#jcn

After all, the incident with the intruder had really been a blessing in disguise, hadn’t it? When you know, truly know, that your life can end at any moment, and you close your eyes, dissolve to nothing but the hush of your breath, truly surrender your soul to fate – why, in that moment you become free. You can be startled, you can be anxious, you can be filled with longing, wishfulness, at times discontent (that will be sternly and swiftly dealt with) but you can never really be afraid, deeply afraid, again. All that you had to lose, you’ve already lost. You walk among the others like a ghost; they have more colors, are brighter, warmer, grasp and cling and tear at life, while you look on and hold lightly to the earth, the sole inhabitant of a world they cannot see.

Richard was worried, and there was no one he could tell. Piperchatting with his mom was out of the question, because he could never tell her the whole story. Everyone else in the house, while not exactly more incapable of coping with human emotions than him – he was the undisputed champ there – definitely didn’t even approach the threshold of “any use at all.” Except, of course for Jared, and he was the one Richard was worried about.

Jared said things Richard didn’t know what to make of all the time. The most he ever found himself saying in reply was “What?” – and then desperately hoping there wouldn’t be an answer and he could forget about it again. He wasn’t sure exactly why Jared said these things. It didn’t seem like he wanted anything in particular from the group. He would just kind of drop something incomprehensibly awful into the room and smile, and go about his business. Great, you had to pretend a plastic bag with a drawn-on face was a teddy bear when you were a kid. What am I supposed to do with that? Don’t you realize how weird you’re making everybody feel? The best thing, the only thing, to be done was to ignore it.

But Richard had finally run headfirst into something he couldn’t ignore: Ed Chambers. Sure, Jared had referred to him as his “fictional” supervisor, but absolutely nothing else about what he’d said or how he’d acted seemed to indicate the guy knew Ed wasn’t real. That couldn’t be a good sign. Maybe Richard should have paid more attention when Jared had his outburst at Gavin’s house. That had been far out of character for someone so mild, so harmless – someone who could be charitable even to the rats they still hadn’t quite gotten around to exterminating from where he slept. And now this. Richard tried for a moment to convince himself that Jared was just kidding. That would be a good way to get himself to stop worrying about it, but he knew it was a lie. There was a blankness behind Jared’s eyes when he talked about Ed that frightened Richard. Maybe they were pushing him too far, too much stress? Did Jared have a breaking point – he’d never thought so. Or maybe this was it. Or maybe there was something worse coming, something it was up to Richard to prevent.

Richard padded down the hall and knocked a tiny, one-knuckle knock on Dinesh’s bedroom door. Thumping sounds and scrambling ensued for an awkwardly attenuated moment, then Dinesh opened the door a crack. “What do you want, Richard?”

“I – I was wanting to talk to you for a couple minutes? About this Ed Chambers thing, with Jared, you saw that, right?”

Dinesh swallowed imperceptibly. Had they been even vaguely directed toward him, he would not have been able to meet Richard’s eyes.

“Yeah, I did. What about it? He’s a weird dude, we all know that.”

“Do you – did you happen to see how it got started? You were with him in the kitchen that time.”

“No, I don’t know how it got started. Maybe that’s how he gets all those girls. Who understands why Jared does anything. Now if you'll excuse me, I’m trying to get to sleep.” Dinesh yanked the door shut with a peevish thunk.

Richard headed back to his room and scaled his loft bed, fretfully. That was dumb, to have expected Dinesh to be any help. Or to give a shit. Richard contemplated asking Erlich for a moment, but didn’t think he could stomach the pompous lecture about Jared’s true two-faced corporate nature finally coming to the fore or something. Gilfoyle was completely out of the question. No, he was truly alone. Without Jared, to ask for help dealing with Jared, so he could ask for help to deal with Jared… he would be stuck in an infinite recursive loop.

Richard stared at the ceiling. Maybe it was something simple. Maybe Jared just wasn’t sleeping again. He didn't have those awful dark circles, the ones that made his eyes seem so blue they glowed, that he'd displayed during the “let’s pivot” incident; but there were probably several stages of sleep deprivation along the road to that and maybe one of them was sometimes believing you’re a guy who could “do it” to Sonia Sotomayor.

Ed knew he shouldn't have let that pussy Jared handle the broadband bill situation. He'd meekly tried to bring it to Richard's attention in that gay ballerina way of his, but one "Fuck off, Mom," and Jared just let it go! What a faggot. Someone that helpless, someone who let others treat him that way, shouldn't be trusted with anything; God only knew what Richard saw in the dude. Fucking useless. So, that morning, Ed had had to be the one to go down to the Xfinity storefront and get it taken care of. Got them a sweet discount while he was there, too -- Jared was the kind of loser who always paid full price. Or even more, probably. They could smell him coming. Someone who it was irresistible -- hell, it was fun -- to take advantage of.

He shook his head, and gunned the engine of the Chevy Volt. Ed was hungry -- cleaning up Jared's bullshit had made him late for lunch. He wondered what Jared was having -- with one hand on the wheel, he shot him a quick text. But who the fuck was this lady in front of him in the 10-year-old Camry? Was she fucking blind? This was the third light in a row she'd been dozing on green, he'd been trying to pass her for blocks -- she was one of those drivers who go so fucking slow you can't even get around them, and he was stuck.

Ed felt his blood pressure rise. He mashed the horn, stopped just short of yelling, "Come the fuck on, lady!" But she still didn't move. Was she deaf too?The light was green! Ed was sick of this bitch in his fucking way. He punched the horn again -- vaguely he noticed room had opened up on the left to drive around her, but now this was personal. He had to get this bitch to move. I know, Ed thought, I'll wake her up, and he gave the gas a little tap, making the motor roar. He'd intended to stop just short of her bumper, give her a scare, more the noise than anything else -- but slamming on the brake with a heavy lurch, he made contact by mistake, just barely.

Jared's head jerked forward, shocking him back to himself, as he felt his bumper make contact with the car ahead. His eyes widened. He hadn't even noticed the white Camry in front of him -- must have zoned out again while he was driving, it'd been happening to him a lot lately. He should have done something -- what, he wasn't sure -- about it long before now, it was putting others in danger! Why, he was no better than someone who would text and drive, and Jared would never think of doing that. But there would be time later to excoriate himself. Jared fumbled at the door handle and launched out of the car toward the other driver, already digging for his wallet and insurance card.

A motherly Asian woman emerged from the midsize sedan, took one look at Jared, and immediately started to try and calm him down. "I'm sorry -- I'm so, so sorry! I don't know what came over me, I'm never this careless, this inattentive-" His hands fluttered around him, a storm of gawky dismay that took legions of "honey, I'm fines," "it was nothings," a somewhat stern, "no, I don't think we should tell our insurance companies, I'm sorry but I insist -- you don't want to raise our rates, do you? Ok then, you don't want to raise MY rates," and one, "Just sit for a moment -- here, why don't you take one of my son's waters -- no, really, I have a whole six-pack -- look, I'm starting to get kind of frustrated here," to finally bring them to rest.

It was a good twenty minutes spent alternating sips from a tiny plastic bottle, some light sniffles, and a face hidden in bewildered hands, before Jared felt composed enough to try and drive home.

Now it was Richard who hadn't gotten enough sleep. That was nothing odd; he'd tried to take his usual approach, flog himself awake with caffeine, get some work done and forget about it. But as the day wore on, his overclocked brain couldn't be corralled from wandering to thoughts of his head of business development's earnest blue eyes, as he told Richard that he'd fired someone who didn't exist. It was just -- crazy. Number one, if Ed was Jared's supervisor, how was that even supposed to work?

Richard shook his can of Redbull, found it empty, yanked his headphones off, and stamped out into the kitchen. It occurred to him -- he should look around the server room to see if he could find something that might be messing up Jared's sleep. There could be noises, leaks, something could have infiltrated the ecosystem as an apex predator to the rats -- who knows, because Jared would never have complained.

It was staring him in the face the moment he walked in.

Shit! Shit, shit – oh shit. The Gavin picture. Duh. Jared had balked at having it in there, but then said something about an intruder being good for him? Richard had checked out, mentally. Maybe Jared hadn’t actually been as sunnily fine as he seemed this time, and having the picture in his room was keeping him awake. And of course... the weird anger outburst had been about Gavin. Richard felt like he was suddenly seeing in the third dimension. Jared wasn’t just an eternally buoyant, strangely maternal accessory for Richard to lean on without much thought. He was… vulnerable. He needed protection. From Richard. Richard had to do protection. Protection, a thing which would have to be done by Richard. A familiar quaver arose in his innards. Either there had been cilantro in that microwave burrito or -- Richard was scared.

By the time he got back to the hostel, a slight tiredness behind the eyes was all that remained of the afternoon's unpleasantness. The only content of Jared's mind was an eagerness to get back to work; he was behind on what he'd hoped to get accomplished over the weekend. A quick peep at his watch revealed that he no longer had time for lunch -- and, that his heart rate had returned to normal, so that was good. Now to grab his laptop from the server room and get down to it.

But -- Jared found himself stopping short moments away from reaching for the doorknob. Right before opening a door is the most important time to be alert and use “the gift of fear,” as described in a self-help book about tuning into your survival signals that Jared hadn’t actually needed to read, as it turned out. And it seemed to be time to unwrap that gift. Jared had heard something. He had definitely heard something. Something larger than even the largest of the rats. Something... human. Perhaps an intruder had finally gotten in through the garage door – the possibility of which, along with the complete and utter lack of insulation, was among the slight drawbacks of living in the server room.

What to do, what to do. If there were an intruder, he certainly wouldn’t keep to the server room once he discovered there was nothing of value among Jared’s possessions. No, he would be coming through that door to menace the rest of the house, possibly armed. Erlich, Dinesh and Gilfoyle were all out having lunch with Jian-Yang’s visiting parents -- or, more saliently, at Jian-Yang’s parents’ expense. Jian-Yang himself had requested that Jared not partake in the invitation, as ghosts are taken much more seriously in his family’s region of mainland China then they are in the U.S.. A perfectly reasonable request.

Jared didn’t know if Richard had ended up going with them, or was in his room with his headphones on, deep in concentration, but he certainly wasn’t about to take chances. The only thing to do would be to come in strong and startle the intruder. Even if he did discharge his firearm in fright, he would certainly take to his heels and flee back the way he had come. Intruders were nothing if not cowards. Sure, there was a slim possibility of the intruder being a decent shot, but, one must take calculated risks in life. Avanti.

Jared took one last deep breath, grabbed the doorknob, and launched himself through the doorway with a full-throated Apache yawp – directly into chaos. Out of a squeal, a crash, the tinkling of what – thank gosh in heaven! – turned out to have been safety glass, he was horrified to see tumble – Richard, clutching a large, torn piece of Gavin's image in his hand! Overcome, Jared flew to his side, patting hands trying to reassure themselves that Richard was still in one piece, tangling with flapping wings of high-quality giclee art-photo paper, until at length, Jared was successfully fended off. He sank down on his cot, one splayed hand trying to push back a heart which seemed to be struggling to fly out of his chest back to the other man.

“Richard! What were you doing? You frightened me to death – I thought you were an intruder! I'm so sorry, I can't apologize enough -- What a repulsive show of aggression-– ”

“No – no, Jared, it’s OK. I was just… Well I thought, what are we really keeping this thing for anyway? I have a picture of the formula on my phone. It was just a fuck-you gift from that jerk… and I thought, given the way – you know, how you didn’t like Gavin very much – maybe it was making you uncomfortable?”

What it’s like, is it’s like this: There is a knife in your guts. You were stabbed a long time ago, and, to prevent more damage, you mustn’t remove the knife without the aid of a doctor, but -- you can’t get to one, none even exist. So, to survive, you must move just so, carefully, you must become adroit at flowing through things at just the right distance so as never allow the handle to knock or tap anything around you. At night, you will never really quite sleep, even if you are unconscious, as you must continue to hold the knife in and never relax your vigilance, or everything else will spill out.

It’s all right. You’re so used to it, it hardly even registers. But oh – then oh, someone does a kindness, and they don’t mean to, they’re not twisting the knife, oh far from that – but they’re tapping it. They don’t know, but they’re tapping it, shifting it ever so slightly, sending a pang through you, destabilizing things, just a little. The threshold is low: They invite you somewhere. Tap -- you’re swept with anguish; someone wants you around, not to do anything for them, but truly wants you there. They compliment you on something you wore. Tap -- your eyes will never leave the floor again; somehow they looked at you and could stand it; somehow, they didn’t find you hideous.

Or, the hardest one -- they notice that you are in pain.

Hope and despair aren’t opposites; they are one and the same. Both grab your head and twist it around to look at what you lack, what you’ve always lacked. One says, you’ll never get it, and one says, maybe one day you will, but both are portals to the same essential void, and both can crack you, shatter you like glass. And those moments, when you are given a tiny bit of it, when the knife is grasped however gently, are like that too. They are every moment when you needed, needed so desperately, and were alone; all played at once like an avant-garde symphony for infinite radios.

“Jared. Jared, hey. You look like you’re a million miles away, uh... buddy.”

Jared’s gaze returns, and focuses on the childlike figure before him. The sweet face, soft coppery hair in curls and waves, diffident shoulders. The blue eyes looking uncertainly up at him, that always make Jared want to draw Richard close, shelter him in his arms from the slings and arrows of his audaciously-sought fortune – but selfishly, had also made him want just to be close to a soul so vulnerable, yet so incongruously brave. He shifted his eyes downward. Soon, they would be drowning in tears, to be sent on their way silently down his cheeks, and he mustn’t let Richard see.

“Oh Richard, I’m just so touched – that you would give any consideration at all to my silly preferences. You have so much on your mind, so many stressors these days, I hope you won’t waste another moment –”

There's a tug-of-war in Richard’s heart. Part of him is dying to flee, counting down the nanoseconds like an atomic clock until all this weirdness can just be over, be over. But another, smaller, part is lifting his eyes to look at Jared – Jared who’s crying – Jared who’s breaking, and Richard doesn’t want him to break.

Something that’s never happened in their relationship to date then happens – Richard moves a step closer.

“No way man. You’re a – we’re a team, you know, and we’re all stressed out, this shit is insane, and, and me – me I’m supposed to be the leader, right – I should – I should be looking out for you. And the rest of the guys.”

A small pat is launched, makes it halfway through the intervening air, but is thought better of and recalled. Secretly, Jared is grateful.

“OK so uh – we should clean that up, but, later maybe? I think – maybe you could take a nap or something, you can always use more sleep, can’t you Jared, ha ha.” Jared nods numbly as Richard makes his exit.