Chapter Text
It starts with a sigh.
Not just any sigh — an award-winning, Oscar-level, full-body exhale of tragic proportions.
Mickey pauses mid-receipt at the kitchen table, blinking twice before muttering without looking up, “Don’t even start.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Ian replies from across the room, standing in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed and his lower lip pushed out so far Mickey wants to slap it back in. Or kiss it. Or both.
“You’re sighing at me,” Mickey says. “Loudly. Pathetically. With intent.”
Ian doesn’t deny it. Instead, he slinks over like a housecat in heat, flopping against the side of Mickey’s chair and pressing his forehead dramatically to Mickey’s shoulder.
“You’ve been doing paperwork forever,” Ian groans. “You’re wasting your life, and mine, and this prime snuggling weather.”
Mickey shrugs him off with a grunt. “Electric company doesn’t give a shit about your cuddle quota.”
“They should,” Ian says, deadly serious. “They should give me a credit every time you deny me affection. Emotional trauma fee.”
“You had your tongue in my mouth this morning.”
“That was hours ago.”
“It was like two hours ago.”
“Exactly.” Ian collapses on the couch behind them. “Two hours of isolation. No kisses. No scritches. No Mickey. I’m touch-starved. I’m withering.”
Mickey pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to refocus on the receipt in front of him. One of many. He’s trying to make sense of the numbers for the shop, but it’s a mess — and Ian Gallagher, resident human Labrador, is not helping.
Ian, sensing weakness, flops upside-down across the couch like he’s melting off it. “You love me less today. That’s what this is.”
“Oh my God.”
“I can feel it in my bones.”
Mickey looks up, exasperated, and makes a show of slowly turning to face him. “Do you need me to physically throw you out of this apartment?”
Ian perks up instantly. “You want to touch me?”
Mickey throws a pen at him. It bounces off Ian’s chest and rolls onto the floor.
⸻
Ian disappears after that, and for a minute Mickey thinks he’s actually left to sulk — a quiet miracle. He gets through four more receipts in relative peace before he hears it.
Footsteps.
Soft, sneaky, padded.
He turns just in time to see Ian reach for him — and then he’s airborne.
“What the—IAN—”
Mickey flails as Ian lifts him bodily out of the chair like he weighs nothing.
“Put me down!”
“No can do.” Ian shifts him over his shoulder, grinning like he’s carrying a prize. “This is an emergency cuddle extraction.”
“You’re a menace.”
“You’re warm.”
“I have shit to do!”
“Your ‘shit’ can wait. Your husband is in urgent need of affection.”
Mickey kicks at him. “You have two working hands and a phone. Go hug yourself or text Fiona or something.”
“I tried that,” Ian says, carrying him down the hall with ridiculous ease. “She told me to stop being needy and go harass my husband. So here I am. Harassing.”
“I hate you.”
“I love you.”
Mickey’s still swearing when Ian tosses him gently onto their bed. He barely has time to glare before Ian climbs in next to him and immediately wraps himself around Mickey like a vine, one leg thrown over his waist, an arm sliding under his neck, the whole nine yards.
“You’re so annoying,” Mickey mutters, trying to squirm away.
Ian tightens his grip. “You’re stuck now. Resistance only makes me cling harder.”
“Is this how you get everything you want? Brute force and manipulation?”
Ian presses a kiss to his jaw. “It works with you.”
Mickey huffs, settling slightly. “You are so lucky I don’t have the energy to kill you.”
“I’m lucky every day,” Ian murmurs, nuzzling into his neck. “But especially right now.”
They lie like that for a long moment. Mickey breathes. Ian breathes louder.
Eventually, Mickey mumbles, “You’re smothering me.”
“You love it.”
“…Maybe.”
Ian grins into his shoulder, smug as hell.
⸻
Twenty minutes pass.
Mickey never actually says yes. But he doesn’t try to get up, either.
Ian runs his fingers through Mickey’s hair, kisses the back of his neck, scratches lightly down his spine in that way that makes Mickey sigh without realizing it.
Eventually, Mickey lets out a content little noise and mutters, “You’re like a walking, talking heated blanket.”
Ian kisses his cheek. “I know.”
“You’re still annoying.”
“You still married me.”
“Because I was tricked.”
Ian gasps. “That’s not true.”
Mickey turns to look at him, lips twitching despite himself. “You gave me sex eyes and made pancakes. I never stood a chance.”
Ian smirks. “You want pancakes now?”
“No.”
“I’ll go make some.”
“Don’t leave this bed.”
Ian grins wide and buries himself closer. “God, I love when you beg.”
Mickey snorts. “I hate you less when you’re warm and quiet.”
Ian closes his eyes, humming happily. “That’s basically ‘I love you’ in Milkovich.”
Mickey doesn’t answer — just loops his hand into Ian’s hoodie and pulls him closer.
He’ll finish the receipts tomorrow. Maybe.
But right now? He has a clingy golden retriever wrapped around him like a blanket, and the world can wait.