Chapter Text
The bar is doing as well as is typical, which is to say, not very well at all (just this morning, Dennis was complaining about the mortgage payments), which is why Paddy’s being packed from wall to wall with patrons takes Mac a little by surprise. Sweet Dee’s new friend from her acting class, Terrell, has really delivered on the customer front. Spirits are high for all the Gang, save for Dee, who’s chafing at her lack of tips.
Mac runs up to the bar, pushing aside a customer, and deposits a bunch of empty beer bottles on the countertop. “Hey, this is crazy!” he says as a means of greeting Dennis and Dee.
Dennis pours a row of shots and responds, “I know! Terrell packed ‘em in, look at this!”
Dennis looks good tonight, Mac thinks. He’s wearing a blue shirt the color of the sky on a nice day, or the color of some of the flecks in his eyes when Mac gets up close enough to see it.
Charlie pushes up to the bar, fitting himself next to Mac, and drops his own bounty of bottles on the counter. “This is crazy!” he says.
“Yeah, dude, we were just saying that,” Mac replies. He turns to face the crowd, leaning his elbows back against the ledge of the bar top.
Charlie turns too, leans back on his elbows, mirroring Mac. “Lotta dudes!”
Mac surveys the patrons packing Paddy’s. It is a lot of dudes. A comical number of dudes. Mac would complain about the ratio being off, but he can’t spy a single woman in the crowd, so there isn’t really a ratio to begin with.
From behind Mac, Dennis comments, “Yeah, it is a lotta dudes.”
“Lotta dudes,” Mac echoes.
Charlie points toward the jukebox, where several men are gathered, “Hey Mac, isn’t that your cousin Brett by the jukebox?”
Mac squints a little, then spies a guy in his thirties wearing a blue button-up. Mac points at the guy in recognition, goes, “Oh yeah!”
He hasn’t seen Brett in ages. Brett’s a few years older than him, but their times at St. Joe’s overlapped. Brett was quiet in high school, kept to himself— ostensibly to avoid getting pummeled during the upperclassmen’s Smear the Queer campaigns (though Mac rarely saw Brett without a black eye or a split lip during high school, so Brett was largely unsuccessful in avoiding persecution). He looks much better now, happy and assured.
“Let’s go say hey!” Charlie says, and they head over to Brett.
“Yo, Brettie boy!” exclaims Mac, pulling Brett into a hug.
“Hey, cuz!” says Brett.
Mac pulls away, and then Charlie goes to shake Brett’s hand.
“Can you believe this crowd?” Charlie asks.
“Oh, it’s something else!” replies Brett enthusiastically.
When Dennis turns away from handing off the fifth sour apple martini he’s made this evening, Mac and Charlie are gone. He cranes his neck to look over the crowd of men at the bar and spots them over by the jukebox. Mac’s chatting up some guy with a mullet. Dennis’s mood sours. Whatever, Dennis thinks. Doesn’t matter. Then, with savage bitterness, that guy has stupid hair.
Dennis averts his eyes, takes a grounding breath, and then heads over to the blond dude in the green polo that’s been trying to wave Dennis down for the past half hour. “Gentleman,” Dennis says, addressing the gaggle of twinks surrounding Green Polo. “I understand my services have been requested.”
Then Green Polo Guy does something that takes Dennis completely by surprise— he reaches forward and takes Dennis’s hand, stroking the back of it gently with his thumb. He’s got a friggin’ thumb ring on, too. “I actually got a couple of services I’d like to request.”
Dennis yanks his hand free from Green Polo’s grasp, alarmed. “Whoa! Uh, what are you doin’, man? I’m not—”
Green polo leans in a little, smiling. “You have the most beautiful eyes.”
“Okay, man, but I’m—” Dennis looks back at the jukebox, and Mac and the dude are hugging now. Dennis’s insides go caustic. He turns to Green Polo. “Really?”
“So blue,” says Green Polo.
Dennis allows himself to bloom a little under the compliment. “Really more of a blue-green, actually, but…”
Brett lays a hand on Mac’s shoulder and says, “Well, I’m really proud of you, man.”
It’s not the kind of thing Mac hears a lot, or ever, really, so he grins, wide and happy. “Yeah, thanks!”
“You’ve come a long way,” Brett says.
Mac’s happiness melts into mild confusion— Brett’s never visited the bar before, so how would he know this is different from the norm? “What do you mean?”
Brett’s smile drops. He looks confused now, too. “You guys are running the hottest gay bar in Philadelphia.”
Mac’s stomach sinks like an anchor in the water— heavy, dragging him down. Oh fuck.
He meets Charlie’s gaze. The pit of his stomach roils with crashing waves, lightning, and thunder. His ship’s sinking.
Charlie’s eyes go all soft and knowing, like he can see right through Mac, right to the storm inside him. And Mac can’t— he can’t deal with that.
“Hey, Charlie, I’m gonna head to the office for a bit,” Mac tells Charlie. He offers Brett a half-hearted fist-bump. “Good to see you, dude.”
After their knuckles meet, Mac bolts away from Brett and the too-knowing gaze of Charlie, beelining for the office. He slams the door shut, tries to do the thing people do in the movies where they slide down the door with their back pressed against it, but he only succeeds in ripping the paper leprechaun hanging on the door free from its nail. He tries to hang it back up, but it’s too torn to sit on the nail anymore, so he starts rifling through the desk drawers for some tape. He can’t understand why he’s having such a hard time spotting it, and then he realizes tears are blurring his vision.
Whatever, Mac thinks, throwing the leprechaun to the floor. He sits with his back against the office door so no one else can come in, and he cries and cries and cries.
He’s been so good. He hasn’t touched another man like that in seven, almost eight years. Not since that party at Dennis’s frat, and the tequila shots, and the Bible, and then Dennis’s creamy skin in the moonlight, and fuck stop thinking about that.
It isn’t fair. Mac has done everything right. He fucks girls now. Sometimes he even finds them pretty. He’s been good and pure, mostly. He’s following the rules, the most important ones. What goes on in his head is different, but the Devil whispers to everyone. Action’s more important, right?
And then Paddy’s, the bar they’d gotten primarily to pick up chicks, has now fallen free from the grasp of Mac’s godliness in the span of hours. If actions are the most important in the eyes of God, then, fuck. Mac’s harboring devils. Worse, one is inside him.
Mac wraps his arms around himself, trying and failing not to hyperventilate. At least the disco music playing in the bar drowns out his cries. He can be alone here to drown in the ocean of his misery.
Dennis doesn’t see Mac for the rest of the evening. Not that he’s worried, or keeping tabs on Mac, or anything like that. Of course not. He’s too busying reveling in the attention of well-groomed men and making a fuck-ton of tips.
But Mac’s absence needles at him. Dennis isn’t stupid— Terrell’s been unsubtly coming onto him since Dee introduced them, and he’s clearly invited an exclusively queer clientele to the bar. While Paddy’s Irish Pub/Gay Bar hadn’t necessarily been what Dennis expected when he woke up this morning, he’s comfortable rolling with it.
Mac won’t be, Dennis knows. This development will, at best, get under Mac’s skin, and, at worst, send him into a shame spiral. And not the fun kind of shame spiral that Dennis has, the kind that ends in hot-but-regrettable sex. No, Mac’s retreated so far into the closet by this point, he’s bound to find Narnia soon. Mac’s kind of shame spiral these days involves a lot of retreating and blubbering, self-flagellation, and trips to annoy whichever priest is a sucker enough to take his confession.
Whatever, whatever, whatever, Dennis thinks, pouring a glass of sparkling rosé for a guy in obvious eyeliner. Let Mac lick his wounds. Dennis is gonna make some fucking money tonight.
The closest three churches are closed for the night, and Mac can’t remember where the other nearest ones are, so he retreats to the apartment he shares with Dennis. He tucks himself into bed, then swigs vodka and pretends to pore over his Bible until, in the wee hours of the morning, he hears Dennis unlock the front door, kick his shoes off, and head to bed.
Mac doesn’t sleep well if he doesn’t know where Dennis is. And when he does sleep, he’s plagued by nightmares— Dennis’s hair fanned out across his pillow, the golden hair that adorns Dennis’s chest, the gentle rose-pink buds of his nipples. And shame, shame, shame, dark and sticky as ink.
In the office the next morning, Dennis counts up the cash the bar made last night, and it’s an unfathomable amount of money. He’s ecstatic— if this keeps up, the bar’s mortgage payment fears will be a thing of the past.
He and Charlie celebrate, whooping and hollering, both grasping wads of cash. They embrace, cash still in hand, cackling exuberantly.
“So much money!” exclaims Dennis. He brings the cash to his nose, breathes in the scent. That’s wealth, baby. Also, sweat and beer and other, less palatable substances, but primarily it’s cash-fucking-money.
“Oh, so much money. We made more money in one night than we’ve made—
“Than in the entire time we’ve owned this place!” finishes Dennis.
“This is great,” says Charlie. “Well, we have to embrace the situation.”
Dennis has done way gayer shit for free— if he can get paid boatloads to just be hot and make drinks and get flirted with, well, Paddy’s Gay Bar it is. “We should totally embrace the situation!”
Charlie fans the cash in his palms out on the desk, drawing his fingers across the bills like they’re tarot cards. “Okay, alright, we’re a gay bar from now on.”
“Oh, absolutely, man.”
Charlie pauses, fingers still hovering over the money, and then looks at Dennis. “I’m a little worried about Mac. I don’t think he’s gonna like this.”
Dennis closes his eyes, and memories play across the backs of his eyelids. Mac on his knees, sucking Dennis off under the St. Joe’s bleachers. Mac, bathed in moonlight, fucking him hard while the Delta Omega Lambda party raged downstairs. Mac telling Dennis he loved him, cock still buried to the hilt inside Dennis. Dennis biting Mac’s arm, right over the feather tattoo, to keep himself from saying something equally stupid.
That last bit, Dennis brushes aside. Mac hasn’t said that since then. And Dennis doesn’t want him to. He doesn’t want to think about it.
Dennis opens his eyes, sees Charlie looking at him curiously. “I wouldn’t worry about Mac,” Dennis says. “He can be quite open-minded.”
“No goddamn way,” Mac says. He can’t believe what he’s hearing. Paddy’s shouldn’t have even been a gay bar for a night, let alone from now on.
The four of them— Mac, Dennis, Dee, and Charlie— sit at a lunch spot on South Street, picking at a basket of shoestring fries, sipping coffee from multi-colored ceramic mugs.
Mac’s not a newspaper-reading kind of guy, but while walking with Dennis from the apartment to the restaurant, he’d spotted ‘Paddy’s Irish Pub’ in a headline and stole the paper while Dennis distracted the pretty newspaper-stand lady with his straight white teeth and sparkling blue eyes. Mac had read the Paddy’s Pub notice, jealousy and envy and shame and a cocktail of other ugly emotions bubbling up inside him, while Dennis got the girl’s phone number.
“Have you guys seen this?” He pulls the paper out again now and reads aloud: “Looking for that new hot spot to spot that stud? Well, Paddy’s Irish Pub has plugged that hole.”
Charlie, unbothered, says, “That’s a nice notice.”
Dennis says, “That’s not bad.”
Mac feels like he’s going nuts. “No, it’s not a nice notice! I don’t want to be plugging anybody’s holes!”
Dennis makes a disbelieving face, and Mac feels a blush start to creep up the back of his neck, pinkening his skin. He stares at Dennis until Dee diverts the group’s attention, and then Mac glares out at the road, willing away the heat under his skin.
“I’m gonna have to agree with Mac on this one,” Dee says, pecking birdishly at a fry.
Dennis chuckles. “Of course you are. I made three hundred dollars last night. How much did you make?”
“First of all, that’s rude,” Dee says, gesturing with her fry. “And that has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”
Charlie scoffs, goes, “That’s exactly what you’re talking about,” and at the same time, Dennis says, “Everything to do with it.”
“Listen, guys,” Charlie continues, “I don’t think we have much of a choice. We need to do this.”
Mac’s gut sinks low, low, low. The waves inside him start to crash against the sides of his stomach, the insides of his ribs, making him seasick. “If you guys remember, one of the major reasons we got this bar in the first place was to get laid,” he says.
Dennis makes a face at Mac, one that says, this should be a pleasant development for you. Mac wants to punch him in his stupid, perfect, symmetrical face.
Charlie says, “Maybe you did it to get laid. I got a little something I like to call business ethics.”
Dennis sighs and reaches forward to grab a fry. There are salt crystals on his fingertips. Mac wants to taste them.
“Business ethics?” scoffs Mac, carefully averting his gaze so he doesn’t watch Dennis eat his fry (though Mac can envision it so clearly, it doesn’t even matter that he didn’t see the real thing).
“You guys, it’s a purely fiscal decision,” Dennis says. And then, when Mac turns back to look at him, Dennis licks the salt from his fingers. Slowly. Deliberately. Looking right at Mac. Something in Mac curls tight. Bastard.
“Oh, bullshit,” chimes Dee. “You don’t care about the money, you just like the attention.”
Dennis removes his fingers from his mouth and puffs up in a prickly way, like a startled pufferfish. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Dee wiggles her fingers mockingly. “Oh, everybody look at me!” she says, affecting an effeminate voice. “You know exactly what I mean, pretty boy.”
“I just get along really well with those guys,” protests Dennis.
“No, you’re leading them on,” Dee says. “You’re not gay, you’re just really, really vain.”
Mac balls his hands into fists on the tabletop, squeezing hard enough that his fingernails dig into his palms.
“Okay, time out,” Charlie says, “Here’s what we should do. Let’s take a vote, alright?”
“Fine,” says Dee.
“Okay,” says Mac. The worst they can do is tie, right? He knows Dee’s on his side— she’d wage wars, level towns, and fell kingdoms over her precious tip revenue.
“All in favor of Paddy’s Pub remaining a gay bar, say ‘aye,’” says Charlie. Predictably, Charlie and Dennis chorus their assent. “Opposed?”
Before Mac can ready his “nay,” Dennis, around a mouthful of fry, points a finger at Dee and says, “Keeping in mind that you don’t get a vote.”
Dee, outraged, asks, “Why?”
“Because you’re the bartender, you’re not one of the owners,” Dennis explains.
Panic mounts in Mac. He needs Dee’s vote. “No, no, no, Sweet Dee gets a vote.”
They descend into chaos, arguing and bickering, voices layering on top of one another like hellish lasagna, until Charlie’s voice breaks through, “All owners say ‘nay.’ All owners, all people who own the bar who are opposed, say ‘nay.’”
Charlie puts his left elbow on the table, leans his cheek on his fist, and looks at Mac like he isn’t a scheming, conniving little worm boy. Mac bites his lip, looks at Dennis, then looks at his balled-up hands on the table. “Nay,” he says, and his lack of volume reflects his knowledge that he’s lost this battle.
“Two against one! Two against one!” cheers Charlie.
Mac drops his head onto his fists. Every day, damnation creeps closer. Paddy’s Irish Gay Pub isn’t even the first step. Mac sinks further and further into the deepest, darkest parts of the ocean of shame within himself, and everyone he cares about holds firm to his ankles and drags him down quicker.
“Paddy’s Irish Pub will henceforth remain the hottest gay bar in Philadelphia!” Charlie says, and Mac hears him knock his mug against Dennis’s in celebration, and Mac is underwater.
Dennis finds Mac in the early evening, trying to tape the paper leprechaun on the office door. “What happened to the leprechaun?” Dennis asks.
Mac’s big bovine-brown eyes meet Dennis’s. “I ripped it off the wall.”
“What’d he ever do to you?” Dennis laughs.
Mac shoves up a shoulder in a shrug, and the corner of his mouth tugs down a little. “Nothin’. It was an accident.”
“Need any help?” It’s not a two-person job, not even close, but Dennis steps closer to Mac anyway, bumping their shoulders together. Mac tenses, but he doesn’t move away. Which is good, Mac can be so skittish these days.
Dennis reaches forward and presses a palm to the leprechaun, holding him firm against the wall. Mac carefully tapes the leprechaun’s jaunty hat to the door. When he’s done, Dennis takes the tape from Mac's hands to put it back into the desk, and when their fingers touch, Mac shudders like he’s been electrocuted.
The way Mac looks at Dennis, it’s like Dennis is a fruit tree, ripe for the harvest, and Mac is Tantalus in the waters of Hades, starving but understanding that Dennis will always, always be just out of reach, forever tempting him.
Dennis loves it. All he wants is to be wanted, and no one will ever want him more than Mac does. No matter what fable Mac spins for himself about how straight and narrow and godly he is, Dennis can smell the lie on him, like a shark scenting blood in the water.
Mac swallows hard, breaks eye contact, and then mumbles, “I’m gonna, gonna check on the…” he trails off, not even bothering to finish his excuse, and then flees the office.
Dennis smiles to himself, triumphant, and watches Mac leave. He takes a moment to arrange the leprechaun so it reaches between its legs from behind to grab lewdly at its crotch, and then he follows after Mac.
The black eye Charlie sports from his unsuccessful date with Janell is gnarly. Dee holds a rag full of ice to Charlie’s eye, making sympathetic noises, as Mac approaches them.
The bar is just as packed as the night before, if not more so. Behind the bar, dressed in a black tank top that shows off his arms and his pecs and his golden body hair, is Dennis. He’s putting on a show for his captive audience— batting his eyelashes, flirting, giggling coquettishly, the whole nine yards.
Mac watches the whole thing, agog in disbelief. The final straw comes when Dennis blows a kiss to some twink, and Mac’s vision goes red. “Are you two seeing this?” he asks Dee and Charlie, pointing toward Dennis.
Dennis notices the rest of the Gang looking at him, calls out, “Boys are out tonight, huh?” Then he does a little spin and snatches a tip from an ogling patron.
Mac’s blood boils. “This is unbelievable. What the hell is going on here?” he gestures to Charlie, “You’ve got Black women crawling all over you,” and then he points at Dennis, “And this Mary over here is the belle of the ball. Why do these people like you guys so much?”
“Well, dude, it’s not that they like us. It’s that they don’t like you. You know why?” Charlie asks.
Mac doesn’t. He shrugs.
Charlie continues, “Uh… because you’re an asshole!” He hops off his stool and wanders away.
Insecurity oozes from Mac’s pores. He turns to Dee, asks, “Is that true?”
“Yeah, kind of,” she says dismissively. “Hey, listen, can I talk to you in the back for a second?” She starts heading to the office without waiting for Mac to confirm he’s following.
Mac grabs his beer and trots after her, letting the office door swing closed behind him. “What’s up?”
Dee leans against the desk, smiling her scheming smile. “You know that girl Charlie’s talking about, that Janell? I know her.”
Mac does not care about this. “Okay, so what?”
“So, I think I know how we can solve this whole gay mess.”
Mac does care about this, very much. A return to normal is exactly what the doctor ordered. “Great! How?”
“Okay, first we gotta start with Dennis,” Dee says, rubbing her palms together like a fly. “Can you get him so drunk tonight? On tequila. But, like, a lot of it. Enough that maybe he might hurt himself.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem.” Mac’s avoided the combo of Dennis and tequila since the Delta Omega Lambda party. But for the sake of returning to normalcy, he’s happy to change that.
“Alright,” says Dee, heading for the door.
Mac’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. “Where are you going?”
“I gotta talk to a couple friends from my acting class.” She gets one hand on the doorknob, the other hand simultaneously grasping her jacket and pointing at Mac. “But seriously— blackout drunk.”
Dee leaves, and Mac smiles to himself, half-sitting against the desk. He makes eye contact with the leprechaun hanging on the back of the door, then his eyes flit lower, and he notices the leprechaun groping itself.
He can’t help it. Mac laughs, and then he polishes off his beer. “Just you wait, leprechaun,” he says. “Things are gonna be normal soon. You’ll see.”
It’s maybe two, three in the morning, the crowd winnowed down to a few stragglers, when Mac sidles up to the bar, plops on a stool in front of Dennis, and says, “Let’s do shots!”
Dennis, who’s been half-heartedly wiping up spilled beer, perks up at this idea. He’s done a few shots with customers so far tonight, but not enough to get him properly drunk. And he’d enjoy being drunk, very much. “Yeah, man, totally,” he says, lining up a few shot glasses on the bar top. “Vodka?”
Mac shakes his head. “Tequila.”
This gives Dennis pause. Mac hasn’t done tequila shots with Dennis since the night Mac fucked him silly. “What’s the occasion?”
“We’re celebrating our success!” Mac proclaims, thumping a fist down onto the bar. “To Paddy’s Irish Gay Bar!”
“Sure, man,” Dennis says, turning to grab the tequila bottle. He lets his face slacken into surprise when he knows Mac can’t see him— radical acceptance of Paddy’s queer angle was not what he was expecting from Mac tonight. He’d figure it’d take longer—way longer—if Mac’s decades of closetedness were any indication.
Dennis pours them both tequila shots, then goes to grab salt and lime wedges. By the time he returns, Mac’s shot glass has already been drained. This pisses Dennis off. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me, man.”
Mac smiles innocently at Dennis. “What’s up?”
“What’s up?” Dennis repeats, incredulous. “What’s up? What’s up is that you’re a twenty-eight-year-old man who doesn’t know how to take a goddamn tequila shot, that’s what’s up.”
“But I did take the shot,” Mac says, tapping the rim of his empty shot glass. “See? All gone.”
“We’re not fuckin’ doing this again, Mac,” Dennis says. He licks his hand, pours salt on it, then takes his shot, licks his hand, and bites down hard on a lime slice. “That is how you take a tequila shot, dumbass.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” Mac says. Dennis realizes Mac’s chewing gum, his jaw working over it as he speaks. “Can you show me again?”
“Christ,” Dennis says, but he shows Mac a second time, a third, and a fourth. His world starts to go hazy on the edges as the alcohol bleeds into his bloodstream.
“Alright!” Mac says cheerfully, pouring more shots. “So, you did the lime first and then the shot, right?” He finishes pouring, then plants his forearms on the bar and leans in a little.
“No. No, no, no, no,” Dennis says. “Dude. You take the salt—”
“Take the salt,” echoes Mac.
“And then you take the shot.”
“Okay.”
Dennis digs some lime pulp out of his teeth, spits it onto the bar top, then lifts the shot glass near his mouth. “And then you suck on the lime, okay?”
“Okay,” says Mac, and then he looks at Dennis through the dark fringe of his eyelashes, and Dennis’s heart squeezes hard in his chest. “Why don’t you show me again, ‘cause I’m getting a little bit confused.”
Dennis makes direct eye contact with Mac and licks a broad stripe across the salt clinging to his skin. Mac’s eyes follow Dennis’s tongue, sparkling with want. “You lick it,” Dennis tells him.
“Salt. Lick it.”
“And then you slam it,” says Dennis.
“Yeah?” says Mac, encouragingly, fluttering his lashes at Dennis.
Dennis steels himself, then takes the shot. After, he covers his mouth with his palm, fighting down bile (Golden Gods do not puke), and hiccups a little.
Mac grins, looking far too pleased with himself. He rocks back a little from the bar top, then leans back in again, chewing his gum far more open-mouthed than is necessary.
Dennis bites down on a lime wedge, and Mac says, “Oh, that’s great.”
Dennis drops his lime slice. He stares at Mac— his fluffy, product-free hair, the narrow line of his nose, his pink mouth. Something is building up inside Dennis, something he’s fought hard to keep down for many years.
Mac reaches for a shot glass of tequila, saying, “Alright, so, I’m gonna do the shot first—”
“No, no, no, no,” says Dennis. “Oh, oh please, please, dude. You’re not listening to me.”
Mac looks far too pleased with himself. “Well, I’m just not getting it, bro. So, I think maybe—”
“You do the salt first.”
“Salt first.”
“And then the lime.”
“Show me again, because I’m not—” Mac cuts himself off, trails a finger through a little puddle of tequila on the bar top. “The salt first. Then the lime.”
Dennis holds a shot glass halfway between his mouth and the bar top. This situation has surpassed ridiculousness and has traversed into the territory of sheer absurdity. Dennis sets down his shot glass. Through drunk-foggy eyes, he sizes Mac up; he’s still chewing his gum like a cow with a cud. He’s making a real show of it, too, chewing so wide that Dennis catches tantalizing flashes of his soft palate and tongue. Dennis wants to put his fingers in Mac’s mouth, and he’s having trouble remembering why that isn’t a good idea. “What’s going on here?” he asks.
Panic briefly flashes across Mac’s features. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t drink tequila, Mac, not since—” Mac holds a hand, and Dennis’s words halt in his throat.
“Don’t,” says Mac, and he looks drawn thin, almost see-through, all of a sudden, like he’s a sheet of onionskin paper Dennis has held up to the sun. “Just. Don’t, okay?”
Dennis wants to talk. He wants to make Mac confront it. Instead, he pops a lime wedge into his mouth and lets the sour taste erase the words lined up on his tongue.
Mac rubs at his temples a bit, like he has a migraine, and then he takes a tequila shot. He does it properly, salt, lime, the whole thing.
The lime wedge lands on the counter with a splat when Dennis spits it out. “So. You, you do know how to take a tequila shot.”
Mac won’t meet Dennis’s eyes. “Yeah, dude. I’m not an idiot.”
“Then what was all this?” Dennis asks, gesturing vaguely to the mess of shot glasses and spent lime slices. “You tryin’ to get me drunk?”
“Yes,” Mac admits.
“On tequila shots. Like before. You lookin' for a round two, man?” he asks. He’s joking, of course, because Mac’s so firmly closeted now, but Mac’s gaze snaps up to meet Dennis’s, and he looks like he’s drowning and Dennis has offered him a life raft.
“What?” Mac asks.
“Well, I guess it’d be round three, technically,” Dennis mutters, sweeping the lime slices off the counter and into the trash.
“What did you say?”
Dennis ignores him, cleaning up the tequila shots. He wipes down the bar, still avoiding Mac’s gaze.
“Dennis,” Mac says, urgently. “Dennis, what did you say?”
Dennis wipes down the bar top, then drops the rag in a soggy heap by the sink.
“Dennis,” pleads Mac, and, finally, Dennis looks at him. His eyes are wide as saucers; his palms are flat against the bar top.
Dennis offers Mac a coy smile, knowing he’s got the other man, hook, line, and sinker. “C’mon, Mac,” he says, and then, with a wobbly, inebriated gait, he walks toward the office.
He doesn’t check if Mac is following him. That’s a universal constant: where Dennis goes, Mac will follow.