Lifelines
by Sandrine Shaw
Joey is twenty-seven when he's pronounced dead.
Joey is fifteen when he first hears about Mitch McDeere. He can't put a face to the name yet, doesn't really care to. He's fifteen years old and his dad's in prison because some rat sold him out to the FBI and ran, and Joey's anger drowns out everything.
His father used to keep him away from the business as much as he could, kept his office locked and sent Joey away to do his homework when he was in a meeting. But now he looks at Joey through the plexiglass wall during the bi-monthly visit his lawyer fought tooth and nail to get granted, and he tells Joey that he has to step up.
"Sorry, son," he tells him. He's a big man, and Joey only remembers him larger than life and invincible, all neat suits and thick cigars, but since they put him away, he lost a lot of weight and his face looks sallow and pale. "You gotta be the head of the family now. No-one else to take care of things but you."
Joey presses his hand against the glass when what he really wants is to smash it into pieces. He swears that McDeere will pay one day, that the first thing he'll do when he's in charge is hunt the man down and make him regret taking his father away from him.
Joey is eighteen when he kills his first man.
He's been around guns his whole life. He's familiar with the smell of gun oil, with the ear-piercing sound they make when they're fired in close proximity, with how heavy they feel in your hand when you close your fingers around the handle. He's watched people die in front of him without batting an eye.
Pulling the trigger himself shouldn't make a difference, but it does.
Bobby Caruso is a terrible person no one is going to miss, a drug dealer dumb enough to try and steal from the mob. Killing him is about sending a signal, making sure that every lowlife on the streets knows that this is what happens to people who try and mess with the Italians. Making Joey do it is about having him prove himself, a twisted coming of age ritual Joey doesn't question.
He passes.
He does what's expected of him. That's the important part. And if afterwards, he spends an hour with his head over a toilet bowl in his father's marble-tiled bathroom, puking out his guts, that's no-one's business but Joey's. The pungent, smokey smell of the gunfire clogs his nose, and the sight of Caruso's brain splattered on the floor in red and pink specks like horrible confetti has burnt itself into his retinas. Every time he closes his eyes, the image is there, a snuff movie in his mind that won't stop playing.
"You okay, kid?" Sal asks when Joey steps out, the need to get some air stronger than the desire to hide himself away.
He knows what kind of a picture he makes, has seen himself in the bathroom mirror: white as a sheet and his eyes bloodshot, the artificial light making the red stand out even worse.
Joey shrugs it off, not bothering to answer the question. "Not a kid anymore, Sal."
Joey is twenty-five when they first call him boss.
What he wants to do is sleep in and miss his morning classes, party too hard with his fellow students, attend frat parties and do stupid shit that could get him arrested on public indecency charges. Instead, he's the head of his Chicago mob, and people look up to him and fear him but at the same time they keep letting him know that the respect he has hasn't been earned but inherited.
He's following in his father's footsteps because it's what his father expected of him, and he knows there are a lot of people out there who think those footsteps might be a little too big for him. He knows they're wrong, and he proves it to them in the most violent way he can so no-one will question him again. What he doesn't tell them, doesn't tell anyone, is that the problem with the footsteps isn't so much the size but the shape, all wrong for his shoes.
Sitting on his own at the bar at Roma with his fingers curled around a glass of Scotch, he feels the bitterness settle over him like a suffocating cloud of poison gas, silently cursing his father and Mitch fucking McDeere and everyone who pushed him on this path when it's nothing he ever wanted.
He pulls himself together and makes tough choices, and every day feels like an uphill battle. So far, he's won them all, but it's a victory by the skin of his teeth and he knows one day it's not gonna be enough.
Making McDeere work for him seemed like an ingenious move in theory, but in reality it's unexpectedly hard and frustrating because Mitch is nothing like Joey thought he would be. He's brave and annoying and stupidly principled. He keeps pushing when he shouldn't and questioning Joey like he has the self-preservation instincts of a lemming, and Joey admires him as much as he hates him.
For every moment when he's tempted to pull his gun and put a bullet through Mitch's stubborn brain, there's one when he just wants to break down and ask the guy to fix Joey's life for him.
Miraculously, he stops himself from doing either.
Joey is twenty-seven when he's pronounced dead.
He sits alone in a small impersonal motel room with ugly wallpaper, staring into the empty space in front of him and wondering if he's made the worst mistake of his life. He never wanted this life, but it's the only life he's known, and the future is vast and uncertain and frightening. And that's if it all works out. If they don't find him before the Marshals relocate him. If no one recognizes his face. If he doesn't give himself away.
It's too late now to turn back. Not when he's already given the Feds everything he knows. He wouldn't survive a day, and the next time he dies, it'll stick.
He flinches when he hears the door opening and instinctively reaches for a gun he doesn't have any more. It makes him feel helpless and frustrated, and instead of being relieved when it's just Louis Coleman walking into the room rather than a hitman the Russians sent after him, he's irrationally angry.
"I should at least have a weapon so I can protect myself. I'm a sitting duck here. But I suppose it would solve a lot of problems for you if someone disposed of me before you had to go through the trouble of getting me to safety."
Louis sighs the long-suffering sigh of someone who's been at his job for a long time and is well used to having the people under his care flip out at him. "There's an agent right outside the door. Two more in the van across the street and another two in the rooms next to yours. Trust me when I say you've never been safer in your life than you are right now, Joey."
His tone is mild, almost amused, and Joey realizes that his emotions are all over the place because Louis' flippant attitude should piss him off but it does in fact have the opposite effect. He drops his head into his hands and rubs his forehead, annoyed with himself.
Louis drops a reassuring hand on Joey's shoulder. "Hey. It's okay to be scared. But you're doing fine."
Joey laughs humorlessly. "If this is doing fine, Marshal, I don't want to see the people who don't do fine by your standards." Truth is, Louis' words are helping. He seems to have a knack for finding the right things to say, offering reassurance rather than comfort that Joey wouldn't accept, and not once uttering any of the condescending you're doing the right thing kind of talk.
With a lopsided smile, Louis gives his shoulder a brief squeeze and sits down next to him, handing him an envelope. "Photos from your funeral. I figured you might want to have a look."
"You guys are fucking morbid," Joey says, but he takes the envelope and reaches inside. It's curiosity mostly, but also a touch of nostalgia. This is the last time he'll see any of these people, and even though in most cases he'll be glad to see the last of them, there's the bittersweet realization that he'll soon be severing the final tie to his old life.
Most of the pictures show nothing he hadn't expected. His men in dark suits, wearing stony expressions. Dancers from his club wiping tears – fake or not – from under their giant sunglasses. Old business partners eyeing each other warily over the open grave, like sharks ready to strike. (And they will. Sooner rather than later. He won't even be out of town by the time they start fighting over who'll take Joey's place.)
Sal looks genuinely sad, and for a moment Joey feels an unexpected stab of affection for the man. I should have valued his loyalty more, he thinks. But it's too late for those kinds of regrets now. He hopes whoever will step into his shoes will appreciate Sal.
Moving on to the next photo, he's surprised to see two of his fellow students from ECU. He went for drinks with them a couple of times. If he'd been a different man with a simpler life, they might have been friends. That they would attend his funeral somehow, in a roundabout way, makes him feel better about his decision to walk away from all this.
He flicks forward a couple of shots that seem unremarkable until he finds one that has him stop short.
There's Mitch McDeere, looking… not like a man who's now free of what was undoubtedly one of the biggest threats to his life. Joey understands why his men would fake grief over his death, hoping it would help give them an in with whoever follows him or to lull the others into a sense of security while they're sharpening the knives. But Mitch has nothing to gain from standing over Joey's grave with a solemn expression – he has no reason to even be there to begin with, if not to gloat and celebrate the fact that a man who used threats to coerce him into working for the mob is gone.
Joey flashes back to the day Sal and Antonio first showed him the surveillance photos of Mitch, fresh out of witness protection, telling him this was his chance to eliminate the man responsible for his father's arrest. He brushes his thumb over Mitch's grim face in the snapshot from the funeral before handing the stack of photos back to Louis.
"Keep an eye on McDeere. Just in case someone in the family thinks they can prove themselves by getting revenge for my father now that I'm out of the way."
Louis eyes him curiously. "Don't worry, I've got it covered."
Joey is thirty-two, and the name on his graduation certificate is Daniel Gallo.
He lives an uncomplicated life. He'd tell you that it's taken him months to get used to it, but the truth is, it's been five years and he still isn't used to it yet. Not completely.
When a car brakes with screeching tires anywhere close to him, it makes him flinch. Every knock on his door is a potential danger from his past. When he gets angry, he sometimes reaches to the back of his waistband where his gun used to be. There are nightmares he can't shake, dreams when he sees the faces of the people he killed or comes home to find the Russians waiting for him, his apartment littered with the dead bodies of his new friends.
It's… hard. It's hard being around college kids and sheltered middle-class people who never had anyone shoot at them. It's hard not automatically being deferred to, having his decisions regularly challenged and not being able to just order someone to get shit done.
Mostly, it's hard because it's not hard at all. Because he wakes up in the morning next to whomever he's currently seeing and there are no life-or-death situations hovering on his schedule and the only risks he runs are missing some classes or a job interview. And if that person he's seeing happens to be a guy, no one is going to give him shit about it.
None of his relationships last long because, even with the rigid rules of WitSec and Louis checking in on him regularly, there's a kind of freedom to this new life he isn't willing to give up just yet. Not having any expectations placed on him except his own is still a novelty to him, and it's exhilarating.
He may not be used to this life, but he likes it.
When he sees Mitch again, Joey is thirty-five.
It's not a chance meeting. He needs a lawyer because some shit is going down in the company he did specs for two months ago. (In ninety percept of the cases, accounting is the most boring job in the world. It just figures that he's one of the remaining ten percent because this is his life and he's attracting danger like a magnet.)
He's defying every witness protection protocol there is. He's supposed to inform the Marshal Service, stay away from the big cities in general and the big city lawyers in particular and under no circumstances get in touch with someone from his old life. It all makes sense and it's in his own best interest. Joey likes the life he built for himself well enough; he doesn't want to go back. He especially doesn't want to wind up dead in a ditch with a hole through his forehead.
But the moment he realizes that he needs legal counsel, his mind immediately latches onto the idea that he should go to Mitch, and even though he knows that it's a terrible idea, reckless and dangerous enough to undo everything he's worked for, he can't shake it off. Louis is going to be pissed, but Joey can't bring himself to care because he misses Mitch and he's been wanting to have a chance to talk to him ever since Louis showed him the photos of his funeral.
So on a Friday morning he walks into Mitch's office, past Tammy who doesn't even look up from the magazine she's reading when he greets her and just snaps at him, "If you're his nine o'clock, you better hurry. You're five minutes late."
He knocks on the door and enters.
Mitch is bent over the files Joey sent him and he absent-mindedly says, "Sit down, Mr. Gallo," before he looks up. Joey can tell the exact moment the look in his eyes changes from the mildly curious assessment of a new client to sharp recognition once he sees past the hipster glasses, past the short business haircut and the beard.
He can't hold back the smirk at Mitch's wide-eyed expression, different enough from the first time he walked into his office a little over a decade ago but equally satisfying.
Mitch looks older, less boyish. The hair at his temples is silver and his hairline has wandered higher. There are lines around his eyes and his mouth that weren't there ten years ago. He looks a little weary, but his eyes are as sharp and clear and blue as ever, and Joey feels his smile softening as he holds Mitch's gaze, thinking how good it is to see him again.
"I was at your funeral," is the first thing Mitch says.
"I know. Louis showed me the pictures."
"Louis." Mitch mutters a string of curses under his breath. "Jesus, Joey."
"Danny," Joey corrects. He pulls out the chair opposite Mitch's and flops down lazily, stretching out his legs. There's something about seeing Mitch again that makes him feel like the arrogant, confident mob boss he thought he left behind years ago. It's almost a little scary how easy it is to don that personality, like he never walked from it at all.
"Right. Daniel Gallo." Mitch frowns at him, because obviously he knows how witness protection works and he's probably aware of all the do's and don't's, just as well as the fact that Joey is breaking about a dozen rules just by being in this room with him. "Should you be here?"
"Obviously not. But come on now, when have you ever known me for doing what I'm supposed to do? I've missed you. I just couldn't stay away." He makes it sound like a joke, a flippant explanation indicating that he's fucking with Mitch, but if he's honest, he's not. He missed him and he couldn't make himself stay away. It's nothing less than the truth, even if he feels ridiculous admitting it.
"Are you going to blackmail me into working for you again?" Mitch asks, but his smile takes the sting out of the question.
"I thought I'd try a different strategy this time. Try and bribe you with dinner instead, maybe? I can tell you all about the case then, at least the rest of what isn't in the file. And if you're intrigued, you take the case."
"How about you come by my house instead and we order in?"
Joey raises an eyebrow at him. "Are you afraid that being seen in public with me might be too risky for you? Getting cautious in your old age, Mitch?"
His dig earns him little more than a snort. "More like, afraid that being seen with me is going to put you in danger. I've never exactly been low profile, Danny."
"Your concern for my well-being is touching. Won't Abby mind if a supposedly dead former head of the Chicago mob shows up at the doorstep?"
"Abby?" For a moment, Mitch seems taken aback, like he genuinely hadn't thought about it. "I don't know. I suppose she wouldn't be happy. But seeing as she's been living in Connecticut for six years now and is married to a pediatrician, I don't see how it's her business who I'm inviting over for dinner."
Joey doesn't know why the news makes him as happy as it does. He didn't have much to do with Abby, back in the day. They only met a handful of times, maybe, and even though she was understandably unhappy with his presence in Mitch's life, he didn't dislike her. She seemed like a strong-willed, intelligent woman, well-suited for Mitch. Joey knows that Mitch's temporary, involuntary stint as a mob lawyer must have put a strain on their relationship, but he thought that if their marriage survived witness protection, it would survive anything.
"Sorry," he offers, without quite meaning it.
Mitch shrugs, like it's not a big deal, like his family wasn't the reason he gave up his life and ran after exposing Joey's father. "Not your fault. Abby just wanted a quieter life for herself and Claire. I guess I wasn't ready for it at the time."
Joey listens closely for any nostalgia or regret in Mitch's voice, but there is none. Six years is a long time, he concedes, long enough to get used to someone's absence in your life. So then why does it feel like it was only yesterday Joey shook hands with Mitch after Patrick walked free?
Later that evening, he finds himself in the living room of Mitch's new apartment with five take-out boxes of Thai scattered over the couch table and Mitch pouring them another glass of wine, finishing the bottle as Joey talks about what he's been doing the past few years.
Mitch watches him intently. "It's weird seeing you like this."
"Like this? What, alive?" Joey raises an eyebrow and smirks.
Shaking his head, Mitch swirls the wine around in his glass, staring into it as if it held all the answers. His smile is almost fond and makes a queasy feeling settle in the pit of Joey's stomach. "Not what I meant. Just… older. Relaxed. Not backing up every statement with a threat."
Joey can't quite hold back the snort, because he remembers threatening Mitch all too well, and the way it didn't really get him anywhere most of the time. "Like you were ever impressed by my threats to begin with."
Mitch shrugs. "When Kevin Stack tried to intimidate me, he kidnapped and tortured my wife. You shot a hole in my bar certificate."
"What can I say? I had a soft spot for you."
Much like his earlier admission of missing Mitch, Joey hides the truth of the statement behind a flippant, ironic tone. He doesn't think he's particularly successful, though, because Mitch doesn't crack a smile or fling a sharp comeback. He just stares at him until Joey gets fidgety and uncomfortable. Just as he's about to say something, Mitch suddenly leans forward, closing the gap between them, and presses his lips to Joey's.
It's a short, dry kiss, not exactly hesitant, but not lingering either. Still, it's enough for Joey to close his eyes and lean in, heart racing when Mitch breaks away.
When he opens his eyes, Mitch is licking his lips. He looks flushed, and more unsure than Joey's ever seen him. "Tell me I haven't been reading this wrong."
Joey laughs, because seeing Mitch McDeere so nervous and wrong-footed is such a novelty that it's almost absurd.
"Haven't you learned yet to trust your instincts, counselor?" he teases, trying to toe the line between cocky and reassuring. He doesn't know if he manages because he isn't patient enough to wait for Mitch's reaction, instead tangling his hand in Mitch's hair and pulling him back in for another kiss.
He tastes like red wine and spices, and the smell of his aftershave fills Joey's senses, evoking memories. An argument in a parking lot, gunfire, Mitch's body covering his own. Did Joey already want him back then? Maybe. Probably. Still, if Mitch had tried to kiss him in the old days – not that he would have, between Abby and his firm morals – Joey would have given him a black eye, or worse.
They're different people now, and as Joey deepens the kiss, lying back and pulling Mitch on top of him, he can't help but be grateful for all the decisions – good and bad both – that led him to this place. Mitch's solid weight pushing his body down into the cushions of the couch is like an anchor, inexplicably familiar and excitingly new at the same time, and Joey feels overwhelmed in the best and worst possible way because he wants this, more of this, everything, and he doesn't think he'll be able to let go once he has a taste of it.
When he wakes up, the sun's up already and the bed next to him is empty. He puts on his boxers and steps out into the kitchen where Mitch is leaning on the counter with a cup of coffee in his hand, Joey's files spread out in front of him.
Mitch looks up and smiles. "Hey. There's coffee over there if you want some. Maybe there's some cereal left from when Claire last came to visit, but it might be a little stale. Sorry, I'm not big on breakfast."
Joey snorts. When he opens the fridge, he finds a deserted wasteland. "You sure you're actually living here? I'd offer to cook but I don't know any recipes based on nothing but beer and moldy bananas. I'm good, but not that good."
"Glad to hear you're still as modest as ever," Mitch snarks back. "I can buy some stuff later. Can you stay for a while, or do you have anywhere you're supposed to be?"
"You mean like in my office, doing accounting for the company that's embezzling money and is possibly involved in gun-running and human trafficking? Yeah, no, I don't think I'm going back there anytime soon."
He knows that's not what Mitch is asking. What Mitch wants to know is if Joey has a life he'd been walking away from, a girlfriend or a boyfriend back home, people who are going to miss him. There's no good way to answer that. He's not in a relationship, but he's made plenty of connections, he has friends he regrets leaving behind. At the same time, when he copied the files and made the choice to seek out Mitch, he knew that he might not return, so there's no point in bringing it up.
Mitch's forehead furrows into a frown when he looks down at the files. "Are they going to come after you?"
Joey winces. "Possibly? I don't know. I didn't make a big fuss when I left, so maybe they don't think that I'll be a problem. But if it were me, I'd want to make sure no one with access to that sort of information walked away and lived. Sorry for dragging you into this."
"Don't be." Mitch's tone is firm and he looks Joey straight in the eye. "Look, as your lawyer I should tell you to inform your handler of the situation right away. We both know that you're violating the rules of the program, and they'll want to get you away from here."
"And as my–" He doesn't quite know how to finish the sentence, doesn't know how to label them after last night. He motions between them. "Whatever this is."
Mitch's lips twitch into a wry smile. "As someone who doesn't really want you to disappear from his life again, I'd advise you to lay low for a while. Stay here, don't show your face around town, especially don't get in touch with anyone else who might know you as Joey Morolto. Let me see what I can dig up on Forsythe Industries to prove your theory. When I have something of substance, we'll give Louis a call."
His heart is beating a storm in his chest. He wants to agree to Mitch's suggestion, wants whatever borrowed time Mitch is offering before he has to go and start all over again, leave everything behind one more time. Leave Mitch behind, when he only just had him back. He likes to imagine that Mitch is as reluctant about that as he is, but he's uncertain enough to ask for reassurance. "Is that safe? For you, I mean. What about that quiet life you implied you were ready for now?"
"I can always go back to WitSec when this is over." Mitch says, too casually. Like it's a joke, except for the way he looks at Joey, his gaze too intense and too blue and – almost – too much. Except that Joey wants what he thinks Mitch is offering, even when it's too soon and too much commitment and not the sort of thing you discuss when you're high on late-night sex and danger-fueled adrenaline. But despite the years of distance between them, Mitch has been a fixture in Joey's life for as long as he can think. He knows Mitch, and – perhaps more importantly – Mitch knows him in return, something that's rare enough in the life he's been living. Mitch knows all his dirty secrets, the blank spots on his resume, the ugly truths, and he still wants Joey around.
He puts down the coffee and leans in to kiss Mitch, slow and deep and dirty enough to leave both of them breathing hard. He offers a cocky smirk when he can feel Mitch harden against him, his back pressing uncomfortably into the counter. "Sounds like we have a plan then, counselor."
Joey is thirty-eight, and he wakes up at six in the morning because the cat is digging his claws into Joey's calf. Sleep is still something that's hard to come by – the nightmares have become less frequent but it's still every couple of days that he wakes up drenched in cold sweat with the image of Bobby Caruso's dead body haunting him – and he doesn't appreciate having one of his rare undisturbed nights cut short.
Groaning, he hides his face in the pillow. "I swear to God, one day I'm going to shoot the little bastard."
Next to him Mitch chuckles sleepily, sounding entirely too amused. "I'm sure Carlos is really intimidated by your threats."
Joey decides that it's not really worth the energy to turn around and show him the finger.
Mitch adores the cat, even though both he and Joey are dog people. Carlos was a gift from Louis, who claimed that having a cat would fit in well with their cover story and flesh out the personas the Marshals created for them. 'Gay couple moving to the West Coast, buying a house with an ocean view. Those fucking hipster types always have cats. I'm sure if you arrive without one, your neighbors will know something's up.'
Basically, Louis is a dick and Joey hates him, almost as much as he hates Carlos.
When Joey raises his head and risks a peek, Mitch is fast asleep again, his body curved towards Joey's. Still restless, Carlos is walking over Joey's legs into the middle of the bed, only lying down when he comes to rest between their heads.
The look Joey gives him used to make grown men cower, back when he was clean-shaven and younger and his word was law amongst the Chicago mob, but he seems to be losing his touch. Carlos looks back with unblinking green cat-eyes, clearly unimpressed, until Joey gives in and reaches out to pet his tiny, furry head. Carlos pushes firmly against Joey's hand and purrs softly. On the other side of the bed, Mitch is smiling in his sleep.
He's had worse mornings, Joey decides.
End.