GALLAVICH EVERYTHING

His

Source: Archive of our Own

Blog: OnlyHereForGallavich

Word Count: 641

This is Part 4 of the Gallavich Reunions series.

-

Mickey Milkovich was nobody's bitch. He had grown up in a hellhole, and adapted so the walls around him were stone cold, stone hard. So no, he was not anybody's bitch. For a long time, the crude term 'bitch' had symbolised weakness. Mickey was a bitch when he cried when his mother died when he was nine. He was a bitch for crying when Terry broke his leg for defending Mandy from him when he was eleven. Terry Milkovich did not raise bitches.

So Mickey sitting here crying because Ian fucking Gallagher had been away at the army too long was pretty much a middle finger to his father's face.

He should have gotten used to this by now. Ian had rejoined the army under his real name on his nineteenth birthday, a few months after Mickey and Ian had gotten back together. Since then, he had been deployed twice, for four months each time. And Mickey had been waiting faithfully like the very bitch Terry had tried beating out of him.

The first time, when Ian had tried to escape their messed up situation, Mickey had tried his hardest to stop him. "Don't." "Just."

It wasn't enough. It hadn't been, and Ian had left, and the slow collapse of their lives had begun. Mickey had tried to say what he really felt, tried to say, "Don't go. Just stay with me." But a lifetime of hiding who he was, being punished for weakness, made him afraid to be vulnerable in front of the boy who saw the world as a place that would accept them the way Mickey knew it would not. Ian was innocent, and Mickey knew he would never be as open in their relationship.

Faggots were unwelcome, and Mickey was nobody's bitch.

But here he was, tearing up because Ian was finally coming home.

Mickey had never understood happy tears. Why the fuck would you cry when you were happy? The Milkovich family wasn't allowed tears even when the world was crumbling. Why would anyone waste them on good times, few as they were.

And yet, here he was.

He fisted one hand around the sheets, and used the other to wipe away the stupid sentimentality escaping out of his eyes. Then he grabbed his old wife-beater and marched right out the door. The crappy car he and Ian had scraped together to buy was standing were it always was, outside the two floored, thin house with moldy walls and paint that didn't stay on them, that had become Mickey's world.

He stabbed the keys into the ignition and started the car, heading to the airport. It took an hour, an hour of nervous fingers tapping on the wheel and speeding over limits. When the white building came into view, he parked the car carelessly and slowly made his way in. He felt out of place amongst all the well dressed business people and placid families in his old clothes and messy appearance. They walked around him with their fancy suitcases and domestic scenes, watching him, clearly noticing how different he was.

But then he saw him.

The carrot colored head he had loved for years, the freckled face that had become more familiar to him than his own. He had a camouflage patterned bag in his hand and was scanning the crowd.

Then blue eyes met green, and both faces lit up. Ian jogged over, trying not to be too obvious because he knew Mickey didn't like attention on them.

He paused a step away from him, tentatively. They watched each other silently for one heartbeat. Then Mickey stalked up to him, and pressed their foreheads together, then their lips.

And for the first time in four months, Mickey Milkovich could breathe.

No, Mickey was not a bitch. But he was Ian Gallagher's, completely and unflinchingly.