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The Internet’s jizzing itself over Kendall and Living+.
Have the Yankees seen this guy pitch? wonders the incestuous scissorfest of business/sport Twitter; r/wallstreetbets is drowning in meme templates, they like the stock, apparently. Forbes rushes out a piece so fast they drop the co- and wax lyrical about The Bright New Waystar, CEO Kendall Roy. It has been two hours and no correction issued yet. On the one hand, it makes a nice change from the political hashtag swamp that’s been seeping through the social media feed walls over the last month. On the other, maybe the swamp wasn’t so bad after all. Roman would kind of like it back. He was just starting to get comfortable with the permanent smell of damp patriotism.
It’s just a little bit dispiriting, is the problem, and the sense of ticking time bomb is a relentless blip inside Roman’s head, like an ellipsis ant trail going in one ear and out his dick. Kendall lied. Kendall is a liar. And this is not news to anyone who’s met him at two AM in the kitchen, age seventeen, coked up and strung out and insisting that he’s sober, he’s just laughing over the concept of a fork. But lying to investors, journalists, legals – that’s different. It’s televised. It’s everywhere.
Nobody seemed worried when Roman left the party, which is doing nothing to help his twitching anxiety. Pride before a fall. He’s seeing SEC-shaped shadows everywhere he looks, and no one seems to care. No one’s thinking. Everyone’s being fucking morons over Kendall, and Roman’s just-
Messy.
Exhibit A: the panicked texts sent in the stairwell outside Kendall’s Kool Klan party. So we may have a crisis on our hands and by we I mean me. Brainless, knee-jerk, reaching out in the comfortable expectation of a rebuff. It’s three days before the election. Nobody’s reading his texts.
Exhibit A, small print: Oops. Mencken’s actually in LA for a short while. Six hours, two speeches, one dinner and a cancelled cocktail do. Cancelled to come see Roman, of all things, because apparently there’s someone out there who reads his texts and takes him seriously. He doesn’t know how he feels about that. Or how he feels about Mencken leaning on the balcony outside his bedroom, taking in the evening mountain view, his hands curled relaxed around the railing.
“We broke some Secret Service hearts with this visit,” Mencken says, accepting the whiskey Roman brings him. “Change of schedule, short timeframes, all the glass walls. Even my wife doesn’t guilt trip me as hard as my head of security just did.”
“Is that why they left the dog sitting next to my favourite armchair? Petty revenge kinda thing?”
“I’m sure it was just a coincidence.”
The whiskey glasses tap together, friendly, unhurried; out of the corner of his eye, Roman watches Mencken’s lanky form leaning against the railing. These final days are crazy times. He seems to appreciate the chance to slow his schedule down for an hour or two. He seems genuinely pleased to be here. That’s weird and possibly a sign of a neurological disorder to rival the Raisin’s, or whatever the fuck’s going on with Sandy Furness these days.
Roman turns away, pressing the icy glass to his forehead. The sunset looks like a bloodbath. Tatty little scraps of clouds stitched together like a bad deepfake video.
“So I hear you blue-balled a bunch of A-listers for me,” he mutters. “Nice to know I’m still top of the priority list.”
“The A-listers were a tentative anyway,” Mencken says. “The waters run blue in these parts, and I’m out of time to convince individual undecideds. And, you know, it’s been a while; we’re overdue a one on one. It might be our last before the election.”
“So I snap my fingers and you come running?”
“Is that how you’re interpreting it?”
Order up: one President, lightly seared, rare on the inside. That was Dad’s MO. The driver at the wheel of the political clown car, the fist up the Presidential puppet’s asshole. Pardons, photo ops, preferential legislation just a phone call away, on demand, any time. It’s what Dad would expect of his heirs: keep the power and hold the leash, don’t be a limp-dicked slug letting his decades of hard work slip away.
Don’t get the easiest part wrong, moron. Don’t fuck up question one. What’s your name?
You’re a fucking Roy.
“I am,” Roman says. “I’m interpreting it as picking right back up from where Dad left. You’re in the White House, I’m in head office, we both know who’s in charge. The only change here is the nameplate on the boss’ door.” He does not fucking want to look at Mencken as he says it, and why should he? He can do anything he wants. Fire whoever. Make his own calls. Fuck up freely and with good cheer.
“Okay,” Mencken says. His voice catches part way through the word, a crack in the wall, the light laugh slipping through. “Sure, we can do that. So you want to be the boss of me? Kink freely, man, I don’t have boundaries; let’s get the roleplay going. Do I need to call you ‘sir’ or are we still on first name terms?”
“I wasn’t kidding.”
“Did I not sound serious? Come on, Roman, play with me. Your dad’s dead, you’re having an adorable little masculinity crisis, and you want to flex on someone to reassure yourself that there’s a new alpha in town. It’s cool. Get it out of your system before you hurt yourself.”
Roman looks up. Fucking curse of his existence, his inability to end a conversation Mencken wants continued. They started out that way in Virginia; he wasn’t there to get pitched, he didn’t care, he was eyes peeled to pick up on the candidate Dad wanted (Boyer, probably, gagging noise) and all set to play hype man for whoever that might be. Make it fun for Dad. Put on a show. Zero investment.
But Mencken is playing in a whole other dimension; he’s 4D chess to the checkers of his peers. He’s fun, he’s quick, he’s a tarantula in a closed cockpit. And he does not rise to obvious bait. He ain’t mad about it; the smirk is creepy-warm, the stance is relaxed, he’s here for a good time and he’s having it and it’s fucking okay because it’s Mencken.
So much for zero investment. So much for being in charge.
“Yeah,” Roman says. He has to drop the eye contact. He doesn’t like how it makes him feel. “I think I did that one already. Hurt myself. The ghosts of fuckups past all came around to run a failure train on me; it’s a mess. One buff big-dicked bad call after another, there’s a line out the door by now.”
“A little over-dramatic, don’t you think?”
Roman laughs. He talks; he’s good at that. And he finds that once he starts, there isn’t any end in sight. “I’m not sure you grasp quite how, uh, thorough I am about fucking a good thing. And fucking it all the way, nothing half-assed here, I am whole-assing my way to failure like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Just fucking it all. Up, down, sideways. All the wacky positions; I’m day trading fuckstocks on the market – can you stop laughing, please, it’s not helpful.”
“You’re right,” Mencken says. “I’m forgetting my place. What’s the approved employee response here, do I just nod earnestly and keep my mouth shut?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Not at all. Please, carry on. I’ll have a survey ready for you when you’re done, you can rate my lowly office scrub impersonation.”
“This isn’t as funny as you seem to think.”
“Thinking is way above my pay grade in this scenario.”
Mencken turns his back on the bleeding sunset, leaning his elbows on the rail. It brings one of his forearms into contact with Roman’s. He doesn’t seem to mind, so Roman leaves it. He leans a bit, a smidgeon, a fraction of a hair closer than Ken, or Shiv, or even Dad have ever gotten.
“I sent pictures of my dick to our female General Council,” he says, and waits for the recoil.
Mencken fucking laughs.
“Okay,” he says. “Were they good pics? Flaccid or fully erect? Can I see? No, wait; ethics, we’re being ethical here. That’s terrible, there’s no way you come back from that. Compared to the crises tearing our social fabric apart – rising crime rates, hostility towards law enforcement, the gradual strangulation of our cultural values at the hands of foreign-owned tech firms…yeah, you don’t come back from this one. Start packing for the Alaskan work camp, Roman. It’s been great knowing you.”
People say that Mencken is a new frontier of depravity on the US political horizon. Righter than right, redder than red, strolling into ye olden Conservative value shop with a sledgehammer and a grin like he’s seen the next page of the script and finds it favourable. Every synonym for ‘monster’ gets thrown his way; liberal media have broken out the anti-authoritarian thesaurus in his honour. He is, apparently, the literal devil. Scourge of the Hollywood creatives. The end of the American dream.
Maybe. Maybe not. Roman’s always struggled to get his head around those arguments, and he’s not one for struggling, so he gave up a while back. He knows that Mencken is different. IP, sure, he’s fucking IP, but at the end of the day isn’t everyone? Mencken brings something more to the stage. To the conversation, to the full-blown confession spilling out from Roman’s mouth in the face of his try me smile.
“I blew up a rocket.”
“You, personally? I thought I caught a whiff of anarchist about you; remind me sometime to tell you about the shit I got up to in my early college days.”
“No, not me personally, it was over in Japan.”
“So it wasn’t even an American rocket? Remind me again why I care?”
There’s no goal to this conversation; Roman can’t work out where the fuck he’s trying to take it, or why he feels so compelled to keep going. He’s never been to confession. He’d be stuck there for the rest of his life. He wants to grab Mencken by the smirk and rattle it off his face; shock him, anger him, pick a fucking fight. It will almost certainly not make him feel better.
He wants fucking…something, and he can’t work out what, but the lack of it gnaws at his insides like syphilis eating at a cock.
“I lost my shit at Matsson,” Roman says, “and now he’s buying ATN just to fuck with me personally.”
Mencken shrugs. “So I heard. It’s fixable. Elect me and I’ll nail him to the regulatory crucifix; Swede Jesus bleeding litigation dollars into the bottomless coffers of US corporate. It’s really not the problem you’re making it out to be. Pretend I said that in a brainless subordinate tone – I assume you’re still trying to roleplay my boss.”
“I literally just fired two people for not taking me seriously.”
“Oh yeah? Have you seen the guy they’ve got running against me?”
“Have I-” Roman says. “Oh, fuck you.” He pushes off the railing, sick of the fading sunset, the view over the hills, the antsy emptiness his whiskey hasn’t coated. Stalks back inside to the artificial light and trusty controlled temperature. He thinks he’d like to throw his glass at a wall. He doesn’t. Don’t make a fucking mess, Roman. Clean it up.
“I’m fucking…losing my mind here,” he says to the empty room. “Spiralling. I’m a corkscrew dick trying to fit into an unlubed square hole. And then I look around and Kendall’s fucking fine, he’s winning, he just lied to a room full of investors but it’s fine because any time Ken gets jail spunk on him he just towels it right off and orders another round. Shiv’s fine, Connor’s exploring an exciting new career in snuff photography, and you’re just laughing at me right to my face.”
Mencken’s at his shoulder. Taking the empty glass from Roman’s hand and moving over to the drinks cabinet; unerringly picking out Roman’s favourite whiskey. He pours them both another round.
There’s something about the way he does it – practical, kind of elegant, kind of watchable. It’s his hands, Roman thinks. He has watchable hands. He’s always gesturing with them in speeches, some of which Roman occasionally deigns to view, though fuck him if he can remember the content afterwards.
“Hey,” Mencken says. “I’m going to drop the kinky corporate roleplay and be real with you for a bit. Okay? You told me there was a crisis, I took you at your word. Roman. Come on. Take a step back for me; can you do that? Take a high level, long term perspective approach to the situation. Which of these problems can’t be solved by money, lawyers, or me?”
The arrogance there is kind of astounding, Roman thinks. It’s Roy levels of fuck you confident. It’s fucking…comforting, in a way, enough that he trusts himself to come and fetch his fresh whiskey, shifting the conversation to a window seat.
Outside, he sees movement among the palm trees. Security; his or Mencken’s. There’s no difference. It’s like they’ve moved in together and lost track of which plate is whose.
The anger seems to have switched itself off. No more fuck you, you’re fired energy here; Roman sags, tired, worn, a soggy t-shirt abandoned on a lawn. He feels the weight of the day pressing down on him, and it’s just…a lot. Forget Living+ and the eternal life con trick; they should sell the crowd on a fix for a fucked up day, a time machine, a way to go back and reassemble broken shit. Get on stage with Kendall, unfire Gerri, stay out of Norway, stop Dad before he boards the flight.
A way to stop getting it wrong.
“I don’t know,” Roman says. “I feel like the grief spiral might be a tricky one to solve. It either falls into the ‘too hard’ basket, or the ‘absolutely do not stick your dick in here’ dumpster.”
“I might have a solution,” Mencken says. “But in the spirit of our constitutional bro code, I’m going to need some reciprocity before we address the abandoned puppy in the room. Cards on the table, I came here with an agenda.” He pauses, giving Roman an expectant look. Polite, kind of; waiting for an invitation to continue, though they both know that if he wants something, it’ll be fucking important. Enough to cancel on the A-listers, and fuck that bullshit about coming to help with Roman’s crisis. This is the real down and dirty.
But it was nice of him to listen first, Roman thinks. It’s more than anyone else has done for him today. He pats the window seat at his side, and Mencken settles close. Polite, again, he salutes with the whiskey, until Roman unwinds enough to tap their glasses together. It’s almost like a secret handshake. Like he’s signing a contract they haven’t yet written.
“So,” Mencken says briskly. “Connor Roy – what the fuck?”
Yeah. That would be the problem. Of course it would.
“You maybe want to be more specific?”
“Do I need to be?” Mencken asks. “Your older brother is siphoning votes, man. He tapped the conservative bloodstream and he’s just drinking his fill unchecked. It hasn’t been too much of a problem up until now, but we weren’t ready for the dead dad sympathy vote; those decimal points are adding up. The campaign’s freaking out. I’m mildly concerned. What’s your take on it?”
“I think he might be a bit hard to fire.”
“That’s nepotism, baby. Sure, I hear you. Do I go carrot or stick?”
It is, Roman thinks, a tiny bit of a fucked up ask. Sell your family out, Rome. It’s just Connor, who gives a fuck? We can give it to him rough and dirty or we can suck him off a little first, but his ass is getting wrecked either way.
But Con’s bringing it on himself. And maybe Dad had a plan for him, a fat stack of fuck off cash or the severed genitalia of yet another overrated European warlord. A warehouse of mite-infested sand for Willa’s box office whimper sequel. Whatever floats his adorably tawdry wedding boat. In Dad’s absence, a certain amount of improvisation is in order.
Roman tries not to feel like too much of a piece of shit. It’s just a hobby. A month from now, Con won’t care. He’ll find himself another respectable occupation, like vivisecting random German tourists who wander onto his land. Or stamp collecting.
“Connor is…Connor,” Roman says. “Half the time Dad didn’t remember he existed. He picked a flight to Norway over his eldest son’s wedding. The whole President race is Con trying to do a thing, you know? Prove himself to the fucking…memory of Dad or whatever; he was telling me about it at the wake and I zoned out as soon as he opened his mouth. But it’s a principle thing. You can’t yell at him to stop, he’ll just dig his little shithole faster. Neither of us has a long enough stick to reach down and fuck him with.”
Mencken nods slowly. “So, bribery. Incentive. Scrap metal, but we coat it in just enough bronze that it comes across as a medal instead of a participation trophy.”
It’s a bit like taking the beloved family vet to get euthanised. Send the old boy gently into that good night so everyone feels less guilty about the younger dog he’s being replaced with. It’s the kindest option Roman can come up with. Less kind options are readily available; they come to mind a lot more quickly, because fuck if Connor doesn’t hand out ammunition to all and sundry wherever he goes.
“Just…offer him a special enough job title that he can tell everyone he’s on the A Team and doesn’t notice he’s benched forever,” Roman says. “Dickwit Treasury Secretary, whatever. Nice salary, international travel, the occasional ‘good boy’ treat snuck into his food bowl. Fucking, I don’t know, tell him he has potential and you could see yourself endorsing him someday.”
“The illusion of a VIP experience, huh? Cover the Styrofoam cake in white icing?”
The less kind options sit on a continuum, a kind of Kinsey scale for fratricide. On the straight and narrow end sits humiliation: Napoleon’s phony penis, or the well-told tale of Connor and the bag that once was shit.
The other end of the scale has the stuff he might not come back from. Willa, for one. The low hanging slut, the worker of the world’s oldest profession. Roman genuinely likes her. Who doesn’t? He thinks even Dad would have looked for another option before selling Willa’s bacon at the conservative shame market.
But the election is getting really fucking close. The bacon won’t sell itself.
Roman sighs. “If it gets to the grand finale and we’re still counting decimal places, I have…something. We can appeal to the Christian morality brigade, rustle up a bigger straw and suck some conservative votes right back. I think it’ll get you over the line.”
“That’s what I was hoping to hear. Is there a reason we’re keeping this straw in reserve?”
“Yeah,” Roman says sharply. “I’m suffering a net loss of family members this week, and I’m sad, and the prospect of publicly slitting Con’s throat doesn’t really appeal right now. I’ll do it if we’re out of options, but otherwise just fucking try the nice way first maybe? Offer the sugar bowl before we crack open the septic tank?”
It’s weird, he thinks into the silence that follows, staring direct into Mencken’s eyes. He likes looking at Mencken. He likes Mencken looking at him. They’ve talked some shit in their time, to each other and at other people; they bounce, they banter, they vibe. They need each other and they know that. It’s a mutual back scratch. That’s the name of the game.
But Roman doesn’t feel quite as mutual as he did a few days back. He thinks he might regret the little grief spiral unload; as good as it felt to let loose on Mencken’s total lack of fucks given, he’s hit the comedown now. He’s low, and lower by the second. He’s holding the ace here, he’s flashed and then tucked it back up his sleeve. But Mencken watches him like he’s considering taking it anyway. Regardless of whether he has to cut Roman’s hand off first.
The back scratch gets rougher; Mencken’s stare starts to peel away the skin. Roman bites hard on his tongue to keep himself from spilling everything from Willa’s history to the number of times he’s looked at Mencken’s hands and fucking…wondered. Considered. Fixated, one hand clamped over his eyes and the other down the front of his pants.
Would it ruin him the same way he could ruin Connor?
Mencken blinks first. It doesn’t feel like a victory.
“Okay,” he says. “I trust your judgment. The campaign team won’t thank me for it, and maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot – but when I look at the track record, you’ve never let me down. I’ll get my people to rustle up a sweetener for Connor, and you can present it to him. Coming from family makes it look more legit.”
“You really don’t know my family,” Roman says. He wilts internally, and probably on the outside as well. Most of that is relief. Some is more complicated than he cares to think about.
“Does it matter, if I know you?”
They both laugh, dry and short, but not without warmth. The awkward fucking tension fades a little. Given space to breathe, Roman finds himself restless, needing to get out of his protective hunch and off the window seat. He leaves his whiskey on a side table. Wanders to the balcony door, touching the handle and deciding not to bother. Might as well invite every mosquito in the neighbourhood to come have a munch on his tasty, tasty buttcheeks.
He ends up on the side of the bed, falling backwards until his spine hits the mattress and he can starfish to his heart’s content. In the skylight above, the light is fading. It does that. Every fucking day, every predictable evening, every movement of a clock he can’t change or turn back.
He’s been thinking about that a lot recently. There’ll come a day when he watches his last sunset through the glass above his bed. He wonders if he’ll know. If there’ll be any warning at all. If he’ll miss the signs like he’s missed all the signs, until he’s slinking his way unnoticed out of yet another celebration for someone else’s life achievements.
It's not a nice thought.
Roman bites at the edge of his thumbnail.
“You don’t really know me,” he says, trying to drag his brain back into the conversation. “If we rolled out my list of personality disorders, it would stretch from here to the moon – and that’s just the version that made it to cinemas. The director’s cut is bigger, longer, and positively throbbing. We’re in trouble if that thing ever erupts. I could level entire cities with the ejaculatory force of my unresolved issues.”
“So you have things,” Mencken says. He’s across the room, moving; Roman doesn’t lift himself up to see. “Who doesn’t? Criticise anyone these days and suddenly you’ve triggered one of their myriad self-diagnosed disorders. When every public personality is a walking milkshake duck in waiting, why not give the punters what they want?”
“Sure, because you have absolutely nothing to hide.”
Roman’s skylight view is halved by hawk-nosed profile, Mencken sitting on the other side of the mattress. One of his hands is by Roman’s head. Suddenly the only thing Roman can think about is rubbing his cheek against it. Nipping the side of Mencken’s wrist. If he bites hard enough, would Mencken pull his hair? Is that…is that a normal thing to want?
The wedding ring is missing. He can see the marks on the skin where it was a few minutes ago.
“I have secrets,” Mencken says easily. “Of course I do; I have my thing, as do we all. It’s just part of the human condition.”
“Oh,” Roman says. “Okay then. I mean, I was kind of kidding before, and now I’m concerned. Are we talking minor #MeToo misdemeanour, or did you interpret Stand Your Ground laws a bit too freely and shoot someone more generously endowed in the melanin area? Have I stumbled ass-first into an Epstein situation? A Catholic church-style coverup?”
Roman gets up on one elbow. He keeps it light, funny, fascists are kinda cool but not really. The fact that he has a specific tone for that should fucking terrify him, he thinks. It doesn’t, but maybe it should. And, he thinks, he doesn’t need to ask this. Does he want to hear the answer? Does he already know? Does Mencken take the wedding ring off any time he’s indulging his thing? Because that is genuinely hilarious if true.
He’s looking up at Mencken (he prefers looking down), smiling a bit, getting smiled at. Thinking that despite all best efforts, he hasn’t managed to fuck this.
Mencken pointedly drops his eyes to Roman’s mouth.
Correction, Roman thinks, feeling his brain attaining a level of weightlessness, the very visceral sensation of all blood flowing south for the winter. He hasn’t managed to fuck this yet.
“So,” Mencken says in a conversational tone. “Are you going to make a move, or do you need me to?”
If he really knew Roman, he’d know the answer to that. Maybe he does; there’s something smug, vulpine, pre-emptive to his smile. He fucking knows. They both do.
“I think – uh,” Roman says uselessly. “Fuck. Can you? Please?”
“Sure. I’ve got you.”
The kiss tastes like a foregone conclusion. An entry into Roman’s five year plan from the moment Mencken opted to hit on him at a bar in Virginia. He’s been told that he’s bad at kissing - too aggressive, too forward, like he’s trying to suck the life out the poor girl’s mouth. If that’s the case then he’s been playing in the kiddie leagues; Mencken is all over him. Open-mouthed, tongue pushing firm into Roman’s mouth like he’s colonising territory. Roman rolls with it. Moans with it. Feels at fucking last like someone really, truly wants him in the room.
Mencken goes straight for the belt. He pops it open, gets a hand past Roman’s fly and grabs his stiffening dick like it already belongs to him. Fucking smiles; Roman can feel it.
“Nice,” Mencken says against Roman’s mouth.
It’s like sinking into a bath in winter; every inch of skin on Roman’s body feels the heat of that approval. He can hear himself whining, soft and doglike, as his dick is held, squeezed and measured in Mencken’s palm. How does that look? If he opened his eyes and glanced down, would he see himself, his fucking dick in the circle of Mencken’s fingers, slicking messy precum all over his thumb? Would it be as hot as it looks in his head?
He can’t look. He’s barely able to kiss back; it’s all he can do to gasp and inhabit the feeling of Mencken starting to jack him off.
His personal trainer, whoeverthefuck, once had the nerve to call him a pillow princess. Roman would have fired him on the spot if he wasn’t so good at his job. And if he hadn’t had something of a point. He thinks he could lie back for hours, letting Mencken suck lightly on his tongue, stroke his dick, breathe on him. Smirk like the world is his oyster and the pearl is nestled damply in his palm.
Roman wonders if this is how Kendall felt on the stage. He wants to fucking laugh in the smug fucker’s smug face, because Kendall lied his way to a win, and Roman isn’t lying about anything.
He’s all in. Raw as fuck, bared and dripping slick into Mencken’s hand. He’s real. The realest person in existence. It’s like he’s been reduced to all his most base and basic parts; a brainless beast well out of his depth, hoping his needs will be met for him.
“You’re a fucking work of art,” Mencken murmurs. “I want to see you at the victory. When I win, I want you for the afterparty.”
Teamwork makes the dream work, Roman thinks, giggling raggedly onto Mencken’s lips. “Okay, yeah. I will…find time. Just fucking cancel whatever else I have on, fuck. I’m all yours.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I promise. I’m showing up wearing a flag and nothing else. President’s choice: Confederate, Gadsden or plain old Stars and Stripes?”
“I’ll think about it,” Mencken says. “Hey – here’s a choice for you. You want to help me out, or do I get to jerk off on your face?”
Roman thinks about it, but not for long.