Alone Together (Gallavich)

eleven

warning: mention of rape

mickey

I pulled out a cigarette and lit it on my way down to the baseball field, the same place I was last week. The goal was to not have this become a tradition, to not have to come down here every Tuesday, hoping that Ian would magically reappear after yet another week of being gone. That was still the goal. Tomorrow was Christmas, and I just couldn't picture Ian as the type of person to ignore his family for Christmas.

Speaking of family, Mandy was slowly coming back around. She was still rarely home but it was more than at first. The guilt had driven me crazy for a while. I understood why she was mad at me. I made her best friend leave without a word or a warning, but I think she could tell it was eating at me too.

I hadn't spoken to any of the Gallaghers since Lip at the bar almost two weeks ago. A part of me felt like I should have tried to do more for them, let them know what really happened between Ian and I, but it felt wrong. I didn't deserve Ian, let alone his family's forgiveness. Plus, telling them would risk other people finding out, and I guess it didn't really matter where Ian was if I was gonna be dead in an alley when he got back, beaten senseless by one of my dad's friends who knew how Terry would feel if he knew.

Part of me wanted things to go back to normal also. Getting more involved in the whole mess when I didn't even know for certain if I had anything to do with it would have only made it harder to let it go - let Ian go.

It's not what I wanted but it's been two weeks and he's still gone. He was clearly happy somewhere else. I wasn't gonna stop him if that's where he wanted to be.

So, I kept walking towards the baseball field in the snow, my head hung low, the only source of heat around coming from the cigarette between my fingers. When I got to the dugout, the pain in my chest grew just as it did every time I came here or even walked down this block since Ian and I were here. All I could remember was being so angry at him - angry at the way he made me feel, the way he looked at me like I could fix something that I couldn't see was broken... the way that I knew he could make me happy, and not just be there for a quick fuck or a getaway car. And then, all the anger went away. We sat next to each other on this bench, just taking in the feel of having each other around, wanting to be close to the other person. And then I scared him off.

I chucked my cigarette to the ground in anger.

His brother's words never left my ears, "he's always been on more of the sensitive side." I fought him and threw him to the ground. I turned him down. I ignored him. And now it's been two weeks and he was doing to me exactly what I had done to him. Except he wasn't here to see I missed him. That I needed him. That my life has been hell without being able to look at him, even if for a second a day.

I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hand, trying to stop the tears I felt coming on. I really fucked this one up.

"Mandy said I could find you here."

My head jolted up faster than ever before, immediately looking over to the dugout entrance where I heard the familiar voice coming from and standing up in my place

"Holy fuck," I breathed out, letting the tears slide out and down my cheek.

There he was, backpack in hand, those green eyes looking straight at me, bringing me back to life after the dead weeks that I've crawled through.

"Mickey, I-"

That was all I could take away from him. I ran over to his body, grabbed the sides of his face and closed the gap between us and our lips. Ian dropped his bag and put his arms around me, eliminating any last space that was left in between our bodies. We stood there for what felt like forever, grasping onto each other with everything we had, making up for lost time. I started moving my hands to his waist, not wanting to go through what happened last time, determined to show him I wasn't going anywhere. When I got under shirt, I could feel his whole body tense up, soon followed by him quickly pulling away all together. He was breathing heavy, not just from the lack of air when we were together, but because he was scared. He looked down at the ground, his body starting to shake out small cries.