Entry for 35
Title: Just One of the Guys
Author: Donner
Feedback: Yeah. Sure. *grins*
Pairing: Roger/Angel FRIENDSHIP
Word Count: 480
Rating: PG
Genre: Roger Musing
Summary: Roger talking about Angel's inablility to fit in with him, Mark, and Collins
Notes: This MAY BE a prologue to a bunch of short stories I wrote called "Three Imaginary Boys", which is about Mark's filming of Collins, Angel, and Roger's relationship (hence three). If you feel like I should post them, let me know. This isn't my best work, but I couldn't pass up using "family" and not using how they bohos are a "family."
Special Thanks: To cryingxxblood's Roger/Angel work, which inspired me.
Spoilers: Sorta
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: I don't own RENT.
Just One of the Guys
By Donna
Sometimes I never fully understood Angel. He had to be messed in the head, because he thought he could get away with going shopping with “the girls” then raising hell with “the guys” with such ease. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hold prejudice against him. My only experience prior to the whole “drag thing” was when Mark and I were passing a drag club, and some queen started hitting on us. It’d be mean to mesh Angel with “those girls”, too.
I guess I pity him a little. He wasn’t a guy or a girl, really. Kind of in-between. Which to some people is a disadvantage, and to others an advantage. He used it as an advantage, but I think that it was also his weakness.
Like some days, when we didn’t have anything to do, we’d just sit on the stoop of our building, talking. Collins, Mark, and I always used to do it. A few weeks upon meeting Angel, Collins said, “Can Angel hang with us?” and we said, “Sure.” Angel sat with us, talking, laughing, and telling some great jokes. And yet... it wasn’t normal. People kept staring. And it wasn’t at my shitty clothes, Mark’s pants, or Collins being... himself. It was Angel’s clashing with us. I felt terrible for the guy, because I knew he noticed that they kept staring at him. But he was cool with it. In true Angel, fashion, he kept on talking.
There were times that he didn’t quite “get it.” Like when I’d call Mark a fag. He didn’t laugh, or yell at me, but he looked a little hurt. He’d never tell me. He just didn’t complain like any of us. He just grinned and bared it to the very end. I’d be damned if I knew how he could live like that.
If we were a real family, like mother, father, whatever, I don’t think Angel would have been our mother. I don’t think we’d even have a mother. I’m sure he’d be more the spinster aunt with seventeen cats. But he was more of the youngest brother that couldn’t fit in with us because he just couldn’t put up a good fight. Which, even though Angel’s whole life was fighting, was true. He just couldn’t be “one of the guys.”
And I think I felt sorry for him the whole time he lived. And I still do.
I wish I’d shown more emotion toward him and not just complain. Because even though he was the one who couldn’t fit in, he was still able to hold us together. And I thank him. Because in his weird way, he made all of us feel a little better.
Maybe he couldn’t fit in, but I pretended he was one of the guys, to make him smile.
END