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“Still can’t believe this shit,” Mickey mutters late that night, as they lay together on the too-narrow bottom bunk.
“Believe what?” Ian asks, too preoccupied with tracing fingers over Mickey’s chest to really care.
“I come in here expecting a fucking firecrotch,” Mickey jokes, “and you’ve gone and hidden the ginger for the first time in your life?”
Ian shrugs, shoulders barely moving against the mattress. Mickey gets a hand up into his hair, and he lets him.
“Almost turned right back around,” Mickey says, softer, letting Ian’s close-cropped curls slide through his fingers. “Told ‘em they gave me the wrong cell, took back my cooperation.”
Ian chuckles, and smiles. Still can’t quite believe that Mickey is there, that Mickey turned himself in, that after all of his bad decisions he ended up with a reward.
“Had to do something,” he says, eyes slipping closed to the rhythmic motion of Mickey hand on his head. “Was gonna run, you know,” he adds. “Maybe join you down in Mexico.”
Mickey laughs.
“You’d never have made it past the state border,” he says. “Black hair or not, you’ve never been good at flying under the radar.
Ian disagrees. Thinks he’s done pretty well at it for most of his life. The middle child that fades into the background, the man doing just well enough not to raise brows. Even half out of his mind with mania, he’d made it farther than anyone expected.
He doesn’t bother to argue. It doesn’t matter. What matters is Mickey, and his face close to Ian’s on the pillow, and his hand in Ian’s hair.
"Why black though?” Mickey asks, tugging at dyed strands. “You miss me that much?”
"Hmm?" Ian murmurs, whacking at Mickey's arm before settling his hand there instead.
"Couldn't see me in person," Mickey explains, "so you made it so you'd see me in the mirror?"
Ian opens his eyes. Blinks Mickey into focus, the faint freckles on his nose so close they seem to dance, never quite settling.
“No,” he says honestly, and wonders if he should have lied. But Mickey doesn’t frown, and he doesn’t pull away. He just lies there tangled in Ian, fingers stroking through artificially dark hair.
“I like that, though,” Ian muses, leaning into the touch. His thumb strokes Mickey’s wrist, once, twice, and he doesn’t let go. “A little piece of you on me where everyone can see it.”
And he does like it. Rather a lot, actually. That after years of hiding, and years of being apart, a stranger could look at him and see Mickey.
“What about you?” he has to ask.
It’s Mickey’s turn to hum in question.
“You ever miss me so much you tried to dye your hair red?”
Mickey snorts, the hot air of it blowing against Ian’s face.
“Nah,” he says, “I’d have to bleach it first. Helped Mandy do that once,” he adds with a grimace, “and trust me, it’s not worth it.”
“Not even to feel close to me?” Ian asks.
“Never,” Mickey confesses. “Kind of avoided anything that color for a while, actually.”
Ian feels like he should be upset by that, maybe. That Mickey avoided reminders of him when they were apart. And he must think about it a little too long, let his face show a little too much, because Mickey is cupping his face in his free hand a moment later.
“Not like that,” he assures, and leans in even closer. Their noses brush together, and Ian’s vision is filled with an endless, hazy blue.
“Way back,” Mickey says, “before Mexico, I mean.”
He pauses. Ian waits, content to breathe against his skin.
“Used to look for people that looked like you,” Mickey continues, quiet, soft. “People I could pretend were you, at least for a while.”
Ian can’t see Mickey’s mouth, but he can feel the wryness in his smile.
“Didn’t work out all that well for me, then,” Mickey says with a huff. “So I did a bit of the opposite, this time.”
Ian lets that sink in.
“So you went for people that weren’t anything like me?” he asks a moment later, curious, and Mickey shakes his head as best he can without moving away.
“No,” he says, then hesitates. “I mean, yes, but—”
“It’s okay,” Ian interrupts him. Nuzzles into Mickey’s palm against his cheek, Mickey’s fingers on his scalp. “It’s all okay.”
“Ian…”
“I mean it,” Ian says, and has decided that he does. That his brief moment before, of wondering how he should feel, was just that. Just wondering.
Because he wasn’t upset. He wasn’t put off at all. Mickey had done things, and he had done things, apart and together all their lives. Things that didn’t matter right here, right now, with Mickey in his arms in their tiny shared cell. Things that would never matter again, because neither of them were leaving this time.
“Okay,” Mickey agrees, and tilts his chin to brush lips to Ian’s cheek. “Okay.”
They lay there a moment more. Eyes closing on images of each other, lungs filled with the other’s exhaled breaths.
“Really wasn’t what I meant, though,” Mickey whispers eventually, and Ian tries to tune back in through the haze of sleep and comfort and Mickey.
“Didn’t need any reminders,” Mickey continues, “or any fake shit. Not down there.”
He doesn’t wait for Ian to say anything, to ask. He tells him anyway, like it needs to get out, out into the warm air between them.
“Just needed my memories,” he whispers. “Decided to let myself keep them.”
He kisses Ian’s lips, a gentle brush, there and gone. Gone but close, gone but never leaving.
“Kept a picture, too,” he adds, and that, Ian catches.
“What picture?” Ian asks sleepily, rubbing his cheek into the pillow.
“You’ll see it someday,” Mickey promises.
“How?” Ian asks, not really listening even though he wants to. “You stash it somewhere?”
“You’ll see it when we get out,” Mickey tells him, his voice fading as sleep comes to claim them. “When they give me back the clothes I came in, and I can take it out of my pocket.”
“Okay,” Ian breathes, and sleeps through straight ‘til morning.