shameless next gen verse

“Hey loser,” Amy grinned as she walked into their shared bedroom, happy to find her sister there. There had been plenty of times growing up where she wanted her own space, but most days she couldn’t be happier to have Gemma by her side. “Yev and I stole some pizza,” she added, explaining the large pizza box she was carrying around with her. “There’s some leftover if you want some.” Amy dropped the box on her sister’s bed before flopping down on her own, stretching out with a yawn. “So where were you tonight?” Amy asked, looking over at her sister with an eyebrow raised.

Being the baby of his brother and sister meant Dominic was spoiled by his mother for supposedly being a miracle baby. There were times she became to overbearing and that was when he’d stay with his sister and brother in law for a day or two. He still had his space and privacy without his mother breathing down his neck and it was something he was grateful for. But with his luck ditching one smothering woman in his life meant he’d have another on him for something. Usually that other woman in his life was Lacey Gallagher.

When it came to Lacey, nothing about their relationship was simple or even healthy. They were on and off more than the lights in his house. They were insanely jealous. Dominic didn’t exactly have a filter most of the time and Lacey always took him back for whatever reason. They weren’t perfect but Dom did care about her and love her even if he didn’t constantly show it. As he laid in his bed watching tv, the last thing he expected was Lacey barging through the door like a bat out of hell. “What the fuck, Lace?” He exclaimed as he sat up in the bed. He didn’t know why she got so worked up over the things he did and he never would. “She’s just some random girl, sit down and chill the hell out before you give yourself a heart attack.”

It had occurred to Lacey more than once that she could do a whole lot better than Dom. The two of them interacted similar to oil and water, but somehow she couldn’t get enough of him. Every time they broke up she went on a date with someone else - part to make him jealous and part to get over him - yet somehow she always ended up back in his arms. Other people might have been better, there was no question, and a relationship with anyone else would have been infinitely easier, but at the end of the day she still wanted Dom. Even if it didn’t make any fucking sense.

While it was something she’d once tried to deny, Lacey knew that she could jealous all too easily. All it took was Dom looking at another girl the wrong way and she took it badly. Dom was supposed to be hers. He didn’t get to go around flirting with every other girl at school. “Just some random girl?” Lacey scoffed, rolling her eyes. Despite her anger, she took Dom up on his offer and sank down onto the bed beside him, but kept herself perched on the bed so she could storm out at any moment. “Do you just flirt with anything that moves now? Can’t you keep it in your pants for even a second?”

There weren’t many people Ariana felt she could count on. While she had her aunt, uncles, and cousins, she didn’t want to be some kind of burden on them. So, she withdrew from most people and stuck to herself and her siblings. It might have been a lonely way to live her life she couldn’t help it. She didn’t feel she fit with her cousin’s group of friends or most people in school. She had a lot more going on that she had to focus on instead of getting drunk or high and hooking up. From what she saw, it just brought more drama which was the last thing she needed on her plate.

When the dust cleared and everything was said and done, Ariana was finally getting the help she needed as well as her family. Her parents were working on their relationship, her siblings were happier not being around the fighting, and she was on medication and seeing someone for her problems. Things were starting to look better but Ariana couldn’t help but still feel things would go south any second. While she might’ve been skeptical about Chloe being at Fiona’s doorstep to see her, Ariana was a bit glad to see a face that wasn’t related to her. The pitying looks and constant eye people had on her mixed with the ‘how are you doing’ and ‘everything okay’ questions were tiring. “Oh..” She said with a nod, not at all surprised people were talking about what happened to her. All everyone did was gossip. Ariana glanced back at her brother and sister engrossed in the movie they were watching. Looking back at Chloe she tilted her head slightly, “What kind of ice cream?”

Showing up at Kylie’s house for anyone other than Kylie felt a little bit weird, though Chloe didn’t regret showing up to visit Ariana. Focusing on other people’s problems was the easiest way to forget about her own. Chloe didn’t think she would ever be able to fix her own shit - and had long since given up trying - but other people she could fix. Not that she necessarily thought that Ariana needed to be fixed, but she could be there to provide support. Make sure she was okay. Someone had to do it, and from the sound of her mom’s gossip, no one had stepped up to the plate yet.

Oh. Chloe bit her lip, shifting uncomfortably as she stood on the front porch. Maybe that hadn’t been the best thing to say. “My mom’s kind of a bitch like that,” Chloe added quickly, giving her an apologetic look and hoping that Ariana wouldn’t think the entire school was gossiping about her. Chloe might not have been much of a gossip, but she was positive she knew more information about everyone in her school than most. And while she did a good job of keeping it to herself, she was concerned enough about Ariana that she had to at least check in on her. “Cherry Garcia,” she said with a grin, pulling it out of the bag to show Ariana. While the other girl still looked skeptical, she was hoping the ice cream would be her ticket in.

For someone who grew up on the south side of Chicago, Kylie Pfender was incredibly innocent. For someone who was half Gallagher and grew up surrounded by Gallaghers and Milkoviches, she was far too innocent for her own good. She had never smoked, she had never had a drink, she had never done drugs… She had never even had sex. She knew how rare that was in a sixteen year old where she was from, but she was happy with who she was. She didn’t need to change for anyone. That just wasn’t who she was.

She was sitting at the bleachers with Marcus, half leaning against his legs as she played with her phone. They were waiting for their friends at the end of the day, and she couldn’t help but frown as he essentially threw his phone. She laid her head back on his thighs so she could look up at him before speaking, “Why isn’t anyone else coming?” She asked, pushing his hand away to deny the hit he had offered, “Did something come up that we didn’t know about?”

Being a fuck up was practically a staple of living in the south side; no one had very good influences growing up, and because if it no one had their shit together. Marcus was no exception. He may have loved his parents, but that didn’t mean they were the best parents out there. For most of his childhood, he’d been convinced that their parents hated each other, only to be proven right when his father disappeared one night to get more beer, never to return. Having Mandy as his primary influence, he’d become a Milkovich through and through.

“No fucking clue, actually,” Marcus admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. He hadn’t actually cared enough to ask, only cursed his friend out for being an asshole. “Yev doesn’t usually give many details,” he added with a chuckle. Shrugging when Kylie pushed his hand away, he took another hit from the blunt, blowing the smoke out slowly from between his lips. “Sure you don’t want a hit?” he added, looking down at the brunette curiously. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had turned him down on that offer.

But after a few beers and a decent amount of sulking at the other side of the room while she watched some blonde skank try to flirt her way into Yev’s pants, Amy didn’t think she had it in her to keep her mouth shut. As soon as the girl walked away - presumably to get another drink before she came back - Amy quickly made her way across the room, bumping into him slightly as she stopped beside him. “That girl?” she asked with a scoff, surveying the blonde over her red solo cup as she took another sip. “You do know you can do so much better than that bitch, right?”

Marcus raised an eyebrow when he heard his phone buzz in his pocket, pulling it out and rolling his eyes as he read the message. He didn’t take his friends as flakes, but according to Yev the rest of them weren’t making it tonight. Throwing his phone down onto the bleachers, he stretched his legs out, resting his boot clad feet on the riser below them. “Looks like it’s just the two of us,” Marcus grinned, looking over at Kylie - the only one that had bothered to show up. Extending the joint to her, he raised an eyebrow questioningly. While he’d never actually seen her take a hit before, it only seemed polite to offer.

As early as six years old Ariana knew there was something wrong with her parents relationship. There were night’s she’d be woken up with yelling and the slamming of the front door. The next morning everything would be okay again. The older she got, the more frequent the fighting became and she tried her best to shield her younger siblings from it. Her parents weren’t happy and it was something she wished wasn’t true but no matter how much she stayed up in bed and hoped and prayed, it was something that wasn’t going to change much like her own lack of happiness. Due to her home life, Ariana kept to herself for the most part. Besides family there weren’t many people she talked to outside of school related things. It was easier to hide how miserable she felt on a day to day basis if she didn’t have many people to interact with.

Everything hit an all time low the night she heard her father yell at her mother how having a family with her was a mistake. Ariana didn’t know how else to take it besides her existence being the source for all the problems between them. The last thing she remembered was taking more than a handful of her mother’s sleeping pills. Next thing she knew she was waking up in the hospital and kept in psychiatric hold. A week later she was out and staying with her aunt Fiona. In her aunt’s words: until Debbie and Derek could get their shit together, she was staying with her. Her family was split up while her parents worked things out. While she sat on the couch watching TV with her little sister, the last thing she expected when her brother answered the door was to hear someone asking for her. Getting up she went to the door, instructing her brother to go back to the living room. Raising an eyebrow she looked at her classmate, “Chloe? What are you doing here? How’d you even know where to find me?”

As soon as Chloe heard her mother gossiping about Ariana’s family, her first instinct had been to visit the other girl. It had been two days since she’d first sat at the top of the stairs, listening to her mother laugh - she didn’t have a bone of sympathy in her, to say the last. But she’d hesitated, not wanting Ariana to think she was pitying her. She wasn’t, of course; growing up the way she did, in the house that she did, Chloe had never thought of herself as someone that could pity anyone else. It really didn’t work that way. While she’d finally mustered up the courage to visit Ariana’s current place of residence, she still shuffled her feet nervously on the front porch as she waited for someone to answer, hoping she’d made the right decision.

It was probably awkward, she realized, showing up at Ariana’s aunt’s house for no good reason. It wasn’t as though they were best friends, even if they had known each other since they were young. But she was almost positive that Ariana wasn’t going to let on to anyone what she was going through; and someone had to be there for her, right? “Hi,” Chloe waved when Ariana came to the door, giving her a sheepish smile. “My uh... my mom mentioned that you were here,” she explained, figuring that sounded better than my mom and her best friend were gossiping about your parent’s marital troubles. “I thought I’d stop by and see how you were doing. I brought ice cream,” she added, holding up the bag she’d picked up from the corner store on her way over.

Hearing her mother constantly gossip about Matt and Debbie made Chloe’s heart pang for Ariana. She’d never seen the other girl let on about her home troubles at school, or maybe she simply hadn’t been paying enough attention. Either way, she wanted to do something to help her out. They might not have been the best of friends, but they’d spent enough time together that Chloe felt guilty sitting back and doing nothing. She might have had a mom that didn’t give a fuck, but at least that was the most of her worries. After stopping to pick up a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, she walked up the steps to where she was pretty sure Ariana was staying, knocking tentatively on the door. “Hi!” she smiled brightly as soon as someone opened the door. Giving them a look over, Chloe was pretty sure this was the family member her mom had mentioned Ari crashing with. “Is Ariana here?”

Even though she knew Dom wasn’t going anywhere - despite his occasional threats to do so - she couldn’t help but get jealous when she saw him flirting with someone else. Hell, she got jealous when she saw him like another girl’s selfie on Instagram. After being let in by the Balls, Lacey stomped up to Dom’s room, not bothering to knock on her door before she threw it open. “So who the fuck’s the blonde?” Lacey snapped as she walked up to her boyfriend, her arms crossed as she gave him a sharp look. She hardly felt as though she needed to clarify; he’d know who she was talking about.