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sparklingmineraltequila · 3 months ago

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American Wasteland

Note: Not as long as I would've liked but I kept it in my drafts for long enough so here it is. My semester is almost ALMOST finished so I'll have some more time after that and 2002 Rust is hard af to write. Though, I hope this carries those of you who've stuck with me, through. Love you guys

Warnings: Cussing, drinking, smoking, drugs, references to domestic abuse, references to transactional sexual activity, references to sex work

Rust sits at the bar, tapping the edge of his Camels on the bar top, when he remembers Travis sneering at the first pack of cigarettes he'd brought home. Just another checkpoint in the list of defiance that his 16 year old self had started to compile. It wasn't the smoking that had pissed Travis off, Rust knew that. It's that he had bought one of those sleek, little cartoons; all bright-colored, branded and ready-rolled. A perfect 'fuck you' to Travis' contemptuous survivalism that kept them without cable and without the sugary stuff that Rust always dragged from by the scruff of his hunting jacket, on the rare trip to tiny provision stores. Just another cut of modernity that he was deprived of; another part of him that, when he had first left, he'd meticulously contrived to slot right into suburbia. Rust didn't give a really fuck in '95, gave even less of a fuck when he was undercover. But now him and Marty are getting older so it's easier to slide into that slow and easy catatonia. Over the past few years, the grudging after work beers had been getting more endurable, Marty's preening around his backyard during 4th of July barbecues almost forgivable. A man's home is his castle and Marty wears that badge of honor with the pompousity belonging only to undeserving men. Marty, Maggie, Laurie, the whole vivarium of the performance of what's normal, good and Christian, as if the bayou wasn't out there with the Spanish moss waiting to blow in a breeze that never arrives and the women's bodies who no-one ever finds.

'Hey.'

Rust looks at her closer, this time. She was always a chameleon, Cassandra. Then again, you'd have to be, in a profession like hers. She's changed out of the pencil skirt and Rust has half a mind to ask her if she's kept the same cutoffs from all those years ago. He doesn't. It's selfish and he hopes she's burned everything goddamn thing she owned from back then. It was always a uniform of some sorts; Rust sees it in the girls he interrogates, in the crime scene photos pasted onto his walls. Those frayed shorts and tiny tops and push up bras and boots or wedges or heels filled in with Sharpie to hide the scuffs. Rust still sees Cassandra, flimsy fabrics stained with blood, sweat or beer, and his biker leather draped over her shoulders, shivering after too many hits of a post-shift joint. He knows she hasn't burnt them. It would be far too dramatic an action and a waste of money. An emotional catharsis limited to suburbanite teenage girls, accustomed to the back-ups and retribution that Cassandra knew she couldn't afford.

Rust remembers the first time they'd talked about this nihilistic disillusionment of hers. It seemed apt on him, with his scars and callouses and whiskey breath. Cassandra's acrimony towards 'the pigs' and 'the system' had seemed almost sweet on a girl with a hot pink hair tie around her wrist. That was before Rust had learnt that she still barricaded the door to her room, now living alone.

'Hate me even more, now?' Rust's voice is gritty with cigarettes and the preliminary beer he drank, before her arrival.

'I knew you were a cop, back then,' Cassandra counters, voice icy as if to veil the hurt that he may have forgotten; relegating her to another footnote of his grief.

Rust clicks his tongue,

'Nah, not really a cop. Didn't have the authority, at least.'

Cassandra watches him, her eyes narrowing fast,

'The fuck is your point? Want me to buy you a beer for your fucking promotion?'

Rust doesn't laugh. He just stares at her while taking another drag so Cassandra takes it upon herself to indulge him,

'Detectives ain't the responders to 911 calls, are they?'

'We ain't.'

'There you go.'

Rust scoffs,

'You hate patrollers?'

'Yeah, I do.'

'Those lazy assholes?' Rust drawls, and Cassandra almost slams his head against the bar top. Rust sees that anger in her eyes; the rage that boils up like hot vomit until she chokes on it, offering up something hideously vulnerable. Dog looking at its mess.

Cassandra lights her cigarette. Still Marlboro Golds, Rust notes.

'You want to know why he used to always leave the phone on the cord?'

Rust knows their talking about her father

'To fuck with me. That man couldn't make it to the toilet in time, most nights that he got liquored up, but the sick fuck always remembered to keep the phone on. Want to know why? Cause when he'd break out the belt or the fists or the bottles, the first thing that I would run to was the phone. Fuck, I was a kid. I didn't understand self-preservation, yet. And that man used to tell me that the cops would take 5 minutes but, in that 5 minutes, he could fuck me up however he wanted,'

Rust wonders if that's why she had to make herself beautiful. Pity. It distinguishes or at least elicits some sort of emotion that isn't just resignation towards those poor ol' children we need to pray for. Beauty. Otherwise, you're just another statistic dripping blood on the kitchen linoleum.

Cassandra exhales the smoke,

'The patrollers used to take 10.'

Rust holds her gaze, wondering he deserves to feel shame; past the empty platitudes and symbols that his badge carry. Cassandra stares down at the burning tip of her cigarette, raising her face up with her hand as she takes a drag. There she goes, back into that smooth, icy shell. Rust wonders what the diversions have since become, those little pivots she uses to veer you off from the path down to that dark, dirty shit. He also wonders if she's finally learnt not to bother with him. Not when they carry smears of each other, all over. Shit like that stains-even after all these years.

'What do you want to know, then? Boudreaux, right?'

Rust gives a nod,

'He ever talk you about the Yellow King?'

'The Yellow King?' Cassandra scoffs, 'Not exactly but it sounds like the type of shit he woulda come up with after a binge.'

Cassandra looks at Rust's stoic expression, evidently unsatisfied with her answer. She sighs,

'No. It doesn't come to mind but you know these guys. Up for a heavy sentence and, for once, are smart enough to see it. They'll grasp at any shit to rile you up. They're like kids.'

'Don't fuckin' infantilize them. They know what they were doing and they're real fuckin' proud 'til they end ass up, in Angola.'

'No, Rust, I mean literally and you know it too. Shit, I thought Texas was bad. Here, it's another fucking planet. You've seen the things they name their schools-schools- after. There ain't nothing that the Bible ain't able to gloss over. Hell, last case I had was a guy beat a another man's face into the concrete over 40 mg of oxycontin,'

Cassandra takes a moment to ask him,

'You seen all those pill mills you got going on, down here?'

Rust exhales some smoke,

'Ain't my division, anymore.'

Cassandra licks the inside of her cheek, pissed off by his nonchalance that she knows is contrived, before continuing,

'Anyway-this man killed another man like you would a damn hound. Said he needed the pills to hear Jesus.'

Rust already knows this. Not this story exactly, but these laconic tales about the depravity of humanity. It's like preaching to the goddamn choir with him.

'Want me to feel sorry for you or some shit? Tell you what a good job job you're doin'? Sittin in those rooms, listenin' to that shit, starin' at those pictures?'

Cassandra stares at him for a moment, almost taken aback. Then, she responds to aggression in the only way she's ever known,

'What, you wanna be an asshole with me cause you still feel shitty that you fucked a 20 year old and liked it?'

Rust almost falters, at that; not out of shock at the crass acidity with which she spits them out but at the sudden surge of nausea he feels at what he's done, something which has been quietly gnawing at the edges of his being. Never too comfortable, Rust is haunted by what he's done like a dull ache in all his joints. Sin and old age plastered on the lines of his face, you may as well be able to smell it on him. Rust sure can.

'I ain't here to re-hash any of that shit with you, Cassandra.'

'No? You think you're better than me, now?'

Rust huffs, gritty with smoke and liquor. It's a lazy retort, they both know it. Lazy and untrue. Cassandra, his ever tenacious Cassandra, licks the inside of her cheek. Rust wonders if she still bites it, remembering the blood he'd taste when he'd concede himself a kiss.

'You got a girl, now? That it?'

Cassandra's mocking tone does nothing to confine that jealous tinge that tilts her intonation downwards.

'Laurie ain't a girl. She's a woman,' Rust lights another cigarette.

'Ohhh, ok. Lau-rie,' Cassandra draws it out, turning it over her tongue, 'Cute name. Sweet, almost. Ain't nothing like Rust.'

'Well, people don't exactly get together based on the congruity of name,' Rust says, dryly.

Cassandra ignores him,

'Is she sweet? A real southern belle; Laurie sounds like that.'

'She's a doctor. Smart,' Rust pauses to let the next word sink into any slivers of hope that Cassandra's so desperately clinging onto, 'Steady.'

'Oh, cause you're so fucking steady, now? Got a badge and a button up, and you're suddenly Uncle-fucking-Sam, himself?'

'You got anythin' else to tell me about Bourdreaux or are we done?'

Cassandra stares at him before narrowing her eyes,

'No, Cra-Rust, we ain't done,' she spits, noticing his involuntary twitch at her slip of the tongue.

Rust pulls out his wallet, placing a couple bills on the bar top, enough to cover both of their drinks, before ambling out. A slower, more controlled walk than his Crash days. Less of a twitch in his neck, now standing firm and upright. He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, nowadays. Cassandra grabs his arm and Rust remembers that desperate dig of nails, in his arms,

'You ain't leaving. Not like that. I don't see you for 8 years and, then, you show up with a badge and a Laurie, in the middle of a fucking swamp.'

Rust studies her for a moment,

'You were just a kid and I was some wild-ass biker junkie-'

'Don't you goddamn dare treat me like a stranger! I used to lick the blood from your teeth.'

'A fuckin' kid that I-'

'I would've found someone else to fuck me up, if you hadn't come along.'

'But I did and I was more than happy to do so,' Rust drawls, trying to seem resolute but they can both hear the fury that lies beneath his stoic penitence.

'Happy's a slight overstatement,' Cassandra pauses, 'You used to vomit, sometimes. Afterwards. I'd hear you.'

Rust doesn't say anything. Just another detail of their relationship that they had never acknowledged, too devastating to deal with the implications. It was easier to let it sit, same way a bullet stays under the skin to stop blood bursting out.

'It wasn't cause of you,' he mutters.

'I know.'

She can't look at him. Neither can he, so he leaves. This time she lets him but not without following close behind.

They walk to his truck with her just a foot away, but silent. He can smell her perfume, the oils she puts in her hair; it must be a small victory to her that she's finally become the woman she was always pretending to be. Rust isn't surprised. Cassandra was, hell still is, smart in how she studied people. Came with the territory of what she did and what she does now, she knew how to coddle men like babies. The girls at the club telling her to wear Elizabeth Taylor's perfume-White Diamonds or some shit- cause it would always get you an extra tip, reminding men of their momma's in their starched church clothes and rouge. Even when they get aggressive, Cassandra always told him that it usually wasn't pure violence, more pathetic desperation. A woman cooing and holding them the way that their mommas and then wives hadn't done in years. That didn't stop the acrimony with how she spoke it and looked at the yellowing, on her arm. She also studied women- she'd told Rust that too, in some dive bar in Galveston. The Chicana girls that went to her high school, mostly. Rust knew it wasn't the earrings or eyeliner, though; it was the authority.

'You make good money?' Rust asks, not bothering to turn as he opens the driver's side.

'You asking me if I turn tricks, on the side? Graduated from stripper to hooker?'

'Shut the fuck up.'

Cassandra looks at him, still knowing how to read him,

'I got a place, Rust.'

'Good, cause ain't no way in hell you're stayin' with me.'

Rust sits there, not starting the ignition. Cassandra knows this is the closest thing she's getting to an oppurtunity to ask, whatever the hell it is she wants from him.

'Give me your arm. I can bring over some files on Boudreaux. I don't need that shit taking up space now that he ain't my problem no more.'

It sounds too rehearsed, too rushed coming from Cassandra's mouth; as if attempting to reinstall that lacquer of composure through cruelty, one that she resents Rust for holding better than she has. She takes a pen from her purse, holding out her hand.

'I ain't got no paper.'

'Your arm, dumbass.'

Rust stares at her,

'I got Laurie now, girl. I don't need you runnin' one over me?'

'What game am I playing?' Cassandra asks, benignly but with that damn glint in her eye. He feels it again, that passivity. The story he told Marty about his time undercover always include that passivity: from the drugs, his department, his grief, Ginger and the rest of the Crusaders. But her always leaves Cassandra out. Rust is a man of extremes: complete detachment or entrenching himself so deeply in depravity, the he now wears part of it forever. No qualms about violence, just the way of the world and who you had to be and what you had to do. Cassandra's amorality always flawed him, though. In opposition to his, it was completely self-serving. Some might've call it selfishness, he called it survival instincts. She had always known what she had to do and how she had to be, to get some. Only way you can be, growing up letting the drug store creeps feel you up, over your bra, to pay for tampons. Rust stares at her now. She knows she's not a good person, neither is he. They never tried to pretend otherwise, to themselves or each other. That's more than most.

Rust extends his bare forearm over the rolled-down window.

#american wasteland #rust cohle #rust cohle x reader #rust cohle x original female character

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sparklingmineraltequila · 5 months ago

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American Wasteland

Note: Finally posting this. I know the time frames are slightly off but this my fic so fuck it, I'm already taking enough liberties. Here we go: 2002

Warnings: language, violence, mentions of suicide, drug use, underage drinking, sex work, and overdose, references to misogynistic talk

The fabric of society is slowing falling apart; rotting at the seams, curling inwards trapping all of its inhabitants under that thick, oppressive old order. Rust sees it all around him: a place that eats it young alive. Nothing is sacred in this decaying edge of the world, an unmoving yet precarious balance between false hope and falling into total abyss. Little girls dancing in food-stained polyester dresses, pretty ribbons in their hands, unbrushed hair stuck to the sweat on the back of their necks, as if they were safe. Teenage girls with a taste for blood and bottles of rum getting warm between their legs, tucked beneath the skirt they cut with their momma's kitchen scissors. They graduate from watching their parents pass out, saliva shiny in the corner of their mouths, to their own little pills, sucked and wiped on those tanned, freckled arms. That or the even cheaper shit that turns all smells to burnt plastic and those rancid magnolias, left to rot on the baking sidewalk. They think the rush makes them free. Hell, so did Rust for a while. But you fly high and you crash hard. That effervescence doesn't make 'em free, Rust knows. It makes them prey.

Laurie sometimes makes him forget that shit, the really fucked up parts that he's been accumulating at a steady rate now. It's almost easy: sat at a normal table, 4 chairs, 2 placemats, some casserole whose recipe Laurie's trying out steaming between them. The conversation flows pretty easy, too. How's work? The food any good? New patients, old patients, bad patients, good patients. Rust's gotten used to the veneer, barely notices the thinning veil of acrimony that he's started performing it with. He doesn't get comfortable; he knows exactly what he has and that he's gonna lose it all. Just like Sophia, just like Claire, just like Cassandra. He sees them, sometimes; delicate, quick moments of nostalgia that make bile rise and the cigarette filter crush under his hard pinch. A little girl's giggle, the smell of coffee on cotton, a click of a heeled boot on asphalt. Rust had found himself staring at Lori while she had been getting ready for bed and, when she scraped her hair up, had inadvertently hoped for her to pull out two strands, just like Cassandra used to do. He'd left the bed and the room after that despite Lori's calls; self-hatred threatening to boil over. Another churn of bile, another crushed filter.

Talking to Marty about it is been futile; the guy doesn't give much of a fuck about anything else except maintaining the rapidly dissolving facade of the family man, that he's played with such trepidatious dedication these past few years. Rust can tell: the barely restrained leers at the bartender's tits, the slow protrusion of his gut (product of those empty bottles clinking when the trash gets taken out), a general frustration at Rust, Maggie, his kids, his weight, his house and himself. Rust knows it's all closing in on him. For a brief moment in time, he thought that Dora Lange would be some sort of catharsis; salve on the wide gaping wound that the horror of existence and his obsoletion in the face of it. It didn't. Straight after the block-lettered newspaper titles and Jameson secretly poured into coffee mugs and meaty hands slapping his back in grudging congratulations and grainy pictures that sold heroism and pity all wrapped into one palatable breakfast news story, it was straight back into the meat thresher of depravity of humanity. Endless cases and assists are what takes up his time; forced to stare straight into that wide, gaping mouth of what nurtures the endless piles of crime scene photos and his desk and walls. It's never over, though. Nothing is ever over. Rust knew that; he didn't need that meth-head telling him about the Yellow King, simpering to make a deal in that little voice they always end up putting on. A child's voice, evidence of an adult who was raised by children, himself. Rust doesn't have it in him to find much sympathy for them: no use crying like a child after you pull the trigger like a man.

All that for him to slit his wrists with the edge of a coke can that god knows who gave him. The blood now solidifying onto that squalid floor and the closest thing Rust has had to free himself from the calcification that these past few years has brought him: slumped against a peeling prison wall. The animal in him feels restless, hungry. This goddamn loop he's stuck him is about to hit him like a freight train and all these detectives can talk about is bureaucratic shit and insipid excuses for how the fuck this man, who 's reading level was not much further than a fifth grader, managed to smuggle that fucking can past the wardens. Marty watches the scene with a detachment, almost annoyed at yet another inconvenience in his life,

'Rust-'

Rust turns round to the two detectives: one edging on aggressive defensiveness and the other looking like he might shit himself at the way Rust's looking at them,

'No, you tell me how the fuck this happens. Who was he on the phone to?'

'His lawyer,' the first detective says, with an demeanour far too close to exasperation for Rust's liking.

'Well, then, get the fuckin' lawyer in.'

That gets Marty's attention. Probably dreading the beaurocratic shitstorm and prospect of spending another hour without air-conditioning or proper ventilation, Rust thinks.

'Rust, is really this all that necessary? Who knows the shit goin' through the guy's head.'

Rust ignores him,

'Call the fuckin' lawyer.'

'Yeah, yeah, she's on her way,' one of the detectives placates as his college mutters,

'To fuck us in the ass,' which earns him a huff of laughter from Marty.

5 cigarettes, three biting remarks towards Marty and about half an hour later, Rust feels his blood congeal to sludge under his wrists. A gelid nausea runs through him, one he hasn't felt since he heard the breaks scream and the bones crunch. He was sure he'd be dead before ever seeing her, again; another ghost in that catalogue of the women who haunted him. A memory, a goddamn trauma that he can't exorcise out of himself.

Cassandra falters, momentarily; Rust would've missed it if it hadn't seen that fear in her eyes, so many times before. That fear and how she'd always had the ability to stare at it before reaching over, looking for the next bigger, badder toy. Rust sees her eyes take him in: how he's slightly broader, the tan that she'd once complimented now deepening the lines of his face, his hair shorter, scruffier.

'Nice button-up,' Cassandra huffs, looking at Rust.

He stares back. She's changed, too. Though, at one time she seemed this immutable, immovable force; taking up space in his life and head, drinking his beers, leaving her razors in shower. She may have switched out the stripper sets for a pencil skirt but that sensuality that she was forced to adopt remains; Rust wonders if it's still out of necessity or just for fun, nowadays. Her hair is still long, tousled by the humidity but neater, styled in a way consider either vain or impractical by Laurie. Cassandra never denied being vain. Ignoring her looks, from where she comes from, isn't humble, it's stupid. Against his better judgement, he checks her left hand: no wedding band. Cassandra notices his gaze's momentary falter and Rust swears that she almost smirks; triumphant that, after all these years, some of that sordid carnality that she managed to pull from him, in the first place, remains.

'You two know each other,' Marty asks, half curious and half disappointed that Rust has some prior 'claim' on the young lawyer in the padded bra before he can slide in a crass or sleazy joke. Rust doesn't dwell on the thought too long, not if he wants to maintain increasingly fraying peace with Marty. Frustrated, maybe? Rust sure as hell is: both of them sinking into a lethargy of deluded complacency as deep and dark as the bayous that surround them.

'A long time ago, now,' Rust says, holding Cassandra's gaze.

Marty stares at Rust a moment longer before turning back to he two detectives, ready to acquiesce any agitation regarding paperwork.

'You were his lawyer?' Rust asks, nodding his head towards the cell where a mop sits, caked in blood and bleach.

Cassandra nods,

'Elijah Boudreaux,' she survives the cell: the stench of piss and those walls with the paint curling off,

'Probably did himself a favour. Was his third time in here and worst conviction, yet. But after a few possession convictions, armed robbery is usually the indication that shit's about to escalate.'

Almost 10 years later and she still possess that cynicism baked into girls, and now women, like her. Rust can't blame her. Shit, he envies it himself; the complacency it must take to finally be able to surrender to that syrupy darkness. To leave the perverts and the abusers and the fools and the comfortable to continue this carnage that they mask as a circus. Eat their food and dink their liquor, then go fuck or shoot up. Anything to turn that burning needle of pain in their chest into a wide, achey numbness. Rust gets it; hell, he does it. Drugs and liquor less nowadays, he keeps it to Camels, cough syrup and maybe the occasional downer. Laurie helps with that too and he hates that he sometimes sees her as another piece of the veil he needs to stay sane or functioning how Marty and the precinct want him. Rust knows she's a great woman, far better than anything he deserves.

Rust grunts,

'You were the last person who spoke to him.'

Cassandra narrows her eyes, picking up on the accusatory tone,

'Yeah, he was pretty shaken up. Said some pig smacked him around a couple times.'

Rust lets out a gelid huff of laughter, his face twisting into a sardonic smile before a sneer,

'That boy was runnin' his mouth on some very heavy shit. Heavier than you know.'

Cassandra arches her eyebrow; a LSPD badge and state issued gun induce no more docility in her than when it was some Taurus and brass knuckles.

'You were never one for that macho-bullshit, though. But, then again, I don't know you, anymore,' she says, her eyes taking in Rust's pressed button up and clean shaven face . Rust doesn't react to her comment; he knows she wants to hurt his feelings. She still feels wronged by him and ,now the confirmation that he could do the whole 'Americana' role-play of a man with a steady income and licence for his firearm rubs, makes the salt fizz in the wound a little deeper. Rust can see it in Cassandra's eyes: the same abandonment of her daddy spending time in the bar or bedroom with women who weren't her. The only time he deemed necessary to delegate towards Cassandra being a very different form of outlet for his anger. Rust isn't forgiving but he knows why Cassandra has to hurt him.

Marty eventually finishes with the base jokes that bitch about prying wives or complaints about the Ragin' Cajuns' last game, and turns his attention whatever leverage he can get on the situation; eyeing Cassandra up likes she's the first rush of blood that he's had to his dick in weeks.

'So, you know Rust here?' Marty asks, almost salivating at the bit, as Cassandra escorts them out, to the car park.

'Uh, yeah. Long while back, now,' Cassandra replies. Rust can see her adjusting to the facility of these people in using his real name; a privilege she was never afforded.

'Long while back, huh?' Marty huffs, that dopey grin adorning his face at Cassandra's precocious answer, 'You must've been, what, 18?'

Yeah, I bet you'd love to tell the entire bullpen so you can all jack-off to that story, Rust thinks as he replies,

'20.'

'And now you are?' Marty draws out the last syllable.

'28.'

Marty looks at Rust, as they walk towards their car, alone in this side of the lot. Rust can see the wheels turning, for one.

'So, you met when he was Crash?' Marty asks in a simperingly paternal tone of concern, as if this revelation isn't just another juicy detail that he's going to offload after some bottles of Lone Star, his colleagues' whoops and dick palming just spurring him on. The more sordid the better, Rust knows, so they can go home to their cream of wheat wives to think about desperate trailer park girls who, unlike their wives, will let them do whatever they want to her.

'He ain't ever been anything but Crash, to me,' Cassandra deadpans, shutting both of them down. There it is again, Rust knows. He gives Marty a terse jerk of his head and Marty sighs, but goes along with it. Rust almost pities how pliable his is, these days. He turns back to Cassandra, met with those deep, dark eyes with he fell into many a times, during mescaline hallucinations.

'We need to talk about this shit.'

'About us?' she arches a delicately plucked brow.

'Still up to your old tricks of playin' dumb?' Rust asks, lighting up before meeting her eyes,

'No, about him. Elijah.'

'Why? He's dead. We do the paper work and then clean this shit up, and we all get back to pretending to save the other lost causes,' Cassandra says, acerbically. Rust notes that, even after all these years of curated pretences, she's never been truly able to mask that rage. Where she's from, they bake it into their kids; fuck 'em up so good that it sticks with them like the cavities they get from being in diapers, drinking cola out of baby bottles.

'You ever see yourself in them, Cass?' Rust doesn't care if he's being cruel.

'Shut the fuck up, you asshole. You didn't know shit then and you don't know shit, now.'

'I ain't interested into psychoanalysing what I already know,' Rust ignores Cassandra's eye roll, 'I'm interested in that Boudreaux and what you can tell me about him.'

Cassandra stares at Rust a moment longer before nodding,

'Fine. I got time tomorrow night,' she writes her number on her legal pad before ripping it off, 'I don't care where, as long as it's a bar and you're buying.'

She holds Rust's gaze as he takes the folded yellow slip,

'One last question, is that button-up like Nordstrom or-'

Rust tugs the paper away, unsure whether the joke is an olive branch or just more of her biting power-play,

'You clean up good, Cass,' he says, making his way to the passenger's side, sliding in without so much as a glance in her direction. As he throws the butt out of the window. Marty starts the ignition and turns to Rust,

'What's her name, again?' he asks with that shit-eating grin.

'Cassandra.'

'Cassandra?' Marty snorts, 'The fuck type of name is that?'

When Rust gets home, it's dark. The inside of Laurie's house smell coffee and potpourri, there are pictures on the wall and a couch with beaded pillows. Rust stares at the walls, those smooth, cool white walls. That empty space being the only part of Laurie's house that remind him of the delusion that he's allowing himself to play. Rust knows that that is all it is: delusion, coping mechanisms. All so that he could forget what has been happening to these women and girls. And that he'll never be able to save them, just like he couldn't save Sophia and just like he couldn't protect Cassandra. Rust thinks about her now, as Laurie hears the slow click of the lock as he shuts the door; calling from her study. Rust makes his way puts makes his way deeper into the house; still replaying the sound of those heels on that hot asphalt all these years later. Cassandra: legs long and tanned and sprinkled with insect bites and bruises, all denim cutoffs or small sundresses, an ease to her sex appeal, that of a girl who knew how to play a woman.

He used to be scared of her sometimes. That has long since dissipated

#rust cohle x original female character #rust cohle x reader #rust cohle #american wasteland

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