A/N: I really should break my AngelCollins junkie habit, but it's SO DAMN FUN! This is Angel's POV, pretty much a narration of the first act in RENT. Disgustingly fluffy and all that...but I just can't freaking help it. I really can't. Oh, and let me know if you think I should continue it. I ALWAYS have more to say on AngelCollins...heh.

You're beautiful…

I don't hear those words everyday. In fact, before I met him, I never heard them. They and so many other words only became reality to me when he became reality to me.

I'm not the one who believes in karma. That's Mimi. She's always had this deep idea about how everything we do comes back to bite us in the ass when we're least expecting it. After she got AIDS, she decided it was because she'd done smack. It was…but not the way she thought. And she didn't stop doing smack, even after finding out she was positive. I think she used the phrase "glutton for punishment" when I raised the issue. I have no idea where she heard that…maybe she read it somewhere. But wherever she got it, Mimi seemed to adopt that as justification for the all shit that kept hitting her own personal fan. "I'm a glutton for punishment."

Funny, but I always thought there was this other side to karma that Mimi never really talked about. The nice side of it: the one where you get rewarded for the good things you do. I wondered about that every time Mimi complained that karma was "fucking her up." I love my Mimi-chica, and I know she's done enough good to deserve even more than she's got; not that Roger isn't a blessing, albeit one she can't recognize. But karma never seemed to work in the way it was supposed to. Sometimes I'd suspect that things equaled out in a karmic fashion, but I never really believed it existed.

Then I met him and I knew for a fact it didn't exist. Nothing I'd done in my whole life was good enough to be equal to him. Nothing.

I didn't have any epiphanies of destiny when I first found him bleeding and cursing in that alley. I just saw a man who'd been mugged, on Christmas Eve no less. I talked to him like I would talk to anyone; he didn't glow or appear in a vision or anything like that. But the longer I was with him, the stronger it got…a weird feeling in my chest, like an ache or even heartburn. I didn't know what it was, I didn't understand where it came from. All I knew was that it started the moment I grabbed his hand and pulled him down that street, and every time we touched or looked each other in the eyes it just got worse.

By the time we got to my house and I fixed him up with some iodine and Band-Aids, I could hardly breathe. I went and changed into what I thought of as my clothes, my real clothes, not the Other Ones I wore when I wanted to avoid the "baggage" that came with being a queen. The idea of him seeing me in them was enough to make me dizzy. I had to sit down and take a deep breath before I went out to meet him. I had no idea what the hell was happening to me. This wasn't normal, this wasn't me. I wondered if my T-cell count was lower than I'd been told and I was finally getting sick, finally succumbing to a delirious, AIDS-induced fever. But it couldn't be that; what illness makes you feel like your heart's on fire if you touch or even envision another certain human being?

That first hour or so was…the best and scariest one of my life. I found a way to breathe (god knows how, but I did) and I managed to stay sane and act normal around Mark and Roger, the "friends" who he said had been waiting for him. They were adorable, both of them: Mark, so sweet and cheerful about meeting me, so indignant and righteous when Benny (who, he'd informed me, was a friend long past the expiration date) intruded; and Roger, angsty and somehow resentful, but still friendly and, like Mark, not showing a hint of disapproval when we met. They were both the kind of people who I knew I could be close to, and who I could understand would have no objection being close to me. But even though I loved meeting them…I had a kind of annoyance with them from the get-go. I wanted to be alone with him…forever.

We stopped at Life Support, and he was open to it in a way Mimi—or for that matter, anyone else I had tried to bring to these meetings—had never been. Knowing he had AIDS too was strange for me; after I found out I was positive, I'd been too wary of other men to let them get close enough to find out about it. But when I met him, I told him straight off, like it was natural…and he told me as soon as I told him, just as candid and natural as I was. It wasn't something I knew how to do. With him, I was feeling my way forward in the dark; it was a wonderful, beautiful darkness, but darkness all the same.

After Life Support, Mark stuck with us (still a little embarrassed over his somewhat unorthodox entrance to the meeting). I felt that annoyance again; it wasn't Mark's fault at all, but I think he sensed it all the same. After a little while, he left to go get Roger and get ready for the show—something that Maureen (another friend I had yet to meet, and one who apparently had some history with Mark) was performing that night. Maybe it was knowing that Mark might not understand exactly what I wanted, but he still felt that things needed to happen without him; maybe it was seeing how easily we were all of a sudden alone that gave me the courage to speak to him. And maybe it wasn't courage I needed, but assurance. Assurance that I wasn't setting myself up for a fall…but for a leap. A leap of faith. What a theme that turned out to be for the rest of the night.

I've dated other men. I've been in other arms, kissed other lips, made love to other people. Some I remember with fondness, some with animosity; some I don't even remember at all. But I might as well have been a virgin with the romantic experiences of a monk for all I thought of those past faces when he kissed me. I could have gone everyday of my life beforehand without human contact, I might have been a ghost since birth until he kissed me. All I know is that I was created that night, that moment, that second: I was Angel for the first time in all my years. I was so many things that I could have been but wasn't, I was everything I was and nothing.

I was so in love that if I had been anyone other than me, I would have slapped myself upside the head and prescribed half a dozen shots of tequila.

I did Ecstasy once before, and only once. The after-burn made me think I was dying, and I swore up and down I would never take that fucking stuff again. But the high was incredible, and I felt like I was tripping out of my mind that entire night. There were no drugs but his touches, no "substances" but his kisses. We talked about anything and nothing; I bought him a coat and got him to forget that the vendor happened to be selling that jacket that he'd lost earlier from the mugging. If it wasn't for her, I might never have known him. That alone earned her a lifetime of forgiveness and excuses from me.

Maureen's show and the riot were definitely my idea of a good time; I'd seen my share of performance art, but nothing quite like a whole vacant lot full of people mooing. The cops decreased a little from the enjoyment of it all, but I only had to feel his arm around my waist and it all seemed so much...prettier. And then dinner at the Life Café…now that was an experience. I felt like part of a family that I had known for a single night; such is the joy of the Village. And Mimi with Roger…now that was less than expected. But expected or not, it felt like one more thing that this unexplained, unearned karma was throwing at us. That night was full of more love and happiness than any other place or time in my life. In the middle of the celebration, he pulled me over to the corner and kissed me so gently and at the same time, so passionately (sounds dorky, but there's no other way to say it) and whispered, "I love you."

It was already more than I ever imagined to be so in love with someone like him. But to hear him say that he felt the same way…and to hear the sincerity in his voice, the certainty and truth that I could not mistake for anything other than what it was…that was beyond my dreams. Beyond my fantasies. Hell, beyond my accepted realm of universal possibility.

He stayed at my house that night and every one afterwards. It was just agreed, we only talked about it once on that first night together. We got to my house and he let me close the door before he pulled me into his arms and just held me in the sweetest way: as though he only wanted to touch me, only wanted to feel me against him. I could feel his heart beating through his chest, and it was all I could not to kiss him as hard as I could.

That waited until a little later.

We talked too, maybe more than we kissed. We talked without restraint; I held nothing back from him, kept nothing hidden. I asked him anything I wanted as well: at one point, I wondered aloud if he'd ever dated a drag queen before, and he said honestly that he'd done so once, a long time ago, but only for a short time: he felt too intimidated, too unfamiliar to really get close to her. Even before I could say anything, he put his hands on my hips and, smiling, said that I was everything but intimidating. I was the most generous, most familiar, most incredible person he'd ever met whatever way I dressed; but when he saw me in drag…he didn't finish the sentence. Instead he buried his head in my neck and whispered, "You're my Angel. I love you so much, so much…you're beautiful."

You're beautiful…

I was never beautiful until I met Collins. But loving him made me beautiful.

Loving him made me so many things.

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Had a sweetheart on his knees

So faithful and adoring

And he touched me

And I let him love me

So let that be my story.

-Lea Michele (Wendla), Spring Awakening