The rain began without warning. It was a sudden, heavy downpour that struck the roofs of Paris with the sharp, metallic ring of buckshot. For three weeks, a suffocating heatwave had hung over the city, baking the stone facades of the apartment buildings and leaving the air in the streets thick with the smell of asphalt, dust, and many other things in between. The earth had seemed dry to the point of cracking, and the night air usually offered no relief, remaining warm and thick enough to choke on. But by midnight, the pressure had broken. As a cold front swept down from the north, dragging with it a low, black ceiling of clouds that opened up, it released a freezing rain that immediately washed the dust from the windowpanes, and also sent the temperature plunging.

Inside the small, top-floor room, the change in the weather was felt instantly. The window, which had been propped open with a thick volume of mathematical proofs to catch whatever meager breeze might pass, let in a spray of fine, cold mist. As its thin yellowed curtains flapped limply against the damp frame, Charles stood by the glass, with his forehead pressed against the cold pane. He watched the streetlamp below, seeing its yellow glare fractured and smeared by the sheets of water running down the window. The street was empty, and the pavement was gleaming like wet coal. No surprise here; it must have been past three in the morning now. He did not move to close the window, even as the cold air began to seep through the thin fabric of his cotton shirt, raising goosebumps on his arms. He actually liked the cold; it was a physical sensation that did not require him to think much, a sharp contrast to the heavy, circular thoughts that had occupied him all through the previous afternoon.

Behind him, his friend Valentin lay slumped on the narrow iron bedstead that occupied the corner of the room. He was sitting up, his back propped against the greasy, peeling wallpaper, and his legs stretched out straight before him. His head was tilted back, resting against the wall, his long, unwashed hair was curtaining his face, and his eyes were half-closed, fixed on a water stain on the ceiling that resembled a rather bloated, distorted hand. What a funny hand that was… Valentin’s breathing was slow, heavy, and also shallow. The drug he had taken earlier — whatever cheap, potent opiate he had managed to score with the last of his stolen francs —, had severed his nervous system from the demands of the present tense. Whatever it was doing, it was still holding him in its slow, heavy grip, turning his limbs to lead and smoothing out the edges of his occasional anxiety.

He looked smaller in the dim light, with his chest barely rising and falling, and his hands lying limp and open on the coarse wool blanket. They were pale, and his veins were standing out blue and stark beneath the translucent skin. Charles had watched those hands earlier, but right now, Valentin’s hands were inert. It was probably best for them to be, for once, innocent in their paralysis.

“God, it’s cold,” Valentin said. His voice was thick, and the syllables were dragging slightly as if they had to be hauled up from a great depth. This might have been the case.

Charles did not turn around. “The heat is gone, yes,” he said. His voice was flat, devoid of any inflection, and it was nothing more than a sound that occupied the space of the room for a moment, at least before being swallowed by the steady roar of the rain outside. “It will not come back for a long time.”

“It was too hot,” Valentin murmured, as he shifted his weight. “I mean, the asphalt was melting. My shoes stuck to the ground and I felt like I was being glued to the earth. Like it didn’t want me to move. Pretty scary, I think.”

“It doesn’t,” Charles said. He pulled his head away from the glass. A small circle of condensation remained where his breath had warmed the pane, then slowly began to shrink and vanish. “The earth is heavy, it wants everything to lie flat on it. Eventually, everything does.”

He walked away from the window. In the dim light of the single bulb that hung from the center of the ceiling, his pale face looked almost translucent. His dark hair was slightly damp from the mist by the window.

“Gravity is the only law left that hasn’t been corrupted. If anything, we are all being pulled down into the dirt. You’re just feeling it more acutely.”

He briefly looked at the room. The wooden table was covered in scribbled sheets of paper, right next to an empty inkwell, there was a small, green bottle of… something?… hidden behind a stack of books, and the clutter of Valentin’s belongings was on the floor: a fairly bland jacket, a pair of worn boots, a spoon with a blackened underside, and a small, plastic syringe.

Charles stopped by the table. He reached for his heavy wool overcoat, which had been draped over the back of a wooden chair, and slipped it on. His hand, pale and steady, reached down toward a blue packet of Gitanes lying next to a rusted wheel-lighter with no flint. He slid two cigarettes out of the pack. The paper was dry, and the tobacco smelling faintly of sweet, cured leaves. No real surprise here, and thus, he did not rush.

He walked over to the bed where Valentin lay. Valentin did not look up as Charles approached; his eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, with his jaw slightly slack. Charles stood over him for a moment, observing the dark circles under his friend’s eyes that looked like bruises in the dim light.

With his left hand, Charles gently reached down. His fingers touched Valentin’s lower lip, which was dry and slightly split from the wind. Curiously, Valentin did not flinch; he simply let his mouth part a fraction of an inch more. Charles placed the end of one cigarette between Valentin’s lips; the paper stuck slightly to the dry skin. Holding it firmly, Charles then put the second cigarette between his own lips.

Thinking, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, worn box of matches. Having left his metal lighter at home, he unfortunately had to rely on these; they would suffice. He slid the drawer open with his thumb, selected a single match, and struck it against the dark sulfur strip. A spark flew, followed immediately by a small, yellow flame that flickered in the draft coming from the window. Charles brought the flame to the tip of his own cigarette, and he drew in, as his cheeks hollowed slightly. The paper caught, as the tip glowed a bright, intense orange, casting a sudden warm light over his nose and eyes. He exhaled a thin stream of gray smoke that drifted toward the open window.

Instead of striking another match, Charles closed the box with a soft slide and slipped it back into his pocket. He leaned down over the bed, lowering his face until he was only inches from Valentin. Valentin’s eyes shifted slowly, focusing on Charles’s pale face, which was only illuminated from below by the small, glowing coal of the cigarette.

Charles leaned closer, tilting his head slightly. He brought the burning tip of his cigarette directly against the white paper tip of the one dangling from Valentin’s lips. And sure enough, the two paper cylinders touched, perfect and parallel.

“Draw,” Charles said quietly, his lips barely moving around the filter.

Valentin took a slow, deep breath. He drew the air in through his mouth, and his chest expanded slightly under his thin, soiled shirt. As he inhaled, the heat from Charles’s cigarette transferred to his own. The two glowing embers flared together, and the paper of Valentin’s cigarette crackled as it caught. And so Charles drew back.

He stood up straight, exhaling another cloud of smoke. Valentin did not move, but his eyes followed the smoke as it rose and drifted; he then took another drag. The smoke rose from his mouth in a thick-ish, lazy spiral, curling around his head like a grey shroud before dissolving into the cold air of the room.

“Why did you do that?”

“The matches are scarce,” Charles said, looking down at the glowing tip of his cigarette. “And it’s simpler.”

“It felt like something else,” Valentin murmured. He took another drag, his hand remaining in his pocket, and the cigarette held awkwardly between his first two fingers as his wrist rested on his knee.

“Everything feels like something else when you are looking for a meaning,” Charles replied. “But there is no meaning, really.”

“You know, you have a steady hand,” his friend noted. His voice was slightly clearer now, as the warmth of the tobacco seemed to rouse him slightly from his stupor. “Mine shakes. Even when I’m not sick, it shakes.”

“Well, a hand only shakes when it wants something,” Charles said. He sat down on the edge of the bed, a few inches from Valentin’s feet. “If you want nothing, your hand is perfectly still. It has no reason to move, and no reason to tremble.”

Valentin turned his sluggish gaze toward him. “And you? You want nothing? Why are you here in this room with me, then? Why aren’t you with that friend of yours, Michel? Alberte? Or Edwige? A strong woman to cuddle up to?”

Charles did not reply. The silence between them stretched, as he kept his eyes fixed on the damp wall, and his face entirely expressionless.

“I won’t talk about that,” Charles said finally.

Valentin let his head rest back against the wall. “Well, I always want something,” Valentin said, his eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at the glowing tip of his cigarette. “I want to sleep. Then I want to wake up. And then I want something that gets me kicking… then I want to sleep again. It’s like a wheel, it just keeps turning.”

“It’s a small wheel, surely,” Charles remarked. “And it’s easily stopped.”

“Not for me,” Valentin said. He took another drag, as the cherry of his cigarette brightened again. “If I stop it, I get sick. My bones feel like they’re filled with cold water or something. My skin hurts when the air touches it. Like tonight, actually. The air is too cold. It feels like needles.”

Charles did not answer. He turned his head slowly, his eyes sweeping over the cluttered wooden table until they settled on a small, flat tin of sardines preserved in oil. He picked it up. His fingers were precise as he hooked his index finger into the metal pull-tab and peeled the lid back. The creak of tearing metal was followed by the salty scent of preserved fish rising into the damp room. Hmm…

He held the open tin out. Valentin, keeping his cigarette clamped between his lips to keep from dropping it, reached down with his thumb and forefinger. He lifted a single, silver-grey fish, dripping with heavy oil, and slid it into his mouth. He chewed slowly, his jaw working with a heavy, sluggish effort. This was pathetic. But Charles took one for himself. The flesh was cold and salty, but quite firm. He ate it in two silent bites, then handed the tin back to Valentin, who set it down on the floorboards by the iron frame of the bed, still half-filled with the remaining fish and the dark pool of oil. They both wiped their greasy fingers on their trousers, letting the fabric absorb the oil and all its irregular smudges.

They smoked in silence for several minutes. The only sound was the rain, which seemed to be growing heavier, and its drumming roar only filled the room and made the walls feel thin, as if the water might at any moment dissolve the plaster and let the dark sky fall in upon them. It was strange to think of. The cold air from the window had thoroughly chilled the room now, and the yellow lightbulb overhead seemed to flicker slightly, as if the power lines in the street below were struggling against the storm.

Valentin shivered. It was a sudden, violent spasm that started in his shoulders and ran down his spine, causing his knees to knock together under the thin blanket. He looked down at his cigarette, which had burned down to the filter, and now was a long cylinder of grey ash clinging precariously to the end. With a clumsy gesture, he dropped the butt into a small, but unrelated, half-filled sardine tin on the floor, where it extinguished with a tiny hiss.

“I’m cold,” Valentin said, his teeth clicking together once. “The blanket is thin, it’s like paper. Shit.”

Charles looked at him. He saw the way Valentin’s shoulders were drawn in, his chest hollowed, trying to conserve the small amount of warmth his body had left. The drug had at that point slowed Valentin’s circulation, he thought, making him much more vulnerable to the sudden, icy drop in the room’s temperature. Charles sat beside him, still perfectly composed; he looked like a marble statue in such a heavy coat. His own hands were cold, and his fingers were stiff, but he felt no desire to move, no urge to find another blanket or to shut the window. One could say that his indifference seemed to match the weather outside.

Yet, as he looked at Valentin’s shivering frame, Charles felt a bit of a strange, cold flutter of… well, not pity exactly, but maybe some solidarity. For months, Charles had recoiled from human contact. The touch of others disgusted him because it implicated him in the grand, farcical play of human relations. He had rejected the embraces of his lovers, the grasps of his friends, and much more. Touch was an endorsement of life, a confirmation that one belonged to the world of the living. And Charles had already decided, with absolute certainty, that he did not belong to it.

But Valentin was different, he thought. They were both the ultimate failures of the system, after all. The revolutionary students in the lecture halls thought they could change the world by throwing rocks and writing manifestos, but Charles and Valentin knew the truth: the world was already dead. It was a corpse rotting in the sun, surely, and the devil was the one pulling the strings of the maggots.

Eventually, Charles reached up and took a final drag of his own cigarette, then dropped it into the same tin on the floor. Slowly, deliberately, Charles shifted his weight. He uncrossed his legs and moved horizontally across the narrow mattress until he was pressed directly against Valentin’s side.

Valentin flinched at the sudden contact. He did not expect that, and his body was rigid, expecting a blow or a shove. On the streets, he knew, unexpected touch usually meant violence. But Charles did not strike him, and merely sat there, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip. Shortly after, Charles unbuttoned his heavy overcoat. It was a thick, woolen garment, heavy and dark. With a slow but fluid motion, he extended the left side of the coat and draped it over Valentin’s shivering shoulders, effectively pulling Valentin into the shadow of his own garment. He reached down and pulled the thin wool blanket up over both of their laps, tucking the edges under their thighs to keep the draft out.

What was he doing?

Valentin froze, confused at this turn of events. He turned his head, his face inches from Charles’s. Noticeably, Charles was staring straight ahead at the peeling wallpaper, his profile illuminated by the harsh glare of the bare bulb.

“Charles…?” Valentin mumbled, his breath catching in his throat.

“Don’t speak,” Charles said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. “Just take the heat, it’s thermodynamics. Heat transfers from the warmer body to the cooler one until equilibrium is reached.”

He hesitated, as his drug-addled brain tried to process the gesture. Sure, Valentin was used to transactions, everything in his life was a transaction. You give me money, I give you a fix. You give me a fix, I’ll steal for you. Problem solved! But what did Charles want? Why was this brilliant doomed boy offering him the warmth of his coat?

Either way, the shivering was just too intense for him, and hence, survival instinct overrode his suspicion. Valentin let out a long, trembling breath and slumped against Charles. He leaned his head against Charles’s shoulder, pressing his cheek into the rough wool of the coat. And so the warmth of their bodies, previously lost to the room, began to accumulate in the small space between them under the blanket and the heavy wool coat. It was a meager warmth, but it was real.

As his eyes grew heavy under the weight of the opiate, Valentin’s mind briefly drifted back to the small, clean room Charles and Edwige had rented for him months ago. They had swept the dust from the floorboards, brought him fresh water, and watched over him while he tried to sweat out the poison in his veins. He remembered waking up in that bed, watching the sunlight cut through the window, and feeling a strange, cold drop slip from the corner of his eye and run down his temple into his hair. He hadn’t known why he was crying then.

They had known each other since they were boys, back when Charles’s hands were just as clean, but his mind was still occupied by the geometry of the world rather than its ending. Charles had always been the one who stood above the mess, naturally, extending a hand to pull Valentin out of the gutters of Paris. He had been grateful for it then, yes. Yet, huddled here, he felt the irony of their positions. Charles had spent years trying to keep him alive, but now, the other boy was the one seeking the dark.

It really was strange to think about.

Eventually, Valentin’s shivering began to slow, and he let his head sink lower until his chin rested on his chest, with his breathing becoming deeper and more regular once more as the drug pulled him back down into his heavy, dreamless sleep.

“Hmmph. You smell like rain,” Valentin muttered, his eyes closed now.

“They have a name for that, you know. But it’s the window,” Charles said. He was looking straight ahead, at the empty wooden chair across the room. “The water is coming in. It’s on the floor now.”

“Eh, let it come,” Valentin said. “We’re high up, it won’t reach us anyway.”

“It will reach everyone eventually,” Charles said. He felt the steady, warm rise and fall of Valentin’s chest against his side. It was a bit of a strange sensation… the feeling of another life, so close, so fragile, and yet so entirely separate from his own. Valentin was alive, obviously, but he was like an animal, reacting only to pain, hunger, and the need for sleep. At times, it felt as if he did not see the world for what it was. He did not see the rot at the core of it, nor the certainty of its decline. At most, he only saw the discomfort of the cold and the relief of the drugs.

Charles felt a sudden sense of isolation. Even here, pressed against another human being in the dark, sharing the same air and the same meager warmth, he was completely alone. It was terrible. The warmth they shared was merely a physical reaction, a transfer of thermal energy between two masses of flesh, and nothing beyond that. It had no meaning. It did not bridge the gap between his mind and Valentin’s. Not only that, but it did not change the fact that tomorrow, or the day after, he would still have to look at the same streets, hear the same stupid conversations, and feel the same suffocating weight in his chest.

He looked down at his own hand, which lay flat on the blanket near Valentin’s. It was still perfectly steady. He could see the pale outline of his fingers, the clean nails, and the skin untouched by the marks of needles or the scars of work. It was a hand that had done nothing, surely; a hand that belonged to someone who had refused to participate.

“Valentin,” Charles said quietly.

Valentin did not move. A low, soft grunt was the only sign that he had heard.

“Do you ever think about the ancient Romans?” Charles asked. He did not look at Valentin; his eyes remained fixed on the yellow lightbulb that swayed gently in the draft.

“No,” Valentin murmured, his voice barely audible above the rain. He thought it was a weird question, and, given their circumstances, it probably was. “Why would I?”

“They had a way of doing things, see,” Charles said. His voice was flat, and almost pedagogical. “When they realized that the world had nothing more to offer them, or when they found the situation too humiliating to continue, they didn’t make a scene. They didn’t… scream or throw themselves from the roofs or whatever. Instead, they went to a warm bath, opened their veins, and let their lives slip away while they talked with their friends. It was quite elegant. Just look at Seneca.”

Valentin did not reply. His breathing had deepened, and his head was slipping slightly to the side until it rested against Charles’s shoulder. His weight was heavy, a limp, mass that Charles supported without much effort.

And Charles did not move to push him away. He let Valentin’s head remain there, as his coarse, greasy hair brushed against his neck. He’d need to wash it at some point, he thought. The cold air from the window continued to blow into the room, carrying with it the smell of wet stone and dead leaves from the square below, but fortunately for them, under the blanket, the small pocket of warmth remained.

Charles closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he did not see the room, or the rain, or the yellow light. He tried to imagine a vast, flat, rather grey-ish plain, stretching out to the horizon in every direction under a low, silent sky. There were no trees, no buildings, and no people. All there was was the cold wind, blowing steadily across the empty earth, and washing away the dust, the noise, and the memory of everything that had ever lived.

He lay his head back against the wall, his breathing falling into sync with Valentin’s, and waited for the night to end.