Chapter Text
So what does that make you, Lip? It makes you wrong, you fucking smart asshole. Now, go back to Kash and promise him that you’re not gonna tell anybody. Because he’s done nothing to be sorry for.
Nothing.
Lies that Ian Gallagher tells himself when he’s in love for the first time.
One: my age never had anything to do with it.
Ian starts the job the summer after his freshman year. He’s tired of doing odd jobs, tagging along with whatever Lip can sneak him into. So he marches into the nearest corner store, work certificate with Frank’s forged signature fresh in hand, the day after the help wanted sign goes up.
“No,” the rude lady who owns the store says immediately with barely a glance at his resume. “Absolutely not. Come back when you’re sixteen, kid.”
Ian expects that to be the end of it, and nearly accepts defeat - he’s never been able to argue his way into situations like his brother does - but the other store owner (her husband, he thinks) surprises him.
“Linda,” says the other owner, giving Ian a kind smile. “C’mon, give him a chance. Look, he went through the trouble of actually getting his work certificate. That shows responsibility. You’re a responsible man, right Ian?”
“Yessir.” Ian replies, cringing when Linda shoots him a dubious look over his newly-instilled ROTC response. But the guy just gives an appreciative laugh, like he’s impressed, and Ian decides that he likes him. He likes his friendliness, the warm sound of his laugh, the way that he treats Ian like an equal, not some dumb kid trailing after his older, brighter, siblings.
It’s a good feeling.
In the end, Linda agrees to hire him. The guy, Kash, gives Ian a warm handshake and welcomes him to the family.
What he doesn’t know is that there was only one other applicant for the job - an attractive woman in her twenties that Linda sniffed out for the way that she twirled her hair and smiled at Kash in the interview.
It never occurred to Linda that she should be paying more attention to the way her husband’s eyes followed the gangly, freckly, barely-fifteen year old boy as he skipped out the door.
Two: it was all my idea.
Ian kisses Kash first. It’s exhilarating and terrifying, filled with teenager lust… and, yes, the heady wrongness of it all.
The thing is, the thing that judgmental assholes like Lip will never get, is that Kash pushes him away right after. “Ian. We can’t.”
“I know,” Ian says shyly, looking at Kash through his eyelashes in a way that always seemed to work on Fiona when he was younger. “I just wanted to know what it would be like.”
He’s never kissed a guy before. With Roger Spikey, it had just been rushed mutual hummers in the locker room showers after ROTC training. It had happened too fast for him to even think about adding kissing to the equation.
But with Kash… there’s just something that makes him feel confident in the idea. He’s been working here for only a few months, and they already feel more like friends than boss and employee. They have the same sense of humor, laugh at the same jokes, and conspire behind Linda’s back to sneak extra food to Ian’s family (and hide Kash’s love for salty snacks he’s not supposed to be eating).
Sometimes, it feels like Kash is the only one who truly gets Ian. Kash knows about everything - his training, his least favorite subjects, his shitty parents, his favorite bands. They’ve talked about favorite celebrities, even, and that’s been enough to make Ian sure that Kash is like him.
And he’s seen Kash sneak glances at him, when he thinks Ian isn’t looking. Felt the weight of his stare, the press of his hand lingering a little too long on his shoulder, accidental grazes of his waist, his knee, his thigh.
He probably didn’t even realize what he was doing.
So Ian had kissed him, because he likes Kash, and even if he’s wrong then he knows that Kash is nice enough to at least not beat the shit out of him for trying.
Kash manages to restrain himself for about a week before he gives into temptation and kisses Ian back, pressing him into the stacked twelve-packs of beer and pop in the walk-in.
“We can’t tell anyone,” He says between kisses as his hand reaches down below Ian’s waist.
“I won’t,” Ian promises, leaning into that incredible rush desperately. “I promise, I won’t say a word.”
Three: he didn’t do anything wrong
It pisses Ian off when Lip finds out, because he keeps acting like Kash is some kind of creep who lured Ian into the back of his van with the promise of a candy bar.
He’s fifteen, he’s basically an adult (especially after Monica blitzed back into their lives last year to dump a still-breastfeeding Liam on them before splitting again, officially moving Ian from “middle child” to “older sibling” status now that there are six of them). And it’s not fair that he gets all the responsibilities of being a “Gallagher adult” while still being treated like a dumb kid by his brother. He can make his own decisions about who he wants to date.
And Lip has it all wrong. Kash isn’t using Ian, trading gifts for sexual favors or whatever Lip’s imagined in that fucked up mind of his. They buy things for each other because they’re in a relationship and that’s what you do in a relationship. Kash risks Linda’s wrath by sneaking money to buy him new shoes when Ian grows out of his, and Ian works extra hours and haggles with the neighborhood ticket scalpers to surprise Kash for his birthday.
Besides, Kash never pushed Ian into sex. He wanted to wait until Ian was sixteen, and Ian was the one who talked him into it. Age of consent in Illinois is seventeen anyway, and neither of them were willing to wait that long.
Kash never pushes Ian for anything. He’s gentle, and he’s sweet. He cares about Ian, and he’s so patient. The first time they almost had sex sex, he didn’t even get mad when Ian freaked and backed out at the last second.
He listened kindly when Ian explained his anxieties, kissed him softly, and told him, “It’s okay. Why don’t we try the other way around?”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course. I never want to make you uncomfortable. We’re a team, aren’t we?”
The panic comes back for Ian later, when he’s lying propped on his elbows on Kash’s bed, eyes darting around to all the signs of Kash’s home, his life with Linda and his kids, and Kash is on top of him. He’s just massaging Ian’s shoulders gently, practically hovering above him, but suddenly it’s like he’s back in that moment right before they almost had sex the first time, and he’s feeling crushed, suffocated, bursting at the seams with his need to escape, to get as far away from Kash as possible-
It goes away again when they’re back in the store, out of Kash’s space, and things are restored to their natural order. Ian’s the one in control.
Four: I have to protect him
If Ian had to pick one thing about Kash he wishes he could change - aside from the whole ‘married with kids’ thing - he would want Kash to grow an actual spine.
In the beginning, it’s one of the things that endears Kash to Ian. It’s easy to empathize with him, makes the situation more palatable when Linda is tearing Kash a new one for absolutely no reason. Kash is the victim - of society, of circumstances, of his shrew of a wife who treats him like garbage.
So it starts, even before the kissing, with Ian stepping in to defend Kash from Linda. Not to her face, of course - Fiona had fucking beamed with pride when Ian deposited his first full paycheck to the Squirrel Fund, so he’s not about to lose this job - but Ian finds little ways to make Kash’s life more bearable. Replacing stolen merchandise, slipping Kash mints after he indulges on some forbidden snack, covering for Kash where he can. They make a good team, usually staying one step ahead of Linda at every turn.
And when Mandy Milkovich sends her brothers after Ian as revenge for him rejecting her advances, Kash steps up to protect him too. It warms Ian’s heart, to have someone looking out for him, the way only his siblings ever have.
It’s nice to have someone who’s just his. His to look after, his person, someone to watch his back. Everything else in Ian’s life is shared - clothes, books, affection - and it’s good to have this one thing to himself. Someone who will laugh with him, love with him, clasp his shoulder when Ian gets promoted and tell him, genuinely, that he’s proud of him.
Kash is Ian’s to protect, from Linda’s cutting remarks, from Lip’s judgement, from the petty thieves who waltz right out of the store because they know Kash won’t do a damn thing to stop them.
“We’re cowards,” Ian muses, as he watches Mickey saunter off with his stolen snacks in broad daylight, and something gnaws at him. Something ugly and uncomfortable. This isn’t who he is. This isn’t him.
When Kash touches his shoulder, it doesn’t feel reassuring and warm the way it’s supposed to.
“We’re smart men in a stupid world,” Kash says. “C’mon.”
You’re pathetic, the thought flashes in Ian’s brain before he can stop it.
No, no, no. Kash isn’t pathetic. He’s kind, and sweet, and better than everyone else in Ian’s shitty life.
Kash is the best thing that ever happened to Ian.
Five: he loves me
Ian comes rushing back to the store with Linda’s freshly-retrieved gun in his pocket, and a new bruise on his face. Thanks to the madness of the day (faking Frank’s death to ward off some gangbangers, typical Saturday shenanigans), there hasn’t exactly been time to process his emotions until he’s racing down the street at Linda’s ‘ store emergency come now’ text on the shared family phone.
He flies into the store, and doesn’t even get to decide if he feels guilty for sleeping with someone else before Linda is decking him across the face.
“That’s for screwing my husband!” She spits at him, before Ian can even protest.
Ian gapes past her, and Kash’s face tells the whole story. Somehow, it had come out. Somehow, Linda knew.
It had to be the cameras. They must have been caught, or Linda saw them adjusting them and put it together.
Ian really hopes it’s the latter, because the thought of Linda watching him and Kash makes him want to hurl into the trash.
“What are you going to tell the kids?” Kash asks. “My parents?”
“You bastard!” Linda shouts. “What about me?”
Ian makes himself small in the background, as Kash and Linda discuss their options. It’s strange. He feels like he’s eight, standing off to the side while Monica and Frank argue over who has to play nice with the social worker, or show up for a teacher’s conference, or take him to the hospital. Like he’s an inconvenience, a thing, not a person with thoughts and feelings of his own.
Linda wants to have a baby. “I get what I want, and you can have what you want,” she tells Kash. “But no touching the forbidden fruit until I’m knocked up.”
Ian looks past Linda to Kash. He expects to see an apology in Kash’s eyes - sorry that she called you that, sorry that she hit you, sorry that I got you in this situation.
Nothing. Kash isn’t even looking at him. The only thing he cares about is making Linda happy so that she doesn’t ruin his life.
The only thing he cares about is himself.
Later, when Kash catches Ian and Mickey together, his eyes so hurt and betrayed, Ian thinks that maybe he was wrong. Maybe Kash does still love him.
But when Mickey takes a bite of a stolen Snickers bar and says, “I like ‘em sweet. But then, so do you, huh?” with just enough hint of knowing disgust, and Kash’s eyes narrow in on that fucking Snickers bar like it’s the only thing in the world that matters, Ian knows.
It’s the shoes. It’s the jacket. It’s taking Ian into his home and touching him on his bed. It’s sleeping with Linda so that in return, he can have his forbidden fruit back.
It’s not about love. Not anymore. Maybe it never was.
Kash pulls the trigger, and Ian stops lying to himself.
And one, ugly, truth:
He’s the first person I ever loved, and he’ll always have a piece of my heart, no matter how fucked up that is.
Sorry.
It’s nine-seventeen on a Sunday morning when Ian gets the news.
He’s just back from a run, perched at the kitchen island and drinking coffee. The apartment is filled with the soft sound of snores drifting from the bedroom door. Ian browses through his phone, clicking through the notifications and clearing them with purpose.
It drives his husband up the wall whenever he sees the amount of red alerts on Ian’s home screen, thousands of missed notifications from various apps ranging from his voicemail to TikTok (“Fucking TikTok, Ian?”). Normally Ian thrives on the chaos but this morning the sight of those red bubbles was feeling just a little overwhelming in a way that he’s trying to pay more attention to.
So he’s taking a moment to get slightly more on track, methodically going through missed notifications of spam emails and ignored texts - whoops he forgot to reply to a text from Debbie a few days ago asking him if he saw the latest Matrix trailer, so he texts her back right away because at this point she’s probably already organized a search party for him - when he comes across the Facebook messenger request from Linda Karib.
The first message is a link to some article from the Plymouth Voice.
Ian swallows a lump in his throat, and clicks on the link.
Local Rec-and-Ed Baseball Coach Convicted of Child Pornography Posession
Ian only reads a few lines, skimming over the details - hundreds of files found on his computer by his now ex-husband, sentenced to the maximum of four years - and clicks back to read the second message from Linda.
Guess we both dodged a bullet, huh.
The one percent of his heart that still has Kash Karib’s fingerprints smeared all over it, wants to ache over this. Wants to tear up over the thought of gentle, sweet Kash locked away in a cell. Whispers to him that the right thing, the compassionate thing to do would be to take the car and drive to Michigan, offer Kash support and empathy because surely no one else is going to -
Ian deletes the conversation from his phone, and blocks Linda on Facebook.
Then he finishes his coffee, slips back into the bedroom, ignores the half-hearted grumbles as he curls around his groggy husband, and allows that tiny piece of heart to wither away for good.
It’s almost funny how little he misses it.