HARD TIMES ━ lip gallagher²

04 | gremlin

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THE GALLAGHER HOUSE WAS trashed as the couple stepped back inside of it the next morning. Plastic cups and beer bottles were tossed around carelessly, Amara had to watch her step, and warily made her way into the kitchen with the bag in her hands, while Lip carried Freddie.

"I thought you already had a job," Liam was saying as they approached the room. Lip traded the baby off with her to make a bottle, and she set Freddie down on the counter, still propping him up with her arm.

"I do," Debbie replied. "Well, I did. We're on strike. And when you're on strike, you don't get paid. So now I'm looking for another job."

"What's a strike?" Liam asked, Amara busied herself with balancing Freddie and texting back her boss at the same time instead of helping to answer.

"An excuse not to work until management agrees to pay you more and work you less. But the Union still wants us to walk around for four hours a day with a sign, chanting shit."

"Is that what those are for?" Liam questioned, gesturing to the signs against the back wall.

"Yeah," Debbie nodded, glancing up as if noticing them for the first time. "Hey."

"Hi," Lip greeted, still moving around the kitchen to make Freddie's bottle.

"You're not breastfeeding?"

Amara felt her face scrunch up and walked over to place Freddie in the Pack N Play. "Fuck no. I'm gonna go shower, you got this?"

"Yeah," Lip waved her off. "I'm good."

She leaned over to give him a brief kiss on the cheek before turning on her heel and heading up the stairs. Since she'd been moved out of the apartment for so long, everything there had been taken out of her name, and put into Margot's by her request. Which meant it was barely paid for, and the water pressure there was horrible, especially since her mother had skipped town with her new boyfriend, and no one had heard from her since.

Amara couldn't believe the feeling of surprise in her gut. She'd been doing so well for them for a while—Amara didn't know why she expected anything different.

The apartment felt so empty when they'd been there the previous night. With Silvia's job at the art museum which took up majority of her time, the place almost looked vacant. Strangely enough, it pained her. She hadn't exactly gotten attached, their former house had really been her home, but it was still sad to see the lot so abandoned.

But the Gallagher house was the complete opposite, as usual. It was still filled with energy and life—maybe that was why it always felt more like home than the actual place she lived at.

Or, maybe it was because of Lip.

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"What the hell is this?" A voice demanded from the doorway, Amara's head snapped in the direction of the sound to see Logan and Tami stood there. Loud Spanish music was playing over the speakers, and she had just finished munching on a tamale. "You fuckers are having a party and didn't invite us?"

"Not a party," Carl answered from the kitchen, dancing with Anne. "Have a tamale! They're great."

"Where's that little gremlin shit?" Tami asked. "I wanna hold him."

"Debbie has him," Amara told her, pointing to where the redhead was stood.

"Kelly!" Debbie shouted, handing off Freddie to Tami, who ogled him along with Logan, and ran off to the door where the brunette had just walked in.

"Well this is my biggest nightmare," Silvia muttered, taking a swig from her beer. "Both of Carl's girlfriends are here and I'm left in the dust."

Amara cocked a brow. "So you do like him."

"I think his face would look better with my fist mark in it, actually," Silvia corrected. "God, I need another one of these. Be back."

Amara shared one quick glance with Lip, and bursted out laughing.

He was still grinning as he cast a gaze over his shoulder, before he reached out for her hand and began to tug her up the steps. She allowed him to pull her, feeling her mouth form into a smirk.

"Don't know how other parents balance all of this," he murmured once they reached their room, his lips warm against her neck as he backed her up against the wall. "We haven't done this in weeks."

"Better speed it up then," she replied, fisting her hands in his shirt for support, before both Lip's hands came up to lift her up by her ass, holding her up with his torso and pressing her against the wall. "Fuck."

"I'm trying."

Amara pulled a face, head titled back as he continued to kiss up her jaw. "Don't be smug."

"Whatever you say," was his response.

"Whatever I say?" She repeated, feeling his mouth falter, but she was already smirking. "Then get on the bed and take your pants off."

He wasted no time complying—Amara couldn't stop the sly smile from spreading across her face. Now it was her time to be smug as she crawled over to straddle him on the mattress, watching his eyes flicker down her figure. She could feel him rigid, pressing through his jeans and rubbing up her skirt as she bent down to trail slow kisses down his chest.

She pulled back to unbutton her work shirt, but apparently she just wasn't moving fast enough, because Lip straightened slightly to unclasp her bra and fumbled with her breasts, before he flipped them so she was suddenly on the bottom, and he was above her. "You were taking too long."

Amara snorted and arched up as she felt two fingers enter inside her. "Or you just have no patience," she managed to get out.

"Patience?" He echoed, sliding them out and moving back up to her neck. "We'll see who's the impatient one by the end of tonight."

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a/n

sorry this is so short!! it's getting harder and harder to write amara in since everyone has their own storylines instead of it all being combined together like it used to be yk ???