Author's Note: Wow...my first foray into the published fanfiction community. How terrifying! And I've made the decision to start it with slash. Very bright of me. I will blame the fact that I am tired. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this little offering, and please read and review!
Warning: This story contains character death, male/male love (albeit one-sided), suicide, talk of AIDs, and other general forms of angst. If that stuff doesn't suit your tastes, stop reading this right now and hit your browser's back button.
Disclaimer: Rent and all its characters belong to Jonathan Larson. May he rest in peace.
His breathing was heavy, labored. His forehead was hot and yet he complained of being ice cold. Occasionally his body spasmed as a wave of coughing came on or his muscles tensed in reaction to unseen aches and pains.
Mark Cohen watched with what appeared to be a stoic demeanor behind which lay a man who felt his sanity to be clinging to the end of a rope. His best friend Roger lay here, in an almost cruelly white, clean room. It wasn't Roger's kind of room, he knew. Roger would much prefer a wall half-splattered with cracking paint and posters of ancient rock legends taped on it. One with color and life and a story to tell. Not this...not this sterile asylum-whiteness. Not the walls that told no story, the walls that hid their stories under a facade of paint.
A thought struck Mark and he nodded with silent acknowledgment. He was like those white walls. Plain. Uninteresting. Secretive. Superficial. His story was hidden beneath layers of flesh, hidden in the darkest corners of his heart and guarded by every movement of his body.
Roger groaned softly and turned his head to look at Mark, eyes bleary with the half-sleep he had been enjoying for the last three hours.
"You're still here?" he asked. Mark nodded. "What time is it?"
"It's uh--" he said as he glanced at his watch, "...2:56 AM." Roger broke into a small fit of coughing, enough to bring Mark to his feet, but his friend put up his hand to hold him back. It was so awful to see such a strong man so debilitated.
"I'm fine...I'm...okay..." he claimed as he took several deep, shuddering breaths. "But why are you here so late? Why don't you go home and sleep?" He could not imagine any reason why Mark would want to stay with him the whole night long. That reality struck Mark like a punch to the stomach. Not that he hadn't experienced it before, but it hurt as much as ever.
What was he supposed to say? Should he say he didn't know how much longer Roger had left and worried about being gone during his last moments? Should he confess that he could not go home and sleep alone in that apartment, that he would be unable to sleep without hearing the calm sound of his breath? Should he make a comparison to the way Roger stayed with Mimi for weeks at the hospital until she lost her fight? Should he express what he had held in so well for four years?
"I...I'm not sleepy. I didn't know what else to do."
Roger looked at him quizzically, thinking for a moment before responding.
"Really Mark, you should get out more. Why not spend some time with Maureen and Joanne? Surely they're up at this hour. Or if that's too much for you to take, why not hang out with Collins? I mean, what fun am I? And you're going to have to get used to it you kn--"
"Roger please, please don't say that," Mark interrupted. If Roger kept talking he wasn't going to keep up those white walls for more than a few minutes. "I don't want to get used to it."
Sometimes he hated how much Roger had come to accept his impending death, because he, Mark, had never come one step closer to allowing himself to even theorize the possibility. Roger was always supposed to be there. Roger was his wall, his comfort, his sanity. He was predictable in so many ways. There was no way he could die. People like Roger just weren't allowed to die.
Roger nodded and went silent. His eyes drifted to the blank wall opposite him, as though trying to see through it. After what seemed like forever to Mark, but was really just a minute or so, he looked back at him.
"I know it's hard Mark but...I don't mind. I really don't. I think I'll be happier. At least I won't have to worry about heat or anything," he said with a chuckle. Mark joined him, but stopped as Roger's laugh turned to more coughs. Mark was once again out of his hard metal hospital chair, but this time he sat Roger up and gave him some water. When the crisis was averted, at least for the meantime, Roger leaned back again and looked at Mark with as much seriousness and sincerity as he was capable of. "I'm ready for it. I want to see Angel again. I want to see Mimi. My God, I want to see Mimi."
If the mind's cries of anguish could be heard, everyone in the hospital would have gone deaf in that instant. The blood that pulsed in his veins echoed in Mark's ears. How could he be so happy to leave everyone behind? Why could he only think of seeing Mimi? Why couldn't Roger imagine leaving him behind? All of the heartache that was going to cause? Didn't he remember Collins at Angel's funeral? Didn't he realize that he was going to let history repeat itself?
Roger must have seen a glint of despair in Mark's icy eyes because he smiled as best he could and said "I know I'm making it sound easier than it is..." He paused, fumbling for the right words. Finally he realized that there was just no way to find them. Then a shiver crept up his spine and began to spread throughout his nerves until he was lost in another set of chills, biting his lip so hard that it bled. Mark called for the nurse and did his best to comfort his friend with blankets, sitting beside him and taking his hand in an attempt to calm him. As the nurse ministered to Roger, Mark saw in her eyes what looked like sadness and recognition.
It finally hit him. Roger was dying. And he could die any day, at any time. He could die in a month, a week, a day, an hour. He could die this very minute.
He blinked back tears at the image of his death. He was not there to see Angel go, but he had heard the stories. He could not imagine Roger's face as pallid as a ghost's, his final exhalation of air, the sound of the heart monitor's irregular rhythm before it finally stopped altogether.
"Hey. Are you okay?" Roger asked Mark, his fit having subsided. Mark half jumped as he came out of his horrific visions. When the clouded blue eyes made contact with his own, a thought struck Mark. He had to do it. He had to say it now or he would regret forever not having told him. He couldn't let Roger die until he knew the truth. He stared down at the white sheets and felt words rising in him that his logical self struggled to suppress with minimal success.
"Roger...I just have to tell you...well..." a lump stuck in his throat and Mark struggled with it for a moment. His friend waited with unusual patience for him to finish his sentence. It came as about as soft as audible whispers come.
"I love you."
The dark blond stared at his roommate and friend for a half second before breaking into a wide grin.
"Hey man, I love you too. You're my best friend. Without you I would never have gotten this far. I'd probably be dead in the gutter from an overdose or something. I don't know how you manage to stand me sometimes, but you really are a great, great friend. Thanks for that." He made a reassuring gesture toward the ceiling. "I'm sure Mimi feels the same, wherever she is."
Mark's heart had skipped half a beat at first, but then he felt it crumble into dust as he realized Roger hadn't understood his meaning at all. He didn't just love him as a friend. True, that was how it was at first. But this...this was different. This was the kind of love where mere sight was enough to command a sigh, the kind where each time he saw him asleep on the couch he had to resist the urge to just touch his beautiful face, the kind where every day Roger spent in the loft was a blessing and every day with Mimi a curse. This was the kind where he would give anything just to see him smile. And because of that, he did not protest Roger's response. Instead he smiled in kind and nodded, not daring to let his eyes leave those white sheets. Those deathly, deathly white sheets.
So instead they spent twenty minutes or so discussing their friends, the old days, Santa Fe, music, and other happy subjects until Roger drifted back to sleep.
The subject was never discussed again.
Nine days later, Roger died in his sleep with his friends standing beside him. The hollow, empty sound of the heart monitor echoed in Mark's ears but never registered in his brain. All that he could sense was the coldness of Roger's hand and the pain of his heart being torn apart.