Phillip Gallagher rested his arms on his knees as he sat on the steps in front of the Milkovich house and lit up a cigarette.

Three years ago, he had gotten into the broken down van in his yard, and asked his little brother to name one time he had let him down, knowing full well that he never had. Because Ian, while only a year younger than Lip, would always be his little brother to him. Someone that he needed to protect, someone that he loved, and someone who truly deserved to be protected. To Lip, Ian was the Gallagher who had the strongest sense of right and wrong, who would always believe in the good in people, and who would always be let down by those people he believed in.

He took a deep drag on the cancer stick, and slowly let the smoke out through his nose.

Lip had been confident in the fact that he was a good brother when they talked in that van. But from where he was sitting now, he wasn't so sure. He blamed the majority of his mistakes on Mickey Milkovich. Lip had known from the second he found out that Ian was fucking the dirty thug that it wouldn't end well for his brother, but he had figured that Ian would eventually find that out too, that he would realize that Mickey was no good for anyone, and go on his way.

When Mickey ended up in juvie for the second time in two years, and Ian had seemed heartbroken, Lip had known who's fault it was, but he hadn't done anything about it, thinking that Ian had learned his lesson, that he would find someone new to fuck, and preferably someone who could still get it up without assistance.

But time went by, and Ian went right back to the pale boy like a moth to a flame. Yet Lip had done nothing to stop it, hoping beyond hope that it wasn't serious, that it was just a fuck buddy situation. However, as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, he knew deep down that Ian was falling for the older boy hard and fast. When Ian started to get more and more depressed, he had thought that maybe the boy had finally given up, finally realized that Mickey was just too far in the closet to ever be able to love him.

Then he found out that Mickey was getting married, and it all made sense, but at that point he had his own Milkovich to deal with, a Milkovich who would end up running his first love over with a car and fucking her up for life, so when he went to the wedding to confront the brunette who had gotten just a bit too much crazy dumped in her head when she was born and found his brother there as well, drunk out of his mind and shouting about love and fucking and marriage, he knew that he had fucked up. But it was too late then, so all he could do was drag Ian out of the bar before the drunk redhead had outed himself to a bar full of homophobes, and get him home.

His Marlboro was burning down closer to the filter ever second.

He had told Ian that he could find someone better, and he had believed it when Ian told him that he was over the boy who had been his fascination for nearly two years. So he had overlooked Ian lying in a bed for days on end, because he hadn't dared to think that he might be like their mother, hadn't wanted to consider it. And then Ian was gone, and he didn't know where he was, or when he would come back, just gone.

Ian had left them. Left them like Monica used to, only he was nothing like Monica, he had always been everything that Monica wasn't, he had been strong, and straightforward, and a rule-follower, so he had told himself that Ian must have just needed to sort some stuff out, that he would be okay, that the texts that Ian was sending back were enough.

He told himself all sorts of things that he knew weren't really true, but then college was starting and his life was moving fast again, and he was getting D's in his classes and he needed to concentrate. He hadn't had time for Ian and his little 'trip.' He had gotten mad at Ian about stupid things, about how he must have been only thinking of himself, not the kids he was supposed to be helping support. About how he had been too caught up in his own little world to see that the sun didn't revolve around him. But he had known that that wasn't true, because Ian wasn't selfish, he had always paid his own way, he always had been good that way.

But Lip stayed angry at Ian until he was being hauled out of a bathroom stall, and asked if he had ever seen his own brother, and Ian had needed his protecting again. So he had looked for Ian, for a couple days at least, and he had found him, and he had known something was wrong, and he had known that him being with Monica meant bad news, but then he had another little brother that needed him, and he didn't have time for Ian, so he had passed off the boy that he had once never let down to somebody else.

He took another drag on his cigarette, which was now almost dead.

So when Ian came home, and Mickey followed after him like a lost dog, he had thought that maybe Mickey would be okay for his brother, maybe Ian had just been high, maybe he needed to come back to reality. But Ian didn't get better. He had stopped acting like the brother that Lip had known all his life, he had gone on jogs before the sun was in the sky, he had stayed up all night dancing at a fucking gay bar, he had started spouting out half baked ideas that would never happen. Yet still Lip did nothing.

Maybe everything else was forgivable, maybe with everything else he had had real reasons not to help. But this was unforgivable. Because he had seen his little brother, the boy he was supposed to protect, the boy that he wasn't supposed to let down, he had seen him spiraling downward, down the same path that Monica had been on before she had attempted suicide.

And he had done nothing.

Nothing at all.

He didn't think that he would ever forgive himself for that one, he didn't think that anybody could, because his little brother hadn't gotten out of bed for days on end, he was just laying there, pale, and still, and crying silently.

And he couldn't help.

And it broke his heart.

He took a deep breath, rubbed at his eyes, ground his cigarette into the ground, and headed back inside, promising to himself that maybe he had let Ian down before, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let it happen again.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Note that I know that Lip couldn't have fixed anything that happened between Mickey and Ian, and that Ian's bipolar disorder wasn't his fault, but If I was in Lip's position, I would blame myself too. I hope you guys like it! Please comment!