Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mac McDonald has been thinking about Dennis Reynolds for seven years.

Seven years is a long time to go and think about someone who’s not even in his life, not anymore. It’s a long time to think about someone whose phone number he’s lost, someone he hasn’t talked to since forever, it seems.

He supposes it’s shorter than ten years. Or twenty years, even. But it’s a long time, because he remembers him. He remembers Dennis Reynolds.

Mac still remembers Dennis Reynolds on a Saturday night, as he makes his way home a little after five in the morning, throwing his shirt that started becoming more sweat and alcohol than fabric, probably, within the last three or four hours or so. 

His head’s only pounding mildly, and ibuprofen takes fucking centuries to work, anyway, so he settles on a scorching hot shower and throws himself into bed afterwards, energy fizzled out, way past caring about getting his pillow wet. This is a pretty normal night, and he doesn’t think about Dennis Reynolds all the time, or every day, but today, he remembers him, quite clearly, so.

His actual workday ended hours ago, obviously. The concert was two hours long, but Charlie and his girlfriend begged him to go out with them afterwards, to celebrate their five year anniversary, for some God forsaken reason, and he’d never say no to free alcohol after a long evening of technical issues and screaming fans.

Working security really isn’t that bad - just exhausting. The upside was the same as going out with his best friend no matter how tired he was, the alcohol was free, and he’d attended more concerts for free than he cared to count, too, even if he wasn’t exactly keen on listening to Taylor Swift tonight. Still, a good deal is a good deal.

Eleven in the evening on a Saturday evening to five on a Sunday morning. 

It’s been a long day. Yet, Dennis Reynolds scratches out a home in his brain for himself once again, as he lies down and stares at the peeling paint on his ceiling, feeling just numb enough that it feels good, without all the vomiting and other nasty side effects.

He’d like to say he hasn’t thought about him for seven years, because it’s kind of pathetic to admit that. Still, it’s been almost three years since he decided to stop lying to himself, and stopped sleeping with women to support those lies, and stopped, tried to stop feeling so much shame pulse through his veins every time he’d smile back at another man who smiled at him and touched the small of his back, so he figures he shouldn’t be lying about this, either.

He remembers Dennis Reynolds, and he smiles at his ceiling as he does, as blue eyes pop into his memory, eyes belonging to a fourteen year old boy coughing exasperatedly around the first weed he’d ever smoked in his life, and a hand belonging to him, too, that roughly pushed Mac down in the dirt when he dared to laugh at him.

He’d been wondering where he ended up, Dennis Reynolds. Where he is now, what he’s become. He’d been wondering about this for five years, maybe, because Mac’s life certainly isn’t looking like he thought it would look back when he was fourteen.

Stupid. Teenagers are stupid. Or maybe he’s just stupid, like his mother’s always told him.

Mac has been thinking about Dennis Reynolds for seven years, but, for some reason, it’s at twenty-eight years old, at five in the morning in the middle of August, lying in his bed with damp hair and without his evening prayer, that he gets the idea to grab his phone and type that tricky little name into the Google search bar.

He doesn’t bother scrolling through all of the noise, because a Facebook profile is the first link it directs him to, and surely enough, there he is, the blue eyed boy, who is no longer a boy and instead, it’s Dennis Reynolds, twenty-eight years old, staring back at him. 

Well, it was that easy. Maybe it’s another one of those divine signs he’s been waiting for.

Mac’s never used Facebook, so he’s not really sure where to go from here. Always hated it, always will, always found it annoying and superficial and aggravating, no matter how many times Charlie tried to convince him to make an account so they could play that farming game together that his best friend obsessively plays every time they get high.

He tries to scroll a bit further down Dennis’ profile, but he can’t get far before it tells him to create an account to continue, and so he’s stuck with the profile picture, and the tiny box telling him the most valuable information that he’s been wondering about many nights like this one.

Lives in New York, it tells him. When he opens the link of Dennis’ current workplace, it redirects him to the page of an animal shelter, and Mac lets out a sigh he didn’t even realize he was holding back. Relationship status: Single.

Apparently, the stupid website requires him to have an account in order to message him. There’s no phone number visible, no email address, no other social media accounts, nothing. It wouldn’t matter, anyway, he’d refused the likes of Twitter and Instagram and whatever else they’re called, too.

Mac almost lets go of his phone. He almost turns it off and passes out, like he’d planned to do all the way home, and wake up in the afternoon and not think about Dennis Reynolds ever again.

The thing is, there must have been a reason he’s decided to look him up, tonight, of all nights. He decides that must be the case, after all, that this must be the reason why he’s never looked him up before, but now he has, and he feels like, maybe, this is why he’s been thinking about Dennis Reynolds for seven years.

He’s almost too tired to think about it, but Dennis’ blue eyes are still staring back at him, and he doesn’t dare to turn off his phone screen. There’s something turning in his stomach at the thought of abandoning Dennis Reynolds on the screen, leaving him in the darkness, shoving him in a corner and putting him in a box.

He can’t look away. He rakes his eyes over the profile once again; twenty-eight year old Dennis Reynolds in the profile picture, a cigarette hanging from his lips and his tie undone; the abysmally insane high number of “friends”; the most recent post on his timeline, a photo album entirely filled with photos of a gray, fluffy cat.

Relationship status: Single.

Fuck this shit, Mac decides. He hasn’t said his evening prayer or called his mother, like he does every other night, but he turns and stares at the crucifix over his headboard for a while, before he decides it, fuck this shit.

A sign is a sign.

Create account.

Mac McDonald is fourteen years old, sharing a joint with Charlie Kelly under the bleachers, like he’s done it every day of the whole school year. What makes today different is that today, this Friday, this is the first time he meets Dennis Reynolds.

Dennis Reynolds is not the kind of boy to hang out under the bleachers.

He’s rather the kind of boy who grew up with two parents and more money than Mac’s seen or probably will ever see in a lifetime. He’s the kind of boy who dresses in button up shirts and sweaters that look itchy as shit, because he’s got the money for it, and who wrinkles his nose at cafeteria food like it’s personally offended him. 

He’s also the kind of boy who’s just like the others - at least, Mac thought so. He’s the kind of boy who addresses Mac and Charlie as Ronnie the Rat and Dirtgrub, because everyone else does, and who laughs a strained laugh and rolls his eyes at his twin sister and her screechy voice.

Yet, here he is, Dennis Reynolds, underneath the bleachers during lunch break on a seemingly normal Friday. He’s got a look of confusion in his eyes, as if he doesn’t know how he ended up here, or like he’s trying to understand what Mac and Charlie are doing here in the first place. He imagines he must look the same.

Mac doesn’t really give a fuck if Dennis Reynolds wants to stand there and stare at them like a creep, though. He scored good weed today, and so he passes it to Charlie again and carries on telling him about how sick The Matrix is, right until the blue eyed boy decides to march up to them and clear his throat.

“Ronnie,” he says, and Mac looks up at him, taken aback by just how blue this Dennis Reynolds’ eyes are, and how tightly clenched his jaw is, and how his hand is flinching restlessly at his side.

He’s kind of the most nervous-looking person Mac has ever seen. It’s kind of hilarious, but it’s more so just off-putting, how Dennis is here, face set in a frown, making him wonder if this is some elaborate way for Adriano Calvanese to beat them up again. Mac doesn’t really know if he imagines it, either, how sad this boy’s confused eyes look.

“It’s Mac. What do you want?” he asks him, in a half-assed attempt to sound nonchalant and hide his own confusion, “Relax, man.”

“I’m relaxed,” Dennis immediately defends him, his voice snippy as hell, and Mac can’t help but huff, which only seems to annoy the boy even further.

“You’re shaking,” he observes, making the boy hovering over them flex his hand, pull it behind his back, “What do you want, Reynolds?”

Dennis’ mouth forms a thin line, then, and he clears his throat again, looking even more high strung than before. Charlie elbows Mac’s side and passes him the blunt again, and Dennis Reynolds watches the action with some sort of obsessive intensity, eyes following it, glazed over with something Mac’s already too high to figure out.

“You’ve got weed, right?” Dennis asks him, voice cracking, shaking his head at himself. Mac doesn’t even realize that he’s gaping at the boy standing before him, not until his best friend pokes his cheek, demanding the joint back once again.

“You smoke?” he finds himself asking- maybe, gasping, “You, Dennis Reynolds. You smoke?”

The boy immediately goes into defense mode again. “I can smoke.”

“But do you smoke?”

“Just forget it,” Dennis groans, “Stupid. I never should’ve-”

“Dude,” Mac laughs, “Seriously, calm down. Yeah, I got weed. You’re buying?”

The silence passing between them now is even longer than before, but eventually, after his frown twists some more and his hands twitch some more, Dennis hums in response.

Mac nods. He pats the bench next to them, and the boy looks at the seat as if it’s something from outer space, or maybe like it’s a volcano, or something, like somewhere he’d jump straight to his death. 

He sits down, though, either way, and Mac doesn’t bother asking if he’s got the money for it, because he knows he has, and if Dennis realizes that he’s charging him overprice, then he doesn’t mention it. Just sits there, staring at him, watches him roll a new blunt, fixes his hair when Mac points a crooked smile at him and directs his eyes straight to his feet.

He’s weird as hell. He’s shit at smoking, too, he soon finds out, because Monday during lunch, Dennis Reynolds is back again under the bleachers, his back too straight right up until Mac and Charlie convince him to join them with the joint they’re sharing, probably some of the most intense group pressure either of them have ever participated in.

The blue eyed boy has tears in his eyes as he huffs, and Mac can’t help how his stomach hurts laughing at him, and Dennis pushes him off the bench, but he doesn’t really give a shit. He kicks his shin, and Dennis calls him a prick, and Charlie is oddly quiet, and suddenly, Dennis is a part of them.

He’s so fucking weird. Still, he pays well, but eventually, the pay doesn’t really matter. Soon enough, Mac’s giving him weed for free, and Charlie stares at them a lot, and Dennis invites them to his rich kid mansion where his parents are never home and his bed is twice as big and twice as soft as Mac’s has ever been, and Dennis’ sister, Dee, calls them losers, but so is she, and they all already knew it, anyway.

Dennis’ house is really nice, Mac eventually decides. His bed is amazing. His parents are awful, though, and definitely not as cool as Mac’s parents, and on Christmas, the four of them break into the Reynolds’ liquor cabinet and get themselves wasted in the best, high quality stuff, the kind of alcohol that Mac and Charlie would never afford in a lifetime.

Dennis is nice, too. Well, actually, he’s a massive asshole, he’s so easy to annoy, and he says the meanest things, so mean they don’t talk for days, but the thing is, he’s also nice. 

Mac doesn’t think anyone ever really understands that, or him, or them, but Dennis just has a way, an ability to make him feel like he’s the only person in the world, and the only person he can be bothered to look at. Even when they’re angry at each other, he makes him feel the same. 

He’s nice, and he’s so sad.

Dennis Reynolds is so sad, sometimes, Mac feels his entire body retract and twitch with pain. Even when they fight each other, when they yell at each other or when they’re breaking each other’s noses and punching each other’s guts and collecting ice packs for each other’s black eyes afterwards, Dennis is still sad. 

Sometimes, his friend’s anger turns into rage and turns into sadness, and sometimes, he yells at him until he has tears running down his cheeks and until his voice disappears, and until Mac hugs him and it all fades away again.

Sometimes, Dennis Reynolds gets so quiet, bites his tongue, and sometimes his voice gets high pitched and he screams at him for no reason because he doesn’t want to talk about how sad he is.

He really isn’t good at that, talking about what’s on his mind. Then again, Mac’s always been shit at it, too, makes him feel exposed and awful and disgusting. It’s easier with Charlie and his fateful, blunt honesty.

Sometimes, Dennis is so sad, so much so that Mac feels his blood boil with anger. Or maybe it just makes him want to cry, too. Maybe both, or maybe, it makes him want to cry for the both of them, so Dennis won’t have to be sad anymore.

The first time he noticed this, he told himself, all the way, reminded himself to pray for him the next Sunday his mother drove him to church. God would take all his sadness away if he couldn’t, Mac knew that, he’d just have to ask nicely.

Dennis is nice, and he’s also got the softest hair in the entire universe, basically, which he learns on Christmas when the other boy’s head flops into his lap as they can’t stop laughing, and Mac runs his hand through his locks and finds that he never wants to leave this again, this moment.

Dee and Charlie stare at them a lot that night. They do that a lot, actually, and before that, it was just Charlie staring at him, and Mac frowns at him when his best friend pretends like he didn’t.

Especially on days like Christmas Eve. Days like those where they have impromptu sleepovers in Dennis’ bedroom and smoke all the weed they have until their eyes are bloodshot, and Charlie stares at Dennis’ hand on Mac’s thigh and on the nape of his neck, stares at it like it’s a puzzle, or something.

He’s sure it means nothing, though. Him and Charlie cuddle all the time when they’re high, it’s not really gay or anything. And him and Dennis cuddling when they’re not high isn’t gay, either, because, like, that’s just how they work. 

Dennis likes touching everyone, not just Mac. Just mostly Mac, which is fine, too.

He feels lucky. Sometimes, he thinks God might have chosen him for this - chosen Dennis for him to meet, chosen for him to find him, tying them together like two cans on a string. This must be why he feels like he can read the other boy’s thoughts, sometimes, it must be, because sometimes, they don’t even need words.

That’s a miracle, if Mac’s ever seen one. He’s starting to think he might like stumbling upon miracles, if they’re anything like Dennis Reynolds.

Dennis and Dee turn eighteen over the summer, right before they go to college, and after Mac and Charlie help them move into Penn, they’re back in Mrs. Kelly’s basement, lying on her fluffy, centuries old carpet and smoking Mac’s newest batch of weed, laughing so hard he feels like the ceiling might start rattling.

It’s easier than crying. Mac misses Dennis already, which kind of makes him feel sick, because he only just saw him something like four hours ago, still, he wants to puke up Mrs. Kelly’s cookies until there’s only acid left in his throat.

Charlie seems like he’s handling it better. He’s laughing louder, his body’s more relaxed, and he rubs Mac’s shoulder every once in a while, for no other reason than just to be close.

He’s already imagining the gang four years down the line. He’s imagining Dennis coming back home, he’s imagining them here, in Charlie’s mom’s basement, or in Dennis’ room, he’s imagining him lifting his friend into a hug until he can barely breathe anymore. 

Mac’s imagining his blue eyes and wondering if God knows that He can never, ever make anything more beautiful than that. It’s crazy.

He’s imagining the three of them being best friends for all time. Maybe they’ll buy a bowling alley, or a bar, or something, maybe they’ll be business owners, score a shit ton of cash and set them for life. They could rob Frank, he muses, spend all their life savings on weed and energy drinks and prostitutes. It’ll be a sweet life, he decides.

Dee can be there, too, he supposes. If they’re going to be business owners, they’ll need a secretary, and Charlie and her can be weird together and stare at Mac and Dennis together if they want for all time, too, who cares.

“When Dee comes back from Penn, I’m going to marry her,” Charlie suddenly tells him, and Mac sputters around his beer.

“What?!” he laughs incredulously, “Why?”

“I don’t know,” his best friend shrugs, a lazy smile painting his features, saying it like it’s the easiest thing in the world, “She’s really funny and I like her. I don’t know. Does there have to be a reason?”

“Yes, Charlie!” Mac exclaims, “Marriage is serious business, man, it’s under the eyes of God! Why’d you ever want to marry her, anyway? Dee’s ugly and annoying.”

His best friend snorts and frowns at him in disagreement. “Dennis is ugly and annoying.”

“So what?” Mac disputes, resorting to that as opposed to defending his absent friend’s honor, because, honestly, explaining how Dennis is by far the prettiest a boy could ever be could take literal years, he thinks, “I’m not marrying him.”

Weirdly enough, Charlie rolls his eyes. “Sure you aren’t.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” the boy quickly mutters in response, “Drink your beer, dude.”

Mac wants to retaliate, although he has no idea what to say, so instead, he just pouts and stares at his best friend, swallowing the rest of his beer in one swig when his temples start to throb again.

“Stop staring at me,” Charlie quips, and he pushes him half-heartedly, but his best friend responds by turning and leaning his head on his stomach instead, and Mac doesn’t really mind it.

“You’re one to talk about staring,” he muses, “And being cryptic.”

“I’m not cryptic,” the boy insists, “You’re weird.”

“You’re weird.”

“Okay, weirdo,” Charlie laughs. Mac laughs, too, and so, maybe, he can forget about missing Dennis just for a little while.

It’s only three days later that Dennis Reynolds calls him from his dorm room, three days later that the two of them start calling each other every week, the exact same day and time, burning three, four, five hours on phone calls talking about everything and nothing. 

He still misses him a lot, though. Sometimes, he dreams about him, until, eventually, he dreams about him every day. He’s sure that means nothing, or just not that much.

One night, in the first week of December, Mac wakes up with water in his eyes that he can’t tell if it’s sweat or tears or both, but he can tell that he’s shaking, that his mouth is dry and warm and he touches his lips, tentatively, feeling like he’s choking.

That’s the first time he’s ever dreamt of Dennis kissing him. Or Mac kissing Dennis, he doesn’t really remember who does what, but he remembers the feeling, and he knows that he’s in his bed, shaking so much that his legs are cramping and his jaw hurts, and he’s never, ever gotten dressed so fast in his life.

It’s six in the morning when he finally reaches the church on foot. He finds the gates locked, though, so Mac McDonald sits on the steps until the priest arrives at eight, and he hugs himself while the sun rises, hoping he’s whispered enough prayers for this to be forgiven.

He tells himself it means nothing, too.

When Mac lies in Dennis’ dorm room bed at twenty-one years old, it’s not the first time his friend holds his hand. They used to hold hands all the fucking time, right up until Mac dreamt about Dennis kissing him at eighteen, and then, well, then he’s been trying not to think about it.

He’s been trying to think about God, instead. Searing pain. His punishment for being like this, for thinking these thoughts that couldn’t be anything but dangerous and evil and painful, because every time he did, he remembered being ordered to confess, confess, confess, his bruised knees, his father’s bruised fist colliding with his bruised face.

He remembered everything.

He’s been trying not to think about Dennis, but Dennis Reynolds has this habit of invading his mind more often than God, more than Hell, more often than his father, more often than his mother. 

More often than any of those girls Dennis pointed out to him in high school and rated on how good of a bang they would be. Mac doesn’t really remember any of their faces, anyway. He remembers Dennis’, though.

He’s been trying not to think about Dennis, yet, here he is, twenty-one years old, visiting his best friend over Christmas, using the last of his weed supply, holding hands. 

Mac wonders if the other boy even realises he’s doing it, and when he grabbed his hand, and why their fingers seem to fit so perfectly into each other that he kind of just forgets their hands aren’t just one and the same. He wonders if God made them that way, but he remembers his father and blood gushing from his broken nose and the pain that still throbs in his jaw every so often, and remembers, no, he can’t have made them that way.

He remembers God creating man in his image, and Mac has no idea what it means in this moment, in this second, as he lies in Dennis’ bed, feels Dennis’ hand in his, feels Dennis’ breath on his cheek.

He turns to look at his best friend, then. He’s staring back at him. Waiting for something. Whatever it is, Mac wishes he knew, wishes he’d understand, so he could give it to him.

Whatever it is, Mac looks back at the blue eyed boy and knows he could ask him to get on his knees like he does back in confession when he prays and pleads for his sins to be washed away, and he’d do it. 

Whatever it is, Dennis could absolve it. Whatever it is, Dennis could get whatever he wanted, he thinks. Maybe Mac doesn’t need it to be salvation, anyway. Maybe he just needs it to be Dennis. 

Maybe that idea absolutely terrifies him so deeply his chest grows tight and his bones feel hollow and his blood turns to ice. Or, maybe, he’s just confused, and he’ll shake his head and get over this. Maybe he’ll pray as soon as he gets home again, maybe he’ll have to. Maybe.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” Dennis asks, and Mac frowns as the room spins around them, and Charlie’s coughing and talking about something with a horse with two heads, or something. Dennis Reynolds, on the other hand, is as clear as day in front of him.

“What?” he hears his own voice come out, in a mumble, in an uncertainty he can feel eating away at his heart. Eating away at him, like bugs crawling and tearing up his insides, like animals feasting on his still living and breathing corpse, turning him hollow. 

He feels his desire there, feels it like a disease, like a curse made to be broken. His desire, all piled up in there with them, turning soft and mushy and rotten.

“Do you think I’m pretty?” his best friend asks again, sounding impatient, “You know, how like- Like Maureen. Or like Tim Murphy, or-”

Dennis stops himself. Swallows his spit or swallows his words. 

He groans at nothing, it seems, rubbing his free hand over his face, cheeks flushed a shade of red that he’ll deny till the end of the universe and that Mac will probably pretend like he didn’t notice, anyway. His friend gives the blunt back to him and squeezes his hand while he does, not pulling away despite how sweaty their palms have been for hours now.

“Forget it.”

“Dude,” Mac says, “You’re, like, the prettiest guy I know. And way prettier than Maureen.”

When Dennis looks at him again, he suddenly feels like he’s said exactly the right thing, entirely the wrong thing, all at the same time. The blue eyed boy just looks at him, and looks at their hands, curiously, just like he did that first day they met under the bleachers, wondering how they’d ever ended up like this.

“Really?” his friend asks, voice cracking. Mac would laugh at him if he wasn’t high as shit, or maybe if Dennis wasn’t looking at him with that confused face of his, too pretty and too painfully strained for Mac to understand that he was real.

“She’s ugly,” he argues, and his friend rolls his eyes at him, like he always does.

“You’re just saying that because-”

“I’m not a liar,” he huffs, and Dennis bites his lip and swallows again, squeezing his hand again. And he moves closer to him, moves further up the bed until he hits the headboard and looks back at him, still, refuses the joint in order to run his free hand through Mac’s hair, instead. Mac doesn’t understand how any of this is real, either.

“I know,” the boy says.

“Good.”

“You’ve never lied about anything?” Dennis surprisingly asks, sounding horribly skeptical, “Nothing?”

It’s the kind of question Mac can’t answer, because he doesn't know what the right answer is; not with his best friend’s hand in his hair, and smoke in his lungs, and the unmistakable sinful feeling of want burning a hole through his chest. 

He remembers the same feeling enveloping him every time he lies at church, to the priest’s face, to his father’s face within prison walls or within the walls of his house, how everything, sometimes, all blends into one. He remembers the same sour feeling of hope and the sweet feeling of relief, all fueled by the same lie.

He doesn’t know the right answer, not with every prayer he’d ever spoken on Dennis’ behalf still lying heavy in his mouth. Not with the way his heart pounds in his ears and the way he holds his breath every time he stands up in church and every time he sits down and every time he leaves and every time he returns. Not with the way his father and mother look at him, like they can see the disease inside him gnawing at the flesh of his heart, like they know that Dennis was the one who put it there. 

Or maybe it was God. Or maybe it was them. Or maybe it was himself, maybe, it was all Mac. Maybe no one would ever feel like this, if Mac McDonald hadn’t been born with shame in his organs and guilt in his bloodstream.

He doesn’t know the right answer, not with his bruised knees still burning and the absence of his rosary burning in his pocket. Not with Dennis Reynolds, blue eyes burning into him.

Not when he opens his mouth and thinks about how he should be praying for something else, but he can’t remember any prayers this minute, not one that doesn’t involve looking up at this man and thinking that the world, the earth and the trees and the birds and the moonlight, that all of that could never exist without Dennis Reynolds being there to see it.

Maybe he should remember to feel this sensation again, to feel this way about God again. Maybe he should. Tomorrow.

Maybe he should answer his friend’s question with a lie, because maybe then, God would spare him for looking up and wondering how he’d ever worshipped a God that wasn’t twenty-one year old Dennis Reynolds, the blue-eyed boy he’d sold weed to at fourteen years old, the boy he’d thought about more often inside the confessional than he’d ever thought of Jesus or any of his prophets.

“What would I need to lie about?” Mac ultimately asks, his voice becoming strangled and twisted inside his throat, trying a laugh that comes out more awkward than it ever was casual or cool.

Dennis shrugs. He runs his hand through Mac’s hair again, nails lightly grazing his scalp, fingers tangled there, like he’s doing it without even thinking. 

“I don’t know,” his friend replies.

“What do you lie about?” Mac inquires, because it’s still eating away at him behind his skin, still has his insides crawling with shame. 

Still has him looking back at Dennis and wondering if there was ever anything as sweet as when this man smiled at him or yelled at him or hugged him or punched him to the ground. It all suddenly feels the same, feels like the same burning, the same sickening warmth, the same searing flames.

His friend shrugs again. Despite his question, Mac suddenly feels like the boy can see all the lies built up inside him, built up like a fortress.

“I don’t know,” he says again. His voice is higher now, lighter, squeakier. Dennis always does that when he lies, although it did take Mac two years to put that together.

He briefly wonders if this is some sort of game. If Dennis is challenging him, or testing him, like a God would do. Either way, he has no clue how to win this, whatever it is. 

Maybe his best friend just wants to see if he’ll break, the same way God does, and his parents, and that disease that courses through his veins, the one which he’ll only give a name years later, the curse that would never be able to be broken, anyway.

Maybe he’s already been broken. Mac doesn’t understand how.

“Stupid things,” Dennis continues, shrugging again, like it doesn’t matter at all, “Do you really think I’m pretty?”

“Yeah, man,” Mac mumbles, the word feeling inconceivably heavy all of a sudden, “Don’t argue with me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” he insists.

“You are,” Dennis repeats, and this is the kind of moment and kind of time where one of them would get angry and the other would follow, where Mac would break and Dennis would snap, which is something like harmony, to him. 

This feels better, though, a silence resting in the burning in his chest and beneath his best friend’s fingers still laced in his hair. In a stupid question that Dennis asked him and Mac avoided answering, because there’s something the boy isn’t telling him and he has no idea why. 

It’s still true, though, that Dennis had always been prettier than any of the girls Mac had ever seen. Mac wonders why his friend never seems to believe him.

“What about me?”

Charlie’s voice suddenly travels from the floor and to his ears, and seconds later, their best friend flops down on the bed right in between him and Dennis, bursting the bubble, dulling the flame in his chest to a quiet ache, instead.

Whatever was burning and simmering and confusing him in the air is gone now. Mac hates admitting that he forgot Charlie was still in his room, and Dennis looks mildly annoyed, but the boy in the middle of them looks towards him with the most serious expression on his face.

“What are you talking about?” Mac asks him, clearing his throat awkwardly, wishing the ache would go away. Dennis’ hand is still in his hair.

“You said Dennis was the prettiest guy you know,” his best friend interrogated him, “Can’t I be pretty, too?”

Mac coughs on his breath, sputtering, only now realising that Charlie probably heard every word they said. Dennis’ hand is still in his hair. Maybe it’s okay to pretend like he doesn’t notice it. Maybe it’s okay to tell himself it belongs there, for now.

“Yeah, Charlie,” he says, chuckling, not quite sure if he’s doing it in shock or relief or in pretense of faking something, faking that he’s not confused as shit, faking that he hasn’t been having confusing days and confusing nights and has neglected prayers for three days and the painstaking embarrassment that follows this, “You’re pretty, too.”

Charlie’s face breaks into a grin, and he doesn’t mention Dennis’ hand in Mac’s hair, so maybe it’s all okay. Even though Dennis looks back at him with nervous blue eyes and a nervous frown, it’s all okay.

“Cool,” his friend says, snatching the blunt out of his hand, and Mac can’t help but laugh so hard the room starts spinning again. Dennis laughs, too. So, maybe, it’s okay.

Mac is sitting at a table inside Paddy’s Pub, sweating his ass off under the air conditioning that’s been broken for probably longer than he’s been alive, when his phone buzzes in his back pocket.

He’s been nursing his third beer for the good part of an hour now, watching his best friend in the middle of the bar, who was already blasted when they met up three hours ago, making his own dance floor with dance moves he doesn’t think anyone except Charlie could’ve ever come up with. 

The other man had been begging him to join for half an hour, too, but Mac’s tired, the month of August being filled with jobs at concerts where he barely knows half the names performing. Maybe he’s also a little deflated, because it’s been two weeks since he sent a Facebook message to Dennis Reynolds and has yet to receive any response, but he’s a little too proud to admit that, tonight.

Soon enough, though, Mac unlocks his phone screen and feels his stomach drop, entirely in a good way, if that’s even possible.

Soon enough, reads some tiny words on a screen and remembers dreams of blue eyes and warm lips, and he remembers a dorm room and soft fingers in his hair and a hesitant voice. He remembers tears and sore voices and yelling, yelling, yelling, in school yards and at home and in the Reynolds’ backyard. He remembers everything.

Four new messages, his phone screen tells him.

Mac wonders, briefly, if this is actually real, or if it’s another dream his subconscious has provided him and his restless mind. He’s almost certain it can’t be real, yet, here it is, right in front of him, with his high school best friend’s tiny profile picture in the corner to prove it.

My Mac, Dennis Reynolds’ message says. Mac remembers this feeling, too, that burning flame tearing at the inside of his chest, knows it intimately from under the bleachers and from the halls of Penn and from the pews of his family church. 

The only difference today is that he now has a name for it. Desire, or want, or a curse, or disease. Today, he’d rather call it something like longing.

I can’t believe it’s you, the next message reads. I’ve been looking for you for a year. I couldn’t find you on Facebook or anywhere, the third message continues.

Maybe it’s not longing in there, inside his chest, inside his heart and beneath his bones, maybe it’s something entirely different. Maybe it beats too fast and claws too hard at his mind, too powerful for longing to be strong enough of a word for it.

Dennis Reynolds has been looking for Mac McDonald for a year. Mac McDonald has been thinking about Dennis Reynolds for seven years.

And there he is, strangely enough. Right there, in the palm of his hand.

Ronnie you son of a bitch, the fourth message finished the string off, and Mac just can’t help it. He grins, he laughs, so hard his stomach starts to hurt, and it’s nothing like anytime he’s been on his knees inside the confessional, begging, pleading for an answer and a cure he was never, ever going to get.

“What are you so happy about?” a voice interrupts his jumbled thoughts to himself, and he looks up to Charlie’s girlfriend sitting in front of him, the on-and-off girlfriend for give or take five years that he, honest to God, cross his heart, doesn’t remember the name of, and still wouldn’t even if she had a gun to his head.

“Just something on Facebook,” he tells her, attempting to sound casual about it and not nervous or entirely wrecked, and most likely failing miserably at it.

The woman scoffs, like he just said the craziest thing she’s ever heard. 

“Since when are you on Facebook?” she asks, and Mac is far too confused and far too gone into his mind’s recollection of Dennis on his phone screen to answer that, so she fills in the gap for him.

“Charlie always complains about it,” she sighs, sounding as tired as he feels, “That you’re not online.”

Mac hums, because that’s true, because the amount of shit Charlie gives him for it is insane.

Truthfully, Mac isn’t against being online like he is against Facebook as a concept, isn’t against wasting his time with it, anyway, even though he never understands any of the lawyer memes that his best friend is always eager to show him. 

It just hasn’t appealed to him, either. Not until now.

“Yeah,” he agrees, thumbs hovering over his keyboard, tasting every word on his tongue but suddenly having no idea which ones to combine, “I’m not.”

The woman lifts one eyebrow, her expression unreadable.

“But you’re on Facebook now,” she says, a statement rather than a question, and Mac’s getting impatient, because he’d really just like to reply to Dennis instead of being fucking interrogated for having a Facebook account now, “How come?”

“What’s wrong with that?” he shoots back, and she shrugs, snatching the beer in front of him and downing the remains of it in one gulp. Mac didn’t really want it, anyway, he supposes, not with Dennis Reynolds waiting for him on the phone screen.

“Nothing.”

“This is none of your business,” he huffs.

“Never said it was,” she replies, suddenly looking way too smug for his liking, “What, you have a secret boyfriend, or something? You can tell me.”

Mac laughs incredulously. Dennis isn’t his boyfriend. That would be ridiculous.

Mostly, it would be logistically impossible, but also just impossible, because, well, Dennis doesn’t feel that way about him. 

Then again, what way is that? The longing way?

Mac doesn’t even know if Dennis is gay, or bisexual, either. He’s probably, definitely straight, though, so, like, no way anything’s ever going to happen. Does he want something to happen?

He shakes his head at himself. The alcohol’s getting to him, and his tired muscles, and Dennis’ words lighting up his face. He needs to stop overthinking this.

“I don’t have a secret-”

“Secret?” Charlie suddenly intervenes, plopping down next to his girlfriend with a lazy smile, struggling to catch his breath, “I know you’re gay, dude, you don’t have to come out to me again. And I knew before, anyway, like-”

“Charlie!” Mac says, rubbing a hand over his face in exhaustion, because, obviously, objectively, he loves this boy. This boy, who’s more like a brother than anyone he’s ever been related to by blood, maybe with the exception of his older cousin, who he only got to spend three months with before the accident.

He’s still impatient, though, his leg’s shaking uneasily and his friends are clearly seeing it as well, so Mac returns his best friend’s smile and tries not to sound normal about this whole thing, because it’s really okay, it’s fine.

It’s just Dennis, he tells himself. It’s just Dennis Reynolds, who’s been looking for him for a year, and who has been on his mind for seven of them. That had to be a sign of some sort, too, even though he hasn’t exactly been looking for signs in a long time. Maybe he’ll have to relearn that old habit of his.

“I know, man,” Mac reassures, “I’m not, like, going back in the closet or anything. Promise.”

Charlie smiles back, a little more eager and only just a bit worried, but he trusts him, anyway. “Okay.”

“Mac’s on Facebook now,” the woman tells him, and Charlie’s eyes widen about three sizes.

“Dude?!” he yells, “Seriously?”

Mac laughs again, fondly and tired and still impatient. He wonders what Dennis might be doing as they’re sat here, inside Paddy’s Pub, the ghost of his memory lingering at the back of his mind.

“Seriously.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, man?” his best friend continues, sounding tragically disappointed and terribly grumpy, “We could’ve been playing FarmVille.”

“I’ve only had it for two weeks, Charlie,” Mac tells him, “It’s a new thing.”

His best friend softens again, begrudgingly so. “Still,” he mumbles, leaning over to steal his girlfriend’s drink, but she’s faster than him and also definitely less drunk than him, so it’s a fruitless attempt, after all, “I thought you hated all that stuff.”

“I do,” Mac says honestly.

“Then why now?” his friend asks, genuinely curious.

“Yeah, why?” the woman echoes, less curious, just nosy. Fuck.

Mac sighs. Might as well tell them the truth, as suddenly embarrassed as he’s become. It only took him two days without an answer to regret sending his message at all, so two weeks of waiting was practically torture, and now, coming up with a reply for Dennis is even worse than that.

“You remember Dennis, right?”

His best friend furrows his brows and nods. “Of course. And Dee.”

Mac rolls his eyes, not really caring to talk about Dennis’ twin sister right now, but nods anyway. “Yeah, well, see, I just,” he tries, not sure how to explain his illogical, random decision, “I was drunk one night and decided to look him up. I was curious, I guess. And I found him on Facebook, and then…”

“Oh, dude!” Charlie exclaims in a gleeful laugh, “You wrote to him?”

“Yeah-”

“Shit, man! Is he, like, a celebrity now?” his best friend continues, “Wait, no, he’s a banker or something. No, he’s a crime lord. Did he say anything about Dee?”

“No, I-” Mac stops himself, trying to stop his head from spinning and his eyes from drooping and his hands from shaking, from closing the page and maybe throwing his phone against the wall so he could avoid this excruciating waiting game, “I just sent him one message, bro. He didn’t mention her.”

“What did he say, then?” Charlie asks, his turn to be impatient, and his girlfriend tilted her head in agreement.

“He, uhm-” Mac licks his lips, contemplates Dennis’ words again, tastes them on his tongue, “He said he’s been looking for me for a year.”

The woman whistles. “Romantic.”

“Shut up,” Mac grumbles. Neither of their reactions faze Charlie at all.

“That’s wild, man,” he laughs again, “You’re gonna talk to him? Like, in person? Or a phone call?”

Mac shrugs, because that’s all he can get himself to do, right now. He can’t even type a response. He wishes God would guide him on this, but, for now, this is all him on his own. He isn’t aware of a prayer made for situations like this, anyway.

“Maybe,” he decides, “I haven’t answered him yet.”

“Oh, do it, do it!” his best friend tells him eagerly, “And ask about Dee!”

Only about ten minutes go by before Charlie’s happily passed out on his girlfriend’s shoulder, and only God knows how much he’ll remember from tonight, but regardless, Mac looks down on his phone once again, possibly even more anxious than before, but sighs and figures, well, there’s no going back now.

Dennis Reynolds has been looking for him for a year. Whatever he says has to be good. It probably isn’t, but he can feel the woman across from him bore her eyes into his skull as she tries to peek on the screen he’s desperately trying to cover from her, so it’s now or never.

It’s me, he finally replies. He frowns at himself, and the lamest response he could possibly give, but a new message suddenly pops up before he can come up with something better.

Do you have Skype? Dennis asks, followed immediately by, I want to talk to you. Face to face.

Mac honestly has no fucking idea what Skype is, but he figures Google can give him an answer to that pretty fast.

I’d like that.

Maybe, possibly, his chest hasn’t stopped that burning, lingering feeling since, but he tries not to overthink that too much, either. He’s chewing on his bottom lip as he glances back at Charlie’s sleeping form, holding the phone in his hand like it contains the secrets of the universe. He’ll ask about Dee later.

Mac takes an embarrassingly long time to figure out how this Skype thing works, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s only one night later that he’s sitting at his laptop that’s been holding itself together for longer than he actually expected it to, staring at himself in the webcam and wondering if he looks anything like Dennis remembers him at all.

He’s changed a lot; he’s stronger now, bulkier, but he supposes a lot of that change in himself has a lot to do with his feelings as opposed to his physique. 

He probably wouldn’t even recognize his own teenage self anymore. At least, he doesn’t think so. He gets hit with a pungent sadness when he thinks about it too much, that version of himself, except when he’s with Dennis. With Dennis, he doesn’t really know.

His best friend’s picture pops up on the screen, telling him that he’s calling him, and Mac anxiously makes a last minute decision to change to a different t-shirt and musses up his hair until the little gel he still had left in there has entirely vanished.

Stupid. He doesn’t know what he’s doing or thinking or feeling. Dennis did always like his hair like this, though.

He finally connects to the call, taking a deep breath that rather makes him feel like he’s suffocating more than anything else. Then, suddenly, there he is.

Dennis Reynolds is sitting there, inside his screen, checking his own hair in the camera and smiling nervously back to him. There’s those blue eyes, the ones that have been haunting his dreams for as long as he can remember.

Mac laughs. He doesn’t know why. He just feels like he must be doing something right, after all, if he gets to sit like this again, in Dennis’ presence, as close as he can get now, anyway.

He suddenly feels so light that he could soar, and he wonders if this is what it’s supposed to feel like when you’re blessed, when you’re cleansed of your sins, for good and for all time. He’d never felt that way before. Here, there’s no shame, like there was back at the church. 

Mac doesn’t know exactly what that means, either. Dennis laughs, too.

“Woah,” he finds himself saying, and his best friend nods, a low sigh sounding through the speakers, almost making Mac shiver.

“Woah,” Dennis echoes, “It’s you.”

Mac bites the inside of his cheek, just to stop himself from grinning so hard, laughing so hard, as he wants, feeling like his face might split into a million pieces if he did. 

“It’s you.”

Dennis nods again. “I remember you.”

He sounds a lot more shy than he used to, Mac thinks. Then again, it’s been a while since they were those teenagers, with blood under their nails and hungry, horrible words in their mouths. 

Mac feels a fear run up his neck and under his skin, entirely out of his control. Maybe he hasn’t changed at all. Maybe Dennis has changed too much.

But he’s dressed fairly the same, button up and blue vest that looks scratchy as shit, and he frowns at himself in the camera, like he always used to do inside their school bathrooms. His Dennis Reynolds, Mac thinks.

“It hasn’t been that long,” he tells him jokingly, “I would hope you did.”

“It’s been seven years,” the other man replies, “You’ve changed.”

Mac knows it’s been seven years. Of course, he knows why, but since Dennis isn’t addressing their little elephant in the room, Mac won’t, either. 

And honestly, he couldn’t give two shits about it right now, not with blue eyes and a toothy grin lighting up his screen, and Mac sighs against himself. He hasn’t prayed in a while, not purposefully, but rather just a product of his bad memory. Tonight, he thinks, he might have to throw a thank you God’s way.

He looks down at himself, swallowing over the lump in his throat and his own fears of the past. “Bad change?”

“No, never,” Dennis says immediately, “You look good, man.”

“Do I look too different?” Mac can’t help but ask.

“What?” the other man laughs, sounding confused.

He shrugs. “I was afraid you wouldn’t recognize me,” Mac says, “That I’m not the same anymore.”

Dennis bites his lip in contemplation.

“You’re not the same,” he agrees, and Mac agrees, and he never thought it was a bad thing, but now, just for a second, he doubts everything in the entire world except, well, this, “But you’re still my Mac.”

He likes that a lot, he quickly decides. He also likes how Dennis is looking at him, like they’ve barely been away from each other a day, an hour, a minute.

“You’re still my Dennis,” Mac finds the courage to say, “You look good.”

“Yeah?” the man asks, sounding nervous and unsure again. Mac hums.

“You always do. I mean, did,” he explains, “And you do.”

Dennis laughs and shakes his head. Mac doesn’t care. It’s as true as he says it, even if his friend might not believe it.

The silence that falls over them isn’t awkward at all. It just feels like memories, like melancholia and hope and fear and longing, all at the same time. It feels something like home.

“I couldn’t find you on Facebook until now,” Dennis recalls, “Or anywhere.”

“I didn’t have Facebook until now,” Mac admits, “Or anything.”

“Woah,” the man says again, “And I, uh- I didn’t have your number. So…”

“Yeah,” Mac replies. Dennis nods. A silent agreement there, and as far as they’ll probably take that particular trip down memory lane.

He clears his throat before speaking up again. “So,” Mac starts, “You’re a New Yorker, now.”

His friend scoffs. “Kind of, not really,” he answers, “I’ve been working here for a while.”

“What does a while mean?”

“Three years.”

“Dude,” Mac says, feeling some childish pulling at his chest return to him, “That’s more than a while.”

“A while can mean a lot of things, Mac.”

“In Dennis Reynolds’ world, yeah, it can,” he retorts, playfully rolling his eyes, making Dennis laugh again. He decides, once more, like he did at fourteen, that it might be the sweetest sound he’s ever heard.

His friend lets out a particularly heavy breath, then, sounding like he’s battling against himself to what he says next. Maybe he is.

“I miss Philadelphia,” Dennis tells him, “New York is different.”

“Bad different?”

“I don’t know,” the man admits, “Maybe not. I don’t know.”

Mac nods. He doesn’t get it, because he’s never set his foot outside of Pennsylvania, but it doesn’t matter. Somehow, he gets it, anyway.

“You’re a veterinarian, right?” he asks, shaking his head with another laugh, “That was your dream, man, I mean, you made it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dennis shrugs his words off, “It’s nice. It keeps me busy, keeps me out of my head. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”

“Who cares?” Mac decides, “Makes sense to me.”

His friend chuckles, just like he did at eighteen, suddenly. Mac remembers that dream of his again, the one where Dennis kissed him. He kind of still looks like he did in the dream, he thinks. He looks perfectly beautiful. Perfectly the same.

“What about you, then?” the man asks, “You’re still in Philadelphia?”

Mac hums, because where else would he be, but he doesn’t say that thought out loud. “Need to take care of my mom,” he says, “And my dad’s in prison again, so, you know.”

Dennis nods. He knows.

He’s probably biting his tongue, too. He used to be blunt about this particular subject, used to say exactly how he felt about Mac’s father, no matter that Mac would nearly choke him out or punch him to the ground and kick him in the shins every time he did.

He’d be a lot less defensive, now. He doesn’t really care. Or maybe he does. It’s complicated. He knows Dennis was right, though, right about Luther and about Barbara Reynolds, too, whom his best friend shed a total of two tears for when she died while he was at college and then forgot all about, like she never existed in the first place. Dee didn’t cry at all. 

He wishes he could be like them now, he realises. He wishes it could be easy for him to do that. It isn’t. He wonders if it’s as easy for them as it looked.

Mac coughs awkwardly, not really wanting to think about his dad or God anymore, not when he’s in the presence of someone much better. “And Charlie and I moved in together.”

Dennis smiles again. “We always talked about moving in together, the three of us.”

“Yeah,” Mac says wistfully, “He’s in law school, now.”

“Shit,” the man exclaims, grin spreading wider, “He’s doing it.”

“He’s doing it,” he replies, equally proud.

“You know, Dee’s acting,” Dennis tells him, “Just like she wanted.”

Mac whistles. “She’s doing it, huh?”

“Yeah,” he replies, “I’ve been running so many lines with her.”

“She’s not doing those comedy clubs anymore?”

“Nope,” the man says, “Theater, mostly.”

Mac nods again. Just like she wanted. He almost wants to laugh again, at the insanity of it all. They’re still real, Dennis and Dee. In those past seven years, he’d almost become unsure if they ever existed in the first place.

“Just like she wanted,” Mac echoes.

“And you…?” his friend asks

“I’m working security, right now,” he shrugs, “Concerts.”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad gig,” Dennis muses, “Free concerts.”

“And free drinks.”

“Not bad, Ronnie,” his friend sighs again, “Not bad at all.”

Mac wishes they could sit like this, talk like this, forever and ever for all time. They talk until late into the night. Close enough.

Mac and Dennis develop a habit of talking every week. Then, every three days. Then, every day. Skype has been taking up more screen time than anything he’s ever used before.

They usually talk way past midnight, too, sometimes into the early mornings, which fits with Mac’s weird schedule, but certainly not with Dennis’. It’s weird.

“We can talk in the daytime, you know,” Mac suddenly tells him one night, past 3 AM, “Why do you stay up all night with me?”

“Because I want to talk to you,” his friend says, like it’s the easiest, simplest thing in the world.

Mac has no idea what to say to that. He knows that the burning in his chest has turned into a fucking forest fire, recently.

“Okay,” he decides, “I want to talk to you, too.”

“Good,” Dennis smiles, “I missed you.”

“I missed you.”

“Stop repeating what I say, asshole,” the other man laughs, because he’s still kind of like that, kind of a shithead, and Mac loves it, because he’s still his Dennis Reynolds, and it feels like yet another miracle created for him and him alone.

“I just know you too well,” he reasons.

“You do, huh?”

“Yeah,” he nods proudly, “I can predict you. Read you.”

Dennis whistles. “Still my Mac.”

“You’re saying that like it’s a bad thing,” Mac teases, and his friend groans lowly.

“I told you, man,” he reminds him, “That can only ever be a good thing.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“It is to me.”

“Okay,” Mac says again, “I guess I’ve just changed a lot. There’s a lot I didn’t like about myself that I like now. I’ve changed.”

“You’re my Mac through it all,” Dennis says, as if he’s reciting a poem, like he’s telling the greatest story since sliced bread, to an adoring, tearful crowd, “Even though you’re not completely how I remember, you still… you still are. I think that’s good.”

“So be it,” Mac chuckles, “Have you eaten dinner, though?”

“No,” Dennis answers. Mac sighs.

“It’s the middle of the night, dude. Let’s stop now, so you can eat,” he decides, “We’ll talk tomorrow, anyway.”

His friend looks like he wants to protest, but he doesn’t. He checks himself in the camera again and then rubs his eyes, and when Mac can’t hold his yawn inside any longer, Dennis immediately follows with his own. They laugh at each other again, just like they used to.

“Alright,” Dennis agrees.

“Alright.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Dennis,” he says. He doesn’t think Dennis has ever looked happier than he does right now, on his screen, but he might be making it up.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Mac.”

Dennis starts getting busy. Sometimes he is, sometimes he isn’t. Mac just is like he always has been lately, just Mac. He can’t say he isn’t disappointed that they can’t always talk every day, but it’s okay, really, it’s okay.

“You guys talk every day?” Charlie asks, half in disbelief, half in awe, “That’s impressive, man. Is he the same?”

“Yes,” Mac answers confidently.

He’s lying in his childhood friend’s lap, on their shared apartment’s floor, higher than they have been in fucking ages, Charlie’s arms around him like they’re on a parachute, desperately, hopefully waiting to touch the ground.

“No,” he changes his mind.

“That makes no sense,” his friend replies.

“You make no sense,” Mac scoffs, and Charlie slaps his arm half-heartedly, passes him the blunt and rests his chin on his shoulder.

“Fuck you,” he says, “You asked him about Dee, right?”

“Yeah,” Mac lies, “She’s an actress, now.”

He can feel Charlie’s grin widen against his clothed skin. “Sweet Dee made it,” he sighs, sounding wistful, “I knew she could. I always knew that, you remember, right?”

Mac nods, finds himself giggling like a fucking idiot, because he’s thinking about Dennis, his blue eyes and his curls and the way he bites his lip when he’s nervous. 

He’s thinking about how he’s started dreaming about Dennis kissing him again, and how he declined a guy at the Rainbow two nights ago, who was exactly his type, because the dream was still playing on repeat in his mind. He’s thinking about how he's started praying again, too. It feels good, for the first time in his life.

“I remember.”

Mac’s barely sleeping anymore, and work is bullshit, and Dennis somehow seems further away than ever. They’re talking often again, but his friend has started working more, and Mac doesn’t know what to do.

He’s proud of him, obviously. He’s also furious. He’s angry and upset and hurt. He’s proud of him. He’s been praying for something different, but he doesn’t know what that would be, and clearly, God doesn’t know, either.

“Maybe you could come back to Philly sometime,” Mac suddenly says, before he can stop himself, one Saturday night doped up on coffee and energy drinks, “Like the old days.”

Dennis grows quiet. Disturbingly quiet. The silence reminds him of something that doesn’t burn anymore, something that hurts more than it does any good.

“I-” the other man chuckles quietly, frowning, “What would I do in Philadelphia, Mac?”

Mac scoffs. His voice isn’t hard or sharp, like it used to be, but his words are, and somehow, that hurts even more.

“Visit me,” he tells him, because, like, that should’ve been obvious, “And visit Charlie, and… you know, man. Like the old days.”

Dennis nods, but he’s quiet again. Looks back at Mac with a distant look in his eyes, like he’s familiarizing himself with his face all over again. Like he’s not his Mac anymore, whatever that means.

“Yeah,” his friend mumbles, “Yeah, I know. I just-”

He’s cut off by a noise, his phone ringing from somewhere behind him, and he curses under his breath, giving Mac an apologetic glance before he hurries out of his desk chair, so fast he stumbles over his fast, which Mac finds oddly and familiarly adorable. 

He doesn’t want to, though, because he feels his face and his body filling with heat again, the bad kind, the shameful kind, the fearful kind. The only he’s only felt on his knees. He thought he had moved past that.

Dennis comes running back after turning off the phone, barely sparing the screen a look.

“Mac,” he clears his throat, “Work’s picked up, there’s just a lot going on right now. I got a job offer, and it could be a really good thing.”

“Okay,” Mac answers, feeling like a child again, “This is not good, then.”

“What?” Dennis asks incredulously.

He shrugs. “Talking to me.”

“That’s not what I meant, fucking-” the other man starts, but he cuts himself off this time, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, mouthing to himself as he counts to ten, “You’re a good thing, Mac. Stop misunderstanding me.”

Mac swallows. “It sounded like that.”

“Well, I didn’t say it like that.”

“I’m not doing that on purpose,” he carries on, “You’re saying that like this is my fault.”

“It’s not!”

“Then why do I feel like it is?” Mac asks with a laugh, a laugh that makes him taste something sour in his mouth, makes his stomach turn like a beast waking from a years long slumber.

“I don’t know,” Dennis scoffs, “I don’t control your feelings, man. I’m not doing anything.”

Mac wishes he knew just how much he was doing, that he was, in fact, doing so much, too much. The thing is, he fears that might ruin everything, make it all ugly again, for good, this time.

“I know,” he tells him.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

They still talk, on and off, ignoring how they clashed all over again, ignoring that bitter exchange just like they did the thing that broke them apart for seven years in the first while. Mac feels weird, now. Too weird.

He hooks up with one of the new security guards after the dude’s second shift, one Friday night. He’s pretty, sure, even though it’s probably the worst blowjob Mac’s ever received in his life, but it helps him, somehow, to get out of his head.

It’s a little past 1 AM before his laptop starts going off, and when he blinks at it and realises it’s Dennis calling him, he kicks the warm body in his bed out with some otherworldly speed, rushing him, ignoring all his complaints that Mac doesn’t bother listening to at all.

He throws on a fresh t-shirt and picks up the call, and Dennis is there again, although he isn’t smiling his shy smile, or his grin, or any other Dennis expression that Mac knows. He looks confused, at first.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” he says before Mac can greet him, and he looks down at himself, and yeah, this is Dennis’ old t-shirt. He hasn’t remembered how or when or why left it in Mac’s house over seven years ago, hasn't spared it a thought, but suddenly, like a miracle, he remembers.

“Oh, yeah,” he replies.

Dennis looks conflicted. That’s the only word that springs to Mac’s mind. He doesn’t like that look at all.

“When would it be possible for you to come to New York?” 

The sentence hits Mac like a semi-truck; or a tornado, or an eruption from the world’s biggest volcano, all in there, inside his mind, blurring everything else except Dennis. He feels that anger again, the flames licking at his bones, and shame, his good old friend, his guilt, the memory of his mom’s cigarettes branding his skin and his father’s rough hands turning his skin blue and purple, it’s all there, overwhelming him, filling his knees with pain again.

He doesn’t laugh, even though he wants to. “What are you talking about?”

“When can you come visit me?” Dennis asks, “Here, in New York.”

Mac feels like he can’t breathe, all of a sudden. His friend is looking at him with his blue eyes, full of so much hope, it makes Mac want to vomit.

“Just like that?” he says, feeling a little dizzy, “You won’t come back to Philly, but you expect me to just drop everything and visit you in New York whenever you like?”

“I didn’t say that, Mac,” the other man says sternly, biting his lip again, “I told you, I’m working so- too much, I don’t know when-”

“I remember,” Mac interrupts, “It’s just a little sudden, all I’m saying.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think this is fair, Dennis,” he decides.

His friend looks like he’s going to cry. Mac feels like he’s going to explode.

“What isn’t fair?” Dennis asks, screwing his face up in anger, in bitterness, just like he knew his fourteen year old Dennis Reynolds, all those years ago, filled with vengeance and hatred and jealousy.

Mac shrugs helplessly. “You were the one who left.”

It’s a new silence that stretches out a frightful long time. Too long. He wonders if this might be it, the thing that ruins it all, ruins a good thing that he’s had for months now, one that’s made him forget everything else in his life. 

Maybe it had just felt too good. Maybe he should’ve known better.

Dennis sighs. “I don’t think I’d be able to come and visit you until next fall,” he says, muttering it like it’s a half-assed apology for a million different things at the same time, “At least. And I don’t expect you to just take the first plane here. I know you’ve got your mom.”

“My dad’s getting released in March,” Mac supplies, even though he didn’t ask, and even though he knows Dennis doesn’t care, either. 

Mac cares, though, because he’s been writing letters and not sending them for months, trying to prepare himself to face the man he’s feared more than God for so long, trying to find it within himself to come out to him and tell himself he won’t care if his father doesn’t want a gay son. He will definitely care, is the unfortunate truth of it all. He’s trying to prepare himself for that, too.

His friend nods. “Maybe,” Dennis says, voice sounding scratchy, “Maybe we should stop talking for a while.”

Mac tries really, really hard not to cry, even though he wants to cry until his lungs give out and his eyes burn. He laughs, but it comes out like a choked sob, and he takes a deep breath and counts to ten like he knows Dennis does, sometimes, even though it doesn’t work like a miracle at all.

“What?” he asks, in pure disbelief.

“I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to do,” Dennis explains, his voice watery, “Or hold you back. And I miss you, and I miss Philly, I do, but I have responsibilities here, and-” he hugs himself for a moment, looking desperate, “Frank’s on my ass. And Dee’s moving. I want to make New York into a good thing. Not just… a thing.”

Mac isn’t sure he understands any of that. He’s confused, and he’s hurt, yet, he nods. He hates feeling this way. Feeling stuck in a corner, with no way out. With no doors or windows open. Just a brick wall.

“It’s been seven years,” he says, for no reason, but Dennis nods.

“It won’t be forever,” his friend says, “Just- just trust me on this. Please?”

Mac doesn’t know if he does. He feels the anger he felt seven years ago creeping up on him again, but he punches it square in the face and holds the beast back, forcing it back into hibernation.

“Okay,” he accepts, “You’re right.”

“Mac.”

“It’s for the best,” Mac lies to himself and to Dennis, too, “You’re right.”

“I’m sorry,” Dennis says. It’s the first time he’s apologized to him for anything since they were seventeen years old. Mac’s chest isn’t burning anymore.

So, he laughs again, but it comes out bitter, obviously bitter, and Mac doesn’t have the strength to hide it. 

“What are you sorry for?” he asks, biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes metal on his tongue, “It’s not like we were dating.”

Mac has no fucking idea why he said that. They hadn’t talked about dating, or flirting, or fucking relationships. He’d told Dennis he was gay, that he was out, and Dennis told him he’d known that since they were sixteen, although Mac didn’t really believe that.

Dennis is a puzzle now, though. An impossible one. Making him feel things. Too many things.

The man on the screen huffs. “You’re right.”

Mac shrugs. Dennis nods, a resigned sigh escaping his lips, although his eyes still look so hopeful that Mac can’t take it at all.

“I guess we’ll talk at some point,” his friend concludes, “Soon.”

He’s not sure either of them believe that. Still, he accepts it, because there’s nothing else he can do.

“Soon, yeah,” he agrees.

“Okay,” Dennis says, “Bye, Mac.”

“Bye, Dennis.”

Somehow, the tone of the other man hanging up sounds just a little louder and a little sharper than usual, and then, the silence is almost torturous. Mac sits there for a while; half an hour or half a minute, but then, he feels urged to stand up, and he goes to the bathroom and he looks at himself in the mirror and feels like something just changed again.

He looks different. So, Mac clenches his fist and slams it against the mirror, enough times that the glass breaks and the blood starts gushing from his knuckles, and then, he sits down on the cold floor, and he sobs.

He sobs so hard he feels like he’s going to die. There’s no other way to describe it. He’s on his knees with bloody hands and he feels like he’s going to die, and there’ll be no salvation for him, and no blessings, and no Dennis.

He folds his hands in his lap, he prays, and he curses God, he tells him to fuck off, because it’s the only thing he can think of.

And he realises it, then. With blood in his hands and on his jeans and shards of glass on the floor, alone in his apartment, with hot tears streaming down his face and with his knees hurting. 

He loves Dennis. He’s always loved him. That’s what that feeling was, and it’s so stupid and so fucked up, because Mac was in love with him, and he’s in love with him, and he has been since he was fourteen years old, and now he’s gone again, before Mac could even get a chance to catch up and piece it all together.

So stupid.

He hears the lock turn somewhere far away, then, and he hears Charlie’s voice, piercing through the noise, “Hey, man! We’re going to that new bar around the corner- the fancy one, you wanna come with?”

Mac sniffs, looking at the floor, remembering that he isn’t dead, that this is still real. When he doesn’t respond, he hears his best friend rummage around the kitchen for a bit, calling out to him again.

“I heard there’s some hot guys there, bro!” he yells, “Serious beef-cakes, man, it might be worth a shot!”

Mac shrugs, to no one but himself. Maybe to God.

He isn’t in the mood to pray right now. Nothing to ask, and nothing to thank for, either. No miracles. He could use a fucking drink, though.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!”