Author's note: This oneshot is a little shorter than the rest and it's also a little bit more light-hearted, I think.

Special thanks go to lemondrizzlecake for beta-reading and reviewing all these tiny pieces!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

Vesuvius
Debbie & Liam

She's goddamn tired, as she makes her way home from work. It's around four pm and Debbie can't think of anything nicer than a cool shower. So she enters the kitchen and lets her backpack fall to the ground. She turns around, thinking about making herself a sandwich when -

"Oh my god!"

The kitchen is a mess – no, it's an actual battlefield. The kitchen table is covered in undefinable pieces, the chairs are flipped over and there's this red substance everywhere: on the floor, on the walls – she lifts her head up – even on the freaking ceiling!

"This is a slaughterhouse!" Disgusted, she tries to reach the table without stumbling over anything and examines the red substance. No blood. Part of her is utterly relieved, but the other part of her just gets madder and madder by each passing second.

She walks over to the counter, drops the key she still held in her hands on it and takes a deep breath. "Carl!"

The counter looks like a freaking battleground, too, and growing up in this house Debbie is actually not sure if it wasn't an actual battle that messed the kitchen up like this. And she had just cleaned the floor yesterday! Furious, she lifts one of the pieces from the ground, holds it as far away from her as possible and tries to identify the material. That's when she finally hears footsteps on the stairs. Still filled up with rage, she turns around, ready to scream at Carl for whatever he'd done this time, but freezes. On the last step of the staircase stands Liam, covered in red from head to toe, a mop in his hand and a really guilty look on his face.

"I can explain this!"

Debbie lifts her eyebrows till they hit the roof. "You can?"

Liam's biting his lip now, looking at his feet. "It's a school project."

"Ruining our kitchen is a school project?"

He shakes his head no and looks up again. "It's a volcano. We have to build one for science class. But, you know, standard volcanoes are so boring. I wanted it to really explode and-" He does not continue, instead shuffles on his feet.

"And what?"

"I found one of Lip's old high school books in the attic. Chemistry, physics. Read a little bit into it and found out what I needed to build something explosive."

"And you just found all the ingredients at the supermarket?" Debbie snores. She's so done with this.

"Not all of them. But, coincidentally, Mickey Milkovich came by. He was released from prison, wanted to say hi, delivered some greetings from Ian. He's fine by the way - Ian, not Mickey. Mickey, too, I guess-"

"Get to the point!"

"He was able to get me some of the stuff I needed, his brother works somewhere or something – didn't quite catch it, so..." He stops his narration and gestures wildly instead.

"So what?"

"It worked! It was a real explosion, or at least something close, but I probably messed up with the combination."

"You saying, you could have blown up our kitchen?!"

His mouth opens to contradict her, but he decides otherwise.
"I was about to clean it up," he lifts up the mop. "You just came in at the wrong time."

Now, Debbie can do nothing but stare at him dumbfounded. "Yeah," is all she can say, "Silly me."

And then she can't help it. She bursts out into laughter. She laughs so hard that her stomach hurts and she's got tears in her eyes and Liam stares at her with wide eyes.
"You gone mad now?"

Debbie shakes her head. "No," she smiles, "Don't worry." She doesn't stop laughing, though.

Liam frowns confused.

~break~

Later that day they're all sitting in the kitchen eating dinner. Debbie and Liam managed to clean up the mess before the rest of the household came home and then prepared dinner together. It's Carl who suddenly looks up, frowns and asks, "Why the hell is our ceiling red?"

Everybody else follows his gaze and truly, there's still a really red spot on the ceiling.

"I built a volcano. It blew up a bit", Liam says, like it's the most natural thing on earth.

"And you hit the ceiling? Respect, buddy," Lip says.

"It's proven, then," Carl whispers, "He really is a Gallagher."

I would be honoured if you left a review.
You can also decide, which of the following chapters will be uploaded next:
Mirror (Carl & Lip)
or
Heart (Fiona & Ian)