Chapter Text
——(Guigino’s, evening)
“Mac, would you silence your goddamn phone? I’m about to speak.” Dennis clears his throat pointedly, drawing in a theatrical breath.
The whole Gang’s before him, gathered for a meal at Guigino’s to celebrate their latest endeavor producing moderate results. A big win to them these days. Dennis is somewhat impressed they’ve managed to make it through the starter and onto the main without anyone souring the mood, though the same can’t be said for the smell as Cricket sits at the opposite head of the table to Frank. He’d been promised after dinner lemons for saving the scheme’s skin as Charlie had the dummy buyers thinking the shithole was haunted. The street rat’s spiritual advisory role solved and sealed it, a deal’s a deal, however regrettable.
“Sure, uh, yeah.” Mac says distractedly.
The mild success of the day has gone to all of their heads, though the wine certainly jogged that along. Mac sits beside Dennis, both adorned in mustard suits with striped yellow and black ties, the exact ones they’d worn in 2009 - thanks to Dennis’ expertise at clothing preservation. As though to scorn his efforts, Mac’s suit seams are pushed out disobediently where his glamour muscles strain against fabric. His legs behave in an equally vulgar manner, splayed under the table so that they encroach on Dennis’ space, but he’s doing his best to ignore the carelessness. Today they’d actually felt in sync.
If he were a more sentimental man he’d say the nostalgia of being the dynamic duo, partners in real estate only - but partners all the same, had been more rewarding than pulling one over on the naive couple they’d sold a dilapidated property to.
What’s harder to not feel grated upon by, is the way Mac’s phone flashes every other minute, pulling his attention from the moment. With every passing fraction of a second Dennis feels the attention span of the rest of the table wane from him. He holds up a brimming glass that he clinks a dull knife to until all eyes are on him - even Cricket’s cloudy one.
The Grindr notification sound trills obnoxiously once more and Mac scoops his phone up with feverish speed.
“Silence it.” Dennis grits out, eyeing the large jug of tap water sitting untouched at the centre of the table.
“Sorry Dennis.” Mac mumbles unconvincingly, going to quiet it before immediately getting caught up in whatever filth awaited him behind the pearly gates of FaceID.
“Dude, you would not believe the girth on this guy.” Mac murmurs to nobody in particular, screen pulled up close to his face, eyes almost crossed in concentration.
Collective groans rise up from the table. Enough of this, Dennis snatches the phone out from Mac’s loose grip and drops it into the large jug of water. It plops and faintly fizzles as it hits the base with a thunk.
“Hey! You asshole!”
The dick pic on screen becomes grotesquely distorted through the glass momentarily before the screen light stutters and switches off.
“You’re buying me a new phone.”
“This’ll fix it.” Charlie shoves Mac his side dish of egg fried rice. Mac only pouts.
Dee squawks at his misfortune as Charlie rolls his eyes, hauling up his shirt sleeve to fish out the phone from the jug. The water makes way for his intrusion by ejecting itself all over the table cloth, surging into the remnants of their main courses. Dennis cusses Charlie out as his lap is splashed, his neatly folded napkin not adequately protecting his knee from getting saturated.
“Can’t believe you man, that guy’s going to think I left him on read. You don’t leave a hunk like that on read.” Mac mutters.
Dennis’ plan for a self congratulatory speech has suddenly lost all remaining appeal as Cricket begins mopping at the flooded plates with the filthy rags he calls clothes, just seeping his stink into everything.
“Oh for Chrissakes you animals. Leave it alone!” He turns to his roommate. “Mac, that guy should be thankful, I just saved him the labour of reading through one of your tedious acclamations. No man should endure your inability to enact brevity over text.”
Mac takes in about thirty percent of this sentence before resigning himself to slouch further in his chair, thighs pressing against Dennis’ even as he looks away from him. Only Mac could turn sulking into an excuse for more physical contact.
Frank has the gall to let out a somewhat disapproving sigh.
“Dennis, we’re all just as sick of Mac’s degenerate lifestyle as you are but-”
“Frank! I thought you said you got it now!” Mac bleats out, indigence reignited at the slight.
“That was before you started ramming it down our throats every five seconds. I can’t swallow it, Mac! I won’t do it!”
Frank pointedly hacks and spits up at the fancy dinner table, not bothering with his napkin, drool dripping down to mingle with his waterboarded plate.
“I thought this was what you guys wanted from me? To be honest with myself and comfortable with my sexuality.” Mac looks around pleadingly at the rest of The Gang, playing the wounded puppy.
“I don’t know what to tell you Mac, turns out your comfort is overrated, you don’t add anything to our lives but gross factor. Dennis funds your lifestyle and I fund Dennis. We don’t seem to actually gain anything out of it.”
“Bullshit! I provide so much value and shit. I protect every single one of you from all ongoing threats at Paddy’s. I diversify our group dynamic. I provide so much value to Dennis, everyday I-”
“I certainly wouldn’t go that far.” Dennis bites out before Mac can continue listing any of the duties Dennis has trained the man to complete for him. Fucking liability. A man should be able to get his pecs massaged by his idiot roommate without it becoming fodder for public discussion.
“Mac’s not paid a lick of rent to you in years Dennis. I always assumed he must be, you know, giving you favors to pay his way.” Dee interjects with a flash of glee as she makes a lewd blowjob gesture drawing a discontented huff from a nearby couple.
Guigino’s is packed for a Wednesday evening. The surrounding tables are covered in twenty-something year olds, all with their phones out recording the way sparklers drip chocolate sauce over garish, oversized sundae desserts in a way that’s so aesthetically pleasing it’s put Guigino’s on the map with the speed of a Norovirus infection. Dennis finds himself wishing the place was on the verge of bankruptcy, not experiencing a surge of artificially sweetened popularity.
“Absolutely not!” Dennis wishes that had come out less shrill, he refuses to look over at Mac.
“Well, if that offer’s on the table Dennis then I’m looking for a roof over my head tonight. I’ve had the taste of your balls in my mouth before so don’t sweat it. I can suck for my supper or my shelter.” As Cricket pipes up Dennis considers if the steak knife to the side of his left hand could solve all of his problems.
This evening has gone from delightful to appalling in a way he should have expected the moment he dared feel a semblance of camaraderie with these morons. Tonight he is, or was, genuinely feeling happy just with the company before him. Naturally it’s fizzled out and melted down into a syrupy, unphotogenic mess.
“I don’t need sexual favours from the likes of Mac, let alone you, vile creature.” He laces in as much acid as he can summon.
“You’re just sour because you’ve only just realised you’ve missed out of several decades of blowing your load into a willing receptacle, no strings attached.”
Dennis dares his sister to continue with his most effective stare. Dee, the incessant wide-eyed cow she is, doubles down.
“Mac could be your rent boy.” She, and only she, smugly snorts at her joke, “Besides Dennis, we all know things have started drying up for you in the female department.” She indicates the youth around them. “How’s perving on twenty something’s been treating you since you’ve fast tracked from DILF into GILF territory?”
She settles into a snide smirk and folds her arms across herself. Dennis had indeed been leering half heartedly over toward a group of obnoxiously loud young women celebrating a 21st birthday, all with hideous desserts before them. Their ample assets hardly secured by dishcloth sized polyester dresses. He could easily acquire one of them, he just wasn't in the mood tonight. He’d left his compact powder at home.
“You take that back you haggard old crone! Your squawking is making my ears bleed.”
Dennis looks to Mac for a laugh he doesn't find. The man just stares at his murdered cell phone where Charlie’s ramming grains of oily rice and lumpy egg into its charging port.
“Be nice to your sister Dennis. She makes a good point about your arrangement with Mac. Seems to me like you’ve not properly capitalised.” Ever the business brained bastard, Frank wags his finger before pushing his glasses up his nose.
Just as Dennis scrambles about his brain to protest in a suitably cutting manner, Mac speaks.
“Can you all stop talking about me like I’m some kind of sex toy? Dennis knows I’m always here at his service for, you know, whatever he needs but he’d have to woo me.” He turns to Dennis at last, painfully earnest expression on his face “I’d need to be woo’d dude.”
Dennis pulls one leg across the other, relinquishing his rightful territory in favour of seeing the hope die in Mac’s eyes.
“Woo you Mac? Really? You sound like a teenage girl.”
“Just your type then.” Dee snorts, basking in the hatred radiating off from her brother toward them all. Mac just absorbs the waves, glistening saucer eyes drooping off into smile lines and greying temples.
Cricket picks at his teeth, disinterested in diffusing the ever growing contemptuous atmosphere. Clearly he’s having the best night of his miserable life and so voices his rancid suggestion.
“It might just be the PCP talking but, hell, with the way you've carried on tonight-” He gestures between Mac and Dennis “I’d pay to see you two violate one another, you ever thought about starting up an Onlyfans? It would be like watching cats and dogs going at it. Now, I'm used to a classic dog orgy, but I’ve always wondered what would happen with a junkyard cat in the mix. I wouldn’t get aroused, mind you, but it sure would be fascinating.”
Dennis’ vision momentarily whites out from the audacity of the vermin before him.
“Enough from you! I shouldn’t have to listen to this, the best lay of your life was a goddamn golden retriever! I’m thereby revoking your after dinner lemons.”
“I take it back, I bet I could get it up-” Cricket viciously chomps at a breadstick. “-as long as Dennis was the one taking it.”
“Cricket might be onto something.” Dee begins, considering the scheme with a faux seriousness she knows will fast track Dennis into hysteria. “I will say, whilst they’d be crap at making love, they would be experts at making hate. You’re already recording at your place all the time Dennis, why not clip some footage? It’s nothing crazier than anything else you’ve ever done to make a quick buck.”
“Gross Dee.” Charlie throws her a disapproving look.
“Thank you Charlie. I’m glad at least one person here hasn’t devolved into lunacy-”
“Oh no, it’s a good idea dude. I’m just saying it wouldn’t sell.” Charlie turns conspiratorially to Frank, Dee and Cricket, wiping his greasy hands up and down his polo. “No way would their stuff be popular enough to profit from. They’re so out of sync these days it would be a terrible lay and even worse content.”
“Excuse me? What do you mean by a terrible lay?!”
“Dennis, it’s ok, just drop it.” Mac surprises him with a hiss, tugging gently at his suit sleeve. Dennis swats him off.
“No, no please explain it to me, I’d love to hear you uneducated fools underestimate the sexual prowess of a Golden God.”
“Don’t spoil the fun Mac, just because we all know you’d bust in half a second after all these years of anticipation don’t mean we can’t theorise.” Frank points at Mac with his spoon, the horrible bastard is still slurping down his drowned slop - ever thirsty.
“Nah, you’re getting it wrong Frank, Mac’s been such a slut these past few years. Dennis could never live up to the fantasy version of him that Mac’s been yanking it to. He’s been triple penetrated by beefcakes, you think Dennis could live up to that?”
Dennis hates Dee, maybe even more than Mac.
“Homoerotic cruelty is their brand though, right? BDSM could be a big sell.” Cricket interjects thoughtfully, scratching at his beard so filth cascades into his lap.
Charlie makes a noise of understanding, mouth downturned as he rolls his neck side to side in what Dennis would call thought, if he believed the man capable of such a thing.
“Dennis does already have the tools for that.” Charlie considers. “I’m just not convinced he has the stamina, Mac’s put in the work at the gym but I’ve felt Dennis’ pec without its padding and it left a lot to be desired.”
“And his hair piece would come right out in Mac’s fingers as he sucked him off.” Dee scrunches her nose up at the thought.
“Like banging someone doing chemo.” Grinning in the stupidest fashion, Frank readjusts his own ridiculous hair topper to drive the insult home.
With each speculation Dennis feels more like The Wound Man illustration he’d been so fascinated by in his youth. Right now, there’s a spear plunged directly in his throat. His wild eyes try to lock with Mac’s, who’s own have shifted down to bore into the linen napkin crumpled in his lap. He’s uncharacteristically restrained. Even his laboured breaths aren’t discernible above the ongoing commotion of The Gang’s speculation as to why Mac and Dennis’ hypothetical sex life wouldn’t be monetisable.
Giving up on acquiring back up, Dennis tunes back in as Dee brings them right back onto the tracks that’ll send them all straight to some sort of mass extermination camp, if Dennis has his way.
“You’d be surprised who’d buy Frank. The online landscape might be oversaturated with twinks and bears in tighty whiteys but there’s still opportunities, their best bet is to find some niche and to get real weird with it.. hey you-” She lumps in a passing waiter, someone who looks faintly familiar. “-would you pay to watch these two bone?”
“I’m sorry, what?” The Waiter is rightfully perplexed, he carries two more of those god awful instagram-ble sundaes in each hand. The sparklers illuminate his confused expression.
“We’re talking full penetration my man, do try to keep up.” Charlie barks.
“Look, I’m serving a table over there and I don’t feel this is appropriate-”
“Answers. Now.” Frank wags his finger. “Or no tip.” A threat even the idiot waiter knows will be followed through on.
“Fine fine..”
He looks between Mac and Dennis. The latter smiles alluringly. The former puts on a piss poor performance, slumped in stoic silence.
“No, no I wouldn’t.” He speaks directly to Dennis. “Your boyfriend doesn’t seem to be enjoying himself. I don’t think your chemistry would translate well to screen.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
Though Dennis’ protesting mouth is wide, it’s Mac that speaks.
Dennis gives him a murderous glare, the fucking plagiarist - that’s his line.
The Waiter looks more confused than ever. “It’s nothing personal, I assure you, I don’t know why anyone would pay for porn anyway it’s free everywhere on-”
“Begone with you now, away from here at once!” Dennis swats him away, tongue finally unlocking. “Moron. Wouldn’t recognise chemistry even if he combined vinegar and baking soda up his own asshole.”
A forehead vein pulsates as he tugs at his earlobe, looking down at his plate. A few hunks of guinea fowl and asparagus swim in between tiny pools of oil. The wetness of his pant leg clings to his knee.
“People would pay, they’d pay handsomely.” Dennis snaps out to the table at large, and several tables beyond that. “Any sane person would absolutely pay to see the artful smut I would produce.”
He stands abruptly, chair screeching an ignored warning. The speech he’d been vying for all evening finally formulates as he feels a beam of a spotlight douse him from somewhere nearby.
Perfect, he is a masterful fucking showman and he will masterfully fucking show them.
“I refuse to indulge in this preposterous conversation with you people any further. Cricket, you are a literal two dime street whore. Frank, you’ve not gotten laid without monetary incentive or chemical enhancement in decades. Charlie, you’re only hard for what you can’t have and, well, as for Dee, what would you possibly know about ‘making love’ given your fundamentally unloveable character. You’re a spinster, truly beyond hope!
Mac’s, assuredly disturbing, propensity to fantasise has all been informed through his witnessing of my proclivities. He’s seen each and every one of my sex tapes and could likely recite the transcripts. He studied with the integrity of a Harvard scholar. The only time in his sorry life he’s actually dedicated himself to something proficiently. Who could blame the man for developing such a hunger?
Any sexual contact between us would therefore be, logically, academy award worthy.”
Mac has always been one to brag, that’s how they’d ended up in this spiral in the first place, and yet he remains tight lipped, enacting a thousand yard stare despite the praise Dennis was generously gracing him with.
Not abated by the treachery, Dennis ploughs on, octaves rising. “I, myself would undoubtedly be the best lay of Mac’s life, I’d ruin him for anyone else for an eternity. In fact, it's a merciful act that I don’t engage him physically, since I would likely render the man into a vegetative state - from the intensity of the orgasm, nay, multiple orgasms charitably bestowed upon him. Now that, that, would be high value pornography.”
He wipes the back of his hand against his spittle coated lips and takes a sharp breath, grounding himself to find total shock and silence - from the whole room. Surely a sign of their humiliation at having been so thoroughly schooled.
Abruptly, a beet red Mac scrambles up and leaves, giving way to an eruption of raucous laughter from the surrounding parties of youthful faces. As they turn, titter and tutt Dennis sees each member of The Gang’s faces’ flash through a sequence of emotion before they all land on their own set of guffawing. Only Charlie looks a little forlornly toward where Mac threw himself head first out of the dining room.
Dennis shudders a little where he stands before stumbling back over his chair as his forgotten sodden napkin persists embracing his shoes. Freeing himself, he turns on his heel, vaguely registering a camera’s loud glare flashing down his body as he barrels away from the table. “This is going to get so many views.” The voice is barely heard above the rush of blood pumping in his ears.
At Guigino’s entrance The Waiter wisely tries to avoid Dennis’ ire by pausing welcoming in a couple. They are a pair of handsome young men, arms loosely held around one another’s waists, wearing dopey affectionate grins, lost in one another’s eyes. Dennis wants to lacerate their lips to ribbons to see how pretty their smiles could really be.
“You should know the service here is terrible. I had every right to have stolen this waiter’s tip before the night was up but, no, now I have to chase after that imbecile before even sampling the cheese platter. Oh, but I bet you’re here for that obscene dessert, aren’t you?” Dennis sneers at them.
The couple’s distinctive unease turns The Waiter suitably flustered.
“No sense of loyalty to your most esteemed customers, why should I grace your establishment with my presence ever again after your ridiculous assessment?” Dennis doesn’t blink as he speaks.
“I’m sorry you’re dissatisfied sir, maybe my answer would have been different if you’d asked a decade ago.”
“Oh, I see! Ageist too! Well, you don’t look so fresh yourself buddy, no spring chicken.” He barks out a manic laugh. “You’re drier than that overcooked fowl your kitchen staff shat out tonight.”
“No, that’s not what I-” The Waiter holds his hand over his eyes in exasperation. “I mean from back when you and your partner used to regularly frequent here for dates-”
“Those weren’t dates.” Dennis shoots back, instantaneously cooled by the shock of the unfounded accusation.
The Waiter just grimaces at him as he ushers the baffled lovebirds away to their table. Dennis roughs up the welcome desk, spilling pens and menus to the floor before exiting the building.