Chapter Text
October 1957
Heavy sheets of rain pour down onto Rufus’ boat from above as the sea sends wave after wave crashing into the hull from below. The boat rocks wildly and it’s all Rufus can do to keep her pointed towards what he hopes is shore. He’s shivering and swaying on his feet, and the water leaking into the cabin is the cherry on top of the two-tier cake he didn’t ask for.
“This is Walker Blue to Mission Control, I’m caught in a storm and requesting nav assistance, do you read?” He’s greeted with nothing but static, barely audible over the rain pounding down on the roof of the cabin. “Do you read?” he repeats, louder, as if volume will help.
More static is all he can hear for a long time. Suddenly, he picks up a quiet but distinct change in pitch of the noise: a voice, though barely coming through, but getting stronger, until Rufus can almost make out a word or two. Reluctantly, he picks up the radio for a third time. “This is Walker Blue to Mission Control. Bobby, you there?”
“—‘m here,” comes Bobby’s voice, and Rufus feels relief wash over him like the water over the deck at the sound of his husband’s voice. “What’ve you—...—caught up in this time?”
Despite the circumstances, Rufus can’t help shouting back, “Oh well my bad, I guess when I got out of bed this morning I forgot to pick out some nice weather to go with my blue shirt.”
“Quit your whining, I’m alre—...—the sonar. What’d you say your location was?”
“I didn’t. Damn storm’s kicking up waves like you wouldn’t believe and I’ve lost my bearings. Must be somewhere off the coast of Maine, though. Near Rockwell, hopefully.”
“—t the lighthouse?” Bobby asks.
Rufus closes his eyes. “Bobby, if I could see the lighthouse do you really think I’d be calling you?”
Bobby’s still talking, but the static has picked back up again as Rufus drifts further and further from his last charted position, claps of thunder and the crash of waves drowning out any remaining hint of his words.
“Didn’t catch that, please repeat?” Static. Rufus takes a deep breath, steadying his hands on the wheel. “This is why I never work on the Sabbath,” he mutters.
“—‘s Thursday,” is what Rufus is pretty sure Bobby says.
“Remind me to kick your ass if I live through this.”
“Just give me something to work wi—...—ments, landmarks, anything?”
Rufus squints out the front window; for just a second, he thinks he sees a beam of light moving through the dark sky, but then it’s obscured by something. “I am telling you, Bobby, I don’t see no goddamn—”
Crash.
The boat shudders and veers sharply sideways with the impact, the wheel slipping out of Rufus’ hands as he’s thrown sideways. By the time he pulls himself to his feet, Walker Blue has stabilised somewhat, but that’s notwithstanding ... something that just put a dent in his deck. Something that was obscuring the lighthouse from view, since there’s now no doubt of the homing beacon shining through the sky up ahead. Small victories.
“Bobby, I think I got hit by something,” he shouts into the radio as he peers out the front window. “Like a piece of rock, or one hell of a big bird, or ...”
A man.
The thing that fell from the sky and crashed into his deck is a man. The rain clouds his vision, but Rufus can clearly see dark clothes, dark hair, two arms and two legs, the whole nine yards. Except there’s an extra yard or so, since two giant pieces of metal appear to have crashed with him. Explains the huge dent in the hull.
Rufus leans out of the shelter, cold October rain pelting his face. “Hey man, you alright?”
Predictably, the man doesn’t move. Why would he, though. He just fell at least seventy feet and hit the deck at full speed. He’s probably ...
“Hey! Can you hear me?” Rufus calls, louder, refusing to believe he’s talking to a corpse. Still no movement. “Damn it,” he mutters, running out into the rain and crouching to check the guy’s pulse. He startles when he finds it beating strong against his frozen fingers.
“Shit.” He flounders for a minute, not having a clue what to do. But an executive decision’s gotta be made. “Know what, if you survived whatever that was, hopefully you can survive a little longer,” he says. “Hang in there, boy.”
The boat doesn’t appear to be taking on water or crumbling under his feet, so Rufus rushes back into the shelter and goes full throttle towards the base of the lighthouse. When the waves even out and the dock is in sight, he could almost cry.
He quickly moors and anchors the boat, heart hammering as he watches his companion’s lips go blue and listens to his breathing get shallower. He grabs the radio again as soon as he’s sure they’re not gonna float away.
“Bobby, this is Walker Blue. I’m docked but I’ve got a guy here who needs help. Can you call somebody?” He lets out a string of choice words when the radio returns nothing but static, despite several attempts. “Figures.”
Fuck. Okay. Guess we’re doing this, he thinks to himself, ducking back out of the shelter to take a closer look at his unexpected passenger. The man is still unconscious, but his heartbeat persists, so Rufus keeps up a running dialogue of mumbled reassurances in case he wakes up. He gets a grip under the guy’s arms and tries to pull him off the scrap metal and towards the cabin, only to find he can’t.
Rufus pulls at the man’s shoulders and the sheets of metal get pulled with him, which is when he comes to a horrifying realisation: The sheets of scrap metal didn’t just fall with him. They’re attached to him. Two sleek, complementary contraptions extending out on either side of him, both bent and damaged. They’re intricately assembled—evidently solid and durable, but far lighter than metal has any right to be, he thinks as he tries to pull the guy closer to the shelter. If he weren’t 99% sure he was hallucinating, he might say they almost look like ...
“Man, those can’t be wings.”
He quickly goes through his options as the rain continues to soak through his clothes. Trying to wake this guy seems unlikely, as neither falling from the sky nor the not-so-dulcet tones of Rufus swearing in his ear have roused him so far. He can’t call anyone until the radio gets reception back, and trying to find help on foot is likely to end in getting lost and dying of hypothermia.
Even if he could get help, who knows what they might wanna do to this poor guy with metal wings hanging off his shoulders. Sure, Rufus is a little scared of him—he fell from the damn sky and barely has a scratch, his skin feels like tire rubber, and he looks like he lost a fight with a welding iron—but for all that he’s no brand of human Rufus has ever seen, he’s still a person.
He doesn’t have a shred of an idea what to do about the wings, but that’s not important. For now, there’s a person here who needs Rufus’ help, and that’s what he’s gonna get.
Careful not to damage the man or the wings any further, Rufus drags him all the way into the cabin where it’s warm and dry. “I’m getting too old for this,” he mutters as he hoists him onto the cot he’s dragged into the centre of the tiny space. Rufus leaves the stranger’s clothes on, draping as many warm blankets as he can find over him instead. He finds a spare towel and dries the man’s hair to the best of his abilities as well.
After checking the radio—still silent—as well as his patient’s pulse again, Rufus pulls up a box beside the cot and collapses onto it. “Take it easy, man,” he consoles, more to himself than anything. His eyes fall on the guy’s head poking out from the blankets.
He takes in the messy dark hair, the sharp lines of his nose and jaw. He looks normal like this, the features relaxed in sleep so incongruous with the metal contraptions crammed on the floor beneath him. Rufus sighs and closes his eyes momentarily. Nothing to do but wait, now. For the man to wake, for Bobby to reconnect, for the storm to pass, maybe even for him to wake up from this crazy dream.
“—lo? Walker Blue, you reading this? Damn it, Rufus, do you copy?”
Rufus opens his eyes, blinking hard against the sunlight streaming in through the door. The boat rocks gently under him, soothing despite the harsh ache in his neck and back from sleeping sitting up. It’s quiet outside—the storm has passed, the sun is up, and Rufus is alone in the cabin.
It takes him a second to figure out why that feels wrong. When the sight of the empty cot in the middle of the floor finally clicks, his stomach drops.
“What the hell?”
“Rufus, I swear to God if you don’t pick up I’m sending the damn coast guard—“
“Will you hold your horses, old man,” Rufus snaps into the radio as he scrambles out of the cabin and grabs it off its hook. “I’m fine. Moored up somewhere under the lighthouse. I’ll get your coordinates in a second.”
Bobby tries to sound gruff in reply, but Rufus hears the relief in his voice. “What the hell happened?”
Rufus looks around—at the cabin in disarray, at the wet blankets on the floor, at the chunk of hull missing from the starboard side of his boat.
“Bobby, I wish I knew.”