Chapter Text
Charlie Kelly is fifteen. He’s sitting on a freezer in Dennis’s garage, staring out the open garage door at the suburb streets. It’s summer, and the air smells like it, smells of cut grass and sprinkler water and smoke from a grill and just like, sunlight. The sun’s only just starting to really make a full effort at going down, the afternoon blue getting slowly tainted with the pinks and purples of evening but it’s still plenty bright out. Dennis’s neighbor’s twin girls are playing in an octopus-shaped sprinkler that spins and shoots water from its tentacles, running and squealing in glittering mermaid themed swimsuits. One’s wearing goggles, the kind that pinch your nose shut for you. The other’s got a snorkel clamped between her teeth, muffling her excited screams.
Charlie’s got about one-third of a Bomb Pop in his hand, and yeah it’s off-brand but you wouldn’t know it from the taste, and he’s just gotten to the blue part, which is his favorite part of the Bomb Pop which is his favorite kind of patriotic popsicle including the off-brand ones if they’re any good and this one is. Dennis’s weird sister has a radio going in her room, and her room is right above the garage. She’s got her window open for the breeze, so the music is almost as clear as it would’ve been if the radio were in the garage proper with just the slightest bit of muffling from distance.
Something feels important about this moment, Charlie thinks. Feels like something his older self will want to look back on someday. It’s a strangely poignant thought, for him. He slurps and laps at the melted blue dripping stickily down his fingers, feeling the ice numbing and aching his lips in equal turn, and thinks, I’m gonna remember this.
Mac’s sat on the concrete floor in a faded Eagles jersey, his skinny thigh just out of kicking distance - not that Charlie wants to kick him, at least not right now, that’s just Charlie’s best attempt at judging distance. He’s got a thick, ancient piece of green chalk clutched in his fist, a relic from Dennis’s childhood or maybe his sister’s. The line dividing the outside from the inside bisects Mac’s wrist, his hand illuminated by glowing sunlight while the rest of him stays dim, as he scrawls something in crude, sloppy bubble letters onto Dennis’s driveway. It’s kinda sideways-backwards from where Charlie’s sitting, and he’s not sure it’s a word he could’ve read anyway, but he can count to four, and if it’s a four-letter word he’s pretty sure he knows exactly what Mac’s writing.
“I don’t know why you’re writing it upside down,” Dennis says, sitting on the steps into his house and thumbing through a girly magazine - not a girly mag, just a magazine that’s real fuckin’ girly - that had shown up for Dennis’s sister while they’d been sitting there. Even though it’s not a girly mag, even though he has girly mags, Dennis has been ripping out all the pictures of girls in bathing suits. ‘Bikini or less’ had been the criteria, but Dennis is having a real bitch of a time finding nudity in Tiger Beat. The sound of glossy paper torn from glue and staple binding echoes through the garage as Dennis sloppily tears out a photo of a preteen blonde girl in a tropical print tankini, her lower half wrapped in a knee-length opaque orange sarong. Dennis licks his lips, raking his eyes over her sunbaked flesh.
“I’m not!” Mac insists. “I’m writing it the right way around!”
“Yeah, to you,” Dennis gestures, “Which means it’s the wrong way ‘round to anyone driving down the street. The only person who’s gonna be able to read that is, like, my dad, when he leaves for work tomorrow?”
“Good,” Mac says, “It’s for your dad.”
“What?” Dennis raises his eyebrows. “Why’s it for my dad?”
Mac gestures emphatically to a blank space of garage floor. “He washed away my pot leaf! I spent all day working on it!”
Dennis finishes leafing through the magazine and, without looking, chucks it over his shoulder into a garbage can full of yard waste. He rolls his eyes. “Mac, you never drew a pot leaf. You drew a green maple leaf, because you apparently haven’t the slightest clue what a pot leaf looks like.”
“I never see the leaves,” Mac protests, “I see the buds, and I see it as a powder. I never see the leaves.”
“If you’re grinding it into a ‘powder’, you’re grinding it too thin,” Dennis corrects, “and more to the point, I told you not to draw inside my fucking garage anymore and you waited til I went to use the bathroom and did it anyway. If you’d drawn it in the driveway like you were supposed to, it would’ve been washed away by now anyway.” He leafs through the rest of the pile of his family’s mail, intermittently tossing items into the trash. “I have zero sympathy for you.”
“That’s why I drew it in the garage!” Mac cries, not looking up from the last letter. Charlie’s almost sure it’s a V now, a V with a line right next to it, and he can’t think of any four-letter words that end with a V. Wolf? He’s pretty sure ‘wolf’ ends with the “v” sound. Is Mac calling Dennis’s dad a wolf? “So that it wouldn’t get washed away! But then your asshole dad washes it anyway!”
Dennis makes a frustrated sound in his throat, tossing the remaining mail into a haphazard pile by his door and picking up his pile of torn-out magazine pages, “On the list of things that make my dad an asshole, Mac, washing away the stupid maple leaf I told you not to draw on my garage floor? Not really the top of the list.”
“Well, I’m still pissed about it,” Mac says, “Hence why, y’know, this.” He gestured to the drawing with the chalk, inadvertently making an extra little scuff on the concrete. “Shit.”
Dennis snorts. “Yeah, hence that shit. Look, if you’re so pissed about it, why don’t you say that to my dad’s face?” Dennis squints at the driveway. “Well, maybe don’t just walk up to him and scream that, y’know, not that exactly, cuz he’ll just think you’re a fuckin’ spaz, but tell him off for washing away your stupid leaf if you’re so pissy about it. He’s like, what, four feet tall? Don’t be a pussy.”
Mac snorts. “You trying to get me fuckin’ killed? I know your dad carries that little gun around with him everywhere.” Dennis chuckles darkly. “You’re a real live psychopath, you know that, Dennis?” Mac drops the chalk. “There! Done! That’ll show him!”
“At 8am, when he backs his car out over it?” Dennis points out. “Yeah. I’m sure it’ll slice him just,” Dennis makes a slicing motion, “Fwp! Right to the bone.” Dennis leafs through his torn-out pictures, crumpling and throwing out a few that he decides aren’t up to his standards after all.
Mac frowns, glances around the garage, back over at the spot of bare concrete that his pot leaf once proudly tarnished, “Maybe I should’ve written it over there.” Mac dusts his hands off on his jeans. “Fuck it, I’m gonna. What’s the worst that could happen? He sees it twice?”
The remaining clippings brush against Dennis’s bare knee with an audible flutter as Dennis gestures violently at Mac and makes a really weird noise, sounding like he’s screaming with his mouth closed. “No! No more drawing in my garage!”
“But I…”
“Ah ha-ha!” Dennis half-screams, half-laughs. “Instead of telling my dad off in chalk drawings or drawing more maple leaves, why don’t you just go roll us a fucking joint?”
Mac shrinks a little. “A joint?”
“Yes, Mac,” Dennis says irritably, “a joint. You forget how to roll one, or...?”
Charlie can see the flush on Mac’s neck even in the dim light of the garage. “I...yeah, no, I…I remember how to roll one, you asshole, you don’t just...”
“You might,” Dennis clips. Mac deflates. “But okay, so, you do remember?” A nod. “Great. Go roll.”
Mac lets out this soft noise that reminds Charlie of the carbonation hissing when you open a soda bottle combined with a balloon leaking air and cries, “Wh-why do you...why do we…”
Narrowing his eyes, Dennis coldly asks, “You’re not gonna share your stash anymore?”
“No! No! It’s not like that!” Mac protests. “I’d never do that to you! I just…it’ll take up all my weed, man, and it’s not even gonna be…like!” Mac gestures over to Charlie, who raises his eyebrows, startled at the sudden attention. “Like, you know Charlie’s tolerance is through the roof, man, it takes so much to get him high, and you’re so fuckin...poised, or whatever, you don’t even act like anything’s happening until like, a few joints in, so it’s not even gonna be any fun, and it’s like... all my weed, man, I’m….”
“Nnnh!” Dennis interrupts, waving his hands and signaling for Mac to stop like an orchestra conductor. “Mac! What? What are you talking about? What do you mean?”
Mac pauses. “Mm?”
“What do you mean it’ll be ‘all your weed’?” Dennis says, voice even but his tone sounding strained, like a rubber band near breaking point. “You’re a dealer. I...one joint? That shouldn’t be all your weed. That shouldn’t even make a dent in your weed. What’s going on here, Mac?”
Charlie’s fully listening now, stomach going a little queasy at the implication he’s starting to pick up on. “Are you saying we’re having a weed crisis, man? Is that what you’re saying to me?”
Mac presses the heels of both of his hands to his eyes and grunts in frustration. “Nnngh! I knew you guys would be like this!” He flings his hands away from his face, slapping them against his thighs. “I...I screwed up a little bit, okay?”
“What do you mean?” Dennis asks. Charlie echoes him, “What do you mean, Mac?”, but a little bit more softly, a little bit more desperate, a soft whine seeping in.
Mac collapses against the toolbench, burying his face into his arms between a belt sander and a circular saw. He moans miserably into his folded arms for a second. Dennis and Charlie exchange a silent, worried glance.
Eventually Mac brings his head up, red-faced, hairline mussed. “I guess it got out, or whatever, that I might’ve kinda had a bit of a hand in getting Black Guy Josh’s plants confiscated, or, like. Whatever!”
Charlie shrieks in shock at the exact same time that Dennis yelps, “Well any idiot could’ve figured that out!”
Mac leans heavily against the toolbench, resting the back pockets of his jeans against the splintery wood. “Anyway, you know I made most of my money buying from the poor black kids and selling to the rich white kids, because they’re all racist as shit and think they’re more likely to get caught buying off a kid with an afro?”
“Of course we know that,” Dennis says. “We’ve been here, watching you do that, this whole time.”
“Right,” Mac waves him off. “I don’t even know why I said that. But yeah, anyway, I got Black Guy Josh busted --- or had like, a real tiny hand in that happening --- and now not a single one of those ghetto bastards will sell to me!”
“So?” Dennis says. “Buy from someone else!”
Charlie sighs darkly. “He can’t.”
Dennis’s head snaps around to look at him. “What?”
“He can’t,” Charlie repeats. “He’s burned every fucking bridge at that school. That’s it, man. Game over. We’re cut off. God fucking damn it, Mac!”
“Don’t yell at me!” Mac shouts. “Do not yell at me, Charlie! I do not handle being yelled at well! I do not handle it well! I do not handle it well!”
“You don’t handle anything well!” Charlie screams. “You just handled us into never having weed again! That’s terrible! That’s handling things terrible! Terrible handling!”
“I’m not terrible handling!” Mac bellows. “You’re terrible handling! Terrible handling!”
“Guys! ” Dennis cuts through to stop them from their next step, which was absolutely about to be yelling “terrible handling” back and forth until the sun explodes. Mac and Charlie both turn to look at him. He raises a hand to each of them. “Calm the fuck down. We’re going to have weed again, Charlie. We’ll just have to stop going through Mac’s contacts, and start going through mine.”
“You have contacts?” Mac says, looking kind of hurt. “Who gave you contacts?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dennis brushes him off. “All that matters is first thing tomorrow I can get us more weed. In the meantime, though.” He raises his eyebrows pointedly at Mac. “You gonna get us that joint, or…?”
Mac furrows his brow. “Are you sure, Den? Cuz I can’t be without weed, I get…”
Dennis shushes him. “Trust me. First thing tomorrow. Primo shit.”
Mac sighs. Charlie knows that sigh - he’s not thrilled, but he’s willing. Dennis knows that sigh, too, and that’s why he’s grinning. “Good,” Dennis says softly. “Good idea, Mac. Good all around.”
“Yeah,” Mac breathes, sounding defeated. “Good.”
“You’ll go roll us a joint?”
“I’ll go roll you a joint.”
A grinning Dennis has to stand to let Mac up the stairs. As soon as the door slams behind him, Dennis chuckles darkly, making his way over to Charlie rather than sitting back down. Charlie’s about to get up, but then he realizes what Dennis is going for: the freezer. He lifts the door that Charlie isn’t sitting on and reaches in, pulling out a Bomb Pop.
“Everything’s so dramatic with that guy,” Dennis laughs, unwrapping the cold treat with his elbows resting on the freezer, putting his chin at the same height as Charlie’s shoulder but not touching it. “Like, come on, man! I’ll get you weed! Calm down!”
“Yeah,” Charlie laughs, then fixes Dennis with a look he’s trying not to make seem too serious. “So, uh, are you actually gonna get him more weed tomorrow, though, or…?”
Dennis fixes Charlie with a look of his own. “Yes, Charlie,” he says steadily. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that. Of course I’m gonna get him more weed.”
“Right,” Charlie grins. “Right, cuz you wouldn’t…”
“I mean, what else am I gonna smoke?” Dennis chuckles, quirking a brow at Charlie. “Right?”
“Right,” Charlie says, but the heart isn’t there and Dennis catches on.
Frowning, Dennis states, “Yeah, and you can get right off that high horse, Charlie, cuz I know for a fact he smokes you out too.”
Charlie shrugs, acquiescing. “Actually, yeah, alright. Fair enough.” He laughs. “Uh, well, in that case, thanks for getting me that weed tomorrow, man.”
Snorting, Dennis bumps the back of his hand against Charlie’s thigh affectionately. “Pfft, yeah, no problem, bud.”
There’s a moment of silence. Charlie picks at the dirt under his jagged thumbnail while Dennis pushes the first bit of the bomb pop into his mouth, hiding all the red and leaving just white and blue; white caps on blue waves. Sky over arctic, reversed. “Man, sucks we’re so low tonight. He was bein’ kind of an asshole about it, but he wasn’t wrong. It takes like, three joints to get me high. One joint, split three ways? I’ll be lucky to even, like, chill out.”
Dennis nods around the oblong shape in his mouth, pulling it out with a soft pop so he can speak. “I thought about that, Charlie, cuz I’m the same way, and I think!” He pauses to eye Charlie with a sideways grin. “I have a plan.”
“Oh, rad,” Charlie smiles. “What is it?”
There’s a long pause where Dennis wordlessly sucks on the popsicle, but maintains eye contact with Charlie in order to assure Charlie the conversation isn’t over. At least, that’s what Charlie thinks Dennis is doing. Sometimes Dennis will do some weird shit like that, and Charlie isn’t entirely sure why he’s doing it, or why it makes him kinda feel the way he kinda does. But eventually Dennis takes the whittled-down Bomb Pop out to offer through red-stained lips, “So here me out here: Shotgunning.”
“Oh,” Charlie says, nodding. Then it sets in. He furrows his brow. “Wait a minute, isn’t shotgunning…?”
Dennis nods. “Yeah, man, I know, but when you’re trying to conserve weed there’s really no method that compares.”
Half-sighing and half-laughing, Charlie mutters, “Mac’s not gonna like that.”
Licking sticky red juice off his smirking lips, Dennis bitterly states, “Mac’s gonna have to fuckin’ deal. Mac's the reason we have to do this in the first place.”
Rubbing at the back of his neck, Charlie glances at the four-letter word Mac scrawled in green into Dennis’s driveway.
Fuck, Charlie thinks.
Fuck, for sure.