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“S’the matter with you? Let’s go.”
“I can’t,” you say, but you barely hear the words as they leave your mouth. Everything feels so distant, disconnected, and a part of you knows that it’s a defense mechanism, that you’re disassociating in the hopes that maybe it’ll hurt less. Maybe it’ll be easier to say goodbye, to let him go because you know he deserves so much more than anything you’ve ever given him, anything you think you ever could give him.
Monica once told you that he could never be enough, that you could do better, that you deserved someone who could look at you without pity in their eyes, and you’d believed her then, but you can see now that she had it backwards. You can see, now, that if anyone is deserving of something more, it’s the man standing in front of you. The man who has risked everything time and time again for you, bent over backwards and stared death in the face because, somehow, he believed you were worth the risk.
Even now, you know you don’t deserve him. Even now, when your stomach feels like it’s in your throat and your lungs feel tight with uncertainty and doubt ‒ even now, you know he deserves the world.
He glances backwards over his shoulder, and then turns back to look you in the eyes and you wish that he hadn’t because it only makes it harder.
“You can. Get behind the wheel, drive the damn car,” he says, and you can hear it in his voice already ‒ the doubt, the uncertainty, the fear, and you know that he knows. You look down for a moment, tear your eyes away from his, and try to tell yourself that this is for the best. That no matter how much you don’t want this, no matter how much your mind is screaming at you to get in the fucking car, you know you can’t be the one to fuck this up for him. Because it’s always been you, hasn’t it? From the very first moment your name left his mouth, you’ve been trouble for him, probably more trouble than he’s ever been for you.
You look up, and the only reason you meet his eyes again is because you know it’s the last time you’re ever going to get to see them.
“Ian, we’re one step from the finish line,” he rations, shaking his head, but you can’t listen to him because you’ve made up your mind. You take the cash out of your back pocket, every cent you have to your name, and you try to press it into his palm but he slaps your hand way and steps back like you’ve burned him, and you think to yourself that there’s never been a time that you haven’t burned him in some way. “What the fuck is that? I don’t want your fucking money. I want you‒,”
You turn away. You have to, because you know what he’s going to say and it’s everything you won’t let yourself have. It’s too much and if you don’t put a little bit of space between him and yourself, you’ll do something you might regret later on, when everything spins out of control again like you know it will.
“‒ to come with me,” he finishes, but you’re just running through the motions now, moving on autopilot as you reach into the car to toss the money onto the dash and grab your things out of the front seat.
“Don’t do this,” he pleads quietly, and you feel yourself slip for a moment, but it’s okay. For this one moment, it’s okay, because if there’s anything you should have told him years ago, if there’s anything you should have said to him over and over and over again, it’s this.
“I love you.”
“Then get in the fucking car.” His voice wavers, and the sound of it makes you feel sick, makes you feel like a monster, like a villain. And maybe you are. Maybe you are.
“It’s not‒,” you start, but it doesn’t matter what it’s not. “This isn’t me anymore.”
Out of every lie you’ve ever told, every lie you’ve ever lived, this one is the hardest. They’re the four most difficult words you’ve ever said and they feel foreign on your tongue, unfamiliar, wrong, but the way your stomach twists isn’t unfamiliar at all. You’ve done this before ‒ lied to him to spare him from yourself, to save him from all your baggage and your bullshit and everything you think he shouldn’t want ‒, but it’s not any easier the second time. You’re kind of glad that it isn’t.
“I’m sorry.”
He looks away, breaks the eye contact he’s been holding from the moment he stepped in front of you.
“That’s it, huh?” This is it. This is you breaking up with me. You step forward, raising your hand to touch his cheek but he steps back. You’ve burned him again. Maybe you won’t ever stop burning him no matter what you do. He stares at you, quiet ‒
And then he steps into your flames, because he’d set himself on fire over and over and over again if it meant he could keep you warm.
His mouth crashes into yours and you slip again, your hands lifting to gently cup the sides of his face, because you know that this isn’t him trying to change your mind. This is him putting his own needs aside and giving you what he thinks you want even if it breaks his heart.
This is him saying goodbye.
You kiss him gently, slowly, and you can taste the cigarette he smoked in a hurry less than half an hour ago still on his tongue, but it’s all right. It’s fitting, somehow, that he would taste like smoke, because he’s always burned for you, and it’s comforting and tragic all at once. He pulls away, his fingers warm against your jaw as he bumps his nose against yours in one last tender moment before he pats his palm against your cheek and steps away.
“Fuck you, Gallagher,” he says casually, and the corner of your mouth curls with the faintest ghost of a smile because you know it’s actually ‘goodbye’ and ‘I love you’ all wrapped into the most appropriate response you could ever expect from Mickey Milkovich in this moment.
You turn to watch him as he walks away, silent as he gets into the car, and he won’t even look at you, but that’s okay. It’s better if he doesn’t, you think, and even as he drives away, you stay. You stay and you watch as your eyes sting with tears, and when you see that bar lift you find yourself smiling even as your heart breaks, because Mickey Milkovich is the free man he’s always deserved to be.
Without a penny to your name, you’re left having to hitch rides all the way back to Chicago. It takes a little under two days, and most of the people who are kind enough pick you up are quiet which is both a blessing and curse, because you don’t want to talk but at the same time, the silence makes it too easy to drown in your own thoughts. Less than twenty four hours after leaving Mickey, you lose Monica as well, and it hurts more than you expect because despite the fact that she’s been in and out of your life more times than you could ever count, she’s the only other person besides Mickey who ever really tried to understand you even when you didn’t understand yourself.
You let yourself cry just once, in between hopping out of one car and into another, and then you push it all away like you’ve done with everything else, and by the time you find yourself in Chicago again you’re not sure if it’s been two hours or two days or two years, and you’re not really sure if you care, either.
As you step through the front door, you can’t help but feel that it doesn’t feel right. Stepping over the threshold feels like stepping into a life that’s no longer yours, a life you started to leave behind. It feels like trying to put on a suit you’ve grown out of and forcing the buttons closed, because someone else thinks it looks nice on you even if, now, to you, it feels like wearing someone else’s skin.
“Ian!” your youngest brother Liam exclaims, and you smile a little as he crashes into you, his arms winding around your waist and his chin pressing into your stomach as he tilts his head back to look up at you. You let go of your jacket and your backpack, letting them fall to the floor by the door so you can pick him up, trying your best to appear as if you’re not falling apart as much as you really are.
The rest of the afternoon moves in a hazy sort of blur as your family fills you in about Monica and asks how work has been, because that’s where they think you’ve been for the past few days and they don’t even think to question it. They comment on how tired you look, but you reassure them that you’re fine and that work has been busy and there’s nothing to worry about, and they don’t think anything of it because they never do.
The next two days are just as blurred as the first, and by the third night you find yourself sitting at the kitchen table across from your eldest brother Lip, an untouched beer in your hand and a mug of coffee in his.
“So, uh, everything okay?” he asks casually, and your first instinct is to lie. You look at him for a few moments, wondering if he’s asking because he thinks maybe you’re slipping again, or if he’s asking because he knows. You want to tell him, get everything off your chest because maybe then you’ll be able to breathe for the first time in almost a week.
“Yeah,” you say, but you can’t look at him. You chew on the inside of your cheek, look up, breathe out. “... No.”
He sits forward a little, dipping his head down a bit to try and catch your eye, and then he glances toward the living room where the rest of your family is arguing about ‒ something. Whatever, you’re not sure, it doesn't matter.
“Come on. Let’s go outside,” Lip says, tilting his head toward the back door as he pushes his chair back and gets up. You avert your eyes, picking at the paper label wrapped around the bottle in your hand with the edge of your thumb nail before you push your own chair out and stand up too, following after him.
“What’s going on?” he asks as he lights up a cigarette, taking a drag from it before he hands it over. You take it from him, pressing the end of it between your lips and breathing deep, trying to figure out what to say, where to start. Stalling. Both.
Tipping your head back, you breathe out, the grey‒white smoke sharp against the night sky, and then you turn your head to look at him. Maybe he’ll understand what you’re feeling. Maybe he won’t.
“You ever think about Mandy?”
The question takes him by surprise, his head turning sharply, and as he looks at you, you can see him trying to work out what this is about. His brows furrow a little, and then he looks away, holding his hand out blindly for the cigarette. You hand it back.
“... What about Mandy?” Lip answers, trying to sound nonchalant about it, but you’ve known him all your life, and you’ve always been able to tell when he cares more than he’s letting on.
“I mean ‒ do you ever regret letting her go?”
He bites at the edge of his lower lip for a moment, lifting the cigarette halfway to his mouth before dropping his hand back down to his side. He doesn’t say anything, not for a long while and you think maybe that’s the end of the conversation.
“Every day,” he says, finally, finishing what’s left of his cigarette off before flicking the butt out into the yard. He blows out the smoke, turning to lean against the handrail framing the steps you’re both standing on. “Every damn day,” he repeats, dragging the pad of his thumb along the edge of his jaw like he always does when he’s nervous or uncomfortable with something. “What she did to Karen was fucked up and ‒ and I don’t know if I could ever fully forgive her for that, but.”
He tapers off, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little, the way they always do when he’s really thinking about something. “But I loved her. By the time I realized how much, it was already too late. But I think she loved me too, you know? Really, truly, loved me. ... If there’s one thing I regret, it’s letting her go.”
He pauses, wets his lips and glances away for a moment. “...Why, uh ‒ why you asking? You talk to her recently?”
You shake your head, reaching up to pass one of your hands over your hair and down the back of your neck, letting it linger there for a few moments.
“Nah, not recently,” you answer, and you feel like you should say more but it’s late and you’re tired and suddenly you’re not so sure of anything anymore. “I was just ‒ wondering,” you clarify, and hope that maybe you can get away with not having said much of anything without him realizing it.
Reaching out, you slap the back of your hand against Lip’s arm, turning back toward the door.
“Come on. It’s getting late and I’m freezing my ass off out here,” you say and you offer a tired smile before heading back inside.
When you wake in the morning (and it’s really not even morning anymore), it’s to the sound of voices coming from downstairs, familiar mixed with unfamiliar and a weird sort of tension in the air that makes you nervous even in the haze of not being fully awake. You blink slowly, rolling over onto your back and pressing your thumb and index fingers against your eyelids for a moment as you ease out of a fleeting dream and back into the real world.
The sound of quiet but hurried footsteps coming up the back stairs draws your attention to the doorway only to see your younger brother, Carl, skidding into view. He glances back down toward the end of the hallway, then rushes into the room and draws the curtains aside, letting in way too much sunlight as he shoves the window open and looks at you.
“Cops are here,” he says quickly but quietly, his tone serious. He steps away from the window and grabs up the nearest bag and dumps it out, moving around the room like an expert as he shoves random things into it. Your wallet, a change of clothes, your meds, and a small roll of hundreds he stashed in the hollowed out heel of of a dress shoe Lip hardly ever wears.
You hold your hand up in front of your face to block out the sun, eyes squinting closed for a moment as you push yourself up onto one elbow, brows furrowed together sharply.
“What for?” you ask blearily, sitting up a little straighter once you register what it is your brother is doing. “Shit, what did you do? I thought you were straight‒edge now,” you joke with a half smile, dropping your hand away from your eyes.
“Not me, asshole, you. They got you and Mickey on camera at a bank in like… Texas,” he says, pausing for a moment to look back toward the hallway before he zips the bag. “You guys went all the way to Texas?” he asks, but he looks impressed.
“Uh,” you start, rubbing your palm against the back of your head as panic floods through you. “Mexico, actually.”
Carl’s brows lift a little, and he nods slowly as a grin starts to spread across his face, but then he pauses again and he looks down at his feet, at everything he’d dumped out of the bag in his hands just a minute ago ‒ a couple pairs of pants, some rolled up t‒shirts, underwear, socks ‒, and you think you see the exact moment it dawns on him that you’d packed the night before, that you were already planning on leaving. He tosses the bag at you, and it lands on the bed just to your left.
“The feds are downstairs right now asking a whole lot of questions. Lip told them we haven’t seen or heard from you in a week, but if you don’t hurry your ass up they’re gonna come looking, and then my ass is going back to juvie for aiding and abetting you . ”
Time seems to slow down. You look at the bag in your lap, then at Carl, then toward the hallway. You realize, then, that Lip knows where you’ve been, because if he didn’t know he wouldn’t have any reason to lie to the police.
“Fuck,” you breathe, and scramble out of bed to pull on a shirt and jeans in a hurry while Carl stands on lookout. This isn’t me anymore. “Fuck ,” you say again, only this time you’re laughing, not because it’s funny (but it is kind of funny), but because there’s adrenaline coursing through your veins. A familiar thrill you’ve gone without, a thrill you don’t ever want to go without again.
“Jesus, Ian, hurry the fuck up, man.”
You pause for a minute to look around your room for anything else you might need, but also just to take it in one last time, and then you grab your phone from the nightstand.
“Tell everyone I said bye,” you tell him as you drop your bag out the window and move to start climbing out after it. Carl gives you a little shove, helping you out just as heavier footsteps start up the stairs and Lip’s voice calls out, I’m pretty sure you need a fucking permit before you start digging around in all of our shit!, just as a warning to let you know you need to haul ass if you haven’t already.
“Go,” Carl hisses, leaning out the window as you drop down onto the plastic garbage bins below. You hop down into the dirt, then look back up toward Carl as you pick up your bag and start to back away. He smiles at you and lifts his chin a little. “Mickey’s a good dude ‒ you know, minus the whole bullshit attempted murder charges or whatever. But he loves you and you deserve that.”
For a moment, Carl looks older than he is. It feels like only yesterday that he was dropping action figures into the toaster to melt them together, and now he’s looking down at you from your bedroom window, all grown up and doing something with his life and telling you something you didn’t know you really needed to hear until this moment.
“... Thanks, Carl,” you call up, quiet but sharp so nobody else hears you. And then you turn, and you run, and you don’t look back.
It’s only been about a week, but they've been some of the hardest few days Mickey's been through in a long while, his time in prison included. Every morning that he wakes up alone in the cold bed of a cheap motel, he can’t help but think of how things should have been. How he thought they’d be right now. Every time he takes off his shirt to shower, he has to avert his eyes away from the mirror so the name on his skin doesn’t remind him of everything he had to leave behind. It’s tough, but this is his life now and there really isn’t shit he can do about it. If he doesn’t have a red headed, alien-looking, pale-skinned motherfucker to keep him going, at least he’s got the beach.
Not only that, he’s got a job, too. Security at a shitty nightclub, but it’s easy and it pays, and it’s not so hard to pretend that every flash of red hair (as rare as it is) under spiraling, colorful lights doesn’t make his heart jump into his throat for half a second, because he knows better.
It’s about mid afternoon when Mickey’s phone starts to vibrate and El Jarabe Tapatio plays from his back pocket, interrupting his lunch‒for‒one in some hole in the wall restaurant. He shoves the rest of a taco in his mouth and licks a little bit of grease from his thumb as he digs his phone out and tosses it onto the table, casually glancing towards the screen as he reaches for his beer ‒ but his hand pauses, hovering near but not touching the bottle, and he just stares at the screen, watching as his phone vibrates against the table, and that fucking picture stares back at him. Red hair peeking out from underneath a worn beanie, and that stupid fucking smile. He bites his lower lip hard, looking away for a second only to look back, like maybe the name will have changed, like maybe he’s imagining things, but he’s not , and by the time he wipes his fingers on a crumpled napkin and picks up his phone, he’s missed the call.
“Fuck,” he says, a little louder than intended, and a few people turn their heads to look at him but he ignores them. Mickey drags his palm down over the lower half of his face. Breathes in. Breathes out. Looks at his phone, but just as he’s about to drop it back down onto the table, it starts to vibrate again. His thumb hovers, ready to swipe, and he steels himself before he answers, sitting back in his chair like this is easy.
“What’s the matter ‒ you miss me?” he jokes, dragging his thumb over his lower lip, casual on the outside but chaotic on the inside.
“A lot, ” the voice in the phone replies. “A ‒ shit, a whole lot.”
Mickey blinks, sharp brows ticking together as he sits forward. He chews his lip, inhales, and swallows around the tightness in his throat, blinking through the subtle sting in his eyes ‒ but something’s off.
“The hell are you out of breath for?” he asks, then pauses. Smirks. “Is this what we’re doin' now? Phone sex? I mean I’m in the middle of a fucking restaurant but I can find the bathroom real‒,” he starts, smiling, teasing and snarky and a little bit fond, but the voice in the phone interrupts.
“You wanna buy me some sandals? ”
He pauses. Pulls the phone away from his ear to look at it in confusion, then with disbelief. “... You seriously askin’ me to send you money so you can buy some fuckin’ flip flops? What, you lose your fancy‒ass big boy job or somethin’?”
“Not yet ‒ but who the hell wears combat boots to the beach?”, the voice answers with a rushed, breathy laugh.
“The fuck are you even tal ‒‒,” Mickey starts ‒ and then it clicks, and his brows shoot up. He sits up a little straighter, his free hand curling around the plastic arm of his chair. “... Really?” he asks, and his voice is so quiet. Hopeful. Careful.
“Yeah, Mick. Really.”
He closes his eyes only for a second, only long enough for him to let out a shaky breath before he’s drawn back in.
“Listen, I, uh. I got the cops on my ass ‒ but I love you, and I should have gotten in that fucking car. ”
Mickey swallows, and then without thinking twice, he stands up, tosses some money on the table, and heads out of the restaurant to his car with his phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear as he climbs in and starts it up.
“If you’re not at the border in two days, you’re on your own. And if you’re gonna wear a fucking dress, tell me so I know what the hell to look for,” he quips, grabbing the phone with one hand and craning his neck to look out of the back window as he throws the car into reverse. “This isn’t you anymore my ass,” he adds, but it’s soft, and he laughs.
“Yeah, yeah. Gotta go. Forty-eight hours,” is the last reply, and then the line goes dead. Mickey tosses the phone into the passenger seat, then turns around to face forward, both hands on the wheel.
And then he shakes his head, and he smiles, bright and genuine, and he grabs his sunglasses from where they’re hanging by an arm from the visor and slides them on.
“... Fucking Gallaghers.”