Thwack.

"Goddammit," he growled. "What in the fuck." He pulled himself forward out of the castle and I stepped back a few paces to give him space, biting my bottom lip to distract myself from my impending heart attack.

With a couple very loud cracks, he managed to stand, rubbing the back of his head. He brushed off his pants and finally met my gaze.

"Jesus Fucking Christ, what the hell are you doing here?"

He leaned back onto the plastic structure for support. The first thing I noticed through his grumbles was his hair, partially pulled back into a short ponytail. The rest of his style hadn't changed, t-shirt under a button-down, but the colors seemed… more subdued. Like he might wear this one at work and actually not want to dirty it with various lunch-time condiments.

His stare was piercing, a thorough mixture of shock, exhaustion, confusion, and general pissedoffedness. There were a million and a half ways I could respond to this greeting and I hadn't settled on a single one on my way here.

"You look good, Hank."

"Geez." He stepped past me towards the benches and walkway. He downed the rest of the beer bottle he had emerged with and tossed the glass into the river.

"Fuck."

I thought he would keep walking but instead, he settled along the railing and stretched his arms. He was waiting.

I approached and paused in his peripheral vision, trying to look for any evidence of the tiny wave from his litter in the water. The lights from the bridge were reflected and distorted and a light breeze teased the surface tension of the river.

"Hank, I'm - I'm sorry. I am so goddamn -"

"I thought you were dead, Al." He was stoic, using his policeman voice as if to report a murder to his unit.

My breath stuck. My eyes hurt. "I know. I should've-"

"Don't. Okay?" He turned from the railing to look at me, his next words spilling out too eloquently for a man suddenly disturbed from his musings. He must have thought about this night. Prepared for it. "You know, you've been back here for how many weeks now, I had to hear it from my damn partner's girlfriend 'cause I guess you two are internet buddies. I was convinced you were fucking dead 'cause I never heard from you for two years. You come back here, you finally show your face, why, why now, why not earlier, why…"

He broke off to stare across the river then back to me, head hanging to examine the loose pebbles in the concrete.

"Why not before Sumo died," I said.

He squeezed shut his eyes and turned back to cross his arms over the railing.

"Connor told me. I was looking for you at the station and ran into them. Ran to your house. Came here. Hank, I'm so sorry. And you're right. I kicked myself in the ass the entire way here. Knowing that I - " I cut myself off to suppress the oncoming tears again. Knowing that I could have been here when it happened, I wanted to say. Knowing that I was here within city limits but didn't show my face.

He didn't say anything for several minutes and I didn't offer anything else. I took a step and reached out a hand to his arm which triggered him to step away, opening the distance between us again.

"You wanna tell me why I never heard from you? You force yourself into my life, drag my ass from kitchen to toilet every other night, always intruding, you were always there, always - you know I think I actually started looking forward to it - and then you don't even leave a goddamn postcard telling me where you were going after you checked out of that place. I moved on, Al, but fuck if that didn't hurt. Didn't think it would, but it did. Spending time with you, and then the fucking and the late nights and the drinks, the days that I wasn't totally wasted, you know, after all - all that, I actually - I missed you," he said softer. "You know I tried to fuckin' visit right after the New Year. You weren't taking visitors. They wouldn't even let me in when I showed them my badge. Been spending the last two years out doin' shit with Connor and his girl and every once in a while I'd be thinking, ' Fuck, wonder what Al's up to .'"

His words hit me in the gut and I struggled to speak again. "I didn't know," I said, my voice lower in the realization that I had fucked up.

To think he drove an hour to see me. That he missed me, even thought of me in passing. When I was in the clinic, I had to tell myself that was it, we had our fun, and he was done and would continue his imbibing and not care if his ass was wet from the rain in the morning. I had to tell myself those things, convince myself of them because I knew I had hurt him by leaving. We were there for each other, these fucked up sources of reliable comfort. I took care of him, and yes, of course I had developed feelings for the man, but I hadn't ever thought they were returned on par. Not like this.

"I didn't know, Hank. I didn't take visitors because I was afraid. I was afraid of seeing you again and wanting to leave but if I had known... I was in Toledo for a couple months but then the deviancy started and I had a couple friends up in Erie offer to take me in. They had work. What I didn't know was that the work was going to be transporting androids into Canada. That's what I was doing that year. And then once it started happening everywhere, here, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, the roads were being blocked, some places were being taken over by the androids, others reclaimed by people, some like this, some split, but the border-crossings were all in flames, I'm sure you know that. Then trying to reestablish some interstate travel…. Hank, I literally couldn't leave Pennsylvania for a couple months, not legally. So, I stayed put and helped where I could between there and New York. That was all of last year, as well. Traveling the border. You were right to assume I could have been dead. I absolutely came close to it. The only thing that kept me going half the time was wanting to tell you these stories and see the look on your face. It's kinda ironic that you like androids now, I wouldn't get the same look that I was imagining."

Hank chewed the inside of his cheek as I spoke. Perhaps to quell more confessions, perhaps formulating what the fuck to do next. Wondering whether or not I deserved forgiveness for causing this hurricane in his life only to vanish with no trace. I was so nervous, my mind still spinning from what he had just said, his features tonight so reminiscent of all the times I had intruded into his life.

"Yeah, well, you'll get a look one way or the other. Tell me," he said, walking back towards the benches.

"What?"

"Fucking tell me what happened, come on." But instead of sitting down, he went back to the castle and fiddled along the ground, pulling out a six-pack (only three left), and returned to sit, placing them on the ground at his feet. He popped one with an opener from his pocket and set it at his side. He popped a second and held it out to me. "Sit the fuck down and tell me everything. Come on. I need the distraction anyway."

There was nothing left of the label by the time I was done talking. I must have picked it clean within the first 30 minutes and then rolled crumbs of paper in my fingers for the remaining 90. There was a bombing up at Niagara so we scattered back to Buffalo. Buffalo back to Erie. Erie to the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Eventually Cleveland to Sandusky. I had traveled that entire length of the I-90 corridor multiple times in well over a year. Almost got caught more than once by local police when my tires lost air but I had no choice but to re-pump in a Walmart parking lot. Helping friends and families, some even accompanied by their previous owners on the initial journey across. The innumerable bodies being fished from the lake by law enforcement, human and android alike. Throngs who had journeyed all the way from the Eastern Seaboard, their numbers dwindling every other day. It truly was a modern Underground Railroad. Once we even passed the dismantled remnants of the camps on the highway through West Seneca. Dismantled or to-be-assembled? After the revolution in Detroit, the quick turn-around of deviancy and uprisings, the northeast state governors banded together and would follow Detroit's example. But that was only on paper, and like every other upset in history, the events that actually transpired on the ground varied widely from county to county, governor to mayor. To this day I still wasn't sure in which direction those gates were being transported.

I finally settled back in Erie for a while with a non-profit office job. Then returned to Detroit and was lucky enough to land a gig at a rehab center as an administrator.

Hank didn't say anything as I spoke nor immediately after I ended.

"Jesus fuck ," was his first whisper.

When he finally cracked the last bottle, cupping it in his hands between his knees, he said, "Never thought I'd be on their side, either, Al. Never fucking thought it would be like this."

"Nope."

Hank was still absorbing my story, silent and motionless at my side for several long minutes.

I interrupted his contemplation first: "Hank, she told me at the station you were promoted. Wanna talk about something I'd never thought I'd see. You're a different man, I can tell that just by sitting with you. I'd like to hear what you've been up to."

He sniggered. He actually fucking laughed. "Too damn much is what."

He stood and threw his empty into the trash bin, before heading behind me towards the lot.

"Come on. It's getting cold."

He downed the one he just opened on his walk back, clanking it into a local receptacle as well. My own empty followed suit and I joined Hank in that too-familiar Oldsmobile.

I know I had just narrated the heavy and solemn history of my time away, so I did my best to suppress a smile at the memories made in the back seat of this car. This really wasn't the time for dirty thoughts about his driveway... a beer distributor parking lot. Wait, that was a handjob while driving home from the distributor.

We drove in silence until he pulled up to his home. He actually parked on the pavement, it was a miracle.

Entering the home was like getting punched in the face by The Twilight Zone; I had stepped into an alternate reality. The house was…clean. It was organized. A few odds and ends like any other home but it even smelled...it didn't smell at all. There was an absence of smell. Hank had turned domestic.

"Uh, Hank, before anything, you gonna tell me what the fuck happened to your house."

I know I had done a decent job in my time here, but this was something else. As I was gawking at the impeccable arrangement of his small kitchen appliances, he finished up in the bathroom and returned, minus shoes and button-down, and took his place in that old arm-chair. I could tell he was trying not to look down the side of the chair where Sumo used to lay. My heart broke and I felt guilty for joking.

"After you left, I kicked my ass into gear and did what I could. Helped open my eyes, I guess. But otherwise, that's Connor and Lana for you. He lives here. After the revolution, I took him in. He's a good kid. And Lana, well, she's here just as much as he is. But they've been spending more time at her place."

"They sound like good people."

"Yeah. They've been good to me. Pains in the ass sometimes, but I seem to attract that type, huh."

I took my old position on the sofa and tucked my legs to the side. "Looks like it's your turn to share, Hank."

After I had left, his disciplinary report grew legs and walked away. He told me about his cases with Connor, his hesitancy and anger, which grew to curiosity and caring, eventually to love. He took over as Captain after Fowler was called to Cleveland. Connor met Lana ("Yadda yadda yadda, I got to hear all about his new sex life" ) and how she turned out to be the cousin of pain-in-the-dick Detective Gavin and there was some whole debacle about her link to Red Ice ("She tell you when you met online she helped her dead brother deal? Didn't think so." ) Hank also told me about how they were pushing him to date an android he had met at a painting class.

"Wait," I said, laughing now. "A painting class? And a lady android? Explain this to me, please."

Hank was softening up as he spoke back recalling the past two years. He laughed with me at this. "Yeah, it was at one of those community centers. Lana's been trying to get Connor out and try new stuff, you know, kinda cute date idea, I guess, and as their perpetual third-wheel, I got dragged into it. And the android, her name's Danielle. We're just friends, don't know how many times I repeated myself to the other two, so I'm telling you now. She's been nice, we get a coffee sometimes. Okay, we did the symphony once, too, but I wasn't interested in her like that. Never was. Made that very clear. I told her, told the two of them, ' No. Dates .'"

He broke eye-contact to pull at a loose thread in his chair before resting his head back.

I pushed up out of the sofa and stepped over to him.

"Al, don't."

I raised my hands defensively. "I wasn't going to!"

Rather than fulfilling his nightmare of being straddled, I knelt at his side and took his free hand into mine.

"Tell me about Sumo."

His fingers twitched but he didn't pull back. "He got old, that's all, hip dysplasia. Lana came to find me at work. She said Sumo was already dead when she and Connor had returned to the house that night."

"I'm so sorry, Hank. You know I loved that dog. And I'm sorry that I - that I didn't come back sooner. I know I should have tried. I'm so sorry about him."

"Thanks. Fuck, it's late."

"Holy shit," I laughed. I released his hand and stood up, noting the time on his microwave in the kitchen. 3:24 AM. "We had a lot to talk about. I should definitely get going." I stepped around his furniture to find my shoes.

"Al, stop. Take the fucking sofa for the night. The two of them won't be by tomorrow."

"Hank, are you sure? Is this some ploy to shoot me in the head for leaving you?"

I regretted the quip as soon as it came out of my mouth but emotions and tensions were still high and it was so late and I was so tired, I didn't have a filter. Never had one anyway.

"Sorry," I said, looking back at him still in the chair. "I, uh-"

"It's fine. Ain't gonna shoot you. You did what you had to do, Al. I get it. I - ya know if there's one thing Connor taught me since I met him, it's how to move past shit. How to forgive and understand, crap like that. And you went through hell, Al. You did a lot for them. Might shoot you for never writing to me, though. Fuckin' ghosting like that isn't cool." He grunted and stretched as he stood from his chair to head into the kitchen.

"Ghosts are immaterial, Hank. Good luck with that."

He muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "You're fucking weird, Al."

"Excuse me?" I asked. I walked through the living room to pause at the border between the hardwood and kitchen tile. "You wanna say that a little louder for the people in the back?"

He tossed out a few lone pieces of trash from the counter and turned back to face me properly from a few feet away.

"You. Are. REALLY. Fucking. Weird. Fucking immaterial ghosts..."

Prompted by that code word, I stepped forward and reached up to lightly hold the side of his face, requesting permission to pursue contact. When he didn't recoil, I motioned to close the gap, his lips meeting mine, slightly more forceful than I had predicted. I missed this. I relinquished after a moment to survey those tired eyes. I was actually shocked that he returned the motions: his kisses slow but deep, needy, his fingertips barely touching my cheek as my own faltering hand fingered his shirt.

He was rarely this tender, ever, the last time around. It was hesitant and resistant cuddling and later, rough drunk fucks on the floor.

I broke first, my mind reeling from this reinitiation of intimacy, and whispered, unsure if my words even came out coherently, "Hank, I'd like to start over with you. Wanna get to know you again."

Hank broke away completely with the eyes of a man woken from a hundred-year slumber.

"Do you think we can try that?" I asked. "We never really had a date other than that concert."

His eyes went wide. "That was a date?"

"No! I mean - are you fucking teasing me? You piece of shit!" I playfully whacked his chest with the back of my hand. "Was that a date to you?"

He shrugged. "I had a good time with you." And then after a few more moments of contemplation, he nodded. "Are you better? Realized I never fucking asked you that. Are you - you're not doing -"

"No, no, I'm doing really well. Thank you. Just needed the time and some good therapy. I hate saying this but the revolutions...they helped me, too. Does that make any sense? I probably sound like an asshole, but using someone else's pain and problems kinda helped distract me."

"Nah, hey, I'm the first to tell you that Connor helped me realize a lot of shit. Everything that went down here, seeing him turn human before my eyes, seeing what was happening to all those other androids, yeah, really puts life in perspective for ya. That boy, he taught me to forgive myself. After Cole and being with you, you were right what you said to me before you left. We weren't good for each other. Took me a while to admit it but without ever telling him about you, he still helped me. Helped me come to terms with Cole's death. Helped me detox. But if you're doing better, if you're not drinking or smoking either - well, I still need one or two, but that's where it stops now - then yeah, we can try that. We can go on a date."

I had no idea what I was going to walk into tonight and I deeply regretted more than ever not coming back sooner.

"Gotta get to sleep before the sun rises. Fuck, I'm tired." He stepped away and slapped off the lights on his way to the hall. "You know where the bathroom is."

I chuckled softly and went to stretch out on the sofa. Despite the sudden exchange of saliva just now, returning to my old habits of inviting myself to his bed was something else I vowed not to do again. He had allowed the door to open again, but I didn't want to rush this time. We had both evolved into different people during the time apart. And I was truly fascinated to learn more about the day he chose to tie up his hair.