Just so you know, I've rated this high just to be safe because of the language that can sometimes come out of Mickey's mouth and for possible future smut.
Also, just wanted to say that if anybody has any ideas of what they want written or anything they want to see happen, just message me or put it in a review. Enjoy. . .
Mickey's whole body seemed to be in pain, but it was the throbbing in his skull that was the worst. Or maybe he only thought that because something was pulling on his hair. Something sticky touched his cheek and he thought he was dreaming, because he thought it felt like a tiny hand.
He opened his eyes, blinking past the light that seemed to be shooting daggers into his brain and frowning at the child standing in front of him. It grinned and pulled his hair again.
"Who the fuck are you?" he asked, his voice slightly broken as he gently tried to remove the kid's fingers from his hair. He was kind of cute in that chubby baby sort of way. Mickey neither liked kids or disliked them, but he decided that he was going to try to be especially nice to this one since with the pounding in his head, he did not need to little rugrat to start screaming.
The kid just sort of giggled and stuck a hand in its mouth and that was when Mickey remembered where he was and what had happened. He remembered his Dad grabbing him around the throat, punching him even as he choked the life out of him. It had been a sort of desperate struggle for air and Mickey had managed to land a few punches, but it was Mandy cracking a glass bottle over Terry Milkovich's head that had saved him.
"He knows Mick," she'd said, her eyes wide, desperate, "You have to go."
And Mickey had known exactly what she'd meant, so he hadn't even hesitate before running. Not that it had been quite running, since he was already half drunk and the pain in his head was making the world spin, the pain in his chest where his Dad had punched him was making him feel like he was about to pass out.
He almost made it to the Gallagher's before that happened.
And it was only when he'd woken back up to find Fiona crouched over him that he realised why he'd been heading in that direction at all. Firecrotch. He was safe. God, Mickey was glad he was safe, even if he hated that he felt like that.
What he hated even more was remembering what he'd told Fiona, because he was positive that he'd told Fiona he was gay right before passing out. He wasn't one hundred per cent sure, but it was more definitely a possibility.
He'd been drunk, that was his excuse.
"Ugh, God my head hurts," he muttered, which of course made his mouth hurt because of his split lip. He sat up and only then realised he was only wearing his boxers. Even his socks were gone. Somebody had undressed him, no doubt while he was unconscious and that would have bothered him a hell of a lot more had he not immediately seen the clothes folded up by the couch he was on.
What surprised him though was that they had been washed. He could tell just by the fact that he could actually tell what colour his jeans were originally. He looked at the kid again, who didn't look like he could possibly be related to Ian and yet somehow was.
Mickey knew because he remembered Ian telling him how by some fluke Frank was his youngest brother's father. He hated that he remembered that. Hated that he actually listened when Ian had been blabbering on about his family. Normally, with anybody else, Mickey wouldn't have listened.
"I don't know what the hell your name is, but I don't think you should be holding those," Mickey said, his voice croaky and annoying for him to hear. He extracted the packet of painkillers from the toddlers grasp and then noticed the bottle of water on the floor.
Okay, this is new, somebody actually gives a shit.
Because he wasn't stupid enough to think that it was all there by accident, but he was confused because in his family, you laughed at the person in pain and if they had a hangover, made as much noise as possible. You certainly didn't wash the clothes of a near-stranger and provide them with a place to sleep and something to kill the pain.
The kid laughed and clapped his hands when Mickey popped the pills and then eased off the couch to dress. It then stuck its thumb in its mouth and climbed up on the sofa to stare at him with wide eyes. He thought it was a strangely silent child, but maybe that was because his only real experience of children was his cousin's daughter who screamed near non-stop whenever anybody went near it, or just for the sheer hell of it anyway.
Normally that would have been the moment when Mickey would have bolted, but he didn't have anything against kids, especially not this one and he also didn't have anywhere to go, so he just sat down next to it on the couch. He hated the fact he knew he would have felt bad if he'd just left it sitting there on its own.
God, isn't Fiona or somebody supposed to be here to look after the brat? They both sat there for a minute or so in silence – because just because Mickey didn't want to leave it to stick its finger in a plug socket didn't mean he had any clue how to amuse it or much of a desire to – before the kid then got up and went across the room. Coming back with a piece of screwed up paper and a handful of pencils.
It made him smirk because it reminded him of his Gallagher, the way he would always take charge of the situation because he knew damn well that there was no way Mickey was going to.
He eased himself down onto the floor beside the kid and took one of the offered pencils. "This is only because you're related to Firecrotch and you're not old enough for me to hate you," Mickey told him firmly, flattening out the piece of paper that the kid had brought over.
Mickey would never admit to it, but he actually liked to draw. Probably because it was something he wasn't half bad at it. The only drawing he ever really did was graffiti, because he knew his brothers would take the piss out of him if they ever caught him drawing otherwise, but that didn't mean that he'd ever lost the skill to actually draw.
"What you want me to draw?" he asked, because even though he could draw didn't mean he knew what he actually wanted to. And considering the things his brain was filled with weren't exactly appropriate for children, it was probably safer to ask.
"El-fant," the kid said, grinning and proving that he actually was capable of forming words even if he didn't very often.
Mickey rolled his eyes, thinking how unoriginal that was since there was a stuffed toy elephant on the opposite side of the room, but hey, he'd asked and he wasn't about to go and argue with a two-year-old.
The thing Mickey found he actually liked about the youngest Gallagher kid – not that he would admit it, ever, he wouldn't even admit to sitting there drawing with the rugrat – was that he actually let them fall into a sort of comfortable silence. Mickey drew the outline of the elephant so that the kid could scribble aimlessly over the paper while he made it a little more detailed.
At the very least, Mickey was glad the kid was a quiet one because it helped out his hangover situation.
He leant back against the couch for a moment, watching the kid scribble with a sort of renewed gusto on the paper, presently making the elephant red. His ribs were fucking killing him, but he knew from experience what it felt like when they were broken and they weren't that bad. He was just sore and it was a pain in the ass. Then again, it didn't seem too long before the painkillers would kick in, so it was only a matter of waiting.
"Fi!" the kid squealed, picking up the paper and waving at the person that Mickey hadn't realised was standing behind him. Fiona came and sat on the couch, gently taking the paper from her little brother's chubby fist. "El-pant," the kid proudly proclaimed.
Mickey suspected from the look on Fiona's face that she was expecting to look down at the paper and see a mass of colours all scribbled onto the page and when she didn't, her jaw dropped a little. She looked down at Mickey, her eyebrows raised, "Did you do this?"
He shrugged, "Yeah, I just didn't want him to start screaming at me or some shit."
She smiled. "It's good," she said and he hated that he felt the tiniest bit pleased about that. He racked it up to the fact that nobody ever complimented him. They swore at him, told him he was a fuck up, but they never said anything positive. Well, except Firecrotch, but saying stuff in bed didn't really count.
Hell, the stuff Ian said to him didn't count. He couldn't explain why, it just didn't.
"Sorry about that anyway, I was in the shower and then work called," she explained and that was when he noticed her damp hair, "And somebody has recently taken to climbing out of his crib." She looked accusingly at the kid, but there was such love in that expression that Mickey had to look away. It practically blinded him. He didn't know how to deal with love like that. He wasn't good with any emotion other than anger, hate or lust.
He shrugged, regretting when he did, because that hurt. "Doesn't matter," he said gruffly, "I just didn't want him sticking his fingers in a plug and frying his brains out or nothing." Mickey was uncomfortable having to talk to Fiona. He wasn't good at talking to people. He usually spoke with his fists.
"Carl did that once," she commented, not seeming to know quite what to say either.
But he could tell that was just because she knew exactly what she wanted to say to him, just didn't know whether or not she had the courage to. If she was anything like Firecrotch, she'd say it eventually.
"Yeah, but that kids a fucking nutjob," Mickey replied, not caring if she found his words harsh or blunt because it was true. Mickey knew who Carl was, but only because the kid was a junior sociopath and Mickey made sure to keep the fuck away from him. He didn't scare him, he just freaked him out.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Fiona smile and decided that maybe it wasn't just Ian who had strange reactions to things Mickey said. Then again, he really doubted Fiona was going to start smiling that shit eating grin at one of Mickey's insults any time soon.
A part of him wanted to thank her for washing his clothes, for looking after him, but the words got stuck in his throat. Mickey didn't know how to do that, he wasn't good at the whole gratitude thing, so he just said nothing and hoped it didn't come across as being too rude.
"Mickey?" she said after a moment and he knew her big question or whatever was coming then.
He just looked up at her, didn't say anything, because he didn't know how the words would sound when they actually left his head. He didn't even know how to make sense of half of what was going on in his head. He blamed the painkillers that had now started to kick in.
"You do know that you're welcome to stay here as long as you need?" she asked and he couldn't help the way she frowned at him. He had been expecting her to ask him to leave or to grill him about what had been said last night, but he hadn't expected that. He didn't know how to deal with that. People were supposed to be horrible to him, they were supposed to want to get rid of him as quickly as possible. They weren't supposed to want him to stick around. He didn't know how to cope with that.
"Why?" he had to ask.
She rolled her eyes at him, like he was being an idiot. "I'm not going to kick you out onto the street," she said, like it should have been obvious to him that she would never do that, "Unless you have somewhere else you need to go?"
He could have been wrong, but he thought that she might have even been hoping that he didn't. But that would have meant that she wanted him to stick around and that was just stupid, he wasn't even going to let himself consider that because that would make him hope.
"So do you?" she asked when he didn't reply, just stared at her in a way he knew was unnerving her, "Have somewhere to go, I mean?"
He considered lying to her, but he was curious about where this was going. "Not really," he admitted, "I have a friend I can probably crash with for a few days." He hadn't given it much thought as to where he was going to go when he'd run out of his Dad's house, the only placed he had ever lived before in his life. He'd just needed to check Ian was okay, needed to see that he was fine. It almost made him regret that he didn't have very many friends – any friends really if he was being honest – that would let him crash at theirs for a long period of time. He knew some people he could threaten into letting him stay, some people who would do it just because, but there wasn't anybody who would take him in out of the kindness of their hearts – not that he believed that shit even existed.
People always wanted something and Mickey didn't do charity.
"So stay here," she said, shifting the kid around on her lap when he started squirming, "I have to go to work, but I'm not kicking you out on the street, Mickey, you're welcome here for as long as you want to be."
He chewed the corner of his mouth, like he often did when he was thinking, or just out of habit really. He could see that she meant it and that pissed him off. He didn't know how to deal with sincerity. If she lied to him, sure he could cope with that, he'd probably find it more realistic, but open honesty wasn't something he was in any way used to. It kind of freaked him out if he was being completely honest.
"So will you be here when I get back?" she didn't really seem to be expecting him to be giving her straight answers, wasn't pushing him for anything, but he could tell that she really wanted an answer from him.
Didn't she understand that he actually needed time to process this? Time to process it when his brain wasn't starting to become fuzzed up with painkillers. "I don't know," he told her slowly, his instincts screaming for him to run, but practically that wouldn't be the wise decision.
She nodded, standing and taking the rugrat with her, but Mickey didn't really register it. He just stayed there on the floor, thinking more than was probably healthy for someone like him. He scowled at nothing in particular, like that would help.
He didn't have anywhere to go that was actually as good an offer as staying here would be, so it would be logical to stay here. But then logical wasn't really a part of Mickey's vocabulary. He wasn't good at logical. But he knew it would be worse for his ego if he left and then had to come crawling back seeking out that place to stay. So wouldn't it be simple to just stay here? It would be, it would definitely be simpler, but Ian had once told him that he had an ego the size of Canada and he thought that pretty much summed it up. He wasn't comfortable with the whole accepting help thing, charity. He didn't need charity, but somehow he was sure that wasn't what Fiona was offering him.
She was offering him help. And even a Milkovich could accept from time to time that they needed help.
So hours later, Mickey was still there, even if he didn't completely know why he was sticking around the house. Maybe it was because it was warm and safe and he didn't have anywhere else to be. Or maybe it was because the whole place reminded him of Firecrotch. He could have explained all of his reasons for doing that, but when the smaller Gallagher girl. . .Debbie or something. . . came barrelling into the house, slamming straight into Mickey, he automatically steadied her. He looked down into her tear stained face and frowned, not knowing why it bothered him that she was crying, certainly not knowing why he bothered asking, "What's wrong?"
Mickey didn't bother asking things like that, not unless it came to Mandy. But he asked it then. And he didn't know why.
She snivelled, reminding him stupidly of Ian as she scrubbed a hand across her cheeks. "T-They t-took Fiona's phone," she said eventually in a broken voice her skin turning red and blotchy, completely unattractive. He wondered how old the kid was, probably eleven, something like that and it was obvious that she had been raised completely different from Mickey, because he knew that if he'd cried at eleven, he would have gotten the pulp beaten out of him from his father. "I wasn't even supposed to b-borrow it."
He wanted to tell her that Jesus Christ it was just a phone and she should get over it and stop crying, but that wasn't what he did. He wanted to say that to her, he definitely wanted to, but he didn't. Instead he asked, "Who?"
And when she looked at him, it was with a frown showing through her tears. Like him, she didn't understand why he cared, but she was smart enough not to question it. He would have backed down and run off instantly if she'd questioned it.
"The b-boys at the end of the r-road," she stammered out after a minute, rubbing at her eyes again, "The one with the h-hat." She waved vaguely at her head, which he thought was stupid, because he knew what a damn hat was.
Mickey didn't comment on her stupid actions, or the fact she was still crying, he just nodded. She followed him back to the door, standing just outside it and watching as he walked down the road. Because he could see the boys she was meaning about. He didn't know them, but he wouldn't have cared if he had done. He zeroed in on the one with the hat, a tall guy with a slightly crooked nose and hair the colour of dirt.
"You took a phone," he said, rubbing a thumb across his mouth and then wishing he hadn't done, because it only reminded him of Firecrotch. He knew Ian had always liked it when he did that, didn't have a fucking clue why though. "I want it back."
The tall guy in the hat smirked, which annoyed Mickey. "Don't know what you're talking about," he said, his tone as cocky as his expression, which really didn't help his situation, "Don't have no phone."
Mickey shrugged, "If you say so."
And then he slammed his fist into the guy's face. There were only three of them and one of them started edging off the side the minute the first punch was thrown. Two against one were definitely odds that were in Mickey's favour. He was a Milkovich, he knew how to fight. He knew how to fight because he enjoyed the fight.
He batted them around a little bit, enjoying the crunch as he stamped on the guy in the hat's hand, breaking at least one of his fingers. "Now, do I need to repeat myself?" he asked, staring down at him, "Because I can do this all day, and I want that phone back."
The guy whimpered which was just pathetic and made Mickey haul him none to gently to his feet, pushing him into a street light. He kept a hold of the front of the guy's shirt as the idiot rummaged through his pockets, pulling out multiple phones and two wallets, dropped them all on the floor.
Mickey pushed him away roughly afterwards, collecting up all of the stuff on the floor and with a one-fingered salute to the boys, sauntered back off towards the Gallagher house. Debbie didn't say anything to him as he moved back inside, but stared with wide eyes as he deposited all of what he'd collected on the kitchen table. There were about five phones, most of them pretty shitty, but still worth money.
She picked one out after a minute and before he could stop her latched onto his waist, her arms wrapped around him. "Thanks," she said when she pulled back. The entire time Mickey had just stood there stock still, but he finally looked down at her and made himself shrug, "Whatever, don't hug me again."
Debbie just smiled, like she'd been expecting that reaction and then because she was a Gallagher and although they had morals, those morals didn't extend to certain things, she started going through the wallets, pulling out the cash. And the kid didn't even hesitate for a moment, she just held it all out to him, not even taking one fucking dollar for herself.
And he didn't know what made him shake his head and step back, refusing to touch the money offered to him. "Keep it," he muttered, pushing his tongue into the corner of his mouth, feeling nervous even though he couldn't have explained why.
She watched him for a minute before a wide smile broke out across her face. "Do you want to watch the new Transformers movie?" she asked after a second, "Lip copied it off someone the other day, but we haven't watched it yet."
God, did all of these Gallaghers talk so much? And why the hell are they all so nice?
It confused him that they were being nice to him, but it confused him even more that he wasn't actually being horrible to them. Maybe it was because Fiona had helped him out for absolutely no reason. Maybe it was because they were related to Firecrotch. Maybe it was because Mickey couldn't actually think of a decent enough reason to hate them.
So he said, "Sure, whatever," and frowned as the youngest Gallagher girl ran off into the other room. Dutifully he followed her, sinking down into the sofa that that last night had been his unlikely bed. She sat beside him, closer than he was comfortable with, closer than he'd expected, but since she wasn't touching him, he didn't complain anywhere other than in his mind.
"You're not that bad," she commented as the movie started, "You should stick around."
And he couldn't help but think, maybe I might, because even if he didn't understand it, even if he hated it, it was quite nice to be looked at with something other than distaste for a change. And besides, it wasn't like he had anywhere else that he could go.