A Different Kind Of Dysfunction - A Shameless Fanfiction (Book One)

Lily Whitman had been angry for a long time.

Not the white-hot, screaming kind of angry.

Not the throwing tantrums, slamming doors, teenage rebellion kind of angry.

No — her anger was colder.
Sharper.
Something she wore like armor.

It sat in her chest like a stone, heavy and permanent, building with every slap, every insult, every broken promise Sylvia threw at them.

She just hadn’t let it out yet.

Until today.

---

It started small, the way these things always did.

Sylvia was tearing the apartment apart, muttering under her breath about "ungrateful little bastards" and "thieves living under my goddamn roof."

She slammed kitchen cabinets, threw half the laundry into the hallway, knocked over the cracked coffee table so hard that a leg snapped clean off.

Adeline wasn’t home — working a double shift.

Sophie was at the library.

Keira was God knows where.

It was just Rory, Leah, Tessa, Lily, and Alyssa in the line of fire.

And Sylvia, of course, the hurricane.

Lily sat frozen on the battered couch, flipping through a ripped magazine she wasn’t really reading.

Tessa curled up next to her, tense and quiet.

Rory paced the living room like a caged dog, knuckles white, jaw locked.

Alyssa played silently with a doll that had lost most of its hair, trying desperately not to exist.

Sylvia yanked open the fridge, found it empty, and slammed it so hard that a jar rattled off the top and shattered on the floor.

"You lazy little shits!" she screamed. "You think food grows on trees?!"

Rory muttered something under his breath.

Sylvia whirled on him. "What was that?"

"Nothing," Rory said tightly.

Sylvia pointed a shaking finger at him. "I bust my ass every day keeping this roof over your heads—"

"—you don’t do shit," Lily snapped before she could stop herself.

The room went dead silent.

Tessa's eyes widened in horror.

Sylvia blinked, like she couldn't believe what she just heard.

"What," Sylvia said, voice eerily calm, "did you say to me?"

Lily stood up slowly, heart pounding so hard she thought it might explode.

"You heard me," she said, her voice shaking but loud. "You don’t do anything. You drink. You scream. You make everything worse. That’s all you’ve ever done."

Sylvia’s face twisted — rage and hurt and something uglier, something Lily recognized all too well: shame.

But instead of apologizing, Sylvia did what she always did.

She got violent.

Sylvia crossed the room in two staggering steps and slapped Lily hard across the face.

The crack of it echoed in the tiny living room.

Lily stumbled backward, nearly falling over the broken coffee table.