Chapter Text
1995
“Wash up, you got some pussy on you.”
That’s how it starts. After another sideways comment from Rust and some of Marty’s impotent rage, the edge of the open locker digs sharp between Rust’s shoulder blades and Marty’s sour mouth is inches from his and reeks of beer. Rust is taller, but not by much. He tips his chin against his chest to look down at Marty.
Marty snarls, “You don’t say fuck-all about my wife. Don’t say her name.”
It’s only a split second, but Marty’s eyes flick towards Rust’s mouth. Rust catches it, and it’s not the first time. He chuckles.
“You still got some gas left in the tank, huh?”
Marty’s face goes slack. The hands he’s got fisted in the front of Rust’s wifebeater give a little.
“What?”
Rust lets the silence linger and spool out syrupy sweet while Marty’s hands go clammy.
Rust says, “You’re always getting up in guys’ faces like this. Making excuses for it, spoiling for fights like that’s what it’s about.” He widens his stance, gets his feet solid on the ground. “But love and hate are just two sides of the same coin.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Rust wraps his hands around Marty’s wrists. He can almost get them all the way around; he has thin, witchy fingers.
“You think with your dick,” Rust says, and shakes Marty’s arms. “You wanna fuck me same as you wanna beat the shit out of me, just to see if you can.”
Marty rears back. “The fuck you just say to me?”
He twists his fists and steps back, and there’s a struggle, each of them grappling for the upper hand. Rust hangs onto Marty’s arms and Marty whips him around and slams him back into the other row of lockers. Rust’s whole body is buzzing.
“It’s okay, Marty,” he mumbles. Their faces are close again and his voice is low and steady and placating. “Lemme guess. You got curious, right? College, maybe high school. Traded a few handies with the boys after a case of beer and told yourself it didn’t count.”
Rust wondered, but the look on Marty’s face says his hunch is close enough to be true: shock too honest to hide it, panic cranked to eleven. Rust takes the opportunity.
“Never learned how to care about anything except fucking and fighting, and you got some crossed wires on that when it comes to me.”
He drops a hand and fits it against Marty’s crotch before Marty can stop him, and cups him through his slacks. He’s half hard and it’s thick and hot and unmistakable and he gets a squeeze in before Marty’s hands come up to choke him or maybe put him on the ground, but Rust pivots back and doesn’t let him, keeps them standing. Marty’s sweating, panicked and insane, and Rust lets him push him back against the lockers again.
“What, you wanna blackmail me?” Marty pants, wild-eyed. “That what this is? Nobody’s gonna believe you, you son of a bitch, just try to—”
Rust grabs one of Marty’s hands and drags it down between his legs. He’s hard too, has been since Marty started pushing him around, and instantly, everything’s different. They go still and hunch in towards each other. Marty hisses and keeps his hand on him, Rust’s hand still covering his. He turns his head to look down the row of lockers and the movement mashes Rust’s mouth against Marty’s jaw.
“Not blackmail,” Rust mumbles. Speaking bares his teeth against Marty’s translucent blond stubble. “I’m seeing this as more of a mutually assured destruction kind of situation.”
Marty doesn’t move. Rust slips his hand down again, puts it on Marty’s cock and works him through his slacks. He presses on Marty’s hand until Marty starts doing it too, and when Marty twists his wrist for a better angle it takes them somewhere they can’t come back from. Rust’s lightheaded and his eyes smear at the corners, so he closes them.
“Knew you’d be hung,” he mumbles, “that amount of unfounded fuckin’ confidence, I knew it’d be huge.”
Marty spits, “Fuck you,” but he doesn’t take his hand off Rust’s dick and he doesn’t stop Rust from pulling at his belt.
“Yeah, you wish,” Rust says. All at once he drops to his knees, the lockers at his back, and gets Marty’s pants open. “How about we start with something simpler for the first date.”
Marty lets out a quiet noise like some dying thing and doesn’t stop him. He looks out at the locker room, then down at Rust, and doesn’t stop him. When Rust takes him in his mouth, he shudders and fists one aimless hand in Rust’s tank, over his shoulder. He braces the other against the lockers.
Rust is quick and efficient (practiced, Marty thinks, somewhere) but it’s good. No superfluous moves, he’s not putting on a show, but it’s good, wet and hot and steady. Marty can’t unclench his fist, can’t keep from hanging his head between his shoulders and sighing. His eyes are shut very, very carefully.
There’s talking out in the hall, unclear if it’s coming or going.
Cold sweat pours down Marty’s neck and he opens his mouth to say what to Rust, he’s got no fucking idea, when the door at the far end of the locker room bangs open. Two guys, halfway through a conversation, and listen, this fucking guy looks me dead in the eye and says—
Marty grabs Rust’s head and tries to pry him off, step back and get his pants up, anything. Rust bites him.
He doesn’t bite hard, but there are teeth on Marty’s fucking dick regardless and he freezes, balls drawing up in terror. He pulls Rust’s hair. Rust doesn’t move. The guys keep talking, coming closer, no fuckin’ way, are you kidding me? and they’ve got seconds left until they come down their row of lockers.
As a new tactic, Marty crushes Rust down on him to try to make him choke on it and let up, but Rust just takes it, opens his throat and gets it down. He grabs Marty’s ass in both hands and pulls him so close his nose is crushed against Marty’s pelvis. It’s so good his knees almost give out. He folds in until his forehead rests against the lockers and clutches Rust’s head to keep him there, dumb and hazy and slow.
The guys stop short on the other side of the lockers and don’t turn down the final row. They talk and get changed and their voices are so close it sounds like they’re right next to them; Rust sucks carefully and Marty doesn’t breathe.
Rust lets Marty go and stands up so quickly he almost knocks his head into Marty’s chin. There’s an excruciating half second of eye contact before Rust manhandles him back through the doorway to the showers, Marty’s hard dick still out and swinging obscenely. Once they’re in there, Rust shoves him back against a tiled wall so hard he’s winded for a second, then twists the knob on the shower next to them and goes back on his knees.
Marty grabs him again automatically, hand around the back of his neck to feel the flex and bob of his head as he sucks him. Marty tips his head back into the wall with a glassy thud, eyes screwed up, mouth twisted into a grimace. With the sound of the shower as cover, he breathes with his mouth—he’s close, muscles fluttering, feet shifting restlessly wider—and the sickly sweet steam smelling of mildew and Irish Spring coats his lungs.
It feels like he’s falling when he comes, a juddering slip like the world’s dropped out from under his feet. He empties himself into Rust’s mouth and Rust sucks him through it, working his tongue around the head, soft as velvet. Marty holds onto him. For a blissful moment, it’s just sex.
Rust shakes him off and makes an ugly hacking sound as he horks up phlegm and come and spits it onto the tiled floor.
Rust stands while Marty’s still catching his breath. Marty’s all blotchy and red and he’s got his face turned away like he can’t bear to look, even though his eyes are shut anyway. His dick is still hanging out, still half hard. His bush is trimmed too short to look good. Rust chases his tongue over his teeth in his closed mouth.
He waits to see if Marty plans on looking at him, and when he doesn’t, Rust leans in close. He feels Marty flinch and he puts his mouth right near his ear.
“I can smell the fear on you, man,” Rust whispers, “pussy, flop sweat and failed dreams. You don’t dig deep, and I mean really turn over some rocks, won’t be long before everybody else smells it, too.”
He steps back. Marty’s stuck against the wall like somebody pinned him there. Rust moves aside and turns on the shower above Marty’s head. Water gushes out and soaks him through his shirt, his pants, his shoes. Rust heads for the door.
“Like I said. Wash up.”
Marty takes a sick day. He gets kicked out of the first sports bar by noon and the second by one-thirty. He drives, pulls over on the side of the road to puke, then sleeps it off in the back seat for a while. He wakes at four and drives again. There’s a black-painted dive bar that reeks of old fryer oil and leaves Marty’s chest burning with rotgut whiskey. There’s the floor of a bathroom stall covered in piss, tap water slurped out of his cupped hands, cool night air that feels like a salve on his heated skin. He tries to pull a guy out of his truck for nearly hitting him in the dark parking lot. He swallows some chew by accident and pukes that up, too. He drives and knows he shouldn’t. He’s got no idea what time it is and he’s running on rage, fumes and gut instinct, on self-sabotage, in a fugue state. He drives.
Rust’s apartment block looks about as bad as some flophouses Marty’s found himself in; motel-style, with a cracked asphalt parking pad and a sad square of dead lawn outside each. Marty finds Rust’s place because of his big red truck parked outside, and only narrowly avoids crashing into it as he pulls up behind it.
He drags himself out of his car and stumbles to the apartment door, knocks with the side of his fist and weaves as he stands there waiting.
A slice of Rust’s face appears in the crack between the door and the frame—cheekbone, a sharp wedge of nose—before he swings it open. He’s wearing one of his stained wifebeaters, slacks, no belt. Bare feet. It’s dark in the apartment behind him except for a bluish fluorescent glow from the kitchen that’s harsh and clinical. A smoke hangs from his lower lip. Slowly, he smiles.
“What, no flowers?”
Marty shoves him hard. Rust takes it, holds up his hands in surrender and lets Marty push him inside. Marty leaves the door open behind him and starts pacing a hole in the bare carpet, a perpetual motion machine running on fidgety panic and fear. He wipes a hand over his mouth, smooths back his hair, rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. He can’t look at Rust. Rust stares at him.
“You—you do that often, with guys?” Marty asks, pointing in some direction, back to that morning, the before. “You do that shit with the guys we work with?”
He’s slurring almost too badly to be understood; Rust is fluent in drunk. He leans back against his kitchen counter, smokes, keeps on smiling.
“This go down easier if you think I’m tricking myself out to the whole squad?” Rust drawls. “Or you wanna be my first?”
“Shut the fuck up. I knew it, I always knew it. There’s something off about you, something—always somethin’ a little—”
“Well, there’s something inherently gay about being a cop, don’t you think?” Rust traces some lazy shape in the air with his smoke. “We spend all our time with men. We call each other ‘partner.’ I sit in your passenger seat and look pretty, like you’re driving me to prom.”
It’s like a magnet flipping polarity, the way Marty looks like he’s about to come at him, then backs away. Stay or go, fight or something else. Rust’s front door is still open and that black square of night outside looks so inviting.
“I don’t”—Marty starts, coughs, swallows—“I don’t think about that shit ‘cause I’m normal, you fuckin’ freak. Nobody thinks about that shit.”
Rust stubs out his smoke into an ashtray behind him and presses himself up off the counter. The way Marty backs away from him could give a guy an ego.
“You seriously believe that, man?” Rust asks.
Marty pivots and they circle each other, like a dance, if you squint. Marty smells vomit and realizes there’s some on his sleeve. He doubts himself, briefly.
“I’ve got a wife,” Marty says, and his voice cracks, “a family. I was normal, ‘til I met you.”
It’s supposed to sound like bragging, but that last bit comes out like a confession. Rust matches Marty’s slow lap around the carpet. He looks unhurried, calm, maybe even a little pleased, and he’s fucking smiling again.
He says, “You feel normal when you were nutting in my mouth?”
Marty lunges. He tries for a sloppy haymaker and Rust sidesteps him easily, grabs his arm and twists it behind his back. Marty freezes at the twinge of pain and tries to duck it, but Rust follows. He catches Marty’s other wrist and gets both his arms behind his back. Marty tries to buck out until he feels the precise, white-hot points of pain at his elbow and wrist that tell him not to. Rust is snug up behind him, his chin hooked over Marty’s shoulder, ear crushed against Marty’s neck. The front door is still open.
“I didn’t do nothing in that locker room you didn’t want me to do,” Rust murmurs in his placid, even drone. “Coulda said no. Coulda smacked me. You got off on it, big time. That’s on you.”
Marty holds his breath. He’s a thousand degrees with Rust pressed all up his back, sweating through his shirt, blood pumping loud in his ears. He stops struggling.
They’re both still for a moment, and then Rust slowly moves Marty towards the door with his arms still trapped behind him. They stop in the doorway.
“Take a good look out there, Marty,” Rust says. It’s the lane between the rows of apartments, dirty cars and lawn ornaments. Nobody outside. “That’s a nice little slice of suburbia that doesn’t want you in it. It’s got no fuckin’ place in it for what you are.”
Rust shifts his grip around slow and deliberate to free up one hand. He keeps Marty’s arms back with the weight of his body. It’s a worse hold and Marty could slip out if he wanted, but he doesn’t. Rust slides his freed hand down Marty’s front and pops the button on his slacks. The zipper pulls down noisily. Marty’s breathing like he’s running wind sprints, with a drunken wheeze on the end of each one.
“You’re so far from normal you can’t even see it anymore.” Rust cups him through his boxers and starts kneading him with his palm. Marty looks like he’s got more beer than blood in him and Rust’s not sure he can get him hard, until he does. “I see you looking at me all the goddamn time, you’re like a fucking kid. You even know you’re doing it?”
Marty groans and tips his head back onto Rust’s shoulder. Rust is practically holding him up now and gets a hand into his boxers, pulls out his cock, fists it and pumps. He’s not totally hard but it works. Marty struggles like he wants to get his hands free, so Rust backs off a bit, but all Marty does is grab onto the door frame for balance. He keeps his other arm bent willingly behind his back and Rust has to close his eyes at that, center himself, breathe.
He slots back in behind Marty and keeps jerking him off, sparing quick glances away from his hand to check for an audience. The muscles in Marty’s stomach and thighs jump as he tries to hold it back, like that’s the point. Like coming makes it any worse.
Rust hisses, “Fuck your family. They’re too good for you.” He slaps a hand over Marty’s mouth and only then does Marty groan, wet under Rust’s palm. “You’re a fucking degenerate, Marty. You and me.”
Rust turns his face in towards Marty’s neck and grazes him with his teeth, but doesn’t bite down. He grabs the front of Marty’s throat and his windpipe wheezes under his hand, more than enough pressure to keep him from breathing. Marty chokes, gasps and comes, hips twitching up into Rust’s hand.
Rust strokes him through it and turns his face down to watch. It’s a thin load. Marty’s had a big day.
Marty digs his nails into the door frame and digs up flecks of peeling paint, shakes all over, hangs his head. Rust squeezes his soft dick hard, really hard, but Marty only hisses at him—doesn’t swear, doesn’t pull away. Rust closes his eyes again.
After a moment he twists Marty’s arm back behind his back, cinches it up high until he yelps, then shoves him outside. He windmills, trips and falls onto the spiky dead lawn on his hands and knees. Rust goes inside for a smoke and when he comes back, Marty is laying on his back staring up at the starry sky with his arms out wide.
Rust ducks his head outside to get away from the fluorescents and squints up at the pinpricks of old light. Back down at Marty, whose glassy eyes are still fixed on heaven and slowly roving. Rust goes back inside and shuts the door behind him, but doesn’t lock it.
Marty wakes up when a lawn sprinkler catches him in the head with its back-and-forth arc. The pink pre-dawn sky scares the shit out of him when he expects to see a ceiling like every other day of his life, and for a second he forgets where he is. That luxury is short-lived: his mouth tastes like day-old roadkill, and out of the corner of his eye he sees the roof of Rust’s truck, and he remembers.
Somebody hums. Marty sits up and blinks to clear his eyes and Rust is leaning in the open doorway to his apartment with a smoke and a cup of coffee and that fucking smile, still in his wifebeater, feet bare.
“Well, this is unexpected,” Rust says, all lilting and pleased.
Marty scowls at him and rubs his eyes. The neighbour’s sprinkler catches him across the back.
“How long you been watching me sleep, you freak?”
“Hey man, it’s my lawn.”
Marty manages to get to his feet. “So you just left me out here.”
“You looked happy. Stargazing with your dick out, that’s about as happy as a man can get.”
Marty slaps at his pants, and his fly’s open, but his dick’s in boxers. He zips up. His car is parked diagonally behind Rust’s truck with the driver side door still open, and as he sees this, somebody else from the housing complex drives by and has to veer around Marty’s car. Marty sees the guy’s face turned towards him, so he raises a hand in greeting because he doesn’t know what else to do.
“You couldn’t drag me inside?” he asks, still waving lamely at the car. “Not even a couple feet?”
Rust slurps his coffee. Marty drops his hand and makes himself look at Rust. Rust’s already looking back.
“I don’t like you much, Marty. That’s no secret.”
He looks like a greyhound, ropey and fast and gaunt. Like a greyhound fucked a hawk. Marty looks out to make sure nobody’s listening, works his jaw and says, “Seemed like you liked me just fine last night.”
Rust honest to God sighs at him. He takes another drink of coffee, then shakes his head.
“You’re not getting it.” He heads inside and leaves the door open behind him. “They haven’t invented a word for the type of shit we got going on.”
Marty follows him in. Rust’s apartment looks the way Marty remembers, now that he’s sober, ish: he hasn’t gotten a table yet, no chairs but two ashtrays that look new, one on the kitchen counter and one on a stack of books next to his mattress, which is still on the living room floor. The early morning light only barely makes it through the closed blinds and the room is dim and gray, lights off, shadowy. The smell of cigarettes is almost enough to bring up whatever’s left in Marty’s rotten gut.
He shuts the door and watches as Rust goes around the kitchen counter and pours him a cup of coffee from what’s left in the carafe. Rust comes back and hands him the mug; it’s burnt and lukewarm, but Marty downs the whole thing in a couple swallows and feels one notch closer to human.
“I don’t like you much,” Rust says again, leaning on the counter and looking out into the living room, “but I don’t not like you, either.”
Marty clenches his jaw. He thinks of the showers, wash up, and he knows when he’s being made fun of. He’s about to let it go when Rust reaches over and drops his spent smoke into his mug without looking, and then he doesn’t.
“What, you think I like you?” Marty snarls. “You think I’d take you as my partner if it weren’t for the fact that nobody in the entire fuckin’ country wants you?”
Rust side-eyes him. “I think somebody wants me.”
Marty drops his mug onto the floor and grabs for Rust—his shirt, arms, throat, anything he can sink his fingers into—but Rust gets him instead. Rust punches him in the stomach like he means it and Marty doubles over, aching, his eyes stinging. Before he can right himself, Rust hauls him up and shoves him back against the counter with a big hand spread in the middle of Marty’s chest.
“No more of that tough-guy bullshit,” Rust mumbles. “You come at me again, I put you on the ground.”
Their faces are close and Marty feels fucking concussed. He pushes Rust back, but gentler this time.
Rust says, “You wanna talk truths? Fine.”
He lights a fresh smoke. He’s leaning on the counter next to Marty but looking out at the living room again, so Marty does too; it’s easier than looking at him. Rust goes on.
“You’re a car crash of a human being. And against my better judgement, I’ve slowed right down to rubberneck as I go by. Gawking at the fiery wreck that is your life.” He sucks on his cigarette so his cheeks hollow and Marty looks over at him, thinking of something else. “Sue me if I’m a little captivated by the tragedy.”
Marty snorts like that doesn’t sting once he’s parsed it out. It’s not much to go off. He thinks about how Rust looked when he was on his knees, and how fucking rude Rust is to everybody else, and he wonders if they’re even talking about the same thing.
Rust slouches towards the sliding door at the far side of the room. He parts the blinds and peers out, smokes, lingers over there like he’s stalling. Waiting.
Marty says, “Christ. If you won’t stop talking in goddamn riddles, I will.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Just ‘cause you’ve decided you’re some kind of faggot doesn’t mean you gotta get me all tangled up in it, too.”
Rust turns around slow and deliberate. One corner of his mouth turns up.
“Is that so?”
“I’m not gonna tell anyone. I’ll— we’ll work together. None of my business if you’re… that way inclined.”
“A faggot,” Rust clarifies.
Marty shuffles his feet. “Whatever you call it.”
Rust smokes and watches him with narrow eyes. It takes a lifetime.
“What about you?” he says eventually.
“What about me?”
Rust comes forward, slow and aimless.
“I find ‘faggot’s’ not too helpful a term. Humans are complicated. Ain’t enough space in a body for all the people we got inside us.” Smoke between his lips, hollowed cheeks. “I know who I am. Do you?”
Marty is uncharacteristically quiet. Still wandering closer, Rust grabs the hem of his wifebeater and pulls it over his head, bare shoulders hunching in, arms flexing. He drops the shirt on the floor. He’s got some scars there that are clearly bullet wounds—Marty files that away for later—and a tattoo on his chest that Marty can’t remember if he already knew about. Can’t remember much at the moment.
Rust stops in front of him and leans all the way in to stub out his smoke on the counter behind Marty; he smells like sweat and oil and cigarettes, unclean. Marty’s mouth floods with spit. When Rust leans back, they’re only a foot apart. He speaks slow as molasses; he’s having fun with it, spurred on by the pathetic hangdog look on Marty’s face, looking like a chided schoolboy.
Rust says, “You either wanna hit me or kiss me on the mouth. Fine if it’s both, but you gotta know.” He leans in to see if Marty tips up his chin, and he does. Probably doesn’t know he’s doing it. “Look at the wolf snappin’ its jaws inside you. What does he want?”
Rust grabs Marty’s face in one hand, squishing up his cheeks. Marty fights it for a second on instinct and then sags in, frozen and breathing hard. Their mouths are inches apart.
Rust says, “I wanna flay you alive, man. Cut you open, pin you up in one of those butterfly boxes and make you see yourself. Almost forty years you got on you, it pisses me off that you don’t already know.” He digs his nails into Marty’s face so hard it drags his cheeks down. “Who the fuck are you, Marty?”
Marty ducks in and crushes their mouths together. It’s off-center and he comes in so hot their teeth hit but Rust groans anyway, keeps a hold on Marty’s face and slots their mouths together, kisses back all stale cigarettes and Marty’s old vomit, mouth-taste and sour beer. Marty kisses like he’s not leaving witnesses. He jams his thumbs up under Rust’s jaw and runs him back until he hits the wall, and Rust bites into his mouth, drags his hands spread wide down Marty’s shoulders; he’s got the body of an aged jock, old muscle under this layer of bulk that wants to be grabbed and torn into.
“There he is,” Rust pants, mouth smearing against Marty’s, getting in half a breath before Marty kisses him again. “What else is that—wolf askin’ for?”
Marty groans into his mouth, sounding more annoyed than anything. He cocks his shoulder so he can get a hand down and grab Rust’s dick, hard, hard enough to lift him up off his heels. Rust hacks out a laugh and tips his head back, tingles all over. Marty rubs him roughly through his slacks, inexpert but so fucking eager, and latches his mouth onto Rust’s throat. He sucks and bites and that’s rough too, enough that Rust knows he’ll have a mark there for days like some teenaged whore, jokes around the station. He doesn’t stop him.
“Fucking shit,” Marty says under his breath, and tips his head down against Rust’s shoulder. His hands are shaking as he tries to get Rust’s pants open. “You don’t tell anybody about this. You take it to your fuckin’ grave, you—”
“Shut the fuck up, Marty. Jesus.”
Skin on skin, Rust’s cock in Marty’s hand and their mouths crashing together again, Marty’s lip nicked by Rust’s teeth and split, the metallic taste of blood. Rust sighs, hangs onto him, gets his shirt off and pushes it away. Marty shakes it awkwardly off his arms. It leaves him in an undershirt that’s not too different from Rust’s.
“C’mon,” Rust says, and pushes up off the wall, dragging Marty back towards the mattress. Rust gets Marty’s pants open and grabs him tight, mutters like he’s halfway through a conversation, “Your package in those tight fuckin’ jeans like anybody gives a shit.”
Marty says, “Seems like you do.”
“Yeah, and I’m a fuckin’ idiot.”
Rust’s heels hit the mattress and he pulls Marty down. Marty’s on top of him, thigh tight between his legs; Rust digs down and flips them over so Marty’s under him. Marty claws Rust’s pants down under his ass, breathes hard, chases Rust’s mouth.
Rust mumbles, “How you want it, cowboy?” and fucks his hips in. “You feelin’ brave?”
Marty grunts as he flips them over again, wrestles Rust under him and pins his arms down to the mattress because Rust lets him.
“Shit no,” Marty says, and Rust laughs in his ear. It may be the first time Marty’s heard him laugh for real. It sounds like a screen door closing.
“Fine by me,” Rust says, easy, like he means it.
Marty gets on his knees and shoves his pants down around his thighs, toes off his shoes. Rust pulls his slacks off completely, no briefs underneath, naked as a jaybird. There’s a perfect tanline shape of where his shirt sits, and paler where his pants go. No further tattoos are revealed, to some disappointment. Marty’s sitting back on his heels and only realizes he’s staring when Rust chuckles.
Marty leans forwards and breathes out hard, like he’s steeling himself. He gets between Rust’s legs and rakes a hand down his chest, over his stomach, says, “Why do you look like this, anyway? What’s a nihilist need a six pack for?”
It turns out Rust still has a smoke in his hand, and he stretches back like a languid cat and takes a drag. He puts his other hand behind his head and it makes the muscles in his chest pull taut as he looks down the line of his body at Marty.
“The body’s a knife,” he says. “Best to hone it.”
Marty hangs his head and barks a laugh. He watches his hand smooth over Rust’s hip and over his cock and balls, which he grabs all in one handful. He’s cut, which Marty doesn’t expect for some reason. It curves a little to the left.
“You’re fucking weird, man,” Marty says.
Rust lifts his hips into Marty’s hand and lets him press his thigh to the side with his elbow. There’s a papery crackle as Rust takes another drag.
“You keep sayin’ that and it’s gonna start to sound like a pet name, sweetheart.”
Marty squeezes Rust’s package so hard he gets a gasp out of him, but he also feels his cock pulse, so it’s anyone’s game. Marty digs his fingers in and swears, bows all the way down between Rust’s legs and presses his whole face into his junk. He lifts Rust’s balls and huffs in deep, inhales it, noses at the base of his dick and its scratch of pubic hair, mouths at his sack. The smell is strong and ripe and human, rank, masculine and violently alive.
Rust laughs again—twice in one day—and he sounds, for the first time since Marty’s known him, faintly surprised. His hand lands on Marty’s head.
“Shit, you like that?”
Marty’s too gone to answer, just says, “Fuck,” muffled in Rust’s crotch, and shoots a hand down and gives his own dick a few strokes. Rust drags Marty’s head in harder, until he’s barely got space to breathe and the taste and smell and everything is all that there is, all he can think about. Marty has to drop his cock so he doesn’t come.
He lets up, breathes, skates his open mouth up Rust’s cock but doesn’t suck it; never has, couldn’t do that. He makes it up to Rust’s face and kisses him, ravenous and wide, all tongue, hears Rust mutter something disparaging in there.
Marty digs a hand between Rust and the mattress, grabs his ass and lifts. “You got something for this?”
“Are you asking if I got lube?”
Marty puts his face in Rust’s neck. Rust turns his head and smokes, says, “It’s fine, man, I can take it.”
Marty groans. He sits back, scrubs a hand over his mouth and struggles to his feet. He heads for the kitchen, best bet, feeling stupid with his pants half on, dick out and belt buckle jangling.
“I’m not taking you to emerg if I split you in half.”
Behind him, Rust drawls, “Promises, promises.”
Marty finds a plastic bottle of cooking oil and nothing better. He heads back to the bed.
“If you’ve got some sicko pain shit you wanna explore, do it on your own time.”
Rust is laying spread out on the mattress looking endlessly pleased with himself, dangling a smoke from his right and stroking his cock lazily with his left.
“Who knows,” he says, dark eyes tracking Marty across the room. “I’ll try anything once.”
He takes one last deep drag on his smoke and kills it, then leans over and stubs it into an ashtray. Marty snorts.
“This finally worth your undivided attention?”
He kneels on the bed. Rust gives him this shit-eating look.
“Remains to be seen.”
Marty throws down the bottle, grabs Rust by his naked hips and flips him over. Rust goes willingly, puts his face into the mattress and lets Marty rake hands down his back and over his ass. He’s quiet, for once. Marty gets behind him and slides his cock up the cleft of his ass, once, twice, shuddering hard.
He remembers, almost too late. “You clean?”
Rust wheezes a laugh. “Hell if I know. I’ve stuck my dick places you wouldn’t go in full hazmat.”
He’s pushing back against him; Marty can barely string together a sentence.
“Jesus, Rust.”
Rust’s hips have the faintest amount of give to them, a squish, but his ass is bony and boyish. Marty digs his fingers in, drags Rust into him and watches his cock rub between his ass cheeks. It’s hypnotic. Makes his fucking head hurt, looking at that.
Rust says, “You’re no boy scout either,” and hooks an arm back. He grabs on Marty’s thigh and pulls, and Marty groans and falls in, braces up on his elbows and presses his chest to Rust’s back. Rust bends his arm, palms Marty’s head and drags him down, crushes them together. “Got tested a few years back. Clean then.”
It feels fucking great just humping against him like a stupid kid and Marty’s mouth goes dry thinking about the rest of it; he’s already halfway there, dripping and ready to go off. He’s got a condom in his jacket, all he has to do is get up and find that jacket, somewhere in here or in his car, unless he lost it last night—but Rust’s still moving back into him, making it good—Rust, who’s so fucking unpleasant, the human equivalent of a pile of broken glass, finally quiet and letting Marty of all goddamn people do this to him like some convoluted murder-suicide, mutually assured destruction—
Marty loses it. He groans and mashes his face into the top of Rust’s back, bites at him, and gives up. Marty’s stupid as hell. Marty has a type and it’ll kill him someday.
He sits up and pours cooking oil into his hand and onto his cock; he does a shitty job and some drips onto the bed. Almost as an afterthought, he slips his slick fingers down Rust’s ass crack and pushes one inside him, drips on more oil and does it again. Rust hardly makes a sound, maybe a breath. His arms are folded under his head and Marty can’t see his face. He sticks in a second finger more out of curiosity than anything else and Rust turns his face towards the mattress, lifts his hips a little.
Marty lines up—doesn’t look, but feels it, the scratch of downy hair different than with a chick—and he thinks about saying something but he’s got no idea what. He starts pressing in.
That gets a grunt out of Rust, and his shoulders come up. He curls forward and puts his forehead down on his arms and he’s so tight sweat breaks out at Marty’s nape, on his upper lip. There’s not enough air in the fucking room and Marty’s head spins like he’s hyperventilating. He grabs Rust’s hips, chokes, keeps working in.
Rust swears once Marty’s almost in, something garbled. He hooks an arm back again and grabs at Marty’s thigh.
“You waiting for a fuckin’—handwritten invite, or—”
He breaks off when Marty slams in the rest of the way out of spite and both of them make some fucked-up sound together, hungry and raw. Rust bucks back on him and Marty’s not good at holding back, not good at moderation and could never handle being wanted, and he plants one hand on the back of Rust’s neck, leans down on it and fucks him, fast right from the jump, even though it feels like he won’t fit, like it might kill him.
Rust claws at the meat of Marty’s thigh.
“Don’t pull your punches"—he groans into the sheets, then something Marty doesn’t catch, then—“feel it for a fuckin’ week,” and that’s better than any invitation Marty’s ever received. He starts hammering into him and Rust muffles a sound in the sheets that will echo around in Marty’s head for longer than he’ll ever admit.
He fucks him fast and hard and his brain shuts off everything but the litany of cheesy porno talk he says to girls, you like that, baby, you like my cock? That feel good? Take it, fucking take it, just like that, good girl, and he doesn’t say it but it’s all in there even though he’s staring at his hand on Rust’s nape and he knows it’s Rust and not anybody else. Good boy. Maybe a few words slip out, because Rust looks pissed off for a while, but he doesn’t say anything, he just—takes it, really good, shifts up on his knees for a better angle and lets Marty fuck him so hard it’s gotta be hell, or else the other one.
“Fucking Christ, Rust,” Marty pants, sweat stinging in his eyes. He regrets the name. He slows right down and holds off, squeezes his eyes shut, tries. He’s gonna have a heart attack, or worse, come. He lets go of Rust’s neck and plants the hand next to his face, leans forward on it to ease up on the ache in his quads. He grabs Rust’s shoulder with the other hand and fucks him back on his cock hard and slow, over and over again like there’s anywhere left to go—he wants to sink into his guts, get deeper—like Rust said, cut him open, pin him up, flayed apart—
“Come on,” Rust hacks out, pissy about it, “come the fuck on, don’t—”
He bites Marty’s hand. It fucking hurts, he really bites down, but Marty feels his asshole clench around him when he does it, like maybe it’s turning him on. So Marty lets him bite, hisses and fucks him through it, swears at him and says mean shit to him and drips sweat onto his back. He hopes to God that Rust’s clean.
Every thrust gives Rust the whole length of him and it seems like too much, something’s gonna give, but Rust gets his teeth out of Marty’s hand, buries his face and makes sounds that have Marty staring down at him, at the slice of face he has the privilege of seeing, and there’s more pain there—more pleasure, more anything—than he’s ever seen on Rust before, on that crushed inch of face between him and his rumpled sheets. There’s something almost holy about it. Rust clutches at the sheets, knuckles white, and twists so hard the fitted sheet springs up at the corners and rolls in; the mattress underneath is yellowed and stained, dotted with little blue flowers.
“Aw, fuck,” he says shortly, the same way he’d say anything else, then goes still and comes. He’s quiet about it, but his whole body goes hard like it’s made of braided wire. Marty reaches down and grabs his cock while he’s already coming, feels him pulse in his hand and spurt over his fingers. Wants to feel it. He shudders at the rhythmic clench of Rust’s body on his dick as he rides it out and he sees fucking stars over that, hot and tight like heaven. Or the other one.
Marty doesn’t have far to go after that. He folds right down and presses his forehead to Rust’s back, rubs his sweaty face on him, scrapes with his teeth. He curls an arm all the way under Rust’s middle so Rust is right in the crook of his elbow and he thrusts in with ugly rabbity bucks of his hips, far past pageantry and not thinking of anything other than the sweat-slick press of a warm body all down his and how good it’ll feel to come in him.
Rust is a lax dead weight on his arm. Rust’s hands still grip the sheets, flexing, and he’s panting but otherwise he’s quiet now; Marty listens to him, strains, gets off on how tired he sounds, used up and fucked out. He squeezes his eyes shut, buries his face against Rust’s back and finally comes, mouth open and quiet. He hears Rust breathe out hard when he crushes all the way up inside him and Marty practically sobs with how good it is. It’s about as good as he’s ever had it. He’s always loved anal, never done it raw before now. He feels it in his whole body, his goddamn toes curl. His face goes numb. It’s a wonder he doesn’t pass out.
He stills. His chest is stuck to Rust’s back and he can’t feel the arm he’s got around his waist. His whole body is pounding, his mouth is dry and his dick is fucking thrilled with itself.
He makes himself sit up a bit, gets his arm out from under Rust and smooths a hand over the back of Rust’s head instead. It’s a gesture he makes on autopilot, a too-gentle sift of Rust’s sweaty curls through his fingers. He catches himself and stops.
Rust turns his head to the side. Marty’s still inside him, Rust’s still on his face and knees. There are red tracks down his back from Marty’s dragging hands but they’re starting to fade.
“The French call an orgasm la petite mort,” Rust says, his voice hoarse. “The little death. Closest we get to dying, coming apart like that. The stab of bliss, that split second of ego death. Like going over.”
Marty stares at the marks from his teeth on the back of Rust’s neck and thinks, it’s nothing like that. It’s animalistic, humping and grunting and sweating, fucking anything that’s warm and wet because your body needs you to fill or get filled, because it’s in your blood. It can’t be a little death when it’s the only time Marty feels alive.
He pulls out as nicely as he can. He brings up a corner of the sheets and wipes off his dick, not looking too close.
“I’ll give you this,” Rust says, turning over, all elbows and knees. “You’re an alright fuck.”
Marty hikes up his pants but leaves them open and flops onto his back next to Rust; his brain’s still coming back online, his hormones are going nuts and he’s thinking about la petite mort, so it’s all he can do.
He says, “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Rust hums in assent. “Probably.”
The bed’s just a double and they lay side by side on their backs, shoulders pressed together, one foot each on the carpet. Rust reaches over and grabs his smokes out of his pants, and when he lays back down, he puts his shoulder right against Marty’s again. No room to do otherwise.
They both go quiet, laying there. Rust stretches out his arms, back and legs, one at a time. Marty breathes secondhand smoke and sweats into the sheets. His hangover’s back, temporarily abated by better things, or anyway, more strenuous things. He tries to keep his brain quiet and can’t. He tries not to think about it and does—all his morts, all his filling and getting filled.
“It was high school,” he says quietly. “Got it outta my system by college.”
Rust nods. “Smart.”
“You?”
Rust nods again. He sits up halfway to ash his smoke—knobs of his spine looking ready to break skin—then comes back.
“Don’t think I’ve ever gotten something outta my system,” he says, in that winding way of his. “I just… fester. Waste away at the edges. Corrosive, like my namesake.”
“You done this before, though?”
“Mhm,” Rust hums. “Before.”
Marty looks over at him. The lines of Rust’s face could cut glass. No trace of guilt or shame or much of anything there, the lucky fuck.
Rust’s eyes flick over to Marty’s and catch him looking. “Not anybody you know, so cool it with the daggers.”
Marty looks back at the ceiling.
Rust says, also to the ceiling: “Good thing you’re not the jealous type, or I could see this getting weird.”
Marty flips him off. He sits up, puts his feet on the carpet and his head in his hands, and he stays like that awhile. His thoughts don’t break ground. He recites the girls’ birthdays in his head, which is something he does, after. Rust smokes quietly behind him.
Marty takes his hands off his eyes and looks down at the left. There’s a perfect arc of teeth marks on the meat of his thumb where Rust bit him. There’s also his wedding ring, which pinches his finger at the best of times because he’s put on a few pounds since the wedding, and worse now because he’s hot and swollen all over. His stomach flips, which it always does. After.
“The hell am I gonna do about this?” he says, and raises the hand so Rust can see the mark.
When Rust doesn’t say anything, Marty looks over his shoulder. Rust’s staring at him, but he looks away when Marty looks back.
“You’ll think of something,” Rust says to the ceiling.
Rust gets out of the shower while Marty’s on the phone. He traipses into the living room naked and dripping.
Marty says to Maggie, “Sorry, sweetheart, I tried to call.”
Rust glances at Marty. Marty, dressed, gestures at Rust’s nakedness and makes a come on, man type of face. Rust flips him off.
“Been in emerg,” Marty says into the phone. “Some meth head in the box bit me, if you can believe that. I’ve been getting shots and shit.”
Rust roots through a cardboard box for clothes, taking out shirts and slacks and smelling each in turn. Marty watches.
“No, no, it’s your day off, baby, you sleep. I’ll be home soon. Alright. Love you too, bye.”
Marty snaps his phone closed. Rust has paused in his getting dressed and stares over at Marty.
“Not a fuckin’ word,” Marty says.
Rust holds up a hand. “No word’s been said.”
He stands, still nude, holding a pair of gray boxer briefs. After a moment, he slowly pulls them on. Marty watches. Rust watches Marty watch. Rust straightens up. The look on his face is, as usual—maybe worse than usual—indecipherable.
After a moment, he asks, “You wanna go again?”
Marty chews the inside of his lip. He looks at the fine trail of hair below Rust’s navel that goes into his briefs, and the gory black-red hickey Marty left on his throat. Marty recites the date of his wedding anniversary, and his parents’ anniversary.
“No,” he says, after way too long.
Rust shrugs. “Alright then.”
He puts on pants and a fresh tank that’s almost as stained as the one he took off.
“You’re gonna smell like smokes,” he says idly. “And dick.”
Marty spits, “Thanks for the tip, numbnuts.”
He was already going to stop by the station, he’s got a change of clothes there. He glances at the door, planning an exit—knowing he’s supposed to—when Rust comes towards him. He motions at Marty’s face.
“You got a nick, there. Just so you know.”
Marty bites at his lip with his lower teeth. “Where?”
Rust presses a thumb to Marty’s upper lip. There’s a tug of pain, and when his tongue chases it, he tastes blood. Rust opened the cut.
“Top left,” Rust says quietly, and takes his hand back.
It feels like they spend an hour there, Rust’s chin tipped down to look at Marty, Marty’s lip stinging. It’s heavy and hot and Marty’s head is killing him, and sometimes he hates himself so much he can hardly stand it. He doesn’t think about it. He leans in and kisses Rust.
Rust goes very, very still. It’s closed-mouth, soft, and Rust is too still, he’s—not kissing back. Pain, instantly, rockets through the back of Marty’s skull.
He steps back and goes, “Fuck,” because he knows. He passes the back of his hand over his mouth and turns around.
“Marty,” Rust says from behind him. It’s pitying and pathetic, like he’s talking to a kicked dog. “Can’t be doing that.”
“I know,” Marty snaps, because he does, or he’s supposed to.
Rust doesn’t say anything else. Marty knows it’s time to go but he can’t make his feet work and thinks, like an idiot, that there’s still some way he can come out on top. He reeks of his own vomit and another guy’s nutsack, so he has a hard time coming up with ideas just then.
Rust says, “Don’t beat yourself up,” and Marty loses it. He spins around and jabs a finger into Rust’s chest.
“Shut your fucking mouth, Rust. I don’t need you to fuckin’—feel sorry for me or some bullshit, don’t you dare—”
“Course I feel sorry for you,” Rust interrupts. His face is locked down, matter of fact, back to the way he says everything else. “All I’m sayin’ is, these ain’t sparks.”
Marty’s neck gets hot. “What, you think I—”
“All I’m saying,” Rust presses on, “is you want me ‘cause I’ll let you fuck the shit outta me, but you don’t care about my feelings, and that makes it easier on you. Because I’m a sexless asshole, it feels like bragging rights, even though you’d eat a bullet if anybody found out. And”—he takes a breath—“you think it’s hot as hell ‘cause you’re Narnia-deep in the closet, so being with a man is the most taboo thing you can think of, and taboo makes your dick hard, otherwise you wouldn’t be stepping out. It’s all just”—he waves a hand—“circuits. Nodes. A natural conclusion of the wiring we got laid out between us. Not on you.”
Marty’s heart beats in his ears. His whole face is hot and he juts out his jaw. Closet in particular hits like a knife between his lowermost ribs, twisting and grinding like metal on bone.
“You don’t know me,” he lies.
Rust shakes his head. He heads for the kitchen where a pack of blue Camels waits on the counter as something to do with his hands, and he can’t look at Marty again.
“Go home, Marty.”
Marty leaves. The morning sun feels like bleach on his skin and he squints against it, makes his way to his car swearing under his breath and kicks the car’s bumper, a tire and the driver’s side door. The door kick leaves a dent he’ll have to explain to Maggie. He gets in and leaves, pulls out onto the road and looks at the bite mark on his hand while he drives; he can’t stop staring at it, not for the whole drive.