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It’s weird getting old when you never thought you’d live past 25, feeling your bones creaking and popping, your body getting too old for this shit. It’s weird when you look in the mirror and see an old man staring back at you, wrinkled and grey haired. It’s weird when people your age start dying of shit that’s not gunshots or gang warfare but more silent, slow killers like strokes and heart attacks and fucking old age. Mickey gets pissed off every time somebody says somebody else died “of old age,” because old age isn't really what kills you, it’s just what people say so they don’t have to say the hard truth. Iggy died of kidney failure because he couldn’t really afford dialysis anymore and the doctors said he was only gonna get worse anyway. Jamie died of lung cancer because of all the fucking cigs he smoked. Angie Zhago had died a couple years ago of pneumonia, and Ian had weirdly decided they had to go to her funeral because “you fucked her, Mick, that’s a big deal, you should go to the funerals of the people you fuck.” She’d gotten married and popped out a shitload of kids, which Mickey hadn’t known. He’d spent the whole funeral remembering how weirdly shaped her tits were, and imagining the hellish world where Ian didn’t exist and him and Angie would probably have gotten married, and the kids up there would have Milkovich blue eyes.
Mickey thinks a lot now. He’s been alive a long time, 74 years, so there’s so much to think about. He spends entire days sitting on the porch with Ian talking about the ways the world’s changed since they were young, smoking weed and taking turns yelling shit at the kids that walk past their house, reminding each other of funny stories like when the two of them, Sveta, and Nika all took Yev to Disney World and he was so excited he threw up on Minnie Mouse. “We’ve turned into grumpy fucking old men,” Mickey says.
Ian snorts. “Mick, you were always a grumpy old man.”
They’re lying in bed one day, curled up together, when Ian says “tell me a story, Mickey.” It’s warm and Ian’s hair — which is only barely red anymore, under all the grey — is rubbing up against Mickey’s face and tickling him. He’s the little spoon, for once, and Mickey’s arms are wrapped around his chest.
“You’re 73 years old, tell the damn story yourself.” Ian gets quiet, and Mickey feels guilty. Ian’s been fragile since Fiona took this bad fall a couple months ago; he goes over to visit almost every day, to see her at the old Gallagher house she’s lived in all her life. Her kids — her actual kids, that she gave birth to — want her to move now, because of the stairs, but whenever they bring it up she starts shouting about how she was born in this goddamn house and she’s gonna fucking die in it, you hear me? She’s fine — probably tougher than ever — but there was a brief time in the hospital when they thought she might not be, and it terrified Ian to get that close to losing her.
Mickey shifts, so that he’s holding Ian tighter, and squeezes him. “Okay, fine, what story?”
Ian sighs happily. “You know what story.”
And Mickey does know what story, because it’s the story Ian makes him tell every time. It’s their story. Ian’s scared of forgetting it, scared of dementia and Alzheimer’s and forgetting who he is. Frank really lost it in the end, couldn’t remember his kids’ names or his own name or even the Alibi’s name. Ian had told Mickey recently that that was his greatest fear. “I can’t lose control of my brain again, you know? I just —“ At this point, Ian’s hands had started to shake. “I can’t lose control like that.”
Mickey nuzzles into Ian a little bit, getting comfortable. “Okay, gingerbread,” he says. “Once upon a time, there was a skinny fuck with bright red hair and freckles who lived in Chicago.”
Ian snorts. “You fucker.”
“Shut up, I’m trying to tell a goddamn story here. There was also this short pasty bastard, with black hair and eyebrows he accidentally bleached once on a dare.”
Ian laughs out loud. “I remember that! They were so blond and you wouldn’t explain for years.”
“Ian, I swear to God I will stop this story if you do not shut the hell up.”
Ian kisses Mickey’s wrist where it’s wrapped around him. “Sorry.”
Mickey tangles his legs up with Ian’s, and hears a soft hum coming from Ian’s chest like a purr. “So. These two South Side pieces of shit were pretty fucked up. One of them was screwing his old married boss — but that wasn’t so unexpected, he turned out to have a weird kink for guys who needed Viagra to get it up, which would end up being pretty ironic because—”
“Mock Viagra all you want, just know that it’s what gets your ass fucked.”
“Well, anyway, it was a shitty situation is all I’m saying. The dude was a creep. But then it turned around because one day a knight in shining armor—”
“A teenage boy who hadn’t showered in a week.”
“—came to the redhead’s rescue.” Mickey is starting to get into the story now. He doesn’t remember what the Kash & Grab looked like exactly anymore, but he remembers sounds, smells, colors, coming in, smelling beef jerky and spoiled milk, seeing Ian with his stupid haircut behind the register. “You were cute back then,” he says softly.
“You were cute too.” They lie in silence for a while, letting the memories sink in.
“So, the pasty one went to save the redhead from the creepy old guy, what next?”
“So, the pasty kid and the redhead started to fuck instead. And at first it was just fucking, but then they started to feel like friends. Or something more than friends. And the redhead pretty much got it right away, what was happening, but it took the pasty kid a little more time, because he was scared, y’know? He wasn’t very good at loving people. He’d never learned how. So he ignored it, but then instead of porn stars the redhead was popping his pale ass into his wet dreams, and then he started thinking about telling him all the funny shit that happened to him while he dealt drugs, and then he started to wish he could tell him everything about his dad and his shitty life.” Ian gently takes Mickey’s hand into his.
“But you know, I — I mean, the pasty kid — couldn’t admit that. And the redhead showed up on his doorstep one day crying and he wanted to wrap him in his arms and hide him from anything bad in the world and that’s when he knew he was fucked.”
“Literally.”
“Jesus Christ with you. Anyway, the gross old man found out and the pasty kid went to jail.”
“Talk about how nobody he fucked in lockup was as good as me.”
“I never should have told you that. The pasty kid got around in juvie, lemme tell you. He fucked a lot of guys. They had no complaints. The redhead is not the only one with sexual gifts in the relationship.”
“Fine, the pasty kid was really good in bed.”
“Really good. And unlike some people—”
“Unlike some people, his dick worked perfect when he got old and he never took Viagra, ever. Say nice things about the redhead now.”
Mickey smiles. “The redhead had the most beautiful dick I had ever seen. Huge. And he knew how to use it. And he made it feel good in a way nobody the pasty kid had fucked ever had before, like he cared about him and wanted to make him feel good instead of just using him as a glorified fist to jerk off in.” He’s said it all to Ian before, but he can tell he’s beaming anyway, even without looking. There’s a pause. “The first time I fucked someone who isn’t you in juvie,” Mickey says quietly, “I cried. I missed you. It felt so dumb.”
Ian is quiet for a long time before he turns over, looks straight into Mickey’s eyes. “You never told me that.”
“I didn’t mean to keep it from you. I mostly forgot.”
Ian kisses Mickey with the kiss that always makes Mickey feel dizzy no matter how old they are, and for a second they could be anywhere: in a gay club at 18, at their wedding when Mickey was 21, in their kitchen on any of the thousands of mornings that have made up their long life together. It’s been so long, Mickey realizes, almost 60 years, depending on how you count it. Ian pulls away, and into the warm space between their faces he whispers “when pasty boy came back did they kiss?”
“No, he wasn’t ready. He wasn’t ready the next time he came home either.”
“Tell me about our first kiss.”
“When we kissed for the first time I felt like I was dying.”
“In a good way, though.”
“In a good way. It was summer. I was 17, you were 16, we were robbing that rich fuck, and we were with my cousins—”
“Your brothers.”
“My cousins! I don’t even remember. We’re fucking old.”
“Shit, Ned must be dead by now.”
“Good riddance. I hated him.”
“I know.”
“Because I was jealous.”
“I know.”
“Because you were the most beautiful person I’d ever seen and I wanted you all to myself.”
“I know. You have nothing to worry about. He wasn’t that good in bed. You were better. Maybe that’s cause I loved you, though.”
“So we were robbing this house, and you’d been busting my balls about kissing you, and it was sunny and you looked so sexy and I just did it.”
“It was a good kiss. Like, short as hell, but good.”
“It felt like everything exploded for me. My world literally blew up.”
“I was your first kiss.”
“You were my first kiss.”
“I wish you were mine, instead of fucking Roger Spikey.”
“Kissing you was fucking terrifying, man. I almost shit my pants.”
“Then you got shot.”
“Yeah, fuck. Then shit hit the fan.” They lie there for a while. “This is the worst part of the story,” says Mickey, because it is, and Ian leans their foreheads together and whispers “we can stop.”
“Nah,” he says. “Gotta get to the happy ending.” He pecks Ian on the lips quickly, having to remind himself even after all this time that they’re safe, that Terry is long dead and they’ve been married for over 50 years, that he doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. “My dad found out, and a bunch of bad things happened. I got married and had a kid. You ran away from home.”
“And went crazy.”
“You’re not crazy. But you did get really sick, and I was so scared of losing you and then Mandy left and I was gonna be all alone.”
“I got better though.”
“You did.”
“And then what happened?”
Mickey smiles. “Then we went and saved Mandy from that fucker in Indiana.”
“Then what?”
“Then we all brought Molly to come live with us here, because you thought Yev should know his aunt and Mandy wanted a sister and you were both right.”
“And then your dad found out about you and me and Sveta and Nika and Molly all living in his house and had a heart attack and died.”
“We paid an inmate to stab him, Ian.”
“Shh! I’m an old man, Mick. Let me have my fun.”
“We got married.” It was a city hall thing, for the tax benefits, and they had both come straight from work — Mickey brought his hard hat into the chapel. But Kev had closed the bar and they had a boozy party that ended in Lip, Kevin and Mickey singing “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” at the top of their lungs and Debbie and Carl both puking in the back alley. Mickey had been deliriously happy the whole time, unable to believe it was really happening. Somewhere, there was a video Ian had taken of a wasted Mickey loudly saying “FUCK! I love you! FUCK! How did I get so lucky, Ian, I love you so much.”
“We had a kickass wedding.”
“True.” Mickey feels sleepy and happy and warm. “We raised Yev. We sent him to college and he got married and now his kids have two grandpas and two fucking babushkas.”
Yevgeny had married a woman named Caroline who came from a very wealthy family, and Ian and Mickey had never quite managed to like her. She decorated her and Yev’s house with expensive art from other countries, and sent their grandchildren to rich kid summer camps, and gave them detailed instructions on taking care of them when they babysat before dubiously leaving them in the Milkovich family home. “It’s like she forgets that we’ve already raised a fucking child,” Ian complained to Svetlana, later. “Well,” she said, “is tradition to dislike daughter-in-law.”
“Only thing traditional about our fucking family,” Mickey had said, which had made Nika laugh and laugh.
They had all felt vindicated when the kids turned out to love visiting their grandparents, begging to come over to the South Side. They’d spend hours playing in the streets with random neighborhood kids, coming back at dusk. Nicholas started getting into fights when he was twelve, and winning them; Mickey had never been so proud, but Caroline panicked and enrolled him in karate and boxing as an “outlet for anger.” (It only made Nicky a better fighter, and he learned how to hide it from his mom.) Katarina, named after Svetlana’s mother, practically ran a gang of elementary schoolers who ran around and keyed gentrifiers’ cars; Ian and Mickey hadn’t had the heart to tell her she was one of the rich people she came home railing against in her high baby voice. Caroline had been extremely unamused, especially when her nice new car got suspicious key marks on it. Camille, the oldest, had had a torrid love affair with some South Side boy named Miguel the summer she was sixteen. Caroline had actually been fairly calm about that one, but Yev had been furious. “We have to break them up,” he’d said. “These South Side boys are only after one thing.”
“Come on, Yev, you were a South Side boy,” Mickey had said.
“Well, yeah, dad, that’s how I know!” he’d shouted, half delirious with panic. Ian imitates him, now, in their bed, and they both laugh. Camille is halfway through college now, and had a messy breakup with Miguel during her freshman year. Nicky is a college freshman, and Kat is the last one at home, a junior.
“How did we get old enough to have our youngest grandchild be 16?” Ian asks, dazed, like he’s never realized how old the kids are before right now.
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I remember when Yev was so little he would come crawling in here every other night to sleep with us.”
They lie quietly together. The sun is rising, still. Ian has to take his meds soon, and at noon they’re going to lunch with Mandy, who will probably complain about wanting more grandkids because Mandy is ridiculous. But for now they’re just warm and sleepy, lying in bed with photos of their grandchildren on the bedside table that Mickey makes a show of turning over whenever they have sex (“I don’t want them to have to see this, Ian!”). Mickey looks at Ian and sees the old man and the teenage boy and every Ian in between and loves them all so much his heart might explode.
“Thanks, Mickey.”
“For what?”
“Thanks for making this life with me. Because it’s been perfect. Thanks for building a life with me.”
“You’re so sappy, Gallagher.”
“I like when you call me Gallagher. Like old times.”
“Thanks for making a life with me too.”