Chapter Text
Mickey looks at the blank document in his hands. Divorce proceedings. He has had them tucked away in a drawer for almost a year. The last time he signed one of these suckers, it was for Svetlana when he was looking at fifteen years in the clink. She told him across a bullet-proof glass that if he didn’t sign, she would be deported and Yevgeny would go into the foster system. He signed them just to get her out of his hair once and for all.
Now? The last thing he wants to do is fill these papers out, especially when he thinks of what a long road it was to get them to the good place they’re in now. A stable relationship, a steady, legal income, they just put a down payment on a starter home. So, why is he pulling out these documents again?
Ian unearthed the old discussion of adoption.
Once upon a time, Mickey would have told Ian again and again that he didn’t want to perpetuate his father’s legacy. All Terry ever taught him was cruelty. Terry called it survival skills— toughening him up day in and day out long before the old bastard started picking up on signs, let alone confirmation, that he had a queer living under his roof.
His mother’s love was as inconstant as he was. Always so eager to pick up her things and leave when things got tough. But mickey always took comfort in the fact that she always a came back for him and his brothers and sister. Until there came the time she never came back.
Really, what does he know about being a parent?
But he has worked past those fears. He has formed a half-decent relationship with Yevgeny, even if is mostly long-distance. Plus having Ian’s youngest brother Liam hanging around their place, as well as babysitting his niece and nephew, Franny and Freddy around as much as they are have gone a long way to prove that he is surprisingly good with kids. In fact, it turns out he’s the fun uncle.
So, what makes him hold onto divorce papers? They’re two ex-cons. And Mickey’s conviction was attempted murder. There is no way in hell a court would ever give Ian a kid with Mickey’s baggage weighing him down.
“Hey, baby!” Ian calls up the stairs. “Franny and Debs are here!”
“I’ll be right down,” he shouts down the stairs as he hurriedly folds up the document and slips it into the hiding place inside a copy of National Geographic.
“Hurry up, Uncle Mickey!” Squawks Little Red. “It’s Snatch Game of Love this week!”
It has become their new Friday tradition. It started shortly after Carl came out as bi—Ian took it upon himself to give Carl a crash course on queer culture, despite Mickey pointing out that Carl isn’t exactly the greatest student. As a result, Mickey ended up outing himself as a closet Drag Race fan. Carl glommed onto the show just for the fights on Untucked. Then Mickey accidentally got Franny hooked while they were babysitting her, leading to Debs joining in. And it snowballed into becoming the new Gallagher family night from there.
The Gallagher siblings gather together to bond over Drag Race, greasy foods, and cheap alcohol while Mickey cracks open an Old Style and gets to spend time with his favorite godchildren.
He heads down the stairs to find his niece kneeling at the coffee table working on her All-Stars bracket. Freddy follows along, ever Franny’s Junior partner, whether the five-year-old understands whatever Franny’s into or not.
Meanwhile Tami and Ian’s younger siblings fight over the validity of Hawaiian pizza. Liam really has grown into the rare sort of Gallagher with Ian’s sense of fair play, but the wiliness of the others— he knows ordering toppings nobody else likes means less competition for the final slice, even if he does underestimate Carl’s ready and willingness to eat whatever is put in front of him.
Mickey joins Ian and his elder brother Lip, preferring to split three greasy bags of White Castle between the three of them. There was a time when the three of them would be passing a roach back and forth. These days, they surreptitiously sneak some weak-ass edibles disguised as breath mints. The peppermint is a nice touch; the kids are none-the wiser.
Mickey’s siblings have an open invitation to join in on these sessions. Sometimes, his cousin will show up when she and Debbie are in an “on” phase of whatever they have going on. And Mandy will FaceTime with Ian.
Sometimes when Iggy stops by (usually precipitated by a fight with his baby mama), he’ll bring over the hard stuff, but Mickey passes on principle these days. Even if Ian’s meds didn’t make him a total lightweight, he was around in the wake of Fiona’s cocaine incident. Sometimes he looks at Ian’s brilliant youngest sibling and contemplate just how lucky the Gallaghers are. To hear Lip tell it, the doctors’ predictions for Liam’s fate were abysmal.
He imagines it happening to Freddy or the Franster and it makes his blood run cold. Sometimes, Ian says that if Mickey’s protective attitude towards their godchildren is any indication, then Mickey would be a great dad.
But all Mickey hears is how great he is with other people’s kids, but how much he shat the bed with his own. He remembers the way he used to hang to the rear, let Ian and Svetlana do the lion’s share of the parenting while he tried to be as hands off as possible. The first time— he thinks maybe the only time— he ever hugged Yevgeny was easily on a short list for one of the worst days in Ian’s life. He has a hard time justifying why he should be entrusted with a child in need of a loving home when he punted so hard with his own son. Ian deserves a better coparent.
It makes him wonder why has he never gone through with it? Push those papers across the table to Ian? Free him up to find someone to have a real family with? But somewhere between Ian’s younger siblings squabbling over nothing, Tami making a mountain out of a molehill a Lip’s expense, and Franny wedging herself between him and Ian, asking them who they think are going to have to Lip-sync for their Legacy this week, he has his answer. Because, then Mickey would miss out on all of this.
Four Months Later
He fiddles with his wedding ring anxiously. It has been six weeks since Mickey left, telling Ian he needed to get his head on straight. It was a fight. A stupid fight Ian can't even recall what it was about, but it got away with them to the point where Mickey got overstimulated and needed to remove himself from the situation. He told Ian he needed some space. He was going to crash on Colin's couch up in Kalamazoo and he'd come back once he was ready.
It has been two weeks since Ian found the blank divorce papers while he was trying to figure out how Mickey managed to put together his monthly financial stats for Gallavich Security. That is definitely why Ian was rifling through his desk and certainly not a flailing effort to figure out where Mickey must have gone after he left Colin's doublewide.
It has been three days since Mickey finally called him for the first time in weeks, telling him he needed to meet with him and asked if it would be okay if he brought someone to the house.
Impossibly, he said “yes.” Had Mickey really moved on so quickly? Or did Mickey have the divorce papers in his desk because he met someone a while back and he has simply been waiting to spring this on him? That would be a fucking dick move. He has a hard time picturing it either way. Mickey’s no stranger to dick moves, but he has always been the constant one. They have both fucked around with other guys when they’ve been apart. But Ian is the one who tried to find love elsewhere. Ian is the one who has cheated. Mickey is the one who pushed to close the relationship back up during their brief misadventures in polyamory.
Is this the sign that Mickey’s really folding in the towel this time? Introducing me to his new guy? Proof positive that he’s moving on? The last time he did that, it was just to make him jealous. But this feels different.
The ring catches the light and Ian can’t help but think of all the times in those early days of marriage when Mickey had to remind him to put it on, when he would take it off to do the dishes, after workouts, or doing arts and crafts with Franny.
He hasn’t even taken it off to shower since the night Mickey left. It’s part of him now. He can’t imagine taking it off any less than he can imagine himself giving up breathing.
Maybe it’s just as well that Mickey found someone, he reasons. Someone he doesn’t need to coax out of bed when he has a low for days at a time, a guy he doesn’t need to worry about going off the deep end or hearing voices from heaven during manic episodes.
At least it wasn’t his bipolar that drove the wedge between them— when Mickey looks back, it won’t be Ian’s mental health that drove him away.
It was Ian.
Ian pushed too hard. Mickey told him over and over again what kind of man he was. Mickey was always clear about his limits. But Ian didn’t listen. He couldn’t believe there was anything to worry about Mickey’s fears that he would end up like his father. Mickey has a coarse personality, but a good heart. He believed in Mickey. Maybe he set the expectation too high and Mickey couldn’t take the pressure anymore.
Ian did this to him. Mickey loved him, he was the one who bore the torch of their romance even when Ian tried to free him from the burden of living with a Ian’s mental illness. Through long separations. Juvie, the army, prison, and Mexico, Mickey was the one who found his way back to Ian every time. Now the roles are reversed. Ian is the lighthouse keeper and Mickey is the one who has found someone new. Someone better.
He pulls out his phone to check the time and sees a notification. He checks it. Two new messages.
The first is from an hour ago.
Lip: U sure you don’t want me there? Moral support?
He had seen that message when it first popped up. He chose to not even click on it.
The second message is from Mickey, less than. It’s strange, the swirling amalgam of the dread and excitement bubbling in his chest.
Mick: just turned off Halstead, See you in 5min
Another message pops up as he reads.
Mick: Miss me?
As if on cue, the doorbell rings. Insult to injury. You only ring the doorbell when it isn’t your home. That has to be intentional. Even when they were kids, Mickey never bothered to knock at the Gallagher house.
He steels himself. If Mickey thinks he is coming home to find Ian a blubbering mess, he has another thing coming.
Opening the door, he expects to come face to face with Mickey, maybe arm in arm with his new man. Instead, he sees nobody.
“Wow, you really are tall.”
He shoots his gaze lower and feasts his eyes on… well, this is just bonkers. Maybe it’s a psychotic apparition. He sees a boy of maybe nine or ten the very spitting image of himself at that age. A slight frame. More freckles on his face than pinkish-pale flesh, unruly red curls in need of taming, and a crooked smile. But he isn’t a perfect doppelgänger— his eyes are a vivid blue with flecks of gold, like lapis lazuli and he has an expressive pair of bushy eyebrows.
“Can I help you?”
The kid extends a small hand. “You must be Ian.”
Ian accepts the hand cautiously. “Yeah. Hi. What brings you to—”
“Mickey says this is home now.”
“He does, does he?”
“Remember how you said there’d be a Milkovich kid in need of a home sooner or later?”
Ian looks to the driveway to see Mickey at the truck of a beat-up Chevy, slinging Ian’s only rucksack from his ROTC days over his shoulder. A smaller bright blue duffel bag with the Superman emblem on it is tucked under his arm.
“Mickey?”
The older man’s face softens and he looks back at Ian so warmly that it makes Ian feel whole for the first time in weeks. It’s strange, the inchoate, swirling amalgam of joy and dread that spreads across his chest at the very sight of Mickey’s stupidly beautiful face. It is almost enough to make Ian forget the weeks of sleepless nights and days full of turmoil wondering what became of him. Almost.
“I was staying with my brother in K-Zoo when I got a call from Social Services about my mom.”
“Shit, Laura? Really?”
“Yup. We finally found out where the hell she fucked off to after she, well, you know.”
He knows better than anyone what it meant to Mickey when she ran out on him and his siblings; how lost and afraid he felt when Mickey realized she truly had abandoned them, leaving them with Terry. Mickey is like Ian, both mama’s boys who deserved better than what they got from their mothers. Ian understands that feeling death from a thousand cuts every time he is reminded that his mom for all she said she loved him didn’t love them enough to stick around.
He wants to wrap Mickey in his arms, give him that safe space to let himself feel. But he also wants to slug Mickey across the face. And so they stand eight feet apart, neither brave enough to take the next step.
Mickey continues. “She made it all the way to California—”
“California?”
“California, PA,” the boy clarifies.
“Pennsylvania has its own California?”
“They also have a Washington and a Versailles,” Mickey explains. “And an Intercourse and a Rough and Ready. Weird, right.”
“So, your mom...?”
“We cremated her!” the boy declares bluntly. “Mickey has her ashes in a mason jar.”
"Were Mandy and Iggy and the others...?"
He shakes his head. "They already did their mourning over a decade ago. And someone had to make sure the kid got taken care of."
Again, Ian knows how that has to feel. He was the only one of his siblings to mourn Monica. To truly miss her. Fucked up as she was, they'll never have another mother.
“So, we really have another Milkovich kid on our hands, huh?”
Mickey shrugs. “Yes and no. This kid don't got a drop of Milkovich blood in him. Lucky bastard. What we have here a Rozhenko kid and... well, there’s no other way to break this to you. Kid, tell Ian your name, would you? Your full name?”
“I- I’m Lenny,” he complies, extending his hand again. “Leonid Clayton Gallagher.”
"Well, that's a cool... Did you say your middle name is 'Clayton?'"
The boy nods blithely.
Something clicks in Ian’s mind that makes both perfect sense and absolutely no sense simultaneously.
Laura and Clayton? Shit, my bio-dad is kind of a slut, huh?
He stares at the redheaded boy dumbfounded, surprised he didn’t hurt his jaw when it hit the ground.