Chapter Text
The one thing Rook knows for certain about the world when he wakes up, is that there's too much of it. Too much light, too much noise, too much air to breathe, too much dust touching him from every direction. It feels less like a hangover and more like someone regrew him in a very large pot overnight, as if his whole body is still raw and new.
He hates every second of it. He needs to stop having drunk adventures with Sharky and Hurk, during the brief periods when Eden's Gate aren't actively turning the county upside down. Because they never end well, and Rook makes so many promises about all the stupid things he won't do next time they get drunk, and then promptly forgets them all once he can't walk straight.
Rook very carefully maneuvers himself upright, which is worse, it's so much worse. Everything aches, it's a horrible, throbbing discomfort that suggests he'd fallen down some stairs last night, possibly more than once. His head hurts worst of all, which seems to be entirely the fault of his eyes, which refuse to apologise, they're just sitting there in his skull, feeling four sizes too big. He doesn't feel sick, which is the one thing the universe has chosen to gift him with this morning. He is, however, the thirstiest he's ever been in his entire life.
He's also in the back of the bar, clearly too drunk to accomplish home in any capacity.
Rook should probably hand in his deputy badge at this point, since he must be technically on duty, somewhere, in some universe. Though it occurs to him that his badge is probably still in Dutch's bunker somewhere. Which is something that's not allowed, and he's either going to have to get it back at some point, or write up a report about his reckless loss of department property.
He makes his way to the nearest sink, and tries to gently drown himself in it, until he feels properly awake, and more capable of being a functioning member of society.
Mary May is cleaning glasses when he opens the door and heads into the main bar. She looks at him, then winces sympathy, in a way that suggests he didn't quite drown himself hard enough.
"Good morning," she says, then smiles wide enough to look like laughter all on its own. "I wondered if you'd be up today."
"People keep letting me drink with Hurk and Sharky," he says, pulling a stool out and slowly falling onto it. "Why do you all keep letting me do that?"
The laughter's obvious then. But Rook can't even be irritated at the noise, Mary May has done nothing but be kind to him since he met her.
"Deputy, you're a grown man, I think that one's entirely on you."
"Oh God, that's not what I wanted to hear," he says sadly. "That just makes me feel like everything is especially my fault." He resists the urge to collapse forward on his own arms. He's up now, he's going to live with the consequences.
Mary May must feel some small sliver of sympathy though, because she pours him a coffee and brings it over, sets it down under him so the steam gently bats at his face. Which is weirdly nice, is this a hangover thing? Does Mary May know secret hangover cures? Has she been holding out on people all this time?
"So, how much do you remember?" she asks carefully.
Rook pauses with his mug of coffee half lifted, because she says that like there's something specific he's supposed to remember, something he's supposed to have feelings about this morning. Or worse, something that he might have to feel guilty about.
Jesus, what did he do?
"I remember most of the drinking," he admits slowly. "If there was a slow slide into bad decision-making later in the night I may have erased it from my memory." He rubs gently at his eyes, which still feel tender.
Mary May's expression is somewhere between amused and apologetic. And he just knows there's something she's dying to tell him, but she knows he's going to hate every moment of it. There was bad decision-making, Rook can feel it in his bones.
"Mary May, what did I do?"
She sighs out a breath and leans into the bar, like she's about to share a secret.
"You may have drunkenly confessed your love over an open, long range radio," she tells him.
Well that feels a little bit like missing a step, on the grand staircase of life. Rook puts the cup of coffee back down again, without doing much more than inhaling the steam.
"For who?" he asks, throat suddenly painfully dry.
Mary May straightens, reaches back through the hole, so she can put another pot of coffee on. As if she thinks he might need it. God, this is going to be worse than he's expecting, isn't it?
"Well now, that's the thing. You didn't exactly confess to a name, you just went on a whole ramble down the radio, like they were actually listening, telling them that they were majestic, and intelligent and terrifying. You told him that you couldn't stop thinking about him. That he needed to stop showing up when you were trying not to think about him, being all dramatic and threatening and crazy. You asked him if he thought about you. And then you told the object of your affection that even though they were, and I quote, 'kind of insanely fucked up, due to all the shit they'd been through,' you didn't care, you'd love them anyway. You told him that you'd been dreaming about him, a few of which you shared with everyone, and Rook those descriptions were very enthusiastic and explicit. Oh, and then you got annoyed because you were using the word 'dick' too much, so you solicited alternatives from the bar." Mary May clearly still finds the last part amusing, God knows how many hours later.
Rook makes some sort of noise in his throat.
Mary May hasn't finished. She hasn't finished, and she tosses a cloth over her shoulder and comes over to him, leans into the bar next to him so she can lower her voice and share the rest of it.
"There was a lot of talk about his blue eyes, I feel like that is a thing you have definitely noticed about him, and about the way he looked at you, about how you loved his voice, and you stayed places you shouldn't, just so you could listen to it. You asked why he had his hair like that, but then admitted that you kind of liked it and wanted to touch it. You wanted to know how many tattoos he had, and if he'd show you all of them, which may have briefly taken you somewhere a little explicit again."
Mary May stops for a second, like she's lost her train of thought, then clears her throat and starts again.
"Ok, a lot explicit. The word lust was repeated about fifty times, and then you wanted a dictionary definition of it, I think you were looking for a loophole of some sort. Because you started muttering that you wanted to touch him, and it wasn't fair. Which started you rambling for a while, about how you couldn't join a cult for him, no matter how many ways he asked you to. And how you knew his brothers would disapprove, but then you said that you were willing to work on it, for them, and all of the people in the county. There was a whole speech about how you didn't want to kill them, but you couldn't be one of their soldiers, even though you would jump in front of a wolverine if they were in danger, which distracted you for a bit into a wolverine tirade, that to be honest I've heard from you before, but never with quite so much venom. I think that was just the scariest thing your drunk brain could think up, to be honest."
Rook makes another noise, and then decides that drowning himself in coffee might be a viable strategy here.
Mary May's face is all sympathy at this point. She leans down on her arms.
"Rook, you don't need anyone's permission to be interested in someone, you know that right? After everything you've done for us, no one is going to fault you for wanting something for yourself, for making poor relationship choices. Or at least no one is going to do it twice. Because it sounds a lot like you've fallen for a Peggie? I mean, I'm not judging, we've all made terrible decisions in the name of love, or lust - let's be honest it's usually lust - but you know they're almost all fanatics. And they're all pretty focused on that whole end times prophecy, that requires you to either be saved or crushed underfoot, with all your property confiscated. We just don't want you to get hurt."
Rook rubs his eyes again, and sighs agreement, because Mary May isn't telling him anything he doesn't already know.
"Yeah, I know, you're not telling me anything I haven't told myself." But it seems that drunk him didn't get the memo that this was something they were going to leave the fuck alone. He feels like it's too much to hope that that was the end of it. "Was that it?" Please, God let that be it.
Her head tilt is apologetic.
"Well you muttered for while about him 'making you do things you didn't want to do,' and then you made a very dirty joke, which you immediately apologised for, and then got confused about whether humour was a sin. Which led to a rant about sin, that eventually trailed off into a pretty depressing story you read recently, about a man who spent six days alone in a well, before drowning. Which made you sad, because you kept insisting his family hadn't even noticed he was gone, and you promised that you'd be there for them if 'sad shit like that' turned up in the papers again. Then you mumbled something about being too young to get married, and we carried you into the back and let you sleep the rest of it off."
Rook drinks half his coffee in one go. It's still very hot, he regrets it deeply.
Mary May comes all the way into his personal space, and settles a hand over his shoulder. She rubs at the knots of embarrassed misery forming somewhere at the back of his neck.
"Honestly, you've been working non-stop since this whole thing started, and you barely sleep. You've never taken a moment to yourself, you've never even mentioned anyone you might have had feelings for. By the end, everyone just felt sorry for you. The others think you should just try and make it work, whoever it is, they say they'll deal with the fallout, if it explodes in your face."
Rook drinks the rest of his hot coffee, which feels a lot like a punishment he deserves.
Mary May must read something in his posture of terrible regret, because she squeezes his shoulder gently.
"And if you don't want to, I mean what are the odds that he was listening to a random, drunk broadcast in the middle of the night?" she offers.
Yeah, what are the odds?
Rook is going to need more coffee before he's ready for today. He just knows it.