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It was a normal morning in the Gallagher kitchen.
That is to say, it was chaotic.
Carl and Liam sat across from each other at the narrow table, tossing dry loops of off-brand cereal at each other over Franny’s backpack, which lay open between them. The girl herself was running circles around them both in her pajamas, Debbie chasing after her with a stern face and a frilly dress held in outstretched hands.
“Come on, Franny,” she muttered impatiently as her daughter evaded her again by diving under the table, “just put on the dress!”
Mickey laughed when Franny ran to him instead, trying to hide behind his legs where he stood by the brewing coffeemaker. Ian ruined her attempt by swinging her up into his arms and twirling her around until Debbie snatched her from him, resulting in an angry shriek as Franny writhed in her hold.
“For fuck’s sake, keep it down in here!” Lip hissed, coming in from the living room where Tami had just gotten Fred settled in his play pen. “If you get Fred crying again, I swear I’ll fucking end you all.”
If anything, the kitchen got louder as everyone there chimed in in their own defense.
Mickey just snorted as he grabbed two mugs and got to pouring the fresh coffee. “Good luck with that,” he offered to Lip, amused. “You get one Gallagher going, you get the whole fucking pack.”
Lip glared at him, opened his mouth the say something undoubtedly scathing and most likely regarding Mickey’s place in the family, when Carl laughed and chimed in from the table.
“Funny, man, that’s what Trevor said to me and Ian at the station yesterday.”
The room went quiet.
Or maybe it just seemed that way to Ian, who could see the way his husband’s back immediately tensed at the familiar name, the way he gripped the handle of his mug a little too tight and poured the coffee a little too high before setting down the pot with a hard clack.
“Trevor, huh?” Mickey asked, voice deceptively mild, and Ian winced behind him.
Carl didn’t get the memo.
“Yeah, you remember him, right?” he checked. “He still works at that youth place, came in to post bail for some kid when Ian was bringing by lunch.” He shrugged, tossed a handful of cereal into his mouth. “We chatted a bit,” he mumbled as he chewed.
Mickey gripped the edge of the counter, knuckles going white under his tattoos. “Funny,” he said quietly, “Ian didn’t think to mention that.”
Ian sighed, ignoring the eyes of his family on their quickly unfolding drama. They’d been fighting a lot lately, a lot more than they used to, and today had been shaping up to be better, damn it. Now he had to do damage control again instead of enjoying a quiet day in with his husband.
“We’ve talked about this, Mickey,” he started, a tad bit exasperated. It must have come through in his voice, because Mickey’s shoulders went up. “Trevor’s not a bad guy, and I’m not gonna avoid him if I see him around.”
Mickey released the counter to grab his coffee again, taking a long, scalding swallow. “Right,” he said finally, not looking at Ian. “Not a bad guy at all. Just wanted to leave your ass rotting in jail when you couldn’t be his poster boy anymore, that’s all.”
“Mickey…” Ian warned, but it didn’t stop him.
“Tell me, Ian,” Mickey mused, turning to face him with hard eyes. “How much of that thirteen percent belongs to him?”
Fuck. Not that again.
“Wait, what’s he talking about?” Debbie was the one to ask first, voice cutting through their palpable tension. She’d even stopped trying to force the dress over Franny’s head in the interim, allowing the girl to escape up the stairs unscathed. “What thirteen percent?”
“Oh yeah, he told me about that,” Lip butted in. “Said Mickey got all bent out of shape cause Ian still thinks about his exes, or something, right?”
Ian closed his eyes against the hurt in Mickey’s as his brother revealed that he knew about their squabble. Fuck his family right now, seriously.
“Not quite,” he gritted out, but when he opened his eyes again, Mickey had schooled his face back into disinterest.
“No, that’s just about it,” Mickey confirmed. “Got my nose out of joint because Ian, here,” he gestured at Ian with his mug, ignoring the hot coffee that splashed over the side, “said I only got eighty-seven percent of his heart.”
Someone whistled, low and long. Ian couldn’t tell who.
“It’s not that big a deal,” he insisted yet again. “My whole life is a fucking shrine to you, Mick. If my heart was a room, there’s be posters of you on every fucking wall.” He took a step closer, until Mickey’s mug pressed into his own chest, leaving a wet spot on his shirt.
“You really can’t let the others have a little space in that room? Not even in the bottom drawer of a dresser that nobody uses anyway?”
Mickey was still, and silent. Then he spun around and slammed his mug back down on the counter, shoved past Ian, and stormed off up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Ian called after him.
“To clean out the goddamn drawers!”
It was quiet in Mickey’s wake, and then—
“Dude, that’s fucked up,” Carl said frankly, and Liam nodded in agreement, eyes wide.
“Did you really say that?” Debbie asked, sounding horrified, and before Ian could answer the back door slammed open.
“Morning neighbors!” Vee greeted as she came through, Kev on her heels. She was holding something, a dish covered in foil, and a carton of juice hung from Kev’s hand.
“We brought you guys some…” Vee trailed off when no one even looked at her, noticing the tension in the room.
“Uh,” she voiced, confused, “what did we miss?”
Carl answered, still looking at Ian in disbelief. “Ian told Mickey he keeps stuff from his exes in a drawer, so Mickey’s up there looking for it.”
“Oh, that’s cold man,” Kev breathed, and Ian exhaled.
“It was a metaphor,” he muttered, and Vee heard him.
“A metaphor for what?” she asked, curious.
“For the thirteen percent of Ian’s heart that belongs to other people,” Debbie revealed, and Vee set down her dish with a clatter.
“You said that to him?” she clarified, and at Ian’s reluctant nod, shook her head and turned to Kev.
“You ever say shit like that to me,” she said firmly, “I’ll cut off thirteen percent of your dick.”
***
A few long minutes later, after he had finally escaped his family’s inquisition about the state of his relationship, Ian made his way upstairs, alone.
When he got to their bedroom, Mickey wasn’t actually going through their things. He was just sitting on their bed, back to the wall, spinning his wedding ring round and round on his finger. Next to him, balanced on their folded blanket, sat the little box with the fancy ones they used in the ceremony just so they wouldn’t have to take theirs off.
Ian’s heart beat harder. That box had been sitting safe in the bottom drawer of their shared dresser.
The one that nobody used.
“Hey,” he said softly from the doorway. Mickey didn’t look up.
“You okay?” Ian asked, and that at least got a response.
“Do I look fucking okay to you?” Mickey returned, eyes on his knees.
He didn’t. Not really. He looked haggard, and upset, his hair spiky where restless fingers had combed through it. Ian couldn’t see his eyes, but he had a feeling they were rimmed in red.
Ian let himself into the room, sat opposite Mickey on the bed with his feet still firmly on the floor. He reached out to trace a finger over the rings in the box, and then the ring on Mickey’s finger.
Mickey let his own hand fall away when he did.
“You know that’s not how I meant it, right?” Ian asked, suddenly desperate to hear Mickey agree. He needed to know that Mickey understood, that just because he remembered his past, it didn’t mean he wasn’t dedicated to his future.
But Mickey just shrugged.
“Not a lot of ways you can mean it,” he said, and shit. Ian had really fucked up this time. “Either I have your whole heart or I don’t,” Mickey continued, “and I don’t. So,” he shrugged again, “whatever.”
Ian took a moment. A long one. He thought of Mickey’s reaction the first time he had said it, when he was mostly just teasing. The way he had been shocked to think that Ian still had fond thoughts for other men. And he thought of his family downstairs, each one more fucked up than the last, all in agreement over the severity of his error.
And to be honest, he still didn’t quite get the uproar. But maybe that was because none of them got his side, either.
“You’re right,” he began, “you don’t.”
Mickey tensed further, pulling away from him on the bed, but Ian wasn’t done.
“You have all the good bits, you know,” he continued. He went to rest a hand on Mickey’s chest, saw his stiffness, and pointed at his own instead.
“You have all four chambers,” he told him. “Atrium and ventricle. You keep my blood moving, keep it useful, keep me alive. And you have my valves,” he added, trailing a finger side to side to point to the right spots as he spoke. “Mitral and aorta, pulmonary and tricuspid.” He smiled. “You keep me going in the right direction.”
Mickey was softening, he could tell, the tension seeping from his limbs as Ian droned on. He kept going anyway.
“You have all my arteries, Mick,” he whispered. “You’re in all my veins. You said I was under your skin, once?” Ian laughed. “Well you’re under my skin, too. And in my muscles, and in my blood.”
“And the others, they’re like…” he hesitated, searched for the right words. Better words than he had used before. “They’re like cholesterol,” he settled on, “plaque. Or…like the scar tissue from a triple bypass, the parts that don’t work anymore.”
Mickey’s lips quirked, despite himself, and Ian counted it as a victory.
“You have a lot a heart surgeries, Gallagher?” he questioned softly, catching on.
Ian smile widened, and he reached out to take Mickey’s hand. This time, Mickey didn’t pull away.
“Maybe a few,” he admitted. “And maybe I’m better for it.”
He lifted Mickey’s hand to his lips, held it there.
“I don’t mind the broken bits,” he told his husband. “The pieces they left behind. Because you pushed through them every time, and made me healthy again.”
Mickey fidgeted, and nudged himself off the wall to settle closer to Ian’s side.
“Alright,” he allowed, “I get it.”
“Do you?” Ian asked earnestly. “Because I want you to, you know.” He dropped Mickey’s hand to hold his face instead, gently stroking a thumb over his cheek. “I want you to know that that thirteen percent, it doesn’t really matter. All that matters are the parts that are you.”
"I chose you, Mickey," he murmured. He reached out blindly for the spare rings in their box on the bed, worked one free. Slipped it onto Mickey's finger without looking away from his eyes. Mickey's hand clenched around it, around Ian's hand, and held tight.
"I married you," Ian added. "Because I love you with every real part of my heart, every little bit that works."
“All eighty-seven percent?” Mickey prodded with a soft expression, leaning forward until his nose brushed Ian’s.
“All eighty-seven percent,” Ian confirmed, and kissed him.