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Two weeks later, a cop comes by the bar.
It isn’t unexpected. Three days after the night he’s been trying very hard not to ruminate on, the gang had sat Charlie down and had A Talk with him. He suspects it would have happened earlier, had he not got in from Paddy's still obscenely drunk and high, slept for eighteen hours straight, and then spent the next two days flat out on Mac and Dennis’ couch, sick as a dog. Mac had graciously offered his bed - Charlie was surprised that Dennis would presumably have let Mac crash on his floor - but for some reason he’s never felt totally at ease on a regular mattress. He’s been grateful to not be alone at his apartment, though. Mac says the invitation is open-ended.
He's still hazy on the details of what had happened after he’d made it back to the bar - something to do with Cricket and his weird bridge crew - but The Talk had primarily consisted of hushed voices - mostly Dennis - telling Charlie under no circumstances to admit to anything. That the police would have a lot of questions, and he should utilise his right to remain silent and ask for a lawyer. Admittedly, Charlie had had a small freakout after that part, his mind helpfully providing unprompted images of the first lawyer he could think of. He’d come back to himself with bloody knuckles and a dent in the kitchen cabinet, Mac and Dee looking concerned and Dennis not seeming quite as incensed as he normally would.
He hates the pity.
He’s been bracing himself for the cops’ visit in every waking moment since, desperately praying he’ll be able to hold it together when they start asking him questions about whereabouts and alibis and all the shit he’s seen regurgitated a million times on Law and Order.
When the plain-clothes detective walks over to the bar and asks if a Charles Kelly is present, Charlie almost falls off his barstool with how quickly his muscles stiffen and his fingers dig into his pint glass. Dennis and Dee bristle and straighten up. He hopes Mac gets back from the store soon. He’s a little worried he’s going to pass out.
The anxiousness is swiftly replaced with confusion as he’s not - as he’d feared - thrown into handcuffs and hauled out of the bar and into a squad car; the detective holds out her hand, and Charlie looks at it as if the concept of a handshake is completely foreign to him.
“I… I have the remains to be rightfully silent”, he forces out, and Dennis and Dee sigh in tandem.
The detective has a kind smile, he thinks. Her dark hair is pulled back into a harsh ponytail, and her freshly ironed pantsuit irritates him a little. She pulls what he assumes is an ID badge from her jacket pocket.
“You’re not in any trouble, Mr. Kelly. My name’s Laura Hazelhurst, I’m from the PPD’s Victim Services division. Would you prefer to talk alone?”
Charlie can’t quite think in a straight line. He opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water, managing only to shake his head and gesture at the others. Mercifully, Dennis speaks for him.
“Uh - Laura, was it?” He puts on what Charlie knows to be a well-rehearsed beaming smile. “Thanks for stopping by. Charlie and I actually spoke about this recently - he has some difficulty with reading and writing, uh, comprehending information sometimes, so he’s happy to talk with us present, in case he, um, misses any important details.”
Laura’s voice softens. “Is that right, Mr. Kelly? Can I call you Charlie?”
Mad as hell that Dennis is still on this ‘illiteracy’ nonsense, but relieved at his ability to bullshit on the fly - and at the knowledge that he likely won’t be carted off alone to the office like a kid who’s been caught playing truant - he clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. And yeah. Um, Charlie, yeah.”
She nods and sits down two stools away, retrieving a small stack of what seem to be notes from her briefcase. “This is just an initial informal meeting pertaining to Jack Kelly’s recent disappearance and likely...”
Charlie’s ears start to ring harshly, just like they do when he’s about to flip his shit or when he wakes up from a particularly vivid nightmare, and he loses focus on what the detective is saying. He grips the edge of the bar tightly and tries to tune in where he can.
A handful of words cut through the high pitched screeching.
Words like ‘missing’ and ‘presumed suicide’.
Words like ‘investigation’ and ‘uncovered evidence’.
Words like ‘inappropriate images’ and ‘historical abuse’ and ‘other victims’.
He can’t stop shaking.
After an eternity of fighting the urge to bolt to the basement and huff more gasoline than any human has ever huffed, Charlie becomes vaguely aware of the woman standing up, Dennis exchanging low-voiced pleasantries of some kind, and Dee placing a gentle hand a couple inches from his. He keeps his head low so he can pretend he’s not crying.
Dee sounds sad. “Did you get all that, Charlie?”
Charlie shakes his head for what feels like the millionth time, not trusting himself to open his mouth.
“She’s gonna - they’ve got someone who… works with, uh, vulnerable adults and all that shit. They’re gonna set up something more formal for in a while, when they’ve… when they’ve built more of a case or something.”
“Am not fucking vulnerable. ‘m a grown ass man”, Charlie lifts his head and hisses wetly.
Charlie’s never felt like anything but a kid playing dress-up as an adult, not really, but something corrosive and vicious burns in his blood whenever he hears people use that tone of voice around him. The one that drips with condescension, implies he's fragile and needs coddling, all but outright stating they think he’s a stupid fucking child who can’t fucking understand fucking anything.
Approaching the bar after seeing the cop out to her vehicle, Dennis looks angry. So angry, in fact, that if Charlie didn’t know with absolute certainty that Jack was already dead, he’s pretty sure he’d be running out of Paddy’s to kill the man himself.
Dennis speaks quietly through gritted teeth. “The good news is they’re not treating it as suspicious. They probably figure the sick bastard was so wracked with guilt that he offed himself. Which is what he should have done a long time ago.”
Dee murmurs in agreement, and after draining what remains of his Coors, Charlie takes a deep, unsteady breath.
“Anyone else wanna get drunk as shit?”
Dennis, grabbing the bottle of Captain Morgan from behind the bar, laughs, too clipped to be genuine. “Already on it, buddy.”
Charlie finally goes back to his apartment two days after the police visit. Frank is finally back from his bullshit conference thing, and Dennis can’t help but feel a bit relieved.
Of course he cares about Charlie; of course he’s spent much of the past few weeks wanting to disembowel an already-dead man. That’s a given. He can’t deny, though, that a not-insignificant portion of his thoughts have been taken up by other things - namely, Mac and Ms. Klinsky.
Dennis cringes every time the two names are even loosely connected in the same train of thought. They’re completely different beasts to tackle, but ever since his pathetic, embarrassing outpour of juvenile emotion to Mac, it’s felt harder and harder to keep everything neatly categorised in his brain. The metaphorical rug feels like it’s been pulled out from under his feet, and it’s disconcerting.
He’s always been good at compartmentalising. Of divvying up every experience he’s ever had, and slotting it into its own little section of his head. Of using what can best be described as a mental label-maker, each category with a trite name, like family shit or work shit or sex shit.
The latter’s previous subcategory of absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, sex that I wanted and was not in any manner rape seems to have fallen victim to a messy burglary, filing cabinet tipped upside down and folders kicked across the carpet. Dennis had been unsettled to realise that Charlie’s disjointed, vodka-fueled ramblings the other night about boxes and treasure chests and mess had made total, horrible sense to him.
In fact, the whole sex shit compartment is peculiarly muddled now. The Mac and the girls on the tapes and the fun kinky shit boxes are intermingled with the shit he doesn’t really want to think about, too.
After Charlie’s left and he and Mac are both sufficiently tipsy, watching Thundergun 2 on the couch, a hand snakes its way onto Dennis’ leg. This isn’t an uncommon way for Mac to initiate the stuff that they’ve been doing, but Dennis finds himself tensing as fingers gently stroke his knee. The filing cabinet is so fucking messed up that instead of recalling the dozens of other times their nights have taken this turn, he’s thrown back twenty years instead.
The hand quickly retreats. “You alright, bro?”
“I’m trying to watch the movie, dude.” Dennis silently prays that Mac is too drunk to notice the way his lips have narrowed and his breath has altered slightly.
Dennis can’t fathom why Mac believes in all this God bullshit, because it’s immediately apparent the prayer has not worked.
“Den. We talked about this, remember? You said you’d… You’d tell me the shit, that, like… that you don’t wanna do.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Can we please not do this now? John Thundergun is about to bang the-”
The television abruptly clicks off, and Dennis is just about ready to throw Mac and his stupid fucking feelings across the room and into the plasterboard.
“Are you serious right now?” Dennis says coldly. “What’s your God damn problem, Mac?”
“Dude, I just - I care about you, and I - after we talked, I thought you were gonna be-”
“Gonna be what? All emotional and vulnerable and, oh, Mac, it’s just all so hard to deal with? Gonna be like that, yeah? That’s what you thought?”
“Dennis, I just want to have a real conversation with you about this for once.”
Mac’s eyebrows are furrowed, his eyes looking infuriatingly sad, and he won’t let the subject drop. Dennis cannot stand this. It’s time to pull out the big guns.
“Mac, are you getting off on this, buddy? Really gets you going to hear about statutory rape? Seems to me like you want me to spill all of the gory details about my first time with a woman for your fucked up fantasies - which is frankly insane given that you’re a fag-”
“Fuck you, Dennis”, Mac spits, and pushes himself up off the couch, kicking the coffee table and disappearing behind his bedroom door.
He’d done what needed to be done to draw the conversation to a close, but he can’t help but feel a grim tug of shame in his gut.
Half a dozen more beers and maybe an hour later, Dennis quietly slinks into Mac’s room and perches on the edge of the bed. Mac stirs. The silence is suffocating, but Dennis can’t bring himself to use his words, and he hopes the verging-on pathetically pleading eye contact conveys what he’s so desperate to say.
With a slow exhale, Mac shifts up to the left and pointedly rolls over to face away from him, but he’s pulling the covers back far enough for Dennis to climb under, and Dennis knows this is the closest he’ll get to his implicit apology being accepted.
He lays inches from Mac, still fully dressed in his button-up and jeans, guilt only partially placated by Mac’s tolerance of his presence and his steady breathing.
It’s better than nothing.
They wake up tangled in what can only be described as a hug, and Dennis pretends to be asleep to savour the moment a little longer.
Charlie paces his apartment, humming under his breath; some dumb tune he pulled out of his ass months ago. He didn’t really sleep last night. He hasn’t slept much in a lot of nights, if he’s being honest.
The bashed-up old keyboard and the bottles of wine - and when he really, really can’t sleep, the bag of glue - make for great company in the small hours, but even when he’s lost in music or booze or chemicals, he can’t quite seem to stop thinking.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t known what the detective - Louise, or whatever she was called - had been talking about, and Charlie’s relieved beyond belief that he’s not going to be thrown in jail any time soon, at least. And he’d been certain that the tidal wave of memories that flooded out of him when Dennis came round that night had been real; sure of it on a level he couldn’t quite articulate.
Still, there’d been this part of him that had desperately wanted to be proven wrong. A frantic last-ditch attempt by his subconscious to convince him that maybe he’d made it all up. Someone to come in and sit him down and say ‘Charlie, nothing ever happened to you, you misunderstood, you’re wrong’.
Instead, he’s wound up with the polar opposite.
There's concrete, physical pieces of evidence that he's desperately hoped were false memories, irrefutable proof of the nightmares that have plagued him for decades, presumably now copied onto the hard drive of some asshole’s computer in a police department office. He's a case file. A statistic. A victim.
The word nauseates him.
His friends all know what happened to him. The cops know what happened to him. Recently, when he’s walked down the street to the bar or perused the shelves of the liquor store, he’s been hit with almost paralysing crashes of certainty that everyone who looks at him knows what happened, too.
He’s pretty sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. Dee had said something about closure the other day, after the cop left, and it left a bizarre taste in Charlie’s mouth that couldn’t seem to be washed away by the straight rum. He remembers all the movies he’s ever watched, where someone’s sat down and shared the big scary secret thing they’ve been dealing with alone, and then they cry it out and hug and then things get better.
It doesn’t feel like things are better.
It feels like he’s ripped the Band Aid off of a festering wound, one that couldn’t heal while he was ignoring it, but now it’s exposed, and instead of healing, it’s just sat there, ugly and inflamed and visible on his skin to anyone who so much as glances. Even before he’d looked at it head-on, it’s burned and itched and stung, and he’s never known life without it. He’s not sure it’s possible to.
Just as Charlie is considering how much of the rent money he can get away with squandering on booze, the door bursts open. It’s Frank.
“Charlie! It’s good to be back. Nowhere near as much pussy as I was expecting in Baltimore. Conference was a total bust. Everyone there was crazy uptight about ethical trading and all that nonsense. Dennis called too, said something about cops or some shit. What I miss, kid?”
Charlie has to take a second to process both the words Frank has said, and his sudden presence in the apartment again. He’s missed him, but after everything that’s happened in the past few weeks, he’s filled with trepidation at the prospect of getting him up to speed.
He shakes it off as best he can. “Frank, what the hell, man? You up and leave outta nowhere then just crash back in? And what did Den-”
Despite asking for an update mere seconds earlier, it’s clear Frank isn’t listening. He wastes no time emptying his suitcase onto the floor by the couch; dirtied and wrinkled shirts, old receipts, and airport-sized mini bottles of champagne tipped into one big pile. Charlie is still standing near the window, bemused.
“S’more like it”, Frank sighs happily. He flings himself onto the sofa, kicking off his shoes. “Anyway. Drop the gossip on the cop situation. Oh, boy, I can’t believe I missed it! Unless we’re talking serious charges.” He frowns. “After the month I’ve had, I don’t fancy no bigwig detective sniffin’ round my business. I ain’t interested in explaining the shit Helga was into.”
Charlie just stares at Frank, unable to formulate a response to the insanity he’s just borne witness to. It’s nothing out of the ordinary - the pair have significantly more unhinged conversations on a near-daily basis - but he’s exhausted, not drunk enough, and can’t bring himself to care about Frank’s bizarre fixation on whores right now.
He walks over to the couch, dropping down with almost as much force as Frank had, tips his head back, and groans, covering his eyes with shaky palms.
“Christ, Charlie, Dennis finally flip and kill someone? Because I always told the idiot, you can’t be getting involved in that kinda nonsense! Not in this day and age, not after-”
“Frank. Can you shut the fuck up for two fucking seconds?” Charlie forces himself to make eye contact, and it mercifully seems to communicate to Frank that this inane bullshit is only exacerbating the situation.
Frank mimes zipping his lips shut, looking at Charlie with more anticipation and intrigue than any seventy-something sleazy fuck should ever have.
“It’s.. Can I have some of that?” Charlie gestures to the heap on the floor. As soon as Frank nods, he grabs two of the travel bottles and immediately necks one, unscrewing the second to sip on as he sits back down.
“Kid, you’re freakin’ me out now. Spill the beans.”
Charlie chews his lip. He could lie to Frank; weave some entirely plausible tale about schemes or drugs or the bar. God knows he’s had enough practice at denial. For some reason, though, it feels unfair to do that now. For all his flaws, there’s yet to have been a situation where the guy has judged him. That, and the ability to obfuscate and dodge seems to have cruelly abandoned him recently.
“Okay.” Charlie exhales shakily. “Okay. Can you… I’m gonna need you to shut up while I, like… I dunno how to explain all this, so if you can just… If you can just let me do my thing, and, uh, explain, you can ask questions after, okay?”
Frank nods again.
“So. Uh. Jesus Christ.” He leans forwards, elbows on knees, and rests his head in his hands. The words come out in a confused, messy rush. “There was this whole thing, with, like, me and Dennis and then obviously the others were all wanting to know too, and it kinda ramped it all up, and it got - it got really bad, and after it happened I didn’t really remember, but I remembered the other stuff - obviously, because that’s why I did it to him in the first place, but it-”
“Him? Who’s him? You mean Dennis or Mac? Charlie, I know you’re in your ‘flow’ or whatever, but that’s the most incoherent bullshit I ever heard in my life, and I just spent three weeks with a bunch of boozin’ businessmen.”
Charlie isn’t sure whether to burst into tears or throw a chair at Frank. He decides instead to let it slide. “When you… When you knew my mom way back, like, thirty years ago or whatever - and I am so serious when I say I don’t want the details on that part, dude - but… did she ever mention, um, relatives and stuff? Like, uh, her brother?”
Frank cocks an eyebrow. “The one she was living with? Jamie or Justin or somethin’? Nice guy, total crazy fucker though. Let me tell you, her whole family was wackadoodle - no offence, Charlie-”
“Jack”, Charlie spits, voice laced with venom. “His name was Jack.”
“Jack, that’s it! Had this crazy-ass thing about his hands, always taken by one notion or another. Wanted to be a lawyer or somethin’ like that, but never really went out the house, which was real inconvenient when me and Bonnie were trying to-”
“He’s dead. I killed him.”
Frank is stunned into silence for several seconds.
“Are you fuckin’ with me?”
Sitting up straight and looking directly at Frank, Charlie stays still as a statue. “I’m not fucking with you, man.”
“Jesus shit, Charlie, what the fuck?! Well, I gotta - I gotta call that lawyer, the Jewish asshole who dealt with Barbara’s shit, he was - Charlie, why would you do that?! You can’t go to prison, it ain’t right, I don’t wanna live here on my own, I…” Frank trails off, frantic babbling replaced with a look of true confusion and distress.
“I already spoke to the cops. I’m not going to jail. They’re… I’m not in trouble.”
“You’re scrambling my fuckin’ head, kid! So this was like a… A self defence situation or what? Dude came at you with a gun?”
There’s no real emotion in Charlie’s voice when he speaks again. Only a tired, resigned, weak shake behind some of the words. “Cops think he offed himself or something. He was - he - fuck. There was… When I was a kid, he moved back into my mom’s place, and he… shit. You know how sometimes I wake up from bad dreams like super freaked out and yelling and shit?”
“Yeah, I always - go on.” It’s so uncommon for Frank to shut up and actually listen that it emboldens Charlie to continue, even though his hands are quivering and Frank looks more sincere than he’s ever seen the man.
“It’s… I know I don’t, uh, talk about what happens in them. Because it’s gross and stupid and it upsets me. But it’s - I’ve had ‘em since I was a kid.” Charlie inhales shakily. “Since he moved in. And… they aren’t nightmares. I mean, they are, but they’re - the stuff in them was real. It was real the whole time, Frank.”
“What are you saying, Charlie?”
He shoots a quick, silent prayer into the stratosphere, desperate for his voice to hold, for the hot harsh feeling behind his eyes to dissipate instead of falling out down his burning cheeks. He can’t make eye contact anymore, focusing intently on a spot on the carpet.
“There were things that happened… no. Things that - that he did. To me. And I didn’t want them to happen. And I was a kid. And it’s not - it wasn’t the kind of shit that anyone should do to a kid, Frank. And I always thought that - the TV shows and shit, they always make it out to be this, like, big evil violent psycho, and he said it’s what people do when they love each other, and why wouldn’t - why wouldn’t I believe that? How was I supposed to know any better? Why didn’t I know better? I could have made him stop, I should have stopped him. Why didn’t I stop him?”
Charlie knows he’s rambling, knows his eyes have betrayed him once again and the tears are falling freely, knows he’s trembling like the apartment’s heating has dropped below zero, but he can’t bring himself to care. He cares even less when he’s suddenly enveloped in a harsh, rough hug, Frank’s head pressed against his chest, noises that sound suspiciously like crying coming from both of them now.
For a moment he freezes, instinct kicking in and the urge to run overwhelming him. But then Charlie remembers this is Frank. The same Frank who stays up with him until five in the morning, throwing back beers and laughing at Dennis and Dee’s misfortunes. Who doesn’t care when Charlie wakes up in a cold sweat, hollering and thrashing. Who’s the closest thing to a dad he knows he’ll ever have.
Frank’s voice is thick with tears but steady and resolute. “I got ya, kid. I got ya. You’re a good egg, Charlie. Hope the freak rots.”
Charlie chokes back a sob and squeezes Frank a little tighter.
Mac is hurriedly shoving half a sandwich down his throat and trying to find his hoodie. He and Dennis are just about to leave for work when his mobile phone rings.
“What the fuck do you want, Dee? We’re on the way, like, right now, we were just-”
“Mac, I do not want to know if you two losers were banging and lost track of time-”
“Dee! Oh my God, you perverted freak, I will kick you in your dumb face so hard that you won’t even know-”
Dennis, perched on the edge of the couch and tying his shoelaces, lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Just ask her what she wants, Mac. It's the quickest way to shut her up.”
“Get on with it, Dee.” He’s tired, a little hungover, and doesn’t particularly want to deal with anyone else’s dumb problems right now.
Dee’s voice sounds low, like she doesn’t want to be overheard. “Listen, dumbass. Charlie’s mom just showed up at the bar, wants to talk to Charlie. About… you know. His uncle, uh, going missing and shit. She’s real upset.”
Mac clenches his fist tightly, the floor suddenly uneven beneath his feet. “Shit. I mean, she’s - she’s always real upset. Is Charlie there yet?”
Dennis is gesturing vaguely, and Mac eventually realises he wants him to put her on loudspeaker. Rolling his eyes, he lowers the phone, mouths ‘Charlie’s mom’ in Dennis’ direction, and hits the speaker button.
“Nope, not yet. But he’s - Mac, I really don’t think this is gonna do him any good, and I don’t really know how this shit is supposed to go.”
“Um.” Mac picks at the skin on his lip. “You should, uh… Oh! I know! Tell her there’s a fire and everyone’s gotta leave, like, right this second!”
The exasperated disbelief on Dennis’ face tells him everything he needs to know, even before Dee replies.
“Yeah, Mac, I’m sure the notion that I’ve suddenly seen a massive fire in the fifteen feet between the two of us is really gonna convince her to get the fuck out.”
His brilliant sparks of genius are never taken seriously by either of these two idiots. “Fine. Okay, uh…”
“Give me the phone, you moron.” Dennis stands and grabs the cell before Mac can even begin to formulate an argument. “Okay, Dee. I’m gonna go round to Charlie’s place, make sure he doesn’t come into work today. I’ll tell him we gave him the day off. Frank’s off at some motel doing stuff I don’t want to think about, so… Mac, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you know Mrs. Kelly better than Dee and I do. I am, without a doubt, going to regret this, but can you two try and… defuse whatever delusion she’s labouring under? I am begging you both to not make me regret this course of action.”
Mac’s first instinct is to argue, to throw the phone down and yell at Dennis for daring to think he’s more smarter than him, but he can’t deny the plan makes sense.
The voice from the phone speaks before he can retort. “Fine. Yeah. Sure. You owe me big time for this, Dennis. And Mac, get your ass here ASAP. You know I hate dealing with old ladies.”
Dee hangs up, and Mac still isn’t sure where to put the anger that's risen rapidly in his chest, so he lets out a frustrated growl before grabbing his wallet, brusquely shoving it in his pocket.
He pauses. “You really think this is a good idea, Dennis? I know I can get - like, sometimes I get a little irritated and shit, and…”
He’s not sure whether to be offended or endeared by the barking laugh that comes from Dennis. “That’s possibly the biggest understatement I’ve heard in my life. But I figure if anyone other than Charlie is used to her insanity, it’s probably you.”
Mac knows that this is the closest thing to affection Dennis can articulate right now, and it doesn't count for nothing. “Okay, yeah. I’ll keep it together. For Charlie.”
“For Charlie”, Dennis agrees.
Wearing a reluctant grin, Dennis tosses the keys to Mac. “You total my car and I’ll break your fucking neck.”
“Oh ye of little faith”, Mac yells as he leaves their apartment, but his heart isn’t in it. He walks swiftly to the parking lot, almost entirely focused on this new mission, but a gentle swell of affection rolls over him at Dennis actually seeming to concede something to him for once. Hell, the wave of emotion almost feels akin to pride on behalf of the man.
After their conversation a few weeks earlier, Mac had thrown himself into researching how he could help Dennis deal with everything that happened in high school. He knows the intervention with Charlie a few years back hadn’t exactly gone smoothly, but he’d made a beeline for the local library almost on autopilot, checking out as many books as they’d allow.
Some of them had gentler, subtle titles, but he couldn’t help but cringe as he’d placed the stack on the counter and the clerk had picked up the first book, the words ‘RECOVERING FROM SEXUAL ASSAULT: A SURVIVORS’ GUIDE’ in bold text on the sleeve. The look of pity from the clerk he’d received as she worked her way through the pile was embarrassing.
“Oh, they’re not for me, they’re for my buddy”, Mac had said with a smile.
She clearly wasn’t buying it. “That’s okay. They’re here for you to borrow. We don’t judge, hon.”
What a bitch. “They are for my buddy!” he'd muttered under his breath as he walked out through the double doors, books haphazardly thrown into a straining plastic bag. God forbid a guy try to help out his friend.
Mac had stored the collection under his bed, not wanting Dennis to feel like he was trying to psychoanalyse him; even if he knew Dennis went through his shit semi-regularly, it was less aggressive than leaving them out on the dining table, he figured.
A lot of the books were complicated and wordy, covering subjects Mac had never even considered, but he’d persevered, making time in his evening routine to sit down and read a chapter or two. It had been a little unsettling, realising how much of the contents seemed to apply to Dennis - and Charlie, for that matter. When he got to a section of one book - bluntly titled ‘The Long Term Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse’ - he’d had to throw the hardback onto the floor and punch his pillow. Seeing it all laid out like that had abruptly shifted the mood from abstract reading to try and learn about all this shit, into what seemed to be a checklist for both of his closest friends, every box ticked. Something deep and sharp tugged in his chest, and Mac found himself immensely grateful that he’d had a pretty sweet childhood.
A few days ago, one of the books, the one with a name about dis-socialisation or something like that - Mac hadn’t got to that one yet and didn’t know what it meant - was lying on the coffee table when he’d returned from the store, a Target receipt shoved in-between the pages as a makeshift bookmark.
Every time he goes out and Dennis stays in, the receipt seems to have moved closer to the back cover by the time he comes home.
Mac hasn’t mentioned it, and neither has Dennis. It's delicate. If it remains unspoken, nothing has to change.
By the time Mac gets out of his thoughts and back to the task at hand, he’s almost at the entrance to Paddy’s. It feels slightly like walking into a booby-trapped basement when he pushes open the door to see Dee mindlessly polishing an already-clean glass, and Bonnie Kelly hunched over a booth table, handkerchief to nose.
He doesn’t think he should mention to her that it’s the same booth her son had sat in weeks earlier, barely conscious after killing his uncle; her brother.
Bonnie looks up and jumps from her seat, sniffling as she rushes over and wraps her arms around him. “Oh, my wonderful little Ronnie! Oh… it’s so good to see you, it’s been such an awful time. When’s my boy going to be here?”
Awkwardly returning the hug, Mac tries to brush away his discomfort. For all her neuroticism and jitteriness, it hurts to see her so acutely distressed, for a genuine reason this time.
“Charlie is - he’s, um -”
He’s never been more relieved to see Dee sauntering over, cloth and glass still in hand. “Charlie and Dennis had to go visit one of our beer suppliers, for, uh, a quality control test. They’re… Me and Mac are holding the fort while they’re on the - the trip. They're gonna be gone a few days at least, I reckon.”
It’s a clumsy lie, but Bonnie has clearly tuned out almost immediately. “My Charlie isn’t here? I needed to talk to him, something absolutely terrible has happened, and he doesn’t know yet!” She breaks down into more tears, and the two of them attempt to guide her back to her seat.
Mac clears his throat as they sit down opposite her. “You can… Do you want to talk to us? We can, um, try and help, I guess?”
“It’s his uncle Jack! My brother! Mac, Dee, oh God, it’s so scary…” Body wracked with sobs, Bonnie trails off, head in hands.
Mac exchanges a glance with Dee and nods at her, urging her to continue. He’s struggling to reconcile the white hot rage building behind his ribcage with the genuine sympathy for how obliviously heartbroken the woman is.
“We saw… We saw something in the newspaper about it. We’re very sorry for your loss.” Dee is speaking carefully, but she spits out the last sentence through gritted teeth.
Looking truly distraught, Bonnie wipes at her eyes and extends a shaking hand to each of them, and wails. “The - oh God, the police came to the house, and they’re saying - they’re saying they think he’s dead!”
Mac sees Dee cringe as Mrs. Kelly clutches her hand tightly, but she pushes through. “Me and Mac - and Charlie, and Dennis and Frank, of course - we know this must be a hard time for you. For all of you”, she adds pointedly.
“Dee, you’re such a sweetheart, bless you”, Bonnie says, voice quivering. “He’s such a good man, my Jack, he’s-”
“That’s not what the paper said.” Mac can’t stop the words before they come tumbling out of his mouth, harsh and careless.
Bonnie’s lip shakes as she continues, mercifully not aggravated further by Mac’s tone. “Well, that’s the problem, honey! They were saying - oh, it’s so horribly dreadful what they were saying, they were making up all these terrible lies, when Jack is such a kind-hearted man, he’s always been so good with my Charlie-boy, Charlie loves him so so much…”
Mac stills.
He remembers the dead, detached look behind Charlie’s eyes when he’d stumbled into the bar in February, shaking and covered in his uncle’s blood.
He remembers the musical last year; Charlie’s frantic insistence that it was all an elaborate metaphor convincing absolutely no-one.
He remembers when Charlie had returned from the police station after turning in the McPoyles, locking himself in the back office and drinking straight gin through the whole night, alone.
He remembers high school, when Charlie threw up into the kitchen trashcan at a party, pale and distant after boasting to Mac he’d gone upstairs and lost his virginity to Stacy Corvelli.
He remembers the middle school science lesson, where some dumb classmate had half-heartedly pushed Charlie to the ground for fun, a hand on his back and face pressed into the floor; the screams and kicks and bites and three-day suspension for Charlie that had followed.
He remembers the small, fingerprint-shaped bruises that had encircled Charlie’s wrists in elementary school, never fully fading - the ones Charlie had impatiently explained were from his nightmares. The ones that Mac had been too young to understand but old enough to be scared by.
He snaps.
“The cops aren’t fucking lying, Mrs. Kelly.”
Dee shoots him a warning look.
Bonnie contorts her eyebrows in sincere confusion. “I don’t know what you-”
Mac leans forwards and presses his forearms into the table, hard enough that it’ll leave dents. “Your brother was a bad man - no, scratch that. He was a pedophile. He hurt kids. He hurt Charlie. He-”
“I think what Mac means to say is-”
“Shut the fuck up, Dee! I know what I mean to say!” Mac almost roars, then clenches his jaw, voice low and serious. “I’m gonna level with you, Mrs. Kelly. I grew up with Charlie. We were at each other’s houses almost every second we weren’t at school, you know that. He’s my fucking brother. And if I could tell - if a fucking seven year old kid could tell - that something wasn’t right, that something had never been right, you don’t get to fucking sit there and try and sell me some bullshit that you didn’t know.”
Cowering backwards in her seat, Bonnie shakes her head, tears rolling down her face and snot dripping from her nose. Her voice isn’t much more than a whisper. “My Jack would never hurt my Charlie-”
“But he fucking did!” Mac screams, slamming his fist onto the wood so hard that the whole table shakes. “He did hurt him, he hurt other kids too, but you - you’re Charlie’s mom, it was your fucking job to protect him, and you failed! You failed him. Get the fuck out of my bar, before I call the cops back here and get them to throw your ass in jail.”
With a strangled sob, Bonnie collapses against the table, so distraught that, for a second, Mac almost feels guilty. He stands, grabbing the glass that Dee had placed down earlier, and hurls it at the floor without a second thought. It shatters instantly.
All three of them freeze, and Mac becomes acutely aware that he might have fucked this up.
Shocked out from her spiral, Bonnie coughs and grabs at her handkerchief, hands quaking and tapping against her cheek in a peculiar rhythm as she stands. “I should go. I should go. I should go.”
“Should I, like, follow her or something? Try and talk her down?” Dee asks as Bonnie walks, shoulders high and head low, to leave the bar, mumbling something over and over again under her breath.
Mac’s voice is low. “Don’t bother. Stupid bitch is gonna be in denial til the day she dies.”
“Jesus Christ, Mac.”
Adrenaline abruptly draining from his body, Mac sits back down as the bar door swings closed, feeling suddenly exhausted. Dee kicks the broken glass away from where they’ve been standing and slides in opposite him.
“I think… I think I might have been a little harsh.”
“You think?!” Dee half-screeches. “Fuck, Mac, you ripped a new one right into a poor grieving old lady.”
Mac sighs. “I just… It’s not fair. She should have protected him. Charlie’s gotta deal with this every day for the rest of his life, and she’s - she doesn’t give a damn!”
“I mean… shit, it seemed to me like she really, truly doesn’t believe it. I don’t even think she doesn’t give a damn, she just… doesn’t wanna accept it.”
Something clicks into place in Mac’s brain. “Like… Like Charlie didn’t wanna.”
“Yeah.”
The pair sit in silence for a few minutes, Mac picking at the skin around his thumb and Dee seemingly lost in thought.
When she speaks again, she has an expression on her face that irritates Mac. Some kind of understanding, smug yet solemn. “You’re mad because you didn’t protect him.”
“Dee, I know you’re a fucking idiot bird bitch, but how the fuck did you get that from what I said?”
“It tracks. Charlie’s your best friend, we all love him - God knows why, but we do, for some reason - but he’s known you the longest. It’s probably fucking with your head that you were there when he was being - when he was going through some shit - and you couldn’t protect him. And you got your whole thing about being big and tough, and your best buddy was getting hurt, and you didn’t stop it, so of course you wanna blame someone else, right?”
Mac fights the urge to punch the wall and swallows back tears, the realisation that Dee isn’t exactly wrong hitting him like a ton of bricks. “But I - I should have protected him, Dee! He needed someone to - to look out for him, and he sure as fuck didn’t have that at home, and - I failed to look out for him. I failed him.”
“Mac, you didn’t fail him. Both of you were kids, you… You can’t put that shit on a kid and expect them to deal with it. And, yeah, his mom is kind of useless, but I guess she’ll come to terms with it when she’s ready to. But still. Someone else should have picked up on it. Like, a teacher or a guidance counselor or whatever. I mean, jeez, it’s not like Charlie’s ever been the most well-adjusted guy.” She lets out a sad chuckle.
Dee’s voice is the kindest and most confident that Mac thinks he’s ever heard it, and it’s flooring him a little.
“I - I guess. Yeah. I just… I wish I’d been able to do something, y’know? But it’s like, I didn’t know what to - how the shit did you get inside my head like that, anyway?” Mac quickly wipes away a rogue tear, doing his damndest to play it off as scratching an itch.
Dee smiles. “Three-quarters of a psych major, remember?”
They both laugh, tension dissipated and a weird calmness falling over them.
Lowering his head and groaning, Mac breaks the silence. “I hope Dennis is keeping Charlie busy.”
Dee snorts. “They’ve gotta be having a better afternoon than us, right?”
Dennis can’t stop thinking about Mac’s stupid library book as he walks the familiar route to Charlie’s place.
It’s frankly ridiculous; there are much more pressing matters to attend to, plenty of other much more interesting things he could be ruminating on. He’s wasting precious time that could be better served fantasising or plotting - hell, he should be coming up with an action plan to keep Charlie distracted and away from the bar.
Instead, he’s stuck on some dumb words from a dumb book that his dumb roommate thought he’d plant, unsubtly, for Dennis to stumble across.
It’s not like he’s never heard the term ‘dissociation’ before. He’s smart, he’s educated. The thought had just never crossed his mind before that the concept might actually explain a metric shit-ton of… well, his entire life. Several decades of feeling smugly superior, safe in the knowledge he’s so much more in tune with the universe than his peers - they feel unstable with this fresh knowledge. Sure, it had always felt unsettling on a visceral level when the sudden wave of numb detachment had rolled over him, but it’s been his background baseline for so long that he’s been working from the assumption it’s part and parcel of being better than everyone around him.
The book had droned on about boring classifications and subtypes for a while, a text clearly meant for professionals - God knows how Mac would power through the dense paragraphs if even Dennis found it a little overwhelming - but then there’d been a chapter of case studies.
Page after page of the most pathetic, incompetent head cases talking about trauma, about adverse childhood experiences, about the way their brains would unpair from their bodies when shit got too intense. About their limbs looking like they belonged to some unknown third party, unwillingly feeling like they were floating a few feet away from their bodies. About reckless sex, drug and alcohol abuse, taking every experience to its most extreme in a futile attempt to feel something real again.
Dennis had come close to throwing up when every word from the maladjusted freaks had hit him like a punch to the gut. The feeling hasn’t quite left since.
He finds himself wondering if, maybe, Charlie’s inability to face up to his own abuse might have fallen somewhere on this spectrum.
In so many ways they’re polar opposites. For a start, Dennis isn’t an illiterate janitor with a baffling affinity for rats and sewers. Charlie’s dumb and he’s intelligent. Charlie’s unruly and he’s restrained. Charlie’s fragile and he’s a rock.
Charlie had forgotten what happened to him, and Dennis had always remembered.
Despite no part of Dennis wanting to be considered anything like Charlie, he can’t ignore the small sliver of him that’s always felt a peculiar kinship with the guy. Sure, it’s always useful to have someone around that’s significantly less functional than he is. Dennis had learned early that pairing up with someone more pathetic was a fantastic way to boost his social status.
He has to admit that it feels different with Charlie, though.
They’ve been hanging out more often recently. Every once in a while, there’s this gentle, quiet understanding that falls over them - an understanding that he’s certain neither of them get much of elsewhere. One with no preconceived societal rules, no need to put on a show or live up to expectations. One where they can just be.
Maybe they’re kindred spirits. Maybe Dennis is just hungover and a little anxious, reading into things that aren’t there. It’s irrelevant, because he’s walking up the stairwell to Charlie’s place, and he needs to get his head out of the clouds and onto his shoulders again.
As Dennis pushes open the unlocked door to the apartment, he grimaces slightly as he steps over the small heap of moldy trash that’s piled several inches off the floor.
“We gotta tidy up in here a bit, dude. Toxic chemicals floating round and shit won’t be doing you any favours. But, uh, I have good news! All the Charlie work’s done for today. We can hang out here for a bit, just you and me, yeah? And… We really need to clean.”
Throwing his head back, Charlie groans. “Later, dude. I’m totally in the zone right now with this shit.”
He’s hunched over his keyboard, picking out notes that sound distantly familiar; Dennis thinks it’s some synth pop song from the eighties. Mistakes are few and far between, but they’re rectified almost immediately. He can’t help but feel a little jealous of Charlie’s seemingly innate ability to play whatever takes his fancy in the moment. Dennis has been playing guitar on and off since college - when he realised the introspective, sensitive music types seemed to be getting laid way more than he was - but it never seemed to click in the same way it does for Charlie.
“What you playing, man? It sounds super familiar.” He grabs the acoustic guitar that’s standing on the stack of magazines in the corner, sits down next to Charlie, and moves around the fretboard, trying to figure out what the hell he’s actually playing.
Charlie lets out a frustrated growl and slams both hands down onto the keyboard, a discordant crash briefly echoing around the apartment. “Well, I was figuring out that Depeche Mode tune, but I’ve lost it now! I’m out of the zone. Thanks a bunch.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry for interrupting your ‘creative process’ by coming over to spend time with you.” Dennis rolls his eyes. “How absolutely awful of me.”
Charlie looks irritated, but he seems more pensive than pissed off. Trying to defuse the fact he’s interrupted what he’s come to think of as Charlie’s enrichment time, he quietly strums a chord a few times. Eyes narrowing, Charlie chews his lip for a second, before playing the same chord on the Casio. They quickly establish a rhythm, but then the keyboard’s notes switch several times in fairly quick succession, leaving Dennis briefly lost.
“You’ve gotta tell me what chords you’re playing, man. My brain doesn’t work like yours does.”
“Dude, it’s literally just four chords! D, C, F, then G. It ain’t rocket science.”
Dennis is affronted. “An F chord? On guitar? As if that’s something you can just do out of nowhere. Jeez”, but there’s a twinkle in Charlie’s eyes that he’s not seen in weeks, and he shuts up and contorts his fingers. It sounds like shit, and he’s inadvertently muting half the strings, but he doesn’t care.
For a while, they sit comfortably, not speaking, looping the same four chords on repeat. It sounds incredibly familiar.
“Buddy, you really gotta tell me what this is. I’ve heard you play it before, I’m sure.”
Charlie looks up, a wide, genuine grin spreading across his features as his hands continue to play.
“It’s Dayman, bro.”