Of three things, Mark Cohen was absolutely certain.
Number one: His camera was not actually a camera, it was simply an extended part of his hand. Therefore, it was reasonable for him to be uncomfortable when people just grabbed it out of nowhere. It wasn't like he went around grabbing everybody else's hands uninvited, was it?
Number Two: Scarves were warm, comforting and very personal; scarves were the perfect thing to hide behind, perfect to use as a shield. Scarves made you feel wanted even when the world did not.
Number Three: He really, really hated Santa Fe. This hadn't always been so; in fact, at one point in his life he'd even harboured a small fantasy inside his head of living out the rest of his days there, in the sun, with the tumbleweeds. When he'd been young, poor, freezing and terrified, it had seemed like the only thing in the world he'd wanted.
Then Roger left, and everything had changed.
Mark realised Santa Fe wasn't perfect - it was a place where people you loved ran to escape the people that they loved, it was a place that offered a forgiving refuge to those people too weak to face their own pain. It was where Roger ran away to, his head filled with thoughts of Mimi, Mimi and himself, together. Mark would lie in bed at night, completely still, frozen not because of the cold but because the abject terror he felt whenever Roger looked at anybody but himself was only ever allowed to surface in the night, where it would do so unmercifully until Mark's very own heart could barely take the pressure. He felt sure that any night, it might stop beating altogether. Eventually, it was this fear that drove him into Roger's bed at night, still empty, still cold, still unmade the way Roger had left it. Mark curled beneath the blankets, rested his head against the pillow, breathed in deep the smell of comfort and warmth, the smell he'd come to associate with love, the smell that meant Roger. He gathered the sheets into a ball in his sleep, letting his unconscious mind dream that his friend had returned, that it was Roger that lay pressed against him so tightly that he could barely breathe.
During the day, work consumed most of his time, and the thrum of his camera beat along with the mottos he repeated to himself constantly: Don't breathe too deep, don't think all day. Too deep a breath resulted in a pain, right below his heart, that cut to his core. Too much thinking blurred his thoughts. Clouded his mind.
Dissociate, Mark, because that's what you do best. Even Roger had seen it. Called him on it. Attacked him for it. And the sad, sad thing was that Mark still wished every night that his friend would come back and attack him again, because even those few, pitiful pushes were better than this kind of nothing.