It's not kissing, it isn't. Not unless you count that brief moment when Ian managed to snag Mickey's bottom lip between his teeth and tug slightly before Mickey batted him away and attacked his belt. Admittedly, it's probably the closest their going to get to kissing, but it still doesn't count. He has to have some fucking hope after all that there may be an actual kiss one day. Or at least one where he gets to keep his tongue in his head afterwards.

He chooses to say nothing about what just happened, not straight away anyway. Because he knows Mickey, he knows that he'll just bolt. So Ian doesn't say a word, he just pushes Mickey against his shut bedroom door, thanking whatever Gods are up there that the house is empty right at that time.

Mickey makes a low sort of keening sound in the back of his throat that if Ian ever commented on he'd just pass off as a side effect of all the cigarettes he smokes; but Ian knows what it really is. He knows it's desperation, pure and simple. He knows because it's exactly the same thing that he feels in his veins every time he gets to touch Mickey like this. Every time he gets to feel pale, hot flesh underneath his palms, he can feel it thrumming through his like a heartbeat.

The thing was, ever since that first time they'd both been on fire and then suddenly they were frozen, frozen in place after Mickey's harshly spat words of 'done is done' and Ian had spent too fucking long wondering how much he'd meant by that. And maybe the short space of time in between Mickey coming out of juvie early and this moment had been their thawing period. Or maybe there had never been a thawing period at all, because it feels like something is different here. It feels like something changed, like maybe they never had to thaw out at all because something happened to make them different all of a sudden.

And it's still just as hot, each touch is still burning and bruising and dancing on that line between love and hate, but it works. It works because Ian's always been so angry at Mickey for everything he says and everything he doesn't say and he's angry for him fucking Angie and not understanding why the fuck Ian could be confused by that. But the thing is, he thinks maybe he was always destined to burn because the anger was burning through him right then and he had never felt more alive in his entire life.

He just wanted time to stop, just so that he could capture whatever it was between them in case it changed again, in case this was the climax and it was never ever going to get better than this again.

The thing is though, that Mickey had never been good at words and maybe neither had Ian, because he'd just always had so many that he'd never known how to get out the ones that he really needed to say. But right then, there was the clear evidence that they didn't need them, because they'd always talked better with their hips anyway. Their words were always at their worst when they came from their mouths, they were always harsh and cutting, never what either probably wanted to say, but their hips, every thrust, every roll said it all, said all that needed to be said for just that moment.

And it was enough for Ian to live with, just living in that moment right then, even if he couldn't freeze it. Because when he sank to his knees and jerked Mickey's boxers down around his knees, swallowing Mickey straight down to the base without any sort of preamble, the noise the ex-con made was the closest thing to perfect that Ian had ever heard. He'd fucked a lot of people, that was just the fact of it, but nobody had ever made noises quite like Mickey; and he didn't even think the older boy realised that he was doing it.

His fingers flexed on Ian's scalp, scrabbling to find some sort of hold in the too-short strands and eventually just setting for gripping brutally as his hips bucked forwards erratically and Ian let Mickey fuck his mouth.

And damn had he missed that taste, the heavy weight of him on his tongue.

"Stop…stop," Mickey barked suddenly, pushing at him with a roughness that Ian hadn't taken personally the first time and never had done since, "You need to get the fuck in me, like yesterday, Firecrotch."

Ian couldn't help but laugh at that in a way that was so much more real than when he'd laughed with any other guy he was fucking. It was a sound that seemed to be torn right out of him as he forced Mickey down onto the bed underneath him, shoving his face down into the comforter on his bed and only just stopping long enough to lube his fingers up before he shoved two fingers straight into Mickey's ass.

Now, he'd fucked Mickey since he'd come out of Juvie, sure, but it never failed to surprise him how tight and so fucking warm the other boy was. It also never failed to turn him on how he could be rougher with Mickey than everyone else, because the ex-con thrived off of it. He lived to feel the burn, pressed back against Ian's fingers and whined desperately as he egged Ian on.

And Mickey was utterly selfish in bed, something that Ian liked even though he couldn't explain it. He liked that it always made it a race between them to get off, because as soon as Mickey was done he was squirming to get out from underneath Ian, ready to leave.

It meant that most of the time Ian had never come so damn hard before in his life than he did when he was in Mickey.

"Get a fucking move on, Gallagher," Mickey snarled out, his knuckles white with the grip he had on the comforter and Ian didn't even think about disobeying him, lubing up and pressing in just seconds later.

He didn't bother with any of that, 'can I move yet' bullshit that he went through with Lloyd or Ralph, he just pushed straight in in one smooth, long slide until his balls slapped against Mickey's ass. And then he started moving, gripping Mickey's hips hard enough to leave marks and snapping his hips forwards with enough force to drive them both up the bed slightly with each thrust until he had to pull Mickey upright and hold his hands flat against the wall as he jack-knifed into him.

Mickey buried his fingers in the spaces in between Ian's and clung on like it was for dear life, pressing back to meet Ian's every thrust and biting into his forearm to try and muffle his moans. "S-shit," Mickey ground out, jerking abruptly and forgetting to try and smother his next cry as Ian bit down hard on the back of Mickey's neck, sucking a mark up to the surface quick while the ex-con was distracted. If he realised Ian had just left a mark he'd be pissed, but then Ian was pretty sure he still didn't have a clue that there was a scar in the perfect formation of Ian's teeth on his left shoulder.

Ian rolled his hips at the same time as he wrapped his arms around Mickey's chest and pulling him back against his chest. His thrusts became slower, albeit deeper and Mickey squirmed half-heartedly in an attempt to get away so he could lean forwards again and make Ian resume their previous pace.

But Ian didn't let him go, just kept him pinned their in place with an arm up across his chest, fingers wound loosely around Mickey's throat to keep him where he wanted him. He caressed his fingers down the pale expanse of Mickey's neck, right where he'd hit him earlier, slamming into him harder just once to distract Mickey from what he was doing.

He ducked his head and nipped at a spot just behind Mickey's ear, relishing in the sound that rattled out of the ex-con. One of Mickey's arms was stretched back behind his head, trying to grip Ian's short hair again and the fingers of the other were still intertwined with Ian's against his chest.

"Tell me," Ian panted into his ear, low and rumbling in that way he knew went straight to Mickey's cock. Mickey had called it his 'fuck voice' once, which was probably the closest Ian was ever going to get to a compliment. And sure enough, at the words Mickey's hips jerked backwards suddenly to meet a roll of Ian's hips.

He didn't reply though, just moaned.

"Tell me, Mick," he said again, "Tell me you were jealous."

He didn't need to see Mickey's reflection to know that the older boy was bearing his teeth at that. "Fuck off, Gallagher!" he growled out in a way that was probably supposed to be threatening but just came out low and strained and exactly how Mickey's voice always was when Ian was fucking him.

"Say it," Ian instructed him, squeezing Mickey's fingers hard and tightening his grip around Mickey's throat as he tried to pull away from the strange embrace, "Say it and I won't fuck him again, promise."

Mickey snarled, "You think I give a shit."

His voice should have been loud in the quiet of the room, but instead it sounded weak to Ian's ears; and probably to Mickey's too. Like he was just trying to keep up pretence or something. "Yeah, Mick," Ian said low, right into Mickey's ear, "Yeah I do."

"Fuck off," Mickey ground out, fingers squeezing Ian's back just as tight, "So what if I didn't want you fucking some grandpa and then giving me some shit." And that sentence just sounded as though it had been punched out of him. "So what."

Ian laughed in Mickey's ear and slid his hand up the ex-con's throat to grab his chin and twist his head so that they were looking at each other. The look in Mickey's eyes was wild and dangerous, but the set of his mouth was oddly determined. "Close enough," Ian breathed out and slammed their mouths together at the same time as he thrust deep and hard into Mickey's ass.

And Mickey came with a scream into his mouth, not really kissing, but not fighting it either, as streaks of white coated both of their forearms and his chest and his ass squeezed and milked Ian's cock for all it was worth.

They tipped forwards haphazardly, Ian still balls deep inside Mickey and making no indication he was planning on moving. He was half-pinning Mickey to the mattress, his torso angled slightly so that he could mash his face into the pillow and not into the back of Mickey's head.

"Fuck you," Mickey breathed out without any real sort of anger, his eyes closed and the side of his face pressed into the pillow beside Ian's, "Just…fuck you, I didn't want to feel any of this shit." And maybe that wasn't an 'I love you', maybe it shouldn't have seemed like an admission of anything at all, but it still made Ian grin wide and unashamedly happy.

But then maybe that was because by now he knew that they were both burning so out of control that it was far too late to stop. It was far too late to want to, because they'd probably go straight up in flames at some point with no turning back, but Mickey was the sort of person Ian would never stop searching for through the smoke. Even if it killed him, because this, this was more worth it than anything else Ian knew.