Mickey had been out of prison for 2 years and Ian never would have known, until they ran into one another on a random night in May.
Ian fights for the love they shared while Mickey fights for the life he built, as they both struggle with shame and guilt from their shared past it becomes clear that they cannot help but be drawn to what is bright and beautiful between them.
Tags: Tattoo artist Mickey Milkovich, EMT Ian Gallagher, Canon Divergent Season 6/7ish, Angst with a Happy Ending, Slow burn, Getting back together
Psychopomp - 28k words
Every patron in the Alibi went eerily silent as a news anchor announced that an infamous local thug and escaped convict was found dead in Mexico. The news was met with casual disappointment or outright cheers, but Ian Gallagher couldn't tear his eyes away from the small TV hung over the bar as the world seemed to burn around him.
At the same time, a federal transport van sped up a stretch of highway just north of the border. Inside, Mickey Milkovich woke up in a body bag, and he was hungry.
Tags: Vampire Mickey Milkovich, Canon divergence, Blood and violence, Bipolar Ian Gallagher, Temporary character death (vampire stuff), Angst with a Happy Ending
Lovers Carvings' - 28k words
Six conversations between Ian and Mickey between 10x10 and life beyond
Tags: Post canon, Married Ian Gallagher and Mickey Milkovich, Dialogue Heavy, Fix-it (kind of)
Both Sides Now - 16k words
In 2011, Ian and Mickey struggle with conflicting desires as their relationship grows. When the universe decides to drop them in 2024, their older selves balance the task of setting them on the right path while grappling with their history.
Spoiler alert: it all works out in the end.
Tags: Time travel, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Season 2 meets Post Canon, Married Ian Gallagher and Mickey Milkovich, Husbands in Love, Idiots in love
City on a Hill - 18k words
As he left Cook County jail with the image of Mickey's heartbroken eyes locked behind bullet proof glass burned into his mind, Ian couldn't let Yevgeny slip away too.
Between prison and marriage Ian kept his relationship with the kid and his mother a secret out of fear and trepidation. Years later, as Ian and Mickey live out their happy ending, he struggles to keep that secret in the dark.
Tags: Hurt/Comfort, fluff and angst, Married Ian Gallagher and Mickey Milkovich, Yevgeny Milkovich, Svetlana Milkovich, Domestic, mentions of past canon-noncon (3x06), angst with a happy ending
Time of the Season - 10k (In progress)
Ian and Mickey, making love through the seasons.
Tags: Porn without plot, fluff and smut, pillow princess Mickey Milkovich, Post canon
The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts - 2.5k
It took thirty years to become Mickey Milkovich, good things take time.
Tags: Mickey's 30th birthday, fluff, husbands in love
Toothache - 6k
The misadventures of Ian Gallagher, boy vampire.
Tags: Vampire Ian, Growing up together
Losing Dogs - 86k
When the certainty of his father’s violence and perversion is revealed, Mickey is faced with two options: leave Chicago, or stay with Ian and his family. As their lives become more intricately intertwined, Ian and Mickey find themselves spiraling out of control and they're both left wondering if they were always betting on losing dogs.
Tags: Canon-Divergent, teenage romance, they're deeply in love, read the tags on ao3 carefully
Sardine - 61k
Ian Gallagher arrives on Winslow Island in a thick layer of fog, freshly 25 years old and with everything he owns in an overstuffed suitcase. The itch he’d been trying to ignore for months had won out in the end, he left his family in Chicago to answer a Craigslist ad looking for a groundskeeper to maintain a small private garden across the country. As he falls in love with the creeping mosses and raging tides of the Puget Sound, Ian discovers there are more strange and terrifying creatures hiding under the dark ocean than he imagined. To his horror, Ian can’t manage to react appropriately to one distinctly not human inhabitant who seems determined to get under his skin.
Tags: Fantasy AU, Selkie Mickey, Pacific Northwest, Gardener Ian
Summary: Ian Gallagher arrives on Winslow Island in a thick layer of fog, freshly 25 years old and with everything he owns in an overstuffed suitcase. The itch he’d been trying to ignore for months had won out in the end, he left his family in Chicago to answer a Craigslist ad looking for a groundskeeper to maintain a small private garden across the country. As he falls in love with the creeping mosses and raging tides of the Puget Sound, Ian discovers there are more strange and terrifying creatures hiding under the dark ocean than he imagined. To his horror, Ian can’t manage to react appropriately to one distinctly not human inhabitant who seems determined to get under his skin.
Chapter One Live tomorrow (29 March). A new chapter will be posted every day for the rest of the week, with the final going up this Friday! Hope some people are interested in tuning in, it's a fun story.
Light splayed carelessly across the muscled planes of Mickey's back as he stepped out of the treeline and stripped out of his shirt, leaving it behind for Ian to collect. By the time he reached the edge of the river, he was completely bare, his feet submerged in the water as he looked back at Ian expectantly. There was a faint wind blowing down the valley of the trees, knocking his dark hair loose from where he'd been pushing it back and out of his face all day. His pale figure looked small against the vastness of the river, the mountains beyond, and the open sky above, yet wholly harmonious in the order of his surroundings.
Over the course of that winter, Ian learned that Mickey liked thievery and beer and public urination and sex and horror movies and making Ian laugh. He had an impish sense of humor that bordered on mean. He didn’t love clothes, or niceties, or when dogs barked at him—as they often instinctively did. He liked weed and daytime television. He did not like most vegetables. He was the love of Ian’s life, and against all odds and laws of nature, his other half. He was still entirely and distinctly not human. Ian had learned not to worry about it.
“What am I going to do with you, Mickey?” He finally sighed. The amusement flickering in Mickey’s calm expression grew less confident the longer the question sat between them.
“You don’t have to do anything with me,” Mickey said, torn between confusion and indignation, his eyes narrowing like they did when he thought Ian was teasing him.
“What if I want to?” Ian challenged with a helpless shrug, leaning back so he could look at Mickey properly. “What then?”
The tight furrow of Mickey’s brow released slowly as his features softened with a kind of understanding, and his mouth opened with a breathless oh. Ian closed his eyes and felt his entire being narrow until he was made entirely of the feeling of cool sea breeze on his cheek and the tilting, swelling love in the cage of his ribs.
The daily drizzle of rain continued to fall, and Ian grew accustomed to the constant dew that settled on his curls and shoulders. He trimmed and collected and planted in the garden, tinkered in the greenhouse, and worked faithfully at the farmers' market. He made friends and got to know people in the small town on Winslow. He ran daily through the forest trails and along the shoreline roads. Life on the island was becoming familiar, the days were similar, and they ended similarly as well—sitting on the dock, talking to Mickey.
Ian and Mickey would have been married for about six years and a few months.
It might seem that time would eventually stop the urgency of kitchen kisses and warm palms pressing against each other's bodies before the sun even had a chance to rise. But what are they if not fragments of desires accumulated in a time just as imprecise? Though that's not entirely accurate; because a portrait is made of thousands of brushstrokes, yet it still forms one complete painting. For Ian, time is a game that stopped chasing them long ago, even before he understood that what they had was love. There has never been a moment where Mickey's body ended completely: it has always remained imprinted inside him like a second skin.
They could have been consumed by the years, disappointed that they didn't become more than what they perhaps expected. They both still think that sometimes, but it's easier than it used to be. The moments when Ian contracts into the bed for weeks, unable to feel himself at all, are enough to sometimes make him doubt whether he deserves this life. But then Mickey sits beside him and waits, feels for both of them, breathes in rhythm with Ian's breath, turning their home into a giant heart where only they exist — where they can feel their lungs fill without fear. When Ian is able to get up, everything moves slower, and Mickey doesn't push him to live beyond himself; only to be beside him, which is often enough. And then Ian will look at him, and Mickey will rise on his toes to loop his arms around that freckled neck, and in that smile that no one has ever seen except Ian — because Ian is the one who brings it out — he'll say, "Let's take it slow."
And on nights when Ian's eyes don't seem to want to close, Mickey's hand finds his skin and whispers to him in the dark when Ian finds his voice to ask, "Why?" It's simple, apparently. "Because you're my husband." And at first, his mind rejected the idea like poison; but so many kisses, so many words, so much warmth settling inside him, have finally created that light that has slowly flooded every corner. And now it's easier to believe: that they belong to each other with a chain forged by their young, dirty, nervous hands.
Mickey's neck used to be traced by stinging needles, his chest cracking with too much air, not knowing how to keep breathing. The fear of disappointing, of using his hands for anything other than stroking red hair... the ghost of fists harder and drier pressing into him. But the grip has loosened over the years, and instead of counting all the scars that ricochet like echoes of a past he still doesn't quite know how to repair, he loses himself counting freckles on a body he could trace with his eyes closed. Love may not be able to heal wounds, but for the first time, they both have someone to press on them, knowing they are not big enough to sink their lives completely.
And for six years, they have learned to read each other's pain, their silences, the things they cannot say, their bindings and nameless anxieties. They have learned to love each other slowly and steal each other's breath, to scream each other's names not as loss but as orgasms in a bed that holds their scents because it belongs only to them. But time is absurd for them; and six years feel the same as ten, thirty, and an eternity. And even then, perhaps eternity is not enough to contain their hearts.
“I’ve been getting these really weird nightmares,” Ian explained. “Which is total bullshit, because I’ve never had issues like this before—sirens, shootings, you name it, and I’ve slept through it, but something about the total darkness and silence throws me off for some reason.”
Julia watched him contemplatively, nodding her head. “Not that surprising, honestly. Something about the gloomy weather and fresh air can mess with people.”
“Yeah?” Ian asked curiously.
“Oh yeah, it definitely appeals to a particular type of person and fucks with others,” she said earnestly. “I’m not into that woo-woo shit, but energetically there’s some strange stuff going on. Maybe that’s why we’re all so fucking closed off, I don’t know. But there are all kinds of ghost stories and serial killers out there—I suggest you get with it or get out if you’re having issues, because if you think it’s all in your head, you’re probably wrong.”
Think about the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, but with Ian and Mickey.
There's none of that dirty need for possession that Pygmalion has, where he doesn't want to let his creation go free, where he wants to tie her down and teach her only what he desires.
Mickey creates a statue because he needs to know that his hands can create beautiful things and not just destroy them. That red can be sunlight hitting marble and not blood spilled on his fingers.
And he spends hours locked in his workshop hammering, tense muscles shaping edges, hollows, lines. His mind clouds with everything he always wanted but killed in a silence that now, suddenly, is too loud. Without knowing exactly what he's creating, he just feels and shapes a body.
When he finishes, all the air escapes from his lungs but not from exhaustion — he's never felt more alive.
Looking at the face of the boy that has taken shape under his palms, he thinks that maybe he already existed and he had only managed to carve him out of the marble block because, oh, how is it possible that that person couldn't have a heart beating inside him?
And when he gets up the next day, the boy comes to life on the pedestal and then moves toward him. Mickey thinks that this isn't magic nor a design of the gods because he wouldn't be capable of creating something so beautiful.
The boy then looks at him and his smile isn't marbled but warm. There are no fractures in him.
"Who am I?" he asks as if he had just found his own voice in that moment.
Mickey runs his fingers over the bones of his neck, swearing he can feel a pulse.
"Whoever you want to be" because he knows what it means to live chewing on every gesture, every word. To think that freedom was meant for those who weren't like him.
Fuck. Maybe Mickey was the statue after all.
And then he kept touching him in the following days, and weeks, and months. And then he gave himself a name; Ian.
Letters that sounded soft like the sun warming their legs as they walked through the woods and Mickey watched his bright green eyes move through every corner, as if everything mattered. Explaining the world to him, Mickey rediscovered it in warmer tones.
"You don't want to leave? You're not obligated to be here. You don't belong to me, Ian" He said one day when they were lying in bed, the redhead's head— because his whitish marble was turning into flesh and creating colors— resting on his thighs, Mickey's hands stroking his fiery hair.
Ian smiled. "I don't want to. I'm starting to feel something new."
"Oh yeah? What?"
And then Ian looked at him with nothing else on his face except a world just for them. "Love."
And over time Ian began shedding the hard rock like a skin that desire was gently washing away. Somehow he became flesh, because Mickey could kiss his chest and feel it pressing against the lips. Feel the blood running beneath it.
He understood one day when they were both at the beach, watching the waves consume the greenish rocks, that the goddess was whispering something to him through the wind.
The need to possess, to burn with wanting, could grant that what he had created would move toward him. But then Mickey had started to love him, and Ian had felt the same without knowing how to name it. And that was what had given him life.
Ian got the distinct feeling that he'd made the right decision, that this was the place he'd been looking for. It was an unusual certainty, so singular that it almost felt hostile. As he turned and started walking back to the cottage, his mind was pleasantly clear and eager to settle in.
Before Ian could step through the doorway, he felt a sudden alertness startle his senses—a prickling along his spine as he faced away from the ocean, like he was being watched. He paused carefully, glancing back for a beat. The wind was still gently blowing through the trees and grasses, the ocean licked at the shore, and Ian’s pulse slowed with the rhythm of the world around him. Shaking his head, Ian stepped back inside.
