It's funny how sleep was sort of an annoyance when he could sleep all he wanted, when he could choose what time to sleep and what time to wake up, when he could get all eight hours no problem, as easily as lying down and shutting his eyes, and how sometimes he wanted or needed to stay awake so he'd drink soda, coffee, take no-doze pills. Whatever it takes.
Then insomnia set in and sometimes he feels like he'd kill if it meant he could get to sleep and stay that way for longer than an hour.
Lately Mark is afraid to sleep. When you're trying to help an addict, you're not supposed to let them out of your sight. Ideally you should have at least one other person helping, but Collins is at MIT and Benny's moved out. It's just Mark and he has to deal with it. So he listens for the door opening, or Roger moving around the loft, or water running in the bathroom. He's a light sleeper anyway.
Well, he used to be. Now he can't sleep at all and he's been wandering around, feeling like he's half-dead. Constantly worrying about Roger started it, probably, and then the nightmares he started having made it worse, but the fact that Roger managed to get out once while Mark was sleeping on the couch was likely what finally did it. Usually he sleeps outside Roger's door, but he screwed up and fell asleep on the couch that night. He tried to sleep the next night and couldn't. At all. And as he went longer and longer without sleeping he found he could function less and less, until he started forgetting in mid-sentence what he was talking about, leaving things half-done, getting headaches so bad that nothing they had in the loft could get rid of them.
Roger shot up again yesterday, and since late last night he's been asleep on the couch. He stays away from his room now, mostly, and Mark can't really blame him. He can't fault him for not wanting all these reminders of April around, but it's easy to fault him for what he does to keep from being reminded. Jesus, he knows it's hard, dealing with addiction and death and disease, but Roger's not even trying, not anymore, and that's really what Mark is angry about.
Yes. He's angry. But instead of giving up and letting Roger go on his fucking downward spiral, Mark convinces himself to try again, find Roger's stash, get rid of it. They'll talk later, after Roger wakes up. And he'll try again after that. And again.
Roger really only stays away from his room when he's sober, and unless he's still got his stash on him, it's probably in there, but of course, all the old hiding places are out. The boxes under the bed, full of notebooks and pictures and phone numbers and everything. Inside jackets in the closet. In the drawers. The compartments in his guitar case. Amplifiers.
Out of desperation, he checks books, under furniture, behind baseboards, until he's checked every corner and compartment in the room, any hiding place that he can think of. Groaning in frustration, he sits on Roger's bed, frowning down at the floor. His anger is gone, and mostly he just feels hopeless now. Like if this is what Roger wants, then there's little he'll be able to do to stop him, short of calling the police and getting him sent to mandatory rehab, a place he can't just check out of and then disappear. He hates himself a little for thinking of it, for even considering letting someone else deal with Roger. He sighs, and curls up on his side, staring straight ahead of him, at the nightstand, past the lamp and the empty coffee cup and the alarm clock -
The alarm clock.
He grabs it, turning it upside down, ripping the backing off of the battery compartment, and there it is. Roger's stash. And the sigh he releases now is a breath he didn't even know he was holding, and he figures it's good that he's feeling a little less hopeless now, a little less like giving up on his friend.
He sprawls back out on the bed, shoving the small plastic bag in his pocket. After that brief moment of optimism, he's even more exhausted than before, and he doesn't really fall asleep so much as pass out from fatigue. Despite that, he still dreams. No nightmares this time, just Roger, the one from a few months ago, before addiction and death and disease. And when he wakes up less than an hour later, he feels empty again, and he thinks that he'd have preferred a nightmare to that. He'd have preferred to dream about monsters and drowning and being torn apart instead of dreaming of his friend, and having to wake up and remember that the person still sleeping in the living room and the person he dreamed about couldn't be much more different.