2Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue
He misses the birth because he's getting a blowjob from some fag outside the truck stop by the Super 8. He can't afford an actual room in the motel since the cash in his pocket is only enough for the bus ride back into the city, so they end up hiding behind the billboard sign that says "McDonald's- 3 miles". It's good, and he comes with a shout, slamming his head against the plywood, pulling probably too hard on the guy's hair.
For a minute, everything is sound. Everything is right as rain. There is hot breath and wet warmth on his dick, and stubble tickling his thighs. This has to be what it's like to plunge something deep in your veins, soothing and soothing until you're at peace. He won't deny that he thinks of Gallagher when he does this. Picturing him always makes it that much sweeter. He feels like he's in the middle of some kind of fucking forest, the kind you'll never find in Chicago, let alone the South Side. The orgasm is like fresh water running over his body, he's lying down in a stream. This is the kind of shit Gallagher reduces him to, and it's not even Gallagher sucking his dick right now.
"Off," he says. He pushes the guy's jaw away and gets a good look at his face in the flickering overhead lights of the billboard. This one has freckles, but his hair is more brown than red. The freckles are what counts, though.
Mickey does up his fly, wipes his nose and sniffles. The guy stays on his knees for some fucking reason. Mickey already paid him, like an idiot, even though you never pay a whore first cause this kid could have pulled a knife on him and ran off like a lot of these kids do. But Mickey wanted it bad enough that he handed the cash over.
And anyway, he's too innocent looking to have the balls to pull a knife. Mickey's not even sure why he's a whore. He's too innocent looking for that, too.
But you can trick people with innocence.
He remembers when Mandy told him to find Ian Gallagher and beat the piss out of him because he tried to fuck her when she said no. He always got the Gallaghers mixed up cause there was so fucking many of them. Only he knew Ian cause he sold him cigarettes and never ID'd, and had a stupid, cracking voice. And the fucking freckles and ginger hair. Yeah, somewhere in the back of his mind he got how there was no way that kid tried to rape anyone. He wasn't really thinking about whether or not Ian did try to fuck his sister because it was just his job to crack skulls when Terry was put away, and he really stepped up to the job, and how many times had he chased those little fuckers up and down Canaryville with a bat before?
When Mandy told him to back off, that she was wrong about Ian, he laughed to himself. He knew Gallagher couldn't hurt a goddamn fly. Too innocent. He had the kind of face that would make you someone's bitch in the joint.
And when he woke up to see that fucking tire iron all flimsy in Gallagher's hand, and his shaky little voice demanding for that stupid 22 he scored from the Kash-and-Grab. Jesus, it was too easy.
It was only about a minute later that Mickey's idea of Gallagher was blown to shit.
It was when he was naked, and really hard with a hand on Mickey's cock and the other creeping down to Mickey's ass, and Ian Gallagher had a voice all thick and urgent, saying,
"You want me to fuck you?"
Even though he had the courtesy to ask, there was nothing sweet about the way he grunted it out, and Mickey anxiously wiggled his hips to feel more. There was nothing innocent about any of it.
"Yeah," he said, and his head went back when Gallagher got a finger inside of him, and he relaxed his muscles like he'd practiced by himself with the hidden dildo he kept under the mattress. He'd been fucked in the ass only once, when he was like, fourteen and really drunk. It was one of Iggy's friends, an older guy who had tattoos on his stomach, something that made Mickey shamefully hard. At that point, Mickey was fucking around with a few people, all of whom he threatened to put into a coma if they ever told. Never, though, had he gotten fully naked with a dude and never had he thought about ass fucking as a reality. The guy with the tattoos made him turn over, and spread his thighs apart and Mickey was never more scared in his entire life than when he felt it press into him. He was never more scared than when, after the pain, it started to feel really fucking good.
The point is, he didn't really expect Gallagher to know what he was doing because Mickey still didn't know what he was doing, but Ian seemed like some kind of fucking expert . And Mickey had been wrong- really wrong about him.
Right before he came, Gallagher was actually slamming into him, making their skin collide with those gorgeous, grotesque noises, and it didn't hurt at that point because he was so close.
There was just something about that. Something about how damn dirty it was, and how it was coming from that baby faced motherfucker. Innocence. What a fucking lie that was.
That's why he pays these young guys to fuck him. He picks the cute ones, with freckles, scrawny arms. He tells them,
"Harder."
He tells them to be mean.
It makes him think of Gallagher, makes him high, makes him a junkie for this.
He doesn't say shit to guy on his knees, just checks around the corner, feeling paranoid that someone is watching, entertaining the idea that Terry followed him here even though it's an hour outside the city.
He doesn't go to the apartment Svetlana and him are supposed to share. Some nights, he sleeps in his room at home and no one, not even Terry, says shit about it because they assume Lana's on the job or out with the girls. Terry doesn't care, as long as Mickey isn't filing for divorce any time soon.
When he finally gets home that night, somewhere around dawn, after taking a bus ride, train ride, and an hour long walk back to his house, Mandy is smoking her last cigarette on the couch. The blue glow of the TV hurts his eyes, and he's tired, plans on sleeping for twelve hours. He doesn't know where the fuck Lana is, and doesn't care, really.
Mandy stands up from the couch, knocking over the ashtray.
"Jesus fucking Christ, answer your phone," she says.
"Forgot it." He heads straight for the kitchen, where the beer is sitting warm on the counter. He cracks one and drinks the whole thing in one go. He belches. Mandy watches from the doorway, letting he smoke burn down to the filter, and she's looking at him with the same animosity that she's exuded since his wedding night, when he choked her behind the community center for screaming and carrying on about fucking Ian this whole time? The whole fucking time?
She hasn't brought it up since.
But then she pulls away from the doorway and steps back a bit, like she wants to distance herself from him. Out of the fucking blue, she asks,
"Did you even fuck her?"
"Fuck who?"
"Lana," she says. Than she pauses and says in one breath, "Is the kid even yours?"
Mickey scoffs. He cracks another beer for this one. Underneath, he senses what she's asking. Did he fuck Svetlana? Did he fuck any woman? Maybe Mandy's looking for a smack by dragging this shit up all of the sudden. Mickey might be too tired to fight her, and you know what, maybe the Milkovichs have beat the shit out of each other for too long, so maybe he just won't.
"Yeah, I fucked her." He remembers it too well for it to not be real. Even the two week bender that followed it wasn't enough to get rid of the memory. He remembers how his ribs were probably broken and it hurt when she was on top, and it hurt when she was on the bottom, and he couldn't handle Gallagher watching from the sidelines so he closed his eyes and came fast. Yeah, he fucked Svetlana.
Mandy looks at him for a long time like she's expecting him to say something else. And fuck it, he doesn't know why he says,
"Wasn't my fuckin' idea."
Mandy furrows her eyebrows. She touches the skin on her elbow, it's a nervous habit that Mickey recognizes. He likes to chew his nails.
"Why the hell would you get married then?"
"She's knocked up." He drinks his beer. He tries to shrug, but it feels more like a slouch.
"So what?"
Mickey doesn't have an answer to give her.
But Mandy must know it because she lives with Terry, too. She knows how it is.
"Dad knows, doesn't he?"
Mickey turns his back to her. He finishes the second beer faster than the first one. The glow isn't nearly bright enough to fix shit. He wishes there was whiskey because Mandy keeps fucking talking. Shut up, he thinks.
"He knows about Ian?"
"Keep your fuckin' mouth shut about things you don't get, alright?" he says, still not looking at her.
He thinks he hears her sigh, but she'll have to suck it up because he's not fucking going there tonight. Not ever. It's enough that Mandy even knows. Mickey's starting to lose track of the amount of people that know now, and it's a frightening, black-hole kind of feeling in his chest.
Then Mandy says,
"You didn't answer your phone all fucking night." She comes around to the case of beer and grabs one, banging the cap off the edge of the counter. "Svetlana had the baby."
He coughs on the last swallow of his third beer.
Stomach cancer must feel better than the ache that starts up.
He stares at Mandy like he can't believe her words. Then she clinks their bottles together, and he almost drops his, as she says,
"It's a boy. Congratulations."
Mickey goes into his room, dank and dirty with six-month old laundry and crushed beer cans. He sits on his bed that creaks with the tiniest movement. He used to wonder how no one ever figured out what he and Gallagher were doing in here because the bed creaked with the rhythm they fucked in. The sound isn't as loud as he convinced himself it was, but he had a goddamn right to be paranoid.
He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to imagine what he'll do next. He will sleep for a bit, maybe, and first thing in the morning, catch the El to the hospital. He'll help Lana pack her shit up, get her settled back in the apartment. Maybe he'll fuck off for most of the day after that, claim that he's gotta work or some shit, that they need to afford diapers.
Diapers for the kid.
He doesn't know why he can't force that thought down. Too late, too fucking late. For the past few months, he's been holding onto the little fantasy that they could still take care of the problem, that Svetlana might suddenly stop being knocked up . But if it's true what Mandy said, then there's a shitting, pissing, screaming baby twenty minutes away from him and he's gotta take care of it for real now. Not a bump under her fucking tube top.
He's not up for this shit.
His heart races so fast that he can feel the blood rushing to every part of his face. He thinks about the freckled kid he fucked in the mouth not two hours ago. He thinks about Gallagher, closing his eyes, imaging that stream that washes over him when he comes, how it was more like an ocean when it was with Ian Gallagher, and how he's just chasing a high that he can't get back to.
It's just a piece of paper, a marriage certificate.
Maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can convince himself that a birth certificate is also just that.