#mark hcs

roger because he's got a really low bullshit tolerance and a short temper, can't help getting into fights (god, you do NOT want to know how many of his bartending stints ended that way) and generally just cannot stand being around the same people for too long. sure, he's a charismatic guy. even after withdrawal he's still quick-witted and has a gorgeous smile, and everyone loves him on sight, more so once they've spent an hour with him. but people get on roger's NERVES. and he has a hard time keeping his mouth shut, when someone's being a piece of shit right in front of him. coworker gossip practically always spells the end for him. sometimes he does his best to keep a lid on it til he fucking explodes, loses his shit and starts yelling (and/or swinging). regardless of if he's fired or if he walks out in a rage, though, he rarely makes it more than three months. if he makes it to six, his friends throw him a party. it's awful. he hates it, but he does love the cake...

and mark because he's too finicky, is never satisfied with what he's doing if it's not something he absolutely LOVES (it never is), and has this stubborn underlying fear that if he stays in one rut too long then he's never going to be able to dig himself back out, that he'll never be able to pursue what he really wants to if the opportunity presents itself or he'll never find the motivation to if he lets himself get sucked into the drudgery of service level jobs now, and it's so fucking irrational it drives him insane, because he KNOWS it's stupid to feel bad for doing what he has to do to buy groceries every week, but he cant help himself. so he puts in his two weeks and quietly disappears from every job he works just shy of the seven month mark, and they never hear from him again.

mark, though. when mark lays a claim he wants their friends to see it. mimi, and collins, and maureen - he'll bite roger black and blue until he's a trembling, swearing, groaning mess and the next morning he'll leave him in bed by himself and start a pot of coffee, knowing the scent of it will lure him out in all his rumpled glory, covered in angry marks. owned.

okay, so, i know mark cohen SEEMS like a subby sub who subs… because he’s just. you know, a nervous, stammering people-pleaser who wants everyone to be happy and is still completely wrapped around maureen’s little finger months after they broke up. 

i think we can all agree that he’d look so damn pretty spread out and shackled to a headboard, covered in bruises and begging for it. you know. voice cracking, whimpering, tugging at the restraints.

but i would like to also argue that, being so highly-strung, mark likely has a WICKED dominant streak buried under his awkward veneer.

roger is, naturally, the only person who knows this. he probably would have been comfortable enough with maureen to let loose, except maureen is like a fucking femme fatale dominatrix, she just… she’s overwhelming, in a good, good, oh so good way, but it doesn’t leave a lot of room for mark to flip things around, shake it up. maureen is too busy domming the hell out of him, sitting on his face, and he leaves that relationship feeling rather like he’s been tossed around in a hurricane, like he never quite caught his balance while they were together. so. maureen doesn’t know. but roger, well.

roger is pretty dominant with him, too, from the get-go, never hesitating to grab and manhandle him and force him down on his knees, and mark is totally a-ok with this, obviously. because mark is, mainly, a sub, has always been mainly a sub (and by always, i mean that maureen makes up about 90% of his sexual history pre-roger), and he likes being jerked around and told to take it. he genuinely just gets off on that so fucking hard, of COURSE he’s wanted roger from the start. roger is a domineering bastard, most of the time. mark knows, the walls in the loft are paper thin and he’s heard enough of roger’s sex life to have a solid grasp on what he’s like in bed. loud, filthy, commanding, and not afraid to get rough. mark has fantasized about being on the receiving end of that for so long that he almost comes in his pants the first time roger fists his hand in his hair. and wouldn’t that be horribly telling?

but roger also has a persistent little submissive streak, one that mark is reasonably certain he’s only shown to a small handful of people ever, ever, and that’s both impressive and a little sad, considering how many people roger has been with. it’s a trust thing, though. being… vulnerable, losing himself in it, he can only do that with certain people, and roger’s not the kind of guy who lets you get to know him just like that.

so once he’s done choking on his tongue and using a wad of fast-food napkins to mop up the sorry remnants of his tea from both his pants and the hardwood, mark is actually kind of honored the first time roger comes into the kitchen and asks mark if he’ll bend him over the couch and spank him. it’s shocking, but it kind of makes sense. especially when he’s actually doing it, feeling the sting on his palm, the heat rising off of roger’s pinkening skin, the way the breath punches out of him in choked whines and sobs each time mark’s hand connects, and then the noises he makes when mark crowds in against him, how he reaches backwards in desperation to pull mark close, digs his chipped-polished fingernails in and begs, fucking begs for him to fuck him. yeah. mark… could definitely get used to that.

he does get used to it. and he enjoys it, frankly, about 1000% more than he ever thought was even fucking POSSIBLE.

up until then it was all fantasies. just… the idea of it, of tying some faceless body up, of saying filthy things in that low voice he’s too embarrassed to use in real life, in case it doesn’t sound as sexy as it does in his head. the first time he uses that voice on roger - “on your knees” he says, fighting to keep the mortification off of his face even as he says it, but roger goes down like a stone and his eyes are glazed over with awed lust and mark’s suddenly too busy having his dick sucked to regret it - is an epic success.

which makes him… curious. and mark is, as we know, an obsessive little fuck, and after they start, he just. can’t. stop thinking about it.

sorry for all of the backstory, i just, i made a sub!roger post a while back and i couldn’t stop thinking about how well that would tie in with this. so. here are the headcanons you asked for, anyway!

mark can get shockingly rough when he feels like he’s allowed. it’s no secret that he likes being roughed up, himself, but he can give as good as he likes to get. (you wouldn’t think it, looking at him. his thighs have got a bit of muscle to them - not a lot, but he does walk or bike practically everywhere, he can’t very well get interesting footage if he only ever takes the subway.)

he has a weird fetish for fucking on non-bed surfaces. maybe it’s just the thrill of doing something “wrong”, or the idea that they were too desperate to wait until they got to the bedroom. which is not untrue, and actually happens… a lot. mostly because roger engineers it that way.

this translates to them having very aggressive, you-have-to-be-fucking-quiet-i-mean-it-roger sex against the bathroom counter in mark’s mom’s house at least once. roger is such a fucking tease, and mark just cannot let it go without consequence.

come marking is one of his biggest weaknesses. mark is fastidiously neat in most areas of his life, but when it comes to sex, he’s… he’s a little ashamed to admit it, but he loves it messy. and when he’s feeling dominant he gets POSSESSIVE. which he’s also a little ashamed of, but roger goes fucking nuts when he pulls out and comes all across the backs of his thighs, or on his face, that one time. so it’s probably okay. it takes him a while to feel confident asking for it, or, well, telling roger he’s going to do it without asking, but holy shit… it’s so hot.

he likes to hold roger’s throat gently between his fingers while he sucks him off. likes to feel it working, every swallow and moan, especially when roger takes him all the way down and gags on it.

if he comes in roger’s mouth, he always pulls out and demands to see the evidence. roger learns pretty quickly not to swallow right away. learns to open wide and push it up onto his tongue for mark to see. he doesn’t want to disappoint mark, and mark always loses his mind at the sight of it, usually shoves him down and fingers him into a blinding, sobbing orgasm on the nearest horizontal surface, so roger’s sure as shit not going to complain about the taste.

mark is the biggest fan of foreplay you will ever meet. seriously, this boy could spend fucking hours fingering his partner open. sometimes he does, if roger will let him. just. fucks him with his fingers, takes his time playing with the angle and the pressure and the pace, rubs up against his prostate all absently like he’s not rock hard and leaking with want, like he’s thinking about the weather and not fucking roger straight through the mattress. 

he’s got an excellent poker face in bed, when he’s feeling dominant, which roger maintains is patently unfair. and stupidly hot.

it takes him a while to warm up to dirty talk. he’s a nervous stammerer and it shows if he tries to start too early; he’s got to give himself time to get into it, loosen up, get himself all hot and hard until he doesn’t care anymore, can’t even bring himself to be embarrassed.

when he DOES get warmed up, mark has an even filthier mouth than roger, which is just. mmmm.

he gets carried away, a lot. says a lot of things that are frankly impossible, sometimes illegal, just fantasies but the sheer fact that mark is saying them, promising them, in that low dark voice never fails to set roger off like a fucking geyser when he’s close. one time he told roger he was going to fuck him onstage in front of every single one of his fans and make him beg for it right into his mic.

he spends a lot of time post-session feeling weird and skittish and guilty, guilty, guilty, about the marks he left on roger, about the shit he said while they were in the middle of it, high on endorphins. 

i don’t know if he’d ever necessarily learn the term but what he’s dealing with is called dom drop, or top drop, and admittedly it does take roger a while to get that telling him to stop being fucking ridiculous isn’t good enough aftercare. he gets it eventually, though.

mark dedicates himself thoroughly to the task of learning how to tie a decent knot, which is good, excellent, because when roger’s feeling subby he becomes a complete rope bunny and mark is DETERMINED to do it right - he will not hurt roger in any way that they haven’t talked about, in any way that roger’s not explicitly asking for or expecting. he’s scarily serious about it. he knows how to do all kinds of fancy shit even though they barely ever get past wrists and ankles before roger has goaded him into fucking him so hard he’ll be limping tomorrow.

not to say he doesn’t have any sadism in him at all… because he does, he does, fuck, roger is so pretty when he whines and cries and arches into the pain. but there’s a lot of guilt to work through, there. and it will take him time to get there.

(when he does get there, he acquires a flogger and they become best friends.)

mark is fucking amazing at aftercare, because he’s a sensitive little mouse at heart, even when he’s all fired up and possessive. he knows intimately what it’s like to have to come out of subspace and whenever roger’s been down he takes extra special care bringing him back up and out of it, slow and gentle. tells him how good he is, how gorgeous he was. mark is normally such a mess when he’s trying to express things like this but when they’ve just ended a scene, and roger is the vulnerable one, mark has no problem waxing poetic about the lovely little details of his handprints still lingering on roger’s ass or the way his face had twisted up when he came, just minutes ago. he’s totally willing to spend hours pampering roger after a scene. prefers it, really. it helps with his own drop, which he gets more often than he admits.

when he’s bringing roger back up, he’s hands on the whole time, never stops touching him if he can help it. if they need a shower (they do) they get in together, and mark spends extra time washing his hair, so gentle, and between his legs, which roger complains about, but mark insists is necessary. partly, he just loves to make roger squirm, but he’s also always paranoid that he’s been too rough with him. he’ll kiss every inch of roger three times over until he’s satisfied that he’s unhurt and satisfied. his fingertips and toe knuckles and the backs of his knees. his eyelids. his palms. the shells of his ears. his jaw and his neck and his sternum, and his inner thighs, even when roger groans and tries to kick him away. mark is too thorough to let any little bit of roger go unkissed. that would be criminal. and roger is his, anyway, on these sorts of days, so he can shut his damn mouth and take it.

also, this one is it’s own separate note because it is IMPORTANT:

mark loves topping from the bottom!!!!

he loves fucking roger, but he also just. loves. riding roger’s cock while he’s bound up and can’t do anything about it. loves torturing him like that, even though his own thighs are shaking, his own back is covered in sweat from the strain of holding back. sometimes he’ll get himself off on roger’s cock and still not let him come until he’s cleaned himself up and untied him, and by then roger is so worked up that it barely takes three strokes before he’s thrashing and coming apart.

the works. roger starts it, because roger is an asshole who can always tell when someone wants his dick, and mark is fumbling and awkward mad adorable really fun to fuck with. so roger starts flirting, you know, just a tease, getting in his personal space, making super lewd comments and eyefucking him and generally making him squirm. at first mark is completely mortified and starts avoiding him COMPLETELY and roger almost starts to feel bad, so the next time he sees him he makes a snorting non-apology, like, "dude, i was just fucking with you, you're too easy."

but roger doesn't know mark very well yet. so he doesn't recognize the gleam in mark's eye as he tells him that it's okay, too-sweetly, head cocked to the side and eyes trailing speculatively down to his belt buckle.

so, mark is the one who escalates it, because he's got to get roger back, right? collins thinks it's hilarious, roger blushes like a tomato when mark takes him off guard, and also, his guitar callouses are disturbingly nice. and provoking him always makes him take it just that extra inch further.

and honestly, mark has the advantage here, because he's not straight, so he thinks he's got it in the bag. but roger actually isn't either, not that he's ever told anyone that.

neither of them is mortally offended when mark, clumsy as he is, leans a little too far in one day and their lips finally meet.

and mark's certainly not going to let roger's tongue freak him out, the next time, when it darts out to trace the seam of his lips before he pulls away.

then it gets... a little out of hand, but they're both so fucking into it, neither of them wants to call it off. both of their girlfriends have long since given up and are sitting back to watch the fireworks. neither of them wants to lose, or to have to give it up. so they're having incredibly charged, competitive sex on every surface in their apartment and in several very public places, and once in april's apartment, probably, before finally having a screaming argument leading to the roughest, hardest, loudest fuck of their lives, and while mark is bent practically in half with his wrists bound together over his head he starts babbling, and admits that he loves him, and THATS when roger comes. and then. uh. he's got... some soul searching to do.

except there's no time for that. and mark is still squirming and panting under him, half-desperate, half-dying of embarrassment and underneath it all he's painfully shy and roger realizes, fuck, he can actually read mark like a book, and then he realizes, fuck, again, fuck fuck fuck, because it's starting to seem like maybe he and mark have been aggressively dating since they MET, and that's... fucking insane.

and all he can think about right now is kissing mark fucking senseless so that's what he does, pulls out and licks into his mouth and replaces his cock with his fingers, fucking him slow and deep until he's begging and crying and his hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat, trailing hot, wet red marks down from his jaw to his throat to his collarbone, down his chest, until he can take his cock into his mouth, and mark blows his load in about five seconds, and roger mumbles "i love you too" into his inner thigh while he's still trembling with it, muffled but utterly sincere.

and then when he sits up they make eye contact, bright red and mute with the sheer absurdity of it all, and mark drily asks if roger is ever planning on letting him out of these cuffs.

later, when mark's still in the shower, roger wanders out still smelling like sex, wearing one of mark's too-small t-shirts and finds collins at the table eating cereal, and is like, "so, me and mark", and collins just snorts and says, "i know. jesus fucking christ, it took you long enough." to which roger just scowls and stalks away, because there's really nothing he can say to contradict that.

mark talking with his hands and being a huge spastic dork is my favorite canon trait of his, honestly!!

also, the fact that he closes up when he’s got his camera IS SUCH A GOOD OBSERVATION and makes it that much better, imo. mark is hugely expressive despite his best efforts to make himself emotionally numb. he just… can’t help it. i think he’s very aware of it, which makes him redouble his efforts to quiet his hands (autistic mark, yes?) and tone his enthusiasm down, when it’s about anything but film. he never really succeeds and in a way he really hates himself for it. he wants so badly to be an impartial observer. 

he tells himself that it’s because it will make him a better filmmaker, that his opinions shouldn’t color his work - and no, “my queer hiv+ friends deserve medical care and not to have their homes taken from them” is not something he considers an opinion, it is a fact - but in the back of his mind it’s also about protecting himself.

he has so much to lose and he’s afraid that giving too much of himself is going to leave him empty in the end. his friends are the biggest source of that intense enthusiasm we see in him: what happens when they’re gone?

i like to think that all of mark’s close friends, i.e. roger, benny, collins, maureen, mimi, joanne, angel, are also kind of attuned to his moods, which is why anytime he starts to gravitate more towards his camera and “close off”, they have a silent agreement to all do their best to drag him back into the conversation.

whereas with people, it takes him an absurdly long time to even realize that they're uncomfortable being filmed (unless they actually tell him to fuck off, which happens with... very unfortunate frequency)

basically, mark sees the people of new york as "wildlife", as subjects... opaque, mysterious, unpredictable. their stories are art to him. they are something to view and contemplate. it's all public, which is where mark gets confused. these are people on the street - out in the world! in public! being people! - and it's not like he's breaking into people's homes and filming their private conversations.

he doesn't get it. guiltily, he wishes that he could keep rolling somehow even after he's rebuked. their stories are important, he thinks, they deserve to be told, deserve to be shared.

but animals he approaches on a personal, individual level. like friends.

he puts away his camera.

he doesn't have to think about it.

mark thinks of people as characters in a screenplay right up until they fall into his life in some meaningful way and he gets to know them, realizes they are human.

i think mark forgets that he's a person, honestly. he spends so much time dissociating from himself, trying to step back and assess things, to look at life objectively, to escape complicated emotions, that he forgets that life and the people inhabiting it are not two dimensional, that they are more than a list of traits.

tbh you are so right? mark is a great protagonist because while he’s the narrator, he’s often sort of transparent, and everyone i’ve ever met who was a fan of the musical was able to project onto him or relate to him in a big way.