Disclaimer: Not mine in the slightest. I bow to the great Jon Larson.
A/N: Finally, something that isn't a Mojo fic. Not that I don't love Mojo with all my shippy little heart, of course, but I've been dying to write a Mark fic for ages. Go figure that the first one I manage to bang out is extremely angsty…I don't usually write angst. Ah, well. I'm going to post it now, before I reread it and decide it's crap. Enjoy.
Everything's false when the lights are off. If I've learned nothing else in this life, it's that I can only trust the sunlight. The moon casts shadows, casts lies…the stars are fabrications.
Living with my father taught me that. Watching the way he'd smile humorlessly at the dinner table, listening to the things he never quite meant to say as they spilled past pale, thin lips every night. Taking in the fake pride and the fake humor and the fake existence that was my creation.
The night is a lie.
Living with Maureen cemented that. Smiling with forced energy as she bounded in at nearly midnight, smelling like someone who was not me. Feeling her kiss me and knowing, somehow, that it wasn't my lips she was tasting. Touching her hand with my own and feeling the skin tense up as though it had a nervous, unceasing electricity spiraling through it. Knowing that she didn't love me.
Only trust the light.
Everything in my life has lead to this, it seems. To watching the world slide by through a thin glass circle. To clicking the record button more times than my heart beats every hour. To laughing without mirth, to crying without emotion, to praying to someone I'm not sure I believe in.
I'm next to his bed. It's eleven twenty-one pm, Eastern Standard Time. I'm on my knees, gripping the thin white sheet in both hands. A scream dances on my tongue; I bite it back. Now is not the time for a meltdown.
My camera—my extra self, my "better half"—lies on the floor beside me. It presses against my leg, the cool metal driving through the denim of my jeans as though begging for me to pick it up, turn it on. Flick that record button once again.
I ignore it. Too long, I've used that damn thing to hide behind. Too many times, I've ducked away from love, from laughter, from everything makes this stupid life worth living, just to pick that tool up. It is, I recognize now—maybe for the first time in at least a decade of lugging it around—only a tool. It doesn't matter, so long as it serves its purpose.
My whole life, I thought that purpose was to make films. To educate others about the world I live in. To immortalize the people I love.
My whole life, I've believed something utterly untrue. The one thing I thought I could trust…
I'm choking. I can feel the bile rise in my throat, can taste the sick acid as it tries to well up. I'm choking on my own fear, on resentment, on years and years of pent-up bitterness.
This isn't right. This isn't my turn. The breakdown comes later.
Eleven twenty-four pm, Eastern Standard Time. I'm in a hospital room. I'm on my knees. I'm alone.
His hand has been cold for at least twenty minutes. I was holding it when he…I didn't even realize what it meant, at first. I didn't know. I thought a draft had gotten the better of him, so I shifted the blanket. And saw for the first time the way his chest had stilled.
I missed it. Somehow. I've been right here, the whole time, and I missed it. I've been on my knees on this freezing tile floor for hours. I've been here since Maureen and Joanne left around seven. I've been here since that squeeze on the arm from my ex-girlfriend, since the bittersweet ruffle of my hair from her lover. I've been here since he rasped out a semi-embarrassed—and leave it to him to look like a guilty little boy, with that still-and-always roguish grin, even when he was lying broken and defeated amidst tubes and wires and machines that never quieted—tone of voice that he didn't want to be alone anymore.
He missed Mimi. That last conversation we had was the most open one I've ever shared with anyone. I never thought I'd be that open with him—more importantly, that he'd be so honest with me. He was never an open book. That was his mystery, his secret. He was a shut-in, even before April. Even before me, and Collins, and Benny. Before anyone I know now found him, he'd been that way.
But in those last words that dripped from his tongue like the blood he'd been coughing lately, he changed. He opened up. He started talking, slow at first, and then faster than I ever would have expected. He told me about looking up to his father's photograph, a man he'd never been able to meet. He told me about hating his mother's guts the first time she brought home a boyfriend, and about cradling her in his ten-year-old arms the night that boyfriend left her. He told me about kissing Casey Whitmire in the sixth grade in the school courtyard. He told me about beating the shit out of Jake Tomas in the eighth grade when Jake tried "get with" Casey in that same courtyard. He told me about crying his eyes out at his high school graduation when he realized it was over, it was finally over.
He told me about his first real band, the first to leave the garage. He told me about his first real girlfriend, a woman four years his senior who made him promise he'd never give up music. He told me about meeting Collins at a concert, about meeting Benny at a protest, about meeting April when he thought he was invincible.
He told me about the drugs. He told me about the withdrawal. He told me about losing April and finding Mimi and everything that I already knew. It didn't matter. I listened. It was what he needed.
Finally, he told me about me. The last words, I see now, that I will ever hear him speak. They echo in my head as if he's saying them now, as if his lips are moving and his chest is heaving from the effort.
"Mark," he's saying, "the first time I saw you, man, I thought I had a serious head-case on my hands. You were so tiny, such a little boy, with your thick glasses and that stupid scarf." He's reaching up, his hand trembling, to touch that same scarf, wrapped around my neck like a shield. I smile. He continues.
"I thought I'd have to spend all my time protecting you, Mark. I thought I'd have to quit the band and quit the guitar and quit my life, just to keep you from getting yourself killed on the ol' streets of New York. I thought you were one of those kids who would somehow stagger into trouble no matter where you went."
I laugh. He isn't too far off. Before I met him and the other guys, I was that kid, the one who got his eyes blacked and his money stolen every time he turned around. I don't remember changing, but I know I have.
His eyes are serious, though a smile still lingers on the edges of his mouth. "I thought I'd have to carry you, Marky. Who'd have thought you'd be the one carrying me all this time, huh?"
My mouth is dry suddenly. I can't move. His hand, shaking and fragile, slides off of my scarf and presses against my fingers. His skin is dry and cool.
"I know I didn't treat you the way best friends are supposed to," he says quietly. "I know that. I hit you, I hurt you. I lied to you, screamed at you. I must have called you every obscenity I knew, and then some. Remember that time I called you a whore?"
I smile again, but this time I can feel the expression quivering. "In French, no less."
He nods, thoughtful. "I beat you, I blamed you. I hated you sometimes. I told myself, on the bad days, that you were a coward. That you were so afraid of losing me that you were forcing me to become someone I didn't want to be. That, if you really gave a damn about me, you wouldn't be hiding my needles and throwing out my stash. You'd just let me be.
"Truth of it is, man, you were never the coward. You were always the strong one. The smart one. I know I wasn't there for you the way you were there for me…and you were always there, there was no failing in that." His lips curve, almost invisible against his pale skin. "You were the one person who was there for me, no matter what. When April died, when I was falling apart, when Mimi died, when I wanted to tear my own head off, just to make it all go away…you were there.
"You're my brother, man. You always have been." If he were stronger, he'd be shaking his head wryly. As it is, he squeezes my fingers until they hurt.
I can't say a word. I can't move. I can't even remember how to breathe. His voice fades from my mind like one of the shadows cast by the tree outside his window. Closing my eyes, I drag in a breath and hold a little tighter to the sheet.
Eleven thirty-nine pm. Eastern Standard Time. Roger is gone.
Everything else is false when the lights are off. Why is it, then, that this can't be part of everything?