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bowieandqueen11 · 11 months

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Get You Out / Roman Roy Imagine

Request: i am in love with ur works!! could you write a roman roy x reader where they first say “i love you” or truly express their deep feelings for each other? again, i would die for your works they are so good 🌟😭

Thank you so much sweetie, that’s very kind of you!! Season 4 is kicking my ass so I wanted to add a little sweetness to it, I hope you don’t mind! :)

Okay so I am very very tired as I write this so it might be terrible but I hope you guys manage to enjoy it anyway ty ty I am so very tired and pre-grieving <3

Warning: strong language, mentions of childhood physical/ mental abuse, funeral setting and general grieving, mentions of blood/ injuries!

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

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°

Roman Roy didn’t want to be a mausoleum any longer.

It had started at the funeral. As his childhood best friend, Roman had managed to squeeze the other siblings into allowing you to sit in the front row with them: Connor had been thrilled, Shiv uncharacteristically accepting, and even Kendall in his own way had been sweet as he clapped your back and ushered you in to sit on what felt like it’s own stifling plank of coffin wood. Roman had spent the whole hour squeezing your hand in a death grip, his knuckles burning a haunting white as he sat pressingly close to your side. Sometimes you couldn’t bare to look at him through the service: his face breaking your heart as it sunk into a face as sullen as a sunken grave as Uncle Ewan pressed on in his critique masquerading as a scorned brother’s eulogy. You glanced at him from the corner of your eye, and raised your middle finger to forgivingly run over his top lip, trying to soothe his scowl. He couldn’t look at you either, but you figured another ounce of pressure against your palm was sure enough to crack bone.

Then came Roman’s turn, and you prayed to everything you could think of to be lenient to him as he walked towards the austere steps of the pulpit, his father lying cold and stern from where Roman lumbered haggardly beside him. Without even meaning to, your hands clasp together and your fingers kiss against your lips as you watch Roman’s form clamber up towards the front of the room. He keeps looking back, piercing you, and only you, with those sunken, empty eyes. Pleading. Begging. Terrified. All you can muster is an encouraging nod as the showman his father forced him to be tries to break through his grief, his hands clasping onto the edges of the lectern. Yet he can’t even manage to look around the pitying room, too focussed on fumbling with his pink cards of unheard adoration as he flicks through them. You go to get up then, noticing the way Roman keeps pleadingly looking straight in your direction as he flicks through the words he knows, deep down, that his father would never have listened to anyway, but Kendall places a hand on your shoulder and keeps you firmly next to him.

You weren’t sure if he were giving his brother the chance to mourn, or if his embarrassment would just add to his back pocket arsenal of blackmail.

Once Roman started waving his limp hands, beckoning you to come and save him from drowning in the next wave of misery he had spent so long conceitedly treading the water of, the distraction of his face crumbling was the only thing stopping you from ripping Kendall’s fingers off your shirt one by one. Thankfully for Roman you’re the first from the sibling group to reach him, and he collapses onto your body as soon as your gentle hands touch the trembling expanse of his back. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’, he sobs into your shoulder, gripping the back of your jacket like it was the last tether connecting him to the living world. He was pale, sickly looking, fading like a phantom as he raised his hands to his face and tried to cower himself away from the overseeing stare of his father. In life, in death, in him. Always watching. Nothing but fury and abhorrence stinking its way out from that decorated box. Roman tried to shield himself from it, but even he couldn’t stop his father’s rigged game. It was too late, even as Shiv grabbed onto his shoulder and wept messily with him. The dagger had pierced skin. The poison dripped in. He couldn’t save himself. His father was too busy rotting inside him to stay within his coffin.

Somehow, everything felt worse when you tucked him into your side, and he managed to stagger back to the pew by leaning against your waist. His coat seemed too big for him: made him seem even more infantile, flooding him in the fashions his father had chosen as he collapses down next to you again, and pretends the whole room isn’t laughing at him. He doesn’t care. He’s used to it. He’s the jester after all, isn’t he? This is what he does. Deflects away, makes people laugh, acts the fool so he can break down in private. He winces, shaking his head and looking down at the ground, knowing he’s fucked up again. Acting the fool or the king, Roman Roy just can’t seem to get his character right. And when it crumbles away, the world is left seeing just how fucking pathetic the real him actually is.

He tries to hide away from the scorn, utilising the gap between Kendall and his sister’s rounding, corporate winning speeches to furl his hands to his chest like a new born, and lay his head on your lap for a moment. Surprised, you raise your hand and let him. In the most sincere gesture of trust Roman’s given since his father died, he smushes his lips against your thigh and squeezes his burning eyes shut, wishing the two of you were thirteen again, and the world didn’t seem to cast him in shadows every time he snuck back out your bedroom window. For a moment, you glanced your fingers back and forth over the stubbled hair by his ear, allowing Roman the freedom to just weep. As you feel the tears pierce your trousers and soak warmly against your skin, you try to control Roman’s wracks of shaking by leaning down and whispering against the shell of his ear.

‘We’ll get out of here soon Romie. We’ll go home soon.’

This seems to kickstart something in Roman; he begins to feel his father’s lashings for showing such weakness close over his throat and choke him out for the second time that afternoon. Home. He doesn’t have a home. How can a crypt have a home, when its too busy housing someone else? Like a puppet being twirled by the unknown strings of a marionette, his fingers seem to clench in resistance against the pull as his limbs clunkily begin to move against you. He rolls back up to sit rigidly again, like someone placing a plank up a scarecrow and placing it back in it’s empty field to decay. A warning for scavengers.

He doesn’t even glance at you again for the rest of the night. His heart’s already bleeding, bruised, swelling with poison. He can’t bear to have it broken by allowing even a sliver of hope that he might be able to escape from his father’s abuse trickle through his solid walls.

You manage to lose him at the funeral reception, too busy in a heated discussion opposing the morals, and the behaviours of the so called next president Mencken to notice Roman slipping out of the room like a kicked stray. It’s only when you’ve resorted to your last idea: asking Gerri if she knows where Roman’s slinked off to, that you notice your phone ringer has been turned down. As you slide it out of your front pocket, your stomach nearly flips backwards when the home screen lights up with a new message: ‘8 missed calls from Roman Roy.’ You’re out the door before Gerri can even finish her sentence, wagging a disapproving finger at Kendall he comes waltzing towards you in a show of concern, throwing him a look of pure derision that his face immediately falls and he staggers a step backwards, knowing not to push his luck with another member of the family tonight. Mencken throws out an insulting goodbye as your handle grips the door, and with a final middle finger thrown in his direction, you’re running down the stairwell and racing back towards the beckoning call of the city’s darkness.

You call him again while you’re sitting, waiting, trying your best not to swear at the driver as he swerves through traffic jams and slams to a break at red lights. Roman picks up almost immediately, and you can tell by the quiver in his voice that he’s finding it difficult to swallow through the tears that drip like poison down his throat. ‘I fucked up Y/n. I fucked up. Please... I want to go home. Please. I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry.’ His voice keeps wavering in and out of static, as if he’s shivering and can barely hold the phone up to his ear. He sounds lost. Confused. He wants you, and what can you do but swallow your own grief and answer his call once again. As you race through the downtown lights towards the area the demonstrations had been held, you relent into an old habit of Roman’s you had picked up from an early age: picking at your nails until they begin to bleed, dripping down and running through the cracks of the frigid, foul-smelling leather.

It had been approximately forty minutes since you had found him wandering down the avenue, limping past the chained gate of the old clockmaker’s shop. He had been leaning against the piss-stained hollows of the wall, using the uneven brick to hold himself up. Whether it was due to the extent of his injuries: the blood trickling down his face and blinking into his eyelashes, the bruises beginning to swell up in familiar places along his patchwork-esque arms, or the fact that his whole body was convulsing in shudders he couldn’t control, even Roman didn’t quite know.

‘Yn.’ It was curt. A simple acknowledgement, in the way one might greet a business acquaintance, once he saw your bleary eyes amidst the neon shadows. You stopped in your tracks, frozen in place at how decrepit he looked: hunched over, grasping his stomach, his face sallow and sunken and littered with a new collage of bruises.

‘...Y/n.’ His voice howled. A call for help, an indulgence as you came wandering down the sidewalk, taking his battered form in.

All Roman did know was that as soon as he felt your arms sink themselves around his shoulders, he wanted to bury himself underneath your skin and let himself die there.

The two of you decide the best course of action is to bring Roman home to your apartment, fearful about the consequences of leaving him alone for the night. You make him take the subway home, believing it best to sink back into normality: to escape the tombs of his father’s helicopter cockpits and enclosing limousine backseats, where nothing but sickness and tears and abuse had ever come to fruition. Roman, surprisingly, doesn’t complain when you bring him down the tunnels and lead him onto a seat littered in what seemed to be the breadcrumb leftovers of someone’s lunch. He doesn’t even seem to notice as the train speeds away from it all, too busy keeping his untrained eyes focused on a poster ripping off the other end of the wall, some genitalia graffiti sprayed over the remains of a Waystar film industry next big summer blockbuster hit poster. The bile rises like warm blood at the back of his throat at the sight of it, and as he leans forward he grabs onto your arm. You manage, just in time, to place your palm at the top of his forehead and stop him from lunging forward and hitting the train’s pole, but the would-be pain just seems to dissipate instead into his muscles as his face screws up, beginning to weep again. You shrug off your coat and wrap it first squarely, securely around his shoulders, before tucking it around yours as well. You want him to feel safe, and he seems to appreciate the gesture as he leans his sniffling head down onto your shoulder, letting you reach over and caress the side of his cheek in the oh so familiar way you used to rock him back and forth when you hid in his father’s pool house as children.

By the time you actually get home, Roman’s exhausted. He doesn’t manage to get further than through your door before he trips over his own feet, a long queue of pent up swears bubbling out of his mouth as his already stinging hands hit the floorboards. You go to help him up, wrapping one arm around the underside of his belly and heaving him back up against your chest, but he waves you off. He wants to stay here for a while. A lapdog, of course, always feels most comfortable on the floor.

‘Fuck! Oh, for fuck’s sake’, you mutter as your phone vibrates for the umpteenth time that night. You fluster as you cut the phone call off, adding it to the long list of curt text messages from Shiv, long winded but caring speeches from Connor, and even the occasional nods of concern from Willa. The latest offender seemed to be Logan junior, who had tried to call you for the fifth time in ten minutes. His name lights up again, illuminated by the what used to seem like a friendly glow of the picture you had taken of him by the pool of a family trip to Morocco several years ago. Now, the sight of his killer edged smile, of the glint in his squinting eyes seemed almost repulsive to you. ‘Kendall, for all I care you can go fuck yourself sideways with your own dick.’

Roman laughs hoarsely at that, making you turn your head and notice the way he’s dragging himself like wounded prey on his hands and knees towards the small cupboard where you keep your coats. He swings the door open with a shaking fist, and you follow in his supplicating, servitude crawl as he makes his way in between a rack of jackets. He’s hiding again, nesting himself away from the world, withdrawing to try and keep the only part of him still struggling to survive safe. Drawing himself down to hide within his father’s grave.

You draw apart the fringes of raggedy winter coats, and threads of brand-new high-end boutique suits to join his little nook, which he openly accepts by scooting himself backwards until he hits the edge of the wall. He crosses his legs beneath him, trying to sit all prim and proper as if he were a school child caught doing something wrong; he raises his arms up to his face to try and shield the blows he knows he deserves for fucking it, yet again.

‘Please, Y/n, just please. Just fuck off. I fucked it. I... fuck. I’m a fucking moron.’

‘What did I tell you about calling yourself a moron’, you chide sternly.

You wouldn’t let him be buried along with Logan. You refused to allow the old bastard to win. Piece by piece, you were going to tear the splintered blade of his father’s daggered tongue out of the crevices of Roman’s body. You were going to win. You were going to be stronger than Logan Roy’s hatred.

Placing your hand gingerly on his wrist, you just allow it to settle there as Roman tries to wince away from you. It takes a little while: a couple of minutes, maybe fifteen, maybe an hour, you don’t know, and you don’t care. But the cracks in the foreboding, eroding stone walls began to break apart; Roman’s weeping slowly descended into bleary-eyed sniffling instead, his closed fists slowly beginning to open like blooming like Narcissus daffodils sprouting, reaching up towards the sunlight from where they lay sprinkled across the forgotten grave. His fingers tentatively sought you out, and once they gripped onto your forearm he broke open like a sepulchre.

‘It’s true though. My dad was always fucking right, like one of those fucking witches from ‘Macbeth’ - you know the ones that stirred cauldrons that talk in riddles and shit. He always knew what I was. I’m such a fucking embarrassment’, he starts, once he realises that you’re not pulling away from him, but instead offering him something he rarely ever receives in his life. Acceptance. Relief. An overwhelming spring of kindness.

‘You mean the evil ones that controlled everybody? That does sound like your dad.’

He hits you with the side of your shoulder and snorts, but the movement is a relief to you. He’s not too far gone yet.

‘Roman, you didn’t do a thing wrong. You’re grieving, and that’s completely normal - it’s expected. It would be fucking weird if you weren’t a mess right now.’

He sobs at that: a harrowing, gut wrenching warble, and he deflates. His whole body seems to sink in on itself like a black hole, refusing to let you go. He drags you in with him, until the two of you are laying on the floor in the foetal position, your knees tucked up against each other in a kind of wallowing solace. You dare to kiss the tip of his nose, using the sweet way his eyes close shut and his face wrinkles as an excuse to run your pointer finger over a gash that splinters crimson red above his eyebrow. Gashing open at your touch, the wound reopens and makes Roman wince, but he doesn’t recoil from you anymore.

‘You should run. Run the fuck away from this family while you still can. We’re all so fucked. I’m fucking - I’m done. I’m dead. This is it for me.’

He opens his eyes again, and allows you a chance to see properly that day just how awful he looks. Empty. Bloodshot. A haunted house. A man fighting for control against the tendrils of his father that grasp into his gut and seem to be squeezing. He mewls, and some irrepressible fury at Roman, at Logan, at the lifestyle and choices of the Roys seems to burst out in sharp whips from your tongue.

‘You can’t do that to me. You can’t say that. How fucking dare you.’

Roman opens one eye again, eyebrow arching upwards in a tired confusion. You place a palm against his shirt, in the dip between his shoulder blade and where his heart should lie, trying to stop your lips from quivering.

‘When, in the last thirty years, have I ever fucking run away from you? When have I ever left you to deal with all this shit alone, and this is how you repay me?’ He starts then, his head whipping back in surprise, but he doesn’t break your gaze as the rush of burning hot tangled fury and worry comes boiling out of you. ‘The first thing you do, instead of coming to me, is to go and get yourself trampled on? You can’t- you can’t do that. Not after Kendall - I thought - I thought, I thought you were dead-’ Your cutting words are silenced by a sob so forceful it makes you hiccup, and you raise the back of your free hand to your mouth to try and shove the words, the sobs, your fear, your anger, the truth back in. Roman’s face falls, the sound of you beginning to sob only making him feel worse.

‘I wouldn’t do that... I wouldn’t’, he begins to make excuses, but you just shake your head, feeling your breathing grow more rapid as the start of your avalanching panic attack finally begins to take its grip on your throat.

‘You’, you warble out, feeling guilty at the way Roman’s the one having to lift his trembling hands in placation, and wipe away the tears that crease your eyes with the corners of his thumbs. He does it so willingly, and so tenderly, that you feel your heart just pierce with an even more righteous anger at the indifference and mistreatment his father heaped upon his kind shoulders. You finally get it, as the affection and the tenderness his father had smothered in the cradle comes flooding through the exhausted lines of his face like a mosaic of shattered light, why he’s so downtrodden all the time. It fights against the forces of his father, flooding past the reckless cruelness of his brother, to shroud him in a sublime patchwork of all the people he’s dared to love. He apologises, the cracks of him seeping through, and it nearly destroys you entirely.

‘You mean so... so much more to me than you even fucking know, Roman.’

That won’t do. He can’t deal with that admission at all.

He cries like a beaten child, recoiling away from your words: ‘I’m sorry! Fuck!’ He grabs at your free hand in an uncomfortable mirroring of the way you had done to him earlier. His moves are far more frantic though: like a bird pecking at your skin, a sword slashing through the tendons of your muscles, barbs shooting against your fingertips as he tries to latch onto you. ‘I’m so fucking sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. Please don’t- I don’t deserve this.’

You weren’t entirely sure what he meant. Did he seriously believe that he didn’t deserve love, or the sorrow that innately follows in its footsteps, like the soft treads of a child waiting patiently behind the closed august doors of his father's office, never to be allowed entrance?

‘They’re all laughing at me, aren’t they? Hickory-dickory, watch how the fucking fool falls.’ He hides his face behind his stout fingers for a second, a child scorned.

‘No. No, they’re not’, you manage to lie between thick swallows.

‘You never made fun of me.’ He sounds so infantile, so defeated. So drained of all life. ‘Thar’s why I always loved you. You’d never do this to me.’

His voice cracks, hoarse and low as his face balls up, and you know it’s the first thing Roman’s said in months that hasn’t been absolute bullshit. It’s his truth. The one thing Logan hasn’t been able to tear out of him.

‘You-’

‘I love you, you fucking asshole.’ Although he’s weeping against the creaking floorboards, his incessant pounding against the door’s of his heart finally seems to be getting somewhere. They begin to be opening. The slant of sunlight began to seep into the vault’s ornate chambers. He was beginning to feel the warmth. He knocks his forehead tenderly against your own, until your salty tears tread quick trails down your cheeks and melt into each other’s mouths.

‘I fucking love you too, you asshole. Thanks for finally noticing.’ You try to smile, and you can feel the pressure of Roman’s lips rise against your own.

‘Fuck you, I’ve been too busy to profess fucking love confessions if you hadn’t noticed. But I thought I was pretty obvious too, dipshit. At least we’re both fucking stupid.’ He laughs then, leaving you no moment to reply as he leans up on his elbow and bends himself down over you. His mouth fall clumsily over your own, damp and plump from a full day of crying, but the sting of the salt against the dry cracks of his lips don’t deter him. It was as if he had been replaying this moment in his mind, over and over and over since the two of you were children. This thought - the idea that he would finally get here was the only thing that had kept him grounded. Kept him sane. And so he kissed you as if you were a dream: a mirage, a living ghost that would disparate as soon as he let go. He cups the bottom of your chin, allowing his cold tears to fall over the bridge of your nose as he lets you breath life into the shallow halls of his once lifeless tomb.

When he finally pulls away, neither of you seem to be able to muster up the courage to speak. He looks bashfully, youthfully shy as he hides his gaze from you and falls back onto his side, although his tongue is prodding the edge of his bottom lip as if in disbelief. You tuck your nose further against his, and he sniffs as you raise a hand to cup his cheek. You’re careful not to press the pads of your fingers against the forming bruise that seems to bloom across the furrows of his eyelids. He languidly blinks, exhausted, but the harrowing loneliness that had spent it’s life chiselling its way into his heart was finally beginning to lift.

A new dawn was coming. A new chance to recreate himself. A new opportunity to try and burn away the ghosts that lived in the crevices of his brain.

‘We’ll do tomorrow together, right?’, he asks, his voice so quiet and muffled you could barely hear him. You press against the edges of his bruise, and he sighs against the corner of your top lip.

‘Together, as always. I promise. I’m going to get you out, Roman. I’m going to get you out.’

#succession #roman roy #roman roy imagine #roman roy x reader #succession season 4 #succession imagine #succession spoilers #kendall roy #shiv roy #logan roy #connor roy #kieran culkin #x reader

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brookheimer · 1 year

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looking at the 'midseason trailer' and seeing roman fighting his siblings, roman shitting on gerri, roman working for fascists, roman walking proudly through ATN like logan did just two days prior... it's not surprising, but it is fucking sad.

logan's death will not free roman. instead, it will reforge the chains he's worn all his life, casting them in iron -- that's what roman deserves for thinking, for the first time in his life, that maybe he wants the chains off. that's what roman deserves for killing his father by not loving him enough, by not loving him correctly or at the right times. logan's death will not free roman at all. if anything, it will imprison him.

(as always, this got very long, so keep reading under the cut!)

this was the worst case scenario for roman. not just logan dying, but the exact way everything played out. he betrayed his siblings, he fired gerri -- for nothing. he could have been on the plane with his father in his last moments -- he refused. his last interaction with his father was leaving logan a voice message that called him a cunt -- the first time roman has ever, ever, questioned or stood up to his father, and also the last. we don't know what killed logan. we probably never will. but god if it won't feel awfully coincidental to roman: the one time he fought back against his father or even showed the slightest hint of doing so, his father died. is it likely that logan heard roman's voice memo and keeled over because he called him a cunt? no. but is it just as possible as anything else? entirely. roman might have killed his dad. roman murdered logan when he could've been on the plane with him holding his hand, if he were a good son. he didn't even tell logan he loved him. not that he needed to, it fucking oozed from his every pore and the desperate nature of that love was one of the reasons logan could never quite stand him -- but that's not the point. roman's one attempt at agency, at setting boundaries, at standing up for himself killed his fucking father.

logan dying would never have been good for roman, at least in his current state, no matter how the actual death came to pass. people often talk about abusive relationships as if the end-all-be-all fixer to abuse is independence, and it's not. independence isn't always enough to heal, especially not when it's forced upon you rather than something you choose. this is especially true for roman, i think. what roman needed was not just to gain his own independence, but to realize that independence and love are not mutually exclusive, that gaining one does not mean losing the other. logan's always hammered in roman's weakness, his wrongness; roman was never someone who deserved to be loved on his own terms. roman's never considered himself to be someone with agency and authority in his relationships -- he's been told over and over again that he isn't a real person, that there's something deeply wrong and unfixable in him, and he believes it. he's never set boundaries with his father or even his siblings because i don't think he really realizes he has the power to do that. he's simply there until people decide they no longer have use for him or want him around, and he'll always come crawling back after a kick because he doesn't realize he's not on a leash -- that he doesn't need to be on a leash. independence has been unreachable all his life, he isn't normal or real enough to be a real normal independent capable person, but if he grovels and shows his use enough, then maybe he can be loved. but his dependence and loyalty is all he's good for. independence means no love, no family, no relationships. and roman desperately wants, needs, those relationships in a way that none of the other characters do (or at least can admit to) -- he wants his father in his life, no matter what; he wants his siblings in his life, no matter what. but independence, being his own person, separating himself from logan's side means he'd lose everything else, everyone else. he's not good for anything anyways. it's not like he has other options.

...until the start of season four. that's why this is all so tragic -- more than anyone else, it seemed like roman was on the road to healing. it seemed like he was finally realizing that independence and love might not be as mutually exclusive as he's been made to think: maybe he could be independent while still having a relationship with his siblings and even his father. maybe he could have his cake and eat it too. he's realized that he's capable, that he has his own worth, and that he can be successful without living under logan's thumb -- and, more importantly, could still text him on his birthday and try to rebuild a relationship, this time outside of business. outside of "that room" in waystar royco. an actual fucking family relationship. that's what escaping the cycle would look like for roman — not complete separation, not a metaphorical killing of his father, but the ability to live alongside him, to have a life outside of him, to love his father without living for him. so simply removing logan from the equation wouldn’t help roman, not when what he needs most is to realize that self-respect is not mutually exclusive with love, that being your own person isn’t a betrayal, that family and love aren’t dependent on how low you can kneel and won’t be whisked away the moment you stand up. and for the first time in his life, it seemed like he was on track to discovering this. maybe he and the siblings could have the hundred, logan could keep going with atn, and in a few years down the line they'd all get together to talk shop and joke around and coexist -- for the first time, he had started to think of himself as enough of a real, okay person to be allowed to coexist with his family, rather than naturally subordinating himself in every interaction.

roman could’ve been his own person, could’ve escaped the cycle, could’ve started a business with his siblings and tried to heal, but now he won’t. he can’t. roman can’t become his own person now, not when his first attempt to do so is exactly what killed logan. it’s his fault. he fucked up and now there’s no dad. he gained his independence, but at what cost? love. that’s the cost. it always has been and always will be. nothing could be more detrimental to roman roy than the exact series of events that occurred in this episode, because just as he started to see a world beyond his father, logan dies -- proving once and for all that the only world beyond logan is one without him in it at all. that’s been roman’s fear all along and why he’s stuck so close to his side: roman loves and loves and loves and is terrified, terrified, of death. of loss. but in a moment of 'weakness,' roman wobbled (he tried to stand up to logan rather than just taking the kicks as he's supposed to, as he always has), and his father paid the ultimate price. there’s no more dad. there’s no reviving him.

…unless, of course, there is. unless roman can undo his error by choosing his father again, and again, and again. becoming logan is the closest roman can get to resurrecting him, after all. and besides, doesn’t he owe it to dad after killing him? after calling him a cunt, choosing not to be with him on that plane he ended up dying on? after forgetting to even say “i love you dad” before the end? roman needs to fix things. needs to make it like dad's still here. needs to make it like he didn't kill his own father by refusing him for the first time in his life. so roman will be the firebreather logan wanted -- he'll do ATN, he'll push for mencken, he'll do whatever it fucking takes to try and make things right. if it's his fault logan's no longer here, then he needs to do everything he possibly can to fulfill his dying wishes, to do what logan would've done, were he alive.

"dad can't die, he's dad." he can't ever die. he's immortal, and his immortality was solidified by the circumstances of his death -- logan will not die. he’ll live on in roman, as roman.

roman will make sure of it.

#to clarify -- i do not think this is roman's endgame. i Hope it is not his endgame. i just think based on the previews and everything we #know about both him and the upcoming episodes... i think this is where his arc is heading for now. and it will be UNBEARABLE to watch #i'm hoping things get better by the end. that there's reconciliation and an ending open enough to allow for a slim possibility of future #healing. but as of right now... i think things are going to get a lot - a LOT - fucking worse before they get better (if they get better..)#k it's 1:30 am i haven't read over this at all so fair warning there. but yeah. told yall i had a lot of thoughts re: what this might do to #roman. hats off to jesse armstrong for creating the literal worst situation imaginable for him. fucking ingenious. i too love putting this #sad little man in situations! but yeah. gonna be watching thru my hands but eating it up while weeping etc etc etc #succession #succession spoilers #roman roy #succession meta #succession s4 #connor's wedding #logan roy #casey shut the fuck up about roman roy #100 #500 #succession speculation

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covertblizzard · 1 month

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jaykyle au where they're theatre kids in the same school but they're not the actors jason's the scriptwriter/director and kyle is the prop manager (i don't know the official terms sorry) and they'd probably do an amazing job on the backstage setting if they could stop arguing for 5 whole seconds about their artistic visions and ideas and how "this would obviously work better this way"

#jason todd #kyle rayner #jaykyle #mypost #dc thoughts #vp of the club: maybe we should find some other people to do the job if they can't get along?#pres of the club: no they're both talented af and i want this to be raving success just knock their heads tgt and tell them to play nice or #i'll make them wear the get along shirt again #WAIT ONE SEC DONNA'S THE PRES and overseer she's pissed bcos kyle played the same role last year and he was chill then #wally's vp no 1 and backstage manager and he's thinking of kicking kyle out #dick's vp no 2 and main lead and he's thinking of kicking jason out bcos it's embarrassing and annoying to work with your younger siblings #kon helps kyle with props and bart is one of the actors and kon is jealous af about it he grumbles a little #roy is the fight scene choreographer #i'm trying to think of something for garth but the only thing that comes to mind i'm not sure are fitting enough #actor manager? weapon manager? oooh maybe pet manager if they have animals... human and pet manager???? hr department but including animals #ooooh maybe pet manager if they have animals #raven can play bart's love interest (in play) maybe (wally doesn't like it and neither does gar for very different reasons)#eddie deals with the contraptions they build for this bubble machines smoke machines lowering and raising anything mechanical #rose and cass helps with the weapons stuff they keep fighting too and roy is TIRED #connor plays the villain he didn't mean to or want to but he got dragged into it and he's really hot and gunned in for next years main lead #he doesnt want this #steph and mia are hair makeup costume department but bart and kon love to hangout and help too #jennie-lynn and bart are in-charge of socials #tim pops up a lot because so many of his friends (and brothers) are here and when he does he helps steph and mia #damian too pops up to help with pet management and sometimes prop art #this is much to dicks annoyance jason is already here can his little brothers LEAVE HIM ALONE SOMETIMES UGH #damian (taking cues from talia and bruce loverenemies dynamic and wanting an artist in-law): we should set jason and kyle up #dick: no / tim: hmm / dick: NO #i want to add the yj girls (cassie cissie greta anita) but i know too little about them right now but imagine they're there and the roles #are to be determined

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bitchthefuck1 · 1 month

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The thing that really kills me about Logan is that his kids are disappointing and ultimately unfit to be CEO, and it's not just that they're like that because he made them like that, but that they're like that because he wants them to be that way.

For all his talk about them being spoiled or coddled and his rant in the S3 finale that getting cut out of running Waystar is their chance to "be your own man" and build something themselves, he has spent the entire show actively undermining any attempt of theirs to do that. Shiv stays out and works in politics, but as soon as she joins a big campaign that could actually distinguish her from her family, he tells her he wants to make her CEO. He offers to buy Kendall out of his shares, but as soon as Kendall tries to take the offer and cut himself out, he refuses. He says he wants them out of the business and doing their own thing, and then as soon as they start actually doing that and buy Pierce, he tries to get Roman back.

The fact of the matter is that as much as he might claim to want a "real" heir, what he really wants is to never need one and for his children to stay children: incomplete, incapable, and under his thumb.

#something something the purpose of a system is what it does #i feel like the 'they are the way he made them' thing is pretty self evident and understood but it's important to distinguish that it's not #just a question of him being bad at raising kids or that he just can't produce the outcome that he wants: he is 100% producing the #outcome that he wants he's just lying about what that outcome is. he doesn't want them to be their own people or worthy of the position #because that would mean he wouldn't be able to control them and (more crucially for him) it would mean he'd have to give up control #of waystar. he doesn't want a legitimate successor because he doesn't want to be succeeded. he wants to deny his mortality and stay #in his spot forever. if his children grow up that means he has to grow old. if he can keep them trapped in childhood forever then he 'has #no choice' but to stay in power because he couldn't possibly leave it to them could he? they're not ready. it's a kindness to keep the #burden of the crown to himsef.#like imagine for a second if he did have a kid who was a perfect CEO candidate and exactly what he claimed to want. do you #really think he'd step aside and let them rule?#or would he see them as a threat and try to find some other way to cut them off at the knees and sabotage them the way he's been #doing with his other kids this whole time.#logan roy #kendall roy #connor roy #shiv roy #siobhan roy #roman roy #succession

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chaithetics · 11 months

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i absolutely adore your stewy fic and have re-read it 50 times already 😭😭 would love a small sequel based on the 9th episode of him supporting the reader during the funeral and butting in to defend her/hold when she breaks down without caring about what other think, im not kidding when i say i’ve read it 50 times i can’t believe i’ve found a fic this good that’s touched the part of my brain obsessed with stewy and starches it to well i adore you

Don't Let Me Go

Pairing: Stewy Hosseini x f (Roy) Reader

Word count: 2.9K

Author's note: THANK YOU SO MUCH NONNIE! I ADORE AND LOVE YOU! Every time I think about this request or read it, I'm kicking my feet and twirling my hair. This is so sweet and just the highest praise ever! WOW. I appreciate you, it was so sweet and I really hope you enjoy this! Please let me know what you think and feel free to message me! I love grief-related shows/movies (I love to be in my feels) so this was quite the interesting one. I apologise for any sadness this fic causes. I have more requests that aren't sad dw! Always open to Stewy requests as well. This can be read as a stand-alone/sequel to Furtive Hands. This also HAS NOT BEEN PROOFREAD lol. I hope you enjoy :)

Chapter/content warning: established/secret relationship, GRIEF, GRIEF, funeral, some fluff but just funeral grief and supportive Stewy.

The last week had been miserable, there was no other way to describe it or to do it justice. It should be raining, that would make sense for the funeral of such a commanding and depressing man, there also should’ve been thunder and lightning. Now that would’ve done justice for the thunderous man that your father was but maybe there was no thunder in the sky because it all left with him.

You’re sitting in the backseat of the car with Shiv right in front of you as you wait for your brothers, both of the Roy daughters are dressed head to toe in black and a fine picture of grief. You’d gladly taken the backseat, it was worth the small risk of motion sickness, it meant it would be easier to distance yourself from any potential, yet inevitable drama.

Shiv had a glassy expression that was hard to read, you picked up that there was something there that wasn’t just grief. You sat up a bit and leaned over closer, so your arms were resting on the back of her seat.

“Are you okay?” You asked softly.

Shiv’s head quickly turned to look at you, grief was there, some unshed tears in her eyes and she looked like a deer in headlights. Her lip trembled for a second and then she sighed and her blue eyes pierced yours.

“Full disclosure…?”

“Go.” You immediately replied and Shiv’s body moved more into your direction.

“I really uh, fucked things up… Ken found out and Mencken, well he’s a form of stabbing a knife in return.” She breathed out and her eyes quickly left yours as she looked down at her body. “And I’m fucking pregnant, I-I told Tom and well he thought it was a fucking tactic.” She humourlessly chuckles as her eyes move to focus on the ceiling of the car.

“Holy shit, Shiv.” You moved closer off your seat to rest your head on the top of the back of the seat dividing you two and put your hands out to hold hers, squeezing them softly and doing your best to genuinely smile for her. “I’m sorry, that’s a fucking lot. But congratulations! Congratulations? Should I be saying congratulations? If not we can go and sort it out, I’ll go with you if you want. Anything you need.”

Shiv nodded as she kept her hand in yours and used her free hand to rub at her face a little. “I thought about it but I’m going to keep it. It’s fine. Thank you though. I’m planning to tell mom and that today so yeah.”

“Thanks for telling me.” You responded giving her hand another squeeze and she nodded. After a few seconds, she let go of your hand and turned back around in her seat and not long after that your brothers joined you both.

*******************

It had been an awkward car ride, you’d sunk into your seat, looking out the window as Roman and Shiv argued. You didn’t say a word, Kendall had eventually intervened and called for a truce which was agreed upon. Kendall had discussed Rava leaving the city with the kids which you thought was justified and you struggled to not call Kendall out, having to bite your tongue and fully focus your gaze on the windows. Right now was not the right time for sibling arguments. You’re sure that Kendall saw your pointed expression before looking out the window again.

This had been tougher than you’d imagined. Roman had immediately broken during the speech, everything that hadn’t come out of him did then. Kendall had taken over, with a speech that had been well received but genuinely made you uncomfortable. Ever since you’d all sat down you’d been close to Roman, one hand gently on his back and the other hand holding his, he had a tight grip on it but he was doing slightly better now. Well, he was visibly.

Each sentence that comes out of your sibling’s mouths feels like a blow and the casket is haunting you. Not as much as Roman though you suppose, if he wasn’t firmly planted onto the pew and with a pale, iron grip on your hands you thought you’d maybe float away. Or maybe you’d just sink down with the pressure of all the eyes, tears and smirks.

As Shiv speaks, you know she’s right, her words about being his daughter have never been easy and it’s starting to get hot. Too hot. Sure there are hundreds of people in the church but it’s too hot even with that, you’re starting to overheat and your thoughts are overcrowding your brain.

You look at Roman, your hand on his back and your other one holding his hand. You bite your lip, trying to force tears not to come. Unsuccessfully though.

“I’m sorry, yeah, um I’m sorry Rome.” You let go of his hand and quickly move to squeeze past Connor and Willa in the pew.

All of their eyes follow you in concern, you start to fidget with the corner of your sleeve while trying to regulate your breathing as you walk off to the side of the Church. You don’t know where to go, it doesn’t feel like anywhere is an option but it feels like you just need to leave. Anywhere but here, home or any place that’s ever had that title. Your mind is racing with that train of thought and another million ones, none are easier than the last though. It’s becoming overwhelming, impossible. Your heart is beating so fast you can hear it and you can feel it beating so quickly it’s trying to carve itself out of your chest. It’s all so claustrophobic.

An arm grabs you and you turn around to see that it’s Connor.

“Hey, hey. Are you okay?”

“It’s just a lot, I don’t think I can be- I don’t really want to be in here right now.” You quietly say, trying not to choke on the inevitable sobs.

“Hey, it’s okay.”

Connor’s gaze is focused on you and it’s gentle. Which somehow feels more intense, it amplifies the feeling of being under a microscope. You tug at your sleeve again as you feel the tears starting to get worse, you try to bite your lip as tightly as possible to stop the incoming sobs from arriving, to distract from the emotional pain with something physical.

It doesn’t work though.

You start to step away from Connor as your crying can now be heard, Roman stays frozen in the pew still trying to find some of his abandoned composure. Kendall’s noticed that this isn’t a toilet break and that Connor’s intervention isn’t cutting it and starts to make his way over.

Kendall quickly realises that he’s not the only one who’s noticed and who is making their way over. Kendall’s compassion for you is still somewhat intact but today, controlling the narrative and putting out fires is his priority.

“Stew, go. People are going to talk.” Kendall sternly whispers with a disappointed look, doing his best to communicate his point without drawing anymore attention to the scene.

“Let them talk, I don’t fucking care Ken.” Stewy spits out with widened eyes.

“You don’t want this story to break today, trust me.”

“If it broke today it would drown in the rest of the funeral, Roman and the fucking GoJo numbers. You know that. Everybody does, it’s why Shiv and Matsson leaked it today.”

“Follow the money back to your fucking seat.”

“The money isn’t my priority here. She’s my partner.” Stewy says, Kendall scoffs and they both quietly walk over towards you and Connor. But you’ve been too overwhelmed to have noticed any of that interaction or them joining you and Connor in your weird corner towards the back of the church.

“I need to- it’s so hot in here. It’s really fucking crowded, I know that you want a good turn out at a funeral but this is- it’s so unnecessary you know?” You cry out rambling and Connor’s concern shows more. You hadn’t publicly broken over your father’s death yet and Connor hadn’t seen you cry since you were a child.

“Yeah, sure. Sure. A lot of people”

“It’s just so hot in here. I need cold air. Maybe some wine? Do you think there’s uh w-wine around? It’s a church, there’s bound to be wine, it’s Catholic- Holy Communion and all… Fuck.”

“I don’t think there’s wine here you can drink.” Connor’s voice breaks a little.

“I can’t do this, I don’t want to be in here. Connor please? Just I don’t know- I don’t fucking know.” You sob out and the tears and sobs just don’t stop. Connor puts his arms around you and does his best to keep some composure for your sake.

Kendall and Stewy have now come over, Connor’s arms are still around you but you feel a hand on your back. One that rubs a little circle and you recognise that little pattern, the pressure, the touch itself.

“Stewy?” You whisper out between a little sob.

“Hey, sweetheart.” His voice is soft and gentle as he continues to rub your back like he has a dozen times over the last several days.

“I just- uh. I just, it’s so hot and claustrophobic. I needed air.” You’ve now left Connor’s arms to press yourself into Stewy’s side, his arms quickly replacing Connor’s as they wrap around you. You’re too overwhelmed to even consider or worry that your tears and makeup might be rubbing on his blazer.

“I know.”

Kendall is standing in an attempt to shield the rest of the world from this interaction, Connor’s hand is on your shoulder now. Stewy looks at Connor, tilting his head slightly towards you. Stewy smiles at Connor and nods, silently communicating that it’s okay and Connor can go back, which he does after squeezing your shoulder softly.

“Can we- can- I need to go outside. I need air.” You muffle into Stewy’s side. Kendall pointedly looks at Stewy.

“I know baby, I know. But there’s a lot of people outside still and cameras still.” Stewy says, as he rubs at your back comfortingly. Stewy isn’t worried about people seeing you both out there but about people seeing you in this state and it being immortalised in the media.

“Fuck.” You mutter and the sobs become louder, more painful and desperate.

You knew today would be hard, nothing was easy with your father. But you didn’t expect today to be so awful and to feel so trapped, he was gone, you shouldn’t feel like this but you just felt vulnerable, like the defenseless kid you were trapped in your childhood. Under a microscope for hundreds to zoom in on your pain, today wasn’t suffering just for your father’s amusement.

“Yeah. We can get some air at the cemetery and take the long way back to the reception? Stop off somewhere if you want?” He asks softly.

“We all came together-” Kendall starts.

“I know-” Stewy quietly interjects.

“I think I’ll go with Stewy, Ken.” You say quietly, you peek out a little from Stewy, puffy faced and wet with tears. Kendall doesn’t look super impressed at that, you can tell but he just gives a small nod.

There’s something about Stewy, his mere presence is a salve on your soul. Being buried into his side, being able to try focusing on the scent of his cologne instead of everyone and everything else is helping you remember how to breathe again. Your lungs remember how it all works again with Stewy at your side.

“Do you want to sit down again before it ends?” Stewy gently inquires now that he’s noticed that your breathing is a bit more normal and the sobbing is more contained.

“Sit with me?” Stewy nods. Kendall scoffs quietly but audibly and takes one of your hands and walks back to the front row pew of Roys, Stewy’s hand is gently on your back as he follows. You sit at the furthest end from Kendall, sandwiched between Willa and Stewy. Willa offers you a small but gentle smile and you press into Stewy’s side as he holds your hand in his.

“Snot siblings.” Roman says as he finally looks at you, leaning across to give you a tissue. “Courtesy of the old Gerr-bear.” He adds as he refuses to look at the woman behind him.

“Oh, thank you.” You whisper quietly and he nods looking away, just across from him.

You’re aware that there’s more attention on you now over your little breakdown and at the development of Stewy coming over and then being at the front Roy children pew, Willa’s there of course but not even Tom or Rava are. You can tell Stewy’s aware of this as well as you look at his handsome side profile, he notices you staring and smiles at you, his arm around you squeezes you softly and he brings the hand of yours that he’s been holding in his lap up for a soft, sweet kiss.

“Just breathe.” He whispers quietly as your hand in his goes back into his lap. You take a deep breathe, even consumed in your grief and the horror of this day you are so grateful for him.

Despite the context, there is something freeing and peaceful about that. Being able to hold your hand in front of hundreds of people, kiss it and sit next to you. Stewy feels it deeply in his soul and while you perhaps can’t appreciate that right now, you can feel it too.

****************

You didn’t stay to receive condolences like Kendall did. You immediately left with Stewy, ignoring the pointed and curious looks from everyone as he had an arm around you as you both quickly walked, he held the door open for you and you both sat in the backseat.

As soon as you both were in and that door closed, you couldn’t help it. You just started crying. It was so overwhelming.

“Hey, hey baby.” Stewy whispered into your hair as he pulled you tightly into him, he pressed some soft kisses to the top of your head. “I’ve got you.” He said softly. He was so soft with you today. But Stewy was always soft with you.

Stewy held you tightly for the rest of the drive and when the car got to the cemetery you tilted your head, so you were still pressed against his chest and looked up.

“Everybody knows now.” He wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement, it was a fact either way.

“Yeah-”

“Are you okay with that? I’m sorry-” You asked quietly, letting out a little hiccup. Tears still in your eyes.

“I don’t fucking care who knows. I love you. You baby. The whole world can know and there’s a lot going on today, I think this will be the least of anybody’s concerns or key takeaways. I just care about you.”

You lean up to give him a soft kiss on the lips, which he eagerly but gently returns.

“I love you too.”

“That always helps.” He says and you let out a dry chuckle at that, as you bite your lip looking out the tinted window. “Should we try one of those exercises?”

“Exercises? I don’t think we can fuck in your car at the cemetery when everyone is here to dispose of my dad-” You say with another dry laugh but some more tears come to stain your cheeks.

“No, no, no baby.” Stewy chuckles and flashes you a charming smile. “Those like grounding, breathing, you’re an amazing professional ones? Oh the colour one! Um, what’s something purple you can see?”

You look at Stewy in awe of his sweetness despite the douchey exterior most have to deal with. Your eyes briefly skim around the car and the sea of people in black outside.

“We’re at a funeral, everyone’s wearing black… Where’s the purple Stewy?” You ask in a tone as teasing as possible but a small sob comes out of you.

“Well you know I have nothing against outfit repeating but I’d worn a purple blazer to the wake- that wasn’t even a week ago baby. There’s a line, and it would’ve crossed the line. With the turtleneck and trousers and a purple blazer it would’ve looked like I was wearing the same outfit. I can’t do that, not in a week, let alone for two death-related events. People would know.” Stewy rambles on.

You can’t help but laugh at his ramble, only he would be acutely aware of that and have considered this all in great detail. You laugh into his blazer and nod. He wears a large smile on his face as he notices that this seems to have cheered you up somewhat. There’s still tears but that’s to be expected, he’s just glad that there’s somehow some smiles and laughs in there as well.

You press yourself into him tightly, inhaling his comforting scent and presence. “Don’t let me go. Not out there, in here. Ever, please.”

“I’d never dream of it, baby..” Stewy says softly as he presses a kiss into your head and then you both leave the car holding hands.

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sgsketchbook · 1 year

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sometimes i lie awake at night thinking about the camping trip that connor took them on. decided to do something about that

#messy because i just physically needed to get this out of my system #like i wanna know more ab this trip. i’m fascinated by it #and roman’s warped perception of it too like what’s that about #anyways idk #sometimes i get in my feelings about connor #i’m a conhead i fear #succession #kendall roy #roman roy #connor roy #succession fanart #i had fun w their designs here #imagine it’s like the early 90s idk the timeline #con is like late 20s #ken is 15 or so #and rome is like 11

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shivjoys · 1 year

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kids who will surely grow up to be normal, well-adjusted adults.

#succession #shiv roy #kendall roy #roman roy #connor roy #succession fanart #my art #in the opening credits they're all kind of the same age for the vibe but i wanted to draw them closer to how i imagine them dsfjhhsdf #i actually think connor would be a lot older but i wanted to include himmm

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cloud-based-and-rainpilled · 11 months

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I’ve been saying tomgreg endgame as sort of a joke but Tom and Shiv fuckin hate hate each other now and Shiv’s taking their unborn child to the pub and Gerri girlbossedly rolls her eyes at Roman when he boo hoos at his father’s funeral and Kendall’s going fully Saturday morning cartoon evil now and idk Stewy’s like dead or smthing but Greg’s loyal to the bitter end even when he doesn’t need to be and Tom’s trying to let him go for Greg’s safety but Greg won’t let him like……………

bros…… we won? is there winning? at what fucking cost??

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pillow-tits · 9 months

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thinkin real hard about Logan sending donuts to Rava’s apartment and shiv being sus about them and Connor saying “why would he send poison to his grandchildren’s house?” to the time where Logan was sus about the food at Kendall’s and feeds mozzarella to Iverson to see if it’s poisoned to Roman revealing Kendall has no biological children generational abuse pipeline.

#succession #kendall roy #shiv roy #connor roy #Roman roy #Jesus what the FUCK is that all about #imagine your parent being so terrifying any good will is equivalent to can be a threat on your life

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royboyfanpage · 20 days

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AU where Mia was introduced before Ollie died and Connor's Green Arrow run had Speedy Mia

#i just. want it.#could you IMAGINE the vibes of like #connor mia and eddie #impeccable. 10/10.#also not written by Dixon #obviously #not roy #connor hawke #green arrow #mia dearden #speedy

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romeulusroy · 11 months

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Succession Preference: Being Their Kid

Requested: Hi!!! Could u do a roy siblings + conner (love the way u write him) with a reader who is their kid? So like a POV in an AU where reader is their kid and each of them how they'd be as parents. (Succession preference or headcanons) - anon

A/N: Thank you for requesting my love!!! Hope you like it!!! Feedback is always appreciated!!! 💜💜💜

Connor loves being a father. He thought his greatest life purpose was being a big brother, but really it was to be a dad to you. He loves you more than anything. Despite being oblivious sometimes, Connor is a very attentive and present dad. He goes to every school event, every game, every play, every activity. He's the parent who goes on school field trips and volunteers for every classroom activity. Raising you is the biggest blessing of his life. He spoils you rotten. He wants you to have everything. Absolutely everything. Connor tells you about your Pop-Pop and your aunt and uncles, about how they used to be a lot closer, trapped in a years-long battle. He even tells you a bit about his mother, wanting you to be as connected to her as you are your other grandparents. He doesn't know what he'll do when you leave, when you move out. He loves being your dad. You're smart and funny and you love him no matter what, no matter how awkward or clueless or loving he is. It's all he ever wanted, he knows that now, to be a dad.

Kendall isn't very attentive. You have your younger (half?) siblings, Sophie and Iverson, and Rava is like a mother to you, but your relationship with your dad is strained. It's hard. Your mother does the best she can, and she's been trying to save you from him for as long as you can remember, but you know better. Your father didn't go to rehab until a few years ago. Before then, you mostly saw him on holidays if you were lucky and vacations. He sorta moved on, started a whole new family with Rava, and that hurts. As you grow up, you really realize that he was just a kid raising kids. He still has a lot of growing up to. You're not mad at him, you can't be. Look at the life he's lead, the people around him. No wonder he's a stifled kid. Still, you feel wronged. No matter what, he's your father. He should have stepped up to the plate. He should have taken his duties seriously. The older you get the more you understand him, his upbringing, but you're still connected to those frustrated feelings of childhood. You want him to be more present, and you hope he will be, but right now he can't be. He's fighting for a legacy he'll never have.

Shiv is a complicated mother to have. She loves you, of course she does, but she's trapped by circumstances. She never wanted to be with your father, she never wanted to turn into her mother, but she is and she did and now you're the product. She has big hopes for you. She knows that you're smart, you're witty, you remind her a lot of herself. She never wants you fight to be heard the way she was. Never. She spent her whole life fighting and still ended up the wife of the CEO instead of CEO herself. She listens to you always. If something is unfair or unjust, if you think you deserve something or want to do something or become someone, she is always there to listen. She 100% supports you in everything you do. She doesn't want you to end up like her. She does everything she can to support you and give you all that you want so that you never feel like she did. Raising you just makes her more upset with Logan. Regardless of your gender she knows you're a capable, whole human being. Why couldn't he do the same? Why couldn't any of them?

Roman is definitely not your biological father. You're adopted by him or he's your step-dad, something like that, but there's just no way he would biologically father a child. He likes you, you're cool. It's a learning experience for the both of you. It makes him realize just how messed up his own childhood was. He feels no want or need to hit you, to abuse you, to send you away like he'd been. He definitely doesn't talk about his childhood in front of you, scared that it might affect you, even just the words enough to mess you up. You know better than to ask. He's not very affectionate, but he's working on it slowly. Very slowly. He's there for you when you need him, when you need a shoulder to cry on or someone to listen. He's trying his best not to be so defensive, so sarcastic. He wants to legitimize your feelings the way his never were. The more he's with you, fathering you, the less he understands Logan. The less he understands his entire upbringing. When you're visibly upset, nothing in him wants to react with anger. He only sees empathy and sensitivity and heartbreak, nothing he feels the need to punish. Fatherhood wasn't ever on his list of life goals, but he's glad that he has you.

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bowieandqueen11 · 1 year

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Kissing Roman Roy Would Include...

Request: oh my god! your kendall roy kissing headcanons were adorable! would it be possible to get some for roman as well? i just know that man is touch starved and definitely had an awkward time kissing the reader early on in their relationship. obviously, you can choose to ignore but thank you!

Awww yes of course you can get some my love this man is 100% touch starved you’re so right <3

LADS OKAY I’M COMING BACK TO SAY THIS IS NEARLY 7K AND MY LONGEST FIC BY FAR LMAOO BABYGIRL CODED anyway comments are much appreciated because I am so tired lol ty ty ily all! :)

Warning: mentions of injuries/ blood, childhood abuse, and some swearing! Also MAJOR spoilers for Season 4!!

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

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°

We all really took one look at Roman Roy and went wet pathetic disgusting meow meow man I love you, and I really love and appreciate that for all of us. Because like... if not babygirl, why babygirl coded?

The first time you guys ‘kissed’, you were both around seven years old: on the tennis court, Shiv had sent a ball flying at Roman that had bent his hand backwards, and left quite a nasty gash of blood running down his arm. Instead of comforting the brother she had just bruised for the umpteenth time, the set of Roman crawling down to sit on the grass while cradling his arm just made her furious, and she went storming off towards the kitchen for some chocolate milk to cool down. You had been watching from the doubles side line, dropping your own racket as soon as Roman began to snivel, squeezing his skin back together and wincing as warm blood gushed out onto the grass. You run over to kneel in front of him, the harsh rays of light blushing across your head like a halo as you grab onto his elbow. You press the back of your shirt against it, hoping it will do until a nurse or one of the waiters comes running out with a first aid kit; as you glance up, the furious face of his father comes pacing past the balcony doors, and so you turn Roman’s head to look at you instead, praying that he won’t spot him. It will only make him whine more. It surprises you when he curses curtly instead at the feel of your fingers pressing down hard against his wound, but when you mumble an apology he finally stops scowling down at the ground and looks up: it’s as if he’s seeing you properly for the first time. His eyes light up as you gently lean down and press a kiss against the bloodstains; just the slightest hint of pressure, and tingling warmth of your your lips is enough to send a flourish through his body and make Roman Roy feel nourished. No longer withered, no longer left to rot. Roman gazes up at you: past the dappled sunlight, past the dotted clouds, past the earth and skies and heavens, and past it all he sees you.

You’re the first and last person he’s ever wanted to kiss. Like craving poison, he knows it will pass through and destroy him if he allows himself to indulge. But by god, if it wouldn’t taste so sweet as it pours down his throat and overwhelms every dilapidated part of his body.

The first time he works up the nerves to kiss you back, is in one of the pool storage huts just past the outer boundaries of his father’s estate. Shiv had finally convinced her father to allow her out into the city to go shopping for some new suits, and Ken had been chained into a business meeting to take notes for Logan, so Roman had been left all alone to wander around the ostentatious shadows and lonely halls of the house he hated to call home. Feeling trapped, like he couldn’t breathe, he wanders towards the ‘safe space’ the two of you had created a couple of years ago: a small nook you and Roman had spent the day nestling out (and nearly breaking his arm shoving unused surfboards and pool cleaning chemical boxes) in the dim, and slightly damp room. Finally feeling at home as he stepped into the mildew-steeped scent cloud that enveloped the square box stuffed full of things his father had wanted out of his sight, his heart is allieved to spot you already there. You don’t even have to look up from your book as he comes dawdling towards you like a puppy afraid it’s about to be kicked. When you open your arm up to him willingly, the true him comes leaping forth: like a darting hummingbird, he comes flying into your side, nestling his chin on the hard part of your shoulder so he can scan the words lazily past your head. After about half an hour of him gripping onto your shirt, as sweet and softly as infant spring, he glances up towards your face and an overwhelming urge overtakes him. Before he can stop himself, before he can make sense of his decision, before he can chide himself for his weakness, he lifts his head up and presses his lips firmly, if a little harshly, against the side of your cheek. Your book crashes to the floor with a thunderous slap, lifting a small cloud of dust as you raise your fingers to the wet spot in surprise. He immediately shuffles backwards at the noise, before making an awkward, fumbling excuse and running out the door.

He never brings it up again, but whenever you’re round at the Roy residence after that you can feel the intensity of his eyes land on you far more often. He blinks away and scratches the back of his neck nonchalantly whenever you catch him, or sometimes scrunches his nose up and starts biting the edges of his fingernails if he’s really nervous. But the love is there. He just can’t say it yet.

Once, when you were the only person in the house besides Connor and Logan, you were asked by the second-born eldest son to help him find Romie. With a concerned sigh, Connor wanders off to check behind the bathroom door off the living room, his lips forming a tight line as he disappears off down the corridor. Turns out, Logan had found out that Roman had been the one to spill his ice cream cone in the car on the way back from his fencing lesson, and Roman had run off cursing and crying when he heard the roar reverberate out from his father’s office at the news. You know where he is, instinctively. Of course you do: you don’t even need to think as your feet guide you towards his bedroom, and your body shrinks down to scoot under the bed and lie on the pristinely clean floorboards. He’s hiding behind the tendril weeds of his fear, making himself as small a target as possible as he balls himself up, trembling like heavy branches when lanced with frost. From behind his raised elbows that protect his face, he’s sniffling, his feet leaving the ground every few seconds from how harshly they shake. You lie down carefully on your side beside him, so hyperaware of any part of yourself brushing against him, in case the wounded creature decides to bolt. Thankfully, he comes sliding towards you, only stopping when your chest does the job for him; being as physically close as he can get to you, he huddles into your embrace while you stroke back the few curls by his ear. Once you’ve finally managed to choke back your own tears, your lips latch onto the spot of skin by the lobe of his ear, eyes closing and ticking his skin. He warbles against you, shivering, and the kiss just makes him whine more harrowingly against your chest.

Romie’s always around you. Always. He finds it difficult to actually be physically intimate, so it says quite plainly (even if you can’t understand it yet) that you’re the love of his life when he comes barrelling down the front stairs of the veranda and straight into your hug whenever your first foot falls onto the estate. It also means that during family dinners, when he’s finally mastering the skill of slouching back in his wishbone chair and tuning out all the horrible and spiteful things wrapped up in faux sincerity his family are saying about each other, he turns instead to kick your feet under the table. The brush of his ankle against your shoe is soon followed by the heavy pressure of his fingers reaching over onto your lap and entangling with your own. When the two of you are finally excused, you decide not to go back inside straight away. Instead, the two of you go for a dander around some of the verdant fields around the edges of the property: a few green patches here there that are filled with the scent of honeysuckle and freshly blooming rainbows splattered amongst the dirt. You decide to stop and sit for a while on the edge of a cobbled stone wall, laughing as Roman nearly falls off the uneven patch as he settles down beside you. He shrugs you off with a wave of his hand, but he’s smiling as you pluck a daisy from between the blades and tuck it behind his ear. For a while, the two of you just exist: watching the sunset brew violet and lilac gleams across your eyeline, talking shite and poking fun at each other, until Roman shyly takes a break from his rapid talking to blink slowly. He leans his torso forward, and after a bashful burn flickers over his cheeks, he squeezes his eyes shut and plants a wet kiss against your cheek, just like he had done all those years before.

He climbs into your room later that night, and you nearly hit him with a baseball bat when you come strolling out of your bathroom to see a teenager laying splayed out in a heap on your rug, a few pages of your homework flying over your desk from where he had banged his knee and tripped. With a lopsided grin, he decides to just stay lying there (once you had convinced him that you weren’t going to actually hit him). Sometimes Roman just likes to watch what you’re doing: to observe as an outsider what normality, what contentment should and could feel like. As you sit by your lamp and finish off your english essay for the next morning, you notice with furrowed eyebrows that Roman is moochier than normal tonight: he keeps squirming, rolling about and whining as if he’s debating something in his mind. That’s why when he’s gripping onto the ivy and finally climbing back down into the darkness later that night, you grab onto the collar of his sherpa jacket and heave him up through the air like a flustered bird towards you. After his initial surprise at the feeling of you pounding your lips against his own, he melts into you: clumsily, messily, desperately, but with one hand gripping so hard onto your window frame that he splinters the wood. His top lip refuses to let you go: capturing onto your bottom lip over and over and over again, the sweet taste of cherry flooding your senses as you bite down on the lip forcing its way into your mouth. When he pulls away, he looks so uncharacteristically serious for a moment as he hovers a few inches away from your face. His eyes never break from your lips, as if he he looks away the miracle he’s been graced with might fly away and he’ll be left with the hellish nightmare of his normal reality. But it doesn’t, and so you let him go.

He burns a crimson red and starts muttering incoherently as his feet work their way back down the garden lattice, but he’s got this giddy smile and a spring in his swishing walk the whole way home.

I mean, like, of course Connor invited you on the camping trip. And man, I mean the tension that had been expanding between you and Roman over the last few years was becoming more and more obvious to his brothers, and it pierced Roman’s heart with a stroke of fear when he realised it was to him as well. Connor’s little fishing expedition by the river turned out a little differently than he expected: instead of a placid moment between family, learning and teaching new skills together and bonding over one activity they could all share in, it was more of a ‘watch little gremlin Roman flirt obnoxiously with Y/n and, once again, ignore everyone else’ fest. Kendall sat on the shore, itchy against the reeds of grass and sighing every time he looked down at his watch. Connor was still having fun, though, from where he was wading his brand new, and never worn again wellies into the shallow end of the creek. It was just that every now and then he would have to trip over his fishing line and scoot to the right to avoid large splashes of weedy water landing on him; Roman had decided a much better use of his time was to try and pull up handful of mud and chase you around the river side with it. Your squeals, as you ran around the tamarack trees and peered around the sides like a meerkat, could be heard from the campsite. So, too, could Roman’s hyena laugh as he went laughing around the bend after you, and Connor had to spend half the night ignoring your shared snickers as he apologies to camper after camper.

I don’t even know how, but somehow the two of you managed to convince Connor that it was a great idea for you and Roman to share a tent. Thanks to Kendall’s pointed warning for the two of you to behave and ‘not embarrass the family name anymore’, you were both surprisingly well behaved during the night. Mainly due to the fact that before you fell asleep, you leant over and left a chaste kiss against Roman’s cold forehead, before turning onto your side facing him and wishing him a goodnight. He wiggled down into his sleeping bag like a little worm as the electricity from your touch spread down like firebolts through his body. That man did not sleep one wink that night. Not one. Instead he rolled onto his left side, and chose to spend his time contemplating you: taking you in. The milky buzz of twilight flooded through the loose zip, the chirp of bouncing crickets on the darkened rocks outside match the intense thudding of his heart. Fumbling his fingers up so they rested underneath the side of his jaw, he made himself comfortable as he observed the way your chest rose and fall: the way your nose crinkled up in disgust when you were in the throes of a weird dream, the way your mouth mushed as you turned more into the stony ground. How much he loved you. How happy he could be if he could just summon the bravery to tell you. How fucked he was. How, if he did, his father would immediately utilise it, weaponize his love against him.

Roman wasn’t stupid, but he was. He didn’t know if he could find a way to escape this cage. Deep in his heart, he knew there was no key to this dog kennel, to this bird cage, to this leash. But he lay there, still, dreaming of freedom.

You get invited along on their family holidays a lot, mainly because Logan spends his whole time on phone calls and not mentally being present so he doesn’t really notice you’re there. If you and Roman aren’t spending the afternoons sitting together on a sun lounger, reading aloud softly to him by the pool side, it’s spent actually in the pool. A freshly seventeen year old Roman had seemed nervous, besides the usual annoyance at having to wear nothing but swimming shorts: shaken all day; when you touch his pinkie finger and grip onto it, silently asking him with your stern expression if you were okay, only the most miniscule of grins could cross his face in response. He still seemed unsettled in the water, besides the fact that Shiv’s foot nearly thwacked him up the face as she and Kendall wrestled each other under the water, both unrelenting in their accusation that the other had lost their splashing match. While you watched on in horrified curiosity, you nearly jumped when you felt Roman softly touch your elbow and lead you away from the affray. You think he’s trying to guide you towards the Jacuzzis as you bob across the water, or perhaps back to his room to escape the antics of his family. Instead, Roman leads you further into the deep end for a moment; after a sharp turn right, you’re surrounded by a small well, a shallow area just out of sight of the main swimming area. The imposing walls loom over your head as you take a perched seat on the brick bench that runs around the semi-circle, and Roman’s breath trembles as he follows suit, sitting maddingly close to you. You open your mouth to ask him what’s going on, but before you can get a squeak out he’s lunged at you, fervently enough to make you nearly bite your tongue. It’s not super romantic, and it’s incredibly clumsy as an inexperienced Roman Roy mashes his lips against your bottom one until he can feel his teeth clash against yours. You can taste a touch of pineapple from the inside of his mouth as he sloppily raises his cupid’s bow, and soon after the tang of chlorine as he falls too far forward and sends you both tumbling backwards into the water. But when you come back up for air, heaving him up by his underarms and staring dumbstruck at him as he pants heavily and tries to look anywhere else, you burst out giggling. Roman’s smile grows brightly enough to blight the sun as he looks incredulously at you, the laughter only stopping short on his lips when he catches the squinting look of his sister watching the two of you from the boundary edge.

It’s the first and last time Roman Roy kisses you for a while, terrified that one of his siblings will go squealing to daddy and he’ll take you away from him. And then, suddenly, the two of you have grown up. Roman’s still stuck to you like glue, but the repression festers away in his stomach until he feels as if some kind of scaly tooth monster is gnawing away at his insides. He feels the leather tighten around his neck whenever he’s standing like an affronted ostrich in that office with his father, his master, his demise, his ghost, him.

So, Roman starts to try and avoid you whenever he’s at Waystar, worried that the grief that never seems to leave his mind will strangle you if he lets you in. Terrified that his father will die, but also that his father will never die. That this is just another cage. Eventually, after weeks of him turning on his heels with a manic jolt and running out of every board room he spots you in: after months of the child dressed up as a man putting his phone to his ear and having nonsensical phone calls every time he passes you in the corridors, you manage to nab him when he’s walking out of the break room. Even though a stuttering cousin Greg thinks you’re trying to kidnap him when you grab Roman by the collar and start dragging him to the elevator, you refuse to let go until Greg’s waving hand is firmly shut behind the metal sheets. You let go, and he fumbles backwards onto the hand-rail that runs around the small rectangle with a bemused ‘what the actual fuck’, but you just cross your arms and stare at him, refusing to talk first.

Your austere façade quickly drops, and you’re quick to slam your first into the emergency button on the panel, gripping onto Roman’s sleeve as the elevator lurches to a stop between the twenty-second and twenty-third floors. A kind of acceptance has washed over Roman, some kind of known and familiar claustrophobia from having spent his whole life locked up, his whole life thrown about sets in. He picks at his fingernails as his eyes dart about, wild and brutal and crushing as he looks around for an escape route. It’s only when you put a hand on his shoulder and draw him in for a hug that he breaks down; he squats down so the two of you are resting a few inches off the floor, his face buried just atop of your heart as he shakes and he cries and he allows himself the security to just crumble. To melt down. To kick his feet and hope his father feels the wring of the shackles against his own ankles. He hopes for the first time in his life, as you stroke the back of his head and shush him comfortingly, that they hurt him.

Something changes between the two of you that day. You’re kinder to each other, and slowly to yourselves. It’s not outspoken, or rushed, or ravenous, but it begins to grow and grow and grow until it’s not only confusion and anguish that lies at the pit of Roman’s rotting core.

It starts with him becoming more comfortable showing affection to you around his family. Like you sitting on Roman’s lap at Shiv’s wedding reception, not listening to the speeches but trying to hide your giggles in Roman’s palms as he’s busy trying to take roses out of the centre piece and pin them through your hair. Or his full weight against you during the professional photos out on the balcony, and not even Shiv flicking her brother or Tom waving his hand at Roman to try and get him to behave could stop him from leaning backwards and planting a kiss underneath your jawline once the man said he was taking the final photograph. The two of you go out into the gardens later that night, trying to escape the ear-hammering loud beats of the D.J., and to try and make an early escape from the growing fight that seemed to be coming between Tom and Shiv’s old work acquaintance. With two beers and slightly tipsy heads, you sit down and talk on the dew-ridden grass, shoulders swaying against the other’s in time with the falling pine leaves. You felt like children again, and against the smouldering clash of fireworks that brandished the sky in bursts of red and gold, you both felt undying as well. He kisses you then, his hand reaching up to brush against the side of your cheek, his bottom lip teasingly tugging at your bottom lip and making you swat him away with a laugh. As you take his hand in your own and press a promise filled kiss against his middle knuckle, he hopes that one day he’ll be able to kiss you at your own wedding.

When you know he’s having a rough day at work, you like to try and sneak into his office and wrap your arm around his stomach, peppering kisses up and down his spine. Although he tries to shake you off like a startled starling at first, when he realises that you also managed to close the blinds on your way in without him noticing, he quickly relinquishes himself onto your barrage of adoration. He becomes all whiny, and soft, and needy, and all the things he’ll never allow himself to be outside of the security blanket of this closed off room. Although he still isn’t comfortable with anything too sexual, you won’t find him complaining as he wrestles you to the sofa. Once you’ve had the wind knocked out of your lungs, and Roman’s satisfied with how fully you’re splayed out on your back before him, he’ll go scuttling over to the end of the sofa and kneel down beside it. With a mischievous glimmer in his eye, he’ll swish his hips from side to side and come crawling up the sides of his body like a wolf slinking towards its dinner. Then he attacks: his tongue heavy and slick as he draws a hickey out just under the pulse point on your neck, pressing him firmly against you if you try to squirm away, chiding you with a warning. When it becomes too much, he lets you grip him up by his tie and walk him backwards until his thighs hit his desk. He jumps up to perch on it, and you stand between his legs as they tighten around you. You’re slow and careful as you loosen the material between your fingers, opening the first button of his shirt, and only the first so he doesn’t become too uncomfortable, with a satisfying loud pop. He whimpers as you lean over to scrape your teeth against the exposed skin, working your way up until your lips are tantalisingly hovering over the stubble on his jaw. He can feel your breath, hot and unsteady as it pants against him, but he still can’t stop the shiver that racks through him as he takes your hand and guides them under his shirt. With your hands firmly planted against his abdomen, you look at him quizzically, worried, but he just keeps his fingers on top of your own and answers you by sweetly pressing his top lip over his own. Just once, he wanted to feel safe, to feel okay with the love of his life touching his body.

The two of you have this game where you try to steal kisses from each other during the most inappropriate and annoying times possible. Oh, Shiv’s trying to talk to you in her kitchen about how her trip to England went? Roman barges in between the two of you, nearly making Shiv chop her thumb off, just so he can interrupt his sister by smirking against your mouth. Kendall wants to run through a presentation the two of them have to give the next morning? You’re grabbing onto Roman’s head as you run through the office, nearly giving him a heart attack as he scrambles backwards and allows you to drop his head back onto the cushion. With a full plant landing on his already pliant lips, Kendall’s left with a fed-up ‘hey’, yet unsurprised look of disappointment on his face as you run off back to your own desk.

When his father called Romie a moron in Prague, the look of desolation that crossed through his teary eyes was enough to make an angel weep. But it broke you even more when he pattered out of the dining area, walking shoulder to shoulder with you, but not saying anything. He was just staring down at his hands as if they were blotted: stained with specks of blood, and he would have to spend another sleepless night scrubbing them out of his skin. It wasn’t the first time he heard it, but it was the first time you were there to hear it too, and you weren’t going to let him get comfortable wallowing in that fearful acceptance. You grip onto his shoulder and steer him away from the milling crowd of sheep, stuffing him into a bathroom stall of the east wing of the hotel. Crowded together, Roman’s hamstring bumps against the porcelain as the two of you scoot about until you’re standing facing each other as best as you could. He looks at you, bleary eyed, and you look at him, bleary eyed. He breaks. Choking, gasping, breathless sobs, drowning in his misery. He grabs onto your shirt, clawing into the meat of your shoulders as if he’ll sink if he lets go. He keeps babbling through bubbles of spit about how he just wants to make his father proud, how he wants to be just like him, how he wants to prove that he can rule all this too. How he can never replace him. But he can. He wants it all to burn, but he wants to stand on the ruins and be the one to plant the foundations again. To make a better world, in honour of his father: in honour of the god of war that rages within his head. You press quick kisses on his sweaty forehead whenever you can, doing your best to dodge the quick turns of his head and wiping away the trails of tears with your thumb. All you can do in that moment, as you press your lips against the side of his ear and whisper it to the most intimate, lost parts of himself, is to let him know that you’re proud of him, no matter what happens next. You always have been, and even the ghost of Logan that possess Roman can’t stop that.

The sloppy kisses he gives you the next morning omg. When the two of you are sitting on your bedroom steps, and you’re biting your bottom lip in concentration as you try to do up the buttons of his dress shirt and make him look presentable in front of his family. Like a feral dog, he uses all of his leftover energy trying to nip and bite your fingertips, catching them on his tongue and pursing them against the roof of his mouth whenever he can.

You cannot convince me that Roman isn’t a jealous bitch. Like at Kendall’s fortieth birthday party, when he finally gives up trying to get up into his special little secret treehouse club, and Shiv has left him to go ham on the dance floor instead. You finally manage to convince him into relaxing for a fricking minute, making him join you at the bar. If someone tries to grab your waist, though, or butt into your conversation while the two of you are hyena giggling and seeing who can spurt more beer into the other’s face, Roman will full on goad them into fighting him. I mean, chest puffed out, crazed look in his face, hands up by his side until they send a weak shove in their general direction. It only ends when Roman either: near topples you to press a bracing kiss against your lips, or you dragging him off and having to hold him through the brackets of his arms. In the corner of the room, over by the sheets of warbling fire that seems to be coming from a central room, you stand behind his feet and wrap your arms up his chest. You can feel the fury roll off him, allowing him a moment to blow off the steam, until his head finally falls like putty and begins to synchronise his breathing to yours again after you hold your lips against the nape of his neck.

The kisses when he comes back after being held hostage (I am doing this so out of order apologies) omg??? He clambers sombrely to sit beside you on the deck of the boat, looking so out of place and serious as he leans back against the cushions. His siblings make fun of him, and tease him, and although he realises it’s harmless and he’ll see it as a key bonding moment a couple of years down the line, in the inside the typical Roy storm is brewing. He can’t say anything: just hides behind the jokes and snide comments so the words don’t choke him. You just feel his weight fall against yours little by little, until his hand reaches out and takes your own so tightly you know it’s going to bruise. The muscle in his jaw tightens and he squeezes his eye shut in an enduring pain at the sight of his father’s helicopter coming in to land. So, for that kind second before his life comes crashing back down around him again and he has to revert back, to hide behind the brick wall again, you take him over to the railings. It’s just the two of you, the warm sea salt stinging against your grimacing faces, and the ungodly sight of a near-naked Cousin Greg lying stretched out beside the slide below you. After a few goes, you manage to unlatch his claws from the white metal and replace them with your soothing palm, rubbing semi-circles against the back of his hand. You’re here. You’re here, with him. You’re not going to let him go it alone again, if he wants.

And he does. He could cry, he so desperately does. Some of the tension falls from his shoulders as he raises your joint hands to his lips and kisses them, gracing over every inch of skin his mouth can latch onto.

You both know, in that moment, that it’s enough. It’s a promise. You’ll stick together, no matter what. You’ll love each other through everything, no matter what. You’ll stay around, no matter what or who he becomes.

Which brings me to... kissing him when you find out about the passing of his father. Standing on that boat, on the most joyous of occasions, feeling as if the whole world is shattering around you. Feeling miserable at the knowledge that deep down, some part of you is overjoyed by the news. Feeling even more downtrodden to realise, as the streaky eyes and thousand-stare faces of the Roy siblings flash back and forth in your line of sight as they pass the phone to each other, that Logan will never really be gone. They’re talking to his lifeless, empty shell through the speakers, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s here in this room. He’s staring through their eyes. Talking in their quivering, harsh voices. Pounding through their feet. Tearing them apart as they try to cling onto each other. In their accusations that burst through their mouths innately. In the ordered instructions hurled out to keep business running smoothly. Hidden between the cracks of their voices as they sharpen their words and seethe them out between clenched teeth when the slightest chance of Logan even being dead is raised. He’s here, right now, as you let go of the death grip Kendall and Shiv have on both of your hands and catch sight of Roman rocking backwards and forth on the floor.

Giving a final squeeze of apology to Connor’s arm, you take Roman out of the room before he combusts. The whole air seems to be chilled: still, like something’s lurking unspoken between the threads of air. Like you’re leading Roman through the cold remains of a morgue. He wanders around for a minute, not even hearing the click of the door as you close it behind you. Not even crying. Not even speaking. For the first time in his life, he looks so much like his father. Too much. It scares you. Until eventually he just closes his eyes and trods over to the wall, thumping his forehead down on the cool metal until it burns. He holds his hand out to you, cufflinks gleaming like the edge of a knife past the ceiling lights, as if he’s offering a contract out to you. Apprehensively, your tentative hand creeps out and places itself gingerly on top of his own. He takes it, his dry lips latching onto you until the bridge of his nose is resting now upon your hand. The deal is done.

When you get back to your apartment though, and Romie finds out that Matsson wants him to fly out and meet him in Norway... that’s when Roman gets weird. Devastated. Freaks out. Grieves. You come out from your shower, wearing one of his suit shirts as your pyjama top, and he doesn’t even give a whistle of appreciation. Instead he’s crumpled on the floor by the canopy of your bed, cradling his knees to his chest, swearing into his kneecaps furiously. But you - you, oh god, you’re the only thing that can stop him from being swallowed up by Logan’s fury. You tilt his chin up during a tangled rush of expletives I don’t dare to copy down here, a scowl setting itself into his face like stone. It begins to soften when he realises you’re touching him, when he can feel the scrape of your nail around his jugular. You do your best to warble an unconvincing smile as you turn his head to the side, so you can better wipe your bottom lip against the edge of his throbbing mouth. You mould yourself to him, working at his pace as he winces at first, before slowly falling more and more easily into your grip. His hands loosen from his arms and fall onto your triceps as he deliriously tries to come back to himself through searching through the velvety warmness of your mouth: by swiping against your tongue and choking back his grievances as you pant into his open, waiting mouth.

You wake him up the next day with a fond kiss against the tip of his nose, and for the first time in a long while he smiles before he wakes fully up. The morning light cradles his bleary face as he sleepily runs a few fingers over the edge of your cheek, before cradling himself into your side again. He feels safe, weary, anguished, loved enough to fall asleep again, after pressing a few gentle licks behind your earlobes to try and hear you laugh again. Even through it all, his main concern is you.

You trace his features while he restlessly dreams, although he squirms from time to time and alludes you to the fact that he’s secretly awake. A kiss here, between the junctions of wrinkles on his furrowed forehead. A kiss there, on the patchy stubble just underneath his left ear. A few there on the dark circles underneath his eyes, until you’re balancing over him and holding yourself up by the hands splayed over his pillow. He just needs to be reminded he’s beautiful from time to time. That he’s perfect. That he doesn’t need to try and be someone else. To encapsulate his father.

But also like, Roman fucking hates Matsson. The way he looks at you during the whole field trip, like a hunter about to swallow its prey whole. Although the continuous comments about his family, and the two new Co-Ceo’s, and the legacy of his father make him burn down to the pit of his stomach with a white hot fury, he can deal with them if he would just leave you the fuck alone. He doesn’t take kindly to anyone but him looking at his soulmate with such adoration and lust in their eyes, so if that overgrown yeti gives you the up and down check out one more time he might actually just deck him in the middle of the retreat. He bites down on his tongue so harshly that his taste buds begin to bubble and prickle with blood, deciding it best to storm off and collect his thoughts before he lashes out and does something he can’t take back. You finally manage to track him down a little way off the beaten track, winding your way over some cobbled steps to find a branched alcove with nothing but a bench and a breath taking view of the gushing river down below. He’s hunched over with his fingers knotted over his knees, his lips so tightly drawn together that at first you don’t even spot the droplets of blood until he turns with a raised eye to look at you.

He knows it’s not your fault, so there’s no convincing or apologies when you join him. Just Roman finally getting all of that pent up sorrow and distress out. After an awkward moment of bouncing your foot up and down, you decide your best course of action is to just open your arm up to him again, like you used to do when you were children. At first he raises a confused eyebrow, before the realisation dawns over his face, and his features crumble. His lips purse, his throat bobbing as he heaves the tears back down, but he can’t stop his lips from trembling as he falls into your side. That kiss was the sweetest, as he leans his chin familiarly against your shoulder and bumps noses with your own. He frowns, sobbing at the knowledge that he can kiss you, finally, in the way he’s been yearning for all his life, and yet it all feels so wrong. So upside down. So far away from what he had dreaming. The freedom feels like a tether, and yet he juts his chin out and latches placidly onto your bottom lip anyway, the tears trickling down and falling between your mouths.

It’s an act of defiance. A key sliding into the lock. He still can’t say it, but he won’t allow himself to smother the feeling anymore. The first sip of poison gliding down his throat, and Roman prays as he presses his forehead tearfully against your own, that it would kill the Logan part of him first.

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