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lyss-writes · 3 years

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dirty work

tom’s awful bachelor party, but make it 1973.

Greg Hirsch is miserable.

He sits alone at the bar drinking tap water at an underground group sex party in Sunset Park, coming down from a high off the three fat lines of cocaine that he’d snorted even though he hadn’t wanted to but felt a—like, a filial duty to do it, a cousinly responsibility to save Kendall from himself. The idea had seemed pretty noble at the time but turned out to be a really fucking stupid decision because he’s pretty sure his heart is gonna burst and splatter all over the sticky bartop. This is why he doesn’t do white drugs. Or leave his apartment, if he can help it.

His passport (newly issued, unstamped) is tucked into his inside jacket pocket, but instead of jetting off to Prague, he is stuck here, watching his cousin’s fiancé pretend with a deranged sort of desperation that he’s having the absolute time of his life.

“Hang on,” Tom said, squinting at Roman. “This isn’t where we’re having my bachelor party, is it?”

“You don’t have a problem with that, do you, Wambsgans?”

Tom blanched. He tugged at the lapel on his overcoat, drew it a bit tighter across his shoulders. Burberry, Greg thought, by the checked tartan lining around the collar. Too ostentatious for... whatever this was. “No, I—I just, uh, wondered. Were all the, uh, all the squat houses on St. Marks Place taken this weekend?”

“Well, hey, you’re welcome to fuck off to the Plaza for crumpets and tea with your fucking norm-o friends.”

Roman raised an eyebrow, but when Tom just stood there, hands in his coat pockets and shoulders slumped in resigned defeat, he jerked his chin toward the tunnel entrance and the group trudged off into the shadows.

His cap toe oxfords were still fairly new, the soles still shiny and slick. (A gift from Tom that wasn’t so much a ‘gift’ as it was a mandated wardrobe upgrade, when it turned out that his Kalsos weren’t as versatile as advertised. Seems that they didn’t complement his suit—Italian, perfectly tailored to fit his body with its absurd proportions, which almost amazed Greg more than the price tag.)

He shouldn’t have had to break them in like this, here. Shoes as nice as these were for the executive suite, swank uptown restaurants with a ‘jacket required’ dress policy and unpronounceable French dishes on the tasting menu (even if it is, technically, his mother tongue, Quebeçois transplant that he is). They weren’t meant for a jaunt through the crack dens of Sunset Park.

Greg stumbled over the gravel path as he jogged, flat-footed, to catch up to Roman, panting a little. “So, like, uh, I take it that we’re, we’re not going to Prague?”

Roman snorted, a sharp sound that echoed off the tunnel walls. “Prague, schmog.”

They should have been boarding a private jet at Teterboro (eight-passenger plane; ceiling low enough to smack your forehead on) and popping open a bottle of Bollinger.

But instead, they’re in a slow-moving service elevator with these huge metal grates, and it kind of feels like they’re a herd of cattle being driven to the stockyard. There are no windows, just concrete and metal and a whisper of a chill in the air. It’s November, after all.

He shivers and hugs his arms around himself, tucks his hands under his armpits, but if it makes him smaller, the difference is marginal at best. God, he wishes he had worn a heavier coat.

“No, sure. ‘Prague, schmog,’ I get it, I’m sure this is like, way better, than, um. That.” Greg softened it with a tremulous laugh, and tucked a loose hank of hair behind his ear.

“But, but, I just. Uh. Does this not give you a bit of, like, a murder-y vibe?”

Roman snapped to attention at that, looked up at him with renewed interest. Well, fuck. Good going, Greg. ‘Here, Roman, here’s a bit of soft underbelly, and a knife.’

He really should have just hung back with Tom.

“Oh, well.” Tom heaves a weary sigh, after the attendant pulls the metal grate shut and the elevator starts its slow climb. “I’m sure it’s gonna be great. Thanks, Roman.”

“What did you expect? Why’d you even ask me, Tom?”

“Thought you’d rise to the occasion.”

“Well, clearly I haven’t risen to the occasion.”

“Where the hell are we?” Greg asks, and when nobody answers him, he can’t decide if it’s a small kindness or something else entirely.

“Scared of a little danger, Cousin Greg?” Roman taunted. His grin was wicked.

“Uhhh,” Greg said, brain stalling out. “‘Danger?’”

“Oh, my God, you’re such a fucking pussy. Just try not to look any crackheads in the eye, you’ll be fine.”

Kendall grunted from somewhere behind them, and Roman smirked. “Well. Present company excluded, anyway.”

“Very funny, Rome.”

When they step off the elevator and out into a sea of writhing bodies, it’s clear that they just do not belong here.

Or at least, Greg doesn’t.

He’s twenty-eight and unattached, but he is also hopelessly, desperately, head-over-heels in love with his cousin’s fiancé. And the sick thing is that he feels like Tom is a little bit in love with him, too.

(He thinks. But he’s always been a terrible romantic, hasn’t he?)

So imagine his dread when Roman tells them that tonight is whatever they want it to be, and Tom’s face splits with a huge, face-wide grin.

Tom pulls him aside by his shirtsleeve and pushes a glass of something amber into his hand, and he’s literally pulsating, giddy. But there’s a trepid undercurrent to it that Greg can feel humming under the surface. “We should talk to some girls.”

“Ask them where they were when Kennedy was shot,” Connor tells them, unbidden, from his place at the bar. “If they don’t know, they could be under twenty-one.”

Tom just laughs off the suggestion, and Greg plasters a cellophane smile on his face even though he can’t think of anything that he’d like to do less.

“Do me a favor.”

His uncle took an idle puff on his cigar and exhaled, slow and deliberate, and the cloud of smoke billowed around Greg’s head. He tried not to cough.

“Can you make sure that Kendall doesn’t come back in a box?”

“Okay.” Greg swallowed, puzzled by the abrupt turn in the conversation (but was it a conversation, is it ever, when Logan is sitting across the table?). He scratched his neck. “Yeah, I…”

“I don’t want him showing up dead at the bottom of some French fag’s pool.”

“Oh, no, absolutely,” Greg said, wincing. “None of us do.”

“Keep an eye on him for me.” Logan studied him with slate eyes. “Is this something you can do for me?”

Logan’s directive is clear. Do this for me, and we’ll talk. The idea of a lateral shift appeals, but only insofar as it puts a lot of distance between him and the mess of sensitive documents re: the Brightstar Cruises scandal. He just wants out. But he also wants to stop pining for his boss, and it’s easier to get a handle on his unfortunate crush if he can get some altitude on this.

But Tom is magnetic. He’s a force that Greg can’t resist. It’s honestly infuriating how easily he draws Greg in, even when he doesn’t want to be pulled.

He tries to resist. Greg trails Kendall around the warehouse instead of Tom, as if he is more intrinsically concerned with whatever his cousin’s getting himself into than he is with Tom, as if his thoughts aren’t just an endless churn of Tom, Tom, Tom.

Kendall evades him easily, slips into dark, secluded corners before Greg can catch him.

Tom, not so much.

He looms large in Greg’s peripheral vision, chatting up some girl with a shock of blonde hair, tilting his head back in a braying laugh.

Greg turns and goes after Kendall.

Someone touches his shoulder at the bar, and Greg is so profoundly miserable that he leans into the touch, and it is a genuine, pathetic comfort. He startles when he looks up into Stewy Hosseini’s face.

He remembers Stewy, of course. From the coffee shop on 5th Ave where Greg saw him with Kendall before they disappeared into the men’s room together. But Stewy won’t remember him.

“Jesus H. Christ, what took you so goddamn long?” Tom beckoned for the latte in Greg’s hand. “You didn’t get lost again, did you? It’s a grid system, Greg.”

“No, no, I just, um. I saw Kendall there, with this guy?”

Tom flicked through an open file on his desk, half-listening with apparent disinterest. “Guy, what guy?”

“Uh, I don’t know. He was, like. Tall?”

Tom looked up from his paperwork with a ghost of a smile at that. “Greg, you’re tall. You’re like if Gumby crossbred with the Jolly Green Giant.”

“Tall-ish, then.”

“Well, that’s helpful,” Tom snorted, and went back to his papers.

“Hey,” he says, and settles into the empty chair next to him. “It’s… Greg, right? You’re the Canadian cousin.”

Greg nods. His head feels heavy on his shoulders, his brain sluggish. “Uh, yeah.”

“Stewy,” he says, and extends a hand. Greg takes it after a beat. It’s warm. His palms are smooth, because of course they are, and he has a firm, solid grip.

“Yeah, I—I know who you are,” Greg says, stupidly, before he can stop himself.

Stewy laughs, revealing a flash of white teeth. “Kid, everyone knows who I am.”

Greg huffed. “I don’t know, man, I saw him for like, three seconds.” As if he hadn’t been thinking about the guy ever since he fumbled his change at the till and walked back to the office in a daze. He didn’t think he’d ever seen someone that attractive in real life. (Aside from, like. Tom, but that seemed to be a matter of opinion, depending on who you asked.) “He had dark curly hair, and, um. A beard, I think?”

“Oh, that’ll be Stewy,” Tom said. “One of Kendall’s old buddies from his Buckley days. Guy’s a prick. Buys companies for scraps and sells off the parts. Why you need a Harvard MBA for that, I have no idea.”

His dark eyes flicker over Greg’s face. “What’s with the long face? It’s your boy’s last hurrah, right? Before he drags Shiv kicking and screaming down the aisle?”

“I guess it’s just a little… much. For me? I don’t, uh, get out much.”

“Mm.” Stewy looks at him for a long moment and flags down the bartender, pointing to the old-fashioned in his hand. He waits until the bartender sets a fresh drink down in front of him, and pushes the glass towards Greg. “Go on.”

“Oh,” Greg says, and lifts the glass to his lips. He’s never been much of a drinker, but the liquor is smooth, and downright sapid on his tongue. “Thanks, uh.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. So, what are you?”

Greg hummed a little, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Is he, um.”

“What?”

“You know.” Tom frowned, shook his head.

Tom’s office was empty, and the door was shut, but Greg lowered his voice anyway. “Like, is he of the, the male persuasion?”

“W-what?”

“What’s your deal?” Stewy takes a long pull on his drink. His eyes stay fixed on Greg’s face, his gaze dark and heavy. “Why haven’t I seen you around before? Guess you’re like, the black sheep Roy, right? Did Logan have you locked away in a sanatorium or something?”

Greg knows that Stewy can’t possibly be interested in the particulars of his life, but he’s too coked out to really connect with the thought. “No, actually, I…”

“Yeah, so, listen.” Stewy leans in. “Here’s the thing. I’m so fucking hard right now that I could literally rip through this jumpsuit.”

Greg blinks. The jumpsuit is… well. It’s black, and sleek, and expertly tailored so that the clean, sharp lines accentuate the breadth of Stewy’s shoulders, and the tapered collar reveals a swath of coarse chest hair. His mouth waters. “Uh.”

“Blame the coke, right? Shit’s potent.” He sniffs, rubs his nose. “Problem is, my girlfriend is, like, having a nervous breakdown or something, but I think you’ll do, in a pinch. You’ve got a nice mouth. Supple.”

“Wait, wait, hold on. Are you actually asking me if Stewy Hosseini’s a queer?”

Greg shrugged.

“How the hell should I know that?” Tom asked, and if Greg didn’t know any better, he’d think that Tom sounded a bit… defensive.

“Like, you know him, right?”

“Not like that,” Tom scoffed.

The forward flirt kind of knocks the wind out of him. Stewy just laughs. “It’s a fucking free-for-all, kid. Don’t tell me you’re a square.”

“N-no,” Greg stammers. “I’m not.”

Stewy nods, and drains the rest of his drink in one gulp. “Great, then come with.”

#title: dirty work #tag: tomgreg fic #au: the extended 1970s succession universe #status: abandoned draft #tag: gregstew

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