Chapter Text
“Deandra?” Dennis scoffs, waving an accusing finger in Deandra’s face like he knows what the hell he’s talking about. With a name like Dennis, Deandra isn't so sure. “That’s so stupid! You couldn’t have picked a better name than fucking Deandra?”
Deandra takes a step back, her hands on her hips and her chin held high.
“I happen to like that name,” she says, and Dennis barks out a laugh.
“Well I’m not calling you that, so you better figure out a nickname, before I pick one myself…” he pauses for a moment and gives her a sly grin “… Deandruff.”
Deandra screams with fury before pouncing on her brother, clawing at his face and pulling at his hair, until she suddenly remembers that picking fights isn’t… feminine. She jumps off of Dennis like he's burned her, smooths out her hair, and storms out with her fists clenched, leaving him to writhe on the floor in pain.
~~~
“I like ‘Dee,’ by the way,” she says, bumping his shoulder with hers. Dennis tears his eyes away from the girl he was ogling across the room and turns to Dee with an incredulous look.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dee sighs. Was his memory really that bad?
“I’m still changing my name to Deandra--” (Dennis groans at this, but Dee squares her shoulders and pushes on) “—but you can call me Dee. Since you seem to hate ‘Deandra’ so much.” Dennis tries to hide his grin, but Dee can sense that he’s pleased she adjusted to him. Narcissistic asshole.
“I do still hate ‘Deandra,’ Dee, you’re completely correct, and I think it’s abhorrent that you would ever want to have a name like that associated with you. But I can deal with ‘Dee.’” Dee smiles, pulls a ring off her finger and puts it on a different one. Dennis goes back to ogling the girl after a quick complaint that Dee threw him off his game. As if he ever had game anyway.
~~~
Dee has a bruise on her cheek where their dad punched her and Dennis is holding ice to her face and crying and it’s honestly just a normal night in the Reynolds household.
“Let’s get drunk.” Dee says abruptly, and Dennis gives her a watery smile as he holds up a bottle of vodka.
“Way ahead of you, sis.”
They pass the bottle back and forth, bump fists in lieu of clinking glasses when Dennis shakily proposes a toast.
“To being disappointments?” Dee laughs.
“To being disappointments!” There’s a dull thud when their knuckles collide and Dennis grins at her.
~~
Dee’s pleasantly buzzed and she’s laughing as Dennis paces the floor and rants about a Max or a Mac or something. Her face is still throbbing and the ice has melted into the carpet but she’ll be fine. She takes another sip from the bottle and lies back down, tries to do a breathing exercise but can’t quite seem to get it right. Dennis stops pacing, fixes her with a look.
“Have you been paying attention to me at all?” His hands are in his hair and his curls poke through his fingers like a stubborn army of soldiers with scoliosis. Dee giggles and tells him no, she’s not listening, but she’s sure it would be quite interesting if she cared, and he gives a short yell in her direction before resuming his pacing and his ranting.
When Dee tunes back in, he’s muttering mostly to himself now, but she draws her knees up to her chest and listens.
“Everyone knows Mac is gay, it’s so disgustingly obvious how GAY he is, even Charlie knows how gay he is and Charlie doesn’t know anything!” Dee wants to get offended on Charlie’s behalf but, okay, it’s kind of true.
“--and I’ve seen the way he looks at the football players, Dee, I know he’ll never want ME with my…” Dennis pauses, looking at himself in the mirror like he’s seeing himself for the first time.
Dee murmurs something she hopes conveys reassurance and opens her arms. Dennis makes a noise that sounds like a cross between a dying cat and a deflating balloon and sits down next to Dee, lets her put her arms around him and tell him about the girl in her math class who smiles politely at Dee but lets her gaze linger on the girls with smaller hands and smaller noses.
She doesn’t realize they’re both crying until Dennis is protesting and winding out of her grip and she didn’t realize she was digging her nails into his shirt until he politely asks her to get the fuck off of him before I cut all of your individual fingers off and feed them to you, Deandruff. She then grabs him by the collar and warns him to never call her that again unless he wants to get a matching bruise, Cocksucker. He spreads his hands wide and grins at her and she pushes him away with a scoff and they’re normal again.