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“So...I read those links you sent me,” Mac says after swallowing his orange juice down with a loud gulp.
“Oh,” Dennis replies curtly. “That’s...good.”
“Don’t start being shy now, Dennis. I have some questions.”
Mac and Dennis are sitting at their kitchen table, finishing up breakfast. What was going on between them was- although a long time coming, still very fresh. It’s only been a month since the gang visited Fun Zone together.
Still dressed in his laser tag gear, Dennis had decided that he wanted to enjoy the rest of his life. He didn’t want to be on his deathbed, not having experienced everything fun that he had wanted to, deeply mired in denial and regret. It was an existential revelation that hadn’t come a moment too soon.
He didn’t want to continue the awkward emotional dance around Mac anymore. He didn’t like the uncertainty and the unspoken words, and he certainly didn’t like hearing about Mac’s forays into sex with men that weren’t him. Altogether, he was tired of it.
So naturally, Dennis let Mac know in less-than-subtle terms the very next day that he did in fact, want him back.
“Mac, baby. I gotta admit it. I do want you back,” he said abruptly, after muting the TV during the commercial break of whatever stupid show they were watching at the time.
Mac turned and looked wildly around the apartment, as if he was under the impression that the words had come from anywhere else but his roommate's mouth.
“You’re talking to me?” Mac queried. Not in a rude way, but in a genuinely inquisitive fashion.
Dennis threw his arms up in exasperation.
“Yes, Mac, I’m talking to you! Who else would I be talking to? We’re the only ones here, and I know you heard me just say your name.”
Mac lowered his head, and a small smile tugged at his lips.
“I know Den, I just wanted to be absolutely sure.”
Dennis sat back against the couch, more relaxed now. He smirked.
“Are you ‘absolutely sure’ you’re not dreaming? Or do you need me to pinch you?”
“Hmm...no,” Mac mused. “No need to pinch me. I do have another test though.”
Mac took Dennis’ hands from where they were resting in his lap and gathered them in his own. Dennis glanced down at their hands - they were clasped together tightly. He looked back up to meet Mac’s kind brown eyes and released a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
“If I leaned in to kiss you...right now, would you pull away from me? Or would you let me kiss you this time?”
Dennis shrugged, but on the inside, his stomach was full of butterflies. It seemed as if Mac had been waiting for this moment, even though Dennis knew in his heart of hearts, Mac couldn’t have been positive it would ever come.
“Only one way to find out,” he’d answered.
All in all, things had been good lately. Great, even. But even still, Dennis had gotten a little...complacent. The novelty of Mac’s polite good morning kisses and sloppy nightly blowjobs, though wholly appreciated and reciprocated - was starting to wear off. It felt like nothing had really changed except that Mac didn’t look like such an idiot anymore when he gazed at Dennis with hearts in his eyes. It was how anyone would hope that someone they were involved with would look at them.
Yes, the initial honeymoon period was just as blissful as Dennis had expected. Mac was the ideal boyfriend. He pulled Dennis’ chair out for him at their most recent monthly dinner and helped Dennis back into his coat when it was time to leave. Mac had even surprised him with flowers the next morning - a beautiful fresh bouquet of twelve red roses.
It was as if Mac was modelling himself after all of the trope-y boyfriends from the romantic comedies that he liked to watch on his phone at night when he thought Dennis didn’t know what he was doing. He looked the part, too.
It wasn’t that Dennis didn’t like being treated nicely. He secretly loved the romance of it all. Mac treated him like a princess and had upped the ante ever since he could proudly call himself Dennis' boyfriend. Still, Dennis felt that there was something... lacking.
There was something about Mac that Dennis missed sorely - some lost aspect of his personality that he reasons he must of accidentally conditioned out of him over the years by acting as if he knew what was best and knew better than Mac - day in and day out.
He missed the Mac that wasn’t afraid to call Dennis out for being a dick, the Mac that liked to remind Dennis of how much stronger he was physically; he missed the Mac that liked to believe that he knew what’s what - and wasn’t ashamed to let him know it.
Most of all, Dennis actually missed being bossed around.
That is how he got to be sitting at the kitchen table with Mac, carefully discussing what he’d asked of him over breakfast. For him to play a role that he’d fallen out of completely as of late.
“So like, just to clarify...if I told you not to talk, you just - wouldn't?”
“...Yes, Mac. That’s the whole point.”
“And if you did say something after I asked you not to...you want me to punish you?”
Mac frowns at the thought, but he’s trying to understand - because more than anything, he just wants Dennis to be happy. If Dennis suddenly wanted to be told what to do after telling Mac what to do and believe for the past ten years, who was he to deny him that?
“It’s not that I want you to punish me, per se,” Dennis murmurs. ”If you tell me to not speak, I just won’t.”
Mac mulls this over for a few seconds. “But let’s just say you do, for whatever reason. You want me to…”
Dennis sighs and speaks up. “Let’s just take this slow. It’s just for us, okay? Nothing would be anything different on the outside. In fact, I implore you to act as if nothing has changed around everybody else.”
Mac doesn’t reply for a minute; he just chews on the last of his eggs and toast slowly. He gulps down another mouthful of his orange juice before he speaks again.
“...because you don’t want people to know that you’re really my bitch, and not the other way around!”
Dennis feels his cheeks start to burn. He rolls his eyes and assumes a nonchalant posture in his chair before making eye contact.
“Something like that, Mac. Is that what you want to hear?”
Mac smiles. It’s a terrible, wide smile that is way too sexy for breakfast time, if you ask Dennis.
“I guess I’ll tell you what I want to hear, when I want to hear it.”
Something tightens in Dennis’ gut at Mac’s tone and that’s when he knows that he’s in for a world of trouble.
*
Mac sits back onto the couch and spreads his thighs open. “Come sit, I wanna watch a movie.”
“...Where do you want me to sit?” Dennis feels like this shouldn’t be a question, but he wants to be sure.
“On the floor, between my legs.” Mac says this simply and reaches for a pillow. “Here, sit on this so you’re more comfortable.”
Dennis takes the plush pillow that Mac hands to him and places it on the ground between Mac’s socked feet. He sits on it, crossing his legs and facing the television with his back to him. Not for the first time today, he starts to feel his cheeks get warm.
“Perfect, Den. Thank you,” Mac says. “Is there anything you want to watch in particular?”
Dennis stills. He didn’t think that Mac would allow him that level of choice but he reminds himself; He chose this entire situation. He shrugs, aiming to appear casual.
“I could watch Inception again. I know you hate it, but it’s just what I’m in the mood for.”
Dennis frowns at his own words. Since when did he care to explain to Mac why he wanted to watch what he did?
Mac says nothing for a moment then brushes his fingers through Dennis’ hair absently. The sensation is soothing and Dennis finds himself taking a steadying breath, relaxing into the feeling. Before he expects it, Mac is speaking again.
“I don’t hate that movie. Tom Hardy is in it.”
Dennis laughs softly. “So that’s why you wanted to go see Venom so badly when it came out.”
Mac’s fingers freeze in Dennis’ hair mid-path. “Shut up Den, you’ve been dragging me to go see every movie your precious Leonardo DiCaprio has been in for the last twenty years, and I never once complained.”
Dennis wants to say: “Mac, you’ve complained almost every time I've ever opened my mouth to praise Leo, you possessive fuck,” but he says nothing, because Mac told him to, jokingly or not.
Mac continues to thread his fingers through Dennis’ hair, slowly and methodically, in silence. The movie begins and DiCaprio is stranded on an abandoned beach, one side of his face pressed into wet sand.
“Are you liking this?” Mac asks, while scratching his nails gently along Dennis’ scalp.
Knowing that Mac can’t see it from where he is, Dennis makes a face. “Am I liking what?”
Suddenly, Mac’s hands are gone from his hair.
“You know what.”
And Dennis would do anything to feel the soft pressure of Mac’s hands on him again. He reminds himself that Mac still has a vindictive streak in him, no matter how wholesome he likes to think he’s become. He could get up and leave right now if he wanted, choosing not to indulge Dennis in this anymore. It would probably make Dennis admire him even more than he has been lately.
Dennis lets his head fall backwards into Mac’s lap. He peers up to see Mac gazing sharply back down at him, his handsome face closer than expected, but upside down. Still, upside down or not, he was handsome.
“I like this, Mac. I like your hands in my hair,” he breathes.
“That’s more like it.” Mac says. “Now, sit back up so I can continue.”
Onscreen, Cobb is saying that once an idea has taken root in someone’s mind, it was almost impossible to eradicate.
Mac slides his fingers back through Dennis’ hair, and Dennis wonders how he could have ever thought the opposite to be true.