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

by Ariadne Beckett

  This was heaven, and he didn’t think it was possible to experience any purer form of love then he felt right now for these two people.

  “You’re not going back to prison, Nick,” said John, absently stroking his upper back.

  “Going back to prison is literally the most probable outcome of my life,” said Nick. “So let me --” he choked up. “Let me enjoy this while I have it.”

  “No,” said John. “I knew it was tough. I knew it hurt you. I’ve always tried to keep you from having to go back, and admired your courage in facing it. But I’ve seen it now. I’m not letting that be your life.”

  Nick closed his eyes, savoring the rough, caring touch. “How can you stop it?”

  “By convincing you to listen to me. By convincing you to believe you are a good man at heart, and in no way broken or irredeemable.”

  JOHN

  John gulped back his emotions. Nick wasn’t a small person, but somehow right now he’d made himself tiny. And unbearably soft and gentle and timid. John hugged Nick tight against his side, and Nick’s arm snuck out a few more inches across his chest.

  “It’s okay, Nick. It’s okay.”

  NICK

  Nick was breathing in short, rapid sucks of air that didn't do their job of dispelling the tearing inside him, the painful emotional helplessness and vulnerability to attack that his adult life was focused on not having to feel. The vulnerability to hurt that he'd half hoped that prison would toughen him out of, that being beat up would toughen him out of, and instead it was turning him into someone with the defenses of a six-year-old....

  No, he'd felt tougher at six.

  "How are you tough?" he asked. "How -- I can only manage it conning the hell out of people and myself. You want me to be reformed? You've got no idea how much it hurts to -- be in in a story I didn't write, to -- if I were me and not Nick Aster, Con Artist, I'd cry in your office when you were upset with me, I -- things with Callie, and my dad, and my mom, and prison -- I'd be catatonic with emotions I can't handle. I never -- I never grew up that way. I never grew tough, or wise. I never got able to face things, just better at acting and the only way out of things I can't handle is running away from them. I can't tell you, fine, I'll go straight, because I know there's only so much pain I can take before I'll do anything to avoid feeling it again."

  He hated himself. He was shaking. He wanted more than anything to run out the front door, and keep running, and find a place, a persona, anything where he could just be cool, calm, collected, and not vulnerable. Suave con artist Aster was the only one he'd found who wasn't. He had to be Aster, why was John trying to break the only defense, the only solace he had?

  "I'm tough because I've always had safe, loving, stable people to turn to when I'm not," said John. "I had good parents to hold me when I cried or was scared, I have Mari to cuddle up against when I'm shaken, I have the FBI giving me stability and support and adorable felonious partners...."

  Nick chuckle-sniffed.

  "Nick, nobody admits that adults get really, really upset too,” said Mari. “We hurt just as bad as kids do, maybe worse. We just learn to hide it behind closed doors. 'Tough' is just learning to bear it until you get home to your husband. You can hide it from other people, but you'll never be able to hide it from yourself. And running away any time you care about something enough that it makes you vulnerable to real pain is no way to have a life."

  "Come here." John pulled him into an even deeper hug, holding Nick’s whole body with his own, kissing him.

  Nick tried to resist the pull of that warm safety and caring that made him melt into a very happy, very vulnerable and trusting place. It was John who broke him down into that which he loved most and couldn't bear.

  "Nick, it's safe," said the familiar rough, gentle voice. "Not the world. It's hell out there. Just right here, right now, you're safe and you're loved. There's nothing wrong with you. Stop running, stop hiding. You're human, that's all. You're human."

  Nick sucked in air, feeling the warmth of tears in his eyes matched by the warmth of John's arms.

  Accept it. For once, just try accepting comfort.

  Something he'd always fought, because accepting it was admitting he needed it. Well.... how bad would that really be?

  You're human.

  "Okay," whispered Nick. John stroked the back of his head down to his spine, over and over, and Nick closed his eyes and went limp. He savored the touch, the caring, the safety and acceptance.

  There was no danger here. He was almost startled by the realization. And nothing to run from, or to. There were terrible things out there, and in his memory. But not here, in this home, in these arms. This was the feeling he'd been chasing all his life.

  The warm cocoon of safety, love, and the ability to surrender to it.

  "You're safe," said John again. "You're home. You're loved. You're a good person, with a good heart. A lot's happened, but you made it, and you're gonna be okay. Okay?"

  Nick nodded, snuggling closer. He was very okay. He was in a heaven he didn't know existed until right now. "Don't let go?"

  "Won't," promised John. "I got you."

  Tears surfaced again, another momentary spike of pain. If someone had been there to hold him like this years ago, when he was frantic and hurting, if they'd just held him, he'd never have gone to prison. It was a sudden, gut knowledge. He was responsible for the incoherent string of actions that had led him there, certainly. But they'd been driven by.... other, far more irrational things. More human things.

  So? He'd also never have met John, or Mari, or Theo, or Alice. Or Kelly. Wash. Neil Kasdan. Gary Wills. Dozens of good inmates and officers. Worse things could happen to a man than enduring a handful of hard years that brought him friends and family and this.

  Okay. Maybe he could surrender to life too. Maybe it was really all okay in the end.

  Okay.

  As Nick recovered, John couldn't resist softly rubbing and petting him, in obvious affection and desire to comfort. It worked. It was comforting, more so than anything he could imagine.

  Nick let himself float in the warm bliss of trusting another human being, of feeling safe and cared about. Of having shown John all the weaknesses and cracks and ugly, humiliating, painful parts of being Nick Aster, and having John react with unwavering respect and gentle affection. There was nothing left to hide, and that was peace he'd never experienced before.

  John's gentle touches telling him, yes, I know and understand the pain you've been through. You aren't alone with it. You have a witness. You are still whole and human and I love you.

  The ache that had invaded Nick's heart while he was being beaten faded at last, leaving him breathing freely and cherishing the warm feeling that replaced it. Brutality and coping with it wasn't a new experience for him. Finding how to bring out the kinder instincts in hard people wasn't new either.

  Being truly loved, being understood and supported and forgiven and held dear, was new. It was a novel, warm, soft, soaring thing that made all other pleasures he'd found in life fade to gray in comparison. He'd loved. He'd never been unconditionally loved in return.

  "This is heaven," he whispered. "This is worth everything. I love you."

  “I love you too, felon,” said John, kissing him.

  “We love you,” said Mari firmly. “You are welcome in this family, and we love you.”

  He pressed himself closer to John's soft, warm body and fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Opposite Forces Attract

  JOHN

  John walked out of a coffee shop and glanced at a color poster taped on the outside wall. It displayed two photographs.

  On the left was an ugly scene; a man was pinned to the ground in handcuffs by one police officer. The photo captured the look of wide-eyed horror on the suspect’s face split seconds before a kick from a second officer was going to connect with it.

  John’s spine tensed, and nausea tightened his throat. He was more than familiar with
violent images, even ones of police brutality. You didn’t make it as an FBI agent if you didn’t get used to looking at ugly crime scenes and their photos without flinching. But he was emotionally scarred himself right now by seeing Nick wearing that look of horror, and bearing the grotesque bruises.

  John’s gaze drifted to the photo on the left, and he let out an involuntary sigh of relief. It was as touching as the first photo was ugly. Another man in handcuffs, another two police officers.

  The suspect sat on a street curb, blood streaming down his arm. An officer knelt at his side, holding him in a sideways hug with a supportive hand on his back. The two men were looking at each other, the officer with compassion and concern, the suspect with obvious trust. The second was bandaging the man’s arm and giving him a reassuring grin, like he was teasing the guy about getting a badass scar out of the deal.

  Once again, John found himself putting Nick in that picture. It was easy to imagine a string of events that would put Nick under arrest and injured. And he found himself longing to live in a world where he could trust that his friend would be treated with that kind of compassion in the aftermath, and not have to worry about the sickening alternative on the left of the poster.

  The images stayed in his head as he walked back to the FBI building, troubling and tantalizing him. None of his agents would be found in a picture like the first. Abusive treatment of suspects simply wasn’t tolerated, or even entertained as an option on the menu around Art Crimes. A shove or two when really irritated was as far as John or any of his agents would go.

  Would they be found in the second photo? Open displays of compassion weren’t encouraged in law enforcement circles, including the FBI. They were too easily mistaken for weakness.

  Had Nick fought and been injured during his arrest, Nick would have been distressed and John would have comforted him. But some other random suspect? Or some other random agent? Maybe, but not likely.

  Okay. John pulled open the glass door with its gleaming FBI seal emblazoned in the center. Lead by example. Make it likely.

  It had been a week since Nick’s release from prison, and he was coming back to work tomorrow. He could walk and sit without pain, and only traces of the worst bruising remained. His stomach was healing well. He was bored and goofy and impertinent and playful, and the aching sadness only appeared in his eyes a few times a day, instead of weighing on him constantly.

  Nick was scheming with Theo to find a painting that had been looted from Agent Kasdan’s family during the Holocaust, and Kasdan had been to John’s house twice since his own release from the hospital.

  Unless John was much mistaken, Nick Aster was developing a friend who had nothing to do with crime or cons. Most miraculous of all, Nick was letting the friendship develop. It was the first time Nick had believed both that he was worth simply being liked, and that another person might actually enjoy his company and personality without playing an angle or wanting something from him.

  John’s first day back was light, catching up with current cases and chatting with his agents. At noon, his phone rang.

  “Agent Langley? This is Detective Amar Matharu — I’m working on Lyndon Green’s old case?”

  “Oh - yeah,” said John. “How’s that going?”

  “Can I take you to lunch?” asked Matharu.

  “Sure,” agreed John.

  On the way to the cafe where they agreed to meet, John spotted another poster like the one that had so affected him earlier.

  Like the first, the image on the left was horrible. Viscerally tension-inducing. It was actually a layout of two photos.

  The top was a man being tortured, by Americans from the glimpses John got of the uniforms. The man was naked, sitting on the floor with his arms chained behind him and wrenched up towards the ceiling in an excruciating stress position. He was skinny and bruised and filthy. Wires ran to his genitals in a manner that left no doubt what they were for.

  The tortured man’s eyes blazed in pure hate, boring straight into the lens with clear desire to disembowel the photographer and probably every person on the planet allied with him. It was a chilling portrait of evil against evil.

  Directly below it was a photo of rubble, bloodstained cloth, and limp, dust-covered limbs. Face up lay a girl, her headscarf torn away, no more than ten years old, with nothing but blood where her lower body used to be.

  The photo on the right made John’s breath catch, because he recognized the men in it. One was a well-known FBI anti-terror expert and interrogator. He was in a prison yard with a detainee in orange, and the photo caught him in mid-swing launching a basketball towards the detainee. Both men were grinning and relaxed, with clear rapport.

  One was Special Agent Dan Fisher. The other was the man being tortured in the photo to the left.

  John walked on, shaking his head to clear it. These posters were profoundly disturbing. The sense of relief and comfort one got from looking at the images on the right made to cringe-inducing other reality almost worse.

  And, he suspected, they were connected with Nick in some way. The internet and newspapers were still running stories about the arrests, the problems being uncovered at Rikers Island, and police brutality in general. It was the topic of the moment, and the artist behind these posters was at a minimum making a statement about it.

  But the appearance of Dan Fisher on one of the posters.... granted as the lead investigator, the man’s name was all over the paper, and his prior assignment was publicly known. But those photos.... they were too graphic, too personally identifying, and too candid to have been willingly released by the government or even the press. They had been leaked, and by someone close to the case.

  Agent Fisher had almost certainly been the one to leak the images of Nick in Rikers. He was being essentially fired by the FBI. Did he have something to do with these posters?

  Detective Amar Matharu and John shook hands and sat near the window of a small French cafe, one of John’s favorites. After they ordered, Matharu tented his hands together on the table and studied them.

  “Your Nick Aster ....has he been irreparably damaged by his treatment in Rikers, and his time in Sing Sing?”

  John frowned. “Emotionally? Or physically?”

  “Emotionally,” said Matharu. “Mentally. Do you think it’s possible to go through times that dark, and survive as the person you were?”

  “I think he has been damaged, and he has been changed,” said John. “But he’s absolutely survived as Nick Aster. It didn’t break him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Did it make him violent? Being in Sing Sing?”

  “No,” said John flatly. “He was and remains one of the least violent men I know.”

  “Does he hate the NYPD now?” asked Matharu.

  John chewed his lip. “I would say no. I think he has fear of the department and its officers that wasn’t there before. But he’s never hated law enforcement officers. I sent him to prison in the first place, and he never resented me. I can’t see this making him hate the NYPD. He’s too intelligent and forgiving to think all umpteen-thousand officers are the sort of people who would brutalize him.”

  Matharu seemed to welcome the diversion when their salads were served, and he crunched for a couple of minutes before speaking again.

  “Lyndon Green is innocent,” he said finally, setting down his fork and meeting John’s gaze. “In about a week, the evidence goes before a judge.”

  John whistled. “Good work.”

  “Not ‘good’,” said Matharu. “Pathetically easy. If I hadn’t been taken off the case when Lyndon confessed, I would have had the right guy in a week. Even for a cold case, all the evidence fits together perfectly. I arrested the real killer yesterday.”

  “And you’re wondering how badly this screwed up Lyndon Green?” asked John.

  Matharu nodded. “The way the court system works — getting a wrongly convicted man released takes a horrible amount of time. He could be in prison for another year, even if t
hey get the real guy to plead guilty in the meantime.”

  John grimaced. “I’ve exonerated a couple of people myself. It’s never taken a year, but it’s appalling how long it did take.”

  “I’m exploring if there’s any way to get him placed into my custody on an electronic monitoring system, like you have with Aster,” explained Matharu.

  “Ah. And you’re wondering if his first act will be to run a barbecue skewer through your ear?” asked John.

  Matharu snorted. “You do get to the point, don’t you? Yeah, I’m wondering if a guy who was tortured into a false confession, spent years in maximum security prison, and lost his home and his family all thanks to police brutality and corruption would be even remotely safe to bring into my life.”