Chapter Text
Tom doesn’t realize until they’ve landed in New York that he doesn't have a place to live.
“I don’t have a place to live,” he tells Greg. It’s almost one in the morning and he’s just betrayed his wife and he doesn’t have a place to live. It’s laughable. He’d laugh if he had the energy to.
“Oh, shit, yeah,” says Greg. “Hey, well, you can always crash at mine for a while.”
Tom has to take him up on the offer.
He’s completely sober, but somehow the ride from the airport to Greg’s apartment is foggy. This is how it’s been for the past… twelve hours? Maybe more — he’s never quite gotten the hang of counting how time passes while traveling. It’s mostly a blur, punctuated by moments so vivid he thinks he’ll remember them forever.
“Can we, uh, share the bed?” Greg says. They’ve ended up in his apartment. “Cause, man, I don’t really wanna sleep on the floor again, and if I’m gonna be, like, an important person or whatever, I don’t think it’s very appropriate for me to sleep on the floor.”
“I’m a more important person than you, Greg,” says Tom. “But you don’t have to sleep on the floor.” Call him soft, or maybe he just doesn’t feel up to picking a fight after he’s been up all night.
Despite barely being awake to begin with, Tom can't fall asleep, so he just lays there in agony, praying he'll crash and get a break from his thoughts. Greg knocked out immediately, and then proceeded to roll around in his sleep mumbling nonsense. Tom remembers that much because he spent a long time trying to decipher it, before realizing that argh lar sheeeee probably doesn’t have any hidden meaning, and somewhere in the white noise of Greg's breathing and the drone of the overhead fan, Tom finally knocks out.
Tom wakes up after not enough time to find Greg on his stomach, one arm slung across Tom’s chest, one leg over Tom’s. Tom's not conscious enough for any of this. He should wake Greg up. Push him on the floor and laugh at him. You big oaf, you need a cuddle? You want to spoon, Greg?
“Eurghhh,” Greg says, turning his head towards Tom and nuzzling into his shoulder.
That rattles Tom’s brain into alertness. What, exactly, the fuck is he meant to do about that?
“Greg,” he hisses. “Greg, you fucker.” Why is he nervous? So Greg is a cuddler, so what? There’s no reason for Tom to be feeling like he may have a heart attack. No one is going to walk in and find them and report them back to… who would even care? Logan, sure, Logan would care, but Logan’s received a picture of his own son’s dick; the bar for sexual things Logan will be disturbed by is quite high. When did this become sexual?
“Greg!”
Greg jolts awake, and Tom can see panic break through his sleep-hazy eyes as he scrambles off of Tom.
“Whoa!” he says. “Sorry, man, I didn’t realize…”
“Indeed,” says Tom.
He read somewhere that waking up with someone automatically makes your relationship feel more intimate, but he’s not sure if that’s true. Greg is Greg, albeit with messier hair and more skin showing and staler breath. He is not much different than what Tom had expected he would be like: of course Greg mumbles in his sleep. Of course he sprawls. Tom had never considered it before, but he is not shocked.
“Um, what time is it?”
“It’s eight thirty,” Tom says.
“Oh, man,” Greg says. He grabs his phone. “Dude, I have, like, twenty missed calls from Kendall…”
“Don’t think about it,” says Tom. This strategy has been utterly futile to him, but perhaps it’s the right one for Greg’s level of brainpower.
“Do we have, like, a game plan, or anything?”
“The game plan is that it’s a Sunday,” says Tom. “So you don’t pick up any calls or respond to any messages. I will… I’ll play it by ear. And tomorrow, we go into the office and we have the conversations that need to be had.”
“Okay, and what kinds of conversations should I be anticipating here?”
“We’ll be speaking to Logan, probably,” says Tom. “We’ll be seeing where we fit in.”
“Fit in to our company being sold.”
“Exactly.” Tom's full of shit here, he hasn't the slightest idea what is going to happen, but Greg doesn't need to know that.
“Oh, man,” says Greg. “Um, are you…” He changes tactics. “What was it like?”
Tom had staved off this conversation on the plane by putting on big headphones and pretending to sleep.
“Shiv and Kendall and Roman are upset,” says Tom carefully.
“Yeah, no shit.”
“And Logan is making the best deal that he can.”
“And you and me, we’re…”
“We were very helpful to Logan,” says Tom. “Well, I was very helpful to Logan. And you’re with me.”
“With you,” Greg says. “Well, that’s kinda…”
Whatever he was going to say, he decides against it.
“Fuck,” he goes with instead, and leans back against the headboard.
The more time passes without hearing from Logan, the more anxious Tom gets. The more anxious Tom gets, the more anxious he can tell it makes Greg. And Greg is fucking obnoxious when he’s anxious.
The bouncing leg. The pacing. The muttering. The rocking. He looks deranged.
“Knock it off,” Tom says after watching Greg get up for some water only to end up doing laps around the kitchen. “You look deranged.”
“Uh, I am not feeling so good,” Greg says. “Tom, have you ever thrown up just from, like, do you ever get so nervous you wanna throw up?”
“No,” says Tom, who hasn’t eaten a full meal since the wedding. “Pull trig if you need to.”
“Okay, but throwing up actually really grosses me out, so I kinda don’t want to do that if I can avoid it. Do you think something like Tums would help?”
“Gregory, how the fuck would I know?”
“I did actually used to get, like, panic attacks? All the time. And that’s sort of what’s happening right now, but, like, it’s been happening all day and kinda yesterday too, if I’m being honest.”
This bit of backstory is not surprising. “Well, what did you do to stop having them?” Tom asks.
“Honestly, I kinda just wait it out? People say meditate but I suck at meditating. Weed helps, but, like, it’s gonna be worse if I’m high and then we hear something, cause what if then we have to do something and I’m high.”
Tom feels bad. He’s only human, and Greg looks like he may faint from hysteria, like women did in the old days.
“Smoke your weed, Greg,” he says.
“You sure?”
“I don’t think anything that urgent will happen today,” Tom says. “And if it does, we’ll figure out some way to get you functional.”
“Shit, man, thank you,” says Greg, and produces a joint and lighter with genuinely impressive speed. “Do you smoke?”
“No,” says Tom. “Not regularly. No thank you.”
“Maybe later,” says Greg.
“Maybe.”
He’s in contact with Gerri, who tells him that Logan won’t be back in New York until Tuesday and that he’ll be bringing Matsson with him. The kids left sometime this morning (so Tom was right not to go to his house). She and Frank and Karl will be back tomorrow. Matsson’s team will be arriving sometime during the week. Things are moving. Don’t worry about it, Tom. You can talk to him when he gets back. Don’t bother him. Stop bothering me.
That sort of thing.
Tom goes for a run so he can get out of the house and away from Greg for a little while. Sometime after that, he passes out on the couch, and when he wakes up Greg is gone and every bit of progress that Tom’s chiropractor has made has been completely undone. At least he doesn’t feel quite so dead tired now.
He texts Greg, Did you abandon me?
The answer comes when Greg returns three minutes later carrying a bag that looks suspiciously like Chinese takeout.
“Hey,” he says. “Do you like Chinese?”
Tom likes real Chinese food, but Greg has produced the greasiest, carb-iest meal Tom has had since college. If it tastes at all good, that’s because of all the MSG. Tom is going to have a heart attack now, too.
Greg’s in better spirits, at least.
“Do people at the office know?” he asks. “Like, when we go in tomorrow, is it gonna be a thing?”
“No. A few people.” Tom can’t say he knows either, for sure, but Greg doesn’t need to know that. “Don’t worry, Greg, nobody will be asking you for an interview.”
“Bummer,” says Greg. Tom won’t dignify that with a laugh. “When do you think they’ll know?”
“Want to hold it over the other assistants’ heads?” Tom says. “Logan will be back Tuesday, and Matsson is supposed to come with him. That’ll get them talking.”
“Are you nervous?”
Tom frowns.
“Why would I be nervous?” he says. “We’re in, Greg. I’m not nervous about making too much fucking money.”
“Yeah, nope. Fair. I hear ya.”
The apartment situation is far from ideal. Tom should’ve gone back to his place this afternoon. It’s too late now to be making any such journeys, though, and besides, giving Shiv more time is probably better. He’s not afraid, he’s just not looking forward to the confrontation. He’ll do it tomorrow. For now, he watches Greg watch a cooking show with a lot of yelling and thinks about texting Shiv. He can't text Shiv, but maybe he should. He can't. He should go home. Everything would be all right if he were home.
“I’m going to bed,” he announces around ten. “Try not to make too much noise.”
“Oh, yeah. Is it… you’re okay with sharing again?”
Tom shrugs. “It’s the situation we find ourselves in.” What harm can one more night do.
“Okay. I’ll try not to, uh, take up too much space tonight.”
“See that you don’t,” says Tom.
He’s almost asleep when he hears the shower turn on, and then actually asleep when Greg climbs in bed next to him. He’s heavy enough that Tom can feel the mattress sink between them. Maybe it’s natural, then, Tom thinks, that they ended up on top of each other last night. It’s only gravity. It’s not worth it to resist.