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Mickey shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be standing outside the shop in the middle of the day with his hands in his pockets, pretending to read the ads in the window while strangers walk by. Shouldn’t be opening the door as soon as the coast is clear, slipping inside as the bell announces his presence to everyone anyway.
And yet.
“Yo,” he greets as Ian looks up from his spot by the register. “Linda in?”
Those green eyes are wide, pink lips Mickey swears he’s not looking at already turning up at the corners.
“No,” he answers slowly, leaning back as far as he can without overturning his stool. “She had an appointment.”
He crosses his arms, watches Mickey move around the room. Even when Mickey turns away, that gaze is a brand on the back of his neck.
“What are you doing here?”
Mickey looks back over his shoulder, raises an eyebrow.
“That’s a stupid fuckin’ question.”
Ian bites his lip. Shrugs, broad shoulders stretching out the too-small T-shirt he wears.
“Thought you weren’t working today,” he says. He sounds smug, like he’s won something. And maybe he has, but he doesn’t have to know it.
Mickey looks back at the magazine rack he stopped in front of. Runs a hand over the top of the pages, winces when his thumb catches a sharp corner. He tucks it into his mouth.
“Picked up an extra shift,” he says around the digit, pulling it out again when he stops tasting blood. Wipes it on his pants, turns around. “Need the cash.”
It’s a lie. He doesn’t do this stupid job for cash, and everyone knows it. If he wanted money, he’d rob the place, not stand around watching Ian restock shelves all day.
“Everything okay?”
Well, maybe not everyone knows. Because Ian looks concerned now, brow pinched, eyes soft as he leans forward.
No, Mickey wants to tell him. No, everything is not okay. Something is horribly wrong with him, because he’s walking circles around a tiny corner store and talking circles around what he wants. And what he wants is sitting there behind the counter oblivious, asking dumb questions like he doesn’t know the answer, like he thinks Mickey is some normal guy who has reasons for his actions.
He doesn’t. Not really. He was just sitting at home thinking about the run he had lined up for next week, and then there was suddenly somewhere else he wanted to be.
“Course it is,” he says instead, putting all his contempt for himself in his voice. “Don’t be stupid.”
Ian grins at the vitriol, like the moron that he is. Like Mickey’d said something cute, and not just insulted his intelligence.
And it’s all of a sudden too much, being here, watching him. Doing things he knows he shouldn’t.
Might as well add one more to the list.
“Hey, uh,” he starts, rubbing at his nose. Waits for Ian to meet his eyes, nods to the back with a smirk that feels wrong because it wants to be a smile. “Thought of somethin’ else I need.”
“Need?” Ian repeats, practically fucking glowing, and Mickey snorts.
“Shut up,” he orders, and marches toward the cooler. Stops at the door, looks back. “You comin’ or what?”
Of course he is; of course he does. And two minutes and a locked door later, Mickey is laying flat on the ice chest with Ian’s hands on his hips and his legs in the air, forgetting why this was a bad idea.
There’s a creak from inside the store. Mickey barely hears it over Ian’s gasping breaths. He figures something fell off the shelf; not the first time they’ve broken something with their enthusiasm. He tugs Ian closer by the arm, scrapes his nails down that hard chest just to see it go red, and—
“Hello, boys.”
Oh.
Fuck.
Ian doesn’t understand. Doesn’t get why Mickey’s making such a big deal of it, why he’s scared out of his fucking skull. Why he should have known better than to take what he wanted when what he wanted was enough to get him killed.
Or maybe he does understand, and he just doesn’t care. Because Mickey’s spent an entire day searching high and low for Frank, trying to protect them both, trying to do the only thing he can to keep them safe.
And Ian went and fucking warned him.
“We have nothing to be ashamed of,” Ian tries to tell him, all earnest eyes and soft hands reaching out.
Mickey laughs.
“What fucking world do you live in?” he asks. Because it’s not the same one that haunts him; that’s obvious now. Not the world of drug deals and gun runs and hiding even in plain sight. Not the world of expecting everyone to turn on him, turn him in, if they think he’s going weak. Not the world where he has to play it cool, has to lie and cheat and pretend that he has a better reason for here than the redheaded menace staring back at him with alien eyes.
Not the world where his own father will beat his head in if he so much as suspects that Mickey’s had those eyes memorized for months.
And maybe that’s good. Ian doesn’t belong in that world, anyway. Doesn’t belong in a place that sooner see him dead than see him…
Fuck it. He can say it. Happy.
He’d been fucking happy. Happy to have those hands on him, fucking giddy for the rest. He should have just stayed home, but he’d thought about seeing that face and felt so warm he’d gone for it before he could think.
Happy was such a stupid fucking feeling. He should have stopped at horny and been done with it.
“I’m done,” he makes himself say, heading to the register. “Done,” looking at the back room, full of all his mistakes. “Done,” looking at the boy that got him there, that he’d let himself think he could have.
He should have known better.
He says some more things. Worse things. To really drive it home.
Not to Ian. Ian will never really get it, and its evident from the way his stupid puppy-dog eyes go soft and wet. Like he gets to just feel things, gets to just react, without worrying about the consequences.
It’s not just his looks that are alien, it’s all of him. Alien to the life Mickey lives.
And it should stay that way.
The door opens with that sickening chime. The sound that always greeted him like a welcome, like a sign that he was entering a new world.
Now it says goodbye. Good riddance. You don’t belong here.
He agrees.
He walks away.