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Roman sits alone in his apartment, staring out of the window, thinking about nothing in particular. Picking up his phone absent-mindedly, he flicks between apps before finding himself in his Gerri chat, idly scrolling up and down through the messages. The messages that had stopped abruptly after Logan had fucked them and she’d refused to help him. Severed their bond. Killed team Goman. Or was it Rerri? She hadn’t approved of either name, obviously. Thumbing through the mess of words and images, strategy interspersed with his desperate attempts for sexual attention, he thinks he probably should have deleted all of this. That’s what a sensible person would do. A strategist. Someone who wanted to get on. It’s almost certainly what Gerri has done. Back at the final message again, he squeezes his eyes shut for a second and then types.
“hi”
Staring at the screen, he wills her to read it. Wills the two little ticks at the bottom to turn blue. It seems like an eternity, but in reality it’s probably only a few minutes of intense staring before he can see she’s online. And typing. And then not typing. Typing again. When he’s sure it’s been a full minute of not typing but she’s still showing online, he grits his teeth, making a little noise to himself, and types again.
“I know you hate me”
Thumb hovering over the keyboard, trying to figure out the next line, his phone almost slips out of his hand when it starts to ring.
“I don’t hate you, Roman.”
He tries to hold back the rush of emotions that he feels hearing that, gripping his wrist with his other hand, fingers pressing against his pulse point.
“Are you sure? Because I would hate me if I were you. Firing you and everything. That seems, y’know, kinda pretty hateful.”
“Well, I’m sure…” she takes a deep, shaky inhale “...that was what you had to do, for yourself. The expedient move at the time.”
“Y-yeah.” Roman sniffs. “I didn’t want to, Ger-bear. But my dad, he…” His voice breaks and he feels a tear roll down one cheek.
“I know.” Gerri blinks furiously, trying to stop her own tears. They’re both quiet for a bit, unsure of how to continue but unable to just put down the phone. Her mind flicks through a few things before landing on something that seems important, right now.
“Rome, have you eaten?”
“Well uh I was at the wedding, so ca- no wait, we didn’t get to the cake, Willa was just talking about looney cake so long I felt like I’d eaten it, and little canopes… no I just looked at those I suppose because we ended up in that room and then the phonecall…brrrrrr! No stomach to eat anything there, I don’t know, was there a cookie?” Screwing his face up to seriously consider whether he’d nibbled at an Oreo before or after the press conference, he finally decides no. “No. No cookie. I guess… I haven’t eaten anything for a while.” He finishes speaking and his stomach gurgles loudly as confirmation.
He suddenly realises he’s starving.
“What do you want? Chinese? Pizza? I’ll order it and get it sent over.”
Looking down at his fingers, Roman waggles them thoughtfully. “Um… Gerri?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think… is there any way of ordering you with the takeout? Ger-bear delivery? Gerri Berry DoorDash?”
“Roman.”
“Nothing weird. I just… Gerri, please? I’m on my own and now I’m not numb, I’m definitely sad and…”
“Alright.”
“Alright?”
“Alright. I’ll come over in a bit. I’ll bring the takeout.”
“Chinese?”
“Okay.”
***
Roman decides to change out of the shirt and pants he’s been wearing all day into something more comfortable. But he doesn’t want to look like a slob, so he forgoes sweatpants in favour of an old pair of jeans, pulling on a t-shirt and then looking at the pullover beside him on the couch. In the madness of getting his dad and his dad’s things off the plane, he’d somehow managed to find a sweater that had been on its way to Sweden, a big woollen thing with cables down the front, like the old man had been planning to blend in with the Scandinavians. And he’d stolen it. Not that it could really be stealing, it was his dad’s sweater and his dad really didn’t need it anymore, and Roman is his son… was his son… whatever. He feels like he possibly just grabbed it and ran, and it wasn’t very subtle at all, but he doesn’t care. He needed it, in that moment. Needs it now. Picking it up, he brings it to his face and takes a deep inhale. It smells of Logan - woody and earthy with a vague hint of something sweeter. Quickly pulling it on, he sits there and breathes the smell in over and over again. Dad smell. Probably there’s something weird about this, but he does it anyway. He’s not sure just how long he’s been sitting there when the buzzer goes. He makes sure it’s definitely Gerri before buzzing her in, standing on the other side of the door waiting for the knock, the sleeves of the sweater down over his hands.
It’s weird seeing Gerri out of business attire. Street clothes, he supposes you’d call them, she’s standing in his doorway in jeans and her own, much better fitting sweater, plastic bags in one hand. She closes the door behind her and they look at one another for a moment, her trying not to break down at the sight of him, so pitiful in the oversized pullover, eyes red, lip twitching as he tries not to break down at the sight of her, the concept of her coming here because he asked, after everything that had happened. After he’d almost held his arms out to her earlier that day, on the boat, telling her he thought he might be sad, and she’d brushed him aside, walked away.
Gerri puts the bags down on the floor, carefully, and then holds her arms out like she meant to earlier. Like she’d wanted to, but was too afraid that doing it would mean she’d lose control, weep all over him and squeeze him tightly and tell him it would be okay, with all those people around, with witnesses and… Roman looks at her for a second, just a second of hesitation, and then he presses himself against her, arms around her torso, face buried in the crook of her neck, smelling her perfume. Floral, light, almost citrusy. And for the first time that day, the tears really come. Not just a stray one here and there, not his eyes watering and him hastily brushing at them. They fly down his cheeks as he struggles to breathe, hearing his sobs like they’re someone else’s, like there’s some other hysterical boy in the room who’s just discovered his daddy has died and he’s not coming back. Holding him more tightly, Gerri lets silent tears slide down her cheeks too. She rubs his back.
“Shhhh. Oh Roman. I’m so sorry.”
“Uh-huh.” It’s all he can manage to say right now, breath still hitching, chest still heaving, unable to stop the weeping train now it’s finally left the station.
They stay like that for longer than Roman thinks anyone has ever held him in his whole life. And Gerri doesn’t let go, doesn’t try to even readjust or move other than to stroke his back through his dad’s pullover, until he finally moves his head back and looks at her.
“Thanks for coming, Ger-bear.”
She brings a hand to his cheek, instinctively, and strokes it with her thumb. “That’s okay. You should eat something.”
Suddenly aware of the tenderness of the touch he moves back, nodding quickly and thrusting his hands into his pockets. He mumbles a “yeah” and then the smell of the Chinese fills his nostrils and his stomach rumbles again. Hungry. He is definitely hungry.
“Do you want plates? Do you have…” All business again, Gerri’s in his kitchen, opening cupboard doors.
“I’m too hungry for that. Let’s just eat from the carton, like commoners.”
She sets the cartons on the table and Roman immediately starts ripping into them, eating spring rolls in two bites and wolfing down satay chicken skewers. Having decided that now wasn’t the time to use chopsticks, he’s midway through inhaling a carton of noodles with a fork that Gerri had found in the kitchen, when he takes a bite of something juicy and almost sweet-tasting.
“Mmmm. What is this? Some kind of delicious shrimp?” He pops the rest in his mouth and chews with a half-smile on his face.
Gerri has only had one spring roll in the time that Roman has been trying to break the world record in speed eating, and is very slowly making her way through her own noodles. She chews her current mouthful carefully and then looks over at him.
“Lobster Yee Mein.”
He stares at her. “Lobster. You got me lobster, on the day my dad died. What are we trying to say here, Gerri? Good riddance to the man who slapped me for ordering lobster? Is that what it is? I know he fired you, but he’s dead. Aren’t you supposed to, um, have some respect?”
“I bought it for you because I thought you’d like it. Because any time you want to have lobster, you can. The cost doesn’t matter.”
Her voice is tight, and as soon as she finishes speaking she shoves another forkful of noodles into her mouth and looks down. She supposes in a way the lobster had been a bit of a fuck you to Logan, a bit of a celebration that he wasn’t going to be looming over them anymore. But she hadn’t thought that when she ordered. She just looked at the menu and found the words coming out of her mouth. Of course she’d analysed her motives to within an inch of their lives on the journey over here, but it hadn’t been some Machiavellian plan. And neither had the bottle of champagne she’d taken from her fridge. It had just seemed like the thing to do.
Roman watches her eat, eyes studying the noodles as if they’re the most interesting thing in the room. For once in his life, he’s dumbstruck. He doesn’t know how to respond to what she just said, considering it sounded quite a lot to him like her believing he deserves to have lobster, if lobster is what he wants. Roman isn’t sure he deserves anything right now. He goes back to the noodles, eating a little more slowly, savouring the taste of the lobster pieces. He does love lobster. He hadn’t just asked for it because it was the most expensive thing on the menu.
“Thanks, Gerri.” He says it quietly, when he’s done, and she looks up at him cautiously over her glasses.
He manages a small smile and she smiles back, putting her carton down and then wiping her mouth with a tissue.
“I thought you might feel like a drink.”
He nods, silently. The quietness is setting her on edge a little. She’s not sure he’s ever been this quiet for this long. Even when he’s on his own she’s pretty confident he talks to himself, a constant patter to keep himself company.
Taking a breath she gets up and goes back to the kitchen, pulling the bottle out of the remaining bag. She holds it up so he can see.
“If you thought the lobster was disrespectful you’re going to hate this.”
“Gerri. My dad is dead and you brought champagne.” Roman’s face twitches.
“I just thought I would bring something. And this is what I had.”
“Veuve Clicquot… uh… 1998. You just had that and you thought you would bring it. Did you just bring a jar of aged beluga caviar too? A sack of saffron? Some freshly dug up truffles?”
She opens her mouth to try and justify herself again and then she sees his lips curling into a smile. A smile that he tries to stop, but can’t. The tiniest smile turns the corners of her mouth up too.
“I thought you’d have those things.”
Roman’s laughter fills the room, and then he’s up on his feet and telling her to pop the cork and pour him a glass so he can toast his dead dad.
“This,” he announces, holding the flute aloft, “is what he would have wanted.”
“He might have preferred to not be dead, Rome.”
Gerri looks at him with a semi-serious expression again, but she clinks her glass against his anyway. His face spasms into a smile and then he downs the glass and holds it out to her for more.
“Do you think you could savour this glass, maybe?” She asks as she pours.
“Oh, sorry mommy. This is probably your best champagne. The most expensive thing you’ve ever drunk. You were probably keeping it for a special occasion, like my dad dying.”
Gerri points at the couch, looking sternly over her glasses. “Sit.”
He only rolls his eyes a little as he follows the instruction and she follows him, kicking off her sneakers and tucking her feet up as she sips her drink. It is her best champagne, and she was keeping it for a special occasion. She doubts it’s the most expensive thing she’s ever drunk though.
“I’m sorry for firing you, Ger-bear.”
Roman had been staring at the fake fire and Gerri had been staring into her glass, and neither of them had really expected him to speak.
“It’s just business.”
‘Well I mean I guess you’re not fired now. Since you weren’t officially. No-one knows. So maybe I can un-fire you.”
Gerri smiles a little. “I don’t think you have to decide that now.”
“You don’t want to strategise?”
She lets out a small breath, feeling her shoulders sag. “Not right now, Rome.”
“Oh. What do you want to do?”
She shrugs. “We could talk about Logan?”
Roman’s eyes narrow. “You really wanna talk about Logan? The woman who brought lobster and champagne to his son’s house on the day he died, and she wants to talk about him? You wanna roast him Gerri? Tell me all the things you hated about the old coot?”
“It was more of a suggestion for you. I thought it might make you feel better to talk about it.”
“Ooh boy, for someone who’s been around the Roy family so long, you sure don’t know us well, do ya? I might feel better talking about it. Well I might but I don’t know what makes you think I will.”
“What do you want to do, Roman?” Said with the patience of a woman who brought up two children and feels like she’s still sitting here with one on his couch right now.
Throwing the remains of the champagne into his mouth, he swallows and then holds his glass aloft again.
“Get shitfaced. Try and forget everything that ever happened.”
***
Gerri had not thought it was a good idea to get shitfaced, but in the absence of any other ideas that weren’t immediately declared boring or stupid she goes along with it, and it turns out that there’s more than enough alcohol in Roman’s cupboards to do the job. Not that any of it is as special as the bottle she brought, in fact it’s a mix of all kinds of things he’s been given that he mostly hadn’t wanted to drink, and now it’s 3am and they have cracked open a bottle of Advocaat.
“What even is this? Is this custard?” Roman waggles his eyebrows. “Mom used to make custard you know, and bread and butter pudding.” He puts on his best British accent for the last part and then laughs. “Actually no she didn’t. She used to make the cook do it. She could have done it herself, she just didn’t want to. Unless there was some way she could use it to make you feel bad. Like it was a terrible imposition to cook your own children their dinner.”
“It’s kind of like eggnog.” Gerri explains with a squint, after a mouthful.
“Egg… what?” He takes the bottle from her and drinks from it, before pulling an over the top face. “Disgusting.”
“Eggnog.”
“What, Gerri?” Passing the bottle back, he keeps his hand on it as he looks at her from under his fringe. Somehow during the past couple of hours his hair has become unmoored and he can’t seem to get it back in place again.
She takes a big breath in and out and then shakes her head. “Nothing.” Pinching his sleeve between her thumb and forefinger, she tugs. “What’s this?”
“It’s a pullover, Gerri. Jeez, how fucked are you? I thought you’d have better tolerance than this, being at least 102 years old.”
“It doesn’t fit you. Where did it come from? Is it… is it Logan’s?”
“Uh… yeah. I guess it is.”
He finally lets his hand fall away from the bottle and she puts it down on the table. She looks at him, stubble forming on his cheeks, hair all over the place, huge over-sized jumper swamping his tiny frame. Her hand goes to his face again, the same way as it had after they’d hugged.
“He loved you, y’know. Logan. Your dad. He was... difficult... and he did some things… but he did love you and respect you… in his way.”
Roman’s brows furrow and then spring back up again, and his mouth works. He’s not sure how to reply. He wants to find a smart-aleck response but one doesn’t seem to be available. Gerri has dumbfounded him twice in one evening. His dad dying must have dulled his powers. Or there’s a glitch in the matrix, or something.
“What about you?” He finally manages. Not smart at all.
“What about me, what?”
Her hand is still on his face.
“Do you love me, Gerri Berry?”
“O-of course I do, Roman. I-I’ve got a lot of affection for you, I’ve known you your whole life, of course I um… love you.”
His lip curls into a half-sneer. “But not, like, in a disgusting way? Because that would be messy, and you’re not about things being untidy and getting in the way of business, are you?”
He huffs, pulling back from her and grabbing the bottle, taking a bigger swig and immediately regretting it.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Rome,” she says, quietly. “You ask for us to be a team and then you send me photos and ask me to tell you disgusting things… and when I try to set boundaries you trample all over them, you ruined my relationship, you probably got me fired when you sent that… picture to your dad for God’s sake…”
“Oh well sorry I broke up you and Laurie, I mean he seemed like a real stand up guy old Laurie, good old Laurie, we all loved Laurie.”
Letting out a sigh of irritation, Gerri has another mouthful of Advocaat. “Really. Laurie is what you got out of what I just said. Okay.”
Roman stares moodily at the carpet. “I was jealous of Laurie,” he announces finally, after several minutes of intense examination of the soft beige pile. “I wanted it to be me. In the room with you, lying in bed together, fucking… being normal. I want to be normal. I don’t like being this way, like some kind of perverted freak everyone looks at funny, like a terrible uncle.”
Gerri can’t help sniggering. “You’re not a terrible uncle, Rome. You’re not Moe, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“Only because I can’t get it up.”
She gives him a sidelong glance and finds he’s grinning impishly, and the giggle she’d been trying to hold in comes right out, starting small and then turning into a full-on laughing fit, and then both of them are almost rolling off the couch, laughing at the absurdity of the conversation, of the hour, of the occasion. Logan Roy is dead and Roman’s big concern is that he comes across like an impotent Lester.
“You could if those girls called you names.” Gerri can’t resist, raising an eyebrow and smirking.
Taking another drink, Roman rakes a hand through his hair. “What kind of names?”
She leans nearer, an elbow on the back of the couch propping up her head.
“You said no weird shit.”
“You brought it up!”
“Touche.”
There’s a pause then, where both of them try to assess their situations and options using brains that have been pickled in all different kinds of alcohol over the past few hours.
“What do you really want, Roman?”
“I told you. To stop being weird. And you, Gerri. I want you.”
“As what? A surrogate mother?”
“Hard though this may be to believe, I don’t think of my mother when I jerk off.”
“You don’t?”
Sucking his cheeks in, Roman tries hard to keep from laughing.
“Gerri! All this booze has made you very… cheeky. Or something.”
“Cheeky?”
“I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“So what do you want then? If it isn’t another mommy?”
Looking up at her through hooded eyes, Roman’s hand tries to reach out and touch her but he fails, like he doesn’t quite know how. He eventually settles on resting a hand on her knee, his index finger linking with hers. He tugs it towards him experimentally.
“Well you’re not poor Gerri. You don’t need to work. You could just… get out of all this. Retire.”
She keeps smiling, pulling her hand back a little and moving her face closer to his.
“You could just get out of all of this. Cash out. Retire. Not like two bill wouldn’t be enough, is it?”
“We could run away together to some little island and you could teach me to be normal.”
“You better be paying me for that, that’s a real task.”
Their foreheads are touching at this point, and they’re both giggling.
“Okay. Maybe not normal. But I’d take care of you, Gerri. I’d get you whatever… things you like. Food and… I don’t know. Trinkets. And if I was incurable then I’d buy you a man to… uh… sex you or whatever you want.”
Her giggling gets out of control at that point, eyes closed, still leaning against him, unable to stop laughing at the idea of him buying her an escort in Panama or something, because he was too weird to sleep with her.
“This is silly.” She finally calms down and moves her head to look at him. Letting go of his finger she pats his thigh. “It’s late. We should sleep.”
Roman stands up and sweeps one arm up in the air melodramatically. “To the bedroom!”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think I should be seen leaving your apartment in the morning, should I?”
“I think it would be worse to be seen leaving at…” he checks his watch “...3.40am, three sheets to the wind, Ger-Bear.”
Drunk and tired, she gives in. “Okay. But we’re just going to sleep next to each other. No funny business.”
“Yes, ma’am. No funny business.” He does a little mock salute and clicks his heels together, hitting the table as he does it and almost overbalancing the Advocaat.
“Careful there, Private Roy.”
“Oooh. Is that what we’re going to do? Roleplay?”
“Roman. Bed.”
***
Lying on his back in the pyjamas that Gerri had insisted on him wearing, he looks over at her head on the pillow beside him. He’s so tired, so very fucking tired, but he wants to savour her being there for a while. Appreciate her next to him, of her own free will, looking back at him like she almost certainly doesn’t hate him. He finds his hand making its way across her body and into her hair, stroking it gently.
“I’ll buy us our own private island, and we can live there together and you can teach me how to be a normie and I’ll buy you stuff. It’ll be perfect. No more deals, no more gaming it out, no more strategy. Just Rome and Gerri together in the sunshine.”
She can’t help smiling, even though his elbow is digging into her chest.
“Come here. Put your arm like this.”
She lifts it and puts it behind her head, and then shifts closer to him so her cheek is resting on his shoulder.
“There.”
Her hand reaches across his body now for his other hand.
“Hey, I thought you didn’t want any funny business, Gerri Berry. Are you looking for my tinkle winkle? Because that’s not where it is.”
Her fingers knit between his and she moves so her chin is on his shoulder now. She looks down at him, his face a little blurry without her glasses.
“Shut up, Roman.”
“Okay.”
They stay in that position for a while, Roman’s arm around her and hers around him, and then she kisses him gently on the lips. A thousand stupid things to say rise up inside him and he pushes them down again, in favour of untangling their hands long enough so he can cup her face and kiss her back.
“Can you teach me the sex now? Like normies do?”
It seems he lost the battle against the stupid things.
Her lips quirk up into a smile almost against her will.
“I thought I told you to shut up.”
“Okay. How about in the morning?”
“Roman.”
“Sorry, Ger-Bear.”
He touches her face again, indulges in another kiss.
She kisses him back, strokes his hair.
“It’s okay, Roman. Now go to sleep.”
“With a hottie like you in my bed?”
Her usual stern look works even without glasses, and he apologises again before closing his eyes. She rests her head on his chest, her arm across his body again. She’s sure she won’t sleep like this, no matter how tired she is, but she can’t help trying. Eyes closing now too, she sighs softly. It had been one helluva day.
***