Archive of Our Own

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”

-Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina”

***

“What do you think of me, Greg?”

“What do I think of you?”

Greg laughed a little. Light and airy. If he hadn’t had a couple of drinks in him from the backstage bar that night the question probably would have given him anxiety. Or if the night wasn’t so nice and his tummy didn’t feel so warm. Instead it kinda made him feel a little high. A nice high. Like he was floating on clouds, and Tom was floating with him. Most highs with Tom—where Tom was involved—were not nice. And that’s what made this different.

He ran an idle hand through his hair and that’s how he knew it had begun to snow, from the feel of the flakes melting on the skin of his ungloved hands. His mom would have yelled at him. For not bringing gloves.

“Yeah,” Tom said then, open and vulnerable, which he is only ever when he is drunk or straight-up miserable. Greg feels only a little guilty admitting he likes him better this way. “Am I too much?”

Tom looked at him as they walked, and Greg looked ahead.

“I think you’re…I think you’re great,” Greg said, because ‘great’ is a good word. ‘Great’, Greg thought, summed up an answer to a very broad and complicated question.

“No, I’m really asking you,” Tom insisted, and he stopped walking to make it clear that he meant it, because unless he suddenly did something very out of character—out of the norm, it was hard to tell, sometimes, with Tom. What, of all the weird shit he said, was meant to be different from the rest.

This behavior meant probably one thing, and that was that he had had a fight with Shiv, either that day or the day before, or possibly the day before that, if it was really something bad that ate at him.

The more Greg thought about it, which was more and more these days, he really didn’t like Shiv very much. He didn’t really mind that she was extremely self-centered or that she went out of her way to make it known that she didn’t care about his existence on the planet, despite them not interacting much to begin with — that was all right. But she didn’t really seem to care much about Tom’s existence, either, which Greg didn’t think was right. And didn’t much understand. There was no reason to marry someone if you didn’t like them. Except maybe for status, or money. But Tom didn’t have either of those.

“You’re really asking me?” Greg stopped and clarified.

“Yeah.”

“Well, okay, um…” he thought of what to say. “You’re my boss. And, you…sometimes, or like…more than most of the time, you do this thing where like…you bully me? Which is not…the coolest.”

Tom huffed and looked down at his shoes. This surprised Greg. He was only stating things that he thought were widely accepted as fact. He quickly corrected.

“But mostly I think you do that because you really don’t like yourself very much. So, like, I get it. I guess. And I don’t really think about it that much. Mostly I just think about how you’ve showed me more, like, care and actual affection than anyone…in my whole life. And how that’s a really weird thing to be…the case, given what I just said about the bullying part.”

And then Tom smiled. And his eyes looked kind, which Greg quickly thought of as beautiful and then quickly didn’t, because that was a pretty big thing to think of for the first time while he was drunk. Like, whoa, Greg. Haha. Hold your horses, buddy.

Tom walked closer. He reached out and plucked snowflakes off of Greg’s coat lapel and from the scarf around his neck. Not because they really bothered him or he didn’t realize more would just take their place, surely. Because that would be weird for a guy from Minnesota, to not understand how snow worked.

“I meant, relating to the speech I gave tonight, Greg,” Tom said, not without immeasurable fondness. “But that works, too.”

***

Greg puts down the book and the cup of coffee and the cigarette and faces the five-thirty-a.m. Laurentians with a puff of smoke from his lungs, and sends it out across the water. The cloud rises in the air in front of him until, from where he’s sitting up on the rocks, it looks like it reaches the very top of the tallest mountain, and then completely dissipates. Gone forever.

It’s cold, with the breeze from the lake and it being, well, Canada in late fall, and his mom would yell at him. For not bringing a coat. But she wasn’t here, and didn’t really get a say.

As an afterthought, he checks the time on his watch. He didn’t know where his phone was, but he knew he should get moving already, or his mom really would have his head.

Inside the cabin, no one but him is awake yet, and the place is quiet and strikes him as very peaceful. Whenever his apartment back in New York was quiet, like at nights when he went to sleep, it just felt lonely. It was only marginally worse than the constant buzz of the city, which, if he’s being very honest, often made him want to jump off the highest building just so he wouldn’t have to hear it anymore.

He wonders if Tom ever feels that way. He thinks he probably does.

Greg creeps up to his bedroom. He turns on the lamp by his bedside which he’s realizing now that he recognizes from his parents’ living room when he was like, seven, maybe. And he opens his drawer, filing through the denim and the light sweaters and the flannel for the first pair of underwear that he sees. It didn’t have to be anything fancy, just clean. Good enough for the washing machine, good enough for Greg Hirsch.

And he nearly trips himself, tugging off his skinny jeans in the small space between his bed and his closet. But he gets through it. Changing his underwear, that is. Only the rest of the day to go.

***

“Hark the herald angels sing, glory to…”

Tom approached him, Old-Fashioned in hand, decorated festively with a sprig of rosemary and a cranberry garnish, and clinked his glass against Greg’s. From the sidelines of the living room in Logan and Marcia’s loft, they watched on as a small chorus of children—two of which were Kendall’s—serenaded them with Christmas carols. Greg thought it was kind of nice, despite trying to wrap his head around how it was that the Roys had arranged for the entire school choir to perform an encore in their living room simply because none of the family had been able to attend the winter recital and Rava had sounded fairly pissed about it.

“What’s the over/under on how many more they’ll do?” Tom leaned in and asked in his ear. “Do I have time to go see a man about a horse? Maybe blow my brains out in the bathroom while I’m at it?”

Greg smiled. Across the room, so that only Greg, Tom, Shiv, Connor and Willa could see, Roman turned and pantomimed—pretty well, actually—hanging himself with a noose from the ceiling fan. If Greg didn’t hate him so much, or think that saying so would get his head shoved down a flushing toilet, he might recommend joining an improv troupe.

Later, after the small children had left and dinner’d been eaten, and some glasses were nearing on empty, some of them sat informally around the dining table. Greg sat near one end off on his own, sort of thumbing at the stem of his wine glass, not really engaged in any particular conversation, per say, but listening attentively.

Shiv had pulled out a large photo album and had begun to flip through it almost too happily while one of the house staff refilled her wine. Greg got uneasy whenever Shiv got drunk. Maybe because it didn’t ever happen, except maybe one other time that he can recall at another Christmas when they were teenagers, which had ended with him being forcibly tied up with Christmas ribbons and locked in one of the many closets at the Roys’ home in the Hamptons where he wasn’t found until the next day when the maids made their cleaning rounds.

She took a long sip as she flipped to a page. Her eyes went wide and she pointed, looking back at Tom.

“Honey, look! Oh, my God, I thought we didn’t have pictures from that charity ball because the photographer, like, had IBS at the last minute, or something.”

Tom leaned over.

“Huh. No, I think my mom took these pictures. She must have made copies and sent them over.”

“Oh, look at that. I loved that dress,” she sighed, wistful. Tom, arm wrapped around her, softly kissed the top of her head. Greg felt like he had to look away at the brief, open display of intimacy. He didn’t know why, but he did.

“And look at you. Is that a cummerbund?” Shiv asked, teasing in the venomous way that all her teasing sounded. But Tom laughed anyway.

“Sorry, a what, Wambsgans?” Roman asked from the other side of the table, even though he had not been listening and was engaged in a conversation with Tabitha.

“Bite me, Roman,” Shiv answered for Tom. “A waist strap. It’s fine. Lots of people wear them.”

“Sure, whatever,” he retorted and turned around, no longer interested now that the word cum was no longer involved. Shiv still looked at the page, thoughtfully.

“This must be, what, ten years ago, now. You must have brought that from home. I didn’t buy it for you.”

Greg wasn’t sure what relevance that had, exactly. Shiv flipped another page and looked to nearly spit out her wine. Tom seemed to grow still.

“Oh,” Shiv remarked, swallowing. “Wow.” The word wow was very full. Like she was making an onomatopoeia sound or something. “I guess Patty sent over a lot of photos, huh?”

Tom began some nervous laughter. “Oh, God,” he started. “You know, the things we wore to prom…”

“No,” Shiv is shaking her head, laughter bubbling out. “No, I’m pretty sure this is just you.”

Greg thought he could see over the long expanse of the table – could see the hints of a powder blue tuxedo made of polyester blend. He got the gist, anyway. Didn’t feel like he needed to stand up to see, which is certainly what Roman, Tabitha, Connor and Willa felt the need to do at the sound of Shiv’s snorting laughter. Soon, Tabitha’s joined in the mirth, laugh ringing out louder than Shiv’s or anyone else’s.

“Geez, Tom,” Connor spoke up. “Bargain bin scene was stiff in the nineties, huh?”

Willa looked at Connor with a very thin smile, but she didn’t say anything, and didn’t laugh. Greg liked Willa quite a bit.

“Oh! Oh!” Tabitha pointed further down the page, drawing Shiv’s attention with a shriek. Shiv’s eyes got wide.

“Is that from Halloween?” Shiv asked. Before Tom could answer though, she kept going. “Oh, Tom, you were just a baby! Look at you, little…homemade costumes—”

Tom sort of rolled his eyes with a smile that, Greg noticed, didn’t really reach them. “Alright, Shiv, come on. That’s enough.”

But Tabitha’d already begun to lift the next page, eager to show Shiv her findings.

“Oh, Tom, it’s cute! Come on, it’s cute!” Shiv insisted. “You’ve never showed me these.”

“Yeah, well—” and Tom laughed a little more, but it was growing very thin. He, gentle but insistent, began to close the photo album.

“Come on. Tom.” Shiv was sort of gently pulling the album back towards her.

Greg felt a presence behind him; turned and saw Logan had entered with Marcia, and he had his hands placed on the top of Greg’s chair.

“What’s going on in here?” Logan asked, seeming only mildly curious and perhaps more perturbed by the noise. Shiv went to open the photo album back again and turned it towards her father, starting to point.

“Dad, look what we found—”

“Shiv, goddammit.” The fist to the table and the sudden boom of Tom’s voice was surely unrecognizable to everyone until the silence swept the room and all eyes snapped towards him, and it became undeniable that he had been the source. Shiv, surely, the most surprised of all, bottom lip dropped open in shock.

Tom, shaking, with his hand to his mouth, took a beat and then stood up.

“Excuse me. Uh – I just.”

He left the room, offering nothing else. There was an uncomfortable lull, but conversations soon started back up, as Tabitha sort of rolled her eyes and turned back to Roman, and Connor guided Willa back to where they were sitting, and Logan and Shiv seemed to share a series of looks.

“It’s fine. No, Dad. It’s nothing,” Greg heard her say. And things sort of returned to normal after that.

“Blue?”

And then a picture of the tie, laid out on Tom’s desk.

“Or gray?”

And a picture of another tie, laid out on Tom’s desk. Before Greg had the opportunity to type up a response, he could see the thought bubble come back up again, indicating that yet another tie was coming ‘round the bend.

“Or red, perhaps?”

After the red picture came in, Tom was still typing.

“If I wear red, I’m a gun lobbyist MAGA toad, right? I mean, really. I could be some kind of poster child. I look like sarah palin’s fucking husband.”

“then again, with our audience, that might not be a bad thing. reactionary as they are, they might see a blue tie and think I’m a ‘liberal cuck’.”

Greg typed out his first reply yet.

“well. definitely not the gray.”

There was a brief pause before the next text came in.

“as helpful as you are verbose, gregory. thank you so much.”

“fuck’s sake.”

And then:

“why don’t you just come in here, anyway? quit jerking off and make yourself useful.”

Greg’s eyes went a little big. He shifted in his desk chair.

“i was working”

“what work could you possibly be doing, greg. It’s 3pm on a friday.”

But rather than answer that hard-hitting question, Greg was already up and out of his seat and walking down the hall. And Tom had been right—the office was pretty much empty. Even the lights were a little dimmer, probably by the janitorial staff to save on electricity or something.

He closed the door behind him to the sight of Tom standing over his desk, looking like he was on the verge of ripping his hair out.

“I’m gonna lose it, Gregory. I’m about to go American Psycho.”

“Well, don’t…do that. Just wear the red.”

Tom tilted his head back and leaned back with his body in some vaguely contortionist slump. “The red, he says. The red. Why didn’t I think of that, Greg? God, you’re such a genius, Greg. Why don’t you take my job, and you do the interview, because you’re clearly so much more qualified than me, you oversized Baby Einstein, you.”

“That’s not true,” Greg said, while walking up to the desk and smiling. Maybe blushing a little. Not entirely sure why he was smiling and blushing. But sometimes Tom’s constant ribbing was actually enjoyable. When it wasn’t so mean-spirited or clearly intended just to hurt him. This felt like one of those times.

Tom went a little quiet, and looked at him.

“Well, that’s perfect,” Tom said. “Just give me yours.”

Greg blinked. “My—”

“Your tie, Greg. Here. We’ll do a trade. You can have this ugly red one you love so much.”

Greg looked down. His was a baby pink tie patterned with white. He didn’t really understand what made it any better than the others, but he also wasn’t particularly attached to it, either. Other than the fact that Tom had bought it for him, and he knew it was expensive. Armani, potentially?

He began pulling at the knot and inadvertently choking himself when it wouldn’t come loose. He looked down, determined to puzzle out this fucking knot like it was a Rubik’s cube, but Tom’s hands were already slapping his aside.

“Stop. Come here.” But there was no chance to, because Tom pulled him in by the tie around his neck. “Don’t know how the fuck you even dress yourself in the morning.”

There were some things, though, that Tom did, that…well, Greg wasn’t sure how to read. For instance, this.

Tom had Greg pulled in…well, it was difficult to say, but maybe…five? Inches? From his face? Which was wholly unnecessary for the task at hand. And Greg was sure Tom probably felt his breath hitting his forehead, and Greg just felt, like…well, to be honest, the warmth of another human body, for one. Which was nice. But also, that it was Tom. And there were some…things. Some outstanding…things. That Greg had yet to sort of…process, really, about how he felt about Tom. Mixed things. And like…like erogenous zone…things.

It's not like he wanted to think about Tom like that. Some days, he wasn’t even sure if he liked Tom very much. Those were the weirdest, because it was like his dick didn’t even seem to care that Tom very often had a repugnant personality and sometimes acted like he wanted Greg dead. And quite frankly, Greg had never once had any, like, serious…thoughts about someone he thought was, like, not a good person. Maybe not a great person—the bar wasn’t quite that high. But, like, at least good. And the jury was still pretty much out on Tom.

And there were plenty of other reasons, too! To immediately and politely say “You know what, no, actually! No, thank you.” whenever an invasive Tom-thought popped into his head.

One. He was his boss. So that was, man, like, red flag! Red flag number one, you know. Even back when Greg had that brief stint working at a Tim Horton’s and had that cute manager with the blonde hair in a ponytail and the really pretty smile, he’d known that one was a bad idea.

Two. He was married to Shiv. Which, he didn’t really care about, per say. Shiv was very mean, and had taken his last twenty dollars one time, and also was cheating on Tom. Or…maybe not anymore? Tom had tried explaining it to him once, but it was kind of hard to follow. But Greg was pretty sure that she definitely had, at one point, cheated. But Shiv also kind of scared the shit out of him. So there was that.

Three, he didn’t think Tom was like…well, how to put this without sounding, really unkind…um, mentally okay? Except, that was complicated, because sometimes Greg thought he kind of understood him, and that was often when the invasive Tom-thoughts were the most prolific.

And Tom did seem…well. Very attached to him. Unusually so, one might say. Unhealthily so. Greg certainly thought so. Sometimes to the point that Greg even thought he…well, that he…Or, you know what? It didn’t matter.

Tom was sort of softly clicking his tongue while chewing the gum in his mouth that Greg could smell from how close he was, and Tom untied the tie with little to no effort, but was now just sort of holding it by its two ends around Greg’s neck. He pulled it off gently, letting the fabric slide slowly against Greg’s suit jacket. Tom stared at where the tie had been.

He blinked himself out of wherever place he had gone to just then and glanced down at the pink tie now in his right hand. Then, he shoved the red tie in his left hand into Greg’s chest and just said:

“Thanks, bud.”

—and walked over to the mirror near his desk to put Greg’s tie on.

“I’ll let you know how it goes, yeah?” Tom called back over his shoulder.

“No need, I’ll be watching!” Greg assured him with a thumbs-up as he moved towards the door, knowing when it was his cue to leave.

“Oh. Great.” Tom said, with a roll of his eyes that Greg could see reflected in the mirror. But Greg only laughed.

Ewan Roy sat in his designated chair in the living room of his ranch. A cushioned, reclining brown rocking chair that Greg thought looked very comfortable, at least from where he was sitting. Not that he’d ever sat in it himself. He didn’t know and did not want to find out what happened to someone who chose to sit in Grandpa Ewan’s chair. If his grandfather weren’t such a strong advocate for gun control, he’d imagine he would have shot them. Then he’d’ve pushed their bloody corpse out of the seat and sat down with a resounding “hmph,”.

On the big-screen TV in front of them, Tom was a talking head with a pink tie beside an ATN news anchor and some investigative journalist.

“I’m sorry, but you said, Mr. Wambsgans, in your own testimony that you were at the time aware of Mr. McClintock’s reputation within the company—”

“I did not. I never—” Tom laughed a little, which seemed a little bit patronizing. Greg would mention it to him later. “I never said that. There were jokes made at his expense, but they were not—”

“You did! You did, you said…”

Grandpa Ewan shook his head with a foul-looking sneer.

“He’s a liar. A weasel, and a snake.”

Greg blinked, unsure of really the correct thing to say. “That’s…he’s…”

“He killed those women just as sure as Lester McClintock did.”

And Greg thought that metaphor was not very kind or apt, as he was reasonably certain Tom had never actually murdered somebody, but he understood the point. He found that generally, where speaking with Grandpa Ewan was concerned, it was better just to not speak at all. For safety reasons.

So why he did, in fact, speak, Greg really had no idea.

“I don’t think that’s true.” Ewan turned his head towards Greg, slowly at the sound of his voice. Visually, it reminded Greg a bit of the Crypt Keeper. “I think, just from personal experience, if Tom had actually known…you know…anything…pertinent, he would have said, you know, he would’ve wanted to do the right thing, and…have said something.”

Grandpa Ewan looked at him, as though he were attempting to gauge the dimensions of the hole he’d need to dig to bury Greg alive in it.

“Is that so? Is that what you think?”

Greg swallowed, and nodded.

“Greg!” his mom called from the kitchen. “Hey honey, come in here, please!”

Greg would need to thank his mom later, for that. He stood and pointed towards the kitchen with a nervous chuckle. “Duty calls.”

Ewan did not flinch. Greg left quickly.

On the kitchen island, Marianne Hirsch slid freshly chopped fruit into a salad bowl and shook her head.

“Please stop antagonizing him,” she said lowly. “Just, please.”

“What? What—”

“It’s bad enough, alright. He’s talking about cutting you out of the will.”

“I didn’t even—!”

“Greg. Don’t argue, just—please.” She handed him the salad bowl. “Take this out to the table.”

“’Kay.” He started walking away.

“Then set it!”

“Uh-huh!”

At night, he found himself once again sat unfortunately yet unavoidably beside Grandpa Ewan as they smoked on the back porch, Ewan with his pipe and Greg with his smushed-up pack of Dunhills.

“You’re still young yet. Thirty,” Ewan remarked, a disbelieving scoff at how young Greg was. Even though Greg didn’t feel very young. “You’re not supposed to have sold your soul at thirty.”

“I wanted more for you,” Ewan continued as he stared out at the rolling empty field. “More than indoctrination into the cult of Roy. More than to serve that rotund ball of slime you call master.”

Greg thought on this. “Tom is…not that rotund, I’d argue.”

“My brother.” Ewan set down his pipe. “But it seems like even that was too much to hope for. For my own progeny.”

Greg followed his mom’s advice. He didn’t say anything.

“When he dies—and he will die, despite what he believes—the ground will bury him, and the worms will eat at him just like everyone else. He’ll take nothing with him. But everything living, that he touched? Will be poisoned forever.”

Grandpa Ewan stood up, and looked down on him.

“Wealth is a disease, Gregory. A terminal one, that spreads. And it’s found its way into our fucking DNA.”

Ewan went inside. The porch door shut behind him. Greg stared down at his hands.

Greg did all the cocaine that was on the table, because Kendall would more than likely have called him a pussy if he didn’t, and also, it would really have been kind of a shame to not do it, you know? Like, hey, it was free!

Also, he’d be a terrible host. He had offered—or, more, well, Kendall had offered up Greg’s apartment for the house party, and Greg had of course agreed—and he just wasn’t the type of host that would turn down party favors. That would be rude.

He wasn’t sure what the party was for, per say? There had been some mention of them probably not going to jail because Kendall had crushed his testimony, but Greg still thought that, like, his own testimony was pretty bad, so it maybe seemed premature? Also Tom’s was bad, but he had to pretend like it was good, or else Tom would probably castrate him.

More than likely Kendall was just using it as an excuse to have throw a party where there was cocaine.

Roman came up behind him and smacked him upside the head while he was snorting it, so that was less than enjoyable.

He sat on the couch near Kendall while he heard him sort of go on—a little bit about the cruises thing and how great he’d been in front of congress, but then he sort of skipped right over it and went into this whole thing about tech, and that’s when Greg pretty much tuned out. Some of the girls sitting on the couch next to him kind of turned to Greg and asked him about his work. They seemed not actually very interested but Greg told them about it anyway while they mostly picked at their nails.

“So are you, like, going to jail, or what?” one asked.

“Oh, no!” Greg answered over the pumping music. “No, it’s not, like—it’s just a bunch of bullshit, you know? What’d Ken say, a—uh—witch hunt. Yeah!”

“Sad about those women, though,” another said, on his right.

“Oh, yeah, no. Super sad. Very sad. Totally.”

Tom had not come to the party even though he had sort of floated around that he might, citing Shiv as an excuse. As Greg felt, like, three different types of adrenaline flowing through him as well as the booze, he wondered if Tom was having a better night than he was.

***

Greg combs his hair back in the mirror; secures his cufflinks, one by one—ones that Tom had bought him that he’d never gotten rid of. They were nice cufflinks, so why should he?

He thinks of all the things that Tom had bought him over the years. Things he didn’t even want, despite how he’d groveled to get them. They hadn’t made him feel good, but something—some future thing that Tom would buy him, or that he might even buy for himself one day—that would do it. And money was just a really big stepladder, and you had to suffer through a lot before you finally reached the top. Once you were at the top—hoo, boy. The top was great. So much to look forward to…up there.

Look at the Roys. Look how great they all felt. Every second of every day.

Greg looks at himself in the mirror. Does a little twist in—not the nicest suit he owns, but one that was good enough. He’s more pleased with how he looks now than how he looked back then. He thinks he looks healthier. All his body used to be was a vessel to move his productivity around—from the office, to his apartment, to a restaurant, to another office, then back to his office.

It had been a silly way, he thinks. To think about a body that housed a person in it.

***

“Get in.”

“What—where—?”

“The car. Idiot, get in the car.”

Greg looked directly in front of him at the silver BMW sports car parked on the street. Sure enough, Tom clicked the keys, and the doors unlocked.

“Uh, Tom?” he asked, genuinely scared. “Did you…are you okay?”

Tom sat down, closing the door of the driver’s seat and putting on sunglasses. He sighed, resigned.

“Get in the fucking car, Gregory.”

Greg did.

“You didn’t…uh…buy this, did you?” Greg asked, fenagling his briefcase over his now-uncomfortably bent long legs and throwing it in the backseat.

“No, of course not, Greg. It’s a rental.”

“Oh, thank God. I was, like, scared for you, for a second.”

“How very thoughtful.”

Tom sped onto the street and Greg latched a white-knuckle grip onto the door handle. He got on the George Washington bridge to New Jersey, and Greg went from reasonably suspicious to entirely certain that he was being kidnapped. Although, that didn’t make much sense, because he didn’t imagine he’d go for a very high ransom.

The wind on the freeway blew Greg’s hair straight back and his tie flipped over his right shoulder. Tom seemed unbothered.

“Hey Tom? Tom! I do feel I have to ask—Where are we going?”

Tom didn’t answer. Which was par for the course on the kidnapping theory.

Tom drove maybe five, ten miles out, and finally pulled into an empty park on the other side of the Hudson. Greg stared at him, brow furrowed. Tom was just looking out at the water and the city skyline, seeming to be in deep thought. He didn’t speak for a long time.

“Have you ever loved something, Greg? I find it hard to imagine you with passion.”

Greg blinked, a little—perhaps rightfully—offended.

“I, well—”

“—Something, and you…you love it, and you want it so badly you give your whole life to it. Because your life’s not worth anything without it, it’s…tasteless and bland and so fucking asinine you want to dash your skull against the wall just to numb the pain. So you have to have it, Greg, and you cut off your own limbs one-by-one until you have it, and then you have it. But then all it does is disappoint you at every turn. You have it in your arms, and it says it doesn’t love you back. And it takes everything from you, and it guts you, and then it fucks some political analyst half your age.”

Oh. So…

“Have you ever loved something like that, Greg?”

“I…I can’t really say that I have, no.”

Tom sighed, sounding disappointed. “Of course not.”

“That sounds…really unpleasant. And not, like, very healthy?”

“Ha!” Tom forced the laugh into a weird, violent sound, probably because there was nothing really funny about it that wasn’t also really upsetting. “No, I daresay that it isn’t, Greg.”

And then Tom leaned forward in his seat and rested his arms against the steering wheel. He hunched over. Soon, Greg saw his shoulders begin to shake, just a little. The sound of the birds and the breeze was louder than whatever noises Tom was letting escape. Greg stilled. His whole body kind of felt a little sick.

“…Are you okay, Tom?”

Greg felt himself being pushed back in the seat before his brain registered that Tom had moved, and felt the mouth that was forced against his and the thumbs digging into the cheekbones on his face. And then—only then—did his brain go, oh. That’s Tom. And that’s Tom’s cologne.

The kiss—which, it wasn’t really, but Greg didn’t have another word for it—was very uncomfortable and, well, alarming. From Tom, it was hot breath and a choked-out moan and way more teeth than what Greg was strictly used to. Greg let out a little noise, because he was surprised, which he thought was very normal and appropriate. But it made Tom back off, checking Greg’s eyes but mostly still looking at his lips.

“What—no?” Tom asked him. Which struck Greg as surprisingly thoughtful. Mostly Tom just did what he wanted. For instance, he had never stopped and asked, “What? No?” when he had been pelting water bottles at Greg’s face, and Greg very clearly had not enjoyed that.

Greg blinked, mouth kind of hanging open. He probably looked a bit like a dolt, but he didn’t really have time to think about that. He was too busy thinking—Yes? I mean, yes, right? Possibly yes?

“I—no, I was…it’s cool, I was, just um…a little, uh…”

Tom started kissing Greg again. And he could just say, well, the kissing got a lot better from there. So that made the decision a lot easier.

Tom’s hands relaxed a little. It felt a lot less like a velociraptor was clawing at his face. He eased up on the teeth, and Greg started kissing back at that point, because that’s, you know, what one did. When being kissed and not…entirely opposed to the idea. There was tongue. There were a lot of wet mouth sounds, which was kind of nice, and Greg sort of vaguely recalled what making out with someone felt like. It had been probably longer than normal since he’d done it, and he hoped he wasn’t out of practice.

Wait. Fuck. He was making out with Tom.

That was probably not good.

By the time the thought had come, Tom was separating from him, and Greg thought maybe that was it. But Tom was reaching down. Pulling Greg’s shirt out of his waistband. Unbuckling his belt pretty goddamn dexterously.

“Oh, fuck—” and Greg’s head hit the seat rest. Tom, watching him, reached into his boxer-briefs and grabbed hold of him, firm and demanding and very Tom—Greg couldn’t escape that fact even if he closed his eyes, even if he wanted to—and he gripped him at his base and tugged him up and down with abandon, with one very clear goal that he was trying to reach, as efficiently as possible.

And, in that sense, he supposed this whole outing was probably a marked success for Tom. Because Greg came, like, not embarrassingly fast, but maybe one tier above it. With a stupid little whine and a drawn-out moan that he would very much never like to hear played back to him.

Tom pulled out napkins from the glove compartment and sort of unceremoniously dumped them into Greg’s hand. He settled back into the driver’s seat, adjusting his suit jacket. But Greg needed, like, way more time than that? He hoped Tom understood that. Because he was breathing very heavy and still had not had time to process even maybe a tenth of the events that had just occurred.

Tom let him clean himself up, at least. But then he started driving away, back towards the city.

It’s not that Greg didn’t have questions. Because he was, he thought, a very sane person, and had many. But he had no clue how to ask any of them, and Tom wasn’t talking. So instead, the ride was silent.

Tom dropped him off in front of his apartment. Greg got out, turned and leaned down. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, nervous like a teenager after a first date. And because he was still sort of riding on the high of his orgasm, played the only hand he had.

“Do you wanna, like…uh, come up? Maybe?”

Tom side-eyed him with somewhat of an amused look. He gave Greg something between a scoff and a laugh, and drove off.

Greg grinned to himself, through the walk inside and all the way up the elevator.

The next time he had sex with Tom was very much a surprise to him. Mostly because the first time had seemed to Greg, after he’d had time to think about it a bit, to be more of a power thing. Which was a little disappointing, but he could deal with it, you know? He was fine. He’d been around the block before. He’d had the odd tryst with a “straight” guy, back in college, and he knew what came next was about a week or so of intentional distancing, followed by strange looks when Greg tried to bring up anything about it, followed by an aggressive encounter of vehement denial that would probably result in Greg getting hit, knowing Tom.

None of that occurred.

Instead, there was a Roy-family outing the following week to one of Waystar’s amusement parks, that was of course not actually a family outing but a series of business meetings of which Greg was obviously not invited to. Tom was, to some of them, which was why Greg was even present.

Shiv was out of town. DC, Tom had said. She was always in DC.

Seeing Tom and speaking with him was unavoidable in the context of work. But Greg wasn’t sure how he had found himself leisurely strolling with him through the park rides and vendor stalls. Tom had taken a turn somewhere, distancing them from the rest of the family, and well, here they were.

“I used to work at one of these. For like, a day,” Greg admitted. He didn’t know why, really. He expected to get all of a dry, “How very interesting, Greg,”, and then nothing more. But Tom just said—

“Yeah?”

“I was a mascot. I vomited through the suit and they fired me.”

Tom choked out a laugh. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, no. No, Greg. Don’t ever tell anyone that story again,” Tom said, still sort of laughing.

“No, just you.”

Tom gave him side-eye again. Greg wondered what he was thinking.

“What are you thinking?” Greg asked. Thinking, maybe he could just ask questions like that now. And it would be okay.

The corners of Tom’s mouth picked up. He kicked the gravel beneath him with his expensive shoes.

“I’m thinking…” Tom looked around carefully and bit at his bottom lip. “I’m thinking you owe me one, Greg.”

Greg stopped walking. Some of his voice got lost in the journey up his vocal cords.

“O-oh.”

Tom crowds him, hands stuffed in his pockets, cornering Greg back against a tall fence.

“You think?” Tom waggled his eyebrows. “Would you like that? Do you want to owe me one, Greg?”

“I’d be—” Greg thought he sort of nodded. “Yeah.”

And so that was sort of how it happened, that Greg found himself laying back on a hotel room bed in just his underwear, Tom climbing over him.

With his suit still on, Tom reached into his pocket back and pulled out something pink. Greg blinked down at it.

“Is that my tie? Dude, I was looking for that.”

It was, but Tom didn’t answer except with a smirk. He just grabbed Greg’s two long arms and pulled them up above his head, wrapping and tying the tie around his wrists. Not in any really tight way, just enough so that it was there, and Greg could pretend he couldn’t move if he wanted to.

Tom began frantically working at his belt and zipper, and Greg relaxed his jaw and throat a bit and psyched himself up for the ordeal—which didn’t take much as he was very fucking hard and leaking and excited about the whole situation in general. Tom pushed his underwear down and took his cock out and slid it carefully between Greg’s open lips. Tom let out a breath and a moan that it sounded like he’d been holding for twenty years. One of his hands gripped Greg by the hair, and the other reached back up and grabbed at the tie as he began fucking Greg’s mouth.

“Fuck—"

And that was all the encouragement Greg needed, pretty much. He hummed around Tom’s dick, which had Tom basically sobbing, and Greg was so turned on at this point that it didn’t even matter when Tom came probably faster than Greg had the first time. There wasn’t really a warning that came with it, but that was okay, because Greg probably would’ve swallowed anyway.

After a minute of Tom breathing kinda heavy, he pulled out and moved to put a knee underneath Greg’s crotch and just let him grind against him until Greg was coming with a long groan, and Greg felt so fucking invigorated by the whole thing that he leaned up and kissed him again. If Tom had misgivings about kissing Greg when his dick had just been in his mouth, he seemed to get over them pretty quickly, because then they were back to making out after that. And anyway, this was Tom, who’d swallowed his own load that one time, so it’d be kinda hypocritical.

Tom, still with his tongue down his throat, untied him and took the tie and stuffed it back in his pocket, like the trophies of girls’ panties that the football players would keep in high school. Greg thought that it was maybe the hottest thing that anyone had ever done—to him, anyway—and wondered if Tom knew that the thought made his toes curl, or if he just did it unthinking, because he wanted to. But he couldn’t ask, because he and Tom were still kissing and moaning into each other’s mouths.

Greg had not done this much making out with people he’d strictly had sex with before. He wondered if it was considered normal.

The word “affair” didn’t mean much to him, because it didn’t really seem like one. Not at first. Affairs were, like, big things. Someone had an affair, that was a big deal. Especially when it was someone important, like the president, or a movie star, or…or… the chairman of ATN News Network.

Greg mentally scratched out that last one. Uh, whoops.

But what he and Tom were doing wasn’t that. At least, he didn’t think? The first two encounters felt kinda like, if you really squinted, and were kind of toxically masculine and heterosexual, you could pass it off as “bros helping bros”, or something dumb that Tom would probably say.

Except for that Tom never said that. Tom never said anything. Maybe it was because by the third, fourth and fifth time, he felt as Greg did, that it was probably too late to deny that it had ever happened. But it’s still like they’re in sexual limbo. Because it wasn’t, like, wrong, other than that Tom was his boss and could definitely lose his job over it. But morally speaking, Shiv had sex with other people, too, and had given Tom “an express ticket to fuck whomever he pleased”, so it definitely wasn’t cheating. But with all the sneaking around, it very much still felt that way.

And admittedly, he didn’t…quite know for certain how Shiv would feel about it being Greg that Tom chose to spend his express ticket to Fucktown on. Like, they had an arrangement, but did that arrangement cover your wife’s cousin? An important caveat, perhaps, that had been overlooked when they sat down to write out that contract.

And that was the other thing that came to mind. Historically, “affairs” didn’t, uh…end very well?

So all those were contributing factors as to why Greg thought “sexual limbo” was probably fine. He could live there happily enough. It’s not cheating, but it’s a secret. It’s not cheating, but it’s a secret. It should be his new mantra. It made things a lot simpler in his head.

There was also another thought in his head. And that thought, or thoughts, was the potential short and long-term career benefits of sleeping with his boss. And Greg didn’t necessarily like that he was thinking about that, but he sort of had to. It was almost weird not to. Shit, Tom might even think it was weird if he didn’t ask for a raise or a nicer office here pretty soon. Because then why was he even doing it? What, just for sex? With Tom? That seemed…odd?

Whatever. Maybe it didn’t even matter. It had been over a week since they’d done anything, anyway. Timing just hadn’t been right. And Greg didn’t know how much longer he should really expect this to continue.

His phone buzzed. Tom was calling. From just down the hall, but that made sense. Tom rarely came into his office anymore. Too much off an occupational hazard, he’d said.

He and Tom had just got done securing this up-and-coming streaming service in a big acquisition deal for ATN. Or, more accurately, Tom had secured a big acquisition deal after Greg had sort of given him the idea, and then Greg had followed him around while he went into meetings and did the actual, you know, acquiring. And Logan had been pleased. Which meant that Tom was pleased.

Or, as it turned out, more than pleased. Before Greg could so much as say “hello”, it was—

“Shiv’s gone. Three-day trip out to Vancouver.”

“Oh. Well—”

“And guess who just got their hands on a little baggy of pure from good ol’ Kenny-Ken-Ken? Or, not pure, obviously. But it might as fucking well be.”

“Is…is it you?”

“Haha! You’re goddamn right, Greg! You’re goddamn right it is. God, I feel high already. Come over. Tonight. Yeah?

Greg kind of stilled. It’s not…cheating. Even though that really, really, really felt like—

And then Tom’s voice went a little lower. “Because I’m gonna snort a line of cocaine off your fucking cock. How does that sound?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, sure. Can’t wait.”

“Great.”

Tom yanked him into the apartment by the arm as soon as he’d showed up, and had crowded Greg against the door and dropped to his knees in front of him.

“God, I fucking missed you,” Tom swore—either to Greg or to Greg’s dick—as he shoved Greg’s pants down.

“Yeah, yeah, I missed—oh—"

—and that’s where Tom blew him. And snorted a line of cocaine off his cock. Which was harder to do practically than perhaps Tom had anticipated, but with some teamwork, they made Tom’s short-term dream a reality.

After the snorting of the cocaine, there was a long come-down wherein Greg expressed a desire for Chinese food, which had Tom wrinkling his nose—or maybe that was the coke—but they settled on a nicer, authentic-looking place with good enough reviews that they were both happy.

Tom brought the food into the bedroom, which Greg found a little unexpected. First because Shiv seemed like the person to have strict rules about that sort of thing. Second because…it was Tom and Shiv’s bed. And Greg’s eyes kind of went a little haywire at that. But he didn’t say anything about it to Tom, and they ate on the bed anyway.

“You don’t ever talk about, like, your family ever,” Greg mentioned to him through bites of egg roll. Greg asked this because of the way Tom had laughed when Greg talked about himself, before he was rich. And because of the photo album Shiv had pulled out that Christmas. And because he wondered if they could talk about these things now—this bond they had had from the start that had gone unspoken because there was always someone else in earshot.

Tom’s chewing got slower. He swallowed.

“What’s there to talk about?”

Greg shrugged. “I don’t know. But you never talk about, like…Minnesota, right? You spent, like, half your life there.”

Tom pushed around his General Tso’s chicken with his chopsticks.

“Well, of course I don’t like to talk about it, Greg.”

“Do you, like…not talk to your family?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

Tom’s head snapped up. “Are we playing twenty questions? Are you giving me the third degree, what is this?”

“No,” Greg blinked. “We don’t have to talk about it.” And then, smaller: “Sorry.”

Greg bit his lip. He should shut up now. He really should. But—

“Like, my dad left us when I was ten. And I haven’t talked to him hardly at all since then. Which, if I think about it, I’m still kind of sad about, because from what I remember of him, he was a very good dad. He, like, took me sledding and stuff. But also I was ten. So I don’t know if I was the best judge of character.”

Tom sort of dropped his chopsticks in the little take-out container and looked at Greg, for a moment, as if he had sprouted a third arm or something. And he blinked. Greg didn’t know what any of that meant.

But Greg thought about how his dad was also gay, and had cheated on his mom with a man, and how that probably said something profound that he’d rather not think about, frankly, about Greg’s own lifestyle choices? And he thought on a hunch that maybe it’d be best if he didn’t share that part with Tom.

Tom sighed. “Well,” he started. “Let’s see. Thomas David Wambsgans was born to Michael and Patricia Wambsgans in 1979 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His mother was a lawyer. His father was an insurance salesman. He had a happy childhood. His parents are still married. They retired in Florida.”

“It makes for a very boring Wikipedia entry, Gregory. You can see why I don’t talk about it.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t, like—” Greg stopped. “Sorry.”

Tom frowned. “What?”

“No, I was just…” Greg sighed. “You weren’t, like, rich, though. Like, you didn’t…”

“Oh,” Tom said, kind of darkly. “Right.”

“I mean, neither was I, really! I mean, we were okay,” Greg rushed to explain. “Things got weird when Dad left. Mom had trouble finding work. We lived in a nice house and all, but we kinda had to save a lot. And then I had trouble finding work, and my mom kind of cut me off, and—”

“No, Greg. I was not rich. Mom didn’t become a lawyer until I was in high school. And there was quite a bit of debt.”

Tom spun his beer around in his hand.

“And it’s not so much that I don’t talk to them as…they don’t talk to me. It’s a tepid relationship. They still love me very much, their only son, but disappointment…is something parents take to the grave.”

This was one of those moments, Greg thought. He understood Tom. At least right now. He really, really did.

“Thanks,” Greg said, kind of quiet. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh,” Tom said, also kind of quiet, and staring at him. “Can I fuck you?”

Greg’s breath got lost somewhere. That wasn’t…he didn’t…uh. He didn’t think Tom would want that. Ever.

“I haven’t, um, finished my egg roll,” was what he said, only because he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Greg, fuck your egg roll.”

“You want to…? Like…now?”

“Yes. I’d really like to fuck you. Right now. Please.”

He didn’t think Tom had ever told him please in his life. So, naturally, Greg agreed. Because he was getting to be very easy.

They moved all the food off the bed. Tom had lube and condoms, which once again, Greg thought of as being pretty thoughtful. And Tom even admitted—

“I’ve never actually done this before, Greg, you know, I just…”

Greg grabbed his cock and kissed him and hoped that reassured him.

Tom seemed to know enough, though, to get lube on his fingers and stretch Greg out first (Maybe through research? Greg was going to save that thought for later when he was jerking off alone). Greg had to reach down and kind of guide him through it a little, and tell him that no, two probably wasn’t enough, but Tom seemed very attentive and eager to learn. Two adjectives Greg did not normally associate with Tom. He also seemed very concerned as to whether or not Greg was enjoying himself.

“Do you…? Is this…?”

And Greg nodded, tilting his head back on the pillow. And it really was. Good. He moaned when Tom crooked his fingers a little, as he very quickly seemed to be getting the hang of it. Tom’s eyes seemed to light up then, and he leaned down and started sucking on Greg’s neck. His other hand moved to throttle Greg’s dick.

“Yeah, you like that, don’t you? God, you fucking love that. Taking it like my cock.”

“Tom? I’m—I think I’m…good. Like I’m ready. Please, can you…”

“Jesus.” And Tom sounded, like, actually flustered.

Tom was slow on the first thrust. Really, as Greg felt his dick enter him with all the careful pace of a doctor performing surgery, Greg just assumed it was because, you know, he’d never fucked another man before, which was very understandable. But then every push and pull afterwards was so long and kind of diabolically slow that Greg became sure it was intentional. And it made him so sensitive to every single little movement and it felt so, so crazy, like…oh, God. Oh, fuck.

He'd thought sex with Tom would be way more like it was in the sports car. Means to an end type stuff, with a lot more of Tom asking him for blow jobs and trying to get Greg to call him Daddy. Which, there was some of that still, you know…peppered throughout. And Greg was even kind of into some of it. Not the Daddy part. But that was not…man, that was not this. This was getting hit by a train and laid out flat type shit.

Tom leaned down and caught his mouth, pulling him into a very messy kiss that moved as he thrusted. The kiss lasted so long and was so uncoordinated that sometimes it felt like all they were doing was sharing a single breath back and forth between them, and somehow Greg found that hotter than kissing?

Tom finally started picking up speed. He grabbed Greg’s thighs and pulled them up higher. As soon as Tom pulled away from Greg’s lips, Greg was groaning and moaning like some back-alley whore probably.

“I want you,” Tom said. “I wanted you so bad. First time I saw…Tell me you—”

Tom’s thoughts kept getting cut off by his groans and rapidly approaching orgasm, but Greg got the idea.

“Yeah. Yeah, I want you, I want you Tom, really—so—please—"

The words just came out, and Greg meant them, obviously, but they also really sounded like something else. He didn’t know what, and was about to come, so he didn’t care.

Tom started jerking him off, and Greg came first. Tom followed, coming in the condom with a moan like a thunderclap.

Tom’s bulky form collapsed between Greg’s legs and he found his lips again. And Tom was still inside him, and the kissing was lazy, and went on, and on, and on. And then Tom’s hand came up, sort of idly, and traced his ear. Pushed a strand of sweaty hair out of his face. Because face-touching was now on the table and he was curious, Greg cupped Tom’s jaw. Put his thumb on his mouth and Tom wrapped his lips around it, and it was so warm it made Greg feel like he could start crying—and oh. Oh, fuck.

Well. That’s an affair.

Greg had kind of a weird few weeks after that.

Shiv came back, and Tom got very busy with work all of a sudden. And then Greg walked in on, what he could only presume from the brief flash he saw before he was screamed out of the room, was Shiv giving Tom a blow job in his office. So maybe…not so busy with work, then.

Tom didn’t, like, apologize or anything afterwards. Which Greg didn’t expect him to, of course. But it still felt weird, maybe, that it wasn’t addressed at all? There wasn’t even an opportunity presented for a conciliatory blow job, which would have made Greg feel a little better.

And Greg was pretty, like, peeved by the whole thing. And, like, still very horny because things with Tom had like, escalated and then completely shut down for a week. And so there was…an incident. Wherein there was a small office party, and Tom was sort of politely mingling while Greg was off to the side with a beer as he normally was at social functions, and Greg was bored, and so he took out his phone and stared at the dark screen.

He turned it on and flipped to Tom’s contact.

“you look so fkn good asfhsksf” he typed. And it was true. Tom did. Tom usually did, in Greg’s eyes, but right now he wasn’t even wearing a suit jacket, and his sleeves were pulled up, which looked distinctly masculine, and Greg thought that was hotter than, like, God. But probably…probably he was just very horny.

But that bit was tame. And if he had stopped there, it probably would’ve been fine.

“so hot. Wanna rub myself on ur fucking thigh until I cum in my pants.”

“we could go to ur office. no 1 would see. u could bend me over your desk and fck me”

“& then i’ll blow you & let u cum in my mouth”

The last one was a little on the nose, but he was getting antsy. And desperate. Tom wasn’t looking at his phone. Greg decided on a last resort.

Eggplant emoji. Drops emoji.

Greg put his phone down and watched Tom from across the room. He was in the middle of a conversation with two newscasters. Clearly there came a point when his phone was vibrating so much that he had to hold up a finger to excuse himself so he could check it, and Greg’s eyes lit up.

He saw Tom still a bit when he brought up the screen. He couldn’t gauge his reaction from where he was, or tell if he was getting hard. Tom quickly put the phone away.

He said something to the two anchors and turned away, now walking towards Greg, drink in hand and an unreadable look on his face. Greg stood frantically and swallowed.

Tom grabbed him firmly by the shoulder, pulling him off a little to the side where no one could hear. He got real close. Whispering, wearing an incredibly thin and performative smile on his face so that anyone looking on would have no idea what they were talking about, Tom said—

“Greg.”

“Tom,” he answered.

“Do you want both our heads on spikes, decorating the ATN building? Hm?”

Greg frowned. “Well—No.”

“Okay. Well, if you ever text me some shit like that again, I’ll fucking dump your body in the Hudson River.”

Tom patted him on the shoulder, and went back to his conversation.

So, there was that.

And then there was the, um, well. Then there was the yacht. When Greg thought he and Tom were definitely both getting fired and going to jail. But then they weren’t getting fired or going to jail, and so that was pretty good. But then Kendall was probably going to jail, which really sucked. He liked Kendall. Kendall had given him a really nice apartment, and talked to him…kind of like a human being, and had done coke with him even though it was really bad coke and Kendall had told him that. And so he told Kendall on the plane ride back to New York that he really didn’t think his dad forcing him to go to jail for something he didn’t do (when in fact it was something that Greg did, but he didn’t say that part) wasn’t very morally upstanding of him.

And somehow that turned into Greg being an accessory to a corporate revolution. Maybe. It wasn’t, like, set in stone yet. He had his misgivings. He was…uh, exploring his options, if you will. He liked Kendall, but Kendall had sort of tried something like this before? Not with a super great track record? And also, would Tom stop talking to him if he went with Kendall? Like, would he see that as a betrayal? That would be bad. Like, yeah, Uncle Logan was probably evil and all, and “revolution” was a very sexy, very exciting word, but there was just a lot to think about here. A lotta…a lot of stakes at play.

But then he started thinking a little bit about what Ewan had said. About selling his soul by the age of thirty.

Or, less like “thinking”, really. More like it would haunt him at night while he was turning over restless in his sleep. And less like “a little bit”, and more like…well, like a lot. And while one would think that would make the decision way easier, the more he turned over in his sleep a lot about it, the worse the whole week got, because both options started to leave him with just a generally sick, super awful feeling in the pit of his stomach. And that was not helpful. And then, a couple days later, his mom called.

And Grandpa Ewan had died.

And Tom had the worst timing for his first call in a week.

“Please tell me you’re alone right now. Fuck. I wanna tear your fucking pants off, bend you in half and—”

“Tom?” Greg said, kind of weakly, and after a poorly timed sniffle.

“…Greg?”

“Hey, Tom. Um…”

“Wh—” Then Tom’s voice got quieter, slightly higher in pitch, and less harsh. Had a way different tone to it. Greg thought he’d heard him use it around Shiv most of the time. “Hey, what’s…what’s going on?”

“Oh, n-nothing much. Um. My grandpa died.”

Tom sighed. “Ewan—Oh. Shit. Are you at home?”

“Um, yeah.”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

“I-It’s fine, you don’t have to—”

“In ten, Greg.”

Tom was there in nine. He found Greg sitting on his floor with his back against his couch. There was no point in trying to hide that he’d been crying, since he’d been transparently doing it on the phone. He imagined that his whole face was probably red.

Tom looked sort of hesitant, but Greg appreciated that he was here, anyhow. Then Tom kneeled down next to him and started touching his hair, just sort of in silence at first. He wondered if Tom remembered what he had said once, about comfort, and his head being touched.

“Greg? What do you want me to…?”

“It’s cool. You don’t need to do anything.”

“Uh-huh. Come on, Greg. Give me something.”

“Okay. I’d really like some weed. Like I’d really like a joint, thanks.”

“Where?”

“There’s a baggy in my nightstand.”

Tom left to go grab it from his bedroom. Greg picked at the wood paneling on the floor with his fingernails.

His earliest memory of Grandpa Ewan was getting on a train together. He thinks he sat in his lap. Ewan pointed out the window at all these old, like, historical buildings. Talked all about them. On and on. He thinks…he thinks maybe he sung to him once?

Tom came back with two joints and a lighter. He fit one into Greg’s mouth and another into his own, and leaned in to light Greg’s first.

Greg thought Tom looked objectively ridiculous, as a forty-year-old man sitting on the floor in a full suit smoking a joint. It made him want to kiss him so bad.

“So.” Tom began, coughing a little and trying to hide it. “What shall we talk about, Greg? What would make you feel better?”

“Anything but…you know. Please. At least, like, right now.”

“Great,” he said. “So. You kept some of those papers I told you to burn.”

“Y-yeah.”

Tom nodded. He didn’t look mad.

“Piece of shit,” he said. “That was smart.”

Greg was kind of sorry he did it now. But it didn’t seem like Tom really wanted him to be sorry.

“So. Are you following Kendall to war now? His top lieutenant? You know, Logan will flay you alive if he finds out where you’ve been spending your evenings, little Gregory. That is, of course, assuming what Logan thinks of you will matter once this is all over. Maybe he’ll be living under some bridge once Ken’s done with him, boiling his own piss and sleeping inside a hollowed-out carcass for warmth. Seems unlikely, but a girl can dream.”

Greg looked down. He shook his head.

“I don’t know. I don’t think…I just, um…I feel kind of sick, right now. About work.”

“Okay. Fine. No dead grandpa, no work. So, what do you want to talk about?”

“No, like…I think…I think I might quit.”

“…so, Kendall, then?”

“No, like, quit quit.”

Tom blinked. His mouth did a weird thing, and then he kind of laughed.

“What?”

Greg just stared back at him blankly. He didn’t know how else to explain what he meant by ‘quitting’, seeing as it was a word in the English language like any other.

Tom craned his neck forward, confused. “And…go back to what? Puking in mascot costumes? No.”

“Those aren’t the only two jobs in the world, you know. Executive assistant or theme park mascot.”

“Yeah, but they fucking might as well be, Greg.”

Greg frowned. “You know I’m a history major?”

“Fuck off. That’s not real. You didn’t say that.”

“I…I mean, I am a h—”

“Greg, I’m going to light myself on fire.”

Greg decided to drop it.

“You’re not quitting,” Tom said, shaking his head like he was willing it out of his brain. “You’re not gonna quit, Greg.”

Greg wasn’t really sure what Tom wanted him to say here, but it sure looked like Tom wanted him to say something.

“Sure. You’re right. Um, probably not.” Greg said, mostly listless. “Can we, like…I don’t mean to sound, uh, um…whorish? But can we please have sex? Of some kind? Like, literally any sex would do.”

Tom’s face split into a grin. A joke was on the tip of his tongue—Greg could tell. Some vaguely unkind, teasing rib that would be indiscernible from sexual harassment. But it didn’t come. Maybe Tom felt that this was not the time or place. Which would be a first, and very alarming.

“Yeah?” Tom leaned forward, plucking the joint from Greg’s mouth and putting it out on the ashtray on the coffee table. “You sure?”

It sounded very much like Tom was trying to disguise his extreme interest in the idea.

“Yes, please.”

Tom stood and offered Greg a hand up. Greg leaned on him to stand, and that turned into kissing as soon as their mouths were at an equal height. They walked a little, past the kitchen and in the general direction of the bedroom, but in between those places Greg was pushed up against the counter with Tom’s hands tearing at his shirt and they started to lose the plot of where they were headed.

And that’s also when Greg kind of choked a little. An unexpected little sobbing noise into Tom’s mouth that had the older man flinching backwards, that turned quickly into hyperventilating, red-faced crying. And all that was in his head, suddenly, was death, and dirt, and worms, and disease, and sold your soul at thirty. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck—

“Oh, shit—” Tom exclaimed, because yeah, that would be a bit of a shocker.

“F-fuck—fuck, I’m so-sorry—” Greg breathed, rubbing his eyes and blinking constantly like he had fucking allergies and sniffling rapidly so his nose didn’t run.

Tom got him tissues. And water. And they didn’t have sex.

He took a train back home for the funeral. And he watched in the window as the mountain-tall skyscrapers of New York City were exchanged for dense forests and old buildings.

Tom had offered to come with him, which was yet another addition to the list of things that were uncharacteristically, perhaps disturbingly kind of him. But Greg had to inform him that outlined quite explicitly in Grandpa Ewan’s last wishes was that Logan, along with all his children and their spouses, were barred from attending. Greg was merely surprised that he, himself, had not made it onto that list as a final, small addendum at the very bottom, written curtly in ink.

His mom was, as to be expected, very disappointed that he’d been written out of the will. But Greg didn’t find that it was in him to care as much as he once did. He was okay with it. As okay as one could be, anyway. If he just pretended that the money didn’t and had never existed, then he didn’t have to think about it so much.

Greg really hated open caskets, though. Looking at a dead body reminded him too much of his own mortality, and that idea really bothered him. Especially when the dead body was Grandpa Ewan, for whom mortality was one of his all-time favorite talking subjects, along with the manmade horror of war and the predatory nature of capitalism. Not great at parties, that guy.

But also, a pretty okay grandpa. When it had mattered, of course. When he was a kid. And it’s that which Greg remembered the most, staring down at his, well, powdered corpse.

Later, Greg’s dad showed up.

Sort of near the end though, in a respectful way, so that his mom didn’t have to really see him. He came in during the very loud bagpipes. And he kind of just stood in the back.

It made sense. His dad and Grandpa Ewan had been kinda close, he remembered. Very much to the chagrin of his mother. It didn’t stop Greg from getting the shock of his life, though, staring back at him wide-eyed and blinking.

All Greg could do throughout the whole ceremony was stare at him. Like he’d done when he was a kid, thinking about how cool his dad was, and how he wanted to be as tall as him some day, and wear a watch like him, and comb his hair like him, and have a really nice smile like him. He looked a lot the same, even now. Maybe even better. A lot older. But like, less tired, maybe.

The only time Greg didn’t look at him was when they were lowering the casket into the ground. And Greg tried not to think about worms again. He did think about something else Grandpa Ewan had said though, about not taking anything with you. Ewan didn’t really have anything to begin with. Except his chair, and his walking cane. Neither made it into the box with him.

But he was right. They lowered you into the ground, and that was it. Then everyone sort of turned away, and went about their lives.

Greg went to his dad first, after everything was over. Mostly because there was no one else to talk to, and his mom was busy being comforted by relatives Greg didn’t know.

He sort of sauntered over awkwardly, hands in his coat pockets and rocking back and forth on his heels. He saw his mom look over, and the look she gave kind of scared him, but he needed to talk to his dad, and he hoped she could understand that.

“Uh. Hey.” Greg’s eyes flitted between his shoes and his dad’s face.

It was his dad. To whom he left voicemails twice a year—once on Christmas, and once on his birthday. His dad would call back, in the wee morning hours when he knew Greg wouldn’t pick up, and leave something short, like, “Hey, sport, got your message! Good to hear from ya,”. But he was here. Like, in front of him.

His dad smiled, tenuously.

“Hey, sport,” he said. Then, sort of pathetically: “Long time, no see.”

Greg kind of hated him for that. But also kind of loved him, too. It was a weird flood of conflicting emotions that a younger Greg might not have understood. But thirty-year-old Greg very much did. He had experience. With hating and loving things kind of in equal measure.

“You want me…” Tom shook his head and squinted, completely not understanding. “What?”

“To, you know…” Greg picked idly at the skin of his hand. They were both naked in bed, but Greg somehow felt naked-er. “Come with me.”

“…To go and stay with your dad for a week,” Tom reiterated. “In Canada.”

“You have, like, vacation days saved up and stuff, don’t you?”

“Yes, Greg, to go to Venice with my wife.” Tom said, and Greg started to feel very stupid and childish for having asked. Tom even laughed a little. “Not to go meet the estranged parents of my mistress. Besides, I, like…I can’t. I can’t take a week off, Greg, that would be…unheard of.”

“Well, look, just—fine. Forget it, i-it was just an idea.” Greg turns over and moves to reach for his clothes on the floor. Of course. It was a stupid idea. It really was. Tom had a wife. A wife. Sometimes, it was like Greg didn’t even live in the real world anymore. This thing with Tom had done that to him.

“Hey. Come on. Don’t be like that,” Tom chastised, and Greg found himself listening, and dropping his clothes again. Which…he didn’t know why. He didn’t like that he just…backed down. Obeyed, as almost second nature. It didn’t even sound like Tom saying it. Not really. Greg wondered how many times Shiv had turned to Tom and said, “Hey, Tom. Don’t be like that.” He wondered if Tom liked it any more than Greg did.

“In what world would I be able to come with you, anyway? What could you possibly say to that man to make that okay?” Tom asked.

Greg twiddled his thumbs in his lap. “I said…you know, that I…I mean, that I…was seeing someone.”

“Oh. Right.” Tom laughed again. “And I’m sure that’ll go over well when the forty-year-old, married man shows up—”

“Well, the thing about that, Tom, is that my dad’s gay.”

Greg turned, wanting to see the reaction. He watched the wheels turn in Tom’s head. It was almost fascinating.

“Huh,” Tom said, voice betraying nothing. “Really?”

Greg nodded.

It did not escape him, in that moment, that the word “gay” had never been uttered before while he and Tom were naked.

“So, it…you know,” Greg started. “Would probably be okay.”

“Right, but…” Tom rationalized, gears in his brain still chugging away. “Would he not know who I am?”

“He, like, um…doesn’t own a TV? So maybe not.”

“What, is he a quaker?”

“No, like…kind of a hippie.”

“Right, well. It’s always one of the two.”

“But even if he did, like…I don’t, uh…I don’t think he’d say anything, Tom.”

“You don’t think?”

“Well, the thing is, he…doesn’t really have ground to stand on, when it comes to, like, cheating on your wife—”

“I’m not cheating on my wife,” Tom said, “Greg, so. Doesn’t really apply.”

Greg didn’t say anything. He looked at Tom for a long time. Then he looked down at the sheets.

“Okay. Then, um.” Greg swallowed. “Then, yeah. I guess you’re not coming then.”

Greg does start pulling on his underwear and pants, now.

“You know I can’t.”

“Well, because you’re not gay, and you’re not cheating on your wife! So there’d really be no reason to,” Greg throws over his shoulder.

“Greg,” said Tom. “Greg.”

Greg doesn’t say anything or turn around. Just pulls his sweater back over him and leaves.

He didn’t leave…the apartment, though. He should have. He probably, definitely should have. But it was kind of late. And it was raining out. So Greg just sat on the couch in the living room with his sweater pulled over his knees.

And surely Tom knew he was still here, because there was no sound of the front door closing. And he wanted, really, was for Tom to come out of the bedroom and sit next to him, and crack some joke that would make Greg forget about the…the fight? Was it a fight?

It wouldn’t make it all better. It would still kind of feel like shit. But in the moment, it’d be okay.

Tom didn’t leave the bedroom for another ten or fifteen minutes. He walked down the stairs in his shirt and boxers. He sat down next to Greg. When he spoke, his voice sounded really thick.

“Do you want to know the terrible, ugly truth?” Tom asked. Greg didn’t know that he did, really.

Tom continued anyway.

“Is that I am…terrified of Shiv finding out. I think she’d skin me alive. I think she’d skin you alive. Not because she cared. But because she…doesn’t really want me to be happy.”

And it sounded like it took a lot, for Tom to say that. As though he were saying things that he didn’t really know until he said them. Tom was quiet, taking it all in.

But Greg cocked his head. Because all he could think of was—

“…Are you happy, Tom?”

Tom was still. And still quiet. He breathed.

“Would this…me going with you, to your dad’s, would it…would it mean a lot to you?”

Greg nodded. In the silhouette of the dark living room, Tom watched him nod.

“Then I’ll make it work,” Tom said. And then he stood, bracing himself on his knees, and went to go get water from the kitchen.

Greg did love Tom. He did. Not with, like, a question mark at the end, but not with an exclamation point, either.

He loved him.

***

He's out the door after dawn. He had planned to sneak out without waking anyone. He thought it’d be polite. He’d had practice with Tom, who often slept in on the weekends when Shiv was out of town, and Greg would let him do it without mentioning anything about it. He’d thought it was an endearing quality, actually. That Tom would do something for himself, because he wanted to.

But as he munches on toast, he hears rousing footsteps upstairs, and figures it’s better to say something.

Greg calls up the stairs. “Hey, uh, I’m leaving!”

“Okay, be safe!” his dad’s voice calls back.

Greg pauses. He’s a few steps to the door before he thinks better on it.

“Love you!” he shouts.

“Love you, too.” Is echoed back.

***

Tom kept it simple for him. He didn’t say what he told Shiv, or how he managed the week off of work, or, God forbid, what he said to Logan. He just showed up at Greg’s apartment that Sunday morning in his sunglasses with the…oh, God. The BMW. He even threw him the keys after he got out to help Greg with his bags. That same BMW.

“You want to drive, shithead? I have no idea where I’m going.”

So many things were inescapably jarring. Tom was in a white polo shirt and fitted khakis. Tom sat, almost contentedly, in the passenger’s seat. Tom turned on the radio, and Tom sang along to the fucking Eagles.

Tom wasn’t wearing his wedding ring.

It almost felt wrong. Like Greg had taken a fish out of water. More. Worse. Like he was seeing something the universe had never intended, and was surely hastily working to correct; Tom would pop out of existence in a moment, only to be relocated back to his office, doing paperwork in a stuffy-looking suit. It felt like something dirty, that he should cover his eyes for, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop looking.

His dad lived in a nice-looking cabin that was off the main road on the edge of the Laurentian mountains, with a lake basically in his backyard. But the house wasn’t too big, either. Just one guest bedroom. His dad lived alone, and had told him at the funeral that the space was “all I need, you know?”. When they saw it from the road, Tom had described it as “quaint”, which was just on the verge of being derogatory.

They pulled into the lot. Tom put his hand on Greg’s knee. Again, Greg’s eyes were drawn to the light patch of skin where a ring wasn’t.

“Okay, what’s the game plan? We get in there, and I’m…what?”

“Huh?” Greg asked, dumb and thinking about a ring.

“I’m…what…?” Tom stared Greg in the eyes, almost begging him to get something. “What…am I, Greg?”

“Oh,” Greg said, understanding. “Oh. Well, you don’t…you don’t have to be…anything, Tom. You don’t have to say you’re, you know…anything.”

Tom nodded. “Right. Okay. Yeah. Good. That works.”

His dad opened the door, wiping his fingers with a dish towel that he then slung over his shoulder. The house smelled…amazing. Like a…an Italian pizzeria.

“Greg, hi!” His dad pulled him in for a hug. Greg had imagined the eighteen different ways the initial hug could have gone on the car ride here, each with an increase in his anxiety. Stilted, uncomfortable, awkward, or perhaps even not at all. But it was fine. It was a good hug. “How are you?”

“Good,” Greg nodded, as he did always when he was nervous. “Good. I’m…good.”

“And, um—”

“Tom.”

“Tom. Tom—Daniel. Good to meet you.” They shook hands.

“And you! And you.”

Greg’s dad took them up to the guest room and Greg’s eyes kind of went wide when he opened the door. It looked like a guest bedroom and all. Nothing fancy. But there were some old things of Greg’s littered around the place that he’d probably left with his dad when he stopped coming to visit him, or that Greg had simply never missed. There was a stuffed animal or two that Greg recognized. There were some old posters. One was Siouxsie and the Banshees. There was a record player.

“Some of this stuff, ah…” His dad rubbed at the back of his neck, perhaps a bit nervously. “You can take it with you, you know, when you go. If you want. I’ve just had it for so long, I…”

“No, uh—no, you can keep it.” Greg said. “It’s just stuff, you know? Like…you should keep it.”

His dad smiled, and told them to make themselves comfortable before he went back downstairs.

Greg set to work unpacking, and Tom was very quiet. When Greg looked up, he saw that he was sort of floating around the room. He stared at the stuffed animals. He stared at the Siouxsie and the Banshees poster. He stared out the window.

“Tom?” Greg called. “You good?”

“Yeah!” Tom exclaimed, as though suddenly remembering Greg was in the room. “Yeah, I’m…” Tom laughed a little, petering out. “It’s just all kind of too familiar, you know?”

Greg came down later that night after his dad had served them a very tasty dinner, and after Greg had gone back upstairs and washed off the twelve-hour road trip grime, to the sight of Tom and his dad sitting at the kitchen counter laughing, talking, and drinking coffee. Presumably decaf.

And Greg did not know how to feel about that sight at all. Mostly good, he thought. Also weird.

“—I don’t, I don’t, no,” Tom said, smiling as he brought the mug to his lips. “No, but my parents were from upstate Minnesota and lived on a farm for…maybe eight years?”

“Oh, you’re kidding.”

“No, no. I’m a city boy, though. Born and raised.”

“You say that, but you look like you were built to chop wood.”

“—Oh-kaay!” Greg shouted, loudly, from the stairs where he’d been listening. “Dad?”

Tom was laughing. Which he shouldn’t be. He definitely shouldn’t be laughing at that. He even raised his eyebrows a little and flashed his dad white teeth.

“Think that’s my cue,” Tom said as Greg approached. Tom stood up, touching his arm as he passed. “I’m gonna go shower and turn in, yeah?”

Greg felt the gesture in his toes. He doesn’t remember if he said anything, nodded, squeaked, or acknowledged Tom at all. It felt too domestic. Like something he might say to Shiv. He thinks he stumbled into the kitchen stool. Somehow he sat down.

His dad smiled down at him, thumbing his coffee mug as he leaned on the other side of the counter. He spoke once Tom was out of earshot.

“He’s a good one.”

No he’s not, Greg thought. He’s awful. Mathematically, I have picked the worst one.

“Please don’t…flirt with him,” Greg groaned instead.

His dad smiled and put up his hands in surrender. “It was a joke. Maybe in poor taste.”

“Maybe a little,” Greg agreed, “I think. Yeah.”

But he really didn’t like that he’d done it. He really didn’t like that he’d reminded him off why he’d left in the first place.

His dad took a sip of coffee. “You meet him at work?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“We don’t have to talk about Tom.”

“Sure,” his dad said. “Kinda weird, but. Hey, do you like work, though? You’re a…executive assistant, right?”

“That’s…that’s right. I am. That.”

“You like it?”

Greg nodded. “Not really.”

“Well, you should do something you like, Greg,” his father said. Like it was that easy. Like everyone should do it. “I always said you were smart. You were really smart, but you’re a follower, and you don’t have to be.”

“Yeah, well, respectfully, um, what would you know about it?” Greg asked, gripping the counter. “Maybe…maybe I like financial freedom and…and nice, you know, clothes. And apartments. And food.”

“Greg,” his dad said, soft. “Everybody does.”

“I just…don’t think you know me.”

His dad nodded. “No, I…I deserve that.”

They sat in silence. Greg fiddled with Tom’s abandoned coffee mug.

“I wasn’t really…” Greg said. “I wasn’t really anything. And then I had this job. Okay? And I like…I like some things about it. But they’re the parts I think maybe I shouldn’t like.”

“Is this about Grandpa Ewan somehow?”

Greg was quiet.

“Greg, I…I wish I’d been around to—”

“Yeah, you don’t wish shit, alright? You just weren’t.”

Greg felt his eyes and cheeks get hot. This wasn’t what he wanted at all. This wasn’t why he came here. This wasn’t why he brought Tom here. He was so excited to see him that he thought he wouldn’t be mad at his dad, but he was. And now it was ruining everything.

Everything was getting worse. Every good memory he had was, like, not as good anymore. His dad’s smile, but bad. His dad taking him sledding, but bad. His dad calling him sport, but he hated it. Angrily, he wished he didn’t even have a dad to remember.

“For a long time, I was a person that I didn’t like very much, Greg. And then I was really ashamed. I don’t…I don’t have any other defense than that. I…” his dad paused. “Don’t live a life that kills you a little bit every day just because it’s easy. Alright? That’s all I got. And I wish I made for a better example.”

“Well,” Greg sniffled. “That’s pretty, uh, shitty. As apologies go.”

“Yeah,” said his dad. “Was never all that good at those, either.”

Greg flopped down on the bed next to Tom when he got back upstairs, and the bed shook with him. Tom turned over with a waking breath.

“Hey, you.”

“I’m sorry I brought you here. It was…” Greg started to mumble. “…it was stupid.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tom said. “Your dad’s home cooking, a queen-sized bed, and all your mangled, perverse little stuffed animals staring at me from the opposing wall? Who needs a Marriott?”

“Yeah,” Greg laughed. “Right?”

He kept laughing. They laughed together.

They didn’t leave, as Greg had thought about doing. Tom didn’t push for it, so they stayed, and things with his dad were not the best. But he could see him and be in the same room with him, and speak to him sometimes. And that was still more meaningful than any interaction he’d had with him in twenty years.

Now, he and Tom lay in lounge chairs in the backyard by the lake, drinking Bloody Marys while his dad was out on some errand.

“I like your dad,” Tom said, like a traitor.

Greg just scoffed.

“I do! He’s nice! He’s friendly.” Tom defended. “Understand, the only other experience I have to compare this to is the first time I met Logan fucking Roy.”

Greg looked at him warily. Tom looked back, seeming to understand what he’d just said.

“Don’t…overthink that, alright?” Tom added, of course, and ruined it.

But Greg had already decided to forget it. He took another sip out of the curly straw and set it back down.

“Overthink what?”

“There you go,” Tom said. “Good boy.”

Greg stopped and looked at Tom again, who was no longer looking at his phone and was now staring openly at Greg—or, more aptly—Greg’s exposed clavicle.

“We can’t,” Greg said, sort of pathetically. “He’ll be back soon, like…”

But Tom was already climbing over him, kissing down his button-down and rapidly moving toward his shorts.

“I don’t care,” Tom said, sing-songy and not without some meanness. “We haven’t fucked in five days and there’s nothing else to do in this God-forsaken cabin, Greg.”

Tom undid Greg’s belt and pulled his shorts down just enough, and he paused and he breathed on his cock through the cloth of his underwear. After a long moment where Tom was either paying homage to his cock or praying to God, he licked a stripe up the broad side of it and dragged his teeth along the head. Greg nearly leapt out of the chair.

“You know, Greg,” Tom said to his dick. “I’m a sick, perverted fuck.”

“Y-yes,” Greg gasped. “I’m familiar.”

“We should do it in the guest room. In front of all your childhood toys.”

They do that.

Tom choked him while he fucked him into the mattress and the hinges creaked and the bed frame hit the wall. And then they flipped, and Greg choked him. It was fun, you know, if a little violent. And a little weird, in the guest room of his dad’s place under the gaze of all the toys he’s had since he was in a crib.

“Man,” Tom said when they were done and breathing heavy. “Freud would have had a field day.”

“Hey sport,” his dad called to him from the kitchen as Greg re-entered the house after a morning jog around the lake. He’d wanted to, just…clear his head. And it was as good a place as any to do that. Arguably better than most. “Want coffee?”

Greg grabbed the mug that is pushed towards him on the counter. “Thanks.”

“Hey, I was thinking—” his dad started as Greg was already priming to leave back up the stairs. “We should do a movie night tonight. You know? I’ve got this projector I’ve barely used. What do you say? I was trying to think up activities where you don’t have to talk to me.”

His dad said it with a grin, like he was really proud of that one.

Greg sort of set his jaw. He had a lot of reasons not to, but…

“Yeah. Sure,” was what he said instead. If just to appease his dad, and little else.

“Great!” his dad was far too pleased now, and he was instantly regretting it. “Great! See you at eight?”

“Yeah. Uh-huh!” Greg called back to him, leaving now.

Greg walked down the upstairs hall approaching the guest room, and he could hear the soft murmurs of Tom on the phone, so he approached slower.

“—Yes, I know. Yes, I know that, Shiv. Honey—”

Greg opened the door slowly, not really knowing the protocol in this situation. But Tom sounded upset, and for whatever unfortunate reason, that made Greg gravitate toward him.

“That can’t be the solution,” Tom said into the phone.

Greg reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. Tom jolted a little, acknowledging him. He smiled tightly up at Greg and turned away. Tom placed his hand on top of Greg’s, patted it once, twice, then held it for a brief second before pushing Greg’s hand away from his shoulder, and letting go.

“Okay. Okay, Shiv, you’re being—you’re being a little hysterical right now—”

And Tom stood and moved towards the window as Greg just barely started to hear the sound of Shiv screaming on the other end, and then he couldn’t anymore.

Greg had never so clearly felt unwanted in Tom’s space…maybe ever, so he turned and left.

Tom was distant for the remainder of the day. During movie night he was completely unresponsive, and while Greg’s dad contentedly munched on popcorn and They Live played on the living room wall, Greg was focused on the way the light of the projector bounced back and danced across Tom’s numbed features.

“Wooo! It’s like a drug. Wearing these glasses gets you high, but you come down hard.”

Tom’s phone buzzed in his pocket. It shocked him out of his stupor, and he stood up, excusing himself out the front door to answer it.

Greg followed.

Outside, Tom had his phone in his hands and he was swearing at it as he typed furiously.

“Tom?” Greg called, and Tom spun around and clutched at his chest. “Is everything okay?”

“What? Yeah. No, everything’s fine. Go back inside.”

“…Tom.”

“Greg, I can’t…” Tom started to massage the space between his eyes like he’d all of a sudden come down with a horrible migraine. Then he sighed, something very resigned.

“If it’s Shiv, like, you can talk to me about it, I won’t…”

“…It’s not Shiv, Greg.”

“Oh. Okay? Well, then, what—”

“It’s, um…” Tom tapped his foot. He looked around at the trees. At the cabin. He ended looking at the BMW before just shutting his eyes altogether. “There’s been, like, um. There’s been a leak?”

Greg frowned. “…a leak?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s…how’s there been a leak?”

“Um, a leak, like, um…you know,” Tom waved his hands around like he was trying to explain some complex concept. Greg just wanted some clarity. “Like, the company, and well, I was…the victim of a hack, Greg.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.” Tom—finally—looked at him. And now Greg sort of wished he hadn’t. He looked miserable. “And, um, with that leak, there were like…e-mails.”

“E-mails?”

“Well, yeah. A lot of innocuous stuff. But then, um, some…” Tom said, and his voice broke. “Some text messages.”

Greg nodded. Then the nods got slower. And then he felt his stomach drop.

“Oh.”

“It’s not…it’s not a very good situation that I was put in, Greg.”

“Was?”

“I had to deal with it, you know. Contain it, out the gate.”

“…Tom?”

“So I talked to Gerri. And…” Tom swallowed down something. Maybe his conscience. “And you were thinking about quitting anyway, so—”

“Tom?!”

Tom lunged and pointed. His face got red.

“Don’t fucking give me that! I told you not to text me that shit! You put me in this position, Greg!”

“What the fuck?”

“I have had to lie,” Tom began, voice shaking with deep tremors, “to my wife, to Logan, to the company, and now the world, Greg, so that my face is not plastered on every fucking TV screen in North America on the six ‘o’clock news.”

Greg started to clutch at his stomach. “Oh…Oh, I’m gonna be sick—”

“You’re gonna be sick? Ha!” Tom threw his head back. “If the headline tomorrow is ‘Shiv Roy’s Homo Husband’, I will be shot and killed, Greg! Do you fucking understand me?”

“But what—what about—”

“You? You’ll be fine! You’ll find another job; you’re a history major, for fuck’s sake!” Tom punctuated the sentence by kicking a flowerpot. And then screaming.

Tom’s head fell into his hands as Greg looked on in abject horror.

“Why did you send me those texts,” Tom spoke, quiet and muffled. “Why did you send me those texts, Greg.”

Greg’s face became a sneer. “I’m the one losing my fucking job. I don’t see why you’re ready to pop a blood vessel over it.”

“Do you think I like this? This feeling? What do you think I’ve been doing for the past twelve goddamn hours?”

“Throwing me under the proverbial fucking bus?”

“Because there was no other fucking option, cuntfuck!”

Of course there wasn’t. Of course, to Tom, there wasn’t.

Greg’s face twitched in pain. He breathed, really shaky. He still felt like puking. “I think you should probably leave, Tom.”

“’I think you should probably leave, I think you should—'” Tom mocked in a horrible Greg-voice. “Yeah, no shit. I’m leaving. Don’t fucking cry on me, what, are we in ninth grade—”

“You’re such a horrible fucking person. And you’re so scared. You’re so fucking scared all the time, that you just self-destruct and kill everything around you—!”

“Yeah, well, what the fuck do you know? You’re a kid. You’re just a dumb fucking kid,” Tom spat, raising his voice louder than Greg’s so he didn’t have to hear it anymore, and he frowned, deep. “And this was a mistake.”

“Okay,” Greg nodded. Mostly because he needed his face to do something else, so that he didn’t cry.

“I’ll go. I’m—I’m fucking going.”

“Okay, fine.”

Tom went back inside to grab his bag. Greg, sort of just numb and hardly seeing three feet in front of him, followed him back inside. His dad looked on from the couch, staying silent. Tom came back down the stairs and slammed the front screen door behind him when he left. The lights of the BMW flooded through the living room, and then faded away as it pulled out of the lot.

Greg, limbs feeling useless and heavy, collapsed on the floor. He had forgotten his father was in the room until he sensed him standing above him, and felt his hand on his head, threading his fingers through his hair, which brought back flashes of vivid memories of his dad doing it when Greg was little, soothing and comforting when Greg’s stomach had hurt, or he had had an awful nightmare. It was then Greg began to hear the wracking, chest-heavy sobs, and realized as he wiped pathetically at his own face that they came from him.

Greg wasn’t sure what he was going to do—in point of fact, he cried about it a lot, and especially at night—but whatever it was, it started with packing up his things at the office into a little cardboard box and doing the less-sexy and more humiliating walk of shame.

It didn’t take such a long time. Greg didn’t have much to pack up. A tiny basketball hoop. A couple goofy pens. And the rest was paperwork. Really, the process was just dragged on by Tom entering the room.

He shut the door behind him. Greg was very claustrophobic, and this was making it so bad.

“I shouldn’t really be seen in here, Greg, but, um…” Tom trailed off and didn’t finish his sentence. Greg continued packing and didn’t look at him.

“The silent treatment, I see,” Tom observed with a painfully nervous laugh. “Right. Got it.”

Greg picked up his box and turned to leave, but Tom was in his way. Greg felt his own jaw click. And Tom was close, and staring down at his lips, and Greg thought that was the worst, most disgusting part of it.

When Tom maybe finally realized that Greg would remain unresponsive, he looked down really dejectedly and backed away. Greg left out the door and decided he had no interest in looking back—at Tom or at the building as he got in the cab and drove off.

In the few months that followed, things got pretty shit. Kendall took his apartment back—obviously—started renting it out for a small fortune. Greg had enough money saved up that could have moved into a slightly more modest New York apartment and hung around searching for work there, but that idea somehow made him want to jump in front of a moving train. He could have moved back in with his mom, but he couldn’t look her in the eyes and tell her what had happened. So he moved in with the one person, he thought, who might have a little bit of sympathy for him.

There were a lot of jobs—even low-level jobs, it turned out—that did not much appreciate in response to the question, “Why were you let go from your last job?”, the answer, “Workplace sexual harassment,”. So that was a bit of an uphill struggle.

He did manage to find something, finally, at a place that didn’t ask that question. There was a business consultant position open at a local museum and he took it, because it was something, and it did, actually, feel like a weight off his shoulders. And he thought he could…you know, like it, maybe, one day. After he came down from his two-year adrenaline rush and stopped thinking about human footstools, Nazis, and NRPI.

He managed to make a few friends, though that felt weird. He’d never been exactly a social butterfly before—he was awkward and often bad with emotions, but he realized, God, he’d forgotten. He’d forgotten that people could be, like, friends. They could go out to bars and talk about movies and sports. And they could call you just to shoot the shit, maybe because they felt a little lonely that night, or just wanted to. And they could say, “good to see you,” and really mean it.

It was at a bar by himself, when Greg had just wanted to go out and be among people, that he got a call he didn’t want, but expected, and didn’t want to answer, but did anyway.

“Hi, Tom,” he said, holding his cellphone to his face as he crowded himself into a payphone booth because it was raining outside and the bar had no awning.

“Um,” and he could hear Tom breathing. He couldn’t decide if he sounded drunk or sick. “Hi.”

“Why…” Greg started, “why are you…”

“Why am I calling? Ha! Uh, good question.” Tom did some more nervous laughter that Greg was both all-too used to and also terribly, terribly missed. Except that—no, he didn’t, and fuck that.

“Would you,” Tom began, “maybe want to, like, um, come and visit? For like a weekend? I don’t know, it was just a thought—”

“I’m in Canada, Tom?”

“Right. Right, of course you are. Well, I mean, you’ve done it before—”

“No. I don’t really want to see you, actually. Why would you think I would want to see you? That’s actually insane.”

“Why would I—” Tom halted. There was a dip into quiet. “Right.”

“I don’t actually very much appreciate that you’re calling right now? So, like…”

“Sure. I just thought…I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.”

Greg sort of opened his mouth but no sound came out. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t provide thoughts for Tom, and this call was getting confusing.

“…But you loved me, Greg, right?” Tom asked, cracks in the deep, performative timbre of his voice giving way to something weaker, more vulnerable, more pathetic than Greg could ever remember Tom choosing to appear to him. “At some point? At any point?”

Greg shook his head, betrayed and more than a little beside himself. “I don’t…that’s…”

“Now that you’ve resigned us to never seeing each other again I just thought it might be time for a little honesty. You know. Who could it hurt?”

“Like, me. Like, it could hurt me.” Greg spat. “And you’re an asshole.”

“Yeah,” Tom said, sad. “Yeah, I am.”

“Goodbye, Tom,” Greg said, before anything else could come out of his mouth, and hung up.

He headed back inside the bar, kind of wet, and slid back onto the bar stool where his beer still waited for him.

Crying into a beer was a dumb cliché, and also something that middle-aged truckers did. So that was unfortunate. But the girl sitting next to him, engrossed in a conversation with her friend, turned and put a hand on his back, and said something she really didn’t have to, like—

“Are you alright? What happened?”

So that was nice.

***

Greg takes the train back down to New York, which he hasn’t taken in two years. He was scared, a week ago, that he might have a panic attack over it, but he’s fine. A little forlorn, maybe, but fine. He brings a book with him to read so he doesn’t have to think about it as much.

The trees and the mountains and the old buildings pass out of sight until he’s greeted with the tall pillars of industry, and where once it felt like he had entered past the gates of heaven into la terre promise (as Tom had once said, pretentiously), it now was an inescapable death march. A descent into purgatory.

He thinks he’d been invited to the funeral politely. Or maybe as an oversight, as he was pretty sure all members of the Roy family now thought about him even less than they had back when he lived here. But he didn’t decide to go for any other reason than one, and that had taken quite a bit of intrepid soul-searching and a little bit of booze. Which, Greg maybe wishes he had right about now. His dad had said, “You know, you don’t have to go, sport. If you don’t want to,” and he’d offered to stay in and watch movies with him instead. But Greg, thankful, had said he was gonna do it anyway, for his own sanity, and his father had said that he was proud of him.

It’s a big ceremony, but almost sickeningly tasteful. Everything perfect and not a shrubbery out of place. The bagpipes play—not so loud as they did for Grandpa Ewan where Greg had felt like his eardrums were gonna burst, and not nearly as long. And then a priest in an immaculate golden robe starts talking about being here to honor “the life and work of a great man, and a great father—Logan Roy,”. But Greg is not paying attention to that, anyway.

Tom is there. He wears a pink tie.

He is skinnier, and has a beard now, which is perhaps a side effect of the divorce. But Greg thinks it looks really pretty fantastic. It made his eyes look kind.

And then, Greg thinks, he could have left right then. Because that’s all he had really wanted to do, was see him.

He doesn’t leave. Yet. When it’s all said and done, and the Roy siblings are standing by the open casket accepting condolences like wedding gifts, Greg walks up and stands next to Tom, near the back.

“Hey, Tom,” he says, like he had seen him yesterday, or even earlier, for lunch.

Tom’s nervous laugh is more tired-sounding now. “The ghost of Christmas past, eh Greg?”

Greg nods and sort of smiles.

“How’s mascot life treating you?” Tom asks.

“Oh, uh, thankfully, that life is behind me.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah,” Greg says. “Did you know—turns out, you can just, like, leave a job? And go do something else?”

“That easy, huh?”

“Nah, not really. But people have been known to do it.”

Tom looks at him for the first time in two years.

“Are you good? Are you happy, Greg?”

“I am,” Greg affirms. “I am, yeah.”

“Really?” Tom asks again, like he doesn’t believe him. Or—maybe doesn’t believe him, but doesn’t believe that anyone can be happy.

“Yeah, I’ve been, uh…like, jogging. Bought an espresso machine. Oh, I’ve been reading a lot,” Greg remembers, holding out the book that he clutched in his hand.

“Oh? The great American novel?”

“Tolstoy. Actually.”

“Ah. A purveyor of the classics.”

Greg smiled. “You should try it. Reading is good. Relaxes you. It, uh, exercises the right side of your brain, you know. Like, that’s what I hear.”

Tom raises his eyebrows in comment and appraises Greg, looking him up and down.

“What do you know,” Tom says, and he gives a scoff that sounds envious. “Looks like I might’ve done you a favor.”

Greg’s smile gets a little thinner. But he still manages it.

“No,” he says. “No, you didn’t.”

Tom’s eyes return to staring straight ahead at the casket. Greg looks that way, too. And he nods to himself.

“I’ll see you around, Tom,” Greg tells him, and he touches his shoulder before he takes his leave.

He could’ve stayed, maybe, to grab a bite in the city or a drink before getting on that train back north. But the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to. He liked to think that he was no longer beholden to the city and its trappings anymore, even though some days it still didn’t feel that way. But he liked to think better things about himself.

He hoped that, one day, Tom did, too.