A/N: I wrote this as a Secret Santa gift for Nat. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The title belongs to Stehphen Trask (or John Cameron Mitchell) and is from Hedwig, as are the song lyrics below. I just stole it for the purpose of my story. And all the characters belong to the Jonathan Larson estate. Don't sue, I'm just a slightly obsessed musical theatre fan. I have no money.
Dedication: Backstgartist (Nat). Happy holidays!
Mark and Roger sat on the couch together, watching a rented movie, "Hedwig and the Angry Inch". It had been Mark who picked out the movie, and the filmmaker who had forced Roger to watch it against his will.
Roger was only now bouncing back from his four months depression after his long term girlfriend, Mimi, died after fighting – and losing – a long battle with the AIDS virus.
The musician, still engrossed in his heartache and depression, sat quietly next to his friend, but for once he didn't try to tune out his pain or block the world around him. Instead he kept very still, listening intently to the movie playing across their "borrowed" television set.
When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.
The origin of love
And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.
And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son.
The origin of love
Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
And Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightening, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."
Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire
And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping round on one foot
And looking through one eye.
Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.
It was the kind of song that made you think. Though the topic was something Roger had been trying to avoid for some time now. Sighing, the musician bowed his head, looking away from the screen, and tried to focus his thoughts on Mimi. His sweet, beautiful, loving, talented Mimi. Not on the man who sat next to him, the man who held Roger's world in the palm of his hand.
He almost willed his grief to come back, almost tried to summon up the depression he had felt after Mimi passed away four months ago. Because the thoughts that had been spinning in his head lately… Well, they weren't right. They were bad thoughts, ones he knew he should not be thinking. He should be thinking of Mimi, not of how much he wanted to-
"Rog?"
Roger jerked his head up and looked at the filmmaker, praying that his feelings were hidden, praying that Mark thought the sudden bout of melancholy was due to his grieving Mimi, and not of the longing for his best friend.
"Yeah?"
"Are you okay? You seem…a little spaced out."
"I'm fine," Roger answered hastily, pulling away from the arm that had found its way across his broad shoulders.
Mark frowned and withdrew the appendage. "You sure?"
The musician nodded and looked down, yearning to hide his burning face from Mark's view.
"Rog, you know you can tell me any-"
"It's nothing," Roger snapped, rising from the couch and storming into his own room. Once inside, he sighed and flopped down on his bed. Why did this have to happen to him? Was it even happening at all? And if it was, how could he get rid of it? Because he knew that's what had to be done. He needed to rid himself of these unwanted feelings of – of what? Lust? Love? – for his best friend. It was wrong. He shouldn't be thinking that kind of thing, let alone consider the possibility that something positive could ever come of it.
Meanwhile, while Roger was sulking in his room, Mark was staring at his friend's closed door, perplexed, and wondering if he should go in after him. Although he would never admit it to the musician, Mark was worried.
Ever since Mimi's death Roger hadn't been the same. He'd always been a bit depressed, distant, closing himself off to the world. But in the past four months he had been even more so than usual. Often times Mark even wondered if he was using again, but he was always quick to cast those thoughts aside. He knew Roger knew better than that by now. Or at least he damn well hoped so.
Mark sighed as he stood from the battered sofa to turn the movie off. It wasn't like he had been paying attention anyway. He knew it was normal to grieve someone you loved when they passed away, but Roger's behavior lately had been going above and beyond the levels of grieving.
Drugs? No. He knew that drugs were not the problem this time around. What the problem was, he didn't know. The only thing he really knew for sure was that there was indeed a problem, and that it was more than the usual depression that follows after losing a loved one.