He woke up to feel Tegan pressing against his side in the darkness, her head pillowed on his shoulder and her arms curled around herself. He knew she was awake, but she said nothing, she just hummed softly under her breath the tune that neither of them could ever forget. She didn't ever say anything about how Mickey would wake up in the middle of the night crying, sometimes screaming out and always saying he was sorry with his eyes screwed tight shut. Just like Mickey didn't ever complain when she felt the need to cling to his side, to curl into him in the middle of the night to try and latch onto the last thing that she had.
Or at least the last thing she thought that she had.
The only time she didn't slide underneath the covers with him in the middle of the night was when Carl was there, when she could curl around him instead. When Carl was there the apartment seemed much less quiet, the ghosts seemed to fade out of sight for a while. When Carl was there it was all noise and laughter and it was like somehow he'd become the glue that held them both together.
Their lives felt too empty with just the two of them. They felt too empty without Kara there to roll her eyes or spit out her beer with a grimace.
They'd moved apartments of course, bought a new place and filled it all with new furniture. They'd painted the walls bright colours, got better beds and a better couch than before. They didn't talk about it, they didn't talk about the fact that that was just their way of trying to fill the space. During the day they laughed and smiled and scowled and didn't everything that they had ever done, they survived, but at night when it was just the two of them and the silence that weighed them down, the loss that seemed to shackle them to the ground, that was when they let themselves finally break a little bit.
Some days Mickey didn't drink anything at all, some days he remained stone cold sober and then on others he drank far too much. He drank until he passed out on the couch, a bottle still swinging from his fingertips. And Tegan didn't say a word, she just cleaned up the bottles and cans and woke him up enough to get him into bed, wiping the salty tears from his cheeks when he shot awake in the middle of the night. And in return, Mickey didn't chide her for the days when Carl brought her home unconscious, both of them reeking of weed and booze. He just carried her inside and cleaned her up, swaddling her in blankets like she was a newborn and touching her arm comfortingly when she murmured for her mother.
Time slid through their fingers, the summer melting into the autumn and the autumn into the winter. They were invited around to the Gallaghers for Christmas to join them and a very swollen and fat Mandy. Mickey even managed a smile and Tegan didn't cry a single tear; both of them pretended they were alright so effectively, so determinedly that their facial muscles hurt by the end of the day.
Mickey was offered beer and weed, practically plied with it, but he just shook his head and sat next to Mandy on the couch, his arm clung around her shoulders and pulled faces when she pressed his hand against her belly to feel the baby's kicks. Even though he would admit that did make him sort of want to smile. He didn't drink because he knew if he did then he was going to break and he hadn't lit up a single joint since the final one he'd lit for Kara. He didn't want to taste that, didn't want to taste the last thing she'd tasted. He didn't want to taste the thing she'd hated most of all on her taste buds.
When the baby came Mickey and Tegan woke up obligingly in the ridiculously early hours of the morning and tumbled into the hospital with their hair a mess and their eyes clogged up with sleep. And it was disgusting, but Mickey stayed in the room while Mandy gave birth and let her squeeze the fuck out of his hand. He watched Mandy and Lip coo over the baby girl with careful, wary eyes and didn't even hesitate when Mandy asked him if he wanted to hold her. She was tiny, as pale as a porcelain doll and her tiny hands grabbed at Mickey as he curled his body over her. She had Mandy's wide blue eyes and the tuft of hair on her head was blonde like Lip's.
She was perfect, even Mickey could see that and for some reason the weight of the baby in his arms filled in another crack in his soul. He smiled genuinely happy when Mandy told him that her name was Michelle and warned him in a dangerous voice that if he ever let her get hurt she'd put his nuts in a vice, because let's face it, even though he could try, Lip was just never going to be as effective at being threatening as Mickey was.
He didn't even grimace when they forced him to have his picture taken, but he handed Michelle back pretty quickly before they could badger him into any more.
Eight months after Kara's death and he and Tegan were both acting a lot more whole. She didn't curl up in his bed every night now, didn't cling to him in public like was a life line. There wasn't the same dependency, even though he knew that to some degree it was always going to be there and that was fine, he was okay with that. He was okay with the clinging as well, but he didn't need anyone thinking he'd gone soft.
It unnerved him when he had people passing by him in the street, people he hardly even knew and they told him that they were sorry for his loss. They weren't, they didn't give a shit, but Mickey was spread too thin, too strung out nowadays to call them out. He didn't ever do anything other than nod before he kept on walking.
After ten months Carl moved in without anyone even talking about it. It just happened and Mickey couldn't think of a reason to complain for the life of him, because the kid wasn't so bad actually. Sure, he was still bat shit crazy, but he made Tegan laugh and that didn't happen often enough so Mickey decided that that was all that mattered.
Summer rolled back around and the burns on Mickey's legs were still tight and uncomfortable, but he wasn't so ashamed of them anymore. He put shorts on for the first time since the fire when Tegan announced she wanted to go to the Alibi Room for a drink. He pretended he didn't know she ran back into the bathroom to cry. And sure, people stared, but he was still Mickey Milkovich and people weren't stupid enough to say anything.
The Gallaghers all stared, eyes bugging out a little when he first sauntered over to their pool and leant against the edge while Tegan pissed about in the water with Carl, dunking him repeatedly because she was a badass and that would never change. They all stared at the marred skin and even asked a handful of questions, but after that it wasn't mentioned again.
Some days Mickey stared at himself in the mirror and thought that he could track every memory with scar. The one on his thigh, the burns on his legs and now the shining circles of silver front and back on his shoulder. He didn't think they were so bad though actually, not since all of them had a story.
Since Lip was off being a genius and Mandy got a decent job, Mickey somehow wound up being dubbed regular babysitting. Or at least he had to look after the kid for a few days a week, but it was alright because she was actually pretty easy to care for. She didn't cry too much and he was the one who managed to coax her first smile out of her, even though he didn't share that with Mandy. Especially not when she rang him up gushing about how she'd been the first one to see Michelle – although they called her Shelly now – smile.
It was just over a year since Kara had died, the anniversary of her death having been celebrated by him and Tegan sitting alone in Mickey's room, steadily drinking themselves to sleep and playing darts with all of the knives they had in the house. They couldn't really remember much the next morning, but then that had sort of been the idea if Mickey was being honest. He didn't want to forget, he just wanted them to be able to survive.
It was three weeks after the anniversary of her death, the weather still swelteringly hot, when Ian Gallagher showed his face in Chicago again, done with the army for good according to Mandy. It was one of those rare days when everyone seemed to have a day off work and Tegan managed to persuade Mickey not to be so cranky and they all piled down to the beach.
It was busy and Mickey hated the beach just on principle, but really if he thought about it then there was actually a million reasons why the hatred was logical. The salt was itchy when it was on your skin and the sand got fucking everywhere; and now he had the added problem of the fact that the burns on his legs got painful if they were exposed to too much sunlight. But he was there because Tegan had pleaded and that was how he ran into Ian Gallagher again, since nobody had thought it was a good idea to tell him that he'd come home the day before.
Then again, why would anyone tell him that?
Carl didn't mention it though and he knew sure enough, but then the guy had always been a bit of a mystery so Mickey wasn't all that surprised. He was the first one to get to the beach with Carl and Tegan, which meant he didn't have to have too many witnesses to the embarrassing argument about putting on sun cream that he had with Tegan. Obviously, she won, which was why he felt like he was sliding across his towel, a ridiculous amount slathered onto his actually completely clean skin.
He had another towel over his shins to protect the burns even though they'd covered them up with an extra helping of his usual cream and the sun cream as well. He tried to ignore the fact that Carl was apparently having way too much fun rubbing the sun cream into Tegan's back by lying back and shutting his eyes.
Which was the reason he was caught off guard when the others arrived.
Mandy kicked the bottom of his foot and grinned down at him, already in nothing but shorts and a bikini top, which meant that Mickey was seeing far too much of his sister's flesh for his liking. Thankfully, he was able to be distracted from that by the six month old child making grabby hands at him. He sat up enough to take her from Mandy, bouncing her on his raised knees and shooting Tegan a thankful look when she caught the towel before it slid off of his shins.
Mickey wasn't really an affectionate person, but Shelly was different. For one she was a baby and she was also one of two people related to him that he didn't hate, so to him that meant he would actually make an effort. And besides, it was hard not to get attached when you looked after the kid as much as Mickey did.
The little girl was babbling away at him in gibberish like she always seemed to do now and Mickey smirked at her before setting her down on the towel so that Mandy could plonk a hat on her head. She'd just mastered sitting up on her own and had also taken to grabbing things, which was something Mickey knew was going to result in disaster eventually.
Shelly had inherited her father's brains; not a good thing to be combined with Milkovich blood.
And then there he was, standing not far from the foot of his towel and staring down with wide eyes. His hair was practically glowing in the sunlight and he made Mickey feel small towering over him like that, but then he'd always made Mickey feel small.
He looked good and that was so blaringly obvious that Mickey had to look away, because it just made Mickey feel even more broken than he already did. Ian was whole and perfect, untouched by grief or pain, his skin smoothed and blemished only with freckles. Mickey, Mickey was just a shell now and he didn't know how to look at something so complete and feign noncholance, not anymore.
"Hey," Ian was the first one to speak, his voice low, wary.
It was awkward, whatever it was that hung in between them, it was awkward.
"Hey," Mickey muttered back, taking a cigarette out of the packet beside him just because he needed something to do with his hands.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ian strip off his shirt and arch his back, cracking it.
"We're going to go down to the sea," Tegan said, touching his arm to draw his attention to her. She didn't ask if he wanted to come, they both knew he didn't. The salt irritated the burns, made them sting.
He nodded. "Dunk him for me," he said, motioning to Carl, "The fucker ate one of my pots of Jell-O."
Tegan grinned and then she was taking off running, everyone else following behind soon after, laughing and smiling and feeling weightless in a way Mickey couldn't anymore. Only Ian looked back to where Mickey had stretched back out on his towel, confusion twisting up his expression as well as a strange sort of bitterness that Mickey couldn't decipher, that he didn't want to look at.