Chapter Text
Lindsay Bluth-Fünke was having a girl.
When she first told her mom that was pregnant, she’d been warned about the supposed “curse” that Lucille claimed she had: she could only have sons. Even when Lindsay pointed out that she had a daughter, she was convinced that the curse had been passed down to Lindsay.
But she was having a girl. A tiny, beautiful baby girl that she would get to go shopping for and dress up in cute little outfits and raise to be a strong, independent woman.
She had never been more excited in her life.
She had also never been more fucking terrified in her life.
The books and mother’s groups always told her that pregnancy was a beautiful thing, the most incredible time of a woman’s life. Lindsay had to disagree.
She spent the first three months of her pregnancy terrified to even tell anyone (except for her husband and her brothers, but they didn’t really count) in case it went wrong. Every time she looked at her stomach and saw her little bump get bigger she felt a little bit sick and had to push her mother’s voice out of her head. Getting bigger was normal. It said nothing about her.
The mother’s groups don’t tell you about how scary being pregnant is. The constant fear of losing her baby was bad enough, but the fear of actually having to be a mother was paralysing. She hadn’t really thought about it before. She thought that you got married, and then you had kids, and then you were a mom. That’s how it had happened for her parents, right?
Thank god for Tracey. Tracey was a fucking miracle. Tracey was Lindsay’s greatest confidant for her entire pregnancy. Once Tracey found out she was pregnant, Lindsay was four months along. Weirdly, Tracey had been the one to reach out to Lindsay, thinking that she might have some idea of how to deal with the whole thing. Needless to say, she didn’t, but the two called each other every day, Tracey from a small but nice house in Orange County and Lindsay from a big apartment in Boston.
They were both scared, and excited and unsure about everything. They helped each other think of names (personally, Lindsay wasn’t a fan of her nephew having two first names, but Tracey and Michael disagreed), pick out nursery colours, figure out what weird feelings were normal and what meant they should probably see a doctor.
Mae was born in September of 1990, and George Michael was born two months later. Lindsay and Tracey had a lot less time to talk while attempting to look after two newborns, but they tried as much as they could. They both agreed that when they finally met, George Michael and Mae were going to be best friends. Their moms knew they were just going to love each other.
Tobias wasn’t home a lot. As it turns out, psychiatry is kind of a difficult job. Who knew? When he was home, things between them were...okay. Admittedly, she wasn't quite as in love with him as she was when they got married. He was good to her, and he was great with the baby. She was getting closer to convincing him to agree to getting a nanny.
Tracey understands, a little. Michael had quit law school and went to work for the Bluth company the moment he found out Tracey was pregnant. Apparently, he wanted them to have a steady income or something, but he was barely home either. Their dad did always have a tendency to overwork his employees. And Tracey had put her studies on hold too. She couldn’t exactly take a baby to classes with her.
By the time Mae was a year old, Lindsay had gotten the World Wide Web. At least that was some sort of change. She was sick of reading the same magazines over and over again, having the same inane small talk with the nanny every day. She’d finally managed to get back to her pre-baby weight and finally felt comfortable going outside again. If she managed to lose a few more pounds, she might even go and visit her mother.
In 1992, Lindsay was finally forced to introduce her daughter to her family. Tracey wanted the two cousins to finally meet, and managed to cajole Lindsay into coming to Buster’s high school graduation. The graduation itself wasn’t very eventful (she could barely see any of the graduating class), but the visit itself...oh boy.
Her mother had started out alright. She’d even mentioned that Lindsay didn’t look like she’d put on a lot of weight. She didn’t say a thing when Lindsay ate something. And she doted on Mae, apart from a few comments about hoping her freckles eventually faded.
She complained, of course, about everything. She hated Bill Clinton, she said he was unfit to be president and reminisced about the days of Ronald Reagan, of all people. She couldn’t understand why people were rioting in LA, completely unable to open her mind to the injustices of the Californian “justice” system that allowed LAPD officers to go unconvicted after beating innocent black men. But, at least for a little while, it wasn’t aimed at her kids.
Of course, her mother’s civility soon turned to slight hostility, openly nitpicking and critiquing Lindsay’s parenting. As if Lucille Bluth was a fucking supermom. Of her four kids, one was Lindsay, one was a perpetually nervous and borderline Oedipal high school graduate, and one was currently M.I.A (the last anyone had heard Gob had been in Vegas, but it had been a while since anyone had seen him). The other was Michael, but he must have been a fluke.
Some good came out of the visit. Aside from getting to see two out of three of her brothers for the first time in a long time, Lindsay got to catch up with Tracey and finally meet George Michael. The toddlers got along like a house on fire. It was adorable. Eventually, it had to end, and Lindsay prepared herself not to see any of them again for a long, long time.
That didn’t work out. Lindsay, Tobias, and Maeby ended up moving in with Tracey, Michael, and George Michael after the Eastern Seaboard was almost destroyed by what people were calling “The Storm of the Century”. As much as she didn’t want to be living with her brother anymore, and as uncomfortable as he seemed around Tobias, it was an alright living arrangement. Lindsay and Tracey would team up to look after the kids after Tracey went back to school. Lindsay had the kids while Tracey was in classes and their husbands were at work, and Tracey took care of them when Lindsay was sleeping or shopping. And, thanks to Gob finally coming back from Vegas and being forced to babysit the kids, Lindsay and Tracey were even able to hang out on their own sometimes.
The Bluth-Fünkes finally went home just before an earthquake hit LA. Nowhere near Lindsay’s family, but still too close to home.
The next few years were mainly uneventful. Maeby started school, Lindsay realised that she had no idea where her daughter’s nickname had come from, she and Tobias began to host wine and cheese fundraisers for important causes, and Gob excitedly informed her that he was starting an “Alliance of Magicians”. At some point, the government had shut down or something, and apparently the president got impeached for getting a blowjob in the White House, but Lindsay didn’t really pay attention to the news.
She paid a little more attention to the whole Y2K thing. The whole idea of everything in the world run by a computer malfunctioning at the same time was horrifying.
The Y2K disaster never actually happened. The world didn’t end, at least not for most people. It might as well have ended, with the way Michael sounded when he called his sister to inform her that Tracey had ovarian cancer.
All Lindsay could say was “Shit.”
“Yeah,” was Michael’s reply. “It kinda sucks.”
“How is she?”
“Well, she’s not happy about it.”
“Yeah, no, of course, she’s not. But...Michael, if I know Tracey at all she’s gonna fight like hell.”
Michael either laughed or sobbed at that, she couldn’t tell which. “I don’t know how to tell George Michael. I don’t know what to do about any of this.”
“You’ll be okay, Mikey.”
“How do you know?”
“I know you.”
Theirs was a dysfunctional, fucked up family made up of broken, fucked up people. For better or for worse, this group of idiots were the people she was stuck with. An evil mastermind for a mother, a selfish businessman for a father, a larger-than-life magician for an older brother, a twin who was just trying to keep everything together, and a baby brother who might never grow up.
The turn of the millennium became a turning point for their family.
When everything falls apart, families have to stick together.