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To Stewy, there are things that cannot be touched.
His hair product, for one. Kendall always stole that shit, tried to smooth the surface afterwards with clumsy fingers, but it was so obvious as to be funny. Stewy started buying it in double, leaving one pot on their shared bathroom counter as if he forgot to stow it, and Kendall would emerge from a shower on a cloud of steam and weed smoke and smelling like Stewy’s pillow, which made him half-hard and half-fond and furious all over.
Packages from his mom. Hadiya’s penmanship was unmistakable, and the Roys never sent Kendall mail anyway, except Connor’s postcards, always watercolor landscapes and wrinkled corners and Wish you were here! Well, I don’t, but you probably do! Joshing. From, Con. But Kendall knew Stewy’s parents liked him, or pitied him, or recognized albeit never understood Stewy’s weakness for him, and their hospitality instinct was bred deep and carefully tended by years of gifts for holidays his family didn’t celebrate, or because Stewy needed new sweaters and maybe Kendall did too, or the snack cabinet had been depleted by their last toke-session and they figured Kendall must love kuku sib zamini. So Kendall tended to open Stewy’s packages. And Stewy would chase him around their Cambridge apartment threatening to smash his copy of OK Computer or piss in the Gucci loafers he planned to wear for an incoming internship interview.
Stewy’s memories, even, are marred by Kendall: he imagines the sounds of his father in the house—the bugle-snort of him blowing his nose, the scuff of his slippers on the carpet, the shape of his broad, proud hands, the way he shook himself when he got out of the shower and bounced loud enough to make the floors creak—but Kendall used to imitate how Ibrahim tightened his fleecey robe on a cool morning, and Kendall would stub cigarettes against the plates that were a wedding present and so moved with them overseas, and Kendall liked sinking into Stewy’s father’s easy chair while watching late-night television, and Kendall, and Kendall.
Stewy has to turn to old albums, childhood albums, to convince himself there was a time before Kendall bent him out of the sun. Seven birthdays where Kendall did not threaten to blow out Stewy’s candles before he could finish his wish. Seven summers before the Hamptons palatial chill. Seven years of vacation pictures before Kendall was invited along to Saint Lucia and the Seychelles and, one miserable and acid-sick time, Anchorage.
Stewy used to have cousins he liked, or looked like and played with and ate beside. He used to build Lego towers so tall, and they never fell. He used to sit on the kitchen counter and watch a steadily revolving cast of cooks prepare dinner, proudly licking a proffered spoon.
There was life, before Kendall. Stewy touches old prints and sees it. And, no matter how hard he looks, he doesn’t think he seemed sadder then. He didn’t look lost. He didn’t seem unmoored, or unsatisfied.
Which is all to say, Kendall tries to drown in Italy but fucks it up—the comeback kid, they called him in college, the king of puke and rally—Stewy puts down his phone, that text from Jess still blinking owlish blue eyes at him, and pulls out the albums. All this life. All this love—his doting but disciplined parents, one notable cat and two lousier ones, here he smiles in Aspen, and here in Virgin Gorda, and here in Mykonos—and Kendall, his stupid, furious heart, he presses a hand to his chest and bares his teeth. All this Kendall, and what does Stewy have to show for it?
A portfolio: Two summer lifeguarding gigs, seven weddings and sixteen receptions, three class reunions, a hundred whiskey-dick blow jobs, handshakes across mahogany conference tables and shitty takeout feasts and wind-whipped spinners in the Speedster, coke-ups and come-downs and risky parachute landings, nights that became mornings that became days turned weeks turned years, bruises like impasto and church candles lit for fuckbuddies and this sinking misery, fucking Kendall, fucking everything.
Stewy wishes, for once, he could catch a goddamned break.
###
“Can you babysit Kendall?”
Though Roman’s tone is harried, Stewy does not pause his Peloton training track. He is in an uphill. He is going to get up this fucking hill. And anyway, Roman is chronically predisposed to histrionics.
“Stewy,” Roman says. “Stewy. Okay, never mind, fuck off, fuck you, fuck your fucking—is someone in your house, who’s talking?”
“You’re interrupting Ally Love,” Stewy grunts. He’s fucking so sweaty. This is gross. He wants to die.
“Oh, no way are you tapping ass right now. Who’s Ally, Ally Love, that’s a porny name. What are you paying for her time?”
“Too much,” Stewy heaves. Then he hangs up on Roman, assuming they have reached a common understanding.
It’s not ten minutes before Acacia comes to the door of his private gym, gently knocking. “Mister Hosseini? Mister Roy is here to see you. He threatened to, um, touch Miss Canvendish’s corgi in the lobby?”
“Oh, good God,” says Stewy. He struggles to remove the fucking bike shoes for so long that he wants to punch himself in the face. He leaves them attached to the pedals, flips them off, and faces Acacia, humbled. “I apologize. I’m not at my best right now.”
She smiles awkwardly at him until he remembers.
“Oh, fuck. Okay. Roman can come up, tentatively. But let Mike know he’s a maybe.” Mike controls Stewy’s vetted and refined list of cleared visitors. Once Roman enters a room, he treats it like his own, but gracelessly—another thing Stewy must really thank his parents for when they next have dinner. They raised him with expectations and taught him how to meet them, to exceed them, and to always shine. So what it’s pathological now, Stewy muses as he scans his shoe closet for a pair that adequately communicates his mood: a sneaker, to exaggerate his current exercised state, a tactical pair, so he cannot be accused of wearing shiny shoes for fun, so not his Zanottis with the gold cobra, but the Foamposite One Sole Collectors—if only Roman were cultured enough to admire the statement they’d make. He goes easy and sleazy with the Dunk Low Pros in that weird elderflower, lavender, sleepy-time tea shade of purple. If he knew the taste of his audience better, he thinks as he quickly waters and dries his face, extorts will over a few sweat-springing curls, he would know exactly how to present. To communicate: Roman, I am in the middle of something and you are not allowed to know what that something is because I want to stomp on you so badly it makes my Achilles tingle.
A quick check in the mirror and—yes, he’s good to go. Putting on the face is for the walk there, and—the elevator opens, Roman is escorted inside by a bodyman Stewy has yet to meet, but has read deeply into the case files of. That look on Roman’s face, the chin down, eyes flared and flicking—there, Kendall haunts Stewy, though he supposes Kendall haunts them both—and even that is unfair to Stewy, who should be haunted more than Roman, deserves more haunting, better haunting—Roman looks at Stewy’s shoes and scoffs.
This, at least, Stewy can brush off his shoulder. No Roy can understand the minutia involved in a truly seamless production, not when their settings are lazy, their writing is predictable and repetitive, their attention to detail is nonexistent—throw on the closest nice coat, Kendall would say, and Stewy would ask him if he was stupid or just naive, and Kendall would flounce mockingly, hissing “Gay or European?”
Not being the first asked to speak is unfamiliar to them. The way their father taught them, their existence alone should be enough for everyone to get by on. And the world treats them the same.
Not Stewy. Stewy became enough using an English language dictionary as bedtime reading. Whatever his quick but flighty brainstuff couldn’t capture in class, he taught himself, which made him strong. Of course he could answer the teacher’s question; of course he knew what he was supposed to say. Of course he learned suave at his mother’s knee and casanova at his father’s, walks into the business rodeo with spurs spitting sparks and a pocketknife engraved with his initials: him preceding, but what his family gave him inseparably after.
To be Stewy Hosseini is to be a collection of perfect somethings, straining hard not to let the cracks between plastered pieces beam light.
“Ro-Ro,” he calls, while striding to grab himself a pre-bottled green juice from the fridge, stuffed to the plastic cap with celery and spirulina powder and cilantro, the deep and mossy color of Ken’s old hangover hoodie. “Kitchen.”
“What, I don’t warrant a—a home office visit? A sit on the couch?” His voice grows louder as he winds through the apartment, then fades again. “Fucking, where am I. This is a bathroom. This is… also a bathroom.”
“Follow my voice,” says Stewy between sips of his juice. “Marco.”
“Fuck-o.” Roman’s head peers into the kitchen. “There you are. Unpleasant as ever.”
“I’m a delight,” Stewy says breezily. “What do you mean, babysit Kendall?”
“Uhh, babysit Kendall, is that not English? I don’t know what you speak when we’re not around, but,” Roman looks across the room, a pantomime, “let’s keep it all American and nice for the kids, yeah?” He jumps onto a barstool, kicking the underside of the counter island with his generic black oxfords. “Should we let’s get talking? Admittedly, I’m on Adderall right now. Don’t make that face, it’s prescription. It’s somebody’s prescription, anyway. I’m fucking telling a joke, you’re impossible to rapport with, you need to rapport back, you—stop just staring at me! Jesus! The fucking Killing myself about this fucking freak I’m looking at eyes!”
Stewy leans onto the counter heavily. Slowly, each word measured, he says, “What did you mean, that I have to babysit Kendall.”
Roman meets Stewy’s gaze for all of a second, then bolts, paces wildly into the living room, walks across Stewy’s coffee table and, with strange grace, leaps onto his deep-set mantelpiece.
“Don’t try to distract me with parkour,” Stewy says. “Say what you came here to say or get out of my fucking house, man. I’ll call animal patrol, I’ve done it before.”
Roman jumps off the mantle. It rattles with picture frames, Stewy and his parents, Stewy’s cousin’s wedding photo, Stewy and his old Model UN team, Stewy and Kendall. Stewy is still straightening the order of them all when Roman says, to his back, “He tried something. In Italy.”
Stewy keeps breathing measuredly. “Uh huh. I know about the attempted coup.”
“It’s not about that,” Ronan says.
“Not about the coup?”
“No.”
Stewy breathes again. It seems he had forgotten. “Then I don’t want to know.”
“Uhh, what?” Roman kills the space between them, eyes wild. “You want to know. You—I saw you at Kendall’s party.”
“Ken has a bajillion parties. You’ve seen me at a million of them.”
“Kenfest,” Roman clarifies, as Stewy knew he would. “You saw how he was, shoving me and Shiv out, hounding Connor about a fucking jacket or whatever, trying to sit on Mattson’s dick, walking around with a huge self-satisfied boner all night. I saw you there, alone, drinking at the bar like you were at B-Dubs at ten-thirty in the morning.”
“Bro,” says Stewy. “Yeah, I went to his party. Why is that a big deal?”
“After everything, you keep going back to him,” Roman says, then cracks his jaw. “The—the bear hug. When he turned tail and went to Dad. The treehouse. That time he stole your boat. When he went to Shanghai and you stayed behind. All the fucking coke. So it’s the, it’s the drugs, Kendall always said it wasn’t that but we told him he was stupid, and now we’re right, and I can’t even be excited about being right because Kendall is going to drop himself in the Hudson with cinderblocks tied to his feet about it.”
“What,” Stewy says, “the fuck. Are you saying.”
“Never mind,” Roman says savagely. He whirls out of the kitchen, but gets lost, and Stewy can hear him mutter to himself as he ducks into room after room, stupid, this was fucking stupid, and something about Shiv.
Even after the elevator doors shut, Stewy goes to check Roman is gone. Acacia stands at the entry mat, a clump of hundreds in hand.
“For the inconvenience,” she explains faintly.
Stewy takes a bill from his pocket to add to the bunch. “Can we make pastries happen for this morning?”
“Absolutely,” she says, still dazed. She shakes herself, gives a slight curtsey, and dashes away, tucking the stack in her bra for safekeeping.
###
Stewy is two danishes and a pain au chocolat deep when his phone buzzes again, insistent vibrations and a personalized ringtone of police sirens. He ignores it, biting into a blueberry swirled kolač with relish. Flakes stick to his fingertips and fall back into the pastry box, dusting almond croissants and orange brioche. His coffee is good, hazelnut and sweetened cream. The sky is clear, Adriatic blue overhead; the city bursts with traffic and pedestrian shouts, but Stewy’s balcony is far above it all, almost peaceful with planters of herbs for his cook and carefully-tended birds of paradise and ginkgo sprawling high. His mother is always sending him plants, telling him he misses the sprawl of Fingerlakes and deciduous forest upstate, and he thinks of her massive sun hat, her dainty pink gardening gloves and miniature trowel, and he keeps every single one.
They’ll need a trim. He should remind Acacia.
His phone rings again. He rejects the call. He does not want the call. His zen is so fragile, his mindlessness is so fucking tentative, he does not want the call goddammit he does not want—“What, Siobhan, for God’s fucking sake, what do you want?”
“You are such a fuck! Pick up your goddamn phone when someone calls!”
She sounds harried. Stewy hangs up on her. His zen.
She calls again.
“Fuck!” Stewy says. He picks it up. “What!”
“Your doorman is being a cunt. Tell him to let me up.”
“You’re not on my list. I don’t want you all up in my space. Wait, you’re here right now?”
“Obviously!”
“Fuck!” Stewy says again. He hangs up, then shoves a painfully mediocre cardamom bun in his mouth whole. Everything is so terrible.
He lets them send Shiv up. She is pissed when she comes out of the elevator, red-bottoms and hair pulled severely off her face, periscope eyes locked on Stewy for the kill.
“What did you do to Roman?” Shiv demands. “You made him weird.”
Stewy rubs a hand over his mouth. He wants to take his contacts out. He wants to herd Shiv back into the elevator, send her down, and say Bye-bye! “You know, I’m not the cause of all evil in this world. Roman was weird far before I met him, and he will be weird far longer than anyone else.”
“You heard about Kendall?” she asks.
“I hear a lot of things. I hear too many things. I don’t want to hear any of this shit.”
“Well. It’s a little fucking late for that.” Shiv bears closer; Stewy’s logic screams at him to run. He backs away, into the kitchen counter, but now she has him cornered. She has barely formed his name in her mouth when he ducks around her, beelining for the balcony, where he has pastries and greenery and open sky and even if she follows he has the upper hand. It’s his space, he reminds himself, examining a fruitful shrimp plant, she’s on his turf. He whirls to her, sits gracefully in a wrought iron chair, and gestures pleasantly for her to speak.
“You are,” she says, then shakes her head, “never mind.” She pulls out the chair opposite him and sits. “Roman said he told you what happened.”
“That is a gross exaggeration.”
With practiced poise, she plucks a croissant from the box between them, rips its end off, and drops it in her mouth. “Well, you must have heard it elsewhere, then. My dad? Greg?”
“No, Don Quixote and Pancho have been silent on all fronts.”
“So?”
Stewy says, “How could I answer a question you haven’t asked?”
She stares him down in that empire-felling way of hers. This look, though it crumples Roman and twists Connor into pretzels, has never worked on him.
“I know your M.O.” she says. “An easy fuck. A quick line. Whatever brings you the surest and most potent payout.”
“Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”
“I know why you need Kendall.”
“I don’t.”
“You really believe that, too. Which is exactly why you do.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“You’re not easily disarmed. I respect that.” Shiv nimbly peels off the outer layer of croissant and chews it. Stewy, to match, sips his cooled coffee. “Kendall disarms you.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Are you two still fucking?” Shiv asks.
Stewy almost spits his coffee back into the mug. One second to run it through his teeth, over his tongue, then he swallows. But that second is enough for Shiv, whose mouth sets with satisfaction.
“Is it easy?” she says. “Is that why?”
“Nothing about Kendall is easy,” Stewy says.
“Then explain it. Objectively, you could do better. You have done better.”
Stewy studies the crooked mouth of horizon, sunlit skyscrapers refracting jagged crepuscular light back skyward, the city all shadows below.
“I don’t think you’re lazy,” Shiv continues. “Ken is lazy. He thinks he isn’t, because he convinces himself everything he can get is a feat of—of ability, of strength.” The truth is, Kendall has a chronic belief he deserves nothing, which turns every win into a victory, every tie into a win, every loss into a tie, he believes he’ll do it better next time. It’s not fool’s courage. It’s not even a short memory. It’s the pendulum irony of being Kendall. “Is it nostalgia? Or is his fuck that good?”
Stewy pulls out his phone and texts one of his assistants: Ken NDA stat.
“Fucking look at me,” says Shiv.
Stewy does not indulge her. He texts another assistant: case of Mtn Dew nowwww plz. And push my call w Fausto to 3pm, apologize for the inconvenience.
Shiv stands. Looking down at him, face sprawled with fury, a child scorned. “Look. Roman and I are busy. We have shit to do about the board situation. We have fucking calls to make. We have meetings we can’t miss. We have a life outside Kendall. And I thought we could trust you with him.”
Stewy flicks a brow. “You can’t trust me with anything.”
Shiv laughs, a humorless, nasty bark. “You’re heartless. No wonder Kendall likes you so much. You’re just another leech on his throat, and we all know he loves to bleed.”
She goes, hips swinging, hands balled.
Stewy calls after her, “Cory will be waiting at the elevator with an NDA for you to sign. He won’t let you go until you do.”
Shiv thrusts a furious middle finger over her shoulder without turning.
###
Stewy rips a nic blinker, then gets a brain freeze. He breathes out slowly, an annoyingly large cloud, and bats it away with one hand while continuing to type an email with the other. Shiv and Roman have calls, they have meetings. Tea party with a senator. Connect-four with the head of Berlin production. Golf cart joyride around the tennis courts.
Stewy has a real job. He has shit to get done. His head hurts. His beard is starting to itch. He has a very low tolerance for worldly discomforts, and his vape is running low. He badly wants a facial. Dizi. An iced eye mask. A day off, no checking his phone, laptop stowed in a closet, no plans. He cannot remember his last day off, which is unlike him. Fucking Waystar. Fucking Roys.
A text. Kendall.
Stewy paces himself, feeling petty. He lasts about a minute and a half, then snatches his phone up and reads it:
hey man. can I come over
Stewy closes his laptop. He rises from his desk chair, doesn’t know why, and sits back down. He straightens his pens, smoothes his sweater, shifts a marble paperweight, then moves it back where it was. He yells, “Fuck!”
Whatever, man.
He sinks into his chair, drops his face in his hands, and groans.
23 away, texts Kendall. thanks.
Stewy doesn’t really know what to do with himself, then. He showers, then wishes he didn’t, as he doesn’t really have time to do much with his hair. He changes twice—limits himself to twice—wonders if he should change his shirt again anyway. Comfortable but classy. Two things Kendall has never been good at. Stewy feels smug. He wants to feel smug. He wants Kendall to walk into his apartment and think, Holy shit, look how normal and well-adjusted Stewy is and how weird and fucking weird I am.
That is not what Kendall says when he walks into Stewy’s apartment. What he says, doleful and low, looking like a cow in line for slaughter in his Sony overears and limp cashmere cardigan, is, “Hi.”
With Kendall before him, it’s real. And that is exactly what Stewy did not fucking want. There was plausible deniability, gracious distance, and now there is this look on Kendall’s face, or the absence of a look, and he cannot fucking stand it.
“What,” Stewy says, not moving to allow Kendall off the elevator.
“Uh,” says Kendall, shoving his headphones around his neck. The second of music that plays before the autopause sounds like fucking math rock. “Didn't…? Rome and Shiv said they told you I was coming.”
“That is like the complete opposite of what they told me.”
“Sorry,” Kendall says awkwardly.
“What is wrong with you,” Stewy yells. He turns around and takes a steadying breath. “Okay. I’m cool. Had to let that out.”
Kendall doesn’t say anything. Stewy hates how he just stands there. The elevator rings and tries to close; Stewy would have let it, but Kendall lilts through just in time.
“Will you…?” says Stewy. “Act normal. Why do you look like this. What fucking happened in Italy.”
“The—the coup?” says Kendall. “We’re off the holding company.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” Stewy turns wearily back to Kendall. “What did you bring?”
Kendall looks at the smiling bodega bag in his hand like he forgot he was holding it. Then he lifts it up, open for Stewy to look inside. Starburst. A sweaty pint of Ben and Jerry’s. A couple of disposable vapes, a pack of Juicy Fruit, and three flavors of potato chip.
Stewy twinges all over. As College-Kendall fell deeper into coke binges, College-Stewy tripped into American junk shit his parents would never keep in the house. And coke. Definitely coke. But the healing power of a cold ginger ale was something he learned from Ken, after a long night, over a crumpled bag of Cheetos, The Slim Shady LP bumping while they laughed and groaned into the toilet bowl in turns.
Maybe Stewy is bitch to nostalgia. Maybe Ken is nostalgia, is a bitch, is past and present. Stewy takes the bag, removes the barbecue chips, and opens them. Offers it to Kendall, who shakes his head, then changes his mind, has one.
So Kendall comes in. Stewy studies him in the kitchen, noontime sun catching his sallow cheeks, the hooked bridge of his nose, illuminating the green in his eyes. He looks awful. He looks pretty. He looks—well. He looks like he needs Stewy.
Maybe it’s a power trip. Maybe he’s fucking horny. But Kendall looks at him and Stewy bends. He always bends.
“Are you gonna say anything?” Stewy says around a chip. They’re on the balcony now. Stewy loves this fucking balcony. He loves an IPA. He even loves Kendall smoking beside him, knees to his chest, sock feet planted on the edge of his chair.
“What’s there to say?” Kendall murmurs, one brow raised. “How’s everything. Maesbury. Your parents.”
“How’s Maesbury. How are my parents.”
“I’m serious.”
“Like you’ll even listen to the answer! Like you’ve ever cared to know about anything that couldn’t be stuffed up your ass or into your bank account.”
“I’m fucking trying, man.”
Stewy sips his beer. “Are you?”
“For real.”
“Like, the same way you always try? Fingers crossed behind your back?”
“Dude.”
“Fucking, coke bag in your inside pocket? Shooters in your socks? Bro, show me your arms right now. You got tracks?”
Kendall bows his head.
“Don’t do that,” Stewy says. “Fight back.”
“I can’t,” Kendall whispers.
The kid who took a dare to touch the bell in an old Italian tower. Who flipped a pool table dancing on it. Who fucked a friend’s mom, braved stomach-pumps and Klonopin, shakes hands with presidents, guts companies, had a stress ulcer at 19, a shark-smiled killer when the wind blows that way, when the planets line up just so. Reduced to nothing at Stewy’s feet.
Stewy has to adjust his pants. This boner is so poorly timed.
“So you’re trying,” Stewy says. “What does that mean? Full detox?”
Kendall doesn’t look at him. “No—not yet.”
“It would probably kill you, cold turkey.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence, dipshit.”
“But eventually.”
“Rava said—”
“Rava is always saying something, Kendall, and you are always listening. When has that ever worked out for you.”
Kendall glares at nothing.
“I’m just saying. Maybe you’re not that compatible.”
“I’m not compatible with much.”
“I fucking hate when you get like this.”
“What, when I agree with you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You speak around things.”
“You speak around things!”
“Why do we always fight.”
“I don’t think you know what a fight is. Anyway, you’re not comfortable enough to fight with me. You just deflect.”
“What should I do. Pretend I disagree?”
“You do fucking disagree. You just pretend not to because you think I’ll like it better this way. You think I’ll like you better this way.”
“Pliant.” Kendall has an almost French ability to say something while his mouth seems to form an entirely different word. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Someone who loves you,” Stewy says. “You, not who you could be.”
Kendall laughs softly. “Who would that be?”
“I don’t know,” Stewy says. “You? You have any ideas?”
“No.”
“Uh huh. A predicament, no?”
“You could—you could say that.”
Stewy sips his beer. “Yeah. I could.” Another sip, and it’s done. He puts it down. “Ken?”
“Yeah, Stew.”
“Come here.”
Kendall looks at him like he heard him wrong.
“Get over here,” Stewy says. He holds an arm out. “Get over here, stubborn-ass.”
Kendall’s frame relaxes, head to foot. He lilts to Stewy like he’s being pulled, climbs onto Stewy’s lap, and buries his face in Stewy’s neck.
“There you go,” whispers Stewy. “Alright, Ken.” He slips a hand up Kendall’s shirt, rubs it over his notched spine, palms his cool ribs. Pulls him closer.
Kendall tugs at his hair a little. “I always like it curly. It’s longer than it was.”
Stewy smiles up at him. “Yeah?”
Kendall nods, noses into Stewy’s temple. Sniffs him. Stewy pinches the soft swell at Kendall’s waist; Kendall jolts, snuffles a laugh.
“There you are,” Stewy says.
“What, uh, what are you going to do about it?” Kendall says. Finally. Something behind his eyes.
Stewy’s smile grows. “You don’t know yet?”
“Tell me,” Kendall murmurs.
Stewy skims his hand up Kendall’s shirt to his neck. “I’m going to unwind you, Ken,” he says. “I’m gonna lay you out.”
“And when all my—when I come falling out of myself. And you see everything.” His solemn eyes. His soft chin. “When I’m all apart.”
“Then I’ll have you,” Stewy says into his mouth. “Is that what you want?”
Kendall stammers soundlessly for a moment, all lips.
“It’s okay,” Stewy says, closing the distance between them. “I know. I know.”
They kiss lightly. A tease. Kendall goes boneless against Stewy, who whispers, “Just like that,” and Kendall sort of moans in response. “You’re so easy, Ken.”
Kendall rubs Stewy’s earlobe between his fingers while they kiss. It’s so weird and so specific, and he’s always done it, but Stewy never asked who taught him. He doesn’t really want to know the answer.
“You wanna go inside?” Stewy asks. He palms Kendall’s strong thighs. “Let’s go get comfortable. Yeah? You remember the way to my bedroom?”
“In the light, sober?” Kendall says. “Fat chance.”
So Stewy tries to scoop him up. He works out, he lifts. But it’s a total failure; they sink back onto the outdoor couch, Stewy with a groan as pain shoots through his back, Kendall beaming at him.
“Old,” Kendall says, accusatory. “You age faster than me.”
“Oh, because you’re so fucking limber.”
“You got gray hair first.”
“One guess as to whose fault that is. Brat.”
Kendall kisses him. Tugs the waistband of Stewy’s pants insistently.
“Get up, then,” Stewy complains. “Fucking heavy bitch. I can’t feel my legs.”
Kendall stands, then pulls Stewy up. It’s so sweet that Stewy sort of wants to shove him.
Instead, Stewy takes his hand and leads him through the french doors, down the hallways, into his suite. Beige linen bedding, a large rug to mute the cold hardwood underfoot, staggering windows with an expansive view.
Kendall looks at Stewy. “Nice place,” he says. “Does the designer do mausoleums?”
“Get on the bed,” Stewy replies.
Kendall does, but he’s back to looking somehow limp and stiff at once.
“Weed?” Stewy suggests. “Do you even do weed anymore, Mister Straight-and-Narrow? I can’t remember a time when we didn’t do weed.”
“Do you have molly?”
“Bro.”
“You asked.”
“He wants molly,” Stewy mutters to himself, planting his hands on his hips. “Spoiled fucking rat that he is, Stewart Little in my penthouse asking for milk and cookies.” He goes into the en suite and rifles through drawers—poppers, pre-rolls, downers out the ears, Stewy’s been doing downers these days because he needs sleep but can’t sleep, fucking Roys, no MDMA. “I’m out,” Stewy calls, “but I’ve got GHB. What’s in your system?”
“Fucking… I don’t know. Not much, probably. Downers.”
“Weed it is.”
“Indica?”
“Aww, you want to nap after? Should we snuggle and watch Care Bears?”
Kendall waits on the bed, looking like he’s trying to laugh. That’s stupid. That’s so stupid. Stewy lays Ken out, then sits on his hips. He makes quick work of packing a bowl and sparking up, offers it to Kendall first, who inhales gratefully, deeply.
They pass it back and forth a few rounds, poking at the ashes with the butt of Stewy’s lighter. Kendall shoves up onto a shoulder so he can hold it properly; Stewy knocks him back down and says, “Let me.” He holds the glass to Kendall’s lips, waits for Kendall to flick his brow, then moves his finger off the hole. Kendall breathes, then takes Stewy’s jaw in his hand, pulls him close, and exhales into Stewy’s mouth. Stewy smiles as he takes it. Giving and receiving. It puts him in such a good mood he lays the bowl aside, throws the lighter onto his nightstand, and shifts his weight on Ken’s hips so they line up just right. Kendall starts to get hard from it. Stewy could blow on his ear and he’d get hard. Stewy could say the ABCs backwards. Stewy could trip up the stairs and Kendall would want him, muse about how real Stewy is, the way Stewy interacts with the world around him.
“You feel good?” Stewy asks, taking Kendall’s hand.
“Mmhm.”
He massages Kendall’s palm, the meat of his thumb. Kendall watches him do it. “What do you want, Kenny?”
Kendall takes his eyes off their hands, now linked. “Um. Stew, I don’t… I just…”
“You just wanna feel good?” Stewy says.
“I just wanna feel real,” Kendall whispers. “Can you make me feel real?”
“No,” Stewy says. “I can’t do that. I can do the first one. Does feeling good make you feel real?”
Kendall visibly thinks about this.
Stewy says, “Why don’t we give it a try?”
Kendall’s eyes shut. His lips press together. He nods.
“Uh huh. Yeah, you look really into it, man. Really… sexy expression you’re wearing. You look like I’m about to give you an atomic wedgie and a root canal. Ken.” He leans over Kendall’s chest, cups his cheek. “Do you want me to hurt you?” he asks.
“No,” Ken gasps.
“Then I won’t,” Stewy says. “Look how easy. Now you try.”
“Do you… do you—”
“No. About you.”
“I want,” Kendall says, “I want,” and he starts to cry.
Stewy sits back on his heels with a sigh. His life is becoming predictable. Or, his friendship with Kendall is. “Maybe you come get me when you figure it out. But I can’t do this part. This…” he gestures loosely. “You know us. When you got like this we used to, what, play Final Fantasy? GTA, and Halo, and Winning Eleven? You need to play it out? I’m there. You want me to order food? Can you eat? Give me something to do besides sit here and watch you blubber in self-pity.”
“I’m done crying,” Kendall says, mopping his face on his sleeve. He takes a gasped breath. “I promise. Please. I want you. I just want you, Stewy.”
“How do you want me?” Stewy asks.
Kendall reaches for him. “Can you…?”
“Say it,” Stewy says. “Tell me.”
Kendall sits up. He sets his face, pushes his shoulders back. “I want you to fuck me,” he says. He barely even stutters getting it out.
“There you go,” Stewy says, satisfied. Arguing with Kendall is like dancing with knives en pointe. Sometimes, Stewy just wants to sit down and remember why he likes Kendall: Kendall is, when he’s just Kendall, enjoyable. “Your wish is my command.”
There has been a long process—twenty years, maybe—of learning and unlearning each other’s bodies. As they grew in new places and shriveled in others. Muscles went to shit, and new muscles took their places. Ken can’t always get off, even when he’s bricked, but Stewy can finesse, Stewy can input time and energy and output jizz all up in his fucking chest hair. It is Stewy’s business to make himself feel good, and that is only a sure shot if the person he’s sexing is as satisfied as he intends to be. May no one say Stewy Hosseini is anything other than an altruist.
So he knows Ken likes it on his hands and knees. And he knows Ken’s shoulders will get stiff and sore, so he kisses and bites his way along the freckled skin there, presses his thumbs into knots, reminds Kendall, “Relax, dude.”
“Can you call me something nicer than dude while you make eye-contact with my asshole.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” Kendall grits, clearly already over this exercise.
“Okay,” Stewy says, and he sort of latches onto Kendall’s back like a sucking creature, fingers trailing, one knee teasing between Kendall’s. “Is this good, baby?”
Kendall shivers.
“Oh, that’s going in the filing cabinet. Lucy, make a note on who my baby is. Now you say, Yes, Sherriff.”
“Stew,” Kendall says, with eyes scrunched tight. “Please.”
“You’re right,” Stewy says softly. He holds Kendall to his chest. “Okay. Just us. It’s just us.”
“Just us,” Kendall echoes.
“Exactly. You can relax now. Try to relax. How can I relax you?”
“Can you,” Kendall says. “Maybe just hold me for a minute.”
“Gayyy,” Stewy says in Ken’s ear. “Scooch closer, closet case.”
Kendall half pulls Stewy on top of him, like he wants Stewy’s weight to bear him into the mattress. Stewy shifts to help, bends a leg to stick his foot between Kendall’s, shoves his arm under Kendall’s neck.
Kendall starts to breathe like he just remembered how to fill his lungs.
“Have you heard of weighted blankets,” Stewy says.
“Shh,” says Kendall. “Stop buzzing in my ear. Just. Can we just be here.”
Stewy sticks his nose into Kendall’s temple. “Yes, Ken,” he says, “we can.”
So he holds Kendall for a while, studying his arm hair in the sun, patches of warm gold skin. When Kendall grows antsy, he palms Stewy’s shoulders, barely any weight behind it. Then he hooks an ankle around Stewy’s leg, like he’s afraid Stewy will try to get off him.
“Do you actually want to fuck?” Stewy says. He brushes a hand along the curve of Ken’s weird bald head. “We can just do this. I’m only asking because I’m going to fall asleep in about two seconds otherwise.”
“I want you,” Kendall says.
Stewy’s dick perks with interest. “Tell me how.”
Kendall, looking strangely rejuvenated, maneuvers out from under Stewy and waits on all fours.
“Deja vu,” Stewy says. He frames Kendall between his thumbs and forefingers, like a cover model. Kendall hangs his head to hide a flush that betrays him, but it crawls deep down his Scottish neck and up his ears. “If I could draw.”
“Stew.”
“No, I mean it. Right now, with the skyscape, with the blankets all messed up…”
“Stewy,” Kendall says clearly. “Get over here and fuck me already.”
Stewy salutes. He says a little prayer. He grabs the lube and gets to work.
Kendall opens like a locked fucking door, every time, no matter how bad he wants it. Patience, Stewy reminds himself, and mischief to sustain him, a crooked finger, a breath nice and close to Ken’s balls, a bite on the ass, the threat of his tongue. He holds solidly to Kendall’s waist with his free hand. Kendall can telepathically tell Stewy doesn’t want him jacking it yet. That’s the thing about knowing people; odds are, they know you back.
“I’m ready,” Kendall says tightly.
“Relax,” Stewy breathes against his hole, and Kendall’s arms literally give out. He thumps to the mattress, half-heartedly hoists a leg to give Stewy access to his ass. Pliant. Stewy gets Ken motherfucking pliant, alright. “I’m getting you ready, Ken. I’ll know when. For fuck’s sake. Stop clenching. What do you need, more weed?”
“You,” Kendall says. “Come on,” almost begging now, “lube up and stick it in already.”
“I will tell you when you’re ready,” Stewy says measuredly. “You want to feel good. You want me to fuck you. Kendall, you will get everything you want.” Stewy curls his fingers to hear Kendall swear. “Just be patient.”
When Kendall is good and ready, Stewy lines himself up. He lays a hand on Ken’s lower back, where it dimples, and thumbs the dip, the hard snake of vertebrae, all of it. He pushes in.
Kendall makes an animal sound, haggard and unintentional.
Stewy leans over him, uncomfortable, but he needs to kiss Kendall right now or he’ll die. He can’t reach, settles for Kendall’s neck, scrapes him with teeth and murmurs something brainless about how good Ken feels. Feels so fucking good.
He pushes up a little, hand on the mattress for balance, hand on Ken’s back for leverage, and rocks deeper. For like ten seconds, all Stewy can do is moan brokenly, eyes shut tight against firework sparks, weirdly nauseous because of how absurd it is to fuck Ken while sober, both of them sober, everything grave. It’s Kendall’s hand batting his thigh as he says, “Move, more,” that wakes him.
He starts slow. Kendall’s eyes are bigger than his asshole. Short thrusts, shallow, acclimating. Experimentally, Stewy shoves in fully. Kendall groans, face smushed into the mattress. It’s a great view. It’s regal. Stewy above, so Kendall below. He speeds up. A little deeper. But drawing it out—if he wants Kendall apart, he cannot rush it, a handy and a kiss at the door. To reach Kendall, he must be meticulous. He can be. Even though his dick is howling at him to go fucking hog wild.
“I want to see you,” Kendall gasps, rushed like it’s a pain to say it, and Stewy maneuvers them as quickly as he can, gets Ken down in boring missionary—boring missionary, who is he kidding, boring missionary with Kendall is like the only thing that makes Stewy moan like a porn star and mean it. “Fuck. Stewy.”
“I hear you.” Stewy’s voice sounds wrecked. “You wanna look at me, Ken, look at what you do to me. Huh!” He starts hammering into Kendall up to the fucking throat, and Kendall takes it like it’s making him stupid, eyes half-shut, legs around Stewy’s waist, arms hanging limply around him, a perfect waterlogged Ophelia. No leverage. Nothing to do but get fucked. “Yeah, ohh, Ken. Fuck yes.”
He takes it in waves, fast and hot, slow and long. He kisses Kendall wherever he wants to, ribs and hips and elbows. He brushes at Ken’s prick, but doesn’t grab it; he braces himself against the headboard and fucks with all he has. His boner is not long for this world. But Ken’s—Stewy pulls out. Kendall nearly wails. He grabs for Stewy, so Stewy catches his wrists, pins them down.
“Don’t do that,” he says. “I choose. Let me.”
Weirdly, Kendall relaxes. Entirely. He liquidizes into the sheets. In his body. Out of his head.
“Good,” says Stewy. “That’s good. Just let me give it to you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Kendall whispers. “Please. Please, Stewy.”
Stewy puts his mouth on Kendall, and that shuts him up quick. He blows with verve, a real Nancy Reagan special, and holds Ken just how he likes, arms hooked around his thighs to draw him close, press him down. Nothing can happen to him that Stewy doesn’t make happen.
The thought makes Stewy’s dick throb against the bed. He moans around Kendall, and that’s it for Ken, no warning besides the monumental and immediate tightening of his entire body, then wide, leisurely release.
Stewy grabs tissues off the nightstand and spits. He’s just laying them down when Kendall grabs him by the elbow, tugs him close, and says, “Now you.”
“This is about you,” Stewy says measuredly. “What do you want?”
Kendall has that fragile, mortified look in his eyes he always gets after an orgasm. Or, an orgasm with Stewy, anyway. “I want to suck you off.”
“Okay,” Stewy says. “Okay, Ken.”
So he lets Kendall arrange him, nervous flitted glances and a tentative sink to his stomach, so he can lay flat before Stewy and take him in. His mouth is hot, familiar, and the head is tongue-heavy, weirdly swirly, sort of like a rinse cycle. It still feels good. Kendall, despite everything, always feels good.
Stewy finishes with one of his more lascivious moans, hamming it up for Ken, tells him good job, thanks him the way Ken used to thank him every single fucking time. Kendall blushes again, clearly remembering. Stewy thumbs come off Kendall’s chin. He cleans them up. Kendall is half-out on the pillow by the time Stewy crawls into bed, deeply spent. This day. This fucking day.
Kendall reaches for him. This, Stewy can allow. He presses Kendall, still sort of sniffly and pathetic, to his chest.
“You thinking?” Stewy asks.
Kendall makes a sleepy sound. “No. Nothing.”
Stewy bites his freckled shoulder, tastes sweat. “Good. That’s good, Kenny.”
His break: he sets an alarm for forty-five minutes. He will give himself that time to shut his eyes and warm Kendall’s cold limbs. Just this one indulgence, regimented, he will allow himself.
###
The alarm turns out to be rude. This sleep is the most dreamless sleep Stewy has had in what feels like months.
But he slips from the bed as quietly as he can—it’s almost three, and life goes on. He has his call. He needs to check his email again. The world is not absorbed by Kendall—Stewy is not absorbed by Kendall. He cannot be. Otherwise, there will be no one left to get shit done.
<###
Stewy puts work away a bit after seven. Fucking, flex hours bullshit. He always stays late anyway. Because he has to finish things. He’s not one to abandon the effort halfway through, except when he is, which is only when things are dire.
He orders pizzas. He pulls his shirt off and finds Kendall in his bed, headphones on, eyes shut.
He drops his shirt to the floor. Strips his slacks. And then crawls across the bed on his knees. Kendall shifts a headphone at the rocking of the mattress, then lowers them entirely. More fucking math rock.
“Hi,” Kendall says.
Stewy sits on his lap. He was a very good boy today. “Hi, Ken.”
Kendall leans in, a dull question in his eyes. Kendall should look far more excited at the prospect of kissing Stewy than he does. So Stewy stops him with a thumb to his lips.
“I feel like going out,” he says. “I feel like making plans. I feel like dancing.”
“Um.” Kendall sags. “Yeah. You should go out.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’m saying let’s go out.”
“I…” Kendall shakes his head.
“No?” Stewy tilts Kendall’s face up, to force him to meet his gaze head-on. “Why? What will make you say yes.”
“Nothing, man.” Kendall shuts his eyes, like he can’t stand Stewy looking at him. His lips turn down. “I just… yeah. I can’t… it’ll, um, I think if I go out, I won’t come back.”
“What the fuck does that mean,” says Stewy. “Okay. Whatever. Never mind.” He climbs off Kendall, off the bed, and searches for loungewear. “Are you entering your stoner phase? A little late in life for that but, hey, you’ve always been behind the curve.”
“Fuck off.”
“You need clothes? I’ll get you clothes.”
“You don’t want me to stay naked in your chambers forever. Surprising.”
Stewy laughs. It’s funny because it rings with truth. He brings clothes for them both to the bed, and they dress together. Kendall’s ears get caught on the neck of his borrowed shirt. It’s endearing, but stupid. It’s Kendall.
“I ordered food,” Stewy says. “I’ve got beer. Let’s go, I don’t know, watch a game. Watch Vanderpump. Watch adult cartoons.”
Kendall shrugs. Stewy rolls his eyes. They go into the living room, where Acacia brings their pizza, their drinks. Stewy eats three slices while Kendall picks at one. The Yankees have a truly shit inning in the Bronx.
Stewy brings their used plates to the kitchen. Kendall, weirdly, lost dog, follows, opens Stewy’s fridge and closes it, the pantry, the silverware drawer. Stewy sets the dishes down, crosses his arms, and faces Kendall.
“Is this a drag?” Kendall says. “Being in. With me. You could go out with people. You could go out with Astrid.”
Stewy has to stop himself from literally fly-tackling Kendall to the floor. His body gets into the position automatically, rugby legs, and it’s almost embarrassing. “You fucking suck, Kendall.”
“Then go out.”
“I’m not going to go out.”
“But you want to.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“So—go out, instead of sitting here and muttering resentfully to yourself like a comic book villain.”
“I’m not muttering resentfully!”
“You fancy yourself the hero, anyway.”
“I certainly fucking do not,” Stewy says. He points at Kendall. “Projecting. Stop projecting.”
Kendall mashes a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. I want drugs so fucking bad right now.”
“So let’s do drugs. Easy fucking fix, man.”
“I don’t want to want to do drugs.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I fucking know that. Don’t you think I fucking know that?”
“Yeah, Ken,” Stewy says. “I do.”
Kendall sighs. He shrugs. Stewy shrugs back.
They go into his living room and Kendall gives him a beej on the couch while Aaron Judge whales one out of the park. Stewy comes in Kendall’s mouth with the crack of the bat.
###
Kendall cannot get out of bed.
There is an important distinction between when Kendall does not want to get out of bed and when he can’t. When he doesn’t want to, he teases and cajoles and downright begs Stewy to stay with him, offering to eat him out for hours until he’s sobbing and cursing the Roy family line or offering to rub his shoulders which will also somehow turn into sex and Kendall’s weird fascination with kissing the tender back of Stewy’s knees.
When Kendall cannot get out of bed, he doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t look plaintively at Stewy; he doesn’t stick his head under the pillow and try to knock back out; he doesn’t roll into the warm spot Stewy has just abandoned. He just lays there. Glazed. Almost deaf. Almost dead.
“Hey,” Stewy says. He kindly doesn’t roll his eyes. “You want breakfast?”
Kendall turns over, puts his back to Stewy.
“Too bad. Come eat breakfast. You’ll feel better if you have breakfast.” Nothing. It’s like talking to the TV. “Fine. Go fucking, Girl Interrupted on me. Whatever.” Stewy waits by the door. Kendall is supposed to look at him, say Wait, Stewy, and then Stewy will graciously hold for Kendall’s proclamation. But Kendall stays silent.
So Stewy heads towards his kitchen. He makes it halfway down the hallway before he stops, angry.
Stewy stomps back into his bedroom. “Kendall, I swear to God,” he says. “This is gross. Where are you.” Silence treatment. “This is deeply upsetting to me. Do something.” It’s like tapping the glass of a zoo enclosure. “What the fuck.”
Stewy climbs back into his bed, over Kendall’s body, and faces him. He prods Kendall’s cheek. His eyebrow.
“Please,” Kendall says, flat, toneless. An AI voice. “Don’t.”
Stewy’s touch changes of its own accord. Instead of poking, gentle, a knuckle rubbing Kendall’s forehead, the bag beneath his eye. The shape of his lips. He cups Kendall’s cheek, and Kendall leans into him.
Stewy lays down, perturbed. He sort of drapes himself around Kendall, who exhales shakily, but takes no relief from their contact, coiled like a tripwire.
“Alright,” Stewy says. It’s been a long, long time since he’s seen Kendall like this. Down instead of crackling with latent energy. He almost forgot. “Tell me what to do. Tell me what you need.”
Kendall curls in on himself.
“Okay, well, I fucking have shit to do,” Stewy says, blustering. “I have meetings. I have calls.” He sounds like Roman and Shiv. “I need to talk to Sandi. Actually, I need to talk to Sandi before your fucking kid siblings talk to Sandi. I need to talk to you and your fucking kid siblings before any of us talk to Sandi. Vacation’s over, Ken. Get back into the real world.”
Kendall says nothing. Stewy finds himself frustrated. Come into the company, Stewy, suck my dick, Stewy, we’ll be kings of the world, Stewy, and the minute they have the chance, Kendall becomes immobile. It’s so fucking classic.
“Whatever,” Stewy says. “Whatever, Ken. I’m going to work. You just… yeah. What-fucking-ever, man.”
He’s still in his closet, hawkeyed browsing for a severe shirt, the form-fitting pants that make his ass and thighs look straight-up Renaissance, when he hears Kendall shuffle into the bathroom and puke with the force of a fire extinguisher.
Stewy pinches the bridge of his nose. Something strange and recognizably weak rears its head in his guts: He should stay with Kendall. He should take care of Kendall, and make sure he doesn’t choke on vomit, and rub his back while he gasps for breath. He should make sure Ken doesn’t have a fucking seizure like that time in college when Stewy cried and called his mom from the hospital waiting room.
His subconscious flinches from that memory so ferociously that Stewy’s hands spasm. He drops his shirt and half-runs into his bathroom, curses when he sees Kendall laid limply on his side on the tile, shivering. His knees crack as he makes his way down to feel Kendall’s clammy forehead, boost him upright. His old nickname for Kendall, in moments like this, them alone, Stewy caring and Kendall humbled, was jigar talâ, his golden fucking liver. Jigar, jigar, Stewy would murmur it, a lilted, drunken lullaby, and Kendall’s arms would break out in goose flesh.
“Alright, Ken?” he says. “C’mon.”
Kendall limply pats Stewy’s thigh. Then holds it, grip tightening.
“It’s like an exorcism,” Stewy says. “Get it all up. That’s the hard part.” He drops his chin over Kendall’s shoulder. “Tea? Broth? Electrolytes?”
“Please don’t go,” Kendall whispers.
“I have work,” Stewy says evenly.
“I know.”
“Okay. I’ll give you five more, right here. I’ll let Acacia know you’re out of it. If you need anything, make it happen. Food. A straightener. Something to ease the pain. Don’t fucking, just, sit here decomposing. Can you promise me that?”
“I’ll try,” Kendall says.
Stewy noses into Kendall’s gross, sweaty neck. “Do better. I’ll be pissed if I get home and you’re dead.”
Kendall hums, like he hasn’t the energy to laugh. Then his stomach contracts, and he brings up bile, spitting miserably.
That’s Stewy’s cue. He doesn’t gag easily, but puke is so fucking nasty, and he hates being reminded of Kendall’s mortality. He fucking hates it.
He rubs Kendall’s bald head, right over the cowlick at the back of his skull. Then he straightens his trousers, grabs his phone from where it fell on the tile, and leaves.
###
Stewy spends an indeterminate amount of the day behind his desk, bouncing his foot, thinking instead of doing. Generally, he thinks and does in equal measure. It is disconcerting to be out of balance.
He briefly touches base with Sandi, who sounds deeply skeptical regarding his claim of being inside any imminent movement. He handles some Maesbury business, moves money around, assuages clients with succinct, unsentimental emails. A call around eleven drags into his lunch block, then into the one-o’clock hour. Stewy has his assistant bring him a bodega caesar wrap, which is soggy and cheesy and hits the spot. He rips nic in the bathroom, texts Ken only seven times, and makes it past closing, when he generally puts in extra hours, but tonight, does not.
Kendall looks better when Stewy gets home—he wears real clothes, his own clothes, and is lucid enough to sit upright and slowly demolish a bowl of pistachios. They watch the news together, both waiting for a mention of Logan, of Waystar, of the Gojo deal, but it seems everything is still hush-hush, left to Twitter speculation and gossip-rags.
“Shiv and Rome invited me out tonight,” Kendall says, studying his phone screen.
“Are you asking permission?” Stewy drawls. “Go, dude. Maybe it’ll be good for you. Plus, it’ll be good publicity: three siblings, united at last. If you don’t yak on the table.”
Kendall lays on his back on the couch, knees tucked to his chest.
“Is this some weird yoga thing?” Stewy asks. “Or a sex thing. Or—I don’t get it.”
“I’m thinking,” Kendall says. “I’m weighing the options. I’m perusing fractals of potential reality.”
“Did you take my molly?”
“I didn’t take your molly. This is—this is the real Kendall right now.”
“Uh huh. Right.”
“I did smoke some of your weed.”
“Bro, I have, like, keef left after last night. Are you keef-high right now?”
“Slightly. But not at all. I’m basically sober. My mind is open to infinity.”
Stewy wrinkles his nose. “Stop that. Oh my God.”
“I’m a receptacle for genius.”
“I liked you better when you were catatonic.”
Kendall sits sharply upright. “I’m gonna meet them.”
“Congrats?”
Kendall nods once, then smacks his palms onto his thighs. He rises, roots through Stewy’s closets, then leaves the apartment with a cigarette held between his teeth and a Bic illuminating his cheeks gold.
“Come back with plans,” Stewy calls as the elevator closes. “Concrete plans I can bring to Sandi.”
Kendall shoots a thumbs up between the doors before they shut.
Stewy considers his options for a moment. Time to himself. Time completely alone.
He jacks off before the bathroom mirror, then showers for an hour and fifteen minutes. He moisturizes his beard, his hands and knees, manscapes to keep things neat. Then he climbs into his favorite pajamas, gets into bed, slips on his glasses, and reads W magazine, where beautiful people stare dreamily at him from between technicolor frills, dripping diamonds, and flipping the pages releases a perfume cloud. A tentative peace descends; Stewy, unlike Kendall, needs time alone to decompress. It feels good. Space is good.
Two hours after Kendall leaves, Stewy has to stop himself trying to text him for what might be the fifteenth time.
Eventually, Stewy drifts, phone in his lap, sheets around his legs. The quiet hum of the elevator rising, the ding of the bell as it opens, slip into his subconscious like a dream. He wakes when Kendall climbs clumsily into his bed, kisses his face all over, quietly sings, “Stewwwyyy.”
“Ughh.” Stewy pretends he isn’t smiling. “Hi. Had fun?”
Kendall’s eyes are copper and dynamite. “Yeah. It was really good. We had ideas flowing. Open communication channels, speculative tech developments, the future of business. Impending greatness.”
“Uh huh. And regarding Waystar?”
Kendall waves a hand. “We didn’t talk about Waystar. Mentally, we are so far from Waystar right now, Stewy, it’s so freeing. I feel this impossible weight is finally off my shoulders. I could fly. If I jumped, I’d hit a crossbreeze and fly.”
“If you jumped,” Stewy echoes. “Okay. So, what can I tell Sandi?”
“Tell her we’ll support the sale,” Kendall says, alight. “Tell her to, uh, get her fucking bag, man. Whatever coin we get is going right back into the system. We’re gonna build something huge. Me, Rome, and Shiv. Together. Isn’t it intoxicating?”
What’s intoxicating is Kendall’s delight. “Good, man. This all sounds really good.” Stewy sits up without shifting Ken off his lap. “If you jumped?”
“Yeah, like, I’d catch flight.” Kendall spreads his arms and grins deliriously at the ceiling, Jack on the Titanic.
Alarm bells sound in Stewy’s ears. “Uh huh. I think—for now—solid ground. Yeah, Ken? Nothing else seems to work out so well for you.”
Kendall’s smile half-slips. “What do you mean.”
“You know what I mean.”
Kendall covers his forehead with a hand. “Uh. Okay. Okay, I guess we’re doing this now.”
“Yeah, we are,” Stewy says. “We’re fucking doing this now, we’ll be doing it forever, we are never going to stop fucking doing this because you were seconds from not making it to plan this shit. To feel this good. Do you understand? How close you were.”
“It was an accident.”
“It was an accident. My dad’s plan was better.”
“Don’t bring that up,” Kendall says woundedly. “This is—this is nothing like that. I’m serious. I’m being honest.”
“Were you even asleep?” Stewy says, cocking his head. Kendall tries to climb off his lap; Stewy locks him in place, arms tight around his back. “Jess sent me a picture of your chart. Your tox screen, Kendall. Yeah. So, tell me. And fucking be honest. Did you even swim? Or did you put your face under? Go limp, go pliant, and let go?”
Kendall roughly rubs a hand over his lips. He says nothing.
“You didn’t even tell me,” Stewy says. “Not a scheduled email. No out of office forever notification. No catty last text. Nothing. Just a lungful of salt water pool, right where your kids could see you.”
“It wasn’t about you.”
“Oh, I very well fucking know it wasn’t about me. I don’t think I so much as crossed your mind, did I, Kendall?”
Kendall shuts his eyes. Shakes his head.
“And you were ready to just… give everything up,” Stewy says lightly. “You’re going to tell me why.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“You’re going to tell me why,” Stewy repeats, louder, “you thought you’d never feel joy again. Or why you never wanted to. You didn’t want one last suck and fuck in the coat closet at a cheugy wedding. You didn’t want to touch me again.” Stewy’s eyes burn. “You didn’t want me, Kendall. That’s what you chose. So tell me why.”
“Really, Stewy,” Kendall whispers. “I wasn’t—I didn’t think. It was spur of the moment.”
“Uh huh. Like the press conference where you killed your dad? Is it wrong to play with the sheep before you slit their throats?”
“I felt,” Kendall forces out, straining against Stewy’s arms. “I just… Stew, let me go.”
“I won’t. I’m not letting you go anywhere.”
Kendall elbows him in the throat. It’s a cheap shot, but it works; Stewy coughs, releases him, and Kendall shoots to his feet, paces the length of the bedroom, suspended against deep midnight and the silver skyline. “I think,” he says, “I don’t know how to let myself be happy. I think it feels gauche. And, and I think I would hate myself—”
“On and on,” Stewy interrupts, “and every word of it? Bullshit.”
Kendall laughs uneasily. “How can I ever make this go away if you won’t believe anything I say?”
“I’ll believe the truth. I know when you’re telling the truth, Kendall.” He straightens in bed. “Were you that lazy? An easy way out?”
Kendall releases a breath. Bows his head. “I asked him to cash me out. And he wouldn’t do it.”
Stewy considers this. “Okay. Why?”
“He… he has something on me.”
“Uh huh.” Stewy inhales sharply. “Is it good?”
“It’s… yeah. It’s devastating.”
Stewy thumbs his lip, then nods.
Kendall comes to sit at the foot of the bed. “It’s gonna kill me, Stew,” he whispers. “I tried, I tried so hard, the DOJ investigation, saving the company, saving the sibs, I tried so hard to feel clean,” his face crumples, and his next words are wet, “but I can’t get clean, Stew. I can’t get clean enough. It’s all under the skin.”
“Why can’t you let yourself be happy,” Stewy says. Kendall wraps his arms around himself. “Kendall. I’m asking you a question.”
Kendall looks at him, plaintive. “Because if—if I just… feel happy now, it means everything is my fault. It means the way I feel,” he thumps a fist against his chest, “that’s all on me. I could have ended it any time, if I can end it now—”
“You know that’s not true.”
“—and I’ve been—I’ve been ungrateful. And—mindless. I’ve been so mindless. I don’t take accountability. I need to make myself take accountability, and, and if I’m happy, that means I’m not accountable. Because how could I ever possibly be happy, knowing what I’ve been a part of. What runs through my veins. Poison I put there, right alongside poison I was born with.”
“I’m fucking terrified of how you don’t realize what absolute horseshit you’re saying right now.”
Kendall says, looking at his lap, “I killed a kid.”
Stewy does not answer.
“Shiv’s wedding. The waiter who died. I was driving us off the grounds, we were looking for stuff. There was an animal in the road. We swerved off a bridge, into the water. And he didn’t get out.”
Stewy slips slowly off the mattress. Stands in the center of his bedroom, surrounded by dark wooden furniture, pale fixtures, a crystal chandelier swaying above him. In his head, gears turn, pegs hit holes, and things fall into place.
“That’s why I fucked the bear hug. My dad—his people found out. They found my keycard on the riverbank. And he, he covered it up. He made it go away. He saved me.”
Stewy tries to imagine the most horrible thing Kendall could do. A dozen ideas, which all take time for his mind to produce, and the truth is not the worst of them. The truth is, in fact, far from the worst. It is, in a way, very easy to conceptualize.
Except that Stewy knows.
Stewy knowing. That makes the list of the worst things Kendall could do to him.
“Say something,” Kendall begs.
It means, Kick me out already. It means, Hit me. It means, Condemn me, but don’t just sit there and make me wait for it.
Kendall’s wet eyes, the left with worse vision than the right, always crookedly squinting. His weak hands, and bad ankle, and new wrinkles, broad chest and thick waist, bony shins, narrow feet. His polarity. Occasional mercurality. Presumptuousness. Pretentiousness. Popinjay. A slight wind could knock him; a hurricane wouldn’t move him an inch.
Kendall, who chose only girlfriends Logan would choose for himself, who Logan would want. Oedipal and Electric. Obsessed with his misery. Powerless to it. Damned by it. Saved within it.
Kendall, who chose Stewy, in his way, and chose him again and again, for himself rather than for his fear or for his father.
Maybe it’s a little rebellion. Maybe that’s all Stewy is, the big bad brown fag under Kendall’s bed, but no, there is something else. Stewy has made it this far in life because he always, always believes there is something else, which time will make apparent when the moment is fitting.
“Kendall,” Stewy says, ragged and truthful, “kharâbetam.”
I’m ruined for you.
###
The next morning, Stewy receives a text from Shiv letting him know she and Roman have gone to Dubai.
Okayyyyyy ???????????
Tell Kendall we’re taking it seriously. We’re looking for investment in the idea.
Stewy wants to flush his phone down the toilet. Only fucking Roys could delude themselves into thinking they have something to invest in every time synapses successfully fire in their heads.
“Please tell me you’re not going to be stupid about this,” Stewy begs as soon as Kendall’s eyes open. “Fucking please, Kendall, don’t be a moron.”
Kendall’s gaze goes apoplectic with fear.
“We’re not talking about that,” Stewy says immediately. “We are never, ever talking about that again. We are putting that in a lockbox inside of a safe inside of the US treasury and we are sinking that shit in the Mariana Trench.”
“Um,” says Kendall. “Shiv and Rome know about it.”
“What the fuck,” Stewy says. He flops face-down into his pillow. “Kendall,” he groans. “What the fuck.”
“I’m not going to say that you should’ve just gave me the coke that night. If it makes you feel better.”
Stewy looks at him. “You went out driving for coke? That’s why you got behind the wheel?”
“Yep.”
“So… okay. So you’re saying… you could have just come to… no.” Stewy sits up. Claps his hands together. Rubs a twitch from his eye. “We are not dealing with this right now. We are sooo not dealing with this right now. Hey, I have an idea. Do you remember my house in Napa? The house with the—”
“—the creepy fucking cellar I threw up in, yeah.” Kendall’s expression is inscrutable, but he seems weirdly calm. He slept, all night. He seems settled. Because now the weight of his crimes sit on Stewy’s shoulders.
Stewy wants to go home. He wants to sleep in his parents’ bed, between their warm and snoring bodies.
“Isn’t it better that you know?” Kendall says.
“No,” Stewy says. “No, Kendall, it is not.”
“Is this the end?” Kendall whispers.
“Of what?” Stewy asks. “Life as we know it? Probably. Is it the end of—what, of us?” Kendall barely nods. Stewy takes his hand. “Kendall,” he says, exhausted, “can we please go to my house in Napa and have boring bad sex, and drink boring bad wine, and pretend everything is normal. For like, four days.” Stewy holds up four fingers. “That’s all I’m asking for. I’ll fucking, I’ll tell everyone I’m finally using my PTO. Maesbury will be fine. Sandi will go berserk, but only a little, because she weirdly believes in the rights of the individual? And we can fucking block your siblings’s phone numbers, we can go totally off the grid,” Kendall shakes his head, but he looks strange and reverent, “we can just exist for a minute. You and me. What do you think?”
Kendall brushes a curl off Stewy’s forehead. “Okay,” he says, like he has weighed his options and decided he can afford this kindness, for Stewy.
“Okay?” Stewy echoes. His heart shudders with relief. “Okay.” He knocks Kendall flat to the mattress, seals their mouths together, and kisses with all he’s worth. “Okay, Ken. This place is so fucked. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
###
Stewy takes a newer Audi R8 from his private parking lot, beneath his apartment building. He feels like driving.
Jess drops off a carry-on for Kendall, necessities only. There is a lot of weed in the bag. Stewy sees it and says, “Fuck yes.”
Stewy takes them to a private airfield upstate, Maesbury access, Maesbury private plane, he would rather fly business class than use Waystar wings. The interior is modern, very white, and cold; the first thing Stewy does is unfold a blanket. He and Ken sip champagne at cruising altitude, studying boisterous, cottony clouds and rare bits of distant scenery. Flights are far from novel for either of them, but Kendall likes flying all the same. When Stewy flies alone, he pops sleeping pills and snores from point A to point B. But today, he studies Kendall in the shifting light.
###
The Napa house is stale—it’s been a few years since Stewy last visited. They throw open the windows, the french doors, then take a walk around the ranch, sort of meandering, admiring the patchwork hills, daisy yellow and deep green, striped with fruit trees. Kendall steals a grape off the vine. Stewy can’t help himself; he sticks a hand in Ken’s back pocket.
They order sushi so fresh it could twitch on the plates, uni and tuna, red snapper and salmon roe, and eat it outside, on an expansive deck, in jackets and vests, the October chill magnified by a generous breeze which flicks their napkins, sings through hanging chimes. Stewy loves it out here. He can smell the soil, sunbaked produce, clear air. He and Kendall kill a bottle of wine quickly. It goes to their heads—something about their impulse control, something about their light fare—they roll around and rub together on an outdoor lounge, a linen couch, and beside a blazing fire pit before tripping inside, messily undressing, sharing Chardonnay-breath kisses and grabbing shamelessly at each other’s asses.
Kendall seems in a better mode, more how he was in college, asking with wide eyes if he can eat Stewy out, finger Stewy, fuck Stewy, make Stewy come. The one place Kendall will unfailingly give attention: in Stewy’s bed.
After, Stewy flicks aimlessly between television programs. He and Ken have been into Selling Sunset lately.
“They’re such bitches,” Stewy says, rubbing Kendall’s shoulder. Ken is half-asleep, holding one of Stewy’s tits in his sweaty hand, mouth-breathing against the other. Stewy honestly, honestly is not thinking about anything else in the world.
Kendall’s phone rings. He ignores it, and so Stewy ignores it.
Some prick they went to Buckley with tours a house in the episode they’re watching. They both laugh loudly over how bald he is now.
Kendall’s phone rings again. Stewy snatches it off the nightstand and puts it on airplane mode.
They get through another ten minutes of TV, Kendall now twitchy, poking Stewy’s gut, shoving his foot between Stewy’s shins. Humming sighs. Clenching his jaw.
“Fine,” Stewy mutters. He gives Kendall his phone. He takes it, slips out of the bed, pulls on Stewy’s boxers, and leaves the room, dialing.
Stewy scoots down against the mattress, a little miserable. His ass hurts. He usually likes when his ass hurts after sex, especially sex with Kendall, but it’s demeaning to be in bed alone and aching. It’s pathetic. Stewy feels gross.
He waits impatiently, fiddling with his phone, since Kendall is allowed his. He plays sudoku until he gets annoyed. He replies to a few quick texts. Asks his mom how she is.
When Stewy hears Kendall’s footsteps approaching, he sits up slightly, hooks an arm behind his head. Feels stupid. Puts his arm back.
“That was Roman,” Kendall says. Standing in the doorframe, he stares at his feet, shifts his weight, and shoves his phone into his back pocket. “Um. I told him we’re here, that I’m with you. And… I told him and Shiv to come out to L.A.” Kendall looks up. “I’ve got a place there. You remember, we partied there, it was my thirtieth birthday present.”
“I remember,” Stewy says softly. “What are you saying?”
“You told me, Let’s get out of here,” he says. “You told me the city is fucked. And you’re right. I feel… alive, here. The open air. The altitude, maybe. This feels good, Stew.”
Stewy knows Kendall well enough not to trust this at face value. Kendall loves the city, feels a deep connection to it, is off-kilter when he leaves. If Kendall is at ends with the city, Kendall is not himself.
“Are you asking me to stay with you?” says Stewy.
“Yes,” says Kendall. The glint in his eye. The mad scientist. He hurries to Stewy, on the mattress, and takes his hands. “I’m saying, let’s do something real. I’m saying, let Gojo buy Waystar, then get the fuck out of there. Come with me. No pussying out. Nothing hanging over us. No stupid ideas. Us and the sibs, building our own empire. Something more majestic and long-lasting than my dad ever could have dreamt up.”
Stewy’s thoughts are wild birds. He grapples for one. Hits air.
“Stew,” Kendall says, sobering. Hurt. “Come on. Don’t give up on me now. We’re—we’re actually close this time. We’re so close I can fucking taste it. This can be good. This can be the way out for me.”
“Uh huh,” Stewy says. “Kendall…”
“Don’t,” Kendall says, afraid now. “Please. I don't… I don’t think I can take it. If you tell me it’s a bad idea.”
“It’s not a bad idea. It’s barely an idea.”
“Exactly.” Kendall brings their joint hands to his chest. Presses them over his heart. “Help me flush this out. Throw me a line, Stew. I’m asking you this time. This is what I want. Throw me a line.”
He kisses Kendall. Palms his cheek. “Let me think. Okay?”
Kendall nods slowly. “Okay,” he says. He laughs a little, then his smile drops, leaving him tired, stretched loose. “Yeah. I’ll go… I’ll go shower. Or something.”
Kendall rolls off the bed and pads into the en suite bathroom, a glass box of a thing, slamming the door between them.
###
The trip is not soured, not necessarily, but it feels different. Their ease is gone. Kendall tries so hard to seem normal, it makes Stewy feel like Rava, which he categorically hates. Kendall wants to keep doing things, he wants to stay busy, and the second they’re in transit, or sitting down to eat, or changing between pastimes, Kendall deflates, sags where he sits with a thousand-mile stare. When Stewy tries to snap him out of it, he overcorrects, grins with too many teeth, a glint in his eye, tries to sweep Stewy off his feet, woo Stewy, like Stewy has ever needed to be wooed by Kendall. It’s almost offensive. It’s not what Stewy cleared his schedule for.
“I’ll go make drinks,” Kendall suggests, immediately after swallowing Stewy’s load. He fucking scurries to the kitchen, hooks MBDTF to a speaker, and bumps to Kanye as Stewy begins to feel like a hostage in his own house, when Kendall was meant to be his captive.
Shiv texts him, What tf did you say to ken. He is all freaked out & we finally just had him up.
that is Not on me. Cunt. U guys made him delusionalcrazy. Deal w it💁🏽♀️💁🏽♀️
LET’S PLAY: Eight Ball!
She responds with a live photo of her middle finger and Roman holding a comically large mimosa, but makes a move in the game too, and that says it all: Shiv is so green. No matter how she replied to Stewy, what it would have said was I am Shiv Roy and I am So Green You Don't Know What to Do With Me.
Roman, at least, is not green. Roman is terrible for many other reasons. Roman is worst case scenario. Roman is possibly the sibling most similar to Stewy, a comparison neither of them can much stomach, more so because Roman is most similar to Logan, in his heart, in his beliefs, in what he is willing to do. And Stewy, in what he is willing to let slide. What he is willing to cover up.
Stewy rises from the bed, rubbing a hand over his mouth. He leaves Catholic compunctions to Kendall, figuring they’re the business of him and a confessional. Stewy doesn’t feel the need to say everything he knows. He doesn’t feel curiosity, past a point. There is no principle to a matter. There is a matter, and Stewy would rather be involved in the few than in the many.
A logical take. Stewy needs someone who truly sees both sides, without—Kendall. Someone who is entirely ambivalent regarding Kendall. By whom the decision—stay or go?—can be made bipartisanly.
He considers his phone. His contacts. His lawyers on retainer. His accountant, even. The girl who sold him this house.
But, in the end, he consults his photos.
They do not go back so far as his albums. They are more poorly organized, not always sequential, here is forth grade and here skips back to second, and here is their eighth grade commencement ceremony, look at them in matching flat caps. There is the photo from that one weird day Kendall found Stewy, a die-hard violin kid, teary-eyed over Vivaldi and laughed so hard he pissed himself a little. And from a college football game, beaming stupid beneath a banner that read WE R HOME AT HAVAHD YAHD! Kendall leaning into sunlight on a boat ride they took in the Hamptons, the first time they were allowed out without their fathers steering. Kendall shooting two thumbs up while Stewy rolls his eyes beside him in a long navy robe—Stewy’s final All State choir concert. Kendall had brought him flowers for that. Cornered him in the bathroom of the venue and ducked under his robe and made Stewy good and late for line-up call time.
And more recently, Kendall’s cheek resting on Stewy’s chest, Stewy’s thumb stroking Kendall’s brow. Kendall at the foot of the stairs, wearing a stupid outfit and engrossed by his phone, while Stewy came down to meet him. Kendall in a bathing suit, in the outdoor hot tub, brow cocked and mouth crooked as he asked Stewy if he wanted that night’s facial sunny side up or scrambled.
And—yeah. Stewy loves Kendall. He obviously fucking loves Kendall.
But there are certain things he can’t choose Kendall over. There are certain things for which Ken can forgive him, and certain things Stewy cannot forgive himself for.
But for an indulgent, tantalizing moment, he allows himself to imagine them how Kendall wants: living in Napa one week, L.A. the next, traveling internationally and spending overnights in Dubai and Rome, Dublin and Tokyo and Rio. Plans sometimes, but spending most nights in, a large shift into a slow life. They could spend Fridays in town, weekends on the beach, sleep in one bed, no need for pretenses. They could take long walks. Coordinate their closets. Shower together. Track each other’s schedules. Two by two unto the ark.
But Rava—but their kids.
Stewy knows, has had fifteen years of knowing, who Kendall chooses first, when he’s weighed against Ken’s family.
No matter how badly Ken wants him—Ken said it himself! He can’t feel happy. He can’t morally feel happy with Stewy, because of his sloppy fucking ties to his pre-written life. Having Stewy will never be enough. This daydream—that’s all it is. A temporary lapse in judgement. Another opportunity to pay off paps.
The spark of life in Ken’s eyes, the thrill of a new idea, it’s not enough of a promise. It doesn’t change Ken. Nothing at all is permanent, least of all Kendall’s frenetic, wind-change moods.
Stewy won’t share him again. He would never do himself that disservice. Not when he understands, now, that he was a fool. That holding out his hopes will be his end.
“Hey, Ken?” Stewy calls. His heart smarts with a sore, chronic ache. “Come in here, man. Come sit with me. We need to talk.”