Title: Only Ugly Things
Author: London
Feedback: please?
Pairing: Mark and Roger as friends, can be Mark/Roger if you want; mentioned Mark/Nanette
Warnings: suicide (attempted), really minor sexual references, swearing, violence
Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize, including but not limited to: RENT, "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", Bombay Sapphire
"Mark, you fucker!"
Roger hit him. Before he could stop himself, he brought his fist around and smashed it into Mark's face. Mark reeled. He hit the counter, then slid to the floor, glasses askew. The bottle fell from his hands, rolling across the floor, leaving a shining trail of liquid.
As it ran, the liquid gathered mites of dust. In the late afternoon sunlight it shimmered, putting in Mark's mind the year Nanette decided to be a mermaid. She had been so beautiful, with a skirt in hula style with fish scales in malleable, silver-blue fabric. Mermaids had nothing to do with Purim, but among jesters and many, many Queen Esthers, Nanette only stood out enough to be perfect. He had asked for a dance at carnival. She turned him down, laughed in his face. He had wanted to touch those scales. He dreamed about them, how they would feel merging with her skin. It was perhaps the mermaid he loved more.
Mark's vision blurred and tilted slightly. His jaw stung where Roger had punched him. The liquid kept shimmering. It was like an oilspill, the year his family lived in Los Angeles when he was seven. Mark wanted to touch the oil. He wanted to catch that elusive rainbow.
It was the pills first. Mark took over twenty of them in handfuls with a mug of tea. Roger returned to find him on the floor, coughing and puking. He called an ambulance and held his friend until the paramedics arrived. He changed out of his vomit-soaked clothes, washed the floor then went to the hospital. Collins was there.
"I don't understand," Roger said, gazing at Mark. "I don't… he was fine. This morning, he was fine. Why is he restrained?"
Collins gave Roger a long, disappointed look. "You can't protect yourself from this," he said. "You need, for him, to recognize it."
"To re-- oh. Oh, shit."
He sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room, sighing, gulping air, tugging his hair and rubbing his face. "Why?" he asked, again and again. "Thomas?"
Mark was released from the psych ward two weeks later. He was given a bottle of opiate anti-depressants, despite Roger's protests, and sent home.
Roger kicked Mark's hand when he reached for the liquid. "Don't you fucking dare," he spat. "Don't you dare."
"It's pretty," Mark whispered. Why was pretty never enough for anyone? Why did they want beautiful? Why did they always want everything to be beautiful? Mark did not understand. Pain was not beautiful. Pain hurt. Pain was ugly, not romantic, and yet they called it beautiful. The Atlantic Ocean was freezing cold and full of poisons, and yet they called it beautiful.
Mark liked pretty things. He liked the color of the Bombay Sapphire bottles. He liked when Roger sang slow songs with whole notes. He liked the way Maureen looked when she awoke in the morning.
"Pretty?" Roger demanded. "It's not fucking pretty, Mark!"
That was beautiful. They would call that beautiful, Roger's anger, his pure, boiling anger. But it wasn't beautiful. It hurt.
There were things Roger should have understood. Roger should have understood that Mark was alone. He should have understood that his soul had shrunk into a painful stone of nothingness weighing down his insides, that Mark had lived too long alone and compressed himself too much. Everything was so cold, cold, cold. He couldn't live alone anymore. He couldn't watch his friends die.
"I just want…" to touch it. I just want to do this once, do this right. I just want to not suffer anymore.
Roger walked into the bathroom. Mark stood before the mirror, eyes closed tightly, a gun at his temple. Roger reacted without thinking: he wrenched the gun from Mark's hand and shoved him into the shower. While Mark sputtered, shivered and struggled to stop the jet of freezing water, Roger emptied the gun. Mark had not loaded it properly: he had no bullet in the chamber, would have fired nothing.
After a while, Roger pulled Mark out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his trembling body. "No more of this," he said, hugging Mark against him. It was terrifying. How many more times? How long until Mark did this right? How long until Roger was not there to stop him? "No more."
And Mark promised with a trembling, runny-nosed nod.
Roger crouched in front of Mark. "What?" he asked gently, no longer angry. When Mark let his head loll and looked away, Roger stroked his cheek. "What do you want, Mark? Look at me! Don't look at that!" He had caught Mark's eyes wandering again to those shimmering colors. "Mark!"
When his hand reached again for the colorful stuff spreading across their floor, Roger slapped his face. Mark's fingers rose with slow curiosity to touch the flaming place on his cheek. "Why?" Roger asked. "Mark, what? Why?" Rat poison. Mark had chosen rat poison for his third attempt, was ready to tip the bottle upside down into his mouth. He chose to kill himself by massive internal hemorrhaging.
Roger wanted to cry.
Mark grinned. Trust Roger to misunderstand entirely. "Because," he said, "you're the beautiful one. Everyone always says your voice is beautiful, your songs are beautiful. Nothing I do is beautiful. It's 'true.' I want to be beautiful." And they only loved ugly things. Only ugly things were beautiful to them.
"You… you want… fucking hell!" Roger yanked Mark up by the collar. Mark did not exactly protest, but his actions were slow, his blood turned to syrup. Roger hauled him into the bathroom and stood him in front of the mirror. "There!" He pointed. "There, Mark. There's beautiful."
Mark began to laugh. "I look like shit," he said. His cheek was red where Roger had slapped him, jaw turning purple from the punch. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
Roger wrapped his arms around Mark as though protecting him. "You look pretty beautiful to me," he said.
Of course, Mark thought wryly. I'm your work now. He brought up his fingers and touched the warm spot on his cheek. "One fish." He winced as he depressed the bruised flesh of his jaw. "Two fish." It was clumsy work. Mark's glasses did him no good, but at last Roger had released him.
Mark stuck two fingers into his mouth and winced when he touched ragged flesh. "Red fish."
"Blue fish."
He turned. Roger, in his usual dopey, romantic way, had his fist folded over his heart.
Fin