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Mickey steps back. There’s something sad and sick writhing around his ribs; a feeling he had managed to forget crawling up his throat. He’s choking. He can’t breathe. In a minute, he’ll be blue in the face and cold, and for the life of him he can’t stop picturing Ian watching it all unfold with an impassive sort of enjoyment.
He says, “So this is it, huh? This is you breaking up with me?”
He doesn’t say after everything?
He doesn’t say what now?
He doesn’t say how could you?
He walks away. He walks away from it all, and on the way home he can’t help but laugh, because isn’t this what Milkovich’s do best? Walk away? He’d convinced himself, at some point, that he was done walking. He’d been stupid enough to stay planted, he’d been too naive to recognize the other shoe dropping.
And that had been his undoing. There was no place for love in the life of a Milkovich.
He makes a vow to never forget that.
*
Three weeks after his life goes to shit, he wakes up in bed with Ian.
For one moment, one bleeding moment, he allows himself to pretend. He gives himself thirty seconds to believe that Ian isn’t a knife and Mickey the willing flesh, that three weeks ago Ian didn’t cut him open, and that he’s allowed to be happy.
But then he feels his skull pounding in an arrhythmic beat and he remembers who he is. A Milkovich. Southside Trash. A boy who got drunk off cheap tequila and crawled into bed with the same man who wants nothing to do with Mickey unless it makes his dick hard.
Pathetic.
He leaves before Ian wakes up, because even after everything he doesn’t think he has it in him to be asked to leave. Shame is already making an unwelcome home under his skin, he can’t imagine what it would do to him to be on the other side of Ian Gallagher’s hollow eyes again.
He makes it home in one piece somehow. He doesn’t remember the walk there, and when Svetlana demands to know where he’s been he’s too tired to snap back something cruel. He just shrugs, and there must be something dark in his expression because she doesn’t push it.
It isn’t until he’s in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, that Mandy comes to him. She sits close enough to touch, but the Milkovich blood in her makes her just as skittish to physical affection as he is so she doesn’t reach out. She just sighs. “You went to Ian’s, didn’t you?”
He very much wants to die, he thinks. Or maybe just fall asleep for a couple months. He’s not sure. “What tipped you off? Can you smell the pathetic on me?”
“The Gallagher’s can go fuck themselves. They’d probably like it, too, since they’re a bunch of self-obsessed fucks.” she says, as though trying to comfort herself as much as Mickey. He can feel her looking at him. “What’s going on with you, Mickey?”
He feels something mean rise up in his throat. He feels anger , and it’s such a relief that his blood sings with recognition. Finding anger, choosing it, is like easing into a dance he knows by heart.
It’s only the tune that changes.
“Don’t you have something better to do than fucking stare at me? Kenyatta is probably drunk and looking to wale on someone. Better go find him before he finds you.” the words are glass in his mouth.
Mandy stands up. “Fuck you, Mickey. I know you’re sad, but you’re such a fucking prick I wonder why anyone even tries with you.”
She leaves. He’s glad. He is at his best in isolation- because when you think about it, everything went wrong when he gave Ian that sledgehammer.
Now his walls are rubble at his feet, and the fault is all his own.
*
Mickey is at the Alibi trying his best not to think. About Ian Gallagher. Or the way Mandy won’t talk to him anymore. Or the son he doesn’t want. He is resolutely focused on the liquor in his glass and the numb feeling it’s giving him.
It’s been a month since his life went to shit, and even though he promised himself that he’d stop seeing Ian he’s fucked up a couple of times. What can he say? He’s a Milkovich, synonymous with Fuck Up , and he’s gone too long trying to deny that birthright given to him.
In fact, he’s pretty sure he’ll call Ian tonight, depending on how drunk he gets. Probably say something like Your place. Eleven instead of you ripped me apart a month ago and I don’t know what to do with the pieces.
In his resolution to not think he begins thinking of his Mother instead. He thinks of everything he knows about her, which is little. He thinks about how she got pregnant with Joey when she was fifteen and how she was addicted to shooting up dope. About how Terry killed her and everyone is too afraid to admit that out loud.
But he also thinks about her voice. She used to sing Purple Rain to him when he was sick as a kid, he thinks. She would cook Ukrainian pirozhki and call him сонечко, which he knew meant little sun because him and Iggy looked it up once when they were high. Her hair was dark.
He keeps thinking about his Mom until he has to run to the bathroom, and as he falls to his knees he pukes until there are tears in his eyes. He pukes until there is nothing left inside him, and when that’s over, he continues to cry. Shameful, fat tears that make his chest hurt with the force of them.
He knows he can’t call Ian. So he calls Mandy instead.
“What the fuck do you want?”
He deserves the cold tone of her voice. She has been at the brunt of Mickey’s cruelty for weeks now, and all at once Mickey hates himself more than he thought he could. “Mandy. I- I was thinking about Mom.”
For a few moments: silence. And then, “Why?”
He leans his head against the cool metal of the stall, and if nothing else that grounds him. “I don’t know, Mands. Everything in my head is all fucked up. Come get me- please. ”
He thinks she’ll say no. He thinks she’ll hang up on him, leave him curled up in the bathroom of the Alibi where he belongs.
He thinks wrong. She says she’ll be there in ten minutes.
*
One month passes. Mickey vows to never see Ian again.
But then Ian calls Mickey, and when has Mickey ever said no to Ian Gallagher?
When they are together they don’t kiss, and when Ian laces his fingers through Mickey’s Mickey knows the answer to the question he’d asked himself earlier: he very much wants to die.
Another month passes. Mickey puts a needle in his arm for the first time, and he feels everything- from the pulse at his throat to the hard edge of his bottom row of teeth. It’s good, too good, and that night he dreams of his Mother and when she says сонечко she begins to cry. Just as Mickey reaches out to touch her, he wakes up.
He goes to Mandy’s room, and when he finds her asleep he shakes her shoulders roughly. He’s flying apart, and he continues to shake her until she snaps an annoyed: “What the fuck, Mickey?”
He leaves his hands where they are. It feels good to touch, to feel. “Let’s get out of here, Mands. Go somewhere. Me, you, Svetlana, the kid.”
He doesn’t say I want to feel human again.
He doesn’t say I need this.
He doesn’t say Canaryville will kill me.
Mandy looks at him, and he can see his Mom in her so much in this moment that it makes him shake. I am not our Father and you are not our Mother. “Okay.” she says.
And as Mickey packs his things, he feels something he hasn’t in months.
Hope.
*
Ian looks surprised to see Mickey when he opens the door. Maybe because Mickey didn’t text first, or maybe because Ian believes Mickey only lives at night, when it is convenient for him.
For whatever reason, Ian’s face is guarded when he says, “Hey, Mickey. What are you doing here? All my family is inside.”
Mickey just snorts, once. “It’s fine, Gallagher. I’m not here to suck your dick.”
He looks down at his hands. They’re on the smaller side, dirty, but reliable for throwing a punch or holding a gun. The fuck-u-up on his knuckles remind him of being young and angry- angry at the world for taking his Mom and angry at some higher power for making him look at boys longer than Terry would approve of. He remembers the sting of Iggy pressing the needle against his skin and how it made him feel older, how he believed finally taking part in the family tradition would make Terry proud.
He was wrong. But Mickey’s good at being wrong. Always has been.
He comes back to reality to find Ian looking at him strangely. He must have been silent for longer than he thought, and he’s about to say I get lost in my own head sometimes, nowadays, I don’t know what’s happening to me before he realizes that Ian Gallagher doesn’t deserve to know anything about him, now, all things considered.
“Are you doing... alright?”
Mickey can only answer that by laughing. He tips his head back and laughs until his sides hurt, until the sound is verging on hysterical, and it feels so good to laugh after all the time he’s spent trapped in his head. He doesn’t care that Ian is looking at him like he’s never seen Mickey before- like they are strangers- because Mickey is laughing and Mickey is leaving and Mickey is going to be okay, one day, he thinks.
“Wow, thanks for that.” he says, hands on his knees as he catches his breath. “Needed that.”
“Mick, you’re kind of really freaking me the fuck out right now. What’s going on here?”
Mick. Mickmickmickmickmick.
Mickey shakes his head, wills himself not to go off the rails because of a stupid nickname he hasn’t heard in months. A nickname he had forced himself to forget. “I came here to say goodbye.”
Ian doesn’t move. Everything about him goes still, from his hand on the door to the look on his face. It takes him awhile, but finally he says, “What?”
“I’m leaving, Ian. I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.”
“Where will you go?” Ian looks at him, really looks at him, and the moment becomes charged. It becomes a Mickey and Ian moment, and suddenly Mickey knows with piercing clarity that Ian will ask him to stay. Will say that things will change. That he’ll change.
He knows it just as much as he knows he has to say no.
“I don’t know, Gallagher. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” Mickey sees the hurt on Ian’s face, and after a moment he realizes it gives him no satisfaction. Strange.
“You can’t go.”
“Why’s that?”
The classic Ian Gallagher stubborn jaw makes an appearance. Mickey is so nostalgic he aches with it. “You just can’t. There’s something here, you know that. ”
Mickey just smiles, but it’s sad. “What’s here, Ian? You get to fuck me whenever you’re horny and I go home wanting to put a bullet in my skull?”
“You have to know that I just need time- I just need some time, Mickey.”
“We’ve been fighting the war for so long now,” he reaches out, lays a rough palm against the nape of Ian’s neck. “We have to call in the troops, Ian.”
Ian kisses him. Mickey lets him.
The kiss feels like the first time Mickey knew he loved Ian, and it also feels like the first time when knowing that didn’t make him afraid. The kiss is those times in the dugout. Under the bleachers. In Mickey’s bed. In Ian’s. It’s history.
The kiss is a goodbye.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t save me.” Ian says, and Mickey wants to claim the feel of Ian’s forehead against his to memory.
“That’s the thing, Ian.” he pulls away. “That was never my job in the first place. It’s yours.”
Mickey leaves. Ian lets him.
*
Mickey makes it home in one piece, and even though his hands are shaking he feels- okay. Okay isn’t good, it isn’t great, but it’s fine for now.
He’s greeted by the sight of Mandy loading up the car, and when she throws a: “You gonna help me out here, dickhead?” his way, he smiles and flips her off. There’s a pleased, surprised set to her shoulders, but because she’s a Milkovich she just flips him off back.
He goes inside. Yevgeny is howling something fierce, and Svetlana is rocking him with a harried twist to her mouth. “Baby will not stop crying.” she says, and her tone doesn’t suggest help me, but rather you aren’t going to do anything about it.
Except he does. He reaches for his son, and when Svet sets him in Mickey’s arms she looks at him like she’s never seen him before. Like she’s seen a ghost. It’s enough to make Mickey laugh, just a little.
“Hey, kid, you gotta stop crying.” he holds his breath for a moment, and when he cannot help it any longer, mutters, “I never meant to cause you any sorrow, I never meant to cause you any pain ...”
“I must be dreaming. Somebody pinch me.”
“Shut the fuck up, I’ve never done this before.” When Svetlana doesn’t push it, he continues, skin itchy with embarrassment but determined all the same, “I only wanted to one time to see you laughing, I only wanted to see you... Laughing in the purple rain. ”
Yevgeny stirs, but begins to quiet. There’s something in Mickey’s chest he doesn’t recognize. He thinks, сонечко.
He says, “That’s right, little sun.”