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“If you die, Ken, I’ll fucking kill you.”
Stewy feels the cold tightening his lungs as he runs after Kendall through the intersection. The snow reflects the traffic lights, glittering green then yellow then red again, but Kendall is already gone. He is a blur on the other side of the pavement.
February 1999. Cambridge, MA.
Stewy narrowly avoids clipping the fender of a BMW as he struggles to catch up with Kendall. Club music is still thrumming in his temples, alcohol thick in his stomach like another lining. His high is already wearing off, diluted by the cold and the slush in his shoes, but Kendall has overdone it. He always does.
Watery Manhattans made in Styrofoam cups and two, three, four vodka shots in a crowded dorm room, then several more in a crowded club. Hits of cocaine off their palms in a swampy restroom, powdered knuckles, a milligram snorted from the coke spoon Stewy keeps in his blazer pocket. Numbing gums, aching fingers.
Buzzing, Stewy had listened to Kendall talk more about the Waystar internship that awaits him on the other side of business school than his classes or his degree. The drugs had twisted his ignominy into bragging, his guilt padded out by manufactured cockiness. Stewy had downed his whiskey sours in silence, struggling to get a word in between private school anecdotes and pointless ramblings about Royco and Roys and co.
Kendall always talks about his father, unprompted, and if not his father then topics that carry enough association to make the transition back easy. Stewy would be annoyed if not for the alcohol edging out Kendall’s angst, morphing it into something more palatable for their so-called friends.
Sometimes Kendall flickers through personalities like a Rolodex. It gives Stewy motion sickness, a feeling akin to the uneasy thrill of chasing Kendall back to campus. Stewy is always chasing him, in one way or another.
Stewy hears Kendall laugh, out of reach and already halfway down the street. He yells over his shoulder, a barely coherent insult, and Stewy struggles to understand it above the wind rushing past his ears, the snow crunching beneath his weather-inappropriate shoes. Stewy nearly catches up to Kendall, but then Kendall turns a sudden corner. He disappears down a poorly shovelled side street.
Stewy follows him. Kendall looks over his shoulder and grins. The space between them closes. Just when Stewy thinks he might finally have him, Kendall clumsily loses his footing, falling face-first onto the sidewalk.
“Ken!” Stewy shouts instinctively. His heart lurches in his chest. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He rushes over to Kendall, maneuvering around an inconveniently camouflaged patch of ice. He crouches down, an eager hand coming to rest on Kendall’s shoulder. “Hey, Ken. You okay, man?”
Panicked, Stewy peers over at Kendall who, after an excruciating few seconds, rolls onto his back. His pavement-scraped nose is bleeding from one nostril, a licorice strip that paints a line down his philtrum. Kendall raises his hand to it and the blood smudges above his lip, staining his thumb. Kendall pauses to look at his fingers, drunk and dumbstruck, then laughs again. Unabashed and bright, the kind of laugh Stewy rarely hears when Kendall is sober.
Stewy feels his face warm.
He blames it on overexertion.
“Dude, fucking seriously?” Stewy huffs, annoyed but relieved. He straightens, then lightly shoves Kendall in the side with the toe of his shoe. “I thought you, like, broke your neck or something, dickhead.”
“You should have”—Kendall hiccups, more laughter—“You should have seen your face, Stew. ‘Oh no, Kenny!’ You were so,”—another hiccup—“So worried. You pussy.” He presses his index finger against the bridge of his rapidly bruising nose. “Shit.”
“Okay, fuck you,” Stewy bites back. “You should see your face, bro. Ew, you have, like, a hemorrhoid for a fucking nose now.”
Kendall keeps laughing. Even with blood dripping down his lips, his drug-induced over-confidence is palpable. Stewy thought if the night were to end in a nose bleed, it would stem from Kendall burning a hole through his septum, not an ice-related accident.
Stewy suppresses a smirk. If he could feel his fingers in his jacket pockets, he would probably lay beside Kendall and try to spot the stars through the inner-city light pollution. Instead, he thinks about July, summer vacation, sunscreen and sweat. He thinks about Kendall in fewer clothes, stretched out on a dock instead of the snow-covered sidewalk. In the present, Stewy can see the wet seeping through Kendall’s coat, the blood blotting the edge of his sleeve.
“Fucking moron,” Stewy reiterates.
It pulls him back from the memory, of the boathouse, of Kendall’s hands between his thighs beneath his swim shorts. Stewy thought they would move on from each other after graduation, especially in the absence of adolescence to explain it all away.
Apparently not.
Kendall tips his chin upwards, an invitation, and Stewy reluctantly stoops down again to look. He presses a finger into Kendall’s wind-bitten cheek, thumb resting on his chin, and gently turns his head to the side. The touch seems to placate Kendall, his expression sobering. Beneath the orange glare of the streetlights, the blood looks uncomfortably dark, a pink bruise forming across the bridge of Kendall’s nose like a juvenile blush.
It’s scraped, nicked on the pavement maybe, but not broken. Even if it were, rest assured Daddy Roy could gather enough coinage from the Waystar piggy bank for reconstructive surgery. Anything for the future face of management training videos and pandering corporate image campaigns. The thought of Kendall posing with dough-faced execs for a performative photo-op makes Stewy nauseous. He can see it now, Kendall, the bump on the bridge of his nose all smoothed out, staring back at him from the other side of a Waystar screensaver.
“Is it bad?” Kendall asks, likely numb to the pain due to the concoction of analgesics in his system.
“Yeah, I can see what little is left of your brain coming out your nostrils,” Stewy says, then straightens. He pats Kendall on the back. “Blow hard enough and there go your last three IQ points, bro.”
Kendall chuckles. His nose continues to gush, blood ribboning his fingers. Stewy grimaces, wishing he had something to give him to stem the bleeding. He thinks about the pocket square tucked into his blazer beneath his coat, the one Kendall gave him for his birthday. Navy blue, Italian silk, probably from Florence or somewhere with an equally flowery name. Stewy already thinks about Kendall whenever the fabric slips between his fingers. His bloodstains would only make the reminder worse.
“You’ll be okay,” Stewy says, a reassurance aimed at himself as much as Kendall. “Can you stand up?”
Kendall sticks out his unoccupied hand, helpless and unembarrassed about it like a barely potty-trained toddler asking for assistance off the toilet. “Yo?”
Stewy rolls his eyes and grabs it. He pulls Kendall up, makes sure he can stand on his own, then brushes the snow from Kendall’s coat. It’s an obvious excuse not to look him in the eye, but it eases the tension.
Stewy squeezes Kendall’s shoulders with both hands. “You good, dude?”
“Yeah.” Kendall tilts his head backwards, pinches his nose. The bleeding has slowed finally. “I want to go home.” His voice comes out of his mouth comically nasal.
“Then stop running off.”
“I only ran off because I knew you’d run after me, idiot.”
Stewy pauses at that. He looks at Kendall, sinking his molars into his cheek, ignoring the warmth returning to his face. He shakes his head dismissively, but he feels disarmed. “You fucking little prince. I told you we should have gotten a cab.”
Kendall smiles, white.
Stewy imagines closing the space between them. Blood on his teeth, red.
Somehow, they manage to make it back to their dorm without further incident.
Stewy leans against the door of the communal bathroom as Kendall washes up, or attempts to. Kendall runs the tap, cupping water in his hands then sloppily dragging them down his face. The water swirls in the sink, pink like the soap in the dispensers, then disappears.
Kendall moves with the coordination of someone suffering from a severe brain injury, continually dropping the crumpled wad of wet paper towel into the sink as he tries to wipe his nose, then giggling about it. He grips the edge of the counter, laughs at his own reflection, then looks over at Stewy.
Stewy walks over, knowing if Kendall is left to his own devices they will be here all night. He feels his eyelids growing heavy. The fuzzy pull of alcohol is fading from his cheeks: a sign that it must be closing in on 4 AM. He grabs the paper towel from Kendall and roughly wipes the remnants of blood crusted above his upper lip. Kendall bites back a smirk, like the touch tickles.
“Bro, what is so fucking funny?” Stewy asks, suddenly insecure about the proximity between them. The position of his hips accidentally urges Kendall back against the sink. Stewy looks down and realizes Kendall is curling his fingers around the front of his coat, dried blood beneath his nails. Stewy feels it again: warmth, vulnerability, both his and Kendall’s.
Kendall motions towards his nose with his spare hand. “My dad’s gonna kill me, man.”
Stewy sucks at his teeth. When it comes down to it, Logan will always be Kendall’s first consideration, the shadow that billows at his heels no matter where the sun hangs in the sky. Stewy thought Harvard would be good for Kendall, putting some distance between overbearing father and underbearing son, but Logan Roy surpasses physicality. It was naive to think otherwise.
“Fucking Scrooge McFucking Moneybags isn’t here. This isn’t high school. He’s never gonna know, Ken,” Stewy manages, then raises his eyebrows at him. “Do you remember what year it is? Where we are? Huh? How many fingers am I holding up?”
Stewy drops the hand he was using to keep Kendall still and uses it to flip him off instead.
“Nineteen fucking ninety-nine, Holworthy Hall,” Kendall answers. “And one. The middle one.”
“Good.”
Stewy wets the paper towel again, wringing out the pink, then brings it back to Kendall’s upper lip. Kendall wrinkles his nose, eyes glassy and unfocused as Stewy presses a palm flush against his cheek. The blood is practically all cleaned away, but Stewy continues tending to him, to placate Kendall, to placate himself, exploiting the closeness while he still has an excuse. Sometimes taking care of Kendall is an exercise in plausible deniability. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Y’know, there’s sposed to be this thing next weekend,” Kendall slurs as Stewy reaches around him to wet another wad of paper towel. “For the, uh, the corporate rebrand, the new slogan, thingy.”
“Thingy?” Stewy snorts. He reaches between them and swipes the paper towel across Kendall’s knuckles and fingertips. “You mean, Waystar Royco: Feel it ?”
“Yeah, feel it.” Kendall chuckles. He lets go of Stewy’s coat, fingers curling around Stewy’s wrist instead. He looks at Stewy, incoherent, a goofy smile on his face. He sarcastically raises his eyebrows. “They want us to fucking—fucking feel it, man. Do you feel it?”
Stewy laughs, but it comes out oddly forced. Kendall had been running the potential slogans by him at the beginning of the semester. Of course, Waystar had settled on the catchphrase that annoyed Stewy the most: a vague enough sequence of words that could mean both everything and nothing at all.
“Huh, do you?” Kendall asks again.
Stewy glances down at their hands, dangerously close to interlocking. “Uh, no. The fuck are you talking about?”
“I dunno, Stew, but I fucking—dude—I fucking feel it. I do. I really do.”
“Sure,” Stewy says. He looks away, works at removing a crescent of blood from Kendall’s thumb cuticle. “Are you, um, gonna go?”
“Dad wants me to, to network or whatever,” Kendall says. “There’ll be press and shit. Y’know,”—he points to his nose—“the tabloids are gonna have a jolly fucking good time with this one. Dad’ll be real pleased.”
“Can’t you just say, y’know, fuck him? And not go?”
Kendall sobers at that. “I mean, I would, Stew. Ideally, I would say, uh, fuck him and not go, but you know how that goes over.”
Stewy sighs, his stomach sinking. On second thought, he does feel it, “it” being the ever-present tightening of Logan Roy’s hands around his second-born son’s throat. Stewy wants to pull Kendall from his grip, or loosen it at the very least. He has vague ideas on how to do it, either by obtaining the funds to buy Kendall out or convincing him to go into a sector he actually gives a shit about. Yet, both options are thinly veiled offers to run away, made with the assumption that there is an exit somewhere, a pathway to the other side.
Kendall is boxed in by Waystar, and sometimes it feels like Stewy can only peer inside, watch as the walls close in, inch by painstaking inch. When Kendall is like this, drunk and high and as close to carefree as he can get, Stewy sees hints of what might have been and what still could be. But drugs only make Kendall more aware of the farce, not any more eager to escape it.
Stewy tosses the stained wad of paper towel into the trash. It hits the bottom with a wet thunk. “Well, would you stop worrying about your fucking nose at least? It was fucked already, dude.”
Kendall scoffs. “Um, dude—”
“—you just gotta sleep it off, Ken,” Stewy continues. He feels pressure behind his eyes, exhaustion brittle in his bones. He drapes an arm across Kendall’s back and guides him towards the door. “Come on.”
Stewy walks Kendall back to his dorm room, up a flight of stairs and down another hallway, letting Kendall lean against him. When they reach their destination, Kendall clumsily tosses Stewy the keys from his back pocket and Stewy manages to jam them into the lock. The bolt unlatches and Stewy boots the door open with his foot. He guides Kendall inside, an arm firmly fitted against his back.
Stewy tugs Kendall’s coat off, tossing it onto the floor to join the rest of Kendall’s dirty laundry, then stoops down to untie Kendall’s sneakers. Kendall kicks them off, wobbling backwards on his argyle-socked feet. Stewy steadies him, silently, assuredly. The only light seeps in through the hallway, a crooked slant that casts crooked shapes against Kendall’s Wu-Tang poster.
Stewy lowers Kendall onto his unmade bed. He goes willingly but reaches out to grip Stewy by the forearm, fingers gently digging into his skin through the sleeve of his blazer.
Stewy frowns. “You good, bro?”
“Hey,” Kendall says, his voice low, then lightly tugs on Stewy’s arm. “Stay.”
Stewy narrows his eyes at Kendall, looking for a sheen of sweat on his forehead, a loss of colour in his cheeks. He considers hauling Kendall over his shoulder and dragging him back to the bathroom, or at least directing him to the nearest trash can. “You okay? You gonna be sick?”
A pause. They look at each other. Kendall blows a raspberry. “Dude, no, please. I can handle my booze.”
Stewy raises his eyebrows. He glances down at where Kendall’s hand is sliding down his forearm, tightening around his wrist, then looks back up at Kendall’s face. “You sure about that?”
Kendall purses his lips. Another raspberry, mostly air. “Like you can talk, man. Fuckin’ lightweight.” He rolls his eyes, tugs again. “If you were, if you were a boxer in the fucking, uh, Substance Abuse Olympics that would be your class.”
Stewy swallows his laughter. He should go. High school is behind them and the addendum of excuses he usually uses after falling into bed with Kendall need not apply. He should say no, ask Kendall to let him go, but everything about Kendall—the playful tilt of his head, the hallway light reflected in his eyes, the eager hand around his wrist—tells Stewy to stay.
Stay, stay, stay, stay, stay.
Stewy swallows the urge. It sits warm in his stomach, seething, begging to crawl up his throat. Stewy stifles it with words.
“Well, I take it you can make it through on your own then, yeah?”
Kendall pouts. It nearly breaks Stewy into pieces where he’s standing. “Stewy—”
“Kendall, get some sleep,” Stewy says quietly. He looks at Kendall and considers brushing away the hair on his forehead to press his lips there instead. He swallows that down too. “I have to go.”
It sounds too harsh, too insistent to be believed. Stewy pulls away, but Kendall keeps hold of him, tugs again. Stewy wavers, takes an accidental step forward. The mattress springs squeak as Kendall shifts his weight onto the edge of the bed and the space between them closes another inch.
“Stew, wait, what if I do get sick? I could—I could fucking, I dunno, throw up in my bed, man,” Kendall blurts out. “I mean, worst case scenario, you might have to help me do laundry again. So, uh, maybe you should, like, stay? Just in case.”
Stewy looks at him, tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek. Kendall looks close to laughter, the corners of his mouth pinched and his booze-bloated face oddly sincere. His nose looks almost normal in the low light, but Stewy can see broken vessels squiggling around his nostrils like a preschool arts and crafts project.
“Are you seriously trying to manipulate me, dude?” Stewy asks. “Right now? At four in the fucking morning?”
“No,” Kendall scoffs. He tugs on Stewy’s arm again, no longer asking but insisting. “But, uh, is it working?”
Stewy sighs. Kendall was never any good at lying when they were kids, his attempts at deception always overpowered by his sincerity. Even now, Kendall clumsily gives himself away: a confirmation that Logan has yet to poison every part of him. It is as endearing as it is frustrating as it is relieving. Even with Logan trying to whet his unsharpened edges, Kendall is still someone Stewy recognizes.
“Fuck you,” Stewy says. “And scootch over.”
Stewy lets himself be dragged down, kicking off his shoes as he goes. He settles beside Kendall, their knees bumping accidentally. The twin bed is crowded even if they both lay on their sides, Kendall with his back to the wall while Stewy faces him. There is no room to be shy, a handbreadth of space between the tips of their noses as they share a lumpy pillow.
Kendall looks at Stewy, his stare unwavering. Stewy meets his eyes. He wishes they would close as he traces each eyelash with his gaze. Kendall should be asleep already, giving himself enough time to forget all this by morning. Stewy fully expects the drugs and alcohol to drag along his memory of tonight as they disintegrate in his system, leaving a hangover as the only remembrance.
Kendall moves in closer, draping an arm over Stewy, pressing his hips into him. Kendall nudges his thighs apart with his knee until their legs tangle together. Stewy lets Kendall do it. For some reason, he always lets him.
“Did you want to come?” Kendall mumbles.
Stewy, distracted by the warmth of Kendall between his legs, barely hears him. “Huh?”
“The Waystar thing,” Kendall says. “Lots of important people. Leaders in the business world or whatever. Five-six-seven course meal from a Michelin star chef, hm? You could come with me if you wanted. Get your name out there.”
“Are you pitching to me? Is this a pitch?” Stewy asks.
Kendall shrugs, letting his head fall forward to rest against Stewy’s shoulder. Stewy feels him draw an uneven circle against the small of his back with his thumb, clockwise then counterclockwise. Kendall’s breath is hot against his neck when he exhales. “Not a pitch, Stew. Just a suggestion.”
Stewy laughs. “Oh, a suggestion, huh?”
“Yeah, a suggestion, asshole.”
Kendall continues drawing circles as Stewy thinks about mingling with board members and co-investors, schmoozing, smiling, nodding and speaking only when spoken to. Stewy likes the game—he always has—but the offer sours when he thinks about Logan. Logan, hardened and grey. Logan, misremembering his name even though he has been friends with Kendall since Buckley. Logan, shaping his son into something unrecognizable.
Anger prickles at the back of Stewy’s neck.
“I dunno, Ken,” Stewy says, cushioning his vitriol with uncertainty. “I just think you should blow the whole thing off. Like, we’re in college now. New city, new state, another year closer to a new fucking millennium. Bro, the world is fucking ours. This is a second chance. Y’know, be your own man type of shit. Do you really have to do what daddy tells you?”
Kendall raises his head from Stewy’s shoulder to look at him. His face is lined, deepening the premature wrinkles around his mouth, but Stewy continues before Kendall can interrupt.
“I mean, why Waystar? You really want to do the news? Fucking kiddie parks? Cruises?” Stewy makes a psh sound through pursed lips. “What about tech? What about the fucking algorithms or formulas or whatever the fuck you were talking about the other day. You could do so much. We could—”
Kendall sighs. “Stew—”
“Ken.” Stewy presses his palm into Kendall’s bony shoulder. He feels so small. “Just hear me out.”
“I am, Stew. Just—”
“Just what?”
Kendall lets out a frustrated huff. He presses his palms into Stewy’s stubbly cheeks and draws them together, squishing his face between his hands. The gesture, comically juvenile, is something he might have done when they were younger.
“You need to shut the fuck up, dude,” Kendall says. “I really—I don’t care about all that shit right now. My fucking dad, the firm, the corporate rebrand. All that bullshit. I asked if you wanted to go because I want you there—and here—I want you here. With me. I want you, bro, okay?”
Stewy takes Kendall’s hands in his and drags them from his face. They curl into fists. Stewy holds them steady against his chest. “Sure, yeah, whatever, man,” he says. “But Kendall, we’re not kids anymore. What about your dad? What about the future—”
“What about right now?” Kendall asks. His eyes find Stewy’s again, searching, his face marked by concern. “Like you said, my dad isn’t here. What are you so afraid of?”
“I guess like . . .” Stewy pauses, shakes his head. The words evade him. “Fuck, I dunno, man.”
It hurts to look at Kendall, so Stewy stares down at their hands instead. He counts the freckles on Kendall’s fingers, which are shorter and more slender but somehow fit nicely with his. A speck of blood that Stewy missed crusts the knuckle of Kendall’s pinkie. Stewy rubs at it and it transfers onto his thumbprint.
“I guess the more he has of you,” Stewy says as he watches Kendall dye him red, “the less I have to hold onto.”
Kendall presses their foreheads together. “Then hold me, dickhead.”
Stewy laughs, the tension easing, then nods ever so slightly. He wraps his arms around Kendall, pulls him in, holds him tight. Kendall is warm and willing, his head returning to the crook of Stewy’s neck. Stewy feels Kendall’s chapped lips brush the skin beneath his Adam’s apple. An almost kiss, probably accidental, but his chest stirs in response. Eventually, Kendall pulls away just enough to yawn, mouth wide open, and Stewy laughs.
“Jesus, bro, what did you drink?” Stewy teases, wafting the air away from his nose before returning his hand to Kendall’s back. “Your breath smells like furniture varnish. I might have to call poison control.”
“Fuck you, dude,” Kendall slurs.
He sleepily blinks at Stewy, a slow and delirious smile splitting his face, then closes the space between them. Their lips clumsily slot together. The kiss is unhurried but desperately needed. Kendall tastes like alcohol, but he also tastes like Kendall: familiar, and yet somehow unearned, too good to be handled carelessly. Kendall cards his fingers through the curls at the back of Stewy’s head. They come loose as the product in his hair loses its grip and Kendall tightens his. Kendall presses into him, suddenly eager as the kiss deepens, then winces when their noses accidentally brush.
“Ow,” Kendall says and immediately pulls away, his hand coming up to pinch between his eyes. “Ouch, fuck. Fucking shit. My nose.”
“Hey, you okay?” Stewy asks, slightly breathless. He presses his teeth into his bottom lip to make up for the loss.
Kendall runs a finger down the bridge of his nose, then the pain seems to subside. He laughs, rolling his eyes at himself, and presses his ear back to the pillow. Stewy offers him a relieved smile. He kisses Kendall on the top of the head, nuzzling into his hair. “Maybe we should get some sleep, dude. Before you break your nose for real this time.”
Kendall nods, already halfway there. His eyes flutter closed. Eventually, his breathing evens out, his arms going slack around Stewy as he folds into him.
Asleep.
A moment passes, then another. Despite the obligation having been lifted, Stewy continues to hold onto him. They remain intertwined, inseparable, inextricably tied to each other, and Stewy realizes something.
He has no real intention of ever letting Kendall go.