AN: I suppose this ought to be rated M, but we all know no one's looking in that section for fic rated M for language, and anyway this is no worse than the show itself. Still, warnings for language and drug use and Mickey and all that.

This show. My heart.

Different Endings All the Same

Ian thinks that he loves Mickey. That's all. Sometimes there's too much fog in his head and sometimes he hates his own skin so much he could tear it off and shred it, but he always loves Mickey and how Mickey complains all the time and how Mickey tastes and how Mickey smells.

Ian loves Mickey. It's simple as that.

-i-

Fiona thinks that choices catch up with everyone eventually.

It's a lesson she thought she always knew, until it turned out she didn't. She wants to flinch away from all of it, Jimmy and Mike and jobs with benefits, the coke and the prison and the felony. Breaking parole. Breaking her heart down the middle because she hurt Liam and she hurt Lip and if she's what passes for the responsible adult, then these kids are fucked. Her choices found her and she's terrified to face them.

But terror doesn't get siblings fed and off to school. Doesn't pay the bills, or keep Lip from having to pay the bills. Fiona can cry all she'd like, and sometimes she does, but these are the responsibilities she took on and she'll carry them the whole way.

And she thinks – she hopes – that the rest of the Gallagher brood is shaped the same way. Frank and Monica are colossal screw-ups, but their children have the same DNA and Fiona won't let it condemn them. It isn't fair. It isn't fair.

Learning that Ian's bipolar makes her want to scream until her throat is broken glass. Learning that Ian's bipolar at the same time as everything else in her life turns to shit…even screaming won't help with that. Her kids can't be Frank and Monica, she can't be Frank and Monica. God, what a waste of all their efforts to survive if they are.

Fiona doesn't think she's ever had an actual conversation with Mickey before the one about Ian's sickness, and she doesn't know if that's for the better or for the worse. But she knows the fright in Mickey's eyes. All the Gallaghers know it. They all met it as children, one by one, Mommy in bed moaning for days and no one's feeding them and no one's taking them to school. When Fiona sits in the bed with Ian she whispers to him that it's different, that he's not Monica, and wishes she knew a way to make him listen.

What she doesn't do is panic. Not this late in her life. She tells Mickey and lets him yell, she tells Lip and lets him grimace, she tells herself and lets herself feel the weariness deep in her bones. Nothing wrong with being self-centered. In this world it's the only centering they've got.

She wants a happy future for all her kids, and it'll be harder for Ian if he's depressed. But it was always harder for Ian, because he's gay, and lives where he does, and is in love with Mickey. It's always been harder for all of them. Welcome to America. Thank you, Mom and Dad.

But those were her parents' choices, the addictions and the lying. Fiona has to face hers first. She has to be strong enough to lift her leg when the ankle bracelet weighs it down.

What the Gallaghers, Ian included, know that Mickey doesn't is that it's endless. Endless ups and endless downs. Endless pills. Endless fighting because Frank doesn't trust the pills. But Mickey will learn, and – he isn't Frank. He isn't and he'll never be, Fiona will see to that, because Ian needs help, and bizarre as it sounds Mickey's helping him, but if Mickey ever stops helping him Fiona will be there and she'll deal with it.

Mickey chose Ian and to be with Ian he needs to be strong: not just for now, but forever. Fiona knows there's no way he gets that yet, no matter what he says. He can never take a day off, never claim illness or boredom or fear. He'll learn it, and learn soon, but until then he'll need backup. Endless battles are the kind Fiona knows best.

She'll run her feet bloody chasing after Mickey's, nipping at his heels, making sure he knows what's expected of him, keeping Ian who Ian is and not who he's terrified he'll become. She'll handle her choice, which is to handle the choices of others too. She'll drop with exhaustion, she'll mess things up again and again and again.

And then the next morning she'll pull herself from bed and start again.

-i-

Lip thinks it's bad news.

Anything involving Mickey Milkovich is bad news, first of all, even if that everything doesn't involve his little brother's dick. And when it does involve Ian fucking Mickey, well, you might as well blow up half of Chicago because it'd be a bit less destructive. Lip knows that, Lip's family knows that, fuck, Mickey knows that, even if he's busy making grand last stands at The Alibi. They don't live in San Francesco or New York. Someone ought to remind Ian.

Lip ought to remind Ian, but he doesn't think Ian would listen. Ian's never listened when it comes to Mickey. "Do yourself a favor and find someone else," Lip said, and yet there was Ian at the wedding, drunk as shit and red-eyed. Lip doesn't think his little brother should be crying over anyone. Much less Mickey Milkovich.

But if he said that he'd have to say the rest of it, which is that maybe Lip's in no position to talk about should and shouldn't. Maybe Lip shouldn't be playing frat boy at college while Fiona nosedives and their family falls apart. Maybe Lip should have stepped in years ago, back when the biggest problems were hidden gay magazines and Kash. Maybe Lip is afraid that Ian won't listen to him about anything, not just Mickey. Maybe he's afraid that he doesn't recognize Ian's new, aggressive self.

He'd also have to say that sometimes, late nights usually when he's drowning in essays and Liam's fussing in the background…sometimes Lip thinks it would've been better if Ian never came back. Not better for them, the Gallagher family in all its awesome incompetence, but better for Ian. Let Ian go to New York or LA, to some better city where it doesn't take days at a crap clinic to diagnose mood swings, where two dudes can swap spit in broad daylight and no one so much as blinks.

Lip sits up at night playing rock-paper-scissors with himself, trying to figure out what he should say.

While he stalls Ian crashes, and the only thing more surprising than Monica's curse rearing its ugly head again is how Mickey won't give up. "I'll take care of him here. He'll get better with me," and if you think you can win an argument with that stubborn idiot you've really got your head up your ass. Lip doesn't know what to think. Neither does Fiona, but it's different: Fiona's responsible for all of them, but Lip is responsible for Ian. And yet here's Mickey, fucking grubby, borderline-sociopath Mickey, butting in and taking charge.

If he fucks it up, Lip just might kill him. But it's easy to think that when he's miles away, cramming for bullshit term papers with a bunch of dopey rich kids.

Then one weekend he goes home, steps into the Gallagher household and is absorbed by its whirlwind insanity. Debbie fighting Carl for the remote, Fiona burning dinner and Veronica changing her kids on the kitchen table. It's refreshing, really. The daily disasters keep Lip sharp.

The only one not around is Ian, because Ian spends all his time with Mickey. "You sure that's a good idea?" Lip asks Fiona, but Fiona's been tottering lately on the line between stable and catastrophe, and can only shrug. Lip frowns, knows he should do something but doesn't know what. Ian is a test he's failing. His little brother is suddenly an unknown subject.

Lip waits until after dinner to throw on his coat and walk to Mickey's. The neighborhood hasn't changed (the neighborhood never changes), and it's cold enough to hurt in his lungs. Fiona says Ian's been better lately, but Lip doesn't see how that's possible, and he's also painfully aware that he hasn't called his brother directly in weeks. The gap in his chest is the gap between them. He shoves his hands deep in his pockets and resists the urge to smoke.

About halfway between the Gallaghers and the Milkovich house is a strip of stores, three out of four boarded up and broken into. The one remaining is a tiny pharmacy where Oxy often exchanges hands in the alley around back. Lip glances at it, but slows only when he sees Mickey Milkovich hovering at the door.

As per usual Mickey looks as though he's been getting into fights with every crackhead in town. His stained sweatshirt and ripped jeans are hardly Chicago-winter-appropriate. He's his normal self, which means he's jumpy as shit, and he jerks his head around at the first sound of footstep on frost.

"Oh," he says when he sees Lip. "The fuck you want?"

"Thought I'd walk over to see Ian, actually." Lip pauses. "We robbing pharmacies now?"

"Fuck off." Mickey waves him away, pulls open the glass door and steps inside. Lip watches through the door as he walks past the narrow aisles, ignoring everything on the shelves. The guy behind the counter nearly spills an old lady's white pills all over the floor when he sees him, but Mickey only grins. Everyone in the South Side knows that grin, Lip included. You see it right before Mickey breaks all your ribs.

Lip steps inside, if only because his balls are freezing off, and watches Mickey step around the counter and head for the back door. The pharmacist still looks like he's going to wet himself but he hasn't been touched. Curious, Lip follows Mickey out the back; Mickey's leaning against the wall, eyeing the door, and glares when Lip appears.

"Did I say you could come stick your ass into my business?" he complains. For the first time Lip notices the black garbage bag tucked under his arm. "I thought you were off getting sorority pussy at school." He sounds a touch admiring, like he approves of Lip upholding his civil duty to bang chicks. Lip comes up with approximately one billion gay jokes but decides to save them for later.

"Home for the weekend," he says, taking up position by a dumpster. If Mickey isn't going to explain why they're standing in this grimy alley catching hypothermia, he certainly isn't going to ask. "How's Ian?"

"Shit, am I his messenger boy or something?"

"Considering he spends every hour of every day with you, yeah, that's kind of what you are. So how is he? Is he, you know…"

"What, is he stabbing small children and barking at the moon?" Mickey grins again, less threatening and more disgusted. "How 'bout you call him yourself, huh? Let him decide what to tell you."

"Come on, Mickey. I know he's not crazy, alright?"

"The fuck I care what you know?" Mickey mutters. Before Lip can answer the door opens and the nervous pharmacist pokes his head into the alley. Mickey flashes him his manic grin, even wider. "About fucking time, asshole. Hurry up and get the shit, it's fucking cold out here."

"Listen, Mickey…" the man whines. He's tall and druggy-thin, in a white lab coat as dirty as Mickey's sweatshirt. The South Side's finest, through and through. "Listen, I could lose my job for this…"

"Yeah? That ain't my problem."

"But Mickey, look…"

"You know what else you could lose, you keep giving me shit?" Mickey pats his sweatshirt pocket. Lip looks closer but can't make out the tell-tale bulge of a gun. Still, the pharmacist pales, gives Lip a desperate look that Lip carefully ignores, then rushes back inside. Mickey yells after him, "Don't be finger-banging no hooker at a bus stop next time, moron!"

When he sees Lip staring at him he shrugs. "Guy's married to some friend of my dad's. She sees this picture I took of him with the hooker, he's gonna end up in pieces in the yard," he says, as if that explains everything.

The cold isn't helping the alley's smell, and Lip lost feeling in his feet five minutes ago. The last thing he needs is to be caught helping Mickey lift Oxy, and he wonders if he shouldn't just leave, go bang on Mickey's door until Ian opens up. He wonders what he'd find there. He wonders if he can call this stalling.

Mickey spits into the snow at his feet, shifts his weight. "He's doing better," he says, apparently to the air because he's not looking at Lip. "Which you'd know if you ever bothered to ask him."

How to call Mickey Milkovich a liar and keep all your teeth? Lip settles for a vague, "Yeah," but still feels the stabbing guilt of a traitor in the pit of his stomach. I want Ian to be doing better, he tells himself, which is true, but it's also true that he can't imagine his brother doing better with Mickey. He can't. Mickey's out here stealing Oxy, for shit's sake. And if Ian was the Ian of a year ago – ok, and if Lip was the Lip of a year ago too – Lip would march into the Milkovich house and drag Ian out by his hair. Or put rat poison in Mickey's beer. He'd do what he had to, which is what he isn't doing now.

The pharmacist comes back, his arms full of small boxes. Mickey shoves the garbage bag into Lip's arms. "Hold that open," he orders, then starts taking the boxes from the pharmacist, checking each one closely before dumping it into the bag. Lip sees more boxes on the floor behind the pharmacist, but Mickey is in no rush.

"Excuse me? What the hell is this?"

The pharmacist mutters, "Just what you asked for, it's all in there."

"No, what I asked for was name-brand shit. What the fuck is this one, huh? How do you even pronounce that? It's like seventeen letters long, dipshit."

"It's the same stuff, it's just the generic version. Mickey, come on, you know how expensive the name-brands are? My boss is gonna kill me."

"I'm gonna kill you if you don't get me the drugs I asked for. I did my research, motherfucker, I know what I want, don't try to rip me off with this 'generic' bullshit. Top of the line stuff and you can shove the rest of it up your ass."

The pharmacist flees a second time. Bewildered, Lip glances into the half-full garbage bag; what difference does it make what kind of Oxy Mickey sells to strung-out deadbeats? It'll end up mostly baking soda anyway. But some of the labels are turned towards him, and instead of Oxycodone he sees Lithobid oral lithium, Loxitane, Zyprexa, Prozac, Paxil…

The stabbing in Lip's gut sharpens and dulls in quick succession. "This isn't Oxy," he manages. Mickey gives him a look.

"Who the fuck said anything about Oxy?"

"You're stealing bipolar meds?"

Mickey shifts, discomfort written on his bruised face. "Look, he's not taking it all at once, alright? Calm your tits, Jesus. We sat in the fucking clinic for, like, three hours, doctor said one set of pills was gonna cost three hundred dollars and he can't even promise they'll work. Shit's a rip-off is what it is." He nods at the garbage bag. "So I got him all the pills he's ever gonna need."

The garbage bag is an extra-tall. There are enough pills here to buy a jet. "This is all for Ian?" Lip asks, and tries to recognize the Mickey Milkovich who hems and haws.

"I'm gonna sell some of it, I mean, some of the shit Ian don't like, I mean…keep some of these generics for idiots don't know any better, who gives a shit…quit grinning at me, asshole!"

Lip feels the heft of the garbage bag and sees Mickey kick at the pharmacy door, and he finally understands Fiona's shrug and that he himself has been a real louse, and he decides he'll call Ian every night – and if they don't have anything to say to each other and if there's nothing he can do, well, Lip will run that risk.

"You know generics work just as well as the name-brands, right?"

"Quit flapping your gums and help me with the rest of this, shithead."

Lip thinks that just maybe and for once, it's bad news getting better.

-i-

Kevin thinks it's fucking adorable.

He comes home after a night at the bar, smelling like spilled beer and peanuts, and steps into a living room that's been completely besieged. Toys on the sofa! Toys on the floor! Toys in the kitchen and also more trash bags full of diapers than he really wants to think about. Somewhere in all of this is Veronica, and sure, she complains she's sweaty and smelly and a terrible mother, but Kev just sweeps her into a hug and pats her head and is glad that at least they both smell, although frankly she smells pretty great.

Kev is a man with a mission.

The mission is to keep The Alibi afloat and keep various Milkovichs from tearing it down, keep his finances in the whatever, help out the Gallaghers without drowning in their problems too: but these are all just side-quests attached to the big boss battle, which is Raise Happy Babies. And suddenly Kevin has so many babies.

He's not totally thrilled with how things worked out (he still thinks about baby number four, and he still wonders if his son is really better off living separate from his dad, and sometimes he remembers Ethel and has to close his eyes) but he's happy overall, and any kid from foster care will tell you that's a major step.

A major step: he has his wife, and his children. Vee is so strong and so brave, and the babies are so tiny. And Kev himself? Well, he still can't spell, and he's intimidated by large numbers, but he has this family and it's his and he can't imagine ever wanting it otherwise. Ever wanting it gone.

Just thinking of being the kind of father that creates a Mickey Milkovich or an Ian Gallagher is scary. Kev's had his share of shitty foster dads, the ones who come home after work bitching to the wife since they can't bitch to the boss, and get physical if they're reminded there are kids around. And he's had the ones who aren't violent so much as they're pathetic, drunk by three, spending state foster-kid money on rotgut. Now that he's a father himself, Kevin wants to round up them all up, the jerks and the drunks and why not throw in Terry the Super-Jerk and Frank the Super-Drunk while he's at it – he wants to round up every deadbeat dad in the world and ask them, what the fuck?

Look at these kids you had! They come out so small and bewildered, and the only reason they stop being those things is because of their parents. Look at all the things you could have done instead of what you did. You could have taught them to ride a bike or read a book or never drink beer before liquor or else never sicker. Could have taught them how to roll a blunt, but also taught them never to touch powder or needles, never fuck with anything that'll really fuck you back.

Could have taught them that if they want to see dick instead of vagina, no one important will care. It doesn't matter, is what Kev would say to his own kids. What he will say. He leans over the bassinets, which might be a word he can't spell but damn if he didn't pick out the nicest bassinets in the Babies R' Us, and is so overwhelmed by these creatures blinking up at him he almost has to sit down.

"Listen," he says. He gives each girl a thumb to hold, is pretty sure he remembers which name goes with which baby, and tries to sound stern. "If either of you grow up and decide you like girls, that is great news. There are a lot of really hot women in the world, you know? And if anyone gives you shit for it, feel bad for them, because they weren't lucky with their parents like you." He pauses. "Also, put tacks in their shoes."

The babies tug at his hands, kick out their feet. "You're gonna be great lesbians," he tells them.

"Kev?" Vee is behind him, fresh out of the shower, rubbing at her hair with a towel. She raises an eyebrow. "Did you just tell our babies they're gonna be great lesbians?"

Kevin beams at her, then at all of them, his tough wife and his tiny babies. "If they want to be," he says, and is sure of every word.

-i-

When Mandy thinks about it she thinks it's sweet, and pathetic, and a huge risk. She thinks it's dangerous. And she tells Ian that, tells him every day, even when he isn't listening, even when he can't listen: she tells him Mickey loves him and they're both giant weirdoes and be careful. Be careful, Ian, please.

But she doesn't tell Mickey, because she had, like, a 1.7 GPA, so if those words have been invented yet she doesn't know them. She can't talk to Mickey the way she talks to Ian. She's never sure who he is.

Her brother. Her own flesh and blood.

-i-

Whatever Svetlana thinks of it, she keeps to herself. But when she sees silly orange Ian she always rolls her eyes.

Mickey and Orange Boy. She's seen them in bed together, seen the way Mickey fidgets – "This is some really fucking gay shit, Gallagher, Jesus fuck" – and the way Ian holds him still. The way Ian's still chattering at four in the morning and Mickey whacks him with a pillow to shut him up. They think they are in a story, those boys. Orange Boy is a harmless dreamer, a fresh-faced fool, but Svetlana's husband is a tragedy of a more pitiable type.

Mickey thinks he's intimidating. Mickey thinks he scares her when he yells in her face, calls her nasty names. Mickey thinks that because he's grown up in the South Side of Chicago he's see it all, survived it all – but if his tattooed knuckles frighten others they never frighten Svetlana. Those clumsy hands. That shrieky bluster.

Svetlana has been witness to men who don't have to scream. Her father, who drank from the bottle and hit with it too. Her older brother, grey as Russia, as slumped as the mother still warm in the grave, whoring with men colorless as Moscow smog for dope and newborn Svetlana's diapers. All the men she's been with, in every country she's been to, grabbing at her with sharp nails and hissing, "Bitch."

The men Svetlana fucks are helpless men, she understood that from the first: her father and all the rest, hurting her because they can't hurt the world that made them. She grew her nails sharp to match and bided her time. But Svetlana is no longer interested in that kind of life, and an American husband, an American baby, were supposed to be her chance. On a freezing Chicago day that almost reminds her of home, she holds her son to her chest and thinks of Mickey, most helpless man of them all.

Mickey is such a scared little boy. Does he think he fools her? Svetlana remembers him limp on the couch, dead above and below, until with desperation he flipped her over and started to thrust. Even then, he only did it to block out Ian's whimpers with his own grunts. The two of them are mopey American boys, chasing happy ending, chasing happy ever after. Like a storybook.

Russian fairytales don't end that way. Svetlana will never teach them to her child.

Mickey's father is the truly frightening one; he could kill his son and Orange Boy, then calmly stroll back to the bar. That anger, that real anger, so consuming and visceral, the anger that makes Svetlana wary – she supposes it must be a part of his grandchild as well. The day her son hits her, or buys some other sharp-nailed woman for a fuck…that day she won't recognize and will recognize him both. That's the ending to Svetlana's fairytale, unless she can choose differently. Maybe America will let her.

If Svetlana thinks about it, maybe she wonders where exactly Mickey is trying to run – to what future? to what happy ending? – but she rarely thinks about it. She thinks about her son instead.

-i-

Mickey doesn't think about it.

If he thinks about it he thinks faggot. He thinks cocksucker. He thinks pansy pussy candy-ass. He thinks of Terry Milkovich kicking him in the gut.

His father taught him to shoot a pistol and bashed him over the head with one. His father bought him his first hooker and married him off to one. His father told Mickey, "Milkovichs get whatever we want, and if it isn't ours we take it," then beat the crap out of his son for doing what he was told.

His father talked shit about Ian, and not only when he caught them but afterwards too, and that's what Mickey thinks about when he thinks about it: Terry sprawled in the living room with his buddies and his blow, untouchable. "That fuckin' Frank Gallagher," someone said, "Scumbag owes me sixty bucks."

"Can't trust a Gallagher,' someone else added. "Buncha nutjobs. Better leave them alone." Everyone agreed but Mickey's father. Terry grunted his disapproval and the whole room went quiet.

"There's something wrong with 'em, alright," Terry said. "Something real sick and spreading, and you chickenshits want to leave 'em alone?" He impatiently waited out the murmurs, took a drag on his cigarette and blew the cloud into someone's face. "The little Gallagher redhead's a faggot. Cocky piece of shit thinks he can suck dick in the South Side. I think that's a real shame."

He raised his voice, spoke so clear you'd think he was sober: "I think that fairy's gonna wake up one of these days with a crowbar up his ass and a gun barrel down his throat. That's what I think."

Terry turned his head, looked over to where he knew Mickey was standing frozen in the kitchen, and he smiled.

And if you're Mickey Milkovich you don't forget that smile.

So what the fuck was he supposed to do after that? Of course he stopped talking to Ian. Stopped talking to just about everyone, actually, spitting monosyllables when he had to, and because everyone knows he's a barely-literate thug no one called him on it, not even Mandy. Only Ian wouldn't take the hint, and God fucking knows he tried his damndest to get Mickey to open up. But what did he expect out of a goddamn Milkovich in the goddamn South Side? If back then he'd suggested they run off together Mickey would've broken his teeth.

Mickey did break his teeth, when Ian called him gay, and when he thinks about it that's what he sees. He sees Ian leaving with a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. Ian grinding against some ancient motherfucker in that homo club. Ian's smile stretched a little too wide and Ian frozen in bed for days. He sees the other Gallaghers and knows they blame him.

They won't say so, they don't have to and not that Mickey fuckin' cares, but he reads the dislike in that smartass Lip's beady-eyed smirk: who the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck said you could touch my brother? Mickey doesn't know what to think about that. The Gallaghers have always been different, weirdly clingy. They actually like each other.

Meanwhile Mickey beats guys up for Mandy but doesn't know how the hell to get rid of Kenyatta, and he can't stand to be in the same room as his son. Milkovichs handle themselves, and the Gallaghers know that and still don't think he's good enough to handle Ian, and Ian's so fucking naïve sometimes and Mickey doesn't know what to do.

When Mickey thinks about it he sees his father and his fuckups and his fear, Ian thrashing beneath Terry with a hole in his throat and bloody froth on his lips, and Milkovichs are never afraid but they're also never fucking faggots, and Mickey's a faggot, and when he thinks about it he stops breathing.

So he doesn't think about it. He puts his head between Ian's legs and thinks about that instead.