Fic: The Classic Love Story
I actually finished writing something! Yes, there will be a party held afterwards in honor of me managing to get through something without bursting into tears. The only reason I managed is because I had two classes off last week. It gave my head time not to explode as it usually does.
Author: Stephanie
Title: The Classic Love Story
Pairings: Roger/April, Mark/Maureen, Roger/Mimi, Mark/Roger
Rating: Pg-13 mainly for language, and somewhat for sex.
Word Count: 3411
Summary: Through all the romances in their life, Mark and Roger can't seem to figure out the constance.
The Classic Love Story
I. April
“She is so beautiful, you know….”
Mark makes a face. Not because he minds that for the last five hours all Roger has been able to talk about is April, that’s just Roger. More because at the moment he’s pretty sure that Roger has given up trying to walk altogether and Mark is just carrying him now.
Mark has always been a small, awkward looking kid, and it isn’t easy to drag this half unconscious drunk rock star back to the loft through the uneven streets of New York. Fuck, he thinks, if Roger hadn’t spent every dollar they had on beer, Mark could have shoved his ass in a taxi and this would be easier. Thank God he’s spent so many years supporting his camera, because other wise there would be no way in hell he could do this.
Grinding down his teeth, Mark grabs onto the arm Roger had slung over his shoulders, hauling him up before he can tumble off onto the side of the road. The cold air is making the sweating and panting even worse, October wind biting at him. Just a little bit further, right? Mark is still getting use to finding his way around New York at night, but if it isn’t just a little bit further, he might have to give up.
Grunting and groaning, he picks Roger back up and steadies them both. Oh, fuck yeah! He feels more accomplishment at being able to support his drunken friend than he ever got from getting into Brown.
“Yeah, Rog,” he mutters, looking down at the sidewalk so that he can see where the cracks and bumps come up, careful not to let Roger trip over them. “She looked great. Like always.”
Personally, Mark has always thought Roger and April look a little too thin, almost like they’re on the verge of being ill. From what he’s seen on the streets around the abandoned building he‘s staying in, everyone has that look. Except Roger, when he’s on stage. Then he looks like a rock star, all bright passion and young artist.
Of course, that could just be the lighting tech doing his job.
“Yeah,” Roger agrees, eyes falling closed, which isn’t helping Mark at all. Shit, he mentally curses, body aching as Roger almost slides down and Mark has to work to catch him all over again. Shit, he should have followed Mike and Dan’s leads and just left after Roger’s fifth beer, about the time that Roger grabbed April out of the arms of some guy she’d been dancing with to call her a slut and get himself slapped.
Mark didn’t know what Dan and Mike did, that Roger and April pull this shit all the time. They fight, they get drunk, they have awkward sex in the bathroom. Mark stuck around through all of that, figuring Roger might need a friend or something. He was really close to leaving, yeah, about the time he heard April moaning in the bathroom, but then she stumbled out and left Roger passed out in the stall.
Roger might look small and kind of sick, but he’s pretty fucking heavy when he’s dragging his feet along the ground. Mark could just leave Roger to sleep it off in the bathroom and, okay, maybe he should have. Probably, plenty of people have passed out drunk there before.
Mark had to be all noble about it, though and help him up. It didn’t look to him like Roger needed to be abandoned in a stall covered in cum, piss, vomit, and probably a few other things Mark didn’t want to touch. It looked to him like he needed help.
Besides, passed out on the floor with his cheeks flushed from the show, the fighting, the sex and - more than anything - the alcohol, Roger kind of looked childish. Well, except the hickies, unzipped jeans, eye make up, and tract marks. No one every mistook Roger for being innocent.
“God, she’s… Yeah, she’s so beautiful, my girl,” Roger mutters against Mark’s shoulder, nuzzling closer, his skin burning against Mark’s. He can see Avenue B now, and it’s just a little longer. Than he can dump Roger at the front door and collapse into bed himself. “I love her so much.”
Well, Mark considers as he looks down at Roger, maybe everyone is wrong. Really tough guys, the sort of guys who fight with their girlfriend and do drugs and scream at their guitar when they can’t write, they don’t turn into love stuck puppies, do they? They don’t always say ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and want to write love songs about the girl of their dreams. Roger is more of a child than people give him credit for.
All this Mark learns in four months living with Roger, who Collins said had come with the and who they simply never kicked out. Maybe Mark is just good at observations, which he’d like to think he is seeing as that is what film should be. Artistic observations of the chaos around you, as he wrote in one of his papers before he got sick of trying to express himself to a bunch of professors who believed art came in the form of homework assignments and he dropped out and came down here and found a kid passed out in the loft Collins found for them.
A rock star wanna be who somehow lost that but got a girl friend and drug problem. There was nothing tricky to figure out about Roger, Benny claimed, he’s not a complicated guy. But Mark thinks maybe everyone has just missed something that he catches, because he’s good at picking up on those things.
Or maybe he sees it just that Mark is the only one who sticks around even after Roger gets drunk.
*
II. Maureen
It doesn’t hurt as much, he thinks.
Roger looks up to the window, the sun glaring at him through the shades as if to show just how disgusted it is with the junkie laying curled up in his own sweat and vomit. Roger doesn’t blame it. He fucking hates himself.
But it doesn’t hurt as much, at least, or he thinks it doesn’t hurt as much. It’s so hard to tell, what with it hurting for so fucking long and constantly and all that shit. Still, he’s pretty sure that it hurt more to breath last night than it does now.
He breaths, and it feels like his ribs dig into his lungs. Fuck, maybe not.
Roger closes his eyes so tight he sees light spots and feels his head pounding, his brain trying to get the fuck out of his skull. Every inch of Roger wants to get away from him. This is how it’s been for months, with the withdraws and relapses. It’s been two weeks, though, without any smack. Not even one little hit. It’s starting to hurt less.
“I told you, I spent the night with Joshua…”
The voice swims into his head, way too high. Oh, God, Maureen. Someone needs to get that girl a gag, no really. What Mark ever saw in her. Well, Roger knows what Mark sees in her. Her breasts and ass.
He tries to smile, but he’s lips are too chapped and, fuck that hurts! He licks and tastes blood, just great. Something else to add to the sheets.
Mark would laugh if he heard that, Roger thinks and notes to tell him later, when he doesn’t feel so miserable. What Mark really sees in Maureen, Roger had no fucking clue. When he was drunk, he started to talk like Collins about this ENERGY that Maureen and Roger both had. If Roger is anything like Maureen, he’d hope someone would shoot him. Fuck, he hopes someone will anyway. This all hurts too much.
There is a deep sigh. Roger’s been hearing that way too much. It’s Mark’s yes I’m annoyed but I can’t show that much emotion sigh. Roger’s only had it aimed at him about nine million times. “Maureen, please, not right-”
“Not right now,” Maureen finishes for him and Roger can tell this is going to be bad. At least when April fought with him, it was loud and quick and passionate. Maureen and Mark’s fights are full of whining and long silences and make Roger think of his parents. “Mark, I SLEPT with someone else. Are you even going to SAY anything?”
Honestly, at this point, Roger would be more shocked to find out Maureen hadn’t slept with someone else, and he’s sure Mark feels about the same. “Look, I know we’re having problems,” he says in that broken down voice. Roger never remembered him sounding so fucking hurt until, well, until Roger started to hurt. Hurt and shake and, God, here it comes again.
He gags, stomach trying to push it’s way out of his mouth. Nope, there’s nothing in there, but it still stings like hell as the ass fills his throat.
“We just need some time,” Mark insists over Roger’s gagging. “I mean, right now isn’t a good time for all this, is it?”
“No, of course not,” Maureen says, but she doesn’t sound understanding at all. Roger settles back down, eyes still closed so that all he can really think about is the pain and the fight going on in the next room. “Now is never the time, Mark. You always have a film or Roger or some other excuse. I tried, baby, I did but you… You just won’t let me help you.”
That actually almost sounds sincere to Roger. So much so that it’s confusing. Maureen doesn’t do sincerer. She does dramatic and loud and look at me. She whines and pouts to get her way but she doesn’t say shit like that.
Fuck, he’s hallucinating. Roger mewls, eyes tightening closed again. Please, just go away. Don’t let April be here. Don’t let anything in. He’s so sick of being so lost and pathetic. He just wants to be better. It’s been over half a year, and by now all Roger wants is for it all to stop hurting.
Goddamnit, he’s like a child. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
The mattress moves. Not because of him. A cold hand presses against his forehead. “I think your fervor is going down,” Mark says, turning his hand around, pressing the back against Roger’s burning cheek. When did he get here? Shouldn’t he still be out there with Maureen. She sounded so fucking sincere.
Roger doesn’t want Mark and Maureen to lose each other. She’s a drama queen and annoys his head ache, yeah, but she makes Mark happy, and she’s actually fun to get drunk with. Why are all theses thoughts hitting him now? Roger just wants his mind to be quite. He just wants to stop feeling so bad.
“Do you need anything?” Mark asks, pulling the blankets from Roger, probably to clean them. He puts more, fresher ones back on before Roger can even shiver. “Water or something?”
“Stop babying me,” Roger mutters, slowly opening his eyes. The light burns, cleans out his thoughts at least, stops his mind from reeling. “Where’s Maureen?”
Mark bites his lips. He looks just as confused as Roger had listening to them. “I’m going to go get you some water,” he says, and scurries out of the room.
“You’re a fool!” Roger yells to him, voice scratching and rough from being so sick. Some part of him feels good knowing that no matter how fucked up he is right now, at least he can still see what Mark can’t.
*
III. Mimi
Mark doesn’t want to have to be the one who tells him, but it‘s going to be him. Roger is standing in the doorway looking and instead of being excited his best friend is back, all Mark can think is how he doesn’t want to be the one to tell him.
“Mimi wouldn’t answer her door,” Roger mutters, looking down at the concrete floor of their squat. Mark figured he would see her first, coming back here afterwards because he knew Mark would be here and answer the door, even though Roger left like an asshole. Roger is pretty use to Mark being there, even when he‘s an asshole. It‘s part of their accepted dynamic, and Mark doesn‘t really mind. At least he‘s back. “Can I come in?”
Mark moves aside and Roger squeezes in the door with his guitar and old duffle bag, even less full than it had been when he left for Santa Fe. This is so unfair. Mark doesn’t want to be the one to tell him.
Roger looks around the loft, setting his things on the table. “I forgot how small New York is.”
“She left,” Mark blurts out, just wanting to get that out before he goes entirely insane. He knows it’s what Roger wants to know. Where is the girl of his dreams? Well, yeah, the new girl of his dreams. He doesn’t want to be the one to have to tell him this, but Mark is always the one that gets to. April is dead. She left a note. Mimi is gone. Fuck, being the best friend sucks.
Roger turns and looks back at Mark. His hair is even lighter than usual, or maybe it’s just his skin being so dark. Mark doesn’t think he’s ever seen Roger with a tan. It’s weird. “She left?”
“I don’t know,” Mark confesses, shrugging. Please don’t get mad, please don’t leave again. “One day she was just gone. I asked Maureen, I asked Collins, I asked Benny. No one knows where she went or how to get a hold of you. I’m sorry.”
Roger keeps looking at Mark like he expects this to be a joke. Yeah, if only. “Goddamnit!” He shouts once it’s managed to sink in. Roger slams his fist against the table, and it rattles under his hand. “She can’t be… I mean, I came back for her and she can’t be gone.”
“Hey.” Mark walks over to him, patting his shoulder. It’s supposed to help calm him down but Roger grunts and hit’s the table again, both hands this time, staring down at the ground, through their floor to where Mimi should be waiting for him. “Hey, we’ll find her. You know we will. Maureen and I, we‘ve already been asking around and stuff. We‘re going to find her.”
Roger glances back up at Mark and Mark sees questions. Why does he care about some junkie girl enough to do all that, because Roger knows that Mark and Mimi hardly even spent time together, and really they weren’t that close, more because Mark was busy with his film and Maureen, and Roger was too busy with Mimi to bother to get them together. And of course the answer is because Roger cares about her, and he isn’t going to watch his friend lose another girl like that.
Roger’s grip on the edge of the table loosens slowly, and he even stands up, running a hand through his bleach and sun lightened hair. “We should check Thompson park,” he suggests, and Mark nods. They know. “I have this song,” Roger explains. “That I have to sing to her.”
“You’ll get to,” Mark promises him. “We’re going to find her.”
Roger nods, and he looks like he believes Mark, which is more than Mark believes in himself to find this lost girl. Maybe Roger really needs to hold onto that, though. “Oh,” he says suddenly, reaching back into his pocket. “I got you something. I mean, I did a little street playing and someone threw it in my case, but I thought you’d like it.”
He hands Mark a wrinkled brown bag, Roger’s attempt at wrapping. Mark looks back at him, smiling in thanks, and everything feels strangely normal between them, even after Roger being gone for a month. It doesn’t even matter what’s inside.
*
IV. Alone
“You know,” Mark speaks up, not glancing away from all the filmstrips laid out around him. “It might sound better if you tried playing the Fender instead of a dead cat. Oh,” he looks up, pushing his glasses up his nose and smiling. “That is the Fender, huh?”
Roger considers throwing something at him, then decides he’s too lazy. He settles for glowering at him before looking back down at his guitar.
He’s at least mostly aware that Mark is just being Mark. Also, the guitar is out of tune and does sound fucking horrible, Roger knows. He has to keep playing it, though. He promised Mimi he’d keep playing, finish a demo tape and all of that. He doesn’t remember why he promised her these things, but she looked so small and helpless. Roger couldn’t really say no.
Now that he thinks about it, Mark probably put her up to it. That seems like the sort of thing Mark would do. He’s always the one there when Roger hits a low point, and always the one insisting that Roger should do things like keep writing, come up with more songs, that he can’t keep living in the past.
When they fought over Roger not having the strength to go to Mimi’s funereal, that was one of the things Mark yelled at him, and he told Mark that he wouldn’t understand since he doesn’t even live in the future, just through his film, selling Mimi’s death. It was a cold thing to say, but Mark didn’t leave until Roger agreed to go with him.
“I need a new set of strings,” Roger complains. It isn’t the stings that are the problem, just that no matter what he tries he can’t stop thinking about Mimi, about April, about Angel, and about, well, that’s going to be him soon. His fingers keep slipping over the strings, the music not wanting to play for him when he can’t even think about it.
“I’ll try and get you some,” Mark mutters, finishing one roll of film, moving to the next. The last edit, he swears, which is what he swore a month before. What he doesn’t know is that Roger is planning to send this one to a film contest no matter what Mark thinks of it. If film making is anything like song writing, you can slave over it all you want but it isn’t until you step out on stage, let other people hear you, that you know what you’re doing. At least, that is how Roger remembers it being.
“Shouldn’t you buy beer with your parents money?” Roger asks, looking down at his fender, frowning at the instrument like it’s the guitar fault he can’t play.
“Or food,” Mark says, rolling his eyes as he looks up at Roger. “All the same, right?”
Roger nods, shifting his guitar in his lap. He plays some notes for April, or tries. It’s lovely at first, then breaks through the air and makes him wince, and he has to cut it off quickly. One for Mimi, then, loud and wild but he runs out of passion for the song and it fades. None of this is working.
“I’ve been thinking.” Why can’t he get any of this right? Why does every girl he love seem to explode on him. Part of Roger thinks that is how love should be, explosive like that, but it just ends up ripping him up and destroying him. He isn’t sure how much more he can take. “Hey, Roger,” Mark says, snapping a bit but it gets Roger’s attention. “I said I’ve been thinking about what you mentioned last night, and I think I will.”
Roger strums a few notes, nice and even, sort of boring, but at least the sound doesn’t make him want to throw down his guitar in disgust. It’s something to work with. “Good,” he says, nodding. “You should. Of course, that means we‘re going to lose you to Hollywood, huh?”
Mark snorts, rapping the film up. “Yeah, you know me and how much I love boob jobs, egos, and high grossing films about pointless love shit,” he says as he carries all the film back to his room, and Roger can’t help but smile. He kind of likes that, that he knows Mark will always be trapped in New York.
Plus, the next notes he play don’t sound so bad.
Author: Stephanie
Title: The Classic Love Story
Pairings: Roger/April, Mark/Maureen, Roger/Mimi, Mark/Roger
Rating: Pg-13 mainly for language, and somewhat for sex.
Word Count: 3411
Summary: Through all the romances in their life, Mark and Roger can't seem to figure out the constance.
The Classic Love Story
I. April
“She is so beautiful, you know….”
Mark makes a face. Not because he minds that for the last five hours all Roger has been able to talk about is April, that’s just Roger. More because at the moment he’s pretty sure that Roger has given up trying to walk altogether and Mark is just carrying him now.
Mark has always been a small, awkward looking kid, and it isn’t easy to drag this half unconscious drunk rock star back to the loft through the uneven streets of New York. Fuck, he thinks, if Roger hadn’t spent every dollar they had on beer, Mark could have shoved his ass in a taxi and this would be easier. Thank God he’s spent so many years supporting his camera, because other wise there would be no way in hell he could do this.
Grinding down his teeth, Mark grabs onto the arm Roger had slung over his shoulders, hauling him up before he can tumble off onto the side of the road. The cold air is making the sweating and panting even worse, October wind biting at him. Just a little bit further, right? Mark is still getting use to finding his way around New York at night, but if it isn’t just a little bit further, he might have to give up.
Grunting and groaning, he picks Roger back up and steadies them both. Oh, fuck yeah! He feels more accomplishment at being able to support his drunken friend than he ever got from getting into Brown.
“Yeah, Rog,” he mutters, looking down at the sidewalk so that he can see where the cracks and bumps come up, careful not to let Roger trip over them. “She looked great. Like always.”
Personally, Mark has always thought Roger and April look a little too thin, almost like they’re on the verge of being ill. From what he’s seen on the streets around the abandoned building he‘s staying in, everyone has that look. Except Roger, when he’s on stage. Then he looks like a rock star, all bright passion and young artist.
Of course, that could just be the lighting tech doing his job.
“Yeah,” Roger agrees, eyes falling closed, which isn’t helping Mark at all. Shit, he mentally curses, body aching as Roger almost slides down and Mark has to work to catch him all over again. Shit, he should have followed Mike and Dan’s leads and just left after Roger’s fifth beer, about the time that Roger grabbed April out of the arms of some guy she’d been dancing with to call her a slut and get himself slapped.
Mark didn’t know what Dan and Mike did, that Roger and April pull this shit all the time. They fight, they get drunk, they have awkward sex in the bathroom. Mark stuck around through all of that, figuring Roger might need a friend or something. He was really close to leaving, yeah, about the time he heard April moaning in the bathroom, but then she stumbled out and left Roger passed out in the stall.
Roger might look small and kind of sick, but he’s pretty fucking heavy when he’s dragging his feet along the ground. Mark could just leave Roger to sleep it off in the bathroom and, okay, maybe he should have. Probably, plenty of people have passed out drunk there before.
Mark had to be all noble about it, though and help him up. It didn’t look to him like Roger needed to be abandoned in a stall covered in cum, piss, vomit, and probably a few other things Mark didn’t want to touch. It looked to him like he needed help.
Besides, passed out on the floor with his cheeks flushed from the show, the fighting, the sex and - more than anything - the alcohol, Roger kind of looked childish. Well, except the hickies, unzipped jeans, eye make up, and tract marks. No one every mistook Roger for being innocent.
“God, she’s… Yeah, she’s so beautiful, my girl,” Roger mutters against Mark’s shoulder, nuzzling closer, his skin burning against Mark’s. He can see Avenue B now, and it’s just a little longer. Than he can dump Roger at the front door and collapse into bed himself. “I love her so much.”
Well, Mark considers as he looks down at Roger, maybe everyone is wrong. Really tough guys, the sort of guys who fight with their girlfriend and do drugs and scream at their guitar when they can’t write, they don’t turn into love stuck puppies, do they? They don’t always say ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ and want to write love songs about the girl of their dreams. Roger is more of a child than people give him credit for.
All this Mark learns in four months living with Roger, who Collins said had come with the and who they simply never kicked out. Maybe Mark is just good at observations, which he’d like to think he is seeing as that is what film should be. Artistic observations of the chaos around you, as he wrote in one of his papers before he got sick of trying to express himself to a bunch of professors who believed art came in the form of homework assignments and he dropped out and came down here and found a kid passed out in the loft Collins found for them.
A rock star wanna be who somehow lost that but got a girl friend and drug problem. There was nothing tricky to figure out about Roger, Benny claimed, he’s not a complicated guy. But Mark thinks maybe everyone has just missed something that he catches, because he’s good at picking up on those things.
Or maybe he sees it just that Mark is the only one who sticks around even after Roger gets drunk.
*
II. Maureen
It doesn’t hurt as much, he thinks.
Roger looks up to the window, the sun glaring at him through the shades as if to show just how disgusted it is with the junkie laying curled up in his own sweat and vomit. Roger doesn’t blame it. He fucking hates himself.
But it doesn’t hurt as much, at least, or he thinks it doesn’t hurt as much. It’s so hard to tell, what with it hurting for so fucking long and constantly and all that shit. Still, he’s pretty sure that it hurt more to breath last night than it does now.
He breaths, and it feels like his ribs dig into his lungs. Fuck, maybe not.
Roger closes his eyes so tight he sees light spots and feels his head pounding, his brain trying to get the fuck out of his skull. Every inch of Roger wants to get away from him. This is how it’s been for months, with the withdraws and relapses. It’s been two weeks, though, without any smack. Not even one little hit. It’s starting to hurt less.
“I told you, I spent the night with Joshua…”
The voice swims into his head, way too high. Oh, God, Maureen. Someone needs to get that girl a gag, no really. What Mark ever saw in her. Well, Roger knows what Mark sees in her. Her breasts and ass.
He tries to smile, but he’s lips are too chapped and, fuck that hurts! He licks and tastes blood, just great. Something else to add to the sheets.
Mark would laugh if he heard that, Roger thinks and notes to tell him later, when he doesn’t feel so miserable. What Mark really sees in Maureen, Roger had no fucking clue. When he was drunk, he started to talk like Collins about this ENERGY that Maureen and Roger both had. If Roger is anything like Maureen, he’d hope someone would shoot him. Fuck, he hopes someone will anyway. This all hurts too much.
There is a deep sigh. Roger’s been hearing that way too much. It’s Mark’s yes I’m annoyed but I can’t show that much emotion sigh. Roger’s only had it aimed at him about nine million times. “Maureen, please, not right-”
“Not right now,” Maureen finishes for him and Roger can tell this is going to be bad. At least when April fought with him, it was loud and quick and passionate. Maureen and Mark’s fights are full of whining and long silences and make Roger think of his parents. “Mark, I SLEPT with someone else. Are you even going to SAY anything?”
Honestly, at this point, Roger would be more shocked to find out Maureen hadn’t slept with someone else, and he’s sure Mark feels about the same. “Look, I know we’re having problems,” he says in that broken down voice. Roger never remembered him sounding so fucking hurt until, well, until Roger started to hurt. Hurt and shake and, God, here it comes again.
He gags, stomach trying to push it’s way out of his mouth. Nope, there’s nothing in there, but it still stings like hell as the ass fills his throat.
“We just need some time,” Mark insists over Roger’s gagging. “I mean, right now isn’t a good time for all this, is it?”
“No, of course not,” Maureen says, but she doesn’t sound understanding at all. Roger settles back down, eyes still closed so that all he can really think about is the pain and the fight going on in the next room. “Now is never the time, Mark. You always have a film or Roger or some other excuse. I tried, baby, I did but you… You just won’t let me help you.”
That actually almost sounds sincere to Roger. So much so that it’s confusing. Maureen doesn’t do sincerer. She does dramatic and loud and look at me. She whines and pouts to get her way but she doesn’t say shit like that.
Fuck, he’s hallucinating. Roger mewls, eyes tightening closed again. Please, just go away. Don’t let April be here. Don’t let anything in. He’s so sick of being so lost and pathetic. He just wants to be better. It’s been over half a year, and by now all Roger wants is for it all to stop hurting.
Goddamnit, he’s like a child. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
The mattress moves. Not because of him. A cold hand presses against his forehead. “I think your fervor is going down,” Mark says, turning his hand around, pressing the back against Roger’s burning cheek. When did he get here? Shouldn’t he still be out there with Maureen. She sounded so fucking sincere.
Roger doesn’t want Mark and Maureen to lose each other. She’s a drama queen and annoys his head ache, yeah, but she makes Mark happy, and she’s actually fun to get drunk with. Why are all theses thoughts hitting him now? Roger just wants his mind to be quite. He just wants to stop feeling so bad.
“Do you need anything?” Mark asks, pulling the blankets from Roger, probably to clean them. He puts more, fresher ones back on before Roger can even shiver. “Water or something?”
“Stop babying me,” Roger mutters, slowly opening his eyes. The light burns, cleans out his thoughts at least, stops his mind from reeling. “Where’s Maureen?”
Mark bites his lips. He looks just as confused as Roger had listening to them. “I’m going to go get you some water,” he says, and scurries out of the room.
“You’re a fool!” Roger yells to him, voice scratching and rough from being so sick. Some part of him feels good knowing that no matter how fucked up he is right now, at least he can still see what Mark can’t.
*
III. Mimi
Mark doesn’t want to have to be the one who tells him, but it‘s going to be him. Roger is standing in the doorway looking and instead of being excited his best friend is back, all Mark can think is how he doesn’t want to be the one to tell him.
“Mimi wouldn’t answer her door,” Roger mutters, looking down at the concrete floor of their squat. Mark figured he would see her first, coming back here afterwards because he knew Mark would be here and answer the door, even though Roger left like an asshole. Roger is pretty use to Mark being there, even when he‘s an asshole. It‘s part of their accepted dynamic, and Mark doesn‘t really mind. At least he‘s back. “Can I come in?”
Mark moves aside and Roger squeezes in the door with his guitar and old duffle bag, even less full than it had been when he left for Santa Fe. This is so unfair. Mark doesn’t want to be the one to tell him.
Roger looks around the loft, setting his things on the table. “I forgot how small New York is.”
“She left,” Mark blurts out, just wanting to get that out before he goes entirely insane. He knows it’s what Roger wants to know. Where is the girl of his dreams? Well, yeah, the new girl of his dreams. He doesn’t want to be the one to have to tell him this, but Mark is always the one that gets to. April is dead. She left a note. Mimi is gone. Fuck, being the best friend sucks.
Roger turns and looks back at Mark. His hair is even lighter than usual, or maybe it’s just his skin being so dark. Mark doesn’t think he’s ever seen Roger with a tan. It’s weird. “She left?”
“I don’t know,” Mark confesses, shrugging. Please don’t get mad, please don’t leave again. “One day she was just gone. I asked Maureen, I asked Collins, I asked Benny. No one knows where she went or how to get a hold of you. I’m sorry.”
Roger keeps looking at Mark like he expects this to be a joke. Yeah, if only. “Goddamnit!” He shouts once it’s managed to sink in. Roger slams his fist against the table, and it rattles under his hand. “She can’t be… I mean, I came back for her and she can’t be gone.”
“Hey.” Mark walks over to him, patting his shoulder. It’s supposed to help calm him down but Roger grunts and hit’s the table again, both hands this time, staring down at the ground, through their floor to where Mimi should be waiting for him. “Hey, we’ll find her. You know we will. Maureen and I, we‘ve already been asking around and stuff. We‘re going to find her.”
Roger glances back up at Mark and Mark sees questions. Why does he care about some junkie girl enough to do all that, because Roger knows that Mark and Mimi hardly even spent time together, and really they weren’t that close, more because Mark was busy with his film and Maureen, and Roger was too busy with Mimi to bother to get them together. And of course the answer is because Roger cares about her, and he isn’t going to watch his friend lose another girl like that.
Roger’s grip on the edge of the table loosens slowly, and he even stands up, running a hand through his bleach and sun lightened hair. “We should check Thompson park,” he suggests, and Mark nods. They know. “I have this song,” Roger explains. “That I have to sing to her.”
“You’ll get to,” Mark promises him. “We’re going to find her.”
Roger nods, and he looks like he believes Mark, which is more than Mark believes in himself to find this lost girl. Maybe Roger really needs to hold onto that, though. “Oh,” he says suddenly, reaching back into his pocket. “I got you something. I mean, I did a little street playing and someone threw it in my case, but I thought you’d like it.”
He hands Mark a wrinkled brown bag, Roger’s attempt at wrapping. Mark looks back at him, smiling in thanks, and everything feels strangely normal between them, even after Roger being gone for a month. It doesn’t even matter what’s inside.
*
IV. Alone
“You know,” Mark speaks up, not glancing away from all the filmstrips laid out around him. “It might sound better if you tried playing the Fender instead of a dead cat. Oh,” he looks up, pushing his glasses up his nose and smiling. “That is the Fender, huh?”
Roger considers throwing something at him, then decides he’s too lazy. He settles for glowering at him before looking back down at his guitar.
He’s at least mostly aware that Mark is just being Mark. Also, the guitar is out of tune and does sound fucking horrible, Roger knows. He has to keep playing it, though. He promised Mimi he’d keep playing, finish a demo tape and all of that. He doesn’t remember why he promised her these things, but she looked so small and helpless. Roger couldn’t really say no.
Now that he thinks about it, Mark probably put her up to it. That seems like the sort of thing Mark would do. He’s always the one there when Roger hits a low point, and always the one insisting that Roger should do things like keep writing, come up with more songs, that he can’t keep living in the past.
When they fought over Roger not having the strength to go to Mimi’s funereal, that was one of the things Mark yelled at him, and he told Mark that he wouldn’t understand since he doesn’t even live in the future, just through his film, selling Mimi’s death. It was a cold thing to say, but Mark didn’t leave until Roger agreed to go with him.
“I need a new set of strings,” Roger complains. It isn’t the stings that are the problem, just that no matter what he tries he can’t stop thinking about Mimi, about April, about Angel, and about, well, that’s going to be him soon. His fingers keep slipping over the strings, the music not wanting to play for him when he can’t even think about it.
“I’ll try and get you some,” Mark mutters, finishing one roll of film, moving to the next. The last edit, he swears, which is what he swore a month before. What he doesn’t know is that Roger is planning to send this one to a film contest no matter what Mark thinks of it. If film making is anything like song writing, you can slave over it all you want but it isn’t until you step out on stage, let other people hear you, that you know what you’re doing. At least, that is how Roger remembers it being.
“Shouldn’t you buy beer with your parents money?” Roger asks, looking down at his fender, frowning at the instrument like it’s the guitar fault he can’t play.
“Or food,” Mark says, rolling his eyes as he looks up at Roger. “All the same, right?”
Roger nods, shifting his guitar in his lap. He plays some notes for April, or tries. It’s lovely at first, then breaks through the air and makes him wince, and he has to cut it off quickly. One for Mimi, then, loud and wild but he runs out of passion for the song and it fades. None of this is working.
“I’ve been thinking.” Why can’t he get any of this right? Why does every girl he love seem to explode on him. Part of Roger thinks that is how love should be, explosive like that, but it just ends up ripping him up and destroying him. He isn’t sure how much more he can take. “Hey, Roger,” Mark says, snapping a bit but it gets Roger’s attention. “I said I’ve been thinking about what you mentioned last night, and I think I will.”
Roger strums a few notes, nice and even, sort of boring, but at least the sound doesn’t make him want to throw down his guitar in disgust. It’s something to work with. “Good,” he says, nodding. “You should. Of course, that means we‘re going to lose you to Hollywood, huh?”
Mark snorts, rapping the film up. “Yeah, you know me and how much I love boob jobs, egos, and high grossing films about pointless love shit,” he says as he carries all the film back to his room, and Roger can’t help but smile. He kind of likes that, that he knows Mark will always be trapped in New York.
Plus, the next notes he play don’t sound so bad.