Nick’s eyes were visibly darker, dark in fear and heartache. “You know the problem with good people? You don’t think evil actually exists because you’re not capable of it.”
John sucked in his breath. “Nick, I’m an FBI agent. Wasn’t always in Art Crimes, either. I know about evil.”
“You didn’t believe me that Callie was in trouble. She not only got killed, Sasha framed me for her murder.”
“I also exonerated you,” said John. “Don’t forget I was the one to arrest Sasha Allieo.”
Tears flooded Nick’s eyes and he gasped for breath. “You asked me if I’d been raped, like that’s the worst thing that can happen to a person. Believe me, it's not. I just read about a prison in Florida where guards murdered an inmate by handcuffing him in a shower cell and running the water at a hundred and eighty degrees for two hours until his skin boiled off and he died. They told him to enjoy his shower and left him to die while he was pleading for mercy. Another guy got gassed to death in his cell. He died with his nose pressed against the bottom of the door, naked except for his boxers, holding his bible and screaming for help.”
Nick drew in a heaving sob. “People die in cells, crying for mercy. Is it so damn selfish and awful and cowardly that I don’t want that to be me? I’m begging you for mercy, John. Let me run. I can’t --”
“Hey. You wanna talk evil, you listen to me,” ordered John. “Every time I plead with you to get out of this life, I have images worse than that in my head. Crime scene photos that’ve given me literal nightmares, for weeks. When I was chasing you, I couldn’t bear the idea that it could be a mobster that took you down and not me. For every horrible, nightmarish, unconscionable crime inflicted by prison officials, there’s thousands more that’re done to criminals, by criminals. And they are so inhumanly cruel I’m not gonna even say.”
Nick had actually stopped sobbing, and was listening. Still in tears, still in terror, but he was listening.
John reached out and touched Nick’s left cheek. Acutely aware of what he was doing, looking at Nick with the most reassuring expression he could muster, he gently wiped the tears away like he had in the cell in Rikers.
Nick let out a soft whimper but managed not to recoil, and his eyes softened.
“I was there, Nick. You think I didn’t feel the horror of what they did to you?”
Nick sniffed, but didn’t pull away from John’s hand.
“Of course I’m afraid the NYPD’ll arrest and murder you horribly,” said John. “I’m afraid the mob will kidnap you and torture you to death. I’m afraid some country whose art you ripped off will send agents to dismember you and bring home pieces of you to their beloved dictator. I know all too well the evil that exists, and it rips me apart knowing what could happen to you.”
John heard another, quieter sniff from behind him and whipped around. Mari was standing there, pale, with tears in her eyes. She had obviously heard the whole horrific thing.
Mari marched up to the bed, pulled back the covers, and got in next to Nick. She gave John a cool look and pointed to the spot on the other side of the bed.
“You’re not letting him run?” said Mari. “Then you stay at his side and you hold him and you protect him with your life.”
John gave Nick a questioning look. It was returned with timid, barely-daring-to-hope assent. He went and got his gun and spare clips out of the safe, and returned and barricaded the door shut. He put the weapon on the nightstand with his cell phone and the radio to the Marshals’ van.
“Marshals know to call the second they see anyone approach the house, police or otherwise,” John told them both, trying to shake the Twilight-Zone feeling out of his head. Was he seriously bracing to protect the people he loved from the police?
Maybe. Or more likely, from their fears, from the ghosts that haunted the innocent every time violence and cruelty came to light. No matter who the perpetrator, but even more sickening when it came from positions of trust.
He climbed into bed, and this time he didn’t wait for Nick to tug him close. He pulled his still-teary, scared partner who’d become so much more against his side and held him tight. He smiled despite himself. “This is one way to keep you from running.”
Nick sniffed and chuckled at the same time, wiggling into a more comfortable position. One of his anklets smacked John’s leg, and John chuckled.
“Sure, kick me all night with the damn things.”
Nick groaned, trying to arrange his legs more gracefully. “One’s not so bad. Two of them’s like wearing swim fins made out of Legos to bed."
John patted him on the back. "Why would I not be surprised if you'd tried that?"
"What, after one of my multitudinous shark-evasion pool parties for eight-year-olds?"
John grinned. That was Nick, finally. "That's it. We have to set up a sting involving sharks, pool parties, eight-year-olds, and Legos. And dual tracking anklets."
"Can I feed a few select people to the pool sharks?" asked Nick with dark humor.
"If they're still hungry after I'm done," said John. "You can go to town with the lead-weighted tracking anklets, though."
Mari got into the game. "Speaking of Florida, there's a company there that'll supply alligators for your children's pool party. They charge you for it."
Both John and Nick chortled. "If 'feeding your kids to alligators' is the best they can come up with for a birthday party, no wonder things get fucked up down there," said John.
Nick cleared his throat. "I don't think the guy wearing two tracking anklets and barricaded behind a door, lying in bed, clinging in terror to his arresting agent, the agent's wife, and a stuffed cat while high on an entire pharmacy gets to judge," he said dryly.
"Dunno," said John. "I think you judge the shark-and-alligator-evasion try-outs for eight-year-olds from here, we got a hit reality show on our hands."
"Still saner than Trump," agreed Nick, suddenly sounding very sleepy.
"Quick, talk about something else," said Mari. "I don't want to have nightmares."
Nick heaved a deep sigh and melted, relaxing against them both. "This is my new favorite way to be kept from running."
John held him a little tighter. He was starting to feel warm and relaxed, instead of chilled, tiny, and scared to death. "We should start a pilot program. Instead of going to prison, felons get cuddled by FBI agents nonstop."
He felt Nick grin. "I think you just solved crime," said Nick. "Even the mob'd get out of the game if they thought that might be their fate one day."
"Poor Nick," sighed Mari. "If it's that terrible, give me back my husband."
"No," said Nick firmly. "Mine. Court-ordered cuddly FBI agent. Not giving 'im back."
Mari patted him on the arm. "I know the feeling."
“Are you mad at me?” Nick asked John after a long while. His voice sounded shaky.
“I’m - a little hurt,” said John. “The idea that you’d abandon this friendship hurts. But I’m not mad at you for being you.”
Nick twisted suddenly in John’s arms and lunged forward, hugging him. He didn’t let go, just clung to John un-moving, tense, his face hidden under the blankets.
“I’d almost rather risk being beaten to death than -- abandon this. Running would be -- the most painful thing I’ve ever done.”
John rested his forehead on Nick’s shoulder. “I’m not gonna let you be beaten to death. And I’m not gonna let you run.”
There was another long silence. Then a soft, utterly heartfelt whisper.
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Anklet No. 2
JOHN
John discovered it was hard to fall asleep when one was a tiny bit concerned about getting into a shootout with a SWAT team. He tried to stop flinching inside at all the creaks and honks and imagined movements in the dark that were haunting Nick. Mari was snoring by the time John managed to well and truly recover from the impact of Nick’s terror.
Nick was falling into a drugged
sleep, but kept fidgeting with his legs, trying to find a comfortable position on his side where the two anklets didn't clonk into each other.
Finally, Nick drifted off pressed against John’s side with an arm across John’s chest, making sure he didn’t go anywhere. Apparently the secret to dual-ankleted comfort was for one ankle to rest across John's, so that the hard plastic dug into John's leg and not Nick's.
Deliberate? Was Nick being snarky even in sleep? John smiled and gave the arm clutching his chest a soft pat, recognizing the warm glow in his chest with a start.
It was love.
JOHN
When morning came, Nick looked acutely embarrassed. “Wow, do I ever feel like --”
“Shut up,” said Mari in a tone that allowed for exactly zero defiance. “I happen to love cuddling with random felons my husband brings home from prison.”
Nick let out a laugh that was almost a giggle.
“Speak for yourself,” muttered John. “Imagine how this’ll undermine my swagger of authority around the office. Better hope the others never find out, or Wash’ll be pissed I never snuggle him.”
“I’ll get you a bumper sticker,” suggested Nick. “World’s Cuddliest FBI Agent.”
“Aaaannnd that will be the day I finally shoot you,” said John. He regretted it a split second later. Nick was silent.
John tightened his arm, realizing it was still around Nick’s back. “Never. You know I’d never do that. Worse. Make you wear a bumper sticker on your hat saying ‘World’s Cuddliest Felon.”
Nick started breathing normally again, and smiled. “Thank you.” He hesitated. “That may be the most scared I’ve been in my life, and that includes when this whole thing actually happened.”
“Any better this morning?” asked John.
“Tons. Hurts a lot less, too.”
“Don’t let yourself get all wound up into it,” said John. “You start to freak out, just tell me.”
Mari cleared her throat. “If he does, hon, listen. Not the seventh time he says it, the first.”
JOHN
There was no freaking out. Nick had turned a corner. Suddenly and dramatically. His eyes held their usual dimension again, he was smiling, and ate everything John put in front of him. Bruises still marked his face, but the swelling was a fraction of what it had been.
He looked and sounded like Nick Aster again, albeit a rather Bruce-Willis-at-the-end-of-Die-Hard version.
“How about we go to work tomorrow?” he suggested.
John rolled his eyes. “You just want an excuse to ditch anklet number two.”
“That sounds like a perfume.”
“Anklet No. 2?” John pondered it with a deliberately serious expression.
“Part of the FBI line of fine fragrances. ‘Surveillance Van’ failed in early product testing,” said Nick.
“Too bad. I liked that one. Le Paperasserie looks to be a hit though,” said John.
“Eh. Silver Handcuffs, now with real silver dust, has bigger promise. Appeals to the S&M crowd.”
“Le Paperasserie is a paean to the unrecognized masses. It’s gonna be found in half the households in America,” countered John.
“I’m wondering is releasing Search Warrant is such a good idea,” said Nick. “Might be better renamed Exigent Circumstances. Has a sexier edge to it.”
“Done,” agreed John. “And we should see about finishing the formulation for Fugitive.”
“What about Unjustly Accused?” asked Nick. “It layers really nicely with CI.”
“For the last time, no!”
JOHN
The next morning, Nick came downstairs while he and Mari were eating breakfast in the kitchen. John stared.
Nick was dressed in a suit and tie, shaved and had his hair arranged to perfection. He looked like his usual breezy self, except for the fact that he was walking like a race horse with two broken legs. And the fact that bruises still discolored every aspect of his face, like an unholy landscape of desert camo and spilled wine.
Blackened red lines of healing cuts accompanied some of darkest splotches of aubergine bruising. Just looking at him made John’s brow tighten in sympathetic pain.
“Whatta you say we go to work?” Nick’s voice was jaunty, and he made an admirable attempt at putting a bounce in his step. But his eyes were glazed, and his face serious.
“Nick - no,” said John. As much as Nick had been doggedly protecting his injuries from view, he’d seen the beating happen on tape, and heard the doctor say Nick looked like he’d been hit by a car. “We’re going to work when you’re healed, and no sooner.”
“I want to,” Nick insisted. “I don’t do well stuck in small rooms alone with my thoughts.”
John didn’t buy it. Nick rarely traded on sympathy, and when he did, he wasn’t very good at it. It was too far from his basic personality.
“So you wanna go to work beat to hell and back, and high as the Empire State Building? When you're drugged, you tend to say things you might regret.”
Nick shifted uncomfortably, then eased himself onto a kitchen chair. “I like the FBI. That’s one of those things I might regret saying. But there are three places in this city I love, and that office is one of them. I miss it.”
John was trying to think of a polite way to say, you look like you escaped a POW camp, you’ll scare everyone at the office, when the doorbell rang.
Theo invited himself in, clutching a large ....something. Pink something. He held himself upright with his nose in the air. “Nick Aster’s personal stylist here, my client needs his makeup done.”
Mari chuckled. “Do you do manicures?”
Theo perked up, a lively grin spreading across his face. “Why yes, mademoiselle."
“My wife is not getting manicured by a - a - underground felon,” protested John. “We have money, you know. For professionals?”
“Oh, I’m a professional,” said Theo. “I have clients.”
“Who?”
“Well, uh, Nick, and I just brought on board the head of a prestigious catering company....”
“And how much exactly do your clients pay you?”
“Wine.”
“Ah.”
John watched while Theo deftly applied concealer and foundation. “Ah - I’m a little uncomfortable with this.”
Theo glared at him. “Of course, you’d be the one to judge, Fed. Just stick to your constrained gender norms, and oppress anyone who has the courage to-”
“I don’t give a damn about gender norms,” said John. “This is just too - cover-up-the-bruises-domestic-violence-ish for me.”
“I should think it would delight you to conceal the brutality of your fellows,” said Theo.
John pointed to the back yard. “Outside,” he ordered Theo.
Theo glared at him. “What, you’re going to beat me up now?”
“Out. Side.”
Theo obeyed, and John shut the door behind them so that Nick couldn’t hear. “Look me in the eye and tell me you honestly believe I think brutality in law enforcement is okay.”
Theo looked him in the eye, but let his silence do the talking.
“It’s not funny or cute to accuse me of that,” said John. “Not right now. Not when Nick was almost killed by it. When I’ve been soaked by his blood. I’ve watched him go through immense physical, mental, and emotional pain this week. I’m sure that would hurt you too, as his friend, but if you were a part of the profession that did it, or if you were morally responsible for his welfare, it would be worse.”
Theo looked away. “You were a complete and utter asshole the other day. You hurt Nick, and you terrified him.”
“I did,” agreed John. “What I did not do was arrest you for aiding and abetting a Federal prisoner escaping custody. What I did not do is bring Nick in on escape charges, return him to prison, or take the suggestion of one detective to handcuff him to the bed. I needed to scare him. Running is a line he cannot cross if he’s gonna have any chance at a decent life.
”
“In the United Corporate Prison Kingdom of America, you mean.”
“I thought you had the list of acceptable escape destinations narrowed down to Nazi hideout in Brazil.”
“It’s better than Sing Sing,” said Theo with a biting glare.
“I never thought he deserved to be in Sing Sing,” said John. “That’s one reason I got him out. He deserves to have to wear an anklet and take orders from someone who knows how to be a functional adult, and pay back into society what he took. He also deserves to be taught and supported and loved.”
Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story Page 16