It’s almost unfair, Jared thinks, in a rare spot of bright, indelible consciousness, amidst a sea of black. Almost unfair how nice this dream is.

Richard by his side again. Richard by his side. Smoothing hair back from his forehead. Reading aloud from a tattered old copy of A Ring of Endless Light. “Why do you even like this book, Jared? It’s so – ” A shy smile. Knees locked, slumped over. Long past visiting hours. On a chair dragged in from the waiting room. 

It’s a dream, thinks Jared. But thank you for making it a nice one. Before he blinks out, again, back into nothing.

**

Jared wakes up alone. By the sounds in the room (a persistent beeping; rumble of voices; a low, electric hum), the odd, uncomfortable placement of his body, and the pain in the crook of his right arm, the setting is immediately apparent. The hospital. Intensive care. By the stiffness in his joints and the sour taste in his mouth, he supposes he’s been here at least several hours. Maybe several days. Maybe, for all he knows, longer.

He cracks one eye open. Placidly catalogs a list of hurts. A cast on his leg. His arm in a sling. Miles of translucent tubing. White. White. Everywhere, sterile white. And then, a spot of color. Fresh daffodils in a vase. A small owl statue. A book cover he recognizes.

“Who did this?” Jared asks, attempting, feebly, to lift and point with his right arm. He gestures as best he can with his eyes, instead, eventually. “All this, um – it’s so nice.”

Why, he doesn’t ask. Why would anyone do this. 

“Oh that was your boyfriend.” The nurse glances quickly, left and right, like she expects to find someone lurking behind her. “Where’d he run off to? And just as you return to the land of the living!”

Jared coughs. His throat is dry. He tips his head toward a styrofoam cup of ice water at his bedside, pleadingly, and she raises it to his lips. “Thank you,” he says. And then, “my boyfriend?”

“Who else did you think it was?”

“It’s just that, well. I don’t have one. Not now,” he tells her.

Jared had very little when he first moved to Palo Alto. Lived with a roommate whose things took up most of the apartment. Jared was grateful for that, even if most of it was standard issue, dorm room furniture, not particularly to his taste. A spare, near-empty bedroom. A few photos tacked up on the wall. Clothes hung neatly in the closet. His one indulgence was a very nice bed.

I wrote a lot of my thoughts on Jared and Gavin’s relationship into Safe Space so I’ll paste one of those passages here rather than repeat it:

After all the effort he’d put into landing his position, it was both disappointing and embarrassing to find that Hooli was nothing at all like the idyllic wonderland Jared had imagined. He’d expected a corporation driven by a desire for social justice rather than the bottom line; a place where the things he liked best about himself would suddenly be recognized and valued by others; and behind it all, Gavin Belson, whose progressive public persona he’d been naive enough to buy into.

Instead, working for Gavin turned out to be a series of endurance tests.

Basically, I think Jared believed in Gavin/Hooli’s public face before he worked there - was thrilled to be a part of it - but that changed pretty fast. (It’s so telling how he says to Richard, ”Hooli is seen as possibly the most progressive company in the world.” Is seen as! Not is!) The small, personal, dehumanizing moments he thought he could put up with - and maybe didn’t believe he could do better than - but the turning point came when he learned of more unethical business practices. Stealing ideas from smaller companies. Dismissing sexual harassment claims. I think he threatened to quit the first time he was tasked with this sort of behavior, but Gavin assured him he’d ruin his career if he did.

What holidays doesn’t Jared like?! He’s celebrated a lot, and even if he hasn’t he tries to be familiar with them. Passover. Christmas. I don’t see Jared as particularly religious, but the ritual and tradition deeply appeal to him. (That said, one holiday I don’t think Jared really gets is Valentine’s Day. It’s equally important to show love every day, no? He’d really make it something special if he felt that mattered to his partner, but otherwise? Doesn’t see the point.)

Jared treasures any memory of his mother where he felt a little bit like it was them against the world. That time she lost it at a neighbor kid who was cruel to him. Sneaking into a museum exhibit. Hiding from an ex-boyfriend of hers, pretending they weren’t home. Going on a trip to the beach though they could scarcely afford it; scrounging up loose change around the house for the pinball and photobooth machines. I think he also reflects fondly on the way she corrected him if he did something wrong: firm but not unkindly, with empathy, always taking time to explain.

V - an empty place. You know who. I know who. We all know who. 

I used this prompt almost entirely as a vehicle for expressing some (tame) Sexy Opinions. So, um, oops?

–

There is a sad, off-putting feeling to a room with nothing in it. Like a naked dead body. A barren, hollow thing on the floor.

Jared tries not to think too much about that, but finds he can not help it as he glances back into his and Richard’s old bedroom. Empty but for the carpet. All of their things already at the new place, or packed up neatly in the back of the car. No bed, no desk, nothing hanging in the closet. None of the posters Jared always thought looked sloppy, but now finds he misses almost desperately.

This is the place where Richard first called him, so charmingly nervous, needing help with his business plan. Where they sat and worked for hours. Where they talked all through the night.

Where they shared their first kiss. First took their clothes off. Where they climbed into Richard’s bed, or lay on the floor beneath it, and learned things about each other that no one else knew.

The freckle-constellation on Richard’s left shoulder. 

The indentation in Jared’s chest.

That Richard wouldn’t leave if he said, no, thank you. 

If he said, no, not like that.

That Richard was loud, and how much Jared liked it. 

That he could go for multiple times a night.

That Richard wanted Jared to take charge sometimes. Often. Pull his hair. Use his teeth. And how much Jared liked that, too.

How sometimes it took hours of gentle, patient coaxing, and other times Jared would get so excited he’d barely last a minute at all. 

The scar on his arm. And on his back. And on his thigh. And each of the stories those scars told. 

How it felt to be happy – blissfully, senselessly, miraculously happy – as he clung to Richard’s hips and gasped into his ear, Ich liebe Dich.

“We had a good life here,” Jared says, hot tears prickling shamefully at the corners of his eyes. He’s sad in a way he would never have expected. In a way he can’t remember being: not in many, many places; not for many, many years. You should know better than to be sad like this, Donald. Sad for such a foolish reason. Sad about leaving, he thinks.

I did #16 already but here are the rest!

11. Intellectual pursuits?

I think Jared is into history. All sorts of topics but especially military, religious, cultural/intellectual, art. Reading books and watching documentaries and visiting museums when he has the chance. He’d enjoy doing some sort of original research, too, which I think would translate into an interest in genealogy. Jared finds what he can on his own family, which isn’t much, then takes to researching Richard’s instead. Imagine his giddy, absolute delight at turning up a previously-unseen photograph of Richard’s great-grandfather, who fought in “the great war” and looked exactly like him!??? Oh man, oh man.

21. Turn-ons? Turn-offs?

The Sexy Opinion question! Okay, we KNOW Jared is turned on by righteous anger and assertiveness, so I don’t need to go into that. Any indication that his partner is enjoying themself really does it for him. Heavy breathing in his ear. Being told he’s wanted. I also feel like he’s wildly turned on by weird details of his partner’s body that only he would know about. Like, that tiny scar way up on their hip bone, or that misshapen mole or whatever? That’s his favorite thing. And if someone were to appreciatively point out the same sort of little detail about him, he’d be so self-conscious and shocked and hot and excited, he’d barely know how to deal.

I’ve written this before, but I think Jared would be bad at and not into anything involving begging/teasing/denial, from either side. He’d be like, “if you want that, I’ll do it” or “well if you don’t want to, that’s fine!” And generally it would trigger a lot of “do I deserve this or not?” sort of questions, which never ends well for him.

22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

Jared would do a cost-benefit analysis on the idea of buying a new vest.

27. What is their biggest regret?

I’m sorry this is kind of desperately sad, but I feel like Jared has experienced a lot of cruelty in his life, and always wondered if he somehow caused it. If there was something he did to make himself an easy target. He doesn’t know exactly what that might have been, but feels near-constant, nebulous regret and guilt over it nonetheless.

28. Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?

Oh, believe me, I know!!!! And I wanted to write them all for you, but here’s #11 (partners in crime). Fair warning: this contains some pretty much entirely off-screen violence, and death.

“Have you seen a dead person before?” Jared asks, calmly, too calmly, like he’s looking over an Excel spreadsheet and not at a body on the floor.

“No,” Richard yelps. “No. Fuck. Jared. No. I haven’t.” His chest heaves, once, violently, and a wretched sound escapes him. Richard clamps his hands over his mouth and races to the door.

Jared doesn’t give himself much time to think. He looks down at the man, cold and pallid as the grey marble floor beneath him, and doesn’t chastise himself for not feeling guilty. All he has to think is, this man was cruel to Richard, he was hurting him, and he feels almost entirely justified. 

Jared packs those thoughts away. He knows it’s time to clean up now. To make things presentable. To pretend at normalcy. After over half a lifetime keeping secrets, those are things Jared knows exactly how to do. By the time Richard comes back from the bathroom, he’s taken care of everything. Mopped up the evidence, collected Richard’s belongings, recovered the hard drive with the past day’s security footage. He sits, hands folded, on an expensive-looking, uncomfortable couch.

Richard sniffles. His eyes are red from tears. A loud, purple handprint snakes around his throat, a terrible reminder of what almost happened here earlier. 

Richard wipes his nose on his sleeve. He laughs a little, remarkably. “Jared,” he says. “That’s supposed to be for show. He never let anybody sit there.”

**

They climb into the car, Jared in the driver’s seat, Richard beside him. 

Jared thinks of all the places he’s been. There are many. Too many. Few worth going back to.

“Where do we go?” he asks. “Anywhere but Pennsylvania.”

“Cape Canaveral,” Richard says, as if shocked at his own decisiveness. He takes down the GPS and plugs in an address. Etches the map into his brain for later. “Kennedy Space Center. Florida. Let’s – Yeah. I always wanted to see it. We’ll go south and then east.”

They pitch their cell phones out the window somewhere outside Palo Alto. Same with Jared’s GPS. At a rest stop in Avenal, they buy lukewarm coffee, donuts, bottles of water, sunglasses, baseball caps. Jared withdraws all the cash left in his meager, well-worn bank account. He tosses the hard drive and most of the remaining contents of his wallet discreetly in the trash. He drives straight through the night, until his hands ache from gripping the steering wheel. Richard barely speaks. By dawn they’re skirting the edge of Los Angeles and heading east.

“You can sleep, Richard, if you’d like to.”

The sky is pale with the bleary haze of morning. Palm trees stretch up into it as if they’re straining their necks.

“No.” Richard shakes his head, his eyes cast down at his sneakers. “I couldn’t. But, ah, how about you? Want me to drive for a while?”

“Oh, no thank you. I’m alright.”

Richard nods. He goes back to fiddling with the car radio, which picks up mostly static and the occasional top 40 song.

“They must know by now. Right? I mean, a famous billionaire. That’s something people’d notice. It’d get put on the news.”

Jared thinks Richard is probably right – that they might even have figured it out by now, that maybe they’ve been reported missing, that maybe their faces are already plastered on every corkboard in every police station in every state, that maybe there’s already nowhere left for them to run now – but Jared says nothing. The only things he can think of saying are questions he can hardly bear to ask.

“Joshua Tree,” says Richard. He reaches over Jared to point out the entrance sign.

Jared turns off without thinking. He’s heard there’s excellent bird watching in the park.

**

When they finally stop for a night, in some run-down motel in the Arizona desert, Jared half-expects the woman at the counter to call the cops. Instead she smiles kindly, comments on what polite young men they are, and accepts Jared’s cash and assurance that he’s left his ID in the car without further comment. She reaches into a cabinet and hands over a pale pink key.

The room itself is small but habitable. There’s a chair covered in cowhide. A single, full-sized bed. A kettle Jared will use to make tea in the morning. Richard immediately, anxiously, checks the sputtering old television for news while Jared excuses himself to the restroom.

He sets the shower running but doesn’t get in. Stares himself down in the mirror as his posture cracks, his breath catches, and the next thing he knows he’s crying, harder than he has in years. Jared clambers down onto the turquoise tile, folding his long legs up to his chest. Pull yourself together, Donald, he thinks. Come on. Distantly he remembers his mother also being like this: excellent in a crisis, then quick to privately fall apart.

When everything feels wrung out of him – all the pent-up anger, and the shame at having expressed it – Jared steps into the shower, set scaldingly, punishingly, hot.

Richard is looking out the window when Jared emerges later, having showered and shaved with a cheap kit procured from the lobby. He wears a white t-shirt and boxers, a towel around his neck. His khakis slung over one arm to iron later.

“Have you seen the stars?” says Richard.

“No,” Jared answers, toweling at his hair. “Well, not really.” All his life he’s spent in or near cities. Never anywhere as remote as this. 

Richard says he has, on a trip to the Grand Canyon. His father drove the whole Hendricks clan. Richard says for a while he wanted to be an astronomer, or an astronaut. He mentions the telescope in his childhood bedroom. How badly he longed to go to Space Camp, but was too nervous and frightened to apply.

“Can you see many more?” asks Jared, genuinely not knowing, but feeling like that’s okay to admit. “Hundreds?”

“Thousands, Jared,” Richard says, emphatically. “Thousands. So many you can’t even – let’s just go see.”

They dress as warmly as they can manage with what little they have with them, for the cold of the desert night. They walk away from the motel, until the light of its buzzy neon sign fades out and the stars appear above them. So many there’s barely any sky. It’s almost impossible to believe, thinks Jared. It’s even better than I ever imagined. 

“I never, I, um,” Richard says later, in fits and starts, as they lay together in their shared bed. “I wanted to say, I guess, thanks. If you – I mean, fuck, if you hadn’t been there I don’t know what would’ve happened. If he would’ve – Shit.” Richard drags a hand through his hair. He sighs long and deeply, his eyes pressed softly shut. “Why, ah, Jared, why were you? There, I mean.”

Jared is unsure how to answer, so he answers the only way he knows how. Truthfully.

“I noticed,” he says, reaching out to gently touch the mark under Richard’s eye by way of explanation. “I noticed all the bruises. You seemed so miserable. Always coming home so late. Oh, Richard, I – I’ve lived with enough secrets to know what it looks like when somebody has one.”

“So you followed me?” Richard asks, in a tone that conveys no judgement.

“Yes. I’m sorry. I was worried about you.”

“It’s alright. I mean, I guess I’m glad you did.”

**

It seems to hit Richard violently the next morning: that being on the run means not going back to Pied Piper. Not seeing any of the other guys. Maybe not ever again. Jared sits with him, wipes the sweat from his forehead, offers gentle, well-meaning assurances that things are going to be alright. He brings back fruit and plain, dry eggs for breakfast from the lobby, but has to coax Richard up off the floor to eat.

Richard flips on the television. Hears a name mentioned that sets them both on edge. “Better get going,” he says.

Outside of town, a cop car lingers behind them. They both tense, eyes locked on the rearview. Jared grips the wheel until his knuckles go bone-white, like the skin could almost split open.

“Oh fuck,” Richard exhales.

“Yeah… frick,” Jared repeats.

“It was self defense,” says Richard. “Right? That counts, doesn’t it?” His voice cracks. They’re both painfully conscious that self defense are words neither of them have said yet. That they haven’t discussed what it really is they’re doing here.

The cruiser speeds up, and passes, and they are alone again. 

There’s one else around for miles. Not another car, not even a bird in the sky. Nothing but the deep, dust-red of the rocks against a vast, unbelievable, blue expanse. Clouds that stretch so far across it, they rip apart and unravel like spools of sugar spun like thread. A strange but amiable silence Richard and Jared talk into, in turns, until they’re tired.

They pass the first of several road signs for Tulsa, Oklahoma. Jared says nothing, but tries somehow to convey that Richard is welcome to speak. 

“My parents,” he says, a bit stricken, sinking into the passenger seat. “Shit.”

Jared reaches across the console and takes Richard’s hand. It doesn’t feel at all unusual.

They kiss for the first time in Amarillo, Texas. Which, if Jared really thinks about it, is a statement that barely makes sense. All the seemingly infinite times he fantasized about kissing Richard Hendricks, he never once considered it happening like this. On an uncomfortable bed in a seedy roadside motel room. Richard’s hair cut brutally short in hopes of rendering him unrecognizable. A neon sign outside their window, panting and gasping for breath.

Jared makes the most of it, the way he always has. Makes memories for them both that are so good, it feels almost unfair they get to have them.

“You said not Pennsylvania,” Richard says. “Why?”

“Oh,” Jared sighs. “Richard. Someday I’ll tell you, alright?”

He senses this is not an adequate answer. Not for Richard, whose mind craves logical, reasonable explanations for things. But Jared has understood for a long time that the past can defy logic. Just like this moment does.

They get breakfast at Denny’s in the morning. Hold hands under the table, beneath their plates of pancakes and eggs. They return later to find the door to their motel room kicked in. Most of their things and the rest of the cash, stolen, right out of Jared’s pillowcase.

“We can’t go back,” says Richard, frantically, though Jared has suggested no such thing.

“We’ll figure it out,” Jared assures, his arms around Richard, already thinking about all the things he knows, the methods of survival that he hasn’t resorted to using in a very long while. “We’ll be together. We’ll be alright,” he says, and Richard nods along with him.

Jared starts up the car. The radio awakens. A local news station left tuned in. They hear their own names mentioned, and shut it off again.

“Who the fuck is Mr. Donald Dunn?” Jian-Yang asks, loudly, into the workroom, holding an unopened piece of mail in one hand and a long, lit match in the other.

“Hey,” Erlich barks, “Jian-Yang. Put that shit out. We’ve had this conversation ad infinitum.” After no small amount of struggle, he manages both to put out the matchstick and wrest the envelope from Jian-Yang’s grasp. “Donald Dunn,” Erlich says, “is Jared. He let that Hooli motherfucker Gavin Belson change his name.”

Jared rushes in from the garage then, nearly panting. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Did someone need me?” he says. 

He considers the envelope Erlich hands him, looking carefully at the postmark, the far-away return address. Jared’s brow furrows, his mouth twists into a frown. He removes a single sheet of thick, cream-colored paper and reads over its contents.

“Oh,” Jared says, ominously. His knees buckle beneath him. He reaches out and grips Richard’s shoulder, and Richard finds that he can not flinch away. Not now, not in this moment. And what’s more, he doesn’t want to. 

Please, thinks Richard, not more bad news now.

“My biological father died,” Jared says.

Gilfoyle looks up from his cereal. “Shit. I thought he already was dead.”

“No, no. Just… absent.” Jared pulls away from Richard. He nods his head vigorously. Puts the letter in his pocket, and seems not to know what else to do with his hands. “Excuse me,” he says, bowing politely, before he turns and leaves the room.

“Well, fuck,” Erlich exhales, into the silence that follows.

**

Jared sits on his cot, looking profoundly worn out, impossibly tired, every last bit of color drained from his face.

“Can I come in?” asks Richard, though he’s already well through the doorway. He sits down beside Jared on the bed. “I’m really sorry,” says Richard, for everything, knowing it’s much too little – unforgivably little – and certainly, for Jared, or for Donald, much too late. But Jared just clutches Richard’s hands and thanks him profusely, as if Richard’s given him the finest gift he’s ever received. 

All this contact, Richard thinks, is unusual. Not bad, just unusual. The sort of thing he’ll only allow between them under extenuating circumstances, like these.

“The letter. It says” – Jared pauses there, and Richard feels that pang of dread in the pit of his stomach again, unsure what Jared’s going to say. He is like a Magic Eight Ball, Richard thinks. Shake him up and see what unpredictable statement comes out next. – “It says I need to claim an inheritance. I don’t – Goodness knows what it could be.”

Jared is still holding both of his hands in his, and Richard notices for the first time that Jared’s room smells like him, and he finds himself overcome with an unfamiliar sort of tenderness. A desire to protect. Something that isn’t quite pity and isn’t quite admiration, but is, maybe, quite nearly both of them.

“Richard,” says Jared, getting up and reaching for his wallet, his windbreaker, his car keys, “you haven’t been out of the house for a while. Would you like to go for a ride?”

“Sure,” says Richard. Then, “where are we going?”

Okay, fine! 

Z. Major character death – do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?