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1.
At first Mac doesn’t think anything of it. Dennis has barged into his room many times before, often in the middle of the night, and demanded various things Mac knew to interpret as ‘attention’ no matter what shape they took. Usually it was a matter of bad dreams so intense they were indistinguishable from reality, which could usually be gotten rid of with a cup of tea and a game of something Mac would muddle through, sleepy voiced and mumbling, until Dennis deigned to go back to bed. It’s annoying but manageable; Mac’s grown a little proud of how manageable. That’s the thing a lot of people don’t understand about Dennis – sure, he’s a giant pain in the ass, but he’s also basically just a human-sized Tamagotchi, and once you know what buttons to press to make him chill out, you’re golden.
He doesn’t usually drag Mac into his own room, though.
‘Look, I’m not going to be able to sleep if you’re not here,’ Dennis is busy explaining to him as he yanks Mac through his doorway by the wrist. Mac is still half asleep, shirtless with his hair in a tangled cloud around his head. He’s yawning and frowning and generally irritated. None of that is slowing Dennis down. ‘You can be my sacrifice in the event of a home invasion.’
‘Like by aliens?’ Mac asks sleepily, waiting by the edge of the bed for Dennis to indicate which side he should take. He’s learned through long – and sometimes violent – experience that Dennis alternates which side he considers ‘best’, and that Mac might as well just wait to be told rather than assume and get kicked to the other side.
Dennis points to the side closest to the door. ‘No, idiot,’ he says, throwing back the covers and patting the mattress for Mac to get in. ‘Like murderers or rapists or whatever.’
‘You expecting a lot of rapists tonight?’ Mac asks, but it comes out half a yawn as he climbs into bed. Dennis didn’t bother turning the lights on when he woke up from his nightmare and careened across the apartment to drag Mac into his psychosis, so his eyes are beady points of light in the dark as he watches Mac lie down, something satisfied in the line of his mouth. He seems weirdly awake, although maybe that can be put down to the manic energy of being woken from a nightmare. He’s been acting kind of weird just generally, though, ever since that thing at laser tag. Squinty and quiet.
That’s happened before, too, although Mac’s trying not to remember why. Last time, Dennis ended up leaving the state.
‘Maybe,’ Dennis says noncommittally, breaking Mac out of his thoughts. He climbs into bed and lies sideways facing Mac, plumping the pillow underneath his head. ‘You never know.’
‘What were you thinking about before you fell asleep?’ Mac asks, like he usually does. If he can get Dennis to go over the thing that was making him stressed and make it funny or stupid somehow, that does most of the work for him and makes it easier for Dennis to go back to sleep. It’s hard to concentrate on his answer, though, when Mac’s so tired. Usually they’re sat in the kitchen for this part; usually Dennis is bouncing off the walls, not lying next to him. It’s so soft in here, so warm in the dark. He can hear Dennis breathing, close to him on the opposite pillow.
‘Nothing, really,’ Dennis says, his voice quieter now. Mac has the weird feeling that Dennis is still watching him as his eyes drift closed, slipping slowly back into sleep. ‘Nothing much at all.’
2.
So it’s nothing out of the ordinary, at first. But then there’s a couple of other things which are harder to ignore.
‘Wow,’ Mac says. ‘That’s my phone, Den.’
Dennis whirls around, his eyes wide and Mac’s phone clutched in his hand. It’s kind of funny. If he had those pointy triangle cat ears, they’d be flat to his skull. Mac flicks his normal human ear and Dennis scowls, clapping a hand to it. Now he’d be hissing. ‘What the fuck, dude. Boundaries.’
Dennis rolls his eyes. He still hasn’t given back the phone. ‘Oh, you know about those?’
‘Hey, I don’t read your sexts.’
‘That’s because I read them out to you before I send them,’ Dennis points out sweetly. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t looking at your sexts. I was just –’ he drops his eyes, all shifty. ‘Trying to free up some space, you know?’
Mac cocks an eyebrow and holds out his hand. Dennis reluctantly drops the phone into it, slow enough that Mac can tell he was giving serious consideration to door-dashing. Mac’s got him pinned, though; caged in the kitchen with his back to the sink. Dennis scowls and slumps against the counter, rolling his eyes to heaven as if Mac’s the one being unreasonable.
Mac looks down at the screen and laughs, high and surprised.
‘Grindr?’ He looks up at Dennis, whose cheeks are turning pink. ‘Really, dude?’
‘You spend too much time on it,’ Dennis tells him with his eyes still on the ceiling. He’s speaking too fast, like he rehearsed this. ‘Too much time looking at screens is bad for your eyes, and –’
‘Who spent like seven hours watching Sephora haul videos on his phone last weekend, dickhead?’
‘– rots your brain, and I only watch those for the drama and the hot girls, shut up –’
‘You rot my brain,’ Mac says.
It makes Dennis smile just a little, his eyes dropping back down to Mac’s face. Mac blinks, then shakes his head. He can’t let Dennis derail him – maybe it used to be as easy as fluttering his eyelashes in Mac’s general direction, but Mac’s grown as a person since then. He’s been working on himself, okay? He’s well aware of his own giant Dennis-shaped weakness, but that doesn’t mean he can’t at least try to build up some defences against it. ‘Stop distracting me.’ He waves his phone in Dennis’s face. Dennis wrinkles his nose, ducking back before he gets hit in the nose. ‘You can’t just look at my shit, okay?’
‘Okay,’ Dennis says, with no remorse. He bites his lip. ‘Just –’
‘What?’ Mac rolls his eyes. ‘You want to check my Facebook, too?’
‘Why would I need to?’ Dennis asks. ‘I already have your password. Anyway, my point is –’
‘You’d freak if I touched your phone, fucking hypocrite –’
‘Do you really think you need it?’ Dennis talks over him, too loud. He stops right after, a look on his face like that wasn’t exactly what he meant to say. ‘I mean, like. Grindr. Do you really use it that much?’
‘You just told me I was using it too much,’ Mac points out, mystified.
Dennis bites his lip again. Mac wishes he’d stop doing that; it makes it so hard to concentrate on what he’s saying. Is he making his eyes big like that on purpose? Focus, Mac, for fuck’s sake.
‘Yeah,’ Dennis hedges. ‘I just meant, you know. Do you really need it anymore? Like,’ he surges past the question, twisting his hands in front of him like a child caught mid-fuck up. Mac could tell him he doesn’t need to be concerned; he has no idea what Dennis’s game is here. ‘Because you must have run through all the good guys by now, right? God knows you hook up often enough, and –’
‘Like you can talk –’
‘You’re going to catch something,’ Dennis finishes desperately.
‘Already have,’ Mac says smugly, then frowns. He’s been contracting regular doses of the clap since he first stuck his dick in something, and Dennis never raised any concerns before. ‘Since when do you give a shit about that?’
Dennis casts his eyes up to the ceiling again, and then back down to Mac’s face. He looks surprisingly serious, drawing another breath to speak. It makes Mac’s stomach squirm.
‘Whatever,’ he says quickly, before Dennis can say anything else. ‘Just stay out of my stuff, okay?’
He’s out of there before Dennis can protest, back to his room. He doesn’t come out for the rest of the day, not until he’s sure Dennis is asleep. Nothing good can come from seeing that look on Dennis’s face, but at least if Mac stays out of his way then he can’t do anything to make it grow.
3.
The next thing really isn’t anything huge, just seems like some stupid joke at the time. Mac doesn’t think he can be blamed for not understanding what Dennis was getting at.
‘You tired, bro?’ he asks, not even looking away from the movie. If Dennis wants to rest his head in Mac’s lap, then that’s fine. Not like Mac was doing anything else with it, and it’s kind of a chilly night. They could both do with the extra body warmth.
‘No,’ Dennis says.
Mac takes a drink from his beer and lays his arm across Dennis’s chest. If he’s going to lie there, he’ll have to deal. Mac hasn’t got anywhere else to put it. ‘You’re gonna miss the movie.’
‘Get away from her, you bitch,’ Dennis intones in such a perfect Ripley impersonation that Mac nearly chokes on his beer laughing. Dennis looks up at him, grinning. ‘See, already know it by heart.’
Mac rolls his eyes, wiping beer off his chin. ‘Yeah, whatever. The point isn’t to listen, it’s to look. That’s why they’re called movies, Dennis. Because they move.’
‘So tell me what’s happening on the screen,’ Dennis demands. ‘That way I won’t miss anything.’
‘Ripley just dumped the kid in a barrel of space acid,’ Mac says flatly. ‘Now she’s attacking Hicks with a chainsaw.’
Dennis hums, picking at his fingernails. ‘Don’t remember that part.’
‘It’s the uncut edition,’ Mac tells him. ‘X-rated.’
‘You suck at storytelling,’ Dennis complains. ‘No wonder that screenplay never got off the ground.’
‘And what about your acting career?’ Mac asks, poking Dennis in the sternum. Dennis mock-scowls and grabs his hand, fingers sliding in between Mac’s. Mac stares down at them, forgetting what he was going to say.
‘What about it?’ Dennis asks, thumb rubbing the outside of Mac’s hand. Did he just make his eyes a little wider? Why the hell would he be doing that? Why is he doing any of this?
‘I, uh,’ Mac says, feeling a little numb. ‘Need to turn the volume up. I need – need my hand back, Den.’
‘Do you?’ Dennis asks, squinting up at him quizzically. ‘But I’m bored.’
‘You wouldn’t be bored if you were watching the movie, like we –’
‘I think we’ve established that I’m not interested in the movie,’ Dennis snaps.
There’s a pause.
‘Then why did you suggest it?’ Mac asks, staring straight at the screen. The volume really is turned down too low; even before Dennis decided to fuck with him, they were mostly just talking over it anyway, only tuning in for the parts where people got fucked up by the aliens. Dennis had been bitching about the fact they didn’t have any popcorn. At least Mac knew what to say to that.
Dennis shrugs, the motion of his shoulder blades strange and pointy against Mac’s thighs. He’d have thought this would have gotten awkward in a different way before now, but Dennis isn’t really that close to his dick. And even if he was and Mac did get hard, it wouldn’t be any great revelation to anyone present. Dennis gets Mac’s dick hard, the sky is blue, God created the earth, etc. Tale as old as time.
That’s probably why Dennis put his head in Mac’s lap in the first place. Everyone needs to feel wanted sometimes, even if they don’t intend to do anything with it.
‘Seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Dennis says.
Mac risks a quick look down and Dennis is frowning at their joined hands, frustrated in a way that makes Mac’s heart race. His role here is to keep Dennis happy, right? That’s his whole thing. Even when it isn’t fair to him, or when what Dennis wants doesn’t make any sense. Sometimes Mac tries to figure out when his world got that small, but he can’t remember that far back anymore. He wonders if Dennis would be able to tell him.
Mac sighs and takes another pull on his beer. He pulls his hand out of Dennis’s grip but leaves it on his chest, fingers spread over his heart, and leaves the volume as it is. A successful relationship is all about compromise.
4.
Obviously, in all the time they’ve spent living together, they haven’t managed to avoid seeing each other naked. Mac spent a fair few years back there making a concerted effort to see Dennis naked whenever he could, until he figured out that seeing it didn’t make anything better, didn’t do anything like scratch the itch. It’s worse once you’ve seen it, somehow; worse to know what you’re missing. So he mostly tries to ignore it, although it’s hard when Dennis has taken to leaving his bedroom door open while he changes clothes. Mac doesn’t know shit about sight lines but it seems pretty obvious that if he’s standing in the kitchen pouring a glass of juice and Dennis is stripping down with his bedroom door wide open, an eyeful is headed his way. He wastes a lot of juice that way until he learns to keep his eyes on the kitchen counter.
He doesn’t think anything more of it, though – maybe Dennis’s brain is just turning to mush in his old age – until Dennis barges into the bathroom one day when Mac is in the shower and yanks the curtain aside.
‘Oops,’ Dennis says, with absolutely no intonation. ‘Didn’t realise you were in here.’
Mac blinks at him, wet hair dripping in his eyes. In all the movies, when someone’s caught naked by another character, they always rush to put something in front of their junk with one hand. A rubber duck or something. But they don’t have a rubber duck, and Mac’s brain doesn’t work that fast. So he’s just stood there with his dick out, wondering when Dennis’s eyes are going to drop to it. He’s keeping them trained on Mac’s face right now, gaze focused like a fucking laser beam, but it’s only a matter of time. Dicks are like that, in Mac’s experience: you just can’t help staring once you know one’s there.
‘Didn’t you hear the water from outside?’ Mac asks eventually, just to do something. His throat feels insanely dry considering he’s literally surrounded by running water.
‘Nope,’ Dennis says. He isn’t pulling the shower curtain back into place or making his excuses or leaving, Mac can’t help but notice. He’s still just staring Mac full in the face, steam swirling between them, as if they do this every fucking day. It’s really fucking hot in here and Dennis is still wearing all his clothes. He must be insanely uncomfortable. What the fuck is going on?
‘Okay,’ Mac says, bewildered. He reaches for the edge of the shower curtain and starts trying to tug it out of Dennis’s grip.
‘But seeing as I’m here,’ Dennis goes on with his fingers still fastened in a white-knuckle grip around the edge of the curtain, ‘I was thinking maybe we could –’
‘Look, if you’re sticking around, can you pass me my toothbrush?’ Mac asks, giving up on the shower curtain and slumping back against the tiled wall.
Dennis’s jaw snaps shut.
‘You know,’ Mac says, gesturing pointedly to the toothbrush pot behind Dennis on the shelf under the mirror. ‘The green one?’
‘I know which toothbrush is yours,’ Dennis says, sounding as if he’s having an out-of-body experience. Mac has no idea why. It’s not as if he’s the one who’s been walked in on while buck naked and covered in strawberry scented shower foam.
‘Saves time if you brush ‘em in the shower,’ Mac says helpfully, as Dennis seems to be having trouble with the concept: his eyes are bugging out.
‘Are you – no, yeah, of course,’ Dennis mutters, apparently to himself. He reaches behind him and passes Mac his toothbrush. ‘Yeah, great. That’s fine.’
‘Are you okay, dude?’ Mac asks, sticking his toothbrush in his mouth. Shit, he forgot to ask for the toothpaste. ‘Hey, can you –’
‘I’m going to put my head in the oven,’ Dennis says, and leaves the bathroom. Mac calls after him about the toothpaste but he doesn’t come back. Mac never does find out what was so important.
5.
The last thing – yeah, okay. Not subtle at all. It hits Mac like a brick to the face, but probably not in the way Dennis intended.
‘That one looks like a dick,’ Mac says, pointing up at the sky. ‘And that one, if you squint.’
‘You think they all look like dicks,’ Dennis says wearily. They’ve been out here for around an hour at this point, and he stopped arguing with Mac about this after the first fifteen minutes.
‘Well, they don’t really look like anything, right?’ Mac argues. ‘They’re just a bunch of stars. People made all that shit up about how they look like dogs and hammers and stuff, I can make up my own shit.’
‘A sky full of dicks.’ Dennis snorts. ‘Poetic.’
‘Amen to that,’ Mac says, feeling vaguely blasphemous but also not really. If God’s mad about him being gay, he’s not going to get any more or less mad about Mac finding dicks in the shape of the stars he threw. Might as well get some fun out of it.
Presumably fun is what Dennis has in mind; he was kind of cagey about driving out here. After they’d been driving for an hour or so with Dennis refusing to provide any kind of explanation, Mac had basically decided that Dennis had gotten in bad with the mafia again and was in the process of skipping town with Mac as his unwilling accomplice. Which was about when Dennis had parked them by the side of the road and made Mac get out.
‘Shut up,’ he’d said, when they were seated on the hood of the Range Rover and Mac was still asking why. ‘Just wait.’
Mac gave up and did; it’s not like there was anything else to do. And now they’re just sitting here, staring up at the stars.
‘I’m bored,’ Mac announces, turning to Dennis. He switches on his phone light and directs it at Dennis’s face. Dennis puts his hand up, scowling. ‘It’s fucking dark out here. You bring beer?’
Dennis leans down on his side of the car and swings up an honest to God picnic basket. Like, a basket made of woven wood strips or some shit. It contains beer, Mac’s favorite flavour of Doritos, and what looks like a package of Thin Mints.
Mac stares at it, thoroughly unnerved. ‘What the fuck. Are you dying?’
‘What?’ Dennis snaps, the muscles in his face going tight. ‘No, I’m not dying. Shut up.’
‘Well, I don’t know! Why all the – the driving and the stars and the –’ Mac gestures, hearing his voice increase in pitch – ‘the basket, what the fuck –’
‘Jesus,’ Dennis mutters. ‘Take deep breaths, freak.’
‘What’s wrong with you? We’ve never been out here, not in our whole lives, I don’t –’
‘I just thought it would be nice, okay?’ Dennis snaps. He thrusts a beer in Mac’s direction. ‘Would you drink this and shut up?’
Mac takes the Coors slowly, still staring at Dennis, his profile clear and sharp against the dusk. Dennis is refusing to look at him, his face a little pink even in the chill of the approaching night. He’s just staring straight ahead, not even looking up at the sky. The sick feeling in the pit of Mac’s stomach isn’t fading; if anything, it’s just getting more intense.
‘If something’s wrong, you have to tell me,’ Mac says. He hasn’t even opened his beer. ‘You can’t just drag me out here and be all mysterious and weird and then say I don’t get to freak out. I can freak out if I want to, Dennis.’
‘Clearly,’ Dennis mutters.
‘Den,’ Mac says, more insistently. ‘Come on.’
Dennis sighs and leans forward, his head in his hands. His beer dangles precariously from his fingertips.
‘You can tell me anything,’ Mac hears himself say, although he doesn’t really mean it. There are some things he absolutely could not handle hearing Dennis say again. But he won’t find out if it’s one of those things until Dennis gives it up. So.
‘Okay,’ Dennis says. He sniffs and pulls himself back up. ‘Do you ever just –’ He stops, chewing his lip. Then he visibly stops himself doing it, exhaling. His voice changes in a way that Mac wouldn’t be able to describe to anyone if they asked, but which makes his hackles rise. As if Dennis is bracing himself to get hit. ‘Don’t you ever wish things were different?’
‘Different how?’ Mac asks slowly. ‘I mean, sometimes. Everyone wants to be a millionaire, right?’
Dennis huffs a short laugh. ‘Not like that. I mean –’ He stops himself again, goes back to biting his lip. If Mac could string together all the times he’s caught Dennis doing that over the last few months, what the hell would it spell out? ‘Don’t you know what I mean?’
This feels like a trick question. Mac always thinks he knows what Dennis means, but he’s only right maybe sixty percent of the time. He assumes this is less his fault and more just a testament to the sheer crazy of Dennis’s thought processes, but the reason doesn’t matter in the end, does it? Sixty percent isn’t enough to stake everything on. Not really.
‘I don’t think so,’ Mac says. His voice sounds a lot smaller now. ‘I mean – I think maybe we want different things, Den.’
That’s always been the case before, he reminds himself when Dennis’s head drops, just a little, between his shoulders. Mac looks away, he can’t – he’s always been wrong before. He has to remember that. Literally every time. There’s no reason to think this is any different.
‘Yeah,’ Dennis says, after a long, drawn-out minute. The resignation in it makes Mac wince; like he had to try but he’s unsurprised at the outcome. ‘Guess we do.’
+1.
Mac isn’t good at fixing things, he can admit to that. He’s good at breaking them and he always has been. He’s proud of it, even; it seems like the better of the two options.
But it has the obvious disadvantage that when something important to him does break, he’s completely in the dark about how to fix it. Dennis doesn’t seem to want to talk to him even when Mac attempts to follow the post-argument routine that’s served them well for two decades: proceeding as if absolutely nothing happened.
‘What the hell?’ Dee asks when Mac turns up two hours late for work for the fourth day in a row, looking torn between amusement and annoyance. ‘He left without you again?’
Not only did Dennis leave for work without him, he also stole Mac’s phone so he couldn’t call an Uber or a cab. Mac remembered like halfway to the bar that buses exist, and also that he might have been able to call a car from the laptop somehow, but by then he was committed to the walk.
‘I know, shut up,’ he snaps, yanking the beer out of her hand and draining it. Jesus. ‘Is he even here?’
‘No,’ Dee says, eyeing him thoughtfully. ‘He fucked off an hour ago, said he had errands to run. What the hell’s going on with you two?’
Mac grinds his teeth. Judging on how successfully Dennis is managing to avoid him, his options are to let this continue indefinitely or to strap Dennis into a chair while he’s asleep and interrogate him when he wakes up.
Because the thing is. The thing is – if Dennis was talking about leaving again – if that’s what he was saying to Mac, about wanting his life to be different – wouldn’t he have done it by now? If it was such a big fucking deal he had to drive them all the way out of town to tell Mac about it, wouldn’t he have shown some other signs of following through? It didn’t seem like he did all that on a whim. He brought Thin Mints.
It never made sense before to assume anything on the basis of how Dennis acted around him, although it took him a long time to stop doing it anyway. Mac broke his heart on shit like that a thousand times before he could even admit to himself that he wanted any of it to matter. They say you never forget your first, but Mac’s only ever fallen in love with one person – he just did it over and over and over again, like a fucking idiot. Does that make it even harder to forget them? Or just harder to see anything different, maybe, than what you saw all the other times?
Maybe it’s time to try.
‘I wanted to talk to you about something,’ Mac starts once they’ve been seated.
‘I don’t get why you wanted me to come here,’ Dennis complains. It had been a trial and a half even getting him through the door of Guigino’s – he hung up the first ten times Mac called, and then after he finally picked up it took the promise of three months’ movie night choice to get him to agree to meet up. He’s obviously going to bitch the entire time, and probably drink way too much wine. It’s enough to make Mac want to give up on the whole idea.
But – the way Dennis’s face had looked when Mac said no to him, out under the stars. That was what he’d done, wasn’t it? Without even realising what he was saying it to. They should get a second chance, or whatever number they’re on by now. A chance to do it right.
‘Because it’s nice,’ Mac says curtly. ‘Like old times.’
Dennis snorts. He stays silent for a long time, twirling his wine glass between his fingers and ignoring Mac. He doesn’t even really look up when the waiter brings their food.
‘Like old times,’ he says dully, picking up his fork. ‘Right.’
Mac startles; it’s been so long he’d almost forgotten what he said. But actually – ‘Yeah, that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you –’
‘I’m not moving out, you know,’ Dennis interrupts, his lip trembling slightly before he bites it still. He clears his throat and pushes the risotto around on his plate. Is his fork shaking? ‘I’ve thought about it, and it wouldn’t even make sense to resolve it that way. The apartment’s always been mine, your name isn’t even on the lease, and –’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Mac breaks in, heart rate speeding up. How is this managing to get so fucked up already when he’s barely had a chance to talk? ‘Since when did I say anything about moving out? I mean – you moving out?’
‘You didn’t have to,’ Dennis says, a muscle in his cheek jumping. ‘It’s been all –’ He waves a hand, draining half his glass of wine in one swallow. ‘Off,’ he says, the line of his mouth dropping unhappily. ‘Everything’s been off.’
‘You think I brought you here to break up with you?’ Mac asks, appalled.
Dennis lets out a horrible bark of a laugh. ‘What’s to break up? We’re not – together, it’s –’
‘I know,’ Mac says, trying to stay calm. He leans forward in his seat. ‘I mean, that’s actually –’
‘– which is fine, it’s fine that we’re not, I know it’s –’
‘Will you shut up?’ Mac demands. ‘I’m trying to tell you something here.’
That brings Dennis up short, pushing him back into his seat. He’s frowning but at least he seems to be listening now. Mac takes a deep breath.
‘Listen, I don’t know what crazy conversation you’ve been having with yourself about this, but I don’t want anyone to move out.’ He laughs, semi-hysterical. ‘I thought you wanted to move out.’
‘Me?’ Dennis blinks. ‘Why would I want to move out?’
‘I don’t know!’ Mac says, throwing up his hands. ‘You were being weird.’
The line of Dennis’s jaw tightens.
‘Anyway,’ Mac says hastily. ‘I figured it out, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Why you were being so – I get it. And I feel the same w–’
Dennis cuts him off with a sharp laugh. ‘Oh, you’ve been trying to tell me –’ he starts, and then stops. Mac can actually see the rest of it hitting him; his mouth drops open.
‘Yes,’ Mac says, pointing at him, praying to God they’re finally on the same wavelength. ‘Yep. That, exactly, right there.’
Dennis’s chest is rising and falling rapidly, his eyes glittering. ‘If you’re fucking with me –’
‘I’m not,’ Mac promises. He’d take Dennis’s hand but he can’t reach that far across the table. ‘I’m not. I wouldn’t.’ Dennis still has that dangerous look on his face. Mac casts around for something to convince him. ‘Look, I just didn’t get it before, okay? I didn’t understand –’
‘I walked in on you in the shower,’ Dennis hisses through his teeth.
‘I know!’ Mac says. ‘But sometimes that happens, you know, when you’re roommates –’
‘Oh my God,’ Dennis says, muffled through his fingers, slumping back in his chair. ‘Oh my God.’
‘It just didn’t seem that different from what we were like before,’ Mac tries to explain, trailing off when Dennis looks up. They teeter on the edge of the moment for a long second before his face breaks, splitting right down the middle into a high, helpless laugh. Mac exhales shakily.
‘I can’t believe this,’ Dennis says, still laughing. He sounds out of breath and he’s staring at Mac. ‘Am I actually awake?’
‘You think it’s a dream?’ Mac asks, a little shyly.
Dennis rolls his eyes, cheeks pinking. ‘More like a nightmare,’ he says, although he can’t seem to straighten out the line of his mouth. ‘Don’t get a big head.’
They spend the drive back to the apartment in total silence – the kind you could cut with a knife, but in a sexy way. Dennis keeps looking over at him every couple of seconds, although when Mac looks back, he turns his face forward to the windscreen and pretends he’s concentrating on driving. Mac cannot stop smiling.
He crowds up against Dennis’s back once he’s trying to open the door upstairs, putting his hands on Dennis’s waist and nuzzling into his neck. Dennis’s pulse is so fast Mac can feel it through the skin, hot against his lips.
‘You’re not helping,’ Dennis says, his breath coming a little short.
‘You’re doing great,’ Mac murmurs, reaching around and closing his hand around Dennis’s, turning the key in the lock. ‘Hey, teamwork.’
‘I hate you,’ Dennis tells him, turning around in Mac’s arms as he walks backwards through the doorway and then – kissing him, kissing Mac, mouth opening wet and hot. Arms around his neck, dragging Mac into their apartment with clawed, demanding hands.
‘Fuck,’ Mac breathes, trying to figure out what to do first. His hands want to go everywhere at once, running up Dennis’s back and down to his ass and up again to bury in his hair, his beautiful stupid fucking hair. Mac doesn’t want to overwhelm him but Dennis is clinging just as hard; he didn’t even pause to turn on the light.
‘You’re so stupid, you’re so stupid,’ Dennis is chanting as he tugs Mac over to the couch, kissing him again, close and hot. He sits down hard and Mac kneels in front of him, can’t pull away from his mouth; he gathers Dennis up and hefts him to the edge of the couch until his legs are wrapped Mac’s waist.
‘Tell me what you want,’ he says seriously, kissing Dennis’s cheek and his ear and hair and all of it, everything. ‘We can do anything, anything you want, but you have to tell me.’
‘Oh, now you’re listening,’ Dennis says, but his voice is hoarse. He seems to hesitate, his hands bunching in Mac’s shirt. ‘I want you on top of me,’ he says, sounding helpless. ‘I just always want you on top of me.’
Mac pulls back and looks at him. They stare at each other for a moment with Dennis’s hands fretting at the collar of Mac’s shirt before Mac nods, leans in again, and picks Dennis up.
‘Holy shit,’ he hears Dennis says, scrabbling his fingernails into the line of Mac’s shoulders as Mac’s hands tighten on his ass. Mac winces but doesn’t let himself get distracted; it’s pleasing to note that Dennis must have put on a couple of pounds since Mac did this last. ‘Some warning would have been nice, Jesus.’
‘That’s not romantic,’ Mac says sternly, trying to remember any obstacles on route to Dennis’s bedroom. It would not be smooth to trip right now. ‘You want me to pause every five seconds and ask if this is still what you want?’
‘You’re going to do that anyway,’ Dennis says, sounding like he’s rolling his eyes. Mac deliberately bangs him into the doorframe. ‘Ow! Uncalled for.’
‘Man, shut up,’ Mac says, dumping Dennis on the bed and stripping off his shirt in one rapid movement. Dennis’s mouth falls open, his eyes going wide as he leans back on his hands. Mac stops what he’s doing, feeling a little self-conscious. It’s good to get stared at and he knows he’s got a nice body, but it’s kind of – different when Dennis does it. It gives him the same kind of queasy feeling you get at the top of a rollercoaster, waiting for the drop.
‘You do it too,’ he insists after a minute of nothing but Dennis staring intently at his chest, taking him in. Even Mac is starting to think this is a little over the top; Dennis sees him with his shirt off all the time. ‘You should strip too.’
‘Shut up, I’m busy,’ Dennis tells him. His eyes flick up to Mac’s face and then back down. ‘I can’t believe you look like this, you know.’
Mac flushes violently, deeply red. He can feel it flooding into his face, leaving him speechless. ‘I don’t –’
‘Shut up,’ Dennis says again, sounding almost angry. He starts unbuttoning his shirt in sharp, quick movements. ‘You shouldn’t be real.’
Mac makes a weird noise and drops to his knees in front of Dennis, who curls down and tries to kiss Mac while he’s still unbuttoning his shirt. In the end they do it together, their fingers getting all tangled up and Dennis laughing against Mac’s face, little puffs of breath.
‘I want to see you,’ Mac says, peeling the shirt down over Dennis’s arms and huddling into him, the warmth of his body. It’s nothing new, technically; he’s in Dennis’s space all the time, massaging him, dyeing his hair, sleeping in his bed. Doing all the shit Dennis wants him to do, trying to live on reflected light. But it’s different. He doesn’t need the hitch of Dennis’s breath to tell him so, but it’s nice to hear it all the same. ‘I have to.’
‘You see me all the time,’ Dennis says. Mac grins because it’s so close to what he was thinking, and because Dennis isn’t even trying to hide the way his voice is shaking. ‘Oh, don’t.’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Mac protests, throwing his shirt to one side and leaning in rest his forehead on Dennis’s chest. Dennis takes his head in both hands and kisses the top of it. He wraps his legs around Mac’s back and Mac wonders, for an insane moment, if he could just stay here like this until he dies. He can’t really picture getting any happier; might as well go out with a bang.
It’s a weird enough thought that it yanks him back into the present. He pulls back and up to kiss Dennis again, hands running and down his thighs. Still wearing jeans. Useless.
‘Can I suck your dick?’ he murmurs against Dennis’s mouth. Dennis chokes. Mac tightens his grip and feels him squirm. ‘Please? I think about it all the time.’
‘Jesus,’ Dennis says. He draws in a sharp breath. ‘If you were thinking about it all the time, why didn’t you – no.’ He scrubs a hand over his face. ‘No, I didn’t mean – it’s fine, I didn’t mean –’
‘You mean when –’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Dennis talks over him, too fast. ‘You’re here now, it doesn’t –’
‘I thought you didn’t mean it,’ Mac says immediately. Dennis goes still, which probably means he’s hurt. But it’s not really like he can argue. ‘Or that you – wanted to leave again.’ He snorts. ‘You kept getting that weird look on your face.’
‘I don’t want to leave again,’ Dennis says, avoiding Mac’s eye as he runs his hands through Mac’s hair. Fucking it all up, feels like; rubbing out the gel. It must feel gross on his hands.
‘I got that,’ Mac says, dipping his head down, trying to get Dennis to look at him. ‘I know.’
‘I don’t want to keep talking about it,’ Dennis says, mulish. He risks a look at Mac’s face and then darts in to kiss him quickly, as if he thinks Mac might not notice. Mac keeps him there, makes it longer and deeper, until he feels the hunch of Dennis’s shoulders start to relax.
‘Let me,’ Mac hears himself saying when he pulls back and slides down, knees back on the floor, ‘let me, let me –’
‘Please,’ Dennis says; he’s the one who says it, this time. Mac’s hands are shaky on the buttons of his jeans.
Sucking dick is both more and less complicated than Mac used to think it would be before he could admit he wanted to do it. There’s a lot to keep track of, but it focuses him so intensely that that doesn’t seem to matter: Mac never feels like such a single-minded organism as when he’s got a dick in his mouth, except for maybe when he’s at the gym. He just loves it – he wants it, it tastes good, it feels good, end of story. There’s nothing about it he doesn’t like.
‘Jesus fuck,’ Dennis swears above him, fingers tightening in Mac’s hair. And there’s that, too – maybe the best part of all is how it makes someone sound. So dependent on you, so needy. Dennis’s voice is curling up like a question, desperate. Mac wants to make him cry.
He pulls off sloppy and slow and wraps his hand around the base to jerk Dennis into his mouth, hissing when Dennis yanks his head back to look at him. His lips feel puffy and sore, stretched at the corners. He’s one good thrust away from tears in his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ Dennis says, low and rough. ‘You like that, huh?’
Mac looks at him from under his eyelashes, goading. Dennis moans as he watches his dick sliding in and out of Mac’s mouth, looking absolutely hypnotised. Mac moves his hand between his own thighs to press, just to relieve some of the pressure on his aching dick. Dennis’s gaze drops to it and his cock jerks in Mac’s mouth.
‘You do like it,’ he says, the rhythm of his thrusts starting to stutter. Mac sucks harder, hollowing his cheeks. ‘You get off on it, huh? Like having my dick in your mouth –’
Mac wants to nod but he can’t; settles for sucking harder, pulling back just enough to keep Dennis on the edge, moaning. He sinks back down slowly, letting the head of Dennis’s cock bump the back of his throat before he swallows around it. The muscles in Dennis’s thighs seize up, his face tightening and then going slack with pleasure as he comes, spilling down Mac’s throat.
Mac pulls off and coughs, heaving for breath.
‘Fuck,’ Dennis pants. His hands are flapping over Mac’s shoulders and face, useless and trying to help. ‘You okay?’
‘Been a while,’ Mac says, hoarse. He blinks; there’s those tears, caught at the edges of his eyes.
Dennis must spot them at the same time because he wipes at Mac’s face with his thumbs, still clumsy and stupid from coming. He frowns at his hands, betrayed. Mac laughs at him and then sighs, ducking down to rest his head on Dennis’s thigh. Fuck, his knees hurt. They’re going to click like stiletto heels on a hardwood floor when he gets up.
‘Come up here,’ Dennis tells him, tipping up Mac’s chin. His mouth twitches in a half-smile. ‘I mean, you look good on your knees and all, but.’
‘I was gonna get on top of you,’ Mac remembers as he stands up, wincing as his knees and back pop. He looks down at Dennis, blinking and come-pretty, the pink flush of his cheeks. Even the deepest of lines around his eyes look more relaxed. ‘I had like, a plan.’
Dennis throws himself backwards on the bed, softening dick still spilling out of his jeans. ‘So get on top of me,’ he says, grinning. ‘Try not to hurt yourself on the way up.’
Mac swears and tugs Dennis’s jeans down his legs. It pulls him down the bed at first and he yelps, not prepared for it. Mac laughs at him again, head hanging between his shoulders. They manage to get there eventually; both naked and rolling around, mile after mile of warm soft skin Mac could fucking bury himself in.
‘I wanted it,’ he says at one point, when Dennis is braced above him and staring down at his cock, watching his own hand slide slowly up and down. He hasn’t sucked it yet but he’s licked his lips enough times that Mac figures the offer isn’t far off. ‘The whole time. You know that, right?’
They covered this earlier, but Mac can’t help himself. It feels too fucking urgent with Dennis looking at him like that, too much like a dreamed thing. He has to know Mac feels the weight of it too; that he never would have left Dennis out on a ledge like that for so long if he’d known what he was actually asking.
Dennis looks at him and snorts, speeding up his hand and tracking the way it makes Mac’s face change. ‘Obviously,’ he says, taunting. ‘I’m not that oblivious.’