Chapter 1

Three months had passed since Ian Gallagher had been home. As he slowly walked towards the house he had grown up in, he couldn't help than feel that everything was somehow different. The closer he got, the more he could see that nothing had actually changed, the pavement leading up to the Gallagher house was still cracked and crumbling, the clasp on the gate had become jammed, like it did every winter for as long as he could remember and the third step from the top of the porch was still loose. The neighbourhood, the street, the house had not changed, but Ian knew that when he walked through that door, nothing was going to feel like it once had.

"Ian!" Debbie squealed, before running towards her older brother and squeezing him as tight as she could. "Hey Debs!" Ian said, looking around the room for his other siblings. Fiona emerged from the kitchen, drenched in dirty dishwater and wearing a stained t-shirt, she gave Ian a pained smile before hugging him, "welcome home". She was angry, Ian could tell this, but the combination of exhaustion, relief and the fact that she knew just how devastated her younger brother was meant that she wasn't going to yell at him, not tonight.

"Where is everyone?" Ian asked, unable to hide the concern in his voice.

"Carl's staying at a friend's, Liam's sleeping". Ian's heart stopped, "and Lip?" the moment of silence that followed seemed to last a lifetime, "he hates me, doesn't he?" Ian wasn't surprised that Lip wasn't there to welcome him home, he had sacrificed Lip's future for his own, his older brother had lost the chance to go to MIT, and it was all Ian's fault. "He's angry, I can't blame him really." Fiona stated as she began folding laundry. Ian could hardly stand it, the tension in the room was killing him. He wished Fiona would just yell at him already, that Lip would have just been there to punch him in the face, anything but this awkward tension and disappointment.

After what seemed like an eternity of polite conversation and discomfort, Ian said goodnight to his sisters and went upstairs to his old bedroom. His baby brother was sound asleep. He had grown a lot more than Ian had expected. Something had physically changed while he was gone, Liam. He was comforted to know that there was one person in his life who wasn't going to treat him differently or judge him for leaving, for taking Lip's name and for lying; that was until he was lying in bed, thinking about a certain other person who had never judged him. The person he always thought about before he fell asleep.

"Ian!" Fiona shouted from downstairs "you have a visitor!" Ian crawled out of bed and threw on the first clean outfit he could find. He stumbled downstairs, barely awake after a restless night's sleep. Standing in the kitchen was a familiar face that was half covered by thick, black bangs and a lot of eyeliner. For the first time in a long time, Ian felt happy to be home. "Welcome home, loser!" Mandy laughed as she embraced her best friend.

"Are you going to ask about him already?" Mandy asked after a few hours of catching up and a considerable amount of weed. "Ask about who?" Ian replied, trying to sound as offhanded as possible. "Who? Who do you fucking think?" Mandy sighed. She knew it's all he had been thinking about the whole time they'd been talking. Ian leapt off the bed and turned away from Mandy, trying to avoid eye contact. 'I'm not going to ask, because there's nothing to tell. Unless you're going to turn around and say that he's divorced or that he's no longer got the mentality of a toddler that can't use their words?" Ian snapped, becoming frustrated with himself for still getting so worked up at the mention of Mickey Milkovich. Mandy sat in silence, waiting for Ian to calm himself down. "See, there's nothing to tell" he grunted and sat back down on the bed. Mandy knew better than to keep the conversation going, it was obvious how much Ian was still hurting over her brother, and a part of her was relieved to see how much he was still in love. For the rest of the afternoon, Ian talked to Mandy about Lip and his family, about being discharged and how he was totally lost, Mandy talked about her dad going back to prison and what was happening at school and deliberately avoided any further mention of her older brother.

When Mandy left that evening, everything went back to feeling awkward. Fiona was still acting distant, Lip was yet to come home and Debbie and Carl had gotten over their initial excitement of having their older brother back home. Ian was beginning to feel like a guest who had outstayed his welcome. He tried to get back into the Gallagher routine and help out, but it just made him realise that over the past three months, life had continued on the south side and his siblings had learned to function without him. After dinner, he couldn't handle the tension any longer. "Back soon!" he called out as he rushed through the back door. Relieved to be out of the house, he strolled along his neighbourhood, recalling memories of places he had found Frank passed out, gotten wasted with Mandy, fought with Lip, and Mickey… well, everywhere was reminding him of Mickey. As he wandered back in the direction of the Gallagher house, he noticed a young man sitting in the gutter of the dimly lit street. This person was clearly in bad shape; Ian could smell Jack Daniels and vomit form a mile away. It wasn't until he got closer that he could make out who it was. A sight like this was not unfamiliar to Ian, in fact it pretty much summed up his childhood, but seeing this particular sight caused Ian to feel an almost unbearable pain in his chest. Sensing that someone was standing behind him, the drunken young man turned his face towards Ian. His eyes almost rolling back in his head from intoxication, he took a moment to focus, before realising who it was that was standing in front of him.

"Fuck, Gallagher?"