Title: Do it Naked
Author: Lioness Black
Rating: R
Genre: General/Dark Comedy
Summary: Mark and Roger contemplate suicide
Notes: Pre-Rent in the NYTW universe.
Disclaimer: Not mine, just good fun.
"Is it even fucking worth it?"
Mark looked over at Roger. Roger was sitting on the couch, picking at strings on his guitar. It was the electric, but it wasn't plugged into anything, so it was quiet. Roger should have been at work. Dave would be calling soon.
Another reason to screen calls.
"Is what worth it?" Mark asked. Going to work? Sitting there on the couch playing his guitar? Scribbling down notes in his notebook? Or throwing the notes away? Snapping his pencil in half? It was the waste of a good pencil, but was that what Roger was referring to? His pencil?
Probably not.
"All this... shit."
"You're going to have to be more specific. We have a lot of shit."
"This, this," he said, motioning down to his guitar with disgust. "Where we live, your constant moping-"
"I'm not moping."
"Your pining and whining."
"That's catchy."
Roger glared at him. It wasn't really threatening. "Why the fuck do we even do it? At least when I was an addict, I had a purpose. Even if it was getting smack."
Mark frowned.
"Now... now, I don't have a goal. I don't have shit. We live in this shitty loft, we don't have money for heat, I can't write a fucking decent note, and I think we'd probably be better off dead, you know that?"
Roger had always been like a zombie. He had a one track mind. Except instead of searching for brains (Mark really was aware that he had watched too many B horror films as a child), Roger searched for purpose. Roger searched for a reason to go on. He had a reason in April, he had a reason in heroin, he had a reason in his music.
He didn't have any of those things anymore.
"Why aren't you, then?" Mark asked. "You say I mope."
"At least I have a decent reason," Roger said. "My girlfriend didn't dump me."
If Mark were any less of a friend he would have brought up the exactly why Roger didn't have a girlfriend at the moment. However, Mark iwas/i a good friend, and said, "You really should just kill yourself, then. You've got a good reason. I'm sure we've got rope around here somewhere, you could hang yourself. I don't know, those beams are pretty old, they might not hold you, well, you hardly weigh anything anyway, they probably would. Or you could hang off the fire escape. If you did it naked, you'd probably make the newspaper. Nothing sells papers like dead, naked rockstars. Oh! You know what you could do? And this is a good one. Pawn your guitar and buy a gun. Blow your brains out. You could do that naked too, if you wanted, but I don't think the poetry is a nice as a naked hanging. What do you think?"
Roger stared at him. "I know what you're doing."
"What am I doing? You could be economical about it, just throw yourself off the roof. That's a good ways down. If you land head first, I'm sure you'd crack open your skull, your brains all over the sidewalk. Can't you just see it? Your head split in two, your eyes open wide, blood streaming out into the snow. I could film it!"
"You shouldn't sound so excited."
"You're the one who brought up killing yourself."
"I didn't bring up killing myself, I brought up us killing ourselves."
"Kill myself over Maureen?" Mark said, looking repulsed. "Fuck that."
"Like you haven't thought about it," Roger said, cracking a sort of smile. Mark wouldn't count it as a real smile, though.
"I... haven't."
"Liar."
"Just because I thought about it... doesn't mean I would. Would I ever want to give her that kind of satisfaction?" Mark paused. Okay, Roger didn't know why Maureen decided to dump Mark. And it apparently had to do with her lack of satisfaction. Mark decided not to use that word anymore, especially in the context of anything involving Maureen.
Roger heaved a sigh. "This fucking blows. It's fucking... fuck."
"Nicely put."
"Asshole."
"I have better reasons to kill myself than Maureen," Mark said. "Do you think this stupid filming is going anywhere? Six years, Roger. Six years. I'm the same place I was when I quit college. I haven't moved, I haven't grown. None of it has made a difference, or done anything. I'm a boy, pretending to be a man. My parents still give me money for god's sake! If I was going to kill myself, it wouldn't be because of Maureen. It would be because I'm a fucking loser!"
Mark hadn't meant to shout. His voice echoed through the loft.
Roger was quiet. He stared at Mark, his eyes wide, as though expanding them would give him the ability to see inside Mark's mind. Though he didn't need to, that was more honest than Mark had been in weeks. Longer, maybe.
"I'm not going to kill myself," Roger said, his voice low. "Not today."
"Me either," Mark replied. "Probably not ever. I'm a chicken shit. I'd never get the nerve."
"I'm probably still going to think about it."
"Me too."
"Maybe I'll write a song about it."
"Good idea."
Roger chewed the inside of his lip. It was familiar habit, it used to be how he calmed himself while waiting for his next high. When the itch got too hard to bear. Roger had tasted blood many times.
"You know," he said, picking out a couple notes, "if I do jump off the roof, I'll let you know. So you can film it. I'll bet the fire escape would be a good spot to film."
"I'm not going to film it, you idiot. If you try to jump off the roof, I'll... I'll try and stop you," Mark said.
"What if I did it naked?"
"Oh, then I'd set up the tripod."
Roger smiled, and it was almost a real smile. "That's what I thought."