AN: HOLY SHIT, I'M FINALLY UPDATING AFTER MORE THAN 2 YEARS. I didn't mean for it to take this long. Pretty sure I'm not finished with this fic, but no idea when I'll update again. I just hope it doesn't take me half as long as this chapter did.

Reviews are always appreciated. The longer the better. :)

Part 7

He's lying there on the mattress just after five in the morning, as the dim blue twilight starts to seep into the room through the window blinds. He doesn't hear any birds. It's still too early for that. He got about three hours of sleep, and that's going to have to suffice. He stares at the white ceiling, not thinking about anything at all, until he recognizes the urge to go running. He gets up and finds a pair of sweatpants in the downstairs cupboard where he keeps the clothes that don't hang, puts them on with a pair of socks and his only pair of sneakers. He doesn't bring his keys or lock the back door behind him, figuring this isn't the time for a B&E and there's nothing worth stealing in the house anyway.

It's nippy outside, the neighborhood dead quiet under the turning sky. The sun hasn't broken up through the horizon yet, and he can still see the moon, a feeble white husk in the west. The trees standing in front yards and back yards still look almost black, as if they soaked up the night, and the street feels eerie, like his memory of suburbia in another state, the scene of his worst nightmare come to life.

He starts jogging north, not knowing how far he's going or what route he's taking. He doesn't want to leave the residential area and move out into the deserted public streets; he would rather circle back and run to the opposite end of the neighborhood instead.

His footsteps hitting the pavement are the only sound in his earshot. He's awake and alert, completely in his body, his skin prickling in the cool air and his breathing quickened. He feels more clear-headed than he's been in recent memory.

Rust thinks about Marty, the last time they spent the night together at Rust's place, the way Marty held him in his sleep and how it felt to wake up draped against him. That Marty is a different man than the one he sees in the bull pen at the office, different than the man who sits at the head of his dining room table when he's having dinner with his wife and kids. The man Marty is becoming in his relationship with Rust can only exist because of Rust, and if Rust packed his bags and left Louisiana in his rearview mirror, Marty's new and secret incarnation would evaporate like a mirage and seem as impossible to Marty himself as it was before they met.

Sometimes, he looks into his eye, in the small circular piece of mirror glued to his living room wall, and he doesn't know what he sees. He still doesn't feel real, which is something left over from his Crash days but also something that has to do with his relationships.

He feels himself changing, because of Marty and Maggie. If he were someone else, he might call it healing, but he doesn't believe he can heal from the past. Healing is a myth. All that Oprah shit. There is no closure, no returning to who you were before suffering. But there is change. Even he can't deny that everything changes, one way or another.

In another life, parallel universe maybe, they'd be fucking, him and Marty. The affection, the tension, the emotional intimacy they share would bubble over into erotic desire, the kissing leading naturally to sex even if neither man had any abstract attraction to men in general. In a way, that alternative scenario might be easier for Marty—unfamiliar territory with familiar rules. But here, what they have has no rules or blueprint. They're flying blind, and maybe that should scare Rust. He wonders if it scares Marty.

As for Maggie, Rust's relationship with her is even more foreign to him. He's always been attracted to women in a way he isn't to men, regardless of his distaste for sex. He's always found Maggie physically attractive, but that's not the reason he has a sense of caution about their relationship. There's always been a part of him that wanted to be close to women. His shrinks at North Shore would've analyzed that with all the predictable Freudian bullshit about Rust's absentee mother, but that's not what the longing is about, in Rust's mind. Women are all the good things that men aren't—devoid of the ugliness present in men, including Rust himself. He had that figured out pretty early in life, even without a mother to confirm it. All the time he's spent and continues to spend in a world full of men who live unchecked by female observation has proven to Rust that they are the ultimate beasts of the world. Cruel, predatory, violent, and dangerous, with a will to domination. There was a time, in his youth, when he thought he would be different. Now he's not even forty years old, and he's shown himself just how good he is at being a man.

Maggie isn't perfect. No woman is. But despite everything cold and hard and human in her, she still has that capacity for love and gentleness, and none of the brutality that Rust has spent most of his life stuck in. The problem isn't so much that he could fall in love with her, the way he did with his ex-wife. The problem is that she could fall in love with him, and he can't do that to Marty.

It's strange to be this close to a woman, without being her lover. He's always wanted this, even if he could never articulate it, but now that he's got it, he doesn't know how to manage it. He wants to be as free with Maggie as he is with Marty, but he's afraid of what might happen if he lets her in all the way. Afraid that she'll want sex, afraid that she'll stop loving Marty, afraid that the whole thing will fall apart.

Where does friendship end and romance begin? Hell if Rust knows. Maybe it's the sex, but then again, maybe it isn't. He loves Marty and he's getting to love Maggie. So far, what he has with them feels better than any romantic relationship he's ever had, in large part because he doesn't have to put up with sex. There's an intimacy he's never had with anyone besides his ex-wife. Some of the touch reminds him of his marriage, mostly the kissing, but a lot of it feels expressive of the deepest, closest kind of friendship a person could have. He doesn't want to move in with the Harts—there's still a distinct separation between himself and their family and marriage—and he sure as hell doesn't want to tell the world that he's anything to them in particular. But there's already a sense of Rust's life being intertwined with theirs, a mutual expectation that they include each other in life-changing decisions and major events and the more mundane details of their emotions.

Rust can't just pack his bags and leave Louisiana.

A couple blocks after he turns around to go home, he sees something down the street, lurking in the receding shadows of a huge oak tree that stands at the edge of somebody's front lawn. He slows down as he draws closer, recognizing the short figure as a person.

When he's close enough to see her in detail, he freezes, suddenly losing any sense of his quickened pulse and the world around him.

A girl with long, corn silk hair stands in the road, wearing a white dress that almost glows in the dim blue darkness. She's barefoot, no more than 10 years old. She's wearing a crown woven from kindle, red berries dead on the stem still bright as blood, and she's holding an antler in her right hand, like she hasn't decided yet whether it's a toy or a weapon.

Rust blinks and half-shakes his head, but she's still there, staring at him from a few yards away.

He doesn't know what to do, a familiar cocktail of dread, terror, and disbelief crawling up his chest and throat from the pit of his belly. He doesn't want to speak, as if the sound of his voice will wake up the whole neighborhood or hell itself, and confirm that he isn't dreaming or hallucinating.

The girl turns around without warning and runs away, faster than he'd expect a child that age capable of.

He hesitates for a moment, then starts running after her. He sees her turn left at a corner ahead and realizes once he gets there that it's the street he lives on. But once he turns the corner, he doesn't see her. He runs all the way back to his house, expecting to find her somewhere—maybe on his doorstep, but when he finally stops in front of his own place and turns in a circle looking for her, he's alone.

He's panting, a V of sweat darkening his t-shirt, more spooked than he's been in recent memory. He keeps looking both ways down the street and searching the houses around him with his eyes for any sign of the girl. She's gone.

He hasn't been high in days. This isn't some drug-induced hallucination. He's wide awake and sober, and she looked as real as his own hand, as real as the house and the grass and the tire swing hanging from his neighbor's tree.

Rust heads into his house through the back door he left unlocked, half-expecting the girl to be there in the living room, but she isn't. He checks all the rooms upstairs, looks in the closets and the laundry room, but he's alone.

It's past six in the morning now, still too early to call Marty at home. The birds are starting to sing.

Rust stands in his kitchen and has one of those moments he's had too many times before.

Am I losing it? he thinks. Am I going crazy?

Marty hasn't been to Sunday service in a couple weeks, but that isn't the reason he slows the car down in front of Saint John's Cathedral on his way home from work on a Tuesday night. His is the only car on the unmarked road, and he idles there before the curb, peering through the passenger window at the lit entrance to the red brick building. He checks the time on the car clock and wonders if the church is open, then pulls into the main parking lot. His car sits alone behind him as he heads for the double doors of the main entrance, and he pays attention to his surroundings, feeling self-conscious—like somebody might be watching.

The door gives when he tries it, and he pokes his head inside before fully committing. The narthex is empty and dimly lit. He heads for the next set of double doors he sees, finds them unlocked, and steps into the nave of the cathedral. He stops when he's just inside, surveying the room. This place is more impressive than any Protestant church he's ever been in. It reminds him of Rust, for some weird reason, and as soon as he thinks of him, Marty goes down the aisle and chooses a pew on the right hand side, not too many rows in.

He sits down and notices the Bibles and pamphlets tucked into the back of the pew in front of him. He wrings his hands in his lap and bites at his lower lip, as he forces himself to look up at the altar at the end of the aisle.

"I don't—I don't know what I'm doing here," he says out loud, careful to keep his voice down. "I'm not even Catholic." He pauses. "Feels like I haven't talked to you in a while. Not since the Dora Lange case. I've been to church more since then, but I haven't actually talked to you, like this, after that night... when I told you about Reggie Ledoux."

By the time he and Rust made it back to Rust's place that night, it was after ten, and they hadn't slept in almost forty-eight hours. They were still wearing the dirty, sweat-stained clothes from the day before. They'd gone about twenty-four hours without food and stopped at a drive-thru on the way home, even though they had little appetite. They ate in the truck parked in the driveway without speaking. They dragged themselves into the living room-turned-bedroom, stripped down to their underwear, and collapsed onto the mattress, too exhausted to shower first. Rust passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow, but Marty—he laid there, his eyes filling with tears, and prayed.

I killed a man today, he thought. Not because I had to. Because I wanted to.

He wasn't sure if he felt guilty for pulling the trigger or guilty for not regretting it. Just a few weeks before, he'd sat at his dining table and told his daughters he'd never fired his gun. He hadn't been ashamed of it. Now, he's a murderer. It doesn't matter that the guy he killed deserved to die or that the world is better off without him. The details don't change the fact that Marty killed someone just because he felt like it.

He asked God for forgiveness. He promised he'd never do it again.

Then, he thanked God for keeping him and Rust alive and getting them out of the whole shit show unscathed.

I'll make things right, he thought. I'll do whatever I have to.

"I been meaning to talk to you," he says in St. John's Cathedral. "About Rust and Maggie and what's been going on. I just don't know how. Maybe I'm—afraid of what you'll think. I know every preacher I've ever heard would say the whole thing's wrong. Guess I'm hoping you disagree with them."

He feels stupid about it as soon as the words leave his mouth. He knows what the Bible has to say about sex and marriage and monogamy. It doesn't say anything about men kissing from time to time and holding each other in bed, but it's clear about men fucking each other being a sin, so he figures it wouldn't have anything good to say about his friendship with Rust.

And as for Marty and Maggie giving each other permission to have sex with other people? He doesn't have to go through the whole Book with a fine-toothed comb to know what God has to say about that. He never took the Almighty's opinion into account when he cheated on Maggie, but for some reason, this open marriage thing feels like a bigger offense than cheating.

"It doesn't feel wrong," Marty says, with half-hearted suggestiveness. "The affair with Lisa, that was wrong, I know that. Killing a man—that feels wrong even when it's right." He pauses, lost in the haunting memory of that day he shot Ledoux. "I just can't believe you'd think that what I've got with Rust and Maggie is as bad as that."

He peers up at the altar as if expecting to find God scrutinizing him there or Christ glaring at him from one of the stained glass window scenes. But the cathedral is silent and still, with no sign of the judgment and wrath that Marty fears more than he could ever admit to Rust or Maggie. He knows what they would say if they could see him here now, if he confided in them his doubts about the morality of their relationships. But Rust and Maggie don't want or need divine approval of their actions or themselves. Maggie takes the girls to church on Easter and Christmas only out of tradition, and Rust is either an atheist or someone who believes in God as his personal arch nemesis. They can't understand where Marty's coming from on this.

He sighs and rubs at his forehead, checks his watch. Maggie's going to wonder where he is if he doesn't get home soon—but Marty gives the altar a long look and doesn't get up from his seat, wanting an answer. Wanting peace. Is he doing the right thing or the wrong thing? If everyone and everything around him would call it wrong, how can it be right? If he's doing something objectively and indisputably wrong, why doesn't he feel the way he did about killing Ledoux?

"I don't have anyone else to talk to about this," Marty says. "I just—gimme a sign. One way or the other, I gotta know what you think. I gotta know if this is fucked up. Sorry, for swearing."

He lingers for a minute, before standing up and leaving the pew. He pauses in the aisle and gives the altar a last look, remembering what Rust said in the first real conversation they had, the day they found Dora Lange. The cross on Rust's wall, above the bed.

That's a form of meditation. I contemplate the moment in the garden, the idea of allowing your own crucifixion.

Marty can hardly believe he still remembers that. He never gave it any thought, dismissed it at the time as one fucked up line in Rust's fucked up side of the conversation. He didn't really know Rust then, and now that he does, he can see how that contemplation fits into Rust's whole worldview. He can't even piece it all together in his own head, why Rust would contemplate God allowing his own crucifixion and what he would see in it, but he gets the references to suicide and suffering and masochism, all of which unsettle him.

Marty closes his eyes and remembers that night on the couch, kissing Rust for the first time, watching Rust and Maggie kiss. The feeling of warmth uncoiling in his belly, like something sliding into place after being dislocated for too long. He remembers making love to Maggie for the first time after moving back into their house and kissing Rust in the car on the side of the road, that afternoon in Melville, the feeling of Maggie's hand in his and the feeling of Rust's head on his shoulder.

When he opens his eyes again, there is no angel standing before him shrouded in light, no face of Christ, no burning bush. Still, no answer.

Marty walks out of the cathedral and crosses the empty parking lot to his car, feeling too conspicuous by himself in that wide open space, moving under God's eye. He gets in the car and starts the engine, pausing for a moment as the man on the radio talks too fast leading up the next rock song.

On his way home, he stops at the gas station a couple minutes from his neighborhood and calls June on the pay phone. She sounds happy to hear from him. He asks her if she wants to meet him for a drink tomorrow night. She says yes.

Maggie tries the front door of Rust's house first, because she knows what it would look like to the neighbors if she went straight to the side door with a bouquet in her hand. She rings the doorbell and waits, despite the fact that his truck is nowhere in sight. When she figures enough time has passed, she goes around to the eastern side of the little house, pulls open the screen and tries the door knob.

Her hunch was right. Rust left the side door unlocked.

She opens it carefully, lingering on the step outside as if somebody might be around to catch her. She goes in and shuts the door behind her, locking it without thinking. She has no idea how she knew that Rust would leave the side door unlocked, but it makes sense to her for some reason.

She stands there and surveys the living room-turned-bedroom and the kitchen. She hasn't been here in a few months and each time she's visited, she hasn't stayed long. The place doesn't look any different than it did the last time she stopped by. The mattress pushed against the wall, on the living room carpet, with the cross hanging on the wall above it. The worn lawn chair folded up and leaned against the opposite wall, where there used to be an assortment of case photos and documents pinned up. He still doesn't have a television. There isn't any decoration or photographs and no furniture except the table and chairs in between the living room and the kitchen. The kitchen still looks as stark as she remembers, clean enough that it seems unused.

She goes looking for a vase in the kitchen cabinets under the counter, knowing the odds of Rust owning one aren't good. When she doesn't find one, she settles for the biggest glass bowl she can find, filling it with water and setting it on the counter closest to the door and the living room. She unwraps the plastic and removes the rubber bands from the bouquet, tossing them in the trash can next to the recycling bin full of Lone Star beer cans and a couple of whiskey bottles. She picked up the peonies at the grocery store on impulse, knowing they were for Rust—and now, seeing them in his house, it occurs to her that he's the last person on earth who would appreciate such a thing. Even so, she's glad she brought them.

Maggie explores the house, looking without touching and taking her time. She goes upstairs and finds the second floor empty. She wonders why he chose a house with a second floor if he had no intention of using it. Wonders why he moved into a house at all, instead of an apartment. She thinks about his daughter and his mysterious ex-wife, as she stands in the doorway of the bedroom and looks in at the bare walls and the unoccupied space. There is no second bedroom, and that must've been as deliberate a choice as picking a house over an apartment.

She tries to imagine what the house would look like if it was really lived in. If it belonged to a family or if Rust tried to make it a home for himself despite living alone. She doesn't know what to picture, because she can't tell anything about his taste in interior decor. He doesn't even have a bed frame for his mattress. The table and chairs downstairs looks like the first set he laid eyes on at a garage sale or the local Salvation Army.

She tries to imagine what the house would look like if his girl were here. It leaves a bittersweet sting in her heart, even as she fills in the details with her own personal style instead of something that might be his. Earth tones and flower prints, finished wood furniture and a lot of books that aren't about violence. Images of animals and the mountains or the forest. He might keep a rifle mounted on the wall, either downstairs in the living room or upstairs in the bedroom. Child's things, girl things, strewn all over the place. No different than the Hart home. Framed pictures on the walls, most of them of the girl, a few of Rust with her. Maybe he'd get a dog, more for his daughter than himself. A hound dog. She can see him with one of those. She can see it all, too clearly—and the white void surrounding her starts to look more desperate.

She sags against the bedroom doorjamb. "Oh, Rust," she says.

Maggie would come up here to hold him in bed, if he slept in this bedroom. But if he were the kind of man who sleeps in the bedroom instead of on the living room floor, the kind of man who wanted to make this house feel like a home instead of a waystation on the road to a death too grisly for the ten o'clock news, then Maggie probably wouldn't have the relationship that she's got with him.

She turns away from the empty bedroom and starts to head for the stairs. She stops when she notices the linen cupboards, feeling an impulse to look inside. In the bottom cupboard, on the top shelf, she finds two short stacks of clothing neatly folded—t-shirts, a pair of sweatpants, one pair of jeans. She runs her hand over the stack of t-shirts, the cotton soft and worn with age. They seem familiar, but she's never seen Rust wear them, as far as she remembers. She looks through them and realizes when she finds the second to last t-shirt, a faded blue LSU Tigers Baseball tee that she would recognize anywhere, that they belong to Marty.

He moved back into their house months ago, and Rust obviously can't stand clutter. Marty must've left the clothes here on purpose, not in case she throws him out again but just because. He hasn't spent a scheduled night at Rust's place since they started getting closer, though he's probably stopped by on nights when Maggie worked the graveyard at the hospital and he didn't have the girls. Does he want to spend the night with Rust on a regular basis? Does Rust want him to? She'll have to talk to Marty about it.

Maggie returns to the ground floor and looks at the pale pink peonies in the glass bowl of water. Their color draws the eye, the brightest point in the house. Peonies are her favorite flower. Not roses, not carnations, not lilies or tulips. But peonies, with their layers and layers of petals.

She notices, for the first time, the small circular piece of mirror stuck to the wall in the living room. She goes and stands before it, seeing that it's only big enough to reflect an eye. She looks at it, without looking into it, and tries to figure out why Rust would want to look into his own eye without seeing the rest of himself. It doesn't surprise her that he would, though she's never seen an eye mirror before in her life, much less met somebody who uses one.

Before she leaves, Maggie sits at the foot of the bed and observes the room. Maybe to see from Rust's perspective, maybe just to feel what it might be like to wake up here after a night sleeping next to him. Marty mentioned to her once, months ago, that Rust suffers from insomnia. She sits on his bed, between blank white walls and below the crucifix, and wonders what Rust thinks about when he's lying here alone in the night.

She notices the red foot locker lingering on the floor in the corner, next to the pile of crime books. She didn't see it before, from any other angle, but now she does. There's a big, heavy lock on it, and she knows in her gut somehow, that whatever he keeps in there, she's better off not seeing.

Rust waits in the lobby on his feet, hands on his hips, skittish as a nervous horse. He checks his watch for the third time. His appointment with Dr. Ayers, child psychiatrist on staff at Central Louisiana Children's Hospital, was scheduled to start five minutes ago, and he's well-aware that every doctor from Nantucket to San Diego runs late on business calls as a matter of course. He showed up early anyway, out of anxiety, figuring he's a cop and this appointment ain't about him, so Ayers won't make him wait more than ten or fifteen minutes.

He hates hospitals, especially the psych wings. It hasn't been long enough, since he got out of North Shore. Everything about this place makes his skin crawl—the white lights that wash out everybody's complexion, the floors clean enough to see yourself in, the off-white walls that'll make your eye twitch if you stare at them long enough. And the smell. The smell is blood and bleach mixed together, the sting of lemon juice in a paper cut.

He checks his pulse, pressing two fingers into his neck, and feels his artery throbbing. He closes his eyes and sees bright orange fire burning in the night.

"Detective Cohle?"

He turns around to find the doctor standing in the open doorway of her office. She isn't wearing the white coat this time, the way she was when he dropped off Audrey's pink notebook.

"Come on in," she says, too pleasant, like he's visiting her at home for sweet tea and conversation.

He follows her into the room and stops a couple paces from the door, as the doctor passes him. He stands with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands on his hips, aware that it's a confrontational stance. It's the way he stands in the bull pen at work, when he's facing off with another detective or Quesada. It's the way he's always stood opposite anyone who threatens him.

She sits behind her desk and looks at him as if waiting for him to speak, then glances at the pair of empty chairs opposite her. "Do you want to take a seat?" she says.

"No," says Rust. "I'll stay where I am."

He can see that glimmer in her eye, the one that indicates the psychoanalysis has begun.

"Okay," she says, leaning back in her chair.

Rust sees Audrey's pink notebook on the desk in front of her and starts to feel weaker in the knees, so nervous that he could be sick. A memory flashes through his mind, one that hasn't hit him in years: the moment right before his daughter's attending doctor gave him and Claire the news, when Rust already knew what he was going to say before he said it.

Ayers doesn't open the notebook. She just looks at Rust from across the room. "I can't be one hundred percent confident in my assessment without talking to the child in question," she says. "So I could be wrong about this. But based on my experience, I would say there's a good chance that the girl who drew these has been sexually abused. The drawings are very specific and varied, especially for a child who hasn't been told in detail what happens during intercourse."

Rust doesn't move or speak, clenching his jaw and letting the feeling of being sucker punched in the gut wash over him.

"Something that does give me pause," the doctor continues, "is the female in each couple appearing to be an adult woman, rather than a child. They're all the same size as the men, and they have breasts. This isn't usually how little girls draw themselves when depicting their own abuse. They're usually smaller compared to the man, without any secondary sex characteristics, and often, they'll have a sad face or no face at all. The women in this child's notebook aren't necessarily smiling, but they don't have sad or angry expressions either. They don't appear to be in distress."

A part of Rust wants to yell at this woman for trying to be optimistic, but he knows that if he opens his mouth right now, anything could happen. He might have a panic attack or need to sit down, something. He feels like his ability to keep it together is entirely dependent upon him staying exactly where he is, in silence, like a chair bolted to the floor.

"So, I'm not as confident as I typically am when I see sexual drawings made by children, that these indicate abuse of the child—but she's obviously been exposed to sexual situations or imagery, at the very least. I would have to interview her to reach a conclusive answer."

The doctor watches him with that inscrutable shrink stoicism, like he's a patient of hers. She reminds him of God. He looks at her and he hates her, the way he hates God. He may pretend to be an atheist to people like Marty, but the truth is, Rust has never been able to shake the sense that there is a god, a cold and indifferent intelligence watching human horror like it's a fucking TV show. Maybe he believes in God just so he can hate the son of a bitch.

In any case, Rust hasn't had a television since he moved out of the house he lived in with Claire and Sofia.

"Did you want to bring her in?" the doctor says.

He blinks at her, stony faced. "No," he says, his voice low and husky.

She pauses, as if waiting for him to say more. "Well, I strongly recommend the child talk to a professional. If she's been sexually abused, the sooner she gets help, the better. This kind of trauma, if left untreated, can have long-term consequences that continue into adulthood."

Rust crosses the distance between himself and the desk and holds out his hand to the doctor. She gives him back the pink notebook.

"Thank you for your time," he says, and leaves without looking back.

Once he's in his truck, he just sits behind the wheel for a minute, without turning the engine. Not knowing how to feel. Not knowing what to do. "Fuck," he says out loud.

When Rust shot that meth head back in Texas, Sofia had been dead about six months. Claire had been gone less than thirty days, and contrary to his expectations, being completely alone made his life worse. By the time she packed her one suitcase and disappeared in the night without so much as a note, Rust was drinking heavy every day, binging on the weekends, starting to slip up at work, and barely speaking to Claire. But her presence, the assumption that they were in this hell together, had been his single consolation. The one thing keeping him in line. They'd been together five years, and she couldn't even bother to warn him that she was abandoning him.

Being alone in that house every night, with the nursery still intact and the family photos still on hung on the walls, knowing that there was not a single human being left on the face of the earth who loved him and wanted to be with him—except Travis, who had never forgiven him for leaving Alaska when he was eighteen and didn't bother keeping in touch—was enough to make Rust put his department issue gun in his mouth about ten days after Claire bailed. Too drunk to walk, sobbing in Sofia's room, he switched off the gun safety and put it in his mouth. His finger straight against the trigger and guard, ready to curl into shooting position.

But he couldn't do it.

He killed the meth head instead, two weeks later. Took one look at the baby girl's corpse and emptied the entire clip of his gun into the man who killed her.

Sitting in one of the interview rooms at his office, waiting to be interrogated, he figured he'd get at least ten years in prison and end up murdered by another inmate within the first year or two. Former cops don't do well inside. He had no illusions about what awaited him, and that point, he didn't care.

The way the feds framed it, the undercover job was a show of mercy. They would make the meth head situation go away, sweep it under the rug, strike a deal with the DA or the AG or whoever. He would never be charged, let alone go to trial. Rust had to ask why. Why was he going to get special treatment? Why did anyone want to do him a favor? One of the suits who offered him the out said, "You're a good cop. And we know what happened to your daughter."

Rust wanted to punch him in the mouth for mentioning her. For pitying him.

But in retrospect, what the feds offered him hadn't been mercy. Just a different kind of punishment, delivered without in any intention to make him pay for what he did but with cold self-interest. Rust was disposable. A man out of options and out of personal ties. Someone they could use however they liked, for as long as they wanted him.

They knew he had no one waiting for him. That's why they used him for four years. And Rust let them, because he had no reason to stop. He was determined to get himself killed. And finally, after four years that felt like twenty, he found himself lying in a pool of his own blood with three slugs burning in his chest, fading out in the dark. Thinking he was finally done. Finally put out of his misery.

His psychiatrist at North Shore blamed the nervous breakdown on the drug abuse and the long-term dissociation from his true identity. Blamed it on the extreme stress of the undercover assignment. But Rust is pretty sure he just couldn't take being alive, after coming so close to escaping. Couldn't take facing his complete aloneness. The nothingness of himself.

Friday night, Marty's watching TV when the doorbell rings. He goes to answer it and finds Rust standing on the Welcome mat, looking about as happy as Rust always looks. He's wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt with a forest green base, not the jacket and tie he wore to work earlier.

"Hey," Marty says and smiles anyway.

"Hey," says Rust, refusing to smile back.

Marty lets him in and lingers in the doorway after, looking both ways along the street.

They head into the kitchen, and Rust sits on his favorite stool at the island.

"Get you something to drink?" Marty says, opening the refrigerator. "Beer?"

"That's fine," Rust replies.

Marty pulls two bottles from the six pack he bought earlier and cracks them open with a bottle opener. He stands opposite Rust, on the other side of the counter in front of the sink, and they drink in silence for a bit.

Maggie's working the graveyard shift at the hospital and won't be back until morning. Audrey and Macie are at their grandmother's house for the weekend. Marty decided he'd rather have Rust over, than go sleep at June's.

"I was thinkin' we could order a pizza," Marty says, heading for the phone mounted on the kitchen wall. He picks it up out of the cradle. "You have dinner yet?"

"No," says Rust. "Pizza's all right."

"You care what's on it?"

"No anchovies."

Marty dials the number off one of those pizza place take-out menus that every family in the lower 48 keeps magnetized to the side of their refrigerator and places an order for one large pizza. While he's on the phone, Rust nurses his beer, peering and blinking at him with owlish eyes. He was torn about coming here tonight: half of him can't stand to keep secrets from Marty, especially ones so heavy and personal as Audrey's notebook and the girl with the antler; the other half wants a distraction, to hide his face in the comfort of Marty's company.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's going to do. When he's going to tell Maggie about Audrey. When he's going to tell Marty about the girl with the antler—or if he'll tell him. The two secrets mingle and itch in the pit of his stomach, part of an unfinished puzzle that he doesn't have the rest of the pieces to. He doesn't have evidence. He doesn't have a name, a lead, a narrative. He doesn't have anything concrete. And that's what keeps him quiet, for now.

They put away two beers each by the time the pizza delivery guy rings the doorbell. They eat in front of the TV, one man to a couch, watching a boxing match without much comment.

"You ever been in a fight?" Marty says, when they're just about done eating.

Rust shoots him a look—the one he gives Marty and anyone else in response to a stupid question.

"On the job doesn't count. I mean, an honest to God fight. Between equals."

"Yes," Rust says, staring at the TV. "More than once."

"Undercover doesn't count either."

"More than once."

Marty gives Rust his own look. "When?"

"Once in college," Rust says. "Didn't know what the fuck I was doing. Once not long after. Third time, was after my daughter passed. At a bar."

Marty grimaces, feeling bad about reminding Rust of Sofia. He doesn't respond, hoping that he hasn't spoiled Rust's mood for the rest of the night.

But after a pause, Rust says, "You?"

"What?" says Marty.

"You ever been in a fight, off the job?"

Marty immediately thinks of kicking Lisa's date's ass in her apartment that night he and Maggie chaperoned Rust's blind date at the Longhorn. He's a little embarrassed by the memory, glad Rust and Maggie don't know anything about it. "One time, in my twenties."

"Did you win?" Rust says.

Marty glances at him. "Yeah. I won."

They watch more of the match on TV, until Rust gets up off his couch to put his plate in the kitchen sink and his empty beer bottle in the recycle bin. Marty switches off the TV and follows him.

"I'm going out for a smoke," Rust says, already digging his pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket.

"Wouldn't mind sitting out on the patio," says Marty. "We can drink this." He takes a bottle of Jim Beam out of the cupboard next to the refrigerator and holds it up for Rust to see.

Rust nods and goes ahead out to the backyard, through the sliding glass door.

Marty brings the whiskey and two glasses.

It's a clear night, the moon waning and about three quarters full, a bright shard of bone high up in the indigo sky. They can see more stars than usual, or it seems that way. Not half as many as in Alaska. The air's cool, almost cold enough for jackets. They sit in the pair of wicker chairs, side by side, looking out at the yard. Rust sticks a cigarette in his mouth and lights up with his old Zippo, breathing in deep and exhaling a long stream of smoke. There's something satisfying about smoking in cold weather. He figures his pop agrees, with the way he chain smoked in the six-month long winters when Rust was growing up.

Marty pours the whiskey in each glass, about halfway full, and hands one to Rust. They drink in silence for a while, the kind of easy silence they've developed on the road when they're working cases. Rust finishes his drink first and pours himself another one, leaving the bottle of whiskey on the concrete floor, between his and Marty's chairs. He takes his time on the cigarette, savoring it.

Marty's looking at him, and through the haze of intoxication, it hits him that he loves the bastard. It's no big thing, no earth-shattering revelation. It's like realizing you're wearing a jacket, with no memory of putting it on; realizing you got it on because you aren't as cold as you should be. His love for Rust fits him, comfortable and just warm enough. Soft on the inside, buttery and tough on the outside, the way a good leather jacket should be. Something that could last decades. How long has he felt this way?

Rust offers him the cigarette without a word, and Marty takes it, smoking a drag and feeling a little bit dazed. He sits with his arm on the armrest of his chair, the cigarette in his fingers, and notices the moon. Rust takes the cigarette back without asking and smokes again.

"Hey, Rust?" Marty says, after finishing his whiskey.

"Yeah?" says Rust.

"Will you stay here tonight?"

Rust glances at him. "Kinda figured I would."

Marty pauses, relieved. Then, he says as soon as he thinks it, "You been sleeping lately?"

"Sometimes," Rust says. "Depends on the night."

"You still using shit?"

Rust slides him a look and doesn't answer.

Marty remembers watching him snort cocaine off his kitchen counter, the day after they killed Reggie and DeWall Ledoux. Remembers finding an empty bottle of cough syrup in the bathroom trash can. Marty stayed drunk that first week of their paid leave, following the shooting, wracked with guilt. Finally, when Rust couldn't take it anymore, he convinced Marty to smoke pot with him instead—where he got the stuff, Marty still doesn't know—and they smoked and stayed high for hours, the spell of guilt and shock broken as they sat with their backs against the wall and laughed together for the first time since they'd met.

Only now does Marty realize that he'd wanted to kiss Rust then, months before that first time on his living room couch with Maggie. He forgot all about it, maybe because he wanted to.

"I care about you," Marty says, all of a sudden. Before he can stop himself. "I hope you know that."

Rust looks at him, then looks away. "I care about you too," he murmurs, and takes another drag on his cigarette.

Marty is self-centered enough that he doesn't wonder whether or not Rust loves him. He's only concerned with his own feelings in this case, wondering what they mean. He's never loved a man before, other than his father. All of the male friends he's had in adulthood, he's only ever felt a warm appreciation for at most. He had a best friend when he was a boy, and that was love, no doubt. But loving a best friend when you're eight years old isn't the same thing as loving another man when you're thirty-eight.

He closes his eyes and tries to imagine having sex with Rust, all of that naked flesh, their two bodies pressed together, mouths on necks and hands grasping at muscle. But it doesn't flow. He can't see his own face or Rust's, just two anonymous men, the image too close-up to show more than torsos and thighs. He doesn't feel that heat in his groin, that lurch of desire in his stomach, that hits him when he sees Maggie or June naked. Everything about the female body does it for him, right down to the smell and taste. When he fantasizes about a woman, he always sees her face, her head thrown back in ecstasy, her mouth open, her eyes shut.

"Hey," Rust says.

Marty opens his eyes.

"You fallin asleep on me?"

"No," says Marty. "Just thinkin."

Rust doesn't have the cigarette anymore. He must've put it out in the ashtray under his chair.

"We can go in if you want," he says.

Marty looks at the moon again and thinks about stopping at that Catholic church and asking God for a sign. Rust would call him an idiot, if Marty told him about that. "You believe in signs?" he says. "Like, from the universe?"

Rust blinks and pauses. "Maybe."

They sit in silence for a stretch, as Marty deliberates over whether to tell Rust what's been on his mind. He pours himself a second whiskey and sips on it, the taste of it warm and thick in his mouth. He's drunk now and wonders if Rust is too.

"Is it wrong, what we're doing?" he says.

"You're going to have to be more specific," says Rust, heavy-lidded.

"You and me. The way we've been lately."

Rust pauses for a second, having to read between the lines. "You mean the touching. Kissing."

"Yeah. And just—how much time we spend together, how much we tell each other. It's kinda like we're—"

"Lovers," Rust says.

"Yeah," says Marty, reluctant to put that word anywhere near his and Rust's relationship out loud.

"We're not lovers, Marty."

"I know that. But we're not that short of lovers, Rust, and you know damn well what I mean. If any of the guys at work knew what we're like..."

"Oh, that's what you're concerned about?" Rust sneers. "The fucking guys?"

"No! I don't give a shit about them. I'm just saying, if they walked in on us kissing in the fucking evidence locker, they'd think we're fucking, and that's a perfectly logical assumption to make."

"So you're saying we shouldn't kiss each other unless we start fucking too?"

"No, God damn it." Marty pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes for a beat. "I'm trying to ask if what we're doing is wrong, morally speaking. That's all."

"Morally speaking, who gives a fuck?" Rust says. "You have an open marriage with your wife, you're fucking another woman, and you're worried about us doing the equivalent of holding hands in kindergarten?"

"When I held hands with a girl in kindergarten, I had a crush on her," Marty says. "And I ain't ever kissed another friend before you or shared a bed with one or any of the other shit we do. That's what I'm saying. You know exactly what I fucking mean, so quit playing dumb."

"You want to know if we're doing something wrong because it might count as gay, and being gay's wrong, huh? You decided to fucking Christianize your conscience all of a sudden?"

Rust gets up out of his chair and goes to stand at the edge of the patio, crossing his arms against his chest as he looks out at the yard. He's got his back to Marty, and Marty looks at him without rising from his own seat, wondering how the hell this turned into a fight when all he wanted to know was what Rust thinks.

"I know you don't care," Marty says. "You don't care about right and wrong, because everything's fucking terrible and we're all going to die and blah blah blah, two hour car ride of depressing nonsense you read in a book by a dead guy who probably couldn't get laid. I don't expect you to care. I don't. I know you're not a Christian, you don't believe there's a God, you think it's all bullshit, and you think I'm a dumbass for even entertaining the idea that it's real. You don't have to wonder about this shit, but I do. All right? And there's hardly anyone I can talk to about it, so I'd fucking appreciate it if you tried to take me seriously for five minutes and talk to me like a normal human being instead of an asshole with no social skills."

Rust lifts his right middle finger in the air without turning around.

Marty lifts his left in return, even though Rust can't see him.

They stay where they are for a minute, listening to the faint buzzing of invisible insects, and the longer he sits there in the quiet, the worse Marty feels. Finally, he stands up and makes for the door, figuring the night's over and Rust's going to stay mad until morning at least. He slides the glass door open and goes inside, not bothering to shut it behind him.

Rust follows him in.

"The only thing you're afraid is wrong in this whole fucked up situation we're in, is you and I," Rust says, his voice raise. "Not you fucking other women besides your wife, not me and her kissing each other and sleeping in the same bed and spending time together alone, without you. All of that doesn't give you fucking pause, doesn't make you wonder if you're pissing off God. Just us. Right?"

Marty looks at him with a pursed mouth and doesn't answer.

Rust shakes his head, hands on his narrow hips. "What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?"

Marty stays quiet, watching Rust almost with a kind of petulance.

Rust turns away from him, looking at the ceiling and trying to control his emotions. He's angry, angry at Marty for being such a predictable dumbass and angry at himself for even being in this mess.

He faces Marty again and glares at him. "You want to know what I think?" he says. "Huh? I think you don't give a shit about God or the Bible or morality. You're just fucking scared of being a queer. Because you don't like them queers, do you, Marty? You don't like fuckin faggots that go cruising for dick in those gay bars everybody pretends aren't there, and you can't fucking stand the thought that maybe you're not a completely different breed of man than they are, after all. And you want me to tell you that what we're doing doesn't count, doesn't make us like them, that you're still Marty "Hot Shot Detective" Hart who goes drinking with the boys after work so you can have an excuse to brag about the women you've fucked and pick up twenty-something pussy, while your wife cooks you dinner at home. You want me to tell you that you're still that guy, and we've got nothing to hide and nothing to lie about, because we ain't doing anything that would make everybody else you know think you're a fucking queer. Well, fuck you. Fuck you for even caring what they'd think and fuck you for thinking that gay shit is wrong but cheating on Maggie isn't. You don't even have religion as an excuse, you just pretend you do."

Marty's red in the face, and he looks down at the floor with more shame than Rust thought he was capable of.

Rust feels like a deflated balloon, most of his anger gone and replaced with a sense of resignation. "You want to quit this and go back to being strictly professional, fine," he says, his tone more even. "Fuck it. I'm too old for this bullshit."

He grabs his keys off the kitchen counter and makes for the front door, not caring that he's drunk and not caring what happens to him once he leaves this house.

"Rust," Marty says behind him. "Hold on."

Marty catches up to him at the door and sets his hand against it to keep Rust from going. Rust doesn't look at him, gripping the knob and ready to punch Marty in the face if he has to.

"Hold on," Marty says again, his voice soft now. "I didn't say I wanted things to change. I didn't say that."

"I am not going to reassure you once a week that you ain't gay, Martin," Rust says. "If that's how it's going to be, I'm done, and I don't care what you want."

He still doesn't look at Marty, but Marty's looking at him, crowding his right side.

"You're right," Marty says. "I'm sorry. You got me pretty well figured out, and I'm sorry if I offended you, okay? I don't want anything to change, between us. And that's what I'm afraid is wrong. For all the reasons you said, I guess. If that makes me a shitty person, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm pushing forty, Rust. I thought I knew who I was—but I didn't. You can't blame me for being freaked out."

Rust turns his head to look at him. There's earnestness in Marty's blue eyes, the kind of earnestness that always takes Rust by surprise because he's so used to thinking of Marty as the same kind of bad man he is, that he forgets Marty's a good one too.

"None of this freaks you out?" Marty says to him.

"No," says Rust, and it's the truth. He's known who he is for a long time, and even though he's never had relationships like the ones he's got with Marty and Maggie, it doesn't startle him now that he does.

They look at each other, Marty and Rust. Still at the door. And Rust knows he's not leaving.

He goes back down the tiled walkway leading to the kitchen, living room, and dining room, and Marty follows him. He throws his keys back on the kitchen counter and gets himself another beer from the fridge, before going to sit at the dining table in the dark.

Marty grabs a beer too and joins Rust at the table, leaving the light off. It isn't pitch black, the kitchen light reaches them enough that they can make out each other's face, but it's dark enough that they can keep being honest. They sit there in silence, drinking a little.

"You really don't care what anyone thinks, do you?" Marty says.

"No," says Rust, lifting his beer to his lips. "I don't."

"Sometimes, it's not just about what they think, but what they can do to you. Other people's judgments can ruin your life. And I don't mean to offend you, but I got more to lose than you do. That's just the facts."

Rust thinks of Maggie and Audrey and Macie—of what might happen to them if CID and the neighborhood and Maggie's parents and everybody in the Hart family's network got it into their heads that Marty's a homosexual. Them finding out that Maggie lets Marty screw around with other women wouldn't be good, but not half as bad as them thinking Marty secretly fucks men.

"You're right," Rust says. "You do have more to lose than I do."

"I didn't mean—" Marty starts, then trails off as if merely acknowledging Rust's ex-wife and dead daughter would burn Rust like a hot iron to the heart.

"I know what you meant." Rust takes out his pack of cigarettes and his lighter and lights up, the flame showing his face to Marty just long enough to prove he isn't upset. The lighter goes out, but the end of the cigarette glows orange in the darkness.

Marty can see the smoke rising, in a thin, white ribbon.

Rust takes a couple puffs, blows the smoke out of his mouth in a plume, and holds the cigarette in his fingers on the table. "Funny, isn't it?" he says. "What men'll tolerate and what they won't."

"How do you mean?" says Marty.

"All the pricks we work with wouldn't give a shit if they knew you killed Ledoux outta spite. Wouldn't give a shit if they knew all the things I've done on the job. Might even respect us more, if they did know. But they'd want to run us out of there for sleeping together."

Marty thinks about that and takes a drink. He's not sure what makes him feel worse: the fact that Rust's right about the other detectives and cops, or that he used to be one of them.

Rust has had to reconcile a lot in his life, but this, this side of him he didn't know about or thought was long gone in the ashes of his old self, is new enough to surprise him just a little. He's every bit as rough as Marty, rougher in some ways because of the things he's done and seen and suffered, dangerous in a way that Marty and the other CID detectives don't quite embody. He can be brutal and immune to brutality—and he doesn't know what to make of this tenderness in him that has sprouted through those layers of depravity and soulless desensitization, like a strange weed or one of those pink peonies that Maggie left in his kitchen. It's almost like being Crash again, walking through the outside world as one thing and privately knowing he's someone else, losing his sense of which man is the authentic one.

This man he is now, with Marty and Maggie, is not someone he's been before. But he isn't shocked that this is who he's become. It still feels a little unreal but not unnatural.

Marty looks at Rust through the dark, biting his lower lip, afraid to ask the question but too curious to hold back. "Have you ever—with a man?"

"No," Rust says. He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag. "Didn't really occur to me when I was young, one way or the other. I wasn't ever opposed to it outright, I just didn't think about it. And the older I got, the more I wanted to spend my personal time with women, because I only ever saw the worst of men. Then, I met Claire and that was that."

Marty feels a strange gladness that Rust's never had a male lover. It isn't couched in jealousy or possessiveness, so much as an instinctual knowledge of how much worse bad sex can be when you do it with a man instead of a woman. He's glad, even if it isn't clear in his own head, that Rust doesn't have any bad memories of kissing men, sleeping next to men, being close to men—that Marty himself doesn't dredge up old feelings Rust wants to bury.

"Maggie know you're this worked up?" says Rust.

"Not really," Marty replies.

That doesn't surprise Rust.

"I don't think she'd have any more sympathy than you," Marty says, and grins a little as he shakes his head.

"You don't know how lucky you are," Rust tells him, before he realizes what he's saying. "That woman. Those kids."

Marty pauses, knowing that he's got to be careful in this territory. "You know, if you ever want to try again—with a woman, you can. It's okay, for you to want that, Rust."

"I don't." Rust picks up his beer and drinks, then smokes. "I don't want what you have. I'm just telling you to be grateful. And don't fuck it up again."

Marty's not sure he believes Rust has given up on women and family, though he can't picture a woman who could spend the rest of her life living with Rust Cohle. Much less a woman who would happily settle down into a sexless marriage. Some part of Marty selfishly hopes that Rust doesn't get another girlfriend, doesn't remarry or have more children—just because he knows all that would be the end of Rust's intimate ties to him and Maggie. He feels guilty about it as soon as the thought occurs to him and tries to drink it away.

Then, the idea of Rust still living alone like a fucking monk in that empty house that feels like a mortuary, twenty years from now, hits Marty. And it's so depressing and unbearable, he chokes up for a moment, and thanks Christ it's too dark for Rust to see.

Rust puffs on the cigarette and drinks more of his beer, sensing some kind of emotional tension in the air between them. For a split second, he wonders if he's made Marty feel guilty, but he can't be bothered to care if he has. Rust has always believed in taking responsibility for his own fuck-ups, and he holds everybody else to the same standard, no exceptions. He's never been mad at Marty for the affair and acting like a jackass about his family, but a small part of him resented Marty back then, when they were working Dora Lange's case. Rust likes to mind his own business, but he's a critical man. And while he intellectually understands that the whole man/woman drama, as he put it to Maggie, is nature's biggest scam meant only to facilitate reproduction, emotionally he has never been able to comprehend cheating, let alone go easy on the people who do it. That's probably due to his own lack of interest in sex, as much as his ethics. In any case, Maggie didn't deserve what Marty did—no good woman does—and that Marty could be willing to risk his marriage and his family, could be so arrogant and dumb as to believe he'd be the first man in history to get away with infidelity, irritated Rust even back then, when he barely knew the Harts. If Marty had pulled that shit now, Rust would probably kick his ass himself.

"Why do you care so much about this?" Marty says, all of a sudden. "I don't get it."

Rust taps the ash off his cigarette into the ash tray Maggie bought for him a few months back. It appeared on the dining table one night, without announcement, when Rust came over for dinner. She smiled at him when he noticed it, and he didn't have to ask if she or Marty had picked up a new bad habit.

"You know, part of me's worried you don't really want any of it," Marty continues, slurring his words a little bit. "That I'm—'m forcing it on you or you just put up with the physical stuff because you know I like it."

"Marty," Rust says, far too patient. "You should know by now that I don't do anything I don't want to, outside the job."

"You don't even like sex. You've never been with a man. And I didn't realize it before but that's another piece of this that's been eating at me. I don't want to be another person who took advantage of you, made you do things you didn't like. I don't want to hurt you."

Rust scoffs at the word "hurt"—and it's a strange, harsh sound in the quiet darkness of the house. The idea of anyone caring about Rust's hurt or thinking that it's even possible for him to live his life without hurt, is as ridiculous as religion. And it's the kind of statement that makes Marty sound wildly innocent, for the kind of man he is.

"I'm fucking serious, Cohle," Marty says, sounding a little firmer now. "I know I can be an asshole, but I don't want to be that kind of asshole. Especially not to you."

Rust actually smiles at that, just a bit. "We're not having sex," he says. "So I don't see what that has to do with anything. If I didn't want you touching me, I'd tell you to fuck off. I care a lot less about pleasing you than you think."

Marty doesn't answer, and Rust can tell he's sulking, even though he can't see him.

"Look, I'm the one who kissed you first, right?" Rust says. "I touch you without being asked, don't I? Why would I do that shit if I had a problem with it?"

Again, Marty remains silent.

"I think you're just freaked out that you might be a bigger queer than me, even though you aren't. Just because you like sex and I don't, doesn't mean you're more into this thing than I am. Why would it? It's not about sex. Unless there's something you're not telling me."

"I don't secretly want to fuck you, Rust," Marty says.

"All right, then. So my point stands."

Marty finishes off his beer, and Rust takes the last few drags off his cigarette, before putting out the butt in the ash tray. It occurs to Rust that he hasn't answered Marty's first question.

"This isn't fucking easy for me to say, so you better remember it when you sober up," he says. "I want this. You and Maggie. I want it more than I've wanted anything in a long time. And I need you. Okay?"

Marty bobs his head, wishing he could see Rust's face now. He can hear how serious Rust is, in the man's voice. "I believe you," he says, when he remembers that Rust can't see him either.

"Good."

Marty leans forward and puts his face in his hands, elbows on the table. "Fuck," he says. "I ain't been this drunk in a while. What time is it?"

"I don't know," says Rust. "Let's go to bed."

They get up and wander through the darkened house, Rust bumping into Marty as he follows him, the alcohol hitting them harder as soon as they're vertical and moving. Marty uses the wall as a guide, one hand dragging against it, and at some point, Rust grabs onto his t-shirt and doesn't let go until they finally make it to the master bedroom in the back of the house.

Marty flips the light on, and they both squint in it, Rust shielding his eyes with one hand as he heads into the bathroom. He pisses away some of the whiskey and beer, then washes his hands and rinses the tobacco taste out of his mouth. Checks himself out in the mirror—he looks as drunk as he feels.

When Rust comes back out of the bathroom, Marty's sitting on the bed in his underwear and a different t-shirt, his eyes closed. Rust sits on the ottoman in front of the matching upholstered chair and takes off his boots and socks, then stands up and strips off his pants and plaid shirt. He leaves the white, sleeveless undershirt on and goes to sit next to Marty, like they've got more talking to do. Marty opens his eyes, pauses, then gets up and heads for the bathroom. Rust waits for him with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He did not intend to get this drunk, and now he's going to wake up hungover.

Marty comes back and sits next to Rust again, looking a little more alert, like he splashed water on his face. "You ready to crash?" he says.

"Mmhmm," Rust replies, still leaning his elbows on his knees. He's dropped his hands down from his face and has his eyes shut.

Marty lays his hand on Rust's back and strokes it a little, then stops but keeps his hand there. After pausing a while, he starts to rub circles in Rust's back, as if Rust needs comforting. It's a hypnotic gesture to Marty, tracing the same circle over and over. Rust hangs his head and exhales.

After a couple minutes, Marty says, "You want a real massage?" He squeezes the back of Rust's neck. "I know you're tense as all get out. Walk around lookin' like you're ready for someone to punch you."

"Just about every guy I meet wants to punch me," Rust says. "Yeah, if you're offering. I'll take it."

Marty pulls his legs up into the bed and sits high up in the center, facing the foot. Rust follows and sits in front of him, so tired and drunk that he could almost cry for sleep, but he's not turning down a free back rub.

Marty pets Rust's back a bit, then says, "Be easier if you took your shirt off."

Rust peers over his shoulder at him with one eye, then peels his undershirt up over his head and flings it in the direction of his other clothes. Even in his drunken haze, he feels vulnerable and strange, half-naked in front of Marty. They've seen each other shirtless before, in the locker room at work and when Marty stayed at Rust's place during his separation from Maggie, but this is different.

Marty starts massaging Rust's shoulders, finding them just as tight and hard with muscle as he expected. Rust forgets about feeling weird and just closes his eyes, grunting at the pain and the strength of Marty's hands.

"Better not tell Maggie about this, or she'll be pissed I haven't rubbed her back in forever," Marty says.

"I'll rub her back my damn self, just because you said that," says Rust, his voice strained and taut. "Shit, that hurts."

"Want me to stop?"

"No. Keep going."

Marty can't help but notice how Rust is built: how narrow his shoulders and back are compared to Marty's own, how he's lean and sinewy with a smaller frame compared to Marty and most of the other men they work with. There's something delicate about Rust's features, his body streamlined, his fists compact. Marty's seen him move—he's fast and dangerous, more brutal than most men Marty's met—but Rust isn't physically intimidating on first glance. He doesn't look like a cop. A lot of guys, you can tell, even when they're out of uniform. Marty figures he's one of those types, he's been in the force so long. But Rust, in jeans and a flannel on the weekends, without his badge or his gun, looks like anything but a cop. Sure as hell not a killer.

Rust sits with his knees up and his arms resting on them, hanging his head as Marty works some of the tension out of his back. He closes his eyes and doesn't make a sound, just enjoys the feeling of Marty's strong hands kneading his muscles. He can't remember the last time somebody touched his bare back like this—probably the last woman he had sex with, during the Crash years. Most of the sex he had then is lost to him, blacked out by drugs and alcohol and the brain damage they caused. He remembers most of the violence, including the grotesque, but not the sex. The feeling of all that sex has stayed in his body. A profound and bottomless loneliness, the kind that could drive you out of your mind if it lasts too long.

That's not what he feels now, with Marty. Here, he feels good. He feels safe.

Marty reaches up and grabs Rust's neck, working on those muscles for a while. It gives Rust a sudden flashback of his pop, who used to grab him by the scruff of the neck when he was a boy, the only sign of affection Travis ever gifted him. Rust shudders, taken aback by the memory, the feeling, the unexpected pang of longing to see that old bastard again.

When Marty stops grasping at the back of his neck, Rust is ready to pass out, though he'd be happy to let Marty keep massaging until he's asleep.

"All right, lie down," Marty says. "Put your head in my lap."

Rust glances over his shoulder at him, just skeptical enough even with his guard down. "You gonna smother me with your pillow?" he says.

"No. Although that's one way to make sure I never have to listen to you in the car again."

Rust lies down and rests his head in the cradle of Marty's crisscrossed legs, not knowing what Marty's up to and not caring all that much. When Marty presses his fingertips into Rust's scalp and his forehead, Rust shivers, sucks in a breath, and makes a noise something like a purr.

Marty smiles. "Guess I'll be doing this again," he says.

Rust doesn't answer. He lies there feeling like he's melting into the bed, as Marty rubs his temples and brow and digs into his hair to knead the scalp.

Marty watches Rust, looking at his face and his chest moving with his breath. He smiles, pink-faced drunk, as warmth blooms in his belly that matches the warmth of Rust's skin under his touch. He carefully lifts Rust's head and slides his hands beneath it, to rub the base of Rust's skull and his neck. He's got to try hard to keep his eyes open, his brain shrouded in the raw cotton sense of intoxication, on the verge of blackout but not quite there. He can't think much of anything or focus with his mind. All that's clear to him is his hands on Rust. When his fingers go still at nape of Rust's neck, he sits there for a while and just holds Rust's head in his hands, feeling the weight of it and the softness of Rust's hair.

"Rust," he says. "Don't think I can stay awake anymore."

Rust doesn't move or answer at first, then sighs and sits up. He goes to turn the lamp out and stumbles back into the bed, in the dark.

At first, they lie side by side, not touching. Rust can smell Maggie in her pillow, and for a moment, he's walking through a grove of magnolia trees in the cold, their white flowers bright against a darkened landscape.

Then, Marty finds his hand under the blanket and sheet and laces his fingers in Rust's. They lie there like that for a while, floating on the surface of sleep without going under somehow. Holding hands. The threatening world melts away, locked out like angry dogs at the door, and Rust is no longer alone in it.

He can feel himself slipping away, and just before he does, he lets go of Marty's hand and rolls on top of Marty. He lies face down on Marty's chest, the lower half of his body on his side of the bed and one arm hooked under Marty's shoulder. Marty touches Rust's other arm reflexively, settling under the weight and heat of his friend.

Finally, they sleep.

When Maggie gets home in the morning, Rust's pickup is still parked on the curb outside. She knew Marty had him over last night and wonders if Rust slept here or if he's just returned for some reason. She pulls into the garage, passing Marty's car in the driveway, and feels a little bit of dread at the thought of needing to stay awake any longer, on account of Rust's presence.

She finds him in the kitchen, wearing a pair of Marty's sweatpants and a white undershirt, cooking with a cigarette in his mouth. He smiles at her, clearly happy to see her, and she smiles back.

"Hey," she says, hanging up her purse on the coat rack.

"Morning," Rust replies, taking the cigarette from his lips. He's got a spatula in his other hand.

Maggie leans onto the island counter and watches him. "What are you doing up this early?"

"Making breakfast. You want some?"

"No, thank you. I really just want to go to bed."

Rust nods. "You look tired," he says.

"You look hungover," she says.

"Guilty."

"Where's Marty?"

"Still asleep. And he'll be just as hungover as I am once he comes around, which is why I took it upon myself to handle breakfast."

"You could've just slept in and taken him to McDonald's for an egg McMuffin," Maggie says.

"This may come as a surprise," Rust says. "But I avoid fast food when I can."

"Oh, really."

"Mmm." Rust picks up his coffee mug from the counter next to the stove and takes a drink, cigarette still in his fingers. "You go on and sleep. I don't need company."

Maggie smiles and says, "Okay."

She straightens up off the island and turns away to leave.

"Hey," Rust says.

She stops and looks at him.

"C'mere."

Maggie goes to Rust, and he pulls her into a hug, cigarette clamped in his mouth again. They hold onto each other for a long beat, until Rust pulls back just enough to look at her. There's something in his eyes that she can't identify, but his face is relaxed and affectionate. She lifts her hand up to push that loose lock of hair back from his brow, sweeping over the back of his head until she cups his neck. She takes the cigarette from his lips with her other hand and stretches to kiss him. He gives her that pleasant, doe-eyed look in response, as she slides her hand down from his neck to his chest and rests it there for a moment. She gives him back his cigarette and heads for the master bedroom.

"If you go home before I wake up, I hope you come back before the weekend's over," she says as she leaves.

"I'll be here," Rust says.

Marty's still dead asleep when Maggie reaches their room, and he doesn't hear her come in. She toes off her shoes and undresses, throwing her blue scrubs in the hamper. She takes off her bra and puts on a t-shirt she sleeps in, then climbs into bed next to Marty. She presses herself against his back, throwing her arm around his waist and sliding her leg between his.

As she passes out, she thinks about how much she likes Rust being in the house and how nice it would be if he lived here.

There was a time when he couldn't picture where he was going to end up. Fresh out of college, not yet police, he would try to imagine his future, see himself in ten years or twenty, but always came up blank. He figured it was because he didn't know what he wanted, but a few years later, when he was dating Claire and she asked him one night in bed where he saw himself at forty, there was still nothing. Rust began to wonder if it wasn't just a lack of direction but an omen—if he couldn't see himself that far into the future because he wasn't going to make it there.

When he became a father, he forgot all about the black void in his imagination. He lived in the moment, because every moment with Sofia was something new, something he wanted to savor. He wasn't interested in the future, assuming that he had one with her. He didn't want her to grow up too fast.

When she died, life itself became that void. He couldn't fathom the future because in any given moment, he couldn't fathom living another year, another month, another week. Let alone ten years. Or twenty. All the light had been sucked out of the world, and he couldn't see anything in front of him. Time got away from him in endless drinking, then manic work. Claire left, and he was forced to face the nothingness of his life, a life he didn't want anymore. That he couldn't see a future for himself was a comfort. If he couldn't pull the trigger, with his department-issue sidearm in his mouth, then he could find a way to get himself killed on the job.

Now, he's past all that, enough that he isn't on a suicide mission. He is not the man he thought he would be, when he was twenty. His life is nothing like he could've imagined as a boy. He is nothing that boy would recognize.

He still can't see his future. He's been trying not to expect his relationship with the Harts to fail. He's been trying—didn't know he was doing it, but he was—not to be fatalistic. But if he stops to ask himself whether or not he can see the three of them together in ten years or twenty, he's got to admit that he can't. That the idea of this weird, nameless thing surviving so long feels like a fantasy. He can't even say with confidence that Marty and Maggie's marriage will last, and that's got a hell of a lot more anchoring it down than what he has with either of them.

Rust hurts for Sofia whenever he's drunk, but that's not the only reason he avoids drinking alone now. The other reason, the one he'd never admit to anyone, is that old superstition wrapped in longing that comes back to haunt him. Death. Death coming for him soon and Rust welcoming it.

In some deeply buried part of him, too sensitive and human to bring out into the light, Rust has started to dwell on the void in his future where Marty and Maggie could be, giving into that old longing for an early death.

He drives back to Erath alone, as dusk swirls around Louisiana like hot ash in the sky. The last of daylight burns along the horizon line in a fiery orange. Audrey's pink notebook rests on the passenger side of the bench seat, on top of his black ledger. He turns onto the dirt road that cuts through the field where they found Dora Lange, his truck tires kicking up clouds of dust in his wake. He pulls up to the edge of the field and parks, grabs the pink notebook and gets out of the truck.

He starts down the skinny dirt path that leads off the road, heading for the huge oak tree under which Dora Lange was knelt. Maybe it's because he's alone this time, but this place feels eerier than it did before. His stomach knots up the closer he gets to the tree, as if he's going to find something there. A new body or a devil's nest or the little girl with the antler who appeared to him in the streets of his neighborhood.

But there's nothing waiting for him, except a huge circular nest woven together with switches and sticks that sits at the base of the tree. There's a hole in the center, big enough to put his hand through. Rust rounds the tree, looking at the ground near the trunk and up into the branches. The leaves shudder in the wind, and the field begins to ripple and sway. He steps out from beneath the tree's limbs and searches the landscape for someone watching, someone who might've followed him or who lay in wait all along. He holds the pink notebook in his right hand, against his thigh, and tries to remember the drawings in Dora Lange's diary. Spirals. Circles and stars. He watches the sky change color, as if it's no more than a thick sheet hiding a monster that moves behind it. A vision, his damaged neurons firing. He squeezes the notebook.

Rust turns back to the tree—the altar of sacrifice to a psychotic god, created in man's image—and kneels where she knelt. He sets the notebook on the ground before him but doesn't open it. He reaches out to touch the nest and lifts his eyes to the canopy again, not knowing what he's looking for or what he expects.

All he's got is a bad feeling.