Chapter Text
It starts in Tibet.
No, wait, that’s not- it doesn’t start in Tibet, Richard didn’t just, like, magically appear in Tibet one day that would be- that’s stupid. Ok, it starts in an airport.
For as much as Richard probably seems like the poster child for ‘people who hate airports’- what with his general dislike of noise, and people, and existing in public in general- he’s always kind of liked them. It’s a liminal space where no one ever knows each other and garbage food is overpriced and everyone is waiting or leaving and no one really feels like they belong. It makes him feel less like shit that he doesn’t feel like he belongs. Forget the fact that he never feels like he belongs, anywhere. At least at the airport he’s in good company on that boat. Or plane. Fuck, whatever.
He’s at the airport because he’s going to Tibet. He sulked for a bit, post-ratpocalypse, and then he realized he was basically broke but also unhireable. So he started coding remotely, under the table jobs where he didn’t have to give out his real name and tried hard to convince himself he wasn’t, like, creating black-market cesspools, and saved up anything that wasn’t going directly to rent or bare bones groceries. He didn’t know what he was saving for until one day he had a fairly big cushion and it hit him: He wanted to see Erlich again.
He didn’t exactly miss the guy, per say. Which sounded bad-but also, their friendship had always felt pretty transactional, so he wasn’t too bent out of shape over whether that made him a morally bankrupt person or not. No, he just felt… unsettled. Everything else with Pied Piper had ended so neatly. Everything was tied up with a bow. He made exactly what he always wanted to- and it was absolutely evil. His friends, former investors, legal counsels, and everyone who had been with him on the journey that was Pied Piper- they were all seemingly there at the end. And then they weren’t. Sure, he still kept up with Dinesh and Gilfoyle fairly regularly. Well, sort of. They were there at the end. And maybe that was the last time he'd really spoken to them, but that wasn't, like, that long ago. So. Whatever, they had started their own thing and definitely did not want Richard to be a part of it. He got that, really, no hard feelings there. Monica called him regularly, and there was always a note in her voice like she was worried he wasn’t going to pick up, that he wouldn’t be able to, that if she hung up it might be her last time ever talking to him. Which, yeah. Fair. Things got a little dark for a bit in that first month after the launch. But he was doing better now, really. And he at least appreciated her concern.
Jared…
So the only real string left to tie, as it were, was Erlich. Richard just wanted to see if he was even still alive, what he had done, and let him know what had finally become of Pied Piper. He probably knew, already, but Richard wanted to tell him in person. The truth. The stuff that only the other founders knew, because Erlich had been a founding member. He deserved to know.
So, Tibet.
But first- airport. Richard is flying out of SJC, connecting to LAX, and from there he’s got like three stops and four connecting flights, at least one of which with a fucking nine hour layover that he will have to spend overnight in the airport. If Richard were smart, he would’ve planned his travel to end in Tibet. Because he’s not just going to China, no way. This is the one time he’s ever gonna have the balls to do something like this- he’s going big. Seeing as many bucket list items as he can- or at least, what came up when Richard Googled “places to travel to before you die”. Richard Hendricks does not have a bucket list, that’s what the internet is for. So he made loose plans to go to each of the places on that list that jumped out at him, but because it was how his brain works Richard had to get Tibet out of the way first. Deal with Erlich, tell him the truth, then have some life changing trip across the globe.
He’s boarding his first flight, the one to LAX, and he swears he sees a familiar head on the plane several rows behind him. He doesn’t quite get the whole profile, as the guy is turning in his seat when Richard spots him, but everything in his body pings with recognition. Jared .
Maybe he’s seeing things. Like Jared with Gwart at Russ fest. That would make sense. Except, Gwart had actually been at Russ fest. Maybe Jared just happens to be going to LA. And he didn’t mention it to Richard when Richard texted the Pied Piper group chat (still unfortunately named, as no one had yet been brave enough to change it) that he would be leaving the country for several months, don’t contact. Yeah, sure. That seemed totally like a thing Jared would do.
Except things with Jared have been…
Richard isn’t proud of how he’s treated his best friend lately.
Jared has always been a complicated piece of the puzzle that made up Pied Piper- even more so after the whole Gwart ordeal. He adored Richard, somewhat obsessively, and though Richard never felt he deserved it- he at least understood it. He was Jared’s boss, the CEO. Jared was used to working for guys who wanted to be treated like some god amongst men (some voice in the dark recesses of his brain reminds Richard you always wanted it when it was coming from him ). Richard had tried to course correct more in the early days, but years went on and Jared got more intense and Richard…stopped trying to curb his behavior. When Jared left him- them , when Jared left all of them- Richard was thrown. He hadn’t ever planned for the possibility that Jared might not worship him one day. So when he wanted to come back as Richard’s assistant , a job he was far too qualified for, on top of returning as COO, Richard…let him. He missed Jared, and if that’s what Jared wanted again- to be able to obsess over him, devote all his time to him, worship him- well, hey. Who was Richard to stop that? Anything for the good of the company, and Jared had always been good for Pied Piper. Totally selfless action on Richard’s part. Definitely not at all motivated by any weird feelings of power and something that Jared’s devotion gave him.
But then the launch happened, and Pied Piper stopped being Pied Piper, and they were no longer the COO/Assistant to the CEO and the CEO of a billion dollar company. They were just Jared and Richard. Two guys. Pals. Friends. Buddies.
But Jared didn’t- he didn’t stop. Richard remembers when Jared had tried, once, to be bros with him. Bifurcate their relationship, he’d said. They’d had nothing to talk about. Richard was terrified that would be the case again. No longer caught in the power imbalance of devotee/devoted, they would have to talk about sports or the weather or other things Richard didn’t care about. Jared would see what a boring, annoying, nothing of a man Richard was, he would spiral in his regret over devoting the better part of a decade to this nothing of a person, and that would be it. Jared would leave him for good and the last traces of Pied Piper would officially have circled the drain.
Jared did not do that. He was just about as intense as ever after everything went down. He called Richard daily, stopped by his house just to make him tea, gave him self help books with charmingly pointed titles like “Unf*ck Yourself: Get Out Of Your Head And Into Your Life!” and “Mistakes I Made At Work: 25 Influential Women Reflect On What They Got Out Of Getting It Wrong”. Jared was just there , all the time, with his soft doe-eyes and his “it’s going to be okay, Richard”’s. His optimism was matched only by his genuine concern for Richard’s mental state.
Except now Richard wasn’t paying him. He was just a shitty friend who never matched Jared’s energy or returned any of his kind gestures, and it was all getting to be just a bit too much. Jared made him feel guilty, not for being the biggest failure in the history of tech, but for being a bad friend. So, yes, he had other reasons for needing to get away from the valley for a bit, but he’d be lying if he said one of them wasn’t Jared. He needed space to figure out how to talk to Jared again, how to let him know that Richard wasn’t some tech messiah anymore and that he needed to stop treating him like he was something special when he was just some guy now. Or maybe he’d go on this whole global adventure thing, and Eat Pray Love himself into being a better person, a better friend. He would check in on Jared, and get him nice books and fancy teas and he wouldn’t have to feel like such a piece of shit anymore. Either way, this trip was going to change him. But, in order to do that, he had to do it alone. Which mostly just meant, for the first time in six years, he’d have to do this without Jared’s help or presence. Because he knew Jared would have loved to plan the whole thing out for him so his travel made sense and his hotels were nice and everything was perfect. But even he wasn’t a big enough asshole to make Jared plan an entire trip he wasn’t going to take. And he couldn't, no matter how much it would hurt Jared, he couldn't go with Richard to keep him comfortable and safe. This was one thing Richard had to do alone.
So he had- he booked flights, chose a random selection of beautiful places to visit based on a google list and what precious few dream locales he’d had in his life, hastily cobbled together a plan to get from place to place in a way he knew wasn’t the best but would probably be fine, and he texted his friends so they wouldn’t worry about him. He sent the text in Pied Piper’s group chat, still active thank god, because he was too much of a coward to let them know individually. To let him know individually. And all that guilt was probably just manifesting itself onto the back of some lanky, dark-haired guy’s head. Who was definitely not Jared because Richard didn’t even say where he was going in his text, let alone what exact flights he would be taking.
Richard takes a deep breath as the little bells go off, signaling a final message from their pilot before the flight attendants’ safety display. And if his life were a fucking sit com, the timing would be perfect, because like a fucking lightbulb above his head, at that exact moment is when Richard remembers something very important:
Jared, his former assistant, had access to Richard’s email when he worked for him. And Richard had forgotten to change access, had forgotten to shut down the account because he used that email for everything.
Everything like booking flights. And hotels. And even setting up his TripIt, which held absolutely every single fucking itinerary item included on his make shift plot to see the greatest wonders of the world. Or some of them, at least.
“Excuse me, would you mind if we switched seats? I’m terribly sorry to inconvenience you, I just didn’t expect to be traveling on the exact same flight as my friend here! I mean, what are the odds!” Richard knows that soft voice, doesn’t even have to look to his right to know that obviously his charming blue eyes and apologetic posture is going to work on the sweet, old lady Richard was supposed to be traveling with for the duration of his flight to LA. He always did have a way with the (60+ year old) ladies.
Richard pretends he doesn’t hear it, pretends his noise canceling headphones aren’t such pieces of shit and that he’s listening to them, staring out the window aimlessly. Fuck fuck fuck this can’t be happening, he wasn’t supposed to be here, he can’t be here, this can’t-
“Richard! Goodness, what a surprise! What are the odds!”
Fuck . Richard thinks weakly, once more for luck, before taking off his headphones and finally looking up into the very familiar face of one Jared Fucking Dunn.