Dale never learned how to whistle. Not in the way you’re supposed to, anyway. He remembers, vividly, that day in sixth grade—seventh?—when Dale figured out how to make the most annoying high-pitched noise in the world by forcing air through the gap in his front teeth. It’d been worth it, though, to see the grin that had split his face and the glimmer that had brightened his eyes. The way he’d looked back at him and exclaimed, “Oh my god, Chip, did you hear that?!” and took him by the shoulders, the warmth of his hands bleeding through his shirt. Nothing Dale hadn’t done before, but there’d been a bubbling sort of lightness in Chip’s chest that had rattled him to his core. Things had changed for him in that instant—but by the time Chip was able to put it into words, it was already too late.
Anyway, Dale apparently still whistles like that—and the sound he makes is, indeed, still annoying. It pierces Chip’s sensitive ears as they walk in, the shrill noise going on for much longer than necessary, and when it’s finally over he can still hear it ringing in his head. A very Dale sort of thing, now that he thinks about it.
“Nice place!” Dale’s saying over the clatter of Chip’s keys hitting the counter. “Guess insurance is a pretty good game, huh?”
“I mean, I didn’t sell my soul for fun,” Chip says. He shrugs off his jacket and sets it over the back of his couch, and when he turns he sees Dale looking at him with an unusually contemplative expression. “What?”
Dale blinks, like he’s leaving a trance, and grins. “Uh. I actually don’t know?” he says. “I guess, like… it makes sense. You were always the practical one. It’s… it’s nice. Having that back.”
Chip swallows down some horrifying, awful, vulnerable emotion and grins back. “Okay,” he says, “then what would you sell your soul for?”
“Do you want the real answer or the sappy answer?”
“Oh, god. Okay. Hit me with the sap.”
Dale’s smile softens, which does all sorts of things to Chip’s insides, and then he steps forward and places a gentle hand on Chip’s shoulder. “I already have it, man,” he says. “I already have it.”
“God—Jesus!” Chip shoves Dale’s hand away and—thank god—laughs. “That was so cheesy I could taste the grease.”
Dale laughs, too, and it’s just like his whistling—overly loud, overly long, a little annoying, and completely perfect for him. “That’s actually my real answer.”
“What, cheese?”
“Nah.”
“Grease?”
Dale’s grin becomes a smirk as he leans against the couch, and he says, with the utmost confidence: “Unlimited pizza.”
It’s such a stupid answer—and it’s such perfect comedy. It shocks a ridiculous guffaw out of Chip and sends him into a confusion of time—he sees themselves back on the Rescue Rangers set cracking jokes between takes. During long, hazy nights perfecting punchlines for episodes that would never see the light of day. Passing notes in class, even rows apart, and desperately trying not to laugh aloud. Trading the dumbest jokes on the playground to see who’d break first. The fact that they still click, and so seamlessly after all this time, is almost impossible to fully comprehend; it bubbles up as too many emotions, clogs his throat, and turns his laughter into a terrible coughing fit.
“Whoa—Chip! Are you okay?” Dale asks. He’s immediately at Chip’s side, which makes another rush of emotion hit his already beleaguered respiratory system. “Oh my god! Chip!”
“I’m—fine! I’m just”—he registers, vaguely, Dale’s hand on his shoulder—“oh, god—”
He hears his savior whine a couple rooms away—Millie, her tag jingling as she clips into the foyer. He also hears Dale shout in surprise when she appears, but that’s less important.
“Aww—” Chip starts to coo, pauses to force out the last of his coughing, and pushes through the lingering scratch in his throat. “Aww, hey, girl. I’m sorry, did we wake you up? Were you having a nice dream about bones or something?”
Millie butts her nose against Chip’s and lets out another whine.
“All right, all right,” he says with a laugh. He scratches under her chin, finally placating her. “I’m sure it was a good dream anyway.”
“… Is this…?” he hears Dale say, and he’s not gonna lie—he was half-hoping that Dale would’ve somehow disappeared in the last few seconds and let this one-sided moment die mercifully. But, no. When has he ever been so lucky?
When Chip looks to flash an amicable grin, he sees Dale glancing back and forth between them, his eyes narrowed in thought. A bad sign. “Dale, this is Millie,” he says anyway. “And Millie, this is Dale! That one guy I told you about.” ( What he told her, no one needs to know.)
“Aww, you told her about me?” Dale holds out a hand, suspiciously like he’s expecting a handshake, and squeals in surprise and delight when Millie sniffs it and gives it a gentle chomp. “Nice to meet you, too! But, uh—wow. Chip. She, uh… she literally is a dog, huh?”
Chip rolls his eyes hard . “Yeah, Dale, she’s literally a dog. Like I said she was.”
“Yeah, but—she’s not even a bipedal dog, or a talking dog, or even a Pluto or anything. Like, this seems…” Dale’s grin tightens as he thinks—another bad sign. “… Unethical?”
Chip blinks. “What? Wait—oh, my god. Dale .” He huffs a sigh. “Dale, she’s not my girlfriend , she’s my pet .”
“Whoa!” Dale takes a dramatic step back, his hands going up in a I’m-not-even-gonna-touch-that gesture. “Okay, Chip, you know I’m, like, the last guy to kinkshame, but that’s a pretty dehumanizing way to talk about your partner.”
“No! Dale! She’s literally a pet! I got her at a PetSmart! I paid an adoption fee! And why would I even have a girlfriend, Dale?! I’m gay as hell!”
He doesn’t realize he says it until he sees Dale’s expression change. “Wait,” Dale says after a moment. “You are?”
Well, he thinks, there’s no backing out now. And if Dale has a problem with that of all things? After all this time? Then so be it.
“Uh, yeah,” Chip replies, a little snappier than he’d intended. “Obviously. But of course you never got it.”
“What? Wait—Chip,” Dale says, furrowing his brow. “Are you saying that I’m dumb or straight?”
“Pick one.”
“Okay, well, one—my being dumb has never once stopped me and you know that. And two—do you really think I’m straight? Like, at all?”
Chip stares at him. “… What?”
“Oh, no. Chip. Chipper. My guy,” Dale says, his grin wide with unreleased laughter. “I’m, like. Super bi, dude.”
Chip keeps staring at him. “… You are? ”
“Uh, yeah,” Dale says, grin widening further still. “Obviously.”
Chip snorts, hopefully loud enough to cover up all the questions swirling through his mind. There are suddenly so many little moments he’ll have to reevaluate when he has the chance—looks he’s never been able to decipher, jokes about how good he looked in costume, hugs he’s always felt like went on a little longer than they needed to. “Shut up, how was I supposed to know?”
“What, you really didn’t notice anything?”
Well— apparently he did. But nothing he’s willing to say. Not yet.
“You know what?” he says instead. “Let’s actually watch that movie. You know, the thing you’re here for?”
“Sure, Chip. Sureeee.”
He gives Chip one of those unreadable looks as he moves to the front of the couch, and Chip, who realizes he has to feed Millie first, thinks about it the entire time he fills her bowl. But of course when he goes back to the couch, Dale’s settled himself comfortably toward the middle, playing with his phone to put together yet another eye-searing Instagram post. Business and avoidance as usual.
“So,” Chip says, picking up the remote and settling next to Dale. “What kind of movie is Morbius, exactly?”
“Oh, it’s not a movie,” Dale says, flashing him a dazzling smile. “It’s an experience.”
It’s strange. Being here with him again, sitting next to him—watching movies with him like time hadn’t passed at all. And when Millie finishes her food and joins them, her head resting next to Dale’s on the backrest, it’s enough to give him whiplash. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. They’re still the same chipmunks they’d been when Chip left, when Dale figured out a way to whistle, when they first met, but they aren’t—they have years between them now, experiences and time they never shared. A worse version of him would be resentful—toward Dale, toward life, toward himself most of all—but he thinks he’s grown enough to see this as an opportunity. They have a second chance. Time to learn about each other, who they’ve become. And, if the way Dale’s leaning against him says anything, a new angle in their relationship to consider.
But until then, they have this moment. And he has no intention of wasting it.