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Eighty two, grunt. Eighty three, grunt. Eighty four, grunt. Eighty five, grunt. Eighty s-
“You fucking playing farm animals or working out?”
A chortled sound, or what might've lived up to the full potential of a laugh if given the sufficient amount of air. Mickey's eyebrow hangs higher than usual, craning his neck around the corner of the bed to catch a glimpse of Ian's twisted figure closer to the ground than anything else.
“Shut up, I'm nearly at a hundred,” Ian rasps back, before resuming the count up.
Mickey rolls his eyes where he's propped with his back against the cool wooden shelf behind the bed, sniffing before taking another inhale of smoke.
Ian's face comes into view, more red than anything else, worn from the exertion, the crease of his eyes and forehead lined with shine. He looks a little dazed, for not more than a mere second, before it becomes steady and alive eyes and a beaming smile.
Mickey feels his lip quirk, “You done, Sporty Spice? Or you still got those 500 laps around the Olympic Stadium?”
It's Ian's turn to roll his eyes, amused. He climbs on the bed from the bottom, so his face is level with Mickey's thighs. Then, ever so gently, turns to let his cheek rest upon the flesh of Mickey's leg, and he can't understand why it feels so unexpected, but it does. Ian closes his eyes and Mickey's hand reaches down to pat his head, damp and burning, his palm flaring with warmth from both their skin.
“Mmh.” Ian hums and blindly waves his hand around to catch the rapidly disappearing cigarette that Mickey wedges between his fingers.
“Tired?”
“Just beat.”
“Same fucking thing.”
Mickey studies him carefully. Tries to jumpstart his memory into latching onto anything similar from that night months ago that had left him wondering where he'd gone wrong in the morning.
“'M not tired. Brain's awake and stuff. Body's beat.” Ian mumbles, his jaw knocking against Mickey's thigh. “Not the same thing.”
Mickey thinks he knows exactly what he means. There were too many nights to count on his fingers that he lain in a room void of light, parts of him aching and wincing and dying for rest, yet remaining conscious enough to feel every one of their demands.
He doesn't want to let Ian sleep. The cusp of light is tapping on the window and then it will be everywhere, followed by too much fucking noise and shit to deal with, and not enough of this. Never enough of this.
“Know what I want?”
Mickey smiles. He'd assumed this moment had been swept off and carried away until maybe a few nights later. “What.”
“To swim.”
“Wouldn't know,” Mickey says, taking a swig of the open beer on the bedside table and wiping his mouth.
“What, you've never swam before?”
Mickey crinkles his face, “No, what for?”
Ian sits up. They're level now. The natural colour of his cheeks is slowly reviving him, his hair flattened lopsidedly from being squashed on Mickey's leg, spiked around the edges. He looks messy, and unkempt, no slicked gel or smudged eyeliner or the gaze of steel he masters on the podium. He looks seventeen, young, beautiful. No one else, sees him like this, and they don't fucking deserve to. Maybe he doesn't, either.
“To go in a pool, cool down, you know!” Ian smacks his side playfully. “Oh, come on.”
“Why would I wanna go in a pool if I don't know how to swim.”
Mickey's vision disappears when Ian's hand covers his face, holding it firmly but loosely when he shakes it and nudges it to the side.
“Badass Mickey doesn't know how to swim. Hope you never have a shoot off near water.”
Mickey chuckles beyond himself and latches on to Ian's wrist where it's still close to his face, tugging it so Ian jerks forward unexpectedly. “Oh you think you're so tough cause you can flop around with fish?”
Ian pokes his side and he flinches and scrambles on the bed and Ian's wrapping his arms around his bare waist and toppling him over. “You look like a fucking floppy fish!”
Dawn is a few of their drumming heartbeats away, and it doesn't bother Mickey that there's a new amber light shading over Ian's skin when he grabs it to roll them over. These days aren't days, nor are the nights nights, they're just mingled breath stolen by a thief, both of them guilty when their mouths are too close to not reach for each other. This is only a moment, a rippling echo inside Mickey's chest of Ian's unapologetic laugh.
*
The weather breaks every box that day, refusing to conform to any rules that come with seasons. There's a crisp sharpness to the air that passes, though it's followed by shallow spells of warmth and streaks of light. Mickey's bundled up either way – better to shed layers than to wish he had a certain person's chest pressed against his back all day. He'd rather not only have that one his mind when dealing with airheaded brothers of his, obnoxious Rub & Tug customers, and every other single breathing person sharing the oxygen.
It's dark out when he's tugging on a cigarette and making the steps he has to back to the house. Ian's day off. Maybe Svet got distracted with trumpet playing naked blonde girl and it would be just them. It made him both afraid and relieved when he realised how comfortable he's come to be to share his living space with Ian. Living space once occupied by someone he wishes he never had to know.
His phone buzzes.
IAN
Come to Eckhart street when u can.
He can't explain why there's a hint of panic holding onto him. Ian does crazy shit lately, sometimes that blows his mind. Sometimes that leaves this bitter taste in his throat, when Ian is barely looking at him but through him, like he sees into a portal of never ending dizziness and movement, eyes skitting and more alive than him.
It's a 15 minute walk. He does it in 7.
He's balling his fists nervously as he turns on Eckhart street, this uninteresting and completely unexpected choice of destination, a small estate of houses just before the NorthSide. He breathes shortly and scans dark corners and alleys, some kind of cacophony of his own heart in his ears. He's afraid. Why is he so afraid? Not for his own back, but of what he'll find?
“You're here!”
Ian's voice.
“You ok?”
Ian's in front of him. His cheeks are brazen from the cold under the jittering lamppost, but his eyes are shining. He hasn't seen many stars, but he probably doesn't need to now. Ian's wearing that orange duffel coat he has, unzipped and thrown out loosely, like he picked it up a second ago.
Mickey breathes, coughs low in his throat. Things have settled, inside. Like he'd been a fuming kettle on the brink of bubbling over but was now a calm surface.
“The fuck are you doing here?”
Ian smiles lopsidedly and turns around. “Follow me!”
Like he would ever not.
He can't help the smile that takes over his face when he realises what they're standing in front of, at the end of the boring rows and lanes of houses, an infrastructure ugly enough to blend in and cater to South Side expectations, but big enough for him to raise an eyebrow.
CHICAGO ECKHART PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL
“You serious?” Mickey breathes, catching the way Ian's staring at him like he has all the answers to the universe.
“Yeah, why not? Couldn't just let you tell me you've never swam before and be ok with it.”
Mickey wants to do something. Kiss him until they fall to the ground, maybe. And he thinks he may still be smiling, or smiling with his eyes, or with the way his body feels light, despite the heavy oversized coat on his back. How crazy it feels to feel like this – to not have an urge to do something to prove that this moment is only a fleeting moment, not who he is. But nothing feels better, than the warmth inside him.
“C'mon.”
“Didn't bring my crowbar with me, Gallagher, must've forgotten it.”
Ian rolls his eyes and smirks. “I've already been in, dumbass.”
“You broke in already?”
Ian looks around. “Why'd you sound so surprised?”
Mickey blinks, flicks his nose quickly. “Jesus, Ian. What if you got caught or something?”
“Right. Didn't realise breaking into public pools was the most offensive thing you'd ever been associated with.”
Mickey chuckles and tries to ease his questioning tone, following Ian through the ajar door at the back of the building. “You know what I mean, man. Shit's weird at the moment. MP's are after your ass and my mug's plastered all over the North Side known as the destroyer of rich families moving scammer.”
Ian fumbles behind him to grab onto Mickey's hand, so naturally as he tugs him through the obscure corridors. Mickey can smell what he assumes is chlorine, washing up in the air. It's pleasant.
“Well let's just forget about all the other crap, for tonight.”
Bright neon beams burst on above them, highlighting the tall dome above their heads, above the aquarium blue of the pool in front of them. Unmoving, still, deep and blue. Empty, silent.
“Please?”
“Yeah, alright.”
Mickey looks around. Sees the thousands of kids that have been and gone, holding their parents' hands, dipping their toes in. Learning how to swim. Learning how to not sink. He wonders who he'd be if he'd floated before, knowing he wouldn't sink. He feels his fingers tremble unwillingly.
“Ay, you know what, it's probably colder than a frozen lake.”
“It's heated.”
“Probably got more kid piss than water.”
“Piss is a liquid. Can still swim.”
“Probably set off an ala-. What are you doing?”
He watches Ian throw layer after layer on the tiles. Coat, jacket, top. His chest. Jeans, pants. His cock, his bare thighs. There, in all his glory. Tall, open, like something you'd fucking worship. More beautiful than most things Mickey's ever known.
He quickly darts sharp glances around, before letting his gaze go where it truly wants. Ian's grinning. “You just gonna go in like that? Double the offense?”
“No one's around, Mick.”
“Not like you'd care anyway, show all that on the daily for retired viagra addicts.”
Ian looks down for a second before coming closer. “Definitely not all of it,” he says, his tone quiet, soft, so sincere it fills every corner of the silent room. “Some of it is only yours.”
Then he frowns, so briefly you'd miss it you didn't look at him the way Mickey does. Then he's gone, and the water is shaking and disrupted, drops landing at Mickey's feet. Ian comes up to the surface, soaked, running hand over his face and through his hair.
“C'mon, get in. You won't regret it.”
Mickey remembers how it felt, seeing the look on Ian's face all those times when he didn't give him what he thought he never could, denied what he thought was undoable. That he did. He can do this.
Clothes piled with Ian's discarded ones, feeling more naked than just his body, under Ian's gaze, intent and intense from where he rests in the water, like an animal. But there's nothing predatory, savage, animal like, about his gaze. It's only on him, only for him, gentle and overwhelming, intimate like they're removing any physical barrier and are touching, even from far away, the dustiest, darkest and unknown corners of themselves.
And for that alone, Mickey steps into the water without retracing his steps. Ian swims up to meet him, where he's tensed up at the feel of being enveloped by waves of nothingness.
“It's shallow, here,” Ian says, almost standing up. “You'll be fine.”
And Mickey trusts him.
He finds his hands under the surface, an endless warm bath around his hips. “This is fuckin' weird.”
Ian tilts his head and smiles. “Good weird though, right?”
“Yeah.”
They float. They walk. They hold each other's hand and briefly let go when Ian wants Mickey to test how it feels on his own – swaying his arms beside him and kicking his feet above gravity, where he knows he can touch the ground. Ian's beaming at him.
“Wanna go a little deeper?”
“What, we looking for bikini bottom or something?”
A giggle. “No.”
They kiss, halfway. Ian's mouth is damp and his face is colder than the rest of his enveloped body, but Mickey clutches on to his neck and his jaw as he breathes, breathes everything through Ian. Lives, through Ian. They gasp and breathe raggedly, Ian's fingertips feathery on his skin with water between them and his waist. They laugh. Sheepishly, and it reminds Mickey of those times when he was younger, and Ian was younger, and they'd laugh – stunned at the feeling and high off it, laughing when they realised they were laughing, laughing because really their smiles were too big to justify otherwise.
“I got you,” Ian whispers when they drift away from the shallow bottom.
It's quiet, in the dome. Only the ripples of current and their breathing, echoing and reverberating around the curved walls and coming back to them. It's hushed, dimmed down, the world sleeping. There's something about this night, warm and calm and so much that is new, that Mickey knows will stay with him. Later, when nothing is as good as this was, and maybe the boy in his arms is far out of his sight and in someone else's, this night, will be there.
Ian looks like he feels it too, droplets on his eyelashes when he blinks. Mickey hasn't seen Ian like this in months, weeks, maybe never. There's a calmness and almost painful happiness, bordering on dangerous. There’s no naivety. He seems settled, like he's finally stopped chasing after something he knew he'd never catch.
“I think I'm gonna remember this night,” he says to Mickey, words soaked in all the love he could find, all the nostalgia he could muster. “For years and years. When who knows what shit will have happened. Maybe shit'll hit the fan tomorrow; for all we know. Well,” his nose brushes Mickey's nose, his lips. “This night here. We'll remember it. It feels special, don't you think?”
Yes, this night is special. And I'll remember it, when I'm lonely, and you're not, and when you're alone, and I'm not. For as long as I can remember, I will. You, always.