A/N: I know, it's taking me longer to update. School can do that to you. With chemistry quizzes and history projects and psychology papers and learning about transcendentalism in English...lots going on. But I've been concentrating on this story like 24/7, so there's no way that I'm giving it up. BEFORE I FORGET because I was going to say this last time but I completely forgot and a lot of people have been asking: This is basically post-April, pre-Mimi (if there's Mimi at all with this story). Just so you know. Mimi isn't exactly a factor.

A/N2: A few people have also been asking about why Roger fainted to begin with. It was just an affect of the AIDS. (Got the idea from a scene in Angels in America where Prior, also AIDS infected, passed out). It's nothing more than the AIDS.

Disclaimer: Me no own-y, you no sue-y.

Roger walked home from the Life Café, a little disturbed and confused.

Tempted, even.

Don't you dare. He thought, practically screaming at himself in his head. You're clean now. It took you ages to get that way and Mark was the only one who would help you get that way. Don't go fucking it up now. You owe this to him.

He pulled his jacket closer to his body. It was cold. Colder than he remembered. It sort of hurt to breathe in this weather. Almost as if when he inhaled, he brought in ice crystals with the air.

Attacking him. That's what this disease did to him.

You have Mark to help you through this.

It seems as if that's all he does.

Help me.

And all I do is hurt him.

With that last thought in mind, haunting him, teasing him, he ran home.

---

Mark sat on the couch, fiddling around with his camera. He felt uninspired. He had nothing to film. At all. For the first time in what felt like...

Forever.

He toyed with the idea of leaving the loft for a little bit, just to film something creative and then come back, but something held him back.

What's holding you back, Cohen? Nothing's ever held you back before...

His answer came when Roger came bolting through the door, gasping for breath. Roger tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out. He shook his head rapidly and tried again, but just fell to the ground, trying desperately to catch his breath.

That was the thing that Mark noticed about Roger ever since he'd been infected with AIDS. Roger used to be able to outrun Mark at any given time, but since the infection, even Roger in top physical condition found himself worsening in shape. Sometimes even a flight of stairs left him breathless.

Mark ran over to the man and embraced him.

"Roger! Talk to me! Oh my God, are you hurt?"

Roger shook his head and opened his mouth. "One of the band members...he's um...help me up, Mark, would you?"

Mark nodded slowly before grabbing Roger's arm. He led the musician to the couch and helped him sit down.

"Thanks. I um...I guess I'll start at the beginning. I met the band and it was a group of really talented guys and I liked them all until I met one. His name was Chris.

"And for some reason, he has this grudge against me. I don't know, he's just bitter towards me. Maybe I'm paranoid, but for whatever reason, I just don't feel comfortable around him."

Mark rubbed Roger's back. "That's completely normal, Roger. I feel like that all the time, even if I just get a glance from some stranger on the street. This is New York. Not exactly the state of comfort."

Roger closed his eyes and shook his head.

"There's more. Not sure how to say this or even if I want to...Chris offered me smack."

Mark instantly jumped up from the couch.

"He what?"

"He offered me smack." Roger looked up and met Mark's eyes, glaring at him.

"You fucking bastard. You took it didn't you?" Mark began to scream, his face turning red. "How could you do this to me!"

In a small voice, Roger replied, "I didn't take any. I couldn't." His voice rose a little bit. "I thought of you and what you did for me and how you stuck by me every inch of the way and never left my side, no matter how irritable I got or violent I got or how much I yelled at you and did these horrible things.

"You were there for me Mark. Everyone else left me behind. April went and...you know and even my parents refused to acknowledge that I even had a problem. But you-"

He looked away. "You never left." On the word 'left', Roger's voice cracked and it was then that Mark realized he was crying.

Roger never cried. If anything, it was Mark, alongside Roger, crying at how messed up his friend was. How screwed up his life had become and how he let the media control his life, when it told him how drugs were cool and how doing them and constantly having sex would leave him feeling pretty cool as well. But those were lies. And all they left Roger with was AIDS.

And Mark cried over it. A lot. He wasn't afraid to let Roger see how he felt.

Roger, on the other hand, felt the need to repress his feelings. He held them back all the time and isolated himself.

Seeing Roger cry was new and foreign...scary almost. But in a way, it was the most stimulating and invigorating thing that Mark had ever seen.

He found his inspiration. What he longed to film. His reason for not leaving the loft.

Quietly and slowly, he leaned over and grabbed his camera. He turned it on and faced it towards Roger, who looked up, eyes red, puffy and flooded with tears.

And suddenly, shocking Mark and even himself, he smiled. "You never left."

A/N: Sappy chapter, I know. But I liked it nonetheless. What did you guys think?