#shiv roy angst | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bowieandqueen11 · 1 year

Text

Resolved Issues / Roman Roy Imagine

Request: HIIIII gonna send my succession request while i still can lol.

how about roman and reader sharing childhood stories? him realising that perhaps, maybe the way his family has treated him is tiny bit Not Normal. the reader being somewhere between "oh my god let me give you a hug" and "i just might fight logan roy in the parking lot". yknow good old hurt/comfort you do it like no other

Thank you so much sweetie!! But also yes I feel this in my soul frick Logan Roy lmao

Warning: strong language. mentions of diarrhoea and mentions of child abuse/ physical abuse!

This 3k beast took quite a while to write, so feedback is appreciated! Thank you! :)

(I do not own Succession or its characters, all rights go to creators. Gif credit goes to @loverboyromanroy.)

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°

Roman shrugs his shoulders and looks steadily at you, straight into your eyes.

‘The fuck- how should I know? Like... twenty three, ish?’

Roman’s perching on the edge of his own sofa, so obviously uncomfortable even in his own apartment. His wrist flicks as he answers, and a few drops of the whiskey he hasn’t touched comes sloshing round the side to stain his brand new eggshell blue decorative pillows. He had never cared much for property. But then again, he hadn’t cared much for whiskey either growing up; it had been his father’s drink of choice, and therefore his. The faint fire in the cold marble fireplace behind his head licks between his ears, and illuminates the confused amusement gleaming in his eyes.

You scoff, and shake your head at him incredulously. ‘You own twenty three houses, and you choose to live here?’ Awaiting an answer you know will be even more ridiculous, you make an effort to tuck your legs criss-cross under you, and sit with your knees resting just underneath Roman’s lower legs. ‘And yet you still live in the coldest ass apartment, I swear to god I’m freezing my ass off, and that’s even with the fire going. Are you a fucking yeti or something, Roman Roy?’

He chortles as you continue: ‘you thrive in colder climates, huh? That’s not surprising, considering a glare from your father could freeze hell over.’ You take a final sip of your drink before reaching over and placing it on the sleek black coffee table; Roman’s eyes drop for a split second as if almost in despondency, some kind of deep scarred sorrow peeking its way out like a tired child, before rising back to yours, seeking comfort. It doesn’t slip your attention. You make sure your fingers brush against his socks as you slip your hands back to your lap, and give a sweet squeeze to the tippy toes. He lets out a giggle and kicks his foot out at you, and it’s the most delightful sound you’d ever hear: that true, unadulterated happiness that Roman Roy rarely ever is permitted to have, without some kind of malicious intention lurking behind it.

‘Okay, well, one’, he ostentatiously holds a finger up by twirling it in the air, and it takes you a second to realise he’s pointedly showing you his middle finger. ‘Fuck you. Two-’, he decides to count with his pinkie finger, ‘my dad owns twenty three hours, I own approximately zero fucking squilch of that. And three, I’m a fucking incredible designer - see that Feng Shui over there? All me baby, I would have fucking killed it as an interior design.’

‘Having one sad as fuck looking potted plant by the window and literally no personal items doesn’t count as Feng Shui, dumbass. You’re just sad.’

‘Okay - well - if you’re such a smartass-’, Roman winds his hands up by his head but nearly lets the crystal glass his brother had bought him for his last birthday fall onto the hardwood floor, so he grimaces and gently places it on the rug. He turns back to glance at you, and despite the fact he’s positioning himself as if he’s conducting an interview: elbows resting on knees with hands clasped out before him, face set in stone, he still looks intent and truthfully curious about the answer he’s hoping you’ll give. ‘What was your childhood home like then? I’m sure full of unicorns that shart rainbows and fucking fairies that sneeze glitter from the way you hate my deco.’

You pause to think for a minute, not fully expecting such an honest question to come from Roman Roy. You place a finger gingerly against your lip, and in that second, perched up on the edge of the pristine settee, Roman wishes he could just leap over and replace your fingertip with his lips. He had never been so entranced by someone: never had the privilege of knowing someone from this corporate world who would be so truthful, so different from him. And yet, at the same time, someone who so deliciously, so crudely, so cruelly reminded him of the young child locked in the cage within his heart: so unknowingly let him cling onto the little bit of him he had tried to keep alive. The only bit of him left that wasn’t a Roy. That was just Roman.

Yet, even in the hope that clouded his mind as he awaited your answer, your words came like slices to slit against his throat. ‘Well, I suppose my home was... well, not to sound pedestrian, or super corny, but it was a happy one?’ He nodded, content to bleed out in front of you. ‘There was usually a lot of laughter, and of course a lot of stress, but you know. We could all rely on each other. It was... yeah, it was nice.’ You stop, biting your bottom lip and switching your legs around so you could raise them up and pull them against your chest.

You didn’t want to look at the man sitting before you suddenly. It was as if he had regressed into himself as you went along: withering, shivering slightly like a frosty chill over an empty playground. It looked - it felt unnatural, as he stared at you without seeing. He blinked languidly for a moment, soaking in your words, before jutting his bottom lip out and trying his best to grin at you. ‘Well, my childhood wasn’t so horrid either. My brother took me and Ken camping once, and although it was fucking sleeting down like bullets of pure fucking ice down by the stream, Connor did eat a fish that looked like a mouldy shoe and spent most of the night running off into the woods holding his ass.’

He snorts then, his little high pitched hyena laugh bubbling out of him as he places the back of his hand against his lips to try and hold it in, and you can’t help but laugh along with him at the sorry image of the supposed Roy brother patriarch scuttling around like a crab with diarrhoea.

‘That’s sweet, but do you have any other actual memories with your family where someone isn’t being ridiculed?’

‘Woah, hey-’, he holds both his hands up, and slides down from the armrest to come sit in front of you. ‘When you meet my brother, you’ll understand that he deserves it.’ You flush slightly at the implication, becoming rather uncharacteristically bashful around Roman, and glancing quickly down between your legs. Pulling at a thread until it becomes loose, you pray the timid fire glow is enough to hide from him the rushing heat crawling up your neck. Due to the fact that Roman also is shyly looking down at the toes he’s currently wiggling to busy himself, you both miss the way the other is blushing.

‘But...uh’, he starts finally after a moment of contemplation: a blessed few minutes of serendipitous indulgence, of growing warmth and familiarity, and just enough time for the two of you to realise how much your presence and conversation had only furthered endeared the two of you to each other, despite the hint of sadness that laced it.

‘I really - I mean, my dad was like, always busy.’ He scratches the back of his head, embarrassed by the way you tilt your head and look quizzically at him. He becomes hyper aware of how close his knee is to resting against yours, and decides to swallow the fear that seems to be clogging up the back of his throat, and shuffles forward until there’s finally contact. ‘And my brother was like, following in his footsteps and all that jazz’, his eyes widen as he holds his hands out by his side. ‘So there wasn’t really much time for... fun, I guess. Or mistakes. Or family.’

It breaks your heart to watch him deflate once he finishes speaking, and suddenly the austere, cold walls and empty, hollow halls of his apartment make all the more sense. He looks so worn out, so tired of having to hide himself away behind a big, empty mansion full of props and antiques and nothingness all put out for show, because that’s what he was. That’s how he saw himself. A big, empty, tired, twisted puppet trying to bend over backwards to escape the marionette strings of daddy’s love, not realising they’re choking him. It was a strategy, a way to protect himself: to become placid, to mask yourself as being one of them, to fit in with his father’s lifestyle, and maybe then the slaps and strikes and kicks and whimpers would feel like something good. Because he’s trying to be just like his father. So if he’s hit, it’s only because the puppet hasn’t quite danced to the right tune, that’s all.

As you glance around, you finally begin to notice how unused all the furniture in Roman’s apartment looks: the cellarette by the bar that looks as if it had been varnished yesterday, to the large screen television on the either side of the elongated room that Roman clearly only put on once a night to watch the news, to the velvet cushioned armchair positioned to sweep out and look across the skyline of the city, yet the headrest didn’t even have a dent. All these things. All this barrenness. It made you sick to your stomach. Here he was: a toy left on the shelf to collect dust, taken out to play with only when it suited the puppet master, and he was still so desperate for love that he still tried to copy his father.

And you could see from the way his eyes were beginning to turn blood shot as he slowly sat there and turned the cogs in the back of his brain over, that this was a thought he had had many times before.

You try your best not to look at him too pitifully, in case he might take offence and retreat back into his shell again when you hold out your hands to him. He swallows thickly, watching your every movement as your fingers unfurl over his knees, and you signal at him to come closer. For a moment, as he squints his eyes at you, he seems tentative. But then you roll your eyes, trying your best to still seem casual, and flutter your fingers at him again.

It takes less than a second for him to latch on this time, and his fingers grip into the sides of your skin so tightly you’re afraid he may draw blood. But then, you suppose, that’s all he’s been familiarised with.

‘It’s fine, I’m fine’, he tries to shrug it off, but his fingers only squeeze into yours all the more desperately. Worried he’ll try and pull away if you keep them suspended between your touching knees, you slowly pull them down to rest on your lap as he continues talking. He begins to play with your fingers almost subconsciously, looping them through his stout ones. ‘I mean, sure, my earliest memory is Shiv trying to drown me in the pool because she didn’t want so many older brothers to take all of daddy’s attention away from her. And Ken was never really present, dad was always shipping him away to some conference training or having him sit at his feet like his lap dog, but it’s fine. I’m fine. I grew up to be a well adjusted adult without any concerning issues at all.’

Although his tone is mocking, once he’s finished his rambling thought he lets go of your hand to rub his eyes. He does a half-yawn to try and cover the fact that they’re becoming rather bleary - to hide the fact that this is beginning to get at him, actually. And he’d rather stop now, if that’s alright. He’s the jokester in the family. The happy man. The go to cheer-upper. The pathetic one. He didn’t want to cry. He didn’t want to cry in front of you. He was never allowed to cry.

He jumps when he feels your hand against his knee, and he sniffles slightly when he looks down and sees you’ve leaned closer towards him. ‘And your dad?’, you ask quietly, cautiously, pulling the hand of his you were still holding tightly into your sternum. ‘What was he like growing up?’

‘Well, I was annoying. I- I am annoying, so, you know-’

He chokes then, and this time he can’t stop the sob that breaks out from the back of his throat like an overdue bell chime.

‘I’m annoying. I’m fucking annoying, you know that?’, he chokes out between sobs, doubling over on himself, but he’s still laughing between each gasping breathe. ‘I’m such a piece of shit’, he states, doing his best to stop his lip from wobbling and the tears from clouding out of his eyes, but he doesn’t complain when you take your hand off his lap and guide it to the small of his back, just before the dip in his shoulder blades. Gently - ever so gently, as if you were cradling a new born child still so unused to human touch, you guide him down to lie on your legs. He goes easily, taking his hands back to lean them under his chin, and allowing you full utility of your fingers. You put them to good use, beginning to stoke back stray curls of his mother’s hair away from his face, tucking them behind his ear until his breathing evens again.

He watches the sun fall over the edge of the Waystar Royco building: a sight he has seen many times before, but one that feels all the more eerie as the slates of dark metal blot out the light like a flashy tomb.

You bring him back, pursing your lips together and trying not to laugh sorrowfully as he sneezes at the feel of your finger moving down his forehead to trace over the dip of his nose, and evidently tickle it. You move onto the curve of his left eye, and it fills you with at least a little comfort to notice the way he squeezes his eyes shut at the movement. What was less welcome, though, were the few pearly tears that slipped past the cracks of his eyes and began to trace down the old bruised shaped hollows of his cheeks.

‘God Roman’, you choke out, trying to gently turn his head so he’s looking up at you. For a moment, he throws a tantrum and shakes his head in refusal, but your fingers are unrelenting and all forgiving against the side of his jaw, and soon he can’t help but give in to the love he’s so desperately begging for. He allows you to turn him, still squirming in your touch, until the two of you make eye contact. And there’s such naivety there, such desire and craving and conviction and belief as he keeps his eyes trained wholly on yours, that the words just come tumbling out of your mouth.

‘I’m going to fight your whole family I swear. I’m going to fight them all, one by one, and then take over Waystar, maybe find out what the fuck is going on between this Cousin of yours and Shiv’s husband’, he chortles at that, and chokes a little, ‘and then the two of us can burn the place to the ground and ride off into the sunset.’

Although he feels only elation at your words, he starts to shake when you use the pads of his thumbs to gently, tenderly wipe the tears away from beside his nose.

‘Stop, please’, he whimpers, but you know he’s not talking about your physical actions. ‘My dad’s never going to die, even if he is gone. Just- just- get out while you can, okay? Just fucking run.’ He grabs up at your hands, and holds onto one intently. ‘Just fucking go, okay, because I will destroy you. I’m- fucking poison, alright?’

‘No, no’, you state more firmly, when you see the creases in his forehead begin to appear. He shakes his head, and his whole face crinkles up when you admit the one thing left unspoken between the two of you.

‘You - you’re worth it. You’re worth putting up with all of this for, Roman Roy. One day, you’ll be free, and we’ll get to make new memories. Better ones.’

‘Just shut up. Shut the fuck up. Please. Just-’

His words die out on his mouth when you lean down swiftly and replace them with your waiting lips. His hand falls from where it was encircling your wrist, and after a moment of stunned shock, comes up to press firmly against the nape of your neck. His widened eyes melt slowly into a blissful, languid close, and despite the fact that he has no fucking idea how to actually kiss someone he cares about, he does a mighty good job of latching onto your bottom lip and whimpering when you go to pull away.

‘You promise’, he whispers into the tense air between the tip of your nose and the side of his stubble. He leans up to kiss you again, and a bite of saltiness stings at your mouth. ‘You promise’, he murmurs again as he opens his mouth, refusing to break away from the kiss: instead breathing you in and licking the tip of his tongue against your own. Steadying yourself, you grip onto his biceps, and press a last, ardent kiss to his mouth by latching onto his top lip.

‘I swear, Roman, I swear to god I’m going to make up for all the lack of love your family has given you. And I’ll start right now.’

#succession #roman roy #roman roy imagine #roman roy x reader #succession imagine #kendall roy #shiv roy #connor roy #logan roy #roman roy angst #roman roy fluff #kieran culkin #succession fanfic #succession fanfiction

524 notes · View notes

brotherconstant · 7 months

Text

You're the one who can pretend That there are no consequences to what you do But the truth is that it's costly Baby, 'cause you lost me Soon enough you're gonna see. —MUNA | One That Got Away

#successionedit #succession #shivlina #karolina novotney #shiv roy #beegifs #sarah snook #dagmara dominczyk #enjoy the angst <3

145 notes · View notes

a-little-nerdy-dude-with-wings · 6 months

Text

I’ve been making the joke that Succession should have a final episode which is a Christmas special called Rome Alone for months now. So now I’m actually making it a fic!

it starts off relatively sad but I promise it will be very tongue and cheek full of home alone references and a good batch of Christmas fun!!

feel free to read and follow the story!

60 notes · View notes

jaebeomsbitch · 1 year

Text

Romulus's Sea of Turmoil (R.R.)

Summary: Leading you through the path of Roman's trauma. Roman learning to accept your help and love even though he's been conditioned to do the opposite. Roman doesn't fuck it :).

Paring: Roman Roy X Genderless! Reader

Warnings: childhood abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse, self harm, emotional hurt, men crying, mentions of injuries, crying, father's death, funeral.

AN: probably the heaviest piece of work I've ever written. I just needed a piece where Roman is comforted like he deserved. Not edited, I wrote this at 1 AM.

Proceed with heavy caution

Roman was used to his father yelling at him. Used to the cadence in his voice when he tells him to shut up, that he was doing something important. He eventually loses Kendall, who goes off to join his father. Silently taking notes after being asked by his father. Roman grows accustomed to playing with Shiv, running through the halls, gleeful laughs following.

Until one day he’s invited into the room, his father deciding he’s old enough to have a taste of his business. He doesn’t know when the hatred begins. Was his father’s hate always there, looming over him only becoming apparent when the sun had finally filtered through?

The beatings begin, bruised lips and swollen eyes. Kendall silently watches as Shiv has her face buried in the sleeve of his jacket. Her tears blotted against the fabric. His father grunting, “The world is tough, you have to learn from early on how difficult life is.” His eyes with a gleam he’s never seen before. At first he begs, like a child, pleading his father to take it easy on him; this only makes him angrier.

Roman used to know why he was struck. Usually to teach him a lesson, like after spilling ice cream in his father’s new expensive car. Another after fighting with Kendall over steak night. Eventually the beatings turn frequent, explanations and lessons lost. Roman tries to justify it, tries to fit explanations into his little head. His father was annoyed by the way he swung his feet, mad that he whispered something to Kendall, angry as he was playing with a bottle when his boredom took over. He spends nights crying silently, mumbling justifications, snot noses frequent as he rubs his face into his pillow.

One day his father discovers him in a cage, eating ‘dog food’ as his siblings surround him. He shakes in fear seeing his father. The feeling of being trapped overwhelmed him. His father sends him to military school to ‘toughen’ him up just like his uncle did. How could he be so weak? To be laughed at by the little girl, paraded around by his older brother? “There was something wrong with that boy and some discipline would fix him,” his father would say.

He learns the routine, accepts his situation until he is released. He comes back home, Kendall now a foot taller, Shivy up to his chest. He’s a ‘military’ man now, shoulder’s squared out, stance stoic as his father inspects him. He’d learned to hide his emotion after hours of grueling training. He learns to numb the pain in his hands and knees from crawling on the floor. How ironic that his father sent him away for crawling only to spend hours learning the fastest way to crawl across the floor.

Kendall started as an intern at Royco, then moved to management training. He begins to look more like a man, an unhinged gleam in his eye that is new to Roman. Roman is sent away again to the LA offices to “learn” about the business. It was more like adult baby sitting, they set him up in an office flooding him with paperwork he doesn’t really understand. This is better though, he doesn’t have to live under the scrutiny of his father, only ever reporting back with phone calls.

The few times he sees his father he once again makes mistakes. His witty remark passing his lips before his mind catches up as he’s struck in the face. He remembers this, remembers why he hates the walls of this house. Remembers why he was grateful for the distance. Nonetheless he mumbles excuses to himself. You’re an idiot, you’re annoying, your father hates you.

He moves back to New York, his father gets sick and then better. Roman continues to berate himself, whispering insults. Relishing in self inflicted wounds. He learns to live with the pain, learns to seek the words from his father’s mouth. Until he meets you, you tell him his words are too harsh. You don’t like the way he treats himself but he tells you to fuck off.

It isn’t until his father is gone that he begins to question himself. He had put himself through years of turmoil for his father, lived in the shadows of his older brother to not attract attention. Was it all worth it? Was it ever worth it? Was it worth starving? Did he even love his father? He asks Tom if he told Logan he loved him. Tom, confused, doesn't know how to respond. Did he truly love his father? His guilt begins to eat away at him. The words would’ve slipped out if they were real. If somewhere deep in the cavity of his chest he felt for his father a shred of love he would’ve uttered those three words. He begins berating himself in his father's absence, unused to the void of pain he’s accustomed to.

He’s lost. He pushes you away, pushes away the one person who tries to help. He doesn’t deserve you, he’s a piece of shit. He practically killed his father with that voicemail. The memories replaying in his head. He punches himself in the thigh wanting to feel the familiarity, closing his eyes and pretending his father once again looms over him. You stop him once you hear the noise, you’d heard him some nights but you couldn’t bear the thought of him hurting himself once again.

He shoves you out of the room yelling obscenities at you in a joking manner. “It’s almost like you caught me with my dick in my hand. You’d love it wouldn’t you?” he laughs, slamming the door. He tries to hold it in, tries to bury the emotion but you hear his sobs through the walls. You spend countless nights on his couch, just waiting for him to be ready. For him to want just a shred of help. It isn’t until the day before the funeral that he leaves the door unlocked.

Perhaps his guilt for letting you sleep on the couch when he knew you had back problems. He tried, tried to keep you at an arm's distance because anyone who crossed his path was destined to a horrible fate. They were tied to a monster, unable to escape. So he gives you the out, leaves his door unlocked as a last ditch effort to let you leave him but you don’t. You approach the bed as you hear his sniffles. You climb into the sheets, cradling him into your chest as he lets the sobs rip through the room. You whisper comforting words until his cries die down.

He didn’t deserve you. Didn’t deserve this, he was as much a killer as his brother was. He never deserved your patience, your worried glances, or your reassuring touches. He’s not allowed to have a happily ever after because he is broken. Broken beyond repair, just a pile of tiny shards on the ground.

He stands on the podium, hundreds of eyes on him. He can’t do this, he can’t be like his father, can’t even fathom his cold body in that casket. He calls for help, motioning with his hands as you hear the beginning of those familiar sniffles. You reach around Kendall, whispering something into his ear that they can’t hear. He shakes his head at his siblings, glancing over at you worriedly. You give him a kiss on the temple before patting his chest. He delivers his speech, Roman the Showman lighting up the sky. The church claps at his ridiculous speech.

Mencken gives him a knowing smile, cracking a rude remark about your assistance. Roman holds it in, he grips onto your hand to tether him to the ground. Lets you do most of the thanking, until he can finally breathe again. He’s shaking in the car, withered away to that scared little boy he once was. You hold him again, brushing the tears from his face as the wet patches grow on your coat. He needs pain, he wants it, he craves it. He begs you to hit him, trying to provoke a reaction from you. Please bring him back down to earth, his soul felt like it was floating away from his body. You hold his eyes open squeezing eye drops into his red streaked eyes as you peck him on the forehead.

You remind him that he’s not allowed to inflict pain and although it’s difficult you’re there. You’ll stage a break up to justify his fallen tears if you have to. He no longer has to bear the crushing pain alone. He nods, following you out of the car. He’s still unable to step in the mausoleum. Afraid he’ll be trapped with his father’s vengeful spirit. You crack jokes with Shiv, breaking to place a kiss on the top of his hand that’s intertwined with yours. In that moment Kendall and Shiv have never felt more alone.

Just like Logan wanted, he looms over the children like a deity. Watching their every move scrutinizing their stupid business decisions. Roman leads you around the room, his shoulders feeling a little lighter as you whisper a joke in his ear. Then he remembers, his dad is dead. Forever trapped in a discount pet supply box. You remind him that it’s okay that he’s gone, he no longer has to lose teeth, no longer has to sit on the counter as you patch his face up and hand him an ice pack. You watch as he flirts with Mencken, you weren’t happy about it but you knew the crowd ATN attracted.

You don’t let him watch the protestors, you shove him into the car. You lead him by the elbow up to his penthouse as he jokes about how hot it is to see you pull him around like a rag doll. He laughs at his own joke about how riled up you are at his father’s death as you guide him to his bedroom.

He lets you undress him and tuck him into the sheets. His jokes die down as he lays in your arms, tears slipping through his closed eyes as his tiredness catches up to him. He falls asleep hearing your voice praise his courage, praise him for letting you take care of him, and more importantly how proud of him you are. He’d never heard that before, at least not genuinely. Only used to hearing it after he’d been whored out to another potential business partner.

He is nowhere near healing but just for now you are enough.

91 notes · View notes

hunzzzzz · 3 months

Text

Fight for you - Chapter 1 : strangers

Kendall Roy x original female character

Themes : slow-burn / enemies to lovers

Okay guys this is my first time writing if it’s terrible I’m sorry

Blurb :

Harper Aly is broken. Hanging on by a thread. Desperately trying to fix her life. Kendall is like a breath of fresh air, pulling her out from the deep end.

Kendall is also broken, but something about her makes him want to fight for her. Fight against himself to a better man, be the man she deserves. She was like the first daffodil of spring, after a cold, miserable winter.

Their lives end up entangled in one another, emotions are high, working together gets complicated, promises are broken.

Can Harper give him a chance, despite her trust issues?

Can Kendall prove to be the man that he says he is?

It had been another seemingly endless day at work, to the point where my mind was anything but focused on the task in front of me. Letting out an exasperated sigh I glanced at the clock, 10 minutes past 7. I longed for the day I would leave the office at an acceptable time, as mentioned in my contract. Exhausted, I flung my glasses on the table and made my way out of the office. By the evening time my contacts had dried out and I had switched to my glasses. The building was practically empty, through my blurred vision I could make out a few stray lights on. It was nice knowing I wasn't the only one slaving away at this hour. I hadn't seen daylight in the past 2 months, my pale skin and sunken eye bags could attest to this. My team had been working relentlessly on an upcoming project, and the grunt of all the marketing and PR work landed on me.

I made my way up to the roof, the the only part of my day that I looked forward to. I closed my eyes, taking the first drag of my cigarette. The nicotine buzzed in my ears, feeling the day's tension slowly drift away. I often came here when the building was scarce to stress smoke in peace. I had never been an avid smoker, just the occasional cigarette if I was particularly inebriated. But when life gives you a fiance who publicly humiliates you in front of the whole world, you tend to pick up a few bad habits. The combination of the man whom I loved, cheating on me, combined with the overbearing workload, had plummeted me to an all time low. I walked towards the edge of the building admiring the admiring the view below. New York was beautiful at night, I found solace in the city lights. From this height I couldn't make out what was going on below. It was an escape from the hustle bustle of the city, I could finally hear my thoughts so clearly.

“Do you ever just think of jumping?” I was ripped from my tranquil state. I snapped my neck to my right to identify the culprit, squinting my eyes, trying to make out who it was. “Just imagine the adrenaline coursing through your veins.” Said the blurry man as he brought his cigarette to his lips, inhaling deeply. I was so lost in my own world, that I hadn't even heard him creeping up beside me.

“Yeah you should test it out. Let me know how it goes.” I snapped, annoyed at the stranger who had rudely interrupted my peace of mind. The 5 minutes of the day that help keep me sane, keep me afloat.

“Uh, okay. Not your day huh?” He chuckled. He had the audacity to find humor in this, it made my blood boil.

“If you keep talking to me I might actually just jump.” I attempted to climb up onto the ledge.

“Okay- fucking extreme reaction. Fine.” He sputtered, backing away, hands held up in surrender. “ Okay look- just can you please- just fucking get down now.” I retreated back down with a victorious smirk. Grateful to finally be left alone, I wasn’t particularly keen on making small talk with some cocky guy from the financing or legal department, I had already done enough of that for one day. I took the last few drags of my cigarette and tossed it away without a care, watching it fizzle out on the cold concrete.

“Theres literally a fucking trashcan right beside you, but no- by all means please litter.” I must have jumped 10 feet in the air, startled hearing the same voice behind me, I scrambled back only to be met with a firm chest against my back. He gripped my wrists from behind as I instinctively brought them up to do God knows what. “Hey, hey- it's still me.” He chuckled. First this man ruined my smoke break and as if that wasn’t enough, now he amped it up a notch and tried to send me into cardiac arrest, some people just have no shame.

“WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?” I all but shrieked, trying to thrash away from him. “Dude, let go of me, or I swear to Go-”.

“Or what? You’ll- uh, fucking threaten to jump off the building again?” He mused, using my own words against me. “Hey easy, easy. I just thought I’d stick around you know given that you’re a suicide risk.” His deep chuckle vibrated through my body, his breath sending chills down my spine. I could feel his chest rising against my back, his intoxicating cologne burning my nostrils. The scent, the exact same one that left me shattered in a million pieces. It all just became too much, my mind began flooding with sour memories from the past.

“Just leave me alone.” I muttered, my voice shaking, as I finally broke free of his death grip. Slumping my shoulders over the ledge, cradling my head in my hands. I rapidly blinked, trying to ward off the tears that threatened to spill, I can't let myself go back to that place. I won't let myself.

“Oh shit- I was fucking joking. Are you okay?” I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Look I’m sorry please don't cry. I’m sorry, I’m a fucking idiot.” His voice was soft as he tried to awkwardly comfort me, trying to make sense of my sudden burst of emotions. Rubbing soothing circles between my shoulder blades. I shrugged his hand off, and cleared my throat, straightening my back, ready to tell him to go to hell. I turned to face him, only to be met by soft chocolate eyes piercing into mine, full of concern. Timidly breathing as though, any sudden movement might push me over the edge, emotionally .

It felt as though all the pain that I so desperately tried to block from my mind, began leaking through the dam. The facade that I had built, convincing my friends, family and co-workers that I was fine, came crumbling down like Jenga .

I choked out a sob as my eyes betrayed me. I let the tears fall, each one washing away a little bit of pain I had been holding onto for months. Drenching my cheeks and leaving me gasping for breath. Each stifled sob echoed the loud, resounding ache in my heart. I was finally allowing myself to grieve my broken heart, my relationship, my ex-fiance— since he's dead to me now .

Deep down I knew this emotional breakdown was bound to happen sooner or later. I just never thought it would be at work with a stranger comforting me.

“Hey, you're okay.” His voice was velvety, soothing my anxieties like a warm blanket. “You’re going to be okay.” His hands gripped my shoulders as they viciously shook.

Once the sobs finally subsided, I felt a lightness I hadn’t felt in a long time. “Well shit, that was embarrassing.” I tried to humour myself, wiping at my mascara stained cheeks slightly, turning away from him and facing the city, so he couldn't see what a mess I had become. “I’m sorry, I don't know where that came from.” I whispered, keeping my eyes glued to the skyline ahead, too ashamed to even look at him. Something about crying in front of people or in public, felt so deeply shameful to me, I felt so vulnerable. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

“Are you sure- because uh, I don't know- there seemed to be a little something more to it.” He questioned sceptically. “Look, I've been there before, bottling it all up. Faking a smile to the point where I almost actually fucking convinced myself- that maybe, just maybe, I actually am happy.” He smiled as he spoke, but there was a deep sadness behind his words. “I’ve been to rock bottom, countless times. So look- just- I’m saying, I don't know what’s going on with you, but, just trust me the more you try to push it away the more it consumes you.” His radiant voice was like a beacon of comfort, guiding me through to the light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time in months I felt like I could open up to someone, without any judgment.

“Okay you got me there, lock me up and throw away the key.” I admitted, earning a small laugh from him. “It’s just so embarrassing to even say out loud. Promise you won't laugh.” I glanced over at him. I already had trust issues from my childhood, so being betrayed by the one person that I thought I could blindly trust without a doubt, shattered me. Before the betrayal, I would put effort into being more social and open with people I called friends. But now I found comfort in the loneliness. I was on a 24 hour look out, working overtime to guard my heart, from ever feeling that type of pain ever again. I knew I wasn't strong enough to survive it again, so I never gave anyone a chance to even challenge it.

“What- of course not. I promise.” He responded in an instant, hand held over his heart.

“My fiance cheated on me, I'm sorry let me reiterate.” I corrected myself. “My fiance of 8 years cheated on me with my best friend.” I confessed. “And the worst part is that it happened right under my fucking nose. But I was too busy planning our dream wedding, setting up appointments with realtors; looking for a bigger place for when we decided to start a family.” I laughed at the last part, somehow saying it out loud sounded so ridiculous— how I was so oblivious to the truth. “I was so focused on the future, letting it blind me from what was actually happening right in front of me.”

“Shit- yeah no that’s uh- that's rough.” He nodded, taking in my words. “Fuck yeah, I get it now. Understood.” His voice was full of empathy. “I can't imagine- genuinely I’m fucking sorry.” Why was he apologising, when the person I longed to hear those words from, felt no remorse. Not a single ounce of guilt for hurting me in the worst possible way, leaving me broken.

“It’s fine. I’m in my acceptance phase now.” I reflected, feeling at ease sharing my raw thoughts with him, knowing that I’d never cross paths with him again. There was no harm in over-sharing with a stranger— what’s the worst that could happen?

“Yeah it sure seems like it.” He chuckled.

“No seriously- I am. Don't let my little breakdown earlier fool you.” I tried to defend myself. “That was partially work related too. The stress of this job has got me pulling out gray hairs. I’m too young to have gray hairs.” I sighed running a hand through my hair subconsciously.

“Okay now hear me out. Maybe- just maybe it’s just your bitchy attitude, that’s making you age?” He joked. Now that the haze of my inner turmoil finally simmered down, I saw his true colours shining through— god he was such an ass.

“Wow, creepy and a jokester. You really are a package deal.” I clasped my hand over my chest, feigning admiration. “I’m sure it’s not a big deal for someone of your prehistoric age to have gray hair, but for the younger generation, we take it very seriously. I don’t expect you to understand. You’re probably too busy dying your hair jet black every morning or getting fitted for your hearing aids.” My words left him stunned, as his mouth hung open in shock. It was clear that nobody had ever put him in his place before; humbled him; brought him back down to Earth. His entire persona radiated— finance bro— the worst of the worst kind of people.

“Okay- ouch. You fucking shoot to kill.” He finally recovered from my brutal attack. “And I’ll have you know my hair is naturally this colour.” He said, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. “And also- I’m still fucking young. I know how to use twitter, I listen to Kendrick, I know how it’s hanging these days.” He said trying to sound confident but I didn’t miss the slight hesitation in his voice.

I burst out laughing, feeling my chest tighten as I gasped for air in between giggles. “Oh god- my stomach hurts- please you’re killing me here.” I took a moment trying to compose myself, as he watched his lips pressed into a straight line, not amused. “I’m sorry but using twitter, and listening to Kendrick doesn’t qualify you to be as young, and hip as you think it does.”

“Fuck you- I’m not even that old. I’m not even close to middle-aged.” He threw his hands up frustrated.

“You keep telling yourself that grandpa.” I smirked, loving how easy it was to get under his skin. Playing him at his own game, if he was going to dick then so was I. It was clear that I was winning the sword fight.

“Jesus- you’re fucking mean.” He smiled, shaking his head, taking my insults with a pinch of salt.

“Well, you know my villain origin story.” I tried to lighten the mood. “Your turn.”

“My turn? Uh- for what exactly?” He asked, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t know maybe your villain origin story, you know, how you became such an insufferable prick.” I replied grinning. “Harassing innocent women who are trying to enjoy a peaceful cigarette.”

“Oh wow- okay. So now I am what- some sort of creepy, stalker who uh- fucking comforts broken women?” He laughed, brushing off my harsh words. His laugh was like a breath of fresh air, so contagious, I joined in too. I couldn't remember the last time I laughed like this, let alone even smiled— It felt like a lifetime ago.

“Answer the question, creep.”

“I guess we're sticking with creep then.” He huffed. “No origin story here. Just a guy who came up here to avoid my family’s daily fucking drama. But then heroically saved a beautiful young lady’s life.” He smiled, eyes twinkling in the city lights. If my cheeks weren’t already pink and puffy from all the crying, they definitely were now.

“Wow, my hero!” I exclaimed sarcastically, rolling my eyes at the absurd lie.

A strong breeze picked up, I subconsciously wrapped my arms around my shoulders attempting to warm myself. I didn’t think to bring my jacket with me for a brief moment on the roof. Little did I know I would spend a half hour, pouring my heart out to a stranger.

“Are you cold here, take it.” He offered me his blazer, shrugging it off wordlessly, seeing my teeth chatter. I graciously accepted it, his scent still lingering on the expensive fabric. He lit another cigarette and offered me one too. I brought it to my lips, as he leaned in cupping his hands, to light it— if the brassy breeze would allow so. As he brought the flame closer, I finally got a good look at his face, the clearest I had been able to all night. I immediately recognised him. At that moment, I genuinely wanted to jump off the building, for real this time.

“Oh my— fucking— god.” I gaped at him, eyes wide as the blood drained from my face. I dropped the cigarette from my lips, stepping away from him. “Kendall fucking Roy. You have got to be kidding me.” I gasped. “Why didn't you say anything?” A million thoughts raced through my head, the most prominent one being— I was definitely going to lose my job. I had just told the COO of the very company I work at, the future heir to Waystar and Royco; to jump off the roof; allowed him to watch me have a spontaneous nervous breakdown; and if that wasn’t already humiliating enough I then proceeded to insult him to his face.

“Wait, are you serious?” He asked, lips parted in silent surprise.

“I’m not wearing my glasses.” I tried to reason, scrambling back, putting some much needed distance between us. “I have to go.” I quickly tried to escape, after digging my own grave.

“YO, wait- hold up.” He yelled, hot on my tail. I slammed the door shut behind me, trying to buy myself a couple of extra seconds as I scurried down the stairs, my heels about to give out under me. I made it back down to my office in record time and collapsed in my chair, heaving. Facepalming once I realised I still had his blazer on.

17 notes · View notes

shivvroys · 8 months

Text

a quiet apology (what are you worth if you don't make a sound?)

karolina-centric oneshot set during chapters 5 & 6 of beneath the underdog

read below or on ao3

i know I’ve lived as a quiet apology,

i’m sorry to you, and i’m sorry to me

Karolina wakes up with a pounding headache and a two-tonne weight pressing on her chest. As the gin from the previous night pours out of her, the shame fills her right back up. Treacherous fucking mouth.

It’s not the first time she’s done this. Not the first time she’s let it fester inside, the longing and the loneliness, and all that fucking hunger.

It starts the same, every time. A face, either the wrong one in the right place, or the right one in the wrong place, and Karolina’s eyes, like the hands of Eve reaching out towards the apple. Her father had always warned her about her eyes. About how they spoke too much, and would bring her nothing but trouble. About how a man’s greatest weapon is not what he has to show the world, but how well he can hide from it. Okno do duše, Karolina!

She ignores Shiv, which she has learnt is the sharpest sword she can wield against the other woman, and the wound that bleeds the hardest. She knows it’s wrong, and resigns in the face of the well of shame that settles at her core. She is a coward and a liar, and she knows she only has herself to blame. Shiv isn’t some pure, innocent soul, which makes Karolina feel even more disgusted with herself for hurting her. For extending her hand in the first place, only to reveal an empty palm, a ghost of a promise she never intended to keep. With serpent hands, eyes and mouth that grab at things that aren’t meant for her, Karolina knows she’s fucked. Damned if she does, and she always fucking does.

She responds to e-mails with punctuation marks that aim to sever, and keeps her personal phone on silent and on the far edge of her desk, face down at all times. She sews her ears shut and realizes too late that the screaming is coming from inside out.

She deletes Shiv’s texts before any replies start to form in her mind, and throws her phone under the covers to muffle its vibrations. Out of sight, out of mind.

Except Siobhan Roy, it turns out, is not someone her eyes can burn the sight of away, nor someone her mind can file away in some hidden corner to gather dust.

When her phone lights up at night, when she knows it’s past three am in Stockholm, she gives in to the plague of her skipping heartbeat, and lets the text burn brightly on her retinas.

“I wasn’t the one who made that fucking call.”

And she’s right. It’s all Karolina’s fault—had been since that goddamn night on the balcony. With the weight of Logan gone, she’d felt like a cockroach suddenly bathed in light, scurrying to and fro without cover. So, she’d let her hands wander, and grabbed at the one beside her like the pin of a grenade. The blood is all on her hands.

“I’m sorry, but I think this is for the best. Please, respect that.”

With eyes closed, the phone ringing in her hands feels like a blast going off.

Suddenly, like a severed chord, the e-mails stop coming in. Her phone stops lighting up. She allows herself maybe one second of guilty relief, before her nerves turn into bleeding wounds. She learns from Shiv’s team that she’s stopped going into work. They don’t know who they should report to in her absence, so they flock to Karolina like orphaned puppies to a stray cat.

It’s fine, she tells herself, though she knows by now how bad of a liar she really is. That telling tall tales only works when you’re telling them to people who weren’t there to see the carnage. In the time she’s gotten to know Shiv she’s learnt what this means. How loud of a warning siren silence is when it comes to her. But still, Karolina tells herself everything is fine. That bad things don’t happen to people like Shiv—that her wealth is a shield that will protect her against herself, like it has done for her brothers time and time again. That it somehow makes what Karolina’s done inconsequential.

That, like Logan, Shiv can put a price on hurt and swipe her card without blinking.

Tom flies out to Sweden in the middle of the night, and Karolina has a panic attack in a dirty bathroom stall.

She grips her phone tightly and sends an okay to Gerri with trembling fingers. In front of her, she sees you’ve got this scribbled on the stall door, with an arrow pointing towards it that leads to a sharpied-in fuck off. She splashes her face with water and wonders just when her eyes had grown the same violet tendrils under them as her mother’s.

Does she have more years behind than in front? Has she made something of them?

She leaves the café without her to-go cup, not trusting her hands to keep it from spilling. She reaches out to a few trusted contacts in Sweden—just to make sure, she tells herself. To keep the company image clean, in case of anything. She doesn’t trust herself to fool Gerri, so she doesn’t ask her any questions about Tom’s impromptu trip. Still, she feels her chest burn under the other woman’s gaze during their scheduled meeting.

When she finally gets home, she drinks half a bottle of wine and sleeps with her phone shoved under the bed.

Tom comes back two days later with slumped shoulders and a short temper. For the first time since Logan’s passing, Karolina feels like a dog waiting for its owner to find some dried up puddle of piss behind the couch. Her unreliable mouth gets the better of her, and she finds herself asking Tom about Shiv, under the guise of pacifying the Swedish team’s anxiety. She hopes that his newfound status had kept Tom from mingling with the masses and reaching out to Shiv’s team himself, and her foundation is enough to cover the heat she feels spreading across her face.

“Right. Siobhan has taken a leave of absence, which might become permanent. So, um, I trust you will be able to offer them some guidance while we sort that out.”

“Oh. Alright.” she grips the pen she is holding and prays it doesn’t break in her hand.

“Yeah.” His eyes remain uncharacteristically empty, though she can see his neck straining under the rigid collar of his shirt. “It’s not a certainty yet, though, so…Just some unofficial forewarning.”

He offers her a tight smile that Karolina can’t scrub off of the back of her eyelids for the remainder of the day.

That night, she follows up with her contacts and comes up empty, which frightens her more than she can admit. She isn’t Shiv’s anything, but she thinks she might know her. And the Siobhan she knows is not an absence. Karolina can’t accept that. She stays up all night trying to find something, anything that will lead her to Shiv. Just to be sure. Really, she’s just being diligent—preparing for the next fire she’ll have to put out.

Her eyes keep darting to her phone, the link she’d severed because of her own cowardice. Because she’d clung so tightly to the cage she’d built around herself. The life she keeps telling herself she’s living, though she’s starting to realize this life has grown more as an idea than a dent in the world. That, for all the living she has done, Karolina might actually leave this world unaffected, the ground forced to carry her bones like dirt at the bottom of a handbag. A crumpled up receipt of a life.

She makes a list of reasons why she shouldn’t call. Mostly, she just reminds herself that she has no right to. She isn’t Shiv’s anything. Why should she be privy to her unraveling, when she’s the one who’d pulled at loose threads in the first place? What would she even say?

It’s only right to disappear when I’m the one who’s doing it. I’m worried about you, about the hurt I caused. I’ve never let myself hold things, I’m sorry I broke it.

Ultimately, she doesn’t call, resigning herself to her own misery. She had been too afraid to let Shiv in, so she figures it’s only fair to suffer being kept out.

She goes to work the next day with red-rimmed eyes and a tension headache, and avoids Gerri’s increasingly suspicious looks.

She needs to get out more. That’s the story she decides to go with, anyway. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, so she figures burying them in someone, at least for the night, might keep them from breaking more things. A right face in the right place, and she’ll sort herself out, remind herself that small pleasures are all that her small flicker of a life needs anyway. That she wouldn’t even know what to do with something bigger than a spark, so why risk running straight into a blazing fire.

That’s how she finds herself in a bar, some gentrified hole-in-the-wall with good enough alcohol and lighting just dark enough to let her hands wander towards the first warm body she can find.

And they do, those wretched things.

She introduces herself as Caroline, and learns that Laura, besides having terribly inviting lips and a mesmerizing head of dark, luscious hair, owns a luxury beauty salon. Or is about to open one. Or she’d just gotten back from getting her hair done. Something or the other. It doesn’t matter, though, because Karolina is happy to nod and let her head fill up with static as long as she gets to watch Laura’s mouth move and her cleavage rise and fall with every breath.

Something shifts, though, and she realizes Laura also has an awful interest in getting to know her, which means Karolina has to start taking longer sips to fill the spaces between the careful omissions she is twisting into stories for the other woman.

“What’s your favorite color?” Laura asks after a while, eyes sparkling in Karolina’s gin-induced haze.

Karolina feels a knot tightening in her chest, and downs the rest of her drink, signaling the bartender for another. The lamest question you could’ve fucking asked.

Her answer is a clipped black, and the other woman sighs in disappointment. They trade similarly lackluster answers until Karolina feels herself start to grow annoyed. Here she is, with a beautiful woman who wants her, wants to listen to what she has to say and store that information away like it’s meaningful, like what they are doing could ever exist outside of a bar or a bedroom, and all Karolina can feel is annoyed. Like she can’t quite remember if she’d left the curling iron on. Like the fact that she is sitting at a bar with a beautiful woman is not what she is here for, but what’s keeping her from something.

She’d already ruined one thing by drinking too much, so she decides another drink is just what she needs to keep this from becoming a thing in the first place. The more she drinks, the more her hands wander, and before long she’s got her tongue down the woman’s throat and her clumsy fingers gripping at her thigh. Laura doesn’t seem to mind, resigning her dream of romance for this dirty dalliance across a beer soaked bar-top.

They’re just shy of classifying as an act of public indecency when Karolina spots them across the bar.

Roman.

He doesn’t notice her, too engrossed in conversation with the leggy blonde he’d come in with. Tabitha? A millionaire heiress with model friends, a penchant for champagne and a relatively low profile. Out of every woman Roman had paraded in front of his father, Tabitha had been the only one Karolina hadn’t needed to keep a bookmark on her computer about, so she’s almost relieved when she sees they’ve kept in touch.

She withdraws her hands from Laura’s leg as if burnt, and excuses herself to the bathroom. Once there, she stares at her reflection in the mirror and tries to count the drinks she’s had. She can’t decide between four or five, until she looks down at her hands and feels all the blood rush to her face. So, one too many.

As she makes to leave the bathroom she almost gets run over by a pair of slender legs and a mass of blonde curls. Tabitha. She smells like lily of the valley, and laughs lightly as they almost crash into each other.

“Sorry.” Karolina catches the woman squint in vague recognition, but she doesn’t give her the chance to say anything before bolting out of the bathroom.

To her misfortune, Roman is right outside.

“Oh, shit, hi, Karolina!” he shakes his head.

Karolina blinks, trying to keep herself from hurling all over Roman’s pointy shoes.

“Roman, hi.” she manages to say, though it comes out all strangled.

“What, uh—fuck, how are you, I guess?” he shrugs.

She had been perfectly content to keep the sum of her interactions with the Roy’s youngest son within the single digits.

“Good. Um—I’m okay. You?” she says, swallowing harshly to keep the gin from crawling its way back out.

“Oh, great. Lost the family business I was taught practically since birth to fight over, but nothing much besides that.” he smiles wickedly. Right.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” she tries.

“Nah, fuck it! It’s fine. I’ve actually never been better.” Besides the too-closely-shaven fade, Karolina could actually be inclined to believe him. “How’re things over at fuck factory, anyway?”

“Good.” Karolina gulps. “Great.”

She thanks God for Roman’s inability to keep an interest for long, because he takes in her answers with feigned acknowledgment, his eyes looking glazed-over already.

Karolina’s spared from having to come up with a more detailed answer by Roman’s date returning. The woman looks down at Karolina, wearing the same shark-like smile she’s used to seeing on Roman. If she didn’t know better, she would find their relationship balanced against their similarities at least vaguely creepy.

“Oh, hey, roadrunner.” Tabitha grins.

“Hi.” she blinks. “Sorry, I have to go. It was nice seeing you.”

She doesn’t wait for an answer before turning around and all but running back to the bar, though she does catch the faint echo of Tabitha’s laughter.

“Hey, you still with me?” she blinks to find Laura smiling at her, a trace of concern etched on her features.

“Yeah, sorry.” she clears her throat. “Just a bit tired.”

From their position at the bar, Karolina can’t see any trace of Roman or Tabitha, but the moment they’d walked in her night had turned sour.

Again, she finds herself with an incredibly beautiful woman, soft and pliant under her wavering hands, and all she can think about is how terribly inconvenienced she feels. How relieved she’d feel if Laura suddenly decided Karolina wasn’t worth the tight skirt and middle-shelf alcohol. She tries and fails to keep some semblance of a conversation going. She decides to save herself further embarrassment and just take the other woman to bed, but then some errant memory of a messy living room or a dirty kitchen island opens itself up to her like a great escape. The more she wrestles with herself, the more morose of a companion she becomes—though, to her benefit, Laura remains just as sweet and charming. The realization that this woman is not only gorgeous, but might also turn out to be a kind human being turns Karolina’s stomach, twisting something deep and ugly within herself.

She looks down at her phone, checking the time. Without meaning to, she corrects the time to Sweden’s. The pit at the bottom of her stomach threatens to swallow her whole. She lifts her gaze up to Laura’s face, her rosy cheeks and soft lips. What a terrible waste.

“I have to use the restroom.” she doesn’t even realize what she’s doing until she’s pushing through the now crowded bar, planting herself in front of Roman’s table. “Can we talk?”

Their table is right next to the crowded dance floor, so all she gets in response from the table are two sets of furrowed brows. The lights are dark and her head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton, so she isn’t sure how she manages it, but a minute later she is dragging Roman out to the dirty alley behind the club. Behind her, Roman is exchanging bewildered shrugs with Tabitha, who’d somehow also trailed along.

Karolina only hears fractures of their whispered conversation.

“Okay, I am not getting into a threesome with the lady who made my pee-pee disappear from the internet.”

She catches Tabitha wiggling her eyebrows at him suggestively. “Mind if I get into a twosome, then?”

“Can I watch?” he fires back. Tabitha nods solemnly.

“Sorry to drag you out here.” Karolina clears her throat, effectively ending their exchange before she lets her stomach express her opinion on the matter.

“Oh, no, I like what they’ve done with this area. The pungent smell of piss really ties the place together.” Roman fires back, gesturing to the sketchy alleyway.

“I was just wondering—have you heard from Shiv, lately? She’s taken a leave of absence.” she tries to maintain eye-contact, despite the horrible dread rising inside of her.

“Oh! Uh huh, yeah, sure. We’ve, um—we’ve spoken.”

Roman’s facial expressions betray only his bewilderment at being asked about his sister by Karolina, of all people.

“Oh, good! Good, that’s—great. Is she—how is she?” out of the corner of her eye, she sees Tabitha watching her intently. Under her gaze, Karolina feels herself shrink down to the gravel on the ground.

“You know, she’s, um, yeah she’s good. Good as ever!” he nods, as if satisfied with the version he’s decided on.

Despite the alcohol, Karolina’s mind sets off like a firework, accustomed to what good means in their language. Sensing her alarm, Roman starts shifting on his feet, before raising a pointed eyebrow in Karolina’s direction.

“What’s it to `ya, anyway? Pretty sure if you propped a mop up in her chair it would get the same amount of work done.”

What is it to her?

“I just…” she trails off. What right does she have to know, when she isn’t Shiv’s anything? When she’d made an absence of herself in the first place. Karolina shakes her head, the weight of the night bearing its full force down on her. She should go home.

Before she can come up with an excuse to drop the entire conversation altogether, Tabitha speaks up. “She’s not okay.”

“What?!” she blurts out, at the same time as Roman shrieks “Tabs—the fuck?”

“She’s worried about her, Rome.” she says softly, tilting her head in Karolina’s direction. Again, Karolina feels herself shrink under the other woman’s knowing stare. She feels like she’s wearing her skin inside out.

“Yeah, I don’t think dad programmed them to do that.”

“Rome.”

“Fine—fuck it.” he turns to Karolina. “You’re probably gonna have to deal with all of that so, uh, it might be lights out on the…” he points to his stomach.

Karolina feels something collapse within herself. Something like panic, or low blood sugar, or the weight of everything she’s broken washes over her. She needs to sit down.

She finds a tall curb and unceremoniously drops herself down on it, the trim of her trousers soaking up the mud beneath her shoes. She feels her blood rush to her ears, and a knot tighten around her chest. She thinks Roman and Tabitha might be talking to her, but she covers her face with her hands, trying to get her breathing under control.

Every step of the fucking way, she’d promised, before grabbing the first exit out.

“But she’s alone.” she blurts out, failing to keep her voice from shaking.

Tabitha looks like she might understand, which makes Karolina even sicker to her stomach. No one says anything, letting that truth linger in the air like poisonous gas.

“Does she even know any doctors in Stockholm!?”

She doesn’t have a mirror to lash out at, so she spills her anger out onto Roman. Her hands are shaking, and she’s starting to feel the soaked up muddy water on the back of her ankles. In front of her, she sees a cockroach frozen on the ground, as if terrorized by its newfound company. She resists the urge to stomp it out.

“Relax, I’m pretty sure she’s not gonna pull out the old coat hanger.” Roman says. “They got abortion clinics in Sweden, right Tabs?”

“Yeah, they do. The medical care system is kind of the best, actually.” her voice is carefully light, as if Karolina’s got a detonator strapped to her chest.

She should have never done this. She should have taken that woman home and kept her thick head in the sand. When she’d told Shiv she’d gotten a piece of herself back, she hadn’t known she was emptying the other woman out. That the little inconsequential escape they’d been building had outgrown its carved out hole in the world, had spilled into their lives and swallowed everything up like a great wave. That she’d left Shiv to drown in it.

The door opens loudly, all three of them turning harshly towards the intruder.

Laura.

“Oh, hi, excuse me, who the fuck are you?” Roman sticks a thumb out towards the woman.

Laura takes a step forward, leaning down slightly to Karolina’s huddled form.

“Caroline?” Roman mouths the name at Tabitha, frowning. “Are you okay, do you know these guys?” she sweeps her eyes cautiously over them both.

“Yeah, I’m her smack dealer.” Roman says, before pointing towards Tabitha. “This is my hired muscle.”

The woman fixes him with a weary gaze, taking another step towards Karolina. The less distance between them, the more the knot in Karolina’s chest tightens. She feels everyone’s gaze burn every inch of her skin.

“Laura, sorry—I think you should go.” she tries keep her voice steady.

Laura takes another step towards her. A shiver runs down Karolina’s spine, sending her nerves on edge.

“What? But I thought—“

She cuts Laura off.

“Look, can you just—fuck off, please?”

For the first time that night, she sees the woman’s face shift to an expression she feels worthy of. Anger mixed with disgust. Karolina welcomes it like soft silk between her fingers.

“Yeah, sure, no problem. Don’t fucking call me!”

With that, the other woman is gone, her heels echoing like a judge’s gavel in Karolina’s ears.

Tabitha is the first to turn her attention away from the now closed door. “She seems nice.”

As if reminding herself of their little meeting’s order of business, she shakes herself lightly, before patting Roman’s forearm.

“What?!” he shrugs, his arms planted firmly on his hips. Together, they look like a pair of exasperated parents dealing with a sullen child.

Karolina tunes them out, still trying to wrap her mind around Roman’s earlier revelation. She closes her eyes and can only see Shiv, small and alone in a hospital bed, skin made translucent by the harsh glare of neon lights. Her husband a shadow on the other side of the ocean, and the last text from Karolina a brazen declaration of what was for the best.

Whole lot of good that best had done for the both of them.

Roman and Tabitha’s evolving argument pulls her out of her thoughts.

“Okay, may I be excused from this thrilling showing of The Vagina Monologues?”

Karolina can hear Shiv’s voice in her head, making some remark about Roman being scared of vaginas. She shrugs it away like a tremor. She watches Roman pull out his phone, at Tabitha’s excitement. Her brain’s still soaking up all the gin she’s consumed, so Karolina doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he starts speaking into the phone.

“Oh, hi sis! What are you doing up?”

Karolina sits up suddenly, almost stumbling over herself. She clenches her jaw, shaking her head at Roman. She can’t hear what Shiv’s actually saying, only the soft sound of her voice.

“Okay, crabby. I was just, uh, out with Tabs— she says hi, by the way.”

Roman extends the phone above his ear, allowing Tabitha to get closer to it.

“Hi, Shiv!” she yells out, before Roman returns the phone to his ear.

“Anyway, we were just out at this bar, and you’ll never guess who we just bumped into.” he locks eyes with Karolina, wiggling his eyebrows.

Karolina continues shaking her head, trying to get Roman’s attention.

“Ew, I said we were at a bar, Shiv, not a daycare.” Roman continues, slapping away Karolina’s protest.

“Roman, don’t.” she tries to keep her voice down so Shiv won’t hear her, a coward till the end.

She catches glimpses of Shiv voice. She sounds tired.

“No, I actually already told Tabs that would be weird. And turns out, she’s already got one Roy kid’s nipples in a twist.” he winks in Karolina’s direction. “Here, bitch, she wants to talk to you.”

Before she has a chance to protest, Karolina finds herself holding Roman’s phone, a picture of Shiv glaring up at her. With shaky hands, she puts the phone to her ear.

“Shiv?”

She hears the other woman exhale roughly.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Karolina bites her lip, taking a few steps away from Roman and Tabitha, trying to find some kind of privacy within the miles of static separating them.

“Roman told me, about…” she finally says, almost whispering.

“Oh.” she hears Shiv scoff lowly.

“I just wanted to see if you were—” she begins to say, before being interrupted by Shiv’s sharp tone.

“You wanted to check up on me?” she almost laughs. “Yeah, I could tell how worried you’ve been about me. So worried you couldn’t pick up the fucking phone.”

She can picture Shiv’s furrowed brow, thumb pressed harshly between her teeth. She doesn’t turn around, but she can feel Roman and Tabitha’s eyes burning holes in the back of her head.

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice starts shaking again.

“Uh, huh. Well, I’m fine.” Shiv interrupts bluntly.

What right does Karolina have to contest that? How could she tell Shiv she doesn’t believe her, when she’d lied and hid like a coward? Like a broken fucking clock, only able to tell the truth when she’s drunk in dirty alleyways.

What could she say to Shiv that would prove more than her absence?

“Okay.” Karolina sighs. “Could we talk? Maybe I could call you tomorrow and—.” she tries.

She hears Shiv take a sharp inhale.

“Could we talk? I don’t know, Karolina, are you going to sober up and pretend I don’t exist again?”

Karolina fixes her gaze on the ground, wrapping an arm around herself. By her foot, she sees another cockroach frozen in place, as if begging to her for mercy like a God. She scuffs her shoe next to it, sending the creature scurrying away.

“Yeah, I deserve that.” she relents.

She thinks she may deserve worse, and she knows Shiv is capable of giving her just that, but she doesn’t want to put her in that position. Mostly, she just wants to see Shiv, to see her real and burning with life and not as a ghost haunting the corners of her mind.

“No, like is it a kink or something?” she hears Shiv swallow harshly. “Do you pretend or do you actually get drunk when you make these calls? Do you roofie yourself and let random girls fingerbang you in the bathroom?”

Karolina lets the shame fill her up, takes all of Shiv’s anger and makes a home of it, if only to feel held by the other woman.

“Shiv, stop.”

For all of her million dollar paycheck, she finds herself running out of words. She’s never really been good at it anyway—not when it comes to telling the truth. Not when it comes to Shiv. They’ve mostly spoken through touch, her careless hands claiming what she’d never allow herself to say she wants. Her eyes breaking their sacred duty of hiding her desire from the world. How can she apologize to Shiv when she can’t see her, can only grasp at static?

“Fuck you, Karolina. Don’t fucking call me.”

The call disconnects and Karolina remains frozen in place, begging some merciful God to crush her into the gravel.

She turns to find Roman and Tabitha watching her, a mix of pity and amusement lighting up their features under the dim streetlights.

“Sounds like you guys sorted everything out.” Roman gives her a thumbs up, receiving a sharp elbow in his side from Tabitha.

Karolina doesn’t respond, can’t find any words to explain, hide or defend what they’d witnessed—what she’s just let spill onto the cold damp street. She just hopes it’ll all get washed down the drain by the rain. She’s gotten so good at hiding things for others, it only makes sense she’d forgotten how to hide herself—always found it easier to be a shield than something that needs protection.

Her jester-gods, in a divine act of kindness, don’t ask her any questions, calling a car and letting her scurry back to her dark apartment with a simple wave. Once home, she goes to bed feeling like a prisoner on death row who’d finally received his final date—in a fever hold of dread and relief.

“Got any plans for New Year’s?”

Karolina drags her attention back to Gerri. She’s been doing it a lot lately, letting her thoughts slip away from herself—sloppily so. She knows Gerri’s grown increasingly suspicious of her near-constant state of distraction.

“No. Honestly, I’ve barely kept track of the calendar.” she sighs, hoping it registers as their usual brand of exhaustion. “I didn’t even realize when Christmas passed.”

Gerri quirks her head to the side, features painted with a lingering curiosity that she doesn’t seem sure she wants to engage.

“I guess the sweatshop’s kept us pretty busy.” she finally says, though she still looks as if she’s drafting approach strategies.

They lapse into silence, which only drives Karolina’s mind further away from herself. She looks out of the tall office windows, at the angry clouds painting the horizon almost apocalyptic. She can’t remember the last New Year’s she’d celebrated properly, before she stopped looking forward at time. She’d been keeping her back turned to the future for so long, she can’t even remember. Maybe when the world was still an open map, and her job was just something she could shake off of her shoulders at the end of each day, in a dingy bar with cheap beer and a stereo stuck on one-hit-wonders.

“Do you think this is it, for us?” she doesn’t realize she’d even spoken out loud until she blinks herself awake from her daydream, and turns to find Gerri looking at her oddly.

“What?” the other woman shakes her head.

“Sorry, I was just thinking out loud.” she swallows a nervous breath.

She doesn’t know how she’s become so hell-bent on destroying her reputation with every person around her, but she finds herself unable to stop. The feeling of taking a step forward and feeling the ground behind crumble under her foot gives her a dangerous sort of thrill—like she’s twenty again, and crowding bathroom stalls with friends for whatever they could find to dull the edges of the world. Like death was just a cautionary tale, and life was whatever her fingers could reach.

She looks at Gerri, wondering if she feels the same. If she’d spent her life like it was a newly bought couch, wrapped in plastic, never letting herself sink into it properly. Waiting for some right moment to feel worthy of letting that life wrap around her.

But Gerri has daughters that she speaks fondly of, and a husband that she’s loved and lost and now gracefully holds the memory of, which looks a terrible lot like living.

All Karolina has is a cold apartment and a heartache an ocean away. She looks down at her fidgeting hands—numb now, without something to rip apart. She clears her throat, grasping the loose thread of her previous question.

“Well, do you think, in terms of our careers, and barring—you know, becoming a dictator or something, is there…more?” she sees Gerri’s face light up with concern, and realizes she must sound vaguely suicidal. “How do you know you’ve finally conquered the mountain?” She finally settles on a less desperate version of her existential problem. Ironic, to experience existential dread when one barely has any existence to show for all her dread.

The version she settles on doesn’t seem to dissuade Gerri from looking worried.

“Well, do you like the view?” she says, voice carefully controlled. “If you don’t, then you haven’t climbed high enough.”

It sounds easy when Gerri talks about it, though awfully lonely. Karolina decides to press harder on the bruise blossoming on her heart.

“What if you’re climbing the wrong mountain?” she can’t raise her voice above a quiet murmur, afraid of the walls trapping her thoughts like cigarette smoke.

“A mountain is a mountain, Karolina.” Gerri concludes.

And with that, Karolina knows the conversation has ended and been tossed into the shredder, already forgotten.

One of the most important lessons she’s learnt from Gerri is how valuable a short memory can be in a place like Waystar. How easy it can be to teach herself how to forget, at least until she starts smelling the smoke in the walls.

There’s a box in the back of Karolina’s closet that houses everything she’s gathered from back there. The life she could have had housed between thin cardboard walls. Black and white pictures crumbling at the edges, of people she’s never known but grew up feeling close to.

Her parents had never forced religion on her, and she figures this is why. That her small hands could never wrap around some far-away God. But these things—pictures, tiny porcelain figures, worn out cassette tapes that spark to crackling life in tongues she’s only ever grasped at, this she could hold to be holier than any ancient proverb. That, even as a child, she could feel the weight of the scale they’d put her life on, the weight of what they’d traded. All of back there, the familiar roads and wild bloom of life enduring despite the violence surrounding it. All of that, for Karolina’s here.

And what has she done with it?

Kept it all in an even smaller box. Shrunk herself down to a matchbox of a life. Spent the years that stretch further back than ahead building everybody else’s box. Let others live here and now for some imagined promise of making time for herself too—someday.

She thinks about the past year, and sees it sketched out on a monitor like a flat-line, more power wasted in keeping it turned on than the life it’s meant to be showing. Then, just at the tail end of it, she sees it—a small spike, the faintest trace of a pulse, a tiny hill of pixels come to life.

That night, she tries to sleep and can’t help but think of mountains. Of the sights they promise and the biting cold they offer. Of how dreadfully lonely and small a person can feel once they’ve reached the top, and how the greatest mountains can only be climbed by stepping over bodies like landmarks.

The more Karolina contemplates the mountain she’s been climbing, the more she feels the urge to look down. There, at the foot of the mountain, she sees a hill, with flush green grass and a bright patch of light shining down on it.

A mountain is a mountain.

In quiet desperation, she briefly weighs the risk of calling her mother. She wants to know what it took. What gave them the strength to give up everything for one shaky promise—a faint silhouette of a hill on the horizon. And if she thinks there might be some of that strength in Karolina, too. If her eyes carry more than a loud hunger, her hands more than a weak grip. If she can gather more than shadows under eyes to put in a box at the end of it all. More than a crumpled up receipt.

She picks up her phone, but she doesn’t call. Instead, she lets the drumming noise of her heart echo in her ears like a siren call, and follows it into a cab.

The man checking her passport asks her if she’s there on holiday. She flashes him a polite smile, grip tightening on the handle of her carry-on. Something like that.

The car ride is shorter than she’d anticipated, and they’re almost there when Karolina starts to wonder whether Roman had even given her the right address, or she’s about to end up at some brothel on the wrong side of the tracks.

Whatever side of the tracks she ends up on, she steps out of the car and looks up at the tall building in front of her. All she’d gotten from Roman was a street name and a building number, and she starts to feel the adrenaline slowly rush out of her, making room for the familiar grip of anxiety.

As she takes a few reluctant steps towards the building, she sees a flash of red out of the corner of her eye. She feels her lungs expand like a vacuum sealed bag sliced open, taking in air as if she’d been held underwater until now.

Karolina watches her for a second, hair a bit longer, clothes wrinkled and loose, but still the Shiv she remembers—still burning bright, with cold-bitten cheeks and a secretive smile.

Not an absence, but an abundance of life. A clear path bathed in light.

Karolina takes a step forward.

“Shiv?”

#my fics #shivlina #succession #siobhan roy #shiv roy #karolina novotney #i fucking FORGOT i set chapter five around christmas #so i had to speedrun their angst so i can somehow do something involving new years #fun fact i only did that bc i wanted to compare tom to jesus #dag_holding_gun.jpeg #shiv x karolina

20 notes · View notes

tomshivendgame · 11 months

Text

tomshiv - jealous (nick jonas)

I don’t think these two know what an open marriage is 😂

#tomshiv #tom x shiv #shiv roy #tom wambsgans #succession #succession hbo #tomshivedit #failmarriage #I MISS THESE TWO #GIVE MATTHEW AND SARAH A ROMCOM NOW #their chemistry’s just off the charts esp s4 #THE TENSION #THE ANGST #theyre so possessive of each other its insane #i love the way they love actually

33 notes · View notes

squashfolded · 1 year

Text

Rewatched season 2 again 😪

#so me when I casually offer up my husband to be crucified #I started this drawing over a year ago actually so I don’t even remember what the clock is supposed to mean teehee #succession #tom wambsgans #shiv roy #tomshiv #ocean #digital painting #angst #art #succession hbo

25 notes · View notes

goldlightsaber · 1 year

Text

I personally feel like Kendall and Shiv deserve a The Last of Us-level “thrown into intimacy” situation but that’s just me

#shiv getting vulnerable and scared #ken stepping up for the first time to comfort his baby sister #I just feel like there’s so much angst potential there #text #succession #shiv roy #kendall roy

8 notes · View notes

motions1ckness · 10 months

Text

“Don’t Call me Kid.”

Summary: Roman get’s a bit too drunk at Kendall’s birthday. (03x07)

Content: established relationship, f!reader, angst, age gap, degradation, insecurity, verbal abuse(?), humiliation, mention of Logan Roy

{This is my first fic so i hope you enjoy!)

*Update:pt 2 “SweetHeart” is up rn!!

Roman had you on edge the whole night. You had never seen him this snide or aggressive before. You blame the immense amount of alcohol he consumed, mixed with him talking to Mattson. So, when you caught Shiv getting more agitated with Roman, you knew he was spewing bullshit.

Though you didn’t feel the most compassion for Kendall, you had spent the night with Shiv and Roman and you couldn’t help but pity the man. It was his birthday and his siblings showed up for Mattson, not him. Time had passed from your arrival, and you stood at a distance from them, far enough that you weren’t in the conversation but you could still see what was happening. Roman sat while Shiv stood in front of him. You could tell he was getting under her skin but thought it was best to stay out of it. In doing so, you had to act like you were listening to this brainless celebrity talk to you about god knows what.

You get snapped out of your head when you hear Shiv call for you, wanting Roman's power trip to end.

“Can you get over here and deal with your mess?” You walked over to them and noticed they had also roped Kendall in this mess.

You took a second to study Roman’s face. He was refusing eye contact with you. Probably out of shame and not wanting to face the consequences. His eyes appeared dark, and his demeanor was unfamiliar. He’s just drunk. He’s just drunk. You tell yourself, hoping you didn’t just find out who you were really dating.

“Oh great. Are you trying to get me in timeout or something?” Roman joked, his eyes flicker over you for a moment. “Whatever, you know Kendall, I already talked to Mattson, who hates you by the way,” He laughs at his own demeaning remark. Everyone is uncomfortable. Kendall turns to Niaomi, who's trying to comfort him by holding his arm and rubbing his hand between hers. You couldn’t stand the way Roman was acting. Sure, he makes quippy remarks all the time, but this time he was just being an asshole.

You clear your throat slightly, uncomfortable with the situation, “Roman, I think you should stop.”

Your eyes lingered on him the whole time, hoping adding yourself into the conversation would defuse the situation and you two could forget about this.

When Roman heard your voice, he finally met your eyes. Turning to face you and sneered “Oh I’m sorry sweetheart, did I hurt your feelings?” You knew Roman was in defense mode but you couldn’t figure out why. No one was attacking him.

The heat from your face felt more apparent. “I’m just saying, I think you’ve had enough tonight and we should head back.” You hoped this offer would be enough and you'll deal with this in the morning. Roman rolled his eyes and leaned back further in his chair. “No, 'cause you know what, I’m having fun at this depressing shitfest. Why don’t you and Shiv talk about what lipstick has the cuter packaging or whatever.” He said with a shrill mocking tone attempting to dismiss you from the conversation.

Shiv scoffed, beating you to a response, “What the fuck Roman? If you’re going to take anything away from this pathetic conversation, listen to y/n," Shiv looked at you with her best attempt at a comforting grin.

Roman glared at her “Oh fuck off Shiv. You’re such a fucking cunt.”

The conversation wasn’t de-escalating and you felt your blood boiling. You were sure everyone could see how much you were seething. “Rome enough. You’ve had your fun. Now let’s go before you embarrass yourself anymore,” You weren't sure if your response was too harsh, but you remained patient with him long enough.

Roman snorted, now full attention on you because you fell into his game, “That’s fucking rich coming from you. You’re always so goddamn sensitive about everything.” He kept a cruel smirk on his face, waiting for your retaliation. Roman knows you hate arguing, but he wanted to push you tonight. Wanting to pull a reaction out of you, lose your composure. Shiv, Kendall, and Niaomi are still present, just speechless. You and Roman had been arguing more since Logan started stringing him along. The three of them felt stepping in would only worsen the situation and decided to stay quiet, not wanting to escalate it anymore.

You fought the urge to reveal any weakness. “I’m not being sensitive Rome, you’re being a dick, Let’s go.” You were biting the inside of your cheek, trying to abstain from your anger. You tried to grab the glass out of his hand before he quickly yanked it toward him.

His grip on the glass tightened as he swirled the last bit of champagne. “Yeah, right, perfect fucking y/n. Trying to control everything.” The tension was evident. Roman wasn’t backing down, not caring if you were the only person that loved or understood him. He just wanted to inflict damage on you at that moment.

Your body was stiff, arms crossed against your chest, hiding your tightened fists. You tasted how the inside of your cheek was bloody, trying to suppress the growing anger, taking a shallow breath from your nose. Trying your best to remind yourself, He’s just drunk. He’s just drunk. “I’m not controlling anyone. Please Rome, you’re drunk and acting insane-”

His eyes narrowed as he took a sip from his glass, muttering under his breath, cutting you off, “Well, maybe if you weren’t so young-”

“Excuse me?” Stumbling over your words a bit, trying to comprehend what Roman just said. Kendall tried to step in, but Niaomi and Shiv decided it was better to leave you two.

He put down his glass, adjusting his view, maintaining intense eye contact, “I’m just saying, maybe this would all make sense to you if you knew how the world works. But you don’t.” His lips curled into a slight smirk like he was proud of what was said.

You felt your breath quicken. Yes, you were younger than Roman and the rest of the company, but you had repeatedly proven you were qualified for your position. You weren't aware Roman acknowledged your age gap enough to bring it up in an argument. “My age has nothing to do with this.” You couldn’t think of anything witty to say in retaliation. You felt so betrayed.

Roman leaned closer to you, the alcohol taking full effect. He didn't understand he was jeopardizing your guy’s relationship with this. He pressed on, “Sure kid. Keep telling yourself that.” Maintaining that pretentious smirk on his face.

All you could do was shake your head and mutter, “You know I hate when you call me that.” Tears had been prickling in your eyes at this point. You refused to cry fuck, fuck, fuck.

Roman rolled his eyes “Welcome to the real world sweetheart. I’m not going to change who I am, so don’t fucking expect me to. I'm not getting any better. Get over whatever savior complex you have that makes you think you can fix me. It’s not going to work.” With that, you felt a new layer added to this betrayal. And Roman felt it too.

You had no control over emotions anymore. Your heartbeat was already beating furiously and irregularly. Your limbs had lost feeling, and you knew your lip was quivering. All you could feel was the stab in the heart Roman left and tears pooling in your eyes and down your cheek. “Fuck you, Roman.” You didn’t need to say anything more. You wanted to, but you knew you still loved him. You made a straight path to the nearest exit. You didn’t give the staff your phone, so you texted your driver you’ll be out in 5.

All you could hear over the horrid music calling from behind you was “See you around, kid.”

#roman roy x reader #succession #roman roy #roman roy x you #shiv roy #kendall logan roy #succession fanfic #roman roy fanfic #roman roy angst #roman roy drabble

303 notes · View notes

bluebeewings · 1 year

Text

Even if there’s little on the tomgreg front (I doubt it) I’m so happy (and scared) with the amount of tomshiv angst we’re gonna get in this season like I won’t be able to handle it

#like every teaser we got a snippet of tomshiv angst #always dreading but also very anxious for their heated discussion in the first episode #I can’t wait #succession #succession final season #tomshiv #tom wambsgans #shiv roy #mine

14 notes · View notes

bowieandqueen11 · 1 year

Text

The Blood Pours / Roman Roy Imagine

Request: yoooo your requests are open i'm so happy!🥰🥰🥰 time to unleash my succession brainrot on you sorry in advance

if that's ok, could you please write the reader comforting roman after the Tooth Knocking Out Incident™? cause i just KNOW he'd go "no yeah that's fine i deserve it anyway :)" before completely breaking down because somebody finally cares and finds it horrifying like. man i just wanna hug him so bad

So true legend omg I want to hug him so bad as well that scene made me emotionally unstable istg let’s give our mans some comfort <3 Also HELLO EVERYONE I’M BACK!!

If you enjoy, please let me know! :)

Warning: some strong language, also Roman being Roman, and mentions of trauma!

(I do not own Succession or its characters, all rights go to creators. Gif credit goes to @endiness.)

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°

Sometimes Roman wished he could feel nothing. Nothing at all.

‘No, yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine! Not like I didn’t see that one coming.’

None of the resentment, and even worse, downright disregard that his father hits him with. Nor the confusing spiels and overambitious derision that his brother likes to anchor him down with. Even worse, the blatant self-righteousness that his sister likes to curl her fingers down his throat with and choke him. He splutters, and he wisecracks, yet the blood still pours out from the corners of his lips regardless.

It would make losing the game again just that much easier. It would make his failure feel like a sliver of acceptance. If he could feel nothing, maybe it would make the punishment for all his sins finally taste like love.

‘What, am I paying you to wait around? Can you just - I don’t know - fucking go instead of staring at me? Fuck!’

He sinks down into the frigid leather of the car seat, leg not even half way through the door before he’s nonchalantly waving his fingers at the driver to go on. Go. Just go. Before he looks slightly to his right and sees the dejected frown Kendall has become too accustomed to giving over the long years. The usual crossed arm stance of his sister, with an extra jagged edge of ice frosting over her shoulders as Tom comes to lead her back in to the show.

He’s too preoccupied with covering his face with his hands and wiggling his pinkie finger in-between the latest gap in his bleeding gums to realise you were running over to fling open the other passenger side door.

‘Jesus Remy - what the fuck was that? Did- did your dad really just-? What the fuck is wrong with your family?’ The words tumble out in a jumbled slew as you slide into the sickly polished smelling seat next to him. He can’t even bear to look at you. All of his effort is currently going into sliding his knuckles down past his tired eyes and staring bleakly out into the slow-moving horizon. He nearly chokes on his swallow, trying desperately to stop his lips from trembling and crack back on his signature ‘I’m fucking better than you’ smile. You give him a moment, not knowing what to say, but desperate to reach out and give him some form of comfort.

As you spot his bottom lip quiver in the fractured reflection of his window, you reach your hand out towards his suit jacket. As he uses his thumb to wipe the bottom of his nose, pretending to shrug and struggle out a half-laugh as he begins to sob, you let your hand linger just inches away from him. Too terrified to make contact. Too scared he’ll either bite your hand off, or even worse, retreat back inside his kennel with a new scar to lick and a muffled whimper.

‘Oh, that?’ he shakes his head and lets out a barked laugh, ‘that was - that was fucking nothing. All that Dinosaur shit? Just, fucking - jokes you know. Just playing around - it’s not polite to talk shit about your dick of a father just because he has his fist up corporate America’s taint.’ He says it all with a slight click to his words, subconsciously running his tongue over the phantom tooth. It was the only thing that got him to stop talking, otherwise he would have rambled on until the cock crowed to fill in the silence.

‘Maybe it’s not polite, but I’ve got a few choice words in my head for him. The first starts with ‘f’ and ends with ‘uck you, you old sod’.’

He tries to chuckle, but he’s just so tired he can’t even manage that. His eyes glaze over, remembering the first time his father had touched him; he couldn’t remember ever getting a pat on the back, a hug, hell even a handshake from the man, but he could picture clear as day the first time he had backhanded him. He had been seven years old, and had come shambling into the kitchens after losing the first round of tennis to Shiv. His instructor had despaired, sending him back inside after he had ran to volley the ball back from the baseline, and ended up with his chin slammed against the ground and his shin skinned to the bone after a long slide.

Even though he had tried to bite back his tears, he wandered around the counters and past countless chefs and waitresses who glanced down at him with a capriciously contained distain for the young rich boy. Haunting around the corners for any kind of comfort, he had run face first into his father, too busy shouting down the phone to notice the bloody lip and bloodstained eyes of the tiny child before him. Shiv, in the meantime, had come running in yelling after her brother, and all the noise had just disgruntled his father. Or perhaps it had been the fact that his failsafe son had lost, once again, and was crying himself silly instead of shaping up.

He had spent that night curled up under his covers crying himself to sleep, vowing he’d never allow his father to see him as weak, undeserving of his love again. But now, he didn’t really care. He didn’t want his father. Fuck that. He wanted you, and god knows he’s never been so despairing, so anguished to know that it’s right there, being offered to him, and he can’t even manage to ask for it.

He could beg? He could grovel? He could crawl along the car floor and whine and shiver and tremble and maybe you could cave in and throw him a little of the love he’s so desperately crying out for.

But then he finally feels your fingertips connect with his back, and the man just breaks.

If he crawled any further into your lap, the man might as well just sink into your skin. Like a paper heart, he curls up into your legs like a little child, resting his chin on your shoulder and sobbing heavily into your neck. With his eyes screwed shut, he finally gathers the courage to just let go and wind his arms around the sides of your waist. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but found that all that he could do was gasp a sharp intake of breath. He felt so helpless, so useless as he thumped his head down against the curve of your shoulder blade and willed himself to stop blubbering for five seconds. You just tug him closer against your chest and hold him as tight as you possibly can; you manage to slip your hands under his blazer and widen your fingers flat against his back, feeling him shiver against you like a chick missing its mother’s wing.

‘Oh Romey’, you sigh out, ‘I’m here. It’s alright. I’m here.’ He sniffles, and you can feel your heart break just that little bit further. ‘I will always be here for you. I swear to god, I’m not letting you within fifty feet of any family member without me present as your bodyguard ever again.’ He giggles through the ratchet sobs, and you try not to wince as you watch a splash of scarlet blood patter against the headrest.

He pulls his head back to look at you with a crooked smile, but that soon falls into a look of absolute concentration? Perhaps a kind of nirvanic understanding? You couldn’t put your finger on it at the time, but the intense way he opened his lips and just stared at you soon became abundantly clear.

Before he even has time to realise what he’s doing, Roman Roy is kissing you.

His eyes widen in surprise when he realises his lips are pressed up against yours, cheeks almost puffing out like a blowfish. When he freezes for a second, though, and realises that you’re not pulling away from him in disgust, the world seems to come rushing back in. His heart seems to be pounding in his ears: his lips, although copper tasting, are burning with each gentle chapped stroke against your own. He tries to bite back the need to cower away and strike a joke at the whole situation. Instead, his suit rumples against your arms as he nearly falls over to press himself further against you, his hands coming up to cup your cheeks and keep you as close to his face as humanly possible. You smile against his lips, tugging the back of his hair and enjoying the happy whimper of delight that cowers out of his mouth as you guide his head to the side and kiss him again.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’, he can’t help but babble every time your lips fall apart for a split second, ‘I’m so fucking sorry.’ His breath is a hot brush of dragon fire against you, rushed and heavy and pained; the burdensome weight of a man so desperately in love.

‘Romulus’, you manage to groan out between his licking kisses, as he pushes you down to lie on the seat, ‘you should never feel sorry for wanting love.’

#succession #succession imagine #roman roy #roman roy imagine #kieran culkin #roman roy x reader #roman roy angst #kendall roy #shiv roy #tom wambsgans #logan roy #succession fanfic #succession fanfiction #roman roy succession #roman roy fluff

480 notes · View notes