#there was one terrible night where we were camping and there was a crazy thunderstorm

[horsegirlhob]

I tend to not consider myself very active but I just came back from a 5 day hiking and camping roadtrip and the first thing I did today after getting home was take a 2 hour walk so actually I think I’m just so affraid of the gym.

[richardlawson]

Night Moves

My parents sold their house. The house they bought before my sister and I were born, in that weird slip of time I’m told was the late 1970s. They’re moving to Providence, city of my father’s birth, and a place where a modest condo can be bought, for two people facing next and (yes, we all must admit) maybe final chapters. Over the 4th of July holiday, I spent a teary two nights in the house, going wandering in Boston with a friend and then, just as it was time to leave for the train, taking last passes through the small expanse of the place. I cried. I made myself cry? I don’t know if the tears were real or forced or if forced tears aren’t actually real. But I did. Almost wept. My mom pulled the car out of the driveway and there was my dad, good old Dad, walking the dog up the hill, the last time I’d ever see that. I blubbed, discretely, until my mom asked me a question and then it was hard to hide. “It’s just a building,” she said, which is what I’d told myself, what my therapist had told me. It’s just a building. Just a thing that teemed with all the stuff of our lives for 40 years. And now it’s not.

The day before this goodbye, my family and I went to a wedding. My cousin’s kid got married, an assemblage of people I’d not seen in at least 20 years. It was held at a country club south of the city, and was full of that kind of straight wedding swagger I hate so much—is there no worse sight in the world than groomsmen in suits clutching bottles of beer? That effortful commitment to male casualness amidst the formalness? It speaks to such an ease, the way these men move through the world, that my sister and I were repulsed by it. During the wedding, a long and violent thunderstorm rolled in. But just before that, my family and I wandered the grounds of the country club, walked along the ridge of a hill that offered a view of the city, the whole of Boston laid out there in the hazy, humid distance. The four of us there, lined up and regarding it. It felt like a maudlin farewell. To this city we’ve all been so tethered to, just then rendered so small, so faraway. 

I traveled a lot this summer, more than I had planned. I went to Provincetown for a few nights, my new favorite place, and felt the mid-June thrill of all that. I went to Los Angeles, mostly for work—a grinding reporting assignment that has yet to bear fruit but still could be something good, I hope—but also to see my sister. She’s so good at day trips, feeling so blessed with a car, and we drove up to Ojai, spent a late morning and early afternoon in its clenching, clean heat. We hiked a short distance to a waterfall, where barefoot kids were laughing and dogs were shuffling around. We went into town, roaming an outdoor used bookstore where I searched for my own book and, as ever, came up short. I’d heard so much about Ojai and, while finding it beautiful, was surprised by how little it offered. “You have to be rich to enjoy it,” I said to my sister as we got back in her car and, sealed up in the air conditioning, drove back to the city. 

In Los Angeles, I spent a lot of time holed up in my hotel, a once-trendy place on the Sunset Strip that has a thumping pool club and is just the right amount of uncomfortable to feel cool. It’s a full-service place, so I could take my meals there, do drinks on the patio, barely leave the confines of it. I went a little crazy, swaddled up in the gray blanket of that place—its easy, healthy-ish, sour food, its lukewarm sauvignon blanc mood. I felt like I was there for a whole long Shining winter, growing a beard and going insane and locating some truer kernel of myself than I’d ever known existed. I let myself skitter out into the night on occasion, to see friends and revel, just a bit, in the riot of a city I hate. (I’m sorry, L.A. friends. I have tried so hard to like Los Angeles, but it makes me so stressed and unhappy and full of constant Sunday Scaries that I have to hate it. That said, I can’t wait to visit again.) But mostly I was alone, conducting halting interviews on the phone, pacing around in my cold room while tall trees fluttered in the balcony window. One uneasy afternoon, I watched a bug crawl around the enormous beanbag chair the hotel provided and figured it knew what to do with this lump of furniture more than I did. 

I just got back from Fire Island, another place I have tried to love and—unlike L.A.—might finally be done with. What a dream of an idea that place is, and yet in execution, or at least in my admittedly narrow experience of it, what a drab and horny and exhausting thing it actually is. I don’t fit in there at all, which is a strange sensation for someone who has prided himself on being able to adapt, to quickly recover, to renegotiate physical and social spaces as needed. Fire Island, the Pines in particular, is a bridge past a bridge too far, I’m afraid. Not because I don’t admire its moxie, its Speedo tan-ness, its louche, buggy reverie. I love that people love it. I just feel sad that Fire Island is something like Paris—a beautiful dream I’ll never be able to actually step into, that I’ll never feel filling me like air, like smoke. (I Juul now—another life update.) But it’s good to have that conclusion—to know, because of increasing adulthood and experience, that it, hey, just isn’t for me. I wish it the best. I wanted to blow a kiss to the island as the ferry puttered away back toward Sayville. Goodbye, place! Goodbye, dream! Goodbye all you wonderful people who partied and yearned and grieved and fucked and fell in love there. See you in Ptown, maybe. All you lively ghosts, living and dead.

Fall trips loom. Film festivals, which are so much fun. I’m going to Venice for the first time, next week, and I am so stressed and excited and curious. I booked an Airbnb that’s not near the movies, that’s on the main island with all the canals and handsome gondoliers and luring, leering pasta. (My Fire Island diet nearly killed me, readers.) I chose holistic life experience over festival ease in booking that place and I hope I don’t regret it. And then it’s straight on to Toronto, a festival I love, a town I am growing to like, with people I know and with whom I’m so ready to pretend it’s summer camp again. Fall camp. Autumn camp. What a good time that will be.

But it will keep me away. I’ve been away so much this year, which has been exhilarating—I gave an award out on stage at a loud gay discotheque in Guadalajara, Mexico!—but also lonely, and denying. The thing I’ve sort of stylistically held for the end here is that I fell in love this year, and while it’s a new-ish, only nine-month relationship (“We have a baby,” I said to Andrew tonight), it’s still a totalizing thing. It’s impossible to look at all of this—parents moving, cities roiling, islands churning—not through the lens of that. How terrifically grounded I have felt this year, to something good and happy and intimate and huge in its smallness. This is the first time I’ve really written about him—a scientist, a smiler, a kind and gentle person who calms me and encourages me—and it feels a little scary to type it out. But there he is, suddenly a center. 

When I was home over the 4th, my mom told my sister and me a story about our cousin, the one whose kid got married at the country club. I guess when this cousin was little, a toddler maybe, she would often say, “I need something.” Just that. That quiet little unspecific thing. “I need something,” she’d say in a small voice, tugging at pant legs and looking up at the adults hoping they’d understand and satisfy whatever it was she was asking for. I’ve thought about that a lot since my mom told us about it, there in the backyard I’ll never see again. I need something. I need something! I NEED SOMETHING! 

Of course we all do. Need something. Need so many things. I get corny, thinking about it. I want to say what a mad and blissful and terrible adventure it is, to go chasing after that need. It is. But, again, that’s hokey. So I guess I’ll just end this ramble with a little moment, from Fire Island. I went to bed early one night, and was half asleep when some of the boys of tea came home. I heard them rumbling around upstairs in the living room, muffled laughter and bottles opening. It reminded me of being a kid in the house I grew up in, that will now be lived in by a nice family from Framingham who wrote a heartening letter to my parents about how much they loved the house. That feeling of life happening just beyond the light under the door. And maybe it is. But in that room on Fire Island that night, there was also the beautiful dark, also the hum of the air conditioner, the whine of the mosquito, and there was me, breathing and blinking and alive. That was so much, too. 

[alwayssunnyprompts]

Hi! I was thinking about how there are any fics about present day Mac and Dennis going camping together! Mac and Dennis decide to go camping just the two of them, the night is surprisingly going well, when a thunderstorm hits them. Take it away!

God it’s been awhile, but this prompt is finally filled! Thank you, @carkid-a! It was challenging to write, and I loved every second of it. Set during S8. Mac is hopelessly in love, and Dennis is Dennis, with a side of hurt/comfort. Enjoy!

“Are you sure this is agood idea?” 

“Mac, shut up, okay?This is gonna be great. You know, it’s good to get away from the city–thenoise, the pollution, all the jackasses who think they’re the center of theuniverse.”

"Dennis, have you everactually been camping?” 

"Listen, you eitherhave the camping spirit or you don’t. And, baby, I have it. You don’t needcamping experience to know that. It comes naturally.” 

Mac absently wonders whenthe skills will show up. 

They’re standing in aclearing in the middle of the woods. It’s just off the path that leads to thecampgrounds, far enough that Dennis can pretend they’re actually in the"wilderness,” but close enough that Mac is confident they can getback to civilization if something goes wrong.  

Not that he thinks somethingwill go wrong. 

 It’s more the fact thattheir track record as far as trips go is…spotty, at best. Their attempt at aroad trip was hilarious as it was sad, and Mac was still angry over the incidentin the woods. He supposes they just weren’t built for this sort of life, butDennis seems obsessed with proving that they can do it. That he can doit. He doesn’t include Mac in the equation often, and Mac is painfully aware.He just can’t understand why Dennis pushes him away. He’s tried everything toget through to him, but he’s always ended up heartbroken. He hopes that thistime will be different. That maybe if they break their streak of shitty“vacations,” they can break their streak of shittycommunication. 

 He takes a step and narrowlymisses a tree branch that would have probably taken his eye out. His headclears. It’s probably all just wishful thinking. It always is. He pushes thethoughts down as best he can. His heart only sinks a little; he’s gettingbetter at this. 

Dennis is walking around themakeshift perimeter of their campsite, looking quizzically at the ground, thetrees, the tent, back at the trees–it makes Mac anxious. 

“Jesus, Dennis, willyou stop pacing? It’s driving me crazy.” 

Dennis’s head perks up andhe pauses, placing his hands on his hips defiantly.

"I’m sorry Mac, did younot want our camp to be expertly optimized for any situation?”

Mac fights the urge to rollhis eyes so hard it’s almost painful.  

"Dennis, it’s gettinglate and you haven’t even set up the tent yet.”

"Mac, baby, this shittakes time. Cool down and let the master do his work.” He smirks andresumes his unproductive pattern. 

“Come on, dude, itlooks like it might rain. I’m serious.”

"Oh, Christ. If you’reso serious, why don’t you make yourself useful instead of just standing aroundfor me to wait on you hand and foot.”  

Mac feels quiet angerboiling in his blood.

"Okay.” 

Two hours later, Mac has setup ninety percent of their gear. The small camp stove, the fire pit, the food.The tent was a work-in-progress, mostly because Dennis insisted on doing ithimself. Mac is subtly assisting, handing him a rod here and there, making aquiet recommendation every so often. The key was to make Dennis think he wasdoing it on his own. 

"Done!” He clapshis hands together like he’s just completed some magnificent work of art. 

Mac narrows his eyes. 

“Dennis don’t you thinkit’s a little small?" 

Dennis deflates, glances atthe tent and back at Mac. 

"Why do you saythat?”

“It’s just that it’snot quite as…roomy as I thought it would be.”

“I mean, sleeping inclose quarters is part of the camping experience, Mac…it’s the closeness tonature that really–ah, shit, I can’t do this. I’ve had it since we were inmiddle school. It, uh…seemed a lot bigger then." 

His eyes dart back and forthand patches of red grow on his cheeks. Mac feels the situation spiraling. 

"Well, you’re thecamping expert, Dennis. Besides, I’m sure it’ll work out fine. It’s supposed tobe cold anyway, you know, sharing body heat wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, itseems like your insight was pretty good.” He smiles.  

He watches as Dennis slowlycollects himself. There’s a split-second smile of gratitude before he plasterson the smug look from earlier. 

“Of course, it was.” 

The evening passes them by,blessedly uneventful. 

They eat shitty canned “camping food” that Dennisinsisted on buying—Mac wonders why they couldn’t have just bought normal food. Theyroast marshmallows and get the melted mess all over their hands. Dennis seemsdisgusted by the texture and artificial sweetness, but part of Mac enjoyswatching him lick it off his fingers. 

When their eyes meet, though, he can’t helpbut smile, and illuminated by the fire, the expression on Dennis’s face looksheavenly.

Mac forgets all of his reservationsthe instant he smiles. 

Sometimes he hates the holdthat Dennis has over him. Sometimes he feels trapped in a one-sidedrelationship. But in the golden glow of the fire and under the deepening nightsky, he feels whole. He could stay in this moment forever.

Dennis says something aboutheading to bed, and Mac thinks to protest. But he’s still completely enthralledwith the beauty of those few seconds, so he nods absently and lets Dennis leadhim into the tent. Their sleeping bags are touching, barely separated by thesliver of plastic tent-floor between them.

He lies down next to Dennisand closes his eyes. 

An explosion of thunderjolts him awake. 

He feels a swell of panic inhis chest as the regret starts to set in. This was a mistake, a huge mistake.All of their stuff is outside. He should have never let Dennis talk him intothis stupid trip, let his feelings, his longing for a weekend alone with him,blind him to how stupid the idea really was. Neither of them were prepared forthis. 

The sleeping bag is cold andscratchy and the earth below them is solid and rough. He can feel theunevenness under his back and desperately tries to position himself in a waythat won’t wreak too much havoc on his spine. The discomfort leads to a wave ofsadness washing over him. He shivers, wrapping his arms around himself. How canhe feel so alone with Dennis right beside him? They’re sleeping next to eachother, like he’s always wanted (where did that come from?) yet the inch or twobetween their backs feels like miles, and he’s suddenly so lost in his headthat he starts to panic.

They’re in the middle ofnowhere. Mac is in the middle of nowhere. And he can’t escape because there’snowhere to run and he can’t withdraw because there’s nowhere to hide. He’strapped out in the open. He feels naked and suffocated and terrified. He canfeel his limbs trembling, and a tiny cry escapes his throat. Shit. He can’tcry. Not now. Not with Dennis– the thought is overwhelming. He tries to kickthe sleeping bag off but it’s too tight, he feels like he’s wrapped in clingfilm and he can’t breathe and everything is happening all at once. His visiondarkens and he realizes that he’s hyperventilating. 

The rain starts poundingagainst the tent and his heart is pounding and everything is pounding and heneeds to feel grounded or he’s going to disappear. He can’t wake Dennis becausehe can’t move, he’s locked in his body, and his brain is trying so hard tobreak through but it can’t, he’s not strong enough, he can't—  

“Mac?”

The voice is gentle andsleepy, slightly confused, but alert. The storm must have woken him up. 

Mac feels a sickening mix ofadrenaline and relief. His head spins and he feels like he’s going to be sick.How is he going to explain this?

He still can’t move. Theonly noises he’s capable of making through the shallow breaths are tiny andpathetic. His hands grasp convulsively at the sleeping bag. He tries to openhis eyes but he’s screwed them shut.

"Mac?” He whispersagain, a little more urgently. “Hey…" 

 Softness colors his tone andhe lays a hesitant hand on the small of Mac’s back. He must be able to feel thetrembling now, if he could before. Mac feels pathetic, but he can’t stop. 

"What is it? Thestorm?”

His hand is moving, strokingup and down his back so gently and so carefully that Mac wants to scream. Whatis it? 

He’s gasping, tryingto get words to come out, but he doesn’t even know what he wants to say. Hecan’t tell the truth. He can’t. He doesn’t even know what the truth is? Is hescared of the storm? Scared of being alone? Scared of Dennis? 

But he’s so far gone andit’s so dark and the storm is so loud. The rain won’t stop, each clap ofthunder sends a spike of adrenaline through his body. He tries to focus onDennis. Just Dennis and his hand and his raspy voice. The idea that Dennisknows something is wrong. Knows him. He wants to be known. He needs to be. 

"Shit,” Dennismurmurs. He moves closer to Mac, lies right up against him and keeps strokinghis back. 

His voice barely registers.The contact is overwhelming. 

“Den,” Mac chokesout. It barely sounds like a word.  

 "There you are. Comeon back. You can do it,“ he coaxes. Any attitude from earlier isgone. 

"I’m here. You’re here.In this tiny, shitty tent. In the middle of the woods. It’s probably 3 am. Iknow you feel terrible, but I’m here, and nothing is going to happen toyou.”  

He lets himself focus on Dennis’svoice, try to climb his way out of the hole he’s fallen into. 

He blinks and the worldcomes into focus. The dim glow from the night lamp in the corner of the tent,knocked over and hidden behind a blanket. The plastic of the floor, the coldair. Dennis’s warmth behind him, hands touching him protectively.  

His head feels like it’sfilled with static. He dissolves into tears, gasping and gulping throughguttural cries. He can feel himself coming back, and he hurts. His muscles areaching horribly, tense and immobile, his eyes and jaw are sore from clenching,he can’t quite feel his hands yet. The sobbing tears through him, exhaustingand uncontrollable. 

"The worst part isover, I promise,” Dennis sighs and gathers him in his arms.“Shh,” he rocks Mac for a couple seconds, “You’re okay.” 

"Den-,” hewhispers. Why is it so hard to say his name? 

 “Yeah, I’m here.” 

 "You’re here,“ heechoes quietly. 

Dennis squeezes him tightfor a second, letting his head droop against Mac’s neck as he holds him. Hisbreath is even and warm.