Maureen wants kids.

Mark isn't really surprised when he hears this, but everyone else is. Everyone else is trying to gently tell her that maybe now isn't the right time, that if she's going to adopt like she's planning now then there's no need to hurry, and maybe a few more months or years of consideration would be best. What they all want to say is Maureen, you're still a baby yourself. Mark knows that Maureen knows what they all really want to say, and it's only making her more certain of what she wants to do, and he knows Joanne is getting information on adoption agencies on her lunch hours, stressing over financial statements and legal documentation and wondering if all those nights Maureen has spent in jail after her spectacular protests are going to have an effect on the agencies' decisions.

Mark doesn't like kids. There's the mess, and the noise, but there's also the fact that you have to be so careful. There is so much to break there, to mess up forever, and then they'll mess up their kids, and on it goes. Mark hates that kind of responsibility. He'd rather save it for someone who knows what they're doing, or at least someone who is that careful, or someone who could learn to be that careful.

"Why is it," Maureen asked him one day, "why is it that every fool in the world can have a baby, but it's so hard for people like us to adopt them?" It was a rhetorical question, one that she didn't really want an answer to so much as she needed to change the subject, to get some kind of reassurance, so Mark didn't say anything. He just shook his head and waited for her to continue. "Did you know that the laws in China will absolutely not let you adopt Chinese children if you're a same-sex couple? Or even if you're single?" Obviously, Mark didn't know this, since he hadn't been keeping up on adoption laws in foreign countries, but he felt bad for Maureen. He felt bad watching her struggling to make sense of it, watching her feeling hurt and unsure, not willing to get her hopes up in case things didn't work out. "And there are so many kids in China who are waiting to be adopted, and we can't take any of them." She sighed and pushed her mug of tea away from her, resting her chin in her hand.

Unlike most of their friends, Mark doesn't think that Maureen would be bad at being a mother. Besides, even if she were, Joanne would be there, and Joanne reminds him so much of his own mother that he's sure she'd be able to pick up the slack.

He's happy that Maureen and Joanne are so excited about this, that they're smiling every time he sees them, even when they're poring over stacks of paperwork or on their way to an interview. Maureen tugs at her earlobes and fiddles with her hair when she gets nervous, but Joanne somehow gets even calmer under pressure. "How can you be so calm, baby?" Maureen keeps asking her. Again, it's a question Maureen doesn't really need an answer to: she just wants everyone to know how nervous she is. She just needs reassurance. They leave for their interview, and Mark and Roger wish them good luck, and they leave to go to Cindy's house for a long weekend.

Roger likes kids. He can ignore the mess and the noise, somehow, and just be a kid with them. He doesn't think about being careful with them. He just does it, and when Mark sees it, he's in awe of it, and his hands are itching to film it all, but Cindy told him to leave the camera or face dire consequences. It's been months - almost a year - since he's seen his sister, and he figured (mistakenly) that he could get by without his camera for one stupid weekend.

One stupid weekend. For one stupid weekend it is all about sitting in his sister's backyard, watching her kids play (the last time he saw them they were a lot redder and cried a lot more; they've actually got a little bit of a personality now). Catching up. Realizing that for all his bitching and moaning, he actually missed his parents and his sister, at least a little. Not having an answer for why he doesn't come to visit or even just call more often.

He told her about him and Roger over the phone, when she called and asked him to come back to Scarsdale, just for a weekend. She was surprised, at first, but after thinking about it for a moment she said, "Well, I guess I'm not really surprised. Geez, Marky, it doesn't matter. You'll come, won't you?"

Of course he said yes. He had to say yes.

Saturday morning he and Roger and Cindy's sons, Jeremy and Thomas, are the only ones in the house, since she and her husband Jacob are out buying groceries for dinner tonight. She offered to take the kids with them, but Roger insisted they stay. "I like them," he said, "They're cute."

"You don't want kids, do you?" Mark asks him when Cindy and Jacob have left and Jeremy and Thomas are across the backyard, out of earshot. When Roger laughs and shakes his head Mark breathes a sigh of relief. He realizes he was only half-joking.

They don't say much more, because for two people who are used to rolling out of bed sometime around noon, nine-thirty is just too early for anything except coffee. When Cindy came in their room at eight o'clock yesterday morning, her face and voice entirely too cheery, telling them that she'd made breakfast and that they were damn well going to come downstairs and eat it, Roger grumbled to him, "You didn't tell me that this was part of the one stupid weekend."

Mark replied, "She didn't tell me that either."

In all it's a pretty good way to distract him for the weekend. Between time with his family and trying to stave off questions from his parents about when he's going to find a girlfriend (he still hasn't told them about him and Roger, and he doesn't think he's going to, because he keeps hearing Roger's alarmingly accurate impression of his mother's voice saying, "But he's not even Jewish!"), he doesn't have much time to think about the interview he's got with the adoption agency on Monday afternoon, or to think about why the hell Maureen would insist they list him as a character witness or whatever it is he's supposed to be.

The apprehension he feels around children also surfaces whenever he does get a chance to think about the interview on Monday - the thought that he has any effect at all on whether or not Maureen and Joanne get a kid worries him a little, because he is pretty good at saying the wrong things sometimes. He gets that feeling that he'll have to be so careful with every single thing - what he wears, how he greets the interviewer. Not to mention what he says and how he says it. Maureen reassured him, told him that he always seems so honest and it would be hard for the representative from the agency not to trust him ("But you are going to say good things, right?" she'd asked him then, which really meant, you do believe in us, right?).

Cindy has to blink back a few tears when she drops them off at the train station on Monday morning ("Early again," Roger groused as they were packing up), hugging and kissing them both. "Call me, alright?" she says to Mark, and he really doesn't remember her ever being this attached to him or Roger, but he tells her he'll call and they get on the train and now Mark really does have to think about the interview today.

"Will you come with me today?" he asks Roger, who has been drifting in and out of sleep for a while.

"Are you sure about that?" he replies, "You know. The ex-junkie AIDS-patient thing," and Mark thinks about how much he hates it when Roger gets glib about that, "Not to mention the unemployed thing. I don't want to ruin it for them."

"So you don't have to come in," Mark says, and he cringes because it kind of sounds like he's ashamed of Roger or something and how the hell is he going to get through this interview if he can't speak like a normal human being? "I don't know," he adds, "I guess I could use the moral support, is all."

"It's not your kid."

"Yeah, but Maureen and Joanne trust me. It's their kid, maybe, and instead of just asking another one of Joanne's colleagues, they asked me."

"I know. Don't be so nervous. They asked you for a reason. They're not idiots."

"Come with me anyway."

"Fine. I'll sit outside or something."

Mark doesn't know what he was expecting - maybe one of those imposing buildings with ceiling-to-floor windows in every office, and stern-looking secretaries wearing severe makeup. He definitely wasn't expecting a block of offices tucked away in a small, squat, dusty building. He checks the address Joanne wrote down for him (her tight script a little hard on the eyes), and looks over at Roger, who is already sitting on a bench a few feet away from the front entrance, lighting a cigarette. "I guess this is the place," Mark says, and Roger nods.

"You'd better hurry. Your appointment's in five minutes," he says around his cigarette. "Don't worry so much. They've got a backup plan if this doesn't work out. And if you screw it up, they'll know next time, won't they?" he adds, grinning.

Mark tries to smile back, fails, and swallows hard. "Well. I guess I'll see you in a while," he replies, and spends entirely too long trying to pull open the door, which is supposed to be pushed.

"Hi," he says to the secretary, who is not very stern-looking at all, nor is she even wearing much makeup. "I, um, have an appointment with Eileen Pickford. 3:30."

"Mark Cohen?" she asks, looking down at her calendar.

"Yeah. Yes."

"Her office is the last one on the right. You're a little early. Or maybe she's a little late," she says, frowning and checking her clock. "But she'll be back soon, alright?"

"Sure. Okay. Thanks."

Ms. Pickford comes in a few minutes after him, a short woman, in her mid-fifties, maybe, with a kind face. She apologizes for being late, dropping her papers onto the floor as she moves past him. "Shoot!" she mutters, and Mark gets up to help her, but she brushes him away. "But thank you," she says as she sits at her desk. "So, Mr. Cohen -"

He can't stop himself from interrupting her to say, "It's Mark," and he cringes as he does so, because can't normal people be polite at this kind of thing? But Ms. Pickford smiles and continues, "Okay, Mark. Maureen's told me a lot about you, you know. You're a filmmaker?"

"Oh, yeah. Yes," he replies, not knowing what to do with this. "Well, I've been shooting footage for news stations a lot lately - it's kind of how I got started professionally, and it's a way to make money while I'm working on my own projects." He probably should be talking up Maureen and Joanne, not himself, but Ms. Pickford seems interested and he's nervous and every time he stops talking there's this awful silence in the room, which he hates.

"So how do you know Joanne and Maureen?" she asks when he is finally able to shut up and let her speak.

"Maureen and I have been friends for a long time, and I met Joanne when they started dating."

"Maureen told me you two used to be a couple."

He nods and says, "That's right," vaguely confused at why she would ask a question she already knew the answer to.

"How did it make you feel, knowing your girlfriend had left you for a woman?"

"No worse than it did if she'd left me for a man, really," he says, wondering exactly how much Ms. Pickford already knows about him. "We were having some problems anyway, I guess, and it didn't really surprise me as much as it should have, probably."

"And how did their relationship seem to be going when they first became a couple?"

"Well, it was pretty bad at first," he says before he can stop himself. "They fought a lot."

"Are they having problems now?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Do you think that Maureen and Joanne might have the impression that a child might fix some problems in their relationship?"

"No. I mean, they had a lot of problems when they first started dating, but I don't think I've seen them argue in ... well, a long time." He's probably saying the wrong things, but he's committed now - she's waiting for him to continue. "They went to Europe last year for their fifth anniversary. I think their reasons for this are the same as everyone else's." Ms. Pickford nods and smiles again, making notes on her pad and not saying anything, and Mark just keeps talking, because it freaks him out when she just sits there and writes at him. "And there's in vitro fertilization and everything, but they never even really thought about that." He doesn't mention the stories Maureen told him about meeting the couples whose last resort was adoption, who'd tried IVF, who'd spent thousands of dollars on it. She'd said it was a selfish process for selfish people.

When the interview is over, and he stands up, he glances at the notes she's made on her pad, half-expecting to see that she's been playing tic-tac-toe with herself or doing a crossword puzzle or something, still feeling that fear that he screwed up early and so completely that she's already made her decision and is just going through the motions, but it's full of quickly-scrawled notes in dark ink. She closes the notebook and smiles at him again. "Don't worry about that," she says. "Thank you for coming in," she adds, holding out her hand. He takes it, and she squeezes his hand a little. "I'm sure that you'll hear when we've made our decision. It was good meeting you, Mark." She walks with him out into the lobby and says goodbye, and greets another person sitting in the waiting room.

He sort of wants to ask Roger for a cigarette, but decides against it. "Hey," Roger says when he steps out of the building. "How did it go?"

"I don't know." He frowns a little. "Good, I guess."

"Good enough to get them a kid?"

"I hope so."

"Me too," Roger says after a moment, taking a drag off his cigarette.

Maureen made him promise to call after the interview - she's not home, but Joanne is. "So how did it go?" she asks him, and he doesn't know how to answer because he honestly doesn't know. He has the feeling she might get a little annoyed with him if he's honest about it, though (Joanne hates not knowing), so he says, "Ms. Pickford seemed to like me," because she did. Mark isn't sure whether that's relevant, but Joanne seems satisfied, at least.

"Thank you for doing this, Mark," she says after a moment. "It means a lot to us."

He only sees Maureen once or twice in the next week, and eventually it's like she's disappeared - he doesn't see her at all for almost a month, and he wonders if he really did screw it up. If he did, he can't really blame her for being angry. "She's probably busy," Roger tells him one night, quietly picking out a few notes on his guitar, frowning a little as he turns one of the keys, adjusting the tuning. "You know how it gets," he adds after a moment, and continues playing. "She's busy, Joanne's busy. They've got to make time for each other in between working and worrying about the kid thing so much. Anyway, they'd let you know if they thought you fucked it up."

Mark nods. There's a book open on his lap, but he gave up trying to read it when Roger joined him on the couch, prodding him every once in a while with the head of his guitar, the ends of the metal strings scratching at his arm.

He nearly has a coronary a few days later when someone hammers violently at the door - not a terribly pleasant way to begin the day. He grunts when he hits the floor, having tripped on the sheets, and feels around for his glasses. As he leaves the room, Roger has just started to rouse, grumbling and pulling a pillow over his head, muttering a little.

It's Maureen. When he opens the door she throws her arms around him, and with the way she's babbling, Mark thinks this could be either good or bad news. "We did it!" she shouts. "We got a little girl!"

Mark is happy about this - he really is. But it's so early and he hit his head on the nightstand when he stood up, so he says, "You could have called, you know." But while she's explaining that she wanted to tell him in person, it hits him. "Oh! Oh god," he adds, grinning.

"I know! We've got to take you and Roger out to dinner sometime. Can you believe this?" Her eyes are a little red (she must have been crying) and she's alternating between speaking normally and shouting so loudly he wonders if Mimi can hear her downstairs. The whole damn building might know by now, for all he knows. She's raving on, still, about how excited she is and how they're really just fostering Jodie ("Jodie, that's her name, did I tell you?") for now, "but if it goes well, she'll be ours!"

Eventually she hugs him (tightly) again and says, "I've got to go. There's more damn forms to sign but after that ... oh my god!"

"Call me, okay?"

"Of course!" she shouts back, already halfway down the stairs by now. "I was serious about dinner! Tell Roger, okay?"

He shuts the door and goes back inside, and Roger's standing in the doorway of his room. "Wow. What's she so excited about?" he asks, and Mark's just opened his mouth to reply when Roger adds, "Kidding. I heard most of it. The important parts."

"I'd be surprised if you hadn't heard," Mark replies, still smiling.

"I told you there was nothing to worry about."

"You did," Mark nods. "Still, I doubt you'd be saying that if you'd been the one they wanted to interview."

Roger shrugs. "Maybe so. I'm going back to bed," he replies, yawning, and moves back into his room, throwing himself down on the bed.

Mark follows him, and finds it's easier to get back to sleep than it's been in weeks.

a/n: Dude. This prompt kicked my ass. I'm sorry it took so long, but you know how it goes, with school and family and real writing projects and stuff. Also, I confess I was hitting the Scrubs fanfiction pretty hard. Still, how's this for a happy story, by god? I had to guess on some of the stuff about adoption, because I know next to nothing about the process except what I read in that Dan Savage book, and I don't think that's terribly relevant to the kind of adoption Maureen and Joanne were doing. Anyway. I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for the reviews everyone's given me so far! The next prompt I'm working on is 93 (break-up) and hopefully it will not take me six months to finish.