Chapter Text
It’s a comment made by fucking Roman, of all people, that causes Tom and Shiv's divorce. A dumb comment said in passing that is supposed to mean nothing but it means everything.
Roman ruins everything while fighting with Shiv over dinner. They fight all the time. They're just two siblings throwing proverbial shit at each other until one of them decides it stinks too much. Business as usual. They fight across a packed table in the private room of a frankly outdated old Ski lodge.
The trip, or as Tom will later think of it, the beginning of the end, is a part of Waystar's efforts to gain positive media attention. The Rockford Conference is a great place to do so. The conference, a gathering of "the world's most important people" aka the world's most elitist pricks, is a real whose who. Roman and Shiv decided to try and work a new deal with an up-and-coming tech startup that could transform Waystar's entertainment branch.
Roman ruins Tom and Shiv's marriage in front of Gerri, Frank, Karl, and Greg. Thank fuck Logan decided to skip dinner. It's the seven of them. And yes, Greg so happens to be seated the farthest from Shiv, and Tom just happens to sit next to Greg over his wife. But it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean anything when Tom dabs a napkin on Greg’s shirt to get out a red sauce stain before it settles. He’s just filthy. And infuriatingly warm. And he somehow makes the world softer around the edges when he's close.
They're deep into their main course, a hearty garlic spaghetti, when Shiv and Roman start bickering.
“What? Why is Hodges texting you and not me?” Shiv asks. Tom looks up between bites of his pasta. It truly is delicious. The chef really listened to him when he requested more garlic.
“Because I suck cock better. How should I know?” Roman spits. Greg continues to eat his pasta like nothing's happening. Forks it down like an absolute heathen, slurping up the noodles like a deranged cartoon character. Tom bites back the urge to scold him. It's always best not to draw too much attention to yourself when Roman and Shiv get like this.
“Cut the bullshit, Rome. You agreed we were in this deal together, so why do I feel like I’m getting fucked here?”
Gerri swirls her wine and sighs. She and Frank exchange a knowing, exhausted glance.
“In this together? What. You wanna sit around the campfire? Braid each other's hair? You aren’t getting fucked, Shiv. Have you forgotten what it feels like? To get actually fucked? Is that why you’re so..” he gestures to Shiv, “like this lately?”
Ouch. A stray bullet. Those happen a lot when they fight. Like two toddlers wrestling in the mud, uncaring of how dirty they get anyone else. He gets a side-eye from Gerri. Greg continues to slurp up pasta and God it's repulsive. He keeps getting sauce around the corners of his mouth and licking his lips like a toddler. The dim lighting of the gaudy lodge makes him look radiant somehow, such a contrast to his uncivilized eating habits.
“Bold of you to say that, Rome, considering you’re pretty infamous for not even being able to get it up,” Shiv chortles.
“Oh, So original Shiv! Look at me, shaking in my boots! You’ve only had that comeback a half a dozen times in the past month,” Roman says. Shiv rolls her eyes.
“If you think you’re gonna win back dad by icing me from this deal, you’re delusional.”
Roman snorts. “Whatever, bitch.”
“Real mature. I’d fight back but I think you’d get off on it. You fucking sicko.”
“Please, you haven’t gotten anyone off in ages. Just look at Tom!”
Tom prepares for another stray, but he isn’t ready for the shrapnel.
“He has more chemistry with Cousin Greg than he does with you.”
And that, right there, ends things.
Multiple things happen at once. Shiv barely spares Tom, who feels like he just got fucking knocked in the head by a crowbar, a glance. Greg, working intently on the spaghetti, suddenly sucks in the noodles like a vacuum. The noodles make a strange pop and likely shoot right down his throat. He tries to hide his coughing spasm and reaches for his glass of wine like a dying man in the desert would for water. Humiliating.
“You're a bit obsessed with my Marriage, Rome. Kind of pathetic, really," Shiv says. Tom grimaces. Far from her best comeback.
“Seriously. Look at where he’s sitting,” Roman laughs like he's discussing something that isn't life-ruining. He gestures at Tom from the other end of the table. “Look at where you’re sitting. You two reek of impending divorce. There's a company pool, by the way.”
Gerri, Frank, and Karl look a bit humiliated at that. The fuckers.
“Where’s Tabitha, Rome?” Shiv asks. But their fight becomes white noise. Tom has to focus very hard on breathing right and appearing normal, cool, unbothered. His chest feels tight and his head heavy like it does when something goes very, very wrong. He puts a particular effort into not looking at Greg. But he can see the lanky bastard looking stiff as a board in his peripheral.
"God, I can't stand him," Shiv says when the two get back to their suite. Tom originally planned to get drinks with Greg, but wouldn't dare risk it after what happened. Shiv doesn't even seem to be focused on the comment at all. Why is Tom? Why did it feel so exposing? So nauseating? All because of what, Greg? Shiv starts undressing, taking off her blazer and unclasping her necklace and putting it on the gaudy wood vanity in the corner. Tom swallows. Stares.
It's strange. To have someone you are so intimately comfortable with. To have someone you'd change in front of. To lay naked in front of. He's seen Shiv at her most human. No makeup. No clothes. But there was always a facade. Shiv has always felt so far away. Towering above him. And Tom, ever the climber, is always reaching and reaching and reaching for her. For something she could give him. When Shiv starts taking off her tights, she looks at Tom. Smiles that empty smile of hers.
"What? You've been quiet, Wambsgans."
Tom blinks.
“Sorry, long day,” he says. He stares at his hands. Thinks of Greg. Thinks of Roman. “I need to shower.”
Shiv blinks at him. Smirks.
“I could…. Join?”
Shiv is a beautiful woman. Powerful and sexy and everything Tom should want. But he can’t bring himself to ask her to come with. Can’t see a scenario where he wants her the way he should right now. He's too tired. Roman’s voice, casually cruel, echoes in his ear. He has more chemistry with Cousin Greg than he does with you.
He decides to run the shower cold and unforgiving.
“Umm. Not tonight,” Tom says. He makes a move to walk down the hall but notices Shiv’s quick, familiar, eye-roll.
“Seriously, Tom?” she says. “God. Fuck! Tom!”
She’s Shiv fucking Roy. She’s not used to being told no. And yet here Tom stands, doing it over and over and over, standing in front of a goddess with no offerings she ever wants.
She moves, tense, and sits in one of the chairs by the window.
“It’s like. You don’t even want me at all.” She spits.
“No,” Tom says. “No, baby, I want you.”
He walks towards her. Who is Tom Wambsgans without Shiv Roy? He has nothing without Shiv. He’s no longer the powerful man in the powerful family with the most impressive wife in the world. He’s no longer a Roy. Not a part of all this.
Without Shiv, Tom is just. Some guy. Some sad guy. The sad he is with her is a curse. The sad he’d be without her is a humiliation, sharp and vulnerable and disgusting in its shape.
“Tom.” She says. She looks at him. So cutting. “Are you gay?”
“What the fuck Shiv?” he snaps. “What the fuck?”
The anger. That’s what he leans into here. Everything else is too rotten. Shiv puts her hands up.
“Fucking christ Tom, it’s a question!”
“Well it’s not a question when you’re in a relationship, as a woman, to the man you are posing the question to!”
“Tom! That doesn’t even make any sense!”
“We’ve fucked. On multiple occasions mind you. And Tabitha! At my bachelor party! Do you think a gay man would-. You know what this is, Shiv. It’s you. You’re so goddamn entitled that when I turn you down you think it must be because there’s something wrong with me. Well, maybe it’s because there’s something wrong with you!”
Tom only realizes he’s shouting when he needs to take a breath. Shiv looks at him like she’s been hit. She stands. Tom focuses on the spaces between his knuckles. They’re white. He tries to relax. When she speaks, her voice quivers.
“Something wrong with me? Tom. My fucking idiot brother pointed out that you spend more attention to my fucking cousin and nobody blinked an eye! And fuck, Tom. He’s right. He’s fucking right.”
“What. Since I’m friends with Greg you think we’re.... you think I’m-”
“You told him you’d take the fall for him. When you thought you were going to prison.”
Tom’s breath catches in his throat. He thinks back to that night. To how used he felt. To how there was no way he could ever fathom saying no. Not to Greg. Never to Greg. Not when he was pleading like that, so sad and desperate with that look in his eyes that just swallows him whole every time.
Shiv sits back down.
“He told you about that?” Tom asks. He hates how quiet he is. Shiv looks at him. Tom realizes, somewhere, that he’s made an error. “Well, I just. I promised him I’d take care of him.”
“I don’t even think you’d do that for me,” Shiv says. She sounds oddly vulnerable.
“Of course I would,” Tom says. He loves shiv. But the words feel sour. Untrue. They don’t even sound convincing. “Shiv, I’m not in love with your cousin. And it’s fucking… like why would you even think that?”
Shiv is looking elsewhere. Like she’s contemplating, deeply. She puts her head in her hands.
“Oh my fucking god.” She says. “I never even asked you if you were in love with him.”
“It was implied! That you were asking that. Shiv! Do you hear yourself? You sound absurd.”
She sighs and looks at the ceiling.
“Tom,” she says. “Whatever, I don’t care.”
That’s the thing about Shiv. She never has. She cares in the way that she thinks caring about someone is supposed to work. It’s a far-away love that feels almost ironic, wrapped in layers of nonchalance.
“I mean, you should. Right? Like if you think I’m fucking banging your fucking cousin you should probably care?”
Shiv looks at him like he’s speaking a different language.
“So are you or are you not fucking cousin Greg?”
“NO.” Tom says.
“Then why are we having this conversation!”
“I don’t fucking know!” Tom snaps.
The quiet that follows is suffocating. It probably only lasts for 30 seconds. Tom stares at the antler chandelier in their room and blinks rapidly. Tries to think of anything but this. Anything but fucking Shiv and Greg and this horrible ache.
Shiv sits curled in the chair, looking almost small. Almost.
“Tom,” she says. “Do you love me?”
“Yes.” Tom says.
Shiv nods but doesn’t look satisfied.
“Just. Look. I don’t care if you sleep with men. But you’re the head of ATN, and you’re married to me. And look, you can just keep it discreet.”
The ache inside him gets bigger and bigger.
“I'm not gay, Shiv. But if you don’t even fucking care then why are we married?” Tom asks. Shiv pauses. “Why are we fucking married, Shiv?”
Shiv stares at the wall, jaw clenched. It feels like if Tom moves an inch, the entire world will crumble. The silence lasts forever, stretching on and on into a sticky, suffocating abyss.
“I think we should end this," Tom says, and he's never been more afraid of himself.