Chapter Text
It’s a normal night for Ronnie: he gets home a little after sunset, as he and Charlie had spent a few hours at the park, up to their usual antics. Not playing on the swing-set or slides with other kids, but instead climbing trees and digging through the mulch for treasures. These kinds of days always ended with dirt under their fingernails and scratches on their knees. All in a day’s work, though.
“Mommy, I’m home!” Ronnie calls out from the kitchen to the woman sitting by the TV. She gives a half-hearted shrug, but he remains enthusiastic. “Wanna see what I found today?”
“I’m watching the television,” his mom grunts, but he still jumps onto the couch and shoves his grubby hands in front of her face, revealing a few different colored objects. He points to a green shard of glass, then a snail’s shell, describing them each in depth and where he found them in the park. Then, he points to a glossy black stone, smooth and shiny.
“This one is my favorite! Charlie found it, but he let me have it!”
His mom grabs the piece of glass from his hand, then nudges him away. He starts to protest, but she holds her hand up, taking a drag of her cigarette. And Ronnie definitely does not feel like getting burned when he’s been having a nice day.
His stomach lets out a long growl, so he gives up trying to impress his mother for the day and decides to make some dinner. He makes his way to the kitchen again, dragging a stool with him so he can reach the cans of SPAM. The stool rocks underneath him, but he manages to retrieve a can and the loaf of bread. Not the most appetizing, but it’ll have to do.
At least he’s used to it – since it’s been his dinner for the past few weeks, with the occasional treat of SpaghettiOs.
Ronnie has been making “dinner” for himself a lot recently, since his dad went on a trip. He doesn’t know how long the trip will be, but he’s proud of himself for picking up the slack for his mom. She’s been a bit distant since his dad left, so Ronnie thinks she must miss him a lot.
He gets himself in bed pretty soon after (admittedly skipping out on brushing his teeth, since his mom isn’t yelling at him to do so).
As he’s drifting off into sleep, he’s pretty sure he hears a thud from outside, but he’s too scared to look.
(Plus, his mother isn’t ever going to scare away the monsters and sing him to sleep. Not that he ever wishes for that.)
____
When he leaves the house for school in the morning, he almost trips right over Charlie. After all, his friend is curled up on the mat outside his front door, resembling a stray animal of some sort.
“Charlie? Whatcha doin’ here? Did you sleep there?” In that moment, Charlie’s sitting up confusedly, and when he turns to Ronnie, eyes squinting and adjusting to the daylight, Ronnie gasps. The whole side of his face is scraped up. “What happened to you?! Are you okay?!”
“What?” The other boy scratches his face, then winces, blinking, “Oh, I tried to climb onto your shed and reach your window. I didn’t make it very far up…”
“So that’s what I heard last night! I thought you were a monster!”
Charlie giggles a little, and then so does Ronnie, both forgetting the fact that Charlie slept outside for the whole night. “I even brought my bookbag! We can go to school now together!”
They begin the trek to their elementary school, and Ronnie starts to feel like he’s doing most of the talking. “So why’d you come over last night? Did we have a sleepover plan?”
“No, I ran away,” Charlie states simply, shrugging. Ronnie’s too impressed and naïve to notice how Charlie’s shoulders cave in on himself and how he begins picking at the hem of his T-shirt. “A monster attacked me…so I ran away. I know you’re prolly gonna think I’m stupid because monsters aren’t real, but I was awake, Ronnie, I was.”
“Everyone knows monsters are real, dude. ‘Course I believe you. Remember how I thought you were one last night, when I heard you fall?”
“Really?” Charlie nearly stops walking. “You…believe me?”
——
Less than two years later, right before he starts middle school, Ronnie’s dad is gone again. Not on a trip, like he believed when he was younger. To prison. For 18 months.
His mom has stopped giving a shit whether he lives or dies.
It becomes clear when he goes to school without lunch for the third day in a row. The past few days he’d been able to plead with the lunch ladies, but today they refuse, saying he needs to come with money from now on. But Ronnie doesn’t have any money. So he doesn’t have any food.
When he gets to the lunch table Charlie’s sitting at, empty handed, he’s greeted with a confused look.
“Did you leave your lunch in the fridge again?”
“No, um, actually, that was a lie,” he admits, because there’s no point in pretending in front of his best friend of years. “My mom hasn’t gotten groceries in, like, a month.”
“What? What have you been eating?”
“Well, there was stuff like beans and SPAM in the pantry that I used for a while, but I’m officially all out.”
Silently, Charlie pushes his entire lunchbox across the table in front of him.
“No, dude, come on—” Ronnie argues, but Charlie just shakes his head and crosses his arms, doing his best to look serious. Ronnie tries to interject: “I don’t wanna take your lunch, let’s share it!”
His stomach growls aloud, ruining his argument.
“Nope, it’s yours now. No backsies.”
Ronnie gives up, because the other boy is quite stubborn when he wants to be. Usually, it’s a quality that gets him into trouble — but today, it earns him a quiet smile and a mumble from Ronnie. “Thanks, Charlie.”
(Charlie secretly brings him extra food from his mom’s groceries from that day onward.)
___
“Hey, I wanna show you something,” Charlie says to him one afternoon in the 7th grade, on their walk home from school when they’ve almost reached the Kelly house. The cusp of winter is starting to chill the breeze ruffling their hair, and since neither of them have a proper coat on, they’re walking close enough that their shoulders bump with each step. For warmth.
“Hell yeah, what is it?”
“It’s my favorite place to go when life is shit, and after today…I think you deserve to be in on the secret.”
Charlie’s referencing what happened after gym class today, when they both ended up beaten to a pulp and thrown under the bleachers. Ronnie had ratted out some kid smoking in the locker room before class while they got changed, which led to them promptly being ambushed after class.
Well, truthfully, Charlie wasn’t involved, until he saw Adriano beating him up…a situation into which he inserted himself by sticking up for Ronnie. A mistake, for sure.
So they both ended up with bloody knuckles and noses, under the massive wooden structure that supports the bleachers, just for an hour until their gym teacher discovered them hiding out there, milking the injuries as long as they could.
If there was an opportunity to miss class and hang out together, the two always took it.
“Okay, here we are!” Charlie interrupts his thoughts to announce their arrival after a few minutes of walking.
“And where exactly is that?” He questions.
“My favorite tree, Ronnie! C’mon!” And Charlie launches himself upwards with an impressive leap. After a few seconds of climbing, he looks back down and sees his friend unmoving beneath the tree. He reaches downward and asks, “Need a hand?”
Ronnie grasps on for a second until he grabs the first branch, and then from there, he slowly makes his way up behind Charlie — who, for his small size, is ridiculously good at this for no reason. He follows until Charlie stops on a branch.
The sight above Ronnie catches him a little off guard — well, more so the feeling he gets. Either way, when he sees Charlie, with the evening sun illuminating his soft brown hair to look like a golden halo, with the breeze pushing his hair in front of his eyes, with a soft smile on his face when his eyes find Ronnie’s. The feeling is familiar yet somehow foreign.
“What do you think?” Charlie asks when he’s finally settled in a branch opposite him.
In that instance, they both look out into the view in front of them, and honestly, Ronnie thinks it’s definitely the coolest he’s ever seen. They’re looking out at the Philly skyline; it nearly takes his breath away. “Woah.”
“It’s awesome, right?”
Ronnie nods emphatically. Charlie bumps their shoulders together.
——
Charlie comes to trust him with his…night terrors. Their sleepovers become fairly regular: every few months, they’ll stay at Ronnie’s for a few nights. Truly, it’s mostly fun and games. Trips to the arcade, shooting hoops, and renting scary movies from Blockbuster that their parents don’t know about.
During the summer before 8th grade Charlie spends nearly a month at his place, save for a few days here and there. He doesn’t quite understand his friend’s choice, since Bonnie spends every moment in their presence begging Charlie to stay and spend time with his Uncle Jack, who’s visiting for a while. Now, Ronnie doesn’t like Uncle Jack very much because he’s a boring lawyer, but he doesn’t get why Charlie is disobeying his mom so vehemently.
Either way, he’s happy to have his friend around, especially since they aren’t seeing each other daily with school being out.
It’s a Wednesday, and he hasn’t seen Charlie since the weekend. Bonnie had eventually threatened to throw out his rock collection, which had brought the boy back for a few nights. Ronnie knows he’s on his way, since they’re waiting for the weekly episode of this new show called The Simpsons.
Sure enough, the doorbell sounds. Mac gasps when he opens it.
“Woah, dude, what happened to your face?! The last time you showed up at my door with an injury like that, we were, like, 6,” Ronnie says, hurrying Charlie inside and to his room, where he has a hidden stash of bandaids and a Neosporin tube under his mattress that he stole from a convenient store after a few too many cigarette burns from his loving mother.
Charlie doesn’t say much, just walks along numbly with him. He mumbles a thanks when Ronnie begins to wipe his face reverently, but doesn’t answer any of his questions about what happened.
Ronnie brushes his hair aside, gently, and examines the main injury, Charlie’s nose — which, he realizes sickeningly, looks like it’s been bashed inward. When he touches it lightly, Charlie flinches violently. Mac sighs sadly. “If you’re not gonna tell me what happened, at least tell me when it happened.”
“Sunday,” Charlie whispers, eyes closed. In fact, Ronnie doesn’t think he’s looked him in the eye this whole time.
“I don’t even know how to help it, Char.”
“Can I just…take a shower, please?”
“Of course,” Ronnie grabs a towel from the closet and hands it over. He turns to leave, but stops for a second, doesn’t turn around to face Charlie, but says, “Let me know if you wanna talk, bro.”
“Thanks, Ronnie.” The response is quiet, small. There’s a wet hitch in his voice that lets him know Charlie’s on the verge of tears. “You’re a great best friend, y’know?”
It’s a rare moment of sincerity between them that leaves a warmth in Ronnie’s stomach along with the question if everyone feels this much around their friends. But it doesn’t matter, because they have always been different. Different from the other kids in their class. Different because their families don’t send them to school with homemade lunches and instead with wounds, psychological and physical. Different because they only need each other. Different because each other was all they had.
They’d been alone until they found each other. Ronnie knows he’s always going to be there for Charlie, even through the bad times.
In fact, when they wake up hours later due to Charlie’s dreams, that’s exactly what Ronnie’s whispering to him.
“I’m here, buddy, it’s me,” he soothes while Charlie rocks back and forth.
“Spiders,” he blurts, sounding choked. The breath he wheezes afterward actually makes it sound like he’s being strangled. “Everywhere…all over me.“
“No, man, there’s no spiders in my room, go ahead and take a look,” he coaxes as Charlie moves his hands slowly from his face. He scans his own body first, frantically, then looks around for a second and takes in the room. Following the survey of the space, he breathes in a gulp of air and sighs. “See, I wouldn’t lie to you, Charlie.”
“There were spiders all over me. Touching me,“ he shudders.
“It’s just a dream, man, I swear.”
“It felt so real.”
“I'm sorry.”
“It always does.”
“Do you want me to hold you?”
“Please don’t,” Charlie nearly begs. It’s not challenging to hide his disappointment in the dark, luckily. He likes falling asleep holding onto Charlie, but he won’t ever push him when he can’t handle it. So instead they lay back down side by side.
But when he’s drifting off to sleep again, Charlie reaches out and grasps his hand, folding their fingers together and squeezing.
(Ronnie smiles to himself in the dark.)
____
They’re in Charlie’s tree again — for the first time as high schoolers, though. They just finished their first week as freshmen, and Ronnie has something on his mind. “What if I went by Mac now? New beginnings, right? It’s the perfect time to change my image from,” he does air quotes, “Ronnie the Rat.”
“Why do you want to change your image so bad?” Charlie sounds a little upset, but Ronnie doesn’t risk a glance at the other branch.
“Dude, we can’t be losers forever! Don’t you want to make friends?”
“I have a friend.”
“Oh yeah? Did you make one I don’t know about?” He jokes, trying to lighten the mood, but to that, Charlie says nothing. Finally, Ronnie looks over to where he’s sitting and sees he’s got his knees pulled to his chest, arms resting on them, and his head laid on top of that. Though he can’t see his face, but he knows he’s upset Charlie.
But, really, it’s not his fault he doesn’t want to be social. And it’s also not his responsibility to stay distant from everything and everyone, either.
Eventually, he breaks the heavy silence.
“I don’t really wanna spend the rest of my life getting the shit beat out of me from time to time. Is it really so bad that I wanna change that?” He pauses, then he adds, “And we’re always gonna be best friends, Char. No matter how many other friends we have.”
“Promise?”
“I promise, dude.”
___
One day, when they’re 15 and sitting side by side in Charlie's basement, the two boys pass a joint periodically back and forth for a few minutes. It doesn’t take long until their minds are going numb. In fact, Mac doesn’t think he’s even moved an inch in the past five minutes.
The reason? Charlie, leaning his head on his arm.
No way is he going to move when he’s experiencing a rare initiation of contact by Charlie. Especially not when the weed is making his brain so heavy, and Charlie is so warm, and he seems so comfy where he is — on him.
It isn’t much longer until the moment is broken. As the joint dies, Charlie sits up, thinking for a moment.
“We should wrestle, dude.”
And, oh lord, it feels like Mac’s ultimate fairytale and his worst nightmare had a terribly wonderful child — this idea Charlie got.
“Why? Isn’t that kinda..” Mac scratches his nose, “gay?”
Everything in his body is buzzing with fear, with excitement, with confusion. Even if he doesn’t have a heart attack now, the second Charlie puts his hands on him, he’ll implode. He won’t make it. This is doom, Mac thinks, especially when Charlie answers, “We’re not gay though, right? So can’t it just be, like, two dudes wrestling…getting better at self defense?”
“So you wanna wrestle with me? For self defense?”
Charlie nods, not seeing the issue.
Of course he doesn’t see the issue, because Mac has pulled the hem of his shirt strategically over the issue, which is tenting his pants at the moment, just from the mere thought of them being pressed together and sweaty.
“We’re not gay though,” Mac repeats.
(And pretends he doesn’t feel a pang of…something… deep down, buried in his chest.)
“Okay then, sure,” he finally decides, trying to sound nonchalant about the whole thing even though his mind is screaming at him to leave that basement right now before anything goes further than he can handle. It’s going to end poorly, Mac knows. But how could he say no to Charlie? Even if it does mean they’ll be all over each other.
He’s only just realized what his feelings about boys and, in particular, Charlie mean about him. He’s not ready to face it yet. So instead, he buries it down. Pretends it’s not real. If he pretends long enough, eventually it will be true, he hypothesizes.
They shouldn’t wrestlep. But for Charlie?
That being said, they decide their first lesson could start now. They’re feeling a bit giggly from the joint, so it seems like a fun time to start.
They stand and face each other, smirking as they exchange a playful handshake. Then, Charlie runs at him, shoulder bared, straight into Mac’s gut — but he’d already assumed an athletic stance to brace himself. Though Charlie is pretty strong, Mac has more mass, being that he has a few inches on Charlie as well as a weight-lifting regimen. He easily (and a bit gently) knocks Charlie’s knees out from under him and uses the opportunity to pin him to the ground: one forearm across his chest bearing weight, other hand holding both Charlie’s hands over his head.
“Got ya!” Immediately Mac laughs in triumph, silently thanking god it didn’t last too long. “Charlie, that was too easy, you really need to practice!”
But when he looks at the boy pinned underneath him, the smile vanishes.
Charlie’s…scared. Of him? Maybe. All he knows is that he’s got his eyes squeezed shut and face braced for pain. Even though Ronnie isn’t trying to hurt him. He’s not, he’s certain he did nothing to injure his friend. Regardless, he releases his grip on Charlie’s hands, which scramble to cover his face.
Mac sits back at a distance when he realizes he’s still straddling him and watches him breathe into his hands slowly, like he’s trying to calm himself down. He sits up to curl in on himself.
“Hey, man, did I hurt you? Sorry, I didn’t mean to. I actually tried not to!”
That’s what seemingly brings the boy back to Earth, because he looks at Mac through his fingers and seems to relax just a little the instant he sees him. Mac wants to do something, but he’s not really sure what just went down or how to help without freaking him out even more. He’ll let him make the decisions now.
“I— You— sorry, you didn’t do anything… I think the joint just scrambled my brain a little, that’s all,” Charlie admits sheepishly, picking at the skin around his fingernails.
“Were you scared of me?” Mac doesn’t know if he wants the answer to this one.
“Not of you.”
“Then of who?” He implores for more information because for some reason, he feels like there are some puzzle pieces falling into place in his mind about Charlie’s nighttime issues.
“Never mind.” There’s a strangled tone to his words. “Can we just forget it, please?”
He sounds so desperate that Mac just nods.
(It’s not until later that day that he notices the bruising around Charlie’s neck, hidden underneath 2 layers and a large hoodie — Mac’s, actually.)
___
It's the last period during their last day of senior year, and the gang is ecstatic.
The end of high school is bittersweet for most, but for them, they’re nothing but thrilled for it to be over. High school was just another bump in the road of what they hope is a much greater life ahead. Mac knows they’re both mostly just looking forward to not being berated on a daily basis anymore. Well, at least by people who aren’t their friends.
“Should we go to the party after this?” Dennis asks him, which pulls him out of a momentary daze staring at the back of Charlie’s head. He’s referring to the houseparty their whole grade will be going to.
“Do you want to?” Mac responds, kicking the back of Charlie’s desk to get his attention.
Chances are that they’ll be far from honored guests. In fact, Mac doesn’t even know why Chrissie Orlando invited Dennis (and by extension, himself, Charlie, and Dee). He’s not so keen on going; he’d rather just hang out with the gang at one of the nearby parks and get super drunk there. Where people aren’t dickheads for no reason.
Charlie turns around, “I don’t know. Why would we?”
“Are you serious?” is Dennis’ instant reply, almost before Charlie has even finished speaking. “Why wouldn’t we? This party will be full of opportunities to get laid!”
Dee nods enthusiastically, and Mac shrugs in resignation.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he says, repressing his distaste at the idea of sleeping with a girl. He’s better off just playing it cool — the way Dennis acts — when they talk about having sex with girls from school. It’s never going to happen, anyway. Girls don’t like the three of them. “We have to stick together, though. Me, Dee, and Charlie don’t wanna go just to be shit on the entire time.”
“Who’s gonna get shit on? Not me! That’s for sure!” Dee exclaims, still denying the fact that no one likes the group of them.
“We’ll see,” Charlie grumbles. “We always get shit on.”
_____
In the end, Charlie is half right. They don’t get shit on; they get shit-faced.
The night begins with a game of stack cup which kicks off the drinking pretty rapidly. The loser, Mac, earns the “bitch cup”, which has been filled with a repulsive mixture of beer, boxed wine, and a few shots worth of Fireball. Luckily, the group surrounding the table begins another game, distracting them from the fact that Mac gives the remainder of the drink to Charlie, who’s offering to help him out.
They both leave the vicinity, struggling to choke down the drink they’re left with.
“That was fucking nasty,” Charlie comments as he finishes the last of it. Mac nods in agreement, stumbling away from the table, and the two make their way out to the back deck, where people are passing around a few joints in rotation. Mac pulls his from behind his ear.
They sit down away from the large group, in their own world, near the firepit.
“Should we be socializing?” Mac asks, flicking the lighter to life. They both stare as the flame begins to spread to the end of the paper. Mac quickly puts it to his lips and inhales sharply so the fire spreads. He tries not to fuck it up — Charlie’s watching him so intently that he’s making even simple tasks nerve-wracking.
“Nah,” Charlie shakes his head. “Don’t want to.”
“Technically, we are socializing already. You and me.”
“Yeah, but it’s different with you.”
And goddamn, if Mac said that response didn’t make his stomach flip, he’d be lying. He lets out a strangled cough and pretends it’s the weed. It quickly fizzles to disappointment, though; he’s always getting his hopes up and over-analyzing Charlie’s words. It means nothing — he knows better than to get excited.
“Yeah. It is.”
Mac finds himself thinking about how content the two are in their own world — away from everyone else. He wonders if soulmates are real. He doesn’t wonder who his would be, though.
They sit in a comfortable silence while music thumps from inside the house, the fire crackles beneath them, and people are chattering around them. And by chattering, Mac realizes it’s mostly shouting, specifically from this one girl who is absolutely throwing herself at everyone in her vicinity.
Her name is Stacy Corvelli, he knows, and he also heard she’s a bit of a skank. Not that he’s judging. But he knows it’s only a matter of time before she makes her way over to the pair.
Sure enough, she spots them. It’s his fault — he was looking.
“Well, if it isn’t Ronnie the Rat and Dirtgrub,” she squeals, skipping along toward them. “How are you boys doing on this fine night?”
“Doing great,” Charlie over-enthuses. Stacy pouts.
“You guys need to be drunker! Let’s go!”
And before they know it, they’re being dragged into a massive flip-cup competition along all countertops of the kitchen.
_______
About an hour later, Mac is just about done with this party. There’s only one thing on his mind, and it’s looping endlessly and angrily.
Stacy’s all over Charlie. All over him.
And he hasn’t pushed her off in a while.
In the past hour, Dennis and Dee have joined them, along with some of the popular kids — primarily Adriano. He’s egging on the four of them, since he loves to shit on people he thinks are below him. Somehow, the gang is still trying to make a good impression — none of them really understand why they feel so compelled to do so.
It culminates when Dennis, in a rare moment of victory, wins the game for the team through a single flip.
Everyone erupts into cheers and boos, depending on what side they were on, but Mac is still only focused on one person. Stacy.
And now, she’s whispering in Charlie’s ear, to which Mac has to step in.
“Hey dude, do you wanna get going soon?”
But when Charlie nods drunkenly and opens his mouth, Stacy cuts him off with a wink. “We’re going upstairs so I can show Charlie what a woman feels like.”
“You’re no woman,” Charlie slurs. Everyone laughs, and Mac tries to hide his smugness at the lack of interest. Truly, they’re all way too drunk for this; it’s going to end badly.
“Ohhh shit!” Adriano exclaims. “Someone wants to sleep with Dirtgrub?”
“S’that so hard to believe?” Charlie retorts, frowning at the nickname. It always upset him.
“Sure is,” Dennis interjects, forcing a strained laugh. Well, he’s definitely jealous that Charlie’s getting attention. This whole situation is awful, and Mac is panicking, because he knows Charlie can’t control himself right now.
“Fuck you,” Charlie spits, but it’s more playful annoyance than malice in his drunken state. “I’m—” Charlie burps loudly, then winks at them with faux charm. “I’m desirable.”
There is no way this is happening, Mac thinks with a sigh of relief. No way she wants him…No way he wants her.
And then, with horror blatantly obvious on his face, Mac watches the scene unfold. Adriano makes another joke about them both being gross, Stacy tells him to fuck himself, and just when Mac has begun to dissociate from his corporeal form, she promptly decides she’s bored of the banter and pulls Charlie away. And he allows himself to be pulled by the wrist.
“I can’t believe my goddamn eyes,” Dee comments.
“Me neither. Holy shit,” Dennis shakes his head.
The rest of the night is lost on Mac — he drinks until his vision spins. And then some more. He doesn’t see Charlie for the rest of the night. Still, he drinks more — until he doesn’t see anything for the rest of the night.
___
“Soooo…” Dennis whistles the next day when the three boys meet for a hangover brunch. “How was it? What was she like?”
“It was awesome, dude. It was, like, so wet and slimy,” Charlie answers, laughing despite an awkward tone to his voice that lifts the pitch of the ends of his sentences. “She was totally loving it, when I was doin’ her. And I did all the things.”
Dennis lets out a confused chuckle, and Mac does the same to distract from what can only be classified as jealousy pooling in his chest, even though Charlie is not speaking about sex like a man who’s had sex. Or at least not good sex. Mac lets his curiosity get the better of him; he asks, “Would you do it again?”
“Totally,” Charlie coughs, but not even a few seconds pass before he reveals he’s lying. “Actually, I mean, I don’t know. It was…weird. I, uh,” he scratches his nose awkwardly, “I don’t think I liked it. As soon as it started, I wanted it to be over.”
“How could you not have liked sex, Charlie? Dude, you might be gay,” Dennis jokes, and the two other boys both tense in their seats. Mac worries that they know something about him that he doesn’t know himself. But he doesn’t know why Charlie reacts to the comment like that. Until…
“…Do you guys think I am?”
Mac’s jaw nearly drops to the floor, but he controls himself for Charlie’s sake.
“Do you like girls, Charlie?” Dennis asks, scoffing at what he perceives to be a ridiculous question. His eyes widen; Charlie’s shaking his head. “Do you like, uh, guys?”
“I don’t think so…” he mumbles, refusing to make eye contact with anything but the table in front of him. It’s a tough sight to watch. “I don’t think I want things from people the way normal teenagers do. I just don’t get it. I’m so fucking weird, god, I hate myself.”
“It’s no big deal,” Dennis reasons with a type of quiet patience and, almost, kindness. It’s a new look for him, but it’s a good one. “Maybe you’re just a late bloomer. I mean, that kinda makes sense.”
Charlie shrugs and scratches the back of his neck, where some hair has grown in. It’d been a while since Mac cut his hair for him.
“Dude, you’re our friend no matter what.” An easy reassurance, hopefully.
In that moment, the waitress returns and interrupts their conversation, which they’re all silently grateful for. Dennis takes the opportunity to change the subject completely, but Mac can’t get over the conversation that just happened. Charlie doesn’t like girls?
But he doesn’t like guys either.
Or is he just a late bloomer, like Dennis suggested… But maybe he’ll never want to be with someone like that. It was so like him, so in line with his other unique behaviors — of course Charlie didn’t enjoy sex. He barely could stand someone touching him.
(Unless that someone was Mac. But he chooses not to dwell on that fact too long in favor of hindering his false hopes.)
____
Never explicitly does Charlie explain to him what happened as a kid with Uncle Jack. Instead, Mac puts together the context clues of Jack’s creepiness, Charlie’s delusions with spiders, the injuries, and his physical recoil at certain fast or loud movements near him.
He’s fairly certain that Charlie can’t separate the trauma from dream or reality, that it’s all melded together into one dark mess in his head.
The two haven’t discussed it discretely, but Mac knows. He thinks he’s the only one who knows the truth.
Apparently not.
It starts when Bonnie informs them that since they’ve graduated high school, Charlie needs to start looking for a serious job.
She says she doesn’t have enough income… so she’s offered her brother a room for rent.
And because Mac feels like, though they’d never talked about what exactly happened, he knows enough to speak up when Charlie goes rigid in his chair: “Tell her, Char.”
Charlie’s head whips to face him, eyes wide, face frozen otherwise.
“Tell her why he can’t stay here while you’re here,” Mac encourages. He hopes this could be an opportunity for Charlie to be honest with his mother about the past and how her decisions affected him. Maybe he’s putting Charlie on the spot, but he hopes it’s for the better.
All the waiting in the world couldn’t have prepared Mac for his reaction. He scoffs, shoulders tensing in a different way — angrily, almost. “You tell her, dude.”
So Mac does, knowing how difficult mother-son interactions can be, especially when mothers are as bull-headed about things as his and Charlie’s are. “Mrs. Kelly, you can’t let Jack stay here because he’s, like, a predator. He’s done some really gross and awful things in the past, and he’s hurt Charlie.”
“He never hurt my Charlie,” she coos. Mac expected this: instant denial. Typical Mrs. Kelly. He looks to Charlie, who’s completely shut down. His jaw is set in irritation. His eyes are dead. Mac wishes he could read his mind right about now.
“He did,” Mac insists gently, trying to ease her into the idea that her brother is a child molester.
“No, no, that was just wrestling! They love to play together, my Charlie and Jack.”
“Holy fuck, Mom!” Abruptly, Charlie stands, knocking the chair backward from where it’d been under him with a bang. He looks like he’s going to be sick. Admittedly, Mac feels the same — but this is not about him or what he feels about (for) Charlie. He’ll just have to withstand his urge to take his friend far, far away from anything that’d hurt him.
The silence in the room is palpable. Mrs. Kelly, unsurprisingly, is on the verge of tears. Both of them are staring at Charlie, who seems frozen in the situation. One hand clenches his shirt, white-knuckled, and the other is in a fist at his side. Still, his jaw is set, his teeth grinding.
Another instant passes before Charlie quite literally bolts from the room and out of the house.
“Mrs. Kelly,” Mac says evenly when her son has slammed the front door. “If you really don’t know what went on when Jack visited, let me get one thing straight: your son was and is hurt by this man. If you wanna pretend you don’t get it, that’s something you can feel guilty about when you go to sleep at night. It won’t be enough to fix what damage is already done, though. Understand that. At least do the decent thing now and protect your Charlie,” he spits. To be fair, he’d kept his cool for most of the little speech, but her whole doting mother act has really pissed him off now.
Then, he follows Charlie.
Luckily, a lifetime of friendship means Mac knows exactly where he’ll find him.
After a few minutes of walking, he stops and looks up. Sure enough, Charlie’s in his favorite tree, the beautiful maple reddening from the fall weather.
Now, Mac’s never been great at climbing trees — too much mass, naturally. But thankfully Charlie isn’t too high up, and there’s a nice thick branch just a bit underneath him: their spots from middle school when Charlie first showed him his secret hiding spot…that no one else on Earth knew about.
“Hey, buddy.”
“Hi,” Charlie breathes in response, looking up from where he’d been digging his nails into the tree bark. Mac notices his hands are shaking.
“I’m sorry for how that went down,” he responds. He doesn’t get closer to Charlie than he is, so he doesn’t freak the kid out. To his surprise, though, Charlie moves himself onto his branch. He actually reaches out and grabs his arm — his grip is a little painful, but Mac will never complain when he takes initiative with physical contact. Charlie’s trust didn’t come easily, but he knows he has it. He knows Charlie will come to him if he’s comfortable.
But Charlie tugs at his arm a little in invitation. The rest goes unsaid. Mac wraps him with both arms, while Charlie just keeps his grip on his bicep.
It seems, in that moment, Charlie finally lowers his guard and lets himself feel.
The first sob shakes him. Mac holds him through it.
Truthfully, he’s subconsciously worried about the fact that they’re in a tree, but their backs are supported, so he guesses it’s fine as long as he is conscious of their bearings.
“I’ve told her so—so many times,” he sobs between words, and Mac begins rubbing circles on his back, knowing that doing it in sets of 3 will be comforting for him. “So many times. And she just— she just ignores it. Pretends she doesn’t understand, that I—I’m the crazy one, and I’m not fucking crazy just because no one believes me!”
“Hey, Charlie, you’re not crazy, okay? And I believe you, I always have.” For some reason, it makes his sobs sadder, more high-pitched and unrestrained. The quickening of his breathing tells him that the panic is getting the best of him.
“But she’s m-my mom,” Charlie curls in onto himself even further, and Mac rests his cheek on his friend’s trembling back. “Why doesn’t she care?”
Because your mom should’ve never had children. Just like mine, Mac thinks yet refrains from saying.
“I don’t know, buddy, I’m sorry,” is what he does say. Silence falls.
“Y’know she used to tell me I was dreaming,” Charlie says once he’s calmed down a little. “That I was just dreaming of spiders all over me and that it just felt real but wasn’t. And then after that, I did dream of that a lot. But whenever he was there, I just huffed glue till I passed out so I wouldn’t remember it.”
Whatever was calm starts to slip away as he relives the trauma. His grip on Mac’s arm disappears, and he starts to dig his nails into his thighs — an old, bad habit. A way to see if he’s dreaming or not. A way to feel something.
“Hey, stop that,” Mac grabs at his fingers and pulls them away from the little curved cuts that adorn Charlie’s thighs now. “Squeeze me instead.”
This gesture isn’t new either — Mac’s been doing it since he noticed Charlie’s subtle form of self-harm. They’re sitting side by side again, but Mac still has an arm around his shoulders. The other boy doesn’t respond; he just grabs onto Mac’s other forearm and holds on for dear life. He rests his forehead against that arm, too, and takes a shaky deep breath.
“You’re always here for me, dude.”
It’s a statement of recognition more than anything, definitely one of gratitude. Charlie’s voice is watery with tears still, and he hasn’t lifted his head up since he rested it on Mac. They take a nearly-simultaneous deep breaths.
Mac leans down, nose in Charlie’s hair, and whispers, “Always gonna be.”
“Same here. Love you, Mac.”
“Love ya too, buddy.”
“But, Mac, I really do.” Charlie pauses, face still pressed his arm. He sounds choked up. “You’re different than anyone I’ve ever met. And I don’t think you really understand what I mean by that, but y’know you’re my favorite person, right?”
“I know, dude. It’s okay; you’re okay,” he rubs his back again in sets of three.
“I’m not, I’m—” Charlie pulls away from all contact except by eye. Actually, he stares Mac down with an unbreaking gaze.
“What’s on your mind, Charlie?”
“I think,” he starts off strong, maintaining his stare, then his voice drops, “I think I have feelings for you.”
Silence, save for bated breath.
“Are you gonna say anything, dude? I just bared my heart to you!”
Fuck. Mac’s head is going to explode. All he can think is, Charlie likes me, Charlie likes me, Charlie likes me back. But what comes out of his mouth is all the word vomit he’s been fed by television, his family, and the Church.
“I thought you said you didn’t like guys? You know it’s bad to be gay, Charlie. God said so. It’s wrong and gross, dude—”
Immediately, Charlie’s face scrunches up with shock. Then, seconds later, his mouth forms a frown again, and his eyes narrow in defense. Oh god, why did Mac say that? Why was that his knee-jerk reaction to his best friend, the boy who’s been in and out of his dreams for years, coming out to him? Why does he fuck shit up so bad?
“Oh, bro, I didn’t mean that—”
“You know what? If it’s so gross and wrong, then fucking prove it, dude.”
“Charlie-“
“Prove you think it’s gross! Kiss me. Because you know what, Mac? I’m sick of you pretending that you and me aren’t different than normal friends.” Then, Charlie’s tone goes from frustrated to just sad. “I know you feel it, too, man.”
“I don’t know what you’re taking ab—”
“Prove it.”
“Fucking fine.” Mac huffs and takes hold of Charlie’s face by his stubbly jaw that he dreams about, and then, he presses their lips together with a firm urgency. To get it over with and prove his point, of course.
What follows is simply bliss; Mac hates to admit to himself. He likes (loves) the way Charlie’s lips feel on his.
Vaguely, it feels like he’s waited his whole life for this. And it ends too soon.
“Tell me you feel it,” Charlie pleads a mere second later, after he pushes Mac off his lips with one palm to the chest. His tone is almost desperate now as he begs for Mac to admit what is so glaringly obvious to both of them. “Tell me you feel something, please.”
Mac says nothing. He drops his eyes to his hands in his lap.
“You coward. Oh my god. This whole time, I thought maybe you might admit—but nope! That’s gross, I’m gross, I’m the Dirtgrub. Why would you like me?” Charlie rambles, unraveling again in front of Mac. He’s backing as far away as he can possibly get. In fact, he starts climbing higher into the tree, face hidden from sight. His pitch heightens when he nearly screams, “Get out of my tree!”
“You’re not gross, Charlie—”
“Mac. Go. Right fucking now!”
“Come on, man, I don’t wanna leave you alone right now. I’m sorry, but you know I don’t like guys—”
“Get out, get out, get out!” Charlie shrieks, and his voice is thick and wobbly with tears again. God, Mac hates that he’s the reason he’s crying this time. Charlie takes a shaky deep breath. “Go, Mac. I can’t take any more today.”
This is the breaking point for Mac. He leaves, with the intention not to harm his friend any more than he already has.
(He ignores the sobbing he hears as he walks away. It’s not like he can just turn gay for Charlie.)