Yep, finished. Is anyone else amazed? I am. Thanks so much to everyone who read and reviewed. I appreciate it so much, and I'd appreciate reviews for this last chapter more than anything. I feel like I should say more but I have no words left, they've all been sucked into this story. But thanks, again.
They're not mine.
VIII.
Roger stood in the doorway of Mark's bedroom, leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest. This had become a familiar position for him over the past few months, one that he had spent countless hours in. He would stand there late at night, silent and barely breathing, watching Mark. Mark alone, sometimes with his arms clasped sleepily around a pillow, hungry for someone to hold onto. Mark with her - with April - her head lying trustingly on his shoulder. Mark and Maureen, who ended up most nights with their backs to each other. But always Mark. Except for tonight. Tonight he stared at the empty, twisted sheets where his friend should have been if Roger hadn't acted with the raging selfishness and single-mindedness that he was always so quick to criticize in others.
Because Maureen was right. The song was about Mark.
His song had probably been about Mark for far longer than he realized. It had been so different when April was still there. The filmmaker had been important and loved and beautiful, but he had been that to both of them. It was natural and easy; there weren't these dark questions and concerns pulling at them, making them feel guilty and confused. She had smoothed it all. On the nights when Roger woke up to find a cold, empty spot in the bed beside him, he knew she was with Mark. Sometimes he would pull himself drowsily out of bed, compelled by some strange need to see them, and cross the cold living room floor on quiet feet to lean in the doorway, as he did now. He would stare at them, feeling tumultuous emotions rising inside of him but not feeling the need to sort through them. He felt the most powerful kind of love he had ever known warming him down to his freezing bare feet; did it really matter what kind it was or who he felt it for more? The answers were never clear anyway. They grew and shifted from day to day, moment to moment. Sometimes he was painfully jealous that Mark was the one who was getting to hold April, rest his head against her hair and feel her soft, clingy hands resting against his chest. Other times he was jealous that April was the one getting to hold Mark, to fully feel his caring touch, which was normally so hesitant. Mostly he was just struck by how beautiful they were, the two halves of his own soul.
But now she was gone, and everything had all become so leaden and complicated. He couldn't sort out his thoughts, because all he could see was her blood whirling pooling down the bathtub drain, and the only sounds he could isolate were her words ripped across a post-it, echoing through his jumbled brain. Mark was there for him, just like always. Roger knew that if he couldn't rely on Mark he would be better off taking a razor to his wrists too, but Mark never faltered in his support and caring, even though Roger could tell that he cried himself to sleep whenever he actually managed to sleep. Something fundamental, however, had changed between them. They were struggling so much with death and disease and grief that they had lost the balance in their relationship somewhere in the mix. Vertigo had set in, and they couldn't go back to being what they were before.
And he was dying. Jesus, he was as good as dead.
And it wasn't enough to just know it. He saw it reflected back at him in Mark's clear eyes, struggling up to the surface, every time their gazes met. He could feel it in the weight of Mark's glance when he was too drunk or fucked up to see straight. He saw his own death clearly, not like hers, not quick and controlled. It would be brutally slow and painful, taking him piece by piece. Mark would have to watch him be dismantled by this disease, and Roger would have to look into Mark's eyes as it was happening and see all of their deaths mirrored in his wavering blue gaze.
The only times when he really felt alive anymore were when he came home to find Mark waiting for him. Then he could close his eyes, lie on the couch and wait for Mark to come sit beside him. He would swallow the pills and the glass of water that the filmmaker inevitably handed him and then just lie there, concentrating on the stubborn beat of his heart and rhythm of his breathing until Mark's fingers gently pushed his hair off of his sweaty forehead, telling him that he should get to bed. Roger wondered sometimes at his cruelty, because he could feel the desperation in his friend's fingers and voice, but it never stopped him. Mark was terrified of his addictions, and he suffered because of them. Roger knew it too, but he couldn't stop the downward spiral. Maybe he wanted to die on his own terms, or maybe he just needed Mark to be terrified.
With Maureen, however, Roger had reached new levels of brutality toward his best friend that he didn't even know he had within him.
He wasn't sure why he had let it happen. True, he was still a man and there was still blood pumping through his veins. He couldn't deny that he found Maureen attractive, but the only other redeeming factor he had ever been able to see in her was the way she had made Mark smile as he tripped haplessly into love with her. Perhaps he was predisposed to dislike anyone Mark became involved with, but Roger could tell from every coquettish tilt of her head and every word from her pert mouth that Maureen would hurt him, and he hated her for that. He had never thought, however, that he would be the other half of the equation that betrayed his filmmaker, and he hated himself for it more than he ever could her. Because he knew. Roger knew how special Mark was, but he had let it happen anyway.
It wasn't love. Not in the conventional sense of the word. It was something bigger and more encompassing and harder to pinpoint because of it. The poet inside of him chafed at his inability to put into words the force that he was so vividly aware of at every moment. It was that feeling that made him stand here and watch Mark sleep for hours, made him lay alone in his own bed crazy for Mark to be curled up beside him. It might just have happened too, as surely and naturally as everything else had happened for them, if death and drugs and pouty performance artists had intruded on them, because on the deepest level Roger didn't need anything more from Mark. They were already as close in mind and soul as any two people could ever be, but Roger craved for them to reach that level emotionally too, in spite of the fact that neither of them had a particularly good track record in that area. Roger wanted to be able to take Mark's hands in his own when they were shaking with frustration or excitement and pull him close, run his hands through his tangled hair and cover his kind lips with sweet, feverish kisses. And more than anything, Roger wanted to wrap his arms around Mark as they slept, spend every night with the filmmaker's warm, slight body pressed close against his. He knew that was the kind of trust and intimacy that Mark wished for most, that he always felt the loneliest at night and that being held by someone even when they were unconscious of it made him feel more loved than anything else could. Roger would do that given half the chance, because even asleep every strand of him wanted to be as close to Mark as possible. It was the only thing that could make him feel tangible and whole again, remind him that he was still alive and put his own demon nightmares to rest, and that kind of love was the only thing he had to offer his friend who had given him so much. They could find in each other what they had lost with April, he was sure of it, but he feared that he had permanently marred their relationship with his own foolishness.
Roger moved forward slowly and sat at the foot of Mark's bed. He was exhausted with guilt and heartache, and he bent beneath the weight of it, covering his wincing eyes with his hands. His fingers were itching with depressing poetry, but this wasn't something he wanted to preserve or even distance himself from with song lyrics. He needed to live it himself, fully conscious. Mark had always accused him of being a masochist.
"I'm a musician, what do you expect?"
Roger smiled vaguely at the memory.
"Besides, what about you? I'm sure there are volumes that can be said about the neurosis of someone who takes all of the pictures so that he never has to appear in any of them."
"Hey, you know I have body image issues."
"And rightly so. When was the last time you ate something?"
"Shut up!"
Roger started when he heard the front door open. He took his hands away from his face. Mark? He stood quickly, visualizing with sudden fear and clarity his friend's reaction to finding him skulking in his bedroom, assuming that it was Mark at all. He crept to the doorway, unsure of what to expect. It was indeed Mark; he was standing beside the front door, hanging up his coat, his back to Roger. Roger felt that same something emotion course through him at the sight of his roommate - he hadn't expect him to come back - and for a moment he was dizzyingly hopeful.
"Mark..." he breathed, almost involuntarily, stepping out of his bedroom and into the living room, pulled toward his friend.
I can feel your eyes upon my face, all the way over here.
Mark turned to face him, his startlingly blue eyes tired and dull. His gaze only met Roger's for an instant before turning hastily away. It was then that Roger realized with a sinking heart that Mark had only come home because he had nowhere else to go.
"Look, can we just not talk right now?" the filmmaker asked quietly.
Roger nodded with some difficulty. If Mark had asked him to jump out of the window at that moment, he would have obliged and gladly.
Although I'm staring into space,you know something's wrong with me, my dear.
Mark plopped down onto the couch, his entire being suggesting weariness. He leaned his head back against a cushion, staring up at the peeling paint on the ceiling, his face expressionless. Roger shifted slightly, uncertain as to what to do. He couldn't tell if his friend was still angry or merely exhausted, and he didn't know how to approach him or even if he should at all. He felt like he should apologize, prostrate himself at Mark's feet, whatever was necessary, but Mark had already forestalled any kind of conversation. Finally, seeing no other alternative and thinking to spare Mark his presence, Roger headed toward the door of his bedroom, intending to stare at his own ceiling for a few hours.
"Wait," he heard the filmmaker say. He turned to face Mark, the surprise and trepidation that he felt showing through his features.
Lay low for now, all right.
Mark was holding a hand out toward him, his impassive face suddenly pleading.
"Don't go," he said simply.
Lay low my sweetheart, now, tonight.
Deeply shocked and confused, Roger complied, moving to sit cautiously beside his friend as Mark's hand dropped to his side. It was rare for Roger to feel as though he had no idea what was going on in Mark's head, but now was one of those times. They sat next to each other silently for many moments until Mark, without looking at Roger who was sitting rigid with uncertainty, turned his head until it rested against the musician's chest. He sighed heavily as he did so, letting all of his anger escape on a breath, and that simple exhalation spoke more than any words ever could. His arms snaked their way around Roger's waist, and he buried himself into the warmth of Roger's body and the detergent smell of his clothes, accepting that it did no good to fixate on hurtful things that couldn't be changed, because nothing outside of that moment really mattered anyway.
Roger's breath hitched as his arms came immediately around Mark, knowing and scarcely being able to believe that he had been forgiven. Shamed by his friend's generosity, he held the filmmaker so close that he vaguely feared he might be hurting him with the physical manifestation of his relief, love and gratitude. Words began to spill from his mouth, babbled apologies and thanks mumbled against his friend's hair and cheek, but Mark hushed him. The filmmaker's breathing felt labored and shaky under Roger's hands, as though he was struggling to contain the emotion that Roger could feel singing through his skin. He ran his hands up and down Mark's back slowly, feeling the warmth of the filmmaker invade his veins, replacing the sting of the disease in his bloodstream that he had been constantly aware of since she died. He closed his eyes, his turbulent emotions gradually calmed by the familiarity of his friend until he didn't think of anything outside of the weight of Mark against him, the rhythm of his own breathing, and the peace that had been restored between them.
Many minutes passed like this before Mark disentangled himself slowly and stood. He leaned forward to hit the play button on the VCR, one of the few luxuries they had left from the days when Roger's first band had been wildly successful, before collapsing back beside Roger. Suddenly everything was normal again. In that moment there was no Maureen, no death or betrayal or uncertainty. Just the art house movie that they had watched together a million times before, just like this, Mark's head resting on a pillow in Roger's lap. When April had become a fixture of their lives, she had quickly joined the ritual. She would sit on the floor, resting her back against the couch and pulling her knees up to her chest. She would flip quietly through textbooks and journals, preparing for class, as the boys watched the arty, esoteric films that completely escaped her analytical mind. Occasionally she would glance up to offer a comment, eager to participate in and try to understand their artistic, intuitive world, which was entirely outside of her sphere. Mark and Roger would inevitably end up trying to conceal their laughter at her decided left-brainness, and she would good-naturedly go back to her sensible world of science, glad to forsake their symbolism and imagery for her statistics and theories. Roger's fingers would stray into her heavy hair, and she'd look up from her articles to smile at him, that smile that made him forget everything but her, before going back to her work. Only now it was Mark's tangled hair that he ran his shaking fingers over lightly, and Mark's fingers that crept up to take a hold of his, and he honestly didn't know which he would choose were he forced to make the decision.
"Are you thinking about April?" Mark asked suddenly, his voice softly breaking the silence between them, his eyes still fixed on the television screen.
Roger shifted his gaze to the filmmaker's face, vaguely wondering why no one else saw just how beautiful he was.
"Sort of," he said. "I was actually thinking more about you."
"So was I. I mean, I was thinking about her but more about you too." He paused. "You know, I wasn't..."
"I know," Roger said, squeezing his friend's fingers.
"I'm sorry I accused you of saying that we were. I know that's not what you meant, I just wasn't thinking straight."
Roger shook his head. "Don't apologize to me."
"Do you think about her a lot?" Mark asked, turning so that he was looking straight up into Roger's eyes.
"Yeah," Roger sighed. "More or less constantly. You?"
"More or less."
"Mark," he said, his eyes roaming over his friend's open face before settling back into his blue gaze. "I'm so sorry... that I've been such a mess. I shouldn't be such a burden to you, and you shouldn't have had to deal with this alone."
"It's okay, I understand," Mark replied. He sighed heavily. "But.. you do scare me so much sometimes Roger. I can't..."
"I know," Roger said sadly. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I do it sometimes. But I'll try to stop, I swear. I just... well, I might need a little more of your help."
Mark nodded, a brief smile on his face. "Sure."
Roger squeezed his fingers again, knowing that words couldn't articulate what he was feeling. Mark smiled up at him for a moment more before turning his attention back to the movie. A perfect, companionable stillness rested between them until Roger managed speak the words that had been loitering in the forefront of his mind all night.
I don't know what's kept me silent somehow.
"What you said before Mark, about no one being able to love you..."
"I know."
It seems my heart wants to say something that my lips won't allow.
"It's not true."
"I know."
So I lay low for now, for tonight.
They didn't speak again that night; they both knew it was unnecessary. As the closing credits of the movie ran, Roger looked down drowsily at the exhausted filmmaker who had fallen asleep over an hour ago, his fingers still curled trustingly in Roger's own. A little reluctantly, the musician rose from his seat on the couch, carefully laying his friend's head back down and tucking a spare blanket around his shoulders. Roger knelt beside the couch for a long time just looking at his friend before leaning forward to touch his lips lightly and lingeringly against Mark's forehead. He then turned to go to his own bed, thinking of the day when Mark might lie beside him.
I lay low my sweetheart now, tonight.
-the end.