Chapter Text
“Yeah, Mick. I’ll wait.”
The words he’d whispered that first visit to Mickey weighed heavily on Ian’s mind. Mostly because they had been a lie. Not a lie born of malice or deception, exactly, probably not even a lie in the strictest sense of the word, but it still battled inside his gut. The truth was, he’d wait forever for Mickey, in the ways that it counted. It didn’t matter where Ian was, what he was doing, who he was with, the parts that mattered, the voice in his head, his heart, would always be with Mickey. The rest of him, though, just couldn’t BE here anymore. He couldn’t go through the motions everyday, wake up, morning meds, work, help Liam with his homework, put him to bed, evening meds, go to sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat like an endless cycle, pausing only to visit the prison every other weekend. He hated seeing Mickey behind that glass, unable to touch him, smell him, hold him. It occurred to him after less than six months into Mickey’s sentence that constant visits weren’t going to work, almost made it worse. Every other day became a few times a week, which, after 3 years, had dwindled to every other weekend. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Mickey, it just felt like they were both wasting away in their own kind of prisons. Mickey, obviously, in the orange jumpsuit, bars on the door and windows kind, but Ian was trapped in a prison of repetition, of so-called normalcy. While it was definitely not comparable to the humiliations that Mickey was dealing with, Ian couldn’t help but wonder how much longer they could stay in their cages before resentment and anger set in. Ultimately, it was the fear of losing Mickey that drove him to tell him that he was leaving. A tentative smile had flashed over Mickey’s face, no doubt meant to mask his own fear of losing the straining thread that held them fast together.
“You just got here, Gallagher. You running off already?”, Mickey said through the crackling phone line, eyes glued to Ian’s face.
“You know that’s not what I meant, Mick. I gotta get out of here, out of Chicago, out of my stupid fucking life. I can’t keep banging my head against the wall, waiting for something to change, to feel RIGHT, when I’m not even doing anything to change it.” Ian desperately willed the blue eyes locked on his to soften, to understand that this wasn’t about leaving Mickey, it was about finding himself.
“Ian, I’m stuck in here for 2 more years, if I’m fucking lucky and they keep on stacking up the bodies around here and overcrowding the place. There’s nothing else I can do for you until then. I don’t know what you… You can’t do this to me again, man. You just got all your shit together, you can’t just…” Mickey hesitated, hating the words he knew were about to fall from his lips. “Are you taking your meds, man? What’s going on with you?”
The sting was obvious on Ian’s face, but he silently reasoned that it wasn’t typical of Mickey to jump to that conclusion. And besides, he probably wasn’t explaining this in too clear a way. He took a deep breath before he spoke again.
“I’m taking my meds, Mickey. I’m stable, I’m clear-headed, I’m sure. That’s the only way I know that this is what I need to do. I wouldn’t be able to actually choose to do this otherwise. You think I’m just fucking off for the fun of it? I don’t want to be away from you, Mick, but it’s not like I can be with you right now anyways. It’s like “stable” me isn’t me, either, ya know? I gotta try, I gotta figure out who the hell I am. I’d give you all of me right now, you know I would, but I’m not enough. You deserve ALL of me, and until I can figure out who that is, I don’t deserve to make you settle.”
“Bullshit, Gallagher! You’re running again? This is that same shit that you pulled when you came back from your mom’s all over again, isn’t it? What the fuck, man? I thought we were past all that? I--” Mickey was panicked, remembering the break up speech that Ian had tried to hand him in front of the Gallagher house that day. It was over 3 years ago, and he thought Ian was over that, but the thought of it still made Mickey’s pulse quicken and his palms sweat.
“No, Mick, no. I’m not leaving you… I mean I AM, but… Look, when you are out of here, when you’re really and truly free, that’s all I want. I want it to be you and me, sickness, health, all that shit…” Ian remembered that conversation from the front steps, too. He couldn’t go back and change it, but he could finally make good on the promise he made to Mickey after it happened.
“I promised you that I’d do better, that I’d get my shit together, and I have Mick, I really have. But it just feels like something’s still missing. I need to, I don’t know, see the world or something. I need to be able to give you all of me, and I don’t think it’s all there yet. Mickey, you’re everything to me. I just want to give everything back to you, too. I don’t know what I’m even looking for! Maybe I’ll know it when I see it, maybe I’ll lose everything and come back with my tail between my legs, but I have to try! Please understand, Mick. Please say you understand, and you’re not mad at me. I’m doing this for you, too, even though it probably doesn’t sound like it.”
Ian outlined his plan to Mickey, the scheduled Skype calls with his doctor, check-ins with his family, the medication schedule, the tentative itinerary, the passport Vee had helped him get, the letters and phone calls he promised to send. He had cashed out the savings he had left from his job, so he had enough money to start his trip, at least. He’d probably have to pick up some odd jobs along the way, but it was something.
He had been working in the bar at the James Hotel downtown for almost the entire 3 years that Mickey had been locked up. He’d remembered being there with guys like Ned, and he was enough of a chameleon that he could find a way to fit in, even charm the guests. He could especially charm the pervy businessmen that often stayed at the boutique hotel, but he found that he could earn his tips now just pointing them in the direction of Boystown with some harmless flirting. Information, a shy smile, and the number of a discrete cab company were all he needed to satisfy them now, and he was thankful for that. It certainly beat shaking his junk, or worse, for tips at the Fairy Tail. So, he flirted, he poured drinks, and he listened… absorbed. He heard about places he’d never see, places these rich bastards, tycoons, minor celebrities traveled and took for granted. Paris, London, Aspen, fucking China! Mountains, trees, waterfalls… things he’d never see in the Southside, for sure.
“Sounds like you got all kinds of ideas,” Mickey muttered. “Don’t need my help. Don’t need my permission. Not that you asked for it. Can’t see your family letting you take off like that, though. Shit, by the time you convince them, I’ll be able to go with ya!” Mickey chided, despite the trembling of his hands.
Ian’s eyes dropped to his own hands in his lap. They were shaking, too.
“I’m leaving tomorrow, Mick.”
Ian didn’t sleep much that night, between the nervousness of leaving and Mickey’s reaction.
He had known there would be a reaction, he just hadn’t been prepared for the one that he got. The defeated look in Mickey’s watery eyes, the almost silent “Yeah...be safe.” Mickey uttered as he stood and backed away from the cubicle they sat in, the glass, Ian. His eyes never left Ian’s until he reached the door to the visitor’s room, where after a heartbeat, Mickey turned and left Ian’s sight. As the sun rose over the grey expanse of the Southside, Ian was grabbing his army green duffel bag and leaving the house on Wallace Street, still silent with his family tucked sleeping inside.