Work Text:
Then
“Kimble, visitor.”
Richard frowns down at the book he’s reading for a second time. He’s not expecting anyone. It’s not even regular visiting hours. The guard stands at the door of the cell, and Richard doesn’t feel like testing his patience. He stands and moves to follow.
When they reach the visitation windows, only one is occupied. Richard blinks, sitting down and settling the headphones on. “Hello?”
Samuel Gerard says, “Thought you might like some conversation.”
Being in prison while awaiting retrial is awful for a lot of reasons. The food is shit, the cots are even worse than some of the crapholes he stayed in while on the run, it’s constantly either too hot or too cold, the air is stale, and there’s far, far too much time to miss Helen. He also just doesn’t have anyone to talk to. He’s not a part of the prison microcosm and he has no desire to be, but he wouldn’t mind human company.
A few of his closer friends have set up a visitation schedule for the times when visitors are allowed. Once a week for ten minutes isn’t quite enough, though.
So yes. Richard would like some conversation. If it’s with a man whose job was hunting him down, well. Richard’s lawyer informed him that Gerard plans to testify on his behalf in the upcoming trial. He can find something to talk about. “You, uh, you watch baseball?”
“Yeah, but I’m probably going to break your heart.”
“Cubs fan?” Richard guesses.
“Worse, Reds.”
Richard finds himself smiling for the first time in a while. “You’re Ohioan?”
“Army brat. I’m not from anywhere. My mom was from Ohio, though, and she raised me on the Reds.”
“Where was your favorite place that you lived growing up?”
“Alaska, but that might just be because we were there longer than anywhere else and I was in high school. Allowed me to grow a few roots. You grow up here?”
“Suburbs, but yes.
” Gerard tilts his head, watching Richard in that intent way he has. “Were you always going to be a doctor?”
Richard shrugs. “I had a phase of wanting to be a firefighter. Then I realized I’m afraid of fire.”
Gerard’s laughter is sharp, shocked out of him. “Heartbreaking.”
“What about you? You always want to be in law enforcement?”
“More or less.”
Richard raises an eyebrow, and to his surprise, Gerard actually starts fleshing out the answer. Nearly two hours later, when the guard returns to take him to his cell, Richard says, “Whatever string you pulled for this, thanks.” For the first time in a long while, he feels…human. Like he is something more than his grief, his anger.
Gerard says, “See you next week.”
Now
“You gotta be shitting me,” Sam mutters to himself.
Poole gives him an unimpressed look. “I am not shitting you.”
Sam asks, “CPD or FBI doing the negotiation?”
“ATF.”
“What? Why?”
“Because one of their agents was doing a lunch time bank run when this started.”
Biting back a sigh, he asks, “That the hostage currently being ‘treated’ by our very own Dr. Richard?”
Poole nods. “Pretty sure that’s the only reason we were notified.”
Sam still isn’t clear on what Richard did to get a notification to them, but it’s beside the point. He’s learned to accept that underestimating Richard’s intelligence is a losing proposition. “I’m taking Biggs. I want you and the team figuring out who the bank robbers are, how many there are, where they come from, why they decided on a bank square in the middle of the city with excellent response time by law enforcement, mother’s maiden names, favorite colors, you know the drill.”
Poole is already walking away as he comes to the final word. Sam yells for Biggs and starts on his way out. He can brief him on the way.
Then
The first visit was nice, and Richard appreciated it more than he was strictly comfortable with. It gave him time away from the boredom, and from the thoughts he couldn’t keep at bay in the face of that boredom. Despite the statement of intent to return, Richard doesn’t expect Gerard back. It’s less that he thinks of Gerard as someone who flakes as that he knows what the world is like. How easy it is to get caught up in the job, in taking care of a house or an apartment, seeing one’s friends, whatever the case may be, and not have time for things.
But true to his casual word, Gerard is there the next week. It isn’t the same day or time, but none of that matters in prison, and Richard suspects Gerard might be making time where there is none. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t want to know.
Instead, he asks, “You a reader?”
“When I have the time,” Gerard says, a wry smile accompanying the statement. “Which is to say: not often.”
“What do you read?”
“Mostly non-fiction. Travel writing, sports history, the occasional biography.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
Gerard is silent for a bit. “Not sure I have one, but maybe The Game They Played, by Cohen.”
“What’s it about?”
“The 1949 City College basketball team. Sort of.”
Richard has noticed the way Gerard will do that, hide whole paragraphs of exposition in a single throw away comment. He smiles. “Sort of.”
“Guess you’ll have to read it.”
“I don’t think we have it here.”
“Nah, you can borrow my copy.”
Richard blinks. “Ah—”
“I’ll bring it next time I come.”
It lands in a way Richard can’t explain. He believes that there will be a next time, and although he can’t say why he cares, aside from the relief from boredom Gerard’s visits bring, he does. “Yeah. Okay. Next time you come.”
Now
Sam is annoyed because, honestly, how does one guy get himself framed for the murder of his wife, spend months on the run proving his innocence, spend more months in prison awaiting a retrial, finally get released, and end up in a hostage situation at a bank? He doesn’t care what you tell him, that amount of crap luck is not normal. Kimball hasn’t even regained access to most of his assets, which, admittedly was probably why he was at the bank in the first places, but it’s still just stupid. The whole thing is stupid.
He finds the lead agent, flashes his credentials and asks, “What’s the situation?”
The agent, Kim, shows Sam a staticy but evidently live feed. On it, Richard is leaning over another man. The picture isn’t great, but Sam’s pretty sure there’s a fair amount of blood on both the body and Richard. Kim asks, “That your guy?”
“My guy is a bit of a stretch. But we know each other, yes.”
“He’s smart. Found a way to get himself in the frame of the one camera they haven’t destroyed and Morse coded your name for what must have been close to an hour.”
Ah. Sam can’t decide if he’s flattered or exhausted. Maybe a bit of both. He nods sharply. “He’ll keep his head. Any progress on negotiation?”
“Nobody but my agent has been shot despite continued threats. Not sure if that’s progress or just that these guys didn’t go in planning to shoot anyone in the first place.”
“Real professionals, huh?”
Kim grimaces. “It’s less negotiation and more keeping things steady until we have a decent chance at infiltration.”
“That could get ugly.”
“Absolutely, but they’ve got close to forty civilians in there, six CPD, and a shot ATF officer. One way or another, it’s probably going to get ugly.”
“Six CPD?”
“Accounted for.”
“How many of the perpetrators are there?”
“We think there are nine. Possibly a couple of drivers, although they aren’t in the building. Hard to say, though, given the lack of eyes.”
“That’s a lot of amateurs all pulling one job.”
“I had the same thought. As of yet, though, we haven’t managed to get anything useful to identify any of them.”
Sam’s about to ask another question when out of the corner of his eye he notices movement on the screen. Looking over, he sees one of the thieves putting a gun to Richard’s head. “What the hell is he doing?”
“We think one of them is hurt. Maybe more than one.”
Richard stands and goes with the guy, off screen. Sam rubs at his face. “All right. If Kimble can find a way to make that useful, he will. In the meantime, tell me what the plan for infiltration is.”
Then
Richard spots the unmarked sedan nearly the moment he’s out of the prison doors. He’s vaguely aware of how differently he thinks now than Before. Before, he would have never noticed an unmarked law enforcement vehicle. Now, it’s one of the first things on his radar.
He has to remind himself that he’s allowed to be here. His acquittal has been processed. He’s legally a free man.
He’s still going through that mantra in his mind when Gerard gets out from the driver’s seat, hooks an arm over the top of the sedan and asks, “Feel like leaving any time today?”
Richard blinks. “Ah.”
“Get in,” Gerard says, and disappears back in the car. Richard, still not quite processing what’s going on, begins walking slowly to the car.
He opens the door, but before he can make himself sit down, he asks, “Where are you taking me?”
“Wherever you tell me. Releases are always done mid-day, I figured you’d have trouble getting a ride.”
“There’s a bus.”
“Mhm. Get in and tell me where we’re going.”
Richard’s assets were foreclosed upon and he and his (new) attorney are still working on getting everything back in order. In the meantime, however, he’s homeless and has yet to get his medical license reinstated. He unfolds the piece of paper given to him by the prison social worker and reads off the address on it.
Gerard makes a face. “No.”
“No?”
“Place is a cesspit. No.”
Richard takes a slow breath through his nose. It’s not that there aren’t people he could stay with for a bit until he’s sorted things out and, at the very least, gotten himself a job. Kath told him that the lab was happy to hire him on for contract work until he’d gotten his license handled and found another position. But most of the friends he could ask have children and busy lives and he doesn’t want to impose. “I’ve slept in the forest after diving off the side of a dam. I think the accommodations will be just fine until I’m back on my feet.”
“No.”
“Gerard, look—”
“You can stay in my guest room. If it ends up taking more than a month for you to get somewhat back on your feet, we’ll reassess.”
“What?”
“I have a guest room, you—”
“Yes, I heard you. I’m asking what is going on.”
“Gift horses, Richard.”
Richard looks out the front of the car. “You and your fucking reputation.”
Gerard laughs.
Now
The timeline speeds up a whole bunch when shots are fired in the building. Sam is thankful he’d come already strapped into a vest, because things get pretty messy after that.
By the time it’s over, there are two dead cops, two dead civilians, six dead thieves, and more injured than Sam can reasonably canvas. In part because he’s busy paying attention to one of them. Richard is bleeding from a gunshot wound. Sam puts pressure on the wound saying, “Sorry,” when Richard mewls. Richard shakes his head.
Sam calls, “Medic!” aware that they aren’t being ignored, the EMTs are just swamped. He doesn’t care. He wants a medical professional with them, now. One who is not currently bleeding.
Richard mumbles, “They’ll come.”
“This isn’t the DMV, doc. I’m not just going to wait our turn.” He shifts his upper body, careful to keep the pressure where it is. “Medic!”
Richard goes a pale shade of green. “Don’t—don’t move again. Please.”
“Shit, sorry.”
Richard shakes his head, eyes closing and Sam says, “Nope, we’re not doing that. Eyes open.”
While Richard is struggling to manage that, an EMT finally joins them. She takes one look at Sam’s hands and calls over a stretcher while beginning triage. It’s harder for Sam to take his hands off when she tells him he needs to than he expected it to be. The blood immediately begins drying, sticky and itching on his skin. He forces himself to focus, asking Richard, “Is there someone I should call?”
Richard manages to prop an eye open. “Mem’rial h’d of OR.”
Sam just barely avoids rolling his eyes. “A family member, doc.” It’s strange to him that in the time Richard had stayed with him this had never come up, but it hadn’t, and now he’s having to ask.
“No.”
There’s a sharpness to the response that reminds Sam, with a shocking clarity, that Richard is still mourning his wife. He doesn’t push. Instead, as they load Richard onto the gurney and into the ambulance, he walks over to the hospital.
Then
By the end of the first week of staying with Sam—“This is my house, call me by my first name”—Richard is more at ease with the situation than he thought he’d be. It’s a nice place: a ground floor condo in a quieter, more middle-class neighborhood than the one Richard and Helen’s place had been in. The thought, like all thoughts that link back to Helen (which are most of Richard’s thoughts) still stings. It’s more like alcohol on a wound though, now, rather than the awareness of a knife that’s already penetrated the skin. Progress, or something akin to it.
It turns out Sam likes to fiddle with CB radios in his free time, so there are often parts lying out on table in the breakfast nook or along the sofa in the small living room. There’s only one bathroom, but neither of them spends overly long on grooming rituals, and they’re both tidy individuals. A case comes up three days into Richard’s stay, and despite the fact that he’s already started working for the lab during the daytime, he rarely sees Sam and never hears him come in. That’s a surprise: he’s no longer a deep sleeper.
Sam evidently catches a break in the case late in the second week, because he’s around slightly more. They watch baseball together sometimes in the evenings, and Sam tells Richard to feel free to read anything he has around.
Richard breaks his promise to himself to get out by the second week, largely because Sam doesn’t seem bothered by his presence, and Richard…isn’t sure he’s ready to rent on his own. He will, obviously he will. But the fact that it’s taking longer than he’d hoped to access even the smallest of his accounts isn’t stressing him out as much as he suspects it should.
Midway through the third week, Sam calls on his way home from work. It’s after seven but before eight, so far from the latest he’s even headed home. Richard picks up with, “Gerard residence.”
“Hey, wanna grab a beer? There’s a place walking distance if you’d like to meet me there.”
Richard looks down at the floor and smiles. It should be weird, it should be. It isn’t, though, and well. Gift horses. “Yeah, tell me the cross streets.”
Now
Sam has to go back to the office to file a post-action report. He leaves Biggs at the hospital as his proxy once Richard has been taken back to surgery. Biggs calls as he’s getting close to finishing up. “He’s in post-op. The only thing they’ll say is that the procedure went well.”
“Gimme half an hour.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
He crosses a few ts, then files the report before heading out. The traffic is, well, Chicago traffic, but he still manages to make it within the promised half hour and send Biggs home for the night. The other man gives him a side-eye that he wholly ignores. They’re off-the-clock. If he wants to stay at the hospital with a guy he was leading a manhunt for less than a year ago, that’s his business.
Charming a nurse—and possibly using his credentials, six to one, half dozen to the other—Sam gets into Richard’s room and sets to reading the two year-old issue of Golf magazine someone left on the windowsill. Sam doesn’t even play golf, let alone watch it.
A good couple of hours passes before the worst of the anesthesia wears off, and Richard fights his way up to consciousness. Sam gives him a few minutes to adjust to being awake, at least somewhat, before standing up and whispering, “Hey, doc.”
“I…g’t shot?”
“Yeah. Maybe consider a new bank.”
Richard makes a noise that might be a laugh or could just be a groan. “S’rg’ry?”
“Yup. Lemme call a medical professional. They could probably tell you details.” He hits the call button, and a nurse pops his head in fairly soon thereafter. He bustles about, checking IV lines and telling Richard he can’t take oral fluids yet, which doesn’t seem to surprise him. He disappears again with a promise to get the doctor.
While they wait for the doctor, Richard’s expression grows more and more confused until he asks, “Why, uh. Why’re you here?”
“You got shot. We just discussed this.”
Richard narrows his eyes. “And I’m at th’ hospital.”
Sam sits back down. “Yeah, well. You didn’t have anyone to call.”
Richard stares at him for a moment before huffing quietly with laughter. This is followed by a sudden stillness that suggests laughing isn’t a great idea at the moment. After a slow breath, he says, “Your reputation is complete bullshit.”
“I’m warning you, I will leave you here.”
“Mm,” Richard says, his eyes drooping closed.
Sam smiles down at his lap and settles in to keep watch through the night.