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The moment of wakefulness before reality dawns is usually the best part of Rust’s day. That’s been the rule of his life. There were moments that were different, moments of soft hair and smooth limbs, or of high, exited voices and someone bouncing on the bed.
Exceptions proving the rule.
He blinks awake, staring at the off-white ceiling. He can hear Marty, snoring down on the ground. Like a guard dog lying in wait, out of some strange sense of affection. He really should figure out Marty’s angle, what he wants from Rust and what he’s going to get.
It’s really hard to bring his mind together right now. Every time he grasps at a thought, it slips away. No doubt due to all these pills Marty handed him with such hope yesterday. Rust took them, because more drugs at this point can hardly change much. These are painkillers and antibiotics and other things Rust didn’t bother remembering, but they’re not that different from nicotine and alcohol and cocaine. The biggest difference is the effect they have on the world – he feels clearer after his cigarettes, less real after his fifth drink, and on fire after that first, wonderful hit. These pills drag him down, yet another tether to a world Rust is still angry at being born into, a body he never asked for.
Rust’s fingers twitch with the need to light up, and he glances instinctively around. The packet of cigarettes Marty bought for him – stupid fucking ribbon and all – lies on the bedside table. He can’t see a lighter though, and all his possessions are lying in a hospital or on the floor of a shitty alcohol-soaked apartment. Marty doesn’t smoke, not now. Rust wonders if he could persuade him to go out and get a lighter, another pack of cigarettes. How that conversation would go, how long Marty would dance around the fact that he doesn’t think he can leave Rust alone without returning to find him dead in the bathtub.
Rust doesn’t want to die, not right now. That doesn’t mean he won’t want it tomorrow, or in a few hours. Part of him is still down in Carcosa, and he’s not sure how much of him is left, or what he wants back. The universe ruined his best laid plans once again, when it let Martin Hart drag him out of the dust in which he was dying, back to the land of the living.
This is why Rust doesn’t let himself make plans.
Rust stares at the ceiling until Marty awakes, one hand drifting idly down the chart the edges of one of his new scars. It’s a mass of twisted and angry flesh, sewn neatly together with black stiches. It’s oddly pleasing to finally have some physical manifestation of all of this, his very own mark of the Yellow King. For too many years all of this has been a storm inside his head, words and images adding up to not quite enough. Images flashing behind his eyelids on nights when sleep would never come.
When Marty does finally get up, Rust’s eyes find the hesitancy in his movement and his bent stance that betray the effect sleeping on the floor has had on his back. He refrains from commenting as an offering to this strange new peace that they’ve built. Instead he voices his desire for a smoke and perhaps, a pair of pants. Marty obliges both with less resistance than Rust anticipates, though he does draw the line at Rust smoking in the house.
“Jesus, Rust, it’s a fucking rental.”
For a moment Rust thinks Marty is going to try and help him put the pair of borrowed tracksuit pants on, but Marty only hovers for a moment. Rust struggles into them and forgoes a shirt entirely. It’s warm enough, and the idea of some sun on his skin appeals.
Marty shoos Rust outside with a packet of matches, a wary eye on him all the time as he goes back in to make breakfast. Rust lights his cigarette slowly and deliberately, letting the first tendrils of smoke curl into his lungs. He feels Marty’s eyes heavy on his back through the kitchen window, but he finds he doesn’t mind it.
Marty returns with food, pushes a plate into Rust’s lap. They sit outside together, watching the sun climb higher in the sky. It’s an odd kind of peace, drawn more from exhaustion than understanding. Still, peace by any method is better than the turbulent days they’ve both got behind them.
Rust lights his second cigarette and looks over at Marty, studies him boldly. His hair is grey and thinning, but he still has the solid shoulders and strong jaw that made it easy to pick up in bars all those years ago. After a moment Marty catches him looking and stares back, everything a challenge. Rust had never felt moved by a sense of machismo, always felt vaguely curious about how it seemed to control Marty. Now there’s something softer in Marty’s eyes though, a question that he’s been asking ever since Rust woke up in hospital.
“You gonna watch me forever, Marty?”
“I dunno, you need watching?” Marty doesn’t move his eyes, not put off my Rust’s customary approach. “Last time I let you out of my sight, things didn’t go down so well”.
Rust inclines his head at this, not quite agreement, but perhaps conceding the point. It gives Marty something to do, he reasons in his head. Better to have someone else to think about, in this tiny grey-walled box. Maybe he lets Marty fuss a little while longer. After all, it’s not like Rust has anywhere to be.
“How’s the-“ Marty waves a hand in the vague direction of Rust’s wounds. Rust shrugs, tipping his head back to exhale.
“All my insides are where they’re supposed to be” He allows eventually “They stitched me up pretty good.”. Marty’s eyes travel down to the gaze that covers Rust’s stomach, get stuck there like he can’t bring himself to look away.
“You know, I talked to the guy that brought us in, in the hospital” Marty says slowly “I was getting discharged that day and I guess he wanted to know how things turned out. 17 years on the ambulances, he said he had. Reckoned he’d got pretty good at knowing if someone’d make it or not, as soon as he laid eyes on them.”
Rust nods – he can see where this is going. Some very Marty point about survival or destiny, something that he tells himself to make reality softer.
“He said he knew I was going to make it, that I was spouting some bullshit on the ride to the hospital. God knows I don’t remember that. But then I told him that you had just woken up, and he was real surprised.” Marty finally looks away from Rust’s wound, scanning the backyard. “17 years and he was sure you were done for. Hell, I was sittin’ there and I was fuckin’ certain you weren’t gonna make it”
“What’r you getting at, Marty?” That’s certainly not the direction Rust expected him to take.
“I dunno, I dunno. Maybe I’m just happy you did, ok?” Marty is defensive, like admitting he’s happy someone didn’t die is too soft for him.
“Maybe I just never learned how to fulfil expectations” Rust returns, pushing back before he sees the look on Marty’s face, emotion written there plainly for anyone to see.
It hits him with a force that almost knock the air from his lungs, how much that hurt Marty. To sit there and try and stop the bleeding while being absolutely certain that his efforts were in vain, and that he was watching Rust die.
A pang of guilt hits him, forces him to look away, look at anything but Marty. Rust knew when he went down into Carcosa he was going there to die, to drag that fucker into hell with him. He’d thought of it so much that any fear or sadness had long since bled out, and there was only relief. He’d taken Marty with him though, pulled him into the darkness as a backup, a gun to finish whatever Rust started. He hadn’t thought about the after, for him or for anyone else.
When they go back inside Rust stretches an arm out experimentally, and sure enough Marty is there steadying him. He does it with a kind of careful wordlessness, like he’s afraid Rust will choose this time to pull away. To do something else to hurt him, Rust thinks, automatically analysing.
That stops his mind dead in its tracks. For someone to be able to hurt you, you’ve got to give them that power. You’ve got to reach out, open up. And Rust must just be the worse detective this side of the Mason-Dixon, because somewhere along the way he missed that. He missed Marty thinking of him as someone he cared about, and if he missed that, maybe he missed himself feeling the same way.
That night Rust drags the blankets off the floor before he settles himself in bed. Marty opens his mouth, Rust gets there first.
“You sleep down there one more night, I’ll tread on you. Bed’s big enough” He swallows his pills as soon as he says it, a good-faith gesture in return. To his surprise, grumbling is all the resistance Marty puts up. Maybe his back’s worse than Rust thought.
It’s strange, having another warm body there beside him. The bed is just big enough that they don’t have to touch, but Rust can feel Marty’s body heat radiating out. It’s like a certain gravity, pulling him closer as it pushes him away.
He wishes for a cigarette and falls asleep to the soft sound of Marty drawing breath.