1Light My Candle: Roger Style

A/N: Well, my cousin Sara and I both get sooooo bored that we think up crazy things to do to Roger. Just because it's fun to torture him :) Eventually, I (I don't know if she wants to be a part of it) am going to write about the day of Maureen's protest, and how that was his first day out of the house in a WHILE and he happens to get in a RIOT. Shall be fun.

We're also going to do Another Day through his POV. These will all be one-shots :)

Anyway. This is Roger's humored thoughts throughout Light My Candle. Enjoy.

— —

Knock, knock, knock.

Well, here's Mark again. Knocking on the door because he forgot his keys and something else so significant that it was worth him coming back and knocking on the door so that I could open the door and let him back in so that he could get the God-forsaken keys and whatever the hell he forgot in the first place that caused him to come back.

So, yeah. I slid open the door as far as I could (which really wasn't necessary, I notice now) and asked, "What'd you forget?"

Then I hopped back in front of the doorway and there was the stripper from downstairs, smiling at me coyly and holding a white candle in front of her face. Obviously confused by my opening statement, she put a smile back up and responded, "Got a light?"

I mean, judging by the wax that was dripping off and had obviously just hardened, and then the way the wick stood on top of the candle made it quite evident that she'd just blown it out. I was confused.

But instead of remarking on the candle, I decided to go with, "I know you, you're—" and then I noticed this all by myself, "You're shivering." I became concerned and angry that this girl was coming to me stoned after I'd just ranted on the roof about my dead girlfriend and my dream to write a song instead of sitting around being high all the time.

"It's nothing, they turned off my heat," she replied, inviting herself in (very rudely, I might add!) and turning around and walking backwards in a very coordinated manner. I threw my favey jacket around her shoulders.

"And I'm just a little weak on my feet. Would you light my candle?" I lit the candle and then realized something else: she rhymed! Oh, so this was going to be a rhyming game? I hadn't had anything planned, so you have to understand that I made up all of these rhymes on the spot.

"What are you staring at?" This question brought me out of my reverie. She cocked her head to the side.

"Nothing," I said, obviously quite startled at the question at hand, "Your hair in the moonlight," I gushed, and then I realized what I was doing. "You look familiar," I covered. Then she almost fell over, so I steadied her with my two hands. Even though I was still holding the stupid burnt out match from lighting her candle anyway, and both hands were very sore from opening that heavy door, I caught her.

"Can you make it?" I asked her, just to be sure. I mean, you never know with these fainting people these days. They just walk around fainting everywhere. This is what happens when you stay outside! If you're smart, like me, you stay in the house all day, and you don't have to worry about catching faint diseases where you just faint everywhere. Therefore avoiding numerous inconveniences unto other people who have daily life routines and can't be walking around picking up fainting people all the time!

And then to top it all off, I didn't even rhyme! So how many disappointments was that today?

"Just haven't eaten much today." Oh, okay, so she was anorexic. That explains the fainting thing. "At least the room stopped spinning." Was it really? I've been up here for how long, and she's telling me what my walls are doing? There was no spinacular action going on, trust me. This I am sure of.

"Anyway, what?" Oops, I was staring at her again. Well, she was talking to me, did she want me to look anywhere else?

"Nothing," there was my intelligently wise cover-up again. I must point out here that by now there is still no rhyming on my part. And I bet you're asking why. 'Why, Roger, why aren't you rhyming?' Quite simply, she was catching me off-guard with all of these stupid questions! I mean, normally, I'm quite a spiffy rhymer. There was a club after school, we had a team, and I was captain rhymer.

"Your smile reminded me of—" she cut me off, and I was about to bust out a fantastic rhyme! But then, once again, the question thing shoved the rhyme I was attempting out of my mind and I forgot it.

"I always remind people of... who is she?" she asked, traveling across the room. And you know, I bet she already knew how much it aggravates me when people cut me off like that. Mid-rhyme, especially.

"She died..." I responded, but then I realized that I hadn't really answered the question. To complete it, I finished, "...her name was April—" she cut me off just as I was about to add, "and she was really a nice kid and all, except, you know, the drugs and the AIDS and the clothing choice and the groupie-ness"—

"It's out again," she interrupted violently, as if her stupid candle was more important than my dead girlfriend and my exquisite rhyming technique. "Sorry 'bout your friend." Friend? Oh, man. She did not just go there. Now she was going to taste my rhyme fury. "Would you light my candle?"

NO! That stupid candle thing came out of nowhere, and it didn't rhyme. She just totally lost by default, because she didn't rhyme that time. Instead of karate-chopping her head, I saw an opportunity to get her out of the loft. I lit the candle, hoping she'd leave, but when neither of us moved, I was just kind of like... "Well...?"

"Yeah?" she wondered seductively, totally coming on to me, when I didn't want to be come onto! Right after I talked about my dead girlfriend, which usually doesn't mean that I'm completely over her. "OW!" she cried, and I almost jumped out of my skin. I wondered if I'd hurt her, and I was about to ask her this, but then I discovered that it was just the stupid wax on the stupid candle that I'd stupidly lit in a stupid fashion.

"Oh, the wax," I breathed, relieved that I hadn't done harm. "It's—"

"Dripping," she finished, once again cutting me off and sending all thoughts of rhyming from my head. "I like it between my—"

WOAH! Did not want to go there! I tore my finger from her grip and stumbled back. "FINGERS! I figured..." I calmed down a bit and then finished, "Oh well. Goodnight." Therefore finishing this conversation. Maybe now she'd take the hint.

Or so I thought.

She basically threw my jacket at me, which almost made me spaz out and have an aneurysm, because normally, objects don't go flying at my face, but I put the jacket down. Then, I initiated Step One on my Twelve Step Calm Down program: I took a deep breath in and—

Knock, knock, knock.

—almost choked on my breath. She was still not gone. God. "It blew out again?" I asked, almost amused at this outrageousness. It was amazing how many times this stupid candle could blow out.

"No, I think that I dropped my stash—"

AH! I knew it! A drug-addict! In my mind I did a little childish dance for figuring all of this out by my lonesome. "I know I've seen you out and about, when I used to go out," YES! A rhyme! "You're candle's out," a double rhyme! Eureka! Technically, out and out didn't count, but I was still proud. I could make exceptions.

"I'm illin', I had it when I walked through the door—it was pure... is it on the floor?" She dropped to her knees and I tried to look anywhere but where I wanted to look... my eyes strayed dangerously close.

"Pfft, the floor?" I immediately reprimanded myself. Where else would it be, Roger?

"They say that I have the best ass below 14th street... is it true?"

Well, since this was a question, I had to look. I mean, seriously, how could I give my honest opinion without giving... a casual glance? It also hurt me a bit... I had heard many times that this statement was true about me, and my sweet apple bottom. I was going to go for a full-out, incredulous "WHAT?!?" but I settled for something a little bit more humane.

"What?" I added a chuckle in there.

"You're staring again," she noticed.

"Oh, no," I almost hyperventilated. Pretty girl—what am I to do? I haven't been in contact with outside human life and civilization for almost a year! Well, except Mark and Collins... and Maureen... and all those other people, but they don't count. "I mean... you do have a nice—I MEAN, you look familiar," I covered, dropping to the floor to help her look for her stash.

Truth be told, I wasn't going to give it back to her, I was going to flush it down the toilet and laugh manically.

"Like your dead girlfriend," she added, kind of coldly.

"Only when you smile," I said, going for a sort-of-insult, because I just said that she smiled like a dead person, "but I'm sure I've seen you somewhere else—"

She cut me off AGAIN, breaking my rhyme groove."Do you go to the Cat Scratch Club?" she asked, picking up something and throwing it away. "That's where I work—I... 'dance.'"

She should've put air quotes on the word "dance," but she didn't. "Yes!" I exclaimed, sitting back on my feet. "They used to tie you up," I commented, reminiscing on the good ol' days when Mark and I used to go to strip clubs together. Or, you know, at least back when I could leave the house without that fear of society.

"It's a living," she defended her job proudly. Pfft.

"I didn't recognize you without the handcuffs," I teased, STILL not rhyming. Man.

"We could light the candle," she came in quickly, bringing back up that stupid candle, "oh, won't you light the candle?" So I did, obeying her every wish. Well, not every one.

"Why don't you forget that stuff? You look like your sixteen," I was really lacking in the rhymage department. Really down on my game today.

"I'm nineteen!" she stood up and I followed. "But old for my age," she bumped into me and I flicked my head to get my luscious blond locks of curly wonder out of my beautiful face. "I'm just born to be bad!" she pushed on, going around the couch and leaving me in the dust.

"I once was born to be bad," I nodded, all-knowing, but then realized the stupidity of that statement. Almost like I was born bad, and then I died and was re-born... to be good. "I used to shiver like that," I told her.

"I have no heat I told you—!"

"I used to sweat," Ha-ha! My turn to cut her off!

"I got a cold!"

"Uh-huh," I shook my head, quite disappointed in her lack of lying skills. "I used to be a junkie." I revealed, hoping she'd be very shocked.

"But now and then I like to—"

"Uh-huh," I tried to cut her off completely, but she continued.

"—feel good," she finished.

Then, I spotted her stash on the ground and stupidly cried out, "OH, HERE IT IS!" And then I remembered that I was going to play-hard-to-get. So I stuffed it in my back pocket and hoped that she didn't hear my exclamation. That, I might add, didn't even rhyme.

"What's that?" she asked, almost running toward me.

"It's—um—it's a candy-bar wrapper!" I covered cleverly, stashing the stash in my back pocket. I still was lacking in the rhyme department still. Very disappointing, I know. But you should see me when I really get going, I'm a lean mean rhyming machine. Haha, see?

"We could light the candle." Wait—isn't her candle already lit? I looked down and realized that, yes, it was, and this puzzled me greatly. Maybe she was trying to come on to me again, with some weird, metaphorical, emotional statement like 'We could light the internal candle... of loooove!' and I was having none of that.

So when she was reaching around to grab the stash from my back pocket and just happened to grab my butt instead, I reached forward and used my finger to smother the flame of her candle. Hey, it's a dog-eat-dog world—you pinch my butt, I extinguish your candle flame!

"Oh, what'd you do with my candle?" Chill out, woman, I just put it out. What else would I do with your stupid candle?

Wait. Don't answer that.

Then she cornered me and then pushed me onto the couch! This was a forceful woman, and I was scared. She was attacking me for Christ's sake! I wished Mark was here—times like this you use the buddy system. Plus, he could throw things at her or something to get her to go away, or film her and mock her while she was on film so she would feel bad and then go away.

"That was my last match," I lied conveniently when she looked at me expectantly while brandishing the candle. I wanted to squirm away and cower from her waving burnt-out candle powers, but I didn't.

"Our eyes'll adjust," she shrugged, and she had to throw the candle across the room like some sort of crazy madman! I mean, honestly, kids these days—that candle could've seriously hurt someone, or broken my guitar! "Thank God for the moon." Oh, yes, now let's bring God into it.

"Baby, it's not the moon at all," I tried to peel away from the whole God thing, "I hear Spike Lee's shooting down the street—" I pointed out the window and she "accidentally" snatched my hand into hers.

"Bah humbug," she practically shouted, almost bursting my fragile eardrums. "Bah humbug," she repeated, like I hadn't heard it the first freaking time. She stroked my hand—scary much—and this made me petrified. I started shaking in my boots.

"Cold hands," I commented, not even looking at her. I couldn't bring myself to do it, this face of... of... meanness! She would probably be like "You're staring AGAIN!" and I'd feel all bad and embarrassed, again. She had, like, staranoia! Oh, I am the master of puns and rhymes. And embarassment.

"Yours too," she shot back, almost like it was an insult (but not nearly as insulting as my clever dead-smiling person verbal abuse), but then she turned my left hand over and studied it, like it was a subject of great interest, or the missing puzzle of life. "I HAVE FOUND IT!" I pictured her yelling, and then I almost laughed. But I didn't. "Big, like my father's," she noticed.

Then, she jerked me to my feet, almost making me trip and fall flat on my face, and then break my beautiful nose, and she asked me, "Do you want to dance?" completely out of the blue.

"With you?" I asked, totally confused. Then I realized that I'd rhymed with one of her previous statements and wanted to do a dance but not exactly with her.

"No," she cracked sarcastically, "with my father," and she did a little spin.

Thinking hard very quickly, I came up with one of the best rhymes I'd ever come up with in my entire life: "I'm Roger." There we go. That rhymed with what she'd said, and it was very informative.

"They call me," she began, not even noticing my amazing rhyme, "they call me," and I almost thought she was going to pinch my butt again, but thank GOD she didn't or I might've gone all kung-fu on her, "Mimiiiiiiiiiiii!"

Then she shook the little baggy of heroin in my face and laughed, poking my nose affectionately, like I was some small child, (hello, how old is she? Who's older?) and walked out the door.

Owned. The word rung in my head over and over, and I remained immobile because that's what happens when I get owned. I was too disgraced to even move, so I stayed frozen and had to wait until Mark got home. You know what happened when he got home?

Snicker. "You got owned again, didn't you, Roger?" he laughed, shaking his head and walking into the kitchen. "I should give you a crash-course on how not to get owned. I mean, Rog, this is the third time this week, man. Get your head out of the clouds!"

This was not the last time I saw dear Mimi. Oh, no, this was just the beginning.

A/N: Stay tuned for "Another Day: Roger's Way", coming soon (or as soon as Sara and I reunite!)

–Steph.

(And Sara)