Disclaimer: I own nothing

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mark awoke, confused, on the couch. "What's going on?" he tried to ask, but the first word came out muffled. Something was blocking his jaw.

"Sorry," Roger said. He automatically set the bag of ice on his lap, then realized what he'd done and, with a hiss of pain, moved it to the table. "It's for the swelling. On your jaw," he amended quickly. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." Mark rubbed his jaw; shots of pain warned him not to do that again. He sat up. "What happened?" he asked. "I thought I hit you. Probably my memories twisted with dreams; you hit me."

Roger laughed. He was sitting on the table, a habit Mark was tired of discouraging. His eyes were red. "You hit me," he said, then mimed it, hitting himself in the chest. "You were probably aiming for my face, but…" He began to laugh. "Anyway, we were mad, I hit you back, and you," he paused for a moment, though he knew, recollecting, hoping his memories proved untrue. "Fell," Roger finished at last. "I caught you, brought you over here and got the ice. You've been out for maybe fifteen minutes."

Mark shook his head. "G-d," he said. "I'm so pathetic I can't even hit you."

"This is better, anyway," Roger told him.

"How do you work that out?"

"Mark, I wouldn't've cared if you'd hurt me. You didn't, by the way, it--"

Embarrassed, feeling considerably emasculated by his inability to impress himself physically or emotionally on Roger, Mark interrupted, "Okay, can we skip that? I get it. I'm pathetic, my life is pathetic, and that's why you've so easily dismissed it and decided you're going to die, because I'm just not enough. Not enough of a friend, am I, Rog?" Immediately Mark hung his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't've gotten angry with you. You're just so infuriating, sometimes I want to strangle you!"

Roger laughed. "Good luck!" he commented. Mark gave him an angry look. "Sorry." Roger blushed and grinned; Mark groaned. He hated when Roger did that. He hated the way girls melted when Roger did that. They wet themselves at a single glance. Fucking rock star. "The point is--" suddenly serious "--that you're right."

"I'm what?" Mark asked.

Again Roger laughed. Mark gritted his teeth; why did Roger have to laugh at everything? If it wasn't some poor double-entendre, Roger had some pathetic private joke, one he refused to share. "You're right, Mark. I wasn't thinking about you at all. I was being a miserable bastard."

Mark was taken aback. Those words paralleled his thoughts, though he hadn't the heart to say so. "Yeah, well…"

"I want to make it up to you," Roger said, "and I've thought of two things I'm going to do." He covered his mouth with his hand and giggled.

Mark sighed and stood up. "I should've known," he muttered, heading off.

"Mark, no! Mark, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way, it just sounded funny. I… d'you remember what me and Collins used to call this?"

Mark nodded. "Yeah, the genius hours."

As Roger continued, he gesticulated with unnecessary vigor. "Do you know why? It's because you can start over every day and in these hours it's not the day or the night, so you can be whoever, whatever. You don't have to be sad, or run away, or miss April."

For a moment Mark stared at Roger. He had never stayed up into the genius hours, having the unfortunate inability to function at any extensive length without sleep. "I… thought you were just so stupid, you hit brilliance," he admitted. "That and you used the 'new day' excuse to act completely immature."

"That, too," Roger said, shrugging. "When am I not immature?" he wondered. "But who cares? Mark…"

A loud, electronic beep announced midnight and time for Roger to take his pills. The two men stared at one another across the loft, Mark daring Roger to truly apologize, to do the one thing that would make it right, to stop acting like a such an infuriatingly stubborn child! He had always been stubborn and immature, like a ten-year-old told not to use his lunch money for sweets. Of course he was going to use his lunch money for sweets, or in Roger's case, for smack.

Of course! Mark realized. Roger's Roger again. Since Mark awoke, his friend's exhausting habits had been irking him more than usual, logically, because Roger had started behaving like his old self. He laughed at everything, related nearly all comments to sex, he smiled his aggravating, girl-catching smile. Roger, who hadn't changed a bit since his sixteenth birthday (if Mark had to guess a date), was back.

It was then that Mark knew what he had to do. Treating Roger as an adult hadn't worked, he had simply gotten to be even more of a lazy, drunken introvert. Treating him as an equal had provoked emotion and violence. "Roger," Mark said quietly, deliciously victorious, "take your AZT."

Roger nodded. "Okay."

He set out all the pills for Mark. "These are antiretrovirals, these are antibiotics, these are vitamins," Roger said, with each category indicating a group of pill bottle. "This is the most beautiful drug on the entire planet," he added, ogling his coffee.

Mark grabbed the mug and moved it away. "Not until you've taken your pills," he said. "What's that one?"

The last bottle stood alone from the others. When Roger emptied his pill bag, the bag he used to carry all of his various bottles of pills, it had rolled out. Upon reading the label, however, Roger had only made a face at set it aside. He sighed and looked at the medications. "I won't take that one," he said. "I'll take the others--"

"But that's the AZT, isn't it?" Mark demanded.

"No. AZT is an antiretroviral. That's the tricyclic. That's for another kind of sickness."

"What kind?" Mark asked.

"The kind…" Roger considered his words carefully. "It's the kind of sickness that I don't think I need drugs for."

Trying to speak as gently as possible, Mark began, "Roger--"

"I'm not sick like that!"

"If the doctors say you are--"

"They're mental adjustment drugs, all right?" Roger demanded. "That's what a tricyclic is, Mark, it's an antidepressant, and I didn't want you to know they'd given it to me."

Venturing a slow query, Mark asked, "Why not?"

"Because I am not crazy!"

Your behavior suggests otherwise… Mark decided against arguing. "Okay," he said. "So take your AZT and… all the other pills--except that one--and then I'll give you your coffee. And you can stop being grumpy."

"I'm not grumpy," Roger protested. He opened his pill bottles and selected one pill from each, cupped the capsules in his hand, then clapped his hand to his mouth, tilted his head back and promptly swallowed every last one of them. Mark shivered and handed Roger his coffee. "Ah. Now I'm not grumpy." Roger drank the entire mug in a single gulp, then went to the coffeepot for a refill. "That's the first thing I was willing to do for you," Roger explained. "The second… do you remember that time you tried to interview me, when you were doing your documentary on the Bohemian lifestyle?"

Blinking sorrowfully, Mark asked, "You mean when you took my camera away and said you were going to pee on it, and you took it into the bathroom and only gave it back because I started crying?"

"Precisely. Mark, you're fondling the camera. Look, I don't know if you're still doing that… I guess I haven't been much of a friend. But if you want to, you can interview me."

Mark looked at his camera, then at Roger, an idea forming in his mind. Horribly, Mark smiled.

TO BE CONTINUED…

…but not for a while. There's one more chapter coming, but it won't be up until I get home from vacation, about a week from now.