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He uses gentle hands with Mac.
Not always, only sometimes. The sun comes in blue and quiet in the late afternoon. A stale wad of bubblegum, ten hours old, has suppressed any quiet hiss of an appetite he might've grappled with. (It's disintegrating in his mouth, decaying down to feathery shreds that cling to his teeth and make his tongue feel like a stick of chalk, but the smell of that ten-ounce steak hasn't left his mind just yet.) And he's home, stirring shit up in the city with his boys again. He feels good.
So he uses gentle hands with Mac.
"Well, I told Charlie he wasn't the alpha, we were, so he stuck his gum in my hair-"
Dennis threads his fingers through the place where Mac's hair starts soft and ends in a matted pink knot, spreading the dark hairs apart where he can. He kind of likes the feeling of his friend's hair under his hand, it's pleasant when it isn't slathered down in grease and glimmering like an oil slick. "We?"
Mac scratches at the edge of one of the fresh, long scabs on his face. "You," he amends, and keeps his eyes cast down.
Dennis is the alpha, that's right. Not Mac, not them, him.
He waits for his roommate to crane his neck up and steal one of those pathetic lovelorn glances at Dennis in the bathroom mirror with those sad stupid eyes of his, but he never does. Dennis' wrist sweeps against the crimson wounds in Mac's face as he works the scissors apart beneath the glob of bubblegum sewn into his friend's hair, and Mac flinches. He could be a little more grateful that Dennis is taking the time out of his day to perform this service for him, especially after how annoying he's been lately. He won't even look up.
"Stop squirming, I'll cut you." It's not a threat, only a careful consideration, but Mac scratches harder at that scab until it flakes away and bubbles up red.
"You'd probably like that," he murmurs, dark brows knitted close together.
Snip.
Dennis tosses the hairy pink wad into the toilet, and meets Mac's sad stupid eyes as he flushes it away. "Don't start," he warns, biting down a little harder on his Big League Chew. "You provoked me."
Mac just shakes his head, looking red in the face and keeping his eyes trained on the floor. His jaw works strangely, like he's rolling all the things he clearly is too much of a coward to say aloud across his tongue.
There's an orange toothbrush on the counter with bristles bent hard in either direction, flattened in morning fits of silent rage. There's an exercise bike in the next room with shuddering spokes and a once skyward dildo that's started lopping over sideways, advertising regular abuse. When the tape roll went missing Dennis ventured into the hall of Hail Marys, rifling through Mac's drawers full of miniature New Testaments and tinier bottles of lube. Mac's favorite Bible, the one with the classic Black leather cover and gold-trimmed, round-eared pages, was closed around the tape dispenser. Romans 12 had been torn in some page-flipping flurry of righteous frustration and painstakingly, lovingly taped back together. Romans 12:19, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.'"
Dennis checks on his stupid sad-eyed friend intermittently in the mirror, carefully shortening the rest of his hair with the other half of his attention. Blood trickles slowly from the reopened seam in the second scratch on Mac's face. Mac doesn't look like he has much else to say. Dennis knows he has plenty, and would love to hear him struggle.
"If you have something to say to me, be a fucking man and say it, Mac."
Snip.
The doorknob pushes hard into his spine. Mac has the scissors now, and points them at Dennis' wide eye. His forearm presses hard against Dennis' chest.
"You can't scratch me anymore. I'm built now, see?" he says through his teeth, looking wild and angry and afraid. Sad stupid eyes dart between Dennis', whose eyelids flutter against the closeness. He can feel Mac's bubblegum breath on his own mouth. "I'll stab out your eye." Dennis looks down to where Mac's 'Denny's Mufflers' shirt kisses his muscles, new muscles, big muscles. 'Built.' Dennis thinks he looks fat and has half a mind to say so, if only Mac's big fat fucking arm wasn't bearing down on his windpipe.
"You can't come back here after all this time," Mac says, teary-eyed, "and just start being mean again." His arm slips down, pathetically, and Dennis snorts.
"Mean?" he parakeets, mocking, sneering. "Are you serious, Mac? Mean?"
Mac takes his arm away and rubs the tears from his eyes, dropping the scissors so that they clang metallic and deafening in the silence.
"What are you gonna do? Stop sharing your toys with me? Tell on me to mommy?"
"Leave it to the wrath of God," Mac whispers to the bathroom tile. "Leave it."
"You couldn't live without me," Dennis carries on, searching big brown eyes for confirmation that he doesn't need, doesn't want.
Mac lifts off him completely and goes back to kneeling against the bathroom counter, resting his unmarred cheek on his arms folded across the laminate. Dennis catches his breath against the door.
His best friend looks beautiful like that, stupid eyes and fat arms and all. Dennis thinks he's beautiful sometimes. Not always. Just... sometimes. But the overhead lights pour down blue and quiet on his clipped hair and tear-tracked face. A stale wad of gum, ten hours and ten minutes old, keeps thoughts of ten-ounce temporary pleasures out of mind. And he's home.
So he wants to use gentle hands with Mac, because Mac is good.
"Leave it," he whispers again.
Dennis folds up a square of toilet paper and dabs carefully at Mac's little open-eyed wound. "You look good," he says earnestly, brows knitted. "I missed you."
Mac swallows. Dennis comes to a kneel against the counter next to him like they're high school boys again, high as kites in mandatory nightly prayer at the side of Mac's bed, plaid comforter and a stuffed dog at the foot of it named Floppins.
His best friend looks at him with those sad stupid eyes, big, brown and beautiful. "Be nicer," he insists, but Dennis knows it's a question. It's always a question.
He loves Mac. Always has. So stupid and good. Doesn't ask for much.
He leans in and presses their lips together. Mac tries not to smile against his mouth, giddy. He tastes like bubblegum; everything does.
"You still have that gum? Get rid of that, it's bad for your teeth."
Dennis tilts his head back, it's a pretty big wad.
"No! Don't swallow it, it's full of toxins, you'll never digest it. Spit it out." He offers his hand and Dennis obliges. Toxins are bad, that's for sure. Mac's good, so he never lets him ingest any toxins, except for crack and gasoline, but those aren't so bad.
"I just kissed you, you know," Dennis reminds him, frowning. "Was that nice?" He doesn't sound right; sounds like some embarrassing soy boy beta cuck, some pitifully infatuated, lovelorn fool like Mac.
"Yeah, Den," Mac says, taking his hand. God, here he goes, taking one charitable deed as permission to start doing sappy, gay shit unchecked. Dennis regrets it already, feels himself turning rosy in the face as Mac touches their foreheads together while they kneel on that blue bathroom floor. "That was pretty nice of you."
His best friend reaches up to the back of Dennis' neck to thread a hand through his hair, but stops short. "Uh oh," he says, and pulls his fingers away with a sticky snap.
The wrath of God, indeed.