Chapter Text
The party went exactly as they’d all expected, and yet not at all like that. Richard watched through increasingly hazy vision as Erlich stammered out a hackneyed announcement to their guests, and Bighead, next to him, remained completely obtuse.
“You’re broke, aren’t you?” Gilfoyle said afterward, before Erlich had even gotten fully off stage. Dinesh smirked behind him, slurping down the last of his fourth Mai Tai.
Erlich glared. “Gilfoyle, I wouldn’t expect you to understand the nuances of big business—"
“Ha, they’re broke!” Dinesh chirped.
“Yeah, we are,” Bighead chimed in, with absolutely no nuance at all. “Wait, how do you guys know? Have you been talking to Arthur?”
It was at that point that he was seized at the elbow by Erlich and dragged into the fray of unknowing partiers, to once again try to escape the consequences of reckless money-spending.
“Better make the most of this,” said Gilfoyle, and headed off towards the bar with Dinesh eagerly in tow.
Richard could have given a shit about any of it. He was drunker than any of them and his thoughts were primarily with the loss of Winnie, and also somehow strangely with Jared. Jared—the guy who lived in the garage and thought Patagonia vests were party attire—had successfully gotten multiple women to sleep with him on that tiny cot.
It wasn’t like he thought Jared wasn’t handsome, or didn’t have a gentle charm to him, or even that he couldn’t be the most thoughtful person in Richard’s life sometimes, down to noticing his different stomach issues and which teas would soothe them—
Anyway. His point was this: if Jared could master his sexual relationships, why couldn’t he?
Richard looked down at his half-empty drink. “I have to pee,” he said out loud, to no one.
He wound through the crowd until he found what turned out to be a storage room filled with a weird amount of empty milk crates.
“Fuck,” he said.
He stood there for another minute, debating whether or not to just pee there, in some corner, because really, who cares, when the door opened behind him.
“Richard?”
Jared’s soft, unassuming voice—was that what women liked about him? Richard turned.
“Hey,” he replied, as casual as possible. He didn’t bother to ask how Jared knew where he was. Jared always knew.
“What are you doing in here?” Jared stepped into the tiny room and the door clicked shut. All the sounds of the party were muffled beyond the walls.
“Um, I thought this was the bathroom,” Richard said. “But it’s not, because, you know, I’m just a fucking idiot who can’t even—“ He chuckled and took a sip of his drink. “Whatever.”
“Richard, you’re not an idiot,” Jared said, his eyes filling up with the unplaced emotion that always caused Richard to look away.
“I am,” said Richard. He sat down on a stack of crates and removed the giant beads Erlich had forced them all to wear, letting them fall to the floor. “I haven’t had a relationship in three years and I just let one slip through my hands, for what? Tabs? Are tabs gonna give me a morning handjob, or let me kiss them even though I’ve had hummus with dinner?”
Jared’s face had crinkled at the words “morning handjob”, but he sat gently next to Richard anyway.
“You stuck to your principles, Richard, and someday someone is going to see that for all that it’s worth—“
“How do you do it, Jared?”
“Do what?”
Richard scratched at the back of his neck. “Get people, uh, women—to like you, and stuff? And not let the smallest bullshit bother you?”
“Oh,” said Jared, very faintly proud. “Well, I suppose I just try to put my best self forward in every situation. Relationships are just a beautiful part of life, like sunsets, or a foal being born.”
Richard squinted. “Sometimes I genuinely have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Jared shifted towards him, their knees bumping together, strangely comforting. “Listen, Richard, I know it’s easy to think you’ll die alone—“
“You think I’m gonna die alone?”
“No, absolutely not. You’re amazing, and brilliant, and you don’t need to worry about anyone else, because anyone who isn’t letting you be your best you, is just getting in your way.”
There was no way he could avoid Jared’s gaze now, not with the intensity coming from it, and Richard found himself trying to place that unplaceable emotion.
“Jared, why are you so nice to me?”
Jared blinked. The sounds from outside had all but disappeared, replaced with a thudding that Richard realized was his own heartbeat.
“Why wouldn’t I,” replied Jared. “Why wouldn’t I be nice to you?”
Because I’m a shitty person, thought Richard, and maybe it was this thought, or the talk of crushing loneliness, or the insane amount of alcohol in his system, that made him lean forward and put his lips over Jared’s. It was cautious, yet sloppy, and he swore he heard Jared gasp, and his mouth was just as soft as his voice—
And then Jared’s hand was delicately pushing him away, and the air became clear between them again, and Richard’s brain snapped back into reality.
“Richard,” said Jared, almost a whisper. The feeling in his eyes had become downright incomprehensible.
Richard stood up very quickly, stumbling, and his drink crashed to the floor. “I—um, I don’t know what… I still have to pee,” he blurted out, rushing for the door. His entire head was buzzing.
He burst out of the storage room as though it was on fire, only to find the party in a similar state of panic. Jared, only a stride behind him, halted as they watched people head towards the exits in disarray.
“They’re shutting it down!” Dinesh called, suddenly appearing before them carrying an entire plate of food and a Tiki lamp. “Grab everything you can!”
Gilfoyle, wheeling a tall cooler, wordlessly signaled him from twenty feet away. Dinesh nodded and they both headed off, into the chaos.
Without so much as a glance back, Richard plunged after them, not caring if he found a bathroom, or even found his way home, just needing as much distance as possible between him and that storage closet, and those milk crates, and any thoughts of what he’d just done.
Fuck Alcatraz. And while he was at it, fuck Hawaii too.