Okay, so I started watching Youtube clips of these two and I love their oddly dysfunctional relationship. . . if you can even call it a relationship. So I thought I'd give writing something about them a go. Please read and review. . . that would be amazing :) And obviously, it goes without saying that I don't own the characters, Shameless US does.

It was two weeks. Two whole fucking weeks before he found out. Although in hindsight, he probably supposed it was good that it took that long, because it meant he got to dish out his own personal brand of justice in the form of revenge.

Mickey was pissed off from the moment he woke up that day. He was pissed because he hadn't heard from or seen Gallagher in two whole fucking weeks. And he was even more pissed because that actually bothered him. It shouldn't bother him whether or not he saw Gallagher, but somehow it did. For the first week – well maybe just the first few days, but whatever, screw the technicalities – he managed to convince himself that all he was missing was the convenience of a fuck buddy. But then he started to drive himself mad and he realised it wasn't just that. He hated that he realised it wasn't just that.

He couldn't stop wondering what he'd done, what he'd said this time that made the stupid little redhead start avoiding him. He'd lie there in bed, either drunk or high most of the time, glaring at his ceiling like it was its fault and desperately try to think back to what he'd said to Gallagher and more importantly, what his reactions had been.

He wasn't quite desperate enough to go around to the Gallaghers, not yet. He found himself walking that way sometimes, but he didn't even know what he would say when he got to the door, so he just turned around and walked away again.

And that was how he came to find out the way he did, because he was getting so fucking antsy waiting for Ian to turn up that he needed something to calm himself down. He'd known the O'Connor brothers most of his life. They were as thick as shit, but they grew good weed so he made sure to stay on their good side. He got it cheaper that way.

He did think Carl seemed a little bit on edge when he let Mickey into the house, but Mickey just put it down to him being high or something. He didn't think anything about it. The house was a mess, kind of like Mickey's own, but in here the smell of weed and cigarettes was a lot stronger. It was almost enough to choke you.

His eyes fell on the baseball bat lying in the middle of the room, its wood caked with long since dried blood. Mickey wasn't bothered about it, because he knew that the O'Connor brothers were renowned for getting themselves into shit. They were drug dealers, it sort of came with the territory. He asked just because he knew it was expected of him and he needed to make some sort of conversation.

"What they fuck you been up to now?" he asked, motioning to the bat that if either of the brothers had had half a brain, they would have scrubbed clean and got rid of by now. If they'd had half a brain, Carl also wouldn't have told Mickey what he'd done. It was probably because the guy knew that as a Milkovich, Mickey had just as many skeletons in his closet, but the difference was, Mickey didn't go around bragging about his skeletons. He wasn't stupid.

"Oh Jase and I had a little fun with that Gallagher kid the other week," Carl said shrugging and looking at Mickey like he thought Mickey would find this news amusing. Which he didn't, at all. In fact, Mickey was pretty sure he could feel something dying inside of him because he knew without even having to ask which Gallagher they meant. "And then when we figured that hadn't taught him enough of a lesson, we roughed him up a bit."

Mickey thought he was going to be sick. He couldn't look anywhere else other than the blood stained bat or Carl's grin. "What you mean you had some fun with him?" he asked, but he already knew. It was written all over Carl's face.

Carl actually looked pleased, rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip, "He probably counted himself lucky anybody wanted to fuck him at all, the stupid fag." And that wasn't even something Mickey thought he could reply to, so he just did the only thing he definitely knew how to do.

He punched Carl straight in the face, feeling his nose crunch and break under his fist. And as the other boy fell to the floor, he kept punching him, again and again, a red haze dropping down over his eyes as the anger boiled over inside of him. He was vaguely away that he was crying at the same time, but he didn't have time to think about how Milkovich's weren't supposed to cry, how they didn't cry. Besides, they weren't sad tears, they were angry tears.

He could taste the salt on his tongue as it seeped in between his lips and then he was climbing off of Carl's unconscious form to face the guy's brother. Jason was staring at Mickey with wide eyes. "Dude, what the hell?" he asked, which was sort of stupid. If Mickey had been in his shoes, he wouldn't have stopped to ask questions, he just would have started throwing punches.

"You really shouldn't have hurt Ian," Mickey said, his voice sounding dangerous but oddly dead even to his own ears.

Jason looked incredulous, his wide eyes going to where his brother lay on the floor. And yet, he was still asking questions. What an idiot, Mickey thought. "Why the fuck would Gallagher matter to you?" the other boy asked, his eyes flickering around for some sort of weapon.

Mickey could feel his lips twist into a horrible sort of grimace and he didn't even care how his next words sounded. At that moment, he was too angry to give a shit about anything, about giving away his secret, that didn't matter. All he wanted to do was inflict pain on the guy standing in front of him. "Because he's mine," he practically snarled as his fingers closed around the handle of the bat still stained with Ian's blood and swung it as hard as he could at Jason's leg.

The other guy screamed and hit the ground, but really, Mickey knew he should have counted himself lucky. If there hadn't been that small rational part of his brain that told him he couldn't see Ian if he was in Juvie again, he would have swung that bat at Jason's head and the wall would have been splattered with his brains rather than the boy just having a broken leg.

Mickey dropped the bat, punching the guy for good measure, just as an outlet for the pain building inside of his chest. All he could think was that they'd hurt Ian. That they'd hurt Ian not only physically, but in the worst way. His Ian. They'd hurt his Gallagher. And even though Mickey would and had denied all feelings and all connections to the younger redhead, he knew that that was not okay with him. It was not okay and it would never be okay that they had hurt his Ian.

Just a few minutes after he'd swung the bat, he was on the phone. He couldn't actually remember why he had that cop Tony's number, but he was glad he did. Normally, Mickey wouldn't have bothered with phoning the police, he would have just left the O'Connor boys there to hopefully bleed out and die, but he knew that he had to do this for Ian. He'd had his own form of retribution, his own brand of justice and even though he had done that for Ian, it had been for him too, it had been to satisfy his anger. But now, now he had to let everybody else have their justice.

So for the first time, Mickey willingly went to the police. Because really, there wasn't much else a loser like Mickey Milkovich could do for Ian. He could beat the guys up and he could turn them into the police, but that was all he could do. He'd always failed at everything in life, even when things came to Ian, he always fucked that up, but he could definitely do this.

"Hello?"

Tony picked up after only two rings.

"This Tony?" Mickey asked, his voice cracked from stress and anger, "It's Mickey Milkovich."

The surprise in Tony's voice was obvious, but maybe it was the pain in Mickey's that stopped him from instantly saying fuck off. "Milkovich, what can I do you for?" he asked, sounding dubious. Mickey knew there was a bit of a double meaning behind that question, he was assuming Mickey was in the wrong. And he couldn't really blame the guy for thinking that, even though he wanted to.

"Um. . ." now that he'd actually made the call, Mickey didn't know what to say. Because it occurred to him that he would probably go to Juvie just for beating the guys here up. He screwed his eyes shut tight and thought of Ian, of that stupid shit eating grin and that flaming red hair. He could do this, he had to do this. His one moment of unselfish glory. "I went to visit the O'Connor brothers and they started telling me about what they did to Ian Gallagher," he explained, his voice even more dead-sounding than before, "I kinda lost it, but there's a bat here covered in Ian's blood" – and a bit of Jason's now probably – "They're both unconscious though so they ain't going anywhere."

He knew he'd landed himself in it now. He knew there was probably no way he was going to get to see Ian, but maybe it would filter through to him somehow that Mickey had done this for him. Damn, this would be the third time he'd gone to Juvie for that kid. It was definitely becoming a habit! But he'd done it, a Milkovich had finally done the right thing.

"Where are you?" Tony said, his voice completely serious, sort of grave as well and Mickey knew the other guy believed him. He probably didn't understand why Mickey had lost it and beat the crap out of the brothers, but Mickey didn't give a shit. He didn't care what the guy speculated, not anymore.

Mickey rattled off his whereabouts.

"Okay, I'm on my way," Tony replied and Mickey thought he'd hung up when the man spoke again, "You get out of there Milkovich, just make sure the bastards aren't going anywhere and leave."

"Jason ain't going nowhere, I shattered his kneecap," Mickey said before it really registered what Tony had just said, "Hold on, why the fuck d'ya want me to leave, won't you want to interview me or arrest me or some shit?"

He could hear the other man sigh softly, could hear him moving. "I don't really want to arrest you for the one good thing you actually might have done," he replied after a minute, "So just get out of there, I doubt anybody can connect you to it if you're not actually there."

Mickey could feel his lips tugging up into a smile, but he knew it probably wasn't a very nice one, even if he was happy. "Thanks mate," he muttered, not really good at expressing his thanks. He looked down at the two unconscious O'Connors, "How far away are you?"

"Couple of minutes."

"Okay," Mickey replied. He knew that neither of them were probably even going to be awake and neither of them could get very far in two minutes, so he just turned his back on them. Mickey hung up the phone and walked out of the building, not looking back. Because he knew, if he looked back, he would probably go right back in there and kill the fuckers.

God, he really wanted to kill them!

Now that he had done his good deed, all the anger was coming back. He felt like he needed to get drunk or high, he needed to find something or someone to punish. But he could do that later. First, he needed to check up on his Gallagher.