I've been plugging away at this off-and-on for like the last five months.

Thanks to vitalsigns for looking this over and offering some suggestions. And also thanks to theladiesyouhate for encouraging me when I posted a snip of this on tumblr a few months ago.

Title from "On the Low," by Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions.

When Rydal wakes, it's still dark out. The room is charcoal-dark, with dull stripes of moonlight filtering in through gauzy curtains as his only light. He reaches out and pats the space next to him; it's empty and he frowns, as things snap into place like the pieces of an unfinished puzzle.

Rydal scrambles up and turns on the light beside the bed. The spot next to him is dented, but Colette is nowhere to be found. Still, he lets out his breath in a soft, relieved exhale. She had been here, with him. It hadn't been a dream. He had had her.

He touches the indentation where her body had lain next to his—on his, under his—and closes his eyes. He strokes his fingertips over the sheets and tries to capture mental snapshots of the night before. Blonde hair brushing over naked shoulders. Wanton mouth a slash of smeared red lipstick. Sweat-slick skin and hitched breaths. His own tan hands grasping her by her slim, pale hips as he drives relentlessly toward release.

Before he can really comprehend, still sleep-drugged, Rydal is half-hard, tenting his briefs. He slides a hand under the elastic and curls his fingers around his cock, imagining they're Colette's, imagining she's here with him.

Where had she gone?

She'd probably gone back to Chester, he thinks, and then something opens in his chest like a wound. Something mean and hot like freshly spilt blood.

Rydal fists his cock savagely and hisses at the friction. He's dancing on the knife's-edge of pleasure-pain now, stroking himself toward completion.

Then thoughts of another hand, another mouth come to his mind unbidden. No lipstick or blonde hair here. Coarse, callused hands. Shining, sharp white teeth catching Rydal's lip and biting hard enough to draw blood.

He tastes copper on his tongue now and he licks at his lips, probes the fresh cut and savors the sting.

His fantasies tangle in one big knot of flesh, lips, teeth, breasts, cocks. Hands on his body, touching him, alternately caressing and striking, lashing out. Colette digging a stiletto heel into the meat of his thigh, pretty, sinful mouth a bright red bow. Chester—oh, God, Chester—pressing the length of his cock against Rydal's ass.

Rydal slides his fingers into his mouth and wets them. He bites gently at first, and then harder, hard enough to leave crescent-moon indentation in the skin.

He slips his hand between his legs and under, pressing. Rydal closes his eyes again, pushes just a fingertip in at first. Imagines it's Chester at his back, arms wrapped around him like a vise. Imagines that he struggles against Chester's grip—though Rydal knows if Chester came to him he wouldn't struggle. He'd go as willingly as he had with Colette, if Chester would only ask.

Chester pulls Rydal back against his front, and he feels the hard line of his cock through Chester's linen trousers and his own thin briefs. He gasps, a breathless, hitchy thing that he'd normally be embarrassed by. He's Rydal Keener, he doesn't get embarrassed, for God's sake. He doesn't have the capacity for it.

He feels the low rumble of Chester's laughter against his back, too, mean and spiteful. Even that goes right to his dick, that hard, bitten off laughter. It's so familiar, and the weight of that sits heavy and hot low in his gut.

"You keep fighting me, but we both know, deep down inside, that you want it," Chester sneers at Rydal's ear.

"N-no," Rydal stammers, stilling his hand on himself. "I—I don't."

"Your body's saying something else entirely," Chester hisses, reaching around to cup his hand over Rydal's on his cock. He rubs his thumb over the head and Rydal jerks against him, but Chester tugs him back in place effortlessly.

"I don't want this," tumbles off his lips. It feels like a lie—is a lie—and he can tell immediately that Chester knows it.

Chester drags a hand up over Rydal's abdomen, smearing pre-come across his stomach. Rydal laughs and lets his head loll back onto Chester's shoulder. His damp, sweaty hair sticks to the sides of his face and his neck.

"Be a good boy," Chester says, "for me."

Rydal shivers against him and the noise that forces its way out of his throat sounds caught halfway between a laugh and a sob.

Chester yanks Rydal's briefs down, leaving them stretched taut across his thighs.

"Chester—" Rydal chokes on it.

"Say it," Chester grunts, thrusting against Rydal, pulling him back against his cock and grinding between his cheeks.

At some point, Chester'd pushed his own pants and underwear down, and now his searing flesh is rubbing—sliding, slick and slippery—against Rydal's hole. Rydal's thighs tense and shake with the effort not to reach behind him, between them, and line Chester's cock up with his entrance.

"Ch-Chester," he tries again.

"No." Chester goes still and holds Rydal against his chest. Rydal lets his head rest for a moment on Chester's shoulder. "Say it."

Rydal opens his eyes and stares up at the ceiling. Chester's chest heaves under him as he drags in big, gulping breaths. There's a lesson he's supposed to be getting out of this, he thinks. Something Chester is trying to tease out of him.

"Please, Chester. Please." Something gritty and thick catches in Rydal's throat. "I want it. I want you."

It's wanton, shameful. A distorted echo of the words Colette had whispered in his ear the night before—please Rydal I want you I need you please give me something something good Chester can't ruin—as he undid the buttons on the back of her pretty dress and pushed it off her milky white shoulders.

In that moment he knows—Chester murmurs such a good boy into his ear—that he's done for. That his last bit of resistance has snapped and flutters in the wind. Chester seems to sense it too, the change in him. The shift. Rydal feels Chester grin against the shell of his ear and tighten his hand around his throat.

Rydal comes in a violent burst of starlight behind closed eyelids, come splattering against his heaving chest and over his shaking hands.

When he blinks his eyes open, the room is once again dark and empty, bereft. His bed is empty. Come cools on his chest. Rydal lifts a shaking hand to smear some of the mess on his bare skin.

Rydal closes his eyes and drowns in the drumbeat of his traitorous heart.