Author's Note: Okay. I'm not exactly happy with the way this turned out, as some people know. So please let me know what you think, seeing as you, the reader, are more important than I, the author.


Roger was completely empty, as far as Mark could tell. He was laying face up on his mattress, his eyes scanning the stained and chipping ceiling with an immense wonder. Mark was thoroughly wasted, his six empty bottles relaxing together in the corner to prove it, as well as the smoke that barely remained in the room and the seventh bottle, shattered into beautiful shiny slivers next to the couch.

Sometimes it worried him that his tolerance was so high, maybe he had too much experience. Soon after those thoughts, though, he would realize that he was being silly, and remember to be thankful for his extreme consumption capabilities. He congratulated himself, too. "Good job", He would think. "Good fucking job for not becoming like him."

He wondered what exactly "like him" meant. What was like him? Making use of an outside force to rid him of his pain? If that was it, he was like him. He was just like him. (Not as bad, he would remind himself. Not nearly that bad. Never that bad.) And just because Mark hadn't run to heroin just yet...it didn't make him better than Roger, did it?

Of course it did.

Because he had tried it. He had tried it, once, and as soon as the cool steel had punctured his virgin veins, he knew it wasn't his drug. And maybe it had just been a bad experience. Maybe he was already too high or too desperate or the junk was cheaper than usual. Maybe it just wasn't the right time. Or maybe, he thought, some people were born for smack, and some weren't. Because he had tried it, and it was the fucking scariest experience of his life.

The wind began whispering its secrets outside the loft windows, and the chill increased to a dull numbness. (Mark didn't notice the change, though, because he was already cold, and already numb. Not because of the beer or the weed, but because he always was. He was cold all the time, and numb all the time. He couldn't even tell the difference anymore.)

The couch kept moving, and Mark just couldn't keep track of it. First it had been near a weak table, situated in the center of a dirty orange rug. But all of a sudden it had crawled to the corner, and walked itself into the kitchen. Mark laughed, because he didn't know what else to do. What was one supposed to do when their furniture was galavanting around like it owned the place? He giggled and spun around in circles, trying to figure out where it had run to now. It must be in the bedroom, he figured. It took him minutes to decide where his bedroom was, and by that point it was far too much of a hassle to actually enter. And so he sat. He sat with his legs crossed in the middle of the floor like he had when he was only a child.

He quickly wondered who he was kidding. He still was a child. A child who didn't know anything about anything.

He laughed again. Laughed so hard that he rolled backwards and onto his side. He didn't stop when he looked up to notice that the couch was still where it had been in the beginning, that maybe it hadn't been running about without his permission in the first place. He didn't stop when Roger appeared in the doorway that must have belonged to them, or when he stepped closer and lowered himself to Mark's level. He only stopped when Roger started kissing him and attempting to remove his shirt. And then, he only stopped so he could concentrate on kissing back.

It never once crossed Mark's mind that this wasn't right, that this couldn't, or shouldn't, qualify as a friendship or anything else. It only crossed his mind that this was fun, and good, and satisfying. And he wasn't going to stop it. Not for anything in the world.