Archive of Our Own ^beta

--

Ian knows he’d made the right decision.

Mickey will always be the first person he’d ever fallen in love with, might even be the only person he’ll ever be able to love like that, but a relationship like the one they’d had can’t be contained. It would have destroyed him, eventually – the running, the crime, the constant danger – he would have burned out, or Mickey would have first, and that would have killed Ian even faster.

He’s sure that he’d made the right decision, kissing Mickey at the border and watching him leave. That’s not his life anymore, it can’t be. He’s so sure.

It just takes his heart a little while to catch up.

--

He knows things with Trevor are beyond repair. Had known as soon as he’d said, “I was with Mickey.” that there’d be no going back to the way they were.

He’d wanted to end it. Because he could have lied – hell, he should have lied, because the last time he’d checked helping an escaped convict cross the border was still a felony – but he’d told Trevor the truth in part because the other man deserved that much from him, but also because Ian had wanted it to be over.

He can’t be in love right now, not with anyone else, and it’s simpler this way.

--

The first letter comes eight days after Mickey leaves.

Ian’s heart starts pounding when he sees it on the floor in the hallway, mixed up with all the bills and coupon flyers. His hands shake as he opens it.

It’s a regular piece of notebook paper and Mickey’s unmistakable scrawl.

Ian expects something terse to be written there; not dead, not caught, fuck you. Something purely Mickey.

That’s not what’s he’s looking at. Not by a long shot.

The first time we kissed, no year
Times I got sent to juvie
How many siblings you have, the cunt doesn’t count

That north side bitch bar where I beat up your grandpa

The tequila that made you puke on Iggy

After the line about beating up Ned, there’s a circle – nothing inside of it, nothing at all, just a circle. It’s the only thing on the paper that’s not words, and that circle and the words are the only things on the paper.

Ian flips it over a few times just to be sure, but he’s left staring dumbly at what he can only assume is the result of Mickey suffering some kind of heat stroke or alcohol binge.

“Dude,” Ian startles noticeably at Lip’s voice behind him – he hadn’t heard his brother come in the front door.

“Hey,” he coughs and tries subtly to fold the piece of paper before Lip sees it. But his brother is a genius speed reader with pretty good vision, and one look over his shoulder tells Ian he’s definitely been found out.

Lip looks mildly concerned and incredibly curious. He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lights one absently. “Mickey’s sending you coded messages now?”

“No, I–” he starts the protest before he actually hears what his brother had said. “Wait, what?”

“Three numbers, one name – something Circle – and most cheap tequila is named after shitty cities in Mexico. Sounds like an address to me.” He shrugs like it doesn’t matter, even though they both know how much it does. “It’s not like the feds would be able to decode that, even if they had flagged it. Pretty smart for a Milkovich.”

Ian laughs on his next exhale, feeling lighter than he has in eight days.

“Well I’ll be damned.”

--

Ian get a P.O. box the next day before his afternoon shift. They can’t be open, ever, without a warrant, Lip tells him; disclosing to Ian that he still gets his most important correspondence sent to one of his own, ever since that thing a few years ago with his financial aid papers. It’s safer for him and Mickey both, if the shit ever hits the fan. Plus, it’s more secure than hoping or trusting that no one else in their house would read something they shouldn’t, be it accidently or not, and keeps his family safely in the realm of plausible deniability.

Be smart, asshole. Don’t piss anyone off and don’t run again unless you have to.
I love you.
And fuck you, too.

Mickey’s response comes two days after Ian’s initial reply. His face isn’t in the picture, and probably no one would be able to prove that the tattooed “U” on the middle finger is his, but Ian would recognize it anywhere.

He stuffs the photo into his wallet and doesn’t think too hard about what that means.

--

Life continues on after that, and it’s calm.

Ian knows he’d made the right decision because as much as he misses Mickey, daydreams about what their life could have been like together, and still jacks off to thoughts of fucking the older boy, he knows it never would have been enough.

That his family, stability, and a life making good on the Southside is what he truly needs.

Carl goes back to military school a few days after the funeral, and it still blows them all away, that he’s the Gallagher who’s probably going to wind up making the most out of his life, but the lot of them are nothing if not resilient, and this is at least a good thing that they’re going to have to get used to, instead of all the massively bad ones that had been thrust upon them over the years.

Debbie continues on with her welding school plan. It’s not the future any of them had wanted for their youngest sister, but Ian respects the decisions she’s made and her commitment to being a good mom. That she hadn’t followed Lip to his ivory towers still disappoints Fiona, but Debbie is young and smart and Ian knows that there’s still time.

There’s always still time.

Lip leaves first. Well, second if you count Carl. Third if you count when Ian had run away to join the army. Fifth if you count Monica and Frank. Honestly, his family is too good at leaving, but every single one of them sucks ass at staying gone.

Except Lip.

Lip is the first one to leave for good, and Ian is a lot of things when it happens, but relieved is what he feels the strongest.

“Damn,” his brother breathes when Ian tells him that, the two of them sharing a joint in the backyard while Lip’s going away party rages on in the house behind them. “And here I thought you’d at least pretend to miss me.”

He’s joking for now, but Ian knows he has to explain before that fake anger and hurt turns all too real. And he wants to, truly he does, it’s just hard around the alcohol and drugs and emotions.

“You don’t belong on the Southside.” He says, but Lip’s expression hardens, and Ian remembers how sensitive he is about that sort of shit. “I will miss you.” He says next, because that’s important, and it makes Lip’s features soften a little around the edges. “But I feel like…I feel like some people can stay here, and-and live here, y’know? Like Kev and V. And Fiona, with her apartment building project and all that shit. And Debbie and Franny, maybe, too. They can live here.”

“But I can’t?” Lip quirks an eyebrow, and Ian knows this next part is going to be important.

“No. You can die here.” The words, out loud, make them both pause, the air around them going still. “You’re dying here, man,” Ian repeats, meaning it more than he thought he did. “And I don’t wanna see that happen to you.”

The streetlamps and lights from the house are illuminating them both in the otherwise dark backyard, and when Lip turns to look at him a moment later, Ian can’t help but remember all those nights the two of them had shared a bedroom as children. He remembers waking from nightmares and flopping around on his mattress until he had a good view of his big brother, because nothing short of that particular sight had ever made him feel safe. Lip’s been making him feel safe his whole life and it should be scarier than it is, to finally let that go, but Ian’s not scared.

Ian’s not scared at all.

“Guess I’m lucky that MIT doesn’t give a shit about drunk and disorderly conduct expulsions.” Lip finally says, breaking the tension and making Ian laugh.

He is lucky, they both know that. Lip’s been lucky a lot throughout the course of his life, but this is the first time his luck’s taken him out of Chicago. Everyone else is nervous about Lip being so far away from home – Fiona’s even said it out loud, that she’s scared Lip will fuck it up again, and that it’ll be harder this time, because he won’t have anyone to lean on out there. They’d gotten into a fight over that one, but deep down Lip knows that she’s just being a parent.

Ian’s the only one who’s not worried.

The farther away he gets from the Southside, the less risk there is. The more hope.

Ian knows that.

--

Gonna be in Boston next week. Six days. Don’t freak out when I don’t write back.

Their letters don’t have an official schedule, don’t come like clockwork at certain times on certain days or anything like that. But it’s been six months and the longest they’ve gone without writing is seven days. Well, they’d gone seven days once, after Mickey had accidently drank the tap water down there and spent several days puking and shitting his guts out – which he’d explained to Ian in graphic detail later. Other than that one incident, though, the longest they’ve gone is four days. They talk more now than they had when Mickey was in prison. Maybe even more than when they’d been living together.

They can’t write anything too revealing, in case their letters get picked up by the feds, and they sure as shit can’t talk about crime or anything Mickey might be doing for a living these days, but they still manage to find things to discuss.

Ian writes about patients he treats – the funny stories and the sad ones. Mickey tells him about some of the shit he and his brothers had gotten into when they were younger, how they used to drag Mandy around with them before she got old enough to tell them to fuck off. Ian likes picturing Mickey young like that, even though he knows the older boy had never truly been innocent. Mickey tells him darker stories, too. Miserably depressing, infuriating ones about Terry Milkovich and the things he’d done to his son over the years.

Sometimes I think he always knew. That I was a fag. He hated me more than my brothers, and they used to say it was cause I looked like our ma, but I think he knew, maybe before I did.

Ian’s hated a lot of people over the course of his life, more than his fair share, but no one as much or as acutely as he hates Mickey’s father. He thinks about it one night at work while he’s cleaning the rig, and he’s pretty sure it boils down to control.

His hate has always been born out of things people have done to him. He hates Frank for being a shitty father, for example. He hates Frank for abandoning them, for robbing them of a normal childhood, for caring more about booze and drugs than any fucking thing else. Hell, he hates Frank for not being his real dad. Hating Frank is second nature, it’s shaped who he is as a person, and not in a good way.

He doesn’t hate Terry like he hates Frank.

Terry’s never hurt him.

Well, he has, many times, but that’s not why Ian hates him more. Ian hates Terry more than Frank because Terry hurt Mickey. And Ian could never stop it, was never in control when Terry was around – except that one blissful night when Mickey had finally found the courage to stand up to his father once and for all – and that’s what makes it worse, he finally realizes.

It takes him a long time to put together what that means about his own feelings, and his future, but later, he blames that on Frank, too.

--

Less than forty-eight hours after Ian sends the note about Boston, he gets a text from a blocked number.

Gimme a sign firecrotch

Ian’s out at a bar with a few people from work, but he quickly excuses himself to go to the bathroom. He’s drunk already, and doesn’t think twice about going into a stall, pulling down his pants, and taking a picture of his junk to send as a reply message.

Mickey only ever called him that, firecrotch, a handful of times when they were younger, and never in front of anyone else.

Damn, is Mickey’s first reply. Then, seconds later, Bigger than I remember

Ian smirks; the masculine pride of being complimented like that mixing pleasantly with the warm glow of it being Mickey doing the flattering, to create a buzz under his skin way more powerful than the alcohol in his system.

It misses you almost as much as I do, Ian’s brain isn’t filtering too well at the moment, but he’s not sure being sober would have stopped him from saying that. Finally got a phone?

It’s a burner. Don’t save the number

Ian sits down on the toilet, smiling at the screen in front of him like an idiot. You being safe??

Almost legit, is Mickey’s response, and Ian doesn’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds an awful lot like ‘I’m trying.’ Why Boston?

Lip got into super smart people school. Ian laughs at his own phrasing, but sends the message anyway.

Ur drunk

When have I ever sent you a dick pic sober?

He imagines Mickey laughing at that, because it’s true and they both know it.

Text me while ur outta town

Ian doesn’t ask him why or tease him about the request – he might have, if they were in the same place, but stuff like that doesn’t always read right in text messages and the last thing he wants is for Mickey to think Ian doesn’t care.

Of all the things Ian had warred with himself over that day at the border, caring about Mickey had never been a question.

Will do

--

Franny says her first word a month after Lip leaves.

Mickey’s been gone for nine months, and Franny’s first word pizza.

Ian remembers pizza bites and jokes about Van Damme, remembers sitting next to Mickey on the couch and stealing glances at the other boy, delighting when he’d realized that Mickey was stealing them right back. He remembers the six rounds of sex they’d managed to squeeze in while they were alone, and he remembers wrapping his arms around Mickey from behind that night, in the first bed they’d ever fucked in, and shushing him sternly when his definitely-not-boyfriend had hissed something like, “I don’t fucking cuddle, bitch.”

Ian remembers the way their bodies had fit together, so perfect and comfortable and safe, that Mickey had stopped putting up a fuss in record time. He remembers being surprised, for some reason, that the two of them had fit together that like. Because it shouldn’t have been a shock, not with how well their bodies worked and moved together during sex, but Ian had created a barrier, back then, between sex and love.

Not the bullshit one Mickey had forced between them since the very beginning, the one that Ian had delighted in chipping away at every day, but something more internalized. Something that had stunk of Monica and Frank, because Ian had already known, that night, how he felt about Mickey. Knew he loved him, and probably always would. He just hadn’t realized until right then, that moment of spooning Mickey for the very first time with the taste of pizza bagels and cum still on his tongue, how much loving Mickey fucking terrified him.

Realizing it should have been enough to get over it, and maybe in a perfect world it would have been. But theirs was a world far from perfection, and Terry Milkovich had ruined any illusions Ian might have been growing the very next morning.

Ian’s never forgotten that morning, never will, but he’s never remembered it all together with everything else that had come just before it.

Until nine months after Mickey flees to Mexico and Franny says “pizza”, her very first word, and Ian can’t stop it when the tears come. He tries to hold back, at first, but it’s just him and Franny alone in the house, and his niece is so fucking innocent, so beautiful and protected in a way none of them ever had been.

He sobs so violently that it hurts. He’s loud, and Franny starts crying, too, because she doesn’t know what’s going on, and Ian couldn’t have explained it to her even if she were old enough to listen. Because he’s always remembered both parts, the night and the morning. He’s always remembered the realization of fear being directly followed by the proof that no, the world’s not gonna prove him wrong, after all.

He’s just never felt it. Never let it sink in.

He blames Monica and Frank and Terry and himself. He hates them all, maybe exactly in that order.

He loves Mickey and hates Terry and misses fucking everything.

Franny stops crying almost as soon as he does, because she’s a baby and she doesn’t understand any of it, just senses the tension of heartbreak in the air.

Ian never tells Debbie what her daughter’s first word had been.

Franny says “mine,” three days later, and Ian grins wide and proud, just like an uncle should, when Debbie tells him.

--

A couple weeks later, Fiona corners him in the kitchen one night. “Hey,” she starts, that certain octave of hesitance in her tone letting Ian know that this conversation is almost definitely going to be about his mental health.

“Hey.” Ian greets, but then reaches into the fridge, starts rooting around cans of pop and bottles of beer, hoping to send the message that he doesn’t feel like talking right now.

He’s sure Fiona gets it, he’s also sure she doesn’t give a shit. “You haven’t dated anyone since Trevor,” she says as soon as he shuts the fridge door. “I know you liked him, but I hate to see you wallowing like this.”

Ian rolls his eyes, almost involuntarily. “I’m not wallowing,” he repeats the word with distaste. “I’m just not dating anyone right now.”

“Why?” She asks, crossing her arms over her chest like she always does when she’s acting more parent than sister.

Ian could fight it if he wanted to, but he’d just worked fifteen hours straight and probably still has puke in his hair from that call this morning. “Because the love of my life escaped from prison and I’ll probably never see him again.”

Ian’s words aren’t loud or even particularly emotional, more tired fact than anything else, but her eyes still go wide like he’d shouted at the top of his lungs. “Ian.” She pauses for a moment and her eyes slowly go back to normal. She uncrosses her arms and moves her hands to either of his shoulders, gripping tightly. “You deserve to be loved the way Mickey loved you.” She refuses to look away from him, and Ian’s a little freaked out now, because Fiona rarely gets this serious about anything involving Ian’s love life. “And someday you’re going to find that with someone who deserves you more than Mickey ever did.”

Ian knows it’s the right thing to say, the motherly, sisterly thing to say. Hell, it might even be true, but, “Are you ever gonna love anyone as much as you loved Jimmy?” Her hands drop from his shoulders. “Even if they love you? Even if they’re perfect, will it ever be enough for you?”

Ian sees it when the tears form in her eyes. He hates making Fiona cry, and wishes now that he could take it back.

Fuck, there’s so much he wants to take back.

“No,” she finally whispers, so choked around emotion that Ian almost doesn’t hear. “No, it never will be.”

--

Find a phone and call me

He mails the letter on a Tuesday morning.

His phone rings Thursday night.

--

“This is dangerous, Ian.” Are Mickey’s first words. “And I don’t have much time.”

“What would it be like?” Ian asks. He’s stone cold sober but kind of wishes that he weren’t.

“What the fuck would what be like?”

“Our life, in Mexico.” Ian explains with a touch of anger, because he really thinks that Mickey should be getting this.

“Why the fuck are you asking, Gallagher?” The other man snaps. “You said no.”

“Because I wanted a different kinda life,” he all but shouts, following it up with an almost hysterical laugh. “My family is here, everything…I mean, you’re a fucking –” he almost says fugitive, but catches himself just in time, because you never know. “And that.” He laughs again. “Watching everything I say, looking over our shoulders. Never seeing my family again? And what about Mandy? I know you care about her at least a little. Why the fuck am I the bad guy because I wanted you here, not us there? Why didn’t you just fucking stay put? Eight years, remember? Eight years and it coulda just been us. It wouldn’t have mattered…fuck, whatever I was doing, whoever I was with, it woulda been nothing the second you showed up again. Fuck, you saw it. I’d choose you over anyone, do you get that? Over anyone, just not…not over everyone. That’s all it was, Mick. That’s the only reason. Why couldn’t you’ve just waited a few more years?”

Mickey doesn’t respond, but Ian can hear him breathing on the other end of the phone. Maybe crying. Maybe trying not to. Enough time passes that Ian catches his breath.

“I gotta go.” Mickey’s voice is rough, and there are definitely tears in it.

“Mick,” Ian starts, but doesn’t know how to finish.

“I’m sorry,” Mickey chokes out, and then the line goes dead.

--

Ian starts dating a guy named Blake.

Blake’s younger than him and has blonde hair. He confuses passionate fucking with love and tells Ian all about his feelings, nearly every chance he gets. Blake gets pissed when Ian starts barfights and fusses over him when he works too many hours in a row. He cooks healthy food and charms the shit out of every single Gallagher he meets – except Frank, of course, but that’s to be expected.

“He’s good for you,” Fiona tells him one afternoon, beaming at him the way she does when she’s trying too hard.

“I know.” Is Ian’s only response.

Because he does know. Blake is the perfect guy to settle down with.

--

Mickey still writes at least once a week.

Ian answers every single one of them.

--

Monica and Frank had made him afraid of love, that much he’s sure of now.

Not incapable of it, he’s not that fucked up, just so terrified of the sensation that sometimes he blocks it out, separates the mind and emotion of it, so he can act the way he wants without spending his whole life cowering in a corner.

Sometimes this makes it hard for him to make decisions, and sometimes he makes the wrong ones.

He’d been so sure, that day at the border watching Mickey drive off, that he’d been doing the rigt thing.

So goddamn sure.

Then time had passed, and nothing had changed except everything that had, his heart hurts all the time, and he’s just so fucking tired.

--

Blake gets a job in Huston five months into their relationship.

Blake is young and confused about sex and love, he asks Ian to go with him because he doesn’t realize what that question really is, what it changes, or how much hearing it can fucking hurt.

--

Ian tells Lip over the phone.

His big brother isn’t surprised. He thinks it’s fucking dangerous, and warns Ian again and again that this better be fucking worth it you fucking shithead or I’m gonna fucking kill someone, you got me? Ian grins wide and proud, because that’s a blessing in Lip’s book.

Debbie understands in a wise and maternal sort of way that Ian finds a little strange, coming from the girl who was so recently an angry, hormonal teenager. But it reminds him of Debbie when she was younger, a version of the person he always thought she could be. They both make promises, and hug, and even cry a little.

He goes to visit Carl at military school. Spends a whole family weekend there, just the two of them, before he sneaks his little brother off the grounds, gets him into a bar without too much trouble, and spills his guts over a bottle of beer, Gallagher style. Carl’s not even surprised. He calls Ian a fucking idiot for waiting this long and promises to visit whenever he can while he’s traveling. He’s not sure yet where the Navy is going to send him, but he knows he wants to see everything. Ian knows that he will.

Liam doesn’t really understand, and Ian can’t explain it in too much detail, because he’s not old enough to know how important this is. Instead, he just spends time with his youngest brother, letting himself feel what this loss it going to be. He knows it’s not forever, exactly, knows he’ll come back and visit, see them again. But he also knows that it won’t be as often as he’d like it to be – in part because of the danger, but mostly because that’s just the way these things go. Families grow apart. Up and away from each other. It’s not a bad thing. But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.

He and Fiona are sitting at the kitchen table one night not long after he gets back from his trip to Carl’s school. Liam’s in bed already, and it’s just the three of them in the house these days.

“So, Blake’s movin’ to Texas.” Fiona starts the conversation for him, which should be a relief but Ian feels it like panic instead.

“Yeah,” he nods, looking down at the bottom of his coffee cup.

“So…” she trails off in a clearly pointed way. “Did he ask you to go with him?”

Ian swallows. “He did.”

“And I’m guessing by your lack of enthusiasm he was disappointed in your response?”

Ian chuckles a little, because she’s right, and he loves her so much.

“That’s okay.” She says, just like a mother should. “You’ll find someone, Ian, I know you will.”

He takes a deep breath and, finally, looks up enough to meet her gaze. “I already have.”

She looks happy for a moment, genuinely thrilled for him, but then he doesn’t say anything else and she can read it, the look on his face. She leans back in her chair and rests her hands on the table. “Mickey.”

And he knows that she only guessed that so fast because of Jimmy/Steve and the love that she had lost, but it still makes Ian feel raw, like she can see right through him. “Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a long time.

Ian remembers telling her that he was gay, the second person that he’d ever actually said the words to – and Mandy he doesn’t count in quite the same way, because he’d been desperate and afraid.

Fiona had said, “I know,” that day, so simply, that it righted Ian’s entire fucking world. Just plopped it back on its axis when he hadn’t even known, before then, that anything had been wrong with it in the first place.

“You don’t know where he is.” She says, and it’s the beginning to an argument that Ian already knows she’s going to lose.

It makes him calm.

“He contacted me right after he escaped.” Ian tells her. “I was going to leave with him then. We got all the way to the border before I changed my mind.”

Fiona’s expression betrays her shock. “Shit, Ian.”

“I didn’t think I wanted that life anymore. Y’know, crazy.” He shrugs.

“Like Jimmy.”

“Like Jimmy.” Ian echoes. “But Mickey’s different. Or…I don’t know, maybe he’s not. Maybe I am. Maybe we are. All I know, all I know for sure is that we talk all the time and I look forward to hearing from him. I like the crazy, even when I don’t, and I love him. It was always gonna be me and him. And I don’t wanna leave you guys, but they all get it, and they all want me to try.”

“Who all?” Fiona asks, shocked again. “Everyone else knows?”

Ian nods slowly, hoping she doesn’t get pissed about this part, of all the things. “I wanted to tell you last, because you’re the only one who’d be able to talk me out of it.”

She takes a deep breath and looks at him the same way she had the day Ian told her he was gay and she told him she already knew. “Do you want me to talk you out of it?”

Ian doesn’t have to think about it. “Do you know what my first thought was, when Blake told me about his job in Huston and asked me to go with him?” She shakes her head, and then tilts it curiously. “I thought…I thought, ‘that’s close enough to the border that I could go with him, leave him, go to Mickey, and never come back.’ That was my first thought, Fi. If I didn’t know before that, I sure as shit do now.”

She keeps staring at him. “Do you want me to talk you out of it?”

“No.” He says. “I want to be with him.”

“Okay.”

They both exhale long and hard.

“Okay.”

--

Mickey doesn’t look surprised when he opens the door and finds Ian standing on the other side. A sly grin creeps up over his lips and Ian finds himself returning it automatically, because he’s so goddamn happy he finally feels like he can breathe.

“Took ya long enough, fuckface.”

--