#mick deserves better that your crusty ass

[thebitchsaid]

GUNTHER STEINER THIS IS A FORMAL WARNING ; I HAVE LET YOU OFF FOR THE CRIMINAL SHIT YOU HAVE DON'T TO OUR MICK LAST SEASON, BUT DO THAT SHIT AGAIN AND I WILL FOK SMASH YOUR NOSE.

[robininthelabyrinth]

AU where Len is the pyromaniac

another one for the short fills. hope you enjoy!

ao3 link

—-

“Hey,” a gentle voice is saying. “Hey. Can you look at me?”

Len doesn’t want to. He just wants to stay here and luxuriate in the glorious feeling of relief he felt. All that tension, all that anger, all locked away deep inside, it needed to be let out - and now it was.

It was -

Wait.

How long has he been here?

Len blinks. His eyes hurt; they feel crusty and sore like he’s had them open too long. He’s dissociating again, most likely.

“Hey. You with me?”

Mick.

Len feels the hot flush of shame. “I did it again,” he says dully. “Didn’t I?”

And he’d tried so hard not to, too…

“Yeah,” Mick says. “It’s okay. You couldn’t help it.”

Mick’s the best, but Len doesn’t deserve him. They’d met in juvie - Mick had saved Len’s ass in juvie, more correctly, and in more ways than just the shiv that’d been heading Len’s way - and Len had made him promise they’d team up again when they were adults. And Mick had kept that promise, tracking Len down years later when he’d finished out his juvie-to-prison term and some of his mandatory probation period, the part before his conviction had been overturned, and between the two of them, they’d scraped up enough for an apartment.

An apartment that Len keeps burning.

Mick says he doesn’t mind. He says it’s all shitty furniture anyway; so no one will notice a few more burn marks. He says that at least Len’s too much of a hypochondriac to be a smoker, so the smoke and the ash don’t have nicotine in them. He says -

He says a lot of things.

But Len knows better.

Mick is terrified of fire - and rightfully so. His whole family burned, suffocated by carbon monoxide, crisped up in flames, burned black and buried under the wooden beams of Mick’s old childhood home.

Mick got blamed for it, sent to juvie for a crime he didn’t commit, and it was only years later, when a lazy and corrupt investigator had been revealed in an unrelated sting and all of his old conclusions reviewed, that they’d found that Mick couldn’t have set the fire and all those years in prison had been for nothing.

See, Mick’s parents were pieces of work, and Len knows what he’s talking about with shitty parents. Len’s own dad beat him half to hell and back when he was a kid, calling it lessons for real life - still did, sometimes, when he was around and not off on some mob job or behind bars, even though Len is mostly smart enough now not to believe him when he said it was for Len’s own good - but at least he didn’t dress it up in religion and make Len an outcast in the community.

Mick’s parents were religious nutjobs, though, and when Mick started acting weird - his dyslexia, high-functioning autism, and childhood epilepsy never properly diagnosed because those assholes didn’t believe in doctors that didn’t use praying - they’d decided he was possessed by evil spirits.

Evil spirits that needed to be frozen out in the giant-ass meat locker with the time lock they kept in their basement.

That was the real reason why Mick had survived the fire that had ravaged his house. Not because he’d been in on it, or because he’d been a coward and run away, but because he’d been locked away down below, shivering, in a temperature-controlled box that the fire couldn’t touch. And then, in the morning, the time lock sprung open - five thirty a.m., time for chores - and Mick had gone upstairs and been found there, standing in the ash.

Years later, when even the most basic examination of the house and interviews with the neighbors revealed this, and also the fact that the fire was clearly the result of some faulty wiring, some asshole social worker’d asked Mick why he hadn’t just told everyone what happened.

Mick had said that he didn’t tell anyone because he didn’t want anyone to know about the evil spirits. He’d rather a fresh start in prison than to go back to how his family had treated him.

Len hates everyone and everything that reminded Mick of those times. He fought anyone who made a joke about exorcisms, and punched door-to-door religious recruiters who probably didn’t deserve it, but he didn’t hate anyone more than he hates himself.

Himself, who lights fires in Mick’s home, where he should be safe from all this.

Len doesn’t even have a good sob story reason for it. Sure, his dad hit him, but it was only to toughen him up (and to get his own anger out on someone who couldn’t fight back - Len gets that now that Mick’s explained it a few dozen times) and there’s no reason, no reason he should be starting fires all the time just to relieve that endless anxiety that always hovers over him – endless, always present, but for when he lights his fires.

Mick gets all tight-lipped when Len says that, though. Mick says that breaking a kid’s arm and locking him in his room with no lights except a box of matches the kid stole earlier is enough. He says kicking a kid out of the house on winter nights so cold that Len only survived by burying himself under snow and sleeping next to lit-up garbage cans is enough. He says that making Len learn how to cook all by himself on their stupid finicky old gas stove that never caught right when he was only five because no one else was going to feed him now that his mom was dead, and again when he was eight because no one else was heating up milk and formula to feed the baby, is enough of a reason to make anyone go to the flames for comfort, because they sure weren’t getting it anywhere else.

Len’s still not sure it’s as bad as Mick makes it sounds - his dad always called ‘em lessons, lessons that Len’s spent most of his life trying to keep Lisa from learning - but he’s stopped arguing about it.

It’s the least he can do, since he can’t seem to actually stop lighting the fires.

“- something to eat?” Mick is saying. He’s put out the small fire Len started, and he’s cleaning up the table.

Looks like Len’s lost some time, which happens sometimes but especially after he lights up, but since Mick’s still talking, it couldn’t have been too long.

“Sure,” Len says. “Anything you like.”

Mick opens his mouth.

“That isn’t salad,” Len adds hastily.

“Salad is good for you,” Mick says with a sniff.

Len feels a stab of guilt. Mick’s always thinking of what’s good for Len.

“We can have salad,” he says. “If you want.”

Mick looks at him with a frown. “I was kidding, Len. I know you hate salad. The only way I get you to eat vegetables is by roasting or sautéing them.”

“You mean when you cast a magic spell on them to make them taste good and not like vegetable.”

“That magic spell is called olive oil and salt,” Mick says dryly. “Maybe a bit of paprika, you have a weird thing for that.”

Paprika, Len assumes, is what makes everything in the oven a cheerful red color. He likes that color.

“Len, what’s the matter?” Mick asks.

“Nothing’s the matter!” Len says immediately, on the defensive even though he doesn’t need to be.

Mick just looks at him.

“Why do you think something’s the matter?” Len tries.

“You just agreed to eat salad if I wanted.”

…a fair point.

“Also, you usually start fires in the tires in the backyard, not the living room -”

Len starts guiltily. He hadn’t known that Mick knew about the tires.

“- which means you were freaking out pretty bad when you got home. What happened?” Mick’s eyes narrow. “Did your dad come by?”

He starts looking Len over for hidden bruises.

“No, he’s still off in Starling,” Len says quickly. “No need to worry.”

“Then what is it?”

Len swallows. He’d been hoping to have some more time to build up to it. “I’ve got us a new job.”

“Good,” Mick says, though he looks a bit confused. They do heists pretty often - they’re reliable enough freelancers that they get hired by crews around the city, though they don’t really have the type of specializations that would get them a job on a permanent thief crew, and the way the split works for junior crew members means they only get so much out of each heist - and it’s not usually a big deal. Nothing to freak out over. “We need to pay next month’s rent and buy enough food, which would be tricky on top of Lisa’s skating lessons -” That’s always top priority, even if it meant going hungry or homeless for a bit. Sure, Mick’s eventually going to get a payout from the city for that whole wrongful conviction thinge, but that was still in progress and in the meantime they still had to pay Mick’s lawyers. “- so a job would be good. Who’s running it?”

“Uh,” Len says, swallowing. “That’s the thing.”

“Not a Family job!”

“No, no! Nothing like that!”

Lewis works with the Families, and as such, Mick won’t have anything to do with them. That always sounded like a reasonable rule to Len, who didn’t like the Families either.

“Then what?”

“Uh,” Len says again, very eloquently. “It’s, uh. It’s me.���

“Huh?” Mick asks, clearly lost.

“It’s - it’s my job,” Len confesses. “No, that doesn’t mean you’re not in on it too -” Mick looked ready to argue for a second there, but the reassurance moves him back to confused. “- it’s, uh. I’m the one running it. The job.”

He braces himself for disapproval. He and Mick have done small things on their own before - ATM robberies, corner store stick-ups - but never a major job. Never anything requiring a crew.

A crew that Len will have to manage and command.

Len - crazy, unstable pyromaniac Len.

Who can’t even keep from starting a fire in his own living room.

God, why the hell did he think this was a good idea again?!

Mick’s going to gently point out that it’s a terrible idea and then they’ll have to figure out how to extract themselves from it after all the promises Len made to the backers and the crew and the fences and -

“Good,” Mick announces. “You’ll be better at it than any of those assholes.”

Len blinks.

“You - really think so?” he says cautiously. “You think I can handle running my own crew?”

“Sure do,” Mick says, so firmly that even Len can’t believe that he’s just humoring Len. “You’re gonna make it big, Lenny. Just you wait.”

Len’s chest hurts, that warm bright sort of hurting that he gets around Mick, the sort that’s even better than the curl of attraction he gets to women and men in the clubs that he goes to when he wants to get laid, because it’s a bit like that and a bit like how he feels when he looks at Lisa, all bursting with pride, and that’s how he knows he’s head-over-goddamn-heels in love with his best friend and criminal partner, because Mick can always make him feel this way with an offhand statement or an expression of faith.

“I’m gonna make you proud,” Len promises, dead serious. No distractions mid-job for him, no sir; he’s going to pull this off. He’s going to be good.

No. He’s going to be great.

They’re going to be great.

“And I’ll be there to watch your back,” Mick replies, equally serious.

Len wouldn’t have it any other way.