are you going to kill me?

It was, by any and all reasoning, utterly illogical. Mark knows that. It’s not that he doesn’t know that it doesn’t make any sense. Mark doesn’t really know what it is, and it’s not for lack of thinking about it, because Mark has been more or less in constant mental turmoil since this thing with Jez started. Hell, Mark has been more or less in constant mental turmoil ever since he met Jez. He’s probably been in at least semi constant turmoil for his entire life, now that he thinks about it, although it almost certainly got worse when he met Jez.

It also so happens that his mental turmoil isn’t the only semi Jez has the ability to amplify.

Once again, just to make it as clear as possible, Mark is fully aware of just how bad an idea this whole entire situation is. It’s just that... well. He’s not entirely sure how to stop it. If he’s being perfectly honest, he’s not even entirely sure he wants to stop it. But he’s also not entirely sure that he doesn’t want to stop it either, so. Hence the turmoil.

He's lived with Jez for more than ten years now and this never used to be a problem in their relationship. Outside of the occasional unwanted and unquestionably unappreciated awkward sex dream, Mark just went through life happily hating his unwanted flatmate for perfectly normal, acceptable reasons. He’s messy, he’s irritating, he literally doesn’t have a job or ever pay any rent. Perfectly normal reasons that every regular housesharing Brit can relate to (okay, so maybe not everyone, but still. Mostly normal). Suddenly he’s the girl on a trashy American reality show who banged her roommate just to cause drama.

That’s why he did it, probably, Mark thinks. His life was getting a little on the dull side. He had to go and stir the pot just to make himself feel a little less insignificant. He’s a divorced dad in his mid-forties with a boring dead end job and no love life whatsoever, so what does he do? Attempt to destroy the only longstanding relationship in his life by adding another needlessly complicated layer to their already overly complicated friendship. Like a particularly fucked up game of Jenga, where Mark constantly takes the worst blocks and balances them with all the grace of a hammered rhino, thinking that this time has got to be the one that toppled the tower, that this can’t possibly go on for any longer.

Surely his and Jez’s relationship must have a toppling point. Everything has a toppling point, right? Mark has fucked up every single relationship he’s ever had, from his ex-wife to his dream girl to his family, and yet through some wild miracle, he still has Jez. He doesn’t remember when it happened, but somewhere along the way he had started assuming- rather foolishly, it seems now- that at this point, he and Jez would just be together forever. It makes him cringe thinking about it. ‘Forever’ was not a word typically associated with Mark Corigan, unless it was followed by ‘alone’, but he can’t help but begrudgingly admit he had started to believe Jez when he said they were each other’s One. Jez might have been a physical and emotional mess with very few skills and a rather expensive drug problem, but he was Mark’s. And as much as he repressed it and ignored it and avoided it, they loved each other.

For the first time in Marks life, he feels a genuine sense of impending dread at the prospect of being alone. While life has been fisting him aggressively since as far back as he can remember, he’s always had Jez. Ever since those disappointingly shitty days back at Darty, they had each other. They didn’t like each other; but they had each other.

And now, a few decades later, he may have fucked this up as well. How fucking typical. Mark Corigan, Human Rubbish, has destroyed everything once again. Bloody hell, he’s going to have to move. He could just throw Jez out, he supposes, since it’s still technically Mark’s flat even after all these years and the bastard still doesn’t pay rent. He’s not sure he could handle the awkwardness of that conversation though. ‘Oh yeah, hi Jez, I’m throwing you out onto the street because I regret shagging you and can’t look you in the eyes anymore, feel free to sleep in Super Hans’ bathtub or even his snake infested guest room, hope you don’t die!’

Well, when you put it like that, it actually sounds quite easy. He could do that. It wouldn’t even be that hard. He could put all of Jez’s possessions in the hall while he was asleep, and before he even realised what was happening Mark will have locked the door behind him. It’s an easy enough plan really, the only real problem arising from the fact that he would have to make sure he never ever saw Jez again, which would probably be difficult given that Jez knows him inside out and would undoubtedly corner him as soon as he left the house to go, well, anywhere. Jez also might kill him, but he probably wouldn’t. Right? If Jez was capable of killing him he’d probably have done it a long time ago, maybe even as far back as Darty. But then again, he never really knows what Jez is capable of, so it might be safer to get rid of him once and for all. Not kill him, of course, unless he tried to kill Mark first in which case Mark would murder him without hesitation. Although Mark doesn’t know if he could beat Jez in an honest-to-god battle to the death. He’s really more of an emotional blackmail guy.

Mark nods his head, steeling his resolve. Jez had to go. It was him or Mark, and Mark was far too petty to die by Jez’s hands. If he got going now, he could probably get Jez’s stuff out before he wakes up. He doesn’t have tons, and Mark moves fast when he puts his mind to it.

Mark, fuelled by determination and embarrassment, sits up slowly and tries to carefully extract himself from the bed. Jez grumbles and throws an arm around Mark’s middle, pulling him back in.

“Where are you going?”

Mark fumbles for an answer, fairly sure that Jez would respond poorly too the ‘I'm throwing you out because I’m worried you’ll kill me’ reasoning Mark’s currently working through.

“Uh... tea?”

Mark is fully aware that it sounds far too unsure to be the truth, but Jez either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care since he just grunts and pulls Mark closer.

“It’s fucking freezing, Mark. This is what you get for being a central heating dictator.”

“That’s your fault for sleeping naked, if you want to be warm put on some bloody layers. We are not made of money, Jez.”

Jez sighs excessively loudly to make sure Mark knows how ridiculous he finds the concept of Mark saving money to spend on food and rent, but Mark has got to admit that Jez is warm and his arms are nice and it’s cosy here, like this, all wrapped up and feeling like he belongs to someone. Even if Jez does kill him, later, it’s nice for now to feel like he’s maybe found The One. Like Jez really is his One.

It’s still far too early to be up, and it’s a Saturday anyway, so Mark decides further analysis of this problem can wait till after he’s had a few more hours sleep.

He’s just about to drift back off, Jez’s arm around him and his warm breath on the back of Mark’s neck, when he opens his mouth.