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It’s 1 am, and instead of laying in bed (like he really should be), Mac is sat on the couch in the living room mindlessly watching the shopping channel and trying not to fall asleep- a task that is growing more and more difficult by the second thanks to the room being lit only by the blue light of the TV screen and the drooping feeling in his eyelids. As much as he might want to just drift off, though, he can’t, and the reason why he can’t is sleeping fitfully beside him, covered by a thin blanket that rises and falls with each breath.
Dennis is sick. He completely slept through his alarm yesterday morning, and when Mac went to investigate, he found his roommate ten times paler than usual and radiating a worrying heat. Of course, the guy had insisted he was fine- for some reason, he only decides to be dramatic when he’s got the tiniest cold, and not when he looks like he’s actively dying- but he hadn’t even managed to get to the bathroom without nearly passing out. Then, when he actually got into the shower at last, he’d turned up the heat way too high and actually had passed out. And yet still, he’d been shivering while unconscious like he was freezing.
Sighing, Mac hazards a glance at Dennis for the fifth time in a minute. Unsurprisingly, he’s still fast asleep, knocked out on the flu meds Mac practically had to force down his throat. He’s absolutely drenched in sweat, usually tamed curls thick with moisture, and if he wasn’t infected with an ungodly amount of germs, he’d almost look... good.
It quite frankly isn’t fair, how a man can become even more desirable when he ought to be gross.
Turning his attention back to the TV with a despairing roll of his eyes, Mac watches some pantsuit-wearing saleswoman flaunt a vacuum cleaner like it’s the best thing she’s ever seen in her entire life. The advert tells him to dial a number to ‘get in before it’s too late!’. Mac doesn’t think there’s much chance of that happening.
Just as he considers ringing up just to tell them that they’re not going to make money selling shitty vacuum cleaners that nobody wants, though, a small sound issues from beneath the blanket beside him- an almost-whimper, wavering with fear. It’s so un-Dennis-like that despite the furrowed brow and beading sweat on his skin, Mac almost doesn’t believe the sound belongs to him until it happens again, a more desperate whine issuing from Dennis’ lips as he starts to shift uncomfortably.
“Dennis?” Mac asks with a frown. “Den? You good, man?”
The pace of Dennis’ breathing increases, short, shallow pants that only indicate a worsening of whatever this is. A nightmare?
“Den?”
“P-please...” A murmur, his cracked lips barely moving. The word comes out on a shudder. “N-no, please, I....I don’t...”
Mac pulls himself upright and presses pause on the TV. The woman with the vacuum cleaner freezes.
“You’re alright, bro. It’s only me here, okay? You’re just having a bad dream.”
But Dennis doesn’t appear to hear him- or, if he does, the words aren’t much comfort. He continues to frown, fingernails digging into the leather of the couch as he starts to shake his head.
“I don’t- I don’t want to, p-please.”
Mac settles a hand between his trembling shoulder blades, hoping to offer some physical reassurance instead. Wrong idea, apparently. Dennis jerks away from the contact, a frightened sob bubbling up in his throat as he scrambles backwards, and, finding only the couch, thrashes wildly against it. Any colour that had been remaining in his face prior to Mac’s attempt at soothing has drained completely.
“Please- please don’t t-touch me, I- I don’t want it... promise I won’t t-tell”
Mac flinches. Oh God.
“P-please, I just- can I...” The tears are streaming down Dennis’ cheeks now, hot and angry and unrelenting. “I want- just let me-“ He raises one arm protectively over his face, the other still striking out madly at the nothingness as he sobs. “Just let me go to class now, please.”
“Den- Den, it’s just me, man.” Mac leans over, eyes darting across the scene in front of him, heart hammering in his chest. God, he doesn’t know what to do. What the fuck is he supposed to do in this situation? “She’s- she isn’t here, man.”
He doesn’t even want to say her name. It’s like an unwritten rule between the two of them, created the moment Dennis approached him after school that day, shaken and nauseous-looking and all of fourteen years old.
“Hey, what’s up, dude? Ms K get on your ass about those fines like you thought?”
Dennis had recoiled at her name, squeezing his eyes shut and swallowing reflexively like he thought he might throw up. “Um... no, she- she, uh... she made me an, uh, deal instead.”
Mac grinned, filled with stupid, boyish cheek. “Oh, yeah? What kind of a deal?”
He’d been teasing, looking for something to joke about, but Dennis didn’t react like he thought he would. He froze, tugging at his forefinger in that way he always does when he’s overstimulated or stressed. Shook his head weakly.
“Can we... can we not talk about it, please?”
Mac had accepted then and there that he wasn’t going to find out what happened that day in the library, but-
“God, p-please Miss Klinsky, just- just make it stop, I- I promise I won’t t-tell anyone!”
Sickened tears prickling at his own eyes, he closes the gap between the two of them, placing his hands on Dennis shoulders to keep him from writhing about any longer. Bites his lip when the latter freezes in his grasp, hiccupping with choked sob after choked sob, still shaking his head fervently.
“Den,” he rasps, squeezing gently. “Den, please wake up, man. It’s- it’s just me.”
“I don’t- I don’t wanna-“
“It’s alright, Den. You’re not... you’re not there anymore- you’re just sick, and- and I’m here.”
“I’ll do a-anything you want just- just please don’t make me-“
Mac swallows past the lump in his throat and almost digs his fingernails right through the sweat-damp fabric of Dennis’ grey tee with the force of his grip. Chokes out a desperate, “Den.”
At last, mercifully, Dennis’ eyes fly open, bloodshot and fever-bright. His panicked breaths still heave in his chest, but the tenseness in his shoulders fades ever so slightly. He looks at Mac like a deer caught in the headlights, unsure of whether to flee or to accept its fate, to admit fear or hide behind the defences of old.
“M-Mac?” he breathes.
Mac sits back on his haunches. “Yeah, Den. It’s... it’s just me. You- you were having a nightmare, that’s all.”
Dennis swallows, scrunching up the blanket into tents beneath his hands. In the dim blue light, Mac can see the thumping of his pulse in his neck, the sheen of sweat on his clammy forehead.
“Y-yeah. I’m- I’m fine.”
“I know, man.”
“Did... did I... say anything?” He asks, arching a brow.
Mac doesn’t hesitate, even if he knows the look in his eyes betrays him regardless. Because a pact is still a pact twenty years later. “No, Den. You didn’t say anything.”
Dennis nods slowly. “G-good... Because sometimes I- y’know, when I’m sick, I... I sometimes say things and they’re not true but-“
“I know. It’s... it’s okay.”
One day, Mac hopes they won’t have to rely on thinly veiled lies- lies that neither of them believe, if the embarrassed look on Dennis’ face means anything. One day, he’ll gather Dennis up in his arms and let him cry against him, safe in the knowledge that Mac would never tell another soul. One day, Dennis will trust him enough to tell the story himself.
For now, though-
“Could... could you maybe call my sister?”
For now, Mac’s just glad he has someone who knows the truth of what happened in the library that day.