Chapter Text
“You’re what?” Mandy shrieks, nearly dropping her beer.
“You heard me, now give me the remote.”
“Why the hell would you want to work at the place you got shot?” Mickey’s had some dumbass ideas in his life, torching his fourth grade teacher’s desk to cover up the fact that he didn’t hand in his homework, for one, but this has to take the cake.
“The fucker that did it is long gone.” Two weeks isn’t long gone in her book, but that’s hardly the most pressing issue. Mickey tugs the remote out of her hand and switches the channel to some extreme sports program.
“What the fuck are you going to do, stock shelves?”
“Security,” he grunts, and if Mandy didn’t know better she’d think he was blushing.
“Jesus. How the hell did you swing that?” Seven months pregnant and bedridden and Linda is still the scariest woman Mandy’s ever met.
“Your fairy boyfriend owed me a favor, that’s how. Now are you done with the fucking questions?”
Mandy’s blood runs cold and she says, her voice too loud in the room, “Ian’s not gay.”
Mickey snorts but doesn’t take his eyes off the TV. “He’s not,” she insists, a little desperate and a lot worried. “What the fuck did you do, blackmail him into this?”
“Jesus, I don’t give a shit, all right? As long as he’s not fucking you, why should I care.” With that he throws the remote back in her lap and storms off to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Mandy stays put for a few moments, shocked, before jumping into action.
She’s not really sure why she runs all the way to the Gallagher house since she knows her brother is sleeping off his hangover, but she’s panting and out of breath when she bursts into their kitchen nonetheless.
The house is quiet for once. Ian’s sitting at the counter, nose buried in a trig textbook like it’s been for weeks, and Lip’s poking around in the fridge. She casts a cursory glance to make sure no one else is around before blurting, “Mickey knows you’re gay.”
Lip turns around with an expression of mild interest but Ian doesn’t even react. With a huff she walks up behind him and slaps him over the head. “Did you hear me? Mickey knows about you.”
Ian blinks at her a couple times, and she wants to scream at him for being so thick. “Oh,” he says at last. “Oh. Uh, yeah. He does.”
“What do you mean, ‘uh, yeah’? My crazy, violent, homophobic brother knows you’re queer, and you’re not even a bit worried about this? He could kill you.”
Ian looks at Lip desperately, and finally he seems to be taking this seriously, but Lip just shrugs at him, the ever-present laughter still in his eyes.
Ian takes a deep breath and says, “Yeah. He’s known for a while, I guess. He, uh, caught me and Kash one time.”
Mandy blanches. “That’s why Kash shot him?”
“Huh? Yes! I mean, yeah.”
“Oh,” Mandy says, and sits on the seat next to him as the adrenaline starts to fade. It makes sense; she always thought it was weird that Kash would shoot her brother over a Snickers bar.
Lip’s trying to smother a grin behind his beer bottle, so she guesses this is the first time he’s heard this too. Ian’s watching her nervously, which she doesn’t get until she realizes he’s probably worried she’ll blame him for Mickey getting shot. Idiot, it’s Mickey’s fault for sticking his filthy nose where it doesn’t belong.
“Is that why you got him the job? Because you don’t have to, I can talk to him.”
“No, no,” Ian says hastily. “It’s fine, really. He didn’t tell anyone why he got shot, so I owe him one. It won’t be that bad.”
“Hang on, Mickey’s working at the Kash and Grab?” Lip asks, nearly choking on his laughter, but Ian shoots him a glare that shuts him up quick.
“Anyway, since you’re here, want to sneak into a movie? If I look at one more geometry theorem I’m going to blow my brains out.”
It’s an obvious ploy to distract her—Ian’s never been much for subtlety—but he’s smiling that sweet, unguarded smile at her so she grabs his hand and pulls him out the door before he can invite Lip along.
She doesn’t pay much attention to the movie, even though Ian lets her choose. Her mind is too full trying to process the fact that Mickey is voluntarily working with someone he knows is gay and doesn’t seem to care that much. It’s all too weird for her to handle, so she’s grateful when Ian starts whispering commentary into her ear, making fun of the actor’s hair and the stupid dialogue, and takes her mind off it like he always does.
**
The start of that summer is probably the closest thing her life has ever gotten to good, so of course it all goes to shit.
Ian’s always studying or working or fucking this new guy who he won’t tell her about, and she’s not jealous or anything, but she’s barely had sex since they started fake dating. And Lip, well Lip is always around, obsessing about his bitch of an ex, and when he’s not he looks at her in the way she wishes Ian would.
She fucks Lip for the first time at Debbie’s slumber party because they’re horny and bored. Ian’s right downstairs, and when she tells Lip to be quiet so he won’t hear them she knows she’s lying, and she thinks Lip knows it too.
A part of her wants Ian to catch them, just to see what would happen.
**
Mandy leans against a tree blowing smoke into the summer air while Ian runs laps around the field. He’s been going for almost an hour now and the light is starting to fade. She waits though, because he showed up at her house that afternoon, agitated and upset and hasn’t said a word since. He needs her there, even if he won’t look at her, and so she keeps waiting and smoking and watching him run until he finally collapses on the grass next to her.
“That general,” he says once she’s lit a cigarette for him and he’s taken a deep drag. “Came by the house to drop off an application. For Lip. Says they need smart people like him.”
Mandy clenches her fists in the grass but holds her tongue. Ian goes quiet again for a while, letting his head drop back into the dirt and staring blankly at the night sky.
“Y'know, the whole reason I started ROTC in the first place was because Lip never did it. I just wanted one place, one place where I wouldn’t be Lip's dumb kid brother.”
“You’re not dumb,” she says. Ian scoffs. He’s not, though. He can make her smile when all she wants to do is scream and rage and hurt someone, can make Mickey bark out a laugh like he’s a kid again, can make Lip soft and human. Mandy doesn’t know much, but she knows you’ve gotta be some kind of smart to make that many people love you; god knows she never could.
“Too dumb to get into West Point,” he says dejectedly, and she cringes because he’s never allowed to sound like that.
“Bullshit,” she says, grabbing his chin to force him to look at her. “Your GPA isn’t that bad, it’s only math you’ve got real trouble with, right?”
“Trig, yeah.”
“Well then I’ll help you,” she says confidently.
“Mandy,” he says, a trace of a smile on his lips, “you’re as bad at trig as I am.” It’s true, but she elbows him in the gut anyway.
“If that fat dumbass of a teacher can figure it out, so can we.”
Ian still looks troubled and he doesn’t meet her eyes when he mutters, “Lip says I can’t do anything by myself.”
He sounds wounded and sad, and Mandy wants to beat the shit out of somebody. She should have known this wasn’t about some general, not really. Lip is the only one who has the power to hurt Ian like this, and she envies and hates him for it in equal measure.
“Well who the fuck would want to?” she asks harshly. “Sounds dull as hell.”
Ian startles out a laugh and looks at her in that way that makes her heart soar. “You’re incredible, you know that,” he says softly, and before she can track the look in his eyes from fondness to mischief he lunges at her, tickling her under the arms until she’s tackled into the damp grass.
Her arms are pinned to her side and he’s straddling her, the moonlight framing his pale face caught mid-laugh. For a second she thinks he might kiss her, but the moment is so perfect that she doesn’t want him to, doesn’t want to be brought down to earth where this will never be as real as she wants.
Instead, she knees him in the groin and scrambles to her feet. The grass is soft and dewy under her toes and she giggles as she runs, waiting for him to catch her like he always does.
**
When they first started dating, Mandy wondered what it would be like to have Ian just for herself, with no one standing in between.
At this point she figures she’s never going to find out.
Lip and Ian aren’t talking anymore and it’s a weird feeling. When she fucked Lip, she thought this might happen, expected, even hoped for it. To drive a wedge between the brothers, not because she’s a bitch, but just because it’d prove that Ian cared enough about her to get jealous.
But even though they’re spending more time together alone, Ian’s still got his fuck-buddy on the side and she’s still stuck knowing that she’ll never be enough.
Or at least, that’s how she explains why she keeps letting Lip fuck her. Really though, it’s because Lip’s good in the sack and he’s close enough to what she wants that she can make do.
Lip isn’t nice like Ian is, or rather, not to her. To Karen Fucking Jackson he’s probably a prince, but Mandy’s just his distraction from the main event. Then again, Ian is only really nice to her, not just random girls off the street, and she doesn’t know what that means.
Lip’s smart and sarcastic and a bit of an asshole when he wants to be and they’ve really only got the one thing in common, but god knows she’s fucked guys longer for less.
Summer is winding down when it happens.
It’s the first time in almost a year, and for some reason that makes it worse.
Mandy closes her eyes and in the morning she gets up like always and goes over to the Gallagher house, where everything is noisy and chaotic and nothing like the coffin she lives in. Ian grins at her from where he and Lip are watching TV—they must have finally gotten over themselves—and gestures her over. And if she gets a bit too close, takes a little too much comfort in his strong arms, well, no one says anything about it.
And in Mandy’s book, if you don’t talk about something, it never happened.
(Except, of course, when the stick turns pink)
“Eight hundred and seventeen,” Ian says, throwing the last bill down on the counter and grinning up at her. “Those snickerdoodles were a hit.”
“My mom’s recipe. The only good thing that bitch ever did.”
“What are you gonna do with the winnings? That’s, like, two hundred extra.”
“And they say you’re flunking math,” she says, and he elbows her in the arm. They’ve been alone since Kev left over an hour ago, putting them in charge of cleaning up the mess in exchange for letting them use the bar for free. If it weren't for the sinking sensation in her stomach every time she remembers why they're here, it would be a perfect night. Ian's been off for the past few weeks: quiet and stoic, the brave little soldier until the end. She figured it had something to do with that guy he was seeing, but he won't say either way. Mandy hates secrets, but then she thinks of Lip and reluctantly surrenders her moral high ground. “Whatever, you keep it. Put it in that rat fund of yours.”
“Squirrel fund,” he corrects automatically. “Don’t be stupid, it’s your money. You should use it for, I don’t know, shoes or some shit.”
“Do I look like a fucking valley girl to you?”
“Yes,” he deadpans and ducks the rag she throws at his head. “You want me to come tomorrow?”
“Fuck off,” she says and turns away. “Hardly my first time.”
They don’t talk about it again, but the next morning Ian’s sitting on her porch, half-asleep with his head in his hands and she can’t help but smile. “Hey,” he says groggily when she slams the door shut behind her. He takes her offered hand and lets her pull him to his feet.
(He doesn't let go.)
Lip actually is nice to her for a while after that, treats her like she’s fragile, and she hates it so much she wants to scream. She thinks about the disgust on his face when he found out, about how he offered to ‘take care’ of her dad if that’s what she wanted, awkward and unsure, and about Ian and his easy smile and the way he still steals the last pizza bagel when they’re playing video games and she makes herself stop thinking altogether.
These fucking Gallagher brothers will be the death of her, she’s sure.
**
“Happy Thanksgiving, assface,” she says when she opens the door.
“Did I wake you up?” Ian asks, uncharacteristically nervous, his fingers twitching at the seams of his jeans. She wonders if he’s on something.
“It’s three in the fucking morning, what do you think?” He didn’t, actually. She was waiting for Lip to show up; they’d planned to have burgers and beer that night since her dad was out of town and he was still in his self-imposed exile from the Gallagher house.
“Karen had the kid.”
Mandy drops her arm from the doorway and takes a step onto the porch. “What, seriously?”
“Yeah. It’s Asian.”
“That slut. Is Lip all right?” She’s hated Karen Jackson since seventh grade, when she laughed in Mickey’s face when he asked her to the movies. And now she’d gone and fucked with Lip’s head too.
“Yeah. No. I don’t know.” For a second she panics; wonders if Ian found out about them, and that’s why he came here. But he doesn’t look angry, just freaked and a little red-rimmed around the eyes.
“You want a beer?”
They drink on the porch in silence, their knees brushing softly. Mandy thinks about where Lip might be, and if he’s doing something stupid. Hell, knowing him he’ll probably still be willing to marry the bitch and raise someone else’s kid. For all that he’s a genius, when it comes to that chick he’s a real dumbass.
“My mom slit her wrists,” Ian says after a while and Mandy chokes on her drink.
“What, tonight?”
“Yeah.” He’s picking at a ripped seam in his jeans and the way he’s avoiding her eye is an almost tangible thing in the air.
“Shit.” There’s not much to say after that.
“Yeah.”
She gets up after another long silence and heads inside. Ian follows her to Mickey’s room, where she rummages through the drawers and he hangs awkwardly in the doorway.
“How’s your brother doing?” he asks.
“Fine. Got eight to ten months. Fucker punched a cop. Got it.” She brandishes Mickey’s stash. “You need to get trashed tonight.”
Ian stares at her, a bit awed, like he can’t quite believe she’s real and her heart soars at the sight. “You’re the best fake girlfriend ever.”
“Don’t ever forget it.”
**
When he finally does find out, it’s not the epic blowout she'd expected. Anticlimactic is the word, really.
Her dad’s out of town for the weekend and she invites Lip over to celebrate the end of the semester that he flunked because he missed too many days. It’s a pretty lame celebration.
She didn’t lock the door because no one is stupid enough to break into the Milkovich house. Or rather, only two people are, and she never minds when they do.
“Hey, Mands—oh.” Ian freezes and stares at them for a second too long, his face as wide open as it ever is, then shuts the door, the lock clicking softly into place.
Mandy panics and looks up at Lip, but he’s still staring at the door. “Fuck,” he mutters, then repeats it again, louder.
He’s off of her and pulling his pants on faster than she could’ve imagined, leaving her with her knees up on the couch half-undressed and in shock.
“Wait here,” he orders sharply when she starts to move, and she has half a mind to hit him but he’s already out the door.
Lip may have had the head start, but Mandy finds Ian first.
He’s on the swings in the playground they adopted as theirs, kicking the dirt aimlessly. When she sits on the swing next to him, he tenses.
For the life of her, she can’t remember why she wanted Ian to find out so badly, why she was so desperate to see him jealous over her. Because the look on his face when he stood in the doorway was just about the worst thing she’s ever seen in her life, and she did that.
She can see it happening: she’ll be phased out as that bitch who almost came between the infamous Gallagher brothers, and with one stupid decision she’ll have ruined the only two good things in her life.
She opens her mouth but has no clue what to say. Part of her wishes she’d let Lip handle this, he always knows how to talk to Ian. It hurts, but she knows when it comes down to it, Ian will always choose his brother over anyone else, even her. Especially her, now that this has happened: bros before hos, and all that shit.
Before she can force herself to say something, Ian nudges her hand with his and offers his joint. He doesn’t take his eyes off the ground, but his lips quirk up when she takes it gently from his fingers.
“I think I’m fucking Jimmy’s dad,” he says, and it sounds like a peace offering.
“Oh,” she says, taking a deep drag. Then, “What?”
He looks at her then with that goofy smile of his, and it’s so fucking absurd that she laughs until her cheeks ache and her ass slips out of the swing.