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Dennis hates sleeping next to Mac. That’s a half-truth and a half-lie. It’s mostly a lie.
The first time it happened, Dennis was sixteen years old and drunk off of his mother’s oldest, most expensive bottle of wine, and he was pretty sure he had left Mac and Charlie and Dee on the floor of his bedroom to deal with their own fates while he crawled under his covers in an attempt to stop the whole world from spinning.
It turned out he was unsuccessful in both of his ventures there. It’s embarrassing to admit it, when he’s wrong, because one of the things he’s proudly fine-tuned over the years is his intuition, after all.
That being said, Dennis was using the entirely wrong approach towards the big, gaping Mac-shaped problem in his life, even back then. He’s been doing it for thirty years now - not that he’s counting. You would think he’d learned his lesson by now, though, right?
But in order to understand why he hasn’t learned his lesson by now, why he’s way past ever learning it, at this point, you have to start with the first time. Dennis was sixteen years old, and his drunken mind had turned from a giggly fizzle of fireworks to a burnt out, miserable dim light in the dark.
He somehow knew the difference without ever having experienced it before, because his room was suddenly spinning unpleasantly as opposed to the usual way that made him feel giddy, and he couldn’t stop it even though he thought it was a pretty good attempt. He also laid there for a solid ten- maybe twenty- maybe forty minutes, he lost track of time and felt pretty he was never ever going to sleep again in his entire life, until the bed startled him with a dip.
Naturally, he decided to investigate the muffled sounds that soon joined him on the sheets, and he turned around to find that, no, the bed didn’t do that by itself, believe it or not. No, it was Ronnie the Rat, who had thrown himself rather carelessly into Dennis’ bed, his cheeks still red from his sunburn from two days ago.
It was the craziest, most infuriating thing, though. It was horribly wrong, because Mac, shockingly enough, he was already out cold, snoring lowly into the pillow, all lazy limbs and sharp elbows and greasy hair.
Most of all, he was taking up so much room, he was all up in his space, all of his space, but despite feeling the annoyance inside him hit like some kind of car crash in the middle of the highway, Dennis kind of just… looked at him. He doesn’t have a good explanation at all for why he just lied there as if time had come to stand still altogether, as if he had suddenly grown roots into the mattress and would stay there forever, nevertheless, though, he did just that.
The sky had already turned dark outside, and his bedside lamp was dim, and Mac’s snoring right in his ear was soon joined by Charlie and Dee, accompanying him in an even louder, grating harmony. And then, like by some kind of magic trick, like their shared laughter suddenly vanished into a cloud of smoke, Dennis was alone.
It didn’t bother him. That was also a lie. He wanted to be used to being alone, in this big, empty shell of a house where his parents were more like wandering spirits than actual human beings, but of course, he’d never wanted to live in a world where his sister’s room wasn’t just across the hall, either.
He’d never really, truly been alone before, actually. Maybe he still wasn’t, if he had to be logical about it, but he was drunk and sure felt like he was more alone than anyone had ever been before in human history.
That’s why he hates sleeping in the same proximity as Mac. He was so loud. He took up so much space and hogged the covers, and he was somehow solid as a rock or as annoyingly stubborn while asleep as when he was awake, because it proved fucking impossible to push him off the bed, much less wake him up, another challenge that sure did test Dennis’ patience.
And then he kind of just gave up, and then he stared at him. If he’s being completely honest, the more he thinks about it, he can’t exactly remember if he slept at all that night. He just remembers his best friend’s peaceful face, not a care in the world, and, well, it kind of pissed Dennis off a little bit.
Or maybe it made him sad. Or maybe it made him jealous. Most of all, it just made him jealous, the jealousy he recognizes from when he was younger, much younger, when he and Dee were children and his sister kept stealing every one of his toy cars after he cut all of her Barbie dolls’ hair off.
At some point, in the morning or in the afternoon, more like, Dennis’ head was pounding as if a bulldozer was currently digging into his brains, and Mac was long gone, nowhere to be found.
The bed felt empty, strangely enough. It had never felt like that before. For some inexplicable reason, that day, the bed he had never complained about a day in his life, the bed he trusted to hide in whenever he wanted the world to fuck off, it suddenly felt way, way too big. It felt like a vast ocean, so vast that no one could hope to survive in it alone.
Maybe that was the problem. Dennis was alone again.
He didn’t tell Mac about any of this, obviously not, there was no reason to. Besides, his best friend was groaning about his own hangover when he found him sprawled on the Reynolds’ kitchen floor instead, complaining about how his blackout had made sure the buzz he had been enjoying previously was long gone.
Of course, he didn’t remember it. There was no it to remember, either, there was just Dennis staring at him half the night and feeling a little like a creep, because he looked at him and tried to fall asleep, but he couldn’t, until he eventually moved close enough to feel Mac’s thigh press against his, and then he was probably just so exhausted that his dry eyes finally gave up. He just decided to pretend he didn’t remember it, either.
Sleeping with next to Mac, well, it kind of, slowly, eventually grew into somewhat of a habit for him. For the both of them. Sleeping and just happening to be in the same room, basically.
Dennis didn’t think much of the first time once a week had passed him by and him and Mac and Charlie kept on smoking weed after school like they always did, but then, he turned eighteen and told his best friend that he had been accepted into Penn after the summer, and the boy had been angry at him before, his anger is so easy to predict, but this time he was so furious that he might as well have had smoke coming out of his ears like some stupid cartoon.
Mac was furious, until he was silent, and then his beet red face screwed up in a grimace and Dennis asked him if he was crying, and the other boy said no, even though the tears streaming down his cheeks clearly told the both of them otherwise. And, oh, shit, Dennis was crying, too. And then they were crying together, next to each other, and he stared at a discolored spot on his wall for a while until his best friend did something entirely unexpected and put his head in Dennis’ lap.
He felt like maybe he should push him off, but he actually wasn’t annoyed that time, he just stared at him again, and he did until the sun disappeared in the horizon and he tried to wake him up, and again, once again, it seemed not even the end of the world could disturb Mac’s slumber. Dennis hated him for it.
He leaned back against his bed and closed his eyes in the hopes that he would fall asleep too, but he didn’t, and then he started to run his fingers through Mac’s hair, almost hypnotically, feeling his limbs grow tired and lazy. When he closed his eyes, he could see the other boy’s hair like straws rustling in the wind, and feel it like ocean waves licking at his skin, and it made something buzz inside him, some tingle of one kind or not, one that eventually lulled him to sleep after what felt like forever.
Mac and Dennis didn’t talk about it again after that. Same thing as usual. They fight, and sometimes their fights are frankly pathetic and embarrassing for both of them, and then they just walk away pretending like they don’t remember it, even though they both know well enough that it happened.
His best friend resented him so much for moving to Penn that he didn’t help him move, because he’s an asshole, but Dennis and Charlie could handle it just fine alone, thank you very much.
His dorm room seemed so empty when his best friend had left, though. And barren, and alien, and scary, almost. Dennis was alone again.
Maybe that was why he tried calling Mac even though he didn’t expect him to pick up, and he didn’t, because it was stupid, but an hour later he heard a knock at the door and there he stood, Ronnie the Rat, with a takeaway bag of Five Guys that Dennis ate almost all the contents of, and he was going to jab a complaint at his best friend for giving him cold fries, make them both forget how they were both miserable being apart with a small, annoying joke, that is, if Mac hadn’t fallen asleep in his lap again.
Dennis, though, for him, this mattress was too stiff and too hard and too unfamiliar, even when he moved around both his friend and himself, lied down and relocated Mac’s head to his chest, because of fucking course, even though he practically moved him around like a ragdoll, the other boy didn’t stir even for a second.
It was probably that night that he realised it, that he was jealous. Or maybe he could explain it, now, why he was jealous, because Dennis had nothing but the barren walls of his dorm room to accompany him for half the night while Mac slept like a rock.
He did manage to fall asleep at one point, but he was awoken again by an argument some idiots decided to have out in the hallway. He startled awake, blinking until his eyes could adjust to the darkness, finding the other boy exactly the same, not moved an inch, drool hanging from his lips and making a tiny puddle in the fabric of Dennis’ sweatshirt.
Mac ended up staying the whole week in his room, and it was the same thing every night. Mac could fall asleep in a second, as quickly as they turned off the lights, but Dennis, he would lie there for hours, his mind turning itself inside.
Dennis really does hate sleeping next to Mac.
But then Mac left, and then, suddenly, Dennis couldn’t fall asleep at all, even for a second. And then, he called him again, and his best friend came over, and it seemed like the only way for him to get any sleep at all was if he watched his best friend sleep long enough until his own eyes and brain and body eventually gave out.
He didn’t tell Mac about that. The other boy has no understanding or sense of personal space, he’s never had that, because he was always all over him, all of the time, tapping him and begging him, practically, to give him something to do, as if he was a fucking dog.
Sure, Dennis wanted to say. Sure, he would tell him to go pick up the newspaper if it would give him a moment of peace, he would tell him to lie down and play dead and spin around and do a backflip and give him a treat afterwards if it meant Mac would just shut up and let him breathe for a second. But when the day turned into night, then, Dennis was alone, and he couldn’t handle that.
It’s really not fair, he thought.
The first night that Mac and Dennis moved in together, they only had a couch, a couple of beer crates, a mattress and an ancient-looking floor lamp that his best friend swore was blessed by God, even though they just found it at the side of the road when they had to stop the gas station. As usual, it was the other man’s fault, the man with the tiniest bladder in the world, and not Dennis who was still hungry and needed a second breakfast.
They didn’t have any air conditioning yet, either, but the day was so hot that the night became mostly bearable, and they were so lazy, too lazy, so Dennis talked with Dee over the phone for an hour and a half and then laid on the bare mattress, starting on a long, pretty well-explained rant that Mac really wasn’t very good at responding to.
“Are you even listening to me, man?” he asked, but he soon got his answer, in the form of his best friend snoring next to him. Dennis groaned, which wouldn’t disturb him, obviously.
Of course he fell asleep. Of course. Dennis could be screaming bloody murder and he’d still be far away, he thought, and the mattress was absolutely awful, even though Mac’s body heat was, you know, not too bad. It was fine. Welcome, even.
Mac was gone, though, that same morning, and he had the gall to yawn while he was making himself coffee, even though he probably sleeps more than the average man has ever done, and when Dennis was younger, he had this childish thought that if he ever missed anything, if he ever wanted anything that someone else had, well, he was just going to take it. And maybe he was still childish, because he said to himself, okay, sure, if sleeping next to Mac is what it takes to sleep at all, to calm the storms that raged inside his brain for reasons unbeknownst to him, that’s what he was gonna ask for.
It was easy, it felt easy for a while, sharing a mattress, and even when Dennis woke up from a nightmare where his limbs were frozen and he was drenched in cold sweat, Mac was still sleeping next to him, like always. So he’d inch closer to his best friend’s sleeping form those nights, he’d nudge his nose and hide his face in his chest, and the other man would wrap an arm around him in his sleep, every time, strangely enough. Sometimes, Dennis liked to imagine he was doing it, that he was aware of it, he liked to imagine he asked him to, with his words coming out of his mouth and with Mac listening.
He’d pretend that was part of his dreams, anyways. The rare, few good dreams he’d have.
He’d found it, Dennis thought. He’d found the cure whatever the fuck was wrong with him, the hammer to shatter the invisible barrier between him and getting one good night of sleep, and apparently the cure was named Mac and sounded like Mac and looked like Mac and smelled like Mac, too.
Taking what he wanted became a lot harder once they actually bought furniture, though. Once they had their own bedrooms, then, sleep seemed decades away, and Dennis never told his flatmate that, either.
One night, though, after something like four or six or maybe eight months, Mac and Dennis slept next to each other again. And then something else.
And it was a mistake, except it wasn’t. That’s a lie, except it’s also true.
The two of them stumbled home from Paddy’s one late night, way too late for a Thursday evening, and Dennis was in a bad mood and threw himself into his bed while Mac scattered his jacket and shoes everywhere, and then, suddenly, his flatmate had sleepily walked into Dennis’ bedroom instead of his own, thrown himself in Dennis’ sheets, and he had no fucking clue what to do now.
It felt warm. And welcome. And annoying. Mac didn’t fall asleep, which was funny and new, maybe because he was talking so much he was out of breath, which is the thing the other man does that irritates Dennis most of all.
Talks so fast and so loud that he sounds like he’ll choke on his own tongue sooner or later. He carried on and on, and Dennis was tired, and he stared at him for a long time and the spit that coated his lips, and for some reason, kissing him seemed like the appropriate way to shut him up. He kissed Mac, and the room became quiet again, but a good quiet, he realised, not the alone quiet.
The other man stared at him with half-lidded eyes for a few seconds before he initiated the next kiss, and then another, and another, and Dennis usually felt so utterly alone at this time of night, but not tonight, not anymore.
He kept kissing Mac’s chapped, warm lips, and Mac kissed him back, and his breathing was so loud it rang in Dennis’ ears until his hand found his waist and then his ass and then the erection that had been poking his leg for quite a few minutes now, meanwhile, his best friend’s hand found his hair and pulled until Dennis moaned down into his mouth and throat and Mac swallowed it like it was some secret treasure that would only be unearthed hundreds of years later.
It was a mistake, that’s the main takeaway. It also kind of wasn’t, and maybe that’s a lie or maybe it isn’t.
Dennis couldn’t decide on which was true or false, because after they’d jerked each other off in a drunken haze and fallen asleep tangled together, he woke up from the best, most peaceful sleep he’d ever had and found his bed empty, like it always had been. Mac was gone, like he always was.
And he was gone all day, too, and he became a little worried, honestly, or maybe he was just going insane, until his best friend walked in the door later this evening, greeted him and went straight for the old mac and cheese from two days ago and mentioned nothing about their little mistake from last night.
The other man turned to him with a confused look on his face, somehow surprised by Dennis’ silence.
“You okay?” he asked, he had the fucking nerve to.
“Isn’t there something you wanna talk about?” Dennis asked him in lieu of a reply, and Mac had the gall to still look confused, and then he smiled, a tiny smile that reeked of guilt, he could’ve smelled the guilt from miles away.
“No?” he said like it was a question, “You wanna talk about something?”
Mac was a bad liar. If there was a degree in lying, Mac wouldn’t pass the bar, in fact, he would be expelled, and future generations would use his awful exam results as examples of students with dreadfully hopeless futures, students who are so beyond help and repair that there’s no point in even trying to pick them back up from the abyss.
Dennis bit his tongue, though. He likes to think he’s a better liar than Mac.
“No,” he told his best friend, “Forget it.”
And the other man nodded, and they would go on like they always did. They’d pretend they didn’t remember, but they’d never pretend it never happened, because Mac was too stupid to pull that off, and Dennis was too stubborn to even attempt it.
Maybe it became Dennis’ biggest problem, though, when it started happening again and again, not sleeping next to each other, but sleeping together, sharing breath and spit and touching until he was pretty sure he could map out his best friend in the dark. It kept happening, and they kept pretending it didn’t, so much so that they didn’t even need to be drunk in order for it to work.
It worked, kind of. It didn’t work at all, though, because maybe it was helping Dennis sleep more, that he wasn’t alone, but soon enough, he felt the loneliness creep into the daytime, too, felt it when he stared at Mac from across the living room and wondered if he really was such a bad lay that the other man didn’t even want to acknowledge that it happened, if he wasn’t enough, or if he straight up just hated him.
One night in December, one particularly sleepless night, Dennis looked at his ceiling for far too long, so long that it started to change shape, that shadows started creeping in on him and he could no longer tell what was real and what wasn’t, and he couldn’t think of what else to do than to send Mac a text.
His best friend responded instantly, yes, he replied, he was awake.
Dennis told him the truth, that he couldn’t sleep, and he listened to the padding of Mac’s feet and the creak of the door and then his flatmate was next to him in the bed again.
“You want me to do something?” he yawned, his eyes and nose scrunched up, looking so pretty it was kind of messed up and hurtful and not fair, “I can make you something.”
Dennis shook his head. “Just stay here,” he meant to ask, though it came out more like a command, “I sleep better when you’re here.”
“When you’re not alone?” Mac asked, which fucking terrified him, because how the fuck did he know that, Dennis asked himself, even though he already knew the answer.
Mac knew because Dennis knew because the universe knew. Mac knew because that’s how the world works, he knows him and Dennis knows Mac and earth is round, too. Mac knew, because apparently he knows things while refusing to talk about them, and that might just take the prize of the new, most infuriating thing about him.
“When you’re here,” he corrected him, because it felt important, for some reason.
The other man accepted the answer, he tucked himself in, he curled up and even tangled their legs together, his breath hot on Dennis’ neck, his voice a low hum vibrating through his skin and bones and organs.
His voice sounded like a heartbeat. That isn’t a lie. That’s the truth.
“I’d totally marry you,” Mac sighed into his shoulder, totally fucking unprompted, and Dennis could’ve sworn his heart stopped completely until the other man finished his sentence, “If you were a girl we could get married, and then you’d never be alone.”
Dennis swallowed thickly. “You wanna marry me.”
“Yeah.”
“You would marry me?”
“If I could marry you I would,” Mac repeated, “I think it’d be nice. I feel better with you.”
His words fell unfinished, though. Unfinished and flat, dropped to the floor like a pin in the world’s biggest haystack, and Dennis had this sinking feeling in his gut, this wreckage of fear, that it would take him years and years to find it again, to even spot a clue of it.
“Better than who?” he dared to ask, but Mac didn’t hear him.
Dennis’ words echoed off the walls, because his best friend had fallen asleep, frustratingly easily as always, and it was so fucking unfair. When he woke up in the morning, Mac was gone, as per usual, and he had had so many nightmares that night that he had stopped counting them, and it was so unfair.
He started locking the door to his bedroom after that night. He felt it was for the best, hell, he wanted to. That’s a lie.