Fic: On The Friendship & Sex... (Chapter 3: Scripts & Sickness)
Author: Mina (Gildedmuse)
Title: On The Friendship & Sexual Relations (Mostly The Sex) Of Mark J. Cohen & Roger M. Davis
Chapter: Three: Dress Up, Scripts and Sickness
Pairings: Mark/Roger (mentions of April/Roger and Mark/Maureen)
Rating: Nc-17
Word Count: 8,650
Warnings: Umm... Sex? Mark-in-a-skirt, if that frightens you enough to need a warning.
Summary: Lots of people know they're friends, of course, but no one really thinks of all the sex that when into that.
Additional Chapters: Additional Chapters: One: First Times & Blow Jobs, Two: Fucking & Fucking Up, Three: Scripts & Sickness, Four: Jealousy & Drinks, Five: Blindness & Bondage
Crossposted: fuckingartists,rentcubed,below14thstreet,2leather2dildos
On The Friendship & Sexual Relations (Mostly The Sex) Of Mark J. Cohen & Roger M. Davis
Chapter Three: Scripts & Sickness
“You know, I can see what the appeal is with these things.” Mark turns himself around to get a feel for what he’s wearing, his eyes staying on Roger’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. His rock star of a roommate is leaning up against the wall and wearing this huge grin. Mark knows he’s being laughed at, but he just smiles back. Roger has one of those smiles where it’s always so hard not to smile with him.
“Don’t tell me,” he says, shaking his head. Curls of blonde and brown fall into his eyes, making him brush them back behind his ears. He keeps complaining about how he needs to get it bleached and cut again, but Mark thinks the grunge look works for him. He thinks the shaggy, unmatched hair makes him look that much more like a bohemian mess of a rock star, but April favors the short, spiked, and bleached and, seeing as it’s April that ties Roger up nearly every night, he’s going to end up cutting it. “You like it because it makes you feel free.”
“Well, yeah…” He laughs, spinning again and the skirt forms a white ring around his waist. Roger’s smile grows and in the mirror, Mark gives him a pout. “What? If you were in a skirt, you’d be turning around, too. It’s hard to resist.”
This time, Roger doesn’t bother to hide his amusement. He just laughs at Mark and reaches out to tug at the edge of the white skirt. “I think Marilyn Monroe’s skirt was a little longer than this,” he points out, pulling it down to around Mark’s knees, and that’s a stretch of the fabric.
Mark shrugs. Yeah, he’d prefer not having to show off his pale, skinny legs but last minute costume shopping didn’t leave him with much choice. “It’s all I could find,” he explains, adjusting the top. When Collins had seen the costume he’d said that all Mark needed was a wig and a vent and he would make a perfect replica. On his way out the door to his girlfriend’s Hampton based Halloween party, Benny added that he could use make-up and some breasts. Mark doesn’t exactly have those sorts of resources, so he just brushes his hair down the best he can and hopes that works enough to help him pass it off as a planned outfit for the evening. Maureen has been telling him about this party for weeks, and even after agreeing to go, Mark still waited until the last possible moment to get a costume together.
Not the best boyfriend move ever, but Mark has had more things on his mind. Like his films for one, none of which seem to be working for him. And the fact that it’s getting colder and they don’t have money or heat in this place, even with Collin’s job at NYU and Benny working for some real estate guy and Maureen’s stint as a waitress and Roger’s almost steady gigs. All that money seems to disappear before it goes anywhere important. There is that and the needles in the bathroom trash, the way Maureen doesn’t come back some nights. There are things that Mark’s had on his mind, that’s all. So maybe he hasn’t been paying his girlfriend as much attention as he should, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her. It just means that he was a little late with this whole costume thing.
“You think it’s going to pass?” Mark asks, distracting his thoughts by trying to adjust the mimicked Marilyn outfit he is wearing to the party of Maureen’s tonight. They’ll have this party, and this night to forget about everything else, and they’ll be fine.
In the mirror, Roger’s reflection gives a non-helpful shrug. “I guess. As long as people don’t mind being blinded by your legs.”
“Very helpful,” Mark mutters, still messing with the hem of the dress to try and get it lower and hide more of his skin. “It was the only thing -“
“Sure,” Roger says, rolling his eyes, but smiling so Mark knows everything is still alright between them, no matter how bad off every other part of their lives seem. “You sure you’re not just using it as an excuse to wear a skirt?”
This time Mark turns around to face the real Roger instead of the backwards reflect so he can take a swing at his arm. “Shut up,” he says, yelping and jumping back when Roger tries to cuff him back. “You know you like it.”
The rock star smiles and looks ready to lunge forward, and Mark is already squeaking and pushing himself back against the sink. Before Roger can answer, the phone rings, a dead sounding beep filling the room as the answering machine picks up. Neither of them even reaches for the phone. By now, they know that it’s better just to screen. “Pookie?” It’s Maureen’s voice, just a little slurred, coming through the machine. Mark slips by Roger who laughs at him, mouthing the nickname. “Markie, I know you’re there.”
“Hey, Maureen.” When he picks up the phone and shoves it against his ear quickly so that she doesn’t hang up, the background static becomes a whole lot clearer. Music and laughing and clearly a party. Wasn’t she supposed to wait for him?
“Hey, pookie,” she says and, yeah, she’s drunk. Mark sighs, rubbing at his forehead and hoping she hasn’t gotten herself into trouble. He loves her, but he knows Maureen isn’t the best at avoiding attention, good or bad. “You’re still at home, right?”
“Err…” He looks down at the phone. She’s calling the house phone, so it seems like a stupid question. How drunk is she, exactly? “Yeah. I thought you were coming home after work so we could go to that party together.” From the sounds of things, Maureen is at the party and has been for a while, and probably isn’t about to drag herself out of the fun to pick up Mark. Oh, well. Maybe by the time he gets there, she’ll be so out of it he can lead her home without too much of a scene. Mark snorts at his own thoughts. Maureen can’t do anything without making a scene.
“About that…” There is some ruffling, what sounds like a hand going over the receiver and more laughing, some of it Maureen’s. Mark closes his eyes and strains to listen, and maybe he’s just a glutton for punishment but he wants to hear what she’s saying to whoever she has with her right now. All he can hear is some muffled conversation and with the static of the background, he can’t make anything out of it. “I know how much you hate these things,” Maureen says when she gets back on. “Parties and all.”
He opens his eyes again, switching back to Maureen’s slurred voice right in his ear. “I don’t hate parties,” he points out. Sometimes he has more important filming to do, but he likes people and being with others and having fun. He isn’t a hermit, damnit! “I want to go….”
More laughing, and this time Maureen doesn’t even try and hide it. She even does that cute little snort thing that Mark likes to get out of her, and now she’s doing it for some other asshole while Maureen tries to talk Mark into staying away so she can be with the other guy for the night. Mark isn’t stupid, he has got this all figured out. He wants to tell her that, too, to stop treating him like an idiot because he knows what she is doing. He wants her to know that he knows what she’s doing and can’t she just stop already so that they can be happy together?
He swallows hard, knuckles white around the phone as he waits for Maureen to get done laughing with this guy. What can he say? That she shouldn’t be cheating? That it’s wrong for her to screw around? How is that going to sound coming from him after all those slips with Roger, after more than one time ending up with his best friend? Sure, he hasn’t really slept with Roger since Maureen, and he can tell himself that all those other times they mess around are just boys being boys, but more and more it feels less like something you do with your best friend and more like cheating. Mark can’t exactly be on the high moral ground here, so he just has to bite his tongue while Maureen giggles with this guy before she finally remembers Mark. “You’ll have more fun at home, filming,” she points out, drunkenly happy. “I’ll be home later, okay pookie?”
“Oh…” The dial tone goes deep, a low monotone in his ear as Maureen hangs up and goes back to her party. “Kay…” Sighing, Mark puts the phone back in the cradle. Maybe he will get his camera, go out to see what he can film. Anything is better than sticking around the loft, waiting for Maureen to stumble back in and pretend none of this ever happened.
He glances to his camera, waiting for him on the table. As of late all his scripts feel dull and contrived and anything he shoots is just as bad. He wonders why he can’t film anymore, like a huge part of the inspiration for it is gone. He wonders why he isn’t a good enough boyfriend that Maureen feels the need to go to parties and pick up anyone that isn’t him. Maybe if he could get some confidence back with his film he could finally manage to make the movie he wanted. Maybe if he were more self assured and daring instead of just a nervous, failing filmmaker, she would like him more.
“Was that her?” Mark jerks back slightly as Roger jumps up next to him, feet swinging out as he sits down on the edge of the table. Mark looks up at his best friend and he can tell that Roger knows. They all know that Maureen is cheating on him, but no one is going to go as far as to say anything. Like they all know why Roger and April lock themselves in his room for hours on end, coming up dazed and shaking, but if anyone actually calls him on it that will make it too real. So they let it go unsaid.
Mark shrugs and starts tugging at the top of his custom. He’ll change out of this, stuff himself in his room, and try and write another script for his documentary. Maybe something about the rampant sexual freedom of many bohemian New Yorkers today and how it leaves filmmaker’s relationships shattered. “Yeah. She decided to go without me.”
She decided that Mark just wasn’t worth putting up with when she could have someone else. Roger gets that, and he just smiles at Mark. No need to say anything about it. That would be cutting too close to serious conversations and by now both of them have so many secrets and problems that they don’t want to chance anything spilling out. “So I guess you’re gonna go….”
“Write,” Mark fills in, nodding. What did Roger want him to do? Actually go over there and go after Maureen? No, let her have her space. She’ll always come back to Mark, right? He’s safe, trustworthy, and dependable. Sure, he’s not the tough, dangerous, aggressive guy she’s probably sleeping with right now but he doesn’t have to be, because what Maureen wants is someone to come back to. He can be that guy, right? “I’m going to change,” he mutters, not wanting to have to stand out here and think anymore about all the guys that Maureen would rather have right now.
He’s about to head into his room when Roger grabs for him. Well, grabs for the skirt, pulling Mark back. “Too bad,” he says, and Mark twists back to see his friend smiling down at him. That smile that means he has to smile back. “I kind of liked you in this.”
“Gee,” Mark says, rolling his eyes as he reaches back to swat Roger’s hand away so he doesn’t end up ripping the skirt. Maybe he can take it back and get money for it. He wonders if thrift stores will let him return something he bought there for three dollars in the first place. “Why thank you, mister.” It’s supposed to be a Marilyn Monroe impression, but Mark hasn’t seen anything by her since his mom made him watch Gentle Prefer Blondes, so it fails pretty badly. Enough that Roger laughs at him, but at least lets his skirt go so Mark can head back to his room.
“Roger!” Mark swings around fast enough to get whiplash, yelping and hands going to his ass. Roger smiles at him, trying to look innocent with his hands folded perfectly in his lap. Mark just glares, rubbing the skin where Roger had slapped him. “Jerk.”
The innocent look cracks and Roger ends up laughing again. It’s really hard to be upset with Roger when he’s laughing like that, open and soft and Mark pretty much ends up melting, rolling his eyes as he gives up on glowering at his best friend. “What?” he asks, flashing that grin at Mark that looks like it could make his cheeks ache. “Come on. You looked so good. I couldn’t help it.”
“You couldn’t help hitting me on the ass when I walked by?” Mark asks with a raised eyebrow, not quite following the logic in that one.
Roger just keeps smiling at him like it’s perfectly normal to slap your best friend like that when he walks by. “It was so cute.”
“You really do hit on anything in a skirt, don’t you?” Roger laughs again, nodding and looking unashamed. And, okay, it’s funny to watch Roger sitting there, laughing his ass off, and even with his bad mood over his film and Maureen, Mark smiles back.
Something clicks, maybe just because they’re been friends for a while now and Mark is use to playing with Roger like this. Maybe it’s more serious, that whole idea that he is just Maureen’s responsible fallback getting to him. Maybe it’s the fact that for whatever reason, Maureen and him haven’t had sex in a week and he really needs some outlet for all that energy.
Mark leans towards Roger, batting his eyes lashes and making Roger laugh harder until he’s clutching his gut. When Mark sets his hands on Roger’s thighs, sliding between his legs, it isn’t meant to be as funny. It gets Roger’s attention, and he slowly stops laughing, looking down at Mark with a curious expression, waiting to see what he’s doing. Only thing is, Mark doesn’t know what he’s doing. He just wants to push. To show that he isn’t just some scared little would-be college student. He likes parties and people and public sex too, damnit.
“I could sue you for sexual harassment,” he jokes, something he would say even if they were still just messing around and his hands weren’t rubbing up against Roger’s legs. He’s a sexual driven teenage boy, just like all those guys Maureen picks up. He can be just as spontaneous and rough as any of them.
Roger’s legs move apart, forcing Mark’s hands to slide up. He doesn’t seem to mind the touching at all, looking down at Mark through his lashes as he licks at his lips. It’s a nervous habit Mark knows Roger has, but he blocks it out. Roger is a sexual God of a rock star, right? After all this time with him, Mark has shaken a lot of those old myths he use to think about Roger, but that is one he never shook. Roger can’t get nervous about sex. “I don’t think you would.”
“Maybe…” Mark has lost most his interest in the conversation. He takes a deep breath to gather up his nerves as he reaches for the zipper of Roger’s jeans. If Maureen is going to go out and cheat that Mark can certainly… He isn’t even sure what he’s doing anymore. Just pushing himself on, not wanting to accept that he’s just Maureen’s back up plan. He has to be worth a little more than that even if it’s just being more than a best friend to Roger.
Roger doesn’t argue with the plan, lifting his hips so that Mark can pull off his jeans, pulling off his own shirt. He doesn’t say anything until Mark slips the top off and starts to wiggle out of the skirt. Then Roger reaches for him, pulling at his arms. “Leave it on?”
Mark looks up at Roger, raising an eyebrow at the request. Roger keeps looking down at him with dark, serious eyes and, well… Later he’ll tease Roger over this kink. Right now he nods and stops trying to get out of the skirt. “Okay.”
Roger smiles at him and Mark smiles back. It’s awkward for a moment, Roger sitting in front of him naked, Mark standing there with a skirt hanging around his waist and both know what is going to happen and both know that it shouldn’t and neither is doing anything to stop it. He could still leave, Mark thinks. He could be the safe guy that Maureen wants, turn around, and leave right now. They haven’t done anything other than undress one another. He could still leave.
Roger hesitates as he leans forward, bends down until he’s kissing Mark, and then he knows that he isn’t going to just walk away from this. It’s what he has been pushing for, and the moment Roger kisses him Mark snaps. He presses into Roger, hands wrapping around his neck and he pulls him down into a hard, deep kiss. The kind that can leave lips bruised, tongues eagerly sliding against one another and mouths smashed together. Messy and rough, the sort of kiss that good, level-headed cameramen do not give. The kind that, when they break apart, leave Roger breathless and flushed and still staring down at Mark like he has never seen him before.
Tangling his fingers into Roger’s shaggy hair, Mark takes a step back and tugs him down off the table. Further down, pushing him to his knees. If he has control over nothing else in his life he has this at least. Pulling his skirt up and yanking Roger forward and before he can even say anything Roger has his cock in his mouth, wrapping his lips around him.
He closes his eyes, tells himself he can pretend Maureen is the one sucking him off. The skirt flutters down over Roger’s head, hiding those curls and his lips stretched around his cock, and Mark lies to himself and says he can pretend it’s his girlfriend. Only Roger’s mouth is hot and wet around his erection, and when Roger groans it sends jolts right up Mark and he doesn’t want it to be Maureen. His hand tightens in Roger’s hair until he’s pulling him down around his cock, loosing track of coherent thoughts because who cares. Fingers slide between Mark and Roger’s lips, and Mark looks down, whining with him and tugging at his hair. No, he just wants Roger’s mouth and he can’t find the strength to form words right now but even with his disjointed thoughts he knows that he wants Roger to finish and not start pulling away.
Finally Roger pulls his hand away, going back to sucking around Mark, tongue running against him and fingers sliding up his leg. Mark groans and nearly falls forward, catching himself on the table as Roger rubs his fingers against him. It stings but not enough that Mark wants him to stop. Just enough that he wants more, that he’s spreading his legs for Roger, thrusting harder into his mouth. Whimpering and moaning softly as he rocks back against Roger’s hand.
“Up,” he whines, tugging at Roger’s hair until he’s dragged him off the floor. He wants to, needs to kiss him right now, so hard that their teeth clash together and Roger stumbles back and Mark doesn’t let him go.
See, he isn’t safe or reliable. He is bohemian, unpredictable, not the boyfriend waiting at home while he’s girlfriend is out getting fucked.
Mark pushes Roger back to break the kiss, and Roger hits the edge of the table with a groan. “Didn’t know you could get that rough,” Roger chuckles but, really, he shouldn’t be talking right now. This isn’t about him making snippy comments so that what they’re doing seems harmless and friendly. Mark doesn’t have time to keep that line drawn. Maureen thinks he’s safe and waiting for her, and Mark is still reeling from that and small things like making sure that this is nothing more than helping a friend out don’t matter anymore.
What would Maureen think if she knew that her safe, predictable filmmaker was pushing his best friend up onto the table, straddling his hips as he bites at Roger’s lips. He doesn’t pay attention to his friend’s surprised look because, hey, Maureen would probably be more surprised wouldn’t she? Walking in with whatever guy she has tonight and finding Mark on top of Roger, skirt around their laps as he undoes Roger’s jeans, hand wrapped around his friend’s cock and Roger doesn’t seem to mind the roughness anymore. Good, because Mark is past the point of stopping because Maureen seems to forget that Mark isn’t just some wimp with a camera that she picked up of the street.
“Fuck.” Beneath him, Roger’s body arches up from the hard metal table, erection pushing further into Mark’s tight first. “Dude, don’t bite that hard.” Mark kisses at Roger’s shoulder, teeth marks embedded in his skin.
“What’s wrong with being rough?” Mark asks as he grabs a condom from Roger’s pocket, and it’s a good thing the rock star always has at least three on him. Why does everyone think Mark is going to be gentle and blind when his friends mess up? Just because he doesn’t bring up Maureen’s constant cheating or how Benny is on his way to abandoning them or that Roger is fucking dying on him and no one seems to notice how bottled up these things get.
Mark grabs onto Roger’s hips as he slams himself down against Roger’s cock and, fuck, yes it burns and hurts like hell but at least it’s something. Something more than waiting for Maureen to get home drunk or Roger shooting up and Mark unable to do anything or watching Collins getting sicker every day because some fucking student didn’t tell him he was positive. At least it’s something else.
Mark screams loud enough to disturb that girl who just moved in under them. His nails dig into Roger’s hips, keeping him pinned to the table as he moves against him. Whimpering beneath him, trying to thrust his hips up, Roger reaches out for Mark, pushing the white skirt away as he wraps his callused fingers around Mark’s cock. All of it rough, hurried and not something friends do. Not something boyfriends with girlfriends who expect them to be a fall back, always there, secure and blindly follow sort of love.
It’s probably not even something a bohemian socialist putting his whole heart into an art that has never once given him anything back should be doing, but sex doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t stop just because Mark should know better, and he keeps slamming his hips back and thrusting into Roger’s hand, riding it out until he’s coming, until he can feel Roger shuddering beneath him.
“You didn’t even sing me happy birthday,” Roger whispers, panting against Mark’s shoulder as they lay there on the cold tabletop, still tangled together, Mark’s skirt soaking in the mess between them. Any minute April could walk through that door and pull Roger away from him with a needle or Maureen could come home, flaunting her activities, trying to get any sort of attention from Mark just so he’ll give her attention, and Mark needs to get himself up and cleaned so he can go back to his regular routine. Pretending not to see what is right in front of his face.
*
VOICE OVER (STANLEY BRIDGES)
November 18, and New York is a frozen hell still. The buildings rise out from the ice, trapped like Lucifer and chewing at her denizens to spit them from corporate America, souls devoured and shredded past recognition. In Alphabet City, the artists and the homeless merge as twisted bodies locked under the ice, distorted versions of the real selves as they try and fight off the deadly winter in any means possible, losing that inch of dignity and integrity they’re so desperately clinging to. We all fester in this Dis, forgotten and scorned for not selling ourselves out. Left to freeze in this icy hell for the sins of a heretic against the capitalist nation. For believing in unity, originality, and truth in the face of the masses.
“You worthless BITCH.”
The shout bursts into Mark’s creative flow, fingers pausing over the keys of his typewriter. The tips of his pale fingers poke out of ragged clothes, posed over the keys of the broken machine as he tries to finish yet another script. Beside him is a pile of papers that he’s already given up on, just like he’s given up on every single other script he has ever tried to produce. Now his next attempt is being interrupted by Roger’s angry voice breaking through the walls. One room over, he can hear April scream and something heavy land on the floor. Roger doesn’t scream back, so it probably isn’t his guitar.
Mark shuts his eyes, fingers brushing against the keys. He doesn’t have to have his eyes opened to type, and even if he did it wouldn’t matter, since half the keys have had their white letters rubbed off a long time before he found this typewriter. At least with his eyes closed, he can pretend to ignore the fight while he keeps trying to write.
Ask any artist whether they regret plunging themselves into such depths as these and they’ll defend their decision to the death, which as the snow gathers on the street seems to be inching closer yet. They want nothing to do with money or fortunate and they only live for their art. Only paintings aren’t going to keep us warm, you can’t even burn them, and poetry won’t fill anything but your soul and our souls aren’t twisting and growling out of hunger. Maybe I’m weak, but as the winter drags on you wonder which hell is worse. This frozen terrain of art, or the bleak picture of the yuppies up street have painted for themselves. Back at my safe haven against this ruthless season, my friends are beginning to fall apart.
“That’s fucking hysterical, coming from you!” Mark takes a deep breath, fingers pulling back from the keys before they twitch and mess up his paper. April’s voice is high and loud enough that he’s sure the whole building can hear her yelling back at Roger. “You can’t even get a fucking gig. Hell, you haven’t written anything worth listening to in YEARS and you call ME worthless? At least I have a job!”
“Flirting half naked with a bunch of drunken yuppies at some hotel bar isn’t a job!” Roger yells back, and the fist against the wall makes Mark stumble, the typewrite rattling in his lap. He clings to it to keep it from falling onto his bed.
“It’s better than anything YOU’VE done with YOUR life!” They sound like his parents. Well, with more cursing and usually his mom and dad tried to keep their voices down so that the kids couldn’t hear, where Roger and April are loud enough to wake up the whole building as they scream back and fourth at one another. It’s the same feeling that Mark used to get, though, when he sat up in his room listening to his mom and dad. He knew back then that the fights didn’t mean much, and he knows that, just like his parents, April and Roger’s fights are just a way to break the tension between them. Nothing serious, something that all couples did. They leave him with this feeling that he can’t explain, though.
Like back at home when he wished the fights would mean something so that his mom and dad did divorce so that he wouldn’t have to deal with them together anymore. An almost wistful feeling.
Shaking his head, he adjusts the typewriter in his lap once again.
It won’t be long before Bobby gives up and moves away from this hell and into the other. He’s already asking me to come with him, to escape from this artist encampment where all these geniuses get sucked in and wiped out. The scary part is how much I want to go with him. How easy it would be to give up on this life we’re living and try to find something better. Even our resident anarchist, Jack Daniels, has found a better place to be. In Boston to teach the upper class minds of MIT. Warm and tucked away, and even though his job isn’t as disgusting as the marriage of Bobby to the murderer of the artists, I know that even he feels like he is abandoning some inch of him.
“You’re a fucking whore, April!” Mark wishes that Collins were here right now. He’s pretty sure he would hand them both a joint and tell them to calm the fuck down, that their yelling isn’t doing anything. It’s like fucking for virginity, killing for peace. They both need to settle down or they won’t get anything done. Mark could go in there and tell them that himself, but he is afraid to look at Roger anymore.
He can see his ribs and thinning hair and shaking hands and… Well, it’s none of his business if they’re fighting. He should just stay out of it. That is what he needs to do. Just keep writing his script, making his film. That is why he is here in New York. Not to look out for some guy he happened to sleep with once back in high school. There are things more important than sex and friends. Like finishing this film.
The cold has even made lovers brittle and easy to snap into pieces, like a thin icicle hanging from the fire escape. Moria keeps asking me what is more important
MORIA JEFFERSON
Me or that fucking book of yours?
“Well if you had a job I wouldn’t have had to fuck him!” There is another loud noise, and this time Mark is certain it’s Roger throwing something across the room. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses enter on the typewriter. Maybe he’ll finally leave April for this, and then life will go back to how it was before her and Mark will finish this film and Roger will get healthy again. He just needs to keep working and not interfere.
STANLEY BRIDGES
Moria, you know that isn’t a fair question...
“I knew it! I knew you would just run back to him again. I fucking knew it.”
MORIA JEFFERSON
What’s so hard about it, Stan?
“Of course you knew it, Roger. You’ve accused me of it every day. How do you think I feel, every time I’m late being accused of fucking my ex?”
STANLEY BRIDGES
You and this book, they’re entirely different things to me. You’re… Well, I love you.
“But you did it! God, I knew that you were still seeing him!”
MORIA JEFFERSON
No, you love fucking me. You LOVE that damn novel. You spend so much time with it I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re jerking off over your damn typewriter. It gets more attention than me and I’m your damn girlfriend.
“I wasn’t still seeing him! I did it ONCE and you practically asked me to, begging for our next hit and how else was I supposed to get it? You always do this. You always push away every time you think these things aren’t going your way. You’re like a fucking kid and… I… I can’t take this anymore. You think I’m cheating on you. Fine. I’ll go fucking cheat on you, you asshole!” Mark winces when he hears the door slam, but he doesn’t pull back from writing this time. He can’t and his fingers fly over the keys, possessed with the flow of the piece.
STANLEY BRIDGES
Maybe because it’s the only thing I have left! The only thing that won’t leave me is my art. I need to have control over that at least, Moria. Art can’t lie to me. Art can’t pretend that she is waiting for me to notice her when in reality she is out every night making sure get noticed by everyone but me! It’s time we all stopped pretending. Stop pretending we didn’t all want to follow after Bobby, that we’re not scared as hell to spend another year trapped here. Stop pretending that we’re okay with Jack being sick. I need to stop pretending that you’re going to realize how wrong you are and come back to be with just me, and that Roger is over in the next room dying from the drugs May is feeding him. This novel is the last thing that I’ll have left when you finally leave me and when Roger dies and when Bobby and Collins just stop coming back.
The truth of our relationship is that it’s falling apart. The truth of Roger’s drug use is that it’s killing him. The truth is this film is the only thing I have left to keep me going when I can see everyone in my life falling away. So it’s about time that we stopped pretending and I started to stand up to you, to him, to myself and change something.
Mark yelps, typewriter falling off his lap when the knock on he door break into his concentration. “Yeah?” He asks, scrambling to get his typewriter back up and make sure no more keys have fallen off. He keeps his eyes on the old machine, readjusting the crumbled paper and checking it over again. With his eye on the typewriter, he can’t look up to see Roger pushing open the door.
He watches his friend out of the corner of his eyes, not looking up to him. He is too busy making sure his script is unharmed. “Hey…”
“Hey,” Mark mutter back, eyes screwed up in concentration. Just keep his head down, and even if the shadow of Roger is shifting through his room as he leans up against the doorframe, Mark can’t actually see him or his hollowed, sick face or marked-up arms.
“Look you….” Roger is starting to twitch. The only times him and April get into fights, those are when Roger is twitching. When he isn’t shooting up regularly, this is how he gets. “You have that money your mom sent you for your birthday, right?” Mark can see where this is going, he can see what is about to happen and all he has to do is lie and shake his head and that will be the end of that. Roger won’t get his money and won’t get his drugs and Mark will save him that much, at least. Even if Roger goes out and gets the money from somewhere else, at least Mark will be innocent of helping his friend. He wouldn’t be saving Roger, but at least he wouldn’t be encouraging this and pushing him closer off the edge. “Could I maybe borrow some?”
“Yeah.” Mark leans back, reaching for his drawer and pulling out what is left of their money. Food money. Living money. Drug money, because if Roger doesn’t get it from him he’ll just find another way and Mark doesn’t have it in him to fight with Roger over this. “This be enough?” And he just hands him what is left.
Roger doesn’t even smile when he takes the money. With how beaten up and dry his lips look, Mark is pretty sure that if he smiles he’d end up bleeding. “Thanks,” he mutters before turning and leaving Mark with his film.
*
Mark never really thought about that old saying, six feet under. It isn’t that he never heard it, but like ‘raining cats and dogs’ he just accepted it as a part of speech. He never really thought that the holes they dig to lower the body in would seem six feet deep. Dark and brown as the dark tumbles in after the coffin. Mark leans over the side, dropping his rose over the top as the mechanical rigs creak as they take the body down. The hole must really be six feet. It looks like it could swallow Mark whole, right down into the earth.
“Mark? Mark, come on…” Mark looks back to Maureen who is tugging at his jacket. “It’s cold out here.”
It’s the middle of December in New York city, of course it’s cold. Something about the open field of the graveyard makes it seem colder and even his jacket and Maureen pressed against him doesn’t make Mark any warmer. This is the first time she’s held onto him like this in a long time, and all it took was April killing herself.
“Wait,” he says, shaking his head when she tries to pull away. Collins has already left, walking a few of April’s friends back home. Benny couldn’t be bothered to show up, not with his business meeting, and even April’s dad walked out after looking down at the body of his little girl tucked away in her coffin. She looks peaceful, Mark thought. Like she did when she was high and curled up beside Roger. Like when they were happy, and even though she is dead she has more color in her cheeks now than she has these past few months. Everyone could look at her and tell that it was close to the end, but no one said anything. No one brought it up, so April took things into her own hands. April has always been a little aggressive, a little dramatic. She has always been the sort of girl that wouldn’t just sit around and wait for fate to catch up to her.
Still, when she was laying her coffin she looked peaceful. Like she was on heroin. Like she died high and will stay that way forever.
“Everyone else is gone,” Maureen points out, and she keeps tugging at Mark’s jacket to try and get him to turn away as these works lower April down into the hole. Everything April ever did was fast and fierce. Her and Roger’s fights to the sex afterwards, there was no bottling that up. You couldn’t even get that in a needle. But now she’s dead, and all of that really doesn’t matter. Now she is just the suicidal junkie girl they once knew.
She should have picked a better time. If she really wanted attention she would have waited until Collins wasn’t preparing to leave in January to MIT and Benny wasn’t about to move out. She would have waited until Maureen and Mark’s rocky relationship had settled down so that they were actually concerned with something other than themselves. Mostly, she would have given Roger time to go through withdrawal, for his friends to prepare him for that note she left behind because now no one has time to mourn. They all have something else to worry about.
“I promised Roger,” Mark mutters, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small pick. He hadn’t actually promised Roger. Roger hasn’t spoken up in two days expect to scream at night. Roger can’t even drag himself out of bed for his girlfriend’s funeral but if he could, Mark would know what he would want. He throws the guitar pick over the roses on top of the coffin. It’s a lame gesture coming from him, and it doesn’t mean anything to April who is on her way to becoming nothing but dirt and a bad memory.
Wrapping his arms around Maureen, they watch as the guys with the machines that go six feet into the ground pack up and move out. “You know, I never really liked her,” Maureen says, leaning her head against Mark’s shoulder.
The truth is that Roger was into drugs way before April, and Mark saw him back in high school and he knows his best friend has always been self-destructive. The truth is that the HIV test doesn’t say whose fault it is, and Mark knows that it’s just as likely to be Roger’s and it was April’s. But that doesn’t change the fact that Roger is the one back at the loft waiting on them and Roger is the one still alive while April chickened out without even saying goodbye. The truth doesn’t really matter anymore, and they are all too self-involved to put the blame on themselves. So it gets buried six feet under, with her.
“We should head back,” Mark says as he lets go of Maureen, and they are still holding hands as they turn and walk away from the grave. “Roger might need something.”
“Yeah,” Maureen says, rolling her eyes. “Heroin.”
Mark gives her a sideways look. “He needs our help.” April didn’t hurt too much, for all these reasons. She left his best friend behind, broken and sick, and Mark can’t make himself care right now that she’s dead. He has something else he needs to concentrate on, like getting Roger through this. He doesn’t know what he would do, though, if it were Roger they were walking away from right now. Maybe that wouldn’t hurt at all, either.
“Of course he does,” Maureen says, voice dripping with sarcasm as it usually does. “Because he was just asking for it yesterday, when you tried, right?”
Mark flinches, letting go of Maureen’s hand and they’re back to how they have been these last few months. Hardly touching at all. “He’s upset about-”
“Smack!” Maureen says without giving him time to reply. “He’s upset because he hasn’t had a hit in two days.”
“His girlfriend just died,” Mark points out without looking back at her as he walks off. In the background the crane is dumping dirt over April’s dead body, and they all know that April’s death is only part of it. They have their own lives to worry about, and she fades out of Mark’s mind pretty quickly with every step back towards the loft.
“You know that isn’t it,” Maureen says, and Mark can feel her shooting a nasty look at him even as she trails behind, trying not to trip over headstones in her heels. “He needs help, Mark, and not just some best friend trying to keep him safe.”
It feels like he’s hand this conversation at least a hundred times since they found that note, three days ago, and the body beside it. Since they knew that the way Roger has been thinning out, it isn’t just the heroin and they have to do something or Mark would be losing his friend way too quickly. “I am helping him.”
“You’re being selfish.”
Mark freezes for a second, turning around to look at his girlfriend, if she is even still that. “Excuse me? I’m being selfish for what? Trying to save my best friend. That’s just great coming from the girl that the whole world has to revolve around at all times!” It is supposed to hurt, just a little, because Mark knows what is coming, and he wants to hurt her before she starts in with him.
Maureen doesn’t look like she believes him at all. “I heard you and Collins talking about it. He’s right. Roger needs to be in rehab.”
“He doesn’t want rehab.” This is crazy. They can’t be standing out here in December why they’re coving up April’s grave, yelling over the sounds of the crane and the dirt hitting her coffin.
“It doesn’t matter if he wants it.” Maureen sighs, throwing her hands into the air. Overdramatic, even if the only ones around to see are Mark and a bunch of dead guys. “He’s DYING Mark, and you’re being selfish by giving him what he wants. You want to be the good best friend, fine. You want to replace April and give him what he wants instead of what you know is right, fine, but remember that April is currently dead and Roger isn’t doing much better.”
“He wants to stay-“
“Of course he’s wants to stay!” Maureen says, pushing herself up closer to Mark, practically shoving him back. “He’s a junkie and heroin makes him feel good and look at his life! He doesn’t want to be put away in some rehab centered where they’re going to make him actually deal with his problems. It’s Roger, for fuck sake, he wants to get high!”
It’s all too much. Mark’s life, it’s getting to be too much. He turns back around, heading away from April and Maureen and everything that is too honest, too blunt and in his face to deal with right now. “Fucking men!” Maureen yells at his back but Mark just keeps his eyes straight ahead, storming back to the loft. It isn’t selfish to want to keep Roger close for however much time he has left. What would Maureen really know about loving someone, anyway?
*
“I hate you every time you do this.”
Roger looks up from his beds. He’s curled up against the wall, hugging his knees to his chest, blankets soaked in sweat. He manages a weak glower before his head falls back to his chest, and Mark can hear something like muffled sobbing. That is the only reaction he gets, but it’s better than usual. He’s come down from the serious withdrawal, at least for a while. He isn’t shaking so hard anymore or crying out, doesn’t try and attract anyone who gets too close, blinding striking out against his nightmares. Seeing Roger hardly able to move, so thin and frail looking that it seems a gust of wind might shatter him, that’s an improvement.
“I told you,” Mark says, taking a step into the room. This time Roger doesn’t even look up, but Mark waits every time he takes a step closer to make sure that Roger isn’t going to jump up and shove him away. “Every time you make it that much harder on yourself.” Another step, and another until Mark is right at the bedside. He puts down the cold water he brought in with him and leans down to pick up the AZT from the floor, putting it back into the bottle. “You know, every time you shoot up against it-“
“I get it,” Roger mutters. Mark stops popping the cap on to listen to him. If he didn’t listen hard he wouldn’t have heard Roger speak up at all, his voice sounding like a dull and quiet growl. Mark can’t tell if it is from screaming for the last hour or if he just doesn’t have enough energy to push the sound out.
“You keep shooting up,” Mark points out as he sets the bottle on the table next to the cold glass of water. Not that he can get Roger to take them. In the last seven months, he’s gotten Roger to take maybe a week’s worth. He’s getting a little better at it, sometimes. When he is in one of these almost catatonic states, sometimes Mark can get him to take the pills. “You say you know better but-“
“Shut up,” Roger mutters, head not lifting up from his chest, hidden in his arms wrapped over his knees. Mark sighs and pushes himself up off the floor, sitting down onto Roger’s mattress. He moved him out of the room and into the living room, closer to the bathroom and the kitchen. He figured it’d be easier to keep an eye on him but sometimes Mark can’t take it anymore. Sometimes he doesn’t want to keep an eye on him, and he needs to get out. He just leaves the loft and he knows when he gets back Roger will be high but he can’t take it anymore. Even if Maureen hasn’t moved out yet, she doesn’t stay around long enough to look after Roger and it’s too much for Mark to handle alone anymore.
He needs some time away, Roger needs time alone to shoot up. That is just how it works.
“Look, Roger-“
“I said shut up.”
Mark sighs, rubbing his hands over his face as he waits for Roger to say more or shove him off the bed. Anything but just sit there, curled up against himself. He doesn’t move, though, not when he’s worn himself out on the hard part of the withdrawal. After that it is like all the life has been drained out of him. Like that time he saw April on the bathroom floor and didn’t move all day. This frozen, broken way that he is now. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” He waits to be told shut up, but Roger doesn’t seem to have the energy to yell at him again. “You need to get better.”
“Shouldn’t you be working on your film?” Mark frowns down at Roger. He hasn’t picked up his camera in a month but then Roger wouldn’t know that, he’s been too busy going between withdrawals and shooting up when Mark isn’t looking. Mark knows Roger could care less, he just wants Mark to leave him alone. It still seems like a weird thing for him to ask.
“I stopped writing scripts,” Mark confesses. His life has enough drama without his need to create more for film. “Look, Roger, we need to get you healthy.”
“Why?” Roger finally looks up, cheeks streaked with dirty tears that he tries to quickly rub away. “What’s the point of getting better? I’m going to die anyway.”
“I know, but-“
“I’ve lost April and the band and everything that means anything,” Roger says, ignoring Mark this time when he tries to speak up. “I’m never going to write music again, or be in love so what is the point of a few extra years?”
Mark looks down at his hands, picking at a lose thread in his shirt. It hurts that Roger doesn’t want to live any longer, and it hurts more that he seems to think he hasn’t got anything left to live for. There have been times when Mark could have just walked away and never come back to this damn loft. He could have left Roger with his drugs and let him die while Mark detached himself from all this. He found a reason to stay for Roger.
Apparently, he doesn’t matter.
“You don’t know that,” Mark mutters, tearing at the loose threads, needing something to distract his hands when he doesn’t have a camera to hide behind. Carefully he looks back to Roger, his head back between his legs, looking so thin and helpless and all Mark has been trying to do for him, that means nothing.
“I do,” Roger mutters and Mark gives up and leaves the loft for him.
Title: On The Friendship & Sexual Relations (Mostly The Sex) Of Mark J. Cohen & Roger M. Davis
Chapter: Three: Dress Up, Scripts and Sickness
Pairings: Mark/Roger (mentions of April/Roger and Mark/Maureen)
Rating: Nc-17
Word Count: 8,650
Warnings: Umm... Sex? Mark-in-a-skirt, if that frightens you enough to need a warning.
Summary: Lots of people know they're friends, of course, but no one really thinks of all the sex that when into that.
Additional Chapters: Additional Chapters: One: First Times & Blow Jobs, Two: Fucking & Fucking Up, Three: Scripts & Sickness, Four: Jealousy & Drinks, Five: Blindness & Bondage
Crossposted: fuckingartists,rentcubed,below14thstreet,2leather2dildos
On The Friendship & Sexual Relations (Mostly The Sex) Of Mark J. Cohen & Roger M. Davis
Chapter Three: Scripts & Sickness
“You know, I can see what the appeal is with these things.” Mark turns himself around to get a feel for what he’s wearing, his eyes staying on Roger’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. His rock star of a roommate is leaning up against the wall and wearing this huge grin. Mark knows he’s being laughed at, but he just smiles back. Roger has one of those smiles where it’s always so hard not to smile with him.
“Don’t tell me,” he says, shaking his head. Curls of blonde and brown fall into his eyes, making him brush them back behind his ears. He keeps complaining about how he needs to get it bleached and cut again, but Mark thinks the grunge look works for him. He thinks the shaggy, unmatched hair makes him look that much more like a bohemian mess of a rock star, but April favors the short, spiked, and bleached and, seeing as it’s April that ties Roger up nearly every night, he’s going to end up cutting it. “You like it because it makes you feel free.”
“Well, yeah…” He laughs, spinning again and the skirt forms a white ring around his waist. Roger’s smile grows and in the mirror, Mark gives him a pout. “What? If you were in a skirt, you’d be turning around, too. It’s hard to resist.”
This time, Roger doesn’t bother to hide his amusement. He just laughs at Mark and reaches out to tug at the edge of the white skirt. “I think Marilyn Monroe’s skirt was a little longer than this,” he points out, pulling it down to around Mark’s knees, and that’s a stretch of the fabric.
Mark shrugs. Yeah, he’d prefer not having to show off his pale, skinny legs but last minute costume shopping didn’t leave him with much choice. “It’s all I could find,” he explains, adjusting the top. When Collins had seen the costume he’d said that all Mark needed was a wig and a vent and he would make a perfect replica. On his way out the door to his girlfriend’s Hampton based Halloween party, Benny added that he could use make-up and some breasts. Mark doesn’t exactly have those sorts of resources, so he just brushes his hair down the best he can and hopes that works enough to help him pass it off as a planned outfit for the evening. Maureen has been telling him about this party for weeks, and even after agreeing to go, Mark still waited until the last possible moment to get a costume together.
Not the best boyfriend move ever, but Mark has had more things on his mind. Like his films for one, none of which seem to be working for him. And the fact that it’s getting colder and they don’t have money or heat in this place, even with Collin’s job at NYU and Benny working for some real estate guy and Maureen’s stint as a waitress and Roger’s almost steady gigs. All that money seems to disappear before it goes anywhere important. There is that and the needles in the bathroom trash, the way Maureen doesn’t come back some nights. There are things that Mark’s had on his mind, that’s all. So maybe he hasn’t been paying his girlfriend as much attention as he should, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her. It just means that he was a little late with this whole costume thing.
“You think it’s going to pass?” Mark asks, distracting his thoughts by trying to adjust the mimicked Marilyn outfit he is wearing to the party of Maureen’s tonight. They’ll have this party, and this night to forget about everything else, and they’ll be fine.
In the mirror, Roger’s reflection gives a non-helpful shrug. “I guess. As long as people don’t mind being blinded by your legs.”
“Very helpful,” Mark mutters, still messing with the hem of the dress to try and get it lower and hide more of his skin. “It was the only thing -“
“Sure,” Roger says, rolling his eyes, but smiling so Mark knows everything is still alright between them, no matter how bad off every other part of their lives seem. “You sure you’re not just using it as an excuse to wear a skirt?”
This time Mark turns around to face the real Roger instead of the backwards reflect so he can take a swing at his arm. “Shut up,” he says, yelping and jumping back when Roger tries to cuff him back. “You know you like it.”
The rock star smiles and looks ready to lunge forward, and Mark is already squeaking and pushing himself back against the sink. Before Roger can answer, the phone rings, a dead sounding beep filling the room as the answering machine picks up. Neither of them even reaches for the phone. By now, they know that it’s better just to screen. “Pookie?” It’s Maureen’s voice, just a little slurred, coming through the machine. Mark slips by Roger who laughs at him, mouthing the nickname. “Markie, I know you’re there.”
“Hey, Maureen.” When he picks up the phone and shoves it against his ear quickly so that she doesn’t hang up, the background static becomes a whole lot clearer. Music and laughing and clearly a party. Wasn’t she supposed to wait for him?
“Hey, pookie,” she says and, yeah, she’s drunk. Mark sighs, rubbing at his forehead and hoping she hasn’t gotten herself into trouble. He loves her, but he knows Maureen isn’t the best at avoiding attention, good or bad. “You’re still at home, right?”
“Err…” He looks down at the phone. She’s calling the house phone, so it seems like a stupid question. How drunk is she, exactly? “Yeah. I thought you were coming home after work so we could go to that party together.” From the sounds of things, Maureen is at the party and has been for a while, and probably isn’t about to drag herself out of the fun to pick up Mark. Oh, well. Maybe by the time he gets there, she’ll be so out of it he can lead her home without too much of a scene. Mark snorts at his own thoughts. Maureen can’t do anything without making a scene.
“About that…” There is some ruffling, what sounds like a hand going over the receiver and more laughing, some of it Maureen’s. Mark closes his eyes and strains to listen, and maybe he’s just a glutton for punishment but he wants to hear what she’s saying to whoever she has with her right now. All he can hear is some muffled conversation and with the static of the background, he can’t make anything out of it. “I know how much you hate these things,” Maureen says when she gets back on. “Parties and all.”
He opens his eyes again, switching back to Maureen’s slurred voice right in his ear. “I don’t hate parties,” he points out. Sometimes he has more important filming to do, but he likes people and being with others and having fun. He isn’t a hermit, damnit! “I want to go….”
More laughing, and this time Maureen doesn’t even try and hide it. She even does that cute little snort thing that Mark likes to get out of her, and now she’s doing it for some other asshole while Maureen tries to talk Mark into staying away so she can be with the other guy for the night. Mark isn’t stupid, he has got this all figured out. He wants to tell her that, too, to stop treating him like an idiot because he knows what she is doing. He wants her to know that he knows what she’s doing and can’t she just stop already so that they can be happy together?
He swallows hard, knuckles white around the phone as he waits for Maureen to get done laughing with this guy. What can he say? That she shouldn’t be cheating? That it’s wrong for her to screw around? How is that going to sound coming from him after all those slips with Roger, after more than one time ending up with his best friend? Sure, he hasn’t really slept with Roger since Maureen, and he can tell himself that all those other times they mess around are just boys being boys, but more and more it feels less like something you do with your best friend and more like cheating. Mark can’t exactly be on the high moral ground here, so he just has to bite his tongue while Maureen giggles with this guy before she finally remembers Mark. “You’ll have more fun at home, filming,” she points out, drunkenly happy. “I’ll be home later, okay pookie?”
“Oh…” The dial tone goes deep, a low monotone in his ear as Maureen hangs up and goes back to her party. “Kay…” Sighing, Mark puts the phone back in the cradle. Maybe he will get his camera, go out to see what he can film. Anything is better than sticking around the loft, waiting for Maureen to stumble back in and pretend none of this ever happened.
He glances to his camera, waiting for him on the table. As of late all his scripts feel dull and contrived and anything he shoots is just as bad. He wonders why he can’t film anymore, like a huge part of the inspiration for it is gone. He wonders why he isn’t a good enough boyfriend that Maureen feels the need to go to parties and pick up anyone that isn’t him. Maybe if he could get some confidence back with his film he could finally manage to make the movie he wanted. Maybe if he were more self assured and daring instead of just a nervous, failing filmmaker, she would like him more.
“Was that her?” Mark jerks back slightly as Roger jumps up next to him, feet swinging out as he sits down on the edge of the table. Mark looks up at his best friend and he can tell that Roger knows. They all know that Maureen is cheating on him, but no one is going to go as far as to say anything. Like they all know why Roger and April lock themselves in his room for hours on end, coming up dazed and shaking, but if anyone actually calls him on it that will make it too real. So they let it go unsaid.
Mark shrugs and starts tugging at the top of his custom. He’ll change out of this, stuff himself in his room, and try and write another script for his documentary. Maybe something about the rampant sexual freedom of many bohemian New Yorkers today and how it leaves filmmaker’s relationships shattered. “Yeah. She decided to go without me.”
She decided that Mark just wasn’t worth putting up with when she could have someone else. Roger gets that, and he just smiles at Mark. No need to say anything about it. That would be cutting too close to serious conversations and by now both of them have so many secrets and problems that they don’t want to chance anything spilling out. “So I guess you’re gonna go….”
“Write,” Mark fills in, nodding. What did Roger want him to do? Actually go over there and go after Maureen? No, let her have her space. She’ll always come back to Mark, right? He’s safe, trustworthy, and dependable. Sure, he’s not the tough, dangerous, aggressive guy she’s probably sleeping with right now but he doesn’t have to be, because what Maureen wants is someone to come back to. He can be that guy, right? “I’m going to change,” he mutters, not wanting to have to stand out here and think anymore about all the guys that Maureen would rather have right now.
He’s about to head into his room when Roger grabs for him. Well, grabs for the skirt, pulling Mark back. “Too bad,” he says, and Mark twists back to see his friend smiling down at him. That smile that means he has to smile back. “I kind of liked you in this.”
“Gee,” Mark says, rolling his eyes as he reaches back to swat Roger’s hand away so he doesn’t end up ripping the skirt. Maybe he can take it back and get money for it. He wonders if thrift stores will let him return something he bought there for three dollars in the first place. “Why thank you, mister.” It’s supposed to be a Marilyn Monroe impression, but Mark hasn’t seen anything by her since his mom made him watch Gentle Prefer Blondes, so it fails pretty badly. Enough that Roger laughs at him, but at least lets his skirt go so Mark can head back to his room.
“Roger!” Mark swings around fast enough to get whiplash, yelping and hands going to his ass. Roger smiles at him, trying to look innocent with his hands folded perfectly in his lap. Mark just glares, rubbing the skin where Roger had slapped him. “Jerk.”
The innocent look cracks and Roger ends up laughing again. It’s really hard to be upset with Roger when he’s laughing like that, open and soft and Mark pretty much ends up melting, rolling his eyes as he gives up on glowering at his best friend. “What?” he asks, flashing that grin at Mark that looks like it could make his cheeks ache. “Come on. You looked so good. I couldn’t help it.”
“You couldn’t help hitting me on the ass when I walked by?” Mark asks with a raised eyebrow, not quite following the logic in that one.
Roger just keeps smiling at him like it’s perfectly normal to slap your best friend like that when he walks by. “It was so cute.”
“You really do hit on anything in a skirt, don’t you?” Roger laughs again, nodding and looking unashamed. And, okay, it’s funny to watch Roger sitting there, laughing his ass off, and even with his bad mood over his film and Maureen, Mark smiles back.
Something clicks, maybe just because they’re been friends for a while now and Mark is use to playing with Roger like this. Maybe it’s more serious, that whole idea that he is just Maureen’s responsible fallback getting to him. Maybe it’s the fact that for whatever reason, Maureen and him haven’t had sex in a week and he really needs some outlet for all that energy.
Mark leans towards Roger, batting his eyes lashes and making Roger laugh harder until he’s clutching his gut. When Mark sets his hands on Roger’s thighs, sliding between his legs, it isn’t meant to be as funny. It gets Roger’s attention, and he slowly stops laughing, looking down at Mark with a curious expression, waiting to see what he’s doing. Only thing is, Mark doesn’t know what he’s doing. He just wants to push. To show that he isn’t just some scared little would-be college student. He likes parties and people and public sex too, damnit.
“I could sue you for sexual harassment,” he jokes, something he would say even if they were still just messing around and his hands weren’t rubbing up against Roger’s legs. He’s a sexual driven teenage boy, just like all those guys Maureen picks up. He can be just as spontaneous and rough as any of them.
Roger’s legs move apart, forcing Mark’s hands to slide up. He doesn’t seem to mind the touching at all, looking down at Mark through his lashes as he licks at his lips. It’s a nervous habit Mark knows Roger has, but he blocks it out. Roger is a sexual God of a rock star, right? After all this time with him, Mark has shaken a lot of those old myths he use to think about Roger, but that is one he never shook. Roger can’t get nervous about sex. “I don’t think you would.”
“Maybe…” Mark has lost most his interest in the conversation. He takes a deep breath to gather up his nerves as he reaches for the zipper of Roger’s jeans. If Maureen is going to go out and cheat that Mark can certainly… He isn’t even sure what he’s doing anymore. Just pushing himself on, not wanting to accept that he’s just Maureen’s back up plan. He has to be worth a little more than that even if it’s just being more than a best friend to Roger.
Roger doesn’t argue with the plan, lifting his hips so that Mark can pull off his jeans, pulling off his own shirt. He doesn’t say anything until Mark slips the top off and starts to wiggle out of the skirt. Then Roger reaches for him, pulling at his arms. “Leave it on?”
Mark looks up at Roger, raising an eyebrow at the request. Roger keeps looking down at him with dark, serious eyes and, well… Later he’ll tease Roger over this kink. Right now he nods and stops trying to get out of the skirt. “Okay.”
Roger smiles at him and Mark smiles back. It’s awkward for a moment, Roger sitting in front of him naked, Mark standing there with a skirt hanging around his waist and both know what is going to happen and both know that it shouldn’t and neither is doing anything to stop it. He could still leave, Mark thinks. He could be the safe guy that Maureen wants, turn around, and leave right now. They haven’t done anything other than undress one another. He could still leave.
Roger hesitates as he leans forward, bends down until he’s kissing Mark, and then he knows that he isn’t going to just walk away from this. It’s what he has been pushing for, and the moment Roger kisses him Mark snaps. He presses into Roger, hands wrapping around his neck and he pulls him down into a hard, deep kiss. The kind that can leave lips bruised, tongues eagerly sliding against one another and mouths smashed together. Messy and rough, the sort of kiss that good, level-headed cameramen do not give. The kind that, when they break apart, leave Roger breathless and flushed and still staring down at Mark like he has never seen him before.
Tangling his fingers into Roger’s shaggy hair, Mark takes a step back and tugs him down off the table. Further down, pushing him to his knees. If he has control over nothing else in his life he has this at least. Pulling his skirt up and yanking Roger forward and before he can even say anything Roger has his cock in his mouth, wrapping his lips around him.
He closes his eyes, tells himself he can pretend Maureen is the one sucking him off. The skirt flutters down over Roger’s head, hiding those curls and his lips stretched around his cock, and Mark lies to himself and says he can pretend it’s his girlfriend. Only Roger’s mouth is hot and wet around his erection, and when Roger groans it sends jolts right up Mark and he doesn’t want it to be Maureen. His hand tightens in Roger’s hair until he’s pulling him down around his cock, loosing track of coherent thoughts because who cares. Fingers slide between Mark and Roger’s lips, and Mark looks down, whining with him and tugging at his hair. No, he just wants Roger’s mouth and he can’t find the strength to form words right now but even with his disjointed thoughts he knows that he wants Roger to finish and not start pulling away.
Finally Roger pulls his hand away, going back to sucking around Mark, tongue running against him and fingers sliding up his leg. Mark groans and nearly falls forward, catching himself on the table as Roger rubs his fingers against him. It stings but not enough that Mark wants him to stop. Just enough that he wants more, that he’s spreading his legs for Roger, thrusting harder into his mouth. Whimpering and moaning softly as he rocks back against Roger’s hand.
“Up,” he whines, tugging at Roger’s hair until he’s dragged him off the floor. He wants to, needs to kiss him right now, so hard that their teeth clash together and Roger stumbles back and Mark doesn’t let him go.
See, he isn’t safe or reliable. He is bohemian, unpredictable, not the boyfriend waiting at home while he’s girlfriend is out getting fucked.
Mark pushes Roger back to break the kiss, and Roger hits the edge of the table with a groan. “Didn’t know you could get that rough,” Roger chuckles but, really, he shouldn’t be talking right now. This isn’t about him making snippy comments so that what they’re doing seems harmless and friendly. Mark doesn’t have time to keep that line drawn. Maureen thinks he’s safe and waiting for her, and Mark is still reeling from that and small things like making sure that this is nothing more than helping a friend out don’t matter anymore.
What would Maureen think if she knew that her safe, predictable filmmaker was pushing his best friend up onto the table, straddling his hips as he bites at Roger’s lips. He doesn’t pay attention to his friend’s surprised look because, hey, Maureen would probably be more surprised wouldn’t she? Walking in with whatever guy she has tonight and finding Mark on top of Roger, skirt around their laps as he undoes Roger’s jeans, hand wrapped around his friend’s cock and Roger doesn’t seem to mind the roughness anymore. Good, because Mark is past the point of stopping because Maureen seems to forget that Mark isn’t just some wimp with a camera that she picked up of the street.
“Fuck.” Beneath him, Roger’s body arches up from the hard metal table, erection pushing further into Mark’s tight first. “Dude, don’t bite that hard.” Mark kisses at Roger’s shoulder, teeth marks embedded in his skin.
“What’s wrong with being rough?” Mark asks as he grabs a condom from Roger’s pocket, and it’s a good thing the rock star always has at least three on him. Why does everyone think Mark is going to be gentle and blind when his friends mess up? Just because he doesn’t bring up Maureen’s constant cheating or how Benny is on his way to abandoning them or that Roger is fucking dying on him and no one seems to notice how bottled up these things get.
Mark grabs onto Roger’s hips as he slams himself down against Roger’s cock and, fuck, yes it burns and hurts like hell but at least it’s something. Something more than waiting for Maureen to get home drunk or Roger shooting up and Mark unable to do anything or watching Collins getting sicker every day because some fucking student didn’t tell him he was positive. At least it’s something else.
Mark screams loud enough to disturb that girl who just moved in under them. His nails dig into Roger’s hips, keeping him pinned to the table as he moves against him. Whimpering beneath him, trying to thrust his hips up, Roger reaches out for Mark, pushing the white skirt away as he wraps his callused fingers around Mark’s cock. All of it rough, hurried and not something friends do. Not something boyfriends with girlfriends who expect them to be a fall back, always there, secure and blindly follow sort of love.
It’s probably not even something a bohemian socialist putting his whole heart into an art that has never once given him anything back should be doing, but sex doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t stop just because Mark should know better, and he keeps slamming his hips back and thrusting into Roger’s hand, riding it out until he’s coming, until he can feel Roger shuddering beneath him.
“You didn’t even sing me happy birthday,” Roger whispers, panting against Mark’s shoulder as they lay there on the cold tabletop, still tangled together, Mark’s skirt soaking in the mess between them. Any minute April could walk through that door and pull Roger away from him with a needle or Maureen could come home, flaunting her activities, trying to get any sort of attention from Mark just so he’ll give her attention, and Mark needs to get himself up and cleaned so he can go back to his regular routine. Pretending not to see what is right in front of his face.
*
VOICE OVER (STANLEY BRIDGES)
November 18, and New York is a frozen hell still. The buildings rise out from the ice, trapped like Lucifer and chewing at her denizens to spit them from corporate America, souls devoured and shredded past recognition. In Alphabet City, the artists and the homeless merge as twisted bodies locked under the ice, distorted versions of the real selves as they try and fight off the deadly winter in any means possible, losing that inch of dignity and integrity they’re so desperately clinging to. We all fester in this Dis, forgotten and scorned for not selling ourselves out. Left to freeze in this icy hell for the sins of a heretic against the capitalist nation. For believing in unity, originality, and truth in the face of the masses.
“You worthless BITCH.”
The shout bursts into Mark’s creative flow, fingers pausing over the keys of his typewriter. The tips of his pale fingers poke out of ragged clothes, posed over the keys of the broken machine as he tries to finish yet another script. Beside him is a pile of papers that he’s already given up on, just like he’s given up on every single other script he has ever tried to produce. Now his next attempt is being interrupted by Roger’s angry voice breaking through the walls. One room over, he can hear April scream and something heavy land on the floor. Roger doesn’t scream back, so it probably isn’t his guitar.
Mark shuts his eyes, fingers brushing against the keys. He doesn’t have to have his eyes opened to type, and even if he did it wouldn’t matter, since half the keys have had their white letters rubbed off a long time before he found this typewriter. At least with his eyes closed, he can pretend to ignore the fight while he keeps trying to write.
Ask any artist whether they regret plunging themselves into such depths as these and they’ll defend their decision to the death, which as the snow gathers on the street seems to be inching closer yet. They want nothing to do with money or fortunate and they only live for their art. Only paintings aren’t going to keep us warm, you can’t even burn them, and poetry won’t fill anything but your soul and our souls aren’t twisting and growling out of hunger. Maybe I’m weak, but as the winter drags on you wonder which hell is worse. This frozen terrain of art, or the bleak picture of the yuppies up street have painted for themselves. Back at my safe haven against this ruthless season, my friends are beginning to fall apart.
“That’s fucking hysterical, coming from you!” Mark takes a deep breath, fingers pulling back from the keys before they twitch and mess up his paper. April’s voice is high and loud enough that he’s sure the whole building can hear her yelling back at Roger. “You can’t even get a fucking gig. Hell, you haven’t written anything worth listening to in YEARS and you call ME worthless? At least I have a job!”
“Flirting half naked with a bunch of drunken yuppies at some hotel bar isn’t a job!” Roger yells back, and the fist against the wall makes Mark stumble, the typewrite rattling in his lap. He clings to it to keep it from falling onto his bed.
“It’s better than anything YOU’VE done with YOUR life!” They sound like his parents. Well, with more cursing and usually his mom and dad tried to keep their voices down so that the kids couldn’t hear, where Roger and April are loud enough to wake up the whole building as they scream back and fourth at one another. It’s the same feeling that Mark used to get, though, when he sat up in his room listening to his mom and dad. He knew back then that the fights didn’t mean much, and he knows that, just like his parents, April and Roger’s fights are just a way to break the tension between them. Nothing serious, something that all couples did. They leave him with this feeling that he can’t explain, though.
Like back at home when he wished the fights would mean something so that his mom and dad did divorce so that he wouldn’t have to deal with them together anymore. An almost wistful feeling.
Shaking his head, he adjusts the typewriter in his lap once again.
It won’t be long before Bobby gives up and moves away from this hell and into the other. He’s already asking me to come with him, to escape from this artist encampment where all these geniuses get sucked in and wiped out. The scary part is how much I want to go with him. How easy it would be to give up on this life we’re living and try to find something better. Even our resident anarchist, Jack Daniels, has found a better place to be. In Boston to teach the upper class minds of MIT. Warm and tucked away, and even though his job isn’t as disgusting as the marriage of Bobby to the murderer of the artists, I know that even he feels like he is abandoning some inch of him.
“You’re a fucking whore, April!” Mark wishes that Collins were here right now. He’s pretty sure he would hand them both a joint and tell them to calm the fuck down, that their yelling isn’t doing anything. It’s like fucking for virginity, killing for peace. They both need to settle down or they won’t get anything done. Mark could go in there and tell them that himself, but he is afraid to look at Roger anymore.
He can see his ribs and thinning hair and shaking hands and… Well, it’s none of his business if they’re fighting. He should just stay out of it. That is what he needs to do. Just keep writing his script, making his film. That is why he is here in New York. Not to look out for some guy he happened to sleep with once back in high school. There are things more important than sex and friends. Like finishing this film.
The cold has even made lovers brittle and easy to snap into pieces, like a thin icicle hanging from the fire escape. Moria keeps asking me what is more important
MORIA JEFFERSON
Me or that fucking book of yours?
“Well if you had a job I wouldn’t have had to fuck him!” There is another loud noise, and this time Mark is certain it’s Roger throwing something across the room. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses enter on the typewriter. Maybe he’ll finally leave April for this, and then life will go back to how it was before her and Mark will finish this film and Roger will get healthy again. He just needs to keep working and not interfere.
STANLEY BRIDGES
Moria, you know that isn’t a fair question...
“I knew it! I knew you would just run back to him again. I fucking knew it.”
MORIA JEFFERSON
What’s so hard about it, Stan?
“Of course you knew it, Roger. You’ve accused me of it every day. How do you think I feel, every time I’m late being accused of fucking my ex?”
STANLEY BRIDGES
You and this book, they’re entirely different things to me. You’re… Well, I love you.
“But you did it! God, I knew that you were still seeing him!”
MORIA JEFFERSON
No, you love fucking me. You LOVE that damn novel. You spend so much time with it I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re jerking off over your damn typewriter. It gets more attention than me and I’m your damn girlfriend.
“I wasn’t still seeing him! I did it ONCE and you practically asked me to, begging for our next hit and how else was I supposed to get it? You always do this. You always push away every time you think these things aren’t going your way. You’re like a fucking kid and… I… I can’t take this anymore. You think I’m cheating on you. Fine. I’ll go fucking cheat on you, you asshole!” Mark winces when he hears the door slam, but he doesn’t pull back from writing this time. He can’t and his fingers fly over the keys, possessed with the flow of the piece.
STANLEY BRIDGES
Maybe because it’s the only thing I have left! The only thing that won’t leave me is my art. I need to have control over that at least, Moria. Art can’t lie to me. Art can’t pretend that she is waiting for me to notice her when in reality she is out every night making sure get noticed by everyone but me! It’s time we all stopped pretending. Stop pretending we didn’t all want to follow after Bobby, that we’re not scared as hell to spend another year trapped here. Stop pretending that we’re okay with Jack being sick. I need to stop pretending that you’re going to realize how wrong you are and come back to be with just me, and that Roger is over in the next room dying from the drugs May is feeding him. This novel is the last thing that I’ll have left when you finally leave me and when Roger dies and when Bobby and Collins just stop coming back.
The truth of our relationship is that it’s falling apart. The truth of Roger’s drug use is that it’s killing him. The truth is this film is the only thing I have left to keep me going when I can see everyone in my life falling away. So it’s about time that we stopped pretending and I started to stand up to you, to him, to myself and change something.
Mark yelps, typewriter falling off his lap when the knock on he door break into his concentration. “Yeah?” He asks, scrambling to get his typewriter back up and make sure no more keys have fallen off. He keeps his eyes on the old machine, readjusting the crumbled paper and checking it over again. With his eye on the typewriter, he can’t look up to see Roger pushing open the door.
He watches his friend out of the corner of his eyes, not looking up to him. He is too busy making sure his script is unharmed. “Hey…”
“Hey,” Mark mutter back, eyes screwed up in concentration. Just keep his head down, and even if the shadow of Roger is shifting through his room as he leans up against the doorframe, Mark can’t actually see him or his hollowed, sick face or marked-up arms.
“Look you….” Roger is starting to twitch. The only times him and April get into fights, those are when Roger is twitching. When he isn’t shooting up regularly, this is how he gets. “You have that money your mom sent you for your birthday, right?” Mark can see where this is going, he can see what is about to happen and all he has to do is lie and shake his head and that will be the end of that. Roger won’t get his money and won’t get his drugs and Mark will save him that much, at least. Even if Roger goes out and gets the money from somewhere else, at least Mark will be innocent of helping his friend. He wouldn’t be saving Roger, but at least he wouldn’t be encouraging this and pushing him closer off the edge. “Could I maybe borrow some?”
“Yeah.” Mark leans back, reaching for his drawer and pulling out what is left of their money. Food money. Living money. Drug money, because if Roger doesn’t get it from him he’ll just find another way and Mark doesn’t have it in him to fight with Roger over this. “This be enough?” And he just hands him what is left.
Roger doesn’t even smile when he takes the money. With how beaten up and dry his lips look, Mark is pretty sure that if he smiles he’d end up bleeding. “Thanks,” he mutters before turning and leaving Mark with his film.
*
Mark never really thought about that old saying, six feet under. It isn’t that he never heard it, but like ‘raining cats and dogs’ he just accepted it as a part of speech. He never really thought that the holes they dig to lower the body in would seem six feet deep. Dark and brown as the dark tumbles in after the coffin. Mark leans over the side, dropping his rose over the top as the mechanical rigs creak as they take the body down. The hole must really be six feet. It looks like it could swallow Mark whole, right down into the earth.
“Mark? Mark, come on…” Mark looks back to Maureen who is tugging at his jacket. “It’s cold out here.”
It’s the middle of December in New York city, of course it’s cold. Something about the open field of the graveyard makes it seem colder and even his jacket and Maureen pressed against him doesn’t make Mark any warmer. This is the first time she’s held onto him like this in a long time, and all it took was April killing herself.
“Wait,” he says, shaking his head when she tries to pull away. Collins has already left, walking a few of April’s friends back home. Benny couldn’t be bothered to show up, not with his business meeting, and even April’s dad walked out after looking down at the body of his little girl tucked away in her coffin. She looks peaceful, Mark thought. Like she did when she was high and curled up beside Roger. Like when they were happy, and even though she is dead she has more color in her cheeks now than she has these past few months. Everyone could look at her and tell that it was close to the end, but no one said anything. No one brought it up, so April took things into her own hands. April has always been a little aggressive, a little dramatic. She has always been the sort of girl that wouldn’t just sit around and wait for fate to catch up to her.
Still, when she was laying her coffin she looked peaceful. Like she was on heroin. Like she died high and will stay that way forever.
“Everyone else is gone,” Maureen points out, and she keeps tugging at Mark’s jacket to try and get him to turn away as these works lower April down into the hole. Everything April ever did was fast and fierce. Her and Roger’s fights to the sex afterwards, there was no bottling that up. You couldn’t even get that in a needle. But now she’s dead, and all of that really doesn’t matter. Now she is just the suicidal junkie girl they once knew.
She should have picked a better time. If she really wanted attention she would have waited until Collins wasn’t preparing to leave in January to MIT and Benny wasn’t about to move out. She would have waited until Maureen and Mark’s rocky relationship had settled down so that they were actually concerned with something other than themselves. Mostly, she would have given Roger time to go through withdrawal, for his friends to prepare him for that note she left behind because now no one has time to mourn. They all have something else to worry about.
“I promised Roger,” Mark mutters, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small pick. He hadn’t actually promised Roger. Roger hasn’t spoken up in two days expect to scream at night. Roger can’t even drag himself out of bed for his girlfriend’s funeral but if he could, Mark would know what he would want. He throws the guitar pick over the roses on top of the coffin. It’s a lame gesture coming from him, and it doesn’t mean anything to April who is on her way to becoming nothing but dirt and a bad memory.
Wrapping his arms around Maureen, they watch as the guys with the machines that go six feet into the ground pack up and move out. “You know, I never really liked her,” Maureen says, leaning her head against Mark’s shoulder.
The truth is that Roger was into drugs way before April, and Mark saw him back in high school and he knows his best friend has always been self-destructive. The truth is that the HIV test doesn’t say whose fault it is, and Mark knows that it’s just as likely to be Roger’s and it was April’s. But that doesn’t change the fact that Roger is the one back at the loft waiting on them and Roger is the one still alive while April chickened out without even saying goodbye. The truth doesn’t really matter anymore, and they are all too self-involved to put the blame on themselves. So it gets buried six feet under, with her.
“We should head back,” Mark says as he lets go of Maureen, and they are still holding hands as they turn and walk away from the grave. “Roger might need something.”
“Yeah,” Maureen says, rolling her eyes. “Heroin.”
Mark gives her a sideways look. “He needs our help.” April didn’t hurt too much, for all these reasons. She left his best friend behind, broken and sick, and Mark can’t make himself care right now that she’s dead. He has something else he needs to concentrate on, like getting Roger through this. He doesn’t know what he would do, though, if it were Roger they were walking away from right now. Maybe that wouldn’t hurt at all, either.
“Of course he does,” Maureen says, voice dripping with sarcasm as it usually does. “Because he was just asking for it yesterday, when you tried, right?”
Mark flinches, letting go of Maureen’s hand and they’re back to how they have been these last few months. Hardly touching at all. “He’s upset about-”
“Smack!” Maureen says without giving him time to reply. “He’s upset because he hasn’t had a hit in two days.”
“His girlfriend just died,” Mark points out without looking back at her as he walks off. In the background the crane is dumping dirt over April’s dead body, and they all know that April’s death is only part of it. They have their own lives to worry about, and she fades out of Mark’s mind pretty quickly with every step back towards the loft.
“You know that isn’t it,” Maureen says, and Mark can feel her shooting a nasty look at him even as she trails behind, trying not to trip over headstones in her heels. “He needs help, Mark, and not just some best friend trying to keep him safe.”
It feels like he’s hand this conversation at least a hundred times since they found that note, three days ago, and the body beside it. Since they knew that the way Roger has been thinning out, it isn’t just the heroin and they have to do something or Mark would be losing his friend way too quickly. “I am helping him.”
“You’re being selfish.”
Mark freezes for a second, turning around to look at his girlfriend, if she is even still that. “Excuse me? I’m being selfish for what? Trying to save my best friend. That’s just great coming from the girl that the whole world has to revolve around at all times!” It is supposed to hurt, just a little, because Mark knows what is coming, and he wants to hurt her before she starts in with him.
Maureen doesn’t look like she believes him at all. “I heard you and Collins talking about it. He’s right. Roger needs to be in rehab.”
“He doesn’t want rehab.” This is crazy. They can’t be standing out here in December why they’re coving up April’s grave, yelling over the sounds of the crane and the dirt hitting her coffin.
“It doesn’t matter if he wants it.” Maureen sighs, throwing her hands into the air. Overdramatic, even if the only ones around to see are Mark and a bunch of dead guys. “He’s DYING Mark, and you’re being selfish by giving him what he wants. You want to be the good best friend, fine. You want to replace April and give him what he wants instead of what you know is right, fine, but remember that April is currently dead and Roger isn’t doing much better.”
“He wants to stay-“
“Of course he’s wants to stay!” Maureen says, pushing herself up closer to Mark, practically shoving him back. “He’s a junkie and heroin makes him feel good and look at his life! He doesn’t want to be put away in some rehab centered where they’re going to make him actually deal with his problems. It’s Roger, for fuck sake, he wants to get high!”
It’s all too much. Mark’s life, it’s getting to be too much. He turns back around, heading away from April and Maureen and everything that is too honest, too blunt and in his face to deal with right now. “Fucking men!” Maureen yells at his back but Mark just keeps his eyes straight ahead, storming back to the loft. It isn’t selfish to want to keep Roger close for however much time he has left. What would Maureen really know about loving someone, anyway?
*
“I hate you every time you do this.”
Roger looks up from his beds. He’s curled up against the wall, hugging his knees to his chest, blankets soaked in sweat. He manages a weak glower before his head falls back to his chest, and Mark can hear something like muffled sobbing. That is the only reaction he gets, but it’s better than usual. He’s come down from the serious withdrawal, at least for a while. He isn’t shaking so hard anymore or crying out, doesn’t try and attract anyone who gets too close, blinding striking out against his nightmares. Seeing Roger hardly able to move, so thin and frail looking that it seems a gust of wind might shatter him, that’s an improvement.
“I told you,” Mark says, taking a step into the room. This time Roger doesn’t even look up, but Mark waits every time he takes a step closer to make sure that Roger isn’t going to jump up and shove him away. “Every time you make it that much harder on yourself.” Another step, and another until Mark is right at the bedside. He puts down the cold water he brought in with him and leans down to pick up the AZT from the floor, putting it back into the bottle. “You know, every time you shoot up against it-“
“I get it,” Roger mutters. Mark stops popping the cap on to listen to him. If he didn’t listen hard he wouldn’t have heard Roger speak up at all, his voice sounding like a dull and quiet growl. Mark can’t tell if it is from screaming for the last hour or if he just doesn’t have enough energy to push the sound out.
“You keep shooting up,” Mark points out as he sets the bottle on the table next to the cold glass of water. Not that he can get Roger to take them. In the last seven months, he’s gotten Roger to take maybe a week’s worth. He’s getting a little better at it, sometimes. When he is in one of these almost catatonic states, sometimes Mark can get him to take the pills. “You say you know better but-“
“Shut up,” Roger mutters, head not lifting up from his chest, hidden in his arms wrapped over his knees. Mark sighs and pushes himself up off the floor, sitting down onto Roger’s mattress. He moved him out of the room and into the living room, closer to the bathroom and the kitchen. He figured it’d be easier to keep an eye on him but sometimes Mark can’t take it anymore. Sometimes he doesn’t want to keep an eye on him, and he needs to get out. He just leaves the loft and he knows when he gets back Roger will be high but he can’t take it anymore. Even if Maureen hasn’t moved out yet, she doesn’t stay around long enough to look after Roger and it’s too much for Mark to handle alone anymore.
He needs some time away, Roger needs time alone to shoot up. That is just how it works.
“Look, Roger-“
“I said shut up.”
Mark sighs, rubbing his hands over his face as he waits for Roger to say more or shove him off the bed. Anything but just sit there, curled up against himself. He doesn’t move, though, not when he’s worn himself out on the hard part of the withdrawal. After that it is like all the life has been drained out of him. Like that time he saw April on the bathroom floor and didn’t move all day. This frozen, broken way that he is now. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” He waits to be told shut up, but Roger doesn’t seem to have the energy to yell at him again. “You need to get better.”
“Shouldn’t you be working on your film?” Mark frowns down at Roger. He hasn’t picked up his camera in a month but then Roger wouldn’t know that, he’s been too busy going between withdrawals and shooting up when Mark isn’t looking. Mark knows Roger could care less, he just wants Mark to leave him alone. It still seems like a weird thing for him to ask.
“I stopped writing scripts,” Mark confesses. His life has enough drama without his need to create more for film. “Look, Roger, we need to get you healthy.”
“Why?” Roger finally looks up, cheeks streaked with dirty tears that he tries to quickly rub away. “What’s the point of getting better? I’m going to die anyway.”
“I know, but-“
“I’ve lost April and the band and everything that means anything,” Roger says, ignoring Mark this time when he tries to speak up. “I’m never going to write music again, or be in love so what is the point of a few extra years?”
Mark looks down at his hands, picking at a lose thread in his shirt. It hurts that Roger doesn’t want to live any longer, and it hurts more that he seems to think he hasn’t got anything left to live for. There have been times when Mark could have just walked away and never come back to this damn loft. He could have left Roger with his drugs and let him die while Mark detached himself from all this. He found a reason to stay for Roger.
Apparently, he doesn’t matter.
“You don’t know that,” Mark mutters, tearing at the loose threads, needing something to distract his hands when he doesn’t have a camera to hide behind. Carefully he looks back to Roger, his head back between his legs, looking so thin and helpless and all Mark has been trying to do for him, that means nothing.
“I do,” Roger mutters and Mark gives up and leaves the loft for him.