Title: Make Believe
Author: Kait Sudol
Disclaimer: Benny, Mark, Roger, et al belong to Jonathan Larson. You can tell they're not mine cuz if I had my way with them, there'd be a whole different ending....
Summary: He got my hopes up and had them shattered, trying, begging almost, to make his idea into reality...
Rating: PG

Make Believe


I watch them sometimes. I don't know why, I don't even consciously choose to do it. It's magnetic, I'm just drawn to them, drawn to their guiltless expressions of love and the warmth that just permeates their auras. At gigs, at the Life Café, at the loft... I stare or glare or sigh in their direction.

They never see me. I don't let them.

I can move. I used to dance. Yes, the yuppie scum has artistic roots. How do you think I fell into their crowd in the first place? How do you think I met Mark? I used to dance and the grace in that follows me even now. I can flit silently around a smoky, crowded club without alerting anyone to my presence. I can lose myself in a crowd on the sidewalk and pirouette into the shadows of the empty lot. I can swirl through customers at any restaurant without giving anyone a chance to see my face. It's a good thing. If I didn't have this gift it would be impossible to allude his constantly wide eyes.

He's always been that way, looking around at his world and taking it all in. He watches everything and everyone and pulls up his camera to save the most breathtaking parts of his environment for his own. I remember watching him soak up parks and dogs and sunsets when we were in school. And me. He loved to capture me on film as I twirled and glided across the dance floor with any number of girls. Girls who would sign up for the modern dance courses just because of my reputation. But that never bothered him. It was him who I curled up with at night.

I don't know why we didn't work. I wanted us to. I loved him so much...more than I had ever loved any other woman or man. More than I loved Mimi, and I did love her, and more than I loved Alison by far. Things just got too stressful and his family entered the picture and he withdrew, like he always used to do when things got tough. He doesn't anymore. He tells that bastard everything, things I never even dreamed of him sharing with the rest of the world. But back then he just shut down.

I started it. If I hadn't said something...if I hadn't run out of ways to help him...maybe it would be me he clings to at night. But no, I went and I ruined it. "You need a friend, not a lover." "I'll help you through this." "It's alright. We'll get through it together." And we did. But we never got back together. We moved to New York together and searched for an apartment, but we never got back together. And I acted like that was alright, but it hurt because I thought he loved me as much as I loved him.

It all changed when he came into the picture.

It wasn't love at first sight. Roger was too stoned to think straight, Mark was seeing Maureen occasionally, but there was something there. They took care of each other. At first it was just reminders about gigs and appointments, but one afternoon Collins and I came home to find them curled together on the couch, two little cats sleeping peacefully. Mark was bruised, broken...I thought that bastard had hit him. I told Collins so, I threatened to kill Roger when he woke up. But it wasn't the case at all and I almost wish it was. I lost my best friend that day, lost him to a good for nothing junkie who he'd known for all of two months.

And it was downhill from there. Alison was to make Mark jealous. Mark was so wrapped up in Roger that he didn't even notice. Roger, who infested his mind with thoughts of betrayal, of the "yuppie scum" who was seducing the landlord's daughter in order to get cash, as opposed to a listless shell of a former artist who met a nice girl at the ballet who just happened to be the landlord's baby girl. Roger who told Mark over and over again that he knew that I would run away the first chance I got. Roger who insisted I was only in their lives to make money from their success.

I married her.

I couldn't not marry her. Because she shared my passion for dance and art, despite her father's insistence that she get a degree in real estate. And she did love me. At least, I think she did. I knew what it was like to love and lose and I couldn't force that upon Alison, who was so sweet and funny. It was the same with Mimi. She wanted somewhere to stay. She wanted someone to be with. And again, she loved art and she loved dance and everything seemed to click. She never really loved me. And I loved her, but never the way I loved him. I think I suddenly understood what he had meant to Roger, as I watched over her and took her to doctor's appointments. For one ecstatic moment, I thought that maybe he didn't love Roger after all.

I remember that moment. The last carefree I can remember in a long time. The idea suddenly blindsiding me, my brain chastising me for not realizing it beforehand, and running to the loft at full speed, the first time I had been back in the East Village since Mimi's funeral the week before. Running up the stairs and knocking on the door, opening it before they answered and then...

Then.

I should have known that Roger was different. I should have recognized that look in Mark's eyes. But I got my hopes up and had them shattered, trying, begging almost, to make my idea into reality. Mark wasn't in love with Roger. Mark was only a caregiver. Mark and I could be together, just like we used to, and I would dance again, just for him.

So I watch them now. It's easier this way. I can pretend that I with him. Pretend that he thinks I'm a decent person. Pretend that we're back at Brown and I'm teaching him how to waltz for the first time and he's impressing me with the fact that he knows how to tango without tripping over his feet. Pretend that I'm not married, that he's not in love, that we can be together again. Pretend that I was stronger. Pretend that I saved him all those years ago. Pretend that he was mine all along.


.end.


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