So this is for Billie, because it's completely and utterly her fault :) in all the best ways though, don't you think?
"Why the fuck are we even watching this?" Mickey asks, giving Ian a long sideways glance from where he's sitting beside him on the couch. They're close enough to be touching. Close enough that it would be so effortless to just reach other and slide his fingers through Ian's, twine them together.
Of course, he doesn't, but he knows how easy it would be.
Everything seems easy recently, but that's probably just because Terry's in jail and all of Mickey's brothers had fucked off to God knows where. There was only Mandy around, but even then she was always with Lip over at the Gallaghers, so it was almost like Mickey had the house to himself.
He says that, but Ian was over almost all the time recently, so it wasn't like he was actually living alone.
It was like that day, they'd worked together, Mickey striding into work to see Ian smiling at him dopily, eyes shining was too brightly for that early in the morning. They'd fucked twice in the cooler, messed about more than they'd worked given that it had been a quiet day and then they'd both walked back to Mickey's.
Mickey could always remember thinking that he didn't know how anyone could be married or in a relationship, because wouldn't you get sick of seeing that person all the time? Wouldn't it drive you mad for them to always be there? He knows the answer now all lies in whether or not you find that person that's the right one in that they don't make you want to tear your hair our at the roots with every suggestion of, "So do you want to hang out tonight?"
No, instead he found he was the one suggesting shit like that.
And maybe one day Gallagher would get sick of him, move on to greener pastures or some shit; but Mickey would be damned if he wasn't going to enjoy this while it fucking lasted.
Ian rolls his eyes, which are red and glassy and Mickey had almost forgotten that they'd been smoking the good weed he'd had stashed away. He supposes that was probably why he hadn't fought the matter too much when Ian had wanted to watch Toy Story.
Which Gallagher could pretend was just because he was high, but what Mickey's already knows is confirms a second later when Ian huffs out, "Fuck off, I love this film!"
Mickey rolls his eyes and watches as on the screen Buzz tried to fly before just toppling to the ground pathetically.
"Sid makes me think of you," Ian mutters, his thigh rubbing against Mickey's where they were pressed together. He looks over at Mickey and blinks maybe a little stupidly. "Not like, in a bad way though," he says quickly, smiling at Mickey like he thinks maybe he'd offended him or something, "I think he's just… I dunno like, misunderstood."
Mickey snorts at the way Ian whispered the word like it was the biggest secret he'd ever have to share. "Fuck off," he mutters, choosing not to comment on how if Sid was like anyone, he was like Gallagher's sociopath of a younger brother.
They both had that love of setting things on fire. Not that Mickey couldn't admit he'd thought fireworks were fucking awesome when he was a kid too. And maybe he still sort of did, but if he wasn't going to stargaze with Gallagher, he certainly wasn't going to watch fireworks with him either.
"You only like to pretend you're a bad guy," Ian mumbles and Mickey wishes he hadn't let the guy smoke so much, because of course the weed made Gallagher chatty and fucking truthful too. His fingers graze Mickey's leg and Mickey can feel that touch burning straight through the denim of his jeans and he wants to press up into the touch. Except it slides away too quick.
And then suddenly Ian's jumping up and shouting, "Ooh," like he's just had the best idea ever and all Mickey can do is watch as the guy scrambles into Mickey's room and he can hear him rummaging around in there and maybe he should be annoyed or something. Maybe; honestly he can't bring himself to care.
Ian throws himself back down beside Mickey closer than he was before and he grins at Mickey like he hung the fucking moon or something, a black marker pen clutched in his hand. "The fuck you doin' Gallagher?" he asks, because he doesn't understand even though he feels like he maybe should when Gallagher starts pulling the sock off one foot and then off the other one, because obviously only wearing one bothers him or something.
Mickey watches Ian wiggle his toes and he wants to ask what he's doing again, but all he can do is watch as Ian uncaps the pen and twisted his foot up so that it's in his lap. The look of concentration on his face is ridiculous as he starts to write on the bottom of his foot and it takes until he dots the 'i' until it clicks in Mickey's mind what exactly he's doing.
"You're such a fuckin' faggot," Mickey tells him, even though it comes out more fond than anything else and he blames the weed for that all the way.
Mickey says that because he doesn't know how to express the thoughts suddenly rolling around in his head. Because he understands; he understands what this is supposed to mean, what it's supposed to symbolise. Ian writes Mickey's name on the bottom of his foot and Mickey knows that it makes Gallagher his in all the ways neither of them will probably ever say, but in all the only ways that matter.
Ian sticks his tongue out, because he's obviously a complete child and tucks the marker pen under his thigh. Mickey can practically see the retorts and the no doubt affectionate or offended – it really could go either way with Ian – mumbling rolling around behind his eyes, but then Ian's doing nothing more than blinking stupidly and he slumps sideways, falling asleep with his head on Mickey's shoulder.
It was like someone had suddenly cut his strings and Mickey would have been freaked out if he hadn't known from past experience that Ian just switched off eventually when he got high enough. He just went to sleep, hardly any warning or anything.
Mickey rolls his eyes even though it's obvious Ian isn't going to see it, but he shifts a little so that Ian won't wake up with a crick in his neck. Which he didn't do because he cares or because he's getting fucking sappy or anything, it's only because he knew that Gallagher probably wouldn't suck him off as readily if he had something to bitch about.
Mickey has priorities and he doesn't like that he has to keep telling himself sex is the highest one, just below 'self-preservation' and 'Mandy'. He doesn't like that the voice in his head is make it obvious that he believes his own words less and less these days.
It takes longer than he'd like to admit – or maybe long enough that it shows he isn't a complete fag – for him to talk himself into it. Eventually though he does just bite the bullet and he grabs the pen out from under Ian's thigh, careful not to wake him because he doesn't need Gallagher watching him as he does this.
Mickey's at least ninety per cent positive he isn't supposed to bend the way he's just twisted his foot and his handwriting is terrible, the letters coming out shaky, but the name Ian is clear against his pale skin.
His toes feel cold now that they're bare, the sock on the floor beside him.
He props his foot up on the coffee table, just like Gallagher's both were, because if he was going to have done something that fucking stupid, he wasn't going to make it more retarded by smudging the ink. Hell no.
Still, the way he looked at it, if it was on the bottom of his foot, there was no way anyone but him had to know about it.
Right?
Maybe he'd get it tattooed there one day, if this shit lasted, he was drunk enough and if he was feeling particularly fucking gay. It'd hurt like a bitch, but he supposed that Gallagher had always been worth the shitty parts of life, which told Mickey more than anything else probably ever could.
Sometimes Mandy couldn't work out why the hell she still bothered. Sure, it fluctuated between being amazing and being utter hell and sure she supposed maybe she was a little bit in love with Lip Gallagher, but still. Most of the time she just wanted to punch him in the head.
And maybe when it came down to it, it was all about not wanting to let go of something she'd worked for; because even Mandy could see that it wasn't really going to work out in the long run.
Sometimes she just thought love had to be a con for people like her. For Milkovichs. It was all screwed up and backwards and neither her nor any of her brothers had ever really seemed to hold down anything more than a good fuck.
They weren't the sort of people anyone ever fell in love with; and Mandy kind of hated that she'd almost accepted that as her lot in life.
Honestly, all she really wanted was a distraction right then. She wanted to get drunk and blow shit up on the Xbox with Mickey, because her brother was someone she could at least understand. He wasn't too difficult, even though sometimes she suspected there was a lot more to Mickey than he pretended that there was.
He'd practically been living home alone and sometimes when she slipped in to grab a fresh change of clothes or something she'd forgotten, she thought the house smelt like cum and sweat and sex more than it did meth and she'd heard Mickey moaning low the other morning; early enough that whoever it was had to have slept over.
So maybe her brother had finally decided to play his hand at a relationship. She wondered if anyone would be able to find something in Mickey worth loving, because if it was going to be any of her brothers that managed it, it would be Mickey.
He'd always been the best out of them, not that that was saying much.
She didn't expect what she actually came in to find at all.
Mickey and Ian were sitting side by side on the couch, the credits for a movie playing on the TV and casting them in a dim sort of light. Ian's head was on Mickey's shoulder, Mickey's resting on the back of the couch, his mouth open and low snores rumbling out of his chest.
The room stank of weed and she could tell just from the way that they were passed out that it was probably the good stuff that Mickey never seemed at liberty to really share.
She hadn't really seen much of Ian lately and she felt almost guilty about the fact that her best friend had apparently resorted to Mickey for company, but she thought for a moment that maybe they could actually be friends. They worked together after all and she'd seen them willingly watching TV together or playing cards whilst Ian waited for Mandy to shower so that they could go out.
Still, the idea of her brother actually having a friend seemed strange to her.
It made sense it had to be Ian though in a way, because Mickey had always been big on stealing all of Mandy's favourite things when they were kids.
She walked over to the TV, going to switch it off because she didn't have the patience to listen to that damn music all night whilst she tried to go to sleep. It was then that she spotted the DVD case on top of the set and she picked it up, smirking when she found out that they'd apparently been watching Toy Story.
It wasn't that strange for Ian, because she knew it was his favourite film, but the fact he'd gotten Mickey to agree to watch it was strange. Her brother must have been really fucking high, was all she thought.
When she turned around, Ian was snuffling his face into Mickey's shoulder a bit more, twisting his torso slightly and it was almost cute in a really weird way. Weird because it was her brother and her best friend. She knew Ian was gay, of course she did, but she felt like she should probably wake him because if Mickey woke up and found them like that, he'd probably beat the shit out of Ian just on principle.
She'd just taken a half step closer, considering shaking Ian awake when she caught sight of something on the pale skin of the sole of his foot.
Mandy crouched down and frowned, blinking a little stupidly at the letters spelling out Mickey's name on the bottom of her best friend's foot. She looked down at the DVD in her hand, 'Toy Story' and maybe it made sense, because that was one of the main things in the movie, the fact the toys had all had their owner's name written on the bottom of their feet, but why the hell would Ian have written Mickey on the bottom of his?
She could remember writing, "Property of Mandy Milkovich' on his leg once when they'd first started fake dating, because she'd maybe been a little in love with him even then and she'd seen all the girls at school doing that to the guys they were dating. She'd wanted a bit of that too.
Panic bubbled up in her chest when she thought about the possibility of Ian doing something as stupid as falling for her brother. He'd always had messed up taste, but even married men were a better option than one of her brothers. Mickey would kill Ian for it, the word faggot like a bad taste on the back of his tongue.
Mickey was better than all the others, but she didn't expect that much of him.
So she was definitely going to wake Ian up, slap some sense into him and chase him out of there. Make him quit cold turkey, no more Mickey; because falling for Mandy's brother had to be the stupidest idea the redhead had ever had.
Except then she noticed the pen in Mickey's lap and she noticed he only had one sock on, his bare foot braced flat against the floor. Mandy frowned, shuffling closer, because it was impossible, there was no way, but she had to check.
She had to check because Mickey had always been the one that she'd thought she'd known, but suddenly things and memories in her brain were starting to click into place like puzzle pieces she'd lost and then suddenly found tucked away somewhere.
The way Ian didn't mind being around Mickey, but more importantly, the way Mickey never complained at having to spend time with Ian.
The way Mickey would just roll his eyes at her whenever she talked about Ian, the comment he'd made once, "He's not even your fuckin' boyfriend, Mandy, Jesus!" that hadn't made any sense, because how could Mickey had known they weren't really dating.
Mickey asking after Ian probably in the most subtle way possible when she'd been to visit him in Juvie that second time he'd been thrown in. The almost guilty look he'd had on his face when she'd talked about him.
Ian inviting Mickey to the cinema with him.
Mickey sharing the good weed with nobody, but then willingly seeming to give it to Ian.
So many things that hadn't made any sense suddenly seemed like they were starting to as Mandy gently curled her fingers around Mickey's ankle, lifting his foot off the ground. He'd always been a heavy sleeper, something she'd never been gladder of if she was being honest.
And then there they were, three letters inked onto the pale skin of the underside of her brother's foot. Ian's name.
And all Mandy could think was that she hated it, because she obviously didn't understand anything about Mickey after all.