Chapter Text
As Ian watched him at the border crossing, his heart beat furiously, and he couldn't breathe until that moment when he realized the guards were letting Mickey through. Only then could he breathe, the joy and elation that Mickey was free, Ian’s eyes shedding tears that he made it. And then he watched until he couldn't see even the green of the car anymore and he wondered why in fuck he hadn't figured out some way to stay in touch. Because maybe the two of you couldn't be together, but he loved Mickey Milkovich, and he'd want to hear from him.
Ian hitched a ride into Laredo and found a bus station to make the final trek back to Chicago.
He looked in his bag and saw the full bottles of 3 prescriptions, and remembered how he'd gone to the pharmacy uncertain if he'd be gone for as long as he wanted to be prepared to be gone. He'd convinced them to give him as large a refill as they could – 90 days, as it turns out – and got information about transferring prescriptions to other pharmacies in other countries. Just in case.
He settled into the Greyhound seat, feeling the rawness of his upper lip, remembering kissing Mickey, and closed his eyes, sighing deeply. His words from a few days before, “I can’t get him out of my head,” never seemed more appropriate than at this moment.
When he got the text from Lip telling him their mother Monica was dead, he thought, “yeah, that about fits.” He texted back, “be home soon,” and closed his eyes to try to sleep a little during the long bus ride. He was tired and sad, but sure he’d made the right decision.
After he arrived back home in Chicago, Ian dealt with his mother’s death, family stuff, the funeral. He laid awake that first night realizing he’d at one time said he’d been working the past few days he’d been gone (when he’d actually been with Mickey), and then at another time said he’d called in sick the same past few days. No one had caught that. Lucky, he thought. He didn’t want to tell anyone where he’d been.
It was the next day that he saw Mickey’s text asking him who he was now and he replied that he was keeping a job and paying taxes and whatnot. Ian wasn’t quite sure what he had meant when he said, “this isn’t me anymore.” But then again, Ian rarely knew exactly what he meant or what he felt. He knew he felt things, and he knew he couldn’t continue on with Mickey, but, as with so many other moments in his life, he didn’t know how to put those feelings into words. The subtle impulses – the quickening of his pulse, the burning in his gut, the tension in his shoulders – what these were trying to tell him, and what they were called were a mystery to him. But he knew he could gain some relief and comfort through having sex, or he could numb the feelings that threatened to erupt by drinking a beer or smoking another cigarette.
He never got a response from Mickey. He thought about writing him again, but he didn’t know what to say.
As he lay in bed the morning after Monica’s funeral, he remembered his mother. He thought of the story he’d told at her funeral that conveyed her zest for life, he thought of how Frank loved her, and Ian thought of how their lives wove together sometimes, and then they’d be apart for a while. And he wondered if he’d cry about the death of his mother. Maybe tomorrow, he thought.
Ian was pretty sure something wasn’t quite right with him. He’d had this sizzling, terrifying, exciting and heartbreaking cross-country adventure with Mickey and barely felt anything. His mother had died, and he barely felt anything. He and his boyfriend of several months had broken up and he’d barely felt anything. He was sure he was on a down. He was sleeping more, not enthused about anything. He went to see his prescribing doctor at the clinic to discuss his meds, thinking that some med tweaking would hold the answer to his problems. Ian only mentioned his mother’s death when the doctor inquired if there were any situational causes for depression and the doctor looked at him with her kind eyes and said, “honey, sometimes it’s not bipolar symptoms, sometimes it’s just grief. Do you have anybody to talk to?” Ian was frustrated that the doctor wasn’t listening to him, that he clearly needed a med tweak, but he responded, “I have people to talk to,” and that was that.
The second week Ian was back at work, his boss Rita was at the station when he arrived. She checked in with him about how he’d been sick and then his mother had died. With the recent conversation with the doctor at the clinic, and now this, he was pretty pissed that people kept getting into his shit. But Rita seemed genuinely caring, and made it clear, “look, I don’t expect to be your confidante, I’m your boss. But I wanted to give you the name and number of a therapist that some of the EMTs have gone to see after a particularly traumatic accident or after a clusterfuck of issues has come down on them. She was really helpful for them, I could imagine it being useful, you know, supportive, right now.” Ian took the therapist’s business card and said thanks, and Rita pressed, “seriously, it would do me a world of good to know you were getting some stuff off your chest. You’re really good at what you do, and I’ve been at this a lot longer than you have and I’ve seen what this kind of work takes out of a person.” She paused for a beat and added, “and our employee assistance program gives you 6 sessions free of charge. Would you please at least consider it?” Ian assures her he will and pockets the card.
It’s a couple more weeks before he actually does call the therapist, but he does, more out of a sense of obligation to Rita than anything else. But also, because Sue told him that she and her husband were seeing a couples’ therapist and it was really helping. Sue was a big sharer, rarely edited herself, and volunteered personal information about herself without provocation. Ian would never be like that, but it felt more in the realm of something that was doable to hear that his co-worker was seeing a therapist. All he’d ever heard at home was “Gallaghers don’t do therapy,” but he was alert enough to see that the “Gallagher Way” may not be the healthiest and best way.