Chapter Text
It’s originally Mac’s idea, although Charlie tries to claim credit for it later.
‘It’s like all he ever does anymore is yell at us, dude,’ Charlie says, voice muffled where he’s got his head jammed into the vent. ‘I don’t think it’d even take that much to push him over the edge.’
‘Right!’ Mac agrees enthusiastically, then frowns. ‘Wait, push him over the edge into what?’
‘Being a serial killer,’ Charlie says, voice spilling out of the vent in a weird reverse echo as he pulls back to frown at Mac. ‘Isn’t that what we’re talking about?’
‘What? No! Charlie, where did you – why would you think that?’
‘Don’t yell at me, man, you’re the one who brought it up –’
‘I didn’t bring that up – why, do you think Dennis is a serial killer?’
Charlie shrugs as he picks up the flashlight, makes a seesawing gesture with his hand.
‘I guess he does keep a lot of weird shit in his car,’ Mac says slowly, squinting as Charlie leans back in and wincing as the flashlight bangs against the side of vent. ‘Dude, you gotta get something smaller, like a lighter, you’re gonna wake ‘em all up with all that noise.’
‘And you think the light’s gonna send ‘em right to sleep?’ Charlie says, pulling back to glare at him. ‘What’s all this about anyway, dude? You worried Dennis is gonna kill you in your sleep or something?’
‘Well I wasn’t before we had this conversation,’ Mac glares, then sighs when Charlie just keeps staring at him, placid and patient. ‘It’s not – it’s not about Dennis being a serial killer, okay? Which I don’t think he is, for the record.’
Charlie looks unconvinced but doesn’t say anything. Mac runs a hand over the back of his neck and blinks down at the floor for a minute, aware of Charlie’s gaze.
‘I really gotta get these rat orphans, dude, can you just spit it out? You know I can’t leave it too long or they’ll start planning and shit – ’
‘Urgh, I’m trying, Charlie,’ Mac says, glaring, then blows out a long breath while Charlie stares at him, tapping his imaginary wrist watch.
‘Do you think that Dennis really hates me?’ he asks eventually in a small voice, eyes flickering up to catch Charlie’s incredulous expression and then away again. They really need to repaint or something in here, he thinks, staring really hard at the corner where the wall meets the ceiling. The amount of paint and plaster flaking off makes it look almost diseased.
Charlie sighs. Mac tenses, bracing himself for scorn, but Charlie sounds uncharacteristically cautious when he speaks.
‘Are you sure I’m the person you wanna ask about this?’ he says.
Mac blinks at him.
‘Who else am I gonna ask?’ He frowns. ‘You’re like my best friend, aside from Dennis. I mean I asked Frank a while ago because he’s kinda Dennis’ dad-type person even if they’re not actually related, but I don’t even know if he heard me, man, he was like super high. And it’s not like I’m gonna ask Dee – ’
‘I didn’t mean – never mind,’ Charlie says, voice muffled again but this time because he’s got his head buried in his hands.
Mac feels his cheeks heating up and stares down at the floor, his hands rhythmically bunching up into fists and releasing over and over again while he waits, heart thumping like a jackhammer. He doesn’t know why Charlie’s opinion about this matters so much, but right now it seems like one of the most important questions he’s ever asked someone. He doesn’t want to hear that that’s what it looks like to other people – that Dennis has been pulling away from him – but the alternative is that this is all in his head, and that’s even more confusing.
Maybe it’s bumming him out so much because when they were younger, it used to be so easy to tell what Dennis was thinking, even if his actions didn’t match up to his words. When he said ‘gimme a toke, asshole’ and slung an arm around Mac’s shoulder, it made sense, because Dennis didn’t know how to express himself in words. Mac never heard him admit to liking a single living human being except David Bowie, but he wouldn’t turn up every day to smoke with Mac and Charlie if he didn’t want to be there, and even if he just wanted the weed, he sure as hell didn’t have to get so close to Mac to do it.
Now it’s like Dennis would rather be a thousand miles away than stand next to Mac.
‘No,’ Charlie says eventually, sounding pained. He pronounces each word carefully and slowly. ‘I do not think that hating you is Dennis’ problem, man.’
‘Really?’ Mac asks, an almost liquid rush of relief spreading through his gut. ‘Because he’s just being so distant with me, man, he never wants to hang out anymore and he’s told me he hates me like ten times in the last year and –’
Charlie sticks his head back in the vent.
‘Charlie! Aw, come on, dude, you’re like the only person I can talk to about this stuff!’
‘I do not want to talk to you about this stuff,’ Charlie says loudly, then ‘Fuck! There’s so many fucking feathers in here, dude. No wonder they decided to make a nest.’
‘Maybe he just needs something to mellow him out,’ Mac ponders, sitting back down on the desk and gazing pensively at the spider web of cracks pinwheeling across the ceiling. Charlie makes a screeching noise and bashes the flashlight against the side of the vent, and one of the cracks gains another inch. ‘Yeah, that’s it! Things have been so crazy recently and he’s getting all freaked out because he can’t control everything, but maybe if someone smoothed the way a little, you know, he’d calm down. Maybe he’d even realise he doesn’t need to be in control of everything all the time, right? And then he’ll stop being such a dick.’
Charlie’s mumbling something about idiots that Mac assumes is in reference to the rats.
‘What’s that, dude?’
‘Dennis is never going to stop being a dick,’ Charlie half-yells, abruptly pulling out of the vent again. He’s got a nasty looking scratch across his right cheekbone and a crazed look in his eye. ‘He’s never going to stop being a dick, that’s just –’ he makes a windmilling gesture with his hands and nearly hits himself in the face with the flashlight – ‘who he is, you know? You know, Mac. We’ve known the dude for like twenty-five years.’
‘Twenty-six,’ Mac corrects absently. ‘Yeah, but it used to be like, he was a dick and I was a dick and we could be dicks together, you know? Not in a gay way,’ he hurriedly tacks on. Charlie’s eye twitches.
‘You’re still a dick, dude,’ Charlie reassures him.
‘Aw,’ Mac says, smiling big. ‘You too, dude.’
None of that solves the Dennis problem, though. Mac sighs, staring down at his hands, twisting in his lap.
‘You’re really serious about this,’ Charlie says. When Mac looks up, the crazed look has ebbed from Charlie’s eyes and been replaced with something that Mac has always interpreted as a feral form of shrewdness when he’s seen it before. Process of elimination aside, this is why he came to Charlie: sometimes the dude just has these laser-like moments of focus where he just gets it, absolutely nails it, and Mac knows he understands. Even when it hurts, and even when it’s hard to say, Charlie understands.
‘Yeah,’ Mac says simply. ‘I am.’
‘Okay,’ Charlie says on a long and loud exhale. Mac waves a hand in front of his face at the smell but stops when Charlie fixes that single-minded expression on him. ‘Here’s what you’re gonna do.’
---
Mac starts small – there’s no sense in scaring Dennis off when that’s the opposite goal of this entire operation.
He’s a little stuck on ideas at first because all of Charlie’s suggestions were terrifying – and he’s pretty sure Dennis’s shampoo already has vitamins in it, anyway – and also because Dennis isn’t a chick. Whenever Mac has tried being deliberately nice in anyone’s direction before it’s always been with the intention to get the girl into bed as quickly as possible, with the least amount of effort expended. Which is maybe why he never had as much luck in that department as Dennis, who puts way more time and effort into his banging schemes. Sometimes it seems like he enjoys the planning part almost more than he enjoys the actual sex, but that’s probably because he enjoys fucking with people way too much for it to be healthy.
But even if Dennis is hard to please, there’s a couple of things in the world that everyone can agree on, and one of those things is free baked goods.
‘Dude, where did all these muffins come from?’ he hears Dennis’ bewildered voice float out of the kitchenette one morning. He grins to himself, staring up at the ceiling. Both Dee and old black man have already left the apartment, so it’s just him and Dennis. He got to fall asleep next to Dennis last night because they’d been the last to bed, and no one had elbowed him in the side or wormed in between them during the night. Good day.
‘What’s that, bro?’ he asks innocently, getting out of bed and shuffling through the apartment to Dennis, still in his robe, who is holding a blueberry muffin – skinny and everything! – and staring at it like he’s trying to set it on fire with his eyes. Mac takes a second to admire the house of cards formation he’d crafted the night before; he’d had to clean up the countertop and everything just to get enough space to arrange it. Kind of a shame they weren’t home baked but Mac had irretrievably fucked up every single batch he tried to make before giving up in frustration, and anyway, it wasn’t like Dennis was going to know any different. Those bitches on the Food Network were always saying store-bought was fine if you couldn’t make it at home.
‘Did you do this,’ Dennis asks, his eyes wide and unblinking on the muffin in his hand. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and I really don’t think the others have the same kind of bizarre, sporadic drive for homemaking as you.’
‘Hmm?’ Mac mumbles with a mouthful of muffin, blinking at Dennis.
Dennis turns to glare at him. Early morning Dennis is one of Mac’s favourite looks, because his hair falls soft over his forehead in individual curls before he’s had a chance to style it. He’s usually already wearing make up by this point but sometimes if he knows it’s just going to be him and Mac in the apartment, he lets it slide. It used to be the last thing he did before they left for work in their old apartment so that it’d last longer and require less touch up throughout the day, but since they moved in with Dee he’d actually started sneaking out of bed early to put the stuff on. Mac’s known a few chicks who wouldn’t go out of the house without make up on, but he doesn’t know why Dennis needs to worry about that. Dude’s got great skin. Fucking radiant. He boasts about that almost as often as he talks about his abs though, so it’s not like he doesn’t already know. He probably just wants his ego stroked. What an asshole.
‘Don’t play dumb with me,’ he says, whirling to point the muffin threateningly at Mac. ‘You’re the only person I know who even attempts to cook on a semi-regular basis. I don’t think Dee even knows what ovens do.’
‘Pretty sure she helped Charlie make Thanksgiving dinner that one time when we had all the guys round, dude.’
Dennis cocks an eyebrow.
‘Are you referring to the time when our apartment burned down, Mac?’
‘Yeah, but that wasn’t ‘cause of the cooking, remember? Dee helped Charlie make the squash. I bet she mashed it with her giant hands.’
He snorts but Dennis just gives him a suspicious look. Mac blinks at him innocently.
‘Why do people call it like, making squash anyway?’ Mac wonders out loud. ‘You’re not making anything, you’re just squishing a bunch of vegetables in a bowl.’
‘Well, sometimes you put other stuff in there too,’ Dennis points out, his expression softening minutely with the distraction. ‘Like seasoning and herbs and … other stuff. I would assume.’
‘Yeah! Cooking’s like inventing, dude, it’s awesome,’ Mac tells Dennis enthusiastically. Mac didn’t get why people acted like baking was girly. You had to utilise real strength to beat the mixture together, and there was the ever-present danger of burning yourself on the baking tray, which Mac actually had done several times. It was totally badass. Maybe next time he should just go totally off book, try and make a different thing altogether than what the recipe said. This was clearly a huge reservoir of untapped potential.
‘Well, not exactly like – wait. Who do you think you’re talking to here, Mac? You’re trying to distract me from the matter at hand.’
‘I am?’
‘Yes, you are!’ Dennis stares at him, clearly irritated that Mac isn’t treating his distress with due consideration. ‘I can’t just be waking up to random baking sprees in the kitchen every morning – it’s thrown off my whole morning routine! Is this going to be a regular occurrence? Is this what living with Dee has done to you? Are you having some kind of mid-life crisis?’
‘Are you having a crisis right now, dude? Is that happening? Jesus Christ, Dennis –’ Mac cuts himself off and shrugs helplessly. Dennis’s gaze tracks his movements like a hawk. ‘It’s just muffins, dude. I won’t do it again, if it’s gonna make you all –’
He gestures at Dennis’s everything.
Dennis glares but holds his gaze as he takes a deep breath and lets it out. Mac breathes with him, letting his hand rise and fall with every one of Dennis’s ten careful deep breaths. Mac beams at him when he gets to the end, giving him a thumbs-up. Sometimes they get to thirty before Dennis’s hands stop shaking, so ten is pretty good going.
‘Whatever,’ Dennis says eventually, subdued. ‘Do whatever the hell you want, I don’t care. I don’t have time for this, anyway.’
Mac can’t help but snort, ignoring Dennis’s glare as he turns away. He’s never really understood why the rest of the gang go off on that thing about Dennis having no feelings. He’s got more feelings than anyone Mac has ever met, and he’s not even good at hiding it – they flow out of his eyes and from the tips of his fingers; they make the hairs on Mac’s arms stand upright.
‘You should really rethink your brand if you’re going to start with the girly shit, Mac,’ Dennis advises as he sets the muffin back down on the counter with a visible look of longing that he’s probably not even aware of. Mac frowns. ‘Baking isn’t a straight man’s game.’
‘It’s not any girlier than your make-up, bro,’ Mac bitches, hip-checking Dennis to get to the coffee. He ignores the twinge in his stomach. Bringing up homosexuality before caffeine is a low blow.
‘Whatever, dick. I’m sure you’ve got a long and convoluted explanation lined up as to how this little display is somehow masculine in a way that I don’t understand, but I don’t have time for five hours of sermonising right now, so you’ll just have to let it go.’
Dennis stalks off to the bathroom like the drama queen he is before Mac can protest.
‘Take one for –’ Mac starts shouting but Dennis yells ‘Water in my ears, bro,’ as he slams the bathroom door. Mac scowls at the muffin formation. This plan is going to be harder to implement than he thought.
But when he gets out of the shower ready to go to work, the muffin Dennis had left on the counter is gone, and there’s an empty case balled up in the trash. Mac grins and fist pumps. Getting Dennis to eat breakfast on an odd day is like, gold medal tier friendship in action. Maybe the jury’s still out on Project Badass: Make Dennis Not Be A Dick All The Time after all.
---
Surprising Dennis with delicious foodstuffs is one thing, but Mac can’t just keep surreptitiously leaving cake around the apartment and hoping Dennis finds it: he’s got to step it up a notch. It’s not easy trying to somehow combine all the things Dennis likes best with things that are actually good for him, though. Mac’s thinking mainly about food here, but it turns out that when you get down to it, a lot of the things Dennis enjoys are actively bad for him. He doesn’t even go to the gym to work off all the beer like Mac does! It’s a tough nut to crack.
Mac pencils a list of things that he knows for certain make Dennis happy, in the hopes that this will knock some ideas loose:
- Compliments
- Large-breasted women
- Predator Tuesday
- Monthly dinner
- That one super gay scene at the end of Dead Poets Society where they all stand on desks and say poetry at each other, although he acts surprised and turns it off every time Mac catches him watching it
- Steve Winwood
- Crack
- Manicures
- Watermelon vodka
- Being the little spoon
- Velvet Goldmine
- Cats
There aren’t a lot of things on that list that Mac doesn’t already take care of, which means he’s either going to have to get creative or just buy Dennis a cat and hope for the best. Going forward, he definitely needs to be sneakier about it; it kind of ruins the effect if Dennis immediately clocks onto everything and starts yelling because he’s pissed he can’t control all the variables or whatever.
Mac’s still pondering his next move when a new bar abruptly opens on the same block as Paddy’s. They serve drinks with little umbrellas in.
Within three days the owners have filed 50 foot restraining orders on every single member of the gang; they’ve actually filed two on Frank.
‘Just in the case the first one didn’t stick, huh?’ Dee asks, then nods and takes a philosophical drink of her beer. ‘I get it.’
‘We’re gonna get those bitches back,’ Dennis hisses, incandescent with rage. He’d steamrolled right over deity-inspired rhetoric and moved right on through to personal insults when he realised the chick behind the bar he’d been hitting on all week was the one who filed the charges. ‘Idiots! Fucking – they think they can tell me where to walk? Not to walk down my own fucking street? Try and stop us walking down our own damn street, it’s an outrage, a goddamn public outrage –’
‘Damn right we’re gonna get ‘em back,’ Charlie nods, his eyes crazy wide. He ducks between them and slings one arm around Mac’s shoulder, one around Dennis’s. He’s slipped into his Law and Order voice. ‘And I know just the man to help us.’
‘Okay, a) you still aren’t a lawyer, Charlie,’ Mac begins, ticking conditions off on his fingers, ‘and b) for the love of God, we cannot keep hiring Uncle Jack. We lose like, every case with him, bro. I’m beginning to doubt that man even went to law school.’
‘No, no, no Uncle Jack, he’s still recovering from the uh –’
Charlie waves his hands around wildly, slapping both Mac and Dennis lightly in the face.
‘Dude!’
‘Charlie!’
‘Sorry, sorry.’
‘The hand transplant?’ Mac asks, wiggling his fingers and grimacing. ‘He really went through with that?’
‘You can get anything transplanted nowadays,’ Frank says sagely. ‘Tits, ass –’
‘You can’t get an ass transplant, Frank,’ Dee rolls her eyes.
‘What would you know about it? You ain’t got one to transplant.’
‘Do they work though?’ Mac asks Charlie. He flexes his hand and shivers. ‘Like, can he move his fingers and everything? Did they connect all the bones back up?’
Charlie opens his mouth to answer but Dennis interrupts him with a piercing whistle that grates right through Mac. Charlie makes a whimpering sound, blinking rapidly at Dennis with a look of betrayal.
‘We’re getting off-track,’ Dennis barks at them, detaching himself from under Charlie’s arm and striding out onto the bar floor. He whirls around to address them, a triumphant smile on his face, eyes glittering with malice. ‘I’ve got a plan.’
Mac settles into his seat and half follows the soothing thread of Dennis’s voice as he lays out his scheme, although it seems unnecessarily complicated. Half the fun of teaming up is watching Dennis when he’s all fired up over some asshole who’s done them wrong. It’s not satisfying exactly, because it always leaves Mac grasping for something he can’t put a name to, but it definitely holds his attention. Something happens to Dennis’s eyes when he gets like this, all intense. It’s like they spontaneously get more bigger or more intensely blue or something. And there’s something about the fluid movements of Dennis’s body when he’s gesticulating like that, the casual curl of his lip; it makes you want to crowd him into a corner, get all up in his space, maybe pin his wrists to the wall so he’ll turn all that sneering energy on you –
‘– so, me and Mac’ll grab the stuff and meet you guys after, okay?’
Mac snaps out of his trance just in time to brace for Dennis grabbing his arm and bodily hefting him out of the chair in his manic determination.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ he mutters. Dennis glances at him out of the corner of his eye and smiles slightly; his grip softens but he doesn’t let go.
Four hours later, they stare up at the outside of the rival bar in silence.
‘Why does it always come down to this?’ Mac wonders out loud. ‘We’re creative people. We’ve got good ideas. We can do better than TP-ing, dude. That thing with the mandolin and the melon baller, that was really good, Dennis.’
Dennis rolls his eyes and bumps Mac’s shoulder. He doesn’t move away again, keeps swaying into Mac even when Mac’s gaze jerks to him involuntarily, snagging on the pink of Dennis’s lip, the hinge of his jaw. He cut himself shaving yesterday and bitched about it the whole ride to work. For the rest of the day he kept pulling Mac aside to ask if it looked infected, did Mac think it would leave a scar? Mac didn’t think much of anything at all, that close to Dennis’s jawline. He was using way too much aftershave and it was almost totally overpowering; Mac felt dizzy just thinking about it.
Dennis catches Mac’s eye and looks away, half a smirk gracing his lips.
‘You bring it out in me, Mac,’ he agrees. His voice is soft, without the commanding element it would have if the rest of the gang were with them. But they’re not; it’s just the two of them out here, under the stars. Not that that means anything. They’re alone together all the time in the apartment. It doesn’t mean anything.
The plume of Dennis’s breath rises in the cold air like smoke.
‘We make a good team,’ Mac replies, smiling at him and resisting the urge to yank on his collar just for something to do with his hands. The air out here feels staticky and thick for a reason he can’t put his finger on; his palms itch. Maybe his body’s finely tuned situational awareness is flagging up the homeless guy down the alley as a threat or something. He tries to shake it off, smiling even more brightly. ‘Blood brothers, right, Dennis?’
Dennis blinks and inhales hard and deep at that. He gives one of those weird, almost desperate laughs they’ve all got so used to hearing. It hits Mac like a punch in the gut.
‘Blood brothers. Right. Of course.’
Mac blinks down at the ground, shoving his hands hard into the pockets of the duster. He should be angry Dennis is laughing at him again, but it’s happened so many times that all his anger got used up, and now it just hurts. He wishes there was some way he could detach himself from this, some way he could make it go away. Sometimes his feelings about Dennis feel like they’re taking up too much space in his body and they’re going to come bursting out before he can stop them, no matter how strong he is. It makes him feel slow and stupid and almost drunk, and the worst of it is in moments like this, when he knows Dennis can tell; when Dennis can see right through him with no trouble at all, like he can just shove every paltry defence out of the way with an impatient hand: get the fuck out of my way, asshole. This is mine.
Dennis’s stare is burning a hole in the side of Mac’s head. He takes a breath like he’s about to say something. Mac squares his shoulders, his fists clenching inside his pockets.
‘Mac, I –’
A burst of synth erupts from Dennis’s jeans pocket and Mac’s brain recognises it after a brief, scrambling moment; the early demo of Dayman that Dennis set as his ringtone.
Dennis’s jaw audibly clicks shut and he fumbles in his jacket pocket for the phone, swearing an endless stream under his breath.
‘What,’ he answers tersely. Mac risks a glance; he’s frowning up at the bar like it personally wronged him. Which, to be fair, it did. They’re violating their restraining orders this very second. They really should get out of here.
And then just like that, the switch flips in Dennis’s expression. He frowns, his gaze flicking to Mac as his eyebrows rise and then fall in exasperation. Mac sighs. Charlie must have said something – done something – stupid or Dee’s fucked up the one small aspect of the plan they entrusted to her, and in a second the world is rebalanced on its axis; they’re back on the same side, watching it all fall apart with their faces in their palms, wondering why they trust these dumbasses with anything more complicated than holding their jackets.
‘Yeah, we – wait wait wait, did you get Dee to read the paperwork, Charlie?’
Dennis rolls his eyes at Mac with no lingering trace of irritation or contempt. Mac grins back, his heart still hammering in his chest. And if everything Mac thought before was true, then so is this: every time they wipe the slate clean, the relief is so powerful it’s almost a drug. He’s been over and over it for years and this is the solution he came up with: God must have moulded them this way, so that no matter how far Mac bends, he’ll never entirely break. In the end, it doesn’t matter if he can’t hide from Dennis, because Dennis isn’t brave enough to search him out.
It’s reassuring, really. It’s good. It’s good that they’re like this.
Dennis slings a casual arm around Mac’s shoulder as they walk away from the bar and Mac lets himself sink into the rare contact; safe, for a given value of the word.
---
Mac doesn’t get another opportunity to progress the plan until the next Predator Tuesday, and then he genuinely considers passing it up just because of how fundamentally wrong Dennis is.
‘You can’t compare Terminator to Thunder Gun Express, dude, they’re totally different movies.’
‘Mac, you know I love Thunder Gun, but they are fundamentally the same movie. They just are, dude, there’s nothing wrong with that. If it ain’t broke –’
‘I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that, Dennis. Those movies are sacred and so help me God, if you keep talking shit I’m gonna –’
‘You’re going to what, Mac?’
Dennis stops walking and turns to glare at Mac in the hallway. The effect of his glare is dampened slightly by the fact that he’s clutching bags of popcorn and chips to his chest like someone might try to steal them if he even remotely relaxes his grip. Mac arches one eyebrow.
‘Then I’m going to return the brand-new copy of Thunder Gun Goes Nuclear I just picked up while you were getting the snacks,’ he replies silkily, slipping past Dennis and his stunned silence and into the apartment. The flat of Dennis’s palm hits the door just as it was about to close, and the sound is so satisfying Mac can’t help but grin.
‘But it’s not even out in theaters yet,’ Dennis mutters, staring at Mac, his eyes saucer-wide. ‘How did you –’
‘Old dealing buddy of mine runs a side-scam on advance screening DVDs,’ Mac interrupts, rocking back and forth on his heels, unable to contain his excitement any longer and whipping out the DVD case. Dennis makes an oh noise and grabs it out of his hands, unceremoniously dropping the snacks on the floor. The bag of popcorn bursts, scattering kernels across the carpet. Dennis doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Isn’t that the best? I kept it back so we can watch it before any of the others and rub it in their faces.’
And conned Dee and Charlie into following Frank to see his weird bridge friends so they’d be alone in the apartment for a viewing, but something holds Mac back from including that part. This thing with Dennis is a fine balancing act, and that information might tip things over into dangerous territory. And anyway, the expression on Dennis’s face right now is enough.
‘That’s awesome, dude,’ Dennis says, staring at the DVD cover in rapt amazement. His gaze flickers up to Mac’s face and his mouth curves into an answering grin until they’re both just standing there smiling at each other. Dee still hasn’t replaced the bulb that blew out in the living room a week ago, so they’re standing there with nothing but the watery light drifting in from the streetlights outside to see by. Maybe it’s only the absence of harsh high-wattage bulbs but Dennis looks unexpectedly, almost woundingly soft now that they’re finally standing still and Mac is paying attention. He’s wearing the comfy clothes they both tend to adopt on movie nights: a t shirt that’s been passed between them so many times Mac knows exactly where the material is beginning to thin at the nape of the neck, could trace with a fingertip the pattern that’s mostly flaked away under the strain of a decade’s washing. Half an eagle swoops under Dennis’s left rib. Go Birds!
Mac clears his throat, scratching the back of his neck. Dennis’s gaze drops back down to the DVD case. His fingers stroke thoughtfully along the plastic spine.
‘I’ve been wanting to see this for months,’ he says when they settle down on the sofa to watch, his expression awed when the rolling credits begin. Mac smiles contentedly and mentally checks another box on his Make Dennis Happy list.
But then Dennis pauses the movie, movements stiff as if he’s just thought of something jarring.
‘What about Predator Tuesday?’ he asks in this odd tone of voice. He clears his throat but doesn’t relax one iota. ‘Not that we haven’t seen Predator like, a million times. It’s not like I care. It’s just, you know.’
He’s still staring at the screen, unnervingly intent.
‘We’ll do it next Tuesday,’ Mac says gently. Dennis’s hand is resting an inch away from Mac’s on the sofa; it looks like an accident, just where it landed, but now Mac feels compelled not to move away even though he really wants to open the chips. He doesn’t understand how sometimes Dennis’s body can feel so much like an extension of his own that it doesn’t mean anything to have Dennis throw an arm round his shoulder, and then there are times like this, when the inch of space between their hands on the sofa feels alive and liquid with potential motion. This – just watching a movie together on the sofa, no one else around – this was supposed to be simple. Why can’t anything just be simple anymore?
‘We could do it tomorrow,’ Dennis says, sounding incredibly grudging about it.
‘Then it won’t be Predator Tuesday,’ Mac points out. Dennis already knows that – he wouldn’t be so reluctant to disturb the rhythm of their routine otherwise – but it’s uncharacteristically nice of him to offer anyway. Sometimes he does this though; someone does something nice for him and he jerks around like a marionette, trying to find an appropriate way to respond, making random stabs in the dark that he’ll later decide to take back.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Dennis says with a barely audible sigh of relief. He presses play and they watch, rapt. Mac’s arm gets a cramp as he sits there without moving, ruthlessly smothering the impulse to reach out and take Dennis’s hand.
---
A nasty stomach flu cuts through Philly like a razor, leaving everyone in the bar bleeding from the immune system.
‘We’ll be fine if we just keep drinking,’ Dee says blearily, her gigantic limbs folded into one of the booths. Her eyes are so red Mac can’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy, although it’s heavily tinged with disgust. ‘Alcohol will heal us. Charlie, can you get me a beer? Charlie. Charlie. Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarlie. Charlie. Charlie. Charlieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.’
‘He’s passed out behind the bar, bitch,’ Mac half-yells, pulling his head up from his folded arms to glare. ‘Get yourself a beer. And get me one too.’
Dee makes a pitiful noise and flops one arm out over the table. She’s been wearing the same clothes for three days. Mac isn’t entirely clear on whether or not she’s actually been home in that time. Or whether or not he has, for that matter. Everything before the last hour is kind of blurry. He has a hazy picture in his mind of a pill bottle on his bedside table, a glass of water. A handful of multivitamins. He’d rolled over and taken them and hadn’t asked any questions, and from the grainy, faraway quality of the memory that might have happened yesterday or five years ago.
‘I’m going to die,’ Dee intones, and Mac grunts in agreement. His head pounds with an interminable rhythm that drags him down into the floor; gravity isn’t playing fair. He shakes and sweats worse than when they went into withdrawal.
‘You’re all going to die,’ Dennis says cheerfully, polishing a glass and nudging Charlie delicately with his foot. ‘I’m serious, I can’t even tell if Charlie’s breathing or not.’
‘You’re gonna get sick, dude,’ Mac groans, levering himself up so he can go and collapse in the booth next to Dee. Horizontal is good. Horizontal is home. ‘You’re gonna get sick, and then you’ll be sorry.’
‘I’m not going to get sick, Mac,’ Dennis corrects. His voice is light and carrying and perfect, and Mac wants to punch it in the face. ‘My superior immune system has fought off the bug that is laying the rest of you low, and you need to face up to it. There’s no shame in accepting defeat.’
Mac tries to growl as he faceplants into the booth, but his mouth mashes against the pleather so it comes out more like a whimper. Dee gives him a pained, sarcastic round of applause.
‘It’s pathetic, really,’ Dennis goes on. ‘If you all took better care of yourselves we wouldn’t go through this every time a bug goes around town. Not one of you has so much as attempted to follow the diet plans I made up for you – purely out of the goodness of my heart, I might add – in an attempt to impart the skills I’ve honed through years of sustaining my own physical perfection. Not one –’
‘Dennis, those diet plans are insane,’ Dee interrupts hoarsely, voice thready and weak. Mac flops over onto his back and props himself up against the wall so he has a better view of Dennis at the bar. If he’s going to have to listen to this bewildering and frankly irritating conversation, he might as well have a decent view. ‘You wanted me to eat a brazil nut for lunch. One brazil nut. Every day. For lunch.’ She pauses. ‘You said I could have two on Mondays.’
‘Well, Mondays are difficult,’ Dennis points out, and Mac can’t help but nod in agreement, although it sets his head thumping again so he stops, wincing. Having a body is so exhausting.
‘Yeah, Dee, Mondays are the worst.’
‘See? Mac knows,’ Dennis says proudly. ‘Everyone deserves a little extra on Mondays.’
Mac makes a disgruntled noise.
‘You wanted me to drink only lemon and honey with hot water like, four days of every week, dude,’ he interjects. ‘I’m not on your side here.’
‘That honey and lemon cleanse has provided some cast-iron scientific evidence, Mac,’ Dennis says, putting down the glass he was polishing and bracing himself against the bar, glaring at the two of them.
‘Scientific evidence of what?’
‘Of, of success! Proof that it works, goddamn it –’
‘Of course you’ll lose weight if you don’t eat for four days,’ Dee croaks. ‘That’s basic science, Dennis.’
‘Thank you, Dee! An odd interjection from a woman who’s been throwing up for three days and still can’t shake the baby weight from five goddamn years ago, but I’ll take it.’
‘But it’s not sustainable, Dennis,’ Dee grits out, refusing to be deterred. Mac can’t see her face because the booth is in the way but he knows exactly what it looks like: Dennis is wearing the same snarl right now. ‘None of those diets were sustainable! We’d be dead within a month.’
‘You’d be thin within a month, Dee, but none of you took me seriously, and look where you are now.’
He gestures to the deserted bar and shakes his head sorrowfully, the effect ruined by the faint smirk twisting his mouth.
‘Charlie might be dead, Dee. Charlie might actually be dead, and all because none of you followed my diet plans.’
‘Check him again, dude,’ Mac suggests. ‘We can’t have another dead person in the bar, remember? It’s like, a rule now.’
‘That’s true,’ Dennis muses.
‘No,’ Charlie’s mangled voice drifts up from behind the bar. ‘Don’ kick me, nope.’
‘Charlie! You’re not dead,’ Mac cheers, then hiccups. The bar’s gone kind of blurry. Dennis’s figure is both distorted and sharp, like a magnifying lens smeared with something greasy. Mac closes his eyes and leans his head back.
‘You okay down there, buddy?’ Dennis asks Charlie, his voice syrupy sweet like he’s talking to a small child he plans to rob. ‘You liked your diet plan, right?’
‘No.’
‘He’s delirious,’ Dennis dismisses, going back to polishing the glass. ‘Doesn’t know what he’s saying.’
‘You tried to get him to go vegan, Dennis,’ Mac mumbles. ‘Shoulda known he couldn’t give up on cheese.’
‘And you tried to make us all eat kale for dinner,’ Dee interjects wildly, her voice cracking right down the middle. ‘Kale. For dinner.’
‘Kale is very good for you,’ Dennis protests. Mac can picture the frown on his face right now, hooked up to the disbelieving tone of his voice. He could make a key of all Dennis’s mopey voices and match them to his different pissed off faces, like pin the tail on the donkey. Pin the shrieking on the hissy fit.
‘I know a dude called Kale,’ Mac observes, pleasantly drifting on a tidal wave of fuzz. Something rumbles in his stomach less than a second later. He lurches to the side and throws up under the table.
‘I bet he knows him from the gym,’ Dee says after a pause. ‘All the assholes in the gym are called Kale.’
Dennis gets sick a week later.
‘I’m not sick,’ he says petulantly, footsteps wobbly as Mac steers him away from the door of Dee’s apartment. ‘You’re wrong.’
‘You can’t go into work today, dude,’ Mac explains patiently for the fifth time, kicking open the door to the bedroom and steering him back to bed. Mac took his eye off him for like five minutes and the guy managed to get himself dressed and start sneaking out, but he can’t even walk in a straight line. Then again, he only applied mascara to one eye and his shirt’s on backwards, so he’s not winning any awards for follow through.
Dennis sits down hard on the bed and blinks up at Mac woozily, swaying a little from side to side. His skin is flushed, his complexion sallow under unevenly applied make up; sweat beads on his brow. Mac grimaces as he cups Dennis’s forehead to test his temperature, wishing he’d thought to grab a towel. Dennis leans into his hand, his eyelids fluttering shut on a long, petulant exhale.
Mac stares down at him, held in place. It’s like being sat on by a cat; God forbid you need to move after they settle down to sleep on your lap. Dennis gets like this sometimes when he’s drunk too, but he’s at his clingiest when he’s sick. The last time he got the flu was back in their old apartment, and Mac ended up sleeping in bed with him because Dennis wouldn’t stop calling his cell at three in the morning, totally delirious, to complain about the human-sized Kit-Kats whispering to him from the corner of his bedroom. Dennis’s clammy hands had clung tight to Mac as soon as he slipped between the sheets, twisting in his t shirt as he made soft whimpering sounds of fright. He didn’t let go all night, not even in his sleep.
Dennis isn’t that far gone right now. Mac doesn’t know why he doesn’t take his hand away, he’s got no idea how you’re supposed to measure temperature like this. He’s not a goddamn thermostat. Who knows how hot Dennis is? Hot as shit, probably.
‘I’m not sick, Mac,’ Dennis says dreamily, still leaning into Mac’s hand. His lower lip is trembling and his forehead creases with irritation as his shivers become more pronounced. ‘I’m thriving. My body is ridding itself of toxins.’
‘Yeah?’ Mac asks dubiously. ‘You don’t look like you’re thriving, dude. You look sick as a dog. You need to rest.’
‘Why do you care?’ Dennis asks, and this time he pulls back from the contact, opens his eyes and stares at Mac. Or at least, where he clearly thinks Mac should be. His pupils keep focusing and unfocusing as he frowns, clearly trying to decide which of the many Macs in his field of vision is the real one. ‘You don’t care. You just don’t wanna get sick too.’
‘Already been sick, remember?’ Mac reminds him, seizing the opportunity to hunch down and pull off Dennis’s shoes. ‘Bro, I wasn’t sold on the Velcro thing before but I gotta say, I’m loving the easy access. You can take ‘em on and off like super quick!’
‘I know, right!’ Dennis beams at him with the easily distracted glee of a toddler. Mac could probably get him to do some truly foolish shit in this state, but his options are limited considering Dennis can barely stand up and also, it’s over the line to take advantage of a bro with flu. They’ve got that written down somewhere, Mac is sure of it. He doesn’t know much about taking care of sick people but at least he knows that, and TV filled him in on the chicken soup side of things. He doesn’t have much first-hand experience, because his mom usually just left him to his own devices when he was sick. A couple times she actually moved out for a few days to make sure she didn’t get sick too. That’s probably why he grew up to be such a badass, like those Spartan kids Dennis was telling them about the other day that grew up in the wild and killed wolves with their bare hands and founded Rome.
‘Up, up,’ he nudges, tapping at Dennis’s legs until Dennis gets the picture and swings them onto the bed, shuffling back until he’s squarely under the covers. He lies straight with his eyes closed like a corpse on a mortuary slab, apparently forgetting Mac is even there until Mac taps on his shoulder. He cracks one eye open.
‘What?’ he croaks.
‘You can’t sleep in your shirt, dude, it’s all long-sleeved and shit, it’ll be so uncomfortable,’ Mac explains. Dennis narrows his eyes and flips the covers back after a concerted effort from his flailing baby deer limbs. Mac rolls his eyes and grabs his wrists loosely in one hand before Dennis can accidentally hit himself or knock over the water on the nightstand. Dennis goes still in his grip. He looks at Mac with beady, glittering eyes. The fever has heightened their intensity to the point of absurdity; if the big guy upstairs had only thought to fit Dennis with an off switch, you’d have yourself a man-sized flashlight.
‘Why’re you doing this?’ Dennis asks him. His voice is blurry with sickness but the words are sharp. ‘Why’re you looking after me? It’s weird, you’re – weird, Mac, doing all this stuff for me.’
His eyes are way too piercing for someone this out of it. They’re probably just sharp and sparkling like that with the fever, and Dennis won’t even remember saying all this in the morning. Mac could say anything he wants and Dennis wouldn’t even remember.
Still. Better to be on the safe side.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude,’ Mac says firmly. He tugs at Dennis’s sleeves until Dennis makes a grumbling noise and sits up, lets it be stripped off him. He flops back down instantly, glaring up at Mac from the pillow with his curls in a wild stir, sticking out from his head. He looks like a dumbass.
‘You look like a dumbass,’ Mac tells him. It’s important that Dennis knows this.
‘The Mother Theresa look doesn’t suit you,’ Dennis continues, ignoring Mac’s skilful attempts at deflection. ‘Come on, man, what are you up to? Don’t think I haven’t noticed all the weird shit you’ve been doing lately. Muffins? The lunches in the fridge? Thunder Gun Goes Nuclear? What’s going on?’
His voice is so hoarse it lends the questions a pleading quality, which isn’t playing fair at all. Mac’s had a lifetime of conditioning instructing him in how to respond to Dennis in need: that waver in his voice, the confused furrow of his brow. They’ve got a good system going here, where Mac leaves Dennis’s lunches in the fridge and picks up extra Alka-Seltzer when Dennis’s stomach gets sore and reminds him to take his meds and doesn’t ask for one single goddamn thing in return except that they never, ever talk about it. Dennis grumbles and sighs and generally acts like being taken care of is a gigantic chore, but there’s a new and genuine curiosity in his voice now, even thick with sickness, that’s making Mac uneasy. He’s never made Mac talk about it before. Dennis is breaking the rules right now, and he’s doing it with puppy dog eyes.
But Mac doesn’t need to feel guilty, because he actually is helping Dennis right now already, so – no. Not today. He throws Dennis’s gross shirt in the laundry basket, avoiding Dennis’s eyes.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude,’ he says, injecting a shit ton of fake cheeriness into his voice. That’s bound to make Dennis crazy. See how he likes it. ‘You should sleep, but I’ll make you some soup later. I think we got a tin of Campbell’s from like, this century around here.’
‘See!’ Dennis crows, sitting up and then making a face like he’s about to hurl. Mac bounds back across the room and hastily lowers him back down with one hand on his shoulder and one on his lower back. Dennis coughs weakly, his hands clutching at Mac’s biceps. He’s so sallow he looks like one of those freakish chicks in old timey British TV dramas who loom at windows and never go outside.
‘Dude, you’re sweating so much, it’s totally gross,’ Mac complains, wiping his hand on his jeans and grimacing.
‘You’re sweating so much,’ Dennis says rudely and coughs again, still out of breath from his exciting foray into sitting upright.
Mac rolls his eyes and carefully detaches himself from Dennis’s feeble grip. Dennis bitches under his breath but lets him go, still watching him with narrowed eyes. Mac picks up the shoes and keys and stuff scattered on the floor so Dennis doesn’t trip if he does something stupid and tries to get up. Dee’s going to rage at him for letting Dennis sleep in their bed while he’s sick, but what the hell else is he supposed to do? They have got to get their old apartment back somehow.
‘That doesn’t even make sense, bro,’ he points out. ‘Get some sleep.’
‘I’m onto you, Mac!’ Dennis tries to pelt the words at Mac’s back as he leaves the room but his voice is weak and hoarse; the words fall short of their intended target and Mac walks away rolling his eyes. ‘Don’t think I don’t know you’re planning something! Don’t think you can fool the golden god! I won’t stand for it, Mac! Mac, are you listening to me?’
---
Dennis heals up within a couple of days, but the edge of wariness in his eyes doesn’t dissipate with the sickness. He seems determined to catch Mac in the act, whatever act that is: he keeps popping up like a jack-in-the-box when Mac least expects it, like when he’s at the Wawa stocking up on hair gel.
‘Jesus Christ, Dennis,’ he hisses, clutching madly at the bottles in his arms so they don’t scatter all over the floor. Dennis arches an eyebrow at him.
‘Stocking up on gel, huh,’ he asks, folding his arms across his chest.
‘Yes,’ Mac says slowly, brows drawing together in confusion. This seems like the wrong answer, but he can’t think what the right one would be. Dennis is staring at him so intently that Mac’s face is beginning to itch. ‘Have I got something on my face, dude?’
‘No,’ Dennis says, rolling his eyes. ‘I’m doing a thing, it’s – I’m intimidating you, dude, keep up. It’s a whole –’
He pauses, gaze snags on something behind Mac’s head. He unfolds his arms and points, looking a little sheepish. ‘Actually, I’m running low on – can you –’
Mac sighs and turns around to face the lip balm display. He plucks a cherry chapstick off the shelf and hands it over to Dennis without comment. Dennis coughs.
‘Thanks, bro,’ he says. He frowns, tapping the chapstick against the palm of his hand in an irritated rhythm. ‘Kinda ruined the whole intimidation thing, huh?’
‘Yeah, kinda,’ Mac commiserates. He gestures around at the rest of the shelves with his one free hand. ‘You need anything else?’
‘Well, while we’re here,’ Dennis starts, which is how they end up in front of the cashier half an hour later with armfuls of hair gel, cup noodles, lip balm, a bottle of lube, beef jerky, kitchen towel and, on Mac’s insistence, three packs of Red Vines. He can usually persuade Dennis to eat those when he’s feeling cagey, on account of a loophole in the packaging that makes it sound like they’re low in calories (they’re not).
‘We should’ve just gotten a basket, dude. We do this like, every time we come here.’
‘You saying you can’t carry all this, Mac? I thought you were stronger than that.’
Mac makes an indignant noise and dumps the stuff on the counter, glaring at Dennis, who smirks and folds his arms across his chest again. He clearly thinks that’s a good look, with the way he’s got his shirtsleeves rolled up even though it’s freezing outside, just so he can show off the muscles in his forearms. And he’s wearing the blue shirt that exactly matches the shade of his eyes. Who takes that long to think about what they’re wearing in the morning? Jesus Christ. It really makes Mac want to knock him off his perch, rough him up a little. Mess up those perfectly coiffed curls.
Mac opens his mouth to object to Dennis’s attack on his superior strength and stamina when the Wawa clerk interrupts.
‘Wow, got a lot of stuff here,’ she says cheerily. ‘I’m Samantha. I’m new here, don’t reckon I’ve seen you two around before. Sure are a cute couple,’ she winks as she scans the bottle of lube, so jaunty Mac wonders if she knows she’s in Philadelphia and not on Broadway.
Mac and Dennis turn to stare at her in unison.
‘Who the fuck asked you?’ Dennis replies, indignant. The folded arms thing really does work with that tone of voice, much as Mac hates to admit it. It’s very ‘may I speak with your manager?’, but in a more masculine, less soccer mom kind of way.
‘Yeah, lady,’ Mac tacks on, puffing his chest up and clenching his fists at his sides. ‘And why would you assume we’re gay?’
‘That’s a good point, Mac,’ Dennis says, still glaring at Samantha. ‘Even if we were a couple, what gives you the impression we’d like to hear your input on that? Our private business is our private business, Samantha.’
‘I didn’t,’ she stammers, hands frozen on the bottle, horrified. ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ Dennis says, oozing charm now as he leans over and prizes the bottle out of her hands, shoving it into the bag with the rest of their stuff. ‘But maybe think next time before you make random assumptions about two very pleasant, very cordial strangers who come into your store to stock up on jerky and water-based lubricant.’
‘Just two guys living together and picking up some groceries,’ Mac interjects, leaning over Dennis’s shoulder and scowling for emphasis. ‘Nothing sexual about that, Samantha.’
‘Nothing sexual at all,’ Dennis agrees, turning to smile at Mac briefly over his shoulder. He turns back to Samantha, sorrowful smirk spreading across his face. ‘You really should think about expanding your mind before you start judging others. Take a look at yourself, Samantha. Take a look at yourself.’
Mac crows at that, catching Dennis in a high five as they turn triumphantly away and start heading towards the doors.
‘But you didn’t – you didn’t pay …’ Mac hears Samantha trailing off bleakly as they walk away.
‘Free groceries, alright!’ Mac whoops as they make it to the car and dump the bags in the back seat.
‘Free groceries, baby,’ Dennis grins at him, sliding into the driver’s seat. He’s clearly forgotten he was mad at Mac in the first place. ‘It’s gonna be a good day.’
Dennis’s problem, Mac thinks as he listens to Dennis humming to Bryan Adams and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, is that he can’t just accept someone doing something nice for him without strings attached. He talks a good game about how everyone should worship at the feet of the golden god but worship doesn’t amount to the same thing as care, not really, not at all. You worship things you can only view from a distance; you care for what’s right in front of you. No wonder Dennis freaks out the minute anyone gets too close – it’s hard to keep someone at arm’s length when you’ve got your back up against a wall.
---
‘So what, you’re saying they’re never going to get them together?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, sis. That’s like the whole point. Once they’re together, all the tension’s gone, and they’d just have to break them up again for drama, or people’ll stop watching.’
‘No one wants to watch a show about people who’re happy all the time,’ Frank chimes in, and they all nod thoughtfully.
‘Friends,’ Mac points out, taking a swig of his beer. ‘Those dumb bitches are always smiling.’
‘Yeah, because they live in a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan in the nineties,’ Dee snorts. Mac clinks their bottles together in agreement.
‘But that just proves my point,’ Dennis argues. He’s really getting into it now, rolling his sleeves up his forearms and leaning across the bar to make his point, fire in his eyes. ‘Ross and Rachel got together and broke up and got back together and broke up, and then got back together in the last episode. They couldn’t keep them together and still have a show. The whole thing rested on the tension between whether or not they were gonna end up together.’
‘How much Friends have you watched, dude,’ Charlie asks, and Mac laughs on a mouthful of beer, snorting bubbles up his nose and coughing. Charlie grins at him. Dennis frowns and raises his hands at them, that one like he’s trying to coax a recalcitrant horse. Mac always found that one funny. It was like Dennis’s hands were saying what gives? Why’re you making fun of me? Which really only made Mac want to make fun of him harder.
‘Not the point, Charlie. Everyone knows about Ross and Rachel anyway, you don’t even need to have –’
‘Alright, I’ll give you Ross and Rachel,’ Dee says, leaning forward with a gleam in her eye. ‘But what about Chandler and Monica.’
Dennis opens his mouth and shuts it again.
‘They’re pretty happy,’ Dee goes on, warming to her theme, gesticulating with her beer. ‘They don’t break up, not even a little bit.’
‘That’s a good point,’ Mac nods slowly, thinking about it. ‘They get together like, what? Halfway through? And then they just … stay happy, stay together. They never break up, they don’t cheat, they don’t fight.’
‘So unrealistic,’ Dee says, rolling her eyes.
‘Yeah, it’d never happen in real life, but in the show, they stick at it,’ Mac says, getting into it now. ‘They’re happy, they work at their relationship –’
‘They don’t work at it,’ Dennis interrupts, crossing his arms over his chest and turning his searchlight stare on Mac. ‘They never have to. The writers never insert any sources of conflict into their relationship, they’ve got a way easier ride. Think about it, dude – they don’t even have to work at being happy together like Ross and Rachel did because, and, aha, here’s the kicker,’ he near-whispers, leaning forward and not so much as blinking as he makes his point punctuating each word stabbing a finger in Mac’s direction, ‘they’re the beta couple.’
‘When did – when have all of you watched so much Friends?’ Charlie asks in total bewilderment. ‘Who the fuck is Chandler?’
‘Explain,’ Mac commands, pointing a returning finger. Dennis smirks at him.
‘Ross and Rachel are the alpha couple, the will-they-won’t-they, the love story for the ages, the big grand romantic arc, right?’
‘Well …’
‘Just go with it,’ Dennis snaps.
‘Fine, fine, love story for the ages.’
‘And Monica and Chandler aren’t. They don’t have the will-they-won’t-they factor, because the whole thing just comes out of fucking nowhere –’
‘At Ross’s wedding to Emily in London, right,’ Mac nods, remembering. He’s thinking maybe they should go and get the flipchart out of the back office. This feels like a flipchart kind of situation.
‘Who the fuck is Emily?’ Charlie asks loudly.
‘Right,’ Dennis continues as if Charlie hadn’t spoken, his eyes darting between Dee and Mac. ‘There’s never any warning, so the audience isn’t invested at all. And then there wouldn’t be a backlash if people didn’t like it and in the next season they had to take it back.’
‘The whole thing is like zero pressure,’ Mac muses. ‘Yeah, I can see that.’
‘Yeah,’ Dennis grins at him. ‘So they’re not a legit example of what we’re talking about, you see? They’re the cozy couple, the comfy couple – the one you don’t really care about. Like a nice lamp. It’s nice to see it there, but you’re not going to cry about it if someone moved it.’
‘I don’t want people moving my shit,’ Dee says seriously. ‘Obviously I wouldn’t cry about it, but someone starts moving your stuff around, that can get messy fast. Like, where’s the line, you know?’
‘Yeah,’ Charlie chimes in. ‘Don’t move my lamp, dude.’
‘It’s a metaphor,’ Dennis grits out. Mac pats his hand consolingly. Dennis’s eyes flicker down to it then up to Mac, briefly startled, the static in his expression fizzling out. He redirects his gaze to Charlie and Dee, half-frowning. ‘I meant – I meant that they’re not like a will-they-won’t-they couple because the value of their relationship in the show isn’t a source of tension, it’s a source of –’
‘Comfort,’ Mac finishes, and Dennis looks back at him, freed from whatever word soup he was getting lost in. He nods shortly, taking a sharp, quick pull on his beer.
‘Yeah,’ he says, his voice quiet and suddenly subdued.
Mac waits, but nothing else is forthcoming, and without Dee and Charlie butting in, the whole exchange takes on a weight Mac hadn’t intended it to have. He clears his throat and pulls his hand away from Dennis’s, chuckling as if he only just realised he’d left it there. He sneaks a look in Charlie and Dee’s direction to see if they noticed and he catches the tail-end of a glance between the two of them – raised eyebrows, half-rolled eyes before they go back to their beers, synced up and smooth, with all the familiarity of a routine exchange.
What the hell is that about?
‘That’s not to say that will-they-won’t-they can’t be comforting in itself, though,’ Dennis says in an odd tone of voice. Mac turns back to him and finds Dennis watching him with an unusually intent expression. The gleam in his eye reminds Mac of water cutting through an oil spill; that rainbow glare, sharp and bright and just over the edge into too much.
‘What?’ Mac asks.
Dennis clears his throat, settling back into his persuasive stance. Mac shifts in his seat a little, nervous anticipation prickling along the underside of his thighs. Dennis isn’t even pretending to include Dee and Charlie anymore, or even Frank, who honestly is probably asleep at this point in the conversation. He’s just looking at Mac, all his attention focused on him and it’s – it’s a lot. A lot of focus to be balled up and thrown in Mac’s direction like that.
‘Sometimes audiences go for so long watching a couple dance around each other, wondering if they’re going to get together, that the uncertainty itself becomes a kind of comfort,’ Dennis says. His voice is calm and even, a still water underneath which runs something dangerous. ‘It becomes a staple of the show, like a running joke or a familiar set.’
‘Right,’ Mac agrees nervously. He notices his hands twisting the beer bottle, pulling at the label and stops them abruptly. He flattens them against the bar, gaze fixed somewhere in the vicinity of Dennis’s lower lip. He clears his throat. Charlie and Dee are still watching in this weirdly charged silence, like at some point Mac and Dennis became the entertainment. ‘It’s like a part of their characters?’
‘Exactly,’ Dennis says, so low it’s a near-hiss. ‘And then what do you do with the characters if they finally do get together? Who would they even be after that, if their whole dynamic is built around unresolved romantic tension?’
Mac frowns.
‘You’d just get them together right at the end,’ he argues, not sure why Dennis isn’t understanding this. ‘Then you don’t have to lose any of the tension or the comfort or whatever it is, you can just bang ‘em together in the last episode and the audience get their closure, the writers don’t have to fuck around with it, everyone gets what they want.’
‘Everyone goes home happy,’ Dennis says evenly. Mac hesitates, not sure what to say. That one vein in Dennis’s forehead that always jumps out ahead of an explosion is making a star appearance.
‘Yeah, dude.’
‘Hmm,’ Dennis says, propping his chin on the bar with one hand, mock-contemplative. ‘But what if the writers get tired of doing that dance, Mac? What about the actors, for that matter? What if the goddamn characters get sick of the goddamn dance? What then, huh?’
‘Well the characters aren’t – they aren’t real people, Dennis,’ Mac frowns. He looks round at the others to see if there’s a point to this conversation that he’s missing, but Charlie and Dee refuse to make eye contact – they’re staring real hard into their beers as if they hold the secrets to life, the universe and everything. Dee’s eyebrows are halfway up her forehead.
Mac looks back at Dennis, whose mouth has receded into a thin, flat line. His hands are bunched into fists at his sides. Mac shrugs his shoulders helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, dude, I don’t get it –’
‘What if they get sick of the will-they-won’t-they before the end, Mac?’ Dennis spits out through gritted teeth. ‘What if they can’t fucking take it anymore and he won’t make a fucking move and they can’t fucking take it? What if they just have to make a change?’
‘The actors or the –’
‘It doesn’t fucking matter, Mac.’
‘I don’t know, Dennis, I guess they leave!’ Mac half-shouts, bewildered and angry in his bewilderment.
The words land on Dennis like a lead weight, flattening the tension in his features until they’re blank and smooth. Mac tracks the rapid flutter of Dennis’s eyelashes as he blinks and blinks. Is that a smear of mascara running under his eyes? Mac’s hands are shaking, flat against the bar. His heart is thumping painfully and he just wants Dennis to stop looking at him like that, like he’s nothing, like he’s worse than nothing.
‘They leave, huh,’ he asks neutrally, like Mac asked him for the time. Although that’s not a good comparison, because last week when Mac actually asked him for the time Dennis told him it was time he got a watch and laughed his ass off about it all the way to the goddamn car, as if that wasn’t a joke that went out of fashion when they were in grade school.
‘Yeah, Dennis, they leave,’ Mac bites out. ‘Isn’t that what anyone does when they’re not getting what they want?’
It sounds – it’s too harsh, too mean for the look on Dennis’s face right now and Mac wants to take it back as soon as he says it. But only for a second. Then he forces it down, makes himself chew on it despite the twisting in his gut. This is how things are; Dennis has said worse to him. Dennis has said all kinds of things to him. He didn’t – they’re talking about a goddamn TV show. Dennis has said worse.
‘And on that note,’ Dee says, too loudly in the shaky silence of the bar. She puffs out her cheeks as she slides off the barstool, eyes wide and cheeks pinking with something that looks like the hands-off, too many feelings flying around kind of expression she used to get around Cricket, when he was still in love with her. Charlie starts to do the same, muttering something about checking his glue traps. ‘I think that’s my cue to leave.’
‘It’s nobody’s cue to leave,’ Mac says, frowning in confusion. ‘We weren’t talking about you, Dee. No one cares if you’re here or not.’
Dennis gives a quiet snort as if he just can’t help it, and Mac swivels back to look at him quickly. But it’s gone before he gets there. Dennis is studying the woodgrain of the bar with that curious intensity, leaning forward on braced hands. Mac fights the bizarre urge to put his hand back on Dennis’s; if there’s one thing that wouldn’t help in this situation, it is absolutely, definitely Mac touching him.
Frank’s long, low whistling snore is ten times more noticeable once Dee and Charlie have made their exit, and it’s just him, Dennis and Mac’s roiling insides left alone in the bar. Mac tosses around several variations on the question in his head before the tightening grip of Dennis’s hands on the bar top tells him Dennis knows he’s hesitating, and to ask the goddamn question sometime this century.
‘Are you okay, dude?’ he asks.
Dennis looks up at him and – nothing. Nothing there. Perfectly pleasant. Smiling and blank and empty, like that first week in suburbia all over again.
‘I’m fine, Mac,’ he says, eyes blinking dewily. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
---
It’s a weird week.
Dennis continues to tell Mac that he’s fine, but there’s definitely something brewing under the surface that he refuses to discuss. He doesn’t avoid Mac, but he stops following him around. He’s eerily quiet the whole week, watching Mac contemplatively for minutes at a time as if Mac is a national monument and he’s an out of town tourist, and he doesn’t bat an eye when Mac tries to out-stare him. He doesn’t even freak out when Mac screws up the mixer order and five hundred cases of boxed orange juice turn up on their doorstep instead of fifty. At the end of that whole debacle, after the police have taken Cricket away and Dee is mixing them mimosas behind the bar accompanied by Charlie’s belligerent coaching, Dennis only sighs and wordlessly hands him a beer. Mac is this close to throwing his hands up and just provoking a fight out of frustration.
The most concrete evidence he has that something’s off is the touching thing.
‘There’s literally no way we would ever have agreed to that,’ Dennis says, half-laughing and leaning back against the bar while Dee scowls. ‘Why would we ever have told you that, Dee?’
‘Because it’s – because I’m going to be in a movie!’ Dee says, looking between them with that familiar, half-desperate light in her eyes. ‘A real movie! That’s being filmed in Philly! And you promised you’d come and support me on-set. I have written proof!’
She jabs at her smart phone. They squint in unison.
‘What?’ Dennis demands. ‘What am I supposed to be looking at here?’
‘The group chat,’ Dee gets out through gritted teeth, ‘where you guys sent firework emojis and said you’d come and support me after I told you about getting the part!’
‘Charlie sent the fireworks,’ Mac nods, remembering, and Charlie throws him some finger guns, ‘but I don’t –’
‘I don’t remember typing that, do you?’ Dennis turns to Mac questioningly. Mac shakes his head.
‘I don’t think so, Dee,’ Mac says. ‘See, we already tried the screenwriting angle, and it didn’t work out for us. I’m not into it, I don’t want to go that way again. It changed us.’
‘I do feel like it changed us,’ Charlies agrees.
‘Took us in a weird direction,’ Dennis nods. ‘Screenwriting isn’t for us, sis.’
‘That’s fine, Dennis, because we’re not talking about you,’ Dee glares. ‘We’re talking about me, and my speaking role in a real-life, totally legitimate historical drama set in our actual goddamn city.’
‘Hold up, hold up,’ Charlie says, clearly intrigued, motioning with one hand for Dee to shut up. ‘Historical, you say?’
‘Yeah,’ Dee says warily.
Charlie strokes his stubble, cocking one eyebrow.
‘Probably got some horse and carriage shit going on there. You think there are gonna be horses on set?’
‘Well, yeah, probably,’ Dee says. ‘I mean, they had horses back in, uh, whenever the movie’s set so, I guess.’
Her eyes widen at the implication as soon as she finishes speaking, and she shoots out a hand in protest.
‘No, no, no, you are not coming on set just to get all weird with the horses, Charlie.’
‘Um, you’re the one that invited us onto the set, Dee,’ Charlie frowns, shrugging at Mac and Dennis. ‘What do you say, guys? Wanna go on a horse trip?’
‘It’s not a horse trip,’ Dee emphasises. ‘It’s a – oh, forget it.’
Mac and Dennis exchange a glance.
‘I think we’re good, bro,’ Dennis says, smirking slightly. ‘We’ve got our own plans.’
Mac grins a little, a little bounce in his chest at the thought: it’s monthly dinner day.
‘Uh huh,’ Charlie nods, eyebrows raised. ‘Sure you do.’
‘What?’ Mac frowns at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Charlie shrugs and takes a sip of his beer, avoiding Mac’s eyes.
‘Why did I fall for it,’ Dee asks, apparently talking aloud to herself. ‘Why did I take written confirmation as proof?’
‘To be honest, I didn’t even know you were a part of that chat, Dee,’ Dennis confesses. ‘Totally passed me by.’
‘I can understand that, Dennis, seeing as how most of the chat is just you and Mac texting each other pictures of the dong shot from Thunder Gun Express,’ Dee snaps.
‘It’s not texting when it’s in the group chat, Dee. It’s messaging.’
Dee blinks at them in disbelief.
‘That’s it?’ she presses. ‘That’s your response?’
‘What else is there to say, Dee?’ Mac frowns. He glances at Dennis, who shrugs. He’s about to complain about how the pictures are actually from Thunder Gun Express: Director’s Cut, theatrical release 2010, and if Dee had an artistic bone in her body then she’d know that, but then Dennis leans back against the bar and reaches over Mac’s shoulder to retrieve his forgotten beer, lunging right into Mac’s personal space. His bare arm brushes Mac’s skin where his shirt doesn’t quite reach, and Mac’s words get stuck in his throat.
Dennis’s eyes flick to him suddenly, when they’re at the closest possible point, so they’re watching each other at the exact moment when their skin touches, and a zip of static passes through them both. Dennis shivers, blinking rapidly, but he doesn’t look away. He looks almost surprised to find that they’re still so close, but there’s no way he can be as surprised as Mac.
‘Um,’ Mac says, or thinks he says. His lips feel kind of numb. ‘You okay there, Dennis?’
‘I’m fine, Mac, thank you for asking,’ Dennis says very evenly. ‘Just trying to reach my beer there. Uh. How are you?’
‘I’m great, Dennis. How are you?’
‘I’m –’
‘I for one am doing great,’ says Charlie very loudly, from somewhere behind Mac, which might as well be a thousand miles away. Whatever’s happening here, it definitely shouldn’t be happening in the same room as three other people. What the hell is happening here? Why is Dennis still staring at him like that? Why hasn’t he moved away? Mac’s entire body feels like one tensed up muscle. If he could somehow stay this close to Dennis while simultaneously teleporting across town, that would be great.
‘Good to know, Charlie,’ Mac’s mouth says, moving without his permission. His brain has shorted out. Dennis’ body heat is seeping into him from just that one point of contact, his arm and Mac’s shoulder. Their faces are insanely close together and Dennis’s eyes are so, so blue. Mac’s gaze flicks down to his mouth and he hears Dennis take a wavering breath.
And then – something shifts. Awareness floods Dennis’s expression; embarrassment, maybe. He draws back sharply then clutches the seat of the stool with white-knuckled fingers, like he needs the support to balance. Mac doesn’t say or do a single thing, just sits, rooted to the spot. His heart is hammering a mile a minute; Dee’s watching him with raised eyebrows as if she can hear it.
He shakes himself free of the moment, taking a long swig of beer to cover the way he’s flushing, and silently, fervently thanks God for the existence of alcohol.
‘Anyway,’ Charlie says, drawing the word out like toffee. ‘I’m gonna go and do that, uh – that thing I had to go and do.’
Mac blinks at him.
‘Yeah,’ Dee adds quickly, ‘I think I’m gonna – go and help Charlie with that.’
They empty out like there’s a fire in the back and then it’s just Mac and Dennis alone, studiously not looking at each other, sat in stifling silence.
Dennis’s throat clicks as he swallows. Mac coughs, one hand uncomfortably massaging the back of his neck.
After a minute, he clears his throat.
‘Wanna go get high and egg Dee’s car?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ Dennis says immediately, and they slide off their stools in unison. Mac is careful their hands don’t brush as they go.
---
God doesn’t have any answers for Mac on Sunday, but Mac’s pretty used to that by now. Honestly, he’d probably be more surprised if one day he actually got a response while praying. He used to wonder what that would look like – an angel popping into existence right in front of him, or if God would just speak directly into his head or something, but now he wonders whether they’re keeping up with technological advances upstairs. How cool would it be to get a WhatsApp message straight from Jesus? It’d save him a hell of a lot of teleportation time.
Mac’s so busy thinking this through, sensing the foundations of a scam in the idea, that he nearly walks right past Dennis on his way out of church.
‘Dude! C’mon, you’re gonna walk right past me?’
‘Huh?’
Mac turns to see Dennis leaning against the church steps, sunglasses on and still needlessly shading his eyes like an asshole.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he smirks, as if he didn’t wave Mac out the door just a few hours ago.
Mac rolls his eyes, dragging his feet as he retraces his steps. Dennis giving him shit about God is easily one of his least preferred ways of spending a Sunday. Dennis always wants to make it a big issue about how subscribing to religion doesn’t make sense, and how is Mac supposed to fight him on that when he’s always been taught that it doesn’t have to? You just do your bit for God and get on with it, and don’t worry about whether it all makes sense or not, because that’s for brains bigger and holier than yours.
‘What are you doing here, dude? You shouldn’t pick up chicks on the steps of God’s house, we’ve had this conversation a million times.’
‘I’m not here for that, Mac.’
‘Then what’s up?’
Dennis looks off down the street and back at Mac, scratching the back of his neck. If Mac didn’t know better, he’d say Dennis was nervous. But what would he have to be nervous about? There aren’t even any chicks around.
His smile is cautious, almost skittish as he unfurls his empty palms. Nothing to see here, officer.
‘I was just passing by.’
‘Are you following me again?’ Mac squints at him, trying to gauge the twist of his mouth, whether his flushed cheeks are from the sun or an impending freak-out. It’s hard to get a read on Dennis when he wears those dumb aviators. It always reminds Mac how much he relies on Dennis’s eyes to figure out what Dennis is thinking, although even that’s been tough to figure out lately, what with Dennis always watching Mac between narrowed eyelids like a snake poised to strike. ‘Dude, that’s not cool. What if you came up behind me and tapped my shoulder and I popped you a good one like I did to Dee that one time on Christmas? I don’t wanna do that to you, Dennis, but you know it’s just a reflex when you’re as well-trained as I am.’
‘Well, that’s not going to happen, Mac, seeing as I’m not stupid enough to approach you from behind,’ Dennis snaps. ‘And also, if I was following you, why would I tap you on the shoulder? That’s the exact opposite of stealth.’
‘For the reveal moment, duh.’
‘What are you talking about, what reveal moment?’
‘The moment when you come up to me all smug because you figured out what I’m up to, so you don’t need to follow me anymore. That’s how it always goes in the movies.’
‘Well, we’re not in the movies, alright, Mac, and I just want to have one goddamn conversation where we don’t –’
Dennis cuts himself off, closing his eyes and visibly counting to ten. He sighs and yanks off his sunglasses to look at Mac.
‘Look, I don’t want to fight, okay? I just want to talk.’
‘Okay,’ Mac says dubiously. ‘Go ahead, man.’
Dennis looks off down the street again and Mac cranes his head to see what he’s looking at, but there’s nothing down there. When he turns his head back around Dennis is watching him with that almost-hesitation from before.
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he says. He rummages around in his pocket and pulls out an index card, waving it in Mac’s general direction. ‘I know things have been kind of weird with us lately, and I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about it. Now I know this is like, the total opposite of how either of us would usually do things but stay with me, here, okay? I’ve put together a couple of talking points just to guide us through it. I know it sounds kind of lame, but I want you to stay with me on this, because I think it could work out really well for us, okay? You with me, buddy?’
‘Okay,’ Mac says again, a little impatient this time. He can’t stop staring at the index card, wondering what’s on the other side of it. This better not be a plan to scam free snacks at the movie theatre or something. He folds his arms across his chest. ‘What is it?’
Dennis clears his throat delicately.
‘Why do you come here?’ he asks, reading each word carefully off the card as if there’s a danger Mac might not understand if he speaks too fast. When he’s finished he gives Mac a smug grin, clearly proud of himself.
Mac groans, disappointment pulling his whole body down.
‘What’s this got to do with us, Dennis? I don’t want to have the ‘religion is stupid’ discussion again, bro. I just get angry and you get all frustrated with me and we never agree on who wins –’
‘Jesus Christ, I’m not – I mean I would obviously win that discussion, because I win it every goddamn time, Mac, but that’s not the point here. Trust me when I say this is all gonna make sense, I promise. I already said I don’t want to fight, okay? And I meant it. I really don’t want to fight.’
Dennis looks at him pleadingly. His nose is definitely reddening in the sun. It’s not like him to step outside the apartment without slapping factor 50 all over his face to protect his precious complexion; he must have been in a real hurry when he left.
‘There. Does this look like the face of a man who wants to fight?’
He gives Mac a big cheesy grin.
‘No,’ Mac concedes reluctantly. It looks like the face of a man who’s going to be squawking like a parrot when he catches sight of his reflection in about an hour, but Mac keeps that to himself.
‘Okay then. So, maybe now you can answer my question. Humour me.’
Mac sighs, looking down at the crooked, chipped paving slabs under their feet, toeing a weed shooting up through one of the cracks. He spreads his hands wide and looks back up at Dennis, squinting in the sun.
‘I don’t know, dude. I’ve been going here my whole life. I don’t know what I’d do on a Sunday if I didn’t go to church.’
Dennis rolls his eyes.
‘I’ve seen you passed out for entire Sundays like, a million times, dude.’
‘Okay, when I’m sober then,’ Mac retorts. ‘When I’m capable of it. When I can fucking walk, Dennis. And I do mostly drag myself out even when I’m hungover as shit, if you recall.’
Dennis purses his lips but doesn’t say anything, clearly waiting for Mac to expand on his point. How is Mac supposed to explain this to someone who doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see, and even then reserves judgment until he can make it fit to his own weird personalised set of specifications? Dennis never met a firm statement of belief he didn’t at least try to wear down to a maybe; it’s probably a miracle in and of itself that they’ve lived together for so long and he hasn’t converted Mac to atheism through sheer force of will. Mac gives himself a mental pat on the back for being the immovable object to Dennis’s unstoppable force.
He casts a glance across the street searching for a sign, and his eye catches on the old Vietnamese lady going into the laundromat. He points, a bolt of inspiration striking him.
‘Like, look at that old lady, bro. She comes to do her laundry across the street there like every Sunday. I’ve been watching her do it since I was a kid!’
He smiles at Dennis expectantly, but Dennis just watches the door close behind the woman and looks back at Mac, frown wrinkling his brow.
‘You going to church is like that old lady doing her laundry?’ he says doubtfully. ‘That’s just sad, dude. I don’t understand the appeal of that at all.’
Mac sighs, clapping his hands together in front of Dennis and wringing them.
‘No, dude, it’s like – this is where God wants me to be, you know? Like He wants that old lady to do her laundry every Sunday at the same time, or He wouldn’t put her there every week. God wants me to be here, that’s what the Bible says. You gotta show up, man.’
‘You think God personally wants you to be here?’ Dennis squints at him sceptically. ‘He sits down every week with a big bowl of popcorn and thinks ‘gee, I sure hope Mac makes it to church this week just like he does every other week, because that shit’s better than Netflix’?’
‘Not exactly like that – of course God wouldn’t eat popcorn, Dennis, that’s just empty calories. But kind of. I mean, I’m here because He commands it. Everything’s dictated by the big man upstairs, Dennis. Why else would anything happen?’
‘Because people are people, and – no. Wait. That’s not the discussion we’re having here, we’re getting off track,’ Dennis interrupts himself, blowing out a long, exasperated breath. He braces himself on Mac’s shoulder with one hand, nearly folding the index card in two. He massages his temples, watching Mac with steely determination. Mac blinks at him, a little startled at the intensity. Has Dennis ever tried so hard to understand this before? Mac pictures the dozens of alternate universes where during the course of this conversation, Dennis has already thrown up his hands in frustration and walked away. They call it irreconcilable differences, don’t they?
In all the universes except for this one, apparently.
Mac pats Dennis’s hand where it’s scrunching up his shirt sleeve.
‘You got this, buddy,’ he says, and Dennis snorts.
‘Christ. Okay. So, God wants you to be here. It makes God’s Sunday every time you show up. He’s doing cartwheels up there. But what about you, Mac?’
Dennis’s eyes have narrowed in the way that means he thinks he’s being sly.
‘What about me?’
‘Do you want to be here? Does it make you happy, being here?’
Mac blinks at him. This is it? This is Dennis’s play? Mac’s weathered stronger temptation to quit church while he was actually sitting in church.
‘Happiness isn’t the point, Dennis. It doesn’t matter if I’m happy to be here or not. I’m here to be reminded of how things are, and how they should be, and if I’m doing stuff good and if not, then how I can do it more better.’
‘But if it’s not – it’s not letting you be –’ Dennis casts off Mac’s shoulder, bracing a hand on his hip. ‘Jesus Christ, this isn’t even like talking to a brick wall, it’s like trying to scale one – which, before you interrupt, you absolutely do not have the core strength to accomplish, Mac, so don’t even try to argue with me.’
‘I wasn’t going to,’ Mac lies, glaring from under his eyelashes. Dennis huffs out a breath that could almost have been a laugh and licks his lips, bites down like he does when he’s concentrating on how to make a point. His lower lip fills up dark pink under the pressure, sore-looking and dry in the sun. He must have forgotten his chapstick, too.
‘What I’m saying is,’ Dennis starts slowly, and something twinges in Mac’s stomach; the nausea before the drop on a rollercoaster, ‘if you stopped coming to church, wouldn’t that be because God wanted you to, then? If everything only happens because He dictates it?’
Mac squints.
‘Doesn’t work like that, Dennis. God would never want me to stop coming to church.’
‘But then don’t you see how flawed that logic is?’ Dennis asks him, and his voice is almost pleading now, all traces of cunning wiped from his face. It’s jarring to see Dennis looking at him like that, without the implicit threat of encroaching rage or the knowing smirk of manipulation. It’s not a joke, it’s not a scam – Dennis is really asking him. He really wants to know. ‘It’s so circular, like – God dictates everything, so everything happens because he wants it to, so by that logic you can never argue God doesn’t exist because duh! Stuff is happening in the world, and that’s because of God!’
‘Exactly,’ Mac says eagerly. ‘You’re finally getting it, dude! God has a plan for everyone, that’s how this works.’
‘No,’ Dennis groans, gesticulating wildly, ‘that’s not what I meant, Mac. Are you even listening to me? I meant – don’t you see how that isn’t a real argument?’
‘It doesn’t have to be an argument,’ Mac frowns. ‘You’re missing the point, Dennis. Faith isn’t about facts, it’s about feelings. If I feel it, then no argument on earth is going to convince me otherwise.’
Dennis’s gaze narrows, pins Mac where he stands.
‘So do you?’ he asks, his voice softer again now and all the more dangerous for it. He presses so close that Mac can feel his body heat, his eyes bright and intent. ‘Do you feel it?’
Mac opens his mouth and no sound comes out. He swallows. Dennis watches the movement of his throat like a cat tracking the tiny, fluttering heartbeat of a mouse.
‘Now you’re just trying to trick me,’ Mac says in a small voice. Dennis stares at him, his brow creasing. He takes a hasty step back as Mac’s voice gets louder. ‘That’s what this is all about. I can’t believe I thought you were really – you’re just trying to trick me, Dennis, like you always do when we talk about this –’
‘Jesus Christ, I’m not – I’m not, Mac, I just want – I want to understand, okay? I want to know what keeps you coming here, week after week, when this thing, this whole thing –’ Dennis gestures wildly at the outside of the church, his voice rising enough that people on the other side of the street start to glance over, ‘this whole thing is always telling you you’re wrong, telling you what you want isn’t right. It’s bad for you, Mac! It’s stopping you from getting what you want.’
Mac stares at Dennis, his heart thumping dully, painfully in his chest. Whatever door was opening inside him slams closed, deadbolt sliding shut. His hands curl into fists at his sides.
‘What are you talking about, dude? What do you mean what I want, I don’t –’
‘Fuck,’ Dennis says loudly. He plants his feet solidly on the sidewalk and lifts his hands up to the sky, staring up at the bright spring sun. His face is approaching the mid-range freak-out shade of purple. ‘I tried, my dude. You can’t say I didn’t at least try!’
‘What? Who are you talking to, Dennis?’ Mac snaps, eyeing him warily. Is seeing people in the sky a symptom of BPD? That wasn’t listed when Mac looked it up in the DSM, but maybe there was a more recent edition he was missing. He’ll look it up online later, when Dennis is finished being an asshole.
‘God, of course,’ Dennis barks, gaze shunting back down to Mac. His eyes are red, watery; he shoves his sunglasses back on his nose inelegantly, not bothering to correct them when they fall crookedly to one side. His nostrils are flaring with rage. ‘He’s the one who made you this way, right?’
Mac stares at him, muscles in his palms tensing with something like fear.
‘Made me what way, Dennis?’ he asks, his throat tight. He must have missed a step in the conversation somewhere. That must be it. There’s no way Dennis is out here on a Sunday yelling at him on the steps of a church about – no way. There’s just no way.
‘Into musical theatre,’ Dennis hisses, then barks a horrible laugh at whatever Mac’s face does in response to the words. ‘Both literally and metaphorically! Isn’t that just the icing on the cake? Maybe God thought that was a real funny joke. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Mac. I think God’s got a real shitty sense of humour.’
Mac doesn’t defend God. He doesn’t say anything, just stands there stupid and silent, swallowing his rage while Dennis scoffs in his face one last time and walks away, index card crumpling in his white-knuckled fist.