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In the summer of 1992, when Charlie’s lying on the fuzzy carpet in his mom’s basement with his best friend next to him, the smoke from their shared blunt doing its best to seep out from the one tiny window, Mac suggests they invite Dennis over.
It’s not really the first time Dennis Reynolds’ name has been uttered between them outside of the school walls, but it’s the first time his best friend has had the idea of hanging out with the boy anywhere other than under the bleachers. Or it’s the first time he’s told him, maybe.
Charlie and Mac met him two months ago. Dennis wanted to buy weed, and they’d laughed in his face, thinking it must be some sort of joke, but he was so serious about it that Mac nodded, and Charlie shook his head as he saw their new companion fumble with the paper and eagerly taught him how to roll it like a pro.
The week after, Dennis was smoking with them once the football team was done with practice. It was usually Thursdays they smoked together, until the other boy joined them Tuesdays as well, and Fridays, too.
Now that it’s been two months, they smoke with Dennis every day. He’s kind of a weird dude, honestly, because he really wants to hang out with the popular kids, and Charlie doesn’t really care all that much about any of them, but he can see anger radiating off of Mac whenever they watch their friend with them.
Dennis is their friend now, by the way. They fit pretty well together, especially because the other boy glances back at Charlie and laughs with him every time Mac’s falling over himself to impress them with his so-called karate skills. It’s a funny thing, though, how he’s doing it a lot more often now, ever since Dennis came around.
See, it’s funny, because after two months, Charlie has been thinking about some of these little things that his best friend has been doing when Dennis is with them that he’s never done before. He laughs louder than he’s ever heard him laugh, and he doesn’t even sell him the weed anymore, now they just share his stash between the three of them, and two weeks ago, Mac’s hair was slicked stiff with hair gel on a random Wednesday, the way he’s only ever seen him do it before going to church. It’s a little suspicious, is all he’s saying.
Charlie can’t see any reason not to invite Dennis over in the summer of 1992, except maybe for the fact that as soon as Mac asks and he says yes, he keeps his mouth shut, even though he can’t exactly imagine that Dennis Reynolds would want to hang out with them outside school. He wants to ask, but his best friend looks like he could explode with the amount of excitement, so he doesn’t.
Dennis has been making it pretty clear that Charlie and Mac aren’t cool. Charlie knows that, Mac, not so much, though. Charlie doesn’t give a shit, honestly, but Dennis is always looking around and behind his back whenever they smoke under the bleachers, always walking in circles around them in the hallways and pretending like he didn’t catch their eyes across the classroom, so he must care a lot, then.
He is a little surprised that Dennis does, in fact, come over.
He smiles at them, even when he says no to Charlie’s perfectly good offer of green paint he’s been drinking or the bag of glue Mac’s been sniffing every hour or so, and he lies down on the carpet, and suddenly, it’s the three of them in Charlie’s mom’s basement, too.
And the thing is, right, that Dennis is funny, he’s honestly hilarious, and he’s really excited about Charlie playing his mom’s ancient old piano that’s only slightly out of tune, latching onto the melody immediately, riffing off it, which is pretty fucking cool. Mac frowns and coughs over the glue bag, but listens to them in silence, anyway.
It feels pretty normal, Charlie thinks, it immediately becomes normal, and then, the three of them, it’s just natural, the way of things. When they’re not in Charlie’s basement, they’re sitting on Mac’s roof, or he and Dennis are tripping while waiting for Mac every Sunday, spending God knows how long in church doing God knows what.
Mostly, though, they’re at his place, getting high with his two best friends is a constant that he’d rather not be without, especially since Mac’s been scoring some good stuff and not just scraps, and they don’t even need to talk at all, just stare at the ceiling until it starts spinning, really, it feels pretty good within itself.
It’s two months before Mac starts putting gel in his hair every single day. Charlie doesn’t think much of it at first, but his best friend seems really fucking eager to fix it sometimes, so much it becomes another normal, and once the couple of weekends hit where Dennis couldn’t hang out with them because his dad apparently wanted to show him where he was working, wherever that was, Mac complains about it. A lot.
It’s only two weekends, but his best friend looks close to miserable just saying Dennis’ name. He isn’t even paying attention when they’re throwing rocks on the trains and his throws suck, and Mac moans so much about it that Charlie ends up groaning at him and stomping all his way home, even though he hears the other boy calling out to him uselessly.
The sleepover they have at Mac’s house the night before Monday, that’s all his best friend wants to talk about, too - Dennis, Dennis, Dennis.
And Charlie likes Dennis. Charlie and Mac just used to have sleepovers all the time, but Dennis comes back on a Monday and the younger boy looks the same way he’d looked when they’d found ten lottery tickets discarded on the road last year, and he isn’t even smoking the blunt or passing it when Charlie elbows his side, because his eyes are shining and have been glued to their friend ever since he arrived.
He rips the joint out of his hand, eventually, which isn’t even a fight. Mac barely notices it happening. Charlie is only a little annoyed by it.
It’s seven months after Charlie and Mac first met Dennis that they interrupt their well trained routine and decide to go to the Reynolds house to smoke. To be honest, Charlie isn’t sold on the idea at first, but Mac is over the moon, and he’ll have to admit, Dennis’ house is really fucking nice.
It’s massive. Everything about it is huge, actually; the beds, the rooms, the bathroom, the backyard, honestly, it might’ve been a hallucination for all he knew, so the two of them decide to make the most of it, giggling eagerly while Dennis shows them around and only rolls his eyes a little bit. The beds and the couch are soft, too, and their friend grabs a bottle of whiskey from a glass cabinet that might as well have been made of fucking diamonds, for all he knew.
Dennis’ parents are out of town, which is his normal, apparently, because he just shrugs with a stiff smile when they ask. It looks insane to Charlie, all this space, all for himself, high ceilings and stale white walls. It’s still kind of impossible for him to believe it’s real.
It’s the same day Charlie meets Dee Reynolds for the first time, too.
Of course, he knows her, but not, like, knows knows her. He mostly knows her from what Dennis tells them, and he complains about every single fight they have, all of the time, and he knows all the mean things the cool kids call her, but now he’s meeting her in their kitchen, and their friend tells his twin sister to, “Get out of my way, bitch,” only to be hit right back with, “Get a fucking life, asshole.”
Mac jumps at the chance to defend Dennis and calls her a bitch, too, and then all three of them are throwing insults at each other. Charlie doesn’t really know what to do with himself, to be honest. Just listens for a while, almost afraid to touch anything, in case it would vanish under his fingers.
Dennis and Dee really do look a lot like each other, he thinks. He didn’t used to think so, just by watching them from afar, but they laugh the same way, he decides, and their hands twitch at their sides when they’re angry, just the same.
It’s not long before they roll their eyes at each other, before Mac glares at her and Dee raises a middle finger at them, and his two best friends disappear somewhere upstairs, yelling at him to come along.
Charlie shuffles his feet for a bit. Dee locks eyes with him, then, blue eyes and long eyelashes, her mouth settled in a frown.
She’s really pretty, he thinks. There’s some black mascara smudged at the edges of her eyes, her cheeks flushed pink, and she’s wearing a green hoodie, which is really pretty, too.
“You’re really pretty,” he decides to tell her.
Dee blinks at him, and then she laughs, for some reason, stares at him some more with wide eyes.
“Right, sure,” the girl answers, almost as if she doesn’t believe him, “Why are you saying that?”
“Uhm,” Charlie says, not entirely sure how to respond to that, “Because I think you’re pretty?”
Her frown only deepens at that. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
“Yeah,” he nods.
“This isn’t, like,” she continues, “A joke?”
“No,” Charlie answers, “I mean, unless you want it to be. I mean, I can tell a joke. If you want.”
Dee chews on her bottom lip for a bit, stirring a spoon in her cup of tea that she’s already been stirring since they walked in, and she sighs, eventually, but there’s a smile, there, tugging at her lips. Charlie decides he really likes her smile, too.
“You should probably go,” she says, and he nods, clearing his throat, pretending like he totally didn’t forget what he came here for in the first place.
“I’m Charlie,” he tells her.
“I’m Dee,” the girl responds, “Thank you, Charlie.”
“No problem,” he grins, and although she doesn’t return it with her own, he waves to her regardless, finding his way down winding hallways until he reaches Dennis’ bedroom, where Dennis and Mac are sprawled on the floor, half on top of each other, passing the bottle between them.
Charlie’s stomach only sinks a little bit at the sight. They cheer as soon as they see him, but as they build their new routine now, the Dennis and Dee’s house routine, the four of them, now, routine, there’s that feeling again, biting at his insides.
Now, Mac wants to hang out with Dennis all the time. Now, they don’t go anywhere without each other, basically. Sometimes, it feels like they’re glued to each other’s sides, almost, and Charlie doesn’t understand why it bothers him so fucking much, except he kind of does.
Now, Mac wants to impress Dennis. So, so badly. Now, Mac is doing what Dennis wants, and talking about Dennis like he’s his new God, and Dennis keeps asking Charlie about Mac, things like, “Did he talk about me last Sunday?” and, “Do you think Mac noticed what I was wearing?” and, “Do you think he likes me? Like, are you sure?”
Honestly, it’s getting a little exhausting. Especially when they’re at Dennis’ house, which he likes, actually, and he likes when Dee is around, but Mac and Dennis have started doing this thing where they talk over each other and whisper with each other and lie in each other’s laps and stare at each other a lot.
Charlie had noticed Mac doing it ages ago, but it’s really obvious now, how Dennis’ eyes follow Mac when he’s not looking, how he loops his arm around him and runs his fingers through his hair until there’s no gel left, and tugs his face into his shoulder when he laughs at the most unfunny jokes their friend could possibly tell.
Dennis seems kind of nervous around him, too.
It’s one of Charlie and Mac’s sleepover back in his mom’s basement, one that has become a rarity now, rarely spending time without the three of them at the same time, that he decides to interrupt his best friend’s monologue about how badass Dennis told him he was, which Charlie doesn’t entirely believe, but it doesn’t matter at that moment.
“Mac,” he says, “You like Dennis, right?”
Mac blinks at him. “Uh, yeah?”
“No, but I mean, like,” Charlie tries, “You really like him, right?”
“What are you talking about, dude?”
“I’m just saying,” he shrugs, “You can tell me, you know, if you like him. And it’s okay if you do.”
“What?”
“Like I already kind of knew,” Charlie goes on, “And I don’t care if you’re gay, bro, and I think Dennis likes you, too-”
Mac nearly jumps out of his sleeping back, his limbs stiff and frozen, his eyes blown as wide as teacups, his mouth gaping so far his chin might as well hit the floor.
“What the fuck, Charlie?!”
“What?”
“I’m not fucking gay!” Mac almost gasps, laughing in disbelief, his voice pitched and whiny and unlike anything he’s ever heard, “What the hell, man?”
“I just thought-”
“You thought wrong,” his best friend tells him sternly, and Charlie has known him long enough to know when Mac’s lying, and this is possibly the most obvious lie he’s ever told him in his life. Charlie doesn’t really get what the big deal is.
“So, you don’t like Dennis, then?” he asks, and Mac shakes his head so far he’s almost losing balance of his entire body, his offended frown only deepening.
“No!” he insists, “I mean, I like him, sure, like- like as a friend! I’ve never thought… Not as- I mean-”
“Okay,” Charlie replies, because his best friend is falling over his words, too, and it doesn’t really look like he can convince him otherwise, with the way Mac’s clutching the cross around his neck and looking at Charlie like he just insulted his mother.
It takes a while before the other boy lies back down.
“You’re acting really weird lately, you know,” Mac tells him, chewing the inside of his cheek. They eventually pass out from the glue fumes, like they always do, and Charlie doesn’t tell him how he’s been wanting to tell him that exact same thing for months. He really is acting weird, though.
The morning after Dennis and Dee’s eighteenth birthday party, Charlie wakes up to the sound of two very, very familiar voices, and he knows that they’re yelling at each other, that they’re growing louder by the minute, and there’s the sound of broken glass, too, hurrying to wake himself up.
Everyone seems to have left by now, judging by the empty living room and sticky floors left abandoned and untouched, and birds are singing outside, and he can hear Mac and Dennis screaming at each other upstairs, so he only trips one time running up the stairs until he finds them.
“Hey, what the fuck’s going on?” he says, a little out of breath, but they don’t pay him much attention, because they’re shoving each other, and they both sound hoarse from last night or maybe just this morning, so Charlie can’t think of much else to do than to grab Mac by his arm, and by his waist, too, he has to, holding his best friend and his flailing arms back.
It’s not a struggle otherwise, because Mac’s arms are like noodles, but he does complain a whole lot, cursing Charlie, too, now.
Dennis laughs. He looks so angry he might implode, he thinks.
“Of course you’re taking his side, Charlie,” he sneers, “You always fucking do!”
He doesn’t even have time to respond, because Mac laughs next to him, while Charlie gapes, having no fucking clue what they could possibly be fighting about in the first place.
“Yeah, asshole, he was my friend first!” Mac tells Dennis proudly, his eyes on fire and his smile cruel, and Dennis’ breath is ragged and his knuckles are white where he’s his fists, and Dee comes running soon enough, too, pulling at her brother’s hand and telling them all to calm the fuck down.
“You’re a fucking joke!” Dennis tells him, “You’re so fucking pathetic, you fucking loser!”
“You’re such a fucking dick!” Mac yells back.
“You have shit for brains!” the other boy laughs again, “Fucking hypocrite! Oh, Daddy never loved you, fucking-”
“Don’t fucking talk about my dad!” Mac screams at him, and he tries hard, really hard, to wriggle himself out of Charlie’s grasp, and he gets close enough that he’s doing a half-assed attempt at choking their best friend while Dennis knees him in the stomach, and Mac kicks his shin, and Dee screams at them again, about just how massive fucking boners they all are.
Charlie has no idea what this is about, but they eventually both grow exhausted. “Get out of my fucking house, bitch!” Dennis hisses at him, “Fuck off!”
“My fucking pleasure!” Mac yells at him, eagerly smashing one of their many expensive bottles on the way. Charlie follows him, because he feels like that’s probably the right thing to do, right now.
“Fuck you!”
It’s almost a month of Mac and Dennis avoiding each other before Charlie decides that he’s had enough. Mac is really sad about Dennis not hanging out with them, really fucking sad, and grumpy, and Charlie is so pissed at him he snaps at him and leaves Mac’s roof at nine in the evening and walks all the way to the Reynolds house, until his best friend’s voice yelling his name eventually fades away.
He finds Dennis on the couch, with Lethal Weapon playing on the television and a container with half a frosted cake in his lap. His friend doesn’t acknowledge him until he sits down next to him, and they’re awfully silent for a bit, until Dennis pushes the cake to him. Charlie shakes his head.
“Mac misses you, you know,” he says, which is true, even if Mac won’t admit that. Dennis huffs.
“He’s a fucking idiot,” he replies.
Charlie is sure there’s a good reason for saying that, because he kind of is, but he sighs.
“He’s, like, sulking all the time,” he tells him, “He’s way more annoying than usual.”
His friend chuckles shortly. Takes another bite of the cake and stretches the silence thin between them, until he eventually asks a question that catches Charlie off guard.
“We’re friends, right?”
He’s a little confused about what the argument was about, exactly, even more so, now, but he nods, anyway. “Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Of course we’re friends, man,” Charlie tells him easily, “Why wouldn’t we be?”
Dennis shrugs. Bites his lip and clenches his jaw, staring at the cake for a long time, as if it held the answers to all the questions in the universe.
“I don’t know,” the other boy admits, “I just don’t know if you like me as much as you like him. And, like, Mac probably doesn’t… I mean, he spends so much time with you, I guess… I don’t know.”
“We’re best friends,” Charlie tells him. Dennis nods.
“Yeah,” he agrees, “I mean, Mac is… Uh, yeah.”
His sentence falters off, and Charlie waits, but whatever the boy wanted to say, it never comes at all. He wipes his mouth, lingering at his lips for a while, for some reason.
“You really think Mac still wants to be friends?” Dennis asks, and Charlie’s pretty sure there’s nothing Mac wants more, so he nods again.
“Dude, you’re all he talks about,” he says, and the other boy looks at him with hopeful eyes as he confirms, “Trust me.”
“Okay.”
“Was that what your fight was about?” Charlie asks, too curious to let it go. Dennis hugs himself for a bit, not seeming very eager to answer that.
“Doesn’t matter,” he eventually says, and there’s probably not much point in pressing the issue, because Dennis soon stands up, putting the cake carefully on the table and his hands in his pockets and looking back at the television like it’s about to decide his future.
“Mac isn’t with you?” he asks in a mumble.
“I came from his house,” Charlie replies.
“Okay,” Dennis repeats, “Uh, maybe I’ll go find him.”
“Okay,” he says, “Is Dee home?”
About ten or fifteen emotions flash on his friend’s face at that, so Charlie isn’t really sure what to make of that at all.
“Yeah, she’s in her room,” Dennis tells him, “Listening to her stupid mixtapes, probably.”
Charlie nods. “I’ll go hang out with her for a bit.”
“Are you serious?” his friend asks.
“Yeah.”
Dennis shakes his head and sighs, finally turning off the movie. “Okay.”
Relief washes over Charlie the following week, seeing Mac and Dennis together again, completely in sync, laughing and sharing a cigarette like nothing had ever happened in the first place to tear them apart. They’re a lot less annoying this way, he decides.
They spend even more time together, though, if that’s even possible, at this point. Soon enough, they talk about stealing one of the popular kids’ cars, and Charlie doesn’t really know what to say, they look thrilled at the concept, hanging on each other by the hip, explaining their incredible scheme to him.
Charlie and Mac haven’t had a sleepover in over half a year. Like, just the two of them. Sometimes, when Mac and Dennis get too drunk, they lie in Dennis’ bed giggling and Mac grows quiet, looking up at their friend like he just hung the moon and stars and everything else.
Other times, Mac really likes to talk about how pretty Dennis is. You know, for a dude, as he says.
Other times, Dennis asks Charlie those questions again, the ones about if he thinks Mac likes him, which Charlie always says yes to, because it’s so fucking obvious everyone on earth should know that by now. Soon enough, Dennis joins them as they throw rocks at the passing trains, too, and the junkyard, and the harbour where they thought a barbecue could be a really good idea and only narrowly escaped the cops after they set, like, a minor fire.
It’s not like Charlie wants to be without Dennis. Dennis gets him in a way Mac doesn’t, it relaxes him, honestly. It’s like he just understands the noise in his brain and all his songs without explanation, and Mac only pouts a little when they talk about that, and Dennis only looks a little sad when Mac jumps on Charlie’s back and they race all the way back home.
They’re best friends. It’s true. Charlie just kind of misses having things that are just Charlie and Mac things, because they don’t have a lot of those anymore.
Mac and Charlie used to do everything together, and now they kind of just… don’t. There isn’t anyone Charlie has more fun with or feels safer with than Mac, but, sometimes, he feels like Mac is changing too much for him to catch up, like he’s trying to morph himself into Dennis, as if turning into him will make him like him more than he already does.
Sometimes, he doesn’t know where Mac ends and Dennis begins anymore. And he kind of wishes it wasn’t like that all the time. That’s all, really.
Charlie and Mac have already visited Dee and Dennis at college countless times, but the twins go back home to visit in a particularly hot summer, and the carnival’s in town, so Mac’s fucking thrilled to cross every game and booth off his win list.
He’s pretty horrible at every single game, but they all already know this, just patting his back in silence and pretending like they’re as upset as he is. Dennis wins one at his first try, and Mac’s so fucking sure it’s rigged, but his anger seems to fade away as soon as their friend places the ugliest looking teddy bear in the world in his arms.
“Your prize,” Dennis says and rolls his eyes, and yeah, he grins when Mac gets a smug smile on his face, and it takes him hours before he can win an equal prize for Dennis in return, but he does, and they’re practically acting like Charlie and Dee don’t exist anymore, and he’ll fully admit it, honestly - it’s pissing him off.
Mac and Dennis spend fucking ages in the photo booth, too, until Charlie decides to run in there and push them off the stools, the two of them a mountain of limbs and cursing at him, which he completely ignores, of course.
“It’s my turn now,” he just tells them, and they yell at each other, but Charlie doesn’t give a fuck, soon enough, Mac and Dennis wander off again, and he finds a seat next to Dee on the bench. She’s almost done with her popcorn, her slush-ice barely touched. He crosses his arms as he watches their friends, and she chuckles.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“They’re so annoying,” Charlie tells her.
“Duh,” the girl replies, “Weirdos.”
“Mac never hangs out with me anymore,” he sighs, and it feels like ages before Dee speaks again, as he holds the photostrip, staring at the three shots of Mac and Dennis and the last one of himself, that sinking feeling in his stomach only getting worse. His best friends’ faces squished together, and he looks back up, watching Mac be so ridiculously awkward around him, following like a lost puppy.
“What, are you in love with him, too?” Dee finally asks. Charlie nearly chokes on his soda.
“What?!” he gasps, “In love with Mac? No way, Sweet Dee.”
The girl smiles again at the nickname, the same way she smiled at him back when they first met. Mac and Dennis call her Sweet Dee, too, but they say it like an insult, like they’re spitting in her face.
Charlie doesn’t get why. He thinks it fits her perfectly. Sweet Dee. Sweet like she's made of cotton candy and sunshine and other good things. Sweet, not like his mother’s peppermint cookies, the awful taste still burning his tongue, faking a smile every time to please her. He never fakes a smile with Sweet Dee.
“Alright,” Dee tells him, tilting her head, “Don’t tell me you’re in love with my brother, too?”
“What the hell-” he stutters, “I’m not in love with them! They’re my best friends!”
“Okay,” the girl says.
“They’re just…” Charlie starts, “Ugh, I don’t know. They’re so Mac and Dennis. All the time.”
“I know what you mean,” Dee agrees, “It’s exhausting.”
“Yeah.”
“How long until they finally get their shit together, you think?” she then asks him, and the girl doesn’t have to explain further, because Charlie knows exactly what she’s talking about.
“When Mac stops believing in God,” he scoffs, “Never, I don’t know. Maybe in, like, fifty years.”
“When pigs fly,” Dee laughs.
Charlie frowns. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s a saying,” the girl shrugs it off, “You know Dennis calls him every day?”
“I know.”
“Jesus,” she mutters, “Dennis always gets so depressing when he doesn’t talk to him, like, what the fuck? Fucking loser. I thought it was kind of sweet, at first, but it’s all he talks about. I hope it’s sooner than fifty years. They’re fucking insufferable like this.”
Charlie really hopes so, too.
The day after the carnival, Mac and Dennis both have bloodshot eyes, like they’ve been crying, and they’re painfully silent, and the twins pack their bags and hurry back to Penn without explanation, and Mac and Charlie smoke weed in his basement until he feels like he can melt into the carpet, and then his best friend is actually crying next to him, and Charlie tries to get him to talk, between snot and sobs and coughs, holding a hand lightly on his chest until his breathing evens out a little more.
“Dennis won’t ever like me,” his friend says gravely, voice small. Charlie has no idea where that came from.
“It’s pretty impossible for him not to like you, though,” he disagrees, “It’s like part of who he is, I think. Like his DNA, you know?”
Mac sniffs. “You think so?”
“Yeah, man.”
“Sometimes I think he hates me,” his best friend says wistfully.
“I think you’re wrong,” Charlie argues, because he knows from countless experiences and conversations that it’s no use to bring up Mac and his God and his place in the closet again, he’s too tired and too high to listen to how much of a sin it is, so he settles on this half of a truth.
“Okay,” is all Mac says.
Dennis calls Charlie a week later, his voice filled with frustration.
“Mac is so…” he starts, “God! He’s so fucking delusional! I wish he could just-”
Dennis stops abruptly. Like he’s choking on his words, maybe, his breathing barely audible. Charlie just waits.
“I wish he could just see me,” his friend lands on.
Charlie isn’t entirely sure what that could mean, because Dennis is being cryptic as shit, honestly, it’s unlike him, but since the silence on the speaker continues, he decides to fill it.
“He’s trying,” he says, because he thinks so, maybe, in Mac’s own weird, repressed, stupid way.
Dennis scoffs. “He should try harder.”
Charlie shrugs, until he remembers his friend can’t see him. “Maybe in fifty years.”
His friend makes another choked up noise. His friend sighs. “I guess.”
“When pigs fly,” he then says, can’t help his smile creeping in again at the thought of Sweet Dee with the wind in her hair and her lips blue from the blueberry slushie, and he misses her a little too much lately, to be completely honest.
“What on earth are you on about?” Dennis asks.
“It’s a saying,” he responds.
“Whatever.”
“You should talk to him,” Charlie urges, “He’s being super dramatic and annoying right now.”
Dennis laughs lightly. “When is he not?”
“Never.”
“Yeah,” his friend agrees, “Tomorrow.”
It’s a pretty standard Mac and Dennis thing, all of that, being secretive and cryptic and blowing up in each other’s faces and floating around each other, so close, and yet, sometimes, Charlie has no idea how they could be so far away from each other, at the same time.
He eventually gives Mac the photostrip from the carnival on his birthday, and his best friend tries and fails to act tough and badass and he cries again, and crushes him in a hug and lifts him over his shoulder until they both fall over together.
Charlie finds the photostrip in Mac’s wallet one night, all four photos intact. He can’t stop smiling. He only wishes Dee was in it, too, but he doesn’t tell Mac that.
Two weeks after Charlie, Mac and Dennis collect their funds and buy Paddy’s together, Dennis gives Dee a job, clearly surprising her. She was probably convinced she’d have to beg on her knees, he thinks, but, honestly, the twins work pretty well together.
She does complain about her doing all the work, and Mac and Dennis still laugh at her, so pretty much everything feels like it’s always done, and it’s a strange sense of home that fills his mind, with his own flat and his own business and his best friends, stubborn and annoying as ever.
The three of them go grocery shopping for their grand opening of the bar on a Tuesday, and Mac is pushing the cart, and Charlie has been talking to him all the way there, but they’re about to enter a heat wave soon and this supermarket is fucking crowded and horrible, and everyone’s too loud and too pushy, and he kind of wants to scream at everyone until they shut up, to be honest.
Before he can do that, though, Mac’s voice catches his attention.
“Charlie?” he asks, “Hey, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Charlie tries, but his friend doesn’t look like he believes him.
“You can hold onto me,” the other man says, “If you want, we’re still missing a bit, but-”
Charlie latches onto the hem of his best friend’s hoodie, and he nods, squeezing the fabric between his fingers. It doesn’t instantly feel good, but it does feel better. He feels closer, closer to the ground, his chest just an inch less tight.
He tries to breathe slower. It’s still too loud, but he can focus better on Mac now, and the items Dennis reads off the list. “Keep going,” he tells them, and Mac smiles at him.
“Okay,” his best friend says, “Den, what-”
Mac’s voice comes to a halt, because Dennis is frozen on the spot, and he’s been quiet for a long while now, Charlie thinks, which isn’t really his normal, and he’s scratching at his arms and staring at his phone, until Mac tries to enter his line of vision again.
“Den,” he says again, his voice soft in that strictly for Dennis Reynolds way, “You need me?”
Their friend looks at him again, for a long time. Mac holds out his arm silently, the one that isn’t pushing the cart, but Dennis surprises him, clearly, not linking their arms but taking his hand, instead.
Mac stammers a bit. He smiles, though, warm and with red creeping onto his cheeks.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Dennis replies.
“Yeah.”
It’s not long before Dennis’ phone rings, and he argues for a bit, before giving it to Charlie, and he can’t help but smile again at who he hears on the other side.
“Hey, Sweet Dee.”
“Hi, Charlie,” she sighs, only sounding mildly irritated, “Do you really need to be three people to do the grocery shopping? I mean, seriously?”
“Yeah,” he replies, because of course it is, “Mac pushes the cart and Dennis has the shopping list.”
“Then what do you do?”
“I put the things in the cart, Dee,” he huffs, “Obviously.”
“Jesus Christ,” the woman huffs, “It’s like working with children.”
They continue on their quest, regardless, and it’s days like this, where Charlie feels like he’s most at home, where everything feels like it should be, where it’s his normal, the perfect normal, really. Mac’s humming under his breath, and then he’s almost bursting out in rage at the one thing they’re missing being sold out, and Charlie catches Dennis’ eyes behind their friend’s back.
Charlie really struggles to hold in his laugh. Dennis rolls his eyes dramatically. Charlie shrugs. They both do. Mac never lets go of either of them, even all the way back to the bar, long after they escaped the hell that is a packed supermarket on a hot Tuesday afternoon.
So, maybe they’re still Charlie and Mac, and Charlie and Dennis, even if they’re also Mac and Dennis. It’s less annoying than he’s willing to admit, right now.