"Do you trust me now?"

Kendall says, "No. You shouldn't trust me, either."

Stewy leans back with his knees apart, his left hand cast carelessly between his legs. He still wears his wristwatch. His suit from the interview is strewn around in pieces where he's stripped it away at his leisure — the bedside table, the bedspread, the floor — but the wristwatch remains.

Stewy is completely unafraid. Being under his gaze is like being stuck full of needles; the hardness of their history has accrued behind those eyes like money in the bank, replicating under its own obscure laws. Together they have more history than anyone else not bound to him by blood — even Rava knew it, and she's never coming back again.

What kind of critically damaged person would have voluntarily joined this family? Only someone desperate enough to tolerate it, some fawning asshole with too many teeth and no charm.

No doubt Stewy's family has its own annual rotation of tragedies but Kendall never hears about them except in passing, like a shark fin dipping above the waves for scarcely long enough to spot. He knows how this kind of dynastic bullshit works. He's done it before, he's come through it. He's not afraid.

"I never thought I'd do this with you sober."

Stewy has touched him before, but he's never reached him — there's always been something in between them, money or drugs or the Roy family name. There's

"Yeah, well, me neither."

"We're off the record now, Kendall. You can take it easy."

Kendall slides off his shoes, untucks his shirt, undoes his buttons.

"Are you wearing an undershirt right now?" Stewy asks, sneeringly pleased with his discovery, and it prods him to strip to the skin — when Kendall throws the garment at him Stewy takes it in his hands. That's fine for Stewy, he's all naked ankle bones and crisp barbered nape, but Kendall's body is made up of hard unglamorous shapes.

"Of course. I'm not an animal."

"No, it's nice. It's very First Communion of you." Stewy presses the white cotton tee shirt to his mouth like a love token, like a louche joke, and something in Kendall's heart lurches.

They aren't schoolboys any more; they're men. He moves his body closer, aligning it against the heat of Stewy's body. Stewy undresses him down to the skin, every last layer — tugging his briefs down with his thumbs, shucking off his socks — and when Kendall comes up again he is cold and stripped and candid. He still can't help holding himself a little, hugging his arms to himself like he's searching for a shred of self-possession — he'd held himself like this in front of the microphone earlier, the opposite of a power pose. Building a wall.

"Before we do this, I need to tell you something."

"So tell me."

Stewy's hand is on his leg, steadying him. His eyes are dark and sweet and bright, like liquor; Kendall searches for the words.

"I may have been a part of something — I'm not proud of. If we move forward, people might use it against you. If we're going to do this, I need to know where you stand."

He needs to know if Stewy will hate him.

Stewy looks him in the eye; his other hand goes to Kendall's chin, two fingers just below the edge of his jaw. Kendall could freeze like this, like a trained animal waiting for a command.

"Are you telling me as your business partner, or are you telling me as your friend?"

"Neither. Right now you're neither."

Stewy is smiling now, and the tension evaporates; his eyes are no longer solemn and liquid, he's no longer a lion-tamer, he's a sleazy schoolboy with a big smile and his pockets full of rolling papers and hundred dollar bills.

"It's sweet you think this is the stuff I like. You, bringing me gossip like a cat dropping off a big dead rat on your pillow."

"After that, I'm telling you that in case he tries to tell you first."

He, unqualified, is always Logan Roy.

"Don't do me any favors. You can tell me later."

Stewy kisses him hard and slow, catching his teeth in his lower lip — the designer-drug rasp of his beard makes Kendall's mouth burn, and he doesn't have time to think about Logan Roy or anything else. His surprise makes his heart flutter and his arms uncross, opening to allow Stewy in against his naked torso — his arms find a loose place around him, cradling him like a sociable embrace, but he kisses him until his mouth aches.

Stewy's fingers press into the meat of his leg — Kendall hoists himself up against him, feeling the muscles in his legs tremble, and he is so ready to lose himself. Stewy is already hard, with a nice shape filling out the front of his Armani briefs; Kendall's own arousal is beginning to pool in his groin, coursing around in confused circles while his brain tries to marshall together the next message. He wants to touch him, to slip his hand inside the waistband and to feel, but not yet. Kendall can barely breathe. He feels like he's going to be sick, or like he's going to scream.

They kiss some more, brutal and tender; he rakes his hands through Stewy's hair until the dark curls shake loose, and Stewy's mouth creeps from his lips to his chin to his jaw, patiently working a red bruise. Kendall could cry; he could cry out with how much he wants this, how much he wants what they've never had.

Kendall fumbles with the condom wrapper until Stewy snatches it from him and rips the packet open. He frees Kendall's erection and brings his hand down the shaft in strokes that couldn't be more different from Kendall's own neurotic sharp tugs. Like he really wants to be touching him — using his fingers and his palm and the side of his thumb like a blade, feeling the shape of him as Kendall's blood pulses under the surface and the velvet head of his cock starts to grow flushed.

Stewy thumbs at the slick spot at the head of his erection, and then licks his thumb.

"You fucking silver-spoon slimeball," Stewy breathes against his mouth, drowsy-eyed and hot with familiarity. Kendall grasps his nipple and twists; Stewy jerks against him with a groan that becomes a laugh and spreads his legs.

He's really not making this easy for himself. Stewy rolls the condom onto him with a hot hand, and leans in as if to kiss him again, but Kendall's fed up with that now and frightened of how much he wants it to continue — they could fuck around like this all night, like a couple of teenagers in the bathroom at a bar.

"Are we good? Did that get your little rocks off?"

"Roll over," Kendall says. "All fours." It sounds rougher than he means to, but Stewy laughs at him and rolls over like he knows just the way this goes.

Kendall presses his mouth to Stewy's back, marking him out with kisses — Stewy's cock is in his hand, and Stewy presses back against him raunchily, angling his body to invite touch. The muscles in his broad back twist and the long furrow of his spine leads the way where Kendall's hands want to go,

"Wait — wait. I want to look at you for a second," Kendall says, and he does — the breadth of his body and the narrowing of his hips just above his ass, the dimension of his thighs, the fine black hairs on his legs and the perfect ruddy split of him.

Stewy reaches back around, fingering himself lazily for Kendall to watch, and the sight makes him stiffen — Kendall's cock grazes the back of his hand, and his heart catches in his throat for a second. He's never fucked a man before — not even in college, not even in rehab, not at the worst times when he's wanted cheap comfort more than he's wanted his dignity or his dad's voice going off like a gunshot inside his head. He doesn't want to fuck some stranger, he wants to fuck the person who knows him best.

They've known each other for twenty years. Nobody knows this whole sick situation better than Stewy does — no journalist, no biographer, no hot-take pundit Twitter blue-check dickhead. Not Shiv, not Roman. Stewy has seen this much of him, and who would he be to judge? He has his own ugly little dramas played out behind closed doors, he's been more entrenched in the Roy family enterprise than anyone else will ever know.

Stewy's voice is broken and arrogant, familiar and unfamiliar between breaths. "You want to look, or do you want to fuck me? Come on and show me."

Kendall spits on his cock, like they're two cowboys in a cornfield and not immensely wealthy men having protected sex in a Manhattan penthouse big enough to contain its own sex dungeon. He broaches him without preliminaries and Stewy lets him — fitting into him unflagging, finding a way into his body where it's tight and hot and secret.

The first few thrusts are cautious instead of deep — trying to figure out the win conditions, trying to find that precious spot Kendall only knows the broadest coordinates of. He braces his hands against Stewy's broad back, and the two of them grapple together, quicker and deeper, harder and more concrete — Stewy sucks hot breaths between his teeth and grinds back against him to set the pace.

How long has he wanted to do this? How long has he wanted to be like this? Kendall reaches around, fumbling to jerk Stewy off. Stewy grinds his erection against his gripping hand, yanking down the bedclothes in a tangle. The sound of his rough breathing sparks something competitive in Kendall, something fiery — he quickens his thrusts, rocking forward and pressing his hand through Stewy's hair. The sweat is beading on the back of Stewy's neck, the deep flush is rising, and Kendall's arousal is a tightening coil in the pit of him — he can't keep himself from making a fist and pulling.

"Fuck, Ken," Stewy rasps, turning his head against the pillow, and Kendall stammers in surprise.

"I'm sorry—"

"Do that again, would you? It's sexy."

Stewy comes first, with Kendall pulling his hair — he can see it happen in his face, the way Stewy presses his mouth into a tight line and the way his eyelids flutter and the way he gasps like he's just done a too-jagged line. He slumps down onto his chest, and all the muscles of his arms go slack.

Kendall's prick slips loose from his body as it sinks down against the mattress; he slips and ruts against the tops of Stewy's thighs, cleaving to him like a drowning man.

"I'm going to come," Kendall says helpless, "can I—"

"Take it off and come on me? Turn me over."

Kendall complies. Who is he to argue with that kind of offer?

Face to face Kendall is smartingly vulnerable — he is hyper-aware of the sex-flush pouring down his chest, ashamed of his standing nipples and the way his pubes extend up to his navel in a thin wandering trail. He's had so much questionable sex and yet he can still feel shame — manhandling Stewy into new positions, marveling that he can even do it, and letting Stewy seek him out with adoring hands on his waist, his chest, his thighs, his throat.

Kendall's been waiting for this for years and never knowing it, waiting to get lost — to forget himself, to come so hard he forgets his name and where he is and where he's been. He doesn't ask does this hurt or is this too much because the very pliability of Stewy's body is the answer, the sweetly game lack of resistance is assurance enough that he's not fucking up. The two of them make one body.

When Kendall comes, pouring himself out on the hot crease of Stewy's hip, Stewy's hand is around the base of his throat — not to choke him, not to hurt him, only a gesture of his total acceptance.

Afterward, Stewy rolls over onto his side, spent. Kendall collapses down against him, fitting in against him — not like before, not adversarial but innocent. He presses his face to the back of Stewy's head and breathes the smell of him, trapped in the thick dark barbered whorls of his hair — Stewy smells like rosemary and hinoki wood and other stupid excessive things, like being clean, like living well. When Kendall stifles a sob, Stewy reaches back a big soft hand to clasp at him, and says nothing.

If Stewy ever tells to what extent he's become intimately familiar with Logan Roy's greatest weaknesses, he'd be telling on himself. He saw all these things and he never spoke up — why? But Kendall knows why — because they're not the same, because it wasn't out of fear, because it benefited the both of them. Kendall is beyond fear now, and they're well-matched for each other. Tomorrow will be another day, a different era. Kendall lies there on the edge of sleep, counting his breaths.

Long afterward, Stewy says: "You know, I'm proud of you, man, I underestimated you. You were pretty brutal."

It takes Kendall a confounding moment to realize he doesn't mean the sex. Stewy means what Kendall Roy is synonymous with now, he means slitting Logan Roy's throat on live TV. All that's left is for the blood to run out, and the body to go cold — what they're going through now is just death throes, the last electric spasms of a dying era.

"Is that right?"

"This is the shit we've been waiting for. You knocked it out of the park."

Stewy is proud of him. Stewy knows him. There in the sheets, he sounds completely unpretentious, like somebody who's been washed clean. Kendall's instinct is to pull away, to disentangle himself, and to lie there flat on his back on the custom-built mattress, contemplating his sins. But Stewy won't let him do it; he tangles an arm casually over his shoulders and holds him there against his side. He's proud of the Kendall Roy he wishes he knew, the Kendall that he himself would be if he'd had the bad luck to be born in the wrong family — vengeful and brave, phoenix-like and living for drama. He understands that it was all self-defense.