Thank you to my lovely Beta Michelle for editing this and also to Billie for telling me whether or not it was working out :P
It was just breathe in, breathe out.
It was just this suspended moment of time where Mickey was just standing there looking down the barrel of a gun at his father. He didn't know if he'd finally cracked, or if this was just the moment when he was seeing everything clearly for the first time, that he was seeing all of his options laid out before him. And he knew what they were now; maybe he'd always known but just hadn't wanted to see them.
And out of all of Mickey's choices, he chose to live. But maybe before anything else, he chose Ian Gallagher, because every time he blinked the only thing that he could picture was that look on Ian's face right before Mickey had hit him. It was all he could see and he'd tried to wash away the image with vodka and whisky, but in some fucked up way that had only managed to make him feel more.
So there he was, looking down the barrel of a gun at his father, seeing the man's mouth twist into a sneer as he spat out the words, "You ain't gonna pull the trigger, who the fuck you fooling, you're just a fucking little faggot."
And Mickey just breathed in and breathed out and then he pulled the trigger.
The sound of the gunshot was too loud and not loud enough all at once. Terry Milkovich hit the ground, sprawled, with red blooming up against his dirty shirt like a fucking flower rising out of the ground on fast forward. And Mickey just walked over, too calm, not feeling a fucking thing and pointed the gun at his father's head, staring him dead in the eyes as he put a bullet in the middle of his forehead.
Because Mickey wasn't above killing, he'd never been that innocent, had never been that good. He'd killed before, both by accident with hitting someone just a little too hard and for a little too long and completely intentionally. The only time he'd ever backed out was with Frank and that hadn't been a case of being too chicken shit to do it, it had been because of that fucking look on Ian Gallagher's face.
It was funny how it always seemed to come down to that look on Ian's face.
He didn't hang around, didn't do any sentimental bullshit like stare down at his dead father and think about how things could have been if maybe the guy wasn't such a sick fuck. No, it was the middle of the fucking day and nobody else was home, but Mickey didn't know how the fuck long that was going to last, so he just did what he'd planned to do ever since he'd curled his fingers around the handle of that gun.
The gun that he tucked into the back of his trousers as he moved around his room like a goddam hurricane, throwing clothes into a ratty duffel bag, some of which he knew for a fact were Ian's. He ripped up the loose floorboard that he stashed all of his drugs and money under and pushed that into the bag too and then he was gone.
He liked to think that it hadn't been a pre-planned act, but the fact that he'd traded a shitty car for a load of coke three days before was evidence enough that he'd planned on at least leaving for that long. He didn't know how long he'd been thinking about killing Terry.
Mickey hadn't had a clue that he'd been driving in the direction of the Gallagher house until he got there, not until he'd parked his beaten up, rusted red car on the opposite side of the road and was banging his fist on the front door. He didn't even having a fucking clue what he was going to say, didn't know until Ian opened the door that he was going to be home.
The first thing that came out of his mouth at Ian's surprised look was, "Come with me," and he knew that didn't make sense, but maybe the weight of the statement could be seen in his eyes, because there was this long frozen moment where Gallagher just looked at him.
"You can't beat the shit out of me and then expect me to drop everything," he said and something in Mickey's chest fucking broke and ripped and he felt like he was about to be sick, but instead he just looked Gallagher dead in the eye and didn't even blink.
"I know," he told him, but see that was the thing wasn't it. Mickey didn't expect anything. He didn't think Ian was going to come with him, he hadn't even thought the guy was going to open the door. But maybe that was the point, maybe that was why he was here. Because what else did he have to lose? He was leaving, so was there really any point in being scared now? "I never promised you anything," he said, his tone maybe just a little too brutal, but his throat felt raw like he'd been screaming for days, "You want things I can't give you and I can't promise it'll be any fucking different outside of Chicago."
And Mickey had everything to gain and nothing to lose, because if this was the last time that he was ever going to see Gallagher, he didn't want to have to spend his life thinking that he'd always been too chicken shit to say just three little words. Even if they were words that felt like they contained the weight of the world.
So maybe that was why he just came out and said it, because at this point he couldn't come up with a valid reason not to. "But I love you," he said, not looking away from the way that Gallagher's eyes went wide and his fingers curled around the doorframe like he needed to ground himself. Mickey didn't know what it meant that despite his earlier statement, those words still tasted like a promise on the back of his tongue.
"You know that."
And Gallagher did know that. He'd always known that. There had been no falter in the words when he'd said them to Mickey in front of that warehouse. "You love me and you're gay." It had never been Ian that they'd had to convince of either of those facts.
Maybe the problem had always been that in his head, Mickey had pictured those words being the beginning of some massive event. He'd always imagined that it would be such a big deal, that it would mean he'd have to change or do something. But Ian just nodding and looking at him, like Mickey had said those words a thousand times, that hadn't been what Mickey had pictured at all.
A part of him had expected Ian to just surge forwards and kiss him at that moment and he told himself that he wasn't disappointed at all when he didn't. When all Ian did was take a step back, leaving the door open for Mickey in as much of an invitation as anything could ever be.
And then all of a sudden it was like everything was fast-forwarded, because they were upstairs stuffing Ian's clothes into a bag and Mickey pretended not to see how Ian's fingers were shaking as he put a picture of his family in there too.
"I killed Terry," he confessed and Ian's hands stilled on the zipper of his bag, but he didn't say anything. He just reacted as he did before, nodding his head and looking at Mickey like none of this was anything of a surprise.
And maybe like Mickey, he was in some sort of shock. None of this had quite hit home yet, but it would later and maybe then they'd be clinging to each other in the dark, gasping and shaking under the weight of words and decisions that they couldn't take back, not now. But right then, they were just moving on an autopilot that neither of them had programmed.
It almost felt like a dream and maybe Mickey would wake up later, arching up off the bed with sweat making his clothes stick to his skin, but that wasn't something that he gave more than a passing thought. Because if this was a dream, then what the fuck was the point in worrying?
"We're only doing this if you're safe," Mickey said, pressing the gun from the back of his trousers into Ian's hand and looking at him seriously. And that could have been Mickey's way of giving Ian this one last chance to back out, because this wasn't going to be easy and it wasn't going to be some walk in the park; but there was this childish, faggy part of Mickey that was clinging to the idea that so long as Ian was there, he'd find some way to make it alright.
Ian's fingers curled over his around the gun and it was the first time they'd touched, the first time since Mickey's foot had connected with Ian's face. And it made something shatter inside of Mickey, something that only started putting itself back together again when Ian closed the distance and pressed his forehead against Mickey's sweaty one.
And they just breathed. They just stood there and breathed in the same air, fingers curled around a gun and the future lay out before them, no matter how short it may be. They just breathed in, breathed out and paved their way with promises whispered in the silence between words they never said.