this is *cough* slightly more than five sentences i'm so sorry
We should buy a bar, Mac thinks.
There’s something about the way Dennis looks just after midnight, when the streetlights are dim and the neon signs are bright and buzzing; when Higher Love is blaring from the jukebox for the seventh time in a row. The drunker he gets, Dennis’s tolerance for just about everything decreases - drugs, stupidity, girls rebuffing him - not Steve Winwood, though. Drunk Dennis loves Steve Winwood more and more, and he’ll waste a lot of nickels to prove it.
They should get out of this place. Because it’s dead, because it’s Monday, because the hot bartender they’ve been competing for is giving them a nasty death glare and she did say her boyfriend was on his way to tear them apart, although that’s an empty threat half the time. Dennis’s head is heavy on his shoulder, eyes closed, face flushed, wiggling a little in his seat as he mumbles the lyrics in soft little slurs, so Mac doesn’t want to move. Not even a little. He wants to sit still and look and feel that awful twisting sensation in his gut when Dennis’s hair tickles his cheek and makes his heart race. He wants to hurt.
They’ll do this all the time at their own bar, because he’s tired of selling shitty weed to middle schoolers and Dennis is never gonna apply to vet school and Charlie is… asleep under the table in a puddle of beer and Gorilla Glue. They’ll have late drunken nights and bad lighting that makes Dennis look unnecessarily beautiful. They’ll play too much 80s music because that makes Dennis happy. And he’ll be bursting with adoration and guilt and it’ll be too much to process but better than the alternative - of not having Dennis around, when it’s like there’s no point in feeling anything at all.
The idea will be a hard sell, but he knows he can do it. Dennis will buy in. If he plays his cards just right, Dennis will settle.
He’ll settle for Mac. He always does.
