Fic: Flicker Flash & Fade
Author: Stephanie
Title: Flicker, Flash & Fade
Characters/Pairings: Mark, Roger, Roger/April (to be Mark/Roger)
Rating: Pg-13
Word Count: 6,740
Summary: Worse than Roger dying is Mark watching him clinging on and unable to accept that this is it. He's spent every day by his bed, waiting on Roger to break through and come back to him, unaware of how blissfully at peace Roger is struggling to stay while trapped in his own little world.
Story: Scene One and Two
Flicker, Flash, & Fade
Scene Three
“What happened?”
When Angel had been in the hospital, everything seemed calmer. Maybe because Mark never let it touch him as much, wished it would all just go away and tried not to pay attention to how sick she looked. Maybe she just had a calming presence, and so the panicked rush of the hospital staff never seemed as bad. Maybe Roger just has the ability to stir up shit wherever he goes, but Mark never had to do this with Angel.
He is standing in the hallway outside his friend’s room, particularly screaming at the passing nurses to get their attention. At least it feels like he’s screaming at them, and they just walk by without a word in this rush in and out of the room, yelling instructions to each other that Mark doesn’t understand.
“Excuse me…” He grabs for one or tries but can’t seem to get his limbs working. “Hey! Wait, what happened? Is he… Hey…” Mark keeps watching them walk pass, trying desperately to get their attention and not let out the scream that is boiling in his throat. Calm down, he tells himself. He should be practiced at this. Disengage, and just wait for the news. But Mark can’t get there. It’s his best friend, damnit, why is no one paying attention to him when he’s trying to figure out if Roger…
“Fuck, what the hell is going on in there!” Mark snaps at the next poor guy that walks by and he nearly jumps back as Mark blocks his way, eyes narrowed because he hates this guy and this hospital and everything that proves just how sick Roger is getting.
“Sir,” the guy says in this just as pissed off voice and it makes Mark even more determined to hit someone if they keep this up. “You have to get out of the way. The patient is suffering from mild cardio arrest-“ He keeps talking, but nothing really gets through.
“What!” Mark doesn’t make it past that. Roger’s heart stopped. That’s what cardio arrest is, right? Maybe he’s wrong, maybe… Oh, God. Oh God. Oh. God. “What’s going on?”
“Sir.” Strong hands push against his chest, trying to push him back as Mark tries to get to the door and to Roger. What the fuck does that mean? Calm down? They just said that his heart had stopped. “We’re doing what we can. Calm down.”
“But... Roger.” No one seems to get that Mark needs to be there, and Roger can’t die like this. He is a rock star, or supposed to be, and is to Mark. Rock stars don’t die like this.
Then there is some nurse, her hand replacing the strong ones. Kate. She’s familiar. She was here for Angel and Mimi and, well, she’ll probably be here for Roger. She’s a good person, hard to find in New York, and Mark turns on her and almost throws her against the wall. Or, well, no. He’s too shut off for that, but it feels like he should. Like he should be angry enough to scream and throw a fit and keep knocking people away until someone does something.
Instead he’s still and silent, looking up at Kate with a dead sort of expression. He feels outside himself and this whole mess, just like he wanted. He fucking hates himself for it.
“Mark,” she says, her kind voice trying to be gentle for him. She’s probably dealt with a lot worse, and Mark isn’t even fighting anymore. He just doesn’t have that sort of energy. “Think of what Dr. Klien.”
He hates that he feels calm. Disgusted with himself that it’s so easy to shut himself down and not think about what Roger is going through. He’s fucking horrible for not letting himself get caught up in this and turn to an emotional mess, but he’s got to stop or else he’s going to do something distract. Kate smiles, seems to approve of this shut off Mark even if he can barely stand himself. “We’re doing all we can, just be calm.”
*
The first time that Mark remembers being in a hospital, the first thing he remembers heading a doctor say is, “We’re doing all we can.”
Mark is too young, only ten years old. He doesn’t really understand what that means. To him it sounds good, like the doctors are helping, but when the man in the white coat tells them this, his mom starts to cry again. On the small plastic chair that squeaks as he rocks to keep himself entertained, he reaches up to tug at his mom’s arms. “What is it? What’s wrong with aunt Miriam?”
His mom, still crying, reaches down to pat Mark’s head. She knows he hates this, and usually Mark would scowl at her but right now she looks so upset, he lets her cry and pet him and doesn’t try and push her away. She needs it. Even a ten year old can see that.
“Mom?” He asks, pulling at her again. He isn’t trying to upset her. He’s just curious why she took him and Cindy out of school to rush over to the hospital to see her sister. He doesn’t even know his aunt that well. He’d only meet her once or twice, and she always had this plump, red face that kind of scared him. His mom wouldn’t let them stay at her house.
But on the whole car ride she was crying, and now she is crying hard and Mark doesn’t understand why. He’s just trying to figure out what’s wrong with his mom.
He would have kept tugging but Cindy with her long acrylic nails that pinch at his skin grabs Mark’s arm, making him yelp as she pulls him back. “Look, Mark,” she says, pulling him over to the corner away from mom. Mark looks at his mom and then to his sister. He doesn’t think he should leave mom alone, but Cindy has this serious look that means Mark should pay attention. Dad used that look a lot. Cindy is older and smarter, so Mark tries his best not to pay attention to mom’s sobbing and listen to her. “Mom is really upset. How would you feel if I were in a car crash and dying?”
“Not good,” he mutters, looking back to mom. She didn’t seem to spend that much time with Miriam anyway, so Mark doesn’t see why she’s crying so hard that she is shaking and looks like she is going to topple over.
“Exactly,” Cindy says, tightening her nails in his arm to pull his attention back. “So she doesn’t need you whining and bugging her, okay?” Mark bites his lip, bites back the whine that is forming in his throat because Cindy’s nails hurt. He doesn’t want to make his mom cry more, though, so he nods and listens to his sister. “You just stay quiet and stay back here, okay? Give her some space,” Cindy tells him, and Mark nods again. He might just be ten, but he knows when he needs to be adult. “None of this bothering her. She doesn’t need that.”
Cindy lets go, and they both settle into their chairs, not looking at their mom as she cries. Mark watches his feet kicking back and fourth instead, and wonders about the car crash and why, if he isn’t supposed to do anything, mom pulled him out of school. It had been science class, and he always liked that part.
Once or twice his stomach growls, or he opens his mouth and looks at mom, but then Cindy glares down at him and he shuts up quickly. Be good, he reminds himself, letting his bored mind wander over school and the magazine pile next to him. He picks it up, reads about how to loose ten pounds in two weeks, puts it back down. His stomach growls and he opens his mouth again before Cindy swats his shoulder.
“Not right now,” she hisses, and Mark slides down in his seat, hands over his tummy as he waits.
Dad rushes after it feels like they’ve been there forever and Mark is so bored that he is bouncing in the plastic chair, which makes his sister glare harder at him. Their parents huddle together, dad whispering as mom starts sobbing all over again. He’s never seen mom cry before and it feels weird. He can’t even look at her, so he stares at the ground and counts tiles and tries to think of other things. Even the spelling test they had today was more fun than this, sitting in total silence and trying not to bother his mom.
After what Mark is sure must be four whole days or waiting, a small girl with a clipboard comes out, looking around the almost empty room with them and two strange men and small baby in her mom’s lap. She calls, “Mrs. Cohen?”
His mom has to wipe off her cheeks, lip wobbling as she stands herself up, or clings to dad while he stands them both up. Mark watches Cindy, who is watching their parents. He does what she does, standing when she stands and walking closer to mom and dad with her, copying her every move so that he gets it right. He still can’t look at his mom, even when she has an arm wrapped around his shoulder tight enough to break him in two.
“We’re sorry,” the woman says with this smile that doesn’t look at all happy. Mark is watching Cindy, sees her face fall and he tries to mimic that as well. “We did all we could.”
*
He isn’t even sure how he makes it to the counselor’s office. Kate has her slender arm wrapped around his shoulders, whispering something to him that is probably supposed to comfort him. “Thanks,” Mark mutters without meaning it, voice sounding hollow and detached from him as Kate sits him down in the chair, promising that Dr. Klien will be right with him. And that everything will be okay and that they’re doing what they can.
Roger’s okay. Heart stopped… It isn’t making sense in his head because if his heart stopped how can he be okay and… And…
That feeling of impassiveness snaps and the panic rushes back in to fill it before Mark can even draw in a calming breath to try and get his center back. It’s his best fucking friend who is in there dying! Why the fuck isn’t someone telling him what is going on! Why are they pushing him into this office with this counselor he hates. What about Roger? Mark needs to know about his best friend, needs to make sure he’s okay.
They don’t understand his best friend and there is no way they’re doing this right. It’s probably just Roger being a jerk because he he’s like that sometimes, hurting himself when he wants to hurt others. Mark could make him stop, he should tell someone that.
Only he knows it isn’t a trick and that Roger can’t just snap himself out of it whenever he wants.
“Mark…” The counselor is there in the chair next to him, trying to get Mark to breathe, maybe, because it seems like he can’t get in any air. Roger isn’t going to wake up.
Fuck. It hits him hard and there goes all the air in his lungs. Roger isn’t going to wake up. He feels himself falling back into that safe feeling and half of him is struggling against it. Now isn’t the time to disconnect. Roger isn’t going to wake up.
“Mark,” the guy keeps saying, like somehow repeating his name enough if going to make Mark give a fuck about whatever he is trying to say. “Why don’t you start working on what we talked about?”
What did they talk about? Mark shakes his head, not because he wants to disagree with the guy but he doesn’t care right now. Roger might not wake up, this might be it and it really hits. Slams into him and settles onto his chest. No wonder he can’t breathe. The counselor pats Mark’s back and all he wants to do is scream at the guy to go. The fuck. Away. He can’t do that, though, so he’s stuck being treated like a five year old who lost a pet.
“Try thinking back to what you and Roger enjoyed doing together,” the counselor coaxes, hand still on Mark’s back making it even more apparently to Mark that he wants nothing more than to hit the guy right now unless he gets the fuck away from him and leaves him and his emotional problems alone.
The hand rubs at his back, sweater dragging along Mark, irritating his skin. The guy says, “Try and remember the good times.” Mark takes a deep breath, finally able to get to the air, and closes his eyes. Inwardly he’s chanting, don’t hit the guy. Don’t hit the guy. Don’t hit the guy…
*
Mark doesn’t think about Roger. He doesn’t think he could take it. That would be too close to accepting the truth about what is happening, and Mark is terrified that if he listens to this guy, whatever is tethering Roger to him will snap.
Besides, this asshole doesn’t know Roger. The best times where when exactly? The drugs? The suicide? Running away and leaving Mark to deal with the realization of what his best friend being positive means after seeing it happen to Angel and knowing it was unavoidable? Pick a moment. Mark doesn’t want to.
He thinks about her instead.
She had golden brown hair, or at least she did in science class when they sat next to the giant windows and the light from outside would bounce of her curls. She wore skirts to her ankles and her hair in a messy bun pinned to her head. She had giant glasses that covered her cute little face and slid down her cute little nose. She had the biggest chest in all of seventh grade.
Her name was Janie White, the perfect name for such a perfect little girl. She is the reason that Mark had to stay in class for a few minutes after the last bell, or else everyone would see that his pants were way too tight.
In lunch she sat next to him with her plain brown paper bag with her sandwich without meat and she would say, “I’m a bohemian angel.”
After a few weeks of this, finally Mark works up the courage to say something. First he swallows his bite of chicken salad. Then he takes a long drink so his voice doesn’t smell horrible. “You’re a what.”
Janie’s face, Mark will always remember this, it just lights up. Like she’d been waiting all her life for someone to ask. “A bohemian angel,” she says, head bobbing with this pent up girlie happiness that makes her even cuter. “That’s what my sister calls me!”
“Oh… What’s that?” He asks, looking at Janie curiously, with that concentrated look of someone who is just hitting puberty and isn’t staring down the girl’s shirt.
“It’s…” Janie stops, her cute little face wrinkled up in thought. “It’s what my sister is and what she says I am, too. Bohemian.”
It’s the first time that Mark would really hear the word bohemian. It’s also the first time Mark would have his hand up a girl’s shirt in the back of the band room as his and Janie’s glasses clank together in what feels at once like the most amazing and awkward kiss ever. That was a good year and a year filled with firsts.
“You know what you are?” There are better years that are complex and contradictory and horrible all at the same time. “You’re my Bohemian Angel, huh? Aren’t you?” There is a year full of lasts. Last year that he let himself get sucked into some dumb classroom with a bunch of teachers who have no idea what things really mean. Last year that he puts up with his dad’s shit and finally moves to the city where he can be free to create.
Last year of April, although no one knew that back then.
“What?” She shouts back, her brown hair bobbing up around her face, her eyes bright with... Well, not just the lights of the club, but Mark doesn’t say anything about it. He’s just escape tyranny and he doesn’t want to seem like some clueless yuppie so to each their own. Drugs aren’t that dangerous anyway, he tells himself and starts to believe it so he never says a word when Roger and April share this weird, dazed over look.
“You,” Roger says with this bright, in love sort of smile as he leans up to kiss her nose. No two people have ever fit together like April and Roger did when they were high. On nights like these they were perfect, soul mates. Other nights, sober nights, aren’t so easy on them but no one says anything about those, either. Too each their own, Mark chants in his head until he’s talk himself into it. “You are my Bohemian Angel.”
“Shut up!” April shrieks, slapping Roger’s arm. It just makes him laugh. It makes everyone at the small table in the back of this loud bar laugh, though you can’t really hear it over the music. Roger and Mark and Maureen and the shadowy figure of a guy right behind them who gives April and Roger this look. The kind of look you give your prey.
It’s like April and Roger can’t see him at all. Mark can, and in his memory this guy is a burning hole where Roger and April’s life could have been. He can remember ever smile that guy ever gave Mark, like he’s sharing some secret. The way his eyes jumped from place to place in this nervous twitch. Those are the things you remember in detail.
He could have gotten up and punch this guy in the face, tell him to leave his best friend alone. It’s already too late, but he wants to imagine he could stop it.
Only is a memory, and you can’t change those. So Mark starts sitting with Maureen close to him, dancing in her seat and humming along to the music. There are no drugs there, well expect pot if that even counts, but she’s just as bright as the other two. She makes him think that nothing in the world could be more perfect than this moment.
April leans in, nose wrinkled in a bright smile. “You’re such a girl.”
“I’m the girl?” Roger asks, laughing as he rubs their noses together and both of them break into giggles. Mark turns away from the man standing right over their shoulders, smiling at them as they almost collapse onto his shoulder.
It all feels good and right, but somehow it doesn’t calm Mark down. That can’t be his best memory of Roger. He doesn’t even want to be thinking about Roger. He doesn’t want to remember about all the good times. Fuck Dr. Klien. He is rebellious. He is bohemian. He doesn’t have to accept anything, not even… Especially not this.
He wants to be thinking about cute little Janie who sat there in science glass pushes her glasses up her nose, giving Mark these shy little smiles every time the teacher looked away.
He smiles back then looks down at the small dictionary he’d checked out from the library, flipping through the BIs, trying to find to BOs. Bohemian… Bohemian… Bohemian… His face lights up as his finger finally lands against the word, right there in small print staring back at him is all the answers in the world about little Jaine White.
1. A native of Bohemia.
Mark wrinkles his nose, looking from the page of the book and back to Janie. She doesn’t look like she is from Bohemia. He doesn’t really know where that is, though, but he figured he’d know if she was because it seems like that would be located somewhere in Asia, maybe. Or Hawaii.
2. The Czech language, esp. as spoken in Bohemia.
Again, he is pretty sure that that isn’t what Janie’s sister means when she calls her a Bohemian Angel. Janie would have mentioned speaking Bohemian, right?
3. A Gypsy.
That might be it, Mark thinks. Maybe she means it like Janie’s a cute gypsy. She is cute, and she does where those skirts that are kind of maybe gypsish. Mark doesn’t know what a gypsy is, really, expect from cartoons. Still, maybe that is what it means.
4. A person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices.
It clicked into place with Mark. He didn’t really know what bohemia was more than what he read in the dictionary. He does not know Puccini or Ginsberg or any great artists, but he knows that Janie is a bohemian angel and that he likes her, and that the definition sort of sounds cool. So it becomes his favorite word, his movement, his.
He knows that April is Roger’s bohemian angel, wild and free and a total disregard for conventional rules. Everyone knew that, and maybe without April, Roger would have never gotten sick but without April, Mark can’t imagine there would be a Roger at all.
Not the same Roger with this wonderful smile that wrinkles up his cheeks as he lays sprawled out over the seat, head resting on Mark’s shoulder and April resting on Roger. “You’re my-“
No.
This isn’t what he wants to remember.
*
“Roger?”
There are new machines hooked up around him, crowding him like long lost friends watching him die. They beep louder and worse than ever. At least they’ve finally let Mark in to see him. Well, see what is left of him. The sort of pale and sallow body of his best friend. Mark closes his eyes, trying to summon up what Roger use to look like and replace the body in the bed with a better picture. Of him on stage at a show maybe, and how beautiful he’d been back then.
He can’t do it. This is pretty much Roger now.
Sighing, he brushes a hand through Roger’s tangled mane hair. Long and brown after being sick for so long, the edges still bleached out. They haven’t had much time to take care of it, lately. Maureen keeps swearing she’ll cut it the next time she comes in, no matter what the orderlies tell her. Mark doesn’t mind it so much. It makes him look like Kurt Cobain. Roger would probably like that.
“Roger?” He isn’t sure why he’s bothering to talk. Roger can’t hear him. Mark would like to believe that. Mark would like to believe that Roger is all but dead and this is just dragging it out. He would like to believe that it is stupid to be here, and then he could just walk away and never look back because he knows his best friend is dead and there is nothing he can do. He would like to believe that this is it, because that would be easier than watching Roger clinging to life and leaving Mark clinging to hope.
Right now, stroking Roger’s hair, he really wants to believe that but there is this fucking part of him that can’t. That is so fucking stupid that it believes Roger will hear him and snap out of this and be okay. Like magic, he’ll have his best friend back.
It’s even worse than Roger being dead, because at least then Mark doesn’t keep himself up all night waiting. This small idea that has wormed its way into him says that maybe one day Roger will be fine. It’s going to kill him when he isn’t.
Still, Mark strokes his hair back to clear Roger’s face, so that if he does wake up he won’t look like a total mess. Not that Roger ever really cared if he looks like a mess. He spent most of his time padding around the loft naked in the summer, having been sweating all week and without a shower. No, Roger was used to being a mess. Mark just figures, if he does wake up…
“It must be nice,” he says, grabbing his jacket and his camera. All the things he keeps by Roger’s bed, since he is here almost every day anyway. “Whatever you’re dreaming about. But you can wake up. I just want you to know... You can wake up now.”
*
Scene Four
“What…” The hospital room is dark gray, almost black but more like darkness made visible. Like a shadow, moving around in and around him. Where he is? This isn’t where he wants to be. This isn’t the bedroom with April and safety. This is some hospital bed, creaking under his wait and covered in the dark.
“This is a journey.”
“What?” Roger sits up, looking around the room for the voice. Familiar, echoing around the fluid, dark gray walls. His own voice, he can hear it, but he isn’t saying anything. Just thinking it really loud. “What the hell?”
Angel smiles as she sits down next to him, wearing that dress from after Valentine’s day when her and Collins stopped by the loft with alcohol and half priced chocolates. It moves around her waist in a puddle of blue as she sits beside him with a knowing look, a look of peace and worry. Confusing him even more. She’s color against the dark gray that moves and shifts around them.
Roger wants to scream at her. You aren’t April, this isn’t right. He wants to go back. Deeper now, back to his girl.
Before he can escape, Angel is grabbing his hand, squeezing hard enough to keep him here, half here and half back in the room. Unsure where he is. “I want you to think of this like a journey.” He jerks away but his hand stays under hers, and he screams, loudly, yelling at for her to get the hell away and let him go back, but not a sound. The only thing he can hear in the room is Angel’s voice telling him, “It’s your head, Roger, you have to get through this.”
“Where’s April?” He needs her. He can bring her back, wants to hold her and be safe. Roger looks around the shadow walls looming over him for sight of April. Deeper. He can pull her out of those walls.
The slap to the back of his head doesn’t hurt, nothing really hurts, but it gets his attention. “Look at me, chico,” Angel says and Roger looks over at her with her water dress and steady color. She doesn’t look so much at peace as annoyed now. “I want you to get out, go back home. People miss you. You know this isn’t right.”
Roger looks up at the ceiling. Terrifying as it shifts, looking ready to crash down on him. He should be able to stop it. It’s in his head. He should be able to find April, lie next to her, be safe. It’s his head, he has control. He just needs to fight this away, deeper, find his girl.
“I don’t want to.” The ceiling slides down, back up, crashes into each other. Like blood through the veins, flowing along. He should be able to control this. It’s his world, he can make it stop. Make it safe.
No blood, no shadows. Safe.
“I want April.” Go away! Go away, go and leave me here. Mine, my mind, mine. He can stop the ceiling. He can bring her back.
Angel stares him down, blue dress blue eyes. Light hair. “Roger, get out.”
“No!” He can push out the blood, he can get to his girl. He can stop this all. His world, his rules, his control. Mine. “Leave me alone!” Bouncing off the unsettled walls, repeating even after Roger’s quieted. Leave me. Alone leave me.
“Roger!” Leave me. Bright blue eyes behind glasses, Angel reaching for him, as unsteady as the walls. Leave. Unsteady as Roger’s thoughts, clawing out of his head. April. Alone. Leave. “Roger…”
Can’t think of him. Her. Please, April, save me. Leave me alone.
“I want to be with her…”
Susan Davis looks up at the sky, lips moving as if asking God what she possibly did to deserve this. She loves her son, she really does and she loves him even though sometimes he can act too much like Charlie. Just sometimes, sometimes he works down her nerves and she has to take a second to mutter things up at the clouds in hopes that lightening will randomly streak out of the nearly clear sky and shot her down. Just for an hour or two of really good sleep.
There is no lightening, and Susan can’t help but wonder what that means. You think the weather could take time out of lazing about to pay attention to the over worked single mother of an unruly teenage son every now and then.
Roger knows all of this because he’s seen her do it all before.
Standing outside the junior high school where she works, Roger crosses his arms and pouts at his mom as he waits for her to say something, making him look like he’s eight rather than eighteen. “Well?”
“What do you want me to say Roger?” She asks, taking a long draw of her cigarette, and Roger knows she needs something to do with her hands so that she doesn’t do anything drastic before she has time to think it through. Right now he wants to grab the cigarette from her hand, force her to look at him and actually do something other than stare up and smoke. He wants drama and over reaction, something to prove that she’s as reluctant about this as he is. Someone needs to be sensible and tell Roger to snap the fuck out of this.
As much as Roger wants to be the rebel, he’s scared shitless about this whole idea and he just wants his mom, of all people, to talk some sense into him. Tell him he’s being childish, tell him that he needs to think about this. He wants her to say that she loves him, and she is doing what’s best for him by keeping him here in fuck all, Auburn instead of letting him run off to New York with nothing but his guitar and a bag of clothes.
Susan exhales the smoke slowly and Roger just glowers at it as it hits the hair, curling around them. A lame excuse for not answering and they both know it. “You’re just like your dad…”
He almost screams. He does, but they’re standing outside a middle school with students walking around and, besides, Roger doesn’t scream at his mom. He loves, her and knows she’s too stressed for screaming. Without his mom he wouldn’t be able to play the piano, much less the guitar. He wouldn’t know how to sneak into movie theaters or the second act of plays with out a ticket stub. He wouldn’t know Puccini or Wagner or Shostakovich, and he wouldn’t know how to play all of the Ramones, the Beatles, and the Seeds. He wouldn’t be able to make chocolate chip pancakes and he wouldn’t have asked Sarah Carter to the prom and without his mom, Roger would be totally useless.
That is what he needs her to tell him right now. He’s scared that he’s messing up, throwing his life away and he just needs someone to try and stop him. He’s supposed to be the bad ass, no holds bar rebel and all he wants is for his mom to ground him so that none of this is his fault.
Instead Susan takes another drag of her cigarette and says, “Your dad always had these big ideas, too. Marry the girl, run off to paradise, become an… I don’t even know. He never really made it that far.”
Again, Roger is holding back the screams with all these tiny thirteen and younger kids swarming around him, buzzing on about how fucking mean their parents are because they won’t let them stay out all night. Please, mom, just this once don’t start talking about dad and tell me what to do.
“You’re just like him, honey,” she says, running a hand through Roger’s newly cut hair. She’s told him she hates it, but he did it anyway and she didn’t say a word. She never does, and most kids would love a mom like her. Roger loves her, he does. Just he’s terrified and she is smoking and not saying a word to help calm him down or talk him out of this jump. “You even have the same pout,” she says, smiling at Roger like it’s funny to be teasing him now.
Roger just groans, knocking her hand away and leaning back against the wall, pouting down at the sidewalk. He can’t think of anything else to say that won’t end in him storming off or his mom walking away and not coming back to the house all night. They have those fights, sometimes, and today might be Roger’s last day in this stupid town. He doesn’t want their last talk to end up in an argument. He doesn’t want to be his dad, no matter what she says about him. “I miss him…”
“I don’t care,” Roger growls, which isn’t the nicest thing to say but fuck it, if she isn’t going to help than he isn’t going to amuse her with her stories about how great his dad has been before he left. The guy never even came to one of Roger’s parties as a kid and he’s all she can talk about now, when Roger is getting ready to run away. He just stopped by to tell her he’s leaving and give her this one chance to do something about it.
Susan stomps out her cigarette, standing up off the wall and brushing herself off. “You be careful.” Roger doesn’t move when his mom brushes his hair back or leans down to kiss his forehead. That’s all she has to say about it? Be careful? “What’s this girl’s name again?”
“April,” Roger mutters, kicking at the cigarette on the sidewalk. April, the reason that he’s going to New York without a job and without a place to stay and he’s nervous as hell that this beautiful, dangerous girl is going to end up breaking him. He better be careful, his mom says. So terrified that he stayed up all night being sick and pacing in his room and she wants him to be careful.
“Well…” Susan messes with his hair a little more, and Roger just moves away from her hand. He isn’t sure what he wants, but this isn’t it. He wants to be in New York with this gorgeous girl and he wants to play his guitar and have a band and be famous and be in love. He wants his mom to tell him no, to hug him and say that he’s her baby and she isn’t going to let him just walk away from everything like this. He should have known better. His mom has never stopped anyone from walking away. “I hope she’s good for you…”
“You’re safe.” Red nails over his lips, dragging through the sweat on his skin as she traces wild designs over his cheeks. Sometimes she would spell words and have him guess. Now she’s just drawing, comforting him and calming down his racing heart. “You’re safe, so long as you stay here.”
In the bedroom. Safe. Roger looks at April. This beautiful, dangerous girl who smiles at him and keeps him safe. Here, he’s okay. He’s in control. Everything is okay. No worrying, no being scared. Her nails press against his skin, real as could be. Here everything is perfect.
He’s okay. Deep breathe. Deeper. He’s okay.
“No one ever tried to stop me…” The mirror on his door reflects their image back at him, two kids sprawled over the bed, swallowed whole by the blankets and pillows. Guarded against the rest of the world. Mirrors lining the walls, showing all around him, showing April’s feet against his and her lips near his ears and her nails on his skin. Too much. He doesn’t want to see himself. Too much, and their gone. Control. He’s safe.
“Shh,” she whispers, kisses his cheek. Never him, but his cheek or ear. Soft press of her lips to remind him that she’s here, just as real as he is. “Don’t think about them. You’re safe.”
Don’t think about blue eyes behind glasses or a wonderful smile from a small girl. None of that. No one tried to save him, they just tried to keep him away from her. April. Safe.
He’s okay.
“You never have to leave,” she whispers into his ear, voice dark and mellifluous, capturing him in its thickness and making it impossible to move. He doesn’t want to move.
The first time April leads him through her apartment she shows him the bedroom and winks and says, “We never have to leave if you don’t want.” She’s twenty two and fun and wild and Roger’s just this kid from Maine who blushes and laughs as he looks into the messy bedroom, and it’s a silly, flirty thing to say but he wishes it were true.
“I’m here,” April promises, too pink lips brushing along his skin, lip steak never streaking across his neck. The perfect scene and they’re alone in here, away from the world and doctors and tests and pieces of paper and razorblades. “That’s all you need.”
When Roger is struggling to write his music, and the band is getting on his nerves and complaining because if he’s their lead singer and songwriter shouldn’t he be giving them more songs to perform? Like he can just write this shit whenever he wants? And while he’s slaving over some fucked up love shit that he can’t force to sound right or real, April comes up behind him, long arms wrapped around his shoulders as she kisses down his neck. He swats at her and says he’s busy, he needs to do this, and she tells him, “It’s okay, baby. I’m all you need.”
Apparently he isn’t, because it isn’t him that she takes into the bathroom with her. It’s a note and a needle and the bathroom door is so white Roger can’t stare at it too long before his body starts to shake from the effort of not blinking.
Roger looks around the loft, spotless and empty save him, standing there looking at the bathroom door. Why did he get out of bed? Did he need something? He should be back in the bedroom with his girl.
He sets his hand on the door. The knob starts to shake. Small little rattles of someone trying to get out. Looking for a way out. Roger’s fingers curl up, scrapping against the door. Clear, like a window as his fingers drag down, leaving three streaks of glass where the paint is peeled off.
The door starts to shake. Flashes of a girl in the streaks of glass. Let me out, Roger, please. Help. Save me.
“Roger?” Safe. He wants to be safe. He wants someone to save him, and no one ever did.
Roger looks back to the bedroom, door wide open and April up on the bed. Their fortress of pillows and blankets. She smiles and calls him back. Whatever she had him get up to get, it doesn’t matter anymore. He should just go back to bed and be with her. Always.
The door rattles. Roger steps back and towards April. Safe April. The April that loves him.
You have to, Roger, save me. Let me out. Please, Roger.
“Come here,” April calls and Roger walks back into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Crawling on to the bed, into April’s arms. Long arms that stretch around him and hold him in place. Let me out. No. Safe. No one ever tried to help Roger get back to her.
Title: Flicker, Flash & Fade
Characters/Pairings: Mark, Roger, Roger/April (to be Mark/Roger)
Rating: Pg-13
Word Count: 6,740
Summary: Worse than Roger dying is Mark watching him clinging on and unable to accept that this is it. He's spent every day by his bed, waiting on Roger to break through and come back to him, unaware of how blissfully at peace Roger is struggling to stay while trapped in his own little world.
Story: Scene One and Two
Flicker, Flash, & Fade
Scene Three
“What happened?”
When Angel had been in the hospital, everything seemed calmer. Maybe because Mark never let it touch him as much, wished it would all just go away and tried not to pay attention to how sick she looked. Maybe she just had a calming presence, and so the panicked rush of the hospital staff never seemed as bad. Maybe Roger just has the ability to stir up shit wherever he goes, but Mark never had to do this with Angel.
He is standing in the hallway outside his friend’s room, particularly screaming at the passing nurses to get their attention. At least it feels like he’s screaming at them, and they just walk by without a word in this rush in and out of the room, yelling instructions to each other that Mark doesn’t understand.
“Excuse me…” He grabs for one or tries but can’t seem to get his limbs working. “Hey! Wait, what happened? Is he… Hey…” Mark keeps watching them walk pass, trying desperately to get their attention and not let out the scream that is boiling in his throat. Calm down, he tells himself. He should be practiced at this. Disengage, and just wait for the news. But Mark can’t get there. It’s his best friend, damnit, why is no one paying attention to him when he’s trying to figure out if Roger…
“Fuck, what the hell is going on in there!” Mark snaps at the next poor guy that walks by and he nearly jumps back as Mark blocks his way, eyes narrowed because he hates this guy and this hospital and everything that proves just how sick Roger is getting.
“Sir,” the guy says in this just as pissed off voice and it makes Mark even more determined to hit someone if they keep this up. “You have to get out of the way. The patient is suffering from mild cardio arrest-“ He keeps talking, but nothing really gets through.
“What!” Mark doesn’t make it past that. Roger’s heart stopped. That’s what cardio arrest is, right? Maybe he’s wrong, maybe… Oh, God. Oh God. Oh. God. “What’s going on?”
“Sir.” Strong hands push against his chest, trying to push him back as Mark tries to get to the door and to Roger. What the fuck does that mean? Calm down? They just said that his heart had stopped. “We’re doing what we can. Calm down.”
“But... Roger.” No one seems to get that Mark needs to be there, and Roger can’t die like this. He is a rock star, or supposed to be, and is to Mark. Rock stars don’t die like this.
Then there is some nurse, her hand replacing the strong ones. Kate. She’s familiar. She was here for Angel and Mimi and, well, she’ll probably be here for Roger. She’s a good person, hard to find in New York, and Mark turns on her and almost throws her against the wall. Or, well, no. He’s too shut off for that, but it feels like he should. Like he should be angry enough to scream and throw a fit and keep knocking people away until someone does something.
Instead he’s still and silent, looking up at Kate with a dead sort of expression. He feels outside himself and this whole mess, just like he wanted. He fucking hates himself for it.
“Mark,” she says, her kind voice trying to be gentle for him. She’s probably dealt with a lot worse, and Mark isn’t even fighting anymore. He just doesn’t have that sort of energy. “Think of what Dr. Klien.”
He hates that he feels calm. Disgusted with himself that it’s so easy to shut himself down and not think about what Roger is going through. He’s fucking horrible for not letting himself get caught up in this and turn to an emotional mess, but he’s got to stop or else he’s going to do something distract. Kate smiles, seems to approve of this shut off Mark even if he can barely stand himself. “We’re doing all we can, just be calm.”
*
The first time that Mark remembers being in a hospital, the first thing he remembers heading a doctor say is, “We’re doing all we can.”
Mark is too young, only ten years old. He doesn’t really understand what that means. To him it sounds good, like the doctors are helping, but when the man in the white coat tells them this, his mom starts to cry again. On the small plastic chair that squeaks as he rocks to keep himself entertained, he reaches up to tug at his mom’s arms. “What is it? What’s wrong with aunt Miriam?”
His mom, still crying, reaches down to pat Mark’s head. She knows he hates this, and usually Mark would scowl at her but right now she looks so upset, he lets her cry and pet him and doesn’t try and push her away. She needs it. Even a ten year old can see that.
“Mom?” He asks, pulling at her again. He isn’t trying to upset her. He’s just curious why she took him and Cindy out of school to rush over to the hospital to see her sister. He doesn’t even know his aunt that well. He’d only meet her once or twice, and she always had this plump, red face that kind of scared him. His mom wouldn’t let them stay at her house.
But on the whole car ride she was crying, and now she is crying hard and Mark doesn’t understand why. He’s just trying to figure out what’s wrong with his mom.
He would have kept tugging but Cindy with her long acrylic nails that pinch at his skin grabs Mark’s arm, making him yelp as she pulls him back. “Look, Mark,” she says, pulling him over to the corner away from mom. Mark looks at his mom and then to his sister. He doesn’t think he should leave mom alone, but Cindy has this serious look that means Mark should pay attention. Dad used that look a lot. Cindy is older and smarter, so Mark tries his best not to pay attention to mom’s sobbing and listen to her. “Mom is really upset. How would you feel if I were in a car crash and dying?”
“Not good,” he mutters, looking back to mom. She didn’t seem to spend that much time with Miriam anyway, so Mark doesn’t see why she’s crying so hard that she is shaking and looks like she is going to topple over.
“Exactly,” Cindy says, tightening her nails in his arm to pull his attention back. “So she doesn’t need you whining and bugging her, okay?” Mark bites his lip, bites back the whine that is forming in his throat because Cindy’s nails hurt. He doesn’t want to make his mom cry more, though, so he nods and listens to his sister. “You just stay quiet and stay back here, okay? Give her some space,” Cindy tells him, and Mark nods again. He might just be ten, but he knows when he needs to be adult. “None of this bothering her. She doesn’t need that.”
Cindy lets go, and they both settle into their chairs, not looking at their mom as she cries. Mark watches his feet kicking back and fourth instead, and wonders about the car crash and why, if he isn’t supposed to do anything, mom pulled him out of school. It had been science class, and he always liked that part.
Once or twice his stomach growls, or he opens his mouth and looks at mom, but then Cindy glares down at him and he shuts up quickly. Be good, he reminds himself, letting his bored mind wander over school and the magazine pile next to him. He picks it up, reads about how to loose ten pounds in two weeks, puts it back down. His stomach growls and he opens his mouth again before Cindy swats his shoulder.
“Not right now,” she hisses, and Mark slides down in his seat, hands over his tummy as he waits.
Dad rushes after it feels like they’ve been there forever and Mark is so bored that he is bouncing in the plastic chair, which makes his sister glare harder at him. Their parents huddle together, dad whispering as mom starts sobbing all over again. He’s never seen mom cry before and it feels weird. He can’t even look at her, so he stares at the ground and counts tiles and tries to think of other things. Even the spelling test they had today was more fun than this, sitting in total silence and trying not to bother his mom.
After what Mark is sure must be four whole days or waiting, a small girl with a clipboard comes out, looking around the almost empty room with them and two strange men and small baby in her mom’s lap. She calls, “Mrs. Cohen?”
His mom has to wipe off her cheeks, lip wobbling as she stands herself up, or clings to dad while he stands them both up. Mark watches Cindy, who is watching their parents. He does what she does, standing when she stands and walking closer to mom and dad with her, copying her every move so that he gets it right. He still can’t look at his mom, even when she has an arm wrapped around his shoulder tight enough to break him in two.
“We’re sorry,” the woman says with this smile that doesn’t look at all happy. Mark is watching Cindy, sees her face fall and he tries to mimic that as well. “We did all we could.”
*
He isn’t even sure how he makes it to the counselor’s office. Kate has her slender arm wrapped around his shoulders, whispering something to him that is probably supposed to comfort him. “Thanks,” Mark mutters without meaning it, voice sounding hollow and detached from him as Kate sits him down in the chair, promising that Dr. Klien will be right with him. And that everything will be okay and that they’re doing what they can.
Roger’s okay. Heart stopped… It isn’t making sense in his head because if his heart stopped how can he be okay and… And…
That feeling of impassiveness snaps and the panic rushes back in to fill it before Mark can even draw in a calming breath to try and get his center back. It’s his best fucking friend who is in there dying! Why the fuck isn’t someone telling him what is going on! Why are they pushing him into this office with this counselor he hates. What about Roger? Mark needs to know about his best friend, needs to make sure he’s okay.
They don’t understand his best friend and there is no way they’re doing this right. It’s probably just Roger being a jerk because he he’s like that sometimes, hurting himself when he wants to hurt others. Mark could make him stop, he should tell someone that.
Only he knows it isn’t a trick and that Roger can’t just snap himself out of it whenever he wants.
“Mark…” The counselor is there in the chair next to him, trying to get Mark to breathe, maybe, because it seems like he can’t get in any air. Roger isn’t going to wake up.
Fuck. It hits him hard and there goes all the air in his lungs. Roger isn’t going to wake up. He feels himself falling back into that safe feeling and half of him is struggling against it. Now isn’t the time to disconnect. Roger isn’t going to wake up.
“Mark,” the guy keeps saying, like somehow repeating his name enough if going to make Mark give a fuck about whatever he is trying to say. “Why don’t you start working on what we talked about?”
What did they talk about? Mark shakes his head, not because he wants to disagree with the guy but he doesn’t care right now. Roger might not wake up, this might be it and it really hits. Slams into him and settles onto his chest. No wonder he can’t breathe. The counselor pats Mark’s back and all he wants to do is scream at the guy to go. The fuck. Away. He can’t do that, though, so he’s stuck being treated like a five year old who lost a pet.
“Try thinking back to what you and Roger enjoyed doing together,” the counselor coaxes, hand still on Mark’s back making it even more apparently to Mark that he wants nothing more than to hit the guy right now unless he gets the fuck away from him and leaves him and his emotional problems alone.
The hand rubs at his back, sweater dragging along Mark, irritating his skin. The guy says, “Try and remember the good times.” Mark takes a deep breath, finally able to get to the air, and closes his eyes. Inwardly he’s chanting, don’t hit the guy. Don’t hit the guy. Don’t hit the guy…
*
Mark doesn’t think about Roger. He doesn’t think he could take it. That would be too close to accepting the truth about what is happening, and Mark is terrified that if he listens to this guy, whatever is tethering Roger to him will snap.
Besides, this asshole doesn’t know Roger. The best times where when exactly? The drugs? The suicide? Running away and leaving Mark to deal with the realization of what his best friend being positive means after seeing it happen to Angel and knowing it was unavoidable? Pick a moment. Mark doesn’t want to.
He thinks about her instead.
She had golden brown hair, or at least she did in science class when they sat next to the giant windows and the light from outside would bounce of her curls. She wore skirts to her ankles and her hair in a messy bun pinned to her head. She had giant glasses that covered her cute little face and slid down her cute little nose. She had the biggest chest in all of seventh grade.
Her name was Janie White, the perfect name for such a perfect little girl. She is the reason that Mark had to stay in class for a few minutes after the last bell, or else everyone would see that his pants were way too tight.
In lunch she sat next to him with her plain brown paper bag with her sandwich without meat and she would say, “I’m a bohemian angel.”
After a few weeks of this, finally Mark works up the courage to say something. First he swallows his bite of chicken salad. Then he takes a long drink so his voice doesn’t smell horrible. “You’re a what.”
Janie’s face, Mark will always remember this, it just lights up. Like she’d been waiting all her life for someone to ask. “A bohemian angel,” she says, head bobbing with this pent up girlie happiness that makes her even cuter. “That’s what my sister calls me!”
“Oh… What’s that?” He asks, looking at Janie curiously, with that concentrated look of someone who is just hitting puberty and isn’t staring down the girl’s shirt.
“It’s…” Janie stops, her cute little face wrinkled up in thought. “It’s what my sister is and what she says I am, too. Bohemian.”
It’s the first time that Mark would really hear the word bohemian. It’s also the first time Mark would have his hand up a girl’s shirt in the back of the band room as his and Janie’s glasses clank together in what feels at once like the most amazing and awkward kiss ever. That was a good year and a year filled with firsts.
“You know what you are?” There are better years that are complex and contradictory and horrible all at the same time. “You’re my Bohemian Angel, huh? Aren’t you?” There is a year full of lasts. Last year that he let himself get sucked into some dumb classroom with a bunch of teachers who have no idea what things really mean. Last year that he puts up with his dad’s shit and finally moves to the city where he can be free to create.
Last year of April, although no one knew that back then.
“What?” She shouts back, her brown hair bobbing up around her face, her eyes bright with... Well, not just the lights of the club, but Mark doesn’t say anything about it. He’s just escape tyranny and he doesn’t want to seem like some clueless yuppie so to each their own. Drugs aren’t that dangerous anyway, he tells himself and starts to believe it so he never says a word when Roger and April share this weird, dazed over look.
“You,” Roger says with this bright, in love sort of smile as he leans up to kiss her nose. No two people have ever fit together like April and Roger did when they were high. On nights like these they were perfect, soul mates. Other nights, sober nights, aren’t so easy on them but no one says anything about those, either. Too each their own, Mark chants in his head until he’s talk himself into it. “You are my Bohemian Angel.”
“Shut up!” April shrieks, slapping Roger’s arm. It just makes him laugh. It makes everyone at the small table in the back of this loud bar laugh, though you can’t really hear it over the music. Roger and Mark and Maureen and the shadowy figure of a guy right behind them who gives April and Roger this look. The kind of look you give your prey.
It’s like April and Roger can’t see him at all. Mark can, and in his memory this guy is a burning hole where Roger and April’s life could have been. He can remember ever smile that guy ever gave Mark, like he’s sharing some secret. The way his eyes jumped from place to place in this nervous twitch. Those are the things you remember in detail.
He could have gotten up and punch this guy in the face, tell him to leave his best friend alone. It’s already too late, but he wants to imagine he could stop it.
Only is a memory, and you can’t change those. So Mark starts sitting with Maureen close to him, dancing in her seat and humming along to the music. There are no drugs there, well expect pot if that even counts, but she’s just as bright as the other two. She makes him think that nothing in the world could be more perfect than this moment.
April leans in, nose wrinkled in a bright smile. “You’re such a girl.”
“I’m the girl?” Roger asks, laughing as he rubs their noses together and both of them break into giggles. Mark turns away from the man standing right over their shoulders, smiling at them as they almost collapse onto his shoulder.
It all feels good and right, but somehow it doesn’t calm Mark down. That can’t be his best memory of Roger. He doesn’t even want to be thinking about Roger. He doesn’t want to remember about all the good times. Fuck Dr. Klien. He is rebellious. He is bohemian. He doesn’t have to accept anything, not even… Especially not this.
He wants to be thinking about cute little Janie who sat there in science glass pushes her glasses up her nose, giving Mark these shy little smiles every time the teacher looked away.
He smiles back then looks down at the small dictionary he’d checked out from the library, flipping through the BIs, trying to find to BOs. Bohemian… Bohemian… Bohemian… His face lights up as his finger finally lands against the word, right there in small print staring back at him is all the answers in the world about little Jaine White.
1. A native of Bohemia.
Mark wrinkles his nose, looking from the page of the book and back to Janie. She doesn’t look like she is from Bohemia. He doesn’t really know where that is, though, but he figured he’d know if she was because it seems like that would be located somewhere in Asia, maybe. Or Hawaii.
2. The Czech language, esp. as spoken in Bohemia.
Again, he is pretty sure that that isn’t what Janie’s sister means when she calls her a Bohemian Angel. Janie would have mentioned speaking Bohemian, right?
3. A Gypsy.
That might be it, Mark thinks. Maybe she means it like Janie’s a cute gypsy. She is cute, and she does where those skirts that are kind of maybe gypsish. Mark doesn’t know what a gypsy is, really, expect from cartoons. Still, maybe that is what it means.
4. A person, as an artist or writer, who lives and acts free of regard for conventional rules and practices.
It clicked into place with Mark. He didn’t really know what bohemia was more than what he read in the dictionary. He does not know Puccini or Ginsberg or any great artists, but he knows that Janie is a bohemian angel and that he likes her, and that the definition sort of sounds cool. So it becomes his favorite word, his movement, his.
He knows that April is Roger’s bohemian angel, wild and free and a total disregard for conventional rules. Everyone knew that, and maybe without April, Roger would have never gotten sick but without April, Mark can’t imagine there would be a Roger at all.
Not the same Roger with this wonderful smile that wrinkles up his cheeks as he lays sprawled out over the seat, head resting on Mark’s shoulder and April resting on Roger. “You’re my-“
No.
This isn’t what he wants to remember.
*
“Roger?”
There are new machines hooked up around him, crowding him like long lost friends watching him die. They beep louder and worse than ever. At least they’ve finally let Mark in to see him. Well, see what is left of him. The sort of pale and sallow body of his best friend. Mark closes his eyes, trying to summon up what Roger use to look like and replace the body in the bed with a better picture. Of him on stage at a show maybe, and how beautiful he’d been back then.
He can’t do it. This is pretty much Roger now.
Sighing, he brushes a hand through Roger’s tangled mane hair. Long and brown after being sick for so long, the edges still bleached out. They haven’t had much time to take care of it, lately. Maureen keeps swearing she’ll cut it the next time she comes in, no matter what the orderlies tell her. Mark doesn’t mind it so much. It makes him look like Kurt Cobain. Roger would probably like that.
“Roger?” He isn’t sure why he’s bothering to talk. Roger can’t hear him. Mark would like to believe that. Mark would like to believe that Roger is all but dead and this is just dragging it out. He would like to believe that it is stupid to be here, and then he could just walk away and never look back because he knows his best friend is dead and there is nothing he can do. He would like to believe that this is it, because that would be easier than watching Roger clinging to life and leaving Mark clinging to hope.
Right now, stroking Roger’s hair, he really wants to believe that but there is this fucking part of him that can’t. That is so fucking stupid that it believes Roger will hear him and snap out of this and be okay. Like magic, he’ll have his best friend back.
It’s even worse than Roger being dead, because at least then Mark doesn’t keep himself up all night waiting. This small idea that has wormed its way into him says that maybe one day Roger will be fine. It’s going to kill him when he isn’t.
Still, Mark strokes his hair back to clear Roger’s face, so that if he does wake up he won’t look like a total mess. Not that Roger ever really cared if he looks like a mess. He spent most of his time padding around the loft naked in the summer, having been sweating all week and without a shower. No, Roger was used to being a mess. Mark just figures, if he does wake up…
“It must be nice,” he says, grabbing his jacket and his camera. All the things he keeps by Roger’s bed, since he is here almost every day anyway. “Whatever you’re dreaming about. But you can wake up. I just want you to know... You can wake up now.”
*
Scene Four
“What…” The hospital room is dark gray, almost black but more like darkness made visible. Like a shadow, moving around in and around him. Where he is? This isn’t where he wants to be. This isn’t the bedroom with April and safety. This is some hospital bed, creaking under his wait and covered in the dark.
“This is a journey.”
“What?” Roger sits up, looking around the room for the voice. Familiar, echoing around the fluid, dark gray walls. His own voice, he can hear it, but he isn’t saying anything. Just thinking it really loud. “What the hell?”
Angel smiles as she sits down next to him, wearing that dress from after Valentine’s day when her and Collins stopped by the loft with alcohol and half priced chocolates. It moves around her waist in a puddle of blue as she sits beside him with a knowing look, a look of peace and worry. Confusing him even more. She’s color against the dark gray that moves and shifts around them.
Roger wants to scream at her. You aren’t April, this isn’t right. He wants to go back. Deeper now, back to his girl.
Before he can escape, Angel is grabbing his hand, squeezing hard enough to keep him here, half here and half back in the room. Unsure where he is. “I want you to think of this like a journey.” He jerks away but his hand stays under hers, and he screams, loudly, yelling at for her to get the hell away and let him go back, but not a sound. The only thing he can hear in the room is Angel’s voice telling him, “It’s your head, Roger, you have to get through this.”
“Where’s April?” He needs her. He can bring her back, wants to hold her and be safe. Roger looks around the shadow walls looming over him for sight of April. Deeper. He can pull her out of those walls.
The slap to the back of his head doesn’t hurt, nothing really hurts, but it gets his attention. “Look at me, chico,” Angel says and Roger looks over at her with her water dress and steady color. She doesn’t look so much at peace as annoyed now. “I want you to get out, go back home. People miss you. You know this isn’t right.”
Roger looks up at the ceiling. Terrifying as it shifts, looking ready to crash down on him. He should be able to stop it. It’s in his head. He should be able to find April, lie next to her, be safe. It’s his head, he has control. He just needs to fight this away, deeper, find his girl.
“I don’t want to.” The ceiling slides down, back up, crashes into each other. Like blood through the veins, flowing along. He should be able to control this. It’s his world, he can make it stop. Make it safe.
No blood, no shadows. Safe.
“I want April.” Go away! Go away, go and leave me here. Mine, my mind, mine. He can stop the ceiling. He can bring her back.
Angel stares him down, blue dress blue eyes. Light hair. “Roger, get out.”
“No!” He can push out the blood, he can get to his girl. He can stop this all. His world, his rules, his control. Mine. “Leave me alone!” Bouncing off the unsettled walls, repeating even after Roger’s quieted. Leave me. Alone leave me.
“Roger!” Leave me. Bright blue eyes behind glasses, Angel reaching for him, as unsteady as the walls. Leave. Unsteady as Roger’s thoughts, clawing out of his head. April. Alone. Leave. “Roger…”
Can’t think of him. Her. Please, April, save me. Leave me alone.
“I want to be with her…”
Susan Davis looks up at the sky, lips moving as if asking God what she possibly did to deserve this. She loves her son, she really does and she loves him even though sometimes he can act too much like Charlie. Just sometimes, sometimes he works down her nerves and she has to take a second to mutter things up at the clouds in hopes that lightening will randomly streak out of the nearly clear sky and shot her down. Just for an hour or two of really good sleep.
There is no lightening, and Susan can’t help but wonder what that means. You think the weather could take time out of lazing about to pay attention to the over worked single mother of an unruly teenage son every now and then.
Roger knows all of this because he’s seen her do it all before.
Standing outside the junior high school where she works, Roger crosses his arms and pouts at his mom as he waits for her to say something, making him look like he’s eight rather than eighteen. “Well?”
“What do you want me to say Roger?” She asks, taking a long draw of her cigarette, and Roger knows she needs something to do with her hands so that she doesn’t do anything drastic before she has time to think it through. Right now he wants to grab the cigarette from her hand, force her to look at him and actually do something other than stare up and smoke. He wants drama and over reaction, something to prove that she’s as reluctant about this as he is. Someone needs to be sensible and tell Roger to snap the fuck out of this.
As much as Roger wants to be the rebel, he’s scared shitless about this whole idea and he just wants his mom, of all people, to talk some sense into him. Tell him he’s being childish, tell him that he needs to think about this. He wants her to say that she loves him, and she is doing what’s best for him by keeping him here in fuck all, Auburn instead of letting him run off to New York with nothing but his guitar and a bag of clothes.
Susan exhales the smoke slowly and Roger just glowers at it as it hits the hair, curling around them. A lame excuse for not answering and they both know it. “You’re just like your dad…”
He almost screams. He does, but they’re standing outside a middle school with students walking around and, besides, Roger doesn’t scream at his mom. He loves, her and knows she’s too stressed for screaming. Without his mom he wouldn’t be able to play the piano, much less the guitar. He wouldn’t know how to sneak into movie theaters or the second act of plays with out a ticket stub. He wouldn’t know Puccini or Wagner or Shostakovich, and he wouldn’t know how to play all of the Ramones, the Beatles, and the Seeds. He wouldn’t be able to make chocolate chip pancakes and he wouldn’t have asked Sarah Carter to the prom and without his mom, Roger would be totally useless.
That is what he needs her to tell him right now. He’s scared that he’s messing up, throwing his life away and he just needs someone to try and stop him. He’s supposed to be the bad ass, no holds bar rebel and all he wants is for his mom to ground him so that none of this is his fault.
Instead Susan takes another drag of her cigarette and says, “Your dad always had these big ideas, too. Marry the girl, run off to paradise, become an… I don’t even know. He never really made it that far.”
Again, Roger is holding back the screams with all these tiny thirteen and younger kids swarming around him, buzzing on about how fucking mean their parents are because they won’t let them stay out all night. Please, mom, just this once don’t start talking about dad and tell me what to do.
“You’re just like him, honey,” she says, running a hand through Roger’s newly cut hair. She’s told him she hates it, but he did it anyway and she didn’t say a word. She never does, and most kids would love a mom like her. Roger loves her, he does. Just he’s terrified and she is smoking and not saying a word to help calm him down or talk him out of this jump. “You even have the same pout,” she says, smiling at Roger like it’s funny to be teasing him now.
Roger just groans, knocking her hand away and leaning back against the wall, pouting down at the sidewalk. He can’t think of anything else to say that won’t end in him storming off or his mom walking away and not coming back to the house all night. They have those fights, sometimes, and today might be Roger’s last day in this stupid town. He doesn’t want their last talk to end up in an argument. He doesn’t want to be his dad, no matter what she says about him. “I miss him…”
“I don’t care,” Roger growls, which isn’t the nicest thing to say but fuck it, if she isn’t going to help than he isn’t going to amuse her with her stories about how great his dad has been before he left. The guy never even came to one of Roger’s parties as a kid and he’s all she can talk about now, when Roger is getting ready to run away. He just stopped by to tell her he’s leaving and give her this one chance to do something about it.
Susan stomps out her cigarette, standing up off the wall and brushing herself off. “You be careful.” Roger doesn’t move when his mom brushes his hair back or leans down to kiss his forehead. That’s all she has to say about it? Be careful? “What’s this girl’s name again?”
“April,” Roger mutters, kicking at the cigarette on the sidewalk. April, the reason that he’s going to New York without a job and without a place to stay and he’s nervous as hell that this beautiful, dangerous girl is going to end up breaking him. He better be careful, his mom says. So terrified that he stayed up all night being sick and pacing in his room and she wants him to be careful.
“Well…” Susan messes with his hair a little more, and Roger just moves away from her hand. He isn’t sure what he wants, but this isn’t it. He wants to be in New York with this gorgeous girl and he wants to play his guitar and have a band and be famous and be in love. He wants his mom to tell him no, to hug him and say that he’s her baby and she isn’t going to let him just walk away from everything like this. He should have known better. His mom has never stopped anyone from walking away. “I hope she’s good for you…”
“You’re safe.” Red nails over his lips, dragging through the sweat on his skin as she traces wild designs over his cheeks. Sometimes she would spell words and have him guess. Now she’s just drawing, comforting him and calming down his racing heart. “You’re safe, so long as you stay here.”
In the bedroom. Safe. Roger looks at April. This beautiful, dangerous girl who smiles at him and keeps him safe. Here, he’s okay. He’s in control. Everything is okay. No worrying, no being scared. Her nails press against his skin, real as could be. Here everything is perfect.
He’s okay. Deep breathe. Deeper. He’s okay.
“No one ever tried to stop me…” The mirror on his door reflects their image back at him, two kids sprawled over the bed, swallowed whole by the blankets and pillows. Guarded against the rest of the world. Mirrors lining the walls, showing all around him, showing April’s feet against his and her lips near his ears and her nails on his skin. Too much. He doesn’t want to see himself. Too much, and their gone. Control. He’s safe.
“Shh,” she whispers, kisses his cheek. Never him, but his cheek or ear. Soft press of her lips to remind him that she’s here, just as real as he is. “Don’t think about them. You’re safe.”
Don’t think about blue eyes behind glasses or a wonderful smile from a small girl. None of that. No one tried to save him, they just tried to keep him away from her. April. Safe.
He’s okay.
“You never have to leave,” she whispers into his ear, voice dark and mellifluous, capturing him in its thickness and making it impossible to move. He doesn’t want to move.
The first time April leads him through her apartment she shows him the bedroom and winks and says, “We never have to leave if you don’t want.” She’s twenty two and fun and wild and Roger’s just this kid from Maine who blushes and laughs as he looks into the messy bedroom, and it’s a silly, flirty thing to say but he wishes it were true.
“I’m here,” April promises, too pink lips brushing along his skin, lip steak never streaking across his neck. The perfect scene and they’re alone in here, away from the world and doctors and tests and pieces of paper and razorblades. “That’s all you need.”
When Roger is struggling to write his music, and the band is getting on his nerves and complaining because if he’s their lead singer and songwriter shouldn’t he be giving them more songs to perform? Like he can just write this shit whenever he wants? And while he’s slaving over some fucked up love shit that he can’t force to sound right or real, April comes up behind him, long arms wrapped around his shoulders as she kisses down his neck. He swats at her and says he’s busy, he needs to do this, and she tells him, “It’s okay, baby. I’m all you need.”
Apparently he isn’t, because it isn’t him that she takes into the bathroom with her. It’s a note and a needle and the bathroom door is so white Roger can’t stare at it too long before his body starts to shake from the effort of not blinking.
Roger looks around the loft, spotless and empty save him, standing there looking at the bathroom door. Why did he get out of bed? Did he need something? He should be back in the bedroom with his girl.
He sets his hand on the door. The knob starts to shake. Small little rattles of someone trying to get out. Looking for a way out. Roger’s fingers curl up, scrapping against the door. Clear, like a window as his fingers drag down, leaving three streaks of glass where the paint is peeled off.
The door starts to shake. Flashes of a girl in the streaks of glass. Let me out, Roger, please. Help. Save me.
“Roger?” Safe. He wants to be safe. He wants someone to save him, and no one ever did.
Roger looks back to the bedroom, door wide open and April up on the bed. Their fortress of pillows and blankets. She smiles and calls him back. Whatever she had him get up to get, it doesn’t matter anymore. He should just go back to bed and be with her. Always.
The door rattles. Roger steps back and towards April. Safe April. The April that loves him.
You have to, Roger, save me. Let me out. Please, Roger.
“Come here,” April calls and Roger walks back into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Crawling on to the bed, into April’s arms. Long arms that stretch around him and hold him in place. Let me out. No. Safe. No one ever tried to help Roger get back to her.