There had been two others before Ian Gallagher. Two other men, and countless women. The women were always the same, they were hasty and some tried to cuddle afterward, their much-too-soft arms draped across his chest as they loudly breathed in his ear while his eyes remained glued to the ceiling, the gnawing feeling of want still settled uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach.

That feeling never went away when he slept with girls. He could fuck them any which way he pleased, which was typically doggy style, with no desire to look at their much-too-made up faces and instead have the ability to do what he came to do. Most of the time he invited a girl over in the middle of the night, after his dad had passed out drunk on the couch. The girl would coo over him from the moment she walked in the door, often times they tried to appear just as hard and coarse as Mickey did as though that would make him not kick their ass out as soon as he got what he wanted. Rather, what he needed.

But even when the seemingly tough chicks with much-too-soft arms and much-too-made up faces left, the gnawing feeling of want didn't walk out the door behind them. It remained in the room, choking Mickey with the most humid of emotions as he found himself flipping through his phone again, and again, looking for someone else who might take this reality and make some sense of it.

Peter Francis was the first person to make sense of the now dull ache that Mickey carried with him. The two had detention together in their eighth grade year, for reasons that Mickey couldn't remember now let alone could he then, he was just used to having an extra hour of sitting in a desk after the final bell had rung for the day. Peter sat behind him and would occasionally sneak him sticks of gum, and he would routinely walk to the front of the empty classroom to throw something in a trashcan. Mickey would think nothing of it until he stood up from his desk and discovered there was an additional trashcan directly next to where Pete would be sitting. Mickey was still staring at it as the slightly taller blonde boy shoved his shoulder on his way out the door. This broke the brunette's concentration and his eyes flickered to see Peter shrugging his backpack over his arm, exiting the classroom. But not before turning his head just slightly and grinning back at the young Mick.

Pete was Mickey's first. They did it behind the sector of garbage cans in the back of the football field near the cross-street of their high school. They were freshmen then, and Mickey couldn't remember a time he had felt more carefree. They would roll dice under the bleachers during organized sporting events that neither of them really cared for and would shove each other into lockers in-between classes, only to be kissing in an empty bathroom stall just before anyone got to campus the following morning. Pete told Mickey he loved him in a gum wrapper, written like chicken scratch in three simple letters, and Mickey said it back by smiling at him from across the classroom.

Pete was jumped by a group of seniors one morning on his way to school. For no reason other than the fact that they didn't like the way he walked. The seniors broke his orbital socket with a tire iron, they kicked in a number of his ribs and brought his head into the pavement so many times that the only way someone would be able to recognize him is if they pulled his school ID out of his wallet. Which is just what a freshman was forced to do as he saw the boys running in the opposite direction, screaming about how "Somebody will see" and "Let's go, damnit, run!"

The only person who knew about the boy's romance was a teacher, she had signed up as a detention supervisor a few months prior and entered the room to find the two boys whispering to one another and grinning mischievously, only to snap out of their trance and sink into their seats at the moment that her presence was known. That same teacher came to the door of Mickey's homeroom class and asked if she could please excuse Michael for a moment, which the brunette hesitantly responded to by slinging his backpack over his shoulder and exiting the classroom. The teacher sighed a heavy sigh as she wrung her sweating hands and Mickey found himself gnawing at the bottom of his lip, suddenly finding himself wishing that Peter wasn't late as he really wanted a piece of gum.

"There's been an accident…" She started.

After that day, Mickey would occasionally stop by their house nearly every day with some video games and a daisy or two shoved in his sweater pocket, and once his parents had left the room he would be at Peter's side, kissing his face and telling him "I'm so sorry, so fucking sorry." For everything that had happened despite it being completely out of his control. Pete's eyes stayed fixated on the ceiling, a bandage around his head where his striking blonde hair used to be. His breathing controlled by what looked like an inflatable bag in the upper right hand corner of the room, Mickey's eyes steadily wetting the shirt he had seen Pete wear for the last several days.

Peter and his family moved, Peter was never the same. The last time he saw Pete was when his mother was wheeling him into a moving van along with all of their furniture and a dozen boxes. "There's a hospital, it's good for him, and it's good for us." But Mickey didn't fucking care what was good for him, he wanted him here, with him. He knew that was selfish and he understood that he was young but fuck it, he was in love and he didn't want to have to admit that but he would. He muttered the words "I love you" against the harsh wind of a Chicago storm as the moving van pulled away from the vacant house and drove off into the impending winter.

At the end of the school year, Mickey committed his first crime, a small burglary that still wound up giving him some time. This is where he met the second. Larry. He didn't know his last name, never wanted to. This was the guy who got him through the summer before his sophomore year, the summer he spent in and out of juvi. If Larry went in, it was only hours before Mick was breaking a window in order to get in there with him. Larry fucked him up against cold pavement with such distaste and lack of want but Mickey didn't care, his arms were strong and his face was scarred and it looked nothing like Pete's, so he just let it happen until the day that Larry was locked up for longer than Mickey could stomach going in for, and Mickey went back to the life he was expected to be living, as a straight thug from Southside Chicago, with a gnawing feeling of want living in him like some sort of sickness, refusing to leave no matter how many times he attempted to fill the void.