A/N: 06-29-02-Ah... back to Angst after my fun romp with exploding cans of whipped cream... ::sigh::
And I'm back from NYC... wow. What a trip. I videotaped Daph's concert, and audiotaped Rent, with Matt, Kar, Maggie, Chad, etc... the crappy thing is, the tape didn't get Act I past Another Day. ::sigh:: But it got all of Act II. So whoever wants a copy of anything, email me. (I'm broke though, so you'll have to pay for shipping and the cost of the tapes. LOL.)
Disclaimer: After thirteen chapters, I'm finally out of clever ways to say it. So sue me. :P
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13. [R]
Storming out had officially lost all appeal.
I made it down the stairs, proud of myself for not turning back to look at him. I knew if I did, I would crumble and I'd never go through with this. Three blocks later, I was huddled by a trash can, furiously emptying the contents of my pockets. Needle... powder... note. The whole morbid package.
This was not the plan. I was supposed to pack up my supplies and take them out of Collins' apartment. That's all. While I didn't see how any of it would matter once I was gone, Collins was still my friend-quite possibly the only one I had left-and at the very last moment, I decided I wasn't about to let him come home and have the consequences of my misery to deal with.
Right, that was it. I wasn't procrastinating or anything. I wasn't scared.
I would go to the loft, do a final good, selfless deed and convince him to go to the damn clinic, and then I would find a place all to myself and make my world disappear. Someplace where no one would find me. I didn't want to be found, I decided. Not by him, not by anyone. Not even Mimi. I didn't believe in such pseudo-spiritual bullshit as afterlife. If there was no future and no past, then there sure as hell wasn't anything beyond.
Besides... vanishing without a trace would be a better punishment, wouldn't it? Keep him wondering for awhile. Drive him crazy. He deserved it.
Didn't he?
Was it a crime to fall in love?
Well, if I'd had my head on straight, my knee-jerk response would be yes. *Yes*, sometimes, it is a crime to fall in love. This was one of those times. They say you can't choose who you love... but you can certainly choose what you do about it.
And so... I should have expected him to pine away after her, never breathing a word of his feelings, on the chance that she might be alive today?
Oh, for Christ's sake, whose side was I on?! Of *course* that's what he should have done. If it weren't for him, she'd be here, and she'd be with me, and she'd be happy.
Keep telling yourself that...
On this note, perhaps someone could explain to me why in God's name I was now sitting in the waiting room of a little clinic on West 29th Street, filling out forms and wondering if he was going to show up at all.
This was it. I would stay long enough to make sure he actually went through with it, and then I'd be out of his life. Simple. No strings attached.
I arrived fifteen minutes before three o'clock, and had been dutifully completing the forms ever since. But it wasn't until I reached the section on "Medical History" that it struck me. I was filling out his paperwork... more specifically, I *could* fill out his paperwork. This was pathetic-I knew every fucking detail about him. Age, height, weight, social security number, medical conditions, allergies, prescriptions, history of past injuries...
Past injuries... God, that was a fun night.
It was our first New Year's as roommates-before Benny, before April... just us. And Maureen, although I tried to block out that fact as often as possible. She wanted to go to some wild club to ring in the New Year, and Mark didn't, so she dragged a new friend of hers, Joanne, instead. I'd been too lazy to scrape up a date, so we ended up stuck in the loft, alone, with little more than a refrigerator full of booze, and our own respective frustrations.
Mark's bed had broken the week before, so he and Maureen had been sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room. Apparently, once I'd been able pry out of him exactly what the hell happened, he confessed that she'd been getting really into Tantra, whatever that was, and had them trying out all these crazy things in bed. I'd lasted about four seconds with a straight face before falling over in laughter. He threw a few raisins at me, and I had to promise never to bring it up again.
(I've brought it up every New Year's since then.)
"All right," I announced, plopping down on the lumpy sofa bed mattress beside him with my fourth beer. "Let's see. First time... well, officially... I guess it would be third week of high school. Jennifer Marbury. You?"
He buried his face in a pillow and groaned. "Third WEEK?! I hate you."
"Come on, your turn!"
"Fine. Second semester of my sophomore year."
I raised an eyebrow, playfully punching him in the arm. "That's not so bad, Marky."
He sighed and bit his lip. "College. Sophomore year of *college*."
I choked on my beer and burst into hysterics.
"Shut up!" he whined.
"Oh, God, that's priceless," I sighed. "So who was it? Maureen?"
He glared at me. "NO. Some girl named Lydia."
"And was she as fucked up as Maureen is?"
He rolled his eyes. "God, you would not believe the stuff she has us doing now. I mean, just look at my bed!"
I set down my beer with a smile, shaking my head. "She's insane. What the fuck *is* Tantra, anyhow?"
"I dunno, some ancient Hindu shit. Like-this one that broke the bed..." He shifted positions in his seat so he was facing me. "Okay, you be Maureen-"
"Whoa!" I leapt off the mattress. "Use a pillow, man."
"Okay... yeah." He set down what had to have easily been his eighth drink, and grabbed a nearby cushion, pulling himself to a standing position-but just barely-on one end of the bed.
I laughed. "All right, get down; you're going to fall and I'll be too drunk to help you up."
A devious smile crept across his face. "No. I'm perfectly sober. Look." He stood straight up, trying his damnedest to keep from falling over, and grabbed the pillow. "Okay? So then, she-"
And with that, his balance became an unattainable thing of the past, as he collapsed in a twisted lump on the bed-which would have generally been a safer place to land than, say, the floor... except that sofa beds can be exceptionally, and unpredictably, temperamental.
This particular one fancied a self-fold-up technique whenever attacked by a strong impact, such as a drunk filmmaker-and within seconds, the entire bed had turned back into a couch. A couch with a very large, obstructing lump protruding from the middle.
The lump moved.
"...Mark?"
"Mmph."
I scrambled over to the couch, doing my best to pry it open... but alcohol and uncontrollable laughter can be a bad combination when performing a feat that required such strength as this one. But at last, with an insane amount of effort, I managed to pull out the mattress and free him from its entanglements.
"Are you okay?" I chuckled, barely half-serious.
He looked up at me and blinked. "Not so much, no."
"God, you are such a dork," I sighed. "Can you stand up?"
"Seeing as I think my leg is broken, no."
"Oh, shit. I'll go call 911."
"'Kay," he whimpered.
Mark can turn into *such* a baby when he's sick.
As I leaned over on the kitchen counter with the phone to my ear, on hold as usual, I glanced back over at him. "This sucks, you know," I mock-pouted. "Now I'll never get to see whatever it was she made you do."
He grinned and glanced at the still twisted mattress around him. "Actually, that was close enough."
That was a long time ago.
Opting to be a complete smartass, I scribbled "Got folded up in a sofa bed" on the blank lines, and placed the paper back with the others. As I pulled myself from the chair to hand it back to the receptionist, my gaze turned to the doorway... where he stood, watching me.
Refusing to let myself be the lesser man, I took the initiative and marched over to him. "Here," I offered, shoving the papers in front of him. "I filled these out. So now you can't chicken out or anything."
His eyes remained glued to mine for several seconds before curiosity lowered them to the papers, which he finally took from me and scanned distractedly... until spotting the line I'd just jotted down. What may have been the hint of a grin appeared briefly at the corners of his lips, but vanished so immediately that it had probably been my imagination.
"...Okay then," I continued at his lack of response, and brushed past him toward the door.
"Wait." I felt a frightened hand latch onto the sleeve of my jacket, and I spun around.
"What?"
"I..."
There it was again. That look of surprise; a deer caught in the headlights. The second time in as many days that I'd shocked him by actually waiting. By not running out. By giving him one more chance to speak, even if he hadn't expected it. That wasn't how anything had ever worked between us. We'd fight, I'd start to leave, he'd fumble helplessly to stop me, and I'd ignore him. And then I'd be gone.
I never stopped to hear him.
I wonder how many unspoken words I've missed.
"Where are you staying?" Somehow I got the feeling, from the look of confusion that suddenly spread over his face, that wasn't what he'd intended to say at all.
"Collins."
"...Oh."
Well, if *this* was what I'd been missing all that time, I guess I didn't have much to be regretful about after all.
"Um..." He fumbled now for endurance, evidently realizing what he'd meant to say. "Look... putting aside the fact that you hate me now, if you want to come home..."
Well, that was bold. I had to credit him for that. I almost felt obliged to credit him by actually consenting. "Thanks," I responded simply. "But no."
He was getting better at hiding the pain. I suppose it doesn't take long. My words had come out so much more blunt than I'd intended. It seemed like everything did lately. I hadn't just turned him down; I'd allowed him to take the blame for it all. Mimi... everything. Which was only fair, really, but easy for me to interpret as manipulative. If I had any part in the blame, he'd have to work up the courage to be merciful. But if he placed the blame entirely on himself, then I was just the bad guy who couldn't find it in his heart to forgive.
A tricky little tactic-subconsciously inherited from Maureen, no doubt.
He stared at the perfectly groomed carpet. "I'm sorry."
I let myself out of the building without a single backward glance.
For one hour I remained hunched in the front seat of my car, twice forced to refill the meter and once nagged by a policeman. I never budged one inch from that parking space. I intended to, of course, every time I looked up at the building and remembered why I was here. But I couldn't make myself do it. I couldn't make myself abandon him like this, I thought, every time I looked up at the building and...
...remembered why I was here.
Why *was* I here? If I did in fact hate him, as he claimed, I should be at the very opposite place of wherever he was at any given moment. My emotions shouldn't extend beyond fury and resentment and a complete indifference to all aspects of his well-being.
Then why did they?
I have no idea how long he'd been standing some feet outside my window before I took notice of him. The expression on his face was so priceless I had to fight from smiling. Damn him. He couldn't decide whether to knock on my window, wave, climb into the seat beside me, or walk away. And, in truth, I don't think any one of those options would have been fully appropriate.
I rolled down my window. "You can get in," I announced impatiently, as if this should have been the most clearly obvious choice.
He scurried over to the passenger side, climbed in, and shut the door in one prompt movement, staring ahead out the windshield.
The loft was exactly how I remembered it... well, not exactly. It was how I remembered it when I last left it, but to be honest, that wasn't really how I wanted to remember it. I wished I could remember it the way it used to be... with a random towel or tank top hanging out Mimi's window to dry, or the smoke from our illegal wood-burning stove snaking its way through the sky above the roof.
No towels, no tank tops... no smoke. Not today.
I pulled up to the main entrance and stopped the car, not bothering to turn off the engine. If I turned off the engine, that would mean I'd have to come up. Or at the very least, make conversation. Mark, however, seemed to take as little notice of this as was humanly possible... and kept his gaze firmly glued to the windshield.
Fine, then. "So..." I began idly. "When do you get your results?"
"Two weeks."
"Mine took three."
"I know."
Figures.
Trivializing this was making me sick to my stomach. It's as if we were talking about car repairs or a ballgame or... anything. Anything but this. But we weren't, and the contrast between the actual subject and what could have been the subject was so severe that I was finding it difficult to breathe.
"Thanks for..." he began, and stopped.
Please, I begged silently-don't say it.
Wait. I had a mouth and a voice. I could stop him before he uttered another syllable. "Yeah."
Oh, very profound, Roger.
And finally, just as I was beginning to think he'd melded with the seat and become a permanent fixture of the car, he gathered his coat and climbed out. I refused to watch, imitating his fascination with the windshield, but deemed it appropriate to at least listen. So I listened for the door of the main entrance to squeak open and fall shut. And it didn't.
A guilty, tentative tap on the passenger window-obviously the last thing he wanted was to trouble me any further. Fine by me.
I leaned over and rolled down the window. "Um... I forgot," he informed me. "I have to give you something." [A/N: Oh hush, slash fans-not THAT kind of something. :P]
Give me something? God, spare me-some lengthy apology letter, or some lyrics notebook I'd left? Anything to get me talking to him again, right? "Mark, I really don't-"
"It's from Mimi."
We were in the loft about fifty seconds later... the first twenty of which were spent in a staring contest, with me deliberating whether or not to believe him, and whether or not I should yell at him for ever speaking her name in front of me. After everything he'd done... I think it would be a rather reasonable request.
I stood just inside in the doorway, and he seemed to have finally caught on to the fact that no amount of staring, silence, or awkward moments was going to make me crumble. So he scrambled around the apartment, looking for whatever it was he had to give me so urgently, and finally ducked into his room.
Something from Mimi was in *his* room?
...Of course. Where else. Had I completely forgotten the last two weeks? For God's sake, they were lovers. And that still didn't feel any less strange to admit than it had when I first found out.
My eyes drifted to his open bedroom door. Some of her clothes were still folded neatly on the dresser. Probably ones that would usually be hanging out the window to dry. A chill went down my back.
He emerged from the room, triumphant, clutching a videotape in his hand, and held it out to me.
I looked from the tape to him. "What the hell is this?"
His face grew shrouded with... what was that? Offense? Now that was just funny. I loved how his eyes spoke for him-'After all these years of living with a filmmaker, you can't fucking recognize a video when you see one?'
"It's a tape," he replied.
"Yes, Mark."
"She gave this to me a couple months ago." He looked down slowly, his nerve seeming to shrink with every word. "She said to give it to you, if you ever came back and... if anything... ever... happened to her."
Oh, God.
I felt the color drain from my face. "Well, what is it?"
"I... I didn't watch it."
"Did she tell you not to?"
"Not... in so many words. I just figured she wouldn't want me to."
"That's some serious self-control."
"No. Respect."
I see. He caught on faster than I gave him credit for. I was being a jerk about this-and was entirely unwavering in that decision-so he was going to be one right back. His attack was far crueler than mine, though. Two short words, and he was able to come off as the victim. The poor, loving, devoted boyfriend who'd been left all alone in this big empty world without his lover. But I wouldn't fall for that.
My hand moved to snatch up the video... suddenly my only possession of value. I eyed the television and VCR across the room, and-with these resources-was struck with a compelling curiosity. I knew I'd never make it back to Collins' apartment without seeing this first.
Mark watched from that same spot on the floor as I silently waded through the pile of cords and plugs, unhooked the equipment, and dragged it all into my bedroom along with the tape.
*My* tape.
Finally... something that was mine, and only mine. Something I wouldn't lose to my best friend if I went out of town for a few months.
I looked back to him once more. His eyes were glued, jealously, to the tape in my hands. Could I blame him? All these months of guarding it-him and his damn "respect"-and he'd never been able to watch it.
Well... ha.
On that victorious note, I vanished into behind my door. His lost face across the living room floor was all I could see as I popped the tape in the VCR.
And I'm back from NYC... wow. What a trip. I videotaped Daph's concert, and audiotaped Rent, with Matt, Kar, Maggie, Chad, etc... the crappy thing is, the tape didn't get Act I past Another Day. ::sigh:: But it got all of Act II. So whoever wants a copy of anything, email me. (I'm broke though, so you'll have to pay for shipping and the cost of the tapes. LOL.)
Disclaimer: After thirteen chapters, I'm finally out of clever ways to say it. So sue me. :P
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13. [R]
Storming out had officially lost all appeal.
I made it down the stairs, proud of myself for not turning back to look at him. I knew if I did, I would crumble and I'd never go through with this. Three blocks later, I was huddled by a trash can, furiously emptying the contents of my pockets. Needle... powder... note. The whole morbid package.
This was not the plan. I was supposed to pack up my supplies and take them out of Collins' apartment. That's all. While I didn't see how any of it would matter once I was gone, Collins was still my friend-quite possibly the only one I had left-and at the very last moment, I decided I wasn't about to let him come home and have the consequences of my misery to deal with.
Right, that was it. I wasn't procrastinating or anything. I wasn't scared.
I would go to the loft, do a final good, selfless deed and convince him to go to the damn clinic, and then I would find a place all to myself and make my world disappear. Someplace where no one would find me. I didn't want to be found, I decided. Not by him, not by anyone. Not even Mimi. I didn't believe in such pseudo-spiritual bullshit as afterlife. If there was no future and no past, then there sure as hell wasn't anything beyond.
Besides... vanishing without a trace would be a better punishment, wouldn't it? Keep him wondering for awhile. Drive him crazy. He deserved it.
Didn't he?
Was it a crime to fall in love?
Well, if I'd had my head on straight, my knee-jerk response would be yes. *Yes*, sometimes, it is a crime to fall in love. This was one of those times. They say you can't choose who you love... but you can certainly choose what you do about it.
And so... I should have expected him to pine away after her, never breathing a word of his feelings, on the chance that she might be alive today?
Oh, for Christ's sake, whose side was I on?! Of *course* that's what he should have done. If it weren't for him, she'd be here, and she'd be with me, and she'd be happy.
Keep telling yourself that...
On this note, perhaps someone could explain to me why in God's name I was now sitting in the waiting room of a little clinic on West 29th Street, filling out forms and wondering if he was going to show up at all.
This was it. I would stay long enough to make sure he actually went through with it, and then I'd be out of his life. Simple. No strings attached.
I arrived fifteen minutes before three o'clock, and had been dutifully completing the forms ever since. But it wasn't until I reached the section on "Medical History" that it struck me. I was filling out his paperwork... more specifically, I *could* fill out his paperwork. This was pathetic-I knew every fucking detail about him. Age, height, weight, social security number, medical conditions, allergies, prescriptions, history of past injuries...
Past injuries... God, that was a fun night.
It was our first New Year's as roommates-before Benny, before April... just us. And Maureen, although I tried to block out that fact as often as possible. She wanted to go to some wild club to ring in the New Year, and Mark didn't, so she dragged a new friend of hers, Joanne, instead. I'd been too lazy to scrape up a date, so we ended up stuck in the loft, alone, with little more than a refrigerator full of booze, and our own respective frustrations.
Mark's bed had broken the week before, so he and Maureen had been sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room. Apparently, once I'd been able pry out of him exactly what the hell happened, he confessed that she'd been getting really into Tantra, whatever that was, and had them trying out all these crazy things in bed. I'd lasted about four seconds with a straight face before falling over in laughter. He threw a few raisins at me, and I had to promise never to bring it up again.
(I've brought it up every New Year's since then.)
"All right," I announced, plopping down on the lumpy sofa bed mattress beside him with my fourth beer. "Let's see. First time... well, officially... I guess it would be third week of high school. Jennifer Marbury. You?"
He buried his face in a pillow and groaned. "Third WEEK?! I hate you."
"Come on, your turn!"
"Fine. Second semester of my sophomore year."
I raised an eyebrow, playfully punching him in the arm. "That's not so bad, Marky."
He sighed and bit his lip. "College. Sophomore year of *college*."
I choked on my beer and burst into hysterics.
"Shut up!" he whined.
"Oh, God, that's priceless," I sighed. "So who was it? Maureen?"
He glared at me. "NO. Some girl named Lydia."
"And was she as fucked up as Maureen is?"
He rolled his eyes. "God, you would not believe the stuff she has us doing now. I mean, just look at my bed!"
I set down my beer with a smile, shaking my head. "She's insane. What the fuck *is* Tantra, anyhow?"
"I dunno, some ancient Hindu shit. Like-this one that broke the bed..." He shifted positions in his seat so he was facing me. "Okay, you be Maureen-"
"Whoa!" I leapt off the mattress. "Use a pillow, man."
"Okay... yeah." He set down what had to have easily been his eighth drink, and grabbed a nearby cushion, pulling himself to a standing position-but just barely-on one end of the bed.
I laughed. "All right, get down; you're going to fall and I'll be too drunk to help you up."
A devious smile crept across his face. "No. I'm perfectly sober. Look." He stood straight up, trying his damnedest to keep from falling over, and grabbed the pillow. "Okay? So then, she-"
And with that, his balance became an unattainable thing of the past, as he collapsed in a twisted lump on the bed-which would have generally been a safer place to land than, say, the floor... except that sofa beds can be exceptionally, and unpredictably, temperamental.
This particular one fancied a self-fold-up technique whenever attacked by a strong impact, such as a drunk filmmaker-and within seconds, the entire bed had turned back into a couch. A couch with a very large, obstructing lump protruding from the middle.
The lump moved.
"...Mark?"
"Mmph."
I scrambled over to the couch, doing my best to pry it open... but alcohol and uncontrollable laughter can be a bad combination when performing a feat that required such strength as this one. But at last, with an insane amount of effort, I managed to pull out the mattress and free him from its entanglements.
"Are you okay?" I chuckled, barely half-serious.
He looked up at me and blinked. "Not so much, no."
"God, you are such a dork," I sighed. "Can you stand up?"
"Seeing as I think my leg is broken, no."
"Oh, shit. I'll go call 911."
"'Kay," he whimpered.
Mark can turn into *such* a baby when he's sick.
As I leaned over on the kitchen counter with the phone to my ear, on hold as usual, I glanced back over at him. "This sucks, you know," I mock-pouted. "Now I'll never get to see whatever it was she made you do."
He grinned and glanced at the still twisted mattress around him. "Actually, that was close enough."
That was a long time ago.
Opting to be a complete smartass, I scribbled "Got folded up in a sofa bed" on the blank lines, and placed the paper back with the others. As I pulled myself from the chair to hand it back to the receptionist, my gaze turned to the doorway... where he stood, watching me.
Refusing to let myself be the lesser man, I took the initiative and marched over to him. "Here," I offered, shoving the papers in front of him. "I filled these out. So now you can't chicken out or anything."
His eyes remained glued to mine for several seconds before curiosity lowered them to the papers, which he finally took from me and scanned distractedly... until spotting the line I'd just jotted down. What may have been the hint of a grin appeared briefly at the corners of his lips, but vanished so immediately that it had probably been my imagination.
"...Okay then," I continued at his lack of response, and brushed past him toward the door.
"Wait." I felt a frightened hand latch onto the sleeve of my jacket, and I spun around.
"What?"
"I..."
There it was again. That look of surprise; a deer caught in the headlights. The second time in as many days that I'd shocked him by actually waiting. By not running out. By giving him one more chance to speak, even if he hadn't expected it. That wasn't how anything had ever worked between us. We'd fight, I'd start to leave, he'd fumble helplessly to stop me, and I'd ignore him. And then I'd be gone.
I never stopped to hear him.
I wonder how many unspoken words I've missed.
"Where are you staying?" Somehow I got the feeling, from the look of confusion that suddenly spread over his face, that wasn't what he'd intended to say at all.
"Collins."
"...Oh."
Well, if *this* was what I'd been missing all that time, I guess I didn't have much to be regretful about after all.
"Um..." He fumbled now for endurance, evidently realizing what he'd meant to say. "Look... putting aside the fact that you hate me now, if you want to come home..."
Well, that was bold. I had to credit him for that. I almost felt obliged to credit him by actually consenting. "Thanks," I responded simply. "But no."
He was getting better at hiding the pain. I suppose it doesn't take long. My words had come out so much more blunt than I'd intended. It seemed like everything did lately. I hadn't just turned him down; I'd allowed him to take the blame for it all. Mimi... everything. Which was only fair, really, but easy for me to interpret as manipulative. If I had any part in the blame, he'd have to work up the courage to be merciful. But if he placed the blame entirely on himself, then I was just the bad guy who couldn't find it in his heart to forgive.
A tricky little tactic-subconsciously inherited from Maureen, no doubt.
He stared at the perfectly groomed carpet. "I'm sorry."
I let myself out of the building without a single backward glance.
For one hour I remained hunched in the front seat of my car, twice forced to refill the meter and once nagged by a policeman. I never budged one inch from that parking space. I intended to, of course, every time I looked up at the building and remembered why I was here. But I couldn't make myself do it. I couldn't make myself abandon him like this, I thought, every time I looked up at the building and...
...remembered why I was here.
Why *was* I here? If I did in fact hate him, as he claimed, I should be at the very opposite place of wherever he was at any given moment. My emotions shouldn't extend beyond fury and resentment and a complete indifference to all aspects of his well-being.
Then why did they?
I have no idea how long he'd been standing some feet outside my window before I took notice of him. The expression on his face was so priceless I had to fight from smiling. Damn him. He couldn't decide whether to knock on my window, wave, climb into the seat beside me, or walk away. And, in truth, I don't think any one of those options would have been fully appropriate.
I rolled down my window. "You can get in," I announced impatiently, as if this should have been the most clearly obvious choice.
He scurried over to the passenger side, climbed in, and shut the door in one prompt movement, staring ahead out the windshield.
The loft was exactly how I remembered it... well, not exactly. It was how I remembered it when I last left it, but to be honest, that wasn't really how I wanted to remember it. I wished I could remember it the way it used to be... with a random towel or tank top hanging out Mimi's window to dry, or the smoke from our illegal wood-burning stove snaking its way through the sky above the roof.
No towels, no tank tops... no smoke. Not today.
I pulled up to the main entrance and stopped the car, not bothering to turn off the engine. If I turned off the engine, that would mean I'd have to come up. Or at the very least, make conversation. Mark, however, seemed to take as little notice of this as was humanly possible... and kept his gaze firmly glued to the windshield.
Fine, then. "So..." I began idly. "When do you get your results?"
"Two weeks."
"Mine took three."
"I know."
Figures.
Trivializing this was making me sick to my stomach. It's as if we were talking about car repairs or a ballgame or... anything. Anything but this. But we weren't, and the contrast between the actual subject and what could have been the subject was so severe that I was finding it difficult to breathe.
"Thanks for..." he began, and stopped.
Please, I begged silently-don't say it.
Wait. I had a mouth and a voice. I could stop him before he uttered another syllable. "Yeah."
Oh, very profound, Roger.
And finally, just as I was beginning to think he'd melded with the seat and become a permanent fixture of the car, he gathered his coat and climbed out. I refused to watch, imitating his fascination with the windshield, but deemed it appropriate to at least listen. So I listened for the door of the main entrance to squeak open and fall shut. And it didn't.
A guilty, tentative tap on the passenger window-obviously the last thing he wanted was to trouble me any further. Fine by me.
I leaned over and rolled down the window. "Um... I forgot," he informed me. "I have to give you something." [A/N: Oh hush, slash fans-not THAT kind of something. :P]
Give me something? God, spare me-some lengthy apology letter, or some lyrics notebook I'd left? Anything to get me talking to him again, right? "Mark, I really don't-"
"It's from Mimi."
We were in the loft about fifty seconds later... the first twenty of which were spent in a staring contest, with me deliberating whether or not to believe him, and whether or not I should yell at him for ever speaking her name in front of me. After everything he'd done... I think it would be a rather reasonable request.
I stood just inside in the doorway, and he seemed to have finally caught on to the fact that no amount of staring, silence, or awkward moments was going to make me crumble. So he scrambled around the apartment, looking for whatever it was he had to give me so urgently, and finally ducked into his room.
Something from Mimi was in *his* room?
...Of course. Where else. Had I completely forgotten the last two weeks? For God's sake, they were lovers. And that still didn't feel any less strange to admit than it had when I first found out.
My eyes drifted to his open bedroom door. Some of her clothes were still folded neatly on the dresser. Probably ones that would usually be hanging out the window to dry. A chill went down my back.
He emerged from the room, triumphant, clutching a videotape in his hand, and held it out to me.
I looked from the tape to him. "What the hell is this?"
His face grew shrouded with... what was that? Offense? Now that was just funny. I loved how his eyes spoke for him-'After all these years of living with a filmmaker, you can't fucking recognize a video when you see one?'
"It's a tape," he replied.
"Yes, Mark."
"She gave this to me a couple months ago." He looked down slowly, his nerve seeming to shrink with every word. "She said to give it to you, if you ever came back and... if anything... ever... happened to her."
Oh, God.
I felt the color drain from my face. "Well, what is it?"
"I... I didn't watch it."
"Did she tell you not to?"
"Not... in so many words. I just figured she wouldn't want me to."
"That's some serious self-control."
"No. Respect."
I see. He caught on faster than I gave him credit for. I was being a jerk about this-and was entirely unwavering in that decision-so he was going to be one right back. His attack was far crueler than mine, though. Two short words, and he was able to come off as the victim. The poor, loving, devoted boyfriend who'd been left all alone in this big empty world without his lover. But I wouldn't fall for that.
My hand moved to snatch up the video... suddenly my only possession of value. I eyed the television and VCR across the room, and-with these resources-was struck with a compelling curiosity. I knew I'd never make it back to Collins' apartment without seeing this first.
Mark watched from that same spot on the floor as I silently waded through the pile of cords and plugs, unhooked the equipment, and dragged it all into my bedroom along with the tape.
*My* tape.
Finally... something that was mine, and only mine. Something I wouldn't lose to my best friend if I went out of town for a few months.
I looked back to him once more. His eyes were glued, jealously, to the tape in my hands. Could I blame him? All these months of guarding it-him and his damn "respect"-and he'd never been able to watch it.
Well... ha.
On that victorious note, I vanished into behind my door. His lost face across the living room floor was all I could see as I popped the tape in the VCR.