Two
The things that Mickey discovered while looking after Mandy's goddamn baby was that:
They don't do a hell of a lot.
They eat a lot.
They smell a lot.
They don't sleep often fucking enough.
And they're bloody expensive.
Because Mickey was a model citizen and all that, he stole most of the clean shit that he needed for the kid, just getting replacements for the stuff that was already in the house. He Googled more about the baby than he ever had done anything else, porn included and it confused him because people seemed to have different opinions and then Lilly didn't do some stuff. Like one website said that babies like to throw up what they ate, but Lilly never threw up unless Mickey span around in a circle while holding her – because he was fucking random like that and wanted to see what it would do.
She was definitely a Milkovich in that she liked to hang on to her food, although had no fucking problem shitting it out. The worst part though was that Mickey was actually starting to get attached to the kid. He was starting to learn which faces were, I need food, which faces were, I just shit myself and which ones were, I'm just crying to piss you off.
Mickey blamed it on some sort of blood connection that they shared or some bullshit like that. It wasn't because Mickey actually did have a soul, or because the kid was actually pretty damn cute. Especially when she was asleep and gormless looking with her mouth open.
She had really soft, tufts of brown hair on her head and Mandy's blue eyes and he thought maybe she looked like Mandy, but he wasn't sure. He found she shut up if he put music on, or the TV, so they started a habit of him falling asleep with her lying flat on his chest. He supposed it didn't matter if he kept on doing it, even if it was stupid, because it wasn't like there was anyone around to see him being soft.
Mickey decided after a month or so, when Lilly started fucking growing so that he could notice it, which oddly he hadn't bargained for, that he had to find a job. He refused to lose a limb at the meat packing plant and didn't have anywhere to fucking leave Lilly, so that was how he wound up at the Kash and Grab.
It turned out that Kash was back, but Mickey just ignored him when he scowled and asked where the fuck Linda was. Kash was so stupid that he didn't even notice the fact Mickey had a baby with him.
He didn't like being in there at the same time as Kash, because it was where he'd gotten shot and because it reminded him of Ian and really just because, but even Mickey knew he couldn't steal the shit he needed forever.
"I need a job," Mickey said bluntly when Linda finally appeared downstairs, because like fuck was he asking Kash.
"Why?" she frowned at him, frowned at the baby to, because Linda actually had half a brain.
"Because Mandy died and I have to look after her fucking baby and I need a job at a place where I can bring her with me," he said simply, "Figured she could go behind the counter or some shit." He rubbed a finger across his bottom lip and turned the carrier slightly so that Lilly's big blue eyes would be visible.
He knew women kind of loved babies, so he was hoping that it would work.
It did, even though Linda was a cold bitch, it worked.
"I heard about Mandy, I'm sorry," she said, crouching down in front of Lilly and touching her cheek with a finger, "What's her name?"
Mickey didn't say anything about Mandy because he didn't want to. "Lilly," he said, smirking at Kash when he saw the guy's eyes narrowing out of the corner of his eye, "So can I have the fucking job or not?"
"Well she's definitely going to grow up with a colourful vocabulary," Linda muttered, "And you can have the job, but I swear to God if you even think about pulling any crap like last time, I will personally remove your bollocks with a spoon." Because this woman wasn't passive aggressive at all. "You know how to work the till?"
"I can learn," he said, because he wasn't fucking stupid.
At the moment he felt that if he could change a diaper, he could do anything.
"Good," she said, smiling at the baby again, "Come pick your hours up tomorrow morning, you can start then as well."
He nodded and she left, obviously not having any desire to run this by her husband. Were they even married still? Mickey didn't know, he didn't particularly care. He just knew he hated Kash and he loved the fact this was pissing him off.
"Who was stupid enough to leave you with a kid?" Kash asked, scowling at him and probably imagining some really colourful ways he could kill Mickey.
"My dead sister," he said, "And you even think about trying to piss me off, you might just get the chance to tell her how fucked up her decision is." With that he left, because just like Linda, he didn't really have any desire to talk to Kash about anything. He didn't want the guy breathing on Lilly either; because Mickey was getting stupidly protective like that.
People who knew him looked at him strangely as he walked back to his house, baby carrier looped over one arm. But Mickey was badass enough not to give a shit what they thought. They probably all thought it was his, maybe she was now. She was on paper anyway.
"Meet the fucked up neighbourhood," he said to Lilly bitterly, feeling a little sorry for the kid about having to grow up around here, but Mickey couldn't exactly to afford to piss off anywhere else and the place he had been staying wasn't really a place you'd want to raise a kid either.
At least in Chicago he got to live in the house that his father had owned. Owned being the operative word.
The old man had dropped off the face of the earth a long time ago and nobody had batted an eyelid because Terry Milkovich was like that; the house had essentially been Mandy's and now it was Mickey's. Mickey wasn't the sort to pass up an opportunity like that, even if the place did make him scowl every time he walked through the door.
It hadn't really changed since he'd lived there last, but then it had only been a few years, not all that long if he thought about it. Mickey had left when he was eighteen, just after he'd gotten out of Juvie that second time. He hadn't looked back, but now here he was anyway.
He stopped for a minute to fix the stupid little had that she had on her head, even though it wasn't really that cold. Mickey just didn't want to risk it, because he knew an unhealthy baby would scream more than a healthy one and she screamed enough already.
They sat on a wall just because it had been too long since Mickey had been out of the house for any length of time, so he sat her beside him in her carrier and smoked two cigarettes, one after the other. He knew you weren't really supposed to smoke around babies, but he blew the smoke in a different direction so it couldn't be that bad. He wondered if Mandy had quit while she'd been pregnant.
He doubted it.
"Just so you know, even if you are a girl, you're still gonna have to learn to fucking fight," Mickey told her, flicking away the end of his cigarette, "I ain't having you dragging down the family name." He said that bitterly, sarcastically because he didn't even think that was possible.
Lilly slept on his chest again that night and Mickey wondered if the kid was listening to his heartbeat, he wondered if she could even hear it. Sometimes people asked him if he even had a heart in his chest, he supposed that he had to have something in there if he was looking after the kid.
But then, he did owe Mandy.
He used that as his excuse most of the time for why he was doing this, but he knew it wasn't really true. Not completely. He wanted to do this as well, because he wasn't letting the only part of his sister that existed be bumped around fucking foster homes. No, Mickey would look after her. Albeit it probably quite badly, but he'd still try.
He had to get her some new clothes the next week, he used the first wages he'd gotten from Linda to pay for them. He just got some more of the weird ass jumpsuit things, or maybe they were called all in one's, he couldn't remember. He didn't particularly care.
All he knew was that he felt like an idiot walking through the fucking shop trying to find shit to fit the baby. A woman had come over trying to be helpful, asked him what he was looking for and he said something to dress the kid in. She'd glared at him when he'd faltered at the question of how old she was.
All of the stuff had the label newborn on and so Mickey logically went with the next size up for the stuff, which when he sort of held it against her looked like it would fit. If it was too big, he figured oh well, fuck it, she'd grow. He discovered then that baby shit was expensive, so he didn't really buy a lot. He just got some more of those retarded all in one things, the cheapest ones he could find and that weren't pink because he decided that the colour offended him. He didn't give a shit if Lilly was a girl or not, he didn't like the colour pink.
It had connotations with being gay and Mickey hated the stereotype, so that meant no pink.
He got these creamy coloured ones with a bears on that he didn't think looked too retarded, not that it mattered too much since she wasn't exactly going to be seen by too many fucking people. Still, if she looked stupid he'd only hate it, so he got ones that didn't offend him too much.
He thought about dressing her in boys shit for all of half a second before he decided that no, the kid was already going to grow up with a complex, he didn't want to make it worse.
She was almost two months old by his maths, he had her birthday written down on a calendar somewhere and he Googled 'baby milestones' so he'd know whether or not she was doing the shit she was supposed to be doing. He found out from that that she was supposed to start smiling soon, so just because he had nothing better to do, he started trying to make her.
All she ever did was gurgle and making fucking retarded noises and faces.
Sort of like him as he tried to make her smile actually.
Mickey started to think when he managed to change a diaper faster than he ever had before, with a cigarette trapped between his lips as well to make his achievement even better – or maybe worse – that he was starting to get the hang of this whole baby thing. He still wouldn't call himself a caring person, especially not given how many people he threatened to gut for shoplifting at the Kash and Grab, but he thought maybe it wasn't so bad if he liked his own relative.
After all, it wasn't like she'd done anything to him.
"That's an adorable baby," a little old lady who he didn't know and who didn't know him smiled at him when she paid for her shit. He had his feet up on the counter, Lilly lying back against his thighs, grabbing at his fingers.
"Thanks," he muttered, taking her money and grimacing at the awkward way he had to twist to do so. He kept a hand on Lilly's stomach to make sure that she didn't fall off his legs.
The woman leant in and touched Lilly's other hand, because apparently babies were public property and anyone was allowed to coo over them and touch their hands and say how cut they were and shit.
"She looks like you," the old woman said and that made Mickey frown.
When she'd left, he picked Lilly up and held her in front of his face. "Do you look like me?" he asked her, because he was still under the impression that she could actually respond. He supposed it was possible that she could look like him. He did sort of look like Mandy and Mandy was the kid's mother.
Lilly grabbed at his nose and he jerked his head back out of her reach. She gurgled and finally cracked a smile. Mickey snorted, because it was just typical that she'd do it when he didn't try and get her to.