Chapter Text
March 2024
When Mickey wins the title of Miss Siren’s Song, it is a lark. There are exactly fourteen queens in regular rotation at the club and Mickey has been performing as Cha-Cha has been there for three years. He’s the third most senior queen on retainer and arguably the most popular. The vote is counted by round of applause and Cha-Cha is an even bigger ham than Mickey.
Cha-Cha handily wins the title, with Kel Dommage and Anita Tension as the first and second alternates, respectively.
It makes Mickey all warm and tingly inside when people tell him how pretty he is as Cha-Cha. However, Mickey insists on treating it like this is no big deal. He only participated for the fifty-dollar gift card to the Outback Steakhouse. But it did make him feel a little special, no matter how he tells his husband the contrary. He parades around the house for the next week in his sash and cheap costume tiara, convinced that this was as far as his pageant career would go.
April 2024
“Miss Chi-Town sounds like it should be a big deal, right?” asks Ian.
“I doubt it,” Mickey shrugs as reclines on the chaise lounge that only recently replaced the old Milkovich family sofa. “Not like I’m doing Miss America or something like that.”
“I don’t think drag queens are eligible for Miss America,” smirks Ian as he reviews the criteria the organizers sent him. Ian suspects the winner of every bar's in-house drag pageant in the greater Chicago area gets a packet like this. “You gonna do this, then?”
“I don’t know,” Mickey grumbles, visoring his eyes with his hand. “Side hustle’s supposed to make money, right?”
It surprises Ian that even now, four years into the life of Miss Cha-Cha Heals, Mickey still talks about his career in drag like it’s a hobby or a side project. But the truth of the matter is when you look at Mickey’s actions and not his bluster, he treats it with as much fervor as he does his work in dance.
If only he could marry the two, Mickey wouldn’t have to choose between the one and the other, Ian thinks.
“Every girl I know who does the whole pageant scene makes it sound like a huge money pit and a time commitment.”
Ian sits by Mickey’s feet on the chaise. “We both make good money during the day. And you have a crap ton of time-off piling up. We can afford it if you take a weekend off to do this. If you want.”
And that’s just it, isn’t it. Does Mickey want this? Most things Mickey has wanted in this world, he has spent some considerable time acting like they meant nothing to them when the truth is that it was just his insecurities speaking. Mickey wants good things to come to him just as much as anyone else does. But he still has the voice in his head he has to battle with, telling him he doesn’t deserve them, or doesn’t measure up.
“Think you’d do okay?” Ian asks.
“You kidding? I’d slaughter those no-talent whores.”
Ian looks at the prompt brief. “Just three categories. Evening gown, talent, and Q&A.”
“Actually categories, huh?”
* * *
July 2024
“No, I said ostrich feathers. Are you freaking deaf or something?” seethes into the phone. “Nobody uses chicken feathers.” The customer service rep says something on the line that Ian can’t make out, but it turns Mickey’s face red as a tomato. “So, you knew you were sending me the wrong thing? Who the fuck does that?” ... “Well, if you didn’t have ostrich feathers, then why the fuck do you offer it on the website?” ... “Well, when will they be back in stock? ... No. Are you retarded? No, that is not satis-fucking-factory. Just refund me. I don’t need this shit.” He ends the call.
“Everything okay?” asks Ian, knowing full well that he risks getting his head bitten off.
“The problem with cell phones is you don’t get that satisfaction of slamming it down after a shitshow like that.”
“That bad, huh?”
“You up for a shopping trip?” Mickey asks, “I really only need one thing.”
“And you need me?” asks Ian.
“Would it help if I said I need your expertise?”
That is how Ian finds himself crisscrossing Chicago with Mickey, scouring his go-to discount supply shop on a Wednesday afternoon.
Ian had gotten so used to doing these supply runs on his own. The rotating schedule when he was an EMT often allowed for him to shop during the day. And now that he’s a masseur again, he takes advantage of the gaps between his different appointments across the city. He didn’t used to think he was a particularly creative or crafty person, but the time to himself alone with the varied materials trying to figure out how to turn Mickey’s increasingly expensive designs into something both affordable and achievable brought out an ingenuity he never knew he had.
Drag shopping with Mickey in tow isn’t a foreign concept, but Mickey has left the materials in Ian’s hands for so long that it feels weird doing it together. They had clearly delineated roles in forging Cha-Cha’s career. Ian’s scope of coverage is admittedly smaller, but he still feels his toes stepped on as Cha-Cha’s costumer.
Not that Ian is having a bad time. Far from it. If you have a chance to go shopping with a drag queen, do it. Going through Hobby Lobby and Good Will with a drag queen is like watching a kid hopped up on Pixy Stix running through a toy store. And if that drag queen is your loud, and adorably obnoxious husband, all the better.
It may have only been a few years since the last time they went drag shopping together, but Mickey is so much more comfortable with himself. He used to play it cool when he saw feminine things he wanted to try. He’d gesture with a nod to something he’d want, then Ian would be the one to take it off the racks and tuck it into their shopping cart.
Times have changed.
“Hey!” exclaims Mickey pulling a dress off the rack and holds it up to the length of his body, fanning out the skirt to give it the full effect. “Think I’d look cute in this?” And he kicks up one foot and twirls on the other.
Ian thinks, “I don’t know about the cut. You’d have no hips in that thing.”
“So, like a flapper kind of deal?”
He smiles. This dress will not flatter Mickey unless Ian does some significant work to it. But he can’t refuse that sweet, earnest look on Mickey’s face. He loves that the man who once said good luck getting him in a skirt after he came out has grown into this uninhibited and self-assured queen as comfortable with his feminine qualities as the masculine ones.
“Maybe I could rework it.”
“Yay!” Mickey is a man who shrieks “yay” now. Ian feels blessed to see it.
“But it won’t work with the look we’re trying to put together, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. We gotta focus on Miss Gay USA. Doesn’t mean I can’t think about the future.”
Winning Miss Chi-Town was a vindication to Mickey, a form of admiration he didn’t know he craved until he was crowned. It was one thing for the regulars at the Siren’s Song to cheer on one of their own who has earned a lot of good will over the past three years. And it’s something to be recognized as a talented dancer, even if he’s always cast in the chorus or as comic relief. He doesn’t shun that sort of praise like he used to. But to be picked out as the best in anything is a wholly new feeling for him.
He grew up feeling worthless.
But now he’s someone. Two someones. However, Mickey may be a skillful dancer and he has every right to feel proud of it, but right now Cha-Cha is a crowned queen feeling the respect of her peers and it has Mickey on cloud nine. She’s Miss Chi-Town, the rated the best fucking drag queen in one of the biggest cities in the country. And she’s headed to a national pageant in a few short weeks. It makes Mickey feel invincible.
Or at least it does until he remembers the upcoming competition.
“Remember what you said when we left the house, baby?”
Mickey shrugs and scratches the back of his head. “Maybe?”
“You said we only need to get…”
“…One thing.” Finishes Mickey.
Ian does Mickey the kindness of not talking to his husband like a child, but he does make a point of nudging his head in the direction of their very full shopping cart in front of him.
“Ostrich feathers?”
“Fuck off,” grunts Mickey. “We would have found some eventually.”
Ian pulls Mickey in for a one-armed hug. “I know you got a lot running through your head, but we gotta have a mission plan.”
“It’s my drag. Isn’t it better to get some of everything, go over the top?”
“I’ve been costuming you for almost five years. I know how to edit your ideas. Trust me.”
Fuck you, thinks Mickey. But he doesn’t say it. Ian is trying to help. He’s holding Mickey back when he feels like he could fly, but he thinks he’s being helpful. Mickey can’t fault him for it.
The rest of the trip goes on as normal. Ian may have rebuked Mickey for turning this “just one item” errand into a shopping spree, but he doesn’t begrudge him. At a discount outlet like this where you pay by weight, Mickey could fill two carts and it might not ever crack the hundred dollar mark.
They never find the ostrich feathers. Plenty of rhinestones, sequins, whole bolts of plum-colored and jade green chiffon, three pairs of stilettos, and enough dresses for a two-week cruise, but not a damn feather.
“I can’t believe you dragged me around there and we didn’t find what I wanted,” gripes Mickey as they push the shopping cart to the car.
“Relax we’ll find them. Or we’ll find something just as good. We can—”
“Two weeks!” Mickey shouts loud enough that heads turn in the parking lot. “I have the biggest show of my life in two fucking weeks! And you’re acting like I’m still blundering around at Sing, Sing!”
“You think I don’t know what a big deal this is, Mick?” spits Ian as they load up the car. “I’ve been here with you every step of the way.”
“You’re not with me on-stage. You don’t know what it’s like!” Mickey exclaims as he slams the car door. “You don’t feel the… the…”
“The what?” asks Ian, both visibly annoyed at being yelled at, but also his eyes searching Mickey for something.
“You don’t feel the same pressure. The way I do. It’ me out there. You get to sit back and watch, and I have to pray I don’t fail.”
Mickey feels sick from the admission. He’s gotten very comfortable with being vulnerable around his husband, but he still hates this kind of feeling vulnerable. Before he even knows it, he’s turning on the balls of his feet.
“Where are you going?”
“Can you take that shit home for me?”
“Mick?”
“Gimme some space, would you?”
“Mickey?”
But Mickey doesn’t stop. He shoves his hands in his pockets and keeps walking.