Chapter Text
At the end of the day, Mickey’s happy the Gallagher’s didn’t end up selling because there on North Wallace, the blueish gray house still stands as a little hood oasis whenever he starts to miss the South Side. Even though he doesn’t venture over as much as when they first moved into the apartment, he still finds comfort in this remaining the same while everything around him changes. He breathes lighter in these aged walls and amongst the chaotic energy that surrounds him as soon as he walks into the door.
Despite not selling, Lip’s decided to keep on revamping the interior because he, Tami, Freddie, and Liam are living there now.
Mickey’s there amongst the dust and tools because Ian persuaded him - at what Mickey would describe lightly as a very manipulative time - into helping that Sunday evening.
Ian left about an hour ago with a list of things Lip needed from Home Depot - ever the little bitch for his older brother - while Mickey helped Lip install some new cabinets. He complained the whole time and spent the better part of ten minutes mumbling how he's only doing this for Liam. But really, the company isn’t all that bad; Lip has worked himself down from whatever tissy he’d been in for the past couple of months and they're amicable, friendly even.
It only got better when Tami stomped her way down the stairs and grabbed two beers from the fridge, holding them up to ask if Mickey wanted one.
Maybe it’s the fact that they’ve worked their way through a few bottles, or maybe he just didn’t pay attention before, but his soon-to-be-sister-in-law is quite funny and has a mouth on her that gets Mickey chuckling. Tami’s a bottle ahead of him and he’s starting to really question his judgment of her because he’s starting to feel the effects of the alcohol while she just keeps knocking them back.
She’s spewing stories left and right, and honestly, Mickey’s struggling to keep up with the helium building in his head. But they’re funny, he knows that for sure. She talks about how reluctant she was to have a baby, how the kid bit her tit when she was breastfeeding - but actually, he didn’t have teeth then, so it was more of a gummy clamp than a bite - and it hurt so much that she almost dropped him. And then she’s divulging on about her old roommates and some bitch she cursed out at the gas station the other day.
“You know the first time I saw you I thought you might be here to kidnap my kid and sell his organs on the black market?”
Mickey laughs. “What’d you call me? the convict Ian brought home?”
“I mean is that not an accurate description?”
He shrugs, takes a swig of his beer, wonders if she ever got the rundown of how inaccurate that statement was. Maybe one day he’ll tell her about those ten years in-between, but not tonight.
Tami licks her bottom lip and smirks, “But now I know how sweet you are. Like a little lovesick puppy.”
“Fuck off.”
“It’s true! I’ve never seen someone actually smile into a kiss. I thought that was just in movies. But you do and you get this doped out look in your eyes.”
Mickey pulls a face, pressing his bottle to his lips in an ill attempt to conceal the pink creeping over his cheeks.
“Ay, Tami, Mickey, you guys planning on helping or just gossiping?” Lip asks, stepping down from his step stool and using his creme long-sleeved shirt to wipe at the sweat pooling over his brow.
“We’re bonding,” Tami asserts. Damn, she’s got some power to her voice too.
“Mickey should be helping me level out this cabinet.”
Tami turns from looking over her shoulder and scrunches her face. She rolls her eyes and waves around a dismissive hand. “Okay, Jabby.”
At that moment Lip looks up almost frantically and makes eye contact with Mickey. He quickly averts his eyes to the back of Tami’s head before dropping them back down to whatever manual he’d been reading.
Mickey perks up. “Jabby?”
Tami laughs bubbly, pulling the reaction from Mickey. “It’s what I-”
“Hey, Tam, enough?” Lip interrupts.
“I wanna hear this,” Mickey says. He locks eyes with Tami and scoots closer, resting his elbows on the table like a teenage girl about to hear something juicy in a school cafeteria.
“I used to call him that.”
“Uh-huh. Why?”
Tami snorts and Lip sighs.
“The first time we hooked up it was no rhythm. Just-” she puts her hand up and punches at the air three times, “Jab, jab, jab.”
Mickey sits back in his chair, cocks his brow with a smirk tugging on his lips. “You'd think someone that cocky would at least have a good stock game.”
Lip shakes his head, doubles down on the paper in front of him, not even dignifying it with a response. Doesn’t matter because now Mickey’s just stumbled upon nickname material for the foreseeable future, and it’s just pain fucking funny. “No comment, Jabby?”
Tami holds up her right hand. “What, you can’t tell me your first time with Ian was earth-shattering?”
Mickey shrugs.
“Oh come on, you guys are like straight from a rom-com movie,” Tami groans.
Sure, if romcoms had homophobic dads and beating the shit out of each other.
“How old were you two?”
“I was sixteen he was fifteen.”
“And at fifteen he didn’t jab you?”
“Nope. Knew what he was doing.”
Tami shakes her head vigorously, “What the fuck? who finds their husband at sixteen- no who has good sex at sixteen? You guys are gross.”
It’s then that Ian enters the kitchen with pink cheeks from the night air, a paint pan, a gallon of white paint, and brushes in tow. “Who’s gross?”
Tami looks back, knocks back the rest of her beer, slamming it onto the table. “You and your husband.”
Ian stares in silence for a moment before turning to Lip. “What’s going on?”
“Yeah, Jabby. What’s going on?” Mickey asks. He and Tami's cheeks bulge with the effort it takes to keep their laughs in.
“See, Tami? He called me 'college' for a whole year and now you’ve just given him more material," Lips says, looking to Ian next. “They’re both drunk and sharing too much information.”
“What kind of information?” Ian asks.
“Lip didn’t fuck Tami good. Jabbed her the first time they were together.” He locks eyes with Tami, a slight slur settling into his voice, “It still like that?”
“Okayyyyyy,” Ian announces. “You’re both cut off.”
“Fuck you,” Mickey and Tami say in unison before falling into fits of laughter.
Mickey decides right then that he wouldn't mind doing this with her again, and that the next time they do he'll tell her the story of a younger Mickey and Ian and how they got where they are today.