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Sundays were different now.
Different, because the gang had recently decided to close Paddy’s on a Sunday. They’d all been so opposed to the idea of traditional values stripping them of their freedom to be alcoholics for half a day a week, but now, they looked forward to closing time on a Saturday, knowing they’d get their bliss the next day.
Mac and Dennis spent their Sundays as they spent most of their time; bickering, watching re-runs of crap television, drinking obscene amounts of off-brand beer and helping each other out with benign tasks. Cleaning, dyeing the emerging silver hairs, giving the other attention, making food. Not exactly bliss, but a break from work nonetheless.
This Sunday didn’t pose any apparent differences. They did the usual things, got on with their day, savoured the peace from the rest of the gang but half-heartedly cursed the presence of the other.
Dennis was quieter that day, but that was the only significant change to note. Mac was wearing lazy clothes, Dennis was periodically scratching at the increasingly commonplace bandages on his arm out of boredom. Mac was eating copious amounts of Twinkies, Dennis was drinking copious amounts of cheap energy drinks like a God damn teenager. Mac was fidgeting restlessly, Dennis was catatonic. Mac was Mac, Dennis was Dennis — or, at least, the versions of themselves that they’d become.
It was when Mac had been in the shower that things had changed. Evening was falling, and Mac had retired to the bathroom, self-indulging in a sheet of hot water, on the highest temperature setting. He’d climbed out and began with his usual routine of writing a message onto the foggy mirror, which varied based on the day. That day, the message read ’get therapy’, watching his reflection appear in the new clarity in the letters. It’s important to note that messages weren’t for himself; they were for Dennis. It’s also important to note that once Mac was satisfied with the deadpan stare at the words seeping into an unintelligible mess of condensation, he’d swipe it away, destroying any evidence.
He opened the cupboard to get his razor, only to find that a blade was missing again — he huffed in numb frustration. “He’s paying for a new one.” So, the idea of shaving got thrown to the side. He brushed his teeth with an empty mind, rinsed his mouth with an even emptier mind, and wrapped a towel around his waist with a mind so empty it should’ve just been called an absence.
Mac opened the bathroom door, and blinked. Dennis was sat on his bed. His hands were jiggling and his lip was bleeding and his eyes were puffy from crying, yet as dry and tear-less as a piece of gluten free bread that’s been abandoned on the kitchen counter for a few days.
“What you doing in here?” Mac asked, in a neutral voice. It wasn’t accusatory, nor was it annoyed — a simple question, that Mac could guess wouldn’t have a simple answer.
“I need you to slap me,” Dennis said. His voice was shaking, but the tone was just as neutral and casual as Mac’s. “Or punch me. Whichever is kinder to the remnants of your masculinity.”
Mac sighed, and closed the bathroom door, half-consciously holding the conjoining fold of the towel around him.
“Bro, this is the fifth time you’ve asked me that this week,” he said tiredly. “The answer’s still no.”
“Please.”
Mac raised an eyebrow, walking over to the small mirror on his dresser, combing through his wet hair with his fingers, in lieu of a comb. “No.”
“Why not?” Dennis asked, his voice more pressing.
“Because I think it’s dumb as hell,” Mac replied, honestly. “Why do you keep asking?”
Dennis didn’t respond, and Mac was facing away, unable to see any other form of reaction, so he continued to brush the knots out of his hair, looking in the pathetic mirror with defeated eyes.
“Can you just fucking hit me?” Dennis finally spoke after an uncomfortably long pause. “In the face. Just pop it right on my nose, no harm done.”
“Besides a bruised nose,” Mac quipped back, pausing for a moment before turning back to face Dennis. His hands were practically flapping, hung tiredly between his knees. Mac pursed his lips as he thought through a concerned train of thinking. “What is it, are you just trying to find a reason to go to the emergency room? Because I can just phone somebody, I don’t have to beat you up or anything.”
“I never asked you to beat me up, asshole,” Dennis snapped, devoid of any emotion that was easy to identify. “I just need you to hit me. There’s a difference.”
Mac grit his teeth in frustration, not bothering to continue with the debate. He walked to the wardrobe, turning back to Dennis over his shoulder briefly. “Can you go in the living room or something? I wanna get changed.”
“I’ve seen you naked plenty,” Dennis rolled his eyes. “No need to be stupid and insecure.”
“I’m not,” Mac responded instantly. “I just don’t wanna get my dick out in the same room as you when you’re having some kinda crisis.”
Dennis snorted a cold laugh. “I’m not having a crisis.” The words weren’t believable.
“Okay, you’re not having a crisis, sure,” Mac said. “Look, dude. I’ll be out in a minute, okay? Just give me a second—”
“I’m dying.”
Mac stopped, facing the wardrobe with eyes that were physically open, but closed in every other sense. “... What?” He asked, quietly.
“I said, I’m dying,” Dennis said again. Mac could hear the erratic tapping of his feet. “Do you never listen?”
“I heard you,” Mac swallowed a lump in his throat. He turned around from the wardrobe to look at Dennis; staring at the floor, fidgeting hands bouncing as his legs jolted them up and down, posture smaller than normal. “I— I meant, like... what do you mean?”
“I mean,” Dennis was growing frustrated. “I am dying.”
Mac blinked in confusion. He was quiet for a painfully long moment. “Uh... What is it that you’re dying of...?”
“Illness,” Dennis responded shortly.
“What type of illness? Mental or physical?”
Dennis scoffed. “Neither. I’m not mentally ill. I’m not physically ill. I am the illness. Dennis Reynolds, Brian LeFeve, the Golden God, Hugh Honey — me. I’m the illness.”
Mac blinked in shock at those bizarrely cinematic, concerning, confusing words. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said cautiously. “You’re dying of yourself?”
“Bingo!” Dennis clapped in a drastically sudden change of pace, leaping to his feet and standing directly in front of Mac, looking at him with wild, manic eyes coupled with a void, empty face. “Now, come on,” he gestured to his own face casually. “Really, you know, get all your anger out. Imagine I’m Luther or Hillary Clinton... or Ed Sheeran, o—or whoever it is you hate the most today. Come on!”
“No,” Mac shook his head as his brow creased further into worry. “Wh— Why would hitting you help?”
“Because it’ll make me feel alive,” Dennis said, and the pleading and desperate tone in his voice was starting to grow more obvious. “Please. P-please, you have to hurt me, dude. You have to, or I’m gonna fucking die, a-and I don’t want to. So help me out?” He looked at Mac with watery eyes. No tears were spilling, but his eyes were glazed, logged with the promise of imminent crying. His pupils were engorging the blue iris’; wild and erratic.
Mac looked back at him, chest filling with a tight feeling of worry.
“I... I’m gonna take you to the emergency room.”
Dennis groaned in frustration, squeezed his fists by his head and grit his teeth, before exhaling and closing his eyes.
“Mac, I don’t need to go. I don’t want to,” he spoke, slowly and deliberately.
“But you’re fucking losing it—”
“I’m not!” Dennis laughed. The laugh was broken, and desperate. Nigh on hysterical. “What is it, you think I’m gonna try and top myself or some shit?”
“I— I don’t know.”
“Why would I? I’m— I mean, I am literally asking you to help me to not die. I don’t want to die,” Dennis explained, growing more erratic. “I’m asking you for a favour!— Is that really too much?”
Mac pinched his forehead and closed his eyes, biting his lip to stop himself from saying something dumb. “Can you let me get changed?” He asked, after a pause.
“Ugh!” Dennis threw his arms up with an aggressive scoff, pressing his palms to his eyes as he took a shaky breath. “Yes, Goddamn, you can get fucking changed...”
He walked out of the room, flexing his shoulders and cricking his neck in an apparent attempt to retain an ounce of normalcy — not that there was any. When was there ever?
The door closed most of the way; Mac pulled it shut the rest, so it clicked into the doorframe. For a long moment, he stared at the wood, blinking in confusion.
“... The fuck...?” He mouthed to himself, before gathering himself and glancing around the room, finding rare appreciation in the quiet solidarity of the empty bedroom.
He threw on pyjama bottoms and t-shirt, taking his time without overdoing it. Truth be told, he was mentally preparing himself for the inevitable onslaught of tension and emotions, in whatever form they may come; probably anger, or upset, or both if they get really unlucky.
He didn’t style his hair, because it was evening and he’d stopped bothering trying to tease it back when it got to this time of day. He was past caring, especially today.
So, he finished getting changed, shook everything off with a physical flap to his arms, and huffed a sigh, closing his eyes. Savouring the final moments of quiet. Then, he opened his bedroom door, and sauntered out.
Dennis was sat with his arms curled around himself on the sofa, but upon hearing Mac’s door open, shot up into a standing position, failing to be casual.
“You took your damn time,” he snapped, walking over. Mac took a few steps towards him, already worried again. “You were avoiding me.”
“What? No-”
“Whatever,” Dennis scowled, only stopping his steps when he was standing right before Mac. “What was so important that meant you could leave your dying roommate?”
“You’re not dying,” Mac tried, voice strained from exhaustion of this conversation.
“I think I’d know.”
“Okay, how do you know?” Mac challenged, stepping around Dennis to go and sit on the sofa. Dennis was silent for a moment.
It’s when Mac was about to sit down, Dennis responded. “I just know.”
Mac turned around, frowning in equal amounts of frustration and sadness. “Are you in pain or something?” He asked, as he sat down, sinking into the leather sofa.
“Not enough of it,” Dennis quipped, frowning still but much less confrontationally. He took a desperate few steps towards where Mac had sat, legs wobbling. He subliminally scratched his arm where bandages were dressing wounds; Mac saw this, and felt his muscles deflate. “Just hit me already, God damn.”
“No!”
“Pussy,” Dennis snapped, kicking Mac’s leg, whose eyes flashed in irritation.
“Shut u—”
“Are you a coward, now?” He pushed; voice cruel, but unstable and trembling nonetheless. His hand erratically twitched around his arm. “What happened to Badass McDonald?”
“Would you leave your arm?” Mac deflected, batting Dennis’ hand frustratedly. “You’re hurt enough, asshole. What, you think I’m just gonna smack you round the face and add to it?”
Dennis jerked his hand and arm away from Mac with a menacing scowl, sitting down heavily on the sofa beside him. He punched Mac’s bicep, as a signal to get his attention, as if he didn’t already have it.
“I’m asking you to,” Dennis said, his face as forcibly deadpan and blank as he could get it, removing any visible emotions from the equation.
“Yeah, and I’m saying no,” Mac returned the expression.
Dennis said nothing for a moment, challenging Mac with eye contact, before sighing dramatically, turning his gaze away.
“Luther would be disappointed...” He raised an eyebrow, almost amused at himself and his cruel remark, a remark that Dennis knew God damn well would evoke an angry reaction.
“Do you have to be a fucking asshole about it?” Mac snapped with a pissed off scowl, flicking Dennis’ shoulder to make his point without socking him a punch to the face. “I’m not hurting you.”
Dennis stared blankly into nothing for a moment, his arms instinctively, subconsciously, starting to creep around himself in a hug, before he reached an apparent level of consciousness, stopping himself. His leg began to bounce, silent for an uncomfortably long pause. Then, he shrugged.
“I’ll just hurt myself then. Whatever.”
Mac puffed a defeated breath, leaning back into the sofa as he held his hands up, and then flopping them down to his side. “Like you don’t every day anyway, Christ...”
Dennis almost winced at the callousness and crippling ennui of Mac’s words, nails twitching in a scratch against his bandages without realising. That’s something that had been increasing in recent weeks — Dennis, doing things without realising.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said blankly.
Mac blinked with a splutter, trying to read Dennis’ facial expression, that was now sunken and empty, rather than manic and erratic or desperate and glazed. “Are you high, bro?” He laughed in what he could almost describe as nervousness. “Look at your arm? I already know— I mean, we’ve talked about it before!” He gesticulated incredulously.
“I don’t.”
Mac poked his forearm, and Dennis winced, sucking air through his teeth as he flinched away. “Exactly. I want a new blade for my razor as well, by the way.”
Dennis looked at him, coldly. “You’re being a dick today.”
Mac opened his mouth to argue, to say something like ‘takes one to know one!’ or ‘are you fucking joking?’, before deciding that actually, Dennis was right; he was definitely being a dick.
He exhaled a heavy sigh, tired and spent from figuring out how to deal with the Dennis that lacked lucidity and span confusion with his reactions. Mac was out of ideas.
“Yeah,” he shrugged, closing his eyes. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Well, don’t apologise, that’s just weird,” Dennis quipped. “If you’re sorry, you’ll slap me. Not even a punch, dude, just a bitch slap.”
Mac didn’t reopen his eyes. He rolled his head back so it was resting on the sofa cushions, face tilted to the ceiling. “No, dude.”
“Then, I’ll—” Dennis cut himself off with a frustrated sigh. Mac’s bizarrely good at being able to say ‘no’. If only I had been. Dumbass fucking teenager. Fuck you. I bet I could get him to hurt me. Hurt me how?
Mac looked up at the ceiling through eyes that were now open. “You’ll what...?” He prompted Dennis to finish the sentence.
“I’ll hurt myself,” He snapped in response, repeating his earlier statement. Mac closed his eyes again and frowned, pinching his forehead.
“How’s that gonna help keep you alive?” He asked, but didn’t fully expect an answer.
Dennis looked into his lap, before blankly across the flat, before over to Mac. His expression changed over an elapsed few seconds, starting as cold and blank and empty, morphing into soft and sad and tired and unsure.
The uncertainty lingered on his face as he shuffled up onto his knees. Mac didn’t open his eyes, nor did he react. Dennis’ stomach twisted. I’ll hurt myself. Pussy. He swallowed a lump in his throat, hesitating for a long moment, before swinging a knee over Mac’s lap. Jesus Christ, Dennis.
Mac’s eyes snapped open, head jolting to look at Dennis with wide eyes, reminiscent of the eyes of a deer caught in headlights, but the headlights of the car kept moving forwards, stopping abruptly, moving forwards again. Teasing the deer with the promise of death from an unexpected foreign light, but stopping, jolting, pausing, leaving the deer asking itself, ‘What the fuck is going on?’
“...Wha—” Mac cut himself off as shock settled in, battling against the confusion settling in deeper, tenfold. “Wh-what... What are you doing?” His eyes averted Dennis’ gaze, because God damn, Dennis’ eyes looked so fucking nervous, and moreover, sad.
“Hurting myself,” Dennis snapped, but the tremor had returned not only to his voice, but to his body as well. Mac felt that in clarity as Dennis’ hands landed on his shoulders. “Keep up.”
Mac’s lips parted, frown deep and concerned, and a little bit offended. His eyes darted everywhere but in the vicinity of Dennis’ face, anxious of the inevitable onslaught of thoughts that would cloud the forefront of his mind if he did. Sure, Dennis had always been unexpected, but planting himself on Mac’s lap during what was appearing to be something reminiscent of a psychotic break, under the premise of hurting himself? That wasn’t something that Mac had expected to encounter that day, even with the unpredictability of living with the man.
Dennis poked Mac’s cheek harshly.
“Look at me, pussy,” he said firmly. Mac did just that, his eyes acting against his own free will as his mind ran a mile an hour. Fuck. Is he going to kiss me? Beat me up? Taunt me until I punch him, like he wants? Not gonna happen— Stop thinking. Pay attention. Dennis was quiet for a moment, seemingly in thought.
“...I— I’m looking.”
Dennis rolled his eyes, and stayed quiet for another moment longer. Licked his lips, but not in lust— in anxiety.
“Now’s your chance,” he eventually got out, his voice quiet but not feeble, keeping confident eye contact, hands trembling.
Mac swallowed a lump in his throat. “To do what?”
“To tell me everything,” Dennis said, and his nose twitched and his head tweaked, anxious energy spilling out in the form of involuntary movements. “I know you’ve got a thing for me, I’m not stupid. So now’s your chance to tell me everything.”
Mac stopped frowning then. He just looked caught out, like a kid with a cookie jar being scolded by his parents. “U-uh...”
“How long,” Dennis prompted, not as a question, in a way that seemed almost desperate, or similar to that; a vague silhouette of desperation, shrouded by a cloak of neuroticism.
Mac couldn’t lie. “High school,” he whispered with a shrug.
Dennis’ bottom lip twitched in a concave indent for a second, barely noticeable. “Why,” he continued, not as a question.
“What- wh... What?”
“Why,” Dennis repeated. “Why do you like me.”
“God, I wish I fucking knew,” Mac said, bitterly and sadly and sarcastically all at once, compensating for how small he feels at his core.
Dennis’ face tweaked again. “Do you love m—”
“Yeah.”
Dennis’ face didn’t react in terms of a conceivable facial expression, but his eyes sprung with welling tears, glazing over his manic pupils and clinging, unshed.
Slowly, he nodded.
“Do you think I’m old?”
Mac blinked in confusion. “We’re practically the same age,” he said, obviously. “So, uh, no—”
“Do I look like Rick Moranis?” Dennis asked, and at this point, the questions were spilling out in a wobbly, thick voice, desperate for reassurance more than hurt.
Mac’s stomach plummeted down to beneath the floor, through the apartments beneath, through the Earth’s crust, straight through to the molten core, where it boiled the stomach acid and singed the butterflies that had just started to try and emerge into an unforgiving black dust.
Oh. He’s been thinking about her again.
Slowly, Mac shook his head. “You don’t look like Rick Moranis.”
Dennis didn’t react for a painstakingly long moment. But when he did, he reacted suddenly; leaning forwards, grabbing Mac’s cheeks, and falling into him, crushing their lips together unceremoniously.
Mac’s eyes widened in shock for a second, before blinking slowly closed as Dennis’ shaking hands gripped his face, his soft, bitten lips squashed against his in a way that was quite the opposite of anything romantic, or much else reminiscent of that. For a moment, anyway, as Dennis took a long moment to seemingly adjust.
And then, it changed. Dennis pulled his lips away from the clumsy one, and then caught Mac’s cautiously reciprocating ones in a more calculated, less rushed, just as desperate kiss. And then, the kisses followed after that, Dennis’ nose pressed into Mac’s cheek and Mac’s hands wrapping around Dennis in a sort of hug, feeling now, not only his hands tremble, but his whole damn body. And then, the kisses merged into one, long, moving one. And then, Mac could feel his cheeks grow damp from tears that didn’t escape his own eyes, but smudged from Dennis’ face.
Mac had often imagined what it would be like to kiss Dennis, and that’s not something he’d be ashamed to admit. You see, Mac had always imagined that kissing Dennis would taste like vanilla coffee and toothpaste and beer and happiness, but it didn’t. Kissing Dennis tasted like dying, and that was a fact that weighed heavy and black in Mac’s chest, because really? It only proved Dennis right.
Dying had a very specific taste, Mac discovered as they kissed. It didn’t taste of rot or mould, because there wasn’t any dead body — not yet, at least. Dying tasted like musty old books, cheap lip balm, metallic braces formed around teeth, and tears.
He didn’t like it all that much. He didn’t like encountering a brush with the Reaper himself, and he didn’t like what that tasted like in such an explicitly lucid fashion. He didn’t like the feeling of being struck in the face with a borderline hallucinogenic experience of being in the high school library, surrounded by slow moving dust particles, only visible from the light creeping in from the windows behind the closed blinds.
He did like kissing Dennis... Just not like this.
Dennis was the one to pull back, however, looking at Mac with tear-flooded, bloodshot eyes. Mac felt like he was looking at gold coin that used to be shiny and new, but now, was shattered from an overbearing weight and against all odds, rusted and dull.
“It didn’t... that didn’t...” Dennis tried for words. “I’m still...”
Mac just nodded, breathing shallow and fluttery. He didn’t know what to say.
“It hurts,” Dennis croaked, lip wobbling. “Mac, it hurts, I... I don’t know how to stop it—”
Mac pulled Dennis into a less bastardised hug, sitting up slightly from the sofa to hug him, to hold him tight. Dennis collapsed into him, arms flopping down and face pressing helplessly into Mac’s shoulder, crying.
Mac didn’t know what to do. He just hugged him, shrouded in distress and alarm as his roommate nigh on sobbed into him.
“I-I, I don’t wanna d-die, Mac, I don’t— I...” he spluttered, his limp arms suddenly twitching up to grip to the fabric of Mac’s t-shirt that hugged his bicep. “I can feel it, i-it’s making me f-f-fucking die and I can’t die, not today, not yet...”
“You won’t,” Mac whispered. “We can go to the emergency room.”
“N-no!” Dennis choked defiantly. “F-fucking no, I... I don’t want to, I’m-I’m saying no, I don’t... I don’t w-want to!” He finished the sentence on a frustrated, high pitched grunt through gritted teeth. Mac’s chest constricted in a void of not knowing, all encompassing fear of entering into uncharted territory.
Dennis was losing it.
Mac held him tighter.
“Okay,” he hushed with a frown. “It’s whatever, we’ll stay here—”
“You’re not allowed to sleep,” Dennis demanded suddenly, miraculously without a tearful stutter. “Don’t go to sleep. You gotta, you like, gotta make sure— you have to not sleep, or I’ll d-die, and if I do when you’re asleep I-I’m gonna be all rotten in the morning and then I won’t have died w-with class, a-and I... Stay awake.”
Mac nodded quickly. “Yeah, dude. Yeah, I’ll... I’ll stay awake.”
“..... Thank you.”
Mac stayed awake that night, as promised. Dennis slept in his bed, because that was more acceptable than Mac sleeping in his, for whatever reason. Mac laid on his back, arms by his side, staring at the ceiling with a sunken, beaten expression. Dennis lay curled on his side, facing Mac but only because he’d passed out, falling into deep sleep. His face was blotchy and his expression, even whilst asleep, was devastatingly scared.
Dennis Reynolds remained to be an inordinate presence, but after that night, his spirit had changed in its tone. Instead of looking at Dennis each day, from then on Mac would have to gaze into the face of a dying God, the face of a non-entity, the face of turmoil, personified as a non-person.
Now, the overbearing existence of Dennis inflicted Mac in vastly different ways; Mac used to rejoice in his company. Now, he grieved.
Mac and Dennis didn’t kiss again.