DISCLAIMER: most of this chapter details rape aftermath from mark's perspective so it might be a little disturbing (it got a bit more intense than i meant for it to be oops). if you wanna skip that and just understand the plot then stop reading after "Two places where his release wouldn't be able to reach, where it could only have been done by another person." and begin reading again when it says "He's not sure how long he laid there on the floor of his bedroom"

Mark wakes up in a very bizarre position; on his back with his legs spread open and slightly bent at the knees, and completely nude. He stretches with a small groan, trying to shake off the drowsiness and figure out why his body aches so much when he notices the mess on his stomach and chest, dried and uncomfortably tacky. He groans, merely thinking he had a particularly good dream the night prior and had somehow kicked off his underwear in the process.

He tries to go into the bathroom and get a washcloth to clean himself up, only for his knees to give out under him. He yelps as he falls to the floor, landing on his side. The fall doesn't really hurt, but it's still enough to shock him awake. He's worried at first, but his legs don't even hurt that much, he just hadn't expected them to be so weak. He blinks, realizing his back and ass were sore as all hell. Maybe the awkward position of his legs had something to do with it? Now that he thinks about it, it was really, really weird he had been in that position in the first place. He had never woken up like that before, and even if it had left his back and legs sore, it didn't explain why his ass felt like it was torn up to hell and back...

Cogs start turning in his head, slowly, too slowly. He feels like he's missing something, something important, something scratching at the back of his head... He just can't figure out what.

He leans back, trying to get his legs under him so he can try standing up again, inadvertently rubbing his thighs together as he does so. He freezes as he feels something... crusty on them, and shifts himself to get a better look. He brushes a hand against the back of his thighs and feels the same familiar tacky texture as the mess decorating his stomach and chest. At first he thinks nothing of it, he already knows he had some sort of wet dream last night... but then he realizes; if he came on his chest, then how did he get cum between his thighs...? Did he come twice? He reaches further down, and feels more of it crusting the back of his balls, and the crease of his ass. Two places where his release wouldn't be able to reach, where it could only have been done by another person.

How. How? His mind races with a million possible explanations, before finally settling on two. One, he either got black out drunk and had sex with a guy and remembers none of it, but that's impossible because he's never had alcohol in his life and he remembers going to bed last night, and he most certainly didn't do that. Two... someone had broken into his house and raped him in his sleep.

He sits on the floor, shell-shocked, not willing to believe that could have happened. There had to be another explanation, but Mark couldn't find one. The severity of the situation is beginning to dawn on him, and his stomach twists with dread and nausea. What does he do now? Go to the police? What was he even going to tell them?

Evidence. He needs evidence. The cum dried onto his legs and ass probably has the DNA of... whoever did this to him. He needs to collect it somehow.

He gets a plastic ziploc bag, he doesn't remember going into the kitchen, but that must be where he got it from. His head feels foggy, he feels like he's moving in slow motion and lightning speed at the same time. He scrapes the stranger's cum off of his thighs, and nearly gags as he realizes there's some still in his hole, and it's still sticky. Like he's in a trance, he gathers up as much of it as he can, drops the bag onto the floor because of how shaky his hands are, and steps into his bathtub with trembling legs so he can wash the rest of it off of himself. He can barely get his hands to cooperate enough to twist the shower handle with how tremors wrack his entire body. He turns the shower on, waits for it to warm up, and starts wiping the... the... stuff... off of himself with a washcloth. He nearly cries as he drags the towel down his thighs over and over again. He can still feel the grime clinging to his skin, but every time he brushes his hand against where he thinks it is, his skin is clean. Despite the way he can feel the weight and texture of the filth, his hands only meet smooth, spotless skin -- rubbed raw and stinging from the harsh treatment of the hand towel. Eventually, he gives up on trying to make himself feel untainted and pure, and moves on to face what he dreads.

His breaths come in painful heaves for air as he moves his hands up his legs to clean his hole. He doesn't want to touch himself there, doesn't want to feel a finger inside of himself, but the thought of leaving it unclean, dirty is far, far worse. He inserts a finger into himself, swallowing down bile, scooping out the filth as fast as he can, and... wait. Why... is he so loose? Mark is... was... a virgin, but he knew a thing or two about how this sort of thing works from smuggled magazines and shameful internet searches. He shouldn't be able to put two fingers inside himself with little resistance, he's pretty sure even one finger should be hurting a little. Sure, he was probably stretched out while he was... raped... but certainly not this much.

It proves to be too much for him to handle. For the second time that morning, his legs give out from under him, and he falls to the floor of the tub, but he catches himself with his hands this time, softening his fall. He kneels on the floor and dry heaves, throat spasming and forcing bile into his mouth. He coughs, gasping for air as he fights for control over himself, tears pricking at his eyes. He sobs, everything is too much; the hard floor of the tub underneath him, the sound of rushing water, the shower pelting him with slightly too-warm water... it's too much. His arms shake, and he lowers himself onto the floor, laying on his side and curling up into the fetal position. He wails, he cries, his tears are washed away by the shower before they can stream down his face and he's eternally grateful because he doesn't want to cry, doesn't want to be weak, but he can't fucking do this.

He chokes back a few more sobs and stifles a wail building in the back of his throat, sniffling as he tries to get his breathing under control. He is not going to let whoever violated him win, not going to let them have the satisfaction of bringing him to his knees.

He's fine. He can calm down. He feels like he's full of maggots, and he can feel the phantom touch of hands on his skin, but he's fine.

He can feel the filth tainting him, rotting him from the inside out. He grasps onto his hair like a lifeline, closes his eyes as water streams down onto his face. It's fine, he's okay.

He... he's fine.

He's fine.

...

He's never going to be "fine" ever again.

He screams, baying like a dying animal as the water batters his body like he's in the middle of a hurricane. Wrath boils under his skin, hatred takes hold of his heart. He hauls himself up to his knees and slams his hands onto the smooth porcelain on the tub, hoping it cracks, hoping it shatters, hoping the shards dig into his hands, hoping the shrapnel tears into his flesh, hoping he bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. Instead it stays mockingly solid, unblemished, not even a single crack marring it's disgustingly smooth and pristine surface. He'll never be that pristine ever again, forever soiled, forever rotting. He pants like a sick dog, like a lowly animal, maybe he's brought this unto himself, his sick fantasies luring him to this fate to him like flies to a corpse. He pounds his fists into the floor until they ache, until they are red and raw and bruised. He cries, he howls, he roars, he...

He comes back to himself, collapsed on his side, face pressed up against the floor of the tub. He has a faint recollection of his rage dissolving into despair and self-loathing, his bellowing giving way to wretched sobs that wracks his body with tremors. He remembers being too tired to hold himself upright, slumping onto the wall, sliding down to the floor. He remembers staring into nothing, his thoughts leaving his head as he stops existing entirely, lost in the whitenoise of water landing on flesh and porcelain. He blinks, and realizes he has no idea how long he's left the water running. It's so mundane, so achingly boring that he lets himself latch onto it, an achor to the normalcy he desperately wishes he could return to. He pushes himself up until he's kneeling, and reaches for the handle, wrenching it downwards to shut the water off.

The downpour stops abruptly, and Mark is in awe of it, staring up at the shower head as if he's stopped the rain during a thunderstorm, as if he is kneeling in the eye of a hurricane. The last of the water spurts out of the faucet, then recedes into a steady drip, and he matches his breathing to the monotonous rhythm.

He dries himself off numbly, dresses himself, rips his bed sheets of his mattress and throws them into the washing machine -- he can't recall much of what he did in between those things, it goes by too quickly. He stares up at the ceiling, the carpet of his bedroom soft against his back, and he feels empty.

...

...

...

He's not sure how long he laid there on the floor of his bedroom, but eventually he peels himself off the carpet, sitting upright with his knees tucked under his chin. He feels slightly less like a husk of himself.

He needs a plan. He's not going to just lay down and take this, he needs to do something

---

He sighs after he places the last metal can on his bedroom floor, stepping back to sit on his bed as he looks over his work. Empty metal cans were positioned in front of his bedroom door and window, and a couple were randomly scattered around the floor. The idea was that if anyone broke into his house and entered his bedroom, they would knock over the cans, creating a domino effect that would hopefully make enough noise to wake him up. Maybe they would even trip on them, who knows, it's not like Mark had any other budget-friendly options he could set up in five hours.

The next things he had gotten his hands on during his shopping spree were an extra alarm clock, coffee, and energy drinks. The idea was that if the caffeine didn't do its job and he nodded off, then he had an alarm set to go off every hour, and it would wake him up before anything could happen. Hopefully. Maybe he could also take a couple cat naps; he didn't want to completely screw himself over.

The last thing he bought was an excessive amount of tapes so he could film himself while he sleeps; he already has a camcorder, so thankfully he didn't need to spend that much money on this part of his plan. As much as he dreads the possibility of seeing what happens to him while he's asleep, the thought of it happening again and him not knowing is worse. The uncertainty would drive him to paranoia it if he had no way to know; always wondering whether or not something had happened, of what was being done to him.

Besides, having a video means having evidence, and a way to identify the perpetrator. Hell, maybe it would scare them off to know that he knew what their face looked like.

Evidence. He looks to the plastic bag sitting on his nightstand, shame coiling in his gut. He's not sure what to expect if he goes to the police with this, not sure if they'll take him seriously or laugh in his face. What do they do in situations like these? Would they interrogate him? He didn't have much information to give, since he was asleep the entire time. Would they do a medical examination on him? Would they poke and prod and ask him questions? A chunk of ice drops into his stomach as he remembers how loose his hole is. If they examine him, they'll conclude that he's been taking it up the ass for weeks, maybe months.

Hell, maybe he has been, he just didn't know it. He must have been sedated somehow, there's no way someone could fuck him hard enough to leave him sore in the morning without it waking him up otherwise. If he follows that train of thought, then he definitely can't find a difference between how he slept last night and any other night recently... how long has it been since his insomnia magically went away?

Don't think about that, he thinks to himself as nausea churns his stomach, don't go down rabbit holes based on theories, stick to what you know

He takes a few deep breaths and tries to calm himself down. Stick to what he knows, sure. So far he knows that he woke up with his legs spread, covered in his own cum, with someone else's cum leaking out his ass, and... his asshole way, way looser than any virgin's should be.

The cops are never going to believe me, he realizes, or they will believe me but they'll also believe I fuck guys on the regular.

He couldn't risk that. If the cops decided to spread rumors about him sleeping with other men, or worse, arrested him for 'homosexual activity,' he would lose everything. His church, his family, his reputation at school, his safety, probably his house, and any hope of getting a job in Mandela... he couldn't.

He buries his head in his hands, digging his fingers into his scalp like he's trying to stop his sanity from escaping his skull. He feels like an animal backed into a corner, and he has no idea how this will end, if it ends. There's nothing he can do except stick to his plan; something's got to give... he just hopes it won't be him.