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So Johnny wasn’t real; Johnny had never existed. The fact seemed to hurt more the longer it lingered in his mind. He hardly made it out of the bar and into the festering alleyway before his throat closed up and his eyes burned. He was so mad. He was so mad that it hurt, and the hurt turned the anger in his chest into tears, because when you’ve spent so long trying and trying and trying and wanting deliriously, and you think you’ve finally succeeded at getting something in return just for it to come back around and destroy you—that was something he was familiar with. And it should’ve stopped hurting by now, but it didn’t. It would never stop.
He whirled around so fast that his head spun, tripping over his own feet like he’d come out of a car crash, and he would know—he’s been in one. Bleeding from his eyes and ears and nose and mouth and—he punched the wall so hard that his knuckles split open in rivets against the rough brick lining Paddy’s. His hand was numb and adrenaline shot through him so fast that he couldn’t help but bark out a laugh that sounded half insane. He curled forward and held his hand to his chest, as if clutching at the wound could ever possibly elevate the sting. It would only make it worse. Mac knew, it would never stop. Or maybe that was something else. Pain was pain inside or out. He didn’t know the difference anymore. One was bleeding into the other.
By the time he got onto the sidewalk and started walking in the direction to his and Dennis’ apartment his whole body felt numb. Like a throbbing limb left cut off from blood flow for too long. People walking near to him shot him uneasy glances from the corners of their eyes and under their fringes. He ignored them, he kept his head held high and his jaw clenched. Brows furrowed and hand clutched. His body was wound up so tight that if someone touched him he had no doubt they’d be getting punched. It didn’t matter if he won the fight or not, it simply was.
By the time he got back to the apartment his hand had stopped hurting. He managed to shove his key into the lock and elbowed the door open. It banged roughly against the wall before jittering back and falling shut behind him. He bent down and pulled the knots on his combat boots loose before kicking them off. He heard them bang against the wall, and hoped they left a scuff mark.
The bathroom was dim when he turned the lights on. A bulb needed replacing. Two out of the three worked, and they were all a sickly yellow. Like alcohol poisoning, like bile, like his most comforting nights spent in quiet solitude sick on the floor and aching—mom never looked after him when he got sick. Dad didn’t either. Dennis would push a bucket over to his side and give him a water before leaving to the sanctity of his bedroom. Mac found faces in the tile pattern and cracks in the ceiling. This was a comfort to him. The water, and the bucket.
He turned on the tap and cold water pumped out over his hand. At first it stung but then his body got used to the sensation and it didn’t hurt at all. He cleaned out the wound as quick as possible, used to patching himself up over the years. Either from the consequence of being a rat or the gangs many failed schemes. He wrapped his hand up in gauze, sealed it up so it would not come undone, and then popped a few Advils to help with any pain. He told himself that he didn’t really need the Advil, it didn’t hurt bad at all, then he told himself to be quiet and just take the damn pills.
His bedroom smelt musky when he opened it up. Even in the middle of the day not a lot of sunlight managed to peak in through his window. It painted the entire room in dull blues that depressed him more than it ever settled him most of the time. The Mother Mary peered down at him from her place atop his headboard in pity.
“Hey mom,”
His knees cracked when he got down on them. Hardwoods always hurt, especially when you got old. Mac felt old now. Felt like all his years were finally catching up to him. So long he’s been chasing his own tail—a dog that just won’t let go. It would be god damned time someone threw him a bone.
“So…Johnny wasn’t real,” he let out a bitter scoff, half a laugh and half an agonized moment where his throat shut up again before he cleared it, “I thought I actually had something, someone, you know?”
Her tender eyes peered down at him. They looked sad. She held her heart in her hands. He felt like he could sympathize with her about that. Hearts being held out to the world. Nobody ever appreciated it. Never got it.
“I made Dennis think I didn’t understand when he told me. I didn’t want to have a whole big conversation about it. About why he…said the things he did.”
He looked down at the floor, suddenly ashamed of his sexuality for the first time since before he came out. Distantly he understood that he had nothing to be ashamed about. The things he told Dennis, the things he admitted, they were for Johnny. The Johnny that he loved and the Johnny he didn’t know was Dennis—his best friend Dennis. His best friend Dennis who had told him they would never work, could never be together. Who scratched him and screamed at him and hated him. Mac’s heard it all before. He’s not as stupid as everyone thinks he is.
“I just don’t know why he’d do this to me mom,” he choked out, aware that his eyes were stinging again with an onslaught on unshed tears, “it’s not fucking fair. I did everything he’s ever asked of me. He wanted me gone and I tried! I tried so hard to move on and I found Johnny! And it was a fucking lie-“
He gripped strands of his hair between his fingers and pulled, overwhelmed and infuriated and hurt all at once. He never felt like this. He usually bottled it all up until it exploded out in sudden uncontrollable rage that dwindled just as fast as it came. This mania was different, it felt like a breaking point.
“Mom I just,” he gasped out and looked back up at Mary, desperate for her to hear him out, “I just need someone. Something. Anything. That can love me back.”
Because the truth was that deep down Mac knew his dad didn’t love him. That he never had, and just tolerated him because of blood ties and outside relations. His real mom resented him because he reminded her of his dad, but mostly because she never wanted him in the first place. He had been in love with Dennis for as long as he had the name “Mac” instead of “Ronnie” but Dennis didn’t love him—Dennis hated him at times. Charlie was his best friend, but in the last decade it’s been FrankandCharlie not MacandCharlie, and Dee…he supposed Dee wasn’t really all that bad. Sometimes Dee felt like the only one who got him when the guys didn’t. Dee was the one who was by his side when Trevor Taft set out to wine, dine, and humiliate them, and she stuck by him when Dennis left to North Dakota; sleeping in the apartment to make it feel less empty. Dee told him he should branch out and meet a guy, fall in love—but even Dee couldn’t fix this cavern of lost love inside of him. She was Dee, and he was Mac.
He doesn’t know how long he stayed kneeling at his bedside like that for, but by the time he got up his legs were both asleep and he had to catch himself on his mattress from falling over. His tears had dried on his face and he opened up his phone, hoping that Johnny/Dennis had at least tried to call and check in on him, but the only notifications he had were 4 spam emails.
Tonight he would tidy up his room and flip through his Bible in repentance. He would do the dishes and dust the living room. He would pour himself a large glass of whiskey and sip it while staring out the window to the street below, and when Dennis got home he would sit in silence listening to his and Frank’s cheated victory in chess. He would smile at all the right moments and nod along when it felt as though he should. He would miss a version of himself that wouldn’t have let this hurt burrow down deep (that version of himself never existed). He would lay in bed still as the dead, and he would stare out his window with no light streaming through, and he would imagine what it could have been like if Johnny were real.
Imagine the soft timbered voice of a man behind him, slipping in to rest against his back. Warm skin and stubbled cheek pressed to his nape. Minty breath trailing between un-gelled strands of his hair. The tenderness he had only seen in movies or read in books where the love interest would say, with shining eyes pressing up into crows feet, “I love you,” and “goodnight.”
He imagined all of that, and hoped that the hurt would go away if he just thought hard enough.