Danny wishes Mack would smile.
He looks good when he does, when his eyes go half lidded shining like headlights beyond the snow, and his mouth curls up with catlike contentment. He looks...happy.
Danny throws darts at the pockmarked bulletin board on the wall of his apartment. He should get a new picture. The last one fell off three days ago. Danny throws darts at roaches as they scuttle along the baseboard. Danny mostly misses.
Danny stares at a water-stained ceiling and tries to count the dots in the tiles, like the opposite of stars, oreo crumbs floating in milk. He would go to bed, but he's exhausted, and so he lies on the sagging green couch not listening to the drone of syndicated sitcoms, halfway to a dream about the last time he saw Mack smile. He doesn't forget things easily, never has, and he doesn't figure Mack does either, but he guesses (though he's never been good at the guess part, he prefers substantiation) that Mack isn't lying on his couch (which isn't cheap pea-soup curbside green) staring at his ceiling (which might be waterstained, but probably isn't shitty-ass acoustical tile, either). He's dead certain Mack's seen him smile (who hasn't, charming Danny, such a nice boy if he wasn't such a bastard), though if it registers on Mack's radar then fuck him sideways.
Three days ago.
Mack with his shirt unbuttoned, halfway out of it if Danny's an optimist, Mack kisses like communion and drowning, some madly sacrilegious salve. Mack kisses heavy and urgent, fumbling apologies and broken buttons and Danny remembers Mack with lunatic liquor shadows prancing in his eyes sliding just past tipsy with a mind on stealing home. Danny remembers heat, sweat, the offended squalling shriek of his bed when they landed and the tumbled clatter of pained curses spilling from Mack's mouth smelling faintly of something classily alcoholic, like anise or cloves. Lying on top of Mack and laughing just to feel him shiver.