Work Text:
Every morning, they awake entangled. Hands, hair, fingers, legs. Jack always wakes up with the sunrise, something he assumes he picked up from being a newsie, a habit that he just can’t shake. But when his wife rolls over in her sleep and buries her face in his chest, he finds that perhaps that habit isn’t such a bad thing. He wraps an arm around her, protective in nature, twisting his calloused fingers in her hair made of silk, and they’re once again entangled, completely beguiled by each other.
Only the heavens know how long Jack could lie like this, utterly enamoured by the paragon dreaming beside him. He can’t quite believe that he and Katherine are married. Yes, it has been four years, and yes, he still looks at his wedding ring at least once a day and is brought to tears because he can’t quite fathom his luck that this goddess of a woman would ever fall in love with him.
It’s too early, he decides, to fall into that spiral. So he opts instead to watch her carefully; to memorise every tiny detail of her before she wakes: the way the first few rays of sun highlight and caress the corners of her face; the way her breaths have somehow fallen into rhythm with his (whether that was his doing or Katherine’s, he doesn’t have a clue); the way she’s smiling slightly despite the fact that she is still deep in sleep. She’s perfect, he decides.
Then she stirs, ever so slowly, and begins to bury her face even further into him. Jack’s heart rate skyrockets. He waits patiently for his favourite sight, and is once again not disappointed by how she lifts her head and carefully opens her eyes, before a wide grin appears on her face as she sees her husband there beside her. She lets out a yawn, then puts her head on Jack’s pillow so their faces are inches apart. He smiles too, a proper, genuine smile, one of the teeth-baring ones that are reserved especially for her.
“Hey,” she whispers, voice like a symphony.
“Mornin’ sweetheart,” he grins back.
Katherine stamps down a fluttering at his tone, and tries to take in the sight. His sandy hair is a piece of art, in those tousled curls which she so loves. She rather wishes he'd leave it like that all day, if she's being perfectly honest. He's squinting a little, because the sleep in his eyes is keeping him from opening them fully, sticking his eyelids together. He's perfect, she decides.
"You sleep okay?" he asks, the low rumble at the bass of his voice forcing her heart to melt, adoration for her husband swirling around inside her; pumping through her veins.
“Yeah,” she murmurs, bringing up a hand and cupping the side of his face, rubbing her thumb in gentle circles on his cheek. “Did you?”
“Fantastically,” he whispers in response, his gaze softening at her second sleepy yawn. “You wanna head back off to sleep, Kath? It’s early as hell.”
“No, I’m okay. It’s too warm to get back off."
She’s right, Jack notices. The temperature has to be at least 85, because the sheets have been thrown to the floor and his forehead is absolutely coated with sweat. In brutal honesty, Jack hadn’t heeded until now, too wrapped up in his wife to pay any attention to his surroundings. Unfortunately for him, once you notice heat, it’s rather difficult to forget that it’s there.
“Jack?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I love you.”
That damn near breaks him. It’s the way she says it; it instills something in him, and he can’t restrain himself. He grabs her face and pulls it to his, capturing her lips in a relentlessly passionate kiss, his brows furrowing when she deepened it in earnest.
“Jack,” she laughs, pulling away carefully and brushing the curls stuck to his forehead by sweat out of the way.
And he’s so utterly enamoured by her, her grace and her beauty, that all he can do is whisper a gentle “I love you too,” in return before he kisses her again.
This time, it’s his turn to pull away, and she is, to say the least, a little disappointed the kiss didn’t last longer. She loves being able to see him like this; the most vulnerable form of himself. It hadn’t been easy getting Jack to open up to her, but she eased him into it carefully until there wasn’t a secret between the two of them. Now, seeing her husband flushed in the face and lovesick after nearly two decades? She couldn’t ask for more.
“Kath?” he whispers, the sudden change in his tone causing her forehead to crease in concern. He noticed her tension almost immediately, and intertwined their fingers to give her some comfort. “Don’t worry so much, beautiful. You’s gonna give yourself worry lines.”
“Is everything okay?” she asks, a newfound caution in her voice. Had she been imagining it all, perhaps? Is it finally happening? Is she about to lose everything she’s ever-
‘Rational brain, Katherine,’ she reminds herself. She just needs to listen to what he has to say. And, besides writing, she tends to find that listening is pretty much what she’s best at.
“Do you ever wonder how different our lives would be if we never met?” The question is innocent in nature, but Katherine can hear the honesty and curiosity behind it.
They raise themselves together, Katherine leaning her back against the headboard, Jack resting his head on her lap, allowing her the freedom to thread her delicate fingers through it as she ponders her answer.
“I mean, I do. Of course I do. Don’t we all wonder about the road not taken?”
“The road-” Jack looks up at his wife in confused adoration. “-the road… what?”
“The road not taken,” she explains patiently. She suddenly remembers the difference in their upbringings. It’s so easy to forget sometimes, with the way they both communicate so flawlessly in their everyday lives. Every so often, however, she’s reminded that the hours of studying she did from a young age wasn’t an option for most children. Or most adults, for that matter. “It’s a poem about choices in life, and how every single decision we make has its consequences. It was published in The Atlantic Monthly a couple years after we got married. A rather interesting topic, really.”
He nods his head. “Ya think you could read it to me sometime, sweetheart?”
She smiles, nodding back. “I’ll find a copy for you; I’m pretty sure I have one somewhere.”
He struggles with words, she knows. She knows awfully too much about him, if he's perfectly honest. He guesses that’s what makes their marriage work; between that and the never-ending adoration they share for one another.
They smile, hands cupping each other’s faces as they bask in the drifting haze of morning.
“Momma?”
A quiet voice appears in the doorway, quaint and timid. Katherine’s face lights up at the sound of their daughter. Jack reckons he’ll never tire of seeing this every morning; how his wife’s eyes glisten every time the two-year-old walks in on them. He knows, deep down, that this won’t last forever. That there will come a time when little Evelyn won’t be so little anymore, and she’ll rather spend time with friends than with her parents. So he treasures these little moments with everything he has.
Katherine drags herself away from her husband to look at her daughter.
“Good morning, little one,” she grins, crawling out of bed and picking Evelyn up, putting her in between the two of them.
“Dadda!” She squeals at the sight of Jack, and he smiles in a way that sends flutters through to Katherine’s heart.
“Hey, Evie,” he beams, taking his hand and twisting a finger in her hair. He notes, with no small amount of glee, that she’s inheriting her mother’s auburn curls. “You sleep well, sweetheart?”
“Yeah!” She giggles, her eyes creasing the same way her father’s do when he laughs. She has little flecks of sleep dried around her eyes, and he moves his hand to lick his fingers and then wipe them away. “Ew!” She exclaims profoundly, swatting his hands away in fits of giggles.
He laughs too, resorting to a tickle fight, leaving her shrieking with laughter.
Katherine watches over with a smile engraved on her face from ear to ear. She knew, of course, when she first met Jack, that he would be an incredible father. That hadn’t surprised her in the slightest. He was basically a father to hundreds of boys by the time he was seventeen, and he was accustomed to treating every one of them as if they were family. She supposes they must have been family, really, as when you have no blood-relatives you tend to take shelter with those surrounding you, and love them as parents and brothers and sisters. It’s a wonder to her how marvellous he is with his own flesh and blood.
Jack eventually takes mercy on Evelyn as she turns to her mother, still beaming.
“Breakfast?” Katherine asks knowingly, noting the hunger in her little girl’s eyes.
Evelyn nods vigorously, squealing as her father picks her up and throws her over his shoulder. “C’mon, Evie, let Momma get dressed and then we can eat, yeah?”
She giggles, and he takes that as a yes. “That okay wi’ you, Kath?” he asks his wife gently, shooting her a questioning look as he hitches his daughter a little higher up on his shoulder.
“Of course,” she responds. “You go keep her busy for a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” he grins. “Love you.”
As he turns to go out the door, she wonders how on earth her life got so utterly wonderful, and she responds with her heart full, “Love you too.”
And in the way she feels only when she's with Jack, she knows , with certainty, that she means it.