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It starts off with a letter. The second Mac sees it in the mailbox, he considers sliding it into his pocket inconspicuously to burn later. That would mean he and Dennis were finally even from all of those years ago.
Instead, he lets it sit on the table like a bomb waiting to go off. The return address, Brian Peterson in North Dakota, glares back at him in childishly large print. Any second Dennis will return from Dee’s, helping her with some TikTok shop scheme they’ve both been hyper-focused on for weeks.
How long would it take him to notice? Mac is the one who checks the mail, maybe Dennis would ignore it until it sat collecting dust for weeks under the piles of unopened credit card offers and bank statements.
When the door slams shut, Mac scrambles out of the kitchen and leans against the wall, aiming for totally chill.
“You’re home!” Mac chokes out, unsure of what to say.
“You sound thrilled,” Dennis says flatly, squinting at him as he kicks his shoes off. And he’s right, frankly, Mac wants to push him back out of the apartment.
He watches Dennis’s face as he looks him up and down, calculating. Mac gulps.
“Of course, man. Always happy to see you.”
Why did this have to happen now, when they were finally doing so well? Even after the weirdness of the rehearsal dinners, Dennis has been closer to him than ever. They were back to their monthly dinners and it had been at least a few weeks since Dennis had scratched him last.
“You know, I was actually just thinking we should go out. There’s that new place that opened up around the block with the girly cocktails and shit I know you’re into and I feel like we really haven’t been out a lot this month plus you have to be so exhausted from putting up with Dee all day and–”
“Mac–” Dennis cuts him off, putting a hand on his shoulder. Mac looks down at it with wide eyes. “Just tell me whatever the hell you think you’re doing a good job of hiding right now.”
Mac steps back out of his touch and scowls. He knows that when he tells Dennis, it’s going to turn into a whole thing. He’ll probably throw something and then Mac’s going to have to clean it up and wonder if he should follow Dennis into his room so he doesn’t hurt himself or give him space so that he doesn’t get even more pissed. It’s always the delicate balance of giving Dennis what he expects and figuring out what that expectation actually is
“Fine, but I want to have it on the record that I tried to make you happy, alright?”
Dennis’s frown deepens, fingers clenching at his side. Mac follows the line of his arm and shivers, turning on his heels before Dennis gets the chance to say or do anything.
He snatches the letter from the table and holds it in both of his hands like an offering. He can’t bear to look at Dennis’s expression, he can only feel the weight of it leave his hands as Dennis takes it from him.
There’s silence. Mac hadn’t considered silence. He glances up.
Dennis is staring at the letter in his hands, expression unmoving.
“I’m sorry Dennis, I was going to get rid of it–”
“You were going to get rid of it?” He asks, voice unnervingly even.
Mac winces. “No, I mean I wasn’t going to get rid of it, rid of it. Just out of the way. I don’t know why I said that. I was just going to leave it on the table, or something! I don’t know, man. I just saw it like five seconds ago and I wasn't thinking. Promise.”
Dennis stares at him, saying nothing, then looks back down at the letter. He walks over to the table and places it down. Mac watches as he shuts his eyes, breathes in and breathes out.
“Dennis…”
“It’s fine, Mac. Move past it.” He turns back around to look at him, expression unreadable. Mac wants to cross over and pull him close, but he knows Dennis would never let him.
“You’re not gonna read it?”
“Why would I read it?” Dennis walks out of the kitchen and back into the living room and sits down on the couch. “I’m tired of this conversation already, so let’s just drop it.”
“Why would you read it?” Mac didn’t know what he expected. “You’re seriously not even gonna open it?”
Dennis had never told him about North Dakota, and Mac had never asked. If he was being honest, he didn’t really want to know. He hated thinking about Dennis playing house with Mandy and Brian Jr. He hated thinking about him sleeping in her bed while Mac was all alone in their apartment with all of the remnants of Dennis left behind.
It was just another weight added to the years of their collective history. Suffocating.
“You’re not even curious? I mean, the kid has to be like 13 now, right?”
“11,” Dennis hisses. “He’s 11, Mac.”
“Fuck okay, I’m so sorry, the kid from your secret family in North Dakota you haven’t seen in 10 years and haven’t mentioned to me since is 11. How could I forget? That’s my bad, Dennis”
“Well maybe if you asked you would know.”
“And you know so much about him.” It wasn’t like Dennis was winning World’s Greatest Father any time soon. For all Mac knew he murdered his entire family in North Dakota and never got caught.
“I did!” Dennis stood up from the couch, hands clenched by his side. “You have no idea what it’s like to be a dad, Mac. How could you? Your dad doesn’t even like you.”
“Oh and whose goddamn fault is that, Dennis?” He steps closer into Dennis’s space, watches his eyes shift. “I could have had a relationship with my dad if you didn’t ruin it.”
“Yeah I’m the one that ruined it,” Dennis chuckles cruelly, turning the letter over in his hands. “You keep on thinking that buddy.”
“He wrote me and you ripped up his letters! I didn’t even get a chance to talk to him.” If it wasn’t for Dennis, Mac’s dad might have understood him. He might have stayed after his dance. He might have been able to talk to him right now.
“For your own good!”
“That wasn’t your choice to make!”
“And it’s your choice if I talk to my own son or not?”
Mac doesn’t have an answer for that. He wants to grab the letter out of Dennis’s hands and rip it up in front of him, to set the whole apartment on fire and watch it burn down for the third time.
“It’s been almost 10 years Mac,” Dennis continues, moving even closer so that he’s right up in his face. “Have you even heard from the guy since?”
Mac is silent. He hasn’t allowed himself to think about it, about why his dad hasn’t reached out to him. He had blamed Dennis for years, but something deep inside of him knows that it’s probably his own fault. That his dad was probably disgusted with him for the way he’d chosen to come out to him, for being himself at all.
“He’s never loved you. Never will. Wouldn’t care if you were dead or alive. And it’s not my fault you’re too goddamn stupid to see that. Even fucking Frank can see it!”
“Funny you should mention Frank,” Mac said, narrowing his eyes. “You know since he can’t even remember your name now.”
Mac hates himself for saying it but he wants to hurt Dennis back, to make him feel even a fraction of what Mac feels all the time.
“Who cares about Frank? He’s not even my real dad.” Dennis crosses his arms, trying to be nonchalant, but Mac can see it got under his skin.
“And we all know how your real dad felt about you,” Mac said, twisting the knife. “Bruce couldn't stand you either.”
“You think Frank loves you? He’s not capable of it, pal.”
“Maybe you’re just jealous because Frank cares about me more than he ever cared about you.”
“If you want Frank to be your new daddy go ahead, Mac. You can have him. I wouldn’t care if the guy keeled over and died today. And you know what? I wish he’d actually been dying weeks ago so I could pull the plug myself.”
Mac knows that isn’t true. The whole time Frank, or Cake Frank, was dying he could see the way Dennis’s shoulders had tensed. He knew that the coke-induced side quest was just a way to forget it was happening.
“Frank was there for me more than you ever were.” Mac’s not sure when he started caring about Frank this much. Maybe it was some kind of fucked up trauma bond all those years ago. Maybe it was how shaken up Charlie had been about the idea of Frank dying, even if he hadn’t said it at the time.
He knows the way he treated Dee and Dennis when they were younger. Hell, it was the reason they started Paddy’s at all. But Frank had been there for him when Dennis wasn’t, and that was something even if it defied all reason.
“Yeah, and Frank’s father of the year, Mac.” Dennis scoffs, then steps closer, getting up in his face so that Mac can feel him breathing. “At least he had the decency to call you a faggot to your face unlike your own dad.”
Mac sees red. He barely registers it happening before he’s pushing Dennis to the ground. They both hit the floor with a crash and Mac watches as Dennis winces when his head hits the ground.
He wants to punch him, and feels so fucking stupid he’s not able to. He and Dennis have fought like this a million times over the years, have torn each other’s hair out in pieces, bitten each other’s arms, slapped the shit out of each other.
His hands are shaking as Dennis squirms underneath him, trying to push him up. Mac remembers when he was able to, back before he’d gotten so jacked. Dennis used to be able to push him up, but now he squirms underneath him and Mac smirks down at him smugly. That’s something he has on him, finally.
“What’s the matter? You can’t get up?” Mac braces his thighs on both sides of Dennis’s hands holding his shoulders down. Dennis’s face is bright red in anger, the veins in his neck prominent in his exertion. Mac laughs. “Go ahead, keep trying.”
“Fuck you, Mac.” Dennis spits in his face then and Mac winces, but keeps pushing Dennis down out of determination.
“Dude, gross.”
“I hate you so goddamn much! I fucking hate you! I hate you!” Dennis’s feet are kicking under him like some kind of stupid toddler and Mac decides that this is better than landing a punch on him.
He knows Dennis doesn’t mean it when he says it. He tells him he hates him at least once a week, like some kind of defensive reflex. In his fucked up way, Mac thinks it’s something like an ‘I love you’ now.
“Yeah you hate me so much, Dennis. I know.”
Mac stays like that, holding Dennis’s hands as he struggles, until finally, he stills, too exhausted to fight back. He’s breathing hard and Mac can feel the rise and fall of his chest, and sees the mascara beginning to smear under his eyes as angry tears begin forming. Mac hates the way it makes his chest twist.
“You look so stupid, man,” Mac says, but there isn’t any malice in it. He eases up slightly on his grip. Dennis can’t even look at him, he averts his eyes and glares at nothing. Mac’s overwhelmed by the sound of their breathing, the feeling of Dennis’s body warm under him.
Suddenly, before Mac has the chance to fully process the shift in emotion, Dennis is looking up at him with his big teary eyes filled with something like determination. Mac cocks his head to the side, trying to decipher it. There’s something unreadable in his expression and Mac wishes Dennis would just tell him what was going on his mind for once.
“Den…” He asks, so quietly that he can barely hear the sound of his own voice, “What are you…”
Now that his hands are free, Dennis reaches up and Mac braces himself for a scratch across the face, but instead feels both of Dennis’s hands on his cheeks. Before he can do anything to stop it, Dennis is pulling him down on top of him into a hard kiss.
Mac gasps into his mouth as he falls back down on top of him, and they both wince as their lips clash together on the impact. Mac’s leg is slotted between them now, and he feels Dennis wrap his leg around his hip to pull him in closer.
This isn’t the first time they’ve done this, but it hasn’t happened for years now. Not since the suburbs. That time in the middle of the night, when Dennis had woken him up by climbing on top of him, already half hard and begging him to get inside of him. Mac sometimes thought it had been a dream or a hallucination the way Dennis had disappeared after it was over, never mentioning it again.
It was always like that, Dennis suddenly using him as a distraction from whatever storm was going on inside of him and Mac being too stupidly in love with him to deny him.
Now Mac feels Dennis lick into his mouth and he groans, wrapping his hands under Dennis’s thighs to pull him closer. He can taste the salty tears rolling down Dennis’s face, even as he grinds his hips up into him.
Mac knows that Dennis is just trying to forget the letter, that he probably doesn’t really want this the way Mac wants this. He selfishly wants to pull Dennis in and take advantage of that, but instead, he pulls back, pushing down on Denni’s chest to separate them, “We shouldn’t do this.”
“Goddammit, Mac,” Dennis hisses as he grips his hair and pulls him back down. “Can you just shut the fuck up? For once in your life, please,” he says, biting down Mac’s jaw. Mac moans as he breaks skin.
“Holy shit–”
“Shhh. Just let me have this.”
Dennis’s voice is desperate and seductive, in direct contrast to the tears in his eyes. He knows that Mac can’t deny him like this, not when his hips are rutting against him like that. His pupils are blown wide, looking up at him like he’s drunk off of him.
Maybe this is how they work through their problems. Maybe all this has been so pent up for years that it’s actually healthy to let it all out. How could he ever deny him? He’s never been able to. He feels overwhelmed by the feeling of how much Dennis needs him.
But another part of him doesn’t know if he’ll be able to take it when Dennis inevitably wants to forget this ever happened again.
“You don’t even want this,” Mac hears himself say. He remembers the feeling of driving his car into the wall all those years ago, bracing for impact. He watches Dennis open his mouth to protest, but cuts him off. “Don’t. This is so fucked up, man.”
“You don’t know what I want, have you ever considered that?”
“You don’t know what you want!” Mac exclaims in frustration. “Less than a five minutes ago you were telling me I’m the reason my dad doesn’t talk to me anymore and now suddenly you want me to fuck you?” Mac pushes himself off of him, standing up.
Dennis doesn’t say anything, just lays back down like he’s given up.
“You’re seriously telling me you want this? And it has nothing to do with forgetting about the letter?” He asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Do you even want this, Mac?” Dennis turns it around on him, sitting up on his forearms. “You’re the one who's been following me around like a lost puppy for the last couple of years and I’m here now telling you that I want you and you don’t want me at all.”
“Because I don’t want to just fuck you, Dennis, okay? I’m tired of it.”
“You’re tired of it?”
“Yeah, I am.”
Mac runs his hands over his face in frustration, and groans. “I don’t even know what we’re fighting about anymore. You want me, you don’t want me. You want me to leave, but you also want me to stay.”
It’s all the shit from the last thirty-five years suddenly unearthing itself on a random weekday.
Dennis has always been this way, and Mac suspects it’s some kind of fucked up coping mechanism, but it still confuses him every time Dennis tells him to leave then gets made that he might actually go.
Something about that must have struck Dennis, because he goes silent again, biting his lip like he’s trying to draw blood. Mac hates himself for wanting to reach out and hold him close. There’s no reason he should have to comfort Dennis right now after everything he had said to him. Dennis is the one who started this.
“What do you want, Den?” He finds himself saying softly.
“I don’t know,” Dennis admits. “Maybe you should just leave.”
He looks so young then, just like he did when they first met. Mac’s reminded of the nights of quiet whispers between them as they both crowded into the twin bed of Dennis’s dorm room.
“I probably should,” Mac says, as much as he knows it’s going to set Dennis off again. He shouldn’t even care what Dennis wants. He was such a piece of shit to him earlier and Mac knows he shouldn’t take it.
He hates himself for how badly he wants to apologise to Dennis, despite it all. Even though he doesn’t deserve it.
Mac looks toward the door. He knows he can go over to Charlie’s without even needing to make an excuse about why he needs to stay there. But then he’d have to see Frank and he can hear Dennis’s voice in his head. You think Frank loves you?
“You know you can’t just say whatever the fuck you want to me and expect me to stick around,” Mac says instead. “It’s so hard being in love with you. I wish I wasn’t sometimes.”
Dennis doesn’t react to the confession. It’s something they both already know and something Mac’s let slip out on more than one occasion. Still, Mac’s chest burns with the admission.
“Then don’t love me, Mac.” Dennis wipes at his eyes in frustration, looking down at the floor. “Go put us both out of our misery and find some other guy to love.”
“You’re so stupid,” Mac scoffs. “You think I haven’t tried?”
Dennis shrugs, not answering him. Mac doesn’t even know how they got here. The letter is discarded on the floor now and Mac glares at it. Maybe he should be happy that Dennis doesn’t care about his son. It means he wants to be here with Mac and that’s what matters after all.
Mac hates the kid, suddenly. He’s not proud of it, but he does. Without Brian, Dennis might have stayed with him that year. They could have even been something.
“You know Mandy said something similar,” Dennis says, his voice sounds like he’s either on the verge of tears or laughter. It’s unnerving. “That it’s hard, loving me. Or maybe that I don’t let people love me. I don’t remember.”
Mac opens his mouth to say something, but Dennis continues. “She always asked about you. About if I’d reached out to you at all, if I had feelings for you.”
Mac feels his heart pounding in his chest. He had had selfishly hoped that Dennis thought about him, but after he hadn’t heard from him the entire year, he wondered if it was easy for Dennis to just forget about him altogether.
“I think she knew I couldn’t…that I didn’t feel something for her. But I tried, man. I really tried.” Dennis sits down on the couch, shoulders slumped over. He pats the space next to him as an offering, and Mac hesitantly sits. “I wanted to love her so badly. It would make me feel normal to love her.”
He doesn’t say he loves Mac, but Mac knows that he does. That it’s the closest thing to an admission he’s going to get. “But you didn’t,” Mac confirms, hoping that Dennis knows what he’s really asking.
“But I didn’t.” He meets Mac’s eyes and Mac breathes in, afraid to move in case Dennis chooses to retreat from him again.
“I’m not cut out for loving anyone,” He admits. “I hurt you, I hurt Mandy, Brian, goddamn Maureen, It’s what I do when I—you know.”
He doesn’t need to finish, Mac already knows. He nods, and as fucked up as it his, he feels warm at the admission that he’s one of the people Dennis loved, maybe loves.
“You make me feel everything and I hate it,” Dennis continues. “Even if Mandy didn’t come I was halfway out the door the second you gave me that RPG. It felt like too much all at once. I wished you had stayed in the closet, you know? The way you were just openly wanting me and suddenly you weren’t pretending you didn’t any more. It scared the shit out of me, Mac. And then I came back and you were pumping loads into that creepy fucking doll and I hated you so much I couldn’t stand it.”
Mac winces. “I’m sorry.” It’s all he can say, really. “I felt like I was going insane when you were gone. I didn’t even know if you’d come back.”
Dennis shuts his eyes and sighs. “I don’t care anymore,” he says, and that’s all that Mac is going to get. The closest to the acceptance of an apology that Dennis’s pride will allow.
Mac leans back against the couch and stares up at the ceiling. He’s not sure what to say now, not sure what to do with all of this new information. Dennis loves him, he’s sure of that, but whether or not Dennis wants to be in love with him is something else.
It’s not hard loving Dennis, the hard part is Dennis not loving him back the way he so desperately needs him to.
Could they ever really be anything more than this? Mac knows he’d ruin it even if Dennis didn’t, and even if they didn’t ruin it themselves, the rest of the gang would ruin it for them eventually.
In the end, it’s Dennis who breaks the silence first. “I’m not going to read it today, but when I do, will you be there?”
Mac looks over at him, and there’s a question in his eyes. It’s more than the letter, he hopes that it’s more than the letter.
It might not be a resolution, not entirely, but for now, Mac is tired.
“Yeah, Den, I’ll be there.” They’ll talk about it maybe in another 8 years, he thinks. For now, he takes Dennis’s hand on the couch, and for once, Dennis threads their fingers together and lets him.