Work Text:
“Richard!” Erlich hammered on the door a second time. “Jared! Open the fuck up!” Richard had seemed really upset when he stormed out of the conference center. Post-firing levels of upset. Worst case scenario, he’d snapped and killed their CEO and right now Jared was tearfully begging him to let him take the fall. If that was it, Erlich was going to have to side with Jared for once. He wouldn’t trust either one of them to cover up a murder worth a damn, and with Richard’s looks he wouldn’t last five minutes in prison.
Best case scenario for why the two of them had been incommunicado for an hour, and why the tracking app Jared had insisted on installing on everyone’s phones “for situations including, but not limited to, any of us being accidentally shipped to a horrifying robot island” said they were both in the hotel suite but they weren’t answering the door; well...
Erlich knocked again. “Wait, are you two finally banging it out? Ugh, fine. I wish you well. But the presentation starts in fifteen minutes so you need to wipe yourselves down, put on some goddamn pants and come look like you still give a shit about this company.”
Two doors down the hallway, a guy fumbling with his door keys glared at him, pointedly nodding at the twin toddlers by his side. Erlich mostly liked little kids when they weren’t being assholes, and since he had no evidence to suggest these girls were assholes other than their parentage, he confined his reaction to glaring back at Dad, relying on that to wordlessly convey the point that if he didn’t want his kids exposed to evocative language and adult relationships then maybe he should take them to fucking Disneyland and not Vegas during CES. Tool.
He was drawing back his fist to really let the door have it when it opened, Jared in the doorway, Richard sitting behind him on the end of the bed, both of them looking stressed out but fully clothed, and too clean and calm to have just been deflowering their former boss/employee. Somewhat appeased, Erlich said, “Answer your fucking phones next time, dickbags. Come on, Monica’s saving our seats.”
Jared glanced back at Richard, who was staring down at the cheap, ugly-ass carpet – Erlich had hoped to work his suite-upgrade magic a second time but no judges’ wives had presented themselves – and said, “We were just talking some things over. Richard? Do you think you’re ready to go now?”
Richard’s mouth was a hard, tight line, his lips almost invisible. “You mean, did I totally change my mind in the thirty seconds since Erlich started trying to break down the door? Uh, no, Jared, I didn’t. You two go ahead. Clearly Pied Piper can launch without me.”
Jared sat down beside him, at a distance Erlich was sure he’d judged to be exactly close enough to be comforting but not so close Richard felt his personal space was being violated. “Richard. I understand that you’re feeling vulnerable right now. I know how hard it is to feel like you’re not essential, that someone else is replacing you, but...”
“I don’t ‘feel’ like I’m not essential. They literally said, non-essential team members off the stage.” Richard lifted his hands, as if to indicate his definitely off-stage surroundings. “So. I’m just doing what the board wants.”
Erlich rolled his eyes. Jared’s patented brand of gentle, understanding persistence might work if they had ten hours to work with instead of ten minutes. As it was, thank God he’d decided to check on them. “Richard, I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you do the presentation, okay? And if David’s really not going to at least name-check you from the stage then that’s a real dick move. But not one person in that audience is going to think that he made Pied Piper. Jesus, Hooli have Bighead fronting the Nucleus launch; you think anybody’s dumb enough to think he wrote a single line of that code?”
Well, maybe anyone who’d read one of those profiles in Wired or Re/code, or that thing about the Time Person of the Year win, but how many people could that be? Plus they were antiquated idiots who still read magazines, so who cared. And Richard did look a tiny bit brighter. Erlich kept going. “You need to sit in the front row, with the rest of your company, and smile at David’s presentation like it’s the best fucking thing you’ve ever seen no matter how much you know that you or me, especially me, could have done a way better job up there.”
Jared rested his hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Erlich’s right, Richard.” Three beautiful words. “If you really don’t want to go then you don’t have to,” which was a lie, because Erlich could carry him downstairs even without Jared helping if he had to, “but if you’re not there, people will notice, and they’ll talk, and it could hurt Pied Piper. And then everything you’ve been through these last few months will have been for nothing.”
“Richard, Pied Piper is all yours. Your code, your vision, your goddamn genius. So you can sit with us downstairs and feel like shit for the next half hour, and then we’ll go to the bar and start a tab on David’s room number, and some day when you’re a billionaire you can buy this shitty hotel and burn it to the ground if you want to. Or you can stay here like Achilles in his fucking tent and maybe bring down the company. Your choice. Come on, Jared.” Skinny as he was, Jared was still too tall to bodily drag him out of the room so he had to settle for a steely glare and a repeat of that “Come on, Jared.”
Jared got to his feet and followed – slowly, reluctantly, but with only one anguished look back at Richard. So, better than Erlich had been expecting.
Half way to the elevator Jared said, “Achilles in his tent...?”
“Yeah. Fuck you for looking surprised I knew that reference. I happen to have seen every episode of Ulysses-31. Subbed, not dubbed.”
He didn’t look back along the hallway, even when he heard a door open and close, or when Jared suddenly beamed at something over his shoulder. One of them had to maintain some chill.
He did clap Richard on the shoulder when he joined them at the elevators. Had to give the kid some acknowledgment that must have been a tough call. The righteous anger was gone from those wide eyes, replaced with embarrassed uncertainty.
“Thanks,” Richard said. “Um. Both of you.”
“Whatever the board says,” Erlich told him, “you’re still my Woz.” He looked at Jared, who was going to start vibrating any second with relief and pride. “Our Woz.”