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It’s early as fuck, and he shouldn’t even be awake, but it’s hard to share a bed with someone who doesn’t want you there and there’s no fucking way Mickey is going to sleep anywhere else. Shit, he’s almost used to getting up early now, like all the sleep Ian is getting means that Mickey has to sleep less for some fucking reason. At this point, he’s probably as tired as Ian always says he is—only, his exhaustion would go away if he got one good night of sleep, while Ian’s… It doesn’t fucking work that way. Mickey still doesn’t really know how it works, how any of this bipolar shit works, and he doesn’t think anyone else does either, as much as the Gallaghers talk out their asses and claim they do. They don’t know shit as far as Mickey’s concerned.
The cracking kitchen tile is cold even through his socks, and he prods at the bubbling batter in the pan sitting on the stove, tries not to think of a smiling, happy Ian up way too fucking early after too little sleep and standing over his own batch of pancakes.
Mickey glares at the pancake before flipping it.
A chair screeches back against the floor, a sound that Mickey grew up listening to but that is still annoying as fuck—especially when he’s this fucking tired.
“Get off your ass and make your own fucking breakfast,” Mickey snaps, waiting for the snide remark about how early he’s up or the fact that he’s making something that wasn’t previously frozen.
It doesn’t come.
But he can feel eyes on him, making him scowl, and he twists his head around to tell Mandy or Svetlana or whoever the fuck is up this fucking early to go fuck themselves, he’s allowed to fucking make pancakes if he god damn pleases, but the only person at the kitchen table is a blanket-bundled, sallow-looking Ian.
“Shit,” Mickey hisses in surprise, mouth fumbling around questions and apologies and pleas that he doesn’t know how to say. Isn’t used to feeling like he should say, because he never feels like he should do anything.
That’s the thing about Ian. He makes Mickey feel like he should do them. Sometimes, he even kind of wants to.
Ian doesn’t say anything, just stares at him in that way that feels familiar and makes Mickey swallow thickly.
He looks away before he says or does something stupid, or before Ian notices. Sometimes Ian can read him like a fucking book.
“I, uh, made pancakes. You can have some.” Mickey chews his bottom lip, pokes the pancake with the spatula and wills it to cook faster. “I guess.”
Mickey’s not expecting Ian to say something. Ian hasn’t said anything other than, “I’m tired,” or, “Go away,” or, “Fuck off,” in days.
“I didn’t know you could make pancakes,” Ian mumbles in his sleep-rough voice, and Mickey almost knocks the skillet clean off the stove, it startles him so much.
It also makes him feel like a fucking dumbass.
“You talkin’ now?” Mickey shoots Ian a glance, can’t help the way his gaze lingers a few seconds longer than he intended. Ian isn’t small—taller than Mickey, at least, and bulked up from all that army shit he used to be into—but he looks tiny, wrapped up in, fuck, Mickey’s comforter like a fucking kid.
Fuck, he still is a kid.
“Yes, I can fucking make pancakes,” Mickey growls defensively, flipping a (slightly burned) one onto the plate beside him. “Not like it’s fucking hard or anything.”
Ian doesn’t comment, and Mickey wishes he would. Wants to say something to keep the conversation going, now that Ian isn’t just shutting him out and pushing him away. It used to be that Mickey couldn’t get him to shut the fuck up, but now Mickey would do anything to get Ian to talk.
He plops the plate of pancakes in front of Ian with little ceremony.
“You hungry?” Mickey asks, a little belatedly, and Ian rubs at his nose, the blanket still clutched in his hand.
Like a fucking kid.
“Yeah,” Ian responds, like the fact surprises him, and Mickey just stares at the little smile that blooms on Ian’s mouth like it’s meant to be there. Like it hasn’t been missing since Tuesday.
Mickey has the weird fucking urge to touch it, like that will somehow make it real.
He doesn’t.
“No fucking kidding,” Mickey mocks with sarcastic surprise. Over the last three days, Ian has nibbled his way through one sandwich. Then again, not moving probably doesn’t use up all that much fuel.
Ian stares at the pancakes, and Mickey finds himself shifting from foot to foot, like he’s being judged for something.
“You don’t have to fucking eat them if you don’t want to, christ. Sorry I’m not Martha fucking Stewart.” He goes to grab the plate, ready to toss the pancakes into the trash or leave them out for someone else to pick at later, but Ian keeps the dish firmly in place. His hand slips from its cotton covering and grabs one of the pancakes, folding it in half before he shoves nearly half of it in his mouth.
It kind of turns Mickey on, but fuck, they haven’t had sex in days, can Ian really fucking blame him?
The first pancake is gone in seconds, and there’s something sticky-warm in Mickey’s chest at the sight of Ian’s food-stuffed cheeks.
“They’re burnt,” Ian tells him through his mouthful, and Mickey sneers.
“Then you fucking make them next time.” Mickey glances away, balls his fists to keep himself from crossing his arms. Ian always sees right through that.
Ian eats through the whole plate in under five minutes, and Mickey just watches him, like he can’t quite believe it.
“You want more or something?” Mickey tries to sound like he’s not offering, even though he is.
Ian hasn’t even finished swallowing, but he manages a, “Yeah.”
“Even though they’re fucking burnt?” Mickey bites, picking up the plate, and it slips a few inches in his fingers when Ian’s hand closes around his wrist. Mickey closes his eyes, and he wants to forget about pancakes. He wants to pull Ian close to him, wrap him up in his arms, search Ian’s entire body with his hands like all the shit he’s been feeling and not talking about has left marks that Mickey could find. Maybe that would make it easier. Mickey understands the pain that shows, that bleeds and breaks and leaves behind scars and bruises.
He’s not good with the non-visible kind. Has been shoving it down deep inside of himself since he was a kid, navigating around the whole dealing with it shit. Too scared what he’d end up finding there.
“They were good,” Ian tells him, like the way his thumb is stroking over the inside of Mickey’s wrist didn’t just jar his entire body. “Could use some syrup, though.”
And Mickey smirks, because Ian’s smile gets a little bigger, his eyes a little brighter, like he’s Ian again and not just the husk of him.
“Ex-fucking-cuse me,” Mickey snarks through his smile (makes a mental store to pick up syrup at some point in the future).
Ian still hasn’t let go of him, and Mickey doesn’t really want him to, even though the stove’s still on and he should take advantage to feed Ian while he’s actually eating.
They stare at each other, their eyes saying what their mouths can’t, and Mickey knows they need to fucking talk about this. They keep not talking about it, because Mickey doesn’t know how, doesn’t want to set Ian off again, is too terrified of fucking up, but they fucking gotta talk about this.
But Mickey can’t make himself, not when Ian is looking at him that way that he does, like Mickey is something, even when he can’t keep his own fucking boyfriend from being upset. Even when he fucks up on a continuous basis. Even when he says the absolutely wrong thing. Ian just keeps looking at him like that, and it twists Mickey’s entire chest into a knot.
“What?” Mickey finally asks, breaking their eye contact and squirming from the length of it. “What’re you looking at me like that for?”
“They were really good pancakes,” Ian says, which is a sack of shit—he’d say they were burnt, they couldn’t have been that good. But Mickey kind of thinks that’s not what Ian’s really saying at all. He likes to think he knows Ian well enough by now that he can read through the lines at least some of the time.
“Well they’re just fucking pancakes, okay? It’s not like a marriage proposal or nothing, you can quit it with the doe eyes.” Mickey finally pulls his wrist away, and Ian just smiles at him—like he knows what those looks do to Mickey, what those little touches do, and fuck, Mickey wishes they didn’t rock him as hard as they do, at the same time glad that they do.
Ian kind of fucks him up that way.
Mickey starts on another batch of pancakes, dripping the batter into the pan and watching it more intently than he needs to. When he glances to the side again, Ian is watching him, cheek resting in his palm and the blanket falling away to reveal his shoulders, like he’s slowly letting his guard down. Mickey’s eyes flick down and then back at Ian again, before he turns his attention back to pancakes.
“…I’m glad you’re up,” Mickey finally says, voice thicker with the force of how much he means them.
“Yeah,” Ian starts, sounding contemplative, and Mickey looks at him from the corner of his eye. “Me too.”
This time, when Mickey flips the pancake, it’s perfectly golden.