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“Jackie! I’m ho–ome!” Katherine called as she pushed open the door, holding two reusable shopping bags.
Jack’s head popped up from the couch, looking sleepy and rumpled. “‘Ay, Red,” he said gruffly.
She winced. “Sorry, were you sleeping?” she asked in a lower voice, twisting the lock on the door.
Scrubbing a hand through his hair—slightly limp without the usual gel in his mohawk—Jack shrugged as he stood, stretching so his back popped. “Nah, jus’ woke up. Hey, didja call?” he asked, taking one of the bags from her.
“Thanks. Yeah, I got the groceries, but I couldn’t read the last thing on your list.” She’d been living with Jack for two years now, dating him for three and a half, but she still had trouble reading his handwriting from time to time.
Katherine hefted her bag onto the counter and turned to him. “Are you feeling better?” she asked, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead.
He shrugged her off. “S’just a cold, Kath, ‘m fine.”
“We thought Charlie just had a cold, and it turned into bronchitis,” Katherine pointed out, unpacking the bag in front of her. He didn’t feel like he was still running fever anymore, she could let it slide for now.
“Yeah, well, Crutchie’s got bad lungs, he gets bronchitis every other year,” Jack coughed, clearing his throat. “I don’t got bad lungs an’ ‘m not an idiot who took up smokin’ on a dare, ‘m fine, babe.”
She turned to him with an incredulous look. “That’s why Tony started smoking? A dare?”
He started picking through one of the bags. “Yeah, but don’t say nothin’ to him, he’s been tryin’ ta quit, an’ bringin’ it up just makes ‘im wanna smoke ‘gain.”
She shook her head. “I… won’t.” Almost four years and she was still learning more and more about the boys. “But he is quitting?”
“Ya know, babe, it’s that scrunched-up worried look ya get why the guys call ya Mom," he teased, poking the spot between her eyes where her brows had furrowed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Katherine rolled her eyes, batting his hand away and smoothing her “scrunched-up” face into something more neutral.
Jack scrubbed his face with his hand, catching on his unshaven jaw, blinking dazedly. He looked vaguely out of it, which probably meant he’d taken cold medicine while she was gone. “What couldn’t’cha read, Red?”
“Oh yeah, that last thing.” Katherine pulled out a package of batteries. “Is this even close?”
Jack looked down at the list, then at the batteries before bursting out laughing. “Not even, baby,” he said, kissing her cheek. “That says ‘cherries’.”
Katherine picked up the list, squinting at it. “Oh, look at that, it does.”
“What’d ya think we needed batteries f’r anyways, Kath?”
“Well, what do we need cherries for?” she shot back. “Neither of us even like cherries.”
Jack blinked again, furrowing his brow. So. Probably more than a little cold medicine. “Wait, why did I add cherries?”
She laughed. “Baby, I think you need to go back to bed. Sleep off the rest of your cold.” He looked like he wanted to argue and she pushed him lightly towards the living room. “Go. I’ll put these away.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Ya su–”
“Yes, go.”
“Ya sound like Miss Medda,” she heard him mutter before he kissed her cheek again and left quickly before she could push him again.
“It’s a mom thing Jackie, get used to it,” Katherine laughed, resting her hand briefly on the barely-there bump under her shirt, before unpacking the rest of the groceries.