Every time is like the first time. He slips his handcuffs and fucks him over the interrogation table. Ryder makes a fist in Jim's hair, jerking his head back to bare the soft part of his throat — Jim feels like nothing but soft parts here, with the lean weight of Ryder's body jammed against him and his stomach gouging on the metal edge.

Two of his fingers probe across Jim's cheek, into his mouth.

"Now spit."

His fingers work inside him until Jim comes in his pants, and then after that — when he can no longer grit his teeth and pretend to bear it, when the rough probing is too much and the knife-edge of queasy pleasure has turned entirely to pain, Ryder overcomes any resistance in him and forces his way inside.

Jim won't beg, but tears spring to his eyes, and he struggles to keep his face turned away as he shakes and retches. Ryder's thrusts come sharp and fast, the slap of skin against skin seems impossibly loud and the friction against Jim's raw inner surfaces is a punishment to itself, too much and too fast and too deep.

He comes inside him, clamping down hard against Halsey's back and forcing a whimper out of him like a girl — when he releases his hold on Jim's head he slumps against the table and Ryder's knee just pushes his legs a little further apart.

Jim will remember the feeling of his hand groping, finding the wet places between Jim's legs with expert familiarity and pressing in hard — fingertips trailing in the cum painting his ass, spilling out against the inside crease of his thigh.

The first time it happens in a West Texas holding cell, and the next time it happens it's brand new.

*

Before that, in the diner — Ryder slides in next to him at the booth, grinning like a wild dog until the corners of his eyes crease. This isn't Nash's place, but Ryder finds him anyway, and when Jim scrambles back there's nothing behind him but cinderblock walls and padded vinyl seating. The next song hasn't even started playing on the radio yet before Ryder starts feeling him under the table — pushing his zipper down without looking and gaining territory fast, while the sinking feeling of absolute familiarity falls over Jim like a sudden sickness.

He doesn't waste any time grabbing ahold of him, as the barrel of a small-caliber handgun presses intently into the soft part of Jim's outer leg — Jim isn't wearing any underwear, and the fact makes him want to be sick now, the slow pull of Ryder's callused hand as his dick stirs.

The waitress takes their orders, and all the while Ryder is rubbing his thumb against the raw head of Jim's dick, scraping hard and painful. He must get the effect he wants — Jim can feel the sudden slipperiness against his hand as keenly as the imprint of the barrel of the gun, and the steady strokes don't stop, as Jim stammers and hunches over like they're making conversation. Two old friends who met again on the road. There are other people there for the morning shift — mostly men, mostly older, none of them look like John but Jim can't stand looking at John's face. Everyone is chatting and smoking and drinking coffee like nothing is happening. Jim drinks his coffee and pretends that what's happening to him isn't.

The merciless strokes achieve their effect eventually, when Ryder gets bored of keeping him on the edge or when Jim's stamina gives out, or when horror gives way to absolute acceptance that this is happening and it's happening to him again and he doesn't know why. When he's done, Ryder withdraws his hand, and licks his fingers clean.

When Jim is wiping himself clean in the bathroom he finds a severed human finger in the pocket of his jeans, like a parting gift. He doesn't die until long after that, but he goes out remembering the touch of John Ryder's hands.

*

Long before the diner, on a backcountry road with the rain coming down in sheets. There has to be a why this time, there has to be a way out. The sun's a pink ember on the horizon, and morning's coming fast. They're a long way from anywhere.

"I need to take a piss," Jim says, voice tight.

"Too bad."

"This isn't even my car, I can't just—"

"Then they'll have a hell of a time identifying the body." The man reaches across him like he's barring Jim from bolting, but the pressure of his arm across his stomach elicits a painful twinge and suddenly Jim is acutely aware he should've stopped long ago — he should've taken that rest stop where he could find it. He must make a noise, because Ryder's amusement is palpable.

"Keep driving."

The weight of his body, the proximity of him — it stirs a flurry of memories that are strong enough to choke him, and for a moment he considers what would happen if he floored it and aimed for the next concrete divider on the highway — whether that would restart the nightmare again, jolt back to some other torture scene where he's not overheated and aching and desperately needing to relieve himself.

Eventually, Jim can't stand it. "Just let me stop. I won't go anywhere." Maybe he can't go anywhere — maybe he and Ryder are welded together for the rest of eternity. Other rape scenes, other methods of torture.

Ryder seems amused; his broad hand gives Jim a sickeningly familiar squeeze. "It's thunderstorming now. You'd get soaked out there. Trust me, I know."

This time he does beg, and he keeps begging. He won't beg for his life, but he'll beg to be allowed not to piss himself before he dies, as if that's too much — with only the slippery edge of fear between himself and the animal instinct to yield and let go, Ryder taunting him all the way with a steady insistent pressure on his bladder.

He's not going to piss himself in front of the man who's trying to kill him — the man who an indeterminate amount of time before was giving him a handjob in a public place, and who before that was fucking him in front of a two-way mirror. He strains to keep a hold of himself, straining to hold back until he can't — the yielding almost hurts, and if the rush of piss darkening the front of his jeans doesn't immediately alert his passenger Jim's cry of disgust does.

"You must be new at this." Ryder palms at him through his soaked jeans — Jim is choking, wet and obscene and furious, but the relief practically makes him shake.

He doesn't feel the knife that time, up under the ribs so fast and precise it's almost a relief all by itself, and if the car does crash he's not there to see it.

*

He still ends up under the knife.

He wakes up lashed to the hood of a car — blindfolded all he feels at first is the creak of metal and the sag of wheels settling in on Texas dirt and blind panic clenches him like a fist, thinking of Nash. What happened to Nash —

—just what did happen to Nash? It's blurred now, lost in a heat haze. Maybe he's found the one time around the block where he never meets her, where she lives a long life out here. Maybe this is a little balance. A couple sobs escape him anyway, sobs that become laughter. This time the defeat is so total it borders on absurdism. Ryder's going to butcher him and leave him for the carrion birds, but no doubt he's going to fuck him first, one way or another.

He doesn't need to see to know the man kneeling over him is Ryder, or that the soft scrape of a knife blade against rope fibers isn't Ryder trying to saw him loose. It's another way of playing with him. He can feel the minute vibrations all the way down to his wrists, the blade of the knife teasing along against the grain.

Ryder's voice comes smoky and close, from someplace bent low over his body. "What'll I do to you this time?"

Jim's mouth is dry, his voice comes out like a gunshot, broken. "This time?"

"Just a couple of love bites, or the whole hog?" The knife passes over Jim's exposed throat in a swish of air, just how close he doesn't know — inches, centimeters. "You're doing well so far."

Jim swallows spasmodically, and tastes road dust, sunblanched dirt.

His belt tugs free, the fly unzips. Ryder's knife finds the soft inner edge of Jim's right hipbone, and begins to scratch an expressive capital letter.

He's exposed now, in broad daylight, and the metal beneath his back is hot — it isn't burning Ryder's hands where he presses himself up for leverage, or else he just doesn't care, he's too far-gone or too crazy. The stink of asphalt is in his nose, and the smell of John Ryder's body, sharp and familiar. The smell of blood — other people's and his own. Ryder monograms hm with an initial R.

Once the finishing touches are applied, Jim gasps, "Let me do it, let me—"

"Let you what?"

"Let me start over."

"I want you to kill me, remember? I want you to take a life. You must not hate me enough yet."

*

The capital R is still scarred on his hipbone. None of the other marks remain, not the slit throat, not anything that came after that.

This time he'll stop it — he'll get it right, he'll fend it off, he'll stop it where it stands and keep the wheel from turning any further. The next time they're in the hotel. Nash won't see this, Nash won't have any part in this, Nash won't get hurt — he can say the words I want to fuck you and not mean them, and Ryder will grin his approval and let them go.

Jim is still wet from the shower — the shower he hardly feels he needs any more, with all the shit that's happened to him packed into the past 24 hours, but it's part of the scene and the talisman he needs to bring him there, to get him like this.

Ryder is beneath him now on the cheap bed, his long legs apart, his bare ass just there muscular and obscene — the hard muscles of his legs stand out, but they're just a lot of unmarked territory. Every time is like the first time. The bed's cheap but it's impossibly soft compared to asphalt and steel and for a moment it seems horribly inviting to snuggle in for a rest and let it end that way. Slow and messy, no doubt, they've come this far together and Ryder won't be disappointed. Jim rolls him over, forces him face to face.

He doesn't bother telling him to spit. No doubt Ryder wants to feel it.

"Tell me how it is." Ryder's voice is a rasp; his wolf grin is nothing but sharp teeth and Jim shields it behind his hand, only to feel to heat of his quickened breathing against his palm. Ryder's arms cinch around him, lifting him up for a better angle to pound at. Maybe he should've tied him up instead. See how he likes it.

The sense of the absurd is strong this time around. Jim can't keep the tremor of a laugh out of his voice when he answers: "Tight."

He doesn't care if it hurts, he doesn't care if the two of them fit together like broken puzzle pieces, Ryder struggling back against his dick in a parody of enthusiasm. He wants this, for reasons Jim doesn't and can't understand

"You've got a pretty big tool to work with. Back then, in that diner." Ryder settles in under him and seems to spread out like a road map, bare chest crossed with scars and sinewy neck. Jim swallows his disgust, and moves his hips, the muscles of his legs ache and Ryder's dick is soft against his belly and he looks strangely helpless this way. Like a reptile, a ghost, his blue eyes just slits in his suntanned face — pleasure unfolding there in the way his head falls back, his mouth setting in a strange smile.

Jim's hands find Ryder's throat as their fucking seems to hit its stride, all the hate and all the pain coming through in sledgehammer thrusts — it's clumsy and he doesn't care, the span of his hands won't be enough and he doesn't care. Ryder fumbles out Jim's own belt for him and offers it up between them.

"Do it." The buckle and the length of the belt make a noose, narrow enough to yank one-handed and tighten without breaking the union of their two bodies. Ryder's pleasure only seems to heighten as the metal of the buckle bites into his suntanned neck, as Jim twists hard enough his hand feels like it'll break and something goes crack, a pop like a distant gunshot. Jim needs to pull, and then to keep pulling. Maybe they'll be doing this forever. Maybe he'll be through.

Every time is like the last time.

*