chapter 10 scene 1, wonderful nothing
Sweat rolls down the column of Dennis’s throat.
The month of May had accosted Philadelphia, springing up out of absolutely nowhere; record highs shattered seemingly overnight, followed by weeks of endless, unbearable brightness, no clouds in the sky for over half the month.
Dennis, for his part, had made it a personal mission to hunker down firmly indoors, away from the sun — except for when there was a damn good reason to go out, like: a cop car to cruise around in, or a kitty-cat to pet, or when his bitch-ass roommate pestered him to come outside, let’s shoot some hoops, it’ll be fun, bro.
Dennis wonders now — moisture pooling disgustingly at his low back, slicking up the ditch of his elbows — when he will wisen up, when he will stop implicitly trusting Mac to have good ideas, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
”I swear it didn’t used to be this hot this time of year, dude,” Mac pants, lifting up his drenched shirt to wipe uselessly at the droplets of sweat dotting his forehead — not able to use the sleeves, like a civilized person, because there are none. “I’m sweating my fucking balls off out here.”
Dennis’s eyes follow the movement and catch; on the vee of Mac’s hips, the droplets clinging to the coarse hair of his happy trail, the flushed pink of his low belly.
Dennis swallows heavily, twirling the basketball in his hands, and rubs his fingertips over the rough bumps like reading Braille.
“This was your idea, Mac,” he bites out, playing at irritated, landing on resigned, tired, worn-down.
Dennis is not immune from having a body, unfortunately, and he feels Mac’s complaint intimately. It makes him shudder away from his own flesh; it makes him yearn to steal Mac’s shirt to use as a shitty towel, or to shred off his skin with a potato peeler, or at least for a long shower and a pumice stone to scrape the tacky, nasty top layer off.
“Well, yeah,” Mac says, his voice twisting up petulantly, puppy-dog eyes jumping out in full force — as though Dennis is personally responsible for the heat wave, as though he can somehow stop it. “Because I didn’t know it would be like, a million degrees!”
If only someone had invented a thermometer, or a newspaper, or a weather forecast, or standing outside for five minutes, Dennis thinks but doesn't say.
If he drags Mac into a contentious argument, they’ll just be stuck out here even longer, sun rising higher and higher in the sky, nasty wetness flooding out of places Dennis didn’t even know humans could sweat.
“Global warming, I’m telling you, man,” Dennis says instead, wincing slightly at the haughty, holier-than thou tone that always creeps in his tone when he pontificates about something, especially when the person listening doesn’t give a single fuck about anything he’s saying. “You’ve really gotta watch — ”
“Shut up about your stupid documentary, Dennis, and give me the ball. God.”
Dennis sticks his tongue out, Mac always rendering him down to his basest, most childish instincts, and passes the ball over with more force than is strictly necessary.
“Fuck you, dude,” Mac grouses, rubbing at the base of his sternum where he’d taken the hit, but doesn’t pursue it — they’re a bit more mature than fisticuffs at the rec center, most of the time, at least now that they’re in their thirties.
They’re playing HORSE, or trying to. It’s less fun without Charlie — Dennis isn’t really sure where he is, or why Mac didn’t invite him — but easier, too, because everyone involved can fucking spell the word horse.
A breath, a toss, and a swish — Mac makes it in.
“Suck on that, bitch!” he crows, flipping around to blind Dennis with a big grin, a move so boyish it slides straight through annoying, straight to fucking endearing.
“Anyone can make a shot from the free throw line, Mac,” Dennis informs him, rolling his eyes as he accepts the pass. “You’ve really got to stop bragging about the most simple accomplishments.”
“And you’ve really got to stop being such an asshole,” Mac snaps.
Dennis sneers so hard it fucks up his form.
They stand there for a long, silent moment, watching the ball bounce wildly off the rim and roll away down the street, beelining for oncoming traffic.
“You’ve got h-o-r,” Mac cries, laughing so hard he doubles over, hands on his knees, beaming up at Dennis like he just invented comedy. “You know, because you’re a — ”
Something — just slightly — wobbles in Dennis’s chest, like a child’s cry. It dislodges nothing that Mac, or anyone else, could observe on his face, in the set of his shoulders, or in the curve of his spine.
“Shut the fuck up, idiot,” Dennis retorts, tucking his chin down to his throat as he jogs after the ball, swallowing down sick.
Basketball retrieved — milliseconds from the street — Dennis pelts it at Mac like they're playing dodgeball, like he wants Mac to ache.
The basketball listens this time and hits its target, bouncing off Mac’s shoulder and crashing into his big toe, which earns Dennis a string of inventive curses.
Mac trots after it, rubbing his shoulder with one hand and stopping the ball with his uninjured foot, balancing unsteadily as he tries to kick it up towards himself.
Dennis snorts at the sight — Mac is such a tryhard fucking loser — and like he can hear inside Dennis' head, Mac shoots him a glare as he scoops the ball up, flexing his biceps unsubtly.
Dennis rolls his eyes; not hard enough to miss Mac dribbling it back across the court, eyes squinted the way they do when he gets laser-focused and intense, offering Dennis a cocksure grin before setting up a shot which he, spectacularly, misses.
It’s Dennis’s turn to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.
Mac frowns, deep and hard, and kicks at the cement court like it’s solely responsible for all of his life’s problems.
“Sunscreen time,” Mac informs him, with a little too much firmness and conviction.
Dennis can hardly argue, though – Mac’s face is pinking up, slipping towards tomato-red, and Dennis is far more sensitive to sun exposure than Mac, and he can’t abide wrinkles, or melanoma, or yet another problem to fuss over.
It’s just easier, and less physically and emotionally exhausting, to meander over to the bench where they’d left their stuff, slip out of his waterlogged shirt, and present Mac with his bare back.
Dennis doesn’t remember when they started doing this, but it’s old. Old like dinosaurs and cavemen, one of those things that’s just always sort of been there, a universally agreed upon approach to doing things.
Mac quickly produces a towel out of the ratty backpack he’d brought.
You had that the whole time and never once offered it, asshole, like you packed it just for this — Dennis thinks, then stops thinking at all when Mac starts stroking the fabric gently over Dennis’s back, wiping away sweat like he’s dusting fragile china.
“The sunscreen needs a dry surface to sink into, dude, do you want skin cancer or something?,” Mac had said, rather aggressively, his seventeen-year-old testosterone-anger flaring when Dennis had questioned him on it years ago.
Of course Dennis didn’t then, and doesn’t now; he’d had no choice but to let Mac show him the best way to apply sunblock..
The lid of the tube pops open; Dennis reaches his band back obediently, stretching his fingers so that Mac can squeeze out enough sunscreen for his chest and stomach. They work in tandem, always have: Dennis covers his front while Mac gets after his back.
It’s more out of necessity, than anything else — if Mac did it all, it would take them hours to get ready for any outdoor activity, because Mac takes his time.
Mac massages the sunscreen in like he’s trying to embed sun protection in the lining of Dennis’s tendons, way down deep in his cells; he works out the tension in Dennis’s shoulders as he goes, kneading lotion deep into the permanent knot at the base of Dennis’s spine, way better and more relaxing than the massage lady in the strip mall that Dennis had started going to when he turned 30 and shit started hurting.
Dennis slathers his front as well as he can, but does it slowly — careful not to move too fast, not to do anything that might make Mac take a step back and abandon his duties, or pause to remember that Dennis has been wearing his shirt all day, that there’s no real need for any of this.
When Mac’s hands start to still, drawing down his back once more, twice more, tracing reverent lines that feel more like caresses than liquid application, Dennis spins around, removing himself from Mac’s grasp before Mac can do it himself.
The sun beats down down so hot and thick that Dennis can feel his whole body flushing as he lets Mac give him the stamp of approval, his bright eyes roaming over every inch of Dennis’s skin, every chest hair and curl in his happy trail, ensuring that every last bit of sunscreen on his front was applied in accordance with Mac’s sun-protection specifications and preferences.
Half a lifetime passes between them before Mac nods shortly and takes half-a-step backwards, breaking the spell of their bodies.
Dennis swallows, then swallows again.
Normally, a few things happen next — Mac might pass him their communal water bottle, ensuring Dennis takes a long enough sip for proper hydration; Mac might flip around to offer up his own back for the same treatment, which Dennis is in no position to decline; Mac usually makes some goading crack about Dennis’s athletic abilities that prevents Dennis from getting the lotion fully rubbed in, since Mac has to dart out of range of his fists —
But none of that happens, this time..Mac just stands there, in the sweltering light, and looks at Dennis, his face neither guarded nor wanting, just Mac looking at Dennis, the same way he’s done for the last sixteen years or so, and Dennis looking back.
Not avoiding each other’s gaze, pretending it isn’t happening, or reading into the intentions barely swirling under the surface, but just — looking, the way Dennis had caught himself doing more and more since that last night at the arcade.
When the storm had cleared between — their breathing calmed down to something half-normal, their blazing bright blushes receding into more manageable, blame-it-on-the-wine flushes — Mac hadn’t banged out the door and hit the ground running, but he hadn’t hoisted Dennis up with his hand, either.
He’d just waited, quiet and patient, for Dennis to stand on his own, then darted out to the sink for some paper towels, passing them under the stall door in an oddly polite manner. Dennis had cleaned himself off, watching Mac’s boots stay rooted in place as he lurked against the counter,like it wasn’t weird and possibly illegal for him to be in the ladies’ room, like it was the most natural thing in the world to wait for Dennis.
All so they could slink out the emergency exit together, their unpaid tab and crimes of public indecency washed away by the fire alarm shrieking, the panicked crowd evacuating.
No one had said half-a-word about it since, and Dennis wasn’t about to start, but —
Standing there on the court, looking at each other — Dennis allows himself to imagine that they’ve finally scratched and clawed their way to some half-steady neutral ground, where no one reaches out, but no one pulls away, either.
He blames the warmth in his chest on the sun.
“Let’s play,” he says, and turns away.
