Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mac has hated Dennis for a long, long time.

He’d like it if he could say if it was from their very first meeting that this sickening feeling started. The thing is, Mac has a lot of feelings when it comes to Dennis Reynolds, and sometimes, this other feeling sneaks up on him, this suspicion that maybe this happened way before they even met entirely.

Maybe it's already happening when Charlie points out Dee Reynolds from their usual hiding spot under the bleachers and tells him that this girl's going to be his prom date, he just knows it, and it's still happening when Mac frowns at him, and when his best friend comes running to him the very next day with an impossible proposition.

“I need you to go on a double date with me,” Charlie tells him, and Mac gets the first new feeling of many, the feeling that his best friend practically since birth is hiding something from him.

You see, life’s pretty simple, really. Mac thinks so, anyway. He’s got God to guide him on what to do, and he’s studied the rules pretty damn well, and once his dad got out of prison, he could finally make his family a real family, like, actually real. 

And he’s got Charlie, and the Christmas after they both had turned twelve years old, they made a blood oath on doing everything together, to go where the other goes, to never leave Philadelphia, on top of that.

Life is easy. Of course, his father was still gone and hadn’t written to him in months, but he just had to wait, like he said, and he knew what his mother wanted when she wanted it and how to avoid her moods and how to hide the burns she gave him, too, so really, life couldn’t be more simple than this. 

Once he and Charlie turn eighteen, they’d buy the pub they’d had their eyes on for years, and life would be simple, it would be easy. It’s not like he ever needed anything else. Maybe he’d find a girl to marry, and his father would probably want him to do that, so that’d be fine, too. As boring as that sounded, he knows that’s part of the perfect family, too.

“When are you going on a date, man?” he asks the other boy.

“Tomorrow night,” Charlie says while stealing the blunt right out of Mac’s hands, “And you’re coming with me.”

And Mac shrugs. Whatever. There's actually about five hundred other things he’d rather do on a Friday night, but this way, he’d probably get a head start on his future plans, so even if he still feels like his best friend's looking a little too nervous for there to be nothing more to his question than that, it's probably fine.

“Is she hot?” he just asks, and Charlie shrugs.

“Probably.”

“What?” Mac frowns, “What the fuck does that mean?”

“You probably think so,” his friend says, as if that was supposed to explain anything, but he sighs.

“Okay.”

But actually, yeah, this happened way before he ever met Dennis. This happened before he ever saw his face, but Mac knew he still hated him, from the day he finally understood what the name printed on his chest actually meant. He knew he hated him just as clearly as he knew that there was no way he was ever telling anyone about that name, which made it really fucking difficult getting his confession out without, you know, saying it.

He sat in the confessional for far too long, but it was only after the church was completely empty that he could actually sit in there without feeling like his insides were on fire. No one on the other side of the window. Just him and God.

And maybe he didn’t say it aloud, but he had a feeling like God knew it, anyway. Knew how disgusting and horrifying and incurable he was, and that he had Dennis Reynolds’ name written on his chest, still had, even when he covered it up and never looked in the mirror and never touched it, either. It was still there.

Mac knew he had to prove God wrong.

He knew that, which is why he said yes to a double date with Charlie, because he had no fucking clue what his best friend was about to pull him into, and because the very same friend was so fucking happy for the entire day, so happy, blissful, weed entirely unimportant, and he fell asleep in Mac’s lap with that giddy expression on his face, so it couldn’t be that bad of an idea, really.

Funny, because he only finds out exactly just how horrible the thing he’d signed up for is when he's sat in their local roller rink and is met with Dennis Reynolds’ displeased- no, uncomfortable- no, horrified face, the two of them staring back at each other, wondering exactly why the universe had screwed them over like it did.

Well, he imagined that’s what he thought. Mac isn’t telepathic or anything. But the boy crosses his arms at him, and they scoff and yell each other, and his stupid sister laughs at it all like it's the funniest thing she’s ever heard, and Charlie doesn't seem to notice anything at all, besides Dee’s terrible jokes, making an effort to laugh at every one of them.

Or maybe he really, actually found her funny. He had this look in his eyes whenever he looked at her, two burning suns in his pupils, the two of them giggling and bowing their heads together, as if they were totally alone in the world.

That looks easy. Really, really easy. 

And Mac is happy for his best friend, he swears he is, even if they're being super fucking annoying, but it's hard to be happy or anything besides super fucking annoyed, when Dennis is right there, when they're sharing the same space and neither of them are willing to give anymore than they had to.

“What’s wrong with you?” Dee asks her brother, and Mac concentrates beautifully on Charlie taking his turn and not on how Dennis is sitting right next to him, both of them making a very conscious, not at all hard effort to not look at each other and not speak a word to each other, either.

Another beat of silence passes before he feels a certain person’s gaze boring into his neck. Not that he's paying attention. He's probably imagining it, right, he nods to himself, just like he imagined how much of a crystal-like, turquoise shade the other boy’s eyes were.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he hears Dennis reply, eyes still on Mac. Or maybe he imagined that, too.

“Oh, I can give you a list,” his sister scoffs, “You’re never this quiet. You’re too much of a dick for that.”

“None of your business, bitch,” the boy says in return.

“Not having fun?”

“Your first date is lame.”

“Fuck you,” Dee responds, “You’re being weird.”

“I’m not being weird, Dee,” Dennis almost groans.

The girl hums. Mac can feel two pairs of eyes on his neck, then, on his back half-turned to them, and if his palms are sweaty, it has nothing to do with Dennis Reynolds and everything to do with how he's currently being beat by stupid Dee.

Charlie cheers as he gets his third strike in a row. Mac sees the girl stand up out of the corner of his eye, a smirk on her face for God knows what reason.

“Don’t have too much fun, boys.”

Dee wins the game, which would’ve hurt Mac’s pride a lot more, if he wasn’t so busy trying to figure out why the world cursed him with such a horrible coincidence of his best friend dating Dennis’ sister, or why it cursed him with-

See, the thing is, though, it must be a mistake. Mac isn’t gay. 

He knows just as much about soulmates as he knows about every other passage and psalm he studied, and like, okay, maybe he fell asleep in a couple, and maybe service was really fucking boring when he wasn’t high, but he’s pretty damn sure that homosexuality is one of the biggest sins in that book by a long shot. He knows, and he isn’t planning on going to hell, and his father would want him to walk in his footsteps, and that didn’t include having a soulmate who’s a boy.

This is why Mac eats his cheeseburgers silently, staring at Dennis who's eating his ice cream sundae and staring back at him, his leg bouncing, and Charlie and Dee are still in their own galaxy entirely, so they pay no attention to them when the boy in front of him grits out an insult like it stung in his mouth.

“Close your mouth when you’re chewing,” he scoffs, “You’re eating like an animal.”

Mac huffs. “You’re such a sore loser.”

“Dee won,” Dennis reminds him.

“And you came last,” he shoots back, “Loser.”

“You fucking-” the boy gasps, “You’re disgusting. And immature, and you-”

“Well, you’re weird!” Mac almost yells, “And you’re an asshole.”

“You’re a dick!”

“You’re both fucking idiots,” Dee hisses at them.

Mac never, ever thought he’d witness a first date so goddamn awful as this one. Charlie probably had fun, though. And he’s happy for him, really.

So happy for him that he doesn’t have in it to complain about having to sit shotgun in Dennis’ car as he drives them all home, as they punch each other’s arms and yell at each other and the other boy almost makes the wrong turn, while his best friend's giggling again in the backseat with his dreamgirl.

Because, of course, of course, Dee Reynolds would be Charlie’s soulmate. Of course, God would force Mac to live through something like this.

Whatever test this is to prove Mac’s faith, though, he’s already had plenty, and he’s not a fucking coward who’s too scared to be in the same room as another boy, even the one who’s his soulmate. A soulmate doesn’t make him gay. It’ll never make him a sinner.

So, Mac kicks in the last remaining part of his father’s booze supply in the garage, he gets the rusty lock off as easily as he’s always done it, and he empties so many bottles of… whatever, until he loses count, and then he falls asleep on his bedroom floor, willing himself to not dream of ocean blue eyes.

It’s only a few weeks after that absolutely horrible double date that Charlie announces his news to Mac, that he and Dee are officially dating, which means that Mac will now be forced to be around Dennis Reynolds again, and again, and again.

Mac doesn’t only know Dennis Reynolds from that mark on his chest. He knows him from watching the boy from the safety of the bleachers, watching him from across the cafeteria and from the back row of every classroom. It’s the Monday where Charlie and Dee officially become a couple, though, that he goes to confession and laughs, certain that there’s no way he’ll ever fall in love with Dennis Reynolds.

He leaves his name out of it, of course. What the Father doesn’t know, he can’t judge him for. 

And just like he feared, Dee is Charlie’s soulmate, and Charlie is Dee’s, and his best friend hadn’t told him anything about that, probably because they only talked about soulmates when they were high off their minds.

He tried, though. Soulmates is a big fucking deal. Even if God clearly made a mistake for him, it’s, like, a clear prophecy, but whenever Mac tried to put words to his theories about this, Charlie smiled and shrugged and figured that his soulmate would come around, eventually. That it would just… happen.

His best friend would also frown at him and beg him to not take it so seriously, which is just crazy for Mac to even consider, because he thinks about it all the time. Every day, every night, every hour.

He just doesn’t understand why God would do that to him. He supposes Dennis is good-looking, or whatever, like he’s sure he would think he was pretty if he was a girl, but Dennis is not a girl, and Mac is seriously, objectively, conclusively not gay.

So, he thinks about that fact the next time Charlie and Dee force them to be around each other, and it’s a little easier to not think of Dennis’ too blue eyes looking at him when he’s well on his way to getting hammered, but his best friend and his girlfriend soon makes themselves busy with Dee’s cassette tape collection, and her music fucking sucks, so he figures no one’ll notice him slip out to rummage through Frank Reynolds’ more expensive drinks of choice.

He thought so, but Mac’s stuck rattling the glass cabinets until a hand suddenly appears on top of his, and then Dennis is pushing him aside, key already in hand. 

“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he huffs. The other boy chuckles under his breath, smelling a couple of the bottles until he seemingly finds what he’s looking for, pulling his head back to take a swig and wipe his mouth.

“I’m not sneaking up on anyone,” Dennis tells him, “You just don’t pay attention.”

The other boy’s curls are sticking to his forehead, and Mac sees the way his skin glistens with sweat and the two drops of whatever he just downed still hanging on at the corner of his mouth, until he decidedly tells himself that he did not notice that at all, taking a deep breath for God knows what reason. 

Dennis lifts one eyebrow at him. Mac realises he’s very obviously holding out the bottle for him. 

It tastes fucking disgusting, whatever it is. It feels heavy in his throat as he coughs, and the other boy laughs so hard that he falls to the floor, clutching his stomach, which is so rude, but the unknown number of beers and the half bottle of vodka and the quarter of whiskey he’s already had is kind of turning the whole world upside down, so he decides to join him on the carpet.

“This tastes like ass,” he hears himself almost whine. The glass is cold, and Dennis’ fingertips are warm as he takes the bottle back.

“This costs more than my dad’s car,” the boy tells him.

“That’s stupid.”

Dennis takes another swig. “It tastes like puke.”

“Yeah,” Mac agrees, the first thing they might ever agree on, “Give me.”

He doesn’t know why, exactly, that they empty the bottle together in silence, but they do, and it’s a little weird, because even though they’ve got the coffee table between them, Mac lies down and notices things. 

Things like the way Dennis wrings his hands together nervously, the red and blue stains on his striped button up shirt, the way he breathes. The way he breathes.

“This means nothing, by the way,” the other boy’s voice suddenly tells him, and Mac notices how his breath cracks on the last word. He also notices how his own heart is suddenly feeling like it’ll blow up behind his chest, and how the floor feels like it’s pounding, too, somehow.

“Huh?”

“This doesn’t mean anything,” Dennis repeats, “Soulmates don’t- it doesn’t mean anything.”

“You got it, too?” Mac asks, because he never really thought about the very real possibility that this boy could have his name written on his skin, too, somewhere.

“You’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met,” the boy grumbles, and he lifts the hem of his shirt just an inch, where Mac can see a sliver of black ink on his hip.

“Fuck,” he mutters, “Why does it say that?”

“Why does it say what?”

“It doesn’t say my name.”

“That’s your name,” Dennis contends, and Mac groans.

“Stupid universe- stupid-”

“Goodbye, Ronnie,” the other boy tells him, and then he’s off the floor so fast that Mac feels like he just got hit by a fucking tidal wave, and he’s almost leaving, his breathing has picked up, faster, urgent, lighter, and he feels a sudden urge to keep Dennis in the room with him just for a second longer.

“I’m not gay,” he tells him, “Just because God put that there, it- I’m not gay. Just so you know.”

Blue eyes stare at him for what feels like centuries. Mac thinks he can almost hear the blood running through Dennis’ veins. He’s probably just imagining it, though.

“God didn’t make us soulmates,” he says shortly, “I thought God was supposed to be wise.”

“He is.”

“Right,” the boy says, sounding unimpressed, “You’ve got nothing to worry about, then. Dee and Charlie being soulmates doesn’t mean we have to do that shit. It means nothing. And there’s just about a thousand people I’d rather fall in love with than you.”

Mac’s mouth feels bone dry, all of a sudden.

“I’m not in love with you,” he says helplessly. Dennis shakes his head.

“That makes two of us, Ronnie.”

A week later, Mac and Charlie are smoking under the bleachers again, and he thought his best friend was actually listening about his very good points on Indiana Jones, until the other boy interrupts him with a question.

“Why are you so weird about Dennis?”

“I’m not weird about Dennis,” he huffs, “I’m not weird about anyone!”

Charlie takes another huff of the weed before he shrugs. “Okay.”

“What does that mean?”

“What?”

“Okay?”

“I don’t know,” his friend tells him, “Because you were crying last week when Dennis went out to get more-”

“I wasn’t crying Charlie, I already told you, I-” he stammers, “I was just hot. And high. And drunk.”

“Okay.”

Mac sighs. He was buzzed to the point where he was probably half-conscious, but he remembers Dennis leaving, he remembers Dennis lying on the rug with the table between them, and he remembers that he was definitely not crying.

He also remembers his name on Dennis’ body, but he doesn’t tell Charlie that. The memory feels scolding hot and makes his throat throb, kind. It tastes like nothing alcohol, just like sweat and maybe like carpet cleaner and bleach and smoke.

And it sounds like Dennis’ footsteps fading away, like his staggered breathing, like his laugh. Mac’s never made anyone laugh that loud. Not even Charlie.

“Okay.”

Mac has a new point to his plan for the perfect life. It doesn’t change much; it’s just another part of proving God wrong in what he knows has been some sick joke all this time, and this part includes avoiding Dennis Reynolds at all costs.

Okay, it’s gonna be a little harder to actually keep himself accountable on that. It’s only been less than a month, but Charlie seems so close with Dee they might as well be married with three kids in the suburbs already. Mac imagines that’s what people in the suburbs are like, anyway.

The only people he knows from the suburbs are Dennis and Dee, and his friendship that isn’t friendship at all with them also grows closer in its own weird way, because Mac and Charlie are already spending almost more time in the Reynolds’ practically mansion-size house than they’re doing hanging out in Charlie’s mom’s basement anymore. 

Dee is fucking insufferable, but he guesses he can’t complain, the house is nice, and him and Charlie have never eaten so much before they’re almost throwing up, so Mac’s pretty sure this suburb life should be part of his plan, too.

It’s weird, though. He spends every day at Dennis and Dee’s house - every day - and he hasn’t seen either of their parents, not even once.

Dennis and Dee don’t talk about them, either. Mac drinks their parents’ alcohol and scuffs their mother’s curtains and pushes over their father’s stacks of paperwork to dig out his spare lighter, but everything feels abandoned and cold and weird. 

Maybe he still likes this place more than his own house, sometimes. He loves his ma, but some of her cigarette burns on his wrists haven’t healed yet, and she didn’t seem in the mood to talk last week. 

There’s food in the fridge, here. It’s cleaner. Their cleaning lady seems nice. Dennis stocks candy under his bed and rolls weed better than him.

Not that he’d ever tell him that.

See, that’s the problem, Mac can’t actually avoid Dennis at all, and it’s annoying as shit, and even though part of avoiding him is also to not say a word to him, it’s hard to ignore him when they’re constantly in the same room. Dennis keeps laughing at him when he’s high, and yeah, maybe Mac likes to pick a fight with him, just so he can stop thinking about the image of the soulmark on the other boy’s hip flashing in his mind.

Avoiding only works for so long, and not saying a word to him only works so long, too, especially since Charlie keeps asking him about it, and Mac’s not about to tell his best friend the one secret he’s sworn to never let anyone know, so it’s only a month, and he already needs to seriously change his strategy.

Mac decides that, no, actually, the best way to deal with being forced to hang out with Charlie and Dee while they’re being gross and couple-y, and being forced to hang out with Dennis, most urgently, is to do the same thing he did last time. Get drunk off his fucking mind.

The other boy seems to have the same idea. Dee suggests they go down to the harbor on a boiling hot summer day, and Mac is already so drunk he tastes nothing but whiskey when water fills his lungs, and he doesn’t even realise what’s been happening until his vision turns black to blurry to blue again, and Dennis is above him, then, crystal blue eyes blown wide and his hand only shaking a little bit as he holds four fingers in front of him.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asks him.

“Four,” Mac coughs, salt lining his gums, Dennis’ other hand burning a hole through his chest.

The boy shakes his head, face screwing up in a disapproving frown. “Two.”

“You’re drunk,” he tells Dennis, whose hands smell like red wine and strawberry tarts, whose curls are now slicked down flat and glistening in the sun, whose hands he’s trying very hard to not grab.

“You’re the one who almost drowned,” the other boy accuses him, “You’re drunk.”

“You’re both drunk, congrats,” Dee chimes in somewhere from his left, “Your hotdogs are getting cold.”

Luckily, it’s the four of them’s favorite thing to do together, anyways. The vodka burns pleasantly in his gut and his fingers everytime he sees Dennis, so he can pretend like there’s nothing else on his mind than that, even if he fucking hates how much the other boy is just there, staring at him, arguing with him.

Mac’ not drunk enough yet to not correct Dee, and how blasphemous she’s being right now, after she crashed her car through Tim Murphy’s mother’s rose garden, and while they’re walking through the forest back to the Reynolds home, cold and no beers left and shoes and socks soggy.

Charlie jumps over a puddle with Dee’s hand in his, but Mac stumbles and feels the water seeping through his shirt, feels the shivers run down his spine and his nose running, too, and the girl’s laughing even louder than the rain falling heavily on the brown leaves. He pushes her hand away, and decidedly avoids looking Dennis’ way.

“Fuck off, bitch!”

“Jesus Christ, you look like shit,” she mutters.

“You can’t say that!” he yells.

“Watch me.”

“You fucking-” he says, almost falling again, and his ribs feel sore and he’s bleeding from his foot and knee and his nose, too, apparently, and he pulls his sleeve up to reveal a gash that’s looking a lot nastier than he thought it was.

He hears Dee gasp and gag, and then Charlie’s holding her hair back while she’s vomiting, and Mac feels bile build up in his throat, too, and now they’re both throwing up, and they’re freezing, and everything sucks, and Charlie and Dee suck.

He feels a hand on the small of his back. Dennis’ breathing is trembling, and he can hear it clearly over every tap of the raindrops, filling his ears.

Their friends walk ahead, but the boy is by his side as he wipes his mouth and spits again. Thank God he didn’t faint. He wouldn’t, obviously, he’s not a pussy, but if he did, that would be the opposite of badass, and Dennis would think he’s a pussy. Not that he cares what Dennis thinks.

“Jesus,” the other boy whispers.

“Don’t take his name in vain, that-”

“What?” Dennis huffs, “What’s he gonna do? If I get struck by lightning right now, you’d tell me it’s God doing that?”

“Well-”

“You’re so full of shit,” the boy says, “God, how’d I get a soulmate that’s so stupid?”

Mac punches his arm, and Dennis punches him back, but they’re both too out of breath and banged up to do anything more than that. “You’re the meanest soulmate ever,” he tells him.

“You’re such an asshole,” Dennis says, his teeth clacking, “You act like I don’t even exist.”

He’s kind of not wrong. This is his main tactic when it comes to Dennis Reynolds, after all, the one he’s been telling the priest about, because since God is apparently is so set on him having the wrong soulmate, the only way to prevent that from screwing his whole life plan up is to avoid said boy like a biblical plague. 

He knows he exists, though. Fuck, how couldn’t he?

Dennis’ existence is glaring at him, burning him like what he imagines is the first taste of what hell is like, then again, when he dreams Dennis, it’s nothing like what he hears about in the sermons.

Every night he wakes up sweating, and he looks up to his Virgin Mary and pleads her to overlook his mistakes, again and again and again, because when he dreams about his soulmate, it’s a feeling he thought was some fairytale bullshit, it’s something he didn’t think would exist, and maybe it doesn’t.

When he dreams about Dennis, he’s drowning. Over and over again. There’s no pain, though, no burning in his lungs, no deep, dark, unknown abyss.

There’s Dennis, his hands holding Mac’s face, his lips latched onto his, like they’re using each other as fucking oxygen tanks, like they’re sharing lungs and hearts and limbs, like they’re going to die together. And it feels good.

Mac figures he should probably wrap that gash on his arm with something so he doesn’t bleed out, or whatever, but there’s an unpleasant crack and he gags again, and the other boy rushes to his side, but falls on his ass in the very same puddle he did just moments earlier.

“Fucking fuck!” Dennis screams, but he doesn’t accept Mac’s help when he gets up, “Worst summer of my fucking life, fucking God.”

Mac bites his tongue. “Dennis,” he says, “You should come to service with me on Sunday.”

“What?” 

“You really shouldn’t-”

“Fuck your God,” the other boy laughs, every part of him radiating disgust, “There is no God, Mac! I can sin all I fucking want! And if there is one, He’s the worst fucking God ever. He’s stupid and useless-”

“No, He isn’t!”

“Mac,” Dennis whispers, and Mac didn’t really notice how close they were until now, he’s watching the other boy’s lips as they spell out every letter, “If there’s a God, like you said, why would He make us soulmates?”

“Uhm,” he stammers, because he has no idea what to say, “I-”

“You said you’re not gay,” Dennis recalls.

“I’m not.”

“Right. So if you’re not,” he continues, “If being gay is a sin, or whatever. Why did He do that? And why did He make my sister Charlie’s soulmate? And why did He make my parents get married? And why did He put your dad in prison? Why did he make my father so fucking awful?”

“What?”

“Seems pretty fucking stupid to me,” Dennis laughs bitterly, and he wipes some mud off his chin that’s mixed with blood and spit, and Mac can’t tell if it’s rain or it’s tears in the other boy’s eyes, right now, “Maybe God would’ve done a better job if I just hadn’t been born at all. That was His first mistake.”

And then, Dennis walks away. And Mac stands there, hearing the thunder rumbling above him, and thinking that maybe if lightning struck him right now, it would be easier.

Mac doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s failing at avoiding Dennis pretty fucking horribly. He wouldn’t exactly say they’re friends, because he still gets mad at him whenever they’re in the same room, and the amount of times Dee has pulled them apart is just really annoying. His whole presence is annoying.

It gets easier when Dennis and Maureen start going steady, but Mac soon realises he’s just a different kind of miserable, now, because at least he could pick a fight with his supposed soulmate while Charlie and Dee were doing whatever couple things they do alone.

Mac is so angry at him. He tells the priest this at confession, but for some reason he isn’t understanding why this is a totally reasonable reaction.

He does sleep with a girl at a prom, but he can’t stop thinking about whether Dennis is sleeping with Maureen that very same night, too. That must be a sin. He doesn’t care. Why should he care who Dennis sleeps with?

He thought it would get easier when Dennis and Dee announced that they were going to college. Straight out of graduation, and Mac couldn’t tell if they were happy or sad or just annoyed at the idea of it, but he knows that Barbara Reynolds left halfway through their graduation ceremony and that the rumored Frank Reynolds was nowhere to be found.

He also knows that he was disappointed. He knows that Dennis and Dee’s eyes were rimmed red, and that they had matching blooming, stark red handprints on their cheeks, and he hates everything and feels a little sick. He takes his mom home and gets stuck thinking about blue eyes until she smacks him out of it.

He wonders if his father would like him. Dennis, that is. He doesn’t know why he cares, but he realises he does, probably at another Sunday service, or maybe the next time he visits and waits for the guards to let him in.

Mac asks his father if he and his mother were soulmates, though, because he suddenly remembers that he’s never actually heard about how they met.

His dad looks like he’s about to throw up, and he punches the window and leaves without saying goodbye. He usually doesn’t say bye, though, so it’s pretty normal, but Mac didn’t even know that was allowed, not marrying your soulmate. His father probably didn’t mean it when he called his mother ugly. Probably.

So now that he doesn’t have to third wheel Charlie and Dee anymore, and, more importantly, now that doesn’t have to spend every hour of the day around Dennis, he decides he should finally get a jumpstart on finding himself a wife.

The girls at Paddy’s look at him like he’s some sort of alien from outer space, or they call him a loser and yell at him to fuck off, so maybe flirting isn’t as easy as those stupid romcoms Dee watches makes it look like. And when Carmen kisses him a few weeks after they met over the pool table, he kind of just feels… nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.

She’s perfect, so it’s all his fault, really, that he doesn’t even feel like he’s drowning anymore. He only feels that in his sleep. He wishes he felt like that all the time.

Carmen really, really wants to find her soulmate, which only disappoints Mac a little bit, and it sucks, because everything would be so much easier if she was his, and he doesn’t know why God is making everything so complicated. 

He calls God stupid one early morning, and he spends half the day in confession repenting, cursing, punishing himself. It’s the only way he knows how to make up for it.

Mac really wouldn’t be a good soulmate to Carmen, anyway. It glares him in the face, how obvious that is, because look at him, how pathetic he is. All he does every day is miss his dreams, miss being asleep while he’s awake, because it’s the only place he sees Dennis, and he’s so fucking mad at him.

Charlie doesn’t like riding the bus alone, so Mac goes with him to visit Dee at Penn - and, yeah, also Dennis, who he finds at a frat party two floors down from where he left Charlie and Dee to themselves, kissing a red haired girl at the bar. 

So, Mac just kind of stops and stands there. Stupid. He doesn’t know why he even went to find him in the first place. The last thing he should want is another man’s company.

And maybe he watches them for a while, and he feels like a creep, but then, Dennis is sitting on a couch and there’s a brunette sitting on his lap with her lips on his, and then her lips move to his neck, and then blue eyes land right on Mac. 

He’s looking straight at him from across the room. There’s streaks of red lipstick smeared on his lips and chin and cheek, and Mac feels his throat tighten as he watches Dennis lick the lipstick off his teeth, but the woman on top of him moves to squeeze his thigh, and Mac has to turn around and find the nearest door and squeeze his eyes shut before he passes out.

He wakes up the sound of Dennis’ voice, high and wobbly, and he’s crying, and Mac stumbles back with him on his arm until he finds his dorm room, and he listens to the other man throw his guts up for what feels like hours.

Then, Dennis collapses on the floor, right into Mac’s arms. He holds him up the best he can, and the tear streaks are dry on his cheeks but his voice still cracks when he speaks to him for the very first time that whole night.

“I wish I could have you,” Dennis sniffs.

Mac doesn’t know what to say.

He goes to confession that Sunday, but when the Father asks him what he wants to repent for, Mac hesitates.

“Jealousy is a sin, right?”

“Yes.”

“What about…” Mac hears his own words falter, “How do you know if you hate someone?”

The priest is quiet for a while. “I’m not sure what you’re asking me, my child.”

“I mean, how do I know if I hate someone?” he says again, “Or if I’m, like… if I could be in love with someone?”

“You mean you’re not sure?”

Mac shrugs. “I don’t know.”

The priest has no answer for that. Fucking useless.

Mac fills his flask on the way out from the water font, and he mixes the holy water with vodka and downs it in one gulp and feels no change at all. He falls asleep with his face in the bible, and he wakes up with drool on the pages and with a boner that he’ll have to repent for another Sunday.

And he misses Dennis. He feels like he’s drowning.

Charlie frowns at him when he immediately says yes to visiting Dee and Dennis again two months later, but Mac decides to ignore that, and focus on getting hammered again. It’s easy because Dee has scored the jackpot, like, premium shit, they’ve got two mini fridges filled to the brim, and he doesn’t know what heaven is like, but he feels like he’s floating, right now.

Mac doesn’t know how long they’ve been here, actually. He knows it was bright outside when they left and now the only light is two bedside lamps and the open fridge, and he knows that Charlie and Dee have moved to the bed with one earbud each and are laughing their asses off to something unknown.

So, now it’s Mac and Dennis, all alone on the sticky wooden floor. Weed is burning in his nostrils and whiskey is burning in his gut, and he thinks he’s almost falling asleep until a voice suddenly fills his ears.

“Truth or dare?”

“Hm?” he mumbles, pushing himself up by his elbows as much as he manages while the room is spinning, and Dennis is sitting in front of him, cross-legged, staring at him with an intensity he’s never seen before.

“Truth or dare.”

“That- fuck-” Mac pushes the empty bottles out of his way, and his cheek is wet with something, and his jaw hurts, “That’s a game for girls, man.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dennis tells him, looking surprisingly steady despite having consumed about the same amount of alcohol as himself, “Choose.”

“Fine,” he rolls his eyes, except he’s dizzy and moves his head and bangs it into the bed, cursing under his breath, “Truth?”

“Coward,” the other man accuses him.

“What the fuck?! I’m not-”

“What are you scared of?”

“I’m not scared,” Mac grits out, “Dare.”

“Kiss me,” Dennis demands. Mac coughs, feeling his chest convulsing, feeling like something’s stuck in his throat or maybe like his limbs are made of glass or maybe like he’s drowning again. He has no idea.

He thinks about Dennis and his soft lips and his hands on Mac’s chest in every single one of his dreams over the years. He thinks about Dennis at a frat party with his face covered in lipstick. He thinks about his own name written on the flesh of Dennis’ hip.

Mac dares to look up towards the bed, where he can only see Charlie and Dee’s feet, but Dennis grabs his face in his hands, just like in his dreams, and their eyes lock once again.

“Don’t look at them,” the man tells him in a whisper, “Kiss me.”

He should drop out. He should take whatever consequence he gets for not accepting a dare. He doesn’t.

Mac kisses Dennis, and it’s the first time he’s ever kissed him without water in his lungs and his ears and his eyes. Mac kisses Dennis, and it feels so fucking right that it’s like everything must just explode around him. Mac kisses Dennis, and his body is burning up, and he’s never been happier.

When they separate, he watches the string of spit connecting them trickle down Dennis’ lip and chin and throat, and he can hear his own blood rushing in his ears, and he feels like some weight the size of a skyscraper just got lifted off his body. 

He feels like he can breathe. It’s like he’d never breathed until now.

Mac isn’t thinking about God at all when he moves to catch Dennis’s spit with his tongue, even though he should’ve. He doesn’t think about God when he licks his way up the other man’s throat to connect their mouths again, or when he pushes Dennis onto his back and pulls him as close as he possibly can, when the man squeezes Mac’s hips with one leg on each side of him.

Dennis is in all his senses, and he doesn’t think he’s ever breathed anything as sweet as his oxygen.

The world blacks out and he wakes up again at some point, with his head on Dennis’ chest and his lips feeling numb. Charlie and Dee are nowhere to be found.

Dennis stirs awake underneath him and rubs his eyes. Mac pokes his chin until he looks down.

“You have me,” he tells him. Dennis holds the stars in his eyes as he smiles.

Mac doesn’t go to confession the following Sunday. He looks at the confession booth and feels sad and angry and disgusted and confused, or maybe he just feels nothing at all. He doesn’t really know.

He knows he has to look away, feeling like the sight of it is burning his eyes out. Or like God is, maybe. He walks without looking at the ceiling, and he refuses to look at the sky, too, because he doesn’t want to think about whether God is looking at him or not, right now.

Dennis is looking at him, though.

The other man throws his cigarette bud away as he stands up and greets him, watching how Mac trips his feet and scratches his hair, looking back at the church door one last time. He’ll come back. Not now. But one day.

“God made us for each other, didn’t he?” he asks him.

The man chews on his lip. He doesn’t look like he agrees.

“Maybe,” he still says, “If you want that to be true.”

Mac shakes his head.

“You have me,” he says certainly, “Whether He wants that or not.”

Dennis laughs.