trust the structure

20. Breaking the rules and 44. Puppy love, for the prompt list thing! (:

he wants a finale (and i came prepared)

Macdennis + martini

It’s senior year and there are three olives in Dennis’ drink. Mac takes a swig of his beer and tells him it’s a lame drink, that it’s foofy. He says it’s gay and warns him he’s going to give off the wrong vibes to the guys at the bar (the bar they’ve managed to sneak into with fake IDs and loud, adult conversation). Dennis swirls the vermouth with the olive pick, grinding his teeth, watching his reflection in his glass do the same clear as day. He asks Mac what’s so wrong with that and Mac quickly responds with homosexuality or with the drink? Dennis swallows a lump in his throat, bottling up his frustration, staring into his martini and thinking about the way he and Mac slept on the couch last night with their limbs tangled together. What was so wrong with that? With the drink, he lies, and Mac laughs it off, says gin tastes like cologne, flips right back to normal. Later tonight, when they’re both good and drunk, Mac will sleep over at Dennis’ house and lie too close to him and stare at the side of his face and brush his knees against his. Then he’ll wake up in the morning and condemn the things in the world that are just as close, just as intimate, just as loving. He’ll condemn things that are even less close, less intimate, less loving- things people do only for one night or for one moment of pleasure- things that don’t involve feelings nearly as big as Mac and Dennis’ are. It’s like he’s looking at two of the same picture of them, side by side, with different captions. One reads friends and the other reads lovers and he’ll keep one and burn the other, even though they look the same in both of them, even though their knees are still brushing in both of them. They could live together, sleep in the same bed, use the same bar of soap, wear each other’s sweaters every day, and Mac would think it holy for years and years until the second someone called it gay out loud, and then it would be a sin. The way he makes Dennis laugh when the power’s down and he acts out their favorite movies would be a sin. The way Dennis reaches for him when he feels small and fragile and afraid would be a sin. The way Dennis catches Mac smiling at him from across the room and swears he knows it too would be a sin. Only if you looked at it too closely. Only if you said it out loud. I drink it for the olives, Dennis chuckles- a hollow sound- and tosses one at Mac’s shoulder.

It’s their third night at the bar and there are two olives in Dennis’ drink. Mac pops the other one in his mouth, sitting across from him at the booth, and cringes. He says he’d forgot how disgusting they were and that they’re even worse with gin in them. Dennis laughs, takes a sip of his martini, and rifles through the paperwork on the table as if he knows what any of it means. It feels good to pretend he does, though, and to sit across from Mac at their bar, over a pile of loose documents that make it their bar. It feels like a commitment. It feels like the next thirty years. Mac’s hand is on the table and Dennis doesn’t know what he’s doing when he reaches over and takes it in his own. He stumbles over something like to the pub, baby! and lifts his glass for a toast. Mac smiles and taps his beer against it, pulling a face when Dennis’ drink spills over into his. To us, Dennis adds and squeezes Mac’s hand, and he doesn’t mean anything by it, but he catches the exact moment it all becomes too much and too close in Mac’s eyes, sees his fight or flight response flip on like a switch. Mac rushes to let go and holds his beer instead, sipping it slowly to make it last longer and staring down into it like he’s staring into the bowels of hell. Mac doesn’t like the taste of gin, but he chokes it down anyways, because it’s better to distract himself with something than to look at what’s right in front of him. Dennis takes the second olive off the toothpick and swallows it, doesn’t much like the taste of it anymore, doesn’t like the way the motion wobbles his reflection in his drink. He thinks maybe some things belong in the pit of his stomach, that maybe they shouldn’t come up for air, that maybe they should stay locked away. He takes this moment and swallows it down, too. He practices that again and again and again over the next decade, because Mac has been right all along- it’s safer to bury something than to give a name to it.

It’s a Sunday and there’s one olive in Dennis’ drink. He’s watching it like it’s the last damn olive on the earth, because he can’t stand to watch the scene playing out next to him. Mac is shamelessly flirting with a patron across the bar, and he’s throwing the word gay around like so much rice thrown on the steps of a wedding chapel. It burns every time he says it, because Dennis was never allowed to, because he would have been beyond redemption. Now Mac declares it like he’s singing from a hymnal. Well, I’m gay and as a gay guy and the gay club down the street are tossed around freely, as if he hasn’t made it obvious enough with his scrapbook-scissor cut sleeves and the way he laughs at the stranger across from him. Mac never used to laugh like that. He used to laugh like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to, and now it’s loud and glowing and unbound. Dennis wonders why he wasn’t enough as he watches his own reflection in his martini. It’s warped and rippled and he doesn’t know who it is anymore. He used to know, and he used to think that would be enough to untie Mac’s strings, but now the wires have gotten crossed and everything is turned on its head. It feels like it’s still fifteen years ago. Nothing has gone anywhere. If you have two magnets, facing each other at the north ends, and they switch hands, nothing changes. They just repel. Nothing changes until one flips south, until opposite ends face each other and attract. Mac and Dennis have never done that. They’ve never lined up right. They’ve always just changed places. Dennis pours the rest of his martini into the garbage, and lets the olive fall in. He hates the fucking olives. They’re the worst part of the drink.