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pynkhues · 2 years

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Roman and Shiv doing a pinky swear!

Thank you!! This one got a little long, anons, but I hope you like it <3

So they go back to Kendall’s villa.

Somehow manage to slink out of their father’s estate and into one of the cars still hovering outside, let the thing crawl them around the Tuscan countryside and sit in silence as the moon hangs itself low above them – a sliver of a thing, something close to empty – and Shiv thinks - -

Too much.

Nothing.

Something in between.

Fuck.

She drags a hand back across her mouth, lets her lips dry against her thumb, watches Kendall slump and Roman shrink in the seats opposite her, and wasn’t one of them beside her before? She remembers the heat, the weight, the feeling of being on a bench with another, and no, that was on the way, Kendall beside her, Roman opposite, but now it’s her on the other side of them, and she hates it.

That her first thought is that they know.

(Then an image, a picture, a look – Tom’s gaze on her the other night when they’d fucked, after she’d told him that she didn’t love him, that he’d always want her, the way he’d froze, set to stone beneath her gorgon stare, her dress up around her waist and her panties gone as she sunk down on him, and then Tom’s grip on her thighs, almost too tight, almost not letting her move, almost punishing, and he was always almost – almost enough, almost gone, almost what she deserved, but nothing about this was almost anymore).

The lights outside the car window flick across her brothers’ faces – catch in the bags beneath Kendall’s eyes and the lines at Roman’s – and she feels it then too, their age, this weight, feels all the ways this night has turned them inside-out, left them exposed, and then, just as quickly, she thinks of them as kids.

Thinks of her and Roman at six, ten, thirteen, making up some mythic language to use only in front of Kendall, just to piss him off. Roman had tried to teach some of it to Connor that one Thanksgiving, but he’d just laughed, baffled, and Kendall had been flush-cheeked and ignored it until Shiv had said they’d teach him, just so he’d admit he wanted to learn, wanted to know what they were saying, that what they were saying mattered enough for that, but he never did and maybe that had stung.

She remembers semesters in Manhattan with Kendall after Roman was sent away and the language they hadn’t even meant to make too, one felt in a tennis swing or a knowing look or an inside joke that had left Roman really fucking mean, and she remembers the boys club too, with Kendall and Roman in perfectly-tailored suits that never seemed to fit them, a roughness to the way they spoke that she was never allowed, how easily Roman had seemed able to read Kendall, how he knew how to swerve from the finish line with him in a way he never could with her.

Mostly though she thinks they’re an odd number, the three of them, and there’s always someone on the bench seat alone.

The slightly metallic smell of recycled air conditioning and the smell of Roman’s cologne mingled with sweat and tears finds her nose, and she looks at him, his gaze out the window, jaw clenched, eyes still watery, and something in her winds like a children’s toy.

She kicks him in the shin, watches his head jerk around, lip curl in a sneer, and she just nods, says:

“You okay?”

Roman stares back at her, eyebrows raised, big, coin-shaped eyes staring back at her, and then he just says:

“Fuck off.”

So they go back to Kendall’s villa.

“Oh is this something we’re doing here? Now?” Roman asks. “Don’t you have kids?”

“They’re asleep probably,” Kendall replies, easy, as he crouches at the liquor cabinet, pawing through the bottles until he finds whatever it is he’s looking for. Shiv wishes she cared, kicking off her heels and half unzipping the back of her dress. It hangs off her shoulders then – a mouth open to the night (like Tom’s too often over hers, under hers, like it was looking up at her as she straddled his hips). She sniffs, dropping bodily back onto the couch, trying to ignore the fact that somewhere in this place Sophie and Iverson are pretending to sleep.

Any thoughts of all the times they stayed up eavesdropping on family vacations are apparently wilfully ignored by Roman too as he watches Kendall drag a bottle of gin from the back the liquor cabinet, orienting three glasses on the coffee table as he pours a healthy jigger.

“Sure,” Roman allows. “On the scale of vacation trauma, yesterday’s probably hard to top for them anyway.”

Briefly, Kendall’s hand stills on the cork of the gin bottle, gaze down, fixed on the glasses, and she knows if she could see him properly, he’d be blinking hard, his lower lip hanging open, any response held to the back of his teeth. She gets up just to take two of the glasses Kendall’s poured, passing one to Roman so she can glare at him, and Roman rolls his eyes, mouths a sarcastic sorry that doesn’t pass his tongue, as Shiv resettles on the couch.

Roman downs the gin in one long gulp, then holds out his glass for a refill that Kendall obliges, before he moves to the other couch. He plants his ass on the arm of it just long enough to roll backwards, leaving his back against the cushions and his legs hanging at an angle over the edge, avoiding Kendall’s gaze. Not that it seems to really matter. Kendall’s sitting on the coffee table himself now, and he downs his glass with a quicker, more practiced swallow than Roman ever could.

“So, what to? Where to?” Roman asks, craning his neck up to slurp from his new glass as Kendall tops up his own.

“There are things we can do,” Kendall tries. “We can make an appeal to the Board, block the sale, there’s a plan here.”

Roman shares a look with Shiv, before turning his gaze back on Kendall.

“Yeah, see the thing with your plans is that they are terrible and don’t work.”

Shiv snorts, sinking back into the cushions, hand firm around her own glass. There’s a white noise in her head that she can’t quite snuff out, leaving every edge dulled. She hadn’t had much to drink at the reception, had sobered up fast anyway, but vaguely, she thinks she feels a little drunk.

“Uh huh, well, I don’t know if it’s the plans, but maybe the, uh, people involved in the plans.”

“Yeah, totally, that person being you.”

“Guys,” Shiv says. “Can we not? I just - - ”

“What? Don’t have the stomach for it?” Roman asks, turning his gaze on her. “No wonder Dad killed you.”

“Yeah, because I’m the only casualty here,” Shiv replies, and Roman pulls a face, feeding his glass back to his mouth and then glancing back at where Kendall’s already looking a little less steady, a little unmoored.

He’d seemed better in the car, firmer than he had in a while after his dustbowl confessional, and Shiv thinks of what he said, and then she thinks of her wedding, and it’s just a fucking straight line back to Tom. She has a drink, feeling liquid with her zip loosened, without the firmness of the dress’ silhouette holding her together, a mess left to ooze in their mother’s vineyard while Kendall and Roman bicker about what, fuck, Shiv doesn’t care.

There was something in it, to it. The cloying way he’d said her name in that room as he’d found his way to her open side, like he knew exactly where she was softest, tenderest, exactly where to press – a grip like a vice made to look like a comfort. She wonders if she has marks still on her thighs from where he’d held her as he’d fucked her the other night.

Wonders if she could dig them out of her skin, remake the shape of her until he’d never touched her at all.

She wets her lips, sniffs, vaguely tunes in to hear Kendall’s low voice stumbling over his new lawyer’s name, and she feels restless suddenly, the image of Tom in her head, his forehead creased, his gaze distant, not a cloak and dagger – she’d never give him that much credit – but like a fucking throw pillow. Something to put under your head or over your mouth, your nose. Death by cotton, and yeah, okay, something in her seems to sober then.

She gets up, toeing back into her shoes and re-zipping her dress, ignoring Kendall when he makes a vague attempt to help hold her glass and shoving it between her knees instead. Roman clocks it, twisting on the seat to sit up, gaze darting over her as she pulls herself together.

“What are you - - where are you going?”

“Where do you think?”

Roman makes a strangled noise then, says:

“No, come on, Tom? You can’t want to be around your - - your murse right now.”

“We need a plan, and I need him to not know that we know,” Shiv tells them, because suddenly this feels important, this need to freeze him in time, in space, so she can catch-up, so she can overtake, so she can dig him up, dig him out, and Kendall seems to hold his breath as Roman arches an eyebrow.

“And what, pray tell, do we know, Siobhan?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Shiv sees Kendall look down, his gaze fixed on a spot on the floor before he lifts his head up again, not to Shiv but to Roman, and she can’t see him like this, but somehow she knows it. That the look on his face is the same as the one on hers, and oh, it’s been a long time since she spoke the same language as Kendall.

Maybe even longer since Roman’s spoken it too. His brow raises, eyes widen, but she knows he’s not surprised, that the thought’s already crossed his mind – that Tom was the one to tell – but that he maybe wasn’t quite as sure yet, hadn’t grasped that particular reality quite as quickly. His gaze flits between them sharply, and Kendall moves like maybe he means to reach for her but then thinks better of it, and it’s heavy for a moment – the air in this too-big room.

“So what?” Roman says, breaking the silence. “You go over there and play dumb wife while I what? Take care of suicide watch over here?”

Beside her, Kendall flinches, but Shiv ignores him, allowing for the way Roman pulls a face like he regrets saying it, and Shiv just doesn’t have time for this right now. She’s not sure how long this energy, this firmness, this plan will last, just knows that she needs to act now. Needs to play dumb wife to buy herself – them – time, position herself bruised, sisterly, soft, so that Tom thinks he’s safe.

“I’ll come back later tonight,” she says, because she will. Because she’ll spin a lie (half-lie) about needing time with her brothers, being worried about Kendall (it was only yesterday, only yesterday, remember?) about Roman (you know how he thinks he’s closest to mom), needing to talk things through, and - -

“Bullshit.”

Shiv’s gaze snaps back to Roman.

“What?”

“How do we even know you’re not going to stab us in the back? Try to cut a deal, make yourself Dad’s new favourite toy’s new favourite toy? Or wait, you’ve got to know that’s Greg, so what? Finally let the fucker knock you up to get yourself back in?”

Shiv rolls her eyes.

“I’ll come back,” she repeats, and Roman scoffs, finishing off his drink and pushing the glass back at Kendall, but Kendall doesn’t take it. He’s watching Shiv with the sort of look she’s not used to, like he gets it, like he understands. Like it’s the two of them again, familiar, and Roman’s the one who doesn’t get it – back in Manhattan for Thanksgiving break, misreading every look, the outsider to every inside moment.

“Whatever, I don’t care,” Roman says, grabbing the gin bottle from the coffee table beside Kendall, and Shiv huffs out a breath, antsy now.

“What, you want me to promise? Are we in grade school? You want me to pinky swear?”

“Actually, yeah,” Roman says, ditching his glass entirely and taking a swig out of the bottle. He holds up his other hand expectantly, and if Shiv didn’t know any better, she’d say it was shaking a little. Shiv huffs, walks over to him, and holds out her own hand, but before she can hook their fingers, Roman twists his hand, flips her off, and then, like he’s changed his mind, suddenly hooks his pinky with hers. And okay, it’s not - - it’s not anything, some dumb thing they used to do like every other kid, but something in her feels wired with it instantly. Twin fingers locked, the Romulus to her Remus. Charged with the way Roman takes another swig of gin, not meeting her gaze, but also not loosening his grip.

Shiv swallows, curls her finger around his a little tighter.

“I should call Con. Let him know we’re here,” Kendall says suddenly, awkward, lurching up off the coffee table behind her, and pulling his cell out of his pocket. After a minute, the sound of the screen door to the terrace opens and shuts, and Shiv exhales, resisting the itch in her head that tells her he shouldn’t be alone.

“This how you jerk off Wambsgans?” Roman asks suddenly, pulling her back to him, to this, to now, like he’d known, and Shiv rolls her eyes, unable to help the smile tugging at her lips.

“This as far as you get with Ger-Bear?”

“Nice,” Roman tells her, dropping the bottle to the floor beside him and breaking his grip. He was pressing his finger so tight to hers, there’s a pink ring of flesh there now, and she rubs her thumb against it, thinks, maybe, it’s the sort of mark she doesn’t want to dig out.

“Keep an eye on him ‘til I get back,” she tells Roman, jerking her head out in the direction Kendall went in, and Roman snorts.

“Should’ve called ahead and had the help get rid of any sharp objects.”

Shiv gives him a look, and Roman sighs, dropping his hands on his knees, says:

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll keep an eye on our very own Captain Ahab here, don’t worry,” he tilts his head, watching Kendall on the back terrace through the window. “What about you? You gonna give Wambsgans the ol’ forty whacks?”

“Lizzie Borden killed her parents, not her husband,” Shiv says offhand, and Roman snorts.

“Yeah, well, you already fucked that up.”

“I did?”

Roman shrugs, glances back at her, a look on his face she can’t entirely read. (Would Kendall be able to?) Shiv wets her lips, and she thinks of telling him she’ll come back again, that she promised, that maybe that means something to her, at least right now, with them, but what comes out is:

“You gonna help me hide the body if I do?”

And at least that gets a wry grin out of him.

“Helped you hide Ken’s Walkman after you broke it in fifth grade, didn’t I?”

“You mean I helped you hide it after you broke it.”

“Details,” Roman says, waving a hand out at her, and Shiv folds her arms over her chest, tilts her head.

“Oh, you mean that thing you’re terrible with?”

At that, Roman rolls his eyes, lurching up off the couch, and Shiv doesn’t even realise she’s been stalling until Roman says:

“Go on, get out of here before Con shows up and starts telling us this all happened because he was out of the loop again.”

Swaying sideways, Roman makes quick work passing Shiv, and she turns in time to watch him reach the screen door, pulling it open and yelling out into the night.

“Hey, asshole, you’ve lost your pool privileges, remember?”

His figure is small there, half a leg out into the darkness, calling to Kendall, and for a moment, she wonders if it’s just about Mum and Dad for him, or about Gerri too. Thinks she can’t think like that now, not yet, not when there’s a road ahead of her with Tom at the end tonight, not when she has to go and play a role she told herself she’d never have to again, not when she has to find her way back here, to these wounded animals she calls her brothers and the creature she feels inside herself, something hardening and something starting to burn. Her thumb finds her finger, feels Roman’s wrapped around it, a language from childhood remembered, and finally, she takes a breath.

Touch prompts

#i was going to do a few today but this one ate up all the space in my head haha #thank you for sending it!#roman + shiv #kendall + roman + shiv #succession fic #hbo succession #shiv roy #kendall roy #roman roy #shiv x tom #kind of #welcome to my ama #prompt fill #touch prompts

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