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Marty had never been what one would call the nurturing sort. When Maggie was pregnant, he would go out and buy her whatever crazy shit she was craving, rub her ankles, then let her mother take over and head down to the bar and grill to shoot the shit and complain about what a drag it was to have a crazy moody pregnant wife. He'd smile, a gap toothed grin, say he loved her and couldn't wait to see his kid, and go home long past bedtime, do the whole thing all over again. Leave early and come home late. But that’s just the life of a cop.
He was working. When the kids were born, he was still working. He was there for the fun bits, changed enough diapers to count, came home to take the girls out for ice cream after Maggie spent all day trying to wrangle them. Marty loved his family, but he was never the nurturing sort.
Which is why it hits him sometimes that he has no idea what the hell he is doing, or why the hell he is doing it. He'll be getting some kinda special protein mix that Rust will hate but at least won’t fuck up his gut anymore, weighing one brand against another, and start wondering what would happen if he just didn't go home. Turned off onto the interstate and just didn't go back to that house that sometimes felt emptier than it had when he first moved in, to the man who seems to be doing his damnedest to decompose in what used to be Marty’s bedroom. Marty may not be the nurturing sort, but he still gives a damn, been trying to give more of a damn.
He's still himself though, so he shoves both protein mixes back on the shelf and grabs some kinda strawberry flavored shit that'll make Rust scowl with more passion than he's seen in him in days and make Marty smile with a wicked gappy grin, so he buys the strawberry and picks up some kinda fruity bubble bath that's on display by the cash register and heads out. Home might not be the most appealing concept at the moment, but at least there’s someone sharing that stagnant air with him, someone else to leave the toilet seat up, making the small human sounds that remind him he isn't alone in the universe.
The sky is endless blue, cobalt, and Marty wonders what that would mean to Rust. He’s struck by the thought a moment later—that he’s tucked Rust’s colors and weird senses into some corner of his brain and kept them. Unsettled, he clutches tightly at the plastic grocery bag whose professions of gratitude glow in the florescent light of the parking lot. He shakes his head and rolls his shoulders as if walking headlong into a storm. The blue is gradually making its way into black as he drives along the highway. All the roads here seem to be highways. He's got Rust in his head and in his home and sometimes, when the light is just right, or his eyes and head are still full of sleep, he thinks he's got Rust in his heart too. Marty turns up the radio loud, tries to lose himself, almost manages it too, has his turn signal on before he even realized what he’s doing. He looks at the bag of strange pink shit in the passenger seat and Rust is there. He goes straight, goes home.
His house is dark, warm and stale from the hot summer sun. Something buzzes from farther down the hall, at the back door maybe, or the bathroom window. He puts down his bag before hitting the lights. Kitchen's a mess. He rubs a hand over his head and grimaces when his palm brushes over more scalp than hair. He tries to listen for Rust's breathing, tries to rationalize away the fear he feels when he can't hear it. Gives up, heads toward the back of the house, darkness closing up behind him, all around him, and it feels just like those tunnels until he gets the light on.
He stands in the doorway of his bedroom, can see the small shallow movements of Rust's lungs through the muscles on his back. He feels something like a father again, filled with the irrational fear that your child has stopped breathing and the mixture of embarrassment and relief you feel watching tiny lungs expand, leaning against the doorjamb, marveling at that miracle of life, of breath. Marty feels the embarrassment, the relief, but isn't sure if awe is what he feels now, watching Rust sleep in his bed, back slick with sweat and and far paler that it ought to be. There is something about this transformation, it was there the first time he saw him in his rearview. He doesn't like it, sure taillight’s still out, but looking at Rust, even before he got gutted, there's way no way to pretend time hadn't passed. Hell, probably good it had passed, would have been a lot less likely to calmly load his gun instead of trying to tackle Rust again if he'd showed up any earlier. But it seems wrong. Things having changed so much, and now Rust: pale and weak, unable to monologue for more than a minute or two, fucked up worse than that week in '95 when he'd been Crash. Marty wants him active again. There is no universe where Rust is quiet and static, listless.
Marty pushes hard off the door frame and gently closes the door behind him, shaking himself before he starts composing poems about his sick roommate/partner/whatever the fuck and moves to the kitchen to scrounge up some dinner. He falls asleep on the couch in front of the TV like it’s an accident and not where he lays his head every night.
"The doctor said no showers, and I sure as hell ain't giving you a sponge bath, but there're only so many layers of sweat you can build up before you become nigh unrecognizable."
Rust scoffs but doesn't move to face him, keeps his eyes closed as if that deep warm darkness will come back if only he doesn't let the light touch his retinas.
"I'm serious, Rust, if it weren't my mattress I'd just drags the hose in here and hose you off where you lie."
"Marty, if you want your bed back, you can just say so."
"Damn it, Rust, that ain't what I'm saying and you know it. You need to get clean, man. I'm not sure you can feel human under all that sweat and grime. Doctor said if we wrap your stomach up real tight and don't let the water go on up above it, a bath should be fine. I'm gonna go draw one and when I come back you’re going to get your ass up and get in it, we clear?”
"Yeah Marty, we're clear, now go on, get outta here."
Marty considers leaving the strawberry bath shit out of it the first time, if only because he doesn’t want to fight Rust any more than he already has to, but figures he might not get Rust in the bath again anyway, and after all the shit he's put up with he’s owed a laugh or two. Both of them almost put their backs out trying to get Rust into the tub. Marty fills the tub around him to make sure it doesn’t get up too high. Rust is distracted by the new sensations of the cold tub and the warm water and the smooth off-white ceramic, so he doesn’t notice the bubbles at first. But the scent of synthetic strawberries, that hits him right in the face, almost makes his eyes water before he adjusts.
"What the hell did you put in my bath, Marty?"
Marty grins, gap toothed and gleeful, shaking the soap off his hands as he gets up from the floor with a creak and a groan.
"Just a little something to cheer you up. You've been downright gloomy lately…well, more than usual; gloomy is basically a personality trait for you. It was on sale; you like it?"
"You know what, Marty? I think I just might." Rust smiles that smile that hitches up one side of his mouth, Marty hasn’t seen it in ages but it always reminds him of the batman villain with half his face scarred and one side of his suit a different color. God, he hasn't seen that show in forever.
He reaches out and pats Rust's all-too-skinny knee before he thinks better of it, and tells him to holler when he wants help or if the water gets cold. Marty isn't the nurturing sort, but the sheets are stained sickly yellow with sweat. Marty won't tell him, but having Rust around means he actually does his laundry before he’s down to that Pink Floyd t-shirt he can never look at without seeing Rust's red rimmed eyes twitching all over the place, without feeling the adrenalin, seeing those kids, the heat of the sun, and the back of Ledoux’s head as yet unmarred by the bullet Marty knew he’d put in it. Marty only just remembers to hold off on starting the laundry until Rust is out of the tub, and goes to rummage around in what was once a linen closet to see if he can't find another set of sheets.
Marty's trying to get the last corner on the bed without having to go around to the other side when he hears a cut off hiss.
"Rust? You alright in there?" When he gets no answer, he hauls himself up from where he’s sprawled diagonally across the bed and heads to the bathroom. Rust is sitting in the bath, foamy bubbles preserving whatever kind of modesty either of them might be pretending he still has, a pinched expression on his face and his hair just barely damp.
"I'm alright, I'm alright" he breathes out, but there is no way he expects Marty to believe him. Marty's face softens and Rust almost hates him for the look he gets.
"You need a hand washing your hair? You know it would be a lot quicker if you let me cut it."
"No need to take your jealousy out on me, Delilah." Marty snorts but directs him to move forward all the same, titling his head back to he can get his hair wet without the water touching his stomach. The shampooing goes quick, but the rinsing takes longer and the water stars to get cool. Together they get the soap off Rust as well as they know how and settle for trying to get him out of the slick tub without doing themselves any more damage. Rust's elbows have gotten sharper since 2002, Marty notes as he lugs his naked body back to the bedroom and tries to get him dressed while staring firmly at the textured 70s ceiling. It's a lost cause, but Rust's body makes him feel more sad than gay.
By the time they get him dressed and all the way on the bed, Rust is just about passed out. Marty wants to get some food in him after having to get up close and personal with his xylophone ribs, but it's pretty clear Rust doesn't have enough in him even to swallow the liquid strawberry shit Marty picked up for him. Marty watches as some off brand TV dinner-–a healthy meal for the hungry man–revolves sluggishly in the microwave and tries not to think about why he cares so damn much about the state of Rust's ribs.
Things are strange. Weird. Fucked up. Marty is half convinced that time warps around Rust like a black hole or some shit. Gets real fast, then slows down so much the seconds move like molasses from the bottom of the bottle. He can't figure how they went from physically going after each other to spilling take out on case files in his office that wasn’t new but had never felt so finished, so complete, as it did with all the shit stapled up on the walls, with nothing but 10 years of denied wondering and repressed mourning and a broken taillight connecting the two of them.
He hasn't seen the man in years and next thing he knows he's holding his guts in, crying like it's the whole world that's down there in the maze and not an ex-partner he'd not quite managed to feel indifferent to. And now with Rust laid up in bed, time is laid up with him. It moves with him, slow and aching and humid-sick.
Marty doesn't know how he got to this place. This place that's always full of oppressive sunlight or crushing darkness. This place where doom sleeps in his bed in the back of the house and lets the flies land where they will without a motion to swat at them. This place where neither heat nor cold is comfort. And if he gets right down to it, if he lets himself get right down to it, down to the heart of things, all Marty really needs is for that man in the back room of his house and his head to be well. To be better. To breathe. To look at him with eyes that pass judgment as the mouth denies you just that. He just needs Rust again. But the Rust he knew never existed for Marty. And if all that shit he said in '95 is to believed the only thing he existed for was to bear witness. But lying in that room with the blinds always shut and the door just barely askew, Marty can't help but think Rust has given up on that as well.
But. He thinks back to Rust in his first bath, thinks maybe he should make a scrapbook: Rust hitching one side of his lip up to snark at Marty about that strawberry bubble bath, the way he'd furtively patted pink-tinged foam before he realized Marty had come back in the room. He thinks he might make that scrapbook after all. Because the man in his bed smells faintly of strawberries and clean sheets, and it doesn't make Marty the nurturing sort, he's never gonna be that, but he thinks he might like to keep Rust like that, see if he can't get some meat in him, thinks maybe someday his scar will heal up and match the color of that damn strawberry shit.
There’s nothing good on TV and Marty doesn't even try to pretend he fell asleep out there on accident. He makes up his bed on the sofa--a sheet folded over like a hotdog bun--brushes his teeth, and leans up against the doorjamb, watches Rust's back move with his breath, until Rust rolls over, looks up at him with those eyes, the ones he can't for the life of him remember why he missed, and tells him:
"Hey, why don't you stop gazing at the mattress and get on in. You bought it; you know it ain't that small."
And hell, Marty isn't the same person he was in '95 or '02 or any other time, Rust isn't either. Marty is softer now (though one would hesitate to call anyone with cheek bones that sharp soft but), he can hardly say the same for Rust with all his bones poking out like they do, but there is something tempered about the steel of his gaze and Marty figures, you can't get more intimate than holding someone's guts inside them, and crawls into bed.
Time moves different around Rust, the night moves quickly and when Marty's eyes creak open, the bright sunlight seeps through the morning air and the gaps of his eyelids, already hot and only getting hotter. The blinds and the window are open and rust's lying there, hair spread out from his head like some kinda Christ figure, the barest of smiles on his face.
Now, this doesn't mean that Rust's sleep-smooth face doesn't get stitched into a pained scowl over the course of the day, or that Marty becomes Mother Theresa overnight, hell, it doesn't even mean Marty doesn't becomes Mother Theresa over the course of his whole life, but it does mean he stops hitting his turn signal quite so often on the way home, and it does mean he stops pretending he fell asleep on the couch by accident, and it does mean he washes Rust's hair with the same strawberry shampoo twice a week, and that he picks up a disposable camera next time he heads out for bubble bath and protein drinks.