A/N: Angsty mood, bad day... Type. Sleep. Cured. For the moment anyways. Enjoy my poorly disguised venting. I love you all. *depression* Reviews would truly light up my world.
Disclaimer: By now you ought to know I don't own RENT. You have no excuse not to know this.
Headfirst
It was a slow, subtle descent- or ascent, if you like- and Maureen didn't begin to realize it, didn't want to realize it, until it was far too late.
Everyone thought she was so shallow, so heartless. You had to be heartless to cheat on Mark Cohen, also known as the sweetest and shyest man in the world or at least on Avenue C. Roger would just as soon spit on her as nod hello nowadays. Not, of course, that that was an enormous jump from his former silent disgust. There was a whole list of labels that she could have been slapped with, most of which had already been thrown at her by the infuriated best friend: unfaithful bitch, cheating whore, adulterer, slut. They got less coherent, became more and more just pure, passionate emotion, the longer he was allowed to continue and Maureen didn't have the resolve to disagree.
It was true. She couldn't deny that she had cheated on Mark. She couldn't deny that he hadn't deserved it, had never done and probably would never do anything to deserve such disregard for his feelings. And she would endure the abuse, for his sake.
Nevertheless, Maureen wished that she could find an ear that would, unbiased, listen to her side of the story.
How many people, after all, had made the assumption that she had cheated on Mark in the first place without even asking, without checking their facts? All of them? How many of them knew that, from the very beginning, Mark had been the one to suggest an open relationship?
Her relationship with Mark had in retrospect been anything but conventional. Maureen never did much that might be considered conventional anyways, but for Mark, with Mark, it should have been different. She would have done different for him. For so many years he had been her rock, her best friend, her affectionate little puppy following at her heel without ever asking anything in return- a constant companion. A person to talk to. A person to fall back on. She'd grown up with thousands of fairy tales about girls growing up and being swept away by their prince charming, a handsome stranger, and she'd grown to expect that. She'd grown to disregard casual friendships, tiny thrills and romantic undertones. That had all been shattered with one stuttering question mark.
Mark and Maureen had suddenly, unexpectedly become MarkandMaureen and, as a single, new entity, everything had changed.
It was nothing she had expected it to be, although it could be argued that she hadn't expected it at all. Mark was not who she had always thought he was. He was better. He was everything. As much as everyone liked to tease Mark about his hopeless infatuation with Maureen, once she had opened herself to the idea she had been just as bad, in a quieter way.
What nobody knew was that Maureen was as smitten with Mark as he was with her. What nobody knew was that just because she could be loud, opinionated, passionate, unabashedly odd, that didn't mean that she had to be all the time. That didn't mean that she had to be about Mark. Mark was different and Mark had changed her whether he knew it or not. Whether anyone knew it or not. She was always going to love him, but things had changed.
It was strange how things had worked. The first few months… hell, the majority of the first two years had been perfect. They had been perfect. Perhaps, she had thought dreamily, there was some truth to the 'opposites attract' thing. Every little thing that Mark did, said, was enough to make her heart tremble in her chest. Countless pages in her diary had been devoted to sappy descriptions of their sex life, their love life, their mornings spent curled up with each other as she babbled about her next big thing, her passion, and Mark listened patiently with that lopsided smile of his and his glasses sliding down his nose, the adoration in his eyes enough to choke her. Mark was like her savior. He brought light into her world.
And then… Then, real life had struck its first blow. Just little arguments. No one would have guessed that Mark, sweet little Marky, could use words so subtly biting. Everyone saw the way she lashed back, though, eyes full of huge dramatic tears and words loud enough to alert the entirety of Alphabet City to their spats. Everyone assumed, always assumed, that it was her.
It hurt more than she thought it would.
The cheating hadn't been intentional. It had started, again, as another unexpected aspect of Mark, Mark the man she had known forever, loved for what seemed like forever. Mark who was acting strangely. She had never been particularly perceptive so it could have been her fault that, while she was out and about looking for acting work and spreading the word about this cause or that, making friends wherever she went, his lonely eyes had strayed. She hadn't caught his tiny signals, his imperceptible sighs and deep, aching loneliness.
Mark had always been the busy one. The one obsessed with his work. You could have asked anyone that and received the same answer. But this time Maureen was the one involved, the one overdoing it. She had grown, as if from nowhere, a life and she had wandered a little too far from where she belonged and Mark had nothing to latch onto.
Nothing but that roommate of his. Roger. He had never liked her.
Maureen liked to think that it was Roger who had given Mark the confidence he needed to break up with her when he finally found out. She had been afraid, obviously, that he would be too meek to leave her. Because it was Mark and because, as they all knew, he was sweet. He was sickeningly optimistic, ridiculously patient. Practically a saint. She had been afraid that when she was finally exposed, when she chose to expose what was really going on, that he wouldn't have the heart to do it.
She liked to think that Roger had given him that confidence because she wanted to have hope for Mark. She wanted to believe that even without her, even when she had to watch his sad blue eyes disappear into her past, that he would be okay. That someone- Roger- would take care of him.
Not, of course, that Mark really needed to be taken care of. He was self-sufficient enough. And Maureen, as oblivious as she could be, had seen far before he could that they were falling apart and no one was lifting a finger to stop it.
It had started as meaningless sex, a fling here and there. She had never formally accepted, way back when, Mark's invitation to an open relationship but now that she saw him once a week and never more, only less, it didn't seem like a formal matter anymore. It didn't seem like any of his business. And he had known, make no mistake. She'd gushed about it to him, actually, just to be sure and he had simply smiled and nodded and gone along with it, just like he always did.
She had thought that it was for her sake. But perhaps she should have been following his absent, adoring gaze… following it straight to the only other person in Mark's life.
It was strange sleeping with women. That had been her first thought. Maureen was an open person. She was, as everyone described her, an extravagant person and she had never been afraid to voice her radical opinion. She had never thought of herself as a lesbian, not even the first time she fell into bed with a woman, the first time she spent hours upon hours learning what it meant to make love with her tongue, her fingers, every inch of her, learning how to worship curves and touch so gently, so softly, and everything felt right. But she had never considered herself a lesbian.
Until she had gone to a bar and met a forlorn lawyer, recently out, recently drunk, and looking for some cheering up.
Until she had woken up again and again and again with that same lawyer, until she remembered her name, her middle name too, and met her parents and everything began flying out of her control so fast her head hurt when she tried to pinpoint exactly how she had allowed it to happen.
And Mark, poor Mark, watched on the sidelines as her new "friend" Joanne became her new obsession, her new passion, the only thing she talked about anymore. And even if no one else even knew she existed she had still become the only thing in her life that was worth it anymore.
She had thought that Mark was the love of her life not so long ago- but now, as that foundation began to crumble a new one was being erected right beside it, stronger than the first.
He hadn't said a thing. He had watched in silent, unreadable sadness as it happened. His eyes, again, strayed to the man beside him and she never even realized, too caught up in her own whirlwind romance with a woman that should have been so far out of her league but somehow, somehow seemed to love her back and she could never understand why but she did. Mark just wanted her to be happy. Mark wanted a lot of things that nobody knew about and nobody could have guessed and he wasn't going to open his mouth and say it out loud.
She must confess, leaving Mark now felt a little bit like abandonment- but when she was falling, spiraling in an entirely different direction, what other choice did she have?
So there it was. It was laid out so clearly in her mind. So perfectly. Joanne's skin smooth and silky and unlike any man's against hers, her full, glossy lips at her ear, her musical laughter, her feminine touch, so intoxicating and alive. Mark's quiet descent, or ascent if you like, to a love greater than theirs. One that he was never, never going to fulfill. One that was impossible.
To be painfully honest she was sorry for him not because she had left him defenseless in a cruel world, but because he would never move on. She could see it in his eyes, the ones that kept glancing uncertainly back in her direction. Mark didn't blame her half as much as everyone else did for their breakup, for the way things had turned out. Mark was reasonable. Mark knew the full story. But when he couldn't move on, where else was he supposed to turn?
Mark, she summarized, was a great guy. It wasn't his fault that neither of them had known how to fix what was somehow, irrationally broken. And it wasn't hers. Love was unpredictable. Love decided what love was and if love refused to work for them it would have to be stowed away under their metaphorical beds, like boxes of old, forgotten toys of their youth.
Maureen would always feel just a tiny bit bad leaving the second best thing that ever happened to her. But not too bad. Never too bad.
Not when it had procured her the first.