Disclaimer: I don't own anything you recognize. The arrangement of the words, that's my choice, so yes, I sort of own that. But nothing else.

He kicked the blanket away, his legs bursting with energy, moving against his control. The sheets clung to his body, soaked with sweat, as he shook from the cold. The pain, the cold and the pain drove Roger into the fetal position, but he could not bring his body in fully for the cramps in his arms and the spasms in his legs.

"A-augh!" he had never before heard such a scream, only read it off a page. Had that been him? Had that gurgling, drowning cry come from Roger? Unable to discern, freezing, he scrabbled for the blanket and fell to the floor. The slamming shock brought up what little he had eaten in the past… day? Roger could not recall eating. He must have, but he could not recall… anything! It was all a burst of pain.

He coughed, still shaking, to clear his throat of vomitus, and managed to lever himself up, leaning on his arms, shaking doubly from the exertion. He vomited again and collapsed, unwilling to hold himself up anymore. It hurt. This… thing, it HURT! "April! April!" What had she done to him? "What've you done to me! Left me here with this, April!"

He threw up again.

He had loved her. She had held a power over him with her intoxicating smell, oozing the knowledge of her sex, the secrecies she alluded to, hinted to tell him of. Nothing in her power had touched the severity of his pain now. For all her innate knowledge so incomprehensible to him, she knew nothing of the pain, could not have endured this. He could not endure it.

An iron fist clenched around his stomach, and Roger coughed burning bile into the growing pile on the floor.

"Jesus, G-d, G-d dammit!" Roger never went to church. He did not pray at his bedside. In times of trouble, he never asked succor from any higher power. Nothing remotely compare with this. Nothing had ever hurt like this, been this impossible. Not losing April. Not anything.

And a part of him knew that there was no help coming, though the night workers at the clinic were lifting him back onto the bed, sloshing sawdust onto the ground. The blanket was drawn over him, and though Roger was freezing cold he began to burn.

He began to cry, though he felt the tears evaporate, shrinking in fear away from his flesh. No one was coming. There was no April, the mysterious pinnacle of passion. The religious figures had been invoked as obscenities. No one. Christ, it hurt. Christ, like any other swear. Christ.

"Mark! Mark! Mark!" It hurt too much! The pain was too pure, pure as a blaze of fire ripping through him, and Roger would die, gladly die…

"Right here, Roger."

"What…?" Roger opened his eyes. He lay in his old bed, the dilapidated mattress sinking into the naked metal frame. The scraps of curtain fluttered over the window, streaking moonlight. And there was Roger, pale in the lunar shine, sweating from a bad dream, gasping for air. Mark sat on the edge of the bed, one hand on Roger's shoulder. "What're you doing?" Roger asked. "In my room," he added quickly.

"What are you doing, calling his name in your sleep?" asked Maureen. Roger had not seen her before. She lounged in the doorway.

"I did?" Roger asked Mark.

Maureen replied, "Yep. Must've been some dream."

Before he could examine physically whether he had had this sort of dream, Roger blushed. None of the signs were present, though: the blanket lay flat, and Roger was fairly sure his trousers were dry. "I don't think it was like that," he said.

"You don't know?" Mark asked gently.

Roger shook his head. He nearly answered that he recalled nothing of the nightmare, but a familiar sensation caused him to shove Mark away and stumble out of bed. "Where are you going?" Mark called as Roger, running clumsily, passed by Maureen. "It's midnight!"

Roger vomited noisily into the sink. Maureen, given a full view from her vantage point, wrinkled her nose. "Men are not as sexy as they like to think," she commented. "I'm going back to bed. You coming, Pookie?"

"In a bit." Had they reached a point at which they understood one another's expressions, Mark would have known that Maureen was implying that Mark and Roger were more than friends. Maureen, in turn, would have understood that Mark cared for Roger as for a brother, and he was not going to have marvelous intercourse while his brother puked himself into oblivion.

Maureen turned away and flounced back to bed. Mark sighed, shook his head, and went into the kitchen, where Roger was rinsing out the sink. He drew a mouthful of freezing water directly from the tap, shook his head and spat. The timer went off, and Roger hissed at it. "Hey!" Mark called, annoyed. "Take your AZT!"

"I will." The words blended as they rushed from Roger's mouth. He grasped the side of the basin, what muscle remained in his back tight against the skin.

The sickness had brought cold beads of sweat over Roger's body. The moonlight shone silver across his top, and with his lower half obscured by shadow, Mark couldn't help but wonder: "Do you always sleep naked?"

Roger looked up in surprise. "I'm not naked," he said. "I'm wearing pants."

"Oh." Mark looked down. A part of him was tempted to smack his roommate's rear end, just to get a rise out of him. Just to bring back the old Roger, perverted and proud of it. That boy had never stopped smiling. Mark wished he could do something to make Roger smile and come back to life, anything to stop the contagious emptiness. "Yeah. You are." Forcing himself to meet Roger's eyes, he persisted, "Why are you sick? I thought you were over that. Over withdrawal." Again.

"I am."

"You haven't taken…?"

"No!" The answer came too quickly for Mark's liking. In truth it came swiftly because Roger could not bite it back, nor could he keep all the venom behind his teeth. He managed not to snap: even so, Mark recoiled slightly. "I'm clean. It's the AZT."

"Take it," Mark said again. When Roger shot him a withering look, he asked, "How often do you need it?"

"Once every four hours."

Mark winced. "Take it," he insisted. "Do you think you're going back to bed?" Roger only laughed. "Me, too. I'll make the coffee." The blue flame of the stove cast a brighter light than the moon. The silence built up between them, mounting painfully in Mark's chest because, unlike Roger, he had something to say, which he feared to say. "What were you dreaming?" Mark asked.

Roger shook his head and shrugged.

"You were calling my name," Mark said. When Roger blushed and looked at the ground, Mark added, "Before that you kept saying 'Jesus', and before that…" It took a moment and a deep swallow for Mark to say her name: "April."

"That's stupid, April's dead," Roger blurted quietly. Tension knotted his shoulders, and though he did not turn away from Mark neither did he face him.

"You don't have to… stop loving her, Rog," Mark said. "I mean, she's still… you were still with her, obsessed with her--"

"You don't know," Roger interrupted.

"Maybe not, but I know you."

"You won't know until you lose," Roger said, more quietly than before.

"Until I lose…?"

"Maureen."

Mark floundered desperately. "I--I--I'm not going to lose Maureen," he said.

Roger stared. Mark didn't see? He thought the pouted lips and the teddy-bear nicknames were only the soft points in Maureen's caustic exterior? Roger had been home less than a day, but he knew. But how can I say it? The last thing he wanted was an angry Mark, because Mark rarely grew angry. Mark only became very sad, behind his camera. Roger's eyes flicked to the ever-present recorder.

"Yeah, you're right." Why hurt him with it? Roger hated Mark's habit of babying him, by why would he do it if not because that was the treatment he expected? Why not devastate a friend save the fear of devastation? "I'm sorry, Mark."

Mark mumbled and shrugged.

Shit. He knew.