Due to the fact that his crime was violent, Mickey had to have a psychological assessment to determine whether or not he was too much of a risk to his fellow delinquents and would need to be put into the high security block. When he was first told he could barely contain his laughter because he was a Milkovich, for fucks sake, of course he was a risk but it wasn't like he went around starting fights for absolutely no reason – that only really had happened when he was horny and Gallagher wouldn't fuck him because he was pissed at him and fighting seemed to be second best.

Contrary to what he had been told and what he thought about psychologists and therapists and whatever, Dr. Harris wasn't really all that bad.

She chuckled softly to herself once Mickey was in her office, sat on the opposite side of the cluttered desk to her.

Mickey rubbed his thumb over the side of his chapped bottom lip, wondering what the fuck she found so funny. "What?" he asked, frowning at her.

One of her hands ran through her auburn hair then removed the glasses from her pale face. There wasn't a hint of make-up on her and Mickey thought she looked almost angelic in a really weird sort of way. He didn't think he'd ever seen a woman, or even just a person, who looked so completely untouched by the horrors that life had to offer. Then again, where he lived, there wasn't a single person whose life wasn't broken or fucked up in one way or another.

When she didn't answer he cursed under his breath and slouched further down in the chair, his legs spread.

As if she was mirroring him, she leaned back in her own chair, another chuckle leaving her mouth only further pissing him off.

"What the fuck is so funny?" he snapped.

"I like your tats," she nodded her head toward his hands, "very meaningful," her voice was full of sarcasm and Mickey seriously wanted to punch that smirk off of her fucking face.

"Fuck off," he muttered, staring her down. He didn't need this fucking yuppie judging him. "Think you're better than me 'cause you have a good job or some shit? Let me guess you grew up in a fucking mansion with money coming out your ass!" He couldn't explain his anger. Maybe it was because he had been itching for a fight, verbal or physical, maybe it was because he felt the need to show her that just because she clearly had had a better life than him it didn't mean she could look down her nose at him, or maybe it was because he actually felt himself envy her in ways even he couldn't quite comprehend.

He honestly wasn't expecting her to smile at him, at least not in the way she was. It was a knowing sort of smile, like she knew him or understood what he was saying. It was unnerving.

"I knew your dad." That was it, that was all she said.

Mickey expected her to explain what the hell she meant by that, because people who knew his dad were either in jail or on their way there, not working at one as a damn psychologist.

"Well, I didn't know him know him, I just dealt him drugs a few times. And to answer your earlier question, no, I don't think I'm better than you. I'm not. I'm worse than you. I may not have a criminal record, but I grew up in your neighbourhood which kind of says it all. The only thing is, I never got caught and I was never dumb enough to punch a cop in the face for no reason," she tilted her head to the side slightly and that smile she'd be wearing the whole time seemed to disappear, "but you had a reason," she said softly, more so to herself than Mickey.

A silence lingered between them and the air in the room felt somehow heavy to him, like all of the words they weren't saying were still seeping out of them and filling up the place.

For some reason Mickey couldn't look at her, at least not in the eye. He wondered if she was going to ask him questions about the whole cop thing and he knew that if she did he would shut down, tell her it's none of her fucking business, but he had a feeling she'd somehow know anyway.

"Are you always this pissed off, Milkovich?" she asked suddenly, breaking the silence that Mickey had just begun to feel comfortable in.

He shrugged casually because that was easier than explaining to her that usually it was easier to be pissed off, even though sometimes it was just a front, than to think about why he wasn't.

That smile was back, unnerving him once again. "Or do you find it easier to act like everything annoys the hell out of you?"

Christ, was she a mind reader? Mickey's eyes shot up to meet hers and he just froze. It took a while for him to straighten out his expression but he knew his face had already answered her question.

"I get that, y'know? It's so much easier to keep everything fragile at arms length, including your feelings, than having to deal with it all head on. Would you say you do that?"

He shrugged again because apparently that was now his way of saying 'yes' without actually saying it.

"Does that just make you angrier?"

"I don't know," he said and he really didn't. "Isn't the point of this thing to see if I'm going to kill someone or some shit? Why the fuck aren't you asking me about that?" Because that would make me a lot more comfortable, he thought. He could talk all day about fighting if he had to but this, this he didn't need to discuss with anybody.

"Okay, okay, Jesus," she muttered under her breath holding up her hands. "I'm Dr. Harris, by the way," she said in what he assumed was her fake professional voice, "though I doubt you give a shit," her voice was just loud enough for Mickey to hear and he chuckled to himself.

She looked at him and winked. "So… fighting, huh? Sometimes it's just as good as sex, isn't it?" she said, completely serious.

Mickey breathed out a laugh and smirked at her. If that was how she thought she must've come from his neighbourhood.

"Yeah, I guess it is."

"Do you prefer to solve things with your fists?"

"Yeah," he said, unashamedly.

"Hm," her head tilted again, "why is that?"

"Uh, well I guess my fists can do more than my words. Plus it's always good to have an excuse to beat the shit out of somebody."

They spoke like that for a while longer, Dr. Harris asking him about what he felt when he fought and how often he found himself getting taken over by his anger and for once in his life he found himself giving honest answers because to Mickey, there was no reason to lie when it came to stuff like that because, in his mind, it didn't make him look bad nor did it make him feel bad. That and he quite liked the fact that Dr. Harris promised him that he could ask her about her old criminal ways and that she'd answer him honestly if he answered her honestly.

"Okay, well in the last couple of months of high school a couple of friends and I decided that we should probably treat ourselves seeing as we were leaving soon. So, uh, well one of my friends was this huge science geek but he was a complete thug at the same time, anyway, we all hated our math teacher Pervin' Mervin or Mr. Fitzgerald so basically we bombed his classroom and left him with only one arm."

"Fuck, that was you?"

She nodded and though she tried to hide it, Mickey could tell she was pretty proud of that and she had every right to be; the story of how Pervin' Mervin got his arm blown off was like a fucking famous tale that everyone had heard yet nobody knew who had done it.

"Well, our hour is up, Milkovich," she said, putting her glasses back on and looking over the notes she scrawled whilst Mickey spoke. Never once did she actually look at the paper she was writing on, which Mickey thought was actually pretty damn freaky.

He leaned forward in his chair. "So, what's my diagnosis, doc?" he asked with a smirk, trying to twist the piece of paper she was looking at to sneak a peek.

His hand was slapped away with impressive force. "Fuck off," Dr. Harris muttered with a smirk. "Right, well, I don't think that you are an immediate threat to any of the other inmates here unless they piss you off," she looked up through her glasses and Mickey nodded in agreement. "Although you are a borderline sociopath," she muttered under her breath but she wasn't quite quiet enough.

Mickey kicked her ankle under the desk not hard enough to really hurt but not soft enough so that it didn't hurt at all.

He found himself laughing, like properly laughing, at her surprised reaction; her deep blue eyes so wide he thought they were going to pop out of her skull. All he did was smirk back and stick his tongue into the corner of his mouth.

"You know I could get you done for assault and should probably write down what you just did," Mickey scoffed at her fake seriousness. She may have been a pretty good psychologist but her acting skills fucking sucked.

"Anyway, as I was saying, though you don't need to be put into the high security block, I do think that you would benefit from going to the anger management class that meets- will you stop laughing and let me finish?"

As soon as the words 'anger management class' had left her mouth Mickey was in stitches again. It was such a ridiculous suggestion and he thought that if he didn't laugh about it he'd probably punch a wall and he figured that that was something Dr. Harris would definitely have to write about.

"Listen, I know you don't want to but it's only twice a week and it's a mixed class with inmates from the female wing so you'll at least have fresh images in your mind to jerk off to." Clearly she was unaware of his preferences and Mickey was pretty fucking thankful about that. "Plus if you complete it successfully, it'll shorten your sentence quite considerably."

To most people in his situation that would sound great but Mickey was actually in juvie by choice because he was safer in there if his dad ever found out about his love of dick. Then again, he figured if his dad ever did find out, Mandy would too and maybe she'd be disgusted, he thought she probably would be, but he couldn't picture her actually wanting him dead - the countless times she had threatened to kill him didn't exactly count - which meant she'd probably warn him about it and if that happened he'd just punch one of the guards to prolong his sentence, easy. But there was a chance that his dad wouldn't find out and so it didn't make sense to turn down an offer that could see him out of juvie quicker.

"Fuck it, okay," he finally said because how fucking hard could an anger management course be? All he'd have to do was maybe swear and scowl a little less and refrain from beating the shit out of anyone. He could do that. Probably.