Disclaimer: I still don't own these characters.
Notes: This chapter's kinda short. A lot of these are just going to be flashback sequences and stuff because I have a lot of incidents in their past figured out.
For the next few days I couldn't do anything. I couldn't eat, I especially couldn't sleep, and I could barely move. I heard the bustle of people the next day taking Roger away. Collins was out there talking to them and Maureen was sitting on my bed with her arms around me. I couldn't even feel her. I was so cold without Roger. My Roger. I drowned in reminiscence.
IIIII
It took me back to Roger's 21st birthday. God, that was an awful night.
We had all been out partying, me, Roger, Maureen and Collins. Even Benny had showed up for a little while. That was when the Dynamic Duo and the Terrible Twosome were dating. Yup, Maureen and I and Roger and April. Maureen thought it up. The best girl friends that dated the best guy friends. She referred to Roger and I as the Terrible Twosome because of all the trouble we caused in high school. Well, trouble he caused that I talked us out of is more like. She and April were the Dynamic Duo because, well, they were. They were dynamic all right.
Maureen and April were practically opposite. For the most part, Maureen was clean cut. Sure, she drank, but she drank the way college girls do. To get drunk and get laid. April, on the other hand was your general fuck up. She drank and did drugs for the sole purpose of getting as fucked up as she could. Maureen had a positive outlook on life and wanted to change things. April was a cynical bitch.
Anyway. April wasn't home when we got ready to leave for the night so Roger decided to go without her. We went out, partied, got a little drunk, well.. I got a little drunk. Everyone else was smashed into oblivion. Roger was higher than a kite, but still coherent enough to be thoroughly enjoying his birthday. We went to the Life and loitered for about an hour and then came home. I think we were all expecting April to be sitting on Roger's bed naked with a can of Happy Birthday whipped cream and a needle full of Happy Birthday heroin. I think we were also expecting to have to plug our ears and pretend not to hear their all-night-Happy-Birthday-fuck-fest.
Nothing could have prepared us for the eerie silence we boisterously intruded on. Roger stumbled into the bathroom to 'take a piss' as he said. Maureen, Collins and I were sitting in the living room recapping the evening's events, including the incident with the waiter at the Life that Roger had so generously grabbed and kissed because it was his birthday and he could, dammit that had gotten us thrown out.
We heard him screaming at April and at first there was a shared bunch of sighs and knowing looks, but it was what he was screaming that caused alarm.
"What did you do to yourself?! April, wake up! WAKE UP!"
The way our bathroom is set up, if you don't open the door all the way, you can't see the mirror and if you cut straight in at that angle, the first thing you see is the bathtub. I pushed open the door and the first thing I saw was the mirror.
I turned around and walked right back out again, face pale with a blank expression. Collins gave me a questioning look and when I tried to answer but couldn't, he hurried inside and sat with Roger. I didn't see what happened, but I knew Collins would handle it. He was good at stuff like that.
I remember collapsing into Maureen's arms and her just holding me and rocking me and kissing my hair and telling me that it would be alright. But they didn't know what I knew. I was the only one who'd seen it so far. They'd all know soon enough, but for now I bore the weight of knowledge alone.
In blackish red lipstick that cruelly mocked the colour of the inside of the bathtub, three words had stared back at me; had obscured my reflection just as they would come to obscure the rest of my life.
We've got AIDS.