Chapter Text
For the first time in weeks, the house is quiet. There's no clamoring of feet up and down the stairs or overlapping voices having ten thousand different conversations. It sounds like people are finally settling in for the night.
When he walks in and plops on the bed, running both hands down his face, Tami's still a little pissed at the situation he has them in. The yellow hue of the lamp lit room cascades along his profile. They sit, tense and quiet. The silence feels louder than ever. It's ringing in her ears like tinnitus. It'll be loud again in the morning, but Thank Fuck she can finally think straight.
Except not Thank Fuck because Lip's sitting here all quiet and contemplative. And Tammy knows - she knows - that she has to apologize for blowing up. Was she right? Absolutely. Could she have communicated better? Absolutely not. But, still, she knows she should apologize.
Focusing on Fred two feet away, peacefully sleeping in his stupid, stolen bassinet, she crosses her legs. The heat of her thighs help warm her cold toes. It's nearly winter and Debbie still hasn't turned the heat on. It's something about how using the heat is pointless when the weather is still warm enough to layer up and be fine.
Eventually, Tami opens her mouth to speak, but Lip beats her to it. Thank Fuck.
"I'm gonna figure something out, okay? I know it's cramped. And not ideal for Fred or you. So I'm gonna figure something out." When he looks at her he seems pained. Like he's not ready to leave but he will for them. For her an Fred.
She scoots closer to him and leans her head on his shoulder. Her gaze catches the small, barely there, handprints on the wall in front of them. Lip said Liam got into a can of wall paint years ago and added his own touch to the house. It was supposed to be used to cover a patched up hole in the hallway.
She figures the house is full of stories of the infamous Gallagher family roaming the halls. The patched wall right next to the refrigerator. The crack in their accordion door. The missing string on the attic. The split wood of the hallway cabinet. Maybe that's why Lip's having a hard time.
Tami murmurs a soft, "I'm sorry." It feels louder than it should. An uncomfortable loud. She doesn't really know what she's apologizing for now. For blowing up. For asking Lip to leave when he's not ready to. For feeling like the walls that surround her are not good enough for them and their baby.
"All good." Lip leans over and presses a kiss to her hair.
"It's not. I should probably apologize to the Mexican family and felon that Carl and Ian have been harboring."
Lip laughs. "No need. The felon has tough skin and the Mexican's moved out."
That saddens her a little bit. She'll miss the smell of tamales from five in the morning to nearly midnight.
"Oh no, Carl must be broken up." A bit of sarcasm tinges her voice.
"Yeah, he struck out. Don't know how he's a Gallagher with his lack of game." Lip says as he wraps an arm around Tami pulling her closer. "Only got a kiss out of it."
"So all that for nothing, huh?" She's kidding. Kind of. "How long will the Convict be here then? Will we be getting rid of him soon?" Lip hums at her question.
"That's different." He says. And it sounds like it physically hurts him to admit that. Like someone is twisting a hunting knife straight through his stomach and he has to grit his teeth to get the words out.
"Different how? I mean Ian goes to jail. Has this fling with his cellmate. And all of a sudden it's okay for him to be here?" A lot of crazy shit happens in this house on account of Frank being around. They don't need an unknown variable like Mickey walking around too. She unwraps herself from Lip, tilting her head to the ceiling and and running her hand from her forehead through the length of her hair. "It's bullshit and you know it! Just tell Ian to tell him he can't live here."
Lip tenses and huffs. She finds it so fucking aggravating when he gets upset because she's making a valid point. It's the first thing parents teach. Stranger Danger. Then again, she sees how Frank walks in and out of the house when he still has a 10 year old to take care of. She knows the stories of him sneaking into their rooms and rifling through their pockets to take the money they saved for utilities and food to instead spend it on drugs.
So maybe they don't know.
"Mickey's..." he struggles, "he's like family."
Her laugh is harsh. Family? She wonders how easy it is to become a Gallagher and why it's been so hard for her to be included. It's like she's on the outskirts. Like she has to squint just to try and read their lips. Like she’s trying to join a huddled conversation and is only met with a circle of backs.
"Do you know why Mickey went to prison?" She knows it’s rhetorical, but still, she shakes her head no. "A few years ago our sister sold Ian out to the military police and got him sent to military jail."
"Fiona did that? I thought she was the one who took care of you growing up. Why would she do that?"
She can't help but wonder what other fucked up shit they went through with the people that were supposed to love and care for them. Every story she hears sounds like a nightmare they were never able to wake up from. No wonder they ended up the way they did.
"No, not Fiona. We have another sister, Sammi. Crazy blonde bitch with a weird kid and a vindictive streak." Lip taps his fingers. She can tell he wants a cigarette. "She's in prison too."
"Sounds like a Gallagher to me." She doesn't mean to say it out loud but the words leave her mouth quicker than she can think. Lip doesn't correct her even though she can see his defenses rising. She wonders, "What does she have to do with Mickey being a convicted felon?"
"He tried to kill her. Allegedly."
And isn't that fucking something. Tami's not sure Lip knows he not making the point he thinks he's making.
"Let me guess, she's in jail for attempted murder too?" She rolls her eyes. Lip laughs at this. No fucking way.
"Yeah, actually." Unbelievable. Mickey tries to kill their sister and somehow she gets cast out and Mickey becomes an honorary Gallagher.
That pisses her off more. She's been trying to get in good with Lip's siblings since she got pregnant but they've all been polite. Just polite. Tami doesn't know what she has to do to be welcomed in. For so long, she felly like she was standing on the stoop of their porch, only catching glimpses of them from the outside.
Now that Fred's born and she's out of the hospital, it feels like she finally has a foot in the door. Even if the only thing she can see is everyone walking in and out of the house.
"Oh, okay, so all I have to do is try and kill Debbie and I'll be in your family's good graces forever?"
"Mm prob'ly, but not for the same reasons as Mick." He rubs a hand down his face and pulls his feet up to lean on his knees "Fuck, I hate that you're making me defend his ass right now. Mickey's the type of guy to act first and think later. But, with Ian, it's different. Defend Ian, think later."
Tami rolls her eyes. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? You just said he tried to murder your sister."
"Well, she was only our half-sister that we met a year before Mickey tried to kill her." Lip says as if it's nothing. As if he sided with Mickey over his sister. It does not make Tami feel better. Not even an inch.
"Ah, yeah, that definitely changes the playing field. I feel much more comfortable knowing it was only your half-sister he attempted to kill." Tami can't wrap her head around how any of this should comfort her. Or how it makes the dark-headed hoodlum family.
She takes a deep breath. The stench of weed wafts in through the window with the shitty seal. The same shitty sealed window that's the reason she freezes at night and has to triple blanket Fred.
Debbie and Carl's voices seep in from outside. She's giving him shit about "not closing" with Anne. Carl says he's not giving up. Arguing, what’s a little distance?
It's nearly midnight and somehow everyone's awake as if they don't have work tomorrow. Except Liam, his door was shut long before the sun went down.
"They've been through a lot together, okay? Like ten years of fucked up shit. So, he's like family."
Every time Lip tells her about his family, she can't understand why he would ever want to be around them. Frank's a drunken asshole. Debbie's a bitch fifty percent of the time. Ian is yet another household felon that apparently blows shit up for fun? Carl... well Carl's okay when he's not hosting a family of forty. And Liam might be the most normal of the bunch. Though, she once overheard him talking about how he was going downtown to collect money
Tami thinks she'll never understand what it means to be a Gallagher.
"Doesn't everyone want that?" Lip grabs her hand, unraveling the clenched fist she didn't know she was holding. "Someone who cares enough to risk a 15 year prison sentence for them?"
"Ghetto love, how romantic?" She turns on her side facing away from Lip and pulling their layered sheets all the way up to her mouth. "Get the lights please."