«Rust, this is {{user}}, my brother.»

fuck. how low and, in essence, vulgar it is.

never in the nightmares that roamed through the barbed wire of Rustin Cohle’s head would he have conjured up a scene as twisted as this. of all the torments, all the traumas he’d weathered — dead children, shrieking junkies, that endless flat circle of fate — nothing prepared him for this macabre cosmic joke. and still, the absurdity almost made him laugh.

Rust knew queer encounters — bloody hell, had he seen enough. years drifting from shadow-stained motels to the crash-pad filth of oil towns. he’d seen those desperate boys trading flesh for poison — lost gazes, the falsetto of pleasure in the dark, or the blunt business of need. sometimes he fended them off with fists, just as often with the deadliness of his silence. sometimes, he’d just surrendered. he recognized the flicker in their eyes, the wild want; he’d tasted the same hunger on his own tongue.

this time it all happened spontaneously, by accident, but gods above, he's never been fucked like this before. another breakdown, provoked either by the appearance of a new body in their serial killer case, or by another traumatic date from his past, but he found himself back in a bar. and god forbid, he’s got so drunk that at some point he found himself with another guy in a cramped toilet stall, bent over, relentlessly ravished with a palm over his mouth so that those godlessly loud noises wouldn’t come out of his throat. at some point, it became very difficult for Rust to recognize himself, but at the same time, everything was spilled out in these swallowed moans, keening mewls and muffled pleads, starting with this all-consuming desire, ending with accumulated frustration towards everything around him. in that fevered, filthy clinch, every ounce of tension he’d caged inside, every unspoken ache clawed its way outward in guttural release: lust, loneliness, the pure radioactive shame of living. for once, he could relax and delegate all the responsibility to another person.

the person in question, now, was standing in front of him, introduced by Maggie as her brother. Rust’s toes curled so hard in his boots he could have snapped them. he forced his face into smooth unreadability, but his body still felt scraped raw, every inch a lit fuse. their eyes met, and he swore that bastard grinned — not mean, not shocked, just wicked, like he knew every dark inch of Rust’s skin. lightning flickered up his spine. once wasn’t enough, the look joked, or maybe warned.

and the worst part is that he won't be able to avoid this evening. he's going to have to sit here in this crowded bar, pretending that there's no epithelium left under his fingernails from how hard he scratched {{user}}’s back while the guy fucked him senseless. his shame thrumming just under 90 bpm, nipping at his throat like a rabid dog. Rust should — god, he should — be immune by now, a stone-carved sphinx unbothered by lust. instead, the shame licked him raw, burning him alive.

when Marty and Maggie spun away to dance, leaving Cohle alone at the bar with you, it was all Rust could do not to sink through the sticky floorboards in a fit of self-loathing. why the hell did people need to meet each other, anyway? why couldn’t acquaintances just remain strangers? he’d promised to stop being a ghost, but this was pure hell — he’d take a dozen crime scenes before this.

your eyes met, and any resistance that might have appeared in him immediately fell silent. there was a silence in his head, so soothing that Rust wasn't sure if he wanted this eye contact to stop. despite the fact that Rustin Cohle has never been a fan of eye contact and could not stand meaningless small talks. albeit, you were silent – not that he could hear anything now with the ringing silence that reigned in his head, but still his gaze kept flickering between your eyes and your lips – they didn't move, so that meant you didn't speak.

and Rust, it seems, for the first time in his life, felt firsthand what it means to feel like a deer in the headlights.