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It was only after Dennis had driven him home, and Jan had gathered his things from their apartment (Mac had to keep reassuring himself that it was still his too) that all the thoughts in Mac’s mind were replaced with the nagging, repetitive notion that his father had left to learn to forgive him.
He didn’t know why he felt this way about it. After all, it was better than if Luther had actually tried to kill him or beat the shit out of him or whatever. There was still the potential that Mac could talk to him again. Mac didn’t know why he felt like the world was ending.
And then there was Dennis, but he couldn’t allow himself to even try to sort that one out.
He tossed and turned in bed. Got up to look in the fridge for some beer. No beer. 2:32 AM. Laid down in bed and thought about his dad some more. Heard his phone buzz on the bedside table.
“Hello?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Duuuude,” Charlie half-screamed from the other end. “Me and Frank just got home because he-” Charlie cut himself off briefly. “OH MY GOD FRANK- we were digging through the trash behind that sports bar but he brought the mannequin with him and it’s so weird I gotta go somewhere can I-”
“Yeah, come over to my place, Charlie,” Mac said automatically. For a few moments Mac heard nothing on the end but doors slamming and the screeching of- Jesus, like fifty fucking alley cats and then Charlie said, “Okay, dude, I’m gonna-” and then the phone cut out.
Twenty more minutes passed, during which Mac got some more extremely important ceiling-staring done, and he finally heard a knock on the door. Then as he was going to get the door he heard another knock, followed by a screechy “MAAAC” and exceptionally loud banging.
“Shut up, Charlie,” he hissed as he opened the door. “Dennis is asleep.” He pretended not to notice Charlie’s scowl when he said Dennis’s name, or the silver spray paint dusting the tip of his nose, creating that wild-yet-unfocused look in his eyes Mac was already too used to seeing. Mac held back a sigh when Charlie bypassed the couch, which Mac had assumed he would be crashing on, entirely to head straight for Mac’s room. Now he sure as hell wasn’t gonna get any sleep.
Mac followed Charlie to his room and paused in the doorway, feeling all his annoyance with Charlie melt away at the sight of him sitting hunched over on the edge of his bed. Charlie always got so manically wound up and then it could drain away in an instant, normally as he became overstimulated and started screaming for everyone to shut up. Right now, though, he just looked so tired.
And small, Mac mused. He had such a big personality but he always looked so small.
Quietly, Mac closed the door and went over to the bed to sit next to Charlie. He sank slowly down onto the mattress, leaving about six inches of space between their hands. “What was wrong with Frank tonight?’ he asked.
Charlie shook his head and made a sort of wheezy groaning sound. “That fucking mannequin, man, it was just freaking me out and I made him throw it away, and then we started fighting about, like, I faked my own death without telling him, yknow, and he’s so needy…” Mac felt himself almost floating away as Charlie said these same things in different ways over and over, rambling on about how weird he was, and he had to dig his nails into his hands not to ride the anger rising up in him again.
“-so, like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do about him, yknow?” Charlie’s words finally registered in his head.
Mac couldn’t hold back what he was about to say. “At least he would care if you were gone.” He said it flatly, almost nonchalantly, but he was certain Charlie heard the emotion brewing beneath.
Charlie took a short sniff out of a sock Mac hadn’t noticed in his right hand-oh Jesus Christ, did he bring more shit to huff-and said, “No, dude, he’d act fucking freaky with a mannequin if I was gone, because I’m his only friend. Like Jesus-” Another sniff out of the sock. “If he cared about me, he’d take the stupid blood test- If he wanted to be my f-” He stopped to take yet another huff out of the sock, but Mac knew exactly what he meant.
And all of a sudden Mac’s anger subsided again, as usual, like the tide going out, because maybe Charlie wasn’t so much better off than he was. He could relate to having a dad that didn’t want to be his dad. He wished all of a sudden that he could talk to Charlie, or anyone for that matter, without the roller-coaster of uncontrollable emotions stopping him.
He prayed it was just his concussion.
“Yeah, but you saw how the gang reacted to me dying, Charlie. They didn’t give a shit.” His tone was still too flat, and even though he had told Charlie to keep it down earlier, he wasn’t whispering anymore.
Charlie looked him right in the eyes, with that shocking clarity of understanding that he demonstrated every once in a blue moon, and said, “This is about Dennis, isn’t it.”
Sometimes Mac felt like in a weird way, Charlie was the smartest one of them all, and this time was no exception. He made no attempt to deny it, just looking at the floor and trying his best to put what he was thinking into words. “He just replaced me, man. Just like that. He thought I was dead and he just got a new- A new roommate and ran around having orgies.”
Charlie paused, like he didn’t exactly know how to disagree with him. “He said he didn’t think you were actually dead.”
Okay, now Mac’s roiling bitter sea of emotions was pushing him to the brink of tears. What the fuck was wrong with him? “Would he have done anything different if he did think I was dead?” he said bitterly.
Softly, uncharacteristically gently, Charlie said, “Of course he would, dude, but why do you care so much about what he thinks?”
“I-” A lump lodged itself permanently in Mac’s throat, and he had to take a second to get around it. “It’s not just him,” he lied thickly. “It’s everyone.” A sudden thought, flashing through his head. “And my dad’s been away from me for so long, and he needs space. To forgive me. What if he just never comes back?” Okay, maybe it wasn’t just Dennis.
Charlie inhaled deeply and didn’t answer.
“No one-” Mac’s voice cracked. “No one cares, Char-”
“Shut up,” Charlie said, at full volume no less. He threw his sock on the floor almost angrily. “Seriously, you’re being such a fucking dick right now. People care.” Mac heard the anger in his words, sure, but he also heard something else.
Mac, almost unconsciously, started sliding his fingers towards Charlie, maybe trying to make up for those six inches of distance between them. Jokes about Charlie being stupid and illiterate and, like, smelly aside, sometimes he just missed being with him. Without those inches.
And, he’d always been such a coward, trying to posture and act brave around everyone but really just acting like a little bitch. That’s why it made so much sense when Charlie’s hand slid over the last few inches to rest on his. Mac may have been a coward, but Charlie was one of the bravest people he knew. He wasn’t just high, Mac realized, he was reading him like no one else could. Like an open goddamn book.
Charlie’s finger stroked gently over the back of his hand; this was a deliberate gesture for someone like Charlie, who at times flinched away from being touched and used touch to get what he wanted. Not with me, though, Mac thought. He’s never use me like that. Suddenly Mac felt like he was ten, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-three again, all those years when he and Charlie would go through life shoulder to shoulder. Never telling each other how they felt, but showing it nonetheless.
“I was ready to die with you, man,” Charlie said abruptly. Mac runs through the conversation in his head- yeah, I was hoping you’d say that, let’s kill ourselves. He nods slowly. “I bought you the wedding dress and all those poppers.” Mac had to stifle a laugh at Charlie’s insinuation that buying someone stimulants was just a way to show them you cared. Fucking greeting card material. Charlie started to tighten his hold on Mac’s hand, and Mac could feel the manic pulse of his wrist. Sometimes he wished Charlie didn’t have to huff so much shit just to get through his life, and he wished Charlie could just exist in the moment. Like this one. With Mac.
“You helped me out of the car when I crashed it into the wall and you took care of me.” Mac’s voice finally cracked.
Charlie, still the bravest of them both, shifted closer. “Why do you think I did that, dude?”
“I.” Mac couldn’t say it, because they never had. Sometimes, though, it couldn’t just be understood. Sometimes he needed to know if he was just imagining whether or not people cared about him, like when he imagined he knew what his mom’s grunts meant or what his dad would write him if he wasn’t isolating himself from Mac (maybe permanently) in Tiawana.
Charlie’s hands-both of them now-came up to rest on his face and Mac closed his eyes. It made a very, very strange image, the two of them just sitting on the bed as Charlie cradled his face. He could have laughed it off as Charlie being high, or he could have pushed him away and tell him to stop being such a fag, or-
Or he could just be here, in this moment.
So he opened his eyes and looked right at Charlie as Charlie leaned over and kissed him.
This wasn’t the first time they’d kissed, they’d practiced on each other as kids and as teenagers had sloppily planted a few and pretended not to remember, but this was the first time Charlie had initiated it, and had-oh God-climbed up in his lap and straddled him and done that thing with his tongue, and it was also the most lucid Mac had ever felt in his life. Mac felt like he could just keep kissing him forever. Charlie’s smaller body fit next to his so perfectly and the smell of paint on him was strangely almost intoxicating.
Mac felt Charlie start to get hard against him, and he was responding in kind. Charlie reached down and undid the buttons on his jeans and with this admittedly adorable Charlie-esque bluntness started clumsily to jerk him off. Oh, Jesus. There were so many things Mac wanted to say, but he tried to express them all with just Charlie’s name, soft and shuddery in his ear and muffled against his collarbone, until he abruptly came. Like teenagers.
Charlie whimpered and rutted against Mac, and Mac suddenly realized he hadn’t touched Charlie. He pushed Charlie off his lap onto the bed, and Charlie looked hurt until Mac leaned over him, unzipped his tattered jeans and took Charlie in his mouth.
For such a loud and whiny person normally, Charlie was surprisingly quiet, panting Mac’s name and shifting his hips and not even holding Mac’s head by his hair, but smoothing over it; so gentle, and so sweet. Mac couldn’t tell what the tears pricking at his eyes were for.
Mac gave terrible head, but Charlie came in his mouth almost immediately anyway, moaning softly in a lower register than Mac had ever heard. Mac spat out the cum in his wastebasket and crawled up to rest his head on Charlie’s shoulder.
“Why do you think I do everything for you, man?” Charlie asked again, but gentler this time, and not like he was even expecting an answer.
Mac was keeping track of Charlie’s breathing. It was slower now, matching his own better. His heartbeat was less erratic.
Mac had wanted Charlie to come over so he didn’t have to be alone. Now, Mac wanted Charlie to stay so they could just be with each other for a night. Now, he wouldn’t have shared what they had just shared with another living person, not even Dennis. His head finally felt so clear.
“Because I love you,” Mac said drowsily. “Because you love me.”
Charlie’s fingers, still so small, circled around Mac’s wrist.
They had always taken care of each other, always done things for one another, always had this unspoken bond buried under the thin layer of antagonism the gang coated everything else with. They were ride or die. They always had been.
That’s why the next morning, Charlie impulsively kissed a sleeping Mac goodbye and departed before Dennis knew he was even there. He said nothing about that night for the next several weeks. He watched Mac watch Dennis with puppy-dog eyes and assert his masculinity and lovelessly fuck women that Dennis had also lovelessly fucked. He got high all the time and kept wandering through the sewers with Frank.
And sometimes when it was just him and Mac, he would rub his fingers over the back of Mac’s hand, slowly and with a purpose, and he wouldn’t say anything at all.