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Ian first mentioned it when they were half asleep.
Mickey wasn’t awake enough to think of anything more than the warmth of Ian’s chest against his back, but he registered the gentle lips trailing soft kisses up his neck. It was just barely reminiscent of the time of manic highs, the time that ended ago, when Ian would wake him up in the middle of the night with wandering hands. This time, however, the words whispered in his ear sounded just as sleepy as Mickey felt.
“You should give me a tattoo.”
Mickey couldn’t help the lazy smile that spread across his face. That was how things were with Ian, how they always seemed to be. Every wall he built up came tumbling down one by one the moment Ian Gallagher poked him in the back with a tire iron. He owed his boyfriend some thanks for that.
In his semi-conscious state, Mickey’s mind drifted back to the early days. The first fight. The first time. Bruises, both from fists and from fucking, and a gun he never actually wanted tossed carelessly onto the bed. Ian trying to kiss him. Over the years he had thought about that moment endlessly, agonized over it, just as he did with every other memory he had of their time together. Missed opportunities, missed chances at love. What if he had let Ian kiss him? Would he have kissed him back?
Where would that kiss have led them then?
The answer to that was lost long ago, in the maze of their journey. Not important now anyway, not when Ian’s lips were tracing the edge of his ear and whispering words of quiet love that Mickey was too sleepy to process. He heard his name once, then twice. That pulled him out of his daze just enough to grunt an incoherent reply.
“You should give me a tattoo,” Ian repeated, punctuating the sentence with a kiss to Mickey’s temple before moving his lips again.
“Ian, ’s two in th’fuckin’ mornin’,” Mickey slurred, eyes still closed.
“Not now, I meant later,” Ian whispered and Mickey could feel the smile against his neck. “What do you think?”
“I think ’s two in the fucking morning,” Mickey replied sleepily, with growing annoyance toward his noisy bedmate.
Then Ian was fucking pouting against his back and Mickey couldn’t find it in him to be annoyed. It wasn’t the pout of real anger, not the jutted chin and angry silence, but the fake, playful sulk, where he stuck his lip out and made a ridiculous whining sound to show his displeasure. Sometimes Mickey wondered if he was dating an actual puppy. Ian’s goofiness was part of his charm, so different to Mickey’s own personality. It always had been.
“Sure,” he finally muttered, just loud enough for Ian to hear.
By the time Ian’s lips had curved back up into a smile, Mickey was already asleep.
It wasn’t until he was draining the last of his coffee, dark and bitter, the next morning, that the tattoo came up again. Breakfast had been eaten, pills had been taken, and Ian lay draped across the couch with his fiery head in Mickey’s lap. Mickey set his coffee down and saw two sea green eyes staring up at him.
“I’m thinking a compass,” Ian told him thoughtfully, as if it was a decision he had been agonizing over.
“What?” Mickey replied, cocking his head.
Ian frowned, “Is that a bad idea? I thought it would be nice.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” Mickey asked, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion.
“My tattoo,” Ian said, as if it should be obvious. “You agreed to give me a tattoo last night, remember?”
No, actually, Mickey had no clue what Ian was talking about. He searched his foggy brain, vaguely remembering a mumbled conversation in the stillness of the dawn and warmth of their tangled limbs, but that was it. He hummed and ran his fingers through Ian’s messy hair. The natural waves were shorter than they used to be thanks to ROTC, but Mickey didn’t mind. He scratched his nails lightly over Ian’s scalp and played with the rebellious strands of red sticking up at the top of his head.
“Does that mean you’re going to do it?” Ian asked hopefully after a moment of silence.
“Said I would, didn’t I?” Mickey replied blandly, shrugging off the way Ian’s responding grin made his heart swell in his chest. “Why a compass?”
Ian paused, thinking.
“Sometimes,” He said carefully. “when we were lost, it felt like I was following a compass that was trained on you.” He smiled softly. “Guiding me back...home.”
Mickey stifled his instinctive response, which was to scoff dismissively at the emotion in Ian’s words. It was his hardest battle, accepting this love that Ian gave so freely. Instead, he nodded slowly, giving his boyfriend an affectionate eye roll and smiling down at him.
“Where am I putting it?” he asked roughly, clearing his throat..
“I haven’t decided yet,” Ian mused, then raised an eyebrow. “Maybe over my heart?”
Even as Mickey snorted and shook his head, Ian was shaking with laughter. He might resent it when Mickey joked about the things that mattered to him, but even he had to admit that his over-the-top romanticism could be pretty funny, especially in contrast to Mickey’s stoic personality. A compass over his heart was a sweet symbol of their love. It was also fucking corny as hell.
“Too gay?” he asked with a grin.
“Way too fucking gay,” Mickey agreed, laughing. “Might as well get my name in a heart while you’re at it.”
They settled back into companionable silence with smiles pulling at their lips. In moments like this, Mickey can’t begin to figure out why the hell he ever fought this. Back in Chicago, things seemed so complicated and overwhelming, but here in Maine, when they’re sitting alone together on their couch in quiet, ordinary happiness, nothing beyond Ian could possibly matter. Mickey continued to play with Ian’s hair while the redhead resumed his train of thought.
“You’re the tattoo artist,” he said finally. “Where should I get it?”
Mickey hummed and looked his boyfriend over, considering the different places he could ink the design. Ian would look fucking hot with a tattoo on his lower back, but he’s more the type to get one on his shoulder. This sort of design wouldn’t necessarily lend well to that, he thought, as he considered the soft curve and ripple of his muscular shoulder. Mickey moved his gaze lower, scanning the freckled skin underneath him. He couldn’t see Ian getting a tattoo on the back of his neck, didn’t really want to put it on his wrist, and most of the other common spots didn’t feel right.
Finally, he smoothed his hand over Ian’s left side. He could reduce Ian to a shrieking, writhing mess of laughter in mere seconds if he dug his fingers in, as he had proven many times before. Instead, he dragged his fingertips over the bumps of Ian’s ribs gently and thinks of the eagle that is already tattooed onto the opposite side. Two dreams, one old and one new, both inked over his rib cage. Ian did love his symbolism.
“Right here,” Mickey said with quiet confidence, patting the spot that his hand is resting over.
Ian beamed up at him, “Perfect. One more thing.”
“Yeah?” Mickey asked.
“I want you to design it yourself.”
A few months after Ian had moved in, Mickey had come home to find a wooden desk sitting in the spare bedroom of their condo.
It was beaten to shit, faded in multiple spots with paint peeling on the left leg, and one of the drawers had been broken, then reassembled at some point in its clearly long and abusive journey. There was still a handwritten price tag on the handle of one of its side drawers and Mickey had scoffed silently as he read that Ian had shelled out fifteen bucks for this junk.
It wasn’t until he set his beaten up sketchpad on the desk that Mickey realized how nice it was to have one. No more days with him spent hunched in two as he worked on design after design for the shop, the muscles in his neck and shoulders cramping so badly he would wince when he straightened. He fucking loved it. He thanked Ian the only way he could think to at the time; he kissed him sweetly and dropped to his knees.
Mickey got home from work most days before Ian was finished, and the day after their conversation about the tattoo was no exception. He entered the condo and went immediately upstairs, slipping into the smaller bedroom and setting his sketchbook on the scratched wood. The lamp sitting in the upper left corner of the desk cast its bright light over the blank page, shadowing it into a soft yellow hue. It was a comforting, familiar sight.
Mickey rested his cheap mechanical pencil on the page and slowly began to sketch a compass. The first was a flowing, ornate design with looping letters and flowers. Next he tried to go with a simpler design. Then another. And another. It never seemed to look quite right, even when he drew a small fleur de lis and three small stars into his fifth design to give it some flair.
The sixth design was as simple as it could get. Two lines, crossed to form a plus, with an arrow extending up just slightly. Then he tried another and drew a small “X”, placing the letters of the compass in their proper places places. Even with a few variations, circles, and extra doodles as ornamentation as extras, none of them seemed right for Ian. Mickey liked simple designs. Ian liked to be a bit showier, but not too showy, and he couldn’t get the balance right no matter how hard he fucking tried.
Ian’s lips pulled Mickey back to reality hours later. His back was stiff, the hand gripping the pencil was aching, and there were at least four pages of compass doodles that just weren’t quite right.
“Take a break,” Ian urged him gently. “Come back to it after dinner if you want to.”
Mickey did. Over the next three days, he filled page after page with hundreds of compasses. Sprawling, looping compasses, simple, blocky compasses made up of just a few lines and circles.
Max watched him doodling for hours, oblivious to the world around him. Finally, she grew tired of his silence, coming over to inspect his work.
“Shit, kid, you got a bit of an obsession with compasses,” she observed sardonically, eyebrows shooting up in surprise.
“No shit,” he replied with a frown, quickly flipping through the pages of designs, before slamming his sketchbook closed. “I just can’t get it right.”
“What’s it for?” she asked curiously.
Mickey didn’t reply, only cast a tired glance her way.
“Fine. You know what insanity is?” Max asked as she pushed the broom toward him. “Doing the same shit over and over, thinking that something’ll fucking change. Go sweep until you’re ready to talk.”
Mickey stayed silent the rest of the day, not saying much to anyone until he arrived in the store the next morning. He could still feel Ian's angry eyes boring into the back of his head. His boyfriend had tried to pull him into bed early the night before, but Mickey had ducked away from his kisses, insisting that he wanted to continue working for a little while longer before getting some sleep. He caught the flicker of hurt in Ian’s eyes, but it was quickly overtaken by concern. Ian was the one that occasionally went into a funk for a few days, not Mickey. The night hadn’t done anything to lessen Ian’s worry. Max gave him the same cautious glance and Mickey sighed.
“He wants me to design a tattoo for him and I can’t get it right,” Mickey explained finally, as he slumped onto the stool behind the counter.
She frowned, “Didn’t take your boy for the picky type.”
“Well, he hasn’t seen them yet, but they aren’t exactly worth showing,” Mickey said sullenly.
Max rolled her eyes and sighed, glancing toward the ceiling. These boys were going to be the death of her. The dumbass in front of her watched warily as she rubbed at her temple.
“You’re never gonna draw something you think is good enough for him, kid. You could draw a fucking masterpiece and it will always seem like shit to you. Trust me, they’re all great. He’s going to love them because you drew them,” Max said in an exasperated tone. “You gotta let him see and decide for himself.”
Her words echoed in his head all day, even as he was tracing and inking designs on strangers. Would Ian actually like them? Were they even worthy of Ian? No, none of them were, but she was right. None of them ever would be. It was with Max’s advice in mind that he sat next to Ian on the couch later that night and silently held out his sketchbook.
The smile that spread across Ian’s face immediately dispelled his fears.
Mickey sat silently, frozen in anticipation as he waited for Ian’s feedback. Ian turned page after compass-filled page, eyes widening, grin stretching, but still...nothing. Each second of silence pushed Mickey closer to pure, unbridled panic that... what? He really didn't know what he was worried about, but he still fucking was.
“This one.”
Mickey’s head jerked up, eyebrows drawing together immediately. Those were not the words he had been expecting. Ian was still smiling up at him, beaming like a fucking ray of sunshine, and his finger was resting on the page.
“They’re all amazing, Mick, but I like this one the best,” Ian said softly.
The compass he was pointing to wasn’t looping and ornate, but it sure as hell wasn’t one of the simplistic ones. The cross was shadowed slightly, giving it the illusion of depth, and had a smaller “X” shape behind it. Cutting through the arms of the compass was a circle with minute squares of black running around the middle of it. Between each arm, on the outside of that circle, was a small triangle pointing outwards. A simple circle, just a single line, bordered the compass; the longer arms falling just slightly outside of it. Mickey had added another circle of small dots around the outside of that on a whim.
“Are you sure?” Mickey asked hesitantly.
“It’s perfect,” Ian insisted, then set the sketchbook aside and reached out to pull Mickey into a kiss.
Weeks later, when Mickey pulled off the bandages covering the fresh ink on Ian’s side and stood by his shoulder, Mickey had to agree.
“Fucking perfect.”