"You okay?" Eric asked Jackie, the mildness of his tone belying a tenseness that had appeared with seeing Hyde at Jackie's workplace.
She glanced over at him, sighed and then nodded. The front seat dipped slightly as she leaned over to place a kiss on his cheek.
They heard a loud noise and Eric glanced up at the rearview mirror to see a trash can fly across the lot. A muscle ticked in his jaw and the car jerked slightly as he stepped on the brakes.
"No. No, it's okay, he really didn't do me any harm."
Eric looked sideways at her and she placed a hand on his thigh reassuringly. He nodded.
He accelerated again, made a left and Hyde disappeared from view.
The scenery changed as the Vista Cruiser sped along the street. People thronged the sidewalks of Milwaukee as they moved about their business, some disappearing into buildings left and right, others gathering in front of shops or stores, everyone looking as if they had places to be and things to do.
"Thanks," Jackie said absently a few moments later, looking over at him with a sweet expression on her face. "For not getting out earlier when you saw Hyde," she clarified, when he raised a brow at her.
He blew out a breath. "Yeah."
He wasn't happy to say the least when he had pulled into the building's parking lot and seen Hyde. But this was Jackie's workplace and he didn't want to make a scene. And judging from Hyde's reaction, there would have been a relatively high chance of that happening had he gotten out of the car like he had wanted to when he had pulled up at the kerb.
"I wonder what he's doing here in the first place. I didn't even know he knew where I worked."
Eric smiled sardonically. He was willing to bet Hyde knew a lot more about Jackie than she seemed to believe.
He was about to say something when they both saw her: leggy and tall and blonde with a bump that was starting to resemble the size of a large watermelon sticking out from the tiniest top imaginable.
"Sam?" Jackie uttered in surprise, turning her head to follow the girl as Eric drove past her on the main street. Her mind raced, and before she knew it, she had swivelled back distractedly towards Eric. "Eric, could we—."
But Eric was already making to turn the car around. She gave him a smile and a quick squeeze of his thigh.
She got out as he pulled up in the street before Sam, who was busy trying to light a cigarette and didn't notice.
Jackie sprang forwards and snatched the cigarette out of her fingers before she could take the first puff.
A startled gurgle of surprise made its way past Sam's lips. "Hey!" she squeaked in indignation. Then she realized who it was. "Jackie!"
"You really, really shouldn't be smoking these." Jackie eyed the smoking cigarette with distaste, looking around to see where she could dispose of it.
"Give that back!"
"No," Jackie told her firmly, then gave her a look. "I thought you quit!"
Sam huffed, belligerence stealing its way across her features when she suddenly deflated, and her face pulled down in a blue expression. "It's my doctor's appointment today," she said miserably.
Understanding dawned upon Jackie.
"Hyde wanted to come with me and I got so excited but then he dropped me off and left."
She stared glumly down the street where Jackie assumed that Hyde had driven off in.
"Y'know, Sam—," she started to say, when Sam's eyes zoomed in on something past Jackie's shoulder and her facial expression changed in a blink. A gleam entered her eyes and a wide smile crept across her lips.
"Ooooh Eric," she breathed. And then when Eric himself came within earshot, "Hey, Eric," she drawled, pulling on his name huskily.
Jackie's eyes narrowed nastily.
Eric neared and came to stand next to Jackie. He frowned slightly at Sam. "Something wrong with your voice again?"
"No!" she snapped irritatedly.
He dismissed her and looked at Jackie. "Why are you holding on to a burning cigarette?"
Jackie scowled.
His brow went up.
"I didn't want her to smoke it, and now I don't know where to throw it," she told him crossly.
"Right." He reached over and took it from her, making to stub it out.
A garishly manicured hand shot out and Sam cried out dramatically, "Stop!", and flung herself on him, belly and all. She tried to wrestle it back. "I didn't even take a drag! You'll waste it! I have a limited supply!"
He eyed her. "You shouldn't even be having a supply in the first place." He looked pointedly down at her protruding belly, of which about four inches of skin gaped bare between her top and her skirt.
Sam ignored him. "Just gimme. I need it."
"No, you really don't," Jackie told her. "Just… Don't. Not because of Steven."
There was a roar of an engine on the busy street next to them and they turned to watch as a familiar El Camino sped past. Hyde didn't even spare them a look. Jackie didn't think he noticed, or bothered, to remember that that was where Sam was seeing her doctor.
Sam's face crumpled.
Jackie felt her heart move, her earlier flash of animosity when Sam had attempted to flirt with Eric disappearing. An overwhelming sense of sympathy flooded her and she stepped forward to place a sympathetic hand on Sam's arm. She knew firsthand what it was like to be in Sam's place.
"Hey, it's okay," she said consolingly. "Eric and I will go in with you. Okay?"
Sam looked disbelieving, then it melted as she turned hopeful eyes towards Jackie. "You would?"
Jackie nodded. Then nodded again with greater certainty and a warm smile. "Yeah," she said, giving Sam's hand a reassuring squeeze. "We'll be there."
She looked up just in time to see Eric roll his eyes and suck in a breath through his teeth.
She shot him a warning look. He returned it with a flintier one.
Sam took no notice, and started bouncing around in newfound excitement, chattering on about how they'd be able to get pictures — actual pictures!— from the ultrasound of the baby in her tummy. "Wasn't it amazing?!"
Eric snorted.
Jackie glanced at his increasingly disgruntled expression and changed tactics swiftly, turning her eyes soft and pleading and throwing in a slight pout for good measure.
Eric's eyes narrowed and he blew out an exasperated breath.
She rewarded him with a brilliant smile. His eyes narrowed further, but he gave her a curt nod. She squealed happily then turned with Sam as Sam dragged her into the clinic with her.
He looked away in disgust, then stared at the cigarette still smoking in his hand. He brought it to his lips, taking a deep, satisfying drag before stubbing it out and following them resignedly into the doctor's office.
They were shown immediately in, the doctor a kindly, older gentleman with an assuring manner about him and bid them all to take a seat. He beamed when he saw Eric, who returned the look with a death stare.
He asked Sam a couple of questions and took notes before ushering her to the examination table and next to a machine with a screen that he informed them that he would be using to check on the baby and hopefully be able to capture a few good images that they could bring home with them.
Then he strapped on his gloves, and with a few flicks of switches here and there, a grainy but unmistakable image of tiny hands and feet appeared on the monitor as he moved the probe across Sam's belly.
"This is my favorite part of each visit," Sam told Jackie contentedly.
The doctor smiled genially at Sam. "I'm glad that this time you've brought your husband along." He nodded approvingly to Eric, waving him closer. "A father should never miss his baby's first moments in the womb," he declared.
There was a split second of complete silence before Eric's eyes bulged out of his face. He looked like he was having a heart attack.
"I'm not—," he spluttered, just as Jackie broke in with an, "Excuse me—."
They were both cut off as Sam shouted above them and reached over to tug hard on Eric's arm with surprising strength. "Come here! You heard the doctor. Look at your baby!"
She pushed Jackie away, gabbing on to the doctor about overprotective older sisters.
Older?! Jackie stared at her, insulted beyond measure. She opened her mouth to correct Sam's most offensive proclamation, when the doctor started to lecture Eric most grievously on his absences so far.
"—didn't get this way by herself, young man. And well, to put it bluntly, if you couldn't keep it in your pants, you need to take responsibility for it."
He shot Eric a withering stare, looking for the moment very much like Red, and Jackie was amazed how she could ever have thought of him as avuncular and kindly.
A strangled sort of sound made it past Eric's throat, and his face turned an unflattering shade of red.
A smile suddenly started at the corner of Jackie's lips.
The doctor was unfazed. "Well! Do you have anything to say for yourself, son?"
Eric started to choke, and Jackie wondered idly if she should offer him some assistance.
He pinned her with a blistering glare, and wrenched his arm away from Sam. It didn't seem to bother Sam, she merely looked like it was a minor inconvenience and reached out to grab it again. Her hot pink nails dug into his forearm like talons.
"You really need to learn to keep your hands off me," she sang out.
Eric looked on the verge of popping a vessel. "I- you- I—," he spat, his face like thunder, looking even more incensed that his upbringing forbade him from using certain choice words in the presence of older gentlemen that looked like they had been in both wars.
He drew himself up and looked down his nose at the doctor. The doctor looked unimpressed.
A sound closely resembling a snort of laughter emanated from Jackie. She hastily swallowed it when she caught his eye, but couldn't quite contain it.
He gave her his back and spun around to set the doctor straight again when Sam sat up and swung her legs down and off the examination table. She groped around and attached herself to his arm, positively purring as she squeezed his bicep with a breathy, "Oooh."
"Now, now, none of that here, my dear," said the doctor with a warm smile at Sam and a frostier glare at Eric. "Absent fathers regardless, the baby looks most healthy." He favored Jackie with another fatherly smile of approval, praising her for being such a caring sister and Jackie, like Sam, preened.
Eric's mouth dropped open. An exaggerated expression of betrayal worked its way onto his face, and she had the grace to blush under his accusing stare.
He stalked out of the doctor's office as soon as was politely appropriate, never having been so insulted in all his life, and the girls followed soon after, a chorus of "goodbyes!" and "thank you's!" and "have a great day!" trailing after them.
He cursed Hyde to eternal damnation and then darkly wondered if the both of them had some sort of daddy issues that made them so susceptible to praise from elderly gentlemen.