Chapter Text
Frank had planned on staying in Paddy’s with the other two as they awaited Dennis’s return, but a call from who everyone assumed was a business associate managed to draw him out of the bar.
For better or for worse, Charlie and Mac were left alone, with the latter anxiously strumming the tips of his fingers against one of the tables.
“ You sure you can do this?”
“ Yeah!?” he snapped towards him. “ Charlie, why would I not be? I know him better than all of you do; I’m his roommate. If anyone can DENNIS him, it’s me.”
“ I mean, he’s not even here yet and you’re sweating your brains out.”
“ That’s because it’s hot in here.” It was not. The air conditioner had malfunctioned a couple of weeks back, rendering it stuck at a pretty low temperature. If anything, Paddy’s was cold as hell right now.
“. . . If you say so, man.” he shrugged it off. “ But how are we even going to, like, do this? I mean, Dennis is one dude. If we ‘demonstrate value’ at the same time wouldn’t he just not know where to look?”
Mac nodded.“ Right . . . I guess we could take turns.” and quickly, before Charlie could even attempt a response, he barked. “ I CALL FIRST!”
“ Oh come on man, come on. Not fair.” the now second-in-line half-assedly protested. “ Fine, fine. sure. You go first.” That way he could learn from Mac’s mistakes; maybe. Because he was pretty much guaranteed to make a ton.
Come an hour or so later, Dennis had finally made an entrance. He walked in on a sleeping Mac, propped on one of his palms against the bar and drooling all over its surface.
Predictably, the former frowned, slowly tip-toeing over to the spot in which Mac slept and then jolting him awake with a bang on the bar. “ This is wood, Mac, WOOD!” He hit it again. “ It’ll get soggy you idiot.”
“ What the fuck man!? What the fuck!? Who wakes someone up like that!?”
“ You were drooling all over the bar! What was I supposed to do?”
“ NOT bang on it!? Maybe just, oh I don’t know, ” Mac gestured thoughtfully, “ walk up to me, SOFTLY, and ask me to wake up!?”
“ You think that works?”
“ It might have!”
Dennis retracted his head, ready to go on a rampage; however, he didn’t; instead attempting to subdue his rage. “ Oh it might have, Mac? It might have??? Well I didn’t want to settle for ‘might have’! Excuse me for not wanting to waste my time trying things that only might work.” Somehow, that was him toning it down. The defined vein popping at the side of Dennis's neck would suggest a worse lash-out had not been far off from spilling out him. The other might’ve actually been lucky that this was the only earful he’d gotten.
Except he didn’t seem to realize that luck of his, though. He was about to speak over Dennis – protest and throw a rampage of his own. But he never got to. See, the ruckus had managed to draw Charlie out of the bathroom, mop still in hand, reeking of a strange mixture of piss and vomit. “ Hey whoa whoa whoa, what the hell. I could hear you from all the way in there, man! And the door was closed .”
“ The door’s not sound-proof , Charlie. Of course you could hear us.” the ‘wealthier’ one responded, not even bothering with a full eye-roll.
Mac, realizing he could turn the situation into bearing some form of advantage for him in regards to their bet, suddenly switched to agreeing with Dennis. “ Yeah.” he nodded, then proceeded to contribute: “ Plus! The bathroom’s not even that far away, dude. I’m pretty sure you can hear anyone speaking at normal volume in there.”
“ Don’t push it, Mac.” Dennis rolled his eyes.
“ Okay okay okay, gang up on me. Go on, gang up on poor ol’ me!” Charlie flailed his arms around, flicking some droplets of god-knows-what from the mop at the other two’s forms in the process. “ Is this your strategy, Mac? Huh, man?”
The one in question cocked an eyebrow in response; that expression quickly shifting into realization as he recalled the reason they had waited for Dennis in the first place. Right, right. That was totally part of his plan. Siding with Dennis was a form of value-demonstration, right?
. . .But that wasn’t Mac’s only value, now was it? He debated making the man some vague shakes o r ‘Mac’s famous mac-’n-cheese , for a second there. Those were things he could offer Dennis that were ( theoretically, presumably, probably ) of value. But no. Nonono. If Mac wanted the ultimate demonstration, he would have to resort to his best skill.
His brawns . Yeah, that was totally it. Just then, he had just gotten the best fucking idea.
“ Oh shit! I uh.” he jogged his mind for an excuse “ I forgot the. The thing at the. Yeah. I’ll. . . “ he stood off his chair, “ yeah ,“ grabbed Charlie by the arm and ran off to god-knows-where.
Dennis was left momentarily dumbfounded, but he wasn’t curious enough to follow the duo. A little jealous, maybe, that they had run off on their own. But his ego would not permit him to act upon it.
“ Hey, hey, what the hell man. What’re you taking me for? I’m not supposed to help you, that’s, like, cheating or something.” the one who hadn’t even gotten a chance to wash his hands ( not that he would’ve ) argued.
“ Wh- no, no. I just dragged you out of there because-” a sharp exhale. “ I can’t leave you two alone, we agreed I’d do my D first and then you would.”
“ Your D?” Careful how you word things, Mac.
“ My demonstration, Charlie. Come on dude, you know what I meant!”
“ Oh sure. Totally. So what do I do while I wait?”
“ I don’t know. And I don’t care; hang under a bridge or something; just don’t stay with Dennis.”
“ Fine, sure dude. I’ll figure something out.” Maybe if the waitress had been around rather than with Dee, he would’ve known what to do right away.
And so, Mac ran off and Charlie occupied himself with. . . coming up with his own plan. Though not after huffing a considerable amount of Glue; he had scored some vinyl floor type adhesives, and was just so excited to try them out that it crossed his mind soon after Mac’s departure.
They weren’t half-bad. Better yet, they helped him half-recall the existence of Cricket; who would be quite helpful with his new plot.
He would give him a call near the bar later, and meet with him in the front just in time to bump into a struggling Mac ; an ambiguous sac weighing his arm down. He would use both arms for it but uh, obviously he didn't need to. Since he was definitely strong enough for it.
“ You got the goods?” Charlie asked, an eyebrow risen in a comically grim fashion.
“ Yep. Out in the back.” Cricket gave a nod, “ They kind of got me first, though.” If Charlie were to bother looking down he probably would’ve spotted some new rips in Cricket’s checkered mess of a flannel. But he didn’t; and sort of dismissed that second statement altogether at the arrival of his best buddy.
“ Hey man, you ready to be blown away?” Mac asked, proud.
“ Wait, I’m supposed to be in there for this?”
“ Yeah man, doesn’t really matter. An enthusiastic audience would probably help with my chances, or something.”
“ Enthusiastic. Sure, I can be that. For a buck or two.” Cricket quickly leaped in, hoping to get even more money out of this interaction.
Mac had only noticed him just then, but his expression didn’t shift all that much. “ Oh, Cricket. What’s he doing here?” he directed the question to Charlie, but it had been the one it was about that answered first.
“ Oh Charlie wanted me to-” the former shushed him.
“ Atah-tah-TAH. He’s here for some. . .” he drew up a devious grin. “ business.”
“ . . . You’re not going to kill Dennis are you?”
“ What- NO dude! You’ll see. Just go inside and do your thing first.”
“ Okay. . .” he still bore some suspicion, but the excitement that had struck him at the thought of impressing Dennis was much more perennial. So he wound up listening to the other for once and stepped inside.
Dennis had been standing there, perched over the bar as he enjoyed a glass of wine. Of course, that joy of his would soon be disrupted by the clinging of whatever it was Mac had brought in; which would immediately turn out to be a set of dumbbells, heavy ones, of course. But Mac had managed to bring them all the way there, so they must not have been that heavy.
Almost randomly, he stood before Dennis; didn't draw much of a reaction, though, he just subtly cocked a brow in subdued curiosity. What on earth was that dumbass planning now?
As it turns out, he was planning the most simplistic butch display of the century; except he had somehow managed to complicate it by going about the exercises incorrectly. First, he pulled the pair off the ground, each in a designated hand, then proceeded to lift them with a hunched back. That alone had set about the standard for the rest of the demonstration; a messy, all-you-can-strain extravaganza. This, of course, was only just beginning.
Weighted squats would follow, but predictably, Mac would go ahead and drop his head each time he went down; then look back up at an unimpressed Dennis at the peak of each (half-)squat. Then he would proceed to do the general lifts; except he’d cheat by swinging his arms further at each rep. The momentum would make it go by so much easier, but it was by no means a display of the brute strength he was trying so desperately to have the other ‘value’.
“ . . . What is this? What the hell are you doing?” Dennis finally bothered to say in-between sips of his wine.
“I’m-” Mac grunted, his sweat gradually finding its way through a greedy shirt; another lift would be fine, though. Probably. It was crucial anyways. So that afterwards he could finish his act with something he had never done in his life. “just-” An attempt at juggling the dumbbells.
“Demonstrating my” Huff “ value” Huff “ to you” Huff “ man. Look.” Yes, no lie there; Mac, who had never juggled a day in his life, had decided that this was the most impressive thing he could achieve.
Achieve being completely delusional, of course. In his head, he had done it masterfully, and won Dennis’s uh, ‘appreciation’ in one swooping round of throw-’n-catch.
However, he had not. Because this was the real world. And in the real world, when you only pretend to know how things work ( and clearly don’t, having spent hours looking for a weight you could lift but also impress someone with ), then attempt to juggle fucking dumbbells, you fail. And they do go up and all, but they end up slammed against the counter the guy you’re trying to impress had leaned on. And of course, his wine would then drip all over the wooden surface, and even go so far as to strike his shirt. And he would just be plain pissed.
Oh and, as the cherry on top, Mac would immediately realize he had told Dennis his plan in the heat of the moment. Without even trying to paraphrase it, too. It was fantastic . The fact that he had an audience for it had certainly been even more fantastic , as well. Cricket had gone into the bathroom to ingest whatever substance he had on him this time ( probably PCP again ). But Charlie, well. Charlie had stayed. And he had managed to catch a terrible case of second hand embarrassment; which he could only rid himself off by trying to make a joke out of the situation. Except the joke never came. So he stayed silent; admittedly holding back some proud laughter as he did, though, because this meant he would be ahead if his own plan went better. Which, according to his gut, he figured would go that way.
Dennis, after trying to clean what little splatter had strayed onto his shirt and failing miserably ( but not as miserably as Mac ), snapped his gaze at the one in question. “ Demonstrating your value, Mac? Really ?? And you thought this was the way to go about it?” It wasn’t that he was surprised, honestly. But nagging had a level of fun to it he couldn’t quite fathom.
“ I mean–”
But wait. Wait wait wait. There was a far more important question he had been forgetting. “ Wait, hold on. Hold on a second here, why the hell were you even ‘demonstrating your value’ on me? Mac, did you really think my system would work on me? I mean it is genius but remember that I’m the mastermind behind it. There’s no way you actually thought it wou-”
Charlie cut him off; karma, for cutting the other off just now. “ Relax, dude. It was a bet.”
Of course Mac would shoot him a glare then. One that screamed something along the lines of what are you doing dude? You’ll blow your own cover . ( Or maybe that was just Charlie’s head that had screamed that. But either way, it needn’t worry. )
“ Him and Dee were like ‘we can Dennis people’ and then she was like ‘I’ll make Charlie, like, super pissed by doing it on the waitress, loser’ like a bird and stuff. And Mac, he. Well, he’s Mac so he said he could do it on you. And. . . yeah.” he immediately looked back at a beaten Mac. “ That was pretty cool though. I mean, besides the. . . not cool part.”
“ I- okay whatever. And, just to be clear, the whole thing was the ‘not cool part’, Charlie.” Dennis quipped, still too salty at the loss of his shirt’s cleanliness to comment on anything beside’s Mac’s failure. He did, however, keep the thought of mocking and demeaning Deandra in the back of his mind for when she was back.
“ Oh come on, man. I mean there was the. . .” he gestured, “ with the–” more gesturing. “And the. . . Yeah, okay. You make a good point.” he gave in.
“ . . . God damn it.” That was Mac, obviously. Dread, dread, dread. Nothing but dread at his own mishap. And at both the fact that he would be losing fifty dollars, and that Charlie and Dee of all people had a chance of getting ahead of him now. ‘God damn it’ was right. Hopefully, Frank’s failure would be worse than his. That was. . . likely , right? He really wished it was. Because otherwise this would've been utterly humiliating. You know, since it totally, certainly, definitely hadn't reached that level yet.
“ No, god damn you . Look what you did to my shirt. And the bar, man. Oh the bar. The fucking wood. First you drool on it, now you spill wine on it? What did it ever do to you?”
That was the last thing he needed, honestly. If Dennis would just drop it for a second, he would probably have enough time to calm down and absorb the bomb he had set up himself. But Dennis didn’t lay off. Because why would he? His shirt was stained! How dare .
“ Jeeze, okay, I get it. You’re in love with the wood, Dennis. I hope you two make sweet, unforgettable love. Sorry for trying to keep things lively here.” what even-
“ By throwing dumbbells at the bar.”
“ It wasn’t supposed to go that way!”
“I’m aware! But it did! And at the expense of my shirt! My new shirt!” Again with the shirt.
Charlie finally hopped back into the conversation, feeling simultaneously left out of the argument and pretty damn done with it. “ I can probably get that stain off. I mean, I’ve cleaned worse.”
“. . .” Dennis had to consider it for a minute. On one hand, Charlie’s clothes reeked of smells that were humanly impossible to achieve, and had on them year-lasting stains. But on the other , he had experience cleaning off shit much weirder, and much more stubborn than a wine stain. “ Fine. But rip it and I swear to god; I’ll have you and your apartment burnt to the ground.”
“ Chill out, man. I won’t rip it. I’ll clean it with the good stuff.” The other two debated asking him what the good stuff were, but wound up telepathically agreeing not to for the sake of their non-existent sanity. “ Just go find something else to wear and hand it over. So I don’t forget to take it.” This, believably enough, had not been part of Charlie's demonstration. He had done it out of his own accord, without so much as a correlation to the on-going bet. That, and Dennis's pockets had candy in them again.
“ Yeah. Okay. I’m sure I can find something in the lost-and-found.”
“ We have a lost-and-found?” Mac was pretty sure they didn’t.
“ No.” Not any that the other two knew of. And without elaboration, he swept into the back office.