Work Text:
The cameras capture every second of it. Staff’s eyes are already trained on Dee, wary of a lawsuit, ready to ply her with cookies and juice. So Dennis remains curled up on the tile as the audience slowly files out, still whispering about how ‘this went wrong, this went so wrong, this isn’t who I-‘.
Mac finally makes someone get Dennis a blanket before kneeling down next to him, a hand pressed to his shoulder. He shrugs it off, his own hands flapping uselessly like a kid having a nightmare. If he were there, if he were really inside himself, he'd shove Mac away like his touch is a hot brand. But it hurts too much to be in his body. So he has to be somewhere else right now, only half-hearing words that he doesn't remember leaving his mouth.
Mac sucks in a nervous breath before shifting his touch to the nape of Dennis’s neck, like when Charlie once showed him how to calm angry cats. It makes a small, fixed point of heat, an anchor for when the rest of Dennis wants to float away. He curls up tighter, settling down with a tiny whimper, until he's aware of the cold floor under him and the ache in his skull. He bats ineffectively at Mac's hands, signaling him to move aside.
Eventually they coax him upright and Frank drives them all home. Dee chews wordlessly on one of the sandwiches from the break room, pecking at the bacon like a starving crow. Charlie tries to crack a joke, still angry they didn’t ask the question about popular board games, but after a few feeble attempts Mac snaps at him to shut up about the dumb survey.
Nobody feels much like talking, anyway.
Without saying a word, they all agree not to bring this up later.
---
They see the filming covered on local news channels, then all over again when the studio fast-tracks the episode to an earlier air date. It goes viral, of course, the whole thing does; Dee gets a subreddit and a niche fetish community, that thing Charlie said about the dragons hits a few t-shirts. But none of it spreads faster than Dennis’s full two minutes of sobbing, whimpering meltdown.
There are memes and remixes by day two. After a week, right before most people get sick of it, no less than four advocacy groups try to adopt Dennis as the victim of an oppressive entertainment system - everything from autism awareness to something about 'misophonia'. It starts the whole discussion up again. Dennis holds a press interview where he denounces them all, insisting he doesn’t belong in the company of ‘freaks and basket cases,' and they quickly backpedal while they condemn his language.
"Forget it," one spokeswoman says. "It was actually pretty goddamn funny."
The real problem is that they'd name-dropped the bar, twice. That was supposedly the reason they'd done this whole stupid thing, to get publicity. Now the place is busy, but there's a lot more staring than ordering. For a few days during rush week, there's a dozen college kids with bad fake ID ordering beers. It's some kind of hazing thing, and they insert buzzer sounds into their drink orders until Dee drags them out in a fit of angry swearing. (One of them makes the mistake of hitting on her. She breaks his wrist.) Dennis spends a lot of time in the back room with “the books”; Mac thinks that means porn until he goes to join him one day and finds him staring at a spot on the wall.
"Uh. You okay, dude?"
"The Easter Bunny."
Mac squints in confusion.
"Shampoo. Tea. Silent movi-"
Mac shuts the door behind him and goes to tend bar.
---
"Hey, bartender, let me get a drink."
Mac stares a hole through him, ignoring the shock on Grant Anderson's face as he realizes. He looks straight past him, dead into the camera, fixed eye contact with whoever dares to watch.
Say something, you son of a bitch, he thinks. Say something else about us. Say it right here in my bar. I dare you.
Mac's angry all the time, out of frustration, snapping out denial or self-defense. This is different. He can't remember the last time anger felt so sharp and ice-cold. He wonders if Dennis feels this way all the time.
---
Dennis rallies, because he always rallies. They always rally. He goes for a spa day and a mani-pedi, and emerges to tend bar with a steely-eyed intensity that makes the others feel itchy. There's nervous laughter hovering at the end of his every sentence.
"Nope, not him. Absolutely not. You must be mistaken."
"You know how I can prove it? Ask me any question. Come on. Come on, buddy, ask me. Right now."
"That is not who I am. Now are you going to order your goddamn beer or what? That is not. Who. I. Am."
Charlie says he guesses it’s fine now; Dennis was always a jerk like this. Mac isn’t sure. He hears him tossing fitfully in the hammock at night. Dee catches him watching one night, and nods with faux-sympathy. “Oh, there’s nothing recovered about that. That is a fallen star, my friend.”
"Don't you think it's gone on too long?"
"Jesus Christ." Dee shakes her head. "You can't tell me he doesn't deserve it."
Frank buzzes at him one day during a round of CharDee MacDennis, trying to throw him off his game. Dennis whirls around nearly too fast to track, his muscles taut, a vein bulging in his neck. His fingers curl and aim straight for Franks’s eyes before Charlie yanks the shorter man away.
Dennis pauses, hands still mid-air, curved in a strangling motion. “That was nothing. Frank should try not being so goddamn irritating. I am absolutely fine. Never been better.”
No one had asked.
---
"You're my brother now, right?"
Mac says it clear out of nowhere, in a nearly empty bar. Dennis doesn't even hear it at first. Mac isn't looking at him, anyway; he mutters the words to an empty bar stool, somewhere down and to the left of where they're both drying shot glasses.
"What do you want?" Dennis asks irritably. He isn't in the mood for this.
"I'm Ronald Reynolds. So you're my brother now. Like we've always been family, but you're my family now for real."
Dennis pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling his skin start to itch. Lately there's this burning just behind his eyes, like something's crawling in him, anxious to hatch. He used to think it'd break free, split his skin and turn him into something new, but more and more he wonders if it'll just claw and thrash until it dies and takes him with it.
"And brothers are supposed to help each other out, so-"
"If you want me to do something for you, just say it."
Mac shakes his head, eyes wide. "No, dude, I just - I think we should be taking care of each other. That's all."
"Mac, I don't even like the real family I'm stuck with. I certainly don't want to add you."
Mac's eyes fall back down to his glass again, focusing hard on buffing out some imaginary smudge. It's quiet for a minute, and Dennis hides a sigh of relief that Mac's dropped the idea because there'd be no end to it, he'd never get a moment's peace -
"Too bad," Mac says under his breath.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. You missed a spot."
---
They tell him it has something to do with a girl, even though he hasn't been in the mood for that in months. Then the girl is also at a Phillies game, giving out free microbrew, and by then he's on to the lie. Charlie has to growl at him like a junkyard mutt before Dennis finally plays along.
Mac and Charlie grew up in the South Philly alleys, but to Dennis they all look the same: winding paths of broken glass and debris, the occasional creepy stray cat. Now and then they go play white trash games at their old stomping grounds, breaking things and setting them on fire, but Dennis is never interested in joining them. He's not a common man, not a common anything, and he sees no need to lower himself. He has his own hobbies. He gets laid, goddamnit.
So he doesn't recognize where they've taken him, just that it's big and smelly and probably crawling with rats. They're not even at the dump, but there's a pile of trash several feet high. He tries to ignore Mac's irritating chirping about how it's time Dennis got some things out of his system. There's nothing he needs to fix - it's fine. He's over it, just like he got over the dating site and the apartment fire and the Range Rover. The divorce. The diagnosis.
Mac slides something over to him, and for a moment Dennis doesn't realize what he's been given; he's wincing too hard at the scraping noise along the gravel. It taps heavily against his shoe and he looks down. Six bottles of beer in one of those cardboard holders with the handle. Mac didn't even have the decency to get a microbrew like he'd lied about, not that he could afford it.
"What is this?" Dennis's voice sounds dull and icy to his own ears.
"Uh, it's beer," Mac says, stumbling over his words. "We thought-"
"You dragged me out here for a beer?"
"Dude, it's enough now, okay?" Charlie has that tone where he's trying to sound official, but you can tell he's echoing a backwards version of someone else's conversation. "I know you're pissed that you didn't guess my answers, or whatever, but this is kind of..."
"Your answers? You think this is about your goddamn answers to that stupid-" Dennis's fingers are flexing dangerously.
"No, but - look, it doesn't matter, because you're being weirder than usual. And Mac kept moping around about it until I thought of getting you out here for this."
"You don't need to buy me a beer, because I keep telling you, we own a goddamn bar." His voice is getting higher, and he's not sure why Mac looks so goddamn happy about that, but it's not helping this creeping irritation he feels.
"He's not explaining it right, it's - it's this thing we used to do. When we were kids." Mac gestures to the cardboard container, forcing a hopeful smile. "Whenever shit got really bad, like really bad and we needed to get it out, we'd pool all our money for a six pack and we'd sit out here and drink them. And then-"
"Oh, good for you." Dennis gives them a few loud, flat claps of his hands. His shoulders feel tight enough to pop out of their joints. "That's very cute. At that age I was sneaking quality liqueurs from my mother's cabinet, but thanks for sharing, I'll be sure to-"
"No, dude, the drinking wasn't the point. The best part was when we smashed them up and raged."
Mac searches Dennis's face, trying to fully catch his eye. His own eyes are wide and earnest as he enthuses. "We'd chug one, like all in one go, and then we'd just break shit. We'd hurl it as high and hard as we could, and the bottle'd break into like a million pieces, dude. We'd knock loose all this junk, scare off raccoons-"
"We set off this car alarm one time just by screaming loud enough. It was the best."
"Are you both out of your goddamn minds?" Dennis snatches up a bottle from the carton. It's still a little slick with cold, and he waves it in the air to punctuate, his voice sharp enough to cut. "You want me running around like a back alley savage because - because what? What are you trying to say?"
He finally meets Mac's gaze. Mac opens his mouth once, twice, before faltering and looking away.
"That's what I thought. I'm fine. I am fine. I'm irritated, I'm furious because a man can't have a bad day without a goddamn camera crew getting involved, but if you're implying that I'm-"
Charlie makes the buzzer sound. It's high and grating; it pierces straight through Dennis like a rusty nail, making his toes curl, and he feels that burning behind his eyes again like it's ready to tear him in half.
Dennis screams and hurls the bottle. It goes wide and misses Charlie easily, smashing against the pavement with the tinkling of broken glass. The sound cuts through him, knocking something loose, and when it falls away some part of Dennis realizes he's still screaming.
He grabs another bottle. Twists the top off this time, lets the alcohol fly out in an arc before hurtling it into the trash pile. Pieces of the heap knock free, falling onto the concrete. It doesn't make the right sound. He takes another bottle and makes sure it goes properly, smashing it right at his feet, listening to it break apart.
It stinks so badly it stings his eyes; they probably haven't mucked this alley out in ages. How many years has it been like this? Impoverished and ugly, likely starting bad and getting worse. He doesn't belong here, but who's going to know if it's just one day?
His eyes are watery now, red around the rims. He picks up another bottle.
"Thank God," he hears Mac saying from somewhere far away.
"Holy shit. I knew it'd work, but are you sure-"
"He needs to remember where he belongs, dude. Works every time."
"Good," Charlie's saying, "because it was a little much, you know?"
"Yeah. Fun psycho is great, but this was getting to be such a drag-"
He screams again, the kind that comes from somewhere in his gut and just blooms out of him. The fourth bottle explodes against the wall. There are cuts on his fingers and a ringing in his ears. 'This doesn't represent-' he tries to think, but he can't cut through the noise to hear the words.
It's the most alive he's felt in weeks.
---
He doesn't really know how much time goes by. It feels like minutes last for hours and a whole afternoon's reduced to a few seconds. All Dennis can tell is that it's dark when he starts to slow down, his limbs sandbag-heavy and his eyes itchy and raw. Mac and Charlie are nowhere to be seen. There's something scuttling under a discarded pizza box, and he really doesn't want to know what it is.
He gets a cab home. Dee asks a dozen nosy questions about where he's been, but he waves them off, heading straight for the bathroom. He's exhausted, almost too much for his nightly routine, but blackheads are unforgiving little monsters and he can't afford to get lax. He splashes some water on his face, washing away smears of mascara and layers of foundation. He's been wearing it thicker than usual lately; he gives himself a mental note to dial it back.
Replacing his container of facial scrub, he pauses, hand hovering in midair. He's too tired to second-guess, reaching for the bottle before doubts catch up to him. He downs two of the diamond-shaped pills with some water from the sink, then puts the medication back, hiding it carefully. Dee knows better than to even glance at the shelf in the cabinet reserved for his things.
Mac's already in his sleeping bag on the floor. Dennis practically falls into the hammock, not bothering to change out of his clothes.
---
Dennis isn't sure when the shift happens. It's the little things, some wavelength inside him that gets adjusted by degrees. But he remembers when he notices: the gang peering down a hole, spouting off theories, debating what they might find. Dennis goads Frank out of habit, more than anything, but he's surprised when the old man looks up with dead seriousness.
"I don't care anything about this hole. I'm passionless." With abrupt certainty, Frank resigns.
And the frustration fades away. He doesn't care today, maybe, but Dennis does. He has a plan for this one, something with a real foundation. Something he can turn into results.
Two days later, Mac's reporting in to him, practically wagging his tail as he explains his terrible strategy. Dennis moves past the flaws in logic, his own irritation. He finds the opening.
"You just told me the infor - you know what, forget it. Good job." He keeps his voice calm and confident. "How about the position of my pawn, how's that sound?"
It clicks into place, then. The rush of power when Mac stands at attention, the thrill of a plan coming together. It's felt like months on end of anxiety, of irritation and explosive rage. He knows where he's standing now. The ground is solid beneath his feet. Noises are softer, colors are just bright enough, and he belongs - well, he belongs on a throne. And he's the only one who's planned enough to get himself there.
"I need you to do something for me," he says, and Mac looks at him like a commoner looks at his king.
Dennis Reynolds smiles. He remembers who he is.