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The urge hits Dennis with all the subtlety of a fucking eighteen-wheeler, and just as much presence and force. He wants to stuff his face full of food until he’s aching and sick, and then he wants to vomit.
God, it’s been a while. Binging and purging were never his M.O. At least, he never wanted them to be, even if they were at times. Regardless, he’s been skipping meals and has been doing so well with his latest diet plan. The weight is melting off, and he’s only fainted once. Maybe that’s why the urge feels so acute, and so troubling tonight.
It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad.
What does?
He’s been dwelling on the pain for twenty minutes, but can’t find its source. Maybe it’s inside his chest cavity, around where his heart should be; maybe something in there is aching. Or maybe the pain is located somewhere inside his skull.
No, he decides eventually; it’s everything. Everything hurts.
It hurts to be alive. It hurts to not be binging and purging, as much as he hates the thought of doing it. He can’t do it. He won’t do it.
Then, as he’s desperately trying to suppress the urge, it hits him out of nowhere — the terrifying thought: I want to do something bad.
What does that even mean? It doesn’t matter. He has to make the feeling go away. But how?
I want to do something bad. I want to do something bad.
He’s going to throw up. He has to. He wants to do it so badly. He’s going to buy a shit ton of food, and he’s going to fucking throw up.
No, that’s not right. That’s not who Dennis Reynolds is. That thought doesn’t represent him. That behavior pattern doesn’t represent him. No, what he most wants is to never eat again. But that’s not enough this moment. It doesn’t provide the immediate satisfaction, the instant gratification that he so desperately needs. He needs to do something in the here and now to make this intolerable feeling go away.
Maybe he can carve into his skin with a razor blade.
Yeah, that’ll do it. Go ahead and fuck up, you fuck-up.
He’s gonna do it. As soon as he remembers where he let Mac hide his favorite razor blades the last time — the last time when it had worked in the moment but he hadn’t done a good enough job of hiding the bloodied gauze and bandaid wrappers afterward. The last time when Mac had found the evidence, and came to Dennis pale and shaking, looking at Dennis with those big stupid eyes of his watering and his brows furrowed together in concern.
Of course, Dennis doesn’t like to cut, not any more than Mac likes finding out Dennis has done it. Cutting doesn’t represent him, either. In fact, it detracts from his ideal self-representation, his outward perfection. Carving into his beautiful, flawless, smooth, porcelain skin with the harsh, biting edge of a razor blade? There’s no art to that, no nuance. For the most part, he’d given it up at age fifteen, once he’d discovered the subtle art of self-starvation.
However, on nights like this, the craving is too intense. It hurts too badly not to hurt. It hurts too badly to not fucking slice into his skin, scars be damned. Because it works. Oh god, does it work.
Gonna slit my wrists. Wanna slit my wrists. Gonna fucking do it.
No, I shouldn’t.
I wanna throw up. I’m gonna throw up. No. Don’t wanna throw up. Shouldn’t do it, shouldn’t ruin this progress. Food will ruin this progress. Eating will ruin this progress. You can never throw it all up. Don’t want to be impure, full, tainted by filth. But it would be so good to get it all out. No. No, bad. Don’t.
See, the problem is this: Dennis talks so much about being perpetually numb, that he himself forgets it’s not a constant state of being. Numbness may be his default state, but it’s not his only one.
Because the problem is also this: Dennis does have feelings sometimes. But his experience of “feelings” is comparable to an average person's experience in the same way that a tsunami is comparable to a relaxing day poolside. That is to say, his emotions are so astronomically large and overwhelming in their sheer intensity, they threaten to burst forth from inside of him. When it gets really bad, on nights like tonight, his entire body feels as if it may shatter from the internal pressure.
Shatter?
Crack.
He should smoke crack.
No, he shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t smoke crack. It’s such a bad idea. But maybe coke? He’d never liked coke nearly as much as he’d liked crack, though.
If you’re going to do drugs, why not make it worth it? You might as well use crack.
He shouldn’t do crack anymore. He knows he shouldn’t. He learned his lesson the last two times. But god, he wants to do it so bad it fucking hurts. Why did he ever quit?
I want do so something bad.
I want to do something bad I want to do somethignb ad iwant to do smoethin gbadI wanttodosomething bad i wanttodo bad things bad bad badit hurts it hurts bad gottamake it hurt bad
—
Dennis is pacing up and down the length of the living room, spinning the keys to his Range Rover around his index finger. He’s going to go out and buy food to eat and throw up. He’s definitely going to do it. Any minute now.
What to buy? What to buy? Gotta make it good, gotta make it bad, gotta make it worth it.
No, but he shouldn’t. He’s not going to go out and buy food. No, wait — he’s not going to go out and buy bad food. He’ll go out and buy all the shit he usually gets so that he doesn’t eat bad food. Diet soda, cigarettes, sugar-free gum, razor blades: all the bad shit. No, wait — all the good shit.
No, fuck that. No razor blades.
He’s definitely going to buy food, though. All the shit he’s been denying himself on this latest attempt to lose weight and achieve peak physical perfection.
I shouldn’t, I can’t, I want to, I have to. I can’t, I won’t, oh god, I need to.
The living room isn’t quite big enough for pacing. So Dennis counts his steps up, down, and all around the apartment. Past the sofa, into the kitchen, around the kitchen table. Back through the living room, around the sofa again, back into the kitchen, around the table—
“Jesus Christ, dude. Sit down, will you? You’re making me nervous.”
Mac’s been glancing up at Dennis every now and then, but he’s mostly absorbed in one of his stupid “men’s health” magazines. He’s pretending to read it, as per usual. Except Dennis knows he’s reading it in the same way Charlie “reads” the free newspapers he grabs from those little stands along the street: only looking at the pictures, and nodding along fake-thoughtfully. Dennis tries not to think about it.
Instead, he shouts at Mac, ignoring how high-pitched and panicked his voice sounds. “Oh, I’m making you nervous? Well, I’m not responsible for your feelings, asshole. Besides, you think you’re nervous? Try—” He laughs, a little hysterically, a lot hoarse. “Try being in my brain right now. Fuck.”
Mac rolls his eyes and closes his magazine with a sigh. “Alright, what’s going on, dude.”
“No,” Dennis says firmly. “Not if you’re gonna be like that.”
Dennis is going to do something bad, and Mac will feel sorry for being mean.
Being mean? How old are you? Stupid, so stupid.
It hurts, though, why’s it hurt? Mac is mean Mac doesn’t like me why doesn’t Mac like me anymore Mac used to worship me if I weren’t so disgusting maybe he would still worship me like the god I am oh god oh god I’m going to die—
Dennis is definitely starting to spiral out of control, circling the drain of absolute fucking insanity. No, that’s a lie. He started spiraling somewhere around half an hour ago, and he has no idea why. Even after reviewing the night in his head, he has no idea what triggered this. And he still doesn’t understand what this feeling is, beyond: need to purge need to purge need to binge and purge.
“Okay, I’m sorry. Jesus,” Mac placates him, although he still sounds a little testy. He will surely pay for that at a later time, when Dennis is feeling better. “Look, just… sit down, will you? You’re freaking out, and the pacing’s not helping. It never does.”
Dennis scowls at Mac, but sits down anyway. Except there’s too much potential energy in his body, desperate to become kinetic energy. He immediately shoots up from the sofa.
“No, this is bad,” stutters Dennis.
“You gotta give it more time than that. Sit down. Just breathe, dude.”
Dennis does; he takes deep, shuddering breaths.
“Now what’s going on?” Mac asks again.
Mac is persistent and determined, and occasionally patient. Mac is a problem solver, even if his solutions often create problems bigger than the ones they originally had. Mac is methodical. Crazy, but in a good way. Wild, definitely. He’ll come up with something. Something unorthodox, maybe. But maybe unorthodox is what Dennis needs right now.
“Dennis,” Mac says, his voice more firm and insistent.
Dennis closes his eyes, clenching his jaw as he tries to think of an acceptable answer. Finally he says it, slowly and carefully, enunciating every horrible syllable: “I wanna do something bad.”
Mac shakes his head slightly, at a loss. “What does that mean?”
“I—I don’t know! Anything. Everything.”
Mac extends his hand, expectant and demanding. “Give me your keys, dude.”
Dennis looks down. He’s still jingling and jangling the keys, spinning them around his fingers by the keyring. There’s a nice weight to it. If he gives the keys to Mac, he can’t go buy the food. Or the razors. Or the cigarettes, the laxatives, the diuretics, the pills the pills the pills — Or crack.
Oh god, crack.
He hands the keys over.
“Okay. Good.” Mac tucks them away in the pocket of his hideously unflattering pants. “Thank you.”
“I wanna throw up,” Dennis blurts out before he can think about it, before he can censor his words, before he can stop himself. “I wanna eat and I wanna throw up. I hate talking about it, and it’s horrible, and I’m so goddamn disgusting, I know. But I wanna do it so bad I’m gonna fucking kill myself.”
He looks wild-eyed to Mac for the inevitable disgust, the condemnation.
“Okay,” says Mac, blandly.
Maybe he just doesn’t know what to do with this information.
It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have said it, I shouldn’t have said anything, I—
“This is good.”
“What?” Dennis exclaims. “How is this in any way good?”
“‘Cause you’re talking about it, which is good. Like, if it stops you — ‘Cause Dennis, you stopped to think about it and talk to me, instead of just rushing headlong into… into whatever, y’know? That’s big, dude.”
“I don’t give a shit. I don’t like this feeling; I’m tired of it, and I want it to go away. Give me my keys; I’m gonna go buy crack.”
“Woah-kay, no,” Mac exclaims. “We’re not doing that.”
Mac taps his chin contemplatively as he thinks for a minute. Dennis watches and waits for an answer in jittery silence. His knees bounce up and down, as he barely resists the urge to bolt from the sofa and from the apartment entirely.
“Okay,” Mac proclaims at last, “so sometimes if I’m feeling bad, it helps to know what the feeling is. That way, I know how to make it feel more better. You know? Like, are you sad? Or angry? Or scared? Or, uhhhh… what are the other feelings? There’s gotta be more than that, right? You’re obviously not happy…”
“I don’t know what it is,” Dennis whines. “I just — It hurts.”
“It hurts? Maybe it’s ‘sad.’ Sometimes when I’m sad, it’s like a dull ache, right around here.” Mac gestures at the general vicinity of his chest.
Dennis throws his hands up in frustration. He stands up to walk away, but there’s a hand gripping at his wrist, stopping him.
“Hang on. We can work with this. Fight Club. You wanna watch Fight Club? Brad Pitt, dude; I know you like Brad Pitt.”
“Mac, I want to destroy everything. Do you really think I have the attention span to watch a movie right now? Unless you have a secret extended release where Brad Pitt hangs dong, I don’t wanna hear about it.”
“Okay, so no movie then…”
Dennis looks down at the hand still on his wrist. Looks back up at Mac. Carefully examines his features for answers. Maybe Mac was the answer the whole time? Sure, everything hurts right now, but…
Mac could make it hurt so good.
“No,” insists Mac, withdrawing his hand as if burned. “Not happening.”
“What? I didn’t say anything!”
Mac crosses his arms tight across his chest. “Yeah, but I know what you’re thinking. I know that look, and — There’s no way, dude.”
“Fine! I doubt you know anyway, but whatever.”
Dennis resumes his pacing: around the sofa, through the living room, into the kitchen, around the table, back into the living room—
“Jesus Christ, Dennis, I know we’re not supposed to talk about it, but come on. You can’t honestly — That anything between us could ever — That you’d compare it, even in your head to anything like — to hurting yourself like that, or smoking crack? That’s really bad, Dennis. That’s really bad, dude.”
Mac is breaking the rules, because he’s right: they’re not supposed to talk about it. Dennis has to shut this down. Asking for help was a mistake. Talking about his feelings was a mistake.
“That’s not what this is! That’s not it at all.”
It may sound like a whine, but Dennis Reynolds never whines. Although Dennis Reynolds never asks for help, either. Yet here he is, asking Mac for the answers. He definitely never begs, though, so at least there’s still that.
“Dennis, have you—” Mac pauses here, pointedly looking away like he can’t even stand to look at Dennis as he asks whatever stupid question he has on the tip of his tongue. “—have you been using me to hurt yourself? Is that what this is?”
“No. No, it’s — No, stop.”
They’re not supposed to talk about it. They can’t talk about it. When they talk about it, Mac remembers that he’s straight, and that Dennis isn’t. When they talk about it, Mac remembers that he can’t want Dennis. He convinces himself that he doesn’t want Dennis, and that’s a lie. The subsequent fallout sends Dennis reeling for months afterward, as his entire world tilts off its axis. There are moments when Dennis loses sight of who he himself is, because his adult life has centered on the fundamental truth that Mac wants him.
It’s just too bad, then, that Mac’s life revolves around the fundamental lie that they’re both heterosexual.
“Dennis,” Mac says cautiously, quietly.
“Stop. Stop it.”
Why is he on the floor? Dennis doesn’t know how he got here, but he’s sitting on the floor with his knees tucked close to his chest, his chin on his knees, his arms wrapped tight around his legs. He feels so small and weak and pathetic, and it’s all Mac’s fault.
“Okay. Alright,” Mac sighs. “That’s not helping, is it?”
He shakes his head. “I just want it to stop hurting. Mac, if I wanted it to hurt, I’d…”
There’s no way to explain it to Mac, or to anyone outside of Dennis’s own head.
Lately, Dennis has been getting the nagging suspicion that his perfect system is flawed. The D.E.N.N.I.S. System doesn’t hurt, but… He keeps turning it over in his head, but he hasn’t gotten much further than that. Mac doesn’t need to know about these theories until they’ve coalesced further in Dennis’s mind. What’s more, Mac doesn’t deserve to know, not after he made Dennis feel so small and pathetic and desperate.
It’s okay to say no it’s okay to say no it’s okay to say no.
Okay, it’s bad. That’s definitely bad. Mac is right; it’s bad.
Mac is still watching him carefully, like he’s waiting for Dennis to explain all the things they’re not allowed to speak aloud. And he’s watching like he’s nervous about saying the wrong thing, or like he thinks Dennis is an injured animal who will attack if Mac gets too close. The distance hurts, though, on top of everything else.
Dennis tries again, and it comes out sounding just as weak and stupid and incoherent as he feels: “You’re supposed to make it not — I want it to not hurt. Everything—Everything hurts. It hurts so bad, and I think I’m gonna die, I really do.”
Mac crouches down next to him on the floor. “It’s alright, man. You’re gonna be fine.”
Dennis shakes his head rapidly against his knees. No, it’s not, it’s not alright, and I'm not, either, and I never will be—
“Can I…?” Mac scoots closer and makes a stilted motion with his arms, but doesn’t finish the question.
Dennis rolls his eyes. “You think I wanna bang but I’m gonna freak out if you touch me?”
“Probably not,” he answers cautiously, “but I wanted to be sure anyway.”
Dennis sighs and shakes his head. “Whatever. It’s fine. I’m just gonna fuckin’ kill myself.”
“No you’re not.” Mac scoots even closer, wrapping his arms around Dennis. “Don’t be so dramatic, dude.”
The pain in Dennis’s chest grows more acute, and tries to work its way up his throat. His attempts at swallowing it down prove futile; it bubbles up and out of his mouth in the form of an ugly, raw, alien sound. It’s humiliating, but Mac coos at him like he’s a goddamn baby. He hushes Dennis and pulls him in closer, holding onto him tighter, and that just makes it so much worse.
So, really, it’s Mac’s fault that Dennis is sitting on the hard wooden floor of their apartment, sobbing his guts out with such force that he’s starting to worry about vomiting after all. Nevertheless, there’s some reassurance in knowing that the mortification of vomiting all over Mac will be accompanied by the satisfaction of… well, vomiting all over Mac. It’ll teach that asshole a lesson for making Dennis cry like a little bitch.
He’s probably crying off his mascara, and ruining the rest of his make-up. Nothing is ever as waterproof as make-up companies want people to believe. The product is probably staining Mac’s tacky, ironic slogan tee, so that’s another reassurance. If they’re lucky, Mac will have to throw it out and replace it with a decent shirt.
“You’re doing a really good job, Dennis,” Mac says, like he thinks Dennis is an idiot who needs coaching on How To Have Feelings. “Look at you. You’re having feelings, dude. Big feelings. All over me. I know it probably doesn’t feel too good, but this is great.”
“Maybe for you. It’s really shitty for me,” Dennis chokes out around his tears.
—
In the end, just as disconcerting as the crying itself is that not even ten minutes later, the storm clouds have parted and Dennis can’t force any more tears up.
It feels like there’s an untapped reservoir in there, like there are tears caught in his throat, still trying to work their way up. He almost wants to push it all out and get it done with — in a thorough and much-needed emotional purge — but he can’t seem to do it. The feelings have passed, and the numbness is settling back in, descending on him like a thick fog. Dennis doesn’t know how long it’ll be before he catches another glimpse of any feelings, but it’s done now. The moment is over, so he won’t allow himself to dwell on it.
He and Mac spend a few more minutes wrapped around each other, the room silent save for the occasional, quiet sniffle from Dennis.
“Better?” Mac asks.
Dennis swallows down the last of the feeling of uneasiness. He feels the God Hole shifting around and reacquainting itself with its home in that hollow spot behind his sternum.
He nods quietly.
“Good.” Mac smiles and wipes a few stray tear tracks off Dennis’s cheeks. “That’s good,” he repeats.
It doesn’t feel good.
But it doesn’t feel bad anymore, either.
It feels like Nothing.