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Outside, nothing has changed. Philly at 2 AM on a late Wednesday night is just as quiet as it was before, the silence punctuated by the occasional rumble of a car driving down the street. The streetlight in front of their apartment building is still broken, flickering as a smattering of flies swarm around the weak glow. The cool air wafting through the sliver of open window smells of the Chinese place down the block, mixing jarringly with the golden warmth of the On Tap Yankee Candle burning on the bedside table ("What's more badass than a candle that smells like beer, bro?" Mac had said gleefully, adding it to their shopping cart before Dennis could protest.)
Inside, however, there may as well have been a cosmic shift in the tiny universe that was their bedroom.
The luxurious bed sheets that Dennis refuses to sleep without feel like sandpaper against his clammy skin. Over the ringing in his ears and the jackhammer of his heartbeat, he strains to hear the steady hiss of water coming from the bathroom sink, desperate for anything to ground him to the present moment.
God, he needs to keep it together. Mac will return any second.
Mac. Infuriatingly stubborn Mac, who insisted for weeks and weeks, ever since this unnameable thing between them had started, that waiting to do it until the right moment would make it more meaningful, placating Dennis with his surprisingly adept mouth and fingers instead. Attentive Mac, who had an eerily precise sixth sense for knowing whenever Dennis had gone too long without eating, who had memorized in record time all of the places on Dennis's body that could reduce him to trembling incoherency with just one soft stroke. Hotheaded Mac, who could go on for days stewing in a venomous sulk whenever Dennis was unnecessarily cruel with his words ("Your dick's microscopic" had earned Dennis a solid 48 hours of the silent treatment. He'd only said it because three other words, more dangerous and less untrue, were threatening to spill from his mouth at the time).
The running faucet comes to a stop and the bathroom door creaks open, letting in a brief burst of fluorescent light before Mac flicks the switch off. Dennis quickly rolls on his side to face the opposite wall, feeling a sharp but pleasant twinge of pain between his legs as he does so, an echo of everything that just transpired. He doesn't think that he has it in him right now to be the object of Mac's wide eyed gaze, chocolate and scorching and wholly inconvenient.
As the mattress dips with Mac's body weight, Dennis fights the instinctive urge to press his back along the inviting warmth that the other man constantly radiates. “Hey,” he feels more so than hears Mac’s gently hoarse voice tickle the nape of his neck, and it’s soon followed by a soft brush of lips that sends Dennis’s stomach plummeting to the floor. "You asleep already?"
"That's a stupid question," Dennis replies as neutrally as possible, not at all liking the shaky, choked quality of his words. "If I’m sleeping, then how would I answer you, dumbass?"
"You not answering would be my answer," Mac says good-naturedly, a teasing affection in his words that only amplifies the frenzied fluttering of Dennis’s insides. To his utter alarm, Mac closes the gap between their bodies, slinging a tattooed arm over Dennis's bony hip, and it takes him a faltering second before he realizes why. A damp washcloth has found its way on his lower stomach, wiping away at the stickiness drying uncomfortably on his skin. Mac's other hand makes itself at home in Dennis's hair, the pads of his fingertips whispering faintly against his scalp. It feels nice – actually, it feels heavenly, not that he would ever admit it out loud – but the closeness, the suffocating intimacy of it all – it’s too much.
The guy’s dick was just inside of him, he thinks wildly, and he’s over here about to lose his shit over some generic vanilla cuddling. He doesn’t remember ever feeling like this – like there’s scalding hot fingers curling in around his windpipe – during the half-hearted spooning he’d feel obligated to do after past emotionally charged Inspire Hope bangs, or even during the small handful of nights when he’d shared a bed with Maureen as her husband (a lifetime ago).
Then again, he supposes, he hasn't been in this position after sex for a long time – being held instead of doing the holding (or, more often, forgoing the step entirely and bolting). Not since the librarian, whose ashy, scaly hands and stale cigarette breath still occasionally revisit him on sleepless nights. Mac is all muscle and heat and safety where Mrs. Klinsky was bony and unfamiliar and invasive, but as Dennis lies there motionlessly, he feels what little air is left in his throat escape in a quick, muted gasp.
"Just – back off," Dennis sputters, yanking the washcloth out of Mac's grip and hastily sitting upright. "I can do it myself." He starts dabbing the cloth against his belly, refusing to indulge the part of himself that immediately wants to look over his shoulder and apologize to the other man. He can picture the dejectedly confused expression that must be forming on Mac’s face, right down to the scrunched eyes and pouty downturn of his mouth.
“Okay, okay. Fine. Just trying to help, dude.”
“You’ve helped enough.” He finishes wiping and tosses the soiled cloth aside, not quite ready to settle back into his original supine position under the covers. “I came, didn’t I?”
Never one to take a hint, Mac sits up, too, fingers coming to a hesitant stop against the small of Dennis’s back. He’s still and silent for once, and if Dennis hadn’t been preoccupied with keeping his breathing under control and willing away the prickling sensation slowly building up in the corners of his eyes, he’d have recognized Mac’s wordlessness for what it is: confusion.
They sit like that for a while, Mac’s fingertips speaking a tactile language of loops and swirls, Dennis’s skin responding with goosebumps.
“Dennis,” Mac murmurs, breaking the tense silence in a voice so low that at first he only hears noise instead of his name.
(He'd only gone to the library that day because Dooley had been ranting about an anatomy book he'd found there earlier, complete with detailed diagrams of every girl part imaginable. He had to see it for himself – Dooley wasn’t always one to be trusted, and more importantly, it was a matter of breasts.)
“I know you came. I was there,” Mac states, resting his chin atop Dennis’s left shoulder. “I felt it.” Dennis can hear the suggestive smirk unfurling on the Mac’s lips by the way his voice dips lower in pitch. He's too worn out to scoff or even roll his eyes.
(It was 30 minutes until closing, and he was the only one there. The damn book was nowhere to be found – of course Dooley had been lying, that rat bastard – and he was just about ready to call it quits and leave when he felt knobby fingers, encircled with garish rings and stained brown from tobacco, wrap around his arm.)
“But sex isn't only about the orgasms, you know.” God , did Mac even realize the inherent irony of trying to teach someone like him about sex? And besides that, he was wrong. He was so wrong; sex was only ever about that final euphoric rush, barreling through one’s body with the speed of a freight train and the intensity of a thousand live wires – the fact that tonight, with Mac, is the first in a long time that he’s experienced this is something Dennis chooses to fiercely ignore.
(“Looking for something, my boy?” was all that he could remember her saying before being led to her office, words of protest glued to the back of his throat. Then: a whirlwind shedding of his clothes, volition, and virginity.)
“I mean, orgasms are nice, don’t get me wrong. I’ve had plenty of them, after all,” Mac continues confidently, the tip of his nose pressing against the damp, flushed skin of Dennis’s neck. “But it’s also a way to get to know someone, in a way you can’t with just anybody.”
(She had tried to make him stay afterwards, pressed against his back, arms wrapped around his narrow waist, the scratchy upholstery of the worn-out sofa making his skin crawl. He’d thought the air would return to his lungs after it was over; instead, he was shaking from trying to muffle the sobs bubbling in his throat.)
“You know – connecting with someone. Emotionally.” And there they were – emotions, rearing their ugly and unwelcome head.
Dennis has always taken pride in his ability to compartmentalize. Ever since that first time, silent and surrounded by books, sex has always been a physical, visceral thing. Carnal. It’s always been about finding the places to put his lips and fingers on someone else’s body to elicit the loudest moan, the most violent of screams – but above all, it’s always been about him . Knowing that he’s the one responsible for another’s pleasure, that he’s the one in total control – that’s always been the most potent aphrodisiac of all.
With Mac, it’s different. It’s always been different.
As Mac’s slow, heavy breaths warmly fan into his matted curls, the weight of this truth – one that Dennis has been trying to deny ever since they first met – batters against the walls of his mind. The prickling in his eyes is a hair-trigger away from giving way to something more, and he’s frozen in place. Maybe if he’s absolutely still, the water that’s building up in the corners of his eyes won’t topple over.
Maybe.
Beside him, he feels Mac suddenly stiffening, as if he’d just realized something.
“Did you not enjoy it?” There’s a pause – an empty gap of quietness where neither of them are breathing – and Mac’s voice takes a downward turn. “Did I do something wrong?”
(Dennis had wanted there to be music – Bryan Adams could always be relied on to set the mood quite nicely – but Mac disagreed. “I want tonight to just be you and me,” he’d said, pulling Dennis into their bedroom by the arm, greedily pawing at the buttons of his shirt, eager to rid him of it. “We don’t need some sappy Canadian bitch to be there too.”
“He’s not some sappy Canadian b–” Dennis had begun to protest, abruptly cut off by the other man claiming him in a sloppy kiss.
“Den,” Mac had murmured, pushing him onto their shared bed. “Stop talking. Let me make this good for you.” He’d wanted to roll his eyes at that – if Mac thought that he’d be the one responsible for making this good in any way, he was in for a rude awakening – but then.
Then there were gentle touches, lips that felt like a forest fire blazing along the terrain that was his skin, slicked fingers that brought stars to his eyes with each alternating stroke, adrenaline racing through his veins as the other man pushed into him, his vision whiting out as he died the little death that he’d died hundreds of time before, different from all the others because this time, he was wholly present from start to finish, flayed apart and assembled back together.)
The thought of Mac even entertaining the idea that anything about this night was a mistake wracks through every inch of him, bringing a tremble to his shoulders that he tries with every effort he can muster to suppress.
“You’re dumber than I thought if you actually believe that,” Dennis blurts, and just like that, his tight hold on the reins gives way, the water welling at his eyes finally succumbing to gravity. Breathing becomes incredibly difficult to do, and as his gasps turn to sobs, he fiercely wishes he wasn’t like this – that he didn’t need to regress like some kind of pathetic child every time things got a little too overwhelming for him – and he fully expects Mac to get up and leave him be.
Instead, Dennis gets gently pulled into his arms, taken down with Mac so they’re leaning back against the headboard of their bed, Dennis pressed against the other man’s chest like they’re two puzzle pieces from different boxes, no logical reason for being together but somehow a perfect fit. Mac’s fingers find their way into Dennis’s hair again, gently stroking as he hums soothingly, the vibrations from his throat slowly starting to relieve the tension tangled in Dennis’s shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes. Mac – hell, anyone – deserves better than this, better than a bawling post-coital disaster. He swipes his hand across his eyes, and he notices black streaking his fingertips, his running mascara another taunting reminder of just how unattractive he looks right now. “This – this must be the least sexy pillow talk you’ve ever had.”
To his utter surprise, this elicits a laugh out of Mac. “Shut up, bozo,” he chides, bringing his hand under Dennis’s chin and turning him so that they’re facing each other. “You’re always sexy to me.” A small, mischievous smile curls at his mouth, and Dennis feels an ache in his chest at the sight.
Mac’s fingers trail across the streaks of water lining Dennis’s cheekbones, and Dennis allows the touch to relax him, the rise and fall of his chest coming down to a normal tempo. Mac’s eyes are firmly fixed on Dennis as he brings his tear-stained thumb reverently to his lips, tongue briefly peeking out and making contact with his dampened skin. Dennis watches, rapt and helpless, unable to look away even if his life depended on it.
The last thing Dennis expects to feel – especially so soon after the accumulated events of the night – is a heated spike of want. But it’s there, flickering in his lower abdomen, and it’s not just from Mac’s suggestive gesture, laced with promises of more to come. There’s a muted fierceness in his best friend – his blood brother, the goddamn keeper of his heart – an unspoken vow that he’ll never have to put up his carefully constructed walls after intimacy, that he won’t need to seek out strangers to forget about that day in the library all those years ago.
“I’m not her,” Mac says.
“I know.” Finally, he’s calm.