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Mickey remembers seeing him hovering of Mandy. He remembers the pain that followed for him after that, after the glass had shattered, raining down over Terry’s head.
He remembers the look on Mandy’s face, so scared and breaking apart at the seams. Mandy wasn’t supposed to be there. Terry’s house wasn’t a place for Mandy, it wasn’t a place for any of them, but especially not Mandy.
It was a weird sort of desperation. The need to get out, the need to find any way out that he could.
He remembers waking up, not knowing when he passed out, but waking up with his face sticking to the floorboards. When he’s pulled back, he’d watched the blood drip from his mouth onto the wood.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Blood before water is what people always say.
But what happens when it’s your own blood that makes you bleed? Where’s the loyalty in that?
It always comes down to blood with the Milkovichs it seems. They draw it, they swear by it. They are made to live by it.
Milkovichs look out for their own.
It’s one of the first things that Mickey remembers Terry saying to him, as he’d slipped bullets into the chamber of a gun. He doesn’t remember where Terry was going, but he knows it was because of one of his Uncles that he was.
Blood looks after blood.
But this isn’t looking after. This is just senseless violence because one man wants something to hit that can make a satisfying noise.
He’d scratched at an itch on his wrist, blood flaking off underneath his fingernails and a sharp sting running through his veins. He doesn’t quite know what it was that had him realise the plan of action.
He knows why he did it, doesn’t regret it for a second.
“I need an ambulance,” he’d told 911 ahead of time. “I’ve just slit my wrist.”
“Is it deep?” the person on the other end of the phone line had asked.
It will be, Mickey had thought.
He’d given his address and hung up then. Not much time left, but he liked having the pressure of that ticking clock. It meant no backing out, but it also meant he could live from this.
He wanted to live.
He used to think that maybe he didn’t, but now, with a razor pressed against his vein, he knows he wants to.
His blood is red, bubbling up over his hand, and Mickey hisses, because fuck that hurts more than he’d thought he was going to.
His blood is red, like Ian’s hair. He shouldn’t be thinking of Ian in a moment like this, but how could he not?
How could he not want to think of the one good thing? Of the light in all of this shitty darkness that’s clawing at him.
He dreams about following that light out sometimes, dreams of chasing Ian down and carving a life for themselves somewhere it won’t matter. Somewhere it will only matter to them.
It’s a stupid dream, a pipe dream, but he wants it.
Fuck, how he wants it.
And now he’s dying. He can feel it.
His head’s spinning and he can’t feel his hand anymore, not the one that’s got red all over it anyway.
He wants Ian. Wants Ian to hold his face and kiss him, to tell him something stupid, ask him a ridiculous question.
More than that though, Mickey just doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be in a shitty little house with a father who beats his ass to a pulp passed out on the couch in the next room. He doesn’t want to have to worry about what his dad might do to his sister if he isn’t there to watch over here. He doesn’t want to worry about his brothers getting hit, about him getting hit for reasons they can’t help.
He doesn’t want to be here. Not here.
He wants to be anywhere.
He wants to be at the Halfway House.
He doesn’t want to die. But he’s dying. He’s dying and he knows he is. It’s colder than he thought it would be.
He’s never thought too much about what dying would feel like. Does anybody? He’d always thought it would be quick, just a sudden instant of pain and then nothing. It isn’t.
It’s long and drawn out and painful and everything he does not want to be experiencing.
The funny thing about death though, is that once it starts, it’s impossible to make it stop. There’s nothing he can do to prevent it.
At his Aunt’s funeral there had been so much bullshit about how she’d gone bravely, she’d welcomed death with open arms and a smile on her face because it was her time. Mickey’s Aunt had had cancer though and he didn’t really know her, wasn’t old enough to remember much but the words spoken about her.
Mickey isn’t like his Aunt.
He isn’t about to open his arms wide and say, “Come get me.”
His only reaction is a resounding, “Fuck off.” He isn’t ready yet. He has so much more shit to do.
Who’s going to tell Gallagher?
He doesn’t know where the thought comes from and it’s stupid, really it is. It slips unbidden into his mind and he can’t quite shake it loose afterwards. Because who will be the one to tell him? Will it be the social workers when someone takes Mickey’s place in their room?
Or will Gallagher just go through life thinking Mickey abandoned him?
He grits his teeth. He can feel life literally slipping through his fingers, staining his palms.
I’m not done yet.
He loses track of what time means, because the next thing he knows someone’s prying his eyelids open and shining a light into them. They’re picking him up and he doesn’t want to move, but it’s less effort to just go with it.
They’re propping him up a little and he can see the front of his house. He can see his brother. He can’t see Mandy.
He’s glad he can’t see Mandy.
Blood looks after blood, Mickey thinks as he watches Iggy’s face, the ambulance having come to take him away.
He doesn’t think much else after that.
*****
He relives it sometimes in the quiet of the middle of the night.
He relives it sometimes when Ian is asleep on the other side of the bed, quiet snores rattling out of his chest a little because he’s on his back again.
He relives it sometimes when he really doesn’t want to.
He relives it and it’s worse sometimes than the others. It’s worse this time.
He’s reliving it and he can’t… he doesn’t…
“Hey, Mick… Mick,” Ian’s hands are large either side of his face but it’s making it worse. It shouldn’t be, but it is. It’s making it worse.
He feels boxed in, feels claustrophobic.
He can’t breathe.
He
Can’t
“Mickey, breathe,” Ian says, hands slapping lightly against his cheeks and then fluttering uselessly in the air between them. They look like pale little, clueless birds. Long-winged and clumsy, tapping out against Mickey’s skin.
The world is blurring at the edges, sharpening in random points. A freckle at the corner of Ian’s eye. The edge of his nose. The hollow of his throat.
He feels like he’s dying again.
He’s dying, but he isn’t as cold as last time.
Maybe it’s because Ian’s here. Ian, who is always so warm, the fluttering birds in the palms of his hands chasing away death’s chilling fingers. He still doesn’t want to die though. They’re just starting, well… not really.
But…
He doesn’t want to yet.
This isn’t the end yet. It can’t be, it can’t… it… he doesn’t…
“Mick,” Ian says again, louder this time. “MICKEY!”
The fluttering little birds pick up Mickey’s hand and they press it against something solid and warm.
“Breathe with me,” Ian says. He can’t see Ian’s mouth, can’t see his lips moving, but it’s like the voice is in his head anyway.
Ian’s voice is always in his head. He quite likes it.
“Mickey.”
He can feel Ian’s chest rising underneath his palm and the first pathetic little breath he manages to draw in feels like heaven. That tiny little bit of oxygen chasing the panic out from the edges of his brain.
He’s not dying after all. He should have known Ian wouldn’t let him die.
“That’s it,” Ian says and Mickey wants to chase that voice. He wants to chase it somewhere warm, somewhere safe.
Away from the past and Terry and the Milkovich house. Away from the red spilling out over his palms, too quick for him to be able to stop it.
Ian’s hand is spreading out over the back of his neck, palm rough but firm and Mickey’s forehead is sweaty where it presses against Ian’s. It’s nice though, grounding.
He quite likes this, even though it’s stupid. He quite likes Ian teaching him how to breathe. “I’ve got you,” Ian tells him and Mickey wants to say he knows, he never doubted it, but his throat is to dry.
It takes too much effort to try and chase down the words, so he just nods.
“I couldn’t fucking breathe,” he says later, when Ian has him gathered against his chest, tucked away in the dark of their room, the covers drawn up to their chins.
Ian doesn’t say, “No shit,” or anything like Mickey probably would have done if their roles were reversed. Instead he just looks sad, eyes wide where they’re fixed on Mickey’s face. “You were having a panic attack, Mick,” he says.
It’s weird to have a name for it.
“Why…” Ian trails off, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to ask.
His hands skirt down Mickey’s arms and he tangles their fingers together loosely. It’s Mickey that grips on tight.
“I relieve it sometimes,” he says, drawing Ian’s pointer finger across the lines on his wrist that had faded to practically nothing but now. “It felt like I was dying.”
They’ve shared this story before. The why, the how… he’s told Ian it all before. In a situation just like this actually. Just the two of them swapping secrets in the dark.
“Sometimes when Monica would get really bad, I’d dream about shoving the pills she never took down her throat until she choked.”
“I didn’t try to kill myself. I just wanted to get us out.”
“You almost did,” Ian says and it’s the truth, even though Mickey never thinks of it like that.
“It felt like I was again,” he says. It tastes like a confession.
Ian’s grip on his fingers is tight enough to hurt, but Mickey doesn’t complain. He just edges closer until their noses are brushing, until each of Ian’s exhales are Mickey’s inhales.
He lets Ian teach him how to breathe again.
He lets Ian fill him with a little piece of himself with each small puff of air.
It’s the best way he’s ever breathed.
“How do you explain breathing?” Ian asks seriously and it’s not what Mickey thought he was going to say, but he likes the surprise. Even if it is strange.
He likes the change in subject and relaxes. Maybe that was Ian’s whole incentive.
He frowns. “Why would you need to?”
Ian huffs and Mickey can taste his toothpaste on his breath, a hint of that weird green tea he drinks. It should be gross, but it isn’t. “But say if aliens came down and you had to explain to them breathing, how would you?” he asks.
“Why would they need to know? Can they not breathe?”
Ian rolls his eyes, which is a weird thing to witness from so close up. “Obviously not.”
“But then how are they alive?” he asks.
It’s a stupid conversation, because why would you ever need to explain breathing? Who the fuck can’t breathe or forgets how?
You, his brain supplies him.
“Maybe they breathe through their knees… I don’t know, answer the question.”
“Why would they breathe through their knees?”
“They’re ALIENS, Mick. Just, how would you explain breathing to someone that hasn’t done it before,” Ian says, sounding exasperated but at the same time not really.
He’s smirking and the only way Mickey can think to describe the way Ian is looking at him is fond. He’s pretty sure he’s just looking back at Ian like he’s lost the plot.
Through their knees, what the fuck.
“You wouldn’t need to, because they’d be dead,” he said seriously.
He doesn’t really get why Ian just huffs at that.
He shakes his head. “No but seriously,” he says, like anything about this can possibly be serious. “How would you explain it? You can't just say like… open your mouth and go…” he makes a dramatic sound of sucking in air and Mickey rolls away from him sharply.
He almost falls off the bed from laughing so hard.
“Fuck off,” Ian mutters and even in the semi-dark Mickey can see that his ears are going red.
“What the fuck, Gallagher,” he says, curling up a little as his laughter shakes right through his belly. “The fuck was that noise supposed to be?”
Ian scowls at him and turns onto his other side, arms folded against his chest. “Breathing,” he mumbles into the pillow.
Mickey’s still laughing even as he clambers awkwardly over Ian’s body. He almost falls off the other side and would have done if he hadn’t managed to catch himself on Ian’s shoulder. He pries his arms open and cuddles himself inside them, his arse and one leg hanging off the bed. He’s seriously uncomfortable, but it doesn’t matter.
“Aww, don’t be like that,” he says softly, nudging Ian’s face with his nose. “You can explain breathing to me anytime.”
He slides their mouths together softly, flicking his tongue out across Ian’s lips.
Ian lets out a small huff right into Mickey’s mouth and he smirks. There we go, he thinks. Game over.