Chapter Text
When Fiona Gallagher walked into her last class of the day, which happened to be art history, she was immediately pointed in the direction of a two-person desk in the back right corner of the room. At least assigned-seating took away the awkwardness of trying to find a place to sit, right?
She made her way over to the desk and sat in the chair beside a very familiar-looking boy. He had the hood of his black sweatshirt up, but she could see that he had wavy blonde hair poking out the front and falling down into his cold blue eyes. The color had potential to be beautiful, but there was an iciness to them that made them almost hard to look at for longer than a couple of seconds. She figured that was maybe on purpose.
“The fuck are you lookin’ at, Gallagher?” He growled, side-eyeing her. His eyebrows were pinched together as if she had insulted him by simply looking and she noticed that he had a hairless line through his left eyebrow that she couldn’t figure out whether it was intentionally shaved or if it was a scar.
“Milkovich, language...and take off your hood,” The teacher scolded as he walked by and the boy rolled his eyes and pulled the hood back to expose his head. Fiona noticed that the sides of his hair were shaved down and several faint scars were littered across his scalp.
“Colin Milkovich, right?” Fiona realized, piecing together where she’d seen him before. Everyone knew Colin Milkovich in the Southside--and not always for the best reasons. She didn’t even realize he was still in school--she figured he’d dropped out years ago.
He gave her a half-assed eyebrow raise which she took as a confirmation, before turning back towards the front of the classroom.
It turned out that art history was the most boring class Fiona had ever taken in her life and it was making the struggle against sleep deprivation pretty hard. She hadn’t even realized when she’d fallen asleep, but she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her shin and sat up quickly.
“Jesus, don’t have a fuckin’ heart attack,” Colin said, shaking his head.
“Sorry,” Fiona mumbled, noticing that the teacher was walking down their aisle, reading from a book. He didn’t seem to have noticed Fiona sleeping, but he probably would have if Colin hadn’t woken her up. “Thanks.”
“Never been thanked for kickin’ someone before,” He snorted, glancing over at her.
“I meant for waking me up. Probably saved me a lecture.”
“I just didn’t wanna hear Lavigne bitch.” Colin shrugged. “Besides, the dickhead hates me. Probably woulda tried to blame me for your ass sleepin’ through his class.”
“You guys know each other?”
“I took this class last year.”
“I didn't even know I’d fallen asleep--that was crazy! One second, I was listening, and the next second you were waking me up. I need to get more sleep or something.”
“Sounds like it,” Colin grunted.
The bell suddenly rang and Colin was up and out of his seat before it even stopped. He plowed through the annoying ass kids standing around in his way and finally breathed a sigh of relief when he made it out of the school and onto the sidewalk to start walking home. Why did he even go to school? He heard the footsteps of someone running up behind him and put his hand in his pocket to grab hold of his switchblade, before spinning around to see who it was.
“Man, I’ve never slept in class like that before. It’s just because my mom came around again last week, so her and my dad have been in and out of the house a lot lately. I was up all night with my baby brother and sister--they have some kinda flu or something. Wouldn’t stop crying all night, but luckily no fevers so far, so I’m holding off on a visit to the clinic,” Fiona rambled, catching up to him.
“Jesus Christ,” Colin mumbled and rolled his eyes, letting go of the knife, but keeping his hands in the pockets of his baggy jeans as he returned to walking. Fiona fell in step beside him, much to his annoyance.
“I just hope I don’t get it, because that would be super annoying to deal with while taking care of them, you know? My sister is two and my brother is one, so they’re at a pretty needy age. My other two brothers are older, though, so they’re pretty self-sufficient.”
“Didn’t ask.”
“You don’t like people, do you?”
“Nope,” He confirmed. “Especially not chatty fuckin’ freshman girls.”
“That obvious I’m a freshman, huh?” Fiona asked, pouting slightly. “Is it because I don’t wear makeup?”
Colin wanted to say no, it was because she didn’t have the quiet, guarded, snarky attitude that most of the older girls had by the time they reached about junior year and dealt with the pervy teachers and asshole sex-addicted dudes, but he just shrugged in response.
“How old do you think I look?” She asked him, either not getting the hint that he had no interest in this conversation or possibly just not caring.
“Fuck you mean?”
“How old do I look?” She repeated. “If you didn’t know I was fourteen, how old would you guess?”
“I dunno.”
“Wow, you’re so helpful,” Fiona told him sarcastically, grabbing his arm and stopping him from walking on. His automatic reaction was to aggressively shake her off, but he held himself back.
“You look fourteen.” Colin said, lightly smacking the top of her hand to make her let go. “The rest of the chicks in your year look like they’re sixteen though, so I guess that still means you look like a middle schooler.”
“It really is the makeup, huh? I just don’t wanna wake up that early to put it on and--”
“Fuck, Gallagher,” He groaned. “Yes, the way you don’t have ten pounds of makeup on or have your tits and ass out does make you look younger, but it’s probably not a bad thing that you look different than those skanks at school. Maybe you’ll manage to graduate without getting knocked up and stuck with some dipshit for the rest of your life. Now, I’m gonna get home and you’re gonna fuck off.”
Colin turned and started walking a bit faster down the sidewalk, feeling successful in losing the girl when he didn’t hear her following him.
“Do you not have friends because you’re an asswipe or because you’re allergic to conversation?” She shouted after him.
Colin didn’t bother answering, not wanting to risk a continuation of the conversation. He just flipped her off over his shoulder and kept walking, leaving Fiona to do whatever it was she did after school.
Colin was only asleep for about an hour, before a loud bang startled him awake. It took a couple of seconds for his mind to catch up to what was happening, but as soon as he registered the heavy footsteps in the hall and another door banging open, he was on his feet and flying out of his room.
“The fuck you mean you don’t have money? We just got back from the Milwaukee run last week, Ronnie!” Terry shouted, grabbing Joey by his upper arms and hoisting him into the air for a moment, before slamming his back against the wall. Joey didn’t dare say anything--staring wide-eyed and pale at his enraged father.
“That’s not Ronnie, Terry,” Colin said warily, coming up behind him. “That’s Joey and you’re drunk. Put him down.”
“Stay the fuck outta this!” Terry growled, gripping Joey harder and making him wince. Colin wasted no time in throwing a punch against Terry’s exposed ribs. Terry immediately dropped Joey and spun around to swing at Colin, but he was just fast enough to avoid the hit.
“Go!” Colin shouted at his brothers, before tackling Terry onto the ground. Joey grabbed Tony and Iggy and pulled them out into the hallway, where they ran into their younger siblings Mickey and Mandy, who were watching the altercation. Colin barely had time to see the five of them take off towards his room, before Terry had him pinned on the ground. He sat on his chest and knelt heavily on his arms with his knees as he punched him in the mouth. Colin brought his knee up sharply against Terry’s back, causing him to grunt and roll off of him.
Terry pushed himself to his feet and tried to take off towards the hallway, but Colin flipped over onto his stomach and grabbed his ankle, pulling and causing Terry to trip and fall forwards onto the ground. He knew he wasn't going to win the fight, but he was trying to buy the kids enough time to lock the bedroom door.
Terry turned around and delivered a swift kick to the side of his face, causing Colin to let go as he felt pain shoot through his skull. He groaned and clutched his face for a moment, trying to quiet the sound of his blood rushing in his ears and the pounding in his head. He distantly heard Terry boom down the hall and pound on his bedroom door, shouting threats at his siblings hiding in there.
“Fuck,” Colin whispered to himself, slowly pushing up into a sitting position, which caused a wave of dizziness to spiral in his head. He used the frame of Tony and Iggy’s bunk bed beside him to pull himself up to his feet and took a few hesitant steps. He couldn’t pass out right now. When he figured he was stable enough, he stumbled out of the room and into the kitchen, where he found an almost-empty bottle of vodka on the table. He grabbed it and made his way back over to Terry as quietly as possible. After adjusting his grip, he swung the bottle as hard as he could muster in his weakened state into the side of Terry’s head, where it shattered loudly. Or maybe it wasn’t that loud, but it just seemed that way to Colin with his developing concussion. It served its purpose, though, knocking Terry Milkovich out instantly.
He waited a moment, making sure that Terry was definitely out cold, before he called out, “It’s me. He’s down.”
There was a shuffling in the room, before the door unlocked and opened about an inch, which was all that the three chain locks Colin had installed would allow. Joey peered out at him and looked down at Terry, before nodding and shutting the door again to undo the other locks.
The door opened wider, allowing Colin to see into the bedroom. Iggy and Tony were peeking out from a pile of laundry on the other side of Colin’s large bed and Mickey and Mandy were poking their heads out of his closet.
“You good?” Colin asked Joey, switching on the light and gently grabbing his arms. He lifted the short sleeves of his top a bit to see his upper arms and looked over the light purple handprints forming on his pale skin.
“Yeah,” Joey confirmed. “They don’t really hurt.”
“Okay.” Colin nodded, knowing damn well he was lying. He’d had bruises just like those countless times and he knew that his arms must be aching like a motherfucker. “Tony, Mickey, come help me drag his fat ass to the couch.”
“I’ll clean up the glass,” Iggy said, jumping over the mess in the hallway and heading off towards the kitchen. Joey and Mandy followed after him, leaping over their father on the way.
Colin grabbed under Terry’s arms and began pulling, while Tony and Mickey each grabbed one of his legs. Luckily, they were pretty strong for only being ten and nine, respectively, so they made it to the couch pretty quickly. The exertion only made Colin’s head ache more and the constant pounding was beginning to make him nauseous.
By the time he made it back to his room, the floor was cleaned up. Joey was throwing the vodka-soaked rags into the laundry bin, while Iggy was sweeping the last few glass pieces into a dust pan.
He sat on his bed and looked up as Mandy walked into his room. She handed him a sock filled with ice and a wet rag. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m good, Kiddo,” He assured her. He gently wiped his face clean with the rag until he figured his lip had stopped bleeding, then he tossed it into the laundry bin and laid on his bed. “All of you go to sleep--school starts in a few hours and you can’t be late on the second day.”
The kids wordlessly scattered to their rooms and shut their bedroom doors. Colin left his open as he always did, so he could listen to see if Terry got up to look for a round two. He shut his eyes and placed the ice sock across his face so that it covered both his busted lip and his throbbing cheekbone, where he was kicked.
Hopefully, the rest of the night could go by uninterrupted.