Chapter Text
Mickey glanced around the small efficiency apartment but carefully didn’t let his thoughts show on his face.
He took in the pile of dishes that had overflowed the sink and drifted across the counter.
He noted the dust bunnies and tumbleweeds of fuzz that had accumulated in every corner and on the leg of each piece of furniture.
The smell wasn’t terrible: that was something good.
Around the corner lurked an open door, white light bouncing out that suggested the tile of a bathroom.
Short, sharp exhalations brought his attention back to the client in front of him. Mickey smiled.
“Mr. Gallagher, I know I can help you out today. I’m just gonna have a look around, ok?”
The man looked worried, forehead creased and shoulders hunched. “The lady on the phone- we did a video thing- she said it would be ok? That you had experience?”
Mickey kept his grin firmly in place. “I do have experience, and if Mandy said it was good, it’s good. I just want to come up with a game plan, a’right?”
This answer seemed acceptable to the client, though no tension dissipated from his posture.
Instead, he followed Mickey on padding feet around the small apartment. First the living room, Mickey made a few pro forma notes on his clipboard, then the bathroom. It was a dude’s bathroom. A messy dude’s bathroom, but it’s not like there was shit on the walls.
Mickey had seen shit on the walls. And in plastic bags in the trash, in places where the plumbing didn’t work. This wasn’t that bad.
The bedroom gave him slight pause- there was an ankle deep pond of clothing, towels, and trash on the floor. A glance back showed the man, Mickey’s client, was hanging in the doorway, shame coloring his face.
“This ain’t so bad,” Mickey announced with firmness in his voice. “Seen way worse.”
“Have you?” The guy cocked his head, like he thought Mickey was lying to him.
Mickey wasn’t lying.
“No dead animals, no cat shit, right?”
The client nodded.
Mickey nodded back. “Like I said, seen worse.”
He positively refused to take on clients that had pets nowadays. Iggy could clean that shit to his heart’s content, smoke some weed and just scrub till the cows came home. Not Mickey.
Mickey liked ‘em like this. Messy, a little dirty, but mostly disorganized.
Plus, the guy had a damn good excuse.
The final stop on the apartment tour was the kitchen. A small plastic table was heaped with unopened letters, many with seals and flags indicating they came from the US Armed Services.
“Looks like someone’s tryin’ to reach ya real bad,” he joked.
The client didn’t answer, not at first, not until Mickey fixed him with a hard gaze.
“Yeah.” He gave an uncomfortable shrug. “Uncle Sam wants to be sure I’m still really fuckin’ disabled.” A sharp laugh accompanied this statement.
“PTSD’s a bitch,” Mickey agreed. “Shit doesn’t go away overnight, sometimes ever.”
That earned him raised red eyebrows. “You know about PTSD?”
It was Mickey turn to shrug, this time casually. “We help a lot a’ people out. This ain’t my first rodeo.”
“Oh,” came the quiet reply, as if the guy thought Mickey had some other reason for understanding trauma.
Which he did.
Mickey just wasn’t about to cop to it on his first meeting with a new client, no matter how hot he looked under a shaggy, grown-out, red buzz cut and scruffy red facial hair.
The loose tee shirt couldn’t hide that the guy was still fit as fuck, and the gray sweatpants- well. Mickey kept his eyes at or above the waist, like a good boy.
He was at work goddamnit. Now was not the time to be trawling for dick.
---
Ian retreated to the far corner of his couch and held his phone in front of his face. He’d pulled his hoodie low over his forehead, so he was as hidden as possible, short of leaving the apartment.
The phone screen was dark; he hadn’t even gone through the pretense of turning it on or pulling up some nonsensical game or video.
His stomach felt sick, roiling like wine-dark ocean waves were having a fight to the death in his belly. Gassy, headachy, fuzzy-eyed, and anxious, his skin pricking with discomfort.
But it had to be done.
Living in a pit of filth wasn’t helping: he’d had conversation after conversation with his therapist about taking this step.
“-and the agoraphobia won’t get better until your living situation feels safer, Ian!” Crystal had insisted. “Just call the number, I know this company, they’re good.”
“Good like out of my price range?” He’d quickly countered, looking for an easy out.
Crystal blew out a breath, not of frustration. Crystal never got frustrated with him- the worst she did was laugh at him when he was being dumb. She never hesitated to tell him that either, when he was being stupid.
But symptoms, true mental illness, didn’t make her laugh.
“Ian,” she said quietly, “this company only works with people like you.”
“Like me, how?”
A perfectly-groomed eyebrow arched through the computer screen. Tele-health had its benefits, Ian guessed.
“Fine, you want me to say it? This company only works for people with mental illness. They bill your insurance, like it's a healthcare related service.”
Ian didn’t say anything, considering.
“Do I have to tip them?”
This at least got him a laugh.
“No, Ian, you don’t tip them. You wouldn’t tip a nurse, would you?” She peered at him closely. “Wait, Ian, have you tipped a nurse? Did they take it? I’m screaming!”
“No!” Ian immediately refuted. “No, Jesus, I didn’t tip a nurse.”
It had been a physical therapist, and yeah, they guy had taken it. Not least because Ian had very obviously written his number on the bill.
“Great, ok. Back to the topic at hand. You call the number, they do a little FaceTime evaluation, and then, if they can help, they send a guy.”
“A guy? Not a cleaning lady?”
Crystal stared at him, dark brown eyes eloquent in the way she had that made all his mistakes seem just… silly.
“RIght, cleaning guy. Ok. I’ll call.”
“Will you?”
“I’ll call!” he insisted.
“Call to- day, Ian. Today. ”
He’d hung up on Crystal then. She was a great therapist, no nonsense and funny but she was also a stern taskmaster, holding him to his word.
He’d called, gone through the whole process, made the appointment, put it in his calendar on his phone, and then purposely forgotten until this morning.
This morning, when he realized he didn’t have a single clean shirt to put on, but the idea of doing laundry, of compiling his dirty clothes into piles and then bringing them down to the basement washer, seemed insurmountable.
And so he’d taken a Xanax and gone back to bed until 1pm, when this man had arrived, knocking on his door with a little clipboard in his hand.
A small part of Ian, a delusional part, had devised high plans about pre-cleaning the apartment, about doing so well that the cleaner would walk in, look around in amazement, and then state that Ian didn’t need any help at all! He was cured!
Ian wasn’t cured.
He was, instead, trying not to make it obvious that he was watching the guy digging in the pantry for a stepladder so he could get to the top shelves of the kitchen cabinets.
The cleaner was short, there was no denying it. 5’6” if Ian was being generous.
And if he could just open his fucking mouth, Ian could explain that he didn’t own a step stool, because he was tall. That would just open a whole can of worms.
Anyway, why did the guy wanna look in his top shelves? Ian didn’t even know what was up there; probably some shit from Fiona from when he’d been released from the hospital.
Trash, probably.
Ian had an image of the cleaner climbing onto the counter tops, just to look at the aluminum baking trays that were squirreled up in the dust recesses of the shelves, and he wanted to giggle. Then he realized the countertops were too crowded with stuff for the guy to get a purchase, and he immediately sobered.
He wanted another fucking Xanax.
Ian checked his phone.
The cleaner had been in the apartment for 15 minutes.
This was gonna be a long afternoon.