Chapter Text
It only takes until the yacht is a few miles from shore for Shiv to land her gaze on Gerri Kellman. Gerri, general counsel at Waystar | Royco has been close to the Roy family since before Shiv was born. She’s no-nonsense and trusted, meticulous, rigid. She looks incredible in a sun hat, the ocean breeze blowing wisps of hair around her face as she watches the coastline disappear behind them. Shiv thinks, in the heat of the sun and the dizziness of the champagne, that, strange as it is, she might be in love with her.
“Gerri!” She calls out from the upper deck, holding on to her own, larger hat.
Gerri looks up at her through dark sunglasses. Shiv thinks she’s smiling, but she can never be sure. Filled with longing, Shiv waves for Gerri to join her, then waits, trying not to reveal that she’s hoping she does. Gerri comes up the stairs wearing wearing a loose linen dress and a structured straw hat. Shiv pictures her, pictures them, on a lavender farm in one of the little towns they’d driven through to get to the yacht. She chastises herself; she needs to focus on whoever is going to get taken down for all the wrongdoing in cruises. But the idea of running away from this all with Gerri is tantalizing, forbidden. She doesn’t like to think that it could be Gerri who takes the fall for all of this. Since they got on the yacht two days ago, Shiv has been constantly reminding herself to play up her worry for Tom, play down the concern for Gerri that beats at her chest every day. Shiv doesn’t want to think about Tom; it’s bad enough to have to sleep in bed beside him, to carry on the facade of their marriage when Shiv knows Tom knows she’s unhappy, knows there are others. He just doesn’t know that ‘others’ means exclusively Gerri Kellman under cover of darkness and the guise of a sort of off-the-books management training.
Shiv looks up to see Gerri bite her lip when she sees Shiv reclining in the shade of an umbrella. She’s wearing a navy-blue high-waisted bikini she’d purchased recently with Gerri in mind. Gerri sits down on the sun bed next to Shiv, keeping herself a respectable distance from her. “That wasn’t exactly subtle,” she says, looking out over the pool.
“Yeah well, neither is the way you’re looking at my tits right now, so…”
“Stop that,” Gerri says. She leans back on her hands, crosses her ankles. “So, how’s Roman?” Apparently this is a safe area of conversation.
“Fine,” Shiv says. He’d recently been briefly kidnapped and was a little shaken, but recovering. “He was playing video games with Tom this morning in the theater so I just…assume he’s good.”
“Uh-huh,” Gerri says. “I just…well, you know how he gets.”
“No,” Shiv says, trying not to look up at Gerri. “For sure.” It’s brutal to not get to be closer to her, to not get to feel her hand, reassuring, on her thing. She hopes Gerri thinks it, too. No one is around; they shouldn’t have to keep this up.
“Any chance you’re available tonight for a little…you know? Our usual? Berlin stuff?” A reference to one of their initial hookups, an extremely kinky one. “Tom passes out at like ten-thirty; I could come by?”
“I’m a little busy trying to stay out of prison to be playing dominatrix with you tonight, Siobhan. But I appreciate the offer. Especially since I explicitly told you this wasn’t happening until I’m sure my…role here…is secure.”
“I will look out for you,” Shiv says. “Now, get drunk with me.”
“No,” Gerri scoffs. But she reaches for a champagne flute on the tray next to Shiv and pours herself a glass. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.” She sips it once then holds it in her hand, Shiv notices, more like and accessory than a beverage. Gerri lowers her head and her sunglasses slide down her nose. She looks directly at Shiv. She’s not wearing any makeup behind her glasses, which always makes her look softer. “At least, not to me.”
“Fine,” Shiv says, drawing her knees to her chest. “But you know I’ll use any pull I have. Like we said the other night.”
“I shouldn’t be worried,” Gerri says, more to herself than to Shiv. “I’ve been loyal.”
“And I’ve been quiet, I promise.”
Gerri looks over one shoulder to see if anyone is around. The deck is empty. She sets one hand on Shiv’s thigh, right against Shiv’s skin. “I know you have,” she says, then, giving Shiv’s thigh a squeeze, gets up, taking her champagne glass with her.
“Hey,” Shiv calls after her and is surprised when she turns around. “Good hat.”
Gerri can’t help herself but laugh as she turns to go back indoors. She is almost immediately replaced by Tom and Greg, drinking green juice and wearing colorful swim trunks.
“Shiv? Juice?” Tom asks, taking two from the bar just inside.
Shiv looks at the champagne. “Uh…yeah. Thanks.” Tom comes to join her, sits closer to her than Gerri had, but still keeps his distance. It’s just like that imaginary line between them in bed at night. He’s careful not to touch her even then, and while sometimes it makes her a little bit sad, mostly she appreciates it. She wants the threesome to change this, at least assuage the awkwardness of it all. She can make Tom feel wanted, still get off, and remind herself that sex with a woman just feels that good to her and it’s not that she’s in love with Gerri or anything like that. But already she knows she’s lying to herself. She doesn’t even want sex with women anymore, a dark and ever-present secret she’s kept for years, she wants sex—more than sex—with that woman. The one who just went off to do something practical like save herself, the woman she, by all accounts of age and social appropriateness, cannot have.
“So,” Tom says, swimming over to the side of the pool where she’s sitting. “Want to place bets on who gets fucked?”
“Yeah,” Shiv says. “I’m betting on you.” She pauses a moment, watches his face contort. “I’m kidding. Oh my god, Tom, I’m totally kidding. No, it’ll be some old fuck. Frank or Karl probably. It’s not…it won’t be you.”
“I mean…Gerri. Gerri looks good for it,” Greg says. “She knew.”
Roman lobs a clear, inflatable beach ball at him from the other end of the pool. It hits him squarely. “Ow, man,” he brushes back his hair where he’s been splashed.
“Not Gerri. Dumbest idea ever.”
“Agreed,” Shiv says, casual.
“You think your old man ever fucked her?”
“Tom!” Shiv says, though she realizes as soon as she does she’s being blatantly obvious.
“Sorry, that’s Shiv’s godmother,” Roman says, swimming up to Tom and Greg from the other side of the pool. “So she’s like…protective. It’s weird.”
Shiv shoots Roman a look, though she knows there is know way in hell he knows. “Gerri and dad? No, I don’t think so. Not that I make that any of my business seeing as it’s disgusting. And it’s not going to be you, Rome. He won’t take out one of us.”
“I was in LA, Gerri says there’s stuff, records, from when I was in LA.”
Shiv was trying to get off the subject of Gerri entirely.
“Look,” Shiv says, “it’s not going to be one of us. Or somebody married to one of us. Dad trusts Gerri,” she looks at Tom, “because she’d not a fucking rat like Frank. I mean, no one likes him.”
Roman climbs out of the pool and wraps himself in a towel to sit next to Shiv. “This isn’t your little club at the stables, Shiv. You don’t get kicked out, i.e., go to prison, no one likes you.”
She glares at him.
“I like Frank, and then we throw in Greg.”
“Uh…hey?”
“Just like as a…a side dish. A free cookie.”
“A free cookie? Dude I—”
Shiv has gotten really good at tuning out Tom’s voice. She turns to her brother, seeing a sort of fear behind she wonders if others can’t. “Hey, about the other day, are you good? Like good?”
“I was held hostage and that was pretty brutal and now my signature’s on stuff where women got like horribly assaulted and died so, uh, no.”
Shiv looks down at her hands. “Right. Rome, dad won’t—”
“He doesn’t love me the way he loves you and Ken. And Connor even. Yuck.” Roman looks over to where Connor and Willa are snuggling obnoxiously on the outer deck.
“He does, Rome.” She doesn’t know what else to say so she just reaches out and warps her arms around him and holds him for a second. Suddenly she thinks: this thing with Gerri is making her soft; it could really hurt her.
—
“Hey Shiv? Can I ask you something?” She and Tom are lying in bed on the yacht, staring up at these little flecks in the ceiling that are supposed to looks like stars. She was going to talk him out of the threesome but instead she feigned illness and postponed it.
“Mmhm,” Shiv says.
“Just out of curiosity…” a heavy sigh.
Shiv cuts him off. “That’s why people ask things, Tom,” Shiv says, her heart is beating in her chest. She imagines him asking her if she’s ever let Gerri Kellman fuck her with a dildo or gag her or tie her to her bed, the answer to all of which would be yes.
“Do you have…gay thoughts?”
“Oh, because of the threesome?” Shiv asks. “Yeah uh…girls are…nice, fine. Haven’t we already had this conversation? Like when we were dating? Like when I disclosed to you, or started to disclose to you, a list of people I’d slept with, before you got scared.”
“Shiv I don’t…I know you’re…over me sexually at the moment…” he looks up at her for a detail she won’t give him. “So I thought I might take that opportunity to you know…mess around a little, learn some stuff about myself instead. Let you and this girl really—go for it.”
“You don’t want to watch?” Shiv asks. She can’t explain it; she feels a little hurt. It’s not that she wants that but it seems less like a betrayal of Gerri if it’s under the guise of Tom’s participation.
“Not because you aren’t hot, I’m just feeling myself pulled in a similar, yet different direction.”
“Oh yeah?” Shiv flips over and folds her arms across her pillow.
“Yeah,” Tom says.
Shiv thinks it might be with Greg, but she doesn’t want to give Tom the satisfaction of caring about it. And definitely a worse offense than her and Gerri in her father’s dated and problematic eye.
“Hey, if you don’t want to have this threesome,” Shiv says quietly.
“No? I thought you wanted it.”
Shiv shrugs. “Yeah…I can get what I wanted from it…elsewhere. You know…”
Tom nods. “Yeah. I mean we haven’t talked if it’s part of the open thing…”
“What?”
“Women I mean. I guess it’s okay with me.”
“Oh it’s okay with you if I let women fuck me in our open marriage, Tom?”
He doesn’t have an answer to that and shrinks back from her. She feels in control. “I do what I want, yeah?” She says and turns off the light.
“No, Shiv, of course you do,” Tom says into the darkness.
She doesn’t tell him she loves him. She’s having a hard time saying it lately because every time she does, the thought of Gerri, the sound of her voice, the thought of being on her knees in front of her flashes in front of Shiv’s eyes. She never felt this way for him—she didn’t ever feel this way about men, and the whole time she’d been with him she’d just been pretending she felt something she could only calculate.
Tears prick at her eyes. She’s angry at Tom for being easy, angry at Gerri for being so difficult, so opaque. She’s angry, mostly, at herself.
—-
2:02pm
Shiv Roy
It’s getting real up here. Tom just ate food off of my dad’s plate.
2:03pm
Gerri Kellman
👍
—-
Tension rises on the boat into the evening. It’s a weird time for everyone. Before dinner, Shiv sits alone by the pool, watching the sun set in the distance. Everyone else is on the lower dock. It’s been a day: Logan sending Naomi Pierce home, which makes Shiv think about her and Gerri being found out and what would happen. She swallows the thought but it sits in the pit of her stomach. She knows he has to be careful, tries not to think of what she would do without Gerri.
Roman seems in better spirits, which is a comfort. He joins her on the sun bed, sipping a beer. “You’re right. I bet it’s Frank,” he says, picking at his nails.
“Can I admit something shitty to you?”
“Yeah.”
“I almost wish it was Tom.”
“Wow.” Roman is chewing on some fruit. “His dick that bad?”
Shiv wrinkles her nose. “No, I just, maybe I made a mistake, that’s all.”
“Real talk? After high school I thought for sure you’d end up with…you know…the fairer sex.”
“Roman.” Shiv bristles. “Let’s not talk about that now.”
“No, I just mean—long term. Like post all this evil-wife use-Tom-as-a fucking-pawn shit.”
“You think that’s a fucking option for me?” Shiv growls.
“Ok. Fine.” He pauses a moment. “I really hope it’s not Gerri.”
Shiv actually gets tunnel vision until he clarifies.
“I mean she knew but she didn’t like know-know, right?”
He’s peeling the label off of his beer. Shiv focuses on his fingers, which look just like hers. His hands a little small, hers a little big, mannish even. She is still catching her breath, focusing on things she can see, like hands. “Um yeah, like you said: he can’t take out a senior woman for cruises. It doesn’t play.”
“This womanthingwith cruises really ups the chances for either of you two as CEO, doesn’t it? I mean, hoping dad doesn’t take Gerri out.”
“It doesn’t play.” Shiv repeats herself, reassuring herself more than him. What does he have wrapped up in Gerri’s success? She looks off at the scenery for a moment.
“For every great and powerful girboss, a thousand other underpaid women have to fall,” Roman says, and Shiv grimaces.
—-
That night, after everyone else is asleep, Shiv and Gerri meet on the upper deck. Shiv feels like she shouldn’t—it seems cruel to meet the company’s general counsel on a night when her father is sending Kendall off to die for the sins of the cruise division.
“Hi,” Gerri says. She locks her phone and tucks it into her pocket. She’s not wearing any makeup and her hair is just brushed out flat. It’s longer when it’s not styled. “Did you…”
“Yeah,” Shiv says. “Ken’s headed back to New York.”
Gerri nods, but her face looks pallid. She’d heard as well, clearly.
“Okay…well, congrats.” Shiv stands a safe distance from her; she hasn’t yet invited her closer, Shiv can tell. “Look. I know he’s my brother, but I…can’t say I’m not even a little relieved it’s not you.”
Gerri purses her lips. “I knew we’d be okay,” she says. It’s clear by the way that she then turns her face abruptly from Shiv to look out over the dark ocean that the we was accidental.
They stand in silence for a while, looking out over the water. However it goes with Kendall, it’s going to hurt. Gerri is going to be busy, Shiv is going to have to not think about her as much, but she keeps catching herself putting her first in every contingency plan. It’s horrible.
“Hey,” she says. “I had a chance to have a threesome with Tom and one of the crew members.”
Gerri seems uninterested. “Oh…yeah?”
“Yeah, and I didn’t.”
Gerri laughs.
“Well, I thought you’d be interested to know.”
“You thought I’d be—do you want a…a fucking gold star, Siobhan?”
“No, I just—“
“You still fuck your husband, don’t you? Jesus; we’re not exclusive.” As soon as she says it, she looks around fast in case anyone heard.
“I don’t know? I mean, are you having sex with someone else right now?”
“No, I—if I were it wouldn’t be any of your business.”
“It might. My sexual health, all that.”
Gerri rolls her eyes. “Go to bed. Don’t think about me when he’s fucking you. It’s disgusting and it’s inappropriate.”
Shiv lets a smirk creep across her lips. “We haven’t,” she says flatly. “In like…months. So the threesome to try and…yeah.”
Gerri drops the scolding and straightens, embarrassed. “Okay, well,” her voice is soft, “I can work with that.”
Shiv smiles. She can’t help but wonder if Gerri means this as a sort of reward for not fucking Tom. “Oh yeah?”
Gerri is standing close to her suddenly. “Yes, you filthy little dyke, I certainly can.”
Shiv gasps.
“Faking it, pretending she’s a good wife when I know very well how much she enjoys being with a woman.” Gerri’s face is close to Shiv’s, her lips near her ear. “Needed to solicit a crew member to satisfy her because her husband doesn’t and the woman, the age inappropriate woman,” Gerri likes to add this in when she wants to make short work of Shiv, who’s definitely noticed, “she really wants is too busy for her little game.”
“Why is it hot that you’re too busy for me?” Shiv whines.
Gerri takes out her phone. “Because I really am.” She looks at the phone in her hand. “I need to take this. Go to bed. And thank you, for letting me know the temperature of…that whole thing.” Gerri answers her phone. “Yeah. Hi, Karolina.”
“Fuck you,” Shiv mouths, turning back toward her cabin. She has to turn away, or she’ll follow Gerri wherever she goes.