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Oh, you’ve been drawing scripts in my head
All this pressure, I could snap just like lead
Oh, I know you hate me and my loaded gun
Spraying my demons all over the sun
— Bleed, Deyaz
They’re halfway to Mexico when Mickey breaks down.
The desert is quiet at night. The desert is always quiet, but it’s got something different at night—an inescapable kind of silence. The kind that brings demons. Mickey can hear his own thoughts, and he’s never been a fan of hearing those. They’re somewhere past Durant, Oklahoma, off the beaten path parallel to Interstate 35. Ian’s asleep in the passenger seat, long limbs all folded up over themselves, red-haired head resting on his powerful bicep where his arm is curled against the window. Something washes over Mickey as he watches the white light from the moon and the car’s headlights play across Ian’s features. It starts out as all-consuming affection and morphs into something else that rises from the pit of his stomach all the way up to his throat. It tastes like bile by the time it hits his tongue.
“Panic,” his rapidly short-circuiting brain supplies. “It’s called panic.”
It fills Mickey’s mouth until he loses the battle. He swerves sharply when the tremors come on. He slams his foot down on the brakes, somehow finding the presence of mind to throw out his arm in front of Ian to avoid him crashing face-first into the dashboard.
“Fuck,” he gasps out on a strangled breath.
“Shit!” Ian’s awake now, obviously, and is looking around with wide eyes as if an entire cop squad is going to swarm in from the flat expanse of sand and shrubs. “What’s going on?”
Mickey’s ears are ringing. His breath is coming in short, harsh pants that he has to fight for.
“Sorry, man,” he manages. “Had to pull over.”
“Mickey?”
There’s a sharp note of fear in Ian’s voice. It’s the same tiny, shrill sound that altered his tone when he was sixteen years old and Mickey did something crazy or had something crazy done to him—that concern-laced note nobody else has ever given enough of a shit to hit for Mickey. But Ian has. Ian has panicked for Mickey. He’s been afraid for Mickey. He has gotten angry for Mickey.
One shrill note in Ian’s voice, and they’re teenagers again.
Mickey can’t look at him. “I had to pull over,” he says again, nonsensically. He thinks his words might be slurring.
He unbuckles his belt with fingers that won’t cooperate. It takes him a few tries, but he bolts the moment he’s free.
He doesn’t make it far, but that wasn’t his intention anyway—just as far as the bile in his mouth will allow before he crashes down on all fours and vomits onto the sand.
The desert absorbs the spewed liquid instantly, makes Mickey’s demons part of its soil, gives them a home where no one will be able to find them. But Mickey will always know exactly where they are: past Durant, Oklahoma, just off Interstate 35.
He throws up until his abdomen spams, and then he throws up some more, dry heaves that tear the devils out of him.
“Shit, Mickey. Are you sick?”
Ian’s a shadow about to crouch down next to him, and Mickey throws out an arm while he braces himself against the ground with the other.
“Don’t,” he snaps in-between retches. “Don’t touch me.”
Ian stills instantly. Ian always stills when Mickey asks him to.
“Okay,” he says, soft and firm, in that way he has to let Mickey know he’s there. He has perfected that note over the years, too. “Okay, Mick.”
When it’s done, Mickey twists away from the mess and flops down onto his butt, knees drawn loosely into his chest. The desert is dancing in front of him, his vision unsteady. He turns his head to the side and spits out the bitter remains of the taste. He fumbles into his shirt pockets for the pack of cigarettes. American Spirit, and isn’t that fucking ironic.
He can’t light up. His hands are shaking so bad the cigarette eventually falls from his fingers. He doesn’t pick it up. The desert is all white light and black shadows and Mickey can’t see straight. Mickey can’t breathe. There’s terror in his belly and his lungs won’t work. He’s so fucking cold all of a sudden he could cry from the ice that runs up and down his spine.
“Mickey.”
Ian. Ian’s there. Mickey had forgotten all about him.
Mickey had forgotten all about him because he knows it won’t last.
The panic squeezes.
Mickey sways, only avoids toppling onto his side by slamming a palm down onto the dirt.
“Shit,” Ian mutters somewhere in the background. When he speaks next, his voice sounds a lot closer. “Mickey, I’m going to touch you now, okay?”
Mickey nods, because fucking hell, when has he ever been able to say no to Ian Gallagher?
Ian appears in front of him like a vision, with that bleeding-heart expression on his face Mickey hasn’t been able to get out of his head since he was sixteen years old. It’s now accompanied by a stronger glint in Ian’s eyes, a man’s strength, and it anchors Mickey to the slippery here-and-now, along with Ian’s hands pressing down on his knees.
“Mickey, I need you to look at me.”
Mickey does, but it doesn’t make a difference. There’s a sharp pain in his chest and his throat is closing up. Shit, is he dying? That would be just his fucking luck—croaking in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, Oklahoma, before he even gets to see the beach. Jesus fuck, why can’t he ever catch a break.
“I can’t breathe…” he chokes out with a hint of absent wonder.
Ian squeezes his knees. “Yes, you can.”
“Fuck’s…happenin’…to me?”
“You’re having a panic attack.”
Well, that’s ridiculous.
“No, ‘m…fucking…not.”
Ian, the asshole, actually lets out a chuckle. “Yeah, you are. Now breathe with me.”
Is he fucking kidding?
Mickey must manage a look that says exactly what he’s thinking, because Ian rolls his eyes. But then his face softens, and for a second, Mickey can’t breathe for an entirely different reason.
“Just trust me. Okay?”
Mickey does. Implicitly. Always has, against his better judgment and every fiber of his being. Mickey would tear his own heart out and place it in Ian’s hands and be perfectly comfortable with his choice. He’s pretty sure he has, once or twice.
He nods shakily.
Ian guides him through some “in for four, out for six” bullshit in a calm but authoritative voice Mickey has never heard before. It must be his EMT voice. Mickey doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the idea of being just a learned procedure. Just a patient. Just. He doesn’t want to be “just” anything when it comes to Ian.
It works, though, the EMT-learned bullshit. Mickey almost doesn’t notice it, but eventually he’s back to breathing almost normally and the fog lifts. He’s left with the feeling of jell-O in his limbs, the promise of a headache, and a dull pain in his chest that he suspects is not entirely due to whatever the fuck just happened.
“Stay here,” Ian says, like Mickey has a fucking choice, and he sprints to the car and back, returning with a bottle of water. “Drink.”
Mickey washes out his mouth a couple of times before he takes a few sips and hands the bottle back. He runs a still-unsteady hand through his hair.
“What the fuck was that, man?” he mutters.
It’s a rhetorical question, he doesn’t really want to hear it, but Ian either doesn’t catch the hint or doesn’t let it stop him. Ian’s been telling him shit he doesn’t want to hear since they were kids.
“It was a panic attack, Mickey,” he says again, gently.
“Bullshit,” Mickey spits. “I don’t get panic attacks.”
Ian sighs, long and drawn-out and knowing. He doesn’t say anything else, just sits down next to Mickey, bumps their shoulders together.
Mickey leans into him, lets Ian Gallagher be the only thing holding him up for a while.
Ian presses a kiss to the top of his head.
“Still want a cigarette?” he asks after a few minutes (seconds? hours? Mickey doesn’t know or care).
“Fuck, yes,” Mickey breathes out gratefully. “Please.”
Ian lights up and takes a drag, then he reaches down and places the cigarette between Mickey’s lips.
Mickey breathes in, inhales smoke and the residues of the demons he just spat up. He lifts his head off Ian’s shoulder and sits up straight.
The silence is crushing. There’s a faint throbbing between Mickey’s temples. He watches the smoke drift into the desert night, and neither of them speaks until the shared cigarette is gone.
“Mickey,” Ian says then, quiet and determined, just as the silence and lingering panic become too much and Mickey hears himself speak over him.
“I’m going to lose you.”
Ian stares at him. Mickey doesn’t turn to look at him, but he can feel the shocked scrutiny on his skin. “What?”
Shit. Mickey isn’t going to repeat it. “You heard me, man.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Mickey finally makes himself look over at Ian. The man is staring at him with a gut-punched expression on his face. Mickey almost feels like throwing up again.
“You heard me,” he says again.
Ian looks utterly confused but also earnest as he reaches out to cup Mickey’s cheek in one hand. “I’m right here, Mick.”
“For how long?”
“For fucking ever.”
Mickey knows that’s a lie. He knows that’s not how it works with them. One of them will fuck up. One of them always fucks up. Or the Universe will fuck them over and split them apart and open. That’s how it goes, and that’s the name of the panic in his belly: Loss. Mickey knows he was never meant to keep Ian. He doesn’t know why he would come to the realization unprompted in the middle of the fucking desert, but there you have it.
He thinks he has always known, deep down, that the loss of Ian is inevitable. That’s what his demons are: they’re not Terry. They’re not the abuse, the pressure, the violence. They’re not juvie or prison or the dead end that is the Southside. Mickey’s demons are the absence of Ian.
“Mickey,” Ian says, dragging the pad of his thumb along Mickey’s jaw, shaking his face ever so gently to bring him back.
Mickey drags his gaze back to the earnestness in Ian’s eyes. “I can’t offer you shit, Ian,” he breathes out in defeat. Even he can tell how tired he sounds.
Ian brings his other hand up, cradles Mickey’s face between his palms. “I don’t want shit. I just want you.”
He leans in and presses his lips to Mickey’s forehead, and Mickey closes his eyes and leans into it, pretends he can really have this for good.
“I’m not leaving, Mickey,” Ian murmurs into his skin.
Mickey opens his eyes and snorts. The sound is bitter enough that he can taste it. “Yeah, you will.”
“No, I won’t.” Ian looks at him sadly, caresses his cheeks with renewed gentleness, like Mickey’s made of fine porcelain. “You’re exhausted. You’re not thinking straight. Why don’t you let me drive for a bit and you can lie down, get some rest?”
Mickey wants to tell him that rest has got shitall to do with anything and he’s actually seeing things clearly for the first time. He wants to tell him he’s seeing things even Ian can’t see yet. Instead, he sighs tiredly and gives in. “Yeah, okay.”
Ian kisses him, soft and slow like they have all the time in the world. Like they’re not on the run.
Mickey’s heart swells and breaks at the same time.
*
They have another heart-to-heart near the border, sprawled out on a blanket under a railroad bridge. The moon is full and fat, spying down on them between the iron pillars.
Mickey feels a little more lucid, a little more in control. He asks Ian why he never came to visit him in prison and resists the urge to throttle him when the guy has the nerve to tell him that it was too hard. Mickey wants to tell him to fuck off, that he was the one behind bars.
Ian asks him if he’s having second thoughts about Mexico and Mickey says no, fuck no. The only thing he could never leave behind is right next to him, so Mickey’s fine with running. He really is. Fuck the Southside.
When Ian says his thoughts were filled with Mickey while Mickey was in the joint, the weight crushing down on Mickey’s chest shifts and lifts. If he had to pinpoint the moment he relearned to breathe, this would be it. He lets the last of his walls crumble, because what the hell.
“Fuck, I missed you,” he breathes out into the night.
Ian doesn’t say anything, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to. They’re lying close together, shoulders touching, thoughts expressed in their own unique way, more with silences than with words.
The panic that gripped him tight in the middle of the Oklahoma desert was about loss, but Mickey isn’t losing tonight. He might lose tomorrow, but not tonight. He lets it be enough.
*
When Ian says, “I can’t,” Mickey isn’t surprised. Hell, part of him even thinks Ian is making the right choice.
It still kills him.
*
3 YEARS LATER
“I told you I wouldn’t leave,” Ian says in the quiet of their honeymoon suite, Mickey’s head pillowed on his chest.
Their limbs are sated and heavy, and there’s room for all the words now. All the future they couldn’t let themselves even dream about before. Mickey knows Ian hasn’t chosen At Last to be played during the wedding for nothing.
“Shut up, bitch, you left so many times,” Mickey says, but there’s no heat in it.
“So did you.”
Mickey sighs, presses a kiss into Ian’s chest. “Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Ian echoes. “Always came back to you, though,” he says after a few minutes, his fingers running along the bare skin of Mickey’s forearm draped across his abdomen.
Mickey lifts himself up enough to look at his husband, gives him the smile of someone whose panic has been obliterated.
“Yeah, you did,” he says, and he leans down to kiss Ian in that slow, unhurried way they have when they’re grounding each other.
Ian’s hand comes up to cup Mickey’s nape, fingers burying themselves into the short locks of Mickey’s hair.
They pull apart just slightly, just enough to breathe, faces still so close together Mickey’s whole peripheral is Ian’s eyes.
“For fucking ever, right?” Ian whispers, dredges up a promise from the desert sand.
Mickey melts against him, crashes their mouths together all over again.
There are demons in the Oklahoma desert, buried in the dirt where Mickey threw them up as the terror took over. In the end, they’re the ones who lost.
END