Chapter Text
It could have been a lot worse.
If you had told Mickey that when he was eighteen– married to a Russian hooker his father had made him fuck once, shattered from a beating and a rape that had been committed against him as retribution for being attracted to men instead of women– he would probably have punched you in the face. (He still might, in fact; the memories of that time were terrible, and even now he could barely stand to think of them.) But considering that he came out of the whole thing alive, it was safe to say things could have gone much worse than they did. He was alive, and Ian was alive, and marriage was shitty but it was hardly the worst of his options where his dad was concerned.
The worst side effect he’d incurred, after the bruises faded and even the sight of Svetlana no longer made him want to hurl, was emotional rather than physical. The emotions that Mickey kept so closely guarded during the day reared their heads, every few weeks, in the form of panic attacks. He knew, instinctively, that he was not sick– at least not with any textbook disease. These episodes came on him every once in a while, almost always at night, like a recurring bad dream he couldn’t control. He would lie there miserably, choking back the urge to vomit and clutching his chest and arms, fighting back the pain as well as the tears that wanted to be released too. Usually he would drop off eventually into a light, restless sleep; when he woke up the next morning he would be sore all over, his head pounding with a migraine and his heart still not quite right.
When Ian had returned from the army, dismissed after only a few months when his false identity was discovered, Mickey finally had an opportunity to escape. They moved across town, to a neighborhood no more classy than Canaryville but marginally safer, and with that distance the anxiety died down. The episodes became fewer and further apart, and having someone else there to see him through did wonders for him.
They had been together for over a year before Mickey woke up in the night again scared and in pain; the panic attacks had all but stopped months ago, and the few moments of anxiety he had experienced since then had dramatically lessened in intensity. But he must have dreamed something– he couldn’t quite remember now– and triggered the emotions lurking deep inside, because he woke up sweating, his chest tight and painful, feeling like he wanted to scream he was so scared. It was reminiscent of the worst attacks he had gotten before reuniting with Ian, where his fear felt like it was trying to tear its way out of his body. For a moment he could not move at all, paralyzed so that he could neither reach out for help nor form any sound, as if in a dream from which he could not wake up. Then he managed to will some motion into his limbs, and let a hand fall onto Ian’s skin, nudging him as Mickey doubled over with another wave of nauseating pain and fear.
Ian stirred, sleepy for a moment before he sensed trouble. His eyes blinked open. “Oh, shit,” he said blearily, pushing himself upright and swaying for a moment with half-sleep as he instinctively reached out for Mickey. The man was shaking, feeling the fear take him over, but when Ian reached out to take his hand, Mickey curled their fingers together gratefully. His responsiveness was encouraging; Mickey was not as far gone as he might have been. They stayed that way for a long while: Ian’s body facing Mickey’s, touching in a few places but not too close, mainly connected by the hand that Mickey was now clutching too tightly in his own. Mickey focused only on continuing to breathe, and staying aware of his surroundings, fighting his way through the pain washing over him in a flood.
When the attack finally subsided, his breathing ragged, Mickey loosened his grip on Ian’s fingers. (He was too overwhelmed to notice the way Ian stretched them out, grimacing slightly at how sore they were from being manhandled.) Ian scooted closer, bracketing Mickey from behind with his body, and muttered. “Been a long time since you had one of those.” Gentle hands were smoothing themselves over his body, and Mickey cleared his throat harshly and whimpered, the closest he was able to get to a verbal response at that point. He was still shaking slightly. “How do you feel?” Ian asked gently.
Mickey took a moment to remember how to form words. “Head’s spinning,” he managed. “Dizzy. Think I might throw up.” The nausea was cresting over him in moderate waves.
Ian reached around and pulled the wastebasket in front of him, just in case. “Want to move to the bathroom for a while?” he asked.
Mickey started to shake his head, but thought better of the vigorous back-and-forth movement and made a negative sound instead. “Need to lie down,” he answered, and Ian understood that the fact that he had not done so on his own meant that he needed help. The young man guided him onto his side on the bed, slowly so as not to jostle him. Mickey felt the bed shift as he got up, and then Ian came back with a cool damp cloth, which he placed on Mickey’s forehead to combat the dizziness. Mickey made a small grateful sound, the tiny bit of comfort making him feel pitifully like crying. When a few silent tears did escape, Ian said nothing– just kept near to him, recognizing this as an emotional response to the care he was receiving.
Mickey’s panic attacks had run the gamut of severity since he had been a teenager. They had started way back then– nights full of anxiety that he had to endure silently and subsume into his own body so that no one around him would know about it. Everyone could be untrustworthy there, with the obvious exception of Mandy, who had helped him, in her own way, when no one else would. Any sign of weakness could potentially bring further retribution from his father. So he bottled everything inside, until his body was aching with tension and he was so closed-off that not even the comfort he so desperately needed could get through.
Since then, these episodes had come with a wide variety of side effects, depending on the situation. He had cried many times, cried so hard he thought he would choke and stop breathing with the force of it. Once, in a particularly unpleasant instance, he had woke up feeling like he did now, like screaming– only he had been so terrified that he had screamed, Ian holding him while he doubled over and yelled in agony. He had felt angry, violated, and so scared that he could not be consoled, and Ian had stayed with him the whole time, murmuring “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,” until finally Mickey had lost the energy to scream and had sagged against his partner. Ian had continued shushing him as he trembled and breathed in labored gasps and told him what he had dreamed about that had caused him such pain. Ian already knew generally what had happened– the parts he was there for all too vividly impressed in his memory, the rest told him in bits and pieces over time– but he held Mickey closer and listened without judgment as he relived his most horrible memories of all, including those which he had not yet spoken aloud.
Now, as this latest panic attack subsided, he sighed and allowed himself to feel loved and cared for. The threads of his latest dream were all that was left; he remembered the powerful sensation of being bruised and battered by forceful hands, his father’s voice echoing in his mind, the memory of being violated and touched against his will. For a while before he found Ian, he had seriously considered never allowing anyone to touch him again; the idea of someone getting that close and having such freedom over his body was unthinkable. But Ian was someone he trusted, who he knew would not take liberties, who cared for him despite what a shitty person Mickey usually was convinced that he was. So he let Ian take care of him, and gradually he felt the pain in his chest subside. Ian settled behind him and rested a gentle hand on Mickey’s stomach, rubbing with his fingers in circles until he heard the man’s breathing become even and calm.
Mickey could already feel the migraine beginning, so when Ian got up for a second– pressing a kiss to Mickey’s neck as he did so, as a further means of comfort– and came back with water and a few Advil, he sat up long enough to take them gratefully. He laid back down on the bed, and Ian leaned over him and gave him a short, chaste kiss on his lips. Then he pulled the covers over both of them and curled in, his body language protective in a way that was weirdly at odds with his usually gentle nature. Mickey felt a little bit of the pressure in his chest lift at the strength of Ian’s affection; he had always dealt in expressions of force, but had honestly never thought that the force that would match his capacity for destruction would be Ian’s sheer ability to love. He was bowled over by it, even more so when Ian whispered into his shoulder, “Love you so much sometimes I can hardly stand it.” He was unable to answer, but he brought a hand up to the back of Ian’s head, his palm anchoring them together.
Ian was always unfailingly patient with him in these moments, no matter what course his reactions took or how severe they were. He was still patient a few hours later, when Mickey woke up again with a migraine worse than any he’d had in years and barely made it to the bathroom before vomiting miserably into the toilet. His head was pounding, the pressure behind his eyelids making it painful to open them even in the low light of the bathroom. When he was done throwing up everything in his stomach, he flushed the toilet and rested his throbbing head against it while he shuddered with the misery of having just been sick. He only stopped when he felt Ian’s cool hands on his sweaty back, rubbing up and down in a soothing motion. Then he calmed, even when he was wracked by another bout of dry heaves that had him doubled over again, though nothing would come up.
Ian got him back into bed once he felt like his stomach was settling, moving the wastebasket next to him once again in case the need to vomit struck him for a second time. The sun was just coming up, but even the minuscule light of the oncoming dawn was causing Mickey to wince and shut his eyes tightly, so Ian lowered all the blinds. Then, as he almost always did, he rubbed his fingers against Mickey’s temples to ease the ache there. Mickey whimpered and initially tensed at the contact to an area that was sensitive to the touch, but then slowly began to relax into it. Ian moved a little closer, then whispered into his skin. “Do you think you can sleep now? You’ll feel better if you get some rest.”
Mickey said nothing, focusing only on overcoming his migraine and keeping his still-wavering emotions under control. He was suddenly finding he couldn’t keep his eyes open, but he was still in too much pain to sleep restfully, and going back to sleep in this unstable state made him uneasy. He whimpered again and pulled at Ian’s hand, still unsure how to communicate this; the only word he was able to muster was “Can’t.”
Ian curled their fingers together. “Tell me what you need, then.” When Mickey didn’t answer, his eyes watering in misery and frustration, Ian kissed his forehead and said, “I think I have an idea. How’s your stomach? Do you think you can get up in a few minutes?” Mickey nodded– the nausea had mostly subsided at that point– and Ian looked at him with a strange fondness before getting up and returning to the bathroom. Mickey heard the water running, and thought frantically that he didn’t think he could stay standing long enough for a shower– but then he realized Ian wasn’t turning the shower on; he was running a bath for him. Just the idea of lying immersed in water made him instantly feel a bit better, and he stayed patiently on the bed until Ian returned and said, “Ready?” He nodded again, and Ian guided him to a sitting and then a standing position.
The light was on in the bathroom, and Mickey squinted at the brightness, already feeling it burn his eyelids as the stabbing pain in his head flared back full force. “I don’t think I can–“ he started to say, but Ian cut him off with a quiet “Ssh, I know, I’ve got you. Don’t worry about that.” He guided Mickey to lean back in the bathtub, and the effect of the water was immediate: Mickey relaxed all over and groaned as contentedly as his exhausted and still-rattled body could manage. His eyes fell shut, and so he only noticed by the darkening in front of his eyelids that Ian had turned the lights off, leaving Mickey to relax in the semi-darkness.
Ian disappeared for several minutes; Mickey heard his quiet footsteps as he padded in his bare feet into the hallway. Mickey was content to be left alone for the moment. His mind was drifting, the relaxation palpable as his tension and unease faded into greater quietness. The only sounds were the lapping of the water against his skin, and further away, the muted noise of Ian moving through different rooms of the house. The headache had faded a small measure, into a dull ache that still permeated his nerves but no longer made him feel like vomiting.
About fifteen minutes later, Ian came back into the room. He sat down on the toilet seat lid, drawing one leg up to his body and propping the other foot up on the edge of the bathtub. Mickey was so relaxed that he could barely move, but he lifted one hand out of the water to curl around Ian’s bare foot, rubbing his fingers over the arch. Ian flexed his toes in response. Mickey opened his eyes and looked at Ian. He was hard to see in the half-light– the sun was only just dawning, and the bathroom was barely lit, so he could only see the young man’s silhouette and the faintest outline of his face. His features were settled, but tired, and he was leaning his back against the sink, propping his head on his right hand. Mickey’s own hand slipped back into the water, and he drifted for a while longer, feeling his eyelids growing heavy and his physical sensations numbing.
When he opened his eyes again, the water was still warm, but markedly less so. Ian’s head was still resting on his hand, and his eyes were closed, mouth slightly open; he appeared to be dozing. Mickey shifted in the water, and Ian’s eyes fluttered open. “Is that better?” he asked, sounding only mostly awake.
Mickey made a noise of agreement. “Think I can sleep now,” he told Ian. If he was being truthful, he didn’t think he could stay awake much longer.
Ian helped him out of the bathtub and gave him a towel to dry himself off with, then left the room. Mickey patted himself dry, and then he changed into a pair of clean boxers, which Ian had left on the toilet seat for him. When he moved into the bedroom after brushing his teeth, he found the bed made with fresh sheets, and shut his eyes for a second in relief and sudden affection for the man who so selflessly took care of him.
By the time Ian came back a few minutes later, Mickey was lying under the covers, curled up and mostly asleep. Ian nudged him awake with the gentlest of touches; in one hand he held two Advil, in the other a glass with a very small amount of ginger ale. “Take these,” he said in a quiet voice. Mickey’s headache had already subsided a fraction, so he needed very little additional medication. He swallowed the pills and drank the fizzy liquid gratefully, relieved at how easy it was on his stomach even though he no longer felt nauseous.
The empty glass was placed on the table next to the bed. Ian climbed under the covers with him, and Mickey turned delicately to face him. The other man looked tired, and Mickey felt a pang of guilt knowing that the Gallagher boy had gotten very little sleep that night on account of him. Mickey touched their foreheads together, feeling vulnerable still but much more stable, the gesture his only way of expressing his thanks to Ian.
Mickey was only half-conscious, and so he remembered the moments between getting into bed and sleeping only as flashes: noticing Ian’s eyelids flutter shut as he dropped off to sleep; the sun spreading in lines, muted by the drawn blinds, as it rose further in the sky. He burrowed into the blankets, his eyes closing unbidden, knowing that both the images in his dreams and the pain in his body would now have faded enough for him to sleep properly. He fell gently into unconsciousness soon afterward.
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There was a moment, around 8:00 in the morning, when Mickey woke up again. He glanced at the clock, then at Ian, who was out like a light in the bed next to him. He didn’t even stir when Mickey rolled over, and the other man realized that his lover must be exhausted, dead to the world. Mickey was already headed back towards sleep himself; some part of him had simply wanted to make sure, he knew, that Ian was there and safe and all right. With this confirmed, he shut his eyes again and fell back into sleep.