God-back-into-our-classrooms president bringing power back to (a subset) of the people, even without photos or press present. Something about the idea of his authenticity makes Roman a little uneasy.

“Okay. Anyway, might be able to get a suite at the Ritz tonight, if, you know.” Roman makes an incomprehensible gesture. “You’re interested.”

Jeryd looks sidelong at him, for a few more moments than is comfortable. Those grey-blue eyes on him always feel so probing. “

Yeah,” he says finally, exhaling smoke and condensation at once. “Yeah, that’ll – probably be necessary.”

The freezing wind blowing inside makes the hair on Roman’s neck stand on end, makes his cheeks redden and his breath condense into clouds of vapour despite being inside. Though the wintry air had felt pleasantly clean and cold and refreshing as he jogged up the front steps of the hotel a few moments ago, he finds now that he much prefers to take in these lungfuls of Jeryd’s smoke-roughened, acrid exhales, wishes he could breathe nothing but this for days on end.

“Cool,” is what he says. “By ‘might’ I meant I already have one, just wanted to see what you’d say. Under the name Ron Rockstone. Keeping shit undercover, you know. Keeping it tight. You can say I put the ‘secret’ in ‘Secret Service.’”

“Under—?” he looks at Roman, half-perplexed, half-amused, more like his usual self for a second. “Sure, whatever. Alright. You’re just in time, Ron Rockstone. Decision should be dropping soon.”

Not half a second later, a stocky, balding man with glasses calls over to Jeryd – “Boss, it’s here.”

Jeryd hastily stubs out the cigarette on the windowsill and rushes over to the table with the computers so deftly that he practically teleports, leaving Roman trailing behind him.

“Well?” Jeryd demands as the staffer hastily skims the decision on his tablet.

“They got it. Sorry, boss. Court’s letting them extend the deadline. Statewide manual recount. As if you can recount burned ballots.”

“Fuck.” Jeryd barks out the word so loudly and suddenly that Roman – standing next to him around the conference table – reflexively shrinks away from the anger. “What the fuck? We have Bush v. Gore, we fucking have it. I knew it. I knew it. With these, ah, fucking, diverse justices. Didn’t I call it, do you remember? I knew it. Half of them would be trading cigarettes for cup noodles in prison if it wasn’t for some bullshit bleeding-heart affirmative action farce twenty years ago and so now I have to fucking deal with this.”

It’s the most overtly racist thing that Roman’s ever heard him say—he usually beats around the bush with fancy language speaking to high-minded ideals. It reminds Roman that there is no fundamental goodness in him, nothing below the façade because there is no façade, he’s just devilish all the way down. He doesn’t know if that scares him or makes him want to draw closer, or both.

“We appeal, yeah? SCOTUS?” Jeryd is now saying. “It should be a fucking slam-dunk. It’s so easy. It’s so easy. Equal Protection Clause. Just like in 2000.”

“Well,” the man who Roman now assumes is the Gerri of the group, “it’s not quite identical to 2000, but, yes, of course. I’ll need to read this more thoroughly but my initial assessment is we have solid grounds for appeal. Solid chances. Maybe not a slam-dunk, but—but, solid.”

“Okay,” Jeryd says, clearly still fuming. The way he commands the room is so attractive to Roman he’s worried his dick’s going to get hard here, in front of God and everyone. It’s not like with Logan, all old-world machismo and barked commands – there’s a hint of the androgynous with him, the way his mouth shapes words and the gestures that emanate from his tall, thin frame, but under that is still pure, cold steel. “All right. You get started on that right away, okay? We need to file today. We’re not letting them fucking have this. They’re already going to be out there calling it a Jimenez victory, fucking scheduling his inauguration and then when we do win, fair and fucking square, they’re gonna fucking spin it and call it a coup, call it unconstitutional, those liberal lefty fucking hacks. Dylan, call a press conference right away, and get the talking points we approved yesterday in front of me, please. Roman, can you—?”

Roman looks up, startled, not expecting at all to be called upon. “Can I…?”

“Never mind,” Jeryd says quickly, and Roman realizes belatedly that he’s – sheepish? It’s not a look that he’s ever seen in that self-assured, wolfish countenance, and then it dawns on him what he was about to say. He wants ATN. He needs ATN. Jeryd has turned away from Roman, busying himself by reading what’s on the sheaf of papers in front of him, and there’s a beat of silence in the otherwise chaotic situation room.

Roman, always relishing the rare leg up for as long as he can before something inevitably knocks him down again, grins. “God, you know what would be so fucking cool right now? If we had like, a top-ten multinational media conglomerate with just, fucking, massive megatons of resources and influence to manipulate ‘what assholes call the narrative’ 24/7, all day, every day, any which way we want, right at our fingertips. Man. I bet if I did something where I could have had that right now, in this exact moment, but because of my own dumbass power-play, I didn’t have it, and I’d have to call some bozo puppet of a Swedish crypto-libertarian sociopath and beg to even try and get some version of my side of the story into the 24-hour news cycle, I would—fuck, man, I’d be so mad at myself.”

“Alright,” Jeryd says, holding a hand up, testy and high-strung, “that’s fucking enough out of you. We’ll talk later, now let me do my fucking job, okay? You remember what it’s like to have one of those?”

Roman shrugs and flips him off, knowing he’s won this interaction, and Jeryd gives him a stern look—no glimmer of affection in those blue-gray eyes, empty as the sky. That’s when Roman knows he’s going to absolutely get it later, and the thought makes his spine tingle.

*

The charity event that evening is uneventful. Roman sits with his siblings in another stupid big room decorated like shit, they make small talk, they look at Roman funny, same old game. It’s the kind of thing for which he’d have a thrill coursing through him like an electric shock if Jeryd were in attendance, but as it is, he’d rather be alone in his apartment jerking off repeatedly. He probably would’ve been here if it weren’t for the fire drill from Wisconsin.

A bunch of people he barely knows and doesn’t like talk about his father, and he has to swallow down the desire to get up there and knock the mic out of their hands and tell them to shut up about his dad, they don’t know him. They’re only saying nice things, but he doesn’t want to share Logan with them anymore. Publicly mourning his father cost him everything, somehow, and the thought that other, lesser people get to do it – that other people can do it with much more grace and dignity than he managed – is infuriating and agonizing. He wants to cry and kick things like he’s a toddler. Once Connor gets up to make the closing remarks, getting to employ some of his unused eulogy material, he breathes a sigh of relief. 

 He’s fixing to make a hasty exit, ready to hit up the Ritz and wait impatiently for Jeryd to meet him there, but Shiv stops him abruptly. Somehow she seems far more pregnant than last time, even though it hasn’t even been a month. He wants to say something nice to her about all that, the whole glowy, pretty, isn’t it such a joyful miracle thing, but he doesn’t know quite how to.

“Hey, Rome,” she says, and then does the thing that makes his stomach drop – she looks at Kendall, who is looking away from both of them. Great. It’s a fucking scheme, whatever it is. “Could we talk about something, please?”

Alarm bells start ringing. They’d seen a bruise on him once or twice that he couldn’t explain, that Jeryd put on him, but that’s nothing. He could’ve joined a fight club, for all they know.

“No,” Roman says, putting his suit jacket back on. “Would rather not. Toodles, have a nice night.”

“Come on. Rome.” Kendall, this time. “Just a—like, we just want to—it’s just a little serious, that’s all. We’re just worried.”

“Oh, worried, that’s nice,” Roman says, starting to walk away. Annoyingly, they just start following him into the lobby—this one themed around white marble with gold accents, the highest of high ceilings. 

“Fuck—Ken, can we just—he’s being difficult?—Okay, if you won’t, then I will.”

Shiv has had an entire reciprocal conversation with Kendall without him so much as saying anything other than a few half-hearted half-stutters. She grabs Roman’s shoulder and they all stop in a little alcove off the main lobby, where there’s a little privacy from the other people milling around.

“Roman,” she says, and he knows, he just knows, from the look on her face, what she’s going to say. Awful sharp-tongued words from red lips, little-sister concern and adversarial perverse pleasure overflowing from big blue eyes, the perfect Shiv cocktail.  “What the fuck is going on between you and Jeryd Mencken?”

“Fuck are you talking about?” he says, automatically. He’s not the best liar, but he’s a better liar than her, at least. “We’re friends, if that’s what you mean? We hang out sometimes? Nothing under the table. I don’t even have a table for anything to be under anymore, or whatever.”

He’s motor-mouthed his way out of situations before – this is fine.

“No, Rome.” Kendall again. The weird apology in his tone makes the brother-homicide Cain instinct rise in his throat, an overreaction, but fuck he can’t stop thinking about the day of the board vote. The feeling of those hands, rock-paper-scissors hands, we’re-in-this-together-hands, trying to crush his skull, knowing where exactly to make his little brother cry out with pain because he had just made him bleed, because he had spent a lifetime watching their father do the same. “Rome, we know. It’s okay. We have a reputable source, but nobody’s going to tell anyone else. It’s under wraps, but… but, we know. We know about all of it, the – the sex, all of it.”

“You don’t know shit,” Roman says, his heart growing cold and dropping like an iceberg into his stomach. How they fuck could they know? How the fuck is this happening? “‘We know, we know,’ shut up with that. There’s nothing to even know, I don’t know what the fuck you guys are going on about, and I’d very much like to go home.”

Shiv sighs. “Romey, are you okay?”

It’s the stupid nickname, the one that they never use anymore, but that used to be everyone’s moniker for him—that’s what gets him to fucking admit it, of all the things.

“Yes. I’m okay. I’m good. It’s good. No need for concern. Just kill all the people who know and I’ll be more secretive next time. What are you, spying on me? Having me fucking followed? How the fuck do you even—?”

Nobody says anything, so he must be right. He still doesn’t understand everything, but he doesn’t want to ask – he just wants this to be over and wants to forget it happened. Of course they would try to ruin the only good thing.

“The—the bruises?” Shiv blurts it out, as though she’d made talking points but he’s gone off-script. “He hurts you, doesn’t he? Like, seriously hurts you?” 

Fuck. Fuck. This shouldn’t be happening. He can’t even explain it to them—though Kendall knows a thing or two, given the way that he looks away at this. Dog pound, burst stitches, it’s all spilled like blood between the two of them. It’s not like Shiv hasn’t made her fair share of jokes either, about what he likes and the boots he wants to be kicked by. It’s all well and good when it’s funny, apparently, or when he deserves to get hurt—by someone more righteous. It’s all fine when Roman’s getting slapped when Shiv makes Dad angry, the whipping boy that everyone pities with averted eyes but nobody would ever trade places with.

“It’s good, it’s fine, it’s good. It’s good, okay?” Roman says. It’s good, he tells himself firmly. It gives him a reason to get up, a purpose outside himself. Isn’t that all everyone is looking for, in the end? Some people get it in love and marriage and Roman gets it like this. It’s ultimately the same. It’s ultimately a good thing. 

“Nobody should—you shouldn’t—” Shiv is sputtering, because it’s hard to say what she wants to say. Nobody should treat you like that, but then she’s probably thinking, well, you want to be treated like that. But you shouldn’t want that.

“Why?” he says bluntly, answering the words she’s not saying. “It works for me. I want it. I like it. And, more importantly, he likes me. Okay? He likes me.”

“A lot of people like you, Rome,” she says, disbelievingly. “Why him?”

“He likes me the most,” Roman snaps, knowing how childish it sounds as soon as it comes out of his mouth. He’s never had a best friend. Everyone has always had someone, except for him. “He likes me best and nobody ever likes me best. Okay?”

“Uh –” Shiv isn’t done arguing. “Mom does?”

“Mom does,” he mimics rudely, putting on a voice. “Great, let me just go fuck Mom, then—oh, fuck you, shut up. Don’t start with that. She doesn’t, anyway, not in a real way, I’m just the only one who doesn’t hate her for not loving us so she plays it up with me as a fuck-you to the pair of you.”

“Jesus, Rome,” is all she says. “He’s fucking evil. And if he actually becomes president, this kind of scandal coming out, it would obliterate you. Like, what—like, okay, the last few months were bad, but you’re not—you’ve got ideas, you’re talented. You can do stuff, you don’t have to get beat up and ass-fucked by Adolf the fucking sociopath just to feel something and then end up, like, down and out—”

“Shut up,” he snaps. “‘Evil,’ you’re so fucking dramatic. He’s, like, a little bit of a fascist, he’s not fucking Hannibal Lecter, he’s not gonna fuckin’—murder me. I mean, I’m not in his murder demographic. White male privilege or whatever.”

“That’s gross,” she says. “Bad fucking joke.”

Roman shrugs. “Anyway, I’ll do stuff. Okay? Eventually. Can’t people just let me fucking relax for a few fucking months?”

“Relaxing is fine. Becoming a Nazi’s fucking pillow-biter is not fine.” 

“Fuck you, stop trying to sound like Dad.” Still, the borderline-slur does sting in a weird way, different from the other insults they always sling back and forth. “That’s a little, what do you cucks say, heteronormative, isn’t it?”

“Oh, sure, yeah, mm-hmm.” Shiv’s not having any of it, her eyes practically bulging with anger. “Love wins: the Nazi congressman trying to steal the election and the alt-right’s most loathsome little gremlin are getting gay married! Should we call Lin-Manuel Miranda to start writing a musical about it, or should we get in touch with the Nobel Peace Prize committee first?”

“O-kay.” Roman makes a face at her. He wants desperately to have her on his side, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, so he just tries to end the conversation—not quite able to look at her. “‘Nazi’ is a little – anyway, you’ve got milk coming out of your nipples. Just great big splotches on your dress right there, look.”

“Oh, is it turning you on? Hard to tell what with the micro-dick and all—”

“Haha. Yeah, you wish.”

An ache hangs in the air, miasmic, between the both of them, a desire to return to old times. The good old times, at least, not the bad ones. But they’re not even speaking the same language right now when once they could have an entire conversation with their eyes. Now he avoids her pleading gaze.

“Ro, you’re—you’re supposed to be a fucking uncle soon,” she says, harsh without meaning to be. “I—I know we all haven’t been on the best of terms lately, but for fuck’s sake, I don’t—what the hell is even going on with you?”

The way she practically says she’s going to not want him in the kid’s life just because—just because he’s like this, it cuts deeper than he even thought it would. She’s always had a knack for getting him where it hurts, even if she doesn’t realize it, the venomous instinct living curled up right under her skin, ready to strike whenever it so desires.

“Oh, what, now that Dad’s dead you suddenly care about whatever fucking—whatever’s fucked up in here?” He taps a finger to his temple. “Now that you guys can’t gloat about it or drill your fucking screwdrivers in here and use it against me? Yeah, fuck off. Your stupid fucking Wambsgans Junior can fuck off too.”

“Oh, fuck you, Roman.” Her hand has automatically, protectively goes to her bump – the gesture surprises him, and makes him feel suddenly wrong-footed. His sister isn’t just his sister anymore. “Fuck you, and I’m fucking serious. Fuck if you ever even get to meet the thing.”

“Thing.” He laughs, hard and mean on purpose. “You’re gonna be such a good mother.”

She looks like she wants to hit him, but says nothing, steps back and raises her hands in a gesture of surrender, a gesture of I give up, and turns to a grave-looking, silent Kendall with a shrug, as if to say, do you want to give it a go?

After a few moments of silence, Kendall finally ventures, in the most Kendall-like fashion possible, “So, like, what, are you… gay?”

“What? No,” Roman snaps, “not necessarily, just – fuck you too, actually, I bet you’re fucking loving this.”

“Why—you know, why wouldn’t you have told us?” Kendall says, and he sounds genuinely confused and a little hurt. “Maybe not about Mencken, I guess, sure, but just, the whole. We made fun of you a lot for the sex thing and, you know, you could have told us.”

Roman laughs again – he loves it when they try to act like they’re a normal fucking family in front of him, when that’s all he really ever wanted from them, though he’d long since given up asking for it.

“Like you wouldn’t have told Dad the fucking second it could’ve benefited you.” He puts on his Kendall voice: “‘Uh, Dad, I hate to do this, but Rome – uh – Rome actually wants to fuck guys, so uh, he can’t be COO.’”

“I wouldn’t—” Kendall starts to say, wounded.

“And, you did, actually. Not this, exactly, but you did. It was, the fucking—you did.”

Immediately on the defensive now. “Uh, no—like, when, for what?”

“For something bad. You just fucking, acted like, you went to him and acted like there was something wrong with me – I was like, ten – you did.”

Fuzzy memories coming to the fore – like someone’s hacked into his system, they’re spliced with things that might not be real. He doesn’t know.

“You’re not making sense, you’re fucking – you always do this.” Kendall, exasperated and gesticulating in frustration. “Whatever it was, I was—like, I was protecting you, probably. You just – you just make shit up and act like I did something to you.”

Piss, spit. Tree house, dog cage. Domination, the language their father spoke best, the only art he recognized. Kendall had to practice it on someone. Pin him down, pinch his nose til he has to open his mouth to breathe. Spit in it – no, tell someone else to spit in it. Make him swallow. Make him cry. Violence, submission. Locked in, can’t leave, pinned down, can’t move. Piss himself in front of the kitchen staff, stuck in the cage and still can’t leave until the bowl is empty. Something wrong happened, something bad. Tree house – someone was there. Dog food, or maybe chocolate cake, throwing it up whatever it was. Rome, that’s so gross. Lick it up and then I’ll let you out. Something else—there was something else. Or maybe there wasn’t. Kendall, or someone else. Not Kendall. No one. Nothing. No real person involved.

“I don’t fucking remember, okay?” Roman explodes. It’s not fair—he’s right, but he doesn’t have the memory anymore. “I don’t remember, but I do remember, I just – fuck it, whatever, I don’t know. You made me weird, man, okay, you locked me in that cage and did things to me and you made me weird and he never looked at me right because of it, and probably you loved that too. Fucking, best thing you ever did for yourself. You probably did it on purpose, actually. You and dad both. Just twist up my brain to make sure you always had someone to look down on. No, it’s – shut up, I don’t care. Just – fuck off, both of you. Stop pretending to care and don’t fucking talk to me about him or about anything.”

He had imagined so many times how this conversation was going to go, deep in the throes of anxious neurosis, and the only thing that makes him feel totally off-kilter is the concern that he never imagined. It’s not so different from all their relationships and affairs and bullshit, so he doesn’t know where the fuck they get off looking at him with eyes so broken-hearted.

*

Roman is lounging in the sitting room of the suite at the Ritz with PGN blaring from the giant television screen, trying to shake off the stupid conversation with his siblings, when Jeryd finally arrives, blustering in with the slam of the door, throwing his bag and coat unceremoniously on an armchair with more force than strictly necessarily. He knows already he’s not going to tell Jeryd that people know about them. He can’t lose this, and he knows Jeryd doesn’t value him over his career, his reputation, his family, his life. So he stays quiet and plans to relish it while he still can.

“—Would-be president-elect Mencken was not seen at the Roy Endowment Creative’s memorial gala for the late Logan Roy. Mencken was likely preoccupied with—”

“Turn that shit off,” Jeryd snaps, wound tighter than he was earlier today.

“Sure thing,” Roman says, flipping it to ATN, which – much less giving any support for the Mencken side of things – isn’t even covering the Wisconsin decision at the moment. Something about teachers in elementary schools using pronoun stickers. “Ooh, that’s cold. You think you should give the Swede a call? Would he answer?”

He’s in the mood for a fight. Those two acting like he’s someone’s battered wife—they don’t know that the hand on the wheel is his. He’s the fucked up one dragging Jeryd into this rotten ungodliness. If he gets hit, it’s because he asks for it. That particular noise in his mind is buzzing louder than ever, overtaking any other desire or drive or thought or feeling: punish me, punish me, punish me.

“Shut the fuck up, Roman, I’m serious,” Jeryd says, and he sounds like it.

Roman gets up, moves closer to where he’s standing.

“Kinda fucked up, isn’t it, how important this phony news bullshit is,” he says, not really trying to suppress the satisfaction in his voice. “How much time did you spend on the campaign, again? You’ve been running yourself ragged kissing babies and shit for a fucking year and change, haven’t you? Man. For it all to go down like this, no big moment, no real victory. Even winning is losing, and it doesn’t even look like you’re winning from where I’m standing—”

He’s pushing Jeryd’s buttons on purpose, in a way that he never had to do with Dad—what Logan had done to him was as natural as breathing by the time he was old enough to analyze it, his sense of ownership over Roman complete from the day of his birth. Like with Kendall, who passed the test with flying colours at the eleventh hour, he wants to know how much Jeryd thinks he can hurt him and get away with it. How much Jeryd thinks he owns him.

He answers the question by hitting Roman in the face, hard—fist, not palm. Hard enough that he can already feel a dribble of blood coming out of one nostril. Good, he knows what to do. He hopes Jeryd doesn’t see the way he smiles, privately, to himself—it might weird him out. Another punch, and another, this time to the jaw, and he actually staggers sideways from the force of them. Catching him off balance, Jeryd grabs him by the shirt collar and essentially throws him against the wall, so hard he thinks the drywall might have cracked. His shoulder’s not feeling particularly intact either after that. When he falls to the ground, Jeryd picks him right back up the same way – he’s thin, but there’s lean muscle in there somewhere, and Roman of course is smaller and lighter than him – just to throw him harder. He has about as much agency in this fight as a rag doll. That last one leaves him crumpled in a heap on the carpet, his hands raised in front of his head in a reflexive defence he doesn’t really feel—he does feel the pain, though, and the blood. A flurry of blows all over every reachable part of him follows, kicks or punches, he’s not sure as he cowers in the corner. After a few minutes, Jeryd seems to wear himself out and leaves him there. Roman was hoping he’d resort to the belt next, like Logan used to, but he seems to be finished. Roman hears a laboured exhale, a muttered expletive, and a kick against a piece of furniture. Then silence.

“You done?” Roman says, his voice coming out weakly as he straightens but doesn’t stand. Bruises must be blooming on his face, and his nose is still spurting blood. Jeryd leans against the couch, looking at him with a strange look on his face.

“We’re going to win,” is all he says, with the air of a zealot. “God is on our side.”

“Fair enough. Hey, sorry.”  

Roman shuffles on his knees over to his feet. This is the good part, the best part – unlike mollifying his dad, he can prove that he’s sorry for acting out or being wrong easily in this relationship. He gets his punishment, he gets to be penitent, and the ledger gets balanced right away. He reaches up for the belt buckle, but Jeryd swats his hands away roughly.

“Let me – come on, just let me, please. Come on.”

“No, uh-uh. Bed.”

Wincing as the pain of the beating starts to really throb around his head and neck, he gets up, expecting Jeryd to follow him the few paces over to the bedroom – it’s not really separate room, just a wide sort of doorway separating it from the sitting room of the suite. With the mood he seems to be in, Roman’s expecting to get bent over, clothes torn off, fucked dry and ripped into shreds. He doesn’t do any of that, though – he hasn’t moved, looking sort of absent-mindedly at some fixed point in the floor. Still troubled, his brow furrowed in thought. So Roman sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, clothed, awkward and waiting for something.

Loud silence for a few long moments—then Jeryd says, “Oh, God,” in some extreme distaste and bends down to pick something up off the moss-green carpet.

“What?”

“Rome,” he says, still with that tone, as though someone just shat on the floor in front of him. He’s holding something small gingerly in his palm as he approaches Roman in the bedroom to show him what it is. “Your fucking tooth. Fuck.”

“Oh.” Roman hadn’t noticed. With some detached curiosity, he feels around his bleeding mouth with his tongue, and sure enough – it’s the same one. “Not a tooth, don’t worry. Not a real one, I mean. Dad knocked that one out a few months ago, it’s just a fake. Maybe I should sue the dentist. Clearly a rush job. Sabotage, maybe. Assassination attempt?”

He looks at Roman then with that awful look, the one he hates and was hoping he’d never see on Jeryd’s face – pity mixed with revulsion.

“Hey, Rome. Look, it’s just – ” This is possibly the most wrong-footed he’s ever seen Jeryd. “All that, I didn’t –you know, I’m just under a lot of pressure right now.”

“Oh, yeah, no, I know.” Roman nods, trying to think of how to tell him he doesn’t need to apologize – that this is just another part of all of this, for him. That it wasn’t even really enough, that it’s never enough. “I’ll call Tom. He’s easily manipulable and thinks we’re friends, I’ll see where I can get with ATN.”

Jeryd looks surprised, and pacified. “Thanks. Listen, on that subject, you’re sitting on a truly obscene amount of money, right?”

“Correct,” Roman says, wiping some blood away from his nose, where it’s still dripping into his mouth. “Why, would you like a taste of my dirty billions? Only if you ask really nicely. Or marry me. Or solve my riddles three.”

Jeryd continues, ignoring him. “Just spitballing here, but why don’t we think bigger than ATN? You’re not completely stupid and you’ve got above-average business acumen in some respects – ”

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me – ”

“I know maybe helping block the Waystar sale would’ve been the easy way out here, but I think it could still be better for both of us in the end. If you started something, set up your own shop as real America’s answer to the new-and-Swedified ATN – not like some of the alt-right nutjob TikTok stuff, but something with legitimacy, integrity, something polished with the country’s most famous legacy media surname attached to it – and you know, then the ‘you and me’ of it all.”

Roman shrugs. “I mean, for one thing, we signed a noncompete. Obviously. It’s a non-starter for at least, I think it was three years.”

“Sure, but I was thinking there could be some creative ways around it. Anyway, just food for thought.”

He can’t resist it. He never can – maybe meanness is his malevolent instinct, inherited from his father, or maybe it’s just the world’s most over-worked defence system going into hyperdrive at the slightest of sounds. Maybe it’s both.

“Face it, Jeryd, you fucked it up,” he says with a scoff. “No use trying to backtrack. I picked the president, you picked your prince, we could have had a merry old time, but you had to have the biggest fucking dick in the room, didn’t you. Even if you ended up fucking no-one but yourself with it.”

By the look on his face, you could almost believe that Roman has hurt his feelings. “Christ, you’re a fucking brat today.”

“Well.” Roman tries again to wipe at the blood still dripping from his nose like a faucet, with the sleeve of his ruined white shirt, the injury making his voice thick and dry. “Maybe you should’ve hit me harder, then.”

Smooth and predatory, Jeryd comes in for the kiss—Roman always feels so small when he holds his face like this, his hands big and forceful. Roman’s blood has poured over his lips, tasting like copper and flesh, and Jeryd seems to like the taste, hungry as he is with his probing tongue. In a quick movement he pushes Roman down so that he’s on top and Roman is lying face-up beneath him on the bed. He tries to get into it, kissing back half-heartedly, but something is wrong. It’s too slow, almost tender as he moves to suck a bruise or two onto Roman’s neck—not enough urgency, not enough detachment. It’s too present, too intimate. He thinks of all the women Jeryd must have done this exact maneuver with, including the one that he ended up marrying, and the thought makes him sick, makes him want to push Jeryd off of him and run away. Even the fact that he’s facing up, that apparently they’re going to do this missionary, is all wrong—he doesn’t like his face to be looked at, prefers to be hidden and fucked from behind like he isn’t anything more than a warm hole to get some unemotional gratification from. Not kissed on the lips while his shirt is slowly unbuttoned, then his pants – hand brushing his cock – it’s not right. He shouldn’t be doing this. But their time together is limited, he knows now; it’s only a matter of time before it’ll be too dangerous to keep going. There’s no harm in letting Jeryd do what he wants, and it seems the beating he gave Roman took all the fight out of him. What’s left behind is Roman’s long-term fucking nemesis: regular sex. He lets Jeryd push a pillow under him to prop him up better and after what feels like an eon of unnecessary foreplay, he finally pushes into Roman. The gentleness makes him want to throw up, as does the way he kisses him again as he works his way inside him. This isn’t what he wants. He puts his arms around Jeryd so that they’re at least not looking at each other, so that his lips are buried somewhere near his shoulder and out of reach, clutching his back while he rolls his hips almost lazily to get the rhythm going.

“You like that?” he says with a fondness that makes guilt rush up like bile in Roman’s throat, clearly getting the wrong idea about how enthusiastic he is.

“Can we – can we – ” Roman is mumbling it, sure that Jeryd can hardly hear him. He can’t, however, bring himself to say the word stop. If he says it, and he doesn’t stop – it could be fine, just part of the game, or it could ruin everything. Roman doesn’t know. So he doesn’t say it, and tells himself to get through it. Be extra good, it’ll be over sooner. An old adage, the oldest he knows. Let the blood pool in your lungs, don’t cough it up and get it all over everything. Nobody needs that, you’re just making a mess. Hold in it. Stay quiet. Dad, nothing happened, promise. Eleven or twelve. Kendall looks concerned, but Dad likes that so, so much better and Roman glows in the momentary warmth. That’s what pride looks like on a father’s face, it must be. Jeryd will like him better if he doesn’t ruin this, make it weird. Nothing happens if you say it doesn’t happen. Truth is in the saying, only in the saying. Be extra good, it’ll be over sooner. Be good, be good, be good – he’s seven years old, be good. He doesn’t know what’s happening but he knows it’s not right. Be good and it might stop, be good and nobody will need to punish you. Piss yourself in the cage where everyone can see, four years old, mop it up, it’s just a game and you like it. Later, he’s ten now, he learns that being good isn’t about not being punished – they don’t care if he gets hurt, they only care about how good he can make them feel. That’s what will end it quicker. He’s fourteen and none of it happened. It’s all gone, left him with a Swiss-cheese memory and a deep, incurable rot inside him. Just be good, Romey, and don’t tell anyone. No. No, that’s not it. Just be good, Romulus, there’s nothing to tell anyone.

Really he doesn’t want it to stop—Jeryd inside him is the only time this body of his has any real worth for anything. He would surrender to this any day, any time, but he just wants it to be worse. He can’t stomach the fucking nicety of it all. Jeryd should spit in his mouth and twist his arms behind his back so he can’t move and choke him until he stops breathing and slap him in the face for speaking and fuck him like he’s barely human. Should tie him up and gag him and cut the useless pieces of him off and starve him and leave him there bleeding and blind until he needs some release again. But he’s being this odd and alarming half-gentle beast, going all slow and sensual like they’re fucking lovers. This isn’t right. This isn’t right. This isn’t love it can’t be love it shouldn’t be love. To be loved is to be left unharmed. To be harmed is to be good. To be good is to fulfill a purpose. Angry men need someone for bloodletting and to be needed is to be useful. To be useful is to be good. He wasn’t built to hold love. He doesn’t remember any state of purity, of virginity, not as far back as time goes. He only remembers the way his self was shaped and mis-shaped around this certain filth, mutated development, failure to thrive, he doesn’t remember the touch that put it there or if there was one at all. But now he needs it, will look for it over and over again, because it’s all he’s made for. No, well, no. There’s nothing to tell. There’s nothing to tell. Don’t fucking touch me like you could love me.

“Rome? Roman? What the fuck—Roman?”

Is it Dad? No – he’s not seven anymore like he feels right now and Dad’s dead, but that look, one part concern and three parts disgust mixed with contempt, is so familiar it feels for a moment like he’s still here.

He doesn’t exactly snap back to reality, still feeling a little outside himself—it’s more like the unreality starts to slowly erode like a receding tide in his mind until the world halfway normal again. Jeryd is looking at him askance.

“Sorry,” Roman mumbles. “Sorry, just keep—no, you don’t have to stop. Sorry. Got in my head.”

He doesn’t know if he was saying something out loud or what had caught Jeryd’s attention, alerted him to the fact that something was off with Roman.

“No, I – You just went sort of limp. Ever fucked a dead fish? Kind of a mood-killer, but thanks for the offer.”

“Stop, hey stop, no, I can – ” He interrupts himself with a sharp gasp as Jeryd pulls out, unfulfilled. ”Sorry, I can be better. Please – come on.”

Jeryd ignores him, swinging his legs over the bed so he’s sitting at the foot of it. Roman scrambles to more of a sitting position, trying to gauge how bad this is, hoping he can be punished into behaving again.

“Are you – okay?” Jeryd finally looks at him, brief and sidelong. “Did you hit your head or something? Like, for real.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just don’t do it nice, okay?” Roman mumbles. There’s no way to explain, none at all; telling it to someone outside the family makes it real. It doesn’t have to be real if he doesn’t want it to be – that’s the nature of truth. “It doesn’t work for me if it’s nice. I thought you got that.”

“Sure. Uh, Roger that.”

It’s awkward after; Jeryd says he needs to go do some work in the sitting room, but Roman already knows that he’ll be sleeping on the pull-out there instead of coming back. He’s ruined it, just like everything else his diseased insect of a self touches.

*

Roman is just moving into the outskirts of consciousness when he is abruptly awoken by something loud that kind of hurts – he realizes belatedly, dimly, that he’s been slapped hard – and again – in the face.

“Wake up,” Jeryd’s voice is saying, distant. “I’m late for work. Here, come on, quick.”

Before Roman can so much as blink twice, the head of Jeryd’s cock is in his mouth, the confusing haze of sleep having left his lips parted and unable to prevent it, even if he wanted to, muffling his “what the fuck?” before half the words are out. He doesn’t think he wants to. He clumsily props himself up and twists his neck to get a better angle, trying not to make it seem like he’s pulling away, trying to keep it in his mouth. There’s that familiar feeling of Jeryd’s hand in his hair, helping him along. Still slowed by the remnants of sleep, he just can’t seem to catch up with what Jeryd wants from him, so he just surrenders to Jeryd to set the pace, brutal as ever.

“All the way in, come on—there you go,” he says, then, grinning, “that’s a good girl.”

Jesus. His cheeks start to burn—there’s no chance Jeryd didn’t see the way his cock stiffens in his boxers at those words.

Just as Roman is blinking away the last of his sleep and trying to get used to the thick slab of warm flesh being pummelled into the back of his throat, Jeryd’s phone starts to buzz. Of course he answers it, with the hand not occupied by holding Roman’s head firmly in place as he fucks into his mouth.

“Yep,” he’s saying, as Roman drools, trying hard not to gag, nose nearly pressed into groin. “Mm-hmm, yeah. I’ll be in soon, just running a little behind schedule.” Moving the phone away from his mouth, he whispers down to Roman. “See what I mean? You can’t oversleep so much, it fucks things up.”

Roman’s only response is a muffled groan – it’s too much, all too, too much. Once upon a time, he was the guy on the other end of the important phone call. Now he’s this, now he’s what he wants to be, what he was evidently made for and far better suited to (even his dad knew that part), and it turns him on or breaks his heart or both, he has no way of telling.

“Okay,” Jeryd continues into the receiver. “Yep, see you soon. Sorry about that. Bye.”

A few more quick thrusts and it’s over, Roman swallows, still half-dazed. The whole thing took about six minutes in all.

“Good,” Jeryd says, petting him on the head fondly. “Good stuff.”

“Fuck off,” Roman says, shaken and trying to regain his proper breathing. “You woke up in a fucking mood, didn’t you?”

Of course, there’s the thing that goes unspoken. After last night, Roman’s panic – it doesn’t work for me if you do it nice – this is Jeryd’s way of pressing reset on their dynamic, letting him know that it isn’t unsalvageable. Doing it the harsh and mean way Roman prefers, even though he acts like he’s annoyed about it. All part of the charade. It’s fucked up, but Roman is sort of touched by it as a gesture. (And extremely turned on by it, also, as a gesture – something about the very few mornings they’ve actually shared seems to get Jeryd in a filthy state of mind. The last time, about a month-and-a-half ago, he’d made Roman kneel under the table holding his cock in his mouth for the entire time he’d, leisurely, had his coffee and scant room-service breakfast – Roman’s been using that particular memory as his premier wank material ever since.)

“Gave me blue balls last night, it’s only fair. I was kind of worried you’d bite me, but I took my chances,” Jeryd is saying, now putting his things into his laptop bag. “Five stars, by the way, seriously.”

Roman hates how much the praise placates him. “Just so I know, ever stick your dick in me without waking me up first?”

“I’ll never tell.” Jeryd winks, teasingly, but then seeing the look on Roman’s face – “Kidding. Jesus. Of course not. Unless, you want me to?”

“Fuck you.”

Jeryd raises his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Noted. Actually, it’s good to know even you have boundaries.”

Roman doesn’t think he much likes being known as this, the person you have to ask, would you like it if I raped you? (Bad words, his mind tells him, think about something else. They’re always nice, always nice, until they aren’t – that’s what good about Jeryd, he’s mean up front but he doesn’t mean it most of the time.) What he likes even less is the fact that he doesn’t think he would mind, anyway.

Jeryd is practically out the door when Roman returns from the bathroom, face washed and mouth rinsed, plonking himself down on the bed aimlessly.

When he looks like that, greying hair combed and professional, perfectly tailored suit and tie, that handsome outline of his nose and jaw, American flag pin on his lapel, the aggressively masculine scent of his aftershave wafting over to Roman – Roman hasn’t even gotten the taste of his cock out of his mouth yet and suddenly needs it inside him again. There’s just something about him.  

“Oh, hey.” Jeryd picks up his work bag, straightens his tie in the full-length mirror by the door of the bedroom that leads to the hallway and the exit. “Was going to ask, how long do you have this place for? Another night, if I can put off going back to D.C. until tomorrow?”

“Do you have to go to work now?” Roman says. “Haven’t the Jews suffered enough? Can’t you just give it to Jimenez?”

“Fuck off, don’t drink the Kool-Aid. Yes, I have to go.”

But he found it funny, he’s grinning. 

Roman says, “But later? Do you want to meet me back here, or what? I’m a busy person, I’m not just at your beck and call, so tell me now and I’ll consider it.”

“Well,” Jeryd raises his eyebrows with mild suggestiveness, not even trying to take Roman’s authoritative tone seriously, “I’ll probably want another one of those.”

Roman rolls his eyes. “Doesn’t the wife ever blow you? Gotta get ‘em all from me?”

The wife has become a sort of abstract character in this little domestic play that they put on, more idea than person—Roman has seen her only in passing, hasn’t really met her, barely remembers what her name is and never wants to speak it out loud.

Jeryd laughs. “Jealous?”

“Oh, fuck you,” Roman says, looking away, feeling stupid for even mentioning her. Hating her, sort of, for getting so much more of his time than he does. “Just wondering. Fucking, want to split the labour with my harem-mate, that’s all.”

“Well—no, to answer your question. Or, not like you do. She’s got nothing on you.”

Roman’s head perks up almost involuntarily as he tries hard not to look as pleased as he is. “Yeah?”

“Oh, no question.” Jeryd shakes his head, the ghost of a smile on his face, as though he’s reminiscing about the feel of Roman’s mouth on his dick. “No fucking question about that. You’re—what can I even fucking say? You’re one of a kind, pal. See you tonight, then?”

“Yeah,” Roman says like he’s considered it at length, pretending like his agreement has nothing to do with what was just said. “Yeah, okay. Let me know when you get away ftom work.”

“Sure thing.”

Then he does something he’s never done before. Instead of heading out, he comes back over to the bed where Roman is – messy bed-hair, in his white undershirt and boxers, feet not even reaching the ground – and leans down toward him, having to bend practically in half to do it. He takes Roman’s face in his hand, stroking his cheek gently with his thumb, making a soft circle right over the red mark from where he had slapped Roman awake not twenty minutes ago. Then he kisses him—chaste and affectionate. Nothing like ever before, nothing like usual. Like a husband giving his wife a goodbye kiss before heading to the office, briefcase in hand. It lasts for about a second and a half.

Pulling away with a pat on Roman’s cheek, Jeryd gives him that self-assured smile where he turns up one corner of his mouth, with that look in his eyes that almost never goes away, the one that Roman is most intensely attracted to—the look that suggests that he knows everything there is to know, and that nothing in the world can shake him. He’s in good shape for fifty-four, but this up close, Roman can see clearly the white hairs outnumbering the dark ones on his head and the lines his face—running across the middle of his forehead, bracketing his mouth—betraying his age. It’s all exactly what he needs.

Then, it’s over and it feels like it didn’t happen. Jeryd doesn’t look at him after that and leaves without saying anything more, the slam of the door ringing in Roman’s ears. He makes sure to give it a few seconds, so that he knows Jeryd won’t come back and possibly see him, and then smiles wide. That was nice.

Only, there is a stomach-turning sense of déjà vu that starts to creep to the forefront of his psyche. The sweetness that comes after the hurt. The things people say, the way they make you feel more important and more loved and more special than ever when they want to make sure that you come crawling back, that you always come crawling right back to lick the boot and say thank you for having me, thank you for loving me in your limited and awful way. Just a taste, nothing more, and then back to the same old everything. It’s the same cage, and it’s not nice. He doesn’t like it, not like everyone says he does, not like he has started to believe he does. It’s not true. His smile falters, then fades completely. The familiarity of the pattern makes him physically feel sick, hot burning bile rising up in his throat.

Another familiar scene: Roman hunched over the toilet in a place that he doesn’t call home, throwing up practically nothing, emptiness and stomach acid.

The moment it’s all out of him, he feels better, as is often the case. He feels so much better. What a strange moment that was. He’ll be seeing Jeryd again tonight, at least. That always helps him clear his head.