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“What is that?” Dennis demands, eyes zeroing in on Mac’s chest. Mac shrugs, ignoring the way all his muscles have gone tense. This is how it is with Dennis these days: he opens his mouth, and Mac starts bracing for a fight.
“A tattoo, dude,” he says. He knew the tank top was a bad idea, but it’s hot as shit outside and it’s his solemn duty to show off his arms while they still look like this.
“I know that,” Dennis snaps. If he’s heading for a full meltdown, they’re gonna be late for work, and Dee just got done bitching Mac out for ducking out early for a Grindr date last Friday. Mac sighs and folds his arms, covering the tat that’s so offending Dennis with the bulk of his bicep. “I thought you stopped getting tattoos. We agreed they make you look stupid.”
“Uh, no, you agreed that,” Mac says. “Tattoos are cool. You’re just scared of needles.”
Dennis splutters.
“Look, can we go? If we’re late, they’re gonna make us do Charlie’s work. You know how it goes.”
“No,” Dennis says. “Show me.”
If it’ll get this conversation over with quicker…Mac shrugs and pulls his tank over his head. The tattoo’s just about done healing; he knows it looks good.
Dennis’ frown deepens as he inspects Mac’s chest. “So now that you’re gay,” he says, “you’re into all this girly shit? A flower, really?”
Mac just lets it wash over him.
“White lilies symbolize purity and rebirth,” he says. “I wanted to show – I spent all this time thinking I was dirty, you know? For wanting what I want.”
“You are dirty,” Dennis mutters. Then he seems to realize how it sounds. “Not because of the gay thing, Jesus. I’m saying I saw what you did with those peaches. And then you left them lying around.”
“Well, in the film—”
“No!” Dennis says, holding up a hand. “I’m not having this conversation again. Look, fine, you want to believe you’re all reborn and pure? Go ahead. I couldn’t give a shit.”
And then Dennis is slamming out of the apartment and Mac is left having to rush after him, pulling his shirt back over his head as he goes.
Dennis doesn’t stop looking the whole day. Mac is used to being observed by Dennis – usually critically – but never with such focus, never to the extent that Dennis’ eyes are on Mac even while he’s serving customers.
And, Jesus, Mac had known Dennis hated his old tattoos, but this is on a whole new level. Back when he’d gotten his first, the feather, Dennis had demanded to know what it meant. And Mac had replied, “I don’t know, man, I just think it looks cool,” and Dennis had let the matter drop. Then came the dragon tattoo, and the same question. “It’s badass,” Mac had explained, slowly like Dennis was being stupid (because he was, really: who didn't think dragons were badass?) Finally, the eagle, which was evidently Dennis’ least favorite of the bunch, if the way he mocked it mercilessly was anything to go by.
Mac had gotten them removed while Dennis was in North Dakota, something that had gone uncommented on. There are lots of things like that, these days.
“Seriously, dude,” Mac says, sliding into a seat at the bar when his feet start to get tired, “it’s just a tattoo. Like, everyone has them.”
“Dee doesn’t have any,” Dennis replies venomously, which is really more than the situation calls for, in Mac’s opinion. “Charlie doesn’t have any. I don’t have any.”
“Well, no, Charlie has that one he gave himself, remember? Badnew?”
“That’s not the same,” Dennis says. “Yours is…”
“Mine is what, Dennis?” Mac huffs, exasperated.
“It’s on your chest!” Dennis says. He’s lucky Dee’s out getting her nails done for a scheme that involves threatening to gouge a hot dog stand owner’s eyes out, otherwise she’d be right on the shade of red he’s turning. “Who gets a tattoo on their chest?”
“Uh, lots of people?” Mac responds. He’s getting more confused by the second. “It’s a pretty common place to get a tattoo.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Dennis says, vein pulsing in his forehead. “As if anyone wants to have to look at that—”
“You can stop looking at it any time,” Mac bites back. “I’m not forcing you or anything. Jesus Christ, Dennis. You’re going to have to get over it, because it’s July and I’m not going to start wearing shirts every day just because you never saw a chest you didn’t want to drool over—”
He cuts himself off, horrified. That’s not what’s going on here, the fact that he’d even suggested it is the most humiliating—the most revealing—
“That’s not what’s going on here,” Dennis says, like he’s reached into Mac’s internal monologue and plucked the words out, except his face has gone from red to sheet white in zero-point-five seconds flat, and he honestly looks like he might faint.
“Oh my god,” Mac says. “That is what’s going on here.”
“What’s going on here?” asks Charlie, emerging from the back room with what looks like a dangerously overweight guinea pig cradled in his hands.
“Not now, Charlie!” Mac and Dennis both yell, in tandem for perhaps the first time since Dennis left.
Charlie looks between them, eyebrows raised, and then he sets the guinea pig on the bar and returns to the back room, door clicking shut loudly behind him.
“You don’t hate it,” Mac says slowly, a grin spreading over his face. “You like it.”
“Shut up,” Dennis says. “You have to shut up, you’re so—”
And Mac starts laughing, so hard he has to bend over with it.
“Why do you make this so difficult?” he wheezes. “You know I’d – you know what I want, and there you are having some kind of crisis because I got a flower tattooed on my pec, like the world’s biggest idiot.”
“Hey,” says Dennis, but there isn’t really any heat backing it up.
“Why don’t you just kiss me, man?” Mac asks. “Better yet, why don’t you just feel it up, if ink’s what gets you going. I’m right here. I’m not going to tell you no.”
Dennis’ mouth makes several abortive movements, but Mac’s well past caring at this point. There have been moments, before, when he’s thought that maybe Dennis feels the same way about him, but then Dennis will yell, or scratch, and his nails or sharp words slice effectively through that train of thought. Mac’s just had to get used to the way wanting Dennis sits low in his chest at all times, waiting there, gathering dust. And this whole time—
“Is it because I’m a guy?” Mac asks.
Dennis scoffs.
“Oh, okay, you’re so sexually liberated because you were willing to let that Asian kid suck you off that one time—”
“It’s because you’re you,” Dennis shouts. “You’re so goddamn annoying, Mac, and no one in their right mind would ever want to be with you. Someone would have to be actually, certifiably insane to date you.”
Mac considers this. “You are actually, certifiably insane,” he says. “You’re meant to be taking pills for it and everything.”
Dennis gapes at him. It lasts for so long that Mac starts to wonder if Dennis is genuinely offended by him mentioning the BPD, even though Dennis brings up his diagnosis every time he thinks it’ll get him out of trouble for being a dick to someone in public.
The guinea pig walks over his hands, which are lying motionless on the counter, and Dennis doesn’t so much as twitch.
“Christ,” he says eventually, stalking out from behind the bar. Mac watches, motionless, as he starts toward the office. “Are you coming or not?”
“Um,” Mac says. His first thought is honestly that Dennis is leading him back there to kill him. He follows anyway.
“Get out,” Dennis tells Charlie.
“Where’s Guineava Convention?” Charlie asks.
“How should I know?” asks Dennis, so convincingly that Mac has to wonder whether he’d noticed the large rodent crawling over his hands at all.
Charlie glares at Dennis, then Mac for good measure, and leaves them alone in the room.
Dennis turns around as the door shuts, expression murderous. It occurs to Mac that pretty much every emotion Dennis has gets turned around somewhere in his head and comes out looking like rage. He’s not sure what to do with this information, but it feels good to have.
“You can’t just,” Dennis starts, face rising in color again. “There are ways things are done, not that I’d expect you to display even the slightest hint of decorum, at this point—”
Mac kisses him, because it feels like otherwise he might keep ranting for a while.
There are a few seconds where Dennis keeps trying to complain into Mac’s mouth, which is interesting, but then he seems to give in: he gets his hands on Mac’s shoulders, pushing him against the door and contributing, finally. There’s stale beer on his tongue and sweat gathered above his top lip, and Mac really doesn’t know what it means that this is the best kiss he’s ever been a participant in. Nothing good, probably.
“Next time,” Dennis says, while his lips traverse the space between Mac’s mouth and his neck, “you’re consulting me first.”
Mac takes a second to get on the same page, and then says, “You want to pick out my tattoos?”
“I said consult,” Dennis responds peevishly. His lips find the uppermost petal of the lily as he speaks. “I just – if something’s going to be on your body forever, I should get a say, that’s all.”
In a Dennis way, it’s sort of sweet.
“Forever, huh?” Mac asks.
“Don’t push it.”