Chapter Text
i saw it flash before me
roman had something about three fun experiences in his life.
for example, when he was drunk as fuck, laying on nate's shoulder and looking through the vip lounge glass on the crowd underneath them; he wasn't sure, whether they were celebrating or grieving something — he was never sure when drinking with nate.
he was almost sure that it was something around friday; he wasn't so sure about month and year. his stomach was full with jin-tonic and scotch — stir, not mix.
he was free from his tie for around two hours now, shoes were lost somewhere under the table (it was the price he paid to keep getting spayed). on the table some girl was dancing and looking in his eyes just because she thought she could have get something from him. roman knew that after some aperols something could've happened between them. nate was deeply in his thoughts, going through some painful breakup with his almost-fiance; it felt like he was in a wedge of calling her and trying to get everything back.
people on the dance floor were going crazy by some edm; roman catches something like can't be sad in my new miu miu and grins.
his phone, laying on the table screen down, was buzzing from time to time — father didn't stop trying to reach out. apparently, becoming personal on the undergoing meeting isn't a particularly good idea. apparently, you'll have to pay for that; roman is almost certain that he'll have to abandon his favorite car until father becomes softer.
surprisingly, the office job was his mother's initiative.
at some point she thought that making some beats for other people and rapping silly things on those beats isn't a suitable career path for a company heir, so from now on roman was trying to kill himself over an infinite number of microsoft teams meetings and exel tables in his father's corporation building.
under every action of his there was almost a father's signature of authorship; under every girl, whom they tried to push under him with enviable regularity, there was almost a mother's one.
he was as good with girls as he was with nuclear physics — so, exceptionally bad. they liked him, but the other way around, especially after he showed up, it was completely silent. they smiled and playfully looked at him; he watched away and looked somewhere where he, as unattainable as a fucking supernova, was signing someone's phone case and smiling sweetly into the camera — they definitely couldn't be together together everywhere.
of course, at some point he tried to show character to his parents — but everything, as expected, was completely useless against their methods of pressure, which even after twenty-three years worked absolutely flawlessly.
at his always empty and cold apartment, under a pile of work papers that he had no energy to sort through, lay a laptop with demo tracks that never made it into their second joint album — at the time roman was going absolutely crazy and never stopped writing things. now it was just a distant memory about something that never happened.
but something sweetly twitched from the deep-buried memories of how, during a break between concerts — roman was opening with tracks that he wasn't ashamed of —they'd lie under the air conditioner in stuffy los angeles, lazily freestyling to the sound of the sea outside. the weed and tooth-breakingly sweet cocktails made their heads feel completely light, and roman almost felt sick with happiness in those small moments for just the two of them.
hollis, looking almost ethereal with his blonde hair and white clothes, was talking something about his childhood, his mother and younger brother, a horse, a trampoline in the backyard, and minecraft, which he started sampling ten years later. in this tiny world, he thawed out his cold prince image and was insanely different from his public persona.
roman told him that he loved him and buried his face in hollis’ chest; he never heard an answer, but somewhere inside, he felt it.
now he's left with almost nothing, nate, who followed him out of a sense of girl solidarity, and a cloud photo archive. everything else suddenly became absolutely useless.
the next beat drop hits, putting roman out of thoughts about ending it all right now — he jumps up, almost knocking over the table. nate looks at him strangel, but says nothing.
"you want anything" he says instead, not bothered with a questioning intonation, hiccupping drunkenly as he presses the touchscreen menu. roman, without looking, presses on the aperol and regrets that smoking is not allowed here.
“i’ll go smoke”, he says, tongue feeling completely numb.
nate looks at him funny:
“dude, again? no hablo español, remember?”
"shit, sorry," roman winces and reaches for his jacket. alcohol and weed always reset him to his default settings, and the english keyboard layout completely disappears from his head. "i'm going to smoke."
"oh, okay”, nate nods and goes back to his phone. the girl on the table loses all interest in roman and crawls over to the couch.
and then he flashes in the crowd.
and all it takes for roman to see is a profile and a familiar blonde hair to jump up from his chair and rush barefoot down through the crowd; the girl squeals and shouts "asshole!" in his back; for one brief moment, it all feels hilariously funny.
roman really was an asshole — not just right now, but in general. it was, you know, something like a general characteristic of him. roman, twenty-two, aries, asshole. it wasn't about his job or the way he managed communication with people — rather, it was about how he failed to manage everything in personal life.
he broke up with hollis eighteen months, five days, and sixteen hours ago (not that roman had actually remembered it or kept track... it was just the right date); now he was in exactly the right state when calling or texting his ex, or even forgetting he was an ex in the first place, was no longer shameful.
the staircase before his eyes swayed from side to side, prompting him to grab the walls with his hands and bump into people he knew and not so familiar, who disgustedly pushed him away. roman almost grabs him by the shoulder, but, fortunately, doesn’t have time — he turns around and it feels like a cold shower. it was a just guy with a vaguely similar face and gray hair, which for some looked blonde.
not him.
roman freezes in place and suddenly realizes how stupid he looks now, completely drunk, barefoot and out of his mind.
he goes back up to the vip much more slowly, collect his stuff, and walks out, blinded by the phone screen with an open uber notification; nate shouts something after him, but the sound cuts off by the closed door; roman feels guilty for a fraction of a second.
but the only thing on his mind was hollis.
at the time nate confidently said that they were both completely fucked up; roman took this as sign, and did a bunch of even stupider things.
now it's clear that he was the only one who was fucked up. but can you blame someone for the feeling that he has finally found the one and only?
Bitch, I don't know how we got here
roman still wasn't sure where exactly they've met. it was probably something like a get-together for reposts or a rap-battle in an old fucked-up warehouse — but almost immediately they became entwined with everything that ordinary people have.
at first it was things like "can you pass the water?" and for some reason they were awkwardly bumping fingers around that stupid bottle; it all ended with empty studio and destroyed mixing desk. roman still felt a little guilty about it.
then, for the first time in a very long time, roman felt like emptiness inside him became almost non-existent. the sensation of having hollis, who was an unattainable wet dream for everyone made his fingertips tingle. everyone saw him on the big screen and were nowhere near; roman was the closest meteor to this supernova.
it was all just like in the most cliched pulp novels, of which his mother was a big fond of — hollis took him absolutely everywhere, introducing him as a new producer (even though everybody knew that he always wrote everything himself), got him passes to places where roman would never get himself, and fucked him in an endless string of utility rooms, trailers sets and studios.
in response, roman actually wrote him something for the new album — at the time he was really into cloud rap and edm — and even made him a voicetag simply because he wanted to understand to what extent he could go. and, probably, because he went a little bit nuts.
I'm leaving you a voicemail
cuz I want you to hear my voice
it was always enough for hollis to simply wave his finger (or, most of the times, just nod his head), and roman would rush to him with the enthusiasm of a fawn being thrown under the wheels of a truck.
he never fully understood how hollis felt about him. i mean, at some point they became about seventy-three percent official. at their friendgroup, for sure; he only realized this for certain when nate, usually indifferent to such things, looked at the crimson hickey that had appeared between roman's t-shirt and jeans when he reached for something and sternly said “you've fucked up”. only later, when everything fell apart, roman finally understood that it was a precaution.
there was a bunch of tweets about them, and roman reread each one of them in fits of self-conviction (see, we really did have something going on!), when they had already, in fact, ceased to exist.
being that something was fucking awesome; roman masturbated to their hometape, which hollis probably didn't even remember filming. in it, taken on romans old crooked iphone, they looked too together, and only for that sincere feeling everything that came before and after could`ve been forgiven.
because the morning after, when roman wakes up with hollis` head on his chest and bruises on his thighs, only one notification breaks through the silent mode on his nearly dead phone — popcrave, citing the artist's social media accounts, writes “the twice-grammy-nominated rapper 2holls is in an official relationship with-“.
Eyes on the prize, agoniz-
a month later, when things finally settle a bit, roman comes to get the things that`s left and traces of whores because hollis is still b in lgbt.
hollis laughs, offers to fuck goodbye, and later writes a track with the line baby wanna raid the whole apartment like the FBI; the public goes crazy, trending hashtags on twitter about the unknown baby of a twice-grammy-winning rapper.
roman knows this baby very well because he sees her in the mirror every day; when he goes through a bunch of posts about alleged girls, it makes him sick — mostly, of himself. how he could not see all of that? the signs were everywhere.
the girls hollis chooses after him — and during him, apparently — are all different from him. it feels like hollis tried to forget roman, diving into bunch of skinny blondes with blue eyes and botox lips.
all this happens before the moment of acceptance of new circumstances: his assistant in a gray suit and blue knee-high socks — roman feels sick from such clumsy attempts at kitsch — for some reason offers to call roman's father and immediately almost catches with her face a mug with the inscription "best boss ever" with unfinished decaf coffee and sugar-free sugar.
to the screeching of his now former assistant, roman smashes his phone against the wall of the office where he now de facto works, and leaves a few hours early to sob his heart out in his own bathroom, where there are too many mirrors and sharp corners.
in the gray and inexpressive now, where are no hysterics left, no re-listening to tracks with his fucking voicetags, no hollis' voicemails, where he hoarsely tells something, periodically slipping into a whisper that makes something inside sweetly squeeze, and laughs while the bass thunders in the background.
they had fucking everything; and then absolutely nothing.
and that is why, suddenly receiving simple: "u up?" at two o'clock in the morning from a number he has memorized and blocked many times, roman smiles completely stupidly and again throws himself into the mouth of the white tiger.