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belamy20
Dinner time and the Gallagher table was loud again, the way it used to be before everything went to shit.
Lip was slicing pizza, eyes clearer than they'd been at lunch. Fiona spoon-fed Liam mashed potatoes while listening to Ian ramble about little training stories. Carl was trying to stack green peas one by one with his fork like it was the most important mission on earth, and Debbie was quietly cheering him on.
Frank, as usual, was nowhere to be seen.
Shane sat in his spot, working through his plate.
His phone on the table started buzzing nonstop—vibrations mixed with the little ding-ding-ding of notifications.
Debbie finally turned her head, curious. "Shane, why's your phone going crazy?"
Everybody else glanced over too. They'd all noticed the noise but nobody had dared ask.
Shane set his fork down and unlocked the screen. "Nothing. Just comments and likes on my video."
"Video?" Fiona's hand paused mid-spoon. "The one you said you were dropping? You actually uploaded it?"
"Yeah. At noon."
"So fast?" Lip actually spoke up, voice still a little rough. He cleared his throat. "How's it doing?"
Shane flipped the phone around so they could all see the YouTube page:
12,487 views.
243 comments.
Likes jumping every time he refreshed.
Ian let out a low whistle. "Wow."
"That many people watching already?" Fiona leaned in, clearly surprised by the number.
Ian set his cup down, curious. "Shane, we haven't even seen what you shot. Can we watch it?"
Shane thought for a second, then looked at Lip. "Laptop's with you—grab it."
Lip turned and brought the notebook over, setting it at the end of the table. Shane took it, opened his channel, found the video, and hit play.
The screen started black. Then a raw roar exploded.
It was a corner of the South Side iron gym. Shane was deadlifting. The bar was loaded heavy on both sides, the metal rod bending under the weight. Shane's back was to the camera, belt cinched tight, lats and traps stacked like steel plates.
With another guttural yell he ripped the bar off the floor, then slammed it back down onto the pads with a deafening BANG.
He stood up straight and loosened the belt.
Quick cuts followed: bench press, pull-ups, barbell rows—all of it backed by a simple, pounding keep-going track.
Once the raw strength clips ended, the music faded and the tone went cooler.
Shane was now in a gray hoodie, walking alone through the rundown South Side streets. The camera moved with his steps, shaky and real.
Flashes hit the screen: a curled-up homeless guy, graffiti-covered walls, corner gang members with hard eyes. Then Shane's voice-over kicked in.
"Look around. This is my daily. I bet it's yours too. A lot of people get lost here… or they never even found the road they wanted to walk in the first place."
Cut to an abandoned basketball court. The hoop behind him was nothing but a rusty skeleton. Weeds grew through the cracked concrete.
He looked straight into the lens. "Change doesn't start by pretending you're already on top of the mountain. It starts by admitting you're still at the bottom and looking up to see exactly how tall that damn mountain really is."
The whole Gallagher table was glued to the screen. Stuff like this was rare back in 2010.
Next came the basement shots—Shane showing off the homemade equipment he'd rigged from junk.
Fiona couldn't hold back. "You really trained with that crap?" She pointed at the screen and the sad-looking DIY gear.
Shane chuckled and hit pause. "Hell no. But I need them to think I did."
He looked around at his family.
"Gotta make them believe I clawed everything out of the trash, didn't have money for fancy gear, just scraped it together piece by piece. Once they buy that, they'll believe the rest—and they'll pay for the idea that they can become like me."
Fiona nodded, half-getting it.
The rest of the video was mostly form breakdowns and explanations.
"Close enough," Shane said. He closed the laptop and looked at Lip. "What do you think?"
Lip wasn't sarcastic this time. His eyes stayed on the now-black screen for a second.
He nodded. "It's really good. Just watching it hits different. Looking at those muscles, I almost wanna have your baby."
He grinned. "You're straight-up magnetic on camera. If I was gay I'd already be sliding in your DMs."
"Fuck off," Shane laughed, then turned to Ian.
Ian's face had gone red, especially when Shane looked at him. He coughed awkwardly and glanced away.
"Hey!" Carl spotted it immediately. "Ian, your face is red like a tomato!"
Ian grabbed his water and mumbled, "Soup's hot."
Debbie's mind had already jumped somewhere else. She rested her chin on her hand. "Shane, those big videos I've seen get millions and millions of views. They make crazy money, right?"
"Millions?" Carl jumped in. "Yeah, millions! So many zeros!"
Shane smiled and tapped the table. "It's not as wild as you think. Even the top subscriber guy probably clears two or three hundred grand a year max."
"Two or three hundred thousand?!" Both kids blurted at the same time. In their heads that was basically lottery money.
Debbie pressed, "That's not a lot?"
Shane shook his head.
Truth was, in 2010 the influencer game was nowhere near what it would become later. Even the biggest YouTube names with millions of views per video still had shaky, limited income.
"Split those couple hundred grand across the fifty or hundred videos he has to bust his brain for every year and it averages out to just a few thousand per video," Shane explained, watching Debbie's half-understanding face.
"They gotta come up with fresh ideas every single day, rack their brains trying to make people laugh until there's nothing left. And they still don't make it as easy as we do with the breakfast stall."
"Why?" Debbie asked. "They've got all those people watching."
Shane leaned forward a little. "That's exactly the problem. They've only got videos. Nobody's booking them for live shows, TV doesn't call, brands aren't throwing real money at some comedy dude to sell their product. Their traffic is hard to turn into cash."
He tapped his own chest.
"Me? I'm fitness. After they watch, besides thinking 'dude's jacked,' a lot of them start wondering, 'Could I get like that? Should I try his plan?' That thought right there? That's money."
He leaned back, giving them a second to chew on it.
Strictly speaking, the real "influencer" era hadn't hit yet. A few more years and Instagram and Vine would slice everyone's attention into thirty-second bites—that's when the real explosion would happen and money would start chasing people.
Shane's plan was simple: build the name "Shane Gallagher" before all that. By the time it hit, people would be waving cash begging him to shoot one video.
A little while later the whole family was piled in the living room watching TV, enjoying the rare quiet moment.
Then—knock knock knock—the front door flew open before anyone could answer.
Kevin stepped in, grinning ear to ear and rubbing his hands together.
"Hey, everybody, get ready—some real fun just dropped!"
"That burned-out car that's been sitting in the empty lot behind the block? Somebody torched it. Fire's going strong. Veronica says the fire department won't bother with that junk anyway, so screw it—grab some food and drinks. We're throwing a bonfire party. You in?"
The second the words left his mouth, every set of eyes in the room snapped straight to Shane.
Shane felt the pieces click. Empty lot. Burning car. This opening was way too fucking familiar.
It was exactly how the first season started.
He nodded. "Yeah, I'm down. What time?"
Kevin's grin widened. "Right now! Fire's raging and Veronica already hauled a whole case of beer over!"
"Yeah!" Carl launched out of his chair. "I'm grabbing the marshmallows to roast!"
"Put on something warm," Fiona said, standing up and grabbing Carl's jacket. "Nights get cold, especially by the fire—your back's gonna freeze."
Lip stood and put the laptop away.
Ian smiled and helped bundle Liam into his coat.
The Gallagher house was heading out for a bonfire.