True Detective - Tumblr Posts
“Given how long it’s taken me to reconcile my nature, I can’t figure I’d forego it on your account.”
rust & marty doodles <3
he's praying I promise
wanna braid his hair ngl
sorry I liked your post from 2014 I'm obsessed with true detective and there's no content ☹️
happy pride month I guess??
"Imagination is the sanctuary where we can live our deepest desires, unfettered by fear or judgment. It's the realm where the uncontrollable becomes manageable, boundaries dissolve, and possibilities unfold. In this secret world, we can relive cherished moments, revive unrequited loves, and welcome others in and out of our lives without needing to explain or justify."
beneath the ice (peter prior)
pairing: peter prior x fem!reader
summary: sometimes following a lead can be a deadly pursuit with unforseen circumstances. especially in ennis.
wc: 4k
warnings: situations of peril (description of a near drowning), swearing, blood, hospitals, peter and kayla r separated and getting a divorce sorryyy, kissing/making out
author's note: HI SORRY I DISAPPEARED FOR FOREVER HI HELLO HOW ARE YOU. i started college last fall so i guess i just got caught up in the swing of things and really lost my game, but here i am! can't promise i won't disappear again as i still do have to finish up the semester (and i may be writing an original novel *winky face*) but i just HAD to come on here and rant because the true detective brainrot is real guys. so so real. i was literally looking for content after the first ep and i was like wait...it doesn't even exist yet which is SO CRAZY because usually i write for/obsess over characters with so much content already out there so like. i guess i gotta make the content this time??? let me know if you want more peter fics because the brainrot is REALLLL. okay, love you! hope you enjoy!
"This is a bad idea."
"Yeah, probably."
Y/N had had it up to here with Peter's complaints. They stood at the edge of the frozen lake, their flashlights beaming over the glassy surface. It was around three o'clock, the sixth day of dark. Y/N still didn't feel fully adjusted to the constant darkness, especially with the case of the Tsalal station in full force. Sleep was a rare commodity nowadays, and she usually relied on that sleep to keep her sense of night and day in check. She wasn't getting any of that now.
"We're not going to be able to see anything from here," she muttered, squinting out at the lake. She took a tentative step off the snowy edge and tested the ice, putting half her weight on it to see if it would hold.
Peter saw what she was thinking before she did it, and he was going to do his damned best not to let it happen. "You're not going out there."
Y/N looked back at him. "I used to be a dancer, remember? I'm light on my feet."
"You were a tap dancer."
"Same difference."
She put one foot on the ice, taking a step forward. There was a little creaking sound as the ice adjusted to her weight, but it held. Peter caught her arm before she could take another. "Y/N."
She pursed her lips. "You can come with me if you want, but it might only hold one of us. Your choice."
"We'll call someone. We'll call Danvers, or—"
"We're here now. We might as well get out there and start looking."
He didn't like this idea. He did not like this plan. But Y/N had, seemingly, set on it. There wasn't much he could do now to stop her. He couldn't beat her, and joining her would probably make things worse. All he could do now was watch her. "Stay close to the edge."
Y/N grinned. "I knew you'd come around."
She turned and aimed her beam of light at the glassy ice, taking a few, slow steps forward. She could see straight through the glass now, to the rocky bottom below. If her lead was right...something would be here. Awena Lake. Something was here.
She traversed farther and farther onto the frozen surface, the wind whipping her hair around her face. She was far. Too far, in Peter's opinion. He was about to call out to her when suddenly she stopped, staring down at a place in the ice.
What he didn't know was that she was staring down at a face.
She whispered something her voice quiet, terrified. Then, a scream. Y/N fell to her knees, punching at the ice, trying to break through.
"Y/N!"
She heard Peter calling her name, but she could only focus on breaking through that ice. Punched and punched and punched until her knuckles split and suddenly the ice below her was getting painted with blood every time she brought a fist down. She was almost in a trance, beating away at the solid glacial matter that just wouldn't break.
But then, of course, it did.
It happened so quick that Peter couldn't missed it if he blinked at the wrong moment. One second he was taking slow, cautious steps onto the ice, heading to get Y/N before she did something really stupid. The next second there was a sound like breaking plaster and a splash, and Y/N disappeared under the ice.
She felt hands grasping at her, trying to pull her down. And a voice—there was definitely a voice. She couldn't quite make it out. She opened her mouth to scream back, and as the cold water rushed into her lungs, her lips formed one question: what happened to you?
Her vision went black before she got an answer.
Music. The first thing she noticed when she woke up was the music. And the fact that she was warm, when the last thing she remembered being was really f-cking cold. Her eyelids stuck together as she slowly blinked open, the dim lighting of the hospital room slowly coming into focus. She tried to flex her fingers and found them stiff as ice (no pun intended). She saw the white bandage wrapped around her hands, purple bruises around her wrist and near the tips of her fingers. Jesus. She'd done some damage on that ice.
The fucking music. It was some oldie—70s, probably. It was playing softly from the corner, and she turned her stiff neck to see Peter slumped in a chair, staring down at his phone. What a loser. She cleared her throat to test her voice.
"If you're on TikTok right now, I'll fucking kill you."
Peter jumped at the sudden sound, his phone clattering to the ground. Y/N laughed, though it quickly turned into a wheezy cough. She sat up, a bandaged hand covering her mouth as she continued to choke. Peter rushed to her side, filling up a paper cup with the water pitcher on the bedside table. He handed it to her and she waited for the coughs to dissipate a bit before taking a gulp of the cold water. She sucked in a breath and found her ribs fighting back against the stretch. Everything was sore. Which, she reminded herself, was her own fault.
"Do you want me to call the doctor?" he asked, dragging the chair closer to sit beside her.
Y/N shook her head. "Nah. M'fine."
He gave her a look, and she clarified, "As fine as I can be."
Peter looked like he wanted to say something for a moment, but held it back. Y/N noticed a manila file on the other side of her and raised an eyebrow, reaching for it. Even leaning over caused her ribs to scream back in pain, but the snatched the folder anyway, flipping it open to see her own medical chart. "Hypothermia, boxer's fracture in both hands, ventricular fibrillation...Jesus. Okay, so I did some damage. My bad."
"What the fuck, Y/N?"
She looked up from her file. Peter had a look on his face she couldn't quite parse. Anger? Pity? Whatever it was, it was heightened by the fact that his under eyes were darker than she'd ever seen them. He stood up, pacing a bit. "Can you stop treating this like it's some fucking joke? You fell through the ice. I had to call Danvers and tell her you almost got yourself killed following some shit lead. You know what she said?"
Y/N stayed silent, fearing that whatever she said would make things worse.
"She asked me why the fuck I didn't stop you."
Y/N wanted to bite back, to yell that it wasn't his responsibility to tell her what to do and what not to do. But, she reminded herself, he probably knew that. It didn't matter. If Danvers said he should've stopped her, he should've stopped her. At least, that's probably how it went in his mind.
She said nothing. Eventually Peter shook his head, muttering something under his breath before going back on his phone. Y/N stared at her own hands, dragging her finger over a little spot of blood that had begun to peek through it. She tried to shift herself a bit and a pain shot through her ankle. She grimaced, hissing lightly at the sting. She pulled her blanket aside and looked down, her stomach twisting when she saw a purple bruise surrounding her right ankle. Almost like a hand.
"Geez. What, did you drag me out by my ankles?" she said to Peter.
"What?" he replied, not looking up, "no, I grabbed your hand."
"Then what the hell is that?"
She pointed, and Peter's eyes followed where she was indicating. "Maybe you kicked something," he offered, "you were trying to swim back up to the surface."
Y/N frowned, something nagging in the back of her mind. "No I wasn't."
"Yes, you did. I saw you."
"No, I was dragged."
Peter shook his head, as if trying to make the words coming out of her mouth form a logical sentence. "What?"
The memory came flooding back to Y/N. The moment just before she started punching at the ice. The face. "I saw her."
"Saw who?"
"Annie."
Peter stilled, his jaw loosening ever so slightly. He looked at Y/N, and for a moment he wondered if the hypothermia had gotten to her brain. "What?"
"Annie K. I saw her under the ice, so I tried to go down and get her."
"Y/N, Annie's-"
"She's fucking dead, I know," she snapped. "But I saw her, alright? I wouldn't start punching solid ice for nothing."
And now Peter was left in a conundrum. On the one hand, Y/N wouldn't lie about something like this. He trusted her that far at the very least. But what she was saying she saw...that went beyond reasonable explanation. He looked at her hands, remembering how they looked just after he pulled her out of the ice. Raw and bloody and bruised. He saw the way she was punching at that ice. It was desperate. No logical person would fuck up their hands like that for a lie. She was really reaching for something. For someone, if that's what she says.
There was still one issue: Danvers wouldn't hear it. They saw how far Trooper Navarro got when she tried to bring Annie's name into the equation. Zero tolerance. They couldn't expect any more grace from the chief.
"You don't have to believe me-"
"I do, Y/N. I do."
She was a little surprised at that. She'd expected Peter to tell her she was crazy. Nevertheless, she could take his belief and run with it. "Then help me," she said, her voice stern. "Follow this lead with me as far as it can go. We don't have to tell Danvers, and if it leads nowhere it leads nowhere. Just don't make me do it on my own."
Conundrum #2: Does he stay on the sidelines or jump through that ice with her?
Fuck it. It's gonna be cold either way.
"Fine."
Y/N's lips turned up into a small smile. Before she could respond, though, one of their co-workers, Lissy, popped her head in the door. "Hey, Prior. You're relieved of L/N duty."
Y/N sat up in bed, giving Peter a look. "L/N duty?"
He gave a sheepish shrug. "Would it help if I said I volunteered?"
"Get out of here. Smartass."
Danvers came eventually to swear at her and ask what the hell she'd been thinking. She gave Danvers the real, honest answer, which was that she wasn't. She'd probably take that better than a lie.
But eventually, of course, she had to.
"And what the hell made you start punchin' that ice?"
Y/N paused. "I thought I saw something, but it was—it wasn't—"
"Well, what?" Danvers snapped. "What was it? Wasn't it?"
"It was nothing, okay? It was a false lead."
That was hard to say, even if it wasn't true.
The highlight of the whole situation was that, at the very least, Y/N's circadian rhythm had gone back to somewhat normal. She looked over files until around eleven o'clock at night when she couldn't keep her eyes open for more than ten seconds at a time. Trying to sleep was a battle for a moment, what with the sore everything and the hands that could barely grasp at the blankets to pull them up to her chin. But eventually exhaustion won out, and she fell asleep to the gentle hum of the hospital's heating system.
And though she never really had in her life, she dreamed.
She dreamed that she was back under the ice, the rocks beneath her feet, crystal clear water swallowing her hole. And there was Annie, beckoning her further and further out. She swam for her until her muscles burned. The further out Annie took her, the darker the water got, and the colder and colder she felt. It got so dark and so cold that she couldn't see Annie at all. It was only when she squinted that she could see her hands in front of her face, and she watched in horror as frost crept over her skin and nipped at her blood.
When Y/N jolted awake, it took her embarrassingly long to realize she was standing on the roof of the hospital. Her bare feet were buried in the snow, the tips of her toes hanging over the edge, five stories above Ennis. A yelp tore out of her mouth before she could stop it, her balance wavering for a single, terrifying moment.
She stepped down from the ledge as soon as she got her bearings, the wind blowing right through her hospital gown and stinging her skin. She stumbled back into the hospital, arms wrapped around herself as she tried to recover from the intense cold, all the while wondering how the hell she got up there.
There was seemingly only one answer: she brought me there.
Peter's kitchen table was littered with crime scene photos. Darwin toddled on the floor, playing with his stuffed elephant, while Peter brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Y/N was so focused that she didn’t notice as Darwin stood and reached his little hand up, grasping for the photos. His fingertips found purchase and he started to pull a particularly bloody photo off the table. Y/N snatched it out of his grasp just before he could be scarred for life and Darwin let out a little giggle.
“Close call, little man,” she said, “that would’ve taken a lot of therapy to unsee.”
Darwin stuck his tongue out at her. She stuck hers out back.
“Kayla should be on her way to come get him. She's trying to beat the storm,” Peter said, scooping Darwin up and carrying him safely away from the photos. They sat down between the couch and the fireplace, and Y/N, suddenly craving a break from the blood and gore, got up to go meet them.
"You guys doing okay?" she asked as she sat cross-legged beside Darwin. "You and Kayla?"
She could tell immediately that she hit a nerve. Peter's eyes darted away from Darwin instantly, his gaze instead setting on the fire. He didn't answer for a moment, and for a moment Y/N thought maybe he was acting like he didn't hear her. "We, uh...we separated."
Y/N frowned. "What?"
"Two months ago. Maybe two and a half."
He picked up the fire poker and stoked the flames—not because they needed to be, but because if he didn't have something to do with his hands he'd go crazy.
Y/N didn't quite know what to say. She remembered when her parents separated, but she was too little to do much about it. Too young to think about comforting them.
"I'm sorry," she said.
Peter just shook his head and shrugged like it was no big deal. "It was coming eventually. We just finally owned up to it."
"Still. It sucks."
"Yeah."
They sat in silence for a moment. Darwin handed the elephant over to Y/N to make way for his sudden interest in picking out the fuzzies in the carpet.
"If it makes you feel any better, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that my ice plunge gave me walking pneumonia."
That didn't make it better, but it did get him to laugh.
They played with Darwin and generally avoided the topic of work until there was a knock at the door. A hush seemed to fall over them, reality setting back in. Peter got up, taking Darwin with him, and Y/N went back to the kitchen table. She made herself busy (or, at the very least, she made herself look busy) with files.
Peter opened the door with Darwin in one arm, Darwin's weekend backpack in the other. Kayla stood there on the other side. She grinned and cooed as she took Darwin, but the grin faded when it became clear that she had to interact with Peter.
Look at the files, Y/N. What's happening at the door is none of your business.
Ugh, but eavesdropping would be so fun.
"What's she doing here?" she heard Kayla say. Both she and Peter looked over to where Y/N was sitting.
Well, at least I don't have to eavesdrop.
Y/N looked up, raising an awkward hand in greeting. "Hi Kayla."
"Hi Y/N," Kayla replied. She wasn't cold, but it was clear that Y/N wasn't her favorite person in the world.
Peter said something about work, but Y/N couldn't decipher it. She went back to work, trying to block out the distant sounds of what seemed to be a heated conversation. Eventually the door closed (not slammed, luckily) and Y/N looked up. Peter stared at the wooden door for a few seconds after it had closed, like he thought it might open again. Y/N rushed to look away as he finally turned and headed in her direction. She tried not to shift as he took a seat on the side of the table closest to her, taking his own stack of files and beginning to sort through them.
After a moment, she spoke. "Aaaaare we gonna talk about that?"
"No we are not."
"Got it, got it."
They studied crime scenes. They looked at the facts. They asked a lot of wrong questions and maybe a few right ones. They got so deep into the case of the Tsalal men that they didn't realize when the clock struck three in the morning just as Peter was about to brew a new pot of coffee.
"Huh," was all Y/N could manage to say when she saw the time.
"Huh," Peter agreed.
She looked outside, which at this time of night was a greyish blur of falling snow moving at too many miles per hour. This was the type of storm Y/N's mother told her to watch out for. People who drove out in these either ended up wrecked or freezing to death before they made it home. "Mind if I stay the night?"
Peter nodded. "'Course."
Ten minutes later, Y/N was curled on the couch with a down comforter draped over her to block out the chill (with the help of three layers of clothes and another blanket on top). The lights were out and all she could hear was the sound of whistling wind as she drifted off to sleep.
And for the second time in years, she dreamed.
She was back under that water, cold seeping into her bones. She saw the surface just a few feet above her head, close enough to touch. She reached up, but before her frozen fingers could make contact with the frozen sheet of ice she could use to pull herself up, a hand seized her ankle and dragged her down. She screamed, but only bubbles escaped her mouth, the sound absorbed by the freezing waters that enveloped her. She rushed to suck in a breath and the water flooded in to meet her screaming lungs.
She was dying.
She looked down at the one who was dragging her, and saw someone she knew to be dead.
"Y/N..."
"Annie?" Y/N said. More bubbles. Annie just looked at her, and somehow she knew: Death was coming.
"Y/N!"
Peter's hand landed roughly on her shoulder, enough to shake her out of the dream and make her realize that she was standing outside in the swirling snow, which was getting worse by the second. She turned, and their faces were so close that their matching frozen, red noses were inches away from touching.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Y/N made no reply, trekking back towards the house as quickly as her bare feet could take her. Annie’s eyes were still flashing across her mind every few seconds, as if trying to come back to the surface and consume her again. She wouldn’t let that happen.
As soon as the door shut behind her, the wind howling and doing its best to pry it back open again, she collapsed against it, trying to stave off cold and paranoid visions. She vaguely heard Peter mutter No, come here, as he pulled her up from the floor and guided her to the fireplace, which he promptly lit. He draped a blanket around her, then two, then three. She must’ve looked like a floating head with all the fabric covering her from the shoulders down as she curled on the floor, knees drawn up to her chest. He sat down beside her after he was satisfied she had enough to warm her up. She was shivering slightly, but the horrified look in her eyes made him wonder if that was totally from the cold. He didn’t ask. He sat, staring straight at the fire with her. That was all he could do.
“It was Annie,” Y/N said finally, her voice hoarse. “She took me out there.”
Peter didn’t respond—he was sure the explanation she would give, if she gave any, would go entirely over his head.
Y/N swallowed hard before continuing. “She’s involved in all this. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why. But something about Annie is still alive. Because what happened to her? That’s what happens when men get angry. But when women get angry? You end up out in the snow in the middle of the night with no idea how you got there.”
Silence.
“She’s angry. We just have to figure out why.”
Peter looked at her, color starting to bloom in her previously purple lips. She stared intently ahead as she talked, almost as if she were in a trance. When Peter reached out and took a lock of her hair gently between his fingers, she didn’t flinch. She glanced over at him, her eyes illuminated by the fire he’d set.
“Your hair froze,” was his only explanation.
Y/N looked down and saw that he was right. Little ice crystals had formed in patches of her hair. She wondered how long she’d been out there in the cold.
She wasn’t sure who leaned in first, or when the images of Annie disappeared from her mind, but in an instant Peter’s lips were on hers, and all visions of Annie floated away, replaced only by the feeling of his lips and hands.
It was only a moment before he pulled away, his eyes shut in a way that suggested he fucked up. For the second time in a week she’d nearly found herself in a life-threatening situation, and here he was playing with her hair and kissing her like a besotted middle schooler. She would be mad—she had to be.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“Don’t be,” Y/N said, pulling him back to her and kissing him again.
That was all the okay Peter needed. He pulled her to him again, this time a bit rougher, but still careful not to accidentally push any blankets off her. It was Y/N who eventually shed them, pulling him onto the couch with her. It was still too cold inside for either of them to remove any more layers they already had on (which they both found extremely unfortunate), but that didn’t stop Y/N from crawling atop him and straddling his waist to better kiss him.
After what felt like hours (but was probably only twenty minutes), they wound up that way, with Y/N laying her head on Peter’s chest, his arms wrapped tightly around her to hold him to her. Her heart rate was just starting to slow down when Peter spoke.
“You know I’ll help you see this through, right?”
Y/N looked up at him. “Yeah.”
He ran a soft hand through her hair and she laid back down.
“This is a bad idea, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, probably.”
But, funnily enough, neither of them cared.
“Talk to me, Rust”
(ID: sequential art
image 1: Marty Hart sitting on the floor of a dingy bathroom between a toilet and a bath tub with an expression of concern, looking towards someone out of frame.
image 2: Rust Cohle sitting undressed in a bath tub full of water, looking blankly at the tile on the wall.
end ID)
Rust Cohle
Study from True Detective