So, this is the first chapter. Let me know what you all think of the idea. Hopefully I'll have more up soon. So please, read, review and hopefully enjoy. . .

Ian was nine when Monica took off, nine when Frank turned into a chronic alcoholic and ten when social services finally came and picked them all up. He hadn't expected Monica to take off, it had just happened out of the blue with no warning. One days she was there, the next she wasn't. After that, he had sort of guessed things would fall apart.

They couldn't stay together, that was made pretty clear from the very beginning. But social services said it was better than them having to live with Frank. Ian didn't know so much about that, but it wasn't like he could argue. Frank certainly didn't argue, they didn't even think he'd realise they were gone.

Fiona hugged them all tight and told them that she was going to find some way for them all to be together again. She said she'd try to win custody or something when she was old enough, but Ian could tell just from the look on Lip's face that they shouldn't hold out much hope for that.

He tried to decide on the drive to the children's home he would stay at until they found him a placement which parent he hated more. He hated Monica for leaving, but Frank for not giving a shit. Then again, as far as he was concerned, as far as he could work out, it all came back to Monica. Frank wouldn't have let them go if Monica hadn't taken off, he wouldn't be drunk if Monica hadn't taken off. Things would all still be the same if Monica hadn't taken off.

So he decided this was all Monica's fault. She was the one he was going to hate.

The drive was boring and long and there wasn't anything for him to do other than listen to the crappy radio station or think because the man driving him didn't have any interest at all in holding a conversation. Neither did Ian if he was being honest. He supposed it could have always been worse. Things could always be worse; that was what Fiona said anyway.

Inside, the children's home smelt faintly of sweat and heavily of dust and people stared at him like hawks from the moment he stepped out of the car. He couldn't tell how many kids there were, but it was a big house, so he figured there was probably quite a lot. He didn't want to know any of them, he just wanted to go home. But he wasn't about to be any sort of coward, so he bit down on his tongue and tried to keep his expression as controlled as was possible.

A slightly overweight woman who introduced herself as Miss Potts led him down a narrow corridor to the room on the end.

"You're in there," she said gruffly, her voice like several miles of bad road, making him wince. She pointed at the boy already in the room, her eyes narrowed, "Play nice, I'm warning you."

The boy was lounging on the bed like the king of the jungle or something. He was dark haired, pale skinned and dirty. Ian figured that he was older, maybe about his brother Lip's age or something like that. He was kind of short looking, and scrawny too, but that just seemed to be something that came with the territory around here. The mouth to food ratio didn't quite add up.

He stared at Ian with blue eyes that were practically daring him to do something that he didn't like. He lit up a cigarette and barked, "Come and close the fucking door then, Jesus!"

And Ian jumped and did as he was told, because he didn't know what else to do. He felt out of place here, whereas this boy looked completely at home.

"AWOL mum and drunk dad, what's your excuse?" the guy asked, obviously speaking because he thought he should or that he had to rather than out of any real desire to be having this conversation.

"Crazy mum, drunk dad," he replied after a minute, not quite sure where to put himself in the room.

The guy looked sideways at him as he blew up smoke into the air. You could tell he had already had a hard life just by the fact that he was smoking so young. Just like Ian. "Only child?" he asked.

"No," Ian replied, deciding to sit on the bed in the end, "One of six."

"Snap," he said, "Now that's out of the way, you want a smoke?" He held out the packet that was mostly full and Ian took one before he even really registered the question. "Wouldn't normally offer," he said, like he had to make that clear, "But they've been getting on my tits about me not having and friends here and freaking out at all my roommate." He blew smoke out of his nostrils as he exhaled. "And I ain't going back to that other place because it smells like piss and the guy in charge is a perv," he continued, looking at Ina in a way that was more of a glare than anything else, "So here's the deal, you don't annoy me and I won't permanently rearrange your face, got it?"

Ian nodded. "Yeah," he replied quickly, because really, what else could he do? The boy kind of scared him. He was thankful for the smoke though, that he had to admit. "What exactly do you find annoying though?"

He wanted to be sure that he didn't do it by accident or something.

"Asking stupid fucking questions for one," he replied and Ian figured he was just the type who swore without even realising it, "What's your name anyway?"

He hadn't realised that they hadn't been through that part yet. "Ian Gallagher," he replied.

"Mickey Milkovich," the older boy returned, blowing smoke out of his nostrils again and that seemed to be that for way of conversation.

-oo-

Mickey called the children's home the Halfway House. He said it was the constant point between your fucked up home and someone else's. Ian could see the logic in that actually and the name stuck in his brain. Mickey had a way of looking at things, a reasoning that was completely unique to him. He said that learning the rules here once was a whole lot easier than learning a whole new set of rules every time you left. Especially since you were always going to come back.

So while every other kid in the house was determined to get fostered, Mickey was determined instead not to.

Ian didn't know what he wanted to do, he hadn't decided.

He could see the logic in the things Mickey said, some of them anyway. He found the older boy interesting, the danger that seemed to be so engrained into his being was intriguing to Ian in a way that shouldn't have been.

Mickey was rude and violent and didn't wash very often, but he was strong in a way that Ian had never seen before. It was like he'd not only accepted that the world had it in for him, that his life was fucked, but he also sort of embraced it.

Ian had never met anybody quite like Mickey and he didn't think anyone else existed who was like him. He wasn't the smartest, even though Ian had realised almost instantly that he was smarter than he thought he was; but he seemed to know things about the world that nobody else did. He decided that that was probably because he seemed to see things very different, like he was looking through a different set of lenses to the rest of the world.

It didn't take long for Ian to work out that here at the Halfway House, everyone avoided Mickey because they thought he was unhinged. Words impulsive, crazy, unbalanced had all been thrown at Mickey and he just shrugged them off. The comments rolled right off his shoulders like he didn't even hear them. And maybe he didn't.

Maybe Ian saw things differently too, because he didn't seem Mickey the same was everyone else did.

They all thought he was impulsive, but Ian could see the calculations fluttering behind his eyes, could see him making the decisions so quickly it seemed like instinct, like an impulse, but it wasn't. Mickey wasn't some sort of lumbering beast that could be provoked so easily, he was more like one of those agile jungle cats: short, watchful and just as dangerous as every other predator.

Ian thought Mickey saw everything, was convinced of it. But at the same time he hoped that Mickey didn't see the awe-filled way that Ian stared at him sometimes.

"You know, you're not actually half bad," Mickey commented only a few days after he'd arrived and the day before he was set to go out to his first foster family, "Makes it fucking typical that you're fucking off tomorrow."

And already Ian knew that was Mickey's way of saying, "Make sure you come back quickly."

Ian knew he would try.