Chapter Text
It’s Mickey’s turn to avoid eye contact, this time around. His gaze darts around the room as he saunters slowly over to the booth and sits down, and when he picks up the phone on his side he just holds it loosely to his ear and doesn’t say anything. His hair is long - longer than Ian’s ever seen it before - and he looks tired and twitchy.
Ian bites his lip, presses the phone tight to his ear, and says, “Hey.”
Mickey glances up at him briefly, then looks away again. “Svetlana send you?” he asks, his voice thin and echoey in Ian’s ear.
“No,” Ian replies. “I wanted to see you.”
Mickey bares his teeth. It can’t really be called a smile, and the noise he makes can’t really be called a laugh. “Well I’ve fuckin’ been here, man,” he says. “You lose the address or something?”
Yeah, Ian deserves that. He’s not here to apologize to Mickey, but he’s also not here to lie to him. “I was trying to move on,” he explains bluntly. “I wanted to try and leave everything in the past. I haven’t even really seen Yevgeny much, or Svetlana.”
“Yeah, well…” Mickey scratches his eyebrow with a dirty thumbnail. “That makes two of us. Bitch sent me the divorce papers, and that’s the last I heard from her.”
“She’s doing good.”
“Like I give a shit.”
That puts a halt to the conversation for a little while. Mickey scratches at the cheap Formica surface of the booth, and Ian listens to the distorted sounds of his breathing down the phone, staring at Mickey’s tattooed knuckles and his chewed-down fingernails. Ian wants so desperately to say I miss you, but there’s other stuff he has to say first.
“I got a boyfriend,” Ian confesses, and sees the muscles in Mickey’s face tighten. “Had a boyfriend,” he corrects quickly. “We just broke up.”
Mickey’s mouth twists bitterly. “You want a fuckin’ shoulder to cry on? Gonna be kind of difficult with this glass in the way.”
“No, I…” Shit. He really should have rehearsed this better. “He cheated on me. With a woman. He didn’t even think it counted as cheating, but I couldn’t stay with him after that.”
There’s no response from the other side of the glass. Mickey is looking away, and Ian realizes he’s looking at the clock - probably counting down the seconds until visitation time is over.
“He seemed like exactly what I needed,” Ian continues doggedly. “Steady job, steady life. He’s a fireman, and an artist. He helped me get this job as an EMT, and he brought me as a date to his cousin’s wedding, and he was… sweet. Real sweet.”
“You gonna make me fuckin’ sit here and listen to this?” Mickey snaps, finally looking up, his knuckles white where his fingers are curled aggressively around the phone. He looks fucking angry, and Ian doesn’t blame him.
“Please, I’m going somewhere with this, just… hear me out.” Ian takes a deep breath, licks his lips, then carries on talking. “He was perfect, you know? On paper. But he… he still cheated on me, like it was no big deal. And I thought, shit, what’s the fucking point? Why am I out chasing this perfect fucking textbook healthy relationship if this is where it ends up? And then…” Ian strokes his thumb over the cheap plastic of the handset, and wishes it was Mickey’s hand that he was holding. “Then I thought about you.”
“Aw, that’s real fuckin’ sweet of you, Gallagher,” Mickey retorts sharply, that ugly expression still on his face. “I always dreamed of being your fuckin’ rebound guy. You done?”
“I miss you, Mickey,” Ian says in a rush, suddenly terrified that Mickey will hang up on him. “I think I was missing you that whole time. I just didn’t want to. I was trying to distract myself from it but I miss you so fucking much.”
Mickey is shaking his head, his expression contorted, like he’s trying to resist what Ian is saying. Like he wants to believe it, but isn’t willing to lay himself bare again. “Fuck you, Gallagher,” he spits down the phone, tilting his face towards it, his lips close to the mouthpiece. “You expect me to believe that? You coulda come and visited me any time, any fucking time…”
“I’m visiting you now, aren’t I?”
“It’s been a fuckin’ year! You don’t get fuckin’ brownie points for visiting me after a year!”
The guard on Mickey’s side of the glass unfolds his arms and glares at him. Mickey throws him a sarcastic smile, but lowers his voice before speaking again.
“You got no idea, Gallagher,” he says, and suddenly he looks exhausted. “This place ain’t like juvie. I got shit under control but it’s a fuckin’ fight, every single day.” He glances sidelong at the fat guard, who has already lost interest. “I’m working on busting out of here,” Mickey says, his voice crackling down the line.
Ian sits up a little straighter at that, stares at Mickey to try and figure out if he’s serious. He looks pretty serious. “How?”
“Let’s just say I got a plan.”
“And what’ll you do if you get out?”
Mickey regards him suspiciously through the glass. “Why. You gonna narc on me?”
“Jesus, Mick, no.” That stings - it really stings. Maybe Ian deserves it, but he can’t believe that Mickey really thinks he would snitch. His mind is racing. If Mickey manages to break out, he’ll have to go on the run - maybe even flee the country. And if he tries to break out and fails, his sentence will definitely get extended. Both options pretty much suck. “Look, don’t try and break out. Please.”
“Nothing keeping me here.” It sounds like a challenge, and Ian rises to meet it without hesitation.
“I’ll wait for you.”
Mickey lets out another not-quite-laugh. It’s a sound that seems to hurt him on the way out. “Yeah, heard that one before.”
“I mean it this time, Mick. I didn’t then, but I mean it now. I’ll wait. I’ll wait fifteen years, if I have to. I can’t promise I’m gonna live like a monk, but I’ll fucking wait for you. Mickey.” Ian clenches his jaw, then reaches up and presses his fingers against the glass, wishing like hell that he could just reach through and grab Mickey and pull him out of this place - take him home, where he belongs. ”And I’ll keep visiting, every week.”
Mickey looks down at where Ian’s fingertips are flattened against the partition. He doesn’t reach out in kind, but he doesn’t tell Ian to take his hand off the glass either. He just stares for a while, his eyelids hooded, and his expression slack with weariness.
“I guess we’ll see, huh?” he says.
A harsh buzzing noise signals the end of visitation time. Mickey hangs up abruptly, settles his face into a casually mean expression, and walks away without saying goodbye. Ian watches him go, with the phone still pressed to his ear. He takes his hand off the glass, leaving behind fogged-up fingerprints that fade too quickly.