Wear Your Memory
One-shot

"Three weeks of planning and all I have to show for it-"

"Was a lousy pinky ring."

It hadn't started out as a pinky ring. Back then, it fit on his ring finger just fine, a touch too big, because he was still too skinny, but passable. Big, clunky, and shiny enough that it would probably get picked up on security cameras, but the strange pattern in the platinum felt as chaotic as he did most days.

He'd been eighteen when he grabbed it, when that whole damn job went sideways and they'd barely made it out without silver bracelets getting slapped on. It had been a last-minute decision as he reached into a smashed display case and grabbed the ring and the near-identical one beside it. A little thinner. A little less gaudy.

Both rings had gotten shut away for years, hidden away in boxes Mick didn't care to look through as they moved between safe houses until he finally put it in a safety deposit box under the name Leo Rory. As he got older, he balked at name, too obvious and too naïve to think that anyone wouldn't make the connection. It didn't matter that no one had—because no one had called him Leo since he was ten and his dad blew away a crew member with wandering hands—but it was an unnecessary risk and one Mick would have mocked him for forever.

The rings floated around the back of his mind, a constant reminder of possibilities and questions that Len could never bring himself to ask. Feelings he didn't fully understand, but the near-addicting experience every time Mick leaned in too close while they were planning. Thoughts he didn't act on until Mick took the step and kissed him while both of them tasted like whiskey and nicotine.

Mick still hummed, satisfied, any time they drove by that motel.

Lisa called them boyfriends, eyes lit up like they were a couple out of one of her Disney movies. They weren't, Len didn't think. Not back then. They had avoided defining anything for years, dancing around the subject and falling into bed or fights—sometimes both—when they skirted too close to it, unwilling to risk ruining something that seemed to be working.

"You mine, Lenny?" Mick asked one night as they lay together, drunk and panting.

Len hummed and rolled closer to kiss him, fingers tangled together like it was supposed to say everything. "Partners."

They never called themselves boyfriends.

Len took the rings out of the safety deposit box when they were twenty-three and he thought they might never get to see Central again. Things were too hot and risks were too high. Self-preservation said they should split up, go in completely separate directions, because a pair was always easier to find than a single person.

They didn't, but they almost did.

They fucked in a dirty motel room and neither wanted to call it the goodbye it felt like. Mick pressing his forehead to Len's shoulder as he held him too tight. Len's chewed nails cutting into Mick's back like he was trying to make sure Mick remembered him later.

Neither of them said a word.

They got dressed too slowly, minutes dragging by and risking arrest every second they lingered, but Len caught Mick's wrist by the door and pulled him back into one last kiss. Lump in his throat. Moisture hiding behind eyes he kept shut tight.

He pressed the thinner of the rings into Mick's palm and meant it as a keepsake.

They left Central City together and it ended up being a promise.

They still fought, Mick's face red and Len's eyes cold as ice as they made shots back and forth. They'd leave, disappear for months until someone came back with presents in place of an apology. Functionally dysfunctional, Lisa said once right before she called them both idiots.

She hadn't been wrong.

They took the road trip to Massachusetts when gay marriage passed in 2004 and there weren't any active warrants for them. They still married under fake names, but the sentiment was the same. Lisa refused to speak to them for a month when she found out they'd done it without her, as if they hadn't already been wearing their rings for close to a decade.

The same rings got put away in lock boxes whenever they were on the outs, stubborn and bitter until they made up again. Fight. Leave. They met other people, fell into bed with strangers, and gave more than a passing shit about the occasional one, but they went back to each other every time.

Then, Mick burned.

It never should have happened. A shipment of combustibles came in a day early and the fire Mick set as a distraction went from manageable to inferno. He tried to get them both out, his arm already broken and head bloody from a fight that had left a guard dead down the hall, but Mick wouldn't move, so enraptured in the flames. Lost to them.

He'd begged, clutched Mick's arm with his good hand and begged.

If he hadn't left, they both would have burned.

They cut Mick's ring off at the hospital, circulation cutting off as fingers swelled in response to the hand that broke when the building fell down around him. The records Len stole when he snuck in said they kept him unconscious for two days, concerned about pain levels after how much of him had burned.

He left a note at the safe house and left, his own ring hidden away in his bag. He told himself he wouldn't wear it again.

It was years before he opened up the worn ring box, heart heavy and feeling like it was the last time he'd slide it on his finger. It didn't fit on his fourth anymore, but he hadn't expected it too. He'd been too skinny when he stole it, but he'd gained and aged and his knuckles had gotten bigger over the years.

Nothing ever stayed the same.

He cleaned it until it shined like it used to and slid it onto the only finger it would fit on. Not a wedding ring, he told himself, not until Mick had a new one on his own finger again.

They never had the time.

He wasn't even sure Mick saw he'd put it back on like some roundabout apology for everything that had happened.

"Someone needs to be present to destroy the Oculus. Mick has elected himself."

He knew he was going to die before his body moved to run back inside. Sara was a step behind him, chasing after him and he didn't ask why. The two of them had floated somewhere complicated, a maybe that may have turned into a something if he and Mick could never restart again.

She deserved better than the half-hearted consolation prize they would have been.

She ran ahead as a guard came around and he stopped, glove between his teeth as he tore it off. The ring glinted up at him, a reminder and a promise he was breaking. He breathed Mick's name like an apology and took it off before he slid the glove back on.

A goodbye.

One last I love you, because he couldn't remember the last time he said the words. Should have said it then, before he slammed the butt of the cold gun into Mick's head. He should have made sure Mick knew.

Sara kissed him, a maybe, an almost, and a goodbye all her own before she took his husband away.

He hoped she'd take care of Mick for him.

The first night, he tried to slide the ring finger. It got stuck at his knuckle and he told himself it was for the best, that seeing it every time he looked down at his hand would do nothing but make him want to turn his heat gun on himself. He put it on a chain instead, some sturdy silver thing he had Gideon whip up for him. Heavy. It stayed cool, like Gideon did it on purpose.

The ring settled against his burns and he rubbed the spot on his finger where his own would have sat if he still had it.

Amaya asked him about it once before he could tuck it away under his clothes. She reached out, curious, but he stepped away from her touch and she let her hand drop. "You're married?"

"Was," he said, voice gruff as he shoved it under his shirt. He could have said more. He could have said it was Len or that he was dead, but the words caught in his throat and he didn't. It was easier to keep it short than try to introduce Amaya to too many modern concepts at once. He was already stumbling through explaining mental illness to her. He wasn't touching gay marriage with a ten foot pole.

"The rest of the team…"

"They don't know. You're not gonna tell 'em." They had their own crap to worry about and he didn't want all of them looking at him like the widower he was.

"That speedster could have killed you, Mick. What then?"

Len's voice stayed in the back of his head, his image at the edges of Mick's vision, and he drank more.

Pretended that part of him hadn't given up the day Len blew himself to pieces.

Pretended he didn't already feel half dead.

He held onto the hallucinations like a lifeline, positive he was finally losing his mind and wishing at the same time they were some hint that Len wasn't gone. They weren't. He probably had snapped.

They made a stop in 1990 and Mick snuck away before they left. He visited his family one last time, only a few months before he'd burn them all alive, and watched from behind a tractor as his siblings ran across the front yard. A younger him sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Len on the front steps, his eyes on the kids while Len's stayed on the notebook in his lap.

"That's the job where I got our rings," Len's voice said behind him, more contemplative than the sarcasm Mick had gotten used to.

Mick knew. Len had told him years ago, but the reminder still made him close his eyes and clutch at it through his shirt. "You're not here."

"I'm always here, Mick. There's a reason you still wear that."

The voice faded the same way the presence at his back did, but he pretended he could feel the touch of Len's lips brushing against his shoulder.

He stood there until his mother called them inside and a different him dragged Len along with them. He pocketed a hairclip he found lying in the grass and tried to remember the song his mom would hum while she braided the girls' hair.

The jewelry store was his last stop, hands shoved in his pockets and a tight smile on his face as the girl behind the counter greeted him. "Can I help you find anything?"

He tapped a finger against the glass, eyes locked on the ring beside Len's. "That one." Another one would replace it before him and Len cased the place in two days. They had the stock out back.

For a minute, he stared at the other ring, fingers twitching and tempted. Wanting. He pulled Len's off instead and handed it over, even though doing it made him feel like he was handing over half his damn heart. "I want that resized too; eight-and-a-half." He couldn't replace it, couldn't lose the sentiment of Len's awful taste in jewelry.

He handed her the balance in cash, a little satisfied when her eyes went wide. "Do the ring today and there's a bonus in there for you."

She got it done. He tipped her way too much, but he leaned across the counter, winked at her, and told her to keep half for herself. Len's ring went back around his neck the second he'd slid it back on the chain and he sighed at the familiar feel of it against his chest.

"What did you do that for? I'm dead," Len said when he walked out of the store. "It's not like I'm going to wear it."

Mick snorted and slid his own ring back on his finger. "Seen a lot of people come back from the dead. You're a stubborn asshole."

"Mick…" Len sighed, heavy and sad, and he looked over at the hallucination. "Be careful. There's stuff coming. I'm…"

Mick blinked and he was gone.

The End