Chapter 1

Mark POV.

Mark slung his book bag over his shoulder, taking out his camera, shivering like mad as he limped his way down the road on his way home.

Trying his best to keep his teeth from clacking together, he started his camera rolling.

"December 24th, 11:46 pm, Eastern Standard Time. This is what it looks like when someone is late on his way home from a failed job interview and spraining his ankle very badly."

He felt a stinging pain from his ankle every time he put any weight on it.

Wow, what a complete Christmas Eve. Almost tripping off a bridge in the freezing cold and getting badly injured in the ankle, which may or may not be broken, and now he was on his way home, to the just as freezing cold loft that might have the power shut off any minute.

At least the snow looked pretty, despite it causing ice in his path, which made his walking even worse.

He let out a shivery sigh as he shut his camera off to focus on getting home in this intense cold weather. It wasn't nice, the fact that the ice was nearly invisible as he stepped with care every step.

It was a good idea to not have brought his bike with him. If he had, he would be groaning on the ground right now in even more immense pain.

He arrived at the loft that he shared with Roger, starting up to the giant sliding door into their apartment.

His quiet footsteps echoed up the staircase as he walked, the sound of his weight shifting to his left leg much louder than his right.

He was late. Roger wouldn't like that. Mark was never late, his internal clock always told him when he was supposed to leave and when he was supposed to get back. On time.

Nearly an entire hour late, since he was supposed to be home by 11:00 PM, not 12:00 AM.

He winced when he immediately heard Roger stop playing his guitar as the door slid open.

"The hell have you been?" Roger said, standing up from the couch.

"I lost track of time."

"Doing what, exactly?"

It took all he had to not stutter as he shrugged and said, "Filming." He tossed his camera and book bag down on the couch next to Roger after he sat back down.

"In the freezing cold? In the middle of the night?"

He sighed and let out a shiver, bundling his scarf closer to his neck. "The snow looks nice in the dark, ya know?"

Roger snorted. "Yeah, right."

"Anything happen that I should know about?" Roger said.

"What? It's not like I have a tendency to get myself into trouble like you do."

"Hey! I don't do that!" Then he paused to think for a second. "Anymore," he finished.

Mark smiled to himself as he wandered into the kitchen to look for something to eat, trying his best to hide his limping. He didn't want Roger freaking out about how his "Little Mark" got injured.

"Yep," Roger said from the couch, letting out a casual strum of a chord. "Of course you didn't have anything to eat yet."

Mark sighed a quiet sigh of relief as he got out of the sight of Roger. "Oh shut up. You probably haven't either," he replied.

He strummed a different chord with a chuckle. "Touché."

Mark opened the fridge and felt disappointment go through him when there was barely anything inside. Just a couple of unopened cans of sauces. We need to get some food, he thought to himself. If only they had the money for it.

"Oh, yeah. Forgot to tell you that the only thing we have is... well, nothing."

"Noted." He shut the fridge and unplugged it for now, to save power.

He went out into the living room, still trying his best to now limp too much, and plopped down next to Roger, who was still just sitting there plucking at his guitar strings.

He let out an accidental hiss of pain, which he quickly covered up with a long sigh. Roger gave him a strange look, nonetheless.

"So, what did you do today?" Roger asked casually, though Mark could see what he was doing.

He picked up his camera and started fiddling with it as he pulled a blanket over himself. Lately him and Roger had been huddling together on the couch to avoid freezing to death. "Went to a job interview, filmed a couple of things, didn't get the job-you know, the usual. What about you?"

"Sat around, played guitar, sat around some more-you know, the usual," he said with a teasing grin.

Mark rolled his eyes but smiled anyway, ignoring the still-throbbing pain that his ankle was letting out.

He didn't think he would be able to hide it from Roger, at least, not until tomorrow, when he would need to examine it himself and there was basically no place in their loft that he could get away from Roger long enough before he would call out Mark's name to make sure he was okay.

Mark had tried to do some things, see. Things that involved a sharp razor, and his wrist.

He especially couldn't be in the bathroom for more than ten minutes, because Roger was even more anxious when it came to that, what with what happened to April and all.

It was a long time ago, yeah, but Mark could tell that he just didn't want the same thing to happen to another loved one.

Roger was basically the only thing that was keeping him from trying again...

Until he was going to be gone as well, in the same place as Angel and Mimi. Then, Mark was going to be following him soon after.

"You alright, Mark?" Roger said. "You seem a little pale."

He realized that he had stopped fiddling with his camera, it now laying still in his lap, as he stared down at the ground. He cleared his throat as he snapped out of it. "Yeah... fine. Just tired, I guess."

"Mark," he said. He placed down his guitar. "Did you get hurt or something?"

Mark sighed and gestured down at his ankle. "I'm not sure if it's a sprain or..."

"Mark! Why didn't you tell me!" Roger exclaimed as he stood and forced Mark's leg on the footrest.

"Exactly this reason, actually," Mark mumbled to himself. He took his foot away from where Roger was kneeling down, about to take his shoe off. "I can take care of it myself. You don't need to worry about me all the time. I'm not a baby."

He bent down and took his own shoe off. Honestly, the exact reason that he didn't tell Roger about this was because he had the tendency to overreact to literally everything that Mark did.

His ankle was all swollen and red. It was bad, but it wasn't broken. That would have been a whole other level of pain. At least the shoe was off, so now it wasn't squeezing as tightly.

"Damn. You need some ice for that? It ain't that hard to find some. Just walk out on the fire escape and we're good." The worry in Roger's voice was lingering, despite him having adopted a more casual persona. Mark could tell that it was all fake.

"Yeah, sure," Mark said.

Roger went out the window onto the fire escape. A little later he came back in with an entire handful of snow and ice.

He took a plastic ziplock bag from the table and put the freezing contents in his hand inside of it.

He then came over and handed it to Mark.

"Thanks." Mark pressed it to the spot that hurt the most, wincing.

"Do you need to go to the hospital or something?" Roger said.

Mark let out a small, non-humorous laugh. "We can't afford the hospital, Roger."

"Oh, right. Maybe Collins and Angel can do something about it?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know, Angel has money, doesn't she? She can... get you a brace."

"Don't those cost a lot? I don't want her to spend so much for me."

Roger rolled his eyes. "Seriously? I'm calling her."

"It's the middle of the night! If you're going to call her, at least do it in the morning when they're actually awake!"

"I..." he said, like he was about to object, then he thought about it for a second and crossed his arms with a stubborn look on his face. "Fine," he said. "We'll go to them tomorrow. But your ankle's going to make it difficult to sleep on a couch, especially with another person. You should go to your own bed."

"Yeah, no. If I did that, both if us would freeze to death and I would take a hurting ankle from that almost any day."

"'Almost'?"

"Not to be specified."

He rose an eyebrow but didn't say anything else about it. He just have known what he meant by that... right? Because he knew that Mark would never be able to live without him after he was gone from this world.

"Okay, fine. But only because you have a good point. If this was in warmer weather, you'd better believe you would already be asleep in your own bed, alright?"

"Alright. I get it."