Irish Twins

by Zebra Wallpaper

A story about Ian and Lip's relationship. Sequel to Redheaded Stepchildren that picks up the story from Lip's perspective.

11. The Shortest Distance Between Two Points

It's dark by the time they finally see the skyline of Chicago. Lip's eye is mostly swollen shut by that point, but he struggles to catch sight of it, confirmation that this trip will someday end.

As they continue south and everything grows grubbier and more familiar, Lip listens to them talk about how hungry they are, what a relief it'll be to get out of this car. They all sound so normal, like real people with real lives.

They reach Wallace at last and Lip watches passively as they unload, stretch and groan. Somebody hands him Yevgeny, and Lip holds him, focusing on the back of the kid's round head, the soft swirl of baby hair. Yevgeny turns to look at him, and Lip half-smiles, the best he can manage. Then Svetlana grabs him back, leaving Lip empty-handed once again.

Lip follows along with the herd as they tramp into the house, throwing down coats and hats and diaper bags from the entry to the living room.

"Where have you been?" Debbie cries from somewhere, and Fiona says, "I've been tryin' to call you for hours."

But all Lip can register is the dining room table full of food and Gallaghers…Frank and Monica seated among them.

"What the fuck?" Mickey asks as he and Ian freeze beside Lip, staring at this tableau of horror.

"If either of you assholes would ever pick up your phones—" Fiona is saying, but Lip isn't listening.

He turns around, walks right back out the way he came.

Outside, he sits on the steps and puts his head in his hands. He needs a cigarette, but he can't manage the act of getting one out. The cold around him is comforting, though, as he listens to the sound of his own breath.

And now Ian is pounding down the steps with Mickey at his heels.

"I can't do this," Ian says as they reach the gate and Mickey pulls him to a stop, "I can't handle this today. I can't."

"Okay."

"I can't see her. I can't do it. I can't. I can't."

"Okay. You don't have to. We can go."

Ian nods shakily and moves to leave, but Mickey continues to hold him in place. Ian looks down at him, confused.

"I just think…" Mickey bites his lip and hesitates, "I mean, you're gonna have to sometime."

"Mick…"

"You don't have to today. Not tonight. I'm sure as fuck not gonna make you. But, it's gonna happen at some point, right? Maybe it's better with everyone here is all I'm sayin'. Everybody's got your back."

Ian doesn't say anything, but he isn't pulling away anymore either. Lip observes with curiosity the look that is passing between them. He recognizes some of it—there's trust there. Ian used to look to Lip with that same kind of trust, back when they were kids and Ian still believed that Lip knew everything. But there's something else in that look too, something Lip can't identify so easily.

"And stop sayin' you can't," Mickey tells Ian, "Can't handle this, can't do that. Of course you can."

There's the look again. And, fuck. Lip realizes what the other element is. It's not just trust or longing or need, though all of that is in there. It's love.

Ian kisses Mickey's forehead. The panic fades from Ian's face as he kisses Mickey a second time. Mickey puts a hand to the side of Ian's jaw, traces his thumb down Ian's cheek. Mickey kisses him back.

Lip flushes with embarrassment, witnessing such intimacy. But it doesn't seem to matter to them that he is here, if they've even noticed him at all. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world even exists. They might as well be two tiny figures in their own snow globe.

"I'm sorry," Ian says, closing his eyes as Mickey strokes his cheek again.

"It's okay."

"I'm sorry."

"Shhh."

Lip watches Mickey soothing him, having guided Ian away from his instinct to run. None of the rest of them has ever been able to communicate with Ian like that, certainly not since he was a little kid. And it occurs to Lip that maybe it isn't Mickey who makes Ian such a mess. Maybe Ian makes himself a mess and Mickey's just the only one who gets—or cares about—the right way to put him back together.

This realization causes Lip's chest to cave a bit, the ceiling bowing down into the space that his heart was meant to occupy. He's never known his brother. He's never known anything at all he thought he did.

Lip starts to climb to his feet, understanding nothing but that he needs to leave them alone. He pauses, though, as someone comes through the door. His chest caves deeper at the sight of his mother.

He shrinks back into his huddle, willing himself invisible. Or dead.

"Ian?" Monica calls out in a trembling voice, "Ian, I'm sorry. I'll go."

Ian and Mickey both turn at the sound of her voice. Ian stares at her, petrified, but Mickey repositions himself beside him.

"It's just…" She folds her arms tight against the cold as she tries to explain, "I wanted to show you that I'm doing better. I'm trying. I got meds again, you know? I don't like 'em much, but I'm trying. I wanna get better for you, Ian. All of you. I miss you…"

Monica bows her head and nods several times as Ian doesn't respond.

"This was a bad idea," she says, "I'm sorry. I'm gonna go. I don't wanna ruin Thanksgiving for everyone. I don't wanna ruin it again…"

Lip glances up as Fiona appears in the doorway, Debbie and Carl behind her. She and Lip exchange a look, then both return their attention to Ian.

He is still stone-faced, but he is walking forward now as Monica continues to babble.

"I shouldn't have…I don't know why I thought it would be good. My head's a mess right now. These drugs make me so dumb…I should just…I wanna go back to sleep…"

Ian stops at the bottom step as he notices Fiona and Debbie and Carl. His eyes linger on them a moment before he looks back to Monica.

He climbs the steps slowly, steeling himself.

"You can stay if you want to," Ian tells her once he reaches the top, "But don't fucking talk to me."

Monica lifts her head to look at him, but he walks past her. Fiona and the kids move aside as Ian goes into the house.

"Hey, man," Carl calls to Mickey, "You coming?"

Mickey sighs climbs the steps. He pushes passes Monica who is still looking stupidly at the space where Ian was. Mickey shakes his head at Fiona and allows Carl and Debbie to take him inside.

"Go, Mom," Fiona says, gently turning Monica toward the door and giving her a scoot, "Get in there before your food gets cold."

Once Monica is gone and they're alone, Fiona asks Lip, "What about you? You comin' in?"

He shrugs.

"You mad at me?"

"No," he replies faintly, surprised to find his voice works after all these hours not using it.

"What happened to your face?"

"Ian."

"Well, that was a long time comin'."

"Eighteen years."

"Looks like he let you off easy."

Lip glances toward the house, dread heavy in his stomach. "The hell were you thinkin'?" he asks.

"I just got tired of fightin'," she explains, opening the door and ushering them both in, "I'm so damn tired, Lip."

He nods. He is tired too. He's not sure he has ever felt so tired in his life. But he hauls himself to his feet and follows her inside.

---

Everyone is distracted for a while with the flurry of accommodating the additional guests. Debbie has dragged up Liam's old high chair for Yevgeny and Carl brings in all the kitchen chairs and the one from the desk without even being asked. There is a folding card table covered with fancy desserts that Lip recognizes as having Sheila's touch—he figures those are what Debbie made while she was over there yesterday.

"Move these," Fiona instructs him.

He's experiencing that peculiar sensation again that he is watching this all play out on a fuzzy television set. Everyone looks a little odd to him and their voices sound tinny and distant. Even his hands feel like they're not fully attached as he does as he is told, transferring the abundance of pies and cakes to the piano bench. He carries each one from the dining room to the living room, amazed that it is floating before him without falling, that he is managing to support them with these flimsy extensions of his useless body.

He sets down the last of the cakes and stares at it, that sense of inevitable doom baring down on him. Between his throbbing head and this creeping dread, all he would really like to do is walk away, find a bed to hide under somewhere and wait out the apocalypse. But he is just a passive viewer with no control over the programming schedule. His feet move him back to the show, and he ignores the guy in his head screaming about icebergs.

When Lip returns to the dining room, the card table has been moved over to expand the regular table and everyone is scooting their chairs and plates around, reorganizing.

"We actually just started," Fiona says brightly, passing the newcomers doubled-up paper plates, "Haven't even carved the turkey yet. There's forks and napkins over there and, well, help yourselves."

Lip tries putting things on his plate, but he can't see well with his swollen eye and he keeps spilling. He lets go of the stuffing spoon and watches dumbly as Amanda takes it from him, and fills his plate. He should be annoyed with this assistance, but instead he is momentarily taken with the way she effortlessly does what needs to be done. There's something so graceful about it, how light problems always seem to be in her hands.

"Oh, Lip—what happened to you?"

"Huh?" He reluctantly pulls his eyes away from Amanda's soft profile and looks to Monica's dopey, rode-hard face. The dream feeling slips away from him slightly. Monica looks better than the last time he saw her—she's clean now; her hair and clothes are neat enough. She no longer looks like she's on whatever the hell she was that night. Still, facing her like this is unnerving.

"What happened to your eye?" She asks. If one didn't know better, she'd sound like a real mother, the kind who cares that her kid's been hurt.

"Bumped it," he replies and turns away.

As he takes his seat, he overhears Carl ask Mickey, "Did you do that to Lip?"

Mickey shakes his head and reaches for the mashed potatoes, mouthing "Ian."

Carl raises his eyebrows at Ian, "Shit."

Once everyone has their plates filled with the sides, Fiona announces with one of her biggest, most desperate smiles, "Ian bought the turkey this year!"

"Yay!" Amanda cheers and begins clapping. After a beat, most of the table joins her, looking mildly embarrassed as they clap. Lip as watches bewildered as the Milkoviches clap too with strained smiles. Fuck if Amanda doesn't bulldoze everyone.

Fiona holds the knife and poultry fork out to Ian, "Wanna do the honors?"

Ian shovels a couple forkfuls of corn into his mouth and mumbles, "That's Lip's job."

She extends the utensils out to Lip instead. He stares at the tools and a sharp tinge of panic arises. He doesn't want anything to do with pretending he holds some importance anymore in the eyes of the rest of them. This is like some awful test.

"Think my depth perception's messed up right now," he manages to say, pointing vaguely at his bad eye.

"I'll do it!" Carl volunteers, grabbing for the knife.

Fiona expertly keeps it away from him and turns to Mickey.

Mickey's eyes go wide. "Uh-uh."

"Why can we not have meat yet?" Svetlana barks, "This is stupid tradition."

"I will do the carving," Frank proclaims, rising from his chair and holding his Old Style high, "I am still the patriarch of this family, whether you like it or not."

He snatches the utensils from Fiona with an ugly smile and sets the beer can beside Lip's plate. "Keep an eye on that for me, will ya?"

The sour smell of the beer hits, and Lip looks away from it, trying to ignore the pang of desire.

He focuses his eyes on Fiona instead, watching Frank with bored contempt. Lip clings to the reassuring familiarity of this sight.

Frank takes a bow as he reaches the turkey and asks, "Shall I give a speech?"

"No!" A bunch of them shout back, drowning out Monica's faint "Oh, yes!"

"Just do it already," Carl groans and flicks a niblet of corn at Debbie.

"Cut it out."

"Make me."

"Stop it," Fiona hisses at them.

Carl and Debbie both start to lean into a fight but stop when Mickey says simply, "Cut it out."

Frank carves the bird, throwing off jagged slices at each plate as he goes, even casting a big hunk onto Yevgeny's high chair. It lands with thump and tilts the tray.

"So, where were you all today?" Fiona asks, ignoring Frank's performance.

Frank whips larger and more ungainly pieces across the table, and Lip finds his eyes magnetically pulled to this sight. He can't stop watching his arrogant father drunkenly performing the job that has always belonged to Lip. Lip's breath catches in his throat at this grotesque vision of his future.

Faintly somewhere Amanda is answering Fiona's question. "We picked everybody up in Green Bay."

This breaks the spell. Lip swallows and turns away from Lip-as-Frank-as-Lip and breathes again.

Fiona is asking Mickey what they were doing in Green Bay if he's been in Milwaukee all this time.

"I live in Green Bay now," Mandy clarifies, and her voice turns all the sounds clear and close again.

Fiona locks eyes with her, acknowledging her presence for the first time.

"Oh," Fiona replies after a second.

"There!" Frank declares, tossing the utensils to the floor, "That's how you carve a fuckin' turkey."

Pleased with himself, he strolls back to his seat, bumping everybody's chairs 'accidentally' as he passes.

He smiles and takes back his beer. Lip allows his gaze to drift down to his plate, safe once more, but he is puzzled by the dry slab of turkey that has appeared there.

"Are you back for good?" Debbie asks Mandy, unable to hide her eagerness at this prospect.

"Just for a couple days. I got stuff I gotta get back to."

"Well, that's nice," Fiona says blandly. She begins cutting up Liam's turkey for him and Lip wonders for the first time why Mandy has always irritated her so much. Maybe Mandy was Fiona's Mickey. Maybe Lip was Fiona's Ian. But this makes his head pound. They really are all just trapped in these stupid patterns.

"Do you have a boyfriend up there?" Debbie asks.

Mandy shifts her hair into her face, trying to hide her smile, her happiness. "I do."

"I have a boyfriend too now," Debbie beams, "Joaquin. He's so great. He's out in Aurora seeing his cousins tonight, though. But we're getting together tomorrow for Black Friday deals. He's gonna push all my carts for me. I can't wait to see how many more deals I can get this year now that I've finally got some muscle backing me up. Three able-bodied brothers and not one of them ever helped."

"Joaquin sounds like a winner," Amanda remarks.

"Did you say you have a boyfriend, Debbie?" Monica asks, seeming to have woken up from a daze.

"Mmm," Debbie replies, tilting her head down and retreating in a perfect Mandy impersonation.

"Is he cute?" Monica smiles, leaning closer.

"I guess."

"Is he good in bed?"

The look Debbie gives her could curdle milk.

"Stop it," Fiona commands, "Let's talk about something else."

"What?" Monica giggles. She tosses Debbie a teasing look, but Debbie refuses to engage it.

"What kind of a name is Joaquin?" Monica pushes, still smiling that stupid we've-got-a-secret smile, "Is that Mexican?"

Debbie doesn't answer, but Monica seems to imagine she's gotten an enthusiastic response, the way she continues on.

"Aw, then he is good in bed! I've had a lot of—they call them Latinos now, right? Latinos?—I've had a lot of Mexican lovers and they're all great in the sack. Something about that macho thing, you know? You know what I'm talkin' about. Oh, Ian! Remember that guy?"

Ian shakes his head, keeping his eyes on his turkey.

"You know! Remember? When we were at that party in Pilsen? We couldn't get anybody to give us any of the good stuff and he said if you—"

"I don't remember," Ian says quietly.

"Oh, he was so cute!" Monica gushes, leaning toward Ian and putting her hand on his, "With those muscles? You said he was totally your type and I said, 'Mine too!'"

Monica laughs with delight at this memory while Ian inches his hand away.

"And then you and him—"

"You need to stop talkin' right now," Mickey tells her.

"What? Why? We're just having fun."

"Yeah, Mom, stop it," Fiona says, "Just cut it out."

Monica frowns at her and at Mickey as well. Then her face lights up again and she looks to Ian.

"Is this Manny?"

"Who?" Carl asks.

"Oh," Monica sighs, looking at Mickey again but still talking to Ian, "I can see it. He really is your type."

Carl makes a face. "You mean Mickey?"

"How's everybody's food?" Fiona interjects loudly.

"Fantastic!" Amanda jumps in, "This stuffing is amazing. Is this a mix?"

Fiona takes a gulp of water and nods. "From Food-4-Less. The store brand. It's not bad."

"No," Amanda agrees, "This beats Martha Stewart."

"Who's Martha Stewart?" Carl asks.

"Oh, she's a convict who has a whole cooking and lifestyle empire," Amanda informs him, "You'd like her a lot."

"She's kinda passé," Debbie mutters.

"Hi, Liam!" Monica smiles, wiggling her fingers at him like he's still a baby.

He looks at her warily and Fiona tells him, "Eat your corn."

"How's your head, honey?" Monica asks him.

"Lip's the one who hurt his head," Carl says, "You can tell the difference 'cause Lip's, like, twenty. And white."

"No," Monica laughs, "I meant from the crack."

Frank snickers and pats her arm. "Coke, Monny, it was coke. He isn't on the pipe quite yet."

That cuts through the pounding in Lip's brain a little. He glances over at Fiona. She is sitting deathly still, staring into her water glass with her lips pressed together tight.

"Liam's fine," Ian says without looking up, "All good. We're all fine."

"Ah, sure," Frank says, "Let's see…"

He reclines one arm on the back of his chair and begins pointing at his children one by one around the table. "Lip: drunkard. Ian: psycho. Fiona: ex-con. Carl: future con. Debbie…well, you know she's up to somethin', and Liam: gonna be attending mandatory Narcotics Anonymous before he starts kindergarten. Sounds pretty fine to me. How did we ever raise such impressive little citizens?"

"You didn't," Fiona takes the bait, "You think maybe that's the problem?"

"Oh, I believe you wanted to be in charge," Frank says. He gives her a sarcastic shrug and takes a sip of Old Style.

"Frank, stop," Monica says, taking his beer from him and setting it down firmly, as if this is the real problem. She turns back to Fiona and smiles.

"I was thinkin' about that, Fiona. Now that I'm all good, I can come back, you know? And…and you can go back to school. Or whatever! Whatever you want to do, you can do it now. I'm home!"

Fiona rests her head in her hand. "Oh, god. Just stop…"

"I wanna help."

"I don't need any help."

"Well, obviously you do, right? I mean, with Liam and Ian and everything…And Carl and Debbie! They need me too. You can't do it all alone, sweetie. Look what happens."

Fiona scoffs and lifts her head. "You're right. I can't. But I am not alone. I got Lip and Ian—" she gestures toward them sharply, "Remember them? And Mickey? That's his name, okay? Mickey. He helps a lot too. And, hell—" she gestures across the table again, "I even got Amanda on my team these days. I got plenty of help. We don't need you."

"But, honey, I'm better now. Doin' everything I'm supposed to. I can be a good mom again."

"Yeah, and how long does that ever last? Next week or next month when you decide it's too hard, and you don't wanna do it anymore? And don't even talk about bein' a good mom. You barely ever managed passable."

"I am not a bad mother!" Monica shouts, "I took care of Ian when none of you wanted him around! He came to me."

"Yeah, 'cause he was fucking crazy," Carl replies.

"How did you take care of him?" Mandy cries with revulsion, "You pimped him out for drugs!"

A wave of cold water seems to crash over everything. Lip's plate goes blurry as he sees instead that filthy squat with Ian's kit bag, those men pawing at Ian's pale body under the rainbow lights of the club, Ian with his Bambi eyes as Lip walked in on him and Kash…

"I didn't!" Monica is screaming, her face crumpled into tears, "I didn't do that!"

Frank chuckles, "Ian does like pimps."

Lip struggles to come back, and focuses on finding Ian, finally locating him in this churning room. But Ian isn't looking at any of them, eyes still fixed on his plate, unblinking. Beside him, Mickey has gone rigidly still.

"He never did anything he didn't wanna do," Monica is shrieking from the far end of some tunnel, "Why do you blame me for everything?!"

Lip tries to close his eyes. He doesn't want to see anymore of this. The silence of his siblings' collective horror is bad enough.

Fiona slams her hands on the table and stands up. "Frank? Monica? You both need to leave right now."

Yevgeny is crying and Svetlana pulls him out of his seat. She casts them all a disgusted look as she carries him out to the kitchen.

"You fuckin' pieces of shit," Mickey mutters, coming back to life. He starts to rise from his chair, but stops when Ian speaks.

"It's not worth it," Ian whispers, eyes still fixed downward, "I don't care."

"Well, I do."

"Just don't."

Reluctantly, Mickey sits, but Lip can see his fists still balled tightly in his lap. There's something reassuring about those fists. Lip hasn't got it in him to fight anymore, none of them do, but Mickey still does. He's not tired yet.

Monica hangs her head and starts to sob.

"Oh, Jesus," Fiona sighs. She pushes her hair back from her head and says, "Lip, I'm sorry, but I need a drink."

"I don't understand," Monica blubbers, "All I wanted to do was see my kids, show you I'm doing good now. I'm better. If it upsets you that much just to see me, how come you let Ian stay? He's just like me now. How come you love Ian, but you can't love me?"

"Unbelievable," Fiona says, pacing now with her arms crossed, eyes on the ceiling. She stops at Mandy's chair and asks her, "You got a smoke?"

Mandy doesn't hide her surprise, but does produce a cigarette, light it, and hand it over.

"Thanks."

Fiona takes a few puffs as she continues to pace. No one is eating anymore. No one is even moving. It's just Fiona pacing and Monica sobbing. Even Frank seems struck dumb by the building tension. Lip watches him take a slow sip of beer and can taste it rolling down the back of his own throat. That would soothe this rising panic inside him, push it all back down where it belongs.

Svetlana returns with a calmed Yevgeny on her hip, takes one look at the scene and retreats right back to the kitchen. Lip wishes he could move. He'd do the exact same thing.

Finally, Fiona stops pacing. She turns toward Monica like a gunslinger.

"First of all," Fiona says, "We do love you. All of us keep tryin' and tryin' not to, but it never seems to take. So don't worry about that. You can go to bed tonight restin' easy knowin' there's nothing you can do, not a shitty thing left, that'll do the trick. Congratulations."

Fiona pauses for another drag, but it's mostly a cover to give her a chance to glance at Ian, check in on how he's doing. He still isn't looking up from the table, though, and she shifts her eyes back to Monica.

"But lovin' you," Fiona continues, "With all the crap you've pulled on us all our lives? That hurts, and it never stops. But it's always about you, right? It's always about you."

Monica is still weeping. She wipes her face with her sleeve, and Frank offers her his napkin with elaborate chivalry.

Fiona drops her hands to her sides. "And you wanna know why all of us like havin' Ian here? 'Cause Ian isn't like you. Not one bit. Ian's tryin', and he's doin' great. Ian actually gives a shit about us, Mom. He doesn't just run away every time things get hard."

But he does, Lip thinks, surprised to find the fury still sharp inside of him, That's exactly what he's planning to do.

Frank chuckles, leaning forward with renewed interest.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," he says, grinning at Fiona then turning his head to Lip, "This the same Ian you were bawlin' about like a drunken fool last night, sayin' how he's runnin' off to Bumfuck, Iowa or someplace to start a new life without any of you? That the same Ian?"

Lip gapes at him. Frank has just spoken Lip's exact thoughts. The hairs rise on the back of Lip's neck.

A wave of nausea overtakes him, and he shuts his eyes tight to hold it back. It's happening, it's finally happening. The Shitty Ship Gallagher is going under. Lip almost tears up, he needs a drink so badly. He is Frank and Ian is Monica, and they're all so fucking doomed.

"What is he talkin' about?" Mickey asks Ian.

Lip opens his eyes, no choice but to watch as the ship collides with the iceberg.

"I need to lie down," Monica sniffles, stumbling from the table as she makes her way to the couch, grabbing whatever lifeboat she can get, "I'm sorry, kids. Mommy needs a nap."

Mickey's glare does not waver and Ian blanches under the weight of it.

Ian swallows and asks, "Can we talk about this later?"

"No, we fuckin' cannot. You're gonna sit here right now and tell us what the hell is goin' on."

Ian casts his eyes around the table, taking in everyone waiting.

He sits back in his chair and swallows again. "I put in for a transfer."

"To where?" Fiona asks coldly, sitting back down hard.

He glances over at her, then to Debbie, then back to Mickey. "Downstate," he replies, "Centralia. It's kinda near Urbana."

"Why would you do that?" Debbie asks.

"Yeah," Carl adds, "The hell's down there?"

Suddenly, Lip wakes with a surge of energy as he realizes everybody is on his side this time. He is not the hated, selfish jerk they merely tolerate—he's in the right on this. Everybody is just as angry and frustrated with Ian as he is. Even Mickey is on Lip's side.

"He wants a fresh start," Lip tattles bitterly, feeling like himself again for the first time in hours, "He wants to go someplace where he doesn't have any family. Be a new man."

Mickey looks at Lip incredulously.

"I know," Lip agrees, "He doesn't give a shit about any of us."

"That's not true!" Ian argues.

Mickey turns back to him. "Why the fuck would you wanna do that?"

"Cause I'm sick of it, okay? I'm sick of being reminded every fucking second that there's something wrong with me. I'm sick of not being able to go anywhere around here or do anything without being reminded that there was someone I was supposed to be, someone I should be, a whole life I was supposed to have!"

"Ian," Fiona says softly, "Goin' somewhere else isn't gonna change that."

"It'll make it easier," Ian asserts, sounding like this is something he's repeated to himself a hundred times, "Nobody there knows who I used to be—who I was supposed to be. They won't even know that there's anything wrong with me. I'll just be like everyone else."

"There isn't anything wrong with you," Debbie says, sounding like a pamphlet, "With proper management, you can live a totally normal life."

Ian rolls his eyes. "I'm never gonna get to be normal here. You're always gonna look at me and see her. The way you guys talk to me and act around me? I'm not stupid. You're all just waiting for it to happen, waiting for me to fuck up. And I have, okay? I've done so much shit, and I never wanted you guys to know about any of that. But nobody ever forgets. And you're never gonna let me forget either."

"Well, grow the hell up and get over it," Fiona snaps, "It's gonna take time for everybody to get used to trustin' that you're not gonna end up like her. We're scared to death, Ian. And you would be too. But you think it's just you? I mean, god, you know how long it took Lip to trust me alone with Liam again? I still don't even think he really does. And yeah that pisses me off and hurts. But we'll get there, okay? Give us a goddamn break."

Ian stomps his foot and shouts, "You all make me feel like shit!"

"That's what family's for!" Lip shouts right back at him.

Ian glares at him. As if setting off a sense memory of the last time they exchanged words today, Lip's head starts throbbing. He pushes through it, though, empowered by his outrage.

"You remember that time we drove out to see Clayton?" Lip says, "Remember when you freaked out? Lectured me about how important our family was, how much it meant to you? You're up to your eyeballs with family—we love you and we give a shit about you, they love you and they give a shit about you—but now that doesn't mean anything?"

"I can't believe you want to leave again," Debbie says, "You promised you wouldn't."

"Debs," Ian sighs, his anger folding into misery, "This is different."

"Guess in Centralia nobody'll know what a liar you are either," Carl sneers.

"Fuck," Ian whispers and puts his hands over his face, mumbling, "I'm not just doing this for me."

Fiona is angrily cutting up her turkey into pieces, refusing to look at him anymore. "Sounds pretty fuckin' selfish to me," she comments.

Ian lowers his hands. "Whenever she goes away, it's better," he says, "Every time she comes back, we get hurt. We were always so much better when she stayed away."

"But you're not her," Debbie argues helplessly.

Fiona continues slicing her turkey into tinier and tinier pieces. "You don't think if she'd stuck around and actually tried and hadn't just kept droppin' us and givin' up and runnin' away, we'd do anything to get her to stay?"

"No," Ian says resolutely, "'Cause she'd still hurt us. That's what she does. That's what I do too. And I don't wanna hurt anybody anymore."

"Well," Fiona laughs humorlessly and sets her knife down with a forceful clank, "Nice job with that."

Mickey has been silent throughout this exchange, watching with a steadily hardening expression. Now he speaks and his voice is eerie in its calm.

"So, uh, where do I fit in this little plan? Didn't hear you mention anything about me."

The self-righteousness drops from Ian's face, replaced by terror.

"That why you kept pushin' me to stay away?" Mickey asks, "So you could put this whole plan together and then just disappear without even havin' to say goodbye? This some sick, fuckin' joke?"

"No," Ian shakes his head vehemently, "That wasn't about this. That wasn't—that's not—shit. This isn't how it was supposed to—"

Mickey watches impassively as Ian stumbles and sputters to explain himself.

Ian closes his eyes and takes a shuddery breath. He keeps his eyes closed as he speaks.

"When you left for Milwaukee that night—"

"Look at me."

Ian opens his eyes and curls his hand up in the plastic tablecloth as he looks at Mickey. Lip watches the cartoon turkey print stretch and distort and all the energy Lip has so briefly regained starts to dissipate. His heart begins to speed up, the thumping loud in his ears. Water is filling the hulls.

"When I saw how much it hurt you to find out what I'd been doing—" Ian is saying, the sound falling far away.

Lip blinks and tries to catch hold of that power he'd had just a minute earlier. He can't find anything, though but the mounting dread. It's the same monster of his nightmares these past months, but this time there isn't any whiskey to drown it with.

He hears Mickey, echo-y: "Of course it fuckin' hurt me!"

"You know," Frank says, pushing back his chair and standing up, "I don't think I can take anymore of this very touching bit of dinner theater without additional libation. Anyone with me?"

Lip stares at Frank even as everyone else ignores him. Once again, he's voiced exactly what Lip was thinking. What is this perverse ventriloquist act?

Frank looks back at Lip and gives him a knowing smile. "You wanna join me?"

Lip can't answer. He can't breathe under water.

Frank cackles and brushes him off then saunters to the kitchen. Lip can hear him saying something to Svetlana, but does his best not to float off in that direction. He pulls his attention back to the argument that everyone, even Liam, is watching with rubbernecker curiosity.

"But when you were gone, I felt better," Ian is arguing with shaky determination, talking to the table again, "'Cause I thought 'Good. If I'm not around you, I can't keep hurting you.'"

"You don't think it killed me every day you told me to stay away? You don't think that hurt worse than all the other stupid fuckin' things you've ever done?"

Ian shakes his head as he mumbles, "There's something wrong with me."

"We already know," Carl says, "Big deal."

"Stay outta this, Carl," Fiona warns him.

Mickey scrubs his hands down his face and lets out a deep breath before he says in a carefully modulated tone, "I understand that you're sick. I understand that you can't control—"

"It's not just that," Ian interrupts him, "I can't just blame that. There's something else. There's something that's not right about how I am. I keep doing these things and it's all me doing them, and I don't know why I don't stop…"

Because he can't. None of them has any choice but to be Gallagher fuck-ups. It's in their history, in their genetics, in their stars. Can't use those to navigate for shit.

There is pain written all over Mickey's face, but when he speaks his voice is soft.

"Ian," he says, "There ain't nothin' wrong with you that you can't make better. You just gotta let me help."

"All you do is help. That's not a life."

"How 'bout you let me decide that?"

"Cause you won't. How long are you gonna keep dealing with my bullshit while everything else out there passes you by?"

"As long as it takes. Fuckin' forever! That's what bein' married is!"

"No," Ian shakes his head, pleading with the table, "I never should've put you in that position. With Yev and with Svet and with…with everything that happened…that was all forced on you. And then I did the same thing! You couldn't say no."

"I chose you!" Mickey roars, "The one fuckin' decision I got to make in my life. And now you think that you get to decide all by yourself that I didn't know what I was doin', and you don't even talk to me about it, just cut me right out? That ain't how it works!"

Ian buries his head in his hands and mutters, "Look at what you were able to do in Milwaukee when you didn't have me around, draining everything you've got. Your life is so much easier if I'm not in it."

"You don't think I thought about that? You don't think I spent however many nights you were just layin' there like a goddamn corpse or fightin' with me or screamin' at me or bawlin' like a psycho thinkin' 'I don't fuckin' need this. I don't fuckin' need to stay here'? You don't think the idea crossed my mind that my life would be a whole fuck of a lot easier without you?"

Ian parts his hands and looks up at Mickey. His eyes are brimming with tears—Lip recognizes that shame like he's looking in a mirror.

"But I still married you," Mickey says sharply. He scowls and rubs his knuckles against the edge of the table. "Cause I don't want a life without you. Why the hell would you sentence me to that?"

Ian hides under his hands once more. "You're gonna resent me."

"I never complained! Not once have I ever fuckin' complained about this."

"But you will. You're gonna wake up someday and you'll be old and have nothing but me and my problems, and you'll hate me. I don't know why you don't already."

Mickey shakes his head in amazement, "I hate the stupid shit you pull. I hate that you fuckin' shut me out. But I don't hate you. How could—"

"I do," Ian spits back. His voice trembles as he continues, "I hate who I am now. I hate myself so much."

This statement sinks in for a long, awful moment. Lip sees that little kid who used to laugh so easily, that boy who rounded the bases in his Goodwill cleats with the grace of a professional, that guy who used to brag over shared joints about shaving another two seconds off his best time…Lip sees them all evaporating.

But Mickey nods his head reassuringly and replies, "Then we gotta work on that."

"I can't," Ian shakes his head, blinking back tears, "Not here. It's too hard."

Lip's stomach turns at this confirmation. Ian won't even fight, not for any of them or for Mickey or for who he always was. That kid who never gave up on anything is gone.

Mickey bolts to his feet.

"Don't tell me you're fuckin' serious about this," he growls, "You're not movin' anywhere. This is just another one of those stupid ideas you get fixed on 'cause you don't wanna actually have to fuckin' deal with your shit."

For one second, Lip becomes frantically hopeful. Mickey can do this—Lip's seen it. Mickey can talk sense into Ian. Mickey can drag him back. Mickey knows how to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

But Ian just sits there. He's shutting down, and, giving up. And why shouldn't he? He's a Gallagher. They are every one of them destined to fuck up anything good in their lives.

Mickey is yelling now. "You actually got no problem just abandoning everyone one who loves you—your whole fuckin' family, our fuckin' family—so you can just start over somewhere else? What kinda person does that? You think that's better than stayin' here with all of us and actually facin' your shit? You that fuckin' selfish?"

Ian remains despondent. Lip pleads silently, trying to send him one of those psychic nudges he used to think they could exchange when they were little boys and shared everything. Fight for this, Ian. Fight not to be her. Fight for something, anything…

"Jesus Fuckin' Christ," Mickey mutters, stalking a few paces into the living room.

Ian follows him, but then just stands there limply.

Mickey stares at him with disgust. "So, what? Is this how you fuckin' say it's over?"

"Mick…"

The sneer drops off Mickey's face. His eyes widen in disbelief. "Is this really it?" he asks, "This you quittin' on me?"

Ian bows his head and whispers, "I don't know. I don't know what to do."

"Aw, fuck you and your 'I don't knows.' I fuckin' know how I feel about you and what this all means to me. I don't know. You better fuckin' figure it out."

Ian lowers himself onto the couch, Monica passed out beside him. He closes his eyes and seems to be trying to curl as deep inside himself as he can.

"You know what?" Mickey says as he snatches up his coat, "You wanna decide everything by your damn self? Wanna be an independent operator? Then I'll leave it up to you."

He slides his coat on and zips it. "I'm tired of chasin' you, Ian. I'm tired of bein' lied to and shut out. I'm tired of feelin' like what we got only means somethin' to me."

Ian lifts his head, as if this impression is shocking and offensive to him. "You're the best thing I've got in my life."

Mickey looks back at Ian then shakes his head. "Then how 'bout treatin' me like that sometime? This is the most you said to me in months. Woulda been nice to hear some of it before you already had your bags packed and both feet out the door."

Lip wants to scream watching Ian sit silent as the water rises, swallowing up everything he still had left. Fight, Ian. Please, Fight. But Ian can't fight anymore than Lip can. Having any chance at happiness at all was only ever an illusion.

Mickey is at the door now. He is shaking, even as his voice remains steady: "I'll see ya tonight if that's what you decide. If you don't wanna try, though, if you wanna keep dickin' around, goin' off and doin' every fuckin' thing on your own….then I guess I won't see ya."

He holds up his hands, washing them of everything, and says, "Up to you."

And Mickey is gone. Lip bows his head in defeat.

Far away he hears Mandy get up, stomp over to retrieve her own coat. "You're an asshole," she tells Ian.

The cartoon turkeys on the tablecloth double-up and overlap blurrily, mocking Lip and his useless hope. His head is throbbing worse than ever. Perhaps he's getting the bends.

"Come on, Svet!" Mandy hollers, "We're leaving!"

Lip watches blearily as Svetlana emerges from the kitchen with Yevgeny in her arms and a can of Old Style in her hand. She looks over the room with eyebrows raised. She mutters something to herself in Russian, and follows Mandy. Lip doesn't need a translation to know what she has recognized.

Ian remains on the couch with his head in his hands while they bundle up to leave. The silence in the room increases its pressure as everything sinks deeper into the dark Atlantic.

When Mandy and Svetlana have gone, Ian kicks the coffee table, sending all the junk sliding off of it.

"Stop it," Fiona says, "I am not happy with you right now."

Frank comes back in then, humming merrily to himself and carrying three more Old Styles in the crook of his arm. He retakes his seat and sets the cans out in a row before him. "What I miss?"

"Shut up!" Fiona barks, startling the kids and Amanda to attention. Lip just watches her with numb detachment. There is nothing he can do about anything. There's nothing any of them can do.

Fiona pushes the hair back from her face again and says, "Not another word, Frank, or I'll throw you in the alley myself." She raises her voice and calls out, "Ian? Sit down."

The threat in her tone alarms Ian enough that he does what he is told even if he moves like he is half-asleep. He retakes his seat at the table, and Carl scoots his own chair a few inches away from him in protest. Debbie casts Ian a withering look.

"Mom?" Fiona calls out to the living room, receiving no response. She sets her jaw and says to herself, "Fine. It doesn't matter."

Then she fixes them all with dagger eyes and informs them, "If this is the last Thanksgiving dinner we get to have as a family, we are going to finish it, even if it kills us. Got it?"

She gets a few terrified murmurs of agreement in response.

"Good," she says, switching over to a tone of firm politeness as she picks up her fork, "Now, does anyone have anything remotely pleasant to talk about?"

There is only silence.

Lip drags his gaze back to the cartoon turkeys on the tablecloth, but they go blurry and become blobs. His heart is starting to pick up speed once more as his family falls apart all around him. He needs to gulp for breath, but he can't.

Fiona has pounced on Debbie now, asking her how Sheila's doing, what she's up to these days. Lip can hear Debbie struggling to perform this charade of normalcy in kind. And the band played on. Lip tries not to listen.

The throbbing in his head and the pounding of his heart are growing more insistent, filling his whole body tight to bursting. Somewhere Debbie is saying something about a used car. A Ford Taurus with good mileage. But it wasn't a Taurus. It was a 've been doomed since the backseat of the Cavalier. What the hell ever made them think they could change anything? What stupidity compelled them to look around that Park 'n Ride, that desolate ocean surrounding their tiny raft, and convince themselves they could paddle enough to reach a shore?

"I don't mind you keeping Sheila company," Fiona is saying, "But why would you want to spend so much of your Christmas break driving across the country with her?"

"When else am I ever going to get to go anyplace for free?"

Go, Lip implores Debbie soundlessly, Go and never come back. We're all fucked anyway.

"You okay?" Amanda whispers to him.

He squeezes his eyes shut. It hurts like hell all this pounding, and he can't tell which is his heart and which is his head anymore. He tries to remember if the bends eventually cause your body to explode or if it's more of a silent implosion kind of thing, your corpse deflating through its seams as it sinks to the hadopalegic. Only his shoes will remain.

"Oh, you are not bringing Joaquin! Jesus, Debbie, you're fourteen years old. I knew this had to be a ploy."

"It was Sheila's idea! She wants someone to help share the driving."

"Then she can hire a chauffer."

"God, you're such a hypocrite! How many times did you let Ian have Mickey sleep over last year? You let Mandy live here when she and Lip were dating! Talk about misogynistic double-standards!"

Fiona is saying something about the difference between seventeen and fourteen, but Lip is thinking about Mandy now, Mandy in his bed when that used to be his room, Mandy telling him that she hoped he'd move away and take her with him. He should've begged her to do the same for him—she's the one who got out. She wasn't cursed to be a Gallagher. But it wouldn't have mattered anyway, even if he'd been smart enough to know to ask…he couldn't have left his genes behind.

"What about that, Lip?"

"Lip?"

He pushes his head back to the surface with a gasp. "What?"

The irritation on Debbie's face confuses him as she talks, clearly repeating something she's already said, "Before she suggested Joaquin, Sheila wanted me to ask you to come. Do you wanna help drive to Arizona for Christmas? You could see Karen."

Lip's heart stops.

"Please?" Debbie asks, "I really wanna go. Jody says she's a lot closer to being more like a normal person now. Well, not normal-normal, but, you know…"

Amanda puts her hand over his, and Lip's heart jolts back to its lopsided gallop again. He manages to swallow and take a shallow breath.

"No," he says faintly, "I don't want to see her."

"Come on! Can't you ever do one thing for anybody else?"

"Ah, Karen," Frank muses wistfully, "She was a spirited piece of ass…"

Lip presses his palms into his eyes.

"I don't think he'll have time to make the drive, anyway," Amanda says, attempting to save him, "He's got so much work to catch up on if he wants to get his scholarship reinstated. He'll need all the time over winter break he can get."

Lip lowers his hands and stares at Amanda as every piece of his body turns to ice.

"What?" She asks, cocking her head to the side. Then she realizes. "Oh! Oh, no."

"You lost your scholarship?" Debbie shrieks.

"Oh, shit," Carl laughs with astonished delight, "Are you flunking out? You're worse than me!"

They all know now; it's real. No one, not Frank or Monica or anyone, has ever failed them like he has. There's no Carpathia or Californian coming.

Lip forces himself to look at Fiona then immediately regrets it. The only other time he's ever seen that anguish in her eyes was when he let the cops drag her away.

"That's the only thing you had to do," Fiona says with disbelief, "The only responsibility you have…Get through school. How lazy do you have to be to let yourself fuck that up?"

He is hot with shame now and dizzy. He can't move and everywhere he casts his eyes, they're all staring at him, demanding some kind of answer he doesn't have. Even Ian, who's been sitting catatonic in his own wreckage, is looking at Lip, Bambi eyes in full force.

"I'm sorry," Amanda says as Lip's listless gaze trails over her too, "I forgot they didn't know."

And then Lip lands on Frank. Frank is laughing, his whole body shaking with mirth.

Frank's laughter reverberates inside Lip's head, joining all the other pounding and throbbing in there. Lip tries to close his eyes or look away, but he can't stop watching Frank laugh. This is Lip's father, taking such pleasure in his son's failure. It must be so much fun for him to watch all of them running away as fast at they can and getting snapped right back every time by the rubber band that connects them.

Somewhere, far off, a cell phone dings. Lip pays no attention to it, unable to let go of watching Frank, hearing every cruel intake of breath and resultant laugh. Some part of Lip's brain, though, the part that still doggedly needs to watch out for them, registers the sounds of Carl diving from the table to retrieve his phone, scuffling with Fiona as she tries to yank him back and tells him now isn't the time to be texting his friends.

"It's important," Carl promises, "I've been waiting all day!"

He must successfully kick her off because a moment later, Carl cheers from the living room like he's won the lottery, "Sweet! She's not pregnant!"

"Who?!" Fiona cries.

"My girl!"

Then Frank really cracks up. He throws his head back with a peal of laughter and slaps the table as it dissolves into chaos. Fiona and Debbie are yelling and jumping up from their chairs. Carl is yelling back. Amanda is saying something in an ludicrously calm tone, trying to reassure Liam that everything is fine, everyone's just playing around.

But Lip remains motionless amidst it all, compelled only and horribly to keep watching Frank laugh.

And then, as if the ventriloquist act reverses its polarity, Lip hears himself laughing.

Frank's face reaches some new level of delight at this. Frank laughs harder and louder as Lip laughs with him. They've got the same damn laugh, and it's the funniest fucking thing. Lip communes with this Ghost of Christmas Future, gives in to the sight of his own bloodshot eyes and bashed up face and venal pleasure in everybody else's suffering. Lip looks fate in the eye and laughs like a drunken fool.

He can't stop laughing, even as his siblings grow silent and he feels them staring again. Even as Frank's laughter dissolves into a couple of hiccups and Frank replenishes his throat with a sip of beer, Lip still can't stop laughing. It's just so absurd, this comedy of futility they're all playing part in. They are all so deeply fucked, so helplessly, endlessly, clearly fucked. And yet they just keep trying! How many different ways do they each have to get fucked before they accept that this family is destiny's bitch? How much pain do they have to bring upon themselves and all the poor idiots left in their trail of collateral damage? Don't they know that they should've just been euthanized like a litter of mangy puppies to begin with? Where does this farcical hope still keep coming from? It's all so tragically fucked…

He puts his head down next to his plate and laughs hysterically with the cartoon turkeys. Gobble, gobble, gobble. All the way to the slaughterhouse.

"I thought he was supposed to be sober," Carl says.

"Shhh," Fiona hisses, "Shush."

"What's wrong with him?" Debbie asks.

Lip lifts his head, wiping the tears from his face.

"I'm fucked, Debs!" He screams, "You're fucked! We're all fucked! It's all fuckin' hilarious!"

He chokes, uncertain whether he's about to start laughing again or about to throw up. Instead, he puts his head back on the table and realizes that he's sobbing.

---

The next thing Lip is really aware of is Ian helping him out of his chair. Ian supports most of Lip's weight and marches him through the kitchen.

"You kickin' me out like Frank?" Lip mumbles as Ian tries to keep holding him up while unlocking the back door.

"No," Ian sighs, "Just getting you some air."

Lip manages to find his feet as they walk through the yard, but Ian props one side of him up to guide him. It's cold and eerily quiet out here.

"Starting to worry I gave you a concussion," Ian remarks as he shoves Lip up into the driver's seat of the van.

Ian slams the door and Lip slumps against it, watching Ian hustle around the hood and climb in on the passenger side. Then Ian sits unobtrusively and waits for him to calm down.

Lip sniffles and takes a few shuddery breaths. His head is pounding still, but at least his heart is no longer racing. The dread and panic are gone too; everything he's been so afraid of has finally happened.

He bends to blow his nose on the sleeve of his sweater, but Ian stops him. Ian hands over a paper napkin he must have still had in his hand when he dragged Lip out.

"This is all torn up," Lip notes stupidly. He runs his finger along the shredded and twisted edges and feels the depression sitting in his gut like a kettlebell.

"Kinda a stressful night."

"Mmm." Lip stops examining the napkin and blows his nose into it. Then he crumples it up. He'd give anything for a drink or at least a cigarette, but right now he has neither.

"Why don't you just go?" He says to Ian.

"No way."

"I'm not gonna take off on a bender or somethin'. I don't even have a coat. And, anyway, you don't give a shit."

"Stop saying that."

"Well, you don't, so go."

"No." Ian settles deeper into the seat and stretches out his legs, "I'm not going anywhere 'til you tell me what's going on."

"Well, my head's pretty messed up from this psycho goin' off on it today. Maybe you did give me a concussion."

Ian sighs. "Is it just that the classes are harder than you thought? Is that what the drinking thing's about too?"

Lip closes his eyes and wills Ian to leave him in his misery. He is exhausted.

"Amanda said you've got a chance to make the stuff up, right?" Ian says, "You can pull that off."

"No, I can't."

"Of course you can. How many papers have you written an hour before they were due? How many papers did you write for people in classes you never even took?"

"It's not the same. I can't get away with that stuff anymore."

"Okay. But you've got extra time. You telling me you can't write a couple of papers and reports in a month?"

"Yes. I'm telling you even if they gave me six months to do it all, a thousand months, I still couldn't get it done, all right? Jesus."

"Why?"

"Cause I've lost my fuckin' mind."

"That so?"

"Apparently you don't have exclusive rights on that anymore," Lip mutters.

He can feel Ian watching him, but Lip refuses to open his eyes. He just wants everything to go away. Then he hears Ian rooting around, pushing crap out of the way, checking the glove compartment, then under the visors and seats.

"Ah."

Lip opens his eyes as Ian peels the cellophane off a pack of Golds and passes one over to him.

"The hell?" Lip mumbles, leaning over so Ian can give him a light and then sitting back, "First the weed in the box spring, now a pack of smokes under the seats of the van? How much crap you got stashed around here?"

"It was under the center console," Ian corrects him, "It's never been fully attached."

"What's with all the hiding places?"

Ian exhales a long stream of smoke and explains, "I used to boost a lot of shit from the Kash and Grab."

"Thought you were a perfect Boy Scout."

"He would've let me take the whole register home if I'd ever asked. Kash was such a pussy."

Lip doesn't comment on this.

"Anyway," Ian continues, "You and Fiona were always stealing my smokes."

"That's 'cause you always had them."

"So whenever I had a carton, I put a few packs away where you guys wouldn't find them. I still got some all over the house. I don't even remember all the spots."

"You're like a fuckin' squirrel."

Ian shrugs. "Winter is long."

Lip smiles at this and takes another drag. He wonders idly if Ian was keeping secrets as far back as the womb.

"So, tell me about losing your mind," Ian says, "What's that like?"

This was another plan. Ian's just been pacifying him with the cigarette, putting him at ease with that light bit of conversation, acting like they're still best friends. Manipulative sneak.

But Lip gives up and decides to answer him anyway. There's no pretending this isn't happening anymore.

"I can't stop thinkin' about shit," Lip begins, "All this stuff I don't wanna think about—you know? Shit from a long time ago, when we were kids, shit with Karen, shit with Monica, shit with you…I don't wanna think about any of it. But it's like I can't stop. It's just constantly there."

Ian is listening. Lip can just make out his brother's familiar form in the dark.

"And I've been havin' these dreams," Lip continues, "You keep dyin' on me, Ian."

"I do?"

"Almost every night."

"Sorry 'bout that."

"And I've been so worried about you…Amanda's right. I've been obsessed."

"I noticed."

Lip sighs, "I'm probably half the reason you wanna go away. Eighty percent, even."

"Thirty-five," Ian replies drily, "Don't flatter yourself."

Lip swallows hard, almost tearing up again. It's been so long since Ian was nice to him.

"How many goddamn freak-outs have I had the past few months?" Lip adds, "The last couple of days?"

"You have been on a pretty impressive streak."

Lip hasn't known until now he still had any shame left to feel, but there it is.

Ian takes a pensive drag and prompts him, "So you can't do your work anymore because you can't concentrate? It's just the thoughts and the dreams and shit?"

Lip shakes his head.

"Every time I sit down to do some of my work," he says slowly, trying to figure out how to describe it, "I don't know what happens. I freeze up. And my heart starts goin' and I get sweaty and all those thoughts start comin' back only they get bigger and weirder and all messed up…"

Lip pauses. His breathing has gotten heavier just talking about this. He can hear his heart.

"Anyway," he continues, forcing himself to ignore this, "It started happenin' with one assignment, then another. Then they all just snowballed. And meanwhile, I was goin' fuckin' crazy."

"I don't think the drinking helped."

"No," Lip agrees reluctantly, "But what was I supposed to do? How the fuck else do you deal with your brain up and leavin' you? And now I'm Frank, and I've lost my mind, and I'm completely fucked."

Ian takes forever to respond. Two more drags before he offers his assessment: "I don't think you've lost your mind. Think you just need some help."

Lip snorts. "Same fuckin' thing."

"No. They put you on the shit they've got me on, then you know you've lost it. You're not anywhere close."

Lip focuses on his cigarette and tries make his mind blank. He doesn't want to think about how scared Ian must have been at first, facing the doctors and all that shit, how he only had Mickey there to help. Maybe some part of Ian had wanted his brother there too. He must have felt so alone.

"It's not that bad, you know," Ian says.

"What?"

"Therapy. I hate going, but some of it's all right." Ian laughs a little and adds, "Mickey thinks everything my therapist says is just great. He'd go with me every week if I let him."

Lip shrugs. "Mickey likes solvin' problems."

"So do you."

"I haven't had so great a track record lately. Or ever, I guess."

"But he's not wrong," Ian says, "Some of the things she's said did help."

"That's great, Ian, but I don't need any of that. I need to help myself."

"You got any idea how to do that?"

"I'll figure somethin' out," Lip mutters, sounding unconvincing even to his own ears.

Ian falls quiet and Lip simmers in spite. Even with all that therapy, all the drugs, Ian's still running from his problems, still keeping all these secrets and pushing everyone away. What the hell good has any of it done him? There's no such thing as help. Not for Ian, not for Lip, not for any of them. They're Gallaghers. You can't fucking fix that.

"You know what you were always the best at?"

Lip furrows his brow as his rumination is interrupted by this inane question.

"Working around the system," Ian answers himself, "You never played by the rules, and you could always find a way to win anyway. You remember what you used to say? The thing about the shortest distance?"

Lip smiles despite everything, having not thought about this favorite line in years.

He ashes his cigarette and proclaims, "The shortest distance between two points isn't any fuckin' line. It's movin' the two points closer together until they're the same fuckin' point."

"See?" Ian laughs, "Rules don't even matter in your world. They can throw anything at you, and you always figure out how to get exactly what you want."

Lip can't even manage a response to this. It's not like that anymore. The only way out of this school situation is through, and Lip's got no experience with that. And even if he did know how to buckle down and work hard, he hasn't got the ability to so much as get started. He hasn't got the ability to even make it through dinner at this point. It's all hopeless.

From the house he can hear voices raised, people still arguing. Or, who knows? Maybe they've moved on to drunken singing. At a Gallagher holiday, it's hard to tell the difference. Sometimes it's both one and the same.

Then Ian speaks, and the brittleness of his voice catches Lip's attention.

"When…when I tried to steal that helicopter," Ian says, "I had this crazy idea in my head. I still remember it."

Lip holds his breath and waits. Ian seems lost in the memory, but then he summons himself back and continues.

"Everybody was calling me Lip there, you know? I was Phillip Ronan Gallagher from the Southside of Chicago, Lip for short. Private Lip Gallagher…There was actually another Gallagher there, and he didn't do stupid crazy person things like I did, so he got to be 'Gallagher,' and I got to be 'Lip.' "

Ian gives an uncomfortable half-laugh. "And then for a while there, at the end, I got this idea, and I couldn't let go of it. I started to think somehow I'd actually turned into you. Not that I was likeyou. That I was you."

Ian run a finger over the dashboard as he murmurs, "The two points became the same fucking point, I guess."

Lip's hands are shaking. He takes another pull on his cigarette as he listens.

"When I decided I couldn't do it anymore…When I decided I was out, and I'd just take that helicopter and go, I wasn't scared…"

Ian turns to face him and explains, "I wasn't scared 'cause I was Lip Gallagher, and rules don't apply to him. I could get away with anything."

Lip stares at his brother through the dark, desperately wishing to see his face to reassure himself that Ian is all right and really here with him right now, not still back there.

"But then it all went wrong," Ian recalls softly, "And I remembered I was me."

Ian takes one last drag and stubs his cigarette out in the ashtray. He sits back in his seat.

Lip blinks rapidly, trying to compose himself enough to respond to this confession.

"I wish I could've helped you," he manages to croak.

"There's no helping it."

"Then I wish I'd at least been there for you. I could've protected you."

"From what? Fate?"

"I don't know what I could've done, but I should've done it."

"If you don't even know, Lip, there's no answer. You know everything."

"I don't anymore."

"Don't say that," Ian tells him, "I have to know that anywhere I go, or anywhere you go—"

Ian puts his two index fingers together on the dashboard once more and Lip can hear him drag them apart. He's drawing a distance between the two points.

"—I have to know that you're out there, same as ever. Same old genius."

"I was never a genius."

Lip is startled by Ian's agitation as he vehemently shakes his head.

"No," Ian says, "It's bad enough that I don't even know who I am anymore. I gotta know who you are. I gotta know that you're still who you always were. That Mickey's still who he always was. Fiona and Debbie and Carl and Liam…Even if I go away, even if whoever I was is gone for good…"

Ian pauses, struggling to articulate his thoughts from this mess of words.

"It's like…as long as I know you guys are out there still being everybody I knew… then I'm not really gone."

Lip stubs out his cigarette and feels weighted down with that same exhausted hopelessness.

"You haven't gone anywhere," Lip tells him, "And even if you do go wherever the hell you think you're gonna go, you're still you. I don't know how many times we all gotta tell you that you can't run away from yourself."

"I don't have to. The guy I was ran away from me."

"No, he didn't."

Ian throws himself back in his seat once more with frustration. Then he sets into brooding like he has always done when trying to work out a retort to some logic of Lip's he doesn't like.

Lip slides another cigarette from the pack and lights it, but Ian snaps his fingers at him, demanding to have it while he thinks. Lip rolls his eyes and hands it over. They might be here a while.

Lip tries to sit still and be patient, but he doesn't want to be alone with his thoughts. So he drums his fingers on the steering wheel while he waits. Doing that kind of shit when Ian is trying to think has always driven him nuts.

"Stop it," Ian snaps.

"What?" Lip asks and keeps doing it.

"I'll crush your hand. You know I'm good for it."

"Fine, fine," Lip says, taking his hand from the steering wheel with a dramatic sigh.

Then Ian sits forward.

"If I didn't change then you didn't either," Ian says with great conviction, as if he's solved a riddle, "Twins are the same."

"Come on," Lip sneers, "Not that old shit."

"We're twins. You used to tell me that."

"Cause you were a dumb little kid who believed it! And I was an asshole who got a kick out of gettin' you to believe stupid crap."

"I dunno, Lip. Lots of other people used to say it about us too."

"Yeah, Irish twins."

"Still twins."

"No. That was just commentary on our parents' low-class procreation habits."

"Still twins."

"Jesus. It doesn't work like that. Even for real twins."

"Bullshit. You're the one who told me that. You told me that if you died, I'd die. If you got hurt, I'd bleed. That's what you said, and you know everything."

"I don't know shit."

"Why? Because you lost your big genius mind?"

"Exactly."

"I lost my mind. You think it's gone for good?"

"No," Lip sits up, "I don't believe that for a second."

Then he realizes the trap Ian has just walked him into.

"If mine came back," Ian says smugly, "then yours will too."

Lip slumps in his seat and surrenders. Even in the dark, he can tell that Ian is grinning. He has always been so delighted anytime he can catch Lip up in his own logic.

There just isn't any good way to argue it, though. If Lip says he has changed, then Ian can claim that about himself too. If Lip says he's lost his mind for good, then there's no way out of Ian making the case that he has too. And Lip doesn't believe that. Despite everything he convinced himself of today, when it comes down to it, Lip still believes in Ian. It's still there. Lip still believes that all of them have got a chance—Fiona, Ian, Carl and Debbie...Just not Lip.

But, then, what's the logic in that? Is Lip spectacularly more hopeless than the rest of them? The probability of that doesn't seem very likely.

All the shit Ian's dealt with? Fiona? If Lip still believes in them, and if Ian, after everything he said today out in the snow, still believes in Lip, then how the hell does Lip prove this hypothesis?

He can't. And if there isn't any hard evidence to support his theory that he is hopeless, then Lip's got no choice but to go with Occam's Razor: he's not hopeless; he's just scared. And probably a little bit lazy, if he wants to be completely honest.

"Fuck," Lip murmurs, bringing his hand to his head.

Ian must see this movement and assume Lip is touching the bandage on his temple because he says, "Sorry I kicked your ass."

"Eh," Lip says, reluctantly allowing himself to be drawn away from his revelation, "Don't worry about it."

"You're really out of shape."

"I know."

"Need to stop pissing people off if you can't hold your own in a fight anymore."

"I know."

"Anyway…sorry."

Lip smiles at Ian, still the same kid who never liked having to be the bad guy when they played.

"It make you feel better, at least?" Lip asks.

"A little."

"I'm still good for somethin'."

Lip helps himself to a second cigarette after all, and they smoke in silence for a bit. He marvels at finding this unexpected hope still intact, but also at having his old brain back, even if only momentarily. He can't recall the last time he worked through a string of logic like that, everything so clear and obvious. His head has been cloudy and crowded for months, a murky mess of useless junk. He didn't know he had any beautiful little eurekas still in him.

"The fuck am I gonna do?" Ian asks quietly.

Lip's excitement nosedives. They're still stuck with this reality. They've still got to face all these problems, even the stupid ones Ian insists on creating for himself. Ian still wants to run away. Ian still wants to blow everything he's got in his life to bits. Ian's still sitting here like a helpless moron, too scared to make a damn move either way.

Lip ashes his cigarette and says, "I can't tell you what to do."

"Come on, Lip. Help me."

That horrible hysterical laughter almost bubbles up from Lip's chest once more at these words, but he manages to contain it. He inhales deeply through his nose and focuses on helping instead telling. If he doesn't try to tell, maybe he actually can help.

"What do you want?" Lip asks, "It's as simple as that."

Ian doesn't answer, and Lip's frustration with him comes rushing back.

"Give it up already," he says, "You didn't get to have the exact life you dreamed about. You got gypped. It sucks. But big deal."

"It is a big deal," Ian says so softly he might not have even meant to say it out loud.

Lip's annoyance is tempered. He takes a pull off his cigarette and thinks about Private Gallagher, acting like such a weirdo in Basic Training that he didn't even get to be the 'Gallagher.' That had probably been a little part of Ian's original fantasy of all of it, having a military-style nickname. Ian probably always thought he'd be 'Gallagher' or 'Irish' or 'Red.' And instead he ended up as 'Lip.' How do you turn a dream into a nightmare quicker than that?

"You're right," Lip says, "It is a big deal. Bet it's hard to let that go."

He watches the little bit of orange glowing at the end of his cigarette and continues, "But you keep thinkin' that everything would be better if you'd gotten what you wanted, and I don't know if that's true. Maybe. But what if you got through Basic and everything fine, and they shipped you over to Kabul or wherever, drivin' a tank around and carryin' a rocket launcher, and then this shit hit you?"

"I know it could've been worse," Ian says tiredly, "Everything can always be worse. I know."

"Yeah. Sure. But say you never got hit with this shit. Just carried on with everything as planned, no bipolar, no nothing. That's no guarantee. Maybe you'd get your legs blown off or brain damage and PTSD. Or maybe none of that. Maybe you just woulda hated it. Maybe you woulda sucked at it."

"So, no matter what, my life would've been fucked up anyway?"

"The point is, you don't know that life would've been better than this one. Maybe you get exactly what you wanted but it's not what you expected or you're not the person you thought you'd be once you got it. I can tell you firsthand—gettin' everything and then fuckin' it up doesn't feel so great either."

"At least you got to have it."

Lip holds his tongue but is incensed by this self-pity. He sees again that look that passed between Ian and Mickey out in the front yard tonight, that look that seemed so alien to Lip. It hurt to see that, to recognize that Ian doesn't need him at all. But it hurt worse when Lip understood why it was so difficult to even identify that look in the first place. Nobody has ever given Lip a look like that.

He hears the girls crying out to Ian along the roadside today, begging him to get back in. Two of them were Lip's ex-girlfriends, the other one Mickey's fucking ex-wife, but Ian was their first concern. Even the Gallaghers tonight, those siblings Ian says make him feel like shit? Lip saw the look in all their eyes, their pain at the very idea that Ian would want to leave them again. Lip knows exactly what they were feeling; he still feels it too.

But when Lip left for college, the biggest reaction anybody had was Debbie and Carl arguing for weeks over which one of them would get his room. That first night in the dorm, Lip sat on his bed listening to the guy next door assuring his mom over the phone that he'd be fine, that he wouldn't forget to eat, that he'd already made a couple of friends at orientation. Lip sat there all night trying to read a book and waiting for anyone to think to give him a call. His phone never rang once.

Ian's gotten to have a hell of a lot that Lip never did. Never will, probably. And Ian's so used to always being liked and loved that he can't even see that.

"You got two options," Lip says tersely, "Go or stay. Just pick one."

"It's not that easy."

"One or the other. Doesn't get any easier than that."

Ian sighs with frustration, which only annoys Lip further.

"Come on," Lip snaps, "Either you give a shit about everybody else or you don't. Pretty damn easy."

"It's not easy!" Ian shouts, "Why can't any of you understand how fucking hard this is?"

His voice breaks pitifully and he backs down.

He is quiet for a moment then says in as even a voice as he can manage, "I don't know how to make anybody understand."

Shame has replaced any aggravation Lip had in him. In all his anger with this dumb plan, he hasn't really stopped to consider how miserable his brother is. Ian saying earlier tonight that he hates himself—Lip hasn't forgotten that. He doesn't know if he ever will.

He listens to Ian breathing, just two feet away from him. Lip wants more than anything to reach out and pull Ian back, but he's afraid. He doesn't know if he can close a gap between them even that small anymore, and he's terrified of finding out how bad things are on the other side of this divide. All Ian has in the world are his loved ones, and if he's willing to give that up for a chance at no longer hating himself, it must be more awful than any of them can imagine.

Lip closes his eyes as he puts words to a terrible thought, "Are you gonna kill yourself if you stay here?"

"I don't know," Ian admits.

Lip winces. This wasn't the answer he was hoping for, but somehow the plainness of Ian's response makes it so much worse. Lip can't speak for a moment, his heart lodged in his throat.

It's not that Lip hasn't thought about this before, it's not like this possibility hasn't been scaring him to death for months, driving him past the edge of sanity at points. But all this time it was only a threat if Ian fell into one of those obvious depressive funks, or something. Here he is now, though, perfectly functional and lucid, successfully medicated and balanced to all appearances. It's like running to switch on the lights only to find that the Boogeyman really is under your bed.

Lip nods several times, trying to keep himself together. He swallows as best he can.

"And bein' here makes that worse?" He asks.

"I feel bad all the time, Lip."

Lip has to swallow hard again before he asks, "When do you feel good?"

"Only when I forget."

Lip smokes and goes over this grim intel he has gathered. No matter how many ways he runs the data, however, he keeps hitting on the same result: Ian's wellbeing has got to take priority over everything else. Lip doesn't want Ian to go; he knows this. The idea of him alone down there is alarming. And the odds that this is gonna buy Ian any kind of happiness seem piss-poor. But Lip also knows, much as it kills him, that he can't try to game this for what he thinks is best. Because if it isn't best, if it turns out Lip was wrong and whatever warning bells were going off in Ian's head telling him to get far the fuck away from here were justified…Lip would never forgive himself.

This has got to be Ian's decision, and that terrifies Lip. But Ian's the only one who can sort and weigh all these pieces of his heart, write his equations from that, solve for x. Ian's always sucked at math, though.

Helping, not telling. That's what Lip's supposed to be doing right now. He can't grab the pencil from Ian and figure the numbers for him, not this time. But Lip's always sucked at knowing any other way to help.

Lip grits his teeth and pries loose his grip on that pencil.

"If gettin' out of here is what you have to do to keep goin'," Lip says reluctantly, "then you should do it."

Lip can tell Ian is startled to hear this. There's a pause before Ian rushes to explain his reasoning, as if he's worried Lip's going to take back his advice.

"I know it's not gonna make me some other person or whatever," Ian says, "I know it's not gonna give me back what I had. But I just…what if it's easier?"

"It might be. Won't know until you find out."

"I gotta change something."

"Well," Lip says, "This would definitely change somethin'. Almost all of your somethin's, really."

Ian goes quiet at this, and Lip smirks to himself. Ian has never liked having to deal with the downsides of his big plans. He loves all the addition, wholly ignores the subtraction. But you can't run numbers like that.

"What's holdin' you up?" Lip nudges him, "What's keepin' you from tellin' us all to go fuck ourselves and packin' up your U-Haul?"

"I'm not…What if I do all of this, and it just makes everything worse?"

Lip stares into the snow accumulated on the hood of the van and has a sudden vision of Ian standing in a cornfield with a gun. He shakes that image away and sees instead blood splattered across the wall of neat new tiles in the Milkoviches' bathroom.

He shakes that image away too and tries only to see the snow, willing his heart to slow back down again. Whatever option Ian chooses here, there are no guarantees. They both want one, some kind of contract and a warranty, but there just isn't any fail-safe solution to a problem like this. It's like trying to separate Ian from his shadow.

"You guys would let me come back, right?" Ian asks in a tiny voice.

"You know we would," Lip sighs, pushing the hair back from his forehead in agitation, "Jesus. It's not really us you gotta worry about givin' up here."

Ian takes another shaky breath and stubs out his cigarette. Lip takes his last drag then does the same. Somehow, the deciding factor has come down to Mickey Milkovich. Of course. Every machination Lip has attempted has failed to turn that guy into a remainder. There's no solving for x without Ian's y.

"You in love with him?" Lip asks.

"You want me to say no."

"This isn't about what I want. This is about you."

"But you hate him."

"What do you care? And for the record, I happen to have come to the conclusion that it's smarter to have Milkoviches on your side than as your enemies. You figured that out a lot quicker than I did. I'll give you points for that."

"You think he makes me worse. You said he fucks me up. You said he ruins me."

"I was wrong," Lip replies, tripping a little on this unfamiliar phrase.

"Liar."

"I was rootin' for him in there, you know."

"That's just 'cause you wanted me to stay."

"No," Lip shakes his head, "I was rootin' for him 'cause he was actually fightin'. I was watchin' him, and I kept thinkin' 'that's who I'm puttin' my money on here.' But I kept lookin' at you and thinkin' 'who's this guy?' The kid I knew used to be a fighter too."

"I'm trying to fight. That's what this is! If I don't change something, Lip, I don't know what I'm gonna do."

"Okay, okay," Lip assures him, "I know."

Lip tries to think this through, begging his brain to work right again, at least for just this one time. Then he pauses before he speaks, putting his words together more carefully than he has ever done.

"I just wonder," Lip says, "If you're not puttin' a lot of energy into fightin' the wrong things. Seems to me you're gonna have to deal with the exact same shit there as you do here. You're gonna have to battle those demons no matter what until they're gone."

"I know that."

"Sure. And maybe it will be an easier fight there without all this baggage around. I don't blame you. I know you gotta be tired and lookin' for any way out. But I think you're so tired you can't even see straight at this point."

"This isn't just some manic—"

"I know that. I'm not sayin' that. I'm sayin' you're fuckin' tired from takin' on everything at once all the time. Maybe if you stopped fightin' for one damn second, you'd see some shit around here you could change. But if you go down there, I just worry you're settin' yourself up with nobody to tag team with, nobody to let you get a breather in this fight. That doesn't seem to give you too good a chance there. And I think you gotta ask yourself: is it more important to fight for total control over every single thing in your life or for the people who make your life worth livin' at all?"

Lip sits back after this little speech and forces himself to shut up. No more telling. No more trying to coerce people into doing what he thinks they should do. The family fixer is officially retired.

"I do," Ian says quietly.

"You do what?"

"Love him."

"Then why the fuck are you sittin' here with me?"

Ian goes very still. His breathing grows more shallow and a little uneven. According to Lip Gallagher's Guide to Interpreting Your Dipshit Brother's Top-Secret Emotions by the Sound of His Breathing: A Study Based on 18 Years of Empirical Research (Chicago Polytechnic Press, 2014), Ian is on the verge of tears again.

"I don't want to ruin his life," Ian insists tremulously.

"So you'd rather ruin yours? The guy is tellin' you to go ahead and ruin his life all you want. For some crazy fuckin' reason, he thinks it's worth it."

Ian wipes his eyes with his palms and says, "I'm not worth it."

"Okay, fine. You're terrible. Clearly, you're the worst thing that ever happened to anybody. But is he worth it?"

Ian starts shaking and snuffling and Lip realizes with bemusement that Ian is trying with all his might not to cry in front of him. Stubborn, stupid, ridiculous kid.

"Hey, man," Lip says, "I just bawled my eyes out stone sober at Thanksgiving dinner and lost it on my kid sister. You don't have to worry about bein' cool for me."

Ian chokes out a laugh and then snuffles a bit more freely.

Lip folds his arms and asks, "So, Mickey Fuckin' Milkovich really makes you happy? Even in that shithole? Even when you're so fuckin' angry about how your life turned out? He actually makes you happy?"

"Yeah," Ian sniffles, "He pisses me off, and he makes me feel like shit sometimes, and he drives me crazy, but…"

"But?"

"Sometimes…sometimes when he's not worrying so much…When it's just him and me and none of this other shit…" Ian drags his sleeve across his eyes and says, "When I'm with him I forget."

Lip nods solemnly. That solves it. Mickey wins.

But Ian continues, "God, I'm so proud of him, Lip. He's gonna do so good with that business. I know it."

"You wanna be here to see that happen?"

Ian doesn't answer this question. Instead he just muses, "He's so fucking smart. He picks up everything like it's nothing…He can do anything…"

Ian turns to him and says fervently, "When he didn't like the doctors at the clinic? When he didn't think they were doing as much as they could? Giving me enough attention? He got me in at the best place in the whole city."

"Thought that was Lishman who did that."

"It was Mickey who got him to do it. I don't even know what he said to him. I haven't had to pay a goddamn bill there yet."

Lip processes this new information, adding it to everything else he's learned today was never true about the world. Then he shakes his head. "You think you're gonna be able to just buy someone like that off a shelf down in Centralia?"

"He doesn't deserve me. Maybe who I used to be, but not…"

"Doesn't he deserve to get what he wants? Even if he's got shit taste? Remember that time we all talked Fiona into splurgin' on that dress she couldn't stop goin' on about, then she brought it home and looked like a hooker in it? We didn't tell her that. Cause it made her happy, and that's all that mattered."

Lip is hoping to make Ian laugh again, knock him loose from this obsessive self-loathing—he and Ian used to crack up every time Fiona left the house in that get-up, strutting with her head high like she was the second coming of Beyoncé.

But Ian doesn't laugh. He just falls quiet.

And Lip feels exhausted. Every bit of today, of the last few weeks and months, the past nineteen years, is catching up with him.

"Who the fuck are we to decide what should make anybody else happy?" Lip sighs, "Isn't that what you were tryin' to tell me by kickin' the crap out of me today? Or did I miss the point?"

Ian is still sitting here, not talking, not moving, just frozen in place by the decision set out before him.

The family fixer's apparently got one last job to take on before he can retire. And this is a bit of telling Lip never thought he'd see himself do.

"You know," he says, "There's one thing I always did find kinda impressive about the Milkoviches. They know what they want, and they don't really second-guess that. They just go for it. You think Mickey ever had second thoughts about beatin' me up all those times in school? No. He saw an ass that needed kickin,' and he went for it. So, maybe you should try bein' more like them," Lip pushes, "If you got somethin' in this shitty world that still makes you happy, then fuckin' take it. Don't worry about what should've been or what might happen. Take it, and don't look back."

Ian still isn't moving, so Lip leans across the gearshift, grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him.

"Don't be a Gallagher," Lip commands, "Don't fuck everything up."

He can see Ian's eyes clearly now in the moonlight, wide and frightened. He could be five years old again.

Lip drops his hands in frustration, "Christ, Ian. When have you ever been a coward? Figure out what matters the most to you and fuckin' fight for it!"

And Ian is out of the van. He doesn't even bother to close the door as he drops down to the snow and takes off down the alley.

---

Lip sits alone in the dark and puts his head back.

"And I remembered I was me," he murmurs to the empty van.

Behind him, the usual chaos is still pouring down in the Gallagher house, Fiona trying as always to bail out enough of that rain to keep them afloat for another night. And Fiona has only ever had her own two hands to cup together, pumps and buckets drifting by just out of reach. But as long as she doesn't stop trying, somehow it manages not to sink.

A few blocks away, Ian is trying to keep his marriage from going down in that same storm, even though he drilled the holes in the boat himself. He's spent his whole life chasing after one white whale after another, even as each turned out to be a school of minnows slipping between his fingers. Now there's no more whales, not so much as a fish left to catch, as far as his tired eyes can see. But as long as he doesn't stop trying, he might at least still make it to safe harbor.

Trying. Ian and Fiona have both always had to do so much more trying than Lip. He steered his speedboat with one little finger, never considering that someday the motor might crap out. Now he's adrift on the same choppy sea without even the gumption to shoot up a flare.

Water, water everywhere, nor any fuckin' drop to drink…

Lip jolts as a rush of cold air hits him. Fiona is climbing into the passenger seat.

"I just need five minutes," she mutters, "Five minutes not in that house…"

"Okay," he says uncertainly.

"When does anything ever stop goin' wrong? Is it just never gonna let up? 'Cause we are fuckin' due for a break. Oh, we are long, long, overdue."

"I don't kno—"

"And you!" She raises her voice, turning to him, "What the hell, Lip?"

"I—"

"No," she cuts him off and puts up her hand to silence him, "I don't even wanna know. I do not need to find out anymore shit today."

Lip closes his mouth and offers himself up to whatever she needs to say.

"All I need to know," Fiona says steadily, "Is that you're gonna fix it. Whatever stupid mess you've made now, you have to fix it. I don't care what kinda scam or magic you gotta work; you figure it out."

She shakes her head and stares out her window, lost in frustrated thought.

They sit in silence for a while, and Lip puzzles over the crux of the matter. He may not be hopeless, and he may only be scared, but he is scared with just cause. It's not only the schoolwork, which is daunting enough. It's also the other stuff, the stuff that's all him. And that's a mess of a problem, a kind he's never encountered before. He doesn't know if he's got it in him to learn this strange new math. Lip wasn't built for trying.

"Is it the drinkin'?" Fiona asks abruptly, "Cause you're doin' pretty good today. And this was a hell of a day. Think you're ready to go back in tomorrow, get yourself another twenty-four hour chip."

The illogic of this startles Lip from his train of thought. "Wait? They let you start over just like that?"

Fiona nods and Lip is appalled.

"Isn't there a waiting period or somethin'?" he asks, "Make sure you're serious this time? How many times they gonna welcome you back with another first day chip?"

"As many times as you show up and say you wanna start again."

"That's ridiculous! So some idiots can just rack up ten, twenty, thirty first day AA tokens, and that's not supposed to be a hint that they're lost causes?"

"I don't know," Fiona sighs as she is stuck once more defending this stuff in the face of his scorn, "At least they're tryin'."

This statement strikes Lip mute. He slowly closes his mouth, disengages his outrage, and sits back, feeling a little dazed.

"Anyway, you better figure it out," Fiona says, "Givin' up on school is not an option. Not even if you do lose your scholarship. Then you get some loans or go part-time or take your classes over at Daley or…or somethin'…They cannot see you fail at this. And I can't either."

She massages her temple and adds, "You think you're fucked? Come cry about that to me when you're twenty-three and completely out of chances."

Then she sits up, as if just noticing something. "Where's Ian?"

Lip swallows and finds his voice again. "Went home."

Her sigh of relief is palpable. "Good."

"Yeah," he agrees, but can't help but ache as the emptiness hits. "I hate losin' him, though. Hate losin' all of you. Feels like that's happenin' more and more."

"How do you think I feel? You're all goin' off, havin' your own lives, and I just stay here, doin' the same thing, nothin' changin' til another one of you leaves. What's gonna be left for me when I lose you all?"

"Some Prince Charming with a douchey tattoo. Long as you keep it tight."

"Sure that'll work out real great. Always does."

The emptiness aches a little more keenly, threatening to become cavernous. Lip sees Fiona growing middle aged and alone in the house, as more and more rooms go vacant. He's still never managed to land on any solution for her, but there's got to be another way to look at it, at least. He pokes around his brain tentatively, testing if it might wake up for another go.

"Maybe," he begins and then becomes more confident as the idea comes together in his mind, "It's not that we're losin' each other. But maybe we're just expandin' our territory, you know? Stakin' more claims out there for the Gallagher clan. Manifest destiny."

"So, where does that leave me? At home, keepin' the fires burnin'?"

"You're not at home. Home's you. It's always been you."

Lip interprets her silence as skepticism, but then Fiona sniffles.

"It's true," he tells her, "Can you imagine how fucked-up we'd really be if we hadn't had you?"

She laughs, and Lip feels more whole again, hearing it. The emptiness scabs over some.

"Where's my home, then?" Fiona asks, challenging this sentimental logic.

"It's us."

"Oh, God," she sniffles again, "Ian really did a number on your head today."

But Lip isn't paying attention to her now. He's thinking about points and distance and shifting positions, if a person changing changes you, what happens when points overlap or move apart…

"You're doin' your mad scientist mutterin'," Fiona comments, "Haven't heard that in a while."

"Just somethin' Ian and I were talkin' about," Lip says, still distracted by the puzzle, "Movin' some points around doesn't change the points, only their position."

"Oh."

Lip laughs and gives up trying to explain it the way he sees it in his head.

"We don't all have to be in the same place all the time to still have 'home,'" he says instead, "We'll still be us. You're not gonna stop bein' you, are you?"

"Not anytime soon."

"I'm sure as fuck not really changin'."

"I think you have," she says warmly, "Think you're growin' up a lot."

"Not doin' such a great job at it."

"Who does?"

Lip abandons his attempt to hammer down their stars into a constellation that makes sense, and they both sit for a while, their minds in separate places. Lip realizes at some point that he's been staring out at the yard and the alley, and not really seeing any of it. He tries to see it now, though, and finds that it is strangely beautiful, the heavy blanket of snow concealing all the garbage, all the ugly bits. Without knowing any better, this could pass for a pretty nice part of the world.

"I wanna try." Lip hears the statement come out of his mouth before he comprehends that he has said them. Then he corrects himself, "I wanna learn how to try. Get it right. I don't wanna give up on this."

"Well," Fiona says after a pause, "That's all I want."

Lip remembers what Mickey said back near Racine, and repeats that now, "Anything worth havin' is worth tryin' for, right?"

She laughs. "When did you get so corny?"

Lip smiles in agreement, but something compels him to go for broke anyway. He'll build a whole damn corn palace.

"Don't think I'm forgettin' about you," he says, "You know how those football players always sign these 30 million dollar contracts and the first thing the guy does is get his grandma out of the ghetto, set her up in a mansion? Thank her for raisin' him?"

"Are you callin' me your ghetto grandma? I don't know how I feel about that."

"Don't worry about it. Just start makin' a list of all the things you wanna do when you get out of here. No responsibilities when you get your mansion."

"Mansion," Fiona scoffs with amusement, "I'd settle for gettin' a window unit for my bedroom some summer. Pull that off, and we'll call it even."

"Come on," he urges, needing to hear her dream, even just a little.

But she seems almost frightened by his enthusiasm.

"Don't count your checks before they're cashed, all right?" she tells him, "You still gotta worry 'bout gettin' through those classes first."

"Don't spend your checks before they're cashed," Lip can't stop himself from correcting, "You count your eggs before they're hatched."

"Yeah, but don't you go doin' either of those. You're the one who's always keepin' our expectations realistic here. We need that."

Lip exhales. He lets his momentary dalliance with dreaming big float away like a balloon.

"Well, I'll get you out somehow," he vows, "Don't worry."

"I don't care," Fiona argues, "Gettin' out is not what I worry about. All I want is for you guys to be okay and relatively happy. If I could just have that…If I could go to sleep every night knowin' that I got that? Then I don't give a shit if I never go more than ten blocks from this dump."

"You gotta want somethin' more than that."

"No, I don't. And I know that's stupid to you, but—"

"It's not stupid."

Lip looks at his sister's silhouette, her posture that is never ever just fully relaxed, all the mess in the house waiting right over her shoulder like always. This is her life's work.

"Listen," he offers instead, "Even if I fucked this up too much. I'm still gonna find a way to help. If it means comin' back here and gettin' a job that pays the bills, I'll do it. I'm gonna help you. I promise."

"I just need you to help yourself, Lip. That's all I need you to do. But you have to do it."

"I will."

Her tone shifts slightly. "You know what else you could do, though?"

"What?"

"How 'bout helpin' me with those dishes? I don't know how I always got stuck with that job."

Lip smiles. "Think I can manage that."

He climbs down out of the driver's seat and meets her on the other side of the van.

As they walk back to the house, Fiona says, "And here I thought all these years you had some medical issue that kept you from bein' able to wash dishes."

"Yeah, it's called 'Smart Enough to Get Outta Doin' It Disorder.' It's a serious condition."

"Well, I'm glad to see you're finally cured."

"It's temporary," he assures her as they go back into the house, "Only temporary."

---

Lip washes the dishes while Fiona dries and they both try not to listen to Carl talking to his girlfriend on the phone. He's in his room, but he's got the door open and the sound has always carried down the stairwell a little too clearly.

"I can't believe you didn't even have to pee on the stick," he says, "Periods are fucking awesome."

"I'm gettin' him sterilized first thing in the morning," Fiona declares and turns the faucet up higher to try and drown him out.

Amanda comes racing into the kitchen, shrieking as Liam chases her with a Nerf bat. He corners her behind the kitchen table and begins whacking her. She's laughing and trying to ward off the blows as she spots Lip.

"You're back!" she says, pausing just in time to get smacked in the face.

"Liam!" Fiona scolds, "We play nice in this house."

Liam roars like a dinosaur and smacks Amanda again, knocking her glasses askew.

"Hey!" Lip snaps in his dad voice, "Cool it!"

Liam lowers the bat and shouts at the both of them, "You're no fun!"

"I'm sorry," Fiona says, "Did you say you don't want dessert and you wanna go to bed early? Is that what you just said?"

Lip struggles not to break his stern expression as Liam trudges out of the kitchen, dragging his bat behind him.

"Gotten strict in your old age," he remarks.

"You're all determined to get me arrested for murder before this day is over."

From the living room, someone start pounding out We Wish You a Merry Christmas on the piano.

"And Frank's hit the happy entertainer phase of his all-day bender," Fiona sighs, "Right on time."

"I can dry the dishes," Amanda volunteers, "Why don't you go sit down?"

Fiona slaps the dishtowel into Amanda's hand without a word and trudges out to the living room looking remarkably like Liam.

"How you doing?" Amanda asks as she takes over drying.

"Stress level's back to about a six. Embarrassment's at ten."

"I would've come out but…Fiona told us to let Ian handle it. I wasn't about to argue with her."

Lip nods and hands her a glass to dry. "How bad did I scare the kids?"

"I really don't think they scare that easy at this point."

He allows himself a smirk, but focuses on scrubbing the bottom of the roasting pan where all the turkey juices have caramelized and hardened. There are years of the crud built up, but perhaps if he does it right, he can loosen it off.

Amanda starts putting away the clean glasses while she waits for the pan to be ready. Efficiency incarnate.

Then Lip asks out of nowhere, "What's your diagnosis?"

He turns his head from her slightly as he hears how blunt and odd the question sounds.

Amanda sets down off her tiptoes and lowers her arm from the cabinet.

"You said a couple times you were goin' to see someone," Lip explains, keeping his eyes fixed on the pan, "I never asked what for."

"Oh. Mostly to bitch about my parents. About school. You." Amanda replies, turning her attention back to the cabinet.

"Yeah, but, you got a label, right? Somethin' they put on your insurance forms?"

"Oh," she says as she takes it upon herself to start removing a row of larger glasses that are stacked unsteadily atop a row of smaller ones, "Inattentive ADD. I'm an Adderall kid from way back. With a smattering of obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Shocker."

Lip sets the sponge down and looks at her. He gestures around the room, "OCD and all our mess? How're you not losin' it?"

"Oh, no, I love it," she gushes and scrunches up her nose with pleasure, "I feel so needed!"

"Jesus," he mutters and returns to his scrubbing.

Amanda resumes her work on the cabinet, putting the larger glasses back and stacking the smaller ones neatly on top of those.

Lip doubles up the sponge on its rougher side and scrapes harder at the crud. He edges a little closer toward what he really wants to ask.

"Sorry if that was too personal a question," he says, buying time to build up his nerve. His heart has started thumping a little faster.

"It's no big deal," she says over her shoulder as she continues arranging, "I'm not embarrassed. Everybody's got something. Anyone who doesn't suspect they have something up there they need to fix is either dealing with some massive denial or living among us as a full-blown clinical psychopath."

Lip tries to smile at this, but can't ignore his heart enough to do it. Instead he scrubs still harder, like he's trying to push the pan through the bottom of the sink. Distracted by the force this activity requires, he finds the words can sort of just slip out.

"You know how you wanted me to make that appointment?"

"Oh my God," Amanda gasps happily, spinning from the cabinet to face him, "You're really going to go! Finally! God…I thought I was going to have to knock you out with a roofie and physically drag you."

"Well, you might, uh, have to," he says. Her excitement is not making him any less uneasy about this.

"Sure," she responds eagerly as she pulls the pan from his hands and begins drying it, "No problem at all. I'll go with you to set up the appointment. I can do all the talking, tell them everything they need to know. As long as you're there to sign everything, that's fine. And then when the time comes, I can even go in with you to the session. Moral support is always good, especially since you're so freaked out about it. You can tell me ahead of time what you want to say and I can prompt you if, you know, if you go blank or get nervous. And if you want, I can even see if Fiona wants to come. If that would help you out to have her there, I'm sure I can talk to her and set it—"

"No!"

They both go still, Lip just as startled as Amanda, hearing that come out so much louder than he meant it to.

"Right," Amanda says shakily, "You're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't—it's not my place. I always go overboard…"

She turns back to the counter hastily and busies herself with an open bag of rolls, tying them back up. Then she scoops up an empty can of cranberry sauce and moves to throw it away.

"No," Lip says again, much more softly this time.

She pauses and looks up at him. He can suddenly picture quite easily what she must have looked like as a child.

"It's nice that you wanna help," he says carefully, "I like that you like to help. I just…I have to do this myself."

"But you said—"

"I said I might need you to make sure I go. Make sure I don't talk myself out of it. Maybe walk down there with me so I don't go chickenshit at the last minute, decide not to go in. But that's it. The rest I gotta do. I just need you to—"

"Moral support," she says, the smile returning to her face, "I can do that."

"That's it," he tells her cautiously.

She nods. "That's it."

Lip returns to the sink and the privacy of having his back to her. He allows himself a moment to just breathe, feel his heart slowing back to normal. Then he reaches for the next dirty serving dish.

As he relaxes and lets his attention settle on the simple task of washing the bowl, Amanda hops up and takes a seat on the counter beside the sink. She cocks her head to one side and smiles as she watches him work.

"What're you doin'?" he asks, setting the clean bowl into the drainer and reaching for the next one.

"Moral support," she replies.

He continues to eye her as he submerges the new bowl.

"Wash that bowl," she cheers, "You can do it, Tiger!"

He flicks some water at her and is pleased by her shriek.

But Amanda is not so easily bowed. She swings her legs and tells him about how she did three years on the pom squad in high school, all the backdoor political shenanigans she engineered the year that she was co-captain, how she was this close to successfully petitioning to have the school colors changed because yellow is not flattering on anyone…

She trails off at some point, and Lip looks up.

"Why'd you stop?" He asks.

"I've just never seen you smiling so much. Got me kind of worried."

He blushes slightly, realizing he has been smiling like an idiot through all her stories.

"Is it possible you're actually listening to what I'm saying?" She asks, "And enjoying it?"

"Think I might be concussed," he replies, returning his attention to the dishes.

"Oh, that's probably it."

When she doesn't resume her monologue, though, he looks back up.

"You're not gonna keep goin'?"

Amanda smiles and maybe blushes too. He's never seen her blush.

"Well," she continues, "I knew if I wanted to do this, I had to get both the PTA and the Booster Club on my side, but that's like mixing oil and water. Cats and dogs. Montagues and Capulets. Social scientists and humanists. But I also knew that the one thing that brings all parents together is local news coverage of their kids' sports…"

That idiotic smile returns as Lip works. It's almost kind of cozy, being here, doing this, listening to her. He's not sure what this is, if this is friendship or moral support or just Amanda being Amanda. God knows he doesn't understand any of those things. But right now in this moment, Lip wouldn't care if he never ran out of dishes to wash.

---

Frank's moved on to playing What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor over and over again by the time Debbie announces that everyone is finally allowed to cut into the desserts. She's arranged them in an elaborate spread complete with plates stacked under some of the pie dishes and cakes to raise them to varying heights, and she's put out a random bowl of apples and some fake leaves for staging. She snaps one final picture with her phone then steps back as Fiona, Lip, Amanda, and Liam descend.

"I told Sheila she should start a cooking blog," Debbie remarks to no one in particular, "If I made stuff like this everyday I would."

"Start makin' stuff like this everyday, and you could put Weber's out of business," Fiona says, taking a slice of an elaborate apple pie that must be eight inches tall.

Lip gets a piece of carrot cake and, not wanting to revisit the cartoon turkeys anytime soon, takes a spot on the couch. Monica is awake now, but she's just sitting there on the other end gazing into nothing. Lip recognizes that new med look, the behavior. They've all seen this present then suddenly asleep then half-awake and out of it business so many times with her before.

He ignores her for a couple bites, but then his resolve crumbles.

"Want me to get ya some dessert?" He asks, though he keeps his eyes carefully on his cake.

There's a delay before she glances around, as if trying to find the source of this question. Then she lands on him.

"Oh, Lip," she says, "No. No, I don't want anything."

He shrugs and takes another bite.

"Thanks for asking, though," Monica continues on in an absentminded voice, "You were always such a nice kid."

"Think you're mixin' me up with someone else," he sniffs.

He shouldn't be surprised by this bullshit. Monica is a crackpot, and a self-centered one at that. After all these years, he shouldn't have any expectation that she could correctly state even the simplest fact about him. And one thing everybody knows is that Lip isn't, and never has been, nice.

"No," Monica replies, her voice still dreamy and distant, "You were a sweet boy. I remember when Ian was born, I was so worried you'd resent him—you know how kids do? But you didn't. You just loved him…You were always such a good big brother."

Lip chokes and turns to look at her as he coughs. He searches her expressionless face, waiting for something more, something to provide confirmation of this statement, some backup, some proof...

But Monica is done talking. She's drifted back to that Twilight Zone place once more.

Lip swallows the cake, though it now feels like a fistful of clay going down his throat.

You were always such a good brother. What if he just allowed himself to believe that for once Monica said something true, got a fact right about one of her kids? Lip cannot recall her ever having given him a gift—not a birthday present or a Christmas present, certainly never a graduation present—but what if she's given him this? What if this belief is his to keep?

He clutches that puppy tight. He doesn't want to give it back.

A wave of cold rushes into the room as Ian and Mickey come through the front door, closing it with great difficulty behind them. Mickey starts stomping the snow out of his boots, but Ian pauses and looks at all of them awkwardly as they stare back at him.

He's got Yevgeny on his hip, and he hitches him up higher, even though it doesn't seem necessary. Trust Ian to find reassurance in a nine-month-old.

"I forgot my coat," Ian explains. Then he supplements this flimsiness with, "And we didn't want to miss Debbie's desserts."

"Yeah, and Svet and Mandy said they needed a fuckin' break from us," Mickey adds as he finishes with his boots.

Everyone just continues staring at them while Frank plays on obliviously. Ian and Mickey both appear a little red around the eyes and raw about the mouth. All the meaning is in them standing here, though. Together.

"Well, come on in, then," Fiona says finally, "We got plenty."

Then tension breaks and the room becomes bustling again as Ian and Mickey integrate, get handed plates and coffee. Lip finds himself observing Debbie, though. She is watching the two of them with an expression of pure relief and delight. Cynicism hasn't swallowed her up just yet. Maybe they'll be lucky and get another year or so before that happens.

Debbie starts over-explaining about each of the desserts to her new testers, telling them all the different twists and little touches each includes ("There's a little bit of Meyer lemon in this one, to give it some kick? And, oh, try these—they've got Anise seed in them. You know what that is?"). Ian and Mickey, god bless 'em, are a patiently polite audience, nodding as if either of them has any idea what she's talking about.

As she babbles, Carl clomps downstairs and stops cold at the sight of the Prodigal Son and Son-in-Law's return. Then he beams with that same relief and runs over to punch Mickey in the arm.

Ian gives Carl an apologetic smile, but Carl just shakes his head at him.

"Fucking playing everybody," Carl mutters, shoving a dessert bar into his mouth then almost immediately spitting it into his hand, "What the hell's in this?"

Amanda is on the floor eating pie with Liam who seems thrilled to have so much attention. Lip smiles, watching her converse about the collection of toy cars Liam shows off to her between bites.

Lip's gaze travels to Fiona who is slumped in the armchair with her pie in her lap and a mug of coffee in her hands. She gives him a tired smile over the rim.

He considers finishing his cake, but it's a lot of cake and he's not really hungry. Instead he sets it down and goes to fetch a cup of coffee.

When Lip returns, Carl and Debbie have monopolized Mickey at the dining room table, pelting him with questions and news about happenings they've apparently been storing up all this time he's been gone.

Ian is just about to take a seat on the couch with Yevgeny. Lip sits down beside them.

"Who's this little guy?" Monica asks, coming to life at the sight of Yevgeny, as if she hadn't even noticed he was here before at dinner. It's the most animated she has looked, making big eyes and a goofy smile at the baby.

Lip waits to see if Ian is going to take Yevgeny away and sit somewhere else, avoid Monica's nonsense. Lip wouldn't blame him.

Ian doesn't, though. He smiles at the kid and tells Monica, "This is Yev."

"Well, Hi, Yev," Monica coos and tickles him under the chin, getting him to giggle, "Who do you belong to, huh? Are you the little man who belongs to himself?"

"He's my stepson."

Monica's face lights up even brighter. "I didn't know Manny had a kid! You never told me that."

"Mickey," Lip corrects her.

"Aw, Ian," Monica sighs, "You always wanted to be a daddy."

Ian just continues to smile at Yevgeny.

"Can I hold him?" Monica asks, "I wanna hold my grandson."

Lip starts to correct her again and tell her Yevgeny is not her grandson, but realizes that she's actually right. And Yevgeny is Lip's nephew too. Lip has a nephew. This is dumbfounding information.

Ian hesitates, the smile dropping off his face. But he gives in.

"Guess then I could eat," he says and gingerly allows Monica to take him.

"Come here, Yevy," Monica coos, settling the sleepy kid in her arms, "I miss babies. I love babies."

Ian watches apprehensively, like a mother cat ready to pounce.

But Monica just cuddles Yevgeny. She laughs and says to herself, "I'm a grandma. Hope I'm a hot grandma."

Relaxing a little, Ian looks over at the plate of carrot cake on the coffee table and asks, "Whose is that?"

"That's mine," Lip says, "You want it?"

"It looks good."

"It is." Lip hands him the plate and fork.

Ian takes a bite and wolfs down another.

"Debs," he calls over to the table, "This is really good!"

"I know," she calls back, annoyed at the interruption, and swiftly returns her attention to Mickey. "Aren't title loans a really bad idea, though?"

"Bad if you're gettin' one," Mickey replies, "Not if you're givin' one."

Lip sips his coffee while Ian eats and Monica holds Yevgeny, swaying him gently.

"How's the club?" She asks Ian eventually, "Is Wojtek still riding everybody's asses?"

"Don't work there anymore."

"You don't? It was so much fun!"

Ian shrugs and scrapes up a blob of frosting. "Didn't have time."

"Little guy keeps you busy, huh? Kids are so much work."

Both brothers let this statement pass without comment.

"Pretty busy with my other job too," Ian says, "And I'm starting classes in January."

"You going to school?"

"Uh-huh." Ian takes another bite of cake and tells her, "Thinking about becoming a paramedic."

Lip rolls his head back and glares at the ceiling. He thinks about Ian blowing him off when Lip suggested this very thing, how disdainfully Ian discarded all that research Lip had gathered for him. Lip can still see the brochures strewn across the floor of the dorm room. This is so Ian.

"You'd be so good at that!" Monica gasps, "Driving an ambulance? Saving everybody's lives?"

"It's just an idea," Ian murmurs and shovels in another mouthful of cake.

"Gosh, that's such a lotta responsibility. I'd never be able to do something like that. Gosh. But you like responsibility. You're so much like Clayton."

Lip resumes drinking his coffee, waiting for Ian to respond to this. But he doesn't. Ian just eats his cake.

"I thought somebody said you were leaving?" Monica says, some parts of her foggy brain aligning momentarily.

"Not right now," Ian replies colorlessly, "Mickey's starting a new business, and it's not a good time. But we might go somewhere together later. See what's out there."

Lip gives him a curious look, but Ian acts like he doesn't notice.

"That's good," Monica says and tries to resettle Yevgeny who has started to fuss, "There's so much out there. Parties, interesting people, so many things to try…"

Ian hands the plate back to Lip and takes the baby from her. Back in the familiarity of Ian's lap, Yevgeny immediately calms. Ian strokes him while Monica babbles on about all the things that are out there in the world.

"It's like you get to have a whole different life, anytime you want," she finishes, smiling into space at some memory, sometime she got herself one of those new lives, no doubt.

Ian rests his chin atop Yevgeny's head. Ian's eyes track slowly around the room: Fiona nodding off in the chair, Liam demonstrating the raise-able ladder on his fire truck for Amanda, Mickey still indulging Carl and Debbie's chatter, and finally they land on Lip.

Lip meets his brother's gaze and tries to determine if Ian is feeling any enticement at Monica's words, any regret for his decision to pass up the opportunity for a whole different life, one without any of them. But as he closes his eyes and settles back to cuddle his kid, in his old home, surrounded by his family, Ian does not seem the slightest bit tempted.

---

That night finds them with a full house. Ian and Mickey take Yevgeny home, but the rest of the Gallaghers stay on, filling every bed. Frank and Monica have commandeered the double in Lip's room, so he finds himself squeezing into Ian's old bunk with Amanda.

As they elbow each other and smack against both the walls trying to get comfortable, she remarks, "This is so much better than the Hilton."

"Better company, at least."

"And entertainment. Told you Thanksgiving was meant to be a cage match."

"You're always right."

"Repeat that, please, until you stop forgetting it."

Lip smiles and tries to sit up a little. "You comfortable?" he asks.

"Hmm," She replies and lifts his arm. She wriggles her body up against his so that he is spooning her, "That's better."

"I like that," he replies, closing his eyes and laying his arm down over her.

"Don't get any ideas," she says, "This is just platonic cuddling."

"Sure. A little conservation of body heat among friends. Humans have been doin' it since time immemorial."

"You make a good caveman."

Lip grunts into the back of her neck, and she giggles. Then she sits up on her elbow with surprise. "Oh, hey."

Lip opens his eyes to find Liam standing by the bed. "Go to sleep, Li."

But Liam is hesitant.

"You wanna sleep with us?" Amanda asks.

"Yeah."

She holds up the blanket and waves him in. "Come on aboard."

There's a lot more scooting and rearranging until they end up as three spoons, big to little. Lip drapes his arm over both of them and buries his face in the back of Amanda's hair. She smells like expensive shampoo.

Liam wraps his hand around Lip's fingers, and Lip stays awake until that little hand goes slack with sleep.

As Lip allows himself to start drifting off, he holds the both of them in his arms and decides that family doesn't ever go away; it just keeps expanding. An accelerated universe. Or maybe it's a black hole. Either way, he closes his eyes and gives in to it.

---

Monica is gone by the time they wake. No one even comments on it; no one is surprised. And when Frank stumbles off to the Alibi to drown his sorrows over it, they all breathe a collective sigh of relief. Fiona turns the bolts behind him.

The rest of the morning passes kind of languorously, a rare day off for all of them.

Debbie is the only one who seems to have woken with any ambition. She chatters about Black Friday as she makes the first pot of coffee, taking advantage of her caffeine-starved captive audience. She doesn't believe in going out at an ungodly hour because that's exploitative of the workers, but she has no compunction about going midday to get her deals—that's just frugal good sense…Lip half-listens blearily, certain he has heard this same exact prattle every year since she was nine.

He comes back to life a little once he's got an actual cup of coffee. Debbie's detailing her plans for what stores to hit in what order, which ones accept coupons on top of the deals, which ones allow you to still stack your coupons…

Lip and Fiona exchange a look of amusement as Amanda takes a great interest in this and starts asking Debbie all sorts of questions. Lip is confident Amanda has never used a coupon in her whole life or ever set foot in Walmart, but that doesn't seem to matter so long as there is strategy to discuss. Then Debbie hauls out her meticulously organized coupon keeper to show off and the two of them get practically giddy discussing color-coded tabs and matching pens.

After Joaquin comes by to collect Debbie, the house gets a lot more quiet. Fiona, Lip and Amanda linger over their coffee, though they don't talk about much of any consequence. Then without even discussing it, the three of them start picking up the house. They put the dining room and kitchen back together, throw out all the accumulated garbage, even run the vacuum. It feels good to just do something mindlessly productive like that.

But around noon, the house becomes lively again because Ian and Mickey show up with Mandy in tow.

"We ain't getting' cheated out of leftovers," Mickey explains as he walks straight to the fridge.

"I paid a lot for that turkey," Ian adds as he ducks in beside him and starts pulling apart the wall of Tupperware Tetris.

The two of them are in remarkably good moods ("The power of gettin' laid again," Fiona whispers to Lip. "Multiple times," Mandy mutters, "Really fucking loudly."), but their cheer is kind of contagious. Everybody gets a little sillier, joking around in a way that haven't in a while. Lip is fascinated to see Mickey teasing Ian, and Ian not even minding when Fiona jumps right in to join Mickey's riff. Then Lip is roundly horrified as even Mandy cracks a smile at Amanda's apparently spot-on impression of Lip.

Fiona makes turkey sandwiches and Carl drags himself out of bed to join them. He consumes his sandwich sullenly with his eyes half-lidded then announces he's going out to hang with his girl.

"Use a fuckin' rubber," Mickey calls after him as he makes his way to the door.

Carl gives them all the finger and heads out.

"Did anybody even know he had a girlfriend?" Lip asks.

Ian and Fiona shake their heads, but Mickey sets down his sandwich in consternation. "He's been seein' her since the summer."

"Didja meet her?" Fiona asks.

"Couple times," Mickey shrugs, "She's all right."

Gradually, they settle into various groupings and activities. Ian and Mickey plop down on the couch to watch an MMA competition. Fiona and Amanda sprawl on the living room carpet and play with Liam.

Lip grabs a handful of Excedrin and a cup of coffee to take them with. His injuries are bothering him a lot more the second day. That always seems to be how it works, though.

He takes a seat at the dining room table since it's easier on his ribs than getting up and down from the couch. It does afford him a nice view of everyone else in the living room, which is fine. He's tired and sore and would rather observe than engage.

As he sips his coffee, however, he notices Mandy. She's made herself almost invisible, sunk into the armchair, though she is clearly an odd man out. There's no way she's joining Fiona and Amanda for preschool playtime. Ian and Mickey are no use either. They seem to think they're doing a good job of pretending to care about the competition on TV, but with all the scooting closer to each other and whispering and handsy movements, they're not fooling anyone. She mentioned earlier that she's gotta bus it back to Green Bay tonight, and this seems like kind of a sucky way to spend her last day here.

Lip manages to catch Mandy's eye. He inclines his head, inviting her over, and for a couple of seconds she looks disgusted by the prospect. But then she hauls herself out of the chair and walks over.

"What do you want?" She greets him sullenly.

"Nothin'. Just thought you looked…I dunno, lonely."

Mandy sneers, "I'm not lonely."

"Well," Lip struggles, annoyed that he's getting this kind of response for trying to do something nice, "Out of place, then."

"I don't need you to rescue me."

"Fine. Do whatever the fu—" He stops himself. This might be the last time he talks to her for a while. Forever, even.

He takes a breath and asks instead, "You want some coffee?"

She looks back at the living room then sighs. "I guess."

Lip is glad to get away from her glare as he escapes into the kitchen. He pours a cup then pauses, realizing he doesn't remember how she takes her coffee. He's not even sure if that was ever something he knew. It seems like it should've been.

He dithers far too long over this dilemma then grabs both the sugar and the milk along with her cup. If it turns out she doesn't take one or the other he can just pretend that he brought them for himself.

When he returns to the dining room, she's still just standing there, arms wrapped around herself awkwardly.

"Sit," he says, putting on what he hopes is a friendly smile, not a desperate one.

She does sit, to his great relief. Lip fusses too much as he sets the coffee in front of her, moving it to three different spots before he forces himself to leave it. He also makes too much of a show of placing the milk and sugar exactly halfway between them. Mandy watches him with her eyebrows raised.

"Drink," he tells her moronically.

"Are you gonna sit?"

"Oh," Lip replies, realizing he's still standing, "Yeah."

She watches him grimace as he sits back down.

"Hurts, huh?" She asks.

He tries to ignore the shooting pain in his ribs and doesn't bother answering such an obvious question. This seems to amuse her, though, and Lip relaxes a little. He reaches for the milk even though his coffee is already room temperature.

"Since when do you take cream?" She asks as he pours, "That some weird college thing?"

"Calcium," he improvises, "Gotta mend my bones."

Mandy rolls her eyes and drinks her coffee black. He does remember that now. He remembers her telling him once that you couldn't ever trust that the milk hadn't gone bad at her house. That was never a problem at the Gallaghers', though. Fiona couldn't keep them in milk long enough for it to turn.

"What's the deal?" Lip asks, "How big of a nerd is this guy?"

"Who?"

"Oscar Mayer."

Her mouth tightens into a straight line.

"Ah," Lip confirms, "So, you're his bad girl fantasy. Probably spent his whole high school career jerkin' off to chicks like you. College too."

Mandy sighs and looks away.

"What?" He teases, "What's so special about him?"

"He never says shit like that."

Lip's smile fades. She's been spending too much time hanging out with humorless cheeseheads.

"Just sayin'," he mutters, "You didn't have to go all the way the fuck up there to find a boring dude like that. Plenty of them around here."

"That's not why I left. I didn't leave for any guy."

Lip retreats behind his coffee mug. He sips the cold, milky swill and waits for her to cool off. He greatly regrets having tried to talk with her. Best to let sleeping Milkoviches lie.

Mandy drinks her coffee too, but her attention strays from Lip. Instead she's watching Ian. He's whispering something to Mickey, but he breaks into a laugh before he finishes saying whatever it is.

"He hadn't gotten out of bed in days last time I saw him," Mandy remarks softly, her voice heavy with the memory.

Lip swallows and tries to distract himself from his own memories dumping sugar into his cup. He swirls it around then scoops up and lets drop several spoonfuls of unappealing liquid.

"I couldn't take one more thing turning to shit," she explains, "and I didn't wanna watch Mickey lose him again."

"Well, he didn't," Lip replies quietly.

Mandy takes another sip then turns her eyes back to him. "What was the wedding like?"

"What wedding?"

She doesn't answer and he looks up to find her sneer back in full force.

"Oh," he says and returns his eyes to his cup, "Wasn't any big deal. City Hall. No party or nothin'."

"Was it nice? I feel bad I missed that."

"Don't know. I didn't go."

He shifts uncomfortably under the weight of her disdain.

"Guess that was pretty shitty," he mumbles and adds, the idea just occurring to him, "Should probably do somethin' to make up for that sometime."

They both watch as Mickey shouts at the TV, letting someone inside the box know that they had it coming. Ian is smiling at this, like Mickey is Mr. Charm and Wit.

"I could throw a bachelor party," Lip shrugs, "Doubt either of 'em ever got somethin' like that."

"The fuck would you guys do?"

He runs a quick inventory of some options—strip club, bar crawl, casino—none of these seems particularly viable or advised.

"Isn't that, like, celebrating being single anyway?" Mandy continues, "Big dumbass goodbye to all the shit you're supposedly giving up?"

"Guess so," Lip admits.

He sits back in his chair and continues to puzzle over it. It's not just that he wants to make up for having been a dick more times than were probably strictly necessary. But it suddenly seems important that he engineer some kind of gesture, something big enough to get them all restarted on the right foot. This horrible year won't settle into its grave until they consecrate that shit. Problem is, there aren't too many sacred rituals in the Gallagher family repertoire.

"What about just a big-ass party? A wedding party?"

The thought is out of Lip's mouth before he has a chance to recognize how embarrassing a suggestion it is.

Mandy stares at him.

"No ceremony or crap like that," he rushes to add, trying to pull his dignity back with slippery hands, "Just a party for them, for whatever this fucked-up thing is they've got. Show them we all give a shit. Better late than never, right?"

Lip almost winces as he waits for Mandy to skewer him. She runs her finger around the rim of her coffee mug, biding her time. She's acting like she's actually considering the idea, but really she's just torturing him. Of all the people to let drop something like that in front of…

"Then I could come," she says, "I could be there for that, at least."

Now it's Lip's turn to stare at her. She looks genuinely pleased. His stupid big mouth has given her something, given them all something, maybe, and there's no taking it back now.

"Maybe they'd let me be a bridesmaid," Mandy jokes, "wear a stupid dress."

"Beard of honor."

"Shut up."

Mandy is smiling; it was always such an accomplishment to crack the code for that.

"Think you could pull it off?" She asks.

Lip sighs and runs a hand through his hair, starting to envision how much work this whole thing might be, "I don't know."

"Bet Amanda could do it."

"Shit, she'd fuckin' love that."

"She'd wanna turn it into some big gay TV wedding."

Lip chokes down his terrible coffee as he pictures this. Already now, he knows this ridiculous plan is going into effect, and his main job is going to be reining Amanda in. And Fiona. And Debbie. Christ. How on Earth did he just make this into reality?

"One thing?" Mandy advises him, "Don't invite your parents."

"Done."

They fall into companionable silence after this, both observing the action in the living room like it's a south side nature special.

Even though Lip's injuries are bothering him more today, some of the other stuff had let up a little when he woke this morning. His heart seems to be staying put, keeping up a reasonable pace. His brain feels less foggy too. It's not so great when he starts thinking about all the work that awaits him tomorrow, but if he just tries to keep busy with other thoughts, that mostly keeps it at bay.

After a while, he asks, "So, what's the plan? With school and Oscar Mayer and everything?"

"I don't know," Mandy says, "Just trying not screw it all up, I guess."

Lip nods and enjoys the delight on Fiona's face as Liam sings a song for Amanda that he learned at pre-school. Having so many people to give him attention really brings Liam out of his shell. Lip grows melancholy as it occurs to him that Liam's gonna be the only one of them to grow up in a house where hardly anyone is ever around.

He pushes that thought away and says, "Whatever you're doin', seems to be workin'."

"Took long enough. And I still do dumb shit sometimes."

"Like yesterday?" Lip laughs, "What the hell possessed you to throw a grenade in everything good you got up there by tellin' them where you were?"

"It was Thanksgiving," she explains, "I wanted my family."

"Lucy and Ricky over there are your family?"

She shrugs. "It's the one I've got."

Ian and Mickey are arguing over something silly. They keep play hitting each other and laughing. Ian looks more relaxed than he has in months. Right now, he looks happy.

At one point, Ian lies back on the couch, laughing so hard he can't move.

Mickey is laughing with him and looks up, still grinning. He catches Lip watching them, but Mickey's smile doesn't falter. Neither does Lip's.

---

Late in the day, Lip is having a smoke on the front steps, enjoying the unexpectedly warm afternoon and watching the snow melting. He glances up as Ian comes out and sits beside him.

"Thought you guys left a while ago," Lip says.

"They did," Ian replies, "Told them I was gonna stick around a little longer, finally fix that burner on the stove. Wanted to let Mickey have some time alone with her before she's gotta go back."

"Figured he'd be pretty eager to catch up with you too."

"I'm not going anywhere."

Lip gives him a pointed look, and Ian grants him half a smile.

"And anyway," Ian continues, "Debbie's watchin' Yev tonight so Svet can go out and we can get the place to ourselves. Mickey wants to talk more."

"Oh, yeah?"

"So much talking," Ian groans and rubs his eyes. "Think I've said more in the last twenty-four hours than I have in my whole life."

"The new and improved Ian Gallagher—now with voice feature."

Ian mutters something under his breath and bums Lip's smoke off of him.

While Ian hogs the cigarette, Lip sits back and surveys Wallace Street. He always thinks this place never changes, but it has. There's some new parking signs where there didn't used to be any, that condemned house next to the church has finally been torn down, and the LaPortes have fixed the porch rails that have been broken as far back as he can remember. It's weird how something can stay exactly the same for years and years, but then it changes and it takes forever to notice the difference.

Ian hold the cigarette out and Lip snatches it back.

"Can you believe that shit with Carl?" Ian asks.

Lip chokes on his inhale and pats his chest. "No," he coughs, "And I shoulda seen it comin'. He was askin' me about that stuff with Karen the other night. We sure gave him some stellar role models."

"Fiona's gonna be gray before she's thirty."

"Think she kinda loves it."

Ian falls quiet, and it's clear he's waiting to ask something. Lip takes another drag, giving him time. The urge to nudge him along is powerful, but Lip fights it. The family fixer is still retired. Now is the age of Zen Lip who just allows things to happen, goes with the flow, passes no judgment. How long this age will last, though, is debatable. Zen Lip is already getting on Regular Lip's nerves with all this wishy-washy patchouli bullshit.

"I wanted to ask you something," Ian says.

"That's a good start."

"I'm gonna talk to Mickey about it tonight, and Fiona too, but I just…I wanted to run it by you, see if it's stupid."

Lip covers up his smile (see ya, Zen Lip) by bringing the cigarette to his mouth. "Go for it."

Ian gazes over at the LaPortes' new porch railings as he speaks. "Well, you know, we're gonna sell the house."

Lip's heart skips a beat before he realizes that Ian is talking about the Milkovich house. "That's right."

"Mickey was planning to get an apartment, or something, but I think all those new expenses are kind of risky when he's buying into the business and just starting up too, you know? Does that sound right?"

"Well, yeah. That's a good thing to be thinkin' about. You got somethin' else in mind, though?"

Ian bows his head and rubs the back of neck nervously. "I was thinking maybe we could move in here."

"What?"

"Well, we could pay something and help Fiona out with the bills, and it'd still be cheaper for us than paying rent on some apartment. And she'd have more people to keep an eye on things, help her out with Liam. We'd have more people to help with Yev…"

Lip blinks as he takes this in. "Yev and Svetlana would come too? Where the hell would you all sleep?"

"Svet and Yev could have your old room."

"What and you two take the bunk beds?"

"No," Ian laughs a little at this image. "I was thinking we could maybe fix up the basement. I mean, it's not forever. And it hasn't smelled like meth since it flooded."

"Jesus," Lip mutters.

"It's a dumb idea, huh?"

"No."

"Really?"

"Talk to Fiona about it first, but I don't think she's gonna hate the idea either."

Ian sits up a bit more confidently.

"Thought you couldn't stand bein' around everybody, though," Lip can't help but point out as he kicks a little dirt over Zen Lip's grave.

"Yeah, I know." Ian rubs the back of his neck again, and says, "But if I'm not gonna get away from it, guess I just…I'm gonna try and look at it like exposure therapy, or something."

"Trial by fire," Lip nods. This sounds a lot more like the Ian he always knew.

"So, what happens to everybody else at the house?" Lip asks.

"The girls'll go somewhere else. Shutting down the rub 'n tug anyway. And Iggy and Joey don't want anything to do with the business. They just want their cut of the house then they're going off on their own."

"You gonna quit your job? Go work with Mickey and Svetlana?"

"No. I don't think I'd like that kind of work."

"Good. You guys wanna diversify your income streams, anyway. Especially right now."

"That's what Mickey said too."

Zen Lip would let that pass, but Regular Lip ashes his cigarette and asks, "Mickey thinks you'd make a good paramedic too, huh?"

Ian sighs. "He does. But that's not why I'm thinking about doing it now."

"Oh, sure. When I suggested it—when it was my idea—you didn't want anything to do with it. But, oh, Mickey comes back and says 'Hey, I got this brilliant idea, don't even need to any research on it—"

"They saved your life," Ian blurts out.

"What're you talkin' about?"

"The paramedics. I was in the ambulance. I saw them do it."

Lip lowers his cigarette and looks at his brother. Ian's eyes are far away, his expression stricken.

"You were dead," Ian whispers, "For a second you were. I saw it on the monitor. I heard it, just like on TV. But then they brought you back to life. I couldn't do it, but they could."

He knots his hands together, still staring far away, but his breath has the slightest hitch to it. Ian is scared, even just remembering it. The idea of losing his brother actually means something to him. Ian gives a shit about Lip.

"Did I look dead?"

"Huh?" Ian turns back to him, eyebrows furrowed.

"What did I look like when I was dead?"

"Shit," Ian bows his head, "I dunno. Same as you did when you were comatose."

Lip files away the fact that he has been resurrected from the dead ('Lazarus Lip' sounds far more badass than 'Zen Lip') for future investigation. Instead he just watches his brother, his stronger, dumber, sweeter twin who loves him and wanted to be able to save him. Now that kid's after the next best thing: working on becoming the kind of person who could. It's all so Ian.

Lip smiles. "So, I did kinda lead you to it after all."

Ian huffs a laugh of surprise. "Yeah, sure," he says, "I owe everything to you. You happy?"

"Fine. Just make sure you tell Mickey that idea was one of mine, all right? I thought of it first."

"Should just stamp a copyright on my whole life."

"I should."

Ian steals the cigarette back. He takes a puff while looking out at the street and asks, "See the LaPortes finally fixed that railing?"

"Yeah."

"Eleven fucking years, then one day they just get around to it."

Lip shrugs as he accepts the cigarette back. They sit for a while, the only sound the snow melt running down inside the gutters and the Rubios' beagle baying ceaselessly a few yards over. That dog never shuts up.

"You remember that time we went to the lake?" Ian asks.

"What lake?"

"The lake."

"Lake Michigan?"

"What other lake have we ever been to?"

"I don't know. And we've been there a hundred times. Which one of those am I supposed to just remember?"

"The first time. When you took me."

"Oh. Yeah."

Lip smiles a little. He can still see Ian holding his hand that day on the bus, when he had that green corduroy coat. They must've been five and six or something. Ian's hair was bright red then. Strangers used to always remark on it.

"Fiona was so mad you went that far," Ian says.

Lip had planned the trip so carefully, figuring out the route on the CTA map, the first time he'd ever gone anywhere that required a transfer. And it'd still been a bit of a hike once they got there, getting to the lakefront. At least it seemed that way on their short legs.

"I kept hearin' about it," Lip recalls, "readin' that we had this massive body of water right in our own damn city. I couldn't believe how big they said it was. I needed to see it in person, prove they weren't just makin' it up."

"You never trusted anyone."

Lip can't argue with this.

"Why'd you take me, though?" Ian asks, "That's what really pissed her off. I was never supposed to leave the block without her."

"Needed a witness to verify, I suppose. Plus, if it was as impressive as they claimed, I wanted you to see it too. Didn't seem right not to share."

"I thought it was the ocean," Ian says, smiling at his naiveté.

"It looked like it could've been."

The water had stretched before them as far as anyone could see, even two little boys from the Yards. There might as well have not been any more world beyond it. They'd reached the edge of everything.

"I used to tell people all the time you took me to the ocean once," Ian marvels, "I said that for years before I realized that couldn't be right."

Lip had been capable of anything in Ian's eyes back then. Maybe Monica was right, and Lip was a good brother. At least some of the time. At least he tried.

There were so many cigarette butts in the sand of the lakeshore. Whiskey bottles. Condoms. Even still, it was extraordinary. Neither of them could speak, and they barely said anything at all riding the buses back. Lip had taken Ian to the end of the Earth and concluded it would do.

"Sometimes I still even forget," Ian says, "Like, just for a second I still think I've been to the ocean before I remember that's not right."

Lip likes this idea. He couldn't give Ian the ocean, but he still managed to give him a couple little drops to carry in his pocket. That's not so small a trick to pull off.

They both look out at the lake now, lapping right up to the base of the porch steps. Wallace Street has disappeared, taking the new parking signs and the LaPortes' rails with it. The future and the past are laid out together before them, so vast you can't see from one side to the other with the naked eye. You just have to trust that another shore is out there, and you'll reach it at some point if you dive in.

"What made you think of all that?" Lip asks, tossing his cigarette butt into the water.

"Mickey said something about the lake this morning when I was feeding Yev, and it made me think about how cool it's gonna be when Yev gets to see it for the first time. I wanna be here to take him."

Lip's got another one of those lumps in his throat for some reason. He swallows with effort and asks, "Can I come too?"

"You have to," Ian replies, "How would any of us figure out the bus route without you? Need a genius to make any sense of those maps."

Another stupid lump. Lip swallows it, even as he smiles.

Then Ian stands and stretches. Lake Michigan dries up.

"Guess I should actually start working on that burner."

"Need any help?"

"Nah, think I got it."

"Yeah," Lip says, "I gotta leave soon anyway. Amanda wants to see some movie she heard about."

"Should take her out to dinner after, make up for that shitshow last night."

"Think she actually liked it."

"What's wrong with her?"

"Chick's got weird taste."

As Ian opens up the storm door to go in, Lip tilts his head back to look at him.

"How you doin'?" Lip asks.

Ian hesitates. Then he responds, "Better than yesterday."

"Can't ask for more than that."

Lip returns his eyes to the street, but behind him, Ian's still standing. He wants to ask Lip something again. Lip waits.

"How you doing?" Ian asks.

Lip stretches his legs out down the stairs and considers the answer to this question.

"I'll be fine," he decides.

"Can't ask for more than that."

And Ian is gone, the storm door slapping closed behind him.

Lip sits alone. He tries to think about where he might take Amanda out tonight. She does like to slum it, and he's an ideal host for that sort of thing. He pages through his knowledge of skeezy diners and back rooms, but none of it is really sticking. Too many faded half-images and details from the past keep crying out from the periphery. So he gives in to their wails.

He starts removing the boxes from his brain, laying them out in front of him one by one. First come the safety-deposit lockboxes, Karen and Mandy and the ghost of Lip's baby that never really was. Monica's got one of those boxes too and Frank and the kids who made Lip's life hell that one month he got sent alone to the foster care group home. He sets these down with a metallic clink.

He lays all of the rest of the boxes beside these. Some aren't safety-deposit boxes, some are cardboard shoeboxes, some are liquor crates; some are dented and beat up, some look almost new; some are bursting at the seams, but some are only slightly full. Ian, Fiona, Debbie, Carl, Liam, Kev and Veronica, Sheila Jackson, Mickey Milkovich, Carl Sagan, Kuz…Some are just places: the Cavalier, all those foster homes, the house they stole from Aunt Ginger, the van, the roof, the library, Polytech…

Lip sets the newest box beside them all. It's hardly filled and the permanent marker is still a bit wet on the label where surely she has written her own name so neatly for him: Amanda.

Then he sits back and surveys it all, this accumulated pile of junk that makes up nineteen years on this pale blue dot. It doesn't look like much outside the close confines of his skull. None of it looks so scary either under the bright afternoon sunlight. They're just people, just places, just memories.

With his mind clearer than it has been in ages, Lip appraises the lot of it. He starts to recognize patterns between the boxes, realizes that he could rearrange all these people and places a thousand times and reveal countless other patterns. He could drive himself to madness trying to map it all out and solve for the one correct solution.

His heart speeds up just thinking about this, so he stops. He stops looking for the patterns and instead picks up one of the less intimidating boxes and sifts aimlessly through its contents. It's Fiona's box. He finds a fossilized chunk of one of the lunches she made him for school, comes across the cool washcloth she used to put on his head when he was sick, pours over the GED scores she got just for him.

He puts her box back and picks up Ian's, so heavy with content he has to balance it partially on the step. Lip slides off the lid and takes out just a few little items: some action figures, a glass bowl, that kit bag stenciled with the name of Private Lip Gallagher. Then he pauses over a remnant, a torn-up piece of velour upholstery. He runs his finger through the nap, watching the line this makes, standing out from the rest. He looks at that mark on this scrap of fabric and thinks about the stories they used to tell. Even wiping them away to write fresh ones didn't make the old ones disappear. He still remembers them all.

Lip replaces the top on Ian's box gently and returns it to the pile.

He slides all of the boxes back into the cold storage of his mind. He does this a little less carefully than usual; he doesn't worry about whom he's stacking next to whom; he doesn't put all the lids on so tightly and doesn't bother with any locks.

Once everything is returned to where it belongs, it's just Lip on the porch still listening to the snow melt in the gutters and the Rubios' goddamn dog. He feels emptier, having taken all that out and then put it back. It's not a bad empty, though, not a loss. It's more just recognition that he's got a little more room to breathe up there than he thought. His hard drive is nowhere near capacity.

He looks down at the porch steps, every sliver of their old paint committed to memory, and realizes that he's also uncovered one last object underneath all the boxes he never noticed was there.

Lip always wanted a time machine. More than anything, that has been his desperate geek boy fantasy. But now it turns out he's had a fucking time machine right here with him all along. It goes forward and backward, no plutonium or flux capacitors needed. It operates perfectly at will, just never at the rate he wants it to or landing quite where he intended.

He smiles as he runs his hand over the steering wheel and sets the dial spinning wherever it may land. Then he climbs to his feet and goes inside to fetch Amanda. There are new memories out there, and he'll be damned if he doesn't find every last one.