They'd been building a porch to run alongside Marty's place; nothing fancy – just a wooden frame knocked up over a deck made of old railway sleepers.
"Gonna need a winch for these, man," Rust says, hands on his hips, looking at the piles of timber dumped in the driveway.
"Where'd you get this stuff anyway?"
Marty gives up even trying to pull the end of one of the sleepers out of the pile. "A guy I know's doing his garden, found a bunch of tracks running down to some old jetty. Said if I wanted em, he'd drop em off."
"What guy's this?" Rust's looking at him with an expression Marty knows of old and has never been particularly fond of, so he hunkers down to look at beams, poking at them, testing for termites or rot. "Uh, Bobby Lutz. Ran into him at the drugstore a few days back."
"Bobby Lutz, huh."
Marty shrugs, straightening up to kick the end of a timber. "He's a friend."
Rust pulls out a cigarette, tapping it on the end of his pack. "And Bobby never knew shit about shit all these years he's been LT out here, huh. Never heard nothing. Never had anyone tell him to keep his head down and his nose out. Things as they are, that's mighty convenient."
Marty straightens, tips his hat back on his head, shading his eyes from the sun. "I known the guy twenty years, man. I don't believe it."
"Not wanting to believe it and not believing it are two separate things."
"Yeah well, in this case it's the first one, so stop busting my balls, okay? He told me to say hey to you, by the way."
"Well, be sure and tell him to go fuck himself." Rust shades his eyes, looking up at the house. "Got any rope?"
Marty's got some scaffolding from a few years back in the garage, and Rust rigs up a pulley system that they can raise the beams on, guide them over to where they need them.
Watching him work, wiry and grey haired, a cigarette dangling from his lip, Marty's reminded of that other side to Rust, the backwoods motherfucker who probably skinned his first racoon at three years old.
"So, uh," Marty says, as the first beam swings into position, "What was it like working them boats out in Alaska?"
After Rust could walk he kind of just stayed. It's been nearly six weeks, and Marty's still getting used to him talking to him almost like a human being.
"Cold," Rust grunts, pulling on the rope that swings the beam round to where Marty's waiting, hands up to catch it, guide it into position. "Very fuckin' cold."
"Yeah, I got that man, I mean what was it like? How long you stay out there? What'd you go out for?" Much as he can see Rust's reluctant to discuss it, Marty can't help himself – he's curious
"Two months at a time, sometimes, on the big trawlers. Where I was, we mostly we went in for crab. Sometimes some shrimp."
"Shrimp, huh? Here I was imaginin' you the great white hunter reclaimin' the frozen North and all the time you're fussing around with pots."
Rust gives him that look like he can't quite tell if Marty's fucking with him, and if he is, he's not quite sure whether he minds.
Marty can't not laugh, and Rust drops his head and sticks his finger up, but Marty sees the barest sign of a quirk round the lips. The slightest bit of warmth and the guy gets shy as a colt – the thing in Marty that always wants to agitate, that can never let shit just be, makes him want to push it, to get in closer for a better look, but mostly he reigns it in, backs off until Rust settles back down.
The first beam goes down with no trouble. Marty wipes the sweat off his face and helps Rust lash the rope around the next one, following what Rust tells him, stuff about distributing the load, using a knot that means the wood can't slip.
Marty gets into position, hands out ready to catch, while Rust starts up the winch. "From what I hear, those boats are deathtraps, am I right? Meant to have an accident rate of what, twenty times the national average?"
"Twenty-five."
There's a short silence, in which Rust carefully readjusts his work gloves and doesn't look at him.
"Jesus, man." It comes out quiet, because though Marty tries to talk to him about this shit more now, open him up a little, he still hates it. This is deep water; he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. And underneath that, he hates the thought of Rust being so alone.
Rust shrugs, casts off his discomfiture in a flash of fuck it. "Got a five inch gash along my thigh that'd make your eyes bleed. End of a shift, got caught on a line. Have to tell you, at that point I did think that was it."
Marty's got blood on the deck in his head, the fish-stink of ammonia in his nose, but he breathes through and focuses on the strong sun on the matchbox lines of the house next door, the grass underfoot and Rust standing there large as life cluttering up his yard and says "Shit, you really do have nine lives."
Rust looks up at the sky, and then at him and says "I guess I do."
The back of Marty's neck is prickling with heat and Rust's shirt has a V of sweat staining the front when, as they're lifting one of the lighter beams into place, Marty hears a snapping sound, sees two of the rope's plies snap and curl round the rest and the beam swing off-centre, spinning toward him.
"Marty, get the hell back–" Rust yells at the same time Marty shouts "Rust, let the fuck go–" and then Rust's yanking as hard as he can, and Marty's stumbling back and the beam's spinning away from him and slamming down onto the deck like a ten-ton coffin.
The force flings Rust backwards into the ground hard enough to drive every breath from his body, but then Marty's down beside him and thank the lord he's getting up on his elbows, squinting.
"Shit, you all right?"
Rust coughs, and struggles up, "...think so." He touches the back of his head and the fingers of his work gloves come away bloody.
Marty's hands are on Rust's shoulders, he turns him so he can look into his face, checking his eyes for clarity, "You hit your head?"
They snap up to his face, irritated, and Rust shrugs him off. "Get the fuck off, Marty."
Marty holds out a hand to pull him up. "Atta boy. Come on in let me take a look at that." He keeps hip by hip with Rust as they go into the cool, dim kitchen, but he seems steady on his feet, and judging by his tone – "Marty. Fuck the fuck off before I put your ass down in the dirt," when after settling him on the couch with a glass of water and getting him some ice wrapped in a towel, Marty's still fussing – he's still pretty much himself.
Marty wakes up to sun coming in through the windows and the sound of Rust moving around in the kitchen, cabinets rattling open and closed. He walks down the hall yawning, wondering what the hell he's doing in there, before he clocks the front door standing open.
"Hey man, you know the door's open?" he calls and as he rounds the corner Rust rushes him, slamming him back against the wall, hands aiming for his throat.
The phone falls from its hook and smashes on the floor, Marty's trying to grab and pin Rust's hands, which are everywhere at once, before a bitter punch to the stomach has him curling into himself, choking.
"Rust– What–" He gets his hand round one of Rust's wrists, then a blinding punch to the head rocks him, and he can't see, he can't see, he's trying to talk and keep his arms up around his head and ask him what – what the fuck – when Rust pins him to the wall, hands clamped round his wrists with a grip like iron.
His eyes are blank in a way that makes Marty's stomach do a greasy flip, and then Rust starts turning his wrist, and Rust is skinny but he is strong and as the pressure on the bone amps up and up Marty stops trying to talk and starts screaming.
The snap of the bone is a stab of fire, agony radiating up his arm, through his shoulder and chest and belly. He kicks out again and again, frantic, hitting shinbone and empty air, but Rust doesn't let go, keeps turning and turning his wrist, and the pain arcs up and up and up, no goddamn ceiling to it, and when Rust lets go he's on the verge of fainting, blue and black flashing behind his eyes.
He gulps air, punching out blindly, and he's off-balance when Rust's hands come round his throat, clamping down and down till Marty's blood is beating so hard in his lungs it burns.
Rust's breath is hot on his face, and Marty is digging his nails into Rust's arm hard enough to break that black bird open, scrabbling at his neck, aiming for his face, trying to slap him out of it. Rust leans back out of reach and the iron bands tighten. He can hear the dial tone beeping frantic.
Suffocating, tasting blood, he wants to say, "Please." He wants his fingers not to be weakening where they scrabble at Rust's, he wants the darkness thickening at the edges of his vision to retreat. He wants, he wants, he wants–
Cold water brings him back – he coughs and jerks, hand out over his face instinctively, jumps at the shrieking pain in his wrist.
"Well ain't you a pretty picture."
Marty's lashed to a kitchen chair pulled up against the radiator. Ankles are bound to the chair, which is in turn bound to the pipes. His good arm is pinned behind him, the other one free, throbbing where it lays.
Marty coughs. "What– Rust, what the fuck," Even as he says it he knows it's no good, dread is snaking through him like a river of poisonous shit.
"There's that name again." Rust is sitting cross-legged on the kitchen table, shaved clean. His head is cropped close, almost a buzz cut – it doesn't suit him. He's stuck a hunting knife Marty vaguely recognises as his in the surface and is spinning it around and around. Miniscule wood shavings spiral upward like smoke.
"You want to fill me in on who the fuck that is?"
Marty senses dark dropoffs in meaning in every direction. He licks his lips and coughs. "Rust?"
He shakes his shorn head. "No."
"Shit. Shit, shit shit." Dread is climbing the walls inside Marty, and he heaves one big breath and strikes out into the dark, scared – shit scared he's getting this wrong. "I think we met before, you and me. You remember?"
Crash leans back, tilting his head and taking a long look at him. "Floyd shirt," he says slow, his eyes filmy, voice a drawling monotone, "Night I ripped off Ginger." He leans in, eyes focusing, and Marty sees the pliers lying in his lap, knows he's meant to see them. "Which don't answer what I asked you."
"Marty. My name's Marty. I'm a friend."
Crash smiles, open and wide but not pleasant, not what you could call a good look, and it's so strange on Rust's face that Marty finds himself leaning back, right back as far as he can.
Crash hops down from the table to lean down face to face with him. "I don't know who you are, man, but you sure as hell ain't no friend of mine."
He's so close Marty can see the shape of his skull under the thin fuzz of hair at his temple, gets a wash of whiskey. Remembers the full fifth he had in the cabinet. Crash takes his hand, real gentle, and moves it back and forth, watching him, a thumb nestled in Marty's palm, sparking red beating agony with every turn.
Marty makes his voice slow and calm, tries to ignore that whole searchlight attention on him. "I'm sorry, I just – I woke up, I heard you movin' around in here – I thought you were someone else. My mistake."
Crash turns his gaze from Marty's wrists to his face, watching his eyes intently. Marty swallows and goes on.
"Look, you shaved your head you found that bump on the noggin, right?"
Something flickers in his face. It's tiny, but Marty grabs for it, holds to it like a lifeline.
"You're a little out of it right now, man, that's why you don't remember. I'm Marty. Remember?"
Crash leans back, steps a few paces away to perch on the edge of the kitchen table. Marty is struck by how fluidly he moves, a swagger that's almost a fall, not at all like Rust, who he's always thought walks like someone, somewhere is beating a damn funeral drum.
"You tickle me, man."
"How's that?" Marty licks his lips, tries to smile. "You're not going to peel my face off and feed me my dick and balls, are you? 'Cause honestly man, not even I can eat that much."
Crash leans against the table, hands on his knees, eyes fixing Marty, hot and red-rimmed and wild, and Marty's memory snags on Rust swaying on his doorstep, clutching a five-dollar bouquet like a talisman.
"Me, I don't have friends. Now what I see–" he lifts up his shirt to show the knitted together gash in Rust's stomach, ugly, pink and puckered – "is something went down, real recent like, and I got one big fuckin' hole in my memory and another in my guts. So how about you fill me in 'fore I kill you?"
"You don't wanna kill me, Crash–" keep him talking, keep him talking –
"So you do know my name–"
"Yeah I know your name, asshole–" It's too sudden to duck; ringing pain splits his head and he tastes blood – his lip's busted open and his nose is bleeding.
"Goddamn it," he spits, kicking against the chair. "Fuck you, fuck you. Goddamn it."
"Manners, motherfucker." Crash has the knife in his hands; he starts cleaning his nails.
"Okay. Okay, fuck." Marty tries to reign in his temper. "You ripped off Ginger pretty bad. He was pissed. You think that wasn't gonna come back on you? Shit. That's where that little present," he jerks his head toward it, "came from."
"And of course, me bein' the decent stand up guy I am, I got mixed up in this shit too while you're bleeding out on the floor, and he give me a little reminder too. Check me out if you don't believe me. Axe to the fuckin' chest, trying to save your skinny ass."
After all this time Marty prides himself that he can tell by looking at Rust, if not what he's thinking, what he's feeling. He can play it as stone-faced as he like, it's loud and clear in how he holds himself, in the slope of his shoulders, whether he's stewing over something, or pissed at him, or fixing to throw a punch. Marty cannot read Crash. He can feel sweat beading on his face; his heart is hammering.
"Look man, you're here because you're lyin' low. I am your friend. The redneck burnout getup is your fuckin' cover – which nice one for blowin' by the way, you look like a fuckin' buzzard – and is that shit all over my sink right now? It better not be when I go back in there."
He's babbling – he tries to focus.
"Look, when I called you Rust, before. You know the guy I mean, you seen him around – half Alaska, half Texas, fucked up skinny little shit. You know the guy I mean?"
Crash blinks slow a couple of times, his eyes get hazy, like he's listening to something far away. Marty's heart leaps.
"I do believe I do."
"Yeah, well, there's more than a passin' fucking resemblance between the two of you. Shit, you could be cousins. So that's who you're going as right now, while all this shit blows over. And you got that clock on the noggin yesterday, and I wake up this morning and my buddy here's got me all trussed up like a piñata. So you can see how I'm not having the best day of my life."
Without breaking his gaze, Crash lifts himself back up onto the table, arranging himself cross-legged. He reaches down to one of the chairs out of Marty's line of sight, and pulls up that fifth.
"You'll excuse me if I take some time to digest." It's just over half empty, and Crash unscrews the cap, and takes a few long swallows.
"You sure are big on manners," Marty says, unable to shut the fuck up. Maybe he can talk himself out of the bullet he's pretty sure has his name on it if Rust doesn't wake the fuck up soon.
"Honour amongst thieves," Crash says, and toasts the bottle at him.
"Come on man, does it look like I'm keepin' you against your will, here? Don't I get any of that?"
Crash shakes his head; his stare is intense, strung out. Some part of him is always tapping or rattling; fingers, foot – at odds with that slow, thick drawl. "You talk like you know me. The rest I got to think on."
He doesn't say another word for fifteen minutes, in which he smokes and works his way down the bottle by an inch.
Marty watches Rust's skinny chest rise and fall, watches his adam's apple bob with every swallow.
He's been trying to give Rust his dignity with the drinking, to stay the fuck out of it as much as possible.
He hasn't cleared the house of all booze. He doesn't mention it when Rust drinks eight Lone Star on a Tuesday afternoon sitting out back staring at nothing and then says not a damn word all evening. Marty makes hot wings and stick-to-the-ribs mashed potatoes and eyeballs him till he eats it all – or most of it.
And maybe he's a coward or maybe it really is just none of his goddamn business, but either way Rust's too fucking skinny right now to handle that much, and the urge to say something, to tell him to cool it on that shit, is burning up inside him.
Crash catches his eye, a flash of contempt bright and hot; Marty hates that look on Rust's face."You my sponsor?"
"Friend." Marty enunciates the word clearly, nods toward the back of the kitchen. "You got pain, your meds are in the drawer over there. Second from the top."
Maybe it'll balance the case in his favour. Maybe Crash'll take enough that he passes the fuck out and Marty can get loose somehow or scream the place down till some neighbours hear and then they can pump Crash's stomach and lock him up till Rust's back in the building.
He pushes thoughts about what they do after this away. He'll work it out. They'll work it out. As long as that bullet don't find him first.
"These?" Crash slips the bottle out of his pocket, rattles them. He looks at the label, considering, "Heavy shit. Just the way I like it." He takes the top off with his mouth, spits it out to rattle on the floor, necks two.
He washes them down with whiskey, grunts with pleasure in a way that Marty has never seen Rust take pleasure in anything, stretches back out on the table like a cat. "I got a question for you, man. Where's Ginger in all this? Sounds like he won that little tussle."
Marty takes a breath, and a chance, and says "I shot him. Right after he ran you through. Bust his head like a grape."
Something flickers in Crash's face, gone before Marty can read it.
"Hm."
"It's more Miles we're worrying about right now," Marty says, and then loses the thread of what he was going to say as Crash picks up the pliers and slides himself off the table to move in front of him.
Crash straddles his lap, puts a hand out to start undoing Marty's shirt buttons, and when the pliers slow the job down he puts them in his mouth, holds them there, his eyes locked on the skin he's baring inch by inch till he hits the scar, blunt and red and indented, over Marty's heart.
Crash traces it, inspecting, and Marty freezes, unable to move, icewater slipping down his spine. Crash pulls up his own shirt, leans back to compare, turns his head and spits out the pliers.
"Looks about right," he says.
Marty is aware that he's trembling, clenches his teeth against it. "Great," he says, "Now could you get off of me, please."
Crash cocks his head at him, and Marty has never felt so sorry for anyone who was ever in the box with Rust Cohle.
Crash's hand slips inside Marty's shirt, traces his ribs, slow and soft. "Now why in the hell would I want to do that?"
Marty swallows, and his heart is huge in his chest, he is drowning, he cannot get enough air. Crash laughs low in his throat, and his fingers keep stroking, gentle, slow.
Marty closes his eyes, shutting it down, shutting everything right the fuck down until it's just his breath in his lungs and his heart beating wild in his chest, his wrist throbbing at his side. "Man, this is not the way it is."
He feels Crash's breath hit his face before he feels his lips on his mouth, delicate, pressing soft and sweet. He smells like Rust, like smoke and cedar, and then Crash opens his mouth, trying to nudge his lips apart, wet and soft, and Marty jerks away sharply.
"Quit it."
"Now don't try and tell me you didn't like that." Crash's palm is flat to his skin, he drags it up and down, dipping it lower and lower each time. "Shit, I know you did."
Marty shakes his head; he is not going to open his eyes. He will not. "I tell you man, it ain't like that."
"The fuck you know, huh?" Crash hums in his throat. "You don't know shit. Guys like you? I met a hundred. Always want something."
He presses in close, nuzzles Marty's face, butting his mouth, his nose insistently against Marty's.
"Got your rescuer complex – you're a good guy, huh? One standup motherfucker. Not just some pig into fucking junkies."
Marty opens his eyes, opens his mouth to tell him to fuck the fuck off because he is getting pissed now, but the look on Crash's – Rust's – face, a mockery of tenderness, stops him dead.
"Shit, look at you. You kill Ginger for me?"
This time when Crash kisses him he doesn't close his mouth. He doesn't do anything. He sits still, and puts who he is, who he knows he is, away inside somewhere else, and when Crash floods his tongue into his mouth, pressing up against him, fingers unpicking the buttons of his jeans one – two – three – he breathes ragged against the smell of him – smoke, cedar – and tries to make his mind a perfect, white blank.
"Fuck you," Marty hisses, "Fuck you."
It's muffled because his face is butted up against Crash's shoulder, and his face is wet and his throat is burning but damn it he is hard, he is so hard he is throbbing with it. Crash spits in his palm, slips his hand around his dick and squeezes, tight and slow, and Marty jerks, a groundswell heat bleeding up through him.
It's bitter and short, and Marty loses it once when Crash jars his wrist, but then Crash is pressing him back into the chair with his body, stumbling his lips down his throat and sucking, warm and wet, touching him all over, fingers up his shirt, on his chest, cradling the back of his head. Crash slides down onto his knees and Marty chokes out "Don't," but his hips jump up to make him a liar, and when Crash puts his mouth around him he moans.
Marty comes with his eyes screwed shut, shuddering and swearing, and he doesn't open them to see, but he hears it when Crash swallows, flinches and hates himself for it when he buttons him back up.
When he's got himself together enough to look up Crash catches his eye. "Friend my ass," he says, and gets up, adjusting himself under his jeans.
"Fuck you," Marty says, again, like the words have any meaning, and Crash picks up the bottle and the pills, shoves them in a bag that Marty knows in his bones has also got every red cent he had in the house in it, and slams the door behind him.
The cold wakes Rust up, fingers of damp chill in his muscles pulling him into consciousness. The smell of dead leaves, mould. He opens his eyes.
He's doing 70 down the highway, fingers unsteady on the steering wheel, numbers on the gauge slipping up and down, blurry – a horn blasts as a Chevy overtakes him. The owner flips him the bird, and as their windows draw level the other guy stops and stares, pulls his hand back in.
He moves off up ahead, and Rust wipes his mouth, wipes his face and neck and puts his finger on his pulse – just habit – chatter in his head too loud to count.
The ground under him stank of damp and leaves. Rustle of them like voices as he sat up. Dome above, arching into the sky. Empty and dark, cold as a tomb.
His hands and shirt were spattered with blood.
He remembers getting up, then going down again hard, his balance off. Suddenly recognising unfamiliar cold against his head, raising his hands to touch his skull, finding just a fine prickle against his fingertips, and panic then, panic reaching though him, clutching like roots.
Getting out of the maze is a blur of sticks and leaves, small scratches stinging his face and arms, the ground coming up at him time and time again, and a beetle shining like a jewel, inches from his spread fingers.
Next the red sky blinding him, high weeds and the broken down shack, and his heart leaping when he sees his truck through the trees. It's open, and the cigarette smell, the maps and garbage tossed in the passenger stairwell felt like safety, like a hand closing around him. He finds the keys on the dash and locks the doors and breathes.
There's a black bag on the passenger seat – he rifles through and pulls out bottles of pills, cash, a knife. He flips down the mirror to a face he hasn't seen in a long time and – pills, cash, knife – a half-formed suspicion comes together.
Now he's watching the white lines that demarcate the lanes he can use and those which if he passes into, spell disaster. He is aware that he is not good to drive.
There's a sick, tight pain in his head that along with the body ache and the sweating, spells hangover. Booze and barbiturates; nothing in the bag or on his skin suggests anything else. A bilious yellow smear rolls up the horizon behind him, breaks over the car in a solid wash, and disappears.
The last real thing he remembers was Marty yelling down the hall at him to wake him in the morning.
His dad taught him to drive when he was fourteen, running his battered old military surplus jeep around and around in the rough field behind their place.
Rust can still feel the wheel juddering in his hands as he steered it round bushes and over rocks, the jump in the pit of his stomach as they bumped over a dip in the ground.
"Careful," his pop had said as they came round a stand of trees, and put his hand out to tug the wheel back.
"Watch that man."
"Yessir," Rust had said, and made a wide circle around empty air as Travis raised a hand to salute.
He came out of it later, like he always did, and they cleaned their boots – hard brush and tinned black polish on newspaper – with him eyeballing Rust the whole time. "You humouring me now, kid? That where we at?"
"Pop, I was drivin'."
The look he gave him then. The way he put his boot down next to its pair, shining black like oil. The same fall he stopped waiting for him every night at the door as he walked up the trail after school.
It's just gone dusk as Rust enters Marty's neighbourhood. As he pulls in to the kerb the sight of the house – dark windows, no movement – sinks into his belly like a lead ball.
He sits quiet for a few minutes. He thinks about Marty's colt and he thinks about Alaska.
The gun, as it isn't in the bag, may still be in the small safe in Marty's office. A few hours of concentrated effort and he can get it out, walk out back and press it to his temple and then – but whatever way he cuts it, it'll be messy.
He thinks of the three women who have a claim on loving Marty and the thought burns, scalds him from the inside out, makes him press his balled up fists to his eyes until he sees stars burst and stream out into colour and pattern.
He gets out of the truck.
He thinks about the heavy tarp he knows is dumped in a corner of the garage, how many miles he could make to the gallon and how far they could get before the inevitable.
Far enough, his mind answers him. A bridge over white water, somewhere wild to dispose of everything, finally. He could try to write, though there's no explanation that makes sense. But it would be something.
The door is slightly ajar, a crack of dark. He pushes it open and steps inside.
The chair setup calls up ghosts – people who deserved everything they got, people who crossed and double crossed and ran with a bad fucking crowd, people who lost teeth and fingernails to hammer and pliers – but he does not allow himself to think, or to breathe, just moves across the floor and puts his hand out to Marty's neck –
– who starts awake like a bomb's gone off and stares up at him ragged and bloody and says, "Jesus– Jesus. Are you you? Are you you again?"
Rust sags to the ground in front of Marty like his legs have given out. "Fuck," he says, and breathes through his hands over his face for a bit.
Marty closes his eyes, bright waves of exhaustion and relief rolling over him. "You wanna let me out, man?"
Rust seems to wake up, snapping alert. "Yeah. Yeah."
He checks the bonds with a quick look and then is up and into the kitchen to get a knife. When he gets back he puts his arms around Marty to get to the rope at his back, and when Rust slips the knife between it and his skin and slices it with one sharp upward movement Marty clenches his jaw and does not flinch.
He's free in under ten seconds, and he flexes his limbs and looks at Rust slumped in front of him, waxy and pale, faintly trembling. "You look like you're gonna puke."
"The fuck did I take?" Rust shakes his head, breathes in, looks up at him so sudden Marty's pinned by his eyes. "The fuck did I do?" His eyes go to Marty's wrist, swollen and purple, and then to his neck, his chest, and his hand follows, lighting on Marty's collar, pushing it aside – abruptly Marty realises his shirt is still hanging open, quickly pulls it closed
"You look like shit," he says. "And I hate to say this, but we need to take a trip to the ER. Gonna need to change your shirt."
In the end Marty washes his face one-handed, pulls on a sweater with a high neck; Rust takes a shower. Marty sits on the edge of his bed, ribs starting to ache, and listens to the water run, thinking of the system they worked out in the days after the hospital break that Rust couldn't quite stand on his own.
Rust standing in the tub, Marty the other side of the curtain with his back turned, Rust holding onto his shoulder, tighter than his lazy tone would suggest. "Don't get used to this, now."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Marty'd said. Listening, under Rust's grunts and hisses of frustration, for the sound of pain.
"Story?" he asks in the cab, low, so the driver can't hear.
Like he expects Rust to be able to come up with one that explains how he looks like he had the shit kicked out of him, and Rust looks like, well, like nothing so much as a junkie coming down hard. When Rust doesn't answer, not looking at him, but out the window into the dark, Marty finishes the thought for him.
"Okay, let's just go with the deck thing. You're getting your head checked by the way, so don't argue with me when we get there."
Rust's head comes up. "M–"
"Not a request Rust," and it comes out cold, so in the strained seconds after he says, "We'll get out as soon as, all right?"
Marty hisses through his teeth when the doctor touches his wrist.
"Nasty break." She looks at the x-ray again, and gives him a shot of something that makes him feel warm and stretched like taffy while she sets it. In that moment, insulated from the pain but still feeling the grinding and shifting of bone, he realises he's expecting to walk out into the waiting area where he left Rust after his CT and find the chair empty.
Must be the drugs talking, because when he gets out and Rust is still sitting there, sweating and swallowing, over and over, Marty slumps down beside him and the first thing out of his mouth is: "I half-figured I'd come out here and you'd have taken off."
Rust blinks slow, his knuckles in his mouth. "Thought on it."
His eyes go to the blue cast binding Marty's forearm.
"You can autograph it later," Marty says, "I'm doped up to the eyeballs here, let's get a cab."
It's past two by the time they get back; Marty dozes with his forehead bumping against the car window. He's so tired all he wants to do is sleep, but Rust looks wan and pale and he thinks they could both use a little normality, so he heads towards the kitchen saying, "Want anything?"
Rust shakes his head, heading for the couch, and Marty makes a green tea and a decaf coffee and two plates of toast.
He puts them down on the coffee table and takes a seat next to Rust, who is closed off into tight lines, his head in his hands, jaw clenched and eyes closed.
Marty drinks a little of his tea, eats a few bites of toast, then feels stupid and stops.
"Where'd you wake up?"
"Where'd you think?"
That makes him wince. "Remember anything?"
"Nope." The echo of how he says that makes Marty's stomach clench – he knows how this conversation goes, and he knows as sure as he knows his own name that he will fight tooth and goddamn nail to stop it happening again.
Rust takes a breath and opens his eyes, straightening, but not looking at him.
"You know I can't stay."
"I know that's what you're thinking, yeah." But it's bullshit.
"Man, I got enough blood–" Rust stops, clears his throat. "I ain't good for people, Marty. Being around people."
"Well lucky for you," Marty says evenly, and he has to grip the cushion under his hand hard because otherwise he's gonna reach out to grab Rust's shoulders and shake him, "I ain't 'people'. C'mon, man. All we've been through, I know your line on reality slips off its hook now and again. You really think I don't know you're a psych-ticket? Shit, I'm surprised they never locked you up."
He feels Rust go very still.
"North Shore psychiatric hospital," he says. "Two months. After I caught those three in my side, before I caught Louisiana."
This time Marty can't stop himself. "Oh, goddamn." He puts a hand out to Rust's shoulder, pulls it along in what's almost a stroke before he catches himself and switches to a hard squeeze. "Goddamn. I am sorry, man."
Rust shakes his head, twitches him off after a few seconds and blows a plume of smoke to the ceiling.
"Nah, man. I don't know why the fuck I'm surprised. Crazy's in my genes."
The silence stretches out and out, and Marty plays with the tassle on the edge of a cushion for something to do with his hands.
"You know," he tries after a little while. "I had a great-uncle got hit on the head after a chicken coop fell on him – two hours he thought he was Shirley Bassey. Tunes and all."
Rust rubs a hand over his eyes, laughs, then he sits back into the couch and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling.
"What the fuck happened, Marty?"
Marty gives him an edited outline, not blow by blow but not skeletal either, enough so that when he skims over the part he's stashed in a lead-lined box and stuffed deep, deep down, the part that sits leaking under his ribs, bleeding out into his chest, it doesn't seem strange.
But when he finishes up Rust is looking at him with those hard, clear eyes, and he knows as well as Rust does that there is a lean to the telling that points toward omission.
Before Rust can open his mouth Marty says, "Can we just forget about it?" leaving it there in his voice what he's really asking for, and sure enough Rust takes it up like a stone or a shell Marty's passed him, and nods.
Whatever he assumes, Marty tells himself it doesn't matter.
Marty's about to suggest they hit the hay when Rust gets up, goes into the kitchen and comes back with three bottles of beer. He sits down and passes one to Marty, tips the other back for a few long swallows, and slides the second down onto the floor by his side of the couch, out of Marty's line of sight.
"Pass me the remote?" Marty says, rather than any of the things he might have clattering around inside him to say – coward – flips on an old black and white, and falls asleep almost instantly. At some point he feels a tug on his shoulder, and moves obediently sideways into it.
Marty wakes up in the morning full length on the couch, the sun hot and bright against the shades.
He gets up, wincing at the pain in his ribs, pain already nagging hot up along his wrist, and looks around for Rust.
He finds him in the yard in sweatpants and a flannel shirt, smoking and sitting on the pile of timber, one leg pulled up against his body.
"Hey," Marty says.
"Hey," Rust says back, and Marty comes over to sit next to him.
Rust's feet are bare, and looking at them resting in the grass, naked and as oddly graceful as the rest of him, Marty both wants to ask about Ginger, and also never to think about the fucker ever again. Wants to know about the psych ward, and never have to imagine Rust in there, all fucking alone.
Instead, he puts an arm around Rust's shoulders, jerks his head at the half-built deck and says, "You think we can get this thing going again?"
"Can't see why not," Rust says, and doesn't shake him off till he finishes his smoke and they get up to go inside.
It's been a week, and Marty's only going a little crazy.
The deck is coming along, slower now he's one-handed. Rust has drawn a black bird up Marty's cast to match his own, wings that arc around the curve like they're about to take off. Marty sat and watched while he did it, barely breathing, his arm resting in Rust's lap, Rust's fingers turning his arm round as he worked, gentle and light.
Marty loves it, has looked at it so often and so long he knows each feather off by heart, the strong wings, the dark, liquid-looking little eye.
"Now that ain't half bad," is all he said when Rust finished up, turning it this way and that to get a better look.
Marty makes food, Rust obediently eats it, then fucks off to the other end of the house to read, or outside to drink his ass off. Marty can't shake the feeling that Rust's fixing to go but can't think of a way to do it, and it scares him how much he hates that idea, how much it twists his stomach up every time Rust pauses too long before saying something.
He's not sleeping too good. He keeps dreaming of that fucking place, Rust disappearing off into the dark, him trying to follow and coming up against banks of devil's nests, getting turned around and closed in and ending up waking up breathing hard, Rust's name on his tongue.
He dreams one night of Crash, who lies next to him in his ratty leather jacket and whispers in his ear, "Now you gonna come quietly, cowboy?" and skips his hand down Marty's thigh. He wakes from that one with his heart hammering in his ears and so close, so fucking close it's almost painful, and with just a few short, sharp strokes, he's coming like a white wave, like he's dying, his teeth clenched hard in his forearm to muffle himself.
One night he's making pasta and the jar slips out of his hand and sauce spills down his bird, and before he knows what he's doing he's yelling "Shit, shit, shit!" and ripping off paper towels to press to it, and then Rust is in the kitchen looking like he doesn't know who he needs to beat the shit out of, yelling, "What?
What? What the fuck?"
"Nothing – nothing man." Marty gestures to the sauce all over the floor, but the towels are in his hands, and he's holding them to his bird.
Rust looks at him strange, turns on his heel, and goes back to the living room without a word.
"Gonna have to be takeout," Marty yells after him, trying for causal, and puts his burning face in his hands.
Rust is in a foul mood; every time Marty looks around he's holding a beer bottle to his forehead, and just says, "Headache," in a tone that says fuck off, when Marty mentions it.
It's coming down hard outside, one of those summer thunderstorms that make the air feel thick and heavy, and the TV's busted. Marty's decided to take a look, even though he's only got a vague idea what it is he should be looking for, and is trying to jimmy the back casing off.
"Hey man, you grab me a screwdriver?"
"Hang on."
Marty fiddles around with the back of the TV, hearing Rust rattling around in the toolbox, then nothing. Marty tries to pry the edge open – it's jammed tight.
"Rust?" No response.
He goes into the kitchen and Rust is kneeling on the floor by the toolbox, and he's holding the pliers. He's pale and clammy, and when his eyes meet Marty's there's full knowledge in them, and Marty feels all the air rush from his lungs.
He backs away, turns his back because he cannot look at Rust, he cannot look at him right now, his heart is beating too hard and he cannot catch his breath.
He puts his hand over his eyes and is trying to get himself together enough to speak when he feels Rust behind him, feels him touch his shoulder, once, light. "Marty."
He coughs a few times, gets himself nearly under control. "Uh, yeah. Yeah."
He turns around and Rust is pale but collected and the look on his face is the one that says I have to go and I'm sorry and it burns into his gut.
He tries to smile. "What's a-" little blow job between friends?
Rust puts his hand on his arm, like he's trying to steady him, like he's saying I'm here, and the solid warmth of it breaks him, and all he can choke out is "Oh, shit," before his hand comes up to cover his face, and Rust pulls him in.
Rust's arms come tight around his back, and Marty presses his face into his shoulder, his good hand knotted in the back of Rust's shirt. "I am so sorry," he whispers, "I am so fucking sorry."
"The fuck are you sorry for," Rust murmurs in his ear, and Marty can hear his heartbeat, can feel how shaky he is in his arms and without thinking he slides his fingers into Rust's hair – soft, soft – and cups his skull like it is the most precious thing, which it is, because it's where he lives.
He feels it when Rust tenses against him, the lines of his body shifting, and all Marty has in him to say is, "Please don't fuckin' go."
Rust pulls back to look at him, the look in his eyes matching the tone of his voice when he says "Marty–" a warning, a warding off, a hand spreading out over Marty's chest, gently holding him back – but Marty ain't good at impulse control and never has been, and he reaches across the inches between them and kisses him anyway.
He cups Rust's face, fingers on his cheek, and this is Rust, it's Rust, it's his breath against his skin, and his lips and his goddamn soft hair, and Marty tries to put everything he's got into it, everything he has, but Rust stands like he's frozen, breathing soft and shallow, still as stone.
It's no good, and with a feeling of loss so deep and dark it makes his head spin Marty takes his hands off him, hanging down empty by his sides, and starts to back away.
But Rust comes after him, moves with him, and his eyes are hot and focused, and when his mouth finds Marty's his lips open almost instantly, and Marty's making this sound, this stupid little sound he should be embarrassed by but he's not, and Rust curls into him like everything good in the world, and he has him and he's got him and fuck everything else, he doesn't give a damn if the house burns down.
"Hey," he mutters after a while. Rust's forehead is resting against his. They're swaying against each other like two drunks on a street corner.
"What?" Rust tenses, and Marty runs his hands down his back, digging his fingers down into the tight muscles till Rust leans in against him, gone liquid, his eyes closed, his head lolling forward. Marty is planning to never ever stop himself touching Rust again when it looks like he wants it or needs it.
"You all right?" There is a weird sense of unreality that comes with him asking Rust that question.
"Uh, yeah." Rust seems to feel it too. "Yeah."
Marty's grinning. "This is weird, right? It's weird."
Rust backs up from him then. "What is this exactly, Marty?"
"It's..." he waves a hand between them, settles with it on Rust's hip, finds he can't look him in the eye, just looks at his hand on the plaid instead, rubbing his thumb back and forth over the fabric, over the sharp contour. "It's you, man. It's just you."
"Since when?" Rust's not pushing him off, but not responding either, and Marty gets his fingers under his shirt, pushes the fabric up. Rust's breath draws in sharply as Marty traces his hipbone, his stomach.
"Dunno," he says, and drops down to his knees so his lips can follow his fingers, "A while."
Rust jerks when he kisses his scar, ridged tissue strange under his lips, hisses when Marty nuzzles his face into his stomach, when he gives into temptation and licks it, down low under his belly button.
"Hey," Rust says, and his voice is unsteady, his hands coming to Marty's shoulders. Marty pushes him gently back against the kitchen table, and nuzzles his face against his crotch, breathing in denim and pulling at the zip and feeling Rust hard under the fabric.
"Suck your dick, man," he mutters, like it's not obvious, but air is rushing in his ears and Rust's thighs are trembling where he's perched against the edge of the table and as his jeans come down Marty touches his leg, strokes it soft and easy as he gets his mouth round his cock.
"Jesus," Rust gasps, and Marty thinks of the best blowjobs he's ever had – in cars, in perfumed apartments, in bed – and tries to do the same. His fingers find the long jagged scar snaking up Rust's thigh, and he puts his palm flat against it, holds it, like he can take it and make it his.
Rust's muscles are jumping, trembling, and when Marty feels him about to come he sucks and sucks, and Rust makes a noise that bleeds down into him like fire, and when he loses it he folds down into Marty, gripping his shoulders like they're the only thing holding him up.
"Fuck. Fuck me," he says, eyes closed, breathing hard, and Marty loves the way his pulse beats at the base of his throat, wants to do every single thing he can think of to make him look like that again. Rust looks down at him then, his hand gripping the back of Marty's neck. "Yeah, Marty?"
"Hell fuckin' yeah," Marty says, and turns his head a few inches to kiss his arm, seeing feathers out of the corner of his eye, catching wings made of ink.