DISCLAIMER: This is a work of original fan fiction based on characters and situations created by Jonathan Larson. The intent of this work is for the entertainment of the fans of the musical theatre work "Rent" and its 2005 movie adaptation, and is not intended to garner payment in any form.

I only rent. I don't own.

RATED: T, for language and post-suicide of a character.

The Fall

Prologue

Waste, the supple leaves whither and fall

The warm breeze grows cold and starts to bite

Waste, tender beats hitch and stall

So tired and loosing this fight

Nothing can grow, just decompose

Deaf to harmony, decompose

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Chapter 1: Liken a Razor

From what he's told me about them, Roger turned into a mixture of his parents: a co-dependant and a control freak. I tried to point this out to him but, not surprisingly, he didn't want to hear it. After screaming at each other, he would finally leave me to cool off in his bedroom. These fights got so exhausting, that I just stopped trying to help him.

Roger's behaviour was tolerable, because it was a very subtle form of abuse, and I have only come to realize this in the last few days before I finally asked Collins for help. It is a form of abuse that has taken me over a decade to recognize. I didn't think I was that dense; but, then again, I was too close to the subject matter this time to realize that I was experiencing it from someone my own age. Maybe, it didn't exist in him, before the trauma.

However, I have made some very heavy and considerable analysis about whether or not I could possibly continue as his friend, roommate, brother … whatever we are to each other. It had reached the point where one of us would have to leave. In a way, I kept hoping that Roger would take the initiative; but, either we were too tired and afraid of any more changes, or we two halves of the same person.

I keep thinking about one of the things that Collins use to go around quoting all the time, especially after he ate the last of whatever food I was hungry for. "Time," he'd say with a mouthful of what should have been satisfying my stomach, "yields no shape".

After the first two or three times he threw this diversion at me, I finally got my brain working enough to ask him how that quote related to my deprived taste buds. "It's Kant," he said, while holding up a hand to my slackened mouth. "But, I Kant think of puns while I'm eating."

He scooped up the eight crumbs with a wink. Yes, I admit I had counted them. "And then he did the same thing to the other artists' houses, leaving crumbs much too small for the other artists' mouses."

Collins stared at me for a moment or two, before bursting out laughing, clapping a hand on my shoulder. "Mark, you're the only one I know who's countered Kant with Dr. Seuss". Actually, I didn't know anything about Kant. I just wanted the crumbs.

He finally did get around to telling me what that quote meant, and I've thought about it a lot since then. Time, he told me, is not linear nor circular. Rather, it's a form of consciousness. "Now, if something that rules our modern society as much as profits do can be stripped of its costume; so can anything else - including the availability of one of your favourite foods." I couldn't stop the grin that appeared when, out of the colossal chasm of his pocket, he produced a kumquat muffin.

His knowledge about what the world's great minds had to say about the transitory nature of things is amazing. I think that the nature of HIV deepened his interest in that topic. Collins told me that he has generally had an easy-going attitude; but, I think it was helped by Heidegger.

I didn't know him before his diagnosis, and I think I'm more anxious about his health than he is, but I am so grateful for his friendship.

When Collins arrived from Massachesetts, I left for a break from the shadows that anchored Roger to one moment in time. I don't know how Collins got through to him but, when I returned to the loft, Roger seemed calmer. There was really only one other way for him to go, and idly waiting for death was as great a tragedy as April's time wrecking obsessions.

I couldn't help being reminded of "Day of the Dead", the few times in the last year that I showed up on April's doorstep. The last time I saw her and Roger together, they looked so much like animated corpses that I couldn't stand being around them anymore.

I was so sure that their deserted existence had ended, that when that desperate plea for help came, it took me a while to realize whom it was who called me.

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I finally realized that underneath the waves are rolling
I cover my eyes, and whisper in your ear
You make all the rain explode and pour the thunder on the faceless
I'm holding my own in the face of you

-- Adam Pascal (2004)

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Chapter 1 of 4

(c)2007, by: Lynne Freels