Disclaimer: Nope, not mine. All character belong to Jonathan Larson… or whoever it is that owns them.
Roger sat there in the cool, damp graveyard long after everyone had left. He sat there staring at the dreary tombstone, reading and rereading the letters until they were permanently etched into his memory.
He kept staring, even as the bright afternoon sun faded, sinking lower into the sky until it was a stunning mixture of shades, of pinks and purples and golds. It was the kind of thing Mark would have loved, had he still been around to see it. Roger half expected for Mark to appear any minute now, camera in tow, to sit beside him as he filmed and marveled at the beauty of it all. Then they would walk home together, hand-in-hand, share a nice dinner of Twizzlers and Raman noodles (their typical Sunday night feast) and fall asleep in each others arms.
But the words written on the dreary gray stone in front of him confirmed that this would never happen again, for the filmmaker in the fantasy was buried six feet under where Roger sat at that very moment.
It had been a beautiful service. Everyone came, even those who didn't know Mark or the Cohen family at all. Even Mark's father, who he hadn't spoken to in over fifteen years, was there sitting in the front row, and got up to say a few words about the son he barely knew. The press was there, journalists snapping photos every other second, and scribbling noisily on their pads, while the distant sound of humming droned from the black recorders held in their perfectly manicured hands.
Outside the funeral parlor people crowded around, some of them with tears streaming down their faces, and many offered condolences or flowers or a kind word to Roger and the filmmaker's family.
The people of New York hadn't seen an event like this since Matthew Shepard, back in '98. And Roger knew that they would not forget this for a very long time to come. It was a small comfort to him knowing that what happened to Mark would stay on people's minds, because in a sense, it meant that the filmmaker would live on even after his physical departure.
Suddenly Roger felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and he jumped in surprise, though he made no move to turn around, nor did he acknowledge the person standing behind him in any way. Collins walked around to the font of the grieving musician and knelt down so that the two were eye level.
"It shouldn't have happened."
The voice that spoke was ragged, and hoarse with heavy emotion. Roger struggled to keep the tremor out of his voice and strained to keep the tears he could already feel welling up underneath his eyelids again from pouring out in another river of endless misery.
Collins simply nodded. "It shouldn't have. But it did, and we all have to try and move on."
"How the hell can we just move on from something like this, Collins? It isn't like somebody just died of a heart attack, or…or… got into a car accident or something!" Roger flailed his arms as he spoke, each word getting louder and more hysterical as the tears slipped, unnoticed to him, from his bloodshot eyes. "He was fucking murdered! Fucking beaten to death and…and…" He could not bear to say the rest, could not even bear to think about what had happened to his beautiful, innocent, Mark. Mark, who had never done a thing in his life to hurt anyone. Mark, who could not even kill a fly in the park. Mark who had been drugged and raped and beaten and…
"Roger, are you going to be okay tonight? Do you want to come over to my place and stay with me for a while?"
The musician bowed his head and lifted a corner of his long-sleeved sweatshirt to wipe away his remaining tears.
"No, no, I'll be fine."
"Are you sure? I don't think-"
" I said I'll be fine."
Collins said nothing, but gave the musician another long, hard look before opening his arms in invitation and engulfing the man in a hug.
"We'll be okay," he whispered as Roger began to pull away. "Just give it some time, and I promise, things will be better."
Roger sincerely doubted that, but he nodded anyway as he picked up Mark's old video camera, which he had used to tape the memorial, and trudged along the busy streets of Manhattan to his home, the loft, that for the first time since he moved in seemed so huge and lonely and empty.
After dutifully swallowing the white AZT pill on the counter, the musician walked in a daze into the bathroom where he opened up the old, creaky medicine cabinet and pulled out the box of replacement razor blades. They looked sharp – after all, they had just been purchased last week – and Roger was sure they would do the job just fine. But just in case, he retreated into the kitchen again and brought the still half full bottle of prescription medicine into the bathroom with him and placed it next to the razors.
I'm coming, Mark, he thought to himself as he raised the shiny piece of metal and lowered it to his wrist. Dragging it across the flesh, the pain he felt was almost a relief compared to the pain he had been suffering ever since that night he had gotten the call from the police.
Alternately swallowing pills and gashing his wrist, Roger began to feel dizzy and he allowed himself to fall onto the hard concrete tiling of the floor in a pool of expanding red blood. The last thing he saw before drifting off into the world of unconsciousness was Mark's face smiling down at him, reaching a hand out and pulling the musician away from his world of endless grief and misery.