A/N: Okay, so I'm breaking out my very first 'Rent' fic. Yay! Yes, this is a MarkOC, because our favorite geek needs a girl. This is also sorta AU—I'm playing with the time lines a little. Angel lives…because I can't write this story without her. She may still die later, but I don't know. Basically, I just wanted the gang to have been together longer than they were in the movie.

To my fellow authors: some of you may notice snippets of things that are reminiscent of your own fics. This is not me trying to steal your ideas; this is your plot bunnies having babies with my plot bunnies. I've tried to tweak everything to make it my own, so…don't get mad. Remember, there are really only so many ideas to go around.

Disclaimer: Grrr…they're not mine. If they were, do you really think I'd be sitting at an all-girl school putting off studying for my exams? No, I'd be happily freezing in Bohemia with our favorite guys. So don't bother suing; I haven't sold back my textbooks yet and I have about as much money as our boys.

FYI: After this chapter, the story will follow a regular story format. I just wanted to jump into the middle of things, and needed something to set it up. So…here. Enjoy, and remember: save a muse, send a review!

Prologue

It all started out quite innocently. Mark was shooting a segment with the Buzzline crew in the park. As they were packing up, the familiar click-clack of a camera shutter caught his ear. The filmmaker turned and saw a pretty young woman taking seemingly random pictures not far from the news van. Mark watched her for a moment as she shot a picture, flicked the film advance lever to rotate the film, turned and spied out another subject, before repeating the process. Then, as though sensing Mark's stare, she turned and made eye contact with him. For once, instead of looking away embarrassed, Mark smiled at her. And she smiled back.

For awhile, that was it. A smile shared between strangers. Then, about a week later, Mark was sitting alone in the Life Café, sipping a tea and reading a newspaper. Roger was out with Mimi, Collins and Angel were who knows where, and Joanne was helping Maureen prepare for a show. Which left Mark with nothing to do and no one to do it with. But lo and behold, the filmmaker looked up and noticed that the same young woman from the park was sitting in two booths over. She smiled and thanked the waiter as he refilled her water, then looked back down at what appeared to be a sketchbook. After a moment, she looked up, catching Mark's eye, and smiled sheepishly. He grinned back, before looking back down at his paper. He waited a few minutes to make sure she had turned her attention back to her sketchbook before risking another peek. Glancing around the room, Mark swallowed the last of his tea and stood, casually making his way over to her table.

And that was how it started. They made small talk, he sat, and they flirted. He found out that her name was Tali, and that she was a multi-media artist. The night ended with her giving him her phone number. For a few days, he just held onto it, as work and friends kept him busy. But a few days later everyone else was once again occupied, and Mark pulled the number out of his coat pocket and decided, what the hell. Why shouldn't he go out and have a little fun on his own. So he decided to be bold and call her. They met up at the Life Café, and ended up just walking around for hours talking. That was the first of several casual dates, many of which rarely meant more than dinner and good conversation. Sometimes they ended up just pulling out their respective cameras and either shooting video or photos of whatever was around them.

However, their dates always occurred when all of Mark's friends were occupied with something else. If you were to ask Mark Cohen why he was putting off introducing his new girlfriend to his friends, he probably wouldn't have been able to give you a very good answer. Maybe it was because he wanted to protect her from the pain of being so close to so many people who are living on borrowed time. Or maybe, if he was a little more honest with himself, it was that he was enjoying spending time with someone who wasn't dying. For the small bits of time that he spent with Tali, Mark was able to pretend that he was a normal guy with normal friends who weren't dying of an incurable disease. He could pretend that they were all going to grow old together, and watch their kids play together in the streets.

But this, of course, was a fantasy. And like all fantasies, it was about to come to a rude awakening…