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“What?”
“I don’t think I need to repeat myself.” Gavin’s staring coolly at him, like it’s nothing. Like he does this every day. Maybe he does. Richards runs the numbers in his head: three hundred sixty-five and a quarter days, ten million dollars a time... no, that’s over three and a half billion dollars a year, and Gavin’s unimaginably rich but there’s no way that’s right.
He already knew that. However Gavin spends his time when he’s not ruining people’s lives, he’s probably not soliciting daily ten-million-dollar blowjobs in public bathrooms. The math’s just a nervous tic. Helps to calm him down when someone like Gavin fucking Belson is staring at him from two feet away, refusing to break eye contact except when his eyes flick, pointedly, to Richard’s lips.
His brain picks the worst fucking time to remind him of that little douchebag Kevin pointing out his thing with his mouth. What he needs right now (he needs to be at home, he needs to go back in time and ask Jared to help him with his tie like he did yesterday, he needs to go further than that and just take Gavin’s money when there was no suggestion of earning it on his knees)– he needs not to lick his lips. He tries to say something instead. “I... you...”
Gavin gives him time to complete that thought, eyebrows raised in amused condescension.
“I’ll sell you Pied Piper,” he says. That seems safer than tackling the other thing, and it’s almost a relief to say it out loud, to know that it’s over.
“I already offered to buy Pied Piper,” Gavin says. “You decided to throw my exceeding generosity in my face and take someone else’s offer. Twice. I don’t appreciate being treated that way, Richard.”
There’s honest-to-God hurt in his voice, like Gavin’s wounded pride makes him the real victim here. “So, what, if I suck your dick in a restroom it’ll make it up to you?”
And now he’s said it. Now it’s real. He presses his lips together so tightly Gavin has to notice them turn white, but he can’t make himself relax.
“I think it would be a nice gesture of reconciliation, yes. You never know," Gavin adds, with an optimism that must be a lot easier from where he's standing, "you might enjoy it.”
He keeps waiting to hear himself say ‘no’.
He keeps waiting to at least think it.
But... ten million dollars.
It’s not that he wants to blow Gavin Belson, of all fucking people. And even if they were strangers, if Gavin was just some random asshole billionaire who’s, whatever, too lazy to get on Grindr and fine with paying way too much for a public hookup, Richard’s never... there was one guy, that party in his freshman year, and he didn’t get beyond making out with him in someone’s dorm room and it was still a disaster, and he’s never even gone down on a girl. And if he was going to have sex with a guy it wouldn’t be this, all frustration and spite and rage, he’d want it to be caring and quiet and someone like...
Richard stares down at the floor and doesn’t let himself finish that thought. The tiles look clean, at least.
Ten million dollars. Erlich gets his ten percent, three each for the others, and he wishes they’d gone for a split that wasn’t so trivial to calculate in his head because something to focus on would be nice right now. They’ve stood by him all this time; they're back home holding things together right now, just so he knows they took this thing he built as high as it would fly. His friends. Is it such a big deal? This way he doesn’t let anyone down. Himself, maybe, but nobody ever needs to know that.
Maybe he can shut his eyes and pretend Gavin’s someone else.
He takes a breath and says, “So in the stall, or...?”
It seems like a long time before Gavin reaches out. Richard steels himself - think about why you’re doing this, think about your friends, think about making up for all your fuck-ups, think about Jared...
- and Gavin just straightens the knot of his tie, and steps back.
“I don’t need to pay ten million dollars for Pied Piper,” he says. Almost gently. Richard can’t breathe. “Ten minutes from now I’m going to have it for nothing. And I have no intention of paying that much for you. I was just interested in your price. Now I know. Now we both know.”