Roger awoke one morning to discover he had been turned into a giant cockroach. No, wait, wrong story…
Roger awoke one morning to discover that he was hungry. Not his normal hungry, where he would raid everything in the kitchen that would open to find that the only food left was Cap'n Crunch. He was actually hungry for a decent meal. This bothered him, and rightly so, because he hadn't felt the need for one of those in over five years.
Deciding to do something about this odd yearning, he got out of bed, careful not to trip over any of the random clothes that were lying on the floor (his, Mimi's, Mark's, that guy who had tried to sell them encyclopedias…) and stumbled into Mark's bedroom to convince him to go out to breakfast.
However, upon entering his friend's room, Roger discovered that Mark was not yet awake. This was indeed an odd day, because Mark was always awake before Roger. Always. Well, other than that time when that squirrel managed to make it's way through Roger's window and into Roger's bed and then, somehow, into Roger's pajama pants, but that's another story entirely, and Roger really doesn't want to remember it.
Anyway, after staring dumbly at Mark's sleeping figure for well over fifteen minutes, he remembered that Mark had no way of taking him out to breakfast unless he was at least somewhat conscious. Roger went into the kitchen to open the freezer and get out ice, but alas, they didn't have a freezer. Roger decided that he should probably stop trying to think before noon.
Instead, he went back into Mark's room and climbed onto Mark's bed and furthermore climbed onto Mark's stomach, sitting and waiting there until his small friend opened his eyes not two seconds later.
"Roger, what the hell…"
"Take me out to breakfast!"
Mark, not being used to the musician actually initiating some sort of activity that involved…not the apartment, stared up at him with his mouth wide open before responding.
"Guh?"
"Okay, you shouldn't think before noon, either."
"Buh."
"Take me out to breakfast," Roger pleaded, shaking Mark's shoulders for added effect.
"Get off of me and I will," Mark hissed. Having a six-foot two man sitting on your stomach isn't the best way to be woken up.
"Take me out to breakfast and I'll get off of you!" Roger responded, thinking that his remark was quite clever and witty.
"…Are you aware that that made no sense whatsoever?"
"Shut up." But Roger got up anyway and went to get dressed.
And so, half an hour later, because when Mark had gone into the bathroom to brush his teeth he realized that they still hadn't untied the encyclopedia salesman who had been bound and gagged in there for possibly a week, and the salesman had put up a relatively large fight when Mark and Roger tried to throw him out the window.
Anyway, half an hour later, Mark and Roger were on their way down the stairs of their building when Mimi came rushing out the door of her apartment.
"Roger, I've been looking all over for you!"
"…Where?"
"My apartment, the stairs…it doesn't matter. You were supposed to come over last night so that we could have hot monkey sex!"
Roger grinned, recalling the last time they did that (the afternoon of the day before) and put his arm around his girlfriend.
"Meems, I'm sorry, but I fell asleep. I promise that I'll come over tonight."
In the meantime, Mark was standing off in the corner, looking lonely and dejected. The author handed him a teddy bear, and Mark smiled and cuddled it. He and the author conspired for a minute, while Mimi and Roger made out up against Mimi's door.
Suddenly, Roger pushed Mimi off of him.
"Meems, I'm sorry, but apparently this is supposed to be a MeandMark buddy story. You go bye-bye now."
Mimi was magically transported back into her apartment, all the while looking wholly offended, and Mark and Roger continued on their exciting venture down the stairs.
"Well, Roge, where did you want to go to eat?" Mark asked when they got outside. It was seventy degrees, but Mark refused to take off his plaid jacket and striped scarf. They were very sentimental to him, even if he couldn't actually remember why.
Roger shrugged good-naturedly.
"I don't know. Anywhere that sells cinnamon rolls. And pancakes. And waffles. And French toast! I want it all!"
Mark wondered what brought on this sudden bout of hunger for real food, but then he looked at the teddy bear (whom he had named George) still in his grasp, and decided not to question anything else that happened that day.
"I think IHOP does that…"
"Mark, look around. Do you see any IHOPs?"
"Good call. Well, there is always the Life."
"I'm sick of the Life."
The sky grew dark and the air became cold. Thunder boomed. Lightening crashed. A pigeon spontaneously combusted. Mark stared at his friend in shock and horror.
"You-you're sick of the Life Café? Roger, are you feeling okay? Do you want to go back upstairs and get in bed? Do you think you're sick? Did you take you AZT?"
As Mark rambled on and on (and on), Roger walked ahead, whistling happily and searching for his House of Cinnamon Rolls and Pancakes and Waffles and French Toast. Unfortunately, in New York, there is no HOCRAPAWAFT. Must be a regional thing.
Mark eventually realized that Roger was no longer listening to him, and was in fact over one hundred feet away from him, and moving farther still, and so he ran to catch up. By the time he was beside his friend, the sky had cleared and Roger was standing in front of a small restaurant, looking at the door in awe.
"The Death Café," Mark read aloud from the menu in the window. "We specialize in real food for Bohemians who are sick of Cap'n Crunch and that café across the street."
Both men turned around simultaneously to discover that the Life was directly across the road.
"I wonder why we never noticed this place before…" Roger pondered, because he had not had the same revelation as Mark (which, in case you've forgotten, is 'Don't question the author').
"Doesn't matter," said Mark. "It's here, it has the food you want, and I don't want to walk anymore!" He pouted his lip. Roger stared at Mark for a couple of seconds before pulling him into a tight hug. "Roger…what…CAN'T BREATH!" Roger let go and smiled sheepishly.
"I can't resist pouty faces."
"If you had told me that when you were going through withdrawal, things would've been so much easier…"
They walked into the Death. It was noticeable right away that the atmosphere was intentionally dark and gloomy. Mark was a little frightened. He had a recurring nightmare with a restaurant that was dark and gloomy, and then a clown came out of the storage room and chased after him with a fork. Mark whimpered and hugged George to his chest.
Roger, on the other hand, was ecstatic. He could smell waffles.
He led the filmmaker over to the only table next to a window and they sat down. A waitress came over to give them menus and generally move the plot along.
"Can I get y'all anything to drink?" she asked, while not-so-subtly looking Roger up and down in approval. Mark frowned at her, obviously not wanting anything to come in between one of his rare moments alone with the musician. Okay, so they weren't exactly rare, they were roommates after all, but ever since Mimi showed up, their moments were rarer than before.
"Water," replied Roger gruffly, not interested in anything but the yummy smells wafting through the room.
"Same here," said Mark, happy that Roger wasn't flirting back with the waitress, as he had discovered within the past three sentences that he was, as a matter of fact, madly in love with him and wanted to steal him away from everything bad in the world and fly both of them to Hawaii. Or something.
"Stupid plot," Mark muttered.
"What did you say?" Roger queried.
"Nothing," said Mark, while looking Roger up and down much in the way the waitress had earlier, although he didn't look as happy about it.
The waitress, in the meantime, was getting their water and planning something evil.
And Roger, in the meantime, was still drooling over the pictures on the breakfast menu.
The waitress came back a few minutes later with their two glasses of water and a scheme to end all schemes. For you see, Mark had accidentally taken off his jacket and scarf when he and Roger had sat down. Stupid mistake, really, because the waitress somehow knew just how sentimental that jacket and scarf were to the filmmaker, even though she had never met him before in her life.
"Two waters," she cackled as she set the glasses down in front of the roommates. "And one," she cackled harder as she grabbed Mark's coat off of the back of his chair. "STOLEN PLAID JACKET AND STRIPEY SCARF!" She sprinted into the storage room, screaming as she went. "That'll teach you to…do whatever it is you did that pissed me off!"
Mark pouted and whimpered, Roger hugged him too hard, yadda yadda…
"The mean lady stole my jacket and scarf," said Mark.
"Steal them back!" said Roger.
"She's in the storage room," Mark pointed out, as if that explained everything. And it did, because Roger knew of Mark's recurring nightmares with the restaurant and the clown and the fork. So instead they went into the kitchen and grabbed a few waffles before scrambling outside and into the safeness of a New York City alley. [The author would like to apologize for the heavy sarcasm used on that last remark.]
"Mmm. Waffle-y goodness," Roger murmured as he chewed.
"You owe me a jacket, Roger. And a scarf."
"What? Why?"
"Because of you I went into that horribly scary place with the mean lady!"
"That may be true, but I didn't force you to take the jacket off. Or the scarf."
"You are surprisingly sexy when you're right."
"What did you say?" Roger queried.
"Nothing," said Mark, who really didn't want to be hitting on his best friend, but he also really didn't have a choice. "Where do you want to go now?"
"Central Park! I've always wanted to feed the ducks," Roger smiled.
"We did that last month."
"Do you always have to ruin my fun?"
"Yeah, actually, now that you mention it-"
"Rhetorical question, stupid head."
Now that Roger was starting to use big words in the right context (instead of, for example, 'Your hair is so superfluous!'), Mark actually was beginning to become more attracted to him. But only a little.
So Mark and Roger walked a long way to Central Park just to feed the ducks. Roger had fun with that, at least. While they were sitting beside the pond, Roger heard a shrill, easily recognizable voice.
"Marky! Roger! You guys aren't in your apartment!"
Mark and Roger looked at each other and shuddered. This person seemed to enjoy stalking them whenever they left their building.
"God, not Richard Simmons again…"
Oh, wait, sorry. Wasn't supposed to type that out. Start again.
"Marky! Roger! You guys aren't in your apartment!"
Mark and Roger looked at each other and shuddered. "Hi, Maureen."
"How come you never come by to see me and Joanne anymore?" Maureen squealed, hopping around for a little while before settling in between the two men and putting an arm around each of them.
"We've been busy, Maureen," said Mark.
"Silly, I know Roger's busy with Mimi and all, but do you really have an excuse?" Maureen asked, placing her hand on Mark's head.
"Er..." said Mark.
"He's been busy. Real busy! With his…thing!"
"Go ahead, Roge, make me sound like a pervert."
"Not that thing!" Roger was trying as hard as he could to come up with a good excuse for his friend, which was really hard in Roger-world but not very hard at all in Everybody Else-world. "The other thing! With the…stuff?"
"What Roger is trying to say…I think…is that I've been busy working on my film!" Before Maureen could say what Mark thought she would say, he continued. "But you can't be in it. It's about…people who aren't pretty and energetic lesbians."
Maureen seemed to buy this and went merrily on her way after squealing a bit more and reminding them (well, more like threatening) that they should come to her protest on pants the following night.
"Speaking of your film," said Roger, "Why don't you have your camera?"
"Um," said Mark.
"Did you leave it at home because you realized that you can't hide behind it forever and that it's time to face reality and get to know people and open up your heart to them rather than pretend to be an emotionless little hermit-type who doesn't care about anything but his work?"
"Um," said Mark.
"Or did the author just forget to stick it into your hand on the way out?"
"The second one."
"Oh. Well, you should consider taking the first one into account," Roger mused.
"I think that we should get regular food into you more often. You make a lot more sense that way."
Roger grinned sheepishly and dumped the rest of his bread crumbs into the pond, where they promptly sunk down to the bottom, because they were still in the package, and there happened to be a cheap prize Pet Rock™ in there. It was kind of strange that Roger didn't notice his cheap prize Pet Rock™, but hey, he was still on a high from the waffles.
"So Mark, what do you want to do next?"
Mark looked at Roger in delighted surprise. Out of all of their years of living together, he had never been asked that before. Mark wasn't entirely sure how to respond. He could think of a few things to say that would make the author absolutely ecstatic (such as "Why don't we got back to the loft and have sex on the floor for days on end?" to which Roger would pause for a second before replying with an enthusiastic "Okay!"). However, Mark was a little too shy to suggest anything of that sort. Plus, you know, he still had to get used to this whole lusting-after-the-best-friend thing.
"How about we go visit Angel at her street gig?" Mark suggested after a moment.
"Sounds good," replied Roger.
They walked along, occasionally looking into shop windows and laughing their asses off at the see-through shoes and rubber halter tops that were considered fashionable. Mark recalled that Maureen had a rubber halter top and laughed even harder, almost collapsing to the ground and gasping for breath.
Roger saw that his friend was having trouble breathing and walking at the same time (he had heard once before that multi-tasking was something that only women could do, anyway), and so he picked Mark up by the waist and flung him over his shoulder. He figured that this would certainly help with the walking part, and maybe after a while the breathing would come back.
Unfortunately, Mark merely started laughing harder, giddy with the fact that being picked up by a man in the middle of the sidewalk in New York, and further being tossed over that man's shoulders, and yet not being ashamed, was a really great way to protest authority and stereotypes and whatnot (although how he came to this conclusion he cannot say). Anarchy at it's best. Collins would be proud.
Collins was two feet away. As was Angel. Mark had not noticed that Roger had actually been moving.
"Roge, put me down."
"Are you still hyperventilating?"
"Does it look like I am?"
"I don't know. I can't see your head."
"I'm not. Put me down."
And Mark was suddenly on the ground, Roger and Angel and Collins smirking at him. Mark looked over to his side and saw that Angel was wearing see-through shoes. He giggled as he hopped to his feet.
"Hey guys," greeted Mark.
"Hey yourself," Collins smiled. He knew that Mark was in love with Roger (he knew this even before Mark knew, and before the author knew, too), and was happy that Mark was getting at least some physical contact with the man. He didn't understand why they weren't back at the loft, having sex on the floor for days on end. Then he realized that all would work out eventually, so he should probably mind his own business.
"Markie, where's your camera?" asked Angel. She was then transported one page back into the story, where she read the whole conversation between Mark and Roger, coming back to the present time a few minutes later with full understanding. "Oh."
"You're just in time for Angel's set," Collins smiled. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.
"Yay!" squealed Roger, who then looked at his shoes forlornly, disgusted with himself for that fact that the words "squeal" and "Roger" were used in the same sentence. And the sentence didn't have anything to do with that hot monkey sex with Mimi.
Angel brought out her pickle tub and played like there was no tomorrow. People gathered around her, amazed with her musical abilities. Some even called friends and relatives to come hear the Amazing Angel. Soon enough, people from around The City, neighboring states, and Japan were grouped on that little street corner, wide-eyed and enchanted with the beat. Mark and Roger had their arms around each other, Collins was smiling, Maureen and Joanne magically appeared and didn't fight, Mimi showed up and decided that Roger was better off with his roommate, and Benny was no longer a stuck-up yuppie. All was right in the world.
Half an hour later, Angel's beat stopped, and the perfectness went away. The people who magically showed up magically disappeared. And all were sad. Except for Angel and Collins, because they were snogging in front of a record shop.
"Now what?" asked Mark.
"Well, I think that trying to get them to do anything with us is out of the question," snickered Roger while pointed to said snoggers.
"We could go to a movie."
"Nah. Nothing I want to see."
"We could go buy some records."
"I've got all the music I want at home."
Mark paused, figuring that it was worth a shot.
"We could go back to the loft and have sex on the floor for days on end."
Roger paused for a second.
"Okay!" he replied enthusiastically.
And so they did.
And there was much rejoicing. Yay. ::waving of flags::