Disclaimer: I own nothing, not Shameless, nor other mention Pop cultural references or quotes.

Author´s Note: The idea for this short story just popped up into my head. I´m trying to write a shot for every possible Gallagher sibling combination (minus Sammie), but I don´t want it to sound forced, so it might take some time to write them.

This piece takes place after the season 9 finale. I just needed to wrap it up a little more.

Special Thanks got to "lemondrizzlecake" for beta reading.

Picture
Fiona & Lip

He doesn´t like to admit the fact that it takes time to adjust. Adjust to life without her constantly being there. It has something to do with the walls he built long ago, or the fact that he tries to pretend that he´s still mad at her and not deeply worried, but in the end it´s just like this: it takes time to adjust.

He makes breakfast, repairs bikes and pretends he´s fine, because somehow that makes him feel fine. Not great, but okay. Fine. He can deal with it being like that.

Liam took it hard, Debbie´s burying herself in work and Carl´s got his head in his papers from one military academy to another to find one that might not reject him, but he does not judge, has long ago learned that he shouldn´t, because the shit going on affects everyone differently, plus Fiona's been more like a mother for them than a sister, while all in all Lip just sees her as that.

So it takes a while for him to adjust, to figure out how to be. It takes no time to rebuilt the walls – he´s damn good at building them, he´s always been – and though he knows he should feel guilty, he doesn´t. Debbie's giving him looks every now and then that make him uncomfortable, because he doesn´t know if she blames him or if she´s worried about him and he wants to call her out, but he doesn´t. Because truth is, he hasn´t adjusted yet, and going into a fight with her might crack his walls.

So instead he lies awake at night more often than not, smokes more than ever and tries to hush away every memory to come. No more Fiona. Gone. No more Monica. Gone. No more Karen or Mandy or Helene. Gone, gone, gone. If he´s lucky, Tami´s sticking around, but even if he wishes so, he doesn´t hope for it.

It´s in the middle of the night, and Liam had a nightmare – he hadn´t had any of them for a long time, and maybe it is because Fiona´s gone. Lip wants to tell himthat he´s too old for crawling into his bed like a little kid, but he sorta likes the warmth Liam brings with him, the steady breathing and the energy he has, twisting around all the time in his sleep.

It´s the first time since he took Liam with him to college that they´re that close, and he tries not to think about the fact that he´s just the filler, that what Liam really wants is Fiona.

But Fiona´s gone and it´s for good. It is good, and Lip´s fine. Except that he can´t sleep.

He takes a look at the clock. 01:34. He counts sheep. 01:42. Turns around on his stomach and closes his eyes. 01:49. He gets up, puts on his shoes and goes for a smoke on the front porch. Gets back inside, lying back down again. 02:13. Closes his eyes, drowses off, snaps awake. 02:14. Damn it.

He´s up in a second, takes one last glance at Liam's sleeping form and gets out of bed again – this time even sneakier than before. He doesn´t put his shoes on, closes the bedroom door behind him and heads for the attic. He bites his lip when he tries to get the ladder down without waking anybody, but miraculously no one even stirs and he climbs up to the attic.

It takes some time to find the switch to turn on the light and when he does, it´s so freaking bright, he almost tumbles down the stairs again, but he can catch himself the second before he falls.

"Fuck."

His right palm throbs and he realizes that he cut himself with a splintered wooden beam. The odds are in his favor. In the dimmed light of the attic he tries to evaluate the damage done to his palm and deems it not deep but messy. Not wanting to go back down to get something to stop the slight bleeding, he looks around and finds some of Liam's old baby clothes. He takes one of the tiny shirts and wraps it around his hand, straightens up – not too much, so he would not hit his head in addition – and evaluates his surroundings.

It takes a while until he finds what he´s been looking for.

In one of the corners is a pile with old photo albums, and somehow the memory just strikes him.

He´s about thirteen, Fiona´s barely eighteen and she´s putting together this stupid album. Frank never bothered to do so, and Monica was barely ever organized enough for it, but Fiona had just begun to find it oddly calming.

"Why you´re doing that?"he´d asked her. "It´s not like our lives are worth remembering."

She´d shot him a glance that was something between sad and furious. "It´s worth for me", she had said.

"I don´t think it´s healthy", he´d said. "I find it rather strange. You´re not old enough to dwell on awful memories."

Instead of getting sad or angry she had just smiled. "But imagine you bring your first girl home. I´m sure she would love to see tiny Lip without his front teeth. And now I know exactly where to look for that." She´d held the picture up, so he could see his younger self smiling in the camera – indeed with two missing teeth.

"Don´t worry. Never going to bring a girl into this mess", he had said and Fiona had just stuck her tongue out at him.

"Never say never", she´d sung.

He smiles at the memory, then stumbles forward and takes the first album in his hands.

It´s not like there are that many pictures, but somehow there are just enough to get a glimpse at how each of them grew from tiny to terrible before someone's eyes. It takes a while to find what he´s looking for because the pictures start with the newest and end with a wedding picture of Monica and Frank, but after a while, he´s holding it in his shaky hands.

It must be one of the rare times Frank took a picture of a family member, because it´s a little blurry, but Lip pretends that their father was shaking out of excitement and not withdrawal.

It´s a picture taken at the hospital right after his birth.

When he was younger, Lip would sometimes be proud to be the only Gallagher sibling being born at an actual hospital, not in the kitchen or a car or the pavement in front of the hospital, but in a comfy room with a clean bed and a nurse.

And instead of showing the newborn with the – probably wasted – mother, the person holding him in the picture is his older sister. Fiona's arms are rather thin and she looks really pale, but she holds the tiny baby steady like she´s shielding him from all the bad in the world. A symbol of what she would do for the next eighteen years and more.

His heart aches, but he cannot keep himself from smiling. He carefully takes the picture out of the album with his not bleeding hand, stumbles back to the ladder, turns off the light and gets back down.

He takes some time, cleaning the cut on his hand, than he sneaks back into his room, relieved to see Liam still asleep.

He fumbles with his pillowcase to shove the photo inside, climbs back into bed and falls asleep in no time.

~break~

He starts to take his time to adjust. He makes breakfast, repairs bikes and doesn´t act like he needs to pretend he´s fine. He knows he doesn´t have to. The walls are up, and if they´re not he just sneaks into his room, takes the picture out of the pillow case and stares at it for a while.

Life goes on, the world turns around, Carl talks about guns again, Liam about school and Debbie buys a Polaroid to take pictures of Franny. He goes to appointments with Tami. Every Sunday he calls Ian and he learns how to ride a bike without constantly crashing to the ground. And then, one day, he just walks up into his room and takes out the shoe box under his bed.

It´s what he calls, The Old Phillip, and even if he knows he´s never going back to be that, he likes having his old self sitting there, safely under the bed, not quiet gone, but silent.

He opens it and looks at the insides, carefully taking out one item at a time, weighting it in his hands. There´s his high school diploma, his AA chips, and a copy of Brave New World. He opens the book, flips through it till the very end. "Did you eat something that did not agree with you?"asked Bernard, He reads. The savage nodded. "I ate civilization."

He takes one last look at the picture, the tiny brown haired girl with the tiny, strong arms and the even tinier baby, then he puts it right within the open pages of the book, closes the copy and puts it back into the box. Carefully he lays back all the other items, closes the box and shoves it under the bed again. "When she comes back", he thinks. "I can take it out again."

Author´s Note:

I hoped at least someone liked this.

Please leave a review, and tell me what you thought. Constructive criticism is welcome. If you wish for another "oneshot", you can also comment. You can choose between "Red" (Ian & Debbie) or "Sleepless" (Carl & Liam).

*quote taken directly from: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)