Secrets Shared
A/N: Hi, everyone! My name is Margaret, and this is my first published RENTfic. I would appreciate both constructive criticism and encouragement, not sure how good this is. I plan to make this about five chapters, and updates will probably be infrequent, as I'm busy with school and music (we have a huge variety show coming up). However, I'd love to know what you think! R&R please, reviews will make me happy!
Disclaimer: I don't own RENT, all characters belong to the great, and sadly late, Jonathan Larson. RIP
A blonde man sits on a tattered, worn couch whose better days had been before the man and his friends had bought it. The man has seen better days, too: he looks like he has lived a thousand lifetimes despite being not yet thirty. His breath comes out in rattles and his face is tear-stained.
A camera rests beside him, where it has been for the past three days, untouched. The Bohemian looks at it, as if noticing it for the first time, then winces. Seeing brings on a painful flood of memories. Despite this, he picks up the camera and turns it on. He has no trouble using it: he was taught by the best. He knows there is plenty of empty film in it, because the last time it was used, a new roll was put in. This is good. He doesn't know how long he'll need.
He lies down and sets the camera on his chest, but moves it quickly to the couch. The added weight makes it even harder to breathe. He turns it off so he doesn't waste battery.
The blonde man slowly staggers over to a small table where the camera's tripod lies. Part way there, though, a coughing fit forces him to settle on the floor and catch his breath. From there, he looks around the cheap loft he and his boyfriend share- no, shared, he corrects. It seems to speak of the terrible grief he has been feeling for the past week and a half. The sky is gray with the promise of rain, and it gives the loft a gloomy tone. Everything in the room, besides the floor and the couch, is covered in a thin layer of dust, giving it an abandoned look. He looks down at himself. The clothes he wears are stained, rumpled, and smell like barf, due to his inability to make it to the bathroom in time on multiple occasions. He has lost a lot of weight as well. Despite the coaxing of his friends, who come over to check on him every day, he hasn't eaten much lately. What he has comes back up within a few hours.
He's glad he can't see himself from the neck up. Considering the state of his clothes, he can't imagine how the rest of him looks. He hasn't slept for days. The pain and the crushing sadness have prevented sleep from coming. The majority of his day he spends crying or sobbing, coughing, throwing up, taking medicine, and trying to get his breathing under control. When his friends come over, he says as little as possible. Talking hurts.
The blonde man hasn't bothered with personal hygiene either. He expects his hair is a mess. What's the point of keeping clean, though, when he can't escape anything? His sickness, pain, and grief hang around him like an iron shroud he can't remove. He hasn't gone anywhere lately or done much of anything. Today, though, the Bohemian is going to change that. He's going to reveal things he's kept inside for years.
He stands up agonizingly slowly and makes his way to the table with a newly found confidence. Although his speed is just as slow as before, having a sense of purpose gives the Bohemian some much-needed strength. Eventually, he reaches the tripod, which he carefully picks up, as if it could break with the slightest wrong move, or like it's a living thing, mortal and deserving of care.
He remembers the last time it was used. It was also the last time the camera was used, and the last good day he and his boyfriend had together. Everything fell apart the next day. It all happened so fast, it ended too soon. Nothing could fix things now, though. The blonde man sighs heavily, not attempting to mask his sadness. How was he to know it would be their last day together? If he had, he would have captured every moment of it.
He begins to make his way back to the couch slowly, tripod in hand, when he suddenly stops, and staggers over to the drawer in the kitchen where the writing supplies is kept. He takes out a pencil, and, unable to find a sheet of paper without some note scribbled on it, picks up a piece of manuscript paper. He swallows hard. It contains the words to a song he's tried to forget twice, but the tune still comes back to him, along with a flash of memories from a Christmas Eve seven years ago. A songwriter holding a young girl's hand, telling her how much she meant to him. The girl almost dying in his arms. The guitarist sobbing into her chest, begging her not to leave him. Her sitting up, shaking, telling the people gathered in the same loft as the one the Bohemian is standing in now that a friend steered her back to life. The songwriter crying with happiness, and holding her close. The young girl seeming well again, then dying on New Year's Eve with a ghost of a smile left on her lips only for the young man holding her the same way as he had when he thought she had died the first time. It was the first time he had tried to forget, yet it still causes the blonde man to collapse against the counter in pain, the memories too much to handle.
The second time was a week and a half ago. He never has liked goodbyes. When everything was falling apart, a desperate songwriter had sung it to his boyfriend. One of them had left the other behind. The Bohemian has tried to forget it again, but the words will not leave his head. They haunt him, everything about them reminding him of things that cannot be changed.
He begins to hum the song, but is forced to stop when his throat begins to hurt. His voice is not what it used to be, the pneumonia, among other things, making him too sick to sing anymore, and he decides he needs to save his voice as much as possible if he's going to make it through what he wants to do.
The blonde man flips the manuscript paper over so he doesn't have to see the song and picks up the pencil, which he dropped on the floor. He carefully carries them and the tripod to the couch. Setting the pencil and paper on the couch, he sets up the tripod and camera like he was taught, so that he will be able to be seen from his place on the couch. He presses record, then goes to sit down, looking at the clock as he moves.
"February twelfth, two thirty PM, Eastern. . ." He cuts off. His voice is just as ragged as his breathing, and he can already tell this isn't going to be easy. "Oh, what the hell's the point anymore? You've gone and left me, and there's nothing I can do to bring you back!"