Chapter Text
“So, let me make sure I have this straight, Mr. Milkovich. You commit attempted murder—”
“I copped to attempted murder. I didn’t actually do it.”
“You break out of prison,” the FBI agent they’d called in when Mickey got to the El Paso DA’s office continued. “You commit fraud to cross our southern border into a foreign country. You sell illicit drugs to American nationals in said foreign country. And now you turn up at the border thinking we’ll let you dictate the terms of your surrender. To the best of your knowledge, is all of that correct?”
Shit, this guy didn’t play games. And they said the Feds were a fucking joke.
“That’s pretty much the long and the short of it,” Mickey confirmed with a shrug, the cuffs digging uncomfortably into his wrists.
Agent whatever-his-name-was took a deep breath that Mickey had a funny feeling was meant to mask just how much he wanted to put a fist through Mickey’s face. That was the nice thing about law enforcement: they had rules. So did the neighborhood, but there were exceptions to those. These guys had to go by the book if they wanted to put him away, whereas the cartel Mickey was about to roll on could adjust and adapt. The criminal fucking underground was a whole lot more efficient than these bastards, though the shortfalls definitely had their advantages. Mickey was going to need as many of those as he could get as soon as word got around that he was a rat.
So much for that Milkovich reputation.
When the deep breathing routine stretched longer than Mickey’s waning patience was willing to endure, he decided to speed things up by observing, “Hey, you don’t want to take down some Mexican motherfuckers selling coke to our good old baseball-loving, apple-pie eating American future, it’s no big deal, man. Just send some other guy in here who doesn’t want to do the grunt work forever and I’ll set him up for life instead.”
Mingled irritation and trepidation flashed through the agent’s eyes, and Mickey knew that was exactly the right move. Guys on the force usually fell into two fucking categories, no matter which force or at what level: the altruists and the opportunists. The goddamn altruists were much more difficult to manipulate, though Mickey was fortunate not to have run into as many of those assholes in his travels. They did this shit because it was the right thing to do or they were just trying to make the world a better place. Bitches like that were why his neighborhood was going to hell in a handbag, fuck you very much. For them, it was worth dealing with the trash like Mickey since it was literally their life’s work. The opportunists, on the other hand—this guy, if Mickey wasn’t very much mistaken—could be handled without a whole lot of trouble. Sure, maybe they wanted to help people, but their number one priority was themselves. They were the bullies from school or the douchebags who would have joined the military if they weren’t too chickenshit to really put their life on the line. They liked having power over everybody else and flaunting it whenever they could, so if you greased their palms, you were golden. It was kind of like dealing with Terry, if he was being honest.
And if he ever heard Mickey say that he had anything in common with the fuzz, he’d put a bullet in his head so fast that his brains wouldn’t have time to go flying out of his skull. Even they’d be too slow to react.
For now, he just had to jump through the right hoops with this moron sooner rather than later. He had someplace to be in six days.
“I hate to break it to you, Mr. Milkovich,” the agent hedged even though what he really wanted to say was pretty fucking obvious, “but you don’t just take down a cartel. Not with information from one low-level dealer.”
“Please, you think I don’t know that?”
FBI-for-brains quirked an eyebrow but didn’t respond. God, was Mickey going to have to spell everything out?
Our fucking tax dollars hard at work, here.
“I’m just a low-level dealer,” Mickey clarified, slow and deliberate and very much like he was talking to the damn kid Svetlana had popped out instead of a grown-ass man. Inclining his head towards the sizable folder on the table in front of him, he continued, “You’ve got my record, man. You know I was bunking with a guy way higher on the food chain than me. I got names and dates and places. I got locations. I got a trail. Your guys are smart enough to follow some fucking breadcrumbs, right?”
It was pushing his luck a little. He knew that. Rationally, now was the time to hold his hand closer to his chest and let the agent come to him. The alternative potentially meant getting locked up in fucking Texas to sweat the temper out of him. That just wasn’t going to fly. He had to be in Chicago, like, yesterday. Cooler heads and all that shit.
For once in his fucking life, he got lucky. Apparently, cartels were as serious a business for law enforcement as they said. Go figure.
“Okay,” sighed Agent Easy. “Give me something to make this worth my while, then.”
Fucking Feds. Was he for real right now?
Scoffing, Mickey retorted, “Hell no, man. Not till I get some shit in writing.”
“Like what?”
“You want information. I want to make a deal.”
“And what happens if your information turns out to be false?”
“Just a risk you’re gonna have to take.” Mickey shrugged. “Way I see it, you got better odds with me than some pinata looking for a free ticket to the states.”
It was hard to tell if the guy agreed with him or not, but he was leaning towards the former since he didn’t automatically rebut that particular argument. Who would down here when they were building a literal fucking wall to keep people out? It wasn’t working, of course, much to Mickey’s benefit. That in itself was proof enough of who was going to win this little battle of the wits they were having.
In the end, racism was apparently alive and well, because the agent eventually glanced at the one-way window separating them from what was likely an entire room of other Feds salivating at the prospect of going after some beaner drug pushers and inquired, “What are your conditions?”
Bingo.
“First off, I want to pick where I get locked up.”
Apparently, that hadn’t been what Fed number whatever had been expecting. He stared at Mickey like he was insane, and not for asking so much as not demanding that he not serve time at all. Little did this idiot know that that was the furthest thing from his mind.
“Back in Chicago, I assume?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not just talking city. I decide the prison and the cell,” Mickey clarified, raising his eyebrows when the agent’s furrowed. “That a fucking problem?”
“Just seems a bit specific, is all. I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t part of your deal with the cartel, and whoever you bunk with is another mule. Or,” he added thoughtfully, “someone you’ve been hired to break out.”
…That was certainly one hell of a leap. A pretty smart one, though. Mickey had to admit, it wouldn’t have been a bad idea. If he had more time, he might have considered seeing if El Camino down there had had anyone in Gallagher’s pen that they wanted back. Oh, well. Shit happened.
“I just don’t want to shack up with some pedo,” Mickey easily evaded. It wasn’t a lie, after all.
Super Fed could tell that it wasn’t the whole truth either.
“What cell did you have in mind?”
Shit.
Mickey racked his brains for a way around this part but came up short. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed to say it. He just…was embarrassed to say it, yeah. Because to Mickey, this was Ian. He wanted to be there for Gallagher, and if he finally had an opportunity to do it where neither of them was going to have to hurt the other, then he was going to grab that shit with both hands. No more Ian running where Mickey couldn’t follow or Mickey running where Ian couldn’t follow. No more glass between them. No more shithead fathers catching them with their pants literally around their ankles. Prison fucking sucked and Mickey in no way, shape, or form wanted to go back—but for Ian Gallagher? For a chance to reclaim what they’d had before everything had gone further to shit than usual? He was too far under Mickey’s skin—too far into his very soul—to do anything else.
To the rest of the world outside their bubble, however, Ian was just Gay Jesus. He was some certifiably insane faggot who’d incited a few goddamn riots and was getting put away in a place he probably wouldn’t mind too much since he’d at least be guaranteed to get bent over on the regular. It was so fucking wrong that it made Mickey want to puke. For one thing, Mickey didn’t care what Gallagher experimented with—he was a fucking top. Mickey’s fucking top, damn it. For another, he was a good guy who just needed three pills twice daily in order to keep good from edging into soldier-of-the-good-lord-Jesus-amen territory. Regardless, that was all anyone would see the minute he said—
“You heard of this Gay Jesus guy?”
For the first time since he’d arrived, the Fed actually laughed. “Who hasn’t heard of that nutjob?”
Man, it was a good fucking thing Mickey was handcuffed to the goddamn table. So fucking good.
Biting at the corner of his lip, Mickey muttered, “Well, that nutjob is gonna be my new cellmate. And you’re gonna make it happen.”
The guy clearly thought he was joking. Mickey could tell. That was a fucking smirk on his face, the bastard.
“Something funny to you?” he demanded, to which the agent shook his head.
“Course not. I just find it interesting that you’re giving up your freedom and are more concerned with having your twink of choice, that’s all.”
The officer at the door had a hard time covering his chuckle with a laugh, though it was nothing on how difficult it was for Mickey not to ignore his restraints and leap over the fucking table to knock this asshole’s teeth down his goddamn throat. What was it with people and calling Ian a twink? Sure, he’d seen it when they were younger: the kid was lanky as shit, and giving lap dances at a gay bar didn’t exactly scream dominator. …Or maybe it did. Whatever. Point was that Ian was the furthest thing from a twink Mickey had ever seen, especially since that last fucking growth spurt, not to mention that Mickey didn’t know one twink with the balls to blow up a van to send a message. This jackass should have had some goddamn respect.
Or, at the very least, not derided some apparent gay rights icon on camera. Jesus fucking Christ.
Since there was no good way to tell this bastard to shut his fucking mouth without losing his chance at getting to Chicago, Mickey bit the bullet and swallowed every word that wanted to come out of his mouth. Maybe there would be time later, once the papers were signed and he was about to board a bus back home. Back to Ian.
And really, this final condition was going to give the Fed more of a run for his fucking money than getting Mickey into a cell with a bipolar activist off his meds.
“See, about that giving up my freedom shit…”
***
“You got the Feds to give you time served on attempted murder? After you broke out?”
Mickey nodded. “I didn’t think they’d fucking go for it.”
“Shit, they should’ve thrown the book at you,” Julius agreed, shaking his head in disbelief. “You must’ve had something real big that they wanted.”
Julius was a great guy and an even better inmate. He was smart as shit but didn’t take it too far. Mickey had been talking to him since he got to the joint, immediately sniffing out one of the bigger dogs of this particular cell block so that he could start the process of making a name for himself all over again. Not that he really needed to: that Milkovich reputation took on a whole new meaning when guys on the inside found out he’d escaped before. Telling them how was usually enough to deter any requests for help, but Julius didn’t immediately turn him away when his usefulness wasn’t exactly concrete. For a guy who was in for strangling his cheating girlfriend to death, he was surprisingly reasonable.
Reasonable enough not to ask stupid fucking questions about what it was Mickey had sold in order to get such a cushy position. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that if the Feds had been so eager to give him whatever the fuck he wanted, it must have been something that would probably get him killed if the wrong people found out. And the last thing Mickey needed was the rest of this place thinking he was a snitch.
Even though he absolutely was.
Terry would be rolling in his grave if the asshole were dead. Fuck if Mickey could ever get that lucky. The shithead would probably outlive all of them.
“Whatever, man,” Mickey brushed him off as he leaned against the rail to check the floor for what felt like the millionth time in the last ten minutes. “Pigs can kiss my ass.”
He didn’t have to turn around to see Julius smirking at him. It was pretty implied in the way he lilted, “Yo, don’t front. I see you looking for someone else to do it.”
A casually flipped bird was all the response Mickey could muster. Unlike Agent Homophobic, Julius was the same as any other guy in the pen, which was to say that he got the fact that everybody in here had needs. For every other loser in this shithole, they already had an established arrangement or plenty of other options walking around whenever they felt like hitting them up. Mickey was waiting for something special, though. His needs couldn’t be satisfied so easily. Nope, his needs were very, very specific.
And when he finally caught a glimpse of the only person in the world who could alleviate them, it was like his fucking heart stopped and all that mushy shit they said in movies. Not that he would know since those movies were for pussies and Mickey Milkovich was no pussy. Just someone’s bitch.
Someone who was going to get a fucking haircut immediately, because goddamn, Gallagher. The black washed him the fuck out. Those curls should have been red just like they had been when he’d disappeared for over four months. Not…that. It was even worse than it had been on his awful laptop screen. Forget barber day—that shit was happening lickety-fucking-split.
Good thing I already got the shiv taken care of.
As a matter of fact, their whole cell was ready to go, minus Ian’s state-provided accommodations, of course. Mickey had made that one of his first priorities when he’d gotten there only to realize he still had three days to wait for Gallagher to join him. It wasn’t too bad, all things considered: it was as quiet as places like this could get, the food was slightly better than at his last lockup, and the toilet was infinitely cleaner. Even so, there was only so much socializing you could do, and while making one shiv was to be expected, two would be pushing his fucking luck if anybody gave enough of a shit to search. Another couple of days and Mickey was about to start asking if there was some funny business going on.
But there wasn’t. Ian was here, and he was doing that thing with his chin that he believed made him look tough. It probably did, though Mickey saw right through that shit. He could poke his chin out and scowl all he wanted; he could even put a little swagger in his step like he belonged in here with these assholes. None of it meant a thing. Underneath the façade Mickey knew he was putting in place so no one would consider him easy prey, he was terrified. Mickey had seen it before. Gallagher wasn’t hard to peg, that was for sure, and he was lucky as hell that Mickey was the sole person in here that actually knew him well.
Maybe it was stupid, but that alone validated his decision to throw away his entire fucking life—or what passed for one, anyway. Whatever Ian said when he found out who his cellmate was, it would be worth it to be here when he was so clearly out of his depth.
Of course, it was worth it in other ways too.
Contrary to what Mickey had planned on their impromptu road trip, they didn’t get straight to fucking. They even forewent the nipple-pinching and ass-eating.
Instead, they kissed a little. Okay, they kissed a lot. It didn’t matter that they had a literal window to the rest of the cell block. As far as Mickey was concerned, it was just him and Ian. Let the rest of those fuckers know that Gallagher was his. That would be a preemptive fuck you to anybody who thought they could muscle in on his man.
If Mickey had harbored any doubts whatsoever that Ian was still his man, they were gone now. Gallagher stared at him like he couldn’t believe his fucking eyes, and Mickey was transported back a few years to his old room where some dumb neighborhood kid had attempted to tell him how it was going to be, tire iron in hand and that ROTC spirit for good measure. Ian had been just as surprised then as he was now, perhaps more so given that nobody in their right mind would have thought Mikhailo Aleksandr Milkovich was fucking gay back in the day. This time was definitely different, though. This time, Mickey let him stare, let him run his fingers over Mickey’s face like he might forget the feeling of his skin if they lost contact for even a second. Ian drank it up like the soft bitch he always had been, too. It could’ve been an hour or a day or a week before he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Mickey’s chest, inhaling deeply one or five times.
“I like the way he smells.”
Yeah, I see you, Gallagher.
“You’re really here,” he breathed so quietly that Mickey almost missed it.
Smirking, he jostled Ian a bit and shot back, “The fuck you think?”
“That maybe my meds weren’t working or something.” Huffing harshly in what would have been a laugh if Mickey didn’t know better, Ian lifted himself back up onto his elbows to frown down at him. “I thought you were in Mexico.”
He didn’t phrase it as a question, yet Mickey could hear a few of them regardless. When did you get back? How did you get here? What went wrong? Why didn’t you call me?
Oh, if only he fucking knew.
But Ian Gallagher was a glutton for punishment, so they could get to the guilt-tripping later. He had the next three to five years to feel bad for Mickey getting himself thrown in the joint. Might as well have some fun first.
“And I thought you were a redhead, but…”
“Jesus,” chuckled Ian. He shook his head as he shifted to lean against the wall and give Mickey enough room to sit up.
“You look like fucking Dracula.”
“All right, I get it.”
“Did you even take the bus, or did they have to use a hearse to get you here?”
“Fuck you,” Ian rejoined, laughing in earnest now. “Kev and V and everyone dropped me off when Fiona didn’t show.”
That right?
There was so much to unpack there, but Mickey decided to keep it simple. For now.
“Lip dropped you off at prison, but he couldn’t keep you away from the hair dye? Some brother,” snorted Mickey. Admittedly, it wasn’t as much of a joke as it could’ve been when he was still wondering how the Gallaghers had dropped the ball and let Ian rise to the rank of felon in their criminal hierarchy. Again, simple.
Shrugging, Ian gave him the typical Gallagher line: “Yeah, well, he was kind of busy with a kid.”
…All right, not the line exactly, but he jumped to the defense of his family, as usual.
“Thought Debbie was the one trying to get knocked up?”
“It’s not his. Something about a girl he was sleeping with.”
“Fuck’s he care for, then?”
“It’s Lip,” he replied as though that explained everything. And, well, it kind of did. Even if it was more Ian’s style to look out for kids that weren’t fucking his, Fiona wasn’t the only Gallagher that handled their own brood.
Usually. Who the fuck stood up a brother they actually gave a shit about the morning he was supposed to be going to prison for the next few years? Especially when that brother was a goddamn pussy?
Sobering somewhat, Mickey nodded in Ian’s direction and asked the question that had been on his mind for days. “Seriously, though, black?”
When Ian laughed this time, it didn’t sound like a happy one. “It was your dad’s idea. Sort of.”
What. The actual. Fuck.
“The hell were you talking to Terry for?” demanded Mickey. He’d thought that they had an unspoken agreement not to go anywhere near his old man ever since the night he came out at the Alibi, and he couldn’t come up with one good reason why Ian would talk to him. He wasn’t that stupid even when he was manic.
If Ian’s grimace was anything to go by, he wasn’t unaware of that himself, and his gaze drifted to the rough cotton blanket on the bed between them when he answered, “I needed some…advice. From somebody who’s been in prison. Y’know?”
“And you weren’t here,” he implied but very much didn’t say. That didn’t matter: the idea sent a pang of guilt through Mickey’s chest. Once upon a time, he’d promised that Ian wouldn’t need a suicide list because he had Mickey. Once upon a time, he’d promised thick and thin, sickness and health.
Then he went to Mexico, and for Ian it was just thick and sickness. Worse, not better.
Mickey hadn’t done so hot himself.
“So, what? He tell you the assholes in here wouldn’t fuck a brunette? ‘Cause that’s some bullshit, man. They’ll bang anything that moves.”
Ian let his head fall back against the wall and stared up at the bottom of what would now be his bunk. “He told me I should run.”
Snorting a derisive laugh, Mickey grumbled, “Fucking figures.”
“Yeah? Your dad didn’t really strike me as the type.”
“Nah, you ain’t seen him when he knows the cops are coming for him. Can’t get very far if you’re already cuffed.”
Mickey watched as Ian turned that over in his head for a moment before shrugging. When Gallagher didn’t say anything else right away, he took it upon himself to prod, “Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Run.”
That one caught him off guard, not that Mickey saw a reason why it should. He wasn’t exactly known for sticking around when the red and blue lights started flashing, after all, so it wasn’t as though he would hold it against Ian for getting out of dodge. But that was just the thing: Ian wasn’t Mickey, and he really shouldn’t have bothered asking when he already knew the answer. Or part of it, as it happened.
“I almost did,” Ian admitted, much to Mickey’s surprise. “Made it to the train station and everything.”
Damn. Who would’ve thought Gallagher had it in him?
“But?”
A ghost of a sad smile flashed across Ian’s face and was gone when he continued, “I just…couldn’t do it. I knew that if I left, I couldn’t come back. I made my own bed, so…now I get to lie in it.”
Anybody who genuinely believed Gallagher belonged in here—if that were even possible—could fuck right off. This was some major shit, shit that Ian could have escaped from if he’d gotten on that damn train and never looked back. Someone might have recognized him someplace else and turned him in, but if he was careful, he never had to face the music. Ultimately, he hadn’t returned because he didn’t have a choice. He did it because he felt bad, like they always said a model prisoner should. Fuck, if there were more people like Ian in the can, the state wouldn’t need cops or lawyers or any of that shit anymore. The felons would be putting themselves away.
Jesus Christ, Ian.
The silence stretched on and on, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It never was, not even at the worst of times. That was what made it even more difficult for Mickey to do what he’d been putting off with petty shit like Gallagher dyeing his fucking hair. As if that really mattered.
“What the hell happened, Ian?” he asked after a few minutes, quiet but determined. If he didn’t push, Gallagher would keep it all to himself, and that wasn’t going to help anybody.
Ian seemed to recognize that too, apparently, because he didn’t brush it off like Mickey half expected him to. Thank God, because he was not in the mood for a fight today.
“I fucked everything up, Mickey.”
Okay, he also wasn’t in the mood for that, but since when did Mickey ever get what he wanted without doing something stupid like coming out to a bar full of homophobes or intentionally going to prison?
“What’d you do?”
“I asked you first,” hedged Ian, not quite meeting his gaze but not quite avoiding it either. Mickey had to think for a second to realize what he was saying, and when he did, he rolled his eyes.
“You didn’t ask me shit, but if you must know, I heard about that crap with the van down there and figured I’d come get the full story straight from the horse’s fucking mouth.”
Talk about an understatement, but one that wasn’t lost on Ian in the slightest. The fucking sap’s face went all soft, and his fingers twitched like he might reach over and take Mickey’s hand, which…wouldn’t be unwelcome. It sure as hell wouldn’t be welcome—they had to think about their goddamn reputations in here, for fuck’s sake—but it wouldn’t be wholly unwelcome either.
Fuck. Gallagher was rubbing off on him, and not in the way Mickey was particularly craving after more than a year apart.
Whether the same shit occurred to him or Ian had other reasons for refraining, he kept his hands to himself. Mickey watched his expression tighten in self-deprecation and something that looked a hell of a lot like embarrassment as he mumbled to the blanket, “It’s…a pretty long story, Mick.”
“Don’t know about you,” he replied, folding his arms behind his head and stretching his legs out so his ankles were crossed in Ian’s lap, “but I got nothing but time.”
That made Gallagher crack a smile, if only for a moment. Then he was back to that serious expression that usually preceded every conversation that Mickey didn’t want to have.
“I, uh… My mom, she…died. That’s kinda where it all started.”
Well, that hadn’t exactly been the first thing Mickey expected him to say. It wasn’t even the hundredth. Frank and Monica were like cockroaches: they got stepped on a few thousand times, but they always came back. Imagining either of them actually dying… He couldn’t really wrap his mind around it.
“Shit, man. Sorry,” Mickey murmured, trying hard not to make it sound like a question. Ian’s relationship with his mom was…tumultuous, after all. It sort of came with the territory when you were the only two certifiable psychos in the family.
Ian’s right shoulder jerked slightly in a half-shrug. “Probably should’ve happened sooner.”
Can’t argue there.
Cockroaches were funny like that.
“When’d she…?” Mickey gestured vaguely, quirking an eyebrow at the sour expression Ian pulled.
“When we were on our way to the border.”
Oh, fuck. Yeah. That definitely wouldn’t fucking help. All her faults aside—and there were plenty of them that came to mind—Monica at least gave more of a damn about Ian than fucking Frank. Mickey figured that was why he had such a hard time writing the bitch off before all the bipolar shit reared its head, let alone their weird sense of camaraderie after. Then she’d gone and fucking kicked the bucket while Ian was out of town and off his damn meds and made the last thing he’d said to her a—well deserved—kiss off? That wouldn’t bother Mickey or the rest of Gallagher’s family in the slightest, which was precisely the goddamn problem. They wouldn’t give two shits, and they’d probably taken for granted how much Ian did, leaving him to grieve. Alone. Right after Mickey had fucked off to Mexico without leaving a number behind.
And that apparently wasn’t all, because Ian continued without waiting for a response, “Anyway, she left us each a few thousand bucks worth of meth.”
Not too shabby, mused Mickey, though what he said was, “Sounds like her.”
Gallagher barked a humorless laugh. “It was even more like her that the drugs weren’t hers to give us.”
He had a point there.
Eyeing him warily, Mickey guessed, “Somebody come looking for you?”
“Yeah. Turns out the drug dealer she was living with didn’t like getting cheated out of his stash.”
“I’ll bet,” scoffed Mickey. Nobody had attempted that shit with him, but he’d heard some horror stories from Terry over the years about what happened to those pole-smoking fudge-packers. His words. No Milkovich tale was ever complete without a good old-fashioned gay joke, the subject’s actual sexuality be damned. “You give him the drugs?”
There was something oddly disquieting about how Gallagher’s expression turned even darker. It looked like it was trying to match his stupid hair.
“What?”
“Not exactly. Carl had already bought a hot tub, and Lip gave the money to his girlfriend.”
“Dumbass,” groused Mickey, more on principle than actually meaning it. Not being a deadbeat didn’t mean Mickey was going to stop giving the guy a hard time or anything.
“Debbie used it for childcare and welding school.”
It took a little doing, but Mickey could visualize that. “What about you?”
Ian blankly echoed, “Me?”
“I stutter?”
Was he blushing? No way. Ian didn’t blush. Asshole didn’t have it in him.
But those freckles were absolutely connecting.
“Don’t leave me hanging here, Gallagher,” Mickey pressed him. Ian hadn’t been training for the military for nothing, however, and remained utterly un-fucking-moved.
“I’ll show you later,” he grumbled. Mickey’s urge to protest was effectively quelled when he added, “Thought you wanted the whole story?”
…Damn it.
Sensing his victory, Ian waited until Mickey begrudgingly nodded for him to keep going before they died of old age. Not that it mattered either way since this story just got more and more complicated as Ian went on. Seriously, sometimes the Gallaghers made the Milkoviches look downright fucking functional.
They didn’t have the cash, so they sold the shit they bought. (Except whatever it was that Ian bought, since it apparently didn’t cost much and was non-refundable. Interesting.)
They didn’t have the meth, but two bags could be recovered.
From Monica’s goddamn casket.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa—hold up.” Mickey was pretty sure his eyes must have been bugging out of his head. “You dug up your mother’s grave?”
“What the fuck else were we supposed to do?” Ian retorted without heat. The idea appeared to disgust him as much as it did Mickey, and he could only imagine what a mess Gallagher must have been to have to go through with it almost right after Monica had died. No wonder he’d gone fucking manic. “He already tried to kill Carl and came after me at work. We couldn’t just leave it.”
“Like hell, you couldn’t. All you had to do was call Iggy. You know a guy who knows a guy, man. Come on.”
There was that judgy goddamn chin again. “I didn’t want anyone to get killed, Mickey. Besides, it doesn’t matter anyway. We took care of it.”
“Yeah, about that. How the fuck did you get some meth dealer to just let you off the hook? It wasn’t like you shorted him five bucks,” Mickey pointed out curiously. As glad as he was for it, the guy couldn’t have been that good a dealer if he didn’t follow through on his threats. It was bad for fucking business.
Ian took a deep breath, shaking his head. “Frank.”
“Fuck off,” chuckled Mickey, grinning wider when Ian laughed a bit himself.
“No, really! Frank just threatened him, and he backed off. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him defend any of us like that before, not even when he wants something.”
“You sure it was Frank? Thought you said he had a twin or some shit.”
“No, it was definitely him.” Ian paused to roll his eyes. “He was on some kind of born-again kick or whatever.”
God, Mickey left for a year, and the whole goddamn world turned on its head. “You serious? I thought the only religion Frank had was kissing the mail lady’s ass when she delivered his check.”
“You forgot the church of Old Style.”
“Oh, ‘scuse me,” chortled Mickey, reminded of the reason for the conversation but letting their laughter drag on a bit anyway. Ian just looked so fucking happy. In prison, of all places. He’d been happy when they were on their way to the border too, but that had been borrowed time. Deep down, they’d both known it. By that point, it had been far too long since Mickey had seen him really happy, really smiling, really laughing like he used to when they were dumb kids without shit like wives and kids and rub and tugs to worry about. Was it so wrong to want to bask just a little now that he could see it while content in the knowledge that this was how it would be for the next three to five years? Yeah, yeah—Ian would get out way before that, and even if he didn’t, it wasn’t like he’d never have a fucking episode again in spite of his meds. Still, maybe that was even more reason.
But it couldn’t last forever. Nothing fucking did.
Well, almost nothing.
“So… You figure Frank had the right idea or something? With the whole…hallelujah and all that?” Mickey speculated, though he already knew that couldn’t be it. First off, the day Ian took cues from Frank was the day Mickey had him committed again. Not even Gallagher was that crazy. And second—that would be too easy. Nothing in their lives was that easy, right?
Right.
“Fuck no,” sighed Ian, confirming his suspicions as the smile slid off his face. “Didn’t stick anyway.”
“Big surprise.”
“It was…a lot of stuff. Monica, then Trevor trying to help, only it didn’t really help to get a blow job from some chub and cry about it.”
Mickey blinked. “The fuck’s a chub?”
“Believe me, you don’t wanna know.”
If it involved sex and Ian didn’t want to talk about it? Shit, Mickey probably didn’t.
“Anyway, I tried, you know? I tried so hard to be good, to be better. He didn’t even hate me for almost going to Mexico with you, and I thought maybe if I just…”
Ian trailed off, closing his eyes as if he thought Mickey might not want to hear about him attempting to get back with that boyfriend of his. And he didn’t, not really. But if it was important to Ian, then Mickey would bite his fucking tongue and get the hell over it. As if he hadn’t fucked other people when Gallagher wasn’t around. Pot, kettle, and all.
Whatever expression Mickey wore when Ian peered up at him through those undyed eyelashes of his, it must have been bolstering enough to give him the balls he needed to keep going. Thank fuck. Anything he had to say sure as hell wouldn’t.
“So, when Trevor needed a better shelter for the kids in his program, I wanted to help. He said helping them was what he wanted me to do, and I did… I did everything, Mick.” That self-effacing laugh was asking for a punch in the face, and if it weren’t Ian’s face, Mickey would have done it. “I even slept with the fucking donor. And his wife.”
Oh. So when he said everything, he meant everything.
And if that wasn’t classic manic Ian from way back when…
Mickey couldn’t find the words to say, and with an irate scowl and his voice cracking in places, Ian plowed ahead, “But it didn’t even matter, because Fiona still got somebody else to buy the building, and we couldn’t come close to competing with that. It’s ironic, right? We grew up the way we did, and she didn’t want a bunch of homeless kids living down the street because it might make the property values go down. What the fuck?”
Now that, Mickey could talk about.
“Wait, the landlord guy in the article was your sister?!”
“Yeah. She bought this apartment complex and was trying to raise rent.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
“She hit her head? Forget where she come from or something?” demanded Mickey without really expecting an answer.
True to form, Ian’s silence spoke for itself: the ginger numbskull had already forgiven even if he hadn’t forgotten. He could be mad at the situation without holding a grudge against Fiona. It would’ve been noble if it weren’t so damn irritating. She was from the neighborhood; she knew what it was like to wonder where your next meal was coming from or if you were going to have to scout out shelters for the night. Not exactly the type he would’ve pegged for helping the gentrification cause along, that was for sure.
“Things just kinda…spiraled from there,” sighed Ian as though Mickey wasn’t fuming so thoroughly that they might toss a possession charge at him. “I got mad and had the kids protesting her building. She kept asking if I was off my meds, which… I mean, I was, but it fucking pisses me off that I can’t even be angry without someone thinking, ‘oh, must just be Ian going crazy again’. Trevor started with the same shit, and then there were… People wanted to turn it into a cause, and it…it got outta hand…fast.”
That part, Mickey had already figured out for himself. But that wasn’t what pissed him off. Shit happened, and Ian was off his meds. No, what really got him was that—
“How did nobody fucking notice?”
Ian frowned, clearly perplexed. “They did.”
“The fuck they did!” Mickey exploded. Fiona Gallagher and Trevor Dildo-Dickhead would have been smart to count their blessings that he was fucking locked up and might—might—cool off by the time he was up for parole.
“I just sa—“
“Yeah, you said you lied about your meds, but how didn’t they fucking notice? It ain’t like you go from chanting kumbaya to running a goddamn cult for the hell of it, Ian.”
It was blunt, and it was hurtful. Mickey realized that when Ian flinched almost imperceptibly, swinging his legs over the edge of the mattress and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. But it was true. Gallagher was strong and brave enough to handle the truth, even about this. He had to be by now.
Yet he nevertheless insisted, “Fiona had a lot going on. She was just trying to get out of the ghetto. I can’t blame her for that.”
Sure, he could. If getting out of the ghetto amounted to ignoring the warning signs that your mentally ill brother was sick and ditching out on your own flesh and blood when you said you’d take them to prison, then maybe Ian should have blamed her for it.
He wouldn’t, though. The idiot was too fucking nice. So, Mickey switched tactics.
“What about your boyfriend? I thought he was a counselor or something.”
“He…kinda disappeared when things got really crazy.”
A deep breath in. A deep breath out. Another deep breath in. Another deep breath out. Mickey tried to count to ten and all that too, but it didn’t work. Instead, he blurted out, “You’d better be talking about the missing persons type of disappeared, Gallagher.”
No response.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”
“It wasn’t his problem,” Ian began, but Mickey didn’t give him a chance to finish since he was already on his damn feet and reeling around to loom over Gallagher instead of the other way around for a change.
“Bullshit, it wasn’t his problem,” he spat. “He knew you were bipolar. He signed up for this shit.”
A little burst of anger finally fucking lit up those green eyes, though Mickey wished it was redirected where it belonged rather than at him.
“Yeah, well, I guess he un-signed up, Mickey. Everything was crazy—I was crazy! Who wouldn’t run while they still could?”
“I wouldn’t!”
That brought Ian up short, and they simply stared at each other for an immeasurable moment, ignoring the barely audible pissing and moaning about their so-called shouting match from the cell next to theirs. Fuck those assholes. They were having a goddamn conversation in here, and if anybody didn’t like it, they could bash their skulls against the walls until they passed out so they wouldn’t have to listen for all Mickey fucking cared. Right now, the most important thing was leaning down to lay his hand on the side of Ian’s neck, gentle but stable, their breaths coming out quick and shallow as if they’d run a damn marathon. And maybe they had, in a sense. He’d said they were one step from the finish line, right?
“I wouldn’t,” he reiterated quietly, thumb gently stroking Ian’s cheek.
Gallagher didn’t say anything. He didn’t really have to: his eyes did the talking for him, as always.
Mickey was inside the Kash and Grab, Ian sidling past with a look he thought was flirtatious but came off as just eager and disbelieving that Mickey was there at all. He was running from a van in some stupid old lady’s driveway, throwing a finger over his shoulder at Ian where the latter was shocked and awed and in fucking love, even that far back. He was pouring coffee at the Gallaghers’ kitchen table, Ian watching him like he thought he might just be hallucinating. He was standing alone in a crowd, his heart racing for a few reasons, not least of which how Ian appeared to be equal parts flummoxed, fearful, and fucking relieved when he told the world what he swore he never would. He was standing over Ian’s bed, apologizing for being late and doing everything he could to wipe the terror away and replace it with stability—a promise. He was under the bleachers, he was at the docks, he was in another van, he was driving away from Chicago, he was walking into a prison cell of his own free will—he was Mickey Milkovich, whose heart beat only for this ginger motherfucker, and this was Ian Gallagher, who’d loved him long before he knew or earned it.
And Mickey was promising something. Everything. Again. Maybe without deserving it. Again.
And Ian was looking at him like Mickey hung the moon purely to cheer him up when he was depressed and shoved the sun’s ass into the goddamn sky for him to marvel at when he was on his manic-fueled runs far too early.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“What for?” asked Mickey just as softly. Ian’s fingers reaching up to brush the hand that still held him steady—would always hold him steady, if he’d let it—sent a shiver up his spine.
“You’re here because of me. You’re always here because of me.”
Mickey nodded, leaning so close he could count those damn freckles if he didn’t already have them memorized. “Damn straight, Gallagher. Know why?”
“Why?” Ian humored him, but Mickey could hear the desperation behind it. The honesty. This bitch genuinely didn’t fucking know.
“Because you’re my problem. You hear me? My problem.”
He didn’t have an answer for that, which was fine. He probably didn’t feel any better when Mickey put it in those words, which was also fine. Mickey’s family was shit, but there were things they never compromised on. Forget the drugs and the guns and the fag-beating and their accumulated century in the correctional system. A Milkovich kept his word, and Mickey would let one of the douchebags in the joint with them shank his ass before he gave Gallagher up again. A Milkovich took care of their own, and Ian Gallagher was his.
And when Ian pulled him down the rest of the way to erase the last of the space between them, Mickey couldn’t help wondering if maybe that was the real Milkovich reputation.