Disclaimer: Jon's, as always.
A/N: Holy hell, never again. It is--:blearily inspects clock:--almost 12:30 in the morning, and I am still in this chair. I'm surprised I can still type. Ah well. I blame this little Roger drabble—yes, yes, I'm venturing once more from the Mojo fluff; huzzah!—on the half-finished Roger sketch in my lap. Poor guy only has one eye, and it isn't quite right, but it's close enough. Perhaps someday, I'll set myself up with a DeviantArt account and share these little sketches with the world, but until then, you get my writing. Hope that's worth a little somethin'. Anyway, enjoy.
Roger sat in the living room of the loft, guitar lazing on his lap like a wooden dog. His fingers rested on the strings, momentarily stalling from the song he'd been picking out; his eyes were focused on the opposite wall, where a film screen covered the slightly-moldy brick.
He could hear Mark cursing to himself in the background. The thin blond man was in the kitchen, fiddling with his projector and camera. Roger smiled to himself. Mark was always fiddling. It seemed to be what he did best: he fiddled.
Even the word fit the man, Roger mused, patting the body of his guitar absently. Everyone had a word that summed them up perfectly, he reasoned; perhaps not the meaning of the word, necessarily, so much as the sound of it rolling from one's tongue. He smiled at the thought and made a note to share it with everyone else later. They'd be proud of him, he thought happily, for coming up with something like this.
Even better, he realized a second later, would be coming up with a word for each of them. That way, he could not only share his theory but prove himself. Collins would be beyond proud.
This would be interesting. He tapped the guitar a little faster, chewing his lip as he thought.
Mark was quite obviously "fiddling". That's what he was, what he'd always done. Fiddled with his camera, with his scarf—even with larger things, like Roger's own life. It was a damn good thing, too, that Mark was such an obsessive fiddler; otherwise, who knew where Roger would be?
What about the others, though? While Mark's term came so easily to him, the others were more complicated. Scrunching up his face in concentration, Roger decided to begin with Collins. He'd known the man longer even than he had Mark; this, then, should be the next simplest one.
Collins. What was Collins? The easiest word would be "anarchy", of course, but Roger didn't like that. It didn't flow from his lips well when he mouthed it to himself. Collins had to flow, like a stream, or melting ice cream. What was a flowing sort of word?
Consciousness. It came to him, slow and easy, and he smiled. That was Collins: consciousness. He was all thought and power and relaxation—always in control of himself, even when you most expected him to curl up and die. Like when he lost Angel; Roger reasoned that, if it were him, he wouldn't have been able to take it. He would have buried himself in the tiny parts of his own world, and never come up for air. He would lose himself. Hell, he'd done it before.
Collins, though, held on. He refused to let himself get pulled under by the weight of grief. Instead, he gripped to life as though it was slipping from him; which, in a way, it was. No one knew how long Collins had left; it could be as much as years or as little as days. Most of the time, it seemed like it didn't matter. Collins would be there as long as he felt he was needed, and then he would go. When he was ready, and not a moment before. He would cling to his mind for all the time that remained; maybe even longer than that. Roger found that comforting.
Who next? The next logical choice was Angel. The glue that had kept them together, even when the beautiful man—woman, Roger corrected himself instinctively—was physically gone. What word could possibly sum up such an amazing creature?
Awe. Angel had always been in such awe of her world. The colors, the sounds—even the pain had inspired her. Roger remembered the time he'd caught her at Life Support—they'd both been early that day for the meeting. The space was empty save for Angel, twirling around and around in the center of the chair circle, her arms and head thrown back as if to feel the nonexistent rush of wind. He had stood, hands shoved uncomfortably in the pockets of his jacket, and watched as she giggled. With anyone else, he would have felt like he was intruding on some private, personal moment. With Angel, though…she was sharing herself, her joy, with anyone who cared to step in. She always had. It was the best way to get around in such an angry world, she'd once said; open yourself up and let as much love shine as you possibly can. The light side of the Force could be stronger than the dark, she'd joked. Collins had poked her side and teased her about never watching Star Wars again.
That day, at Life Support, Roger had allowed himself to smile in the most childlike way he had in years. When Angel finally looked up and spotted him, she beamed back. Then she had charged forward and grabbed his hands from his pockets, hauling him into the circle with her. He hadn't protested, though normally he would have jerked away. Instead, he had let her spin him around with her, both of them laughing like children until the other Supporters had finally trickled in.
Yes, awe was the word to describe Angel. She had been in awe of the world, and it of her. It fit perfectly.
Now…Maureen. Roger gritted his teeth together, picking out a quick melody on the guitar. This would not be so easy. Though he'd known her forever, Maureen had always been something of an enigma to him. Wild and frenzied, she never seemed to think before she spoke. She was the kind of woman who left torn hearts and car crashes in her wake, yet no one could ever get enough of her. Lord knew Mark would probably always be slightly enamored with her. Joanne appeared to be able to take care of herself, but she was under the woman's spell too—maybe more than Mark himself had been.
What word touched on Maureen? Roger let his eyes drift around the loft, searching for some clue. His gaze fell on a poster Mark had brought home three days ago, an ad that screamed "Kittens for sale! Twenty bucks! Contact Sheila!"
He had no idea who Sheila was, beyond someone who apparently bred cats for a living, but the poster helped all the same. Cats. Maureen.
Feline.
He wasn't even referring to that stupid cat suit she pulled out every once in awhile. Maureen was, for all intents and purposes, a large, dangerous cat. Not a housecat, no. Though normal cats were anything but sweet—every one Roger had ever met had been vicious and calculating—they were still too…basic for Maureen. She was, as she'd always insist, anything but ordinary. He saw in her something stronger, more exotic—a tiger, perhaps. Yes, that was it. Beautiful, graceful, deadly. Maureen was a downright scary person sometimes. She was sexy and street-smart, and knew it; a dangerous combination. She stalked cafes and streets as if she owned every building and every person in them. She prowled dance floors, taking names and breaking hearts—at least until recently, when the only name she took was Joanne's. She had stopped crushing souls, at least as far as Roger could see; somehow, Joanne had done the impossible in getting Maureen to chill out and settle down.
But the woman was far from tame; any fool could see that. No one owned Maureen Johnson; the most you could hope for was a 60-40 partnership, with Maureen always on top. She was too free to ever fully relax into anything—like that tiger. You could trap an animal like that in a nice habitat with good food and plenty of fresh air, but it would never be your pet. There was always the danger of being at its mercy.
The same went for Maureen. Roger filed away the word with the others and said a silent prayer for Joanne's mental well-being. He had a lot of faith in that woman, but Maureen could take down the best of people and just barrel on.
Joanne. This, too, wouldn't be so simple, mostly because he didn't really know Joanne. She was a lawyer, he knew, and a lesbian. The love of Maureen's life, whatever that entailed—and he wasn't too sure he wanted to know. There was more to the woman, of course, but he'd never gotten close enough to find anything out. He'd never had a reason to; she was Maureen's lover and Mark's strange confidant (when that had happened, he didn't know; the one time he'd questioned it aloud, Mark had gone off on a tangent about a tango and Roger had decided he didn't want to know about that either). That was it.
Except it wasn't. Joanne had a word too, and Roger was determined to find it. Setting the guitar beside him on the couch, he leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and tucked his hands under his chin, one palm against each cheek. His thinking position. Mark had always taunted him about its childishness, but Roger didn't care. This was the position that had gotten him past geometry, and he was convinced it was as foolproof a technique as any. Mark always quipped that it had to be, if Roger used it.
Joanne. Roger rolled her name around his head. Joanne. What was Joanne?
Crazy, was the first thing to come to mind, for being in love with Maureen. Roger batted the term away; too judgmental and not fitting enough.
Anal-retentive. That one came in Maureen's voice, which frightened him. Of all the voices in his head, he never wanted Maureen's to be one. He made a mental note to consult a doctor about that when he got a spare moment.
Security. There it was. Almost afraid that it would leave as quickly as it had come to him, Roger scrambled for a pencil. Flipping the cat ad over, he scribbled 'Joanne--security' on the back. Then, as an afterthought, he added the others' names and respective terms as well. If Maureen's voice was infiltrating his thoughts, his memory would probably be the first to go. It wouldn't be smart to allow an entire afternoon of such hard thought to go to waste.
Security, yes, that was the perfect Joanne-word. Out of all of them, she was the one who knew her place in the world. She had money, enough to ensure food in her cupboards and fresh milk in her fridge. She had a job, steady and promising. She even had things so potentially-confusing as her sexuality worked out perfectly: she knew what and who she was. A lesbian? So what? Doc Martens in place of high heels? They were comfortable, she always insisted. Women over men? At least women smelled better and thought more clearly, she argued. Usually.
Really, the only piece of Joanne's world that wasn't perfectly dusted and set in place on the coffee table was her relationship with Maureen. It was good for her, Roger thought, that she had someone so abnormal and totally bohemian as the spastic Ms. Johnson. At least it kept Joanne on her toes. It kept her life from being absolutely boring.
More than her own life, though, was the way Joanne was there for the rest of them. Though she was the newest to the group, she never failed to prove her loyalty and strength. It was Joanne who had helped Mark through a nasty fight with his overprotective parents two months ago. It had been Joanne who had bailed Collins out of a bit of trouble with a few local police officers who weren't too appreciative of public protests (especially those that involved a large black man who stripped naked to the waist and climbed half-way up a flagpole shouting about the travesty of war and commercialism; Roger had laughed himself silly when he saw his long-time friend on the news, screaming words so long that Roger himself would have had to look them up). And it was always Joanne who coaxed any of them out of depression, out of panic, out of revelations about their collective lack of success that tended to pop up at inappropriate times and overwhelm each of them. Joanne was secure, not only in herself, but in her place as the unofficial crying shoulder for each of them. Even Roger, though he'd only taken part in her silent services once. When Mimi had…
He bit his lip, harder than before. Mimi. He'd been putting this one off. This was the one he didn't want to think about. The one word he wasn't sure he'd be able to come up with.
There were so many, none of them pleasant. All of them bit into him, hard. They were something like school; teeth that sank into his skin like barbed wire and never quite let go.
Death. Sickness. Loss. Hopelessness.
No, he thought, somewhat dizzily. No, those weren't right. That wasn't his Mimi; never had been. Not even at the end. Mimi was so many things. Light, and air, and flowers, and dancing, and freedom. She was everything he had thought he'd never see or feel again after April. She was…
Clarity.
Mimi was clarity. She was the point in his life where he saw everything change. The pain fell away for the first time in over a year; the depression, the perpetual angst, all faded away to reveal this. Her. Brown eyes as dark and wide as a fawn's, bright smiles that were enough to light up the room even when the power was out. She was clear and perfect, even in her flaws; the first simplicity he had ever known.
She was the one who had dragged him, kicking and swearing, out of the trap his mind had become. She had achieved the goal Mark and Collins had had for what felt like forever, and she had done so in record time. With Mimi, the secret was innocence. She had been places, done things that a lot of people wouldn't dream of, yet she had innocence draped over her like a soft blanket. It protected her, even when Roger thought she should break from the pressure of withdrawal, of the disease crawling through her veins like acid, of the loss of one of the best friends she'd had in the world. Her innocence lit her from the inside out, leaving no room for shadows or mystery. She was the easiest to read of all of them, because she saw no point in keeping secrets. Why bother, when you didn't know if you had the time to reveal them all?
She'd been gone for almost three months. At first, Roger had done exactly what he'd originally expected of Collins: he'd retreated. His mind once again became his cave; the loft, his prison. He locked himself in, and tossed the key over his shoulder with no interest in ever finding it again. What else was there, without love? Without her?
Clarity. It had taken him six weeks for it to smack him in the face. Six weeks to realize that Mimi—not to mention Angel—would be scolding him for this. Pulling on his hand and trying to force him out into the sunlight again. Trying everything she knew to force him back into the life he was letting slip through his fingers.
Epiphanies are strange things. Once you get one, it tends to stay with you.
Roger sighed to himself, the excitement of his little game finally wearing out. He scratched the words 'Mimiclarity' on the back of the flier, and stared down at them. There they were. His friends, all of them, clumped together on a singular sheet of paper.
Fiddling.
Consciousness.
Awe.
Feline.
Security.
Clarity.
Only one missing. Roger ran his fingers through the mop of hair on his hand, wincing when one of his rings caught on an unruly curl. One missing, and it had to be the hardest one of all.
Everyone had a word. Even him.
It took him hours. Through dinner—ramen cups with Mark, as they sprawled on the floor watching the filmmaker's latest work. Through writing more to his song. Through picking up a copy of the Voice and flipping from page to page blindly, hoping something would leap out at him.. Just one word.
It only came to him that night, when he lay in bed, half-delirious with sleep. He bolted upright, too tired to think past the single term, but not too tired to practically run in his flannel pants and socks to the living room where that flier lounged under his guitar. Grabbing up the pencil, he clumsily etched the final words on the sheet.
'Roger--distraction'.
That was it. Him. His whole life had been about distracting himself and others from the world around them. His music, his brooding, his drinking, his joking—all of it pulled his eyes from the pain of existing. Where Angel had embraced it, where Mark spent his time fiddling with the pieces, where Collins explained it and Maureen danced with it and Joanne set it neatly where she saw fit…where Mimi had smiled at it, letting it in because she knew it belonged. He never had. He put it off, hid from it, buried it beneath beers and chords and bad haircuts. He lived for distractions.
Settling back between the sheets, Roger closed his eyes. This was why he had his friends, he thought; he needed people to show him, without fear, what he was always hiding from. He needed people to drag him forward when all he wanted was to step back.
Each of them had a word, and while none of them fit in a particularly coherent fashion, all of them worked together. That was why they'd been together for so long, bound. Each of them needed the others to operate. Distraction can only bring a person to a point before clarity or awe or sheer mad feline danger had to step in and haul you over the line.
Roger smiled sleepily to himself. The game was complete. Everything made sense.
His English teachers had been right. Words did make a difference.
He wasn't a hopeless case after all.