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“I said I wanted thick slices,” some jerk is yelling at the deli counter when Mickey wanders over. “Does this look thick to you?”
“No sir,” their best worker grits out, already pulling on a pair of fresh gloves. He grabs the tiny slice of meat when the customer waves it in his face again, tosses it down on the plastic-covered counter. “Sorry, could have sworn I heard thin.”
“Then get your ears checked, boy, because I know what I said!”
“Yeah, Gallagher,” Mickey says, slipping behind the counter. He grins into the frustrated face that greets him, tilts back onto his heels. “Man knows what he said.”
The deli worker just looks at him, green eyes tired.
“Mickey.”
“The one and only,” Mickey agrees, and drops him a quick wink before turning toward the customer.
“Now, what seems to be the problem here, sir?” he asks, making a point of straightening his store vest as he does. Black and sleeveless, just how Mickey likes it, with Security emblazoned boldly across the chest. “Heard the ruckus all the way from my office,” he adds, thumbing over his shoulder in a direction that said office absolutely isn’t, “so it must be somethin’ terrible.”
It has the desired effect. Half the bluster goes right out of the man across the counter, his eyes flitting from the sad pile of rejected meat to Mickey’s badge and back.
“Well, I’m not happy,” he says unnecessarily, blinks when Mickey just raises a brow. A bit of his energy comes back when he catches the same tiny shift of the deli-worker’s lips that Mickey sees from the corner of his eye.
“This boy,” he starts more forcefully, gesturing at the source of his complaint. Mickey cuts him off with a raised hand.
“I’m afraid we don’t employ boys here, sir,” he corrects easily. He leans forward, like he’s telling a secret, ignoring the way the man’s mouth thins into an angry line.
“Child labor laws, you know,” Mickey says in an exaggerated whisper. “Ridiculous if you ask me.”
He stands up straight again, speaks a little louder.
“Time was a boy’s first job brought in the bills for his dad’s meth habit,” he reminisces, and shoots an elbow into the gut of his coworker. “Those were the good old days, right Gallagher?”
“The best,” comes the dry answer. “Good meth is a lot harder to find now.”
Mickey grins, delighted.
The customer is less so.
“I asked him for thick-cut sausage,” the customer whines, trying to get back to the point. “And he tried to hand me a slice so thin I could see through it!”
Mickey whistles.
“Yikes, Gallagher,” he says with a sad shake of his head, glancing up through his lashes at the taller man at his side. “That is a pity. A man wants a thick sausage, you give it to ‘em.”
Two throats close on two very different reactions, the absurd choking sound a pleasure to Mickey’s ears.
“Gotta say, though,” he muses, gaze darting from Gallagher’s pink face to the splotchy red of the customer’s, “you sure you want it thick?”
“What,” the customer babbles. “I don’t…”
“Looks like you could do with a little thinning out yourself,” Mickey explains, gesturing around his own abdomen, and is rewarded by a bug-eyed stare that he earns often enough that the rest of the store employees have fondly dubbed it “Milkovich’s masterpiece”.
“Why…,” the man sputters, neck and ears flushing a violent, deep red. “You can’t just…”
“I think you’ll find I can,” Mickey says sympathetically, leaning toward him. “I mean,” he adds, palm up between them, “you roll over on your wife one more time, she might not make it to my place after.”
He ducks the punch.
Well, less of punch—the guy didn’t have it in him. More of an open-handed slap that lands instead on the edge of the counter, which Mickey is already skirting.
“Hey, we have a winner!” he says as he rounds it. He grips the customer’s shoulder before he can straighten up from his failed attack, keeps him hunched over even as he spins him away from the deli station.
“And do you know what you’ve won for assaulting the store’s security officer?” he asks cheerfully as he frog marches him toward the front.
“First class trip to the world’s crappiest parking lot,” he answers himself while the automatic doors slowly slide open. “Comin’ right up!”
The doors aren’t even fully open before he shoves the man through. He steps back, waits until the man stumbles far enough away for them to close. Grins to himself when he sees that the guy had managed to land in a puddle on the asphalt, dark water climbing up the back of his khakis.
“You can’t always bait them into getting kicked out, Mick.”
Mickey’s grin gets wider.
“Says who, Gallagher?” he asks, not bothering to turn.
“Says Sandra.”
“Yeah, well.” Mickey shrugs. Finally turns around, shoulders past his coworker on his way back through the store. “It’s workin’ out okay so far.”
Ian walks with him, unprompted, just like he’d followed him to the front. His gait is slow, one step to Mickey’s two, and it would be annoying if it just…wasn’t.
“Well,” Ian says as they cross through one of the less-crowded aisles. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Mickey returns easily. Then adds: “Like at all, ever, or I’ll tell Sandra you left the counter again.”
“Aw, too late,” Ian says with a pout. “Cause I’m about to go on break, and I’m gonna tell everybody back there that the hero of the deli counter struck again.”
Mickey chokes, just a little.
“Hey, I’m not a—”
“You’re my hero,” Ian counters, stepping close to tap Mickey’s chest with a finger. “And someday I’m gonna convince you of it.”
“In fact,” he adds, finger lingering for the longest second of Mickey’s life, “why don’t I try to do that over lunch?”
“Lunch,” Mickey repeats, brain stuck on the single point of pressure between them. “I eat lunch.”
Ian huffs a laugh.
“I know.”
Of course he knows. They’ve had lunch together every shared shift since the day Gallagher sat down next to him and pulled out a three course meal on his first day.
“My sister worries about me,” he’d said with a smile warm enough to melt the ice in the break room freezer that hadn’t been defrosted in three years. “You want some?” he’d offered, sliding over a nuked bowl of macaroni, and Mickey hadn’t eaten alone since.
“Meet me here at twelve, like last time?” Ian is saying now. He’s a foot away somehow, then two, then too far. “It’s my turn to grab you something.”
Mickey doesn’t really answer. Just makes a vague sound, and clenches his fingers to he doesn’t grab onto to Ian’s trailing apron strings.
“See you then!” Ian says with a grin, teeth too big for his stupid freckled face, and then he’s disappearing behind the employees only door that Mickey hadn’t realized they’d reached.
Mickey stares at the metal door. His hand migrates up to his face, thumbnail finding it’s way between his teeth.
“You got it bad, baby boy,” a low voice comes from behind him.
Mickey wishes he were capable of scowling so soon after a Gallagher encounter.
“Shut it, Carla,” he orders instead, biting the thumb still in his mouth when it comes out more wistful than warning.
She moves forward instead, gets a manicured hand on his shoulder. Bright acrylics dig into his canvas vest, leaving behind dents when she releases him.
“Just sayin’.” She gets in front of him, hops up onto an unused display counter. “You don’t make a move soon,” she continues, legs swinging out almost far enough to kick him, “then that one’s gonna—”
Mickey catches her foot, shoves it back down.
“Get taken off my hands,” he finishes for her. “Yes, thanks, I know.”
She tucks her freed foot beneath herself, brings her other leg up to rest her chin on her knee.
“He’s gonna take himself off your hands, more like,” she says.
And. What. He moves in, one stride taking him to the edge of the counter, hands coming up to brace himself on either side of Carla’s hips.
“The fuck do you mean?” he demands, face too close, close enough to count her false lashes.
Carla isn’t phased. She never is.
“You haven’t heard?” she asks, head tilting, completely unconcerned. “Kid put in for a transfer.”
Mickey’s eyes narrow. He leans back out, frowns.
“Yup,’ Carla keeps going, as if she’s talking to herself and not to an armed man (a taser counts as armed, damn it) with anger issues.
“Our golden boy’s goin’ places, Milkovich,” she sighs, jumping down from her perch. She walks past him, standing stock still in the middle of the aisle, and adds:
“And right now, he ain’t got a reason to come back.”
For the first time since Gallagher started working, Mickey skips his lunch break.
He holes up in the security office instead, shitty prepackaged sandwich half eaten in front of him, leaving a streak of mustard on the worn keyboard as he cycles mindlessly through the camera feeds. A woman in the bakery compares two identical loaves. Carla pockets a lipstick after a customer decides not to buy it. A dude in produce feels up some tomatoes. And at the entrance to the employee-only area, Ian Gallagher waits.
For him.
Mickey watches. Can’t help himself. He keeps the feed open while he forces down a bite of stale bread, keeping an eye on the way Ian greets all their coworkers as they come and go. His head is high, his shoulders straight, and a plastic bag with the deli logo hangs from the loose grip of his hand.
Mickey imagines whatever’s inside will taste a lot better than the week-old chips he’d found in the back of his drawer.
Everything tastes better when it comes from Ian; it’s a truth he has to acknowledge. Cheap food shared in a too-loud room, cigarettes smoked on the loading dock. Candy stolen from the bulk bin and broken pretzels marked down for discard. The muffins Ian had brought from home once, lemon poppyseed, and sold on the down-low to help out his little sister.
Mickey doesn’t even like poppyseed; it gets stuck in your teeth, and it makes you fail drug tests when your corrupt PO buys you breakfast before a check.
But Ian had handed it to him, and that muffin was the best damn thing he’d ever eaten.
Mickey had experienced a lot of new bests since the other man showed up. The best talks. The best laughs. The best sleep he’d ever had after the night they accidentally got locked in and raided the liquor department with Mickey’s master key.
His best performance review in five years. “Beloved by coworkers,” it cited, and that was never something he’d been accused of before. Just having Ian around had been enough to make that change.
It’s no wonder the guy’s moving on. He wasn’t meant to be stuck in worthless job like this, taking shit from customers that weren’t worth a single freckle on his pale face. He was a good guy, an actually good guy, maybe the first one Mickey had ever known. And he deserved better than four faded walls and an ex-con lunch buddy who couldn’t keep an appointment.
On camera, Ian seems to be realizing the same thing. He looks up at the clock next to the camera, looks around again like he’s missing something. Lets his shoulders slump for just a second before pushing them back, striding right under the camera and back to work.
For once, Mickey thinks as he switches the feed to the front to watch the skater kids fall off their boards in the parking lot, he’s glad that the cameras can’t zoom. He doesn’t need to see Ian’s face.
He leans back in his chair, pops open the bag of chips, and crunches them unsatisfactorily between his teeth.
He was right.
They’re terrible.
He manages to avoid Ian for the rest of the day. He’s not really sure why he’s doing it, except that he’s pretty sure if he talks to him, he’ll say something stupid. Things he means, things he doesn’t. Things the old Mickey would say.
Something like “why didn’t you tell me?” or “you’re really just leaving me behind?” Something like “what, you think you’re special?” or “who said you could do better than this?”
“Who said you could do better than me?”
It’s fine, he thinks as he makes final rounds after closing. Really. It won’t be that different without him. Mickey gets along with the others now, has friends, has a routine. He’ll still be roaming the darkened aisles each night, making sure all the freezers are closed so Charlie doesn’t get in trouble. He’ll still restock the granola bars in the break room, so Logan doesn’t crash next time he forgets to pack a lunch. He’ll still lock Nina’s bag in his office so it won’t get stolen before her next shift, and make sure that the spare key to the front door is—
Not on the hook where it belongs.
The fuck?
He leans closer. It’s not there. Nor is it on the ground behind the trash can, or on his desk, or—
“Looking for this?”
He jumps.
“Jesus Christ, Gallagher!” he yelps, spinning around with a hand on his chest to brace his pounding heart.
Ian looks completely unrepentant. He’s standing right inside the office door, where he’s not supposed to be. When he’s not supposed to be. Arms crossed, face stony, and a look in his eyes that Mickey can’t read.
“You tryin’ to kill me?” Mickey asks lightly, trying to gauge the situation. “Sneakin’ up on a guy in his own damn office, you’re lucky I didn’t shoot ya.”
Ian doesn’t move.
“You only have a taser,” he says, voice flat.
“Right,” Mickey mutters. Shifts on his feet. Wishes he had listened to Sandra when she told him to rearrange the furniture, because then there would have been a desk between them.
“You uh,” he tries again. “You forget somethin’?”
Ian is still staring at him. He barely even blinks.
“Nope.”
Mickey swallows. Again, a little harder. He hasn’t been the focus of Ian’s attention like this since…well, ever. He’d always thought it would be kinda hot, to have Ian apply the same single-mindedness to him as he did to the finicky slicer that took off the tip of Carlos’s finger that one time. But, well.
It isn’t.
Not now, not like this. Not when it seems like he’s more likely to get a fist to the face than the careful glide of those hands over—
Ahem. Not important.
“Then what the fuck are you doin’ here?” Mickey asks. He means for it to sound casual, teasing. It doesn’t.
“You’re supposed to be home by now,” he rambles on when he doesn’t get an answer. “I bet your family is—”
“And you were supposed to be at lunch,” Ian interrupts with a scowl, and oh.
Right.
“Shit, man,” Mickey says. Forces an awkward laugh as he scratches the back of his head. “Look, I’m sorry,” he adds, and means it. “But somethin’ came up.”
“Uh huh. Something like what?”
Ian sounds like he’s agreeing with a child, that over-enunciated tone when you know they’re talking bullshit. And Mickey feels like one, avoiding him because he can’t handle his own damn feelings. Feels like he’s back under his father’s roof, where feelings aren’t allowed.
“Like…” Mickey grasps for something believable, something that will make it all better. Fails. “Like a—”
And Ian is moving. Closer. Too close. Mickey’s heart is still beating too fast, just from the shock of before, that’s all it is. Pounding away in his chest as his head starts to feel light from the blood flow, fists clenching to keep his hands from shaking. He feels small, so small, useless next to the man that he—
“Like a sudden need to completely avoid me?” Ian asks, and suddenly it’s all too much.
Too much wanting, built up over months. Too much regret, built over the day. Too much Ian, right here, right now, when Mickey can’t even—
“The fuck do you care?” he’s spitting out before he can stop himself. “You got a new job anyway, not like one day makes a difference.”
It’s bitter. It’s mean. It’s Mickey’s defenses coming up in a way they haven’t needed to in years, and he can’t do a damn thing about it.
Ian can. Ian does. His arms and his attitude come down, his frown turning from frustration to concern. He moves, just a little, to reach out—
It’s enough that Mickey can shove past him, can make it out the door, out of a space that’s gone from comfortably close to too fucking small for Ian Gallagher’s gigantic presence.
Ian follows him. Of course he does. Follows him as he storms through the nearest aisle, making for the front, spare key forgotten in his need to get away.
“Are you,” Ian starts behind him, stops as Mickey rounds a corner first. “Are you upset about that? The job?” he gets out once he’s got Mickey in sight again.
“No,” Mickey bites out, kicking a loose tag under a shelf as he passes. “Maybe.”
He reaches the end of the aisle. Nothing left between him and his escape but a few quick steps and a key. Home free, Gallagher free, now and forever. Back to the way things used to be.
He turns around.
“The fuck didn't you tell me for?”
Christ, he sounds like a girl. A little girl, begging her friend not to move away.
The cold expression from before is gone from Ian’s eyes, replaced with something else. Something softer.
“I didn't think you'd care,” he murmurs, a far cry from the tone he’d taken before.
Mickey gapes.
“You didn't think I'd—“ He cuts off, spins a half-circle, back, his hands in the air. “The fuck Gallagher,” he all but yells, no outlet for his racing thoughts but the volume of his voice. “You're the only one here that I—“
He stops again, with force. Breathes hard. Tries again.
“You really thought I wouldn't care if I never fuckin’ saw you again?”
Ian’s frown is disappearing, and Mickey doesn’t like it. He should be angry, he should be upset, he should be whatever the fuck it is that’s making Mickey want to run away.
Mickey never runs away. He just gets louder.
“Of all the self-centered bullshit,” he rants, barely knowing what he’s saying. He just knows he has to get it out. “I can’t believe you’d think that—”
“Mickey.”
“After the last fucking year,” Mickey says, “and you saw how I was when you started, you asshole, you—”
“Mickey.”
“Thought you knew me better than that,” he keeps on over the interruption, building up steam. “Thought you saw how things changed. But I guess that doesn’t matter to—”
“Mickey!” Ian cuts over him. He strides forward, grabs Mickey’s flailing arms, holds on as Mickey tries to pull loose.
Mickey kicks at him. “Fucking traitor!” he spits, and “You don’t get to—”
His foot connects with a heavy thud, steel-toed shoe against denim and muscle, and Ian yelps.
“What the hell, Mickey?” he cries as he bends over, clutching his shin.
“You think you get to just leave?” Mickey keeps raving. He shoves at Ian’s shoulder, doesn’t dwell at all on how firm it is, how well it resists him. “You think you get to—”
“I'm just switching departments!”
Mickey stops.
Blinks.
“What?”
“I'm leaving the deli counter,” Ian grits out between his teeth. He sits abruptly on the freshly-mopped tile floor, rubs at his leg. “I’m moving to the dock,” he explains as Mickey stares. Rolls up the cuff of his jeans, pokes at the already forming bruise with a hiss.
Looks up into Mickey’s eyes.
“I'm not going anywhere.”
Oh.
Fuck.
Mickey sits down too, right there past the registers. He’s suddenly weak. Suddenly tired.
“You’re not leaving,” he repeats. It sounds hollow. Like it’s coming from somewhere else. Some part of him not yet back to the surface.
Ian rolls his pants leg back down.
“Wasn’t gonna leave the whole place without sayin’ goodbye, Mick.”
His voice is soft. Soft like Mickey’s muscles with all the fight gone out of them. And he isn’t done.
He scoots forward, using his good leg to pull himself along the floor. Gets close, like he did in the office; close enough to feel the air make room for him.
This time, it doesn’t feel so claustrophobic.
“Mickey,” he murmurs, and waits. Waits for Mickey to pull his eyes away from the way Ian’s shoes press up against his, and meet that warm green gaze.
“You're important to me too.”
And Mickey doesn’t know what to say.
“I—” he tries. Swallows back the wrong words, the ones that come to him first. The ones that still want to push things away, that haven’t realized yet he doesn’t have to.
He finds better ones. Better like Ian.
“Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Ian asks, then chuckles at the face Mickey must pull. “All this?” He shakes his head. “Don’t be,” he says with a grin. “It's nice to know you feel so strongly. Was kind of starting to wonder.”
Mickey can feel his ears heat up.
“Didn’t say that,” he argues weakly, for absolutely no discernible reason. Because apparently no amount of personal improvement can make him better at this.
“I mean I've been flirting with you for a year now,” Ian goes on, oblivious, “and you still haven't made a move.”
Mickey just looks at him. Looks at his eyes, warm, open. Looks at his smile, soft, free. Sitting with him there on the floor, after a fight that he didn’t deserve, like Mickey hadn’t tried to ruin everything.
Something this good doesn’t belong in Mickey’s world, but maybe it can stay there anyway.
“And you,” Mickey gets out through a tight throat. “You want me to...”
He trails off.
“God, you’re so fucking annoying,” Ian laughs. “I’m practically sitting in your lap right now after you maimed me, and you still can’t take a hint?”
Mickey looks down. Well fuck, he really is. Sometime in the last couple minutes, Ian had managed to throw a leg over Mickey’s knees, and he hadn’t even noticed.
“Um,” he says, and puts a tentative hand on Ian’s knee. Ian leans into him, and it takes a second to find his voice again.
“You hungry?”
Ian smiles.
“Starving.”