Disclaimer: RENT belongs to Jonathan Larson

After the coffee and sweets had been eaten, the younger members of the family were sent upstairs to brush their teeth and change into pajamas. Something in the jostling at the sink, the multitude of far too many elbows and knees and the littlest one straining to pop up and spit into the basin, eased a knot in Roger's chest.

Of course, he still plainly did not fit in. Both Mark and Maureen wore soft, plaid flannels, and Mimi wore a nightgown. Roger had an old T-shirt and sweatpants that were getting to be a bit too short for him. And when the others stampeded downstairs to say goodnight to their parents, Roger hung back.

"Aren't you coming?" Mark asked. When Roger hesitated, he said, "It would mean a lot to Angel and Collins, I bet."

I don't owe them anything, Roger thought, but he followed Mark down the stairs.

Mimi settled herself on her mother's lap. She obviously meant to fall asleep there rather than in a strange bed. Maureen hugged her parents and aunts and uncles, and Mark did the same. He paused for a moment and spoke with Collins.

Roger hung back, leaning against the doorjamb. After his brief chat Mark trotted over to him and said, "Collins said I could stay in your room tonight."

A hint of a smile played at Roger's lips, but it faded when Collins followed the boys upstairs, though he explained, "I don't think either of you knows where the sleeping bags are… you don't mind, do you, Mark?"

"He can have the bed," Roger mumbled.

Collins tossed a sleeping bag to Mark, who caught it and said, "I can't kick you out, Roger."

"I'm offering." He glanced at Collins. "Take the bed."

"You two can sort it out yourselves," Collins decided. He hugged Mark once more and kissed his forehead; Roger stayed back, his face stony. "'Night, boys."

When they were alone, Mark shut the door and said, "I can't take your bed, Roger. I'll sleep on the floor."

Roger just said, "Okay."

"Collins and Angel said they'd get you new pajamas," Mark added. "You get in bed first, I don't want to be stepped on."

Roger crawled under the covers, then Mark flicked off the light. They didn't speak as Mark unzipped his sleeping bag and settled in it, then zipped the bag up again. Their breathing deepened to match and fill the room.

Mark broke the silence that wasn't a silence. "How come you don't let them hug you?" he asked.

"I don't like being touched," Roger said. "Not by people who aren't family or lovers. It's not right."

"Collins and Angel are family," Mark replied.

Roger was silent for a long moment after that. From downstairs came a burst of laughter: the adults, conversation lubricated by the copious amounts of food they had swallowed and glasses of wine, were enjoying themselves.

"Were you adopted?" Roger wanted to know. Everyone knew that he was, since he had lived with Collins and Angel for only a few months. Roger himself had been a fosterling so many years, he no longer thought twice about it. "Is that why you have a black mother?"

"No," Mark told him. "My dad's white, like me and Maureen."

"Is he dead?"

"No, they're just divorced."

"Do you mind?" Roger asked.

"Not really," Mark answered honestly. The boys instinctively kept their voices low, adding an air of intimacy to their conversation. "They parted on pretty good terms, actually. And it's not like Mo and I don't see Dad. We do."

"So how come they're not married?" Roger asked.

Mark shifted, searching for a more comfortable spot on the floorboards. "My mom's a lesbian," he said.

"Look, you don't have to tell me--"

"No, she's really a lesbian," Mark insisted.

Roger leaned over the side of the bed. "You serious?"

"I'm serious," Mark said, and scowled when Roger laughed. "Are your parents both…?"

"Dead," Roger said.

"I'm sorry."

"Like shit."

A few drops of rain fell. Light flew into the room as a car passed, slowly, on the street.

"Roger?" Mark asked. Wind rustled to leaves on the tree in the front yard. "How did they die?"

When Roger answered, he sounded as though he was trying not to cry. "They just did," he said.

"Rog--"

"Nevermind!" Roger snapped.

For a moment Mark lay in the dark, quiet, straining to pick out the voices of his family below. In the next room, his sister was snoring softly. "When I was small," Mark said quietly, letting the darkness swallow his words, "I used to make up stories. I would make up stories where I would have these adventures… one of my favorites," he admitted, blushing, though no one saw, "was that I was a prince. And there was usually an evil princess and I was supposed to marry her, but in the end I destroyed her."

Then he listened to the scorn he had always imagined meeting this announcement, until Roger said, quietly, "You can be the prince."

"Who will you be?" Mark asked.

"I'll be the young slave who captivates you at the market. You see me penned with the others and you're fascinated," Roger narrated.

Mark took up the thread of the story, "I can't stop thinking about you, though we move on, to the point that I return later in the day--"

"Only to find," Roger interrupted, "that I had already been purchased!"

"And by one of the cruelest nobles in all the land," Mark decided, too caught up in the story to really consider what sort of tale he was telling, "who would use you for his bed until he tired of you, and then work you or beat you to death."

A number of factors at work produced the gruesome tale. Mark's frustration and inability to lash out at his hypercompetitive, controlling high school environment contributed, and Roger's feeling of futility towards his own life. Their repressed teenage libidos moved things along, and the fact that neither had grasped the concept of subtlety. Mark understood it visually and Roger in music, but in storytelling both were subtle as a knock on the head.

As the story progressed, Mark tried to buy Roger and failed. Roger managed to avoid mistreatment by his master, but only by ducking again and again out of tricky situations. He finally lost after he and his noble-master, who had no name, went to court and Mark humiliated the noble, who took it out on Roger.

Mark rescued Roger.

"What did he do to you?" Mark wanted to know.

"He hit me," Roger said, "with his belt, his hands, whatever was nearby." There was no question in either boy's mind whether this was a fictitious creation. Returning quickly to fiction, "I manage to make it to your room, with your help, and then I collapse."

The story continued that Mark cut away Roger's clothes. He rinsed and bound any place that was bleeding. Luckily none of Roger's bones had broken.

Mark kept the room clear of anyone but the healers who visited to tend to Roger. Once Mark had learned how, only he was allowed in the room. Roger slept for almost an entire day. When his eyes opened, Mark helped him sit up and made him drink some broth. Roger was asleep before he could speak, but he woke a few hours later to pee, and Mark gave him more food and this time they spoke.

Slowly, as Roger's body healed, the boys began to kiss and touch, Roger thinking Mark was a healer and Mark keeping his identity secret.

"Were the stories always like this?" Roger asked, breaking the mood somewhat. He was no longer tired.

Mark considered. "Not really," was his first impression. "I always got rid of the girl," he admitted, "but I never got so far as meeting the boy."

"When did you know?"

"I guess…" Mark considered for a moment. "I took Hebrew school classes with this girl… we made out together. I didn't like it. That was my test, when I was twelve. Hey, Roger?"

"Yeah?"

"Earlier you said that… you don't like to be touched except by family or lovers."

"Mhm."

"Have you had many lovers?"

Roger chewed his lip before admitting, "No. I had a thing with a girl in one of the homes, but…"

"Did you have sex with her?"

"I was thirteen," Roger said.

In the lull, leaves whispered on the trees. Cars drove by, distant. Maureen snored in the next room, but no discussion came from downstairs. As the boys told their story, the adults had gone to bed.

Mark checked his watch. It was one a.m. "I've never had a lover," he said.

"Have you ever had a boyfriend before?" Roger asked.

Mark considered this. The short answer was that no, he had not. Rain pattered against the sidewalk and wind rustled leaves on the trees.

Mark climbed up into Roger's bed and snuggled close against him. "Are you my boyfriend?" he asked quietly. "Did you mean it when you kissed me?"

Facing the wall, Roger said, equally quiet, "I meant it."

"So it's okay if I touch you?"

"Yes."

"Why do you sleep in only a T-shirt? Aren't you cold?"

"No." He had been, but the heat trapped under the blankets warmed him, and his sweatpants were far too small to be comfortable.

It bothered Roger, at first. It bothered him and he knew precisely why, anger boiling deep inside him at the hypocrisy as Mark's fingers explored his body. He didn't, couldn't enjoy it, he just lay there and let Mark get on with it.

Then the fires in Roger, buried deep where he had confined them time and again, flicked at the nearness. Where he had thought only burned coal remained a flame lapped, then a blaze.

For some moments Roger had felt Mark's erection against him. He just hadn't cared. Now he did. Now the closeness, the nearness, Mark's hands against Roger's chest, now it meant something. Compassion chipped at his defenses. This was not what it had been with the girl. This was Mark, caring about Roger, in all that beautiful hypocrisy of loves.

Roger's breathing grew shallow. The flames within him found the same flame not millimeters away, the fire in Roger calling to the fire in Mark.

As something unfamiliar flooded his mind and Roger's consciousness ceded to passion, his lips moved around the shape of a single word. That word was namaste.

To be continued...