PLEASE ALWAYS HAND ME ALL YOUR EMO/POP PUNK!MICKEY HEADCANONS, THANKS.
OKAY WONDERFUL here's one about how Mickey even finds FOB:
GOTTA be an accident, right? Where is he gonna hear pop punk of any kind in his regular daily life? We know he dropped out of school early, has spent time off and on in juvie since, and it's not like anyone in his family (outside of Mandy) would listen to it.
So say he gets sent on a job in the middle of May '05 (From Under The Cork Tree came out May 3rd of that year), and it's just an easy car jacking from somewhere on the West Side. Someone in the house owes Terry some money and he's gonna take the car as payment but he can't be fucked to do it himself so he sends Mickey. And Mickey is not at all mad, will take whatever excuse he can to get away from the house and all the family hanging around right now, though he does kind of wish he had Ian with him, but for what? They're fucking, not dating, even if they do hang out sometimes before they fuck, or after, or instead of if they're with Mandy, but this would just be them alone so why the fuck should be be wishing Gallagher were here?
He'd be agitatedly chain smoking the whole walk from the L, chest and head tight and throbbing like they do when he thinks too hard about this... situation he's got going on with Gallagher. He'd find the house easy enough, he'd staked it out the last couple days and had heard the family talking about leaving for vacation and knew there'd be no one home to catch him so it's late afternoon when he gets there.
He's after the Honda on the street, the one with the Wheaton College parking sticker in the corner, and it takes no time at all to jimmy the lock and slide into the driver's seat, reaching beneath the dash and yanking at the wires, twisting them together to get the car to start.
And as soon as he does the stereo ROARS to life, loud as fuck camera noises pouring out of the speakers and Mickey is PANICKED for a hot second but then some guitar comes in and his whole fucking brain lights up?????
And then the guy starts singing??????
Mickey's four songs deep, just finishing Sugar We're Going Down by the time he realizes he's still sitting in front of the goddamn house and finally drives away. He takes the longest route he can to the chop shop Terry told him to go to and before he gets there he digs around in the car looking for the cd case that matches the CD he popped out of the slot in the stereo before finding it in the glove box. He wipes the car and pockets the CD before dropping off the car and gets to the nearest pawn shop he can to get a cheap discman and some shitty headphones.
He doesn't come home till after dark. He spent all day walking around and listening to the album on repeat and felt his whole fucking brain rewire itself. How the fuck did these guys take all these complicated, mixed up feelings he have and put them into songs????
The CD and the discman immediately become his most prized and we'll hidden possessions.
