I felt like I should be writing more. This is Roger and Mark, no romance, but some kind of a painful love in a whole other way.

"Hey Marky."

He doesn't answer, not that I expected him to. He's been silent for so long now, I've almost forgotten his voice.

Almost.

I set his camera by him, letting him be near it for a little while. Sometimes I wish I could leave it with him always. I think he'd appreciate that. But someone would steal it; take it away from both of us. He wouldn't be able to stop them, not anymore.

We sit in silence. It's cold out here in New York's December, a month that seems to feel icy in more ways than one. I wonder if he feels the chill anymore, now, a year later. Probably not.

I try to remember his smile. He used to light up when Maureen walked in the room, but that was so long ago and she's nearly forgotten him. He smiled those few months when Angel was around; her good humor was contagious to us all. He smiled when he met Kay, the writer with the spark of fireworks in her eyes. She fit him perfectly and his grin spoke her name for months.

But soon his smiles stopped coming: when Kay left him, when he held a doctor's note claiming 'Possessive', when he felt the virus rack his body for the first time.

He doesn't smile anymore. He can't, and didn't for weeks before. I think that's when he gave up.

"Want me to play for you, Marky?" I ask, and pull out my guitar without waiting for a response that won't come.

I play softly at first, strumming out cords, melding them with other tunes, creating, not music, but simply sound. I put pain into that sound, as if trying to pluck out emotion on my heartstrings. I'm trying to tell him that I miss having him around, hanging around the loft, simply fiddling with his camera, or making a pot of tea for the both of us though I don't ever drink it. I want him to understand that with my guitar, I'm wishing for something. I think he gets it. He could always tell my heart from my song.

I glance his way, and suddenly I can't feel anything but the fact that he's not the same. The music changes from easy sound into something harsher, colder, something to match the air. I let some kind of anger built up in my frozen fingers and I send them, suddenly scalding, over the strings, forcing out everything I feel, everything I know I can't have.

I slam my hand over a cord and stop, winded, though I don't know why. A woman passes slowly, watching me carefully after seeing my outburst. I watch her eyes shift from me to him and back.

"Your friend?" she asks softly.

I nod, and she gives me a sympathetic smile, and then continues on.

I pluck a sour cord, wince, and glance towards him.

"Sorry Marky." I stand, try to stomp feeling back into my legs. "I'm gonna go home now, ok?" I stare towards him for a moment, and suddenly something he once said, over a year ago is filling my mind.

Perhaps it's because I'm the one of us to survive.

The irony hits me and I leave the cemetery thinking of him.