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Ian knew he was completely and utterly screwed when he started to find Mickey Milkovich sweet.
In truth, nothing much had actually changed about him. He still shrugged Ian’s arm away when he tried to sling it affectionately over Mickey’s shoulders in public; still cracked crude jokes, and flipped off cars that didn’t stop to let him cross the street (when he was walking) and pedestrians that made him stop at crosswalks (when he was driving). He made snide comments about movies Ian liked, and called Mandy names, and preferred fucker to any standard terms of endearment. He shut down when Ian wanted to talk about important shit, and wouldn’t shut up when Ian just wanted a little peace and quiet. And he was unbearably cocky and difficult when he wanted to be—which, most of the time, he did.
Mickey’s personality, such as it was, had driven Ian to frustration on many occasions. In all the uproar of their daily lives and their chaotic families, his closed-off lack of affection and undemonstrative nature left Ian fuming more often than not. It took distance to make him realize the truth. Alone in his dorm at basic training, away from the South Side and his family and this maddening man, he had time to think.
At first the anger was all Ian could recognize. It kept him up at night, in his creaky little cot of a bed; his head echoed with Mickey’s voice. Get the fuck away from me, it said, and you’re nothing but a warm mouth to me. I’m done, done, done. And he fumed with anger over it, tried to stamp out his rage with rigorous training and mental discipline. But he just grew more exhausted, and the echoes of Mickey’s voice got louder and louder.
Finally, on a cold fall night, when all Ian could think of was the family he missed and the life he’d left behind, he heard it: Mickey saying I love you. Only it didn’t sound like “I love you” at all. It sounded like I missed this, it’s good to switch back, and I’ll meet you there in twenty, and So what’re you goin’ down for, then? It sounded like Not everyone gets to blurt out how they fucking feel all the time. It sounded like get off of him.
It wasn’t until he finally, finally heard it in the single word don’t that he finally broke down and cried.
As he walked down the familiar Chicago streets to the Milkovich house, it did cross Ian’s mind that he might be making all of this up. He could just be hearing what he wanted to hear. It would be easy enough to pretend, at boot camp hundreds of miles away, without the real thing to deal with.
But then he was in Mickey’s yard and Mickey was standing right there in front of him, eyes wide and wet around the edges in a way he didn’t let anyone else see, and the first thing he said was, “Fuck, Gallagher, what’d you have to go and do that for?” And Ian thought it was the sweetest thing he had ever heard.
(He is so very, very screwed.)