The Taste of Rust

A broken bond, a loaded gun, and the hatred that’s keeping one man alive.

The rain tasted like iron. Arthur leaned into the damp brick beneath the crumbling cinema marquee, the ghost-letters above him spelling nothing he cared to remember. Flynn was two streets over. Above the butcher shop. The thought was a shard of glass working deeper into his throat with every swallow. Flynn.

Once, Flynn had been sunlight on engine grease, knuckles brushing Arthur’s as they passed a wrench under the belly of a rusting Ford Capri. The solid warmth against Arthur’s shoulder after his father’s coffin vanished into the earth. Laughter that cracked the brittle silence of Arthur’s world. Now? Intelligence reports painted a different picture: Flynn, the broker of misery, crushing futures like scrap metal. Arthur had seen the hollowed eyes in surveillance photos – Flynn’s handiwork. He hated him. He savored it.

That was the monstrous bloom inside him during the rain-lashed stakeout. Hatred wasn't just an emotion; it was a lifeline. In the sterile years since their fracture, Arthur’s interior landscape had become a featureless, frozen plain. Feeling was a liability, sandpapered away. But this hatred? It burned. It crackled with the intensity of their shared past. It was the only color left on his monochrome canvas, the only proof something alive still flickered in the void where his heart used to beat.
He moved through the downpour, a shadow dissolving into deeper shadows. The butcher’s shop entrance was unlocked – a sliver of carelessness, or perhaps indifference. The stairs groaned under his weight, each creak a memory: Flynn bounding up two at a time, shouting about a found carburetor; Flynn slumped, drunk and weeping after his mother passed; Flynn leaning in the doorway, a silhouette against lamplight, saying words Arthur couldn’t recall, only the feeling of the world tilting.

He moved through the downpour, a shadow dissolving into deeper shadows. The butcher’s shop entrance was unlocked – a sliver of carelessness, or perhaps indifference. The stairs groaned under his weight, each creak a memory: Flynn bounding up two at a time, shouting about a found carburetor; Flynn slumped, drunk and weeping after his mother passed; Flynn leaning in the doorway, a silhouette against lamplight, saying words Arthur couldn’t recall, only the feeling of the world tilting.

The door to Flynn’s flat was cheap pine, scarred and flaking. Arthur didn’t knock. He turned the handle. The room beyond was a cave lit by the sickly green glow of a fish tank and the flicker of an ancient television broadcasting snow. The air tasted of stale cigarettes, cheap whiskey, and something deeper – the ozone tang of burnt-out potential.

Flynn sat in a threadbare armchair, facing away, a silhouette against the static. He didn’t turn. He simply raised a chipped porcelain teacup – a relic Arthur recognized instantly. Flynn’s grandmother’s. Arthur had mended a hairline crack in its handle a lifetime ago.

"Took you long enough, Arthur," Flynn said, his voice a gravel road worn down by bad weather. It wasn’t surprise. It was exhaustion.

Arthur stepped inside, the rain dripping from his coat onto the thin carpet. He kept the distance of the room between them, his hand resting near the weight at his hip. The hatred pulsed, a familiar, almost comforting ache. He saw the Flynn of before superimposed on the ruin before him: the strong shoulders slumped, the vibrant eyes dulled to muddy puddles reflecting the TV’s meaningless dance. The betrayal wasn’t just Flynn’s actions; it was this becoming, this erosion of the man Arthur had once… what? Loved? Needed? The specifics were buried under the years, but the shape of the loss was a constant, hollow pressure.

"Look at you," Arthur stated, the words cold stones dropped into silence. "Brokering despair. Hollowing out places like this. Was the money worth becoming this?"

Flynn finally turned. The face was older, harder, etched with lines Arthur didn’t know. But in the eyes, for a fleeting second, Arthur saw a flicker of the old Flynn – a spark of sharp intelligence quickly submerged in a weariness so profound it seemed geological. He took a slow sip from the cracked teacup. The gesture, so mundane, so achingly familiar, was a physical blow.

"Worth it?" Flynn echoed, a dry rasp. "Does a drowning man ask if the water’s worth it? He just sinks." He gestured vaguely at the room, the town beyond the rain-streaked window. "It’s all sinking, Arthur. Just different speeds. I just… learned to swim in the dark."

Arthur’s hand tightened on the grip of his pistol. The hatred flared, hot and bright. It was easy. Clean. It demanded the finality of the trigger pull. This was why he was here. To erase the tumor Flynn had become. To cauterize the wound of their past.

But then Flynn’s gaze settled on him, truly focused. Not with fear, but with a terrible, weary recognition. "You look like hell," Flynn said, almost gently. "Empty." He paused, swirling the dregs in the chipped cup. "Except for the hate. I can feel that. Burns right through the static."

The words struck Arthur like a physical force. Empty except for the hate. It was true. That was the horrifying revelation blooming in the toxic air between them. The hatred was the connection. It was the only bridge left spanning the abyss Flynn’s choices and Arthur’s own hardening had carved. Without this corrosive, burning fury, what linked Arthur to this broken man in the chair? Without it, Flynn truly became just another target, another assignment in the endless, grey procession. And Arthur? He became nothing but the weapon he wielded.

The gun felt suddenly alien in his hand. Heavy. Crude. Killing Flynn wouldn’t purge the past; it would annihilate the last, twisted thread of feeling that tethered Arthur to his own humanity. It would leave him utterly, terminally hollow.

Flynn watched him, a ghost of a bitter smile touching his lips. He understood. He saw the war in Arthur’s stillness, the terrible realization dawning. He raised the cracked teacup again, a grotesque toast. "Savoring it, aren’t you?" he whispered. "That old, familiar fire. It’s the only warmth left."

Arthur didn’t move. The rain lashed the window. The television snow hissed like the static between heartbeats. The hatred didn’t lessen; it intensified, becoming a physical presence in the room, thick as the smell of old blood from the shop below. It was a monstrous, vital thing. It was the echo of laughter under a car, the phantom pressure of a hand on his shoulder in the dark, the shared silence that had once meant everything. It was all that remained of Flynn, the real Flynn, buried under the ruin.

Slowly, deliberately, Arthur took his hand away from his gun. He didn’t draw it. The act wasn’t mercy. It was something far more desolate.

Flynn’s eyes widened slightly, the weary ghost surprised. Then, understanding settled deeper, a profound sadness etching itself onto his ruined face. He lowered the teacup.

Arthur turned. He walked back to the door, the hatred a cloak around him, heavier than any armor, warmer than any memory. It was the only thing holding him together. He pulled the door shut behind him, the click echoing in the stairwell like a final, unanswered question. Downstairs, the butcher’s shop sign flickered.

He stepped back into the rain, the water mingling with the salt sting suddenly pricking his eyes – not tears, but the acid burn of preserved emotion. He walked away, not from Flynn, but with him, bound tighter than ever by the savage, beautiful, necessary poison of his hate. It was the last ember in the cold. It was the taste of rust on the tongue, metallic and final, the taste of something precious corroded beyond repair, yet undeniably, devastatingly real. The only thing left that proved he could still feel. The only thing left that proved Flynn had ever mattered at all.