Tittle: Connect the Dots
Author: flyery
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Rating: PG/T
Summary: Roger doesn't know what he's done to deserve Mark.
Notes: More than anything else this is a character study with no clear plot. Also, this is M/R, this is slash. There is nothing graphic. If you don't like this sort of thing, I am not forcing you to read it.
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Rent, be it the characters or the plot. I just play around with them.
Roger never went to a rehab center. Instead, he made Mark promise at the beginning, right when he promised to get off heroin, to stay with him, to keep him safe, to force him threw withdrawal. So Mark stayed with him, helped him through it all because Mark didn't break his promises.
Roger knew that Mark worked hard during that time, trying to deal with a Roger who wasn't the friend he'd known before.The problem was that it wasn't only heroin that he was addicted to, he was addicted to the whole lifestyle. He was addicted to the sex, the drugs and the rock and roll; that status, that lifestyle that came with being a rock star. He was addicted to April too, but she was gone, was ripped away from his hands, by his hands.
He trusted Mark with all that, with keeping him sane, with preventing him from going back, no matter how much he wanted to. He trusted him to know what was right for him. Mark would keep him safe, he reasoned, Mark would help him.
He knew he was right some time through the second day.
Mark let him go to his room and let him lock the door and trusted him with his own privacy. Mark didn't give up on him when everyone else did. Roger could hold on to Mark as hard as he wanted to and Mark would continue to promise him that he'd never leave him, that he'd always be there for him.
Of course he would knock on the door every half hour or so, would check on him, would force him to eat, to take his pills, but he seemed to know that Roger wanted to quit even if he was still taunted by little baggies overfilling with white powder and spoons and candles and needles that glistened…
The only thing that abruptly ended those fantasies each time they tempted him was the blood that always rested on the tips of those needles. His contaminated blood, April's contaminated blood. That and Mark's pretty blue eyes. Pretty blue eyes that could always read him and were always alert now, always ready to check for cloudy eyes and new marks.
Roger knew that he deserved that look, that it along with his polluted blood were his punishment for breaking all the rules.
When he thought back on it, on that year, half a year (he wasn't sure) he remembered shaking and twitching and being to weak to anything but throw up in the kitchen sink. (He couldn't even throw up in the bathroom anymore, every time he stopped retching he would see it decorated with April's blood and notes and far too many broken promises.)
He remembered Mark holding a cool cloth to his forehead, remembered Mark devoting all his time and money on keeping him clean, on buying him pills, on keeping him safe.
Roger made the whole thing harder, took the hard way out after the taking the easy way for so long. That was the difference between him and April, he supposed. She took the easy way right to the end but at the last minute he took the hardest path.
There were so many ways to try to quit that are less hard on the body, on the mind, but he insisted on doing it the hard way. Most junkies took a medication that produced similar effects and the patient was gradually weened off of it.
He refused to let anymore drugs in his system (not that they could afford it), did it the hard way where it hurt and ached and little baggies called to him. But that was another part of his punishment: he had stopped seeing life, stopped seeing April and this was what he deserved, he deserved it all.
The person who didn't deserve it was Mark. Mark who did so much and suffered for him and had to restrain him when he ran at the door. He'd hurt Mark, he was sure, even beyond the physical pain he caused.
He remembered Mimi going throw withdrawal and knew he was so much worse. Yet Mark succeeded where he couldn't, Mark saved his best friend while Roger couldn't save his lover. Mark deserved some reward for what he did, deserved warm water and fresh food and a full stomach and all the things Roger couldn't give him. So why hadn't he already left and succeeded in his own life like Roger knew he could?
Roger never wanted Mark to leave him but he was sure that he should before he got too sucked Roger's problems.
Mark would later tell him that he already had, that within five months of meeting Roger, it was already too late for Mark to forget the musician who had captured the lens of his camera
He knew there were holes in his memory. Holes that should have been filled with violent outbursts and blood leaking out of Mark and bruises appearing across Mark's arms. Knew that he hurt Mark. Knew that he was the one to blame for the scar that Mark had hidden under a scarf that his mom knitted. His mind was filled with so many holes. If his memory was knitted into a sweater, it would fall apart for all the holes.
He doesn't remember but Roger was always good at playing connect the dots. There were the scars on Mark's shoulders, along his forearm, the ones that crisscrossed his thighs and his stomach. There was the way Mark flinched every time Roger tensed up, every time his muscles readied for a fight. It wasn't a hard game to play, connect the dots.
It wasn't something he liked to remember but at the same time it was a lesson, a warning.
He'd like to think that he'd never hurt Mark but he knew that that wasn't be true, that he already had.
Roger couldn't see what he'd done in life to deserve Mark. But he must have done something because Mark deserved sainthood, or whatever the Jewish equivalent of that was, for staying with Roger.
Maybe, to some degree, Mark felt it was his duty to help him. Back in high school, according to Maureen, Mark had been well on the way to becoming a crackhead but something had stopped him. Maybe it was that near brush that had given him this strength. Whatever it was, Roger knew that Mark had always stayed by his side.
There are a lot of things that Roger had learned to live without. Things like smack and April and glory and worship and songs that sounded right.
He was never good at giving things up: as a child at church he'd always hated Lent because he didn't see the point in giving things up. Still somewhere along the line he just had too because that's what happened when his life collapsed, when the glory he'd been so close to getting had slipped out of his fingers.
He deserved that for his reckless life.
Sometimes, he thought that in Sunday School they should tell his story to explain to little children why they should learn to appreciate Lent; because really, they'd only keep having to give things up for the rest of their life.
But now, he'd gotten some practice but practice didn't make it any easier. He still held things too close to him, so close that they ran away and it wasn't any easier each time it happened. Gradually pain fades and it was only once in a while now that he found himself looking up when he saw girls with orange-red hair and dark eyeliner or when he passed by CBGB's.
Losing Mark would be different, he decided. Because without Mark Roger had no reason to stay clean, to prevent him from becoming one of those junkies who begged for money on street corners. Mark was the one who kept him going even when everyone else gave up.
He'd said thank you, maybe once with words, but Mark still heard it somehow.
Mark heard the "I love you"s too and those were never spoken except in looks and glances. Something in Mark gave him the ability to hear all that Roger said without ever needing his ears.
It was a good thing that Mark was so good at hearing without using his ears because otherwise he and Roger would never talk. In fact they would never have become best friends, never have stayed by each others' side, never would have been brave enough to deepen the first kiss that had been given without one of them being high, drunk or dared to.
Roger could trace every scar he'd ever given Mark by now and each time he did it, he hoped they'd rubbed off a bit. But he knew that those were part of his punishment.
Sometimes Roger wished he could just drop all of his baggage. The problem was that without all those memories, all that baggage he'd never have given Mark a second look. It wasn't that Roger-before-baggage was cruel but he'd never been good at love or commitment or relationships.
Roger-with-so-much-baggage-it-almost-ripped-his-arms-off was a little better.
A/N: So I hope you liked this and if you did or you didn't please review and just let me know. I don't really care if it's just one word, I'd just like to know what people think because that's really the greatest gift yo can give me. Thanks for reading!