Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“How many times do I have to fucking tell you? I wasn’t trying to kill the bitch.”

Mickey’s public defender (Jack or Jim Whatever-the-Fuck—he hadn’t been paying attention) peered over the top of his stupid thick-framed black glasses at him with the most unimpressed expression Mickey had seen since telling Fiona Gallagher that he was better with an iron when it was being used to commit felonies. How ironic.

“Miss Slott claims that you incapacitated her—”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know she had shit in her system?”

“—locked her in a moving crate—”

“Oh yeah? You got prints off that lock?”

“—and shipped her upstate.”

“Okay, she’s the one who shipped the crate. It just had…different cargo than she was planning,” Mickey argued lamely. He didn’t need that skeptical frown and raised eyebrow to tell him he didn’t exactly have a rock-solid defense.

“Mr. Milkovich,” his attorney sighed, pausing to consider his words carefully if Mickey was reading the room right. He couldn’t blame the guy: the poor bastard probably wanted to skip town when he heard who he had to keep out of the joint. There had to be enough stories of the Milkovich family circulating in legal circles by now to keep the booze industry in business for the next few decades. “From a strictly legal standpoint, you don’t have much of a leg to stand on. You’ve as good as admitted to drugging Miss Slott.”

Years of hiding his thoughts from Terry were the only reason Mickey managed to refrain from pointing out that Miss sounded a whole lot like he was calling Sammi a lady, and despite the constant stream of Russian hookers and other South Side garbage he’d become acquainted with growing up, he’d never met anyone less like a lady than Sammi goddamn Slott.

If his attorney could sense his thoughts, he was a good enough guy not to comment. Instead, he continued, “The rest of the story speaks for itself. Even if you weren’t responsible for her being placed in that shipping container, you did put her in a vulnerable position that directly led to the same result.”

“Don’t bullshit me, man,” muttered Mickey. “No jury in their right mind’s gonna believe I didn’t shove her ass in there.”

“No, probably not. You had the means, the opportunity, and the motive.”

Damn right, he’d had the motive. Not an hour went by where Mickey didn’t remember what that bitch had done to him—to them. The last year or so had been a roller coaster of emotional bullshit that gave him whiplash just thinking about it. His dad finding out his secret, marrying Svetlana, winding up with a kid, losing Ian, finding Ian the way he’d fucking found him. Coming out in front of a bar full of homophobes he’d been hiding from for as long as he could remember just so that Ian wouldn’t walk right back out of his life again. Not that Mickey actually thought that that was what would have happened, in hindsight. He and Ian had been circling around each other for years, sometimes at arm’s length and other times crashing together like magnets. Even when he thought it was over—even when it should have been over—they somehow ended up right back in each other’s orbits. A soft bastard would have said it was destiny or fate or some other horseshit like that. Ian definitely would. No, one of them would have cracked. In that instance, it was Mickey, and he couldn’t say he regretted it.

But they’d gotten—what? One night? Because the next day, Ian’s brain had decided it was time to throw another wrench into the shitshow that had become their lives. Mickey might not have recognized it, but everything between then and Ian running off with Yevgeny had been borrowed time. It was stupid to think that two gay guys from the South Side would get a happy ending like that. For them, it was always just better or worse, or that was how it seemed.

The night Ian got dragged out of his own damn house by MPs was supposed to be one of the better ones. They were supposed to change their bloody shirts, the unfortunate casualties of Ian’s attempt to fucking feel anything on his meds, and go out on a real date for a change. They were supposed to sit down at a nice restaurant and eat with those goddamn utensils like Ian wanted. Like Mickey wanted, though he’d never admit that out loud.

Instead, Sammi had shot their plans to hell and tried to ruin Ian’s life for…revenge? Over some shit between her weird-ass kid and Carl? Mickey may not have graduated from high school, but he wasn’t an idiot. Ian had nothing to do with any of that. He was sick. He needed help. He needed his family.

Not to be locked up until the army decided what to do with him.

Not to get caught up in whatever stupid crap Monica Gallagher was into these days.

So yeah, he’d had plenty of fucking motive to kill Sammi. The problem? That’s not what he was trying to do. A little bit of torture? A little bit of humiliation? A little bit of showing that bitch what would happen if she ever came for his man again? Sure. He was a Milkovich, and whatever baggage that might come with, never let it be said that they didn’t take care of their own. Mickey hadn’t been able to do that for Ian before his dumb ass ran off to the army and a fucking breakdown, so he had to make up for lost time.

Unfortunately for him, he was a Milkovich.

“So, what are we looking at?” he asked, deflating slightly in his seat. The chains on his handcuffs pulled taut against the bar they were hooked to, and Mickey glared at them so that he didn’t have to see his attorney’s face when he answered. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good news.

It was always just better or worse.

The fact that his attorney didn’t speak up immediately wasn’t comforting. Papers were shuffled, his fingers tapped noisily on the screen of his iPad, then silence.

Just give it to me straight, man. Jesus Christ.

Mickey was about to press the issue when his asswipe lawyer finally offered, “I can only see one possibility for a reduced sentence.”

Reduced sentence. Well, that was probably as scot-free as Mickey was ever going to get, so no use complaining about it.

“Right now, the heftiest charge is first degree attempted murder.”

Snorting, Mickey impatiently retorted, “Yeah, I got that part when the cops showed up. Keep going.”

Public defenders had to be thoroughly trained in the art of either patience or being a pussy, because this moron didn’t hesitate to appease him: “We could make a deal with the prosecution to lessen the charge to second degree, which is substantially less time behind bars.”

“What’s the fucking difference?”

“To put it simply, first degree means you planned to do it. Second means you didn’t.”

It was all Mickey could do not to say that he absolutely, one hundred fucking percent planned to make Sammi pay. If the look on his attorney’s face was any indication, he already seemed to have a pretty good idea of that.

“It was a crime of passion,” he continued without giving Mickey a chance to incriminate himself further, thank fuck. “You were upset about losing your partner and acted irrationally, not out of a premeditated desire to kill Miss Slott.”

Irrationally, huh?

In their neighborhood, it would be more irrational not to man the hell up under those conditions. Snitches and stitches and all that shit. If you didn’t lay down the law, then the law would mow you down in the street, maybe even inside your own home—and by law, he wasn’t talking about the cops. There was only one law in the ghetto, and the police had nothing to do with it.

Which was why Mickey asked, “How come that ain’t considered defense?”

His attorney blinked. “Are…you saying Miss Slott attacked you?”

“Uh, you hear what she got popped for?”

“I mean before your offense.”

That was a tricky question. As far as Mickey was concerned, anything that hurt Ian was a personal attack on him, and she’d knocked that one out of the park. But as far as he could tell, that wasn’t something this bozo was going to understand. That suit looked like it probably cost more than Mickey’s house, and that was including whatever those hipster yuppies were willing to offer for it. Gentrifying fucks.

His attorney took his silence as the response that it was and oh so kindly informed him, “Arguing defense of your partner could potentially leave you open to further charges.”

Mickey scoffed. “The fuck you talking about?”

“Legally, Miss Slott was performing her civic duty by contacting the authorities about Mr. Gallagher. You were harboring a fugitive, which is a—”

“That wasn’t his fault!” Mickey exploded, and the tiny room echoed with the cacophony of his fists beating against the metal table. For the first time since he’d been let in, the asshole sitting across from him actually had the sense to look a little scared. “He’s fucking sick!”

“I’m only trying to present you with reasonable options, Mr. Milkovich,” his attorney immediately evaded. He waved a placating hand towards the door, and Mickey realized that his outburst had almost gotten him put in a chokehold by the fat rent-a-cop outside, who was watching him as if he might flip the table. Which he absolutely felt like doing but wasn’t stupid enough to try. Not until he found out just how far up shit creek he already was.

Taking a deep breath, Mickey forced himself to slowly sit back in his chair and uncurl his fists where they were still pressed against the cool metal. It didn’t help quell the boiling pit in his stomach, but it kept the guard from busting in. That was a step in the right direction.

Once he was sure that Mickey wouldn’t gouge his goddamn eyeballs out, his attorney cleared his throat and said, “Your actions would be viewed by a jury as retribution, not defense, and the prosecution knows that. The best we can hope for is a plea bargain for second degree attempted murder.”

“Yeah, and how long is that?”

“Five to fifteen with the possibility of parole.”

If Mickey didn’t know any better, he’d say the guy had socked him in the jaw. All he could do for a moment was stare, mouth agape as his brain struggled to process what the best he could hope for really was.

“Five to fifteen?” he repeated, though he could barely hear the words as they were leaving his mouth.

His attorney nodded, not one ounce of sympathy in his eyes when he added, “Given that you’ve been in and out of the juvenile department of corrections multiple times, and with that Milkovich reputation, I wouldn’t count on anything less than ten.”

A decade. Locked up for a decade. The four years he thought he’d be without Ian paled in comparison to that. He’d be around thirty in a decade. His kid would be in middle school in a decade. The whole goddamn neighborhood would be full of organic coffee places and stupid fucking hipster bars in a decade.

Ian would have to move on with his life in a decade.

“What if we went to trial?”

Desperation was the only reason he asked, and his attorney had to realize it too. He was staring at Mickey as if he were the psycho instead of his psycho boyfriend.

Ex-boyfriend.

Sort of. They hadn’t finished that conversation, and it was definitely a conversation they were going to finish.

And not in a fucking decade.

“I…wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Why not? Maybe the jury’ll feel for a guy who lost it on some bitch who tried to ruin his life.”

“Or maybe they’ll see a thug who was angry that a heretofore law-abiding citizen got his lover arrested and tried to kill her for it,” his attorney shot back, finally losing a little of that patience Mickey had been testing. “It happens all the time on the South Side. You know that as well as I do. Do you really want to gamble on it and spend twice as much time in prison when you lose?”

Mickey didn’t have an answer for that. The guy had a point, there was no denying it. Plus, he’d said it himself: that Milkovich reputation wasn’t doing him any favors in front of a jury of his peers. Of course, they wouldn’t really be his peers. He’d be fine if they were. He’d be out on the street again tomorrow, storming up the steps of the Gallaghers’ house demanding to talk some sense into Ian. But that wasn’t going to happen because his peers? Yeah, they’d be a bunch of snobs from the parts of Chicago that wouldn’t wander into the South Side if you paid them. They’d be the ones who were glad to hear that a bunch of blue-bloods were moving into the neighborhood and making it impossible to afford for the people who’d spent their whole damn lives there. They wouldn’t even need to talk about it—they’d put Mickey away in an instant once they got a load of the tattoos on his knuckles and how comfortable he looked in an orange jumpsuit. Hell, they’d probably even ask the judge to sentence him to the maximum.

But there was still a chance, slim as it was, that they’d have a little compassion. Maybe they’d acquit him just because first degree wasn’t the right fit.

There wasn’t any wiggle room if he took the plea deal. Guilty was guilty, and a decade was a decade.

God, what he wouldn’t give for a pack of smokes and the biggest fucking bottle of booze he could get his hands on right about now.

What he wouldn’t give for a redhead who’d always had a hell of a lot more sense than he did.

“You mind if I think about it?” Mickey eventually murmured to the table.

His attorney was silent for a moment before he started gathering all his shit together. It wasn’t until everything was stuffed neatly in a briefcase that Mickey could probably hawk for a year’s supply of Ian’s meds that he answered, “I’ll be back in the morning.”

Yeah. Because Mickey could totally put all the pieces of his life back together by then.

***

When push came to shove, Mickey had next to no one he could go to for advice, much as he hated to admit that he needed it in the first place. Mandy was long gone. Iggy… Where the fuck even was Iggy anyway? He hadn’t heard from Sandy in months, Terry was a no-go even if he wasn’t already in lockup, and the Gallaghers… They didn’t know shit about the justice system. Not really. The closest they had was fucking Frank, and somehow that asshole always crawled out of trouble before things got too serious. The Gallaghers were visitors—the Milkoviches were lifers.

And boy, did he not want to think about that.

So, he ultimately only had one real choice if he was going to toss ideas around with anyone whose opinion was worth a damn in this context. Oddly enough, it was someone whose opinion he’d never given a damn about before. Funny how life had a tendency of making you take it in the ass, and not in the good way.

“What do you want?” Svetlana blithely inquired as soon as the call connected. Leave it to his bitchy Russian wife to get straight to business without any small talk. Admittedly, that was one of the few things he actually liked about her, if liked was even the word for it.

“Need some advice,” he muttered into the receiver without preamble, hunching his shoulders around the metal phone panel as if the guards behind him weren’t listening to every goddamn word he said anyway.

“I mean, there’s just no privacy.”

Shit. Ian thought the group home was bad? The hell would he think of this place?

Which was the reason he wasn’t on the other end of the phone. Among others.

Because she had a really creepy way of sneaking into your head and reading your thoughts—or maybe because Mickey was that damn transparent lately—Svetlana huffed, “And why don’t you ask Carrot Boy?”

He’s never been locked up for real.

He broke up with me. (Sort of.)

His head’s already enough of a goddamn mess without me tossing even more onto his fucked up genetic plate.

All were true, but Mickey settled on, “Got his own shit to deal with.”

Svetlana hummed noncommittally, and Mickey was pretty proud of himself for not snapping at her. He could practically see that fucking judgy stare of hers. It was the same every time: when he’d brought an unconscious Ian home from the club so he could sleep the coke off in their bed, when he’d tried to stiff her on money for the baby, when he’d stupidly attempted to stay on Terry’s good side at the baptism even though he hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place. Nothing grated on his nerves more than that illegal Russian hand whore looking at him like he was the one with the goddamn problem.

Luckily, whether she took pity on him or just wanted him off the phone, she didn’t give him shit the way she normally would. There was a puff of static as she sighed at the other end and then repeated, “What do you want?”

Mickey scuffed his shoe on the cinder block wall and stuffed his free hand in his pocket. “They’re talking about a plea deal.”

“Take it.”

“You haven’t even heard what it is yet.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Svetlana dismissed him. “Is already better.”

That brought a bitter chuckle to Mickey’s lips. It wasn’t untrue, but it still hurt like a motherfucker to have someone else acknowledge what he was already well aware of.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Not the advice you wanted?” she asked all too knowingly.

Now it was Mickey’s turn to sneer. “What, that I should throw myself in the can for five to fifteen? The fuck you think?”

“I think you are still scared little boy, only there is no daddy to run to this time.”

“Say that again and I’ll rip your teeth outta your mouth,” Mickey rejoined testily. Unsurprisingly, Svetlana wasn’t intimidated.

“Hard to do from prison cell.”

“I ain’t scared of shit,” he deflected, bluff effectively called and therefore not worth pursuing.

“Oh, really? You aren’t scared of losing Orange Boy?”

That shut him the fuck up, all right. Not needing to see him to witness her victory, Svetlana didn’t spare him a second to recover.

“You think he won’t wait for you. You think he will realize you are piece of shit and move on.”

“I need the shit-talking, bitch-slapping piece of South Side trash I fell for.”

Well, at least Ian already knew Mickey was a piece of shit and didn’t care. Never had. Why the fuck that was, Mickey would never know.

Didn’t mean she wasn’t right, though.

Mickey glanced over his shoulder, but the guards were too busy talking about some kid’s birthday party to listen in on his conversation. Svetlana didn’t make him answer, which was nice just in case they were paying more attention than it seemed. He wasn’t ashamed to be out—that ship had already sailed. He still wasn’t about to air his business when he didn’t have to.

“You shouldn’t worry.”

Fuck off.

“Who the hell says I’m worried?”

Choosing not to dignify that load of crap with an answer, Svetlana simply stated, “He loves you,” as if that solved anything. As if that was enough.

Fucking newsflash: Mickey had figured out that Ian was in love with him a long time ago, and love was still never enough, not even when Mickey finally grew a pair and admitted that he felt the same way. Some stupid bullshit tore them apart regardless of their goddamn feelings, only it wasn’t a few months in juvie this time. Mickey Milkovich had graduated, motherfuckers. This here was the big leagues, and where he would have considered it inevitable a few years ago, now he was desperately searching for any loophole he could to keep him out of the joint. He’d known he was fucked for life as a kid, but he hadn’t had a reason to change that back then. Now some red-haired asshole fucking needed him no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he didn’t.

South Side pride didn’t protect you from South Side logic. If it did, maybe he’d have had more choices than listening to the wife he never wanted telling him to take a deal he didn’t want that would keep him away from the one thing he did.

“So, you think I should take it?”

Mickey had to be grateful, albeit grudgingly, when she let him change the subject. “You would rather go to trial? Get sentenced to longer?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

Silence.

“Okay, fine,” he sighed. “Jesus Christ, I get it.”

“Think of this as opportunity.”

“An opportunity,” Mickey echoed incredulously. “How the fuck is this an opportunity?”

He could practically hear the smirk in her voice when she answered, “Your uncle called when he heard the news.”

“Which one?”

“The one with friends in high places.”

Aw, shit.

The thing about the Milkovich family was that there was no shortage of shitheads willing to do whatever they had to in order to make a buck. His dad’s brothers? Some of them were even bigger douchebags than his old man, which was saying something. He’d done a few drug runs with them and his cousins, carried out a few less than savory operations to intimidate anybody who owed them money, and basically acted as their errand boy to put away some cash in the past. Up until now, he hadn’t been in a position to help them with their inside gig—the one where they took contracts from pussies who were too chickenshit to get their own hands dirty.

Well, Mickey had been a drug dealer, a pimp, and a conman. Adding prison hit man to his resumé was basically just a drop in the bucket at this point.

“He sure works fucking fast,” Mickey muttered. His family was already positive he’d be going away for long enough to get some shit done—more of that South Side logic in action.

“Is good offer,” Svetlana countered firmly. “Will help me pay to take care of baby while you are in prison.”

“I’m so glad all this works out for you. Really,” he shot back sarcastically.

If you could hear an eye roll, now would be the time. “Stop complaining. It is good for you too.”

Glaring at the wall, Mickey took a quick inventory of his situation and retorted, “Oh, yeah? How you figure that?”

“Just think. By time you are released, Yevgeny will have forgotten you,” Svetlana practically purred before the line disconnected.

***

There was a lot that jail and juvie had in common. For one thing, the food was shit. For another, so was literally everything else.

The nights were the worst part. During the day, at least there was stuff to keep you busy, and by stuff, Mickey meant working out. That had become a habit of his during his yearly stints in lockup, though he’d denied for the longest time that it had anything to do with wanting to see a certain someone’s reaction to it when he got out. Pushing his body to its limits meant that he didn’t have to use his head, which was a goddamn blessing when all you had was time and nothing to do with it. Every now and again, he’d find someone worth holding a conversation with. It was usually just grunts and nods and staying the fuck out of each other’s way, but that was really all conversation inside was good for anyway. They’d pass a few hours like that, do some community service to pretend that they were being prepared for release to become productive members of society rather than because the system couldn’t afford to keep them, and then get shut into their cells so they could start all over again tomorrow.

All the push-ups and sit-ups in the world weren’t enough to keep you out of your own head when the lights went out and the other inmates told you to stop making so much noise and go the fuck to sleep. It didn’t matter if you were in juvie or jail—you were well and truly fucked at night.

And Mickey had the next decade of his life to look forward to it if he followed Svetlana’s advice.

He’d be an idiot not to. He knew he’d be an idiot not to. Mickey Milkovich wasn’t going to get a break from any jury. He checked all the boxes in the ghetto trifecta: poor, gay, and thuggish. Honestly, it was dumb to even ask Svetlana for her opinion—he already knew what he had to do.

That didn’t make it any easier to do it. Even as he told the little voice in his head that nonsensically argued he might have a chance at a trial to shut the fuck up, he couldn’t help wondering. Hoping. What the hell else did he have?

Not Ian, that was for shit sure. If he could be persuaded to take back what he’d said a few days ago outside his house, it still wouldn’t make a difference. Mickey couldn’t ask him to wait. Ian had already been waiting for his ass to pull his shit together for longer than Mickey cared to think about.

That was why he’d run off to join the army, wasn’t it? By that point, Ian had been almost single-handedly fighting for them to be a thing for nearly two years, and what had Mickey done? Fucking nothing. No, wait, that wasn’t true—he’d set them back at every turn. Sometimes it was worth it. Towelhead catching them together and then shooting him at least meant that he never laid another hand on Ian, as far as Mickey could tell. All the rest… What a fucking shitshow, all so that he could protect himself from whatever Terry would do to him if he found out exactly what he’d raised. And Ian had been patient with that, for the most part. Even if he didn’t understand, he’d tolerated it. He’d accepted being Mickey’s dirty little secret and only pushed back against it a couple of times. In fact, the more Mickey thought about it as he stared at the underside of his cellmate’s bunk above him in the dark, he could only count two occasions where Ian had ever asked him for anything. Two.

To admit that he loved him, just once.

Not to marry Svetlana if he gave even half a shit about him.

That was it. Two requests in the whole time they’d been together. There were other things, sure, like playing the jealousy card with that ancient doctor or practically daring Mickey to kiss him, but that was different. That was fucking little shit, which was why Mickey could give in to it. When the big shit went down, he ran away with his tail between his legs. Ever since Ian came back—or, more accurately, ever since Mickey had dragged his coked-out ass back—he hadn’t been so okay with waiting anymore. He hadn’t been so unguarded anymore. A little piece of the old Ian hadn’t survived him marrying Svetlana, and that was on him. Not Terry or Ian’s fucking bipolar bullshit—Mickey.

So, he couldn’t even begin to ask him to wait again, this time for a hell of a lot longer than he ever had before. He couldn’t be mad when he thought about how Ian hadn’t visited him in the last few days since the cops had dragged his ass off to jail to wait for a trial or a sentence or whatever. Well, okay, maybe he was kind of put out. After all, Mickey was only here because he’d gone after Sammi for Ian’s sake. That had to have earned him at least a little gratitude even if they weren’t technically together anymore, right?

The reminder made him nauseous, and Mickey rolled over on his flimsy excuse for a mattress to face the blank grey wall. Stupid fucking Sammi had interrupted before they could finish what Mickey fully intended to be a very long and painful conversation. That was the only way Ian Gallagher was going to say goodbye to him. He had to mean it—Mickey had to know that he meant it.

Right now…he wasn’t so sure. Ian was off his meds and had just gotten home from a road trip with his drugged up, psychotic excuse for a mother, who Fiona and Lip had told him spent most of her time denying she was bipolar to begin with. The entire drive home, they’d been swapping stories of all the crazy shit she’d done; by the time Mickey had pulled up outside their house, he was positive that Carl’s story about her trying to fly off the roof was pretty tame compared to everything else. Even so, Fiona wasn’t as worried that Monica would hurt Ian as she was that the bitch would convince him that they all wanted to fucking change him.

And on that, it looked like the score was one for Monica and zero for the Gallaghers. Even less for Mickey since he was the one who had to fucking watch the fallout.

“Too much is wrong with me! That’s the problem, isn’t it? Too much is wrong with me, and you can’t do anything about that. You can’t change it. You can’t fix me because I’m not broken—I don’t need to be fixed, okay? I’m me.”

The deafening silence in his cell couldn’t mute how Ian’s voice seemed to shatter when he dropped that bombshell or how Mickey’s brain had short-circuited when he realized where the hell he was going with that whole outburst. Maybe being locked up wasn’t the worst thing, though, at least temporarily. At the time, he’d been too fucking devastated to really think about what was going on. A few days and a lot of thinking later, Mickey knew exactly what it was.

Ian was trying to protect Mickey. From him.

It would have been funny just how much the tables had turned if he wasn’t currently facing down the likelihood of a decade-long stay at the nearest metal motel. If not for how much more fucked up than usual their lives had been lately, Mickey might have thought he was imagining things. Mickey wasn’t the one who needed protecting from Ian. Fuck, Ian was the shithead who needed to be protected from him. That was how this relationship worked: Ian deserved better and Mickey did his best to live up to that. Not that he ever could, but sometimes he’d convince himself that he must be close since Ian stuck around.

Yet there was no arguing with the way it had all gone down and how goddamn obvious it was in hindsight. Ian Gallagher wasn’t a subtle guy when it came to his emotions. His family might be blind half the time (they had to be if they didn’t call the fucking cops when Ian went MIA for months), but Ian was the easiest book Mickey had ever read. And that look on his face? The one he had to turn his back on Mickey to try to hide? Yeah, he’d seen that shit before.

He’d seen it at the Kash and Grab. It was a miracle that he even remembered, he’d been so pissed off at the time. Frank had had plenty of opportunity to run his mouth about what he’d seen in that freezer, and none of Ian’s bullshit could cover the fact that he’d tipped the asshole off. It wouldn’t be Ian if he didn’t. Tough guy or not, he was a big softie. That was why their…discussion had ended in something Mickey still regretted saying and a pair of red, tear-filled eyes that had followed him down the street while he stalked Frank to the nearest alley. Eyes that made him toss the gun and get himself sent to juvie where he wouldn’t have to worry about Frank spilling the beans or his dad finding out or what he wouldn’t fucking do just to make those goddamn tears go away.

He’d seen it the day his dad beat the shit out of them and brought Svetlana into the house for the first time. It wasn’t passion that had Mickey throwing himself into the act, the mask he had to wear to make sure nothing worse happened if he didn’t. There was no meeting Ian’s eyes that morning. There was no watching him try to look away or his face crumple when he realized that he’d still have to listen.

He’d seen it outside their old stomping grounds, where Ian would train for ROTC and Mickey would just shoot shit. The booze he’d been chugging to forget about what he was going to do in two weeks didn’t erase the way Ian had looked at him, begging Mickey to throw him just one bone and admit what Mickey apparently hadn’t been able to hide as well as he’d tried to. And what had he done? Kicked him in the face. Left him bleeding on the ground and walked the fuck away.

He’d seen it at the psych ward. The deal was seventy-two hours, but it sure as hell felt like once Ian went through that gate, he wasn’t coming back out again. Like a goddamn moron, he’d apologized—fucking apologized. Mickey couldn’t be sure whether it was for cheating on him or taking the kid or up and vanishing. Regardless, Mickey had already forgiven him. He was fucking manic. If he’d been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have done any of that shit. If Mickey had listened to Fiona and Lip about that mental health assessment or whatever, it never would have happened in the first place. How the hell was Mickey supposed to blame him when he was off his rocker? Yet there he was, apologizing and giving him that look.

The same look he’d worn when Mickey showed up in the middle of the night instead of going to pick Ian up from the hospital like he should have.

The same look he’d worn all the other times he thought he was about to lose Mickey.

The same look that had been on his face when he told Mickey to take a flying leap the other day.

“You used to love me. Now you don’t even know who I am.”

Oh yeah, Gallagher? You sure about that?

“Shit, I don’t know who I am half the time.”

That was probably the toughest part of this whole mess. The rest of the Gallaghers were so focused on how destructive he’d be that they didn’t fucking stop to think about what this shit was doing to Ian’s head. He was right: after he came back, there were times when Mickey really couldn’t tell that he was the same kid he’d fallen for, gotten shot for, gone to juvie for, come out for. He could deal with that, though. Anything was better than being without him like before. But what about Ian? His whole life was going down the drain because of some dumbass disease his shitty mom had passed down to him. All his dreams of being in the army were gone. (Not that Mickey was complaining, but he was trying to be sympathetic, dammit.) Going back and finishing high school would be hard enough without the added bonus of being drugged up the entire time. His family had their own shit to deal with, and his two rocks were never fucking around anymore with Fiona doing…whatever the hell Fiona did and Lip away at college most days. Talk about the worst goddamn timing.

And now he was pushing Mickey away too, only not for the reasons he was selling. It wasn’t about Mickey trying to fix him, though he didn’t doubt for a second that Monica had put that little seed in his head. No, manic or depressed or whatever, this was still Ian Gallagher. Maybe he didn’t think that he knew himself anymore, but Mickey always would.

The first thing Mickey knew? Ian Gallagher couldn’t lie for shit.

“You don’t owe me anything,” he’d said, as if Mickey was just sticking around because he felt he had to. And wasn’t that fucking hilarious: Mickey Milkovich did what he wanted to when he wanted to do it. Sure, it might take a while for him to figure his shit out, but he got there eventually. Taking care of Ian? He didn’t owe him that. It was what they did—it was part of the deal—and he’d told Ian as much.

And Ian, like the sweet bastard he was, gave him one last out.

“I don’t want you sitting around worrying, watching me, waiting for me to do my next crazy shit.”

Crazy shit. Crazy like drugging his half-sister and stuffing her in a shipping crate? Crazy like picking up some random dude or a decent looking bitch instead of just waiting another day for his phone to ring? Crazy like promising to stay with goddamn wedding vows?

Okay, the last part wasn’t so crazy. What was crazy was that he didn’t say hell yes when Ian asked if that was what he saw for them.

What was crazy was not grabbing that dumbass’s stupid fucking face and kissing him until he forgot what the hell he was trying to do.

What was crazy was that Sammi hadn’t given him a chance.

But maybe that was okay. If she did, Ian would be waiting for him, and Mickey definitely wouldn’t be able to make good on sickness and health and all that shit. Not for a fucking decade.

And a decade was what it would have to be. If he tried hard enough, Mickey could almost convince himself it was all for Ian. He wanted to protect him? Well, there was no place safer than prison, right?

Chapter Text

At least Mickey didn’t have to worry about getting dressed up on the worst day of his life.

Actually, scratch that—the worst day of his life was when Ian left and Mickey didn’t do fuck-all to stop him. This sucked, yeah, but it wasn’t that.

Might as well be, he mused as he was led to the courtroom where he’d willingly be the prosecution’s bitch. As if to punctuate just how fucked he was, the chains that bound his wrists and ankles together jingled tauntingly with every step.

Denial was a heady asshole, and he’d clung to it with both hands the last couple of days. Telling his jackass attorney that he would take the plea bargain, listening to the shit-for-brains tub of lard they called a guard inform him of his arraignment time, getting shoved in the van and cuffed to the floor—all the while, he’d avoided admitting the reality of the situation to himself. He’d forced his mind to stay blank so that he wouldn’t have to deal with whatever was about to smack him in the fucking face. Soon enough, he wouldn’t get to pretend this wasn’t happening. He wouldn’t be able to ignore the fact that he was getting locked up when the guy he needed more than air to breathe needed him.

Today was the day the fighting stopped. Today was the day he well and truly lost Ian Gallagher.

The realization hung over his head, painting the world around him in shades of grey until he was starting to think he’d gone colorblind on top of everything else. That would be his luck, if he’d ever had any to begin with. Then again, he’d gotten a few months with the guy he loved. They weren’t perfect; half of them were spent trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him. Still, it was better than any Milkovich could have or should have hoped for. That had to be enough.

Or so he told himself. In reality, his fingers kept twitching restlessly while he struggled not to do something stupid like choke out the guard walking in front of him and jump out the nearest window to escape the fate that waited down the hall. This place had fucking cameras and cops at every intersection. There was no way in hell that he would make it five steps before someone tasered his ass and got him on about fifty other charges he had no argument against. At that point, it wouldn’t matter what his name was—they’d lock him up and throw away the key. Fucking pricks were way too uptight about the whole assaulting an officer thing.

So, Mickey put one foot in front of the other. He propelled himself forward even though it went against every instinct in his body that screamed he should be running in the opposite direction.

And he definitely didn’t think about green eyes and red hair and the feeling of a muscular arm wrapped around him when he woke up in the morning.

Not until the door opened and he stepped into the courtroom, in any case.

Mickey hadn’t expected to see anybody there for him. Who the hell would come, anyway? All he’d even remotely considered was Svetlana showing up with Yevgeny. If they were going to be working together while he was in the joint, then it would be good for her to seem like she gave a shit as his wife so that her visits wouldn’t look suspicious. The COs were mostly a bunch of high school dropouts who couldn’t get into the cop academy and went for the next douchiest career, but they weren’t all stupid. Given her line of work, she knew it too, which was why she was the first person he saw sitting right behind his public defender with a carefully heartbroken expression. Mickey had to hand it to her: she was a pretty good con artist when she wanted to be. He might have thought she really was upset about him getting put away if it weren’t for actually knowing the bitch. She’d probably already planned a good riddance party. After all, it was what he would have fucking done if he’d found out he didn’t have to deal with her ass anymore.

Nothing about Svetlana’s presence surprised him. The entire Gallagher family taking up the rest of the seats in that row? Yeah, that brought him up short. Mickey had to grit his teeth to keep from asking what the fuck they were doing there. When he spotted Ian beside his wife, Yevgeny yanking on the drawstrings of his jacket where he sat in his lap, Mickey sort of put two and two together.

Ian looked… Well, okay, Ian looked like complete shit. There wasn’t any hiding it, though Mickey knew it wasn’t his fucking fault. His face was too pale, as it had been since he’d started getting sick; it was like his freckles were hiding from the mood swings and general bullshit until they thought it was safe to come back out again. A few strands of hair had escaped from where he must have brushed it this morning, giving off the distinct impression that he’d been running his hands through it. Normally, Mickey would have found it fucking hot—it would have given him an excuse to touch, to brush it out of his face and maybe get a little closer than that for a while. Now, it just looked unkempt in a way that Ian never would have allowed before his brain went on a fucking sabbatical. Back when they were kids, he’d started wearing it short so it was never out of order; when he’d lost his goddamn mind and was dancing at the club for all the senior perverts to watch, it had been stylishly coiffed until all the hairspray had probably put a new hole in the ozone layer right over North Wallace. Mickey couldn’t say he missed those days in particular (any more double shifts and he would have gotten put away for attempted murder a hell of a lot earlier), yet the effect was sobering regardless.

Bright side? Ian’s eyes were dead. No light there. They were dark, half-lidded, and it seemed like he might just fall asleep any second. So, he was back on his meds. Mickey would call that a victory.

The only one he was likely to get for a while.

It was no wonder the rest of the Gallaghers had shown up, seeing as Ian probably shouldn’t even fucking be here in that condition. A tiny part of Mickey buried so deep inside that Terry wouldn’t find it if he cut him open and dug around next to his spleen was glad he’d come anyway. Sure, he should be at home in bed, sleeping off the crazy and adjusting to his meds. But after over a week of no contact—not one call or visit or anything? It was a good sign. Or, well, it was a sign. Mickey would take that shit.

Even better was that they were all sitting on his side of the room, which was indication enough that they weren’t exactly pissed off at him for the Sammi situation. If they were, they’d be over on the prosecution’s end, but thankfully they weren’t so thrilled with the bitch either. Of course, they hadn’t accidentally-on-purpose shipped her ass out of Chicago in a crate, not that it mattered. What could he say? Milkoviches had the guts to give people what they deserved. It just sucked that now he’d have to face the goddamn music. It also fucking sucked that Ian would have to watch.

Maybe Fiona couldn’t take a hint, or maybe she thought he was just irritated in general. Either way, she offered a sympathetic smile to what he hoped was the most threatening death glare she’d ever seen. He couldn’t be sure just how much the goddamn handcuffs watered it down.

“Milkovich, Mikhailo Aleksandr.”

Mickey’s attention really should have been on the black-robed bitch waiting to pass judgment on him, yet his gaze strayed back to Ian and his heart skipped a beat when his (ex-?) boyfriend’s eyes suddenly snapped to his. It was kind of nice to know that even in a drugged stupor, he could recognize when it was time to wake the fuck up and smell the goddamn roses. They’d all come to see the show, so might as well be conscious for it. Instinctively, Mickey straightened a bit and smirked right at him. If this was the last time they saw each other—if Ian stuck to his guns and never came to see him once he was transferred to the big-boy pen—then he didn’t want Gallagher’s final impression of him to be that he’d turned into some kind of pussy scared to go to prison. Not Mickey Milkovich. He’d be the badass South Side thug Ian had, for whatever fucking reason, fallen in love with. It was better that he carried that image with him when he turned his back and left Mickey behind.

If he turned his back and left Mickey behind.

When.

Swallowing hard against a wave of grief similar to the one he’d felt when Ian had first broken it off with him, Mickey forced himself to actually listen as he stepped up next to his attorney and the judge read to the room, “In the case of the State of Illinois versus Mikhailo Aleksandr Milkovich for the Class C misdemeanor of third degree assault and Class X felony of first degree attempted murder, it has come to my attention that the prosecution and defendant have reached a plea arrangement.”

God, this was the part Mickey hated. Judge Judy up there already knew they had a deal, but instead of just getting to the fucking point, she was going to draw this out because they had to get all formal about it. No wonder the system was broken. Talk about priorities on the wrong shit.

“Yes, Your Honor,” the ancient old fuck on the other side of the aisle rasped. The guy must have smoked about ten packs of cigarettes a day to sound that bad. Mickey would have felt for him if the sack of shit wasn’t, y’know, trying to throw him in prison. “The prosecution is willing to offer Mr. Milkovich a reduction to Class One felony attempted murder in the second degree.”

“Does the prosecution still seek to pursue the Class C misdemeanor of third degree assault?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Jackson, does the prosecution’s offer coincide with what the defendant has been made to understand?”

Oh, so his attorney’s name was Jackson. Well, at least he remembered the jack part.

“It does, Your Honor,” his attorney confirmed without so much as glancing in Mickey’s direction. Why bother? Another day, another asshole getting himself locked up on the taxpayer’s dime. No use prolonging the inevitable, apparently. There was probably a line of dickweeds just like Mickey lined up waiting for Mr. Jack-off to get to them.

“Very well,” the judge continued, her attention shifting to Mickey. “Mr. Milkovich, you stand accused of attempted murder in the second degree. How do you plead?”

How did he plead? He pleaded insanity because he was fucking crazy for one Ian Gallagher and would do anything to make sure his ass was safe—anything. He pleaded defense because if that bitch was willing to throw the best of the Gallaghers under the bus for something he had no control over, what the hell would she do to the others? He pleaded family because God knew that was all that mattered in this world and the Gallaghers had treated him more like a member of theirs since Ian had come back a few months ago than his blood had since he was born, a few exceptions notwithstanding.

But none of that meant a damn thing in a court of law, so with all the Milkovich pride he could muster and the sensation of Ian’s eyes burning a hole in his back, Mickey raised his chin and pleaded, “Guilty.”

The judge nodded, indifferent to his attitude or his future. “That being the case, and after reviewing your priors, you are hereby sentenced to fifteen years in a state penitentiary with the opportunity for parole in no fewer than ten.”

Bullshit, scoffed Mickey internally. With overcrowding, there was no way it would take that long. Five years—eight tops—and he’d be back on the street.

Hopefully.

The rest of the hearing didn’t really matter. It was all final formalities and the shit he didn’t give a damn about. Not that any of this meant shit to Mickey. The only thing—the only thing—he regretted about his actions were the consequences. If they thought that standing around making decisions about how he would spend the rest of his twenties was going to scare him straight (in the criminal sense—it was too fucking late for him in any other context), they had another thing coming. This was his last opportunity to stand on the same side of the glass as Ian, and he wasn’t about to waste it listening to crap he had no say in.

Subtly peering over his shoulder, Mickey had to admit to himself that he was actually sort of glad the Gallaghers were here. Getting locked up on his own would be better for them, but… It was nice, having someone there who gave a damn, even if the only reason they did was probably because of their brother. Fiona and Lip stared evenly back at him, and unless he was very much mistaken, he thought he spotted a little of the respect that Carl showed him in their eyes. Goddamn right, they should respect him. He was getting put away for going to bat for them, although Mickey wished Debbie wouldn’t look so broken up about it. The roofies had been her idea; she’d been there when it all went down. If they wanted to get real technical, then she should be up here with him as his accomplice. Maybe they wouldn’t have slapped the felony on her, but she’d be getting some kind of sentence for coming up with the plan that Mickey had executed. Conspiracy or some shit. But that would never happen. The day Mickey snitched—especially on a Gallagher—was the day he’d buy every camel jockey on the South Side a round. Not gonna happen. Not in this lifetime.

Still, Mickey almost preferred her guilt over Ian’s blank gaze when he finally worked up the balls to meet it. For a guy that was usually easy to read, Ian was doing okay at hiding whatever he was thinking right now. That or he wasn’t thinking anything at all, what with the meds fucking with his head. Yeah, that was probably more likely. Something was going on in his mind, though. Mickey could tell from the way his eyebrows kept pulling slightly towards the center of his forehead, as if some kind of emotion was struggling to get past the wall of chemicals that kept his brain from making him run out into traffic.

Whatever it was, Mickey felt pretty confident he wasn’t going to get the chance to find out. Before he realized what was going on—before he was ready—two guards stepped up on either side of him and started guiding him back towards the door he’d entered through. No time to say goodbye, no time to get a word in. Just footsteps, clattering chains, his goddamn wife’s hand brushing his forearm as if she weren’t ready to fucking celebrate, Ian’s mouth opening like he might want to speak—

Then they were gone.

***

“Look alive, Milkovich. Got a visitor.”

Rolling his eyes, Mickey didn’t bother to glance up from the game of dominoes that had already lost him a week’s worth of smokes and half the gruel-flavored sausage links he’d snuck out of the cafeteria. “Tell her to fuck off.”

Thankfully, the guards here weren’t so bad. This one even smirked a little, and the pale spot on his left ring finger made Mickey wonder if he understood what it felt like to not want to see your fucking wife.

Svetlana had been attempting to visit him ever since he’d been transferred from Cook County correctional to the pen three weeks ago. Odds were that she wanted to talk to him about the jobs he was supposed to be doing for his uncle, but fuck it, Mickey wasn’t in the mood for that shit. It wasn’t that he was taking time to adjust or anything like that. This place was no different than juvie except for everyone being taller and locked up for bigger shit than shoplifting or selling their neighbor’s cat’s organs on Craigslist. And he wasn’t moping either. He wasn’t. He was just done being at that Russian cocksucker’s beck and call every goddamn second. When he came out, Mickey had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t let her boss him around or blackmail him ever again. It wasn’t like she had any other dirt on him besides his feelings for Ian at that point, so what was the worst she could do? Now, he was safely tucked away in a place where there were people who literally got paid to watch his ass in case a hooker with a claw hammer wanted to bash his brains in while he was sleeping. Admittedly, it was so that he didn’t do something fucking stupid; that didn’t mean they weren’t supposed to protect him if he needed it too. But whatever, the point was that if he didn’t want to see Svetlana, he didn’t have to. He didn’t owe her shit.

“Don’t worry,” the guard assured him, “it’s not your old lady this time.”

Well, that was certainly a fucking surprise, and Mickey felt his heart immediately kick it into high gear. He couldn’t think of anyone who would come all the way out here to visit him except Svetlana. Nobody else had a reason to want to see him.

Nobody except the only other person on his list of approved visitors.

Mickey wouldn’t say he jumped out of his seat, but maybe he got from the table to the cell block door faster than he’d moved since waking up to a phone call he’d been hoping for and dreading at the same time. Subtlety didn’t matter anyway. Not right now. Who gave a shit what any of these limp dicks thought of him? The same Milkovich reputation that had gotten him here in the first place would make them think twice before starting something. There had to be a few perks to being saddled with his name, right?

It seemed to take forever, but the cops finally put their fucking donuts down long enough to escort anyone who’d had a guest sign in over to the visitation room. Mickey was practically vibrating in place, he was so irate at how long it seemed to take to get there. Could they move any slower? Did they know how to pick their feet up off the ground? The inmates weren’t even shackled together, so they had no excuse to be taking this damn long to walk from one end of the building to the other. Maybe they figured everyone wanted to take in the scenery outside the windows as if they didn’t have goddamn holes in their cell walls to see out of—who the fuck knew. Regardless of why the COs seemed to be doing their best imitation of grannies heading to bingo on a Saturday night, the thumping of Mickey’s heart hammered louder and louder in his ears the further he was from the cell block and he realized too little too late that he was unconsciously straightening the collar of his orange jumpsuit as if he was on his way to a goddamn date.

Okay, calm down.

Easier said than fucking done.

By the time they reached the solid metal door that separated them from whoever had nothing better to do on a Tuesday afternoon than come see the friendly neighborhood scum of the earth, they had a whopping twenty minutes left before their guests had to leave. That was fine, though. Twenty minutes was more than enough.

Actually, it fucking sucked, but like everything else in Mickey’s life, it was either better or worse. Twenty was better than zero, so he’d take it.

One by one, they were given their phone assignments and sent into the room. It, like everything else here, was no different than he’d experienced before: an uncomfortable metal stool in front of a pane of glass with a phone on the hook to let them talk to the outside world. He never got over feeling like he was using a goddamn city payphone every time, and Mickey quietly harbored the belief that they were probably the leftovers that hadn’t been broken before the age of cell phones had made them worthless piles of shit relegated to entertaining meth-heads while they staggered around Chicago.

But the tweakers could go fuck themselves. Mickey had more important things to occupy his mind and time with, like the beautiful work of art sitting on the other side of the glass at stall number six.

And if that wasn’t the gayest thing he’d ever thought, Mickey didn’t know what could possibly top it.

They were long past the days of keeping his cool and pretending like Ian didn’t matter to him just to save himself some trouble on the inside. It was fucking prison—guys were doing each other whether they were straight or not in here. They didn’t exactly have a bunch of alternatives, so it was put up or shut up. Years ago, when they’d been in the same position and Mickey had still been incognito as the South Side's up and coming fag beater, he’d thought he had something to prove. He wasn’t about to be anybody’s bitch, and it seemed like if they knew he was gay, that was just what he’d become. So, he’d put on that front, that façade that even fooled Ian for a while.

Not anymore, bitch.

Ian had come. He’d come. Like hell was Mickey going to fuck this up by being a pussy.

A grin spread across his face, and Mickey didn’t bother hiding it as he hurried to sit down. It was tough, but he somehow managed not to rip the fucking phone off the wall in his eagerness. They couldn’t touch each other, which was the most goddamn difficult thing in the world right about now, but they could talk. He could hear Ian’s voice outside his own head. If that was all he was going to get, then he was going to dive right in, motherfucker.

The fact that Ian didn’t really smile back didn’t dampen his mood at all. Fucking meds.

“Knew you’d come,” Mickey lied once they each had a receiver pressed to their ears. It was almost embarrassing how he got goosebumps on his arms just from hearing Ian breathing, but he wasn’t ashamed of it. Nothing had changed: liking what he liked didn’t make him a bitch.

Ian’s eyes kept darting between his face and the counter, and he hesitated a few seconds before mumbling, “I, uh… I wanted to see you.”

“I need to see you.”

“Not a good time.”

Leaning forward in what he hoped was a more sexy and less desperate kind of way, Mickey automatically replied, “I wanted to see you too. Getting tired of looking at all the ugly fuckers in here.”

A massive understatement and a slight misdirection, but Ian already looked uncomfortable enough that Mickey didn’t want to scare him off. The way his lips quirked up on one side told him that Ian knew what he really wanted to say, though, and Mickey felt his own smirk widen exponentially. A guy who seriously meant that they were over over wouldn’t be smiling like that at some dumb half-compliment, and hiding it couldn’t fool Mickey.

How would he react if Mickey told him the truth—the whole truth, not whatever he watered it down to because there were ears everywhere and while he wasn’t ashamed of who he was or who he loved, no one else needed to get all up in their shit? What would he do if Mickey told him that Ian’s eyes were all he thought about when he was trying to sleep at night or that he constantly felt the ghostly sensation of Ian’s hair threading through his fingers? What would he say if Mickey told him he had every fucking freckle on his face memorized—which was a goddamn achievement with how many of them there were—and that he’d never seen anything as beautiful as when Ian wore that little lopsided grin that he’d been lacking lately? That wasn’t even mentioning all the dirty shit that came to mind, and man, did it come to mind right about now.

…What? It had been, like, a month since Mickey last got laid and it hadn’t even been Ian. Mickey didn’t give two shits about any of that activist crap, but if a fag or two wanted to start making noise about Illinois allowing conjugal visits, he wouldn’t be complaining.

Ultimately, Mickey didn’t say any of that stuff—especially about visitation—because he was sure Ian could already tell he was thinking it. …He sure as hell hoped Ian could tell. Gallagher had to know that shit by now, right?

But just in case he didn’t—just in case he was as fucking blind as the rest of his family could be sometimes—Mickey blurted out before thinking better of it, “You’re like a breath of air, man.”

Ian immediately cut that back-and-forth bullshit out, his eyes connecting with Mickey’s and staying there like he’d been craving for weeks. After all, he was the last one who’d said that, back in the dugouts when shit was a hell of a lot easier even though their lives seemed fucking insane at the time. Leaning against the chain-link fence, laughing at every word that came out of Mickey’s mouth or just the way the grass looked because he was wasted after that one can of beer, Ian had eventually calmed down enough to sigh, “Jesus, I c’n fuckin’ breathe.”

“The fuck’s that mean?” Mickey had asked. When his head rolled to the side to watch Ian’s silhouette against the slowly darkening sky over the baseball field, the goofy grin was gone and Ian was looking right back at him.

He’d almost seemed sober until he just said, “Aaaaaaaaair, Mick.” Fucker had even started laughing again as he drew the word out.

Rolling his eyes, Mickey had thrown Ian’s shirt at him. “That’s kinda how it works, Gallagher.”

“No, ‘s not what I mean,” he’d snickered.

“Okay, then what do you mean?”

“It’s like… ‘S Like…” Ian had squinted his eyes in much deeper contemplation than was really necessary, stammering a few half-sentences that made no fucking sense until Mickey was pretty sure he’d just give up and go back to demonstrating why he needed to stay away from mixing alcohol with his meds. A few minutes had passed before, proving him wrong, Ian managed to get out, “The pills. ‘S like being underwater. Everything’s all slow ‘n’ fuzzy ‘n’ shit. I mean, nothing feels real, y’know?”

…Fuck.

Mickey hadn’t been drunk—hell, he wasn’t even buzzed—but that sobered him right up anyway. They hadn’t talked a whole lot about what the meds did. Ian was too ashamed of them to say more than that they sucked, but Debbie had given him enough to go on that he knew it wasn’t a walk in the fucking park. How could it be when you had chemicals keeping you from feeling…well, anything? Mickey sort of understood in theory: take away the high highs and the low lows, and sooner or later you’d just have the normal shit. Avoid any major upsets, take the goddamn pills, and everything would stay even keel. Hopefully. That was all well and good when you weren’t Ian fucking Gallagher, who had more emotions stored up in that thick skull of his than Terry had queer jokes. An Ian Gallagher who didn’t feel anything wasn’t Ian Gallagher.

Did he know that too? Was that why he’d picked a fight and shotgunned a beer he absolutely should not have had? Did that have anything to do with why his hand was all fucked up that day?

A million questions had come to mind, but so did Ian’s fears, reminding him that he didn’t need or want yet another goddamn caretaker. His entire family was stepping up to the plate on that front. Mickey wasn’t his nurse—he was his boyfriend. There had to be a way to take care of him and be the same guy, right?

So, Mickey had set all those questions aside (he kind of knew the answers anyway), leaning over to shove his tongue down Ian’s throat and kiss the shit out of him instead. It wasn’t until he pulled away a few minutes later that he’d whispered into the space between them, “You still feel like that?”

Even though his eyes weren’t open, he could tell Ian was grinning like a dipshit, they were so close. “Mm-mm.”

“Good.” Mickey remembered jerking Ian towards him by the exposed elastic of his boxers. “Come on up for air, bitch.”

The next two rounds hadn’t erased what Ian said from his mind, though he hadn’t gotten a chance to really think it through what with the singing and the not going on their date and the fighting the fucking military police and goddamn Sammi. Ian probably figured he’d forgotten. Actually, that was stupid—Ian had probably forgotten, he’d been so hammered through all that. He definitely remembered now, however. He looked too fucking sad not to.

And if there was one thing Mickey Milkovich wasn’t about to put up with, it was a sad Ian Gallagher. Not today.

“So, how you been?” he changed the subject. Not the smoothest transition, but he guessed he deserved a few points for trying.

Until Ian’s expression shuttered and he did that thing with his chin. That chin…thing. God, Mickey fucking hated when he did that. Nothing good ever came after.

Sure enough, it felt like Ian had kicked him in the balls when his eyes dropped to the space between them and he coolly retorted, “Don’t worry, I’m taking my meds.”

That much was pretty fucking obvious. His eyes were clearer than they had been last time Mickey had seen him; the bags that stuck around after the goddamn manic nights where he got no sleep and the depressed days where he got way too much had shrunk a bit. Shit, there was even some color in his face, his freckles starting to peek out from wherever the hell they’d run off to. Yeah, it still looked like he could use a nap, but Ian looked good. Scruffy old hoodie, worn-out T-shirt—didn’t fucking matter. He looked gorgeous.

Always looks gorgeous.

“Not what I was asking,” Mickey replied honestly, instantly glad he did when Ian peered up at him through the hair that had fallen into his face. It reminded Mickey of when he used to have those dumbass bangs of his when they were kids, of when he would sneak a peek at Mickey as if he couldn’t fucking tell. He could. Every single time. And every single time, Ian looked just like he did now: surprised but grateful, as if he couldn’t believe that Mickey was gracing him with his goddamn presence but would soak it up while he could. It was familiar and comforting and Mickey would tattoo it to the insides of his eyelids if it wouldn’t hurt like a son of a bitch.

After a few precious seconds of their visitation passed them by with Ian just staring at him, Mickey shifted in his seat and gestured towards him. “So seriously, man. How you been?”

Ian shook his head slightly, opening and closing his mouth a few times as he seemed to be thinking of how to answer that. Big surprise—the fuck were you supposed to say when you were bipolar, drugged up, and watching your life swirl around the drain?

“Been better, I guess,” was what he came up with. Typical Gallagher.

“Know the feeling,” Mickey replied, jerking his head towards the door back to his cell block. “You wouldn’t believe some of the shit I’ve seen in here.”

“Like what?”

Ian didn’t seem to realize that he’d moved closer to the glass, not even when Mickey mirrored him to rest his elbows against the counter.

“Would you believe some fucking moron got himself thrown in solitary for trying to see if he could scoop a guy’s brains out of his head through his nose with a plastic spoon like the goddamn Greeks?”

“Egyptians.”

“What?”

A smile so tiny he almost missed it played around Ian’s lips when he repeated, “That was the Egyptians.”

Mickey would have given Ian crap for giving him crap, but it was such a sudden return to the way things were fucking supposed to be that he couldn’t be bothered.

“What the fuck ever, man, it was gross as hell,” he waved him off instead, stretching his jaw to keep a smirk from giving him away. “I’ve seen cleaner shit in Yevgeny’s diaper than what came outta that guy’s nose.”

Okay, so maybe Ian had more right to look disgusted than Mickey. They hadn’t really kept score on baby changes, but he was convinced that Ian could take the gold if they added it to the fucking Olympics.

“Won’t that mean way more time on his sentence?” he asked once the mental images cleared from both their heads.

“No shit.”

“Then why do it?”

Shrugging, Mickey retorted, “Already got twenty-five to life. The hell does he care?”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say, because Ian shut down faster than Fiona could change boyfriends. Smile? Gone. Eye contact? Gone.

Son of a bitch...

“Anyway,” he hurried on with a quick glance at the clock. Like hell was he wasting the next ten minutes. “What about you? You, uh… You been up to anything?”

Ian’s right shoulder twitched upwards, his eyes still downcast. “Not really.”

A pause. “Still working at your sister’s diner?”

“Yeah. Started back two days ago,” Ian murmured.

Helpful. Real helpful. Mickey was trying so fucking hard not to continue their unfinished conversation right here and now, not with a goddamn audience and less than ten minutes until they were going to stuff him back in his cell without so much as a picture of Ian to tide him over until his next visit (if he even came back). Ian wasn’t exactly giving him much to work with, though, and Mickey had never been very good with fucking chitchat.

Not right now, he reminded himself, gripping the phone tighter as he racked his brains for anything else to break the newly awkward goddamn silence. Eyes, ears, the clock—they were whatever when their options were this limited. He just couldn’t bring that up when he wasn’t in any position to grab Ian and keep him from walking away. It was too important. There had been invisible walls before: he hadn’t reached out and made Ian stay with him when he ran off for the army or when he’d left after spending the night on Mickey’s bedroom floor or when Terry had made him fuck Svetlana and then kicked Ian out the door—literally. Mickey wasn’t about to let it happen again, so it was just going to have to fucking wait. A lot of things were going to have to fucking wait.

Something couldn’t, though.

“Hey, uh…”

Ian stiffened slightly but didn’t interrupt him. The tension had Mickey shifting uncomfortably in his seat before he told himself to stop acting like a little bitch.

“I’ve missed ya.”

Nothing. It didn’t even look like he was breathing over there.

“You hear me?”

Still no answer, but Ian’s fists clenched tightly all of a sudden.

“Hello? I said I mi—”

“You probably shouldn’t.”

Blinking, Mickey huffed, “’Scuse me?”

The seconds ticked closer and closer to the end of the conversation, and it was all Mickey could do not to punch the glass in order to speed Ian the fuck up. When Gallagher raised his head, though, he was pretty fucking glad he’d narrowly kept his cool.

He looked wrecked.

“I told Sammi.”

Uh…okay?

“Told Sammi what?”

“About the army. About what I did.” Ian paused to take a deep breath, eyes wandering off somewhere over Mickey’s left shoulder. “She asked about it while she was fixing up my hand. I…didn’t think she’d call them, but…”

But she did.

There weren’t enough expletives in the world to cover what Mickey wanted to say about that stupid bitch. There weren’t enough car batteries for what he’d love to do to her now. Forget attempted—Mickey could straight-up murder her for taking advantage of Ian when he’d been sedated, for fuck’s sake.

His fingers were pressed so hard to the plastic receiver that Mickey distantly thought he might just break the damn thing. Not that he gave a shit. He clutched it like a fucking lifeline, because if he let go? King Tut back there wouldn’t be the only one going to solitary with a dime or two added to his bill.

“Alright,” he finally managed to reply. All things considered, he did a damn good job of not sounding like he was contemplating calling Iggy to put out a hit. “So? Fuck’s that got to do with anything?”

The exasperated half-glare he got for that was so Ian that it almost cut through his carefully tamed fury. Almost.

“It just feels like every time you get locked up, it’s becau—”

“Jesus Christ, Ian, if you tell me you think this is your fault, I’m gonna break this goddamn glass and beat some sense into your fucking head,” snapped Mickey, immediately regretting it when the CO stationed at the door took a few aborted steps in his direction. Luckily, a conciliatory nod pacified him, and Mickey turned back to Ian to hiss into the phone, “This ain’t your fault. You hear me?”

Stubborn fucking Gallagher didn’t look even a little convinced. The muscle in his jaw danced and he nodded stiffly. “Sure, Mick.”

Uh-huh. Sure, Mick, my ass.

Mickey didn’t have a chance to hammer the point home, however, as the fucking alarm chose that moment to alert them to the end of visitation hours. Of course, it did. Because something was better than nothing, and it was always either better or worse with them.

Y’know, for once, Mickey was willing to admit to himself that he just wanted things to be fucking good for a change. A day. Hell, an hour. Anything but settling for twenty minutes that hadn’t gone well. They hadn’t gone badly—Ian could have told him he’d meant what he said and walked the fuck back out, so this was a step up from what could’ve been. But the way he pulled the phone away from his ear and then put it back again as if he wasn’t sure whether he should say goodbye or just hang up and leave wasn’t good.

And fuck if Mickey didn’t need something good right now.

He didn’t realize he’d moved until his fingers were up against the glass the way Ian’s had been back in his juvie days. There was no asking Ian to wait. That was a level of selfishness Mickey hadn’t reached since he’d basically told Gallagher he’d have to be his fucking mistress if he wanted them to be together since he was getting married either way. The closest he could get while still giving Ian the out was, “So, uh… Am I gonna see you again?”

Ian wanted to say no. It was obvious. But they were fucking magnets, the two of them. Gallagher was under his skin, and he liked to think that maybe a part of him was under Ian’s. Glass or prison or fifteen years—it still had to count for something. Didn’t it?

The longer Ian’s eyes shifted uneasily from his face to his hand against the glass, the more Mickey started to wonder if it didn’t. What they had had survived a lot of shit, but this was a whole other level of fucked up. Back before he came out of the goddamn bunker they’d politely referred to as a closet, Ian had been pissed off that he wasn’t free because it meant that they couldn’t do dumb shit like hold hands in public or go places together or kiss. That was nothing compared to this.

And it didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as not being able to do a damn thing when Ian’s eyes went misty, his fingers just barely skimmed the glass in front of Mickey’s, and he whispered, “Yeah, Mick. I’ll be back.”

Chapter Text

Mickey had lost count of how many sit-ups he’d done, like, ten minutes ago. The number didn’t really matter—there was no set standard he was trying to meet or anything. The boredom had set in, so this was all he had. In a few minutes, he’d switch to push-ups. After that, he’d go back to goddamn sit-ups. Whatever.

Ordinarily, he would have switched things up with some of the free weights that were provided in a near constant state of stickiness from where nobody fucking bothered to clean them. It was a nice change of pace from sitting in his cell doing the same two exercises where he did literally everything else besides eat. Today, however, the last thing he wanted was to be out amongst his fellow fucked-for-lifers.

He’d been careful. Nobody had seen him. They never did. But why risk jogging any memories, just in case?

His accomplishments were the intermittent talk of the cell block, and Mickey would have been proud of them if not for the growing unease that had settled in the pit of his fucking stomach. At least he wasn’t a total waste of space in here. At least he was fucking doing something and would have plenty of cash waiting for him when he got out. Well, he would if Svetlana was holding up her end of the bargain. So far, they were fifty-fifty thanks to his uncle getting himself fucking locked up and no longer needing a cut of their earnings. He didn’t corner the market on hits, though, so there was plenty of business for both of them to make a profit. But knowing Mickey’s luck, that dumb whore would hoard all his cash and run off to fucking Moscow, so he wasn’t counting on it too much.

They’d fallen into something of a routine, him and his wife. She tagged along with Ian, gave him the job details, then lined up another contract until Mickey called to tell her that he’d been thinking about what she said last time she visited. Stupid fucking coded shit would be the death of him, but she insisted on something more subtle than it’s done. As if it made any difference. Hell, he wouldn’t call her anyway if it weren’t for the fact that he wanted Ian to visit him and she would make sure it happened. They couldn’t talk about the hits over the phone what with all the monitoring and shit, and Mickey wouldn’t give her the time of day if she came by herself, so they both got something out of the deal beyond just cash.

If Ian had put together what they were up to, he didn’t mention it. Gallagher had never been particularly picky about how he chose to make a living, even going so far as to help with their moving ventures. (Okay, he said helped, but picking Mickey up after he and his family finished scavenging wasn’t exactly going to get him chased by the fucking cops or thrown in the slammer.) This was also the guy who had done a goddamn porno just to get them a few hundred bucks. Granted, he’d been manic at the time and didn’t have enough sanity left to figure out that that was so not okay, fuck you very much, but still. It had happened.

So, he didn’t ask, and their visits stayed…weird. Mickey couldn’t lie about that: they were fucking weird.

The next time he’d come back after their first visit, Mickey hadn’t really gotten a chance to talk to him. Not when Svetlana was in tow, Yevgeny in her arms and monopolizing the goddamn conversation because they were married and they were supposed to care about each other or some shit. The COs had been ogling her cans where they were practically hanging out of their holsters while Mickey watched Ian keep the baby occupied over her shoulder. And if she had to repeat the details of the hit a few times, what the fuck ever. She shouldn’t have been there. This was his Ian time, and the last thing he wanted was a reminder of how fucked up their relationship had been ever since the day of the wedding. That wasn’t to say that they’d been much more put together before that, but at least then it had just been the two of them trying to figure things out. Adding Svetlana into the mix was like the worst Jager bomb in history: everything went to shit so fast that it made your head spin without even giving you a pleasant buzz after.

When he finally got a chance to talk to Ian, visiting hours were almost over. Again. Mickey was over that fucking rule about only having an hour with your guests. Who the fuck cared how long you were with them? It wasn’t like you could sit up and talk all goddamn night. They’d get kicked out eventually, so what was the fucking harm in just letting them have this? Yeah, yeah. It was his punishment. Wasn’t the justice system supposed to be about rehabilitation and all that? Churning out productive members of society? Curing them of whatever fucked up shit had gotten them locked up in the first place? He would’ve thought the state would let them have more time with people on the outside—good influences and all that crap the politicians ate up.

Fucking no. One hour.

That wasn’t near enough to say everything he wanted to.

Then again, they spent so much of the limited time they had staring at each other that maybe it should’ve been plenty. Ian always looked like he was either regretting his decision to come or ready to run from the room—usually both. The hardest part was not knowing whether that had anything to do with Mickey or if it was an unfortunate side-effect of fucking prison. Of one thing, Mickey had been absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure since Ian had busted into his room and demanded Towelhead’s gun back: Ian Gallagher did not belong in prison.

Could he survive it? Sure. Would he be able to keep his head down and stay off anyone’s shit list? Probably. Hell, he’d been in a group home for all the delinquent douchebags around Chicago and had escaped with just a little bruising—from Terry, not those wannabe dealers and thugs who’d probably get thrown in the joint over something stupid instead of the real deal. Anyone who could put Mickey on the ground with one strike to the throat would make it out of lockup. Physically, he’d be fine.

Mentally? That was a whole other fucking story.

Because Ian was soft. He was the kind of bastard who’d help an old lady across the road or stand up for a camel jockey if he saw someone giving them a beatdown.

Because Ian was sweet. Bitch probably thought Mickey didn’t know he’d taken a bunch of Liam’s clothes to the house for Yevgeny, but he’d seen that secondhand shit before, and it didn’t come from fucking Goodwill.

Because Ian was kind. The kind ones got bent over in here.

Prison was draining as it was, but to have a heart as big as Ian’s? It was no fucking wonder he seemed to be sitting on pins and needles from the time they walked in to the time he shuffled out in Svetlana’s wake.

Mickey tried to make it as painless as he could, which was probably why the whole thing felt like something out of the goddamn Twilight Zone. Censoring himself wasn’t one of his many skills, but he found that he was doing it like an old pro. He told Ian a few stories about what was going on on the inside—the funny ones that ended in a punchline, not the ones he’d probably earn another felony just for fucking mentioning, they were so goddamn awful. He asked about the Gallaghers and what stupid con job Frank was pulling now. He sprinkled in a little subtle flirting, ignoring Svetlana’s visible judgment where the bitch was watching a few feet away.

They didn’t talk about meds.

They didn’t talk about them.

Mickey was going to lose his goddamn mind pretty soon. Being in here was bad enough, but not even having Ian out there to look forward to? The hell was he living for?

Years back, he’d have just found somebody in here to be his bitch and take his mind off it. Seriously, banging some other dude made it real easy to set Gallagher aside for a while given the very different nature of their dynamic. Besides, Ian hadn’t been his then. He wasn’t now either, all things considered, but the big difference was that Mickey belonged to him. No way was he running to some twink in the joint just because things were fucking strange with Ian on the outside.

Because strange as everything was, Ian fucking showed up. He didn’t have to—Mickey couldn’t exactly hunt him the fuck down or anything, and Svetlana wouldn’t resort to threats when she knew Mickey would get her ass deported if she did. Which meant there was something there, something that was holding onto them just as tightly as Mickey was. Something that was waiting even though Mickey hadn’t fucking asked him to. It was the same whatever-the-fuck that had drawn Mickey into those Kash and Grab booty calls and taunted him into kissing him for the first time. It was buried deep, yeah; Ian was too beaten down by his fucking brain to act on anything he wanted the way he used to. That was okay, though. That was fine.

Mickey goddamn Milkovich had enough fight for both of them. He just needed the right grand gesture. Fuck candlelight and chocolate and flowers—that was for pussies and homos. …A different kind of homo—whatever. It had never been their style. Nah, their relationship was fireworks, not some slow-burning bullshit. Whatever he did, it needed to send a message. The sort of message that could cut through some fucking drugs and tattoo itself straight into Ian Gallagher’s damaged brain.

Speaking of…

“You hear what happened to Bronson in 38B?” his cellmate Damon asked as he moseyed in and stepped over Mickey to climb into his bunk. The longer Mickey knew him, the more he realized that the guy was like a beaner Kev: a lot of sense without the brains to go with it.

Rolling his eyes, Mickey hedged, “How the fuck could I not? Ain’t like news travels slow in here.”

“Got stabbed in the balls,” he continued anyway.

“Guy was a fucking pedo. He had it coming.”

Damon grunted in agreement and, thank fuck, let the subject drop. The rest of the cell block would be talking about it for at least a couple of hours, not so much because it was new and different as because they had nothing better to fucking do. The gruesome details didn’t interest Mickey, though. The client hadn’t asked for them in the contract, so who gave a shit? There were more important things to worry about.

“You get the stuff?” he inquired, abandoning his next billion sit-ups and craning his neck to meet Damon’s eyes over the edge of the shitty excuse for a mattress.

His cellmate frowned at him. “You mean the coke?”

Jesus Christ.

“No, shithead, the other stuff.”

One second. Two.

He took it back. Kev could run circles around this idiot.

“Oh.” Damon nodded. “Yeah. I got it covered, gringo.”

Another second. Two.

Scratching idly at the corner of his mouth, Mickey demanded, “Great, so where is it?”

“Felipe‘s got another customer ahead of you. Said he’ll drop it off tomorrow after count.”

“Fucking tamale-roller better disinfect that shit,” muttered Mickey under his breath, though he knew that if he wanted the goods clean, he’d have to do it himself. Hell, he’d be lucky if nobody else had used it before him.

When he ignored how fucking pathetic it was, Mickey figured it was pretty ironic that he didn’t have to be manic to get into stupid, reckless shit. At least it took Ian a goddamn mental illness to do something like film a porno without a rubber. Mickey was crazy for this, but not certifiably so.

The shit I do for you. Fucking Gallagher.

He said he didn’t know what I love you meant? Well, shit, that made two of them. Mickey had never heard it from or between his parents; his siblings didn’t toss it around like the Gallaghers did. Ian was the first fucking person he’d said it to, and he was the first person Mickey thought might just love him back. Scratch that—Ian did love him back, for fuck’s sake. That was one of the only things Mickey could be sure about in their relationship. They might not always be together (by choice or not), and they might occasionally smack each other around a little before they got around to fucking (physically or verbally), but Mickey didn’t doubt for an instant that Ian loved him. That shit had been obvious the second he showed up on Mickey’s doorstep not knowing where else to go because hurricane Monica blew into fucking town again.

Looking back on it, that was how Mickey knew he’d been fucked from the start when it came to Gallagher. Because he might have no clue how love fucking worked for the rest of the world, but what he did know was that people who loved each other took care of each other, and when he’d opened his door to find Ian needing him? It was the first thing he wanted to do.

But Mickey couldn’t take care of him here, so his gesture had to be a promise that he would one day. That he could in some kind of fucking way if Ian just kept showing up and talking to him. If he came back out of his shell and ignored the goddamn ambiance and stopped fucking blaming himself for Mickey getting thrown in here.

A promise that was going to be real fucking expensive to get rid of.

And apparently a promise that was going to have to wait a little longer, like every other fucking half-assed plan Mickey had.

“Milkovich. Get your ass out here.”

Mickey frowned at the two COs standing outside their cell, easing himself onto his feet and taking a few cautious steps towards them. Neither made a move to cuff him, which was admittedly a little unexpected, and the one on the left jerked his head towards the exit.

“Where we going?” asked Mickey.

“Solitary.”

Shit.

“The fuck for?”

The guard—Miller, according to his nametag—gave him a look that he would’ve punched right off his face if this wasn’t prison and he didn’t have a taser on his belt. “You know what for, Milkovich.”

Of course, he did. That didn’t mean he was going to rat on himself like some bitch, though. If they wanted to tag him for something, they’d have to fucking put the information out there. He wouldn’t do their jobs for them.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he evaded easily, not that Miller or the other CO seemed all that impressed.

“Sure you don’t,” Miller scoffed, leading the way through the door while his accomplice fell in line behind Mickey.

“Nope. This a gangbang? ‘Cause that’s nice and all, but you ain’t my type.”

If he thought that would get a rise out of them, he was sorely mistaken. The bastards didn’t say another word as they led him through a couple of nondescript hallways and down a set of steps to a very different cell block from his. It wasn’t any worse, really. Even when they opened the door to the tiniest room he’d ever seen that wasn’t a bathroom and gestured for him to get inside, all he could think was that at least he’d get a few days without having to listen to Damon suck their meals out from between his teeth or take a piss or whatever. A bed, a toilet, no windows, no cellmates—not too bad, really.

“Wow, for me?” he snorted. “That’s real sweet.”

For the first time since they left gen pop, Miller’s expression wasn’t that of a mindless, state-employed lackey. The son of a bitch was smirking when he remarked, “Consider yourself lucky we’re giving you two weeks here and not reporting that little stunt. Assault will get you a good bit of time added onto your sentence, and the state of Illinois is already hard-up for space in here as it is.”

Mickey didn’t say anything, but he didn’t really need to. Somebody had fucking seen him, and instead of doing the smart thing and keeping their goddamn mouth shut, they’d gone squealing to the COs. Probably made a deal for extra smokes or someone sneaking in a Big Mac so they’d get a break from the shit they served in the cafeteria. If that was it, then it was too bad for them. Mickey was now obligated to find out who the motherfucker was and knock all their damn teeth out, which would make enjoying those fries a hell of a lot harder. They’d be lucky if they weren’t eating through a tube for the next six months by the time he was done with them.

Because he’d made the call that morning. He’d said he was thinking about what he and Svetlana had talked about last time she visited. It wouldn’t take two weeks for her to come back—for Ian to come back—and Mickey wasn’t going to get to fucking see them. He’d be too busy staring at the wall of his new singles cell. Or punching it. The way he felt right now, it was a real tossup.

The only bright side of this new heaping helping of bullshit was that they weren’t going to charge him for it. The COs here weren’t as dumb as they looked, and they sure as hell weren’t saints either. Who the fuck cared if a kid fucker got stabbed in the sack when nobody was looking? It was fucking prison—that shit happened all the time. The perp deserved a goddamn medal, and Mickey was getting one. Solitary was a nice break from all the skinheads and gangbangers out on the block.

As with everything else, though, fucking Gallagher ruined what should have felt like a reward in the Milkovich family.

***

Mickey didn’t see Ian again for almost three months.

Fortunately, that also meant he didn’t have to see Svetlana’s ass, but it was hard to feel grateful when he was jonesing for his fix of the redhead he’d been addicted to since before he was too old for juvie. He’d thought he could take the separation, that he’d prepared himself to survive if Ian was done with him because of their break-up or Mickey’s sentence or a fucking meteor wiped them out or some shit.

He was wrong.

Every day that went by without anyone coming to tell him that Ian had signed in was like a knife to the heart, and it was all Mickey could do not to go straight to the phones when they were open and blow up Ian’s cell with a few hundred colorful variations of what the fuck, Gallagher. That wasn’t to say he hadn’t almost done it a couple of times. The pill-pushers locked up on a mandatory minimum had plenty to say when they were stuck watching him with his hand hovering next to the number pad, agonizing over whether or not to dial the person he wanted most. He never did, though he wasn’t at all ashamed of the fact that today, he called Svetlana instead.

The bitch probably would have been justified in hanging up on him given that he’d ignored her visits—which had continued even without Ian, as if he were really going to go shoot the shit with her. Desperation made him try her anyway, and he was surprised to find that she was willing to hold a conversation.

Just fucking in it for the money.

“I was wondering when you would call,” she drawled in lieu of an actual human greeting. “Are you finished moping like angry child?”

Glaring at the phone as if it might pass on the message for him, Mickey shot back, “Go fuck yourself. Where’s Ian?”

“How should I know? I only lived with him so that idiot husband would support baby he helped create.”

That was some fucking bullshit, and they both knew it. Sure, that was how it had started: Svetlana had tolerated Ian because it was the only way Mickey would fucking stay. It didn’t take long for her to figure out that he was good to have around, at least after he could get out of their goddamn bed again. He cooked, he cleaned, he changed fucking diapers—all without being asked, all without being manic. The money he made at the club combined with whatever semi-illicit endeavors Mickey and Svetlana got into more than paid to keep them running through the winter. If there was one thing Svetlana appreciated and respected, it was a man who paid his fucking dues, and Ian had done that in spades. It spoke volumes she was talking to him at all after the whole baby-kidnapping fiasco, even if it was all a ruse to get Mickey to see her. Somewhere deep down in that big empty cavity where normal people stored their blood pumper, she might not like Ian, but she sure as shit respected him.

And he was useful, which was even more important to her than respect. Mickey had figured that out real quick.

“Don’t give me that shit. I know you two talk,” he scoffed with a glance over his shoulder and a bird flipped at the fucking muscle head who looked like he might bodily throw Mickey out of his way to get to the phone. Bitch could wait his damn turn.

A moment passed where Mickey knew she was trying not to admit that he’d called her bluff, and eventually Svetlana had no choice but to peevishly retort, “He isn’t speaking to me.”

“Doesn’t fucking have to for the two of you to get your asses down here, does he?”

“I don’t think he is interested.”

Mickey rolled his eyes. Over two months of visits wasn’t what he would call uninterested, especially not when Gallagher had a house full of siblings to tell him why it was a bad fucking idea to visit in the first place. …Or maybe just Fiona. She wanted Ian on the straight and narrow, and if there was one thing Mickey couldn’t really claim to be an expert on, it was doing things on the up-and-up.

“Bullshit.”

“You really fucked up this time.”

That stopped him in his tracks. “The fuck you talking about?”

“You know, we came to see you after last job,” Svetlana segued smoothly, and Mickey got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that he knew where this was going.

“So?” he demanded anyway, scratching his nose with his thumbnail.

“So he was looking forward to it. Actually smiled to see me and Yevgeny.”

Shit, what Mickey wouldn’t have given to get a load of that. Ian’s smiles had been few and far between after his diagnosis, and the idea that they’d made a sudden return when he was supposed to be visiting Mickey? After everything?

Yeah, this wasn’t going to be a happy fucking conversation.

Mickey swallowed hard and prodded, “Okay… And…?”

“And when we got there, stupid guard with the grabby hands tells us you got caught,” Svetlana spat. Mickey figured part of it was about the cash—she expected him to do this shit right and not gum up their operation with fucking solitary or charges—but that wasn’t all it was. Bitch had that murder-lilt going, the one she usually reserved for threatening him if he didn’t contribute his fair share to whatever the fuck it took to raise the kid. It wasn’t hard to put two and fucking two together from there.

“He pissed at me?”

“I don’t know,” she huffed. “He would not talk.”

Yeah. He was pissed, all right. That was how Gallagher operated: shit got tough when he couldn’t mentally handle it, and he turned tail and ran.

“Fuck,” whispered Mickey, scrubbing a hand over his face. Even in goddamn prison, Mickey was hurting Ian. It probably wasn’t even what he’d done to get himself thrown in solitary—Ian knew about that shit and had never been bothered by his more violent tendencies. Whatever the silent treatment was, Mickey would put money he didn’t fucking have on it being related to Ian thinking Mickey’s sentence was his fault. That, too, would be a typical Gallagher move. They always made it into a half-hearted joke, but Ian was consistent. Even when he was slowly going apeshit, he was consistent. Now the asshole was avoiding him, and it was all too easy when Mickey couldn’t even take a dump without it being scheduled.

Even in goddamn prison, Ian was hurting Mickey.

Were they ever going to get to a point where they were actually good for each other, or were the rest of their lives bound to be a series of fuckups with some good moments in between?

Maybe it was selfish as hell, but Mickey was willing to take the latter. What did it matter so long as Ian was there? Hurting each other over and over and over again wasn’t fucking ideal, but nothing they did could ever top the pain of not being together at all. Mickey knew that all too well and wasn’t about to go back to that life. Not if he had anything to fucking say about it.

They’d never talked about it, but Svetlana was one of two people in his life who understood that. She’d caught on somewhere between that shitshow of a baptism and offering to peg him. (Fucking gross.)

Which was why it set him off more than it probably should have when she asked, “So, will you see me if I come tomorrow? We have work to do.”

Work? Fuck work. Mickey needed a goddamn sick day.

“We ain’t got shit unless you bring Ian with you.”

“I told you. He won’t come.”

Mickey ignored the way his stomach turned upside down and grunted, “Then fucking no.”

“Really?” laughed Svetlana, though she clearly didn’t find it funny. “You would rather cry into pillow over your boyfriend like teenage girl?”

“Fuck off.”

“We had a deal.”

“Yeah, and your fucking end was bringing him with you!” Mickey exploded, not that it seemed to rattle his goddamn wife a bit. She just fucking laughed some more.

“What should I do, kidnap him? Force him into trunk of car and drag him into prison on a leash?”

“Not my fucking problem,” he ground out through gritted teeth. “Kidnap him, blackmail him, pay him—I don’t give a shit. Just get him here.”

Mickey slammed the phone onto the hook so hard that it was actually sort of impressive that the damn thing didn’t break. His expression must have been enough to warn everybody off giving him shit, because not one of the pussies in line behind him said a word as he whirled around and stormed back to the cellblock, his mind racing.

Giving Svetlana free rein to do whatever got Ian on the L and to the prison for visitation hours hadn’t been the smartest idea, but she wasn’t fucking stupid. She knew he was talking out of his ass. The day he had someone blindfold his (ex-?) boyfriend and throw him in a trunk just to see Mickey was the day he needed to rethink where he was going in life. A couple months ago, he’d been willing to just let Ian go if that was what he wanted. It sure as hell would have been what was best for him, given that he couldn’t sit around and spend his life waiting for Mickey to not be holed up in the local pen. The more time stretched between visits, though… Yeah, Mickey was realizing that he really was somebody’s bitch. Fuck what was best—nobody was going to be better for Ian than him, and if he couldn’t go to Gallagher, then Gallagher needed to come to him.

As much as he hoped she wouldn’t have to blackmail or pay him to do it—as much as his chest hurt at the thought, because he was Ian Gallagher’s bitch these days—that was her fucking problem. His was making sure that there was something to keep Ian coming once he got here.

So, Mickey beelined straight for 12C and knocked loudly on the doorjamb. “Yo, wake the fuck up, man. It’s afternoon.”

The tall, gangly Mexican lounging on his bunk glanced up at him and smirked. “Am I going to miss prison bingo again?”

Any other day, that would have been reason enough to sharpen the edges of his sarcasm, but Mickey was in a goddamn hurry.

“What the fuck ever, man. You got the shit I ordered?”

Felipe snorted, shaking his head as he peered out of the cell over his shoulder and then moved towards the toilet.

“Was wondering when you’d be coming to collect, gringo. Not like I don’t have a steady market in here waiting for the goods.”

“What can I say? Been busy,” grumbled Mickey. He reached out to take the little plastic bag in Felipe’s hand only to have it snatched out of his grasp. “The fuck?”

“You got my fee?”

Jesus Christ, knew I should’ve gone to the Russians about it.

“I already had Damon pay you,” Mickey reminded him, voice low and hopefully more than irate enough to indicate that he wasn’t in the mood for any bullshit.

“Three months ago,” clarified Felipe. He gave the bag a pointed jostle. “There’s high demand for this shit, man. Gonna have to charge you a holding fee.”

Mickey frowned skeptically at the motherfucker’s attempt to swindle him. “Yeah, I’m sure that shit’s been sitting here the whole time, huh?”

“This ain’t Amazon, man. But hey, you don’t have to pay, and I don’t have to provide,” he observed with a shrug that made Mickey want to tear his arms out of their sockets.

That wouldn’t solve this little problem, though, so Mickey swallowed what he really wanted to say and dug a hand into his pocket for the cash he’d brought just in case something like this happened. Giving in hurt like a motherfucker, but as he’d already as good as established over the phone, he basically had Property of Ian Gallagher stamped across his ass and was willing to jump through a few fucking hoops. If all went according to plan, then the stamp wouldn’t even have to be on his ass.

***

“Thanks for coming back.”

“Yeah… Svetlana paid me.”

Well. That fucking sucked. Mickey’s chest itched uncomfortably, and he wasn’t sure whether it was six-day-old ink settling in or how Ian had been avoiding his gaze since he got here. Whatever, though. It didn’t matter. They were at war here, and Mickey wasn’t fucking going down without a fight.

“You look good,” he offered when it appeared that Ian wasn’t going to continue the conversation on his own.

The result was… Well, it wasn’t great, but it gave Mickey a little bit of hope. The fluorescents made it harder to see when Ian’s jaw twitched, and it seemed like his (ex-?) boyfriend was doing his best not to meet Mickey’s eyes. He immediately understood why: it was a hell of a lot easier to hold out when they didn’t look right at each other. How many fucking times had Mickey caved the second that bastard raised those stupid green eyes of his and gave him that look? Shit, it’d had Mickey on his knees in a fraction of a second before, the electricity was that powerful.

So, he was on the right track.

Time for the fucking big guns.

“Got a new tattoo,” Mickey pressed on. Once Ian’s gaze landed on his, the curiosity practically radiating off him, he added, “Did it myself. Hurt like a son of a bitch.”

That was putting it fucking mildly. It was almost unbearable to pull his jumpsuit aside and peel the edge of his tank down enough to show Ian the swelled tattoo of his name over Mickey’s heart, but Mickey slapped that cocky smirk on his face and didn’t let it fall as he set down the phone to do so. Not when the fucker stung like hell or when Ian stared at him as if he had gone out of his goddamn mind. It was worth it.

Ian didn’t seem to think so if the way his mouth formed the word Jesuuuuus was any indication, but hey, they were all good. He could’ve rolled his eyes or hung up the phone. Instead, there was some concern there. An ex wouldn’t give two shits if you had a painful new tattoo, right?

The thought made Mickey grin wider, and he was proud as shit when he saw Ian’s lips turning up too.

“Looks fucking infected,” he needlessly pointed out. As if Mickey didn’t fucking know that already. It would be a few more days until he could reasonably get some goddamn medical attention and not be seen as the cell block’s biggest pussy, though, so no use bitching about it.

Shrugging a shoulder, he dismissively replied, “Kinda hard to round up a clean needle in here.”

That could have been the end of it. It should’ve. But if Ian Gallagher ever reached a point where he didn’t give Mickey shit or get on his ass about something, Mickey would have to get him committed. Again.

“Gallagher’s spelled with two L’s.”

Yeah, Mickey knew that. He’d fucking spray-painted it on a building once. The fuck is he…?

Then it hit him.

“No, it’s fucking not,” he mumbled, not sure whether he should smile at the ghost of a laugh at the other end of the phone or bash his fucking brains against the glass when he looked down to see that yep, he’d fucked up the tattoo. It wasn’t his goddamn fault—he hadn’t forgotten how to spell Ian’s last name. He hadn’t. But it was the first fucking tattoo he’d given himself and it hurt like hell and by the time he’d gotten that far, he was about ready to drop the goddamn needle. His stupid brain must have shut off at some point in the process, because Ian was being nice in only bringing up the missing L—he’d fucking skipped the H, too.

So, he wasn’t in love with Ian Gallagher. He didn’t fucking belong to Ian Gallagher.

Apparently, Ian Galager was a different goddamn story.

“Fuuuuck.”

When Mickey glanced back up, he couldn’t really bring himself to feel too bad. Okay, it fucking sucked that the one thing he’d been planning for the last three months had completely blown up in his face and that there was no way he could even begin to fix it, but… Ian had laughed. Ian had spoken to him the way he used to. Ian was rubbing at his mouth as if he could hide the fact that he was trying so damn hard not to smile, and Mickey was transported back to juvie where a smart-ass redhead had grinned at him through a different pane of glass while Mickey attempted to keep anyone else from realizing how fucking gone he was for the asswipe.

Some things never changed. Thank fucking god.

The irony of the situation had Mickey chuckling and, feeling a little braver, he hesitated only a few seconds before saying, “Been thinking about you.”

There they were. There were those eyes.

“Do you ever think of me?”

No answer. Those eyes danced away but came back. They said everything Ian wouldn’t. And he knew it was selfish. He knew it was the worst possible thing he could ever ask Ian to do, but Mickey couldn’t stop himself.

“Gonna wait for me?”

“You’re in here for fifteen years,” murmured Ian brokenly. At least it wasn’t a no.

“Yeah, but I’ll be out in eight with overcrowding, so…”

It hurt to watch Ian’s expression shutter. It was unbearable to have to chuckle a little as if the whole thing was a joke when what Mickey desperately wanted was for him to say that he’d wait.

It was even more painful to see how much it obviously hurt Ian not to.

“You tried to kill my sister,” he eventually deflected, toneless and clearly reaching.

Mickey’s eyebrows flew up to shake hands with his fucking hairline. “Half-sister, one. Two, like you give a shit. Bitch had it coming, calling fucking MPs on you.”

And there was the goddamn alarm, interrupting right when they were getting to the good part.

No fucking way. Not now—not yet.

The sound still shook Ian, though, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the COs started telling everyone to wrap it up. There were shuffling footsteps behind him as the other inmates finished their calls and started moving back towards the door, but Mickey didn’t budge an inch. This wasn’t over. This couldn’t be over, and he wasn’t going back to his cell until fucking Gallagher gave him a straight answer. Even if it was fucking bullshit, Mickey needed a straight answer.

“Will you?” he asked—pleaded—quietly. “Wait?”

The room was almost empty. Ian was staring at him, eyes meeting Mickey’s and then darting away repeatedly. Svetlana was pointedly not fucking watching them, bouncing Yevgeny in her lap instead of dragging Ian out the door the way she normally would have.

Still no answer.

The seconds stretched until Mickey knew he was pushing his luck and forced himself to choke out, “Fucking lie if you have to, man. Eight years is a long time.”

And wouldn’t you fucking know it, Mickey had been wrong again. He’d thought Ian leaving him and Mickey doing nothing to stop him hurt more than anything?

That wasn’t even in the same ballpark as how Ian looked like he was drowning when he muttered to the table, “Yeah. Yeah, Mick, I’ll wait.”

It didn’t hold a candle to how red his eyes were when he and Svetlana walked away or how he may as well have lodged the receiver in Mickey’s ribs on his way out.

Because even worse than leaving was lying about staying.

And that was it. That was the moment. The moment where everything turned around, because this time, Mickey wasn’t going to let it happen.

The moment where Mickey Milkovich decided to buck his family’s reputation and fucking break out of prison. Whatever it took.

Chapter Text

“What about spoons?” Damon’s voice carried softly over the edge of his bunk down to where Mickey was doing his level best not to strangle him.

“What about ‘em?”

“You could, like…sharpen them and dig your way out.”

Huffing an incredulous laugh, Mickey retorted, “That shit only works in cartoons, man. Get serious.”

“You never know. They ain’t got the money to take care of this place, so the walls could be all brittle.”

“They could be made of fucking Styrofoam and I still wouldn’t be outta here before I turned eighty. What else you got?”

Mickey closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his nerves and shore them up against Damon’s obnoxious thinking noises tap-dancing on them. Any fucking cellmate. I could’ve gotten stuck with any fucking cellmate, and it had to be him.

“I got something!”

Somehow, Mickey doubted it. That didn’t stop Damon from leaning out and grinning down at him as though he’d just won the goddamn lottery.

“There was this show where a guy broke out of prison in Chicago,” he whispered excitedly. “We just do what he did and we’re home free!”

Never in his life had Mickey contemplated suicide. Not once. Not growing up as a closeted gay kid on the South Side or in Terry Milkovich’s house. Not on any number of the repeated occasions when everything in his life went to shit. Nope. Never occurred to him. But right now, he really wondered if it wouldn’t be better to find a window to jump out of. At least then he wouldn’t have to let Damon’s idiocy kill him slowly. Seriously, where the hell was his compassionate release for putting up with this Mexican banger hit man motherfucker for the last five months? Convicted kid fuckers got out for less. Mickey hadn’t made it past the ninth grade, but he knew there was something about cruel and unusual punishment being illegal. And this was certainly fucking unusual.

“Okay, one: that was a different fucking prison. Two: that guy had the damn blueprints to said prison. And three”—Mickey grabbed his pillow and lobbed it straight at Damon’s face—“it’s a fucking TV show! Are you shitting me?!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Keep it down, Milkovich!”

“Fuck off, or I’ll shove your dick down your throat!” Mickey shouted back at the morons in the cell next to theirs. Assholes needed to learn to mind their goddamn business. Couldn’t they tell that this was a private fucking conversation?

Privacy in prison. That’s a good one.

Groaning in frustration, Mickey lowered his voice again and hissed, “You’re a fucking Mexican. Ain’t you supposed to be good at sneaking outta places?”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t hear you coming up with anything,” grumbled Damon as he rolled back into his bed and out of Mickey’s line of sight.

That was because Mickey was drawing a big fucking blank, not that he was going to let his cellmate in on that. He’d been in and out of the minor leagues, and most of his family had done time on the pro level, but not once had he heard of a prison break. Escapes just didn’t happen. All the taxpayer dollars in Illinois were being dedicated not to the food or clothes or fucking toiletries, but to making sure that they stayed inside and away from the rest of society. That was kind of the point, right? It was prison for a reason. All that fancy equipment was designed to make sure there weren’t any holes in the convoluted web of security that held them all captive. Their cell doors were opened and closed remotely, so there was no lock to pick. The furniture was built into the walls and floor, so there were no bolts to loosen. Cameras watched them whether they were taking a walk or a dump, so they were never unmonitored. Every entrance had a card-swipe, and every card had an owner, and every owner had a gun or a taser. Unless they got the whole fucking pen involved, they weren’t going anywhere.

Hell, Mickey hadn’t even wanted to tell Damon, but how else was he supposed to get the fuck out of here? He’d lasted a couple of months before he realized that if he was going to do anything, he’d need some serious help to do it—inside and out. There was enough cash in his commissary for the former. Everyone was so goddamn strapped in here that it wasn’t too tough to offer a few bucks and get whatever the hell you wanted. When he set aside the fact that it was bordering on impossible to break out as a whole, he figured it would be easy to get the right guys in place if he scratched their back.

Getting some fucking help on the outside was where Mickey ran into trouble. His options were limited, and when he considered that whoever helped him would be in just as much shit as him if they got caught, the list shrank even more. Ian was immediately out, no matter how much Mickey wanted to go straight to him once he left this place behind. (If he left this place behind.) Mickey loved him too much to toss this shit at him on top of the literal ton of bullshit he was already dealing with. He’d looked healthier than he had since his first depressive episode last time they saw each other, and Mickey would rather die than fucking set him back now. Besides, if it had been that hard for Svetlana to get him to visit, who the fuck knew what he’d say if Mickey asked him for help escaping? Gallagher would probably go running to Fiona or Lip for advice, and neither of them were likely to be on board with an escape attempt. So, yeah, Ian and the Gallaghers were a hard no.

Svetlana wasn’t an option either. Mickey could count the days when he’d been truly happy on one fucking hand: most of them involved Ian, but receiving divorce papers from his bitch of a wife ranked right on up there. It wasn’t even worth calling to find out what the hell had prompted that; he wasn’t the slightest bit worried about what this meant for the money that he sure as hell wasn’t going to be getting now. All he could think as he practically begged the COs for a pen and signed that shit was that with her out of the way, there really was nothing stopping him from being with Ian. That commie wank handler had cast a shadow over their whole fucking relationship even when things seemed good and she and Ian got along. Not anymore, bitch. Not anymore. Whether she found someone else to marry or hopped a plane back to the goddamn motherland was neither here nor there for Mickey—good riddance to her and the kid and the constant reminder of the worst period in his life they represented. Mickey couldn’t even bring himself to be irritated that she’d skipped out of their deal before he could ask her for help now. For one thing, he doubted she’d believe he could even get three steps off the property. For another, she’d probably call the fucking cops and collect the reward. No, thank you.

So, with the Gallaghers and Svetlana…unavailable, that left him with approximately fucking nobody on the outside to get things ready for when he hopefully found himself out there a decade early. Terry was unreliable and would probably be in and out of the joint himself too many times to count on him. His brothers and cousins couldn’t be trusted not to get high and spill the beans at the Alibi ten minutes after he talked to them. Nobody else on the South Side would be willing to help a Milkovich, at least not with something this major. Half the neighborhood had to be counting their blessings that the house was mostly empty. Not like they contributed a whole lot while they were there.

That meant resorting to the one thing Mickey had always struggled with: asking somebody else for fucking help. Which sucked, but he was trying to get over it even as he wondered whether cutting Damon’s tongue out would keep him from talking while he tried to find somebody else to work with.

Even that was an idle thought, though. Damon was the perfect accomplice. Sure, he was dumb enough that he didn’t catch on quick, but the asswipe had an undeniable history. Working for a cartel was serious business, and it had taken over twenty years before his dumb ass had ended up in prison for it. He had contacts all over the place in every major city from Chicago to Mexico City. One call and he’d have a fucking fleet of tacoheads ready to escort them to the border.

Because that was where they’d be headed once they were free—if they were free. It wasn’t like Mickey could head home or stay in Chicago. The cops would be looking for him. He’d be a fugitive.

If he broke out, he couldn’t go home. Ever. He’d accepted that, and it wasn’t like he’d be upset about it when there wasn’t a whole lot waiting for him anyway.

The question was how he’d convince Ian to leave with him.

But he could save that for later. Right now, the fucking important thing was that he was no closer to being outside the goddamn electric fence than he’d been when Ian halfheartedly promised to wait a few months back. The mental images of them on some Mexican beach drinking tequila (or pretending to since Ian would get so fucked up if he mixed his meds with the hard stuff) were a pipe dream for now. Until he had some idea of how to get out of here, he needed to keep his head in the game.

“Gotta be something else we can do,” Mickey muttered, knowing Damon would hear him. “Something they don’t watch too close.”

Silence, then, “Infirmary? Shank each other then bust out a window?”

“Nah, they expect that shit.”

“True… I think Manuel tried it once.”

“Who the fuck is Manuel?”

“Friend of mine,” Damon explained. “Lives out in Arizona with his family now. Or maybe New Mexico…”

Rolling his eyes, Mickey asked, “That how he got there? Sneaking out through the infirmary?”

“Oh, hell no. They caught his ass and added another five.”

“Yeah, that’s real helpful. Tells us what not to fucking do. Probably have more luck sneaking out in the…the trash…”

Mickey trailed off with a frown. The trash. Jesus fucking Christ, how could he be this stupid?

“Yo, Damon?”

“What?”

“How long you think it would take you to get a few of your guys to go official?”

The answer was apparently a long-ass time. A year, to be precise, and Mickey was practically crawling out of his skin when they were ready to pull the fucking trigger on that shit. All things considered, it was probably for the best: there were too many mistakes they could make, all of which would end with them right back where they started and a few more years added onto their bid than before. This was a delicate fucking situation that required all the finesse in the world, so spending a few months ironing out all the wrinkles couldn’t hurt.

Fuck that shit.

It sucked. Plain and simple.

One fucking year where all he could do was keep his nose down and stay out of trouble. Given that he had more reason than most to make that his middle name, it was a lot harder than it looked. Milkoviches didn’t turn the other cheek—they took aim at whoever the fuck was annoying the shit out of them and beat their cheek until they didn’t have any teeth left. Mickey had never in his life turned down the opportunity to fight, not even when it came to Ian. Of course, they usually tended to end their scuffles a whole lot more pleasurably than visiting a dentist, so he didn’t mind in that regard. Here, though? Shit, these assholes seemed to make it their life’s work to bug the hell out of him. Every time he turned around, somebody was just asking for it. They cut the cafeteria line right in front of him or took too long on the weights or wouldn’t fucking turn so he could take a shit in some semblance of privacy. It was obnoxious as hell, but Mickey couldn’t say anything about it half the time. If he did, somebody might start something, and the last thing he needed right now was the COs watching his every move. Not when those moves were all intended to have him out on the street, and fast.

Without a little impromptu boxing practice, there was nothing to break the monotony. In his juvie days—even in the first couple of months he’d spent in prison—Mickey could content himself with working out in the hopes that something more exciting would come along once or twice a week. A redheaded something who had a tendency to put shit in his commissary or manipulate someone else into doing it for him. Mandy had shown up too, which was always good for a laugh if a touch awkward given how many guys on his side of the glass were undressing her with their eyes. Fuck, that would have led to a fight as much as anything else, so the fact that Mandy didn’t come to visit either was a goddamn blessing even though Mickey would kill for some company that wasn’t dressed in orange. Instead, there was no one. He didn’t get any letters or visits; he didn’t hear a word. Honestly, he hadn’t really expected to: who the fuck would come to see him now? Anyone who had a reason wasn’t around anymore or was too busy with the rest of their shit. He couldn’t even be mad about it, which fucking rankled more than anything else. How the hell was he supposed to ask anyone to drop their lives and make him feel less like his was going nowhere fast?

He couldn’t, that was how. Mickey was saving all his fucking karma for the ultimate question, the one he wouldn’t think about until they crossed that bridge. Or border. Whatever.

None of that discouraged him, though—not Mickey Milkovich. He was a goddamn fighter. So what if he took every goddamn opportunity to blow off some steam with the cell block twink, keeping his eyes closed and picturing a very different scene? Something had to keep him from going apeshit in here and focus his eyes on the prize. So what if he took a little extra time on his physique until he was a bit more chiseled underneath that jumpsuit? It felt good to be in shape, entirely for himself. Entirely.

Because he’d be out soon, so the long hours of restless waiting while he tried not to get too comfortable? The fuck did he care about that for?

***

There was something decidedly ironic about the fact that Mickey had made more AIDS jokes than he could count in his lifetime and was now sitting shoulders-deep in dirty fucking needles.

He was going to get AIDS. And not even from a dick.

Life wasn’t fucking fair.

There was a disgusted grunt a few feet away, followed by the sound of trash smacking against hard plastic, and Mickey kicked the side of his own receptacle in irritation.

“Hey,” he hissed, “you mind fucking keeping it down over there?”

For a moment, he wasn’t sure if anyone heard him. Then Damon’s muffled voice groused, “This is nasty, man.”

“What, you think I like it in here?”

“Still can’t believe this was the best you could come up with.”

“You had a fucking year to think of something better, so sit down and shut the fuck up. I ain’t dealing with this shit just to get my ass caught.”

Damon made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh before the noise outside Mickey’s stupid hazmat container stopped, leaving him in fucking peace for a whole minute.

Was this ideal? Hell no. There was almost nothing he wanted more than to get out of this pile of shit and take a hot shower to make him forget all about the blood-spotted tissue draped over his left knee. Almost nothing sounded better than being back in his bunk where at least shit was sanitized even if it would never be clean.

But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Almost nothing.

Mickey Milkovich had done worse and stranger things in his life to get within spitting distance of Ian Gallagher. He’d gotten him in his bed with fucking Terry and Mandy in the other room. He’d made his need known at the Kash and Grab in broad daylight. He’d pummeled that faggot doctor in the middle of a busy street, gone to a goddamn gay bar, walked down the fucking sidewalk in Boystown with six feet of dead weight over his shoulder like a caveman, beat up a club pole-smoker, and nearly killed a bitch. Fuck, he’d cried. In front of his sister. In front of Ian’s sister.

Hiding out in the infirmary’s waste to sneak out with the rest of the trash? This was nowhere near the dirtiest he’d ever felt, and if it ended with him under the high school bleachers or in the dugouts or some back alley with Gallagher, then it would be fucking worth it.

Even if the last two hours were pure hell on his lower back.

It was another two before the rest of their plan went into motion, and Mickey was startled out of a light doze by his container jerking suddenly to an angle and rolling along the floor with an agonizingly harsh bump. Not that there would ever be a next time, but if there were, he was dishing out extra for a little compassion. Shit, they weren’t moving furniture—could they be any rougher?

Knew I should’ve gone with the skinheads, he grumbled internally. As if his thoughts were broadcast to whatever dumb Mexican fucker was carting him to his destination, the wheels went over a particularly rough patch of something, and Mickey closed his eyes in discomfort as one of the needles scratched against his wrist. Fucking prison bitches.

“Hey! Not so fast there, Jorge.”

Oh shit.

There was only one kind of person in here that could sound like a cop and a jackass at the same time, which meant they had to be getting close to the exit.

“It’s Reynaldo,” a voice muttered through the plastic separating him from Mickey’s fist. If it hadn’t been, he would have punched the dumbass. They weren’t exactly in a position to stand around getting picky over fucking names here.

“Whatever,” the CO brushed him off. Mickey could practically see some generic, blond former alter boy nodding towards his container as he demanded, “Where you going with those?”

Don’t fuck this up… Do not fuck this up…

“Taking them out to the truck, sir.”

“Thought that was Marco’s detail.” It wasn’t a question.

Mickey bit his lip so he wouldn’t groan aloud at the fucking pause that followed. They’d gone over the story ten goddamn times! The only way they could have drilled it into the moron’s head any further would have been if they’d made fucking flash cards or used an actual drill. The latter was sounding pretty good when Reynaldo sputtered incoherently until he pulled his shit together.

“He sent me instead,” he eventually managed to fucking remember. It was too late, though: the damage was already done.

“He sent you,” the CO deadpanned.

“Y-Yes, sir.”

That was it: Mickey was going to kill this idiot and earn his fucking sentence.

Reynaldo seemed to figure out that he’d screwed the goddamn pooch, because he immediately started backpedaling: “He wasn’t feeling so hot today, you know? Asked the doc if I could work his rounds instead.”

“Oh, yeah? Which doc?”

Silence.

Jesus, would he just pick one? The guy was in here for the next twenty years anyway—it wasn’t like it mattered if he got caught lying later. Plus, he was going down as soon as the COs realized that Marco not feeling so hot translated to Marco being fucking locked in the electrical maintenance halls connected to D block. His goose was fried for a few hundred bucks and all the coke he could OD on from one of Damon’s mules on the inside.

“The one with the glasses? Tall?”

Fucking thank you.

“Dr. Giles.”

“Yeah, yeah. That gringo.”

Don’t sound so fucking relieved, you moron.

There was a long pause, during which Mickey felt like all the needles turned inward to poke him even though he was still frozen in place. Despite what an idiot he could be, Damon hadn’t made it this far in his career for nothing, and he could tell his cellmate was doing the same in his can.

“I’ll be checking on that,” the CO finally conceded, and Mickey let all the air whoosh out his lungs in relief. “Get that shit out of here. Truck’s leaving in five.”

Chalupa-brains apparently understood just how lucky they were getting, because he didn’t wait to be told twice and Mickey definitely wasn’t complaining about the bumpy ride now. Bruises would heal and if he was going to get AIDS off the shit in here, then it was probably already too late to bitch about it. Those were problems for after they got on the fucking disposal truck, and that wasn’t counting anything that could go wrong between here and there.

Which, surprisingly enough, didn’t happen. Their escape was actually kind of anticlimactic when he considered what a big deal it was. Mickey wasn’t sure if he should have felt relieved or paranoid, but by some strange stroke of what he’d call luck until it fucking turned on him, everything else went off without a hitch. The receptacles were strapped into the truck, the truck drove out of the compound, the compound didn’t raise the alarm—and they were free.

Well, for now. Freedom would have meant walking the streets like a normal person, but all things considered, this was at least better than getting a whopping six square feet to share with another person for the next ten years. And hey, being free? That was some subjective shit. As Ian had loved to remind him at the worst possible fucking times, he’d spent most of his life as a prisoner in one context or another. The moments they shared negated all that, though. It didn’t matter if they were alone and could be themselves or hiding in the middle of a crowd—as long as Gallagher was around, Mickey was never trapped. That was why his field trip to army land had been the most devastating experience Mickey had undergone. Part of it had to do with the way things had ended, of course: while Mickey had never been thrilled with how keen Ian was on getting his ass blown off in Bumfuckistan, it would have been way better if he’d left to do that without all the Svetlana bullshit. Terry’s goddamn intervention notwithstanding, the knowledge that he couldn’t just send a text or randomly show up somewhere Gallagher usually frequented anymore had gutted him. It was like an invisible set of handcuffs attached him to his house and his goddamn family, and only Ian had the key.

Shit. That soft bitch made me fucking soft, Mickey mused as they jostled their way back to Chicago proper. So much for that Milkovich reputation.

***

The old neighborhood hadn’t changed a whole lot since he went in, which both surprised him and didn’t. The place was a shithole and always would be; it wasn’t like the folks who lived there were the sort to slap some new paint on their houses or clean up the trash in their yards. The ghetto detritus strewn here and there was comforting in its familiarity: their streets wouldn’t be the same without a couch laying sideways against a fence or a few dozen beer bottles clogging up the sewers or a pile of filthy clothes that could have been dumped out of a car but was probably some homeless motherfucker who passed out from too much booze under the L instead. Those gentrifying bitches could try as hard as they wanted, but this part of the South Side wasn’t going anywhere fast—not without one hell of a fight.

A piece of Mickey wished that he could stick around to watch. Hell, it wished he could stick around to partake in the madness that was bound to erupt eventually. That night they’d shoved Lip in the backseat and shot up that bullshit organic coffee place? That was what it meant to be South Side. No expensive, sugary bitch drinks. No peaceful fucking protest. Things down here got passionate in a way that the new blood in the neighborhood didn’t really understand and could never be part of. It was that passion that kept most of the real South Side trash from ever trying to get out. Well, that and the fact that they were all fucking broke with nothing to their names but some priors. But even if they weren’t, this was the place to be. This was home.

Despite the last year of daydreaming about beaches and sand and never being fucking cold again, Mickey was going to miss it.

That was why his eyes were glued to the windows as the van drove through the same old streets towards their destination. All his memories were in this place—the good, the bad, and the fucking weird. On this corner was the liquor store where Mickey had acquired his first fake ID in the back room for fifty bucks before inflation doubled the price. Down that alley was one of many hideouts for some fascist pricks who had paid good fucking money for unidentifiable semi-automatics that had gotten the Milkovich family through more than one winter. Two blocks away from where they made a left to go in the opposite direction was the whorehouse dressed up as a massage parlor where Svetlana had worked before Mickey opened the rub ‘n’ tug. The empty field they passed used to be where they picked up the coke that Mickey sold around town until the place burned down and became the spot for bonfires and other South Side summer chaos. (That was before the cops shut that down, of course.)

There was the high school he’d gone to for a year but visited more frequently than he’d attended after he dropped out. To collect on the coke. And for…other reasons.

They passed the Kash and Grab, where he’d worked perhaps the only honest job he’d ever had. In between rounds with Ian in the freezer. Good times.

To their right was the baseball field where he’d made it through all of half a season before getting kicked off the team. While Ian was watching, not that he’d known it at the time.

A few streets over was the Alibi. Fuck, what didn’t happen at that shithole?

A few streets up was his house, looking the same as fucking ever. The paint was chipping off and the roof needed new shingles, like, five years ago. That old dresser was still on the front porch with a bright orange cone they’d gotten from somewhere lying on top. The shit Ian had tossed out on his manic cleaning spree that Mickey hadn’t moved back inside was still there, as were a few of those fucking suitcases they hadn’t gotten rid of. The gate was still busted, and the lawn didn’t need cutting because all the goddamn garbage kept it from growing right.

There was a car outside. Iggy’s car.

And if that didn’t take him back a couple of years. Back to when things were actually sort of good. When Terry was back in prison for violating probation. When Ian was back and they were living together. When Svetlana was off his back for the most part. When nobody gave a shit about the fact that he was gay and that he had a boyfriend and that boyfriend was sleeping in his bed. Yeah. It had been pretty all right.

…Then Ian had stolen that car and taken Yevgeny on his insane fucking joyride and everything had gone to shit overnight. Couldn’t forget that part.

Mickey wouldn’t say he could do without those memories, but he sure as hell wasn’t looking to relive them. So, he didn’t say a word as they approached and passed his house, leaving it in the rear-view mirror where it fucking belonged. He didn’t want to think about that shit. He didn’t have time to consider stopping to tell Iggy where he was going or calling Mandy to let her know he was leaving or running inside to grab a few of the things that he’d admittedly like to have with him if he was never coming back again. If he ever felt like it, then he could ask Damon to have one of the assholes in the van with him take care of it.

That thought almost made him laugh even as he scooted down in his seat to avoid the eyes of an approaching cop. What the hell would Iggy say if he could see the van full of beaners Mickey was traveling with now? Okay, there were a couple of white guys in back, but ironically enough, they were the hired help. They didn’t know shit about shit and were only here for the hundred bucks Mickey promised them for one very simple job. Three simple jobs, actually: drop-off, pick-up, and delivery. How fucking hard could that be?

Still, it wasn’t his usual crowd, that much was fucking certain. The temp goons didn’t say a whole lot, and Damon’s crew refused to speak fucking English half the time. Mickey couldn’t be sure if they were working out the logistics of getting the two of them out of Chicago or planning to stab him the first chance they got. It was pretty even odds.

They came in handy, though. The guys were competent, which was a nice change from what Mickey had always had to deal with doing runs with his family. Then again, that wasn’t so shocking given that they worked for a goddamn cartel. To them, unloading a couple of escaped convicts from the back of a truck, making sure they got shuttled into a van instead of an incinerator, and getting them dressed in nondescript clothes was probably just a regular fucking Wednesday. Their ride was a little nicer than they were used to on the South Side, but with all the uppity fuckers moving into the neighborhood, it wouldn’t seem too off-brand.

The fact that Mickey looked like a damn hobo up in the front seat, however, might set off a few alarm bells. Oh well. Too late to change his mind on this one.

Damon had almost lost his shit when Mickey told him they had a quick pit stop to make before they left the city. Apparently, these cartel types were a bit quicker about getting out of fucking dodge before they got caught.

“Our faces are gonna be all over the news, gringo,” he’d argued when Mickey told him to fuck off and hopped in the van anyway.

“Nobody’s gonna recognize me,” Mickey had scoffed in return, grimacing as he flicked a few strands of the shitty wig they’d gotten him off his shoulder. “I look like fucking Frank.”

That one had tripped Damon up for a second. “Who?”

“Nobody. Look, just don’t fucking worry about it, okay? I can handle this.”

Shaking his head, Damon had warned, “We get caught, I’m ditching your ass and heading to Mexico myself.”

So far, he hadn’t had to make good on that promise. They’d taken their time; they’d been careful. The stupid move would have been to go running right for the finish line, but they’d been smart about it and waited a couple of nights. The longest fucking nights Mickey had ever spent, and that included waiting around to hear from Ian or the cops or the goddamn morgue when he’d taken off with the baby. It couldn’t be helped, though. They’d ditched out in the middle of the afternoon, which meant that the COs would know they were gone by that night’s count. Cops and investigators had probably been crawling all over the South Side, talking to anybody who knew him and waiting for him to show up. All Mickey could wonder as they camped out by the docks was what Ian’s reaction would be when he found out. Like hell would the cops pass up a chance to question him—his name was all over the fucking visitors’ log. The fact that he hadn’t been around lately wouldn’t mean anything. All they’d care about was that he’d been there.

They’d probably gone looking for Svetlana too. Fucking great.

Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, though—Ian knowing, not Svetlana. Mickey didn’t give two shits about what she was thinking as long as it stayed a good mile or two away from him. Gallagher, on the other hand… It might have worked in Mickey’s favor. Did he really want to sneak up on the guy after months of radio silence? He had no clue what kind of shape Ian was in and no way to find out before they saw each other. If he was still sick, who knew what would fucking happen? If he wasn’t, would he really want to see Mickey again? Or would he have moved on enough by now that he’d roll his eyes and chalk all this up to more Milkovich drama? That was what Mickey would do in his position, after all.

Of course, Mickey would also finish his cigarette and come running once he was done getting pissed off about it, but what could he say? He’d always had a taste for keeping life interesting. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be telling Pedro or whatever the fuck his name was to pull over on the side of North Wallace with a straight line of sight to the Gallaghers’ front door.

“You,” he barked at one of the jerkoffs the cartel pricks had picked up so none of them would get recognized on this little escapade. Tossing him a junky flip phone they’d pinched from a mini-mart the previous day, he pointed across the street and ordered, “Wait a couple houses down from that one. You see a redhead come out, you do what I told you. Got it?”

The guy nodded and immediately moved for the door, pulling his hood up over his black beanie. As he reached for the handle, he threw over his shoulder, “She cute?”

That’s all I fucking need is him giving Debbie the goddamn phone.

Mickey rolled his eyes and clarified, “No, shithead. It’s a guy. Now get the fuck out.”

For a street thug looking to make a few bucks, this idiot asked a lot of questions. Mickey almost threw him bodily from the van when he inquired, “How long am I supposed to wait for him?”

“Until you fucking see him!”

“That could be hours, man.”

“Then I hope you brought a snack,” Mickey drawled. “Do you want your fucking money or not?”

That did the trick. He didn’t look happy, but the guy hopped out of the van and slammed the door shut behind him anyway. Shit, how hard was it to find good help in the hood these days?

Fortunately, they didn’t have to wait long enough for him to decide that this gig was costing him more than he was earning. After half an hour of watching the door as though it might disappear if he glanced away for a second, Mickey straightened in his seat and unconsciously held his breath when the redhead in question stepped onto the porch.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Ian looked fucking amazing.

He’d regained the weight he’d lost when he was sick and the meds were messing with his appetite, but it was all muscle. Mickey could tell from the way his jacket fit across his shoulders and his ass filled out those trousers. There was some roundness in his cheeks again, and the sharp edges from his club days were nowhere to be seen. His hair had grown out a little more, too, and was just as neatly combed back as ever.

And Mickey was definitely his bitch, because all he could think was that Ian Gallagher was a goddamn vision descending the steps and slinging his backpack on. He couldn’t even find it in himself to be ashamed of that, either.

Like clockwork, his hired thug started down the sidewalk while Ian was rounding the edge of the fence and heading towards him. A lead weight seemed to drop into Mickey’s stomach when he caught the look on Ian’s face as a police cruiser made a pass down the street, and yeah, he must have found out by now. Gallagher had never been given a reason to look out for cops anywhere he went, the pussy was such a fucking good guy, but his eyes followed the car for a second before he rolled them at himself. It was a testament to how well Mickey could read him that he was almost positive Ian had been trying to see if he was in the backseat.

Come on, Gallagher. You know me better than that by now.

He really did. Otherwise, he would have sounded a hell of a lot more surprised when he answered the phone that had been dropped at his feet to hear Mickey murmuring, “Miss me?”

All his uncertainty vanished in an instant when Ian immediately perked up, his eyes searching up and down the street as if Mickey was dumb enough to be standing right where any slightly intelligent cop would be looking for him.

“Mickey,” Gallagher breathed over the line.

Fuck. That did some shit to him. All of a sudden, he was seventeen years old again, hopping through the poles under the high school bleachers towards where Ian was surprised but clearly not disappointed to see him.

This time, though, there was no fucking reunion—not yet—and Mickey was yanked out of his nostalgia when Ian quietly implored, “Where are you?”

Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

But shit, if Mickey wasn’t fighting the urge to go to him right here, right now.

“Meet me at the south shore docks in an hour,” he replied instead, battling against every last fiber of his being and staying put. “Drop the phone in the sewer.”

With that, he hung up and let the test begin. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ian—his were the only hands Mickey could imagine putting his life and freedom into. But he had to know what to expect. He had to know how far apart they’d grown over the last year.

He had to know if it was even worth asking a question that would put Ian in one hell of a fucking awful position.

Because he was selfish and he was careless and he was reckless.

And he would be in love with Ian until the day he died.

So, he watched. He waited.

And his heart picked up speed when Ian automatically stepped out into the street and did precisely as Mickey told him.

Chapter Text

Years ago, during Mickey’s dumbass phase, he’d said something stupid. That didn’t exactly narrow it down a whole lot given that he’d been spewing tons of stupid shit back then, but this stood out in his mind as one of his dimmer moments. Like, burned-out-fluorescent-light-on-the-Sizzler’s-sign dim. It wasn’t telling Ian he’d cut his tongue out if he went in for a kiss. It wasn’t deriding him for thinking they had a real relationship or calling him nothing but a warm mouth. Hell, it wasn’t even when he’d been too fucking tone-deaf to realize that saying they could keep banging after he got married made Mickey no better than the camel jockey or the pruney surgeon. (All he’d had on them was that he wasn’t a fucking pedo for what he wanted.) Mickey wasn’t proud of any of that crap, but actions could wipe them away. He’d been the one to kiss Ian, and he’d been the one to come out and say they were a couple, and he’d been the one to make room in his house so Ian didn’t have to be some secret fucking mistress. They were all things he could fix.

There was still one, however, that would always dangle in front of his nose like a stinky goddamn sock—always there but missing its pair to throw in the wash.

“Not everybody just gets to blurt out how they fucking feel every minute.”

Yeah. He’d gone there.

Mickey couldn’t believe he’d actually bought into that. By all accounts, it had definitely seemed that way for the longest fucking time. Whenever he turned around, Gallagher was mouthing off about this or that, talking like a fucking girl. High school, jobs, community college—the goddamn future? That wasn’t something Mickey could see himself ever having back then, and hearing Ian bring it up always left a bad taste in his mouth. All his rebuttals lacked heat, though, because when it came to brass tacks, that was how Mickey knew Ian fucking cared. No one else talked about that crap with him, and it was admittedly kind of nice that he gave enough of a shit to try. (And that was a secret Mickey would take to his grave.)

The day of his wedding was the one time he hadn’t been able to stomach it. The fuck did any of it matter then? They were done. There was no future for them, just as Mickey had always logically if increasingly reluctantly acknowledged. Terry had set a fucking match to it. When Ian refused to back down, fooling himself into believing that there would ever be a snowball’s chance in hell that they could make it work anyway, all the bitterness in Mickey’s gut had bubbled to the surface and made him say…that. Like a fucking moron.

And yeah, Ian had a mouth on him. He said shit Mickey never would have imagined thinking, much less putting out into the world in the form of words. It was like the guy had no fucking filter sometimes.

But it had taken an embarrassingly long while for Mickey to realize that it wasn’t because Ian talked. It was because Mickey spoke his language.

Shit, how many times had he seen it during his stint living with the Gallaghers? Until Ian crashed and burned, they were happy to just let him do what he was going to do. They didn’t ask about his job, even though Fiona had to be suspicious when the only cash Ian had on hand was a bunch of crumpled bills he’d pulled out of that weird little gold thong of his. Lip had asked about him re-enrolling in high school at one point, but Ian shrugged it off and that was where the conversation stalled out. He entertained his younger siblings but didn’t hold any meaningful conversations with them, not where he was the topic of conversation. (Mickey’s stomach still churned when he remembered how Carl had asked if they were together and Ian had brushed it off by saying Mickey smelled good. Fucking Gallagher.) With every day in that house, Mickey came closer and closer to the realization that Ian Gallagher didn’t talk about how he felt. Lip was a partial exception since Ian had clearly let something about their relationship spill to him well before he ran off to join the army with his brother’s identity. Otherwise, it was just Mickey, and even then it was in a language all their own.

That hadn’t changed. Years later, it was exactly the same.

Slipping the burner phone through the metal grate into the sewer translated to, “I trust you.” Showing up at their spot (fucking late but better than never) and shoving Mickey for having him kidnapped meant, “I missed you.” Meeting him at the docks and letting Mickey’s lips and tongue draw him out of that stuffy shell like poison from a wound was, “I need you.”

Dropping the boyfriend bomb yet holding onto Mickey all night like he might float away if he let go?

That was, “I love you.”

And as always, it wasn’t fucking enough.

Mickey couldn’t lie to himself: he’d had a feeling from the beginning that Gallagher wasn’t going to cross the border with him. It had been nice to hope, to dream, to let the delusion last for a couple of days while they were together and happy and in love without any goddamn barriers. But it couldn’t last. It never lasted. Even now, it was always better or worse for them. In order to get the better, they had to expect the worse to crop up eventually.

They’d ignored it for a bit, and Mickey had eaten up every scrap of time they’d gotten while he could. Not just the sex, although that was fucking fantastic, as always. The conversation, though? Getting to talk freely and openly about anything and everything as if they were back under the school bleachers, passing a cigarette between them with all the time in the world on their hands? Fuck, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d missed even that. He could’ve spent hours listening to Ian fill him in on everything that had happened while he was planning his getaway from the daily grind of prison life.

It was… It was a fucking lot.

There were pieces that made Mickey’s heart ache and his fists clench, like some manipulative firefighter dickweed who’d had the nerve to cheat on Ian and then make it seem like Gallagher’s fault for getting upset about it or how defeated Ian had felt when he’d thought being a janitor was the best he’d ever get and Mickey hadn’t been around to force his head out from between his own ass cheeks. God, he’d missed so much completely and irrevocably fucked up shit. Fiona’s near-miss of a wedding had him rolling his eyes, and he cringed at the idea that Lip—mister we need to do something about that super hot sex offender—got thrown out of his fucking university for totally breaking down after having a thing with his goddamn professor. His mind literally recoiled at Debbie having a fucking kid she was raising by herself—a kid she’d orchestrated having, and not even to sell, which really fucking confused him—and trying to marry some guy for his disability check as if she was goddamn Frank. Then there was the shitshow where Svetlana had apparently divorced him so she could shack up with Kev and V in some really strange, fucked up threesome bullshit. (Yeah, their dynamic had been a little weird when Ian moved in, but it wasn’t anywhere near the same level as that.) Somehow, it seemed like the most normal thing that had been going on was Carl getting racially confused. That and Frank ruining Fiona’s almost wedding. Oh, and Monica randomly blowing back into town like a fucking tumbleweed on fire. Yeah, some shit had apparently stayed comfortably odd as fuck.

But it wasn’t all bad. Ian was stable again. He was himself in a way he hadn’t been since before Terry had caught them together all those years ago. He’d gotten his GED and hit up the community college for all the certifications he’d needed to be an EMT, saving lives like he’d always wanted without the risk of getting blown up or shot. Mickey felt like he’d ascended to another plane of existence when Ian ranted at him about how he hadn’t taken any of Monica’s shit—or his new boyfriend’s, for that matter, when the fucking prick tried to tell him he needed to move on.

“Move on?” Mickey had scoffed, dragging his eyes away from the road to shoot Ian an incredulous glare. “Does he even fucking know the shit she’s pulled?”

Ian had shaken his head with a frown. “No. I never really told him.”

And if that didn’t send him right into space, Mickey didn’t know what would. Because Ian might have a relationship—or have had one—but that guy wasn’t shit if he didn’t get even part of the story about one Monica Gallagher. It didn’t bother Mickey in the slightest that it made him no better than a fucking teenage girl: he was just so damn glad that Ian hadn’t enlightened him. That was family shit. That was theirs.

So, with a grin he didn’t attempt to contain, he’d grumbled, “Should fucking keep his mouth shut about shit when he ain’t got a clue.”

Although he didn’t answer, Mickey could tell from the slight smirk twisting his lips that Ian wasn’t arguing either.

Leaving Damon in the dust had been the best decision Mickey could have made. Neither of them had to keep their conversations on the vague side or beat around the bush. Ian could give Mickey shit for swimming in a vat of AIDS; Mickey could light him up for bottoming to a fucking dildo. Ian could explain why he’d stopped coming to visit; Mickey could confess just how much he’d missed him like some pussy.

They could say goodbye without an audience.

How fucking ironic was it that this time, Mickey was the one going somewhere Ian couldn’t follow? It seemed like their whole relationship was a marathon of Ian vanishing—literally and figuratively—and Mickey not being able to go with him. Now, it was the other way around, and it didn’t hurt any less.

He wasn’t stupid, though, even as he desperately attempted to change Ian’s mind in one last ditch effort to make the unworkable work. Gallagher wasn’t like him. Never had been. He had a family that gave a shit if he lived or died, if he was sick or healthy, if he was taken care of or on his own. He had a job that he actually fucking loved for a change, where he was doing good. He had a bunch of gay shelter kids who looked up to him and could use someone who wasn’t simply a goddamn cautionary tale in their lives. He didn’t have a bank account anymore, but it wouldn’t take long for him to build it up again. He’d made a life for himself, one that maybe even had a spot for Mickey in it if he hadn’t fucked things up so badly.

In the event that Ian could just walk away from all that, however, there was some serious shit Mickey just couldn’t guarantee that would utterly destroy him. Where the fuck were they going to live? How the hell were they going to make money—or, at least, how were they going to make money in a way that Ian could live with long-term? How were they going to get prescriptions for Ian’s meds or the cash to buy them, if they were even readily available in whatever shithole they ended up inhabiting? As great as the last few days had been—paradise, really—there was a suspicion and a fear itching underneath Mickey’s skin as mornings and evenings passed without the telltale rattle of pill bottles in Ian’s backpack or into his hand. And Mickey got it: even though he was accustomed to them, those side-effects might have him enjoying their time together a little less. If this was all they were going to get, then Ian wanted to make the most of it. Mickey understood that better than anyone else ever would. But Gallagher was on the clock. His routine was his health, his sanity, and he needed to get back on his goddamn pills. He needed to get back home.

Mickey loved him. He did.

And Ian loved him too.

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t right. Not in the here and now. Not in the past. Maybe not ever.

So, Mickey had to let him go. He had to let Ian let him go when he took his shit out of the car and left the cash on the dashboard and kissed Mickey in the language only they spoke.

And it meant, “Goodbye.”

***

The first thing Mickey realized after crossing the border was that he had no fucking idea where he was going. The second thing he realized was that it didn’t even matter. Those cartel motherfuckers had eyes and ears everywhere.

And okay, maybe he got why Ian was so pissed at having been shoved in the back of a van and kidnapped.

At least Gallagher had gotten plenty of room during his abduction, though. Throughout Mickey’s illustrious career on the South Side of Chicago, he’d had to play human Tetris in the trunk of a car on a few different occasions. The dead bodies they were hired to dispose of were usually the hardest: once they got stiff, all you could do was shove a little and hope for the best. Their unconscious cargo was a whole lot more pliable. Make some room, leave a few of the automatic rifles at home, and you were set. Mickey hadn’t given much thought to what it must be like for the dumb fuckers who got themselves in enough trouble to have to ride back there, but as the car he’d been unceremoniously stuffed into bounced over the shitty goddamn streets these beaners apparently didn’t care to pave properly, it was sort of all he could dwell on.

Border security was nothing compared to this. With the exception of hiding his identity, it had been a breeze. Nobody gave a shit if you were trying to get out of the States; they only cared about the assholes coming in. A quick check under the car to make sure he wasn’t driving a bomb was all it took to get them to let him through. Hell, they barely took a second glance at his fake passport and ID. If not for the flash of red hair in his rear-view mirror, Mickey would have said the entire operation had been far too easy.

From there, he’d driven a few hours to the south with no destination in mind. They’d gotten an early start, so he’d had the whole day ahead of him. Mickey knew that eventually he would have to stop and find a motel somewhere so that he could collect his thoughts and figure out what his next step would be, but that was a concern for later. At the time, all he’d wanted was to keep his mind occupied. Driving was something he could practically do in his sleep—it wasn’t like he was fifteen fucking years old anymore or some shit—but it was enough to prevent his thoughts from shifting back to what he’d left behind and how much he desperately wanted to pull a U-turn. The small manila envelope with all of Ian’s savings inside, on the other hand, was a constant reminder.

Fucking Gallagher.

Of course, avoidance couldn’t last forever. Morning became afternoon became evening, and Mickey was just contemplating where to get off the highway when a pickup truck floored it around him to cut him off and screech to a halt so quickly that he almost rear-ended the bastard. All the garbage from his car’s previous owner flew forward when Mickey slammed on the brakes, that annoying cowboy stripper fag tag swinging wildly from the mirror as a smaller car pulled up right behind him. There wasn’t enough time for Mickey to remember how Damon had taught him to say fuck you in Spanish since the next thing he knew, he was being dragged outside by a bunch of fucking spics and…

Well…

That was kind of how he’d gotten here, wasn’t it? He couldn’t even take comfort in the fact that they’d had the common decency to let him keep his shit when his backpack knocked him in the fucking face at every goddamn turn. Jesus, did they forget they were carrying a person or was this their way of just fucking killing him slowly?

Honestly, he would be surprised if it weren’t the latter. His initial confusion was due solely to how sudden the situation had flipped itself on its head. Once he was settled into the trunk long enough to get his bearings, it was pretty clear how this was going to go down. Damon had made his calls; he’d sent word through his chain of contacts that the two of them were heading for the border. The two of them. His cartel buddies were expecting him to be in the goddamn car, not just Mickey with a couple grand and the remnants of his lipstick. He figured he must have driven right past some prearranged drop point where they should have stopped to meet, and now they were going to kick his fucking teeth in for leaving Damon behind. Then again, maybe they’d ship his ass back and collect the money instead. What was the point of killing him when they could make a profit?

The possibilities swam through his head so fast it made his head spin (although he thought that may have had more to do with how frequently it hit the side of the trunk than anything else), and the rest of the ride passed in a blur of trying to decide how he was going to spin this in his favor. A cash reward was good, but he was positive an escaped convict in the tank for what he’d been popped for wasn’t going to be worth a lot. Mickey just had to convince whoever was in charge that he could bring in more money doing whatever they needed or wanted him to do.

Within reason. Mickey Milkovich was nobody’s bitch. Well, he was one person’s bitch, nobody else’s. Like fuck was he going to do some shady shit like be a back-alley hand-whore or something. They could fucking kill him instead of turn him into a gay, male Svetlana—the goddamn irony would do it if they didn’t.

Some might call him a pussy for it, but what could he say? He wasn’t as brave as Ian had been to sell himself in order to get by after the army didn’t pan out. Or as manic. That was definitely a big part of it, and Mickey was somewhat comforted by the idea that Ian wouldn’t make the same decision again if it was put in front of him—when it was put in front of him, as he’d said when they were catching up.

And fuck, he really needed to stop thinking about that. Gallagher was already going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Did he really need to torture himself by asking what Ian would fucking do?

Better that torture than whatever waited for him outside the trunk when the car finally rolled to a stop, he supposed. There was no plan that would save him now, though, so Mickey simply took a deep breath and waited.

Let the fucking shitstorm begin.

Mickey ordinarily didn’t tend to dwell on things he regretted unless they were related to six feet of muscular South Side ass, but as he listened to car doors slamming and squinted in the sudden light pouring into the trunk, he wished he’d been a bit more thorough in learning Spanish from Damon. Not the whole goddamn language or anything, just some functional shit that might give him a hint of what the douchebags dragging him roughly to his feet were saying to him and each other. A few words made sense since they were nothing complimentary and incorporated just about every curse Mickey had memorized. Otherwise, he was in the dark and had to go on fucking body language to figure out what these dickheads wanted.

Not for the first time, Mickey wondered if Canada would have been better for relocating, extradition laws be damned. If only Canada didn’t fucking suck worse than Mexico. Bunch of pussies with no real market for someone of Mickey’s very specific and limited skill set. Oh, well. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

The place he was led into wasn’t the worst shithole Mickey had seen, though it was pretty close. Nothing around here was any different from what he had been expecting: shitty dirt roads, a bunch of leaning shanties that looked like they might fall over if it rained too fucking hard, skinny dogs digging through trash heaps in alleys not too far away from the structure Mickey entered. By comparison, it may as well have been the fucking Willis Tower. Where most everything else had been thrown together from scraps of plywood and sheet metal, this place was standing strong, all plaster and stone. Mickey got the distinct impression that it had been some kind of government building once upon a time, but given that the area looked like it was the equivalent of Mexico’s forgotten middle child, who fucking knew how long it had been empty before it was repurposed as a…hideout? Headquarters? He had no goddamn idea. As far as Mickey was concerned, it didn’t fucking matter anyway. The important thing was keeping an eye on the exits in case he needed to make a quick getaway. It wasn’t like he’d get far, but better to attempt it than just lay down and die like some bitch.

If he died here, that Milkovich reputation that had gotten him this far would be for nothing. If he died here, no one at home would ever know.

And that was fucking fine—with one exception.

So, Mickey didn’t make waves. He didn’t ask questions. He kept his damn mouth shut and followed the thug in front of him, wincing at the barrel jabbing him in the kidney from behind.

“So, this is the famous Mikhailo Milkovich,” a heavily accented voice rang out as they entered what looked to be a dining room. Or a drug den. It was sort of tough to tell when there were a couple of tweakers passed out in the corner with needles in their arms while the man who’d greeted him tossed a napkin onto his plate at the table a few feet away.

Taking in the fat fuck before him, Mickey cautiously jerked his chin in the guy’s direction and grunted, “Who’s asking?”

If he thought they were going to make things that easy, he was sorely mistaken. His host waved a hand, Mickey’s escort immediately dissipating to stand by the doors with guns at the ready, and continued as if he hadn’t spoken.

“You have made quite a name for yourself, my friend. The news has not been kind.”

“Should hear what they say back home,” joked Mickey tersely. Sweat gathered along his neck and slowly dripped down his spine. He had a feeling it wasn’t just from the heat, and the slimy smirk he got in return didn’t do a damn thing to make his skin crawl less.

“Believe me, I have. It is my job to know who it is that I am expending resources for, si?”

Great. He really is the fucking big fish. Just my goddamn luck.

Mickey was out of practice what with Terry having been out of the picture for so long, but he called upon the wealth of experience he had with appeasing his father and didn’t say a word, schooling his expression into something bland and waiting. No good kingpin started a conversation with that opening and didn’t expect to get to the punchline of what they were owed in return. It wouldn’t have been good fucking business if they did, and while his cellmate was definitely not the brains of any operation, Mickey knew enough about these cartel types not to underestimate them.

Unfortunately, they had one piece of unfinished business that slowed the process down. Nothing could ever just be fucking easy.

“Where is Damon?”

Biting idly at the corner of his lip, Mickey shrugged and hedged, “He ain’t here?”

His host stared him down in silence.

“We got split up on the road,” lied Mickey once it became obvious he would have to make the first move. He’d practiced the story in the car with Ian after they’d ditched Damon’s ass and taken off. It had seemed like a good one at the time: who wouldn’t fucking believe that two escaped convicts had to go in separate directions to avoid getting caught and shipped back to Chicago?

This guy, apparently.

“The agreement was that you were to arrive together,” Pablo Escobar over there reminded him, “yet none of my men have seen him cross the border.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you.”

At that point, Mickey wasn’t sure what to expect. Were they going to gun him down thinking that he had killed Damon and dropped the body somewhere between Illinois and the Rio Grande? Would they send Mickey to pick his ass up even if it meant getting caught by the fucking border cops and sent back to prison? Would they give him a pass because Damon was a moron and any good crime syndicate was better off without him? Okay, wishful thinking on that one, but stranger things had happened over the last few years.

And that wasn’t about to end anytime soon if El Chapo bursting into laughter was any indication. Fuck, Mickey was not equipped to deal with this bullshit today. He was tired, he was hungry, he was missing Ga—

Don’t think about that.

Anyway, he didn’t have the patience to play these games. His nerves were alight, watching for one reason to run even if that would end really fucking badly for him. Back in the day, his dad hadn’t been the laughing kind; neither had any of his other relatives. When they were pissed, they beat the shit out of you. When they wanted to make you uncomfortable, they got up in your face. Hell, when they were happy, they got up in your face. It didn’t really matter either way: they were assholes regardless of their moods. The laughter was reserved for when work was set aside for the day or they were celebrating a job well done. What was happening here didn’t really qualify as either, and Mickey didn’t know what the fuck to do with that.

A few seconds stretched to a minute, Mickey shifting restlessly and nearly bolting on instinct when the tub of Mexican lard hauled himself to his feet and came to stand right in front of him. Instead of punching him in the fucking face like he was anticipating, however, a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder and shook him slightly as if they were old fucking friends or some shit.

“The fuck?” Mickey couldn’t help blurting out, which only seemed to entertain him more.

Great, always with the psychos.

“You entertain me, Mikhailo Milkovich,” he chuckled. His grin didn’t waver as he leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, “You and I both know Damon is one dumb puta, don’t we? You were smart to leave him, or you would already be back in prison waiting for tonight’s count.”

Mickey wisely refrained from commenting. If this was a test, he was going to fucking pass it. Damn, if he’d had that resolve when he was still in school, maybe he wouldn’t be here right now.

It was far too late for that, though, so Mickey concentrated on standing his ground and not looking like he’d rather be literally anywhere else but here (except prison, of course). This guy was intimidating, and his scrutiny was nearly unparalleled, but Mickey had practice. Nobody was going to scare him, not when he’d spent years in the closet on the South Side with a father like his. Nothing could fucking top that, even if this situation was fucking nuts.

Sure enough, whatever the beaner king found in his eyes appeared to be enough, and he jostled him one last time before returning to his seat with a satisfied smirk.

“Damons come and go. I have plenty more where he came from. You, however…” His eyes took their fucking time trailing from Mickey’s hair to his shoes and back again. “You are a rarer commodity. I can put you to good use.”

That was a fucking relief, though Mickey refused to let it show. They still needed to settle what use that would be, after all.

“What you got in mind?” he asked. It was clearly the right response.

Easing back on his chair until Mickey wondered how the damn thing was still standing, his host explained, “You Americans love Mexico. All the beaches are full of you gringos all year long, and there are always foolish white pendejos looking to have a good time. They love Mexico, but they’re scared of us."

…Oh. Well, shit.

“And you think they’re gonna be less scared of me,” Mickey surmised. It was hard not to scoff when his new boss raised his hands in a gesture of approbation. If they were anywhere else, he would have called bullshit: the tats on his knuckles usually warned people off rather than drew them in. Around here, though? Jesus Christ, Mickey was kind of scared of these assholes—only kind of—so he probably looked like a goddamn Jehovah’s Witness next to their tan gangster asses. He may as well have been, as a matter of fact.

That was why he didn’t argue when the next words out of tubby’s mouth were, “Congratulations, Milkovich. From now on, you work for El Asesino.”

Because who in their right mind would say no?

Chapter Text

One year. More than that, as a matter of fact. It had been over a full year since Mickey had dragged his ass to Mexico, and he had yet to see one motherfucking beach. Maybe that was to blame for how short a fuse he had with the little dipshit that thought he could stiff Mickey for the coke he’d ordered.

And who fucking ordered coke, anyway? They weren’t a goddamn takeout joint—this was a service. If you were going to go to the trouble of purchasing illicit substances, then at least have the fucking gonads to come get them in person instead of trying to secure the goods over the phone. What Mickey’s shitty excuse for a drug pimp was thinking, he had no clue. Apparently, there was history here, not that that made a fucking difference when the guy showed up at the drop with only half the cash he was supposed to be paying.

Mickey never thought he’d say it, but he was getting too old for this shit.

“You don’t got the cash, then you’d better fuck off,” he grumbled as he shoved the prearranged bags back into the pocket of his hoodie. Which was fucking unnecessary so close to the damn equator. Seriously, Mickey was sweating balls under the stupid thing, but it was better this than a fucking man-purse or whatever else he’d need to carry his stash. Shit was way easier when he could keep his stock at home and just bring what he needed for the deal.

He had no home now, though. He had no house that belonged to him where he could be at least somewhat sure nobody was going to go through his shit and take the damn drugs. Sure, they’d go through his shit—Milkoviches knew no boundaries like that—but they weren’t dumb enough to mistake a money pot for a personal inventory.

In this hellhole? That shit would be gone quicker than Mickey could say pinata.

“I told you I’m good for it,” the whiny bitch argued like…well, like a whiny bitch.

Smirking, Mickey rebutted, “Man, if you were good for it, you’d have the money with you.”

“You expect me to carry that much? Around here?”

“If you want your shit? Yeah, that’s kinda how it works.”

“I told you,” he pleaded as desperately as any other tweaker around this dump, “I’m giving you part of it now and can come back with the rest.”

Mickey thought his eyebrows might just move in with his hairline. “And I told you, you ain’t getting shit until I get the cash in hand. If your pansy ass can’t walk from your car to here, then my associate”—he gestured to the wrestler-looking motherfucker standing at the mouth of the alley—“would be happy to escort you back to get the rest.”

That wasn’t what ended up happening. What did end up happening was the wrestler-looking motherfucker taking this shithead by the collar of his shirt and throwing him like a damn shot-put ball. Another day, another douchebag sent packing. It was actually amazing how many stupid ass American kids tried to pull a fast one like that. Didn’t they know they weren’t messing with some corner dealer anymore? Even then, this shit wouldn’t fly. Mickey had busted more than one pair of kneecaps for less, and his customers had usually thanked him and completed their purchase afterward. Either these kids were fucking stupid or he was losing his touch.

Eyeing his glorified security guard, Mickey pondered whether it wasn’t so much that he’d lost his touch as they didn’t think he could possibly be as tough as these tacoheads. Shit, if they weren’t fucking right on that count.

Since he’d come to Mexico, he’d done his best to keep his head down. He dealt the drugs he was given, traveled to the shitty dumpster fires they called towns where he was sent, and delivered the money without skimming more than his cut off the top. It was simple. It was borderline mindless. The cops down here tended to turn a blind eye, knowing who he worked for and, in more than one case, getting a little out of it themselves. Overall, it was a life free of complication or headaches. Well, except for the customers. Those morons sent him back to his motel room every night with what didn’t quite constitute a migraine until he got a few glasses of Patrón in him.

Things could have been better, he supposed. The beaches were far off, and he spent most of his time in fucking slums with back alleys full of beaners selling whatever the fuck they could think of. (The food was kind of to die for, though, so he couldn’t complain about that.) There were plenty of days when Mickey got out of bed, walked outside, smelled the goddamn dog shit (or what he hoped was dog shit) lying in the street, and wished that Mexico was more like the dream and less like the stereotype. Still, it wasn’t like he had room to say a whole lot aside from a few grumbles and mumbles about what shit this place was. The alternative was prison, and he had already promised himself he wouldn’t end up back there.

So, he hustled. He sold. He got a new fucking tattoo and considered getting an old one fixed before shrugging off the idea as not worth the money. It wasn’t like anybody was ever going to see it anyway.

For the second time in his life, Mickey wasn’t exactly aching to find someone to bang. The first had been more difficult: he’d been pining, for fuck’s sake. So hard, in fact, that he’d picked up some random redheaded bitch at the Alibi and tried to pretend that it could ever be the same without his redheaded bitch. Mickey had known it couldn’t before they got into that goddamn bathroom, yet he’d gone through with it anyway as if it would prove something, if only to himself. That he was a piece of shit maybe, or that this was all his fault and he was getting what he deserved for not taking advantage of having Ian in his life far earlier. That he could piss and moan like a fucking pussy all he wanted, but it would never bring back what he’d lost.

This was different. He hadn’t lost anything this time—he’d given it up. He’d let it go. He’d let Ian go, and as much as he wished Gallagher was warming the other side of the bed every night despite how fucking hot it got in Mexico all year round, he wouldn’t change what had happened. Because somewhere on the South Side of Chicago, Ian Gallagher was okay now. He was probably back with his dumbass boyfriend and his stupid fucking family, going to work every day at his goddamn job and saving up money for…whatever. Meds. A place of his own. Fucking retirement. It didn’t really matter since Mickey would never find out. He’d set Ian free, so the guy could do whatever the hell he wanted, just like Mickey.

It was a little like smoking or snorting coke: willingly letting it go made it last, whereas having your ass forced into rehab just made the cravings stronger. Losing Ian had sent Mickey spiraling; giving him up, in a really weird fucking way, had cut him loose. It didn’t matter if he didn’t find any dudes to fuck or have any interest in a goddamn relationship like some fag. Mickey Milkovich was free. Totally, completely, one hundred percent free.

Yep. That was him. Gallagher-free.

Until some asshole walked up to him with Ian’s fucking face on his shirt.

They’d moved two days ago and were doing their deals in a crowded bazaar, right in the middle of the action as if they were just selling street corn or some shit. It was no wonder business was slow: even if the fucking tourists could find them, they wouldn’t be able to tell who was dealing drugs from who was dealing enchiladas. That was fine by him, though. Mickey wasn’t the one who’d picked this spot, so he wouldn’t have to explain to El-high-and-mighty why they hadn’t pulled in their normal amount. It wasn’t his fucking fault Americans seemed to think that anything like this needed to go down in the shadows with a bit of that South Side ambiance.

It was around noon when they finally got lucky, and José jerked his head towards the main thoroughfare at two college types who’d apparently been stupid enough to take their spring break here instead of Cancún like all the other preppy shitheads. And what a fucking pair they made. One was your standard fare: button-up shirt with a paper in his hand like he was following goddamn written directions. The other guy briefly caught Mickey’s attention, but when his gaze drifted down to the shirt he was wearing, it fucking stayed there.

Oh, yeah. That was definitely Gallagher.

Who was apparently going by the name Jesus now.

Gonna fucking need Jesus when I’m done with his pasty ass, Mickey internally groaned. After all, Ian wasn’t the type to have his face on shirts or be comfortable with a lot of attention—attention that made it all the way down to fucking Mexico. So, something was fishy, and it wasn’t the burritos three stalls down.

“¿Que necesitas?” demanded José when Richie Rich got close enough to clearly be looking for them. A little too clearly for comfort, and Esteban immediately moved in their direction, muscles tensing and tats squirming on his arms.

“Oh, shit,” muttered the guy wearing Ian’s fucking face as he turned and tried to beat a hasty damn retreat. It would have been funny if Mickey didn’t have so many questions, namely ones starting with, “what the fuck,” and ending with, “is going on.”

“Looking for something?” Mickey called before they could get too far. The last thing he wanted right now was to send Esteban to tackle their asses so he could get some information about a shirt.

Luckily, these kids were the same as every other American brand of asshole that showed up on the front step Mickey didn’t have. As soon as they heard English and saw white skin, they were ready to do business. God, how fucking predictable.

The trust fund bitch was brave enough to reply, “Guy at our hotel sent us?”

That certainly explained a whole lot. However, Mickey was definitely going to have to track down that motherfucker and remind them why it wasn’t a good goddamn idea to write down directions on how to find your friendly, neighborhood dealer. They worked for a cartel and pulled shit like that? Terry would have killed him, resurrected him, and then killed him again if Mickey had ever been that goddamn moronic.

Mickey must have done a pretty good job of hiding his exasperation, because the dickhead wearing Ian’s fucking face came closer to announce, “We’re looking for party favors?”

Why they seemed intent on asking Mickey whether that was what they were there for was anybody’s fucking guess.

“Like what?” he prompted, hoping they’d at least be able to give him that much on their own. From the look on his face, Esteban was thinking along the same lines.

“E.”

Well, he did okay, though Mickey was docking them points for Surfer-Hair having to check back with his buddy to pick the right stuff. Wasn’t college supposed to teach you how to think for yourself or whatever? He was positive Mandy had mentioned Lip complaining about something to that effect years ago.

And there he was, right back to the fucking Gallaghers.

And Ian’s fucking face.

“Fifty a pill,” he replied while trying so damn hard not to look down. It was far more difficult when the guy came to stand right in front of him.

“We’ll take ten.”

See, these were the kinds of idiots Mickey preferred. No games, no tricks, no negotiations—they probably weren’t smart enough to try it anyway. Gordon Gekko whipped out the cash faster than a co-ed’s tits at a frat party, and the exchange went just as smooth. Mickey was a professional that way: business before pleasure.

Something told him this wasn’t going to be very pleasurable, however.

It was a struggle, but Mickey managed to sound like he didn’t give a shit when he nodded towards the Beach Boy wannabe’s outfit and asked, “What’s with your shirt?”

“Gay Jesus?”

The fuck?

When Mickey’s expression apparently spoke his thoughts for him, the dumbass elaborated, “This guy going to prison in Chicago. He blew up a van to keep queers from being converted?”

Either his brain short-circuited or… No, that was about right. Mickey couldn’t fucking begin to process that information. Ian had blown up a van? Ian was trying to stop some homophobes from converting homos?

Ian was going to prison?

Ian was going to prison.

His customers were gone before he recovered enough to ask any more questions, not that he would anyway. The fuck would they know? And even if they did have more information, it wouldn’t be anything he couldn’t find on the damn internet given that whatever had happened had put Gallagher’s fucking face on shirts and was sending him to fucking prison.

So much for having his shit together.

Sighing, Mickey took a drag from his cigarette and shook his head. “Fucking Gallagher.”

***

Manic.

That was the first word that came to mind by the time Mickey got to the end of the YouTube video of Gay Jesus blowing up a van. Technically, the second word. The first was actually fuck. It was the worst thing he’d seen since being subjected to Terry’s ass crack hanging out of his fucking boxers, although that didn’t stop him from hitting replay like the masochistic son of a bitch he was.

“My God is a faggot,” called Ian from behind some old dudes and the kid they were trying to talk some twisted version of sense into. Even the backs of the assholes’ heads when they turned to watch him spoke volumes: they weren’t feeling the amen on that one.

Ian, predictably, didn’t give a shit.

“My God is a dyke. My God is trans, a junkie”—he raised his hand to point skyward—“a whore!”

And that was where the goddamn van exploded. Even though Mickey assumed Gallagher had been expecting that to happen, he started just as much as Mickey had the first time he’d seen it—but he didn’t lower his fucking hand. Nope. He was going for broke.

“We will not be victims.”

Fuck.

The video went on for a bit, long enough to see the motherfucker Ian had been talking to admit defeat and Gallagher give him that The Fuck Are You Gonna Do About It look. Mickey knew that look well. A bit too well.

Nothing Ian said was out of the norm for him. He’d spent how many years watching Mickey be something he wasn’t to appease fucking Terry and had finally called him out on it—called him a victim, only not in so many words—the day of his wedding. That had been Gallagher’s kryptonite: watching people be trapped, whether it was Mickey in the closet or Lip in the hood or himself in his own fucking head. On a normal day, he would just swallow his criticisms and go about his business. The real world fucking sucked, and nobody knew it better than them. Nothing was fair; nothing was just. People died for doing nothing and lived for doing everything the wrong goddamn way. Just look at fucking Frank.

That was a normal day, though. Nothing about that video was normal. Nothing about Ian’s behavior was normal.

This wasn’t the Ian that had almost started crying in the basement of that goddamn monstrosity where Mickey had gotten hitched to Svetlana for a couple years. This was the Ian who had almost lost his shit on a bunch of fag-haters at a funeral. This was the Ian that almost brained a few of them with a fucking cross, ironically enough.

So, how the hell did he go from having his shit together to a manic fucking mess? And where the fuck was the rest of his family? Sure, Mickey was up to speed enough to know they were all dealing with their own shit. That was normal when you got older, he figured. How often did his cousins and brothers and uncles up and vanish altogether? Nobody asked questions because they expected it. That was how life worked.

But if Mickey had learned anything from officially making what he and Ian had a couple thing, it was that mental illness shot that to shit. Fiona hadn’t been wrong that day at the army base, much as Mickey hated to admit it then and now: there were days when Ian couldn’t care for himself. When he was depressed, it was like his whole body was on pause in his mind. He’d needed help doing simple stuff like shower or eat—he could fucking do it, but he needed someone to drag his ass out of bed long enough for that. He’d needed constant supervision. Well, not constant, but periodic checks to make sure he hadn’t offed himself or some shit. He’d needed someone to differentiate between the times when leave me alone was what he really wanted or the exact fucking opposite. It was exhausting, and it didn’t even hold a candle to Ian when he was manic. Everything he did seemed normal; he never realized when he was starting to talk faster or obsess over the dumbest fucking shit or keep Mickey up all goddamn night with his obnoxiously insatiable libido. Those were the moments where he’d needed someone to make him slow down, even for just a second. Mickey… He hadn’t been so good at that. Clearly.

That had been his fault. Every bit of it. The Gallaghers had warned him what would happen over and over and fucking over again, but did he listen? Hell no. He’d been too terrified that they were going to toss him in some nut house and throw away the key. Losing Ian was too painful a thought to fucking deal with, so he’d ignored the signs and symptoms until Gallagher was running off with the kid and having goddamn psychotic breakdowns in the middle of grocery stores.

Ian’s family hadn’t held it against him, even though they really should’ve. Neither had Ian. They all just sort of silently moved the fuck on and focused on how they were supposed to help him get…maybe not better, but stable. That was as good as it would ever be from then on. No going back to that lanky redheaded kid with the stupid fucking freckles and those dumb puppy dog eyes that had stared at Mickey like he was the universe or whatever. Not without a lot of meds, and not in exactly the same way. It was a tough pill to swallow, but they’d done it. Team effort and all that. When the going got rough, the Gallaghers banded together to protect their own, and Ian had needed a lot of protection, from himself most of all.

So, where the fuck was Ian’s goddamn family now?

Not there for him, that was where. It didn’t take much racking his brains to remember that the Gallaghers had been falling apart when Mickey was last stateside. Fiona was buying property to become one of the newest yuppy shitheads trying to destroy the neighborhood. Lip was self-destructing. Debbie was man-hunting. Carl was…Carl. Liam was still young enough that Mickey had to wonder if the kid would even remember him.

Which left Ian. Alone. Manic but probably not off the wall enough for anybody to notice since they were out for themselves. Not until the proof was in the pudding or, in this instance, the arsonist was in prison.

Mickey couldn’t even cling to the hope that this was a one-off thing that the Gallaghers had just…missed. There were too many fucking news articles about Gay Jesus and his band of merry rainbow bitches. He’d made it into the New York Times—the New York goddamn Times.

What a fucking shitshow…

Ian had certainly gone to town, and it didn’t look like it had started long after the last time they’d seen each other either. What began as simply trying to raise money for a youth shelter for gay kids escalated to protesting some local property owner that wanted to buy the place for a gallery or whatever and didn’t give two shits about who needed the space more. Asshole probably grew up on Lake Shore Drive with a silver spoon and a Lamborghini. Ian must not have been in the deeper throes of his mania at the time, because Mickey had no doubt that if he were, he’d have gutted the guy and hung him from a flagpole in front of the new shelter. Instead, everything progressed in the strangest series of fucking events Mickey had ever seen. There was some church trying to guilt teenagers into converting and a Bible-quote face-off that, according to the article, Gallagher had won since the kids had followed him out of the joint and joined the cause. The cause that a few other religious figures also joined because hey, why not turn logic on its fucking head. The cause that went from getting that shelter to the fucking Church of Gay Jesus. (They even had a T-shirt, though why the fuck it had a hot dog on it, Mickey would never know.)

The cause that was a cult. A fucking cult. With Ian at the head of it.

“Fucking Gallagher,” Mickey groaned, scrubbing his hands over his face and wishing that it could wipe away the images and videos that were embedded in the article. No dice, but at least he tried.

The church thing descended into protecting a runaway teen and thwarting attempts to get him to a conversion camp or some shit that sounded a whole lot nicer than it really was. Which was nicer than what Terry would have done, though, so Mickey didn’t dwell on it. There was too much running through his head, from exploding vans to arrests to expanding the following into fucking county lockup. Because things weren’t bad enough, Gallagher had to become the prison favorite for preaching the good word in a way that people could relate to.

Well. Mickey had told him he’d need to work on his leadership skills if he wanted to be an officer. Apparently, Ian had been holding out on him.

That was certainly looking on the fucking bright side.

The not so bright side was that all of it basically went to shit at Gallagher’s arraignment. Mickey hadn’t wanted to watch, not when the article would give him all the important highlights anyway, but he couldn’t help clicking the play button regardless.

One fact became apparent right away: Mickey loved the guy more than anything, even now, but he looked like fucking shit with black hair. The fuck was he thinking? Wait, he was clearly manic, so the bastard wasn’t thinking. Or, at least, not thinking straight.

But black hair?

“So, you’re this Gay Jesus I’ve heard so much about,” the judge began.

Black-haired fucking Ian stood up, chuckling the way he always did when he was uncomfortable and didn’t know how to fucking hide it. “I… No—no, Your Honor. I mean, yes, but…my name’s Ian Gallagher.”

Least he looked contrite. That would help his sentencing.

“Alright, Mr. Gallagher. In the case of the state of Illinois versus Ian Gallagher for the felony crime of arson, how do you plea?”

Man, Mickey hated those words. It still fucking rankled that he’d had to cop to attempted murder when he hadn’t been trying to kill that bitch. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it now, but seriously, that was going to fucking sting for the rest of his life for more reasons than just the fact that it lost him Gallagher.

Ian’s family looked about as good as he’d felt back then, front and center and obviously hating every second that they spent not knowing what Ian was going to fucking say. Served them right, as far as Mickey was concerned. Where the hell had they been to keep him from getting caught up in a goddamn cult?

Starting a goddamn cult. Jesus fucking Christ.

“Your Honor, a young man was being forced into a van against his will to be taken to a conversion camp,” Ian began, his expression earnest and heartfelt and fucking innocent. Fuck, he was a grown-ass man and still looked like he did when he’d get all mushy at fifteen. “His would-be captors wanted to deny him of his true nature, and I stopped that from happening, so I will not apologize for that. And the people who were trying to change him were his family, people who were supposed to love him for who he was unconditionally like my family has loved me.”

Oh, shit. Mickey could take pretty much anything—the van, the goddamn mania, the fucking black hair. But not how Ian’s voice cracked talking about his family. Anything but that.

Cursing at himself under his breath, Mickey tweaked the tip of his nose and blinked a few times. He was done crying over fucking Gallagher, for fuck’s sake.

Ian took a deep breath on the screen of the shitty laptop Mickey had acquired from some black-market dealer outside Mexico City three months ago, swallowing hard. Somehow, Mickey already knew what was coming. He spoke the language, after all.

“And to not love…that is the true crime. And at the end of the day, everything I did, I did in the hopes that we would learn to love each other the way that Jesus taught and God intended, and…more importantly, the way that we all need.”

…Shit, Gallagher.

So, maybe Mickey could see why a bunch of hippies had made him the center of their cult shit. Maybe. He wasn’t religious or anything, but…fuck.

This was Ian Gallagher, however, and as much as he might stand by his actions, he wasn’t one to shirk responsibility either.

“But I understand there are laws, and I broke one,” he observed quietly, and even the judge seemed at least somewhat impressed that that was the turn his fucking monologue had taken. Clearly, she didn’t know Ian Gallagher. “I set fire to a van and, in doing so, I turned what I intended to be a movement of love into a movement of anger. Went too far, Geneva,” he added over his shoulder to some ginger chick in the front row. “I was crazy to let it go as far as I did.”

There it was. That was the part Mickey had been waiting for—hoping for, if he was being honest. Pleading guilty would have resulted in the maximum if he didn’t make a deal, and there was no way he would claim to not be guilty after that speech. So, that only left one option, and it made Mickey sick to his stomach even as he listened to Ian force it out of his mouth as quickly as he could on the two-day-old video. It was like watching someone rip a fucking band-aid off.

“Truth is, I am bipolar. I was off my medication—"

Called it.

“—and I was in a manic state, in which I was not in control of my faculties, so… I plead not guilty by reason of insanity.”

That definitely wasn’t what the fucking groupies wanted to hear, if the way they started screaming and shouting in the middle of the goddamn courtroom was any indication, but it was music to Mickey’s fucking ears. He’d get time, yeah. There was no avoiding it. Instead of being locked up for years, however, he’d probably see a few months in the pen and then be let out if he stayed on his fucking meds and didn’t make trouble. And seriously, Gallagher wouldn’t make trouble in prison. The article already said he was busy playing kumbaya in jail and had plenty of twinks and muscleheads alike inside rooting for him. They knew just as well as Mickey that he was one of the good ones, the ones that got put in for doing something stupid as fuck but who didn’t really deserve it like the rest of them.

None of that made a damn bit of difference to all the assholes wearing Gay Jesus shirts, and Mickey had to hit pause before he threw the computer against the fucking wall in irritation. What, did they expect Gallagher to go down for this while they walked around with his face on their fucking clothes? Did they want him to rot in the pen for the cause? Shit, why not just have somebody shoot his ass and get it over with. Then he’d really make a splash, huh? Douchebags. All of them. Mickey didn’t give a shit about any of that. He even laughed derisively at the last line of the fucking article: “After being found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to three to five years in a state penitentiary, only one question remains: did the Church of Gay Jesus truly send a message or simply spread the ramblings of a madman?”

Whatever. They didn’t know Ian. Nothing he’d said at his trial was wrong. None of it was any different from what he’d been trying to tell Mickey before he went off the fucking deep end. Sane or not, medicated or not, Gallagher’s whole point was valid. It was soft as hell and fucking embarrassing to watch him say in public, but it was valid. Anybody with half a brain in their head would see that. Anyone who gave half a shit wouldn’t hold it against him.

If you give half a shit about me, Mickey.

Of course, he did. Which was why Mickey couldn’t be mad at that dumbass for getting himself into this mess or his stupid fucking family for not tying him to a chair and forcing his damn meds down his throat long before it had gotten to the point where he would be heading to the big metal playground in a week.

Which was why Mickey needed to get off his ass and pack. That much had gotten pretty fucking obvious about halfway through the video. Around the part where Ian almost cried talking about his goddamn family, actually.

Ian Gallagher was a tough guy who could definitely make it in prison. He could. It would be hard, but he’d manage. It wasn’t as if he’d be in for long. Besides, he was a grown-ass man who’d been taking care of himself in weird fucking situations since long before he was more than a skinny-ass teenager. Probably before that, even. There would be a nice quiet corner of prison where he could ride out the length of his sentence and then be right back where he started, except he’d be on his meds at that point since it would be part of his parole requirement. Yeah. No big deal.

In theory.

In reality, Ian going to prison presented the same problem as following Mickey to Mexico: he wouldn’t be able to hack it away from his family, in distance or just in time. Mickey knew firsthand that visitation and phone calls could only do so much. Even though they’d apparently missed a lot of shit going down because they were too damn selfish to realize that their brother fucking needed them (or maybe Mickey was a little biased, but whatever—he would have fucking been there), Gallagher’s family meant the world to him. That was exactly what he was going to be giving up. Mickey had always rolled his eyes when his POs talked about support systems and all that shit, but when it came to Ian, he knew it actually meant something. The fucking Gallaghers were all he had, and they’d be outside heavy concrete walls and electric fences. They knew what he needed, in general and when things were going wrong with his meds. Nobody on the inside was going to give a damn if he was manic or depressed or bored or lonely or upset or missing his family or…

Fuck, Ian was soft. He was good, even if he was a convicted felon now. There was no way he should go through this alone.

There was no way he would go through this alone.

So much for goodbye.

Sighing, Mickey closed the lid on his laptop and dug around under the shitty motel bed for his backpack. “Fucking Gallagher.”

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.