Author: Emmie
Title: Chelsea
Fandom: RENT
Pairing(s): Mark/Roger/April
Rating: PG
Continuity: Between "Goodbye Love" and "What You Own".
Author's note: I think I feel for Mark here. I like the idea for this fic in my head, but can't seem to express it properly. To me, it reads like a string of clichés. Ah, well. It's based on the Counting Crows song of the same name, and I think I also managed to slip references to Bon Jovi and Fight Club in there somehow. Points for those who can catch them.
Summary: Mark wanders the streets of New York, somewhere between dream and reality.
Words, Mark had decided, were a problem. Words did nothing to express reality. Another point in favor of images on film. They might not have been real, but the were a hell of a lot closer to it than clumsy, useless words. At least they only had the power to show, not to hurt.
Mark goes walking in the city late at night, under the pretense of filming. Really, he just doesn't want to go back to the loft. It doesn't particularly matter, because New York echoes with his last words to Roger. Perhaps it's because I'm the one of us to survive. It isn't what he meant to say, or at least, not how he meant to say it, but fuck, watching the people you loved die, one by one, didn't exactly put a person in the best frame of mind, and before he knew it, there the words were.
It sounded horrible, it sounded like he was bitching and gloating all at the same time when he had no right to do either, because after all, he wasn't the one dying.
It's just that sometimes, he wishes he was. In the end, he's going to be the only one left. He knows Roger envies him that. Roger is terrified of fading away. Mark is just terrified of being alone.
He walks aimlessly through the city, camera forgotten in his hands. Images flash through his mind. April. Roger. The three of them, back when things were good and right and death was hundreds of years away, something that happened to other people. Back when he'd loved them both, and they'd loved each other, and loved him, more than they'd loved drugs.
Before April was gone, before Mark's whole life had become silently ruled by the fear of what would happen when Roger was gone too. Well, Roger had taken care of that already, he supposed.
Somehow, he thinks, it's not so much that Roger is gone. It's that Roger doesn't understand, that somewhere on the other side of the country, Roger hates him for something he didn't even mean to say.
The streets are quiet and dark, and Mark is seeing things or going insane, or possibly both, because the Roger in his head has materialized into the Roger sitting on the roof of a nearby building, smoking a cigarette. Mark shakes his head, closes his eyes, and when he opens them, there on the corner, leaning against a brick wall outside a liquor store, chatting, are April and Angel.
Mark stops dead in his tracks, unable to think, unable to breathe. April glances up, smiles at him, so beautiful it hurts. It's been so long. The breathing thing isn't getting any easier.
Then they're walking away, and Mark wants to stop them but can't, wants to say something but doesn't know what.
April turns, walks back toward him. He reaches out to her, and they embrace. He kisses her, and as he does, strong arms wrap around him from behind, and it's so perfect, so right, like coming home again. Then April smiles at him again, and waves, and walks off to join Angel, and it's just him and Roger. Again.
"Hey," says Roger, and Mark wonders for a moment how he got down from the roof so fast. Then he remembers that he's losing his mind, which seems to explain it. "What the hell are you doing all the way in Chelsea?"
"Not thinking about you," Mark says dryly.
"Yeah?" Roger says. "How's that going for you?"
Mark sighs and tries to put his feelings into words. Preferably ones that won't make him seem like even more of an asshole. There's really only one thing he can say, though.
"Rog… I miss you." The words carry on the wind. There's no one there to hear.
Mark turns around, walks away. He can go insane back at the loft. It's warmer.
Two thousand miles away in Santa Fe, Roger wakes up from the strangest dream he's ever had.