Archive of Our Own

Mac becomes Charlie’s best friend when they’re seven years old, and Charlie feels like he’s hit the jackpot. Mac is more popular than him, definitely, though Charlie isn’t totally sure what he does differently to get more of the other kids to like him, except that maybe he’s usually covered in less dirt, and sometimes he joins the kickball games at recess instead of just playing alone by the pile of rocks, looking for weird bugs. But Mac doesn’t mind any of that stuff. As often as he’s doing something cool like playing sports, he’s sneaking off with Charlie to go look at the rat nest he found underneath one of the school dumpsters.

Charlie is two months older and a whole two inches taller than his new friend, but Mac still acts like the boss of him most of the time. Charlie doesn’t mind,usually. Mac does know more than him about a lot of things, like the stuff he learns at church, and everything he reads in the books that Charlie still can’t understand no matter how hard he tries. But sometimes Charlie thinks Mac just likes acting like he’s cooler and tougher than someone else. So he lets Mac pull him around by the sleeve of his jacket, and lets him sound out words for him even though they still don’t make sense in his brain, and lets him win at wrestling sometimes even though Charlie’s bigger.

In return, Mac lets him come over to his house whenever he wants. Charlie likes Mac’s house a lot, even though Mac just thinks it’s “okay, I guess”. Mac has a TV in his room, and a dog that hangs around sometimes, and a dad who’s around even less sometimes. His parents seem to be out a lot, actually, which just means that when they have sleepovers Mac and Charlie can stay up late and play games and eat junk food. Mac’s house doesn’t have a guest room, so when they finally get too tired to stay up the two of them just curl up together on Mac’s bed. Charlie’s never been a very touchy person, but he likes this; it feels warm, it feels safe. They wake up with their legs tangled together and the blankets kicked to the floor, and Mac digs some poptarts out of the pantry for them to eat on the walk to school.

Somehow, almost by accident, Charlie ends up spending more time at Mac’s house than his own. It’s not that he’s trying to avoid going home, not usually at least, but now that he has a friend like Mac it seems too lonely there. He tries to bring Mac over a few times, but it’s not quite the same. Mac is stiff and awkward in such a clean, neat place. So Charlie is over at his house more often than not.

It’s nice, having a best friend. Charlie’s never had anyone before who’ll stick with him no matter what weird stuff he likes to do, much less someone who actually wants to do weird stuff with him. Charlie hopes Mac thinks he’s his best friend, too. He likes the idea of being someone’s favorite person, and since Mac is his favorite person, it only seems fair.

“When we grow up, we should get our own house,” Mac says one day. It’s summer, they’re eight now, and they’re cutting up magazines on Mac’s living room floor because it’s too hot out to do anything else.

“Together?” Charlie asks.

“Well yeah, obviously,” Mac says. “Who else would we live with?”

Charlie thinks for a minute, but there’s definitely nobody else he likes as much as Mac. “Yeah, I guess,” he says, fumbling with the scissors and accidentally chopping the arm off a picture of a baseball player. “Does that mean we’d get married?”

Mac squints at him in confusion. “No, dude.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Mac says, in that voice he uses when he thinks he’s teaching Charlie something very important, “that’s not allowed. We’re both boys.”

“Why does that make it not allowed?”

“I don’t know,” Mac says, getting frustrated now, “It just isn’t. Have you ever seen it happen?”

Charlie thinks for a moment but no, he guesses he hasn’t. “No,” he admits finally. “But it’s also not allowed to live together unless you’re married, right?”

“That’s not true!” Mac objects sharply. “Best friends live together all the time in movies. You don’t know the rules at all.”

“Okay,” Charlie says simply as Mac starts listing off movies to prove his point. He knows Mac will talk about movies for hours if he lets him, but he’s okay with that, just listening to him talk as the air conditioner hums and the scissors snip gently. Even if they’re not gonna get married, Charlie thinks he’ll be okay, so long as Mac thinks of him as his best friend too.

The sixth grade class always has a semi-formal dance at the end of the year. It’s nothing amazing, but they string some lights up in the gym and there’s food and music and it’s supposed to be fun. As much as they’d looked forward to it in the years leading up, now that they were sixth graders themselves it didn’t seem nearly so exciting. Charlie thinks he wants to go a little bit, if for no other reason than he’s never been to a dance before and it would be a good way to waste a night, but if Mac’s not going then neither is he. There’s no question.

Mac tells him no at first, tells him it’ll be boring and there’s no point in going if neither of them have girls to bring anyway. But Charlie doesn’t let it drop. He can’t really explain why, but he wants to go if Mac will go with him. It seems like something they should do together. So he mentions it casually a few times, and then maybe a few times not so casually, until Mac finally tells him fine, they’ll go to the dance, just stop asking for god’s sake.

Now that they’re actually here, though, Charlie feels beyond out of place. He’s dressed okay, he thinks, wearing one of the shirts and ties that Mac keeps for church and his cleanest pair of jeans. But he feels weird now, standing awkwardly in the glittering lights amid girls with their makeup done and boys with styled hair. He’s not even sure he recognizes most of his classmates. The music is far too loud.

Mac is here with him, though, hasn’t ditched him to go ask girls to dance, even though he boasted the whole walk here that that’s what he’d be doing the moment they arrived. Charlie thinks Mac probably feels just as weird as he does, but he’s not gonna let anyone see it. Only Charlie can tell, from the little things: the way his mouth is set hard and how he keeps fussing with his tie. And if Charlie knows Mac, he’s definitely going to do something stupid to cover it up before the night is over.

They’re swaying awkwardly on their feet near the concession table, pretending to be sort-of dancing to cover up the fact that they’re stuffing candy into their pockets everytime the teachers look away. They’re as far on the fringe of the dance as they can be without being completely out the door, because as much as Mac talked about them being kings of the dance, neither of them has worked up the courage to push their way through to the center.

“This sucks, Charlie,” Mac grumbles. He chucks his empty punch cup to the trash can and misses by several feet. “I’m never letting you drag me to some stupid dance again.”

“It’s not that bad,” Charlie says sheepishly, though okay, it really is. But Charlie feels a weird pang at the idea that he’s somehow disappointed Mac, like he’s the one who made the dance lame instead of actually any fun.

“Yes it is, dude! We’re not doing anything.”

We could dance, Charlie thinks, like he’s been thinking all night but hasn’t said. ‘I’m not dancing with you though,’ had been one of the first things Mac had said after agreeing to come in the first place. Charlie wasn’t sure why, other than that Mac was convinced he was going to find some girls to dance with, but he didn’t want to push it either. He knew from experience that when Mac got weird convictions about stuff for no reason, it was best to just let it go.

The lights change suddenly, dim down low and turn reddish. Charlie thinks idly that maybe it’s about to turn into one of those dances in horror movies and everyone’ll start dropping dead, but instead the music just becomes very soft and the dancers settle down considerably. Kids pair off, and those odd ones out slink quietly to the fringe and pretend to be occupied getting a drink.

Mac stiffens beside Charlie, grabs him suddenly by the arm and drags him away from the back wall. “Come on,” he says tensely. He stops suddenly, spins Charlie around, and places his hand stiffly on his shoulders. “Move back and forth a little,” he orders.

Charlie laughs, can’t really help it with how serious Mac looks. “Are we dancing?” He asks.

Mac scowls. “No, Charlie. We’re just pretending to so we don’t look like losers who can’t get anyone to dance with them.”

Charlie doesn’t know what the difference is, doesn’t really care enough to ask. He feels weird though, just standing there while Mac holds him by the shoulders. He peers around at some of the other dancers and, after brief observation, places his hands carefully on Mac’s hips. He somehow stiffens even more than before at the touch.

“Dude,” he whispers, “knock it off.”

“This is how everyone else is dancing,” Charlie argues, though it’s not completely correct because the other kids are standing much closer together, instead of weirdly at arms-length like Mac is holding him.

“We are not dancing-”

“Pretending to dance, fine, whatever,” Charlie sighs, feeling frustrated for reasons he can’t explain. “You’re doing it all wrong anyway.” And then, chasing some stupid impulse that’s been gnawing at the back of his mind all night, he wraps his arms as far around Mac’s back as he can and yanks him closer.

It’s not graceful. Mac stumbles a bit, steps on Charlie’s foot, knocks his chin against his forehead. Charlie had long ago lost that small height advantage he had when they were little, and now Mac stands over him by a good four inches at least. They fit together awkwardly, but they still fit together.

Charlie fully expects to be pushed away, and he can’t explain the little thrill of satisfaction he feels when he’s not. Mac looks annoyed, and his face is a funny shade of red, but he doesn’t shove Charlie off, doesn’t scold him even if he’s technically breaking their promise from earlier.

“This hurts my arms, dude,” is all he says, and moves his arms from where they’re draped awkwardly over Charlie’s shoulders to loop them under his armpits, his hands now resting hesitantly on Charlie’s bony shoulder blades. It’s like a hug, almost but not quite, and though Mac and Charlie have literally slept curled around each other before, Charlie feels like they’ve never been quite as close as they are now.

He feels nice, he feels warm all over, he feels a little worried at how much he wants to close what little distance is left and burrow his face against Mac’s chest. They’ve always been close with one another but Charlie knows that by now he should have grown out of his stupid desire to wrap himself around his best friend and never let go. He’s not sure what to do now that he wants to more than ever.

He doesn’t have to decide. The song ends — was it really that short? — and the lights come back up. Mac springs away from Charlie so fast he’s surprised he doesn’t trip over himself. He must see something in Charlie’s face, even Charlie’s not sure exactly what, because his panicked look smooths out and he pats Charlie on the shoulder almost tenderly. “Come on, dude,” he says, “Let’s get out of here before all the losers start coming back.”

The lights go down like that a few more times during the night, but Mac doesn’t do anything about it anymore, just tells Charlie that they should take the opportunity to pickpocket someone, but never works up the nerve to actually try. Charlie feels like he’s developed some weird reflex response: everytime the lights dim he wants to ask Mac to dance (pretend to dance) with him again, if only to see how Mac would react. But he can’t work up the nerve to do that either. So he sways in place, nods along with whatever song’s playing, and hangs onto the hope that maybe Mac will do it again anyway. It’s okay to hope, he decides, as long as he doesn’t ask, as long as he doesn’t admit that he wants to—

The dance ends, they walk home. Even in spring the evenings are still bitter cold, and Mac is the only one who thought to bring a jacket. Charlie tries to ignore it, but he’s shivering within minutes. He hopes Mac will notice, though he doesn’t know what he expects the other boy to do about it.

“We’re never going to a stupid school dance again, Charlie,” Mac says, and Charlie quietly agrees.

Mac said that eighth grade was going to be their year, but it’s already November and Charlie doesn’t see any sign of that happening. In the past year or so it’s felt like their lives have been flipped upside down and kicked across the floor.

They both have impossibly shitty grades. It’s not even completely Charlie’s fault; for all the years of teachers saying he’d “figure it out eventually”, he’s about as good at reading now as he was in the fourth grade. He hears a lot of words thrown around when they think he’s not listening, “illiterate”, “dyslexic”, “stupid”. Charlie doesn’t know which one is right. He just knows that it takes him a while to make sense of the ways letters are put together, and then even when he’s sure he has it figured out, someone always tells him he’s wrong. He doesn’t think it’s a big deal, not really, but it makes passing English class really difficult.

Mac can read just fine, if maybe a little behind some of their classmates, but he’s got his own problems to deal with that have made school seem less and less important. His dad’s in jail now and though he outright refuses to ever talk about it, Charlie knows it fucked up his life pretty badly. He can feel it whenever he goes to Mac’s house now. It’s in worse shape than it was before and there’s an eerie, somber air in every room. Mac’s mom has stopped saying hello to him when he comes over, doesn’t even really seem to know or care that he’s there. Mac himself has gotten quieter, more closed off, more likely to lash out at the slightest provocation. He’s gotten a little better as the months have dulled the shock, but he’s still not the same kid he used to be.

Still, they’re alive. They’re friends. They’re good enough at cheating that they’re probably not going to be held back a year. And if they both have bruises from when tensions got too high, if Mac gets suspended for a week for fighting, if Charlie has started blurring out the stress with whatever he can find under the bathroom sink, then that’s fine.

They distract themselves whenever possible; stupid, often reckless stuff that makes them feel better for at least a while. Trespassing, setting fires, harassing stray dogs. Tonight it’s just hanging out at one of the high school football games. The game itself is boring as shit, but they’re doing what they always do: sitting at the top of the bleachers with pockets full of gravel and seeing how many people they can hit before someone figures out where the rocks are coming from and calls security. They’ve been banned from the stadium six times now, but it hasn’t stopped them yet.

It’s cold tonight, almost unbearably so. It was supposed to be in the fifties, but the weatherman is a bitch so it’s below freezing instead, and it seems like they’re the only ones who didn’t bring blankets. Mac doesn’t look visibly bothered, he's always been a little more resistant to cold than Charlie, but his ears are bright red and he’s shivering hard without even seeming to notice.

Charlie reaches over and throws an arm around Mac’s waist. It’s an innocent gesture, something they’ve done for each other a hundred times before. But they don’t stay that way now for more than a second before Mac shoves his arm off, hard.

“Get off of me, Charlie, what the hell,” Mac snaps. He rubs his side like he’s trying to scrub off the touch.

“What? It’s cold out, asshole,” Charlie retorts, reeling from both the push and the unexpected anger.

“I don’t care, dude, do you want people to think we're gay or something?”

Oh, there it is.

Charlie doesn’t know how it started exactly, if somebody called him gay one day or he heard something at his church or the thought just popped into his head, but Mac is more fixated on the idea of being gay than Charlie thinks any straight guy probably should be. It’s mixed up somewhere in Mac’s weird new obsession with ‘being a man’, the same obsession that made him start going to the weight room twice a week, and try out (unsuccessfully) for the football team three years in a row, and pretend he knows how to fight when he can barely throw a steady punch.

Charlie wouldn’t even care in any other case, certainly doesn’t care who Mac decides he wants to make out with or whatever, but Mac has started dragging Charlie into his dumb masculinity crisis and Charlie is getting sick of it. It started with small things: Mac stopped holding his hand when they were eight, stopped hugging him as much when they were ten, kicked Charlie out of his bed and onto a sleeping bag on the floor when they were eleven. And now this.

Charlie accepted all of these without a word, chalked it up to just getting too old for dumb childhood affection. He sometimes wondered why, then, he didn’t particularly want to stop being close with Mac. But then again everyone always said he wasn’t a ‘normal kid’ anyway. It wasn’t for a while that Mac’s stupid insecurities started to rub off on Charlie too, make him think a little harder about their whole friendship.

And okay, Charlie isn’t gay. He isn’t, he’s sure of it, but he doesn’t really know what he is either. He just doesn’t really care about the whole thing very much at all. There’s some people he thinks are good-looking, sure, and there’s one girl who he sees in the hallway sometimes who he thinks is very pretty (though she still won’t give him the time of day), but when he thinks about taking anyone out and making out with them and feeling them up like all the other boys brag about doing, he just doesn’t see the same appeal.

But then there’s Mac.

It’s different, he argues to himself. They’ve been friends since practically forever. All his feelings for Mac are mixed up together in years and years of friendship, staying by each other’s side no matter what, sleeping in the same bed. They’re blood brother, they know each other inside-out and back again, and if Charlie maybe feels something for him that you’re not supposed to feel for your best friend, well how is he supposed to know? All he knows for sure is that he feels safe with Mac, he likes the feeling he gets when he’s near him, and sometimes he wants to wrap his arms around him so he can keep that feeling forever. That doesn’t have to mean he’s gay for him though, right?

It’s easier not to think about. Charlie’s good at that — not thinking about things. There’s nothing life can throw at him that he can’t tune out with a bottle of glue and a stupid scheme with his best friend. He can hope, maybe too optimistically, that Mac will get over himself and they and go back to the way they used to be. If they can do that, maybe Charlie won’t have to feel so wrong everytime he wants to hold onto Mac and never let go.

High school sucks. It sucks, and Charlie is going to punch Mac in the face the next time he sees him for all the times he went on and on about how much better their lives would be once they were finally there. The day someone finally tells Mac that movies aren’t the same as real life is going to be a great day for everyone.

Charlie is used to the fact that most people don’t like him. He was fine with it when he was a kid and he’d be fine with it now too, okay with just keeping his head down and doing what he wanted, if it weren’t for Mac. Mac with his stupid dreams of grandeur and delusions that he’d get in with the popular crowd if only he did whatever dumb stunt he thought of this week. And since Mac and Charlie are a team, forever and always, it’s the both of them who take the social backlash of Mac’s attempts at impressing people. Charlie just wants to go back to being “that gross kid” without everyone in the school talking about it.

“Hey Charlie,” There’s a soft thump next to him and Charlie glances up to see Mac leaning heavily against the side of his locker, watching as Charlie digs through the piles of trash for a pencil. “How’s it going?” Charlie just shrugs in response; it’s going about as well as it ever is.

“Cool,” Mac is quiet for a moment, staring off down the hallway as other kids push past them on their way to class. They should really go too, if they don’t want to be in even more trouble than they usually are. “Let’s get out of here, Charlie.”

“Hmm,” is all Charlie says in response, because they say this to each other all this time. There’s no real meaning behind it, but pretending that they’re going to run away makes it easier to get through the day sometimes.

Mac grabs him by the sleeve of his jacket. “Really, Charlie, let’s skip for a while. Nobody’s gonna give a shit.”

Charlie wants to say no, because he’s already had detention three times this month, because his grades are completely shit, because this next class is the one where he gets to see the girl who he’s been quietly admiring for a long time now (he thinks he might be getting pretty close to winning her over). “Okay,” Charlie says instead, because sometimes Mac looking at him with a sheepish smile does stupid things to his brain.

They creep out one of the side doors without anyone noticing. Charlie assumes they’ll head into town, or at least to one of their usual stomping grounds like the train tracks, but instead Mac leads him up the hill to the football stadium. It’s locked up, like it always is in the spring, but the fence is easy to climb and there’s nobody around to yell at them about it.

“Come here,” Mac says, and pulls Charlie into the little alcove under the bleachers. It’s not comfortable, full of rocks and a year’s worth of trash, but it keeps them out of view and out of the wind.

Mac pulls two bottles of beer out of his backpack, cracks them open and hands one to Charlie. It’s become easier and easier lately to sneak beer from Mac’s fridge, and they take full advantage of that fact. With a combination of the alcohol and the cleaning supplies, Charlie’s starting to get a lot of large, fuzzy patches in his memory, and sometimes it feels like way too much effort to keep a train of thought going for too long. It’s probably not a good sign, but like hell he’s going to stop anytime soon.

They drink in silence, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. When Charlie finishes his bottle faster than he expects, Mac hands him another without a word. There’s no way they can go back to school now — showing up drunk would get them way more than detention — but neither of them really care.

“We should do this more often,” Mac says

“What, drink?”

“No. Wait, yes. I mean cut class though, come out here,” Mac says. He’s quiet for a moment, looks uncharacteristically pensive. “High school fucking sucks, Charlie.”

Charlie laughs because really, he could have told Mac that a long time ago. He knocks their drinks together in toast and finishes his in several long gulps. Then, in some dumb impulse, he throws an arm across Mac’s shoulder and pulls him in close. “Yeah, let's do this more often dude.”

Mac doesn’t push him away. Mac leans into his touch like a cat, tucks his head against the hollow of Charlie’s neck, and Charlie doesn’t know if it’s because of the alcohol or just because there’s nobody else around. If his heart is beating a little fast, it’s just because he was expecting anger, and fuck if he’s gonna consider that it might be any other reason.

“Charlie,” Mac says in an unusually soft voice, “we’re still best friends, right?”

“Yeah, dude, always,” Charlie answers, a little hesitantly because he’s not used to that note of vulnerability in Mac’s voice.

“Good,” Mac says. “Then we don’t need any of those other douchebags.”

“Fuck them. You and me forever, dude.”

This makes Mac laugh a bit, and Charlie relaxes. It's like how they used to be. Mac’s hair is tickling uncomfortably against his neck and he reaches up to brush it back, not realizing until his hand is already on Mac’s head that he’s basically petting the other boy’s hair. But that’s fine then, right? Mac’s hair is soft and a little too long, he probably needs to get it cut soon, but it looks good on him. Charlie likes the way it hangs over his eyes a bit on the days that he doesn’t gel it back. He should probably stop staring at Mac’s hair. He should probably stop touching Mac’s hair.

"Gross, Charlie, your hands are all sticky," Mac grumbles, but doesn't make any effort to move. He looks relaxed, almost, more relaxed than Charlie's seen him in a while. Charlie never really feels like he's not wound up like a top, but he feels a little better this way too.

It's probably just the beer but Charlie feels very warm right now. It's probably just the glue he huffed in the bathroom earlier but his head is humming like a wasp nest. It's probably just how close they're sitting but he feels like if Mac asked him to run away with him now and never come back, he'd do it. He really would.

“I’m not running away with you, dude,” Mac mumbles tiredly. Charlie startles slightly, not sure when exactly he started saying that stuff out loud. ”Where would we even go?”

“Dunno,” Charlie shrugs. He didn’t have a plan in mind, just wants to stay with Mac as long as possible. Maybe forever. “We could get a place together somewhere.”

Mac laughs. Charlie isn’t completely sure it was a joke. “I’m not living with you, dude, you’d trash the place. I’ve seen your locker.”

“Well if you don’t, who will?” He doesn’t know why it suddenly feels like a pressing issue. But in all his life so far he hasn’t found anyone who gets him like Mac does. Most people can’t even tolerate him for a few minutes, much less seven years and counting. Who else is ever going to want to live with him? Who else would Charlie even want to?

Mac sighs. “Don’t say stupid shit, Charlie.”

“Whatever, I’m drunk,” he says, though two beers is definitely not drunk. He hopes Mac will just let it drop. He hopes he and Mac will stay like this for a little while longer. He hopes Mac brought enough beer that he can wake up tomorrow with no memory of the fact that he might be something sort-of close to in love with his best friend, because that is not something Charlie wants to think about at all ever again, not if he can help it.

Charlie rarely gets what he hopes for.

Charlie doesn't hate Dennis. He's a mostly okay guy, his house is cool to hang out at, and he takes himself so seriously that it's fun to just listen to him rant sometimes. Charlie just thinks it's funny how Mac is so blatantly, openly, and stupidly obsessed with him. Funny in a way that makes Charlie want to bang his head against a wall.

They hang out as a trio more often than not these days. It’s not like Charlie is unused to other people or anything — he and Mac have managed to make a few other outcast friends in their three years of high school, so Charlie is used to being in a group — but he and Mac were always still clearly an unbreakable pair. It was fun to have their own little posse, but at the end of the day, Mac and Charlie still had some things that were just for the two of them. Now, Charlie can’t think of the last time they’ve done anything alone in over a month.

And the thing is, Dennis doesn’t belong with them anyway. Clearly doesn’t. The other kids they hang out with, they run with Mac and Charlie because they’re just like them. Shitty grades, shitty social life, shitty futures ahead of them. Dennis though? He’s just some rich douchebag who hangs out with them because he’s bored and he knows Mac will give him free weed if he puts his arm around his shoulders and actually calls him Mac instead of his new ‘nickname’. Something he rarely does for Charlie, by the way.

Not that Charlie wants Dennis to put his arms anywhere near him, but calling him Charlie instead of dirt grub every once in awhile would be nice.

The point is, Charlie really wouldn’t care about Dennis at all, he’s just one more asshole dude who at least buys them beer sometimes, but while Charlie can just roll his eyes when Dennis starts going off about how great he is, Mac seems to be taking every word to heart. All of the things Dennis says about life or girls or popularity or whatever, Mac quotes it likes scripture, and Charlie can’t stand being able to practically see the hearts in his eyes when he talks.

Charlie puts up with it though. He can’t bring himself to serious get jealous because his best friend isn’t paying as much attention to him as before, and Dennis is hardly the worst guy in the world. So he grits his teeth and listens to Mac spout some stupid fawning bullshit for the hundredth time and tries to just let himself be happy that his friend is happy. But everyone has their breaking point, and Charlie’s always seemed to hit his just a little too hard.

It’s something completely meaningless; Mac and Charlie are just supposed to go hang out on Saturday one of the old parks. Mac has a stolen case of beer stuffed in his backpack, and maybe it’s nothing huge and special, but it’s supposed to be fun. So when they’re at Charlie’s house getting ready to leave and he watches the all-too-familiar car pull up out front, he can’t stop the cold feeling that punches him in the chest. “Is that Dennis who just pulled up?”

Mac glances up, not looking surprised in the slightest. “Oh yeah, he’s driving us over.”

“Why?”

Mac frowns. “What do you mean ‘why’? Because I don’t want to walk ten blocks. My leg is still fucked up from that bridge stunt last week, which is completely your fault anyway.”

It’s not his fault at all, but they can fight that out later. Right now Charlie just wants to know when the hell the plans for today changed to include Dennis goddamn Reynolds. “No, dude, I mean since when is Dennis coming at all?”

Mac looks at him in confusion. “Uh, since I asked him to? We’re just getting drunk at the park, bro, why wouldn’t he come?”

“Yeah but—“ Charlie knows he can’t really complain, should have expected this by now. It’s just, the way Mac had gripped his shoulder and told him it’s been awhile since they’ve done anything nice together, he’d just thought maybe, “I thought it was just gonna be the two of us.”

It’s a bad thing to say; Mac looks defensive now, and faintly annoyed. “What’s wrong with Dennis all of a sudden?”

“Nothing!” Lots of things, but that’s neither here nor there. “It just feels like we never doing anything just the two of us anymore.” He can’t help his voice trailing off a bit at the end. This is so pointless; he knows Mac isn’t going to get it.

Sure enough, Mac just frowns, his head tilted slightly like a puzzled dog. “We do a ton of shit together, Charlie, what does it matter if Dennis comes along too? He always hangs out with us.”

Charlie wants to say yeah, that’s the entire problem. Charlie wants to shake Mac by the shoulders and tell him that Dennis is never gonna understand either of them like they do. Charlie wants to ask if Mac even likes him anymore, or if he’s just a third-wheel who comes along so that Mac doesn’t have to feel like he’s just going on dates with Dennis.

Suddenly, the beer in Mac’s backpack really doesn’t seem all that appealing. Not when he’ll have to drink it listening to Dennis go on about some girl he’s trying to hook up with while Mac makes doe-eyes at him and they both pretend Charlie isn’t even there. He’s not doing that today, he can’t. “Fine,” he says, “go with Dennis. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Well he’s your new best friend, isn’t he Mac?” There, he said it.

Mac stares at him for a moment, dumbfounded, and then he laughs. It’s not a friendly laugh. “Seriously, Charlie? Is this why you’ve been a huge dick for the past month? You’re jealous of Dennis?”

“No, no, I’m not—” He fumbles over his own words, his face burning with anger. Of all the ways he thought Mac would react, this wasn’t it. How can Mac replace him with some prissy bastard he only met a few months ago and not get what’s wrong? “Dennis is an asshole anyway, dude! You think he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you but he’s only even likes you because you kiss his ass all the time."

Mac face goes red. “What the hell is your problem, dude? You’ve never cared if Dennis comes along to things before.”

“Of course I did!” Charlie’s voice is doing that thing it always does when he works himself up, getting high-pitched and ragged. ”I was just being a good friend-”

“So I’m a shitty friend because I talk to people other than you? Do you even hear yourself, Charlie?”

“Dennis doesn’t even give a shit about you!” Charlie’s making random, flailing gestures now, and he can’t stop it any more than he can stop his voice getting louder and louder. “Maybe you could tell if you weren’t so fucking gay for him!”

It’s a low-blow. Mac’s face flushes red, with anger this time instead of embarrassment.

“Fuck you, Charlie. Don’t come at all then.” He whips out of the room, grabs his bag from the floor and wrenches the door open. He hesitates for a moment, looks back like he’s waiting for something. Charlie wants to say he’s sorry. Charlie wants to say he just misses him, dammit.

Charlie says nothing. Mac slams the door so hard it rattles the entire house.

He feels angry. He feels hurt. Mostly he just feels sick. It’s okay, it’s okay, he knows how to deal with this. There’s always an easy way to make the tight, awful feeling in his head go away. He stumbles to the bathroom, carefully locks the door behind him and rifles through the cabinets with a vengeance. Most of the bottles are almost completely empty; he needs to slow down before his mom starts to catch on. But that’s a problem for another day. Right now he needs something, anything.

There’s an old tin container of turpentine way in the back, hidden behind some old paint rollers. The lid is so stiff he has to pry it open with his teeth but the fumes are still strong. He doesn’t bother getting a rag, just breathes it straight from the bottle until he’s coughing hard and feels warm all over. He keeps enough focus to get the lid back on before his head hits the floormat and he lets himself drift off into the high.

He wakes up with drool on his face, chemicals on his hands, and two hours late for school. He stumbles down the street, head throbbing painfully, and thinks that this is the first time in a long, long time that he’s walked to school alone.

Mac tries to stay pissed at him, avoids him at school for all of two days before he cracks and joins up with Charlie on the walk home like nothing ever happened. Even if they can’t be the same as they used to be, they’re still Mac and Charlie. They always wind up back together somehow.

Things should be better now that Dennis is away at college. Sure, Charlie misses him a little; he’s grown reluctantly fond of the guy in the past two years, however much of a dick he might be sometimes. But now that he’s away and busy learning or partying or whatever you do in college, Charlie should have Mac to himself again. They should be hanging out everyday again, just like they used to. But when has anything ever worked out the way Charlie wants it to?

Mac gets a job. Charlie can’t really believe it; neither of them had ever held jobs during high school, not counting Mac’s little drug business. Mac just rolls his eyes when Charlie questions him about it.

“Dude, we’re adults now. Like, actual adults.” Even years and year later, Mac still has that tone of voice he only uses when he thinks Charlie’s wrong about something. “We can’t just keep selling weed like a couple of kids, we’re the men of our house now.”

Charlie knows for a fact that the only reason Mac stopped selling weed was because none of the kids at the high school trust someone who doesn’t go there anymore, and he’s too much of a wuss to deal anywhere else. Charlie knows that Mac hates his ‘real’ job more than anything. Charlie knows that most of Mac’s paycheck just goes to gas money to drive to visit Dennis once a week. But he just nods anyway. “Yeah, sure.”

But with Mac gone for hours every day and his old stash of wadded-up bills starting to run out, Charlie needs to find something for himself to do. Mac promises him there’s ‘lots of places’ that’ll hire him if he tries, so Charlie does try. They all want someone who can read or brushes their hair or knows how to operate a cash register or doesn’t smell like a mixture of bleach and stale sweat at all times.

“Jesus christ, Charlie,” Mac says when he gets turned down a sixth time. “Just let me help you out, alright?”

Mac gets him to take a shower (“A real one, Charlie, use soap.”), wrestles him into one of his dress shirts, combs his hair like he’s a show dog. Charlie wants to hate it — does hate it a little, at least the parts that make him feel like he’s being scrubbed out of his own skin — but he has to admit he likes having Mac fuss over him like this. It’s something he hasn’t done in a long time, not since they were little kids and Mac helped bandage his constant cuts and scrapes, or maybe since they went to that dance in, what was it, fifth? Sixth grade? Memories are fuzzy for him these days.

“Put this on,” Mac orders, tossing him a tie. Charlie fumbles with it unsuccessfully for several minutes before Mac takes it back. “You don’t even know how to a tie a tie, seriously Charlie?”

Charlie shrugs helplessly; it’s not really something he had to worry about before. Mac sighs. “Okay, come here. Hold still.”

Mac knots it with one practiced motion and tightens it carefully until it’s just snug enough to make Charlie want to rip it off. Mac snaps at him to quit squirming but Charlie can’t help it, not when Mac’s fingers are cold against his throat and he’s standing so close that Charlie can feel his breath on his face. There’s a lot of times, when they’re just hanging out, drinking and making stupid plans, that Charlie can forget that he’s ever felt anything for Mac that isn’t normal friendly shit. Then Mac has to go and do things like smooth Charlie’s collar down gently and push one last piece of hair back down flat. It’s a lot harder not to think about then.

“Stand up straight,” Mac says, and Charlie snaps to attention, feeling like a posed mannequin as Mac inspects him carefully.

“How do I look?”

“Well,” Mac says slowly, “you’re still Charlie. But you look kind of normal, I guess.” He claps him on the shoulder and smiles. “Come on, buddy, We’ll find you a job.”

Charlie has no idea what Mac has in mind that he hasn’t already tried yet, but it turns out the shitty pizza joint Mac buses at needs a janitor very, very badly. They barely even interview him, just look him over, ask if he’ll work minimum wage (what else would he work for?) and tell him he’s got the job.

It’s nice, working with Mac. Their other coworkers don’t really give a shit if they spend more time talking than working, too annoyed by Mac and unnerved by Charlie to bother starting fights with them. And Charlie is good at his job, too. It never occurred to him before that he could get paid for just ferreting out vermin and scraping sludge off of things. Plus, they have some really good stuff in the janitor’s closet, and they never notice if bottles start to run low a little faster than usual.

For the first time in their lives, Mac and Charlie are making honest-to-god steady pay, and it’s hard not to let it go to their heads.

“We can move out soon, Charlie,” Mac says one night, sprawled across his bed and gesturing with a half-empty can of beer. “What’s an apartment cost anyway? Probably not much more than we have.”

"Yeah, yeah," Charlie nods absently. He's tucked up on the bed next to him, close but not too close for Mac’s comfort, somewhere between 'tipsy' and 'completely drunk' and starting to nod off.

Mac rolls over and puts on his best stern expression. "I'm serious, Charlie, we're too old to be living at home like this. We're money-making men and we need our own place."

Charlie can't help grinning at the way Mac says it so casually: 'our own place'. He knows it's just to save money — rent in the city is a bitch — but rooming with his best friend sounds like the best idea in the world. Better than any vision of the future Charlie's had for himself anytime recently, at least. "Where?"

Mac pauses, eyebrows scrunched together as he thinks. It's almost unbearably endearing. "I don't know," he says finally. "Pretty much anywhere. New York City?"

Charlie frowns. "That's way too far away, dude."

"Okay, fine, maybe just somewhere out of town then. I don't care," Mac sighs, runs a hand down his face and closes his eyes. "I just want to get out of here."

"Right," Charlie says, even though he doesn't quite get it. For as much of a mess as their lives have been, Charlie's never blamed Philadelphia for it. It's impossible to imagine living anywhere else. He's never been good with change in general, really. But maybe if they stay close by, maybe if they stay together, it would be okay.

Mac raises his drink, sloshing beer all across the sheets and his arm. "To lives that don't suck."

Charlie laughs, joins him in the toast. "To all the assholes who said we couldn't do it.”

They drink and think up a new toast, keep going until they run out of both beer and things to toast to. Mac passes out before he can tell Charlie to go sleep on the couch, so Charlie figures that means Mac can't technically be mad at him for staying. Especially not when it's so warm and familiar to lay like this, even if they're both ridiculously gangly teenagers now, not little kids. He falls asleep with Mac drooling on his shoulder and dreams of what it’s like to be real adults with their own place.

It doesn’t work out. Of course it doesn’t. Dennis comes home from college and Mac moves in with him without a second thought. He invites Charlie to their housewarming party, which is really just the three of them getting drunk on a couch in the middle of the bare livingroom, and tells Charlie cheerfully that he should get his own place nearby so they can still hang out. If he remembers at all that he once wanted this kind of life with Charlie instead, he doesn’t show it.

So Charlie does what he tells him to. He digs out all the cash he has wadded up in his sock drawer and puts his first payment down on the world’s shittiest apartment. It’s full of dirt and rats and there’s a bizarre amount of stray cats in the alleyway, and maybe the weirdest part is how much he doesn’t mind at all. He almost starts to really enjoy it, living on his own with nobody to tell him what to do or how to act or how much trash it’s acceptable to let pile up on the floor, until Mac calls him up a few months later.

“Hey Charlie,” he asks, “you ever wanted to own a bar?”

This is just their life now, has been for a while. They own a bar, and while it’s no means famous, it’s enough to pay rent (usually). Being able to drink whenever they want is pretty nice, too. Charlie technically owns a third of the place, but he’s found he mostly just ends up doing what he’s always done best: cleaning messes, fixing pipes, and bashing the seemingly endless stream of rats in the basement. Dennis bartends, Mac runs ‘security’, and Dennis’ sister seemed to just show up one day and never left, so she’s their waitress now, or something. It’s a good life, probably. Charlie doesn’t know any other kind at this point.

It’s strange, being part of… well, whatever they are. Family sounds wrong but friends doesn’t quite cover it. They’re a gang, and it seems like they’re rarely apart. It’s probably not normal, but when has anything in their lives ever been? At least there’s a certain comfort to it. Even if nobody else gets them, there’s three people in the world who always will.

Charlie likes it. He really does. He’s got a place to live that he can clutter up as much as he wants without a single person telling him not to, he’s got a storeroom full of beer that no one can tell him not to drink, he’s got a place where he can yell and break things and wander around covered in blood and dirt without a single one of the drunken customers batting an eye. He’s got his best friend, his other friend who’s maybe not quite as bad as he once thought he was, and the girl who’s not really so terrible once you get to know her. Charlie doesn’t need anything else.

Except, sometimes, there’s just one little thing.

“We never do anything just the two of us anymore,” Charlie mumbles into the top of his glass. It’s very late, two in the morning last time he checked, and he and Mac are supposed to be closing up the bar. Instead, though, the moment the place cleared out Mac slammed two bottles on the counter and told Charlie it’s been a hell of a long time since they’ve gotten drunk together.

“Hmm?” Mac looks up from his own drink, which he’s been steadily picking the label off of for the past twenty minutes; just one of his nervous tics. Charlie’s been quietly watching the little curls of paper pile up under his hands. “What are you talking about, dude? We’re doing that right now.”

“Getting drunk in the bar doesn’t count, we do that every night. What about when we were kids? We used to do stuff all the time.”

Mac sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “All we ever did back then was get drunk too, Charlie.”

“That’s not true! We used to do… other stuff.” He can’t think of anything right now, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. “Come on, man, when’s the last time we did anything without the rest of the gang?”

“What’s wrong with that? I know Dee’s a bitch and that sucks, but Dennis is cool, right? We’re not seriously back to that, are we?”

“No, no,” Charlie says, making some sweeping gesture of protest that only succeeds in knocking one of their many empty bottles to the ground. “You know I like Dennis, man, come on. It’s just,” he fumbles here slightly, some mixture of alcohol and embarrassment causing him to practically whisper the next words, “I just miss you sometimes, you know?”

"That doesn't make sense, Charlie," Mac says, but he isn't rolling his eyes at him. He's looking at him with a sort of soft, sad expression, like the way someone looks at a stray dog. Or maybe he's just really drunk.

Charlie shrugs. He knows he can't explain it, at least not in a way that will make sense to anyone else, but being 'The Gang' isn't the same thing as being 'Mac and Charlie'. It never has been. Mac and Charlie were one big mess of memories, both good and shitty, and there was something in the way they looked out for one another that just didn't couldn't, translate to anyone else.

Charlie loves Mac. Mac loves Charlie. Sometimes it's enough to just know that. Sometimes Charlie just really want to do something about it.

"Fine," Mac says, and there's a terrifying moment where Charlie thinks he might have just said all that shit out loud. But Mac just stands up (unsteadily; they really are horribly drunk by now) and gestures to the door. "You wanna do something? Let's go do something."

It's not until they're outside with the door locked behind them that they realize don't even have anywhere to go. For some reason Charlie finds this really fucking funny, can't stop giggling as he leans against Mac for support. Mac's trying to stay serious but he's too drunk to keep it up for very long.

"Fuck all this. Let's run away, Charlie," he says into Charlie's hair. Being small is usually a pain in the ass but there's always two times when it's okay: crawling through vents, and having Mac rest his chin on the top of his head.

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Charlie agrees without hesitation. He'd go anywhere with Mac right now. But it only takes them a few minutes to realize that neither of them has a car or money for a cab, anyway. Besides, it occurs to Charlie that running away would probably mean leaving the city, and he's not drunk enough yet to not feel a stab of anxiety at the thought.

They don't want to go home though, so they walk. They're holding onto each other, stumbling and laughing like the couple of lowlife drunks that they are. They walk until they're thoroughly lost and too tired to keep going, just outside some empty little park. They find a bench mostly out of view of the road and drape themselves over it, exhausted and lightheaded.

Mac seems happy though, smiling as he digs through his pocket for a cigarette. He doesn't smoke often, Charlie knows that, only when he's particularly wound up, or he just thinks it'll look cool. He tips his head over the back of the bench and blows smoke into the air. "Nice night," he says.

Charlie looks up. The sky is a flat grey slate; not a single star. "Yeah," he agrees. They're silent for a few moments, Mac smoking and Charlie watching a stray cat amble its way across the far end of the park. Charlie feels more warm and content than he has in a while. They should get this drunk more often.

"You're right, bro," Mac mumbles suddenly, eyes half-closed against the harsh orange streetlights.

"Hmm?"

"We don't do enough stuff together anymore," he peers at Charlie from under hooded eyelids and offers him the cigarette. Charlie doesn't really smoke — cigarettes stopped doing anything for him a long time ago — but it's better than nothing. He fucks it up almost immediately, nearly coughing his lungs out onto the grass. Mac laughs, slapping him hard on the back.

"You're a dick, dude," Charlie mutters, handing him the cigarette back. Mac shrugs, sticking it back between his teeth with a grin, and Charlie wants to punch himself in the face for thinking that's almost kind of attractive.

"You're the one who wanted to spend more time with me so badly," Mac says, and Charlie scowls slightly at the way he says it, like Charlie's some clingy chick who thinks Mac isn't paying enough attention to his feelings or whatever.

A sharp wind blows through the park, sending the dead leaves whirling in all directions, and even under the alcohol warmth it’s bitterly cold. Both their jackets are still at the bar, completely forgotten in the hasty tumble out the door.

“Shit, it’s freezing,” Mac says. He glances over at Charlie like he’s just noticing him for the first time. “Come here, dude,” he says, and practically drags Charlie across the bench to press against him.

Charlie tries to pull away at first, both from discomfort (Mac is pretty heavy, and he’s putting practically his whole weight on Charlie’s shoulder right now) and surprise. Mac’s not usually a touchy drunk, or a touchy person at all. But Mac just tightens his grip and makes some drunken approximation of a soothing noise. “Come on, dude, I’m gonna freeze to death over here,” he slurs.

Charlie lets himself relax, and now that he’s more comfortable the warmth really is nice. Mac’s radiating heat like a furnace and Charlie would try to chase it, if they weren’t already sitting probably as close as humanly possible. At any rate, they’re close enough that Charlie can see the faint lines on Mac’s face, and the thin strands of hair hanging loose over his forehead. Charlie swears he remembers it being slicked back earlier, but the long day and the wind have taken their toll. Not that Charlie minds; he’s always liked Mac’s hair better this way.

Mac seems to suddenly notice that all they’re really doing is staring at each other and, okay, pretty much cuddling. He drops his eyes and, it’s hard to tell with the cold and the alcohol, but Charlie’s pretty sure his face is redder than before. “Just for the record,” he mumbles, “this isn’t gay at all. We’re just sharing body heat. It’s practical.”

“Sure,” Charlie says, though he gets the feeling he’s not the one Mac was trying to convince.

Mac glances back up hesitantly. There's fifteen years of, well, something hanging in the air between them and Charlie thinks fuck it. It's been so long, and they're so drunk. Leaning over to kiss Mac takes almost no effort at all.

He should probably hate it, just like he's always hated kissing just on principle, but doubly so because Mac tastes like a gross mixture of beer and cigarettes and he's far too drunk to even know what he's doing in the first place. But he can't hate it because it's Mac, who's hair is hanging loose and who's stubble is rough but not awful and who's probably going to pretend this never happened once they're sober but for now is giggling drunkenly against his face until they have to break apart.

Mac slumps forward like a deadweight, burying his face against Charlie's shoulder. "I fucking knew you had a crush on me, dude," he mumbles almost inaudibly.

"What?"

Mac makes some vague gestures with his hands before giving up and tangling them back in Charlie's hair. "You've been totally gay for me since forever. Since we were kids, right?"

Charlie doesn't know how to respond, how to explain the awful jumble of memories and feelings from years and years and years, so he just says, “Shut up,” and pulls Mac tighter against him, because it really is cold as fuck. “Petting my hair is pretty gay too,” he mutters.

“Fuck off, it’s cold. I’m doing you a favor.”

Charlie doesn’t need any explanations. He doesn’t need Mac to come up with any bullshit reasons for this to be an acceptable thing that two straight friends can do. He’s unreasonably drunk in a park an hour before sunrise and he just wants his best friend to keep holding him like this for a little while longer.

Somewhere in the back of Charlie’s head, behind the haze of alcohol and drugs he’s built up over the years to drown in out, there’s a voice, the closest thing Charlie has to a voice-of-reason, shouting at him not to get his hopes up. Nothing is going to change. They’ll wake up in the morning either too hungover to remember a thing, or with memories just fuzzy enough that Mac can decide that he just imagined it. Maybe Charlie will think he imagined it, too. Just because drunk Mac can kiss him doesn’t mean that sober Mac isn’t still a mess of deluded masculinity complexes. Way too tough to cuddle someone on a park bench. Way too straight to even think about kissing his best friend. Nothing is going to change.

Charlie shuts that voice up. It’s never done him any good anyway. He doesn’t need to worry about later when there’s still a right now. And right now Mac is still holding him, grip going limp as he starts to drift off (Charlie should really wake him up before he winds up having to drag him home), mumbling incoherently in his ear, his forgotten cigarette burning itself out on the grass below. They must look ridiculous, but Charlie doesn’t want to move.

“So we’re gonna do this sorta stuff more often?” Charlie asks into Mac’s hair. “You know, because we’re best friends and everything.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure buddy,” Mac mumbles, nodding against Charlie’s shoulder, barely even awake.

It’s alright to hope it’ll be true. Tomorrow is a long way away.