A/N: Holy shit we're seven chapters deep! Wowwww. I hope ya'll know this is probably my favorite multi-chapter that I've ever written and I seriously plan on finishing it this year. I actually went and counted the Fridays left this year, and I have no excuse not to finish this fic. So if ya'll are willing to keep on encouraging me, I'll do my very best!

Also, I'm sorry that this chapter was a week late. I was in Canada visiting my wife with our life partner and we had a great time! x) Hope this is worth the wait.

Chapter 7: Who Knows

It's entirely Roger's fault that Mark ends up at the community center doors at ten in the morning on a Monday afternoon.

For days now all Roger has done is watch him. He's made every excuse to pop into Mark's room – sometimes he doesn't leave. Sometimes he peeks in and asks Mark, "Whatcha doin'?" so casually that Mark almost fools himself into thinking that Roger is actually interested. But that can't be true, because not even Mark is interested in his own life, or this damn screenplay. Michael makes him want to throw things, and Michael is supposed to be him.

He supposes there's some kind of symbolism there. He's too tired to look for it.

In any case, all of Roger's uncharacteristic hovering and smiling is making him twitch. It's practically impossible to pull up his sleeve at all when Roger is home nowadays. He never knows when he's going to just fucking waltz in and catch him red-handed.

Literally.

He's settled for quick, nervous razor-bites in the shower, but watching the pink water wash over the porcelain reminds him so much of April that he has to stumble out and huddle on the, shuddering and remembering.

Life Support is a good enough excuse to get him out of the house without Roger trailing suspiciously after him. Mark had considered it for a long few hours in the middle of the night, staring at a blank page, sweating. Collins hasn't talked about going since he's been back in town, so it's probably safe to say he won't be there…

And the people there will only remember him the way he was, smiling and apologetic and good-naturedly awkward. Back when he had it under wraps.

Mark misses that version of himself with a poignant sort of despair.

So… here he is.

The building is still covered in graffiti, and the doors still don't quite line up in the frame. Mark wonders vaguely if it's still as drafty as it had been a year ago, and if he's going to have to keep his coat on the whole time. He hopes not.

At the same time, he recognizes an opportunity for unquestioned sleeves when he sees one.

He takes a ridiculous amount of time just standing there on the pavement, gazing sightlessly at the worn brick and trying to convince himself that this is what he wants to spend his morning doing. He takes a lot of deep breaths. It makes him dizzy, which he supposes is as close to courage as he's going to get; he ducks his head and slips inside with his breath caught in his throat.

It's not like you have to share anything. It'll be just like the old days.

The old days had mostly consisted of the group – Paul, Steve, Ali, Gordon, Pam, Sue, Roger, Collins, Angel, Mimi – sharing, and ranting, and talking over one another, and crying and laughing and hugging while Mark sat in the back and clutched the sides of his chair and smiled as he declined every invitation to speak.

They'd never entirely stopped issuing them, but he was resolute. He didn't need to share. He didn't have problems, like these people – it would be a crime for him to complain about his inability to hold down a job to these people who might be dying.

Angel had never seen it that way. Mark fervently wishes that Angel were still around, to corner him against the coat rack and ask him what was wrong.

There's no one to confide in now. No one willing to do the work; no one willing to put up with him that long, long enough to understand how lost a cause he is; no one to invite him to talk, just talk, like he matters.

But Mark doesn't worry about that. He already knows he doesn't matter.

He doesn't realize that his feet have already taken him to where he's going until Paul is already coming over, smiling huge and warm and welcoming, with is hand extended. "Mark! It's been a while! How have you been? We're about to get started."

Mark numbly shakes his hand, feeling suddenly dirty and infectious in a way that none of these people ever could be. "Fine. Uh, good."

Paul peers at him closely, dark eyebrows knitting together. "Are you sure?"

Some part of him wonders what his face is doing right now. If Paul's reaction is any indication, it's not what he wants it to be doing.

This was a fucking terrible idea, Cohen, can't you ever keep your angst to yourself?

"Um," he stammers, fumbling for words. Damn it, why is he even here? "Yeah. I'm sure. I'm, uh, just – here to get some footage," he manages with a tight smile, weakly holding up his (recently dusted) camera, and miraculously Gordon speaks up, sounding bored and skeptical as ever. God bless that cynical bastard.

"Much as we've all missed the camera man, could we maybe get started?" He's leaning forward in his chair, chin in his hands and eyebrows raised in challenge, and Paul visibly forces himself not to roll his eyes as he glances back at him.

"The meeting doesn't start until everyone gets here," he tells him patiently, eyes still fixed knowingly at that something on Mark's face that he's starting to panic about. He fights the crazed impulse to start rubbing it frantically, until the skin peels off, until his misery sinks back into his bones where it belongs, not in his pores where anyone could see. Paul can't see into his head, he tells himself reasonably.

"Everyone is here," Gordon counters with just a hint of a sneer, and it reminds Mark of Roger so much that he almost laughs. He only just restrains himself, with the thought of everyone's eyes snapping to him at once. "Come on. None of us have a lot of time to waste."

It's not really a fair jab. Paul is positive too. Mark doesn't say anything about it, just politely backs a step further away from the man blocking his path and starts to edge around him.

Paul, recognizing defeat, gives him one last imploring look before sighing deeply and going back to the group. "Alright, alright. Mark, why don't you have a seat." He stands behind a chair and braces his hands on the back of it, looking around the circle approvingly. "Who's here today?"

Mark inches forward and grabs a chair of his own from the stack against the wall, eyeing the circle with a sinking heart. The group has gotten smaller; besides Gordon, Paul, and Sue, none of the names or the faces are familiar to him.

This is going to be even more uncomfortable than he thought.

He sits down anyway, because the alternative is Roger, and Sue smiles at him. He musters a smile back. It seems to appease her because she turns back to the group and says her name, loudly and pointedly. It takes him a full minute to realize that she's just skipped over him.

A rush of gratitude leaves him breathless and staring, wide-eyed and desperately appreciative. She winks.

Mark decides suddenly that Sue is his new favorite person in the whole wide miserable world.

"So, with Easter coming up, I was thinking – and obviously this is only a suggestion – that we should talk about our families, blood or otherwise…"

Paul is talking again and it takes all of his energy just to focus on the words. Now that he's sitting down, his whole body feels tense and stiff and awkward. Unfamiliar eyes drag over him curiously. He wrings his hands in his lap and pretends not to notice.

If you hadn't stopped coming, they wouldn't be staring, his pet voice says nastily. He grimaces and shoos it, fingers slipping up his sleeve compulsively to rub at the raised marks there. Several of them are painfully cracked and scabbed. He's not going to worry about that right now… He's just going to smile and fade into the background.

And that seems ominously descriptive of his entire life right now.

"… You might not be wrong, Gordon, but don't you think that you should give your brother the benefit of the doubt?"

There's a smattering of thoughtful murmurs and Gordon snorts audibly. Mark's thoughts have gone in at least ten misshapen circles by the time he realizes Paul is looking at him again, and even though he's not really being addressed, it unnerves him enough to guiltily start listening again.

Gordon is leaning forward, eyes glinting with a frayed sort of challenge. "Do you think I haven't tried? For fuck's sake, Paul, you've known me long enough –"

"I know." Paul smiles achingly and leans back apologetically, scratching his head. "I know. I just wish that you could get along with the people you have left. We all want the best for each other here, Gordon."

Gordon is skinnier than Mark remembers him. He's still gawky and tall and severe-looking, though, suspicious in stillness, hands secretly wringing in his lap. Mark had always really identified with that aspect of Gordon, one that he wasn't entirely sure anyone else had noticed – much as he pretended that they didn't, these meetings made Gordon anxious as hell.

He tries to scrape together what he knows about Gordon from the several meetings they'd attended together last year and comes up worryingly short. He's a teacher. He's a lot like Roger, in a lot of ways, in that he's unapproachable and has an impressive scowl to match his attitude. Mark vaguely remembers comparing them in his mind, eyes darting between them from one side of the circle to the other.

They'd never gotten along very well, to his recollection… That was probably an understatement. But that really isn't surprising.

After all, Mark thinks that if he met himself he'd be absolutely fucking disgusted.

Bloody wrists bloody heart all out in the open for everyone to see, everyone to know, to know poor Marky Cohen's a pathetic wretch and will be his whole miserable life.

It's getting hard to tell "the voice" – his own nagging, sneering voice – from his conscious, deliberate thoughts.

He's lost count of his breaths. His chest is heaving. Sue is peering at him in concern.

"What about you, Mark?" Paul asks, and he freezes halfway through picking a scab, eyes like chipped saucers. He probably looks like a fraying wire, pathetic and maybe a little dangerous. (That's how Roger had looked, those days and weeks he'd prowled and thrashed and sobbed out of nowhere, that's how Mark imagines himself except less, always less, barely anything, maybe he can just disappear?)

Belatedly, he realizes that he's panicking.

"What?" he manages, praising every higher power he can think of for keeping his voice from cracking just then. Paul smiles patiently.

"What about you?" he repeats easily. His voice is honey smooth. Mark hates it. "I know that you might not necessarily celebrate Easter," and here he's apologetic, and Mark wants hysterically to laugh because God I'm a terrible Jew you have no idea how long it's been since I've gone home for Chanukah but his throat is so constricted that there's no option. "But I know that at least some of your friends do. Will you be alone this holiday, or do you have someone to spend it with?"

There's a soft, special emphasis on alone that makes Mark's head suddenly too light on his shoulders and before he knows it he's standing, lips stretched into a tight, painful smile as he stumbles back and around his chair.

There are so many eyes on him. They can all see, through his sleeves through his chest where everything is clogging and sticking like black tar, like poison, they can see him.

Don't don't don't don't look–!

"That's, um, a good question actually I should probably go back and ask – ask Roger what his plans are – er," he scrambles, desperately, fighting the urge to turn and bolt and almost forgetting to snatch his camera up in the process. "Thanks for having me, again, I'll s-see you around probably –"

He promptly loses the battle.

Every pair of eyes follows him all the way out.

They don't stop tugging at the back of his sweater until he's half a block away.

He finds out that he has exactly fifteen dollars and several grimy pennies in his wallet, and promptly spends over half of it on the first pack of cigarettes he's bought for himself in years. He's choking one down, remembering miserably that he'd never really gotten the hang of the smoking thing even when he was doing it back when he and Roger were joined at the hip and apparently the lungs, when someone strolls around the corner and bumps his shoulder.

"Got a light?" Gordon stares him down and Mark feels like he has to crane his neck to get a good look at him – not that he really wants to.

His tongue is burning and he exhales reluctantly, nervously flicking ash from the tip and trying to smile. "Yeah – uh, give me a second."

The last thing he wants to do is encourage anyone – let alone someone who reminds him so very fucking much of Roger – to hang around him while he's trying to stave off a monstrous panic attack, but Gordon just shrugs and leans against the building beside him, and eventually Mark stops fumbling in his pocket and hands over the battered blue lighter he's been using for the past year and a half.

Half-smiling, Gordon takes it and looks back down at his hands as he flicks it. On, out, on again, and out – and then Mark remembers.

"You don't smoke," he says slowly, mouth tasting of ash and heart sluggishly, sickeningly racing on. It still hasn't stopped pounding and he's been standing out here for almost twenty minutes. How the hell did Gordon even find him, unless he followed him?

"Not since I was nineteen." Gordon shrugs, flicking the lighter again. It putters pitifully. Mark is incredulous that it still works at all, not that he's complaining. He doesn't have money for a new one. He occupies himself with his cigarette, which is shrinking rapidly down to the filter, and his shaking fingers, and his rubbery knees, and the way Gordon's hair falls in soft, dark curls into his eyes.

Mark laughs stiltedly. He can't bring himself to ask the guy to leave, at this point. It would be too telling.

Not that he's not already visibly shaking.

Not that he can't feel those eyes, eyes all over him, making his scabs itch and crack and ooze.

Not that he can't feel Gordon's eyes, dark and serious, following the line of his wrist.

He knows he knows he knows they all know –!

Fuck, his mouth tastes disgusting now. The cigarette is gone, crumbling between his fingers, and he lets it go and licks his lips and closes his eyes and just gives up.

I don't care who knows anymore.

I want to be done.

Funny, it's not the first time he's thought those exact words. It may be the first time he has the means to do anything about it though.

While he's contemplating his suicide, Gordon is still scrutinizing him and playing with his lighter like they've been hanging out on sketchy streetcorners together for years. If he actually was Roger, that wouldn't be terribly inaccurate.

Gordon wears less eyeliner than Roger, Mark thinks to himself dazedly. None, actually. His lungs feel oddly deflated in his chest. His knuckles are probably white around the blade in his pocket, the warm plastic sweaty in his palm. There's a bathroom in the café around the corner that isn't too disgusting and he can imagine, head swimming and teeth aching-itching, how he could slip in and lock the door and bring the metal to his wrist and whine out loud at the relief of the tension headache growing between his eyes.

Another five minutes have passed. Probably. Gordon stops glancing at him and hands the lighter back, pulling his coat tighter around himself. It's not flannel or leather, or a band t-shirt, so Roger would definitely not wear it.

"If you ever want to yell at the world," he says suddenly, eyes laser-focusing on Mark's so that he almost wants to stumble backward and throw up his arms to shield himself. "I always come to the Saturday night meetings. And Mondays, too."

Somehow, Mark finds his voice. It feels detached from him, nearly drowned out by the buzzing in his head. "I don't know if I'm really cut out for, um… I mean…"

He almost laughs again, and this time he's almost sure he would have started crying, so he's intensely grateful when Gordon interrupts him with a slight shrug.

"I might feel less bad about ditching if I have a partner," he says breezily, and gives Mark a pointed look as he brushes past. He bumps his shoulder again in that weird, friendly way. There's something like sympathy practically glowing in his eyes and it makes Mark almost sick to think about where it might be stemming from. "Just an offer. See you around, Mark."

"See you," Mark rasps, watching him go helplessly. The blade in his pocket is screaming for him. His wrists are wailing, too, for mercy or for more abuse he just can't tell anymore.

They both know which it will be, anyway.

Just like last time. Just like every time.

Last time…

When Gordon disappears around the corner, Mark staggers down the street and up eight flights of stairs like he's fleeing from a ghost.

Maybe he's the ghost. He's not sure if that counts.

The blade bites one thin vein and he hits his head against the bathroom wall, biting his lip to keep from gasping. Roger calls his name distantly. He doesn't sound like Gordon. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay…

Mark takes several deep breaths through his nose. Blood is trickling down over his fingers, slow and thin. He's flooded with blissful numbness, apathy.

The hospital room fades from behind his eyelids. The sirens fade from his ears.

He's here and now, not back there and then.

It's okay. It's okay.

"Mark?" Roger calls again, brightly. He's getting closer. Mark reaches out and locks the bathroom door, and stares at his red-ribbon arm in listless fascination. The anxiety bleaches out of him through the roots of his hair.

For now.

"Maureen brought over a bunch of old tapes earlier, I thought a couple of them looked pretty decent. You in?" The floor creaks just outside the bathroom door. Roger's got a big smirk in his voice, the kind that normally makes Mark's eyelashes flutter. Even numb, he goes a little weak in the knees for it.

"I'm kind of tired…" Mark manages, smiling strained and frazzled. "Maybe not tonight, Roger." At least his voice is steady. That's an improvement.

Gordon probably thinks he's out of his fucking mind after today. Paul, too.

Everyone sees through you.

Everyone knows.

"I've got popcorn," he sing-songs, shaking something – presumably a box of stolen dollar-store snacks. Mark hastily wipes at the shallow new cuts lined shakily along the crease of his elbow. "C'mon, Mark, I know you don't have anything better to do…"

Roger is never this friendly, not without prodding. Not unless he's had a really good day.

But Mark can never deny him anything.

"I'm coming, I'm coming…" he laughs, and pulls his sleeve down again. The knife slips harmlessly back into his pocket.

He can continue this tonight.