Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mickey’d finally come to terms with being invisible when he’d entered college. High school had been ok: he’d been able to outrun or hide from his family reputation, but people at least looked at him. Here? Now? Thousand-yard stares everywhere, looking right through him, like he was invisible despite the tiny but bright enamel rainbow flag pin he wore on his backpack.

Invisible was safe. Lonely, but safe.

He still couldn’t believe he’d made it to finals week. Not Mr. Barely-scraping-by, piss-poor, working-full-time on top of two courses this semester.

In all honesty, he’d fully expected to be kicked off the campus the first morning he’d shown up. It was the first time he’d gone to a campus for anything other than selling weed, and he was certain all the other, legitimate students, could probably smell it on him or some shit. Read it in the grungy denim jacket he wore or on the scuffs at the toe of his boots.

But no. Miracle of miracles, he’d been able to find his first lecture hall (Introduction to Comparative Literature) unmolested and sneak into a back row without causing a scene. ( Because he was invisible, though he didn’t know it quite yet .)  Of course, from up in the nosebleed seats, he was then able to scrutinize and judge every poor schmuck who came in after him.

Jock. Prom Queen. Geek. That is a child. That is a senior citizen. Another dumb jock. Stoner. The faces were too far away to be clear, but the stereotypes were all present and accounted for.

And Mickey? 

As much as he hoped his outfit and false bravado would cover it up, he was a nerd. Dyed, in the flesh, book-reading, comic-con aspiring, mathematical-badass, nerd.

And if he thought that first day was bad, awkwardly sitting in a room full of strangers who were probably all looking sideways when he opened his flip phone to check the time, the rest of the semester was no better.

Somewhere around week two he’d lost the plot. Granted, he hadn’t exactly owned the plot for high school English, but this shit was worse. World-wide perspectives with weird-ass syntax and phrasing that never felt like the translator had gotten the essence of the story right.

Which is how Mickey had ended up here, in the campus library at 11pm (open 24 hours for finals, god bless ‘em) squeezed into the only available table (‘cause it had a wobbly leg and the shitty chairs) going back and forth between three dog-eared books and the grindingly slow laptop he’d inherited from Iggy, and then promptly had to debug. Thoroughly. Repeatedly. And he still got the occasional porn pop up.

Eight pages, double spaced, due by tomorrow morning. And that was to say nothing of the exam he also had to study for, Intro to Macro Economics. The Macro exam wasn’t calculations so much- those he could’ve done in his sleep. This was explaining which equations worked, and what their limitations were and and and…

It was a lot, ok? Mickey didn’t have the cash to be dropping on failing classes: his only hope was straight A’s at community college for two years and then an academic scholarship to a university. Until then, he spent all his time outside of class working. A real job, no less, not just slinging drugs or weapons to other degens. Nope, Monday thru Friday from 8 am to 4 pm, except for the afternoons he had class, Mickey could be found at Jack’s Hardware, moving heavy things and carrying shit. Occasionally working the register when one of Jack’s two ne’er do well sons called out because they were too hung over to work. 

Jack paid ok, and Mrs. Jackie, as his wife liked to be called, slid him lunch on the DL almost every day. She’d wander down the aisles, hand Jack and the slacker son of the day their fancy bento lunch boxes, then sneak over to the warehouse door, where Mickey would be lurking, invisible behind the opaque plastic curtains. With a finger to her lips, she’d pass him a little ziplock baggie, containing one sandwich, a few crisp carrot sticks, and a cookie. Brand name, too. No Hydrox bullshit for Mrs. Jackie, oh no.

Mickey didn’t mind saying it was the best he’d eaten, regularly, for years. Better than juvie, better than the high school caf, for damn sure.

Just thinking about Mrs. Jackie’s sandwiches had his stomach rumbling loudly in the scrupulous quiet of the library and Mickey flushed, glancing around quickly to see who’d noticed.

A scowl from a surly upperclassman seemed pointed in his direction, so Mickey buried his nose in his book.

Time must have passed because when he checked the time on the laptop it was now midnight; he’d been startled back to awareness by some outside force, the upperclassman with the rude stare was gone, seat at the single desk taken by a some other poor sap in a large jacket, while a student stood before Mickey, looking hesitant. A tall mother fucker, carrying a weighty backpack, looking a little lost, a little out of place.

“Can I- is this seat taken?”

Mickey looked around. Though the seat across from his was technically open, there must be other -

No. There were no other options, short of camping out on the floor. Mickey offered an inclination of his chin, and the other young man sat, pushing down the hood of his hoodie to reveal a shock of bright red hair, shining like a lantern in the fluorescent gloom of the library. It’s startlingly bright and Mickey kinda just wanted to stare.  But he couldn’t. Too much work to do in too few hours of darkness left to do it in, before he had to high-tail it work.

Without a word of social interaction (Thank fuck) the man produced his own book, clearly also borrowed from the same library, and a soft-with-wear notebook. The page he opened already had an array of scribbled notes, arrows clearly visible pointing to other notes on the same page.

Mickey looked at his own notes beside the ancient laptop: different system, same chaos. 

But at least the new guy was keeping his mouth shut so Mickey could go back to pretending no one else existed. Back to the warm comfort of his own invisibility. 

---

1 am.

The guy’s stomach was rumbling at regular intervals now, and it was distracting as fuck. With a suppressed eye roll, Ian reached into his backpack and pulled out a candy bar, sliding it ‘cross the table.

Nada.

Ian frowned, glancing up in earnest now. The guy was really into his book, teeth nibbling at his lower lip as he went from page to laptop and back, checking himself, so immersed in the work that he hadn’t noticed the offering.

Yeah, it was an offering alright. There had been single study carrels down on the library’s lower level, but Ian had taken a chance that his crush would be up here, and it had paid off. Here he was, M. Milkovich, handsomely clad in a denim jacket but deeply encompassed in his work, probably entirely unaware of Ian’s semester-long interest. It had been nothing more than a passing fancy until one day M. Milkovich walked in late, slinging his backpack down one row ahead of Ian in the lecture hall. 

His backpack with the tiny but clear rainbow enamel pin. 

Game on.

Except M. Milkovich didn’t know that, didn’t know the game was on, didn’t even know Ian existed, it seemed.

Not used to having to jockey for anyone’s attention, Ian was sure he’d been doing it all wrong. Then, a tattooed hand shot out and snagged the candy bar. 

“Thanks,” came the muffled gratitude.

Ian beamed, hoping for eye contact, but was gaze-blocked by the laptop and book. At least he could hear the guy chewing, the sound loud in the sacred silence of the library.

Giving up for the moment, though not the war, Ian returned to his books, casting the occasional glance of query across the table. There were hours left in the night. 

---

2 am.

Mickey was starting to feel squirrely, like he was in the twilight zone. Everything he was typing looked terrible, suddenly he believed he had no handle on what either book said or meant, and every little noise or rustle of paper was annoying the shit out of him. His hackles were up: Mickey was a fire looking for a spark.

And Sparky across the table was chewing, audibly, on the cap of a pen. Gnawing away like he wasn’t a millimeter from getting a mouthful of ink. Mickey didn’t much care whether the pretty boy from wherever got his face messed up, but it would certainly disrupt his workflow-

Ah, fuck. It’s not like he was getting much work done anyway.

“Quit it,” he hissed, staring fixedly at the jumble of words on his screen.

There was a fuckin’ typo right there. Why hadn’t Google Docs caught it? Why did the stupid-ass program insist that words like ‘minsincerity’ were wrong but ‘amd’ was right? It wasn’t really a word, was it, amd ? Maybe in Iggy’s past life, it had been a recognized-

The chewing hadn’t stopped. Mickey looked up. Sparky was moments from tasting phenoxyethanol.

“Hey, seriously.” Mickey tapped his knuckle on the wooden table top for emphasis. “You’re gonna bite right through that shit in a second.”

“Huh?” Sparky stopped for the moment, and was staring blankly at Mickey. The pen hung from his lips like a forgotten cigarette. 

It looked good. Both Sparky’s mouth and the idea of a cigarette. Speaking off…

“Watch my stuff?”

Sparky’s eyes widened. Then he nodded.

Mickey checked that his doc was saved, then pressed himself up on his fists. “And don’t bite through that thing while I’m gone. Ink’s a bitch to get outta your teeth.”

Then he grabbed his jacket and walked out, determined to find a spot to sneak a smoke. Maybe the cold air would restart his brain.

---

Ian was agog. M. Milkovich and he had engaged in an actual conversation, eye contact, a sharing of ideas, and he’d ended up sitting there like a giant moron, watching the other man walk away. 

But he was coming back. The laptop and books were still here, plus the candy bar wrapper. 

His mind raced with all the things M. Milkovich could be doing. Taking a piss, maybe. Stretching his legs. Hooking up with a chick. Hooking up with a dude. Hooking up with a non binary person. Images raced, full movies of hearing the guy talk, smile, close his eyes and sigh in pleasure…

At that train of thought, Ian’s teeth clenched ever so slightly, and he felt the hard plastic carapace give a warning crunch, releasing a small burst of inky air that promised a mouth full of blue in about .25 seconds.

Ian spit the pen into his waiting hand just in time to get a hand full of ink, rather than a mouthful. This was only a very minor improvement. Short of standing up and leaving all their combined belongings unattended, which a great many photocopied signs warned vociferously against, Ian was stuck, cradling the palm pool of blue goo to his midriff.  He glanced around wildly, hoping perhaps someone else, an adult maybe, would show up and save him. 

No, he was the adult here. No one was going to save him. He’d grown up knowing as much, and to fall back on childhood patterns now was the last thing Ian wanted to do. Not when he’d worked so hard to be stable and get here.

M. Milkovich was back, a faint air of smoke clinging to him; Ian wanted to lunge forward, sniff him up and down like some rabid drug dog. Instead, M. Milkovich stood, hands gripping the back of his library chair, staring at Ian. At Ian’s handful of ink.

Then he smiled. “Told ya.” It was a good smile, lots of white teeth and some measure of actual mirth in the crinkles around his eyes.

Ian flushed. Say something. SAY SOMETHING.

“Yeah, you did tell me.”

Anything but that.

“You want me to get you a tissue?”

He could only nod, not trusting himself to keep the inanities on the inside.

M. Milkovich disappeared again, but returned not with a tissue. Instead, he had a giant roll of brown paper towels that he’d very clearly stolen from the student bathrooms down the hall.

Arm still propped awkwardly against his midsection, Ian made to pull and tear off a piece one-handed, but made a hash of it, ending up with a scrap less than the size of a dollar bill.

A heavy sigh from M. Milkovich, who’d seated himself to watch the proceeding, and then assistance. Wordlessly, the guy unspooled a length of paper towel and handed it to Ian.

Tense minutes of wiping and pouring left Ian with a giant pile of inky paper towels and one blue hand.

Dark blue though. Not like M. Milkovich’s eyes. Not right now at least. Maybe another time, in another mood- No. Stop it, Ian. Stop with the mindless crushes on strangers , he told himself for the ten thousandth time.

“Can you watch my stuff now?”

He received a nod of agreement, and Ian betook himself to the men’s room to scrub at his hand. The bathroom was out of soap. And, thanks to M. Milkovich, also out of paper towels. Delightful. So Ian was forced to air dry his hand to the best of his ability, before resorting to wiping it on the leg of his jeans to get the rest of the water off.

Without even wondering about the well-being of his belongings, Ian returned to the shared table.

M. Milkovich was watching him with open amusement sparkling in his expression, sort of fizzy and bright and on the verge of laughter, being held back on account of the conspiracy of silence all libraries possess.

Ian frowned. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Your leg, man.” M. Milkovich seemed scarcely able to restrain his incipient giggles.

Peering down, Ian got it. The remnants of the ink had left distinctive hand prints up his thigh.

“It looks like you got blown by a Smurf,” Milkovich assessed.

This was it! This was his chance.

---

“Been blown by worse,” Sparky grinned back to him.

Mickey very much wanted to continue this line of conversation, but he’d sort of been on a roll when the guy returned, so with a regretful nod, he turned his attention back to his hunt-and-peck typing. Not pretty, but it got the words down mostly right.

---

4 am.

Dawn was threatening, the deepest night now past, and there were a few students sleeping at their desks. Others had put on headphones that did little to diminish the hugely loud thumping of music designed to keep them awake, if not alert.

Crumpled chip bags and empty soda bottles filled the trash cans and every few minutes, one student or another would lean back on their chair, stretching widely and yawning.

Mickey was seven pages in, and he was stuck. He knew there was evidence for his last point somewhere in the story, but until he found it, he’d be reading as fast as he could, looking for any sign of the main character’s mother. The words were starting to blur together and waver on the page. The library book’s plasticine dust jacket was warm and clammy in his hands where he was clutching it too tightly.

Across the table, Sparky was also deep into a book Mickey recognized. Maybe the guy was in another section of the same class? Didn’t matter. He, too, was immersed, licking his index finger periodically to help him flip the pages.

Gross, but none of Mickey’s business.

He’d gotten a bit hypnotized, watching Sparky turn the pages and then scan, turn, and then scan, lick, turn, scan, lick.

Something in his hands moved and Mickey startled to alertness.

Across the table, Sparkly was blinking slowly as if he, too, had just awakened. 

The spines of their books were so close, Mickey realized as they each fell into a light sleep, they must have grazed the other, waking them up.

They shared an indecipherable look, Mickey studying the other man for any clue as to his intentions, and Sparky staring back. There was no challenge in it, no threat. Not even a come-on, but more like a gentle invitation. Then the guy let out a massive yawn.

Sparky laid down his book. “I’m beat. Need to rest for at least a few hours, then I can finish this.”

Mickey wished he could do likewise, but he had to be at work in four hours, so at best he’d grab a catnap in his car for an hour, if he finished this shit soon. He knew his face had closed when Sparky’s attention flickered over him.

“You tired too?”

Mickey rolled his eyes, heavy as they were. “Fuck yeah. But I got work at 8.”

“You can’t call out?”

“Need the cash.”

Their voices were hushed, but in the silence of the library, the whispers took on intensity. Subtext.

---

Ian nodded. He understood the way empty pockets burned your fingers, the way the need to get right and stay right, cash in pocket and bank account above zero, became an obsession. He’d tried at least, to tempt- Wait, what was this guy’s name?

“At least tell me your name,” Ian heard himself plead, still working to keep his tone low. “What’s the M for?”

M. Milkovich’s face split in a wide grin, creating the tiniest crinkles of pleasure at the corners of his eyes.

“M is for Milkovich,” he offered carefully.

Ian snorted. “I know that much, I’ve been behind you for checking exam results. ‘M. Milkovich, 89 on the first quiz, 92 on the midterm.’”

There was a warning harumph from the table over, and Ian leaned down, table top cutting into his belly so he could get closer. 

The guy’s brows shot up. “Wait- you stalkin’ me?”

“No, no, no, nothing like that. I saw you, and… I was curious. I am curious.”

Pleasure seemed to seep from M. Milkovich in the flush of his skin. “Mickey,” he finally offered, voice barely more than a whisper. “It’s Mickey.”

“Mickey,” Ian repeated. In all his wild guesses he had never even been close.

Mickey stood, slowly pushing books and papers and laptop into his bag as Ian watched.                        

“I’m Ian.”

“Been callin’ you Sparky in my head.”

“Sparky?” Unsure if he should be offended or not. “I thought you were stayin’ here to work?”

Ian had read a great many books in his day, seen probably months and months of bad TV, week after week of movies of all qualities and genres, and now, for the first time in his life, he was seeing an actual human being smirk at him. Something about the middle of Mickey’s face moved, though only the corners of his lips turned down. Mickey might have hit something true on the head, though, because Ian felt the slow bloom of warmth travel up his spine to the crown of his head. A spark.

“Yeah, I think I need something else. Kinda hungry.” Cool blue eyes perused Ian’s body, leaving no doubt as to the hunger Mickey meant. 

Ian gulped. “Yes, yeah. Ok, yeah.” 

Another loud shush but who the fuck cared? M. Milkovich, or Mickey, he guessed, was coming back to his dorm. Though Ian knew full well he’d be losing out on valuable writing time, it seemed worth it. Besides, maybe this would wake him. 

Wake up all of him, not just the walking zombie he sometimes felt like. 

Mickey was busy offering the shush- er a rather eloquent middle finger as Ian quickly shoved all his stuff into his bag. 

They exited the giant cement edifice just as the first fingers of the sun began to show across the darkness of the sky. Ian knew if he turned, he might yet catch a few stars in the murk. 

But he had nothing left to wish for.

---

As they walked out of the library, Mickey felt every eye on him. Disconcerting, after so long being a ghost, haunting the campus, or so it felt. 

Fuck ‘em. As soon as he’d said yes, or accepted the weird-ass offer, the last piece of his essay’s puzzle had fallen into place.

It wasn’t the mother and the son, it was the lovers. 

Mere minutes would be needed for him to wrap the exam up. Which left much more time to be spent elsewhere.

Wrapping up in warmth.

Wrapping up in being seen.