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Ian Gallagher was born in the springtime.
Not that it really matters.
Not that springtime is something he even understands.
But it’s something Fiona likes to tell him when things get bad. With her shaking hands in his hair, brushing limp strands from his aching head with thin, chapped fingers. She leans over him, pressed against his shoulder, murmuring romantic thoughts about a sun they could feel.
That’s when you were born, Ian.
She’s never seen it either. Straining to hear her in the dark, Ian’s pretty sure Fiona’s whispered words of soft, wet grass and fragrant earth are pulled from a dream of hers.
Spring was no longer spring by the time Ian was born. There’s nothing to differentiate their time now.
He thinks Frank might have known it – thinks his young feet might have felt the dew that came before the frost – but his brain is so pickled now that Ian can’t stand to hear the addled ramblings on things that Ian will never get to know.
As if such a thing as honeysuckle could ever bloom anywhere but in Frank’s distorted memory.
The sun is distant this morning. It hangs, as it always does, pale and thin in a muted sky as Ian slips out of bed. His brothers, not due up for another couple of hours, snuffle and sigh and shift in their blankets while Ian quickly dresses and tiptoes down the stairs.
Fiona meets him in the kitchen with a mug of tea and a slice of toast, dropping a kiss to his cheek as she scurries quietly about the room.
He thanks her, murmuring the words into the steaming cup between his palms. For the tea, for the breakfast. For the whispers of springtime nonsense over these dark days.
“Go on, now,” she says, smiling down at her hands. “Get to work.”
The air is thin when he steps outside. Ian tugs his hat over his ears, breathing against the burn that immediately settles in his lungs.
It’s fucking cold.
It’s always so fucking cold.
As he makes his way to the workshed, he idly wonders why they’re never truly used to it. He wonders why the cracked, bleeding skin never seems to heal; why his eyes still sting and water as he goes about his long days.
Every long day, always the same.
Pulling his sore body from under his scratchy sheets and slowly blinking awake as he wraps himself in layers. Tea, toast, kiss to the cheek. Crossing hardened, frosted paths to the shed where he meets Kev. Cursing under their breath as they gather their tools and head out into the field together.
Working with blistered hands; salvaging what they can from the blighted soil. Dragging the livestock into living at least another day, and another day after that - just enough to make it worth it.
Just enough to keep themselves fed so that they, too, can pull another day of life and work from the frigid fucking earth beneath them.
Today, Kevin’s already there when he pushes the heavy shed door open.
“Hey man,” he calls, stamping his heavy boots in a futile attempt to get warm. He crosses the shed to Ian, throwing an arm over his shoulder and pulling him into a hug. Against his ear, he murmurs, “Feelin’ alright?”
Ian stiffens in the embrace, pulling back slightly. Kevin’s already shaking his head.
“Nobody but us, Ian,” he says, looking around. “So, all good?”
It hadn’t been that bad; not really. Three days down with Lip and Kevin covering his work so nothing fell out of place in his output – it really could have been worse.
It could have been so much worse.
It could have been what happened to Joaquin, the friend Lip won’t talk about.
Joaquin, who got sick. Worse than the occasional flu or bug that brought them all down from time to time. Something like that can be looked over. Something like that can fade away, can recede under their skin like the cold that lives in their brittle bones.
But he didn’t bounce back. His work started to suffer. And as hard as Ian and Kevin tried to cover for him– and as hard as Veronica worked to keep him from falling apart– it all came to a shockingly quiet end.
One day, just like the day before, Joaquin dragged his fragile body to work.
The next day, he didn’t.
Lip won’t talk about it.
Now, Ian lightly shoves Kev away, huffing a laugh. “All good,” he promises. The thank you hangs unspoken between them. “Now get the fuck off me and let’s get on with it.”
It’s cabbage harvest today. He’s so fucking sick of cabbage. Just once he’d like to grow something bright, something fragrant. Something that bursts rather than wilts on his tongue.
They work alone now, the two of them, hunched over the ground and harvesting what they can with blunt blades. It’s quiet, save for the occasional hiss from Kev when he jabs his own fingers.
When Joaquin worked with them, he’d whistle sometimes. Ian can tell Kevin’s thinking about it, too.
Finally, he says it.
“What d’you think happened to him?”
“Jesus, Kev,” Ian groans. “You gotta ask me that out here?”
“No one gives a shit about us, dude,” Kevin says, and he’s probably right. “As long as we’re haulin’ in these ugly fucking vegetables and keeping their cows fat, nobody thinks about us.”
Ian sighs, leaning back on his heels. Out of habit, he looks around before speaking. There’s nothing; nothing but the pale, distant sun in its gray sky.
“Dunno,” he shrugs. “What happened to any of ‘em? Ain’t that the point of followin’ all the rules, so you don’t have to find out?”
“You mean you don’t want to find out?”
Ian stares, dumbfounded. “Do I want…?”
Any goddamn day now, he could find out.
“Not like that,” Kevin rushes to say. “Not find out like that, fuck no. I just mean– like, do you think he’s still alive?”
“Fuck,” Ian breathes. “Fuck, man, I don’t know. Probably not, right? He’s useless to ‘em if he can’t work, y’know? Why would they take him just to keep him alive somewhere else?”
Kevin presses a heavy palm to his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”
He’s pretty sure Lip knows. But Lip won’t talk about it.
The sun is just over their heads. It’s so fucking cold.
“C’mon,” Ian says, standing on stiff knees and clapping Kevin on the arm. “Let’s grab lunch. We can’t talk about this anymore.”
The kids are back from school when they amble into the house for their meal. Vee swans over to them; tea, toast, kiss to the cheek.
Ian is greeted with shouts and high fives and hugs around his legs, wobbling in the doorway.
“You’re up,” Debbie says brightly, and Fiona shushes her from her place at the stove.
“I am,” Ian says, ruffling her hair and taking a seat at the kitchen table. “Just a cold, Debs. All good.”
They should know; one day they will know. But not now.
“We got a new teacher today,” Carl says around a mouthful of watery cabbage soup. “Like, she came from somewhere else.”
“Oh?” Fiona says over her shoulder, shooting a startled look at Veronica. Ian’s not sure he’s ever met a new person in his entire life. Everyone’s just sort of been there.
He’s seen a few of them disappear, though. Seven of them, he thinks, in his twenty years.
“Where else is there?” Debbie asks, wide eyes peeking over her mug.
It’s quiet.
Lip probably knows.
But Lip’s not here, and Lip won’t talk about it.
“Plenty of farmland out there, I’m sure, Deb,” Fiona sighs, even though they’ve never heard of somewhere else. “Now, tell us about this teacher.”
“She’s so cool,” Carl shouts, and Ian nearly chokes on his tea. The rest of the family blinks at him, equally confused.
“She’s– what?” Kevin asks.
“She is cool,” Debbie agrees. “And pretty, Fiona, she wears makeup.”
“Why?” Fiona gasps, just as Veronica asks where the fuck she got it. Ian’s not even sure how Debbie knows what makeup is.
“She makes it herself,” Debbie says proudly. “She showed us, it’s all around her eyes. Told you she was cool.”
Ian leans back in his seat, not sure what to make of any of it. A new woman– cool enough to impress a couple of preteens– dropped in the middle of a frozen wasteland? What, from some different frozen wasteland?
Just weeks after Joaquin disappears?
After years of the same, always the same, Ian’s gut churns with all this newness.
Fiona meets his eye across the kitchen. Lip probably knows.
Everyone returns to work after lunch: Ian and Kev back to the shed, Veronica to the infirmary. Fiona shoves the kids outside to their chores before turning to her own.
Ian keeps an eye out for Lip as he steps back into the cold. He peers across the flat, dull landscape, looking for the familiar shape of his brother trudging from job to job.
They let Lip run this place, really. He manages the new builds, the pathways, the stores of food. He’s just not allowed to say that.
Ian doesn’t see him this afternoon, though. Instead, he finds two sets of blue eyes staring back at him from inside the house across the road.
“Dude,” Kevin says later as they’re cleaning up for the day. “The fuck’s going on?”
Not even the sun is watching them now; it drifts towards the horizon, leaving behind no indication that it was ever there at all.
“Fuck if I know,” Ian grunts, tugging the shed door shut. “New people, for some reason. Maybe they’re on vacation?”
“Vacation,” Kev snorts. “Can’t believe they taught us that one.”
Ian knows there are things he doesn’t know. And he’s not always sure how he knows the things he does.
He’s never known warmth. He’s never known rest.
But he knows enough to know something’s missing.
“You get a vacation, thanks,” Ian grins. “You get one blessed day off a year for your physical, you ungrateful fuck.”
“Yeah, I’ll be sure to tell them thanks when they’re checking my goddamn reflexes.”
“That is what they expect,” Ian says, rolling his eyes. “Now shut up while we walk back.”
Kevin’s been bold lately, and it makes Ian nervous.
The rules fucking suck; they all know it. The curfew, the work detail, the rations. The measure of their productivity. The fact that there never seems to be enough of anything, despite the ache in their bodies day in and day out.
But hanging over their shivering heads is the constant fear of what happens. Of whatever the fuck happens when someone steps out of line, when they can’t contribute or provide for the community.
Lip knows something.
But Lip won’t talk about it.
He sulks around the house, haunting their long days with a stormy grief behind his eyes. His face goes stony when anyone tries to speak to him, though, and in the weeks since Joaquin got sick, they've stopped trying.
Tonight, though, there’s an itch under Ian’s skin.
They sit behind the house after dinner, smoking shitty tobacco around a pitiful fire. Veronica sips her weak homemade wine from a mason jar.
Ian watches Lip watch the flames sputter into ember, then to ash. He opens his mouth before he knows what he’s doing.
“What do you know, Lip?”
His brother’s eyes are on him instantly, narrowed and searching. Fiona looks to Kev and Vee, already anxious.
“The fuck are you askin’ me?”
Ian falters for just a moment. Only a moment before he remembers the eyes watching him from across the road. He barrels on.
“Who are the people that showed up here? Where’d they come from?”
“Ian,” Lip sighs, “come on. You’re just up and working again. Don’t stress yourself out like this.”
“No - don’t do that.” Ian’s not letting it get derailed like this. He takes a heavy breath. “Where’s Joaquin?”
Lip’s face goes blank. “He’s gone.”
“Lip,” Fiona says gently. “What happened?”
“What always happens,” Lip snaps. “He got too sick. He had to go, so they took him.”
“And you don’t know anything more than that?”
“They say it’s for their own good,” Veronica says. “That’s not what it really is, is it?”
“No,” Lip whispers to the ground. Then, louder: “Of course it’s fuckin’ not.”
“Come on, Lip,” Ian tries now. “What’s goin’ on?”
Whatever it was that held Lip’s body so tightly snaps in front of them. He deflates, rubbing a hand down his tired face.
“Look,” he starts, “I don’t know shit about those people that got here today. I don’t know where the fuck they came from or why, and I think it’s weird as hell. But it’s a crazy goddamn coincidence because–”
Lip cuts himself off, swallowing hard. Ian puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Joaquin– when he– when he got sick like that,” he says, not looking at anyone. “He got sick out there.”
The words land, but they don’t settle.
“Out… where?” Fiona asks.
“Out there,” Lip says again. “Out of here.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Kev snaps, a little hysterical. “There is no out of here.”
“There is. Of course there is. Just not for us.”
“What,” Ian says, feeling like he might pass out, “what is it?”
Lip softens. He grips at Ian’s hand where it still rests on his shoulder. “I’m not gonna tell you that, man. Not really safe to know that.”
“Do they know you fucking left?” Fiona asks, face contorted with fear.
“Don’t think so,” Lip says, though it provides little comfort. “They waited for Joaquin to get as bad as he did to take him, so it’s not like they got him immediately.”
“How’d it happen?” Ian murmurs.
Lip looks skyward, blinking quickly. He feels guilty, Ian realizes.
“We’d been out a handful of times,” he says slowly, wincing at the incredulous shouts from his family. “We were, I don’t know, trying to see if what we’d heard was true?”
“The fuck you been hearing?” Veronica asks, voice heavy with dread.
“No one watches what they fucking say around me anymore,” Lip tells them, and Ian thinks back to what Kevin had said that morning. Nobody thinks about us. “It’s like they forgot I’m not one of them. There was just – a lot of talk about where all our goddamn food goes and where our timber comes from. I kept listening until we had enough to just… go.”
Ian is floored by the betrayal that washes over him. Lip found something– whatever the fuck it is– beyond this, and never said anything?
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Shame blooms pink across his brother’s face. He looks sorry when he speaks: “We didn’t know if it was gonna work. I wasn’t gonna just risk you like that, Ian. And when it did work, I don’t know, man, we didn’t really think about it. It all happened so goddamn fast.”
Fiona leans in. “You really can’t tell us anything? Where– how’d you even get out?”
“It’s shockingly easy,” Lip says, and Ian scoffs. Easy for Lip isn’t usually that easy for anyone else. “And I just… I don’t think I quite understand it yet. There isn’t much to know, so I don’t wanna get into it all and risk you guys knowin’ something you shouldn’t. It’s just different out there. And I think…”
“Think what?” Fiona demands.
“There’s talk about people out there. Who wanna, like, change things.”
“Change how?”
“What people?” Ian asks. “Like the people that came here?”
“I don’t know why those people are here,” Lip says again. “I doubt it, though. Why would they try to change shit here? Nothing could change here.”
Ian feels sick. And there’s still –
“Joaquin?” he asks gently. His brother hesitates. “It’s okay, Lip.”
“It’s not fuckin’ okay,” Lip snaps, before deflating again. “I dunno if they’ve got shit we don’t have here. Medicine or shit we don’t have. Last time we went – he was sick by the next morning. You know what happened then.”
They don’t know what happened then; not really. They took him. And now he’s gone.
But when did they come for him – and was he expecting it? Did he fight against them, or did his tired body just accept it? How quickly was it all over?
Ian doesn’t want to know.
He never wants to know.
He has to know.
There’s someone different waiting for him in the shed the next morning.
Ian had woken up, head spinning, and slipped out of bed. He paused in the doorway for a moment, watching the gentle rise and fall of his brothers’ chests. Lip looked peaceful, perhaps unburdened after a night spent releasing truth into the cold night air.
Tea, toast, kiss to the cheek; Ian made his way to work.
And now someone different is standing in front of him.
Ian hasn’t met someone new since his first moments of awareness. Everyone he's ever known has always lived along the shoddy road that leads to the field. He’s not sure what the fuck he’s supposed to do. His arms hang limply at his sides, his mouth open and stupid.
“What – hi?”
The stranger quirks an eyebrow. Ian recognizes the blue eyes from the house across the road. He flits his eyes across the rest of his face, unsure of how long or how directly he’s allowed to look.
Ian knows there are things he doesn’t know. But he knows he’s gay. He knows he likes to look.
The man in front of him – strong, Ian notes, beautiful and bold, made of contrasting color and shapes – looks back at him. Ian’s not sure what he sees. Someone thin and gray, with bony limbs held together by knotted and aching joints.
Ian doesn't know where this man came from, but it couldn’t have been a place like this.
He realizes, now, just how long he’s been looking.
“What–?” is all he manages to say.
“You got a question?” the man asks, sharp but not unfriendly. Ian turns it over in his mind, this new voice. He decides he likes the sound.
“Got a lot of questions,” Ian shoots back. “Who are you?”
“M’here to work.”
It’s a nonanswer. It tells Ian nothing, so he tries again.
“Okay, but who are you?”
The man sighs, rubbing a hand across his brow. Ian follows the arc of his fingers.
“Mickey,” he says. A new name. Mickey. It paints the inside of Ian’s brain, settling in with the sound of his voice. “And I’m here to work.”
“We’re all here to work,” Ian says, confused. “It’s literally all we’re for. Ain’t shit to do but work and follow the rules. So, why are you here to work?”
Something flashes across Mickey’s face. It’s dark; it’s curious. Ian thinks it might be recognition.
“They told me to,” he answers simply. He studies Ian for a moment, biting at his lip. “And I’m– looking out, I guess.”
A chill runs down Ian’s spine. Oh.
Oh, shit.
They brought him here to watch them.
Which means –
“And the other one?”
“What?”
“The other one of you,” Ian presses, “the girl at the school?”
“Ah,” Mickey says. “Mandy. My sister. Don’t know why they put her there, she’s shit with kids.”
“I hear she’s cool,” Ian mutters, and Mickey snorts.
They’re watching them, then. All the way down to the school. Ian itches to warn Lip. They know something. And Ian knows there are things he doesn’t know.
Kevin hauls the shed door open, startling them both from their study of each other. Mickey swears under his breath.
“Sorry man,” Kev calls, shoving the door closed. “Vee’s wake up was, uh, spirited this morning and– who the fuck?”
He’s by Ian’s side in an instant, arms crossed over his chest. Ian flushes with affection for his old friend, standing beside him in every attempt to look menacing.
“Who’re you?”
Mickey just raises an unimpressed eyebrow, and Ian sighs.
“Kev, this is Mickey. He’s… here to work?”
He wants to say the other thing. He’s here to watch us. But Mickey is eyeing Kevin closely, and he doesn’t want to call any attention to the fact that they all know something.
“What – okay?”
“Yeah” Ian sighs again, before straightening. They’re wasting time, and they’re being watched. “We gotta get out there.”
Cabbage. Always the fucking cabbage.
Ian and Kev toss idle conversation back and forth: the cows are looking good; Fiona is making them new socks. Kevin might let his hair grow out again.
Nothing about what they know. Nothing about what they don’t.
Mickey chimes in now and then. Fuck cows and their dead fuckin’ eyes, but damn if there’s anything like a good cut of beef in his stew. He’ll provide the wool if Fiona would make him and Mandy a pair of socks, too. Kev would look fucking stupid with a ponytail.
Ian is astounded.
Who the fuck is this guy – here to watch them, but engaging in casual conversation like he isn’t gonna tell them everything they say? Like he isn’t cataloging their every move?
He’s pissed off by the time they trudge back for lunch. He’s pissed about the change in their routine, about the new voice clanging around in his head. He’s pissed about the danger pervading his work, edging closer and closer to his family.
He’s pissed about how goddamn funny this guy is.
Mickey’s laugh swirls around in Ian’s chest as he toes off his boots, decidedly not inviting him in for lunch. Instead, Mickey disappears into his house across the road, chuckling at his own joke as he goes.
Kevin is bent at the waist when Ian steps inside, arms resting on his knees. “Dude,” he says to the ground, “what the fuck?”
“I know,” Ian says, throwing himself into his seat. Fiona darts over to the table. Tea, toast, kiss to the cheek. “Holy shit.”
“What’s going on?” Lip asks, coming down the stairs. When Ian hesitates, he adds, “The kids aren’t here, they’re doing some project at the school.”
“Fuck,” Ian hisses, putting his face in his hands. “I don’t know what the fuck – okay. One of those people got assigned to work with us? Mickey, he said.”
The family gathers quickly, sitting at the table and leaning in. Veronica reaches for Kevin’s hand.
“Why?” she asks.
“He said they told him to,” Ian answers. “I think it’s just two of them. His sister Mandy’s at the school. He’s just… in the field with us.”
“Weird,” Fiona says, leaning back in her chair, hands gripping her mug.
Ian takes a breath. “He also said…”
“What?” Lip asks warily.
“Before Kev got there he said they’re here to, like, look out.”
Sharp inhales around the table.
“He said that to you?” Kevin asks, incredulous. “What the fuck does that mean, look out for what?”
“Dunno,” Ian shrugs. “Didn’t want to mention it in front of him.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Lip says. “They brought these people here to look out? So, what, they’re watching us? And all they did was stick ‘em in the field and the school?”
“Right,” Fiona agrees. “Why bring anyone new here to watch us? Why aren’t they doing it themselves?”
“Maybe they’re trying to throw us off,” Veronica wonders, “like they want us to know they know something’s up.”
“If they knew something about what we did, they’d’ve gotten to me by now,” Lip says firmly. “What would they be waiting for?”
Ian can’t wrap his head around any of it. Mickey watched him while they worked, sure. Studied him as he stabbed at the cabbage. But the way he talked to them; the way he worked alongside them – there’s no sense to it.
“They’re definitely watching,” Ian says. “I just– there’s gotta be something bigger we aren’t seeing.”
The walk back to the field is silent.
Ian and Kev can’t bring themselves to chatter; Mickey walks a few paces behind them. They work quietly together until the sun sinks low, watching each other whittle at the plants.
Suddenly, there’s a new kind of same. Every long day, the same.
Mickey’s always there when Ian arrives for work. He stands alone in the shed, sharpening blades or mixing their shitty soil.
They nod or grunt some kind of tired, burdened greeting. Kevin offers the same when he pushes through to the shed, and they gather their supplies for the day. Seeds, spades, shovels. They slowly perk themselves up as they settle into the rhythm of work.
Ian and Kev chat about nothing, Mickey offers his running commentary. Ian snorts before his brain catches up, before he can stop the huffs of laughter rushing from his lungs.
And something about it becomes easy.
They work well together. Mickey seems to know what Ian needs before his mind even formulates the thought: passing him a sharper blade when he can’t quite sever a tough root, shoving at the heavy bales of stiff, frosty hay when his sore arms can’t muster the momentum.
Their output starts to surpass the days before Jaoquin got sick. For the first time in a while, Ian starts to feel safe in his work. He’s doing enough. He’s giving enough.
Mickey watches of course; he always watches.
Well – he watches Ian.
His gaze never wavers. It snaps to Ian’s as soon as he steps into the shed every morning, and it rests against him throughout the day. If Ian wasn’t so wary of being watched, even this, too, could start to feel safe.
Like he could be seen, instead of surveilled.
Mickey doesn’t offer much about himself. He won’t divulge where they came from or how long he thinks he’ll be here. He jokes and he laughs; he curses when Kev accidentally trods on his feet. He complains about his sister’s terrible cooking.
He asks Ian, quietly, if he’s feeling alright one night as they make their way home.
“What do you mean?” Ian asks, wary. He thinks about Joaquin; if they ever asked him how he was feeling. “I’m good.”
“Just seemed weird today,” Mickey says, sniffing. “Distracted, or whatever.”
And maybe he was distracted today. He was distracted by the movement of Mickey’s shoulders under his thermal as he worked, by the deft skill of his scarred hands sifting through the soil.
Ian won't say it though. He simply shrugs. He's good. He's always good.
Mickey accepts the nonanswer easily enough, shoving his hands in his pockets and walking ahead. They part ways at Ian’s house with a stunted wave and tight smile.
Ian reels as he tries to will himself to sleep. His mind is a tangled knot of anxiety and vigilance, of work and frost and tea and toast, of curiosity of laughter of seeping blooming lust.
As the long, same days pass, Ian remains curious. The lust drips down his spine; but he remains afraid.
When the shift happens, it happens fast.
They’re smoking their shitty tobacco around another weak fire when they jump at steps approaching in the dark.
The twin sets of blue eyes stand out from the shadows of the flames flicking across their faces. Ian falls in, losing himself in the cracked sheets of ice looking back at him.
“You guys got room over here?” Mandy raises an arched eyebrow when no one answers her. She pats at her coat pocket and pulls out a flask. “Booze?”
Veronica narrows her eyes. “You make that?”
“Nah,” Mandy snorts. “Brought it with. Starting to run low, but I’ll share if you let me stand by this fuckin’ fire. My ass is gonna freeze off.”
Kevin grabs the flask from her fist and takes a long pull. “Oh fuck yeah,” he groans. “The fuck is that? It’s real good shit.”
Mandy grins. “That, my man, is whiskey.”
“You just – they let you have that?” Ian splutters. What else do they have that Ian’s never seen? Veronica ferments her shitty ice wine, but they’ve never tasted anything stronger than that. He’s only ever heard of whiskey from Frank’s muddled tales of warm air and springtime.
“No one lets me have anything,” Mandy corrects, and Ian doesn’t understand anything. She steps around the fire and plucks the rolled cigarette from his fingers. She brings it to her own lips and takes a drag. “Fuck, that’s awful.”
Ian can’t help it; he laughs. Something about these two. He can’t help anything.
Mickey watches him across the flames. He’s like nothing that Ian’s never seen before. He glows; a sun he can almost feel.
There’s a lot that Ian doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know the feeling of a man’s spine beneath his fingertips. He doesn’t know what it is to be touched, to be stroked. He doesn’t know what it is to sink, to take or be taken.
There are things that Ian wants to know.
“What else are you two hiding?” he asks, a smile on his lips.
Lip looks at him like he’s grown another head. He can see the questions behind his eyes. Why would you ask him that? What the fuck, Ian?
Ian shakes his head just slightly. Not like that; he doesn’t want to know that right now.
Mickey bites down on his lip. For once, he looks away.
“What the fuck, Ian,” Lip does hiss at him later, hidden in their bedroom while Carl snores softly in his bed. “You’re flirting with him now?”
“Come on,” Ian sighs. “Not fuckin’ flirting, just – I don’t know, trying to figure them out.”
“Sure you are,” Lip grumbles, pressing his face into his pillow. “We still don’t know shit about these people, man. It can’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like – complicated. What happens when they decide they’ve heard enough? You really wanna let them get close like that?”
Ian’s not sure what he wants.
He just knows that he wants.
It’s still dark when he climbs out of bed the next morning. He slips downstairs before Fiona gets up; no tea, no toast. No kiss to the cheek. He leaves tracks in the frost as he makes his way to the shed.
There’s someone different waiting for him when he gets there.
“Knew you’d come.”
Mickey’s waiting for him there, always watching. Always looking. But–
Different.
Ian sees it: the want. He wonders what Mickey knows. What he wants to know; what he wants to learn from Ian. He wonders what Mickey can show him.
He finds the answer in the heat of Mickey’s mouth, in the drag of his lips. It’s in the press of his body, the feel of his spine beneath Ian’s fingertips. At last, at last he knows.
Mickey can show him everything.
And so unfolds a new same, a new same long day.
If Kevin notices the shift – the heavy smell of sex lingering in the workshed, the brush of Mickey’s hand as he passes Ian a spade in the dirt, the looks the wide smiles the blush – he graciously doesn’t mention it.
They work. Cabbage turns to carrots turn to leeks and greens, to turnips and peas.
Tea and toast, whiskey and wine.
They meet in the mornings. It’s the best they can do with the rhythm of work. They pant and sigh and move together, grasping at skin and limbs and the heat between them. When they collapse, spent and laughing in the corner of the workshed, Mickey runs his hands through Ian’s hair.
A kiss to the cheek.
Sometimes Mickey lays with his head in Ian’s lap, grabbing a few more moments of rest before the day begins. On other days, they tease and spar and trade increasingly creative jokes about Kevin’s ponytail.
There are some mornings when Mickey’s gaze sits heavy on his skin.
“Why’re you really here, Mick,” he sighs on one of those mornings, leaning against Mickey’s chest.
“Told ya,” Mickey says easily. Ian notices that he doesn’t stiffen; he doesn’t hesitate. His hands just rake through Ian’s hair. “They told me to. Dropped me off and everything.”
“Why?”
“You really think asking them why is ever a good move?”
He’s right. “And the looking out?”
Mickey hums. “Yeah. M’looking. Think you are, too.”
Ian frowns. That doesn’t mean anything. “Are you ever gonna tell me anything real? Like, where the fuck you came from?”
“Does it matter?” Mickey asks, voice quiet and raw. “You already know everything real about me.”
There are things Ian knows now. Things he thinks he might actually understand.
He knows the little gasps Mickey breathes when Ian traces the lines of his body with his tongue. He knows the smirk on his lips when he drops to his knees in front of him. He knows the taste of him, the flutter of his eyelids when he comes in Ian’s mouth.
But more than that:
Ian knows that Mickey’s least favorite chore is milking the cows because he doesn’t like getting too close to them. He knows that his hands ache in the cold, he knows the little hum of appreciation when Ian takes them in his own. He knows the scar on his forehead, struck by a father that hated him.
He knows the soft warmth of Mandy’s head resting on his shoulder.
There’s so much he still doesn’t know. It wars against the things he does, and with every long day, Ian wonders if there’s much else he needs to know.
And suddenly he loves them both so much he can’t stand it. It’s all tea and wine and smoke, it’s a sun he can feel.
Everyone else gets used to them, he thinks.
Fiona makes them each a pair gloves to go with their socks, while Kev rolls an extra cigarette every night for Mandy to tuck behind her ear.
The kids love her. They trip their way home from school, babbling about the way she teaches them to write more than just their names.
She teaches them how to do more than tally their crop output, how to whittle more than just tools. She teaches them about joy beyond work and doing their part.
Everyone is used to them, now, except for Lip. He stays skeptical, clinging to the things he doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand how she could know these things.
“Where’d she come from that they’d let her know that?”
“I don’t know,” Ian says, chewing on his nail in the dark. “Neither of ‘em will budge.”
“She can’t be teaching them that stuff.”
“You don’t want them to know that stuff?”
“Fuck, Ian,” Lip groans, “of course I do. I want them to know whatever they want. But we’re not supposed to know any of it. They’re watching. And if anyone catches it–”
“If she’s sayin’ shit, you really think she’d admit to teaching them how to write?”
Lip doesn’t have an answer. He stares up at the ceiling, face pinched. Ian watches him breathe against the frustration, illuminated by moonlight.
“You’re going out there again, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful, Lip.”
“Yeah,” Lip says, rolling over and pulling his blanket tight across his chest. “Yeah, you too.”
Lip is gone before Ian wakes up the next morning. And he doesn’t come back.
Ian tries not to panic. Lip is smarter than anyone.
Mickey doesn’t say anything about Lip’s disappearance. They don’t speak of it at all; no one dares to. Ian almost feels safe in the silence. Mandy passes Ian a cigarette by the fire, as if she doesn’t notice the absence of Lip’s scrutiny.
At this point, Ian is desperate to trust them. He decides to let himself.
Until one of those devastatingly quiet days.
One day, just like the day before, Ian dragged his tired body to work.
The next day, he doesn’t.
He’d felt it coming on. The heaviness in his bones, deeper than the cold that lives there. He pushed through it for as long as he could, but soon enough the worry and the absence dragged him under.
Fiona comes to him in the morning. Tea, toast. A lingering kiss to the cheek.
Kev will cover for him. He’ll do it for as long as he can. Until the work starts to suffer. Until his family can’t hide him and what he is anymore. Until they come for him and he finally knows what happened to Joaquin.
He’s so fucking cold.
The fear claws at his mind, beating at his skull. But Ian is too goddamn tired to examine it, so he lets it take over as he rots.
Mickey comes to him in the evening. Hands in his hair, a kiss to the cheek.
“What’s this?” he asks softly.
Ian just stares. He’s not sure how Mickey got in here, bypassing his watchful sister down in the kitchen. He’s not really sure what Mickey’s asking.
He’s not even sure what this is, other than something that happens to him.
“Ian,” Mickey tries again, fear just on the edge of his voice, “what is this?”
“Tired,” Ian croaks. “Just tired. Back soon.”
He can’t say more. His throat collapses in on itself. He thinks he might just die here.
Mickey watches him.
“You’re sick?” he asks quietly. “What, like the flu?”
Looking out. I’m looking.
He’s in bed for two more days, and it’s not getting any better.
Mickey comes back every night. Asks Ian what this is. Please, Ian, what is this.
Panic rises in his chest as the distant sun rises on the fourth day. They’re going to come for him. Mickey was here, he was watching. He asked to know; there were things he didn’t know that he’s seen now–
And they’re going to fucking come for him.
He turns to Lip’s empty bed. Wills him to be there, face slack in sleep. Lip wouldn’t let anything happen to him.
Lip wouldn’t let them take him.
He’s not sure where he’s going as his aching legs carry him down the road. Ian walks through the fog of his mind, stumbling beyond the shed and the cabbage and the turnips. He stops in front of the treeline that borders the field.
Ian’s never really wondered what lies beyond these weak, brittle trees. No one ever indicated that anything could be beyond them. Their world has always been this.
Nobody thinks about us.
He steps between the trees. Nothing happens.
He breathes the same, burning air.
Ian moves in steps, unable to think beyond the small movements of his feet. His body is slow; he’s so fucking cold. He comes to stand in front of a tree, realizing he’s never really looked at one up close before.
If he could, he’d bring a hand to trace the texture of it. He’d learn the grooves of the trunk, the sticky sap that it bleeds. He might knock against it, feeling the solid wood that might have seen the springtime. He’d know something he didn’t know yesterday.
Through the trees, he hears his name.
They’ve come for him, then.
Mickey’s hands are in his hair, cupping his face. They’re gripping his sharp elbows and rubbing fiercely at his arms. They’re everywhere, feeling every broken piece of him.
“What the fuck, Ian,” Mickey hisses, whisps of cold air between them. “What the fuck is this?”
“You’re gonna take me?” Ian asks him.
“Take– what? I’m gonna take you the fuck back home, asshole. What the shit are you thinking?”
Ian lets himself be led away. He supposes it’s nice; nice of Mickey to let him say goodbye.
Fiona corrals him back into bed when Mickey pushes him through the front door. No tea or toast. No kiss to the cheek. She paces around his bedroom, furious.
“What were you doin’, huh? Going out there while you’re sick. What the fuck, Ian? You think we can handle losing you, too?”
He can barely see her through the fog. “Lip,” he offers weakly.
“What about him,” she snaps. “You lookin’ for him?”
Ian shrugs. Mickey sits on the edge of his bed, but Ian can’t look at him. Not when he knows he’s just waiting to take him away.
“You weren’t even going the right way, man,” Mickey sighs, and Ian can’t help it then. He gapes at him as Fiona stops and whips towards them.
“What?” Ian’s voice barely carries, but Mickey is always watching.
“That’s not– fuck. That’s not the way out.”
“You know Lip’s out, then?” Fiona asks, body deflating under the weight of her dread.
“Of course I do,” Mickey says, rolling his eyes. “Told you I was lookin’.”
“Enough of that. What are you looking at?”
Mickey runs a shaking hand down his face. “I’ll tell you, alright? Can we just– warm him up, please?”
Ian sleeps for a long time.
When he wakes, Lip is there. “M’sorry,” he murmurs. “Sorry I wasn’t here.”
He’s here now.
The entire family is crammed into his bedroom. Kev and Veronica hover in the corner, while Mickey is still perched on the edge of his bed.
Mandy, he learns, has the kids downstairs.
Ian looks at Mickey. Right. There are things he needs to know.
“Alright,” he begins. He takes Ian’s hand. “Fuckin’ fine. They made us come here, like I already fuckin’ said. We’re here to work. That’s the truth.”
“Fine,” Fiona says. “But now you’re gonna tell us why.”
Mickey bites down on his lip. “Can I fucking trust you?”
“Are you kidding me? You’ve been watchin’ us for them and you wanna know if you can trust us?”
“For them? You think we’re doin’ shit for them?”
“You said–”
“No I fuckin’ didn’t!”
“Shut the fuck up,” Lip interrupts. “Everybody shut the goddamn fuck up. You know how they got here.”
Ian can barely keep up. No one seems to be saying anything at all. At the sound of his brother’s steady voice, though, he tunes back in.
Of course. They knew it all along.
“They were with those people,” Ian says, understanding at last. Lip nods. “They were with those people tryin’ to change things.”
There’s a heavy silence in the room. Ian looks at Mickey, who stares down at where his freckled hand rests in Mickey’s scarred ones. He squeezes, and Mickey looks back up at him. He then peers around the room.
“Doesn’t matter where we came from, alright? You ain’t gettin’ there from here. What matters is we got fuckin’ caught. So here we are.”
“They didn’t take you?” Ian asks.
“What does that mean?” Mickey asks, genuine confusion settling over his face. “Why do you keep sayin’ that?”
“He doesn’t fucking know?” Kev splutters.
“What happens when you can’t work anymore,” Fiona says, voice hard. “Like if you get hurt or sick– if you don’t just die, they take you.”
“Take you where?”
“Dunno. But you don’t come back.”
“They kill you,” Lip corrects. “They fucking kill you.”
“You know that for sure?” Fiona demands.
Lip doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. There are things he knows now; there are things they’ve always known, really.
Mickey looks sick. He turns back to Ian. “You…?”
Ian shrugs, nodding once. “If they find out about this, it’s over.”
“And you thought I was gonna fucking tell them?”
“You said–”
“Don’t fucking tell me what I said,” Mickey snaps. “I never said I was gonna tell them shit.”
“So when you said you were looking out,” Vee says slowly, “you meant–”
“That we are literally lookin’ out, yes, Jesus Christ.”
Kev blinks. “Looking out for what? For us?”
“Yes, for you, you stupid fuck. Nobody else is.”
Nobody thinks about us. Nobody thinks about us. Holy shit. Nobody thinks about us.
“That’s why they didn’t take you,” Ian says. “We don’t fucking matter out here.”
The fog creeps over his field of vision, down his shoulders and over his chest. It settles in his stomach, black and sickening.
They don’t matter.
“We could still work,” Mickey says simply. “Why the fuck would they waste two working bodies? As long as the crops come in, who gives a shit about me and Mandy?”
“And the rest of us aren’t a threat,” Lip adds. “Too weak, too stupid. Too fucking cold. They dumped them here and didn’t look back.”
Mandy appears in the doorway. She shoves in next to Mickey, smiling gently at Ian.
“We’re lookin’ out for you,” she agrees. “Helping with the food, teaching the kids what you never got to learn, I guess. But – we could teach you, too, y’know. We could teach you a lot of things.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Veronica asks. Kev wraps an arm around her.
“I don’t think it’s over,” Mandy says. “It doesn’t end with us being left here. We could try again. Here. With you.”
Ian looks to Mickey. “And you agree?”
“I do,” he says seriously.
“That sounds fucking dangerous,” Fiona scoffs. “How the fuck would that even work with them watching?”
“Fiona,” Lip says, “come on. They’re not really watching. They just made us think they are. We’ve been watching ourselves with their stupid fucking rules this whole goddamn time.”
“No,” she argues. “They’re here. You work next to them every goddamn day–”
“Yeah, and they barely notice me. They don’t see us. They’d never think we could do it. We grow their food and then we fucking die, Fi. That’s all we are here.”
We don’t matter. Nobody thinks about us.
The fog overtakes him.
The sun is distant when Ian blinks awake again. It hangs, as it always does, pale and thin in a muted sky.
Mickey is still holding his hand.
“Hey,” he says.
Ian stares for a moment. He moves his hand away.
“You said I knew everything real,” he whispers.
“I kinda– Ian, I kinda thought you did. The way you talked about rules that first day, about the work. I thought maybe there was something there in you.”
“That’s a huge fucking thing to have to read between the lines, Mickey.”
“Yeah,” Mickey says. “Yeah, I know. I just didn’t know what I could say. They moved us out here so fucking fast. I needed a little time to figure you out.”
Ian nods. He understands that. There’s still so much he doesn’t know.
“What do you think,” Mickey asks, gesturing around the now-empty room. “What, uh, do you think about all that?”
“I don’t know, Mick. I’m so fucking tired.”
Mickey bites his lip. “Yeah. Your brother and sister told me a little bit about… about this.”
As if on cue, Lip and Fiona step back into the bedroom. Lip sits on his own bed while Fiona crosses over to Ian. Tea and toast. A kiss.
“I want to know more,” Fiona says, moving to sit next to Lip. He looks at her, nodding. “We want to know more about this.”
Mickey doesn’t take his eyes off of Ian. “And you?”
He’s so fucking cold. He’s not sure if any of this matters. He’s not sure he wants anybody to think about him. To remember him like this – to remember him if he tried and fucking failed.
He’s not sure he could stand it: to learn how to write more than his own name, to know more than cabbage and dull blades and cracked skin. He’s not sure if he could stand to learn himself beyond these rules only to lose it all.
Today, he’s cold and he’s tired. And they don’t matter.
But the thing about their long days is that there’s always another one.
He looks out the window, at the pale, distant sun. Maybe it’ll always be that way, holding onto its own memory of warm air.
But there are things he knows now.
Ian Gallagher was born in the springtime. He thinks it might have been real once.
He looks back at Mickey, at the sun he can feel, and takes his hand.