Absaroka, Wyoming
The Red Pony Bar & Grill
He hated winter. It wasn't as though he really enjoyed spring, summer or fall all that much either but for him it was always the worst. It looked as though everything was blanketed in clean, white, layers. A fucking pretense to hide the shit-stains and dark corners beneath a veneer of cleanliness that allowed blue-collar shoppers to clog up the streets. Off they went, enjoying their cheery pre-Christmas music while orphans went without and addict-mothers wrapped lollipops because it was all they had. But here these blue-collar shoppers were, throwing away good money on people they only saw once a year. What a joke.
Merry fucking Christmas, suckers. Shoppers going about their business gave him a give berth. He trotted down the street hands tucked into his black Hollister sweater. He was always looking for something to capture his attention. He grinned, teeth flashing in a shark's predatory smile when something popped up on his radar. A group of teenage girls were smiling at him as they walked past. They bunched together like sheep. They were always instinctually afraid, in the end, not wanting to wander too far from the streetlight but still daring enough to tempt the wolf in the dark with their cherry lipstick smiles. Stupid little things, all of them, to young to know better, no one wiser around to mind them.
A girl with electric blue eyes and matching hair interrupted his eye flirting with the mousy-haired brunette who lingered at the outskirts of the gang. She gave him the finger as she grabbed her friends' hand, tugging her along. Acting leader of the pack she bustled them away with the pretext of a movie.
She kept her eye on him when they passed, elbows brushing in close quarters of the sidewalk.
"Come on, the movie is starting soon," she said, linking arms with the brunette.
Ah, little lamb didn't see the wolf, did she? He licked his lips, stopping in his tracks to smile in her direction. Mousy, plain-faced types appreciated open regard. It was a skill teenage boys hadn't yet mastered. This brunette was no exception, casting her doe-eyes right back at him in a manner he read as promising.
"Hey there, pretty girl," he called out. "I bet you're not the type to talk to strangers on the street but I love that necklace."
Her hand clasped the delicate fiegler artwork dangling from a chain around her neck that rested atop her modest assets as her cheeks turned pink. She resisted Blue Eyes, pausing mid-step. Her eyes traced up and down him with avid interest.
He smiled wider.
"I'm new in town, visiting a friend, pretty girl. My name's Hector."
"Can't it wait, Ash?" a different, black haired girl asked. She too was flicking her eyes at him, clearly unperturbed that she was making eyes at the same man as her friend.
He patiently bid for time, pulling his hands from his pockets - less threatening - as he slouched against a building making no effort to hide his interest in their street side conversation. Brunette, blond, black, he wasn't choosey tonight. He'd started the night in the look out for someone dark-haired and big-breasted, but he was new. He didn't know all the ins and out of this sleepy little town.
He waited to see what the girls would do.
"No, make us late - again - and I'll tell Justin you made out with Brian Lavell in the janitor's closet. You know, when you two 'took a break,' Marcy."
Marcy slumped, wilting at the reminder of her boyfriend. "You're right Ash."
Ash snorted, nudging her more adventurous, and busty friend along in front of her. No girl left behind, here. Apparently.
"Of course I am."
He didn't know what it was but some women knew what he really wanted. Maybe there was something to that woman's intuition they harped on about. All that feelings and shit talk because as soon as Blue Eyes caught him looking, every muscle in her small, pixie frame had become taunt, heavily masquerade eyes narrowing in his direction as though she could see into his head. Pre-cognitive fight or flight reflexes instinctively kicked into gear and she wasn't even fully aware of it. The girls fell into step moaning and bitching amongst one another even as they smiled. A giggling crowd of hormonal, poor impulse control accidents waiting to happen. It would have been easy pickings. If not for that one girl who looked at him and saw something she didn't like he could have separated one from the crowd. Taken her home for the night. He wanted, his blood was aching for it.
He sighed, and moved on, even jungle cats struck out sometimes. He could feel it; an itch under his skin that needed to be scratched. Men were just animals, really, underneath it all. Chasing wants, needs, desires. Women were not so different. No matter what they told themselves, chasing security, that feeling of being wanted, sex. Sometimes their wants aligned and it was called dating. Other times it didn't, and for those occasions he had an ace up his sleeve, being an educated, midwestern boy. Police officers could be very helpful, once they had been plied with his All-American charm.
'But she said yes, earlier tonight, officer.'
His face scrunched in what they would believe to be genuine confusion as he built a rapport that could be shared with most men who struck out at the bars night after night.
'Women, who knows what goes on in their heads.'
'Are you sure it wasn't a misunderstanding' the cops would ask, and that would be it. Within a few days the accusation was summarily withdrawn. Case closed. 'Buyers regret,' the boys would say, clap him on the back and let him off the hook.
'You're a free man, stay out of trouble, kid' as they slapped him on the back and showed him out the door. Misunderstandings happened a lot apparently, in all kinds of towns he'd discovered.
Hector strolled along snorting in amusement as the group of teenagers disappeared from view. He could still hear them, giggling uproariously, not one of them having a single fucking clue. They'd brushed shoulders with a monster on the street and gone off to watch their movie. They would finish the night safely tucked in their beds under their parents' roofs. The brunette and black-haired girl would probably spend the night quietly resenting Blue Eyes. They'd be wondering about romantic what-could-have-been until the next shiny new thing caught their eye. But they wouldn't say anything to counter Blue Eyes; either, neither one had the backbone for that from what he could tell. They had too swiftly fallen in line when their designated Alpha female barked. Slipped out of his clutches without even knowing the danger.
His blood burned for the friction of a body against his dick, for soft skin and loud cries. But it was not to be. Not tonight, anyhow. He watched them go, pretty girls all in a row, his gaze lingering on the quiet one. He licked his lips, a dangerous gleam shining darkly in his blue eyes. He thought he could have made her scream. Too bad, she looked easy. He sighed, better luck next time.
Hector flicked his Marlboro; dispassionately watching as that bright whiteness he loathed began to blacken with ash and arsenic. He looked at white clumps of snow and thought of the thin line of coke his mother used to snort before she OD'd closing that chapter in his life. Foster homes were shit. At least mom was consistent about her shittiness. He blew his last puff into the chilled air, watching as the cigarette seeped into the ground, small embers at the butt dying, where it would become toxic waste for the next decade as it slowly decomposed.
A man with a brown Stetson and a heavy tan coat snapped it up from the ground dropping it in a nearby trash can as he proceeded to enter the establishment behind him. The red LED sign declared it the Red Pony. Who the fuck named a good bar something like that, that's what he wanted to know.
"Hey, dude, who the hell named this place?" he asked, shooting the question out fast before the hard-faced cowboy disappeared into the crowd of bodies already packed inside.
The man with the brown Stetson appeared to deliberate his question. Studied him for a long, slow moment. The man widened his stance as though he had come across a rattler in the rocks and not a stranger at the curb of a small town bar and grill. It was a subconscious recognition. Some kind of gut instinct law enforcement types sometimes had when they spotted him. He didn't know why, he wasn't doing anything wrong. It just wasn't his night, was it? It could be something to do with this town.
Small towns could be the fucking worst. Sticking around might not be the best idea he'd eve4r had. He'd already struck out once for the night. Small towns were slimmer pickings, fewer women, and fewer people, higher odds an unfamiliar face would be noticed in a crowd. He could be fucking invisible in big cities like New York and Los Angeles but stood out like a sore thumb in bumfuck-nowhere Absaroka.
The man shrugged, a move that was aiming for casual but was far to deliberate for Hector to believe.
This big man didn't like him.
He could tell from the way his eyes hardened, his hand resting on his hip was meant to be relaxed but missed the mark. He could see the gun strapped to the man's waist now. He didn't let it didn't bother him.
Everyone wore a gun in places like this.
"Well, now. That would be the owner of the establishment, Henry Standing Bear."
Hector scrunched up his nose in distaste.
He couldn't help his reaction and he shouldn't have been surprised with the Cheyenne Reservation so close. Of course, the shitty name made sense now. 'Red Pony' was probably a thickheaded attempt at punning. 'Red' for the application of the term 'redskins' that was levied against Indians back in bygone days that no one gave two fucks about these days. Kind of clever, he grudgingly admitted, reclaiming the terminology. Or maybe not, maybe the man liked the color red and had a thing for ponies. Who the fuck knew.
"Huh," he said.
He might as well have said 'fuck him and his pony, too.' Hadn't meant to give so much away, really. But the man in front of him was no slow on the uptake cowpoke. He caught on fast, this big man.
His eyes narrowed a little, giving him a rangy, squinty-eyed look.
Maybe he was one of those Indian lover types, all for embracing different cultures and shit. Hector resisted the urge to shrug, to explain how his two-timing father left his addict mother to chase after a little, dark-skinned slip of a thing who called herself Helen Running Deer. It was a free country.
He could hate whomever the hell he wanted, and he didn't feel like chatting with this big, watchful fellow anymore. He saw to fucking much that was for damn sure. Besides, he didn't owe the cowboy squat. What was he going to do? Arrest him.
Another cigarette halfway to his mouth he paused. The dim streetlights glinted on the shiny tin-star pinned to the man's chest. Well, fuck. It really wasn't his night, was it?
This quiet, watchful man was the local sheriff. The man across from him pointed to the vividly red sign nailed to the left of the bar's door. It read: no loitering violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
His intent couldn't have been clearer if he'd pulled out his Colt M911A1 from its side holster and said 'I don't want to see you hanging around my town.'
A thrill of excitement shot down his spine. It was as if he'd stepped into one of those old-timey movies. This big, wide shouldered sheriff definitely fit the bill. Looking like the strong, silent hero type, complete with the aesthetic square jaw. He belonged in the sort of film with paper-cut-out villains who were always dialoguing their plans to the local would-be hero.
Hector looked him up and down, sparing a thought to wonder if the man had some kind of gutsy, hot-tempered sidekick, too. That was the only role missing from this little show down.
He left his cigarette unlit, stuffing it in his pocket.
The man nodded to the black stain, an ugly blemish against the white snow. "Those things will kill you, you know."
He grunted. "Everyone has to leave this world, sooner or later."
"I take it you're not from around here, mister?" the man asked, fishing for a name he wasn't going to get. His eyes drilling into him like he was taking a mental snapshot, to remember for later.
He grinned, lips pulled back in a cracking veneer of civility. "You're right, I'm not from around here. Maybe I'll see you around, sheriff."
Tipping his baseball cap in a mocking salute he stalked on down the road. He didn't bother looking back; he didn't need to see to know the sheriff had his eyes trained on his back.
The burn of the mans' stare remained, hard and insistent, and not attention he currently wanted.
He would find another street corner to darken as he watched the sheep shuffle on by. Maybe he'd even pluck one from the herd. It was the one truly wonderful thing about pre-Christmas madness and the white fucking snow freezing up the roads. People could just vanish into that beautiful, white blanket. No one would notice a disappearance until the holiday hubbub died down and the spring thaw swept through the county. Assuming they had anyone to notice at all.
It worked to his advantage and people like him who were waiting in the wings, the darkened corners no one wanted to see. Everyone was so busy with their reality shows and iPhones. Boxed-in by their own little innocuous lives, who had time to notice the stranger walking down the street, or the man lingering under the streetlamp? Having picked out a new spot he lit up a cigarette blowing a plume of smoke into the air.
His eyes, though, kept returning to the Red Pony. The big sheriff was gone, he'd given up staring and continued on his own business at the bar, but his attention kept being pulled back in that direction.
A man hurrying past his corner knocked into him sending his cigarette flying, ruined by the wet snow.
He snarled, grabbing at the idiot's jacket. "Watch it!"
The man peered at him, a smarmy grin spreading across his face. "Trig?"
He let the idiot go, shoving him back a few paces. There was only one man who called him that these days. A nickname picked up in high school for his short fuse. One little pencil stabbing and they never let a guy forget it.
"Well, Mitch, how they hell are you?" he asked. He watched the other man have an idea beginning to take shape in his mind while he thought of the bright red LED sign across the way.
Mitch had a fetish for those dark-eyed half-breeds who lived on the Reservations. Back in high school he'd dated one of them for a few weeks. He'd been a lanky, dark hair kid who sat in the back of their class.
If he played this right he could get what he wanted.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Mitch said but he kept licking his lips and darting looks over towards the Indian-owned bar.
A dimple appeared in his left cheek when he smiled. From the way Mitch was bouncing his leg and looking over at the bar he knew he'd been headed for the Red Pony.
"Yeah, what's got you in such an all-fired rush?" he asked, testing the waters. He let his mouth curl in a small grin as he waited to see if Mitch was up to his old habits.
Mitch shrugged his square jaw set in determination, his hazel eyes all lit up and twitchy with anticipation. "The Red Pony isn't five star or nothing, but the burgers are hot and the beer is cold."
"And…"
"And -" Mitch paused, swallowing, his Adam's apple bobbing. "The barkeep is fucking pretty."
Hector snorted, he had been right about Mitch. Two strikes and a hit. "Heh, Mitch, you old dog!"
He wondered if Mitch was willing to share. If he could persuade Mitch to share on account of them being such good pals and all it would sure change the tune he'd been singing, and settle the matter of the ache low in his belly. He hadn't had a warm body under him in a while and he's starting to get that craving.
Mitch being well, Mitch, it was probably not some innocent, doe-eyed girl, either. Not that it mattered to him; the fun was in the fucking. The act of having a warm body thrashing under the palms of his hand - that was where the thrill was for him. Warm, wet heat, as he made them come, maybe cry, too.
Mitch held up his hand, shaking his head in denial. Something of his thoughts must have shown on his face.
Mitch knew him, maybe a little too well.
"Whoa, it's not like that, man."
"Aww, c'mon, why the hell not?"
Mitch visibly drooped, the fool, like a lovesick bitch.
Hector suppressed the urge to sneer.
"He wouldn't look twice my way."
"Oh-oh, I get you!" he said with false sympathy. "I suppose I'm not too surprised - always figured you were bent! There's ways around that particular obstacle, you know. Slip a few blues in a fella's drink...you get to scratch an itch, they have a black-out drunk night...win-win by some standards."
Mitch shrugged, feigning nonchalance, but the man was still standing there talking with him. He was the fish baited by the sparkle of tinsel on the fishing hook. That burgeoning gleam of hope on his pretty-boy face told him what he needed to know. Mitch would be his. Hook. Line. Sinker.
"I don't know, Trig," Mitch said, biting his lip.
"Well, you sleep on it, then. We can get you laid in the meantime," Hector said, procuring a fifty from his pocket. He waved it under Mitch's nose knowing that soon the other man's resolve would shatter and when that happened he'd own him.
Hector watched from the corner of his eye as the locals filed out of the establishment. Drunks were getting into cabs that they would have been too sloshed to call for themselves. He made a note of it when one of the bar staff workers exited, his back to the street as he hauled a bin outside.
Mitch's pupils were dilated and his breathing switched, becoming short and faint. Hector smirked. So this was the piece of tail Mitch was drooling over. Trig appraised the back of him, or what he could see anyhow in the dim streetlight.
He whistled under his breath. It came out louder than he'd planned and Mitch punched him in the shoulder, wanting him to shut up.
Hector grinned. Slim, fit, and a nice ass. Mitch could have done worse. Mitch's weak attempts to turn him around were pointless, the Indian didn't even look their way. Maybe he hadn't heard the cat-call.
It didn't matter to Hector who had made up his mind the moment he saw him. He'd be noticing them soon enough.
Hector slung his arm around Mitch's shoulder leading him away from the bar, but the shorter man kept flicking his eyes over his shoulder. He had it bad, Trig thought as he quietly chuckled to himself. His own shaggy blonde hair flopped into his face and he grumbled, tying it back with a band.
It was a damn nuisance at the best of times, but the chicks seemed to dig it. Trig remembered that they had made a hell of a duo back in their high-school days, between his own Anglican good looks and choir-boy Mitch their beds had never been cold for want of company.
"So, tell me Mitch, does this town have any hookers or has that big, cowboy sheriff I just met rounded all of them up too?"
Mitch threw his head back and laughed. "You met Sheriff Longmire, then? He's the law around here, him and his two three deputies. Branch is off at a training seminar, leaving just Ferg and that pretty blond...um, Vic? Yeah, Vic."
Trig hummed, taking in the information. "A woman deputy? My, my isn't that sheriff progressive. Wouldn't have thought it to look at 'em, looks like something that stepped out of the Old West."
"So. Hookers. I might know a place," Mitch said, gesturing toward Trig with a 'follow me' wave before sticking his hands in his pockets as he ambled ahead. Trig lagged behind, flicking his cigarette into the snow, casting one last glance at the bar just in time to watch the sheriff get in his beat-up truck and drive off.
"Pew-pew," Trig said, blowing fake gun smoke from his fingertips.
He didn't imagine he'd cross paths with the sheriff again. He didn't want to, either, the big man looked like he had a hell of a right hook and Hector wanted to keep his face the way it was. He carelessly set aside his concerns about the sheriff without further contemplation. He was getting good at this sort of thing, didn't fuck up to often anymore. It would be the cozy company of three out in the mountains: him, Mitch's, and his pretty fucking Indian.
Absaroka, Wyoming
Kidnapping: Week Three
It was difficult to breathe with his face pressed into the mattress, but he tried anyway. The fight within him had dwindled down to a flickering spark. His body was too tired to keep it up for long and his head told him submission would hurt less. He conceded the point as he lay on the mattress. His emotions locked down. Shipped to some distant land over the horizon, leaving him numb as he stared at the wall. Its impression burned into his retinas even when his eyes closed. His emotions were buried at the bottom of a deep ocean, or at the ice-crusted peaks of a mountain, he imagined. It did not matter much where, so long as they remained absent. He could do nothing but lie still and take it, and was far too tired tonight to bear the shame. He did not want it, but words had long since proven futile, and what he wanted matter even less.
There were hands on his body. Lips pressed into the vulnerable base of his neck, a heavy weight pinned him down, which caused the mattress to dip. Friction built low in his belly as his body hummed in response to the outside stimulus that he had no control over. He had become the passive observer of his own body's functions.
He felt it when the man moved inside him.
He wished he could not feel a thing.
Pleasure flashes sparked through him and his body responded to a foreign object slamming into that spot inside him, again and again until he was panting like an animal in heat, his feet sliding for purchase on the sheets.
He felt everything keenly.
The painful stretch of a rough fuck.
A dick that was not attached to Walter Longmire was rocking into his ass.
Blunt teeth that nipped hard enough to break the top layer of his skin; it hurt. This startled a gasp through his closed lips, no matter how hard he tried to keep quiet. They did not like it when he made to much noise.
Human teeth, leaving blunt human indents. He reminded himself, for all the two men behaved like beasts. Coyotes would have been kind enough to push him into death's arms. They left him to linger between worlds; spirit laid bare, and his body stripped naked for their lust. Coyotes knew only how to kill the body; a man was a far more insidious animal that could kill the spirit in inches. It was this that they did; his spirit had been rendered in two. He was now half of himself, half a man, as he laid on the mattress his mind millions of miles away.
He took deep breaths and with each one became more hollowed out and cold, even with the sweaty heat of a man pinning him down. He shivered from the ice threading through his veins, struggling to remind himself that doing nothing meant survival. If he did not fight he would not be hit, would not bleed unnecessarily. Fighting would gain him nothing nor would it salve his pride.
Be still, he reminded himself, and it will be over.
Beyond the relative warmth of the RV, coyotes yapped and yowled among themselves under the phosphorescent light of a Hunter's moon. The brightness of it seeped into the room through the small window to his left, dividing the space with looming shadows and empty spaces that were pits of blackness. A lone wolf howled in the distance and the coyotes fell silent; wild things knew when to be still and quiet, too. The man on the mattress did not think it would survive to see the encroachment of summer. The wilds were oftentimes an unforgiving place to solitary predators such as them. Kipling understood a wolf's strength did not come from itself alone; it borrowed from its pack brothers. Come winter, the lone wolf died.
His reality began to fracture, his mind wandering strange paths, as he remained locked out of his own self. He did not want to go back. There he was consumed by hot weight, and the creak-creak of the springs on the mattress drowned out by pleasure-grunts and his own bitten-back cries.
He was outside; where everything was so white it hurt his eyes to look upon. Snow crunched below his bare feet and the coyotes hunted their yellow eyes gleaming like lanterns in the dark.
He imagined the winter gale tearing his skin and gusts of wind snapping through the Tamaracks so strongly it forced the boughs to bend and bend and bend until their branches cracked, splitting them into halves. He was as splintered at those broken trees, branches tore by the wind, outer skin cut down to nothing.
With them, he was nothing but a warm body on a cold night. He looked at the yellow branches. Victims of nature's indifference lying fallen in the dirt, leaves pillaged by the winter elements. His heart lurched into his throat because he understood. It was an understanding so sharp, so keen it near-to bowled him over.
Nimbly he stepped over the broken limbs and peered up at the Pleiades; the seven pups who lit the night skies. Lore said a chief's daughter gave birth to pups after lying with a mysterious stranger who returned only to take his offspring.
'Where you go, I go' she vowed to her youngest but could not uphold her promise, she had no wings to fly. It was a sad tale - family torn apart by indifferent forces beyond human comprehension. Ah well, it is what it is. The seven stars were an adequate compass for travelers navigating their way home and that was all he required. Lost in the barren tempest he found himself outside Walts' door.
He had no idea how he had come to be here but he knew in his heart this was where he most desired to be. He reached out to touch the door and found himself inexplicably inside. He was so relieved to see something familiar that he did not pause to consider the impossibility of what lay before him. The prospect of losing his mind was an inferior evil, compared to what he wished to escape.
Walt's cabin had all the familiar comforts of a second home; it always had felt so to Henry. No matter how many bullet holes riddled its tough exterior this structure would always feel warm in the way of an old friends' company. It still smelled like cedar, dust, and a hint of leather.
'Welcome back' it said as if the walls held him up when he wanted to fall to his knees.
'Be at ease,' said the crackle-pop of the fireplace.
Wood burned, sacrificed to feed the fire causing the air to heat as an abiding warmth wrapped itself around him when he thought he might shake apart from the shivers. So cold, why was he still so very cold? He did not know and so long as he was here he did not care to investigate further. Walt's cabin was a house alive with memories both beautiful and bittersweet.
The ghost of Martha wandered these quaint halls. Her smile was both inviting and infinitely sad as she turned a corner and vanished.
Henry's eyes flicked to Walt. His friend was deeply asleep on the couch, head tipped back as he snored. A fact he would staunchly deny upon waking. Still, he refuses to believe he snores even after all these years of reliable sources. Henry leaned against the couch, content to watch in silence.
"Walt," he finally said.
The image of his friend pulled away even as the words left his lips. Walt became a distant silhouette, vanishing down an endless corridor Henry could never outpace. He stopped running forward, watching, as the Walt in his dream world began to disintegrate, clay turned back to dirt.
"Néméhotatséme," he said, and for the first time in three weeks, his voice did not shake.
It was steady as the Rocky Mountains, enduring. There was power in it- in speaking his heart. It gave him the courage to face the reality fast approaching.
He spoke, in this place between worlds and the facsimile of Walt, knowing he might never get the chance to say them to the man he wanted most to hear. This world was not real. He was not really here with the snow and the coyotes, or in this familiar space with Walt's buzz saw snoring.
The walls that had held him up receded and he was left on his knees, his hands grasping for what was not there to be touched. Left adrift in a world where he was neither awake nor asleep, the rational part of his brain began to awaken. It was slow and sluggish as a lizard that sunned itself upon a flat rock. Rudely jolted back into his body he began to recognize the signs for what they were: loss of time and the disconnection of spirit and body. Dissociation. Henry was quietly falling apart at the seams, and the man panting on top of him remained ignorant to it.
The man at his back moved, slow and deep. Sparks of desire flickered in his belly and he clenched his eyes closed.
He did not want it, but his body did not care, responding to the pressure as the man flexed his hips until he bottomed out.
Henry withdrew from the physical happenings, curling inward mentally. Cowards' choice, perhaps, but he was past caring. He forced his mind into a whiteout blankness that nothing could touch. Let it happen, what did he care.
If he stayed in absentia it did not matter much, did it? It was just something that happened to his body while he stared, blank and numb and empty at the walls until he could feel nothing at all. He was an unoccupied vessel as they made his body burn with unwanted pleasures.
He wanted the chill night air, the coyote tricksters circling, and Walt's warm, cozy cabin setting back. He did not care if it was real or a mental construct, a safe-space created by his mind. More than anything he wanted to not be stuck here inside this RV, which was both hot and stifling. There was a frustrated scream clawing at his throat but he did not give it a voice. More than one predator was circling tonight. He wanted his friend. He could admit that truth within the confines of his head, for all that it pricked his pride to admit.
He wanted Walt to be the big damn hero, one more time. He could use some help right now. Without law enforcement, and in Absaroka Walt Longmire was 911 for everyone, he could see no clear way out. The smallness of the room, the inevitable bad end to this whole sordid affair, was beginning to get to him. While Henry did not suffer from claustrophobia he could feel corners collapsing inwards.
He did not enjoy confinement, trapped in this single room, allowed to leave only to take care of bodily necessities. They permitted him to wash himself off, shower, and shave, even if it was just to destroy DNA evidence of their semen, and he was grateful to them for it. Each time he considered: if they made him do this maybe there remained a chance they would release him. It was screwed up, even he knew that, but he was damned grateful that they let him do that much, wash off the smell of sex in the morning. There were instances, though, when boredom became such a malady that even their attentions were a diversion from the maddening, slow, crawl of time. Even as a boy, he had hated confinement. There was a part of him, small, but very present that longed for an end to this nightmare. Any end would do.
He was pragmatic enough to know that this would not last indefinitely. Failing that he would not last so long as that with the demands they made of his body. He was a fit man for his age, but that was the caveat. He was not accustomed to being on his knees all night or taking it on his back with his feet in the air for inordinate amounts of time. Before they were satisfied he was often so worked over from tense muscles and awkward positions that by the end of the night he was more Charlie Horse than Standing Bear. His age was creeping upon him and he did not welcome the reminder in the dull ache of his joints, the embarrassing strain in his thighs as they rag-dolled him in whatever manner they wanted.
Maybe he was being overly dramatic. Walt had accused him of dramatic flourishes in the past, and he was not entirely wrong. But he did not like any part of this, it made it that much harder, and deeply embarrassing when he physically could not do what they wanted. He had fought, at first, until it hurt too badly to do so. He fought less, and the pain was different, an inner sundering of his spirit. Stuck between Heávohe and the blackness waiting behind his eyelids, no choice left to him was a good one, and he hurt. In ways, he had not yet reconciled, in ways he had not known he could.
Stop, he wanted to say as reality sank its teeth into him savaging the remnants of his disassociation. He said nothing because words were useless when the man in question did not care about consent. The feel of snow and the sounds of hunting coyotes drifted further and further away.
He held on to it as tight as he could but it was like grasping cobwebs that broke at the whisper of wind through gossamer strands. It slipped from his grasp, gone to places he could not follow. Instead, he felt the sharp sting of teeth sinking in, but they were not wolf or coyote fangs, they were blunted and all too human. A most vicious creature, man. He had not had a hickey, purple bruise sucked into fruition on his skin in years, for some time. He had come a long way since his halcyon days of high school tomfoolery and college parties where the main course was alcohol. Then, he had chased his nascent desire for rougher, male, hands on his body. He did not enjoy it now. Not the hickey. Not the groping hands. Not the suffocating weight. Thrashing did no good, he learned that quickly.
All it did was force them harder inside, made their grip tighter on whatever part of him they leveraged to gain his compliance as he was bent over the mattress edge.
His neck throbbed, a spit slick pulsation that left him vulnerable to the faint draft coming in from the small, cracked window. It burned where teeth had nicked skin as Mitch indulged his vampire fetish, lightly sucking at the wound. It could have been worse, as far as wounds went, and did not concern Henry. It stung a little, nothing more. He turned his face to the side. If he squinted he could see through the spider web of fissures in the small window. The snow made the world outside the RV look white and clean and he dropped his gaze.
He could ever be clean of this. The musky smell of sex clung to the room, to him, and he hated it. It was an idle fancy, a will o'wisp gliding across the brooks, this desperate want to be clean. He doubted sweet-smelling soap or all the sage in the world would be enough to scrub the dirt from his skin.
The man on top of him grunted. He had lost what little rhythm he possessed several minutes ago; he would come soon.
"Still tight." The man used his grip on his hips to pull him back into his thrusts, the pressure inside was building, and he hated it. It was a relentless tidal wave of stimulation that forced Henry over the edge to his own climax.
Henry groaned as he came, his face shoved into the pillow to muffle the sound, his face hot and wet with tears of shame.
The man smiled, his mouth pressed a kiss into his shoulder even as Henry struggled to calm his breathing.
"Told you I could make you come," he muttered. "Still so fuckin' tight, Henry."
Rough hands gripped his hips bruising-tight as weight pressed down on his back. Caught between sweaty skin and the lumpy mattress there was nowhere to go. Now thoroughly spent and oversensitive Henry held still, waiting for the man to finish. His hands clutched at the bedding habitually, feeling the coarse texture of the blue sheets wrinkling in his grasp.
There was no rhythm or finesse to Mitch; it was too fast and too hard. The burning friction wearing at raw nerves, spending up sparks of pain to flair in a kaleidoscope of not good. He was too hot, cramped, and smothered by the small space. His inability to move, to shove Mitch off left him fighting the onset of panic as his breath stuttered, the sounds coming out of his mouth choked and small. He was made to feel small and helpless, with his hands bound by police restraints at the headboard.
Mitch's hands roved up the length of his thighs and pulled him, impossibly, wider as he thrust in deep. Henry could not stop the burst of sound that was forced out of his throat with the exodus of breath from his lungs. It was a painful shock and he wanted to get away from the hurt but he was flat on his stomach. Emptied of conscious thought beyond no and stop he mindlessly pulled at his wrists.
Distantly he could feel the metal rub against the skin. His wrists were covered in scabbed over abrasions, which cracked open as his body was forced into movement, used as an inanimate rag doll. He did not beg or plead during the act. His words would only be ignored like the barking of a stray dog. Mitch only pretended to care, when it suited his purposes as he lived out the fantasy scenes that lived in his head.
By now Henry knew what he was to them, a whore, that was all.
Barely even a human.
The RV creaked, shuddering against the storm and he waited for it to be over. Henry tried to drown out the noises, awful wet slap of skin, hoarse pants, and a litany of fucks breathed into his ear, but he failed. Hot breath ghosted over Henry's neck in a cruel mockery of intimacy that sickened him when he could still vividly recall another man's touch, someone he did want. Rough stubble scraped against his thighs leaving marks he wanted to wear on his body, hands that could be gentle even in the wild throes of passion. Perhaps it would have been better for him if he did not. He fought to keep a solid, mental barrier between the going on's here and what it meant to him when he lay with a man who meant something altogether different than the stranger who rutted into him now.
"Fuck," the man groaned as he chased his sex-endorphin high to its finish.
Henry felt the hot rush of come spilling inside himself and shuddered. Mitch rarely used condoms, small mercies that the other man did so religiously.
As usual, the man grunted when he came.
Henry trembled where he lay, pressed beneath the sweaty, sticky weight of the man. It was strange that the act of choice altered so much about the mechanics of sex. He was disgusted at the feeling of slick wetness where they were joined and his own unwanted reaction.
"That was good."
Mitch sighed, sounding like a man deeply content with the course of his evening. After a few minutes, his grip on Henry loosened and his breathing petered out. He propped his chin atop Henry's shoulder blade, the bristles of his beard irritated the skin leaving stark red abrasions.
Henry's nostrils flared in distaste, he could smell him, cheap cologne, stale beer, and toothpaste. He could still feel the man inside; too, for all that he wished he could not.
"Why don't you ever talk much, hmm?" Mitch quietly asked, casually running his hands up Henry's side. "I know you can, sure cussed me out good that first time."
Henry wished the man would just leave him be, but that would be asking for too much. Tired, sore, and disgruntled Henry kicked back his impulse to be snappish or violent in his response.
Mitch was close enough that he could theoretically head-butt him at this angle. Henry threw the notion out the window, it would require pressing the man, still inside him, deeper. Henry considered the satisfaction at hearing the cra-ck of a broken nose but it was short-lived.
It might be worth the resulting headache. Might even be worth what would probably happen later for all of a single moment. He did not act on his impulse. Wisdom of experience dictated it was not worth it.
"What -" Henry paused, his voice came out all wrong, soft. Exhaustion crept in without his permission, bleeding into the edges. He hated that, too. He swallowed and began again. "What more can you possibly want from me?"
"This isn't how I imagined it, you know?" Mitch breathed into the shell of Henry's ear; his words when spoken were close and intimate, feeding into his idea of pillow talk between lovers.
"I wanted to ask you out, you know?" Mitch said, quite suddenly sounding very young and insecure. "I knew you'd never give me the time of day if I asked. Trig, well, he had a plan. But - but you should know this wasn't what I imagined."
Henry listened as he spoke, but could not for the life of him pretend to know what Mitch wanted in return for this confession. He knew from the ensuing silence that Mitch was fishing for a particular response. Was it forgiveness? Validation for his actions and a 'there, there' pat on the head? Perhaps.
Henry did not know if this was something he could give, they had taken everything else.
Mitch's hand smoothed along Henry's ribcage as he waited for an answer from his captive, he became almost lazy in the glide of his hands. The other man was gentler with his touches now that he had gotten what he had wanted, most nights followed this pattern. When it was like this Henry could easily imagine it was not Mitch who lay behind him - inside him - but he never let himself slip down that path of thinking. Mitch was not...Mitch was not. It did not matter that it would make the touching, the fucking, more bearable. He could not do that; close his eyes and play pretend in the dark when another man fucked him so hard he wanted to cry.
Henry squeezed his eyes shut forcing himself to remain in the present even as his mind automatically tried to drift off. It was not a habit he wanted to develop.
"And what is it you imagined? Did you imagine I would become your Patty Hearst? Is that what you imagined?" Henry asked, desperate to end the conversation. "I am sorry to inform you but ninety-two percent of hostages do not develop what mainstream media terms Stockholm syndrome."
Mitch huffed, laughing a little. Henry could feel the displacement of weight as it rumbled from the man's chest and grimaced into the mattress.
"Really? I mean, no, not really. Fuck, how do you know all this shit, anyhow."
Henry threw out both the first and second thoughts that came to mind, he was all too aware of the vulnerability of his current position. He reached for an answer that would satisfy Mitch, but not insult the man.
He was young, and his pride easily bruised. Henry did not wish for more bruises of his own, he had more than enough.
"I read, nothing more," Henry said. "Wisdom says it is better to be a person who knows things than to be the person who does not."
Mitch hummed, his hand coming up to run through Henry's hair, threading through the section at the corner of his ear where Henry knew full well it was beginning to gray. Walt had been kind enough to point it out once.
He had also been wise enough to bring it up after the sex, the old fox.
"Wisdom, huh?" Mitch murmured.
Henry wanted to go to sleep.
He wanted Mitch to shut up and leave, so he could try.
Sleeping here was not unlike closing one's eyes among a pack of ravenous lions, incredibly hard, but necessary. He put it off as long as he could, the black behind his eyelids offered no sanctuary from the horrors conjured by his sleeping mind, but it did not last indefinitely.
His head ached terribly.
It was worsening - a persistent throbbing sensation that was building momentum, pressure spots knotting at his temples that would shortly become one hell of a migraine.
Fingers snapped in Henry's face and he blinked hard. His brow furrowed as he registered that he had blanked out. He had not realized it was happening and this added loss of control was cause for alarm.
"Hey. Would it kill you to make a little conversation with me? Fuck, snow coming down like it is, Absaroka's going to be buried to her tits in it. It's just going to be us three out here for a while longer."
Henry bit the corner of his lip as he tugged the restraints. He wished he could press his hands over his ears as Mitch's tone climbed higher in pitch.
"I did not kidnap you. I did not put a gun to your head and-"
Henry cried out as the weight as his back shifted, pulling away, and new hurts clamored for his attention. They could get in fucking line.
He closed his eyes, fighting off nausea. Trying, even through the escalating pain, to remember if there had ever been a time when he did not feel like shit. If there had existed such a time it was lost to him now.
"Fuck, sorry I asked," the man said as he yanked up his wrangles. "Goddamn Indian."
Mitch snatched up his gray sweater from the floor and left the room.
Henry could hear him cracking open another beer, flopping into his chair like a hormonal teenager. Mitch was an asshole but he was gone, Henry considered that a minor win and kept his opinions to himself. He overheard the low rumble of male voices as they spoke in the larger section of the RV, about him specifically.
"Finished already, that was quick, - even for you," Trig teased, followed by the sound of backslapping.
He grimaced as they enjoyed their male bonding, drinking beer and talking while his body ached from overuse.
"Maybe I'll have a go, what do you think?"
Henry froze, his heart damn near skipping a beat in anxiety as he waited for Trig to continue speaking or enter his tiny back room.
"Eh, do what you want, but we're going to have to clean him up if you know what I mean? If you want him all pretty for the camera," Mitch shrugged.
Trig sighed. "Oh, well, sh-it," he said, and they both laughed.
Anger flared in his belly, but died a quick death, replaced with mortification as his face burned bright red in the poor lighting. He wanted to scream, he wanted to curse loud enough that the Creator might take notice, but did not.
Trig was right around the corner and he dared not make a sound to draw further attention.
He swallowed past a throat gone tight, tears threatened at the corner of his eyes but he willed them back. He was tired, sore, and dehydrated, tears would not help.
It was small consolation that Trig would leave him alone tonight when tomorrow he would have to bear their clinical, impersonal touching as they made sure he was fit forviewing, and more fucking. It was somehow worse. Having to be dependent on them for personal hygiene. Requiring their permission for such necessities bothered him, more than the sex even did most days.
He knew his perspective was skewed, but he was relieved that Mitch's desires, at least, were uncomplicated.
A quick fuck, a few bites, and Mitch either fell into a dead sleep or went off to do whatever he usually did when he was not on top of him. Trig was less simple, he needed complete control when he felt he lost that he became enraged.
Naked, half curled on the narrow bed Henry remembered the last time he had not kept his own mouth shut around Trig. He had ended up chained in the snow like a junkyard dog. His memory was clouded but he was certain he almost died, Mitch had taken a chance disobeyed his companion and brought Henry inside before his bits started falling off from the ice and snow. Of the ways, he had considered leaving this world and journeying into the next death by exposure to the elements had not been on the list. But then, neither had this, had it? His brain dredged up an old memory; a place and time where he did not hurt in every way a man could be made to hurt.
Henry closed his eyes and fell into the past.
There was a fireside hearth and the aroma of a steak cooking in the oven. Henry in a rare mood was stretched out on the couch, his head propped up by Walt's knee as his friend read aloud from a book in his cabin. Walt's large, calloused hands, which were so experienced with the modes of occupational violence but also knew how to play Henry like the keys of his beautiful piano, until he was desperate and begging for Walt's touch, grappling and surrendering in equal measure until they were joined as one. Those hands, versed in many skills, were always careful in the turning of pages. Walt did not want to tear or crease the edging unduly.
Henry, while sprawled across his lap, had taken a small, private pleasure in watching Walt and his big hands maneuver the thin bits of paper. The other man was almost unconscious of his actions, as he went about it, it was this that caught Henry's attention and held him enraptured.
Such care, and it was not even a conscious effort on Walt's part.
Henry had enjoyed the elegant prose; it had lacked the wordiness of other poetry, and the low steady rumble of Walt's voice, which was in of itself a rare pleasure.
Pain has an element of blank
It cannot recollect
When it began—or if there were
A day when it was not.
He enjoyed the frenzied lovemaking that followed even more.
Desperate with the need to feel skin to skin, to be one, belts and shirts had strewn the living room until there were no barriers left between them. Each kiss was like the first, even as the rightness of it echoed across time. As though they had done this eon ago beside a brook overlooking yellow rolling plains.
Each man divested themselves of their cloth-spun armor, choosing to lay themselves bare in flesh and spirit as they shared their bodies. Walt, kind in his unobtrusive way, had thrown down a tribal blanket before pulling Henry down to the floor with him. It felt as if they could not get close enough, straining against fragile mortal bodies, as they crashed together over the cliff of want-need-desire.
Walt's rough hands had been gentle that night. As though Henry were a page from one of Walt's beloved books. It was enough.
Henry lay in silence, adrift in the soft haze of memory, as the room slowly stopped spinning and reality solidified. A solitary tear slipped down the side of his face remembering a touch that did not hurt and a man that he wanted had always wanted.
The electric pain behind his eyes was dying down to something smaller. Less sticking needles in his eyes and more of a dull throbbing ache. He stared at the ugly mustard yellow panel, the same ugly mustard yellow panel he had been staring at for going on three weeks. He was too tired to fight this night, not like he did the first time it happened anyways.
He tried to forget, even now.
Those small desperate sounds that escaped when he had been shoved facedown on the bed, the burning rush of shame.
I should have fought harder. He was bitter with the knowledge; certain there must have been something more he could have done. He tried to forget, but it was all still right there, in the back of his mind, still happening.
His mind drifted sometimes now and when he came back to himself a terrifying sickness settled. What if this was it? What if the last thing he ever saw really was this ugly mustard yellow paneling? The last thing he felt, or heard, or did would be confined to this room, this man, and this ugly as hell paneling. And for what? He had been shoved into the oldest profession in the world because a few assholes wanted extra cash they got from submitting homemade videos to questionable Internet sites. It had crossed his mind that they were distributing them on the Dark Web for a price but as there was little he could do he did not pursue the thought. The truth was he did not care to know if that was so. He exhaled a ragged breath and counted backward to sixty, struggling to keep his composure, he did not get past forty before he was overwhelmed.
Shame, it sat like soured milk in his stomach, he was sick with it.
He had not been the one batting his eyelashes and shaking his ass for free drinks. All this had been instigated because ofher habit of making bedroom eyes at customers. It was a game the girls liked to play. They would count out their earnings at a table in the corner and see who got the biggest tip at the end of the day. The winner paid for drinks on those nights. It seemed somewhat counter productive, but it was none of his business so he kept his nose out of it.
He had pointed out the un-wiseness of such games in a bar frequented by men with lowered inhibitions, and sometimes even lower inclinations. He had been told unequivocally to 'butt out.' He had done so but kept his eye on them, both when he could spare them.
There was only so much he could offer when he was often run off his feet during the busy hours. He wanted to lay the fault with her, relinquishing the blame that bowed his shoulders to the point of breaking. But he could not do it in the end. Whatever she might have done to lead the asshole on, she did not deserve this ugliness in her life. She was young and had the rest of her life ahead of her.
She would face enough obstacles being a Cheyenne woman; she did not need to be another statistic stapled to a wall. No one deserved this. Amy White Feather had a ten-year-old kid-sister and a mother who loved her. She had people who were waiting for her at home when her shift at the bar ended. Who was going to notice when Henry Standing Bear did not return home? No one except the feral tabby-cat he sometimes fed.
If he was lucky.
Alright, perhaps that is a little unfair. Walt will notice. Eventually. Henry reminded himself. They had had sex. Really good sex at that, Henry mused, Walt had ridden him hard and fast, kissed him as he came and stayed until he drifted off to sleep. Then, the stubborn fool began to avoid him so it might take a while but he would get around to it in his own was just how it went with Walt and Henry had long since accepted that. No one was perfect. He will realize, eventually, but too late this time. The hourglass was tipped and the sand was spilling out. The last call was right around the corner, he could feel the mounting tension as it drew nearer. Trig was getting bored with him and once that happened it was out of his hands. Henry chose not to linger on how much his death would affect Walt. It made his chest squeeze painfully. He had enough collective hurts of his own to keep track of. He was too damn tired to add someone else's to the list.
Winter had swept in like a hurricane this year burying the world in silence and enforced distance by piles of snow, the cold made his bones ache these days. Walt would take no notice of his absence. He would catch bad guys, read his beloved classics, and avoid the fact that it had meant more than a quick fuck in the dark. At least, Henry hoped it had. It was all he could do, in the end. Hope. Really, when it came to things such as feelings Walt Longmire could be as skittish as a twice-kicked dog. It could take three times as long before the man would spit out whatever thoughts he had been chewing. When he got there, to that critical point, then he might notice Henry was not where Walt seemed to always expect him to be.
His heart twisted to realize that Walt was going to face this alone, the actions left undone, and far too late. Henry knew Walt, as a friend, and as a lover. This was going to haunt him, but he did not blame him. He should have known Walt would run. It had been too soon to indulge in the hunger that clawed in their bellies whenever it had gone unsatisfied for too long. That was often the way it was between them. Henry did not blame him because he was not much better. So much of what was between them had always been left unsaid. A promise with a kiss, a vow fulfilled with the silence of understanding born from years of history. Softness shared in the dark and left between the blankets and middling hours before the crackle and glow of a flickering fireplace.
Walt was not a man given to an excess of words. Walt was not free with his words either, it was not his way. It would surprise many people to learn that when left alone with his books Walt was a quiet man. He had a proclivity for hoarding them, words, and books, like a dragon, guarded its gold. He mulled over his thoughts before he chose to speak ripping away his outer-bark of stoicism and laying bare his private thoughts. Henry did not know how he was with others but years of familiarity had allowed him a place of significance. Walt let him inside his private space. Henry if he was honest, and he always tried to be with himself, loved that about his friend.
He did not love the long, drawn-out awkwardness in place now. This wasn't Walt being meticulous; this was Walt thinking himself into a corner, waiting for Henry to drag him out of it.
Walt was not predisposed to 'just because' calls. He would need a solid reason to stick his neck out and go looking for him after the way things had been left. A hastily scribbled 'Gone hunting in Wichita' on a yellow sticky-note stuck beside the phone was an awful lot to pin his far-flung hopes on. In conclusion, the probability of a door-busting rescue scenario worthy of the silver screen's John Wayne was poor. Walter Longmire would not be coming to his rescue. He was well and truly fucked.
Mitch was tolerable, but the other man who held him captive was deeply unsettling, and for more reasons than the sex. It was how he looked at him, as though he was not even the same species, Henry had seen the look before. It never ended well. His stomach tightened unpleasantly but he had no desire to vomit so he forced his thoughts down another path. As much as Mitch and his affectation of intimacy repulsed him he did not concern Henry half so much as the other man.
Mitch had even made noises about letting him go; 'when he was done' he would say. Usually after sex, or right before he slumped off to sleep. Henry was not naive enough to take him at his word. Hope was a dangerous thing after all, but he did not seem quite as invested in making him bleed as his companion was. Henry considered himself fairly thick-skinned.
He had lost any latent sensitivity to prurient name-calling at an early age, running a bar and being Cheyenne had settled the rest. He picked his battles better than that, mostly. He had been called all manner of things from 'shiny-apple,' 'cherry-nigger,' and the tame brand of 'Injun' made popular by Hollywood's western pop-culture. Personal experience dictated this was the white man's easy, go-to insult. Henry accredited this to drunkenness and lack of imagination. But whore; now there was a new appellation even for him. It was what the other man called him, never by his name.
'Hey, whore,' he said, or 'fucking Indian!'
Henry was no man's whore. He knew this and yet he found he needed to remind himself that this was not his choice.
Lack of 'no' did not amount to consent. He had said no, the first time, and the second, and the third. For all the good that did him. He did not say it anymore.
'Whore,' Trig called him, like it had become his favorite endearment. He said it with such deliberateness there was no mistaking his intent. It cut a little deeper each time like rubbing salt into an open wound.
Rationally he knew it should not bother him any more than the rest of the things he had been called in his lifetime. Despite what Walt thought he did not have an extensive repertoire of bedroom experiences with men. It seemed to him whore was a slur most often employed by drunken men with little, pencil-dicks trying to prove their masculinity. He knew all this. Yet there existed a world between rationale and emotion and like the Tamaracks shaking in the winter gale Henry could feel himself being to buckle under the weight.
He was no man's whore, maybe, but they were halfway to making a liar of him in the word was clinging to him like dirt he could not scrub clean, burrowing its claws under his skin and into his very thoughts, a dark seedling whose roots were fast spreading.
Something was going to break; it was only a matter of time.
Tamaracks were proud trees, their branches heavy with yellow leaves, but they could only bend so far before their rugged limbs would break and they would give way to the storm's will. He was no man's whore, but it was a difficult affirmation to hold to when he felt only half a man in the first place.
Henry could no longer see the beauty of an Absaroka winter, the raw destructive force that was nature unleashed. He felt too keenly the weight of the storm. No longer able to find that place within him that was still and quiet in the face of this violent unmaking.
The storm had grown stronger, and he was tired.