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It started with a question.
“Do you know how to use an iron?”
As if she wasn’t sure why she was asking; as if something compelled her to try anyway. Try to reach over the divide between them, the space between protective sister and worried boyfriend. The space that grew every time Mickey spoke, every time Fiona disagreed. Every time they were who they were.
“Yeah,” Mickey answered, taking his own step into that space. “As a weapon,” he tacked on honestly, and he was firmly on his own side again.
Fiona rolled her eyes. Walked away, basket on her hip, with one last glance toward the boy’s bedroom door.
“Not what I was asking,” she muttered, kicking aside a broken action figure on her way down the hall.
Mickey shrugged, at first. “Be more specific, then,” he said after her, probably not loud enough to hear. “Answered your fucking question, didn’t I?”
Fiona didn’t respond. He didn’t expect her to. And as she disappeared down the stairs at the end of the hall, he didn’t really care.
At least, not until he had stood in the unusual quiet for a moment. Looked back to see Ian still sleeping, forward to see no one else there. He shuffled his feet on the wooden floor, felt the warmth of this house that didn’t belong to him, and felt the space between him and Ian’s family yawn ever wider before him. The family that would sooner write him off than believe that he could be useful.
And well. Fuck it. He had offered to help, and goddammit he was going to.
The floor creaked under him as he made his way to the stairs, casting back a glance to make sure that Ian hadn’t stirred. But he hadn’t, of course he hadn’t, so Mickey kept going.
Fiona was still straightening out old stacks of clothes when he got downstairs. She’d shake out a shirt, twist it this way and that, then drape it over the back of the couch with more of its kind.
He’d never seen anyone take such care with such poor things. In his house, things stayed where they fell, and if you were lucky, they’d still be there when you needed them. No one had ever checked his shirts for holes like Fiona was doing, or frowned when they found one. No one had run fingers over frayed hems, clipped the stray threads hanging there with sewing scissors, or pinned it and set it aside for repair.
He wondered why she bothered.
The iron hissed behind Fiona as she sorted through the stash, hot and ready on it’s little table. Mickey walked over to it, not bothering to be quiet, and ignored the way Fiona stopped and stared.
He reached out a hand, curious, and got his fingers close enough to feel the heat before he was slapped away.
“What are you doing?” Fiona hissed at him, eyes sharp. “It’s hot, you moron, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
Mickey rubbed his wrist, and stared. At her pinched face, at the way her eyes ran over him as if looking for injury.
“And?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Who fucking cares?”
Fiona bit her lip. Her frown remained, but turned odd at the edges.
“I care,” she said shortly. “You don’t get to be hurt in my house.”
She said it like it mattered. Like it mattered to her that he be whole. Like he was one of her threadbare shirts, worn but welcome, and not just a foul-mouthed man that wandered in on her brother’s heels and never left.
And people had cared about him before. He wasn’t that fucking pathetic. His mom had cared. Iggy cared, sometimes. Mandy cared, and maybe Colin, and Ian. Definitely Ian.
But Fiona…Fiona was different. He was pretty sure Fiona hated him. And she still stopped him from burning the shit out of himself, like she didn’t want to do it herself any other day.
Maybe that’s why he said it.
“Thought you had some fuckin’ ironing to do,” he huffed, and reached out again, this time for the handle. It felt alien, domestic. Weird, and maybe right.
“So are you gonna show me how to do this or not?”
Fiona’s arms fell, the shirt she held brushing the floor.
“Let’s start with that one,” Mickey said, and nodded to where the hem was collecting fresh dust. “Put that bitch up here before you get it all nasty.”
Fiona blinked at him. Twice. He wondered what she was thinking, or if he really wanted to know.
Then she laid the shirt over the ironing board, and reached for Mickey’s hand on the iron.
“Well first,” she said, closing her fingers over his too tightly for him to pull away, “there’s one thing you should always remember…”
Now, years later, Mickey hears the same question.
“Do you know how to use an iron?” Fiona asked breathlessly, holding out a wrinkled dress. She’s already running late to her interview, her first one in her efforts to move back to Chicago, and she’s dashing around their apartment like a madwoman trying to get ready. He can’t decide if he wishes she had gotten a hotel, or glad that she’s just running around their place half-naked and not some random building downtown.
“Somebody taught me once,” he says, and takes the dress as she starts to smile. “Think I can probably remember.”