Chapter 3: Fuck You
The silence after Derek’s tears was worse than the shouting. It was a vacuum, sucking all the air out of the room. Marcus lay on the ruined couch, feeling the cold wetness seep into his shirt, listening to the ragged, wet sounds Derek tried to stifle against the floor. The hand clutching his felt like a drowning man’s grip—tight, desperate, full of a terror that had nothing to do with physical survival.
A slow, cold fury began to uncoil in Marcus’s gut. It started as a pinpoint of clarity in the post-sex haze, burning away the confusion and the shame. It spread, ice-cold and logical, through his veins. He looked at their joined hands—his own slender, ink-stained fingers locked in Derek’s massive, calloused paw. He thought of the words. Just a hole. He thought of Derek’s face, crumpled in misery even as he said them. He thought of every time before this: the frantic, shame-filled release on the rug, the clinical brutality in the bedroom that was supposed to “fix” them, and now this—a raw, painful fuck on the couch followed by tears and a clinging hand.
Every single time, it was Derek who ignited it. Derek who kissed him first. Derek who proposed the catastrophic “one time” to get it out of their systems. Derek who had manhandled him just minutes ago, using him like a fucking stress-relief toy. And every single time, after he got what he wanted, he turned cruel. He built a wall of ugly words—tool, placeholder, hole—as if saying them could somehow undo what he’d just done, could scrub the truth from his own skin.
The hypocrisy of it was breathtaking. The sheer, cowardly unfairness.
The ice in Marcus’s veins reached his heart. He flexed his hand.
Derek held on tighter, a soft, almost imperceptible sob shaking his grip.
Marcus tipped his hand out of Derek’s. The motion wasn’t violent, but it was final, a deliberate severing of that desperate connection. He sat up, his body protesting with aches both superficial and deep. He looked down at Derek, who was now staring at the ceiling again, tears gleaming on his temples, his empty hand lying limp on the floor.
“Fuck you, Derek,” Marcus said.
His voice was quiet. Flat. It held none of the heat of their fucking, none of the frantic energy of their earlier fights. It was a simple statement of fact, cold and heavy as stone.
Derek flinched. He turned his head, his eyes wide and red-rimmed, searching Marcus’s face for the anger he could argue with, the hurt he could maybe clumsily try to soothe. He found only a settled, weary disgust.
Marcus stood. The movement made him wince. He didn’t bother pulling up his jeans, just hauled them over his hips as he walked, the denim chafing the tender, abused skin between his legs. He didn’t look back. He left Derek on the floor, amidst the wreckage of the living room and their friendship, and walked down the hall to his own bedroom. He closed the door. He didn’t slam it. The soft, definitive click of the latch was more damning than any noise could have been.
He leaned back against the door, the wood solid and cool against his spine. His room was dark, the only light the faint blue glow from his computer’s sleep mode. It was his space, cluttered with sketchpads and graphic tablets, shelves bowed under the weight of art books. It smelled of pencils, paper, and him. It didn’t smell of Derek. Here, the metallic tang of regret was his own.
Marcus was pissed. A clean, clarifying rage that finally cut through the fog of lust and confusion. He was fucking pissed. Every time it happened, Derek was the one who started it. Derek, who couldn’t sit with his own shit for five minutes without trying to fuck it out or fight it out. Derek, who would look at him with those hungry, tortured eyes and pull him in, only to shove him away afterward with a verbal shiv to the ribs. It was a shitty, cowardly way to be treated by anyone. But by the man who’d been his best friend since before they knew what the word meant? It was a betrayal that ran deeper than the sex, deeper than the lockdown madness. It was Derek choosing to be cruel to protect his own fractured ego, and using Marcus as both the instrument of his pleasure and the punching bag for his self-loathing.
He slid down the door until he was sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up. He rested his forehead on them. The physical ache was a dull, persistent throb, a reminder of the violence of Derek’s need. He welcomed it. It was easier to focus on that than on the hollowed-out feeling in his chest.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. Time in the dark room became fluid, measured only by the gradual lessening of the sharpest pain. He heard Derek move eventually. The heavy tread down the hall, the pause outside his door. Marcus held his breath. He saw the sliver of light under the door darken as Derek’s shadow blocked it. He waited for a knock, for words mumbled through the wood.
Nothing.
The shadow lingered for a full minute, a silent, oppressive presence. Then it moved away. The floorboards creaked as Derek retreated to his own room. His door closed. Another click.
Two separate silences now, divided by a hallway.
The next two days were an exercise in hostile archaeology. They dug through the rubble of their shared life, trying to unearth a version of normalcy they could both pretend to live in. The house was divided into territories. The kitchen was a demilitarized zone, entered only when absolutely necessary, exits swift and strategic. The living room, the scene of the crime, was largely abandoned, a ghost space holding the imprint of their bodies on the couch.
Derek tried. In his own clumsy, infuriating way. He made a full pot of coffee and left it. He ordered Marcus’s favorite Szechuan takeout and put the containers in the fridge without a note. These were peace offerings, but they felt like bribes, apologies delivered by proxy that required no actual speech, no vulnerability.
Marcus ignored them. He drank the coffee, ate the cold, slick noodles straight from the container at three in the morning when he knew Derek was asleep. He took what was offered without acknowledgment, a silent testament to the new economy between them: goods and services with no emotional currency attached.
He worked. He lost himself in a digital triptych, three panels of a man being consumed by his own shadow. The colors were violent—sickly greens, bruised purples, the harsh red of a raw nerve. He didn’t sleep. He existed on a diet of caffeine, resentment, and the peculiar adrenaline of heartbreak.
On the third evening, the tension reached a brittle snapping point. Marcus was in the kitchen, washing the single plate he’d used. Derek walked in to get a beer. The space was too small. Their arms brushed. Both men froze, as if the contact were a live wire.
Derek cleared his throat. “You’re not sleeping,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“You’re not either,” Marcus replied, not turning from the sink. He could see Derek’s reflection in the dark window over the faucet. He looked exhausted, shadows like bruises under his eyes.
“Marcus…” Derek started, then stopped. He cracked the beer open, the hiss loud in the quiet. “We can’t just… live like this.”
“We are living like this.”
“It’s fucking killing me.” The words were raw, stripped bare.
Finally, Marcus turned. He leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “What do you want me to say, Derek? You want me to make it better? To tell you it’s okay that you use me as your fucking fleshlight and then insult me to make yourself feel less gay about it? Is that the service you’re looking for?”
Derek flinched as if slapped. “That’s not… it’s not like that.”
“It’s exactly like that.” Marcus’s voice was deadly calm. “You initiate. You take. You feel like shit afterward. So you say something vile to create distance. That’s the cycle. I’m just the prop.”
“You’re not a prop,” Derek shot back, but the defense was weak, automatic.
“A hole, then. Your words, man. Not mine.”
The color drained from Derek’s face. He took a long swallow of beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing. When he lowered the bottle, his eyes were hard. “You wanted it too. Don’t act like some fucking victim. You were right there with me. You told me to go harder.”
“I did,” Marcus admitted, nodding slowly. “Because for a minute there, in the middle of it, you seemed honest. You weren’t thinking. You were just feeling. And then it ends, and your brain kicks back in, and you have to immediately degrade what just happened so you can sleep at night. That’s what pisses me off. The whiplash. You don’t get to have the honesty of the act and then retroactively make it a lie. Pick a lane. Either it meant something or it didn’t. Either I’m your best friend you’re fucking or I’m just a hole. You don’t get both.”
Derek stared at him, his jaw working. The conflict was a visible storm on his face—shame, anger, a deep, terrifying need. The silence stretched, taut and thin.
Then something in Derek’s expression broke. Not into tears this time, but into a stark, helpless hunger. The kind that bypassed thought altogether. He took a step forward. Then another. He was in Marcus’s space, the heat of his body radiating, the scent of beer and clean sweat filling Marcus’s senses.
“What if I can’t pick?” Derek’s voice was a low rasp. “What if it’s both?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He cupped the back of Marcus’s head, his fingers tangling in the messy black hair, and kissed him.
It was nothing like the others. There was no hesitation, no clinical curiosity, no brutal fury. This was pure, unadulterated want, deep and desperate and terrifying in its sincerity. Derek’s tongue plunged into his mouth, claiming it. A moan vibrated from Derek’s chest into Marcus’s. It was the sound of a man giving up a fight.
And Marcus, despite the rage, despite the logic, felt his body respond instantly. A hot jolt went straight to his groin. The ice in his veins melted under the sudden fever of Derek’s mouth. He kissed back, a surge of angry desire meeting Derek’s hunger head-on. His hands came up, fisting in Derek’s shirt, pulling him closer until their bodies slammed together against the kitchen counter.
Derek broke the kiss, breathing harshly. “I’m sorry,” he gasped, his lips moving against Marcus’s jaw. “I’m a fucking coward. I’m sorry.” He was mapping Marcus’s neck with his mouth, sucking at the skin hard enough to mark. “But I need… fuck, Marcus, I need you.”
“You need a hole,” Marcus whispered, the accusation a last, weak defense.
Derek pulled back just enough to look him in the eyes. His gaze was blazing, clearer than Marcus had seen it in weeks. “I need you,” he repeated, each word deliberate. “Right now. Please.”
The ‘please’ undid him. It was a word Derek never used. A surrender.
Marcus gave a tight, almost imperceptible nod.
It was like a dam bursting. Derek’s hands were everywhere, tugging Marcus’s t-shirt over his head, yanking at the button of his jeans. Marcus did the same, helping to shove Derek’s sweatpants and boxers down over his thick thighs. They stumbled, a four-legged creature of frantic need, out of the kitchen and the few feet into the living room. They didn’t make it to the couch. Derek pushed Marcus down onto the worn rug, the one that had witnessed the first shocking spill of seed.
Derek was on him, heavy and real, their cocks sliding together in the sparse, dry friction. “Lube,” Derek gasped. “Where’s…”
“Fuck the lube,” Marcus snarled, spreading his legs, wrapping them around Derek’s waist. He was still loose and sore from before, the memory of pain a ghost in his muscles. He wanted it to burn. He wanted the rawness to match the feeling in his chest.
Derek understood. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and positioned the broad, flushed head at Marcus’s entrance. He paused, looking down, his expression a mixture of awe and devastation. “Look at me,” he said.
Marcus held his gaze.
Derek pushed in. The stretch was immediate, a sharp, burning ache that made Marcus hiss through clenched teeth. It was dry, tight, almost punishing. Derek groaned, a deep, ragged sound of pure sensation. He sank in inch by agonizing inch, his body trembling with the effort to go slow. When he was fully sheathed, he stopped, buried to the hilt, their hips flush.
“Christ,” Derek breathed, his forehead dropping to Marcus’s shoulder. “You’re so… fuck.”
He began to move. Slow, deep, grinding thrusts that ignited the raw nerves. The pain was a bright, clarifying fire. Marcus met each thrust, lifting his hips, taking him deeper, wanting to be consumed by it. He clawed at Derek’s back, leaving red trails on the sweat-slick skin.
“Is this what you need?” Marcus gritted out, each word punctuated by a drive of Derek’s hips.
“Yes,” Derek groaned. “Just you. Just this.”
“Tell me what I am,” Marcus demanded, his voice breaking on a particularly deep thrust.
Derek’s rhythm faltered. He looked down, his eyes wild. “You’re Marcus. You’re my… you’re everything.” The words were a confession torn from a place deeper than shame. He fucked into him harder, faster, losing the last vestiges of control. The dry, rough friction built into a devastating, overwhelming sensation. It wasn’t smooth or slick; it was brutal honesty, skin on skin, a punishing connection that felt more real than anything before.
“Gonna come,” Derek warned, his voice thick. “Gonna come inside you. Want to feel it.”
Marcus was right there with him, his own cock trapped between their stomachs, leaking onto his skin. The crude, possessive words, the raw physicality, the unguarded look in Derek’s eyes—it was the honesty he’d been craving. It broke him.
“Do it,” he panted. “Fill me up.”
With a choked, guttural cry, Derek slammed home and froze, his body convulsing as he pumped his release deep inside. The hot, sudden flood was a shock, a claiming. The feeling triggered Marcus’s own climax, a sharp, almost painful eruption that striped his stomach and Derek’s.
Derek collapsed, his full weight pressing Marcus into the rug. He was shaking. He nuzzled into the crook of Marcus’s neck, his breath hot and uneven. “Not a hole,” he mumbled, his lips moving against Marcus’s skin. “Never a hole.”
They lay there in the aftermath, Derek still inside him, the evidence of their joining cooling on their skin. The silence this time was different. It wasn’t empty. It was charged, fragile, full of a truth they had just fucked into the open.
Marcus stared at the ceiling, feeling the weight, the wetness, the profound, unsettling sense of having been seen. Derek’s hand found his on the rug. Their fingers laced together. This time, Marcus didn’t pull away.
He didn’t know what it meant. He didn’t know what came next. But for the first time, lying in the sticky, painful truth of it, Derek hadn’t tried to take it back.
The rug fibers prickled Marcus’s bare back, a grounding counterpoint to the liquid warmth spreading inside him. Derek’s weight was a solid, anchoring pressure, his breath a damp rhythm against Marcus’s neck. They stayed like that, fused, as the room cooled around their heat.
Derek finally shifted, softening, slipping out with a wet, intimate sound. He didn’t roll away. He propped himself up on his elbows, looking down, his gaze tracing Marcus’s face like he was memorizing it. The usual post-coital fog was absent from his eyes. They were clear, alert, and terrified.
“That hurt,” he stated, his voice rough.
“Yeah.”
“I wanted it to hurt.” Derek’s admission hung between them, ugly and true. He glanced at the mess on Marcus’s stomach, then the darker, more private evidence leaking between his thighs. “I wanted to feel it tomorrow. To know it was real.”
Marcus swallowed. His throat was tight. “It’s real.”
They disentangled themselves, the movement clumsy. Derek fetched a towel from the bathroom, wetting one end in the sink. He returned and, with a gentleness that belied his earlier ferocity, cleaned Marcus’s stomach. He paused, his hand hovering. Marcus took the towel from him, finishing the job himself, wiping between his legs with a wince. The tenderness was too vast, too foreign. He wasn’t ready for Derek to touch him there, not like that.
They pulled on their clothes in silence, the earlier urgency replaced by a heavy, shared exhaustion. Derek picked up their empty beer bottle from the kitchen floor, the lone witness. He stood there, spinning it in his hands.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said to the bottle.
“Join the club.”
“No, I mean…” Derek put the bottle down carefully. “I don’t know how to do any of this. This… thing. With you.”
“We could start by not being dicks to each other after.” The words came out sharper than intended.
Derek flinched, then nodded. “Yeah. Okay.” He ran a hand over his shaved head, the sound a faint rasp in the quiet. “It scares the shit out of me, Marcus. This.” He gestured vaguely between them. “All of it.”
“What part?” Marcus asked, leaning against the doorframe. “The fucking your best friend part, or the liking it part?”
Derek’s head snapped up, his eyes wide. The question, so bluntly put, seemed to stun him. He opened his mouth, closed it. A long moment passed, filled only by the hum of the refrigerator. “Both,” he finally whispered. “But mostly the second one. Because if I like it… then what does that make me?”
It was the core of it, the tangled knot Marcus had been picking at. “It makes you a guy who likes fucking me,” Marcus said softly. “That’s all it has to mean right now.”
“It doesn’t feel that simple.”
“It isn’t simple. But the words you use… they make it worse.” Marcus pushed off the doorframe, walking to the sink for a glass of water. He drank it down, stalling. “’Placeholder.’ ‘Hole.’ That’s not just you being confused, Derek. That’s you being cruel to me so you don’t have to feel like a ‘bad’ version of yourself.”
Derek looked like he’d been gut-punched. He sank onto a kitchen chair, the wood groaning under his weight. “I’m sorry.”
“You’ve said that.”
“I mean it. I am… so fucking sorry.” He dropped his head into his hands. “I look at you and I see my best friend. And then I see… everything else. And it gets tangled up and I feel like I’m losing both of you. So I lash out. It’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever done.”
Marcus stood, holding his empty glass. The apology felt different this time. It wasn’t a surface-level bruise. It was an amputation. He could see the raw nerve.
“We can’t keep doing this in anger,” Marcus said. “Or in shame. I won’t be your punishment.”
“I don’t want to punish you.” Derek looked up, his eyes pleading. “I want… God, I just want to be near you. All the time. It’s like this static in my head, and the only thing that turns it off is when I’m touching you. But then after, the static comes back ten times worse because I’ve never needed anything like that before. Not from a guy.”
Marcus set the glass down. He walked over and pulled out the other chair, sitting close enough that their knees almost touched. “So don’t run from it after. The static. Sit in it with me.”
Derek stared at their near-touching knees. Slowly, tentatively, he reached out. He didn’t grab Marcus’s hand. He just laid his own palm open on the table, an offering. After a heartbeat, Marcus placed his hand on top of it. The contact was electric, but in a new way—a current of recognition, not just hunger.
They sat like that for a long time, in the dim kitchen light, not speaking. The silence wasn’t empty or hostile. It was full. It held the ghost of their breaths, the echo of their coupling, the weight of twenty-one years of friendship bending under a new, terrifying strain.
Derek was the first to move, turning his hand over to thread their fingers together. His grip was firm, certain. “Come to bed,” he said, his voice low. “Not to… I mean, just come. Sleep. I’m so tired.”
Marcus nodded, wordless. He let Derek lead him down the hall, past his own bedroom door, to Derek’s room. They didn’t turn on the light. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, painting silver stripes across the neatly made bed. They undressed again, this time with a slow, weary practicality, dropping their clothes in a pile on the floor.
Derek pulled back the covers. They slid in, the sheets cool against their skin. They lay on their sides, facing each other, an inch of space between their bodies in the double bed.
“This okay?” Derek whispered.
“Yeah.”
Derek’s hand found his hip, his touch light, questioning. Marcus closed the gap, shifting forward until their foreheads touched. They breathed the same air. Derek’s thumb stroked a slow arc on Marcus’s skin.
Sleep didn’t come for a long while. They just lay there in the dark, navigating the new geography of each other. The heat of Derek’s thigh against his. The rhythm of his breath. The scent of him, musk and salt and Derek, embedded in the pillow. It was more intimate than any fuck they’d had. It was terrifying.
Marcus must have drifted off. He awoke to darkness and heat. Derek was pressed against his back, a solid wall of sleeping muscle. An arm was slung heavily over his waist, possessively comfortable. Marcus’s ass was nestled against Derek’s groin. And Derek was hard.
It wasn’t an aggressive presence. It was a sleepy, natural swell, pressing insistently against the cleft of his buttocks through their boxers. Derek shifted in his sleep, a low grunt escaping him, his hips nudging forward. The friction was soft, muted by cotton, but unmistakable.
A pulse of pure, undiluted want shot through Marcus, hot and immediate. He bit his lip, staying perfectly still. He could feel the thick length of him, the gentle, unconscious rocking. It was a claim made in total vulnerability. Derek, asleep, wasn’t running. Wasn’t thinking. He was just needing.
Carefully, Marcus pressed back, a fractional movement. Derek’s arm tightened around his waist, pulling him closer. A soft sigh warmed the back of Marcus’s neck. The rocking became a little more deliberate, a sleepy rhythm.
Marcus reached back, sliding his hand under the elastic waistband of Derek’s boxers. He found him, warm and full and silky-skinned. He wrapped his fingers around the shaft, giving a slow, gentle stroke. Derek’s breath hitched. His hips stuttered, pushing into Marcus’s grasp.
“Marcus?” Derek’s voice was thick with sleep, confusion.
“Shhh,” Marcus whispered, stroking him. “Just go back to sleep.”
But Derek was awake now. He nuzzled into Marcus’s neck, his lips finding the sensitive skin below his ear. His own hand slid down, over Marcus’s hip, under the waistband of his boxers. He found Marcus already hard, leaking. A low groan vibrated against Marcus’s spine.
“Want you,” Derek mumbled, his voice gravelly with sleep and desire. “Like this.”
He hooked a finger in the waistband of Marcus’s boxers and tugged them down. Marcus kicked them off. Derek did the same with his own, his cock springing free to press directly against Marcus’s bare skin. The heat was shocking. Derek’s hand, slick with pre-come from Marcus’s cock, reached between his own legs, gathering moisture. He pressed his wet fingers against Marcus’s entrance, still loose and tender from earlier. Marcus gasped at the touch.
“Okay?” Derek breathed, his lips against Marcus’s shoulder.
“Yes. Go slow.”
Derek positioned himself, the head of his cock nudging against him. He pushed in with a slow, inexorable pressure. There was no burn this time, just a deep, stretching fullness that made Marcus arch back against him. Derek filled him completely, a seamless fit in the dark.
Derek stilled, buried inside him, his body trembling. He kissed Marcus’s shoulder, his neck, his jaw. “You feel…” he started, but words failed him. He began to move, a slow, rolling grind of his hips.
This was nothing like the frantic, angry couplings before. This was languid, deep, a slow fuse burning in the dark. Derek’s thrusts were measured, each one a deliberate claiming of the space inside him. One of his hands stayed splayed on Marcus’s stomach, holding him close, while the other reached around to stroke Marcus’s cock in time with his pushes.
The pleasure was a slow, syrupy tide rising from his core. It wasn’t a sharp climax but a spreading warmth, a sense of being utterly possessed and utterly safe at once. Derek’s breaths were hot puffs against his neck, his grunts soft, private sounds.
“Touch yourself,” Marcus whispered, his own voice shaking. “I want to feel you come inside me.”
Derek’s hand on his cock stilled. He moved it to his own hip, his fingers digging into Marcus’s flesh as he drove deeper, faster. The pace shifted, the languid heat building to a simmer. Derek’s control began to fray, his thrusts becoming harder, more urgent. His mouth was open against Marcus’s skin, panting.
“Gonna come,” he warned, his voice ragged. “Fuck, Marcus, I’m gonna…”
“Do it,” Marcus urged, reaching back to clutch Derek’s thigh, urging him on. “Fill me up.”
With a strangled cry that was half-sob, Derek slammed home and held, his entire body rigid. Marcus felt the hot, sudden rush as Derek pulsed inside him, a deep, internal claim that left him shuddering. The feeling, so intimate and raw, tipped Marcus over the edge. He came with a choked gasp, his release spilling over Derek’s hand still pressed against his stomach.
They collapsed together, a tangle of spent limbs and shared breath. Derek stayed inside him, softening gradually, his arm a dead weight across Marcus’s chest. Their skin was slick with sweat. The room smelled of sex and sleep and them.
After a long while, Derek carefully pulled out. He got up, padding to the bathroom. Marcus heard water running. He returned with a warm, damp cloth and cleaned them both with a tenderness that made Marcus’s throat ache. He tossed the cloth aside and slid back into bed, immediately pulling Marcus against him, skin to skin.
No words were spoken. None were needed. The static Derek feared was gone, replaced by a humming, exhausted peace. Marcus closed his eyes, his back fitted securely against Derek’s chest. As he drifted towards sleep, he felt the faint press of lips against the nape of his neck. A kiss. Not a prelude to anything. Just a kiss.
He fell asleep with the taste of it lingering in the dark, a fragile, unspoken promise neither of them knew how to keep, but for now, in the quiet dark, didn’t have to break.