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“So how’s the real world been, huh? While I’ve been gone?”
Mickey is laying facing Ian so he has nowhere else to look but into the blue of his eyes while they talk. Ian has an arm lazily thrown over him, fingers playing with the hair peeking out under his beanie. Mickey’s hands are tight against his own chest, not reaching out, but tapping on the floor like he’s been wanting to this whole time. Ian has half a mind to take his hands in his and make the decision for him.
“...I dunno,” he says, lamely. “What do you wanna know?”
Mickey finally decides on toying with the buttons on Ian’s shirt. Everytime his fingertips graze his skin, Ian’s eyesight goes soft and pink and hazy around the edges. If they hadn’t just finished for the third time that night, maybe it would’ve turned him on.
“I-” Mickey shakes his head, mouth slightly open, eyebrows raised on his head. Ian can see every scar on his skin as he flounders for an answer, can trace every fold as they crease on his face. Eventually, he lands on one. “Has someone killed Sammi, yet?”
Ian laughs, and it comes out lighter than he thought it would. “No, Mick. She should still be in prison. Hasn’t bothered us.”
“Thank fuck,” Mickey nods. “She was a bitch.”
“You should be a poet,” Ian smiles. He goes back into his memory, tries to remember where Mickey fit in time. “Remember how Carl was goin’ to juvie?”
“Yeah, man. I ironed his fucking shirts.”
“You did not.”
“Yes, I fucking did. You were asleep.”
“No, you didn’t. But whatever, he’s in military school, now.”
“What?” Mickey’s hand stills where it had migrated to Ian’s side, playing with the fabric of his shirt. His eyebrows furrow. Ian marvels at how, two years later, he can still predict where his emotions will fit on his face before they even get the chance to settle. “What the fuck?”
“I can’t even explain it. He got outta juvie actin’ like a thug. It was so weird. And he was wrapped up in some drug shit.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, but he straightened out.”
“Thank fucking God. But, military school? Wasn’t that your thing, Gallagher?”
Ian lets go of Mickey’s hair. Mickey must notice his distress, and Ian marvels at that, too. At how the distance between them should be two years long, but it’s short enough that he can feel Mickey’s breath on his nose, instead. That they can still read each other like it’s easy.
“I mean, don’t beat yourself up over it, or nothin’.” Mickey strokes up and down Ian’s arm with his fingertips, lazily, or maybe he’s just sleepy. “You’re doin’ good for yourself anyway, ain’t you? Fuckin’ EMT, Ian.”
Smiling, Ian repositions himself so his chest is on the floor, and grabs Mickey’s wrist. Mickey stays on his side, watching him.
“Yeah, I’m an EMT. It’s fucking...” he hums into the blanket. “Awesome.”
Mickey huffs. “How’d that happen, anyway? Ain’t you a crazyhead?”
It doesn’t hurt, coming from him. Not even remotely. “I got fucking perfect on all the exams. I was irresistable.”
He doesn’t answer. For a minute, all Ian can hear is the sound of their breaths mixing together between them and the sounds of the night outside the van where the windows are cracked open just enough to let the air in. Traffic and people and the buzzing of neon. Then, “so, you figured out your meds, huh?”
Guilt settles in Ian’s gut, dense and heavy, waking him up. He props his head on his elbow so he can meet Mickey’s eyes. His beautiful, blue eyes.
“I’ve been taking them the whole time,” Ian says, and Mickey’s face doesn’t change. He was confirming something he already knew. “I’m sorry.”
Mickey scowls, voice low. “Don’t give me that shit, Gallagher. You don’t got shit to be sorry for.”
“Mick...”
“Shut up. Trust me, I’ve had fucking forever to think about it,” he says. Ian imagines it: Mickey, alone in a prison cell, reliving the fight on the porch for hours. “I’m not mad at you.”
“It was shitty.”
“Sure. I haven’t exactly been a saint, either, Ian. Now we’re just even.”
Ian has something to say, about how it’s not about keeping track, or how this is different altogether, or how he thinks he might actually be a saint after all. Then Mickey adds, “you’re here now, anyway,” and Ian loses his voice.
Mickey doesn’t seem to mind. He shifts closer to him, looping an arm through his and around his back. Kisses Ian’s collarbone.
“So,” he coaxes, “how’s Lip doin’ in college?” and Ian knows he must really want to hear his voice if he’s willing to bring Lip up to do it.
“Shit, Mickey. He got kicked out.”
Mickey grins against the dip of his shoulder. “Is it fucked to say I saw it coming?”
Ian can’t truly get angry, not with Mickey’s nose in his neck and their limbs so inertwined he doesn’t know where he ends and Mickey begins, but he gets real close. “Yeah, asshole. He had to go to AA.”
“Oh,” he mumbles, and to his credit, he does sound apologetic. “Didn’t know. He okay?”
“Better, I think,” Ian nods, already back to feeling like he was doused in honey. “But.. I dunno. Some shit went down with his girlfriend, but it was always kinda fucked up... somethin’ about her kid, and the kid’s dad bein’ an addict...” Ian’s eyelids flutter without his permission. “Plus, it’s weird with Debs goin’ out with her brother, but it’s only to have someone take care of her baby, I think. Which, I dunno how that works, ‘cuz he-”
“Stop. Her fucking what?”
“Oh,” Ian smiles, slowly wills his eyes open. “Her baby. My niece. Franny.”
“Debbie got knocked up? By fucking who?”
Ian thinks, if he squints, he sees worry in between Mickey’s brows. He smooths it out with a kiss. “Old boyfriend. Ran the fuck out on ‘em once she told him, though. Fucked up.”
“Fucking pussy,” Mickey agrees. “She okay, though?”
“Fine. But Fiona was pissed.”
Mickey snorts. “Fucking Fiona.” Then, “niece, huh?”
“Debs doesn’t let anyone near her,” Ian whines. “But she’s so cute. I wish you could see her.”
If he wasn’t so sticky with sleep, he wouldn’t have said that. But he is, and he did. Mickey freezes and pulls away, though when Ian peels an eye open- he hadn’t even noticed they’d closed again- he doesn’t look upset, so he doesn’t feel nervous about it. Just a little curious to see where the conversation turns. Maybe he sort of wishes the silence will stretch on long enough to let his eyelids fall for good.
Before that could happen, Mickey asks the question: “Heard from Svet?”
And even intoxicated with sleep, Ian can read all the subtext.
“Yeah, Mick,” he smiles. He traces Mickey’s cheek with his fingertips. “She and Yev are doin’ real good.”
“Haven’t heard from her since she fuckin’ divorced me,” he mutters, sounding a little sad. It’s nothing like Ian expected.
“She’s workin’ at the Alibi. She’s doin’ a polyamorous thing with Kev and V.”
“A what thing?”
“A threesome, Mick.”
“What, for real?”
“Yeah. Like, a romantic one,” Ian shifts closer, and Mickey gets the message, settling back into him. “They’re all a couple. A throuple.”
“That’s fucked up,” Mickey laughs. Ian knows he’s not too serious about it, so he lets the comment slide. That, and he doesn’t wanna interrupt the hand going up and down his back. He lets out a little sigh and hugs him impossibly closer.
“It’s good for them. They take care of each other’s kids, you know? Yev has friends his age.”
“That kid’s never gonna be fucking normal. Why’s he always gotta have three parents?”
Ian can’t help the drunken smile he presses into Mickey’s temple. He can’t even answer. Three parents, including Ian. It’s all he ever wanted, even if it’s too late, now, to do anything about it. He’ll realize that in the morning. Right now, he closes his eyes and resolves to visit Yevgeny more often when all this is over.
“Keep talkin’, Ian,” Mickey slurs, as if he wasn’t two blinks away from sleep himself. Ian just huffs, says, “there isn’t anything else,” even though there definitely is. “Tell me about prison.”
Mickey sighs, rubs at his eye as best he can with his arms trapped somewhere around, under, beside Ian. He can’t tell exactly where he is anymore. “You don’t wanna know about prison, man.”
Ian tries to tell him he does, but it comes out like a hum.
“Same shit everyday,” Mickey says. “Fuckin’ boring.”
“Gotta be somethin’.”
“I guess the sex was pretty good.”
Ian musters up all the energy he has left in his body to slap Mickey’s side. It comes out more like a tap. “Asshole.”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one gettin’ a boyfriend ‘n shit,” he jokes, but maybe it doesn’t really sound like one. Ian doesn’t have the brain capacity left to explain himself, or to even begin to sift through how he feels about any of it, so he just holds him tighter.
Then Mickey finally, finally turns in Ian’s arms so his back is pressed flush against his chest, and Ian forgets everything. He presses his lips to the back of his head and mutters “I fuckin’ love you,” into his hair. He doesn’t even think Mickey hears it, with the way his tongue clumsily drops the syllables before they make it out of his mouth. He doesn’t get to find out before sleep washes over him.