Title: Stupid Questions
Author: SuperiorityComplex88
Pairing: Mark/Roger
Summary: Pre-Rent: Boredom ensues in the loft, and Mark questions the importance and appeal of his name. Roger gives him quite the answer. ONE-SHOT – SLASH!
Rating: M… for just-in-case reasons where sexuality is concerned. And for Roger's dirty mouth. :Giggle:
Disclaimer: Rent, as brilliant and awesome as it is, isn't mine. Neither Roger nor Mark is mine… you have no idea how much that upsets me, lol… Both belong to the wonderful late Jonathan Larson.
Author's Note: Okay then – my first Rent-fic, kids! I've been reading a whole lot of them, half-finishing a lot of my own, and now I've finally worked one out. If this one goes well, I shall progress. Yes, it's slash – why? Because I'm a shameless fangirl? Yep. :Smirk: Enjoy, dears, and pass the Rent-love on…
"Roger?"
"Hmm?"
"If I could have any name other than Mark, what do you think it would be?"
Roger glanced up from his lyrics and gave a few absent taps of his pen. "Why?"
Placing his camera on the table before him, Mark shrugged. "I think it's an interesting question." At Roger's resulting look, which reeked of, 'Interesting, my ass,' Mark rolled his eyes. "So sue me, I'm bored." He gave his roommate a pointed smirk. "And don't tell me you're busy songwriting."
Scowling, Roger glanced at the pile of discarded lyric sheets at his feet. "Well, you've got me there," he muttered, shifting his weight on the couch. He was inwardly thankful for his friend's interruption, but he wouldn't admit it out loud; instead, he redirected his gaze to Mark and considered his question. "Any name other than Mark… gee, that really narrows it down, huh?"
Mark only gave a small smile and raised his eyebrows in response.
"Yes, and thank you for your generous help… okay, uh…" The guitarist cast his mind around for a bit and frowned, somewhat put out by his lack of answers. "I don't know," he bit out, trying to sound irritated. "Marcus?"
Mark cringed, standing up. "Jesus, Roger, that's like a direct derivative of my actual name."
Feeling trumped, Roger set his guitar aside. "Well, it fits you, I guess."
"It sounds like a turtle."
Without thinking, Roger let out a bark of laughter. "Sir Marcus the Turtle!" he announced with false grandiose, grinning at Mark. Hearing his roommate groan, he chuckled again. "You set yourself up for that one, Mark, come on…"
Mark, obviously regretting asking his question in the first place, rolled his eyes again. "Yes, thank you, Rog," he said flatly, heading over to the couch to join his friend. "But seriously, I want to know. Where's your creative gene?"
Roger gave a smirk at the filmmaker's relentlessness and kicked at the mess on the floor. "It's on an off-day, apparently."
Sighing, Mark settled himself to Roger's right and laid back into the couch as much as possible. "So I'm not getting a serious answer, am I?"
Shrugging, Roger surveyed his friend out of the corner of his eye and spoke with hesitation. "If we're being honest here—"
"Which must suck for you…"
"Shut up, you cheeky bastard."
A chuckle.
"I don't think I can imagine you as anything but Mark," Roger said frankly. Seeing Mark's less-than-enthused expression, he quickly added, "Not that it's a bad name or anything."
"I know," Mark assured him, voice as unchanging as his face. Roger gave him a perplexed look, and the filmmaker paused, taking off his glasses to clean them on his sweater. "Aside from looking for a creative answer from you, I guess I just wanted someone else's perspective on it."
Roger's eyebrows rose. "Unusual wish for Mr. Film Man."
Mark shook his head. "I mean, I'm not particularly in love with my name, it's – well, it's a name." He smiled a bit as he replaced his glasses. "It's just kind of plain. You know, one syllable, common sound…"
"Oh, come on, stop shitting on yourself," Roger interjected, snatching Mark's glasses from his face.
"I was shitting on my name, not on myself." Mark made a face. "Why you had to go there, of all places…"
Roger barely held back a snort, endeared. "I think your name defines you," he stated, putting Mark's glasses on. "Whenever I hear 'Mark', I always think of movies, Post-It notes, your strangely albino-like hair…" He grinned and tugged on Mark's scarf with two fingers. "This scarf."
Mark, with none-too-subtle a blush, smiled at Roger's antics. "I guess."
"Now, this?" the guitarist continued, pointing to the glasses he still wore. "All part of you, too. You can't tell me I don't look totally wrong with these on." His spirits were lifted at the sound of Mark's laugh.
"Good point," the filmmaker agreed, accepting the glasses back and donning them again.
Roger smiled despite himself and turned to face his roommate on the couch. "What about me?"
"I dunno, Conceited, what about you?"
"What about my other-than-Roger name? Let's go, creative genius."
Mark blinked, as if in thought. "I think I'll go with Bernie."
"…What the fuck?"
"Kidding," the blonde man amended, chuckling.
Roger couldn't help but laugh with Mark. "I should be offended by that."
Mark kicked his feet up on the table in front of them. "Probably," he confirmed, letting out what sounded suspiciously like a giggle to Roger. "Truth is, I can't think of you as anyone but Roger." He smiled and glanced at his roommate. "Sorry to disappoint."
Finding himself strangely contented with Mark's answer, Roger shook his head. "I like my name."
"I do, too," Mark agreed, and when the guitarist looked over in surprise, he elaborated. "It suits you. Sorry to use your earlier words, but whenever I hear 'Roger', I think of music. And sometimes of how you always need coffee."
"Nice to know," the guitarist murmured. Smirking, he leaned back and surveyed Mark, wondering why in the hell he had brought this topic up. "I dunno. I've always liked two-syllable names. They're not too much, but assertive enough to… have power, I guess. Presence."
Mark shifted and sighed. "Unlike the one-syllable names, huh?" he asked dryly.
Roger couldn't help but smile. "Well, one, it's monosyllabic—"
Mark rolled his eyes.
"—and two, monosyllabic names are pretty damn cool, too." He paused to gather the right words. "They may not take up a lot of room or anything, but they can say a lot with a little." He noticed Mark staring with raised eyebrows and quickly added, "And all that kind of shit."
"That's pretty thought-provoking, Rog," Mark commented honestly.
Shrugging for the umpteenth time, Roger cast his eyes upward and laid his head back on the couch. "Plus, 'Mark' is an easy name to yell when you're mad." Hearing the filmmaker sigh, Roger grinned and rolled his head sideways to see his friend.
"Your kindness knows no bounds."
"I know," Roger quipped cheerily. He took in Mark's slightly slack expression, directed into his lap, and found himself a bit annoyed at his friend's lack of… self-esteem, he guessed. In fact, his first reaction was to ask why the hell Mark had posed the question to begin with if nothing Roger could say would matter. Instead, he bit his tongue, and finally endured the silence long enough to interject none too cleverly. "Hey," he said shortly.
Mark had shifted his gaze to his camera, as if contemplating grabbing it again, and he shook his head, seeming to sense what Roger wouldn't venture to say. "Blame it on my tendency to ask stupid questions."
…The fuck? Roger thought. The guitarist gave Mark his full attention. "Come on, there are lots of things your name is good for."
Mark glanced at him uninterestedly. "Oh? Well, when you've found a use other than expressing anger, let me know."
Roger pursed his lips as the self-deprecation rolled off of his roommate in waves, figuring his "easy name to yell" comment had screwed up whatever good vibes the two of them had been sharing. The blue eyes were duller than usual, and Mark's entire aura had gone from relaxed to withdrawn. Instead of snapping at the filmmaker, as was custom and expected, he found himself letting out a gentle, chiding, "Mark."
The affect on his roommate was instantaneous. His eyes widened as he turned his glance over to Roger, body freezing; his hands, formerly fidgeting with the fabric of the couch, were now limp. For his part, Roger tried very hard to wrap his mind around the foreign way he had just said his friend's name, but one look at the basket case that was Mark convinced him to keep everything personal to himself.
Although that doesn't go for my hands, the guitarist thought vaguely, watching his own fingers come in contact with Mark's cheek. The next few events occurred like a very odd bout of clockwork. Mark's eyes closed, a breath escaped his lips, and his entire demeanor shifted.
Roger leaned forward a bit, taking in the change in his roommate: the shallow breathing, parted lips, and, most importantly, the fair-skinned hand that came upward to grasp Roger's forearm. And here it came out of his mouth again, more solid this time, and in a whisper of utter care and concern: "Mark."
Mark's eyes opened. That one had been different, and both of them knew it. That 'Mark' hadn't just been Roger recognizing his roommate's name. It had been Roger, wholeheartedly adoring the light hair, open mind, nervous habits, pale skin, and everything else about Mark that came along with the man's name.
A smile crept onto Roger's face at this realization, and when Mark's questioning orbs locked with his own, the guitarist could only guess what query his roommate wanted an answer to. Failing hopelessly at finding anything else to say, Roger slid his hand around to the back of Mark's neck, brought their foreheads together lightly, and breathed, "Your name's pretty good for whispering."
Mark let out something between a laugh and a choke, and Roger found that his roommate's lips fell onto his own with remarkable ease, his hands burying themselves in the rocker's hair without hesitation.
Roger told himself that he hadn't meant this to happen, but at once gave into the feel of Mark's presence – close, warm, and solid. He let his lips gently close over the filmmaker's, and his fingertips mapped out Mark's face as he listened to the other man react to his touches. When Roger's fingers reached the hollow in Mark's throat, he was extremely amused to feel the filmmaker shiver; Roger, for all he was worth, couldn't help but pull the lighter man into his lap, although he would've been more graceful about it had Mark not closed in on him like some sort of predator. As soon as the two of them had moved closer, Mark had slipped his tongue between Roger's lips with skill that made the guitarist gasp. He opened his eyes to find that a smile had finally graced Mark's features.
Hands splayed onto Mark's lower back, Roger found himself overwhelmed with everything about his roommate: the way his hands assaulted Roger's hair, the heat of his chest, the texture of his sweater, which really needed to come off…
In a half-hearted attempt to stop his thoughts, Roger moved back and tried to say Mark's name normally, but the filmmaker's hands trailing down his own spine rendered the word a moan.
At this royal fuckup, Roger caught a glimpse of a smirking Mark, who leaned in towards his right ear and said, "So it's good for moaning, too?"
That did it.
In one swift motion, Roger had pushed the filmmaker backwards by the chest, grabbed both of his hands to hold above his head, and bodily pinned him to the couch beneath them. Mark groaned, but indeed, he looked no less interested than he had three seconds before.
His senses aroused, Roger moved his face within inches of the other man's. "I told you your name was good for lots of things, Mark," he muttered, feeling inexplicably cocky. Seeing that his roommate's previous withdrawn state was completely gone, he saw no reason to hold anything back anymore.
Mark squirmed beneath him – which Roger felt was surely killing both of their consciences – but met the guitarist's gaze unwaveringly. "Yeah?" he breathed.
Emboldened, Roger let his hand wander from Mark's chest to the side of his face. Following any other conversation, this movement would have been no big feat, but tonight… it was intimate. Roger realized how much of a cheeseball Mark must have been thinking he was, but for his roommate's sake, he didn't care.
Letting his thumb trail over Mark's lips, he smirked and said, "I plan on practicing what I preach."
Somewhere between the many collisions of lips and teeth and tongue and the heat rising between them both, they found their way into Roger's room. With a frustrated, "Roger, how many buttons does this thing have?" Roger found his shirt off; in between pants, there was an instance of, "Your sweater…Mark, it's too damn thick," and Mark found himself in a similar situation. Among the sheets, the breath, and skin, Roger made sure that Mark heard his own name in every way possible, lest the filmmaker not be listening. He found no shortage of pleasure in the fact that Mark returned the favor readily, particularly when teeth were involved.
He realized it was quite amazing that the sound of someone's name could do that to a person. It was almost unreal, and damn near addictive.
As his teeth grazed a sensitive spot on Mark's stomach, he heard his name escape in a hiss from Mark's lips.
Roger smirked against the other man's skin. It was also undoubtedly a turn-on.
The following morning, Roger pulled his coveted plaid pants on and plodded out into the main area of the loft. His mind was oddly clear after the night before. When he found his roommate sitting on the metal table, tinkering with his camera, he grinned. "Good morning, Mark."
The reaction he got out of the filmmaker, Roger decided, was one he planned on relishing for a while. Mark's head lifted in a simpler and less self-conscious way than he had ever seen before. Almost giddy-like. "Morning, Roger," he answered with a smile.
Crossing the room and perching across from Mark on the table, Roger raised his eyebrows and stole Mark's coffee. "Sleep well?"
Mark set the camera aside and stared at Roger openly. "Now who's the one asking stupid questions?"
The grin returned. "Well, at least you learned something yesterday." He met Mark's stare evenly and sipped his coffee.
"Oh, definitely," Mark answered honestly, giving Roger quite a smug look. "That I need to come up with more stupid questions so you can prove me wrong more often."
Reviews make me insanely happy... :Skips off like an idiot: