Casual Sabotage

21 - The Ring

All in all, it was fine, October went by, Halloween came and went. November was cold as fuck and Mickey took advantage of the fact that Ian was big enough to curl himself around Mickey, keeping Mickey in a warm cocoon at night.

It was in the middle of the night in the middle of November, that Mickey was woken up by the deep, screechy sounds of an untuned guitar. Mickey sat up confused and looked around the dark bedroom. Ian sat on the blanket in the middle of the bed with the light of his cell phone's flashlight and played the guitar he had bought in July with a bunch of other toys. He hadn't touched it since then, just looked at it guilt-ridden from time to time.

"Ian?", Mickey asked groggily.
"Hey, Mick"
"What are you doing?"
"Couldn't sleep, so I thought I could learn playing this, always wanted to play an instrument. Isn't it crazy that none of us ever learned to play something? Frank plays the piano, I don't know how he ever learned that he's not exactly patient."
"Ian, it's the middle of the night"
"It's alright, go back to sleep."
"I can't sleep when you're playing that dead cat thing right next to me. Go sit on the porch, play there."
"Okay", Ian got up.
"Grab a sweater, it's cold", Mickey mumbled lay back down.
Ian nodded, took some warm clothes and left the room.

Mickey woke up the next morning, the memory seemed like a dream to him now, and shit, he hoped it was just a dream. He bit his lip and felt the space in the bed behind him: it was empty and cold. Ian couldn't sleep last night. Ian randomly picked up the hated guitar and started playing in the middle of the night, not caring about who he might wake up.

Mickey pulled the blanket closer around his body. He knew what this was. It was starting again. Ian would behave like in July again. Mickey curled up in himself underneath the blanket.

He could hear Ian singing somewhere downstairs. It was starting again. It was happening again. Mickey knew he couldn't handle this a second time. He couldn't go through this again, their relationship wouldn't be able to endure it.

"I should have forced him to go to the hospital. I should have just listened to the others and brought him there.", he thought to himself. He stared at the closed door. He wanted it to stay closed for the rest of the day. He didn't want to look into the Gallaghers' faces. He didn't want to see and experience Ian like this again. He didn't want this. He just wanted to stay in his bed and hide from the whole world forever.

Downstairs, Ian had abandoned the guitar a while ago, he had shaved off all his beard and buzzed off almost all of his hair, looking like 17 again, and had spent some time around six a.m. in the attic looking for colours. He was determined to give the hanging cabinets in the kitchen a new design. He drew a bunch of flowers on one cabinet when the siblings slowly came downstairs one by one, by now he was drawing dicks while having a laughing fit.

"Here, this is mine", Ian pointed the brush at the biggest one on the cabinet, "This is Mickey's and this fat fucker is Roger Spikey.", he winked at Lip. Debbie put a hand on Franny's eyes, which made Ian laugh because in no way did Franny know what dicks are or could even process the pictures she saw, neither would she remember them. Lip convinced him to overpaint the dicks after all again since all the cum coming out of them didn't go with the kitchen, "Maybe I can paint it on the bedroom wall, I'm sure Mickey would like it", he had giggled.

Fiona and Lip sat next to each other at the table, watching him.
"Where's Mickey?", Fiona asked lowly.
Lip shrugged, "Haven't seen him. Do you think he bolted again?"
"Car's still outside", Carl said, who luckily had abandoned his black-kid-at-heart phase by now.
"So, what, is Mickey still in bed?", Fiona asked confused, "No way he slept through this."
Lip shrugged, "Maybe he left but without the car. He was two working legs."

"Oops", it came from the kitchen, Fiona didn't even want to look.
"I go look for Mickey", she said and went upstairs, so Lip and Carl had to deal with Ian spilling paint all over the floor.