Okay, this one really is random, but I was watching a program that sort of gave me the idea. . . that's my excuse. Don't know how it turned out, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Please read, review and hopefully enjoy. . .
Ian knew he should be over it by now. It had been six years after all.
Six years since he came home on leave to find out that Mickey Milkovich had taken a bullet in the back from one of the local gang leaders. He'd died in hospital and nobody had known about it until a week later when they'd already cremated him. Mandy had tipped his ashes out under the El, because she said Mickey wouldn't want any fancy shit and he didn't have any favourite place, but he had used to get high under the El a hell of a lot.
Ian hadn't been there for that, nobody had thought to tell him about that until he'd come home on leave and mentioned going around to see Mandy and maybe see if Mickey had managed to keep out of jail. Fiona's response had been a simple one, "Oh, did you hear, Mickey was shot six months ago, but you should probably go see Mandy yeah, she's been pretty lonely since he died."
Ian had never had a panic attack before and he'd never had one since, but he had one then.
And still he woke up every morning and his first thought always seemed to be: Mickey's dead.
Whenever he went home, he kept expecting to see Mickey sauntering out of some dark alley or sitting under the El getting high. He went to the dugout and expected Mickey to be there, waiting for him so that they could fuck. He kept expecting something, anything to happen where Mickey would just pop up out of the darkness and it would all turn out to be one big mistake.
It never happened and eventually, Ian started going home less and less and when he did, he didn't leave the house because it was the one place he'd never been with Mickey, the one place he couldn't find a single thing to remind him of the ex-con.
Everything in the army reminded him of Mickey though.
When he saw a gun or heard a gunshot he thought of that time Mickey had been shot in the leg by Kash. If he saw blood on someone's lips, he'd think of that time Mickey had kissed him with a split lip until blood filled both of their mouths. If he saw someone mouthing off to a senior officer, he thought of how bad Mickey would have handled authority like this. He couldn't escape him, maybe that was why he couldn't forget.
Or maybe it was because his heart just wouldn't let him.
Some nights he'd lie in his bunk and silently chant to himself, "Nothing but a wet mouth, nothing but a wet mouth." He thought maybe if he convinced himself Mickey had never given a shit, it would have all been okay, he would have been able to laugh again without feeling guilty. It never worked, because he knew it was just a lie. No matter what Mickey had said, he'd cared.
Ian was made an officer and it was everything he had ever wanted to be. He threw himself into it, thinking that would help, that that would make him forget. All it meant was that he had something to do rather than live in the past, but the fact he'd be right back there when he closed his eyes at night never escaped him.
He just couldn't forget.
It was six years to the day that Mickey Milkovich had died and while most of his platoon went off into the nearby town on their weekend leave, Ian just got several bottles of vodka and like every year wondered if it would be possible for him to drink himself to death. It was the same each and every year and nobody bothered him anymore they just left him to it. They knew he'd be back to as normal as he ever had been or could ever be anymore by the time the morning came.
He staggered outside, needing the cool night's air, already half drunk and still going. He had one full bottle clutched in his hand as he raised the other to his lips. The liquid burned a path down his throat and made his wince and almost gag, but he was practically numb to it now. He didn't even want to think what these days did to his liver. When he could, he drank enough for both him and Mickey combined nowadays, he thought the ex-con would have been proud of him. He wasn't a lightweight anymore.
Some people saluted him as they walked past but he waved them off slightly drunkenly. They were newer, you could tell by the glances they gave him, the ones full of concern. Wisely, they left him be.
He tripped and almost fell, crashing into someone and unable to stop the stream of illogical laughter that burst from his lungs. He thought he heard someone talking to him, but he couldn't really think. He was lowered to the floor and he sat there on the side of a road with his legs stretched out in front of him and saluted thin air as he touched the bottle to his lips again.
"Fuck you Milkovich," he muttered, or maybe he shouted it and tipped some of the clear liquid on the ground as he slurred, "And have a drink on me." He laughed again and seemed to sigh at the same time.
He froze when he heard someone shout his name and felt his heart jump into his mouth, the panic bubbling up inside of him. He hadn't heard that name in a long time, sometimes it felt like a lifetime away. And the part of him that was all about survival told him to run for the hills, not to be drawn in by it because it was obviously from around the corner that the shout had come and there was no way they could have seen him.
But then the stupid part of his mind was telling him that all he had to do was poke his head around the corner. He'd heard the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat', but he figured he wasn't fucking elegant enough to be a cat so that really didn't apply to him. And he was curious, he couldn't deny that.
And he was on an army base for fuck's sake. There was no way anyone could have found him here.
So he put down the bin that he had been emptying and edged towards the corner of the building, towards the road where the shout had come from. He took his time, because he was curious, not suicidal and he listened hard to see if anything else was going to be said.
It wasn't.
And he didn't expect what it was he saw.
There was a person dressed in combat trousers and a dark tank top, sitting slumped on the side of the road. He had one bottle sitting beside him on the ground and was drinking healthily from the other one. The guy was obviously drunk, even though it was getting darker, he could tell that much.
"Todd, don't mind him," another guy, Chase, who worked in the kitchens with him came to see what he was looking at, "He does this every year." Chase's features were twisted into an expression of sympathy. "It sort of sad actually, he's apparently this great officer, but every year he gets pissed out of his skull and wandering around the base."
"Why?" he asked, frowning at the guy in question where he seemed to have drained the last of the bottle and let it roll away from him. Without even hesitating for a moment to let his liver rest or something, he reached for the other bottle and unscrewed the top. His hands were shaking, they could see that from where they stood.
Chase shrugged. "There's lots of theories," he said, "But no one really knows anything for fact, you ask him he just tells you that someone he knew died." Chase smiled sadly, "My guess, it was his boyfriend or something."
"Boyfriend?"
"Oh yeah, he's gay," Chase said, shrugging, "Not a bad guy though, you wouldn't have guessed." He didn't know why that made him walk forwards, why it felt like he was being dragged forwards like there was some sort of magnetic pull attracting him to this guy sitting on the side of the road.
"What you drunk for?" he asked when he came to stand behind the guy.
He didn't look up. "I'm not drunk," he muttered and the voice was almost heartbreakingly familiar, "Not yet anyway."
And he should have left it there, he knew he should have left it there, but he just couldn't. So instead he asked, "Fine then, who died?"
He knew he wasn't imagining the way that the guy's shoulders tensed and he took a deep swig from the bottle clutched in his hand. "Someone important to me," he said, exhaling loudly, "What about you, who died?"
"Me," he said without thinking, even though it was strictly true.
The guy turned around and his eyes narrowed slightly as he obviously tried to see through the blur in his vision. "Well you look pretty alive to me," he said, frowning, but Mickey wasn't noticing that. No, he was too busy feeling like someone had hit him with the truck. He saw the dark red hair, the freckles and that mouth that seemed strange without a smile on it. He stared and he felt like the world was falling out from underneath his feet.
It sort of felt like he was seeing a ghost, except this was the ghost of his past.
He should have walked away right then. No, in fact, he should have run. But he didn't. Instead he slowly lowered himself to the ground beside the one person he hadn't been able to put behind him from his past and through the twist of jealousy that someone was making the redhead feel like this, he asked, "Tell me about them."
He didn't know why he asked that. But he couldn't very well take it back once the words were out.
Ian knew he was well on his way to being drunk when he looked up at the person standing behind him and for a second thought it was Mickey. He sort of wanted to take the guy's fingerless gloves off of him to check out his knuckles, but he knew that was stupid. He saw the blonde hair and swallowed down the pain in his chest.
"Tell me about them," the guy said, Ian didn't even know his name.
And maybe that was why Ian wasn't telling him to fuck off, why he wasn't telling him to mind his own Goddamn business. Maybe that was why he actually answered. Or maybe it was just because he was sort of drunk and couldn't really think of anything other than what he'd lost at that moment.
"He was a dick," he said, because that was the first thing that popped into his mind, "He swore too much, didn't shower enough and everybody hated him. He was short as well, but it was sort of cute even though if I'd ever told him that he would have killed me. He didn't like me letting him know that I actually liked him. He used to do this thing with his forefinger where he'd rub it across his bottom lip or sometimes he'd lick the corner of his mouth and I don't think he even realised he was doing it, but I noticed every single time."
Ian took another drink from the bottle, staring at the ground like maybe Mickey's face would magically appear there.
"He'd never let me kiss him and he considered any foreplay that wasn't just to lube him up or make one of us hard enough to fuck a waste of time," he continued even though the guy beside him hadn't made any indication of wanting him to continue. He hadn't told him to shut up either though, so that was something. "We only fucked face to face twice, the second time my Dad walked in on us, but the first time he bit me so hard on the shoulder that I still have the scar." He reached up and touched the mark and found himself smiling a little stupidly. "He thought I talked to much, thought I was stupid for wanting to join the army, didn't really seem to like me all that much and hated if I ever told him I missed him when he went to Juvie or that I liked him when he was out of it. He used to smile in his sleep and it was the only time he ever really would smile, otherwise he just sort of smirked."
He took another drink and pulled a face as it slid down his throat, burning.
"He once stabbed someone over Jell-O with a plastic fork," he said randomly, "And I remember thinking that that the guy he'd stabbed was fucking lucky because he could still walked. Mickey always really liked his Jell-O."
Ian hadn't eaten Jell-O since Mickey had died.
"He went to Juvie a second time for punching this cop in the face and I was always too scared to go see him, not because of what he would say, but because I didn't know what I would have done if he had refused to talk to me," he said, not sure why he was confessing to this. Normally he kept his mouth shut on all things concerning Mickey, just suffered in silence. "I only saw him once in between when he got out and I went to WestPoint. He was getting high in these dugouts where we'd fucked once."
He drained the bottle, wondering how he'd drunk it all that fast and thinking that he should have been feeling better now, not worse. He knew he wasn't really angry about that, but the fact he wasn't drunk enough to feel numb just seemed to tip him over the edge.
"And then he fucking died," he said, practically snarling, "He went and pissed off one of the guys everybody knew you shouldn't piss off because he thought he was invincible because he was Mickey Fucking Milkovich and nobody would ever touch him because he scared the shit out of everyone. And he got shot in the back and nobody even thought to tell me until almost a year after it had happened, because when he had been alive the dickhead had been too much of a pussy to admit even to me that I wasn't just another warm mouth."
He threw the bottle away, hearing it smash somewhere in front of him.
He didn't even know if the guy he was talking to was still there, he didn't want to look, didn't want to see the judgement or the pity in his eyes.
"I was the one that went off to war, I was the one that was supposed to die first," he said, scowling, "He wasn't supposed to leave me, he was always supposed to be around so that one day when I had the courage I could actually go and tell the fucker how much I loved him."
He snorted and glanced sideways to see the guy – he still didn't know his name – staring at the floor. Ian couldn't read his expression, it was hidden in shadow with the way he was hunched over. "What's your story, then?" he asked, because he was done talking and he thought it was only polite that since he'd had his rant this guy was entitled to one too. He looked depressed about something, it almost made Ian wish he'd shared his vodka.
The guy didn't look up and Ian thought he wasn't going to speak, but in the end he did.
"I died," he said and his voice struck a cord inside of Ian because it was familiar, because it sounded like Mickey. He knew that was just his wishful thinking though, it was just because of the date. "I didn't have anything to live for, because the one thing I'd ever cared about had waltzed off to war, so I got reckless, said the wrong things to the wrong people and got shot for my trouble."
Ian couldn't take his eyes away from the guy next to him, his heart wouldn't let him.
"I woke up in the hospital and they explained what had happened, explained that the person I had been was dead and that I had to go into witness protection because they might need me to testify at some point," he said, his voice sort of dead sounding, "So I went, because I didn't have anything left there anymore. I had a sister, but she'd be better off without me, I knew that. And it wasn't like I had any friends who were going to notice I'd gone, in fact I'm pretty sure the community was going to celebrate my death rather than mourn it."
Ian watched him toy with his gloves and again, he was struck with the urge to take them off the guy, just so he could look at his knuckles, so that he could search the pale skin for those familiar tattoos.
"I got sent to army bases to work in the kitchens, because they figured it was a job and a place to sleep and the chances of me being found here by the people who were hunting me were a lot slimmer," he said. Ian saw his eyes flicker in his direction, but when he saw Ian was watching him, he looked away quickly. "And I didn't complain because even though I fucking hated the army, it reminded me of him, it sort of made me think that I was closer to him or something stupid." The guy spat on the floor, because he was obviously classy like that. "But I only end up searching for him whenever I look at all the soldiers standing there on parade and sometimes I just wish that fucking bullet had killed me."
Ian stared at him, watching as he slowly looked up and met Ian's eyes. "Who are you?" he asked, trying to see past his blurred vision and past the blonde hair, trying to imagine the person in front of him to be dirtier and dark haired and sneering.
The guy didn't resist as Ian reached across and started to pull of his gloves.
Even in the dim light Ian could see the tattoos there on the guy's knuckles and he felt tears blurring his vision before he could stop them. "I really am drunk," he muttered, skimming his fingers over the guy's knuckles, wanting to let go, knowing he should, but he wasn't able to.
"If that's what you want to believe, Firecrotch," he muttered, sliding his fingers through Ian's and squeezing them tight, "Or you could just believe what I just fucking said, stop crying and look pleased to see me still alive."
Ian did one better than that, because whether or not he was imagining it, whether or not it really was Mickey sitting in front of him, he didn't care. He grabbed Mickey's head, digging his fingers into the blonde hair and pulled him close, mashing their lips together.
He was surprised when Mickey's mouth moved against his, even more so when his tongue flicked past the seam of Ian's lips and slid over the top of his. "You do know the idea of witness protection is that you don't tell people who you are, right?" he asked when they pulled apart, but he made sure he stayed close enough that he could taste Mickey's breath on the back of his tongue.
"Fuck you, Gallagher," he replied, his fingers digging hard into Ian's waist, "You're still the one crying like a bitch." Ian wondered if Mickey even realised he was too.