RENT: Never Be the Same
Title: Never Be the Same
Characters/Pairing: The Man/April, Roger/April, mentions of Mark and the other loftmates
Word Count: 5043
Rating: R
Summary: She's the one person who means everything to him, and he can't do a thing to keep her.
Notes: Written for soscaredtolove for rentficathon #1.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rent or any of its characters. Luther kind of is mine, though. Rawr.
His mother had always told him he shouldn't talk to strangers - not that he ever listened to her on that count anymore, and couldn't remember if he ever had, but for some reason that was the thought that entered his mind when he saw her. Not that he thought this girl was the dangerous sort of stranger by any stretch of the imagination. She was a delicate-looking girl, chin-length brown hair and wide brown eyes in a pale face, skittish and shy and clutching that guitar case she carried like it was the last thing in the world she thought she could count on. Her clothes were rumpled, like she hadn't changed in days, dark rings beneath her eyes like she hadn't slept. He knew the look - she'd been living on the street.
He watched her from his position seated on one of the railings that lined the grass areas of the park, following her with his eyes until she finally sat down on a park bench, that guitar case tucked protectively behind her legs. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself like she was cold, though it was actually relatively warm for late October. It seemed more a defensive thing, as far as he could tell.
Shouldn't talk to strangers, but while unfamiliar, he couldn't bring himself to think of her as a stranger - maybe it was just that something about her made him want to know her, which was strange enough for him as it was. He watched a minute longer, while she sat there on the park bench, and he balanced carefully on the railing. A leaf dropped off the tree above her head, drifted down, orange-gold in the sunlight, and as it fluttered past her face, the girl freed one hand long enough to bat it away. He smiled and slid off the railing, walking slowly over to the bench where she sat.
The girl lifted her head sharply as he drew near, and after a moment gave him a tentative smile in response to his. He didn't bother with introductions or hello, as both seemed unnecessary with this girl. He just asked directly, "You're new here, aren't you?"
"Yes," she answered softly, and it surprised him a little. He'd expected her to lie. Now that he heard her speak, she sounded less shy than simply uncertain. Didn't know what to do with herself here - on the street, in Alphabet City, maybe in the world itself. She looked young enough that this might well be her first time away from home, and that was the only reason he could figure he was talking to her now, because he didn't talk to strangers in general, not because they were dangerous but because he didn't like them. Again, though, this girl didn't seem a stranger.
He shifted his weight a little, from one leg to the other, his eyes flicking rapidly from her face to the guitar case at her feet to the sky, and back down to her wide brown eyes. She reminded him of something, and it took him a moment to think of what it was: something cuddly that kids begged their parents to take home. A stray kitten, found in an alley somewhere. But kittens had claws, and this girl... She didn't look like she had even that.
"Listen, sweetheart," he said, the appellation slipping from his lips before he could think about it, and he gave no pause to consider it, "it's gonna get dark soon, and this isn't exactly the best area to be out alone, especially if you're not from here."
She shrugged, curling a little more into herself - no physical indication of it except that her shoulders hunched forward a little, she tucked her chin down just a bit. "I don't have anywhere to go."
"Yeah, I don't either," he answered, and she glanced up at him with a look of surprise. "If you want to stay around me, maybe... you could. It's up to you."
She paused, and then there was a hesitant little smile - too trusting, too sweet to have been on the streets for any real length of time at all. "Sure."
He paused, and then sat down on the bench beside her. "What's your name?"
She didn't answer for a second, a moment's hesitation that made it seem almost as if she had to think about her response before she gave it. "April."
"My name's Luther."
*
"Hey, Cowboy," April chirped brightly as she hopped onto the railing beside him, and Luther rolled his eyes, watching in bemusement as she overbalanced and nearly fell off before catching and steadying herself.
"Are you ever going to stop calling me that?" he asked, and she shrugged in response.
"Are you ever going to stop wearing that hat?" She asked the question with her head tilted to one side, a cheeky grin on her lips - she'd warmed up to him quite a bit after they met, once she was convinced he wasn't going to kill or rape her, and by now he probably couldn't get rid of her if he tried. He didn't particularly mind.
Pretending offense, he reached up and adjusted the hat on his white-blond hair. "It looked like it was going to rain earlier," he said defensively. "I don't know about you, but I don't like being wet." April bit her lip, fighting back both a giggle and a response she knew he wouldn't want to hear, and as soon as he realized it he rolled his eyes again and shoved her gently, just enough to unbalance her and make her jump off the railing. "Don't even think it."
"Think what?"
"Exactly." He hooked his feet on the lower bars of the railing, hands curled around the top bar, and looked at her with one eyebrow raised. "So what do you want?"
"I don't have to want anything to talk to you," April answered disdainfully. "Though if that's the case, I can leave right now." She turned and started to walk away. Knowing she didn't mean it, Luther simply watched her until she sighed and turned around again, stalking back to him.
"You know," she announced, "it's much more impressive when you run after me or call my name or something."
"Sorry. Do you want to turn around and we can try it again?" It shouldn't be this easy to talk to her, this easy to joke with her. Luther didn't talk easily to anyone... except for April, and he couldn't even guess the reasons for that.
"No, that's fine. I actually did want to ask... you want to go to the park?"
He paused, and glanced around slowly. Trees. Grass. Playground and dog run and people and kids... It certainly looked like a park, and so he had to wonder what April's definition of a park would be. "We are in the park, sweetheart."
"No, not this park," she said, like that should have been evident from the beginning. "I mean Central Park."
Luther sighed. "That's about fifty blocks from here, you know."
"Forty-nine blocks, actually, but you were close. It'll be nice. Fresh air and-"
"You realize no air in New York qualifies as fresh, right?" Even as he said it, he hopped off the railing to join April. He had nothing to be sitting around here for, nothing better to do - there was no reason not to go with her.
"Hush." April stood in front of him for a moment, studying him quietly. With that sort of intensity in her eyes, he expected her to say something important, or do something - he didn't even know what he expected, but whatever it was, it kept him frozen there for an instant, April watching him with her head tilted to one side speculatively, and him looking down at her, barely able to breathe. At last, she said decisively, "Also, your hat's on crooked."
*
Luther never meant to get into drugs. He'd used to sneer at the users, the ones who used what little money they had for something as stupid as heroin. But the dealers were always there, impossible to ignore or avoid. The temptation was there, and the opportunity was present. It was almost bound to happen, one way or another.
By the time it did happen, he and April had found a place to stay, an empty building they could squat in mostly undisturbed. Not the best of places, but when the two of them had been living on the street for so long, this was the best they could hope for - and neither of them particularly minded, really. They even found an old mattress and dragged it inside, slept there together for the warmth. Nothing ever happened, despite them sharing a bed. April treated him like he was her big brother or something, which wasn't surprising the way he'd protected her, helped her find her way around the streets. Frustrating as hell, maybe, but not surprising.
It was there that April found him, after the first time he used, sitting on their mattress on the floor, leaning with his head and back against the bare, unadorned wall, his eyes closed. He opened his eyes when she stepped into the room, with a soft, "Hey, sweetheart."
It took her about two seconds to figure out that something was wrong - he could tell by her worried frown, the look in her eyes, and he couldn't say or do anything to fix it.
In the same way he didn't mean to get into drugs, he certainly didn't mean to get April into it. She was too sweet for that, too... innocent, despite having toughened while on the streets - or maybe it was just the way he saw her, that perpetually innocent girl he'd first met on the bench in Tompkins Square Park. If he was going to go about screwing up whatever was left of his life, it was his decision and all that shit, but to open up the door for April to do the same... The thought made him feel a little sick, and a little dirty, like there ought to be some sort of visible tarnish that came from doing such a thing.
But when April asked for the needle one night, he couldn't quite bring himself to say no to her. He handed it over.
No matter how long he stared at his hands, he never found that tarnish he expected to show up there. There no visible mark to be found of what he'd done to April, just the pale skin of his own bare hands. No, if the marks were on April, on her forearms in dark track marks he couldn't focus on for more than a second or two without looking away. They matched the marks on his own arms, though he kept those covered most of the time, with a sweatshirt or a jacket, except on the warmest days when he couldn't avoid going without them. He never looked at his arms those days, in a way that could only be managed by careful, deliberate intention.
And, of course, such things spiraled out of control. He never meant to get into drugs. He never meant to get April into drugs. He never meant to start dealing, either, and that was almost a coincidence, an accident, like the rest of it. Couldn't really blame it on fate, though, because all that did was present the opportunity, and he was the one that took it. And so there he was in the same park where he'd met April, every night, with pockets of smack and a .45 he'd bought on St. Mark's Place in his pocket, and April still called him "Cowboy" though he wore that old battered hat less and less these days, and more often just wore a sweatshirt and jacket, the hood of the sweatshirt pulled up to shield his face. He knew he wasn't the person April had first given the affectionate nickname, even if she seemed to think he still was.
*
"Please, Cowboy," April whispered, her voice a little hoarse, arms wrapped around herself tightly. Her eyes were on his face, pleading and desperate, but Luther's eyes were on her hand, resting on her arm, and the way she dug her fingernails into her skin. He swallowed back a pang of guilt and hurt, trying not to think about how long it had been since she'd had a hit, though he knew exactly how long, almost to the hour. He could almost feel the beginning of withdrawal, as strongly as if it were him.
He forced his eyes away from her arm, up to meet her eyes, not that that was much better. By now he was used to junkies. By now he was used to junkies pleading with him for drugs, used to turning them away, but this was April, and this was different, and his own voice was almost as pleading when he said, "You know I can't, sweetheart. I'm sorry."
Impulsively, he reached out and took her wrist gently, moving her hand away from her arm. She'd dug little crescent-shaped welts into her skin with her fingernails, just barely breaking the skin, and surprisingly vivid red against pale skin and paler scars and darker track marks. "You're hurting yourself" he told her, as gently as he could.
"Luther," she said, no longer a whisper, but a firm and forceful demand. He looked up sharply to meet her eyes, not because of her tone, but because she'd called him by his name, something she never did when it was just the two of them, alone. The look in her eyes was so hungry, so desperate, and so not April that it scared him a little. He of all people ought to know how drugs could change people - having them and wanting them - but somehow he'd thought, or maybe just hoped, that it would be different with April. That she wouldn't change, no matter what the drug did to other people. He realized, now, he'd run out of room for denial on that matter.
"I'll do anything," April murmured, and Luther froze. He'd gotten such offers before, and always turned them down, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to believe that that was what anything meant, when April said it. She had to mean something else, it had to be a mistake or a misunderstanding, because April wouldn't do that with him no matter how much she wanted the drug, she treated him like her brother and that was the way it had always been, she-
April stepped forward, her wrist still held loosely in Luther's hand, and almost lunged forward, up on her tiptoes to capture Luther's mouth with her own, leaning against his chest a little. Her weight against him pushed him the step or two back until his back was flat against the bare concrete wall, but April stayed with him, still as close to him as she could get, and as much as he knew he ought to push her away, he couldn't quite bring his hands up to actually do so, not until she finally rocked back on her heels, still as desperate and hungry as before. "Please?"
And Luther thought back to how much smack he had, whether he could spare any just this once - though he knew if he said yes, it wouldn't be just this once, couldn't be - and then his mind was pulled back to April, to his fingers still curled lightly around her wrist, to her free hand resting on his shoulder and the feeling of her lips on his. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and nodded ever so slightly. "Alright." He knew, even as he said it, that he'd regret it, but April's mouth on his once more made it difficult to care.
*
April had learned fairly quickly that she was better off avoiding Luther when he was high, if she wasn't too - he got aggressive and snappy; he got mean, and April knew to avoid that. He didn't blame her, all things considered, but when she disappeared after their last fight... Usually April would be gone for an hour or two. Not all day, let alone several days. Luther tried to ignore the fear that rose up over her absence, telling himself that it wouldn't help even if something had happened to her. She had to be fine, even if he couldn't think of a reason she'd be staying away this long.
He had his answer when April bounded up to him when he was in the park, breaking away from the man she'd been walking with. Luther recognized the man, but he didn't have the chance to remember where from before April pounced on him and stood on tiptoe to put her arms around his neck, kissing his cheek quickly before dropping back onto her heels. "Hey, Cowboy," she said brightly. "How're you?"
Luther could only stare at her, unable to believe she'd be so casual after she just vanished for three days. "I... Fine. Where were you?"
April flashed him a cautious, sheepish smile. "I... ran into someone on the street, a couple days ago, and we started talking... I've been staying with him and his roommate. I would've told you, but I-"
Luther noticed a guy starting to walk up to him, out of the corner of his eye, and held up a hand to indicate for him to wait, automatically assuming he wanted drugs. And then he paused, glancing over and realizing that it was the man April had been walking with, fairly young - younger than Luther - with raggedly cut hair bleached blond a few shades darker than Luther's hair. He was one of the users who regularly came to him. Luther knew him by face, if not by name. And April had been with him...
Luther glanced over to April questioningly, eyebrows raised. He didn't even have to ask the question - she knew it was coming already, and answered it a little hesitantly, like she wasn't sure how he'd react. "Um... this is Roger. He's the roommate of the guy I ran into, he said I could... stay with them. I mean, he lives right on Avenue B, you can see the building from here, so I'm not really going anywhere, just..." She glanced over her shoulder and motioned slightly to indicate the building, just one street up from the park.
"You... you want your things," he said simply, ignoring the guy - Roger, not that his name really mattered. He had no reason for jealousy, it wasn't like April was anything but a friend to him, it wasn't like she belonged to him, but the idea of her moving the few things she called hers out of the place that was home, pathetic as it was, made something in Luther's chest ache. When April nodded, though, he just inclined his head to one side, expression calm, and said, "Well then, let's go."
*
"Are you alright?" Luther asked, leaning across the table to frown at April. She didn't look quite herself anymore, more like a paler, washed-out version of the girl he used to know. He had to wonder if maybe she was sick, if something had happened somehow. Luther was always careful with his needles, made sure that he was the only one to use them. April, he knew, was more careless, would share with anyone so long as she knew them, so long as she trusted them. Like that would somehow protect her. "Your friends, the people you live with, they're taking care of you?"
"I'm fine, Cowboy," she said with a bit of a smile, rolling her eyes. "I promise. Just haven't been sleeping much lately, that's all." She paused as the waiter walked by, grabbing his wrist lightly and saying hi, chatting with him in a familiar manner. Luther sighed and rubbed at his temples, waiting for her to finish her conversation with the waiter. Of course she'd be friendly with the staff here - it was April, she was friendly with freaking everybody. He wasn't even sure why that annoyed him at this point. Not so long ago, he'd thought it a part of her charm, and maybe it still was, but nevertheless, he almost wished that maybe she weren't, maybe she'd be just a little more reserved, keep to herself a bit more. If she were, she wouldn't have left to live in that loft on the corner of 11th and Avenue B. She could be still living with him, not in that crappy place they'd been before, but a real apartment he could now afford, on 13th Street. He couldn't help but think maybe that would be better for her.
When the waiter finally walked off, April looked back to Luther, and caught his concerned look. "Really, Luther, I'm fine. Stop worrying."
"I wasn't worrying," he muttered, not entirely truthfully. "Just asking. I need to know if I have to hurt your boyfriend."
April rolled her eyes and dumped another packet of sugar into her coffee. That had to be the third or fourth, Luther noted distantly, and rolled his eyes a little. It didn't seem that much sugar should be soluble in a relatively small amount of coffee. "You're not hurting Roger. I know you don't like him, but at least be civil. He's civil to you."
"Only because he has to be," Luther retorted, and knew April couldn't and wouldn't deny it. Roger was, at best, civil to him, because it was the only way Luther would sell him drugs, and because April would be upset if he wasn't. And for that he overlooked his disdain for Luther - which they all knew was there anyway - and the fact that April still slept with Luther from time to time, when she couldn't find the money. Luther couldn't quite overlook that he just plain didn't like Roger.
April sighed. "Doesn't matter why." She sat there quietly, hands curled around her coffee cup like she was trying to warm her hands, though it was perfectly warm inside the restaurant. Luther realized that, despite all the sugar she'd dumped into it, she hadn't taken a single sip of her coffee, just stared at it like she was looking for something there. After a moment or two, she looked up and smiled faintly. "Well. At least try. And drink your coffee."
Luther obeyed silently, because he couldn't think of what else he might say.
*
For all that it was New York, and for all that there was the inevitable disconnect from everyone around, in some ways Alphabet City functioned rather like a small town - news spread fast, and the bad news faster than the good. Disease and death people tended to learn of soonest of all, and so it was less than a day after the ambulance showed up at the corner of 11th and Avenue B that Luther found out what had happened. He'd known already it had to be bad news. The ambulance hadn't had its sirens on when it left.
When he heard, he'd been standing on the corner of 10th Street, one block down from the loft where April lived - he hadn't moved far from her place since he saw the ambulance earlier that day. For some reason, he kept expecting her to come out and tell him what had happened, reassure him she was alright. When he heard, he'd whirled around and slammed his fist against the brick wall. Just once, and the pain of that cleared his mind a little. It didn't chase away the anger - that stayed, coiled dangerous and white hot in the center of his chest - but it let him think a little more clearly, and he stared at the blood on his knuckles with an abstracted expression. April's blood must have been that bright when she...
His thoughts lurched away from that, and he glanced up sharply, feeling suddenly nauseous. There were a few people standing there watching him, the man who'd told him - one of the random people April always managed to befriend, whose name Luther could never remember - and a couple junkies who still wanted something from him. He gestured impatiently and pushed past them, growling softly, "Find someone else tonight." He couldn't deal with the hungry eyes, the grasping hands, not tonight.
Luther took a more indirect route home than usual, walking down to First Avenue and then north, just so he wouldn't have to walk past April's building. He had the feeling that if he did, if he went even that close, he'd want to actually use the damn gun he carried, which he'd never actually fired, and fucking murder Roger. If April had never met that jackass, if she'd never moved in with him... She'd probably still be living with Luther, she might well be his. Certainly she'd still be alive. His breath hitched in his chest, and he couldn't really see anything in front of him anymore - it all faded to a colorful blur, and his feet carried him by simple routine back to his apartment.
He didn't cry until he got home and had locked the door behind him, and then he closed his eyes and sank into the nearest chair, shaking violently because some people you weren't ever supposed to lose.
*
Luther hardly noticed holidays anymore - they passed by in a fluid haze, one after the other and largely unrecognized. Other things were remembered more clearly, and the only thing among them tied to any date was April's birthday. Everything else - meeting April, conversations and secrets and kisses, even just on the cheek - was tied to place, and so Luther mostly ignored the holidays. He couldn't exactly avoid realizing it was Christmastime - there were lights hung everywhere, there were Christmas trees sold in the park and poinsettias on St. Mark's, and Christmas music everywhere.
April used to love Christmas.
Luther made it a point to be out of the house on Christmas Eve, where he couldn't dwell on it. The cold air in his lungs kept him focused on reality, on the now instead of even a year ago, less than that, when April had been alive. Sitting on the steps outside someone's apartment building, he surveyed the people on the street. He would have thought that on Christmas Eve more people would be at home. Then again, it was the East Village. How many of these people had homes worth going to?
Something cold and wet landed on the back of his neck, and he reached up to wipe it away, glancing to the dark sky to see that it was snowing. With a sigh, he pulled the hood of his jacket up over his head.
All he could see in his mind's eye was April trying to catch snow on her tongue one winter night years past, while he watched, quietly bemused.
Luther jumped to his feet abruptly, tearing his mind forcibly away from that. The girl he remembered was dead, and had been even before she slit her wrists. Even knowing that, he'd have liked to be able to at least go to her funeral. Of course, her friends wouldn't have let him.
He kept his thoughts away from that as, seemingly, all at once, several of his clients found him. It was easy to keep his mind on that, the mechanical, careful exchange of cash and plastic bags, keeping one eye out for the cops at all times. It was easy to think of nothing at all with four or five junkies clustered around him, money in their fingertips and hunger in their eyes. It was familiar, in the way even the most distasteful things will become familiar if you do them long enough, safe and familiar and easy to fall into, to avoid thought.
That shattered when he noticed someone speaking to one of his clients, the stripper from the Cat Scratch Club. The man looked older than the last time Luther had seen him, more tired and ragged, and his hair not as blond, closer to red, like he hadn't bothered redying it in some time. Even then, Luther couldn't help but notice him, recognize him. Bastard - he'd half hoped he might be dead.
Luther pulled free of the cluster of junkies quickly, shouldering past them and striding toward Roger and the girl. "Hey, loverboy!" Roger didn't turn around, and Luther snapped, "Cutie pie!" For some reason that made him turn, God knew why. Luther used to make mocking comments of the sort when Roger came to him for drugs, and maybe that was what caught his attention. Luther didn't know, the words had simply slipped out. "You steal my clients, you die," he said simply, but that wasn't what he wanted to say. He wanted to scream at him, shove him, hurt him. He took April from him, he killed her, he took away the thing that had mattered most of all and Luther wasn't about to let him take one more fucking thing away, no matter how little it mattered to him.
He wasn't really listening as Roger snapped something at him, because he really didn't give a damn what Roger said. The girl Roger had been talking to tugged him away, and he started to walk off. Luther followed him for a moment, then shook his head, turning away. A short distance down the block, he noticed a guy with a camera waving to him, trying to get his attention, probably just so that he'd have a clear shot of Luther on that damn camera - Luther recognized the guy as one of April's old roommates, and flipped off both him and the camera with a disgusted sneer. He couldn't remember ever really hating people like this, any time before April died. Now he knew. Now he knew how it felt to hate someone this violently, this strongly, because they'd taken the thing he most loved, because they'd had every chance to save her, they'd pulled her away from him and if he'd been there, she wouldn't have died.
He took a breath and turned away, shoving his hands into his pockets and feeling a few packets of smack brushing against his fingertips in either pocket. Don't think. Don't feel. Don't hurt. It was simple. He could forget everything, forget her. Easy. And about as natural and right as a needle pushing into a vein.
Characters/Pairing: The Man/April, Roger/April, mentions of Mark and the other loftmates
Word Count: 5043
Rating: R
Summary: She's the one person who means everything to him, and he can't do a thing to keep her.
Notes: Written for soscaredtolove for rentficathon #1.
Disclaimer: I don't own Rent or any of its characters. Luther kind of is mine, though. Rawr.
His mother had always told him he shouldn't talk to strangers - not that he ever listened to her on that count anymore, and couldn't remember if he ever had, but for some reason that was the thought that entered his mind when he saw her. Not that he thought this girl was the dangerous sort of stranger by any stretch of the imagination. She was a delicate-looking girl, chin-length brown hair and wide brown eyes in a pale face, skittish and shy and clutching that guitar case she carried like it was the last thing in the world she thought she could count on. Her clothes were rumpled, like she hadn't changed in days, dark rings beneath her eyes like she hadn't slept. He knew the look - she'd been living on the street.
He watched her from his position seated on one of the railings that lined the grass areas of the park, following her with his eyes until she finally sat down on a park bench, that guitar case tucked protectively behind her legs. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself like she was cold, though it was actually relatively warm for late October. It seemed more a defensive thing, as far as he could tell.
Shouldn't talk to strangers, but while unfamiliar, he couldn't bring himself to think of her as a stranger - maybe it was just that something about her made him want to know her, which was strange enough for him as it was. He watched a minute longer, while she sat there on the park bench, and he balanced carefully on the railing. A leaf dropped off the tree above her head, drifted down, orange-gold in the sunlight, and as it fluttered past her face, the girl freed one hand long enough to bat it away. He smiled and slid off the railing, walking slowly over to the bench where she sat.
The girl lifted her head sharply as he drew near, and after a moment gave him a tentative smile in response to his. He didn't bother with introductions or hello, as both seemed unnecessary with this girl. He just asked directly, "You're new here, aren't you?"
"Yes," she answered softly, and it surprised him a little. He'd expected her to lie. Now that he heard her speak, she sounded less shy than simply uncertain. Didn't know what to do with herself here - on the street, in Alphabet City, maybe in the world itself. She looked young enough that this might well be her first time away from home, and that was the only reason he could figure he was talking to her now, because he didn't talk to strangers in general, not because they were dangerous but because he didn't like them. Again, though, this girl didn't seem a stranger.
He shifted his weight a little, from one leg to the other, his eyes flicking rapidly from her face to the guitar case at her feet to the sky, and back down to her wide brown eyes. She reminded him of something, and it took him a moment to think of what it was: something cuddly that kids begged their parents to take home. A stray kitten, found in an alley somewhere. But kittens had claws, and this girl... She didn't look like she had even that.
"Listen, sweetheart," he said, the appellation slipping from his lips before he could think about it, and he gave no pause to consider it, "it's gonna get dark soon, and this isn't exactly the best area to be out alone, especially if you're not from here."
She shrugged, curling a little more into herself - no physical indication of it except that her shoulders hunched forward a little, she tucked her chin down just a bit. "I don't have anywhere to go."
"Yeah, I don't either," he answered, and she glanced up at him with a look of surprise. "If you want to stay around me, maybe... you could. It's up to you."
She paused, and then there was a hesitant little smile - too trusting, too sweet to have been on the streets for any real length of time at all. "Sure."
He paused, and then sat down on the bench beside her. "What's your name?"
She didn't answer for a second, a moment's hesitation that made it seem almost as if she had to think about her response before she gave it. "April."
"My name's Luther."
*
"Hey, Cowboy," April chirped brightly as she hopped onto the railing beside him, and Luther rolled his eyes, watching in bemusement as she overbalanced and nearly fell off before catching and steadying herself.
"Are you ever going to stop calling me that?" he asked, and she shrugged in response.
"Are you ever going to stop wearing that hat?" She asked the question with her head tilted to one side, a cheeky grin on her lips - she'd warmed up to him quite a bit after they met, once she was convinced he wasn't going to kill or rape her, and by now he probably couldn't get rid of her if he tried. He didn't particularly mind.
Pretending offense, he reached up and adjusted the hat on his white-blond hair. "It looked like it was going to rain earlier," he said defensively. "I don't know about you, but I don't like being wet." April bit her lip, fighting back both a giggle and a response she knew he wouldn't want to hear, and as soon as he realized it he rolled his eyes again and shoved her gently, just enough to unbalance her and make her jump off the railing. "Don't even think it."
"Think what?"
"Exactly." He hooked his feet on the lower bars of the railing, hands curled around the top bar, and looked at her with one eyebrow raised. "So what do you want?"
"I don't have to want anything to talk to you," April answered disdainfully. "Though if that's the case, I can leave right now." She turned and started to walk away. Knowing she didn't mean it, Luther simply watched her until she sighed and turned around again, stalking back to him.
"You know," she announced, "it's much more impressive when you run after me or call my name or something."
"Sorry. Do you want to turn around and we can try it again?" It shouldn't be this easy to talk to her, this easy to joke with her. Luther didn't talk easily to anyone... except for April, and he couldn't even guess the reasons for that.
"No, that's fine. I actually did want to ask... you want to go to the park?"
He paused, and glanced around slowly. Trees. Grass. Playground and dog run and people and kids... It certainly looked like a park, and so he had to wonder what April's definition of a park would be. "We are in the park, sweetheart."
"No, not this park," she said, like that should have been evident from the beginning. "I mean Central Park."
Luther sighed. "That's about fifty blocks from here, you know."
"Forty-nine blocks, actually, but you were close. It'll be nice. Fresh air and-"
"You realize no air in New York qualifies as fresh, right?" Even as he said it, he hopped off the railing to join April. He had nothing to be sitting around here for, nothing better to do - there was no reason not to go with her.
"Hush." April stood in front of him for a moment, studying him quietly. With that sort of intensity in her eyes, he expected her to say something important, or do something - he didn't even know what he expected, but whatever it was, it kept him frozen there for an instant, April watching him with her head tilted to one side speculatively, and him looking down at her, barely able to breathe. At last, she said decisively, "Also, your hat's on crooked."
*
Luther never meant to get into drugs. He'd used to sneer at the users, the ones who used what little money they had for something as stupid as heroin. But the dealers were always there, impossible to ignore or avoid. The temptation was there, and the opportunity was present. It was almost bound to happen, one way or another.
By the time it did happen, he and April had found a place to stay, an empty building they could squat in mostly undisturbed. Not the best of places, but when the two of them had been living on the street for so long, this was the best they could hope for - and neither of them particularly minded, really. They even found an old mattress and dragged it inside, slept there together for the warmth. Nothing ever happened, despite them sharing a bed. April treated him like he was her big brother or something, which wasn't surprising the way he'd protected her, helped her find her way around the streets. Frustrating as hell, maybe, but not surprising.
It was there that April found him, after the first time he used, sitting on their mattress on the floor, leaning with his head and back against the bare, unadorned wall, his eyes closed. He opened his eyes when she stepped into the room, with a soft, "Hey, sweetheart."
It took her about two seconds to figure out that something was wrong - he could tell by her worried frown, the look in her eyes, and he couldn't say or do anything to fix it.
In the same way he didn't mean to get into drugs, he certainly didn't mean to get April into it. She was too sweet for that, too... innocent, despite having toughened while on the streets - or maybe it was just the way he saw her, that perpetually innocent girl he'd first met on the bench in Tompkins Square Park. If he was going to go about screwing up whatever was left of his life, it was his decision and all that shit, but to open up the door for April to do the same... The thought made him feel a little sick, and a little dirty, like there ought to be some sort of visible tarnish that came from doing such a thing.
But when April asked for the needle one night, he couldn't quite bring himself to say no to her. He handed it over.
No matter how long he stared at his hands, he never found that tarnish he expected to show up there. There no visible mark to be found of what he'd done to April, just the pale skin of his own bare hands. No, if the marks were on April, on her forearms in dark track marks he couldn't focus on for more than a second or two without looking away. They matched the marks on his own arms, though he kept those covered most of the time, with a sweatshirt or a jacket, except on the warmest days when he couldn't avoid going without them. He never looked at his arms those days, in a way that could only be managed by careful, deliberate intention.
And, of course, such things spiraled out of control. He never meant to get into drugs. He never meant to get April into drugs. He never meant to start dealing, either, and that was almost a coincidence, an accident, like the rest of it. Couldn't really blame it on fate, though, because all that did was present the opportunity, and he was the one that took it. And so there he was in the same park where he'd met April, every night, with pockets of smack and a .45 he'd bought on St. Mark's Place in his pocket, and April still called him "Cowboy" though he wore that old battered hat less and less these days, and more often just wore a sweatshirt and jacket, the hood of the sweatshirt pulled up to shield his face. He knew he wasn't the person April had first given the affectionate nickname, even if she seemed to think he still was.
*
"Please, Cowboy," April whispered, her voice a little hoarse, arms wrapped around herself tightly. Her eyes were on his face, pleading and desperate, but Luther's eyes were on her hand, resting on her arm, and the way she dug her fingernails into her skin. He swallowed back a pang of guilt and hurt, trying not to think about how long it had been since she'd had a hit, though he knew exactly how long, almost to the hour. He could almost feel the beginning of withdrawal, as strongly as if it were him.
He forced his eyes away from her arm, up to meet her eyes, not that that was much better. By now he was used to junkies. By now he was used to junkies pleading with him for drugs, used to turning them away, but this was April, and this was different, and his own voice was almost as pleading when he said, "You know I can't, sweetheart. I'm sorry."
Impulsively, he reached out and took her wrist gently, moving her hand away from her arm. She'd dug little crescent-shaped welts into her skin with her fingernails, just barely breaking the skin, and surprisingly vivid red against pale skin and paler scars and darker track marks. "You're hurting yourself" he told her, as gently as he could.
"Luther," she said, no longer a whisper, but a firm and forceful demand. He looked up sharply to meet her eyes, not because of her tone, but because she'd called him by his name, something she never did when it was just the two of them, alone. The look in her eyes was so hungry, so desperate, and so not April that it scared him a little. He of all people ought to know how drugs could change people - having them and wanting them - but somehow he'd thought, or maybe just hoped, that it would be different with April. That she wouldn't change, no matter what the drug did to other people. He realized, now, he'd run out of room for denial on that matter.
"I'll do anything," April murmured, and Luther froze. He'd gotten such offers before, and always turned them down, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to believe that that was what anything meant, when April said it. She had to mean something else, it had to be a mistake or a misunderstanding, because April wouldn't do that with him no matter how much she wanted the drug, she treated him like her brother and that was the way it had always been, she-
April stepped forward, her wrist still held loosely in Luther's hand, and almost lunged forward, up on her tiptoes to capture Luther's mouth with her own, leaning against his chest a little. Her weight against him pushed him the step or two back until his back was flat against the bare concrete wall, but April stayed with him, still as close to him as she could get, and as much as he knew he ought to push her away, he couldn't quite bring his hands up to actually do so, not until she finally rocked back on her heels, still as desperate and hungry as before. "Please?"
And Luther thought back to how much smack he had, whether he could spare any just this once - though he knew if he said yes, it wouldn't be just this once, couldn't be - and then his mind was pulled back to April, to his fingers still curled lightly around her wrist, to her free hand resting on his shoulder and the feeling of her lips on his. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and nodded ever so slightly. "Alright." He knew, even as he said it, that he'd regret it, but April's mouth on his once more made it difficult to care.
*
April had learned fairly quickly that she was better off avoiding Luther when he was high, if she wasn't too - he got aggressive and snappy; he got mean, and April knew to avoid that. He didn't blame her, all things considered, but when she disappeared after their last fight... Usually April would be gone for an hour or two. Not all day, let alone several days. Luther tried to ignore the fear that rose up over her absence, telling himself that it wouldn't help even if something had happened to her. She had to be fine, even if he couldn't think of a reason she'd be staying away this long.
He had his answer when April bounded up to him when he was in the park, breaking away from the man she'd been walking with. Luther recognized the man, but he didn't have the chance to remember where from before April pounced on him and stood on tiptoe to put her arms around his neck, kissing his cheek quickly before dropping back onto her heels. "Hey, Cowboy," she said brightly. "How're you?"
Luther could only stare at her, unable to believe she'd be so casual after she just vanished for three days. "I... Fine. Where were you?"
April flashed him a cautious, sheepish smile. "I... ran into someone on the street, a couple days ago, and we started talking... I've been staying with him and his roommate. I would've told you, but I-"
Luther noticed a guy starting to walk up to him, out of the corner of his eye, and held up a hand to indicate for him to wait, automatically assuming he wanted drugs. And then he paused, glancing over and realizing that it was the man April had been walking with, fairly young - younger than Luther - with raggedly cut hair bleached blond a few shades darker than Luther's hair. He was one of the users who regularly came to him. Luther knew him by face, if not by name. And April had been with him...
Luther glanced over to April questioningly, eyebrows raised. He didn't even have to ask the question - she knew it was coming already, and answered it a little hesitantly, like she wasn't sure how he'd react. "Um... this is Roger. He's the roommate of the guy I ran into, he said I could... stay with them. I mean, he lives right on Avenue B, you can see the building from here, so I'm not really going anywhere, just..." She glanced over her shoulder and motioned slightly to indicate the building, just one street up from the park.
"You... you want your things," he said simply, ignoring the guy - Roger, not that his name really mattered. He had no reason for jealousy, it wasn't like April was anything but a friend to him, it wasn't like she belonged to him, but the idea of her moving the few things she called hers out of the place that was home, pathetic as it was, made something in Luther's chest ache. When April nodded, though, he just inclined his head to one side, expression calm, and said, "Well then, let's go."
*
"Are you alright?" Luther asked, leaning across the table to frown at April. She didn't look quite herself anymore, more like a paler, washed-out version of the girl he used to know. He had to wonder if maybe she was sick, if something had happened somehow. Luther was always careful with his needles, made sure that he was the only one to use them. April, he knew, was more careless, would share with anyone so long as she knew them, so long as she trusted them. Like that would somehow protect her. "Your friends, the people you live with, they're taking care of you?"
"I'm fine, Cowboy," she said with a bit of a smile, rolling her eyes. "I promise. Just haven't been sleeping much lately, that's all." She paused as the waiter walked by, grabbing his wrist lightly and saying hi, chatting with him in a familiar manner. Luther sighed and rubbed at his temples, waiting for her to finish her conversation with the waiter. Of course she'd be friendly with the staff here - it was April, she was friendly with freaking everybody. He wasn't even sure why that annoyed him at this point. Not so long ago, he'd thought it a part of her charm, and maybe it still was, but nevertheless, he almost wished that maybe she weren't, maybe she'd be just a little more reserved, keep to herself a bit more. If she were, she wouldn't have left to live in that loft on the corner of 11th and Avenue B. She could be still living with him, not in that crappy place they'd been before, but a real apartment he could now afford, on 13th Street. He couldn't help but think maybe that would be better for her.
When the waiter finally walked off, April looked back to Luther, and caught his concerned look. "Really, Luther, I'm fine. Stop worrying."
"I wasn't worrying," he muttered, not entirely truthfully. "Just asking. I need to know if I have to hurt your boyfriend."
April rolled her eyes and dumped another packet of sugar into her coffee. That had to be the third or fourth, Luther noted distantly, and rolled his eyes a little. It didn't seem that much sugar should be soluble in a relatively small amount of coffee. "You're not hurting Roger. I know you don't like him, but at least be civil. He's civil to you."
"Only because he has to be," Luther retorted, and knew April couldn't and wouldn't deny it. Roger was, at best, civil to him, because it was the only way Luther would sell him drugs, and because April would be upset if he wasn't. And for that he overlooked his disdain for Luther - which they all knew was there anyway - and the fact that April still slept with Luther from time to time, when she couldn't find the money. Luther couldn't quite overlook that he just plain didn't like Roger.
April sighed. "Doesn't matter why." She sat there quietly, hands curled around her coffee cup like she was trying to warm her hands, though it was perfectly warm inside the restaurant. Luther realized that, despite all the sugar she'd dumped into it, she hadn't taken a single sip of her coffee, just stared at it like she was looking for something there. After a moment or two, she looked up and smiled faintly. "Well. At least try. And drink your coffee."
Luther obeyed silently, because he couldn't think of what else he might say.
*
For all that it was New York, and for all that there was the inevitable disconnect from everyone around, in some ways Alphabet City functioned rather like a small town - news spread fast, and the bad news faster than the good. Disease and death people tended to learn of soonest of all, and so it was less than a day after the ambulance showed up at the corner of 11th and Avenue B that Luther found out what had happened. He'd known already it had to be bad news. The ambulance hadn't had its sirens on when it left.
When he heard, he'd been standing on the corner of 10th Street, one block down from the loft where April lived - he hadn't moved far from her place since he saw the ambulance earlier that day. For some reason, he kept expecting her to come out and tell him what had happened, reassure him she was alright. When he heard, he'd whirled around and slammed his fist against the brick wall. Just once, and the pain of that cleared his mind a little. It didn't chase away the anger - that stayed, coiled dangerous and white hot in the center of his chest - but it let him think a little more clearly, and he stared at the blood on his knuckles with an abstracted expression. April's blood must have been that bright when she...
His thoughts lurched away from that, and he glanced up sharply, feeling suddenly nauseous. There were a few people standing there watching him, the man who'd told him - one of the random people April always managed to befriend, whose name Luther could never remember - and a couple junkies who still wanted something from him. He gestured impatiently and pushed past them, growling softly, "Find someone else tonight." He couldn't deal with the hungry eyes, the grasping hands, not tonight.
Luther took a more indirect route home than usual, walking down to First Avenue and then north, just so he wouldn't have to walk past April's building. He had the feeling that if he did, if he went even that close, he'd want to actually use the damn gun he carried, which he'd never actually fired, and fucking murder Roger. If April had never met that jackass, if she'd never moved in with him... She'd probably still be living with Luther, she might well be his. Certainly she'd still be alive. His breath hitched in his chest, and he couldn't really see anything in front of him anymore - it all faded to a colorful blur, and his feet carried him by simple routine back to his apartment.
He didn't cry until he got home and had locked the door behind him, and then he closed his eyes and sank into the nearest chair, shaking violently because some people you weren't ever supposed to lose.
*
Luther hardly noticed holidays anymore - they passed by in a fluid haze, one after the other and largely unrecognized. Other things were remembered more clearly, and the only thing among them tied to any date was April's birthday. Everything else - meeting April, conversations and secrets and kisses, even just on the cheek - was tied to place, and so Luther mostly ignored the holidays. He couldn't exactly avoid realizing it was Christmastime - there were lights hung everywhere, there were Christmas trees sold in the park and poinsettias on St. Mark's, and Christmas music everywhere.
April used to love Christmas.
Luther made it a point to be out of the house on Christmas Eve, where he couldn't dwell on it. The cold air in his lungs kept him focused on reality, on the now instead of even a year ago, less than that, when April had been alive. Sitting on the steps outside someone's apartment building, he surveyed the people on the street. He would have thought that on Christmas Eve more people would be at home. Then again, it was the East Village. How many of these people had homes worth going to?
Something cold and wet landed on the back of his neck, and he reached up to wipe it away, glancing to the dark sky to see that it was snowing. With a sigh, he pulled the hood of his jacket up over his head.
All he could see in his mind's eye was April trying to catch snow on her tongue one winter night years past, while he watched, quietly bemused.
Luther jumped to his feet abruptly, tearing his mind forcibly away from that. The girl he remembered was dead, and had been even before she slit her wrists. Even knowing that, he'd have liked to be able to at least go to her funeral. Of course, her friends wouldn't have let him.
He kept his thoughts away from that as, seemingly, all at once, several of his clients found him. It was easy to keep his mind on that, the mechanical, careful exchange of cash and plastic bags, keeping one eye out for the cops at all times. It was easy to think of nothing at all with four or five junkies clustered around him, money in their fingertips and hunger in their eyes. It was familiar, in the way even the most distasteful things will become familiar if you do them long enough, safe and familiar and easy to fall into, to avoid thought.
That shattered when he noticed someone speaking to one of his clients, the stripper from the Cat Scratch Club. The man looked older than the last time Luther had seen him, more tired and ragged, and his hair not as blond, closer to red, like he hadn't bothered redying it in some time. Even then, Luther couldn't help but notice him, recognize him. Bastard - he'd half hoped he might be dead.
Luther pulled free of the cluster of junkies quickly, shouldering past them and striding toward Roger and the girl. "Hey, loverboy!" Roger didn't turn around, and Luther snapped, "Cutie pie!" For some reason that made him turn, God knew why. Luther used to make mocking comments of the sort when Roger came to him for drugs, and maybe that was what caught his attention. Luther didn't know, the words had simply slipped out. "You steal my clients, you die," he said simply, but that wasn't what he wanted to say. He wanted to scream at him, shove him, hurt him. He took April from him, he killed her, he took away the thing that had mattered most of all and Luther wasn't about to let him take one more fucking thing away, no matter how little it mattered to him.
He wasn't really listening as Roger snapped something at him, because he really didn't give a damn what Roger said. The girl Roger had been talking to tugged him away, and he started to walk off. Luther followed him for a moment, then shook his head, turning away. A short distance down the block, he noticed a guy with a camera waving to him, trying to get his attention, probably just so that he'd have a clear shot of Luther on that damn camera - Luther recognized the guy as one of April's old roommates, and flipped off both him and the camera with a disgusted sneer. He couldn't remember ever really hating people like this, any time before April died. Now he knew. Now he knew how it felt to hate someone this violently, this strongly, because they'd taken the thing he most loved, because they'd had every chance to save her, they'd pulled her away from him and if he'd been there, she wouldn't have died.
He took a breath and turned away, shoving his hands into his pockets and feeling a few packets of smack brushing against his fingertips in either pocket. Don't think. Don't feel. Don't hurt. It was simple. He could forget everything, forget her. Easy. And about as natural and right as a needle pushing into a vein.