I know this probably needs a new title. I have a hard time with titles. This is my first RENT fic and was heavily influenced by sleep deprivation, caffeine, cough medicine and my history teacher's annoying drone. Please be kind in reviews. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. It just occurred to me that I may want to change the OC's name. It sounds quite a bit like an OC in another series of stories and I don't want to create confusion.
When Mark awoke around 3AM, it took him a few moments to realize what was different than when he had fallen asleep. Around midnight, when he had gone to bed, his girlfriend, Alexcia, had been lying next to him, head resting peacefully on his chest. They'd all been at the Life Café for dinner and, despite the frustrated managers insistence that they were loitering, had stayed well after their plates had been cleared. With the money Collins had 'withdrawn' from the ATM earlier that day, they were, after all paying customers. And it was a special occasion. Angel Dumott-Shunard had entered the world twenty-four years prior to last night. Granted, it was three years and a few months since Angle had left the world, the event was surprisingly light hearted. After three years, all of them, including Collins seemed to have accepted that it was more important to celebrate her life than mourn her death. Even Alexcia, who had never actually met the bright-eyed drag queen, was able to appreciate what sort of person they were honoring. After a few rounds of Stoli, Roger had allowed an equally drunk Maureen to paint his fingernails robin's-egg blue; Angel's favorite shade.
Mark supposed the reason Roger had allowed himself to get that smashed was that the last time they had had a big party at the Life, Mimi had been present. That night, three years ago when Angel sent Mimi hack to hear his song, Roger asked her to be his wife. One week later, they rock star and the dancer stood in front of a church full of their family of friends and committed to carry each others' baggage. Collins stood behind Roger as his best man, Maureen behind Mimi as her maid of honor. Roger had asked Mark to be his best man, but instead, he offered to film the ceremony as a wedding present. That night, they held a roaring reception for the new couple at the Life Café and even the manager didn't complain when they hung streamers and pushed tables together. Four months later, the family found themselves yet again in a sterile hospital room, standing around beeping machines and tubes as Angel's gift of precious time expired. After Mimi's funeral, Mark heard Roger as he kneeled next to Angel's headstone before leaving the cemetery. "Thank you so much, Ang," he said, softly, "We're looking after Collins for you down here. Keep an eye on my wife up there, will you? Maureen was right, ya know. We were the lucky ones; lucky to have ever known you. To have been friends. . Just tell Meems I'll always love her, okay?" He then stood and they walked numbly back to the loft. Mark really hadn't expected Roger to last long after Mimi went. With so much of his soul tied up in hers, he didn't see how the widowed man could carry on after those ties were severed. But as minutes turned into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, it seemed that he would carry on his wife's credo of living each day as your last.
About a year and a half ago, Mark met Alexcia in the crowd at a gig Roger's band was doing in a bar in Manhattan. It had come as something of a shock to Roger when he found out where the rest of Well Hungarian had ended up. Jayce O'Neil, the former drummer, had died of a drug overdose not long after April killed herself. Kenny Mitchell and Eric Daniels were both married with kids on the way when Roger tracked them down. Kenny had actually been surprised that Roger was still alive. His inability to rebuild Well Hungarian had not been a deterrent. Roger rounded up three guys and they began writing. When Mark asked why he was giving up on the old bad, he just shrugged and said that he wasn't the same guy he was back in those days and the bad-boy image wasn't important to him anymore. Today 4 U was born. Most of the gigs they played, like the one Alexcia had been at had been to raise funds and awareness for AIDS research. That night, Mark was standing on the bar with his camera, filming his best friend on stage, surrounded by ecstatic fans. It seemed that he had again found the notes with the power to ignite the air. Wrapped up in pride for the front-man, Mark, in true Mark fashion, had stepped one more step to the left than the oak bar allowed for. When he came to, he was laying on a counter in the back kitchen with a cold towel on his forehead. When the face looming above him wouldn't come in to focus, he was worried he had done serious brain damage. The face above him then slid his black-rimmed glasses back onto his face and he saw her.
Smiling, she said, "I'm guessing you're no prima ballerina." The face that had placed his glasses on him had innocent green eyes and was curtained by wavy red hair. Natural red. There was nothing about this girl to remind him of Roger's old rock concert hookup, whose hair color, like so many things, was false.
Mark tried to sit up, but failed and was forced to lie back on the cold counter. "I tango," he said, dumbly, attempting to selvage some small amount of dignity.
Steadying him, the red haired girl laughed, "Well, Mark Cohen, I think you may need medical attention. Who are you here with?" Music was still thumping out in the main hall and it took the words a moment to register. "I'm here with—wait a minute- How do you know my name?" Grinning, she held up his camera and indicated the small silver label on the bottom. "Right. Well I really don't think I need a doctor." As he said this, he swung his legs over the edge of the counter and hopped onto the tile floor. Immediately, he swayed violently and sat back down.
"You cracked your head pretty bad out there. It doesn't look like you're going to be tangoing for a while if you don't get checked out. I'll take you if you're here alone. I'm Alexcia by the way." She said, going to the sink to rewet the rag she'd been holding on his head.
Did he need to go to the hospital? Should he just go off with this girl? What about Roger? "I'm not here alone," he said, finally, "Roger Davis, you know, the guitarist out there? He's my roommate; I'm supposed to be filming the show."
"Well we can leave a note with the bartender to give to you your friend after he's done with this set. I think you may have a concussion; you're sort of slurring your words."
He knew it was foolish to trust this girl. Anyone could pick you off the floor of a bar, and this was New York after all. But, he reasoned deliriously to himself, she hadn't tried to steal his wallet. Somewhere is the rattled depths of his brain, he knew this was a feeble excuse, but it was enough for him to allow himself to be led out of the bar and onto the street by the pretty red haired girl. Alexcia, he said to himself. He'd nearly been expecting her to introduce herself as Angel. Once in the back of a cab headed for the hospital, Alexcia started asking him small-talk questions as though needing to keep him talking and trying to assess the severity of his head injury. "So where do you and Roger live? I didn't think the band playing tonight was from around here?"
"East village. We've got a loft in Alphabet City. I guess Roger knew the owner of this place a while ago and he asked them to do a show. What about you?" He was trying to ask her equal questions so it didn't feel quite so much like an interview.
"Sounds like we're practically neighbors. My friend Carrie and I had a little flat on Avenue B, but she just moved out, so I'm living there alone," she said casually. "So, what's the deal with the name of the band?"
Mark smirked; he really hadn't thought of the true origin of Roger's band's name for some time. "An old friend of ours; it was like a saying he had. A saying she had," he added more to himself than her.
"He or she?" Alex asked.
"Well technically, it was a saying he had, but he was a drag queen. Angel." He said.
Looking at him curiously, she asked, "What do you mean he was a drag queen? Did something happen to her?"
Suddenly, the pounding in his head wasn't' going to prevent Mark from giving a fitting explanation. "Yeah, she died last fall. See, she met our friend Collins on Christmas Eve the year and they fell in love. It was the craziest thing. Roger and I were sitting at home, right, and Collins comes in passing around food and vodka. We hadn't seen him in like, seven months and we asked him how he paid for it all and he ushers in this gorgeous girl in a Mrs. Claus jacket and zebra tights. She started dancing and singing. Singing Today 4 U. That's where the name comes from. She was a drummer and this lady gave her $1000 to get her neighbor's dog to jump out its window. Anyway, later that day, I went with them to a meeting and when Angel introduced herself, she took off her wig and wiped off her lipstick. It was wild. I mean, obviously Collins knew she was a guy, but Roger and I had no idea. She had AIDS though, that's what the meeting was for. Collins has it too. Angel was…. God…. There isn't a word for it. One in a trillion."
Alexcia was starring at Mark in the dark backseat of a cab with a rapt expression. "She killed a dog?"
"It get's better. The dog was an Akita, right? The woman told Angel its name was Evita too. Well our ex-room mate, Benny said the next day that his wife stayed one from this thing because there was a death in the family. Angel's sitting there and she goes, 'Who died?' and Benny, who has absolutely no idea who she is says, 'Our Akita.' Get where I'm going with this?" Mark said, on the verge of tears of laughter.
"Oh my god. Wow, feel like I've been given a real insider's access to the band now," she laughed. Just then, the cab pulled up outside St. Michael's emergency room and Mark paid the fare before they walked in.
All in all, it wasn't as bad as Alexcia had imagined. After an examination, Mark was declared to have a second degree concussion and was asked to hang around for about an hour for observation. About an hour and a half after they arrived, Roger came bursting through the emergency room doors, looking around frantically for Mark and the girl the bartender had told him he'd left with. Alexcia, who was out in the hall buying a bottle of water approached him when she recognized him from the bar. "You're Roger Davis, aren't you? Mark's friend?" she asked.
"What? Yes, I am. Are you the girl from the bar? Is he okay?" he asked, looking like he was about to jump out of his skin.
Seeing his worry, she said, "Yeah, I'm Alex. Relax; he's going to be fine. Come on, I'll take you to him." Without waiting for a reply, she took the sleeve of his leather jacket and led him to the exam rooms down the hall. "The doctors said he has a fairly minor concussion and he can leave in a little bit, they just want to keep an eye one him for now. Right through the curtain," she said ushering him in, "Mark, look, someone finally got the note. Told ya."
"Hey, man. What the hell did you do to yourself? I thought I saw you standing on the bar filming." Roger asked, giving his friend a five.
Blushing slightly on the hospital bed, he said, "Yeah, I was, but apparently I overestimated the length of it. I sort of pulled a Wile E. Coyote, I guess. Alexcia here saw me and persuaded me to come get checked out."
Turning to Alexcia, Roger sighed, "Thanks a lot for helping him, and for leaving the note to tell me. I mean, I saw that he wasn't up on the bar anymore, but I figured he was just in the can, or shooting from another angle or something."
Even from the start, Roger seemed torn between gratefulness that Alexcia had helped Mark, and distrust because well, he was a native New Yorker and it was just his nature.
The next day, Mark called Alexcia on the number she'd scrawled on the back of a Mountain Dew ad. He told Roger that she'd wanted him to let her know how he was feeling, but he really just wanted to talk to her again. Over the next couple of weeks, she seemed to blend into their small family, but Roger still reserved his doubts. Since April, he didn't put much faith "concert girls" as he called them. Mark defended her every time Roger brought it up. Of course, he didn't give any indication of dislike when she was around, but when he and Mark were alone in the loft, he had the tendency to slip in a snide remark.
As shown by the shades of orange or pale blue often to be seen stuck under her nails and staining her cuticles, Alexcia was a painter. Because painting didn't usually bring in a steady paycheck, she worked at a Starbucks during the day, but even that turned out to produce insufficient funds. A month after she'd scraped Mark off the dirty bar floor, Muffy, or "Allison," as some (but certainly not Roger) called her, forced Benny to evict the residents of her building. One afternoon, upon returning home from work, she found a yellow legal document on her door. "FINAL EVICTION NOTICE," signed at the bottom, "Lawrence P. Grey," cosigned, "Benjamin L. Coffin." Although Mark and Roger often ignored the eviction notices on their building, Alex didn't have the pull with Benny that they did and her building was being demolished.
Before she even had the chance to mention that her old room mate, Carrie, had invited her to move in with her, Mark invited her to move into their spare bedroom. Although he'd been warming up to Alexcia a bit, Roger was not pleased in the least bit. "What do you really know about her, Mark? Who's to say she isn't nuts? Or a junkie? Or-or anything? You've known her for less than a month!" He ranted when Mark brought the idea up.
Collins, who was doing a crossword puzzle at the small metal table, looked up and said, "Roger, Mark's a pretty good judge of character. She was nice enough to pick his albino ass off the floor and take him to him hospital. Let her in, and if you find out she has a taste for human flesh, kick her out. You let-"But he stopped short.
"What?" Roger said, irritably. Collins shook his head. Mark had a rough idea as to who he'd been about to say Roger had let in. Roger had let April and Mimi in, and he'd known they were addicts, but Collins wasn't about to refer to Mimi as a junkie.
Scratching his cap, Collins said, "You let Mark movie in in the first place before you really even knew him. Besides, this by needs to get laid."
Rolling his eyes, Mark said, "Gee, thanks a lot Thomas. I'm not asking her to movie in so I can date her. She needs a place to stay. And what ever happened to 'no hitting on room mates'?"
"Boy, that was just to keep Mo from pounding on you the minute you walked in the door."
"Whatever. It comes down to Roger. I'm not going to date her, so it's not my call. What do you say?" Mark said, perfecting Maureen's 'pout lips.'
Shaking his hair back, Roger groaned, "She can movie in. Trial basis. As long as you promise to never make that face again."
"Deal!" Mark said, gleefully slapping palms with Roger.
The day Alexcia moved in had been chaotic and really quite exhausting. Maureen had volunteered to help 'feminize' the spare bedroom for her, but freaked out when she discovered the layers of dust that had settled there. Her shirking to responsibility had led, unsurprisingly to an argument with Joanne. This argument, however, was ended fairly quickly as far as their fights were concerned, and with a wink, they left for their own apartment without giving much of an explanation. Despite his distrust, Roger seemed to take to having Alexcia as a room mate quickly. For one thing, she played a little guitar and he enjoyed lending pointers and promoting his passion. For another thing, she brought with her the contents of her small fridge, some of which was three cases of beer that Carrie had left when she'd moved out. She also owned a CD player and tape deck, something Roger had been missing dearly. Soon, even the answering machine message was rerecorded so that a female voice was added to the drone of, "SPEEEEEEAK!"