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No one even knows, or cares to remember, but Frank’s emergency contact is Fiona. The doctors don’t find the right information form until well into the night, under piles and piles of files so old the ink has almost bled off of the yellowed paper. They call and, with their best professional voice, tell her that they’re sorry but her father has died.
(It’s not their fault they don’t know theirs wasn’t a normal father/daughter relationship, that the news they’re delivering isn’t quite the same as the ones they do every day).
Fiona answers and ends the call without even switching on her bedside lamp. She lays there, in the dark, staring at the expanse of her ceiling, no fucking idea what to feel. That’s not even a hyperbole, she just… doesn't. Maybe she’s just feeling everything all at once.
She lets this nothing (or everything) wash over and cover her, for hours and hours until she falls asleep just as the sky’s starting to turn pale.
(She doesn’t wake the person, partner, whatever laying in bed next to her, and when they get up the next morning she doesn’t tell him Frank has died, goes on with her day like normal. It’s going to take her a while).
*
Fiona has to tell Lip, because the hospital had already been asking about Frank’s body and she can’t deal with that, she’s not even in Chicago, and her siblings will have to take care of it. She shoots him a text asking to call her as she’s leaving for work, and Lip wakes up to it, bleary eyed and confused by his surroundings.
He slept at Tami’s dad’s the night before (this is not permanent, he told her, hugging her close outside the Alibi, we are not moving in with your dad, I promise I have a plan, but I just wanna be together tonight), and now he’s tangled into her long hair and her long limbs, Fred staring at him from his crib like he’s asking why they aren’t up yet, he’s too hungry for them to be sleeping in, thank you very much.
He meets his siblings outside the hospital, all coming from different directions, a family just starting to go their separate ways and already reuniting.
Reuniting because Frank died.
The hospital put him in his own room, waiting for them to come see him, and they’re all silent as they file through the door, one by one, a little puzzled, like they know it’s weird that this isn’t like all the other times they’ve done this, there’s a sense of finality mixing in with the feeling of familiarity of this moment.
Liam is the first to take tentative steps to the bed, and then he takes Frank’s hand, gently, something on his face that his siblings can’t quite read.
(Lip thinks he should be way too young to be looking any way like that. He’ll always think Liam is way too young).
Carl and Debbie sit in the only two chairs in the room, looking at their feet like they’re not sure their own bodies are still there.
Ian doesn’t quite cross the threshold. He stands right on it, arms crossed and a frown deep between his eyebrows. He’s going to be there for his siblings, he’s not going to skip out on a moment important to his family, but he’s stopped feeling any sort of way for Frank a long time ago. He doesn’t feel bad about feeling nothing.
(Mickey waits just behind him, back leaning against the wall in the hallway, almost like he’s keeping watch).
*
Lip decides to sell the house to Shelby.
After a call to Fiona, who tells them to keep her share of it, she’s not sure she wants it and more than that she sure as hell doesn’t need it as much as they do, the five of them sit down in the ruins of their kitchen and try to decide what to do with it.
They scream at each other for a full weekend (well, Lip and Debbie scream, the others roll their eyes and try to steer the conversation into something resembling constructive as best as they can), but by Sunday night they have what looks like a feasible plan.
They’re gonna talk Veronica and Kev into going as partners on the Alibi with Lip, Ian and Carl’s shares of the house: they’ll still get to move to Kentucky, but they’ll still own the bar, letting Carl and Lip manage it.
It sounds like the most sensible idea for everyone, for now, taking a bit of a gamble with money they could use for something more stable, but it’s also an investment, something that could hopefully turn into something good, someday.
(It also forces them to keep in each other’s lives a while longer, they all think but no one says).
Vee declares it’ll be a shitshow she’s happy she’s not going to be around to witness, but she hugs them a little tighter than usual, and then lets Kev’s overwhelming excitement hide the fact that maybe she’s tearing up a little.
*
She’s right, of course. It is a complete shitshow, for a long time.
Carl almost sets fire to the place, and his idea of making it better is repeating that at least this time he didn’t do it on purpose, and bills keep piling up even if they don’t do much renovations on the place, barely any at all.
Fiona calls a couple of times with business advice, that Lip is too prideful to accept in the beginning, and that stubbornness almost puts them under at some point. But they start to get the hang of it, slowly, and by the time Kev and Vee are up in Chicago to visit, it almost looks like they know what they’re doing.
(Gallaghers ain’t no quitters, right?)
*
To no one’s surprise, Debbie ends up accepting Heidi’s offer with barely any explanation or warning to the family. She’s packing hers and Franny’s clothes in a frenzy, talking a mile a minute and Lip, leaning into the doorway with his ankles crossed, has to try very hard to stop himself from asking all the questions he wants to scream at her.
What the hell are you thinking?
Do you even realize what you’re doing to Franny??
....Why the fuck did you make such a big deal about the house if you’re just going to up and leave with this nutjob?
He says none of that, mostly because he’s seen the look in her eyes so many times in Monica’s that at this point he’s not even sure he can keep fighting it. His brothers peek at him from the end of the hallway, where they’re packing up their old bedroom, and they’re all sporting the same expression he’s sure he has on his own face, and he knows what they’re trying to say.
Just let it go.
So he does. They all help Debbie pack up her truck and they hug her goodbye, plant kisses all over Franny’s face and shoot worried, unsure looks at the menace in a woman’s body that’s already slouched in the front seat.
(They watch her drive away from the yard, the last time they’re going to be able to stand there and still call it their own).
*
After a month or so, Debbie and Franny come back to Chicago. The house is already not there anymore, so they crash on Ian and Mickey’s couch in their new apartment. They stay there for a week, Debbie talking for hours and hours about how great it is to be back home, surrounded by familiar places and faces again. Franny just sits there, very quiet, nodding along to what her mother says, like she always does.
The next morning, Debbie is gone, but Franny’s not.
There’s a note on the coffee machine, Debbie’s surprisingly neat handwriting just informing them that she’s going to run down south again for a little while, a friend of a friend needs help with a job and you know how it is, never a bad idea to make some cash when you can, right? Franny isn’t going to be a bother, really, thank you so much for looking out for her!!
Mickey stares at the note, then at Ian, like his eyes are going to bug out of their sockets, and Ian isn’t far behind, the world spinning a little too fast for seven in the morning when he hasn’t even had coffee yet. He’s already thinking up a plan, something, trying to figure out what time Debbie left and that maybe he could still catch up to her, when Franny is running into the kitchen, asking for her mommy, and Mickey scoops her up before Ian can even react, plopping her down on the counter and shoving a poptart in her hands.
Mickey just tells her the truth, there and then, about where her mom is, the fact that she hasn’t specified when she’s coming back, and what’s going to happen next (so you’re gonna spend some time with us, is that okay kid?) in a way that makes it all sound easy and normal, his own poptart crunching in his mouth as he speaks, and Ian’s heart swells in his chest at the sight.
(Mickey’s already far better at this than Ian will have any luck ever making him believe).
*
Carl, in between signing a bunch of papers for the Alibi he understands absolutely jackshit about, and trying to find an apartment to live in before Tami throws his ass off of their couch and on the street, goes to find Tish.
He’s not completely sure why he decides to, but he feels like he has to make sure, you know? He has this nagging voice at the back of his mind (a voice that sounds annoyingly like Veronica’s and Fiona’s all wrapped into one) and he never liked it much, having to think too much on something.
He finds her, and she’s still pregnant, almost ready to pop, and they have a nice, completely normal coffee shop date, like they’re just meeting instead of whatever the hell went on between them. She tells him that yes, that’s his baby but also that no, she didn’t lie when she told him she wasn’t trying to get pregnant that one time. This was just an unexpected-but-somewhat-happy accident, and she really doesn’t want anything from him.
He asks again, a couple of times, just to make sure, but the answer is always a quiet and firm no, thank you Carl.
Carl takes the offer, and doesn’t let himself feel bad about it.
*
Turns out, Tami is pregnant, and after a couple of weeks where Lip acts like the world is crashing down on him, he realizes that it’s not actually that big of a deal after all.
Actually, he’s even a little excited, when he allows himself a moment to think about it.
He talks about it with Tami, sitting on the floor in the apartment above the Alibi that is their home now (Tami doesn’t even bat an eye when he tells her the type of business that used to go down up here, and he thinks that maybe that’s the hottest she’s ever looked to him, already used to the batshit crazy antics of the South Side), and tells her, echoing himself from some years ago, that he’s okay with this baby, if she is too.
She looks terrified for just a fraction of a second before she smiles bright, and leans down to kiss him, and okay, they’re doing this.
(Maybe he’s starting to make some good choices, finally).
They get interrupted by Liam coming in to ask what he’s supposed to do with the trunk of sex toys that got left behind in what is now his new room.
*
When Debbie shows up again, a full six months later, Franny runs into her arms anyway, excited as ever, but Ian holds back, serious, and waits for the reunion to be over before letting his sister inside, hushering Franny off to Mickey so he and mommy can talk.
He’s made a game plan, while Debbie was away, a checklist of things that need to happen that he’s compiled with Lip’s help, after long phone calls with Fiona asking for advice. Item number one on the list: he and Mickey will take Franny, if Debbie wants to keep doing her thing, but they’re gonna need something on paper that says they’re her actual legal guardians.
Debbie thrashes at that, yelling betrayal and accusing him of conspiring with Lip, but he patiently explains that that’s not it. Ian had realized quickly how stupid they had been, to take Franny in so casually, when they both have a record and Franny was technically an unreported abandoned minor. They need to do it right, this time, if Debbie wants to live her life and do it in a way that will minimize the impact it could have on everyone else’s.
Because, the truth is… Ian doesn’t hold it against Debbie for leaving. He sees the way Lip scoffs when they walk about her, the she’s just like Monica barely contained in his brother’s voice, and he knows Lip’s right, but Ian also was just like Monica at some point, and no matter the different circumstances, acting like Debbie’s behaviour is a problem to be fixed rubs him the wrong way. So he’s decided that he’s still going to worry about her a reasonable and appropriate amount, but he’s not going to try and change her other than for the parts that need to be changed.
Franny doesn’t have to live in the constant state of uncertainty they used to when they were her age.
Somehow, in an incredible fit of self-awareness, Debbie seems to understand, and signs Franny over to Ian and Mickey as her new temporary legal guardians, and that’s that.
(They go to bed that night and Mickey holds onto his arm a little tighter than usual, and Ian doesn’t have to ask why. He just holds him right back).
*
Tami goes into labor on a Wednesday when Lip was already off duty at the Alibi anyway, working on some new bike Brad got for them to work on in their free time. She calls scared out of her mind, because it’s two weeks too early and what the fuck, why does this shit keep happening to me, and Lip runs home so fast it’s a miracle he doesn’t break his neck tripping on a crack in the concrete.
It takes longer, this time, hours and hours of Tami and Lip just pacing around the room while Tami carves her fingernails into his forearm with every passing contraction.
Lip worries, the whole way through, a worry so bone deep he’s not even sure if he’s breathing, hoping none of the nurses are asking him important questions because he has no idea what he’s answering, but then the moment comes and miraculously nothing goes wrong, and Tami gets to sleep while Lip holds the tiniest baby girl he’s ever seen in his life, and he thought he wouldn’t be able to breathe and it’s weird to find out that he can, actually, that this feels easy and good and right, that no matter how far off course life managed to throw him he still ended up here, with more than he could have ever imagined or hoped for.
*
He says it out loud for the first time to Tami, the day they come home from the hospital and they’re puttering around the apartment, unpacking and organizing the nursery properly, now that there’s an actual baby here that needs to use it and they’re figuring out the space, sizing up what their routine will look like.
“I want to go back to school,” he says, head tilted toward his daughter in his arms so that he doesn’t have to look at Tami staring at him, “not right now, but maybe. The Alibi isn’t going horribly, and I was thinking in a couple of years, when Fred is in school and a little more manageable, I could look at what classes I need to finish my degree, and I– I just–”
Tami is smiling a little when he looks back up at her, and he can’t finish his sentence.
“You just–?”
“I just– it’ll make me feel good, finally finishing it. And it makes sense financially too, I could get a better job…” he trails off, looks down again and the girl is staring right back up at him. “I think I wanna show them they can be whatever they want to be.”
“Okay,” Tami’s voice comes out watery, like she’s holding back tears (damn hormones, she’d say if asked), “I think that’s a great idea.”
*
They haven’t really talked about kids anymore, it’s been almost a year, and Ian doesn’t bring it up again.
It’s easier on Mickey, to do it like this, and Ian is more than okay with the way things seem to have turned out. In Mickey’s mind, Franny is already kinda messed up so it’s not going to be his fault if she grows up weird, he says, every time someone in the family makes a comment on how well Franny seems to be doing. He says it gruffly, like he’s trying to defend himself and downplay the compliments, but Ian can see the tiny spark of pride in his eyes.
Mickey likes Franny, and maybe that’s what made it easier, the fact that he knew her already, knew she was already somewhat of her own person, someone he didn’t have to build up from scratch. It’s nice, Ian thinks, to see that Mickey doesn’t feel like he has to change himself too much to be able to look after a kid.
They get along wonderfully, Mickey and Franny, taking each other in stride and falling into step with this new sort of life they have. Franny listens very seriously as Mickey rambles on about the proper way to clean a shotgun, stands carefully beside him as he shows her. Mickey is the one that always makes a point to correct everyone (with various degrees of his usual violent streak) on pronouns when Franny asks to be called a boy again, and this time finds someone who actually cares to listen.
(He makes a joke, once, that Terry must be looking up from hell and dying all over again, but Ian knows that’s bullshit. Mickey is getting past the point where he ever thinks about his dad at all).
*
The Alibi stays pretty much the same, but Lip and Carl manage to convince Tommy and Kermit (who for some reason bear more weight than Vee and Kev) on allowing enough changes that now it calls in a more varied clientele, and business starts to steadily get better. Kev and Veronica visit when they can, and Kev complains about the new paint on the walls only once.
Frank’s stool is just a stool now, people sit on it without thinking anything of it, but when Liam comes around, sometimes to do homework at the bar and escape the crying children in the apartment, he always sits there, a look on his face like to him it means something.
(Tommy and Kermit are always the first ones to notice).
*
The first time they see Fiona is years later.
Vee and Kev invite them down in Louisville for the summer, all of them, all the little families they’ve created for themselves, to come together and escape the heat of the Chicago summer.
They are all there, scattered around the pool in Vee’s mom’s building, and it doesn’t take that long at all for Lip and Ian to circle Fiona slowly, and then Fiona’s shrieking as they crowd her and let themselves fall into the pool, her body trapped between them, laughing even as she yells out fuck you both and tries to push Ian under.
They chat, and they eat, Carl constantly trying to sneak his way out of lines of questioning about the bar from Kev, until it starts to get dark and a little cooler, and then the adults get to have the real conversations, the ones where they reminisce about the South Side, and how dumb were we when we were teenagers, uh?
Mickey nopes out of it almost immediately, citing that they’re all boring assholes who don’t know how to have fun, but he ends up at the far end of the pool, where they’ve set up a couple of sun chairs for the younger kids to nap on, and at some point Ian turns to find Mickey fast asleep right alongside them, Franny draped all across his chest with drool pooling on his shirt.
Lip and Liam sit with the group but they’re lost in their own little world, talking quietly with heads huddled together, speaking excitedly about some sort of math gibberish no one else understands.
Because in the end, Lip does go back to school, maybe a few years later than what he had planned on, but that just means that he gets to enroll in time with Liam, who chooses the same field of engineering Lip is picking back up. That’s great news for Lip, who gets to skip class sometimes if the bar needs him, knowing there’ll be notes at home that Liam is willing to share, but awful news for Tami who, in her words, is now living in the worst kind of frat house: a nerdy one.
(Fiona looks around, and after years she can finally draw out a long held breath. Maybe they all did alright without her, too).
*
In the end, life goes on like this. They all live their separate lives, come together when they need to.
They are all still surprised life can actually be bigger than just the South Side.