Archive of Our Own

It’s July, but it’s raining in Philadelphia. The streets and sidewalks turn to rivers. The cars roll cautiously through the puddles, the hidden potholes beneath the black, shining water send up spray through the crashing sheets of rain. It abates for a moment and it’s like the sky smiles, blue and bright, and then the bulging, charcoal clouds thunder again — like God is saying I AM HERE — and the rain comes back harder than before, half hailstones now. The Earth shudders again, lightning flashes white and terrible, brightening even the darkest confines of the grimiest establishments, thunder rolls her applause, the priests look up, and the power goes out.

“Shit,” says Dennis, flicking the light switch. “Dude, Charlie! The rats have got into the wires again.”

Charlie pokes his head out of the basement, eyes wild and bloodshot. “I’ll get them. I’ll kill those —” He disappears back down the stairs, ranting and raving about rats as he does.

And then Dee and Mac enter from the back alley, shaking water from their eyes. Dee’s make-up is running down her cheeks, hair sodden and straggling around her shoulders, shaking like a leaf. Mac shakes his dark head like a dog, shirt plastered to his skin, bare, tan arms prickled with goosebumps, Dennis can see even in the dark of the bar as another flash of lightning sings across the dirty floor, shimmering in the puddles at their feet — they look like sirens, eerie in the white light of the storm — like the second sun of an atomic bomb.

“You’re getting water all over the floor,” Dennis complains, dragging his gaze away from Mac and his shining wet skin, the brightness of his dark eyes.

“Well, sorry,” says Dee, struggling out of a jacket that doesn’t seem to have done much to keep out the rain. “Sorry that it’s raining.”

“Power went out all down the street just then,” says Mac, fiddling with the light switch anyway. “Damn.”

Why would we be immune to the electricity going out all over town? Dennis wants to ask, but he can’t be bothered to get into another argument about God’s love of Irish Catholic bars. “Go and tell Charlie, he thinks the rats have got into his wires again.”

“Shit,” says Dee, who had to nurse Charlie back from shell-shocked when he last tried playing with the electrics, and squelches through the dark bar towards the basement calling, “Charlie! Don’t you fucking dare touch anything!”

Dennis watches Mac, keeping the bar between them as he pretends to dry glasses that no one’s used in weeks. It’s been raining so much through June and now July, hardly anyone can be bothered to even go out to a bar. Dennis assumes this is global warming catching up with them, or something.

The thunder grumbles again, so deep and awful Dennis can almost imagine why you might believe in God. Mac looks up, like Dennis imagines the priests might be looking up at their painting ceilings and chandeliers, at the damp stained ceiling of the pub, his face soft and features darker, eyes more doe and hair more raven . Holy Saint Mac, the last saint before the end of days.

“Can’t believe it’s still raining,” says Mac, his hair is dripping in his eyes. He reminds Dennis of dogs he hates and cats he loves all at once. Raining cats and dogs. He reminds Dennis of some forgotten scripture learnt at St. Joe’s, he’s like Noah on board the Arc, watching the rain. He’d probably save Dennis, if he was Noah. He’d forget all about re-populating the world, he’d save Dennis.

“Are you going to say that every time you walk into a room?” Dennis snaps. He’s said it at least ten times this week, probably, and it’s still raining.

Mac shrugs and the rain seems to get louder on the roof, pounding on the windows like it might get worse. “If it keeps raining, guess I will.”

Below, Dennis can hear Dee shouting at Charlie and Charlie shouting at the rats. “Where’s Frank?”

He shrugs again, Dennis can hear water dripping from his hands, the hems of his trousers, Mac’s feet shifting in the boots he’s had resoled a thousand times. “I think he’s trying to build a dam down the block, still. He’s got this obsession with beavers.”

Dennis sighs. I AM HERE, says God once again, the thunder seems to shake the frames of the world and tilt the axis of the poles. “Of course he is.”

Mac smiles and comes closer, he leans over the bar. There’s hazy memories here, in the dark of the pub. How many times as Mac sat there? Talking to Dennis during a shift or after work or during a scheme, grinning at Dennis like there’s something there to love. It makes Dennis feel like lightning. Fleeting, fleeting power.

The lights fizz back on and Dennis hears Charlie cheering from the basement. Mac’s face washes back tan, his hair black with damp, shirt still tight to his tan, tan skin, freckled shoulders beaded with raindrops.

“Didn’t you wear a coat?” Dennis says.

The rain slows a little outside, pattering soft on the windows, thunder grumbling way off. “Nah,” says Mac, scratching his head, “it’d just get wet.”

“That’s the point of coats,” he says. “They’re supposed to get wet, not you.”

“They’re not very badass, though. Grab me a beer, Den.” Den, swallowing that last part of his name like it belongs to him, he hasn’t done that in a while. “Please?”

Dennis wishes for a stupid moment that he didn’t say please. Demand things again , he wants to demand, command me, trick me, do your worst. The wind seems to hit the side of the building like an animal, a great bear tearing through plywood. “Yeah, whatever.”

He grabs a beer for him and Mac, Mac turns on the TV. Dee and Charlie come up out of the basement, Dee still sopping wet in a much less attractive way than Mac — they’re both going to get sick as shit sitting around in wet clothes — and Charlie looking a little singed but not incoherent like he’s grabbed a live wire.

“Strange weather in Pennsylvania continues this afternoon after almost three weeks of what meteorologists are calling the PA Monsoon Phenomena. The storms seem focussed mostly around Philadelphia with power outages and floods sending the city into a spiral, no one has any idea what has caused the rain. Here now live from South Philly, Jackie Denardo.”

Dennis sips on his beer and watches Denardo — bundled up in so many jackets she might as well not be on screen — start gesturing to the sky and then to the hunk of trash blocking the street where the Waitress used to work back in ‘05 or maybe ‘03, Dennis can’t remember.

“Shit,” says Mac, “that’s Frank, dude.”

“That’s Frank?” asks Charlie. “That’s cool as shit.”

“No, it is not cool as shit ,” says Dennis. “He’s built a dam of trash across the street. What is the fucking point —?”

“Because beavers are badass!”

“No, Charlie,” says Mac and the rain gets harder. “Please say you’re not going to —”

Charlie runs out of the bar yelling about beavers and the rest of them watch him go, sipping their beers. When Mac makes a little noise like he’s about to run after him, the rain worsens, and worsens again when Mac sits down a funny little sad look on his face. The rain drips from his hair, Denardo shouts over the pounding rain on the TV.

“He’s going to die,” says Dee, slumping down into one of the booths. “Wanna get drunk?”

Mac switches the channel to something a little more light, reruns of some sitcom Dennis inexplicably knows every character’s name in, even though he’s almost certain he’s never seen an episode, and leans over the bar — his wet head by the sleeve of Dennis’s shirt — and grabs a bottle of tequila. That’s the memory, Dennis behind the bar and Mac sitting in that seat — ‘and lime first?’ — the shine of his white teeth on his pink lip. Dennis blinks again and Mac is older, no longer that baby faced sweetness, like milk and honey.

“Let’s get drunk,” Dennis agrees, and rounds the bar to join his sister and his childhood drug dealer.

*

The warmer and drunker and more happy-drunk they get the slower the rain gets, until it slows again into a deadly, wet silence.

“Think that’s the end of it?” asks Dee, half falling out of the booth as she looks out of the window. Her hair has dried to little ringlet curls like she used to have when they were little.

Dennis shrugs. “Dunno.” He feels warm and loose “Keeps stopping and starting, just needs to make its mind up and stop.”

“Is it the end of the world?” she asks, cheeks ruddy with drink she looks like a child.

“The end of the world wouldn’t start somewhere like Philly,” says Mac, “it’d be in… Jerusalem or something.”

“Listen to the Godly man,” he says, the room is spinning and Mac looks young again, dew soft and doe-like, “he knows what he’s talking about.” He raises his glass to Mac and drinks the rest, it sits sickly on his tongue. “Always so devout, so pious.”

Mac shakes his head and Dennis thinks he hears the pattering of new raindrops. “We should get you home, Den. You’re wasted.”

He scowls. “I’m fine, shut up.” It really is raining, soft but raining.

Dee says, “Do you think Charlie’s okay?” And then the wind picks up.

Mac looks nervous. “Surely they won’t spend all night out in the rain? Frank will get tired of it and go to some warm bed with some whores. Right?”

“Maybe if you’re lucky they’ll take refuge in a bin,” spits Dennis, “or the sewer. Or maybe they’ll both die and we’ll get the rights to the bar.”

The low hum of the news reporter, “The rain has started again here in Philly, our reporter —”

“Shit, I’m going home before it gets worse,” says Dee, staggering up. Neither Mac nor Dennis offer to walk her and she doesn’t expect them to. She looks at them balefully. “Lock up when you leave.”

Dennis rolls his eyes, like they’d need reminding, it’s their bar. “Bye, sis.” He watches as she stands in the threshold, looking out at the drizzle, soft lances of silver catching in the single street light. Girls are something nameless like the rain, Dee with her hair like fine gold. He feels sick with drink, with the warmth of Mac beside him. Men aren’t rain, men are easy and known.

“Another drink, then? If you won’t go home?”

He looks at Mac, the soft darkness of his eyes, and he isn’t easy and he isn’t knowable. He’s this new thing, something Dennis has and hasn’t known for years.

“Dennis?”

“Yeah, another drink.”

They have a beer and don’t talk, listening to the rain worsening against the windows, dripping from the gutter out in the back alley, the wind whistling under the door and howling up the street. Dennis wonders if Dee got home, if Frank and Charlie are huddled together in their trash beaver dam, humanity’s answer to the beauty of natural innovation.

Then Mac says, “Let’s go home.”

*

Dennis has always loved the sound of rain when you’re sitting in a car. The hush of the air-con drying you, the woosh of the windscreen wipers, the plinking of raindrops on the roof, the smell of wet clothes and knowing you’re going to be home and dry soon. He hates the feel of mascara drying sticky on his cheeks, run down his skin, marring him. He hates it, he hates it. If he were God he could proclaim it with a boom from the heavens, I AM ANGRY and the world would stop and listen and churches would be built and songs be sung of his greatness.

“I hate the rain.” He is not sober enough to drive, but it’s so dark and wet everyone else is indoors.

“I know,” says Mac, hearing him. Mac won’t make hymns for Dennis, though. “You don’t hate all of it, though.”

Dennis remembers rain when they were at school, splashing in puddles on the way home, Charlie laughing, Mac grinning, his eyelashes dark and wet and spiked like he’d been crying. “I do.”

He catches Mac smiling out of the corner of his eye, like he doesn’t believe him. He pulls up the car, headlights blaring through the drizzle, the apartments big and dark above them. He wonders how he could have been too late for Mac, the boy he loved and the man he hated. Dennis licks his lips and kills the engine, they sit in the dark car for a moment, and then they’re both getting out and hurrying towards the apartment, splashing through the silver dark puddles.

Mac is laughing like they’re children again and Dennis is drunk enough to do the same. They huddle under the foyer, struggling with their keys, shoulders warm beside each other and rain cold on their backs as it lashes against the building. Mac’s face is too close, bright eyes and bright teeth, always too big and too much, freckled shoulders and big hands.

He remembers the storm on the boat, where they almost died. Mac wet from rain, from God’s rain, telling them he was gay. The resignation in his eyes, his hands warm on Dennis everywhere he touched too much. He remembers too much.

Then they’re in the dry stairwell and the rain is slowing up outside, they’re soaked anyway, it hardly matters. Mac is smiling, so close like they used to be all the time . Every moment. “See,” he says, “you love the rain. I’ll race you.” He goes pounding up the stairs, boots clumping loud and waking up all the neighbours.

Dennis watches him for a moment. Clumsy oaf. And then follows, bounding up light behind him and grabbing Mac on the shoulders like he used to, digging his thumbs in to the great warmth of him. It’s so easy it burns, so easy it must be a sin, a temptation.

They whirl up the stairs like dry autumn leaves in an updraught, spinning out of control round and round, grabbing and touching like they’re twenty, thirty, almost fifty. Mac grabs him as they reach their floor hoists him up by the waist with those dancer’s muscles, the taut marble made flesh of him, Michelangelo’s David if he were some undiscovered eighth wonder of the world, pushes him through the doors onto their landing.

“Shhh,” says Dennis, grabbing Mac by the face as he comes through the doors after him, “the neighbours.” It’s like Mac’s hands bruise him, scald him without touching, always the memory of them there on his waist, lifting him like it’s easy to hold something so sharp. Mac’s expression is giddy, like sugar rush and Christmas Day and that anticipation of a scam being bought. Dennis wonders if this is what Charlie thinks of when he sings Day Man, fighter of the — And Mac grabs him again, squeezing his shoulder, grinning.

In the apartment, they have another beer sitting on the couch and Dennis wonders abstractly how he got them home without crashing the Jeep.

“It’s stopped raining again,” says Mac, lips poised over the neck of his bottle, head cocked to listen, “even the wind…”

It’s you, Dennis wants to say, even though that would be impossible and stupid and Mac was right: the apocalypse would never start in Philly, you’re the rain. It can’t be true. He looks so beautiful, ethereal like starlight spun into skin and bone. Champion of the — of the everything.

They drift off on the couch at some point, mostly empty bottles set on the ground by their feet.

*

It’s July and it isn’t raining, not yet. Dennis watches Mac hum in the kitchen, rubbing at the soreness in his neck from sleeping on the couch. Mac’s cooking eggs, he knows how Dennis likes them, it feels like clothes he should have out grown but somehow still fits.

He turns on the TV and Jackie Denardo stares at him grimly from a backdrop of trash and rainswept street, the ground is still thick with water even though the rain has stopped. “The ‘Philly Beavers’,” she says, “have taken control of the —”

“What the shit are Frank and Charlie up to?”

“Dude, are they still out there?” Mac frowns over his shoulder, poking the eggs. “Jesus Christ.”

“I think they’re doing some kind of Judgement Day scam,” says Dennis, wrinkling his nose as he watches the man who used to be his father scream from the top of a pile of stolen shopping carts. “Possibly. Or they’ve cracked, the idiots.” He gets off the sofa and goes into the kitchen, watching Mac warily before patting him on the shoulder. “Thanks for making breakfast, buddy.”

Mac glances at him, wide-eyed. “No problem, bro.” He smiles and, before Dennis moves away, pats him on the back too.

*

There’s actually a few paying customers in the bar by the time they make it in, the traffic slow with the water-logged streets and the diversion around Frank and Charlie’s dam. Dee is already behind the bar and they both join her, all three nursing the same hangover as they knock back a few hair of the dog shots.

Dennis touches Mac on the hip when he passes him to get more beers out of the fridge, Mac squeezes his shoulder as he leans up to grab the limes to chuck at Dee. Every touch Dennis feels stupidly nervous that Mac will shy away from it, that the rain will start again, that the apocalypse will come when Mac stops loving Dennis. He doesn’t know how he went so long denying himself this, the warmth below his palms, the scalding memories of Mac’s touches fizzing like static under his skin, lingering like all the memories Dennis has of him.

“Are Frank and Charlie actually going to come into work?” Dee points her lime knife at the TV where Denardo’s Wednesday replacement clone is pointing at the diverted traffic behind the trash bags and junkyard shit piled across the street.

Mac swigs his beer. “I tried texting them but all I got were symbols from Charlie and nothing from Frank.”

“Let me look.” When Mac hands him his phone, Dennis feels the warm tips of his fingers graze him like the far off points of stars. “How has he changed his keyboard to wingdings?”

He’s warm behind Dennis’s shoulder. “Are those wingdings? What’s a wingding?”

Dennis shrugs. “These, I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Mac snatches his phone back. “Helpful, Dennis.”

“They’re going to get arrested,” Dee says, sourly, “for inciting a riot and public indecency and obstructing traffic and whatever else that incurs.”

Dennis sighs and watches the TV, Mac warm against his side.

*

The rain starts again after midday. Dennis scowls at the second bag of chips that has appeared in front of him ‘miraculously’ in half an hour. He glances across the bar at Mac who is surreptitiously watching him back and pretending to sweep the floor by the booths. Wind bangs the door of the bar, rain lightly taps at the window.

Dennis stares hard at the chips on the bar.

Mac sidles up, standing with the bar between them. He drops a bag of peanuts next to the chips too. He stares Dennis down.

Dennis grabs the peanuts, the rain relents a tad, the door stops banging in the gusting wind, there’s a lull of silence. Incredible, insane . He peels open the bag. Why is Mac magical? Did he really find a leprechaun at the Rainbow? Do gay men just come with superpowers? Maybe it’s somehow a Spiderman situation, bitten by the storm on the Christian cruise.

He smiles, slow, at Dennis. Dennis shakes his head, frowning, and pops a peanut in his mouth.

*

He wakes up in the middle of the night to a crack of thunder. GOD IS HERE, GOD IS HERE! He thinks for a moment of the dam, of Frank and Charlie in the rain, for a moment of Dee standing on the threshold of the bar, watching the wind pick up, and then he thinks of Mac. He gets up in the dark, fumbling to the door of his room.

The apartment is black and quiet. He can hear the wind outside, whistling past the building, the rain slamming against the windows.

He pushes into Mac’s room without a thought. He used to be in here all the time, pushing in and out of it whenever he wanted, whether Mac wanted or not, taking it all for granted. Mac is twisting in the bed, rain god wet with sweat, the dark storm light spilling heavy and grey over his skin through the window.

“Mac?” He crosses the room, the rain and wind howl like living things with teeth that rend, the world in her jaws. “Mac!” He sits on the edge of the bed and touches him, touches the magic thing. He’s red hot, warm-blooded and real.

He shoots up with a gasp, chest heaving, hand clawing at Dennis’s wrist.

“Mac, hey, Mac, it’s me!” He curls his hand in Mac’s sleep shirt, leaning in close to catch his eye. “You were dreaming, you were dreaming.” Stop it! The thunder rolls and Dennis finds the Lord’s prayer on the back of his tongue, sitting in his throat like a loyal dog, he didn’t know he still knew it. GOD IS — The rain stops. “Mac.” He reels him in as the wind quietens, pulls the rain god against his chest and soothes a hand across his dark hair.

“Den, Dennis. Holy shit.” He sounds almost like he’s crying.

“It was just a dream.”

“I know.” The wind hisses warningly. “I just —”

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Dennis squeezes him, pushes him down so he’s lying on his twisted sheets, and lies down next to him. “It’s okay.” He’s warm, he’s always warm, like a furnace. He thinks of all the times he’s slept beside Mac. The sheets are cold with sweat against his skin.

“Dennis?” Mac whispers, his arm hovering awkwardly around Dennis’s shoulders. The rain has entirely stopped, a strange, overwhelming silence in her wake. Mac’s hard dancer’s body his pliant against Dennis, like it’s been waiting for him to fit there against it.

“Go back to sleep,” he says, shutting his eyes.

Mac’s hand falls on his shoulder and then slips down, down to his waist, leaving a comet trail of heat behind it, all the way down his side. Dennis feels his heart beating, panic rising in his throat, he can stop storms with a touch, Mac can start them with a dream. If he makes Mac too happy will it ever rain again in Philly? “Wasn’t it raining?” asks Mac.

“It stopped. Go to sleep.”

He huffs against Dennis’s scalp, and does.

*

He wakes up with his head against Mac’s chest, he doesn’t remember falling asleep. Mac is already awake, his hand scratching through Dennis’s hair, humming something that might not be a song at all.

He stretches, slinging his arm over Mac’s stomach.

“We’re late,” says Mac, his voice warm like honey through Dennis’s chest.

He lifts himself up on one elbow to look down at Mac, the morning sun on his face, purple shadows under his eyes, the black eyes sleepless nights and nightmares leave you with. “Why do you care?” Looking down at Mac like this makes him want to kiss him? That perfect pink of his lips and brown of his eyes. The sun is out because of Mac and Dennis. He lowers his head again, pushing his face into Mac’s neck, the warm skin smell of him.

“Dennis,” Mac hums and Dennis doesn’t know how he’s lived without this. “Den, come on. Time for work.”

Dennis moves his lips against Mac’s neck in a way that could be an accident, if he’s questioned and Mac makes another tiny noise, his hand falling to the small of Dennis’s back.

“Den,” he whines.

“Fine, work.” He lifts himself on his elbows again, knowing what he looks like. Bedroom eyes and hair mussed by Mac’s hands, sunlight on his face. He hasn’t got make-up on but Mac is looking at him like he doesn’t care. “Come on, Mac. Get up for work.” He smiles and pulls away, he feels like a God.

*

They end up at the dam, begging Frank and Charlie to abandon their ‘masterpiece’. The more frustrated Mac gets the worse the weather gets, darker and darker clouds billowing up out of nowhere in the blue skies.

“Get the fuck out of the landfill you’ve made in the middle of the street,” Dennis yells. “You fucking imbeciles, savages, no-good —!”

Dee has Charlie by the arm like a misbehaving toddler as he tries to crawl back into the cave at the centre of the trash. “Get back here.”

Big fat droplets of rain start to spatter the drying sidewalk. Dennis shoots a look at Mac, his quaking rage.

“It’s starting again,” says Frank, raising his fists, “Judgement Day is upon us!”

“No it isn’t!” Dennis makes another grab for Frank. “Get down.”

“Come back to the bar, right now,” says Mac and something rumbles close by. “Before the cops get here, come on. Charlie. Please, buddy.” Rain smacks hard into the tarmac and trash, every drop heavy and almost warm. God is here, and it is Mac, Dennis thinks.

Frank wavers at the top of the pile of trash, Charlie twitches in Dee’s grip, Dennis can see Jackie Denardo pointing at them for the camera crew.

“We’ll figure out a better Judgement Day scam back at the bar,” says Mac. “This is about to fall apart anyway.”

“It’s a pile of trash,” says Dennis, “it was never together. Back to the bar or we won’t post your bail and we’ll take your shares for ourselves, and sell your apartment if you’re just going to live on the street like animals anyway.”

“Let’s go and get drunk,” says Dee.

Frank and Charlie exchange looks.

“Now,” says Mac, anxiously looking up the street, they can hear sirens below the pounding rain, Dennis is already wet to his skin, “now.” Thunder booms. NOW. Dennis feels it thrill down his spine.

As they herd Frank and Charlie back to the bar, Dennis lets his hand brush Mac’s, smiles at him, conspires and laughs at the smell of them, at the look on Dee’s face. The rain slows, slows, stops.

Dee ushers the two ‘beavers’ (as they’re insisting on being called) inside. Mac grabs Dennis’s shoulder.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” he whispers.

“Don’t be silly,” says Dennis, his heart like a stone in his throat, like Jesus’s tombstone, “you couldn’t control the rain. That’s impossible, Mac.”

Mac looks at him, like he doesn’t believe him. “Okay.”

“It isn’t. This isn’t Jerusalem. You’re a bar owner in South Philly.”

Mac smiles at him and says, “Jesus was only a carpenter.”

He feels like his mind is splitting open. “I don’t think you’re Jesus, Mac.” He doesn’t, it’s the truth. “It’s just coincidence.” Or some other magic. The storms still haven’t dried up, rain is soaking through Dennis’s sneakers from the puddles outside the bar. “Or you’re doing something accidentally.”

He nods, he looks frightened.

Dennis kisses the God of the Philly Monsoon Phenomena — GOD IS HERE and something quieter, like church mice and the warmth of his mouth — outside a bar where the evidence of his power and great works drips from the pub sign and still dampens their skin. Mac’s hand cups his cheek, Dennis winds his arm around his waist. He pulls away and whispers, “Whatever it is, we can handle it.”

Mac nods, his eyes on Dennis’s lips. “Is it just to stop the rain?”

“No.” He thinks of the thunder and how it almost made him believe in God, the warmth of Mac’s skin and his smile and the scalding touch of his hands and an apocalypse in Philadelphia. He thinks about a kid with a lopsided smile and freckles on his shoulders, pressing a joint into Dennis’s hand and saying smoke. “It’s not about the rain. It’s about you.”

The sun shines so bright in the puddles and shimmers on the wet bricks and glitters in Mac’s eyes like diamonds and the crowd spilling out of the Rainbow. He kisses Mac again, below the sun, with a smile he can’t help, and freckled shoulders warm beneath his hands.

It doesn’t rain for a good long while after that.