“Our - house. My mom burned it down, we lost everything,” said Nick. “Except -”
Nick gulped and pointed at the cards, and some of the photos. John nudged them to examine the photos of an old yellow house on a run-down city block, surrounded by a chain link fence a few feet high with dried grass growing up through the wires.
“I never felt safe there - I always thought the place was going to burn, but I thought it was going to be the bad guys finding us. I kept those things hidden, away. And money. I always thought we’d have to run. And the only way we’d eat is if I had money, because my mom never did.”
“I always thought you didn’t know how to form real connections with people,” said John softly. There were people in these photos. Families, on porches and lawns and in driveways of houses with neat green lawns and hanging baskets.
“I had to learn to give them up,” said Nick.
John hesitated, taking a seat next to Nick’s side. “I never wanted to pry - in case it was painful. But I want to know.”
Nick smiled. “To hear what dystopian formative years produced Nick Aster? Because a fucked-up childhood is the only reason to become a criminal?”
“No.”
Nick regarded John with curiosity, studying him with a look that was not only inquisitive but something very rare for Nick: open.
"Talking about my childhood is a lot like talking about prison. People zero right in on the tragic bits."
"We zero in on what has lasting impact," said John. "Positive or negative. I know your father was a dirty cop, a murderer who abused and abandoned you. Don't particularly wonder about your middle school teacher the obsessive chinchilla breeder."
"Whatever I may have gone through as a kid, or as a prisoner.... people have had it so, so much worse than I have in my worst nightmares," said Nick.
"I get it." John paused. "It's not a competition, though."
Nick sighed and picked up a photograph of a man and a woman standing in a driveway with three kids. The man was in a US Marshals uniform. Nick pointed to the youngest boy in the photo. John narrowed his eyes, studying the dark hair, the confident stance. Nick.
“If it’d all been miserable, there wouldn’t have been anything to grieve for,” said Nick. “I spent six months basically in foster care of the US Marshals when I was eight, seven different Marshals and their families took turns taking care of me.”
“Why?” asked John.
“My mother tried to kill herself. She was an addict — she was institutionalized after I came home and found her unconscious with her wrists cut. I called 911 and tried to stop the bleeding, and CPS was going to take me into foster care at the hospital. The Marshals didn’t want that to happen to me, so they pulled rank and said it would be a security risk.”
“They take good care of you?” asked John.
“They - were all wonderful. I cried every time I had to go stay with a new family, because I’d fall in love with the idea of being able to stay with these people forever, in their nice houses and normal lives.”
“Why they keep shifting you around?” asked John.
"I was never really sure,” said Nick. “All these families were just wonderful to me, it hurt when they didn't want me any more, and - I tried. I really tried to be what they wanted, and to be good, and it just never worked."
John had never seen Nick look so wistful and willingly vulnerable. "I.... think I got kicked out of the first home because their kids were jealous of me, so I put everything I had into winning over the little boy who lived in the next place. He wanted me to be his brother forever. I half-overheard them saying something about how I was too much for them to handle.”
“Were you a difficult kid?” asked John, puzzled. Nick the adult could be infuriating, but his basic nature made it hard to imagine anything but a smart, active, lovable young boy.
Nick shrugged. “I guess I must have been. Half of what I know about charming people, I learned when I was a kid and trying to get one of those amazing families to keep me. I kept thinking it was working, and then, boom: 'Danny, you get to go stay with somebody new for a while. They're so excited to meet you.'"
John whistled. “Ouch.”
The photos showed Nick and his “foster” families smiling, relaxed.... happy. Nick certainly didn’t appear tense or defiant or sulky in them.
“By the end of it I was so tired of grief I just started faking it and not getting attached,” said Nick. “Now I know the awesomeness was partly artificial - you always pay a ton of attention to a new puppy at first.”
John grimaced. “Is that what it felt like, when I went out of town? That I got tired of the puppy?”
“It felt like you gave me away to a new family,” said Nick. “I - didn’t have to be vulnerable to this. I didn’t have to let myself cry in Mari’s arms and sleep with you guys. I could’ve been tough, but I felt safe enough to not be.”
John stroked the side of Nick’s upper arm, stood, and went to the kitchen to fix them something to drink. This was a lot for Nick to share, and he was starting to look tense.
Chocolate peppermint black tea looked appealing. He boiled water, found spoons and sugar cubes, and pressed a mug into Nick’s hand. Nick looked up at him with an affectionate smile, knowing exactly what the diversion was about.
John sat back down beside him with a mug of hot, minty-fragranced tea of his own.
Nick fiddled with the tea bag. “Home number six....you’ve gotta know how careful Alan was to place me with good families, good people. This was a woman, Lexi Sandall, the only time I wasn’t placed with a couple. She worked witness protection too, but wasn’t our handler.”
“Was she bad?” asked John, keeping his voice soft. He had no idea where this was leading.
Nick shook his head rapidly. “No. One night three men broke down the door - looking to extract information about a witness. She shot one of them, wounded another, but she was losing the fight.”
“Uh-oh,” said John.
“I sneaked up with a baseball bat and managed to get the uninjured guy right in the back of the head,” said Nick with a tiny, proud grin.
John grinned too. “Way to go, little Nick.”
“The other guy grabbed the bat from me and laid me out cold,” said Nick. “Lexi shot him and I went to the hospital with a fractured skull. Alan was home number seven. He brought me home from the hospital and took leave from work to care for me. He’s the one who told me the real story about my father being an arms trafficker, and not a heroic cop gunned down in the line of duty.”
“Seems harsh,” said John.
Nick shook his head. “My mom almost bled out in my arms. I saw Lexi get attacked, saw two people get shot, knocked a guy out with a baseball bat, and got knocked out with a bat myself. By that point, Alan figured I could handle the truth.”
The pieces all clicked together. “The head injury!” said John. “That’s where you got your brain injury, wasn’t it?”
Nick nodded, trying not to laugh at John’s “eager detective” expression. “I think so. I started coping way better with trauma, not being bothered by things, taking more risks, caring less about the rules after that. I thought it was a good thing. I mean - I’ve been clobbered on the head quite a few times, but that was the one that put me in the hospital. I’m guessing that was it.”
“Wow,” said John. “Do you have a picture of Lexi?”
Nick shook his head. “Because she worked in witness protection, they didn’t want photos of her with me floating around.”
“Makes sense,” said John. “Nick ....forgive me if I’m prying. But it seems to me like maybe you never really got to be a kid.”
"People were lying to me from the time I was a toddler, about my father,” said Nick. “I could tell something was off. There would be these horrible undertones, and silences and sideways glances. When I was old enough to figure out they were hiding something, I thought.... that he had suffered horribly when he died."
John whistled. "That's a bruta
l thing for a kid to figure out."
"Yeah." Nick studied the table. "I'd rather hear, ‘your dad's a killer, and he was murdered in jail, and he deserved it.’ It still would've broken my heart, but I wouldn't have been crying myself to sleep imagining things. Kids don’t have limits on our imaginations yet."
He glanced up and gave John a shy look. "I grew up with my role models lying to my face, hiding things from me, and evading questions. I lived a lie in witness protection and I was living in a bigger lie. I don't trust because I grew up thinking strangers were plotting to kill me, my heroes were deceiving me, and -- well, among criminals, once I started hanging out with them, trust isn't a thing that exists. When I say you're the only person in my life I trust, that's not me being strange and paranoid."
"And I just figured out why lying seems as normal as breathing to you," said John dryly.
Nick shrugged. “Face it, it’s normal to most people. Including you. I’m just better at it than average. Is it really wrong, to want to be who I am? To want joy and money and excitement?”
“It’s not wrong to want it,” said John. “But it is wrong to take actions that harm others in order to have them. The law isn’t always right, but in general it’s a pretty good guide to what society has defined as right and wrong.”
“It’s the ‘in general’ that trips me up,” said Nick dryly. “Face it, sometimes it’s a horrible guide.”
“Look ....Nick. When we go after a bad guy together, you’re usually pretty passionate about stopping them,” argued John. “You can’t tell me you’re just doing it to stay out of prison. Well -- when I was chasing you, you were a bad guy too.”
Nick ducked his head.
“You are a good man. Your actions are sometimes not. If you truly can’t see where that line lies --”
“I can’t,” said Nick.
“Then listen when I tell you where it is. Believe I’m not trying to crush your spirit, and listen.”
Nick took several sips of tea, his eyes slowly closing. “I can’t promise you I will never break another law. But I will promise you to sincerely, with all of my will, try to go straight.”
“I promise to help and support you,” said John, his voice breaking. “As your friend and family. Not an agent.”
NICK
"Just don't get boring. At least promise me that."
Nick startled. Mozzie was sitting in the shadow of an old oak tree, hiding from the last of the late fall sunshine. His coat collar was turned up, and his breath fogged in the clear air. "You certainly won't get boring," said Nick dryly.
"Will you?" asked Mozzie.
"Promise, get boring, or marry you?" asked Nick.
"Answer the ambiguous question," said Mozzie.
"I promise not to get self-righteous, take up golf, or develop an interest in penning year-end fiscal analysis reports. The rest of it sounds really boring to me too, so I'm counting on you to help me find ways to have fun that don't end in, 'You're under arrest.'"
"Ugh," was Mozzie's only input.
"I'm serious," said Nick with a pleading expression. "John and I were so close to climbing the walls, we played hide and seek in the FBI parking garage today."
"You need mental help," muttered Mozzie.
"I do," said Nick. "Badly."
"This is why people bungee-jump off cliffs, isn't it? I know, let's break into the Large Hadron Collider!" suggested Mozzie, his eyes brightening with excitement.
"Illegal," said Nick.
"Take over a diamond mine?"
"Also illegal, unless you have a few billion around for the takeover," said Nick.
We could steal a few billion, then buy a mine legally," suggested Mozzie.
"You're a really fantastic help," said Nick. "I know now why I come to you for help staying on the path to righteousness and un-imprisonment."
JOHN
“Nick ....I talked to Alan.”
A sharp intake of breath was Nick’s only reply.
“He ....didn’t recognize you, or your new name in the media.It broke his heart to hear you’d been in prison.”
Nick looked out at the edge of the fountain. “I hope you told him -- it led me to meet a horrible tyrant of an FBI agent, and that I’m happy.”
“Sort of,” said John. “Maybe I phrased it a little less colorfully.”
“Convinced him you were some sort of nice guy who doesn’t beat me every day in the basement of the FBI building?”
“Now I really will,” teased John. “Good idea.”
“BAD idea,” retorted Nick.
“He did tell me why none of those families ever kept you around.”
“Oh ....” Nick tapped his fingers rapidly on his leg, and refused to look at John.
John smiled. “They fell in love with you, Nick. They knew you didn’t belong to them, and that you were going to be going back to your mother. They knew they were going to get so attached it would break their hearts, so they did it while it would hurt less.”
Nick did look at him then, his eyes widening. “Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“They sent me away because they liked me too much?”
John nodded.
Nick paced to the kitchen counter. He washed a clean bowl before sticking it, empty, in the refrigerator and putting a carton of strawberries in the dishwasher.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The Cuddly Badass
JOHN
“John?” Nick had his rare, genuinely anxious expression on. “Are you - do you think you’ll be able to rely on me in the field after this?”
John frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Uhhhhh ....let’s see, sobbing like a three-year-old, making you and your wife sleep with me, screaming in terror of harmless situations, telling you sob stories about my childhood, underwhelming you with my tales of the existential angst of prison, crying every five minutes --”
John cut him off. “It was more like every six.”
Nick was thrown. “And there’s the cuddling with stuffed animals ....”
“I’ve got a list of my own,” said John. “Enduring a beating that’d have most men catatonic in a corner, then walking into a group of mobsters and Nazis in restraints designed to render violent criminals harmless, with a price on your head. Taking down a 250-pound redneck and three guys holding you, with three holes in your stomach added to the odds against you.
“Enduring brutal torture while you were already beaten, restrained, and stabbed. In the middle of all of this, acquiring and concealing a cell phone which you used to rescue yourself. Walking out of there on your own feet when you were dying and shouldn’t have been able to so much as stand, and flipping off one of the men who beat you. Let’s not forget taking on an armed thug kicking the ass of a US Marshal when you were a little kid. Yes, Nick, I think I can rely on you in a crisis.”
Nick was grinning. “You make me sound like such a badass for getting my ass kicked more ways than I can count.”
“You are a badass. A perfectly adorable, cuddly badass with a fondness for fine wine and stuffed cats.”
Nick grinned. “You know what? I think I can live with that description.”
John gave him the least convincing stern look ever, mimicking Nick’s concerned approach. “Uh -- after this, do you think you’ll still sincerely able to respect me enough to obey at least one out of every five orders I give you?”
“I might bump it up to one in four,” said Nick with what looked like sincerity.
“Sit down and shut up,” ordered John.
Nick gave a little bounce in place and grinned. “Say, have you been to that new restaurant, Al Pitarros?”
“The one that’s outside your radius, so I can eat a peaceful dinner with my wife, and no Nick Aster? Don’t ask me to take you there.”
“Will you take me there?”
“Go file last month’s expense reports,” said John, pointing and giving Nick a stern look.
“I would, but I’ve got som
e paint to watch dry,” retorted Nick.
“That’s it. Go get your hat. I’m taking you back to prison.”
Nick stood, retrieved his hat from the coat rack, and tossed it on John’s head with uncanny accuracy. “What?” he said, grinning in reply to John’s glare. “I said might bump it up to one in four.”
“Damn it, Nick. Come here, you cuddly badass idiot.”
Nick wrapped his arms around John and nearly squeezed the air out of his lungs. John hugged him, and patted his back. “One in five isn’t bad.”
Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story Page 56