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jeniffercheck · 9 months

Text

deep sea dive (got down, but you stayed alive)

shivlina tumblr prompt: exploration of shiv & karolina's relationships to food

words: 13.9k

read here or on ao3

a/n & cw under the cut xx

a/n: ty to the anon who requested this!! not sure if this is what u wanted but the backstory is now here if anyone would like any other fics from this universe.

i’m also not sure whether this needs to be a disclaimer or not, but if any roman stans are reading this, roman is a huge part of the backstory, but this is just from shiv’s perspective. it’s not really meant to be commentary on how i view roman or his thought process on this subject, just how i imagine shiv might rationalize it from her point of view, and we know she's a wonderfully unreliable narrator at times, which i love her for<3

cw: this is an introspective fic from shiv's pov and is about her struggling with an eating disorder, so definitely please take care of yourself if you believe a portrayal of disordered thoughts will trigger you. i never like to get preachy within a fic, but the overall tone is very pro-recovery if that is of concern to anyone!

August tastes like a punch to the gut. It’s a sweltering heat, the kind that’s dense and swallows her whole as if it has nowhere else to go but inside of her. It’s always a shock to her system, returning to the summer palace, the one in Amagansett that always bothered her because all of her friends were in Southampton, and she was stuck in the east. She longs for the days when that was the only reason she disliked this house.

They don’t return often, the humid and salty air bearable few times during the year, and least of all during the red hot peak of Summer, but Shiv got into a fight with Roman and she really pissed him off this time, so Roman begged Kendall to suggest it to dad, and when Kendall uses just enough intelligence to convince their dad that something was his idea, well, that’s that.

Shiv knows she shouldn’t have come. That she should’ve just let Roman win and said that she had a work event that couldn’t miss, but she wanted to prove him wrong. Or maybe just prove something to herself. Either way, it was a bad fucking idea.

They’d only been there the first night before Dad called in the cavalry, bringing the whole Waystar A-team in to assist with what always seems like never-ending crises. What used to be a home for passive-aggressive domestic spouts and Roman pulling her hair until she agreed to make a sandcastle with him is now for grown men, shouting and arguing over stock market inflation and quarterly reports, optics that she has to carry despite her non-involvement and regardless of if she agrees with them or not. The kicker of it all is a surprise tropical storm deciding to cut through the Atlantic, leaving Connor and Kendall still delayed by air travel. No threat of evacuation, but still making it extremely impossible to do anything but dwell inside this fucking house.

Shiv thinks Roman likes being there. Like he gets off on the awful memories and pretends that they turned him into something worthwhile. Shiv hates it. She thinks the floorboards creak, and the couches are old money gauche, and the whole house feels like it’s going to bury her every time she steps inside of it, as if she’s holding up the frames with her own two hands and if she lets go it’ll topple her. It makes her feel alone again, like she’s thirteen and her mom just called and told her to have a good summer except she never really says the words good or summer and instead uses the words sad and I don’t know why you do this to me, and I do hope he keeps you kids away from the ice cream.

A familiar feeling returns, the one that feels like maybe if she can just be smaller then she’ll blend into the house, disappearing into the walls and finally make it into rooms she’s always been shut out of. Today isn’t that day. Today, the important people are doing business, and Shiv just has to brave the weather and wait. She’s in the day room when the lights flicker, and on instinct she moves towards the kitchen, knowing there are flashlights in one of the junk drawers that hide the clutter because perception is always more important than practice, but she pauses in the walkway, her hands suddenly clammy and her heart pounding a little harder.

There’s not even anyone in the kitchen, but she still feels like something terrible will happen if she steps into it. The same way she feels like if she sets foot in one of the bathrooms, she’ll be tempted to pull out a dusty scale from when she was fifteen, or the way she can’t open the closet in her bedroom because if she does, she’ll just see racks of clothes her mom bought knowing they’d never fit her. It’s terrifying, if she’s being honest. It’s terrifying and lonely and feels fucking foolish because she’s an almost-thirty-year-old woman who can’t fucking walk into the kitchen of her childhood summer home. The grip it has on her is ridiculous but it’s also strong, so much so that she doesn’t even notice someone coming up behind her until their voice is ringing out.

“Shiv?” It’s Karolina. “You don’t happen to know where the tea would be, do you?”

Shiv turns around, immediately noticing how tired Karolina looks. She doesn’t think that it’s uncommon for anyone working at Waystar, but being dragged out to the fucking Hamptons with your boss because he can’t trust anyone else in the office to do their job for five days has to be a different level of burdensome.

“Uh, yeah,” Shiv says, trying to sound normal. Because despite the fact that the sight of this very kitchen makes her skin crawl, she still knows every nook and cranny in it. She’d be able to steal the Crown Jewels if they were being protected in this fucking kitchen. “Over here.”

The presence of another person gives her just enough fear of looking stupid to set aside the shame for just a moment, because really, she doesn’t need the Waystar Head of PR to think she’s a fucking headcase, not that she wouldn’t already think so. She shoves her clammy hands in her pockets and takes a deep breath disguised as a sigh and walks confidently into the kitchen, as if the very sight of it doesn’t make her want to walk out onto the beach and surrender herself to the entire ocean.

“Want anything specific?” Shiv asks, heading for the tea drawer.

When she opens it, she ignores the favorite water packets still sitting in there, fifteen-year-old expiration dates reminding her that she should be fucking over this by now. She remembers how upset she used to get when Kendall and Roman would steal them, daring each other to down the powder in one shot over and over again, her screaming until her lungs hurt from the stress and theirs hurt from laughing, nobody having the wherewithal at the time to stop and think about why a box of flavored powder could set her off dramatically. It was the same old story back then. Shiv would want something so deeply that her bothers could only think to mock her for caring about something at all, rather than stop to wonder if the thing she wanted was even good for her. She thinks it’s not all that different from now.

“Oh, it’s not for me,” Karolina says, her voice giving Shiv permission to tear her eyes away from the drawer. “It’s for your father. The house staff was caught up in the storm while preparing the groceries and I guess since he hasn’t hired a new assistant yet, tea duty has now been added to my job description.”

“Right,” Shiv says, pulling out the tea she knows her dad prefers. “What did the last one do, buy him the wrong pair of socks?”

“Forgot to pick up his dry cleaning,” Karolina says. If she’s bothered, which Shiv assumes she has to be, she doesn’t let it show.

“Unforgivable,” Shiv says, turning to find the kettle. She fills it with water and sets it on the hotplate, finding a mug for the tea as well. She glances back to Karolina to find her on her phone again, and she feels a little bit like she’s been tricked into tea fetching becoming her job. For as much as she doesn’t know, though, she does know that the whole team has been working on something huge and stressful that Shiv will have to make assumptions about as they talk around it during dinner, so she figures tea fetching can at least keep her busy.

“I can bring it when it’s ready,” Shiv offers. “The kettle might be a while.”

Shiv thinks part of her does it because in some small way she does want so badly to enter that room, to not be a ghost roaming the rest of the house while everyone else serves a purpose, if only for a moment. Karolina looks up from her phone as if she’d forgotten she even entered the kitchen at all, but in a surprising turn of events, she locks her phone and sets it down on the counter, taking a seat on one of the stools across from where Shiv is standing.

“No, it’s okay,” she says, hands raising to her temples. “I could use tiebreak.”

In that case, the liquor cabinet is in the dining room,” Shiv says. Karolina laughs, though it feels a little forced and not so humorous, but she still looks tense.

“I’ll remember that,” she says, sighing.

“The boys in a bad mood?” Shiv asks, already knowing the answer to that question.

“I know why one of them is,” Karolina says. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the other one, would you?”

The question feels pointed, and Shiv has to imagine Roman has been saying things about her behind closed doors. Whatever. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“I know why Roman’s acting like someone dropped his phone in a toilet,” Shiv says, trying her best to act very nonchalant. Karolina stares at her blankly, a frustrated sort of disbelief that Shiv knows she must wear around the Roys often.

“I mean, I have to ask—did someone drop his phone in a toilet?”

The kettle lets out a soft beep and Shiv takes it off its stand, pouring hot water into the mug and letting the tea bag steep. She shrugs.

“You know, I really can’t recall,” she says. “But if someone did, I can assure you, he deserved it.”

So, yeah. It wasn’t her proudest moment, whatever. Karolina quirks an eyebrow at Shiv.

“Well, as long as you can assure me,” she says, the trace of an amused smile on her lips.

Shiv is acting amused as well, and she thinks in some sense she is, but she also knows her actions have consequences and those consequences are currently this house and a fucking hurricane, for some reason. Roman’s certainly made his point by dragging her back here.

“Uh, tea’s ready,” Shiv says, sliding the mug toward Karolina. “Just, ask Roman if he’s doing something different with his hair. It’ll make him think he looks good. Sulking time over.”

“And you’re not setting me up because he got a haircut and he hates it?” Karolina asks, grabbing the mug.

“Me, set you up?” Shiv asks, bringing her best playful smile back to the forefront. “I would never.”

Karolina eyes her for a second longer, and then shakes her head, lightly laughing. She thanks Shiv for the tea and leaves the kitchen, and as soon as she’s gone, Shiv also high-tails it out of there. She doesn’t realize how unnerved it actually made her until she’s back in her room, just away from it. She’s not sure any room in the house is actually safe, but some rooms sure as hell beat others in the memory department, that’s for sure. She stays in the near-safety of her room for a while, and by the time dinner comes around, she ends up lucking out.

The chefs aren’t able to get the necessary ingredients to the house due to limitations from the storm, so it’s a free for all. It gives her the ability to slip away, to tell Dad that she’s tired from traveling and needs some rest, and she does exactly that. She sleeps through dinner time since that’s the only sure way to not think about it and she sets her alarm for one in the morning, deciding she’ll return to the kitchen then, when everyone else will be asleep. Then, she can eat in peace and fucking figure out how she’s doing to survive this trip.

Really, she can starve for a week. It’s not like she hasn’t done it before.

She swallows the thought, wishing that intention could somehow nurture a body the same way an apple can, but it can’t, and besides, Shiv’s intentions would all be empty calories anyway. The house is quiet when she wakes again, save for the wind blowing wildly with the storm and she moves as quickly as she can through the floors without making too much noise. She wills herself not to pause before entering the kitchen this time, figuring she better get in the habit of looking unbothered so she can at least act normal around everyone else, but she regrets that decision as soon as she follows through with it because she doesn’t have time to realize that Karolina is in the kitchen, notebooks sprawled on the counter and laptop glowing in the dark. Leave it to the fucking workaholic.

She can’t help it when a small, “Oh,” escapes her, as she genuinely is surprised, and she regrets that as well because if she hadn’t said anything she probably could’ve just escaped the kitchen without Karolina ever having been the wiser. Karolina looks up immediately, not quite startled, but definitely mildly concerned.

“Is everything alright?” she asks, Shiv’s suspicion of the worry confirmed by the way Karolina seems to instinctively check her phone for notifications and her watch for the time.

“No catastrophes,” Shiv assures. “I just came out to get some water.”

Which isn’t the truth, but she’s not going to eat fucking dinner now. Not in front of Karolina, at least. She feels bad, the way that Karolina seems to relax, and she thinks it must be exhausting to live your life on behalf of someone else’s eggshells.

“Good,” Karolina ends up saying. “We have enough of those currently.”

She sounds a sort of stressed that Shiv doesn’t think Karolina would ever admit to, and it piques Shiv’s interest, because what could be so bad that her dad dragged all of them out on his family vacation? He’s definitely done it for less, but she always thought that was because they were kids, and he didn’t know what to do around them other than work.

“Am I going to find out what’s going on? Shiv asks. She knows the answer, but it’s worth a shot. Karolina’s response comes by way of a huge sigh.

“You know that’s not for me to decide, Shiv,” Karolina says.

Shiv fills a glass with water, just as she’s pretending to have intended, and notices a pot on the stove. Maybe she eyes it for too long, a half-empty serving of macaroni and cheese, because Karolina notices.

“Do you want some?” she asks. Shiv doesn’t know how long Karolina’s been in the kitchen for, but if she’s as intuitive as she seems, then it’s likely she’d have noticed that Shiv actually never came down for dinner. Regardless, she wasn’t prepared to make a decision like this, not right now, and it feels a special sort of awful because to anyone else, it would be a simple yes or no. To Karolina, Shiv thinks it’ll still sound like a yes or no, but Shiv will have crafted an entire narrative around it. If she’s pretending to not be hungry, she has to know the why. Stomach ache? Period? Brought snacks from home? In her head, she pretends that the nausea is what’s causing her lack of appetite rather than her lack of appetite causing her nausea, and she declines.

“I’m okay,” Shiv says, downing the lie with a sip of water. “Thank you, though.” She adds on the gratitude at the last minute, like she’s just remembering again how an unaffected person would react in the situation. Karolina doesn’t seem to pay any mind to it and accepts it well enough, and Shiv actually thinks she might look a little self-conscious about it herself.

“It was the quickest thing I could find, I guess they…got it for when it seemed like the kids would still be coming?” she explains, then, “I’m sorry—it must be strange having all of us taking over your home right now.”

Shiv wants to say it’s not a home, that it’s a wooden structure on top of concrete and dirt that sucks the life out of her every time she returns to it, and that it’s not a home but an endless black pit of terrible summers and awful memories and she feels like it’s slowly consuming her the longer she’s inside of it.

“It’s fine,” she says instead. “It’s not the first time you’ve been sent on a Roy family vacation, right?”

Shiv wonders how many other things Karolina’s been a fly on the wall for throughout her life. Certainly not everything. Maybe Karolina is feeling altruistic, or maybe Shiv just looks entirely pathetic, because she spills the beans.

“There are allegations coming out against one of the ATN presenters,” she says. “That’s why we’re all here.”

“Well, that’s fun,” Shiv says. “And totally not surprising.”

Karolina huffs, the kind that’s agreeable but lets Shiv know that she’s tired of this kind of bullshit.

“It’s not going to sink us,” Karolina says, propping her chin into her hand. “But it could hurt ratings pretty badly if we don’t come up with the right angle.”

“Can’t you just lie to ATN viewers?” Shiv asks. “Those braindead conspiracy theorists won’t give you two fucks.”

“That’s part of the plan,” Karolina says. “It still looks pretty bad though, considering some expenses were paid for on Waystar’s dime.”

“What, Waystar isn’t allowed to do pay-offs anymore?” Shiv is semi-sarcastic when she asks, because she’s not sure quite sure where hush money falls on the legal spectrum all the time, but it’s certainly never stopped them before.

“The events took place at the location of an illegal poker club,” Karolina says. “He’d been using his company card the last few months to secure funds, and I guess he thought—”

She starts combing through her notes again and laughs a little bit.

“I seriously don’t know what the fuck he thought,” Karolina says. “He’s screwed.”

“He should be screwed,” Shiv says. “God knows you’ll figure out a way to get him out of it.”

Karolina shifts in apprehension.

“We’ll see about that,” she says. “But, um—I should get back to this, it’s already too late and I haven’t even begun narrowing down my main proposal.”

“Right,” Shiv says. She holds her glass of water, “Good luck.”

“Oh—Shiv?”

Shiv turns around, eyes expectant.

“Roman appreciated the compliment.”

Shiv smirks, then mumbles a, “Good,” and makes her way back to her room, hungry.

—

The sight of dinner has always been disturbing, but here in this house, she thinks it’s a kind of cruel and unusual punishment. It’s far from a safe option, especially in the large dining room with her dad’s employees and Roman sitting directly across from her, but they’d managed to get all of the ingredients across the island in time for a good meal today, and her dad wanted all of them in attendance. Roman’s still pissed at her, she can tell, so she tries her best to eat the fucking food if only to spite him, but she’s admittedly having trouble. The texture is wrong, and the flavor is gamey, and there are quite a few people she doesn’t even know, and she has no idea who in this room even knows that she could be having a bad time at all, and it’s just fucking hard, to do this in front of everyone. To struggle under their noses, and apparently, she’s not even doing a great job of that.

“What’s wrong, Pinky, you don’t like it?”

She doesn’t know if he asks because he’s a concerned father who remembers that sometimes she has an affinity for starving or if because he genuinely is concerned that the meal is bad, and she doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of either of those options so, she lies.

“It’s fine, Dad,” she says, hoping that’ll be the end of it, but Roman has other plans, clearly.

“Shiv doesn’t like anything that’s solid or resembles a nutrient, remember?” he says. “Thinks it’ll make her bloated if she’s nourished.”

It hurts Shiv’s feelings, of course it does, because it’s out of line and there’s really no reason to say it all other than the sole purpose of making her feel like shit, because if there’s one thing Roman needs to do when he’s upset is drag Shiv all the way down to his level where he wants her to belong, as if her being better than him would be the most devastating thing to ever happen to anybody. It also upsets her because this isn’t the time or the place, and he knows that. She’ll gladly go hand-to-hand with Roman any day of the week, but here? In front of all these people? It’s just fucking humiliating.

She ignores the intense stares from the table, the gazes that are trying not to land on her and the ones that are trying not to look concerned even though they remember, and she bites back. It’s what she does.

“Oh, are you getting back into wellness?” she asks, her tone pleasant yet cunning all the same. “Tell me, Rome, how’s your personal trainer doing?”

She stifles a laugh as he kicks her from under the table, and revels in the sound of awkward silence, knowing it’s that of victory for her. She makes eye contact with Roman as she takes a bite of the food, turning her head back to Dad when Roman rolls his eyes in defeat.

“The meal is wonderful, Dad,” she says. “Really.”

He seems pleased enough, choosing to ignore the verbal spat of his youngest children and moves the conversation over to the old guard, asking Frank and Karl about some meal they had overseas one time. Shiv knows Roman is still watching her, probably seething with a silent rage he’s reserving only for her, and even though everyone else has stopped paying attention, she painstakingly finishes the entire plate. She wants Roman to see her do it, for whatever power he thinks he holds over right now to be displaced, because what’s he gonna do, tell on her for finishing her meal? Get fucked.

She holds the small victory close to her chest, knowing that if they were anywhere else, or even worse, with Mom, it would be a loss. She’ll always remember clearly the summer she learned how to starve, sitting between Roman and Mom at meal times, them commiserating over how they were stuffed and they couldn’t believe she’d been able to eat that much and they’d do it every lunch and every dinner and if she had a late breakfast Mom would say, I don’t know how you do that, that would leave me full until the evening, until she eventually started leaving a little bit left over on her plate, more and more every day until the comments subsided as if they were just goading her into joining their misery. Shiv never found satisfaction from it in the way they did. She still doesn’t. She finds it painful and burdensome and hates the way it leaves her head cloudy and her heart straining, and she hates nights like this, where everything is a reminder of where she came from and who she came from, and why she’ll never be any different. It’s a sickness that’s in her for life, and everyone around her feeds into it.

When they’re dismissed, she all but books it to her room.

She stares at the ensuite for what feels like ages, fighting off the urge to just puke it all up. She knows it’s useless, only having done it on a few, desperate, occasions, but it’s the sort of thing you can never quite shake once you know it’s a possibility. She vividly remembers mentioning it to her mom in a random call that the girls at school were starting to do it and her mom saying, that hasn’t been in since Princess Diana, darling, and she wishes that back then she could’ve known how it didn’t even matter whatever the hell Princess Diana did, and it didn’t matter what the girls at school were doing, and it didn’t matter that Roman couldn’t eat without projecting his hatred of himself onto her, and it didn’t matter that the only way to receive validation from her mom was by shrinking, because if it didn’t matter then, then it wouldn’t fucking matter now. This incessant, useless, fear that’s rooted in nothing because it’s all bullshit yet somehow runs her life anyway.

She’s about to just fucking give in when there’s a knock on her door.

“Shiv? It’s Karolina.”

She ignores the alarms going off in her mind over what exactly Karolina could be needing from her in this moment, but she checks her hair and her makeup in the mirror by her door before opening it. She’s used to this, pretending like things inside of her aren’t completely falling apart while doing her best to look perfect on the outside. She thinks her mom might be proud of her if she wouldn’t hate her so much for succeeding.

“What’s up?” she says, hoping she sounds nice, because Karolina has always been nice to her, and Shiv would love to be able to be the type of person who can reciprocate kindness, even in the face of something as horrific as her older brother’s employee being a reminder of all the ways he can still exert power over her, even into adulthood.

“I was wondering if I could run something by you,” Karolina says. “Feel free to say no if you’re busy, but I’d love to get your perspective on this ATN situation.”

“You want my help?” Shiv asks, surprised. “Don’t you have like, an all-star PR team at your fingertips?”

“Cell service went down after dinner,” Karolina says, holding up her phone. “And beyond that, I could honestly use an unbiased mind to bounce things off of. Someone who understands strategy.”

Shiv looks down at her own phone, noting the service bars are gone. She also notes the time, realizing she was in fact just sitting there, resisting, for almost forty minutes, and fuck if she couldn’t use the distraction. Plus, she will admit that the knowledge of Karolina seeing her as somewhat of a peer makes her feel good. Like a shred of validation is something she can latch onto to sustain her if only for a little while.

“Uh, sure,” she says. “I’m not—I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Great,” Karolina says, sounding relieved, “do you want to…?”

She gestures behind her, presumably to go off somewhere that isn’t Shiv’s room, and Shiv looks back for a second, eying the bathroom once more. She has half a mind to tell Karolina to go ahead, that she’ll meet her in a second and she’ll do what she needs to do, but she doesn’t feel like losing today. She doesn’t want to lose today. She tries to calm her mind, remind herself that burning her esophagus with acid won’t do anything but hurt herself in a worthless kind of way, and she relents, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind her.

“There’s a small study down the hall,” she says. “We can go in there, if you want.”

Karolina agrees, and she leads them to the room. Maybe small is the wrong word for it, but it’s certainly smaller than her dad’s study. The inside of it is boiling with nostalgia, remembering all of the mandatory summer work done with tutors and the way Roman would cry when he had to do math. The lights flicker as Karolina shuts the door and they both pause for a moment, as if not moving could stop an impending power outage. The lights don’t go out though, and Shiv thinks the wind howling and the rain pouring against the window are actually kind of calming. She’s never minded storms.

She sits on the couch by the window, an old Winchester that’s cold and stiff and feels a little bit like her childhood, and Karolina follows her.

“So,” Shiv says, settling sideways into the couch. “Where are you at?”

Karolina sighs and looks over her notebook, and from what Shiv can tell, it looks like she’s fucking drafted the Da Vinci Code on it.

“Well, your father doesn’t want to sack him,” Karolina says. “Which wrecked my strongest proposal.”

“He seriously wants ATN to back him?” Shiv asks. Karolina nods, not bothering to hide her annoyance at this fact, and Shiv has to wonder what exactly this guy could have on the company for him to be keeping his employment while in such a compromising position. “What’s he got?”

“He’s been on the news desk for twenty years,” Karolina says. “He has some leverage, unfortunately.”

Shiv knows that’s all Karolina’s going to tell her, and she doesn’t bother pressing because, really, she doesn’t even want to know.

“So what strategy are you leaning towards right now?” Shiv asks, trying to get a grip on the situation.

Karolina grimaces and shakes her head.

“Ignore and deflect?”

Which Shiv knows means that it’s bad, because if Karolina Novotney is saying ignore and deflect then there’s no spin. That’s an eleventh-hour call for a mind like hers, and Shiv imagines she isn’t taking it lightly. Seeing as they’re trapped in a near-hurricane with no cell service, Shiv also has to imagine that Karolina is preparing for the worst-case scenario in case the team back at the office comes up with nothing.

“Can’t Dad just call up Congress?” Shiv says. “Ask them to start talking about UFOs again while the news quietly breaks?”

She’s half-joking, but she doesn’t miss the way Karolina pauses, considering her words. She writes something down in the notebook, eyes combing through her words.

“That’s not a bad idea,” she mumbles.

“Karolina,” Shiv says, Karolina looking up at her. “Really?”

“Would it be the craziest thing Waystar has done?” Karolina asks, to which Shiv can’t confidently say no, but she can still confidently say that it’s fucking nuts.

“I think it would effectively be one of them, yeah,” she says.

“It doesn’t have to be UFOs,” Karolina argues softly. “Maybe there’s something we’ve been sitting on, a story about a senator or a news rival—what’s something that would distract working-class America?”

“Beats me,” Shiv says. “The libs are threatening to outlaw coal mining again, or—I don’t know, they’re trying to make semi-trucks illegal and ban diet Coke?”

Karolina pauses once again as if it’s not a bad idea.

“I’ll write those down,” she says.

Shiv watches her pen glide along a new sheet of paper, getting lost in Karolina’s elegantly messy handwriting. She can’t help her thoughts as they drift back to earlier in the night, and she realizes for a short moment, she’d nearly forgotten all about the anxiety of having eaten. Nearly, is the keyword. She clenches her fist slightly as the urge to disrupt her digestive system returns, and she feels stupid for thinking she could beat it, feels stupid for thinking she could come to this house and just feels fucking stupid.

“What do you think?” Karolina’s voice rings out, and it’s then that Shiv notices she’d even been talking.

“Sorry,” Shiv says, blinking her eyes roughly. “Could you repeat that?”

Karolina looks the slightest bit concerned, too caught off guard to be able to hide it this time around, but Shiv is grateful when it doesn’t manifest into anything other than a suspicious glance.

“We’ll feed the tabloids with a red herring, something inciting like the red Starbucks cups or another conservative company succumbing to, I don’t know, pride marketing…and if we time the news cycle right, we’ll have viewers so riled up that they won’t even notice the exposé breaking.”

“I like it,” Shiv says. “Inconsequential, and doesn’t involve shaking anyone down. Clean hands.”

Karolina nods, a little bit like she’s trying to convince herself that it’ll work, but Shiv thinks it’s as good an idea as any, especially considering the conditions it’s being derived over.

“Best case scenario, we get internet back up and I find out the comms team back in the real world has already solved the issue, but this is good to have,” Karolina says. “Not great if we don’t have internet in the next twenty-four hours, but I’m trying not to think about that.”

“I guess my dad dragging all of you out here to work on this has backfired,” Shiv muses.

“And here I thought he just wanted us on the family vacation,” Karolina says, her sarcasm so perfect that Shiv almost thinks she’s being serious.

“Right,” Shiv says, twitching a grin. “The Roy family vacation of everyone’s dreams.”

Karolina hums, and Shiv thinks they both know Roy family vacations are not something anyone should classify as a dream. Shiv follows Karolina’s eyes out the window. She can’t say it’s gotten worse, because really, she hasn’t been following the weather, but it definitely doesn’t look good.

“Think we’ll have to evacuate?” Shiv asks.

“It’s supposed to let up,” Karolina says. “The worst is hitting now and might keep us stranded for a couple more days, but it should pass without too much concern. That’s what the news has been saying, at least.”

Shiv nods, lamenting on the fact that she’s going to be trapped in this place for at least another two days, and she doesn’t think she could’ve predicted this nightmare scenario if she’d tried.

“Well,” Shiv says, standing, “guess it’s time to go back to playing happy family. Let me know if you need help with anything else, this—uh…this was nice, yeah. To feel useful.”

“I appreciate it, Shiv,” Karolina says. “You’re really good at this, you know.”

Shiv isn’t sure if she’s hearing things, but she feels like Karolina says it as if she thinks it’s something that Shiv needed to hear, and Shiv wonders if maybe she did. When they part ways, she goes back to her room, using the high of a single compliment to get her through the night. She takes a shower, reads her book, and she goes to sleep full.

—

Kendall arrives the next day, as does the return of cell reception.

The rain lets up just enough for him to make it out of the city, it apparently being too unbearable for him to be away from the action. She was almost hoping he wouldn’t come. She can handle Roman. Shiv might be the youngest, but Roman’s always been more of an equal when it comes to their battles. Kendall is…overwhelming. He actually cares if she’s doing alright.

If he hasn’t seen her in a while he’ll hug her tightly, just to feel how thin she is, and he’ll give her constant once-overs, looking for signs that he should be worried. He’ll sidebar with Connor, pretending like it’s just business, but Shiv knows better because Kendall and Connor are never on the same page about anything unless it comes to her, and then Roman will just get even more upset because he’ll never receive the same amount of sympathy even though he’s arguably worse off than her; he just likes starving too much to let himself be caught abusing it. She thinks Kendall is somewhat of a hypocrite as well, as if they’re just supposed to pretend that keto and intermittent fasting aren’t just excuses in their own right, but boys aren’t supposed to struggle the way that Shiv does, so Kendall abides by that and Roman understands deep down that he’s crossed a line he shouldn’t have. Shiv has no concept of the lines and thresholds. All she knows is that Kendall is going to hover, and Connor will eventually arrive and give her those sad eyes, and Roman is going to take out all of his jealousy on her, all the while she’s just trying to exist.

She suddenly wishes Tom were here, because he always understood, and he never made her feel pressured. He’d sit with her at the dinner table and talk and talk, pretending not to notice that it was taking her extra long to finish her meal, or if he noticed things going south, he’d say he wasn’t feeling good and ask if they could bring their meals home for later.

But Tom isn’t here, because they’re on a break. Because Shiv apparently feeds off of depriving herself. Of sustenance, of happiness, of love. Running on empty is her baseline. Anything above it and she starts to feel queasy.

Shiv lucks out today though, because as soon as Kendall arrives, he’s pulled into the crisis management session. The ATN story broke, so they’re all busy dealing with the fallout, and she’s free to sulk and avoid the kitchen for as long as she wants. By the time dinner rolls around they’re left to their own devices because the storm picks back up, as if it’s a tropical storm delivered to specifically answer her prayers. The chef is still in the house, always on call when Dad is around, but Shiv can’t bring herself to do it when nobody is forcing her. Not here, at least, but later that night, she starts to feel a little guilty. Maybe it’s to do with Kendall being in the house, or maybe she just needs to give herself some sort of excuse so that she can eat, but late into the night she sneaks off to the kitchen. Only to find Karolina there. Again. It’s the same process, Shiv asks about her work, she pretends that she was just getting water, and then she retreats.

And then the same fucking thing happens the next night, and then the fucking next.

Shiv hasn’t seen much of Kendall yet, and Connor still hasn’t been able to arrive, so there hasn’t really been anyone monitoring her intake of food, which means she’s conveniently had a very easy time forgetting to eat. So, by that third night, Shiv is fucking hungry, and hanger grows really fast when you combine it with sleep deprivation, your childhood summer home, and a fucking hurricane.

“You do know there are like, twenty other rooms in this house, right?” she says, knowing her tone is probably a little harsher than it should be. It sounds like something she’d say to Roman when he tries to sleep in her bed after getting too drunk, rather than to one of the stars of her dad’s executive team. Karolina does look surprised when she first hears Shiv’s words, and she does look like she has a rebuttal ready, and let’s face it, Karolina definitely does, but whatever she’s going to say, she seems to hold it back.

“I’ll go work upstairs,” she says, not putting up any kind of fight or asking any questions. She starts stacking her things and Shiv immediately feels like an asshole.

“No—wait,” Shiv says, because that wasn’t what she’d intended, maybe a little bit, but not really. “I just—that came out wrong. I’m not trying to kick you out of your workstation.”

Karolina slows down her movement, but she doesn’t stop entirely, still electing to close her notebooks. She looks down at them, and even in the dark Shiv can tell that something is troubling her. She wonders if Karolina’s somehow put the pieces together, or if Roman’s already spilled the beans that Shiv is just another statistic on the stereotypical fucked up rich kid spectrum, and she feels more ashamed than she usually does, like maybe Karolina will lose respect for her if she knows that Shiv cares about many calories there are in a medium-sized apple. She wants Karolina to just spit it out, but when she does, it’s not what Shiv was expecting.

“Do you need privacy, Shiv?”

Not demanding an explanation or asking Shiv what she wants. Just asking what she needs. She wants a lot of things, a lot of undeliverable, impossible things, but what she needs is very simple. She needs to fucking eat, and she needs to not have to do it in front of anybody else. She feels nervous, like Karolina is seeing right through her, and she almost wishes she could just say no, survive on water for the night once more because then it would save her from having to be vulnerable in front of someone else, but Karolina’s offering, and if Shiv can get up in the morning and not have to lie to Kendall when he asks her if she ate last night, she’d feel a whole lot less shitty than she has these last couple of days.

“Yeah,” Shiv says, avoiding Karolina’s eyes. “Please.”

“Okay,” Karolin says, her voice softer than usual. “See you in the morning.”

Shiv continues to look anywhere but at Karolina as she grabs her pile of work and leaves, and she waits until the footsteps completely disappear and the droning silence of the house is all she can hear. She scours the pantry until she finds something small enough that it won’t feel like it’ll kill her and large enough that her stomach will stop feeling like it’s going to fold in on itself. She lands on a granola bar, the kind that’s dense and would’ve been life-destroying to eat when she was younger, but she just opens it and throws away the wrapper before she can think about its contents. It takes her twenty minutes to eat the damn thing. She feels incredibly stupid, sitting there trying to keep down a fucking granola bar, and she once again wishes that she had never come back to this fucking house, feeling awful at the severity of what she has to accept as a small relapse. Small, because she’s going to go home at the end of this trip and she’s going to be fine. She’ll return to her routine and she won’t be plagued by the fucking horror of these nautically decorated walls.

She manages the bar though, and though she doesn’t feel good about eating it, she feels good about eating. She’s still anxious when she gets back in bed, having a sinking feeling that Kendall’s going to want to have breakfast with her. She thinks it would almost be like a premonition if she didn’t have such a deep understanding of how these things go.

Kendall does wake her up. The storm let up and there’s a chance the weather might stay nice for a while, and the local breakfast spot in town is open for the day. Dad wants to take the whole gang, a sort of thank you for working hard, as if he’s really even capable of saying that.

This breakfast spot also happens to be Shiv’s worst nightmare. It was the third summer after everything started. Mom was mad at them, so they stayed in the States, and Kendall had a break from his college expeditions and decided to stay with her and Roman. Shiv remembers that she’d gotten considerably smaller by then, because she’d actually been upset that their mom wouldn’t have a chance to see it. It was much less exciting that Kendall would see it, and not having been around her for the better part of a year, he certainly noticed.

She’d had to beg him not to tell Dad, nearly to the point of a screaming match. She still doesn’t know why he didn’t. Maybe he felt guilty about things he realized he was feeding into, or maybe he just simply felt sorry for her, but still, he never told. He gave her one condition that summer, that she had to eat breakfast with him every single morning at that restaurant, so that he knew she’d eaten something. She was desperate, so she did.

The secret didn’t last for long after that, though, because early into the school year she passed out in the middle of AP Government and that was that. She was sent back here, this summer palace to be monitored for the rest of the school year. Supervised by tutors to make sure she didn’t fall behind in school and a dietician tracking her every meal. Friends far off in the city, not knowing exactly why she was missing but knowing all the same, like she was some maiden, sent away to the shore to solve her ennui. She thinks that’s what Kendall probably feels more guilty about, that he could’ve done more before it all imploded, as if they weren’t all completely fucked from birth anyway.

So they go to the restaurant, and of course Shiv ends up right between Kendall and Karolina, and she tries to satisfy Kendall by ordering a basic kind of egg white omelet that’s light on the cheese and adds in a fruit cup as well when it feels like Kendall’s staring daggers into her head.

“You want to come down to the beach with us later?” Kendall asks once the waiter’s left their side of the table. “It might be our only chance with the weather.”

She feels bad, because he seems so hopeful but that’s really not something she’s sure she can do, let alone whether it’s something she wants to do.

“What, to stare at the seaweed and jellyfish left behind by a tropical storm named Earl?” she asks, hoping the joke will detract from her ever having to answer. It works, because of course Roman bites.

“Sorry we didn’t invite you to a tropical storm in Santorini,” he says. “Hopefully next year will be better fit to your impossible standards, Siobhan.”

Shiv smiles sweetly at him, like she so often does before she’s about to tear him a new one.

“That’s kind, Rome,” she says, “but you know my impossible standards include you not being in attendance.”

“Are you getting this?” Roman asks, turning to Karolina. “Make sure your eventual Roy family tell-all mentions Shiv’s unfiltered hatred for her own flesh and blood.”

Shiv glances at Karolina, noting her visual reluctance to insert herself in what’s obviously an issue between Shiv and Roman, but she jumps in flawlessly.

“And what do you suggest my tell-all says about you, Roman?” she challenges.

“Let me think,” Roman says, “that I’m an adoring brother and son, my astonishing business reputation precedes me—”

“That your dick’s the size of a baby carrot?” Shiv suggests.

Kendall stifles a laugh, and Shiv’s actually too embarrassed to look at Karolina’s reaction, because Roman’s is not good, and fine, maybe it was a little too far.

“My dick is not the size of a b—” Roman cuts himself off as the waiter comes by with their food, sulking in his chair. “Fuck you, enjoy your shitty eggs. Oh wait—you won’t.”

“Roman—”

“It’s fine, Ken,” Shiv says. She clears her throat as she cuts into her shitty eggs. “Roman’s just being funny, right?”

They both know he’s not; she thinks they all probably know he’s not, but for the sake of the group he also relents.

“Oh, I’m being hilarious.”

She takes a bite of the omelet, and she can already tell it’s going to be the longest fucking meal of her life if she doesn’t just finish it. Between Kendall watching her to make sure she eats all of it and Roman eying her in hope that she eats none of it, she has no choice but to just fucking work off of spite alone. That’s the one good thing that’s changed now, is that the comments that used to make her feel bad about eating now make her feel bad about not eating. That’s the difference that usually divides her and Roman these days. He revels in the sickness and the reveling makes her sick.

She somehow finishes an acceptable portion of the meal, and beyond that she thinks Kendall knows better than to hound her about finishing all of it while in such a public setting. She already knows if they have dinner tonight it’s going to be a completely different story, because he’s going to watch her incessantly to make sure she downs every last bite. He luckily doesn’t bring up the beach again, and she’s successfully able to ignore him until they’re back at the house and she’s catching up with Karolina.

“Hey, Karolina?” Shiv says, stopping her. “I just wanted to say sorry for dragging you into that, between me and Roman, I—you don’t have to entertain us like that, when we’re being assholes.”

Karolina’s expression is painfully unhelpful in displaying her emotions, per usual, but her response does ease Shiv’s guilty mind, just a little bit.

“It’s fine, Shiv,” she says. “I’ll make sure to mention in the tell-all that the source of Roman’s dick size is anonymous.”

Shiv lets out a surprised huff of laughter, but before she can act too impressed at Karolina’s indulgence in their game, Kendall’s caught up to her again, and she has a sneaking feeling that he’s going to ask her—

“Shivvy,” he drawls, his tone teasing, yet brotherly. She realizes it’s rare, that he and Shiv are on such good terms, and it makes her feel even worse knowing she’s just going to turn him down. “Coming to the beach?”

Shiv isn’t sure if it’s the way her lips purse, or maybe the fact that she hesitates a second too long, or maybe it’s the look of sheer panic in her eyes, but Karolina speaks up.

“Shiv was actually about to help me with something,” Karolina says, sending a questioning look to Shiv before adding on, “Unless you changed your mind?”

“Uh, no—no, I’ll hang back to help,” Shiv says, then turning back to Kendall. “Maybe I’ll catch you a little later if you’re still down there?”

Kendall looks slightly suspicious, but the possibility of a PR crisis seems to outweigh that suspicion.

“Is it anything I should be concerned about, Karolina?” Kendall asks. “Do you need me to get Dad?”

“No, no,” Karolina waves him off. “It’s just standard stuff. The storm caused me to get a little behind on work and Shiv offered to help out.”

Shiv gives him one last sorry smile fit for a rain check, and accepts the response, nodding his head. He turns to leave before stopping in his tracks.

“Oh, Shiv—Dad wants to have dinner tonight, just the kids,” he says, eyes glancing at Karolina. He looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t. “Connor should be getting in this afternoon and it’s the last night all together, so…yeah.”

“Got it,” she says. “Thanks, Ken.”

He stalks off again, leaving her with that terrible bit of information. She knows he told her so that she can mentally prepare, that if she needs to starve herself through lunch just so dad can enjoy a civil dinner with his kids then Kendall will allow it, just for today. She briefly wonders if he’s going to extend the same grace to Roman, or if he’s just going to get an unspoken, suck it up. It seems unlikely that it’ll go well anyway, what, with all four children under the same, evil roof.

“Uh, thank you,” she says, turning to Karolina. “The beach was the last thing I needed today.”

She is grateful, and she tries to sound so even though she feels like maybe Karolina is picking up on things that Shiv wishes she wouldn’t. It’s not that she dislikes having people in her corner, but she thinks after all these years she hasn’t quite shaken the shame of needing them at all.

“I’m always happy to extend my services,” Karolina says with a light smile, and Shiv can tell she’s trying to keep things easy. “Though, if you didn’t want it to be a lie, I could actually use some help again. Only if you’re not busy.”

Once again, Karolina feels like a godsend.

“Lead the way.”

—

Shiv reads through legal documents for what seems like hours. It’s not the most mind-numbing task she’s ever had to do, but it certainly isn’t the most salacious. It’s all old court records and contracts, mixed with random yearly reports, like expenses and budgets. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason, but Karolina told her to pull out anything that doesn’t seem completely closed or dealt with.

“What exactly is this for?” Shiv asks, eying a court settlement from a guest slipping on one of the cruises.

“PR is doing a clean house,” Karolina says. “We don’t want any more loose ends or surprises. This ATN incident should’ve been on my radar.”

“Certainly you can’t be held responsible for a grown man embezzling to play underground poker,” Shiv says.

Karolina gives her a certain tight-lipped smile, the kind that makes Shiv think that her dad has already made it quite clear whose fault he thinks the situation is, and Shiv is reminded that things that should be certain in the world of Waystar are usually just pipedreams.

“Well, the only thing I’m getting from these expense reports is that Karl really likes Starbucks,” Shiv says.

That does get Karolina to crack a genuine smile.

“He finds one wherever we go,” she says. “Gets cranky if he can’t have his vanilla chai.”

They work in comfortable silence for a little while longer until Karolina shuts her laptop.

“I’m going to pause for lunch,” she says, standing. “Do you want anything?”

Which, Shiv wishes she hadn’t reminded her about it, since she was just getting over the looming hunger in her stomach, not wanting to spoil her ability to have dinner as well.

“Uh, no,” she says. “I’m just going to keep going through these.”

It’s a tired tone, the kind where it sounds like she’s being too polite to be telling the truth but too shy to be fully lying, and she thinks Karolina notices. Just like she’s been noticing a lot of things.

“Are you sure?” Karolina asks. “The weather is still holding up, we could go somewhere else?”

It makes Shiv pause, the way that Karolina suggests somewhere else, as if it’s apparent that eating any kind of food in this house feels like she’s shoveling fresh dirt into her mouth. She thinks back to the night prior, Karolina’s, “Do you need privacy, Shiv?” and Shiv wishes she could know what Karolina’s thinking, what she assumes is going on. Shiv is a little tired of fighting though, and the mental gymnastics are starting to create an incurable headache (that she knows could definitely be treated by just fucking eating) and she does think it might be easier to stomach a meal away from this property and away from her brothers.

“Sure,” she says. “I—I know a place.”

Karolina doesn’t let her surprise show too much, and Shiv knows she was probably expecting a no, but Shiv loves defying people, and anyway, she is fucking hungry. She has this looming feeling that having breakfast and lunch are going to create a myriad of problems for her at dinner, but a small part of her actually feels good for saying yes. For attempting to do what’s right for her body.

They go out to a place Shiv knows well. Somewhere she wouldn’t deem safe, considering the current circumstances, but somewhere she would deem acceptable and tolerable, which is about as close to safe as she can get right now. Shiv finds that she has a good time. Karolina is great conversation and beyond that, she doesn’t seem to give a fuck what’s sitting on Shiv’s plate, or how much of it is left at any given moment. She doesn’t pull any faces when Shiv clearly orders the lightest thing on the menu, and she doesn’t make any comments when Shiv doesn’t touch it for the first five minutes it’s arrived or waits another five minutes after her first bite. There’s no coddling or peeved-off eyes. It’s almost as good as just enjoying a meal alone. Almost.

There’s still the lingering knowledge of dinner tonight, and while it’s not the worst experience she thinks she’ll ever have involving meals with her family, this is still the first time in a while that she’s postured the ability to have three full meals in one day. She thinks again that she shouldn’t have to posture, and she should just be able to do it, and that she actually can do it, but it’s still hard. Whatever. Life is fucking hard.

“So,” Karolina says, near the end of the meal.

“So,” Shiv repeats, looking at her suspiciously.

“I told you a secret, right?” Karolina asks. She looks very much not serious, but the question still makes Shiv nervous.

“What, the ATN thing?”

Karolina nods.

“What do you want to know?” Shiv asks, suspiciously.

“How Roman's phone ended up in a toilet,” Karolina says, raising her eyebrows.

“Uh, if I understand it correctly, I’m pretty sure when you’re holding something, and then you let go of it—it falls,” Shiv says. “You know, gravity and all that.”

She’s smirking as she says it, and Karolina rolls her eyes, unable to stop herself from laughing at what Shiv would call her own stupidity.

“So, what, it was an accident?” Karolina asks.

“Look, he took my phone and started going through my texts and then he threatened to send one to my ex,” Shiv says. “So, I stole his and held it over the toilet until he gave me mine back.”

“And he sent the text to your ex?”

“No,” Shiv says, like it’s obvious. “He gave me my phone back and then I dropped his in the toilet.”

And that’s not the entire story, but it’s the story she’ll tell. The real story involves quite a few choice words she doesn’t think she and Roman will ever repeat to each other, but she still maintains that Roman deserved it. Shiv decides she doesn’t want to hear Karolina’s judgment on the story though, because yeah, Shiv was being immature and maybe she brought this all on herself. But Roman’s a fucking jerk, so.

“Do you have siblings?” Shiv asks, as if say, on a scale of 1-10, how weird do you think I am for this?

“A younger sister,” Karolina says. “Never dropped her phone in a toilet, but we definitely got into some trouble.”

“I can’t imagine you getting into trouble,” Shiv says, giving Karolina a once-over. For as long as she’s known her, Karolina has been the spitting image of poised and professional, though, the anonymous dick-size source definitely has made Shiv rethink that position. Karolina just laughs.

“How do you think I got so good at lying?”

—

It starts raining again by the time they get back. It’s annoying, the threat of another storm rolling in and stranding her once again, and she’s almost convinced she should book it right there and then, but Karolina tells her good luck with the dinner and she doesn’t say any more than that, doesn’t make any hints that she even knows what Shiv would be needing good luck for but it feels good all the same, and she finally feels like she has an actual ally in this house for the first time in her life.

Somehow, she finishes the meal. Thank god Connor likes to talk, because it gives her the time to just thoughtlessly chew and by the time she feels full enough to stop, there’s only a small amount left, the bits she normally wouldn’t like anyway.

And when they think nobody’s listening, Kendall leans closer to her.

“Karolina said you two went out for lunch, too?” he asks, his tone impressed. Shiv bites back a smile, not wanting to appear more pleased than she feels like she should.

“Mhm,” she hums, making eye contact with him, an eyebrow raising. He matches her expression and then nods to himself, speaking lowly.

“That’s great, Shiv, really.”

She lets the words sink in for a second, because really, she doesn’t congratulate herself nearly enough for successful days like this, even if they don’t start out purposeful.

“Whoop-dee-doo, Shiv ate a carb,” Roman interrupts, rolling his eyes. “Let’s get out the champagne.”

“Dude,” Kendall says, eyes shifting quickly to Roman. He’s trying to be subtle, knowing he can’t really say shut the fuck up in front of Dad without it risking ruining dinner, but Roman’s not having it.

“What?” Roman says. “I said, let’s get out the champaign. Not sure how that’s offensive.”

But Shiv’s had enough with the passive aggressive bullshit.

“If you have something to say, Roman, I think you should just say it,” Shiv says.

“I just think that you should learn how to respect other people’s personal belongings,” Roman says.

“Okay, well you’ve made your point very clear by dragging me back to this fucking shitpit,” she says. “So can we be done?”

She thinks she hears her dad call out her name somewhere in the background, but she and Roman are in too deep now.

“That’s funny, I…don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, feigning confusion.

“Oh, right,” Shiv says. “You just randomly chose the summer home out of five that happened to be where I spent the worst year of my life. What a coincidence.”

“That was this house?” Kendall asks, looking desperately between the two, and Shiv finds it comical that they have so many fucking houses that he could mix up which one she was fucking interventioned inside of. “I thought it was—Roman, what the hell, dude?”

“Jesus Christ,” she semi-laughs. It would almost be ridiculous if it weren’t her family.

She thinks maybe Roman actually looks a little ashamed, like he knows his own payback has gone too far, but she also knows that this week has hurt Roman too, and a hurt Roman hurts everyone. And maybe it does suck for him that he obviously can’t hold his food down either, but it’s not her fault that he’s better at keeping the secret. If he wants the attention, he can fucking go get it.

“What’s all this?” Dad asks, and Shiv has to wonder if he can even remember all this or if he just thinks of it as a small blip. An inconsequential moment in her life that they’d already fixed.

“Nothing, Dad,” Roman says. “Shiv’s just having fun reminiscing on being a girl interrupted.”

This catches his attention, because apparently her dad has an expanded memory of 90s psychological dramas.

“Are you still having problems, Siobhan?”

And that’s enough, because it’s the way he says problems and uses her full name, which is entirely too serious for the fact that, yes, okay, maybe she does still have problems, but she was doing fine until she stepped foot in this goddamn house, and they all brought it up again.

“You know what—can we not talk about this?” Shiv asks, wondering why it always has to be the main topic of conversation. “It was like, twelve years ago—can we fucking move on?”

“Oh, please, as if you haven’t been putting on a show all week,” Roman says. “You fucking love it.”

Which is what makes her snap, because she can think of a million things she’d probably love a lot more than fucking this.

“I love it?” Shiv asks, setting her knife and fork down. She can see Kendall and Connor glance at each other out of the corner of her eye. “What part of this do you think I love, Roman? Being hounded every time I eat and being hounded every time I don’t? Or being back at the house I was locked up in for seven months? Which part do you think was my favorite, Roman, getting to skip school or the fucking feeding tube?”

She stares at Roman, waiting for him to say anything.

“So much for being twelve years ago,” he mutters, throwing his napkin on the table.

“Fuck you.”

She ignores a chorus of her name being shouted as she rushes out of the dining room, stalking through the halls that are feeling increasingly smaller the longer she’s wading through them. She bumps into Karolina on the way, who she vaguely thinks tries to stop her but all she can mumble is a “Not now,” and continues off to her room. She thinks she can hear Kendall’s voice off behind her, but she enters her room, slamming the ancient door that’s barely attached to its hinges and she locks it. She goes straight to her suitcase and pretends like she doesn’t care that Kendall’s pounding on the door, begging her to just let him inside.

“Shiv?” Kendall’s voice calls out. “Please, honey, can I come in?”

She ignores him, throwing her belongings aimlessly into her bags, ready to get the fuck out of here and just go back to DC, away from all of these people. Kendall calls out her name, which she ignores, again, and then there’s more mumbling behind the door in varying degrees of volume until there are a few beats of silence and a new voice appears.

“Shiv? It’s Karolina.”

Shiv falters for a millisecond, but then continues with her things. A crack of thunder shakes the house and she checks her phone, slamming it back down on the bed when there’s a glaring emergency services notification on the lock screen. Karolina’s voice rings out again.

“Kendall—he went downstairs, so…it’s just me if you want to talk,” she says. “Or give a sign that you’re still alive.”

It’s that last comment that makes her wonder if Roman is right. If in some twisted way she does love this, the attention, and the care, and the concern. She always denied that suggestion from the therapists, that it was never really about the food at all and that it was a simple cry for help from a girl who just needed to be hugged by her parents. She denied it because it never felt true. The attention she got from this never felt good, it felt intrusive, and overbearing, and a felt a whole lot like failure. Every part of it has always felt like pure failure. If she ate too much she failed, if she ate too little, she failed. If mom thought she was fat then yeah, she failed, but if mom was mad that Shiv was thinner than her, guess what? She fucking failed.

Before she can even really think about it, she’s opening the door. A surprised Karolina is standing there, looking serious as ever, and she realizes it’s not even a feeling of failure. It’s just guilt.

“Oh,” Karolina says, a little breathless. “Hey.”

“Do you have any more work that you, uh—that you might need help with?” Shiv asks, because if she’s not getting out of this house any time soon then she needs a fucking distraction. She’s not going to sulk in that room with that fucking bathroom and she’s not going to go back downstairs to hash it out with her brothers, but she can’t leave, so the next best thing is busy work, just like when she was seventeen and the only thing that felt remotely calming was aiming for a five on the AP Gov exam. To just, prove that she can do something other than cause problems.

Karolina nods, giving Shiv a quick once-over, and she watches Karolina’s eyes trail briefly beyond Shiv and into her bedroom, looking to see what, Shiv isn’t exactly sure.

“Yeah, um, why don’t we go to my room?” Karolina asks. “Shop’s already set up in there.”

Karolina glances down at her phone and types something quickly.

“You can tell Kendall that I’m alive, and I’m not going to off myself or fucking rip out my own intestines, or whatever else he told you,” Shiv says. “You can also tell him to get fucked sideways.”

“I think that one’s above my pay grade,” Karolina says quietly. “But I’ll let him know you’re alright.”

Shiv nods, and she follows Karolina to her room. She wasn’t lying when she said she’d set up shop, the entire seating area being delegated to Karolina’s work files.

“Leave enough room for your clothes?” Shiv asks, gesturing towards the setup. Karolina lets out a weak laugh, which Shiv can only assume means that no, Karolina did not.

“In fairness, we had very little time before coming here,” Karolina says, sitting down in front of a stack of papers. “I signed out all of the expense reports I could find, hoping the ones we needed would be there.”

“Plus some,” Shiv says, sitting down in the open seat. They work silently for a little bit, and Shiv uses the time to calm down. She’s less upset than she would’ve been in the past, but pissed off all the same, and the work helps. Gives her something to focus on other than spiral about everything that’s ever gone wrong to lead to this point. The elephant in the room does begin to bother her eventually, and she doesn’t buy that Karolina isn’t at least a little curious as to what went down.

“You don’t want to know what happened?” She asks, Karolina looking up in surprise at the sudden sound of her voice. Because Shiv knows Karolina is nosy; she’d want to know why Roman was even mad at Shiv in the first place, and beyond that, she fucking works in PR. She thinks this woman has to love drama, but she also thinks Karolina can tell that this is sensitive, and maybe that bothers Shiv. The eggshells of it all.

“What I want to know and what’s my business are two different things, Shiv,” Karolina says. “If you want to talk, that’s fine. If you just want to work, that’s also fine.”

Which cements it; Shiv is a fucking charity case, so maybe she’ll just take the charity. She’s tired of holding it in.

“Just—” Shiv tries to find her words. “You know when people find something out about you and then it becomes what they define you by? Like you don’t have anything else going on in your life except that one thing?”

“Yeah,” Karolina says. “I do.”

“Well, that’s what my brothers are like, and they all find ways to bring everything back to this one thing and it fucking—it makes it so hard to move on from it.”

Karolina takes a beat. Shiv can tell she’s thinking, especially since Shiv is just dancing around words at this point.

“Do you think they’re right to be…concerned?”

It’s a good question. One that Shiv herself doesn’t even know the answer to. She doesn’t want them to have to be concerned, and she thinks she fares pretty well on her own most of the time. But if something like that happened when she was off by herself in DC? She doesn’t know how far she’d go without them intervening. She sighs, running a hand through her hair. The only way out of this conversation is through, and anyway, she started it.

“I have a—fucking, eating disorder,” Shiv says, heart pounding, because it’s been a long time since she’s acknowledged those words, let alone in front of someone she barely fucking knows, but Karolina doesn’t even flinch, doesn’t give her sad eyes or a sympathetic oh.

“Okay,” she says, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. It encourages Shiv to continue.

“And none of them will ever separate me from it,” Shiv says. “It’s like they’re fucking more obsessed with it than I am. I just don’t want to care anymore. It’s exhausting.”

“It is,” Karolina says after a moment. “It fucking is.”

Shiv studies her, so as not to imagine the slight anger she feels like she can hear in Karolina’s voice. The steadfast poker face gone; Karolina looks upset. Shiv hasn’t said much of anything yet, so unless Karolina’s somehow tapped into an empathic energy in the last thirty seconds, Shiv realizes this is personal.

“Do you…” her words trail off. She’s unsure of how to frame the question, but she’s sure she gets the point across because Karolina just sighs quietly and shifts in her seat.

“Caught me,” Karolina says in a soft voice. She doesn’t sound embarrassed like Shiv had, more resigned, than anything.

“Um, is this okay?” Shiv asks, gesturing between the two of them. “To talk about it?”

“I wouldn’t have said anything if it wasn’t,” Karolina says. “Promise.”

Shiv knows that promises don’t mean much between people like them, but she’s never known Karolina to not hold her end of a bargain, so she bites.

“How—when did yours start?” Shiv asks. It’s a personal question, one she feels like maybe she shouldn’t even ask, but she’s just so desperate to not feel alone right now, and she thinks Karolina can tell, even if Shiv won’t come right out and say it.

“Well, growing up I think there were signs, maybe, but it didn’t really start until college,” Karolina says, looking down. “I got into a relationship with someone who was pretty, um—opinionated, and it just sort of spiraled from there.”

“That’s rough,” Shiv says. She knows what it’s like to field opinions, and knows how much worse they can make all of this.

“It was,” Karolina agrees.

“What type?” Shiv asks, quickly adding, “if you don’t mind, you—you don’t have to answer that.”

“No, it’s okay, Shiv, really,” Karolina assures her. “It was anorexia. I tried a lot of different diets at the time and nothing was really working how I wanted except eating less and eventually I just, stopped.”

Shiv nods, looking away.

“Me too,” she says. “It got bad when I was in high school.”

“Young,” Karolina observes. Shiv ignores the sentiment, not ready to move on to herself yet. Which might be selfish, but Karolina seems to be open to the conversation currently, so she keeps going.

“When did you realize that it was an issue?” she asks.

“I didn’t,” Karolina says. “I mean, I knew it was wrong, like every time I skipped a meal or restricted I could feel that shame, but I convinced myself I was just being calculated. And that—that relationship I was in, it fed it. Get enough positive attention for starving yourself and it becomes the only thing you want to do.”

“Yeah,” Shiv says, with a hollow laugh. She turns to look at Karolina again. “So what happened?”

“Before winter break, I’d been mentioning in calls to home that I was working out, so my mother and my sister wouldn’t be suspicious,” Karolina says. “My sister liked to snoop though, and she overheard a phone call between me and that partner and she heard some things that were said…She confronted me about it, and we got into a huge fight because I couldn’t face it at the time. I would’ve had to admit that so many other things were wrong as well.”

Sounds familiar.

“That happened between me and Kendall,” Shiv says. “I had to beg him not to tell.”

“Did he?” Karolina asks.

“No,” Shiv says.

Karolina sighs and looks down at her hands.

“You know, it’s scary for them,” she says. “To watch that happen to someone and be powerless in stopping it.”

Shiv realizes she’d never really thought about that, how Kendall could’ve been scared. She knew he was worried, but she’s always been too wrapped up in her own shit to think about the fear that would be attached to that. How he’s probably still scared when things like this week occur, but she’s not that same little girl anymore. She doesn’t have a fucking death wish.

“I just wish they would trust me,” Shiv says. “They just act like they’re waiting for the day that I’ll be fixed, like it’s one less thing that they’ll have to worry about and that’s—it’s not going to happen.”

“Have you explained that to them?”

Shiv feels like a dumbass when she says a muffled not really.

“My little sister didn’t trust me for the longest time,” Karolina says. “And it was so embarrassing because she’s my little sister and I was supposed to be this, role model, for her and I felt like I’d failed her. Maybe in some reverse way, your brothers feel the same. Like they failed you and they need to make up for lost time.”

She knows that much is true for Kendall, and maybe it would actually do her some good to just open up to him for once in her life, if only to save both of them some trouble. Roman though, he’s a different story, and it’s as if Karolina knows exactly where Shiv’s mind is going when she asks her next question.

“You um, you mentioned that Roman chose here for vacation as payback, for the phone thing,” Karolina says. “Does that have something to do with…this?”

“Uh, yeah,” Shiv admits. “When I had my—when I was at my worst, they sent me here. I guess—I don’t know they thought it would be better than staying at some program somewhere, but I always thought they just wanted to keep it hush. It was awful, just dealing with it alone like that.”

“Well,” Karolina says. “Roman certainly knows how to cut deep.”

He does.

“It’s fine,” Shiv says. “That’s like, our thing, I guess. I drop his phone in the toilet and he commits psychological warfare for self-harm by proxy. Normal sibling stuff.”

“Normal,” Karolina quips.

“He’s the only one that even remembered it was this house, so, he does care in some fucked up, Roman way,” Shiv says.

“Still,” Karolina says, “To return to the source of the trauma, just—it takes a lot of guts, Shiv. Don’t be too hard on yourself right now.”

Shiv feels a relieved breath escape her as Karolina says the words, nearly giving her permission to just struggle. She’s not entirely sure she’s ever had that permission before, to just let things be hard if they’re hard. She forgets that it’s a part of the process sometimes, that sure, it sucks and it’s dangerous, but if she pushes herself too hard then she’s not giving herself a chance at fairness at all. That she can’t just bend at will and sustain it forever.

“Thank you,” she says. “I think I needed to hear that."

“We all do sometimes,” Karolina says.

Shiv looks at her, and she knows it’s wrong to assume, really, she does, but she never would’ve guessed about Karolina. Never.

“Are you—I mean are you in a good place?” she asks.

“I have more good days than bad at this point,” Karolina says. “It’s still hard, but it’s easier. Though, I don’t think anyone else seeing me eat dinner at one in the morning huddled over work would assume that was particularly healthy.”

“That’s what you were doing?” Shiv asks. She feels a little like she should’ve noticed, but then again, she’s basically been dealing with a never-ending panic spiral since she arrived, so she’s not sure that was ever even really an option.

“I like to use work as a distraction,” Karolina says, “And when I was deep in the disorder, probably at my worst, I would just bury myself in work so that I could just forget to eat. It took a long time to be able to do it consistently, but one of the things I do is three meals a day. Doesn’t matter when or what, but it has to be three. It works for me, to have that structure.”

“Do you ever…” Shiv’s words trail off, she doesn’t want to pry, but she’s curious.

“Fall off the rails?” Karolina asks, to which Shiv nods. “Not in huge ways anymore, but sometimes, sure. Like last night when you came down to the kitchen, and I left—I hadn’t eaten yet and I could tell that you just wanted to be alone, but it was also kind of the perfect out. To give in, just that once.”

Shiv suddenly feels guilty, because she basically kicked Karolina out of the kitchen, and even though that wasn’t her intention, it still sucks to hear that Karolina was able to use her to a sick advantage.

“I’m so sor—”

“No, no, Shiv, it wasn’t your fault,” Karolina says. “I used you as an excuse. I could’ve asked you to wait and I didn’t. You know, the stress of work and being in a foreign place, it happens. All we can do is keep trying.”

Keep trying.

Shiv looks down.

Shiv keeps a steady breath, because she’s not going to cry, not over fucking this, and it feels like a weight she thought would always be dragging her down is finally lifted just from being understood. Understood by someone who isn’t patronizing her or telling or that, she can do it! Or keeping track of her wins and her losses. Just by someone who knows how hard it is for her to be showing up at all. Showing up for the wins and for the losses. Showing up for her brothers in spite of misunderstandings for misplaced concern. Just, fucking showing up.

“I’m trying really fucking hard,” she says.

“I know you are.”

—

She returns to DC the next day with more than she thought she would. She thought she’d leave the summer palace bitter and angry, and in some sense, she still is, because she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to completely let go of that resentment; but she won’t let it define her. She promises Kendall that the next time she’s in the city they’ll have dinner, and she’ll talk to him. Explain the things he can’t control and explain that she doesn’t want to be that fragile little girl that he remembers. That she does well, even if sometimes she also does bad. Roman doesn’t say sorry, but asks if they’re cool and she doesn’t say yes, but she punches him in the shoulder and says maybe, and they both know that’s enough. That they’re fine and they always will be because at the end of the day, Roman and Shiv have each other, regardless of how testy they get.

She returns to DC with a new friend. Someone she respects and who she thinks respects her. Someone who gets it, and is happy that she gets it as well.

She still thinks that August tastes like somewhat of a punch to the gut. That it’ll never not be ripe with the sweet thrill of keeping a secret that you have no idea is about to be ripped out of your possession, but she thinks it also tastes a little more like reconciliation now. Like maybe some secrets are meant to be spilled, and some truths are meant to be harsh, but that some truths are also soft, and they come with forgiveness and understanding and just the slightest bit of brevity. Things won’t ever be perfect, and they certainly won’t always be good, but she knows that they won’t always be drenched in bad. She’ll be kinder to herself. Let herself find peace in the struggle.

What’s a little bit of struggle compared to Shiv fucking Roy?

#shiv roy #karolina novotney #shivlina fic #shiv x karolina #succession fic #tw eating disorder #cw eating disorder #mine #need to make a fic tag #duskfalls

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