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"But that's no fair, Ronnie!" Charlie whines as he climbs out of the back seat of the brand new Range Rover. "You can't just call shotgun for life like that!"
“Of course I can, bitch,” Ronnie says smugly, slamming the front passenger side door. “Besides, Dennis would much rather have me sitting up front with him than you, right Dennis?”
Dennis ignores the question with a heavy, put-out sigh and walks ahead of his two bickering henchmen to unlock the back door to his house. Honestly, listening to the two of them squabble over Dennis had been really entertaining when they first started hanging out, but now it’s just annoying most of the time. Especially Ronnie. He leaves the door ajar for the two boys and heads straight for his room without waiting for them to catch up to him.
He shouldn’t even be stuck with these losers this weekend, anyway. His real friends are all partying it up at a cabin in the Rockies right now, but Dennis hates camping. And flying. Plus Adriano said there wasn’t enough room for everyone at the cabin, and since Dennis hates nature, it made the most sense to both of them that he be the one to stay behind.
Dennis has already dry-swallowed three pills he’d swiped from his mom’s medicine cabinet by the time Charlie and Ronnie come bursting through his bedroom door. They both sit down on the rug at the foot of the bed, Charlie sitting with his knees hugged up tight to his chest and Ronnie with his legs splayed out across the floor, leaning back on his hands. They’re still arguing about shotgun rules. These pills can’t kick in fast enough.
“Dennis, please tell Ronnie that I’m not too smelly to sit up front with you!” Charlie whines, all shrill and high-pitched.
“C’mon, shut up about that shit,” Dennis says, rubbing his eyes. “I thought we were gonna smoke some weed?”
“Oh, right!” Ronnie says, perking up and fishing a sandwich bag out of his sweaty back pocket. Dennis wonders if the shit his mom takes would work faster if he snorted it instead. He grabs some joint papers out of his bedside table and chucks them at Charlie’s head. Then, unable to contain himself any longer, he says, “And for the record, Dirt Grub, yes, you smell like shit. Take a shower sometime, will you? I don’t want your stench seeping into the upholstery of the Range Rover.”
Charlie turns bright pink and scowls at Dennis, who kicks Ronnie’s leg out of the way so he can sit cross-legged on the floor with his back resting against the foot board. Ronnie doubles over at the jab, grabbing Dennis’s shoulder and laughing way harder than it probably deserves. He leans into Dennis’s personal space when he’s laughing like this, and it’s making a warm swirly feeling pool in the base of Dennis’s stomach and travel up his spine to tingle the back of his skull. Or maybe that’s just the pills starting to kick in. He yanks the baggie of weed out of Ronnie’s hands and unzips the seal. “We gonna smoke or what? I’m bored as shit over here.”
Ronnie sucks dick at rolling joints, but he always insists on rolling one. To be honest, Dennis usually prefers uppers, booze, and pills, so he’s not really the best at it either. But for someone who makes all his pocket change selling drugs, you’d think Ronnie could at the very least get the weed to stop falling out the ends and shit. The first spliff doesn’t last long before it falls apart and burns another mark into Dennis’s rug. So Charlie comes to the rescue and flawlessly rolls their second one, passing it to Dennis with the lighter and a self-satisfied expression. Dennis finds these rare displays of self-esteem from Charlie a little cute, the way his cheeks flush pink and his eyes squint almost closed because of how big he’s smiling, and hoo-boy, Dennis should have read the label on that pill bottle.
Dennis takes a hit off the joint and passes it to Ronnie, holding it in as long as he can before exhaling with a cough. The tingles in the back of his head start spreading and swirling around, engulfing his ears and working down his neck and into his shoulders. He relaxes into the headboard, letting go of tension he didn’t notice he was holding and unclenching his teeth. He watches Ronnie and Charlie take their turns with the joint, talking animatedly about some dumb bullshit and gesticulating wildly with their hands, sending ash flying all over the rug. Dennis wonders if Adriano and the rest are smoking weed right now. Probably. It’s probably not as good as the shit Ronnie saved for him and Charlie, though. He finds the thought comforting for some reason.
“C’mon, Dennis, tell the man I’m right!” Ronnie says, wrapping his arm around Dennis’s shoulders and pulling him out of his thoughts.
“Hmm?” he mumbles, paying more time to the joint Charlie is passing to him.
“Tell Charlie I’m a better smoker than him.”
Dennis scoffs. “How the hell are you a better smoker, Ronnie?”
“You know, I mean,” Ronnie says haltingly, “I can inhale way more than he can, and I can hold it way more longer than him. And I don’t cough like a little bitch for 10 minutes every time I take a hit - ”
“I told you asshole, my mom says I have asthma,” Charlie says defensively, arms crossing, “and the coughing feels good! It gets you a bunch more higher that way.”
Dennis pulls a lungful of smoke into his lungs as Ronnie says, “Whatever, dude, you’re just a pussy who - mmfhhh?” and then grabs the boy by the scruff of the neck, yanking him forward to seal their lips together. Ronnie gasps open-mouthed in shock against Dennis’s lips, and Dennis takes advantage of this to exhale into Ronnie’s mouth, filling the boy’s lungs with the smoke from his own. Ronnie still isn’t pulling away, and Dennis can’t help but to snake his tongue out to take a little experimental swipe at his soft, puffy bottom lip. This seems to help Ronnie regain enough of his senses to push Dennis roughly away from him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ronnie gasps, sputtering and coughing and choking. His face is red as a goddamn cherry, and his lips are shiny with Dennis’s saliva. This pleases Dennis more than he is comfortable dwelling on.
“Shotgun,” Dennis says, and he can feel his cheeks aching from how hard he’s grinning but goddamn if he can’t stop.