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By the time Dennis met Mac and Charlie, they were too molded together for him to see them as true individuals. They were two separate people; two, somehow, very different people, but they were twins in every way he and Dee were not. Where he and Dee shared DNA, shared a concurrent creation, Charlie and Mac shared a life. They were postpartum codependent in a way Dennis never understood. Not biologically related, but the shitty circumstances of their adolescence seemed to create a makeshift cocoon for them, forcing them into high school life and teenaged problems before they'd ever even realized there was a world outside the two of them. That myth, about Zeus, and humans originally having two heads and two hearts, splitting them apart so they would spend the rest of their lives looking for their other half. Dennis didn't feel that way with anyone, and he didn't believe in myths, but Mac and Charlie were enough to make him doubt. Mac and Charlie made him and Dee look like two absolute strangers to one another, like they'd never even shared a zip code, let alone a womb.
When they were small, Dennis and Dee had created their own language. All consonants and fricatives, mangled Spanish words their nannies taught them thrown in just because it was more commonly heard in their home, they drove their parents crazy with it. Then, one day, they just stopped. No discussion, no agreement, they just picked up in English and never touched their language again. Dennis couldn't even remember it, then, but sometimes he wished he could. He wished he could, at random, while sitting in the car on the way to school or fighting over the TV remote, turn to Dee and offer her a car crash of jumbled phonics and have her respond back like they never grew out of it. Sit in their old roles and not notice the seams straining.
Mac and Charlie were once again opposites. They seemed to be born in hand-me-down clothes that, unless they suddenly tripled their body weight, they would never fit into. Their roles were roomy enough for them to be whatever they wanted, and still they didn't seem to know what that was. He liked that about them. In a way, they were everything he wasn't, everything he wanted to be. Loose, carefree, in no rush to tailor the fabric of his life to make it fit him. Mac and Charlie represented something to him. The potential of making it, or of having nothing become of him for as long as he lived, Mac and Charlie represented Dennis' choice to do either.
Fifteen years old and standing under the wooden bleachers, all rain-rotted and groaning, holding hands like it was the most normal thing in the world. Even when Dennis walked up to them, they didn't part, Charlie's knuckles turning white against Mac's, Mac's fingernails digging into the back of Charlie's hand. They looked at him with cold eyes and Dennis was half tempted to run, to back away and out of there before either of them could ever say he was there at all.
He stared down at his four hundred dollar designer shoes, caked with mud.
Mac looked him up and down. "You want something?"
"No," Dennis blurted, face burning. Why did he always have to sound so god damn eager? "I…I'm just trying to get away from my bitch sister."
Charlie and Mac glanced at each other, a moment between them, a language Dennis didn't understand. But he wanted to. God, he wanted to.
Charlie caught his eye, and it took that moment for Dennis to realize he'd never really heard the kid speak. Like, truly speak. He'd heard the muttered replies to dares from Adriano and his crew, when they were getting him to inhale shit that would put a WW2 vet down, but he'd never really heard him talk of his own free will until right then.
"Who's your sister?" He asked.
Dennis' heart skipped a beat. It wasn't much, but it was something, an invite to keep talking. A sign that they weren't just telling him to fuck off and die. A conversation. Even if it was about Dee, it was something. God, he couldn't remember the last time he had an honest conversation, about anything, anything normal, since last year. And even then…Dennis shuddered. It was promising, to be invited into a conversation and not have anything expected of him, not have to…give them something he didn't want to give. To not have to give, or take. Just be.
He just had to be.
---
Being seventeen proved to be the best time of Dennis' life. Firmly situated in their friend group, they spent one of their typical mornings, hotboxing the Rover in the woods behind the school with some of Mac's dealer's weed he would never see the return on. Dennis felt like a sandbox, like if he closed his eyes his face would disintegrate into its individual atoms, scattered out along the soft cloth interior. Charlie would probably get his muddy boots on his face atoms. What the fuck.
"I feel like I'm full of jellybeans," Charlie said, his voice quiet and smooth. Dennis didn't figure it out yet, but one day he was going to get Charlie to sing for him. With the erratic way he spoke, Dennis knew his range was probably fucking insane, and he wanted nothing more than to see how that applied to music. He looked over at him, thinking to maybe turn the radio up so that Charlie might sing along, but Charlie was staring at Mac, passenger seat reclined all the way back to allow him the reach.
"Yeah?" Mac asked, eyes soft and so-slightly-pink, his arm straining where Dennis looped his over it, but he didn't push him off. "Better than glue?"
"Nothing is better than glue, dude, this is just different. Glue is a snow globe. This is jellybeans."
Mac took another hit from their shared joint, and Dennis thought about forgetting to know what shotgunning was again, just so Mac could show him. The first time they'd ever smoked with him, they let him feign his upper-crust ignorance, sputtering until he was red in the face over the tiniest intrusion of THC into his preppy little body. Like a delicate belle. It'd taken four tries of that fucking charade before they resorted to it, before Mac and Charlie competed over who could deposit more smoke into Dennis' all-too-willing mouth, cupping the back of his head and letting Dennis just sit back and breathe. There's no way they'd fall for it again, but he could hope.
"That's great, dude," Mac whispered. He was always trying to take care of them when they were high, even if he was right up there with them.
"Yeah, especially 'cause…I…did we talk last night?"
Mac's eyes flickered briefly to Dennis, a flash of contact, before returning to Charlie. "No. There was no answer when I called your house. Thought you'd passed out."
Dennis laughed at the memory of the night before, which had been utilizing every inch of the Reynolds' lawn to create a high stakes obstacle course, involving the hot tub, pool, the trampoline, pool noodles, every piece of sports equipment available in the garage, and mouse traps. It was fucking insane. Mac was the first out, unable to regulate his weak, pathetic little frame from the polarizing cold of the unheated pool (they'd turned the heater off for this purpose specifically) after the burning hot jacuzzi. Dennis tripped in the wet grass on the Slip-'N-Slide portion of the contest, somehow taking a basketball to the groin when Charlie resorted to guerilla warfare, and ending in Charlie with two mouse traps on his left hand, waving in victory.
"Right. Well, I was going to. Except I got home and…my uncle is back."
Dennis, still laughing, less from yesterday's events and more from the absurdity of it, was slow to read the room. Charlie's words drawled, his lips shiny and bitten red, not at all indicating he'd said anything worth note.
"You have an uncle?" Dennis wheezed. It wasn't until he looked to the backseat and saw Mac, wide eyed, obviously sobered by whatever Charlie just said, that Dennis realized it wasn't funny.
Eyes darting back and forth between them, there was, once again, that fucking language they spoke, without speaking, that Dennis could never understand. He thought…he thought he'd got in with them! That there was really something there, a solid ground, a mutual friendship that extended to all parties involved. This entire time, he'd been trusting them, letting them get to know him in ways he didn't even know himself, caring for them in ways he didn't know he was capable. And they were still fucking leaving him out of everything. Burning hot rage seared his bones, the nauseating taste of jealousy brewing in his stomach.
Mac and Charlie never spoke about their families. All Dennis knew was that they each lived with their respective mothers and that neither of them really had dads. He knew Mac's father was in prison because he told him, he told everybody, it was basically the only thing that kept them from getting their asses kicked at Amanda's end of the year pool party last year, it wasn't really a best-friends-only piece of information. Meanwhile, Dennis had told them everything about his family. About his mom, about his dad, about Dee, about his mom banging their poolboy and his dad banging every woman with a pulse and a half-muttered consent; he thought they cared about him. But apparently they didn't. Apparently, Dennis never meant as much to them as they meant to him.
Mac cleared his throat. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I…" Charlie's eyes gleamed with a past Dennis had no part in, but Mac seemed to be written all over. "Growing Pains was on. I couldn't really get to the phone."
"I thought you didn't watch that show," Dennis muttered, distinctly annoyed due to Charlie's insistence he'd never heard of the show before, but the morning bell drowned out his voice. He understood why the people around the school needed to know, but why the fuck the bell needed to sound loud enough to burst the ear drums of everyone in a five mile radius, he'd never understand. "Shit. Let's go."
He was halfway to the front doors of the school before he realized Mac and Charlie hadn't followed him, instead disappearing behind him like a fucking illusion. He briefly entertained the idea that he hallucinated them, before realizing the weed that would have caused that was Mac's, and therefore impossible. Still, no fucking sight of either of them. What the fuck? He didn't even want to be high anymore; it was pathetic feeling it by himself, especially then, when all he wanted was to pout and feel dejected while his teacher rattled on and fucking on about Lord Byron or whoever. Fuck all of this.
Dee pulled his gaze from the floor, knocking her shoulder into him. She didn't say anything to him, her eyes wide and spacy, probably smoking the weird sativa strain Magoo got her into that made her bounce off the walls. Dennis nodded at her, picked his head up, and walked to class. Fuck Mac and Charlie. He had his own twin thing. He didn't need them.
Before he could relish in it, though, Dee was gone, off to the math class she did nothing but pass notes in and stick gum in other girls' hair. Outside, the sky turned so dark it was almost black, casting shadows on the ground like an ocean, sinking everything into darkness. Looked like a storm was rolling in.
He only made it through first period before he returned to his car. If he was going to mope, he was gonna do it in the privacy of his own home. Fuck everyone in that school.
---
Thunder boomed outside like an earthquake; Dennis sat comfortably in the den, praying the power wouldn't go out before the credits rolled on Die Hard. He hated when he missed the ending of movies, even if he already knew how it went. A bowl of popcorn in his arms, he wondered if his own house would ever be like this when he got older. So full of possessions, of needless accessories to an empty life. He wanted a big house like this, he thought, but he didn't know if he'd be able to handle it being so empty. Even if he got a wife, a few kids, he didn't imagine it would make his house, his life, any fuller.
The sound of the doorbell, ringing incessantly, sends him jumping, popcorn scattered along the couch. His heart barely has time to subside as he's pushing himself up and through the hallway to the front door. It's almost three in the morning, anybody who would be coming home at this hour already had a key, so he couldn't imagine who it—
Charlie and Mac are soaked down to the bone on his doorstep, shivering like a slight breeze could send them shattering. The portico offered them some shelter, but not nearly enough, Dennis couldn't do much else but stare at them. In a surprised breath, his nose burned with the acrid stench of bleach. Had they been huffing bleach on their little vacation from Dennis? That's what they abandoned him to do? Huff bleach?
"What the fuck are you guys doing out here?" Dennis whisper-screamed, though nobody else was home. "Did you walk here?"
Charlie and Mac both nodded, teeth chattering.
"W-We don't have a car, buses don't run this late, we-we tried to get here earlier, but the train—" Mac started to explain, but his words were cut off by the most strained sneeze Dennis had ever seen. He was surprised Mac's eyes didn't bulge out of his head.
Charlie didn't say a word next to him, eyes wide and unblinking, he looked so much younger than Dennis had ever seen him, smaller. It freaked him out.
Head struggling to catch up, he sputtered. "Well let's go," he finally managed. "I have to go find towels for you guys to dry yourselves off with. Go sit in the bathroom in my room, but don't touch any of my shit."
"Thanks, Den," Mac mumbled, expressive eyebrows genuine and open. Dennis didn't know why, what that meant, or if Mac really meant for it to mean anything.
"Thnks," Charlie breathed, but Dennis could tell he meant it. The difference between Charlie's reluctance because he didn't mean what he said, and the mumbling that came with who he was as a person was a fine line. Dennis liked to think himself a tightrope walker.
Running to the maid's closet, he snatched some of their older towels. They were still good, truly, but they had been less-than-brand-new, which his mother would never stand to display. These would probably be best, considering the amount of dirt and South Philly grime they could have on them since they walked to his house in Noah's Ark II. Clutching them to his chest he ran back to his room, secretly pleased that his friends…his best friends, needed him for something.
They needed him.
It was a lot. The entire time Dennis had known them, Charlie and Mac always fended for themselves. Without anyone else looking out for them, they looked out for each other, and they never seemed to need anything more than what they already had. For them to come to Dennis, they didn't even have to ask for his help. To just imply they wanted it, was enough. Dennis would give them the air out of his fucking lungs, even if he would never admit it.
Dennis could hear through the whispering from beyond his bedroom door, because Mac was incapable of talking at a volume level lower than thirty, even when everything else was on mute, which abruptly stopped the minute he opened the door. Like a pin dropped, everything had gone dead. A bolt of jealousy cleaved his heart in two, but he couldn't let it bother him. He reminded himself that they were here, in his house, because they needed his help.
They left puddles on the tile, Charlie hunched over on the ledge of the bathtub and Mac standing ramrod still. So close together their calves were touching, Charlie's hand tight around Mac's, pale skin so cold it almost turned purple. He sobbed quietly, curling in on himself to such an extent Dennis didn't know how he was still balancing, shaking with it. Dennis closed the toilet seat lid and set the towels on them, almost scared to touch them. It felt like the rules about sleepwalkers, how you weren't supposed to wake them. As though touching them would shatter the delicate silence between them, the stillness. He was afraid of what would come if he did.
As if in a trance, Mac took them, awkwardly draping one of them over Charlie's shoulders without letting go of his hand, then using the other to dry his hair.
"Here, dude," Dennis muttered, taking the towel gently from Mac's ice cold hands and running it over Mac's hair. What was once plastered to his forehead now stuck up in every direction, and Dennis would have thought it was endearing if not for the fucking harrowing vibes in the room.
Mac smiled at him, a private moment between them. "Thanks. Do you have any food?"
"Not unless you want to eat Dee's calcium bone-strength health shit. We can order though, if you want."
"Yeah, totally. I'm fucking starving." A heavy second passed, much longer than was comfortable, before Mac pulled out his wallet. Dennis almost scoffed. He didn't even know Mac had a wallet, especially when he went over Dennis' and always claimed he 'forgot' it. Sighing, he carefully removed his hand from Charlie's, which Charlie didn't fight, his hand dropping against the tub with a thud. He handed Dennis a few twenties, new ones, so crisp they all stuck together. "Use that to pay. Get pizza."
"Where did you get this?" Dennis asked, voice low and serious. He didn't know what was going on, but he wasn't trying to get caught up in whatever bullshit they tried to get money with this week, and end up getting his ass beat because they couldn't think more than one half step ahead.
"Ed finally paid me my cut; Why does it matter? Just use it, okay? Christ."
"What crawled up your ass?" Dennis scoffed, leaving them alone in the bathroom once again so he could go use the phone. He had to go in the den this time, since Dee got so angry with him for using the connection in his room to talk to Mac and Charlie that she cut the fucking cable.
Before he left entirely, he pressed his ear to his slightly ajar bedroom door, at an angle where they wouldn't be able to see him.
To his surprise, it was Charlie speaking this time, saying, "We can't tell him."
"I know. I won't. But he's gonna ask, and we really didn't think that far ahead."
"We'll just tell him we almost got mugged or some shit. We were on our way here, almost got mugged…ran here. That…Why wouldn't that work?"
"Because you're crying, dude. You're the one who got kicked from the wrestling team because you wouldn't stop biting the heavyweights, he is never gonna believe we were mugged."
"Well, we cAN'T TELL HIM, MAC. WE CAN'T, OKAY? I CAN'T GO TO JAIL AND YOU CAN'T GO TO JAIL, WE WOULDN'T SURVIVE IN JAIL. DON'T, DON'T MAKE ME GO TO JAIL."
Dennis flinched at Charlie's volume and ran down to the den, ordering the pizza from a place that wasn't necessarily great, but was the only one he know of that would be open at these hours and would deliver to his house. The woman on the phone sounded like Dennis called her clean out of a coma, grumbling as he ordered what he'd already had memorized down to heart. Pizza orders, scrawled next to the names of two assholes who couldn't even let him in on a secret. Pathetic.
What could they have possibly done that they couldn't tell Dennis about? It couldn't have been anything that bad, right? Nothing they could reasonably cover up. But they had hours. Then again...it could've just been petty theft, and Mac and Charlie really didn't trust him at all, not even with something so stupid. But that wouldn't make much sense. Mac and Charlie are the ones who taught Dennis how to shoplift, how to make a party sized bag of potato chips slip silently into a winter coat. It couldn't have been that. But if it was anything smaller they wouldn't be so fucking freaked out about it. So...what if it was bigger than that? Breaking and entering…car theft…he would jump right to arson if not for the rain.
He missed both the total and the wait time while he was thinking everything over, shards of ice shooting through his heart as the line went dead and Mac appeared in the doorway, apparently having abandoned Charlie to pin him here. It was like he was about to be fucking hunted for sport, but he couldn't find it in him to be scared.
"Hey," Dennis greeted, trying to be casual. He could hear his own blood rushing in his ears.
"I heard you eavesdropping," Mac said, not entertaining polite conversation for even a moment.
"Well, technically it's not eavesdropping if you were in my house. I think I'm entitled to those conversations legally, actually."
Mac squinted. "I'm pretty sure eavesdropping is just listening to a conversation that you aren't a part of. That two people are having privately. 'S not a property thing, I don't think."
Dennis grew tired of all the weird tiptoeing. He wanted nothing more than to just ask, to shake the information out of Mac like salt, and just have no secrets between the three of them. Couldn't they see that he just wanted to be in? Whatever illegal thing they did earlier that day, Dennis would shoulder it too. He'd help them cover it up, give them an alibi, anything. They just had to let him. Why wouldn't they let him?
"Look, I just wanted to say, what you heard before? It's no big deal. Charlie was just shaken up by the whole thing, blowing it out of proportion like he does, y'know? You really don't have to worry about it."
"...Well if it's not really a big deal, then why don't you just tell me? I won't tell anybody else, and if it's really nothing, then I wouldn't even really want to tell anyone else. So just do it. Just tell me."
Mac frowned. "Ehh, it's none of your business, dude, really. It's not even my thing to tell you."
Dennis huffed, so frustrated with the both of them it burned underneath his skin. "So then why are you here? You want me to clean you up? Dry you off like I'm your fucking mom? You can't just use me as a-a hideout spot, and then not even tell me what you're hiding from!"
"It's not about you! Not everything is fucking about you, Dennis!"
"No, shit!" Dennis yelled, his voice scratching, echoing down the hallway. "I know it's not about me! It never is! All you two ever do is talk about each other. Mac and Charlie, Mac and Charlie, every fucking day is filled with the two of you talking about each other and nothing fucking else!"
"THEN WHY DO YOU STICK AROUND? WE WERE FINE BEFORE YOU, YOU KNOW. WE DON'T NEED THIS SHIT! WE DIDN'T THINK THAT BEING YOUR FRIEND MEANT WE HAD TO STOP BEING US, TOO, OKAY? I THOUGHT WE COULD ALL BE OURSELVES. IF YOU DON'T LIKE HOW ME AND CHARLIE ARE, THEN WHY ARE YOU EVEN FRIENDS WITH US?"
"BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!"
Long silence stretched out between them as Dennis choked on his own twisted tongue. Mac stared at him, eyes gleaming in the light. Dennis couldn't breathe, like an ice cold fist had plunged itself into his chest and gripped his heart in its steel palm, he could feel it crushing with every breath he took in its grasp. Not even trying to deny it, to backtrack and make it platonic, he let it lie. You didn't say those words, in that order, in that way, if you didn't mean it the way he meant it. And he meant it. God fucking dammit couldn't Mac tell that he meant it?
Was there a word for that? For a secret so heavy, that even though he'd known its features, the exact name of it had been a mystery to even him? There had to be. There had to be words for the feeling buried so deep in the pit of his stomach that he didn't even know what it was, that it was love, until the realization skipped his head and fell out of his mouth without consideration for what this would do to them. To him. To everything. Without even meaning to, or knowing he was about to, he just ruined his entire life.
"You what?" Mac's voice was almost inaudible. Rain beat against the roof like the marching band of Dennis' heartbeat. All percussion.
Dennis sniffed. "You fuckin' heard me, dude."
"Me? You…me?"
He sat back down on the leather chair and curled up into a ball. "Charlie, too. Obviously I mean Charlie too. I…I didn't...I just want to be part of the gang, dude. But you won't let me in." He fought the tears welling up in his throat. "Can't you fucking tell by now that I'd keep any secret you told me? You wouldn't even have to ask me to. There's literally nothing that you can tell me that…that would be so bad I'd snitch. Even if you—"
"We killed my uncle," Charlie breathed, appearing behind Mac in the doorway. Mac jumped, apparently not having planned his surprise entrance nor heard him coming. "That's what we did. That's…we…He's dead."
Dennis stared at them, vision swimming, as he fought to process everything that was happening to him right now.
"I think I'm gonna throw up," Dennis groaned, clutching his stomach. "Like, actually throw up."
"Charlie already did. Twice," Mac told him.
"Three times."
"What? When? Where the fuck was I?"
"Just now. I got it in the toilet, though! Your bathroom is fine," Charlie assured when Dennis shot daggers at him. Oh, god. Not the time to be thinking about shooting. Or daggers. Holy fucking shit. "But, yeah. We…we weren't gonna be able to keep it from him, dude. It's Dennis. Our Dennis."
Mac sighed. "That's exactly why I didn't want to tell him. That's one more person getting dragged into our shit, Charlie. We…we don't need him going down with us."
"Us too…about the thing you said earlier…" Charlie continued, ignoring Mac.
Dennis blinked himself out of his fixated stare, digesting. He still wasn't sure whether he could believe them or not, his mind was leaning towards not, but all the other events fit too neatly into them telling the truth for Dennis to rule it out entirely. The little confession he let slip didn't slip easily out of his mind either, and the fact that Charlie called him theirs was stuck too. Maybe he should pinch himself. Maybe he should start taking hard drugs.
"Which thing?" Dennis asked, trembling. He had to be sure. Fucking Christ, he had to be sure. Even if they recoiled, because apparently they had fucking murdered someone earlier today, he wanted to know.
"The whole…the love thing, man. Us too."
"I meant it—"
"We know how you meant it," Mac interrupted. "And we mean it back. But I don't really wanna talk about this right now, because we have other shit to worry about." Mac's face burned red, and Dennis allowed himself a moment out of processing, to let himself find it cute. He could do that now. He could…he was allowed to love them now. In the darkest moment of his entire life, sitting in front of the people he loved who just confessed to a murder, Dennis found one of the happiest moments of his life. God, he was so fucked up.
Charlie nodded. "Did you order the pizza?"
"Jesus Christ," Mac groaned.
"Yeah, I did. What did you guys…This guy was an asshole, right? I…I'm assuming you didn't just kill this guy for no reason." His eyes darted to the phone. Was he about to end up like Charlie's uncle? Was all of this an elaborate plan to cut off a loose thread? Did they really even love him?
"He was a fucking dick," Mac cried. He looked back at Charlie, who curled in on himself a little since Dennis' question, and cleared his throat. "He wasn't a good dude. Like, not in a way where he was just so annoying we had to...yeah, but, like, disgusting. He should've been in prison for years for the shit he did."
"I really don't wanna talk about it," Charlie spoke, stopping Mac from continuing. "Not because I'm trying to keep secrets, just 'cause…"
"It was bad," Mac finished for him, hands curled into fists at his sides. "He deserved everything he got."
Dennis stared at them. They were all idiots, sure, with violent tendencies that usually led to wrestling over the last bottle of a certain soda in a convenience store (Dennis and Charlie, every time, because Crystal Pepsi was a limited time thing and you got it last time) or getting into drunken fights at parties (Mac, with Charlie starring as the tag team alternate, and Dennis in the getaway car), but never to murder, to even claiming murder. But still. They were all seventeen, they—wait, no. Charlie's birthday was last month. They rented all the Alien movies and got drunk in Charlie's basement. Shit. If Dennis went to the police with this, which he didn't really plan on, Charlie would be tried as an adult. Fuck.
"What did you do with him?" He asked, wondering if there was a man's body somewhere on his property. Which would be so annoying, honestly. They can't just...kill a dude without Dennis, and then make Dennis be the brains of getting away with it. Not that he wouldn't step up to the task.
"Stuffed him in a suitcase. Took him down to the Kensington overpass. Robbed him. We didn't leave anything." Charlie's eyes were wide and brimmed with emotions Dennis couldn't even begin to understand. He just wanted to hold him, but he didn't know if Charlie would be into physical touch right now. So he stayed put.
"The rain'll wash away anything we did leave," Mac added, nodding. He gestured to the money he gave Dennis, sitting pristine on the table next to the phone. "We need to wash the money, though."
Dennis sniffs, swallowing hard. "Good, yeah. That's…I'm glad you came here. And that you told me. It…it's weird, but it means a lot…"
"We know."
They both looked over at him then, an ocean of words in their gaze, and Dennis held it. He held them, and he understood.