Title: And Then There Were Two (Sensibilities)

Author: Inherently Flawed

Disclaimer: All hail Jonathan Larson

Note: Not my best work by any stretch, but I came to me in a bout of insomnia last night and I decided that tonight, hopped up on a pitcher of iced tea, was a good time to write it. No flames, please. Reviews, though, are always welcome.

April is giggling in the corner as Roger improvises a goofy ballad for her. The sound of new love – how sweet. I hear the words 'albino roommate' set to a tune and send a glare Roger's way. Collins and Maureen are sprawled on the couch, excitedly formulating a new anarchist protest duet performance. I cringe and sigh as I hear something about streaking and a rubber chicken. Thankfully, I've finally learned that at times it is just best not to ask about some things. Especially where plots between Collins and Maureen are concerned. Benny is crouched in the far corner with the phone, stretching the cord to its very limit. Seems like these days you can always find him on the phone with Allison – stubbornly trying to carry on a romantic conversation with his uptown girl while shouting to be heard and asking her to repeat every other thing she says. The thing about our loft is that in the main room, sound carries to every corner. He never has been able to recognize a lost cause. I'm narrating.

I move around the room, getting shots of all my friends. Close up on: April's uninhibited smile, mouth open and teeth showing. Roger with a smug, full-fledged grin and a teasing twinkle in his eye as he glances my way. Benny, frustrated and half-hidden behind a stack of boxes, as though that's going to muffle any sound in this place. Collins, speaking with such animation that spit occasionally flies from his mouth. Maureen, playing a good student, eyes wide in amazement at the ideas coming from her professor's mouth.

Roger smells clean today, which is a new trend I'm starting to like. He's showering and changing his clothing on a basis more regular than 'when the flies arrive'. April always smells like Dove soap, and a little like flowers. A whiff of their combined scents hits me as I walk by, and it's a pleasant change from the stale-smoke-moldy-food-unwashed-boys smell the loft usually has. Benny smells strongly of overpriced cologne – I don't think he used to wear so much of that shit. Obviously, Allison's dad is paying him too much. Collins and Maureen are basking in a whirl of pot smoke. The scent is drowned a bit by Maureen's citrus shampoo and spicy perfume, but is pure and unadulterated from Collins.

Roger and April are tucked away in Roger's bedroom, having sex for what seems to me to be the hundredth time in the four hours we've been awake. Maureen is pacing about in front of the kitchen table, reciting lines from the script which Collins, sitting on the table, is holding. She tries different inflections and motions as she runs through her lines. Collins offers advice and corrections when needed. This is a fairly big part for her, and she's incredibly nervous. We've all got her lines memorized by now, and she's still going. I'm narrating.

I move around the room, getting shots of all my friends. Lately, Roger and April's faces look so similar that a passing glance couldn't tell one from the other. Mouths hanging slightly open as they trip, pupils dilated to the point where I can hardly tell what color their eyes are. At least we don't have to look at them right now, even if we can hear every breath taken in that room, thanks to cheap, shoddy walls. Close on Roger's closed door. Pan to the answering machine, whose red light is blinking at me, because I'm the only one who notices it. Messages for Benny, which we will hold for him, along with his boxes, stacked up next to the doorway of what is now just Collins's room.

Roger and April smell like the club they were in last night, and all of the goings on therein – smoke, alcohol and sex. Every time they take a break from doing it like rabbits, I can smell sulphur as they light and extinguish candle after candle. The faint smell of pot that usually tints the apartment has faded a little, since no one has had the money for it in the last few days. Therefore, Collins smells like himself – earthy. Not earthy in the hippie, I'm-morally-against-showering, etc. kind of way, but in the Collins kind of way. I could swear I smell a bit of cologne on Maureen, but that doesn't make sense because I don't wear any. Must be the lingering ghost of Benny's morals.

Days later, my head still echoes with screaming, the footsteps of the paramedics, hysterical sobbing. The loft is silent, for the most part. Roger only occasionally whimpers or lets out a strangled sob, since we are in a good hour. Soon the yelling, ranting, stomping and throwing will begin again as we refuse him his escape, release, pain relief, the one tie he feels he still has to April. Maureen comes over and tells me in as quiet a tone as her voice can manage that she is going out for a while and might stay the night with a friend. She is nervous about being here, in this silence. The door rolls quietly shut behind her. I'm not narrating. This doesn't need to be seen by anyone else but us.

Even though my camera is not here to remember things for me, everything of the past week is still boldly emblazoned inside my skull. Roger's face that plainly said that his world and everything he truly loved had just collapsed and left him. Maureen's face, pale and horrified. Maureen, getting sick in the kitchen sink. Roger, getting sick anywhere he happened to be as withdrawal set in. Collins, dragging Roger from the bathroom. That tiny yellow Post-It note that ruined our lives. I selfishly take a moment to think that it's not fair – April didn't even live here, technically; what right had she to slit her wrists in our bathtub? Stain our tile grout slightly but permanently pink? Put our friend through the agony he's in now? Roger emerges from his bedroom, shaking and sweating, and I hand him his brand-new bottle of AZT.

The entire loft reeks. Of vomit, mostly, and many unshowered bodies. I want desperately to throw open all of the windows and let the New York smog clean out the stench, but I restrain myself. I wouldn't dare, since it's hardly registering above zero out there, and now with two HIV-positive roommates… well, I wouldn't dare. The bathroom and Collins's hands still smell of bleach, which I feel bad about even though I know it was necessary. Collins wouldn't let me do any of the clean-up, not wanting to put me at risk. Above it all, I swear I can still smell the coppery smell of tons and tons of blood.

Roger has picked up his guitar again, for the first time in months. He's half-heartedly strumming Musetta's Waltz and often his attention drifts away from it, but it's better than moping in his bedroom. Collins is reading on the fire escape, windows left open due to the breezy-but-warm weather. Things are a lot quieter around here since Maureen left (Okay, so I was naïve, I get it. The cologne, 'staying the night with a friend,' I should have known. But it's not like I didn't have other things on my mind!). I'm narrating, though there isn't much to say.

I move around the room, getting shots of my friends. Roger probably wouldn't notice if I was holding the camera up to his nose, he's so lost in his own head. He idly fingers chords on his beloved and recently reclaimed guitar and stares out the window. I wonder what he's thinking about, or if he's thinking at all. I see a few tears begin to form in his eyes, and I have my answer. He stubbornly blinks them back and turns his attentions back to the guitar. I leave him be. Collins is intently scribbling in the margins of his book, a thick tome of something heavy-sounding. For weather like this, they are both disturbingly still and quiet.

I can't smell anything today. I have a cold, of all things to be sick with during this beautiful weather, which is why I'm not leaving my room unless absolutely necessary, and even then I try to hold my breath. Life has gotten quite a bit scarier around here since Roger was diagnosed. Granted, Collins has been positive for years and I've never worried much about it. Probably because he's the biggest, burliest, strongest looking man I know – it's absurd to think of him getting ill. Roger, though, looks infinitely more fragile. So in my room I shall stay, until I can smell enough to tell Roger to get off his ass and take a shower.

"Close up on Mark's new bedroom, recently vacated by Collins, who has abandoned us to chase greener pastures at M.I.T."

"Mark, put that damn thing away for once, would you?"

"I'm recording for posterity!"

"Posterity?"

"Future generations."

"I know what it means, dumbass, I'm just wondering why you think future generations will be interested in our life."

"At least I'll have something when VH1 shows up for 'Behind the Music'."

Snort. "Which I'm sure will be any time now…"

"Shut up. I don't make fun of your song writing, so you don't make fun of my filming."

"Mark, you do make fun of my song writing."

"…Okay, fine."

"Thank you. For once, an actual face-to-face conversation with my very last remaining roommate."

"This place feels so empty… Remember when we had six or seven people packed in here at a time?"

"Oh yeah. Never a moments peace, no hot water, never enough food or beds to go around. Good times. And do note my sarcasm."

"Roger, you were the one always disturbing the peace, there's still no hot water and not enough food to go around."

"But at least we each have our own room."

"Hey Mark, come check out this amazing sunset!"

"Roger…"

"Really, it's great! You should come take a look."

"Roger!"

"It's lighting up all the buildings, reflecting off windows… I bet it would be a great shot for your movie."

"Roger! You know damn well all I can see is your fuzzy ass next to a fuzzy window, backlit by something kinda orange. Give me back my glasses!"

"Apologize!"

"You deserved it!"

"Apologize!"

"Give them back!"

"Alright, good luck finding those specks of yours in this big, big apartment with no help from me."

"I hate you… Roger, I'm sorry I laughed at you for saying your favorite movie is-" giggle "The Wizard of Oz."

"Yeah, nice try. Next time do it without laughing, and we'll discuss the return of glasses."

"Roger, what the hell is that smell?"

"Um… I was trying to cook."

"Cook what? Didn't we already agree that you aren't allowed to use the hotplate because of what happened last time?"

"A grilled cheese."

"We have bread? And cheese? At the same time?"

"Well, sort of. I had to pick the moldy parts of both, but there was enough left that I could compile a decent sandwich."

"Roger, please, please tell me you're kidding."

"…Okay, I'm kidding."

Sigh.