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It was easy enough, as always, to convince Karl to stay for a nightcap. But especially tonight.
He likes the calm, and things are calm, at Frank's apartment. Quiet, neat, dimly lit. Permeated with this inescapable literary musk, from the stacks upon stacks of classic books, that seemed to seep into every surface. It's like Frank-- in its worn familiarity, Karl is more comfortable here than anywhere else. With no wife or kids or enemies around, Karl feels lighter. He's able to just nurse a cool glass of outlandishly expensive, good whiskey and let it cloud his head. He can give up the planning, lay his gun on the table, and just… sink into a trance of safety he can pretend will last. Frank won't judge him. It's all he can do, really, to try to forget what they've both just seen.
"I can't believe the old bastard's dead," Karl murmurs, breaking their truce of silence. They'd carried it, unspoken, since stepping off the plane. They’d gotten good at keeping quiet, letting the air grow thick like a spiderweb– let it collect all of the things that needed to be said. Let it carry the weight of reality.
Through thin lenses, Frank's eyes flicker up to meet his, brow furrowing a tad. Off Waystar premises, he wears these intolerable square reading glasses that make him look ancient, Karl jokes, like someone's grandpa. He looks solemn, contemplative, like he's cooking up some sonnet about it. But in response, all Frank does is sigh and say, "… yeah."
"I barely believed it as it was happening, right fucking in front of us…" Karl breaks into a chuckle halfway through his words. Unable to not laugh in the face of death, emerging from the airplane toilet. Unbelievable.
"Oh, yes. Truly I tell you-- I thought the day would never come."
"Yeah. Neither did the kids, it seemed."
"Christ," Frank snorts, eyes lightening as he rolls them, "'cause you'd think Kendall would have been less of a wreck, right? With all the times he's tried to put the old man in the ground, and now he's calling asking me to bring him to the pilot, like the kid's the President, or a goddamn Air Force General…"
Overcome with half-delirious laughter, Karl falls backward at that, arms shaking as he tries valiantly not to spill whisky on Frank's leather sofa. "Careful, jesus, Karl," Frank chides him, looking amused.
"Oh, imagine him in one of those caps…"
"Please--" Karl chokes, breaking down at the mental image. "Kendall Roy, at your service."
When Karl's chuckling subsides and he's able to train his eyes on his colleague again, Frank's already gone still.
"What?"
"Logan, not coming back… it makes me think."
Frank's never not thinking. "Hm?"
"All that work we've put into this life, keeping ourselves in his good graces." Frank gestures to an imaginary expanse, like the time spent is a landscape he can look out upon, valleys and valleys of rolling grass, wilting over the years. "As in, well… my mother, her funeral and all."
Karl nods. He'd been there, for Frank. Someone had needed to be there who actually knew him.
"I met Logan, joined Waystar right as my dad passed, and then I could probably count on one hand the times I saw my mother after that. It was easy to get in lost in. But, it-it wasn't that I'd just up and forgotten about her. I remember her taking care of me as a little boy, reading to me at night-- y'know, I remember her. I was just so busy, going to these tiny gala things for the company, which never seemed to end. I was always chasing down clients and doing damage control in meetings with you and all this laughable… this offensively insignificant ant-sized bullshit to kiss the feet of the king properly. And now the King--" Frank barks out a laugh, that seems to die in his throat shortly after-- "now the King's dead. In a box, six feet under. Just like everyone else will be. What he thinks truly, truly doesn't matter anymore."
"So… do you feel like you wasted all that time?"
"Maybe?" Frank looks very tired, all of a sudden. "Maybe. I really don't know."
"Because I was there, too, for a whole lot of that, and I don't think like you wasted it. Personally, I think the company wouldn't have survived half as long as it has without you." Karl shrugs. "I mean, that's just a fact."
"Mmm." Frank nods, still staring off into space. "Well. Thank you."
"Can you imagine me having done those first big newspaper acquisitions with just Logan on my side?" With an exaggerated look of 'yikes', all in the wide eyes, Karl grimaces. "Jesus Christ. It would've been over before it begun. We'd have been strung up by our toes. We'd have been the butchers' daily special. You were the one who convinced him intimidation and letting them scramble was pointless, and that tailored pitch was what needed to be strongest; he started asking for your advice a lot more after the Henderson deals."
"Well, Logan didn't understand how some sides of people work," Frank concedes, like that was obvious. "I mean, he would've have been able to see everything, I used to say, if he'd just pick up a hardback more often--"
"Exactly," Karl interrupts. "He needed you. We needed you, to be able to talk a game big enough. And this company needs you now, if we're not gonna go belly-up without a captain to steer us. A king on the throne, like you said."
"Sure."
"I mean, life goes on. We'll crown someone new. Nothing you can do about all of it now. And you've done a fine job."
"It's just-- it's Logan's company, Karl," Frank protests, voice turning strangled, before taking a frustrated sip of his whiskey. Alcohol seemed to ease more emotion from his lips than he usually let slip. "It's never not been Logan's behemoth baby. He made it, we raised it. What-- what the fuck do we do without him?"
A decidedly dryer-eyed Karl blinks, raising his eyebrows in response. "You know, Frank, I think you must be the only high-ranking man in this company not about to throw a celebration right about now. Logan's dead, time to get the spot I deserve-- that's what they're all thinking. But, no. You're worried about the man himself. You're thinking legacy."
You, at least, care.
It was so strange. It was what made Frank so… remarkable, to Karl. Seemed he'd survived the world of bloodsuckers, these heart-eating backstabbing monsters, with pieces of his soul intact. Karl knew Frank would miss him, if he was gone. Sometimes one needed that, maybe.
"Well, aren't you?" Frank heaves a long sigh. "He was our friend, sometimes, wasn't he?"
"I don't know. Within the past year, he made me get on my hands and knees and oink for sausage. He's not exactly the type of boss you miss."
"Yes. And Logan fired me, a couple of times actually. Tried to burn us both over a billion silly little things. Yet I feel… I feel like reciting 'O Captain, My Captain' in his honor. Silly, isn't it?"
"Maybe it isn't. Who knows. You pretentious bastard,” Karl chuckles.
The two go silent, a beat. The only sounds were their breaths and the buzz of the city. An ambulance's wail, like another tycoon had left his private plane in a body bag. Karl's whiskey had been reduced to a couple of amber droplets-- how had that happened?
Again, Karl was the one to break the silence. "Do you ever think about…?"
"What, death?" Frank responds, quickly.
"No, no. I mean, obviously, you do, you would, you have to"-- they snort at that-- "but, as in… with a hypothetical overlay to this prompt, mind you, leaving the company. Waystar."
Frank takes that seriously for a long minute, before admitting in a very small voice, "I just don't know what else I would do."
They meet each others’ eyes. That seems to resonate to both of them– once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. And they've both been in for a very, very long time. Together. Then, the emotion of the thought passes and they’re just left. Staring. Four eyes through the dark. Brain upon brain. Neither breaks their gaze.
Embarrassingly enough, Karl chokes first, losing to the heat creeping up his neck.
"Would you want to…?"
Karl clears his throat hard, at that. He wants to echo Frank's words from earlier today to the weird Hirsch cousin: nice try, kid. He’s not staying. Not again. "Well, that's very kind."
"It's been quite the long day. I'd understand if you'd want company."
"My wife is company."
"Not company like I am." His eyes are so dark; they seem to burn.
They're both still, for a moment. Lost in something neither wants to name. Then, Karl averts his gaze and just like that, the spell is broken. He's not willing to admit much more about the moment or the feelings it gives him; if anything, he's already trying to forget it existed.
"No, it's late," he reiterates, tone light with forced casualness. "I need to get home."
"Alright. Well. Send her my regards."
Karl nods. "I'll see you tomorrow, at the wake." (Never seems to be very long that the two of them are apart.)
"Indeed." To his surprise, Karl turns to find Frank approaching before wrapping his arms around him and holding him for just a second. It's warm and comforting. It's hard to let go of him-- it's like home. "You take care."
"Yes." Karl stares into his friend's eyes, mildly transfixing by the closeness, the unspoken boundary crossed. Logan's death used like an alibi. Plausible deniability.
Frank's eyes glitter with drunkenness, in the dim lights of his apartment, as he claps a hand down too hard onto Karl's shoulder in a clumsy attempt at easy masculine affection.
"Do not go gentle into that good night, my friend."
“Rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” Karl answers.
He thinks back to it later, on the drive home. He doesn’t even know where along the line he learned those words from Frank. They’re just there. Like all unaddressed things, they lurk. They simmer. They haunt.
And, because he's been around a while, because it's easier... he lets them.