Chapter Text
There comes a time when you look into the mirror and realize that what you see is all that you will ever be — and then you realize that the desperation inside of you will never go away, because the root of it is, well... you.
From there on you become trapped at a fork in the road. One way leads to the acceptance of the fact that you will never change regardless of the combination of your efforts, struggles, blood, sweat and tears — while the other one leads to a dead end — a brick wall that's a hundred feet tall, surrounded by identical walls of the same sturdiness and height, and the only way you can possibly go is the way you came from, simply to appear at the same fork and choose the same very road that you know leads to a deadlock.
Kendall has been doing that for a month now — going in a circle over and over again, expecting a different result. He wastes at least half of his day lying in bed, unable to move, but also unable to sleep. Then, when he eventually needs to get up, he wastes time pacing. He wastes time thinking, getting into his swamp of a head so deeply he’s afraid he won’t be able to get out. He wastes time ignoring phone calls, because he's afraid that if he picks up he'll stutter. And, the most important of all, he wastes time living, because, to be brutally honest, his end had been signed and affirmed and fucking stamped with roses on top during that last meeting.
Kendall still has no idea why his rotten and purple carcass isn't floating somewhere in the Hudson. Maybe he was too much of a coward, maybe he knew deep inside Colin would never let him do it, maybe he wanted to wait a bit and see if everything truly was as hopeless as it seems.
In the end, none of that really matters, in fact — nothing does, because he is going to forcefully make it all end.
Kendall tried, and he was defeated. If anything, nobody can accuse him of not trying. He tried to stay for his children, but, honestly, that's a stupid thought. They probably hate him. Despise him. See him as something unworthy of their love, like— like broccoli or Justin Bieber or whatever it is kids their age hate. They are better off without him. Free of the burden of making small talk with him and pretending like they care about what he is up to or saying i love you when they don't really mean it. Soon enough they'll be richer than they can dream of being, and he would be a far away memory just like grandpa Logan.
He is going to commit suicide. Kill himself. Commit self-slaughter, self-murder, seppuku, harakiri, liven't — whatever, call it whatever you want.
These past few weeks he’s come to hate the term 'killing yourself', because he thought it was misleading. People don't kill themselves. They commit murder — technically premeditated murder, because it's an act you commit after careful planning and consideration, you do not jump into it the first time you think of it. You need the means, the reason, the opportunity, the plan. A suicide without a good plan is a failure, that's what it is. And if Kendall is anything, he’s a murderer.
Another point about the idea of suicide that Kendall hated was the selfish aspect of it, or, rather, the way others considered it selfish, when in reality it's another battle lost, only this time, it's the battle with your own body and mind. Kendall was defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, say — cancer, people opt to encourage the valiant efforts of the deceased "He fought so hard, he kept struggling until the very end," and they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is wrong. It’s so wrong it makes Kendall nauseous just thinking that someone may assume he gave up easily, while his whole life has been a battleground filled with the corpses of the better versions of himself he used to be.
The Japanese have always had the right idea about this. Suicide isn't selfish. What's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.
In his case, it doesn't even matter. Whom does he have? Nobody. No siblings, no mother, no father, no children, no wife, hell— even Jess left. Dad used to say, 'Money wins,' but money didn't win, not this time. Kendall is richer than he ever was, yet it’s all meaningless. Shiv won. Tom won. Roman won. Only Kendall lost.
Connor winning was the funniest of all, because he didn't even participate in the game, yet he was the most victorious of all.
Kendall has thought about it. Calling Rava and telling her it will all be different from now on. He is clean, the prime reason he relapsed is gone, he can be a good father and husband, if only she will let him, but every time his finger hovers over the call button his brain shoves images of her rejecting him over and over again, images of her pitiful looks, the lack of love in her eyes, maybe even disgust of his false promises, and then he pulls back, shrinks into himself and doesn't dare touch his phone for hours.
He can bear Rava berating him, cursing him, treating him like a wounded animal, even hating him, but seeing her loveless eyes? He cannot bear that. He just cannot.
Roman has called him a few times, Shiv hasn’t once, but mainly it's been Connor, calling five times a day at the same time, never missing once. Kendall knows he should be moved by this display of concern from his elder brother, the actual eldest son, but his calling him every day at the same time felt more like an act committed out of responsibility, something he felt like he had to do because that's what normal people, normal siblings do. It felt like a chore. As such he found it very hard to be consoled by the act.
Are they that incapable of being normal human beings? What is wrong with them? Or is it just him? Something irrevocably wrong and corrupted inside him, something so dark and broken and all around incorrect, imprecise, erroneous, amoral, deceitful, so deeply rooted inside of himself it's impossible to discern the man from the wrongness. He hates it. Oh, he hates it. He hates himself and everything that is incorrect with his soul. He can never come to accord with it, and so there's only one option remaining — erasing all that is wrong with himself, even if it takes the man along with the corruption.
He thought about shooting himself in the head, having all of his horrible thoughts and feelings explode out of his skull in a single moment of unapologetic selfishness, but it felt... wrong, because if there's poison inside of him, flowing through his veins, filling him up from head to toe, then he needs to let that poison out, let all that was wrong with him slowly trickle out into the cleansing water, his very essence going down the drain where it belongs. He thought about the way he was going to do it since the death of the waiter at Shiv's wedding, thought about jumping from the roof of Waystar most of the time, but the image of his body being a red splatter of meat and bones on the concrete was less than appealing. If he was going to die he would like his body to be relatively in one piece.
He chose this day for no particular reason. Not even a roll of the dice. He simply woke up in the morning, had his usual black coffee with a cigarette, and such desolation came upon him that he couldn’t bear the thought of waking up like this another time.
The tub is already full. He filled it up an hour ago. All he needs to do is climb into it and do the deed, which he’s sure he will. There’s been many times he’s chickened out or let luck decide his fate for him, but this time’s different. It’s real. It feels real. He doesn’t even have Logan to tether him to life anymore.
Kendall didn’t want anyone showing up uninvited at first, so he rented an apartment, and then he kept delaying going back to his house, and now he’s been here for the whole month. He doesn't know if his siblings tried reaching out to him in his actual house after failing to get to him via cell, and honestly he doesn't care much right now. It's all pointless. Shiv will probably dance on his grave the moment he’s gone. Roman might get sad, but he’ll bounce right back when he realises Kendall has been a cancerous tumour on their family this whole time. Caroline might not remember she had a son in the first place, and Connor won’t even care. They’ll be okay. He has set an alarm kind of thingy he found in App Store for 2.99$ that's gonna send a pin with his location to Connor in about ten hours along with a small note, he doesn't want to accidentally traumatize some poor housekeeper by forcing them to find him— him? Will it still be him at that point?
The image of his dead body floating in the tub is strange. The idea that it will be an empty husk makes him detached enough to not be too squeamish, yet it still sends shivers down his spine, his body's natural response to a very real threat to its existence. He sighs and brushes it off. That's just animal instincts, it'll pass.
Dragging his feet, Kendall submerges himself in the lukewarm water. He’s taken his shirt off prior to getting in, but he doesn't feel like taking off his pants, and he doesn't really get why people opt to be naked when slitting their wrists in the bathtub. Do they want people to find them with their dicks out? Isn't that embarrassing? It's not like they needed them to be off to wash themselves, that was not the point here. Do they just take them off out of instinct, because submerging yourself into the water with your clothes on rings a weird bell in your head that says it’s wrong? Maybe he should’ve gone for psychology in Harvard. He could’ve made an entire study exploring the connection of nakedness and suicide.
The water feels nice. It gradually relaxes his muscles and calms his mind. Water has always been an ally of his, allowing him to hide all of his anxieties and insecurities inside it, embracing him like he so desperately craves when no one else would. Now it will embrace him one last time. The warmth makes him feel like sleeping — preferably forever — but when he is about to make sure his sleep is eternal and uninterrupted, Kendall notices that he has forgotten to bring the most important piece — the razors.
"Come on!" he cries to the empty apartment in exasperation. He can't even kill himself with dignity.
The razors are under the mirror on the sink, he will have to get out to reach them.
With a roll of his eyes, he climbs out of the tub, dripping water everywhere, and clumsily reaches the razors, almost slipping on his way back to the tub. That's embarrassing. He's glad there's nobody around to witness yet another one of his blunders, and then he lets out a chuckle imagining himself dying on his way back to killing himself. That would've been ironic. The news and the tweets about how clumsy and cringe he was would be the thing legends were made of.
The ATN headlines will probably be along the lines of ‘Kendall Roy, forever fated to never reach his goal: loser billionaire dies in a freak accident before being able to kill himself’.
Shiv would absolutely love that.
Nevertheless, he successfully makes it back into the tub, opens one of the razors and puts it to his wrist.
He has researched about killing himself before actually trying to do so, but it was frustrating because most of the articles were riddled with 'it's not worth it' or 'please seek help'. He found out that cutting the veins in your arm is probably the worst way of killing yourself if you truly want to die, because it is both painful and susceptible to failure. Only about 6% of the people who try it end up dead. Though the biggest reason for failure is being found sooner than is needed, and if he eliminates that possibility, there's no clear reason he must fail.
It is time to go through with it.
The razor is so cold against his wrist, a clear contrast with the warm water, and Kendall involuntarily shivers. He really— really wants the all consuming gaping hole in his heart to go away, for him to be able to take a breath without it sucking everything and anything it comes in contact with. He wants to wake up in the morning and smile effortlessly. He wants to be able to look at passing cars without thinking if they could kill him at their current speed. He wants to look down a balcony and not see his body’s bloodied caricature at the bottom. He wants to stop being a vortex of nothing but failure and untapped potential. He wants to stop being.
This is it, this is how it ends. A lifetime of failure, pain and self-consciousness coming to a close by his own hand. It was no different than putting down a sick dog that has nothing more in this world but misery. He is a cog, a useless cog, nobody needs him, nobody cares about him, he is forgotten and abandoned and rusted, lying somewhere on the floor of an abandoned factory, never having gotten the chance to do his duty.
The first thought Kendall has as he drags the razor up his arm vertically is that the articles weren’t lying— this hurt like an absolute motherfucker. The cut up arm immediately feels more like a spaghetti noodle barely hanging from his shoulder, but he proceeds to take the razor and do the same with the other arm as fast as possible, so that he is done before losing all feeling in his injured hand.
Huh... is this it? He has never imagined that dying was so much easier than living. To live he had to eat, drink, keep his body and mind happy, deal with the daily annoyances of meeting his family and friends and assuring them he’s still a responsible adult, while dying simply demanded that he lie and sleep. Sleep... Sleep... he hasn't properly slept in so... so long.
The blood slips out, slightly warmer than the water, blooming with colour around him like a bath bomb. It's nice, in a way, though he's surprised it's still red and not green or black as he imagined the poison inside of him was. He needs it all to go. That is Logan's DNA, and it is poison. He is overwhelmingly glad his children do not share even a drop of the same genetic material that makes up his family, otherwise they'd be just as miserable and horrible as them.
He starts feeling faint in about ten minutes, or was it twenty, maybe it's been half an hour? He can't really tell. His hands don't feel like his hands anymore. The pain is there, but he's used to it already. He's been in pain most of his life, he can take another hour of it. The water is mostly red by now. Suddenly Kendall feels disgusted by it. Stupid corrosive material, how did he even live with that thing inside of him all those years? How could he bear having Logan's blood in his body?
He drifts in and out for a bit, trying to imagine all the good things he's had in his life: bringing Iverson and Sophie home, marrying Rava, dad promising him the company at seven years old, him and his siblings sharing a blunt and hugs, giving Shiv a piggy back ride when he was older and could finally take her up on his shoulders, playing hide and seek with Roman, Connor teaching him how to tie his tie for the first time. Him and Stewy hiding from everyone in the tree house and smoking the cigars Kendall had stolen from his dad. He desperately tries to find a single happy moment he's shared with his mother, but comes up blank. It's enough to sour his mood further.
He wishes he'd spent more time with Connor. He wishes he didn’t corrupt his friendship with Stewy.
And right as spots begin dancing in front of his vision, little stars that burst into colours and then turn black, he hears the most terrifying and gut wrenching sound — a knock.
Kendall's heart sinks. That one little sound is enough to bring up more terror inside him than the idea of dying. What is he supposed to do? Get out of the tub… somehow… and then go tell whoever it is to fuck off? Maybe he misheard? His head is not the cleanest of places right now, it's not out of the realm of possible that he's hearing stuff that's not real. But then another one sounds, and another one, and he faintly hears Roman's voice, but not loud enough to make out what he's saying.
How did he find him? What? It’s impossible. He’s probably developing schizophrenia in his forties like the damn loser he is. Is he already inside?
He didn't lock the door, of course, why would he? If they were to find him they will need to open the door somehow, and he doesn't want to cause anymore problem for the owner of the apartment than he is planning to. He is a fucking idiot, dad was right. Why would he care about something like that? The owner can just take it out of his bank account when he’s dead, literally nobody will care.
Kendall wants to do something, anything, take up the razor and cut his throat, the artery in his thigh, whatever would make him die instantly, but his hands won't listen, they're dead weight, and he's half awake and weak.
This was not supposed to happen. No—no, absolutely not. Please no. He knows what the consequences of this will be. If he survives, he will probably end up like Connor's mom, sent to a mental hospital and locked up for eternity, his siblings finally having a valid reason to be rid of him without the uncomfortable feeling of having killed him.
Oh, God. How did they find him? How is he going to look everyone in the eye again if he survives? Not an option, not an option, not an option.
The door to the bathroom swings open, and Kendall loses all hope as he, through his half-lidded eyes, meets the terrified ones of his younger siblings.
"—and you dragged me along here to do what exactly, Rome?" complained an exasperated and tired Shiv Roy to her elder and slightly less exasperated brother.
"Don't you wanna see how he's doing? Where's your sibling radar, Siobhan, i'm hurt."
"No?" said Shiv, dragging it out sarcastically, "he's probably nose deep in coke or someone's ass, or maybe nose deep in coke that's on someone's ass, I don't want to witness that—"
"Oh, come on, Shiv, you know he was never the sexual escapade type, he's too much of a pussy for that."
"Regardless," she sighs, "I don't want to be here, Rome, I—"
"Shiv," Roman says quietly, suddenly very serious, looking at the buttons of the elevator they were riding in to Kendall's floor, "are you really not worried, even a little?"
This admission surprises Shiv. Roman is the kind of guy that will deny, deny and deny that he held even a modicum of care for anybody in this world but himself. Shiv knows that's not true, because she's lived with Roman half of her life, but whenever he explicitly showed that he was concerned, it meant that he was panicking, straight up anxious.
"Why are you so worried?" Shiv sidesteps the question.
In truth, Shiv is worried. She's been worried about Kendall since the day they agreed to sell. It's just that... that she doesn't want to see the consequences of what it did to her brother, of what she did to her brother. She doesn't want to see him back at the jaws of addiction, and that's exactly what they're going to witness when they meet him.
In any case, it was her decision, and she stood by it. She did what was best for her, even if it hurt Kendall. Even if it destroyed Kendall. She did it because she knew that if their roles were reversed, Kendall would do the same. Except her whole personality and identity were not tied to the company, and taking it away from her would not evaporate her on the spot.
"This may... sound weird, but I have a bad feeling," admits Roman, as if caring for his own brother is some deeply rooted secret he only dares to share with his other sibling.
Shiv guffaws, "Really? That's it? That's why you've decided to stalk him here like some weird Japanese cartoon girl?"
"We haven't seen him for — how long it’s been — a month? Is it so strange that I want to know how he is or what he's up to?" Roman says, trying to defend his reasoning.
Shiv sucks in a harsh breath, “I don’t— I don’t get it, Rome, have you forgotten? Already? If you have, I will remind you: He popped the stitches on your head, he tried to strangle you, he pushed me while knowing perfectly well I was pregnant. Did he ask you or me if we were well after that? No. Did he say sorry? No. Did he try to make any sort of amend? No. So yes, Roman. It is strange that you want to know what he’s up to when we both know perfectly well what the answer to that question is.”
Shiv’s brutal rant leaves Roman speechless. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, but then swallows the self-depreciating bullshit which came to mind harder than he would swallow a cat.
Shiv notices that the upsurge of the pressure between them has reached levels that even the toughest of submarines would consider extreme, and quickly adds.
"Rome, it's Kendall, he'll bounce back, he always does. He's just gone and hid himself to lick his wounds and get high."
Except what Shiv doesn’t say is that the reason Kendall always bounced back was because he had something to bounce back for.
Roman stays silent as the elevator swings open. She could very well be right. Kendall could very well just be laying low and trying to get his act together.
Hah! Speak of fairy tales.
As they near the door with the apartment number corresponding Roman’s intel on Kendall’s whereabouts, he stops short.
His brother is behind that thing, probably high off his ass, or lying in a pool of his own vomit after getting wasted on booze. He's not stupid enough to OD, but... Roman's not so sure of that anymore. What if they find him dead? What if he’s been lying dead inside this apartment for weeks and nobody thought about checking on him? What if—what if—what if—
There's been this deep seated fear in him for the past week. The kind that made his teeth chatter and his body tremble. Thinking about Kendall made him very… very cold, and no amount of alcohol or blankets could make him warmer.
It took some time to admit it to himself, but… he was worried. It didn't matter that Kendall went crazy a bit there at the end, even though he knows it should matter, but they've always been like this, and, at the end of the day, they were still siblings.
There was this very interesting foreign businessman Roman had met one day. He would greet everyone with a kiss on the cheek, because that’s how they did it wherever he was from, apparently, and he also had a very questionable taste in music. During the break of one of the meetings they were attending together at Waystar, the man had gotten a call. From whatever Roman could make out, the businessman was speaking to his brother who was not so subtly asking for money, and the businessman, without much consideration, agreed to provide said money. Roman made a very crude joke about the man being a walking wallet — or something of equal nastiness —he can’t remember exactly, but the foreigner laughed in a very light manner, told him his brother was a gambler and an alcoholic, neck deep in debts, and then added that they had a very good saying in his native tongue: 'a dog or a wolf, he's still my brother'.
Later he proceeded to explain that the comparison with the animals was done in order to show that it didn't matter what kind of scum or abomination, 'dog or wolf' your brother was. He was still your brother, still your family.
He didn't give it much thought back then, brushed it off as sentimental garbage, but as the events of the last year unfolded, he kept coming back to it like a monk in search of inner peace.
Dog or wolf, Kendall is still his brother.
Gathering his balls in his hand, Roman gently knocks on the door and waits, not saying anything, as if his voice might be enough to spook Kendall away. He waits for a bit, shuffling uncomfortably from leg to leg, and then looking up at Shiv. She shrugs and motions for him to knock again, which he does, louder this time.
"Open up, Kendall, it's Roman," he specifically leaves out the part that Shiv is with him, "are you jerking off in there? Should I wait for you to finish?"
There's no answer. He knocks again.
"You’re probably wondering how we found you, fuckface, but fuck off I’m not telling you, or— wait— why the fuck not? I hired this one techy-savvy Steve Jobs-esque nerd — or maybe he was not as much Steve Jobs as he was Julian Assange — but you didn’t hear that from me, and he stalked your sorry ass to here, because you were too stupid to get rid of your phone, but no surprises there.”
“Now open up, you’re not— fucking— Elsa from that cartoon where they put a carrot up the snowman’s ass, I’m not gonna spend my afternoon whining under your door like a dog that wants to go pee-pee.”
“And, I know what you’re thinking in there, you little shmuck, we know you’re not out, so don’t even try pretending. Yes, I know it’s illegal, or, shit, wait, I don’t know if it’s illegal or not, I just gave that dude on the first floor five Benjamin Franklins and he told me you haven’t gone out. Did I just waste 500 dollars, Shiv—"
“Pretty sure it was illegal to track his phone to begin with, Rome—“
“—should I have just asked politely like a good little boy? I don’t know, my brain is wired to bribe everyone at this point, even if there’s no reason for me to do that,” Roman gets more and more frantic as he goes on, “Just open the fucking door, Kendall, chop-chop, c’mon, open up, time’s money!” Suddenly Roman wasn’t talking as calmly as he was a second ago. He hits the door with his palm, then, reflexively, tries the door handle, expecting it to be closed, but, to his surprise, the door swings open.
Roman's heart sinks for a second, but he doesn't show it.
"If I come in and see you naked in an orgy pile i'll throw you out of the window, Kendall," he says, before gently pushing the door open. To his disappointment, an orgy straight out of his perverted fantasies is not what he finds.
The apartment looks sterile, as if nobody has been renting it at all, or if anybody has been, it’s not been Kendall, because Roman knows Ken’s living habits. He’s not exactly a swine, but also not the cleanest of guys. Even with a housekeeper — there were mugs all around, since Kendall is a coffee maniac, dishes in the sink, maybe a sock or two on the ground, and all the appliances of his tech strewn around: Laptop chargers, headphones, phone chargers, TV remotes and so on.
"Ken?" Shiv asks, looking around. It seems she has made the same observations he has.
"Is he actually not home?" maybe he sneaked out somehow without anyone noticing?
Roman wanders for a second before spotting a sheet of paper lying on a glass table. Everything on it is crossed out so violently he can’t make out a single thing. The pen used to create that macabre thing is on the floor beside the table. The scene seems like some kind of puzzle piece Roman has acquired, but he can’t really makes sense of what to do with it.
"He's probably wasted and sleeping, where's the bedroom in this place?" says Shiv, spotting an open door and what looks like a bed behind it.
Roman shrugs as if to say ‘lead the way’. Shiv rolls her eyes and walks there, periodically throwing glances at the apartment, as if it's gonna come alive and spit them out the way Kendall will probably do the moment they find him.
They reach the bedroom and look around. What seems to be Kendall's bed is ruffled and not made, pillows and covers all over the place, as if the occupier of said bed shuffled around and couldn't find a good position to sleep in, but Kendall himself is nowhere to be seen.
"Where the fuck is he, then?" Roman grumbles in exasperation.
"Rome?" Shiv says, voice low, dare he say — afraid.
Roman looks at the direction of Shiv's gaze. There's an en suite bathroom... with lights on.
Roman's lip trembles as his heart turns into a heavy weight in his chest. He knows, he knows, he's known for a while, he was just too much of a coward to admit it to himself.
"Shivy, honey, why don't you wait here," he says, his gut sinking all the way to his feet.
Shit. Fuck. Dick.
This is not good.
It's like Shiv doesn't even hear him as she goes forward and tries to grab the handle of the door.
"Shiv..." Roman catches her hand before she can squeeze it down, looking at her with terrified eyes, shaking his head, maybe pleading for her to stay behind, he doesn't know. Shiv gives him her usual look of determination, the very same one she would give Logan whenever he caught her elbow down in a cookie jar before dinner, and Roman concedes. He knows his little sister. She’s not gonna back down.
They squeeze the handle down together.
It seems stupid to think of, but at that moment, Roman would give all of his money, all of his connections, both of his kidneys, everything he owns and is, just to see Kendall on the toilet with his boxers down, reading some stupid article on his phone, maybe planning to overthrow the government or some other weird thing only Kendall would think of, and not... not...
...this...
Roman is in a horror movie. This is all a fragment cut off from a very crappy, very unfunny gag on ATN. He’s not in real life. He can’t be— he can’t be— that can’t be his brother in there— there must be some hidden disease in his brain that makes him see things—
“Oh…” there is so much red in there, “oh no,” Roman doesn’t think he’s seen so much blood in his entire life, “oh no.”
Someone— someone please rip his eyes out of their sockets.
"Kenny?" Shiv utters, and Roman's heart twitches like wobbly jello as he realises Shiv said Ken's name the very same way she whispered 'Daddy' to Logan on the day of Connor's wedding.
“Ken?” his brother looks so calm in the face of death, “Ken?” he can’t even fucking remember the last time he’s seen his brother at peace.
This is insane.
Roman feels his heart is beating so furiously he can feel the pulse in his throat, trying to tear his neck apart. His heart pulses in his ears like a headache. He can’t breathe.
Roman takes a step forward on legs that stopped feeling like his own minutes ago, and then sprints to where Kendall is, almost slipping on the wet floor and diving head first in into the tub himself.
“Shiv, call an ambulance,” he says as calmly as he can manage, submerging his hands in the bloody water to try and get Kendall out. Sweet Jesus, there’s so much of it. Has it all come out of his brother? Does the same blood flow in his veins right now?
Shiv only stands there, ashen, her lips trembling and blue, not able to move.
“Shiv, call a fucking ambulance!” The scream is enough to snap her out of her stupor, as she quickly grabs her cellphone and begins dialing 911.
“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck—“ Roman manages to wrestle Kendall’s boneless body out of the water, then lays him on the ground, and rests his head on his leg, because what can he do other than make him comfortable?
His eyes trail over to the long cuts on his hands. They are on full display and still gushing blood.
Roman’s seen Kendall injured plenty of times in his life, ranging from scraped knees to accidental overdoses in the bathrooms of their childhood home. But this was.. different.
Kendall did this to himself, purposefully. He didn’t know they were coming. He didn’t know. Couldn’t have possibly known. And that meant that Kendall…
Roman violently shakes his head, “No…”
Oh God, oh no, this is insane. This cannot be happening. This shit happens to everybody else, it was not supposed to happen to them. Kendall could not have possibly wanted to die. His brother is the embodiment of indomitable human spirit. He always comes back no matter what. He’s reborn like a phoenix after every single failure. It’s just who he is! This does not fit into the picture, it’s so wrong. That thing in Italy was a fluke, he didn’t mean for it to happen. He didn’t, he didn’t.
He faintly hears his sister talking on the phone, as she says something, explains and begs, but all Roman can do is look at Kendall, who is lying on the floor with half-lidded eyes, staring at him with the most disappointed gaze Roman could imagine. It’s the type of look his dad would give him whenever he did something too embarrassing or fumbled something too important, except dad’s gaze doesn’t hold a candle to Ken’s. Almost like he’s so disappointed to see them that dying is a better alternative.
His brother's lips move but no sound comes out, the words too unwilling to take flight.
“Ken? Uh… Ken, please—“ he’s begging and he doesn’t know what he’s begging for, “Please? Look at me?”
Kendall blinks, as if to say "I am looking at you, dummy." Or maybe that's just how Roman interprets it, because he's not sure if Kendall is aware enough to understand him.
“Rome… uh, Rome—“ Shiv says, voice chocked by tears, gesticulating wildly with her phone still in her hand, “they’re— they’re saying, uh, that we— we need to put pressure on the wounds with something.”
Roman places his brother's head on the ground before springing into action; this motion is the gentlest thing he has ever done in his life, “put it on speaker,” he grabs one of the towels hanging on the wall, “you take the other one, and… uh… what— what else should we do?”
“Just put any type of cloth you can find on the wounds and apply as much pressure as you can, okay? Help is on the way.” The voice of the 911 operator is akin to God coming down from the heavens to guide them.
Roman and Shiv abide immediately, desperately trying to be useful.
“We— we have towels here. Towels are ok, right?” Roman can’t help but ask, even when he knows they are okay. He needs to double check, though, because failure to do something correctly equals to a very dead Kendall. And a dead Kendall is a boring Kendall, and there’s nothing Roman hates more than boring people.
“Yes. Towels are alright. Just keep pressing as hard as you can, don’t let go.”
Roman has never before noticed how slowly time passes, how tediously it goes, similar to sand in an hourglass. Tick-tock, tick-tock, another sand particle, another second, another breath out of his brother's lungs that could very well be the last one. He feels as if all three of them are stuck in a time-freezing bubble, while the rest of the world goes on at a normal speed. Meanwhile, his insides are hollowed out, nothing coming in and nothing going out – a desert filled with sand, filled with time. Time that he wishes he could share with Kendall.
Roman is too scared to wipe his own nose from snot in fear that it would reduce the pressure he’s applying to the towel and kill his brother. He’s afraid to breathe too deeply in case it reduces the pressure and kills his brother, he’s afraid to blink in case he loses contact with the towel and it kills his—
“Is the door to the apartment open?” comes the voice of the operator from the phone.
“Uh… uh yeah— yeah it is!”
“The paramedics are coming up, they’ll be there shortly.”
“Okay— okay,” says Shiv, her voice trailing off.
“Tell them to move their fucking assess, or I will sue all of you, do you hear me?!” an irrational fury overtakes Roman for a moment. He needs someone to blame, someone to take off this huge rock that’s been squeezing his ribcage to the point he couldn’t breathe. He needs his heart to stop hurting for one God damn moment.
“They are coming as fast as they can, sir.”
How can she be so calm when his brother is bleeding out in front of him? How can she tell him they’re coming as fast as they can when they should’ve been here the moment they called? Kendall should have had a team of paramedics waiting for him beside his door. They’re rich, they could afford it. After this is over Roman is going to hire a full emergency team consisting of paramedics, firemen and policemen to trail Kendall wherever he goes if Colin can’t do his fucking job.
The paramedics rush in. They gently push Roman and Shiv out of the way, and begin checking on Kendall. His pulse, his eyes, his hands, while Roman and Shiv stand on the sidelines like the background characters of a TV show.
“Is— is he alright?” he asks, “he’s okay, right?”
A paramedic that’s not busy with anything at the moment approaches them, “I know this must be a shock—”
Shiv cuts her off, “please just… just tell us.”
“He’s alive, you’ve found him in time, but he’s done a great deal of damage to his arms, and he’s lost quite a bit of his blood volume, we need to take him to the hospital for a transfusion and stitches.”
The rock on Roman’s chest shifts slightly.
“He’s— uh, he’s gonna be alright?”
The paramedic looks them over; hair ruffled, bloodied hands and clothes, sunken eyes. She wants to tell them everything will be okay, that their brother will make it through, but she also knows that making false promises can have very bad legal consequences, especially with people as powerful as the Roys.
“We will do everything in our power to ensure that he is.”
Roman’s eye twitches. Kendall is being put on a stretcher.
“Shiv, call our driver, right now,” he commands, “and you—” he turns to the paramedic, “tell me which hospital you’re taking him to, and so help me whatever fucking deity you believe in, if he dies, I will have you and all of your buddies here unable to get a job that pays better than being a suited peacock in the Waystar parks, am I clear?”