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Mickey presses his head into the brick wall behind him and exhales, watching the plume of pale smoke dissipate into the cold night air. The alley behind the coffee shop is his refuge at work, partly because it’s the only place he’s allowed to fucking smoke but mostly since it scares the shit out of the sheltered assholes he’s forced to work with. When he’s out there, they never come and bother—no small talk, no forced “team bonding.” Silence.
It’s funny, really, that they’re so terrified. The alley is like a gated suburban community compared to the shit Mickey grew up in and around.
He takes another drag of his cigarette and wonders how long he can stretch his fifteen minute break before Clark Kent comes to nag him (his real name is something else—Graham, or Landen, or some other fucking preppy boy name that Mickey refuses to acknowledge) when the back door wrenches open.
Mickey doesn’t acknowledge it right away, eyes closed as he waits for the skittish bastard to tuck tail and run. “Still got ten minutes left,” he reminds them.
“Y-yeah, I got that,” fucking Clark Kent responds, sounding nervous—whether it’s from the alley or Mickey himself, Mickey doesn’t know (doesn’t care). Fucking funny either way. “But some guy is asking for you?”
Some guy?
Mickey lets another long stream of smoke pass through his lips as he turns his head to the side, raising a skeptical eyebrow.
“‘Scuse me?”
Clark doesn’t say anything—makes a helpless face and an even more helpless shrugging motion, like that qualifies as some sort of explanation. It’s clear that the situation is just as confusing for him as it is for Mickey.
People don’t ask for him.
Not ever.
“Um.” Clark’s fingers prattle against the doorframe, and he looks like he desperately wants to be anywhere else. “Around our age? Red hair? Kind of—“
But red hair is enough for Mickey’s eyes to flash with recognition, and his lips dip further into a frown.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Mickey hisses under his breath, and Clark’s words trip and stumble until they stop completely. Mickey kicks off the wall and stamps out his not-nearly-smoked-enough-dammit cigarette with his foot in the same motion, muttering under his breath as he stalks toward the door. Clark tries to press himself flat against it as Mickey barrels past, which would be a lot more fucking funny if he wasn’t so fucking pissed.
He pushes out of the back room with too much force, and the door thwacks into the wall to announce his presence to the stupid redhead from two nights back standing at the pick-up end of the bar.
No, not standing.
Waiting.
“The fuck you want?” Mickey growls, apparently a little too loud if the shocked little gasp and admonishing look from Maggie is anything to go by. He flips her off below the counter, and she looks so scandalized by it that she immediately turns away. Bitch has a stick up her ass about something.
“I was hoping for another latte, actually,” Ian suggests, and he seems a little more unsure than he did the last time he came barging into the joint like he owned it. Mickey stares at him blankly, completely unamused.
“Seriously?” Mickey’s look turns harder. “You want to order something, you fucking stand in line like everyone else.” What the fuck is this kid’s problem?
Ian holds up a receipt.
“Already paid for it.”
Mickey blinks at the receipt, eyes shifting up to Ian, and back again.
“Okay, yeah, I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing out here.”
“Mickey,” Maggie says in her overly sweet voice as she approaches, and his mouth thins into a line. “This customer ordered a latte, but was, um… Unsatisfied with the one I made him, and requested you to do it.” A pause. “Specifically.” There’s enough of a hardness to her voice that Mickey has to turn to look at her, and at the way her lips are pursed as she holds back her anger. She thinks she’s the fucking second coming of Jesus in this place, and to see her so miffed over one fucking latte makes him smirk.
Almost makes him like the ginger, even.
“I’m on my break,” Mickey states. “Should be on my break,” he corrects, glowering at Ian again.
“That’s okay.” Ian’s lips curve up into a smile that Mickey doesn’t fucking understand. “I can wait.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Mickey asks, incredulously, and Maggie hisses his name scoldingly. He’s pretty sure she’d probably take a swipe at him, if she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t flay her open with his pocket knife later.
He wouldn’t—not really the flaying type—but she don’t need to know that.
Mickey meets Ian’s eyes with a glare, and then goes to grab the milk and steam pitcher from the fridge.
“Wash your hands first,” Maggie tries desperately, flailing around in the background, but he doesn’t listen. If Ian has a problem with dirty hands, he’s just going to have to deal. It’s the price of being a snobby, persistent little shit.
“So… Do you live around here?” Ian asks as Mickey sullenly steams the milk, and he snorts instead of giving any sort of vocal response. Sure, they’re still technically still in the South Side, but they’re so far north it’s really only South Side in name and nothing else. Fuck, if the people he worked for didn’t pay for his Ventra Card, he would have left this dump behind long ago.
But it’s good pay, and it’s far enough away from his neighborhood that he doesn’t have to worry about his rep getting ruined (or following him).
“I’ll take that as a no…” Ian surmises when Mickey stays silent, and Mickey just rolls his eyes in turn.
“Don’t see how it’s any of your fucking business,” Mickey mutters, slamming the pitcher on the counter a little harder than necessary.
“What’s he doing?” Clark Kent asks in what has to be the worst excuse of a whisper that Mickey has ever heard.
“Making drinks?” Maggie half-assedly replies—what the fuck else would he be doing?—and she sounds unsure, like maybe she just broke a rule by letting Mickey do something he doesn’t normally do.
“He knows how?” Clark asks in astonishment, and Mickey’s momentarily smug thoughts of getting Miss Goody-Two-Shoes in trouble immediately sour. The only fucking thing these people think he’s good for is cleaning up their god damn messes.
“Don’t listen to them,” Ian murmurs, leaning in a little closer. It kind of makes Mickey uncomfortable. “Your latte could take them to the fucking cleaners.”
Mickey lets out a scoff of a laugh, turning wide, disbelieving eyes on this guy. Who the fuck talks like that?
“Yeah? You get lattes here a lot?” Mickey can’t help but ask, frowns at himself as he starts to pour the milk into the espresso.
“No,” Ian answers up easily, something weirdly happy laced through his voice. This guy is a fucking weirdo, seriously. “I’m usually more of a straight coffee drinker.”
Me too, Mickey thinks and doesn’t say. There’s no reason to say it. What’s he looking for? Solidarity between drip coffee drinkers? Not fucking likely.
“You know we still got coffee, right? We just don’t keep it out for the assholes who come in right before close,” Mickey snarks, and when he chances a glance at Ian’s face, Ian is smiling a little wider. It’s weird as shit. Most of the douchebags would have huffed up their chests and threw words in his face if Mickey made a comment like that.
(Again, there’s a reason he’s not supposed to interact with the customers. Mostly because getting up in Mickey Milkovich’s face usually ends with his fist in their face.)
“So, uh, you don’t have to drink this frilly bullshit.” Mickey sets the pitcher out of the way, staring down at the heart sitting on top of the latte—it’s not as good as the one from the night before, but it’s not exactly a perfect art.
And even if it fucking was, it’s not like Mickey is trying to prove anything.
“No lid,” Ian says as Mickey reaches for it, and Maggie sputters behind them—something about policy and safety that neither of them listen to. “And I don’t know, this frilly bullshit is kind of growing on me.” Ian grins over the lip of the cup, and it makes Mickey rock back a step with how strangely predatory it is.
Like Ian knows—
No. No fucking way. No one knows, especially not this elitist leprechaun.
Mickey averts his eyes, legs tensing with the urge to get away.
There’s a tap against the counter, and another five dollar bill under Ian’s finger. He slides it toward Mickey with a grin, and suddenly Mickey feels like taking it would be as bad as accepting a bitch-gift in prison.
Mickey is no one’s bitch.
“Until next time.” And Ian leaves him with that same smirk that makes Mickey want to kick the shit out of him. Mickey stares at the money, chewing his bottom lip before he reaches forward and takes it. He’s just fucking over-thinking things.
Clark or Maggie starts to say something, but he shoves the money in his pocket and breezes past them.
“Taking my fifteen,” he announces.
“You only have ten left!” Maggie calls after him, and he flips her off again over his shoulder. Her indignant sputters make him grin, even as the bill in his pocket seems to burn a hole through to his skin.