Chapter Text
“As iron is eaten by rust, so are the envious consumed by envy.”
-Antisthenes
One of these days, this damn cat is going to give him a heart attack.
Mickey huffs out a breath, annoyed, and glares over the edge of the balcony.
All he sees, as he looks down, is the shadowed sidewalk far below. Lake Michigan, stretched out in the distance, dark and angry with the encroaching winter. Dying grass strips and busy Chicago streets that span the distance between him and the water, familiar and vast and unsettling as always.
Even if he squints, he can’t make it look like the Southside. Like home.
He takes a step back, squats down, scowl unwavering. There’s a bungee cord looped around two of the balusters on the railing, secured by a locked carabiner. Threaded through the bungee and traveling up, over the handrail, is a doubled-over length of bright orange climbing rope. It dangles down, falls to a balcony a few stories below him.
He scowls at the rope for a moment, watches how it jostles slightly from the shifting weight attached to the far ends. He scowls, and glares, and tamps down that edge of worry trying to press against his sternum.
He’ll never get used to it. Walking through the door, to find her gone.
Houdini little fucker.
Mickey glares at the rope because he’s too relieved to do much else, and he feels a bit stupid for it. For worrying so much, when this exact thing happens an easy three times a week, and always turns out okay.
Don’t get attached, he’d told himself, when he brought the cat home.
Look at him now, getting attached and shit. McGyver-ing a fucking cat elevator, so that he doesn’t have to run up and down the stairs every time she wanders into Mrs. B’s place, instead of just locking her inside when he leaves and saving himself the energy altogether.
She likes exploring. Meeting people. She moped for three days, the first and only time Mickey’s tried to keep her contained, and it just about broke his stupid heart. Seeing her sad, like that.
He really didn’t mean to get attached.
Fuck, he’d do anything for that little menace.
He reaches forward, makes sure the ropes are held tight. That the railing’s still steady, the carabiner’s still locked. They’ve been doing this for months, now, and he’s not sure he’ll ever trust it completely — mostly because he doesn’t trust anything completely. Something he learned a long time ago that, for better or for worse, has stuck with him.
From his jeans pocket his phone vibrates, two quick, short buzzes. He straightens with creaking knees and fishes it out, swipes it open. Shivers, as the breeze picks up, dances across his bare arms like cold water.
Gooseflesh rises on his skin, hairs prickling, and he bites down before his teeth can start to chatter. It’s pitch black at what should be dinner time, and all he wants is a beer and a smoke and a burrito the size of his fucking face.
- - -
Eleanor (6:27PM): All set Dear. :-) E.
- - -
Thank fuck.
- - -
Mickey (6:27PM): thanks mrs b. owe u one
Eleanor (6:27PM): Call it even Hun, You fixed my sink last week, Dont forget! ;-) E.
Eleanor (6:28PM): Be sure to refrigerate that, when you get it, Reheats at 350 for Twenty Mins. E.
- - -
Mickey rolls his eyes, bites back a smile. A calm warmth stirs in his gut, and it chases away bits of that sharp worry.
- - -
Mickey (6:28PM): don’t gotta do that, u know. i can feed myself
Eleanor (6:28PM): Hush up Dear. Reheats at 350. :-)
Mickey (6:28PM): for 20 min, got it
Mickey (6:29PM): thank u. bringin her up now
Mickey (6:29PM): 💪🏼
- - -
He pockets his phone. Reaches for the ropes with cold, winter-chilled fingers, and starts to pull.
Arm-length by arm-length he reels the other end up, the weight a solid, nice pressure in his hands. He’s careful, as he goes, slow — he doesn’t want to jostle her too much. She’s strapped in, he knows, but he doesn’t want to take any risks. Not with her. She’s a tiny little pain in the ass, but if anything happened to her, Mickey’s pretty sure he’d go absolutely postal. End up back in the can by day’s end.
The early November air sinks into his skin, his bones, as he pulls her up length by length. He peers down over the railing as he goes, watching the basket grow bigger and bigger with each tug on the rope. It’s hard to distinguish color or movement, from within the well of the basket, swallowed almost entirely by distance and darkness.
As it gets closer, though, moves into the light from his own balcony that’s spilling out between the balusters, he sees a flash of yellow. Two eyes, bright and visible and fuckin’ creepy as all hell against the shadowed distance, and that warmth in his stomach grows, just a little.
Tapetum lucidum, it’s called. Something to do with night vision, or something. He’d looked it up one of those first nights he had her — jolted awake to bright yellow eyes staring at him from across the room, nearly giving him a fucking heart attack.
“That’s just a thing, with cats,” Mandy had told him.
“Bullshit. Fucker’s possessed, or somethin’.”
“Look it up, if you don’t believe me. The internet exists, grandpa.”
She meows at him as she gets closer, tiny and sweet. Innocent.
Mickey glares at her, expression firm.
“You think just ‘cause you’re the size of my boot I’m not gonna yell at ya,” he scolds, hoisting and hoisting until she’s within arm’s reach. “Just ‘cause you’re cute don’t mean you get away with this shit. I’m gonna padlock the door, then what’re you gonna do? Huh?”
Henry chirps at him as he finally reaches the handle for the basket, pulls her safely onto his balcony.
He’s not going to padlock the door, and the smug little thing knows it.
With a sigh, Mickey places the basket on the little table he has on the landing, settles to the seat beside it. The cold from the chair’s arms send spikes of ice down his spine, and he can’t wait to get inside.
He starts undoing the hooks in the basket, untangling everything as Henry watches him. It’s big enough to be spacious, for the tiny cat, lined with a soft wooly blanket. And she loves the ride, he knows. She sits in the basket unprompted, on her own time, and stare at him expectantly. All but asking him to go down. It’s the only place she doesn’t put up a fight, about getting a damn harness on, because she knows there’s no movement until she’s strapped in.
He scratches her head with numbing fingers, feels her warmth, her softness, and she presses up into the touch. She purrs under his attention, and it fills the balcony. That edge in his chest fades, with her back in his sight.
She only squirms a little as Mickey unhooks her from the harness, secured to the basket with another locked carabiner. Free at last, she hops happily onto his lap, nuzzles her face into his chest in greeting. Purrs some more, as he lifts his hand to hold her close.
“Yeah,” he mutters to her, and scratches behind her ears. She arches into it, rubs her face against his knuckles, eyes closed. “Hi to you, too. You’re a pain in my ass, y’know? I love you, but you’re a little shit.”
He reaches back for the basket. Next to the tiny blanket nest where Henry was lies a container wrapped in a navy blue dish towel. It’s warm, when Mickey takes it in-hand, and he peeks inside.
Some red sauce, some noodles. Lasagna, maybe, if the hefty weight of it is any indication.
He bites back a smile, and makes a mental note to thank Mrs. B. She’s an old, frail thing — but she enjoys the company, when Henry comes to visit, and always shoves food at Mickey like he’s wasting away to nothing.
Mickey can’t complain. He never had homemade shit, growing up, and it makes Mrs. B happy to share her meals. She doesn’t have anyone else to share them with, anymore.
Henry, as if sensing his attention is elsewhere, climbs higher on his chest, nuzzles in under his chin. Demands his focus in the best way that she can, and simply pushes herself into his face.
“…Yeah,” he acknowledges, blowing her fur out of his mouth against another gust of chilling wind. Henry makes a disgruntled kind of noise — small and distinctly unhappy — and Mickey holds her nice and tight, plants a kiss to her tiny head. “I know. I gotcha. Let’s go inside, huh?”
But as he turns to go, Henry curled in one arm, dinner in the other, he stops.
There are voices nearby. Close.
He hesitates, and strains his ears. To his left, from around the corner of the building, the voices get louder.
He’s known, since his last neighbor moved out, that a new one would be filling the vacancy sooner rather than later. Sooner has come — and if the voices are any indication, they must’ve finally discovered the balcony.
Mickey had only caught the tail end of the moving brigade, as he made his way home from work that evening. A couple of guys were bringing a couch in as he got off the elevator, struggling to fit the damn thing through the narrow apartment doorframe. There were a myriad of other voices floating through the open door, women’s and men’s voices alike, laughing and instructing and chatting, and the chaos of it alone was enough to make Mickey tired.
There must’ve been eight, maybe ten people in there, moving shit around in the tiny space. He wasn’t sure how they all fit, or which one of them was actually going to be living here, but Mickey hadn’t had the mental bandwidth to ask, either. He had a shit day, and just wanted to sink into his bed for a movie night with his girl. That’s all.
But as he stands there on the balcony, he can’t help but hesitate. Strain his ears, just a little, trying to catch snippets of conversation from around the corner. Any info he can glean, about his new neighbor.
He’s a nosy motherfucker. Sue him.
“…last of it,” one voice says, strained and low. One of the guys, then. “Kev’s gonna bring me and Carl by tomorrow, help get the rest of the furniture in. Dresser, and shit.”
“Thanks, man,” a second voice says, half-laughing and tired. “This is… a lot more work than I realized.”
“Yeah. How the fuck do you own this much stuff?”
“I don’t.”
“My broken back begs to differ.”
“You carried things to an elevator, not up a mountain. Relax.”
There’s a break in the conversation, and Mickey thinks maybe that’s all they’ll say. He catches a whiff of tobacco, though, as the wind picks it up, and he shivers at the warring sensations. The cold, against his skin — the musk of a cigarette, comforting and calming.
His last neighbor always gave him grief, for smoking on the balcony. They’re technically not supposed to. HOC guidelines, or something. It’s a relief that this one likely won’t give a shit, seeing as he’s doing it too.
“You’re gonna be okay, here, right?” the first voice says, and it’s quieter than before, harder to hear. Mickey steps closer to the edge of the balcony, closer to the wall, stringing his ears. Holds Henry tight, in case she gets any funny ideas or decides she wants to meet some new impromptu friends. “Gonna stay in touch, and shit?”
There’s another pause. “I’m moving out,” the second voice returns, quieter too, but almost amused. “Not running away.”
“I know.”
“You think this is nuts. But I got it.”
“I know that, too.”
“Okay, good.”
“…Still. I can stay over, till you get situated, if you want. Help you unpack, get things sorted out.”
There’s a clapping sound, another wave of smoke. “Nah,” the second man denies. “Won’t have a bed ‘till tomorrow, and you need your beauty rest. Got that big trip comin’ up.”
A sharp step. Rustling jackets, like they’re pushing at each other, roughhousing. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“I’m sleeping on the couch, idiot.”
“Alright, then I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“You were just complaining about your back.”
“Then you sleep on the floor, and I’ll take the couch.”
“Fuck you, it’s my apartment. Besides, don’t you have… papers to grade, or something? Do you even have any of that shit with you?”
The sounds of their scuffle fades, with that, and the owner of the first voice lets out a sigh, loud enough to carry to Mickey.
“Okay, fine. I won’t stay over. But the offer’s there, y’know. Whenever.”
A beat passes after that, a long moment of quiet. Another breeze presses in around him and Mickey’s shoulders climb to his ears involuntarily, shivering with the push. He curls himself around Henry, shields her from the breeze as much as he can.
He’s gonna get fucking frostbite.
He’s not even wearing sleeves.
He really needs to get inside.
Something about the exchange keeps him pinned there. He knows he shouldn’t be eavesdropping, but he can’t help it. There’s a weight in his stomach, and he chews at his bottom lip.
They’re siblings, he's willing to bet. Brothers. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. Something about their tones, maybe — the conversation that’s happening behind the words. He knows those kinds of talks well, has had his share of them with Mandy.
They haven’t in a while, though. Those conversations — teasing, rooted in something solid and earnest — have been missing for a while. All they do these days is fight.
From around the corner, the voices have dropped lower. Murmurs, that Mickey can’t pick up through the wind. He waits, straining to hear, bracing himself against the night —
A laugh breaks through it all, bright and snickering. A little nasally. It cuts through the cold, floods Mickey’s cheeks with warmth. Henry perks up at the sound, rearing her head back from where it was tucked under his chin.
He can’t remember the last time he heard someone laugh that openly, that honestly.
“Okay, fuck you,” the second voice manages, the bright laugh’s owner. He’s breathless and amused, and Mickey doesn’t want it to stop. The laughter. He wants to hear it again. And again.
“Am I wrong?” the first man asks, drawling and playful.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Always.”
“Alright, then. We’ll make a bet. Twenty bucks says you’re eating takeout by the end of the week.”
“Fuck you,” the second guy repeats, still half-laughing. “Just ‘cause you’re hopeless in the kitchen doesn’t mean we all are. You’re on.”
They’re close, Mickey realizes. They’re not just family, they’re friends.
It leaves a bitter taste in the back of his throat, and he hates it. He doesn’t even know this guy. There’s no reason, for this to leave his mouth so sour, but it does.
Mickey thinks about the bustle of voices, floating through the open apartment door. They were loud, and cheerful. There were so many of them, there to help.
When Mickey moved in, almost nine months ago, the only hands in sight were his own. It was so quiet.
He kisses the top of Henry’s head again, tucks her in close.
“C’mon, frypod,” he murmurs, and turns away, scratching behind her ears. “Let’s go get warm.”
Henry yawns in his arms, tuckered out from her adventures, and closes her eyes. She’s warm and alive, and it’s more than Mickey’s had in a long time. It’s enough.
The voices are still laughing, as Mickey slides the glass door shut behind him. He leaves them there, doesn’t look back.
He shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, anyways.