Chapter Text
“Hey!” Lip hisses at Mickey and Damon from across the car. “Maybe you two shouldn’t be seen together.”
Mickey and Damon's side by side mugshots have been all over the news.
“Good call,” Mickey says, rubbing his eyes. He's probably exhausted after driving for most of the night.
“Hand it here,” Damon says as he takes Lip’s place at the gas pump.
He taps Lip’s shoulder in silent thanks and Lip is relieved to sense some of the tension break; Damon’s been on a low-grade angry simmer since Mickey kicked him out of the car to have sex with Lip.
Not that Lip blames Mickey; after 18 months of seeing him only behind a glass, they’re equally eager to get their hands on each other. Even in non-sexual ways. Lip’s hand has found a semi-permanent spot on Mickey’s thigh as he drove. And Mickey spent Damon’s most recent nap with his hand cupping the base of Lip’s neck, toying with his curls.
Lip takes Damon’s snack order and follows Mickey inside the gas station. They quickly fill their baskets. He silently hopes the store’s security cameras are broken, but are left up to dissuade thieves. Kash and Grab, style.
They’re back in the car and on the road in under ten minutes. Nobody's looked at them twice.
More tension leaves Lip’s body when Jesús welcomes Damon with open arms.
Beside him, Mickey nudges his arm and shoots him a self-satisfied smirk.
“Yeah. Great. Now all we need is instructions on crossing the border, fake IDs. Oh, and money.”
Lip wishes he had more than a couple hundreds stashed away, but he’s not exactly making bank washing dishes at Patsy’s.
“Cheer up, man. Have some cake.”
“Think we have to wait for the birthday girl to cut into the cake, Mick.”
“Whatever.” Mickey shrugs and heads towards the buffet table. He piles two plates up high and they find a table tucked in a quiet corner. Lip only picking at his empanadas while Mickey devours his food.
Lip watches him with quiet amusement until he remembers a throw away comment Mickey had made early into his incarceration: prison food left him hungry most nights.
He pushes his leftovers towards Mick who grins wide in thanks.
Lip checks to make sure nobody’s looking at them—knows Mickey wouldn’t be comfortable with any PDA—but with the pink tablecloth hiding the gesture, he gets away with squeezing Mickey’s knee. He leaves his hand there and slouches back in the lawn chair to make it look natural.
It’s for him as much as for Mickey. Part of Lip still doesn’t believe he’s really here, within reach. That he gets to have this again without needing to wait 13 more years (6 with overcrowding).
Mickey feels less substantial, fragile somehow under his hand. After only 18 months in prison, Mickey’s lost what little padding he had around his waist and hips. It was hard to notice at the docks; they hadn’t really taken their clothes off. But in the backseat? Lip had noticed. He’d assumed it was just from Mickey working out, but now he knows better.
When the birthday cake is cut and distributed, Lip makes sure to line up for two pieces that he slides to Mickey.
After the quinceañera, they drive a few more hours. It’s night by the time they reach a small, empty house tucked at the end of a long dusty driveway. The house has that characteristic odor of a closed-off space that doesn’t get aired out. It reminds him unpleasantly of the Jackson house.
There's only one bedroom, but Damon pulls a narrow mattress and bedding from a closet. Mickey places it on the living room floor just under the window overlooking the backyard. The safe house is far from any town and, when they lie down, they’re looking up through the window at a night sky free of light pollution. The stars are clear in a way Lip’s only ever experienced during school visits to the planetarium.
They spend almost an hour exchanging quiet words, in between kisses, despite their bone-deep exhaustion. Mickey tells Lip about how he sent someone to check on the Milkovich house, but it seemed empty.
“I don’t even know where Iggy went.”
“Didn’t he visit you?”
“Not in a couple months. I think he might be in trouble. Hiding somewhere.” Mickey bites his lower lip, worrying at the skin.
He doesn’t need to explain further. Iggy might be on the run, too. Or he might be in a ditch, and Mickey has no way of knowing which one for sure.
Lip tightens his arm where it’s wrapped across Mickey’s lower back. Pulls him closer against his chest. Mickey tucks his head a little lower, hides his worried expression, and Lip knows not to push the subject of Mickey’s siblings.
“Monica’s back.”
“The fuck. Since when?”
“Couple days before you broke out, I think? Debbie said she just showed up at the house one morning.”
Mickey scratches his forehead. “And what does she want, this time?”
“No idea. She—she told V ‘I’m staying forever’, and I went off on her.”
“Shit, I almost feel bad for her.” Mickey smirks to let Lip know he doesn’t mean it even one bit.
Lip snorts, but the humor drains away in a blink. Fucking Monica. And her perfect timing. She’s been gone for years, but reappears just in time to pour salt in the fresh wound?
In 10 years, when you cure cancer they’re going to come at you with an honorary degree.
What the fuck does she know about Lip’s life? She wasn’t around for his downward spiral, how lost he’d felt after Mickey was taken away. And Lip’s stomach drops with the realization that he hasn’t told Mickey about the board’s decision yet. Mickey didn’t realize how truly fucked Lip was when he asked him to come along.
“I don’t know why you want me to come with you,” Lip says. He winces because that’s not what he meant to say. He half expects Mickey to brush him off for whining when Mick’s the one who’s been in prison for almost two years.
“The fuck you talking about?” Mickey pulls himself up on his elbows to look down at Lip.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Mickey’s face shuts down, but his eyes are full of dread, and Lip regrets being vague because of course Mickey’s go-to fear will be cheating. Fuck.
“No! It’s not that. I didn’t cheat, Mick.”
Lip hasn’t slept with anyone else since their first, supposedly casual , hook-up five years ago. Part of him is still surprised he managed to go without sex for over a year. But between rehab, getting thrown out of school and missing Mickey, his energy’s been somewhat diverted to other concerns.
Still, he gets why Mickey reacts the way he does; when they got together, they were both still hurting from cheating exes.
Mickey huffs and slides down to rest his head back on the pillow besides Lip. Lip tucks a loose strand of hair back behind Mickey’s ear and Mickey relaxes into his side.
“I had a hearing at my college last week.” Lip realizes he hasn’t said the words out loud yet; people just guessed what comes next from his outbursts. “They… they’re not taking me back.”
Mickey’s eyebrows pinch tight. “So what? You really think I’m going to drop you just because a bunch of assholes at your college think they can pass judgment?”
Lip hesitates. “Nevermind. Forget I said anything.”
“Hey, you brought it up.”
Lip turns to stare at the dark ceiling. “Yeah, I know—”
“Lip,” Mickey says as he grabs Lip’s chin and forces him to meet his eyes. “I want you to come with because I want to be with you. That’s it.”
“Right.” Lip pulls out of his grip, looks away and, when that’s not enough, he shuts his eyes.
“Yeah, okay. Fuck you, man. I’m not your family, you don’t have any grand expectations to live up to.”
Silence and tension grows between them, Mickey adjusts himself on the narrow mattress and for the first time, Lip wishes it was wider so he could get even a semblance of privacy.
“Look,” Mickey says with a sigh. “You were making fighter robots two years before graduating high school. You already have the know-how. Can’t you just… I don’t know. Get a fake diploma along with the fake IDs tomorrow?”
“You don’t get it!” Lip hears his voice rise, the ramp-up to yelling, but can’t stop himself. “I'm never graduating, Mickey! Even if I had the cash, they wouldn’t let me back in.”
“Okay, so not there. What about other—”
“There aren’t any other—”
“Did every other college get blown up while I was inside? Huh?”
Lip grits his teeth.
“I don’t want to try another college,” Lip says, forcing himself to slow his breathing. One day at a time, and whatever other bullshit he learned in AA. Right now he’ll call it a victory if he can manage a minute at a time without blowing up his relationship. He doesn’t want to blow it up, but a part of him thinks this would be easier if he was on his own, if everyone just left him the fuck alone.
So he fights against that instinct and admits, “It wouldn’t be the same. Without… Youens, and Joaquin.”
Mickey’s gaze softens as it travels across his face, “I know, man.”
There’s a long pause that Lip fills with once more replaying the board’s decision in his mind. How disconnected he’d felt at the moment. How raw everything has felt in the aftermath.
Mickey breaks the silence, reading him like an open book. “You’d found your people.”
“Yeah.” Lip admits it even though he can see the hurt on Mickey’s face. Because Mickey had tried to hide it with support and encouragements, but he never got around to feeling comfortable on campus. He’d come to visit Lip, sealed up tight behind his Southside swagger. Armored against the looks and whispers of arrogant college dipshits.
And Lip had maybe, possibly, leaned on his RA privileges a few times to make life harder for those jerks. Maybe, possibly, punched a couple of the guys who made really out there comments about Mickey’s visits to Lip’s dorm.
He never told Mickey why he lost his job as RA, but that’s one part of his college career he doesn’t regret.
“I know you think it’s a circle-jerk, but I’ve missed it,” Lip says, like a confession. Like something he’s never fully articulated even in his own mind. “And I thought ‘of course, I can go back eventually’. I was so sure I could talk them into it.”
Rejection flickers across Mickey’s face before he can fully hide it. Lip can’t take it back, now. He knows he needed to say it; if they’re running away together, they’ll have to be on the same page about some things.
Mickey looks away. The silence isn’t as tense as the previous one, but it’s not comfortable either. Lip almost tells Mickey to drop it before he can try to find another solution. Mickey in problem-solving mode is like a dog with a bone.
“Okay,” Mickey says, drawing out the word, like he’s still mid-thought. Lip glances sideways at him, but Mickey’s eyes are focused beyond the room, out the window, on the clouds moving across the night sky. “They must teach robotics in Mexico, right?”
Lip sighs. They’re back to that, then.
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Then let’s just enroll you there.”
Just like that, simple. Lip turns the idea around in his own mind. Tries to figure out why this very reasonable suggestion bumps his low simmer of anger up to medium. It won’t be the same , Lip almost says again, but knows it makes him sound petulant.
“You said they wouldn’t take you back anyway.”
“I know.”
“Did you… try any other university? American ones, I mean.”
“No.”
“Didn’t you also get into MIT?”
“Three years ago, yeah.”
And Massachusetts isn't far enough from Chicago to be an option for Mickey. They’d always be looking over their shoulders.
Beside him, Mickey scratches his eyebrow with his thumb, probably annoyed at Lip’s stonewalling.
Fuck. Your boyfriend’s just trying to help, asshole .
His boyfriend who’s here and not behind bars.
His future won’t look the way he thought it would, and he didn't have time to make new plans. The only definitive answer Lip can give Mickey is this: “I’m coming with you, Mickey. Not re-applying to MIT.”
“Hey, man. You can always come back. Not you the law is after.”
Lip watches Mickey’s face closely. He’s being glib, but there’s a tightness at the corner of his eyes. Eyes that won’t meet Lip’s gaze.
“Hey, if you changed your mind about me coming, better tell me now.”
“Fuck you. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Right.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! You must really be in the dumps if you need your ego stroked this hard, Gallagher.”
“Yeah, well. Kinda thought that was obvious.”
“Asshole. You better come after I went through all the trouble of kidnapping your ass.”
Lip smiles, remembering Mickey’s voice over the burner. Miss me? As if he even had to ask.
“I did miss you.”
Beside him, Mickey takes a deep shuddering breath.
“I’m glad you’re out.” Lip turns onto his side to watch Mickey. “Kinda… keep expecting to wake up or something.”
Mickey shuts his eyes tight for a heartbeat. “Me too.”
Lip runs his fingers through Mickey’s freshly shaved hair. When that doesn’t draw Mickey’s eyes back to him, he tips Mickey’s chin. His turn to force the eye contact.
He caresses Mickey’s cheekbone with his thumb. In summer, that skin is dusted with freckles.
“I want to see if you get more freckles in Mexico than at home. Maybe watch you grow your hair out again.”
“Yeah? You liked the long hair?”
“Yeah.”
“Beach and sunshine.”
“Beach and sunshine,” Lip agrees.
The image is so clear in Lip’s mind: wind coming in from the Pacific— can you smell salt water? Either way, he intends to find out—tussling Mickey’s hair, bleached a shade or two lighter under year-round sunshine. Mickey would reach up to shade his eyes against the setting rays. His skin golden and freckled from the sun.
Maybe a little apartment, just far enough from the beach to avoid crowds of tourists, but where they can still hear the ocean. Nights falling asleep to the beat and counter-beat of waves and each other’s breathing.
The thrum under Lip’s skin settles. The dimmer of his rage turned low, low, lower. He runs his fingers along the curve of Mickey’s shoulder where he expects to see freckles bloom. That future bears little resemblance to the one he’s been picturing for the past few years, but he already had to adapt his plans when Mickey got locked away.
The memory of that day makes him seek Mickey’s hand. Lip entwines their fingers, pulls Mickey’s hand up to his lips.
Mickey’s knuckles split open, bloodied and shaking as he tried to fight off both the cops and a disarmed Sammi. Lip’s own hands cut open from punching the police station’s brick wall after he heard the charges…
He presses a kiss against Mickey’s knuckles. The skin, long since knitted back together.
Mickey huffs, but doesn’t fight the gesture. “Fucking sap.” He cups Lip’s face with his free hand.
“Mhm.”
Now Mickey’s out. On the run, but soon free. And while Lip doesn’t know if he’ll go back to university—for now, he can’t quite approach the topic of his education without being seared by pain—he knows Mickey’s a part of whatever future he wants for himself.
“I’m not going anywhere without you, Mickey.”
“Yeah,” Mickey says and it almost sounds like a question. A breath stutters out of Mickey when their eyes meet. He settles. “Ditto.”