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I’m honestly really torn between Roman being both a whiny boy, and becoming extremely introverted and retreating back into his shell when he’s feeling sick. It’s a sorrowful mixture of him both needing and craving some kind of attention, someone to just be fond of him for once in his life and fear. The kind that makes it difficult for him to ask for someone to care for him without hearing the voice of his father ringing in the back of his head, taunting and scolding him for being weak and unmanly. In that same vein, he’ll call you up to come over, but then acts aloof and bratty because he’s too afraid he’ll get the wrong kind of attention.
He’s just always waiting now for that kick.
You have to guide him past all the mocking, and crude jokes to actually make him feel warm, and comfortable, and safe. You have to, because I genuinely in my heart don’t think he’s properly capable of taking care of himself. He was never taught to. His parents only bothered with him when they could take something from him.
I mean, he’s spent his whole life being told he was sick by the people who were supposed to love him most, so he always feels like he deserves it, that it’s only right that he’s physically sick too.
When you walk through the door into his apartment, you have to try and gently shove him off because he immediately prowls over and tries to drape himself over you any position he can. By the time you manage to shrug off your coat and hang it up on the rack, he’s already slinked off to roll up into a ball on the sofa. He’s a pitiful sight, with his head tucked on top of his knees and arms wrapped tightly around the Prussian blue dress shirt he’s still wearing, albeit crumpled. He’s sniffling, and you can’t tell if he’s caught a cold, or if the red-rimmed eyes also mean he’s been sitting here, alone and crying.
You call Connor straight away, excusing yourself to his second bathroom for a minute, just hoping for some expert advice from the older brother. He had to think for a moment, but in the end he finally manages to mumble out that when Roman was feeling a bit down when he was younger, that he used to stay up with him all night and try to get him to eat something.
‘Just-just don’t leave him. Please. He doesn’t do well on his own. Thanks Y/n.’
When you come out, he tries to play it off. ‘It’s just a stomach thing, no biggie’, he mumbles out from behind his knees. Yet you refuse to take that for an answer, instead scooting him over on the sofa to plonk down beside him. When your knee bumps against his thigh, he tenses, but finally looks up at you from his little burrow with wide, tired, anguished eyes.
I think he would take great comfort in being all moochy as he lays his head down on your lap with a body wracking sigh. He shuffles, until his ear rests between your thighs, and as he closes his eyes he pretends that no - this isn’t intimate, it doesn’t feel nice, he doesn’t need this - until you start playing with the loose fringes of his hair. He has to swallow down the natural instinct to swat your hand away, instead just trying to relax his hunched shoulders and focus on how his spine shivers every time your finger nails graze his scalp. He wishes he could stay in this tender moment forever, even if he believes he’s playing it cool.
You pretend not to hear the little whimper that escapes from the back of his throat.
Don’t tell him in the morning because he’ll just guffaw at you, but he does manage to fall asleep against you, if only for half an hour of bliss. He rolls over so his eyelids are facing you at some point, and it nearly leaves you breathless when he seeks out your fingers in his sleep and entangles them, resting them under his chin. For the first time in a while, he looks peaceful. No worry lines clouding his forehead, no scowl sitting on his face, no biting his bottom lip or worrying about being perceived as a fool. He feels sheltered, secure, and you can tell.
For once, he looks like any other guy. Just resting in the arms of the one person he actually has truly trusted, and loved, during his 34 years on this earth. He sleeps past daybreak for the first time since he was ten years old, and his father made him wake up and help set the breakfast table every day for a year, in punishment for squirting him with that water pistol.
The next day, you even manage to drag him into the bedroom to rest and recuperate. He’s still so sleepy, though, that you have to help him unbutton his shirt and change into his white pyjama top. The whole time he just keeps staring at you with a twitch on his lips, a soft smile daring to grace his sweet face. He glances down languidly at his feet any time you try to catch him in the act, in an almost embarrassed display.
I mean of course he has a spare set of clothes kept here for you to change into as well.
When he tumbles face first into the bed, you take the opportunity to go and try to heat up some chicken soup in his intricate looking kitchen.
‘Can you put spaghetti in it?’ you hear him shout from the bed. ‘Mum used to break up noodles and put it in canned soup when we were kids.’
You don’t fail to miss the mumbled ‘and when she was home.’
You don’t now whether to laugh, or break down crying when you re-enter the room and see him sitting at the edge of the bed with the duvet wrapped tightly around his head, watching old cartoons from the television secured against the far wall.
Let’s be real you have to feed it to him spoonful by spoonful. Any time you start to move, whether it’s to go pour him a cup of water, or to put down the spoon and bowl on the bedside cabinet, he starts winging and making fistful, grabby hands with a mockful expression. ‘No, no no, you have to stay’, or ‘I’m sick, you’re supposed to look after me’, is all you hear as he collapses down on the sheet dramatically in a cloud of duvet and blankets.
You know deep down that he’s only pretending to be annoying. In truth, he really does feel better when he’s in your company, but he’s been scorned and ridiculed his whole life for admitting such feelings. They’re so repressed, he only knows how to express what Roman Roy truly does feel through his own humorous brand of scorn, too much like his father and yet so little as well.
He does annoy you by making you fluff the bed pillows about a thousand times, though.
I feel like he’d get more affectionate when he’s ill? Kind of like he finally realises he’s hidden away from the world and can let loose a little. It surprises you when you jump under the duvet next to him, and he snuggles down into your side. He allows his head to droop down onto your shoulder, and just when you think he’s drifting off again, you feel him lean over and press a slow kiss against your shoulder blade. He does it so tenderly it feels like a drop of rain falling against your skin, yet it’s so unnatural it burns like fire as well.
I mean he’s still Roman Roy though, so he gets antsy and bored after a couple of days. To try and cheep him up, you play kids games around the apartment with him. Things like hide and seek, where you finally find him folded and squished in the bottom of his wardrobe, and he’s giggling like a mad hyena with his hands covering his eyes when you open the door. Or indoor bowling, with empty loo rolls and oranges, and he hops on your back like a little whooping frog when he gets a strike.
Let’s be real is he really sick or is he just using it as an excuse to spend time with you away from the watchful eyes of his family and the stress of the company-
Roman doesn’t want his family to know that he’s ill, but they find out from Connor anyway. Kendall comes to visit him with a cup of broth he picked up from his favourite café. Shiv sends a basketful of muffins. Even Marcia asks an assistant to write him a well wishing card. Logan doesn’t bother.
Touching on his mummy issues again whoop whoop, I think the only way he would be able to restfully sleep is if you read to him. The book choice doesn’t matter, but he likes to rest against your chest and move between gazing up at you with all the stars in the skies hidden in his eyes and back down to the bed, trying to wish away the tears that burn his eyes and stop himself from crying.
When he finally feels better and goes back to work, he goes back to his usual ways, but you can see an extra twinkle in his smile that he reserves just for you in the hallway. One step at a time to finally becoming a functioning human being, eh?