For a while now Mark had been leaving the loft at five o'clock exactly, never saying where he was going, and returning almost exactly an hour and a half later. Whenever Roger would press his friend for answers, he was always blown off or had the subject changed on him. So in a way this was all Mark's fault to begin with, if he had just answered Roger's questions, he wouldn't have even been there.
Mark turned a corner into some dingy park and a few moments later Roger did the same. He crept behind a tree, softly humming the James Bond theme as he did so, getting himself comfortable as he saw Mark take a seat on some rickity old bench.
Was he waiting for someone? Maybe he was on some date or something. Something inside him stung at the thought, and Roger had to shift a bit to get comfortable. Why hadn't Mark told him that he was seeing someone? He thought he deserved to know that the other was seeing someone, if nothing else.
Roger had to refocus as Mark reached into his bag, pulling out his camera, and something else. He squinted, trying to get a better view, but whatever it was had been placed in a paper bag. Taking a moment to look around, he took slight comfort in the fact that no one else seemed to be around. Maybe Mark wasn't on a date, maybe the whole thing was completely different and he had misjudged everything. Perhaps Mark was just needing some alone time, maybe he didn't do anything here but just sit and mess with his camera. Then again couldn't he have done that exact same thing at the loft? He was in his own room enough to give Mark any privacy he really wanted, so why did he have to run away to some shitty park to get it?
Mark reached insde the paper bag, pulling out what seemed like a piece of bread. He began to tear it into smaller pieces, then finally throwing them to the ground and smiling as the pidgeons began to flood the floor, fighting and clawing at each other for the meger scraps of food.
Roger watched for twenty minutes, before letting himself fall backwards into the grass. He couldn't believe he dragged himself out here for this. Of all the things Mark could be doing, of all the horrible, brilliant, or flat out insane things that he could have chosen to do, he's feeding pidgeons.
A laugh escaped him, and then another, and another, until Roger found himself curling up and laughing hysterically. He had been so worried over pidgeons! For a while all he could was just lay there an laugh at his own stupidity.
"Roger? What the hell?"
He laughed even harder when Mark found him, struggling to get up but failing miserably. After a few more minutes he started to catch his breath, occasionally glancing at his friend and breaking out into snickers again.
"Pidgeons Mark? You're cheating on me with pidgeons?" He shook his head, still laughing. "I can't believe it, you're leading a double life as an old woman! What's really in that bag eh, thousand year old candy and knitting"
Mark was doing his very best to glare daggars at him, but he only succeeded in gaining the look of an upset child. "Shut up would'ya"
"Oh god I'm sorry Marky-boy, but if you'd have known all the stuff I'd been thinking, man you'd be the same exact way." He put an arm around Mark's shoulder, leading him back to the bench where he'd abandoned his things. "C'mon, I'll tell you all about it while we feed some birds."