meanwhilemachine
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I'm having wicked dreams of leaving by meanwhilemachine
Fandoms: True Detective (TV 2014)
09 Jul 2026
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If they didn’t want him drunk at work, Marty reasoned, swirling the glass and watching the whiskey cling to the sides in that way that always put him in the mindset of maple syrup—of Saturday mornings when his father got out early for work and it was just him, his mom, pancakes on the stovetop and the sun turning the crummy kitchen linoleum gold—if they didn’t want him drunk at work, they shouldn’t have had him at a bar.
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It's the early '90s. Marty is (mildly) undercover, investigating a case and pounding whiskey and panicking about the steady, settled, regular-type life he swears he wants. Rust is (deep) undercover and wondering if he remembers what it is to want. By chance, they meet.
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Marty follows him. Not clear where. Cut of Rust’s shoulders, loping walk of a predator and with some starved line to him. STATE POLICE across his back.
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Evening, and a brief interlude by the bayou.
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“Where’ve you gone, man?” Marty won’t let go of him. He can feel himself digging his fingers into jawbone, won’t let up until he can squeeze the apathy out.
Rust says, “Same place, Marty,” and Marty grips hard enough to bruise.
Rust’s hand reaches up slowly and folds over the hand on his face. He pulls Marty off him finger by finger, and when he opens the door Marty thinks he’s going to walk out into the threat of oncoming traffic. Instead, he curves over- more legroom, fresh air- and starts unbuckling Marty’s belt.
Bookmarked by meanwhilemachine
01 Sep 2026
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Louisiana- Somewhere between the cane fields, roadside gas stations, interview rooms, and endless miles of highway, Rust Cohle and Marty Hart begin learning things about each other neither of them remembers deciding to learn.
The problem isn't the knowing.
It's realizing how long it's been happening.Bookmarked by meanwhilemachine
20 Aug 2026
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“So how are you and Laurie?” Marty asks, just to have something to say.
Rust is quiet for a long minute, pulling half his cigarette down his lungs in that nervous way he hasn’t done so often, like maybe he really had learned a new appreciation for the sanctity of human life, and Marty thinks maybe he’s touched on something fragile. Maybe he and Laurie are fracturing after all, his psycho-intellectual bullshit finally worn her down. The rolling paper crackles softly in the silence between them as the cherry bites lower and lower towards the filter.
“I’m fixing to ask her to marry me,” Rust finally says, and Marty chokes on his beer like he’s had the wind knocked out of him.
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Or: Rust and Laurie in vignette.
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Bookmarked by meanwhilemachine
09 Aug 2026
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Rust — Rust a fool — allows himself to imagine a world in which he turns. A world in which they solve this together, they grind it out and start thinking, really thinking, pavements and hard man-hours, answer to nobody but themselves, they solve it. Marty turns. Let this be that world — it’s the world of shit-all else, it’s the world where Rust wakes up wishing he hadn’t every fucking morning, the world in which he knows the sound a child’s bones, still soft, make under the wheels of an ‘84 Mercedes 230CE — let him have this, just this. Only this.
Marty doesn’t turn. Marty mutters under his breath, “Sanctimonious prick,” and Marty leaves.
They arrest Rust twenty-one days later.
Bookmarked by meanwhilemachine
05 Aug 2026