Chapter Text
The world is full of light.
The world has always been full of light, ever since Dennis was born. As he’s grown, he’s found the light in different places. Sparks of incandescent joy he’s chased and fought for, held in his hands until they burned, the flesh blistered and red beneath, because he can never bear to let go. And whenever the light inevitably slips through his fingers, when the world grows darker and darker, another desperate search begins. Anything to find it again, no matter the cost.
What he’s realized, noticing the thread burrowing through the core of his life, connecting each tangible moment, is that in the pursuit of the light, there will always be hurt. It doesn’t matter whose hurt it is: his own, someone else’s; many, many others’. There will be hurt, it will hurt, but the temporary reprieve the light brings is always worth it.
Someone will hurt, but Dennis will get to look at the light again.
“Do you fucking get it now, Mac? Do you? Has it finally gotten through that incredibly thick skull of yours?”
Each word punches out of Dennis like a blade, sharp and strategic. Wounding, yes, but only out of necessity. It’s what he has to do to make this make sense again. To make his imbecile of a roommate stop fucking around and use his damn head, like Dennis knows he knows how to do. To alleviate the tightness in his chest, to slacken the noose he’s felt tightening around his throat ever since his perfect plan came crashing down around him, thanks to a particularly indignant fit of rage.
But there’s a buzzing in Dennis’ ears. A monotonous hum, incessant and unbroken, droning on and on and goddamn on. The pitch hasn’t changed in ages—so long, too long. Long enough for him to start forgetting where it’s coming from, and begin wondering if it’s just part of him now. Like it’s been there forever, and always will be. Another one of those sticky, unfortunate things in his life that clings to him, refusing to leave without careful intervention. And it’s making all of this so much harder.
There was once a time when it would’ve been easy. A few, in fact. So many moments over the years when he wouldn’t have cared, not one, single iota, and this sickly concern wouldn’t have ever crept up behind him, stalking him like a predator in the wilds.
It’s hard not to feel things the way other people do, the way he once used to. But falling out of practice over the course of a few decades has only made his feelings all the more impossible to navigate when they do return.
“Mac,” Dennis tries again.
This time, his voice is almost frighteningly calm, flipped on a dime from outraged to his version of considerate, the one he finds easiest to approximate for these scenarios. Better than letting the real emotion in and risk it showing. Mac likes it, anyway. He likes anything Dennis gives him, but throwing a hint of softness in there instantly wipes any of Dennis’ (justified) transgressions from his mind.
“Mac,” Dennis repeats, the shepherd to lead the lamb out of the storm and into shelter. “Do you understand now?”
Mac is just as glassy-eyed as he has been for the last few minutes, splayed on the bed, gaze unfocused and trained to the ceiling, like he’s witnessing something vast and miraculous. There’s no movement from him other than the jerking of his hip, synced to the twitches in his weeping erection, and the jagged rise and fall of his chest. All reflexive motions, not conscious.
It reminds Dennis of watching him make the slow trek towards death a week ago, airway swollen almost entirely closed, because of those stupid nuts. Intriguing enough at the time, but not an incident Dennis wishes to see a repeat of. Maybe that’s what’s scared him enough to end his tirade and try a different tactic. Or maybe it’s just that Mac has stopped paying attention to him, something altogether unheard of when they’re together like this.
Dennis steps closer to the bed, stopping right in front of it, between Mac’s legs listlessly draped over the side. Hopefully close enough now that he can block out whatever Mac is seeing instead of him. He nudges Mac’s naked shin with his clothed one, and it’s enough.
Mac gasps, something flickering to life in his eyes before they flutter closed. He breathes deeply, once, twice, then swallows.
“I get it,” Mac says, voice low and throaty and barely there. Dennis likes the shame he hears in it. Mac has been far, far too shameless lately, in everything he does. It’s another small step on the road to appeasement.
“Good,” Dennis says, letting the barest hint of satisfaction tug at the corner of his mouth. “Took you long enough, but we got there eventually,” he remarks, pressing his leg into Mac’s.
He doesn’t say the rest of it—that this is all Mac’s fault anyway, that he’s brought this on himself—because he doesn’t think he has to. He thinks it should already be ingrained into Mac, by this point: that he always makes the damn bed himself.
“Dennis, I need you to touch me,” Mac pleads, rising off the mattress. “Please,” he begs, simpering and pathetic, like he somehow still hasn’t learned anything at all over the course of the last hour—over the course of their entire fucking lives.
Dennis’ lip lifts in distaste. He raises his foot off the ground, then brings it down on top of Mac’s, digging it in until Mac cries out. “Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because,” Mac scrambles, face twisted in pain, eyes wet and his Adam’s apple working in his throat like he’s struggling to breathe. “Because I’ll do anything you want. Anything, just—please.”
Normally, Dennis would scoff at such a weak ploy. Normally, it would never work as a bargaining chip, because Dennis can have Mac do anything he wants almost any day of the week, providing he has the right tactics and the right reward, and that reward certainly doesn’t need to be anywhere near the level of actually touching him sexually.
But there’s one thing Mac is lording over him right now: one thing Dennis is scared of. As scared as Mac is, of being left with only a dry orgasm from prolonged torture in the form of a set of vibrating anal beads he’s already dulled his dick to by letting “Johnny” use them on him so goddamn much, and Dennis needs it gone. Quashed for good, so Mac can never bring it up and try to hold it over him.
So Dennis doesn’t have to fear, awash in a cold sweat at night, that he’s going to use it as justification that they’re anything they’re not.
“Say it meant nothing,” Dennis says, scarily quiet. He hasn’t been this serious in a long time. It’s almost unsettling to himself. “All of it—everything Johnny said to you. Say it meant nothing. Now.”
“I—” Mac starts, the words instantly dying in his throat, like his voice just fell out of him.
Dennis watches Mac’s brow draw inward, the glimmer in his eyes fracturing again. It’s far from the first time, and it very likely won’t be the last, but Dennis has never felt the break with him until now. It isn’t written all over his face like it is Mac’s, but it shatters in his throat, the pieces lodging into the soft tissue, and the pain of swallowing around shards of glass is immeasurable. It makes him want to claw out his own windpipe, just so he’ll never have to experience it again.
“Mac,” Dennis warns, through a mouth laced with shrapnel. Mac looks close to tears, but he almost never cries in front of him. It’s one of the few attributes Dennis can wholeheartedly commend him for.
“It meant nothing,” Mac says, looking up at Dennis with an expression so simultaneously empty and full of want. “It all meant nothing.”
Dennis swallows heavier than he would’ve liked. He thought this would feel good. He thought it would feel mind-numbingly, euphorically good to finally be free of the prison that’s caged him, ever since he admitted the ruse and accidentally handed Mac all the power in the process. But all he can feel is glass, and all he can taste is blood.
The socked foot Dennis levels to Mac’s groin is hardly his own. He pushes, twists and digs just like he has before, but even with a tender, sensitive cock beneath it, there’s no joy in the pain he’s delivering. The only thing that lets him know he’s still here is Mac’s agonized whimper, and even its hold is hollow and tenuous.
“Not like that,” Mac pants, though he’s still getting off on it. His dick jumps under the ball of Dennis’ foot, soaking a wet spot into Dennis’ sock.
Mac’s voice is so far away, but the line of his erection, fitted so delicately under Dennis’ arch, is too close not to be real. It presses against him, begs silently, gives under the force when Dennis tests how far he can push it, and springs back when he releases. It makes Mac squirm and cry out, undoing him faster than the beads vibrating at full power inside him could manage. When Dennis curls his toes over the head, he feels the warmth of Mac’s release splatter against the cotton-wool blend.
Suddenly, Dennis is reminded these are expensive socks. Very nice, very expensive socks, and Mac will have to pay for them. Not monetarily—forty-six years old and he still can’t reliably manage that, will somehow never be able to—but some other way. Just another thing he’ll have to find an alternate form of reimbursement for, tacked onto the perpetual list that never shrinks, only grows.
“Dennis,” Mac says, voice floating in the air around them. “Can—can you stop it now? It really hurts.”
Dennis frowns, looking down to the foot that’s still pressing into Mac’s groin, then to his hand, holding the brand new phone he rigged up the app on after Mac broke the old one. Then back to Mac’s face, contorted by a grimace and something else. Probably the reticence to even admit his discomfort to Dennis and give him more ammo. It would’ve been the most idiotic maneuver any other time; Dennis would’ve taken advantage of it without a second thought.
But right now, Dennis just doesn’t have the energy, or the drive. So he pulls his foot back, finding the presence of mind to unlock his phone. Once he hits the off switch on the app’s display, Mac’s head lolls, his entire body relaxing.
Meanwhile, Dennis just stands there. He stands there, with one uncomfortably wet sock, watching Mac come back to himself, studying him like he’s never seen him before.
Here’s the person he knows best in the world, other than his own twin sister, the man he’s spent the better part of his life dissecting and unpicking and weaving back together when he tugs at too many loose threads. But in moments like these, separated from reality, Dennis can marvel at the newness of him, observe this strange animal in his strange habitat and quietly appreciate what the bias of all his pent-up frustration and resentment never lets him.
He can watch, with unblinking eyes that swallow all the light, and see the muscles flex in Mac’s arms as he turns onto his side. He can watch and be rewarded by the sight of Mac’s flaccid cock shifting against his thigh, the head blanketed in foreskin again, glistening from his release, and think of sculptures in museums and gardens and chapels, and realize this is how masterpieces are created. He can see the curve of Mac’s back, the dip of his spine becoming all the more prominent as he adjusts himself with one leg forward, and think of something so jarringly simple: how it would feel to rest his hand there, forever and ever, and never let go. Sink his nails into the skin and hold him in the maw of his palm for eternity.
“Let me,” Dennis says, nearly jumping at the sound of his own voice.
He’s lost control here, even of himself. The one thing he wasn’t supposed to do—the exact opposite of what he resolved himself to at the outset. But in this state, he isn’t sure he even minds.
Mac jumps too, and maybe Dennis should feel accomplished that he flinches at the mere suggestion. His fear doesn’t bring any satisfaction, however. What sparks something inside Dennis, makes all the years of training and tactics and masterminding feel worthwhile, is how Mac still obeys, gripping under his thigh so Dennis has access to the small plastic handle that protrudes from within him.
Dennis has done this once already, when Mac was drugged into stupor by the drink he paid someone to deliver to Mac’s motel door under the guise of it being from Johnny. Mac must have a serious death wish, honestly, to accept an open container from a random man outside his door at a seedy motel. He has no clue how truly lucky he is that it was only Dennis behind the facade. Saving Mac from himself yet again, except the roofies erased most of his memories of that night, so he’ll never know how profusely he should’ve spent the last three days expressing his gratitude to Dennis.
Limp and inert, the beads had slid from Mac without resistance once he was sedated, hardly a flicker of recognition flashing across his face. It was its own kind of thrill, something Dennis could now admit made him so hard so quick, he’d locked himself inside the tiny ensuite, barely a step above the “Animal Shithouse” formerly known as the men’s bathroom at Paddy’s in terms of cleanliness, jerking off fast and dirty into a wad of toilet paper with Mac still unaware on the other side of the door all the while. Of course the power had gotten to him—it always has, and it always will—and that visage of Mac, curled into a ball and so utterly helpless, completely unsuspecting, has stayed burned into Dennis’ eyelids each night since.
Tonight, though, there’s a good chance it’ll be replaced by a new memory playing on loop. While Mac is in much the same position as Dennis molded his semi-conscious form into, his face is an entirely different story. It shifts constantly throughout the process, seizing in anticipation when Dennis first applies force to the handle, then screwing up with pain, biting a grunt into his lips, as Dennis tugs the biggest bead at the base past his rim. After that, it drops slack with pleasure, and all Dennis hears from him are moans, tinier and tinier each time.
In the end, almost nothing remains. Nothing but Mac’s fist bunched around the loose bedsheet, and the weight in Dennis’ right hand that feels much heavier than the time before.
Dennis lays the toy on the bed, contemplating the disquieting sense of finality it brings with it. Technically Mac can do whatever he wants with the thing—Dennis already went to enough trouble buying a new set to make his point after Frank ruined the last one—but for his part, Dennis is going to delete the app off his phone come morning. Johnny is dead at last, and Dennis won’t allow his corpse to be dug up repeatedly just so Mac can cling to the shambling carcass of a person who was never real in the first place. It doesn’t matter that Dennis feels a little sick at the thought, bile rising up to mix with the blood. The whole matter is buried, and that’s all there is to it.
Mac sits himself up with a groan, and Dennis notices how his line of sight tracks straight to his groin, decidedly more interested now that the vacancy of before is gone.
“Can I suck you off?” Mac ventures, looking like he expects the worst, but still hopeful despite it.
Dennis just stares at him, unable to dispel the fog that’s settled in, muffling him to the world. “Yeah,” he finally says, still too numb to protest or snap something degrading like he normally would.
And Mac, stupid fucking Mac who’s too goddamn smart in all the worst ways, picks up on it immediately.
“Dennis?” he asks, getting off the bed to kneel at Dennis’ feet. “Dude, are you okay?”
Mac blinks up at Dennis, eyes wide and full of concern, glistening under the dim light of the overhead fixture, half its bulbs burnt out. He hasn’t bothered to replace them, because as much as he has certain standards when it comes to cleanliness, or likes to attempt to play homemaker with Dennis, he’s terrible at all of it. In the first years they lived together, Dennis tried to help, setting up his room for him with proper furniture and decorations and bedsheets: a nice fucking duvet and everything, reasoning that with Mac’s shitty childhood, no one ever taught him how to do it on his own, so once he was graciously given a helping hand, he’d figure it out.
It turned out that Dennis overestimated Mac—a common mistake back then—because he never did, and one day Dennis absently glanced into his room to see all the nice shit he helped him buy just fucking…gone. For a few years there, some of it sporadically reappeared in short, manic bursts, but then the day came that it all disappeared forever. Dennis has yet to comprehend what possessed him to do it, penitence or contrition or what. Even now, years after coming out, his room still looks like it belongs in an abandoned seminary kids tell each other is haunted and hang around on the weekends so they can scare each other and fuck, not anyone’s home. Granted, it isn’t like Mac sleeps in here all that often nowadays, but Dennis will never understand the fucked-up standards he applies solely to himself. At least his disgusting, unmade bed serves somewhat of a purpose, since Dennis doesn’t spare a shred of worry for defiling it like he does his own.
“Dennis,” Mac broaches, hesitant in a way that normally makes Dennis want to spit in his face (except the little bitch gets off on that too, so it isn’t even satisfying anymore). “If you don’t want me to, I don’t have—”
“If you’re going to do it, fucking do it,” Dennis bites out with the scant amount of vitriol he can muster.
Mac’s forehead creases, and Dennis dares him to say something else, he dares him, but there are no more words. Mac only nods, rushing to unbutton Dennis’ slacks, always so damn obedient. Either that, or he just wants his prize before Dennis can think better of it.
Dennis grips Mac’s hair as soon as his mouth envelops his cock, hot and all too receptive, taking him into the hollow of his cheek. Usually, it’s Dennis with the guiding hand, making Mac do exactly what he wants him to do, exactly how he wants him to do it. Usually, he’s the one urging his cockhead into Mac’s mouth, watching his cheek bulge with it as it presses into the wet, velvety skin. Working Mac by his hair at an incessant pace until he’s all fucked out and raw, with spit dribbling down his chin and an expression of unadulterated bliss. There was a time when Mac was terrible at this, fucking godawful, honestly, so without Dennis’ instruction, it would’ve been nothing but sputtering and gagging and—well, maybe there was still a lot of that. But Dennis also would’ve been standing there until his feet were numb and his dick was shriveled, so, as a favor to them both, he took the reins, and he’s never really let go.
But tonight, that’s not what this is. Dennis’ hand in Mac’s hair is automatic, part of the routine and nothing more, and how soft the strands feel in his fingers when he isn’t gripping them taut is a small wonder he hasn’t oft experienced. Mac’s hands settle around Dennis’ thighs, just above where he’s pushed down his pants and briefs, and their warmth is a welcome one, like the eager suction of his mouth around him. His head bobs, and he sets a pace of letting Dennis slide along his cheek to the back of his throat, gulping around the tip whenever it breaches the hallowed ground. He looks up at Dennis all the while, doe-eyed and desperately seeking his approval, whatever feedback he can glean from his face.
He does the same thing every time, and Dennis doesn’t know that he’s ever received what he wants in return. Dennis knows he’s never given it up of his own volition, certainly, and though there may have been a few times he was so intoxicated he can’t quite be sure, those were also the times Mac was just as wasted, if not more.
Dennis knows now, however, because he finds himself watching it happen. Something in Mac’s face shifts, his brow drawing together in a way so clearly plaintive, while his eyes brim and his pupils blow wide.
Dennis hears Mac whimper in the back of his throat, feels it vibrate against his cock, and the suction of his mouth becomes almost unbearable. Dennis wants to be horrified at the development, left without a clue as to how he was looking at Mac, other than it was apparently capable of eliciting that, but the feeling can’t reach him. He can only buck forward, holding Mac’s head flush to his groin, as he comes down his throat with a flash of white-hot pleasure that burns all the way up his spine.
Once Dennis is spent, breathless and weak, Mac pulls off, resting his head against Dennis’ stomach and gulping for air. Nose pressed just below Dennis’ navel, Dennis feels him kiss the tight muscle between his hips, peppering him with more when the push he must’ve been expecting after even daring to try the first one never comes. Dennis stands there while Mac presses kiss after kiss into his abdomen, even sucking a few bruises into the skin as he grows more emboldened, and Dennis stands, rooted in place.
Dennis stands, and he stands, and instead of pushing Mac away, he lets it happen, and he thinks about the universe.
Sometimes Dennis feels like a dying star, and the only planet still close enough in his orbit is Mac—the only celestial body still capable of receiving any warmth. And when all his fuel is exhausted, when he becomes chill and cold and nothing more than a fading glow, Mac will die with him too. They’ll forever be suspended in space as time stretches on, motionless shells of what they once were.
But Mac doesn’t have to die. He isn’t a doomed thing, isn’t leaking life from every pore, every second of the day. Somehow, he’s only gaining it, and that’s the most mystifying part of it all. Ever since coming out, he’s seemed fresh, revitalized, despite everything that’s been thrown at him. He’s always been mulishly resilient, but the motivation was different. Before, he scrambled for anything that would let him move on, whatever would let him avoid looking at what he so obviously was in the face.
There are still remnants of that, but now they pale to this confounding, earnest attempt at trying to be someone. Not someone important, mind you, but just…someone. Someone who’s maybe a little bit better than he used to be. Someone who’s looking forward to something. Who has something to look forward to.
If Mac could get his shit together just enough, Dennis could see it for him. Chances are he never will, but Dennis could still see it: some beefcake to settle down with, maybe not the biggest looker out there face-wise, certainly not compared to Dennis, but so muscle-bound Mac wouldn’t give a shit about anything else. He’d have to be one of those rich, successful gays; damned if Dennis would wind up doling out “spousal support” again because Mac has nothing to his name other than a dildo bike, a half dozen crucifixes, and a jizz-stained bible after decades of cohabitation. Then rich fantasy beefcake could find them somewhere nice to live, and pay for all of it, and Mac could play house with him instead. And no one would find it weird or pathetic that they were only getting around to such basic shit in their middle-age, since no one automatically expects gay guys to follow that whole life path anyway.
No, Mac would get all the praise for being so strong and brave, just like he already does with the men who flock over him at The Rainbow until they inevitably disperse after listening to him for more than two minutes, or the random women he tells his life story to when he’s trying to play wingman for Dennis because, “Gays are super disarming, dude!” And if Dennis ever, ever, entertained the idea of trying to capitalize on that logic for himself, all he’d be viewed as is a creep, since gay men who took forty years to come out after the most pitiful, drawn-out charade possible are apparently just so adorable, but any middle-aged man who bandies about the word “bisexual” is gross. That’s how the world works, after all.
It makes Dennis sick, deep down in the darkest, loneliest part of him. So sick it comes up to choke him in his throat again. Fucking Mac, the man who’s spent his entire life searching for absolution, is still too blind, too willfully ignorant, to see he’s already found it. And chances are he always will be.
“Mac,” Dennis eventually manages to croak, and Mac freezes in the middle of sucking another hickey into the jut of Dennis’ hip.
“Yeah, Dennis?” he asks, staring up at him. Like he’s staring directly into his sun, and just like all the other times, it’s so plain in his face: what’s just on the cusp of his tongue.
But Mac doesn’t say it. It’s the one thing he’s always known better than to express outside of the direst of circumstances. Instead, he repeats his earlier refrain.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m going to bed,” Dennis announces, nudging Mac off of him.
And Mac must have picked himself up like he always does, maybe even trying to call a futile goodnight after Dennis. But if that did happen this time, for once, Dennis didn’t ignore it on purpose. Somehow, he just wound up in his bed—he must’ve.
Wherever he did end up, all Dennis knows is that from there, he blacked out for good.