Fic: Love Like You
Author: Stephanie (Gildedmuse)
Title: Love Like You
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,080
Summary: A teenage Roger isn't so sure about this relationship with his best friend.
Additional Note: Filled request for shadow_mage who might want to reconsider being so vague as "first time, teen angst". Hopefully she'll enjoy. ^^
Cross-posted: rentslash, below14thstreet, fuckingartists. Just the basics.
Love Like You
The scary thing about being in love with Mark is how old he seems.
Really, Roger knows, he’s only five months older. Mark has pointed out more than a few times that he’ll be able to buy cigarettes and beer five months before Roger. Not that a little thing like age has ever stopped either of them, it’s just one of those things Mark can hold over his head. When you’re seventeen, eighteen and twenty-one and being an adult, able to leave behind your parents and high school and all the rules seems forever away, so they count the months and Mark has five less to wait then Roger. It’s only months, though, not years and Mark is still just seventeen so really they’re the same age, and most of the time they act it. Most of the time, Mark is a perfectly normal teenager; skipping the last two periods of the day to go sneak into an R-rated horror film their parents don’t want them to see or breaking into pools at two in the morning to go skinny dipping. Those times are just about boys being boys (being boys with hormones, really, because the movie ends with Mark leaning over, Roger’s hand traveling up his thigh and the skinny dipping was just as lacking in innocence). Those were the sorts of times Roger enjoys being Mark’s best friend/boyfriend and everything is just like it should be for a young teenager trapped in Scarsdale.
That’s only most of the time, though. There are also these days when Roger is sitting on the floor with his guitar, playing softly as Mark sprawls himself and his homework over the bed and works as he listens to Roger sing. Roger is trying to write a new song, one that his band (“The Well Hungarians”, named in a moment of true teenage humor) won’t roll their eyes at. He keeps plucking at his guitar, keeping the music soft and his voice softer so that Mrs. Cohen won’t come bursting in, asking what the boys are up to. She did that once before, and even though Mark swears she always knocks now, Roger is still nervous about it. Despite the fact that his pants are on this time.
Even with the music and the scratches of Mark’s pencil against the paper, the room seems silent. A good kind, though, that Roger and Mark are so adept at sharing until Mark breaks it, asking, “Why do you always sing about love?”
It’s not a weird question. Roger has heard it before. Even his younger sister asked him about it, once, but he’d been a moody fourteen-year-old boy so he’d just slammed his door and told her to fuck off. With Mark he takes him time to actually think of a decent answer. “Well,” he says, still playing through the chords he’s strung together so far, “I guess it’s because everything is about love.”
Mark’s lips turn up slightly, and he says, “All you need is love,” in a very bad impersonation of Lennon. Roger rolls his eyes, banging his head back against the bed to make his point that Mark is an idiot. It hurts his head more than it shakes the mattress, and Mark just laughs at him, reaching down to massage the back of Roger’s neck. Right now, everything is just fine.
“Everyone needs it,” Roger says, leaning back into Mark’s hand. After a few seconds Mark pulls it back, flipping a page of his science book and Roger goes back to plucking at the strings of his dad’s old fender. “I guess that’s why everyone has to sing about it.”
Roger tips his head back to look up at Mark, who is frowning down at his book. It’s right then that he knows everything isn’t fine. That isn’t Mark’s frown of concentration when he is trying to solve a problem. It’s his grown up look. “I just don’t get your music,” he admits with a bit of a shrug, still looking down at his homework instead of to Roger. “You make love sound so easy, but it’s not really like that. It’s not like there is a magical soul mate or love at first look or anything like that.”
You’re my soul mate, is what Roger thinks but he keeps it to himself because he doesn’t want Mark laughing at him. He said the same thing about Sarah, and Mark said he was acting like a girl, which according to his band and Sarah, is true. Roger can’t help it, though, if he thinks love should be like music. Instant, meaningful, passionate, and utter devotion to someone else. Mark is more sensible than that, or so he insists. He flips a page and scribbles something down in his notebook, saying, “It’s hard work. You can’t just let someone go because they mess up a few times. You have to stick things through for it to really be love.” He avoids looking at Roger while he says all of this, the frown on his lips making him look so much older.
Roger doesn’t know where these thoughts come from, or what to say when they come. He can only look back at his guitar, mood dampened by Mark’s thoughts, and wonder. Is it something he’s done? Is it something Mark is doing? They’re in love, right? So how can Mark say these things? Maybe they’re nothing more than artistic ramblings, but they leave Roger’s stomach twisting and an ill feeling settling in his chest. Mark sits in silence, letting Roger brood for a while as he continues with his homework. “You can keep singing,” he says quietly, breaking the not-so-comfortable silence. “I was just thinking out loud, that’s all.”
There is a hint of desperation in Mark’s voice, and that is one of those things that scares Roger.
*
The scary thing about loving Mark is sometimes Roger feels like he’s in second place.
Which isn’t to say that Mark ignores him. Mark doesn’t blow Roger off (well, he does but not in a bad way) just because he’s scared to have his image ruined at school or his parents find out. No, Mark will gladly kiss Roger in front of the house or hold his hands as they walk down the halls. He never shies away from letting people know they’re together, and he has made it perfectly clear that he isn’t interested in anyone else. The frightening thing is, Roger isn’t worried about anyone else. He’s worried about something else.
Mark is obsessed with his camera, with this idea of being a famous filmmaker. He talks about it all the time. Not as much as Roger talks about his band, but that’s only because Mark just doesn’t talk as much as Roger. Mark talks enough, though, that Roger knows what he expects out of life. He dreams up these scenarios, him with his overactive imagination and filmmaker’s visions, about going to New York and shooting films and the lives he’s going to change. Listening to Mark is a lot like watching a movie. His voice rises and falls with the moments in his own dream future, the images and storyline working together perfectly as he tells Roger how it is all going to happen for him. Roger never minds listening to Mark talk about everything he’s going to do.
The scary part is how Roger is never a part of these flights of fantasy. Maybe, occasionally if he’s forced Mark to talk about them or simply asked, Mark will add him in somewhere. His part always seems awkward, though, like the filmmaker giving his best friend a cameo appearance that seems out of place with the film. It’s never as solid and real sounding as the rest of the story. Roger has to wonder about that.
Maybe he should accept that he’ll always be second to Mark’s work, but that isn’t how Roger’s idea of love works. For him, music will never go before Mark. He needs to be in love to create, so without Mark there is no music. Without Roger, Mark would still have his camera. Without Roger, Mark would be fine and that isn’t what Roger wants. “Big Bad is Jealous,” Lindsay says once, when Roger makes the mistake of complaining to their friends about it., “of anything that takes your wiw’ lovey-dovey Marky-baby away from you.” She says it with a smile, but Roger can’t help but think that it’s true. He can’t stand knowing that Mark doesn’t need him as much as Roger needs Mark.
So there are plenty of days like this, when they’re at a party and there is Mark with his camera. “Documenting,” is what he calls it. Documenting their teenage anarchy, but Roger doesn’t see any anarchy and he definitely doesn’t see anything that is theirs. How can Mark be documenting them, when he spends the entire party hidden behind his camera?
“Just a second,” he says when Roger taps him on the shoulder and asks him to dance or offers him a beer. Mark has the camera held in place, watching as a girl throws up in a corner, and what is so appealing about that, anyway? Roger can’t even watch it, himself, but Mark stands fixated on the image. “How many documentaries have footage like this?” He asks, as if Roger has seen enough documentaries to know. Mark has made him watch a few, but he spends the time leaning into Mark and kissing his neck and trying to get his attention. He can do it, usually, but not when Mark has his camera out. Then Roger is secondary and no amount of kissing along his neck and licking at his ear ever changes that. “They don’t really see the teenage scene. They don’t understand the youth and what all these restrictions are doing to us.”
Roger rolls his eyes. He recognizes this as Filmmaker Speak. It all sounds like artistic bullshit to him. He drowns the beer he’d brought for Mark and goes to sit on the couch not occupied by teenagers making out and pout a bit. Mark is busy with his camera, and everyone else seems to be in a couple, so what is left for Roger to do but brood about it? Is it so much to ask, to want to be the center of someone’s life?
Part of Roger knows he’s being silly. Part of him knows he can’t stop Mark from doing what he loves, and he shouldn’t expect him to. He knows Mark loves him, and that should be enough. Only it isn’t. Not for Roger.
It doesn’t take long before the couch next to him dips down, and Roger looks over to see a girl scooting next to him. She’s got big eyes and big lips and big… Well, other areas. She smiles at him, leaning closer and smelling like berries and rotting flowers, although he suspects the perfume doesn’t say that. She’s pretty though, and she has this really cute smile that is almost lopsided, like Mark’s.
So she leans in, and Roger should pull away because she’s spilling out of her shirt and he can smell the alcohol. Everyone at the party smells like beer, though, and Roger needs attention even if it’s the bad kind. The kind he should say no to, because he loves Mark. “Hi,” she says, keeping on her cute little smile, pressing into Roger.
“Hey,” he answers, glancing over to Mark to see if his boyfriend has noticed him yet. He hasn’t, not even when he swirls the camera over in their direction, and he must at least notice the fact that Roger has a girl nearly in his lap, but Mark just keeps filming. It would be easy to just… Well he wouldn’t but he could, and Mark wouldn’t even notice. Not when he has work to do, and then Roger is just a secondary part of his life. Someone who might follow when he goes to New York, when he writes that script, when he makes that movie. The walk-on boyfriend, only on screen for a second and still looking so out of place.
Roger pushes the girl away and leaves the party without saying a word. It’s not like Mark will notice.
*
The scary thing about loving Mark is the thought that this is just a way of rebelling.
Mark isn’t like Roger. Roger snorts a bit at the thought because it’s true a thousand times over. They’re best friends, sure, and they like a few of the same things like Nirvana and horror movies (Mark has good taste in horror movies. He even made Roger watch these old black-and-white vampire ones, and even they were pretty cool), but outside of the shallow things, Roger and Mark are completely different people.
Some of their differences and quirks compliment each other, sure. Mark has to sleep up against a wall and holding onto something, and Roger likes sleeping towards the edge of the bed and curled up so they fit together despite that difference. Mark can be too grown up sometimes, yeah, but Roger can make him have fun and be a teen again, and when Roger gets too moody Mark can roll his eyes and shake his head and get him to calm down. They’re different, but those are good different. Some things don’t mesh that well.
Like their families. Mark complains about his overprotective mom and his nosy sister and his dad who wouldn’t know art if it hits him. Roger sees things differently though, like how Mrs. Cohen took them to New York for Mark’s birthday and paid for the whole thing just so Roger could go, or when Cindy lies to her parents so that Mark can sneak out to go to one of Roger’s shows, and even Mr. Cohen who Roger has heard yelling at Mark about school puts down a payment on the camera Mark has been dreaming of. Mark doesn’t see all the little things his family does for him, because he’s too busy obsessing over the bad and hating the suburbanized life to notice how lucky he got with them.
Roger doesn’t have a suburbanized life. He’s from, as he heard Mrs. Cohen whisper, the wrong side of the tracks. He’s not rebelling with his music, because he’s got nothing to rebel against. Mark does, and Roger wants to believe that what they have has nothing to do with that. He knows that some of the things Mark does is just acting out, proving a point. They’re being raised in the error of punk, and sometimes you have to create chaos just for the sake of chaos - commit taboos just for the sake of upsetting the upper class.
Doing it just to upset your family, though, is different. Maybe Roger wouldn’t normally care, but when Mark spends more time arguing about their relationship with his dad then actually being with Roger, he has to wonder. He doesn’t want to be a stage, a rebellion, a way to act out. That isn’t what Mark is to him, and he wants to think that Mark wouldn’t do that to a friend.
When they’re sixteen and curled up in bed together, Mark starts to kiss him and Roger doesn’t know why. He doesn’t stop him, either, because he’s a teenager with hormones. He runs a hand through Mark’s hair and pulls to deepen the kiss, moaning into Mark’s mouth as his friend’s hands run over his chest, down the front of his jeans. Mark breaks away from the kiss, but keeps his hands on Roger. “Mom and Dad think you’re no good,” is what he says.
Roger tries to stop rubbing up against Mark’s hand and shrugs. “They’re probably right.” As if Roger has said exactly the right thing, Mark starts to kiss him again. Heavy, sloppy kisses as the boys roll around on bed together, trying to figure out where to touch and how far they can push. It’s more awkward than anything Roger has ever done before, because it’s Mark, his best friend since freshmen year, and he doesn’t know exactly what to do. Mark seems to know what he wants, though, pressing up against Roger and brushing his fingers over his jeans. It feels good, the way Mark’s fingers stroke along his crotch and he starts to bite and lick at Roger’s ear, and pretty soon Roger is moaning and pushing into his hands and not too worried about what they’re doing.
It’s a bit of struggle to slide out of his pants when Mark is already climbing on top of him. Roger doesn’t know where this is going, so he just tries to keep touching Mark, keep kissing him, and he lets Mark do the rest. Like reaching into his nightstand and pulling out some lotion, pouring what seems like half the bottle onto Roger’s hand. He moves Roger’s hand until he can press into him with a finger, lotion covering both of them as they try and move together. It’s messy, and smells clean like a soap but they keep trying until Mark is moaning and pressing back against Roger’s fingers, even with a bloody lip he’s bitten into hard and tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
More of that too-clean lotion goes over Roger, and Mark crawls up over him, slowly pressing himself back against his erection and it must hurt from the way he whimpers and cries, but he keeps going and Roger doesn’t stop him. To Roger it’s like he’s hardly there with Mark at all. It feels good, tight and hot and different than a blowjob, and he grabs Mark’s waist and helps him settle. He moans, trying to keep it down in his throat because the part of him that isn’t thinking about anything but how good this feels doesn’t want Mark’s parents to hear them.
Mark rocks his hips up and down, still whimpering but Roger is a teenage boy and too far gone to care. He groans and arches off the bed, thrusting deeper into Mark. Eventually, he wraps his hand around Mark’s cock, and they move together for a while before the pace becomes sloppy and haphazard, the slap of skin against skin and choked moans filling up Mark’s small bedroom.
Roger comes, biting down on his lip hard enough to tear it open. Mark pulls away from Roger, falling beside him and jerking himself off the rest of the way. It’s not a romantic first time. It’s not even something Roger really thinks about that often after it happens. What he does think about is the way Mark curls up beside him, going to sleep without a word.
He never explains what happens to Roger even if after that they start to touch more often, and Roger turns them into boyfriends despite Mark’s silence on the issue. He never pulls away when they kiss, though, and holds Roger’s hand so even without words, Roger figures he likes being with him. The first time Roger gets to hear anything about it, Mark is yelling at his dad.
“You’re so closed-minded!” Is what he says, and Roger is standing in the living room, awkward and out of place and Mark and Mr. Cohen wage it out in the kitchen. Mrs. Cohen gives him an apologetic but tight smile, like she’s known before Mark came in here and kissed Roger for the sole purpose of making some sort of point - one that is now lost on Roger. She knows, the smile says, she just doesn’t get it. Roger doesn’t, either. “Just because Roger is my boyfriend-“
It’s the only time Mark calls them boyfriends. Usually, he just doesn’t talk about it. At least, never with Roger. It takes two years for Mark to say anything about it to him.
They’re sitting on Mark’s bed again, wrapped up in each other and Roger is staring at the ceiling and Mark’s homework has been pushed aside, next to the guitar and abandoned song about love that Mark doesn’t think is real. They’re just sitting there, and suddenly Mark says, “I’m I got accepted to Brown.”
It’s not a direct address of them, no, but what Roger hears is, “I’m going to the school my dad wants me to go to, I’m leaving you, and I’m done with this stage of my life.” Roger hears all of that. He’s been listening for it all these years, and there it is just like that. He sighs, pulling away from Mark and ignoring the small frown on his friend’s lips, like he expected Roger to congratulate him. “I’m going to New York,” he says, because if Mark isn’t going to fulfill his dream, then Roger is going to create his own. Mark isn’t the only one who wants to go to the city and make it big, and even if before now Roger’s ideas have always involved Mark being there, well, things can change. Roger can change.
Roger grabs his guitar and leaves, walking home without a word to Mark or a goodbye to Mrs. Cohen. He doesn’t need some rebelling filmmaker to make his life complete. Roger just needs love, and not the kind Mark is giving him.
*
The scary thing about being in love with Mark is how easy it is to forget him.
New York moves at the speed of light around Roger, never stopping or slowing down. Knocking into him and trampling over him as he speeds by. Roger likes how busy it keeps him, because he never has to stop and think.
He never thinks about why April seems to know just what he needs. April is this girl like a vision with wild hair and eyes and a smile to match. April shows up to one of his shows, one of the pathetic few the band manages to get, and she just never leaves. He likes her laugh and smile and body so he lets her stay. She likes his voice and lips and hands and leads him after her as she disappears down an alleyway looking for someone called, “The Man.”
Mark thinks he’s special, but nothing about him is as brilliant as smack. April looks beautiful when she’s on it, so Roger decided to give it a try and he feels just as beautiful during that first high. The crash is nasty, sickening and horrible like ten of the worst hangovers he’s ever had. The secret, April tells him, is just to stay high. That works like a charm.
A year or so after he moves to the city, Roger is packing away his guitar after another small show when some kid comes up to him. Bright blue eyes behind thin glasses, a sort of lopsided smile and in moment he has his arms full of him. “Hey,” he says, and Roger feels slow as he tries to remember who this kid is, thinking he’s just some groupie until the kid adds, “Roger, I can’t believe I found you!”
Roger is still frowning at him when Mark pulls back. Not because he’s still upset, but because he had forgotten about the kid and now, just like that, he’s back. “Mark,” he says in a short, almost questioning voice that does nothing to knock Mark’s smile out of place.
“Okay,” he says, rolling his eyes a bit. “I called your mom to see if you were still here, but I thought it be nice to talk with you again.” Mark says all of this like it is No Big Deal that he left. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Roger says, running a hand through his hair that April bleached out and cut up for him. Mark doesn’t look any different, though. Still the same kid from Scarsdale, sweaters and all. “You on vacation?”
Mark shakes his head, snorting a bit as he says, “I couldn’t stand it there. No time to make my film. So I dropped out. A guy I met there - Collins - he’s letting me and Maureen stay with him.” Roger doesn’t know these people, but it really doesn’t matter. What is important is that Mark dropped out, and Mark is still filming, and maybe all that talking he used to do about his future hadn’t just been rebellious make-believe.
The scary thing is that here is the Mark that Roger fell in love with, and now he doesn’t feel a thing.
Title: Love Like You
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,080
Summary: A teenage Roger isn't so sure about this relationship with his best friend.
Additional Note: Filled request for shadow_mage who might want to reconsider being so vague as "first time, teen angst". Hopefully she'll enjoy. ^^
Cross-posted: rentslash, below14thstreet, fuckingartists. Just the basics.
Love Like You
The scary thing about being in love with Mark is how old he seems.
Really, Roger knows, he’s only five months older. Mark has pointed out more than a few times that he’ll be able to buy cigarettes and beer five months before Roger. Not that a little thing like age has ever stopped either of them, it’s just one of those things Mark can hold over his head. When you’re seventeen, eighteen and twenty-one and being an adult, able to leave behind your parents and high school and all the rules seems forever away, so they count the months and Mark has five less to wait then Roger. It’s only months, though, not years and Mark is still just seventeen so really they’re the same age, and most of the time they act it. Most of the time, Mark is a perfectly normal teenager; skipping the last two periods of the day to go sneak into an R-rated horror film their parents don’t want them to see or breaking into pools at two in the morning to go skinny dipping. Those times are just about boys being boys (being boys with hormones, really, because the movie ends with Mark leaning over, Roger’s hand traveling up his thigh and the skinny dipping was just as lacking in innocence). Those were the sorts of times Roger enjoys being Mark’s best friend/boyfriend and everything is just like it should be for a young teenager trapped in Scarsdale.
That’s only most of the time, though. There are also these days when Roger is sitting on the floor with his guitar, playing softly as Mark sprawls himself and his homework over the bed and works as he listens to Roger sing. Roger is trying to write a new song, one that his band (“The Well Hungarians”, named in a moment of true teenage humor) won’t roll their eyes at. He keeps plucking at his guitar, keeping the music soft and his voice softer so that Mrs. Cohen won’t come bursting in, asking what the boys are up to. She did that once before, and even though Mark swears she always knocks now, Roger is still nervous about it. Despite the fact that his pants are on this time.
Even with the music and the scratches of Mark’s pencil against the paper, the room seems silent. A good kind, though, that Roger and Mark are so adept at sharing until Mark breaks it, asking, “Why do you always sing about love?”
It’s not a weird question. Roger has heard it before. Even his younger sister asked him about it, once, but he’d been a moody fourteen-year-old boy so he’d just slammed his door and told her to fuck off. With Mark he takes him time to actually think of a decent answer. “Well,” he says, still playing through the chords he’s strung together so far, “I guess it’s because everything is about love.”
Mark’s lips turn up slightly, and he says, “All you need is love,” in a very bad impersonation of Lennon. Roger rolls his eyes, banging his head back against the bed to make his point that Mark is an idiot. It hurts his head more than it shakes the mattress, and Mark just laughs at him, reaching down to massage the back of Roger’s neck. Right now, everything is just fine.
“Everyone needs it,” Roger says, leaning back into Mark’s hand. After a few seconds Mark pulls it back, flipping a page of his science book and Roger goes back to plucking at the strings of his dad’s old fender. “I guess that’s why everyone has to sing about it.”
Roger tips his head back to look up at Mark, who is frowning down at his book. It’s right then that he knows everything isn’t fine. That isn’t Mark’s frown of concentration when he is trying to solve a problem. It’s his grown up look. “I just don’t get your music,” he admits with a bit of a shrug, still looking down at his homework instead of to Roger. “You make love sound so easy, but it’s not really like that. It’s not like there is a magical soul mate or love at first look or anything like that.”
You’re my soul mate, is what Roger thinks but he keeps it to himself because he doesn’t want Mark laughing at him. He said the same thing about Sarah, and Mark said he was acting like a girl, which according to his band and Sarah, is true. Roger can’t help it, though, if he thinks love should be like music. Instant, meaningful, passionate, and utter devotion to someone else. Mark is more sensible than that, or so he insists. He flips a page and scribbles something down in his notebook, saying, “It’s hard work. You can’t just let someone go because they mess up a few times. You have to stick things through for it to really be love.” He avoids looking at Roger while he says all of this, the frown on his lips making him look so much older.
Roger doesn’t know where these thoughts come from, or what to say when they come. He can only look back at his guitar, mood dampened by Mark’s thoughts, and wonder. Is it something he’s done? Is it something Mark is doing? They’re in love, right? So how can Mark say these things? Maybe they’re nothing more than artistic ramblings, but they leave Roger’s stomach twisting and an ill feeling settling in his chest. Mark sits in silence, letting Roger brood for a while as he continues with his homework. “You can keep singing,” he says quietly, breaking the not-so-comfortable silence. “I was just thinking out loud, that’s all.”
There is a hint of desperation in Mark’s voice, and that is one of those things that scares Roger.
*
The scary thing about loving Mark is sometimes Roger feels like he’s in second place.
Which isn’t to say that Mark ignores him. Mark doesn’t blow Roger off (well, he does but not in a bad way) just because he’s scared to have his image ruined at school or his parents find out. No, Mark will gladly kiss Roger in front of the house or hold his hands as they walk down the halls. He never shies away from letting people know they’re together, and he has made it perfectly clear that he isn’t interested in anyone else. The frightening thing is, Roger isn’t worried about anyone else. He’s worried about something else.
Mark is obsessed with his camera, with this idea of being a famous filmmaker. He talks about it all the time. Not as much as Roger talks about his band, but that’s only because Mark just doesn’t talk as much as Roger. Mark talks enough, though, that Roger knows what he expects out of life. He dreams up these scenarios, him with his overactive imagination and filmmaker’s visions, about going to New York and shooting films and the lives he’s going to change. Listening to Mark is a lot like watching a movie. His voice rises and falls with the moments in his own dream future, the images and storyline working together perfectly as he tells Roger how it is all going to happen for him. Roger never minds listening to Mark talk about everything he’s going to do.
The scary part is how Roger is never a part of these flights of fantasy. Maybe, occasionally if he’s forced Mark to talk about them or simply asked, Mark will add him in somewhere. His part always seems awkward, though, like the filmmaker giving his best friend a cameo appearance that seems out of place with the film. It’s never as solid and real sounding as the rest of the story. Roger has to wonder about that.
Maybe he should accept that he’ll always be second to Mark’s work, but that isn’t how Roger’s idea of love works. For him, music will never go before Mark. He needs to be in love to create, so without Mark there is no music. Without Roger, Mark would still have his camera. Without Roger, Mark would be fine and that isn’t what Roger wants. “Big Bad is Jealous,” Lindsay says once, when Roger makes the mistake of complaining to their friends about it., “of anything that takes your wiw’ lovey-dovey Marky-baby away from you.” She says it with a smile, but Roger can’t help but think that it’s true. He can’t stand knowing that Mark doesn’t need him as much as Roger needs Mark.
So there are plenty of days like this, when they’re at a party and there is Mark with his camera. “Documenting,” is what he calls it. Documenting their teenage anarchy, but Roger doesn’t see any anarchy and he definitely doesn’t see anything that is theirs. How can Mark be documenting them, when he spends the entire party hidden behind his camera?
“Just a second,” he says when Roger taps him on the shoulder and asks him to dance or offers him a beer. Mark has the camera held in place, watching as a girl throws up in a corner, and what is so appealing about that, anyway? Roger can’t even watch it, himself, but Mark stands fixated on the image. “How many documentaries have footage like this?” He asks, as if Roger has seen enough documentaries to know. Mark has made him watch a few, but he spends the time leaning into Mark and kissing his neck and trying to get his attention. He can do it, usually, but not when Mark has his camera out. Then Roger is secondary and no amount of kissing along his neck and licking at his ear ever changes that. “They don’t really see the teenage scene. They don’t understand the youth and what all these restrictions are doing to us.”
Roger rolls his eyes. He recognizes this as Filmmaker Speak. It all sounds like artistic bullshit to him. He drowns the beer he’d brought for Mark and goes to sit on the couch not occupied by teenagers making out and pout a bit. Mark is busy with his camera, and everyone else seems to be in a couple, so what is left for Roger to do but brood about it? Is it so much to ask, to want to be the center of someone’s life?
Part of Roger knows he’s being silly. Part of him knows he can’t stop Mark from doing what he loves, and he shouldn’t expect him to. He knows Mark loves him, and that should be enough. Only it isn’t. Not for Roger.
It doesn’t take long before the couch next to him dips down, and Roger looks over to see a girl scooting next to him. She’s got big eyes and big lips and big… Well, other areas. She smiles at him, leaning closer and smelling like berries and rotting flowers, although he suspects the perfume doesn’t say that. She’s pretty though, and she has this really cute smile that is almost lopsided, like Mark’s.
So she leans in, and Roger should pull away because she’s spilling out of her shirt and he can smell the alcohol. Everyone at the party smells like beer, though, and Roger needs attention even if it’s the bad kind. The kind he should say no to, because he loves Mark. “Hi,” she says, keeping on her cute little smile, pressing into Roger.
“Hey,” he answers, glancing over to Mark to see if his boyfriend has noticed him yet. He hasn’t, not even when he swirls the camera over in their direction, and he must at least notice the fact that Roger has a girl nearly in his lap, but Mark just keeps filming. It would be easy to just… Well he wouldn’t but he could, and Mark wouldn’t even notice. Not when he has work to do, and then Roger is just a secondary part of his life. Someone who might follow when he goes to New York, when he writes that script, when he makes that movie. The walk-on boyfriend, only on screen for a second and still looking so out of place.
Roger pushes the girl away and leaves the party without saying a word. It’s not like Mark will notice.
*
The scary thing about loving Mark is the thought that this is just a way of rebelling.
Mark isn’t like Roger. Roger snorts a bit at the thought because it’s true a thousand times over. They’re best friends, sure, and they like a few of the same things like Nirvana and horror movies (Mark has good taste in horror movies. He even made Roger watch these old black-and-white vampire ones, and even they were pretty cool), but outside of the shallow things, Roger and Mark are completely different people.
Some of their differences and quirks compliment each other, sure. Mark has to sleep up against a wall and holding onto something, and Roger likes sleeping towards the edge of the bed and curled up so they fit together despite that difference. Mark can be too grown up sometimes, yeah, but Roger can make him have fun and be a teen again, and when Roger gets too moody Mark can roll his eyes and shake his head and get him to calm down. They’re different, but those are good different. Some things don’t mesh that well.
Like their families. Mark complains about his overprotective mom and his nosy sister and his dad who wouldn’t know art if it hits him. Roger sees things differently though, like how Mrs. Cohen took them to New York for Mark’s birthday and paid for the whole thing just so Roger could go, or when Cindy lies to her parents so that Mark can sneak out to go to one of Roger’s shows, and even Mr. Cohen who Roger has heard yelling at Mark about school puts down a payment on the camera Mark has been dreaming of. Mark doesn’t see all the little things his family does for him, because he’s too busy obsessing over the bad and hating the suburbanized life to notice how lucky he got with them.
Roger doesn’t have a suburbanized life. He’s from, as he heard Mrs. Cohen whisper, the wrong side of the tracks. He’s not rebelling with his music, because he’s got nothing to rebel against. Mark does, and Roger wants to believe that what they have has nothing to do with that. He knows that some of the things Mark does is just acting out, proving a point. They’re being raised in the error of punk, and sometimes you have to create chaos just for the sake of chaos - commit taboos just for the sake of upsetting the upper class.
Doing it just to upset your family, though, is different. Maybe Roger wouldn’t normally care, but when Mark spends more time arguing about their relationship with his dad then actually being with Roger, he has to wonder. He doesn’t want to be a stage, a rebellion, a way to act out. That isn’t what Mark is to him, and he wants to think that Mark wouldn’t do that to a friend.
When they’re sixteen and curled up in bed together, Mark starts to kiss him and Roger doesn’t know why. He doesn’t stop him, either, because he’s a teenager with hormones. He runs a hand through Mark’s hair and pulls to deepen the kiss, moaning into Mark’s mouth as his friend’s hands run over his chest, down the front of his jeans. Mark breaks away from the kiss, but keeps his hands on Roger. “Mom and Dad think you’re no good,” is what he says.
Roger tries to stop rubbing up against Mark’s hand and shrugs. “They’re probably right.” As if Roger has said exactly the right thing, Mark starts to kiss him again. Heavy, sloppy kisses as the boys roll around on bed together, trying to figure out where to touch and how far they can push. It’s more awkward than anything Roger has ever done before, because it’s Mark, his best friend since freshmen year, and he doesn’t know exactly what to do. Mark seems to know what he wants, though, pressing up against Roger and brushing his fingers over his jeans. It feels good, the way Mark’s fingers stroke along his crotch and he starts to bite and lick at Roger’s ear, and pretty soon Roger is moaning and pushing into his hands and not too worried about what they’re doing.
It’s a bit of struggle to slide out of his pants when Mark is already climbing on top of him. Roger doesn’t know where this is going, so he just tries to keep touching Mark, keep kissing him, and he lets Mark do the rest. Like reaching into his nightstand and pulling out some lotion, pouring what seems like half the bottle onto Roger’s hand. He moves Roger’s hand until he can press into him with a finger, lotion covering both of them as they try and move together. It’s messy, and smells clean like a soap but they keep trying until Mark is moaning and pressing back against Roger’s fingers, even with a bloody lip he’s bitten into hard and tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
More of that too-clean lotion goes over Roger, and Mark crawls up over him, slowly pressing himself back against his erection and it must hurt from the way he whimpers and cries, but he keeps going and Roger doesn’t stop him. To Roger it’s like he’s hardly there with Mark at all. It feels good, tight and hot and different than a blowjob, and he grabs Mark’s waist and helps him settle. He moans, trying to keep it down in his throat because the part of him that isn’t thinking about anything but how good this feels doesn’t want Mark’s parents to hear them.
Mark rocks his hips up and down, still whimpering but Roger is a teenage boy and too far gone to care. He groans and arches off the bed, thrusting deeper into Mark. Eventually, he wraps his hand around Mark’s cock, and they move together for a while before the pace becomes sloppy and haphazard, the slap of skin against skin and choked moans filling up Mark’s small bedroom.
Roger comes, biting down on his lip hard enough to tear it open. Mark pulls away from Roger, falling beside him and jerking himself off the rest of the way. It’s not a romantic first time. It’s not even something Roger really thinks about that often after it happens. What he does think about is the way Mark curls up beside him, going to sleep without a word.
He never explains what happens to Roger even if after that they start to touch more often, and Roger turns them into boyfriends despite Mark’s silence on the issue. He never pulls away when they kiss, though, and holds Roger’s hand so even without words, Roger figures he likes being with him. The first time Roger gets to hear anything about it, Mark is yelling at his dad.
“You’re so closed-minded!” Is what he says, and Roger is standing in the living room, awkward and out of place and Mark and Mr. Cohen wage it out in the kitchen. Mrs. Cohen gives him an apologetic but tight smile, like she’s known before Mark came in here and kissed Roger for the sole purpose of making some sort of point - one that is now lost on Roger. She knows, the smile says, she just doesn’t get it. Roger doesn’t, either. “Just because Roger is my boyfriend-“
It’s the only time Mark calls them boyfriends. Usually, he just doesn’t talk about it. At least, never with Roger. It takes two years for Mark to say anything about it to him.
They’re sitting on Mark’s bed again, wrapped up in each other and Roger is staring at the ceiling and Mark’s homework has been pushed aside, next to the guitar and abandoned song about love that Mark doesn’t think is real. They’re just sitting there, and suddenly Mark says, “I’m I got accepted to Brown.”
It’s not a direct address of them, no, but what Roger hears is, “I’m going to the school my dad wants me to go to, I’m leaving you, and I’m done with this stage of my life.” Roger hears all of that. He’s been listening for it all these years, and there it is just like that. He sighs, pulling away from Mark and ignoring the small frown on his friend’s lips, like he expected Roger to congratulate him. “I’m going to New York,” he says, because if Mark isn’t going to fulfill his dream, then Roger is going to create his own. Mark isn’t the only one who wants to go to the city and make it big, and even if before now Roger’s ideas have always involved Mark being there, well, things can change. Roger can change.
Roger grabs his guitar and leaves, walking home without a word to Mark or a goodbye to Mrs. Cohen. He doesn’t need some rebelling filmmaker to make his life complete. Roger just needs love, and not the kind Mark is giving him.
*
The scary thing about being in love with Mark is how easy it is to forget him.
New York moves at the speed of light around Roger, never stopping or slowing down. Knocking into him and trampling over him as he speeds by. Roger likes how busy it keeps him, because he never has to stop and think.
He never thinks about why April seems to know just what he needs. April is this girl like a vision with wild hair and eyes and a smile to match. April shows up to one of his shows, one of the pathetic few the band manages to get, and she just never leaves. He likes her laugh and smile and body so he lets her stay. She likes his voice and lips and hands and leads him after her as she disappears down an alleyway looking for someone called, “The Man.”
Mark thinks he’s special, but nothing about him is as brilliant as smack. April looks beautiful when she’s on it, so Roger decided to give it a try and he feels just as beautiful during that first high. The crash is nasty, sickening and horrible like ten of the worst hangovers he’s ever had. The secret, April tells him, is just to stay high. That works like a charm.
A year or so after he moves to the city, Roger is packing away his guitar after another small show when some kid comes up to him. Bright blue eyes behind thin glasses, a sort of lopsided smile and in moment he has his arms full of him. “Hey,” he says, and Roger feels slow as he tries to remember who this kid is, thinking he’s just some groupie until the kid adds, “Roger, I can’t believe I found you!”
Roger is still frowning at him when Mark pulls back. Not because he’s still upset, but because he had forgotten about the kid and now, just like that, he’s back. “Mark,” he says in a short, almost questioning voice that does nothing to knock Mark’s smile out of place.
“Okay,” he says, rolling his eyes a bit. “I called your mom to see if you were still here, but I thought it be nice to talk with you again.” Mark says all of this like it is No Big Deal that he left. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Roger says, running a hand through his hair that April bleached out and cut up for him. Mark doesn’t look any different, though. Still the same kid from Scarsdale, sweaters and all. “You on vacation?”
Mark shakes his head, snorting a bit as he says, “I couldn’t stand it there. No time to make my film. So I dropped out. A guy I met there - Collins - he’s letting me and Maureen stay with him.” Roger doesn’t know these people, but it really doesn’t matter. What is important is that Mark dropped out, and Mark is still filming, and maybe all that talking he used to do about his future hadn’t just been rebellious make-believe.
The scary thing is that here is the Mark that Roger fell in love with, and now he doesn’t feel a thing.