#toe fic 🍅 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

abundanceofnots · 3 years ago

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a little (just under 2k) playground scene with Lip and Ian as dads, as per @pink--and--white's request. i apologize to all actual parents in advance.

“How the fuck did we get here?” Lip asks through a huff of incredulous laughter.

Ian shades his eyes from the sun, turning to his older brother with a look of mock concern. “Your memory that bad already, old man? We drove here.”

It earns him a stinging smack on his thigh.

“Asshole,” Lip retorts back. “You know what I mean.”

Ian’s eyes flit back to the scene before them. “Yeah, I do,” he confirms a beat later, his voice more earnest this time.

This, by far, isn’t a new feeling. Lip’s had the exact same thought pass through his mind countless times in recent years, always in a momentary flash of warmth that filled up his whole chest. It happens all the more often now over the most mundane shit, though.

The first time was, probably, when Freddie was born. Then Ian got married, and Al came along, and Liam got to a good school—and after that followed every other quiet (not literally) evening when the whole family gathered up in the kitchen.

In those instants, Lip would stall himself for just a second, getting lost in the overwhelming sounds and visuals, and think, what the fuck.

He’s getting soft. That’s it, most likely. He’s getting soft and sentimental, going on with his extremely unexceptional life, wondering how in the hell did a piece of shit like himself get so lucky, and slowly becomes someone he’d gladly punch in the face not too long ago.

It hits him hard again, this strange sense of pride and wonder, as he sits next to his baby brother on a bench overlooking a kids’ playground.

This one’s the real deal. Everything here is child-proof and clean, with no syringe or dogshit in sight. Frank or some random homeless guy aren’t lying in a drunken coma by the swing sets. There’s not even one bullet hole in the slide. And maybe it’s not so hard to admit that this is actually pretty nice. That this is them now.

Still, the whole thing is, without a doubt, totally ridiculous. Here they are, Lip and Ian—the college dropout and the ex-con, the true sons of the South Side—sneakily munching on their kids’ packed afternoon snacks.

“Dumb luck, I guess,” Ian answers Lip’s question after some musing and takes a sip from Toe’s pink-colored juice box.

Lip hmms before he bites into a baby carrot. “For us, or them?”

“For us. Definitely.”

They’re just two regular dads who carry around lunchboxes and always have a wet wipe or a pack of tissues at hand, ready to blow noses and wipe off residue chocolate from chins and hands. There aren’t enough words in the English language that would describe how incredibly ridiculous this is, because once upon a time, not too long ago, still, Ian wore a jumpsuit with Dav on the nametag and believed this was it for him, and Lip thought the only way to get through life was by drinking himself through the ordeal.

How the fuck did they get here?

“Freddie! Hey, Freddie!” Lip calls out to his oldest, who hangs upside down from the monkey bars, effectively ignoring him. “Fred!” he tries again with an annoyed sigh, and the boy finally remembers how his ears work. “Can you help your cousin on the slide?”

“Okay!”

With a swift motion, Freddie pulls himself up again to grab hold of a bar, unhooking his knees in the process, and jumps down into the sand with practiced ease. He then immediately gets into a run, coming behind the red-headed girl in black overalls who’s been trying to climb the gentle ramp on her own.

“What was that about?” Ian inquires amusedly.

“Early puberty, I think. He doesn’t want us to call him Freddie anymore. It’s Fred. No Fredster, no Fredtastic, definitely no Fredosaurus. Just Fred. Apparently, I went to bed, and my son turned into a middle-aged man overnight.”

“Oof. That’s rough.”

“Yeah. The next thing I know, he’s gonna get a neck tattoo and his first STI. Al, buddy!” His younger son Alvin, at least, seems to have no trouble with hearing. “You need help? Want me to push you?”

“No, I’m good!” the blond kid shouts back from the swing, and to prove his point, he pushes himself harder off the ground to gain momentum.

Lip scratches his forehead. “They don’t need me anymore,” he comments darkly. “I am officially a bother.”

“You’ve always been a bother,” Ian notes before he stuffs his mouth full of grapes. “Come on, Lip. Freddie’s eight. He’s not exactly packing his bags to leave home. He’s still very much a daddy’s boy.”

“I don’t know, man. When I remember what I was already doing when I was his age….”

“Yeah, but that’s different. They’re not like us. They don’t need to be, and that’s a good thing.”

Ian’s right, but the concept of normal as something desirable, something he doesn’t necessarily need to rebel against, is something Lip may never fully come to grasps with. And neither does Ian, even if he says otherwise.

“We might be getting a dog,” Lip says after a while, pausing before he sinks his teeth into a cheese stick.

“No way!” Ian smirks at him. “Look at you, perfect American family and shit.”

Lip snorts at that. He and Tami are pretty damn far from perfect. “You not thinking about getting a pet? A friendly rottweiler for Mickey, perhaps?”

“No. First, I gotta talk him into having another kid.”

That takes Lip by surprise. He knows Ian absolutely adores his little girl, his mini ginger twin that everyone got to call Toe, short for Tomato, but he also knows the whole story behind how she came to be.

“Oh, yeah? You’d like another?”

“Yeah,” Ian admits, and as his eyes drop to his lap where his fingers fiddle with a paper straw, Lip realizes he sounds ashamed about it.

“Not as easy as poking holes in condoms with you guys, huh?” he jokes to release the sudden tension.

“Hah. No.”

“You told Mickey yet?”

Meeting his brother’s eyes again, Ian gives a noncommittal shrug. “I hinted.”

From experience, Lip knows that hinting in Ian’s case almost exclusively means Mickey is fully aware of his intentions and just chooses to ignore them before Ian confronts him head-on.

“Hopefully, you’ll have another girl,” he tells Ian after a quiet moment filled with children’s high-pitched screams and the steady screeching of a swing set. “It’s a lot more physical with boys. These two are already fighting like we used to.”

“Doesn’t really matter when you’re raising a Milkovich,” Ian remarks before yelling: “Hey, Toe? You wanna have a sip of your juice for me?”

The girl waves at them eagerly as she slides down the bendy chute. Getting to a run right as her feet touch the ground, she comes to a jolty halt in front of them, taking a good, hard look at the juice box as if only now realizing what’s expected of her.

“No, thank you,” Toe then peeps and skips off again.

“Polite,” Lip appraises.

Ian gives a low chuckle. “Fuckin’ weird, huh?”

“With Mickey as her dad? A little.”

They watch the kids play for a few minutes. Ian offers to exchange a cheese stick for three grapes, and Lip negotiates it up to five before agreeing.

“You think he’d be against it? Having another kid?” he asks Ian mid-chew.

“I mean, I wouldn’t blame him, after all the shit with Terry. Maybe with a second kid, he’d think there’d be twice the damage he could do. Dunno,” Ian surmises uncertainly. “I know how hard it was for him to even want a kid, and I get why he was scared. Don’t get me wrong, I’m shitting myself every day when I think of the ways I could fuck this up. But he’s a great dad. You saw him with Toe. She’s obsessed with him. The way she laughs at everything he says makes you think he invented comedy or something.”

Lip’s aware that their conversation turned sort of serious once again, but he can’t help not breaking into a smile. “Sounds like you’re kinda jealous of your husband there, Ian.”

“Oh, I hate his guts,” his brother confirms, only partially kidding. “I’m a fun dad, too, you know.” As if on cue, a figure coming their way catches his attention, and Ian nods to where his daughter’s playing, telling Lip: “Okay, watch this.”

Mickey gestures at Freddie with a finger to his lips, coming around the slide just in time to catch his daughter in his arms with a victorious roar.

“Daddy!” Toe announces the good news to everyone around with a loud squeal.

Ian gives his brother a pointed look.

“Fuck, man,” Lip huffs with mock seriousness. “You tellin’ me she loves her dad? What a nightmare.”

“Yo, lunch ladies.” Mickey suddenly approaches them with Toe at his hip. “How ’bout less chit-chatting and more kid-watching? Think I’d remember if I left my kid with a giant fuckin’ bruise on her forehead this morning.”

“Yeah. She’s had a bit of a scuffle with Alvin earlier,” Ian says, reaching out to soothingly rub Toe’s calf as if said scuffle and the tears it brought weren’t already long forgotten.

“The hell’s he doin’ fightin’ someone half his size?!”

“She started it!” Lip counters weakly.

“Okay.” Mickey’s mouth hangs open for a minute before he finds his figurative footing again. “I guess she had her reasons for that. And you should teach your kids to not fight dirty.”

“I go play now,” Toe informs him then, putting a stop to his rant and his bad mood in one go.

“Yeah! You do that!” Mickey replies as he puts her down, matching her level of enthusiasm. She heads for the extensive pirate-ship-like construction this time, watchful cousin Freddie already on her heels, and Mickey drops heavily next to his husband, letting out a prolonged groan into his hands.

“Tough day?” Ian asks needlessly.

“Igor’s a fuckin’ idiot.”

“Told you he was.”

“And I agree, so drop it, a’ight? Hey, by the way.”

“Hey,” Ian echoes before they exchange a quick kiss.

Mickey notices the juice in his hands then and perks up. “That raspberry?” he checks after he’s already snagged the box for himself, taking loud slurps from it to get every last drop. He finishes off with a belch. “Fuckin’ love raspberry.”

Lip finds that anything he’d say at that moment would only spoil the natural fucking beauty of it, so he just appreciates with a private snicker.

“Daddy! Daddy!” Toe yells from the top of one of the pirate ship’s smaller slides. “Come play!”

Mickey pats at Ian’s thigh. “That’s on you, man. I’m beat.”

Putting his fun-dad face on, Ian heaves himself up without a complaint. “Hey, jellybean! Do you think your dad can fit on the slide, too?”

Toe shakes her head vehemently, giggling as she watches Ian jog toward her. “No, daddy! No! No!”

“What, you don’t think I can?” Ian asks again, halfway through his climb up on the board. “Well, take off your socks now because they might get blown off! I’mma fit!”

“Daddy!” Toe howls with laughter as he bumps his head on one of the low railings.

Beside Lip, Mickey imitates the reaction, both his hand and the phone he’s holding with it to record a video visibly shaking. When he notices Lip staring, his grin falters a little.

“These two jokers,” Mickey complains after he ends the recording. “She always laughs at everything he does like he invented comedy or some shit.”

Lip answers with a knowing smile, his chest feeling full of warmth.

Seriously, how the fuck did they get here?

#toe fic 🍅#my fics #gallavich fic #shameless fanfiction

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