Rating: strong R

Warnings: Mild language, violence, drug use, suicide, sexual situations (not explicit)

Song Featured: "Dangerous Game" from the musical Jekyll and Hyde

Disclaimer: RENT is the sole property of Jonathan Larson. Also, the song "Dangerous Game" is the sole property of its writers.

They meet after a show. They talk at the bar afterwards, each feigning actual interest until she asks him back to her place.

Her apartment's small, but it doesn't matter. They only need one room.

I feel your fingers, cold on my shoulder

Your chilling touch as it runs down my spine

He watches her strip, enchanted by every move. When she takes her top off, he sees the track marks. For a brief instant, he wonders if he should leave.

Watching your eyes as they invade my soul

Forbidden pleasures I'm afraid to make mine

Before he thinks too much, she's on his lap, her lips covering his. His hands are on her hips as she grinds against him, his jeans now painfully tight.

"Bedroom," she whispers against his ear. He can't do anything but nod and let her pull him along the darkened hallway.

At the touch of your hand, at the sound of your voice

At the moment your eyes meet mine

I am losing my mind, I am losing control

Full of feelings I can't define.

He wakes the next morning in her bed, slightly hungover, but no worse than usual. She's not there. He follows the light slapping sound to the bathroom. She's sitting on the edge of the tub, tapping her arm for a vein. There's a needle balanced delicately beside her.

It's a sin with no name, like a hand in a flame

And our senses proclaim it's a dangerous game

He doesn't think he'll see her again but the next night, she's at the gig. Part of him is disturbed, wondering if she expects something of him. When she slips away after a simple hello and handing over her phone number, he finds himself intrigued, drawn to her.

The months slip by and they fall into a routine. The day is for sleeping, for buying smack, for shooting up. The night is when they come alive. The night is for his gigs and her seductions. For getting high. For hours of sex without any pretenses or forced conversations.

A darker dream that has no ending

That's so unreal, you believe that it's true

They aren't careful. Careful is for people like his roommates, good people with preconceived notions of right and wrong. No, they're bad and they like it that way. They don't bother with condoms—why waste money that could buy more smack? They share needles, both so desperate for a high that they're unwilling to search for a second needle.

She starts pulling away slowly. He sees her flirting with other men during his gigs. A few times she slips out of his line of vision for ten, sometimes twenty minutes. He wouldn't be bothered, but she won't tell him where she goes. She brings home more smack now, though she won't say where she gets the money for it.

A dance of death, out of a mystery tale

The frightened princess doesn't know what to do

Will the ghosts go away? Will she will them to stay?
Either way there's no way to win

It's one of his roommates that finds her in the bathroom of her apartment. They'd been looking for him. He hasn't been home in a week. Instead they find her in the bathtub with her wrists slit. He comes home while the police are there to take the body. Her favorite red lipstick is uncapped on the counter where she dropped it after writing the note. Scrawled across the mirror in that harsh blood color are four words: Baby we got AIDS.

He sees it and can't do anything but shake and tremble. He runs out and throws up in the alleyway before buying more stash and shooting up, praying it's all been a bad dream.

All I know is I'm lost

And I'm counting the cost

My emotions are in a spin

They tell him they're going to help him get clean. He wonders if it's a good idea, if they mean it…After all, now he's dying anyway and it's his own damned fault. His best friend says it's not his fault entirely, that it's possible that she was sick first. There's no doubt in his mind that that's a very strong possibility.

I don't know who to blame

It's a crime and a shame

But it's true all the same

It's a dangerous game

The withdrawals are bad. Of his four roommates, only one is actually there. One has a job he has to go to. One apparently got married, though he's not sure when that happened. One is staying with her mom and dad until the worst is over. He knows that's best. He doesn't want to hurt her. He doesn't want to hurt anyone.

They fall into a routine too. The day is for arguing, screaming, sometimes physically striking one another. The night is for shaking, for sweating and vomiting and feeling pathetic. The night is for crying.

No one speaks

Not one word

But what words are in our eyes

He apologizes the first morning and the second. He says there's nothing to apologize for, that this will all get better. They know it won't though. They've gotten his test results back. Even if the withdrawals get better, he's going to go downhill again and it'll be worse, much worse. And probably sooner rather than later. They don't talk about that though.

Silence speaks loud and clear

All the words we don't want to hear

A month passes the same way and the shaking and vomiting lessen. His sweating has all but stopped. He can finally sleep but never through the night. He wakes screaming and crying at least once each night. The nightmares are so real, so vivid. His best friend runs in and shakes him awake, then holds him until the tears stop.

At the touch of your hand

At the sound of your voice

At the moment your eyes meet mine

He's terrified of what's happening to his own body. The trembling is still there from time to time. What scares him more is sleep. When it comes, as it occasionally does, the nightmares are still there. After two more months, he's forced himself into a kind of insomnia, preferring the exhaustion to the nightmares he sees whenever he closes his eyes.

Through it all, his best friend is the only one there. The other roommate comes home from her parents' house, but at night when he screams, she doesn't come running. He does. He hugs him tightly and promises to never leave, to never abandon him. He rocks him like a baby until he's lulled into a relaxed stupor halfway between sleep and waking.

I am losing my mind, I am losing control

Full of feelings I can't define

He can't bring himself to tell the others what happened, what the tests said. Sure one of them has it too. But that was out of pure accident and happenstance. This was his own stupidity, his own weakness, his own failures.

It's a sin with no name, no remorse and no shame

Fire, fury and flame 'cause the devil's to blame

They rally around him. They tell him blame won't change it. They tell him they're not mad, that they don't hate him and never could.

And the angels proclaim

It's a dangerous game