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Laying low. That was the plan. At least that’s what Ian had thought they mutually agreed upon all that time ago after Mickey had shown up in his prison cell- his only shining ray of light in the darkness.
“We just gotta lay low,” Mickey had breathed into his ear that first night, his voice thick and husky and full of feeling as they curled around one another on the bottom bunk, both clinging on like the other would evaporate. “Do our time, pay our dues and get the fuck out of here, alright?”
“Alright.” Ian had agreed, and kissed him one more time to make sure he wasn’t a mirage. It was a shocking turn of events for more reasons that one- Mickey had never been one for minding his business or holding back, least of all laying low.
Now, months later, Ian steadied Mickey’s head with both hands as he got a good look at the damage- a big ol’ black eye spread out from his tear duct to the edge of his moderate sideburn, taking up a good portion of his cheek on the left side and puffing his eyelid out to almost comical effect. It had been a few hours since the… incident, a few hours since two prison guards hauled the profanity spouting Southsider back to the cell, and the redness of the impact site had deepened into a mottled purple-gray color that really brought out the robin’s egg blue of Mickey’s eyes.
Ian sighed loudly. Nope, laying low had never been a Milkovich specialty.
“Your eye is already swelling shut.” Ian murmured. He had taken the only rag out of his DOC shower kit and ran some water over it, before attempting to clean the small gashes in the flesh on Mickey’s cheek where the skin had been broken.
“Yeah, no shit,” Mickey grunted, before recoiling as the cloth swept across a particularly tender portion of his injury. “Fuck- OW! Watch it, man.”
“Sorry! Sorry…” Ian hummed, but he wasn’t really. It served Mickey right for getting into such a nasty scrap when they had promised one another to stay out of trouble.
It was past lights out now, and the two men sat on the bottom bunk of their cramped sleeping quarters, their cell illuminated only by the glow of the naked flood light posted just outside. They weren’t supposed to be sitting there like that, in their undershirts and boxers, bare knees knocking together as Ian nursed his boyfriends wounds, but if the guards assigned to their cellblock gave a shit, it wasn’t apparent.
Ian went back to work, trying to be gentle as he wiped away the dried blood. Mickey carried on anyway, hissing like he was being branded every time Ian came within a quarter inch of his skin. “Alright, are you gonna let me clean it or not?” Ian eventually huffed, dropping the bloodied rag onto his lap in frustration.
“It fuckin’ hurts! Jesus!” Mickey’s exasperation sounded much more like whining as he made the effort to keep the volume low.
“Yeah well that’s what happens when you throw hands with some bastard who’s twice your size, dumbass.” Ian stood from the bed, taking care not to bump his forehead on the top bunk in the darkness as he had so many times before. He made the incredibly short trip to the sink just across the cell and began to rinse the rag off, his back turned to Mickey. When there was no snarky reply from his boyfriend, Ian decided to let the silence stand for as long as he could, just like the perpetually stale air of their cell.
After about a minute of nothing but the sound of running water bouncing around the four walls that surrounded them, Mickey finally said something.
“You take the meds they gave you tonight?”
Ian watched the final pink swirls of Mickey’s blood filter down the sink as his stomach churned and twisted. He shut the water off abruptly and wordlessly, bending down to the metal trash can next to the sink- the one that was literally bolted to the floor to presumably prevent cellmates from beating one another to death with the heavy object. Ian plucked the crumpled paper cup from where it rested on top, the one he lined up twice a day every day to receive, and stomped the three steps over to Mickey, tossing the cup at him.
Even someone hard of hearing could have picked up on what Ian was trying to say. It’s empty. I took them. Half of him- the part without the chronic mental illness, he assumed- knew that Mickey only asked because he gave a shit, which was honestly a miracle in and of itself. But the other, much louder half, still deeply resented the questioning. Ian already felt like a toddler, locked in an extended time out for what he had done. He knew Mickey was in the exact same situation, but the extra level of medications and psych evaluations and group therapy made Ian think he was somehow just a little more stuck despite not having as long of a sentence. Maybe it was delusional, maybe it was unfair, but Ian couldn’t help the way he felt.
“Good,” Mickey nodded somberly, and he bit the inside of his cheek again as the entire left side of his face throbbed in agony. It wasn’t like it was the worst pain he had ever been in, but their cell was fucking warm and he was… embarrassed . Mickey thought it was a weird feeling to be experiencing, considering his track record of bullshit and general tomfoolery, but that didn’t stop him from being ashamed of getting his ass kicked.
Not that the other guy didn’t look just as bad- if not worse. Mickey knew for a fact he had landed a few good punches, especially after he heard the telltale cracking of bone and had felt the familiar feeling of his tattooed knuckles impacting against solid flesh.
The asshole had it coming anyway, Mickey fumed internally as he watched Ian putter aimlessly around the cell for another minute before eventually returning to sit beside him when he no longer had a choice, tossing the blood stained rag back to Mickey. Fuckin’ Kaminzki. Couldn’t keep his fat ugly piehole shut if I took a staple gun to it.
Ian didn’t seem to get it, but then again, Ian didn’t know the circumstances of the brawl. Not yet anyway. Mickey tried to focus his one working eye as the other one rapidly closed on itself, seeing that Ian was leaning down, anxiously organizing the stupid little collection of books he kept in a neat row next to his shower shoes and other toiletries.
“You pissed about somethin’?” Mickey asked, graceless as ever in his execution
Ian kept on messing around with his books, evidently trying to decide whether he liked them better color coordinated or alphabetized. “Not pissed. Why would I be pissed?” He muttered, glancing at his boyfriend briefly over his shoulder before going back to his collection.
“You sound pissed.” Mickey snorted derisively and pressed the still damp rag to his face, trying to soothe his angry wound. The last thing he needed was to lose his eyesight permanently on the left side if the cuts were to get infected or some shit. He needed the swelling to go down, and the wet rag was all he had to remedy the situation- just another perk of being incarcerated.
Ian slotted the last book into place and turned back to Mickey with a sigh, leaning forward and draping his forearms over his knees, letting his arm dangle so that just the tips of his thumbs brushed against one another. “I’m not, Mick.” He insisted, and just by the way the nickname fell out of Ian’s mouth, Mickey knew there was something else coming after it. “It’s just… maybe I don’t get why I have to follow the fuckin’ rules if you don’t.”
Mickey’s eye socket throbbed beneath his hand, matching his own heartbeat. He knew what rules Ian was talking about, and it wasn’t anything imposed upon them by Cook County Corrections. The fact of the matter was, he knew full well that the rules Ian was referring to were established on the very first night they found themselves together in their cell- the very cell they both sat in now.
Interestingly enough, Mickey had discovered that once the fuzzy warmth of their reunion had worn off, there were still problems that lurked beneath the surface. Their relationship had never been smooth, but it turned out that his little vacation to Mexico hadn’t removed any of their previously outstanding issues- it had only prolonged them, pausing them until the two men reunited. Then, there were only the two of them between the four walls of the cell, and there was nowhere else for those issues to go but out into the open.
A lot had happened.
Monica died. Ian spiraled.
Mickey moved drugs and illegal firearms and had the emblem of a cartel permanently etched into the skin of his forearm to show his loyalty.
And then, when Mickey had caught wind of Ian’s very public descent into madness, when he had seen how the love of his goddamn life had managed to get himself into just about the shittiest situation imaginable- in true Gallagher fashion- he sold out the cartel without thinking twice. There was no contest. Ian came first. The only reason Mickey agreed to leave without him to begin with was that he didn’t want to drag Ian down with him- if Ian had a good job and a relationship with someone who gave two shits about him, that had to be good enough for Mickey. So he left. And apparently, it hadn’t taken long for Ian to fall apart.
The unavoidable truth was, they needed one another.
Without Ian, Mickey had allowed himself to transform back into a soulless thug, free of morals and motivation to make something better for himself. Without Mickey, Ian had devolved into chaos at the first opportunity, and he couldn’t course correct himself until it was too late. And now that they were together again, serving out their sentences side by side, they needed some guidelines to live by. Mickey had never been big on rules, and as much as he liked to argue otherwise, neither had Ian. There was something in their southside DNA that made it almost impossible to respect boundaries, even ones set for their own good. But this time, it was a matter of protecting one another, and that was enough to inspire them both to play along.
That’s why they had the piece of paper crudely taped to the cell wall where they both could see it. It was a short list, but it got straight to the point.
Rule #1: Ian takes his meds.
Rule #2: Mickey stops fighting.
Rule #3: Ian and Mickey lay low.
Mickey knew he had broken rule #2, and by virtue of that fact, rule #3 as well. Still, Mickey figured that it had been worth it.
“Trust me, I had a good fuckin’ reason.” Mickey insisted, dragging the cloth way from his face. The bleeding had been stemmed, and now only a few dots of red colored the rag. “If that motherfucker kept his mouth shut, he and I wouldn’t have had an issue. But he just had to keep flapping his fuckin’ gingivitis riddles gums. So I shut his mouth for him.” He tried not to sound proud about it, but Mickey wasn’t good at hiding that shit. Not even a little.
Ian gave his boyfriend a hard look, trying to decide whether or not he wanted to dive into the subject so late into the night, when they both needed enough shut eye to function at the asscrack of dawn.
“What’d Kaminski say to you?” He asked. Ian needed to know. Mickey had been known to fly off the handle over some pretty mundane things, after all.
Mickey fiddled with the blood stained rag, pulling it taut and letting it go over and over despite how sore and swollen his knuckles were. “Dumbass kept calling us fags.” He muttered under his breath, and it took a second for Ian to register what he had said.
“Really?” Ian sounded a little surprised at the revelation. “That’s what this shit is about?” He vaguely motioned to his boyfriend’s various injuries.
Mickey shrugged and dropped the rag to the floor, signaling that he was officially done cleaning his wounds. “Called you crazy.” He added, although by the he way spoke, it was obvious that he knew the detail wouldn’t strengthen his case.
“Yeah?” Ian gripped the metal frame of the bunk with his fingertips. Whatever resentment he had been holding onto was now impossible to maintain. Mickey’s bleeding heart was the perfect match for his bloody knuckles, and Ian had always been besotted by both. “I hate to break it to ya, man. But we are fags.” He picked up one hand and clapped it down onto Mickey’s bare knee. “And I am pretty fuckin’ crazy.”
“Maybe.” Mickey conceded, although he quickly amended the statement with, “But I’ll be damned if that pea-brained douchebag gets to be the one who points that shit out to us.”
Ian cracked up with laughter, stifling himself almost immediately as to not draw the attention of any guards lurking nearby their cell. When he glanced back at Mickey, Ian could see that the man knew he was being fuckin’ ridiculous, but that he also didn’t regret his actions in the slightest. And despite how beaten up and sore Mickey looked in that moment, Ian couldn’t have been more turned on by his boyfriend. Mickey’s particular brand of insanity had always been irresistible for Ian, and that was one thing that wasn’t about to change anytime soon.
“My fuckin’ hero,” Ian pretended to swoon, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead and swaying to the side.
“Yeah, yeah, fuck you.” Mickey huffed, somehow managing to curl his bruised hand into some semblance of a middle finger.
“No, fuck you !” Ian countered playfully, carefully trapping Mickey’s hand in both of his own and pulling it up to his lips, waiting for the fingers to fully uncurl before pressing gentle kisses over each of the wounded knuckles. The letters etched into Mickey’s flesh were all distorted from the swelling, and if Ian had not known what they spelled out before, he would never have been able to guess. Mickey had always lived up to his tattoos, but Ian was well aware that his boyfriend’s hands had the capacity for more than just violence.
“The hell are you doing?” Mickey grunted, as Ian’s lips made contact with tender flesh.
“Well, you did break the rules.” Ian pointed out, hitting Mickey with his most seductive gaze. “But I guess it was for a good enough reason. So how about I give you your reward?”
Mickey felt a tiny bit of whatever blood was left inside of his body rush directly toward his pelvis. The tone of Ian’s voice was enough to have him panting, and the idea being proposed was intriguing enough for Mickey to completely forget about the dull throb of pain spreading out from his left eye.
“Reward?” Mickey hummed. “What kind of reward?”
Ian was sporting a wicked sort of grin, and the speed of Mickey’s heartbeat increased dramatically. “Guess you’re about to find out, huh?”