Chapter Text
“When I turn towards you
in bed, I have a feeling
of stepping into a church
that was burned down long ago
and where only the darkness in the eyes of the icons
has remained
filled with the flames
which annihilated them.”
—Henrik Nordbrandt,
Our Love is Like Byzantium
He wakes up cold some time in the night a few hours after Marty has brought him home, confused and afraid, with the yellow taste of Carcosa heavy in his mouth like poison. For several long seconds he doesn't know where he is and nervous fear sets his heart to fluttering too fast against his ribcage, a prisoner throwing itself against the bars of its cell. Panic clamours in the pit of his stomach, in his chest, in his head, and his mind is full of fuzz like cotton wool so he barely has the presence of mind to draw in a deep breath, to hold it, to calm down.
Memory comes back to him in quickfire fragments like lightning strikes, so when Marty appears in silhouette against the honey-gold light spilling in from the hallway and says, “You alright, man? Heard you shout,” Rust is already on the brink of sleeping again. He mutters something about bad dreams, something like an apology, before slipping back under the surface into the warm healing dark.
In the morning he wakes feeling clearer than he has in weeks. The wound in his belly is a dull and constant ache like a broken bone, and when he absently presses his fingers against the dressing, shivering barbs of sharper pain go needling through him until his eyes water and his mouth fills with saliva like he needs to puke. It's a good pain, keeps him grounded, whispers you're getting better in a language only his nervous system understands. For a long, precious moment he lies still and silent in the sticky warm sunlight spilling through the blinds, letting it warm his skin and his sluggish blood. It's been a long time, longer than he can remember, since he woke up after sunrise feeling well-rested, feeling good.
The clock on the bedside table reads 0630. He dozes, and the next time he looks the sun is higher and brighter, and three hours have passed. His mouth is dry and he needs to piss with growing urgency, so he rises from the bed like a corpse from the dead and slips at last out of his hospital gown into something more comfortable. Marty has always been bigger than him, so the wifebeater he changes into hangs shapeless off his shoulders and the flannel pants sit too low on his hips.
Getting dressed takes longer than he expects, and the exertion leaves him sat dog-tired on the edge of the bed, gripping the sheets hard while little pinpoints of light swim and burst in front of his eyes. It takes ten minutes to dress and another fifteen before he trusts himself to stand and walk gingerly out into the bathroom, where he splashes his face with cold water after taking a piss that seems to go on forever, and studies his reflection in the mirror. He looks the same as ever, lean and tired and hungry, but the shadows under his eyes are deeper now and dark as bruises, and he's paler than he ever remembers being, like a ghost or a shadow. He doesn't spend long fretting over it. Whatever he is, eyeballing his reflection all day isn't going to change anything.
He splashes his face again and dries off (he has to bend for the towel and pain drills into his guts when he does) and shuffles grimacing into the living room, where he finds Marty sat sleeping on the couch. He has the remote control in his lap and one hand curled around an empty bottle of Lone Star, and Rust watches him pensively for a moment, then settles down slow on the couch beside him. He tries to be gentle but Marty startles awake anyway with a sound halfway between a gasp and a groan, and spends the next several minutes looking guilty, like a kid caught out by his parents after watching cartoons all night.
“You wearin' my clothes?” he asks at length, looking bemused, voice thick with sleep. Rust shrugs.
“Figured you didn't want my bare ass on your upholstery,” he replies, and Marty makes a noise in the back of his throat to concede the point.
Rust reaches down for the packet of cigarettes on the end table while Marty alternates between trying to figure out what's on the television and fidgeting with all the shit he's fallen asleep with, clearing his lap so he can lean forwards and rub his eyes and say, “I'll swing by your place later, get you some clothes that actually fit.”
“You can take me home, Marty,” Rust replies around the cigarette clenched waiting between his teeth, “I can look after myself.”
“Nah, I know—but you don't have to. You can stay. I... I want you to stay.”
Rust considers this for a moment, lighter raised but not open. He can feel Marty watching him, gauging him, waiting for a response... but he takes his time, wondering how long it's been since someone really cared about him, weighing up whether he feels good about this or just uncomfortable.
He flicks open the lighter and draws a warm breath of smoke up into his lungs, and the sound of the Zippo snapping shut again is very loud against the inane sound of the television.
“Alright,” he says in a cloud of exhaled smoke, and that settles the matter.
*
They take the I-10 south for thirty unchanging miles out of Baton Rouge towards Gonzales. Rust watches the trees spill past in a blur of fever-bright green, and the taste of them at the back of his throat is all ozone and scorched earth.
“Everything multiplies too fast out here,” he mutters, half to himself. “You stay still too long it'll swallow you.” He catches the colourless reflection of the sky in the flat, stagnant stretch of water running alongside the blacktop and at the sight of it he feels smothered, like he's drowning, even after the water has fallen behind them and it's just the wild green overgrowth again.
Half a mile later, he feels the weight of Marty's hand on his knee, warm and reassuring, and it brings him back from his suffocating thoughts,
“You alright, man?” he asks, stealing a quick sidelong glance at Rust. “You look kinda green, want me to pull over?”
Rust offers the barest shake of his head in response. “I'm fine.” He doesn't need to look at Marty to know he doesn't believe him.
“Suit yourself,” he replies at length. “Just don't puke in the car.”
Marty leaves his hand where it is, absent-mindedly rubbing slow, soothing circles against the outside of Rust's leg with his thumb, right up until they hit their exit, when he has to shift gears and slow down. He doesn't put it back, and Rust can't quite decide how to articulate that he wishes he would, so he just turns and stares back at his own eyes reflected in the window until they pull up outside the roadhouse. A sign hangs from the door, closed until further notice, and Rust finds himself wondering about Doumain for the first time since Carcosa, where he's gone, when he'll back... if he'll be back. The bar means a lot to him, Rust knows that as well as anyone, but there are bad memories in this place and plenty of them.
When he gets out of the car the gravel bites into the bare soles of his feet and it seems like a long way to his front door. It's barely past noon and the heat is overbearing, pressing in wet and stifling all sides, and Rust lets it wash over him, fill his lungs with the rotten black stink of swamp, of things growing too fast and dying and growing again. By the time he opens his eyes and comes back to himself Marty is already at the door. It's unlocked but Rust isn't sure he has the energy to say as much, so he just walks carefully through the shimmering heat of the parking lot instead, and lets Marty put an arm around his waist to support his weight on the steps leading on to the porch.
“You ever hear of a lock?” Marty asks with an incredulous shake of his head as Rust opens the door wordlessly.
“Wasn't planning on coming back,” he replies as he crosses the threshold into the familiar confines of his apartment, the air hot and still and stale with smoke. He means for the words to come out cold and casual, but they catch in his throat and he fumbles over them, and it sounds more like a confession than an irrefutable statement of fact. He feels Marty's discomfiture like a physical thing behind him.
“Ah, Rust...” he mutters, and Rust turns around to look at him stood there in the doorway like he doesn't know what to do with himself.
"I drew a line, okay?” he says, unapologetic. “Underneath Dora Lange and Marie Fontenot and all those boys and girls buried along the bayou in unmarked graves. I drew that line a long time ago, and for a long time I couldn't see anything past it. It was like standing on the edge of something looking down—at nothing, darkness implacable. Now I came to terms with that, with that darkness, but... you know, man, you know it wasn't as empty as it looked.” He pauses, looking down at his hands, and wishes he'd bought his cigarettes, wishes he'd stayed slumped on Marty's couch, wishes he'd bled out in the dirt in Carcosa... but he didn't. He didn't and nothing is ever easy, so he draws in breath and sighs it out and goes on, “I already told you I'm not supposed to be here... but I am. I am, and as long as I've got you in this, whatever this is, this weird Beyond, I'm not..." he trails off, reaching for the words, struggling through the fog of too many thoughts. "You don't have to worry. Alright?"
Marty mulls it over for a moment, then nods like he's satisfied—and maybe he is, maybe he isn't—and makes a dismissive gesture.
“Go get your shit. I'll wait here.”
*
He sleeps the whole way back, shallow, unwholesome sleep that has him jerking awake every few minutes and feeling inexplicably exhausted by the time they're back in Marty's apartment. There's a ball of pain in the pit of his stomach like hot lead and he's on the verge of passing out by the time he sinks down gratefully on to the couch. He can hear Marty talking, but the words are lost on him, and all he gets is the inflection, as if heard from underwater.
He drifts out and sleeps, and the next time he wakes he's in bed, with Marty curled up like a child beside him, breathing slow and deep and easy.
Those first few nights are good, and later, when the nights are not so kind to them, when they come awake screaming if they sleep at all and sit drunk in the dim white fluorescence of the television screen until the sun comes up, Rust remembers those nights when sleep came easy with a distant sense of gratitude.