'And when there's nobody left to blame
And you're covering up the stains
Of the silent tears you hope to never show
Well, when nobody knows how you feel
Do you think those emotions are real?
Or do they go away if they are not spoken?'

"Ghosts" ~ Gatton & Rich

~OL~

"A game?"

"It's not going to eat you." Sam waved the ticket again for good measure. "Just some good quality basketball. NBA."

"Quality is an iffy promise, boss."

Sam shushed Cosmo. "We have an extra seat. Compliments of the US Marshals service as an early Thanksgiving gift. We got 'em for free."

Richard still looked dubious. He set down his chopsticks and Henry prodded his elbow to keep eating. "Basketball?"

"Yeah," said Sam. "You know, one guy tries to get the leather ball in the hoop and the other guy blocks?"

"I've never been to a basketball game."

Biggs glanced up from his teriyaki bowl, scandalized. "Doc, are you serious? Not even in college?"

Richard shook his head with a half smile. "I played pick up games, but I've never seen an official match. More of a ball hockey man myself."

"This is tragic." Cosmo spun his office chair until he faced Sam. "Tell him it's tragic, Sammy."

"It'll be fun," Sam clarified. "And Lord knows we could all use a little fun."

Poole raised her chopsticks in a salute. "Here, here."

They sat in a loose circle in the bullpen, between desks, which was empty today apart from their team. Nestled between Henry and Sam, Richard's long legs stretched halfway out. Almost fully relaxed, and it was Sam's personal mission to get them all the way straight by the end of lunch.

Noah pretended he wasn't stealing wondering looks at Richard in between bites of noodles and grinned when he thought no one was looking; the doctor being here, guard down, was monumental, though only their youngest couldn't hide the delight of it.

Neither could Sam, but he expressed that through buying copious bags of knock off Japanese food.

"Sure. Why not." Richard finally took the ticket and pocketed it with lots of blinking. He still had yet to eat more than a third of his plate. "I'll come to the game next month."

Cosmo rocked his fist. "Yes! Now we'll have expert commentary when a player gets injured. Sports announcers always just make it up on the spot."

Richard and Sam commiserated with a longsuffering look at each other. The team was too busy laughing to care, and in some remote, mushy part of Sam's brain, it struck him that he'd be okay with this new brand of normal if it stuck around. Ever since Richard's case, a vulcanized cohesion had sparked between the team. Comradery, he supposed, the sense they fought for something bigger than just capturing a criminal.

"You want another spring roll?" Sam clued in that Richard might not be eating the noodles, but he consumed spring rolls at a steady pace. He'd polished off three already.

Richard coloured a little. "Only if there are extras left. Sorry."

"Don't be." Sam patted Richard's chest as he stood. "Glad someone's eating them."

About to turn away, his eyes flashed back at a sudden flinch. Richard covered it up in seconds, back to a calm affect, but Sam didn't doubt his eyes.

Or his gut.

And right now it blared for dear life.

Richard met his eyes, a beat of octane connection. The fear in them paused Sam in place, a type of emotional poison he hadn't seen in eight months. Richard's gaze flicked away.

Thankfully no one else noticed the reaction, and it allowed Sam a second examination. He almost dismissed the flinch as another trauma response, the doctor keyed up.

Then he saw the dark cloud marring his skin.

Richard's collared shirt had slipped down from the force of the flinch. A splotchy shape painted the peekaboo of clavicle, a reverse gradient from amethyst to sickly yellow.

Sam's heart thundered. His gun burned against his hip.

Somehow, by some miracle he never understood even thinking back on it later, his voice came out totally normal. "Richard, you wanna come pick out which spring roll flavour you'd like?"

Richard nodded—also a miracle. Nonchalant as you please.

Only Henry spared them a second glance, brow puckered. Sam tilted his chin in the subtlest version of a headshake he could manage. Henry backed down with a nod.

The others jabbered away while Richard and Sam filed into the board room, to the long table where they'd dumped all the food buffet style. Its soundproof design wasn't perfect, but the abrupt dearth of voices when Sam shut the door set both Richard's and Sam's teeth on edge.

Richard backed up until his thighs hit the table. "Sam—"

"If you tell me another lie about a hysterical patient, I'll throw this fortune cookie at you."

Richard clamped both hands around the table edge. Blood seeped out of his taut knuckles.

Sam reached for him. Stopped. An aborted motion. The right to touch felt precarious in this moment and without precedent, sacrosanct. "Can I…?"

Richard eyed him from beneath his lashes for a beat. A long beat. Only years facing down criminals kept Sam from squirming.

Clumsy fingers then slipped out the top three buttons. Richard did the honours for him—he pulled apart the shirt flaps and Sam's arches tingled where his heart splatted into them. Cool streams iced down his neck.

"Bloody hell."

Richard huffed.

"Richard." Sotto voce and all breath. The muted word still made his friend stiffen. "Richard."

In the hush, Richard's eyes skimmed the wall of monitors, as if to demonstrate his own control in this situation. That he wasn't anyone's puppet. For Sam, it only served as a reminder that this was the same room where he'd talked with Richard on the phone, where he'd called from Sykes' house and asked for help, in his own way.

Sam padded closer at a crawl.

He hardly blinked. Some wild part of him held out hope he hallucinated the whole thing. Because there was no way Richard's bony—underfed—chest could be a mesh of black and lavender bruising, that hidden bandages along his ribs spoke of expert but lonely hands patching himself up—

That bruises on the right side of his neck could wind in such intimate, three inch strips.

Fingers.

Crimson splotched over the world with the feral sincerity of a toddler's meltdown. Sam began to tremble.

"Who?" he demanded in a rasp. "Who, Richard?"

Suddenly his behaviour these past few weeks made sense. The reluctance to go home, the weird bruises, how jumpy he was, especially with people bigger than him.

Suddenly everything made sense.

And yet none of it did.

"This is private, Sam. It isn't anyone's business."

The rivets in Sam's heart threatened to shake apart. "You said I'm your only true friend in the world. Here, this is what a friend does. So who? I want a name."

"Does it matter?"

Sam finally made it to the endzone, right into Richard's space. His hand hovered over bare, assaulted skin. "Would it matter if it was me?"

Richard's head shot up. His wracked eyes swept all through Sam's and Sam let him, anything to keep him communicating. "Of course. But it's not the same."

"Why the hell not?"

A mulish tilt stained Richard's mouth. "People are different with me, no matter how much the courts pardon. You haven't broken the law."

"I have actually. Many times in my youth. But, Richard…" Sam lost his breath again. His fingers quivered over the largest bruise, on Richard's breastbone, what must have been a mammoth punch from a meaty fist. Only hard knuckles left marks like this. "Who hurt you?"

The dry sob surprised Sam, slipping past his own lips.

Not as much as Richard—he jolted under Sam's hand, which had somehow landed on Richard's chest without either of them noticing.

"Huh?" Sam stroked with his thumb. "Who laid a violent hand on you and thought they could get away with it?"

"Let it go, Sam."

This sound had a baby with the sob and ended up a deformed laugh. "Over my dead body."

Richard paled. "That's what I'm afraid of."

"Let me handle me. Are you in any pain? Have you treated them?"

Richard stared at the hand on his chest. Like it didn't make any sense and had spoken the truth of some veiled universe all at once.

"Richard."

The doctor shook a little too. "Nothing broken. Been treating them with a salve and analgesic, ibuprofen if the bruises swell."

Totally clinical, clipboard chart style. Not a hint of self pity.

The crimson bled into Sam's face. "Richard…why didn't you tell me? You should have the second this bastard got within two feet of you."

Richard stared hard at Sam's wrist watch.

Sam resisted jostling him, but he ducked his head to try and recapture the doctor's eyes. "Do you not trust me?"

"No! I mean yes! Why else do you think I showed up at your door and your office and…Sam, I don't need you to fight my battles for me. You've dealt with enough of that."

"Clearly you do."

"I need…" Richard ran a hand through his hair. Dark encircled eyes closed with a defeated crease. "Please. Please, I just need…"

"What, Richard? What do you need?"

"To feel normal. To think that for once in my life, I could make things right and it would actually work! That I might go back to what I'm good at and not get second looks in the hall or hear whispers over lunch and be avoided like the plague. I need connection."

Sam's turn to stare. He moved his hand up to Richard's neck and Richard didn't bat an eyelash. Such trust, from such a traumatized person, hard earned but heavy nonetheless. Sam's throat prickled. With featherlight pressure, he traced the outline of each mark.

"I think I'm living proof that it did work."

Richard's eyes flew open.

Sam's hand didn't stop there. His other joined the pilgrimage, in a glide up Richard's jaw until he framed this stubborn, precious, hyperintelligent man's face in both palms. "Richard, do you understand that I would put a bullet into the arm of anyone who touched you with it?"

Words never made it to Richard's tongue. Unblinking, those frayed eyes stayed fixed on Sam's.

"Because I would. And I tried to kill you barely a year ago. How's that for connection?"

Something wet hit Sam's thumbs.

"You don't mean that," Richard whispered.

"I do, and I think that's what you're actually scared of. So just give me a name and this can all be over."

Richard's eyes went flinty. "I spent six months with no power over my own life, hunted like a dog. I won't live through that again."

The flinch escaped before Sam censored it.

Richard tried to step back and wavered, like he couldn't afford such distance. A personal war in a personal hellscape. "He's my problem, Sam."

Floundering, Sam blinked fast. These words made no sense in the orbital physics of his world. Not according to the way his heart or team or moral code worked. "But I'm your friend."

The cheeks warmed in his palms, a return of colour and fire. "You are."

"Then let me help you."

"I'm sorry," Richard gasped, though Sam had no idea what he could possibly be apologizing for. "This is why I didn't tell you. You don't need more of my messes to deal with."

"Richard—"

"Goodbye, Sam."

Richard's skin seemed to scald Sam's fingers when he pulled away and fled out the door.

~OL~

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in and out. Breathe in…

Andoutbreatheinbreatheoutbreatheinbreatheout—

"Sam?"

Sam's hand dropped away from his eyes, wet with both tears and sweat. He sagged on the stairwell's metal railing. Tried to remember how inhaling and exhaling worked. The panic episode faded in efficient trickles, well trained after years of this.

However…it didn't work quite as fast this time. Sam had to hold his breath for four counts and let it out for five another two minutes before he could hear past the drum beat in his ears.

Breatheinbreatheout…in and out…in…and out…

Cosmo closed the door without a word. This was the only emergency stairwell without camera coverage and everyone on their team knew it. Sanitation staff hardly cleaned it, let alone visited here.

The small deputy left an uphill stair between he and Sam, but he leaned against the railing too. His folded arms creaked against his leather holster.

"Doc left the party early?"

Sam managed a nod once he finished those gasping sounds.

"Mmm." Cosmo held up a white takeout bag. "Guess he won't need these spring rolls after all."

Sam swallowed back another sob. His palms still sparked in the cool absence of Richard between them, the promise that he was here, whole.

But he wasn't whole, was he? Hadn't been for almost three weeks now.

"He wanted to feel safe." Sam's hand returned in a drift to his face, back of it against his mouth. "That day in the office, when I was sick—he trembled in fear because someone hit him that very day and…and relief to be safe, with us. Someone…somebody hit him. Multiple times."

Cosmo closed his eyes.

"He isn't safe." Sam wheezed it out. Something about that refused to compute, that everything had been set to right in the Kimble vs. the state case, injuries healed, reparations paid, name cleared, and yet Richard was still in danger.

Kept showing up at bakeries and Sam's desk and his freaking front door all because someone dared harass him.

Cosmo's voice was low. "You make him feel safe, seen. You have from the very start, Sam, and you know it."

"Not well enough. I missed it." Sam wiped his face with his blazer sleeve. Cosmo just stared straight ahead at the concrete wall, the only reason Sam could keep talking. "I missed it, Renfro. Samuel Gerard, the man who can pinpoint the type of cigarette ash on a man's collar and I'm blind about this one person."

"Not exactly a new development."

Sam stopped breathing.

"Sammy, you're the biggest take-no-crap person I know. A sure fact since the day I met you six years ago." The deputy sniffed, accent thicker yet gentler than normal. "And then we're assigned this guy who has the opportunity to kill you in a water tunnel and in the prison and the hotel that night but doesn't and you have ample opportunity to kill him a buncha times and you don't…"

Just a flick of eyes made it to Sam before they were back to neutral. But there was no missing Cosmo's faint smile. "Now you take a lotta crap, the good kind. And mainly with him. Now you're friends with everyone on the team instead of just our sort-of boss."

"Sort of?" Sam couldn't help himself.

"Let's be real, that title's for show. We all know Poole runs this office."

Through the treacle of Sam's heartache, a balloon pushed its way to the surface, right in his chest. The bare beginnings of a laugh.

Not much more than a forceful exhale, but Cosmo smiled for real anyway. The stairwell echoed with a moment of humour. Funny because it was true. Sam hadn't known a loyal, soul-deep friend until he met Richard—a convicted murderer who had, in a ridiculous twist, somehow wormed his way to Sam's heart. It made him soft in strange ways.

"He saved my life." A late tear furrowed in Sam's dimple. "That night in the hotel. Nichols was set to shoot me…Richard knocked him out him a second before he could."

"He didn't want you to get hurt."

"Yeah, and I'll never forget how much he risked by doing so, his case, the chance for retribution. All because he wanted me in one piece. All because he cared, because he's a self-sacrificing idiot who doesn't know how to ask for help."

"But he did." Cosmo shifted forward to emphasize his point. "He called you from Sykes's house."

And boy, what an ask that had been. Sam bore the late nights lying awake running that phone call over and over in his mind to prove it.

"I just wish he knew…he doesn't have to save everyone all the time."

"Sounds familiar."

Sam shook his head. "I wouldn't be alive without him."

Cosmo gave up pretending and turned his head. He had a dreamer's eyes, better for writing poetry or painting landscapes than cataloguing crime scenes. They were wet too.

"Sammy, do you know why I get up and do this job every day?"

A curious question, considering they were standing in a stairwell because Sam had an anxiety attack-slash-meltdown over what had technically started as something job related.

Sam grunted. "To make the world a better place?"

"That's why kids like Noah do it." Cosmo bit the inside of his lower lip. "It's a perk sometimes, sure. But the real seasoned guys, like you and me…we do it for our partners. We get up everyday because we can't stand the thought of them facing crap alone. Gotta keep each other sane."

"Not for the good of other people."

Cosmo scuffed his shoe. "No, though we don't tell the public that. We do it for the good of our people. This team. For Poole, who by some miracle can do her nail polish on a turbulent 747. For Henry, who's just starting to tell me which parent gave him some of those scars on his arms. For you—who do your best to be detached and ended up adopting the case of the century anyway."

The stairwell rang, even when Cosmo fell quiet for a beat. Sam didn't bother denying it.

"He woke you up, Sam, in a way even we couldn't. Put some life back in your eyes."

"Life?"

"They were hollow before Richard came along. As if you didn't care what happened to you. Then suddenly you walk into work one day with this astonished look on your face and a fire in your belly."

Woken up. Not a bad word for it. "I forgot…I hadn't felt purpose in a long time. Not just career purpose but being alive purpose. Richard had nothing but purpose. No family or support, though. I suppose that's where we met in the middle."

"You wanna face the crap with him like he did for you."

Sam wavered his hand in a helpless gesture, to encompass the entire world and leagues of his failings. To recite them all would take the rest of his life. "He won't let me return the favour."

"Is he okay?"

"No." Sam's voice dripped just as much worry.

"What are we going to do about it?"

Sam levered off the railing and drew to his full height. "I'm going to kill somebody."

~OL~

If you ever want to find out what sixteen phones ringing at the same time sounds like, take a trip to your local emergency room.

Sam stepped foot in Chicago Memorial and smacked face-first into a wall of noise.

A nurse in bloody scrubs veered around without even looking at him, while another yelled stats from an examination room. The PA blared an urgent request for a Doctor Okolo. Two boys and their mother sat crying in the row of waiting chairs.

Sam nodded at these folks, an acknowledgement of shared pain. His lived in that crevice sliced open along his chest. A boiling cauldron feeling that festered and bubbled the longer he dwelt on the object of his search.

"Excuse me?" He stopped at the reception desk. "I'm looking for the HR department."

The woman, one phone to her ear and another tucked against her shoulder, opened her frowning mouth with clear intent to tell him off…

Then she saw the badge Sam had deliberately left hanging out of his coat pocket. "Fourth floor. Second door on the left."

"Thank you."

At a loping march, Sam made for the elevators. Now the sea parted for him, the shark's tooth glint of his badge drawing many eyes. Sam ignored them all. He punched the elevator button for the fourth floor seven times before the doors finally closed. His trip was shared with two nurses bent over an X-ray film and a security officer speaking Mandarin into a walkie talkie.

Sam didn't even spare them an extra glance and elbowed open the door once it stopped. Calm as his eyes looked, a strip almost as scarlet as the scarf around his neck mushroomed at the base of his throat.

"Sir?" A secretary intercepted him at the HR doors. "Sir, this area requires a hospital ID to gain entrance—"

The woman might have said something else, but Sam couldn't hear anything over blood pressure's lion snarl in his ears. Sam grit his teeth and shoved open the double doors.

Although he most certainly heard someone yelling.

"This is outrageous! There's no protocol against reporting something on someone else's behalf! You can't act like it's no big deal just because it's him!"

Sam's march slowed at the familiar voice. He turned the corner to find HR's main desk and a familiar face. "Doctor Wahlund?"

Lab coat slipping on one side, hair a mess, she whirled around. Her tightly balled fists released. "You. You're the guy who believed Richard."

Sam stopped in his tracks.

She shook her head. "Sorry. Gerard, right? I don't remember your full name."

"Deputy Gerard. Call me Sam."

He held out his hand in the very definition of a fool's prayer. As if she'd want anything to do with him after what he put her friend through.

"Kathy." Wahlund shook it at once and Sam's brows soared towards his hairline. She had an iron grip.

A quick one though. Then her glare darted back to a frazzled man behind the HR main desk. "I'm glad you're here, actually. Will you tell this man that I'm allowed to report an incident on a colleague's behalf? That they shouldn't play nonchalant about it out of prejudice for a former—falsely—convicted felon?"

"Funny." Sam flipped up his badge so the man could see it. "That's why I'm here too."

"Please." The administrator raised both hands like Sam held him at gun point instead of a fierce stare. "An injured party has to come forward themselves. I can't file an incident report without firsthand testimony."

"Since when?" Sam demanded.

"Since they wrote the protocol for this. Even an eyewitness account will do, someone who saw firsthand the mistreatment Dr. Wahlund here so enthusiastically insists is happening."

Sam met Kathy's eyes. "You know about it too."

She nodded, tearful. "I've seen how jumpy he is when anyone gets too close, the way he always walks someone to their office so he doesn't have to be alone in the staff hallways."

Sam's heart took a nosedive into his stomach. "So it is happening here. I figured from what he said, but…"

"Have either of you even seen someone mistreat Dr. Kimble?" the man asked.

Dr. Wahlund and Sam shared a grimace. She tapped a weak fist on the desk. "No."

"Then I can't officially report this. Otherwise it's just conjecture. Has he asked you to do this on his behalf?"

"Not exactly."

"There you go. Case closed. Until Dr. Kimble asks for help, it's out of my hands."

Kathy's eyes swung to Sam, wide with hope. "Sam? I know Richard thinks highly of you, trusts you. Surely he mentioned something."

"Wait, he talks about me?"

The doctor managed a thin smile. "I'm the only professional friend he has right now. And yes, he mentions you and your 'very kind' team all the time, though vaguely and without names. Says you're the only reason he wanted to keep going by the end of that chase."

Sam put a hand on the desk too, to steady his watery knees. Doctors saying earth shattering things had apparently become his reality.

"Do you have any idea who it is?" Sam's initial approach of alerting HR was useless, he swiftly decided. He turned his full attention to Kathy. "Anyone who's been looking at him wrong?"

A blouse button fluttered over Kathy's chest, her erratic heart beat. "That's the problem…no one's outright said anything against Richard, not even as a joke. Everyone's been distant but professional about him returning to the OR. A little frosty, perhaps. But not hostile."

No luck there.

Sam retrieved his wallet. "If you hear anything spoken against Richard, and I mean absolutely anything, you call me. Or you for that matter, if someone gives you a hard time about supporting him."

Kathy looked from Sam to the business card he pressed into her hand. She canted her head. "What happened?"

"I saw some evidence at lunch of how this person's been hurting Richard. He said 'he,' so I assume it's a man."

"No, I mean…" Kathy held her fist and the business card close to the fluttery button. "What happened that night in the hotel, that made you care so much? I've never gotten the whole story."

Sam eyed the administrator, then walked around the corner. Kathy followed.

"I cared about him long before the blowout with Nichols," Sam murmured. That, at least, was the truth.

Kathy shook her head again. "But why. No offense, but you're not the most likely choice for Richard to befriend. Same goes for the other way around."

The crevice yawned into a crack. Sam's composure threatened to crack with it. "He…he gave me back a part of myself that got lost a long time ago."

Kathy gazed for a long time at the scarf, of all things, then Sam's incensed face, the latent anger still simmering underneath his heartache. He oozed grief and ire like the éclair. She waved his business card.

"Something tells me he gave you more than that."