Ready for You
By The Versatile Scarf
Chapter Eleven
A/N: Uhhhh HI. I dunno what's going on with this story. I'm just gonna get down to writing. HECK YES WATCH ME.
(What the heck has RENT fanfiction come to?)
Song: Ombra - Cirque du Soleil
x-x-x-x-x
over the distance slipping through our hands
Needles. Needles and hot and cold and waves of discomfort followed by flashes of relief. Then the cold returned as the needles dissipated and the muscles flexed and spread. The feeling crept upward, reaching the point of termination and fading completely. A crack, barely audible. A breath sucked in, held, then released through his nose.
He hadn't moved his leg from beneath his knee for half an hour, if not more. It was only when he'd been unable to feel the limb from the knee down that he'd shifted, jaw clenching at the horrible feeling of his foot awakening from its slumber, returning to life, and all that other resurrection bullshit. Mark had always hated that. Always hated remaining in one place for too long where the blood was restricted from some part of his body. Funny, then, that he chose to be a filmmaker. There was always the chance that he wouldn't be moving. There was always the chance that he'd be stuck in some horribly painful position. There was always the chance that when he broke free of this position he would simply topple over. So were the risks that he took.
And that movement just now, pulling the left leg from beneath the right knee, that had been a risk. It had been a risk because he feared pulling Roger out of that fiercely concentrated state he'd dissolved into. It was a risk because those fingers might stop their strumming. It was a risk because he feared he'd never hear the unending drone of Musetta's Waltz in person again.
It was that sort of fear he'd suppressed when he'd first gone away. Those memories he'd hidden in some dark recess of his mind. He'd left behind his films, for they would only serve as reminders. Reminders of Roger's musical block, of Collins' laughter and vague teasings, of Maureen's incessant 'Look at me' attitude.. Reminders of things he, at that point, had thought he'd never see again. In fact, had planned on never seeing again.
But he'd returned, hadn't he? Come back to this..
They'd called it hell, once.
That wasn't right, though, was it? In hell you weren't surrounded by your friends. Sure, there were arguments.. fights.. anger, but none of them truly hated one another. None of them truly hated Benny. And how could it be hell when they'd had an Angel?
Perhaps it was Purgatory. Certainly not Heaven, but it hadn't been so horrible.
A sour note. His jaw clenched spastically in apprehension, bandaged hands gripping at the camera settled on his legs.
Tension.
"You ever going to put that thing down?"
It was a full twenty seconds before Mark responded with anything more than a noncommittal grunt.
"Yeah."
Green eyes fell on the camera, flickered upward to wide blue, then back to the six strings. Back to the balance. Back to something that made sense.
"How about right now?"
Back to Mark.
"Maybe later."
And back to the guitar.
When a discordant sound was produced, there was a reason for it. His fingers slipped. A cause and effect. If then. A hypothesis. To Roger, Mark's recession did not make sense. It did not make sense that they'd actually ventured into their previously respective bedrooms the night before, settling into a sort of disjointed rhythm(that was interrupted time and time again), and when he'd come into the living room this morning the blonde had been sitting on the couch, clutching the camera so tightly his knuckles had turned white, staring at absolutely nothing.
He'd left him there, going about his business, glancing occasionally at the prone figure. The fingers had lessened their grip, and the stiff posture he'd adopted had relaxed. The eyes were no longer unblinking.
A step further. He'd gone to his room. He'd retrieved the guitar. He'd sat on the(ir) table. He'd strummed.
Mark had leaned back into the cushions behind him and turned to watch, hands now merely pressing against the camera(only God knew if the thing still worked--it had become more of a security blanket than a working piece of machinery), tension still evident, but lessened.
That had been forty minutes ago. Mark had only just moved for the first time in thirty a few minutes before. It was as though Mark had been hypnotized until Roger had begun hitting the sour notes, distracted by the staring. He'd thought, perhaps, that returning to something that would have been 'normal' three years, six months... no. He didn't know how long Mark had been gone for to the day. In fact, he hadn't been keeping track--the blonde mumbled in his sleep.
"Are you hungry?"
"No."
More silence, interspersed with random notes; a tuneless string.
"Maureen left us some stuff."
He'd been slipping others' names into their conversations in hopes of eliciting reactions.
"I'm fine."
Nothing yet.
Bringing up his fingers to rub lightly at his eyes, Roger heaved a sigh. He was tired. His sleep, that disjointed rhythm, had been disturbed at least ten times the night before. It was always the same, too. The first time had terrified him, but by the third he'd merely resigned himself to not sleeping very well.
The door would click and squeak open. A dim light thrown by the bulb in the bathroom would illuminate the shadow's feet as they shuffled just inside the doorway. There the shadow would stop, waiting. That lasted a full minute sometimes. Then the shadow would venture forward toward the foot of the bed and drop to its knees. Roger would pretend to still be asleep. A hand, like the fucking swamp creature, would rise slowly from the obscurity of the darkness and close around his ankle. The grip would be painful for a moment, as though testing for the limb's solidity and truth, and then relax.. but not disappear. Mark, for it could only be Mark, would release a sigh the size of a gale, and then move back toward the door.
It would serve him right if I left. was Roger's thought each and every time.
But he didn't leave.
He merely waited until the door shut again to curl up and wait for the next visit.
"Did you sleep well last night, Roger?"
"You should know, Mark."
... He wouldn't say that.
"Yeah."
"That's good."
.. This couldn't fucking go on the way it was.
x-x-x-x-x
"Did you buy this shampoo, Roger?"
The strange, stressed version of Mark that had been present this morning had faded as the day progressed. The camera was sitting next to the lamp between the(ir) ratty old couch and the overstuffed but worn out easy chair, momentarily forgotten, but Roger had seen the filmmaker's eyes stray toward it more than once throughout the course of the day.
Upon which he'd realized he'd been staring, and that had been more unnerving than anything.
He wouldn't admit it. He wouldn't admit the relief there. He wouldn't admit the happiness at their reunion.
He wouldn't admit that he laid awake the night previous because Mark's constant checks that Roger hadn't disappeared assured him that the filmmaker hadn't been a figment of his imagination.
"Maureen did."
The wry smile that worked its way across the pale lips almost showed through the chapped, cracked lips and the bruise on his chin.
"I should have know--"
That was it.
Roger stood sharply, startling them both into a silence, though the musician was the first to break it.
"No, Mark. You shouldn't have known." Four steps forward, a half-shuffle back. "How the fuck could you have known when you haven't spoken to Maureen in over three years?" Four steps forward, a half-shuffle back. "How the fuck could you be sure that she hasn't changed?" Four steps forward, a half-shuffle back. "How the fuck can you be sure that maybe, just maybe, some of us aren't he same?" Two steps forward, a step back.
"How the fuck can you know that you didn't change us?"
Mark's shoulder blades pressed against the wall. Roger stood two steps from him, the outward picture of calm, his words angry but his tone smooth. That was more frightening than any fury could have been.
"You can't just think things will go back to the way they were, Mark. You can't just come back, go a little crazy, and then expect things to return to normal."
Two steps left, two steps right.
"April's dead. Angel's dead. Mimi's dead. Collins is dead. You weren't even here for his fucking funeral, Mark. Has it ever occurred to you that you've missed out?"
Roger knew he was shaking. Roger knew that Mark was trembling. That annoyed him. It annoyed him beyond anything he could ever imagine. The incessant shivering before his eyes was pissing him off. A handful of shirt was grabbed, and knuckles pressed against fabric which pressed against sternum and the shoulder blades pressed further against the wall.
"You think you can make up for that in a few days? You don't want me to call anyone. They all still think you're raving. Do you even know what you did? No. You don't. That's another thing you've missed out on, Marky." His tone was no longer calm. It was snide, annoyed, with just a touch of anger. "We went through that together."
Roger could feel Mark's heart fluttering wildly beneath his knuckles.
"Call me when you've caught up."
Twenty minutes, two slammed doors, and a slew of curses later, Mark peered out from behind the door of his room.
He'd keep it together. Roger hadn't left for good. Roger couldn't have left for good. Roger's guitar was still sitting on the couch. Slid between two of the strings was a piece of paper. Swallowing, he stepped forward deliberately, one foot in front of the other.
A phone number.
He picked up the camera from the table, cradling it to his chest, and plucking the paper deftly away from the instrument.
Pausing, he regarded the scratched, though undeniably warm surface of the acoustic. The paper went between his lips, and his now free hand moved along the strings, creating a screechy sort of sound--nothing like the beautiful music he knew Roger was capable of. Gripping the neck, he lifted Roger's beloved--it was a promise--and moved for the phone.
He set the camera down first.
Taking the paper from between his lips, he set it beside the phone, and hauled himself up onto the(ir) table. Camera once again in his lap, guitar gripped tightly, he held the phone between his head and shoulder, dialing the number slowly, but with determination.
Two rings.
"J... Joanne? It's Mark."
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