Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

God damn it. 

God. Fucking. Damn it. 

A man, no, ...God like Him doesn't deserve this kind of treatment. He even asked for the ratings, nicely, politely, and was met with spite. 

Dennis strode towards the exit of the bar. His arms swing aggressively at his sides, head low, shoulders hunched in an almost predatory stance. A little beer sloshes out of the bottle that's hanging from his hand. Red begins to creep into the edges of his vision, and something's cracking open inside of him. He's in the Land Rover without remembering unlocking it.

The damp Philly lights wash over the dashboard as he screeches to a stop at a red light a few feet too late. The cross traffic flips him off and yells. Dennis' face contorts and he bares his teeth, growling back despite the windows being closed. He didn't give a fuck. He was a god damn Alpha, a deity among humans, and he always got the final word. They could think he was insane if they wanted to. That meant they feared him. If he couldn't have respect, he'd have fear. The light turns green and the tires squeal under his lead foot. 

Peeling around the corner and into Dee's apartment complex, Dennis lurches the car into park crookedly, jerking the door open. The parking lot is already littered with trash, so he chugs what's left of his beer smashes the bottle behind her car and hopes that one-starring bitch gets some glass in her tires the next morning. He white-knuckles his keys like Wolverine, staring down the two people that pass him with fear in their eyes as he prowls down the hallway. Good. Be afraid. Hands shaking, it takes a couple tries and a few more expletives to fit the key into the lock, and Dennis bursts into the apartment. Slamming the door rattles the walls and reverberates up through his spine, alleviating the tear in his chest for a brief moment. This thing inside was eating him alive, destroying him. He was a God, and he had been shunned. He needed to destroy. 

The laptop is the first victim, guilty in Dennis' eyes the moment he entered the living room. Stalking over, he lifts the computer over his head, smashing it against the wall and kicking over the coffee table it had rested on. "God DAMN IT!" He screams, partly out of rage, and partly out of pain as he feels his shin connect with the wrong edge of the table. The sharpness of the sensation gives Dennis pause, and he stands over the mess and huffs out shuddering, ragged breaths, eyes wild. He needed more. He needed control. 

The impulse hits him like a truck, and Dennis' head snaps up, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. His body is moving for him before his brain catches up, and he finds himself tearing through Dee's room and bathroom until he finds the stash he's looking for. There's barely any left, but it's enough. Control. That's what he needed. Crack gave him that. It smashed that hole inside him like it was an ant. Wasting no time, Dennis leans against the side of the bed and lights up, moaning as he feels it hit him, the rips in the fabric of his irredeemable soul being stitched back together, if only for a half-hour. 

30 minutes is over too quickly. Dennis feels the crash coming on, and anxiety leaks into his chest as the stitches inside start to burst at the seams, tearing open wider than ever. He chokes on an unexpected sob that wells up, a wave of self-doubt crashing at the shore of his consciousness. The tide is coming in; Dennis is trapped against the cliffs, unable to save himself. His ladder of false confidence is broken beyond repair. Lifting up the lighter to eye level, he flicks the flame on and off, watching it dance and die at his whim. He entertains this for a while, bringing it closer and closer to his skin until the hair of his arm is singed off. He's edging himself to a different kind of breaking point, and a twisted grin crosses Dennis' face. The flame touches his skin this time, once, twice, three times, and he holds it there, letting a pained, satisfied hiss out through his teeth. The surfaces blisters up, and he thinks for a minute he can burn out before the ocean takes him. 

Dennis is wrong, of course, as he turns his head and catches a glance of himself in the floor mirror. He crawls towards it, examines the hollows in his cheeks, scattered bruises, the redness under his sunken eyes. The eyes that stare back at him are black, dilated, and empty. Like a corpse. His nose is still too big, too much fat on his face. A face that grows more crimson as he trembles at the monster before him. Ugly. Pathetic. Dennis screams with everything he has left in him, fist flying forward to shatter the glass. His voice breaks into strangled sobs accenting the shards that rain down over him and blood that trails over his knuckles.

They all pushed him away. Nobody wanted him. He wasn't enough, never enough. He's nothing to them. Worthless. Insignificant.

Dennis doubles over, but it ends up being a dry heave; nothing comes up when nothing was ever put down in the first place. Tears are pouring now, and he doesn't really care. It's too much. Everything is too much. Body giving out, he curls up where he is, glass and all, and shudders, sobbing. 

He's alone. He's nothing. And so, so fucking empty.

Chapter Text

When he finally comes to, he isn't sure how much time has passed since he'd left the bar, much less how he got home. He's only aware of hearing Dee's bitching coming from down the hall. Eyes darting to the partly-closed shutter doors of the bedroom, Dennis lurches up to close them, only to be met with a potent mixture of sharp and deep, aching pain. Losing himself in the sensation for a moment, he startles uncharacteristically as he hears the front door open; Mac is busting in with words already in his mouth. 

"-the hell dude, why'd you leave us?!"  

His friend's voice has an edge to it that says he's mildly inconvenienced, bordering on pissed. Even though he's seen worse from him, Dennis already knows he does not want to deal with this. Everything hurts, and he's not sure he has the energy anymore to even move. He starts to pretend he can do just that until Dee's shrieking joins the mix. 

"Oh my god, is that my laptop?!" There's a pause, and sounds of plastic and metal crunching under feet. "Oh...I will murder him. I'm going to kill you, dickwad."

Footsteps jolt across the floor towards him, and Dennis freezes for a moment, brain hazily trying to figure out what to do. 

"Just fuck off!" He tries to sound dangerous, but his voice is hoarse as fuck and sounds more like a croak than anything. It's too late though, and she's already through the door, barging into the room like the inconsiderate trash she is. Her face contorts, eyes darting from him, to the broken mirror, to the spent pipe by the bed.

"You piece of shit."   

Dee curls her lip and comes at him with nasty talon fingers and rage. Dennis scrambles up and back, grabbing a shard of glass as he goes. Scrabbling to get her off, one hand to bats away his sister's assaults and the other wields the shard he holds too tightly, feeling it press sharply into his palm. He doesn't have the energy for this, to fight, to keep defending himself; Dennis stumbles, and Dee follows him down, nails digging into skin, his shirt ripping. The next attempt is to just cover his face and try to kick her off, until the weight atop him is suddenly and unexpectedly alleviated. 

"Jesus Christ, Dee!" Mac's got her under her arms and is dragging her back, face turned away to avoid the claws. Dropping her back down unceremoniously, he puts himself between the twins, eyes doing a quick once-over of Dennis, who's sitting himself up, eyes wide and bewildered. "What the fuck, man?" 

Dennis doesn't have an explanation, and he doesn't offer one. Instead, he sets his eyes back on Dee, who glares at him before getting her bird legs back under her and stalking away. "You buy a new laptop or I key the shit out of your car." A drawer opens and is shoved closed, and she slams the door on her way out of apartment. Dennis flinches.

He says nothing, arms trembling as he barely holds himself up against sharp pain shooting in his back from falling on the glass. Mac slides the doors closed, turning to him and gesturing to the mess. "What the hell, Dennis?"

Dennis doesn't know what the hell any of this is. Staring hard at the wall, he ignores his friend's questions, then blinks slowly, lifting his arms to assess the damage. His head is floating, the edges of his vision fuzzy and dots dance before him. Fresh blood from his palm leaks over the dried blood from his knuckles, and trails of red well up from Dee's claw marks. 

"Hey. Dude. Den. DENNIS." Mac makes his way closer to his friend, who sits uncharacteristically silently with a blank stare. He crouches over and waves a hand in Dennis' line of sight, checking his eyes. The usual bright blue is almost completely blown to black; wherever he'd gone, the guy definitely hadn't come back to himself. "Are you still high?"  He asks, without really expecting an answer; Dennis is always so straight-faced that Mac can't always tell if he's flying or crashing.  

Standing back up and sighing, he scrubs a hand over his face, looking down at the man before him. He's seen Dennis high. He's seen his breakdowns. But that was back when they lived together, it hasn't happened once since moving in with Dee. This is just BAD on so many levels. This is a goddamn clusterfuck. His first instinct is just to not want deal with it, but this is Dennis' problem. So it's his, too. 

"Fuck me..." Another exasperated sigh is huffed out. This is the second time in one night Mac's left with the cleanup, and he glances around, going to grab the trash can from the bathroom. He looks back down at the crumpled man below him and pops a squat, collecting the pieces of mirror around Dennis and tossing them in the bin. Keeping his eyes low, his gaze flicks up ever so often to check if his friend is back yet, but the other's eyes remain empty.

Once he finishes, Mac starts to stand, but pauses, noticing the shard Dennis still clings tightly to. Fresh trails of blood trickle over the surface in little rivulets, and he curses under his breath. "Shit, dude.." Reaching up to Dee's dresser and grabbing what turns out to be a tank top, he holds Dennis' wrist with one hand and wraps the shard in the cloth. He shakes the other's wrist gingerly when the catatonic man doesn't let go, pressing on the tendon. "Hey, come on Den." Mac urges, and he's eventually able to work the piece out and toss it in the trash.

This seems to trigger something, because Dennis jumps, breathing in sharply and head snapping up. Back pressing against the side of the bed, a whine leaks out of his mouth, and Mac raises an eyebrow, making a sympathetic face. "Welcome back, buddy."  He begins to wrap the fabric around the cuts on the other's palm, eyes absently trailing over claw marks up and down Dennis' arms and settling on what looks like burn blisters. A feeling that tastes like bile and lurches inside him, reminding him of the first time he saw this on his friend in high school. When he's finished, Mac stands halfway, threading his arm under Dennis' shoulder and pulling him up. "Gonna get you cleaned up." 

"Why do you give a shit?" Dennis mutters, and Mac rolls his eyes, continuing to pull him towards the bathroom. He feels the other resisting though, and doubles his efforts.

"Come on, dude."

"You don't give a fuck, none of you do. You're just here because I pay for all your shit." His friend continues, and Mac barely stops himself from screaming back how god damn much he does care, and how much of a fucking idiot Dennis is to not see any of it. "Go away, Mac." He feels Dennis pushing him off, and he lets his grip ease a little, turning himself towards the broken face that glares at him. This time the man pushes harder. "I don't want your fake sympathy, get the fuck off me." 

They're lies, all of it, as soon as they leave Dennis' mouth. He doesn't want to be alone, but he can't be seen like this, he can't have anyone seeing how weak he is. How worthless, useless, and fragile. Pushing Mac again, it does nothing, so he tries again, and again, over and over. 

Mac doesn't leave or let go, because that's just how he is. He holds on, taking each hit. "You know I care, idiot." He tries, but Dennis still pushes, so he sighs and grits his teeth, waiting patiently for possibly the first time in his life. After a minute or so, the other man wears himself out, giving up. Mac wraps his arms around him and pulls him closer, slowly at first until Dennis all but collapses into him, shuddering. "I don't want to be alone." It's muffled damply through the growing wet spot where Dennis' face is pressed into Mac's shoulder, but it strikes him deep in his chest, and he hums, bringing a hand up to run through blonde curls. He backs them up and slides down the wall gently, tilting his head to rest against the dresser. Something feels so guilty about how warm he feels with Dennis so broken in his arms. Mac doesn't think about it. 

"Yeah, I thought so..."