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“What is happening to me is my own fault, for not having more backbone.” - Margaret Atwood.
I wouldn't know what to do with another chance.
Roman could feel her phantom nails dragging down his skin.
Her nails became claws and his skin turned to mush.
She was eating his fucked up flesh.
He was rocking himself to death, humming a lullaby.
He knew that she didn’t remember doing it to him.
She did know bitey, which she had created for him. And then it expanded. And that was it.
She looked at him like he was crazy any of the many times she understood what he was implying when he asked her about it.
“You’re more likely to have touched me,” here and “I would have rather died than be in the same room as you then (at the time) Roman.” and it was always Roman, “let alone have touched you.” Never Rome like in his memories. “Stay still Rome.”
How old had she been? Why was his mind blank there?
If you gave it to me.
Roman had never thought about it being wrong until he was well into his twenties.
It was like he somewhat understood it shouldn’t be happening to him, but he didn’t think it was wrong.
It was so normal to him by that point that it didn’t click that it was wrong. Not until it was his therapist. Not until it was that incident with his therapist made him think of his younger sister. Touching him similarly.
Did that make Shiv a victim? She would have been younger than him. And she knew how to do the touching. She had to have learnt how to do that from somewhere. Or someone.
Who was it?
When was it?
Where was it?
Did that put them on equal victim footings? Whose was worse?
In a desperate way, Roman wanted it, her, to happen again.
What would he or she do differently?
He never remembered it as hurting much, not when it was her.
How would he feel now? How would he react?
He didn’t necessarily want it to happen again, he just wondered, if it did, how would it happen? How long would it last? Would it only be Shiv? Was it even Shiv? Was he even remembering her correctly? Was he the one lying?
Was it always only Shiv?
I couldn't take the embrace of a real romance.
Roman had felt diseased after being held hostage in Turkey. None of the men looked at him in any type of way, Eduard became a shell and they practically never talked again after that point.
There was no catharsis whilst on the yacht either. He watched Kendall get killed and thrown into the shark infested water then Kendall set the sharks on fire.
And then the fire blew up.
So Roman had never watched the Senate hearing.
It didn’t cross his mind again until his parents fucked him and his siblings over in Italy. Then after Kendall’s confession, he knew he needed to see it.
He watched as Gil Eavis’s face lit up with hunger trying to get something, manically. He wondered what Eavis would do if he knew Kendall had killed someone. He wondered what he would think if he had found out how badly Roman had wanted to butcher Lester. Or himself.
Roman would climb on top of Lester’s round body, he would sit down at the peak of his gut and tear at it. There was a poem he didn’t know how he’d found called ‘Eat Me’ by Patience Agbabi. It described what he wanted to do so well. Almost completely as he wanted to do it. The context was different, but the murder was the same. ‘His mouth slightly opened, his eyes bulging with greed. / There was nothing else left in the house to eat.’
The fat that had ruined him.
Had that contributed to his eating problem? His Lester was shaped?
Roman couldn’t say but he felt he knew it couldn’t have only been Caroline or one dumb competitive summer.
Roman climbed until he was sitting on Lester’s neck. Lester would struggle but Roman would win.
Roman would stab him hundreds of times. Roman would castrate him. He would make the man pay for the damage he caused.
Roman would represent his family at Lester’s funeral, he would say what he shouldn’t in no words. He would kill him twice. It would be glorious.
Roman had always felt this attachment to Stewy. He wanted Stewy to touch him. From the first summer they met when Kendall came back from college with a limpet called Stewy.
Roman had wanted the older boy to take him apart. Roman actually wanted it. (That was a first for him.)
Stewy never touched him.
Roman resented him for it when he was younger but now, he respected it. Stewy was the only adult he’d met that had stayed the distance they were meant to.
Roman thought that was gracious. Stewy could still get it now, if Roman was being one hundred percent honest.
Roman had always been a bedwetter.
It had started for him at a young age. When he would have vivid nightmares about anything. Monsters under his bed.
Then he stopped.
Then he continued.
He continued to wet the bed until he was seven and he was screaming waking up. Soaking in his own pee.
Not from nightmares. From memories.
And his parents were incredibly concerned.
“Some kids mature early,” Caroline came to his defence. This had always been her line of argument.
Roman justified his bed wetting that way by the time he was eleven.
Wet dreams.
A much better alternative to the truth. The pee clung to him either way.
Sex dreams.
And they were in a way.
He could still see Connor’s shocked face in that stupid sex club Rhomboid for Tom’s bachelor’s party.
Connor had seemed so sure about his version of events. Shocked that Roman would want to write it off a different way.
Roman hired Sam for his own personal benefit. Got him to dig up his admissions records for St Andrews.
The St Andrews which was in Scotland. Scotland where his dad had fled. The same Scotland his dad couldn’t stand. Couldn’t even step foot in if not for an event that he had to attend to save face.
The same St Andrews which was a university. A university he never went to.
A military base nearby. Poems written about it. Widely known. Rich. Posh. Big. Old.
St Andrews. A university. Not a military base camp. He didn’t know the name for the place where he’d been tortured. It couldn’t have been in St Andrews. It couldn’t have been St Andrews.
Roman hadn’t remembered his life correctly.
He had never applied to St Andrews university. Sam had drawn up blank after blank. It seemed Roman might’ve gone to Scotland when he was fourteen. But that was it. Only seemingly. No concrete answers. No responses. More questions. Always more questions.
There was a course in Scotland apparently, from his early twenties. He’d signed up for an international course. Where he had been given a certificate of completion. An award.
A course he didn’t remember. A certificate he didn’t own.
Some degree? He couldn’t name. He didn’t know what it was.
Sam couldn’t tell him that either.
More questions.
Always more questions.
It'd race right through me.
Roman knew- knows- that this isn’t what he should feel. He shouldn’t want to be raped again. That wasn’t what he should want. But he did. He did. Didn’t he? It would fix him to have it happen again, to know exactly what’s happening and why it’s happening. That’s why he needed it to happen again. So he could know. So he would have closure.
He needed that. Surely, then, if it happened again, then he would be fixed, wouldn’t he?
His entire life would be fine. He wouldn’t feel so much pain anymore.
So he enlisted Jeryd.
Jeryd would do it. Jeryd would do what he needs. Needed. Wanted. Craved. Depend on.
I'm much better off.
Roman had a pervasive dream about him becoming a woman. It would be more accurately described as a nightmare.
Because of its haunting quality. But the frequent appearance of it comforts Roman in a strange way. He’s come to enjoy it.
It's the least worst of his bad dreams.
He wakes up in the dream looking the same (exactly like Caroline) but with tits (so even more like her). Boobs. Breasts. They make his ribs look smaller but the mounds look more like excess fat than what they are.
Jeryd goes insane over his body every time. He wakes up from the dreams not so mad.
If he was a girl maybe he would have hurt Shiv how she hurt him.
Jeryd’s hands glide along Roman’s torso. His hands are cold and feel distant. Even as they touch areas of skin that makes Roman shiver, he doesn’t feel like he’s there in the moment. He feels out of it. Opposite himself.
He has to reach out and trace Jeryd’s hands where his hands are touching Roman’s body so that he knows this is happening.
Roman’s dick is hanging out in the open, his ass is out too, readier than his dick. His dick is soft but his asshole keeps twitching. He wants Jeryd to dive right in.
He can’t describe the feeling as Jeryd continues to dive down Roman’s body. Exploring every inch of Roman as if he’s not seen Roman naked more times than any other person before him. Jeryd disregards Roman’s impatient shuffles. He normally can’t stand to see Roman moving on the spot, but Jeryd ignores it this once, and keeps going lower and lower. When Jeryd reaches Roman’s dick he flicks it. He finally takes his attention off Roman’s body. With his eyes no longer watching Roman’s movements, Jeryd stares into Roman’s eyes, seeing the twitches there, waiting for Roman to fall apart and beg for it.
Roman is better than this most of the time. But he needs it. So badly. He can’t wait. So he starts to move around. Twitching more. His eyes don’t stay concentrated on Jeryd’s. He revokes eye contact. He takes a step away from Jeryd.
Which is when the man pounces.
With the way things are.
There was a time when Roman couldn’t physically leave Jeryd.
The man had handcuffed him to his desk, or moved him to his bed once, a food dispenser made for a dog another singular time. (Roman had half expected dog food or cake to come out of it but instead it was lucky charms, and the bowl next to the food dispenser would be filled up with milk whenever he woke up. He would just be able to lick at the milk and get the lucky charms on his tongue to swallow.)
Roman couldn’t physically leave, even when he wanted to, and he desperately wanted to.
Jeryd walked in on him with puddles of piss at his feet, seeping into the mattress, soaked into his clothes, if Jeryd had even bothered to leave him in those. And if not, piss would be stuck against his skin, making his skin crust and him smell disgusting. His skin would sometimes look so damp it would look shimmery. Then it would mattify and the smell would take away any mystery from the sheen.
Roman couldn’t physically leave him. In any case.
And now he had been given his privileges back, he could still feel the piss drying against his skin, he somehow didn’t want the privileges back.
He chose to stay as Jeryd got more violent with him, threw objects at him, hitting his head, aimed at his head, and he stopped play raping him and started to rape Roman for real. Roman screaming and crying, taken violently, because Jeryd had turned violent in all aspects.
Roman couldn’t leave.
He couldn’t get up and go.
He couldn’t make himself get up and go.
“Have you talked to your sister recently,” Jeryd casually asked, as he uncuffed Roman from the bed posts one time. Jeryd started to strip the piss stained sheets. (Jeryd had started to lay puppy pads underneath him. There were layers of puppy pads beneath him.)
“No,” Roman had only braved talking to Connor at that point in time. His brother was still in his own world, talking about renovations to their dad’s old place and post-election news. He was going to Slovakia? Or Slovenia?
“She exposed CCTV footage of Kendall meeting with a Democrat the day before the election. And quickly coming to meet me in a matter of hours. At least I’m not on the footage. But it was my election headquarters.” Jeryd looked at Roman with contempt in his eyes.
“Did you have any role in this exposure? Do you know how this makes me look?”
Roman shook his head. He hadn’t talked to Shiv since. God. He hadn’t talked to her in a long time. He didn’t know anything.
“Words,” Jeryd commanded.
“No.”
Jeryd slapped him across the face. Roman steeled himself, his brain swimming, his thoughts scrambled.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I haven’t spoken to her since.” He trailed off. How many months had it actually been?
“All right then.” Jeryd rang his fingers through Roman’s hair. Scooping at the low hanging fringe, Roman was reminded how bad it must look right now. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
Jeryd stripped Roman off next, in a similar detached way that he’d done with the bed. Like this was a chore. An inconvenience that he was used to dealing with. His clothes joined the pile of sheets.
Jeryd’s clothes went with them.
Roman could feel Jeryd’s movements but he wasn’t present in his body.
This had happened to him before but in this specific circumstance it felt wrong.
The next thing Roman knew was him being sick all over his hands.
He felt before he saw it and then he was back in the moment.
Housekeeping had gone home and Jeryd couldn’t skip out on him faster than if he tried so Roman was left to sleep in his own vomit covered sheets.
He lay next to the patch of sick and smelt it.
He woke up with his hand bunched around the sickly fabric.
He left it for his housekeeping.
He made himself busy doing nothing exactly.
He tried not to think about his housekeeping cleaning the sheets.
He tried not to think about Jeryd watching him throw up and keep going. Roman tried to ignore it all.
I wouldn’t know what to say to a gentle voice.
Roman could still remember how it felt to meet Jeryd for the first time. He could feel the whole world pause as he looked up from pictures of his soon to be step-father to see the future President in front of him. He knew as soon as Jeryd laughed that Roman was going to need to have his dick inside him. It was an easily accomplished goal.
Roman felt high as he rode Jeryd’s dick that night, in his dad’s bathroom before he walked out with Jeryd, fucked out, to tell his whole family to make him the Republican Candidate.
He could still remember Kerry’s satisfied look, he knew in that moment that they were cut from the same cloth. If he was a woman, he would be her.
Almost exactly a year later, he remembered hearing Willa make a snide comment towards Marcia about them being in the same position now. He had thought about it when Kerry came crashing in, trying to collect her things calmly and having a breakdown. Not too much earlier he had been all up on Jeryd’s dick.
He had the exact image of her face as he, he, was the one to bend down and pick up some of her things with her.
He could also remember the cold look on Marcia’s face. But the small twitch of her eyebrow which gave her true feelings away.
He wondered if Jeryd’s wife would ever see the same look on his face if they met like that.
He imagined Jeryd dying, he imagined watching Jeryd die in front of his Presidential team, his evil brother in law, his most hated friends, and he burst out laughing as Jeryd lay dead. And then, Jeryd’s wife would see him, really see him, the next day. She would be astonished. She would hate him. She wouldn’t be like Marcia. She would hit him, smack across the face, and physically order him to be killed. And they would do it. He knew that burying people like him was the top job of many Secret Service Men. His family wouldn’t even care. Maybe his mother, maybe Caroline would cry. But she would quickly use it as an opportunity to get her claws into Shiv and keep ahold of her without him around to keep the tension between them tangible.
Once, in the present, Jeryd had hugged him. Roman had frozen. He backed away from it. He acted like it never happened. He wondered if Logan was looking down at that specific moment and began to chant ‘faggot, faggot, faggot.’
For Roman, being violently raped by Jeryd on the older man’s bad nights, was better than to be hugged. That night Jeryd did hurt him. But the hurt didn’t feel as good after the hug.
Now, he was unable to see Jeryd in the same light, that man wasn’t the man who had held his head under water as he made Roman profusely apologise for speaking when he wasn’t spoken to at an event that day.
Roman had been hard as he gasped for air. Jeryd left him heaving in air, rock hard in his pants, and walked out.
Roman had thought as he coughed that he would never see Jeryd again. But he did. He saw him the next week and they fucked.
The whole time Jeryd held his head down into a pillow. The two suffocating feelings were distinctly different and Roman knew how to articulate that for Jeryd when the man was feeling nostalgic.
One of their favourite moments Roman liked to think about, was after he had been fucked by Matsson, he had arrived back in America, piping hot, begging for a cold shower, after hours on the same plane as his whole family, still able to feel Matsson’s cock inside him and hear the voice of Logan yelling at him over the dick pic to Gerri.
He had been fantasising the whole flight about Gerri pulling him up on it. She was there. She was on the flight.
But that never happened.
Instead, he had arrived back to his apartment in New York, and Jeryd had been there. Jeryd didn’t know that Matsson had only just fucked him so Jeryd didn’t go slow. He fucked into Roman’s sore hole and kept going until Roman’s dick was pulsing from not being able to come anymore.
That night, Roman had wished for a pussy. He wanted to feel the thing hurt. Really hurt. He wanted Jeryd to breed him painfully. He wanted to be Kerry, to be his mother, in England where rape inside a marriage was only made illegal in 2003. He wanted to feel how Shiv would be able to, squeezing out wambsglans. He wanted to allow Jeryd to perform genital mutilation on him. He wondered what his mother would say about all of these thoughts. He had heard her spout lies about his father hurting her in sexual ways. Logan would never be proud of hurting her physically, only emotionally, but he wondered if it was true.
What would he have done as a kid if he had walked in on it, his mother being raped?
Roman wanted to feel Shiv orgasm around his cock. He wondered why he called his, a cock, and Jeryd’s a dick. And did he always call Jeryd’s a dick? And was there others that he only ever called cock or dick? What did he call Logan’s?
What did he call Uncle Mo’s as Lester put his grubby hands all over his premature body? And why did he pray for Jeryd to do that to him, but what Uncle Mo had really done was an excruciating experience for him?
Roman wanted to have an eating disorder in the same ways that his siblings did. He wanted to be Shiv, puking her guts up. He wanted to be Kendall, doing coke to lose the put on pounds. He even desperately wanted to be Connor, dumb, idiotic Connor, who had hired a nutritionist who told him to cut down on everything. He wanted to only eat air like Connor did.
It'll roll right past me.
Roman knew what Jeryd thought of him. He knew it even as Jeryd never voiced it.
Whore, slut, bitch.
To Jeryd, Roman knew he was a playtoy. What Roman felt for Jeryd would never be reciprocated. Roman didn’t even think he wanted it to be. But he kept wondering.
What would Jeryd do, like that stupid show. He wanted to film Jeryd’s reaction to every little thing he did. He wanted to see Jeryd visibly react to begin with.
Jeryd would hurt him and not bat an eye. Roman wanted to know what Jeryd was thinking, he needed those AI brain chess things to tell him what Jeryd thought. He would learn how to play chess and get Jeryd’s neuropathways to communicate with him in that specific way.
Roman had met Jeryd’s wife, son and daughter on numerous occasions.
The first time Roman had met Jeryd’s son was during the first election, Jeryd had invited him over, their fists had even managed to bump with sexual tension surrounding them. Roman had wanted that old man’s fist in his ass, up his ass? He wanted to see the stretch of it, he wanted to see his hole prolapse after taking it.
He didn’t completely understand how that would work anyway. Would it fit? And anyway, Jeryd’s fists weren’t as big as some he’d seen. Yet again, he was stuck thinking about him. And what was done to him. Did that ever happen, he didn’t think so but there was always the possibility it had. Roman had been so young. So impressionable. Even now, he felt like that child, he would follow Jeryd everywhere, he went crawling back every single time. He couldn’t help himself. It was an addiction to get hurt. He needed to feel the pain. He was scared that without it he would disappear.
Even after everything that had already happened to him, he wanted more. He wanted to hurt to the max. He wanted to hurt so much he couldn’t hurt anymore.
He wondered what being cannibalised felt like, he could bet that was what he needed to happen to him.
He wondered who he knew that would be down for that? Gerri would presumably find it too dirty, she liked to be detached. She didn’t want to think of herself as a bad person for doing phone sex with someone she met when she was twenty and he was five. Jeryd would enjoy the act of it but not the ritual. That would be too complicated. Eduard he knew would hate it, he wasn’t even religious, but Eduard would use that as an excuse, his cultural religiousness. Matsson would like seeing him piss himself in his final moments but he wouldn’t want the world to know about his sickness, Matsson would love to piss in Roman’s mouth as he took his last breath. Roman knew he was probably his best shot. He decided not to think about Shiv. That wouldn’t be a fun experience.
Being physically eaten was his last step to perfection, he knew it would never happen but he relished the day he could be put in the ground as a wad of flesh and bugs could feed from his eyes. He wouldn’t donate any of his organs so that they could have them. How many bugs would be able to feed on the flesh that he circled with his fingers right around his wrist, making more and more fingers overlap sooner, making his wrists smaller.
Jeryd liked that. He was grab-able. And it used up less rope. Rope that could be put into his mouth. His tongue got rope burn one time and he loved it. It was the best sex between them. Nothing Jeryd did could top that.
Unless Jeryd went back in time and fulfilled the role Roman wanted. The uncle. His molester.
How wrong was it that Roman wanted that? How sick did that make him? Was he sick? He knew therapists that would tell him he wasn’t that they had hurt him. Not them. Her. She had hurt him so was that her way of making herself feel less bad? Or the truth? Was it fine to want to be violently raped by his current boyfriend slash countries dictator President who would get him killed on a moments notice if he found out that he’d fucked his mum’s new husband when he ran out of the entire country instead of going to him.
How bad was it that Roman sometimes wished, dreamed, that Jeryd would strangle him to death?
How wrong was it to wonder why Shiv never wanted to discuss what she did to him? How wrong was it to wish his sick and twisted jokes were the truth instead of what did happen? Why was he this way? Why was he wrong?
And when Roman came back to the country, and after he lost everything, and after he drank at a stupid bar alone, acting gay by having some fruity drink, he realised he needed to go back to Jeryd.
So he went, he took his driver (who he would probably have to fire soon if his finances were going to be affected by this sale and trade him in for someone cheaper), and he told him Jeryd’s address. He hoped Jeryd would be there when he arrived and he was. Alone.
Roman was already half drunk but by the time he got naked he was blackout. He knew he had passed out as Jeryd touched him. He also knew that he woke up the next morning projectile vomiting. He didn’t know what happened. But the cum between his legs told him.
Once after Roman had met Jeryd’s family for the first time which meant Jeryd’s wife was seeing him again only a week later, she gave him a look of disgust whilst he was talking to their son. It was like she knew what her husband did to Roman. Roman couldn’t look her in the eye after that and he avoided talking to Jeryd’s kids, even though his son was the only young one.
Jeryd’s daughter was twenty and definitely a lesbian. Roman once counted the amount of times she had asked about Shiv and within an hour the count landed on fifty times. She had a little crush which was cute but it made Roman shift in his seat as if the crush wanted to hurt him.
Jeryd’s wife was the one that did hurt him. She would nip at his clothes and playfully push him without too much force. She would ask him to come look at something and practically tackle him into the separate room.
Roman couldn’t blame her. He wondered if this was how his own mother had felt when she was being replaced. At least he knew the truth and was able to move on. Jeryd’s wife would likely never get that closure.
Roman wished he could shut his legs and cut Jeryd off.
He knew that in the very simplest of gestures like that he would be free from this life of abuse. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell Jeryd no.
That had always been Roman’s problem.
He could instigate, he could continue but he couldn’t ever stop. He liked being in control but the second he was out of it, it was like that didn’t even matter anymore. He didn’t care enough to change that.
He should. He knew he should. He was stupidly aware of how much he should. But he didn’t. Or, he did but he just couldn’t. And then it’s a cycle, a circle, and he’s back at the start with a new person, a new fantasy, and he’s five years old being held down in a treehouse but did that ever happen? And he’s thirty seven being fucked by the President but did the President want to fuck him or rape him?
Roman would never escape. He could never escape.
And whose fault was that?
You’ll see I don't really have a choice.
“He had come of age in a time when identity politics were your very identity.”
Roman couldn’t help but gravitate towards disgusting men.
He could hear the noise of the most depraved man in the crowd of a charity event or sponsored dinner and instantly knew he had to get near them. Which usually turned out with him bent over (later that night) on the older man’s knee or a desk or a bed.
Most despicably once over a bathtub, the man’s child (around four years old) had walked in and screamed. The man had hurried off to comfort the ‘poor thing’ but he inevitably came straight back to him to finish his work. Roman hadn’t strayed from his spot.
His history with men like that was why he was obviously surprised when Jeryd hadn’t tried anything like it that first night. Nothing in Roman’s dads bathroom. Nothing afterwards. It wasn’t even until the next morning when Roman had been able to scramble his way into the man’s phone contacts.
It wasn’t until a week later when Jeryd sent the first text message to him, ‘will you be in NYC next week? Thursday?’ Roman had gone hot all over reading the message and changed his schedule to be there.
Jeryd ended up having to cancel at the last minute after Antifa found his hotel’s location and set up an encampment outside the lobby. Multiple bomb threats followed, Roman made a joke about how Jeryd must have been getting flashbacks to when his best buddy Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped being blown up by the IRA.
This interaction had catapulted their flirtations.
They did eventually get to see each other again though.
Roman had already sent Jeryd a tasteful and suggestive picture of a very close up smooth space between his thigh and left ball.
Jeryd had liked it. Enjoyed it.
So when they met again, Roman had sucked the older man off, focusing on licking Jeryd’s balls.
Jeryd came in Roman’s hair and left as Roman took a shower.
It wasn’t until months later when Jeryd stayed longer and gave Roman his first orgasm of their soon to unfold long line of hook-ups.
Then Jeryd became obsessed with making him overstimulated to see how many times he could make Roman come.
The running total was five times however Jeryd had managed to ring two in ten minutes out of him at one time which sounded much more successful than the total to Roman.
Jeryd fucked him well and proper each time no matter what which Roman appreciated.
He kept going back.
Even as he started to feel Jeryd’s hands became the opposite of voluptuous, like Lester’s had been.
Even as his orgasms turned painful and corrupt; he enjoyed Jeryd’s company.
He had managed to find the most disgusting man of all.
The President of the United States.
So don't even ask me.
There were parts of the identity he had manufactured for himself that he hated.
Mainly, it was the appearance that he had no emotions.
He could still see the shocks on Tabitha’s face when he had cried in front of her.
It had only happened once and it seemed to make her love him. He didn’t understand which was worse; him crying or her falling in love with him because of it. They both seemed equally daunting at the time.
But now, the whole world had seen him have an epic breakdown whilst ugly crying as his tears spoke a thousand words about what kind of man his father was. Brute and hero both came to mind. There was still a split reaction.
His crying face was a GIF, a video of him stumbling as he climbed up the stairs trended on TikTok, captions such as ‘me when my ugly democracy destroying dad died from being cucked too hard by his wife.’ And his least favourite, ‘me the second I’m given the tiniest bit of responsibility.’
It also reminded him of his meltdown on top of that mountain with Kendall and Matsson. They had both been concerned afterwards, although they showed it in entirely different ways.
“He understood that he had come to represent something he had never asked to represent; he understood that whether he wanted this representation or not was almost incidental. But he still couldn’t do it.”
Roman’s life felt like a shitty essay written in time to just finish it by 23:59, to be handed in at 00:00.
Even the most intellectual novels felt like shitty takes on even worse topics. He couldn’t grasp this entire thing, even still.
Even still. Another shitty essay term.
Better yet.
Proving that.
Implies or presents.
When it hasn’t happened in a long time Roman will go and seek it out. Because he lives off it. Thrives off it. That horrible first touch. And how it lights his entire body on fire, how he immediately bucks up into the attention. Needing it desperately whilst pretending that he doesn’t.
Roman goes and finds it when it won’t find him because he needs it to live. If he wants to die then all he has to do is stop getting himself touched. Once the hands get off and he’s clean, then he can die. But for now he can’t.
Not with the hands still wanting him.
Fucking whore, Roman was sure he heard it. The wicked whisper. He turned to face the sound. The person who had spoken it. Those words.
There was no one.
Roman shook his head. He kept walking down the corridor.
Much, much better off.
“You’re not real,” Kendall was saying over and over again in Roman’s brain as he walked home from the sweaty party.
He contemplated calling Matsson to see if that tension and look when Matsson was pissing wasn’t only in his head but he decided not to push his luck.
He forced his driver to leave him behind before he made any bad decisions.
But he couldn’t stop that voice from repeating the phrase over and over again. “You’re not real,” turned into Kendall admitting to the dog cage, “You aren’t a real person, you’re a dog, that’s what I locked you up.” And Kendall’s voice stopped sounding like Kendall, turning into words Kendall would never say and the tone would get deeper soon, it was Logan saying the phrase. Calling him all sorts of names.
“Faggot,” rang through his head over and over again.
The word of his childhood that would not leave him alone in his adulthood.
“Faggot,” and it was Tabitha calling him that.
She wasn’t there when he got home.
They broke up not too long after that. Not in person. She was in a random state, he was on his sofa, in the spot she had claimed like a house cat.
He actually, shockingly, felt sad. When it happened. As it happened.
Tabitha had pleaded with him to tell her to stop before she embarrassed the both of them.
“I like it,” Roman insisted the first time they managed to present themselves naked in front of each other.
“Are you sure?” Roman resented how careful she was. He wanted to scream at her that she had no business asking him that. And why wouldn’t she just hurt him already?
Couldn’t she stop making him wait for it to happen.
The closest she got to hurting him was when she accidentally moved backwards in his kitchen not knowing he was trying to sneak up on her.
That wasn’t malicious.
Roman wondered if she had ever hurt someone.
Had she been a bully in High School? Had she laughed at the substitute teacher?
He couldn’t imagine it. She was much too kind for her own good.
Roman didn’t want to take that from her.
Maybe he was glad that she ended it with him, so that she never changed, or something.
Better by far, by far.
Roman hadn’t been able to find any activity that had made him feel as complete as not eating until he found a personal trainer and didn’t eat as he was forced to do what felt like a thousand sets of sit-ups until he was on the verge of passing out.
Roman’s diet then only consisted of water. He was surprised that his lungs hadn’t been drowned by how much he consumed.
Roman had gone through many personal trainers over the years, all with robust payouts when they eventually realised that he wasn’t trying to ‘become a man’ but in fact, become a skeleton.
Roman liked when it hurt. Afterwards.
Then he absolutely knew that it was real. He had proof. That he liked it.
Knowing.
But even still, he thought, did he?
Did he know? That he liked it.
Really?
Could he?
Roman and Jeryd had first been in a strange limbo.
They could violently jerk each other off. But they wouldn’t kiss.
Now, Jeryd would make him come by kissing him deeply.
Roman thought back to then. Before. When kissing was a big no.
He had never realised how far he would go with Jeryd.
That he was still there with him.
Now, just kissing him.
Keep on calling me names.
Roman’s whole body was on edge as he snuck out of his room at exactly midnight, in the hall he was met with the face of his ‘uncle.’ Who had told him to do this exact thing. He grinned widely seeing Lester waiting for him, and together they made their way out of the main house into the specific guesthouse Lester had been put in alone.
Roman hadn’t seen it coming. He should have. He was trained to be a fucking faggot since birth so he should know when someone wanted to fuck him. He knew now that everyone else had seen Lester for who he was. When they spoke about it during Kendall’s manic episode turned cluster fuck turned let’s all kill dad turned whatever the hell it was now that it had sufficiently ended. So why hadn’t Roman known?
In the guest house where nobody could hear them. Lester fucked him. It wasn’t Roman’s first time being fucked that way but it was the first time he knew what to call it. It was the first incident he could remember all of the details of.
He could still remember exactly what Lester had said to him during it, “good boy,” which was interchanged with “good girl” which turned into, “you dirty boy,” “you dirty whore.” By the end of it, Roman realised that it wasn’t so bad. He could’ve pictured it going worse. And there were times that it was worse. With Lester and others.
There was a time, similar to with Jeryd, when Lester had almost suffocated him. With a pillow.
Lester had pulled out afterwards and came all over Roman’s back. Roman couldn’t see when he was in the shower to wash it all off. There was some sticky residue on his towel when he dried himself. He tried to taste it and ended up with a mouth full of fluff.
There was a time with Shiv. He didn’t know what it was. He was so much younger and she couldn’t have been old either. She was younger than him. She probably didn’t even have a glimpse of a memory of it. And he felt bad.
God, he felt awful. But it wasn’t him. He didn’t touch her. He would joke about it. He would still talk about it. He knew that his niece would inevitably have him as her least favourite uncle because of those sick jokes. “I got your mommy pregnant kiddo,” he once whispered to her. She couldn’t have been older than six months.
Roman hated himself for it. But she had. She was responsible. Whether or not she knew. Whether or not she even remembered.
Because he did.
She had touched him. And it hadn’t hurt but it was still awful.
Roman had been fucked more times by fifteen years old then some people would be their entire lives. He was sure that technically you could say that about having sex once because there would always be people who died a virgin. He checked and the average number (at the time, the very early 2000s) of times people had slept with others came to around 20. Which was the exact number of times he had slept with others by fifteen.
Now, at thirty-seven, it was much, much past that.
He had stopped counting it aged nineteen when it was starting to sound scary. And now he knew that the original count was probably not accurate to begin with. He knew he’d been touched earlier than he could remember. He must’ve been.
Roman did sometimes think about how often these exact situations played out, would every situation he’d been in happened again?
And if so, how would he ever know?
There could be a girl in Spain right this second who was going through almost the exact situation, if not the exact situation, as he was in. And unless she somehow found out his situation, or she made the names and he found out about hers. They would never ever know. And how fucked up was that?
Roman had remembered the dress Willa was wearing when he payed her to try and fuck.
He had said, “just give it a flick. I’m trying to see something.”
It hadn’t worked.
She was wearing a purple, open back dress. This was when she was a brunette, so it looked good. Better than it would now. It was long and it almost touched the floor even though she had taller heels on than usual. She looked very leggy, and she had focused on a darker makeup look too. It made her features stand out more.
Roman had never seen her in that dress again.
And the next time he did see her, she was on Connor’s arm, randomly at his house. He knew her amounts and could have doubled her pay to twice as much as Connor was giving her, to get her to leave, but he didn’t.
He fumed knowing that someone around the Roy’s knew that he was fucked up but not in the way the others would write him off in.
Roman had paid Willa in advance in the hopes that would have incentivised him to make the most of his money but that wasn’t working.
He had been sitting in his lounge chair watching Willa smile at him with her boobs out and sat on his (much more comfortable) bed.
She was his first. His real first. His consensual first. His paid first.
She could have a laugh with him.
He wondered if that made him as bad as the people who fucked him.
Roman was happy for her to be with Connor. Sure, he was happy for her. He just couldn’t comprehend it.
Roman had been angry when he found grace. His first personal trainer had quit a few days ago, telling him that starving himself and dieting were different (objectively untrue) and that he refused to hear Roman moan anymore as he stretched his legs. Roman was offended that someone wouldn’t want to hear that.
And when he met Grace he was still irritable about it.
So he pulled a face when she introduced herself and hoped he would get the hint. She obviously had but she chose to ignore it and started to talk about designing jewelry. He didn’t care until she mentioned the price of a recently sold piece and then he was in.
She took that weak spot and used it to her own advantage for the years of their relationship that followed.
Even as she introduced him to her kid.
She couldn’t let her hold go on him for those few seconds as the first impressions rolled in.
Roman liked it when it hurt.
He moaned as Jeryd fucked into him starting at a brutal pace. Tearing apart his insides. Roman panted, and met him there. He came. Hard.
He yelped when Jeryd grabbed his hair. His cock twitched in response.
I’ll keep kicking the crap til it’s gone.
That same election night that Roman met Jeryd’s son, he had also met Jeryd’s head of PR and communications. She was a Black woman in her late 30’s. She had an Afro. She had on a tight suit. She didn’t speak a word to him as she blatantly heard him and Jeryd mock the women like her that they would be killing when he was elected.
He aspired to be that level of crazy.
To push all the oppression that will inevitably follow Jeryd’s Presidential win aside and take the money to do what? The inevitable racism especially against Black women that would happen (as it did happen at Jeryd’s rallies) once he sat on the Presidential throne. How could you know that was coming and help it?
But Roman got it. Hadn’t he allowed himself to be hurt in a cruel way to get what he wanted? And he did get what he wanted. So she must have a similar thought process.
It was that or it was a ‘this won’t affect me’ mindset which Roman refused to brush her off with. He knew she would be more complicated than that.
Roman hasn’t seen her since Jeryd has become President.
Roman had once accidentally slapped Jeryd across the cheek during sex.
He had gone to swat Jeryd away from his neck.
He had been bleeding from how Jeryd kept biting and sucking and digging his fingers into the same sweet spot right in that area and it made Roman’s whole body burn up, he was on the verge of tears and he had already orgasmed twice.
Jeryd hadn’t even touched his dick or hole. Jeryd was only attacking this spot on Roman’s neck.
He grossly over estimated the distance between Jeryd and Roman’s neck. So the swat became a painful smack. To Jeryd’s entire face.
Roman had turned around to see Jeryd’s entire face illuminated in red.
It looked painful.
Roman immediately started to gush out his apologies.
He hadn’t just over estimated the distance between him and Jeryd but the power he held.
He continued to apologise until Jeryd slapped him back. Much harder than Roman’s whack had landed on Jeryd’s face.
The sound of Jeryd’s full force reverberated across the entirety of the empty penthouse. The open plan penthouse.
Roman moved out of that penthouse a few weeks later.
This was when Jeryd introduced real, purposeful and painful sex.
Roman regretted the slap for months afterwards.
Until he became so accustomed to the feeling of tears and internal bleeding. Then he went soft. He couldn’t bring himself to care. He accepted it.
He had to take himself for an exam a day after Jeryd had forced two dildos inside of his ass as if Jeryd had been intentionally trying to split him in half.
The doctor asked him if he had been raped.
That was how bad it looked. It looked like he had been raped.
Roman never saw her again. A hefty check found its way into her bank account, a non disclosure agreement and a lawyer had visited her.
That wasn’t his last doctor who would say the same thing. Who would ask the same question.
If you keep on killing.
Roman was no stranger to the doubt that came along after the rape. He had been there many times and it almost always came when he was sitting in the bathroom afterwards.
One distinct memory he had was from when he was about thirteen years old and he had sat down on top of a wicker basket in a guest bathroom in Caroline’s new cottage in some area of Yorkshire and there was just this thick coating of blood all over his hands.
He took the basket outside afterwards and put stones in it to make it sink in the lake down at the bottom of the garden.
He knew where the blood was coming from but he doubted what had happened to him. Still now he didn’t remember who it was who had done that to him. So he didn’t think it happened like the blood would imply. He had to have asked for it to be rough. That was what happened.
Recently he had run into a man who made him feel hot all over. He ran to a restroom and sat down on the toilet lid. He could feel the plastic strain under his weight (he needed to lose some of it) and he panted. What was that all about?
He kept doubting.
It was probably nothing.
Roman reimagined his rape until he wasn’t sure any rape had truly happened to him. It got to the point that it had to have been made up by him.
No individual would actually enact that pain onto a human being.
Roman was used to getting fucked. It was part of his routine to get fucked.
Yet, he had grown to resent it. When he saw that someone else wanted it. From him and from others. He couldn’t look at it.
You could get me to settle.
He’d tried it once, cutting, but he was too chicken to press the blade against his skin. It felt too big. Like a real thing.
Not eating wasn’t the same. That wasn’t tangible. Cutting, it was too… he didn’t know. He couldn’t do it. And that was why he wasn’t a zebra crossing look alike.
Roman couldn’t do that to himself, even after everything he’d been through, even after everything he had done to himself. He couldn’t go there.
This wasn’t Roman’s first time on suicide watch.
Even though he shrunk under Mencken and Dylan’s alternate gazes, he had felt it all before with Connor.
Connor who begged to be let in. Who pleaded with Roman to explain why.
Roman had passed out after not eating for the entire week at Connor’s house (or that was how it looked, he had eaten two bananas and one sandwich in his stay, only because Connor had the same food with him).
“You are embarrassed about your blood, its redness, the way it is just coming out of you with no concern for anyone's feelings. You are (...) embarrassed to be alive.”
Roman threw up all over himself as he stood up too fast.
He was crying, he realised as he put his hand in the sick.
There were warm liquids all over his body.
He was disgusting, disgusted.
There was sick mixing with tears and Roman just needed to shower.
He was gross. Wrong.
Something was wrong.
You’re only a victim when people believe you.
Roman understands that all too well. He watched as his own dad dismissed Lester’s rape victims. Women who he has personally been responsible for their downfalls. His dad had handed out NDA’s with no regard for the people signing them and he continued to allow that behaviour to take place, it had escaped Cruises back in the late 90s and even to the time Roman was in LA, it had infected Studios.
Roman knows that a perfect victim is a dead victim but to his dad that person isn’t a person at all and they were certainly not a victim when they were alive. His dad has a way of spinning the narrative that drives Roman insane. He could see the exact way his dad would spin what happened to Roman.
He was mature for his age, he fooled around like teenagers do (not straying from the claim that it only happened when he was a late teenager), a reminder that nineteen was a teenager and it must’ve been that age range when all this (still) alleged touching took place.
Roman could see it unfold in front of his eyes as clear as day. His dad had tactics that he stuck by and that only ever shifted to fit the dominant view of society, or the view that would accept him.
Roman was no stranger to the truth. A victim isn’t a victim unless they’re believed. A rapist isn’t a rapist unless they’re found guilty.
Roman was a rape victim. And he acknowledged that when he was seventeen before turning his back on the cause.
That was until #MeToo and his entire family almost crashed and burned. Cruises and then studios. Rapist director, rapist producer, rapist CFO, rapist here and there and everywhere.
Roman wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t even the slightest bit shocked. He could only complain that it was happening right as he got back in.
He didn’t care. That’s what he could pinpoint when it all came out. He just didn’t care.
Nobody actually did. The reporters had bosses who should’ve been called out. One of the fact checkers on the big whistleblowing story Roman knew was a rapist because he’d shoved it inside him at nineteen. Roman couldn’t believe the hypocrisy but ultimately he didn’t care.
It was bad for business and he got called out for being questionable.
But that was over as soon as it began. One big producer down and how many more to go who never went.
Roman didn’t care.
So what if he was a rape victim? That didn’t matter. None of it mattered.
It was all fucking nothing.
He was nothing.
Lester turned him over. He lent on top of him for a second. Roman’s clothes were wrenched off his body. His summer shirt ripped. His shorts in shreds. Lester was strong. He reminded Roman that he was capable of being gentle despite this, when he reached down and grazed along Roman’s spine.
His fingernails were blunt. He made Roman’s skin buzz. It set Roman’s nerve endings on fire, on edge. He waited for the pain to return. He was waiting for the next act of violence, the same that had ripped his clothes from him.
It didn’t come.
Roman lay naked on the bed. Lester touched him, gently, then got off. He stood up. He left.
Roman looked behind himself, in disbelief.
Lester just left.
He walked out.
Roman got up. His pants had been left on.
He ran to his bedroom. He’d left the evidence behind. He couldn’t go back to his clothes. He didn’t know which room they’d been snatched in.
Roman put on new shorts, a new summer top. He reached into his wardrobe, trying to look at what clothes he was missing, he couldn’t remember what he’d been wearing moments earlier.
He felt naked as he left his room in his new outfit. He didn’t miss Shiv’s glare. Or pointed comment about how come he got to change for dinner and she wasn’t allowed?
And as soon as I settle.
Roman could hear it as Jeryd became closer to his orgasm, as the older man started to pant desperately near his ear. If Roman had the ability to turn over in this moment then he would be faced with the exact same expression Jeryd always made on the cusp of his orgasm.
Roman had gone soft a while ago, around the time Jeryd started to insert his fingers in Roman’s hole to loosen him up. Roman felt somewhat sorry for the state of him. Because he should actually be hard; it would be normal to be hard under these circumstances. But instead, he wasn’t; he really wasn’t.
Jeryd bottomed out inside of him. As his cum spurted out.
Roman moaned wantonly at the feeling of it. Jeryd would be wearing his typical smug post-orgasm smirk if Roman could see him.
Jeryd got up out of the bed with a deep groan. Roman was sure he had heard a bone crunch as he straightened up.
Roman felt the wet thud hit him right before Jeryd left the hotel room. A wet washcloth. The only courtesy Jeryd would show Roman after their exploits.
He wiped the cum from behind himself.
He fell asleep in the hotel’s bed, ass facing the world.
He woke up freezing cold.
He momentarily panicked feeling that solid pain in his backside before his consciousness clicked in and reminded him what had happened. He then spent ten minutes helplessly attempting to jerk off before stopping. He was too weak to continue. He also didn’t really want to hurt himself either.
But when had his wants ever been considered?
‘Are you in Kansas next week, Wednesday?’ Was the message he opened his phone to.
‘No.’ Roman replied back.
He didn’t want to see Jeryd so soon. He was already growing too attached, he needed to move on first, then it could go back to a casual fucking the President relationship.
He almost called Eduard, before reminding himself that it was never happening again between them. No matter what. Not after what had happened there.
So instead he messaged Frank and started a heated debate over appropriate work socks. He left the hotel at 10am. He didn’t shower.
I bet I’ll be able to move on.
So much of the time Roman could feel them. On him. Hanging over him. Touching him. Haunting him.
Every corner he took, every hotel he stayed in, he would imagine seeing one of the hands there.
Would he know them? Would he recognise them? Would they recognise him?
He was paranoid and deluded when it came to them.
The thoughts kept him up at night.
How many people had touched him?
How many?
Why didn’t he know how many?
He woke up once with someone touching him and his first move was to flinch. He did that but knew immediately to stay calm.
So he remained there. Calmly in his place.
He located where they were in relation to him.
A dick. Which was along the crease of his ass and both arms around his waist.
Roman knew one arm would be dead for potentially five more minutes when the person woke up so he braced for how long he had. He closed his eyes.
Despite what he had believed he was in the middle of, he had managed to go back to sleep.
He was woken up by Connor.
Roman looked up to Connor pushing him lightly, blowing some air on his eyes. Roman has two responses, in that moment, yawn or moan. So, he yawns.
When he’s able to look, Connor isn’t hard.
They both have all their p.j.s on. This isn’t what he thought. He doesn’t know how he feels though.
Is he disappointed about it? Or fine?
Neither?
Could he ever be neither?
How could I fight?
Roman had already established it with everyone that he knew, that he was a freak, a sex-pest, a pervert. Anything but a nonce. But not when it came to his siblings.
He would imply they fucked as children. That Connor had molested him. Kendall had made him blow him in his treehouse. And Shiv. She had forced him to fuck her friend in front of her whilst she palmed herself.
All not true.
All lies.
But everyone held the idea that he was fucked up, when sex was involved.
Which was very, scarily, real.
Tabitha had wanted him to seek help.
She was convinced that something had happened to him after he was a kid. And she was so right. Somehow she just knew. She got it. Instantly.
Even after the first joke he made. She had pulled this face, scrunched up her nose and closed her eyes a tiny bit. She looked sick. And then he got used to seeing it.
And later hearing her say those words, “get help.”
At the end, she had begged him. And he still refused.
The last time he had talked to someone. They hurt him. His therapist. Aged twenty. His very first shrink. And she had brave face lied to him. Told him it wasn’t his fault. Then drugged him when they accidentally bumped into each other in a bar. (Was it an accident? Really?) He woke up in her in-house office.
He never went back to therapy as much as he lied about going at any opportunity to upstage one or all of his siblings.
He was a sex-pest. And he would accept that title if it kept people away from him.
But somehow, it didn’t. In fact, it brought them closer to him and he had little to no air to breathe between them. A constant stream of abuse, abusers, entering and swiftly exiting his life. All at their will. All choosing him and then choosing to go. On their terms. Fucking him up in their own way.
With Tabitha wanting to know what had happened he had to think.
How do you go about telling someone that? (What had happened to him.) I was sexually abused as a child.
I have been raped more times than I have consensually had sex.
My dick can’t get hard and I want it to happen again.
I’m scared to have children because I think I might do it to them. I don’t know if I’d be able to stop myself.
I want to die. Badly.
But yeah, do you still wanna marry me? Please, marry me?
That was an impossible thing to say, to do.
We’re on the same side.
Roman could feel his whole being boiling up to the point of explosion. He was bubbling up ready to burst into flames. He didn’t understand why this was happening all of a sudden. It was like he had finally been primed to explode after all this time. The last bomb waiting to go off at the end of a long battle when everyone thinks they’re safe waving the white flag.
The bomb in storage, left over from the last war. He felt like he was losing the plot. The run of himself. He hated it. That this was finally him about to explode. After everything that he had been through, that he had done to other people, this. This. Was finally his explosion. Of all things, this was so disappointing. He didn’t understand why. He especially didn’t understand why it was happening now. There were so many questions but it all came back to that primary one. Why?
It was overwhelmingly dumb, which was the main thing. That’s why he resented it so much, it was just fucking dumb. To be so exhausted now. When he was fine. When nothing bad had happened to him in such a long time. Why breakdown now?
Roman could tangibly feel the tension in the air when Logan and Lester were in the same room together. He often wondered how it would be if Jeryd had ever been in the same room as Lester.
Jeryd knew that he was wrong, he knew what had been done to Roman and he knew every name Roman remembered (besides Shiv, he couldn’t afford to let that cat out of the bag) after Roman had panicked right as he woke up with Jeryd spreading his cheeks open, he had slipped back in time, back into his 11 year old self, 7 year old self, 15 year old self, 5 year old selves mindset and fucked it all up.
“Who?” Jeryd’s hand stopped, Roman’s cheeks were being held open horribly, he felt like he was going to be sick for multiple obvious reasons.
“Sorry,” Roman rushed to apologise.
“No,” Jeryd tensed even more, “I didn’t tell you to apologise.” Roman could hear every noise in the atmosphere. He could hear himself swallowing, the spit awkwardly sliding down his esophagus.
“Tell me who you think I am, tell me who that is.” Jeryd probed.
Roman dropped his face into his pillow (what had he been doing before that?) and groaned loudly, too loudly, Jeryd dragged him by the hair up out of his pillow based hiding spot.
Suddenly Jeryd was no longer inside him but on top of him and Roman didn’t know how to react. Jeryd’s hands closed over his neck.
Jeryd has climbed onto his back.
Roman is being smothered into the mattress.
“Tell me who that is.”
Roman somehow managed to drag himself up, “my dad’s old business acquaintance.” Roman dumbly spoke. He couldn’t believe what he was saying even still.
“And why are you saying this business acquaintance’s name at this moment?”
“Jeryd please,” Roman stared at the mattress.
Jeryd, still on top of him, pushed him down.
He passed out.
He spilt the beans not too long after that incident.
After a violent reminder, threat, promise, ambush, from Jeryd.
An older man touching him is what he needs the most. An old man whose hands are disgusting and he doesn’t know where they’ve been but can assume the man’s hands have been involved in horrific business. He knows it has to be Lester’s impact. That man changed him forever. But it’s what he needs. It’s what he craves now.
He can’t help it. He can’t change it.
He doesn’t want to change it.
He doesn’t need to change it.
Roman wondered if he could ever get fucked and just like it for what it was, or if he’d always need it to be more. To change it or name it. He didn’t think he would ever be able to.
Beside you?
Roman wished he could be one of those abused people who didn’t know at all that they had been abused. They never knew as it happened and they would never find out.
But he knew that he was never destined for that. It was simply too kind for him to be allowed the luxury.
It seemed he was created to remember what had happened, for the most part at least.
Because there were still bits that he didn’t remember. And against his wishes he hated that. He wouldn’t wish to partially remember. Maybe that was the worst thing for him?
And I'll keep kicking the crap ‘til it’s gone.
Roman caught Jeryd looking at him as he entered the fundraising (sponsored) dinner for the new POTUS.
Afterwards, they fucked like bunnies. Grossly. And for a while.
Jeryd left many, many, marks on his body, one bruise stung as he sat on his ass for the two hour long drive back to his apartment from the event.
It was exactly what he needed.
A disciplined hand.
He wouldn’t do what Roman felt he needed but what Roman actually did need.
It was beautiful. For him. It was a match made in heaven (hell, deep, deep in hell).
Roman had craved Jeryd’s cold hands on his body for months by the time they saw each other again. Jeryd had been tied up with warning signs of Russian attacks in Europe and speaking’s of ‘terrorist’ attacks (in Dylan’s words, that Roman knows are Jeryd’s sayings, meaning that it was only organised protests from Antifa).
Roman hadn’t been similarly busy, he’d sat waiting for a quick visit from Jeryd. Which finally arrived, in the form of a private meeting.
Roman hadn’t expected protests at his arrival but the meeting didn’t just involve him. Jeryd had included other ‘tech’ CEOs and executives, making it a tech fuck fest. Roman pretended not to see Matsson’s name on the list his latest assistant had given him.
Roman knew, knows, that it was wrong but there was comfort in it. Comfort that he didn’t want to shift. Because he didn’t know who he was if he wasn’t in pain.
Roman wanted to feel the pain of the first time that it had happened. He didn’t remember it at all. That was something he needed. He wanted to know how it felt.
[ "I think I wait for people to hurt me," she said quietly, "and when they do I feel a certain smugness at being right. And, after that, I just feel pain." ]
As soon as I settle.
Roman has been abused potentially over fifty times more than the average person had in his lifetime. He knew that because he had checked.
Fifty times?
It seemed utterly incomprehensible and fictional (was it technically fictional anyway?)
Roman had smashed his phone after he googled it.
At some points it felt good, like an achievement almost? But at other times he felt vengeful, angry, frustrated. Like he needed to get his own back.
And even still, he didn’t know the entire extent of the abuse he had suffered.
His fifty times was based on a shitty guess which was almost certainly incorrect. (Because it was likely higher.)
What did that say about him then?
Roman spent the entirety of election night on edge.
Nothing could calm him down.
Move on.
Roman had always felt it in the back of his mind when he touched Shiv now how she had touched him back then. In that way she didn’t remember.
He had asked her extremely directly once, which answered what he would always try to ignore, “do you remember our old game?”
She had looked at him blankly and with a thoroughly displeased look on her face, “you seriously just pulled me to the side as I spoke to an important political figure only to ask the same stupid question you always pester me over, Rome?”
“It’s not stupid,” he hissed back defensively.
“Yeah it is,” Shiv wasn’t her usual self in her response. He had hit a nerve.
“I guess you have to forget it then.”
“Good. I didn’t ask you did I?”
He rolled his eyes at her. She took off back to find who she had been speaking with.
Roman is sure Jeryd’s campaign manager hates herself, why else would you support the kind of campaign Jeryd had ran?
The ballots, the burning?
How she made that all happen. Under Jeryd’s control like Roman. Willingly.
She must hate herself. Roman sure does hate himself.
Cock? Dick?
Coke? Drugs?
Roman needed something. He didn’t know what. He didn’t know what to call it. He didn’t know how to ask for it. But he needed it. He knew that he needed it.
Keep on, keep on.
There’s this one time with Lester that he entirely remembers.
He’s sure.
Lester requested he kiss him and then Roman trailed the kisses down the entire length of the older man’s body.
Until he got there.
This time stuck with him because of the next part.
Lester told him not to suck it. Just to plant kiss after kiss on the length.
Roman did as he was told.
And Lester came on his lips.
Which Roman kept closed. He was told not to suck. So he didn’t suck the cum into his mouth either. He left it there.
Because Lester told him to.
He’s still so sure that he remembers it.
He thinks about it as he takes Jeryd’s dick in his mouth. Sucking.
Shiv’s grasp on his hair was robust, no movement he made seemed to be good enough to shake it off. Her hand followed every move he made. He couldn’t escape her.
Roman woke up panting.
He had wet the bed again.
Logan would be furious. He tried to hide it but he didn’t know how so with it piled up on the floor, he gave up.
Frank sat him down that lunch time, and asked him what was wrong with him. Roman shook his head. He didn’t know. He didn’t think anything was. Frank let out a resigned sigh and left him alone.
All those years of running do eventually, finally catch up to him. He’s run head first into a brick wall for the first time and it finally feels like he’s done. He meets a man that he knows. He recognises. He knows instantly who this man is to him.
Roman knew that the bed wetting was a problem.
He knew even at that age, it wasn’t a good sign.
Get me to settle.
Roman had been called sick in many senses.
Once, and the only positive time, in England when he’d first met some lad from a private school who thought he was down with the poors by using their language. Roman hadn’t appreciated it then and he didn’t now. But he wondered if that context was better than this regular context.
That wasn’t his first experience of being called sick in England.
He had accidentally overheard his parents discussing his condition one night. He had woken up, drenched in his own urine, and he had walked to their room to try and get them like he usually did. Which is how he heard it.
“He’s still young Logan,” Caroline had reasoned.
“He’s nine Catherine.” Logan sounded angry, Roman hadn’t heard his dad call Caroline her name without anger in his voice.
“It’s perfectly normal at that age to be having these… incidents.”
Logan’s voice could cut her throat, could cut his throat in his hiding spot, the tension was that high, Roman was on edge, backing away from the door.
He had always imagined he wouldn’t be wanted the second he turned eighteen. But he was.
A second market was created for him at that age. He went from the kiddy fiddlers up to the big leagues. The ones who pretend to be good people to cop a feel. Of someone they can pretend is younger than they are without ever getting into legal trouble. There could be a moral outcry but they wouldn’t serve prison time. Any trial would be dismissed within the blink of an eye.
This market had many more to choose from (even though Roman resented the aspect of choice he was given by that age, as if he could pick who was going to groom him, yet he often did), and many more who threw themselves on him.
There was an eighteenth birthday countdown for Shiv publicly. There was a similar private one for Roman.
Roman sometimes thought there was a bet that had been placed where the person who managed to touch him first got a mouth watering sum of money.
Because they began to draw towards him quickly and without pause.
One gala he could still recall being touched, felt, smothered by hands, at least twenty times or potentially upwards of that amount. Roman could remember so many of the faces that linked to the hands. But not how it physically felt to be touched. Just how it felt emotionally.
Able to move on.
Roman’s right kneecap had an almost imperceptible scar right where the only two pairs of shorts he owned ended. He knew that he was the only person who would spot it on himself which kept him investigating his body. It wasn’t all about his eating that made him check over his body. It was this too.
He always wanted more.
More like that one scar, he wanted to be someone who cut. For no reason other than he could make the incisions so small that nobody would see them as they healed or once they healed. Only he would know that they had existed. Because they wouldn’t stay for long. Those small scars would almost certainly leave him. A scar that small couldn’t possibly stay, could it?
Once, when he shouldn’t have, he looked at his dad changing, he saw something glimmering on his back. Now, with the pictures Connor sent of his dead face, part of his dead body from the identification process, even though Roman had escorted him off the plane, through those pictures, Roman had seen they were scars. Thick and long. They looked horrific. They looked like they would’ve burnt. Roman underestimated what his dad had been through. He wished he didn’t.
There was always a reason to not eat.
Lester wouldn’t want him if he became all bones. Roman would die. Shiv would love him more. Connor would care for him. Roman would die. Kendall would pity him and be ever so slightly nicer to him. Roman would die. Caroline would give him tight smiles. Gerri would look at him appraisingly. Roman would die.
Not eating was powerful in a sense. If he didn’t do it, if he continued to not do it, there would be one thing he could control. If he could control what he put in himself then maybe others wouldn’t be forcing things in. Even if what they were putting in and what he was refusing weren’t on the same scale. And wasn’t having an eating disorder the norm?
He knew it was his norm.
He once googled how many calories were in the average man’s cum. He spat it out at every opportunity he had. 25 calories was far too much. He wouldn’t be able to meet his basic 200 calorie limit per day with the constant stream of it entering his mouth. He would have to sacrifice a banana if he swallowed too much.
He also googled if there was any possible way for cum to break into his stomach if it was spurted into his ass. He was fifteen. He was blindly thinking about nothing correctly.
Roman could talk through it, the steps of rape.
It starts off kindly, like there’s a choice, there’s a hint and a wink. And then it becomes a command, the hint being laid out clearly and the wink becomes a smirk. The smirk develops into their whole body swaying, the excitement getting to their head. There are steps to the madness. A sociologist might say it’s opportunism, they see Roman’s a weak dog, and they kick him, but he knows its all about control with rape. They know what they’re doing and what they want. Most of all they know how to hurt. They may have never done it before but they know the steps.
They get on top next. They hold you down and they keep you in place. They lower you to their level, metaphorically and physically. Two of these things can exist together, ask any poet.
They hurt you, make you bleed and it's done. Roman has experienced the method again and again. He can identify when its about to happen to him. Maybe he likes that? Does he like that?
Jeryd was soft sometimes, if his wife had gone out wearing his stylists choice, if his son had done all of his homework, if Roman hadn’t spoken out of turn at an important dinner.
Jeryd would leasurely masturbate in front of him for around two minutes, then he would request Roman’s hand and then his mouth and then he would come on Roman’s tongue and Roman would swallow it.
Jeryd would wait to get hard again, leaving Roman’s arousal to fester, and he would allow Roman to underdress himself. Then he would lay Roman down on the bed and climb onto the side of the bed next to him. He would wait to see if Roman rolled over or stayed that way up. Then he would be gentle. He would open Roman slowly, with his fingers, no matter how hard he was Jeryd wouldn’t enter until Roman told him he could.
Jeryd would take Roman apart slowly and then let him come.
After that, Jeryd would come inside of his hole. He would stay inside until they were both spent and soft. Then he would lay down next to Roman on the bed and shower with him (neither of them would touch each other), and then he would peck Roman on the cheek and leave.
Roman still couldn’t decide if he enjoyed it more that way or hard, rough, bleeding, on the floor, vomiting, in the middle of a panic attack, screaming.
He wasn’t sure.