AN: I made myself so hungry with this chapter, you guys.

'Have you heard the story 'bout the man on the moon?
He was so lonely, you could see on the news
Everyone loved him, but he never knew
Reminds me of someone, somebody like you.'

"Man on the Moon" ~ Gavin James

~OL~

"I have a question."

Sam didn't look up from his cellphone. "Shoot."

"It's about alarms."

"Alarms?"

"Like home alarms."

That got Sam's head up at light speed. He stared at Richard, who sipped his Styrofoam cup of coffee. The bakery lineup shuffled forward a few feet and only the press of people at his back stirred him into motion.

"How did you even know where to find me? It's seven-thirty in the morning."

Richard shrugged. "Biggs told me when I called your office. Said you stop by this bakery every Wednesday morning for an éclair to 'make it through the week.'"

"Traitor." Sam still wouldn't take his eyes off the shorter man. "Did someone trip your alarm?"

"No, see, that's the problem. I don't have a home security system and I want your advice before I buy one."

Sam's shoulders deflated away from his ears. His trigger finger stopped twitching.

"You want one with an alarm."

"I thought they all came with alarms."

Sam shook his head. "No. Well, yes. But some are silent alarms that alert the police before the intruder even realizes they've been caught."

Richard's mouth twizzled down on both sides. He averted his gaze, onto the shiny glaze donuts, and glared at them instead. Sam waited him out.

"I don't want that," said Richard, oh so quiet. "A normal alarm will do."

"That would be my call also." Sam eyed a double chocolate éclair behind the display glass. "That way I have time to react and protect myself, in the event of an attack."

Richard swallowed a few times at the word, Sam noted in that investigator part of his brain that never shut off. A low hum, he most days he could ignore it.

But with Richard…

"I'll send over some specs," said Sam.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. We still need to figure out what works best for your new home. Some are harder to hear from a back bedroom, for instance. Some are window slider sensors and some work based on laser 'wires' and things like that."

"We? I think I can make a decision on my own."

"They all say that," Sam groused.

Richard opened his mouth for what was likely a very feisty retort—

When a burly, six-foot-two man brushed Richard's shoulder on the way out with his order, jostling them both. The man balanced a coffee in one hand and bag of donuts in the other. "Oh, excuse me! Sorry about that. It's packed in here today."

Sam expected to hear Richard's polite go to—"No problem at all. You have a great day."

He should have known better by now, honestly. Fool him twice. Richard was never predictable.

Right as Sam thought it, Richard darted away from the man, back by Sam's shoulder. He trembled enough to pierce concrete. Coffee spilled down his fingers.

"It's alright," said Sam at once, and the big man took that as a 'no worries,' waving in thanks as he left. "Richard?"

Sam tried to turn, but Richard had the elbow of his coat in a death grip. "Hey, Peter Pan. Ain't nothing gonna hurt you in here but the fat content."

"Right."

Dead pan. Rote. It might as well have been a computer saying it.

A quick peek over Sam's shoulder revealed ashen skin and Richard's teeth clenched so hard Sam winced on his behalf. He reached behind with his other hand and patted Richard's. It was cold, clammy.

"You hearin' me, Richard?"

He must have—at Sam's words, he bolted out the door. Sam blinked. Took a very deeeeeeeep breath.

Then he ordered two éclairs and found Richard on a sidewalk bench by the entrance, fists clasped in his lap and sans coffee. Businessmen parted around the bench in a sea of gray wool.

"Sorry," Richard said. Still no signature blush in sight. "Crowds have me on edge today, I guess."

Sam said nothing, just handed him a gooey piece of heaven before sitting down. Richard stared at the éclair in his lap and Sam bumped them together in a toast, chewing it piece by delectable piece. It got him through the week's hump day, without fail. Flaky chocolate dough wrapped lovingly around molten chocolate mousse or ganache, depending on the baker's fancy.

"Does that happen a lot?" Sam finally asked. He kept his eyes on pedestrians and bikers whizzing on their way to work.

So did Richard. "Losing my mind in a coffee shop?"

"Feeling unsafe with people."

"Stupid, huh?"

Sam clapped his hands free of sugar and chocolate phyllo. The last of the cream rolled around his molars, a sizzle wink that helped him appreciate Richard's suddenly lax jaw. "Naw, Richard. It's not stupid at all. Not after what you've…we've lived through."

Richard threw him wide eyes. "You too?"

Sam crossed his ankle over his knee. "Not with your case but once, years ago. I dodged a bullet with a sliver of room to spare. Had trouble pulling my gun for months."

Richard sketched a tiny, grateful smile, hair feathered in the autumn breezes. He still wouldn't touch his éclair. It leaked a little and chocolate oozed out of one side, a crime scene smudge on the wax paper.

A boulder began to sink in Sam's stomach.

~OL~

Sam finally turned off the shower's hot stream—only to hear his cellphone ring in the bedroom.

"I'm comin,'" he barked.

Towel wrapped loosely around his waist, he managed to snatch his phone off the nightstand on its last ring. He flipped it open and dripped all over the buttons before pressing the correct one to accept the call. "Hello? Gerard here."

"Hey, Sam."

"Richard?" Sam spun away from the mirror where he attempted to tame his spikes of damp hair. "It's eight at night."

A quick intake of breath. Richard's silence stretched for a half minute.

"You said…I could call you at home."

Sam closed his eyes, scowling at himself. "Sorry, Richard. Of course you can, anytime. Just didn't recognize your number. You said you had a late shift at the OR."

"I did. I'm calling from my hospital extension," said Richard and then didn't elaborate at all. "Want to go for a beer?"

"Sure. How about that bar and grill down on Pacey Drive?"

Another beat.

"I'd rather not. I stayed there, at the men's hostel, last year."

Sam swallowed. "Right. Okay…"

"How about somewhere we both haven't tried? Maybe that new place by the old theatre. It just opened last week."

"Done deal." Sam didn't bother pointing out that he had memories on that street too, arresting a convict a few years back. "Be there in fifteen."

Richard must not have gone home after his shift, because he beat Sam there by enough time to save him a seat at the bar. An uneasy grimace on his face eased into a smirk when he spotted Sam's dazed face.

The doctor yelled to be heard over a bachelor party on stage at the front. "How's this for different?"

"Richard." Sam barked that too, collapsing onto the stool next to his friend. "This is a karaoke bar."

Richard laughed and slid him over a bottle of Austrian beer, his favourite. "I had no idea either. Quite the energy."

A gross underestimation. Sam concluded such upon a quick visual sweep of the bar, purple and blue lights flashing for dancers at their backs and a spotlight on terrible singers in the karaoke section. Friends cheered them on from the tables while music boomed over hidden loudspeakers.

"To the crazies," Sam declared.

Richard tapped his beer bottle. "Takes one to know one."

"Shut up."

Richard laughed again. It released a shaky tension in his fingers. He had his shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat, but he let go of his watchful posture the moment Sam's elbow brushed his.

They listened to the groom's truly heinous but committed rendition of "Sweet Caroline" and snickered through most of it. Though the volume barred any serious conversation, Richard didn't seem to want that. He just smiled at Sam and smiled at the bar tender and smiled at the room at large.

Yesterday's deflated éclair crept again to mind. Sam put down his bottle.

"Sorry, sir." A young waitress, slip of a thing, bumped into Richard's side. She still somehow managed to keep the double order of fries on her tray from spilling. "Didn't mean to hit you!"

"It's nuts around here." Richard smiled at her too. Didn't even flinch. "No harm done."

Sam studied him for a moment after the waitress thanked him and scurried off. "All this noise is giving me a headache. You up for a walk to the park?"

Richard threw back the last of his beer and thumbed out a few bills to cover the tab. "Sounds good."

They shouldered their way outside—and halted.

"Wow." Richard marvelled up at the sky and streetlamps overhead. "I forgot how pretty this can be if you have time to pay attention."

Sam's throat smarted at his friend's slip but he had to agree: a light snowfall, early for Chicago and probably just a teaser, pirouetted over the city in fat, graceful flakes. Some settled in Richard's eyelashes as they resumed walking.

Sam kept his hands in his coat pockets, but Richard held out his left palm and grinned at a manna cake of snow. It melted along his lifeline, a porcelain canyon. Together they tried and failed not to look like eager school children about the snow. Some people pushed rudely past them, not even sparing the phenomenon a glance.

It painted Richard in a funny portrait, the white in his hair like an old's man's before it melted, his face tinged with wonder.

"Came straight from the hospital?" Sam asked.

"I left work early, actually."

"Why? Everything okay?"

Richard waffled his head. "Just wanted to. Took off a half hour early without telling my boss. It was only paperwork for the rest of my shift anyway."

Sam's mouth dropped open. "Mr. Gotta Help Every Person in My Path played the hooky card?"

"Feels good, honestly."

Sam's bewilderment grew. That wasn't their reliable doctor by any stretch of the imagination. Sure he wasn't exactly the world's best rule-follower…but to sneak off from work? Without warning?

"Richard…why'd you want to go for a beer so badly?"

"Guy can't get a beer with a friend?"

"Richard."

Richard didn't answer right away. They made it into the park, seated on a little bench that was ice underneath Sam's butt, before he inhaled a long breath. It misted into the air upon its liberation and Richard tucked his hand away in his coat.

"You know the one thing you never get used to on the run?"

A lot of things, probably.

Still, Sam asked, "What's that?"

"Not being able to call anyone." Richard got that fiery, dead-eyed look he only wore when up against some tough odds. The same look he wore fighting with Nichols. "Returning to an empty apartment or empty room and knowing no one else will be there. Ever."

Sam watched a squirrel, snow speckled, race up a tree. "That doesn't just happen on the run, you know."

Richard didn't glance at him, the saint. He just nodded.

"It's okay to admit you're lonely, Richard."

"Just…sometimes I can't sleep." Richard nosed into the top fold of his coat collar. "I hate going home and just laying there. Nights I go out with someone make it easier."

Sounds familiar. Sam hadn't slept properly for months after his wife left.

Sam swiped his shoes in the grass so they left a mini snow angel. "Richard, how long has it been since you got real sleep? Not a cat nap."

This silence stretched so long that Sam wasn't sure Richard would answer at all. He certainly didn't have to. Not with the evidence laid bare in part, enough for Sam to fill in the gaps. The tips of Richard's ears reddened, from cold and emotion and that certain something Sam could never quite understand. Richard's arm warmed against Sam, a furnace of held back words.

"Three days," he finally said, totally matter-of-fact. Sam's chest throbbed in radar pings, broken telemetry since the man sitting next to him made all his instruments go haywire.

"Can't you prescribe yourself something?"

Richard met his eyes with a sideways glance. That furnace spilled over until it warmed Sam's insides like the éclair. "I just did."

~OL~

The campfire huddle talked over itself. Cosmo and Biggs refused to agree and somehow even Noah's manual page flipping didn't help either side's argument.

"I still say it's our jurisdiction!" Poole butted in.

Biggs slapped a nasty mug shot on the whiteboard. "Do you really want to chase an escaped psychopath?"

"Better than all our hard work going out the window because CPD are cowards." Cosmo paced from Poole's desk back to his own. "I mean we've been chasing this lead for three days. And suddenly they swoop in and take all the credit. We can't let them do that!"

"Sure we can!"

Noah held up a hand. "Technically, we can't. He escaped a federal prison system. That makes him our problem."

Both sides groaned.

Henry stood back, eyes longing on a fresh pack of cigarettes he could no longer smoke indoors. Sam sat in a spare chair, cheek in his palm, gaze somewhere off in the distance. Or more specifically—two days and that uneaten éclair. Soggy. Lost looking like its owner.

"Hey, what do you guys know about PTSD?"

All four voices died away. Poole's sharp eyes caught Sam's first, stunned, then Noah's. Curls in his ponytail glinted gold under the fluorescents.

Cosmo recovered first. No surprise. "Like that thing war veterans get?"

"Doesn't have to be someone who survived combat." Biggs frowned. "My cousin was in a car accident and couldn't drive for a year after. Had nightmares about it."

"It can be hell." Henry rolled a cigarette around in his palm. They were some of his first words all day, and everyone quieted further. "Sometimes people get it for seemingly dumb stuff. Almost getting hit by a dirt bike. Bitten by a dog. A tornado siren going off accidentally in a small town."

Sirens. Alarms…

Sam swivelled to look up at Henry. "Yeah, I know all that. But how does someone recover from it?"

"You havin' nightmares 'bout the job?" Henry asked, plain faced.

"Not me, someone else. I'm worried they're…that functioning among people has become a struggle."

Henry nodded. "That's what makes it PTSD and not just post traumatic stress. Lasts longer than three months and cripples your daily life. Fight or flight's constantly turned on."

"That's it." Sam sat straighter. "That's exactly what's happening. Only some of the puzzle pieces don't slot for me."

An image of Richard asleep in the bullpen amongst all these people who'd pointed their guns at him contrasted against his scare in the bakery. Then how comfortable he was in the bar with all its noise—so long as Sam was there with him. That didn't fit the PTSD profile. Not for what happened in the past year.

"He's gotta talk to someone, Sam." Cosmo's voice sounded strained. Maybe Sam had dealt his hand too soon and Cosmo saw through it. "A professional someone."

A sour expression passed through the group. 'Shrinks and clinks,' they always joked, for how often perps got incarcerated for something screwy in their heads. Sam didn't find it funny now.

"What can I do in the meantime?"

Henry hummed with a faint shrug. "Just listen, man. All people want is to be heard."

Sam nodded, but the prospect of convincing Mr. Independent himself to go see a therapist sounded like asking the pope to enter a rap battle. Possible but far fetched.

Time to strategize.

~OL~

Strategizing went completely out the window when Sam came home two nights later and found a bundle on his front stoop.

He scrambled for the glove compartment and his personal issue Glock. Sam had it out, safety off, before he even turned off the ignition.

Not tonight, you don't. I've had a crazy enough week without someone trying to break into my…house…

Sam stalled upon hopping out of his truck and rounding the hood. The figure certainly wasn't moving, not crouched over his door lock in an attempt to pick it. No crowbars ready to pry open windows.

Worse—the person wasn't even standing.

Sam squinted in the dim light of his flickering porch bulb. The figure slumped in a shadow, knees to its chest. Leather loafers scuffed.

Wait.

"Richard?" Sam pocketed his gun, safety back on, and jogged up the steps. Urgently but not too fast. Light enough on the balls of his feet to avoid an excess of noise. "That you?"

Not a real question. Sam knew those loafers like they were a Sistine Chapel painted behind his eyelids. He knew the mop of maple hair even better.

But he needed a verbal answer.

Every nerve ending prickled at the night's suburban quiet, the lack of breath sounds or dogs or even planes overhead. Even nerves on his tongue tingled, that lightning strike ozone feeling right before a criminal pulled out a weapon or did something stupid.

After a minute, Richard's head bobbed to reveal eyes fraught with a breathtaking amount of emotion. Sam, trained to read people for a living, couldn't decipher them all. Just the pain. Ungodly amounts of pain.

He knelt down at once.

"Richard." A softer tone worked even better, Richard's eyeline tracking from some thousand-yard distance back to Sam's face. "It's me. It's just Sam."

The street remained dead quiet. Plenty quiet to hear Richard release a tremulous breath. "S…Sam?"

Sam's heart squeezed in his chest.

"Yeah." A quick scan revealed just a thin collared shirt. No wonder Richard shivered so hard. Sam whipped off his wool coat and draped it around Richard's shoulders, like a shock blanket. Then he placed a careful hand on the back of Richard's neck. "A conference call ran late. Haven't been home after dark in a long time and I'm gettin' sloppy. You okay?"

Another question that wasn't really a question.

Richard didn't answer, just tried—without success—to still his lips. He was bloodless all over. His eyelashes stuck together in gunky patches, the result of dried tears. A vice clamped around Sam's chest and his hand twitched on the back of Richard's neck, right against a pulse point.

He shifted on his toes. "Where's your car, Richard?"

Another facial spasm.

"Huh? Where'd you park?"

"I don't remember. Sam, I don't…I don't know."

"Alright, okay." Sam held up his other hand in a placating gesture. Worry throbbed in his belly. He made sure none of that bled into his even keel voice. "Are you telling me you walked all the way here?"

"No, I…" Richard listed back into Sam's hand. No smell of alcohol at least. "I stopped for a while, but I couldn't make myself do it. So I…I just started walking."

Sam's heart seized altogether. "Make yourself do what, exactly?"

Richard swallowed. He ran a hand across his mouth like he might be sick; blood speckled his fingers.

"Hey!" Richard jumped at the electric tone, but Sam gravitated towards the blood. "How'd you do this?"

He grabbed Richard's wrist and turned the palm up. The other hand bore a matching set of crimson nicks. Sam fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief and tore it in half, wrapping strips around the cold fingers.

"Its nothing," said Richard, which only made the battle between throttling him and swaddling him in a gargantuan blanket that much worse. "Just cut myself cleaning shards of a broken bowl earlier tonight."

Sam looked up, still holding both of Richard's wrists. He shook them a little. "Richard."

Barely a breath. A word so tender and finite that Richard's face immediately crumpled.

"Richard, this has to stop."

"You think I don't know that?" Anger flew out of Richard's mouth without power yet multitudinous heat. "You think I want to live like this?"

Sam inched closer and Richard turned his head away to avoid the insistent eyes. A tear trickled into his mouth. Sam's hand found its way back to Richard's neck.

"Talking to someone might do you a world of good. I mean that."

An abrupt shift. Richard's head swung around to stare at him.

"This level of traumatic stress, your responses, can have lasting effects," Sam finished in a whisper.

Richard's stare ended when he tipped his head back against the siding—and laughed. Sam's grip followed him the whole way. Richard laughed like the world was ending and he had a front row seat all to himself. Sam disliked this far more.

The bitter sound ended in a cough. "Yeah…yeah, it sure can. Boy, does it ever."

"You have to let someone help you."

Richard hesitated. Sam's eyes clouded, straining to read why. Then Richard leaned his cheek on Sam's outstretched forearm and it was Sam's turn to swallow.

"What if there isn't anyone?" Richard whispered back, heat snuffed out in one pop.

"You have me." Sam hissed it, fervent. "No idea what I'm doing, but you're not alone, Richard. At least one person cares what happens to you, and I know for a fact that my team of professional busybodies also care very deeply about you."

Richard sighed, sending a hot stream along Sam's arm. "I know. Why do you think I walked here?"

Sam puddled just a little more, just when he thought he was too crusted over to go this soft. His thumb skidded across stubble under Richard's ear.

"We'll figure out your car situation in the morning. For now, it's either a hospital or my couch."

"A couch sounds like paradise to be honest."

"Done deal. Welcome to casa de Gerard. Population one."

No way was Sam letting Richard go home by himself. Not in this state…whatever it was. Sam still struggled to read the conflict on Richard's face.

But the way Richard closed his eyes when Sam's shadow engulfed him didn't take an expert.

Sam's eyes stung without his permission. Oh to go back and tell himself a year ago the impact this case, this one man, would have on his life.

"You're safe," Sam breathed, pure instinct. He held himself still while Richard sought refuge in the dark of his bulk. "You hear me? You're safe here."

Richard nodded without budging.

"Let's get you inside."

Sam thumbed the cold neck one last time before standing and offering his hand. Richard eyed it, lost in a sea Sam couldn't name, then rode the pull to his feet.

"Whoa." Sam caught him when he wavered and propped him against the house. "Okay, no quick moves for you."

"Just tired," said Richard, the world's worst lie. He clasped the coat tighter around himself. Both men were pretty much the same height, but for some reason it dwarfed him. Probably thanks to Richard's stingy eating habits lately.

"Sure, and I'm Elton John."

Richard rolled his eyes, undermined by the fact Sam had to hold under his elbow or he'd have wobbled just getting in the door. Sam unlocked it and flicked on a light. He shoved Richard towards the kitchen table.

"Make yourself comfortable. I'll grab a first aid kit."

Sam bustled around, cleaning up loose magazines and takeout containers, and hoped he had some herbal tea and honey left in the bread box. It certainly didn't hold any bread these days. Sam couldn't remember the last time he cooked his own food.

"Here we are." Sam trooped back into the kitchen after a trip to the bathroom medicine cabinet. "We'll get you patched right up…"

Cushioned with his head on his arms, Richard's breaths already whistled faintly. Years sloughed off his face, subconsciously comfortable in a place he'd never been before, just like that day in the bullpen. Where was the flinching now? The fear?

Sam fell into a chair, a heavy, helpless motion.

A former convict. Dead to the world across Sam's kitchen table and yesterday's newspaper. Wrapped in his coat.

Wonders never ceased.

Neither did the ache in Sam's throat.

"What are we going to do with you, Peter Pan?" A burning need to touch him again seared through Sam's hand. He resisted, though he too bent forward with his chin on his wrists to watch the doctor sleep. Long eyelashes were a paint brush on his skin. "You're floating away faster than I can catch you."

~OL~

Sam stumbled into the kitchen the next morning to see a fresh batch of blueberry lemon muffins cooling on the counter and Richard stretched across his couch, watching the shopping channel.

"Morning," said Richard, eyes still on the screen. Something about a tennis bracelet. "They're still hot, so don't burn your mouth."

"Thanks." Sam blinked at the muffins. He didn't have flour or lemons in the house, as far as he knew.

"Least I could do after the hospitality."

Sam waved it off and poured himself a cup of coffee. "Having you here puts my mind at ease anyway. I would rather you come here than hear about you in my morning crime bulletin."

Richard stilled. "Wouldn't be the first time."

"No, it would not. Though I have to ask how you know where I live."

"Oh, I got bored one day while in custody waiting for the pardon. You had a back deck built recently. A friend down at City Hall found the zoning permits you filed."

Sam shook his head but couldn't help a husky laugh. He plopped into the recliner. "You realize you just admitted to a criminal offense."

"Also wouldn't be the first time."

"You insufferable sawbones."

Richard smiled.

They watched a sporty lady model the diamond bracelet for a while. The narrator droned about how many outfits it went with.

"This is riveting content for you?"

"Familiar," Richard corrected. "A background noise that makes me feel at home."

Another relic of Helen's presence stored on the shelf of Richard's psyche, perhaps in uncleavable ways. Sam set down his muffin. An image of the Kimble banister, streaked in blood, gleamed in his mind. All thanks to forensic photos he'd studied later and a trip through the empty house.

He dreamed about that house sometimes. Richard probably did too. Another way they were bound for life without equal among anyone else in their lives.

"You ready to go find your car?"

"Yeah." Only a few bites were nibbled out of Richard's muffin. Unlike the two Sam wolfed down. "Just let me clean up."

Sam enjoyed the hilarious—baffling—sight of renowned vascular surgeon Richard Kimble folding not only the blankets given to him last night but also Sam's coat where it hung over the back of the couch and even the pillowcases, heedless of his bandaged hands. Like a fussy hotel housekeeper.

Sam lost the brawl against a smile. This man might just kill him one of these days. "You don't have to do that."

"I like things in their place."

"A good trait in your profession."

That got the day's first chuckle out of Richard, breathy as it was.

They drove around for almost twenty minutes before Richard started to recognize the neighbourhood. He motioned for them to stop. Twenty minutes wasn't a long distance in Sam's truck but walking it must have been brutal.

"Don't even know how you made it to my door in this chill. Smells like more snow on the way."

Richard pointed. "Here's good."

"You sure?" Sam craned around to see nothing but a small park. No high surfaces Richard could contemplate jumping off of. No fast moving traffic to step out into.

"It's okay. I can walk to my car from here."

Sam caught Richard's arm before he hopped out. "Richard—time to level with me."

"Yeah?" Richard's wide, innocent eyes did nothing for Sam's breathing. This untrained man had gone up against a killer and won out of sheer spite, had survived impossible things, had spent countless nights crying alone because no one believed him.

Sam dreamt about that too.

"Are you a danger to yourself?"

"No. No."

"Because I won't let you go back to work like nothing's wrong if you are."

Richard clasped back under Sam's forearm, to his shock. Seldom were the days Richard initiated touch. "If I was, you'd be the first person I call. I'm fine, Sam. That's not…last night I just needed to go somewhere…"

He didn't finish the thought, however long Sam waited.

"Thanks for not shooting me when I showed up unannounced."

"Bad look for a federal agent," Sam joked.

Richard left with a smile and pump of his arm. Sam's eyes tracked him the whole way, from the time he closed the truck door until he disappeared on the opposite side of the street. Steps dragging more than they should. Eyes jumpier on every noise than they'd ever been.

Only once Sam rounded the block on his way into the city did he realize the police precinct stood directly across from the park.

~OL~

The next day, a loaf of chocolate zucchini bread appeared on Sam's desk.

Not even building security could say how it got there before offices opened for the morning.