Chapter Text
Dinesh meets Kelsey through Richard’s wife, Robin. She first mentions her—just a somewhat-pointed reference to one of her co-workers who’s sweet and a good coder and emphatically single—one of their Pied Piper bi-monthly, catch-up dinners, which Dinesh mostly only goes to anymore because otherwise Jared starts texting him daily to see if he’s ‘doing okay.’ It’s easier just to suck it up and show up at whatever restaurant, where Jared’s overbearing presence is moderated by Richard and Robin and sometimes Bighead or Monica or whoever else of the people they had once worked with still willing to be seen in public with the senior management of a company that had made the Windows Phone 8 look like the iPhone X.
Gilfoyle never comes. After a full two years of increasingly creative rejections, even Jared stops asking, meaning that now it falls on Dinesh to tell everyone that Newell Road is getting off the ground nicely, that Gilfoyle is doing fine, that he’s still as much of a dick as ever, and that he sends his best wishes to all of them. The last part is always a lie of course, because Gilfoyle never says anything of the kind, but they all politely pretend to believe it.
Robin is a new addition to the group. She and Richard had met in Switzerland, when he was still doing his around-the-world trip and alternating between trying to avoid Jared and posting cutesy photodumps together on instagram that made them look like a honeymooning couple. Apparently, Robin had found their weird, pseudo-stalkery friendship “charming” and, even more bizarrely, had found Richard “brilliant, funny, and handsome”—at least according to the speech she had given at their wedding. Dinesh and Gilfoyle had spent the rest of the ceremony trying to figure out what she could possibly be getting out of lying about any of that, because she’s a successful engineer doing cloud infrastructure at Adobe with great hair and a nice smile, and Richard brings nothing whatsoever to the table. Gilfoyle still insists that she must suspect something about their disaster of a launch and now she’s playing the long-game trying to wheedle the truth about their criminal activity out of Richard through years of establishing trust as his closest confidante. Dinesh argues that it’s more likely that she’s one of those people who can only get off by watching their partner be humiliated as publicly and spectacularly as possible, so she’s basically married the tech industry’s equivalent of a man who spends 24/7 in a gimp suit.
Jared says it’s true love.
Whatever her long-term plots or psychosexual problems, Robin is now a part of their little group, apparently. She’s nice enough and Dinesh mostly doesn’t mind Richard bringing her around, except when it reminds him that Richard has a whole wife now and Jared still seems to be getting laid left-and-right for whatever reason and Gilfoyle is still probably doing whatever Satanic e-sex shit he does, leaving Dinesh the only one out of all of them consistently too pathetic to bring a plus one to dinner.
Robin, at least, seems determined to fix his pathological single-ness. Dinesh can tell it isn’t because she actually cares about him being alone or anything, but rather because she secretly hates being the only newcomer at the table. She gets this weird nauseated expression sometimes, especially after a few bottles of wine when they all start reminiscing and she’s the only one at the table not laughing over the memory of that one time a prospective incubee had brought a working nuclear reactor to a pitch meeting, or the time Russ had lost $3 million funding an app that edited terrible wraps onto photos of sportscars. Robin will sit there, smiling faintly over clenched teeth, while Monica tries to hide the fact that she’s just snorted wine out her nose, and then she’ll say, with a hint of desperation, “Dinesh, are you seeing anyone these days?”
He’s not. He’s never seeing anyone, because even now that he’s the co-founder of a successful company and he’s finally kind of, sort of shed all of the horrible luck that had been tied to Pied Piper for years, he still can barely make it through one dinner date with a woman. He can listen well enough, but as soon as the time comes for him to talk about himself, all he can ever think to talk about is Newell Road—the same boring work talk that every woman in the Bay Area has heard a hundred times on a hundred dates—or Gilfoyle. There aren’t that many women willing to sit through an entire main course in silence, but there are even fewer willing to sit through the full litany of everything he finds irritating about Gilfoyle. He misses Mia, as terrifying as he had found her. Sometimes, he even misses Jeff-the-ratfuck.
“Why don’t you just get your own office? Or, like, start your own company without this guy?” Dinesh’s last Hinge date had asked, halfway through Dinesh’s monologue about the way Gilfoyle was always leaving his mug on Dinesh’s side of the desk, even though Dinesh’s desk is expensive teak and not just whatever cheap IKEA shit Gilfoyle had picked for himself, which means that the bottom of Gilfoyle’s mug leaves rings unless Dinesh puts down a coaster for him.
Dinesh had stared at his date blankly for almost thirty seconds after that, because what kind of suggestion even was that? He could tell she wasn’t in tech, because she didn’t know that all of the shitty sloppy coffee rings and casual racism and blaring Napalm Death alerts were worth it, because Gilfoyle is the best systems architect out there and, frankly, Dinesh is too old to learn how to work with anyone else.
He’d just shrugged and said, “Because it’s Gilfoyle,” like that explained everything. His date had left before dessert.
So anyway, it’s not like Dinesh is swimming in romantic options when Robin mentions Kelsey. She spends the whole night dropping less and less subtle hints, telling Dinesh how nice and funny and smart she is, and then she shows him Kelsey’s company picture just to prove that she isn’t doing the whole ‘good personality’ thing. She is pretty, so Dinesh gives Robin a noncommittal shrug and an “I guess” when she asks if she can give Kelsey his contact info. He doesn’t think anything is going to come of it, because Kelsey seems way too pretty for him and she works with Robin at Adobe, which means she doesn’t even need any of Dinesh’s money and there’s no way she’s actually going to bother going out with a total loser like him anyway.
*
To his surprise, he wakes up the next morning to a new email from [email protected], just a no-pressure little intro message asking if he’d like to get coffee sometime. He has barely had time to finish reading the email before Richard texts him three times in a row, begging him to agree to a double date the following weekend. Dinesh rolls his eyes, but he agrees to it. Worst case scenario, at least Richard and Robin will experience firsthand how much of a dumpster fire Dinesh’s dates always are, and that will get them to stop trying to involve themselves in his love life.
But then, to Dinesh’s absolute astonishment, it isn’t a dumpster fire.
Frankly, at this point in his dating life, just ending the night on speaking terms with a woman would be the best date he’s had in years. It’s better than that though—Kelsey turns up at the restaurant at exactly the same time as Dinesh and they actually hit it off, something he hasn’t done with a woman since Mia. They’ve already had two cocktails together at the bar by the time Richard and Robin show up, looking like proud parents who’ve just observed their autistic toddler sharing a toy at the playground. Behind Kelsey’s back, Richard mouths See? at him. Dinesh flips him off.
Richard isn’t wrong, though. Kelsey is great; she’s pretty, but not in a flashy enough way to make Dinesh nervous, and she’s smart enough to talk coding with him without constantly trying to show off or one-up him, and she genuinely laughs out loud when he calls Gavin Belson Fifty Shades of Gay, even though it’s not even his best Gavin Belson joke. By the time their main course arrives, the date is going so well that Dinesh is pretty sure it would actually be considered a good date by any non-Dinesh, normally functioning adult.
Kelsey had Ubered to the restaurant, so Dinesh gets to be a gentleman and offer to drop her off on his way home. She rolls her eyes when the chauffeur pulls his Tesla around and says, “Oh, you’re one of those people,” but Dinesh doesn’t even have time to be offended because she gets into the passenger seat and says, “Why don’t you just take me back to your place? You can show me that art book you were telling me about.” Dinesh doesn’t even remember what book he had been babbling about, but it doesn’t matter, because even he isn’t oblivious enough to think she actually wants to see a book at 9 pm on a Sunday night.
It’s like Dinesh has fallen into an alternate dimension. Even the sex goes well, like well enough that Kelsey genuinely passes out in his bed afterwards, and he stares at her naked back and thinks, how did I get this lucky? He’s pretty sure that nothing has ever worked out this well for him before, not once in his entire memory, and the horrible little voice in his head that always sounds like Gilfoyle adds, I wonder how long until this is all going to blow up in my face.
*
The morning after their first night together, Dinesh wakes up to the sound of Kelsey rummaging around the room for her clothes. He keeps his eyes squeezed closed to give her the chance to sneak out early and never talk to him again, but then he feels a soft hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake.
“Hey,” Kelsey says quietly, when he pretends to wake up. Her hair is a mess, and it’s tickling Dinesh’s chest as she leans closer to him. “I have to get going so I have time to shower and change before work, but I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. I had a really, really nice time last night.”
“Oh, uh, me too,” he says, caught off guard. She looks really pretty in the morning sunlight, and he’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Promise you’ll call me, okay?” she says, and then she presses her lips against his cheek and rushes out to catch her Uber.
Dinesh pulls on a shirt and wanders out into the kitchen to find his phone. He’s starting to feel better about himself than he has in years. Kelsey had really seemed like she meant it when she’d told him to call and, as much as he’s having trouble believing any of this is real, there’s a text waiting for him from Robin saying that Kelsey “couldn’t stop gushing” about him.
Selfishly, he hopes that she’d at least mentioned the sex, because he’s pretty sure Richard thinks he’s a failure on that front, along with everyone else he knows. It’s shitty, because he’s fucking not, so Richard can stop doing that thing where he stutters through awkward offers to give Dinesh ‘some, uh, helpful advice?’ on making his dates happy.
Dinesh has always been decent at sex. He knows he’s not, like, a pornstar or anything, but he knows how to ask his partner what feels good for her and at least 90% of good sex is just good communication anyway. It’s just getting women to agree to have sex with him in the first place that Dinesh has trouble with, which Richard ought to know already because they’ve been friends for almost a decade at this point and Richard has seen Dinesh fumble every single woman along the way because of his personality, not his sexual prowess. Richard honestly probably got the sex thing from Gilfoyle, because Gilfoyle fucking loves to wax poetic about how sexually disappointing he assumes Dinesh is, and Richard is a fucking idiot enough to take Gilfoyle at his word about anything to do with Dinesh.
He’s still standing at his breakfast bar, staring into space and fuming about the time Gilfoyle had told a whole room full of new hires that women called Dinesh Muammar al-Get-off-me, when his phone buzzes in his hand.
Kelsey Mulvaney 8:27 a.m.
Home safe!! :) had a great night, hope we can do it again sometime soon ;)
Dinesh counts to sixty slowly in his head so that he doesn’t come across too desperate, because he doesn’t want her to think he was just standing around in the kitchen waiting for her to text, but then he double-taps her message. He’s never been good at the whole stupid playing hard-to-get thing you’re supposed to do after dates these days.
Dinesh 8:29 a.m.
I had a great night too :)
Dinesh 8:29 a.m.
Are you free this weekend? There’s supposed to be a really good new sushi place in Sausalito
Dinesh 8:30 a.m.
No pressure if you’re busy or you don’t like sushi.
Kelsey Mulvaney 8:30 a.m.
I have no plans and I love sushi!! how’s 7:30 friday?
Dinesh stares down at the phone, wondering again if this is somehow just a huge prank on him. Is the joke just that it’s funny he would ever believe that a woman would actually like spending time with him? Are Richard and Robin suddenly helping Gilfoyle fuck with him for some reason? He can’t begin to fathom what he could have done to Richard to deserve this kind of treatment but, at the same time, it has got to be a prank because his life never goes this well without some horrible, monkey-paw-esque consequence, so there’s no way that a nice, pretty girl like Kelsey is two-exclamation-marks enthusiastic about the prospect of getting sushi with Dinesh of all people.
And then the front door opens and Gilfoyle wanders into his kitchen, his eyes bright and eager like they always are when he’s found a new way to torment Dinesh, and life starts to feel normal again. Dinesh slides his phone into his pocket, because there’s no way in hell he’s ever going to live it down if Gilfoyle sees that he just triple-texted.
“Did I see an actual human woman leave your house at 8 a.m. in the morning, or are sexbots just getting that realistic?” Gilfoyle asks, opening his fridge and pulling out a bottle of Old Rasputin from the side door.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Dinesh asks. Gilfoyle is now standing hip-to-hip with him, fumbling around in the silverware drawer. Dinesh is hyper aware that he’s still in his boxers and probably reeks of sex which, like, should prove to Gilfoyle that he isn’t a complete failure, but is still making him feel pretty fucking exposed, especially since Gilfoyle smells faintly like the aftershave he’d started wearing just to piss Dinesh off and prove that there were perfectly decent aftershave options that ‘don’t leave you smelling like one of Jared’s sluttier nursing patients’.
Gilfoyle grunts, overturning Dinesh’s chopstick tray, and then slams the drawer in frustration.
Dinesh sighs. “If you’re looking for the bottle opener, it’s still hanging in the living room, right next to the door of the wine fridge. Like I told you it was last week.”
“And I told you that was a stupid place to keep it,” Gilfoyle says, forgoing the bottle opener altogether to pop the cap off against the edge of Dinesh’s counter like he’s some frat guy or something. He takes a long swig, even though it isn’t even 9 a.m., and then says, “So, I take it you finally got desperate enough to go on that date Richard kept bugging you about.”
“I was not desperate, thank you very much, I just thought she sounded nice. And she was, by the way. She was very nice.”
“Mm-hmm. I’m sure she was. How long until she’s selling all of our company information to Cloudfare?”
“She works at Adobe.”
“Same thing,” Gilfoyle says, shrugging. “Tell me, when you brought her back here and started humping her leg like a Chihuahua in heat, did she actually pretend to be enjoying herself? Did she tell you she achieved climax? Because you’d think that a lie that obvious would prove to even you that she’s trying to get something from you.”
“Fuck you, I’m great at sex.”
“Of course you are. You get so much practice, after all.”
“Did you come here for an actual reason or just to give me shit?” Dinesh asks, shoving him aside to grab his overnight oats out of the fridge. “I don’t have time for this, I need to get ready for work because unlike some people, I bother to show up to the all-hands meetings I schedule for our employees.”
“I was out of beer,” Gilfoyle says, shrugging. He takes another long sip of the beer, watching Dinesh spooning blueberries into his mouth with a bored expression, like Dinesh should feel bad or something that his breakfast routine isn’t more interesting.
“Okay, so now that you have your dumb beer, can you fuck off?”
“Nah,” Gilfoyle says, leaning back against the counter. “Not when it’s bothering you so much. You’re so twitchy. What are you so scared of? Do you think I’ll somehow scare off the woman you had over last night…retroactively?”
“I don’t know, Gilfoyle, you tell me what I should be scared of. I know you’re messing with me right now, but my date with Kelsey went really well, so I’m not going to let you fuck it up for me.”
Gilfoyle doesn’t say anything to that, just smirks at Dinesh, raises his eyebrows, and drains the end of the beer. He sets the empty bottle on Dinesh’s sideboard, even though there are about a dozen marble surfaces where it wouldn’t leave a ring, and chuckles as Dinesh scrambles to wipe away the condensation.
Fucking Gilfoyle.
*
Sushi with Kelsey on Friday goes well, and then a walk through the Botanical Gardens on Sunday goes even better, meaning that by the following Monday, Dinesh is fairly certain that he has actually managed to find an honest-to-God girlfriend. One who isn’t an Adobe spy or a prank set up by Gilfoyle or, unlike his last girlfriend, a material threat to national security. He finally has someone to check out new restaurants he sees on Instagram with, or to go to movies with, or to bring to all the fancy charity events that their PR guy Colton insists will be good for their brand awareness, and which Gilfoyle refuses to go near with a fifty foot pole.
He’s happy. Of course, because he’s him, being happy means he’s also constantly on alert for whatever giant red flags he’s missing that are going to make this whole thing go up in flames any day, but he spends most of his time like that anyway, so it’s not like this is that different. At least with Kelsey, Dinesh is getting laid in the meantime.
It should be enough to make him happy. Kelsey is great—she’s like everything Dinesh had described in the dozens of dating profiles he’s written at this point. She’s easy to talk to and fun to be around. She helps encourage him to try new things he’d normally be too worried Gilfoyle would give him shit about, but she’s also just as happy he is to spend most of their nights snuggled up on the couch binging Netflix together. She’s basically perfect for him. She’s—
She’s not Gilfoyle.
It’s not even hard for him to admit to himself anymore, the Gilfoyle of it all. The thing about being in unrequited love with your best friend-slash-worst enemy is that, sooner or later, you get used to it. Dinesh has tried for years to talk himself out of the pathetic obsession with the guy, but at this point, he’s pretty sure that he’ll carry his crush to the grave. Every so often, he and Gilfoyle will have a particularly nasty fight and he’ll genuinely start to believe that this is the end, that he’s finally free to let it all go, and then Gilfoyle will cast him a conspiratorial look and say something about a we that implies Dinesh-and-Gilfoyle are a single unit, and Dinesh’s chest will get all warm and squirmy all over again.
The gay thing had freaked him out a little at first, but honestly, that wasn’t nearly as freaky as the Gilfoyle thing. Half of Palo Alto is some kind of alternative sexuality, usually adopting whatever label is trendy at the newest up-and-coming company in any given month, and Dinesh probably would have been perfectly fine sitting in the monthly Queers In Tech meetings and describing himself as bisexual or pansexual or omnisexual or really anything else that wasn’t ‘mostly women, but also Gilfoyle’. Especially since, as time goes on, the ‘women’ part has become less and less relevant, to the point that his sexuality now is pretty much just Gilfoyle.
And it’s not like he can’t get it up for Kelsey or anything, but whenever they’re in bed together, his mind will often drift to some particularly clever bit of code Gilfoyle had written recently, and then sex will be easier after that. It’s fine, really, because he’d stopped being freaked out by the whole code gay thing years ago and thinking about someone else’s code while in bed is way better than thinking about the way someone else’s hands had moved on the keyboard as they wrote that code, or the smug pitch of their voice as they’d said, ‘try not to cum in your pants when I show this to you’.
His therapist says that Gilfoyle is just, like, this idealization at this point. The first crush you never really get over, even if you haven’t seen them since high school and you live the rest of your life perfectly happily married to someone nice and normal who isn’t based on a teenage fantasy. It’s just that in this particular case, the first time Dinesh had formed an honest-to-God crush wasn’t in school, where he was too shy to even look at the girls, or in university, where he had been way too focused on his studies to make the normal kind of mistakes. Instead, it had been at the age of 26, when an anti-social 4chan troll with a fucking neckbeard had leaned over his shoulder as he’d been plugging away at his app and said, “So are you, like, super good at blowjobs? Because even someone as dumb as Erlich can’t actually think this totally shit idea is worth a free room.”
That night had been the first time Gilfoyle had popped up in Dinesh’s imagination, right as he was on the brink of cumming. He’d chalked it up to stress and the weirdness of his new living situation at the time, because that was better than considering the fact that he was actually attracted to the guy.
He knows better now. He’d stopped trying to pretend it was anything else years ago.
He’d first thought the word ‘love’ six years after they’d first met, while he and Gilfoyle were sitting on the roof of the abandoned Pied Piper offices, steadily making their way through bottle after bottle of Tres Commas and brainstorming plans for the future. Gilfoyle hadn’t even let Dinesh finish his teaching idea before saying, “we’re not Richard, there’s no way we’re teaching,”—and there it had been again, that utterly irresistible Dinesh-and-Gilfoyle ‘we,’ and so Dinesh had said, “So, what are we doing then?” and had thought, ‘oh, so this is what it feels like to be in love’.
*
Kelsey finally meets Gilfoyle after she and Dinesh have been dating for about a month. She’s started staying over more often, enough that she now keeps a change of clothes in his closet so that she doesn’t have to rush home before work. It means they have time to eat breakfast together, which is one of Dinesh’s new favorite things—Kelsey is quiet and mild-mannered in almost everything else, but she’s ferociously competitive when it comes to both the Wordle and Sudoku. Over coffee every morning, the two of them race to finish first, stabbing at their phones with a ferocity that sometimes has them doubled over with laughter, pointing out that they both look so stupid, caring so much about something so meaningless. They aren’t allowed to start until the coffee is brewed anymore, because Dinesh had once caught Kelsey watching the clock tick down to midnight just to get a head start over him. He’d found it so endearing that they’d both completely forgotten about their phones for the next few hours.
Dinesh has already finished the Wordle that Kelsey is still stuck on, and he’s about to absolutely crush the Sudoku too, when the front door opens and Gilfoyle walks in, already mid-conversation. He does this all the time—it drives Dinesh crazy, because it’s like he thinks that Dinesh couldn’t possibly have anything else to do than sit around and wait for him.
“Just a warning that Leon Spader over at Dragonstone is getting real fucking antsy about the latest build for—”
Gilfoyle breaks off his sentence abruptly, his eyes settling on Kelsey. For the most painful ten seconds of Dinesh’s life, they just stare at each other, and then Gilfoyle says, “There are numbers you can call if you’re being held somewhere against your will. I think there’s something about how you’re supposed to put a spoon in your underwear before any flights, too, and the TSA are already on high alert whenever Dinesh is around.”
“Fuck you,” Dinesh says, flipping him off. “This is Kelsey. Kelsey, this is Gilfoyle. He’s the total dick that I’m always telling you about who, for some unfortunate reason, I am in business with.”
“The reason is that you’re cripplingly codependent,” Gilfoyle says, plopping himself down onto Dinish’s couch and swinging his legs up so that his boots are resting on the coffee table. “You weren’t answering your phone, and we have to come up with a plan to deal with this whole Leon situation.”
“Uh, okay?” Dinesh says, gesturing at Kelsey and their whole breakfast setting. “Can this wait until we get to the office?”
“No, it can’t ‘wait until we get to the office,’ because Leon Spader from Dragonstone, with whom we have a massive contract pending, is going to already be in the office waiting to talk to us, and we don’t want it to look like we aren’t already on the same page. Therefore, we need to strategize now, which I am forcing you to do because, for some reason, I have wound up having to corporately manage your ass like I’m fucking Jared if I want the company that I poured my heart and soul into to be perceived as even remotely professional, rather than a flaming, steaming mess that was co-founded by a pathetic, insecure child who’s so desperate to finally live his high school fantasy of being popular that he spends all of his time and money paying for Tinder Platinum and fucking whichever tech groupie will have him instead of actually running our business.”
“He’s lying, he’s a dick,” Dinesh tells Kelsey quickly. “I haven’t been on a single Tinder date in months, I promise. I don’t even have Tinder Platinum anymore.”
He’s half-expecting her to demand to see his phone to check if he still had his Tinder account downloaded—which he doesn’t, so fuck you, Gilfoyle—but she isn’t even looking at him. She’s staring at Gilfoyle, her eyes narrowed in disgust, and Dinesh kind of can’t believe it. Gilfoyle always manages to ruin things for him, even when he’s clearly a liar and an asshole, but Kelsey is looking at Gilfoyle like he’s something she’d just scraped off of the bottom of her shoe.
“Can Dinesh and I have a moment to finish our breakfast?” she asks Gilfoyle pointedly.
Gilfoyle shrugs. “You don’t have to worry about saying anything around me. I’ve heard him get dumped and rejected dozens of times. I can wait.”
“Do you live here?” Kelsey asks, folding her arms. “Just go wait in your car or whatever, I need to talk to my boyfriend.”
Gilfoyle stares at her for a second, unblinking, and Dinesh is impressed that Kelsey keeps her composure under his unsettling stare. Once, he’d seen Laurie Bream get into a staring match with Gilfoyle, and Laurie had blinked first.
“Fine,” Gilfoyle says eventually, standing up. “Dinesh, you’d better come straight to mine after you’ve left the money on the dresser for your lady friend, because I’m serious about coming up with a strategy for this Leon thing. In the meantime, I need a beer.”
He walks across the kitchen and opens the door to the fridge, taking his sweet time to pull out one of the Old Rasputins lining the fridge door. Dinesh glances over at Kelsey to find her frowning at him, her expression almost pitying—it’s like she thinks he’s some kind of battered spouse, and he doesn’t know how to explain to her that this shit isn’t even particularly bad, as far as Gilfoyle goes.
Gilfoyle holds his hand out to Dinesh. He’s not even looking at him, too focused on staring Kelsey down across the breakfast bar. Dinesh doesn’t know what to say to diffuse the moment, so he doesn’t say anything at all, just slides open the silverware drawer and passes Gilfoyle the bottle opener.
“See you in a minute,” Gilfoyle says, toasting him, and then he walks out of the house.
There’s silence in the kitchen after he leaves. Kelsey is still glaring at the door, like she thinks Gilfoyle will be able to feel the heat of her anger even now. Dinesh feels like she must be judging him too. It’s like he’s getting more and more uncool in her eyes for not standing up to himself in front of the school bully and just, like, letting him take his lunch money or whatever.
“Is he drinking and driving?” Kelsey asks.
“No, he, uh, lives next door,” Dinesh says, suddenly wishing it weren’t true. Cripplingly codependent, Gilfoyle had said, even though Dinesh had only bought this place because Gilfoyle had mentioned it was going on the market. Dinesh’s old condo had been way too far from their office anyway, and the buyer had been highly motivated. It would have made perfect sense for him to snap it up, even if he weren’t in love with him.
Kelsey doesn’t say anything more about it. She pulls her phone out and returns to the Wordle. Dinesh doesn’t care about the games anymore; he can’t bring himself to finish the Sudoku. Gilfoyle has probably crushed his time already anyway, even though he doesn’t even like Sudoku and just does it to piss Dinesh off.
Dinesh stands up, stacks their plates, and takes them to the sink. The silence stretches between them, and he spends way too much time trying to distract himself by getting the water temperature just right under his hands. He can feel the tension sitting in the room like a physical presence peering over his shoulder, but he doesn’t turn to look at it, because then he’ll have to see Kelsey’s poor, pitiful Dinesh face again.
He’s struggling to think of anything he can say to explain any of what his and Gilfoyle’s relationship must look like from the outside. He’s just joking around, he could say, but that isn’t even entirely true. He’s always like that. He’s like that with everyone, but mostly with me, because he knows I’d do the same thing right back to him. We hate each other. We understand each other. He’s my best friend. He treats me like shit and I treat him like shit and it doesn’t even matter, because I love him and he might not love me the same way, but I don’t think either of us can survive apart anymore.
“He seems like a fucking asshole,” Kelsey says eventually, which pretty much covers it.
*
Dinesh tries to keep Kelsey and Gilfoyle apart after that.
The worst thing about it is that it isn’t even a challenge. Gilfoyle makes no secret of his disdain for Kelsey, rolling his eyes whenever she comes up, but he seems completely uninterested in the opportunity to leverage his disdain into some kind of horrible torment nexus for Dinesh. Whenever Dinesh mentions that she’s going to be swinging by later, Gilfoyle just quits whatever game they’ve been playing, grabs another beer from the fridge, and heads back to his place without another word. Dinesh finds himself peeking out the window more often on those nights, trying to make sure Gilfoyle isn’t plotting something horrible to ruin their nice date nights, but he’s almost always just at his desk on his laptop, completely ignoring the light in Dinesh’s bedroom.
It’s much more unsettling than anything else.
When he and Kelsey hit the three month mark, making it the longest relationship Dinesh has ever been in, he decides to make it official by asking her to move in. Half of her stuff has basically migrated into his closet anyway at this point and she doesn’t want to get rid of her place in the middle of a buyer’s market, so nothing will really be changing for either of them and asking her to move in is basically just a formality at this point. Even so, Dinesh feels very grown up for asking, and even more grown-up when Kelsey gets kind of teary-eyed as she agrees.
To celebrate, he invites her out to meet his friends. He’s determined for her to sit down with Jared and Monica especially, just so he can prove that not all of his friends are total dicks, even if he doesn’t really like Jared that much and he and Monica have never been close. They’re nice, normal enough people at least, the kind of dinner guests that won’t make Kelsey question her decision to be with him, and that’s good enough for Dinesh.
They arrange to meet at the same seafood place they go to every time Monica is back on the West Coast, and Dinesh lets Jared take point on coordinating schedules, since sorting through Outlook calendars seems to bring him a perverse amount of joy.
Dinesh has no idea what Jared had said to get Gilfoyle to agree to join the rest of them, but he must have said something, because Gilfoyle pokes his head into their shared office at 5 p.m. the next Friday and says, “We should get going soon if we want to beat traffic.”
He looks good, too. He’s not wearing a suit or anything, but his hair is washed and half-tied up in a neat bun and he isn’t wearing any death metal band logos, just a nice dark henley layered under a navy blue flannel. Dinesh hasn’t seen him dressed this nicely since Richard’s wedding, and even then, Dinesh doesn’t think his hair had looked quite so elegantly arranged. It’s weird, thinking of anything about Gilfoyle as elegant, but Dinesh doesn’t really have any other words for the way that the faint silver streaks catch the light when it’s tied up like this.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” Dinesh says, when he’s sure that he isn’t about to blurt out something stupid about how Gilfoyle looks right now.
“Jared told me you were threatening to kill yourself if I didn’t, and I didn’t want to have to deal with any of that paperwork,” Gilfoyle says, shrugging.
“That’s not—I didn’t even ask Jared to invite you.”
“Oh, am I not invited? Did your girlfriend tell you that I couldn’t be invited?”
“I didn’t—I just—you never come to dinners,” Dinesh splutters. “Shut the fuck up. Whatever. Of course you’re invited. Let me just text Kelsey to let her know—”
“To warn her I’ll be there?” Gilfoyle asks, looking amused. “You need to text your girlfriend to warn her that your business partner is coming to a dinner with all your mutual friends?”
“No, just—so she’s not expecting a ride, or—”
“Jared said that she’s going to be driving over with Richard’s wife anyway,” Gilfoyle says. “It’s an hour at a restaurant together, she’ll live. I won’t even sit near her.”
“What about on the way home?” Dinesh asks.
“I’m going out with Monica after,” Gilfoyle says flatly.
Dinesh feels the familiar twist of jealousy that he gets whenever Gilfoyle mentions his whatever-it-is situationship with Monica. It’s not like Dinesh cares, especially now that he has an actual girlfriend of his own, but it’s fucking weird that Gilfoyle has this thing going with their mutual friend and former coworker and Dinesh doesn’t know fuck-all about it. It’s fine. Gilfoyle can be friends-with-benefits with Monica and it doesn’t matter to Dinesh at all.
Dinesh hits the ‘enter’ key harder than he’d meant to, and the cursor freezes. “Fuck.”
“Are you actually working right now?” Gilfoyle asks, poking him in the shoulder. Dinesh hadn’t even noticed him rounding the desk, but now he’s standing right next to him. “There’s nothing else to do before Monday, you’re just gonna mess up all of my work. Come on, I need to grab several drinks before I have to talk to Jared about elder care for two hours.”
“I’m not even ready yet.”
He doesn’t have time to react before Gilfoyle reaches over and tangles his hand in his hair, ruffling it hard. One of the strands catches in Gilfoyle’s horrible goat ring, and there’s a sharp sting as it rips away from his scalp.
“What the fuck was that for?”
“I was helping you get ready, Princess,” Gilfoyle says, rolling his eyes. “You look fine now. Let’s go.”
Dinesh flips him off, but he switches off his monitor anyway. In the reflection of the dark screen, he catches sight of his hair, all messy like Gilfoyle had given him shit about when he had been doing all his press as the CEO of PiperChat.
He reaches up to fix it, groaning, but Gilfoyle catches his wrist. “Seriously, you look fine.”
“Stop fucking with me, I’m just going to take a minute in the bathroom—”
“I’m not fucking with you,” Gilfoyle says, his hand tightening around Dinesh’s wrist. Dinesh has never noticed how strong his grip is—he doesn’t know if Gilfoyle has ever grabbed him quite like this before, not in all the years they’ve known each other. “It looks good, okay?”
“Uh, okay,” Dinesh says, lowering his hand slowly.
He feels off-balance, because Gilfoyle is acting weird and he has no idea how to respond to this sudden intensity without knowing what the fuck his deal is. Does he really care this much about making Dinesh look stupid? Every single person they’re meeting has seen Dinesh look way stupider than this in the past, even Robin, so it’s not like that’s even going to make him feel any worse about himself.
Gilfoyle is weird in the car too. He’s all quiet and bizarrely easy-going. Usually, they spend the whole drive arguing whose music to play, to the point that Gilfoyle had once gone so far as to reset the voice command on Dinesh’s Tesla so that it would only play Behemoth, no matter what Dinesh asked for, and it had taken him a full week to figure out how to fix it. Tonight, Gilfoyle says nothing at all when Dinesh puts on his ‘Best of the 80s’ playlist, not even when “Livin’ on a Prayer” comes on and Dinesh sings along at the top of his lungs to the chorus.
They get to the restaurant half an hour early, so Gilfoyle drags him to the bar next door, where he downs three straight glasses of whiskey before saying, “Alcoholism is only a problem if you’re a pussy who doesn’t know how to manage it.”
Dinesh doesn’t bother arguing, just shrugs and sips his beer. He doesn’t want to get into an argument about it, because that argument is going to end in Dinesh admitting that he’s had fucking nightmares where Gilfoyle dies of liver failure, and then Gilfoyle will laugh at him and call him stupid and gay for the rest of his life. Until he dies of liver failure, anyway, and Dinesh won’t even be able to say I told you so when Gilfoyle is dead.
Besides, he’s having a much better time arguing with Gilfoyle about how he always fucks up Dinesh’s Disco Elysium play-throughs by taking over halfway through and then getting way too into the race science stuff, which is just objectively a dumb way to play the game. He can tell Gilfoyle knows it’s bullshit as well as he does—he catches him smirking to himself at one point, but he keeps arguing about it anyway, because he’s an asshole who’s terminally incapable of admitting for even one second that Dinesh might be better than him at anything.
Dinesh is so distracted by Gilfoyle’s fucking insane opinions that he doesn’t realize he’s on his third beer already and it’s already well past 7:30 until his phone starts ringing in his pocket. When pulls it out, he’s shocked to see that it’s 7:57 already. Kelsey is calling him, probably to ask where the fuck he’s been all this time and why he hadn’t texted her.
Dinesh shoots her a quick text that they’ll be right there, and then he jumps up from his seat and tries frantically to signal the bartender that he wants to close out.
“Fuck, dude, we’re so late. They’re going to be so mad at us.”
“Are they going to be mad at us?” Gilfoyle asks, sipping his fifth? whiskey without a hint of urgency. “Or do you mean your girlfriend is going to be mad at you?”
“Come on, Gilfoyle, we said 7:30. We have to go.”
“We’re already half an hour late. They’ve definitely sat down already and are probably already eating without us. Do you really think the extra five minutes it will take to finish our drinks is going to make more of a difference now?” Gilfoyle asks, because he’s an asshole.
Dinesh should absolutely tell him to go fuck himself, because he’s just doing this to fuck with Dinesh, but it’s like— even if this whole charade is just Gilfoyle being a dick and trying to distract Dinesh long enough to make him late, it doesn’t change the fact that Dinesh is genuinely enjoying himself right now, more than he has in god-knows-how-long. Besides, Gilfoyle has a point; Kelsey is going to be fucking furious already that Dinesh was out drinking with Gilfoyle instead of being at their dinner, so it’s not like wasting half of his last beer is going to make her any less mad.
He sits back down. “Okay, but after this, we get the check,” he says.
“Whatever you say.”
*
By the time the waiter leads Dinesh and Gilfoyle to the group, Robin is in the middle of telling some story about a terrible meeting she’d had earlier that week. Kelsey keeps jumping in to fill in details, which is making both Richard and Jared laugh in the awkward, uncontrollable way they both do, like they’re having some kind of joint panic attack. None of them look like they’ve missed Dinesh or Gilfoyle very much, except for Monica, who’s sitting at the far end of the table between two empty seats and glaring at them.
“Where the fuck have you been?” she asks, as Gilfoyle takes the seat on her right. “You’re almost an hour late.”
“Traffic is a bitch this time of day,” Gilfoyle says, meeting Dinesh’s eyes.
“Oh, yeah, uh, there was so much traffic. Just bumper-to-bumper traffic. Tons and tons of traffic,” Dinesh agrees, because Kelsey is now looking between him and Gilfoyle, brow furrowed in concern.
“Well, you’ve arrived just in time,” Jared says, ever the optimist. “Robin was just telling us the most hilarious story about the new hire from their marketing department. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind starting over to fill you two in.”
“Dinesh knows this story already, you can go ahead,” Kelsey says, like Gilfoyle doesn’t even exist. It’s one of Dinesh’s favorite things about her, except for all the times he fucking hates it.
“Okay, so, uh, after all that, then Dan went back to the old mock-up that Alyssa had already rejected, because he thought it was the new one Brian had just pulled together—”
Dinesh tunes her out to try to catch the whispered argument Monica and Gilfoyle are having, just quiet enough to be inaudible. He leans across the table for the bread, just in time to catch Monica hissing, “—no traffic on 280, you asshole, do you have any idea how fucking awkward this was?”
“Maybe awkward for you,” Gilfoyle says. “I’m pretty sure everyone else was having a blast. Look how happy Jared is, it’s like watching Pinocchio finally turn into a real boy but the blue fairy had a really sick, sick sense of humor.”
“Okay, fine, but I had to sit here dying for a fucking cigarette while Robin gave me her whole ‘cancer stick’ lecture, and then I had to listen to Kelsey tell Richard that she’s worried because she thinks you’re fucking gaslighting Dinesh into staying at Newell Road, and I’m fucking positive that’s something you put into her head—”
“So you’re saying that I’m gaslighting her about I’m gaslighting Dinesh?” Gilfoyle asks, chuckling into his beer. Dinesh doesn’t even know where he got a beer, because no waiter has asked him for his order yet.
“No one is gaslighting anyone,” Dinesh whispers to them. “Can you two just, like, play nice?”
“Us two?” Monica asks him, arching an eyebrow. “Where were you just now, Dinesh? ‘Stuck in traffic’ right?”
“Lying isn’t the same thing as gaslighting,” Gilfoyle says, way louder than either Monica or Dinesh.
“Gilfoyle,” Dinesh says, making sure none of the others are looking at them. “We totally weren’t lying. Or gaslighting. There was a lot of traffic.”
“Whatever, I don’t even care where you really were,” Monica says. “I’m going out for a cigarette. Gilfoyle?”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, and follows her towards the front of the restaurant.
Dinesh watches them go, that same familiar jealousy gripping his gut. When they’re almost at the entrance, Monica rests her hand between Gilfoyle’s shoulder blades, just a single soft touch, and he does nothing to shrug her away.
“Are they, like, a thing?” Kelsey asks Dinesh, leaning across the table to tap his arm. He jumps—he’d almost forgotten she was there. That she’s the entire reason they’re actually doing this.
“Monica and Gilfoyle?” Richard asks. He lets out an awkward little snort, as if the suggestion is completely ridiculous. “I don’t think Monica is, uh, his type.”
“She totally is his type,” Dinesh argues. “Remember Tara? Like, she had the whole weird Satanist thing going, but other than that, she and Monica aren’t all that different. She’s like, got that whole hot, cool, not-like-other-girls thing going on, right? And she smokes.”
“It’s weird he had another girlfriend too. I can’t imagine anyone dating Gilfoyle,” Kelsey says, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “He’s such a fucking tool.”
“He’s got all the tattoos, though, and girls love sexy tattoos,” Dinesh says, a little bitterly. His mouth is moving ahead of his brain, he’s sure of it, because he’s had three beers already tonight and his filter is entirely switched off. “Plus he fixed his hair and it looks not as stupid most of the time now. Besides, much I hate to admit it, his code is sexy as fuck. If you’re into that kind of thing. Which, apparently, Monica is.”
“Jeez, Dinesh, why don’t you propose while you’re at it?” Richard says, laughing awkwardly. “If you’re gonna be, like, writing poetry about the guy.”
“Fuck you, Richard, I’m just saying, like, objectively.”
“Dinesh has a point,” Jared says, and Dinesh has never been so grateful for his presence and all of his bullshit corporate conflict mediation stuff. “Within the microcosm of Bay Area coders, Gilfoyle is kind of what you might call a ‘bad boy.’ I could see why someone looking for a bit of danger might consider a relationship with him.”
“Gilfoyle is not a bad boy,” Richard protests. “That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said. Gilfoyle is, like, an antisocial weirdo. He’s not, uh, some kind of teen heartthrob.”
“I don’t know, Richard, you’re even more of an antisocial weirdo and you have a wife,” Dinesh points out. “At least Monica can say it’s, like, some kind of Catholic rebellion. What’s Robin’s excuse?”
“Okay, fuck you too, Dinesh, I’m not anti-social,” Richard says, and then he underlies the argument by missing his mouth with the glass he’s trying to sip from and spilling wine all down his front.
Dinesh laughs at him, because he’s feeling mean. “Yeah, okay, you’re not antisocial at all. You’re so cool and suave.”
“What are you dickbags talking about?” Gilfoyle asks, bumping into Richard’s chair on the way back to his seat. Monica is trailing behind him, looking faintly worried.
“Oh hey, Gilfoyle. Dinesh was telling us all how sexy your tattoos are,” Richard replies, letting out a little wheezing laugh.
No one else laughs, not even Robin. There’s a moment of silence, Richard’s words hanging in the air between them, and Dinesh feels his heart constrict because he hadn’t fucking said it like that, but also everyone is acting like what he’d said had fucking mattered. Like Richard had crossed some sort of invisible line by bringing it up. He can’t bring himself to look at any of them, because he’s pretty sure they’re all staring at him, and they’d only be doing that if they somehow fucking know.
“Fuck you, Dick,” Gilfoyle says sharply. He’s not looking at Dinesh, but his shoulders are suddenly rigid.
“Yeah, fuck you, Richard,” Dinesh adds, laughing nervously. “That’s totally not what I meant at all.”
“Seriously, Richard?” Monica asks, glaring at him. “What the fuck?”
“You know I don’t like to criticize, but that was highly inappropriate,” Jared—fucking Jared—adds.
Dinesh is expecting Richard to protest, to explain that it hadn’t even been that bad in the grand scheme of things. He’s pretty sure Richard has implied that he’s gay for Gilfoyle a hundred times in the past, and none of the rest of the group has ever batted an eye, not even when Richard had been standing in the living room and screaming at them to fuck each other and get it over with. There’s no reason why Richard should back down now of all times and yet—
“Sorry, Gilfoyle,” Richard mumbles, looking down at the tablecloth as he does. Dinesh is even more confused now, because there’s absolutely no fucking reason Richard should be apologizing to Gilfoyle instead of to him. He hadn’t even done anything to Gilfoyle. But Jared is beaming like he’s proud of Richard for apologizing, and even Monica looks slightly placated.
Kelsey looks as confused as Dinesh feels, but she just lets out a little nervous laugh and asks Jared to pass the bottle, and the tension seems to ebb out of the conversation.
“It’s whatever,” Gilfoyle says quietly, a moment later, and Dinesh doesn’t miss the strange look that passes between him and Richard.
*
“What the fuck was that whole Richard-Gilfoyle thing?” Kelsey asks him, when they’re in the car on their way home.
“I have no fucking clue,” Dinesh answers honestly. He’s trying not to think about it too long, because he can’t face the prospect that any of them could possibly fucking know, and especially not that Richard and Gilfoyle not only know but have, like, boundaries set about how they’re going to talk about Dinesh’s pathetic little crush.
He casts around for any other explanation and settles on, “I think maybe Richard had a thing with Monica back in the beginning of Pied Piper, so maybe it’s about that?”
“That was so awkward,” Kelsey says, laughing a bit. “It wasn’t too bad overall, though. I really liked meeting Jared, anyway. He’s such a funny guy.”
“Jared? I mean, I guess he can be kinda funny,” Dinesh says.
“Why don’t you two get together more? You clearly have a lot in common.”
“You think I have a lot in common with Jared? Have I really been fucking up our relationship that badly? The guy’s very thoughtful and decent at office management, but he’s like, so uncool he makes your average coder look like the Fonz. Like, pre-shark-jumping Fonz.”
“I liked him,” she says.
“Okay,” Dinesh says, trying to keep the frustration out of his tone. It’s fine that Kelsey fucking hates Gilfoyle. Not everyone’s partner and their best friend get along. It’s fine that Kelsey clearly wishes that Dinesh was best friends and neighbors and business partners with a man who belongs on the welcome wagon of a Mormon leper colony.
“We should do something with just Jared and Richard and Robin sometime,” Kelsey says, and there it is again, her absolute conviction that Dinesh is going to agree with her. She talks like he’s looking for an excuse to ditch Gilfoyle as much as she is, and completely ignores the fact that he goes off to work with the guy every single day because he fucking loves their back-and-forth.
“If you want,” he says to Kelsey, and that’s the end of the conversation.
*
They fall into a routine over the next few months.
Dinesh had once read that there comes a point in every relationship where you start to plateau, and the only two options are to break up or get married. Before Kelsey, he hadn’t really ever dated anyone long enough for things to feel comfortable, let alone boring, so he’d written it off as something people say to justify their terrible life choices.
He gets it now. Kelsey is a constant presence in his life and it’s nice and all, but also they’ve watched through basically everything decent on Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime. They’re running out of options, because Dinesh absolutely refuses to touch CommaVision, Russ Hanneman’s shitshow of a streaming platform, after he and Gilfoyle had made the mistake of taking him on as an early investor in Newell Road and, in exchange, they’d wound up doing hours of unpaid labor debugging that shitshow of an app until Dinesh couldn’t even see the logo without getting war flashbacks. He’s pretty sure the double login screen glitch is still there to this day.
It means he and Kelsey spend most of their nights in silence, each plugging away at their own laptops because they’re similar enough that they wind up bringing half their work home every day. Sitting together is comfortable enough, but Dinesh doesn’t ever have much to say to her, and apparently she feels the same way. They still have sex a few times a month, and it’s not bad, but it’s not good either, especially since Dinesh has started making a concerted effort not to let Gilfoyle creep into his thoughts during, and so he usually just winds up going down on Kelsey for half an hour and gently declining her offer of reciprocation.
Even so, he can’t come up with a single reason why he should dump Kelsey. She’s practically fucking perfect for him, and it’s not her fault that he has some kind of latent, fucked up masochistic tendencies that render him unfit for a normal, healthy relationship with a normal, healthy woman. She’s literally everything he’s ever wanted from a partner, at least when he’s imagined himself having a partner who isn’t Gilfoyle, and she seems genuinely happy to spend her entire life sitting in silence in Dinesh’s living room and occasionally sharing twitter memes. He’s unbelievably lucky to have found her, and he’s pretty sure he’ll never find anyone else even half as well-suited to him again.
He’s pretty sure that he loves her, anyway. This is probably what love feels like for normal people, this soft comfortable existence they’ve built together. She calls it love after all, and she doesn’t act like she’s any more into him than he’s into her. She says it easily, casually, and then giggles whenever the weight of the word catches on Dinesh’s tongue.
At the very least, Dinesh is pretty sure he can learn to love her, as much as any couple learns to love each other. It must easy to learn to be in love, if fucking Richard can do it with his nice, normal wife, because whatever is wrong with Dinesh, he is not and has never been nearly as much of a mess as Richard Hendricks is. People get over crushes all the time, which means that the gaping hole in your chest must stop aching sooner or later. Otherwise, Taylor Swift and all those other pop singers writing about heartbreak would be dead by now.
“Did she finally dump you?” Gilfoyle will ask him every so often, whenever Dinesh gets to the office in a bad mood. He never seems to care, never even looks at Dinesh when he says it, but it’s always about Kelsey dumping him, and the absolute conviction in his tone always sets Dinesh’s teeth on edge.
“Why do you never ask if I’m the one doing the dumping?” he grumbles once, which makes Gilfoyle snort into his coffee.
“The last time you wanted to dump a woman, you called the FBI to do it for you,” Gilfoyle points out. “No way you’ve finally got the balls to do it yourself. Ergo, she’s going to be the dumper. As usual.”
“Fuck you, I could totally be the dumper. I could dump her right now if I wanted.”
“Are you going to ‘dump her right now,’ then?”
“No, because I have no interest in breaking up with my very wonderful girlfriend.”
Gilfoyle shrugs, his eyes still glued to his monitor. “Pussy.”
It’s not long after that when Dinesh grits his teeth and resolves to shit or get off the pot, because Kelsey is too fucking nice and normal to deserve any of Dinesh’s dysfunctional moping, and he can’t keep acting like she’s a placeholder for someone that he fucking hates, and also who will never in a million years actually happen for him. He’s got to treat her like she’s The One, the perfect girl he ends up with in the movie version of his life, because she’s the closest he’s ever going to get to that. If he starts picturing honeymooning with Kelsey in Hawaii as his happily ever after, not some cheap consolation prize, he might finally get everything he’s ever wanted.
*
He sets up the proposal perfectly. He breaks into Kelsey’s pinterest account for inspiration in picking out the ring, which is barely a violation of privacy, and he learns that she has a whole private board labeled ‘Maybe Someday?’ and full of wedding pictures, from rings to dresses to hors d’oeuvres. He overspends, paying a full half year’s salary for the nicest, biggest version of a cut and style she seems to like, because she fucking deserves the best, and then he books them a weekend getaway in Carmel, ostensibly as an early birthday celebration. He even makes sure the B&B they’re staying at has a bottle of her favorite champagne stocked to celebrate.
He doesn’t tell anyone else about his plan, because he doesn’t have that many friends and he’s pretty sure either Richard or Jared would instantly spill the news to one another, and probably to Monica too while they’re at it. The only person he really wants to talk to about any of it is Gilfoyle, which is stupid of him, because Gilfoyle is just going to say something racist and then tell Dinesh he’s doomed to be sad and lonely forever, so Dinesh is a fucking idiot for caring so much about his opinion.
The Friday before he’s planning to pull the trigger, Dinesh can’t keep it in anymore. Gilfoyle had been particularly irritating this morning, kicking Dinesh’s shin throughout a shareholders’ call and constantly stretching out to set his mug down on Dinesh’s desk, just to watch Dinesh keep moving around the coaster underneath it. He’s not doing anything to Dinesh now, probably because he’s stopped answering emails and is letting Dinesh take care of their overflowing inbox while he works on his pet malware detection project instead. It sucks, because he’s still fucking distracting Dinesh with the way his hands are moving on his keyboard, and if Dinesh doesn’t say something else soon, he’s not going to be able to control his mouth and he’ll say something so much worse about Gilfoyle’s fingers on his dick.
“I’m going to propose to Kelsey this weekend.”
Gilfoyle doesn’t respond. Dinesh would wonder if he’d even heard him, but he stops typing abruptly and his neck has suddenly gone all weird and stiff.
“I booked a nice bed & breakfast for us to stay at down in Carmel,” Dinesh says, turning his chair to face Gilfoyle. He’s not typing anymore, but his eyes are still fixed on his monitor, just staring at a single point with his jaw clenched.
“I know it’s a little early, but I really think she’s the one,” Dinesh continues, to the silent office.
“What on earth would make you think that?” Gilfoyle finally asks, removing his headphones. He’s still not looking at Dinesh. “Do your people even believe in ‘the one’? I thought it was more like ‘the one your parents bought for you at age five in exchange for their best milking cow’?”
“I know you know that isn’t right, so I won’t dignify it with a response.”
“You are aware that saying ‘I won’t dignify that with a response’ is, in fact, a response?”
“Whatever, fuck you. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you here.”
“I don’t know why.”
“I just need you to tell me if this is a really, really stupid idea, and if it’s all going to blow up in my face.”
“This is a really, really stupid idea, and it’s all going to blow up in your face,” Gilfoyle parrots, his voice completely flat.
“Fuck you.” There’s a pause, while Dinesh tries to convince himself that it’s fucking stupid to keep doing this to himself, when he knows what Gilfoyle is going to say. He fails, and blurts out, “Okay, why is it a stupid idea?”
“Because you aren’t in love with her.”
“What?”
“I said, it’s a stupid idea because you aren’t in love with her,” Gilfoyle repeats. He’s finally looking at Dinesh, staring right into his eyes, and it’s so intense that now Dinesh is the one who has to glance away.
“You’re just so insecure and desperate to prove that there’s not something wrong with you that you’re grasping at the chance to be with the only woman who’s ever been able to stand being in the same room as you for more than five minutes. You barely even like each other.”
“Fuck you,” Dinesh says again, angrier now. It turns out he was right to bring it up with Gilfoyle after all—all of Dinesh’s own stupid doubts and insecurities sound so bitter and mean and so fucking stupid when they’re being parroted back out of Gilfoyle’s mouth, it’s almost enough to convince him he’s doing the right thing.
“You aren’t even arguing with me,” Gilfoyle says. “Is that because you know I’m right?”
“No, I don’t know you’re right. I know you’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe you don’t even know that you’re lying to yourself because you’ve never actually been in love,” Gilfoyle says, “but what you have with Kelsey isn’t love. It’s pathetic codependency from two insecure people who are terrified of aging alone.”
Dinesh almost laughs at that, because it’s fucking ironic as hell for those words to be coming from someone Dinesh has been so fucking obviously in love with for at least half a decade. Gilfoyle thinks Dinesh doesn’t know what it feels like to be in love? It’s like that old saying about how a fish has never heard of water because it’s never been outside of it.
If Gilfoyle were a fish, Dinesh is pretty sure he’d be one of the fucked up ones in South America that swim up your urethra and eat your penis from the inside, because that’s pretty much what it feels like to be friends with him.
“Fuck you,” he says again. “I’m asking her.”
“Your funeral,” Gilfoyle says, and then he pulls his headphones back over his ears and starts typing.
*
Kelsey says yes.
Because there’s something wrong with him, Dinesh calls Gilfoyle before his family, while Kelsey is in the other room showing her parents the ring over FaceTime.
He’s surprised Gilfoyle answers at all. He’s sitting somewhere dark and loud, some bar Dinesh doesn’t recognize. He squints down at the phone, blinking slowly like he’s already halfway to blackout drunk. It takes him a few tries to prop up the phone on the bar, but then the video adjusts to the darkness and Gilfoyle’s derisive expression is centered on the screen.
“Are you heartbroken? Is this a consolation call?”
“No, fuck you, this is a ‘you were wrong, she said yes’ call,” Dinesh says, flipping him off.
“Aren’t you supposed to show off the other finger?” Gilfoyle asks. “I don’t see the ring. Did she not even get you a proper diamond? Doesn’t she know how much you love pretty jewelry?”
“You’re one to talk, Lord of the Rings,” Dinesh shoots back.
“Touché.”
“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
“On a wedding I think is an absolutely terrible idea? No, I am not. The best I can do is to wish you good luck, even though we both know there is no amount of luck in the world that will prevent this marriage from being a spectacular failure.” He raises a glass to the screen. “So cheers to that.”
“Fuck you. I don’t even know why I called you.”
“I don’t know why you called me either.”
“Is that Dinesh?” Gilfoyle’s face is suddenly shoved aside and Monica appears on screen, holding what looks like a full bottle of scotch in her free hand. She’s trying to use it to wave at him. “Congratulations on your engagement!”
“Thank you,” Dinesh says. He tries to keep his smile in place, even though the sight of Monica practically hanging off of Gilfoyle is making him feel a bit nauseated. “I didn’t know Monica was in town.”
“She’s not,” Gilfoyle says flatly. “I’m in DC.”
“You’re in DC? Why the fuck are you in DC? What’s in DC?”
“Monica.”
“Oh, okay. Um, yeah, that makes sense,” Dinesh says, trying to sound like he has any fucking idea whatsoever what’s going on between them. He’s never been entirely sure if the two of them are actually fucking and he’s obviously dying to know but, at the same time, he’s pretty sure he couldn’t actually handle the information that Gilfoyle is having regular enough sex with one of their old colleagues that he’s willing to fly across the country for it.
“I’ll be back by our 11 a.m. on Monday,” Gilfoyle says, which isn’t the point.
“Me too,” Dinesh responds, which is even less the point.
“Cool. See you then. Good luck with your…everything,” Gilfoyle says, waving vaguely at Dinesh, and then he ends the call.