AN: The more reviews I get, the more I want to write. So here's the next section, next day! This is encouragement, people. I think. Anyway, I've gone and ignored homework (again) and finished chapter 3, so have fun ignoring homework to read it. Or work, family, pets, whatever. Wow. I'm not helping myself, am I? Oh well. I thank everyone for their wonderful reviews (I love them so, so much) and here again are my replies to the anonymous.

Meg – Yay! I'm glad you like it (again. Assuming you are the same Meg that reviewed last chapter. Which I suppose you could not be. Hmmm.). Thank you for the review!

Socogal – Really? Thanks! And thank you for the review – those make me feel so special inside.

Amber, recovering Rent Head... – Yay! So here's my part of the deal. Up goes Chapter 3!

Disclaimer: Oh, don't I wish. But life is such, so of instead of making the entire cast follow me around, singing (because that's what I would do if I owned Rent), I have to listen to my cast album that is starting to skip, I play so much.

At First Glance

"December 24, 2:21, Eastern Standard Time. Zoom in and out on flowers. Again."

Mark sighed. He had no idea why Maureen was complaining about him being late. She was supposed to have gotten married back at one. Last he'd heard about it, Mimi had come running to Roger, explaining that Maureen was having a bit of a meltdown about her shoes (they apparently didn't match her dress) and now the bridesmaids were trying to comfort her (and keep her away from various forms of alcohol) as she sobbed while making bitter predictions of the failure of her marriage. Women. Mark rolled his eyes as he scanned the church. And that had been a little before one...

His camera suddenly stopped roving. One of the bridesmaids had come in the side door by the alter. She had this ... this smile. It was dazzling. Then he caught sight of her eyes, and zoomed in until they filled the entire lens. A spicy, defiant green, clear and vulnerable, but guarded; a happy expression didn't fully mask the haunted air written at the core of those deep, wide eyes. He hadn't even realized he'd put his camera and was staring straight at her (quite obviously) until she blushed and turned to talk to Maureen's brother, who was performing the ceremony. Mark shook his head and brought his camera back up, until he felt a poke in his side. He turned to find Roger beaming down at him, his grin about to split his face in half. "Love at first sight?"

"Cliché if I ever heard one." Mark's off-hand tone was belied by burning cheeks. Damn my stupidity for living in New York, where no one can get a tan, he thought grumpily.

"Come on, Mark." That smirk was obscenely large, Mark decided. "Your eyes met from across the room. You're the filmmaker. Shouldn't that be a sign to you or something?"

Mark rolled his eyes. "Yes, if you're Disney. Now if you'll excuse me ..."

He put his camera up to his face and wandered away in a hurried fashion, ignoring Roger's cries of "Hey! Go talk to her!" and panning the audience. What he saw in the very back of the room stopped his camera for a second time. Instead of being fascinated, however, he was worried.

"Benjamin Coffin III," he narrated under his breath. "Invited, but not expected to come. Thought he'd be frightened off by the very thought of Roger."

Suddenly he noticed something about Benny. It was a sadness that was clinging to him. And ... were those tearstains on his cheeks.

Lowering the camera, Mark could see none of it. But he had always been able to see people better through a lens than with his own eyes. He had been trying to connect more with people since that fateful day when Roger had accused him of living a lie ... "When you really detach from feeling alive." Those words had stuck with him ever since. He knew he had started retreating behind his camera more and more as each of his friends got sick, and he was trying to reverse that. But he still felt as though his camera showed him a side of the world most people couldn't see.

Sighing, he slid in a seat next to Benny. "So. Alison dumped you, didn't she?"

Benny glanced at him sharply before returning his eyes to Joanne, who was starting to pace, though Dave looked as though he was trying to reassure her (probably of the fact that Maureen was going to marry her, and not jump out of the nearest hotel window with the woman from the check-in counter). "No need to soften the blow for me, Marky. I can take it." His voice was rough and bitter.

Mark snorted. "Oh, like you did for me when you found out about Maureen?" Benny dropped his head onto the pew and covered it with his arms. He looked so dejected that Mark couldn't help but soften his tone. "What happened?"

"I quit her father's company." Benny sighed and slowly pulled his head up. "He wanted me to sell your apartment building to be bulldozed for a grocery store. I refused, and it was the final straw for her." He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes like he was in pain. "Ironic. I bring news of a divorce to a wedding. Wonderful."

Mark was torn for a moment. Finally he blurted out, "Come live with us."

Great. Roger was going to kill him.

Benny gave him a surprised look. "Really?"

Mark shrugged and gave him a wry half-grin. "Yeah. We never gave your old room away, and you can't afford to live where you are now anymore. Think of it as payment for a year of free rent."

Benny looked happy at the prospect. He was obviously trying not to get his hopes up as he frowned at Mark and asked him, "What about Roger?"

Mark sighed. "Let me handle Roger." He said grimly, as though announcing his death sentence. He knew he probably was.

Benny gave him a long, assessing look. "Ok." His face broke into a wide smile. "Thanks."

They stared up at the alter for awhile. Mark broke the silence with "You know you'll have to get a real job, right?" He laughed as Benny groaned.

Dave and Collins plopped in on Benny's other side, looking exhausted. "Hey, man, you better start the filming," Collins informed him with his eyes closed. "I am so dead from all their drama I am going to sleep through their whole damn wedding." Benny and Mark laughed as Dave nodded agreement from his spot on Collins' shoulder.

Benny poked them up. "If you're going to sleep, go do it somewhere else. I won't be in the line of fire when Maureen discovers two of her best men sleeping."

As the pair stood up, Dave glared at Benny. "Fine. We're going. Just know that if we go down, we're taking you with us." He stomped off, dragging a laughing Collins.

Benny shook his head at Mark. "You know, he is getting more and more like Maureen every day. Now off you go.

Mark got up and started filming and commenting. "December 24, 2:46 pm. The Johnson-Jefferson wedding actually begins. At the alter is Joanne Jefferson, lawyer and bride, wearing an untraditional black dress. And walking up the aisle," he panned out, "is Maureen Johnson, wearing the more traditional white. Although," he gave Maureen a once-over, "I don't it's traditional for it to be that short. And low-cut."

The wedding went smoothly, which kind of surprised Mark. He realized he was a bit disappointed by the lack of fireworks, this being Maureen's wedding after all. But ever more surprising was the fact that he was genuinely happy for her. The days of him jumping at her beck and call like a little Jewish love struck puppy was over. Thank God. Joanne was much better equipped to handle the stress. And they both looked so happy standing up there.

His camera, however he tried to direct it otherwise, often wandered to look at the bridesmaid he'd noticed earlier. She had dark brown curling hair down to her shoulders, and she was slightly plump, but not in a bad way, or so it seemed to Mark. She was even shorter than him. The only thing that bothered him about her was a slight resemblance to Maureen. But he'd never met her, so she had to be one of Joanne's lawyer friends. Maybe she was that Laurie that Joanne went on about, so much that Maureen appeared a little jealous every time her name came up. But he'd thought Joanne had said Laurie was Asian. Oh, well.

As the last of the wedding procession made it's way out of the room, Mark panned over the brides' smiling faces, the charming bridesmaids and the ... oh no. Mark caught the look off Roger's face, and he knew he had seen Benny. He sighed. This was going to go well.

He was so distracted as he left, he didn't even notice where he was going. As a result, he crashed right into someone. "Oh, sorry, sorry," he muttered as he helped up the fallen bridesmaid.

And looked down into a pair of spicy green eyes.

"God, I'm sorry," she said, flustered. Then she took a double take of him. "Wait. Are you Mark? The camera guy, right?"

Mark held up the camera in confirmation. "I'm sorry, but I don't think I know ..."

She shook her head. "No, it's ok. I'm Maureen's cousin, Abby." She stuck her hand out, and he reached out to shake it. They held on a bit too long, staring at each other, than looked away, embarrassed.

"So ..." Mark desperately wracked his brain for something to say.

"Cake?" She looked hopeful. He grinned.

"Sure."

It was all kind of cheesy, in a love story kind of way. But he liked it.

AN: So, less funny. I hope you still like it, though. And for those who wanted more depth, I hoped I also satisfied. I'm kind of nervous about this chapter, so please tell me what's up. Love? Hate? Please review!