Work Text:
ROMAN ROY NAMED SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR TO JERYD MENCKEN
WASHINGTON — Roman Roy is joining President Jeryd Mencken’s team of Senior Advisors, as announced by the White House early this morning. This follows accounts of their vastly implicative collaboration on President Mencken’s campaign, solidifying rumors of Mr. Roy and President Mencken’s close personal and political relationship.
In a press release from the White House announcing Mr. Roy’s appointment, President Mencken withheld no praise, describing Mr. Roy as an “accomplished and distinctly perceptive man with an uncanny touch on not only the needs of the American people but the wider global economy as well”. President Mencken also seemingly confirmed reports of Mr. Roy’s heavy involvement in his journey to presidency, despite a previous statement from his camp claiming Mr. Roy was only distantly supportive. In the President’s own words, Mr. Roy left an “indelible impact on the campaign, of which (he is) indebted to him”, noting Mr. Roy’s birthright-like handle on the media.
Mr. Roy, 37, recently left the world of business after finalizing the sale of media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo to Swedish tech firm GoJo, helmed by Lukas Matsson. Mr. Roy’s brother, Kendall, joins him on the outskirts of the firm at the dissolution of Waystar’s existing board of directors, while their sister, Siobhan, remains associated with the company as an extension of her husband and new Waystar Chief Executive, Tom Wambsgans.
Despite Mr. Roy’s lack of political activity prior to the presidential campaign, he has risen quickly amongst the ranks of President Mencken’s cronies for reasons still murky to the general public. The two were quick to connect on political stances, but how Mr. Roy earned the President’s trust continues to be speculated. Regardless, his introduction into President Mencken’s cabinet will likely be staggering.
Various transition staff members have characterized Mr. Roy’s influence on the President as “excessive” and “pernicious”, detailing the exclusive direct channel the President allows Mr. Roy, of which even most of his long term staff have not been able to afford thus far. He is said to be a brash and disruptive personality with a taste for vulgarity, which has been previously written about in detail by various Roy family profiles during his time in Waystar. (Read: The Roy Circus in a post-Ringleader World.)
His duties will concern providing the President with strategic advice on communication and economic concerns, and he is expected to work closely with President Mencken’s media team as provided by his decades-long work in the industry.
Mr. Roy’s appointment is demonstrative of what pundits are deeming what will likely be a major source of concern during President Mencken’s tenure. He has displayed a tendency of single-mindedly aligning himself with the elites and demagogues, gifting weighty positions tied up with bloated taxpayer-sourced salaries to personal friends rather than tried and true civil servants. His cabinet is teeming with underqualified provocateurs whose expertise lie with curating viral soundbytes for followers and dissenters alike.
Despite Democratic resistance to the announcement, Republican reception on the ground level has been favorable. Many are lauding President Mencken’s decision, and while it would be out of turn for his near-cult following to disagree with his activity, they have been especially galvanized by his folding in of a holder of the Roy name. The Roy family, whose channel ATN has been considered a longtime bastion for the right, are warmly viewed by the ultraconservative faction the Republican party. While Mr. Roy is no longer tied to ATN, he still holds the magnitude and consequence that comes with his family name.
The shape of Mr. Roy’s appointment in the wider picture of President Mencken’s tenure remains unclear. However, what is for certain is that this decision has further cemented how President Mencken intends for his style of leadership to be defined: whatever he wants, he will certainly take.
The article makes for fantastic foreplay. Just you and I against the world, baby. Bonnie and Clyde junk and innumerable doses of happy feelings to shoot up his veins. They get through the first few paragraphs, Roman half-hard and sporting a giggle-induced stomachache, imagining the loser liberals red-faced and puffing steam like fucking cartoons.
It’s a landslide affair from there; they never even fully make it out of their clothes.
Mencken—ever the paradox—rebels against the gray by his temples with the way he likes to kiss. He’s got the knack of a hellbent teenager: greedy and wet though to his credit, never imprecise. He irons his tongue along bare skin, thumbs his way across Roman’s thighs like he’s shaping him into a fucking masterpiece.
Roman finds a place on his lap, and feasts on the bones Mencken throws his way.
“That’s it, that’s right,” he nestles his fangs into Roman’s jugular, the singe turns his brain into a molasses-thick slush. “God made you just to please me, didn’t he?”
Rides him until it fucking hurts. Lets drowsy whines dribble from his mouth like spit, with spit. Makes good use of the hours he put into those sissy equestrian lessons.
“Always good for me,” Mencken heaves, bruising the words into Roman’s collarbone. “My ace, my perfect fuckin’ plaything.”
When Roman cums, he draws a blank, dives straight into the deep end, and dips his toes in the afterlife. He settles in, slap-happy, the supposed and Reddit-approved guarantee of post-nut clarity muddled by how fucking dopey he’s left.
The high keeps him up for a few hours, a welcome insomnia. He finds himself staring at Mencken like the proverbial, age-old creep, chin resting between the grooves of his fingers as he maps out and commits to memory his sleeping features.
It’s almost unfair; Mencken is effortless muscle, solid bone strung together by sinew and a fresh monarch’s sheen glossy across his flesh. He’s skyscraper cheekbones, a tempestuous curve of the lips, a jawline Roman would fashion for himself and whittle into his bones. He’s got the old-Hollywood ethos: gel-slicked hair and an even slicker smile Roman would sell his soul just to see. Varnished with a classic Cary Grant finish and a camera-ready, cock-and-bull spiel that slots right into his whirlwind epic of a life to boot.
He hesitates to sound like one of those fucking gurus with the chakra talk they think they’ve earnt by visiting India once, but Mencken has an aura to him that might potentially be more terminal than poison gas. Just existing in a 20-foot radius of the man is enough for him to break out into hives or blow a load, being close enough to count his eyelashes one by one might just cause him to combust into a pile of horny goop.
And to think this man, this fucking beast of a man, wants him so readily, chooses Roman above all else to sit by his right side. It doesn’t feel anywhere close to a cheap thrill. Even the best blood-pumping coke from Stewy’s plug should concede; nothing can fucking compete.
Sleep comes eventually when he makes a space for himself in the hedge between Mencken’s arm and torso. Roman finds his perfect muzzle in the crook of Mencken’s neck.
He wakes alone. There’s a buzzer that blares through his brain the second his arms meet nothing but air.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Roman Roy has been expertly “Hoodwinked, Bamboozled, And Flat Out Deceived” once again, folks. Stay tuned after the commercial break for the “Poorly Concealed Erectile Dysfunction Mental Breakdown”! I am the President of the United States, and I approve this message.
Before he can let the corrosive disappointment acid spread from his gut, however, the pill to pacify him makes it within his eyeline. A suit: a decent lapel, no creases to show for. It’s nothing too special—Roman’s been around suits and male pattern baldness his whole fucking life (see: Fuckass Frank)—but Mencken’s left with it a classic ruby tie to match. Of course, Republicans have to rep their team color the way trucks of nacho-stuffed patriot zombies show up in jersey-ed droves for the Superbowl.
Each layer of clothing slides on without resistance: buttons slot into eyelets, trousers zip at their own accord. Thinking too hard about shit like this—the feeling of being sheathed in snug fabric that gives an outline of himself for all to openly leer and behold—usually sets off a skin-burning claustrophobia. He’d headlined a tour for the ages: a one-man retelling of the Emperor’s New Clothes starring Roman Roy, New York City’s finest failure with a half-finished screenplay stuffed up his ass. Audiences of corporate nothings and loaded banker sickos with their hooker plus ones had been seated for matinees and galas of his bouncing bloated body left bare besides his pasty whites, with an original score from his mother roaring from the orchestra pit. You’re getting a little tubby, Roro, the aptly-tubby opera singer lets the vibrato loose. Don’t you think you’ve had enough of that mille-feuille, my love?
If anything’s certain, it’s that dressing himself has never been this fucking easy in years; he’s being swaddled in wool and the ease that comes with taking his foot off the gas pedal.
A ping on his phone, and a full schedule. Mencken’s had it meticulously laid out, down to the second. A brief bright and early at half-past 9, meal time at 1, a check-in with the Minister of Employment at 4, tentative dick appointment at 11. When the fuck did ‘personal assistant to my booty-call-slash-nepo-colleague-slash-pet?’ become a subcategory to the presidential discipline? The bottomless time pit of fighting pesky welfare-warrior pests and fortifying militias of domestic terrorists in uniforms of red-white-and-blue can miraculously make space for a detailed 9 to 5, 5 to 9 dedicated to his blow-up sex toy? Campaign site testimonials from Mencken’s elementary school teachers with their feet already planted deep in their graves didn’t call him an overachiever for nothing.
Either way, he has crafted it with his own hands: a savant of careful, steadfast, and all-consuming control, as if Roman’s life was a clay begging and screaming for him to mold it.
Oh, but routine is good. Routine soothes the incurable, roaring mindfuck that’s plagued him between the ears since the fucking dawn of time. A Mencken-flavored routine? He’ll take it down like cough syrup three times a day.
Roman will do his part too. He’ll pluck out his brain, make himself into a toy. He’ll fold himself in like a marionette, he’ll be anything if Mencken only imagines it.
It doesn’t even take him ten minutes in his first briefing to realize it’s barely a job. It’s nothing if not a formality, really; he attends a few bullshit meetings here and there, sitting in to nod mindlessly at the big stuff and pretend like the quality of corn rednecks eat is of any consequence to him. The common mantra that public servants just die to moan? The fact that they break their backs trying to make even just one Sloppy-American-Joe happy? That’s about as true as Roman’s ability to shoot a basketball from half court.
The first few weeks are a cakewalk, which in part may just be because he occupies a made-up job that had been served with a side of piping-hot orgasmic hysteria. It’s not that much different to what he was doing at Waystar, except now he’s got constituencies and taxpayers to snooze to instead of big budget blockbusters and the usual empty-headed consumers. The comparison should be enough for him to instinctively hurl like a kid on a Dodrick-themed rollercoaster, but for some supernatural reason it slips into his bones like a warm anesthesia.
Mencken tries to make good on his capital R-rated promise, with a few addendums. Turns out, it’s not exactly realistic for the Leader of the Free World to chain him to his room and have him every single night of the week, but four is a good compromise. Free nights vary too: sometimes they only have enough for a slippery trade of hands, and on others, Mencken so sweetly pushes Roman closer to mahogany headboards, velvet agony, and death. It’s a goddamn delight. He isn’t sure if he still knows how to keep himself afloat without it.
Two or three or six hundred more high-horse think pieces slobber their way through Roman’s first month in office, and by the time the public has gotten used to his take on Marilyn Mon-Roro, he hears again from Shiv in the form of 20-something text messages of comically varied lengths.
If going by Roman’s expectations, her response to this whole ordeal is a little delayed. It’s likely the baby brain, the life parasite that’s icing her reaction time. She’d fucking kill him, no question, if he let the phrase “baby brain” even stumble from his mouth. But alas, he doesn’t see a need to give her the cherry on top to disown him, since she’s already made half the journey there.
What the fuck, Rome? Blah blah blah. You seriously and genuinely disgust me. Blah blah blah. Oh, here’s a fun one! You’re so fucking eager to have someone suck your dick that you’ve decided to hold up the American people as collateral to your own perversions.
He’ll have to send that to Mencken. Print it out and frame it like a premium Rembrandt.
The rest of the messages he reads in a caricature’s voice, his very own patented way to cope as she lashes the fucking whip.
The last time he and Shiv had fought to this degree, Connor had coined it “The Great Squabble of North Island” with a boyish smile bright across his 30-something stubble like it was some funny anecdote. Honestly, it was over something far too trivial to recall now—who would take which room, when they’d go to the beach, who could snag the lobster a moody Kendall refused to eat—but Roman is incapable of forgetting the way he had licked his wounds in the sprawling landscape of their meager hundred acre backyard.
She had been twelve, him a sour-faced thirteen, but they had thrown around hefty words they had only seen the big-bad-adults handle up until that point. True to her name, every little jibe was its own shiv; she had been as precise as the snipers he knows some of D.C.’s best hide, with a hand firmly latched around the art of the insult like it was her fucking job.
She had scratched open the scabs that had only just closed up, prodded her nails into patchy purple spots, and had sliced him through with those eyes cut from Dad’s own cloth. While Kendall’s strikes only scalded, Shiv’s fed a seismic ember that rendered his insides into ash, an expert kid arson.
She’s only gotten better at it over time, a worthy apprentice to their oh-so-lovely mum and pops like the overeager bitch that she is. The punches always come easy to her, but from the barrage of texts sent his way and the ticking voicemail nuke he presses open now, Roman knows she’s more than just a little incensed.
“Look, I don’t know what this is, Rome. Like, a fucking power trip? I get it if you’re still mad about whatever the fuck happened with Matsson and Tom and fuck all; that’s fine. I’m—you know why.”
(A pause. An anomalous crack in her voice—legal microdoses of vulnerability allowed under the regime of the Roy family kleptocracy.)
“But whatever this is? Handshakes with your local Christo-despots and cozying up to the literal fucking devil? You can’t be serious because if you are, I swear to God, I will personally use up the rest of my remaining D.C. favors to screw you out of there. Are you—I don’t know, is he letting you swing your dick out in the West Wing? Did he give you the green light to publicly execute dirty socialists in the town square? Jesus, you’re an actual fucking disgrace.”
(She spits. She toils away trying to get him to move, do something, react. A tennis ball machine pelting neon pellets his way. He’ll take the hits. Bruises fade quickly into skin in the grand scheme of things.)
“You’ve never even cared about politics. You haven’t even read the Plato your autocrat buddy loves. His neo-Nazi talons must have gone so far up your ass at this point if you’re as blissed out as they say you are. You’re his fucking pet, Rome. Those pictures TMZ dropped? One look and I could fucking guess that he walks you in between fascist tea-time with foreign dignitaries.”
(He merrily remembers the candid little shot of Mencken’s firm possession, the hand where his wedding ring rests brazenly manhandling the back of Roman’s neck. His pageant-ready wife had actually been stood to the right of them, the obscured and negligible victim of the camera’s depth of field. It had made its rounds in the Twittersphere, circulated like a hot potato. Had spawned a few wacky headlines too, conservative posts scrambling with: WOKE MOB THREATENED BY PRESIDENT’S HEALTHY DISPLAY OF MASCULINE FRIENDSHIP. Safe to say, it had sat on the Iron Throne of his jerk-off material moodboard for an entire week.)
“This isn’t a fucking ultimatum, but I’m giving you a week. You wet the bed because you’re mad at me, like I said: that’s fine. If you clean it up and make your way back here with secret back channels to Mencken down to zero, I won’t even make that big of a deal out of it.”
(She’s a bit late for that. The figurative and literal back channels, and making a big deal of it too.)
“Don’t make this difficult, Roman. Come home or don’t show your face to me again.”
It takes two clicks to delete her message. He scrubs his hands clean and doubles down with a dollop of Purell just to be safe. God awful bitch. Frau Hypocrite, that woman.
He wonders how she can be sent into a self-righteous spiral from where they’re seated at the very top of the capitalist food chain, munching on the bones of Chinese sweatshop children. If he’s hated anything about her, this is probably what takes the fucking cake. Oh, look at me, I’m just a woman with a golden heart, I weep because of inequality and wipe my crocodile tears with my bespoke Italian handkerchief, bought through the Privilege Bank!
Was she worried his association with the most powerful man in the world (by the way, in case you had forgotten) would reflect poorly on the reputation she’s deluded herself into believing was squeaky clean? She was going to be popping out a baby for the captain of the Waystar Bigot Ship any day now. Maybe consider that first. It’s not even like the Roys have been upstanding citizens, friends to the homeless, or charitable beyond the hollow galas and pleb-accessorized photo ops for folks to scrape off of Getty Images.
If anything, Roman was contributing more to Dad’s legacy. He’s got his own seat at the President’s table, ‘Roy’ printed out in bold on a place card, with a hefty slice of cake too. He has his hand on a phallic joystick; he could get an industry destroyed by only ever moving his mouth up and down, open and close. The only thing she’s got going for her is a baby-daddy making good use of their open marriage by taking lingonberry dick 24/7.
If he had to hear her go on and on pretending to give half a shit about people that aren’t who she sees in the mirror, he might just off himself. Plug his ears and take a nice long bath with a toaster, Kendall style.
Plus, her whole gotcha moment? Open the kimono and see that the big boss handles him like a mutt, leather leash and all? Her darndest effort was to try to spook him over being at Mencken’s beck and call. What a shame; he’s gotten pretty good at the whole ‘bring-me’ game, if being around Dad for almost four-fucking-decades was worth anything. Newsflash: she would’ve done much better if she had told him something he didn’t already know. Give him some fresh fucking meat to chew on at least.
A buzz. His meat dealer, just in fucking time.
Nothing for me tonight past 9. Come have dinner.
It’s a bit jarring seeing him undone the way he is. Roman’s gotten very good at painting out a variety of Mencken portraits: post-coital Mencken, a Mencken above him, a Mencken behind, a Mencken—Jeryd, here—interspersing grunts and huffs with niblets of eager desire that would kill his already-dead Dad twice over. This: Mencken in a wrung out college tee that’s seen the entirety of Roman’s life, and a knit sweater that curls around his so-fucking-hot-god-fucking-damnit arms, is a novelty.
He’s perched across an offensively old chair some powder-wig geezer definitely died in, his own old-man glasses seated nicely on the bridge of his nose. The TV is running ambiently in the background, some rerun of a lowbrow medical panic show he cannot fathom any thinking person watches. There’s a faint scream, the scratch of a D-lister’s duped desperation that would probably sell better on PornHub. Dr. Jones, the patient is bleeding out too quickly for us to handle! That might just be a Waystar Studios production, actually.
Swallowed by Mencken’s hands is a good ol’ fashioned smash burger, the type of grease bomb that would send Roman down a week-long purge just to rid any traces of sodium that stained the inside of his mouth. He had inhaled them as a kid, stacks of A5 Wagyu patties went down like Big Macs, as if he was an endless well. It had chubbed him up; he’d been filled with this naive pride, that when he looked in the mirror he’d seen something that sketched a little close to his father’s frame.
If there was anything in this world that may have filled Logan’s immovable heart with glee, it might just as well be a burger. Or the thought of Uncle Ewan enduring Chinese water torture. No, it was a burger for sure. He fucking loved a burger.
He had loved a burger so much, once he figured Roman’s own portion had dipped into what was grilled up to be his, he had struck him raw with a half-burnt spatula enough to keep him a burger-barren wasteland since then. His mother had handed him a bowl of fruit, a sweet band-aid on a severed limb, and told him it was for his own good that he had a family who cared so deeply about his diet.
“Hot plate for you,” Mencken gestures, an identical burger sitting next to his own. “Wanna fill yourself up before I get a chance to fill you up, little boy?”
A turn of the gut, not entirely unpleasant. There’s hunger of a wide variety that caws in the empty concave that is his neglected stomach.
“God, you’re so fucking old,” Roman is powerless to stop the smile that breaks across his face and the disgusting ache in his cheeks at the crinkle of worn lines that materialize around Mencken’s eyes. “If you fast tracked an Anti-Corny Act tomorrow, would it be constitutional for the national guard to turn and arrest you? Peepaw the biggest fucking offender?”
Mencken doesn’t spew back a counter, letting Roman shuck off his blazer and slouch face first on the California king as the TV whirs on. Dr. Jones, the hammer has inflicted trauma on the patient’s skull! His brain has been bashed in! Is he unsalvageable?
“Besides, I’m good on food, dinner, whatever,” he muffles into the sheets. “Thanks.”
The soulless mosquito buzzing of the TV comes to a halt, and Mencken’s dour inflection fills the silence.
“What did you do at one o’clock today?”
“What did I do?” he knows instinctively what he’s done, or hasn’t for that matter. “I don’t fucking remember? I might’ve taken a piss, who knows.”
“Look at me when you answer me, Roman,” Mencken warns, blood in the water. “You know I don’t like evasive responses. It reeks of cowardice.”
He bites back a sullen groan. He had been doomed from the start. It had been a rookie-fucking-mistake to even think he could get away with it. ‘Fuck Around and Find Out!’ is a rigged game, top to bottom, when Player 2 is a man whose word is law, whose embrace pinches like a mouse trap.
Roman lifts his head, strains his neck to fix his gaze on a stern face.
“Fuck you, fine—I’m looking,” he whinges, allowing a teenage cadence to slip through. “FYI, sir, I had one of those protein bars and a smoothie. So, not nothing.”
Mencken cocks his head at the retort, lips quirking downwards as a testy expression spreads across his features. The geriatric specs kind of add to the whole grumpy man look of it all. It’s borderline comical, if Roman was feeling up for it. Whump whomp, you’ve displeased Daddy!
“Half a smoothie; which is basically worth, give or take, a pint of air,” he tuts. “You know I keep my tabs.”
For a split second, he wonders if it’s worth arguing over. He tries his hand at a cost-benefit analysis, the Bullshit-O-Meter’s chance of survival. He’s able to deduce his case is dire, and relents. In this world, punishments kind of read like win-win situations anyway. Mencken is especially magnanimous in victory, some psychosexual tick that ups the dial to a hundred whenever he happens to be proven right.
Roman doesn’t bother moving from where he’s splayed out on the bed, flopping his head back on the duvet as he lets the silence carry over as his final message. It’ll always be yes, sir; of course, sir; you’re right, sir.
“Eat,” Mencken says. “Don’t make me ask again.”
Conceding doesn’t mean he can’t play the game though, lean in heavy to the fun part of whatever the hell you’d call their arrangement. Sure, he’s always the one who gives in, but he can’t let the man get off too easily. He’s a Roy for God’s sake; he’d been branded as a professional patience tester straight out of his mother’s ghoulish womb.
“Too much effort,” he protests, peevish in fifty shades of faux. “You wear your subordinates thin, don’t you, POTUS? You want me to keep the engines running just so you can cash in on me until I’m within an inch of death again, right? I know your style.”
“And I know yours, kid,” is Mencken’s spar back. “You know you can just ask. Did your cushy tutors never teach you that? Just use your words like a big boy.”
There’s a spider squirming up his spine. It makes him shiver.
“Ask? For what? I don’t ask for shit. Asking is for losers.”
He had been taught to take, not ask.
“Don’t go dumb on me now, Roman,” the sound of disapproval has never been sexier. “Save that for the afterparty. I only need those three simple words.”
There’s a dip in the mattress, the warmth of a body. Mencken manages to keep a distance, as if lurking and appraising his prey. His scrutiny doesn’t need to be seen for it to be felt.
“God bless America and its speechwriters,” Roman laments. “You’re going to have to stop talking in riddles or I’m going to have you sent to the nursing home with all the decomposing dementia freaks.”
“Fine, I can speak your language,” Mencken’s voice evens out, the razorlike tone he pulls from its sheath just for covert transactions with the rich and richer. “I’m flexible—I’m willing to incentivize, give you a bang for your buck, a solid return on investment. Profit margin is a net positive.”
“Oh yeah? Then do, pray tell, what return shall I expect to receive?”
Roman figures now would be the perfect time for Mencken to turn his mental pages to Chapter 4 of ‘50 Quick Tips on Keeping Your Dog Happy’ for a fitting reward. Rub them behind the ears after a treat? Let them sniff about and give you a dog-spit facial? Not the worst option.
“It’s easy: you bite, I bite.”
May I invite you to bite me? He had asked once, a shameless purr over the phone, somewhere in the haze of time, in the morbid depths of the pre-grief belly. Scenes of life before his tenure at the top of the world tend to roll out like used film, dark around the edges and spotty with fissures. Anyway, he can fill in the gaps to know he probably wanted the incisions embellishing his skin to remind him there was still something red and alive under there.
“Now, what’s the line?” Mencken inches closer, expectant. “‘Feed me, please?’ I told you they were three easy words.”
A vulture’s claw drags its way through the tangles of his hair and finds a steady clasp on his skull. Roman quivers, eyes heavy; it’s warm.
He can acquiesce. Heeding to instruction is embedded somewhere in between the hardware of his shell.
“Feed me,” the color of his tone is a demure hue of crimson. “Please?”
“Since you asked so nicely, I suppose I must.”
What exactly happens next, he’d die if you held him at gunpoint and asked him to recall the specifics. Consciousness is a fickle thing when Mencken has him cradled firm against the thrum of his bosom.
He keeps an arm outstretched along Roman’s torso, a guiding hand splayed across the sweep of his back while the other lifts the bites up for his mouth. The sensation of a circling thumb keeps Roman afloat and stops him from gagging at the wafts of beefy pollution that feed the flames of an unwanted appetite. Each bite is another chip through the barricade; he finds that he can endure the way sustenance settles in his stomach without his bones going brittle.
As he chews, Mencken’s lips latch on, magnet to magnet, and he lets Roman’s skin dance between his teeth. When he pushes his ivories closer together, a gasp escapes Roman’s lips between swallows, a reflex.
“Y’know when my son was a baby, I got really good at doing the airplane bit,” Mencken dots down along the curve of his neck, letting a hundred flowers bloom with his diligent mouth. He’s thorough, takes his perfect time coloring in specks of mauve and depravity.
“Are you trying to ‘son’ me?” Roman manages. “If you tell me to say ‘ah’ for the airplane, I think I might set myself on fire.”
“Ooh, rough, a second plane has just hit the Roman Roy Tower?”
He shudders at the sickly feel of the grease that paints his lips as they curl into a smile, identical to the one lazily pressed up against his collarbone.
He wakes the next day, a freshly-ironed 40 short hanging by the closet. It sags across his hips like an untailored heap, a prepubescent itch, but he swallows his discomfort like he does everything else. He’ll fill it out in time; he’ll trade in dutiful mouthfuls to accrue enough kiss-bitten flesh for his suits to hide—he’ll happily become a glutton. He can have his cake and eat it, too.
Waystar has a meeting set up with Mencken. He eases the news through urgent swipes of the tongue, slipping see-through excuses between bribes he offers with a guiding hand to placate Roman.
It’s unavoidable—a scrape of teeth on his ear and a delectably constricting tug of the wrist—you understand. He rasps out his special pillow talk, rote Presidential porridge: it’s some ‘first hundred days’ bullshit, progress updates on the company’s IKEA-fication, cursory mutual handjobs to keep money pumping like hot oil. Well, Roman doesn’t mind being on the receiving end of a handjob himself, yum.
He’s briefed about it the next day, hands and stomach cum-free. The details die as soon as they reach his ears, an act more subconscious than anything. The main thing is that he’s asked to attend a few meetings as the President’s business-savvy advisor, the kind of guy that knows how big players handle the ball.
It also means Tom, his least favorite in-law by a mile, has to make an appearance at Washington for a few days.
To his credit, he holds himself a lot better, posture shot straight and self-assurance filling out the shoulders slotted in his tryhard suit. Power reads well on Tom when he isn’t scrounging for morsels, save for the fact that Roman knows he still chows on Swedish shit for dinner and downs it with his foul Germanic wine.
He brings with him a few familiar faces, a stony Karolina and a butterfingered Greg, but his posse is mostly fresh-faced. In some ways, him bringing Waystar 2.0 is relieving. They hover around him like flies, skittering about with emails leaking from their hummingbird fingers.
They don’t speak; Tom doesn’t even deign to look at him, really. It’s the same, but different between them: the air of indifference and the tight expressions. Tom busies himself seducing politicians with plastic words that drip from a matching plastic smile, except now he’s got his grubby hands groping the family business, having whored and cucked himself to the top.
Impulsively, he sends Shiv a quick message in the lull of a meeting. It’s a match of Russian Roulette; he’ll hold the gun up to his head, finger on the trigger, to see if it’ll blow back on him. Her contact still reads a loud “MAJOR BITCH: DO NOT RESPOND” from when he changed it after that last voicemail.
I’m sending a hit on Tom btw. It’s like he’s let the douchebag cancer metastasize in him. Didn’t think it was possible for me to like him less.
Oh so you reply now?
Is the jury still out on your divorce?
The conversation is on pause. Not the best time to do it. It’s tricky with Matsson.
Wait so now you’re good with staying with Mr. Minnesota because he’s sitting in dad’s chair? You can’t cuck him anymore since he’s the big boss?
Fuck off.
He doesn’t have a reply. Learning how to speak to each other again feels like trying to walk on a half-healed sprained ankle.
Are you going to come home? This really isn’t funny anymore.
I like DC.
Horseshit. You never fucking visited me whenever I was out there.
I like DC now.
What kind of leash does he have you on? You’re moving like a cuntstruck idiot.
I told you he’s nice.
Made you read Plato yet?
You’re still triggered? So typical of you, Madame Snowflake.
He sneaks in another message before she has time to let the seething and bubbling hot estrogen into his side of the ether.
Yeah, well it’s good for me being here. The new gig, new playground.
New dad?
A feeling he can’t quite place lurches forward in him.
You’re the one living with new dad.
She reads the message. The gray bubble worms around on his screen.
Fine, whatever. Do you know where Ken is?
Fuck if I know. You’re the one who pulled the rug out from under him.
Do you want me to spare some corruption for you and get the FBI looking? Ask POTUS for a special search dispatch? You can cash your payment in blowjob.
Nevermind. Forgot you’re still a moron.
It’s better without you here anyway. Less shit to shovel.
Good day, sis.
“Why Plato?” he gabbles out in the fleeting, God-given second Mencken chooses to ease his stranglehold.
“Hmm? What gives?”
They both sound equally zonked out, and Roman would laugh at the smattering of syncopated bed squeaks if he wasn’t so out of it. Dickmatized. The handy work of sodomy’s very own black magic.
They’d been granted a free night—thanks to some Eastern European ambassador whose bowels are currently being scoured out by a top quality, authentically American, roadside hotdog—an opportunity to cut the losses of what had been shaping up to be a truly shitty day. Finding out what exactly drives Mencken’s perpetual hard-on for Plato should be very low on his present list of objectives, but it’s difficult to focus on the more pressing hard-on in front of him with Shiv’s words weighing on his mind.
“Fuck,” he sputters, a tug on his hair and a particularly charged nudge forward; it sears. “The ‘read Plato’ bullshit. With Shiv. Mmh—fuck.”
Mencken angles forward, brings his sneer up right by Roman’s ear. Sweltering beads of sweet, sweet perspiration leach down with the collision of his abdomen with the exposed skin of Roman’s back. It warrants a nasty, porno-fake slosh which should be obnoxious by all accounts, but he doesn’t even have space to care, not when the unyielding pulse he’s been submerged in causes him to completely numb-out like he’s been baked fresh from the lobotomy lab.
“You want to talk shop now?” Mencken digs himself deeper, taunting. “Your sister? I could’ve sworn I caught a whiff of incest in the air. Very American of you—bravo.”
God, Roman might just leave the throw pillow sopping wet with his spittle, if he doesn’t rip it apart with his bare hands first. The thought itself is humiliating: those bottom-of-the-chain White House cleaners finding another soiled and stretched set of sheets to zip up about. If any of them have working brains—highly doubtful, considering their job keeps them elbow-deep in toilets—they should use it to get Mencken’s staff to piss away a few extra grand to stop them from running with their nuggets straight to the afternoon print of The Sun.
If it does go public, there would be very little wiggle room for plausible deniability. Pillowfights are unlikely to contain both the participation of grown men and, well, jizz.
“So, tell me, fuckbird,” Mencken frets, mouthing his way damp along Roman’s spine. “The sibs had a cute little spat? Needed me to fuck the frustration out of you?”
“Can’t a man learn more about the—shit—owner of the dick he lets into his very sacred—fuck—rear orifice?”
It earns a mercurial sort of snort from behind, the kind that injects little spurts of youth into Mencken’s character.
“Very sacred, indeed,” is his musing as he intakes the foul-fucked air, punctuated with thrusts further in; the sugary sting of the stretch nearly pushes Roman to wail like a bitch, though he bites down on his tongue instead. “You were made for it. To take me.”
Mencken keeps a measured hand on everything under his care: his work, his staff, his family, his nation. It gets one thinking then, how the drops of recklessness in his body have all made their way into the doomed throes of his screwing and his kissing and his messianic tongue. Whoever had orchestrated it, Roman will heartily worship. Slap a devout sticker on his bumper and take the flog out for his 3 P.M. flagellation sesh, would you?
“Yes,” he nods off in waves of spaced out dicked-down-delirium, answering even though he isn’t offered a question. “Feels so good. Feels so—fuck—please, need more—”
If Mencken’s mission had been to carve himself six feet of Roman deep, you’d better give him a gold star, and then some.
Mencken pulls away briefly, a bargain with the devil, and though Roman finds himself keening at the growing emptiness, the drag of his cock is a mouthwatering good. It’s so good in fact, that when Mencken draws himself back into Roman, the newfound contact causes him to finish, completely untouched and with breathing room around his dick to spare. Christ.
“Will you ever answer my question or am I just going to have to assume you have, like, a freaky fetish for him?”
“For whom?”
“Plato. Or another bearded Greek that enjoys smoking the big-O and pulling scarves out of his ass; I don’t know.”
They trade words as Mencken uses a damp cloth to erode away the traces of their sin—a simple repentance, a sham show of repugnance towards the vast evils of which they’re capable. He grazes it along Roman’s stomach, polishing him back down until he’s got a brand-new gleam. His pretend doll: whitewashed in taintless, puritan paint and poised for another round of first-time corruption. His own, handmade Prometheus.
“Well, once,” Mencken begins. “I was a wee boy taking up political science at the University of Fuck All—do you seriously care to know?”
“I don’t know, I guess I just—I feel as if maybe it’d be cool if I, as an esteemed member of your Cabinet, at least knew your code of principles beyond the—how do I say this nicely? The H-man impersonation?”
They don’t make a habit of mincing their words around each other. Roman can stretch his legs out and chuck political correctness off a ten-story tower.
“Do you know anything about the Republic, Roman?”
Mencken doesn’t make a habit of hiding his condescension either. He bathes in the humor of being patronizing, his lifeblood.
“I mean, I’m fucking aware of the allegory of the cave, if that counts,” it probably doesn’t. “Which is kinda stupid. To me.”
It’d be easy to lose his footing here and slip conveniently back into the cage, the home of the weaker dog; he’ll be twenty-three, watching Shiv with her diploma and big words, and Ken’s half-baked monologues on Foucault and his god-awful hipster rebrand.
“You see, in the Republic, Plato uses Socrates to map out this idea of a truly ‘just’ society: one ruled by philosopher kings.”
“And you would—of course—be this philosopher king type, right?” Roman jests with a bit of a bite, but he means nothing of it. “You and the rest of your self-professed thought leaders get to sunbathe in the spotlight just because?”
“Philosopher kings are the only ones who should be entrusted with the authority to rule—they are the only ones capable. Superior in every way,” he palms Roman’s matted hair away from his face, the caress of a thousand needles. “The vermin of the earth can only comprehend what is in front of them. And knowledge? True knowledge? They can scurry around for years, like little Sisyphus, trying to find it. They will never get around to it. At least, not like how kings do.”
“So what’s your pitch, big man? Your selling point, hm?”
“I take care of you, don’t I? I know what’s best.”
And maybe they both know the answer, the fucking 800-pound elephant in the room, which is why Roman doesn’t waste his words on a drawn out, soppy response. No, he chooses instead to settle into the space he has grown accustomed to—the anchoring crook of a neck—and lodges himself deep in the nook he’s been shaping for himself since perhaps, always.
“Buy into me,” Mencken croons the words as if they’re his very own painkiller lullaby; it quells Roman into a needed hypnosis as they succumb to an inevitable drowse. “All I’m asking you to do is buy into me. Wherever I go, you follow.”
The boneless drift towards slumber is easy; the night is quiet in ways New York has never pretended to be. Well, it’s really no use coming home now, when he’s already there.
He tells one of the no-name Columbia clones that pass off as aides to get him the most disgustingly expensive copy of ‘The Republic’ available. He’ll pay any price. It arrives, bound tight in leather and his own irreverence, and finds a place on his desk. Though he leaves it unopened and unread, for once, it fucking means something to him. He’d be remiss not to mention the fact that it also makes for a stellar fucking paperweight; it doesn’t knock over when they’re too impatient to get to the bed.
In the morning, he combs his hair back with extra care and rubs forty dollar rings of moisturizer into his face like an asshole. Mindlessly, he tethers himself with his blood red tie and pins the star-spangled banner to his blazer the way he knows Mencken particularly likes. In his ears, the slow purr of boot-heavy commands cushions each second he breathes. The voice of God, its timbre a Presidential pitch perfect, guides him as he sinks into the comforting shape of a world so innate, deep-rooted, undeniable.
Hands in his pockets and a learned smile stretching wide across his face, he sidles through to the Oval Office.
“Good morning, Mister President. Fancy a chat?”