Richard Hendricks (Platonic & Romantic Headcanons) (Silicon Valley)

                                    

                                          
Warnings: Cyberstalking, Emotional Manipulation, Toxic Mindsets. 


Platonic: 
Richard has a habit of mistreating his friend and expecting unconditional loyalty nonetheless. He will lie to their face about his emotional state and work details but, at the same time, throw a fit as soon as he convinces himself that they are withholding information from him.
To be a friend of Richard Hendricks is to be made into the proverbial rubber duck every time he hits a snag in his coding, wherein he divulges the intricacies of his compression algorithm in a monologue that potentially lasts for hours. Whether these talks occur in the wee hours of the morning or not is irrelevant to him, as Richard spends many a sleepless night optimising his creation.
As he sees the rise of Hooli on the horizon, Richard becomes ever more protective of Pied Piper and ensures that his friend receives a generous standing in his company. He gives them more shares than their colleagues if they are an employee and a higher percentage of Pied Piper stock for less money if they are an investor.
In all cases, Richard tries to hide this from everyone else to avoid conflict until he is peer-pressured into telling the truth by a suspicious Dinesh and Gilfoyle, a greedy Erlich, or a curious Jared who assumes the discrepancy is an error. When caught, Richard scrounges for proof that his friend provides a unique service to the company and refuses to change his mind.
Among the fastest ways to throw Richard into a downward spiral is for his friend to quit Pied Piper and take a job or invest elsewhere in the tech industry. His foot will go through Erlich's door within minutes of the news, and a laptop will be hurled to the ground and stomped in a tantrum befitting a small child.
He chastises them for disloyalty, only to fall asleep on their doorstep so he can surprise them the next day with offers of a raise or more stock if they reconsider. Richard grows defensive and accusatory if his deal is rejected or met with anything less than immediate acceptance.
While Richard is not going to win a round of fisticuffs anytime soon, he cannot stop himself from belittling the entity that, in his eyes, stole his friend. His words are personal, awkwardly scathing, and born of the fear that his friend has found someone or something better than he is.
Romantic: 
A steep learning curve for Richard to overcome is his tendency to flee, sometimes into a glass panel, and vomit into the nearest bin whenever his partner makes eye contact with him for longer than a few seconds. Richard worries that they are judging him and secretly hate him, and this anxiety causes him to blurt inappropriate compliments and insult the people around them.
It does not help that Richard prefers to go to his partner's home rather than have them visit the incubator, as Dinesh and especially Gilfoyle jump at the chance to reveal embarrassing secrets about Richard. He takes this as an attempt to sabotage the relationship and loses his cool, promising that he and his partner will rise above this pathetic effort to sow drama.
Richard himself plays a significant role in the very erosion of trust and respect that he claims will never happen. Anything his partner does that annoys him, such as using spaces instead of tabs for coding, is stewed over and mentioned in every disagreement, regardless of its relevancy or lack thereof to his newest grievance. 
Even if his partner breaks up with him, Richard obsesses over what they have been doing since the separation. He stalks them on any social media they may have while simultaneously claiming to the guys that he is not obsessed, even though he does all of this on company time.
Richard looks for any reason to dislike his partner's new suitors and creates tension where none previously existed. He treats these people, for the most part, with outward politeness but voices endless complaints about their appearance and mannerisms once they are out of earshot.
The targets for these criticisms are often traits that Richard is insecure about in himself, and he believes that by drawing attention to the perceived shortcomings of others, he is minimising his flaws and validating his stance on how much of a washed-up impostor this person must be.
Jared walks into Richard's workspace one day to find the walls covered with whiteboards, which are drowning in equations for how much havoc he can wreak on his replacement's career in the shortest amount of time. Various swears accompany the numbers, so Jared stages an intervention after persuading Richard to put the marker down and start eating again.
He ultimately enables Richard for a while, albeit under protest, before he declares that Richard should either reconcile with his partner or move on. Erlich encourages the pursuit and frames it as Richard's first step towards becoming a man, while Gilfoyle and Jian-Yang shame Richard for being a needy loser with no game. Dinesh and Monica suggest Richard seek professional help, and Big Head merely remarks, "Sounds rough, man."