Still, our hearts beat.

The Voices, They've Won

Friday 11th / 2100 words

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Ian's eyes are fixed on the blank ceiling above, barely blinking while hot tears threaten to escape. Surely it's only been a few hours since he last saw Mickey, but it feels like so much more, days even. So, so long.

His head feels like a cinderblock, as if it's been filled with cement and dried in harsh summer sunlight. The call that sparked all of this, five days ago, plays sometimes in the back of his mind, quiet and far away but there. That kid, the way his heart had stopped beating under Ian's very fingers and his chest caved under Ian's administrations; the kids friends in utter grief outside the door. All in his very own highschool bathroom, too. He, Lip and Mandy used to escape here, smoke a few on the very floor he kneels on eleven years later. It floats far away, but on top of everything it continues to make him feel leaden.

Most of all, it's that familiar numb ache that takes him over completely. Overrides all energy, motivation, emotion, thinking. How he could feel so weighted and so numb at the same time was so far beyond him.

Everything is heavy and gruelling, as if he's suddenly made up from the densest tons of rocks there are on Earth. His arms, his legs, his head, his fingers. Especially his chest. It almost hurt to even breathe, lungs and ribs phantomly aching and throbbing with every breath drawn in. Something that is so unthought, a basic instinct of human survival - more the action of mindlessly doing than actively having to remember to do - and yet, breathing feels like something that is way too much he is able handle. Too much responsibility to be alive. Too much effort. Too much. Everything is too much.

And he can't seem to stop or prevent that feeling.

Somehow, he reaches his hand to the bedside and shifts it over the wood until he finds his phone. Bringing it back, he is hardly able to keep his hand upright long enough to see the screen. 3:27 pm - but he doesn't take any notice. So he turns his head, arm resting against the mattress as he goes into his call log, and dials the one person who makes things feel somewhat okay.

He places it on speaker, leaving it to drop to the sheets as he closes his eyes and scarcely listens to the dialling sound, waiting for Mickey's voice to channel through the line.

But it doesn't.

Instead it goes to voicemail.

- - -

He rushes to pull his ringing phone from his back pocket, almost there when a loud, arrogant and booming voice echoes through the open air. He's caught red-handed.

Fuck.

"I gotta check this, Chris. I have to." Mickey tries to reason, hands still against the denim of his pants, eyes subtlety shooting daggers.

"What did I tell you? You touch that phone, you're gone. It stays powered off, or you don't bring it. This is a construction site, Milkovich. I don't wanna be responsible for an accident because you're not following rules."

Mickey swallows, pursing his lips engaging a mild staring competition between his boss. As his mind whirls in his brain - warning him the possibility that it's Ian! It's Ian! It's Ian! He need you! - the ringing dies out.

"No phone call is so important that one of my guys ends up in the back of an ambo 'cause you decided to bring it on site. Got it?"

Mickey's heart is racing against his ribs and all he wishes he could do is punch the smug look off his boss right off his face - but this is good money. Him and Ian need money. This is the only job he was able to get after trying so many places, since Ian became an EMT again and deemed their weed biz to see the end of it's glory days.