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Ian can only sniffle when Lip comes out of the house with a frozen bag of peas and a box of tissues.
When the door opens, he can still hear yelling, first Frank, then Monica, then Fiona. He can hear Debbie crying from somewhere as well.
He’s 7 years old, and Lip is 9, holding the bag to his little brother’s black eye with one hand and using a tissue to shove up Ian’s bleeding nose with the other.
Monica had come home, angry and pregnant, as usual. Frank was already home, which was a shock, but unsurprisingly so drunk he didn’t even notice when he shattered the bottle off the counter and Fiona yelled at him, gathering the pieces with her bare hands.
There’s a bang and more yelling, and as the front door swings open, Lip gathers Ian in his arms, pulling him aside as Monica storms out, running down the road wailing as Frank yells some obscenities and throws a plate out the door.
Lip covers Ian’s head from the shards of ceramic flying off the sidewalk.
There’s one last shout from Fiona, a lot of crying, and suddenly she’s out the door too, slamming it behind her before sitting down next to her brothers, a tiny Debbie crying as she carries her outside.
Frank and Monica were never really around, not that it bothered anyone too much, because when they were, scenes like these were unavoidable.
“Are you okay? Is Debbie okay?” Ian’s voice is meek and small, the way he had trained himself to sound. Fiona turns and smiles at him, scoffing.
“I’m okay. Little Debs is okay too.” Fiona placed the toddler’s head in her lap, letting her crying fizzle out. Fiona gestures to the girl, and Lip exchanges places with her, cradling Debbie’s head in his lap, gently brushing his fingers through her hair while handing Fiona the now-thawing bag of peas and a handful of bloody tissues.
Fiona scooches to Ian, tilting his head to the side with her thumb and index finger, examining his eye, dark and puffy. The swelling went down with the cold, but it was still heavy and painful.
“It’s my fault. I got in their way.” Ian looked off to the street, avoiding eye contact with Fiona so his big sister wouldn’t see him cry.
“No, it’s not your fault.” She pulls his head back down and wraps her arms around him. Fiona was 13, just now coming into adolescence, and Ian hated that she couldn’t even enjoy it, because she was too busy parenting her younger siblings, with another on the way.
“You think Monica will come back tonight?” Ian asks.
Lip, still idly petting Debbie’s soft auburn strands. says “She’s probably off doing that meth-head down the road.”
Fiona elbows Lip in the ribs, careful to avoid disturbing their sister.
There’s silence between the siblings, as the night roars with police sirens and distant fights. Ian examines his family beside him, most rosy-cheeked from either crying or the cold, tiny scratches or nicks on their elbows and knees.
Then Ian lifts his hand to feel his busted lip from last week, to the bruise above his stomach from four days ago.
Frank was neglectful, vindictive, and cruel, but rarely directly violent. He would shout and insult, steal and lie, but he wouldn’t lay a finger on Fi, or Lip, or god forbid little Debbie.
Ian, however, wasn’t always so lucky.
When Monica got into one of her states, frantic and erratic, Frank became inconsolable. He couldn’t keep her from vanishing for nights, coming home disoriented and dazed.
So he drank, more and more and more. He drank so much that in a blur, a spilled glass or unfolded shirt from Ian looked a whole lot like a spilled glass or unfolded shirt from Monica.
They had the same piercing green eyes, soft nose and hardy cheekbones. Frank’s heart would ache just looking at the child.
And Ian, at 7 years old, wanted to be looked at. To be attended to, to be acknowledged.
So on the really bad days, like tonight, Frank did. Lip yelled and held onto his father’s arms, straining to pull them away while Fiona jumped from her position on the couch with Debbie, shoving Frank back and covering Ian’s quivering form with her’s.
Monica just covered her mouth, an unreadable blank stare present the whole time.
“Don’t worry about when Monica gets back.” Fiona reassured, hugging him a little tighter. “Let’s go inside.”
Ian can only shakily nod his head and the Gallagher children collect themselves off the steps, Fiona took the bag of peas, usually reserved for injuries but could potentially be dinner some night this week, and left Ian’s bloody tissues on the splintered hardwood.
Lip hoisted Debbie into his arms, who was already slipping in and out of consciousness. They crept through the door, careful of the creaking floor, before seeing Frank passed out on the kitchen floor as usual.
“Take them upstairs.” She directs Lip, who carries their sister, her head resting on his shoulder, in one arm, and takes Ian’s hand in his other.
Fiona just looks at Frank, disgusted. She goes and throws the now red-stained bag of peas into the freezer, before toeing Frank’s pale face with the tip of her shoe.
He groans softly and she wants nothing more than to kick his teeth in, but instead she crouches down and rolls him onto his side, like she does almost every night.
By the time she gets upstairs, Debbie is fast asleep in her bed, and Lip is sitting next to Ian in his. Ian’s knees are up to his chin, blood caking onto the dirty fabric of his shirt.
Ian doesn’t want to say it, he knows it’s not their fault. He knows without them, he’d be either even more miserable than he is now, or dead.
But the air feels suffocating, like he’s underwater all the time in this fucking house, drowning, gasping for air.
Before he can stop himself, Ian blurts out “why doesn’t Frank hit you?”
Fiona’s breath catches in her throat, and Lip just looks away.
“I don’t want him to… I just don’t know why he doesn’t.” Ian tries to backtrack, not wishing ill on his siblings, just expressing frustration at the circumstances- at himself .
Fiona swallows and looks down at the floor.
“I don’t know, Ian.”
Ian just blinks and whispers an “ okay ”.
“Go change into a clean shirt and get to bed, little red riding hood.” She tries to give a sympathetic smile, but the pain shadowed in her expression is palpable.
Ian pouts. “Red riding hood is a girl!”
Lip giggles and Fiona grabs a clean shirt from their dresser, handing it to Ian and ruffling his hair. “Then maybe you should dye your hair!”
“You’d just call me blonde riding hood!” Ian takes the shirt and sheds his bloodied one, pulling the clean one over his head. The siblings smile and laugh for the first time all night.
Moonlight barely pierces through the shitty blinds, Ian wide awake as he drifts to sleep, feeling the throbbing in his eye, and the dull ache of his bruised nose.
“I don’t know Ian.”
Yeah, me neither.
+
The next morning, Fiona holds Ian and Lips’ hands as they walk to school, like she does every morning.
Ian always hates this part, because Fiona has to go home to take care of Debbie, and Lip has to go to his 4th grade class, in the other building, leaving Ian alone for the day. And Ian really hated being alone.
But he pretends to hate it when Fiona pulls them both in for a hug and he pretends to gag when she kisses him and Lip on the head, before turning and heading back to the house. Lip punches Ian in the shoulder playfully and bounds off ahead of him, waving goodbye while he meets up with his friends.
So Ian stands alone, and trudges ahead, stopping to look at the dirty lamppost, the shine of the new steel faded, now only offering a murky reflection of the street nearby.
But even in the blurry, scratched metal, Ian can see the dark purple outlining his eye. He spends a second concocting a story for his teacher, maybe today he fell down the stairs, or was playing basketball with Lip and took it to the face.
Making it to the courtyard, he masters the art of blending in, unassuming and small. He spots a group of kids from Lip’s class, two or so years older than him. He knows they’d never mess with him, Lip was too liked by his classmates (mostly due to the fact he’d do their homework for them if they paid him and left Ian alone) to bother the little redhead.
That doesn’t stop the kids from pointing and snickering at him, though. Amongst them, the only one not laughing, has his back turned to Ian. He turns and Ian is met with intense blue eyes, angry and cold. His jet black hair is messy and unkempt, barely contained as it stuck up in all directions. He’s got a dirty band aid across his nose, matching his dirty clothes and hands, covered in what looked like motor oil and old blood.
Most notably, he had a black eye, perfectly matching Ian’s. Ian didn’t mean to stop and stare, but before he could stop himself, the boy took notice of him and pushed aside the group.
“The hell are you looking at , Gallagher!?”
Of course, a Milkovich.
Ian quickly turns tail and runs away, hands gripping at the straps of his hand-me-down backpack.
He stops at the door to the main building, panting and wondering. Maybe he fell down the stairs, too. Maybe a basketball got him in his face, too.
Maybe every adult had a least favorite.
+
It’s quiet, and Ian is awoken by his own fleeting memories, scratching at the back of his brain.
He thinks he smells blood, the old wood of the stairs, even the hardy scent of booze and puke from Frank.
So he inhales, trying to chase the scent as best as he can (why, he’s not exactly certain), before it’s replaced with something different. Something that smells like cigarette smoke, a little bit like sweat and a little bit like cheap soap. Under it, it’s almost delicate, like cinnamon or cloves, sweet even.
It’s far better than the scent he had grown used to in his memories.
Ian leans forward, burying himself in the smell, letting it spread a wash of comfort in him. He realizes his arms are wrapped around it, under fresh warm sheets, skin flushed against each other.
The other scent, the other memory, is fading, and Ian untangles himself from the bed and groggily makes his way to the bathroom, taking in the near eerie quality of silence of the West Side.
Splashing cold water onto his face, he leans over the sink, breathing heavy.
Monica was dead. Frank was dead. He would never really get an answer, even if he thought he knew. He would never really know. Never know why it was only him. Only ever really him.
Fuck, Ian was an orphan.
The reality settled like heavy sand at the bottom of the ocean, not stirred by waves, but only moved by soft current.
Everyone was an orphan where he came from. In fact, he was a late bloomer to the party, really.
Tears well up behind his eyes, and he curses himself for it. He puts a hand over his eye, fingers feather light over his eyelid, pushing below his crease and above his cheek, eyebags forming in his age and exhaustion.
He doesn’t remember the last time there was a bruise there- specifically from Frank. He remembers moments, but they fall together in a jumble of pieces.
Somehow, he remembers when he went to school with matching black eyes with the Milkovich boy.
Of course, that’d be the one he remembered.
Aside from the obvious, maybe in that moment, he realized everyone was someone’s least favorite. That the world was out to get all of them. He wasn’t special.
And it was comforting.
Ian sniffs and wipes the tears from his eyes, before noticing the figure in the mirror leaning in the doorway of the bathroom behind him. His arms are crossed, dark hair mussed from sleep, clad in his underwear and one of Ian’s tank tops.
“You okay?” He asks. It’s not prying or invasive, it’s dripping with concern and affection that makes Ian’s heart heavy.
Ian nods, clearing his throat and avoiding eye contact, even in the mirror. “Yeah. I’m good.”
The man isn’t convinced. “You don’t look good.”
Ian gives a condescending laugh. “Yeah, well, maybe I always look like shit.”
He’s quiet, only observing his husband.
Ian runs a tired hand over his face and turns, facing the figure. “When I was a kid, Frank would get super drunk. More drunk than I had ever seen him.”
The raven-haired man shrugs. “Yeah. I mean, water is wet, but yeah. I know.”
Ian smiles at that, and looks down. “I mean, really drunk.” He looks back at the mirror. “Sometimes he’d try to beat the shit out of me. I mean, Fiona and Lip never let him really hurt me, but it only got worse when our mom left. People always told me I looked so much like my mom.”
More silence. He knew his husband, of all people , knew a thing or two about shitty parents and shitty childhoods. But something in the pit of his stomach hurt at knowing his siblings were somehow saved from that particular evil. Ian got the black eyes, Ian got locked in the basement, Ian got his summer money from weeding yards taken from him.
“I’m not even Frank’s kid.”
The other man nods. “Yeah. Lip mentioned something like that.”
“Is that why he hated me the most?”
His husband moves to wrap his arms around his neck, a hand cradling his cheek with delicate ease. “Is that a question you actually want an answer to? Or are you just trying to justify why Frank was a shit awful person?”
Ian’s silent, just looking into icy-blue eyes, which are somehow the warmest thing he’s ever seen.
His thumb brushes Ian’s cheek under his eye, and the redhead takes his hand and places it over his.
“Do you remember when you came to school with a black eye?” He asks his lover.
Stark black hair, pale skin and bright blue eyes staring back at him like they did all those years ago. Free of bruises and blood.
“I came to school with a lot of black eyes.” Mickey Milkovich responded. Ian grips his wrist a little tighter.
“We both had black eyes that day.”
Mickey presses their foreheads together, breath warm on Ian’s face.
“Yeah? We were matching? That’s pretty gay.”
Ian smiles and pokes Mickey in the chest. “Shut up.”
Mickey laughs and tangles his fingers in Ian’s auburn locks. “You remember a day like that?”
Ian’s hands tighten on his waist, pulling him closer, almost trying to pull Mickey’s soul with him.
“I do. It was the first time I realized that most parents are kinda shit.” Ian says. “And it’s one of the many times you almost threatened to kill me. Since the pencil incident.”
“We really not letting the pencil thing go?”
“Absolutely not.”
Ian presses his lips to his husband’s, slow and loving, feeling the smooth skin of his face, his arms, free of any scars or bruises inflicted by the awful truth of being someone’s least favorite.
Pulling away, breathless, Ian admires how Mickey still chases his lips a little, cheeks pink.
“Frank is dead. So is Terry.” Mickey says, and Ian nods.
“And we can be sad about that. But we can also be happy.”
Ian nods again. Mickey is still stroking his cheek, going in to nuzzle into the crook of his husband’s neck, the slight stubble from his last shave scraping against his collarbone.
“If it makes you feel better, you’re my favorite.”
Ian tightens his arms around Mickey.
“It does.”