The last thing he remembered from his old life was lying in bed with his phone in one hand, half-awake and still scrolling.
He had been watching clips from Shameless. Not the later seasons either. The early ones. The messy, chaotic stretch where everything still felt raw and ugly in a way that made the show impossible to stop watching. He had seen most of it before, but somehow he always ended up going back to the same scenes, the same arguments, the same relationships that somehow felt even more frustrating the second time around.
Especially when Mandy came into it.
Every time her storyline started up, he got annoyed all over again.
Because Lip Gallagher was supposed to be the smart one. Not just school smart, but sharp in general. Fast with people. Good at reading situations. Too aware to miss the obvious.
And yet somehow, when it came to Mandy Milkovich, he acted like an idiot.
She had his back more than almost anyone else ever did.
She defended him, helped him, pushed him, believed in him when most people around him either expected him to screw up or were just waiting around to watch it happen. She saw something in him and didn't laugh at it. She made room for the version of him that could've been more.
And Lip still treated her like she was optional.
Like she would just keep showing up no matter what he did.
It got under his skin more than it should have for a fictional relationship. Enough that sometime late at night, when his eyes were heavy and his phone was slipping against the blanket, he muttered into the dark, half joking but not really joking at all:
"If I was Lip, I wouldn't mess that up."
Then he fell asleep.
When he woke up the next morning, the first thing he noticed was the smell.
Cigarettes, fried grease, stale coffee, and detergent so cheap it barely counted.
His eyes opened slowly.
The ceiling above him was old and cracked, the paint uneven and tired. He stared at it for a few seconds, still foggy with sleep, before the wrongness of it really settled in.
This wasn't his room.
He blinked hard and pushed himself up on his elbows.
The bed felt off too. Lumpy mattress. Thin blanket. Springs pressing up in places they shouldn't. There was a chair in the corner with clothes thrown over it, a crooked mirror on the wall, and a mug on the windowsill beside a stack of books that looked like they'd been dumped there instead of put away.
He sat up properly.
"What the hell?"
Even his voice sounded wrong. Rougher. Lower. Not his.
He looked down at his hands.
Not his either.
The fingers were longer, rougher, with scraped knuckles and callouses that didn't belong to him. He stared at them for a second, then swung his legs off the bed and stood too fast.
The room seemed weirdly familiar.
Not from real life.
From memory, but not his own.
His pulse kicked hard once.
He crossed the room and stopped in front of the mirror.
Lip Gallagher stared back at him.
Same face. Same tired look. Same blond hair, half a mess from sleep. No dream haze, no weird distortion, nothing shifting when he moved. Just Lip.
He stood there for a few long seconds, waiting for his brain to reject what he was seeing.
It didn't.
"You've gotta be kidding me," he muttered.
The bathroom down the hall didn't make things any better.
He splashed cold water on his face, braced both hands on the tiny sink, and looked up again.
Still Lip.
Still that face.
Still this house.
Gallagher house.
Which meant South Side.
Which meant Chicago.
Which meant this was either the most convincing mental breakdown in history or—
"Oh," he said quietly, staring at himself. "This is real."
That was the worst part.
The second he accepted it, everything around him started making sense a little too easily.
Not full memories exactly. More like instincts. He knew where the bad floorboard was. Knew which cabinet downstairs would probably have chipped mugs in it. Knew where to turn in the narrow hall without thinking. It felt like his brain had been dropped into somebody else's life but had still been handed a map.
Then another realization hit him.
A memory, except not one from his old life.
This room. This bed. Mandy here with him. Her sitting with one leg tucked under her, talking like she owned the place without ever trying. Her hand catching his hoodie sleeve. The kind of ease that only came after something had already happened more than once.
He leaned back against the sink.
"Okay," he muttered, trying to think through it. "Okay, so we're already there."
That narrowed the timeline down fast.
Early seasons. School still mattered. Karen was probably somewhere in the picture or about to be. Mandy and Lip were already in that weird half-relationship where everyone could see what was going on except the idiot living in it.
In the show, Lip treated the whole thing like it didn't count. They slept together, spent time together, slipped into each other's space like it was natural, and he still acted like none of it meant anything unless he decided it did.
He dragged a hand down his face.
That part didn't need to stay the same.
He wasn't stupid enough to think he could control every part of the story now that he was inside it, but one thing already felt obvious. He wasn't going to follow Lip's exact path just because it existed.
Especially not with Mandy.
Downstairs, the kitchen looked exactly like it should have.
Dishes stacked in the sink. Two cereal boxes sitting open on the table beside a bottle of syrup and somebody's homework. A spoon on the counter. Another one on the windowsill for no reason at all. The whole room had that lived-in, chaotic feel that made it look like five people had been using it at once for years.
Fiona stood by the counter pouring coffee into a chipped mug, hair up, expression already worn thin from being awake before everyone else.
She looked over at him.
"You alive?"
The answer came out before he had time to think about it.
"Barely."
She snorted into her coffee.
"Shocker."
Across the table, Ian was eating cereal like none of this was unusual, which for him it probably wasn't.
"Milkovich was here earlier," Ian said.
Lip paused.
"Yeah?"
Ian nodded toward the door. "Said you better not still be asleep."
That sounded right.
He grabbed a piece of toast off a plate near the stove and leaned against the counter, trying not to look as disoriented as he felt. The strange part was how normal everything else seemed. Fiona moving around the kitchen. Ian sitting there half-awake but still listening to everything. The house sounding like it had a life of its own. It didn't feel like acting. It felt like stepping into a rhythm already in motion.
The front door opened a minute later.
Mandy walked in without knocking.
Of course she did.
She had on a leather jacket, her hair tied back, and that same blunt, direct look she always had, like she had never once in her life asked permission to take up space. The second she saw him, her attention locked in.
"There you are."
He bit into the toast mostly to give himself a second before answering.
"Morning to you too."
She came over and bumped his shoulder with hers.
"You ditch school again?"
"Thinking about it."
"Idiot."
There was a faint smile behind it, though, small enough most people probably wouldn't notice. He did.
Up close, she felt more real than anything else had so far.
Not a character. Not somebody flattened down into scenes he remembered from a show. Just Mandy. Tough in that practiced South Side way, blunt enough to come off mean if you didn't know better, and still more genuine than half the people around them.
He already knew how this played out if he left it alone.
Lip kept taking and Mandy kept giving until there wasn't much left to misunderstand.
He wasn't interested in doing that.
Mandy leaned beside him against the counter and crossed her arms. "You coming later?"
He looked at her. "Where?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Kev needs help unloading stuff behind the Alibi."
Right.
He nodded once. "Yeah."
That made her pause.
Normally, Lip would have dragged that into an argument for no reason. A complaint, a joke, some sarcastic line before giving in anyway. This time he just answered.
She looked at him harder. "You okay?"
"Why?"
"You're acting weird."
Ian made a quiet sound into his bowl that might have been a laugh.
"He woke up five minutes ago," he said.
"That explains the dead face," Mandy replied, though she still sounded suspicious.
Lip shrugged. "Still waking up."
She shifted a little closer, studying him like she was trying to decide whether he was hiding something or just being difficult in a new way today.
"You sick?"
"No."
"Hungover?"
"No."
"Then why're you looking at me like that?"
He hadn't even realized he was doing it.
He took another bite of toast to cover the second it took him to answer. "Like what?"
"Like you forgot who I am."
The line landed harder than she probably meant it to.
Because technically, he hadn't forgotten. He knew exactly who she was. Maybe more than this version of Lip ever had.
He swallowed. "Didn't forget."
Her eyes stayed on him for another beat, like she was waiting for him to say something else. When he didn't, she nudged him again with her shoulder.
"You still coming over tonight?"
He knew exactly what she meant.
The same thing they'd already been doing for a while now. The same arrangement that wasn't really an arrangement. No label. No real conversation about it. Just Mandy and Lip slipping into each other whenever he felt like letting it happen.
He kept his voice casual because that was what this version of him would sound like.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll be there."
Not maybe.
Not probably.
Just yes.
Something in her expression eased, though she covered it almost immediately.
"Good," she said.
Then, because softness never stayed out in the open with her for long, she added, "Don't disappear like last time."
A flicker of memory surfaced. Lip blowing her off. Mandy acting like it annoyed her more than it hurt her. Him assuming she'd keep coming back anyway.
He felt a quick, sharp flash of irritation that didn't fully belong to him.
"I won't," he said.
This time, he meant it.
She held his gaze for another second, measuring whether she believed him. Then she nodded once, like she was accepting terms that didn't need to be said out loud in front of everyone else.
"Don't be late," she said, and turned toward the door.
Ian glanced up once she was gone.
"You two still doing the fake dating thing?"
Lip looked toward the closed door for a second before answering.
"Something like that."
Ian gave a shrug and went back to his cereal. Fiona didn't bother commenting at all, which probably said more than if she had.
Lip finished the last of the toast, grabbed a jacket that felt right the second he put it on, and stepped outside.
The South Side morning air hit cold.
Kids were already out on bikes. Somebody was yelling down the block. A car door slammed. Music blasted through an open window somewhere nearby, too loud for this early but not unusual enough for anybody to care. The whole neighborhood looked worn down and alive at the same time, like it had survived too much to bother pretending to be anything nicer than it was.
He shoved his hands into his pockets and started walking toward the Alibi.
His thoughts widened as he moved.
There was the obvious problem first: he was in Lip Gallagher's body, in Lip Gallagher's life, in a timeline he mostly knew but not down to every exact day. There were things coming he remembered clearly and things he only remembered in fragments. Karen. School. The Gallaghers being the Gallaghers. The kind of trouble that never arrived one at a time.
Then farther out, in the back of his mind, another thought sat there waiting.
Bitcoin.
It sounded ridiculous in the middle of all this, but it was there anyway. He remembered enough. Not every perfect number, not every exact moment, but enough to know there were ways to turn future knowledge into something real if he didn't screw it up.
That was later, though.
A long game.
For now, things were smaller.
Learn the timeline.
Don't do stupid shit.
Stay out of avoidable disasters.
And most of all, don't treat Mandy like she was some placeholder until something else came along.
He reached the Alibi and found Kev at the back of a truck already hauling boxes.
Kev looked over and grinned. "Look who decided to show up."
Lip grabbed one of the boxes off the tailgate. It was heavier than he expected, but his body adjusted to it easily enough.
"Relax," he said. "I'm only ten minutes late."
"In Gallagher time, that's early."
Lip let out a short laugh despite himself.
They started unloading in a steady rhythm, carrying boxes around back and through the rear door. It was simple work. Nothing dramatic. Just cardboard digging into his hands, Kev talking half the time without expecting full answers, and the familiar noise of the Alibi waking up for the day.
And honestly, that was fine.
No cosmic explanation. No sign telling him what to do next. No magical instruction manual for surviving inside somebody else's life.
Just the South Side, moving like it always did.
But underneath the shock, something had already settled firmly into place.
This time, Lip Gallagher wasn't going to make the same mistakes.
And when it came to Mandy Milkovich, that was the one thing he was absolutely sure of.
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