Disclaimer: I do not own Mid90s.
"You know Mom used to smoke, right?" Ian rhetorically asked Stevie when he saw the pack of cigarettes sticking out of the latter's pocket. "She did a lot of stuff like that before you were around. She was a lot different when I was a little kid than when you were a little kid."
"What do you mean?"
"She was very different," Ian repeats, to put it simply. To put it more complexly, Dabney was totally fucked. Literally... "Guys coming in and out all the time. A lot of sounds."
Stevie was a product of one of those escapades, and presumably the reason she slowed down.
By that point, Dabney had already made progress with Ian in other regards, such as remembering his doctor's appointments and to have a well-balanced meal on the table by a certain time. He was just starting to feel like he actually had a mother when Stevie suddenly came into their lives and stole all her attention.
Stevie didn't exactly turn out to be a mama's boy, but they were close up until his teen angst set in, and because she didn't fuck up his head from the get-go, he'd been a lot more pleasant than Ian to be around, it seemed. It really wasn't fair. Ian couldn't be blamed for the way he turned out any more than Stevie could be credited for the way he did. It was Dabney's fault Ian was like this. She gave Stevie the better version of herself, so Stevie turned out to be the better son, and as an already fucked up Ian grew more and more hostile toward Stevie, Dabney grew more and more frustrated with and disappointed in Ian. It was all one giant feedback loop that Dabney started and Ian didn't know how to break.
At eighteen—the age that Dabney weirdly specified she herself was young enough to be breastfeeding Ian—he was still getting into shouting matches with her and wailing on Stevie for always being so perfect in contrast.
"What kind of sounds?" Stevie asked from his place beside Ian on the couch, not taking his eyes off his video game.
Of course, Stevie knew what kind of sounds...
"Fucking sounds."
After a pause, he said with the growing frustration he'd had toward everyone lately, "Fuck Mom," though he obviously didn't mean it in the context that Ian couldn't help but take it, and a traumatized expression crossed over Ian's face as he flashed back to memories of Dabney that caused intrusive fantasies to play out in his head.