Mickey woke up two weeks after Mandy had walked into his room to find him there and typically he was desperate to leave as soon as his eyes opene. He didn't say anything about Ian, or about trying to kill himself and Mandy didn't press him to. She knew she had to let him think things through, just like she knew she had to pretend that she didn't see the bitterness and the pain in her brother's eyes.
But Mandy knew her brother and even though she can see that he was trying to pretend like nothing ever happened, he was still different. He still cursed and swore at her, made a few snide comments, but his heart didn't seem to be in it. And he never started any of their conversations, it always had to be her. Mickey was just quieter than she was accustomed to him being and it was that simple fact that was enough to remind her what had happened. It was enough to make her want to protect her badass big brother for some fucked up reason.
Not that she'd ever tell him that, because depressed or not, Mickey would still hate her for it and would no doubt set something of hers on fire. He'd never hit her, would never harm her physically - twisting her tits when she annoyed him didn't count - but Mickey did have a habit of burning things.
Thankfully, the one thing she counted whatever lucky fucking stars she had for, was that even though he wasn't the same, there was nothing medically wrong with Mickey. Aside from the fact that he looked exhausted and a little ill, he was perfectly healthy. Which the doctor had told them was a fucking miracle considering how many pills Mickey had swallowed and the fact he had gone into a coma.
Mandy just put it down to the Milkovichs being fucking stubborn.
On the El, Mickey didn't say anything. He just sat low in his seat with his arms wrapped around himself and his feet up on the rest of the seat, meaning Mandy had to sit behind him. And she didn't say anything either, because she could see how pained he was. She kept wondering what he was thinking. She kept wanting to ask what had happened between him and Ian, because it was obvious something had. But Mandy didn't, she just kept her mouth shut because she knew that chances were, even in his exhausted, depressed-as-fuck state, Mickey would bolt.
So all she did was hand him a pot of Jell-O that she'd forgotten she had in her bag and the weak smile he gives her was more than enough to let her know that maybe everything wasn't going to be completely fucked from then on. That maybe Mickey was going to be okay.
"Where the fuck have you been hiding?" Iggy asked from where he was sprawled out on th couch, lazily drinking from a beer and watching what looked to be porn on the television.
Mandy scrunched up her nose at how disgusting her brothers could be sometimes and smiled to herself when Mickey's only answer was, "Fuck off." She thought it probably would have broken what was left of her heart to break if he'd done anything else. Or worse, done nothing at all. Because Mickey had never just lain down and taken what their brothers dished out. He may have been the shortest and the youngest boy, but he was smarter and he held his own.
She followed Mickey into his room, watching him as he looked around. No doubt he was noticing that she'd finally gotten around to cleaning up the packets of painkillers and even some of the other stuff. Mickey's room had always been a mess though, that was the way he liked it as far as she knew, so she hadn't done much else. The little washing she'd done was folded and put away in his drawers already.
"You going to be okay?" Mandy asked him, knowing he would hate the question, but she had to ask for her own piece of mind more than anything else.
Mickey shrugged when he looked at her and that had not been the answer she was hoping for at all. She'd wanted him to swear at her, not look at her in a way that was so completely un-Mickey that she wanted to hug him and never let go. It was stupid. Mickey had never been the weak one, he'd never needed looking after, had never let any emotions show. But now Mandy was watching him look around his room like he didn't know anything anymore.
He was looking not just like he was broken, but like he always had been. Just like all of them. Every Milkovich was broken or scarred in some way, using drugs, alcohol and anger to patch up the cracks and stitch up the seams. But Mickey looked like he'd long since forgotten where he put the duct tape to put himself back together. He didn't even look like he wanted to be whole again.
"Mick, tell me what you want me to do?" she asked, sounding more helpless than she ever had done before. She never wanted to hear herself like that ever again. "Just tell me how I can fix this." How I can fix you!
He managed a small sort of smile when he met her eyes and he had her wanting to cry. She wanted to cry and kick and scream under the weight of the sadness in the room. Mandy could feel it, but she felt strange because she didn't even know what that sadness was over. "I don't even fucking know," he admitted and for just a split second he almost sounded like himself. Except he didn't at all.
"Want me to make some eggs?" she asked, completely at loss for words, "That hospital food looking pretty shit."
She thought his grimace was probably supposed to be a smile. "Yeah whatever," he muttered, pretending to be himself.
A part of her wanted to tell him to quit it and to just curl up in a ball or whatever and cry. She wanted to tell him to talk about it. To do something, anything, just to get it out of his system. But they were Milkovich's and he was Mickey and that wasn't going to happen regardless of whether or not she wanted it to.
Iggy had disappeared by the time she walked out of Mickey's room, which she counted as a good thing because there was no fucking way she was going to cook for him. She managed to coax Mickey out of his room and sit him down in the kitchen. He put too much ketchup on his eggs, just like always and picked at the bacon with his fingers, eating too fast. Tha was exactly the same as usual, except there was a tension in the air that hung between them like rope.
It was like he knew she was going to ask questions, was waiting for her to, but Mandy was just waiting for the right time to voice them. She didn't know if there ever would be a right time, but she knew she'd have to ask him sooner or later, otherwise the curiosity was just going to eat away at her insides.
When someone knocked on the front door, Mandy had every intention to ignore it. Especially with the way that Mickey tensed up at the sound. "Mandy!"
She jumped at the sound of her name being yelled and cast a glance at Mickey, who looked like he was about to be sick. Because they both recognised the voice. They both knew it was Lip. No doubt they were both praying to whatever God there was up there that Ian wasn't with him.
"Mandy, I know you're fucking in there!" Lip yelled through the wood, "I saw you go inside."
And she could feel her lips twisting into a sneer at the idea that he'd been watching the house. She wondered how many times he'd come around and found she wasn't there. It had been two weeks since she'd punched Ian and she should have known that they'd come looking for an explanation. Or at least Lip would, being the protective big brother and all that shit. It hadn't been intentional, but she knew she'd avoided them by having spent practically all of her time at the hospital waiting for Mickey to wake up.
"Mandy, I just want to talk!" Lip yelled again, pounding on the door some more.
They should probably count themselves lucky that their Dad was in jail again, otherwise he would have been as pissed as hell at the noise. Then again, their Dad got pissed over pretty much everything anyway, so it wouldn't have been any sort of surprise. At least it would have chased Lip off for a while.
Mickey didn't look at her, his eyes were locked on his half-eaten meal. He only looked up when she went into the weapons cupboard and grabbed a handgun. "What the fuck are you doing?" he asked, catching her wrist, his eyes wide and panicked looking. Sort of reminding her of a startled deer.
"Calm your tits," she told him, probably a little more harshly than was necessary, but Mickey didn't need anyone mollycoddling him. He never had. Even their mum hadn't been stupid enough to try. Not that she had actually ever given enough of a shit about Mickey to try. "It's just to make sure he stays away, I wouldn't actually shoot him."
Ian she couldn't make any promises about if he was there. But hey, the guy had already signed up to get his ass shot off. It would just be practice. Mandy had almost completely forgotten what it felt like to love Ian Gallagher. She didn't feel sad or worried about him leaving to his little warzone soon.
Mickey didn't say anything else, but then she didn't give him the chance. She tucked the gun into the back of her shorts and pulled her top down over it. She knew Mickey was following her into the other room as she went towards the door, but she also knew without having to look that he was staying out of the line of sight of whoever was on the other side.
"The fuck do I have to talk to you about?" Mandy asked, opening the door and glaring at Lip. She glared because he actually sort of looked good. But then she'd always had the hots for Lip, but she'd already decided she hated him too.
He looked surprised at her tone, like he hadn't expected her to still be mad about whatever the hell she had been mad about. "Well how about we start with why the hell you punched Ian?" Lip asked, folding his arms over his chest and staring at her like that was going to make her crack or something.
"Fucker deserved it," Mandy practically spat out, "Now we done here, or you want to talk about the weather next?"
She could already feel her patience being chipped away at, all because Lip Gallagher was standing in front of her as right as fucking rain.
"What's wrong with you?" Lip asked, scowling a little, "Ian says you haven't been in school."
Mandy sneered. "Nothing is fucking wrong with me," she ground out through her teeth, reaching behind her and revealing the gun. She knocked it against her leg casually, opening the door a little wider. Lip was staring at her now like she'd lost her mind. Maybe for a moment she had. But having to sit and watch your older brother lie in a hospital comatose could do that to a person. "But I swear to God, something will be wrong with you if you and Ian don't stay the fuck away from me and my brother."
She had a horrible feeling that seeing Ian would just about make Mickey crack. Especially if he was with his boyfriend. She wondered if it had been that Ian had gotten a boyfriend now that had made Mickey want to do himself in. Or had it been something more?
And she was sure that she wasn't imagining the look of realisation in Lip's eyes and Mandy had to pretend that that didn't make her feel stupid. She had to pretend that it didn't bother her in the slightest that apparently all the people who were closest to her had known and Mickey and Ian and yet she hadn't had a clue.
Lip held his hands up, almost like a surrender, because Mandy knew one thing. She knew that Lip understood what it was like to be weirdly dependant on a sibling. Lip depended on Ian just as much as Mandy depended on Mickey. The difference was, the Gallaghers just had no problem showing it.
When she shut the door and turned to face him, Mickey said nothing. He just stared at her for a moment and then held out the smouldering cigarette in his hand that she didn't think he'd even taken a single drag from. And for some reason, she thought maybe that was his form of an apology. But he also thought that in some weird way, she had actually just made him feel a little better.
Mandy could hope at the very least.