* 𝙵𝙰𝚁 𝙵𝚁𝙾𝙼 𝙰𝙽𝚈 𝚁𝙾𝙰𝙳 .

‘  your friend sounds like an after school special.  ’ / @shinedied

        rustin doesn’t know what causes his synesthesia to act up ; one moment the detective is writing down the witness’s statement on his ledger notebook , the next the atmosphere is shifting around him , turning into something stuffy and heavy .  cohle can smell dust on him that hadn’t been there a minute ago and , even though they are standing out in the parking lot , it feels as if the space around them ought to be smaller than it is .     ──      daniel torrance makes a comment about marty and the detective can feel the specks of dust shifting around him . he blames it on the louisiana air : the heat and humidity brought all sorts of uncomfortable sensations . but it stuck to the roof of his mouth , a taste that came with the scent of old abandoned furniture .

            he considers explaining to mr. torrance that marty hart would prefer to be referred to as a colleague rather than a friend . but he chooses not to . the man before him didn’t seem to comprehend the sort of place he was in ; cops around those parts had a much looser code of ethics . although they had sworn to serve and protect , they often chose to serve their own indulgences and protect primarily their colleagues’ backs . to belittle them or their warnings could earn mr. torrance a lot of issues . rustin eyed daniel from head to toe . no , he wasn’t from anywhere near to louisiana . his hands were too clean and his eyes too bright . the swamps hadn’t gotten to him ( yet ) . but something else had . there was a rough texture to his skin that rustin cohle was familiar with . he thought dehydration ; he thought high levels of alcohol consumption . the detective put his pen away     ──    HE THOUGHT NONE OF HIS BUSINESS .

*      @detectiev.

thinly  veiled  frustration  almost  bubbles  to  the  surface  and  rears  its  ugly  head,  but  that  would  not  be  conducive,  so  she  takes  a  deep  breath,  counts  to  ten  in  her  head.  there’s  a  reason  she  usually  stays  away  from  this  side  of  the  work,  the  side  that  requires  her  to  interact  with  people  or  the  public.  cops  especially.    ❝  look,  detective  cohle,  my  assumption  is  that  you’re  good  at  your  job,  but  i  need  you  to  trust  that  i’m  good  at  mine.  ❞

‘  that day has haunted me.  ’ / @rightly

       “ hm. ”  it’s the noise he offered in reply. the grunt seemed agreeable enough. detective cohle hadn’t been there when agent cooper first learned about laura palmer, but he had heard plenty about the case. there was something particularly morbid about murder cases in small towns. it caused an uneasy feeling to settle somewhere between the vertebrae of rustin’s spinal chord. when someone got killed in tight-knit communities like that, the first word that came to rust’s mind was COMPLIANCE. then laziness. and finally, the worst word of all, acceptance. one of that town’s children had been brutally murdered and, still, people around those parts continued to mow their lawns and eat their pancakes.

𝐓𝐇𝐄   𝐄𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐄𝐒   𝐎𝐅   𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄𝐃   𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐒   ,   lives  cut  short  so  cruelly  by  a  man  who  once  posed  as  the  sun  and  stars   ,   they  hold  a  permanent  place  in  the  hollow  of  her  bones.  martin  whitly  has  been  punished,  but  it  is  she  who  has  been  sentenced  to  carry  with  her  twenty  -  three  names,  twenty  -  three  stories,  twenty  -  three  faces.  and  her  children  —  oh,  her  children,  with  their  blank  slates  in  this  world  forfeited  to  a  name  synonymous  with  suffering.  he’d  poisoned  everything  he’d  touched.

she  knows  that  look.  god,  does  she  know  that  look.  she  could  spot  it  a  mile  away,  the  skepticism  that  follows  her  like  a  shadow.  still,  it  catches  her  off  -  guard,  betrayed  in  the  sudden  snap  of  ceruleans  in  the  detective’s  direction.  coming  from  him   —   from  a  man  who  has  danced  with  as  many  skeletons  as  she   (  if  the  news  reports  are  to  be  believed  ),  searched  for  an  escape  in  just  as  many  drinks,  been  dealt  just  as  raw  a  deal. 

❝  yes,  well,  that’s  what  monsters  do.  they  haunt.  i  understand  you’ve  met  a  few.  ❞

              her glance didn’t wound him. perhaps because cohle had built enough of a thick skin ( through the aid of drugs and alcohol and disenchantment ) to not let anything pierce through. nothing ever touched him anymore, not really. but he did see something vaguely familiar in jessica whitly’s eyes. every woman’s pain reminded him of the first he had ever really hurt. he recalled the disappointment in his ex-wife’s stare as she watched him become mean and bitter. they both reached rockbottom in a matter of months after the funeral. he remembered watching her cry from his corner of the room, still and aloof.  𝚁𝚄𝚂𝚃 𝙷𝙰𝙳 𝙵𝙴𝙻𝚃 𝙽𝙾𝚃𝙷𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚃𝙷𝙴𝙽 𝚃𝙾𝙾 .  and that had been a crime in itself.   ───  he fluttered his lashes. rust decided it was best to focus on lighting his cigarette. looking jessica in the eye had suddenly become unbearable.  

                 “ we’re all monsters, mrs. whitly, one way or another. ” cohle drawled before exhaling a cloud of thick grey smoke. he could look at her then, through that curtain of tobacco. “ some of us just feel bad ‘bout it. ” rustin wondered if jessica whitly felt bad about what had happened to all those dead people or if she just felt bad that it had to happen TO HER. the veil of smoke faded and rust placed the cigarette back between his lips.

‘  my demons are not remotely tackled. they’re just mildly concussed.  ’ / @desolades​

 rustin blinked very slowly. it looked as if he was dozing off. or perhaps like he wasn’t really there. physically he was sitting on a stool covered in worn out brown leather, contemplating a half-empty glass of diet coke inside a windowless bar. but mentally, rustin was back in texas, heartbroken and hopeless, saying something similar to what tomás had just told him to a psychiatrist:  mildly concussed.     ━━━     sounds about right.

             the more cohle watched that man the more of himself he saw in him: he had an eternal sort of tiredness trapped behind his eyes, one the detective had seen countless times in the mirror. perhaps tomás had lost a family too. perhaps he had just seen all of the filth that got caught in that dusty swamp water they had over there. was he the same sort of bad as rust? blue eyes lingered on the man’s hands as smoke curled up from his cigarette and collided with the bar’s low ceiling. no, he wasn’t the same sort of bad as him.

              rust could smell pine trees. an intense scent that both comforted the detective and alarmed him towards the fact that he was, in fact, hallucinating. he tried to take the taste of pinyon off his tongue with tobacco. but it lingered there, on the roof of his mouth, heavy and warm. something wild and distant that didn’t belong there. 𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙾𝙽𝙳𝙴𝚁𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝙵 𝚃𝙾𝙼Á𝚂 𝚃𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙳 𝙸𝚃 𝚃𝙾𝙾 .  “ i figure people’s demons never go away. not really. ” 

‘  it’s hotter than a whore in church today.  ’ / santino d'antonio if u want ! 🌹 @bruisedstare​

“  yeah. ” he agreed before taking a long drag of his cigarette. 

the other man’s skin glistened under the bar’s lights, just like everyone else’s. it was a particularly warm evening. folks were saying this could be the warmest summer yet. and because cohle felt his shirt glue to his back and a moistness building underneath his armpits despite the best efforts of a janky looking fan, he was inclined to agree. rust wasn’t from around those parts, he wasn’t used to the humidity. and neither was the guy lingering by the counter next to him.

he had money, that much was clear ( all it took was getting a whiff of the guy’s cologne for rust to tell ) . but the group of men standing close by, watching, and waiting, led the detective to believe that perhaps that man wasn’t just an unfortunate tourist. he took a long drag from his cigarette and exhaled smoke. the damp bar was made only more miserable by the grey tobacco reeking cloud hoovering over everyone’s heads. 𝙰 𝙻𝙸𝙽𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚂𝚃𝙾𝚁𝙼, rust thought. 

“  everything’s drying out around these parts.  ” cohle pointed out before killing that night’s sixth cigarette in an ugly little ashtray. “  makes vermin of all sorts come a’running, lookin’ for something to drink.  ” he turned to face the man then with a pointed look. he might have looked more tired than anything else but one thing rustin cohle didn’t radiate was friendliness.

‘  that day has haunted me. ‘ /  @serialbride​

cigarette smoke clings to the fibres of his shirt   ━━━   nowadays that’s all rustin can smell on himself ; nothing but ashes. he contemplates the woman standing before him and comes to the quick conclusion that jessica whitly looks out of place. at first rust thinks it might be the greyness and grime of the underground parking lot, she is far too refined for that sort of place, too clean looking. but then he thinks that, perhaps, she’ll never fit in anywhere. never again. not after what her family went through. she had laid with an animal and bared its’ children. that sort of commitment could drive a person mad. 

rustin remembered the case, it was big news for a while. police folk were talking all over about it. the more he looked at jessica whitly, the more cohle began to wonder: how could a woman like her not know? had she been blinded by mr. whitly or had she wilfully looked away? either way, there was blood on her hands too. no room for her beyond the pearly gates. she was stuck down there with him, elbow deep in swamp water.  

         “ figure it haunts a whole bunch of people. ” the ex-detective regarded, raspy and monotone. he appeared to be as unsympathetic as he had always been. how couldn’t he?   𝙷𝙴𝚁 𝙿𝚁𝙴𝚂𝙴𝙽𝙲𝙴 𝙻𝙴𝙵𝚃 𝙰 𝚂𝙾𝚄𝚁 𝙰𝙵𝚃𝙴𝚁𝚃𝙰𝚂𝚃𝙴 .   metallic, like a fresh scratch had been left there, on the roof of his mouth. rust reached for the cigarettes in his breast pocket while eyeing jessica from head to toe.  “ nice coat. ” he’d take ash over the taste of blood any day.