RENT: Not Dying from Disease
Title: Not Dying from Disease
Characters/Pairing: Roger and Mark, mentions of Collins and Mimi
Word Count: 2648
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Strange how finding out he wasn't dying only made him feel as if something had died.
Notes: Written for rentchallenge weekly challenge #6.
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Roger stared silently at the tiny pill bottle sitting in the middle of his palm, the blue and white pills inside that rattled a little as he shifted his hand. He glanced up, across the room, at Mark, who didn't seem to be paying the least amount of attention to Roger, completely absorbed in whatever he was doing, something that involved a notebook and a pencil and a calculator, probably bills. Roger turned his attention back to the pill bottle after several seconds. It was still half-full, which, to be truthful, was probably because he hadn't been taking the pills as regularly as he should - this bottle ought to have run out before now. It wasn't an accident that he hadn't run out yet.
The rattle of the pill bottle broke his silence, much louder this time, as Roger hurled it across the room, it hit the wall, fell to the floor. Mark dropped the pencil he'd been holding in his mouth and jumped up, looking wide-eyed from Roger to the bottle. Roger's eyes remained on the bottle, rolling in little circles on the floor. He was a little surprised it hadn't popped open and spilled the pills on the floor. That would have been more satisfying.
"What the hell was that?" Mark demanded. He acted like it was a gunshot fired, not just a bottle of AZT thrown against a wall.
Roger managed, at last, to pull his eyes away from the bottle on the floor. They rested briefly on Mark's face, registering surprise, concern, annoyance, before Roger looked away, out the window. He wasn't sure why the avoidant gaze, except that by now it was habit. Mark told him to take his AZT, and he'd look away and stall, and when Mark asked later he'd more often than not tell him yes, he'd taken it, when in reality he'd done no such thing. Mark would tell him to eat, and he'd balk and complain and finally eat a handful of cereal or something to appease him. It made him feel a teenager or something, like Mark didn't trust him to take care of himself.
Fuck that.
"I'm not doing this anymore."
"Doing what?" Mark didn't precisely raise his voice - really, it just went up of its own accord, out of frustration and confusion, and probably uncertainty over whether Roger was going to start throwing more things. He wasn't.
"I'm not taking that shit anymore. It... it makes me feel sick, and it gives me headaches, and I can't think. I've been fine, I've been healthy, so I'm not taking it anymore."
Mark stared at him in silence for a moment - Roger tired of the moment before Mark did and looked away, frowning quietly at his hand, at the letters tattooed on his fingers, as if seeing them for the first time. He only looked up again when Mark spoke. "Are you kidding me?"
"What?"
"Anymore? You're not taking them anymore? Don't give me that, Roger, you're not taking them anyway!" Mark stepped away from the table and walked over to meet him, staring down into his face. He didn't even look angry. Upset, yes, but not angry. Roger was almost bothered by that - he was able to deal with anger more easily. "You think I haven't counted the pills? You think I don't know you haven't taken any since, what, a week and a half ago? I'm not stupid."
"Fine. So then you know, I'm not lying to you, there's no reason to worry about it." Roger folded his arms over his chest, a little defensively. Anger he could deal with, because anger he could counter with more anger, if Mark were yelling at him he could just yell back. But... however sharp his words, he wasn't yelling, and he wasn't angry, and reasonable conversations about serious things were hard for Roger. Arms crossed over his chest provided a good sort of barrier, however imagined.
Mark's voice softened, and he rested one hand on Roger's arm. Roger somehow resisted the urge to pull away. "Yes. You're healthy now. And I'd like you to stay that way. You've got to take your meds, alright?"
"I told you, I take the fucking meds, I can't think. With the headaches it's too hard to-"
Mark let his hand fall and narrowed his eyes a little. "So take some fucking aspirin!"
There it was, the shift in tone, the raised voice, that gave Roger just enough leverage to yell back. "The aspirin doesn't fucking work! I've tried, alright? I'm not taking it anymore, and it's none of your business whether I do or not."
Mark clenched his jaw, with a stubborn upward tilt of his chin Roger recognized - he usually did that when he was trying not to cry. "Of course. It's none of my business if my best friend wants to die a little faster."
That took the wind out of him. "Mark..."
Mark's chin still had that slight upward tilt, the tightness to his jaw that meant he was fighting back emotion, and his voice did come out strangely emotionless as he said, "You need to go to the doctor."
Roger stepped back quickly, and he could feel something in his shoulders knotting up, his heart jumping a little, that automatic temptation to run, not that running would do him any good. He'd learned by now not to listen, whatever instinct told him. "What? Why? I'm fine, you know that!"
Mark rubbed at the back of his neck, looked down at the floor, back up at Roger. "You haven't been to a doctor since you... You should go. Get your T-cells checked, make sure you're-"
"Mark, I'm not-"
"Roger." It wasn't as harsh as it could have been, not a shout, but it was enough to make Roger fall silent. "Go to the doctor. Get your T-cells checked. If they're fine... you can stop taking the AZT, and I won't say a word about it."
Roger eyed him suspiciously, brows drawn together. "Really?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
*
It was funny, in the sort of way no one ever laughed at. No doctor ever sat him down and talked to him when he found he was positive. April got the results first, and Roger got them from her, with "WE'VE GOT AIDS" scrawled on it in red Sharpie, in April's terse, bold handwriting, because even dying she apparently didn't trust him not to fuck up, didn't trust him to understand the words already there in black and white. Positive was not a word Roger had trouble understanding, whatever April thought.
Negative was something else altogether. Negative made no sense after two fucking years. The doctor tried to sit him down, talk to him, explain how these things happen, that the tests weren't right a hundred percept of the time, and if he hadn't come back after that first test... Roger walked out after a minute and a half.
He passed by Mark in the waiting room - Mark had, for some reason, insisted on coming, though Roger had refused to let him come with him when he spoke to the doctor. Mark jumped up and trailed after him, hurrying to keep up with Roger's rushed pace. "What'd he say?"
Roger didn't answer, didn't even look at him, and Mark couldn't coax him into speaking at any point on the walk back to the loft. When they returned to the house, Roger went directly to his room, slammed the door, dropped the paper on his bed. It was already creased and battered - he'd held it in his clenched fist the entire way home. He couldn't look at it now. Maybe it would end up shoved in some out of the way place, like his first results, April's note. Maybe he'd throw it out. Just then he couldn't decide, so he sprawled on his bed, on his side, stared at the wall in silence.
There was something wrong, some mistake, because over two years of his life couldn't have been mistaken in the first place. And Mimi... God.
It had to be fifteen, twenty minutes before Mark cautiously pushed open the door and stuck his head in. Roger didn't move to look at him. "Roger? You okay?"
Roger, wordless, curled into himself a little more, his back to Mark. There was a pause, and then he heard Mark step into the room, heard his footsteps on the bare floor, heard a rustle as Mark picked up the paper. That got Roger to sit up and grab for it but Mark had already stood up and tried to smooth the creases from the paper, and Roger could tell by his expression that he had already read that word, the only one that mattered...
"Mark," he said quietly, a warning edge to his voice.
"Roger." Mark's eyes flickered up to Roger's face, then back to the paper. His voice was hushed, his eyes wide. "This says that you're..."
"Get out," he said tersely, jaw clenched.
Mark stared at him, brow furrowed. "Roger, really-"
Roger lurched to his feet, shoving roughly at Mark's shoulder to push him to the door. "Get out!" It had been ages since he'd yelled at Mark like that, loud enough that it made his throat hurt, loud enough that it hurt his own ears, and Mark's mouth dropped open momentarily before he stepped quickly out of the room, the results still in his hand. He had the courtesy to close the door behind him.
Roger stepped back and all but fell back onto the bed, more his knees collapsing beneath him than a conscious decision to sit, and his hands balled in the sheets, his mind still on that goddamn paper Mark had taken with him. He waited, inexplicably, to find a red marker and write on it, in his best imitation of April's handwriting.
WE'VE STILL GOT AIDS.
*
Roger couldn't deal with Mark, because Mark didn't get it. He tried to be careful, he tried not to say anything that would set Roger off. But he was happy - not just happy, all but ecstatic, and couldn't understand why Roger wouldn't as well. Roger took to staying in his room, only coming out when he absolutely had to, and then usually when he could reasonably expect Mark wouldn't be around.
Strange how finding out he wasn't dying only made him feel as if something had died.
So he hardly spoke to Mark, and Mark knew better than to try to speak to him, most days. He tried once to knock on Roger's door, called his name, but Roger sat there in silence until he went away, and Mark didn't try again. It wasn't until week or two later that Roger woke up to find a postcard on the floor that Mark had apparently slipped under his door.
Roger left it there for several hours, and when he finally picked it up, didn't read it for several minutes. He sat there, on the edge of his bed, holding it, and then finally flipped it over without even looking at the picture on the front - finding, as he had known he would, Collins' handwriting in a precise and simultaneously careless scrawl. He only read a sentence or two, and he could find in every word an undertone of anger, resentment that Collins probably didn't even mean to be there. Though Collins didn't put it in so many words, though it was written so much more tactfully, in a way Roger couldn't complain about without looking like an ass, there was the same underlying message he had known there would be - Get over it, enjoy it, you've got an out none of us do.
For the first time since he got the results, Roger walked out of his bedroom knowing that Mark was outside, walked to the stove, pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the postcard on fire, dropping it in. Mark watched him silently, eyebrows raised, clearly uncertain what to say, or if he should say anything. Roger watched it burn for a moment, then turned abruptly and walked back to his room, all without a word.
*
Roger ventured out of his room at two AM, to find something to eat. Mark tended to keep to something resembling a normal schedule, he figured Mark would be asleep by then, and sure enough, when he glanced out the door, the main room was empty. He searched through the cabinet for a minute or two, settled on a bag of chips, and when he turned around... found Mark standing there, in the middle of the room, somewhere between where Roger stood and the door to Roger's bedroom.
Roger frowned at him for a moment, and then started to walk around him, head down as if he could just pretend he didn't exist. As if he didn't know that expression from Mark, that expression that meant he was tired of the bullshit and they were going to talk now, damnit.
Roger didn't want to talk now. He stepped around Mark, but before he could reach the door, Mark grabbed his arm, pulled him back. Roger tensed, but managed not to jerk away or shove him. "Hey," Mark said.
"What?"
"What's the matter with you?"
For a moment, Roger simply stared at him, and then laughed harshly, in a pained, unamused way. Now he jerked his arm away, out of Mark's grasp, but didn't walk away, though he wasn't sure why. "Nothing's the matter with me. That's it."
"So why're you acting like there is? You're acting just like you did after April died, and at least then I knew why."
Mark looked at Roger over the top of his glasses, his gaze level and serious. Roger stared at him for a moment and then sneered, turning away. Mark lunged forward before he could make it to his bedroom and grabbed his arm, harder than before. Roger shoved him, expecting Mark to let go, back off - instead, Mark shoved back, free hand going to grip the collar of Roger's shirt, and abruptly Roger found himself slammed back against the wall next to his door, too startled to push him off.
"No. No you're not. You're not walking out right now, you're talking to me, alright? You're not dying, you're negative, you're okay, why're you acting like this?"
Reaching up to grip Mark's wrist, Roger pulled it away from his throat, but Mark had a wild, fierce look about him just then, something belligerent and challenging that made Roger not want to push him too far. So he kept his voice low, and softer than he'd have liked, when he answered. "I've been dying for, what, two and half years now? That's who I am."
"What? That's not-"
"No, it is. And now it's not, and I don't know who the fuck I am anymore."
Mark let go of him and stepped back, the challenge fading from his eyes. "I... you're... you're Roger." And Roger raised an eyebrow, silently questioning - of course he was, but that was a name, not a person. He was Roger, but who was that anymore, now that the thing that had changed his life, the thing he'd built his life on for what seems the most important part of his life... wasn't true? And Mark could see that, read that in his face, and swallowed hard, after several moments of silence amending his answer.
"We can find out again."
Roger stared at him, and looked down at his feet, and finally, hesitantly, nodded. "Okay."
Characters/Pairing: Roger and Mark, mentions of Collins and Mimi
Word Count: 2648
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Strange how finding out he wasn't dying only made him feel as if something had died.
Notes: Written for rentchallenge weekly challenge #6.
Disclaimer: Still not mine.
Roger stared silently at the tiny pill bottle sitting in the middle of his palm, the blue and white pills inside that rattled a little as he shifted his hand. He glanced up, across the room, at Mark, who didn't seem to be paying the least amount of attention to Roger, completely absorbed in whatever he was doing, something that involved a notebook and a pencil and a calculator, probably bills. Roger turned his attention back to the pill bottle after several seconds. It was still half-full, which, to be truthful, was probably because he hadn't been taking the pills as regularly as he should - this bottle ought to have run out before now. It wasn't an accident that he hadn't run out yet.
The rattle of the pill bottle broke his silence, much louder this time, as Roger hurled it across the room, it hit the wall, fell to the floor. Mark dropped the pencil he'd been holding in his mouth and jumped up, looking wide-eyed from Roger to the bottle. Roger's eyes remained on the bottle, rolling in little circles on the floor. He was a little surprised it hadn't popped open and spilled the pills on the floor. That would have been more satisfying.
"What the hell was that?" Mark demanded. He acted like it was a gunshot fired, not just a bottle of AZT thrown against a wall.
Roger managed, at last, to pull his eyes away from the bottle on the floor. They rested briefly on Mark's face, registering surprise, concern, annoyance, before Roger looked away, out the window. He wasn't sure why the avoidant gaze, except that by now it was habit. Mark told him to take his AZT, and he'd look away and stall, and when Mark asked later he'd more often than not tell him yes, he'd taken it, when in reality he'd done no such thing. Mark would tell him to eat, and he'd balk and complain and finally eat a handful of cereal or something to appease him. It made him feel a teenager or something, like Mark didn't trust him to take care of himself.
Fuck that.
"I'm not doing this anymore."
"Doing what?" Mark didn't precisely raise his voice - really, it just went up of its own accord, out of frustration and confusion, and probably uncertainty over whether Roger was going to start throwing more things. He wasn't.
"I'm not taking that shit anymore. It... it makes me feel sick, and it gives me headaches, and I can't think. I've been fine, I've been healthy, so I'm not taking it anymore."
Mark stared at him in silence for a moment - Roger tired of the moment before Mark did and looked away, frowning quietly at his hand, at the letters tattooed on his fingers, as if seeing them for the first time. He only looked up again when Mark spoke. "Are you kidding me?"
"What?"
"Anymore? You're not taking them anymore? Don't give me that, Roger, you're not taking them anyway!" Mark stepped away from the table and walked over to meet him, staring down into his face. He didn't even look angry. Upset, yes, but not angry. Roger was almost bothered by that - he was able to deal with anger more easily. "You think I haven't counted the pills? You think I don't know you haven't taken any since, what, a week and a half ago? I'm not stupid."
"Fine. So then you know, I'm not lying to you, there's no reason to worry about it." Roger folded his arms over his chest, a little defensively. Anger he could deal with, because anger he could counter with more anger, if Mark were yelling at him he could just yell back. But... however sharp his words, he wasn't yelling, and he wasn't angry, and reasonable conversations about serious things were hard for Roger. Arms crossed over his chest provided a good sort of barrier, however imagined.
Mark's voice softened, and he rested one hand on Roger's arm. Roger somehow resisted the urge to pull away. "Yes. You're healthy now. And I'd like you to stay that way. You've got to take your meds, alright?"
"I told you, I take the fucking meds, I can't think. With the headaches it's too hard to-"
Mark let his hand fall and narrowed his eyes a little. "So take some fucking aspirin!"
There it was, the shift in tone, the raised voice, that gave Roger just enough leverage to yell back. "The aspirin doesn't fucking work! I've tried, alright? I'm not taking it anymore, and it's none of your business whether I do or not."
Mark clenched his jaw, with a stubborn upward tilt of his chin Roger recognized - he usually did that when he was trying not to cry. "Of course. It's none of my business if my best friend wants to die a little faster."
That took the wind out of him. "Mark..."
Mark's chin still had that slight upward tilt, the tightness to his jaw that meant he was fighting back emotion, and his voice did come out strangely emotionless as he said, "You need to go to the doctor."
Roger stepped back quickly, and he could feel something in his shoulders knotting up, his heart jumping a little, that automatic temptation to run, not that running would do him any good. He'd learned by now not to listen, whatever instinct told him. "What? Why? I'm fine, you know that!"
Mark rubbed at the back of his neck, looked down at the floor, back up at Roger. "You haven't been to a doctor since you... You should go. Get your T-cells checked, make sure you're-"
"Mark, I'm not-"
"Roger." It wasn't as harsh as it could have been, not a shout, but it was enough to make Roger fall silent. "Go to the doctor. Get your T-cells checked. If they're fine... you can stop taking the AZT, and I won't say a word about it."
Roger eyed him suspiciously, brows drawn together. "Really?"
"Yes."
"Okay."
*
It was funny, in the sort of way no one ever laughed at. No doctor ever sat him down and talked to him when he found he was positive. April got the results first, and Roger got them from her, with "WE'VE GOT AIDS" scrawled on it in red Sharpie, in April's terse, bold handwriting, because even dying she apparently didn't trust him not to fuck up, didn't trust him to understand the words already there in black and white. Positive was not a word Roger had trouble understanding, whatever April thought.
Negative was something else altogether. Negative made no sense after two fucking years. The doctor tried to sit him down, talk to him, explain how these things happen, that the tests weren't right a hundred percept of the time, and if he hadn't come back after that first test... Roger walked out after a minute and a half.
He passed by Mark in the waiting room - Mark had, for some reason, insisted on coming, though Roger had refused to let him come with him when he spoke to the doctor. Mark jumped up and trailed after him, hurrying to keep up with Roger's rushed pace. "What'd he say?"
Roger didn't answer, didn't even look at him, and Mark couldn't coax him into speaking at any point on the walk back to the loft. When they returned to the house, Roger went directly to his room, slammed the door, dropped the paper on his bed. It was already creased and battered - he'd held it in his clenched fist the entire way home. He couldn't look at it now. Maybe it would end up shoved in some out of the way place, like his first results, April's note. Maybe he'd throw it out. Just then he couldn't decide, so he sprawled on his bed, on his side, stared at the wall in silence.
There was something wrong, some mistake, because over two years of his life couldn't have been mistaken in the first place. And Mimi... God.
It had to be fifteen, twenty minutes before Mark cautiously pushed open the door and stuck his head in. Roger didn't move to look at him. "Roger? You okay?"
Roger, wordless, curled into himself a little more, his back to Mark. There was a pause, and then he heard Mark step into the room, heard his footsteps on the bare floor, heard a rustle as Mark picked up the paper. That got Roger to sit up and grab for it but Mark had already stood up and tried to smooth the creases from the paper, and Roger could tell by his expression that he had already read that word, the only one that mattered...
"Mark," he said quietly, a warning edge to his voice.
"Roger." Mark's eyes flickered up to Roger's face, then back to the paper. His voice was hushed, his eyes wide. "This says that you're..."
"Get out," he said tersely, jaw clenched.
Mark stared at him, brow furrowed. "Roger, really-"
Roger lurched to his feet, shoving roughly at Mark's shoulder to push him to the door. "Get out!" It had been ages since he'd yelled at Mark like that, loud enough that it made his throat hurt, loud enough that it hurt his own ears, and Mark's mouth dropped open momentarily before he stepped quickly out of the room, the results still in his hand. He had the courtesy to close the door behind him.
Roger stepped back and all but fell back onto the bed, more his knees collapsing beneath him than a conscious decision to sit, and his hands balled in the sheets, his mind still on that goddamn paper Mark had taken with him. He waited, inexplicably, to find a red marker and write on it, in his best imitation of April's handwriting.
WE'VE STILL GOT AIDS.
*
Roger couldn't deal with Mark, because Mark didn't get it. He tried to be careful, he tried not to say anything that would set Roger off. But he was happy - not just happy, all but ecstatic, and couldn't understand why Roger wouldn't as well. Roger took to staying in his room, only coming out when he absolutely had to, and then usually when he could reasonably expect Mark wouldn't be around.
Strange how finding out he wasn't dying only made him feel as if something had died.
So he hardly spoke to Mark, and Mark knew better than to try to speak to him, most days. He tried once to knock on Roger's door, called his name, but Roger sat there in silence until he went away, and Mark didn't try again. It wasn't until week or two later that Roger woke up to find a postcard on the floor that Mark had apparently slipped under his door.
Roger left it there for several hours, and when he finally picked it up, didn't read it for several minutes. He sat there, on the edge of his bed, holding it, and then finally flipped it over without even looking at the picture on the front - finding, as he had known he would, Collins' handwriting in a precise and simultaneously careless scrawl. He only read a sentence or two, and he could find in every word an undertone of anger, resentment that Collins probably didn't even mean to be there. Though Collins didn't put it in so many words, though it was written so much more tactfully, in a way Roger couldn't complain about without looking like an ass, there was the same underlying message he had known there would be - Get over it, enjoy it, you've got an out none of us do.
For the first time since he got the results, Roger walked out of his bedroom knowing that Mark was outside, walked to the stove, pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the postcard on fire, dropping it in. Mark watched him silently, eyebrows raised, clearly uncertain what to say, or if he should say anything. Roger watched it burn for a moment, then turned abruptly and walked back to his room, all without a word.
*
Roger ventured out of his room at two AM, to find something to eat. Mark tended to keep to something resembling a normal schedule, he figured Mark would be asleep by then, and sure enough, when he glanced out the door, the main room was empty. He searched through the cabinet for a minute or two, settled on a bag of chips, and when he turned around... found Mark standing there, in the middle of the room, somewhere between where Roger stood and the door to Roger's bedroom.
Roger frowned at him for a moment, and then started to walk around him, head down as if he could just pretend he didn't exist. As if he didn't know that expression from Mark, that expression that meant he was tired of the bullshit and they were going to talk now, damnit.
Roger didn't want to talk now. He stepped around Mark, but before he could reach the door, Mark grabbed his arm, pulled him back. Roger tensed, but managed not to jerk away or shove him. "Hey," Mark said.
"What?"
"What's the matter with you?"
For a moment, Roger simply stared at him, and then laughed harshly, in a pained, unamused way. Now he jerked his arm away, out of Mark's grasp, but didn't walk away, though he wasn't sure why. "Nothing's the matter with me. That's it."
"So why're you acting like there is? You're acting just like you did after April died, and at least then I knew why."
Mark looked at Roger over the top of his glasses, his gaze level and serious. Roger stared at him for a moment and then sneered, turning away. Mark lunged forward before he could make it to his bedroom and grabbed his arm, harder than before. Roger shoved him, expecting Mark to let go, back off - instead, Mark shoved back, free hand going to grip the collar of Roger's shirt, and abruptly Roger found himself slammed back against the wall next to his door, too startled to push him off.
"No. No you're not. You're not walking out right now, you're talking to me, alright? You're not dying, you're negative, you're okay, why're you acting like this?"
Reaching up to grip Mark's wrist, Roger pulled it away from his throat, but Mark had a wild, fierce look about him just then, something belligerent and challenging that made Roger not want to push him too far. So he kept his voice low, and softer than he'd have liked, when he answered. "I've been dying for, what, two and half years now? That's who I am."
"What? That's not-"
"No, it is. And now it's not, and I don't know who the fuck I am anymore."
Mark let go of him and stepped back, the challenge fading from his eyes. "I... you're... you're Roger." And Roger raised an eyebrow, silently questioning - of course he was, but that was a name, not a person. He was Roger, but who was that anymore, now that the thing that had changed his life, the thing he'd built his life on for what seems the most important part of his life... wasn't true? And Mark could see that, read that in his face, and swallowed hard, after several moments of silence amending his answer.
"We can find out again."
Roger stared at him, and looked down at his feet, and finally, hesitantly, nodded. "Okay."