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Dennis goes down with a cry, and for the split second that he’s falling, a part of him is convinced he’s going to die. His small life flashes in front of his eyes, or rather it doesn’t, because there simply isn’t enough of it yet, but he does remember how awful Dee was when she stole Mr. Tibbs last week, angry at Dennis for a reason he still hasn’t understood. Remembers what he had for breakfast that morning, oatmeal with no milk because that's where the calories are, remnants of its empty taste still sticky on his tongue.
Then comes the impact, and with it the pain, a sharp, blistering sting that shoots up his leg lighting-fast.
He’s fallen and ripped his knee open against the jagged edge of the planks that line the Jersey shore boardwalk, and it’s not a big wound, but Dennis is six, and sheltered, and has never been hurt like this before, and the sight of his own blood terrifies him, shows him for the first time that he’s human and vulnerable and ultimately helpless. How his skin can tear open just like that, show everything that's hideous and supposed to be safely kept inside him. Slumped down right where he dropped, Dennis starts crying, as the mass of people parts around his family, and continues undeterred on their trail down the boardwalk.
Dee rolls her eyes, absentmindedly fiddling with her ponytail. "You‘re such a goddamn crybaby."
She’s already fallen more times than she can count, seeking out all the things her mother tells her ladies shouldn’t do, not that Dee counts as a lady, with that gangly body of hers and that hideous beak. She climbed a tree and ripped her arm open when falling out of it, worn the wound like a badge of pride at the dinner table. Barbara hadn’t even noticed, fussing over her brother's small cold, and some spiteful part of Dee still wishes she had a scar along the length of her arm, something loud and ugly her mother couldn‘t ignore.
Frank snorts, a sharp, ugly noise like a wart hog, a cruel one. "Nancy boy," he says, and Dennis isn‘t exactly sure what those words mean yet, but he knows that it‘s nothing good, already dreads the moment when he finds out and the shame will rise up his throat all over, threatening to spill out.
When he looks up to his mother—for help, a hand to help him up, a bandaid, he isn’t sure what exactly she’d want to give him —she’s turned away, eyes averted like she’s trying to pretend to just be another passerby, not part of this family she‘s never wanted at all, and a gulf opens up, between what Dennis has always thought he knew about their relationship, and what he‘s only now slowly starting to understand.
"Don’t make a scene, people are staring," Barbara hisses, voice sharp, and somehow this is what stings most of all. More than Dennis’ knee, even.
—
Mac watches Dennis cry, the way his shoulders shake with it, how he trembles like a small animal taken with something so much bigger than itself. They’ve lived together for only five years at this point, and Mac has never seen Dennis show this much emotion before. He doesn‘t know that yet, but he never will again.
He‘s almost overwhelmed with the intensity of it. There‘s something so strange about this, about watching Dennis be so vulnerable in front of him—Dennis, who watched Titanic all the way through with a straight face. Dennis, who doesn‘t get this emotional usually, except he is now, and Mac is a little bit taken aback, because this is not how things work between them, not at all.
Mac looks down at the magazine in his hands, but even the rippling muscles of the model of the week can‘t distract him. He keeps glancing back. As if something is drawing his eyes towards Dennis‘ face; something much more than the animal urge to locate the origin of the noise ringing in his ears. Mac can‘t stop fucking staring.
They‘ll pretend none of this happened, later. Mac will pretend he didn‘t see Dennis cry, and Dennis will pretend he didn‘t see Mac watching him. And things will be fine, for just a few years more. The wound festers.
—
When his mom died, Dennis didn‘t cry. It was weird almost, how much he didn‘t need to, just didn‘t feel the urge, that pull, as if some switch hadn‘t been flipped yet. As if his mother would just come stomping around the corner again, heels clicking on the tiles in a pattern that Dennis sometimes catches himself drumming with his nails.
She never felt entirely human, so it made sense she wouldn‘t be bound by concepts like mortality. Would just live forever like some specter, hovering just at the periphery of Dennis and Dee‘s vision, haunting them both in different ways. A voice in Dennis’ ear, a finger poking Dee’s ribs, a glance at the calories on every chocolate bar that they end up eating out of spite and throwing back up out of shame. A gnawing pit deep inside Dennis' chest that nobody else will ever be able to fill again.
If there‘s one thing Dennis is certain of, it’s that their mother could never have found peace. Not after stalking her own funeral and finding them missing, looking down at Dennis in his bed looking up at the ceiling stony faced, not a single tear shed.
Like someone had taken a large scoop to the sadness in his chest, hollowed it out.
God hole.
When Dennis watches his mother's skeleton being dug up years later, it’s only then that he finally manages to cry about it. He doesn’t feel any better after he’s done.
—
They‘re sharing a joint while skipping gym and Dennis is fidgeting with the sleeve of his sweater, picking at tiny pills on the fabric with nails too manicured for a 12 year old.
Mac doesn‘t ask how the stain got there, mud all over the front of that faggy pale blue sweater, but he has a pretty good guess. Has watched them trip him before, for no reason other than they can, and there‘s nobody willing to bloody their nose for someone this obnoxious and prissy.
Hadn‘t been, at least. Mac tries not to think about what he‘d do if it happened in front of him yet, if he‘d throw himself on them the same way he used to if anybody dared to lay a finger on Charlie, back when he didn’t know that Charlie shrugs the humiliation off easier than Mac does when he loses. Tries not to think too hard about when Dennis changed from someone Mac tolerates to someone he’d defend. Mac takes a deep drag and savors the burn in his throat.
"Can‘t you just scrub it out?"
Dennis scoffs, and Mac is reminded of why someone would want to trip him, watch that sneer melt into panic. "It‘s cashmere, you idiot. You can‘t just scrub it. I’d need to have it professionally dry cleaned and even then there‘s no guarantee the stain will go out."
Dennis‘ bottom lip wobbles. His eyes have gone wet.
"Man, you‘re such a crybaby," Mac says, but there isn‘t any malice behind it. He says it matter of factly, like how the weather is decent that day or their math teacher is an evil haggard old crone. He doesn‘t expect the reaction, for Dennis‘ entire face to fall, pull itself inward.
"I‘m not," Dennis says, but the pained expression and tears running down his cheek do little to further his cause.
Somehow, Mac can‘t bring himself to mock him any further. Maybe if they weren‘t alone here, if it wasn‘t just the two of them, if there wasn‘t that stupid flu going around that has Charlie‘s mom practically locking him in his room.
Mac does the kindest thing he can think of, hands over the joint, and pretends not to notice.
They spend the rest of their class wordlessly passing the joint back and forth, watching the wind rustle the leaves, already turning a rich red. It‘s going to be fall break soon. Hopefully Charlie‘s mom will have calmed down by the time Halloween rolls around, or Mac might need to sneak him out of a window again.
He wonders what Dennis does for Halloween. Trick or treating in the fancy neighborhoods where they shower you with candy, probably, and then flushing it all down the toilet like the weirdo he is.
Mac doesn‘t notice when Dennis stops crying, but by the time the bell rings, only his red eyes and puffy face still betray him. Then again he always seems vaguely upset, as if something is bothering him that he can‘t put into words.
Dennis sniffs. When he turns to Mac and asks "Can you tell?", eyes red from both the weed and the crying, Mac lies and says "No."
He isn‘t exactly sure which Dennis is asking about.
At home later that day, Mac gently pries the lit cigarette from between his mother's fingers and grinds it out in the ashtray. She doesn‘t wake easily, and she won‘t wake easily now, judging by the amount of empty bottles strewn at her feet, but a small, jumpy part of Mac still worries about her eyes shooting open any second. Her hand snapping out, the flicker of the lighter, Mac digging his nails into his palm and biting his tongue until he tastes blood so he won‘t give her a reason to think he‘s any weaker than she already does.
In his room, Mac pulls the covers over his head and tries to forget about the things he‘s seen, but Dennis‘ face keeps flashing in front of his eyes, like it always does. There are chipped crucifixes hanging on the wall and bags of weed Mac hides under his bible, but maybe God is distracted by the cigarette slowly glimmering out, just for a few stolen minutes. God isn‘t a moth, but Mac needs something to cling to.
Fist wrapped around himself, Mac thinks about Dennis‘ eyes, red rimmed and glassy, and he thinks please forgive me, but he isn‘t sure which one he‘s asking it of; Dennis or God.
—
When Mac asks him if he has ever prayed before, Dennis throws his head back and laughs, recently whitened teeth glistening.
What he doesn‘t say is that he has, countless times, that he went to a catholic primary school and threw himself at God with the senseless devotion of the recently saved, the desperate willingness to believe in salvation that makes people memorize verses and handpick a saint to ignore their pleas.
How he sat in his bedroom, knees folded underneath him and tiny hands clasped in prayer, face tilted up to the heavens and throat bared for the Lord to sink His teeth into.
How he stopped, because begging God never changed a single thing for the better. Didn‘t stop his parents from fighting, or the librarian from touching him, or Dee from pulling away, so gradually that one day Dennis woke up and couldn‘t remember the last time they‘d hugged.
He still prays sometimes, but the prayers are weak, half-formed things that slip into his mind and never leave his lips. In the split-second before Dennis collides with the car Charlie pushed him in front of, when he sees his own reflection in his tenth glass of wine. A prayer like an intrusive thought; a habit he‘s never been entirely able to break.
Either way, Dennis doesn‘t know much about prayer, could never quite do it right, but the way that he has seen Mac do it has always felt wrong, too. Probably, there is no right way. None that could get god to listen. If he does exists, the sound of their suffering must soothe him to sleep.
—
Mac stuffs his fist in his mouth to muffle his gasps, as if the Lord has His ear pressed to the top of their building. As if he could diminish the sin by making it quieter, hiding it under blankets and behind drawn curtains that let no light in. As if his hand wasn‘t moving all the same, as if he could still get absolution from some father figure after one has already turned away.
Being gay is no sin, and touching yourself is no sin either, Mac knows that by now, but the thoughts he has, those are sinful, those are wicked and evil and would make even someone as merciful as the Lord shake His holy head in disgust.
Tears streaming down that perfect face, Dennis‘ cheeks messy with mascara as he gags on Mac. Eyes big and wet as he tries to swallow it all, feeble hands trying to push him away.
Why can‘t he be normal? The question Mac‘s mind has echoed his entire life; why can‘t he be normal, why can‘t he like women, why can‘t he just think of caressing Dennis and not of punching him.
It‘s not like he doesn‘t crave gentleness too, like he wants to hurt Dennis all the time, but sometimes, Dennis will lean against Mac, not even knowing he‘s doing it, and Mac‘s fingers will itch with violence, and then his throat will burn with disgust.
He‘s not a violent person. All his life, Mac has only ever tried to hurt those that deserve to be hurt, those that hurt others, and he tries telling himself that this is what the itch is, an urge to punish Dennis for his cruelty, but he knows that it only ever comes when Dennis is being sweet.
Mac feels pity for the rats Charlie bashes and puts the spiders that invade their apartment outside instead of crushing them. He likes stories where the good guys win and the hero rides off into the sunset with the boring girl he rescued for some reason. He‘s a good person, or he‘s always thought he was.
Mac‘s teeth sink deeper into his fist as his hands wrap around Dennis‘ throat.
Sorry he thinks, I‘m so sorry, but in his fantasy, he‘s only ever grinning.
—
"Fuck," she says, "you‘re hurting me," tears welling up in those mascara rimmed eyes, and Dennis thinks good, thinks this is what she deserves, for what she has done and what she will do in the future. Ugly rotten bitch.
He hates her, then, with a deep fury he can‘t even comprehend and isn‘t sure he needs to. Why would you claim you‘re fine with things getting rough and then whine about it? When did people start forgetting that sometimes you just grit your teeth and bear it, wait for everything to ebb away. She‘s old enough to know better. She‘s old enough to be mature about this.
What she deserves is someone who won‘t listen to her pathetic screams and finally give her what she deserves, but Dennis knows, even then, that he won‘t be the one to teach her that lesson. He‘s disgusted, suddenly, repulsed on some deeper level. At the way shes scrambling away as if he actually did anything to her, as if she isn’t the who came up here by her own free will, who knew what she was getting into, who grinned and said, "Do your worst." when Dennis told her he likes pain.
It doesn‘t matter. Dennis watches her gather her things with trembling fingers, uselessly fidgeting with the locks before she finally succeeds at opening them all.
Women.
Later, Mac pretends he didn‘t see the sobbing woman stumbling out of the apartment with her heels in one hand and her thong in the other, but he‘ll still think about her for months, about every single one of them. Not with pity, but with fascination. A weird sense of envy, maybe. When he searches for them on Dennis‘ tapes, the ones that stumble out and slam the door, he never finds them.
—
Dennis wonders, sometimes, when the rules changed. When you started being allowed to say no.
—
Dennis has a drink and then another one and then another one until his vision goes blurry, until everything melts together in front of his eyes. The bar turned into a multicolored soup.
The rest of the Gang flutter in and out of his peripheral vision like butterflies, even if it’s not their bar he‘s drinking at—just a bar, some bar.
They won‘t stop haunting him. It was like this in North Dakota too, when he‘d spent his evenings walking the streets with a bottle of something non alcoholic in hand, pretending he had anything other to do than wait for Mandy to ask him to babysit again. He‘d see them walking around street corners, just the very tip of a jacket he could have sworn was Charlie‘s, a blonde head in the crowd that must have been Dee for a heartbeat, but when Dennis looked again, he couldn‘t find anyone looking even remotely like them.
He chased some guy through an entire mall, convinced Mac had somehow found and followed him, ready to unleash hell, but the person he found, terrified and brandishing his phone like a weapon, didn‘t even have brown hair. Just a vague bulky shape that set Dennis running, bare arms that immediately screamed Mac, Mac, Mac.
When he‘s drunk, or high, or tired, or sometimes for no reason he can decipher, no distinct wrongness he can feel out, every baby's cry sounds like Brian Jr. As if he had somehow come all the way from North Dakota, still in his stroller. Dennis isn‘t even sure if he can walk yet—he‘s been too scared to check Mandy‘s facebook for updates. Too scared to read that he‘s started saying Mom, now that he‘ll never say Dad.
At least Brian is marginally less cursed of a name than Dennis.
If the people in the bar notice that Dennis is crying, they don‘t mention it. They shoot each other glances, and scoot away a bit, as if the sadness could infect them, because that‘s the kind of bar this is, that‘s the kind of bar Dennis still goes to. There‘s no women. Only the bottle and his tears, and all the regrets threatening to pile on and crush him to dust under their weight, making his shoulders sag and his back hunch down over the countertop.
A ghost himself.
—
Sometimes, Dennis feels someone else’s words slip into his mouth.
Be good for me, he says to a girl, and when the words come out all wrong and not his own, he calls her a dumb slut instead, and the girl moans. Other times she slaps him, and yet other times she doesn‘t say anything at all, because some girls know better than that, they still understand how things are supposed to go.
He tells Dee her teeth are too yellow and her elbows too knobby, and remembers the harsh edges of his mother's red lips curl in disgust, how he would watch her mouth as it moved sometimes, as if he could puzzle out something to make her words make more sense.
Dennis looks into the mirror, watching his own face, or the face that should be his, and worries that his neck sags.
—
Dennis learns to love pain when he realizes that it‘s inevitable. If the world will chew you up and spit you out either way, it makes sense to get some pleasure out of it at least.
Anything with a sharp tool, he figures out very quickly, is a no go. Too easy to mess up and slice too deep, leave a scar that won‘t fade, and the small part of Dennis that sort of shudders a little bit at that thought, but not in a bad way, he immediately smothers under the vivid imagery of his mother rolling around in her casket—her bones, at least, if bones can roll—and when that doesn‘t work, the knowledge that Dee would immediately know the scars origin, in that weird, awful twin way, and not only tell everyone but also never let Dennis live it down, is enough to dissuade him.
No knives, or scissors, or anything sharp. Needles would be fine, probably, but are still best avoided, considering the fact that Dennis had to carry Mr Tibbs to get his flu shots until his mother told him he was too old, and still occasionally imagines petting that soft furry head in the moments before they push the needle in.
(Dennis is 16 when he first leafs through the book he found dusted over on a shelf, a collection of crime scene photos, and thinks that being shot with a gun would be fun, but there isn‘t really a way to experience that without lasting damage. It would be nice to die without dying at all—to feel what it‘s like to brush your fingertips across the other side. To just dip your tongue in, and then know what's waiting for you.
Death isn‘t beautiful, but still, in the pages of the book, the one he always puts back into place after he‘s done reading, because he knows he‘s not supposed to look inside, there‘s something elegant about it. Messy, but elegant. Or at the very least, even the bodies smeared across the pavement seem like they‘ve found some kind of peace.)
So slicing doesn‘t work, and getting shot is not an option, hot wax is too messy, and ice cubes are too boring, and clothespins look too goofy, even if they have a nice sting. Impact play is great, but its hard to find the right people—ones that won‘t just stop at a gentle spanking with their palm.
Strangulation sounds nice, but it seems too risky. Cut off circulation to the brain for too long and you‘re a goner—there‘s no way Dennis is entrusting his brains oxygen supply to some random person mentally unwell enough to comply with his demands.
And then sometimes he doesn‘t care about the rules, about the dangers of it all. Sometimes he just wants the pain to numb him out of his body completely; as if, once past a certain threshold, everything turns to bliss again. He‘s never been able to reach that boundary, but that doesn‘t stop him from trying, reaching out his fingers to maybe finally, actually, have a taste of what he‘s been chasing after.
That‘s when people start running, usually, or those that don‘t run, aren‘t the kind that should be trusted—not that it matters to him, then. Getting them to stop isn’t the problem. It’s that nobody has ever been willing to go far enough.
But if there‘s no scar, and there never is, for a reason even Dennis himself isn‘t quite sure of, it‘s like it didn‘t happen, and like that other person, that other part, can be safely locked away again, like a sated beast that won‘t rear its ugly head for some time.
—
"Hit me," Dennis says, and Mac looks surprised for a second, but then he shrugs. "Okay."
His fist connects with Dennis‘ nose with a wet crunch, and Dennis thinks, as he‘s almost toppling over, that maybe he should have said slap.
For a few seconds, everything bursts into color. Their boring, dull apartment momentarily transformed.
"Do it again," Dennis says, before he can think straight again, and Mac obliges without hesitation, going for the stomach this time. Dennis doubles over in pain, tears springing to his eye and all breath knocked out of him.
"Again," he wheezes, voice a bit wobbly, and if Mac notices he doesn’t let on because he goes for the face again, sending Dennis to the floor in a crumpled heap.
Theres only pain, sharp and hot and stinging.
The again dies on Dennis‘ lips; all that makes it out is a low, wet grown. His cheeks are wet with tears, ears ringing with the aftershock
"What exactly was this about?" Mac asks, but Dennis can‘t hear him, and Mac ultimately doesn‘t care enough to wait for an answer. Not yet.
When Dennis gropes his way back into sentience, Mac is long gone, and only the pain lingers. Dennis thinks he tastes blood in his mouth, and the worry of a broken nose, one that heals crooked, eternal disfiguration, how could he have been so stupid, sends bile up his throat, but his nose is still fine, and the blood is only a bitten tongue. Dennis is mostly relieved, but more disconcertingly, also the tiniest bit disappointed
Bathed in the blue light of the refrigerator, Dennis presses a frozen pack of peas to his face, and the tears that well up in his eyes feel like they freeze on his cheeks.
—
When Dennis says God, he whispers it, tucked in bed and aching so badly he can barely lift his head. Mac hasn‘t asked why he skipped dinner, and there‘s a deep, senseless want in his gut, a desire for something he can‘t figure out and doesn‘t want to think of.
When Dennis says God, sometimes what he means is Mac. Sometimes what he means is his Mother.
—
The video rental store has run out of anything that remotely interests them and they‘re watching the titanic. It‘s been hours of nothing but people talking on a boat, and both Mac and Dennis are desperate to see that dumb cruise ship sink. They‘ve gone through two bowls of popcorn already, Mac grateful for the excuse to rest his eyes while pretending the microwave is refusing to work again.
Dennis hates Jack, and he hates Rose, and he does not give a shit about what happens to them, and he can‘t wait for them to drown, in fact, which he tells Mac, who then elbows him and whispers dude, spoilers with popcorn kernels flying from his mouth.
Fast forwarding is not an option. It‘s the sunken cost fallacy—because how much more time can it take for this boat to sink, Mac says, clueless—and it's neither of them being willing to admit defeat to this stupid drawn-out chick flick.
So when the boat finally begins to sink, Mac almost choking on popcorn when he spots the iceberg the navigators fail to, Dennis shooting awake from where he‘d only almost nodded off, they‘re elated.
The titanic breaks down, and it‘s spectacular, but ultimately rather disappointing. It‘s cool, sure, but it‘s not worth the wait, or rather nothing could be worth the wait, but there still could have been explosions at least.
And then Rose, that dumb bitch, is clinging to the door-plank-thing, and Jack, that dumb bitch, is telling her to let him go because the weight won‘t carry both of them, and Dennis snorts, because it‘s ridiculous, because Jack is a total loser for dying just so that this girl he just met can float to safety in his stead.
When he turns, the wry remark dies on his lips.
Mac is crying. There are tears rolling down his face, actual ones, fat and heavy. His bottom lip wobbles, just a bit.
"You‘re crying," Dennis says.
Mac brings up a hand to touch his cheeks, then looks at it, as if confused by the wetness clinging to his fingertips.
"I guess I am?" he says. It sounds like a question.
Dennis turns back to the screen, but it‘s already too late. He‘s seen something he can‘t unsee.
When Rose throws the necklace into the ocean, then lays down to die, Dennis wonders if Mac is still crying. He doesn‘t dare look.
—
Mac tastes the tear, tip of his tongue flicking out to catch it. What do tears taste like? Nothing, really. A little bit salty, but mostly it‘s nothing, mostly Mac isn‘t sure what exactly he expected—and yet he licks a wet stripe up Dennis‘ cheek, tasting every drop as it falls.
Thinks about how long he‘s wanted to do it, about all the shame he felt, balled up in his chest, all the muttered apologies sent up to the lord. About how he doesn‘t feel ashamed now, strangely enough, how it mostly feels right, as in, this was what he wanted for so long, this is what he maybe doesn‘t deserve but still gets, the way you don‘t earn most good things that happen to you in life. How it feels sort of like coming home, though he can‘t tell what he‘s coming home from.
—
Dennis thinks about Mac‘s knuckles, kissing his face. About his bones snapping on impact, blood spraying all over the dirty kitchen tiles. Broken nose and broken heart and all.
About Mac taking his fist and digging it all the way inside Dennis' chest, punching through his stomach, his sinew and flesh, deep into viscera. Brushing his knuckles along the notches of his spine, blood so deep under his nails he‘ll never quite scrub it off again. Dennis‘ guts dripping from Mac‘s fingertips, landing wet and messy on the tiles, all those things he‘ll never get back inside him.
He settles on Mac‘s fist knocking the breath from his lungs and bile up his throat.
It‘s the closest they get to a kiss these days.
—
"I love you so much," Mac says, leaning against Dennis in the dim evening glow, both of them curled up on their couch, "that I sometimes feel like I have to rip you to pieces. Or I want to, at least. Is that weird?"
It isn‘t, Dennis wants to say, but the words don‘t come out right. Instead all he says is mhm, a vague sort of nothing noise that Mac reads whatever he wants into.
Maybe tomorrow, they‘ll get hit by a car, both of their remnants smeared all over the blistering Philly road and left to bake in the sun. It seems like a fitting end for the mess that they’ve made. For now, Mac leans in and slots his lips against Dennis‘ knee, kissing the tiny scar there, only visible if you press your face up close enough.
Faintly, he tastes sea salt.