Push Too Hard, Rent, Mark/Roger, PG-13
Title: Push Too Hard
Fandom: Rent
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2043
Notes: More inmates fic. Born of my desire to see the boys punch each other. For holycitygirl, who actually wrote an end to this.
The letter comes on a Tuesday, and Mark only remembers this because it’s the first time in weeks that he’s actually managed to figure out what day of the week it is. Mark shouldn’t know this, but he does. It’s his last attempt for normalcy here, one that he returns to on occasion when things start to grate his every nerve.
He knows that he is already not in the best of moods when the letter comes.
He’s not sure what it says, but it must be important what with the way Roger carries it with him all day, pulling it out and rereading it whenever he gets the chance. The letter itself doesn’t bother Mark; it’s the fact that Roger offers no information about it when they’ve shared everything the past few months-a cell, a meal, a bed. And he hates that Roger has secrets from him. Mark shouldn’t hate this, but he does.
He manages to ignore his curiosity all day. Most of Roger’s life outside of the prison walls is still very much a mystery to Mark; he shouldn’t let some silly letter that could very well be from his mother get to him. But it does. And come lights out when the darkness isn’t replaced by Roger’s hands and lips, Mark can’t stand it.
“What’s with you? You’ve been quiet all day.”
Roger says nothing, but Mark knows he isn’t asleep because his breathing isn’t right. Mark shouldn’t know this, but he does.
“Roger, come on. I know it’s got something to do with that letter you got.” He holds his breath and waits for the details to descend from the bunk above.
“Fuck off, Cohen.”
He shouldn’t be hurt by this, but he is.
***
Roger has spent the past seven months trying to forget about April. He hates to cut and run, but he’s been trying to disentangle himself from her for almost a year. She’s his bad penny, and this is the only place he knows she won’t turn up. Prison, strangely enough, has its benefits.
But then he gets a letter, the first he’s heard from anyone in months and that’s no surprise with the company he keeps, and he recognizes the slanted scrawl, scribbled by shaking hands. He holds it in his hands for a full twenty minutes before he can bring himself to open it.
Mark is watching. Mark is always watching. And as he tears the envelope, he knows he should just tell him. April is the only person in his life worth a name and a story, but Roger has never been able to bring himself to share either with Mark.
The letter reveals what he was afraid of: nothing has changed for her. She’s pouring a poor substitute for life into a needle and into her veins, and she just can’t fucking shake it. She’s crashing on floors and turning the occasional trick to fuel a habit that he’d been trying to help her break before he got picked up. She’s cracked throughout, and the lightest breath will shatter her. It’s no way to live what with all the wolves and demons, landlords and pimps, breathing down her neck.
He reads the letter, and he knows it’s too late.
She’s asked for help from the one person who can’t help her. The postmark reads from over a week ago. He reads “help me, baby” and “I can’t do this anymore” and “I’m sorry” and knows that it’s a miracle she even managed to make it to a mailbox.
It’s a suicide note. And in his gut, he knows that if she isn’t gone already, she will be soon.
***
Mark treads softly the next day and pretends that this isn’t eating away at him in excruciating little bits like when Roger doesn’t eat breakfast or when Rafferty’s cellmate knocks into him in the exercise yard and Roger doesn’t say anything.
“What’s up?” Collins asks Mark with a nod in Roger’s direction.
“Won’t say. Been like this since yesterday.”
“He ain’t told you? What with you two whispering together all the time like a couple of twelve year old girls?”
Mark shrugs, and Collins lets out a low whistle. “Damn. Must be something big. Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll tell you in his own time.”
That afternoon at lunch, Collins and Mark exchange glances as Roger chases corn around his plate with his fork.
“You need to eat something, man,” Collins says, and Mark’s grateful he’s not the only one with the urge to mother his cellmate. Somehow his own concern doesn’t seem as absurd with Collins there beside him.
“And you need to just quit it,” Roger says.
Collins drops his spoon and sticks his finger in Roger’s face. “Lose the attitude, man. Mark may be your bitch, but I ain’t gonna take it.”
Mark snaps his head around to look at Collins. “Hey!”
But Roger starts to smirk and covers it up by shoveling food into his mouth. Collins shoots Mark a wink, and he unclenches.
***
Roger knows he can’t keep this to himself for much longer. He knows that Mark’s constant concerned glances are enough to make him snap. And he knows that the only thing he can do about any of it from in here is to talk to someone about it. It’s too late for April, but he knows he has to do what he can to preserve his own sanity. It’s the only thing he has left.
So when lights out comes, he climbs down onto Mark’s bed where Mark has been waiting for him.
“What’s going on?” he whispers, and even in the dark, Roger can see him start to reach out for him and stop.
Roger wonders where to start, and maybe he should have thought about this in all the time it took him to work up the courage to tell Mark.
“You know,” he says finally, “that I’ve done some stupid shit. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I told you that I was doing drugs for a while. Heroin, mostly, but I got clean. What I didn’t tell you is that I have a girlfriend who came along for the ride. And she wasn’t as lucky as I was when it came to detoxing.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
Roger nods. “Nearly three years now. She was… well, a groupie, I guess. Who became more.”
Mark says nothing, doesn’t move, barely breathes. Roger rushes on to fill the silence.
“She’s got problems. She’s got a lot of problems. We kind of fell into that whole mess together, and things got messy really fast. And that letter… from the sounds of things, she isn’t handling them well. Not with me away in here. And it’s just a reality check that I wasn’t expecting.”
Mark sits up. “Do you love her?”
“Sure.”
“Sure?” He can hear Mark holding back, but his derisiveness is unmistakable, and when Mark stands, Roger follows, one finger jabbing a warning in the darkness between them.
“Don’t.”
“Sure is what you say when someone asks if you want more mashed potatoes or if you feel like catching a movie on Saturday.”
“I said don’t.”
And he’s wishing he were back in bed, and he’s wishing that he never said anything at all, and he’s wishing he didn’t feel the compulsion to tell Mark things when he know he should keep them to himself. And he’s wishing he’d ended up in a cell with Rafferty because then he wouldn’t have slipped into this comfort zone where he and Mark think they know every thing about each other when they’re little more than strangers crammed into a hole together.
“I just don’t see why you’re so upset,” Mark says, and Roger hears his tone and wonders if maybe he ignored Mark for a bit too long this past week because he’s clearly picking a fight. “I mean, you didn’t care about her enough to even tell anyone about her. She was a junkie, and from the sound of things, she was just using you for a quick fix and a casual screw with someone who might be famous one day.”
Roger isn’t conscious of the fist forming or pulling back, but fuck, he feels it as his knuckles connect with Mark’s cheekbone. In the back of his mind, he wonders if it’s caught the guards’ attention, but the rest of him is focused on grabbing Mark by his collar and hauling him back to his feet so he can send him to the floor again.
Mark’s face is filled with an anger he’s never witnessed before, not even when he’s watched him rant about Rafferty and what he’d like to do with him, not even before Roger really knew him, when he saw him go off on some guy in the food line for bumping into him. He had thought that it was genuine, but now he knows that Mark was just trying to play tough guy so he could build up a rep that wouldn’t get his ass kicked. You have to play people here. Roger, like any new inmate, learned that quick. Mark’s fingers grapple at his own, trying to pry his grip from his shirt.
“Fuck you, you know it’s true.”
“Don’t you fucking ever talk about her again. Don’t even so much as fucking mention her name, you understand?”
He has Mark backed against the wall, and surely the guards have heard the screaming. He knows they’ll come soon; they’ll let two trouble makers tear each other apart for a bit, just to save themselves the trouble of trying to put them in their place. But he and Mark have kept their noses fairly clean.
Mark’s hand flies out and connects with the side of his face, and it’s just enough to distract him as Mark throws him off and backs away to the far corner.
“You don’t know. You don’t know me, and you don’t know her, you fucking little shit.”
Coffin’s face appears in the small window that offers them a sprawling view of Unit 9, and Roger’s grateful for small favors. Coffin treats them all right, mostly because he’d rather not bother with the paperwork of taking action against them. He raps on the door. “What the hell is going on?”
Mark and Roger stare each other down, trying to see how to play the situation without having to exchange words. Mark’s lip is bleeding; Roger’s eye is already starting to swell.
“If I have to open this door, you’re both getting solitary for a week. And if you both don’t tell me there isn’t a problem by the time Grey gets up here, there’s going to be real trouble.”
Mark drops Roger’s gaze as he swipes at his mouth, and the decision is made. It’s up to Roger to handle this. To decide if they’re going to be able to work through this in a way that doesn’t draw the guards’ attention again, or if they need a week apart to cool off.
“That’s it. Put your hands on your heads and step into the middle of the cell.”
“No, it’s cool, man,” Roger assures him, but at the same time he follows Coffin’s orders, just in case the opportunity has passed. He feels Mark standing behind him, still allowing him to control the situation.
“That right, Cohen?”
Roger holds his breath, can feel his knuckles throbbing with each beat of his heart, and waits for Mark’s answer.
“Yes, sir. Everything’s fine. Just got a bit claustrophobic in here. You know.”
Coffin’s eyes glance back and forth between them, and then he pulls back. “You keep it down then. I’m gonna have my eye on you two. Another sound, and you’re both in isolation.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.” Roger says.
Neither of them move until they can no longer hear Coffin’s footsteps in the hall. Then Roger spins around and jabs his finger in Mark’s chest.
“Don’t fucking talk to me. Don’t say a fucking word, understand?”
Mark lets his hands fall from where he had clasped them behind his head, and Roger can feel his eyes follow him as he climbs into his bunk and turns to face the wall.
Fandom: Rent
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2043
Notes: More inmates fic. Born of my desire to see the boys punch each other. For holycitygirl, who actually wrote an end to this.
The letter comes on a Tuesday, and Mark only remembers this because it’s the first time in weeks that he’s actually managed to figure out what day of the week it is. Mark shouldn’t know this, but he does. It’s his last attempt for normalcy here, one that he returns to on occasion when things start to grate his every nerve.
He knows that he is already not in the best of moods when the letter comes.
He’s not sure what it says, but it must be important what with the way Roger carries it with him all day, pulling it out and rereading it whenever he gets the chance. The letter itself doesn’t bother Mark; it’s the fact that Roger offers no information about it when they’ve shared everything the past few months-a cell, a meal, a bed. And he hates that Roger has secrets from him. Mark shouldn’t hate this, but he does.
He manages to ignore his curiosity all day. Most of Roger’s life outside of the prison walls is still very much a mystery to Mark; he shouldn’t let some silly letter that could very well be from his mother get to him. But it does. And come lights out when the darkness isn’t replaced by Roger’s hands and lips, Mark can’t stand it.
“What’s with you? You’ve been quiet all day.”
Roger says nothing, but Mark knows he isn’t asleep because his breathing isn’t right. Mark shouldn’t know this, but he does.
“Roger, come on. I know it’s got something to do with that letter you got.” He holds his breath and waits for the details to descend from the bunk above.
“Fuck off, Cohen.”
He shouldn’t be hurt by this, but he is.
***
Roger has spent the past seven months trying to forget about April. He hates to cut and run, but he’s been trying to disentangle himself from her for almost a year. She’s his bad penny, and this is the only place he knows she won’t turn up. Prison, strangely enough, has its benefits.
But then he gets a letter, the first he’s heard from anyone in months and that’s no surprise with the company he keeps, and he recognizes the slanted scrawl, scribbled by shaking hands. He holds it in his hands for a full twenty minutes before he can bring himself to open it.
Mark is watching. Mark is always watching. And as he tears the envelope, he knows he should just tell him. April is the only person in his life worth a name and a story, but Roger has never been able to bring himself to share either with Mark.
The letter reveals what he was afraid of: nothing has changed for her. She’s pouring a poor substitute for life into a needle and into her veins, and she just can’t fucking shake it. She’s crashing on floors and turning the occasional trick to fuel a habit that he’d been trying to help her break before he got picked up. She’s cracked throughout, and the lightest breath will shatter her. It’s no way to live what with all the wolves and demons, landlords and pimps, breathing down her neck.
He reads the letter, and he knows it’s too late.
She’s asked for help from the one person who can’t help her. The postmark reads from over a week ago. He reads “help me, baby” and “I can’t do this anymore” and “I’m sorry” and knows that it’s a miracle she even managed to make it to a mailbox.
It’s a suicide note. And in his gut, he knows that if she isn’t gone already, she will be soon.
***
Mark treads softly the next day and pretends that this isn’t eating away at him in excruciating little bits like when Roger doesn’t eat breakfast or when Rafferty’s cellmate knocks into him in the exercise yard and Roger doesn’t say anything.
“What’s up?” Collins asks Mark with a nod in Roger’s direction.
“Won’t say. Been like this since yesterday.”
“He ain’t told you? What with you two whispering together all the time like a couple of twelve year old girls?”
Mark shrugs, and Collins lets out a low whistle. “Damn. Must be something big. Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll tell you in his own time.”
That afternoon at lunch, Collins and Mark exchange glances as Roger chases corn around his plate with his fork.
“You need to eat something, man,” Collins says, and Mark’s grateful he’s not the only one with the urge to mother his cellmate. Somehow his own concern doesn’t seem as absurd with Collins there beside him.
“And you need to just quit it,” Roger says.
Collins drops his spoon and sticks his finger in Roger’s face. “Lose the attitude, man. Mark may be your bitch, but I ain’t gonna take it.”
Mark snaps his head around to look at Collins. “Hey!”
But Roger starts to smirk and covers it up by shoveling food into his mouth. Collins shoots Mark a wink, and he unclenches.
***
Roger knows he can’t keep this to himself for much longer. He knows that Mark’s constant concerned glances are enough to make him snap. And he knows that the only thing he can do about any of it from in here is to talk to someone about it. It’s too late for April, but he knows he has to do what he can to preserve his own sanity. It’s the only thing he has left.
So when lights out comes, he climbs down onto Mark’s bed where Mark has been waiting for him.
“What’s going on?” he whispers, and even in the dark, Roger can see him start to reach out for him and stop.
Roger wonders where to start, and maybe he should have thought about this in all the time it took him to work up the courage to tell Mark.
“You know,” he says finally, “that I’ve done some stupid shit. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I told you that I was doing drugs for a while. Heroin, mostly, but I got clean. What I didn’t tell you is that I have a girlfriend who came along for the ride. And she wasn’t as lucky as I was when it came to detoxing.”
“You have a girlfriend?”
Roger nods. “Nearly three years now. She was… well, a groupie, I guess. Who became more.”
Mark says nothing, doesn’t move, barely breathes. Roger rushes on to fill the silence.
“She’s got problems. She’s got a lot of problems. We kind of fell into that whole mess together, and things got messy really fast. And that letter… from the sounds of things, she isn’t handling them well. Not with me away in here. And it’s just a reality check that I wasn’t expecting.”
Mark sits up. “Do you love her?”
“Sure.”
“Sure?” He can hear Mark holding back, but his derisiveness is unmistakable, and when Mark stands, Roger follows, one finger jabbing a warning in the darkness between them.
“Don’t.”
“Sure is what you say when someone asks if you want more mashed potatoes or if you feel like catching a movie on Saturday.”
“I said don’t.”
And he’s wishing he were back in bed, and he’s wishing that he never said anything at all, and he’s wishing he didn’t feel the compulsion to tell Mark things when he know he should keep them to himself. And he’s wishing he’d ended up in a cell with Rafferty because then he wouldn’t have slipped into this comfort zone where he and Mark think they know every thing about each other when they’re little more than strangers crammed into a hole together.
“I just don’t see why you’re so upset,” Mark says, and Roger hears his tone and wonders if maybe he ignored Mark for a bit too long this past week because he’s clearly picking a fight. “I mean, you didn’t care about her enough to even tell anyone about her. She was a junkie, and from the sound of things, she was just using you for a quick fix and a casual screw with someone who might be famous one day.”
Roger isn’t conscious of the fist forming or pulling back, but fuck, he feels it as his knuckles connect with Mark’s cheekbone. In the back of his mind, he wonders if it’s caught the guards’ attention, but the rest of him is focused on grabbing Mark by his collar and hauling him back to his feet so he can send him to the floor again.
Mark’s face is filled with an anger he’s never witnessed before, not even when he’s watched him rant about Rafferty and what he’d like to do with him, not even before Roger really knew him, when he saw him go off on some guy in the food line for bumping into him. He had thought that it was genuine, but now he knows that Mark was just trying to play tough guy so he could build up a rep that wouldn’t get his ass kicked. You have to play people here. Roger, like any new inmate, learned that quick. Mark’s fingers grapple at his own, trying to pry his grip from his shirt.
“Fuck you, you know it’s true.”
“Don’t you fucking ever talk about her again. Don’t even so much as fucking mention her name, you understand?”
He has Mark backed against the wall, and surely the guards have heard the screaming. He knows they’ll come soon; they’ll let two trouble makers tear each other apart for a bit, just to save themselves the trouble of trying to put them in their place. But he and Mark have kept their noses fairly clean.
Mark’s hand flies out and connects with the side of his face, and it’s just enough to distract him as Mark throws him off and backs away to the far corner.
“You don’t know. You don’t know me, and you don’t know her, you fucking little shit.”
Coffin’s face appears in the small window that offers them a sprawling view of Unit 9, and Roger’s grateful for small favors. Coffin treats them all right, mostly because he’d rather not bother with the paperwork of taking action against them. He raps on the door. “What the hell is going on?”
Mark and Roger stare each other down, trying to see how to play the situation without having to exchange words. Mark’s lip is bleeding; Roger’s eye is already starting to swell.
“If I have to open this door, you’re both getting solitary for a week. And if you both don’t tell me there isn’t a problem by the time Grey gets up here, there’s going to be real trouble.”
Mark drops Roger’s gaze as he swipes at his mouth, and the decision is made. It’s up to Roger to handle this. To decide if they’re going to be able to work through this in a way that doesn’t draw the guards’ attention again, or if they need a week apart to cool off.
“That’s it. Put your hands on your heads and step into the middle of the cell.”
“No, it’s cool, man,” Roger assures him, but at the same time he follows Coffin’s orders, just in case the opportunity has passed. He feels Mark standing behind him, still allowing him to control the situation.
“That right, Cohen?”
Roger holds his breath, can feel his knuckles throbbing with each beat of his heart, and waits for Mark’s answer.
“Yes, sir. Everything’s fine. Just got a bit claustrophobic in here. You know.”
Coffin’s eyes glance back and forth between them, and then he pulls back. “You keep it down then. I’m gonna have my eye on you two. Another sound, and you’re both in isolation.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.” Roger says.
Neither of them move until they can no longer hear Coffin’s footsteps in the hall. Then Roger spins around and jabs his finger in Mark’s chest.
“Don’t fucking talk to me. Don’t say a fucking word, understand?”
Mark lets his hands fall from where he had clasped them behind his head, and Roger can feel his eyes follow him as he climbs into his bunk and turns to face the wall.