in the sanatorium

“He’d do it to us.”

“He wouldn’t do it to you.”

Shiv frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, not you.”

“Because I’m the girl. The little lady. Do you remember when Waystar lined up to acquire Bluebook Archival? Maybe you don’t, considering you were on smack, but at some shitty infosec conference in Vegas, the CEO kept trying to stick his hand down my pants. It was like he was chasing me, from room to room like the Overlook Hotel — wherever I went, there he was, trying to fuck me. I remember being shocked that something like that could happen in dad’s world, right in front of him. So I just kept dodging and dodging all those creepy hotel-room visits. I made it through the long weekend, unfucked, and when the conference adjourned, I was so glad it was over with. Do you know what dad said to me on the flight home? Stop making this so hard for us. Would it kill you to spread your legs? He knew the whole time.”

If he weren’t her father, it would be one thing. If it weren’t her father it would be an anecdote, a tweetstorm, a tale of hardship endured on behalf of an entire gender — but Logan Roy is her father, and she wouldn’t have had a hotel room at some infosec conference if not for him and nobody feels bad for the stool pigeon, the Nazi collaborator. Even this is a pulled punch — the thing she can’t tell him is waiting just on the other side of it, the story that’s just too much to believe.

“Shiv—”

She can’t look at him. She holds up a hand. She is standing in front of her brother in her bra and panties.

“After that, I knew I couldn’t hack it. I mean, I knew I wanted to do something else the whole time, I knew I wasn’t going to be his handmaiden my whole life, but that, yeah, it was a lot.”

Kendall’s face scares her; it makes her pull back, and it annoys her. This isn’t a pity story, a consciousness-raising session, a disclosure; it’s a communication of their mutual interest. Kendall thinks he had it worst, and maybe he did. He’s gotten reamed six ways from Sunday for daring to rebel, and now he’s back in dad’s pocket, scampering around after him and doling out the pills. What’s Logan afraid of — Marcia? Marcia wishes she could do what they’re going to do next.

“I’m sorry that happened,” Kendall says.

“Yeah, boo-hoo. I don’t want to get back at him for that, that isn’t why I brought it up.”

Kendall swallows; Shiv watches his throat. He’s still dressed for dinner, in a suit jacket and a shirt with no tie, and under that — she can itemize him, just like Tom, undershirt and gray jockey shorts and charcoal-colored socks.

She stands there in front of her brother in her underwear: pale beige mesh, ribbons and straps the color of flesh. Shiv doesn’t remember who she bought this lingerie for — whether it was for Tom or for herself or for some other man, to stand in a shimmer of shell-colored lace and mesh and to be looked at. Naked but clothed, not on land but not at sea — showing and not-showing,

This is something they’ve got to do now; they can’t turn back. Shiv climbs down next to him, feeling the slippery pull of suit fabric against her naked legs; Kendall’s head is cocked back, his sharp adam’s apple is showing under the blue shadow of stubble, and the look in his face is full apprehension and all desire.

Shiv takes his face in her hands. Her mannequin-beige manicure shines against his shadowed cheek; Kendall looks tired, sick, but sober. This is what she would once have called looking well.

“There’s nobody else I would rather be doing this with.”

“We’re doing this,” Kendall says, not in response to her but in affirmation to himself — to the both of them.

Shiv kisses him on the mouth. It’s pitiable how his lips part under hers, how smooth and cold the stubble of his chin is against her own jaw.

“You can touch me,” she says, and slides into his lap.

Kendall takes her in his hands, gripping her, as though he’s bewildered by the substance of her, bewildered to be sober and here and holding her against him. His erection is tenting the material of his suit; she wants to measure its shape. She’s never been much of a cock-watcher, and she’s never had the urge to see how her brothers measure up to each other, but at times like this, she can’t look away. Kendall is watching her; she’s watching Kendall, watching him open up like a flower.

Absurdly, she feels like a call girl — curled up on his lap in thousand-dollar beige mesh, watching him touch her. His slippery fingers press into her through her panties, finding the gash of her and rubbing; Shiv draws a breath, more for resolve than from pleasure.

“I want you to have my ass,” Shiv says. “As a gift.”

Shiv rides against his lap, spreading her thighs wide apart and guiding Kendall’s fingers — he’s afraid of hurting her, of splitting her apart somehow, and she presses her hips into the hollow of his hand like an encouragement.

“I can’t,” he says, “I can’t,” and she guides his prick between the top of her thighs, against the warm triangle-crease where her two thighs and her cunt come together.

Her arms around his shoulders and her breasts flush against his shirtfront — he can’t bring himself to touch her there, but he grips at her thigh and her middle with bruise-tight hands and lets her ride against him, slowly working his hard cock between the pale smooth lotioned planes of her inner surfaces. It’s easy almost to get into the rhythm of it, like a barre class or good head — feeling him rock back under her weight, feeling the hot beads of his precome smear into a slick.

“I’ll take care of you,” Shiv says — her hair falling in her face, sticking to Kendall’s busted mouth, smelling like serum and shampoo. Tom was too busy being politic to fuck her like he loved her — like he loved fucking her, like he could stand touching her. Kendall won’t even penetrate her when she asks him to — like they’re not doing what they’re doing if he doesn’t, like they’re the last two technical virgins at the purity ball. The friction of his cock between her thighs makes her clit stiff, and the dull strain of the muscles in her legs is the good kind of hurt, the kind of exertion that means something more than dull self-discipline.

She can see it in his eyes, the hesitation, the opaque fear behind the milky light of pleasure. Maybe it would be better to yank her panties down right now and ride him dry — but this way the pair of them have to set the pace, Kendall’s hands guiding her, Shiv’s hot thighs seizing him.

When Kendall starts, breathless against her, it’s with “Shiv, don’t you think—”

“You’ll think you can’t do it, but you can. I promise you can. We can kill him and get away with it.”

That’s the word they’re both avoiding, that’s the word better left off the record. Kendall Roy can kill Logan Roy and it won’t be like killing his father at all, it won’t even be like killing his boss — it’ll be like pest control, like getting a cancerous lump removed. Both of them are acting like if they don’t use the word, it won’t be real — like this thing between their bodies, whatever they’re doing that isn’t sex and isn’t premeditated murder. She isn’t a murderer, Kendall isn’t an addict, Kendall isn’t her brother. They’re just conspirators.

“No, I trust you — I just don’t think you need me like you think you do.”

“What else do you want me to say? Kendall, I need you. Kendall, I want you with me. He’s an old fucking man. He could die any minute. What do you want me to tell you?”

Who would let a drug addict handle an old man’s medication? One pill at the wrong time, or two pills on the wrong day, no pill at all. It’ll be easy. It’ll be easier than it has any right to be.

“Say it again,” Kendall says.

“Kendall, I want you.”

Her lipstick is smudging, her throat is sweating. Kendall slips her left breast free from its sheer beige cup, his thumb over her hardening nipple, and ducks his head to kiss her breast. Shiv bites back a sound, more a whimper than a moan, and doesn’t even notice him fumbling apart the latch of her bra.

Having him between her legs is a weird rush, a primal thrill. Shiv slips her hand between her thighs to rub her thumbnail over the head of her brother’s cock and feels him groan and buck beneath her.

“Kendall, I want you. Are you going to come for me?”

Kendall doesn’t need to say a word. She knows.

After this, she’ll have to fuck him — really after, once all this is over with and they’re babes in the woods, orphans of the storm. She’ll take him to bed and he’ll be glad for it without a fucking sword hanging over his head. If their many problems won’t be over without Logan Roy, at least they’ll be a damn sight fewer.

Old times, like a couple of delinquents, huddled together on a calfskin couch, sullen and plotting. Kendall fingers her to climax while she’s still wet with his come, fucking into her while she winces and twists in his lap — his thumb presses into her clit with steady strokes, his shirtfront trembles against her naked breasts. If there are tears in his eyes, she doesn’t notice them. Shiv presses her face into Kendall’s shoulder, breathing the smell of dry-cleaning and Tom Ford cologne — needlessly expensive and still too cheap.