Then something shifted and the world came flashing back to normal speed and sound and feeling as Mark crumpled to the ground.
"Man, we should've stayed!" Roger complained, glaring up at the clouds as it began to snow lightly and hunching his shoulders against the cold. Mark rolled his eyes.
"Why? It'll be colder later."
"Yeah, but if you'd've just waited another twenty minutes we would've had a reason to get drunk." Roger griped. "Then we wouldn't have minded the cold." Mark chuckled.
"Me turning 25 is not a reason for you to get drunk." he pointed out. He didn't much care about winning the argument, really - Roger was having fun regardless of the complaining, and it was good for him. After all, it hadn't even been six months since they'd lost Mimi, and Roger had taken it pretty hard.
"Yeah, well, I could've worked with it." Roger muttered as they turned to cut through an alley to get home quicker. Mark's laugh was cut off abruptly when they found themselves staring down the barrel of a drug dealer's gun.
"Mark? Mark, look at me." Mark looked up at Roger's face, trying not to be scared by the all-too-evident fear there, in his eyes and his voice. Mark tried to say something, but breathing hurt, he could hardly get enough to not pass out, never mind talking. Roger seemed on the verge of panic, looking up to scream "Somebody help!" a few times. Mark felt something press against his stomach and he gasped in pain. A glance revealed Roger's hand, pressing rather hard to try to stop the bleeding, his scarf substituting as a bandage of sorts. "Mark?" He asked, his voice shaking. "Mark, talk to me." Mark struggled to breathe.
"Hurts." he said weakly. "Not... too much... blood, though." he gasped out, looking down at his stomach.
"No." Roger choked out, a pained expression on his face. "Not... not too much."
"Stop telling me your fucking lies!" The dealer screamed at Mark, waving his gun menacingly. "You know where Mimi is, and you're fucking going to tell me!" Mark's heart pounded in his ears as he held out a hand to keep Roger from rushing the guy, but he willed himself to at least appear calm.
"I swear to you, Mimi died over the summer--" Mark started.
"Fucking liar!" the dealer shouted. "You try to lie to me again, you're gonna regret it!"
"Stay with me, man." Roger pleaded, his voice sounding thick with tears. Mark winced a little, trying to catch a breath, and squeezed Roger's hand.
"Not... going..." he murmured. It took too much effort to do anything more. He was so tired.
"How bad does it hurt?" Roger asked hesitantly. Mark closed his eyes, thinking - it took so much effort to even do that - and tried to summon the energy to respond. It would be so nice to just stay here, to rest... "Mark?" Roger's voice cracked, filled with panic. Mark struggled to open his eyes.
"Not much." Mark said eventually. "Just... numb. And kinda... cold... all over." It took so much effort to get the words out, Mark wondered distantly if it was even worth it. Roger pulled him closer, pulled Mark's head into his lap, and Mark envied his warmth.
It was so fucking cold.
Mark could hardly breathe, he was so scared. But the dealer wasn't going to just go away, so...
"I swear to you," Mark said earnestly, "I'm not ly--" A loud bang ripped through the alley at the exact moment he felt the tug of something passing through his body, accompanied with a blinding pain, soon replaced by numbness, and all Mark could think for a moment was that in fifteen minutes it would be his birthday.
"Rog?" Mark gasped, struggling to breathe, to stay awake. Roger needed him, he had to hold on until help got there, Roger had said it would come, said it'd be okay...
"Yeah?" Roger sniffed. He was crying, Mark realized, startled.
"It's... gettin'... hard to... breathe..." God, it couldn't get any harder to speak, to breathe. Mark only half-registered the sound of Roger's breath catching in a muffled sob.
"You just hold on." Roger growled. "You are not fucking leaving me." Mark shook his head almost imperceptively. Everything was getting fuzzy around the edges... fuzzy sights, fuzzy sounds, fuzzy feelings, fuzzy thoughts. A heaviness settled in Mark's chest, fighting him, fighting his efforts to draw breath. Mark could feel his heart slowing down, and it scared him.
"Love you..." he wheezed, hardly able to form the words. He felt Roger shift, felt himself move a little as Roger clung to him, sobbing.
"Don't you leave me, Mark, don't you fucking dare..." Mark felt Roger's chest vibrate with the words. "Oh, god, I love you, too, Mark, don't leave, please don't leave..."
But if Roger had anything else to say, Mark couldn't hear it. All he could hear was his heartbeat in his ears, slowing down. Slower, slower... slower...
Stop.
He was still, and pale, and the only thought going through Roger's mind was that he should never have to see Mark like that, Mark was the one who was supposed to survive everything, fucking human tupperware. But he wasn't moving, wasn't breathing, and his eyes were closed. Roger could almost think he'd fallen asleep, almost almost almost...
He shook him softly, knowing somehow, in some distant part of himself at the back of his mind, that it was useless. "Mark?" His voice was rough, choked past tears. "C'mon, Mark, open your eyes, man, you've gotta hang on just a little longer, please..."
There was a bang, deafening as it echoed in the narrow alley, the sound of it making Roger jolt backwards automatically. The dealer turned and ran, and Mark just stood there for a second. For that second, Roger couldn't move, couldn't breathe, simply stare and shock. He took a step toward Mark, asking softly, "You okay?" Mark looked over to him with a stunned, confused expression – and then fell, almost without a sound.
Roger lurched forward automatically, dropping to his knees at Mark's side and taking Mark's face in his hands, trying to keep the panic out of his voice and only partially succeeding. "Mark? Mark, look at me." There was something dazed in Mark's eyes, unlike the usual perfect clarity Roger saw there, and when he opened his mouth to say something nothing came out, his breath hitched like it hurt him. Roger's heart plummeted into his stomach as he realized, abruptly and with perfect certainty, this was it.
There were tears falling on Mark's face, running down along his cheek to his neck before soaking into his coat, and Roger stared at him blankly for a moment before realizing those were his tears, and he couldn't stop them. One of Mark's hands was still in his, and he squeezed it a little, running his thumb over the back of Mark's hand distractedly, eyes fixed on his face.
"Hey, you promised me you wouldn't leave me," he said softly, desperately, his voice cracking a little, like that reminder would somehow change the truth, bring him back. "You swore, after April, remember? You... you promised me."
Roger unwound his scarf from around his neck quickly and pressed it to Mark's stomach, feeling nauseous at the sight of the blood there. It wasn't that blood usually bothered him, it was more seeing it on Mark, seeing Mark hurting and bleeding and God this sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen to Mark. "Mark? Mark, talk to me."
"Hurts. Not... too much... blood, though." Mark lifted his head a little to look at his stomach.
Roger's eyes flicked down, away from Mark's face momentarily, to the injury. There was a dark stain spreading on the concrete beneath Mark, some of the blood already reaching where Roger knelt on the pavement and soaking into the knees of his pants, warm and sticky, and too fucking much of it for Roger to cling to much hope. Roger bit his lip hard, fighting back tears, and finally said in a halting voice, "No. Not... not too much."
Just as long as he acted like it was okay, kept calm, convinced Mark he was going to be fine, someone would get here to help and Mark would be fine, he would, he had to be...
Mark didn't answer him, didn't open his eyes, and a desperate sob wracked Roger's body. He slumped forward over Mark, pressing his forehead to Mark's chest and shaking, choking on tears and unable to breathe, unable to think of anything but how still Mark was, how wrong this was, how it should've been him, he should've said something, done something...
One of his hands, the one not clinging to Mark's hand, was on Mark's back, and he began to realize dimly that it was coated with blood, slick and hot, that there was blood all over his clothes since he'd pulled Mark onto his lap. It didn't really matter, except that the sudden realization of just how much blood there was served as one more blow to the desperate illusion Roger was still clinging to, the idea that any minute Mark was going to open his eyes...
"Rog?"
Roger had never heard his voice that weak, that pained, and it scared him. "Yeah?" he asked, no longer able to hold back the tears and just fighting to speak without them choking up his throat and making speech impossible.
"It's... gettin'... hard to... breathe..."
No, no, no, no, no, no no no nonononono you can't die, Mark, you can't leave me, not after April and Mimi, not after I lost them both and I can't do it again, I can't lose you... He said none of that out loud, just fought back a sob, couldn't let Mark see him crying. "You just hold on. You are not fucking leaving me." There had to be someone coming, someone who had heard them and would come to help, had to be, because Mark had to be okay. Would be okay. He would be.
It was the silence that cut through Roger's thoughts, that reminded him of reality, that broke through the frantic, impossible hopes he'd been building up that Mark would be okay and open his eyes and someone would come to help. It was a silence unbroken by anything but Roger's gasping breaths and sighs – no footsteps on the sidewalk outside the alley, no one around to help. No sounds of breathing from Mark, certainly not the gasping, pained breathing of before, which would have been audible enough. Nothing but silence. Absolute, dead silence.
Roger squeezed Mark's hand lightly, realizing dimly that his fingers felt colder than they ought to, and the blood on his own hands was getting tacky and cold. "Mark," he whimpered softly, and a little desperately. "C'mon, man, you're supposed to be around a long time after I'm gone, remember? I swear I'll do anything you want if you just look at me, I'll get out of the house whenever you want me to, I'll – I'll take my meds when I'm supposed to, I'll stop hiding your glasses, anything, just... please... Mark?"
As before, the only answer he got was silence.