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It’s taken him a long time to reconcile his nature.
Marty thinks he’s talking about his beliefs when he says it.
As with all things, Marty just doesn’t look any deeper than a superficial understanding of his own personal experiences.
Rust doesn’t feel the need to explain.
Should have disclosed to Quesada at the start but things haven’t been right for a while, so he didn’t. Still doesn’t. And since he turned into the DEA’s favourite wild-man junkie trick, his files have been scrubbed and salted so many times some things have dropped off.
There are a couple of signs, maybe, but days like that, he just smokes a little more and says a little less. Marty’s useful enough keeping the others off his back.
And isn’t that something, Rust sometimes thinks.
Alphas are all the same. Marty swaggers and puts out pheromones and nearly pisses everywhere to mark his territory, and Rust gets caught inside the boundaries just enough to be under protection.
Rust would be more amused by his predicament if he wasn’t too exhausted.
Marty is exhausting.
Rust watches him go through life dick-first, and it would be laughable if Marty didn’t occasionally have a good fucking brain in his thick skull. Is a halfway decent detective when all the blood isn't down between his legs.
But Rust supposes he’s got his own moments.
Times like now when he’s stood by the car, feeling warmth shift inside him; feels his body on the edge though he knows it’s going nowhere close to that molten, swollen heat it should be. Distracting enough, though, and enough for him to bare his fangs at the world around him.
Fucking parasites feeding on each other, he thinks, breathing in the stink of omega sex in the trailer that pretends to the delusion of a brothel.
Little thing not even eighteen has Marty’s alpha instincts going into overdrive. Rust just thinks she’s made her choice – get fucked for food and shelter. Or get fucked for money for the same.
He personally knows some old-school Alaskan families pass their omegas around like chattel. Easy enough to believe it happens in the bayou too.
Girl’s out of that, at least, if that’s what she’s running from.
He gets back in the car and holds his legs a little closer together than he normally bothers with, even though he knows he’s not likely to leak these days. He’s never actually in heat. Always on the cusp.
His days of chemical abuse have really left their fucking signature.
Three bullets ripped his body open, but the drugs burned holes in his brain. Fucked with his hormones.
They tried to fix him in Northshore.
It didn’t take.
He lets Marty drive him back, neither pf them saying much; way they always do.
Ten years ago, he thinks tiredly, he’d have been on suppressants. Twenty years ago, he’d have been locked in that hunting cabin down the coast, desperate and hurting, riding his own fingers until he finally gave in and reached for his heat kit.
Nothing fancy. Standard issue knotting dildo and the little bottle of synthetic alpha scent to keep him calm.
Claire’d used it on her pulse points so he could breathe it right off her skin like blow as she rode him, pressing him down into the sheets so he could feel properly mounted.
Remembers her cleaning him up in the quiet just after, nesting with him in their bed.
Base animal instincts.
The problem with humans, he thinks, is they grew a consciousness somewhere in their evolution and fucked up what should have been a simple, honest existence.
He leans over Marty’s shoulder to look at a file and if he breathes a little deeper, well, Marty will never fucking know.
Except Marty goes still.
“Jesus, Rust, what is that smell?” Marty demands.
Rust backs off so quickly he’s not sure he doesn’t make Marty suspicious.
But the only one who seems to notice is Geraci.
The fucker’s heard them too, and stares hard at Rust with his shifty, cunning fucking predator’s eyes. The look on his face is ugly.
The look on Geraci’s face is always ugly.
“Must’a brushed up on something at the bunny ranch,” he replies.
He knows how to lie better than most men in the building.
Marty dips his head. “Yeah, must have. Can’t say we met any others out there.”
-----------------------------------------------
Crash is a bad idea.
Crash is a fucking insane idea.
Rust feels reality wear thin most days but as Crash, reality feels like a gossamer fucking veil. It pulls taut when Ginger’s special mix burns a few more of his braincells and tears entirely when he gets to his trailer. Smells nothing but gunpowder and musk.
His insides roil but he can’t be sick. He’s too high to be sick. He's so high he has no inhibitions left. Is nothing but want.
Violence relieves some of the pressure but it’s not enough. The jacket is suffocating him, tshirt underneath clinging to his sweat-damp skin as he sits waiting in the bar.
He’s keyed so tight he doesn’t know whether he wants to shoot Dewall in the head or bend over and beg
Marty smells great when they meet-up by Dewall's truck. Smells like sweat and hormones and Rust has a half-formed fantasy in his mind about being pinned right there in the fucking bushes – dirt and brush under his cheek while a thick, heavy cock ploughs his ass properly for the first fucking time in years.
First proper alpha since that guy who gave him Sophia.
Maybe Marty would give him another daughter, he thinks deliriously, like one of the daughters Marty gave Maggie. Soft little baby for Rust to grow and birth and raise and his alpha could…
The thought of Marty as any part of the equation kills the mood.
Rust tolerates Marty on good days, and dislikes him on bad ones. Marty has all the self-awareness of a fucking fence post and no restraint. He acts like the world owes him happiness and takes it for granted that his life of rainbows and plenty is a burden.
Rust still protects him, though.
Can’t help it.
Stages the scene and soothes Marty’s fear. Reassures him. Keeps him safe. And when he sees the kids, he reaches for the dead one without a thought. Takes the worst on himself because the alpha wants to do something - save someone - but the omega knows endurance.
Besides, even the dead need nurturing.
The paramedics relieve him of his burden and try to ask him questions that he brushes off with a shake of his head. Then Marty hands them a live little girl and nobody notices anything else.
The girl is catatonic. Traumatised and abused in ways that puts murder into the heart of every LEO who looks at her. Makes their trigger fingers itch to do exactly what Marty did but can’t acknowledge.
He backs off as his skin crawls. Demma says Quesada wants him back at the station, but he has just enough self-preservation left to avoid that particular confrontation.
Rust’s supposed to be in Ennis on leave. He’s not supposed to be a wild-man junkie trick anymore. Not supposed to spend three weeks getting high in the company of murderers, rapists and dealers; raiding cook houses so he can slip info back to clean, upstanding cops with dirty lives.
The paramedics aren’t around when he collapses at home.
But Marty is.
And Marty breathes deep while he’s leaning over him and his eyes go round. His throat shifts as he clamps a hand over his nose.
“Aw shit,” Marty swears, nearly inaudible under his breath.
And Rust just wishes he could remember what happened to his heat kit because he needs it now. He needs it, and he doesn’t have it, but he wants it. In spite of every fucked-up thing that he’s seen and done in the last three days, he’s in heat. Finally. After five fucking years.
And he whines because he can smell… he can smell.
It explodes like a sunburst in his vision and he cringes because he can barely see now. Synaesthesia is a bitch at the best of times but when he had Claire, she would close the blinds for him. She would take care of him.
He passes out. Mercifully.
Omega heats only happen every couple of months, and at most they last a couple days. Nothing as regular as a beta woman’s oestrus cycle.
His first heat after five years lasts hours.
He drags himself back into reality to find Marty in his kitchen by an open window, chewing on his lip like gum. Bags packed by the door.
“I called Quesada. Bought us some time,” Marty says.
Rust pours himself coffee and doesn’t say anything.
“Take the pills,” Marty warns him, and Rust nods.
They go in together.
Everything’s too bright, too loud. His skin is too sensitive and people press too close. Marty shakes everybody’s hand, drinks whatever they give him, and walks a circle around Rust as he tells the tale.
Rust lulls as everybody backs the fuck up.
It takes them an afternoon to make it to their desks.
Marty puts a mug of coffee down in front of him.
“They’re talking medals,” he says, grinning wide, “The girl’s alive.”
They don’t know who the boy is. They don’t find out his name for two weeks. By then Marty has a promotion, and Rust has a commendation.
It’s more than he expects. Omegas don’t tend to get promotions.
Says everything that Marty has to fight for Rust’s commendation.
Rust doesn’t give a shit.
They continue to say nothing about it and Marty continues to bring him coffee. Occasionally brings him food. Occasionally looms at his shoulder if the others start to overreach their quota of assholery.
Rust doesn’t need it.
He chooses to ignore it.
He takes his damn suppressants.
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The shit hits the fan in 2001 when they’re both in a downward spiral of self-destruction.
Rust loses track of his pills and goes into heat.
Again.
As with all their worst moments.
But this time Marty is drunk. And Rust is too far gone.
He aches and has been aching for over twelve hours now. Staggered home when it started because his abdomen feels like a drum – so tight and swollen he’s in pain. Leaking slick like a faucet down the backs of his thighs. And by the time Marty finds him he wants another baby so bad he could cry.
Nearly does when he sees Marty reach for the condoms. Doesn’t want them. Wants it raw and rough and fucking purposeful. Not pleasure - procreation. Only reason he exists.
Only reason any omega exists.
He can rail against his biology all he likes, say the words about abstinence and the sin of fatherhood, but he can’t stop himself from remembering what Sophia was like when she was born. What she felt like in his arms, how she smelled. The little baby sounds she made.
He couldn’t breastfeed her back then, but he thinks deliriously that he’ll try harder this time. Do better. He’ll take such good care of her and love her and raise her right.
Marty isn’t gentle when he gets between his legs. Hauls his hips up and sinks in with a snarl.
Rust takes it because the effect is like a drug. Like heroin all over again – instant relief.
He focuses the last remnants of his consciousness on clamping his mouth shut. He has a tendency to vocalise, and he doesn’t want to give Marty that ammunition.
But Marty sees him, even if he doesn’t understand him, and he snarls again and adjusts his angle.
Rust screams.
At least he assumes he does. He appreciates that the sound may be only in his head.
Marty’s knot is the thickest thing he’s had inside him since Sophia was conceived. Claire’d asked timidly if he’d like her to get a strap-on and he’d nearly bitten her head off. But even that roll in the hay that gifted him his baby girl is nothing compared to Marty.
The bright white in his vision is so blinding he can’t see. Feels damp on his eyelashes even as he tries to raise his hips higher, tries to take Marty deeper.
Marty cups the fingers of his left hand over Rust’s eyes.
“Keep ‘em closed,” he rumbles, “I got you.”
They use a blindfold the second time, so Rust has the pleasure of going nearly insane with how much more he feels the heat of Marty’s body on him. Strong, solid limbs holding him down.
Rust isn’t a small omega. Grew tall because of genetics and strong because his father put him through paces designed to build muscle. Didn’t believe in raising helpless men, whatever their secondary genders. Then his father taught him to break a man’s bones and rip his joints apart so well that Rust could probably overpower Marty if he liked. Even now, face-down on a bed, when he’s nearly out of his goddamn mind.
Thinks about it. Thinks about bucking him off, twisting him down and… and riding him, he thinks deliriously, let gravity do the work.
But he can’t seem to move right, and anyway Marty is heavy, and Rust feels protected. Just for a brief moment. Even if Marty hates him, Marty will protect his child, he thinks.
He keens when Marty bites the back of his shoulder, the shock more pronounced because it’s intimate. Too intimate. They should have discussed it. Marty should have asked first.
But Rust lulls as a tongue apologetically laps at the sting.
“Fuck, sweetheart,” Marty whispers, “Feel so good. Want to show you.”
Rust doesn’t reply. Hates with every fibre of his being that the only thing he lets himself do is reach back for Marty’s ass so he can pull him closer while he grinds against him.
He can’t see, but he can hear. And he hears Marty’s sharp, painfully aroused whimper before he is bitten again.
Marty leaves the blindfold on until they're done. Feeds him and cares for him until they're done. They’re done after the fourth round a day later, and he’s in the shower when Marty slinks away.
They don’t talk about this either.
Marty tries once, but Rust looks through him with a dead, level stare and changes the subject. Silently dares him to try again.
Marty doesn’t. Is a coward the same way all alphas are cowards. And vulnerable the same way all alphas are vulnerable. Marty will never ask, because Rust shows no signs of submission.
Concession, maybe, and sometimes compromise. But never submission.
Whatever an omega does in a bedroom is just biology. Out in the real world, Rust barely tolerates him on good days, even when he protects him.
Marty won’t risk finding out just how little Rust actually respects him.
-------------------------------------------
It takes two months before Rust admits he’s been deluding himself.
It takes another month before he starts to drink again.
Laurie holds on for a while but whatever they’ve had is dead. He killed it by telling her that he will never give her a child. Won’t even raise one with her. Laurie wants children more than she wants a wedding ring and he knows this.
She thinks he’s standing on his pride.
He thinks he’s going mad.
He starts to take his first mouthful of whiskey at 7am every day after a morning run just so that he doesn’t put his fist through someone’s face when he walks into the bullpen.
Demma’s transferring to Vice, which he supposes is nice for a guy who has a hard-on for barely legal prosts in distressed denim. Everybody’s busy making jokes about ‘last things’ in Homicide – last call, last copy, last report.
He stays at his desk, pouring over old cases of missing women and children. Marty asks lightly what he’s got, and Rust doesn’t deign to answer.
He can feel Marty’s lightness change. Feel it darken and heat.
They’re doing this a lot now – not quite talking.
They’ve never had much in common but at least they used to have an understanding. Rust understood how to appease an alpha and Marty got his kicks hovering at Rust’s elbow like he was the big protector. Like Rust was some textbook fragile omega and not a man who could rip other men’s joints apart.
It amuses Rust to think of Marty like some little yappy fucking terrier, game and growling, trying to protect a rottweiler bitch.
Rust isn’t anyone’s bitch.
And he is tired of scrutiny.
Every single thing he says invites a challenge. Could say the sky was blue and Salter would ask for evidence.
So he looks for evidence. Burns through hours at a time on the road and in the archives. Sets up his finds at home because he knows Marty and he doesn’t want this discussion.
Thinks he may have to have it when Marty gets him alone in the car over one of the few assists he lets Marty go with him and stand there at his elbow just a little too close. Like Marty is guarding him.
Rust ignores him.
Does his job.
Gets his confession.
On the way back, Marty asks, “What’s crawled up your ass?”
Rust stares out of the window and doesn’t answer.
“You talked to Laurie yet? You can work things out. Ain’t nothing wrong with apologising.”
“I got nothing to apologise for,” Rust says.
“Like that matters. You apologise and she takes you back.”
That’s not wrong, Rust allows, Marty is a walking advertisement for paving the way to his wife’s unhappiness with apologies.
To be fair, so is Rust.
Not that anyone in Louisiana knows he ended up roofied into heat in a bar just three months into wedded bliss. Only went in there to surveil a money-drop and thought he’d have one drink to fit in. Got dicked down by a stranger for three days in a cheap motel who sent him back to his bride used and pregnant.
Claire had forgiven him. Claimed him fiercely with more love than he deserved, and Rust had had friends on the job back then. Some allies. They’d protected him.
Marty’s eyes are very blue. Rust can see that even in the reflection on the dusty car window.
“Can’t apologise for what I haven’t done, Marty.”
He could.
He could apologise for not telling Laurie the truth.
The truth is he wants a child. The truth is he doesn’t want Laurie to be the one who carries it.
Sunlight flashes through the trees. Obliterates Marty’s reflection in the glass and floods his vision like a sunburst.
Rust feels warmth whisper through his abdomen.
But he’s taken his suppressants.
So that’s all he’s willing to allow himself.
--------------------------------
Maggie catches him in 2002.
She’s not drunk, but he is.
And he has always been tempted.
Maggie is a beta but she feels like the dream he used to have about strong, nurturing, domesticity. Some safe, familiar place that let him be whatever his nature dictated he should be.
He’s always wondered if Marty ever told Maggie what he was.
Marty would never tell her about the time he fucked him – about the blindfold and the bites he left on Rust’s shoulders – and Maggie has always treated Rust like any other man. Like an equal.
His unasked question is answered when she puts her mouth on him. Not on his mouth, but on his neck. Near his scent glands. Fires his blood so fast he can’t catch his breath. Feels himself respond before he knows where he is.
So when Maggie kisses him, he fights it hard but not long.
It's like it was with Laurie all over again. He takes because she offers, and because she asks him to, and because a small, secret part of him enjoys the submission of giving her exactly what she wants. Even if he knows it isn’t about him at all.
Maggie isn’t Laurie. She isn’t thinking about him; doesn’t really want him even when he’s balls-deep inside her.
Alphas are hard to forget.
He closes his eyes, and it doesn’t last long.
Shame closes in very quickly after relief.
In the end she damages him more than Marty does. Though Marty gives it a good try when he tackles him in the parking lot.
Rust could fight back far more effectively now but there is no point anymore and he thinks perhaps he deserves it. Protects himself only in so much as he keeps Marty from doing worse damage than the superficial.
Some bruises, some blood, and in the end the outcome is not unexpected.
After everything he’s done, Salter tells him that if Marty cuts him loose, he’s finished. Tells him no one else wants to work with him, and Rust doesn’t care because he’s on borrowed time anyway.
Has been since a year ago when Marty bent him over and sated the animal desperation inside him. Maggie’s only given him a more socially acceptable lie.
So he lies.
Walks out.
Within the month, he’s back in Ennis with nothing to his name but a couple of boxes of things salvaged from twenty-six years of a wasted life.