Once Ian and Mickey actually started talking about getting married, the news moved fast.

That part wasn’t surprising. Nothing stayed private for long once it passed through the Gallagher house, and this was the kind of thing people repeated with interest. The real surprise was that they were trying to plan it at all.

Or maybe “plan” was too generous.

Every time someone brought up anything that sounded organized, the whole conversation went sideways within minutes. Ian wanted to at least pretend there should be a plan. Mickey thought the entire concept of wedding planning was ridiculous and acted like every decision anybody suggested was a personal insult. Fiona tried stepping in once and ended up with both of them talking over her. Debbie had opinions about decorations until Mickey told her if he saw a single mason jar anywhere near the ceremony he was leaving town.

Lip stayed out of most of it.

That had less to do with disinterest and more to do with experience. After his own wedding, he had learned something useful: weddings only worked when the people getting married were allowed to handle it in whatever way made sense to them. Trying to force a normal ceremony onto people who were never going to want one was a waste of time.

Even if their version of handling it looked like chaos.

The Gallagher house was crowded again one evening when Lip and Mandy stopped by.

That wasn’t unusual either. The kitchen was loud before they even made it through the door. Someone had left the TV running in the living room, and voices kept drifting back and forth between rooms in that familiar way where nobody was really having one conversation so much as five at once. The table was covered with takeout containers, a half-empty soda bottle, Ian’s notebook, and a pen that had already been thrown down hard enough to roll onto the floor once.

Ian sat at the table with the notebook open in front of him like he was trying to wrestle order out of it by force.

Across from him Mickey leaned back in his chair with the expression he always wore when he thought everybody else around him was making life harder than it needed to be.

“This is stupid,” Mickey said.

Ian let out a breath and rubbed a hand over his face. “We need to decide something.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how weddings work.”

Mickey waved one hand vaguely toward the notebook. “Then pick something.”

Ian stared at him for a second. “That’s literally what I’m trying to do.”

Lip stayed quiet near the counter, arms folded, watching it all without much interest in joining. Mandy stood beside him, one hand resting lightly over her stomach in an absent, protective way that had already become second nature. She had started showing a little by then, not enough that strangers would automatically know, but enough that everyone in the family had stopped pretending they didn’t notice.

She glanced toward Ian and Mickey, then back at Lip.

“You think they’ll figure it out?”

Lip shrugged. “Eventually.”

Carl wandered through the kitchen at that exact moment with a beer in one hand and stopped long enough to look at the table, the notebook, and both men glaring at each other across it.

“Do it at the Alibi,” he said.

The room actually went still for a second.

Ian looked at him.

Mickey looked at him.

Even Fiona, who had been halfway into the kitchen from the hallway, paused.

Carl took a sip of his beer and frowned at everybody staring.

“What?”

That was how the idea started.

Nobody admitted it was a good suggestion right away, mostly because it had come from Carl and everybody’s instincts told them that was suspicious. But once it was said out loud, it stayed in the room.

The Alibi made more sense than half the other places anybody had suggested.

It was familiar. Cheap. On the South Side. Nobody would have to pretend to be people they weren’t. Mickey wouldn’t have to stand on some beach in linen while relatives he hated clapped politely. Ian wouldn’t have to drag him through a church ceremony that neither of them wanted. It could be quick, loud, and honest, which was probably as close to perfect as they were ever going to get.

Later that night the conversation moved to the bar itself.

Kev was behind the counter when they came in, wiping down glasses in the way he always did when he wanted to look busy but mostly wanted to listen. Veronica was beside him, checking something at the register with the kind of focus that suggested she already knew this conversation was going to become her problem eventually.

Ian barely got the idea out before Kev lit up.

“You want to do the wedding here?”

Mickey looked around the bar like the answer should have been obvious. “Why not.”

Kev grinned immediately. “I’m in.”

V looked up at once. “You’re not even part of the decision.”

“I’m emotionally part of it.”

“You’re emotionally part of everything.”

Kev ignored her and leaned over the bar. “No, seriously, I like it. We clear out the tables, clean the place up, string up a few lights, maybe get something decent up there—”

V cut in before he could build a whole event in his head. “You are not turning this into prom.”

Mickey snorted.

Kev pointed around the room. “It works. You know it works.”

V crossed her arms and looked at Ian. “You sure you want your wedding in a bar that still smells like spilled beer and bad decisions?”

Ian thought about it for maybe two seconds.

“Yeah, actually.”

That settled it.

A few weeks later the wedding happened.

The Alibi had been shut down for the night and made to look just different enough that the regulars would’ve blinked twice walking in. Not fancy. Nobody there would’ve trusted fancy anyway. The stools had been pushed back, tables moved out of the way, the floor cleared enough to make room in the middle of the bar. Someone had strung lights along the walls. The music was already going before half the guests had even arrived.

It still looked like the Alibi.

Just a version of it that had agreed, for one night, to behave.

People filled the room quickly.

Gallaghers.

Milkoviches.

Kev and V moving through it like hosts even though they were also technically working.

A few other faces from around the neighborhood who had been part of Ian and Mickey’s lives for years in ways that no one needed explained.

Lip stood near the bar for a while, looking out over the room as it filled. Mandy leaned against him comfortably, close enough that he kept one arm around her almost without thinking. She wore something simple and soft that fit her differently now because of the baby, and she looked happier than she did at most events that involved too many people and too much noise.

“You remember our wedding?” she asked.

Lip glanced down at her and smirked a little. “Hard to forget.”

Kev passed by at that moment with two drinks in his hands and pointed one at them.

“You two ready for round two?”

Lip shook his head. “Not ours.”

Kev laughed. “Good. I’m too old for that much emotion twice.”

Near the center of the room, Ian and Mickey stood facing each other while the officiant tried very hard to project some kind of formal authority over a room full of people who had already started drinking.

He got about thirty seconds into whatever speech he had prepared before Mickey looked at him and said, “Yeah, yeah, we get it.”

The whole room broke.

Ian laughed first, then everybody else followed, even the officiant after a second when he realized fighting it would only make the moment worse.

That was really the entire ceremony.

Short.

Messy.

Completely them.

A few words. A few signatures. A few jokes shouted from the wrong side of the room. Then it was done and they were married.

The celebration after was louder than the ceremony itself.

Music got turned up. People started dancing between the tables, which was a generous word for what Frank was doing by the jukebox later on. Kev disappeared behind the bar completely and took that as permission to keep everyone’s drinks full whether they needed them or not. Veronica spent half the night making sure nobody knocked anything expensive over or let Frank steal a bottle he definitely hadn’t paid for.

Carl laughed so hard at something across the room that even Mickey turned to look.

Debbie got emotional, tried to pretend she wasn’t, failed immediately, and then got annoyed at everyone for noticing.

Fiona stood back longer than most of them, watching Ian with the kind of expression she always got when one of the people she raised hit a moment big enough that it caught her off guard.

Lip mostly stayed near the bar.

Not hiding. Just watching. That had become his place at a lot of family things now, somewhere near the edge where he could see all of it at once without getting dragged into the center unless he wanted to. Mandy stayed beside him most of the night, tired earlier than she would’ve been a year ago but content enough that neither of them felt any need to leave soon.

At one point she looked around the room, taking in the crowd, the bar, the shouting, the dancing, the way Gallagher and Milkovich and everybody else had blurred into one loud group without anyone really questioning it.

“You know,” she said quietly, “this whole place is basically our life.”

Lip followed her gaze.

The Alibi.

The South Side.

Family.

Friends.

A hundred bad decisions and a few good ones that had somehow lasted.

“Yeah,” he said. “Pretty much.”

And it was.

Not polished. Not graceful. Not the kind of wedding anybody else would’ve designed on purpose.

But it fit.

By the end of the night, nobody was pretending otherwise.