Hello all! This is Chapter Four! Yay! Soo…well, in this chapter I get into the beginnings of the whole Benny thing, which was insanely fun to write because it had a lot of room to be creative, because there isn't really much we know about it. This chapter is mainly a flashback to the Benny-and-Mimi days. I apologize for the suckisness of the previous two chapters, which just…bother me. I think this one is better though. So read, enjoy, and review, even if it's to tell me that this sucks beyond belief. Thanks to Mary, my beta! She gets an Angel hug!

Mimi zipped up her boots, tousled her hair, and slashed some lipstick across her mouth. Her makeup was gaudy to the point of being obnoxious, and her outfit consisted of an incredibly skimpy leather bikini, fishnets, and leather boots. Ah, work.

She slipped into her silky robe for the beginning of her act. God, she hated this job. Mimi loved dancing, but this was practically the opposite. Sure, she moved to music, but this wasn't elegant, this wasn't art. Mimi was a sex toy, and she felt disgusting.

Making her way to the curtain, she sighed. A nineteen-year-old shouldn't have to entertain balding, middle-aged men for a living. But then again, she told herself, I'm old for my age. As if that really made a difference.

The music started, and she strutted onstage, her expression a mask of sexiness and confidence. She knew this routine by heart. Seductive spin here, hip shake there, try not to let them notice your skin crawling as they shove money into your bra. Yeah, it wasn't rocket science.

Mimi faced the audience, sinking slowly and seductively to the floor. Before she could spin around and kick her legs, however, she caught sight of someone in the audience that caught her so off guard she stopped, nearly toppled over, leapt to her feet, and yelled "What the hell?!"

The music went on, but the audience was confused, outraged that their pretty little sex toy stopped shaking her ass. Mimi could see her choreographer toward the back looking furious. She didn't care. This was ridiculous. She leapt down from the stage, and automatically everyone started pawing at her. She slapped some hands, and whispered with acid in her words "Keep your goddamn hands off me."

She made her way over to her target, glaring. "Benny," She said coldly. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"I wanted to see your show," Benny said, his voice a low, seductive purr. "I haven't seen it in ages." He looked her up and down, and she snatched his jacket from his chair to cover herself.

"You have a wife, Benny," Mimi snarled.

"That didn't seem to matter to you three months ago." Benny flashed her a coy smile, and she shuddered.

"I told you at the Life Café. It's over. I'm with Roger. And I'd like to remind you, in case it slipped your mind; thanks to you I'm technically homeless." She made to walk away because everyone was staring, but Benny caught her arm and pulled her back.

He looked thoughtful. "Ah…right. Your building. How 'bout we discuss it over dinner?"

Mimi stared at him warily. "You might actually reconsider?"

He nodded slowly. "How about you change and I take you out to eat?" he suggested.

Mimi thought for a moment, then shook her head.

"No. I'm not going to go out to eat with you. You have a wife, and I'm not going to let you cheat on her again." Benny opened his mouth to protest, but Mimi continued.

"I know eating dinner isn't technically cheating, but I don't feel….comfortable….doing so. Maybe I'll just drop in on you at home some day soon and we can talk about it. Talk about it, then leave right afterwards." She glared at him.

"I know how you are, Benny." She said. "I won't let it happen ever again."

And with that, Mimi walked away, still wearing Benny's jacket, leaving everyone in the room wholly confused. There was no way she could finish her act after that. She got dressed, mind whirring the whole time, and headed back to Angel's apartment, which, for the moment, was home.

Mimi burst through the door to Angel's apartment and flopped down onto the couch. Angel walked out of the kitchen, looking perplexed.

"Hey, Meems, you're back early," she said. Mimi groaned.

"Angel," she said. "Something really weird happened at work today."

Angel looked instantly concerned. "What happened?"

"Well," Mimi said, sitting up and turning around to face her friend, "Benny was there, and he tried to get me to come to dinner with him. He said we could discuss the possibility of him taking the padlock off of my building."

"What the hell?! What did you say?!" Angel exclaimed, sinking onto the couch next to Mimi.

"No, of course." Mimi said, "But I told him I might drop in on him to talk about it. Because if he's serious, shouldn't I at least try?"

Angel looked wary. "You know how he is, hon. I'd be damn careful if I was you. You remember how it was last time."

Mimi nodded. She knew all to well.

Flashback – Three Months Earlier

Mimi was cold. She felt terrible. She had spent all her AZT money on heroin this week, and now that was gone, too. She hadn't been getting as many good tips at the Catscratch lately; business hadn't been going well for the club for a while. No money for food, smack, AZT or anything else. She was feeling more desperate than ever.

Later that night, she walked out the doors of the Catscratch Club, just having finished her shift. She was debating with herself about which was a priority to buy first with the meager wage she had earned today: food, AZT, or smack? Did she have enough for a slightly more lasting amount of either?

Sighing, she leaned against the brick of the building, feeling slightly woozy. Her head hurt, and she closed her eyes.

"Um, excuse me?" A smooth, deep voice broke Mimi from her trance. She snapped her eyes open to see a handsome, smartly dressed black man standing in front of her, looking worried.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

Mimi shook her head, then nodded, then began stuttering out a confused, incoherent sentence. "Yes, I mean, no, I mean, well, I guess I'm okay but I'm not great, I mean, well, I'm sorry, sir, but I really should be getting home." She made to walk away, but he stopped her.

"Are you one of the dancers? You look familiar." Seeing the pained look on her face, he quickly added "I'm sorry, that was rude. Would you like to come to dinner with me? You look dead on your feet."

Mimi stared at him. This man was an angel. "Oh, yes, please!" She said in earnest. Not wanting to sound desperate, she quickly backtracked, saying "I mean, if that's okay. It sounds like it would be nice."

He smiled at her and nodded.

Later that same night, Mimi and Benny-the man she had met-were making out fiercely on a couch in his ritzy penthouse apartment. Mimi felt so released and thrilled; something in her life was finally looking up. She grabbed his hand in hers, happiness bursting through her veins. Wait a second. What was that she felt on his finger? Hard, cold, metallic….she broke away from him to look at it.

It was a wedding band.

Gasping in horror, Mimi bolted upright, shoving his hands away. "What the fuck, Benny?!" She exclaimed in a whisper that was almost a scream. "You're-you're……you're married?!"

He nodded absentmindedly and put his hand on the back of her neck to try to pull her into another kiss. She leaped to her feet, shuddering.

"What's her name? Don't you care? You're cheating on her!!" Mimi swayed slightly. Though with a full stomach and pulsing with adrenaline, she was still severely lacking in the smack-and-AZT department.

Benny looked disappointed, like he had hoped she wouldn't care. "Well…" he said, "Her name is Allison Grey. She's my wife, but……I don't love her." He paused as Mimi stared at him in outrage, and continued. "You, on the other hand, are much more…shall I say….enjoyable to be with." He stood up, and walked over to where Mimi was standing. He smiled seductively and traced her cheekbone with his fingertip.

"Weren't you telling me earlier how poor your financial situation is at the moment? If you want, I could help you out. I am your landlord, after all."

Why was his logic suddenly making perfect sense? Mimi thought of the wedding band on his finger, proclaiming him wed to someone he clearly wasn't suited for, someone who naturally wasn't worthy of him, and how could this be a bad thing if he wasn't really in love with her at all? She couldn't see the ring anymore, all she could see were his eyes and his beautiful, rich chocolate skin…..

Later, Benny broke apart from her for long enough to say "So I guess this means you don't care about Allison?"

"Allison who?" Mimi murmured against his lips.

They continued their passionate affair, meeting in secret places and hiding from the world. Mimi always was eager to get away from everything and just run off to be with him; he was becoming an even better release than smack. Speaking of smack, he even leant her money to pay for it, AZT too. Not that she ever told him where his money was going, but he didn't seem to care. A whisper in his ear that she was running low on cash, she would be taken care of.

Mimi wasn't sure if she loved him, exactly, but she loved the time she spent with him. It was the closest thing to a real relationship she'd had in a long time, despite the fact that it was an affair.

After a bit more than two months of bliss, however, Mimi could see that they were starting to fray. Benny didn't seem to care that much about her anymore, beyond her "company."

One day Mimi entered the dressing room at the Catscratch to see Benny standing much too close to a particularly, well, whore-y blonde and whispering something in her ear while she giggled. Mimi saw his hand wrapped around the girl's waist. He was slipping money into the waistband of her costume.

Mimi stared at him, outraged, fury pulsing through her veins. He looked up and met her gaze. His smile faded slightly and he made to go over to her, but she sprinted out the door before he could catch up.

After that encounter, Mimi sat on Angel's couch with her head on Angel's shoulder.

"Honey," Angel said softly, "You know that if he's the kind of man to cheat on his wife, he's likely to cheat on you too."

Mimi sighed. "Well, maybe I should know that, but he always told me that I was so much more important than Allison! I mean, he doesn't love her….I thought that maybe…..he was serious about me."

Angel smiled sadly. "Meems, no man who is having an affair cares about anything more important than sex. You should've thought about that."

Mimi sat up straight. "Well, what the hell was I supposed to think?!" She exclaimed with rage and pain tearing through her words. "He paid for my AZT, he took me places, he acted like he goddamn loved me!!" She drew back into herself again, and whispered softly, "So what now? Where do I go from here?"

Angel brushed a curl from Mimi's forehead. "Break up with him." She said simply. "Tell him he's a cheating bastard asshole, and you won't have any more of it. You're not his little bitch anymore."

Mimi nodded. "I will," she said, feeling strong.

And with that, Mimi and Benny were no longer a "thing." She went back to living single, and he turned off her apartment's electricity.

End Flashback

"Angel….." Mimi said, "What would I do without you?"

Angel laughed. "Die? Go crazy? End up as an old woman who spends her days drinking herbal tea, writing haikus and serenading her forty-seven cats?"

Mimi stared at her, shook her head, then continued. "Seriously, though, Ang. You always take care of me."

Angel gave her a small smile. "Well, that's what friends are for, right, chica?"

Mimi smiled back at her halfheartedly. "I just wish…that I could do the same for you."

Angel looked at her in a sad, patient way. "You don't have to."

Before Mimi could respond, however, there was a bit of a commotion in the hall. They heard a loud noise, then a stream of swearing.

"I think your professor's home, " Mimi teased, and Angel brightened up, going over to the door to let Collins in. He was hopping on one foot.

"I stubbed my goddamn fucking toe!" He exclaimed angrily. Mimi and Angel burst out laughing. Collins hopped over to the couch, and Angel went to tend to him.

"I should go see my boy, too." Mimi stood up and waved. "Bye hon."

And with that, she headed over to Maureen and Joanne's apartment, where her sullen, broken boyfriend was waiting.

Mimi strode through the doors of the apartment, which was quite modern and clean compared to the loft. Well, a lawyer did live there, after all. Mimi was glad that she was staying at Angel's instead. She waved a greeting to Mark, who was sitting on the couch looking entirely absorbed in his camera and didn't even seem to notice her. Maureen and Joanne were bickering in the kitchen. She heard the quiet strains of Musetta's Waltz wafting through the air and followed them to find Roger in the guest room, sitting on the bed and plucking absent-mindedly at the strings on his guitar.

"Hey," she said softly and Roger looked up. He set his guitar off to the side.

"Hey," He responded. She sat next to him and laced her fingers through his.

"Why do you always play that song?" Mimi asked him. She had heard those delicate notes too often for there not to be a reason for his playing them.

Roger looked away and gave one of his rare, small, awkward smiles. "I'm not sure exactly," he began slowly. "I just…love how it sounds so beautiful and sad at the same time." She nodded, and he went on. "And La Boheme is such a gorgeous opera."

Mimi smiled. "You don't strike me as an opera fan."

"I'm not, for the most part," Roger said, shrugging. "I just really…relate to that one."

Mimi thought about how Roger was so different than Benny, and how unfair it was that Roger was so much better a person and had so much harder a life. She wondered, as she sat with him and they quietly discussed different aspects of life, if there was a way to bring Benny back into her life for a short time without hurting Roger or herself. She wasn't going to be his whore again. All Mimi wanted was to have her apartment back, and she knew that Roger missed the loft. If she could somehow persuade their landlord to oblige, and therefore help everybody, wouldn't it be worth the risk?

Authors Note: Thanks for reading, and reviewers=EPIC WIN!!! On a side note, this is what Mary, my beta, typed in place of my thank-you to her when she beta'd this:

"My amazing beyond belief beta for this chapter is my best friend Mary. I love her so, she is such a role model for us all. Oh, to be like her would be to smell a thousand roses!"

I just thought that was too much of a gem to not share with the general public. :)