Chapter Text
“Mickey, your father is an evil, psychotic prick!” Shouts Ian. The afterglow from their quickie now passed, all Ian could feel is the anger and frustration that he feels. Why won’t he listen to reason? He has to know this is a shitty hand they’ve been dealt, but he doesn’t have to play it. “You’re just gonna let him ruin your life—"
“Don’t act like you know anything about my father!” The shorter boy bellows back. He looks like he’s on the defensive. Ian stares him down, searching Mickey’s face longingly. Mickey sighs and the temper turns to something softer, uncharacteristically honest. “Trust me… you’ve barely seen anything.”
He sits on a folding chair and gestures for Ian to join him in the adjoining seat. Ian remains standing. “Look, I know it’s shitty, but things are gonna get worse if I don’t go through with this. If you think what happened to us was bad…”
“We could leave.”
“What? Get the fuck out of here.”
“Leave with me,” pleads Ian.
“What? Run away with you? And go where?”
Ian shrugs. “We’re both eighteen now. We can enlist together.”
“What happened to West Point?” Mickey looks concerned. “All that extra schoolwork, all that training…”
“I wouldn’t be able to take you with me to West Point.”
“So you want me to run off to bootcamp with you instead?” Ian knows that Mickey has never been a fan of Ian wanting a career in the military, but he’s never spoken his peace. Perhaps helping Ian to train all this time was just Mickey’s way of banking time with him. “You wanna get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever? And there is no guarantee we’d be stationed together.”
“Better than staying here, isn’t it?”
Mickey is quiet for a long time. “You’re serious?”
“What else is there for me here?”
Mickey resumes fixing his tie, still disheveled from earlier. “I never thought you’d go through with it.”
“You kidding?” Asks Ian. “It’s all I wanted since I was thirteen.”
“All you wanted?”
Ian looks at Mickey. Now it is the brunette’s turn to search Ian’s face. “Okay, maybe it’s the only thing I’ve wanted. But you’re not a thing, are you?”
“Got a place you want so you can cover all three types of nouns, then?”
Ian laughs, his hand on Mickey’s knee. The shorter boy looks around before he accepts the touch.
“I… I can’t go with you. Not there. I can’t trade in one war zone for another.”
“Okay, so no enlisting. But we can’t stay here.”
“Better the devil you know,” sighs Mickey.
“What do you wanna do then?”
“I want you to leave.” Mickey sounds surprisingly calm.
“What?”
Mickey pulls his suit jacket back on. “The longer you’re here, the more chance I’ll give in and do something stupid. Gotta go up there and go through the steps.”
“So you’re just gonna go through with it?”
“It’ll get Terry off our back. Don’t you get it?”
“Do you love her?”
“I love you, ya fucking idiot!”
Ian’s jaw drops. He never expected Mickey to say it. Mickey’s eyes are wide. Clearly shocked that he admitted it.
“If you love me, how can you go through with this fucking joke?”
“This is the only thing keeping us safe. You believe me now when I tell you my dad could kill us if he wants?”
“He can try.” False bravado, but Ian will not be deterred. Whatever it takes to keep Mickey from walking down that aisle.
“D-don’t! Don’t even joke like that. I’m doing this to keep you safe. You think I care about that whore and the kid?”
“There’s a kid?”
“Yeah. First time fucking a vagina and the dumbfuck universe decided to screw me good, huh? Probably isn’t even mine. But good old Terry said you, me, and the whore should wait for a bullet in the head if I don’t go through with this.”
“You’re going to be a father.” This changes everything. Ian would rather Mickey fight for him or run away with him. But there’s a baby. Mickey’s baby. Mickey’s son or daughter. They need to fight for this child.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So you gotta do this, huh?”
“Yeah,” answers Mickey, his voice thick and wet.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Stay away for a while. At least until Terry gets himself locked up again.”
“Seriously?” He wants to help. In any way he can, he wants to be there for Mickey. But exiling himself from Mickey’s life is unacceptable.
“If you play the law of averages, it won’t be long.”
“If I go, I’m not coming back. I’ll enlist. Won’t even have to see each other for four years.”
Mickey inhales deeply. “When?”
Ian shrugs. “Next bus to basic is next Saturday.”
“Think you can stay out of Terry’s crosshairs until then?”
He’s okay with this? He really would rather see me shipped off than have me anywhere near his father? Should I be flattered or dying inside?
“Yeah,” chokes Ian. “I think I can manage that.”
“C’mon. There’s a back entry here.” He gestures toward the far side of the basement. “I don’t wanna risk Terry seeing you leaving.”
It’s only thirty feet, but it feels like miles. Too much time in silence, but also too much to say. If he sticks to his guns, this might be the last time he talks to the boy he thinks the world of for years.
The back exit is a basement hatch. Mickey pushes it open, unconcerned about the dust landing on his tux.
“Wait.” Pleads Ian before he mounts the steps.
Mickey looks at him, wide blue saucers threatening to well up with tears. “Yeah?”
Ian pulls Mickey close by the tie. Neither boy thinks about the exposure to the open air provided by the opened basement hatch. They only started kissing a couple weeks ago. A chaste kiss outside of Ned’s McMansion. A sleepover spent exploring each other with their lips. One aggressive kiss before they banged not twenty minutes ago.
But this is a goodbye kiss. Ian wants to put every bit of emotion into it, wants Mickey to physically feel just how much Ian cares for him. He wants Mickey to remember him when he’s gone.
Minutes later, maybe hours later, they pull apart from the kiss and Ian whispers, “I love you too, asshole.”
They both want to giggle at the name-calling. But they’re too dejected. Ian keeps looking back as he walks away, thinking Mickey will have closed the hatch. But Mickey doesn’t close it until Ian is finally out of eyeshot.
That night, Ian gets a text from Mickey’s sister, Mandy.
Mands (20:17:44): Have you Mickey lately???
But what is he supposed to say? Mandy is still in the dark. How does he explain why he was with Mickey minutes before the wedding. He leaves the message on read. Two more texts comes the next day. Then another the day after that. And then they stop.
He does not leave the house for several days.
Not until Friday does he feel up to facing the world. And he knows where he’s going. He gathers up his driver’s license and his diploma and heads to the recruitment office. The process is surprisingly simple. He is registered within minutes and he signs all the forms he needs to. As of tomorrow morning at 0800, Ian will be on a bus and headed to Fort Jackson in South Carolina.
On the way out, he sees a familiar shock of pitch black hair in a puffer jacket surrounded by a plume of smoke. Ian is true to his word. He wants to rush toward him and say his final goodbyes before he goes. But they did that already. He gave Mickey a kiss for the books and told him he loves him. That’s farewell enough. Instead he keeps his distance. He turns and walks in the other direction.
The only family members that know he’s going are Lip and Fiona. He’s eighteen, they can’t stop him. But they walk with him to the designated bus pickup spot and give him enough hugs to suffocate a normal human. After a few minutes in line, he boards the bus and takes the first empty seat.
It’s 0759, a minute before the bus is due to leave. Ian has been engrossed in the one book he packed with him, looking down. He would rather let his imagination get engrossed in an imaginary war in a fantasy realm than be stuck thinking of what he’s leaving behind all the way from here to the East Coast.
“This seat taken?” No. It couldn’t be. He looks up. “Mickey?”
“Mind if I…?”
He’s paralyzed in surprise. The shorter boy had put it in no uncertain terms that this wasn’t a way out he’d be willing to take.
“Red?”
“Yeah. Yes, c’mon. Sit.” Mickey lowers himself to eye level, wedging in as close to Ian as possible without raising anyone's alarm. He feels like he needs to pinch himself. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
The bus pulls away. Ian doesn’t even notice Fiona and Lip waving to him from the street.
He shrugs. “Never made it to the altar. I gave the whore everything I had and told her to fuck off on the next Greyhound out of here.”
“So that’s why Mandy’s been texting me?”
“Suppose so. I haven’t been around the house. Been hiding out from Terry all week. Figured I had to go somewhere. Might as well hide from the old bastard somewhere well-defended.”
“What happened to ‘better the devil you know?’”
“Well,” Mickey starts, subtly resting a pinky finger on Ian’s knee, “Maybe the unknown devil’s not so bad when there’s an angel by your side.”