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"I'm gay."
The words fall flat in the air between them, and Ian can't catch his breath.
For one sick, dizzy second, he thinks that maybe Mandy is his soulmate. Why the hell else would he have said it? Shouted it, almost. In the middle of the morning, right outside the Milkovich house, where Mandy's crazy—and probably homophobic as shit—brothers are still waiting to pound his face in.
But if Mandy is his soulmate, it's not fucking fair. Sure, you're not required to have sex with your soulmate. Hell, you don't even have to be in a romantic relationship with them if you don't want to. But Ian's not crazy for wanting every part of it, everything his soulmate can possibly give him. Is he?
(Then again, when has anything about his life ever been fair?)
Mandy starts to turn around, and Ian can barely look at her. He's terrified to meet her eyes, and feel . . . something. To just suddenly know that it's her, for the rest of his life.
"What did you just say?" she snaps, and he looks at her, and he doesn't feel any different. The relief is so intense, he starts to close his eyes—but first he has to be sure.
He closes the distance between them, and Mandy is apparently too freaked out to yell or shove him away this time. He grabs her arms, and looks her in the eyes.
"Mandy," he says. "Tell me the sky is green."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" she says. She's not even angry anymore, just completely confused.
"Just do it, jesus!" he says, and she jumps at the intensity in his voice.
"OK, oh my god!" she says, shaking his hands off. "The sky's fucking green or whatever. OK?"
He lets out a laugh, and tilts his head back. "Oh my god," he says. "That's awesome."
"Seriously, what is your problem? Are you just, like, a complete whack job?" Mandy is starting to look genuinely scared, but Ian's so buzzed right now, he couldn't care less.
"Mandy, listen to me," he says. "I'm gay. Totally, one hundred percent, cock-in-a-dude's-ass gay, OK? It's not you. Well, I mean, it's you, but not you you. It's just that you're a girl. That's all. I'm just gay."
"Jesus christ, would you stop saying that, what the hell is wrong with you?" she hisses, grabbing his arm and dragging him farther away from the house. Ian lets himself be pulled, still riding high on the adrenaline rush of actually saying it out loud to someone. And not because she's his soulmate. Just because it was the right thing to do.
This is the right thing. He can feel it.
"Mandy! Mandy, hey!"
"Get away from me, you fucking perv!"
Mickey rolls over in bed and smirks a little, hearing his sister's shrill voice outside the window. Someone's about to find out why you don't mess with a Milkovich, even if she dresses like a Bratz doll and acts like a hooker half the time.
"We need to talk!"
"Yeah, good luck with that, buddy," Mickey mumbles to himself.
"You are a dead man, Ian Gallagher!" Mandy screams. "Fucking. Dead!"
Gallagher? Holy shit. Mickey shoves himself up, and grabs for his jeans. Two fucking days of chasing that asshole down, and now he shows up and hassles Mandy right outside their fucking house? Gallagher isn't dead. He's fucking six feet under, and he doesn't even know it yet.
"I'm gay."
Silence.
Mickey freezes, not even breathing. His jeans are still dangling from his hands. His heart is pounding so loud, he can't even hear what Mandy says next. Then Ian says something back, too quiet to catch. Mandy snaps something cranky, then Ian laughs. Their voices start to move away from the window.
And Mickey's still standing there like an idiot, staring at the posters on the wall above his bed, at the ass of the half-naked girl that he cut out of some magazine and stuck to the top of a pizza box, under the words FRESH and HOT.
Iggy had thought that was fucking hilarious. It is fucking hilarious.
All he can hear is Gallagher's words echoing through his mind, like they're on some kind of crazy loop. Gallagher is gay. Holy shit.
That's fucking hot.
Mickey's breathing starts up again, but faster than normal, and all of a sudden, there's this stream of images running like crazy through his head. Gallagher's mouth stretched around some guy's huge, red cock. Gallagher on his hands and knees, bare ass up in the air like the pizza-box girl's, taking it, liking it.
He swallows and shuts his eyes, breathing hard, trying to block out everything except the pictures his brain is creating for him.
In his mind, Gallagher pushes back against the guy pounding into him, thrusts his ass back, with his dick—
Wait. No. Shit, no. What the hell is he thinking?
Gallagher's dick. Hard, huge, and fucking shoving into some twink.
"Oh, fuck," he breathes, and drops the jeans, grabs at his own twitching dick through his boxers.
But somehow it feels like it's Ian's hand, pressing against him, his face up close against Mickey's, breath hot and wet against his cheek.
I'm gay.
"Shit," he hisses, and comes in his boxers like a fucking twelve-year-old. "What the fuck."
Mickey spends the next two hours in his room with a chair jammed under the door, getting off as hard and fast as he can: first with his hand all wet and slicked up around his dick, imagining Ian crouched above him, sliding his lips up and down, over and over again, and then again on his stomach with three fingers buried in his ass, humping up against his own bed like a fucking animal.
He's sweaty and shaking by the end of that one, but somehow it's not enough, because his mind is still going crazy, imagining Ian—Gallagher—fuck it, Ian sliding his dick between Mickey's ass cheeks, pressing up against him from behind with his whole body, licking at the sweat that's gathered on his neck.
There is no way he's going to be able to get it up again, at least for the next hour or so, but Mickey can't help trying. He slides two fingers back into his ass, and can't choke down the little sound that he makes. It's good, but he knows that Ian could do it better, somehow.
"Fuck," he whispers, muffling himself against his pillow. "Fuck. Fuckin' . . . fuck me."
It's kind of a dumb thing to care about, but ever since Mandy called her brothers off and told them Ian was her boyfriend now ("So be fucking nice to him, you fucking shitheads!"), Mickey hasn't said a word to him. Not that Ian was expecting an apology or whatever, but shit, Mickey won't even be in the same room as him.
"Is your brother allergic to other humans?" he asks Mandy once while they're doing homework on the couch, after Mickey's door has slammed shut in his face for the fourth time in a week.
"He's just a gigantic fucking douchebag," says Mandy with disgust. Ian's starting to realize that's how she shows affection. That, and punching.
"Maybe he feels bad for beating the shit out of Lip and threatening to kill me?" Ian suggests.
Mandy snorts. "You're kidding, right?"
Ian shrugs.
"I'm serious. Don't worry about it. Mickey hates everyone."
"Yeah?"
"Duh," Mandy says. "I'm pretty sure he'd sell me out for two sticks of gum. You know, as long as it was a flavor he liked."
"Yeah?" Ian says. "You think it'd take two?"
Mandy punches his arm, but she's grinning a little. "Shut the fuck up, you prick!"
"Oh yeah? Make me. Or make Mickey do it," he says. "He does all your dirty work, right?"
"He wishes," Mandy says. "I only send him after the small fry."
"Oh yeah?" he says again.
"Yeah," she says, and grins. "You don't want to see what happens to the people who really piss me off."
He can't fucking look Gallagher in the face anymore. Not that he was doing a whole lot of that before, but . . . shit. Mickey's known what he likes for a while now, since he was fourteen and having to think about some fucking action movie to get hard when he was sitting around watching porn with his brothers.
But this thing with Gallagher—this is some next-level, full-on obsessive gay-ass shit. He wants him, like he's never wanted an actual person before.
There's just no way he'd be able to look at Gallagher's stupid face without staring at him like a goddamn pervert. Like he's hungry.
Which is too fucking bad, because Mandy's apparently appointed herself as Gallagher's full-time beard, so Mickey's a fugitive in his own fucking house. Can't even jerk off when the two of them are around, because Gallagher's the only thing that can get him going right now, and the idea of jerking it to his sister's best friend while the two of them do their algebra homework on the couch is a level of sad that Mickey's not sure he's ready for.
Maybe in a few more weeks.
In the meantime, he's working off his frustrations by shaking down the Kash and Grab on a weekly basis, which is sweet in a couple of ways. Free food is always number one, even if they're starting to run out of some of the stuff he likes. Watching that weak asshole behind the counter fucking cower is definitely satisfying. (And fuck that guy for getting to spend however many hours a day with Gallagher. Not that that's why Mickey has it out for him. Well, it's not the only reason, anyway.)
And, of course, there's always the possibility of catching a glimpse of Gallagher on his way out, like he did just now. But he's careful to never go when Gallagher's the only one in the store. Mickey doesn't trust himself to not—do something. He doesn't even know what. Something stupid.
But, all things considered, he's basically got it all under control.
“Hey, Mickey!"
Shit. Shit. He hates the excited little drop his stomach does when he hears Gallagher say his name. Why the fuck did he go back in there? Stupid fucking mistake.
"Why don’t you steal from a neighborhood you don’t live in? Have some civic pride, huh?”
Mickey turns around, ready to snap something back, or fucking throw something to shut him up, but suddenly his mouth is moving without him even thinking about it, and he hears the words like someone else is saying them. Like he's fucking possessed.
“Because I’m trying to get your attention, jesus, Gallagher!”
He freezes, staring at Ian. Ian's staring back at him with huge eyes, and his mouth—that fucking mouth—open in shock.
"What did you just say?" Ian whispers.
Mickey drops the box of stuff, and gets the hell out of there.
Ian stares after him, open-mouthed, heart pounding.
“Him?” says Kash. “Are you kidding me?” But Ian doesn’t even hear, doesn’t turn around. He just takes off running, following Mickey's path across the parking lot and up the stairs to the El.
The image of Mickey’s face is burned into his mind. One second he’d been sneering, angry, but as soon as he realized what he’d said . . .
Scared. Mickey was scared.
Ian pounds up the last few stairs, jumps the turnstile, but it’s too late. He can hear the train pulling away.
He walks slowly back to the Kash and Grab, still in a daze. Kash won’t look at him, and Ian doesn't even care, because all he can think about is Mickey’s face, his look of panic. The way his eyes had flicked to Ian’s mouth, just for a second, right before he ran.
Linda reams them out when she finds the food scattered around the parking lot, but they’re both too much in shock to say much.
“Get the hell out of here, Ian,” she says disgustedly. “I expect it from this idiot, but now you too? Get your head on straight before you come in tomorrow. Got it?”
"Yeah," he says, but he's not really listening.
The Milkovich house is only three blocks out of his way, and his feet take him there without him even thinking about it. He climbs the stairs and bangs on the door a few times.
No one answers, but he’s almost sure Mickey is there. He imagines him sitting on the couch where Ian and Mandy played video games yesterday, that freaked-out look still on his face.
No one’s ever been scared of Ian before.
No one’s ever paid as much attention to Ian as Mickey has. Even when he was trying to beat Ian’s face in. Which, come to think of it, is apparently Mickey Milkovich’s way of pulling someone’s pigtails.
I’m trying to get your attention, he’d said. He wants Ian. Or wants Ian to notice him, anyway.
Ian bangs on the door one more time. “Mickey, c’mon!” he says. Stubborn silence from inside the house. Or maybe Mickey isn't there at all. “Fine. But this isn’t over, OK?”
Mickey takes another swig out of the bottle of Jack, and rubs a hand across his face. "Shit," he says. "Shit." He's never felt anything like that before. It was like having the stomach flu, knowing you're going to puke, and not being able to stop it.
He just puked a fucking emotional confession at Ian Gallagher. And not even a good one. "I’m trying to get your attention"? What the fuck is that pansy-ass, third-grade-girl bullshit?
Hell, if he had to confess his dumb gay feelings for Gallagher to his face in the middle of a parking lot, why couldn't it at least have been something good, like "I want to you hold me down and pound my ass till I'm begging you to let me come"? Maybe Gallagher would have at least taken him up on it.
"I’m trying to get your attention."
Christ.
Ian thought Mickey was doing a good job avoiding him before, but it turns out that Mickey can go totally AWOL when he feels like it. Five days, and nothing.
Of course, when he does finally surface, it's not to talk to Ian. It's to beat the shit out of Kash, and take the gun.
"Are you kidding me?" Ian shouts. "The gun? What the hell, Kash! Why would you even pull it on him? What was he trying to steal?"
Kash is silent, the bruising on his cheek and his bloodshot eye making him look especially pathetic.
"Linda's going to kill you, you know," Ian says. "Kill you, and then fire me."
Nothing. Ian rolls his eyes.
"God, you're a pussy," he says. "I'll get it back myself, OK?"
"Can't you just ask him?" Kash mutters.
"No, why the hell would he give it to me?"
"Because," Kash says. "I mean, since he's your—"
"Shut the fuck up," Ian says, and slams his way out of the store.
When he gets to the Milkovich house, Ian picks up the crowbar that's leaning next to the door. Mickey's basically a cornered wild animal right now. This is definitely not his smartest idea ever. But hey, smart ideas are Lip's job, not his.
The door's unlocked, and there's no one in the living room or kitchen. Mandy's door is open, but she's not inside.
STAY THE FUCK OUT, says the sign on Mickey's door.
Ian takes a deep breath, then pushes the door open as quietly as he can.
Mickey's room is basically like the rest of the house—empty cans, trash, junk piled everywhere. More weapons on display. But underneath the smell of musty laundry, old shoes, and shitty body spray, Ian can almost catch something else. Something warm, and a little like some kind of food he can't quite remember.
Mickey's sprawled on his stomach on the bed. One of his hands is hanging off the bed, but the other is pinned under his body, as if he's been—
Shit. He can't think about that right now. He needs to get the gun back.
Ian quickly prods Mickey with the crowbar, then leans away as he turns over.
"What the—" Mickey starts, but he stops as soon as he sees Ian's face.
"I want—" Ian says, but the words dry up in his mouth. He swallows, but it doesn't seem to help. He just stares at Mickey's face for a second. Blood is pounding in his ears, and it's making it hard to think.
"Gallagher," Mickey says quietly, and stares back at him. His eyes are really blue. Ian never noticed that before. "What do you want?"
"I want the gun back, Mickey." That's it. That's all. But for some reason his mouth is still moving. "And I want you."
"Fuck," Mickey breathes, then he's pushing himself off the bed and moving toward Ian, who drops the crowbar with a loud, metallic clatter as his hands come up to grab onto Mickey's shoulders, and Mickey pulls them down together onto the bed.
"C'mon, c'mere," Mickey mutters feverishly as he pulls off Ian's coat and shirts, then starts undoing his jeans. Ian pushes his hands away, and yanks Mickey's tank top over his head, then runs his hands down Mickey's chest, and grabs his waist, thumbs rubbing under the waistband of his sweatpants.
"Shit, you're so fucking hot," Ian says, half dazed, staring down at him.
Mickey's breath stutters. "Wh-what?" he says.
"I said you're fucking hot," Ian says, looking up to meet Mickey's eyes. He looks—stunned. Like he can't imagine why anyone would ever say that. "What's wrong?"
"Are you . . . are you fuckin' lying?" Mickey says. The words are barely audible.
"Can't," Ian breathes at him, his eyes drifting half closed as he slides his hands into Mickey's pants and grabs his ass. "You know I can't."
"Oh fuck," Mickey whispers, and grinds against Ian. "This is better."
"Better than what?" Ian asks, smiling a little.
"Better than—" Mickey swallows. He's fighting it.
"Hey, hey," Ian says, and runs one hand up Mickey's back, rubbing soothing circles against his skin. "You're OK, it's OK."
Mickey moans and buries his face in the crook of Ian's shoulder, half turned on and half embarrassed. His dick is so hard, fuck. Ian's hands are huge and hot, and feel so good, even just touching his skin.
After another second, both of Ian's hands come back to rest on his ass again, then move up just enough to ease his pants down. Mickey kicks them off, then reaches down and finally undoes Ian's jeans.
"Fuck yeah," he whispers, and Ian fucking blushes. Mickey doesn't care. He's too busy yanking Ian's jeans off, and then climbing back of top of him and rubbing his dick up against Ian's. After a few seconds, he licks his hand and wraps it tightly around both of them.
"Ohhh fuck," Ian says, and bucks his hips up hard. His dick pushes into Mickey's hot hand, wet with spit and now a little bit slippery with their precome.
Mickey stares at Ian's dick. "I want you in me," he says, almost distractedly, and Ian moans, his hips thrusting up again and again.
"Not gonna make it that long," Ian confesses. "Sorry. I can't—" He whines a little.
"It's cool," Mickey says. "But just—" He lets go of Ian's dick, then slides forward a little, spreads his legs, and reaches back, guiding Ian's dick so it pushes between his ass cheeks.
"Holy shit yes," Ian gasps, pulling back and then thrusting up again, pulling Mickey's ass down at the same time
Mickey tries to hold himself up at first, but after a minute he gives up, and lies down with his body fully against Ian's, his mouth on Ian's neck in a hard, open-mouthed kiss.
Ian drags a hand up his sweaty back, and presses it against the back of his head.
"That's good, Mick, that's so good," he whispers, and Mickey shoves up against him and comes, gasping. Ian pulls Mickey close, and follows.
They lie in silence for a while, breathing together. Ian runs his fingers up and down Mickey's spine.
After a minute, Mickey presses a kiss against Ian's jaw, then bites the same spot.
"Better than all the times I thought about it, you fucker," he says, and Ian laughs.
"How many times did you think about it?" he asks.
"Too fucking many," Mickey says. The words are still slipping out too easily, makes him a little nauseous now that he doesn't have a hard-on to distract him, but it feels a little better every time.
"All the time?" Ian says, his eyes bright.
"Yeah," Mickey whispers. "Want you so much."
"Yeah," Ian says dreamily. "Fuck yeah."
They lie tangled together on the bed for a few more minutes, then Mickey nudges Ian's shoulder. "Mandy's gonna be back soon."
"She can deal," Ian says, and stretches.
"Sure, with your shit. She doesn't know jack about me yet, and I wanna keep it that way."
"Why?" Ian says.
"Because I don't want people to fucking know, that's why."
"But we're together," Ian argues. "People need to know—"
"People don't need to know shit," Mickey says tensely, and Ian pulls away from him. "Hey, hey. Relax. This ain't about you, OK? You—you're . . ." He swallows. More word vomit. But—"You're perfect, OK? This my own shit. I gotta figure it out on my own."
"You don't have to do anything on your own, Mick," Ian says. "That's what this means."
"I know," Mickey says, his face softening. "I know. I just—it's gonna take me some time. OK? Can you . . ." He stops. Looks at Ian. "Can you wait?"
"Long as it takes," Ian says. "I'm not going anywhere."