Sentimental Reasons, a rent fanfic

Disclaimer: I don't own it.

Author's notes: I came up with this trying to get over the fact that everything that I'm trying to write for We Fit Together is currently sucking. So for now, instead of an update for that you get this. It take's place about 20 years after the end of the show. Tell me what you think.

Sentimental Reasons

I do certain things for sentimental reasons. I do certain things because they're habit. I do certain things because I don't even realize that I'm doing them. I do certain things because I don't know what I would be if I didn't do them.

Like on every November 23rd . I go to this club in the middle of the city. Nobody there knows me, and none of my few friends would ever go there. So on every single November 23rd I go there. No matter what day of the week it ends up being, and regardless of what I have to do the next day, I go to this club. It's here that I sit in a corner and get drunk off my ass drinking these bottles of cheap beer. Seven bottles of cheap beer. And to top it all off, after I'm drunk, I always get up and find one of the club's dancers, and dance a tango with her. Every year, the tango seems to get better.

I do this all because of Maureen. The tango, because of the dancing in circles you did when you were with her. The seven bottles, because that's how many times I caught her in bed with someone else and just put up with it. And this didn't count all the times that I just knew there was someone else, but didn't actually see her with him…or her. And I go on the 23rd of November because that was when she started the tango to begin with. It was the day I first met her when we were both 21, and the day she ended it by telling me that she got from her lesbian lover, Joanne, than she did with me.

Thus I go to a club in the middle of the city on every November 23rd, drink seven cheap beers, and dance a tango. So I can clearly remember the period of my life that I have labeled "Hurricane Maureen."

Then there's why I wear the infamous striped scarf. Thick black and white stripes. It's most definitely not the most fashionable item in the world. At least, wasn't. Because ever since Today 4 U: Proof Positive somehow got big without the help of cretins like Alexi, and then I made it's companion film, The World Revives, copies of the scarf have been turning up on every teenager, who thinks that it just looks cool…or they wear it to show that they've fallen in love with this bohemian lifestyle that I've shown them, and that's how they'll express that love until they get away from their parents. I asked them.

And you would think that I would be happy. I sparked a fashion trend. But that was never what my scarf was about. I never liked the scarf. I got it when I was a freshman at Brown; my little sister, Rachel had mailed it to me. She was nine, and my grandmother had convinced her to start knitting. The scarf was her first completed project. It had holes where she had missed stitches, and strands of yarn hanging from the areas where she had to start a new stripe. I really would never wear it, but I kept it stuffed somewhere in my dorm room drawer, because she was so proud of her accomplishment of finishing a scarf that she was able to give to her big brother. She sent it with a note that explained exactly how she made it, just in case any of my friends saw it and wanted one just like it. At the end she told me she made it for me because she loved me and that she missed me now that I was off at college. I shoved this note in with the scarf.

I loved Rachel. She was my baby sister, and I when I lived at home I would always take care of her, giving up nights out doing whatever, to baby sit her. And I know that I was her favorite sibling. She was always sending me these little letters, just filling me in on what was going on with her. I would always write her back, and throw the note out.

So that's why I always carry the note that came with the scarf with me, where ever I go. Because it was the last one that I have from her. Not a week after I got the scarf I got a phone call from my mom. There had been an accident. I rushed home. Rachel was so brave, she was smiling and everything when I got there. The last thing she ever said to me was, "Why aren't you wearing the scarf that I made you Marky?"

I made Benny come down before the funeral and bring me the scarf and the note. And now they come with me where ever I go. They're all I have left of Rachel. I don't even have a picture.

Which led to me always having my camera with me. I had known for along time that I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I have had my camera since Rachel was three. But before she died I would only film things when I had set things up to be perfect. About a month after she was gone, I started to lose the image of her face in my mind, and I didn't want that to happen to any other person that I ever got involved with.

So I brought my camera everywhere with me, and I started filming everything that happened in front me; all of my friends, the parties…but I never got in front of the camera, because honestly…who needs a piece of film to remember their own face?

By now I've realized that it was really pretty dumb of me because a lot of the things that happen to me are pretty memorable (À la dancing on the tables at the Life) and the memories of those things aren't going to just fade away and disappear. But I still bring the camera everywhere, and I still film just about everything, just in case.

The hatred of my mother is a longtime tradition that also spawns from knowing Rachel. Rachel's accident had left her with the need for many surgeries, that were risky, but extremely helpful. And my mom refused to take the risk. She said that she wasn't going to risk Rachel's life on exploratory surgeries, and that Rachel would be fine. When the heart monitor flat lined Rachel clearly wasn't fine. I couldn't forgive her for sentencing my baby sister…her own daughter to death. I know that I can't really blame her, and she stays in touch as though she doesn't realize that I hate her, and I want to except her apologies, I do, but I continue hating her for Rachel.

Of course there's my need to take care of people. The way I would always remind Roger to take his AZT, leaving messages on Collins' machine, even when I knew he was out of town, probably running naked through some other monument, just to tell him if he ever needed someone to talk to that I was here, because somehow, he ended up hearing all of our problems.

Again, this comes from Rachel. That's four different little things that I do just because of her. Five if you count the note and the scarf separately. When she was hit by the car, she was crossing the street to come home from her piano lessons. When I lived at home I would go with her, and whenever we came across a street I would remind her to look both ways before she crossed the street, because she never remembered on her own. I took care of Rachel. And she didn't look that day when she crossed the street. Now I have this thing where I have to tell people to do little things that they most certainly know how to do, because if I don't they most certainly will not remember to do it and they might die because of it.

I have the visits to the cemetery. The trip once a week to the cold pathetic cemetery where there's a line of tiny gravestones placed in chronological order. I talk to each one of them and give them reports on my life, and then I'll give them something in the order that I pass them. Angel gets a single daisy, for Collins, a small cup of Stoli is poured on the granite. For Benny, a note about how the he's never going to get any rent out of me, these blow away in the wind. Mimi gets some bangle that or scarf that I find at a flea market or something; they're always gone the next time I come, I just pretend that she actually came and got them. And Roger will get a guitar pick. He must have had about four hundred of those, but I don't give him back his. I add to his collection. I stick them in the soil right near his grave. I'm pretty sure that if I were to dig it up they would all be there, and I like this fact.

I go to the Life Café every December 24, and have a memorial for Bohemia. I lose it for just one night, and everyone in the café goes with me. We dance on tables, and order the vegetarian food just so we can comment on the names. And I don't even know who's doing it with me anymore. I just do it. Every year it changes, toasting to different influences, making different customers who don't know of the tradition uncomfortable.

And then there's my most pathetic thing. I still live in the loft. Both of my films are a success. They've put me in a place where I can be financially comfortable for most of the rest of my life. But I don't move to another place, and I don't fix any of it's problems. There's no heat. Snow comes down into the bathtub in the winter. And I can't bear to fix it or move. I just stay…in a run down loft…with my projector.

I hate that my life has been reduced to day by day going through the motions of all these stupid little traditions, just because if I suddenly stopped I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I hate myself because I started doing all these things in the first place, without any sort of a cut off date in mind. Mourning is fine, sure, but it has been 26 years since Rachel died, and I still can't get rid of a goddamn scarf. I hate myself for still thinking about Maureen because she treated me like shit and I just let her. I hate that instead of just saying to myself, "Shit Mark, you need help," I just come up with justifications for all of these little mannerisms that I've developed over the years.

But most of all I hate the fact that I know I can't stop, because if I do stop then I'll be forced to recognize the fact that I'm alone and I have to get along without them. And I hate that because I know that I won't be able to.