Chapter Text
The summer Mickey met him was the same summer that he realized, with insignificant suddenness, that the ocean is not blue. Everyone tells you it’s blue. They all think it’s blue, they all paint it blue, speak it blue, sing it blue, dream it blue, but it isn’t. Not on a sunny day, not on a stormy day, the ocean is not blue. He notices it, as he stares out at the silky roughness of the Atlantic Ocean, that it’s green. It’s gray. It’s brown. But never blue. Maybe the slightest hint blue, if at all, but only through immense power of suggestion. And with this realization, as you stare into the ripples of the Atlantic, you start to wonder where this illusion came from, and if the sky reflects the water, why is the sky that unmistakable, hopeful shade of bright azure we all know and love?
“The ocean is green,” Mickey says, leaning against the warm, eroded wood lining the boardwalk. He blinks at the reflection of the sun on the waves, and Mandy wipes sweat from her forehead. Her angled, black eyebrows scrunch together, and her pale skin glows from the salt in the air.
“What?” she answers after a drag on the half-crumpled cigarette in her fingers.
“The ocean,” Mickey repeats, “it’s green.”
“Ain’t green everywhere,” she responds. “Gulf of Mexico ain’t green.”
“How the fuck do you know?”
“I’ve seen it.”
Mickey snorts. “You haven’t been south of Virginia.”
Mandy coughs and crosses on arm across her chest. “Well, on Google, ya know, I’ve seen pictures. Why’s it matter, anyway?”
Mickey shrugs. “Dunno. Everyone’s always tellin’ ya that it’s blue. But it isn’t.”
Mandy sniffs. Her blue eyes search the ocean for an argument, her thick black hair wavy from the salty air. “Yeah. I guess not.”
The water’s rough today; lifeguards wave the tourists out if they don’t have a surfboard.
Mandy taps her uneven nails softly on the fence line; she balances the cigarette delicately between two fingers and Mickey clutches his nametag between his own. He checks his watch. Five minutes before his break ends.
“Give me that.” She hands him the cigarette. He takes a thick draw.
“Nasty habit,” a wrinkled, over powdered woman jeers in passing.
“Whatever kills me the fastest,” Mickey mutters to the ground. He’s off-duty. Four more minutes. He glances at the “no smoking on boardwalk” sign and puffs on the cigarette again.
“What’s the date?” Mandy asks.
“Tourists won’t be gone for another three and a half months, Mands.”
Her response is a deep sigh.
Three more minutes.
A girl from their neighborhood passes by in the uniform shirt of a scam tourist shop a few blocks down the boardwalk. She waves, her big eyes tired. The siblings wave back silently. She steps out of the way for the tram. Two more minutes.
Mandy sighs. “I lost it, Mick,” she says quietly, with weight.
“Lost what?”
“My job.” She leaves him in stark silence.
“Which one?” he asks grimly.
“Juice bar.”
Mickey hands the cigarette back to her. It’s almost finished. “What for?”
“They partnered with some exchange program. Let go all the American kids to make room for a shipment of Italians,” she says through gritted teeth.
“Colin ain’t gonna be happy,” he warns, pushing himself away from the fence and working to pin his “MICKEY” tag back on.
“The ocean is fuckin’ green,” she mumbles as he walks away, back to Leo’s Pizza. He turns at the milky glass door and watches her take one more thoughtful drag through the static of the crowd before she stomps out the cigarette, ruffles her damp hair, and pushes her way against the stream. Her skin is pink from the sun, and her long legs carry her fast, with piercing eyes to navigate the crowd, above high cheekbones and full lips, rose from the summer.
Mickey blinks and she’s gone. He pushes open the door, and an icy air greets him.
The shop is empty; it’s only 10 am.
“Leo!” Mickey shouts towards the back. “You in?”
A few shuffles, one bang, and the door to the kitchen produces a round, greasy man with black balding hair and the biggest, reddest, most crooked nose ever spat onto a human being.
“What? Waddya want, Mickey, time’s fuckin money.”
“Nobody’s fuckin’ here, Leo.”
“Yeah, but every second I spend talkin’ to you I gotta spend on another fluid ounce of vino when I get home.”
Mickey smiles. “Funny, had you more pegged for a beer kinda guy.” He spares a glance at Leo’s solid stomach.
He nods. “Now we’re getting smart, are we? You don’t start talkin’, kid, I’m goin’ back in that kitchen.”
“Alright, alright,” Mickey stops him with raised hands. Leo stares at him impatiently. “Listen, Mandy’s lost a job to some exchange leeches, I gotta pick up another shift.”
Leo squints. “Mickey, you pick up one more shift, you’re gonna be working full-time.”
“Well—“
“Well,” he interrupts Mickey, “I didn’t open a pizza shop to grant my dish pigs health insurance.”
Mickey shakes his head. “Never had it, never asked for it.”
Leo scratches his head, and sniffs. Finally, he sighs. “Look, kid, I like you, alright? And you’re one of Colin’s marmaglia .”
“So?”
“So…kid, this ain’t conventional, you’re kinda young, but you’re the most responsible piece of shit I’ve hired in the place, so how’d you like to be my assistant manager?”
Mickey stares at the man, mouth half open, frozen.
Leo mimics him, opening his mouth with a dumb expression. “What? You don’t want it? You one of those saints, not gonna take shit you ain’t qualified for or whatever?”
“No,” he says quickly. “No, I’m—“
“Honored? Tickled? Aroused? You don’t gotta pander to me, Michelangelo, just finish your day here, and come in tomorrow at 8 am all bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to start your new life as a people pleaser, alright?”
“Yeah. Fuck. Yes, thank you, Leo, I owe you.” His smile hasn’t felt this easy in years.
“You owe me six more fuckin’ hours of work, so get back to it.” He sniffs and pushes briskly back into the kitchen.
“My name ain’t fuckin’ Michelangelo!” Mickey calls after his boss, as an afterthought, without much conviction.
His chest sings.
The ocean isn’t blue. I just got promoted. Maybe I’ll stop smoking.
“Are you open?”
Mickey’s mind takes time to answer, time he takes to look at the kid stepping up to the counter.
Shaggy red hair, freckles, square chin, watery eyes. A tight, worn tank top stretches across his chest above ill fitting cargo shorts. Everything about the boy sings runaway; his hair, his shoes, his skin indicate he’s held together only by petty theft and a will to survive.
“Yeah, we’re open.”
He orders, digs in his pocket for exact change.
Mickey slides his order, a single slice of cheese pizza, across the counter to him, and his eyes come alive. He snatches the plate and ignores his receipt, not taking the time to find a seat before finishing the slice in four bites and turning to leave.
Mickey watches him push out and shrugs, checks his watch, and chews his lip. Five hours and 58 minutes to go.
The nights in Azurra are cold despite the season; everyone says it has to do with the ocean, and the wind, and the current, but Mickey’s been to Ocean City and he’s been to Rehoboth and he’s been to Cape Cod and no matter what he always comes back and stands on the deserted boardwalk and shivers more than he did when he was gone. But tonight, he can hardly feel the chill on his shoulders.
A promotion. A promotion.
He feels borderline ridiculous over his happiness regarding the small step up from, as Leo so eloquently put it, dish pig. But, with a promotion comes a raise, quelling his concerns about Mandy’s lost job, and the title Assistant Manager on his resume couldn’t hurt.
He takes in another breath, drinking in the salty air and then digging in his jacket pocket for a cigarette and his lighter. It only takes one roll to light a flame, and the resulting poison in Mickey’s lungs never felt so good.
He starts his walk home, and is struck by the stark contrast of the boardwalk at night compared to its daytime bustle. It’s deserted, practically, besides the occasional group of teenage boys, smoking weed and rolling across the bumpy wood on skateboards and yelling unwelcome compliments to girls unlucky enough to walk past.
The boardwalk in itself has neighborhoods; up towards the one digit numbers are your high scale hotels and houses, and the restaurants so expensive they shut down during the off season; none of the locals can fucking afford it.
Towards the middle are the grimier residencies; still alright, still livable, but the hotels are louder and the staff smile much less, and the beach houses look much more...loved.
Past all the hotels are the tourist traps, the thousands of shacks that sell shitty airbrushed t-shirts or stuffed animals or other various useless pieces of novelty crap. Mickey briefly wonders, not for the first time, how the proprietors sleep at night selling that shit.
At the very end, at the outlet, there’s a never ending carnival and the docks, where boats take off for sunset rides on the bay.
But, in between the outlet and the shops, there’s a street; one that turns off with a suddenness that allows you to miss it. Neon lights flash and stutter and loud laughter spills from the pulsing mouth of the street, collecting from the separate clubs and tumbling into one big slur of energy. Mickey knows it’s the faster way home; taking the street before it causes a whole domino effect of blockades and gated residentials that would make a tourist’s head spin. Even so, he usually avoids it.
It’s the queer part of town. Every local knows it, even if they don’t say it. And it’s not that Mickey really has a problem with the whole gay thing. Who gives a fuck? No, what he cares about is the comments, the offers, the propositions, endlessly thrown his way until he can finally emerge out of the suffocating alley.
For some reason, that he may never know, gays just want him. And it makes him entirely too fucking uncomfortable.
He doesn’t know what leads him to turn down the street just then; maybe his newfound sense of inner calm, maybe his rush to get home to give the good news to his family, but something prompts him to forget about his trepidation for tonight and just take the fast way home.
It starts 15 seconds after he sets foot in the fucking alley.
“ Hello, sweet thing!”
He purses his lips and keeps walking.
“You wanna grab a bite, honey?”
He rubs a hand across his mouth before suddenly remembering something, and shoving both his hands back into his pockets to hide his tattoos, but he realizes a second later that he was too late.
“Oh, you can fuck me up any time!”
“How ‘bout you back the fuck off?” he calls back to the detached voice. He continues to put one foot in front of the other, ignoring the occasional whistle and the warm air spilling from the doors of the clubs, snapping open as he passes every once in awhile.
He lifts his eyes once. Once . Right towards a small alley, and he almost stops in his tracks. He squints, and confirms that yes, there definitely is a dark figure standing there. Two dark figures. This time, he really does stop, and maybe he knows better than to stare, but something just seems off about it. The figures shift, moving together, forward a little bit.
And then Mickey sees him again, just barely lit by the streetlights, clinging to the alley. The absolutely-without-a-doubt-that-is-a-runaway kid, red hair and freckles and all, latched onto a much older man, holding his hand out, waiting, smiling with this fake deviousness, and Mickey watches as the old man hands the kid what looks like a sizable stack of cash. His stomach twists. He can feel the cold air again. He shivers.
The kid couldn’t have been more than 17. What the fuck kind of pervert pays a teenager to fuck? Mickey thought back to the ravenous state the kid had been in that afternoon, and his heart cracks. He’d been poor; shit, he is poor. But selling yourself for your next meal? That’s a whole new level.
Someone bumps Mickey’s shoulder and he realizes that he’s zoned out; blinking, he searches again for the pair, and almost jumps when he spots them coming his way. He almost wretches when he realizes that the man paying for it is even older than he previously thought; upwards near 60.
He sniffs. His eyes very briefly go out of focus. He makes a decision.
“Ay!” he calls just as the pair brush past him. They take about five more paces before pausing. Mickey rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, you, Carrot Cake. I’m talkin’ to you.” The kid seems to freeze, and then slowly, he turns around, eyes narrowed.
Mickey takes a breath. What the fuck is he doing? “You really wanna go home with that Brillo pad motherfucker for a couple hundred bucks?” The kid blinks rapidly, but the old man bristles.
“And who the fuck are you?” the man asks in a voice that suggests he has about a decade's worth of mucous built up in the back of his throat.
Mickey ignores him, taking a step closer to the redhead, looking him dead in his (very green, very large) eyes. “I’ll give ya a place to sleep and food to eat. For a week.” The kid’s eyes widen, and then soften with what could be gratitude. He releases the older man’s arm and immediately walks towards Mickey, jaw set.
“Wait. Wait!” the man calls out. “I need my money back.” The man crosses one arm across his chest and holds out the other, waiting, but Mickey scoffs. He glances over at the redhead, who he finds is already looking at him expectantly.
“How much he pay you?” Mickey asks. Without a word, the kid hands the cash over to Mickey, who flicks through it impatiently.
“Thr--four--four hundred bucks? That’s all? For him?” Mickey asks, jutting a thumb towards the redhead to his right. “ That’s all you’re charging? You could get a grand a lay from these tourist assholes, dude.” The kid looks dumbstruck, dropping his gaze down and to the side. Maybe it’s the neon lights, but Mickey can swear he can see the kid blush.
The man opposite them clears his throat impatiently. “My money?” Mickey’s eyes flit back and forth, from the money in his hand to the man standing in front of him.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mickey finally says, licking his thumb and shuffling through the cash again. “Red here will take half, because he let you stand next to him for 5 minutes and touch his arm. That’s about as much as two hundred would get you with a regular escort looking the way he does, anyway. Sound good?” Mickey slips two hundred dollars to the kid next to him, then holds out the remaining money to the other man.
“You’re robbing me!” the man exclaims, and Mickey’s eyebrows shoot up. He takes a step closer, making sure his stare doesn’t break from the other man’s eyes. He slams the money against the other man’s chest and licks his lips.
“Sound good?” he repeats, more pointedly, and he watches the man visibly shrink, finally mumbling his assent. Mickey smiles a wide, sarcastic, dangerous smile. “Good!” He pats the old man’s cheek, with venom. “That’s what you get for paying to fuck teenage boys. Have a nice night!”
Mickey chokes back a laugh as the man scrambles to get away, turning back into the alley where he had first paid the redhead.
Mickey jumps when he feels an arm linking through his. “The fuck?” he exclaims, taking a step away and turning to the boy beside him, and he swallows drily at the kid’s mischievous smile. He’s practically glowing under the neon light, eyes dark and hungry. It shouldn’t make Mickey’s chest constrict. It does.
“You gonna take me back to yours, or what?” the redhead asks, voice velvety and smooth.
Mickey blinks, and it takes him about seven seconds to remember that he had actually offered this hooker a place to live. For a week.
“Yeah, I, uh--” Mickey starts dumbly, before swallowing and trying again. “What’s your name, anyway?”
The redhead takes a second too long to answer, before saying, “Curtis.”
Mickey narrows his eyes, before sighing and biting his lip. “Your real name, Red.”
“That is--” the kid stops almost as soon as he starts, cut short by Mickey’s raised eyebrows and knowing expression. The kid noticeably swallows, before mumbling, “Ian.”
“Ian,” Mickey repeats. He snorts at the redhead’s expression, all wide-eyed and shaky. “I ain’t a cop, chill out.” Ian seems to visibly relax at this, trying once again to link arms with Mickey. Mickey opens his mouth to protest, but when he meets Ian’s eyes and sees the tiniest bit of security swirled in with the facade of desire, he shuts it again and lets Ian’s arm fully loop through his.
“I guess you gotta feel like a sitting duck walkin’ through a place like this, huh?” Mickey says softly.
Ian shrugs, but his small smile says he appreciates Mickey’s understanding.
Mickey stands there for a few more seconds, breathing, nearly succumbing to his urge to rip his arm away from the kid, but he chokes it down.
After all, if he’s got someone on his arm, maybe all the bullshit catcalling will chill the fuck out, and he can just get home and sleep.
So, they start forward. One foot in front of the other.