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Ewan Roy dies barely two years after Logan.
Most of his last year on earth is spent, uncharacteristically for someone so far blessed with extraordinary health, going in and out of hospital, as if his age was finally catching up with him. Perhaps his loathing of his brother and everything he stood for had been what kept him going. Or perhaps, the satisfaction of getting to bury Logan had faded swiftly and wasn’t enough to keep him alive any longer.
Ironically, the last year of Ewan’s life was the year of Greg’s where he had dedicated the least amount of time to thinking about his grandfather, not really out of spite but quite simply because he was too busy with his new job in the wake of the GoJo deal. Either way, like most things in life, once it happens it feels nothing like Greg had imagined it would.
He gets the news while sitting at the conference table in Tom’s office, prepping for a meeting with the entire print media top brass later in the day. Chief among the multiple tasks included in his nebulous new title of ‘Senior Business Operations Manager’ is making Tom look on top of every single aspect of the business. Greg’s phone starts vibrating, he glances at it and sees it’s his mother, so he rejects the call before setting it back on the table, but she just rings again. Greg frowns and sends it to voicemail for the second time.
“Everything alright?” Tom asks. Right then his phone lights up again on top of the table, screen up. Mom. “I think you should pick up, if she’s calling three times in a row, Greg,” he says with a frown.
Marianne delivers the news bluntly, without introduction. She had been visiting because Ewan was recovering from an ankle sprain. At some point after breakfast, Ewan complained of a sharp headache that wouldn’t go away. While he was getting ready for Marianne to drive him to hospital, he collapsed in his bedroom. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was dead.
Through it all she sounds unnervingly calm and collected, as if she was just telling Greg about her day. Once she’s done, she asks, “The funeral is the day after tomorrow, but do you think you can make it here by this evening?”
“Y—yeah, I… I think so,” Greg answers automatically, without really having thought about it.
“Good, let me know when you’re arriving. I gotta go, the people from the funeral home are here,” she says and hangs up.
Greg is left staring at his phone for a moment.
“Greg?” Tom asks, softly, and Greg wonders how much of the call he could hear and whether he guessed just from Greg’s side of the conversation.
“Grandpa just died.” It sounds so strange, said out loud. Almost like it shouldn’t be possible to make a statement of fact about something so monumental. Except it doesn’t feel monumental. It doesn’t feel like anything.
“I’m so sorry, Greg, I really am,” Tom says and he means it, not because he’s sorry Ewan’s dead (he isn’t) but because he knows you can still mourn someone who was horrible to you, it’s one of life’s mysteries. He lays a hand on Greg’s shoulder and starts rubbing soft circles in a slow, steady rhythm.
“I… I don’t know… I should…” Greg trails off, like he doesn’t have any idea what to do. Right. That’s Tom’s cue.
“Jill?” Tom calls his assistant’s name, and Greg looks confused.
Jill immediately appears in the doorway, with a notepad in hand and that air of being ready to solve anything Tom might throw her way. Because she is. She could probably aim for his job if Lukas wasn’t so scared of competent women over fifty.
“Jill, how fast can we get Greg here to… um,” he hesitates for a moment before remembering, “Harrington, Quebec province?” Then he pointedly adds, “With time to pack… appropriate clothes,” hoping she catches his meaning.
She probably didn’t need the raised eyebrows, because she seems to take in Greg’s lost expression and the fact that Tom’s still rubbing comforting circles on his back, and from her face he can tell she makes a pretty accurate guess. “On it, Mr. Wambsgans,” she says and leaves.
Tom turns to Greg. “How’s your mom?”
Greg sighs. “I don’t know. Oddly calm?”
“Oh?” Tom tries not to sound too surprised. He likes Marianne, but she’s not exactly… stable.
“Yeah… she can be… she can be pretty cool-headed at the weirdest possible moments?”
Before Tom can think of anything else to say, Jill is back.
“There’s a Canada Air flight from Newark at 3:40, he can make it if he leaves now and takes off from West 30th in time. And just in case he doesn’t, there’s another flight an hour after that. Oh, and there will be a car waiting for him at Montreal airport.”
“Good, good,” Tom says. “Please call Sergio, he can drive Greg home as soon as he’s ready.”
Jill turns around and leaves, and Greg just stares after her uncomprehendingly, looking unsure as to how this whole conversation involves him.
“You should probably go home to pack now, buddy.”
Greg shakes his head as if trying to get himself out of a stupor. “Yeah, I… yeah.”
Before he leaves, Tom gives him a quick hug and pats his back a few times, murmuring something vaguely reassuring in his ear.
“I’ll see you Saturday at the funeral, okay?” As soon as he says it, Tom realises he’s as well as admitting to eavesdropping on Marianne’s side of the conversation, but Greg is too overwhelmed to pick up on it.
Tom watches him walk towards his own office and wishes he could do more. He wishes he could go with Greg and make sure he’s alright (although he’s pretty sure there’s no way he can be), but he can’t bail on the print media editors when half of them have flown in just to see him. They’re jittery enough as it is, since they suspect (with good reason) that Matsson is about to dump print wholesale in the immediate future.
Well, perhaps there’s one more thing he can do.
“Jill?”
“Mr. Wambsgans?”
“Listen, as soon as you’re done, why don’t you go after him, make sure he has packed a black tie and a nice suit, proper shoes for a funeral, that kind of thing?”
Irrationally, he wonders if his assistant is about to make a comment on how insane that sounds. Instead, she deadpans, “Should I go through his underwear drawer, too?”
“Only if necessary,” Tom answers with a relieved smile. “I’m sure you will treat it with the same respect you would the Shroud of Turin.” A pause. “He’s… I don’t think he’s in a right state to do much of anything by himself right now.”
Jill stares at him for a moment. “I could ride with him right now and set everything up from the car, I’ll come back as soon as he’s on the way to the heliport.”
Not for the first time, he wonders what sacrifice he should offer to the corporate gods for having put her on his path.
“Thank you, he… just make sure he takes everything he needs with him.”
Right before Jill turns to leave, Tom says, “Oh and Jill?”
“Yes?”
“Just charge everything to my personal card.”
“Of course, Mr. Wambsgans.”
It looks as if she might have been about to say something else but she thinks better of it. Instead, she just nods once and leaves in the direction of Greg’s office.
The car ride home is mostly silent, with Jill typing furiously on her iPad and occasionally making a phone call, and Greg staring out the window.
As Greg unlocks the door and steps back to let Jill walk in before him, he wonders if she has an opinion about him staying at Tom’s house. If she thinks it’s weird, or juvenile, or if she has even given it any thought at all. He’s aware she would never let it show either way, let alone tell him. For Greg, it’s one of those things you’re so used to you barely give them a second thought until you’re forced to look at them through someone else’s eyes.
It all started when Kendall, after his second stint in rehab in six months, decided the path to healing involved “severing all material ties to New York”, by which he apparently meant selling all his real state in the city, including Greg’s building. Kendall gave him ample notice and even apologised, offering to sell it to Greg at a more than generous discount, but unfortunately no amount of generosity would place a newly-renovated Tribeca loft within Greg’s price range.
It was almost by divine intervention that Tom had just bought himself a bachelor pad right around the time that Greg was contemplating a choice between destitution and Astoria. It was ridiculous to call it a bachelor pad when in reality it was a brownstone with a patio just off Lincoln Square, but when Greg asked him, Tom had only mumbled a vague explanation about needing to reinvest the divorce settlement money quickly. (There was something darkly hilarious, and telling, about the prenup making sure to cover Shiv’s extramarital exploits but not an eventual sale of Waystar shares.)
Tom had offered Greg to move in with him until he could save up enough for a place that didn’t make him want to cry every time he thought about it (Tom’s words). The offer itself had come amidst a long speech about living the bachelor life to the fullest and getting his freedom back, and also something about the shackles of marriage, but the truth was that Tom hadn’t brought any women over since the first huge party he threw when he bought the house, and their life resembles more that of two overworked executives who are much too tired to party (which they are) than that of two wild party animals on the prowl. And there is also the matter that, even though he wouldn’t dare bring it up to Tom for fear of being murdered, monogamy and marriage, perhaps not with Shiv but very much the idea of it, is something Tom actively misses. When Tom and Shiv’s relationship finally collapsed following Shiv’s miscarriage, less than a month into Tom’s tenure as CEO, Greg could tell just how much grief Tom was carrying around in silence. Once, while terribly drunk, Tom had confessed how he knew in his heart that it was the best possible outcome and that made him feel too guilty to breathe. Greg understood because he had had that same thought himself, and it made him feel like a monster.
And so Tom and Greg had come to share a house in an arrangement which they insisted on describing as temporary even though they probably passed temporary around the three-month mark. Which had been almost a year ago.
Jill, as expected, is unreadable on this subject, as on any other.
She just hands him a handwritten list with everything he needs to pack, from a black tie down to a toothbrush, which Greg isn’t sure when she has managed to make.
“Can I help?” she says.
Greg is vaguely disturbed at the thought of her rummaging through his drawers.
“Perhaps I could pick the suits?” she suggests.
Of course she managed to think of the least invasive task possible.
“Yeah, that’s… yeah.” He makes a vague motion towards his walk-in wardrobe.
“Suit bag?” she asks.
“Behind the door.”
And off she goes.
(She has him all packed and dropped off at the heliport with plenty of time to make his flight, of course.)
When Greg’s car finally pulls up outside his grandfather’s farm, he realises that because Marianne sounded so calm on the phone, he hasn’t really paid any mind to how she might be holding up beyond being… well, sad. Greg just hopes she hasn’t been getting creative with her prescription drugs again.
As if he had summoned her with his mind, right then the lights of the porch flicker to life and she’s opening the front door. He gets out of the car and waves awkwardly as the driver unloads his carry-on and suit bag. She looks really small backlit against the doorframe and feels even smaller when he wraps his arms around her. They hug for a long moment in the foyer, before Marianne steps back and ushers him in.
Greg hasn’t set foot inside the house in four years and his first thought is that it’s just as cold as he remembered. He had always wondered if the cold was metaphorical, but apparently it had less to do with Ewan’s presence and more with his aversion to central heating.
“You remember Chad, right?” his mother says, and for the first time Greg notices a man standing at the bottom of the stairs.
Actually no, Greg does not remember Chad, because he has never met him, beyond seeing him in the background of a video call with Marianne once. He looks roughly Marianne’s age and otherwise utterly unremarkable, like any of her other dozen boyfriends Greg didn’t really bother getting to know because they never stuck around for long anyway.
Chad awkwardly approaches Greg and gives him an anemic handshake. “So sorry for your loss, man.”
Greg really doesn’t want to have a man his mother has been seeing for under six months in the house right now, but at the same time he knows she might behave better if there’s a stranger around.
“Are you hungry, baby?” Marianne asks.
“No, I… ate on the plane.” He thinks he did, at least.
“Then we should go to bed, I think. We need to be at the notary first thing tomorrow.”
Greg looks at her, uncomprehending.
“The will, Greg.”
“Oh, right,” he says as if he understood. He’s unsure why he even needs to be present. Perhaps there’s a Quebec law stating that his disinheritance must be notarised, just for that extra bit of humiliation, they do things differently here.
His mother has set him up in the room Greg used to call his own. If this was any other day, he probably would’ve complained about it until she moved him, but considering the circumstances, he figures he should just shut up and endure the too-small bed and the unpleasant memories in silence.
Like countless other nights spent in that same room, Greg lays in bed staring at the eerie shapes the trees outside the window make on the ceiling.
He’s not sure how to describe how he feels about Ewan being dead. He only knows that it feels nothing like he had imagined it would.
He had imagined he would feel relief, or perhaps even elation. Relief that someone who in Greg’s innermost thoughts he could admit had never held any affection for him or elation at him being gone. For a long time, he had told himself Ewan was just from the tough love generation, that deep down he did feel love for his only daughter and only grandson. He had let go of that belief sometime in the last four years, ever since moving to NY. It’s ironic that getting to know Logan had helped him see Ewan more clearly.
But now that Ewan is finally gone, it’s as if all the resentment Greg had been harbouring for the past twenty-odd years had suddenly emerged from the depths he had repressed it to and was now coursing through his veins, filling up his lungs, choking him and not letting him breathe.
He was right however in thinking that would make him bulletproof against grief. Apparently, there is such a thing as pre-grieving, Roman had just been mistaken in thinking it could possibly defend you against a force like Logan Roy. Ewan Roy, on the other hand, was evidently pre-grievable.
Irrationally, Greg wishes he could feel grief. A grief sprung not from love but from all the resentment he had tamped down on and that he had never allowed himself to feel because he was hoping one day everything would be made right miraculously, as if getting as angry as he truly felt would preclude that imaginary magical day of reconciliation with Ewan when he told Greg he loved him and he was proud of what he had achieved. Now he knows it never will.
The notary is much younger than Greg expected and has a kind smile. She ushers them into her office and explains the process in simple terms without sounding condescending. Greg instantly likes her and wishes he could find out what she made of his grandfather.
“I have already contacted Greenpeace’s in-house legal and the executor, a Mr. Pugh? Mlle. Herbert will arrive in an hour to smooth out other details, she was in charge of Mr. Roy’s estate planning here in Canada.”
Greg makes a non-committal noise. He doesn’t really care, he’s just glad not to have to deal with Pugh again.
“As I believe you already know, your father and grandfather made Greenpeace the main beneficiary, so we will just focus on the provisions that affect you.”
As she reads on, Greg is mostly just happy to hear his mother will be well taken care of. He’s distracted, wondering how to help her not to not get into debt again, so he’s caught off guard when the notary says, “Now, onto you, Mr. Hirsch.”
“M— me?” Greg asks, startled. “Um, yeah. Sure.”
He’s not particularly keen on hearing how much money he’s not getting, but he knows he should just go along with the formalities.
Except. That’s not at all what the notary says next.
For some unknown reason, Ewan has left him far more than the five million his mother had assured him. Almost ten times more. It’s all structured in a way involving deadlines and legal hoops and external supervision that means he will not receive it all at the same moment, so he will still be waiting for Ewan to finally release his grip on him for a few more years after he’s gone. He probably enjoyed planning it this way. But the distributions will be generous enough that he could quit his job, if he wanted to.
“He also left you this letter,” she says and hands him a thin envelope. Greg is too shocked for his hands to tremble as he opens it.
Gregory,
You should refrain from reading anything in this change of heart. You don’t deserve a penny and you never did. However, it was pointed out to me that, were you left with nothing in my will, you would continue to leech off your feckless mother until she either dies or grows tired of you. If there is any decency left in you, I hope at least you will consider using these funds to stop being a burden to her.
Signed: Ewan J. Roy
In the presence of: Mtre. Sarah Dwyer – Notaire (Dated: 14th November 2021)
The notary seal is a nice touch, both to make sure it was done properly and not as one last cruel joke, and to make it even more impersonal.
Greg wishes he could back to a minute ago, and not knowing why Ewan had changed the will again. But of course Ewan would write him a letter. Helpfully. Cruelly. Both.
He looks over at his mother but he can’t read her expression at all. Although to be fair, he doesn’t know what he’s feeling either.
Tom flies to Canada the day of the funeral. He told Greg he would stop by the house to pay his respects before the service, because it seemed the proper thing to do, but now he’s wondering if propriety is worth dying of hypothermia.
The house is horribly cold, as if it had never been properly heated. Greg had talked once about how Ewan barely ever turned on the heating, calling it a selfish waste of resources, and how eventually you got used to wearing two thick jumpers inside the house. At the time Tom thought Greg was exaggerating, but now he sees he was actually underplaying the situation.
Marianne looks strangely calm, and more put together than Tom has ever seen her, which makes the stilted small talk that is mandatory at wakes much easier to carry on. He couldn’t say why, but Tom has always been exceptionally deferential to Marianne, even though objectively he never really needed to bother.
Awkward small talk with Marianne’s boyfriend, on the other hand, seems to be as excruciating on Greg as it is on Tom. He’s also starting to get the distinct impression that Chad is gearing up to asking him for a job.
“I’m so sorry,” Tom interrupts Chad’s pitch of a sports channel for pets, “but I have a scheduled call in five minutes. Greg, is there anywhere…”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Of course,” Greg says and points to the back of the room.
Tom throws one last half-hearted apology in the boyfriend’s direction and follows Greg along a corridor and into what looks like a small office with wide windows overlooking the garden. It’s filled with flowery chintz and looks oddly feminine and soft compared to the rest of the house.
As if reading his mind, Greg says, “This was my grandmother’s study.”
“Oh.” It’s all Tom can think to say.
“I never met her. She died when my mother was in high school. Grandpa never came in here but he kept the room exactly as she left it.”
“That’s… not something I would’ve expected from him,” Tom says, diplomatically.
Greg just shrugs and they look at each other in silence. What do you follow that up with, Tom wonders.
Greg suddenly shakes his head. “Oh, sorry, your call. No one will bother you here, I think.”
“There is no call, Greg. You just looked like you could use a break back there.”
Greg looks at him and closes his eyes. “Thank you, man, I… this is a lot.” He sighs loudly and perches on the edge of the desk. “I used to hide in here when I wanted to get away from him.”
Tom makes a non-committal noise and takes a couple of steps towards him.
“But there’s no getting away from him today,” he says dejectedly. Without warning, he reaches inside his jacket pocket and hands Tom an envelope. “A final fuck you, I guess.”
Tom gingerly opens the envelope and reads the letter inside. His first thought is relief that Greg is getting at least a fraction of his inheritance, probably the infamous five million he’s heard so much about. His second is that if Ewan wasn’t already dead, Tom would be considering killing him. He doesn’t know what to say, so he carefully folds the letter and gives it back to Greg, who shoves it in his pocket unceremoniously.
“This is so fucked up,” Greg says in a small voice and puts his head in his hands.
Tom steps closer and starts patting Greg’s shoulder awkwardly, because yeah, it is.
“You’re shivering,” Tom says after a moment, because it’s true.
“The heating’s off.”
“I noticed. I don’t usually wear my coat indoors.”
“Apparently the boiler has been unused for so long that it doesn’t start anymore without calling a plumber,” Greg says and visibly shivers again.
Before he can even think of what he’s doing, Tom steps forward into the vee of Greg’s legs and awkwardly wraps his open coat around him. “You’re just trying to steal the coat off my back, aren’t you?” Greg huffs a laugh but scoots closer and drops his head onto Tom’s shoulder.
“It was always so cold in this house,” Greg whispers and just as Tom is wondering how much to read into that statement, he hears what is unmistakably a sob come out of him.
Tom gets his hands out of his coat pockets and wraps them around Greg’s shoulders, and now Greg is crying in earnest.
“He hated me.”
“No, he didn’t,” Tom says automatically, even though they both know it’s probably a lie.
“He did though.”
Tom sighs. “I don’t think he hated you. They just… the life they had meant they weren’t truly capable of love.” There’s no need to specify what he means by ‘they’. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah well, maybe it is, because I’m not sure I loved him either and I… I am capable of love, I think?”
Tom hugs him a little tighter. “Well, maybe he just didn’t deserve it.”
They stay like that for a long moment, in what feels like the only pocket of warmth in this frozen house.
Finally, Greg pulls away and says, “We’ll be leaving for church soon.”
Tom takes a step back. “Need a ride?”
“I should… I should go with my mother, I guess?”
“Right.”
Greg makes no move to get up and leave the room, so Tom gives his shoulder a firm squeeze. “Come on, America’s poorest rich man, time to face the music.”
Greg looks at him like he doesn’t quite get the joke but gets up and adjusts his suit.
Thankfully, Greg isn’t expected to speak at the funeral. An old army friend of Ewan’s gives a long-winded eulogy that is more about empty ideals than about a real person, and in a way it’s fitting, because it feels like he’s eulogising a complete stranger, someone that never existed, at least not in Greg’s world.
It’s already dark out when the reception, poorly attended and even more poorly catered, starts to wind down, and Greg approaches Tom as he’s leaving the restaurant.
“Um, do you mind giving me a ride to Montreal? I only need a minute, my bags are in my mom’s car.”
Tom frowns and shakes his head. “There’s no rush, Greg, you can take a couple more personal days, if you want.”
“No, I…” Greg looks around to check that no one is listening but still leans towards Tom to whisper, “Actually, I don’t want to go back there? To the house, I mean. Fucking… Chad’s gonna be there and I just can’t…”
Greg tilts his head and looks at Tom with big, pitying eyes. It works, because to be fair it almost always does.
“Of course,” Tom says, nodding, “But… I’m actually flying back tomorrow morning? I didn’t know if I’d make it back in time for the last flight, so I’m spending the night in Montreal.”
“Oh,” Greg says dejectedly, watching his escape plan evaporate.
Tom taps his fingers against his mouth. “Listen, I’m sure we can find you an extra room for tonight and why don’t I get Jill to put you on my flight?”
Relief floods through Greg. “Thank you, man, I… I really need to get out of here.”
Tom smiles at him sadly and squeezes his arm for a long moment. “Come on, go grab your bags and let’s fuck off back to civilisation.”
The Four Seasons is fully booked so not even Jill can get them an extra room, but she manages to move Tom to a two-bedroom suite instead. Tom actually prefers it, because this way he won’t have to let Greg out of his sight for too long. He didn’t utter a single word for the entire car ride from Harrington, and Tom is starting to worry. He barely even reacted when Tom showed him a video of Mondale doing something cute that the sitter sent him, and that always does the trick when Tom wants to get a smile out of him.
Greg seems permanently confused, staring uncomprehendingly as Tom tells the bellboy where to put their scarce luggage, as if he had forgotten how hotel rooms work.
“I’m gonna grab a shower, why don’t you start looking at the room service menu?”
“I’m not really hungry.”
Tom knows if there’s food in front of him, Greg can be cajoled into eating it. “Well, I for one am starving, and I’m not going to have dinner by myself, so just order us two of whatever looks good and a nice wine,” he says as he marches into the marble bathroom.
It’s one of Tom’s greatest achievements in life, that Greg is now capable of ordering drinkable wine without direct supervision.
After his shower, he peeks into the sitting room to check on Greg and sees that the coffee table is covered in legal documents. Greg is staring into the distance looking hopeless.
“Everything okay?”
“No? This is all so fucking confusing, I just…” Greg says and groans. “All I know is that I don’t want to go back there. Ever again, if possible. But I don’t even know if I can just send a lawyer or if I have to… I don’t know, it’s all gibberish.”
Okay, Tom actually knows what to do here. “Why don’t I call Rick? I’m sure he could help, at least to give you a basic lay of the land?”
Greg bites his lower lip but doesn’t reply.
“Or perhaps…” Tom tries again, “would you like me to call my mother?”
Greg looks up at that and his eyes widen in the way Tom knows means he wants something but doesn’t want to come out and just ask for it. Tom grabs his phone and dials. “Mommy? Yeah, I’m here with Greg and…” He goes into the other room to give her a general idea and spare Greg from having to explain, then comes back and wordlessly hands Greg the phone.
“Um, hi, Martha, I’m so sorry to bother you this late,” Greg says. “Oh, well. That’s… no, no, I know.”
Tom smiles to himself. He doesn’t need to hear the other side of the conversation to know that his mother is chastising Greg for even suggesting he shouldn’t have called her. He turns around and goes back into his room, getting dressed in pyjama trousers and a t-shirt. He figures he should give Greg some space, so he lays on the bed catching up on his emails. After a while, he hears Greg call his name before showing up in the doorway, pushing the phone in Tom’s direction.
Tom quickly gets up and takes it. “Mommy?”
“I think he’s much more upset that he’s letting on, Tommy.”
“Yeah, I gathered,” Tom says, looking at Greg’s drooping shoulders as he leaves Tom’s room again.
“His grandfather sounds like a real piece of work. May he rest in peace.”
Tom lets out a soft chuckle. “You can say that again.”
“I hope he’s a little calmer now. Understanding the situation can help, sometimes.”
“Thank you for taking the time.”
“Don’t be silly, you know how much I like Greg.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long pause and Tom gets the feeling his mother is waiting for him to keep talking.
“Take good care of him, will you?” She says when Tom doesn’t. “He needs… someone right now.”
Tom is left with the distinct feeling that his mother was about to say something else, but right then room service finally arrives.
Greg starts picking at it with apparent disdain and only at Tom’s insistence, just to end up demolishing a Greek salad, an entire tenderloin, and not just his potatoes, but also half of Tom’s. Tom smiles into his wine.
Greg hates to admit it but Tom was right, he feels much better now that he’s eaten. He can’t remember the last time he had a full meal. Probably not since he left New York. Which reminds him.
“What time’s our flight tomorrow?” Greg asks suddenly. “I didn’t even ask.”
“Ten,” Tom answers and takes a sip of his wine. “Home in time for lunch.”
Greg nods slowly. “Office in the afternoon?”
Tom visibly hesitates. “Not for you.”
“Especially for me, I have so much to catch up on.” At Tom’s dirty look, he adds, “I need the distraction, seriously.”
Tom sighs. “We’ll see.”
Greg smirks, knowing he’s won.
Tom sets his empty glass on the table and sighs loudly. “On that note, this day has been going on for long enough, I’m gonna turn in.”
Greg stands too but makes no move towards his own room.
“Do you…” Greg starts. He’s looking anywhere but at Tom.
“Do I?” Tom prods.
“Do you mind if I…” Greg says and waves his hand towards Tom’s room. Tom frowns but after a second his face clears and he looks at Greg with an expression that Greg doesn’t quite have the energy to decipher right now. He’s just profoundly thankful they’ve become as close to reading each other’s minds as you can get without veering into chip implant territory.
Tom doesn’t mention that there’s barely fifty feet between his bed and Greg’s, he doesn’t make a jab about whether Greg would also like a nightlight and his plushie. He doesn’t say anything at all, he only stretches his hand towards Greg’s arm but lets it fall halfway and nods.
“I’ll find something for us to watch while you get changed, alright?”
When Greg walks into Tom’s room in his pyjamas, Tom is already in bed and a black and white movie is playing quietly on the TV. It should perhaps be weird how not weird the scene is. Tom has one of those gigantic ceiling drop-down screens in his room in New York and sometimes they watch TV on Tom’s bed until one or both falls asleep.
Tom is on his phone and Greg pretends to be watching whatever Tom put on for a while.
“You know the weirdest part?” Greg whispers into the quiet semidarkness of the room.
Tom immediately drops his phone on the sheets and turns to look at him, and Greg is unnaturally touched at the small gesture.
“Yeah?”
Greg sighs. “All my life I thought the world would be less scary without him in it. That once he died everything would be instantly, magically better. And it’s just… not?”
“The world is always going to be scary, Greg. That’s called being an adult.”
“Yeah, I… yeah. I guess.”
“But you… I’ve told you before and I meant it. I got you.”
“I know.”
There’s a long pause and Tom looks at him intently from his side of the bed. “Do you, though?”
Greg frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… it’s ok if you didn’t get his money, you shouldn’t worry about that. I’ll take care of you. You can live with me as long as I want. And when Matsson wakes up one day and decides to sell off whatever’s left of Waystar, I’ll drag you with me wherever I land.”
Greg should say something at this point, he knows he should. He should tell Tom about Ewan’s will. He should assure Tom that he’s fine, that he doesn’t need Tom’s help or his money or even his pity. But they’re laying together in bed close enough for Greg to count Tom’s lashes, and Tom is whispering promises into the darkness and it’s so close to what Greg really wants that all he can think about is how to hold on to this moment with both hands, because he can’t remember ever feeling this safe.
(In retrospect, that was the last point Greg could’ve stopped the train from derailing.)
It’s remarkable how Greg’s day to day doesn’t change, mostly because he makes a conscious effort for it not to. He still works the same hours, he still has to sit through Matsson’s insane Zoom calls in which he believes he’s redefining human interactions, he still eats dinner at home with Tom most nights.
Except, he now has a private banker (which Tom recommended), an accountant (also recommended by Tom), a tax lawyer, and a second lawyer to deal with the third lawyer who’s acting as trustee (suggested by Gerri, of all people). But that aside, he can’t say things have radically changed.
For most of his life, Greg had thought about money strictly in terms of the things he could buy with it. (Or, more often than not, the things he couldn’t.) Then he reached the inner Roy sanctum and realised money, serious money, is actually about the things you could do.
Now that, for the first time in his life, he has his own means, he has learned that money, real money, is also about the things you don’t have to do. You don’t have to worry about the future. You don’t have to suck up to anyone because your livelihood depends on them liking you. You don’t need to get anyone to like you – you do it because you choose to. And more importantly, you don’t need to be scared of a lot of the things that scared you for most of your life.
Oddly, the things that do scare you are much scarier when money stops being your main concern, because only the big ones are left. He knows his mother can pay for the best possible therapy and meds, but he can’t heal her mind with money. It does make him rest easier to know that, even if she blows through her entire trust, he could still support her comfortably with his own.
He is also faced with decisions he never had to consider, like buying his own apartment and moving out from Tom’s house.
The problem is, of course, that he doesn’t want to.
From the get go, living with Tom had been… frighteningly uncomplicated. He had never noticed how used to being in each other’s space they had become over the years until they started sharing a house. A dance they engaged in without even being aware they knew the steps, never in each other’s way, but always at each other’s elbow when needed, in a choreography they have perfected over time.
Ever since Ewan died, he has just been hoping that Tom doesn’t notice he’s not leaving now that he has no real excuse for staying at his house.
Still, he sometimes browses Manhattan real estate listings.
“Finally getting on the property ladder?” Tom must have recognised the logo at the top of the page. He’s leaning over Greg’s shoulder before Greg has time to close the tab. “Bit out of your price range there, buddy.”
“I got… distracted.” Which isn’t even a lie. “But I am. Looking at options, that is. This was only meant to be temporary, anyway, and I don’t want to impose? Now that it’s not out of, uh, necessity.”
“You’re not imposing, Greg.”
“I love being roommates with you, Tom, I do.” It hits Greg that calling whatever it is they are roommates is possibly the worst euphemism in the history of avoidance. “But we can’t just be… roommates forever, can we?” It’s supposed to be rhetorical but it comes out sounding like an actual question.
“Why not?” Tom throws back, and his question hangs between them for a long moment. Before Greg can decide whether it was a joke or not, Tom says, “Don’t be ridiculous, Greg. I know you just moved in because mooching off me was your only choice to avoid mould-induced asthma but you can stay for as long as you want.”
“I could at least pay you rent? I know you don’t need it, but…”
Tom puts up a hand. “Five million is nothing, and I don’t want you to burn through it like wildfire.”
“Well, it’s not nothing, Tom, it’s almost what you make in a quarter?”
Tom throws him a dirty look.
“Regardless. You should be thinking about investing wisely and collecting that compound interest, not blowing all your returns on rent, you financial heathen!”
And that was that.
Which is why, since moving out or paying his way is apparently not an option, Greg tries to make himself useful in ways he didn’t before, like buying Tom dinner, or ordering a couple of cases of Tom’s favourite Bordeaux, or paying for Mondale’s ridiculously fancy groomer (should a dog’s haircut cost more than his own? It’s a question for the ages).
It’s small things, at first. Tom has taken up the habit of drinking Armagnac as a nightcap instead of whiskey so when he notices the bottle running low, he makes a mental note to replace it – but the next night there’s a brand-new bottle of Dartigalongue sitting next to the almost-empty one. He assumes there must have been a spare one in the pantry that he forgot about it and doesn’t give it another thought.
Then one random Friday night he’s with Greg at the newest it-spot in town, and they've been ordering too-sweet cocktails with increasingly ridiculous names that got funnier to pronounce the more they drank. Some of them turned out to be undrinkable and were abandoned after a couple of sips but they just kept ordering more and more and their table is now a rainbow of elaborate concoctions in glasses of all shapes and sizes. When the waitress leaves an ornate box in front of Tom and he opens it to settle the tab, he doesn't find his own card inside but a black Amex belonging to Gregory J. Hirsch instead. Greg sheepishly reaches into his pocket and hands Tom the card that he had opened the tab with when they arrived.
“Uh, I... um. I swapped it for my own card earlier. My treat.”
Something contracts around Tom’s stomach that may or may not be connected to the alcohol.
He puts it out of his mind until the following week, when they’re having dinner at Allora and Greg he insists on picking up the bill. Tom is mildly horrified, because they have gone through two whole bottles of Brunello and ordered three different things with white truffle, which were delicious, of course, but everyone knows it’s just an excuse to charge double on any dish. They squabble over the bill for a bit and then Greg says, almost shyly, “Let me, Tom, please? I want to, now that I can afford it.” And that shuts Tom right up. Firstly because he’s never been able to deny anything Greg has ever openly requested, and secondly because it hits him that… it’s true.
When it happens again a couple of weeks later, Tom starts feeling a little off kilter. It escalates slowly but surely until one day Tom realises they’ve been paying for their nights out pretty much evenly. Beyond setting up a couple of meetings with his accountant and his private banker, Tom hasn’t really been involved in the day to day of Greg’s newfound fortune, but he knows enough to have an idea of what Greg can and cannot afford. And yet. He’s surprised every time, as if Greg was an actor answering his cues with lines from a new script no one had bothered giving Tom.
Back when Greg had first started working at Waystar, he enjoyed Tom taking him out to lunch or dinner essentially because of the free food in restaurants he could never have afforded on his own. Nowadays, he does enjoy the food, probably more so that before, since his palate is at this point almost overeducated (not that he would ever admit that to Tom), but definitely not because it’s free. In fact, he’s been trying to pay for as many meals as Tom will allow. But above all, he enjoys the company (not that he would ever admit that to Tom, either). He likes spending time with Tom out of the office, which is an insane thing to think when they not just work together, but also share a house, so they basically spend every waking hour in each other’s company.
And yet, since Tom became CEO, their little restaurant outings have become one of the few times they’re on their own in public. Greg is fully aware of how stupid it is to be annoyed at the fact that, now that Tom is suddenly a Big Deal, people tend to stop by their table and interrupt their meal. They are usually sent on their way after a quick exchange of pleasantries, but sometimes, another Big Deal will stop by their table and it’s not just the conversation, but the actual dinner that gets interrupted, like right now when Tom stands up to greet a silver-haired guy Greg vaguely recognises and his wife.
“Tom! So great to run into you,” he’s saying in a British accent, “I actually meant to call you before we fly back home, to know what your guy in Brussels is doing about this new bullshit EU directive.”
Greg politely introduces himself to his wife, who in turn tells her to call her Rachel, and resigns himself to making awkward small talk with her while Tom seems to be more and more immersed in a conversation about satellites. Unfortunately, there’s only so many comments about the restaurant and the weather that Greg can come up with, so he’s soon left shuffling in place, looking anxiously at Tom, mentally begging him to end the conversation.
“See, this is why it’s important to have an exit strategy ready,” a voice says to his right.
Greg’s head whips to finds Rachel giving him an amused look. “Wh— excuse me?”
“You need an exit strategy for when they get like this,” she explains with a nod towards Tom and her husband, “or you’ll be standing here all night while your food gets cold.”
“Well, it’s… it’s carpaccio? So, it’s fine? I mean, of course it would be even if it wasn’t… um, already cold.”
She laughs and pats his elbow. “You’re too polite, Greg. Hence the exit strategy. Wendi was the one to teach me this trick.”
“Wendi?” Greg asks.
“I know!” She says and laughs again, as if Greg had made a great joke. “But she’s surprisingly nice when you get to know her. Anyway, now I’m passing it onto you, I guess.” Her smile seems authentic, like she somehow seems to think Greg is in the same boat as herself and Wendi Murdoch, which is something Greg can’t even begin to unpack.
“Anyway, what you need is an exit strategy with a sort of urgency scale. Mine goes from a soft nudge,” she says and demonstrates, gently squeezing her husband’s elbow. Without looking, he reaches towards her and absently pats the small of her back but doesn’t interrupt whatever he’s saying to Tom or even turn around. Rachel looks pointedly at Greg, “This doesn’t usually work unless he wants to leave himself. And then from there it can get more and more obvious until you reach something like pretending the nanny just texted me saying she’s taking one of the girls to hospital. But I only recommend that if it’s absolutely necessary to leave, like say if he’s talking to a politician close to re-election.”
Greg can’t help it, he lets out a weird bark of laughter, and Rachel joins in, delighted. It’s loud enough that Tom and his new best friend finally stop talking and turn to look at them.
“Oh, good, you’re done talking shop then?” Rachel says without missing a beat. “Lovely to see you again, Tom. And lovely to meet you, Greg, I’m sure I’ll see you around.” She leans closer to him and whispers, “Good luck coming up with your own exit strategy.” And with a wink, she’s walking ahead of her husband, who can only shake Tom’s hand hurriedly and scurry behind her towards the door.
“What were you two gossiping about?” Tom asks as they sit back down.
“Oh. Well.” Greg adjusts his shirt collar. “She… uh. She seemed to be under the impression that you and me… well. That we, um, that…”
Tom’s furrowed brow suddenly clears. “Oh. Oh. That’s…” He takes a nervous sip of his wine. “They live in London, so they’re not… well.”
Greg nods vigorously, as if Tom had made actual sense. “No, totally. She just assumed because she didn’t know that you’re divorced. From, you know, Shiv. A woman?” Belatedly, he realises he’s just making everything worse. “I mean… I didn’t mean…”
“Shall we order some more wine?” Tom interrupts him, a little too loudly.
Tom’s looking about as flustered as Greg feels. It’s not the first time someone else makes an assumption. It’s not even the second or the tenth or possibly the hundredth. And every time it happens Greg’s embarrassment seems to gets worse. Probably because while the assumptions are wrong on the surface, they aren’t that far off in the underneaths. He’s aware that their relationship is more than a little… well. Complicated. And he’s never quite sure how much is his own fault, or whether it’s a shared culpability. Tom has never said anything, but what is there to say, anyway, when he’s the one constantly touching Greg, and Greg is the one constantly pretending that there’s nothing odd about it. So it’s no one’s and everyone’s fault, like most things in life.
Still, when his zabaione arrives, he pushes it across the tablecloth towards Tom as a peace offering. Tom takes a huge spoonful and his eyes flutter a little, which makes Greg think thoughts he had just agreed with himself to resolutely not think.
Greg wonders if at some point either of them will suddenly grow the courage to address the elephant in the room – and he really hopes it's not him.
Of all the possible ways for Tom to find out Greg has been lying to his face for months on end, his mother inadvertently dropping a bomb on his head is probably the most ridiculous.
Tom is just on the phone with her and happens to mention Greg is walking Mondale because if there is one trick that dog knows how to nail is identifying the weakest person in the house and making sad eyes at them until they inevitably cave to whatever he’s begging for.
“Wait, Greg’s still living with you? I figured he would’ve bought a swanky apartment on Fifth Avenue by now.”
Tom chuckles. “I don’t know how far you think five million will take you in New York, Mommy, but it’s nowhere near the Upper East Side.”
“Well, sure, but he has something like fifty, doesn’t he?”
“What? No, it’s…”
“You might be right, he gets five now? I thought it was ten upfront, then he can request distributions for particular things, like real state purchases? But I might be misremembering.”
Tom is speechless.
“Tommy?”
“Yeah, the… distributions. You’re right. I didn’t think of that.”
“I mean, no sane trustee would sign off on him spending the entire inheritance on a single purchase, but I’m sure he can find something in his price range,” she says with a chuckle.
Tom is quiet for too long. “Tommy?”
“Yeah?”
“I mean,” Martha starts to say, in a softer voice, “that’s only assuming moving out is what he wants to do, of course. What you both want?”
The back of his neck prickles uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”
Now it’s his mother who stays silent for a little too long. “Nothing. I just… you know you can call me anytime to talk about anything at all, don’t you, baby?”
“What?”
“I know opening up to one’s own mother is hard, but think of it like this, I’m in family law. I’ve seen it all, Tommy.”
Tom is too busy reeling from the news to really parse her meaning. “Um, of course. You… you really have, haven’t you?”
He cuts the conversation short after that. He needs to think.
Almost forensically, he starts re-evaluating every interaction with Greg since Ewan’s death that he can remember, every little thing. Like when he had taken Marianne to Paris for her birthday… Tom had assumed it was just a figure of speech, that Marianne was the one footing the bill even though Greg had planned the surprise trip, but maybe… maybe it wasn’t. Maybe when Greg had said that the trip was his present, he had meant just that. That it was his fucking present. As in he was paying for it.
Tom is self-aware enough to know that he enjoyed the sense of superiority brought by throwing around his money for Greg’s benefit and that he’s unsure how to navigate their relationship now.
The truth is, Greg could move out, buy his own apartment, pay for his own dinners, find his own tailor, plan his own holidays in Europe. There’s nothing Tom can give him now. Nothing to bribe him with so that he stays. Not even his job, because one day soon he might decide he doesn’t want to work with Tom anymore either. He might decide he doesn’t want to work at all.
It’s not the first time Tom experiences the feeling of someone who depended on him suddenly not needing him anymore, and he’s surprised to find that it doesn’t become any easier to handle the second time around. Shiv needed Tom when they met – in retrospect, he sees that it was the entire unhealthy basis for their relationship, clinging to Tom in order to climb out of the pit of despair he had found her in. But as soon as Tom was done helping her to reach the surface, she started to pull away. He doesn’t feel quite that way with Greg yet, but he probably will soon. Perhaps, like Shiv, Greg will also start resenting Tom for having ever needed him in the first place.
Tom stopped berating himself for comparing his relationship with Greg to his relationship with Shiv a long time ago. He knows what it means. It was pure coincidence, a sort of narrative device almost, that Greg would choose to walk into his life on the very day when the chain of events that signalled the beginning of the end of his relationship with Shiv was set in motion.
If he were so inclined, he might call it fate. If he were three glasses into a bottle of red, he’d definitely call it fate.
Suddenly, there’s a small commotion at the door and Greg walks in with Mondale, cheeks flushed from the cold, the dog circling him hoping to get his toy back. He smiles brightly at Tom and Tom smiles back, unbidden.
Tom is very good at ignoring things, when he wants to, so he can pretend he doesn’t hear a clock ticking.
It hits Tom at random moments, and when it does it’s all he can think about.
Like right now. It’s ridiculously late, they’re eating takeout for dinner in Tom’s office and they still have at least a good couple of hours of going through figures before they’re ready for the meeting with Lukas tomorrow. And Tom thinks, ‘why is Greg here?’. He doesn’t need to be. He could walk out right now and never work again a day in his life. There was a point, a long, long time ago, almost like a different lifetime, when Greg needed his job and clearly was willing to do whatever it took to either keep it or ideally trade it for something better.
And he had. Done whatever it took, that is. Sometimes even at Tom’s expense.
“If I’d told you it was gonna be me, what would you have done?” The question tumbles out of Tom’s mouth before he can stop it.
“What?”
“That night before… everything. When I had dinner with Lukas and you came over for drinks, if I’d told you that he’d offered me the job, what would you have done?”
Greg looks absolutely terrified and Tom wants to yell, ‘what are you even scared of? You shouldn’t care about being fired anyway’.
Instead, he asks again, “Would you have sold me out to the siblings?”
Greg looks Tom straight in the eye, and for some insane reason he reaches for Tom’s hand and squeezes it once, hard. “No. No. I only did it because I didn’t know it was you. If I’d known…” After a long silence, he asks the question it’s clear he’s been dying to ask for a while. “Why did you scare me for no reason instead of telling me the truth?”
“I wanted…” Tom rubs his eyes tiredly. “I wanted you to think you owed me. That you had to stick with me, be grateful when I swooped in and saved your neck.”
“Or, you could’ve trusted me instead.”
Tom makes a pained face.
“I never would’ve called Ken if I’d known it was you, Tom. You do understand that, don’t you?”
Tom shrugs.
“No, Tom, listen, it’s important to me that you know that.” And he does look as if it suddenly was the most important thing in the world.
“I…” Tom doesn’t really know what to tell him. “You did what you had to do, Greg. I forgive you, if that’s what you want to hear. I understand, I do.” He might’ve even done the same, if their roles were reversed. Or maybe not. But Greg doesn’t need to know that.
“No, clearly you don’t. Listen, I want you to forgive me for almost ruining it for you because I was an idiot, but you don’t get to forgive me for betraying you because I didn’t, Tom. I never…” Greg lets out an exasperated huff. “Why didn’t you trust me to have your back?”
Tom is thrown off at the sudden change of tack. “Because that’s not your job, Greg.”
“What?”
“I take care of you. That’s why you stick with me. That’s why you need me.” A pause. “Needed me.”
Greg looks at him questioningly. It should be the perfect time to come clean, but Tom is too tired to find the courage. He probably couldn’t find the courage even if he wasn’t. One of his underlings walks in with the graphs he had asked for earlier and Tom sighs, relieved.
The funniest part about Greg and Willa becoming close friends is that, other than Connor and maybe Tom, literally no one noticed it happening in the background quite simply because no one cared enough to look. Perhaps even funnier is that they had become friends at all, after their disastrous first conversation. But the truth was that they genuinely liked each other, and who in their position wouldn’t need a sympathetic ear from time to time, someone who knew exactly what life inside the Roy family asylum felt like and (almost certainly) wouldn’t use any information to stab you later.
Willa had even mellowed a little towards Tom, partly because Greg had begged her to give him a chance and simultaneously begged Tom to be on his best behaviour around her. Which made the sporadic dinners the four of them had at Connor’s insistence a little less frosty, at least. Not that Connor would’ve minded, because the reason for inviting them in the first place was trying to convince Tom to make ATN endorse his newfound senatorial hopes. (The scary part was that he actually has a shot of winning, with or without Tom’s intervention.)
Willa has been eyeing Greg ever since they sat down, either because she’s scarily good at reading people or because Greg’s acting weird. Probably the latter.
“So, I need to tell you something, but you have to promise not to judge,” Greg says, nervously drumming his fingers on the table.
Willa raises her eyebrows. “When have I ever…”
Greg looks at her pointedly. “Well, you have, on occasion, voiced some very negative opin—”
“Saying you’re stuck in a codependent psychosexual relationship with your boss isn’t judging, Greg, it’s just giving an accurate description.”
“Shhhh!” Greg hisses, frantically looking around them, but the restaurant is half-empty on a Tuesday evening, and they’re tucked away from prying eyes and ears in a quiet corner booth. “Willa, please don’t.”
“Okay, okay, but you’re just silencing me because you know I’m right.”
“This is not about that, anyway.”
Willa leans towards him and lays a comforting hand on his arm. “Sorry? Come on, tell me everything.”
And so Greg takes a deep breath and does. He tells her everything. The trip to Canada, the change in the will, Ewan’s letter… and how he doesn’t really want anyone to know. She mostly stays silent through Greg’s speech, only urging him on with a soft hand on his arm when one of his pauses grows a little too long.
“But…” she finally says, frowning, “I don’t understand, the siblings are bound to find out through your mom anyway? Or some other way, the shareholder list or something?”
“Yeah, eventually, but… I just don’t want things to change.”
“What do you mean you don’t want things to change, you’ve been whining about wanting things to be different since I met you!”
“Yeah, no, it’s just… I’m at a good place, finally? I don’t want to shake things up, at least until I’ve figured out what I want to do.”
“Like quitting your job?”
“Yeah, thing is… I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m not even sure I’d want to, actually, I mean, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but not working at all can make people, um …”
“Want to do things they’re absurdly unqualified for, like running for the highest office in the land?”
Greg laughs. “Yeah.”
“Fair enough.”
“I need to figure out what I want to do with my time now that I’m not doing it for money.”
Willa nods approvingly but after a moment she looks confused. “But wait, why haven’t you moved out then?”
Greg scratches his chin and starts playing with the chopsticks. “I mean, you know what house hunting is like in the city, and I could never afford that place on my own, inheritance or not. And also I would really miss Mondale, you know?”
Willa makes a face. “You would miss… Mondale?”
“Yeah. And the house.”
“Greg.”
“And also um. I haven’t told Tom.”
“About not wanting to move out?”
“No, about… the money. He doesn’t know.”
“He doesn’t know?!” Willa is loud enough that a waiter looks in their direction.
“Um. No.”
“When you said you didn’t want anyone to know, I didn’t think it included…” She shakes her head as if to clear it. “Explain. Right now.”
“He assumed I was only getting what my mom had told me about, and it never seemed like the right time to tell him, so…”
“Sweetie, please don’t take this the wrong way, but your grandfather died four months ago, I find it just a tiny bit,” she elongates the words and pinches her fingers close together in the most annoying way possible, “hard to believe you couldn’t find a single appropriate moment in the almost twenty-fours a day the two of you spend together in order to casually slip into the conversation something like, ‘oh, guess what, I’m rich now’”.
“Well, I’m not really rich, compared to…” Greg makes a waving motion with his hand that could mean anyone in their immediate family, really.
“That’s so not the point.”
“I know, I know,” he says and sighs heavily. “I just… I don’t know how.”
“No. You know how. You literally just told me. You obviously don’t want to tell him. And now I need to find out why.”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’m a smart girl, why don’t you give it a go.”
“He might… ask me to move out?”
Willa snorts. “Nice try. That man would probably cry himself to sleep every night and blast Adele on repeat if you got your own place.”
Greg sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It would, I don’t know, it would change things between us, I think?”
“You think he wouldn’t be happy for you? If he clings to that seat for a couple of years he’ll be far richer than you.”
“No, no, I think he would be really happy for me, like, in theory.”
“As opposed to being happy in practice? What does that even…”
“Forget it, it’s stupid.”
“Ah no, no, no. You know the rules. You start spilling the tea, you have to empty the full teapot.”
“Literally no one says that. And also I regret ever agreeing to those rules.”
“I know.”
He takes a fortifying breath. “Tom is a very nurturing person, actually? No, don’t laugh, you asked!”
“No, you know what, on second thought, I see it. Very Midwestern. I should know. Go on.”
“And I think to a certain extent he feels responsible for me?”
“As in…”
“Like, he looks out for me, has since the beginning?”
“Yes, because he’s in love with you.”
“Willa! I’m trying to be serious!”
“Sorry, sorry, low hanging fruit!”
“Anyway, he has always taken care of me, even when it’s in his own…” Willa opens her mouth but before she can finish his sentence, Greg adds, “his own peculiar way.”
“And?”
“Well, what if once I tell him about the money, he just… stops? What if he’s all ‘well, Gregory, now you’re not a hapless duckling anymore, time to spread your overgrown wings and fly solo!’ after I tell him?”
Willa’s face goes through several different expressions before settling on pity. “Honey…”
“Yeah, I know, pathetic.”
“No!” She takes both of his hands on top of the tablecloth. “No. Greg, honey, listen. And I can’t believe I’m about to say something nice about Tom fucking Wambsgans, I’ll need a stiff drink to get the taste off my mouth. Anyway, the reason he does all of those things is because he cares about you, a lot, and that’s the only way he can express it?”
“Nah, I think he just feels responsible.”
Willa groans. “Greg!”
“What? He does, I think.”
“Fine, let’s leave his feelings aside. Let’s talk about yours.”
“I don’t—” He starts to protest, but the withering look Willa gives him is enough to shut him up.
“Here’s the deal. Either you tell him about the money, or you tell him about how you feel about him. Or, ideally, both.”
“But—”
“Would you rather he randomly found out from someone else?”
“God no, that would be… that would be the worst.”
“Good, that’s settled then.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“Well, I promise that, if it goes wrong, which it won’t,” she adds quickly at Greg’s panicked eyes, “I will visit as many open houses with you and introduce you to as many cute men as it takes to find you a home, a boyfriend, or both.”
As he hugs her goodbye, Greg admits to himself that she’s right. He’ll tell Tom on Sunday. There’s nothing urgent going on, so they probably won’t need to go back to the office at all, and Tom will be in a good mood. Hopefully. And if it all goes to hell, he can hand in his resignation first thing Monday. He decides to walk a few blocks while he comes up with a good speech. He tries not to worry too much when, by the time he starts feeling the cold air seeping into his bones and hails a cab, he isn’t any closer to finding the right words.
It is a bit ridiculous, really, that a coat brings it all to a head. Or fittingly ridiculous, perhaps, that of all things, it should be a fucking coat that makes Tom finally lose his shit.
It’s a crisp but sunny Sunday morning and for once, they have a quiet day completely free of work obligations ahead of them, which almost never happens, so after breakfast they decide to take Mondale on a long walk, all the way across the park, and stop for coffee at the small specialty place Tom loves.
Greg is wearing… well, there’s no way to describe it other than as a beautiful coat. More than beautiful. It’s perfect. The fabric, the colour, the fit. Tom knows exactly how much it costs because he had looked at it idly then decided it wasn’t really for him, that it would look much better on someone built like Greg. The irony is almost too much to bear.
They’re on their way back, barely a block until they make it home, and Tom feels himself grow increasingly restless. He throws away his paper coffee cup with enough force that it makes a weird sound as it hits the metal.
Greg is reaching into his pocket to produce one of those ridiculously fancy treats he always carries around for Mondale. From the pocket of his perfect fucking coat, which is approximately the price of three metric tonnes of healthy dog treats.
“You should stop giving him treats for no reason, it encourages bad behaviour,” Tom hears himself say is a petulant voice, out of nowhere.
If Tom wasn’t so angry he would find the way both Greg and Mondale throw him confused looks endearing.
“But you know I always give him a treat after long walks?”
“Well, you shouldn’t,” Tom snaps back and picks up a faster pace.
When they get home Tom rushes up to the door but Greg stops at the bottom of the steps, frowning. “Where is this coming from?” he asks.
“It’s nothing,” Tom answers impatiently. “Let’s go.”
Greg reluctantly walks up the steps, but can’t seem to let it go. “Well, it’s obviously something, if you’re so worked up about it?”
Tom sighs as he opens the door and steps inside the house. “It’s… it’s your fucking coat, Greg,” he says, turning around in the foyer to glare at Greg.
“My coat?” He looks at the coat he just hung on the coat stand. “You don’t like my coat?”
“No, Greg, exactly the opposite,” Tom says angrily as he walks into the living room and carelessly throws his own coat on the nearest chair. “It’s the perfect fucking choice. Great cut. Cashmere. The colour even matches your eyes. If you’d given me the entire Brunello catalogue, I would’ve picked that exact fucking winter jacket for you.”
“So… the problem is that you do like the coat?”
“The problem is that I didn’t fucking buy it!” Tom yells, out of nowhere.
“Wh—”
“You can buy yourself a million cashmere coats, Greg! You can upholster an entire motherfucking apartment in cashmere if you so wish!”
“That seems a bit unnecessary?” Greg says hesitantly and takes a couple of steps towards Tom.
“That’s not the point!”
“Somehow I feel like we’re not talking about designer outerwear anymore, but I don’t know wh—”
“I know, Greg.”
“What?”
“I know about Ewan’s will.”
A very long pause follows, in which neither of them move, staring at each other, frozen.
“How did you find out?” Greg finally says, breaking the silence.
“How did I… seriously? That’s your question?”
“No, I mean… I just…” Greg raises his hands in a placating gesture.
Tom ignores him. “So what was this, huh? Some big… I don’t know, elaborate joke to keep you entertained? One last hurrah before dumping the punchline on me and retiring into a life of leisure?”
“A life of… what?”
“Well, my sincerest apologies for cutting the charade short. You can fuck off now. You’re finally free of me, fucking act like it.”
“I… what?
“You don’t need me for anything, Greg. You don’t even need me to keep your job because you don’t need a fucking job in the first place!”
“Tom.”
“Or perhaps, do you want me to fire you, get that absurd severance package I wrestled out of HR for you, to complement your meagre allowance?”
“Yeah, well, fuck you, Tom!”
“Fuck me? Fuck you! Are you even gonna say, huh? Why you did this?”
“Why I… I don’t know, I…”
“Oh, fuck off, don’t play coy with me, you piece of shit.”
“I just… I didn’t know how to tell you, Tom.”
“You didn’t… what?”
“I never… I never know how you’re gonna react? About anything?”
Tom purses his lips in disagreement but says nothing.
“And also you’re… really weird about money?”
“Excuse me? I am the one who's weird about money?”
“You liked the idea of me owing you, you said it yourself!”
“That’s diff—”
“No it’s not! It’s the same shit, you just…” Greg knows he’s about to cross into a territory which they’ve both studiously avoided if he says his next words. “Admit it, you wouldn’t like it if I stopped being a poor hapless street urchin!”
“Are you insane?” Tom yells, predictably. “I was relieved when I thought you were getting at least something from Ewan, how can you even…”
And the thing is, Greg is pretty sure that’s true, he needs to admit, albeit reluctantly. But he’s still angry, so instead he says, “Relieved because I stopped being your responsibility?”
Tom’s nose flares. “You’re an asshole.”
“Maybe I am. But you’re obsessed with money.”
Tom lets out a nasty laugh. “So are you, you fucking leech!”
“No, Tom, you’re so obsessed with money, that you…” Greg feels as if he could physically see the line in the sand that he’s about to cross. “That you’ve convinced yourself the reason why it didn’t work out with Shiv is because she held all the power, and not because she fucking despised you.”
“What the fuck do you even know about my marriage, Greg? Or any marriage, for that matter? You, the relationship expert? Don’t make me laugh!”
“I’m an expert in you, you asshole. Just because you didn’t care to learn anything about me after all this time doesn’t mean…”
Tom laughs. “You think I don’t know you?”
Greg juts out his chin, defiantly.
“Fine! How’s this for not knowing The Mysterious Mr. Hirsch. Money is control, and you’re fucking terrified of being in control, Greg.” He’s advancing towards Greg as he speaks, and his voice gets dangerously low. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell me, isn’t it? Because control means responsibility, and if you didn’t tell me you could keep on pretending everything that happens in your life is someone else’s fault. Logan’s, Ewan’s… mine. Anyone else’s but yours, because that would mean you’re a fucking adult, Greg, and you’re nowhere near ready for that, are you?”
“You take that back.”
“Take it back? What are you, twelve?”
Greg walks up to him and shoves him against the chest, hard. “Take it back.”
Tom lets out a nasty laugh. “Or what?”
“You fucking asshole, I’m gonna…” Greg shoves him again, harder. Except, instead of pushing Tom away, his hands are somehow gripping Tom’s shirt instead.
Tom’s eyes are ridiculously wide. They’re both panting in anger, and absurdly, Greg thinks how, if there is truly no coming back from this fight, it might be the last time they ever stand this close to each other. It’s a terrifying thought. Terrifying enough for him to pull Tom closer, and for some reason, Tom lets himself be pulled.
Tom knows it’s about to happen a second before it does. He could’ve stopped it but he doesn’t want to, if he’s being honest. And if this is the last time ever that he’s alone in a room with Greg, it won’t matter either way.
And so he lets himself be pulled closer by his shirt, until their chests are brushing. They’re both still panting, and Greg’s angry face is almost too close to see his expression clearly beyond the wild look in his eyes.
Tom knows it’s about to happen so he decides to fall into it, and kisses Greg, almost collapsing against his mouth. Greg makes a weird sound and it’s not surprise, not really, it can’t be, but soon he’s kissing Tom back and making other, much more interesting noises instead. After a moment, they start pawing at each other’s clothes and fall onto the sofa, Greg on top of Tom in a tangle of limbs.
Over the years and relationships, Tom has fought after having sex and has had sex after a fight, but this… it’s impossible to tell the difference. Somehow it’s more fighting than fucking but Tom doesn’t really care because either way it’s the most exhilarating feeling he’s ever experienced. He would never allow himself to be this rough with a woman but this feels right and Greg seems to like it, to welcome it, to be more than happy to fight back. It is also neither the first time he kisses a man nor the first time he kisses someone he’s in love with, and again, it feels like neither, or both, or something completely different.
Tom is so caught up in kissing Greg that he doesn’t notice Greg snaking a hand into his boxers and gasps in surprise when Greg touches him, breaking the kiss. Greg grips his cock almost a little too tight and Tom lets out a guttural moan. Greg is staring down at him, eyes blown wide and hair sticking in every direction from someone frantically running his hands through it and Tom deliriously thinks, ‘I did that, that was me’.
Greg is jerking him off almost like he wants it to hurt, like he’s punishing Tom, like this is an extension of their fight, and every time Greg twists his fist just so Tom has a tougher and tougher time remembering what it was that they were fighting about in the first place.
The pace Greg sets is relentless. Tom tries to slow him down by pulling him in by the neck and kissing him, but somehow Greg has apparently been a secret handjob savant this entire time because he manages to kiss Tom until he’s almost dizzy from a lack of air while simultaneously jerking him off as if he wanted Tom to come in the shortest time possible. Tom is about to say something when he feels the familiar tingle in his stomach and can immediately tell it’s too late. Before he knows it, he’s coming all over Greg’s hand and still he continues to stroke Tom’s cock until he’s done and beyond, until it becomes almost painful and Tom tries to push him off. Only then does Greg stop and pull back for a moment but before Tom can ask him what he wants, he feels Greg rubbing his erection against Tom’s thigh. Tom bends his knee and starts moving against Greg a little too roughly, and now Greg is riding his thigh in earnest, his forehead pressed against Tom’s so his ragged, desperate breaths blow against Tom’s cheek and Tom thinks he might not survive this because his spent cock is twitching just from the sensation.
Greg starts to make increasingly impatient noises and ruts even harder against Tom’s thigh, so Tom decides to help him along and slides his hands down Greg’s back until he’s gripping Greg’s ass so hard he’s sure he’s leaving bruises. He doesn’t even have time to do anything else because Greg lets out a high-pitched moan and comes all over Tom’s thigh.
“I wish I’d bought that coat sooner,” Greg says, once their breathing is back to normal. He still hasn’t moved from where he collapsed on top of Tom after coming.
Tom chuckles softly and rubs Greg’s back once. “Yeah,” he says, and it’s a testament to how well Greg can read him that he knows there’s something more there.
“What?” Greg asks, lifting his head from Tom’s shoulder to look him in the eye.
“Nothing.”
“Come on, tell me,” Greg insists and prods Tom’ calf with his foot
“It’s not the coat, Greg,” Tom finally answers. “I mean it is, but… well. You know.”
“I really don’t, Tom.”
Tom sighs deeply. “I would’ve bought you that fucking coat.”
“You can buy me… other coats? If it’s that important to you?”
“It’s not…” Tom starts to say but instead of saying anything else he shifts until Greg is no longer on top of him and they move back until they are both leaning against opposite sides of the sofa.
“Tell me?” Greg says and reaches out to take Tom’s hand in his. “I wanna understand,” he adds, because he truly does.
Tom is silent for a long moment, staring at their joint hands. “Listen, I… I’m aware you just moved in with me because you didn’t have anywhere else to go, but I… I don’t want you to move out, even if you don’t need to live here.”
“Tom, people shouldn’t…” Greg starts but stops, hesitating. “People shouldn’t stay just because they need something. They should stay because the very idea of leaving sounds horrible.”
Tom lets out a bitter laugh. “But you see, Greg, the problem is that what I want is for you to stay because it’s me who needs something, I’m the one for whom the idea of leaving sounds horrible.”
“What are you saying?”
“I know you don’t need me anymore, for anything, I know that, but I… I do need you, Greg.”
“And what exactly makes you think I don’t need you?”
“Fifty million reasons?”
Greg sighs, exasperated. “It’s not about the money, Tom.”
Tom laughs bitterly, missing the point, probably. “But it is. It always has been, since we met. Both of us have spent way too much of our lives obsessing about money to pretend it doesn’t matter, Greg.” Yes, squarely missing the point.
“It does matter, but not… not for this. Not just… this,” he gestures between them and their rumpled, half-off clothes, “but this,” he says waving his arms wide to indicate the entire house. “All of it.”
“I don’t understand, what are you getting out of this? What’s your angle?”
“There is no angle. Being here is the angle, Tom.”
“But… why?”
Greg doesn’t want to say the words, was prepared to go to his grave without ever voicing them out loud, but he knows Tom needs to hear them, and he knows he needs to give Tom the proverbial wine bottle after lying for so long. That’s the whole point. Trusting the other person not to smash it on your head at the worst possible moment.
“Because I… well.” Knowing he needs to say the words doesn’t make it any easier to get them out. “Because I love you?”
Tom swallows. “You’re asking me?”
Greg laughs. “No. I…” he takes a deep breath and tries again. “Because I’m in love with you.”
Tom’s eyes are suspiciously bright and watery, but he continues to stare at Greg.
“Don’t move out. Please.”
“This whole mess started because I didn’t want to, so… no need to ask?”
“No, but I need to. Ask, I mean. I want to ask you. Please don’t move out.”
Greg smiles. “Of course not,” he says and kisses Tom.
After a while, Greg says, “What happens next?”
“Well, we could still go for that late lunch at Orsay.”
“Or…” Greg says, looking anywhere but at Tom, “or perhaps we could have lunch delivered and wait for it in bed instead?”
Tom just laughs.
It’s been about a month since… everything.
Greg isn’t sure what it means that the two most fundamental life-altering changes he’s experienced in the last six months haven’t altered his life that much. Well, that’s not exactly true. He’s in bed with Tom, the same bed where he has slept every day of the last month that they’ve both been in New York. They have their phones and iPads out and are trying to find four free days in a row, five if they’re being ambitious, to disappear somewhere warm together. It takes them thirty minutes and some creative rearrangement of schedules for the next few weeks, but they finally manage, and Tom drops his phone on the carpet next to the bed with a triumphant sigh.
“So, beyond four days of mojitos and uninterrupted sex, what's next for the not-so-secret millionaire?” Tom asks.
Greg just shrugs and makes a non-committal noise.
“Come on, don’t you want to just quit your job and have some fun? Do something wild?”
“Wild as in…”
“Well, maybe you’re too old for the trust fund baby lifestyle, but you could give it a go.”
“That’s not… not really my vibe?”
“So what’s your great plan, then?”
“Actually, I was thinking maybe… settle down?”
Tom raises his eyebrows. “Wow, don’t be so wild, grandma,” he deadpans.
Greg rolls his eyes. “Come on, would that something you’d be interested in?”
“What, watching you throw away your last chance at youthful debauchery? Not particularly.”
“No,” Greg says in an exasperated tone. “I meant… settling down.”
“I’m a divorced Fortune 500 CEO in my forties, I’m the definition of settled,” Tom says and reaches for the bottle of water on the night table.
“No, I meant… settling down as in… well, marrying me.”
Tom chokes on his water and starts coughing uncontrollably. Once he can breathe again, he says. “Ha! Got me there, well played.”
“I’m serious. Marry me.”
“Sure, Greg.”
“No, seriously. Marry me for my money, I don’t care. People do it every day.”
“That’s not funny, Greg. And I have a great sense of humour.”
“Fine. Then marry me for love?”
“Are you serious?”
“I know you’re the one with more experience at proposing, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m doing.”
“You’re doing it all wrong, Greg!”
“Well, the last two times you proposed it didn’t turn out too great, so I beg to differ.”
Tom looks at him scathingly but he just rolls his eyes.
“You’re insane. Money has gone to your head.”
“Aren’t you always saying I should make bolder choices? Come on, what do you say?”
“You can’t just…” Tom starts to say but then looks at Greg. “Fuck. Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Fuck it. Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you, you fucking idiot.”
“Seriously?”
“Why are you surprised, you’re the one who asked!”
“I thought it would take more convincing, to be honest.”
“Are you calling me easy?”
“Well, available evidence would sugg—”
“I can still change my mind, you know.”
Greg just smiles wide at him. “Nah, you won’t.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Tom grumbles and pushes him back onto the bed.
(“You know, Gregory, if I’m marrying a millionaire maybe I should get a prenup, make sure I get properly compensated, you know?”
“Oh— oh?”
“Yeah, and I happen to know a pretty good family lawyer, so I might just call her right now, if you don’t mind?”
“Oh— oh! Um, you think… you think she can advise us both, or is it a conflict of interest?”
“Well, she will certainly want to advise us both on how soon we should give her grandchildren, just so you know.”
“Yeah, I’m okay with that.”)
.