Chapter Text
The first call comes when Lip's as high as a kite.
He chalks it in as an auditory hallucination. It makes absolutely perfect sense. Phillip Gallagher has broken into his own home. A home that he insisted on selling. And of course, he’s as high as a kite.
Breaking in had seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision at the moment. Who would call the cops on him anyway? Most of the neighbours didn’t even know the house had changed hands. And DeVry, the asshole who had decided to pay Lip a mere 75 grand for the house was now looking for a greater idiot to pawn this house on. It was a shitty house in a shitty neighbourhood. Lip had no idea what had possessed him to believe this dump could be made into something profitable. But even the most intelligent of souls sometimes fell prey to such insane bouts of blind optimism. And Lord knows (as does Lip now) that he’s the farthest thing from an intelligent soul.
Not like he could go back home like this anyway. Tami never seemed to be too happy with Mickey's secret stash. And he definitely couldn't crash at their place going by the sheer pace at which Ian had already started undressing his husband when Lip had escaped by the skin of his teeth. He still didn't understand if that was an effect of the weed... or just them?
So, breaking into the old house was perfectly sensible. It was also perfectly sensible to drag their old, stained, ragged couch into the kitchen, to lie on it and then look at the patch on the wall that Debbie had repaired and that he had unsuccessfully tried to paint over. In his perfectly sensible musings, the wall repaired itself again, splinter by splinter till it was as good as new. Or, as good as old because nothing in his house was less than ancient. Much like good old Ginger who was buried in the yard.
That’s when the phone rings.
Lip lets it ring for a solid minute before it comes to a stop. When the ringing starts again, he makes a gargantuan effort to lift his head.
That was an actual phone which was ringing.
They had a phone?
The constant ringing finally brought back a long-forgotten memory in Lip’s mind. Yes, the ringing sounded familiar. Because he has heard this before. When they had first moved into this shithole… Well, it wasn’t a shithole then. It was the nicest place he’d ever been in. Definitely beat living in a car. Was he 10? Or maybe 9. The house had a phone then. An actual landline with the chord and everything. Fiona once told Ian and him off for making relentless prank calls. Not because she cared about the fact that they were bothering people. But because the phone connection cost a fucking kidney.
Which is partially why someone had stopped paying for it at some point and it had become obsolete and had been eventually walled in behind some junk that kept accumulating in this house. Out of sight, out of mind.
Lip had no idea how it was still ringing. Had DeVry actually paid for this shit for some reason?
He’d try to get the answer out of him later. Right now, the phone was ringing for a third time. The sheer force of bewildered curiosity made him lurch upward towards the sound.
It took him a while to locate the phone but thankfully, he didn’t really have to excavate it. Apparently, DeVry had indeed fixed it up or something.
The receiver was still dusty as all hell, but Lip couldn’t bother with that right now.
The moment the ringing stopped, an odd expectant silence took its place. It took Lip a few seconds to realise that he was holding up the receiver to his ear. He was supposed to speak now.
“Uh… hello?”
There was a very audible (and very tiny) gasp on the other end of the line. Whoever had been blowing up this phone for the last… ten minutes had clearly not been expecting for the phone to be actually picked up.
“Hello?” Lip repeated himself. His high had slowly but surely started dissipating, letting cold, hard senses take over. This number had been extinct for the past... fifteen years? Who’d possibly call here? Did DeVry actually want to set up this connection for some ulterior (read ‘cocaine related’) purpose of his? Or…
“Hello, yes,” a tiny voice interrupted his thoughts. Lip blinked for a few moments, still trying to figure out if he was hearing things.
“There?” he asked tentatively.
“Yes, here.”
The voice, Lip had to admit, had an extremely peculiar but familiar quality to it. It was a child of course. Couldn’t be older than 10. Probably a lot younger. Probably also very nervous at having accidentally made this connection. But the voice didn’t betray much of that nervousness at all. It was rather self-assured. Even if it was all pretense, it was a very well-developed façade of propriety and self-possession.
“And who might you be?” he ventured to ask as gently as possible.
“I… I can’t say.”
Lip couldn’t help but smile. “Because Mama told you not to?” The voice remained silent. “Or because it’s a prank?”
The voice on the other end still didn’t answer. Lip had a feeling the elusive caller had not thought so far ahead into the conversation.
“If this is a prank, it’s not a very effective one, you know?” Lip chuckled a bit, “You aren’t really saying much to hoodwink me. You have to have a script.”
The voice finally replied this time. “But I’m not trying to prank you.”
Lip nodded despite the fact that the voice wouldn’t be able to see him. “I get that. I do.” Suddenly a more sensible explanation for this entire occurrence strikes him. “Oh. Shit, wait. I should have asked you this before. You weren’t trying to call your grandma or something, were you? Maybe you have the wrong number written down.”
He started feeling a bit uneasy all of a sudden. Had he not been high, this would have been the first question that he’d have asked.
“I don’t think you meant to call here, kid," he insisted.
Lip waited as an absolute silence reigned at the other end. He had expected a shuffling of papers or at least a shouted out “Mom!”
But nothing.
“Is this not the Gallagher house?”
Lip stilled completely. “Who are you?”
“I can’t say, I told you,” the self-assured voice assured him. “But, hello, Lip.”