This is for Billie, who like me wanted something with an understated ending :) because obviously our email conversations are just the best things!

Ian doesn't know who said it, probably Lip, but at the base of it all it was true that you could take a person out of the Southside, but you could never completely remove the Southside from a person. And he hadn't quite thought how true that was, he hadn't really had to.

He'd moved out of Chicago first chance he'd got. An early enlistment into the army that thank god they didn't find out about. Of course, it wasn't too difficult to adjust to people thinking he was Lip. Mostly he was just called by his last name, but sometimes when he introduced himself, he had to swallow down the name Ian, his real name and there were only those rare occasions when calling himself Lip didn't result in a sour taste on the back of his tongue. But he was so deep into the lie now that he didn't even really think about it.

It had been years, years since anyone had called him Ian other than his family. A family who he went back to see occasionally, but always alone and always feeling guilty, so the visits were few and far between. He'd only really planned on taking Lip's identity into the army, but instead he'd somehow fashioned an entirely new person for himself somewhere along the line. And the Lip he'd become wasn't anything like the Ian who he'd used to be, but he supposed that was alright because he hadn't exactly ever felt alright in his own skin anyway.

He'd never felt like he belonged.

The problems only came when the lies threatened to crush him down into the ground under their weight. He'd become so wrapped up in being this person, even now he'd left the army; because now he was out he'd worked out that he didn't really like the regimented structure of it all so much anyway; and gunshots only made him think of one thing, of one person. He was Lip even as he thrust a hand out with a flirty smile in the middle of a gay club, feeling like he was betraying everything that his brother had ever stood for as he lied to everyone's faces.

And even the guy he lived with. Even the guy who he fucked into the mattress, who he pressed down with his body and screwed his eyes tight shut in an effort to pretend his memories weren't taking him back to the Southside. Even he still gasped out, "Lip," as he arched up into him and it was enough to make Ian feel sick. It was enough some days to have his hips stuttering forwards and a grunt forcing its way out of his chest in a sloppy pretence of an orgasm. And he'd throw an empty condom into the trash, hidden under random, useless debris and his life would feel as wasted as that condom had been.

It was ridiculous, he knew it was, but most days he was okay with it. Except for that odd one in a hundred where Tom's face would be scrunched up in a mixture of confusion and anger and his hands would be splayed on the table as he leant across it towards him and he'd just be shouting, "Lip! The fuck is wrong with you, Lip, Jesus!"

And the scream would just bubble up in Ian's throat and sometimes he's stalk out, press his hands over his ears and lock himself away in the bathroom, sobbing soundlessly into the tiles like the world was shattering underneath him. Because he'd used to have a plan, he'd used to know how his life was going to play out.

And this wasn't how it was supposed to go. None of this was right, not a single little detail.

"Shut the fuck up! You don't even know a single thing about me!"

Except for that one time. He'd walked away all except for that one time when he'd just exploded, launching his cold breakfast at the wall and feeling himself shatter just like the plate, into too many fragments and pieces to ever put together right again. Not that he'd really been doing anything more than pretend he was whole in the first place.

It wasn't his fault. It really wasn't Tom's fault that he didn't know a fucking thing. It all lay with Ian, but he just couldn't take it. He couldn't take him standing there with his lips shaping his brother's name as they screamed at each other. He just wanted to be himself, just for once, even though he didn't have a fucking clue who he was any more.

And so he left; like somehow he was going to find everything that he was supposed to be somewhere on the streets of New York. He was shivering in his skin a long time before it started raining, sheets of it coming down on top of him, running into his eyes and filling his mouth and he spat off to the side, tasting blood where there wasn't any. And for a fleeting moment he thought maybe that if he just tipped his head back and stared up at the sky, maybe he'd drown under the rain and under the weight of all of his lies.

He deserved it after all. Didn't he!

He'd made his bed a long time ago, so now he could just fucking lie in it. Except he had been, hadn't he? He'd been lying in it, except nobody ever had a metaphor or some shitty advice for what happened when you'd been lying in that bed you made so long that your joints had seized up and gone stiff and you felt like you'd been running too far and yet hadn't moved all at the same time. Nobody ever told you what you were supposed to do then, when you'd left everything you knew behind you and you'd never felt so fucking lost in your life.

Follow your nose, they'd say, follow your feet.

Except all Ian could smell when he breathed in was stale sweat, cigarette smoke and chocolate and then all his feet wanted to do was run as far away from those memories as he possibly could. Because he didn't want to think about what it felt to be sixteen and in love, to be so happy and so terrified all at once. To have possibilities spread out before you and for just a moment to know exactly who you wanted to be, because you'd never had someone look at you like they just had before.

Like they didn't have a fucking clue how you'd managed to worm your way under their skin, but like it had never even occurred to them to try and dig you out anyway.

Ian didn't want to think about why gunshots made him think of Snickers bars, or why the sound of them made his heart hurt in his chest. Why it made it beat too fast like he was having a panic attack. He didn't want to think about it, but he did anyway. Sometimes he just couldn't help it.

He didn't realise that he'd been standing still on the sidewalk for probably way to long until a car drove past him, wheels splashing through a puddle and showering Ian in dirty water. Like he was already wet anyway.

He breathed out a long breath, stalling going back to the apartment to apologise or maybe explain and he fucking knew it. Maybe he could use the rain as an excuse, which was what he told himself as he stepped under a nearby bus shelter.

There was a guy already there, sat down on the metal bar with his feet up against the plastic opposite. A cigarette was held between two of his fingers and he wasn't quite as piss wet through as Ian was, but still it was close enough. His face was turned away from Ian, but when he took a half step closer, into the shelter, he didn't even know why he was surprised at the familiar face that looked over at him.

Neither of them look surprised actually, because of course this was fucking typical. Of course their life was like some sort of fucking soap opera where maybe they had followed their feet after all. Except maybe in a soap opera they'd say something dramatic, something big and emotional that summed up all of the past that they had. Maybe. Only difference was, it had been fifteen years now and Ian didn't feel like he had anything to say that would matter anyway, not now.

So he just sat down on the cold metal beside him and accepted the half-gone cigarette he was offered. He took a long drag, wrapping his lips around the filter and tasting the sweet tang of chocolate as he breathed in. it wasn't his memory this time when he breathed in and all he could smell was sweat and smoke and chocolate and maybe that was why it didn't burn in his lungs.

"You look like a fucking drowned rat, Firecrotch," Mickey told him, lips twisting into a smirk that was so familiar at the same time as it was different, because they were older and there were too many lines in Mickey's face, but he still smelt the same and sounded the same. And he was still looking at Ian in that way that made Ian's heart trip in his chest.

Ian breathed smoke out into Mickey's face, tapping out ash into a puddle on the floor. Their eyes met and their gazes held and he found himself snorting out something that wasn't a laugh, but was something similar. He took another drag of his cigarette and smoke had never been so easy to breathe in.

And maybe Firecrotch wasn't quite his real name, maybe seeing Mickey was one step closer to oblivion rather than one step further away from all of his lies, maybe this wasn't going to change anything at all; but there were possibilities and it sure fucking felt close enough.