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Ian comes in with winter heavy in his jacket. It's the kind of cold that seeps out from clothes like tobacco smoke, smelling like pine trees and salted slush and dollar kebabs. Lip can trace Ian's whole day through the smell; from school and stolen cigarettes behind the portables, to the sweat of cadets, to the cumin and yeasty beer smell of the corner store, to the long February walk home.
"Hey," Lip says, leaning over his text book and out from the top bunk. "Debbie made meatloaf, there's some left."
"I already ate," Ian says, flashing a smile as he flings his jacket onto his bed. He pulls off his toque next and brushes his hair down quickly with his fingers.
"Did you take my lighter?"
Ian slides the zippo out of his pocket and tosses it to Lip. "My flint died," he says. "Sorry."
"I've got flint in the drawer," Lip says, fidgeting the lighter between his fingers like worry beads.
Ian strips off his t-shirt and yawns. Lip watches the clockwork of muscles in his back and freckled skin as Ian grabs shirts from the laundry, the veins standing out along his arms as he takes a deep smell from each and tossing them back in the pile. Ian roams through mounds of their shared clothes, sweaters and t-shirts so lost between them it's hard to figure out who owns what anymore. Ian huffs one of Lip's stolen Gap hoodies and pulls it on, a little too big in the sleeves but good enough. Lip can't help but wonder when Ian got so big and, at the same time, if his brother has always been this small.
"Godfather one or two tonight?" Lip asks, closing his textbook over his finger. "It's your turn."
Ian grins. "Not tonight, man. You got any deodorant?"
"In the bathroom, under the sink," Lip says. He pulls his finger away and closes the textbook. "Who's the guy?" Lip asks, sliding down from his bunk and landing with a thud and a creak on the old floorboards, bare feet cold and his boxers twisting around his hips, his shirt half-tucked into the elastic. He slaps Ian's shoulder jocularly, hard muscle where there used to be a teenaged boy. "Anyone I know?"
"Just a guy from ROTC," Ian says too quickly, leafing through the dollar bills in his wallet.
"Man, it's been a free for all since they got rid of don't ask don't tell, huh?" Lip says. He tugs a cigarette out of the package on Ian's night table, burns it with a lighter still warm from Ian's pocket
"You know it," Ian says, grabbing the cigarette from between Lip's fingers, taking a long drag before handing it back. "Hey, you got a five spot I can borrow?"
"Sure," Lip says. He digs through their bookcase and pulls out his thousand-page Encyclopaedia of Greek Myth. There's a wad of cash hidden in the hollow dug out between the entries marked Charybdis and Scylla. Lip folds a twenty into Ian's hand.
"I owe you," Ian says, shoving the bill in his pocket. "You seeing Karen tonight?"
"Midterms are starting," Lip says, gesturing to the mess of papers spread out over his sheets with a shrug. "I got those douchebags at Northwestern to pay one-fifty a paper."
Ian doesn't smile. "Call her, Lip."
"She's screening her calls again," Lip says quietly, bogarting the cigarette between his lips as he tugs the window open, sitting on the edge of Ian's bed and blowing smoke outside. "I've tried calling her. Twice."
"Twice," Ian says, shaking his head as he checks his jawline in the mirror, the barest flush of copper stubble. "Dude, her dad is fucking missing, probably living it up in some South American country by now. You're going to need to try harder than fucking calling her twice."
"After what that piece of shit did to his family? To Karen?" Lip says, hissing out a slip of smoke from between his teeth. "No fucking way am I gonna mourn that asshole. If he's gone I hope he fucking stays gone."
"Jesus Christ, Lip," Ian says, punching Lip's shoulder, hard enough it will bruise. He gives Lip a look of total gay impatience, a look Lip knows too well these days. Full of that acerbic edge Ian gets when he just does not fucking understand straight guys sometimes. "Not him. For Karen, man. She probably needed you. Dude, if you did that to me I'd be fucking pissed too."
Lip sits down on Ian's bed, just shrugs as he smokes his cigarette in long, deep puffs. He coughs into his fist, drawing out the last dregs of smoke from the bottom of his lungs, not sure he's got anything good to say that isn't a stream of swear words, a fuck you maybe not to Ian directly but to the whole damn thing. "Yeah, well."
"Hey, Gallagher curse, man. We're all smart as hell and dumb as shit." Ian grabs his coat and pulls it on, benefitting Lip with a condescending smile. "Call her. Keep trying, at least. Jesus Christ, Lip. Grow a pair."
Lip can't really hate Ian for it, rationality winning out in the end. It's not like he hasn't tried calling before but the deadweight of the phone feels like cold iron in his hands and all the things he wants to say somehow never include an apology, somehow always end up with Lip feeling somehow jealous that Karen's got one less shitstain in her life to stress about. Ian gives him a withering look, a look that seems to know all of that, a look that says that he's seen the hundred times Lip has picked up the phone and half-dialled her number.
"Hey, fuckwit," Lip says as Ian moves to leave. Lip wrenches a hand under the top bunk of his bed, grabs a couple condoms and tosses them to Ian. "Don't want you coming home pregnant, dude."
Ian laughs, pockets the condoms anyway. "Asshole."
Lip sits by the bedroom window and watches as Ian steps outside, locking the door behind him and ducking his hands into his pockets. Lip isn't sure why, but for a second he feels like calling out, opening the window and telling Ian to skip tonight, to just stay home and watch shitty movies in the dark with a joint between them like they used to do. He doesn't, of course, and Lip watches as Ian rounds the next corner and walks out of view. The itch burrows in Lip's fingertips and it lasts until he finishes smoking his cigarette.
It happens sometimes as Lip watches them – Ian usually, or Fiona sometimes – and all of a sudden feels this punch in his chest, this dull thud against his ribcage like a gunpowder squib. It's unplaced, for no real reason at all; in the way Fiona cracks the ice out of the tray, maybe, or the way Ian loops his laces around the ankle of his boot twice before tying them, these nothing moments suddenly made severe. It makes Lip stop still for a second, frozen solid as the sound of blood rushes through his ears and deafens him, the hair at the back of his neck prickling coldly. He can run from the police across a busy street with an ounce of weed stuffed in the back of his jeans like it's nothing, but it's those quietly missed beats, those murmurs of the heart that freak him the fuck out.
Lip jumps when Carl pushes the door open, stomping into their shared bedroom. Lip immediately brushes it off, rubbing the back of his neck once and tossing his cigarette butt out the window.
"What's up?" Lip asks.
Carl's face is dirty with smeared marker, ketchup in the corner of his mouth. He frowns at Lip. "Fiona says I need to go to bed."
Lip smirks, slamming the window shut. "Do you?"
"No," Carl spits out.
Lip walks around Carl, closing the door behind him. From his dresser drawer Lip picks out an old magnetic travel chessboard and a lukewarm bottle of Rolling Rock. "If you can beat me, you get the beer."
Carl splits into a grin. "Wicked."
They sit down on Ian's bed, cross-legged with the small red and black board laid out in front of them, little magnetic nubs with stickers overlaid to represent which piece is which. Lip lights up a new cigarette and slaps Carl's hand away when he reaches for it. "All right, how much do you remember from last time?"
"It's not a horse, it's a knight," Carl says, chewing at a dirty crescent of fingernail. "And don't lose your king."
"All right, good," Lip says, ruffling Carl's hair, buzzcut short and fuzzy like a hedgehog. "You're white which means –"
"I go first," Carl says, grinning down at the board.
"Good," Lip says, aiming his smoke at the ceiling as Carl slides a magnetic pawn two spaces towards the middle. "Now show me what you got. Everything to play for here."
Halfway through the first game Lip shrugs off the rules and cracks open the Rolling Rock. He shares it with his little brother, swilling mouthfuls of tepid beer while he teaches Carl how to castle his King.
At a quarter to one, Lip carries a half-sleeping Carl across the room to his bed, tossing a couple of blankets over him. Lip watches Carl roll and twist himself in the duvet until comfortable, watches him sleep for a minute to make sure he's staying put.
That thud still hammers in the back of Lip's chest for no reason at all, but after a couple games of chess, after making sure at least one brother is all right and where he ought to be, it mostly fades to a little secondary pulse in the caverns and bellows in the bottom of his lungs. Quiet enough that Lip can ignore it and fall asleep.
Waking up is easy. Lip's always been a morning person under the right circumstances: a cigarette, quick jerk in the bathroom sink, and a beer from the lukewarm minifridge Ian conned off his pederastic English teacher. He sits on Ian's empty bed and drinks and smokes and checks the texts on his phone while he hears his brother and sisters fight for the shower.
not gonna be home. make excuse? from Ian.
Lip smiles and throws his phone onto his pillow. He does the daily Gallagher ritual of sniffing clothes meant for the wash, finds one of Ian's camo t-shirts and a stolen pair of designer jeans still clean from the last parent-teacher conference.
The kitchen is empty but Fiona has marked it with good morning. A pot of coffee under the percolator, an open box of cereal, and a carton of milk with five bowls piled next to it. Lip pours himself a breakfast but ignores the milk, picking out handfuls of Golden Grahams by hand and shovelling them into his mouth between puffs of a morning cigarette.
Fiona comes downstairs next, her hair wet and pulled back in a ponytail. She pours herself a cup of coffee, smiles at Lip for a quarter of a second and says: "Where's Ian?"
"He had to drop by Kash's," Lip lies automatically. "Said it was important. Something to do with his shifts."
Fiona nods and takes a deep draught of her coffee, filching Lip's cigarette for a quick puff and handing it back comes barrelling into the room, like she's afraid to let him see her smoking. "You okay for lunch?"
"Wasn't planning on staying that long," Lip says, taking another handful of cereal. "First essays of the winter semester. Good money, Fi."
Fiona sighs. "Right. But you know," she's in a rush, tossing sandwiches made last night into paper bags, so the speech is short, "this is an opportunity and yada yada don't mess this up for yourself, Lip. I mean it's basically a free ride. You know my policy on shit that's free."
"Jesus, college," Lip murmurs, taking a drink from Fiona's coffee cup. "High School was harder."
"Then show them," Fiona says, grabbing Carl by the neck of his sweatshirt as he runs by her and wiping toothpaste off of his cheek, "how much of a joke they are by doing really well, all right?"
"That's the most cynical do-your-best speech I've ever heard," Lip says, getting up from the table and pulling on his winter coat, fur-lined hood casting him in shadow.
Fiona gives him that look, tempered a little when she smiles. It's different than the way she smiles at the kids. It's a private, teasing smile, the kind they used to have when they were little and the only two children in the house, when Ian and the rest of them weren't even a spark in Frank's bloodshot eyes. Lip knows she's only using it to manipulate him, but he doesn't mind when it's Fiona, when it's that smile.
"You need the phone?" Lip asks, shoving his feet into already laced boots. He tosses the phone over before she even says anything, Fiona catching it one handed.
"Have fun at school," Fiona says as Lip leaves by the back. He flips her the bird as he closes the door and Lip can hear her laughing through the open kitchen window as he treads down the stairs.
Lip attends his eight-thirty class on Jacobean Shakespeare but skips his ten o'clock history of philosophy. It's a moral compromise with Fiona, getting an A paper on Othello but dodging out of college before the quiz on strawman arguments.
He buys Marlboros at the student union and a black coffee, holding it with fingerless gloves, already exhausted from the respectable college life that floats around him like the flotsam of a cappuccino. Buying paninis, studying in groups, signing up for ultimate Frisbee in the spring. Like a half-reformed alcoholic with a bottle of whiskey, Lip can't help but feel like he'd give it all up for a night of black eyes and misdemeanors. Thievery prickles in Lip's cold fingers like a buzz, like his own personal incurable illness no amount of mixers with the Pi Epsilons or karaoke in the Westfall auditorium will fix.
There's no plan yet, but Lip wanders back to his old high school. Bag heavy with stolen text books for classes he isn't in and an essay marked 49 out of 50, Lip trudges the forty blocks from college to his alma mater, knocking slush from boots against trees every mile. A cigarette warms his fingers for ten minutes, burned slowly with the smoke bolstered by every fogging breath while Lip thinks of every short con he knows that requires a pair.
Lip rounds the school to the smoking section but Ian is nowhere to be seen. Mandy sits alone on the picnic table with her raccoon make-up and tussle of hair three different colors, skiving off whatever class to smoke cheap cigarettes and vodka out of a water bottle. It's snowing a little, an early dark shadowing the day with grey clouds, streetlights glowing with a halo from the spastic flurry of ice like the sky is clenching its fist around him.
"Hey," Lip says, shoving his hands in his pockets, snow built up on his shoulders and on his hair before he shakes his head.
"Lip," Mandy says, smiling. She's sitting on a picnic table, one leg crossed over the other and her foot bouncing gently. "Flunk out of college already?"
"Yeah," Lip asks, grinning as he kicks his boots free of slush again. "Hey, you seen Ian around?"
"Not since last night," Mandy says, raising a thin eyebrow. "He didn't show up for school today. Why?"
"Last night? Where was he last night?" Lip says, holding out a hand for Mandy's cigarette, a ring of candy pink lipstick staining the filter. He takes a puff, holds it in the cupped shell of his hand like a joint. "When last night?"
"I dunno, he came to the party at around nine, I guess," Mandy says, clicking her fingers in demand of the cigarette.
"What party?" Lip hands the cigarette back, coughing into his fist, the menthol prickle of her Kools illuminating the back of his throat.
"Jesus Christ, you working for the goddamn police?"
Lip doesn't smile this time. "I'm not fucking around, Mandy. You know something you're not telling me."
"Hey, fuck you," Mandy says, still smiling, her eyes darting to and fro. "He left the party. Whatever. The fuck, dude?"
"I swear to God, fucking tell me what you know," Lip says sharply, no mood to play. It's hard not to indulge the darkness, the hundred ways Ian is helpless, screaming something out, lost out there and unnoticed. "I'm not fucking around here."
Mandy rolls her eyes, heaves her shoulders once. "It was a welcome home party for my brother. Mickey got out of prison early. Like, it's fucking bullshit, anyway. Mickey'll be back there in three weeks, tops. Ian just came to see him. I think they knew each other from, like, whatever. Ian just wanted to drop by, like you fucking care anyway," Mandy says, smiling slightly at that. "He was just, like, a good fake boyfriend, you know? He stayed for a couple of shots, smoked a joint with Mickey, and left at eleven when the puking started. Just split, with Mickey, I guess. Dunno where he went after that. Happy?"
"Thanks," Lip says, heaving his bag back over his shoulder and walking away, calling over his shoulder: "If you see him, get him to text me, all right?"
"Fuck you too," Mandy says sweetly, lighting a new cigarette off the dying orange coal of her last.
Lip stands in front of Karen's house for an hour. He holds his fist near the door but doesn't knock. He smokes two cigarettes quickly, deciding twice that after the last breath of smoke he will knock and say the things he ought to say. He's not really sure what those things are, doesn't know exactly what he's sorry for, but as always he just wants to make it okay. Lip has always taken more stock in being okay than being right.
After stomping out the second cigarette, he stands with his hand poised near the door for five minutes. Ideas shoot through his head like roman candles, a trail of stumbling words that fade out with a pfft as they reach the apex.
After what feels like an hour, Lip drops his hands back in his pocket and starts to walk home.
His phone beeps – asshole asshole asshole, from Karen, 2:25 p.m. – and Lip turns around fast enough to see the curtains of Karen's bedroom swish together.
Halfway home and another kick of slush against the tree, Lip stops to watch a bus turn the corner and lumber slowly up the street, its exhaust bellowing like the pipes and valves of ancient lungs. Lip stands there as it crawls towards him, stopping at traffic lights but coming towards him slowly, inevitable, like some kind of rusty sphinx suddenly offering strange questions. Without thinking, Lip fiddles in his pocket for the right change and he boards the bus, standing by the front door as it heaves its leviathan weight past his house, burping noxious clouds out of the tail pipe. It's hard not to feel like Jonah swallowed into this steaming and heaving belly of the whale
The heating on the bus comes through vents along the windows, smelling like diesel and musty coats. Lip watches his house crawl by like the set piece of an old film, the rolled canvas background of his neighborhood being handcranked by the props department of his life in this static car chase.
Lip feels this heavy, heavy weight sink in his chest like sand bags lowered down from the catwalks just out of sight. It's something a lot like guilt, or maybe dread, dread of going back home and finding the same broken china, the same thousand-count puzzle of his life missing all its edge pieces, just these little lumps filled in haphazardly – blue sky, the cracking foundations of a house, the half-finished faces of the people who live there.
Lip knows it's guilt, knows because, fuck, this is what Frank does, dad does, fucking Frank does. He skips out to find a better time, coming back home to find there is no better time at all. And here he sits, in the bloated metal shell of the bus gaining momentum on the freeway, Lip finding those same reasons not to come back home, to just be gone a bit longer before he has to search through the puzzle for the pieces that fit neatly into the others.
The history building of Lip's college is an old thing, six stories tall and officially a Chicago heritage landmark making it ineligible for modern conveniences like elevators and a heating system that actually works. Lip's designated half-locker is on the fourth-floor, a neat rectangle situated between lectures on the French and Russian revolutions.
Digging under layers of sweat-stained wifebeaters and trackpants, stolen textbooks and empty plastic bottles of vodka, Lip finds a plastic baggie stuffed with a half-ounce of fragrant green Humboldt county. Shoving it into his pocket, he makes for the library.
Lip breaks up the weed, rolls it in TOP papers, and smokes the joint in the library bathroom, perched on a toilet and blowing smoke towards a half-open ceiling window. The weed isn't great and Lip didn't do the best job of sifting out the seeds, the odd one going off like a popcorn kernel near his makeshift cardboard filter, sometimes shooting to the back of Lip's throat and hitting like a flaming meteor. He coughs it out and smokes the joint down to the last sixteenth inch of skunky smoke. The roach hisses when it hits the water and spirals clockwise as Lip flushes it down, the drifting, half-focused smile of weed already creeping up his spine and radiating there like a radio transmitter.
For the next three hours Lip writes without pause. The words flow like a liquid, dripping down from his frontal lobe and through the medulla, rushing along his spine to open like a river down his arm, wrist, fingers, and out the pen. Lip doesn't even think when he writes, just moves his hand over the paper, absolutely weightless and almost thoughtless, his head strangely clear and light. It's as real as the trance of the ancient sibyls, wafting the toxic fumes in their Greek caves and letting the words run out of them like blood, a stream of thought that congeals into prophecy. The essay organizes itself almost on its own, paragraph after paragraph translating the numbers station noise in his head into a treatise on Thoreau and transcendentalism. Lip barely feels like he's part of the process.
By seven o'clock he's got two and a half essays written and the buzz begins to wear off. The words ebb, then stop altogether, Lip's pen poised midway through a burst of thought on realpolitik and the Berlin Wall. Lip stretches and twists in his chair, a little sluggish as he climbs back into his body from his temporary vacation, finding that his back aches from how he was stooped over the desk, his wrist cramping in twining pulses, and a firm indent in the meat of index finger where his pen dug in like a trench.
Lip gets a drink from the water fountain, checks his cellphone, and stands next to the Dewey decimal cards limply. He's already three hundred dollars up which is good enough for a day's work. He could go home now. He could make something to eat and figure out where Ian is and help Fiona make lunches for Carl and Debbie. And then he could sit in his darkened bedroom and wonder why he can't make anything right, why – even at his best – Lip feels like nothing more than a single sandbag propped up against a flood, or a shitty threadworn tourniquet trying to stem the flow of blood from the burst artery of his family.
Lip goes back to the library bathroom and books himself another ticket overseas with rolling papers and sticky, acrid weed.
When Lip gets home, just before midnight, he feels mostly straight. His head isn't spinning anymore, and the creeping paranoia of being followed, spied on by the other commuters on his bus, has mostly disappeared to the odd glance over his shoulder as he walks the two blocks home.
The kitchen light is on but the house is quiet. Lip hangs up his jacket and kicks off his boots, the wet cuffs of his jeans dragging under his socks and squeaking against hardwood.
Fiona is the only one around, sitting at the kitchen table with her head in the crook of her arms, fast asleep over a stack of paperwork that looks like taxes. She's a body in the yellow interrogation of the kitchen light, the scene of some sad, quiet crime. A beautiful girl with black ink on her fingertips like blood.
Lip clicks his lighter into life, bites down on the filter of a cigarette and pulls out a bottle of Rolling Rock from the fridge. He sits at the table and drinks, smiling as his sister snores softly, her ponytail bobbing ever so slightly with each breath.
"Hey," Lip says gently. And then, louder: "Fiona?"
Fiona jerks awake, pushing herself away from the table like a bolt, like she was just resting her eyes. "Jesus, Lip. What time is it?"
"Midnight," Lip says, handing her the beer automatically. She takes a big swig, then rubs her eyes. "Go to bed, Fiona."
"No, I've got to –"
Lip refuses when she offers the beer back. "I'll finish up here. Just, go to bed."
Fiona looks like she's going to argue. Her exhaustion colors her face, purple like bruises in the bags under her eyes, her skin pale and cheeks only just now shocked into a blush as she takes another swig of the beer. "I –"
"Let me do this, okay?" Lip says quietly, squeezing Fiona's hand for just a second. "Let me do this one thing, all right? Jesus."
Fiona sighs, and it's a sigh Lip's heard before. It's the kind of sigh too old for her, the sigh of mothers and grandmothers, the exasperated huff of pain that keeps women like her up at night. Lip pictures old Sicilian women in black scarves burying their sons, or the strange and drained mothers of serial killers explaining almost tediously their mistakes during an interview on 60 Minutes. It's the sigh of resignation, of realizing the extent of their failure in the help offered by others. Fiona manages half a smile and Lip feels his guts tighten up like tuned guitar strings, shucking the breath right out of his lungs like an oyster.
"Okay," Fiona says finally, standing up and patting the top of Lip's head a few times, fading out until she's just wrapping her fingers in his curls, swaying a little on the spot. "I'm sorry –"
"Forget about it," Lip says, dragging the tax forms across the table and scanning them quickly. "Goodnight."
"Night," Fiona says, cupping the back of his head gently before letting go.
"Hey, did Ian come home?" Lip asks suddenly as Fiona heads to the stairs.
"Not yet," Fiona says. "He said he was with you. Wasn't he?"
"Oh, yeah," Lip says, waving her off quickly. "He said he, uh, wanted to go to Mandy's before he went to bed. I thought he might have come home before me. Never mind, I'm sure he'll be home soon."
Fiona looks at Lip appraisingly, her eyes tightening in the darkness. "Is he okay, Lip?"
Lip can't even lie about that one, says the truth before he thinks maybe he ought to spare her right now. "I – I don't actually know."
Fiona gives that same, sinking sigh and shakes her head. Her shoulder stoop and her hands hang limply at her sides like she's been drained out, a withered girl pressed between the pages of a heavy book. "What about you?"
Lip shrugs, looks back down at the papers lying on the kitchen table, fiddling with Fiona's pen, spinning it around his fingers like a drumstick. "Sure."
"Good night, Lip."
"Night, Fiona."
The sound of her bedroom door closing, the silence ballooning at first and then settling down on him like a sheet being shaken out.
The threat of worry creeps up on him, but Lip swallows it down. His whole life he's done a pretty good job of keeping worry quiet, why stop now? He wants to text Ian, just wants to hear from him at the very least, his second half in faggotry and kindness. He just wants to see Ian right now, and he can't help but want it no matter how cool he wants to play it. Lip flicks the pen between his fingers and tries to forget himself.
And then his phone beeps with a text message from Mandy. hes with mickey i guess dont tell him i told you
Lip replies. with?
Mandy. fuck u
Lip puts down his phone and picks out a shiny new Marlboro that he smokes in four minutes flat.
Lip doesn't sleep at all that night. A persistent smoker's cough keeps him awake until he just gives up the ghost, says a silent fuck it and goes to shower at five-thirty in the morning. He masturbates quickly in the pounding hot water, an angry kind of jerk off with his head pressed up against the tile wall and thrusting quick and sharp into the squeeze of his palm. He punches his knuckles hard against the tile, taking the idea of self-abuse half-seriously, fucking his hand and finding it hard to catch the breaths that come by. He bites the thin webbing of skin between his thumb and forefinger as his chest burns red, squeezing his eyes closed tight as he comes against the tiled wall with an angry little fuck.
Dressed and shaved, Lip eats a bowl of dry cereal at the kitchen. He sits there reading a week old newspaper the sun just now heaving itself over the horizon, a pallid burst of silver light catching everything blue and grey.
Lip sits there and eats. And then he stands up, puts the bowl in the sink. He pulls on his jacket and heads out into the cold, pubertal dawn. He walks over to the Milkovich house with its yard strewn with dog shit and empty beer bottle and the mangled wreckage of shopping carts. Lip sits on the hood of Mickey's car, draws his knees up to his chest, smokes a cigarette and waits.
At eight-thirty, Mickey comes stomping out of his house. He's only dressed in jeans, and with a sick twist in his gut, Lip can see the red marks on his collar and throat from across the street. Lip sits where he is, smoking his fourth cigarette of the morning and smirking around the filter.
"The fuck do you think you're doing, Gallagher?" Mickey asks, his heavy leather boots cracking the ice-slick puddles, crashing through ice and slush.
Lip stands up on the hood, the crackle like theater-lightning as metal buckles in dimples under his feet. "Hey, Mickey."
"Get the fuck off my car, asshole" Mickey says, the chalk-white muscle and skin of his shoulders bristling, the veins in his arms like roadways and rivers from bicep to wrist. In a distant, smoky, stoner way, Lip almost finds Mickey good looking, or at least someone who might provide an eager boy or girl with a decent fuck. His arms and his flat stomach and the condescending leer that might do it for some people. Might do it for Ian, at least. The tingle of adrenaline shoots through Lip's stomach, blossoming in his chest like a tongue of flame, a solar flare.
"Aw, Mickey," Lip says. He jumps off the car, smiles right in Mickey's face, close enough to smell the whiskey, the lemon-lime of Mickey's shaving cream, and the buried smell of his little brother's cologne. "You fucking piece of shit."
Lip barely gets in the first punch before Mickey is twisting away. He swings at Mickey's right temple, but comes in closer to his jaw. Mickey jumps back with a shout, the blow glancing near his chin as Lip aims a second punch, swinging at air. Mickey goes for a knee in Lip's stomach but Lip grabs his hair, yanks Mickey's head back and jabs a fist into his kidney.
"Jesus Christ," Mickey huffs, the breath half-thrown out of him. He folds over and glares up at Lip, taking a few steps back. His bottom lip is split open and shining with new blood.
"You stay the fuck away from him, you fucking hear me?" Lip says, almost smiling, an elated kind of psychosis going through him, the itching, almost horny need for an iron whiff of blood in the air. This feels good right now, too fucking good. Lip's gotten into more fights than he can count, but he likes this one, really does, loves that he's got a brother on the other side of it, that his knuckles are stinging for a reason.
"Who?" Mickey asks, holding his ribs and managing to right himself with a hiss. From the flash of panic in his eyes, Lip knows he's right.
"My brother, you fuck," Lip says. "Or do you want to know people you take it up your ass from a fifteen year old boy?"
"Lip?" Ian's standing in the doorway of the Milkovich house. He's mostly dressed, just barefoot and the button of his jeans undone, his belt loose and open, his shirt open to the sternum. He looks frantic, maybe kind of angry too. Lip smiles at him, what he hopes is a winning grin.
And then Lip feels his face explode. For a second it feels like he got shot at, struck by a firecracker, this blinding shock in his cheek bone followed by a wet foamy burst at the bridge of his nose. His head slams back against the metal door of the car and he slumps to the ground, too dazed to feel anything at all, the brilliant silver shrapnel of stars swimming behind his eyes.
Ian is halfway across the road before Lip even realizes what's happened, that his face hurts and there's copper in his mouth and Mickey is massaging his knuckles with a satisfied grimace. Lip touches his face and comes away with a palmful of red.
"You tell him to shut his fucking mouth," Mickey says to Ian, cupping his cheek roughly as his thumb dirties up a line of Ian's cheek. "Jesus Christ. You fucking Gallaghers."
"Get the fuck out of here, Mickey," Ian says quickly. "Dammit. You didn't have to fucking hit him, Mick."
Mickey shrugs and grins out of the corner of his mouth. "Motherfucker started it. You coming over tonight?"
"Yeah, whatever," Ian says quickly. "Fuck off, man."
Lip struggles up to his feet. Ian gets an arm under his shoulder, helps him up, his breath clouding in angry huffs. Lip leans his weight back against the car and catches up to his racing heart as Ian pulls off his t-shirt, balling it up and dabbing at Lip's nose. It tastes like his mouth is full of pennies, the iodine and iron sting of his blood making Lip's head spin. Somehow all of it feels okay, just about right, really, no matter how fucked up everything is. The boxer's whiff of blood, the smell of doing something instead of fucking waiting for it to happen.
"Please tell me you're not fucking in love with that guy," Lip says as Ian soaks up the blood with his shirt.
"Shut up and tilt your head forward," Ian says, grabbing Lip's hair and tugging him to the right position.
"I thought you were supposed to tilt back," Lip says, watching as blood drips from his mouth, his chin, the tip of his nose. It drops on the snow, a Jackson Pollock of red and white, an artist's slash of gore spattering Ian's bare feet.
"If you want to drown on your own blood, sure," Ian says, his hand resting on Lip's back, his fingers scratching kind of angrily, kind of possessively at the top of his spine. "Jesus, you are such a colossal fucking asshole. You are – fuck, Lip."
"You know he's using you, right?" Lip says, a little muffled, the wet red bundle of Ian's shirt held over his mouth and nose. "You know he's just going to fuck you over –"
"Shut up," Ian says, sighing. "Jesus, Lip. Fuck. You are – I don't even fucking know. You are such a fucking shit sometimes. Why'd you even do that?"
Lip shrugs limply. "Tired of not being able to do shit, man."
"You think this was helping me?"
Lip shrugs again. "At least you know I'd do that for you, huh?"
Ian laughs, then punches Lip in the shoulder, hard.
Lip leans forward and the blood drains away, Ian rubbing his back and turning the shirt over in his hands as the blood soaks white cloth red. Ian is still barefoot and keeps moving from foot to foot, frozen pavement and patches of ice. "Go get your shoes. I can take it from here," Lip says, taking the shirt from Ian. Lip manages to wriggle himself out of his jacket by the time Ian comes back, no longer barefoot but shirtless and scowling, his hands stained ochre with dried blood.
"Still an asshole," Ian says, taking the coat and pulling it on.
"You love him?" Lip asks.
Ian is quiet for half a block. "Keep the shirt against your mouth. You can only drink a cup of blood before you wanna puke."
"Jesus Christ," Lip says, spitting blood in the slush. "You stupid dumb ass little gay kid. I swear to god, the guys you like sometimes. If I was gonna be gay, I'd do it right. Ryan Gosling and Sean Connery and shit. Fucking Mickey?"
Ian looks over at him, his anger fizzing out, bubbling over to a wry kind of smile, a hated kind of affection. "You owe me a shirt."
"You know," Lip says, trying to make it sound as casual as he can. "If he does anything, absolutely anything shitty to you, I'll have his fucking head, right? Like, I will not stop"
Ian laughs at that, throwing an arm over Lip's shoulder. "You go ahead and try. Jesus, I'll run out of shirts."
Lip walks to Karen's house just after ten o'clock at night, his right nostril stuffed with Kleenex, his mouth tasting like salt and blood and beer. His eyes are bright and his head quick and more alive than it has been for weeks, driven by smell of dried blood and the half-lesson of doing shit instead of letting shit just happen.
He stands outside her bedroom and tosses pebbles at her window. Lip can't help but feel a pleasant twinge in his chest when she doesn't open her window, but rather, thirty seconds later, comes out the front door. Like she was expecting him.
"What happened to your face?" Karen asks, her arms folded over her chest. The piercings are gone, the words written in pen and needle hidden under the long sleeves of her sweater.
"The reason I didn't –" Lip takes a step forward, but Karen shies away a bit so he stays where he is. It's starting to kind of snow again, the pitiful little fuzz of ice in the air swelling the glow of the streetlamps, never really seeming to touch the ground. Lip takes a deep breath and tries again. "I'm gonna be honest, all right? I'm not fucking sorry."
Karen narrows her eyes, tightens her arms over her chest. "Great. Thanks for coming over, Lip."
"I'm not sorry because I – I'm jealous, all right?" Lip says, sounding more desperate than he ever thought he was. His voice comes out strained, slick blood and smoke-scratch at the back of his throat. "I fucking wish my dad disappeared to fuck knows where. I fucking dream about it. So when I heard, I – I couldn't even pretend to feel bad for you. After what that asshole did to you, I – I don't know, all right? I didn't know what to say other than congratulations. Fuck."
Karen chews on her bottom lip, but she doesn't move, just nods a little. "Okay."
"But I am sorry I – I'm sorry I didn't figure out what you – needed, I guess. I'm sorry for that. And I still don't know what you need, or what you even fucking feel anymore. I just know that he was ruining your fucking life, and I know what that's like, Karen. And I know what it is to hate someone you're supposed to love. And I know how hard it is to even look at yourself in the mirror sometimes because all you see is fucking him. And I know you're terrified of turning in to someone like him. I know what that's like, okay?" Lip spits and it comes out pink. He doesn't know why but he chokes on those words in a strangled hiccup, what they cling in his throat like thistles. It's not what he planned on saying, it's just what he says, really. "But that's not how it's gonna be, okay? You're not going to turn out like him. In fucking seventeen years you're already twice the person he ever was." Lip shrugs, shaking his head and wiping his cheeks quickly, severely. "That's it. That's all I wanted to say. I'm done, all right?"
Karen stands there for a minute, chewing her bottom lip until it's swollen and pink. Then she takes a few steps closer, walks slowly towards Lip. Her eyes are bright like wet jewels, the tip of her nose winter-red. The spray of snow catches her black hair, clings to her thick eyelashes in beads. She leans forward and kisses him once on the mouth, a long kiss shared between blood and chapstick, closed eyes and a lingering hiss on the part like maybe, maybe there ought to be more. "Okay, Lip," she says in a muffled breath, and then turns away, wiping her face as she walks back to the house.
"Karen," Lip calls out after her. "Can I – can I call you sometime?"
Karen turns and watches him for a long time. She sniffs, draws her hands up into her sleeves. "Maybe. I guess so."
Ian gets home at about two in the morning. Lip is dozing, half-stoned on the couch in the living room when he hears the scrape of the front door, the heave and push as Ian forces it closed, sliding the deadbolt in.
There's the rustle of his jacket, the clunk of his boots as he kicks them off. Lip rubs his eyes and sits up on the couch as the smell of diesel and the sour tang of halite comes in with the winter air. Ian shuffles into the kitchen in socked feet, drinks milk out of the carton and wipes his mouth against the back of his hand.
Lip has to stop the first two sentences that come to mind, reminding himself of the half-worded promises, the cheerful fuck-yous they made concerning Mickey and late nights and condoms. Where the fuck have you been? becomes You off fucking that lowlife again? becomes, "Hey, isn't it past your bedtime?"
Ian gives him that same shit-eating grin, half I'm-getting-more-sex-than-you, half you-know-me-too-well. "You stoned?"
Lip shrugs, hands the pinched half of his joint to Ian, who flops down on the couch next to him. The taxes are finished and arranged in a neat pile on the coffee table next to two empty bottles of Bavaria and an ashtray filled with stubbed Marlboro filters. Ian takes the lighter and the joint, sucking in a lick of flame and an acidic mouthful of weed that he coughs out in little bits.
Lip slides deeper into the couch cushions, his high mostly tempered to a kind of double-gravity; his arms are too heavy to move, his eyes half-closed. "Where've you been?" Lip manages to ask.
Ian just laughs. "Never mind. How's the nose?"
"Hurts," Lip murmurs, touching his fingers gently to the tape and gauze spread over the bridge of his nose. "Hey, I talked to Karen tonight."
"How'd that go?" Ian asks, taking another hit, a hitched string of sucking breaths, a stuttered train of smoke sent out in rings from the round of his mouth.
"Good, I think," Lip says, breathing heavily, smiling a little in the corner of his mouth. "Yeah. Good, maybe."
"Did you tell her you love her?" Ian asks, smirking.
"Shut up," Lip says, knocking the side of his head against Ian's shoulder. It's the short burst of questions, that staccato rhythm of their usual conversations, back to their familiar patterns despite the blood under their fingernails and the bruise blooming around Lip's right eye. "No, I didn't. Well, sort of, but not in those – exact words, I guess."
Ian laughs, settles deeper into the couch, resting his head on Lip's shoulder as he gets fuzzier, blurred in the cotton breath of weed and exhaustion. "You're such a faggot, man."
"Fuck you," Lip says with lazy affection, taking the joint from Ian's fingers and smoking a thin breath.
By the time he finishes it off, flicking the dead roach into the ashtray, Ian is already asleep. Lip twists and fidgets a failed kiss against Ian's hairline, coughing out the last of his smoke and laughing.
Fiona's going to give them hell tomorrow morning but Lip just lets himself sleep right there. It's a hell of a lot of worry these days, and what's he got to show for it? Bruised knuckles, a face too sensitive to touch. A girl's chapstick on his mouth, and her anger turning into something else. An asshole of a brother who wipes the blood from your face even though he's standing barefoot in snow. A sister like a saint who smiles like she used to, sometimes. It's enough, maybe. To be honest, that night is a quiet goddamn victory, a night of bloody, stoned, goddamn miracles. It's a house full of siblings, and everyone is doing what they ought to, and everything, at least for the next seven hours, is in its right fucking place.