GALLAVICH EVERYTHING

Hello

Source: Archive of our Own

Blog: OnlyHereForGallavich

Word Count: 1024

This is Part 5 of the Gallavich Reunions series.

-

It had been six years.

Six years since Ian had shoved Mickey out of his life.

That night, he woke up thrashing in his bed.

Alone, of course.

It hadn't taken long for him to realise Caleb was not what he needed in his life. He was great, but he wasn't...

Mickey.

The name brought a fresh onslaught of memories, and the stream of pain that followed.

Ian shuddered, eyes hungrily moving to the exposed, jagged metal that he knew lay next to his bed. But he resisted. His mind fell back to Mickey's face as he said, "sickness, health, all that shit."

He would never subject Mickey to feeling the slightest bit guilty for anything that happened. He would never let him feel like he hadn't done enough.

You are enough, Mickey, Ian thinks, you have no idea how ENOUGH you are.

It's the least he can do for the only boy he has, or will ever, love.

He grabs the crappy phone from under his pillow.

He dials the numbers Fiona, and his doctors have tried to teach him by heart. The one he only truly memorized after he caught Mickey crying in the shower one time.

"Hello," a mechanic, altered male voice says, "Welcome to the suicide helpline. Please take a breath, calm down and tell me what you are feeling."

//

What had drawn Mickey to the job was probably that he would be trapped in a room all day, not having to meet other people. Plus, he just had to go through a training course; he had no qualifications anyway; having spent six years in jail for assault.

And okay, maybe that one night when he found Ian on the bathroom floor with a knife to his wrist played in his mind too. The blind terror he had felt in those moments, the horrific possibility of life without Ian; they were feeling he would never want anyone else to go through.

It was three in the morning. Mickey always took the night shift, not trusting himself when it came to the darkness.

Night brought bad memories from his childhood. A screaming Mandy, a dead mother, a drunk dad who used Mickey's back as a canvas for his knife.

The night terrors had left him when he was with Ian; fucking cheesy as that sounded. There was a comfort in having Ian's arm around him, chest against his back, face buried in his neck.

It was home to him.

For the last six years, he had been wandering, lost.

He had fucked other guys, sure. Mickey fucking Milkovich was not going to be fucking celibate.

But there was never really anyone else.

"Hello?"

The voice was achingly familiar.

It stole Mickey's breath away.

//

"Hi," Ian repeated, feeling stupid, "um, my name is Ian Gallagher and I'm... kind of feeling down right now."

He waited for some kind of confirmation, but the line remained silent. Maybe that was how it worked?

"So, um, should I tell you a little about what's going on?" He probed. A quiet, confirmative noise came from the other sound of the line.

It sounded kind of familiar.

Ian wrote it off to the meds, and wishful thinking.

"I, uh, broke up with the boy I loved six years to today. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is his fucking face when I told him it was over." Angry tears poked at Ian's eyes, and he walked out of the house out to the porch steps.

"I'm such a selfish piece of shit. I know he's better off without me; that's why I did it in the first place. But I keep wishing I could have him back," tears were streaming down his cheeks now. Thankfully, the street was deserted.

"I just... I'm nothing without him."

//

Too good to be true.

Too fucking good to belong in his shithole of a life.

"I just wish I could tell him I still love him. He was in prison, for protecting ME," Ian let out a bitter laugh and Mickey could hear the tears in his voice, "I visited him just once. And told him I only came cause someone paid me to."

The memory twisted Mickey's heart, and he felt the tattoo on his chest like a brand.

"You don't know him, ya know," Ian continued, and Mickey almost laughed at the irony of the situation. "You don't know him, but take it from me that he's fucking perfect."

"He's such a good guy. And he has no fucking clue. He thinks he's some kind of thug, but he's so much more. He would protect the people he loves with his life. I was lucky," Ian's voice broke here, "to be on that list for years. He was a fucking softie at heart, man, he was fucking golden."

Mickey was so fucking glad every operator got a private room. Cause it would probably damage his carefully crafted reputation if anyone saw him bawling like a kid at his first horror movie.

"You know this one time, he just kissed me. We were at the club I used to work at, and he just kissed me. He liked to pretend everything was about sex, but we didn't even bang that night. He just kissed me. In public. Fucking cheeseball that he was."

"Fuck off," Mickey slipped up before he could stop himself.

Silence followed.

//

Ian's heart was in his throat.

"Mickey?" He asked quietly.

Mickey said nothing, and just hung up.

"Thanks for calling LoveLife helpline! We hope we could help you! Remember, your life is-"

Ian cut the call off.

Then he typed 'LoveLife helpline centre' into his phone's search tab with shaking fingers.

//

Three days and two sleepless nights later, Mickey decided his false sickness had gone on long enough. He showed up at work for the first time in days and was greeted by a figure he hadn't seen in six years, three days and two fucking sleepless nights.

"Mickey-" Ian began.

"Shut the fuck up," Mickey ordered.

Ian did.

"Cause I'm going to fucking just kiss you right now, okay?"

And Ian nodded.

//