Post-Rent, with a couple of pre-Rent dream sequences thrown in. I know it's short, but I wrote this ages ago.
Mark awoke sweating and trembling slightly. He'd be dreaming, but trying to hold on to the details was like trying to hold water in a cupped hand. The harder he tried to remember them, the more easily they seemed to slip from his drowsy brain. He, himself had been there, so had Roger and Collins, but they seemed different. They had all been younger; the virus had not yet taken its toll on Roger's body, and Collins… had Collins ever really looked young to him?
Well he looked less weathered, at any rate. Some days, especially near the end, Collins had appeared to have the weight of the world on his shoulders. He wasn't scared to die, no, he was just disappointed that he wouldn't be able to continue celebrating life with his friends. And even that sadness had been light; he had no regrets in the fact that he'd fully taken part in his life with the ones he'd loved. Lying on the hospital bed, when asked if he was afraid of what came next, a peaceful gaze would fall on his eyes and ease the lines of his forehead. He said he'd lived long enough with his Angel, as Roger tied one of her silk scarves around his frail wrists.
In the dream, Collins and Roger had been worried about something…. Him. It all looked very familiar somehow, like a modified memory, or reversed déjà vu or….something. Roger, the older Roger, the one who carried the weight of disease and the memories of April and Mimi, and the scars of withdrawals, laid in bed next to him, still asleep, a calloused hand warm on his stomach.
Why had Collins and Roger been so concerned in the dream?
He froze when it hit him, the broken pieces of the dream clicking in to place. Straining to remember the dream's details, he'd fallen momentarily back to sleep and awoken with a snap, now fully aware of what the dream that had woken him up had been about. It had been like on e of his films flipping through the projector reels too fast, only with sound and definition.
It wasn't a memory, not really. Not his at least, although it was a memory he was a part of. Unlike his own memory, however, he was not simply an observer to the action. He was in the middle of it.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Collins held on to his arms in a riot-breaking, preventing him from lunging wildly at Roger on the other side of the room.
"Get the fuck off me Collins!" he raved, "I swear to God, I'll kill him! I'll fucking kill him!"
"Well dude," Collins said with far too much patience for the situation, tightening his hold on Mark's upper arms. The motion was well practiced from having been on the receiving end of it from foreign law enforcement officers on so many occasions. "That's exactly why I can't let go of you. Now sit your ass down and cool it."
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Five years ago, that same scenario had played out in the loft, but not with the same people. Five years ago, Roger, in a fit of rage from withdrawals, had strained against Collins' strong arms, trying to get at Mark. Mark had simply brought him a glass of water and asked him a please take his AZT. In the dream, Mark realized, he was Roger. But that hadn't been the end of the dream, either. It skipped ahead to a memory a week or so later.
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
They were slumped against the wall of the bathroom on the cold linoleum floor. He'd been vomiting and Roger was pressing a cool towel to his sweat-drenched forehead. Everything was accurate, straight from his memories. Right down to their tattered clothes and the color of the vomit floating in the toilet.
Well, almost everything.
As with the other portion of the dream, it had been Mark, not Roger, holding a towel to a vomiting man's face as he wretched into the toilet. What happened next, Mark had all but forgotten, but it had indeed happened, only with him as the speaker.
Roger hold on to Mark's quivering shoulder to steady him and wiped the free flowing tears from his cheeks. In a falsely confident voice, he said, "We're gonna get through this, man. There's me, and there's Collins, and we want to help you." His voice fell an octave, "You were right though. I could have stopped you doing this a long time ago. I'm sorry, I'm really, truly sorry."
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Back in the real world of their bedroom, a small, tinny alarm on the night stand rang out in the dark, Mumbling, still half asleep, Roger twisted on his side and gave Mark, who he believed to still be asleep, a small squeeze and shake on the shoulder.
"AZT time, baby, come on," he yawned, "and then we go right back to sleep."
Roger took two small tablets from the orange bottle on the nightstand and shut off the alarm. He swallowed his own and slipped the other in to his lover's mouth. They settled back down into the covers and he draped his arm back over Mark's side. When he believed him to be asleep, he smoothed down the spiky, blonde hair and in the dark whispered, "I'm sorry, Mark, I'm really, truly, sorry."
Notes: Hey, I know that's all kind of hard to get. I was cleaning out my back pack and I found that in my history notebook. I think I wrote it after a test on Russian Absolutism. I think the basic idea is supposed to be that both Mark and Roger blamed themselves for things that were sort of beyond their control, but I don't remember that well.
Reviews? Pretty, pretty please?