One-Shots

sorry about the blood in your mouth

(i wish it was mine)
Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich one-shot

                    

        “So, is it true? You’re getting married?”

       Mickey doesn’t take the damn bait for once, just lets Gallagher have his go.

       “So who is it, is it Angie Zago or some other piece of trash you screwed so you can pretend I don’t matter to you?”

       Mickey isn’t surprised that Gallagher found him here—if he were a different man he’d say he half expected it—and of ‘course he knew that word would eventually get around about the wedding (word always fucking gets around on the South Side) so he ignores him. Figures that if he does it long enough, maybe he’ll just leave like last time.

       He can drag it out if he wants. Listen as Ian pulls out more questions, could wait for him to grow impatient and frustrated enough to just fuckin’ leave and consider Mickey a lost cause in the process. Mickey expects some harsh insults about how he’s a pansy who can’t even stand up to his own father before the walkin’ away part though. And he’ll take all of it without so much as a flinch because he fucking deserves it this time (maybe deserved it every time, he knows well enough that he ain’t nobody’s damn hero). He recognizes the game; the rules don’t change just ‘cause the situations do.

       Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any luck (never really has) and when Ian throws the damn bottle at the wall, the broken glass scattering across the floor, he can’t help but exclaim, “Aye, what the fuck, Gallagher?”

       “Oh, he speaks!”

       And he can hear it in Ian’s voice, can hear the shit he’s causing to stir up inside the redhead, wishes he could lie to himself a little more and say it doesn’t matter, that Gallagher doesn’t matter. But he won’t—can’t. Whatever. Hell, the whole reason he’s doing this wedding shit is to make sure the kid doesn’t wind up some nobody in tomorrow’s paper, and even if he can’t just say that outright, he figured Gallagher was smart enough to figure it out on his own.

       It’s not unusual for Mickey to save up all the bits of himself that are both wrong and broken so that he can bury them deep down under shit that doesn’t mean much to him, it’s how he was raised, after all. When other kids were learning how to color inside the lines of a coloring book, Mickey was learning how to duck from a stray punch to the head and pretend it didn’t fuckin’ faze him. Most of the time he believed it.

       But it seems no matter how hard he tries, he can’t bury this thing (with Ian Gallagher of all fucking people) for good. There’s always gonna be a loose end—probably because he doesn’t really wanna bury it, would rather just bury Terry fifteen feet deep, if he could—and that loose end will always get twisted and pulled so much that it unravels into something else entirely.

       And since he can’t bury this thing, he walks out and hopes Gallagher will take the hint and quit while he’s ahead because Mickey’s itching for a fight, can already imagine the blood on his knuckles and the throbbing in his muscles. And the fighting is nothing new because that’s what he does, it’s who he is for Christ sake, but he doesn’t want to beat the shit out of Ian if he doesn’t have to.

       But Ian is tired, bare, a thin veneer of brashness over a jumble of worry, and his gaze is open and bold when he says, “So that’s it, we’re over? Your dad beats the shit out of us and you’re just gonna get married, no conversation, nothing?”

       You deserve this, Mickey thinks to himself as the words reach his ears, you should’ve known better.

       And Mickey does deserve it so he’ll take it because he may be many things, but at the end of the day he’s still a Milkovich and he knows when he’s fucked up. Plus, it’s true, isn’t it? He’s such a damn pussy that he couldn’t (can’t, he corrects himself) even keep either of them safe. He got clumsy and a little too fuckin’ comfortable with everything and it all resulted in this. He’d never been that damn stupid before, couldn’t afford to then, still can’t afford to now.