#i don’t really care being known for fall out boy👀

[arrowflier]

arrow 💕🏹💘 16 and 64? 👀🥰

As pirates go, the Gallaghers are a pretty useless bunch. Not all that scary, and not all that productive. They hit easy targets, literal child's play, and spend half their time conning instead of conquering.

The people they steal from barely even fight, most of the time. They know Frank, unfortunately, but they know his children too, and seeing their gaunt faces is reason enough to let them get away.

Until one day, Frank finds his ambition. And though the children beg him not to, he finds them a new target: the Milkovich Mariner, an infamous smuggling ship known for dealing in instruments of war.

They come up on it just only miles from port, Frank at the helm, a stupid move if ever there was one.  And once they’re alongside, already being shot at by the other ship’s skeleton crew of scoundrels, there’s nothing for it but to commit.

Lip goes first.  Stupid, yes, but smart too: they aren’t expecting it, and he gets in a few good shots before he’s overrun.

Carl goes next, outraged at seeing his brother go down, and Ian and Fiona follow with curses to protect him.

“Stay back!” Fiona orders the others, sure that they’re all about to die and hoping that Debbie and Liam might still escape.

Liam listens.  Debbie doesn’t.

And it’s a mess, a horrible mess, bullets and knives everywhere.  Surprisingly little blood on either side, the Gallaghers loathe to fight, the Milkoviches caught off guard.

For a second, one horrible second, Ian comes face to face with a boy his age brandishing a dagger in his face, and thinks that’s it.  It’s over.

Then there’s a loud shout from the front of the ship, a girl’s high voice crying out in pain and in anger, and the boy turns to look.

Ian does too.

It’s Debbie. 

Or rather, it’s the girl twice her size that Debbie is holding around the neck, knife pressed to her throat.

“I’ll kill her!” Debbie shouts at the men surrounding her.  “I will, if you don’t let us go!”

“Fuck,” the boy mutters, knife dropping.  “Mandy.”

The fighting comes to a standstill.  And out from the depths of the ship comes the captain, Terry Milkovich himself, finally making an appearance.

“Do it, girl,” he snarls, pushing his way across the deck.  “You don’t have the guts.”

“Put your gun to my head,” the boy mutters toward Ian, eyes hard as he looks back at him.

Ian blanches, and the boy growls, then grabs Ian’s arm and does it himself.

“Fuck!” he shouts, extra loud to draw attention, and elbows Ian when he just stands there, his wrist in a tight grip to keep him from lowering his gun.

Terry looks over to them, stopping his progression toward the girls, and Ian catches on.

“She might not have the guts,” he says, trying not to let his voice shake, “but I do.”

He hopes it works.  He hopes Terry cares more about this boy than that girl.

“Mickey,” Terry growls.  “You fool boy, what are you playing at?”

Ian gives the boy, Mickey, a good shake, ignoring his annoyed glance at the jostling.

“He’s playing at getting killed,” Ian says, full of bravado, “if you don’t back down.”

And it doesn’t look like it’s going to work.  Terry hesitates a second longer than he did before, but his face is still thunderous, his eyes still hard.

Then there’s the cock of a gun behind him, Fiona’s face over his shoulder, and she hisses in his ear,

“If you want to live, you’ll let us go.”

-

In the end, he doesn’t so much let them go as falls unconscious when she hits him on the temple with the butt of her gun.  And they scramble in the shock of it, grab Lip where he lies bleeding but alive on the deck, and start back to their ship even as Frank shouts at them to get what they came for.

“You gonna leave just like that?” Mickey asks when Ian tries to follow, his hand still tight on Ian’s wrist.

“Alive?” Ian answers.  “Uh, yeah.”

“My dad will come after you,” Mickey says.  “You should take some insurance.”

“Like what?” Ian asks, confused, and Mickey smiles.

“Like me.”

(“Didn’t really want to shoot anyone,” Ian says later, and Mickey rolls over in the cramped bunk to stare at him.  He’s sharing with Ian by necessity on the small ship, Mandy bunking with the girls, having convinced them to take her, too.

“I know, you moron,” he says.  “I move guns for a living.  You think I didn’t notice the safety was on?”)

#trope mashup #fanfic adjacent #gallavich #gardenerian