Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story

by Ariadne Beckett

  “Let’s get you off that particular career path, shall we?”

  Nick had always been dead serious about not lying to John. It had been the one, sole true thing he could bring to this partnership. He refused to do it now. Decision time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Wanting It All

  NICK

  Nick considered saying 'okay'. His world felt like it was turning upside down, and he gripped the sides of the bed.

  Since the attack, he simply couldn’t be Nick Aster, the persona. And incredibly, John had responded with an unwavering, disarming message: I like you. I value you. I care about you. Even vulnerable, scared, insecure, physically broken, and worth nothing as a consultant.

  John had barely left his side for two weeks, except under orders from Curry, and his sincere friendship hadn’t faltered in the face of Nick at his very barest. Nick had told John things he never planned to reveal to a soul, about his father, about prison, about his fears and hurts.

  Nick cherished that so much that this moment made him want to scream. To run. He’d just been thrown against a wall of reality. Because John did want something from him. John did want to change him. For all that acceptance of Nick laid bare, who he was still wasn’t okay.

  Nick looked at the wall. It was ugly, and hard and cold. He lifted his left hand and ran his fingers across it. He understood. If the roles were reversed, he would want to save John from this. It would hurt, badly, to think of John locked in one of these cells.

  “I -- knowing my brain is malfunctioning changes some things,” said Nick, thinking this through for the first time himself. “I can see where ....maybe I do need a guiding light, to show me where it’s leading me astray. But it’s still my brain. It’s still me, even if it is damaged.”

  “You are wonderful, Nick,” said John, his expression serious. It wasn’t a platitude. John got it.

  “The guy you’ve let me see these last couple weeks is an exceptional, brave, forgiving human being. I don’t think being a criminal, with all the pain that causes other people, is you.”

  Pain.

  That was what Nick felt at the mere thought of abandoning what had meant his physical and emotional survival. He couldn’t handle the idea of submitting to poverty or boredom.

  He was wrenched with a sweeping, soul-crushing grief. Similar to what he’d felt entering prison, and when he’d decided he had to run. He, who he was and what made it possible to face life on his own two feet, would be forever unacceptable to the person he most wanted acceptance from.

  He’d unwisely, at peril to his own soul, let this bond with John deepen until he needed it. Let John and Mari become a proxy for things he’d never had and never would. Some things - freedom, autonomy, love ....were best held in the realm of fantasy, because they were simply absent in the real world.

  He needed to pull off this course, now. Use his partnership with John to stay out of prison until the end of his sentence, then leave the country. No more attachments to people, places, or things.

  He’d had his fill of grief.

  “Nick?” John sounded desperately concerned.

  “Yeah, you screwed it up,” said Nick. “This is over. You just convinced me I was loved and accepted for what I was, then -- John, you’re a prison. You want to change me into what you think I should be. You want to train me into an obedient little prisoner --”

  “Nick!”

  Nick startled from deep within.

  “When you obeyed me and ate that yogurt, I wanted to cry,” said John, looking pale and defensive, horrified.

  “I gave up in here,” said Nick. “It was easy and comfortable and only killed part of me. I don’t feel like dying the rest of the way.”

  John was silent. Nick’s anger was building.

  “Nice of you to wait until I’m completely reliant on you to ask me to stop being me," snapped Nick. "You don’t think that carries a threat, say ‘yes’ or I walk out and leave you crippled in a cell with one of the world’s largest police departments trying to murder you? You don’t think it’s exploitative, pulling this when I’m drugged silly? It it were an interrogation it would be illegal, if you were asking for sex I’d be incapable of consent, you’re only asking me to change my entire being and means of survival.”

  “Nick, shut up. Shut up. Just stop.”

  Nick recognized the look in John’s face. It was vulnerability, not something he was used to seeing from the tough FBI agent. He shut up, and listened.

  “I grew up in ranch country,” said John. “Our neighbor ran cattle. You never met a man kinder to his animals. He let me ride his horses starting when I was six, so I was there all the time. Jim -- his cows loved him, an’ that’s not really a thing cows do. He’d feed ‘em careful, make sure the little ones got plenty, give ‘em bottles, pet them gentler than you’d ever imagine a rancher doing. They’d follow him all over the fields, come when he called ....they worshiped him, an’ so did I.”

  He looked sideways at Nick, and his mouth twisted. “He slaughtered them himself too. They walked right into the pen and licked his hand, and he gave ‘em a treat and shot a captive bolt into their brains. I saw him go out into a field and calm down a calf that was wandering around screaming, looking for its mom that he’d just killed.”

  Nick felt faintly sickened. “Oh, jeez ....”

  “I wasn’t a naive kid,” said John. “I knew these were beef cattle. But seeing the love and trust those animals had for the guy that was gonna kill them, or their parents or calves, in cold blood ....was such a betrayal it broke me. I had nightmares about him calling me, with the bolt gun in his hand. That sort of ....”

  He gave Nick an anguished look. “I stopped caring about being nice. I care about being honest, not sucker-punching people. I’ve got no patience for fake, socially-conscious NPR sensitivity. I’ll speak my mind and yell and throw my best friend in prison before I’ll touch suckering someone with acting like I’m such a nice guy when reality is I’m gonna have to hurt them.”

  Nick closed his eyes, two sets of images playing in his tired brain. One was of gentle, sweet, concerned Neil Kasdan pinning his bruised body, reassuring and cuffing him while he screamed in pain and terror. The other was of John, furious in the rain, grabbing his wrist and letting go when he screamed. Trying again, gently, then backing off despite his anger when Nick couldn’t handle it. For all John’s harshness, Nick trusted his honesty and sincerely caring heart.

  “What if I say no?” asked Nick, his voice coming out so weak it was almost a whisper.

  John didn’t hesitate. “Nothing changes. Nothing. It’s okay.”

  John held his arm in a steady, gentle grip. It reminded Nick of something. Of his first arrest, of John leading him through a parking garage. Nick’s hands had been cuffed behind his back, and his legs had been shaky, and he was afraid of stumbling with no way to catch his fall. John had held him exactly this way. Nick had fallen, and John caught him, and held him while he got his feet under him again. He’d never thought of it that way, but he supposed that had been one of his earliest lessons in trusting John Langley.

  “I will be your partner,” promised John. “I will help you and understand and stand at your side. No matter how much you screw it up, if you just try.”

  “No,” said Nick.

  John blinked. He looked away, and his shoulders slumped in despair.

  JOHN

  Mari’s words about fighting for Nick, about refusing to lose him, echoed in his mind.

  From the moment his anklet failed, Nick had been treated as unfairly as humanly possible, and he was taking it ....maybe not in stride, but better than anyone else John could imagine. He also took inflicting massive unfairness, via fraud, theft, and deception, in stride. To Nick, that was how the world, and people, worked.

  He looked Nick directly in the eyes. “Okay. But I have a challenge for you, regardless. Be better. Fight to make it better. Don’t endure it, don’t perpetuate it, you be better. ”

 
“As far as I can tell, I have two choices in life,” said Nick. “Be myself, make my own choices, live with the wind in my face, and end up dead or in prison. Or submit myself -- to you, to the law, to prison -- and let other people choose who I am and what I do, walk through life with my head down, so I can have things like a home and family and friends.”

  He looked openly at John. “I’ve tried both ways. There’s no winner. With you and Mari last week -- I would give anything to have that, as a real part of my life, not just because I was hurt. Coming in here yesterday ....”

  Nick bowed his head. “I thought you were done with me. But I was -- it’s hard to part with people like Neil Kasdan and Gary Wills. So I just decided to let them. I let them take me to prison and put me in chains and I let them hurt me for as long as I could bear it. It would keep my mind off being -- gotten rid of.”

  I’d rather be tortured than have to think about you abandoning me.

  When Nick loved, he loved hard.

  “They both hurt. They’re both -- they both have a different collection of pieces of the things that make life worth living, and I want the whole set,” said Nick.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Lost

  NICK

  Nick was sick. Suddenly, horribly. He felt cold, and tried to gulp away nausea. It was when he looked at John and it got worse that he figured it out.

  He’d been him again. His soul needed John as a friend, and his future needed John as his handler and protector, and so what had he done? Gotten angry and poked the bear.

  John caught his look of desperate worry. “Nick -- you don’t talk about your childhood. But I get the impression it -- maybe you never knew what it was like to be loved.”

  Nick shrugged. “Okay, it wasn’t apple pie and baseball on the ranch. It wasn’t a Dickens novel either. It was kind of cool.”

  “Your father beat you, and left your life. Your mother ....I just want you to know love can -- as intensely as you love, people can feel that way about you, and not beat you or con you or abandon you. You’re worthy of being loved unconditionally -- the fact that it didn’t happen when you were a kid isn’t your fault.”

  “I hope -- I’ll get to experience that sometime.”

  “Nick, you have,” said John, looking directly into his eyes.

  Nick’s heart stopped. John knew his worst sides, his crimes, his flaws. John had seen him terrified, crying, and furious. John had seen him beaten beyond recognition, stripped down in a restraint chair, and cuddling a stuffed cat. He’d betrayed John, cursed at him, and spent the night clinging to him for dear life.

  Everyone else in his life, to an extent, knew Nick the construct. John had seen it all, and was sitting in prison with him, looking at him with absolute love.

  Nick gulped. “What did I do to deserve you?”

  “You’re you,” said John in a soft voice. “For that matter -- most of what you said when you were cussing me out last night was true. So what did I do to deserve being looked at the way you are right now?”

  Oh, my God.

  John was a deeply flawed guy, and that had never mattered to Nick in the slightest. Theo tended to make him feel like that was a bad thing, Stockholm Syndrome meets battered spouse syndrome meets a sub with no sex and no safeword. But nothing stopped the simple affection and joy and safety he felt in being John’s friend, even if it did come with an anklet.

  So that was how John felt about him. He saw the flaws and they just didn’t matter. That was how it was possible for a John Langley to care about a Nick Aster, even if he did come with a few stray felonies and a six-year-old’s grasp of impulse control.

  “I want to hug you so badly right now, I could scream,” said Nick. He didn’t even know what emotion this was. He didn’t want to cry, with joy or sadness. He wanted to scream. Not in pain or frustration or anger.

  One of the horrifying realities he’d had to come to terms with during five years in here was you don’t matter. Sure, he’d developed friendships, good ones, with fellow inmates. Not hating the guards had given him an added bit of humanity in his life, and he’d come to matter to many of them. But to the system, to the void that controlled his life utterly and completely? He was powerless against it, his guards were powerless against it, and it barely acknowledged his existence.

  In the beginning, he’d been confused by fellow inmate’s rants about being nothing but a number to “them.” The COs learned his last name and called him by it, often with compassion or affection. They wished him good morning and good night and asked if he was okay. He’d imagined something with a great deal more yelling and cursing and being literally called by a number.

  But to the system he was in, his well-being, his fears, hopes ....they meant as much as those of a coffee cup or a stapler.

  Then along came John Langley, who would look right at him and examine every nuance of thought and emotion. And it wasn’t intrusive or creepy, because his eyes held affection and a softness that told Nick he cared about what he saw. He wasn’t just a person to John, he was a person whose emotions and thoughts and moods and future mattered. They weren’t always catered to, but they mattered.

  He wanted to scream in relief. He was right here in the mouth of that black hole of disregard, the one where procedures were supreme over human pain and terror and even compassion. John was clinging to the rope, refusing to let him fall into that pit.

  You matter. You’re loved. You’re worth fighting for.

  “John, I owe you so much I don’t even --”

  “Hey,” said John softly. “You make my life better every day. Even when you drive me screaming up a wall and I wanna throttle you. I still can’t believe the federal government said, ‘Hey, this guy’s yours, if you want him,’ and you came and stood at my side.”

  Nick still wanted to scream so fiercely, he had to choke it back. He remembered being in his cell, trying not to scream and cry. Being in that chair, unable to move, trying not to scream. Being in solitary confinement, trying not to scream. Being in Rikers, forcing himself through the agony of dialing a cell phone while blinded with pepper spray and with his hands chained so tightly behind his back he could barely move without screaming. So he had screamed, several times, in pain and frustration and fear that he wouldn’t get the call out or John wouldn’t come.

  The first minutes of the call had been consumed by that fear, leading not with ‘John, I’ve been beaten and tortured, please help me,’ but with ‘John, I didn’t run, please believe I’ve been a good little felon ....’

  “I hope -- I’ll get to experience that sometime.”

  “Nick, you have."

  “John ....” Nick knew this was going to sound helpless and weak, but so would screaming here and now in the cell. “Please don’t ever let me go or give up on me. You’ve ....been my only hope in the world more than you know.”

  JOHN

  The fact that Nick was still terrified that John was going to abandon him stung for a minute. “I’m sitting in a damn prison cell with you after you tried to run, practically ripped my throat out when I got here last night, and just listened to you say you’ve got no plans of ever reforming yourself. What more do I gotta do? I’m here.”

  Nick’s invisible flinch of pain stopped him, and he bit the inside of his lip. He remembered Nick’s words: ‘Just remember the wounds are really fucking raw right now.’

  “Nick, just how many times you been abandoned?” asked John softly, with the now-familiar ache in his heart. “How much’s it take to teach a man this kind of fear?”

  “Not much, if it happens right,” said Nick with equal softness. He was looking at the cell wall. “I deserve to be in here. I don’t deserve you, or that anklet, or to be running around having the time of my life playing with the FBI.”

  Nick clenched his fists, still staring at the wall. “The last time I was beaten by a brutal cop, it was my father. I’ve got no idea what a good guy is.”

  “Nick, look at me. Please,” asked John, saddened
by the lost, baffled confusion on Nick’s face. John was lost too, but he had no intention of giving up on finding the way. Nick, he was beginning to realize, had given up long ago and simply decided to enjoy being lost.

  Nick obeyed, his blue eyes soft and worried.

  “I know you were just horribly victimized by bad guys in law enforcement,” said John. “Then you were hurt and terrified by good guys in law enforcement. But I know you’re smart enough and good enough to know that’s not the spirit of what it means to be one of the good guys. If there’s anyone I know who can transcend personal negative experiences and see the inherent good in people and a profession, it’s you. Please don’t think you aren’t going to get or don’t deserve a happy life with friends and family who love you intensely and unconditionally, or give up on that desire.”