Disclaimer: I do not own RENT, sadly - it belongs to Jon. Love you, man - the world's a little less bright because you're gone.
Author's Note: This fic was written for an "odd pairings" fic challenge on LiveJournal. Personally I think it turned out pretty well - but let me know what YOU think.
It was a sure thing, how everything was going to happen. Mimi would fade quickly, Collins would follow soon after. Maureen and Joanne would break up, and Joanne would lose touch with them - she never was completely part of the group, back then. Roger would hold on for a few years, with Mark taking care of him. Then, it would just be Mark and Maureen, with her taking advantage of Mark's lost puppy syndrome and convincing him to take her back.
It wasn't supposed to be Roger, lost without his best friend. It wasn't supposed to be Joanne who stuck around and Maureen who was only heard of through the grapevine and a yearly Christmas card. It wasn't supposed to be them left alone.
Maureen had left right after Collins died. Benny had been at the funeral, and the two of them had fought. Badly. Mark couldn't calm either of them down, and Collins was six feet under, unable to help with these things anymore. After that, they never heard from Benny again, and Maureen went home, packed her things, and left. They didn't hear from her until the next Christmas, and even that was only a card with nothing in it but the pre-printed quote and her name signed at the bottom.
Mark became the anchor. Roger had been badly shaken by Collins' death, and Joanne was left heartbroken by Maureen's departure - Mark was the only sort of stability they had left. When Roger slipped back into drugs, it was Mark who noticed, and helped him get clean and stay clean. When Joanne - now moved into the loft, because her old apartment held too many memories of Maureen - refused to eat or come out of her room for a week, and just cried, it was Mark who coaxed her out and got her to eat something.
Mark was stable. Mark was strong. He was their rock, their shelter, their protector even. He'd grown up a lot since Angel died, and when it had come down to just them, Joanne and Roger found that neither of them could or wanted to imagine life without him.
Neither of them expected to get a phone call in the wee hours of the morning, telling them that Mark was in the hospital. Neither of them could say anything as the doctor told them that Mark was in a coma, and his condition didn't look good; or when the police officer told them that Mark had been jumped by a group of guys who had seen him and Roger holding hands a few days before and had decided to jump the "fairy". Neither of them brought up, afterwards, the time Roger walked in on Joanne, kissing Mark's hands and begging him to wake up. Neither of them talked about how Joanne had had to physically restrain Roger as best she could when Mark finally died.
It started a couple weeks after the funeral, when Joanne got up in the middle of the night to get a drink and heard muffled noises from Mark and Ro-... from Roger's room. She had opened the door softly, and saw Roger curled into a ball on Mark's side of the bed, clutching "that damn scarf" and sobbing brokenly. Joanne had hesitantly sat on the bed and calmly rubbed his back - neither of them were the physically affectionate sort back then.
For a week this went on, every night, until one night Joanne couldn't stop the tears from coming, and the two of them cried for Mark, for themselves, and each other; clinging to each other in place of the scrawny filmmaker they both wanted so badly.
Three months after Mark died, Joanne kissed Roger. The kiss didn't last for more than a few seconds, but Joanne savored it - lips that had touched Mark's, lips Mark had loved. It wasn't him, but it was enough to fill the emptiness in her heart for a while. Afterwards, neither of them mentioned it, and went about their lives as if it had never happened.
Four months after Mark died, Roger kissed Joanne. It wasn't the same - her skin was smooth, free of stubble, and she smelled like vanilla and spices instead of soap and apples. It wasn't Mark, but it was something. Physical contact, the touch of someone who knew how he was feeling. They never spoke of it, but they began filling what little voids they could. Roger would take Joanne into the sunlight when she was depressed, and get them popcicles off an ice cream cart. Joanne would listen to Roger's songs, and sing along sometimes. There was only one song they never sang. They would hug each other, kiss each other, do as many as they could of the countless little things that Mark had done, that they'd barely noticed until he wasn't there to do them anymore.
Six months after Mark died, Roger crawled into Joanne's bed late one night, and they shared their nightmares with each other. Then, with a strange sort of deliberateness, they quietly filled the remaining void as much as they could, making almost no noise, only murmuring Mark's name as they held each other afterwards.
One year after Mark died, Roger and Joanne went to the Life Cafe together to drink and remember the man they both loved. They held hands, walking in, and sat in a corner booth together, so close their legs were touching. The waitress was relatively new, and had never known the sweet, adorable, geeky Jewish filmmaker who had once treated the Life as a second home. She smiled at Roger and Joanne and told them they made a cute couple. Joanne sighed as the girl walked away.
"I can never be him." she said, finally voiceing what had gone unspoken for so long. "I can never love you like he did, or appreciate you like he did." Roger squeezed her hand under the table.
"I know." he said. "Neither can I." Joanne nodded, and a silent moment of understanding passed between the two lovers.
They never spoke of that again.