i was going to delete my tumblr acct but instead i’m going to post part of a fic i started a good 6-8 months ago and will probs never finish.
Juvie is fucking boring.
Just a bunch of spoiled kids who got caught on their first B and E’s trying to steal some stereo equipment or something equally dumb. Snot-nosed babies who cry in their cells at night, who wait for their mommies to visit on Saturdays. Losers who try and prove their toughness by picking fights with only the smallest and weakest.
They tried it with Mick, in the very beginning. Before he set fire to Johnny Cortez’s mattress while Johnny was still on it. The kid was fine, nothing a skin graft won’t fix. And those eyebrows will grow back, most likely. But still, they leave Mick alone now, let him fail his GED prep course and run laps around the yard in peace. He does three miles a day, even in the rain. Runs around in a circle like a fucking hamster on a wheel.
One day, one day, one day. His mantra every time his foot hits the ground. Out of this playground and on to bigger and better things.
Or, that’s his mantra until some of Cortez’s lackeys start pounding on the new kid in the yard.
Scumbag guards, they don’t do a thing but pretend not to see as it’s five on one. The new kid is scrawny, but he sure as hell has a mouth on him. He’s taking quite the beating, but he still lets insults fly as much as his attackers’ fists do. And Mick isn’t quite sure why—maybe it’s the fact that five against one is bullshit, maybe it’s the fact that new kid tells that asshole McGee his mother doesn’t suck dick as well as his father does—but Mick breaks out of his rounds at the two mile mark and hits Tim Kennedy in the back of the head so hard he falls right down.
That’s when the guards finally decide to get up off their asses and do something. The crowd starts to scatter and the new kid looks up at Mick with narrowed eyes. Then a smirk breaks out over his face, cool and a little bit scary. “Hey,” he says.
So Snart starts following him around and Mick doesn’t mind all that much, especially after Snart manages to procure a pack of cigarettes (not that hard) and a book of matches (pretty impressive). They smoke in the corner of the yard; they run the three miles, Snart trailing behind at first, until eventually he starts to catch up. They fall in step together somewhere around the second month.
Snart’s mom dies after six months; he gets leave for a week to go to the funeral and mourn before they lock him back up like nothing ever happened. When he comes back, there’s something different about him, something colder and more cautious. Mick isn’t the sort of guy to ask what’s going on, or to pass along condolences. He is, however, observant enough to work out the fact that Snart’s old man likes to use his fists as much as some of the dumbasses in here. Mick doesn’t know how Snart’s mom died, only that she was often on the receiving end of those fists.
“I have to get out of here,” Snart starts muttering daily. “Lisa’s there alone with him.”
Lisa. Mick caught a glance of her once when Snart’s mom brought her to visit. She was maybe three years old, but she clung to Snart like he was saving her from the boogey man (and maybe he was). Snart cares about her like he cares about nothing else.
While Snart tries to get his dad on the phone to check on Lisa daily—there’s never an answer at the Snart house—Mick wonders if it’s better to have parents who disown you instead.
Mick gets out first, but it’s only because he turns eighteen before Snart. He gets a job slinging burgers and a shitty apartment above a decrepit Blockbuster. The guy who manages the Blockbuster is a terrible flirt and also an idiot, so it’s not hard for Mick to lift twenties out of the cash register. He lives on free burgers and stolen Skittles.
He’s not waiting for Snart’s juvie sentence to be up, but he’s not not waiting, either.
Lisa eyes Mick warily. She’s a tiny little thing, all elbows and curly hair, and she has that Snart distrust on her face.
“Who’s this?” she asks.
“This is Mick,” Snart says distractedly as he burrows through the duffel bag on the table. “Mick, Lisa.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
Mick expects there to be italics on the word “boyfriend.” They don’t come. Lisa’s tone stays even.
“Nope.” No italics in Snart’s answer, either. Mick files these things away for later. “Lisa, you have to stay here while Mick and I go out for a little bit, okay? Just stay inside with the door locked and don’t let anyone in.”
Lisa crosses her arms over her chest. “I need help with my math homework.”
“When we get back, okay, Lees?” Snart picks up the duffel bag and nods to Mick. “Let’s go.”
He drops a kiss on Lisa’s head as they walk out the door.
They rob the bank and then come home and work through a first grade math worksheet. It becomes the new norm in Mick’s life.
Lewis Snart is in and out of jail for the next few years. Len claims that he needs to keep a low profile so social services don’t realize that Lisa is technically on her own without any parental supervision. Lisa—twelve years old with an attitude to match—claims that she doesn’t need anyone looking after her. Mick secretly thinks she’s right, but doesn’t dare voice that opinion to Len; Lisa is the one thing Mick keeps quiet about.
So Lisa lives in their janky apartment, sleeping in Len’s bed while he crashes on the couch, and Mick steals what they need to survive. It’s not an ideal situation, and it’s certainly not what Mick thought he’d be doing with his twenties, but it’s surprisingly not the worst.
(Mick would kill himself before he’d admit it, but living with the Snarts, it’s sort of like having a family, and ever since Mick was renounced by his real one, he doesn’t exactly hate it.)
“If the kids in juvie could see you now,” Len jokes one night as Mick and Lisa put together a DNA model for her science project.
“They’d see that I’m really fucking good at science projects,” Mick says.
Lisa giggles. “Hey, Mick. We’re out of tampons.”
Lisa’s fourteen when Lewis gets out of jail and comes looking for her. It’s the first time Mick meets him and god, does he hate that son of a bitch. Len is so tense the entire time he’s in the apartment that Mick is pretty sure he’s about to crack into five thousand pieces.
Lewis is moving to Coast City, he says, to try and get a new start. He wants to bring Lisa with him. Lisa looks up at Len and Mick and bites her lip. It’s the first time Mick has ever seen her look scared. He doesn’t like it.
In the end, Lisa goes with Lewis because he threatens to get social services involved. They’ve been so good and hiding and lying low and now it’s all for naught. Len stops talking for a while, and when they go back to pulling heists, Len has this destructive air about him. Mick doesn’t say anything, just backs up Len as best he can.
When they both get thrown in jail, it’s not too much of a surprise. Mick gets out first, and when he gets home, the box of tampons is still under the sink.
Mick is used to stitching himself up. Needles don’t make him nervous, and when Len takes a through-and-through in the leg it’s a quick and neat clean up. Mick’s the first aid guy; Len doesn’t have the temperament to be gentle with anything when he doesn’t want to be. Mick knows when it’s time.
It’s raining when Lisa bangs on the door, the collar of her shirt soaked in blood. She’s seventeen with a tongue like acid, but now she has tears in her eyes. Len disappears after the story of Lewis and a whiskey bottle, flies out into the rain with his shoes untied.
Lisa looks up at Mick like he’s the only thing left in the world, and he pours her a vodka and ushers her toward the couch. “Drink this. It’ll help.”
She shrugs off her coat and pulls down the strap of her tank top. It’s a deep wound, still bleeding, a perfect line right across her collarbone. Mick gathers the supplies and cleans up the blood with a gentle hand.
“I’d say maybe seven stitches,” Mick says once all the dried blood is cleaned up. “Shouldn’t be too bad.”
“Have you done this before?” Lisa hiccups. She sounds young, more like the little girl who had nightmares about thunderstorms.
Mick scoffs. “Your brother and me, we aren’t too careful.”
Lisa drains the vodka glass and screws her eyes up tight as Mick works. She only whimpers once, when the needle first goes in, and she grips Mick’s leg harder than he thought her capable, but she doesn’t cry anymore. She’s tough. Been hanging around him and Len for too long.
“You’re still here,” Lisa says once the wound is closed. She’s slurring a little, drank the vodka too quickly. Mick thinks she must weight one-fifteen, tops. A glass of something strong would do her in, no matter how many wine coolers she sneaks at parties on the railroad tracks.
“Where am I supposed to be?”
“No, I mean,” she flaps her hand around. “I mean with my brother. With Lenny. You’re still here with him. No one else has ever stuck around before.”
Mick shrugs. “Where am I supposed to be?” he repeats, eyes firmly on Lisa’s collarbone as he ties off the last stitch.
Lisa hums a little. “You’re one of the good ones, Mick.”
He runs a towel over the stitches, cleaning up the excess blood. “No, I’m not, Lisa. You have to remember that. You have to be able to tell the difference.”
“I can tell the difference,” she insists. “You think me and Lenny would have survived without you? You’re crazy if you do.”
He tucks her into Lenny’s bed after making sure she drinks a full glass of water and swallows three aspirin for the pain. Mick never wanted a sister; it’s just his damned luck that he got one anyway.
