#if only the writing for carl and liam was better then i could say this applies to all six

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

one thing that the (four oldest) gallagher’s have in common is that they’re all ugly criers. love that

[j-the-writer]

'No matter how long apart'

Carl Gallagher x GN!Reader

Warnings: angst ig? Swearing Not proof read

Word Count: idk

This is my first Shameless fic, might be a tad inaccurate. ❤️❤️❤️ Also my first fic in months, testing the waters basically

--------------------------------------

Growing up in the Southside was rough, with no father figure and a mom working 2 jobs just to make ends meet. But there was one person who seemed to make it better. Carl. Carl Gallagher and the whole family seemed like a light in the dark.

You met him while he was looking for animals to torture and, reluctantly, joined in. From then on, you and him were always close, capturing animals and stealing out of donation bins or packages off porches.

You were close but as you both got older, Carl began to drift away. He got involved in gangs and started selling drugs. You spent less and less time with the Gallaghers.

The sentencing was hard, watching them take him away, knowing it would be a year before you'd see him again.

In the beginning, you'd write him letters, telling him about Debbie or Fiona. He stopped responding after a few months.

Without Carl around, you started helping around the Gallagher house more, watching Liam and helping with bills.

A year would pass and he'd come back. You can still remember him walking through the front door. A rushing feeling of excitement and then... confusion.

Carl was different. Corn rows, long gold chains and an accent you'd never heard from him before. He acted like he didn't care and was too 'cool' for you, or even his family.

So you stopped coming around again, only popping in to check on Fiona or Debbie once in a while.

And..that brings us to now. The soft sound of rain on your bedroom window and the ever so often crinkling of paper.

You'd let out a sigh, staring down at your homework, your chin resting in your hand. Math..never one of your strong suits.

3 ×^2 times 4x - 9...

Brrrrrrrr....Brrrr...

You'd jump a bit, looking down at your phone. The caller ID was a phone number Fiona used to call you.

You'd set down the pencil, picking up the phone and holding it to your ear. "Hey Fi..what's up?"

Silence. "Hello..?"

"Hey.." His voice was low, soft. A bit shaky even. Carl.

"What do you want?" You'd say, eyes narrowing as you leaned back in your desk chair. Carl had barely spoken a word to you in 3 months. Why now?

"I..well.." He'd sigh. "Can you- can you come over?..please. i..I need you." He sounded desperate, like he couldn't breathe.

This was a side you hadn't seen of Carl since you were kids, if ever.

"Right..um, you're at home right?"

"yeah, just get out here as fast as you can please. I need you."

That was enough to convince you. With a quick goodbye, you'd hang up the phone, abandoning your homework and slipping on a pair of boots.

You'd pull a jacket on, precariously opening the bedroom window and slipping out. Rain droplets dotted your face as you jogged out of your yard, through the gate, towards the Gallagher house, towards Carl.

It was dark, late and nobody was around to see you. To see you in your pajamas and a pair of rainboots running down the street.

The Gallagher house came into view, a figure sitting on the porch stoop.

The wooden stairs let out a groan under your weight and they'd look up.

"Shit Carl- what happened?" His forehead had a nasty mark and stitches.

You'd drop down to sit next to him, hand moving to his cheek, turning his face so you could get a better look.

"I know it's been a while, I should be bothering you..I'm sorry." He'd say, looking at you. Carl's eyes were glassy with tears, though you could tell he was fighting it.

"It's okay, Carl. I've missed you.'' You'd murmur.

It's like that flipped a switch. Carl would reach over, arms around you in a tight hold as he pressed his face into your shoulder, softly sniffling before crying.

His shoulders would fall up and down rapidly as he tried to stop crying. His fingernails dug into your back as he sobbed.

You don't know what to say. You've never seen Carl like this. A part of you is relieved he's come back and still feels comfortable with you. Another part is saying that something shitty must've happened to make him this desperate.

Your arms wrap around him, your chin resting in his hair, breathing in his scent. Some cheap cologne he thought was cool probably.

"Wanna go inside and talk about it?" Carl's cries stop for just a second and he nods, pulling away and wiping his nose.

You both stand up. He opens the door, heading inside. You'd pause, looking after him for a split second.

You'd think. About the corn rows, the accent, the chains, the new attitude, just how much he changed.

But, you'd head inside anyways.. Because no matter how long apart you two were or how much Carl changed, he was still your best friend and you loved him.

[michellemisfit]

Would you give another season to Shameless or Merlin? Why? Why not the other?

Ooooh… The question is who’s writing it? Am I? Is the show running team who did the last season? Can I pick the writing staff? Does it have to be another season at the end of what there currently is? Or can I insert an extra season anywhere?

Basically, how much of a God am I in this scenario? That’s the real question!

Because the Shameless show running team went whack towards the end of the show, so I’m not sure I’d trust them to do much better with an extra season. The show had eleven fucking seasons! That should be enough for anyone to tell a decent story! LOL And I’m not mad about how the show ended. But I would love to give better endings to especially Debbie and Lip. I’d also love to see Carl and Liam and where they are in 5 years time. I’d like someone to do a temperature check on Fiona. I want Mandy to come back. I want Sandy to come back and date the fuck out of Debbie. And hey, Ian and Mickey are a bit of a’ight. Wouldn’t mind some more of them on my TV screen.

Merlin on the other hand started steering that boat towards the iceberg the second they came back with Season 4, and while I love every goddamn minute of that show, there’s a lot of pretty bad minutes. And so much wasted potential. And so much wasted talent!!! And hey, if you let me insert a season in the middle and re-write history, then we can talk. But adding to the way the show actually ended? There’s really only two ways a Season 6 can go. One: Show me Gwen bringing about the Golden Age of Albion while Merlin wanders the earth, lonely as a cloud. Two: The future part of Once and Future. Option 1 would be boring/depressing AF. Option 2 would… take away the magic of having a thousand different people imaging a thousand different ways that the story could go. And whichever way they chose… it wouldn’t be good enough. Because then that would be the definitive way. Currently it’s Schrödinger's Season 6, and there’s all kinds of potential in that. Once you open a box… it’s just a dead cat. Why do you think we’re the Once and Future Fandom? Fascination and Frustration, baby!

So I guess I’d have to say Shameless, because while another season may not solve all problems… Eh! How much harm could it possibly do?

[ziammyloves25]

Zayn is Liam’s Sunshine ☀️ and proofs why! Ziam Masterpost

During the month of June and up to its release, there were a handful of things foreshadowing an lgbt song. Including Liam’s response to a coming out story, and it being “warm and loving”, and the Ziam eyebrow slit returned.

Liam wrote the song “Sunshine” with Carl Falk in Sweden at the beginning of December 2020, along with a few other songs. (Includes a sister song which he says will be released later). Liam already wrote/recorded “Sunshine” then used opportunity to release it through a Disney movie soundtrack. It wasn’t written for the movie characters, the song is personal to him. He’s mentioned during promo that the robotic effect just happened to be like him singing along with Ron, wasn’t the original intent to be that. “Happy accident”(CapitalFM live Aug 26, 2021)

This also lines up being about him (not movie character) because within the song Liam wrote about becoming comfortable with himself by learning how from just being around this other person aka his “sunshine”.

“Oh, I was feeling so invisible

I didn’t know this could be possible

But you really on something different

You do you, just work it out

And I think it’s rubbing off on me”

In the Sunshine music video and Stack It Up lyric video, Liam is laying down showing the feather tattoo on his arm. The feather tatt is complimentary to Zayn’s bird tatt on chest (missing feather. There’s 5 on one side, 4 on other). With feather is lyric from “You and I”. “I figured it out” 🪶

“Stack It Up”, directly from Liam, is about “making money so you can share it with someone you love”. The mv includes a pink triangle, which queer codes towards gay love.

Zayn’s mom calls Zayn her “sonshine” all over her social media. In 2021, Zayn’s mom posts an ig story of her listening to “Vibez” while in her car. Caption: “My sonshine”. Again reinforcing it as an affectionate name Zayn is used to.

Liam listened to “Better” during an ig livestream he was particularly in good spirits. Liam loves it immediately. Grooving, closing his eyes, annoyed when it stops, happy when back on, hypes it up! His sister, Ruth joins the live later and giggles about it youtu.be/OZ4paDnjMPw

“Better” released on Sept 25 2020, Liam listens to it live on ig that day. Liam talked about writing trip to Sweden with Carl Falk during a Dec 15 live. He had already heard Zayn’s “Better” when he wrote “Sunshine”.

Zayn making the single cover for “Better” the most Ziam references he could fit. (Also. “Sunshine” is for a robot movie!!!)

Zayn’s song “Better”. Lyric, “I hope I leave good vibes on your living room floor”. Song is telling his partner, I love you but I need reassurance we can do this together. We have to fight for it. (Song is 2:54 long and is RED on Spotify. Numbers 25 and 4 is a Ziam thing.)

Song “Sunshine” includes ‘vibes’, repeatedly. The lyrics are expressing to ones partner… You give me only good vibes! I’m not fully comfortable with myself yet but I’m learning how to be from your example. We are on this journey of life together, My Sunshine!

Liam has directly called Zayn “Sunshine” while on stage in front of THOUSANDS of people.

September 9, 2021 - Zayn’s mom posts ig story of “Good morning Sunshine 🌞🌞🌞”…. While Liam promotes the song.

The timing.

[arrowflier]

Can you write Mickey proposing to Ian. Like they are already married but Mickey finds himself thinking about how he would have done it if he proposed so he just does it 🥰

Mickey's hands are sweating.

So is every other part of him, but he's used to that.  The hands, though: that's a problem.

Sweaty hands make it awfully hard to hold the ring.

He feels like he's been planning this forever.  The proposal.  Trying to make it perfect, trying to make it special.  Trying to keep it them without having to punch somebody out in the middle of a crowded bar.

That seemed like the kind of thing that only worked once, anyway, and Ian had beaten him to it almost five years ago.

He looks around the room as he fingers the ring in his pocket, skin-warmed metal slipping between his clammy fingers. 

The restaurant is busy, and loud.  The Gallaghers alone are stretched over multiple tables: Fiona and Carl with Debbie and Franny at one, Lip and Tami feeding Fred at the next.  The Balls are in town, something about a kid's birthday party, and take up their own four-top.  Even a couple of the better Milkoviches have shown--Sandy and her new girlfriend, studiously avoiding Debbie's eyes, and Iggy, fresh out of lock-up.

He has Mandy on speed dial in his pocket, for after. She still hasn't gotten over missing it all the first time.

Ian is sitting at their own table, sipping at his fancy draft beer and poking at the screen of his phone as he waits for Mickey to come back from the bathroom. Liam says something next to him, and Ian laughs, tilting the screen so his brother can see. Liam looks past the phone, catches Mickey's eye, and smiles.

Mickey swallows. It's time.

He grabs a glass from the tray of a passing waiter, not caring what's in it or where it's headed. In lieu of a piece of silverware, he pulls out his pocket knife to hit against it and make it ring.

The tables nearest him quiet, but the room is still to loud. So he taps the glass again, then sets it down, and bangs his fist on a stranger's table instead.

"Yo, listen up!" he yells, and the conversations around him peter out. "I got somethin to say."

Eyes are watching him from all over the room. Eyes he knows, and eyes he doesn't. But he doesn't give a shit about them.

He only cares about the bright green eyes of his husband, wide and curious, and fixed on his.

"I'm fuckin gay," he starts out, voice catching on the curse. "Just thought you all should know that, first."

A few mutters make their way through the room, but he ignores them. Ignores the loud, "Yeah, we know," from Carl, too.

"So it shouldn't be a surprise," Mickey continues, his voice strengthening with every word, "that I'm in love with a man."

"Hell yeah he is!" Kev whoops, and Vee slaps him on the back of the head.

"Sorry, man," Kev says, just as loud. "Keep goin, you got this."

Mickey breaks to roll his eyes, and when he's done, Ian is smiling.

"Like I was sayin," Mickey pushes on, "I'm in love. With a guy." He lets his lips twitch up in A grin.

"A guy whose idea of foreplay is poking me in the back with a tire iron, who thinks a first date is banging in the cooler of a convenience store on break."

An old lady gasps off to the side, but her white-haired friend hits her with a too-large purse.

"Quiet Beth," she hisses. "Like you never screwed Daniel in the bathrooms at the corner store."

Mickey chokes on a laugh, hiding it behind the hand not clutching the ring.

"Uh," he says. "Right, anyway...turns out that guy was actually pretty fucking romantic."

He smiles, soft.

"Think he knew I couldn't deal with that back then, though," he admitted. "So we did other stuff instead."

Ian's eyes already look wet. His hand has fallen to Liam's shoulder, holding tight enough to turn his already pale knuckles white. Liam takes it like a champ, barely wincing.

"He was the first guy I kissed," Mickey says, and watches Ian bite his lip. "The first guy I let spend the night. His hand was the first one I ever held, without somebody else puttin it there."

Ian's free hand curls on top of the table, empty, searching. He grips the tablecloth, little wrinkles spiralling out from between his fingers.

"We were together for so long that even apart, I felt him there. Put him right on my skin," Mickey adds, hand over heart," so I'd never be without him."

He moves forward, past tables of strangers. Past tables of friends, of family. Stops in front of Ian, eyes never parting.

"And now I never will be," he finishes, "because he's my husband."

Liam forces Ian's hand off his shoulder, and scoots away. Ian is left clutching desperately at air.

"That's still not enough, though," Mickey says, circling the table.

Everyone is quiet, now, enraptured; Ian most of all.

"It'll never be enough," Mickey states, and slides down to one knee.

Ian is gaping at him, now. But he doesn't hesitate when Mickey reaches for him, offering his hand immediately.

Mickey takes it.

"I'd marry you a thousand times if I could, Ian," Mickey whispers. His voice still carries through the eerily silent room.

"But right now, I'll settle for twice."

He pulls his other hand from his pocket. Shows Ian the ring, the dark braided metal he placed on Ian's finger at their wedding, freshly cleaned and engraved for their anniversary.

"Ian Gallagher-Milkovich," he says, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt when Ian's breath hitches at the name, "will you do me the dubious honor of not divorcing me?"

Ian chokes of a laugh. A few others giggle across the room.

"Is that really what you came up with?" Ian asks giddily. Mickey nods.

"I mean, I figured we'd do the whole vow renewal thing too, make it official..."

Ian is still laughing, even as he starts to cry.

"Fuck you," he gasps out.

Mickey raises his eyebrows, gives them a wiggle.

"Only if you say yes."

Then Ian is falling into him, over him, chanting "Yes, of course, yes, you asshole,"; and their family is crowding around them, cheering; and strangers are clapping, shouting congratulations, offering to buy them champagne; and Ian pulls him up, and kisses him, and all of it fades to a dull roar in the back of Mickey's head.

"You're such a jerk," Ian whispers as they part, face wet with happy tears. "You made me cry, you asshole, and Lip is never gonna let me forget it."

"Think Liam took pictures," Mickey offers back, and Ian leans in and bites his bottom lip in retaliation.

"Your own fault," Mickey murmurs after Ian soothes it with his tongue. "You proposed to me in public twice, it was your fuckin turn."

Ian just smiles. The noise around them is dissipating, people going back to their meals, but they'll stay in their little bubble for as long as they can.

"Really up for doin' it all again?" Mickey asks. "Wasn't exactly easy the first time, and I ain't gonna go any easier now we can afford shit."

Ian's smile turns soft.

"Yes," Ian whispers, and kisses him.  "Always."

[emsemotional]

out of line

Okay so this is a little baby one shot  based on my mental health advocate!mickey headcanon that I posted a little while back. I used to write a lot for various fandoms back in high school, but it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and even longer since I’ve shared anything I’ve written with anyone other than @lewslew, so please be nice- I definitely have some room to grow with characterization and timing. 

This is taking place post-finale, so I’ve taken some liberties regarding what everyone ends up doing after the series. In my mind, Mickey and Ian buy the Gallagher house themselves, because they’re Southside boys at heart and they need a backyard for their dog (duh). But they’re waiting on their Westside lease to end, so Lip, Tami and Liam are staying in the house while Lip and Debbie fix it up and renovate a little (you can find my whole hc on what everyone’s up to post-series here). I was talking to @iansfreckles a while back about a possible Gallagher/Tamietti family dinner- I’m so interested in how this would go and how the families’ dynamics would interact. SO, this takes place at said Gallagher/Tamietti family cookout, right as Lip and Tami are moving out of the house, and Ian and Mickey are moving in. Cami and Brad’s kids are with Aunt Oopie, I dunno I didn’t want to write them haha. 

Content warning: ignorant/rude comments about individuals with mental illnesses and language akin to that of the show

-

Tami had almost said no when Cory asked to bring her new boyfriend to the Gallagher house. Between the Gallagher and Tamietti families, there were going to be plenty of big personalities under one roof, as is. But Cory had actually asked this time, and she had just babysat Fred during a last minute highlight appointment. Tami had reluctantly agreed and her sister had seemed so happy that she almost forgot her hesitation. 

Looking back, Tami’s decision was questionable. Lip had been able to prepare his family for the rest of the Tamietti’s, explaining the family dynamics and topics to avoid. Chad was a wildcard.

He had burst through the front door laughing loudly beside Brad and Cami, who didn’t seem to think the joke was as funny as Chad did. Cory and Bob followed them in, annoyance clear on Bob’s face. Tami and Lip moved to the door to greet their visitors, Tami depositing Fred in Carl’s lap, where he was sitting on the couch. Carl immediately grabbed the toddler under his arms, grinning at him and lifting him up above his head, making propellor noises on his way down. 

This, this is what Tami had wanted her family to see. The Tamiettis had made it clear that while they tolerated Lip, they thought Tami could do better. They thought he was ill equipped to help raise a family, constantly doubting his ability to provide, and his dedication to his family. Tami had tried to explain Lip’s role in his own family- the patriarch of the Gallagher home, a man who had been taking care of people for his entire life. Perhaps the only way for the other Tamiettis to see the value in the Gallagher side of Fred’s family, was to observe it first hand.

Lip made it to the Tamiettis first, shaking Bob’s hand and taking the handful of bags and jackets that were thrust into his arms. 

“No show Brad!” Tami cheered, hugging her sisters, “You made it!” 

Brad rolled his eyes, lightly clapping Tami on the shoulder, “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”

Cory turned towards her sister, a wide smile on her face, “Tam, this is Chad, the guy I was telling you about?” 

Tami turned to shake his hand, finally giving him a good look. Truth be told, he looked like every other guy Cory had seriously dated- some tall, brunette, conventionally attractive, straight laced kind of guy. He didn’t seem any different from the other business majors, fraternity boys and bar bouncers that Cory had intruded her to. 

“Tami right? So great to meet you, thanks for inviting me!” 

“Of course, nice to meet you too! Come on in, you guys!” 

The Tamiettis settled into the living room, Cami choosing the seat next to Carl, cooing down to Fred, “There’s my favorite nephew! How are you sweet boy?” 

She ran a gentle hand across Fred’s head before introducing herself to Carl, “I’m Cami, Tami’s sister.” Carl swallowed a smirk at the rhyming names, nodding, “Carl, Lip’s brother.”

“Ah, the one buying the house?” 

“Nah, that’s Ian and Mickey, they’re upstairs somewhere. I’m the cop,” Carl stated proudly.

“Fuck the police!” Mickey’s voice called into the living room in response, as a flash of red and black hair came tumbling down the stairs. All the Tamiettis turned to watch Mickey jog through the living room with Franny on his shoulders, Ian chasing after them. 

“Get him Uncle Mickey!” Franny squealed, “He’s gonna catch us!”

“I’m a little busy running, kid. Hit ‘em or somethin’,” Mickey grunted, scrambling to hand his niece a rubber ball previously balanced on the back of the couch. 

Franny wound up her arm, tossing the ball at Ian’s head with all her six year old might, “Take that, Uncle Ian! You’re dead!”

Ian groaned dramatically, clutching his face and sliding onto the ground. He let out a theatrical sign and closed his eyes, finally defeated. 

Franny cheered as Mickey lifted her off his shoulders, “We did it! We killed him!” Franny dropped down to the ground to check that Ian had accepted his defeat, poking him in the back with the toe of her shoe.

Mickey gave her a crinkly grin, the kind he reserved for Franny and Ian alone- unguarded and childlike. “Sure did! Pretty badass if you ask me.” 

Ian got to his feet, tickling Franny’s stomach as he addressed the room, “Hey, sorry we were in the middle of… a game.” 

“Liquor store robbery!” Franny cheerfully announced. 

 Franny began introducing herself to the unfamiliar faces, sharing that she was in the first grade, enjoyed playing with guns, and wanted to be a welder like her mommy when she grew up. As Liam and Debbie descended the stairs, and the rest of the Gallaghers and Tamiettis introduced themselves, Tami marveled at how smoothly things seemed to be going. No one was yelling, or aggressively drunk, or making a thinly veiled classist comment- yet. 

The two families quickly settled into a comfortable chatter of introductions and the conversation, surprisingly, continued to flow without a hitch. They soon made their way outside, where Debbie and Bob chatted while manning the grill. The other family members scattered across the yard- Liam sat in a lawn chair typing on a laptop, occasionally asking Lip for grammar advice. Ian, in the middle of telling some wild story from his EMT days, was fully emerged in conversation with the rest of the Tamietti family while Mickey and Carl considered how many crimes Carl could theoretically arrest him for, arguing over how many years Mickey would have to serve. 

Everything was great- until Chad decided to open his mouth. They had finished dinner and were crammed into the living room, escaping the Chicago windchill. Chad was sharing one of his own work stories from the construction site he worked on, describing a man who had wandered onto the site and started yelling at Chad and some of his coworkers that week.

“Totally off his rocker,” Chad commented, “He kept telling us about how we were tearing down his house, and that he didn’t give us permission to do this. Just screaming at us, swearing, and he wouldn’t listen when we kept telling him that he trespassing, y’know? Just super crazy- needed a fucking Xanax or something.” 

Ian tensed, fiddling with the ring on his left hand while the other Gallaghers exchanged pointed glances. Tami began to interrupt, clearly in attempt to change the subject, but Chad continued. 

“The next day,” he explained, “the very next day, he came up to us and was asking to bum a smoke, like he didn’t fucking flip his crazy ass on us yesterday, I swear he must’ve been like bipolar or something, acting like we were old pals. Must’ve gotten carted off or killed or something, haven’t seen him since.” 

While the Tamiettis offered a polite chuckle, the Gallaghers remained silent. 

Mickey, who had been sitting on the couch next to Ian, looked up from his folded hands. “So you got something against bipolar people? It’s a fucking mental illness man.” 

Chad smiled, backtracking, “Hey, nah, calm down. He’s just some crazy homeless dude, who cares?” 

“He’s not just some crazy guy, he’s a person with a disease, the fuck’s wrong with you?” Mickey asked. 

Ian placed a hand on his husband’s shoulder shaking his head. “Mick, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter.”

Eyebrows raised comically high, Mickey stood and crossed his arms. “Um, fuck that, it does matter! You’re not a fucking punchline Ian. This is our house, yours and mine, and no one’s going to be talking like that in my house. Obviously no one else is going to say something, and you shouldn’t have to, so I will. I won’t stand for that shit.”

The Tamiettis exchanged horrified looks as the Gallaghers mostly just looked at the floor. Finally Lip spoke up from where he was standing by the TV, “Mental health is uh… a sensitive subject around here. We just… we take it seriously, y’know? First hand experiences and shit.” 

Cory opened her mouth to speak but she quickly stopped when she saw Tami swiftly shake her head in her direction, suggesting she stay out of it. 

Mickey lightly rubbed his eyebrow, “Yo, douchebag, apologize or get the hell out of my house.”

Chad raised his hands in surrender, “I didn’t realize it was such a big deal man, sorry.”

Mickey rolled his eyes with a huff, turning on his heel to walk towards the back of the house. Wordlessly, Ian followed him out the back door, leaving the living room in a heavy silence.

After a moment, Chad breaks the silence, “Look, I really didn’t mean to start something, I was just telling a story. Should I go out and apologize again, try to talk about it?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Liam replied, “You should give Mickey some time to cool off.” 

“Yeah,” Lip agreed, “I wouldn’t follow them out. Mickey… he gets protective? Always has been, of Ian. Our mom was bipolar, and so’s Ian. He’s stable, doing great, but he’s, uh, he’s been through a lot. It’s just not good joke material around here.”

Chad nodded, silence overtaking the room again. Franny looked up from her coloring book, clearly bored with the turn the night had taken.

“I’m gonna go play with Uncle Mickey and cheer him up!” 

Debbie chuckled from her seat across the room, “Yeah, go bring them some beers Franny.” 

“Okay!” Franny chirped, hopping to her feet and skipping into the kitchen. Debbie gave a soft smile as she watched her daughter, on the way to hang out with her favorite uncles. 

-

From his seat on the back stairs, Ian watched Mickey pace through the yard, grumbling about “Fucking Northside yuppies… and their ignorant bigoted asses… what the fuck is wrong with people?” He glanced over at Ian, his expression softening when he noticed the defeated look on Ian’s face. Mickey paused his pacing, coming to sit next to Ian on the steps. 

“I’m sorry, I know I prolly embarrassed you. Was I out of line man? I just got so fucking mad,” Mickey quietly mumbled, looking down at his hands in his lap. 

Ian gently shook his head, “Don’t apologize. You weren’t out of line… I think I’m just disappointed, y’know? That comments like that still get to me? I should be over it by now, every reminder that I’m sick or different shouldn’t still sting like that. And why do I have to be the one that the conflict and the drama revolves around? Why not fucking Carl or Liam or god… anyone else just for once?

Mickey’s expression softened even further. He nudged his knee into Ian’s leg, “What’s that shit you told me when Terry died? Trauma doesn’t always make fucking sense and recovery isn’t… oh shit, what’s the word? Linear! Recovery isn’t linear. Doesn’t make you fucking weak, just means you’ve been through some shit.”

“Yeah. I guess it was easier to tell you that than it is to tell myself.” 

Mickey hummed in agreement and the two sat in silence for a moment before the back door creaked open. A tiny red head shoved her way through the doorway, arms wrapped tightly around two bottles, frosty with condensation. Franny sat down on the steps between them, silently handing her uncles their beers. Ian accepted his with a dry chuckle, thanking her. Mickey ruffled her hair, offering a small smile. The voices from inside had faded and the night was relatively calm, other than the occasional siren or dog barking. 

Franny, not looking particularly concerned, looked up at them to ask, “Uncle Mickey, why’d you get mad at that guy?”

Mickey rubbed at his eyebrow and let out a sigh. He looked towards Ian, a silent request for him to take the lead on this conversation. He was confident in his ability to discuss the stupidity of princesses or the importance of wearing gloves during a legitimate liquor store robbery with his niece. He knew how to play, and joke, and how to be there when she woke up from a bad dream, stumbling down the stairs with bedhead and snotty tears. Mickey had grown into his role as an uncle, but he still doubted his ability to talk about the tough stuff with anyone other than Ian. 

Ian cleared his throat, taking a second before asking, “Franny, do you know what it means to make a joke at someone else’s expense?” 

Franny’s eyebrows scrunched together and she shook her head. 

“It’s when you make a joke to kind of make fun of someone else. Like to tease them. Y’know how we make cop jokes around Uncle Carl because he’s a cop?”

She nodded, and Ian continued, “That guy… Aunt Tami’s sister’s boyfriend, was making a joke and it ended up being at my expense. That’s what made Uncle Mickey mad. He didn’t mean to make fun of me, but he kind of did. That’s all. Uncle Mickey was just sticking up for me.”

Franny sat for a moment, deep in thought. “I didn’t know he was talking about you.”

“No, he wasn’t. Not directly. He was telling a story about someone else. But he made a comment about him being bipolar. D’you remember when we talked about that? That I have bipolar disorder?” 

Franny nodded, “That’s why you take your special medicine.”

Ian continued, “A lot of people don’t really understand what that means, and sometimes they make jokes about it that aren’t really funny. They’re just kind of… mean. So that’s why we got upset.”

Franny considered this for a minute and asked, “Do you want me to go tell mommy? She says I should tell her if someone’s being mean. She can fix it.” 

Ian smiled a little, patting her little back and shaking his head, “Nah, mommy already knows, she heard. And I think Uncle Mickey did a pretty good job telling him that what he said was wrong.” 

Mickey let out a sarcastic laugh, “And I got more to say to that piece of shit if I ever see his Northside yuppy fucking face again.”

“I think he got the point Mick,” Ian sighed, “Don’t waste your time.” 

Franny shrugged “Mommy and Uncle Lip and Aunt Tami were all still talking in there when I left. Mommy told me it was a good idea for me to come out here.” 

Mickey grabbed Ian’s hand, bumping their shoulders together. “Whatcha wanna do, man? We can head back to the apartment, go to the Alibi and get tanked, I don’t care, it’s up to you.”

“Don’t know, I’m tired of running from things. And you were right Mick, it’s our fucking house. Could we just sit out here for a little while?” Mickey ran a thumb across Ian’s hand and mumbles so quietly, in that voice he only uses with Ian- “‘Course we can”

Having completed her task of delivering beers, Franny stood up and put her hands on her hips, “I’m going to go inside, I won’t let anyone be mean to you Uncle Ian.”

Ian looked up to lock eyes with his niece, “I appreciate it Fran, thanks.” 

She stood up and gave Ian a kiss on the top of his head, no doubt a gesture she’d picked up from some other family member, likely Mickey or Fiona. Ian smiled as she turned away to walk back into the kitchen.

After a few minutes Ian jerked his head towards the door, “Y’ready?” 

Mickey hummed in agreement, standing and offering back his hand to help Ian up. They walked over the threshold of the kitchen into a conversation clearly about Mickey’s exchange with Chad. The Tamiettis were all sitting down in the living room, with the Gallaghers mostly standing, leaning against the various remaining surfaces. Lip’s hands were in his hair, a plain indication of his frustration and exhaustion. Tami abruptly stopped talking, in the middle of what seemed like an impassioned rant. She seemed unsure of how to continue now that Ian and Mickey had reentered the house. Debbie, sat on the couch with Franny in her lap, was scowling, while Liam absently stared at the wall, clearly wishing he were anywhere else. Carl quickly walked into the kitchen from where he had been leaning up against the living room door frame, clapping Ian on the shoulder.

“Hey, why don’t you guys go take a walk or something for a sec- I think Lip and Tami have it handled.”

Lip spoke up from the living room, “Yeah, it’s okay.”

Mickey tensed, bracing himself. “No, it’s not fucking okay Phillip-“

Lip grumbled something about that not being what he meant, shaking his head, while Ian quietly interrupted his husband, forcing him to make eye contact. 

“No, it’s not, but I don’t want to just keep going over it, Mick. I’m not in the mood to educate him. I’m not saying it’s okay, but I want to move on. Lip can handle it.”

Carl nodded and repeated himself, “Go take a walk, come back in ten. Lip and Tami got it.” 

He reached into his pocket, pulling out a joint and pressing it into Ian’s palm with a smirk. 

“Rolled this for later, you guys take it.”

Ian raised an eyebrow at Mickey, who let out a sigh with a slouch, “Fine. Be back in ten.”

-

The two of them return to the backyard, Tami’s yelling resumed, her voice carrying all the way outside. 

 “M’sorry, I know I keep talkin’ when you just want it to be over with,” Mickey mumbled, looking down at the dead grass in the vacant lot beside the house.

 Ian grabbed him by the back of his neck, fingers brushing through Mickey’s short hair, “Hey, no. I… I appreciate you sticking up for me- seriously. I’m just tired… tonight’s not supposed to be about me y’know? It’s supposed to be about Lip and Tami, and Fred, not me. I just wanted to be Lip’s brother tonight, not the crazy brother, the sick brother. I just don’t wanna be the one that causes the issues anymore.” 

“You didn’t cause this Ian. You being bipolar didn’t fucking cause this- that asshole, opening his mouth and not knowing when to shut it- that’s what caused it. I get that you just wanna let it go, and I will, but if he say’s something else-“

“If he says something else you can beat the shit out of him.”

Mickey grinned, looking up to meet Ian’s gaze. “Fucking fantastic. You wanna smoke this bitch?” 

He grabbed the joint out of Ian’s hand and pulled a lighter from his flannel’s front pocket.

Ian finally cracked a smile, one that actually reaches his eyes, “Free weed? Fuck yeah.”

Mickey tossed the lighter to Ian, who caught it and lit the joint with a practiced flick. He took a couple hits and closed his eyes, smiling again as he exhaled the smoke. He handed the lit joint over to Mickey, along with his lighter and jerked his head in the direction of the van in the backyard, “Wanna go sit?” 

Mickey nodded and breathed in a sharp inhale, heading in the direction of the passenger seat door. 

Ian climbed up into the drivers seat, letting out a deep sigh, “Feel like I’m in high school again- sneaking around with you, trying to find somewhere to be alone.” Mickey chuckled and passed the joint back over.

 They smoked in silence for a while, Ian nudging Mickey with his elbow as the ember approaches the filter, “You want the last hit?” 

“Nah man, that’s yours,” Mickey shakes his head.

Ian took it, stubbing out the butt on the van’s dashboard and tossing it onto the floor. 

“Still wanna kick his ass?” He asked, lazily turning his head towards Mickey with a grin.

Mickey rolled his eyes, “I think I can contain myself.”

“Yeah?” Ian breathed, inching his face closer to his husband’s. The moon, freshly risen, highlighted Ian’s face, illuminating the dash of freckles across his nose.

Mickey didn’t answer, opting to close the distance between them, pressing a soft kiss to Ian’s lips. Ian’s hand came up to cradle Mickey’s face, thumb gently brushing his cheek.

And if they didn’t make it back inside for a while, so be it. 

[casually-slips-into-coma]

An Essay (sort of) Explaining the Many Grievances I Have With Debbie Gallagher

Once again, Debbie is the fucking worst.

I’ve been wanting to write out my feelings towards her character for a fucking minute now just so that I have a full concise list. Now, I can talk about how Debbie has a constant need for attention, or how her character has become someone unrecognizable in the past few seasons, or how she’s a terrible mother, but what I really want to focus on is the center of my issues with her: her sexuality. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about to be a homophobic rant or anything. I just think her queer development has been written terribly and that should be addressed.

Too often I see people praising queer characters or relationships based solely on the fact that they are queer, and as a member of the community, I get it. I am also starved for representation. This, however, does not mean I’m going to settle for annoying, poorly written characters.

Why Make Debbie Queer?

The first thing I want to address is why suddenly develop a WLW storyline for her. Given that Debbie started as a little girl on the show, this gives the writers a lot of opportunity to give a character like that interesting storylines because she does not yet have a solid personality. It gives writers the liberty to take her story anywhere they want to without the constraints of established character because she, as a person, is still developing into adulthood. The show runners unfortunately dropped the ball with this.

From season 4 and onwards was when Debbie began showing interest in dating, sex, and romance having just turned the corner to puberty. From then up until season 9, she has shown exclusive interest in men. It isn’t until Alex the welder that Debbie deviates from this path. Alex is portrayed as a stud who confuses Debbie. I am inclined to believe that Debbie was originally attracted to her because she was masculine and therefore close enough to the people Debbie had previous experience with.

This arc was treated very much as Debbie experimenting with her sexuality, something that Alex also ends up realizing after Debbie tells her that having sex with a girl is “not that bad” and “like having sex with yourself” (S9E4). Once this storyline wrapped up (with Debbie shouting “you make me want cock again”) the writers powered through, adamant about Debbie now being a lesbian.

I have two theories as to why they’ve been fighting so hard for her queerness.

1) This was around the time that Cam was leaving Shameless. This obviously didn’t end up happening, but I was under the impression that the writers were freaking out at losing their token gay character and needed to fill that position. When Cam ended up staying, they were stuck with a queer Debbie storyline and decided to just go with it.

2) Shameless was planning on doing a WLW storyline regardless of Cam’s choice to leave and were originally going to give it to Fiona and her lesbian tenant that she had a close relationship and a lot of chemistry with, but Emmy Rossum wanted to move on from Shameless, and so they pivoted and gave the arc to Debbie, a character that was not supposed to be moved in that direction and so her new sexuality seemingly came out of nowhere. Fiona as a bisexual character would have made sense. Debbie still does not.

Shameless’s Awkward Relationship With Bisexuality

One of the biggest issues I have with Debbie is her insistence on being a lesbian. Lesbianism doesn’t come out of nowhere. Bisexuality, however, can. When you grow up being told that you are supposed to feel attraction to men, and you genuinely do feel attraction to men (which Debbie has expressed in past seasons/episodes) it’s easy to ignore your attraction to women and write it off as something that either isn’t a big deal, or something that isn’t there. It’s a lot more confusing than being strictly at one end of the spectrum. It would have been so much more believable if they had simply made Debbie bisexual. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t because the show has a history with bi erasure.

Bisexuality has been treated badly all throughout Shameless, used as a vengeful plot device back in the earlier seasons where Monica was only ever with women when unmedicated. Then in Season 7 when Ian’s boyfriend Caleb cheated on him with a woman (enforcing the stereotype of bisexuals being unfaithful) Ian, possibly acting out of anger or ignorance, said things like “only women are bisexual. When a man says he’s bisexual he’s really just gay”. The only semi positive bisexual representation on the show was Svetlana and Vee when they were in a poly relationship with Kev (though I also think that storyline wasn’t handled as well as it could’ve been).

This fight against the bisexual label in media is not a new one but it is also a harmful stance to take when writing a sexually fluid character. Debbie declaring that she is, in fact, a lesbian after waxing poetic about how Matty had a big dick and Derek had a great body and knew what he was doing is not the way to go. 

You could argue that Debbie, like many other queer women, is an unfortunate victim of compulsory heterosexuality, but frankly I don’t think the writers are well versed enough in queer theory for that to be a possibility.

Debbie as The White Feminist

Debbie is the pinnacle of white feminism. It’s an unfortunate thought that has occurred to me a few times throughout the show. She talks a big game as a man hater and someone after the equal treatment of women but she herself participates in a lot of problematic and anti feminist behavior.

For one, she r*ped Matty back in season 5 when he was blacked out and unconscious. This was a point in the story that was glossed over and one where she suffered no repercussions other than Matty no longer wanting to be around her. It was explained in the show that Debbie didn’t realize what she did was wrong until after she was explicitly told so because she was maybe 14 when it happened (not 100% on the age Shameless is very inconsistent about timelines). It was treated as somewhat of a punchline, something that Shameless has unfortunately done more than once when referring to male sexual assault (Mickey’s r*pe, Liam in season 10 ((i think??)) and in this latest season, Carl) but that is a different topic. 

There was also the time in which she lied to her boyfriend about being on birth control so she could trap him into a relationship with pregnancy (which also counts as r*pe!!) Good on Derek for getting out of that.

Debbie has also been pro-life in the past. Now I understand this was when Fiona was pressuring her into aborting her pregnancy, and as a pro choicer myself, I believe that Debbie was fully in her right to have bodily autonomy and go through with the pregnancy. This isn’t where the issue lies. It’s when Fiona finds out that she too is pregnant and tells Debbie that she wants an abortion that Debbie accuses her of “killing her baby”. Again, her behavior could be explained by her age given that Debbie was still a young teen during this time.

When her actions as a White Feminist become less excusable is mostly in the latest season. Her relationship with Sandy is one that I’m not really happy with because Debbie doesn’t deserve her.

Recently, it has been revealed that Sandy is actually married to a man and has a son. It’s explained that she was basically married off against her will at the age of 15 to a man twice her age. This implies that the product of the marriage, her son, was most likely conceived through dubious consent (or worse) at the hands of an adult when she was just a kid. Just because Debbie thinks that Sandy’s husband “seems nice” does not give her the right to try and make a victim of grooming feel bad about not wanting to be with her abuser. While I understand that Sandy’s son has no fault in how he came into the world, I’m still gonna side with Sandy when it comes to having to take care of a child she didn’t want and who is most likely a source of trauma for her. It’s not difficult to sympathize with Sandy and see that she’s clearly gone through something fucked up and Debbie, despite claiming to love and support her, AND despite her dumb white feminist arc about wanting equal pay and all that jazz, turns her back on the girls supporting girls aspect of feminism.

This isn’t even mentioning how shitty it was to just leave Franny by herself and assume that one of her siblings would take her to school and pick her up and stuff as if they don’t all have separate lives. She talks a lot about being a good mother but decided to “let off some steam” by fucking off to a gay bar to get loaded on coke and fuck a gay man (which wtf thats not a thing that really happens with casual coke but whatever I guess). Once she realized she fucked up, instead of taking responsibility she decided to paint herself as the victim as well as spew offensive bullshit about how she “probably has AIDS now” because of her sexual encounter with a gay man. No lesbian in their right fucking mind would ever say that because as members of the LGBTQ+ community, you are at least a tiny bit informed as to how devastating and tragic the AIDS crisis was for queer people.

(I also have an issue with how Debbie capitalized on her felony as a sex offender and her sexuality to start her Hot Lesbian Convict business but I think that’s enough said.)

Blame the writers

The show got almost an entirely new cast of writers after season 7 which is why the show feels more like a sitcom with low stakes and no consequences rather than a drama, but if there is a queer writer on the team it’s not very evident. Even the better half of the queer relationship story, Ian and Mickey, I don’t feel has really been done justice since the change in writers. It’s just become painfully obvious that the actress is a straight girl playing a gay character (not to mention I have never seen any chemistry between her and all of her female love interests). I don’t fault Emma Kenney (the actress) for this. I actually really like her as a person and I like the videos she makes about the cast and such, and I think she does her best with the script she’s given. My complaints with Debbie are targeted entirely towards the writers.

This brings me to my final point. I need them to let Debbie be alone. Her whole thing for the second half of the season has been that she clearly has abandonment issues and is afraid of being alone. It’s why she’s so adamant about keeping the house and fighting with Lip about it (I’m actually on Debbie’s side for that one but that’s besides the point). They had her and Sandy break up which leaves Debbie to spiral further into her loneliness. From a writing point of view, it makes sense to take this opportunity to give her an arc in which she can overcome that and feel comfortable with herself so that she can move on as an adult instead of jumping into a new relationship. This is especially true since this is quite literally the last season ever of the show and any character development needs to be wrapped up. Introducing a new character out of nowhere does not give the viewers enough time to actually get invested in the new relationship. It’s also unfair to Debbie’s character because her arc is going to feel incomplete.

Anyway,,,,,,uuuhhhhh,,,,,feel free to add on if u want lmao

[bellafarella]

Please have mercy on me

This is a short one shot following 11x08 so if you didn't watch it yet then avoid this until you do since there are spoilers in it!

Summary: Mickey can’t believe his eyes. Terry’s dead.

Notes: Hey everyone!

Just thought I'd write a short one shot to fill in a missing scene between when Ian and Mickey find Terry's dead body and then Ian going to the hospital, and what happened when they both were home at the end of it all.

I hope you like this 💖

*********************************

Mickey can’t believe his eyes. Terry’s dead. His eyes instantly fill with tears as he looks at his father - a man who has abused him his entire life, a man who couldn’t put his own bigotry aside to love and accept him for who he is, a man who constantly tried to kill him for being who he is - with a plastic bag over his head, his eyes lifeless, his tongue sticking out slightly from his mouth. Mickey feels Ian’s hand touch his shoulder from behind him and the tears just fall from his eyes, sliding down his cheeks. He sniffles and Ian turns him around and wraps him into his arms. Mickey lets himself be embraced by the strong and comforting arms of his husband, letting the tears fall as he cries silently in the crook of Ian’s neck.

Ian’s hand moves up and down his back, soothing him as he holds him tight, whispering into his ear, “I’m here. I love you. We’ll get through this together,” over and over in the softest voice.

A ringing blares through the silence of the moment and Mickey tries to pull away. Ian doesn’t let him so Mickey says, “Ian, answer your phone.”

Ian lets Mickey go so that he can grab his phone from his pocket. “It’s Carl,” he says looking at the screen.

“Answer it,” Mickey nods, wiping away a tear from his eye as he turns back around to look at his lifeless father. He can barely register anything Ian’s saying on the phone to his brother after he answers the call with, “This isn’t a good time.” Mickey’s too caught up in his own mind as he continues to look at Terry. He’s wanted his father dead for - God, he can’t even remember how long. The first time he ever thought about his father dying was when he was only four and Terry beat the shit out of his mom. He wasn’t in the room but he could hear her wails and cries, her pleads for him to stop. He curled up in Mandy’s bed with her, holding her close as she cried in his arms. She was only two, and he was only four, and all he could think was please God, kill dad. From them on, everything just got worse. His mother died and Terry focused his abuse on him and Mandy instead. Mickey thought every day how he wished something would land on his head and kill him, or a deal would go bad and he’d get shot, or he’d get put away in prison for the rest of his life. Those thoughts intensified when Mickey realized he’s gay. He knew he could never let Terry find out or he would murder him. He lived years of his life afraid that his father would kill him. He pushed Ian away because of that fear. In the last few years, Terry has tried to make him miserable every step of the way and now that he finally got what was coming to him, Mickey has no idea what to feel. He feels relieved but he also feels devastated. He worked so hard to make sure Terry was being taken care of in his state even though he didn’t deserve it. Mickey vowed that he would be better than his father. He wanted to be a better man, a better husband, a better father one day. Hearing Terry tell him just hours ago that if Mickey wasn’t gay - that he wasn’t who he is - he would have been a decent son. Those words tore Mickey’s heart in half because all he’s ever wanted was to be loved and accepted, and he knew he would never get that, even if he wasn’t gay. Terry was a hateful, spiteful, evil man, and Mickey knows deep down that that would never have changed.

“Mick?” he hears Ian say before he touches his shoulder. Mickey turns around to look at his husband's face, his soft green eyes looking at him with so much love and compassion. “There was an incident at Liam’s school with Frank. Carl brought him to the hospital, everyone’s headed there now.”

“You should go,” Mickey says instantly.

“No, I’m going to stay with you-”

Mickey shakes his head, “No, you should go, be with your family.”

“You’re my family,” Ian tells him, his hand coming up to caress Mickey’s cheek, wiping away some more tears with his thumb.

Mickey smiles at him softly. “I know, but your siblings need you.”

“But-”

“I need to handle this,” he says, nodding his head back towards his fathers dead body behind them. “I’ll be okay, Gallagher. I’ll see you at home later.”

“Are you sure?” Ian asks, his eyes searching Mickey’s.

Mickey shrugs his shoulder, “Not really but we both have responsibilities to our fuckhead fathers so I’ll be fine.”

Ian nods, letting out a deep breath. He leans forward and kisses Mickey’s forehead softly before pressing his forehead against his, “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” Mickey whispers back.

Ian pulls back to look at him, his hand still holding his face. “I’ll see you at home. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be quick, promise.”

“Okay.” And with that Ian rushes out the door to head to the hospital. Mickey takes a deep breath before turning back around to see Terry.

Sister Mary-Luke comes back into the house and she explains what happened. Terry was rude, vile, and just plain evil. He also begged her to be taken out of this life. “He was an evil man and did not deserve the patience and love you were giving him,” she tells him. “He begged for mercy and - well, this isn’t a life worth living, my child. It had to be done.”

Mickey nods, his eyes filling with tears again. He doesn’t blame her. Terry has been begging to die since his shooting. Mickey just never expected it to happen like this and definitely not today.

*

Mickey’s glad Ian took the ambulance so it makes it easier for him to call 911. Mickey removes the bag from Terry’s head and closes his eyes and mouth, propping him back up. The EMTs come and Mickey explains how he just arrived back to check in on his father and found him like this. He sent the nun home before they arrived, and he said that he thought his cousins were here watching him. They declared him dead and Mickey bit his tongue from saying no shit. They explained that they would bring his body to the mortuary and that Mickey can go by tomorrow to deal with his body and any plans he has for his funeral.

Mickey thanks them when they leave with his father’s dead body before walking back home. For the first time in a very long time, the house is empty. There’s no life, no sound, nothing that makes this house a home. Mickey trudges up the stairs and makes his way into his room. He strips down before going to take a hot shower. Thankfully there is still hot water and he uses it up as he lets himself cry and cry, letting the water wash away his tears.

He crawls into bed in his boxers and a black tank top, with his phone. He texts his idiot cousin who abandoned him today to tell him Terry’s dead. He also tries calling Mandy. She doesn’t pick up so he leaves her a quick voicemail, “Hey, it’s - uh, it’s Mick. Listen, Terry’s dead. Call me when you can.” He tosses his phone on the bedside table before pulling the covers over his head and praying he can fall asleep and forget this day happened.

*

Mickey wakes up to the feeling of someone curling up behind him. The covers are no longer consuming him so he turns around to see Ian in bed beside him, he’s in his boxers and a t-shirt too, his eyes so soft as he looks at him. “Hey,” he says, his voice horse.

“Hi,” Ian whispers back. “You okay?”

Mickey shrugs. “They took his body to the mortuary. I can go there to deal with it tomorrow.”

“We will go there to deal with it. I’m sorry, I didn’t stay with you,” Ian tells him.

Mickey reaches for his face, pulling him closer. “Don’t be,” he says before kissing Ian softly on the lips. Ian kisses him, his hand pulling him in by the waist. That’s as far as it goes before they just rest their foreheads together. “How’s Frank?”

“He has dementia from being a drunk,” Ian tells him with a sigh.

“Shit.”

“Yeah…”

After a few silent moments, Mickey asks, “Is Liam okay we missed his thing?”

Ian smiles softly which makes Mickey feel a bit better. “He understands. He won the iPad.”

“No shit,” Mickey chuckles. “Good for him.” Ian nods, his smile faltering slightly. “Hey,” Mickey says softly, his hand hooking under Ian’s chin so he looks at him, he has his own tears in his eyes. “Today has been a shitty fucking day,” he says. Ian snorts out a wet laugh before Mickey continues, “But we’ll get through it, together.”

“I should be telling you this,” Ian says, sadly.

“You did, now it’s my turn,” Mickey says softly, caressing his cheek. Even though Frank isn’t Ian’s biological father, he’s been the only father he’s ever had. Frank was a neglectful, alcoholic, junkie, asshole of a father but now that he’s slowly losing his mind, it’s going to be a lot for the Gallaghers to handle, especially his husband, and Mickey is going to be there for him just like he knows Ian will be there for him as he goes through all his feelings and all the planning of his father’s passing.

“I love you,” Ian says softly.

“I love you,” Mickey says back before curling up against Ian’s chest, feeling his arms wrapped around him again. The two of them both silently cry in each other’s arms, letting all the misery they’ve felt for years growing up with abusive fathers and all the sadness they feel over what has and is happening to them, just wash away as they comfort each other, knowing that even through all this pain, there will be light and happiness again, because they have each other, always.

[dailytomlinson]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

The Best Face Masks For Running and CyclingHere’s how to stay covered up while on your bike, on a jog, or for your next workout outdoorsAd By Rolling Stone See More

The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[stylesnews]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.

The Best Face Masks For Running and CyclingHere’s how to stay covered up while on your bike, on a jog, or for your next workout outdoorsAd By Rolling Stone See More

The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”

[gallavictorious]

11x03 Fill-In Ficlet: Use Your Words (Or Don’t)

How do they go from sniping at each other in the kitchen to enthusiastically banging it out just a little while later? And why on Earth is horrible, horrible dirty talk suddenly a thing?

Well, they have this whole conversation where they basically talk things through but, you know, in their Ian and Mickey way of not talking things through but totally talking things through. You know? Also, there are kisses.

Warnings for some truly atrocious attempts at dirty talk but no actual smut. Also vague displays of a fucked-up relationship with violence, and clueless dumbasses trying, and only halfway succeeding, to chill with the misogyny and toxic masculinity. For all that this is mostly ridiculous and self-indulgent fluff.

Read below or on AO3.

---

They walk home from the Alibi together, but six feet apart and in silence.

Dinner is mostly silence, too, the celebration of Carl's first arrest dampened by Lip's outburst and Debbie storming off. Lip and Tami soon excuse themselves; Liam has homework; it's Carl's turn to do the dishes. (That mostly means they won't get done, but at least they'll know whom to blame when there's no clean plates or knives in the morning.)

Mickey's pours himself another glass of Jameson, but pauses when Ian abruptly rises from the table. His husband doesn't spare him a second glance though, but merely puts the half-thawed vegetables back in the freezer and walks off with a half-hearted “night” to his two younger brothers.

Well, fuck you too.

Mickey can feel Liam's eyes on him, but for once the kid keeps his mouth shut.

Smart kid.

Mickey takes his time emptying the glass. Takes the time to fill it up again and empty it once more too, while pointedly not listening to a single word Carl is saying about the fucking arrest he made.

Then it's getting late and there's nothing for it and he's sick and tired of them not being fine anyway, so fuck it.

He leaves the glass on the table for Carl to tidy away.

In their room Ian's sitting on the bed with his back towards the wall and a book in his lap. He looks up when Mickey enters, but doesn't say anything and promptly turns his attention back to his paperback. His jaw is set, but his shoulders slumped. Angry still, then - but tired even more than angry. Defeated, maybe.

Mickey fucking hates to see it.

He busies himself by the drawers, aimlessly rifling through the socks for something to do with his hands. “So. Quit your job?”

There's a brief pause, as if Ian's trying to determine whether Mickey's trying to start something again, and whether or not to strike first with a snarky reply. In the end he settles for a soft exhalation and,  “Yep. Tried to make me to work for free through my lunch break.”

He'd told Mickey as much already, at the Alibi. Hadn't gone so good, so this time Mickey tries for a different response: “Fuck 'em. We'll be fine 'til you find something else. Too good for that fucking place anyway.”

Another pause, long enough that Mickey turns from his fumbling with the socks to look at his husband. Ian's staring down at his book, mouth opening and closing a few times, like he's on the edge of saying something but then thinks better of it.

“Yeah,” he mutters at long last. “Don't know that I am anymore. Bipolar ex-convict in the worst economy in fucking lifetime? Not seeing a lot of options for me here.” Before Mickey has time to think of an appropriate response to that Ian's eyes darts to his face; darts away just as quickly. “Manager called me a little bitch.”

Oh. Okay. Yeah. Fuck.

Moving over to the bed, Mickey sits down on the edge of it. “That manager's a fucking idiot. The hell does he know? That's bullshit.”

Ian lifts his head at that, looking at Mickey with something that might be hope tempered with wary skepticism, and a hint of challenge. “Really?”

Mickey meets his gaze without flinching; holds it for a moment. “Yeah, man. Bet that asshole knew you could break him in half without breaking a sweat, that's why he's spouting stupid fucking stupid shit like that.”

A beat, to let that sink in, and then Mickey allows his lips curl into a grin, pulling his legs up on the bed to crawl over to Ian and crowd him: “'Cause you know you're the toughest motherfucker on the South Side, so big and so strong and so manly.” He reaches out to squeeze Ian's left bicep for emphasis.

“You're a dick.” But Ian doesn't pull away and he's starting to smile, as Mickey hoped he would; it's in his eyes first, softening and a glimmer, and then it's on his lips, growing wider.

Mickey feels his own grin grow wider too, as something in his chest loosens and lets up.

“Yeah?” he asks, eyebrows suggestively raised as he, ignoring the dull protest of his aching ribs, leans in to let his lips brush over Ian's in a not-quite-a-kiss. “Whatcha gonna do about it, huh? Gonna bend me over and pound me so hard I fucking scream? Gonna make me beg for your... your big, fat cock?”

Ian tilts his head to the side, brow furrowed in faux affront. “You calling my dick fat?”

“Think I've got the right to, Tim Kruger, I've choked on it enough times.”

A snort of surprised laughter and then Ian's hand is on the back of his head, pulling him in for a kiss that is hard and hungry and coming home. Mickey shifts to straddle his thighs, their lips never parting, and fuck, it's just been a few days but it's been too fucking long.

It goes on for some time; Ian's arms around him, fingers scratching against his scalp; Mickey's hands running up and down Ian's sides, as they kiss and they kiss and they kiss.

At long last, with a long sigh, Ian pulls back a little, his eyes searching Mickey's as he runs a thumb over his cheek.

“You want me to do that?” he asks after a moment, and there's just the faintest note of uncertainty in his voice.

Mickey doesn't like it. He doesn't want Ian to be uncertain about him, about them, ever. But he bites down on the urge to bristle. Takes a deep breath. “Do what?”

“Bend you over.” A tentative, lopsided smile. “Make you beg”

Ah. “Ain't never said no to that shit before, Gallagher.” How the hell is that even a question?  Okay, there'd been this morning, kind of, and maybe a few times when they just started fucking and he had issues and things got a little too intense or whatever, and he's not so much for the actual begging, but in general, Mickey's never been opposed to Ian getting a little – or a lot – decisive with him.

Least not as long as he doesn't make him feel lesser than for liking it that way.

“Mm.” Ian nods, but he doesn't lean back in to resume the kiss. Instead he reaches out to run his hand over Mickey's thigh, idly, and with a pensive look on his face.

Mickey very, very badly wants to tell him that now that that's cleared up maybe you could get on with it but he's determined not to be (too much of) an asshole tonight; to be patient. He waits, and eventually Ian looks up. The uncertainty has seemingly fled; the look in his green eyes is calm once more, and direct:

“So just to be clear: you're not exclusively a top now?”

“What? Hell no.” Mickey makes a face, genuinely taken aback by the notion, but then he shrugs. “Doesn't mean I'd mind switching it up once in a while, though. We've tried all kinds of new shit after we got married, figured it might be fun to try that too.” He pauses, chewing his lip. “Thought you'd be cool with it.”

Ian smiles, reaching out to give a playful little tug to Mickey's hair. “Give me some warning next time and I will be.” Abruptly, his smile turns devilish. “After all, how could I resist such a stunning embodiment of pure masculine prowess?”

Mickey's eyes widen. Oh. Uh-huh. All right then.

“I dunno,” he says, pushing hard for feigned thoughfulness even as he pushes his ass down on Ian's groin, wiggling just a little. “Seems like six pack-packing, strong-willed, stoic soldier boy like you could resist just about anything.”

Ian's quiet laugher is cut short by a sharp intake of breath as Mickey leans in to nip at his ear. “Even a – ah – man-swole hardass?”

“Yeah, 'cause you're such a top dog alpha male.“

“Ultra super power bottom.“

“Fierce and ruthless devastator of assholes.”

“Yeah, asshole is right... Ow! Okay, you're going down … you big manly boss man.“

---

If there is a moment, quite some time later, when they're both happy and spent and relaxing in each other's arms –

If there is a moment, when Ian's eyes stray to the bruises on on Mickey's side, and if he reaches out to let his fingers brush over them in the whisper of a touch, if a shadow passes over his face –

Mickey will catch his hand and bring it up to his lips to press a quick kiss to it.

“Looks worse than it is,” he will say and Ian's lips will twist, in rueful smile or grimace or both:

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Bastard who jumped me hits like a fucking - “ Mickey will break off and make a disgusted face. “Hits like a... a... a fucking weak person. Jesus Christ. Fucking V.”

Ian will chuckle. A bit weakly, perhaps, still a little lost to the lingering memories of the afternoon, but he will chuckle. Will pull Mickey closer to him, carefully; push his nose to his hair and breathe him in. “I love you.”

And Mickey will smile. “Mm. I know. Love you, too.”

---

A/N: Listen, I don't begrudge anyone engaging in bad dirty talk if that's what gets them going, but I didn't really expect it for Ian and Mickey. I guess this is my attempt to wed what we saw in mid-credits scene to my already established perception of the characters. Oh, and I have a kink for understated reconciliation so there was no way in hell I wouldn't jump on this. XD That also means I want to read ALL THE FIC written on this topic, so if you write/see any, please let me know?

Tim Kruger is a gay porn star with a huge dick, btw. I know this because I googled "gay porn star huge dick". I have some regrets.

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

here's a question, what do you think happens to Debbie (and Franny) post s11? Personally I'm not a fan of the idea that Debbie would go off with Heidi after she fought tooth and nail to stay in her own house, plus Heidi is...not really what I'd picture for a good ending to Debbie's story. What would you see being a good post script for Debs?

ahhhh i love you for asking this

i mean, there's a part of me that wants to say that everything will go great for them, but i think that it'll be rough for a little while.

to answer the heidi thing (which i have talked about many times before but this ask is a little bit old lol sorry!), she will not last. she'll be gone in like, a week, and will never be heard from again. i think that the finale made that pretty clear, even though other people interpreted it in other ways. when heidi mentioned texas, debbie looked hesitant, and considering how she spent the past season fighting for this house, and the past eleven seasons fighting for her family, there isn't a single part of me that thinks she will be leaving for texas and if she does, her kid will be coming with her 100%.

but anyways, debbie will be going through it. she will have lost her father and her girlfriend in the same week or so and given her abandonment issues, i think she'll probably break. she'll have a whole breakdown over it, then be a bit depressed for a month or two, and then i think she'll slowly start to feel better. also, something that nobody talks about for some reason is the fact that post-11x12 all of the gallaghers (including mickey, tami, kevin, and veronica) all most likely get covid since they were all around frank and like touching him and shit, so that will probably happen.

i think that, as always, she'll pick herself up on her own and fix everything herself. her business will thrive, maybe she'll help out at the alibi if carl and tipping buy it (i hc that they do), but i think that money-wise she'll be set.

she and lip will definitely still have some conflict. every gallagher kid has a complex, difficult relationship with frank (i've actually been writing about this) but these two and frank have always stuck out to me (but they all stick out to me, honestly). i think that since the two of them were already fighting and are both notoriously awful at handling their emotions shit will go down.

debbie will keep the house since it's been in her name since the season nine finale (i mean duh, why would lip get to sell HER house??), lip, tami, and fred will move to milwaukee but then lip and tami will split up and it'll be messy, maybe he'll come back to chicago and they'll get split custody, carl will live there for another year or two, liam will live there until he graduates, and ian and mickey will move back to the south side. debbie will feel uneasy because of all of the change, so she'll insist on family dinners weekly, absolutely NO exceptions (you could be sick with some sort of flesh eating virus and she'd still demand that you attend).

she will never fully process losing frank. even dead, he still manages to fuck her over. i think that she'll set up a memorial for him a lot like the one she set up in 3x01.

if she reads the letter it'll fuck her up even more and i'm hoping that she gets therapy (i have a fic in my drafts about this lol) to help her deal with trauma, abandonment issues, grief, and help her navigate parenting while being only twenty.

i seriously just wish her the best because season eleven really made me realize how much she actually needs help.

live laugh debbie gallagher

[shameless-notashamed]

my main thought after 11x11 is wtf is going on? this is supposed to be the penultimate episode of the entire series, but i’m left with more questions and i don’t see how the series finale could ever answer all of them.

ian and mickey’s whole debacle of a storyline was of course my favorite. although it was laced with the same intensity as the rest, i don’t find myself worrying for either of them the same way as i do the other gallaghers. and that right there is definitely saying something. and it does feel nice not to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. it’s still never simple, and these two seem to find ways to over complicate things, but at least it feels stable in a way i maybe never thought it really ever would or could have been.

after two seasons of sandy integrating herself into the gallagher and milkovich families, we are supposed to so easily accept this new love interest for debbie? debbie was told to go looking for a relationship in which the other person was more of a loser than she was, so does this mean we are meant to believe sandy was better than debbie? why make sandy such an important person to mickey in s10 and then for debbie in s11, just to completely write her off so near the end of the show? we may never know.

is carl going to be a father? carl gallagher? put a goldfish into a microwave, carl gallagher? my mind is completely mixed on this possible outcome, but i’m rooting for him. thus the complexities of shameless and also carl.

everything about frank leaves me utterly confused and i’m also deeply invested, which is baffling seeing as how i’ve had a lot of trouble caring about frank for a while now, if ever? even still, debbie has no right to blame frank for her jilted love life. she is surrounded by people who have found nurturing and loving relationships both in spite of and despite their parents... and to see lip struggling to find his way and the money for a home for tami and freddie, then for frank to dangle the idea of a “gold brick” salvation in front of lip is perplexing. this is most especially because it’s coming from the guy who somehow stole an iconic painting from the art institute of chicago... but what resonated with me most is frank and liam, they have a storied and historied past together. please, for all the stars i can wish upon in the sky, although frank’s outcome is yet uncertain, don’t let it be liam who finds him

i completely understand kev’s need for sentimentality as he leaves the only life he’s ever known for the hopes and promises of something more for his family. him and v have overcome their own pitfalls, yet have still come out on top. i can’t not be happy for them, but it also makes me sad thinking about how they will no longer be around looking out for the gallaghers. i felt that when lip realized they wouldn’t be his neighbors anymore.

i can’t help but feel tense leading up to next week’s final episode. especially with how this one ended. i don’t expect some all encompassing perfection of a finale, that just wouldn’t be shameless. but i do have hope. i hope that when we at last part ways, the bittersweet emotions i’m sure to feel might be a little more on the sweet side.

[mjsarcastic]

SPOILERS FOR SHAMELESS

I watch the finale of Shameless, and damn it, I'm pissed off. WTF kind of ending was that???

Where was the resolution? Why were there so many random subplots thrown in literally twenty minutes into the episode? Why is Ian and Mickey and Kev and V the only two good pairings left on the show? Are you really trying to convince me that Tami, after spending literally the ENTIRE season telling Lip they had to move out of the Gallagher house, suddenly decided it was fine if they stayed and raised a possible second baby? Did anyone even find out about Frank dying? Did they really end this amazing show slowly gone down hill by basically leaving the entire cast singing fucking Kumbaya and pretending like they weren't all about to go through a bunch of shit? What the hell kind of writing went into this episode?

Sorry about the rant, I'm just upset that this was how this show I loved so much ended. I love the cast, I love the characters (besides Tami. I want Mandy or even Sierra back,) and I love this show. But come on! I can't be the only one who agrees that this was a terrible ending to a truly amazing show.

So, to make up for it, here's my alternative:

We start out in the morgue of a hospital, where Frank lays dead on a table, and when a nearby physician asks if he had any other family, Fiona is revealed to be standing there with a frown as she replies that he did (my mom pointed out that she was probably still his emergency contact even after Fiona left, and I agree.) Later, at Frank's wake, and after a reunion between Fiona and her siblings where she has to reveal the news, there's a small get together at the Alibi where Frank had been cremated and put in an empty bottle of whiskey that sits on a little table, and all the Gallagher's are there and give small speeches.

Liam is the most distraught out of all of them, and he finally stands up for himself and tells the gang that Frank cared for him more then they ever had, and he announces he had been accepted into a STEM school in, like, California or something and heads off because this kid deserves better, but of course he makes up with his family then heads off using his cut of the house money made from selling the house.

Speaking of, Lip stills manages to sell the house to that Shelby guy and invests in opening a bike shop with Brad and some of their old coworkers, and there happens to be an apartment for rent above said garage he rents out with the promise to Tami that she, him, Fred, and their possible new baby would be in a nice house by the end of the year. Yada, yada, I hate the pairing but it's pretty much too late to change it, so go with it.

Debbie, unfortunately, doesn't realize that her new girlfriend what's-her-name is basically her Jimmy-Steve and goes to El Paso with her, bringing Franny along, which is pretty unfortunate but there isn't enough room in the episode for Debbie to realize she jumped back into a relationship way too soon.

Ian and Mickey, my favorite pairing on the show, pretty much have the same storyline as in the episode with the discussion of kids and such included. I moved their anniversary up to a bit later, since my idea includes a short few month time skip, so bare with me here. Just know that they still had the anniversary party in the Alibi.

Carl decided to buy the Alibi as suggested in the show, and a few months later, there's a reopening where everyone attends including Fiona, who stayed to help, and Kev and V, who had flown back with their girls to attend the reopening before they officially moved to Kentucky and never looked back. Debbie isn't there, I honestly wouldn't expect her to be, but Liam is and so is Lip and Tami, and due to the success of Lip and Brad's bike shop, the pair were planning on renting a house soon where they could raise Fred AND their new baby...sarcastic yaaay. Fiona plans to go back on her travels later that night, Liam and Kev and V plan to leave to their seperate places the next day, as do Lip and Tami, while Carl stays and acts as a cop and a bar owner. There's a painting of Frank with a glass of beer raised and a smile on his face that Carl had commissioned.

And as the camera zooms away from the bar, as the Gallagher's all pour out and begin to go their seperate ways while a recording of them singing the same song in the real finale plays, the new name of the Alibi is revealed to be called "Frank's."

Finally, at the end, Frank stands on the beach in front of a barrel fire like how the series started, and he says the same thing he said in the real finale before he drinks from a bottle of beer, makes a toast to the audience by saying, "And to, you glorious bastards, for watching the Gallagher's suffer for your amusement for the past ten years. Here's to you, you motherfuckers!" And the camera zooms out away from him as the song finishes, and the credits roll for the last time.

Bonus credits scene: Tommy and Kermit sit at the new Alibi and stare at the painting of Frank as Kermit asks if the painting would follow him like the Mona Lisa, and when he tests it out, the whiskey bottle full of Frank's ashes that sits on a shelf under the painting falls and breaks into pieces, and Tommy and Kermit look at each other with the thought that Frank now haunted the place, and then, it cuts to black.

There it is; my alternate plot. Don't like it? Well, it's not canon, so move on with your life and deal with the real ending like the rest of us have to.

GOODBYE SHAMELESS. THANKS FOR ALL THE GOOD TIMES, AND THE BAD TIMES!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤

[arrowflier]

hi 💛 i know this may be out of character for post-finale, but i was wondering if you could write a bit of angst (with happy ending of course) where mickey becomes more withdrawn from the gallagher fam cause he doesn’t feel like he really belongs (thinking of lip during the “mickey’s not family” kitchen scene and mickey&lip’s fight) - maybe mick is staying back at their westside apartment more often, not attending family events, only feels comfortable around ian, etc. - eventually ian catches on, they talk, and he makes it better 🥰

This went a little different and it's ooc for the other Gallaghers, but I think it still hits the general vibe so I just went with it.

---

The wake of Frank Gallagher’s death was filled with uncertainty. For the present, the future, the family. For Ian. Because for all Ian said he wouldn’t care when Frank died, for all he said he was done caring for, mourning for a man that used him, threw him aside…

When it came down to it, Ian was still a Gallagher. And Gallaghers didn’t let each other go that easily.

Mickey wasn’t a Gallagher. He never had been. And he had never felt that difference more strongly than now, standing behind the counter in the Gallagher family kitchen, feeling like an eavesdropper as he listened to them plan.

Plan for a wake no one wanted, a remembrance no one asked for. Plan out Frank’s goodbye while the man himself sat in ashes on the mantelpiece.

Ian looked tired sitting on the opposite side of the room, facing Mickey. His face was drawn, his eyes squinted thin and surrounded by red, and his mouth twisted as he argued with Lip over how much of the money from selling the house should go toward completely unnecessary arrangements.

“I’m just saying,” Ian said plainly, “that we don’t need to do anything fancy. There’s nothing wrong with a cheap party at the Alibi.”

“Party,” Lip snorted. “Don’t think this is the kind of thing we’re supposed to celebrate.”

“Why the fuck not?” Mickey couldn’t help himself from chiming in. “Frank was an asshole, and nobody cared when he was dyin’ on the goddamn sofa.”

It was true enough. They had all been rather unbothered by his imminent demise until they got the call, a few words over a tinny phone connection enough to suddenly make it real. To make it important.

“No matter how much we hated him, he was still our dad, Mickey,” Lip argued, wiping a hand over his face. He eyed the drink Carl held hungrily before taking a slow sip of his own cola, adding, “Not all of us can just leave family to fuckin’ rot.”

And that hurt. Felt like a fucking kick in the chest, over a heart already bruised. He could see Ian watching him, though, and his husband had enough to deal with without getting into Mickey’s shit again.

“He’s already cremated,” Mickey pointed out, putting on an unconcerned face for Ian’s benefit. “Nothing left to rot, man.”

“Well we can’t just do nothing,” Debbie said, for once on Lip’s side. “I mean yeah, he was a shitty dad, but it’s not like he was Terry.”

“Not a high bar,” Mickey countered. “Think he deserves some kind of parade just cause he didn’t try and kill any of ya on purpose?”

A brief moment, just one, as that went through the room. Then:

“Mickey,” Lip sighed, “just let us deal with this, yeah? This is kind of a—”

“Family only thing,” Mickey interrupted bitterly, repeating words that Lip had thrown around one too many times. “Yeah, I figured.”

Ian offered an apologetic look from across the table, but didn’t argue for him. Not like last time, when his first thought had been to defend Mickey’s place.

Mickey took the hint.

“I’ll be out back,” Mickey said shortly, directed at Ian, and marched toward the door. “You know, whenever fucking family time is over.”

“Mickey…” Ian called after him, but he didn’t get up. Didn’t follow. And as Mickey left, he could vaguely hear Ian making apologies.

So he didn’t stop when he went down the steps. And he didn’t stop at the gate. He didn’t stop at the sidewalk, or the street, or the edge of the neighborhood.

If he wasn’t fuckin’ family, he didn’t need to be at the family home. So he went to his new one instead.

---

“Mickey?” Ian called out as he entered the apartment, hours later. “Mickey, are you here?”

Mickey didn’t answer. Ian found him anyway.

“There you are,” he said with a sigh as he came into the living room, where Mickey lay sprawled over the sofa. He stopped at Mickey’s side, towering over him.

“You weren’t answering your phone,” Ian complained, looking to the device Mickey held with both hands. “Why did you leave?”

“Why do you think?” Mickey answered. “Wasn’t exactly welcome.”

Ian had the grace to look chagrined.

“Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. “You know how Lip gets…”

“Stupid?” Mickey said, and Ian shrugged.

“I mean, yeah. Kind of.”

Mickey went back to playing on his phone, leaving Ian standing awkwardly at his side.

“I told them I’d come back once I found you,” Ian told him abruptly. “You should come with me.”

Mickey didn’t answer, eyes on his game.

“Will you come?” Ian pressed, and Mickey dropped his phone with a sigh.

“They don’t want me there,” he answered. He lifted a hand to rub the back of his neck, and Ian caught it, pulled it away.

“Why would you say that?” he asked, voice earnest, his thumb tracing circles on Mickey’s wrist.

“Dunno,” Mickey lied, then caved immediately. “It’s a family thing,” he said. “And I ain’t family.”

“You’re my family,” Ian countered, but Mickey shook his head, pulling his hand free.

That wasn’t enough.

They were quiet, for a moment, and Mickey was about to give up and pick up his phone again when Ian broke the silence.

“You’re more family than Frank was, if you think about it,” he said suddenly. “Definitely more of a Gallagher, if you only count the good bits.”

“It’s cheating to only count the good parts of me,” Mickey argued, feeling bitter, and Ian knocked his shoulder with his hand.

“Meant only the good bits of being a Gallagher, Mick,” he corrected, rolling his eyes before they settled, soft, on Mickey’s face. “Stuff like being there, taking care of each other. Sticking together when things get rough.”

“Don’t think your brother agrees,” Mickey said flatly, then winced as Ian sat down hard on his outstretched legs.

“My brother,” Ian started, “is an idiot.”

Well, Mickey wasn’t going to argue with that.

“But believe it or not,” Ian continued, “he does think of you as family.” Mickey tried to cut in, but Ian glared at him until he closed his mouth, settling back against the arm of the sofa.

“You know what I heard him telling somebody the other day?” Ian asked. Not waiting for a reply, he said, “that if they had any trouble, he’d sic his brother-in-law on them.”

“Don’t think using me as a threat counts as me being part of the family,” Mickey grumbled, but Ian shook his head.

“Wasn’t a threat,” he explained. “He was offering your services. Cause you’re part of the family, now, and he knows you would help him.”

He would. Of course he would. Without a second thought, even for his least favorite in-law, even at risk for himself. But it was a surprise to hear that Lip knew that.

“Carl tells people you taught him how to fight,” Ian went on. “Brags that the infamous Mickey Milkovich taught him everything, and that’s why he makes a good cop.”

Mickey snorted. Of course that little fucker did.

“Didn’t think he’d grow up to be a pig, did I?” he said, and Ian just smiled.

“Liam tells the school bullies that if they mess with him, his brother will beat them up,” Ian continued. “Didn’t work very well until he said that brother was you.”

“Damn right I would,” Mickey agreed easily, scowling at the idea of anyone giving Liam a hard time. “He’s a good fucking kid.”

“And Franny fucking adores you,” Ian said, knowing it would make Mickey smile. “Which means Debbie does, too.” Ian scooted closer, sitting on Mickey’s thighs instead of his shins.

“You know I offered to babysit the other day, and the first thing Debs asked was if you would be there?” Ian laughed. “She almost said no until I promised you would be.”

“Little sis has good sense,” Mickey muttered, flushing to his ears, and Ian nodded.

“She does,” he agreed. “They all do.” He raised a hand to Mickey’s face, held his cheek. Stroked his thumb over it. “You’re family, Mickey,” he whispered. “And they love you. Just like I do.”

“Fucking sap,” Mickey murmured, leaning into the touch.

“You know it,” Ian said, and pulled him in for a kiss.

When they parted, Ian took Mickey’s worries with him.

“What do you say?” Ian asked softly, hand sliding down to Mickey’s neck. “Come home with me, let them apologize?”

“Thought this was home, now,” Mickey said.

“It is home, for us,” Ian answered. “But the house is home too. Family is home,” he stressed. “And you’re family.”

“Lip ain’t gonna apologize,” Mickey pointed out next, leaning in again, and Ian shrugged.

“Come home with me and tell him he’s an asshole?” Ian offered instead.

Mickey grinned, resting their foreheads together.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I can do that.”

[hlupdate]

A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”

“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”

“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.

July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom. 

It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.

Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”

In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.

“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”

To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars. 

The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”

One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.

“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.

“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”

Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”

Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.

Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”

Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.

At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”

“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”

At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”

Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.

“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”

Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.

Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.

“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”

Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible. 

But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.” 

“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”

That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”

For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”

“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”

Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.

“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.” 

Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.

“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.

“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”

Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.

“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”

He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”

Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.

“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”

A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”

Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.

But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.

“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”

After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”

In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.

There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”

But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.

“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”