Chapter Text
He is thirty-nine, and he should have known better than to expect anything other than a stab in the back by his father.
As he had cleaned up the scattered remains of his violent outburst in that bathroom, Kendall had felt a brief flicker of need. That promise of sweet, blissful destruction that always lay like a slumbering dragon in the back of his mind, longing to be awoken. His hands had shook as he willed the beast back to sleep. He wouldn't let his father be the reason for his break of sobriety like he always was. Kendall hadn't worked this hard to be here, ruining himself, his friendships, his family, and slipping in and out of rehab twice now, to just go and fall off the deep end again.
He stared at himself in the mirror and tried to convince the reflection that this was just a roadblock. A hiccup in a long line of full-body coughs and shudders. He knew Logan Roy. Knew how infuriating the man was, how he couldn't under any circumstances be trusted. Knew it better than anyone. Which meant that he couldn't just surrender here and now. Not after everything.
He told himself he was going to go on the offense. That he was going to force his father to give up the reins and hand him the kingdom. He was.
Or, at least, he thought he was.
Up until his father ended up in the hospital.
Now he stands here, outside the hospital at night, the dying ember of his cigarette fading away on the concrete. Kendall is the sort of person who’s always been at war with himself and with his own nature, but never more so than in this moment. Because his father could die, could never wake up again, and he doesn’t know whether that terrifies him or relieves him more.
On one hand, this is the same man who’s abused him for so long, who’s responsible for every single mistake that Kendall’s ever made. Who threw him onto the path that led him to being a divorced, ex-junkie, who can’t go a single day without feeling at least a second of overwhelming despair.
On the other hand, it’s his father. And he loves his father as much as he hates him. Sometimes the ratio changes, sometimes it’s 60/40 and then 40/60, but it’s always there. It’s always some fucked up yin yang type of love.
And it’s just. It’s not fair. Because he’s still so angry at his father, but he can’t even process that while the man’s lying on his deathbed. No, he just had to go and have a stroke and make Kendall feel guilty for every bad thought that shuffles through his brain, deserved or not. So typical of the man, to have even his own failing health be a method of control.
It’s in this moment that he’s decided he’s had it. And okay, maybe it’s not just in this moment, maybe it’s been a series of little, niggling ones threatening to burst up over onto the surface for years and years and years. But this is the particular moment where he finally just lets the dam burst. Because frankly, he’s tired of being scared of one single human man. One man who’s ruled his life and everyone’s lives for as long as he’s breathed air. And now this man is deteriorating before their eyes, literally and figuratively, and people are still following his every lead out of pure fear. It’s ridiculous. It’s insane.
And Kendall is going to finally put an end to it. Because his father no longer has a hold on him. His father can’t fucking touch him. Kendall tasted being a CEO for a brief second and it was like sipping from the holy grail - only for it to be yanked away yet again. But he can still taste the consecrated wine on his tongue, can still find it under his teeth and in his gums when he thinks back. Because it was meant to be.
Kendall loves his father. Even in spite of everything (and everything is everything). But he will stop at nothing to knock him off his throne once and for all, no matter what it takes.
Kendall is thirty-nine and he’s marking the map, collecting the toy soldiers, and gearing up to declare war.
Kendall is thirty-nine, and he’s not sure why he’s still trying to hold onto his marriage by its pilling, disintegrating thread.
He’s been hanging out with Stewy more frequently than he has in a long, long time. Sure, they’re lifelong ‘BFFs’ even after everything that happened between them, but their relationship had begun to stick to a more ‘see you once a month and catch up’ type of standard.
Except everything changed once Rava filed for divorce. Officially.
Now he sees Stewy for bagels sometimes in the mornings, sees him during the occasional lunch break at an outdoor café in battery park, hangs out with him after work at restaurants, parks, and at either his or Stewy’s place. It’s becoming a habit almost as frequent and addictive as snorting coke was.
More and more now, as he’s sitting by the other’s side, smelling that familiar god-awful cologne he insists ‘is the same one that Kendrick wears, on god’, he feels a sharp pang of irrational longing. It burns through his chest like the world’s worst heartburn, and each time it only spurs him to reach out to Rava instead.
Rava, who’s perhaps even more unattainable by now than Stewy. But at least she makes sense. At least it’s obvious that he should still want her, should still try to win her back. And he does want her. And he does want to win her back.
But it’s worse when he sees Stewy. When he gets so close to breaking a different kind of sobriety. So he places every mishandled and unwanted emotion he feels towards his friend and projects straight back at her instead.
It does nothing but make both him and Rava more miserable.
And still, Kendall doesn’t know when to quit.
He is thirty-nine, and he can’t have either of the people he loves, so he decides to dive into the deep end of the dating pool - whether he wants to be there or not.
Kendall is thirty-nine and he has unknowingly (unthinkingly) become the kind of person he swore he never would.
“I'm just seeing someone, but y-you... you're the boss” Anna had said, eyes darting away like she was afraid (because she was afraid)
Kendall had felt the floor drop beneath him, a sickening grimy feeling like sticky, hot fat coating his limbs underneath his clothes. “No. No, no, no. I'm... I'm not that guy.”
“Yeah, sure. No, I'm...” she paused, and then her nervous, put on ‘friendliness’ finally dropped as she looked him in the eye. “But actually, you are the guy. Right now.”
Kendall’s back at his apartment now, tux still on, afraid to take it off because that’ll mean he’ll have to see more of himself. And he doesn’t want to see what’s underneath, doesn’t want to acknowledge that the body attached to him is the one that went through all the actions of tonight without a fucking clue in the world.
It was a disaster. A complete disaster.
It feels as if everything he’s done lately has been destined to fail. As if he’s stuck inside a Buster Keaton movie, in which every action he takes has been scripted and played out in front of an invisible audience. And every time they laugh and laugh at each slip and tumble that comes his way. He wishes he could tear at the screen that separates them and show them that he’s a living breathing human just like them. Wishes he could find the writer of his life and hold them up against a wall and demand that they give him some kind of slack once and for all.
Because if it wasn’t failing to secure Vaulter, then it was failing to become CEO. And if it wasn’t that, then it was fucking up the loan with the bank, ruining any chance of getting back together with Rava, flunking at earning his father’s approval for how he saved the company in his stead, and then (accidently) making his date believe that he forced her to go out with him.
Kendall holds his face in his hands, feeling that slimy feeling of grease still sticking to his skin. Is it really there, is it just the remnants of sweat and exertion, or is he actually losing his mind? He grimaces, pulling his hands away and wiping them on his pants. Except it doesn’t go away. It feels like his entire body is covered in it, in this slimy film of residue. He has to get undressed. He has to clean it off. He has to do a lot of things.
He’d already fired Eva, at least. Because what the fuck was she thinking, twisting his innocent interest in Anna into some kind of deranged order? He was not that guy. He wasn’t the scummy Hollywood executive, forcing a young actress to sleep with him if she wanted the role. He wasn’t the mythical villain either from Arthurian or fairytale legends, threatening to take land away from the local farmer unless he surrendered his daughter to him. He wasn’t. He wasn’t.
“How much a plate? You gotta get at least a blow job.” Roman had joked after, like it was funny. Like anything about this situation was humorous. “That's the law.”
Kendall is a good guy. He’s always been respectful of women and their autonomy. Has always endeavored to make sure he never made them feel the way he’d felt under the thumb of his father. Unlike other men, he has the advantage (or disadvantage) of knowing just what it’s like to feel threatened by the very presence of a man. To fear the promise of sexual violence in every touch, every word, every interaction.
He’s a good guy. He’s one of the good ones! He is, he is, he is.
“That's not the law.” Kendall had said quietly, unable to feel, unable to handle anything except disgust and rage. It didn’t matter that Roman was trying to cheer him up. He wasn’t going to entertain it.
This isn’t his fault. This is Eva’s. And he’s enraged beyond belief that she’s put this on him, that she’s made him feel like this. There’s no way she’ll get away with what she’s done. He doesn’t care that Anna told him not to say anything, because he already told her off, because he’s a good guy. He’s going to fix this and prove that (god fucking dammit) it wasn’t his fault.
Kendall finally sheds his clothes like snakeskin, then scrubs himself in hot water all through the night. He never does get the residue out of his pores.
Kendall is thirty-nine, and he will not take the blame – not for this.
Kendall is thirty-nine and he’s making the rounds to dethrone his father, like a righteous maverick gathering his allies in order to take down the local tyrant.
It feels good, entertaining the route of exposing the man for all of his recent problems. Like some fucked up cancellation parade. Maybe it’s because he was never able to tell the actual truth about his father before, for all of the… other things he did. So now, it’s cathartic to allow himself this – this tattling. “Dad’s not fit to run the company.” “Dad pissed on my floor. What else is he capable of?” Kendall knows what he’s capable of. And finally, he’s going to make the world see it too.
At least, for most of it. For the other stuff.
(Not the stuff that matters)
It feels good when people believe him. When Frank listens to him at his apartment. When he gathers other doubters, other people who don’t see Logan Roy as the end all of all. “I’m doing it for him.” Kendall says. But both he and Frank know it’s a lie.
However, the more he prepares, doubling down for the vote of no-confidence, the more he becomes convinced that his father knows what he’s up to. That any minute, he’ll open a door and there the man will be – surrounded by lawyers, employees, and trusted friends all ready to send him packing for his betrayal.
He’d call himself paranoid, but when you’re doing with Logan Roy, it’s just called being smart.
Except it’s at dinner, during Thanksgiving, when Logan’s little ‘problems’ go from strange to unsettling. Kendall is already severely uncomfortable after having to stiffly escort his (ex)wife and son back into the dining room. He feels like a prison guard shuffling inmates from one cell to another. It’s even worse when one of those ‘inmates’ is the woman he loves.
(Loved. Loves? It’s still difficult to reconcile his feelings on that matter)
Either way, it isn’t fun.
So they’re at the dinner table, with his father to his left, his pissed off ex to his right, and the rest of his family and everyone else he knows circled around them. Iverson is picking at his plate, even after Rava made sure to separate each food so that none of it was touching. Shiv is sitting across from him, speaking over an awkward Tom with Roman and Grace in a manner that flits between snippy and playful.
“I’m sorry, I just think that if the GOP wants to completely degrade itself to a level unseen during even the Reagan era, then that’s fine, but you can’t genuinely find any pride in belonging to a party like that.” Shiv says, shrugging, her glass of chardonnay due for a refill.
“Oh yeah, and you find your pride when you’re sucking on Joyce’s tits? What, is there like, liberal catnip pouring out of those things?” Roman replies to a chorus of groans and noises of indignation.
Rava in particular looks as she wants to put her hands over Iverson’s ears, but instead just hisses, “For gods’ sake, Roman! Can we tone it down with that talk?” at the same time that Marcia says “Please, we said no politics at the table.”
Roman raises his hands and hunches as if he’s been pummeled by rotten tomatoes, but his grin bellies anything other than remorse. “Jesus, sorry, sorry. Forgot the crowd I was dealing with tonight. I’m just used to a family dinner where things like ‘You’re letting yourself get bent over and fucked like a pussy by your new P.E. teacher, Rome,” is as commonplace as passing the butter.”
Once again Rava gestures with frustration at the literal child in front of him while Shiv just rolls her eyes, “That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Dad would at least wait until after dinner to speak to us like that. Isn’t that right dad?”
They all look to Logan while a few chuckles ring out, trying to make light of depressing childhood memories as per usual. But his father looks distracted, as if he’s lost in some faraway thought in, stuck in another time. The chuckles peter out into another awkward silence, something becoming more and more common these days during the old man’s lapses, until something strange clicks in his face. It’s like he’s hearing the words, but he’s still not fully present.
“Mhmm… hah, for Kendall, maybe…” he mumbles, eyes glazed over as he fingers the stem of his wine glass.
Kendall doesn’t move.
Everyone else goes back to their titling laughter, misunderstanding the nature of Logan’s words. But Kendall knows. At first, he tries to tell himself it wasn’t what he thought. But who is he kidding? Kendall knows exactly what he means. And in all of his thirty thirty-nine years, or at least since his father started treating him differently than just a regular son, he has never once said anything in a manner to anyone suggesting what he’s done. Never. Not even in a joking manner.
He was always too careful about that.
People continue to talk around him, but he doesn’t hear it. He feels like a fly caught in amber, stuck and terrified, his surroundings blurring around him.
If his father was able to let a little omission slip like that, as tiny and innocent as it seems, what else would he say in front of others now?
What else would he do?
And as if to answer that, Kendall feels the slightest touch of a hand on his thigh – and it’s so light that it could have been made by the brush of a bird’s wing. And yet, it still causes him to jump in his chair so violently that he spills his wine over his plate.
“Shit. Shit, sorry, uh sorry.” Kendall stammers, shaking hands grabbing for his napkin as he hazily tries to wipe up the mess. When he turns to look at his dad, to wonder what the hell he was thinking, his father stares back at him only with confusion.
Like he hadn’t thought what he was doing was wrong. And then Logan looks up, and for the first time in the past who knows when, finally realizes just where they are. And who they’re with.
Logan pulls his hand away swiftly.
If he feels guilty, or ashamed, or even embarrassed by his actions, he doesn’t show it. He just looks at the mess like he’s annoyed by Kendall’s little mishap. “Christ, Kendall. What’s caught up your jacksie?”
You. Always you, you fucking monster.
“N - nothing. Sorry, just, sorry just a shiver. Don’t mind me.” He continues to ramble, but Marcia lifts her hand to stop him in his fussing.
“Don’t worry about it, Kendall. We’ll have that cleaned up for you.” She nods to the staff, pointing and making quick, authoritative gestures until his plate is being taken away and the linen is being mopped up by a towel. “Would you like a new plate?”
“Uh, no, thank you no, I think uh, I think I’m full enough.” He lies. He had barely finished, but now he feels as if he even looks at a piece of turkey, he’ll lose his dinner all over the table. And then they would really have something to clean up.
“Sorry, excuse me everyone, I’m just going to run to the bathroom. I think I might have gotten some on my pants.” He lies again, making jerky motions as he stands from his chair. He hears Rava ask from behind if he wants any help before he politely declines in a voice he can’t hear, stumbling forward and making his way to the nearest toilet. Once he’s inside and he’s locked safely away from the rest of the world, does he begin to breathe again. He sits down on the toilet seat lid, his head in his hands, and tries to pull himself together.
Kendall sits there as the seconds tick by, as the noise of the dinner continues off in the background without him. He knows he can’t stay in here forever. As much as he wants to. Here, where he can’t feel his father’s touch, where he doesn’t have to worry if what he says next is another terrifying omission to their sordid late nights. So he times himself on his phone, and rests the side of his temple against the cold porcelain of the sink.
He is thirty-nine, and much to his unending horror, the little slips don’t stop there.
He is thirty-nine, and Kendall’s back off the wagon again (again, again, again).
Because fuck it. Logan ruined his chance at being CEO, and then despite everything Kendall tried to do to get him kicked out, he managed to ultimately fuck that up too. (Thanks, Stewy, by the way, for that betrayal of Ancient Roman proportions – especially after how close they’d been lately). And if that wasn’t enough, his own father goes around spreading lies about Kendall’s sobriety, destroying any semblance of the miniscule trust that Rava still had in him (and thus fucking up his visitation rights). Not to mention his continued, horrific, dementia-fueled slip ups.
Always little things, little touches, little phrases, little hints. Always innocuous to everyone except to Kendall.
“Sometimes he wanders at night, into the office.” He’d once heard Marcia say in confidence on the phone, when she thought no one had been listening. “I never know what he’s looking for. He won’t tell me.”
Kendall knows. He knows because the office is on the second floor, four doors down. Different apartment. Same layout.
So, like, fuck it. Why not? Why not just go and do what everyone clearly believes and wants him to do? It’s not like it matters that it was all lies – they were so ready to believe it anyway, because it’s Kendall, and Kendall is always going to be the despicable, disappointing, fucked up coke addict to them no matter what he tries to do. So, really, what is the point? Why has he bothered to desperately try and stay sober when the reward lying at the bottom of the rainbow was just an empty pot with a note taped to it saying, ‘fuck you’.
Austerlitz was honestly eye-opening for him. A breath of fresh air in a sea full of sewage. It’s comforting, in a maudlin sort of way, to have finally confronted his father like that in front of his siblings, violent reaction and all. Because what exactly does he have to be afraid of anymore? He’s at rock bottom now, he’s lost everything – and this time, he really means everything. Because though this is not the first time that he has fallen this far, it is the first time that he hasn’t had Waystar as his parachute to save him from hitting the ground and breaking his skull. It’s as freeing as it is soul crushing.
But hey, at least he has blow to cheer him up.
Nevertheless, Kendall doesn’t let his dire straits completely end any future for himself. Waystar CEO isn’t everything. Kendall can start something new, something for himself far, far away from the meddling malignity of his father. He can be an investor, a leader of innovation and of new beginnings for promising young entrepreneurs. He can do the very thing he’d wanted to do all along with Vaulter, to step out of the backwards, Jurassic staleness of his father’s era and into the future.
Or at least, he thought he could.
Once again, he is the fool in the vaudeville act - the circus clown - the coyote in the Sunday cartoon with the anvil dropped on its head. He doesn’t know if there has ever been anyone who has tried and failed so much as he has. If there was, he can only hope they met a swift end, because living through this endless comedy is the worst tragedy one could imagine.
Fuck those young entrepreneurs, actually. And what the fuck was going on with Roman, coming in between him and Sandy and going off about this dog cage story? Kendall barely remembers it, but he knows it’s not how Roman described. He knows his dad fucked up him, that Kendall sometimes did unkind things to his siblings as a child as a form of letting off steam, but even he wouldn’t have done something that fucked up. At least, not like how Roman was desperate to spin it.
It just feels like everyone is out to get him, out to betray him. First Stewy with that whole board bullshit, then the start-up girls, and now Roman too. He’s just – he’s sick of it all. Sick of not knowing who he can trust.
And now here he is, at this pathetic, bacchanal, so-called bachelor party, high off his rocker with too many lines of cocaine up his septum to count. He’s walked away from Greg, aware that the kid is tailing him because dad got scared of his proclivities (even though he’s the one responsible for them in the first place) and is in search of… something. Something unknown, something that’ll stop the spinning wheel of his brain and land on a tier that doesn’t say ‘Sorry! Try again next time!’. His palms itch in a way that can’t be scratched by normal standards. He needs something else. Something… strong.
“Ken – Kenny, hey. ” Stewy says (and speak of the devil) from a dimly lit hallway, a gaggle of fucked up, scantily dressed millennials on either side of him. He reminds Kendall of an expensive bottle of tequila, stocked behind the bar with various chasers and other misplaced liquors when it clearly should be on a higher shelf. And like all tequila, he knows that if he orders it, no matter how fancy or lavishly priced, he’ll regret it in the morning.
Either way, when the sporadic spot of light hits Stewy’s face, drowning his shadowed features with an off-putting shade of neon pink, Kendall knows this is that something. Even though he’s still mad at the guy, he knows that this will scratch that itch. His palms tingle at the thought.
“Hey.” Is all he says in response, not wanting to give himself away just yet. He can still have the higher ground, can still be the guy in the room that Stewy’s pitching to. Because, for once in what has felt like a really, really long time – they’re finally on equal ground here. No bullshit, no Kendall fucked Stewy over lingering beneath the surface of their friendship like it has since college. Because now Stewy is the one who’s committed a sin on the torn quilt of their history, a blemish mixing and pooling with the thousands that Kendall has left there.
“Listen man, I heard about what happened after I left. Can’t believe Romy is still the same little brat who threw a fit every time we went off to get our dicks wet without him.” Stewy laughs, shaking his head. “Still, you shouldn’t let that distract you from what we spoke about. Because like, dude – I’m serious about this. You know you need to get away from Waystar, that shit is poison man. Always has been.”
Kendall shrugs, sliding up against the wall across from Stewy, a spot that’s blissfully body-free. “Maybe. Maybe not. You want me to just give that all up? That’s like – that’s all I’ve got Stewy. You know that.”
Like a magnet to metal, Stewy crosses over until he’s inches from Kendall, elbow perched on the wall to support his weight. He reminds Kendall of a teenage jock flirting with the cheerleader against her locker. Well, Kendall’s fine playing the cheerleader, if it gets him what he wants.
“I don’t think that’s true.” Stewy says, and though there’s a playful curl at the edge of his mouth, his eyes betray him. “You have so much more than that. Could have more, if you stopped swimming in the pus of your dad’s womb.”
“Yeah, you uh, you think so?” Kendall slides himself closer, uncaring of who sees them. This is Rhomboid after all. The Vegas of New York. What happens here, stays here, and whatever doesn’t will be forgotten when the sun swims up anyway. His fingers twitch, brushing against the bottom of Stewy’s blazer. He watches as his friend’s pupil’s grow darker, bare and uninhibited by whatever the fuck’s in his system.
“Yeah, I uh, I do…” Stewy trails off uncertainly, as if he’s only now been made aware of their proximity. “Look, Kendall… I don’t want you to get the wrong idea…”
Kendall rolls his eyes, his fingers playfully sliding up his lapels now, edging from wallflower to siren. “What’s the problem? It’s not like there’s anything holding us back right now. I mean, this is an everything goes kind of party, right? No rules? Some kind of, like, liminal fuck space? And anyway, I’m single, you’re single…”
“I have a girlfriend, man.”
“Like I said, you’re single.” Kendall says, to which Stewy can’t help but grin. His friend runs a hand over his face, like he knows he’s losing a battle he’s been fighting for far too long.
“Ken… It’s been, god, more than a decade? And I thought you were trying to be serious, you know? With serious girls.”
Kendall’s fingers creep past his blazer and over his shirt, delicately feelings all the little (and not so little) ways in which his friend has grown since they were young. “Fuck that man. I’m over that shit. Where did it get me, really? A failed marriage? A ruined career? Nah man, I’m done holding myself back from the things I deserve.”
Stewy’s breath is hot on his face, slow and heady and laced with the taste of vodka. Not tequila maybe, like he’d envisioned, but still. Mouthwatering all the same. “Kendall…”
“Come on dude, I thought you were trying to seduce me back there, with Sandy? Or is that all you’ve got?” Kendall says, hand moving lower, and lower, and lower, until…
“Fuck.” Stewy hisses, his hand grabbing Kendall’s wrist. Except it’s not there to stop him, not from the way his thumb rubs tantalizingly against his veins. Kendall knows. He knows the ways in which Stewy works, the ways in which his body operates maybe even more than Stewy does.
He’s held himself back for far too long, always denying himself from the things he really wants. A life outside of his father, a life of drinking, of drugs, of Stewy. He’s already done the first three things. What’s stopping him from achieving the last?
And Kendall’s aware of their history, aware that the last time he made a move was on the eve of his own fucking wedding. He remembers how disastrously that went, can play it over and over in his mind like a fucked-up movie reel. But his world has changed, has been twisted and pulled and turned inside out. The rules don’t exist anymore. Kendall is going to have what he wants. And he’s going to have that now.
He’s more confident this time around when he presses his lips to Stewy’s. The stubble is a scratchy, painful relief and those plush lips taste familiar in a way that gets his dick instantly hard. A kind of erotic comfort that can’t be matched anywhere else. It’s easy, like settling into a warm bath on a cold, rainy day. The copious amount of drugs in his veins probably do a lot to help that confidence, but it hardly matters. He’s a new man now. He’s taking charge for once, and he’s not backing down.
“Shit, Ken.” Stewy groans when they finally break for air. Kendall just redirects his mouth to the man’s neck instead, sucking at the skin like a high school virgin, leaving blooming roses of purple and red. “I guess this – this is really happening, huh? You’re a relentless motherfucker, you know that?”
Kendall just grins up at him, his hand gripping at Stewy’s belt buckle. Stewy moves to stop him before he can undo it however, a little breathless laugh like a girlish squeal escaping his throat.
“Woah, soldier. I know we’re in fuck-o-rama manor, but how about we take this to a more private room first, okay? I’m an exhibitionist as much as the next guy, but if I’m going to get my dick sucked by you after twenty years of Ken-briety, I’d rather it be just the two of us.”
Kendall just snickers and pulls Stewy by the belt instead towards one of the many open, vacant rooms. Clearly it’s been used quite recently, the smell of sex and weed lingering in the stale air, but Kendall’s never been that picky. He just shuts the door behind them before he pushes Stewy up against the wall, a discarded bottle of something clattering away beneath his feet. “Who said I’d be the one doing the sucking?”
Stewy smirks, his thumb smoothing over Kendall’s bottom lip in a way that makes his eyes want to roll into the back of his head. “Please. You’re hungry for it like an anorexic chick at a five-dollar all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“Oh yeah?” Kendall says, but he’s already slipping down to his knees.
“Oh yeah.” Stewy says, and then Kendall’s finally unbuckling him and pulling out his fully erect, blood-filled cock and he says, “Oh yeah,” and Kendall knows he’s toast. Freshly made and piping hot.
Now, there are two cocks in the world that he knows intimately – from tip to base - better than even his own. But out of the two of them, this is the only one that can make him cum just by taste alone.
Which he does. In an embarrassingly short amount of time.
But Stewy doesn’t make fun of him (even though he has all the right in the world to do so). He just pulls Kendall back up when he finishes and kisses him so hard that Kendall forgets that anything ever changed between them. That he ever was so stupid and so afraid of some rotten, old man that he made the ridiculous mistake of leaving him. That they went on to different friends, different women, different lives before they ended up right back here.
And when Stewy gets his hand around Kendall, his practiced, smooth fingers so warm and so easeful, Kendall comes a second time that night. Something he had thought impossible at this stage of his life.
But Stewy always has that effect on him. The ability to break through reality, and turn every rule he ever knew to dust.
Everything changes, after this. It’s not the last time they see each other this night – no, Kendall still goes on to speak with Connor about doghouse, and with his newfound confidence (and post-sex high) he finds the time to approach Sandy about his offer with a resolute clarity he didn’t think he was capable of.
When he leaves Rhomboid in the bright, eye-burning light of the dawn, he leaves with a newly steeled spine and a hardened finality he didn’t have before.
“Sometimes it is a big dick competition.” His father had said that fateful day. Well, thanks for that, dad – because Kendall’s got the memo now. He’s joined with the enemy. He’s snatched Stewy back. He’s become his own man with his own needs, own agenda, and own backbone.
He is thirty-nine, and he is going to win the competition, no matter what he has to sacrifice to do.
He is thirty-nine, and he was so, so wrong.
Kendall has never been so cold in his whole life. It seeps underneath his clothes, inside of his skin, and down to the very marrow of his bones. He thought he’d felt what ice inside of your veins felt like when he went through withdrawal. Like many times in his life, he was wrong.
(He killed a kid)
He feels nothing but this cold as he stumbles through the marshy weeds in the pitch black of the night. He keeps expecting to wake up from this, to leap up in bed and then sigh in relief that it was all just a nightmare. But he’s not waking up. This is real. This is real.
Should he have called 911? But he lost his phone. Should he have yelled out for help? But they would have blamed him. They would have locked him up and thrown away the key. Should he have tried better, harder, faster – to - to save him? He could have held his breath longer. He should have dove down sooner, instead of waiting and sitting there like a fucking asshole.
(He killed a kid)
His toes feel blue. He doesn’t know how he knows that, but he does. They feel blue, and black, and wet. The wet permeates just as much as the cold. He still has that murky, algae damp taste in his mouth. He doesn’t think he will ever taste anything else as long as he lives.
Every now and then, as he hobbles along, he thinks he will die. His heart is beating so fast, so fast that he thinks it will pop and burst like the bubble of chewing gum. He remembers a documentary he’d watched, about the climbers who succumbed to their deaths on Mount Everest. How some of them had died of heart attacks, instead of hypothermia or falling. Because the cold actually narrows your blood vessels to retain heat, forcing the organ to pump more and increasing your heart rate. He’d always thought freezing temperatures were supposed to slow it down, allowing you to fall into a hypothermic coma, as gentle as a deep sleep. He wishes that would happen instead. He would like very much to just drift away, to black out and be carried off into the night, so he wouldn’t have to deal with the morning ahead. If he even makes it to that.
(He killed a kid)
He imagines himself saving the waiter. He imagines himself back in the car, when it first hit the water. Unbuckling the boy’s seatbelt and grabbing him by the armpits as he pulls him out of the car. They make it to the surface, gasping and struggling but alive. He lays the boy on the grainy bed of sand and uses his hands and mouth to resuscitate him until he comes to, coughing up mouthfuls of murky water, just like in the movies.
Except this isn’t a movie. The boy is lying at the bottom of that water, in the black, sightless depth, still strapped to a metal deathtrap as fish swim in and out around him. And Kendall is alive, half-jogging half-running back to his sister’s wedding, barely a scratch on him. It shouldn’t be fair. The one-time Kendall fairs better than the next guy, and he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve it.
(He killed a kid)
When the fireworks start going off, he’s half convinced it’s because the police have found him and are coming to take him away. That it’s – signal flares, gunshots, sirens. They got him. They found the killer. He’s going away for good. But it’s not any of those things. It’s just fireworks, for his sister’s wedding. It’s a good thing. A happy thing. He’s sure everyone’s enjoying them. Everyone but Kendall.
When he finally makes it back to his room, he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the authorities to bang down his door, drag him from his hot shower (so hot, so warm, and after being so cold, burning), and in front of everyone, sentence him away for his crimes. But they don’t. He gets dressed. He blow-dries his hair. He walks out of his room like he’s been here the whole time, like nothing happened. Like he’s just at his sister’s wedding, and the worst thing he’s done tonight is betray her while trying to betray their father.
(But it’s not. Because he’s killed a kid)
The next morning, he hopes yet again that it was just a dream. A violent, manifestation stirring from the guilt he feels at ruining Shiv’s happy day. And then Greg mentions the waiter, and he knows it was a silly thing to hope for. A ridiculous, childish want.
He’s inside, he’s dry, and he’s fitted with a good layer of clothing.
But he still feels cold.
“Kendall, Logan wants a word with you.” Colin says, and Kendall understands in that very moment that his father knows. Doesn’t know how, or why, but he does. A calm sort of panic washes over him, relief and fear coating his bird-weak heart all at the same time.
And he was right. His father sits him down, speaking of the waiter with a wry sort of tone, like he’s amused they’re even skirting around it - this pretend little dance they’re preforming. Because they both know. He doesn’t need to say it out loud. Doesn’t need to explain the keycard they found, or that Amir saw how damp Kendall was last night. But he does it anyway, because his favorite game in the whole world is tormenting his son. Winding him up like a jack in the box and then slamming the lid down when his head pops up.
He’s not surprised when Logan starts telling him to cut ties with Stewy and Sandy. To go back to rehab. To be his again. Because this is just the thing that Logan has been waiting for, for years. The right piece of bait on the hook, the missing cog in the wheel, the golden ticket in the chocolate bar. The fucked-up misstep that would allow Logan to regain control and finally get his claws back into his boy once and for all.
Kendall can feel the noose wind around his neck as much as he hears the handcuffs snap close around his wrists. He wants to laugh at how silly he was for ever thinking he could escape his father. He wants to beat himself with a hammer mostly for being the one that made it happen.
Because that’s the real kick of the matter, the punchline of the joke. Logan didn’t have to do anything. Kendall managed it all by himself.
Kendall is eight years old again as he sits on that couch, trembling, his shoulders hunched, fat, heavy tears rolling off his face while his father speaks to him with a soft tone and a rigid consequence.
When his father opens his arms above him, once more like his god and his executioner all at the same time, Kendall can’t help but sob and fall into them. It is in this moment that he gives up. It is in this moment that he chooses to feel relief that he can be a child again, comforted in the embrace of his father who loves him. It is nicer instead to feel relief, than it is the alternative.
“You're my boy.” His father says as he kisses Kendall’s cheek, forehead, and his face over and over, his large hand clasped over the back of his head with the firm grip of protection and possession. It promises many things. Many, many things that Kendall thought would never happen again. They will happen again. “You're my number one boy.”
“I’m sorry.” Kendall sobs, and when he says it, it feels as if he’s apologizing for so much more than just this night. For thinking he could ever betray his father. For living a life that didn’t belong to this man. For thinking he could ever be his own person.
He is thirty-nine, and he has spent his entire life trying to get away from his father only to fall back into his arms once again – and he only has himself to blame.