Chapter Text
June was still shaking from those three gunshots. Nick had gone around the corner to confront two Guardians, and when the gun went off, she’d feared they had shot him. The sound was so unexpectedly loud, it hurt her teeth. But deeper than that was the sudden sharp shock of possibly losing him so abruptly. Her whole chest ached with the realization that if her lover was dead, it was because of her. He wouldn’t have been anywhere near that water park but for her.
She couldn’t keep asking him to risk his life for her, she told herself harshly. If he got caught…tortured, hanged, shot…the guilt would eat her alive. She begged God to let him be okay, vowing to never make him put himself in danger, if He would just protect her love this one last time.
She sagged with relief as Nick appeared unscathed a second later, holstering his pistol as he headed for the car. Understanding how scared she must be, he altered his trajectory to walk beside her. He put a hand on her lower back to support her, giving her a flashback of another time he’d touched that same spot. The day before Holly was born. Winter, not summer; Gilead, not the borderlands. But still, that same warm touch. She grabbed his arm for support, not caring that Moira and Luke were right there, the latter eyeing her like a jealous hawk. Nick herded them all into the car, and they sped away from the waterpark.
Going home in the back of a car
And your hand touches mine
When we're done making love and you look up
And give me those eyes
‘Cause all of the small things that you do
Are what remind me why I fell for you
And when we’re apart and I’m missing you
I close my eyes and all I see is you
And the small things you do…
--“Those Eyes,” New West
Nick felt simultaneously lighter and heavier now. Lighter, after finally being truthful with June, confessing that he still loved her and only her. Heavier with the weight of killing two Guardians. That younger one in particular, who’d looked at the Commander as some sort of hero until the moment Nick shot him right between his admiring eyes. Hardly the first young man Nick had killed, hardly the last. It never got easier.
As his car sped towards the Canadian border, Nick realized he’d murdered two men to protect Luke fucking Bankole. June’s husband, the winner of their love triangle. But June loved Luke, and Nick loved her, so he would defend whoever she needed him to. Keep June safe and keep her happy, no matter the personal cost to his ego or his safety.
Luke and Moira were chatting like children in the backseat, giddy now that their mission was over and they were out of danger. June, more subdued, sat beside him. It was a strange feeling for Nick: only wives were allowed to sit in the front seat of a car in Gilead. He’d driven with her plenty of times as a handmaid, but never had she been at his side like this. He liked the feeling. It was almost like they were in a free country, allowed to be partners. All day he’d felt that sense of partnership. Bonnie and Clyde in the waterpark.
He moved his hand to turn the car’s heater down a degree, then let his fingers brush her thigh. She responded right away as he hoped she might, letting her hand fall naturally against his. Neither looked at the other. No need. They were used to covert touches in front of clueless others. The car radio played a Canadian indie ballad. “When we’re done making love and you look up and give me those eyes,” the singer crooned, and Nick’s stomach flipped over. When June used to roll off of him, sleepy and satisfied, gazing at him with those sky-blue eyes…well. Nick would do literally anything for her. Kill anyone, do anything, go anywhere, damn the consequences.
There would be consequences tonight, Nick mused. When he got back home, his father-in-law Gabriel Wharton was going to rip him a new one, if Joseph Lawrence didn’t beat him to it. Or even Rose. They were all going to be seriously pissed at him. Diplomats from abroad were finally visiting New Bethlehem, and Nick had chosen the same day to go off and play search and rescue with June. Maybe Rose and Lawrence would cover for him, make up some bullshit excuse, but that wouldn’t placate Wharton for long. If there were spy drones or cameras that had caught Nick at the water park, his goose was going to be very cooked.
He’d have the entire trip back to New Bethlehem to come up with some sort of cover story. And anyway, spending the afternoon with June was worth it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her watching him intently. She squeezed his fingers. “Hey, what’s wrong?” she said, barely audible over the music.
Nick shrugged. “I’m just trying to figure out how I’m gonna explain this all-day absence when I get home.”
“Your wife’s gonna be mad if you miss dinner?” Luke asked. He had mentioned Rose several times so far. He really seemed to want to hammer home that particular topic, always emphasizing the word wife. Nick couldn’t really blame him. Luke was surely feeling insecure today. First June showed up with her baby daddy in tow, in order to save Luke’s ass and his mission. Then Nick killed two men without flinching. Luke might wave his pistol around like a badass, but he’d never shot anyone. It wasn’t in his nature.
Blaine chose not to answer Luke’s question about Rose. Instead, he glanced at Moira and said, “So, June tells me you’re from Detroit.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said. “How about you? You grow up in Boston?”
“No, I’m one of yours. From downriver. Delray, River Rouge, we moved around a little. Near Jefferson Avenue, mostly.”
Moira leaned forward in her seat. “Hold on, you’re a Detroiter?”
“Yeah.”
“Is there actually a part of the city called ‘downriver’?” Luke asked. “Sounds more like Alabama than Michigan.”
“There were factories along the Rouge River,” Nick explained. “My dad worked at one, ‘til he didn’t.” The plant shut down, and his father had shut down along with it. He’d turned to menial short-term work, scams, charity handouts…and the bottle.
“He was a factory worker?” Luke asked. Nick assumed he was trying to sound politely interested, but it came off like a condescending dick instead.
Apparently it sounded that way to Moira, too. “Hey, don’t knock it. That’s good solid work,” she chastised her friend. “Your cars and your parents’ cars were built in those factories.”
“No, I…yeah, of course.”
After an awkward pause, Nick said, “Which part of Detroit are you from, Moira?”
“Northwest. Near Palmer Park.”
“That’s a nice area. It’s strange, I feel like I’ve seen you before, but there’s no way we went to the same schools.”
Moira pursed her lips. She recognized him, too, and she knew where from: he used to drive Waterford to the brothel and hang out with the kitchen staff. “I worked in the Boston Jezebel’s for about two years.”
“That’s it.” He slapped the gear shift. “I knew I recognized you from somewhere.”
“She was a waitress in Jezebel’s,” Luke supplied. Nick looked puzzled by that comment; Moira’s eyes skipped guiltily away. June turned to give her a meaningful look.
“Okay,” Moira said, “I guess road trips mean Truth Time. I’ll go first. Uh, Luke, Jezebel’s isn’t a restaurant, like I told you.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s…” Moira took a deep breath. She hadn’t talked about that part of her life in years. “A brothel. For the Commanders. The old Boston Hyatt, it’s a whorehouse now.”
Luke squinted at her, then looked at June as he remembered something. “Our Hyatt?”
“Yeah, that one,” June said. The one they’d started their affair in. A terrible coincidence.
Looking back at Moira, Luke went on, “You were a waitress in a brothel?”
“No.” She shook her head sharply. “I was a…not a waitress. I worked there. As a sex worker.”
“What!” Aware that he was again sounding judgmental of others’ professions, Luke softened his tone. “That must’ve been terrible for you.”
“Yeah, I didn’t tell you before, ‘cause…well, I just, it doesn’t matter now. I don’t like to think about that time.”
“Yeah, sure.”
With nothing more to say on that topic, all four of them grew silent. After a few minutes of listening to the radio, Moira went back to the previous topic: Nick Blaine. He was the only new person in the car, and she was curious about this Eye and Commander that June nevertheless trusted enough to have a baby with. “So, what did your mom do, Nick?”
“She was a cook in a diner.”
“Oh, that’s why you were always hanging out in Jezebel’s kitchen with the cooks. You felt comfortable there.”
“Yeah, that…and I had a thing with Beth for a while.” He glanced at June. “Before I met you.”
“I know,” she said saucily. “When we were at Lawrence’s, we used to compare notes.”
That got a quick laugh out of him. “I don’t even want to know the details.”
Moira knew June still had some residual guilt about Beth’s death, so she steered the conversation back to the previous subject. “Did you help your mom out in the diner? Learn how to cook, all that?”
“Not much. She stopped working when I was eleven.” Nick had never been particularly verbose and didn’t want to tell his sad sob story to Moira or June’s husband, of all people. But it was a tediously slow two-hour drive back to the Canadian side of the border, and there was nothing else to do besides talk. Besides, he felt a new need to be known by June; he had never really shared much of his background with her before. This afternoon, he’d opened up to her more than he probably ever had. He was so tired of being a closed book, of lying and deceiving and hiding, even in his own house with his own wife. So, what the hell. “That year, my mother got hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street.”
“Jesus,” Luke sighed.
“I thought your mom left the family,” June whispered.
“Not then. I mean, she survived. But her pelvis was crushed and she couldn’t stand up all day as a cook anymore, so she went on disability. When her doctor stopped prescribing pain meds, she got hooked on other stuff. And uh, then she left us. I don’t know what happened to her.”
After a sober pause, Moira asked, “Your dad took care of you after that?”
“Uh, no, not really. Not very well, at least.” Nick didn’t want to elaborate on his late father. Alcohol, beatings, and screaming matches: that was his adolescence. June knew that, so he didn’t need to say more. “I mostly raised my little brother. Did a shitty job of it, though. Trust me, you guys are much, much better parents than I was.” Better than I am. Joshua dropped out of school and drank himself to death, wrapping his car around a tree. Nichole doesn’t know who I am, was afraid to even be held by me. And Rose is pregnant with a baby I don’t give a damn about, conceived in a wordless, loveless breeding that took less than two minutes.
Nick turned the music up to signify that he was done talking about his childhood.
Halfway through the song, though, he felt June’s fingertips brush against his arm. He glanced at her, his eyebrows raised in silent question. “That’s why you made a deal with Mark to come to the hospital,” she whispered. “Me getting hit by a car—it reminded you of her.”
“Yeah, it scared me,” Nick admitted.
She smiled gently. “I’m okay,” she mouthed at him.
“I know,” he mouthed back.