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The sun was still achingly hot, even as it was setting. Ian stretched out along the rooftop they were laying on, elongating his entire body. His fingers just touched the roughened edge of Mickey’s palm where he was lying out beside him, and Ian snuck a glance to the side to judge Mickey’s reaction. He didn’t do anything. Ian ran his pinky lightly along the side of his hand, waiting. Finally, Mickey cracked an eye open.
“What are you doing?”
He sounded bored, tired. Ian grinned as he pulled his hand back, closing his eyes and tilting his face up towards the orange and red sky.
“Nothing,” he fibbed. Beside him, Mickey snorted disbelievingly.
“Put those hands to good use,” Mickey said a minute later. “Wanna roll another joint?”
“I’m already baked,” Ian said, huffing a little with laughter. “Man. Shit, I’m baked.”
“Yeah, I got that. Fuck, you’re such a lightweight.” He heard rustling to the side of him, and then Mickey asked, “That a no?”
“No, let’s smoke more.”
Ian pushed himself up to a sitting position and waited until Mickey did too. He pushed a baggie of weed and a pack of rolling papers towards Ian across the cement of the roof, and Ian immediately set to work. He was finished in minutes, and handed the joint to Mickey while he busied himself finding the lighter they had been using. Once he found it, kicked a few feet away, he held it up to the joint now cushioned between Mickey’s lips.
Ian definitely wasn’t paying attention to his lips as he pulled hard around the lit joint. He definitely wasn’t watching them as Mickey pulled it away and blew a steady stream of smoke out. He definitely wasn’t watching them quirk up into a smirk right before Mickey brought the joint back between them to take another pull. Not at all.
“Wanna fuck?” Ian asked, unable to help himself as he watched Mickey work smoothly to inhale and exhale in well-practiced time.
God, he looked good, half sweating from the afternoon heat and loose and calm, so relaxed from his high. His skin, somehow still very pale but less so than in winter, had a few freckles scattered across his cheeks and neck, barely visible except when they were close. Ian knew where all of his freckles were, dotted absently across his skin; he had memorized them all. He repressed a desire to just lean in, to press his mouth to one freckle that he could see dark and clear on Mickey’s collarbone even now, and flicked his gaze back up to Mickey’s instead.
Mickey looked amused at the suggestion, even slightly derisive. Ian swallowed hard.
“No,” Mickey jeered. “It’s like ninety degrees out. I’m sweating my balls off, man.”
“Mickey.” He hadn’t meant it to sound so much like a whine, but there it was.
“Unless you can get me off without touching me, stay the fuck on your side of the roof.”
The blow was softened somewhat when Mickey passed the joint over right after, and Ian, already far higher than he had intended when he had first texted Mickey this morning but not at all unhappy about his situation, took it and inhaled deeply.
“Fuck,” he breathed, and he meant to say, “That’s good,” but he was interrupted by a sudden, violent coughing fit and he didn’t have time to say anything else. He doubled over, hacking viciously, and only when it was over and he sat back up did Ian notice that Mickey had been rubbing his back while he wheezed. He had been laughing, but rubbing his back at the same time. Ian didn’t even have time to appreciate it before his hand fell away and Ian started laughing too. For awhile they were just them, there, on that rooftop together, a lit joint between them and laughing so long that Ian’s stomach hurt and he thought he might cry.
“Oh, fuck.”
Mickey finally collapsed onto his back again, closer than before. Ian laid down beside him. If he turned his palm just so, his thumb brushed Mickey’s…
Laughter was still bubbling out of them at intervals, but as it went on they calmed a bit. Ian felt good, light; he spent a full minute swaying his hand back and forth, half turning it over and then laying it flat again, watching his thumb brush again Mickey’s every single time. When he finally laid it down for good—palm up, thumb on Mickey’s—he rolled his head to the side and found Mickey staring at him. For a second, Ian expected him to pull away, or at least reclaim his hand, but instead he just smiled all softly and quiet and let Ian have that brush of their thumbs.
Ian sighed contently and turned his face back towards the sun. It beat hot and uncomfortable down on the two of them; Ian could feel his skin burning already, even with the late hour. By this late in the day sunburn should have been out of the question, but here he was, splayed out on a rooftop with his heart pounding and his skin overheating, burning up despite all that.
“God,” he breathed. His eyes had drifted closed, but he could feel Mickey’s eyes on him as clearly as he could feel the rough cement on his back, as he could the sweat on his skin, as he could his own heartbeat. The sun was so warm, lulling him away from it all anyway.
Mickey was clearly paying more attention than Ian was, because when he didn’t go on, Mickey prompted him, “Yeah?”
He sounded bored, but Ian knew better.
“I think…” Ian breathed in, smiled. The uneven cement rubbed painfully against his already chafed back, through the t-shirt stuck to him from his sweat. The sun beat down relentlessly, setting over the rooftops in the distance and shining on them like a beacon. Ian was so high he could practically feel his own skin. He breathed out. “I think this is the happiest I’ll ever be.”
He was drifting, fading. If he was hot, Mickey was a furnace beside him, and Ian could feel him burning and alive right there with him. He hoped Mickey was floating just like he was.
Then sleep was there, quick and insistent, and Ian didn’t want to be lost in it but he didn’t want to fight it, either, he just wanted to feel good. He just wanted to have good dreams and for Mickey to have good dreams and for them to be there together, floating through sleep with each other.
Before he could forget, Ian shifted his thumb, rubbing it deliberately over Mickey’s one last time before letting it rest against his. Mickey was as warm as he had expected. And then, so quietly that he might have imagined it, so softly that it could have been part of his oncoming dream, so sweetly he would forget it when he woke up, he heard Mickey whisper.
“Me, too.”