Chapter Text
11:42 PM
On a Monday
Philadelphia, PA
There is an headache slowly building behind Dennis’ eyes.
It’s a steady thrum that pulses right between his eyebrows. He can feel his forehead tightening because of it, skin bunching up in what surely amounts to disgusting wrinkles being on full display. He makes himself breathe slowly, counting for each inhale and exhale. In-two-three, hold, out-two-three. Repeat.
Normally, this would work without issue. He’d make his body listen to his orders, which are the only ones that matter, and the headache wouldn’t even think of forming. He’d regain command on the disgustingly human functions his anatomy still insists on trying to have, and he’d go on polishing the beer glasses he’s holding in his hands.
This time, it doesn’t work. This time, there is indecently loud squawking happening right next to him.
“That doesn’t mean it’s not real,” Dee’s gratingly high voice cries out. She’s, by her own words, helping him behind the counter, putting away the glasses he half-assedly finishes cleaning. His eye falls to the ones he’s passed her already: a messy pile that looks like it could topple over with a breeze. Her clawed hands distractedly push all the glassware together, making it clink in a way that worsens the pulsing behind his forehead.
Her attention isn’t even on Dennis, is the thing. She’s bickering with the other three morons, who are all sitting merrily at the counter and sipping beers from plastic cups—Dennis had made it clear he wouldn’t clean any more glassware for them. Dee keeps on talking, oblivious to the war happening inside Dennis’ own head.
“Frank says he knows a lot about it,” she states, pointing at the older man with a glass she’s holding. “As he should! He’s, like, the most divorced man in existence.”
Frank, who is busy slobbering beer all over himself, shrugs and lowers his cup. “It’s true,” he affirms, turning towards Mac.
Mac is the only one to have common sense in this conversation, aside from Dennis himself. He stares at the rest of the Gang with a confused frown etching his features—and normally, that expression is directed at Dennis himself, and it’s one he loathes. Because Mac should always be able to understand what Dennis means, and if he doesn’t, then there is a fundamental problem.
This time, though, that horribly unknowing frown that makes his eyebrows scrunch up is dedicated to the others, and it’s a sentiment Dennis shares. Dennis sees him open his mouth, possibly to ask something idiotic, when Charlie interrupts him by putting a hand on Frank’s shoulder.
His words are directed at the other, who’s busy guzzling even more alcohol down. “Come on, man,” he starts, “you’ve only divorced twice, it’s not that many times.”
Dee tuts from her place aside Dennis, throwing yet another glass in the ‘clean’ pile. “It’s the sentiment that counts. The vibe.”
Frank nods again at Dee’s words, giving Charlie some idiotic form of assurance that the younger man needs, for some unknown reason.
Mac, whose confused frown has begun to slip into his angry-at-the-confusion-he-feels frown, cuts in harshly. “I’m not saying it’s not real, just that it doesn’t make any fucking sense. Why would the government give bonuses to divorced people?”
“Think about it,” Frank grunts, grabbing a little bowl of peanuts and shoveling some in his mouth. Crumbs fall down to his shirt, mixing with the beer already staining it and creating some sort of poisonous concoction that Dennis fears looking at. “If there’s a broad in some sort of, I don’t know, abusive relationship, then the husband is also incentivized to leave.”
The pulsing behind Dennis’ eyes ticks, ticks, ticks, and seems to implode on itself. The catalyst, of course: insulting levels of stupidity.
“Hold on,” he butts in, finally joining the car crash pantomiming as a conversation happening in front of him. “You’re telling me the bonus is for both people? Both people that get divorced get money?”
The lights in the pub are low, and yet Dennis thinks about shutting them all off. The soft yellow hues dance in front of his gaze, highlighting the emptiness of the place. No customers, but then again, he cannot pretend to be surprised.
He tells himself to not stare at Frank and to ignore the disgusting mess the other is making of himself, if he wants him to survive the discussion. If not, one of the weighty beer glasses in his hands would make for a great bludgeoner.
“That’s right!” Frank cries out, sending peanut crumbs flying all over the counter. Dennis’ eye twitches. Before he can do anything about it, Mac uses one of his hands to scoop them up and throw them on the floor.
Mac’s words redirect Dennis’ attention easily. “That doesn’t make any sense, man,” he tells Frank, messily wiping away all remaining crumbs with the palm of his hand. “Why would the government give money to both people that get divorced? How would that even work?”
Dennis finds himself nodding, reassured that he doesn’t carry all of Paddy’s IQ on his back. “Not to mention,” he adds, “I’ve been married before, too. Nobody told me anything about getting money, I was the one that had to give the money. For years.”
Memories threaten to resurface, and he forces his mind to push them down. This time, his body listens to him. No stench of dead teeth, or of rotten cat-like corpses. Dennis sees Mac give a hesitant nod out the corner of his eyes as he grabs another glass.
Charlie decides to enter the conversation again, hand still on Frank’s shoulder. “You just didn’t qualify, man!” he confidently rebukes, waving his other hand, still holding his cup of beer.
Dennis feels the words wash over him, and they sting with something shamefully close to offense. His arms, still busy with their wiping work, lower sharply. “Excuse me?” he hears himself say, indignantly frowning at Charlie. “I didn’t—”
Dee interrupts him, something only he should be allowed to do, and something he’ll get back at her for. “Of course you didn’t qualify!” she states, as if it’s common knowledge. “You and Maureen didn’t even last a month. The couple has to be married for a year, minimum.”
Charlie nods, waving his cup towards Dee and sloshing beer all over the place. Dennis feels a growl threatening to crawl up his throat, and he slams down the glass he’s given up on wiping with resolution, throwing the rag he’s holding on the spilled mess. “And you people know all of this how, exactly?”
Dee finally turns to him. “Frank’s been telling us about it, we told you guys!”
Her voice is raising to levels of highness that Dennis cannot bother to process. He selectively decides to ignore her, and looks at Frank again.
The older man is attempting to clean his shirt of the mess that has befallen it. He hastily grabs Dennis’ rag and wipes at the stains with it, not realizing a beer-soaked fraying piece of fabric is not the most indicated instrument for it. He looks at Dennis, and confirms: “We just started talkin’ about it before you two came in for work. It’s not complex, listen.”
He finally lets go of the rag and leans forward, gaze moving between Mac and Dennis. Mac leans forward as well, as if Frank’s words could make more sense the closer he is to them. Dennis catches himself almost doing the same, and rapidly schools his features into ones of unbothered indifference.
“As I said, it’s mostly for couples that fight a lot. Ones that definitely shouldn’t be together, that have no reason to anymore,” he explains. “Both people have to agree to gain the bonus. If one does’t want to, then both don’t get it. But if it’s an abuse sorta thing, then people’ll agree to anything to get out of it, right?”
He waits, stares at them with expectant eyes. Dennis knows what he’s saying is moronic. He knows it doesn’t make any sense. It shouldn’t, by all accounts. And yet—
“I… guess,” Mac pipes up, his words still unsure, yet tinged with a tiny bit of understanding. And Dennis, despite everything, finds himself giving a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
“Right,” Frank continues. “So, the government has a fund for it. It’s taken out of the social insurance taxes, and it all goes towards those special cases where a couple definitely needs to be apart. The department of state investigates, and if they find that there is a basis for it, the couple splits, and they each get a cool three thousand a month!”
Mac’s eyes widen. “Woah,” he breathes out, “holy shit. Three thousand? Every month?”
Frank shoots him a flat look. “That’s what I said.”
Dennis desperately attempts to harp onto his skepticism, despite the fact his headache is quickly getting replaced by a voice whispering three thousand. “Wait,” he says, forcing disbelief in his tone. “How the hell have we never heard of this?”
Charlie scoffs from his perch on a creaky stool, shoveling the peanut crumbs Mac had thrown onto the floor in his mouth. “Uh, dude,” he comments, “did we ever have a reason to?”
Dee rudely decides to re-enter the conversation, a quite frankly unneeded input. “The only ones of us who were ever married wouldn’t have qualified at all. The government had no reason to bring it up. Frank and Charlie didn’t last that long, either.”
Dennis raises his eyebrows, pointing at the living belch sitting in front of him. “You think the thing he had going on with Mother wasn’t abusive? At least mentally?” he rhetorically asks, and his sister’s brain seems to reboot on the spot. Before she can respond that Dennis is correct, as is typically true, Frank pipes up again.
“Physically, too. On both ends,” he rectifies, and both Dee and Dennis stare at him with wide eyes. “But there was no way in hell I’d accept anything that gave your whore mother any more money. And she felt the same.”
“What the—” Mac exclaims, his familiar and easy anger resurfacing. “Frank! We could be three thousand dollars a month richer right now! What the hell, man!”
Frank waves him off with a flick of his hand. “I don’t need three thousand dollars a month. I’m rich. I’m telling you all this for you guys.”
Dennis hums, turns to look at Mac, who is still staring at Frank with his fist clenched. “There’s no way we’d see any of those three thousand if he was getting them, Mac,” he says, and hopes it doesn’t come off as reassurance. It’s not meant to be, he tells himself. He doesn’t know what it is.
It’s not reassurance, but Mac must find it so, because his tight fingers relax. A long breath is pushed out of his nose, and he slowly nods, absorbing the truth Dennis has laid out. “Shit,” he curses, shooting Charlie a dirty look. “Couldn’t you and Frank have remained together for a year? And then like, beat each other up a little in front of a judge? Fuck!”
Charlie gasps in outrage that, Dennis knows, is wholly sincere. He finds the fact that he’s aware of it more worrying than anything else. “I’d never abuse Frank! Ever!” he cries out, and Frank agrees with a chorus of “Yeah”s that make Dennis close his eyes in frustration.
“Don’t you two fight on the regular? Physically fight, specifically?” he cannot resist bringing up, despite knowing that the best course of action to diffuse a Charlie Situation is to simply ignore it, and hope the man himself loses interest. Let no one say Dennis Reynolds is not catty.
Charlie scoffs, leveling Dennis with a look that conveys such superiority it makes his blood boil. “Dude, those are disagreements. Not abuse,” he explains, elbowing Frank, the ‘duh’ wholly implicit. Frank seems to share it, and Dennis decides staring at the wall behind them is a better use of his time.
Dee has taken on the mantle of polishing the glasses. The disgustingly beer-soaked and peanut-contaminated rag is in her hands, leaving the glassware worse off than what it had been. Dennis cannot find it in himself to care, not when the possibility of being six thousand dollars a month richer is swimming around his mind.
“Listen,” he announces, his voice raising to its natural leading tone. The eyes of the three men in front of him turn to Dennis, and for a tiny moment, all is as it should be. “The solution here is obvious. We—”
“Dennis and Mac need to get married.” It’s Dee’s voice, because of course it is.
“Goddamnit, you bird, stop interrupting—” he hears himself snap, and the words die in his throat.
A pin drops, and Dennis hears it. Except there are no pins, and all of them hear everything—the silence that befalls the group feels eternal. Paddy’s, normally so creaky and loud even in its stillness, feels completely quiet. Dennis inhales, exhales, and stops. His breaths are too noisy. He wonders what the others think of him. He wonders how long he can hold his breath for, if he’ll survive the interminable quietness that has overtaken them.
In the real world, a few seconds pass. And then, as he is wont to do, Mac cracks and splinters.
“What?!” he shrieks, tearing down the wall their silence had created without a care in the world. The man looks frazzled, Dennis thinks. Jittery. Uncomposed.
Dennis isn’t all those things. So he forces himself to finally breathe, and when he opens his mouth, he hopes he’s not fraying at the seams. “Shut the fuck up, you bitch,” is what he settles on. A tried-and-true classic. His attitude isn’t at the high it was a few seconds earlier, not even close. Although he’s probably the only one to have noticed, so he doesn’t dwell on it.
Mac shoots him a sideways look. Dennis ignores it.
To his infinite horror, Frank and Charlie don’t burst out laughing, they don’t call Dee a bird, they don’t ignore her input. No, what they do is worse: a betrayal. They start nodding, and stare at his sister with agreement in their eyes.
The blow of it sits in his chest uncomfortably. It’s a weight, nestling behind his ribcage, settling close to his lungs and leaving them raw. Stop it, he thinks. He forces himself to close it in a little box, lock it, and ingest the key. It’ll dissolve in his stomach, and he’ll be able to forget about it.
He thinks about Mac throwing his hands around Dee’s neck, and not doing anything to stop it this time. The thought is as reassuring as it is brief.
Dee, still ignorant to the happenings of Dennis’ mind, looks at Mac with a raised eyebrow. “What do you mean, what? It makes the most sense.”
Mac and Dennis’ words overlap, until Dennis doesn’t know which ones are his.
“How does it make the most—”
“What are you even—”
“Oh my god, just think about it!” Dee squawks, indignantly throwing the ruined rag onto the counter again. “Get your heads outta your asses for a second. Neither Dennis or I can marry Frank, for obvious reasons,” she states, pointing at Frank with a finger. The man shakes his head with a scowl, crossing his arms in an X.
Dennis is inclined to agree, but nobody needs to be aware of that.
“Charlie and I aren’t gonna get married, because he doesn’t want to be alone in a room with me for more than an hour,” his harpy of a sister continues, and Charlie nods with a what-can-ya-do shrug.
“And,” she finishes, “Mac can’t marry me, because he’s gay, and he also would kill me.”
Mac curses under his breath, and stares at Dennis with a frown. “It’s true, Den. I would.”
Dennis cannot have this conversation, will not debase himself with it. It’s not something that deserves his attention nor his response. Mac, of course, holds no such regards. His sister hammers in the final nail:
“You two literally already live together, and you’d definitely fool any government bozo that comes around. Just pretend to fight more than you usually do.”
And the coffin is sealed.
Charlie begins rambling on and on with supporting arguments that aren’t arguments at all. “You know each other’s favorite beer brands,” he vomits out, “you brush your teeth at the same time,” “you’ve scratched him so much his cheek is more resistant to it now,” and it’s all bile, all disgusting slop that means nothing at all.
Mac starts stuttering out half-sentences, which means he feels as though he’s losing, but doesn’t want to give any ground. “You—well—” he complains, waving his hands around. Then, a sudden clarity hits his eyes, and he declares: “Dennis and Charlie! What about them?”
Dennis deliberately ignores the strained desperation in the words. What about them, he cries out, and the sentiment of it Dennis wholly agrees with. But this is about him, so he levels the other man with the harshest glare he can muster up.
“There is no Dennis and Charlie because I’m not getting married, Mac.” Then he looks at the entire Gang, to ensure his words are heard. “To anyone! At all! Is that goddamn understood?”
Frank has the gall to look unimpressed. He makes a disappointed hum, and responds: “That’s your six thousand that you’re losing. No skin off my back.”
It’s the match Frank had meant it to be. Charlie and Dee implode, the gunpowder making their words fast and nonsensical. It’s a cacophony, one that Dennis is used to, and wishes he was not.
“Dude!” Charlie complains, getting of his stool and standing, as if to give his words more power. Joke’s on him, he’s shorter now than he was when seated. “You literally just have to keep doin’ whatever it is you do, and then beat each other up in front of a judge! It’s not hard!”
“Yeah!” Dee agrees, and Dennis feels his fingers clench into the familiar shape of a claw. “Don’t be selfish, dickbags! This would help all—”
“I’m not fucking entertaining another seconds of this!” Dennis shouts, finally shouts, and the loudness of his voice feels like a balm. He lets it wash over him. “Get interrupted, you bitch! How does that feel? Huh?! Huh?!” he adds, the simple pettiness of it making him giddy. Dee rolls her eyes, the bastard, and he elects to ignore it.
“You guys are insane,” Mac adds, his words secure only in appearance. It’s such a shitty fucking facade it almost makes Dennis furious.
The lights of the pub are insufferable. The discussion around him is, by all means, unacceptable. It’s a random Monday night, and no client has walked through the door in over a hour. Charlie has probably turned the ‘closed’ sign on again.
“I’m going home,” Dennis declares, and hopes to all that is holy that it doesn’t sound like defeat. “I’m not listening to any of this anymore. My head is fucking killing me.” He’s not running away, he tells himself, and he doesn’t bother saying it to anybody else. They already know, without a doubt.
Dennis rounds the counter and walks towards the hangers to grab his coat, glossing over the protests of the others behind him. He’s pretty sure his sister throws a “Pussy!” into the mix, one that he graciously does her the favor of ignoring. The floorboards of Paddy’s creak and groan under his steps, and it is, against all odds, reassuring. At least something has not changed.
As expected, Mac gets up from his stool. As expected, he hurries to grab his coat as well, whilst he keeps hurling insults towards the rest of the Gang. As expected, he reaches the door of the pub as Dennis does, and falls into step right behind him.
“Fuck you guys!” he screams with finality, as the door goes to close behind him. “Choke on your peanuts and die, Frank!”
His words echo around the empty sidewalk, lost to the frigid autumn air around. Dennis’ breaths fog in front of his face, leaving the twinkling gleams of the streetlights blurry. His Range Rover sits alone in the street, parked in what he considers to be his spot. No other cars are around, an unsurprising and familiar view.
Mac walks next to him, shoving his hands into his pockets with jerky and rageful movements. Of course even that has to be done angrily. How would people know he’s mad, otherwise?
“Can you believe them, bro?” Mac asks, all rhetorical and all assurance-seeking. Dennis decides to answer anyways.
“They’re fucking morons,” he hisses, words sharp. They cut his throat as they leave. “Morons. Every single one of—”
“They are!” Mac shouts in agreement, to nobody else but the empty road. He’s interrupting Dennis, and he feels his eye twitching. Again.
“Dee just says some bullshit,” Dennis mumbles angrily, “and they all agree with it. Morons. Morons!”
“That’s what I’m saying, man! It’s ridiculous!”
They reach their respective car doors at the same time, pulling on the handles and crowding in the interior. It’s freezing inside, and they find no respite from the cold air stabbing their skin like pins and needles. Dennis hurries to turn on the car, the familiar sound of the engine running warming him more than the shitty heater.
Mac is, quite literally, vibrating in his seat. His leg jitters with energy, his jaw is clenched. He’s a bomb ready to explode, one that doesn’t wait to do so.
“There’s no fucking way, Dennis,” he protests, “we’re not doing that shit.”
Dennis tightens his hands on the steering wheel, and floors it on the gas pedal. “Of course we aren’t!” he shouts in agreement, blowing past a stop sign. There isn’t a living goddamn soul around, anyways.
“We’ll find another way!” Mac agrees. He gestures as he says it, having found the reassurance he so desperately seeked. He sinks his claws into it, doesn’t let go. “Let them get married, if they really fucking want to!”
“Exactly!” Dennis answers. They’re in a loop, he distantly realizes. He states something, Mac agrees. Mac states something, Dennis acquiesces. It’s probably normal. When it comes to something like the subject they are discussing, of course they’d agree on it.
He swerves down another street. His car tires squeal unpleasantly, skidding on the frozen pavement of the road. “It’s just non-negotiable. We’re not doing something like that.” Dennis ends, and hopes it is as final and resolute as Dee’s coffin-binding words had been.
Mac nods, jaw finally unclenching. His fingers tap restlessly on the armrest. “Yep. No way in hell.”
“Mac & Dennis Get Divorced”