Work Text:
Having Mickey show up late to work wasn’t unusual – he overslept often and sometimes he got distracted on the way to work or just lost track of time or anything else. When he hadn’t shown up all day though, Ian had gotten worried. He’d spent ten minutes pleading to Linda to mark Mickey down for a half day so his probation worker wouldn’t get on his ass about his missed time before he went to Mickey’s place to check on him.
The Mickey that answered the door after he’d pounded on it for what felt like ten minutes was less Mickey and more Casper the Bitchy Ghost. Paler than usual and looking positively exhausted, he still sucked on a smoke and leveled Ian with the most venomous glare he could manage.
“Jesus, Mickey,” Ian murmured. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” Mickey rolled his eyes and turned to retreat back into his house. Ian followed of course and closed the door behind him. The house was surprisingly still considering how populated it usually was and Ian appreciated it since it looked like Mickey was being stubborn and impossible as always.
“You alright?” he asked, following Mickey into the kitchen and watching him nearly drop the pot of coffee as he tried to pour himself a cup. Ian watched him shake for only a moment before he took it from him and put it back in the coffee maker. “No coffee. Go lay down on the couch and sleep.”
“Fuck off, I got shit to do,” Mickey argued, going for the coffee pot again.
“Like what? You don’t do anything,” Ian insisted. He unplugged the coffee maker and did his best to herd a disgruntled Milkovich towards the couch. He tried to shove past Ian but found him to be more formidable than he expected and having been sick for as long as he had he didn’t have much fight left in him.
He sunk onto the couch and fought against Ian when he tried to put a blanket over his shoulders. “Fuck off, Gallagher. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah, I can tell you’ve been doing a great job of that,” Ian said, going back to the kitchen and scavenging together whatever he could find in the scant Milkovich kitchen. He went back to Mickey with a couple pieces of dry toast with a thin layer of crumb-riddled margarine on each and gave them to him. He looked incredibly unimpressed by the offering but after watching the TV with drooping eyelids for a couple minutes he eventually gave in and started munching on a piece.
Ian shucked his jacket and hung it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs then joined Mickey on the couch, and that was when the slumping began. Distracted by the TV and his toast, Mickey began to fall asleep, leaning more and more against Ian’s side as time went on. A couple of times he blinked himself awake and mumbled a curse and a ‘stop fuckin’ babying me, I can do this myself’ or something to that effect, but before long he was fading again, until he was snoring heavily against Ian’s shoulder.
Even with his shirt covered in crumbs from all the times Mickey dropped his toast and with the rapidly-growing pool of drool soaking into his shoulder, Ian was still the happiest he’d been in months. Until, of course, a week later when he found himself bed-ridden and barely able to hold a coherent thought with the pounding in his head and the congestion in his sinuses. Thanks a lot, Mickey.