I don't own Rent. Credit to Johnathon Larson. RIP you wonderful genius...
This wasn't even supposed to be a one-shot! It started out as something I was planning for a future fanfiction and I just ended up writing two thousand words and then adapting it to stand on its own. This is the first full Rent story I've ever written, I hope you guys like it! Entirely from Maureen's POV.
Love.
It was never like that for me and Mark. It was never real because I never loved him that way, and he knew it. I guess I was just scared, of a lot of things. I remember the day I told my parents I was a lesbian. Do you know what my dad did? He beat me. He fucking beat me and my mom just stood by and watched. And then when I showed up all bloody and bruised the next day at school, no one cared. No one showed a single bit of sympathy for me or even asked what had happened, except for Mark. He found me having some kind of breakdown behind the school. We hardly even knew each other when it happened, but we got to know each other. He sat with me through two classes while I cried and screamed and poured everything out for this boy to hear, and not once did he laugh or insult me or make me feel like any of it was my fault. All he did was hold me and tell me that everything was going to be okay, that there was nothing wrong with me, that I was still the Maureen Johnson everyone knew and loved...
Loved. He loved me, and that's when it started. Even from the beginning when he knew I couldn't love him back. I can't even imagine what that would be like, being in love with your best friend and knowing it can never happen. Eventually he did tell me. I had snuck out of my house one night after my dad came home drunk and ended up breaking my wrist. I went straight to Mark's and we sat in his basement for hours. He told me that he loved how brave I was being, how strong, and how beautiful I was through all of it... and he kissed me. I let him. We both knew that it didn't mean what either of us wanted it to, but we still did it and then I fell asleep in his arms. After that it became routine for me to spend the night at his house. If my parents noticed they sure as hell didn't care. No one ever cared about me for a long time, except for him. Sure, at school I was the drama queen that everyone admired but never actually became friends with. He was the one who took the time to know the real me.
Eventually we did get together, if what we had could ever be called a relationship. To me it was different. It started one night about four months after I had told my parents. I had this girl up in my room. I hadn't thought my parents would be home until after midnight and so we didn't lock my door... we were only making out, that's it. I actually kind of liked that girl, but then suddenly my parents burst in and my dad started yelling at me like he always did. My mom got that other girl out to take her home and my dad... Mark ended up sneaking to my house that night, wondering why I wasn't at his. It took everything I had to convince him not to call the police when he saw me. Eventually he managed to get Roger, Collins and Benny to come over- I didn't know them until that night- and they took me to this little hang out area they called "The Space." The five of us became the best of friends that night, and I asked Mark to pretend to be my boyfriend. Looking back it was just cruel of me, knowing that he loved me and it would only hurt him more to know that I wasn't entirely his. But I didn't know what else to do. I figured it would convince my parents that it was all just a phase. It also meant that if I met a girl they wouldn't suspect anything.
Was I cheating on Mark? You could say that, if we were really a couple. In private or with the guys we just acted like friends, at first. Then it started to feel real. I wasn't in love with him, but he was like my brother and I trusted him. Knowing he loved me, maybe I also wanted him to be able to have as much of me as possible. So we started acting like a real couple. We would hold each other when no one else was around to see. I started to say "I love you" back. I would let him kiss me when he wanted and I even started to kiss him when he didn't ask for it. Eventually we started to get intimate, and I just pretended it was all real like I knew he was doing, because it was real for him. All I knew was that he cared about me and would never hurt me. But I hurt him. I hurt him so much and so often that I can't believe he ever thought I was worth it.
In the years after we graduated and before I broke up with him once and for all, I would come back to the loft after being out all night, some article of clothing missing and he would be waiting for me every single time without fail. He would just look up at me from the couch, knowing I had been at some bar, knowing I had hooked up with some girl, knowing that it would happen all again in a few days and knowing that he would let it happen. Knowing that I would let him take me that night but that it wouldn't feel the same. "I cheated on you again," I would say after coming home. He would look at me for a while before nodding and opening his arms, and without a word I would fall into them and let him feel like I was all his. No one but our friends knew otherwise, but even they wouldn't have been able to see it any other way. It was all so perfect on the outside, but I wasn't completely satisfied. I had just about accepted the fact that I would stay with him forever because he would never leave me and I couldn't leave him without a damn good reason. No other girl I met would have been worth losing him over. No girl until Joanne...
When I met her, it was as if my entire world stopped for a split second and everything I had worked so hard to build just came crumbling down around me. She caught me staring at her from across the coffee shop. I had noticed her when I walked in, but it was different than the way I noticed women I had one night stands with. This woman was so much more than that. Without even speaking to her I knew that I wanted- no, I needed to know her. I needed to talk to her and get inside that gorgeous head of hers and learn what made her tick. I needed to stay up late with her talking about anything and everything, fall asleep AND wake up in her arms instead of leave while she was still wasted. I don't know how I knew this, but I did. When she noticed me staring she blushed and waved me over, an adorable little smile playing on her lips when I sat down across from her. She told me that I had caught her eye as well and for some reason wanted to talk to me. And we did talk, for hours and hours and I had never felt so alive. When she gave me her number and left, the desire burning in my body was not for sex as it usually was. The desire I felt was simply to be with her. She intrigued me, this lawyer who hung around the Lower East Side when she clearly belonged amongst higher class folk. I called her up that night and ended up going over to her place, spending the night there on her couch instead of in her bed, yearning as I was to even have her lying next to me sleeping.
I broke up with Mark two days later, telling him exactly why I was doing it, and exactly why he never needed to speak to me again. He was strong that day. He didn't cry, didn't shout, didn't even raise his voice. He smiled at me sadly when I told him that I was in love and said that this would always be my home, and he would always be here for me. He helped me pack my things and I went over to Joanne's apartment, moving in without a formal invitation. She didn't seem to mind, and pointed out on that first night how ridiculous it was for me to be sleeping on her couch if we were going to be living together. We hadn't even kissed each other yet, but we did that night. That was all that we did, kiss and then fall asleep with her arms wrapped around me. It was so bizarre and new and it felt so right to me. How long had I known this girl? Three days. I had known her for three days and I was throwing away everything I had since I was sixteen years old, but somehow I wasn't worried. When she held me that night it didn't feel like it did with Mark. It felt like I fit there perfectly, like her arms had been waiting for me to find them all those years.
It hadn't been much more than pure chance that ripped me away from Mark and dropped me into Joanne's life, nothing more than luck and my caffeine addiction that drove me to that coffee shop on that exact day, only five minutes after she had gotten out of work after having nearly decided to go home and save her three dollars on overpriced coffee. But somehow it all happened perfectly. Maybe if I hadn't stayed with Mark all that time I wouldn't have met her. Maybe if I never lied about being straight I would have ended up dead from all the beatings instead of booking it out of my parents home the moment I turned eighteen. And maybe if Joanne hadn't helped to keep me sane I would never have had the courage to confront my parents again and tell them that it was my life, whether they liked it or not. I loved this woman, this perfect amazing one-in-a-million woman that took my breath away every time I saw her.
But it always comes back to Mark, doesn't it? That funny little cameraman who had decided to take the long way to class and ended up running into a broken drama queen. That boy saved me and guided me through some of the toughest years of my life. Without him I wouldn't have the love of my life, and maybe it's heartless of me to say that when I know he still loves me. He may deny it to his friends and even to me, but I can tell. He still looks at me the same way he did all those years ago in his basement when he kissed me for the first time. He looks and me and knows that we could have been perfect together, but also that perfect never would have meant happy. I guess in the end life can't be fair to all of us. Maybe one day he'll meet another girl and realize that all this pain was worth it. He'll understand why I left him for Joanne and that everything really can work out in the end.
Until that day, he'll still have our memories. I'll have my Joanne, and he'll have those days we spent together back when everything made sense, and I could tell him that I loved him back.