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Mickey struggled to get the front door open, pushing and shoving before eventually getting tired of it and throwing his whole weight into the door with his shoulder before it finally gave way. When he entered the house, there was stuff everywhere, clothes, toys, suitcases and just random shit that doesn't belong there. He knew what he signed up for when he moved into the Gallagher house, but this was ridiculous.
Storming through the house, he kicked things in his path with more force than necessary, silently enjoying the 'smash' of something when he kicked it at the wall. When he entered the kitchen, he saw ants covering the bench, going mental over a bowl of soggy cheerios that he had told Franny FOUR times that morning to put in the trash.
"FRANNY!" Mickey bellowed, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration and tried to take a calming breath; it did fuck all. A few moments later, tentative footsteps sounded from the kitchen stairway, the little girl peering around the corner timidly. "Come here, now!"
"What?" she asked, slowly stepping towards him, not meeting his eyes.
"How many times have I told you not to leave food out?"
"You haven't uncle Mickey ..." Franny lied, smiling sweetly up at him.
"Na uh, that cutesy bull shit doesn't work on me," Mickey said, though it was working on him. He crouched down, gently taking her hand and wrapping an arm around her waist so he could talk to her seriously. "You can't leave food out ok? It attracts pests, gross little fuckers that will eat your Barbies faces off if you're not careful."
"No!" she gasped dramatically.
"Oh yeah," Mickey laughed, tickling her ribs causing her to giggle. "So, clean your mess ok?"
"Ok."
He supervised, perched at the entryway to the kitchen with his arms crossed over his chest, doing his best to look authoritative. It was hard, though, as he watched her little legs carrying her back and forth from the table and to the garbage can and back again. She was so tiny, and the little red ringlets coming from her ponytail swished in the wind as she went. Finally, when the job was (mostly) done, she stood next to him with her little hands on her little hips and gave a nod of approval.
"There," she said with all of the maturity of a grown-up. "It's done. I did it. Now I'm tired."
"Get used to it, kid. That's life," Mickey shrugged and gave her an appreciative pat on the back. "You go do whatever the fuck it is that you do, and I'll finish up. Cool?"
"Cool," she agreed and skipped off to the living room.
The thing about messes was, Mickey grew up in a mess. It was never-ending. You pick one thing up and one of his fuckhead brothers would put ten things in it’s place. You clean a dish and someone turns around and breaks it. So, when Mickey got out, he swore he wouldn't ever live that way again.
He went to work on what she didn't get to. Cleaning the table with Clorox, washing the dishes, putting away the left out cereal boxes and bags of chips. The Gallagher's, he decided, were far fucking filthier than he was, and fuck them for turning him into some bitch maid.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The next day Mickey came home from running errands, his work was never done, opened the door to see the same scene from the day before. There were fewer clothes and general mess in the lounge room but the kitchen was a bomb site. Breakfast hadn't been tidied up and it had Mickey fuming. Surging forward, he saw a note attached to a box of Froot Loops, it read 'Don't worry about the mess, we'll clean up when I'm home. Love Debs!'.
Considering it was 12:30 pm, she wasn't returning anytime soon. Frustrated, Mickey grabbed a new trash bag from the drawer and started putting everything in the trash and he meant everything. The bowl of half-eaten cereal, the crusted spoon, half-drunk cup of apple juice, if they weren't responsible enough to clean up after themselves then they didn't deserve to have it.
As he lifted the box of Froot Loops to toss, a giant rat fell from the bottom of the box and scurried across the countertop.
"Ah, what the fuck!" Mickey threw the box at the creature, loops going everywhere as the box narrowly missed the vermin as its maneuverer its way across the bench towards the cupboard, hiding behind the coffee canister. As if on instinct, the brunette grabbed the pistol he had holstered in the waistband and pointed it, tracking it’s every move.
This carried on for some time, years of Milkovich conditioning overtaking his every movement as he watched this... a wild beast, hunting it, ready to take it down at a moments notice.
It was quiet, too quiet. Mickey had lost track of his prey. As he was about to holster his weapon, he felt something on his foot, something fuzzy.
"AGH!" before he realised, he had shot at it and there was now a brand-new bullet hole in the kitchen floor along with a tuft of vermin fluff. "Nope, fuck this," Mickey placed his weapon on the counter and headed for the door, on a mission while also needing to think of a good excuse to explain to his husband how there was now a new bullet hole in the kitchen floor.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Mickey!" Ian shouted, slamming the front door as he looked for his husband. "Why did I just get an alert from our joint account that you spent $75 at the hardware store? What the fuck did you buy that cost $75? That account is for bills..." Ian's steam faded as he entered the kitchen, utterly baffled at the scene before him. It was like that scene from the 1997 movie Mouse Trap, traps lining every surface of the kitchen. Mickey was studiously placing the umpteenth trap on the counter, tongue poking out as he placed it down without trying to set it off.
"There was a mouse," Mickey said by way of explanation.
"Just one?" Ian asked incredulously.
"It was more like a rat, at least a foot long."
"A foot-long rat," Ian nodded along, bouncing his head as if he were in total agreement, but Mickey knew better.
"Yes, Ian. What, you don't fucking believe me? In this shithole? You don't think that it's maybe possible that one of those giant fuckers made his way in from the city- probably sniffed out you and your slob family's leftovers."
Mickey spoke, yelled even, but his eyes never stopped watching, stopped scouring the floor, the counters, anywhere that the vermin could have gone. He was tough, born and raised in a dangerous area.
Had his fair share of run-ins with the law. Fought people just for looking at him weird- yet, there he was, like a scared little boy looking for monsters.
"Right. Okay, Mick. You keep looking for a foot-long rat. I'm gonna go get a shower. Then make dinner for my slob family. You let me know if and when you find your new friend."
Mickey waved him off, dropping to his knees and checking for the umpteenth time under the fridge. It had to be somewhere. And he would find it.
Dinner found Mickey picking lightly at his food. He couldn't say that mouse (rat) hunting hadn’t left him particularly hungry, but when he'd tried to decline the plate of pasta handed to him, Ian jutted out his chin in defiance.
"You're either gonna eat it, or I'm gonna shove it down your throat. You pick."
So, he sat and ate with his family. Picked at his plate. Took a bite here and there. And. Waited. He watched as his family around him continued as if nothing happened. He listened, past their voices, tuning into a specific sound- scurrying. Scuffling. But he didn't hear anything. And no one else seemed to, either.
Xxxx
Later that night, when everyone had gone to bed, Ian was busy kissing down his husband's chest. Normally Mickey was right there in the moment but he couldn't get his mind off that beady-eyed fucker.
Ian trailed his tongue along the waistband of the other man's briefs, stilling momentarily when he noticed something was up or well, wasn't.
"Mick, what's going on?" Ian asked with concern. Normally he just had to walk by the man and he was good to go.
"Sorry, man," Mickey sighed, sitting up and facing his husband. "I just keep thinking about it and I don't know what to do."
"Thinking about what?" Ian asked confusedly.
"About the rat, it's been a whole day. I set up the traps, it should be dead- "
"The rat, Mickey? Seriously?"
"What?"
"You're distracted by the rat? You lived in a house with mould, asbestos and hookers who had so many communicable diseases that scientist probably don't have names for them all yet, and you're worried about one dirty rat?"
"Well... yeah. I don't want some pervy fucking rat watching, might be getting off on us." Rolling his eyes, Ian turned to his side of the bed and tried to go to sleep.
"Goodnight, Mickey."
Smirking, just because it would piss off the other man, Mickey leant in close to Ian's ear. "You could blow me under the covers, it wouldn't see us there."
Glaring, Ian looked over his shoulder before grabbing his pillow and beating the other mercilessly.
Xxxxxxxx
Mickey had always been a light sleeper, years of conditioning beaten into him to keep an ear out for odd noises and things that go bump in the night. So, at 4 am when he heard a loud 'SNAP', he sat upright in bed, grabbing his pistol he kept loaded on the bedside table and pointing it at where he thought the noise came from. The commotion roused the other sleeping man, groggily rubbing his eyes and staring blearily at his husband.
"Was' goin' on?" Ian yawned, looking at the gun in the brunette's hand.
"Heard a noise," Mickey explained, taking the safety off and loading the chamber of the gun.
"Probably just a mouse," Ian yawned, turning over and pulling the blanket over his shoulder.
"The mouse," Mickey said in realisation, his eyes lighting up as he pulled the blankets off and jumped out of bed and hightailing it down to the kitchen.
"No, fuck, Mickey wait!" Ian called after him, they did not need a second bullet hole in the kitchen.
Mickey didn’t listen. He wasn’t going to wait for Ian to shake himself fully awake, and meander his way into throwing on a pair of shorts. He wasn’t going to sit around while Ian talked about work, or his day, or about the bills that are coming due. He wasn’t. Not when he was close to getting rid of the thing once and for all.
He reached the bottom step, careful enough not to step on any of the traps he'd laid. Thankful that his vision was still tuned for the darkness, he tiptoed toward the light switch, and turned it on in what he hoped would be an 'Ah-ha,' moment. But when he turned around, his blood ran cold.
In the centre of the floor was a trap, snapped shut after having been triggered. But what there wasn’t, was something caught with a broken fucking neck as Mickey wanted. Instead, what he saw was fucking horrific.
It didn’t register how he didn't hear it. He should have; the squeaks and the clacking and the other traps snapping. It must not have moved until he turned the light on. But there it was. The fucking rat, the size of a fucking dog if you asked Mickey, tail trapped beneath a small silver wire. And it was fucking pissed.
"Jesus Christ! Ian!" He yelled, loud enough to wake the house. To wake the dead. He didn’t care. He didn’t. Fucking. Care.
"Mickey?! Are you-," Ian stumbled down but froze in place when he took in the scene of the kitchen, and Mickey climbing on top of the dinner table.
"Fucking- get it, Gallagher! Smash it! Kill it!" He shrieked, yelling like a little girl, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t think about how stupid he looked when that thing was trampling around his kitchen as if it owned it.
"Okay, okay," Ian said, trying and failing to placate him. "I'm gonna trap it and take it outside, alright?"
"No, you're fucking not! You're gonna send it back to hell!"
Rolling his eyes, Ian grabbed a Tupperware container from the cupboard and trapped the mouse inside.
"Careful!" Mickey shouted from the safety of the top of the table as he watched the other man lift the container to his eye level and peeked inside.
"It's actually kinda cute," Ian cooed as he reached in to help the frightened little creature free its tail.
"Don't touch it!" Mickey hissed, traipsing over to his husband and gingerly looking over his shoulder at the vermin. "it'll bite you and you'll get gangrene, then your dick will fall off. Who would want you then- fuck off!" Mickey shrieked as Ian pretended to throw the mouse at him and fell on his ass on the table.
"I'm going to take it outside- "
"Kill it!"
"I'm taking it outside," Ian repeated himself, heading for the front door.
"Across the street, no, down the street. So far down the street it has to fucking hitchhike to get back in the same zip code," Mickey instructed firmly, spitting and pointing as he passionately told Ian what to do, to which the other waved him off and did what he wanted; he wasn't afraid of a Milkovich anymore.
Mickey sat on the table as he waited for Ian to return, surrounded by the safety of his plethora of loaded mouse traps, it calmed him in some strange way, like sleeping with a loaded gun. Just as he thought about laying down because the other man was taking his sweet time, Ian wandered back through the front door with his empty contaminated Tupperware container.
"You better be putting that in the trash," Mickey instructed, watching as Ian placed it on the countertop before joining him to sit on the table.
"You've eaten out of worse," Ian shot back playfully, which earned him a middle finger, "the mouse is now safely living under the 'L', we can visit him on our way to work, bring him snacks- "
"Stomp on the fucker's head."
"You were too scared to even look at it, let alone touch it. Big bad Mickey Milkovich afraid of a wittle mouse."
"Keep laughing, Red, see what happens," Mickey warned, leaning over the benchtop and grabbing his carton of smokes and lighter before lighting up.
"Ian, kill it,” Ian mocked, laughing hysterically at his own joke. Mickey, unimpressed, took a long drag of his cigarette then blew smoke up towards the ceiling.
"Real cute, you want a black eye or a busted nose?" Mickey asked studiously, puffing on his smoke, even though it did nothing to calm him down.
"’Ian, send it back to hell!' you should have seen your face, ah!" as Ian had been mocking him, Mickey sucked the cigarette down to the filter, stabbed it out on the ashtray they kept on the table then pounced on his husband, glaring down at him threateningly.
"I don't like mice alright?"
"Am I the one in the relationship who has to kill the spiders?" Ian asked with a shit-eating grin.
"And the mice," Mickey said like it was obvious, "you got a problem with that?"
"Absolutely not," Ian smiled, rubbing his hands along Mickey's arms that were caging him. "You know, we aren't completely dirt poor anymore, maybe we should call a pest guy? Get them to look at the house? It's probably not the best for Franny to be around mice and shit."
"I can always call Iggy," Mickey mused, playing with a stray lock of hair that had fallen on Ian's forehead.
"God no," Ian said definitively, "knowing what bootleg shit he would get, he'd kill us all."
"Alright," Mickey sighed, as though it was some huge taxing effort, "Ill call a pest guy, will that make your whining ass happy?"
"Yes."
"Good," Mickey smiled, leaning down and kissing his husband. He liked making Ian happy. Just as he thought about taking things further, he heard the undeniable sound of a mousetrap being set off. The brunette was on guard in an instant, looking around the room trying to find the source of the sound. Just as he thought he found it; another trap set off. Across the room laid two dead mice, squished to death in the traps.
Getting up, Mickey ran up the stairs leaving a very confused redhead in his wake.
"What are you doing?" Ian shouted; he didn't care if he woke up the whole house.
"Finding a 24-hour pest exterminator!"