Title: Facing It
Author: BohoJules
Rating: T
Genre: Angst
Summary: Mark tries to stay strong at Roger's funeral, tries to be the strong one, but he still hasn't even faced that his best friend is gone.
Notes: Beginning and ending lines taken from the poem "Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa.
Facing It
I said I wouldn't dammit: no tears. I'm stone.
Why couldn't he stop shaking? His hands, when not nervously shoved into the pockets of his corduroy trousers, were quaking with rapid tremors, almost as though he were cold. It was the middle of April, the sun shining through the stained glass windows of the church, perhaps seventy degrees, but Mark was freezing. He could hear his teeth chatter, feel the goosebumps that rose on his forearms, practically see his breath in the air. It felt like he had been submerged into ice, that he was slowly slipping into some deep hibernation he would never awake from, even if he wanted to. Roger was gone.
It had been a week, not even, six days and a few hours, since Roger had lost the battle with AIDS. The flu. The common flu. That's what had been Roger's, the strongest person he had ever met, downfall. A fucking flu he had picked up down at the Life one afternoon. Not just the flu, he sighed. Mimi's death only a few weeks before had badly shaken all of them, weakening Roger's already frail condition.
Collins leaned over to take one hand, squeezing gently, almost as if to try and take some of Mark's pain onto himself. Joanne attached herself to his opposite side, both attempting to console the filmmaker who was already gone. Without realizing he was doing it, he squeezed back, softly, then wrapped an arm around Joanne to soothe her crying. He even leaned against Collins for a minute to comfort his friend, when they had originally tried to do so for him. It always happened this way; somehow, Mark became the strong one, the anchor, even when he was crumbling inside. I'm stone.
Roger was dead. There was no easy to say it, no easy way to understand it. He had been sick for years, yes, but he had been so healthy. So alive. Just three months ago, he and Mark had gone on a sabbatical of sorts, driving out to San Francisco just to see the Pacific Ocean – which had looked exactly like the Atlantic, except the people were friendlier – then Santa Fe, to return to the small cafés Roger had found four years before, and finally to Chicago, only because neither had ever been there. It had been long and tedious, the hours spent crammed into Roger's secondhand Ford only to spend a few hours in a city that was like home only cleaner, but the fact that they had been together had made it worthwhile. Mark had watched the films last night... Roger had been so vivacious.
A priest who had never even met Roger was saying some words now, which everyone who had known him tuned out as white noise. Roger had hated churches anyway, ever since they had known him; something about his father growing up in one, and how religion had always made him feel weak, insignificant, and so very alone. The only time he would ever enter churches had been for the funeral of a Life Support member. Now it was his turn, with barely the first four rows of pews sparsely littered with family and friends: Mark, Collins, Maureen, and Joanne seated as family in the front, a few members of Life Support or people from the Life behind, and then Benny and the Davis' looking decidedly uncomfortable in the back row of the church. Then there was silence, and Mark realized that everyone had turned to look at him.
They expected him to give the next speech, something he hadn't prepared for, even considered. But, like always, he stood and took the fall for his companions – they were too shaken up to even breathe properly, much less speak. With all eyes following his slow, deliberate pace, Mark took a stand at the podium. "Roger is... was... my best friend." His voice sounded quaky, even to his ears. I'm stone. He cleared his throat and began again, finding strength and volume by detaching. "Roger was a musician, a good one. I suppose." He grinned, blankly, and Collins managed a smile. "He was great at playing Musetta's Waltz." That earned a laugh, if only a weak one.
"He was never the same after Mimi died. I think that's what finally got him, just missing her. She died four weeks ago, if any of you didn't know. They," here his voice choked off, and he had to pause for a few breaths. "They had only been married a year, when she went. And then he... then he died."
Then he died.
It was so anticlimactic, 'then he died,' but that's how it had happened. There was no blaze of glory, no remarkable moment, he had just slipped away in the middle of the night while Mark slept at his bedside. He had just... died. Six days ago, Roger had died.
"Fuck," the startled gasp was the only thing that let Mark know he had spoken aloud, and Collins' eager giggle as the easygoing one suddenly became the anarchist – swearing in church. "He just died... that's all there is. Roger died six days and," he checked his watch, his voice stronger than ever. "Eight hours ago. I was there with him, when he died. He hit me, to wake me up, told me he loved me, and then just... died. That's all."
It suddenly struck him that the tears he had fought so long to hold in were streaming down his face, and that his shoulders were shaking with harsh jarring movements. Then it hit him, and for a moment he couldn't breathe; it felt like someone had hit him in the stomach, knocking all the life out of him. "Roger died... he died, and I was there, and I couldn't help him. Just like Mimi, and Angel, fuck, even April. I was there when they all died, but couldn't do anything." He turned away from the crowd, now struck dumb except for that front row, the only ones who would have mattered, in Roger's opinion. "I'm sorry, guys, but I can't be the strong one here. Roger was always the strong one... and now he's dead."
It felt good, to finally break like this, as he collapsed against Maureen and Joanne and Collins, sobbing like everything in his world was gone – which it seemed it was. For once, he was the one held and supported. For once, he was the weak one allowed to seek comfort in the arms of family. And for once, he was allowed to grieve, to say goodbye. He cried, that morning in the church, ignoring the man who had never even met Roger and the people in the back who didn't matter and holding his strange family like a lifeline, and he said goodbye to April and Angel and Mimi and Roger.
Then he cried for his family, strange as they were – a performance artist and her lesbian lawyer partner, with the HIV positive philosophy teacher thrown in – and for the brother they had lost.
I'm flesh.
Fin