March Madness, Day 1, Rent (Inmates), Mark/Roger
Fandom: Rent
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 417
Notes: Inmates!
“You awake?” Mark asks, and his voice is so quiet that it hardly qualifies as a whisper.
Roger shifts beside him, his nose rubbing against Mark’s arm in a way that reminds Mark of those times his niece would fall asleep against his shoulder while watching Disney movies a long time ago-not quite a lifetime, but close.
“What is it?” Roger mumbles, lips slow with sleep, breath warm against Mark’s skin.
Mark’s eyes take in the rusty bed frame, the grey concrete of the cell. He doesn’t have any questions here in the dark squashed comfortably between Roger and the cold wall, only answers: this is where you’re happiest. This can get you killed. This is someone you have no reason to trust except that you do. You will not be able to walk away from this in a month when real life finally takes you back. He never knew that answers could be more unsettling than the questions that create them.
“Nothing,” Mark says. “Go back to sleep.”
“What’s wrong?” Roger lifts his head and his eyes are still heavy-lidded, his face slack from sleep. If Mark focuses hard enough on the face, it’s all he sees, the walls of the cell and the rust of the bed frame fading to the background.
Mark finally understands what Roger was talking about that night, about how scary it was to hear that Roger was in love with him and how it was a hundred times scarier to say. Because even though he’s in the worst place he’s ever been, he can’t say that he hates his life. He has Roger, in whatever capacity Roger is there to be had. And the thing that keeps Mark awake is that the sex isn’t what’s complicated. The sex makes sense as much as anything makes sense in a place where you’re known as a number and you have to ask permission to take a piss. The sex can be rationalized. It’s everything else that’s built up around it, all the answers that Mark would’ve preferred remain in the limbo state of questions that taunt him in the dark. And the sensation in his stomach is all too easily named, but he’s just not as fearless as Roger.
“Mark?”
The answers keep coming unbidden, so Mark silences the voices in his head the only way he knows how and reaches up and around Roger’s neck, pulling him down so that he can more easily find his lips in the dark.
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 417
Notes: Inmates!
“You awake?” Mark asks, and his voice is so quiet that it hardly qualifies as a whisper.
Roger shifts beside him, his nose rubbing against Mark’s arm in a way that reminds Mark of those times his niece would fall asleep against his shoulder while watching Disney movies a long time ago-not quite a lifetime, but close.
“What is it?” Roger mumbles, lips slow with sleep, breath warm against Mark’s skin.
Mark’s eyes take in the rusty bed frame, the grey concrete of the cell. He doesn’t have any questions here in the dark squashed comfortably between Roger and the cold wall, only answers: this is where you’re happiest. This can get you killed. This is someone you have no reason to trust except that you do. You will not be able to walk away from this in a month when real life finally takes you back. He never knew that answers could be more unsettling than the questions that create them.
“Nothing,” Mark says. “Go back to sleep.”
“What’s wrong?” Roger lifts his head and his eyes are still heavy-lidded, his face slack from sleep. If Mark focuses hard enough on the face, it’s all he sees, the walls of the cell and the rust of the bed frame fading to the background.
Mark finally understands what Roger was talking about that night, about how scary it was to hear that Roger was in love with him and how it was a hundred times scarier to say. Because even though he’s in the worst place he’s ever been, he can’t say that he hates his life. He has Roger, in whatever capacity Roger is there to be had. And the thing that keeps Mark awake is that the sex isn’t what’s complicated. The sex makes sense as much as anything makes sense in a place where you’re known as a number and you have to ask permission to take a piss. The sex can be rationalized. It’s everything else that’s built up around it, all the answers that Mark would’ve preferred remain in the limbo state of questions that taunt him in the dark. And the sensation in his stomach is all too easily named, but he’s just not as fearless as Roger.
“Mark?”
The answers keep coming unbidden, so Mark silences the voices in his head the only way he knows how and reaches up and around Roger’s neck, pulling him down so that he can more easily find his lips in the dark.