And then. “Yeah, take it,” Mark ground out. “Fucking faggot.”
Francis went still. Everything in him stopped while Mark thrust away. He’d heard those words before. He’d heard them from a guy who hadn’t stopped when asked, decades ago.
“Stop,” he said weakly, but Mark didn’t hear him.
Instead, Mark called him a fag with a lust-spiked voice, and then pressed into him, stayed there, and came, grunting loudly.
Mark pulled out and flopped on the bed gasping for air and holding onto the condom with one hand. He flung his other arm over his eyes, and his mouth curled into a satisfied grin.
Meanwhile, Francis’s cock wasn’t even half hard anymore, and he got up with shaky legs and went to the bathroom.
He stared at himself in the mirror, wondering how it had gone like this. He knew Mark didn’t mean it. Mark wasn’t the type to say such things, but in the heat of the moment, his mental filters were wide open and poison spilled out.
Francis had told himself he wouldn’t be that guy. The one who would let anyone do this to him ever again. But this wasn’t a situation like the one back then. This was someone who genuinely cared about him—Francis knew that without a doubt—and yet this had happened.
He cleaned up and went back into the bedroom, still not sure what to say.
He might’ve even swept it under the rug if Mark hadn’t been so fucking observant and immediately honed on to the fact that something was wrong.
“Give me two seconds,” he said, holding up his hand as he went to dispose of the condom. He came back quickly, and watched as Francis pulled on his clothes by the bed. “What happened? Did I hurt you?”
A small snort bubbled out of Francis, and he shook his head. “Not exactly.”
Mark stood there, just inside the bedroom, naked as the day he was born and frowned. It was as if he was trying to rewind whatever it was that might’ve gone wrong, but couldn’t grasp it.
Instead, he came to Francis and put a hand on his wrist, stopping his attempt at pulling on his shirt.
“Talk to me, please,” he said and sat on the edge of the bed.
“You used a slur,” Francis whispered. “And you didn’t hear me when I told you to stop after.”
Mark looked taken aback, his eyes wide and a horrified expression on his face. “I…what?”
Francis snorted again, bitterly, and made eye contact. “You fucked me and called me a faggot, Mark. The last guy who did that didn’t stop either when I told him to.” He let the weight of the statement settle, feeling an odd vindication when Mark went pale as he put together what Francis wasn’t saying.
“I’m sorry probably won’t cover this,” Mark said quietly, tearing his gaze from Francis’s.
“No, no it doesn’t. It should, but… not with this, Mark.” Francis finished getting dressed. “Don’t get me wrong, I know you’d never, ever call me that if you weren’t mostly gone inside your head and everything wasn’t concentrated around your dick, but….”
When Mark glanced at him again, there were tears in his eyes. “I… I’ll do better. I’ll talk to Evy. I….” His lower lip wobbled like a child’s, and Francis wanted nothing more than to comfort him.
But he couldn’t. Not when he was starting to have flashbacks, starting to hear that other man in his head where he hadn’t been in a very long time.
“We’ll get over this,” Francis promised, feeling the certainty in his words and hoping that Mark did too. He went to stand between Mark’s legs and pulled him into a hug.
Mark put his head against Francis’s stomach and seemed to draw comfort from the brief touch Francis allowed.
He stepped back and looked at Mark. “I’ll let you know what the Grahams decide. I need a day or two to process my feelings.”Please give me space.“Talk to Evy. Figure this out for yourself. Don’t let it become poison.”
Francis walked to the front of the house and picked up the clean dishes from the kitchen. He took his overnight bag and put his shoes on. Leaving Mark’s house was the hardest thing he’d had to do in a while, but he had to.
Chapter Eleven
Mark sat on the bed for a long time after Francis left.
He couldn’t remember saying that word, nor hearing Francis tell him to stop. The horrifying guilt washed over him in waves. It receded, only for him to remember that someone else had done the same thing to Francis before and Mark knew all too well what that meant. A new wave crested over him as he sat there, numb and feeling too much at the same time.
Eventually, he decided to take Francis’s words to heart. He got up and pulled on some clothes, then went to look for his cell phone and texted Evy.
