A/N: It's Friday, and there's a new chapter. In the last two weeks, I've dealt with most of the things, that were keeping me busy. But I'll keep updating this every other Friday for the time being, since it seems to work. Thanks as always, for any reviews, favorites and alerts on this. It means a lot.

Chicago, Illinois

December 31st, 1989, 7:21 PM

Kelso and Brooke's dining room

The sticker was still sitting on Jackie's face, once they got to dessert. Sure, Steven had assumed, she would want to get it off, but it wasn't about that. This was about making Betsy happy, if it happened to prove Steven wrong in the process, it didn't exactly hurt either. Jackie cut off a piece of chocolate cake. She and Steven had barely spoken, since this afternoon. Not that, that was anything new. In fact, their friends would probably have noticed more, if they suddenly got along, or alternatively were yelling at each other. "You've got to be kidding me, right?" Jackie said, looking over at Donna. "Your feet are even swelling too much for your giant shoes?"

"Shut up, Jackie!" Donna fired back, but she was smiling, even as she said it. Donna was taking the whole pregnancy thing a lot easier now, than she had, but Jackie knew, she still liked making jokes about it. It made it feel like less of a big life changing thing. Jackie might be fairly convinced, she wanted to have kids someday, but she could still imagine it being terrifying, when it came down to it.

"So, big D," Michael started, looking curious at Donna. He set his drink down on the dinner table. "You wanna eat anything weird yet? Because Brooke was practically eating Oreos for breakfast, when she was pregnant with Will."

"Michael-" Brooke said, rolling her eyes. But Jackie noticed, she was smiling, as she cut a piece of the chocolate cake.

"Dad, Oreos aren't weird. What are you talking about?" Betsy protested, giving her dad a glare. Fez looked as proud, as if Betsy was his daughter, and not Michael's. Jackie almost let out a laugh, but instead pointedly looked down at her plate. Then Fez sent Kelso a betrayed look.

"I thought, we were friends," Fez said under his breath, still glaring at Kelso.

"I- Let´s get back on track," Michael hurried, seeing as both Betsy and Fez were looking at him, like he'd betrayed them. "Weird foods? Had any of them, big D?"

"Ow! I was just asking, Donna! Damn!" Donna hadn't answered, but instead just punched Michael firmly in the arm. Steven looked like he was about to start laughing, and barely avoiding it. He looked, well, good. Thankfully, he hadn't had the moustache, since sometime before Eric and Donna's wedding, and his face was cleanly shaven. All the other boys were wearing a dress shirt, but Steven was wearing a t-shirt, obviously. The Who, if Jackie wasn't wrong.

She could admit the fact, that he looked really good. Sure, he had annoyed her earlier, and she was going to do a better job of putting what happened in August behind her. But that didn't mean, she couldn't admit to herself, that he looked nice. The first step to solving a problem, was admitting you had one, or something like that. Jackie pushed the thought out of her head and turned her attention back to how Michael was trying to get Eric to spill Donna's cravings. It wasn't going well.

Once dinner was done, everyone had settled in Kelso and Brooke's living room. Hyde was always surprised the couch and the arm chairs didn't look worse, considering two kids and Kelso lived here. There wasn't actually space for all of them, so Kelso and Fez were still sitting at the dining table in the other side of the room. He and Jackie each had an arm chair with the couch in between them, not that he would have minded sitting on the couch or anything. That definitely wasn't the reason. "Mommy, why can't we go to Fatso Burger for my birthday? Julia had her birthday there." Betsy asked, sitting in between Brooke and Donna on the couch.

"Sweetie, you know they don't like your dad at Fatso Burger," Brooke said, making Hyde raise an eyebrow. Whatever Brooke was talking about, he hadn't heard about before. But that figured, with all the shit Kelso did. Some of it had to pass him by without notice. "He's not allowed within 50 yards of any of the Fatso Burgers in Chicago."

"Can't we just go without dad, then?" Betsy asked, making Kelso let out an offended shriek. Brooke shook her head, clearly on the verge of laughing.

"I'm sorry, dad," Betsy said in Kelso's direction. The girl had a serious expression on her face. "But Julia had her birthday there, and it was so cool."

"Wait, Kelso do you have a restraining order against Fatso Burger?" Forman asked. If Hyde wasn't wrong, Jackie squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. Normally Hyde wouldn't have noticed what Jackie was doing, and he definitely wasn't looking. It was just obvious. Even if he had no idea, what this was about, Jackie clearly did. "You're a cop, how do you even do that?"

"I don't have a restraining order! They just banned me, because-" Kelso protested. He looked over at the sofa and the chairs. Jackie practically chugged the rest of her drink. "Whatever, those guys are jerks anyway."

"Figures, we're the ones who ste- I mean, borrow Fatso the Clown for a night," Hyde quickly corrected himself, partially because of both Brooke and Kelso's glare at him. Fair enough, but he wasn't used to having kids around. Angie and her husband hadn't had kids yet, and most of the other friends he occasionally saw in Milwaukee or Kenosha, he wasn't that close with, and Forman and Donna didn't have any kids yet either, even though they were obviously on the way. "And Kelso is the one who gets himself banned for life."

"Were you about to say steal?" Betsy cut in, before pausing to yawn. Guess, it was fairly late for a ten-year-old kid. Her little brother was already fast asleep. "Was that what he was gonna say, dad?" Betsy asked, looking at Kelso.

"Alright, you're going to bed, little lady," Kelso said, before Hyde had a chance to answer something. Nobody else brought up anything else relating to Fatso Burger, until Kelso had headed up the stairs with Betsy.

"I forgot how good this tastes," Fez said, taking a sip of his drink, grinning widely. He looked happier, than Hyde had seen him, since the vending machine at the Hub broke, and he'd been able to get free candy for a week, before anyone had noticed. "It's like liquid gold."

"I'm going to go in the kitchen," Jackie said, pointedly looking at the three people left on the couch. If he cared, he probably would have thought, she was deliberately trying to avoid him. But he definitely didn't care, so he wasn't thinking that. She tugged her hair behind her ears. Jackie wasn't uncomfortable often, usually just bulldozing through life, but when she was, it was easy to tell. "Does anyone want anything?"

"You guys stole Fatso the Clown?" Eric said to Donna, as Jackie headed for the kitchen door, when nobody wanted anything. Looked like Donna hadn't told Forman about their trip to Fatso Burger with Randy. Not that Forman had a habit of getting bitchy about Randy or anything, he'd gotten over it relatively quickly after he got back from Africa. Hyde got up from his chair and headed towards the kitchen.

"Hey," he said, as he closed the kitchen door behind him. Jackie was leaning against the counter, twirling her drink in her glass. Hyde paused next to her, she didn't look up at him. "So, what actually happened with Kelso and the Fatso Burger thing? You look, like you know something."

"Believe me," Jackie started, and turned her head to look at him. She was trying to smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. "You of all people, don't want me to tell that story."

"Jackie, come on," Hyde started. He took a step closer to her, and Jackie set her glass down on the counter. "If it's a burn on Kelso, it can't be that bad for you. Unless, you two got caught doing it in a Fatso Burger bathroom, in which case I really don't want to hear about that."

"Alright fine," she said, clearly ignoring the last part of what he'd said. He wasn't sure how to take that. "I made Michael go get a burger with me. Once we got there, I went to the bathroom and made Michael order for us. He wanted them to mix up the soda flavours, so he could get both Cherry Pop, Orangina and Cola in one cup. The guy behind the counter complained that he couldn't do that, and apparently-"

"That's why, Kelso is banned from Fatso Burger? That's not even that bad," Hyde interjected. Jackie took a sip of her drink and worried her lip. "The fact that, we stole the clown is way worse."

"It gets worse," Jackie said, almost like she was reassuring him. "Michael broke the soda machine. I don't know how, it wasn't a self-service one, but when I got out from the bathroom, it was spraying soda everywhere. All the employees and Michael were soaked with soda. Then the deep fry set on fire too. I had to drive Michael back to the motel, so he could take a shower-"

"Wait a minute, motel?" Hyde cut her off, having a sneaking suspicion, he knew what she was going to answer to his next question. "When the hell was this?"

"The night, Michael drove me to Chicago," Jackie said with a deep breath. Something tightened in Hyde's chest, that he didn't want to own. It was so tempting to just leave the kitchen, and not hear whatever it was Jackie was going to say. But for some reason, his feet were nailed to the ground. The expression on Jackie's face was obvious, sincere. If he knew her at all, she wasn't lying. "I was going to tell you, Steven, I promise. I just- You took off, and when you got back, I was really upset. And I missed my shot to tell you, before Sam showed up. It didn't seem as important to tell you, after. Seeing as you clearly didn't mind keeping your stripper wife around."

"So, Kelso saying that crap about you two sleeping together?" Hyde asked. He already knew, what the answer would be, as he asked.

"It's Michael, Steven," Jackie said. She worried her hands. He believed her, everything about the way, she was standing told him, she was actually being sincere. Besides, she didn't exactly have a reason to bullshit him now. It had been ten years. Neither of them wanted to pick up, where they left off. What happened in August, had made that clear. "Remember that time, Eric tried to tackle him, so he didn't say something like that to Mrs. Forman?"

"I guess, I kinda- I wanted to hope you didn't, sleep with Kelso, you know," he started, looking down at his hands, the words coming out quieter than he'd thought. Hyde looked over at her for a moment. "But come on, Jackie, what was I supposed to think? You took off before, I could give you an answer. I figured you'd finally decided you could do better than me- Whatever."

"What? Like Michael?" Jackie asked. He really wanted to leave the kitchen, and just go back to the living room. He wasn't looking at her anymore, but he could kind of hear the smile in her voice, like she thought the idea was ridiculous or something. She put her hand on his shoulder, making him catch her eye. "Steven, you were always leagues ahead of Michael."

"Could have been a little clearer about that," Hyde replied. He wanted to tell her, that the only reason, he'd stuck around with Sam, was because he thought everything had been blown up between them. There hadn't been anything to fix, he'd been pissed off at Jackie, and Sam had just seemed like the easy way out. At least that's what he'd thought, he'd been wrong clearly, but that's what he'd thought. But he wasn't sure, how to say any of that.

"I know. And I'm really sorry about that," Jackie said, her hand still on his shoulder. She didn't seem intent on moving it. A small pathetic part of him, didn't really want her to either. A loud noise echoed from the living room, and Jackie immediately turned her head. "Oh god, was that Fez' vomit noise? Does Michael and Brooke have Amaretto?"

"Well, obviously not anymore," he not so helpfully supplied, with a smirk.

"Steven!" she squawked, but she was smiling too, like she was about to laugh. Neither of them said anything for a moment, both just grinning. "I better go check on Fez," she said, making a move for the kitchen door.

"Jackie, hold on a second," Hyde said, once she'd moved past him. He had to say something, anything was better than nothing. Even if he was a lot better at nothing, then anything else. "I just- Back then. Not now, obviously. But back then, you probably wouldn't have needed to get me wasted, to make me wanna marry you."

For a moment, something passed over her face, that he couldn't quite identify. His throat tightened and he was grateful for the shades. Her hands clenched and unclenched, before she let her arms fall down by her side. Her expression was blank. "That's cool," she said quietly, before turning to leave the kitchen, to help Fez out.