"The prodigal son returns!"
Ian isn't sure he's heard him until he's walked up so close that he's taking up Ian's entire field of view.
Mickey.
Ian feels winded and lightheaded and the guards are closing the electric gates behind him. Ian can't turn and run back. The United States government is done with him. The state of Illinois is done with him. He's a free man; free and trapped.
"That doesn't really apply to this situation... like at all."
"Fuck if I care. I just always wanted to say it." And Mickey shrugs.
Ian doesn't want to smile at that, but he does. Ian wants to ask how in the hell Mickey knew he was being released today when he made sure his own family didn't, but he doesn't. He tries not to remember tagging along with Mandy to see Mickey that time he got out of juvie. He tries not to think about what it meant then, and what it could mean now.
Some guards are yelling somewhere behind them, that they need to vacate the premises of the front lot. Ian starts walking. Mickey follows.
"You're lucky they didn't try you as an adult."
Ian doesn't respond but he does walk slower. Mickey falls into step.
"What was the final verdict?"
"What does it matter? They let me out."
"Answer the question, Fire-crotch."
The answer is his entire life circling back to what he always fear it would be. Nothing. Nowhere.
Ian tries to walk faster, but Mickey pushes him back with a solid hand to his shoulder. It's the first time they've touched in 268 days and Ian tries to focus on anywhere but the point of contact. A trick his sergeant swore by; don't focus on the entry wound and you'll live longer.
"Just answer the fucking question, Gallagher."
"They're letting me off. Clean slate and all."
Mickey takes it in for a second, and then grins. "But not too clean right? Since it's a felony to lie your way into the US army and all that. They won't take you back. Not ever."
The way Mickey's looking at him makes Ian think there's something he's not saying. It's an old feeling that makes him feel sore in places he told himself he'd shed running suicide runs in basic. "Don't jump for joy. It's only my hopes and dreams."
"They were fucking stupid, is what they were. There's easier ways to get yourself killed."
And there's that fucking look again. Ian won't let himself believe in what's on the other side of it. "I'll take any option where you're not hovering over my shoulder." Ian removes Mickey's hand from his shoulder, and he could swear he felt Mickey's pulse under his fingers for a moment."
Mickey doesn't follow straight away. "Quit being a bitch, Gallagher."
"I did," Ian calls back, "back when I stopped chasing after you."
When Mickey catches up to him they've made it to the fringes of society. There are people, stop lights, cars, establishments.
"What, you want me to say I'm sorry?" he asks him in a low voice because there's people waiting next to them at the curbside. "About the wife? About my kid?"
The light in front of them turns green and Ian starts and stops so fast he nearly stumbled over himself.
They stand there not going anywhere long enough for the light to turn red again.
"You knew she was pregnant."
"Yeah. I did."
He hadn't though. Ian had stored that horrific bit of information somewhere in back of his mind where he'd worked hard to unprocess it. To forget it like that would somehow protect him.
"Boy or girl?" Ian asks. Mickey answers, and Ian files it away, and hurts.
It's a long walk, three bus stops and a ride on the L back to the old neighborhood. They are sitting next to each other in the back of their second bus, not saying anything and not looking at each other. Both staring out staring opposite windows onto the same street and seeing completely different things.
They could have sat that way for ever, but Mickey grabs him by the crook of his elbow and pulls them off on the wrong stop. The district they're in is mostly vacant buildings and empty manufacturing factories that shut down when they were in middle school. The place is littered with trash and glass, and in the alley mickey leads him into, condoms and the occasional syringe.
"Quit acting like you don't know why we're here."
Ian doesn't trust what he knows anymore than what he thinks, and he thought the army would fix that in him. That it would take away all fucking bullshit and finally leave him with something real.
'Getting your hopes up is the congenital defect of the Gallagher family', Lip told him once. He'd believed it then, but it's only now that Ian can feel the faulty valve in his chest.
So Ian fucks Mickey like he hasn't fucked anybody in 268 days. He fucks him like he can't stand the sight of his shit eating grin or the sound of his groaning. He fucks him like he's only just realizing how much he fucking missed him. He fucks him like he hates him now more than he ever loved him before. He fucks him like he might just fall for it all over again.
When its over, all Ian wants to do is zip up his fly and walk away. Leave Mickey here, just as he is. They've fucked. They're finished. There doesn't need to be anymore to this. He should just walk away. Ian did it once before.
Only now he can't remember how he did it.
Mickey pulls up his pants and pulls out a cigarette and a lighter. He lights up and takes one long drag, two, three. Ian watches Mickey's fingers and his lips and his Adam's apple and he hates himself because Mickey is going to hand the cig and that's going to be even more final than the fucking.
Mickey breathes out, flicks the ash away, their eyes lock for a single second. This is how Mickey says whatever he can't say.
And Ian knows that the words he doesn't hear are only what he wants them to be. Never what he needs them to be.
I missed you.
I love you.
I'm sorry.
But the taste on the end of that cigarette is real, and it's Mickey, and it makes Ian stupid and happy and miserable and gluttonous and he dives in and kisses Mickey.
Mickey's whispers 'fuck' and 'Gallagher' and 'about damn time.'
It won't be the same as before. Mickey will learn it the hard way. So will Ian.
But really, in the end neither of them will have learned a damn thing.