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Late afternoon on the fourth, Rust finds himself sitting at the kitchen counter next to a sorry excuse of a makeshift cheese tray, carefully arranged with a little pile of sweet gherkins he won’t touch and a new sleeve of baked crackers. He’s been working his way through all the monterrey jack one bite at a time, and Marty’s already threatened him twice about ruining his dinner but still hasn’t bothered to pull the plate away.
There’s a couple burgers firing on the grill set up on the porch, and he’ll have to go back out through the sliding door and flip them in a minute or two, the full extent of his dinner contribution outside pouring them both a glass of iced tea. Marty’d brought home a sixer of beer along with some fresh tomato and a key lime pie, still tucked away and waiting in the fridge. Rust smells propane smoke soaked heavy into his clothes and the neighbors are already popping off firecrackers down the street, something that echoes too closely to gunfire if he catches a memory just right.
“We should’ve picked up some fireworks,” Marty says, looking out the kitchen window with a slightly wistful expression loitering around his eyes.
“For who?” Rust asks, gaze slowly trailing over to find the other man’s face. “Ain’t nobody here but you and me.”
“Well shit,” Marty snorts. “Guess I forgot a couple of washed-up assholes aren’t allowed to celebrate their country’s founding with a little patriotism.” He puts some more forceful elbow grease into stirring up the pasta salad he’s been mixing together, making the plastic bowl skip and clink on the countertop. “And don’t you even start in on some shit about consumerist propaganda, for Christ’s sake. Sometimes it’s just nice to sit back and watch the show.”
“Yeah,” Rust hums with a small smile he directs toward the floor, dragging a fingertip through the ring of water pooling under his glass on the granite. “It is.”
Marty turns to side-eye him at that, though he quickly busies himself with shaking a little too much beau monde into the pasta, something Rust always says tastes like the half-scorched bottom of a crawfish pot.
“Guess we can sit out and watch whatever the neighbors decide to put on,” Marty poses after a few more turns of his spoon, moving across the kitchen to pull the tomatoes from the fridge. “Wyatt Johnson down the street always does a little show for the kids, should be good this year judging by the way they’ve already started up.”
Rust thumbs across his mouth and moves so the bar stool faintly creaks under his weight. “You want me to get in the truck and go buy you a pack of roman candles?” he asks, and maybe it comes out a hair softer than he’d intended it to.
“Nope,” Marty says, pulling a knife out of the block to start slicing tomato. “What I want you to do is get them burgers off the grill so we can sit down and eat.”
Out on the porch, Rust flips the patties a few times and watches the heat ripple off the grill and up through the late afternoon air, making little mirages dance in front of his eyes. Thunder rumbles faintly in the distance, more of somebody else’s problem than theirs, though he has to stop and wonder at the quick and potent pang of something that shoots through him at the normally welcome sound.
He thinks of Marty inside, staring out the window as he walks through memories of Audrey and Macie that are two decades old, little girls still waist-high and holding sparklers that shower gold as they dance down the driveway through the smoke-scented dark. There might be a separate and similar memory if he digs down deeper, but Rust doesn't let himself wade too far out into his own past tonight.
He hopes, then, that it doesn’t rain.
There are some visions Rust never really thought he’d have.
* * *
“What’d I tell you?” Marty says with an appreciative sort of grunt, settling back in his lawn chair to raise the neck of a beer toward the fireworks bursting down the street. “Gonna do it up real nice.”
“Not bad,” Rust says, watching the darkened silhouette of their neighbor stoop over to hold a long lighter to the wick of something the size of a shoebox sitting in the middle of the street. It catches quick and then he’s backing away fast, standing in the safety of his driveway as blue and yellow sparks shoot up into the open air with shrill whistles and pops.
Marty takes a long pull off his beer, eyes bright with the colors that flare across the sky. He waits until the street has gone momentarily dark, punctuated with shouts and laughter coming from the rest of the party outside watching a few houses down, and then slants a look over into Rust’s lap.
“Probably sounds stupid,” he says, clearing his throat, “but I always used to figure the shit you saw looked like fireworks.”
Rust doesn’t have to ask what he means, though he does anyway. “What shit?”
Marty cuts a hand through the summer air like light trails and fire sparks might blur and burn in its wake, manifesting right there in front of them both. “Visions, hallu—well, you know what I mean,” he says, like they’re talking about cereal commercials and not the nerve damage in Rust’s head. “Seeing things like you do.”
Smoke already hangs heavy in the sky and Rust breathes it down deep, itching halfway for a cigarette but not enough to go inside and fish one out. “Hallucinations,” he says, picking up the word Marty had tried to drop before huffing out a breathy kind of laugh. “Fireworks, huh?”
“Well,” Marty says. “Shit if I know, you never really told me. Always used to get that gaping look on your face when things stirred up, reminded me of a baby with its first birthday cake.”
There’s an awkward spell of silence that wedges into the air after that and Marty nearly crashes breaking back into it, fingers tightening around the neck of his beer. “Jesus, I didn’t mean it like—fuck, I’m not saying another word for the rest of the night.”
“Not too far off the mark,” Rust says after a few moments, soft, watching the neighbor light off twin bottle rockets that scream up into the sky to burst and die. “Could look like fireworks sometimes, probably a little more dull—like I’m watching them burn through water.”
The present tense isn’t lost on Marty and he sighs, letting his lungs twist and wring out like wet rags. “What about the other times?”
Rust doesn’t say anything about oil slicks that shine like abalone spirals in the grocery store parking lot, the way he has to blink until the moon stops running like a burst egg yolk some nights. Not a word about starlings or places where black stars rise.
“Nothing fancy,” he says, eyes wavering along the line of Marty’s jaw. “Spots in your peripheral vision, most people tend to get them later in life anyhow.”
“Huh,” Marty says, toned partway unconvinced, picking at the soggy label on his beer before knocking back the last mouthful.
“What’s got you interested in that all a sudden?” Rust asks, dragging one foot along the still-warm pavement to cross his ankles.
“Dunno,” Marty says. “Sometimes get to worrying stuff like this might bother you.”
Fireworks crack and cough loud in the distance and the night is warm but hangs in a soft cocoon around them, padded at the edges with colorful lights and a mixed potpourri of charcoal barbecue and black powder smoke. Rust almost feels sleepy despite the noise, limbs loose and eyes cast at half-mast, letting the breeze card through the waves just now gone long enough to flop down over his forehead. Marty’s blue flannel shirt is unbuttoned and hanging open and if Rust wanted to he could reach over and pull the neck of his undershirt down, suck and bite a pink love mark into the skin of his chest, a burst firework of a different kind here in the gentle dark.
“Naw,” is what he says, letting his eyes laze shut. “This suits me just fine.”
* * *
The neighbors run out of fireworks sooner rather than later, and Rust and Marty fold up their lawn chairs and tote them back into the darkened garage to the sound of scattered applause down the street.
“What’s your assessment, Captain America?” Rust murmurs, following Marty back into the air conditioned house as the garage door folds shut behind them. It rolls off his tongue before he even really knows he’s said it, the first and only other time burned on a disc probably sealed in Maynard Gilbough’s filing cabinet somewhere.
Marty turns with a grin pulling around his mouth and a new light in his eye, and when he snags hold of Rust’s belt loops and reels him in they wind up toe-to-toe on the kitchen floor, all warm flannel and denim soaked with the smell of smoke and summer.
“Captain America?” Marty says with a smile thrumming through his voice, nosing along the side of Rust’s face until their mouths catch and gently collide. “Should I start pulling out all the nicknames I got for you?”
“Already know them all,” Rust says, walking them forward until Marty’s ass bumps into the sink. He reaches up and gets his hands around the back of the other man’s neck, nipping a little at his bottom lip. “But you can remind me, if you want.”
“Go and put me on the spot like this, cowboy, I’m bound to forget,” Marty laughs, sliding his hands up Rust’s sides before he leans in to kiss hot along the line of his throat. “Other day when you were being real sweet I almost went and called you sugar.”
Rust reaches down and squeezes Marty’s ass through his jeans, earning a little wisp of a moan in response. “You can if you want,” he says, watching him through the spread of his lashes, wondering if Marty knows the full breadth of what he means. "Whatever you want."
“Fuck, baby,” Marty says, and there’s the last one pressed sharp and hoarse against the soft spot below Rust’s ear while Marty grinds in tight against him.
“Yeah, Marty,” Rust says, starting the push-and-pull that’ll take them to the bedroom, heat flared up like a combustion engine in his gut now. “Come on.”
When they tumble back into bed Rust falls first with Marty crawling after him, sliding up between the wide his spread legs like he’s always belonged there. He could undo Rust’s belt dead blind in the dark these days and with two tugs and a clink it’s falling open with ease, letting Marty start working dryer-softened denim down over his hips.
Clothes get kicked and pulled away piece by piece, tossed into four shadowed corners of the room where they’ll be collected like broken wreckage later, and when they’re both flush naked Marty sees Rust’s eyes shine faint against the soft light bleeding in through the open door, just enough of it to make out the map over his heart.
“How’re we gonna?” Rust asks, stomach rising and falling with Marty still kneeling in front of him, and Marty moves to fish that familiar blue bottle from its home in the nightstand before bowing back over and pressing his answer to the soft white of Rust’s inner thigh.
“You stay right where you are,” he says, nosing up along the warm and musky skin there until his mouth grazes the line of puckered pink where it starts under Rust’s bellybutton. “I got an idea.”
“Jesus, Marty,” Rust hisses in time with the pop of a plastic cap, already squirming underneath him while his hand grapples at Marty’s shoulder. “Don’t be fucking around down there.”
“I ain’t,” Marty says, stomach clenching at the way Rust’s breath hitches and gasps when two fingers slide into him.
Rust is tight and hot around his hand but gives himself up to it, steady breathing punctuated with soft swears while Marty tries to work him open. He always knows they’re getting close when Rust’s thighs start shaking, quivering like a pulled bowstring held back a few moments too long, and by the time he pulls his fingers free the other man’s erection is bouncing hard and obscene with a pearl of something wet gathering at the tip.
“Get down here,” Rust rasps, hooking a foot in the bend behind Marty’s knee where he’s still kneeling in the sheets, and Marty shakes his head as he gets his hands up under Rust’s hips.
“Not yet,” he says, feeling a faint little burst of heat lick up from the base of his spine when the head of his cock grazes Rust’s thigh, unaware of the fireworks still popping somewhere outside the bedroom window. “Get—get that pillow, need to put it up under your back.”
Rust blinks at him, eyes shining like black ink in the dark, but he pulls the pillow down from behind his head and raises up with his weight braced on his calves, letting Marty tuck the pillow underneath him.
Their eyes brush again and the line of Rust’s throat is working fast, legs still spread wide in an open invitation. Marty runs his hands along the inner softness there, feeling the skin tighten and tremor where his fingers trail, and when he pulls up on Rust’s thighs they wrap around his waist on reflex.
“Hold onto me,” he says, hitching them up further so Rust’s ass is lifted off the bed, strong muscles still cradled around his hips when he takes himself in hand and pushes forward into him.
Marty doesn’t waste any time with being slow, can’t anymore, just gets his hands around the meat of Rust’s ass and yanks him forward until he’s buried in him up to the hilt. Rust makes a noise like whetted stone in his throat but then moans high and loud, and Marty knows he’ll be hurting in the morning but for now it’s all the more worth it.
“Tight as a goddamn motherfucker,” Marty chokes out, reeling back and fucking into him hard and deep enough that Rust’s body jolts two inches up the bed. “Taking it all for me, Rust—come on, fuck, c’mon.”
Rust is already biting his bottom lip halfway raw, lids drawn heavy with his stomach pulling and straining while he keeps himself angled up. There’s a fine sheen of sweat slicking over them both and he pants out a gasp at the height of the next thrust, like a bird had taken wing somewhere in his chest and burst free from his throat.
“M-Marty,” he keens, legs trembling again, and when his grip starts to falter Marty only digs his fingers into the smooth muscle of Rust’s ass and fucks into him faster. There’s the lewd slap of damp skin and the mingled gust of their harsh breathing, a wedge of light from the hall cutting over Marty’s shoulder to trail across Rust’s throat, and when the heat starts to build it flares up like a struck match between them, burning fast toward the end.
When Marty throws his head back to suck in wind the light from the hall haloes around Rust’s face and now he can’t take it, can’t keep them both up anymore. There’s ten tiny crescent moons pressed into Rust’s skin when he lets go of his lower body and drops him back into the bed, letting his knees go slowly out from underneath him until he’s got one hand tangled up in Rust’s hair with the other keeping him held above and steady.
Their lips brush while they breathe and Marty’s rhythm has broken stride and slowed but he’s close enough now that he wants to wait for Rust, letting the weakening strength left in the other man’s legs pull and hold him deeper while he grinds into his ass, Rust's dick caught in the friction between them.
“Love you inside me like this,” Rust rasps in a voice that hardly belongs to him anymore, cupping one hand around the back of Marty’s neck to angle his face closer. Their mouths finally slot together and Marty thinks the only air he’s getting is what Rust’s breathing out and he’s pulling in, words being exhaled into him like a trembling sort of prayer. “So close, Marty.”
And when it comes it washes like a warm wave over the both of them, bleeding through Marty while Rust whimpers up into his mouth and clenches around him with a fluttering kind of heat, letting Marty rock and ease them through the rest of it while one leg slips free and falls back into the mess of sheets.
When Marty’s breath comes back to him he can barely lift his head, felled down so close against Rust that he can feel the thrum of his heart in the hollow side of his chest. A familiar thumb is dragging up the line of his spine, fingers following invisible lines that Rust traces like runes on his skin to close off this kind of ritual.
“You alright?” Marty mumbles, suddenly aware of how heavy he feels sprawled over Rust like dead weight. When he shifts around to move Rust only hums low in his chest and slides a warm palm down to the middle of Marty’s back, keeping him there while they listen to the last few fireworks of the night boom and shudder down the street.
“What’s your idea of the American dream?” Rust asks a little while later under the full cover of night, words pressed quiet somewhere near Marty’s pulse.
Marty huffs out a soft laugh into Rust’s hair, narrowing his eyes against the ceiling. “That some kind of trick question?” he says. “You and your fuckin’ pillow talk.”
“Not a trick question,” Rust says, sliding one foot up the length of Marty’s calf. “Sure you got a list. White picket fence, 401K, country club membership and a beach house somewhere down in Florida.”
“Baby,” Marty murmurs after a long moment, running a hand up Rust’s side to settle in the smooth dip between his hip and ribcage. “What makes you think we ain’t already living it?”