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Richard couldn’t go home. He hadn’t even tried. Helen had— Helen was— He checked into a hotel and slept and stared at the wall and lived off of convenience store stuff and room service for a week.
Mostly, he slept.
After a few days, he went for a walk. It felt like a big deal. It was a big deal. He bought a baseball cap, and kept his head down. Nobody seemed to recognize him. That was good.
With that small success under his belt, Richard started looking for a slightly less temporary place to live. He couldn’t go home. Helen— His accounts were still frozen but Kathy had tracked him down (“With a vengeance,” Deputy Gerard had said, looking both annoyed and impressed) at the Marshals office the night of his arrest. She’d pressed a credit card and two hundred dollars in cash into his hand, kissed him on the cheek, and then pulled Gerard into a conference room to yell at him. Richard could make out the tone but not the words, and hadn’t felt up to standing up to go find out. But when Gerard came back he’d watched Kathy sweep out of the office and he’d said, “After this whole godforsaken misadventure I’m officially revising a number of my baseline assumptions about the medical profession. Biggs, whiskey.” The other Marshal—Biggs, apparently—had already been rummaging in a drawer and had set a nearly empty bottle down on Gerard’s desk with a thunk, along with two glasses.
Helen— Well. Richard used Kathy’s credit card to pay for an extended-stay hotel apartment that didn’t have any obvious signs of vermin. He’d upgrade to an actual apartment later. Or maybe he’d move to Alaska. Or maybe he’d join Doctors Without Borders and ask to be assigned to a war zone. Right now it was hard to think more than a few days ahead, let alone plan. He had no job, no friends. (He could practically hear Kathy say, “What am I, chopped liver?”). So, not no friends. But no community, certainly. And Helen was— And where was Samuel Gerard in all of this, anyway? Not a friend. But no longer an enemy. No longer Richard’s hunter, his untiring persecutor. He— Richard found himself thinking compulsively back to Gerard’s smile, sudden and sincere, in the back of the car. Something that felt like affection. Rough hands, kind, unlocking the handcuffs. How to square that warmth with months of terror? With the icy face of a man who had fired round after round directly at Richard’s face while he lay helpless, trapped behind bulletproof glass?
How to move forward with a life that had been severed nearly completely? It probably wasn’t a great sign that even finding a place to live seemed too onerous, too complex for Richard to aspire to.
Richard’s days blended together, not from sameness but the opposite: there was no rhyme or reason, no rhythm, no consistency. He was in and out of his lawyer’s office for this thing and that. His house was deep cleaned and put on the market, all without him ever having to set foot in it. Helen— The real estate agent was very kind. And then there were lingering formalities to close out from the case itself, and from his time on the run. The Chicago PD had business for him. The courts had business for him. The Marshals had business for him, though somehow it was never Gerard himself in the room—instead, his motley crew of a team swept Richard from one set of tidy-up paperwork to the next clean-up interview. A kid named Newman was forever pressing warm paper cups of tea into Richard’s hands. He never drank them, but he appreciated them anyway. It was nice to have something to hold, something to do with his hands.
After the first couple of days, Richard had bought himself a cheap notebook at a drugstore just to keep track of the various appointments, hearings, phone numbers, details. He’d become his own disaster secretary. But at least it was something to do that felt useful. And it was necessary—there was just so much of it. And there seemed to be no shape to any of it, no clear sign of when it would all be over. Being exonerated was in certain ways as disorienting as being falsely accused had been.
And then, somehow, it was over. His lawyer was shaking his hand. His accounts were unfrozen. His house was sold. Kathy had gotten tired of trying to convince Richard to crash in her guest room instead of the extended stay (“Please get out of this dismal paisley purgatory,” she’d said) and had taken it upon herself to find him an actual apartment. She’d hired her cousin, an interior designer, to fill the apartment with comfortable, generic furniture.
Richard had kept nothing from the house. A clean break felt better, easier, than the unfathomable prospect of sorting through a lifetime of— So he bought a stereo system, a couple of books of crossword puzzles, and a large abstract painting from some kid with a sweet smile selling her work on a table on the sidewalk, and called it a day on the apartment.
Life, somehow, went on. A cardiac clinic called, asking for a consult on a particularly difficult case, and that consult turned into a regular gig which eventually turned into a job, and then somehow Richard was going for a run most mornings, making himself breakfast, drinking his coffee in the car, joking with his colleagues, eating at a favorite lunch spot, having Kathy and a few other friends over here and there for dinner, and sleeping mostly dreamlessly in the same bed every night.
And waking up nearly every morning choking for breath, body rigid and heart aching. But even that persistent terror somehow became ordinary, reliable. As did the ongoing heartbreak of a life without Helen. A life without her light, her smile, her searing sarcasm. She’d been— And now she wasn’t. And would never be again. And that…somehow that became everyday, too. Monthly phone calls with her mother and brother turned into the occasional letter. He never visited her grave. She would have rolled her eyes at him if he had, and he didn’t see the point either. She was gone, and he would never not miss her. Better to remember her life than her death. (Easier said than done.)
Two years passed, then three. Three years of tentatively piecing a life back together again. Taking up swimming. Learning to cook for one. Attending a cousin’s funeral, hugging people he hadn’t seen in decades.
There was a bar on the ground floor of Richard’s apartment building. After a few months of passing the drinkers out having smoke breaks on the sidewalk on his way in and out of the building at night, Richard finally woke up enough to notice there were rarely any women there. It was a gay bar, evidently. Not a particularly flamboyant one. Lots of couples, even some middle-aged farts. People like him. Richard took to waving hello to the bouncer on his way into the building. And one evening, not quite ready to face the deafening quiet of his apartment once again, he turned right instead of left and walked into the bar instead of the lobby.
It was nice. The place wasn’t very big, a bunch of small tables, a pool table, and a longish bar. It didn’t have the look of a place that was mostly for cruising. Richard sat at the bar and radiated “leave me alone,” and people did. Just letting the burble of chatter and laughter wash over him felt good. He left after one drink, but he came back the next week, and the week after that. It was a nice addition to his modest routine. And it was nice, if he was honest with himself, which he tried to be, to notice admiring looks every now and then. He hadn’t been with a man since before Helen. But after Helen—somehow the idea of men seemed easier.
And it was only looking, after all.
The bartender’s name was Mitch. He’d come to Chicago from Colorado in the 70s and regretted it immediately but didn’t have the money to buy a bus ticket back. And by the time he did, he was part-owner of the bar and had adopted the first in a series of old, small dogs. “I’m basically a dog hospice agency,” he told Richard, wiping down the bar. “Twenty years and still going strong. Though I think Rita and Danny might be on their last legs. The rest of the gang will really miss Danny when he goes.”
“How many dogs do you have right now, anyway?” Richard asked.
Mitch shook his head and slid a beer over to another regular. “If I don’t tell you, then you won’t have to lie to the—hey, speak of the devil!” he cried, his face lighting up. “My favorite cop!”
Richard turned, and froze. Samuel Gerard was walking towards the bar.
“Mitch,” he barked. “How the hell is my girl Binkie? She shuffled off this mortal coil yet?”
Gerard hadn’t noticed Richard yet. For a wild moment he considered running. It was as though three years spent carefully uncoiling, allowing himself to believe he was free, that nobody was coming for him—as though those years had never happened. As though he was back in that spillover tunnel at the top of the dam, his heart hammering so hard it felt like it might explode, his legs weak, a stolen gun clutched in his shaking hand, and Gerard’s exasperated face, incredulous, callous: I don’t care.
Mitch reached across the bar and clasped Gerard’s hand in a brief grip. “Your girl Binkie has a urinary tract infection,” he said. “Otherwise she’s in the pink of health.”
The moment passed. Richard didn’t run.
He just stared, mutely, as Gerard glanced casually at him, glanced back at him, and then fully registered who he was looking at.
“Holy hell,” Gerard said quietly. “Doctor Kimble.”
Richard didn’t say anything—he had no idea what to say. The seconds stretched out. Finally he croaked out, “Deputy Gerard.”
“I guess,” Gerard said nonsensically. Then he seemed to gather himself a little. He clapped his hands together decisively and said, “Mitch, I’ll let your friend here finish his drink in peace. Catch you another time. Regards to Binkie.”
And he was gone.
Mitch stared at Richard, bewildered.
“What was that all about?” he said. “He arrest you sometime or something?”
“Yes,” Richard said, grateful that Mitch had apparently been living under a rock for all of 1993.
“Oh my god,” Mitch said. “How awkward.”
“Yes,” Richard agreed. His heart was still pounding and his entire body felt oddly far away.
Richard didn’t sleep that night. Part of it was the adrenaline hangover. But a lot of it was—
“I thought you didn’t care,” he’d said in the car. And then that smile. Gerard’s face all lit up with sudden warmth and humor. “Don’t tell anyone,” he’d said.
A lot of it was that smile. Gerard’s loose swagger, striding up to the bar, belt buckle flashing, face crinkling into—that smile.
Richard didn’t return to the bar for another month. Eventually he started to feel like a coward, and, irrationally, to feel like he was being disloyal to Mitch. So he went back, taking his usual seat at the bar. Mitch didn’t blink, just set down a Manhattan and started telling Richard about the newest addition to his collection of small, sick dogs. “Rita passed,” he explained.
“Condolences,” Richard said sincerely. And just like that, his routine was back in place.
He didn’t see Gerard that night. He hadn’t been expecting to, though it had been clear he was a regular. Richard probably would see Gerard again sooner or later. And when that happened, they would probably ignore each other. It would be fine. There was no reason they couldn’t both drink at the same bar. It would probably be good for Richard’s…recovery, or whatever you wanted to call it. For him to prove to himself that he could occupy the same space as Sam Gerard, an equal, a free man, disinterested, indifferent.
“You depress me,” Kathy told Richard a few weeks later, after killing nearly an entire bottle of Chardonnay. “You gotta get out there, Richard. Helen would be so pissed off at you.”
Richard smiled, despite himself. “You’re one to talk.”
“Hey, I have girlfriends!” Kathy huffed. "I have so many girlfriends!" Richard rolled his eyes.
“But come on,” she pressed. “What’s stopping you? What’s the problem?”
Richard gave his best shot at an honest answer. “First of all,” he said, “I’m busy.”
“Lame,” Kathy said. “Second?”
“I miss Helen.”
“Fair,” Kathy said. She poured herself another glass of wine. “But that’s never going to go away. At a certain point you just have to miss her and also move forward.”
“Fine,” Richard said. He ran his fingers through his hair and scrubbed at his face. He was fuzzy from the wine, but Kathy had asked, and he—for whatever reason, he actually wanted to answer.
“But also—I don’t know, Kathy. It’s just—I’m a mess. I don’t think I’d be much of a catch for anyone. Anyone I’d be interested in, I wouldn’t want to inflict myself on. Who out there is thinking, hey, you know what I want is a guy who broke out of prison, can’t breathe right when he’s near trains or open water, and was on the FBI’s most wanted list?”
Kathy was smiling, a funny, crooked affectionate little smile.
“What?” Richard said suspiciously.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just, that’s the most words I’ve heard you string together in one sentence since Helen died.”
It took a while, but Richard did see Gerard again. Even though he’d been braced for it, his stupid mindless heart still started pounding when he made his way back from the cramped bar bathroom to find the seat next to his empty stool newly occupied by Sam Gerard. Richard halted awkwardly and Gerard looked up. “Damn,” he said. A look of—regret? sympathy?—flashed over his face, and then he was smiling, but it was a polite, small thing. An apology of a smile. It looked out of place on his face.
“Sorry, Doc,” Gerard said, standing and reaching for his scarf. “Didn’t realize this was you.” He gestured at Richard’s mostly-finished drink. “Carry on,” he said, shrugging into his jacket. “I’ll just—”
Richard should have let him go. Should have nodded, said thank you, and let him go.
Instead, he reached out on impulse and grabbed Gerard by the arm. Gerard looked up, startled. Richard opened his mouth and immediately realized he had no idea what to say. The moment stretched endlessly as they stood there, with Richard’s hand on Gerard’s arm. “Tell you what,” Gerard finally said, gently, “let me buy you a drink. Least I can do.”
Richard nodded, still not trusting himself to speak.
They sat. Mitch ostentatiously said nothing as he got Richard another Manhattan and slid a beer over to Gerard before bustling off to the other end of the bar and leaving them to sit in silence, nursing their drinks.
It was not exactly a restful silence, but it felt okay anyway. Richard had no idea where any of this was going, but he found that he didn’t really mind. He sloshed his drink around a little so the ice cubes rattled and chimed against the glass.
Gerard looked down at his beer and laughed. “I want to ask ‘How are you,’” he said. “But—”
Richard looked up, a little surprised. “I’m okay,” he said.
“Are you really?” Gerard said. He returned Richard’s gaze, and it was—it felt strangely intimate.
“Let me see those hands, Doctor.” Richard remembered that look from the back of the car, the night he stopped running.
“I didn’t see you,” Richard said. “In the Marshals office. When I was—when they—after.” It sounded a little plaintive to his ears. Like he was asking, where were you? Why weren’t you there?
Gerard rubbed the back of his neck. “Didn’t think you’d want to,” he said.
“You were avoiding me?” Richard asked.
“Figured you’d be happier without my ugly mug around,” Gerard said. “Man who’s been chased up a tree by a bear maybe doesn’t want to spend a lot of quality time with said bear after the fact.”
Richard swirled his drink again. “I wouldn’t have minded,” he said finally.
“Okay,” Gerard said. Richard thought he looked a little pleased.
Gerard waved Mitch over for a refill. “Didn’t expect to see you again,” he said when they had the corner of the bar to themselves once more. “Especially not at a place like this.”
“I don’t suppose you run into a lot of your, uh. Targets. After the fact,” Richard said.
“Especially,” Gerard repeated, his raised eyebrows indicating the bar as a whole, “at a place like this.”
“Oh,” Richard said, looking around. A place like this. A gay bar. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?” Gerard said. His face was carefully neutral, but he seemed to expect an answer of some kind.
“Yes,” Richard said, feeling brave and terrified at the same time. “It’s—yes.”
Gerard nodded. Richard waited, strangely breathless, as the moment stretched. Gerard looked like he was waging some kind of internal battle. Then he looked down at his beer, still mostly full, and seemed to come to a decision. He turned away, stood up. Took out his wallet to pay the tab.
He was leaving. Richard felt it like a punch in the gut.
“Well, Dr. Kimble, it’s been—”
“I live here,” Richard blurted out nonsensically.
“I hope not,” Gerard said, pausing halfway through putting a twenty down on the counter.
“I mean,” Richard added hastily, “I live in this building. My apartment is in this building.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want—”
—what are you doing, Richard, what are you doing—
“Do you want to come up?”
Gerard gave him a steady, unreadable look. “Okay,” he said.
Richard swallowed, his throat clicking. He downed the rest of his drink and made his way to the door. Gerard followed him.
The elevator was an eternity. They stood side by side, staring in silence: Richard at the floor and Gerard at the ceiling. Finally, Richard was turning his key in the lock, was opening his door, was showing Gerard in, was closing the door.
The world tilted and spun as Gerard pushed him against the inside of his front door. Richard could feel the heat of his body from knee to shoulder, strong and insistent, pressing into him. Gerard’s face was against his, mouth by his ear, breath hot.
“Richard,” he said. His voice was soft. Richard’s whole body was lighting up.
“Y-yeah,” Richard managed.
“I need you to tell me very clearly—”
Richard ducked his chin and angled his face so his mouth met Gerard’s. The kiss started dirty, open-mouthed and messy, and only got dirtier. Richard was panting when Gerard broke the kiss. His brain felt like someone had set off a bomb in it.
Gerard pressed his forehead against Richard’s. “I hope that was a yes,” he said.
“Yes,” Richard agreed. “I—yes.”
Gerard’s hands snaked down to Richard’s belt. “You have no fucking idea,” he growled into Richard’s ear as he worked his belt open. “No idea. You asshole. I wanted you while I thought you were a murderer. I wanted you when I knew you were innocent. Mourning a wife. I wanted you when you were bleeding. You looked like a fucking kicked puppy and I still wanted you so bad. I felt like a monster and I still wanted you. I didn’t sleep for weeks.”
He pulled his face away and looked Richard square in the eye, inescapable, as he wrapped a hard hand around Richard’s cock. Richard bucked helplessly into his grip, unable to look away.
“My team nearly murdered me,” Gerard said, his hand relentless. “And it’s your fucking fault. I had to buy Poole a Louis Vuitton handbag, just to make up for—”
“Sam,” Richard managed. He was so close. He wrapped his arms around Sam, pulling him in tighter. He could barely move, but he could do that.
“Richard,” Sam murmured, pressing his face into Richard’s neck, jerking him fast and dirty. “—A handbag, Richard, and it was—you almost died, I almost killed you, why would you want—why would you let me—”
“Sam, shut up,” Richard managed, and came. Sam held him through it, kissing his ear, his hair, the side of his face, small tender kisses that made their way to his mouth as his brain came back online. Richard eventually leaned in, finding Sam’s mouth, pressing himself into the kiss, warm and soft. They kissed for a long time, easy and close, unhurried, against the door. Sam’s body was heavy against Richard’s, arms against the door on either side, boxing him in. It felt—protective.
“I’ve been trying so hard not to think about you,” Sam finally said. “Richard. For three years. I don’t think I’ve ever tried so hard and failed so miserably at anything in my entire life.” He laughed. “Except catching you.”
“But you caught me,” Richard said, and Sam tucked his face into Richard’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” he said. “Guess I did.”