Archive of Our Own

Roman stares at Kendall as he watches him interact so casually with these random people.

Roman was sure Kendall has only known them for matters of hours but their group lack of sobriety was making it look like they’d known each other forever.

Roman felt a stab of pain inside him as he drags Kendall out of that environment, back to their present and the daggers they had stabbed into each other that would have one of them bleeding out soon.

Roman hated that Kendall had given him his location, he resented how much easier it would’ve all been if Kendall had refused and told him to go fuck himself.

“What the fuck are you playing at?” Roman asks breaking Kendall’s weird huffs and hums to get something real.

Kendall doesn’t look at him, just sits in his car and shrugs. (Nothing real is gathered.)

Roman keeps his eyes on the road as he drives, he takes his call, he lets Kendall act stupid.

He lets Kendall run up to the window when they arrive, banging on it like he’s trying to break the glass barrier down like that’ll break the other barriers between the family.

Roman keeps going like he normally does when he gets inside and tries not to watch too intensely as his whole world breaks apart again, Shiv stomping off, Kendall nearly being hit (the closest Logan had ever been to his special boy), Connor shivering in his place.

He gets to his room and lets Kendall in afterwards.

Kendall’s coming down from his high and sure Roman will give him something.

Roman isn’t sure what he has to give but he curls up on his side and lets Kendall have at him.

Kendall ruts into him with so much velocity that Roman gets moved around out of his comfortable position.

Once Kendall’s done Roman goes to sleep.

In the morning he’s first of the siblings to pile out, Logan and Marcia had already left the night before, he says bye to Connor and Willa and doesn’t care to ask Shiv if she’s okay or see if Kendall’s managed to get himself some more drugs.

In the car, on his way back to wherever his drivers been told to take him, he plays the look on Kendall’s face as he sat with those random people on their random couch in their random room in their random house and thinks about why his brother was so free when he took so many drugs, when he was inside of Roman and when he was drunk but he was never free when he looked at Logan or when his kids and Rava were around or Roman was with him and he was clean.

Roman wonders what makes him that way and if it’s the same thing that makes him his own way.