get well soon

Chapter 1: 1944, part one

A/N: Hello all! Welcome to the first book of The Kennedys anthology series, which will allow me to branch out into different stories and genres whenever I feel stuck in a rut with The Kennedys (which is my big, big project that will hopefully be completed, one day). If you like this drop me a comment and let me know! For roanokesunset26 <3

**
Here's one thing you can trust
It makes you and me to make us
One of those days you've had enough
I'll be there
If it ain't one thing, it's another
And you need someone to pull you out the bubble
I'll be right there just to hug ya
I'll be there

"Get Well Soon" by Ariana Grande

**

"Your uniform's baggy." Joe commented as they exited the Irish pub they had traveled halfway across London to find.

Jack looked down at his rumpled blazer and slacks. "Huh, I guess it is. I must have lost some weight while I was recovering."

Joe rolled his eyes. The unspoken truth in the comment was that none of Jack's clothes ever seemed to fit, not since he was a little boy. It was because his weight shifted so drastically in between illnesses. Their mother had never been able to keep up.

"Just don't strain yourself too much now that you're up walking, okay? I know you're dying to put that Purple Heart on your jacket and go get into a girl's skirt as soon as possible but I don't think your back would hold out."

Joe was only half-joking.

"At least I'm not getting in a bomber plane like some idiot." Jack replied. "Ya know you don't have to come out of this war with one of these," he gestured to the numerous medals that now adorned his uniform. "You just need to come out with your life or Dad will stick the whole dynasty's future on me."

Joe chuckled. "You would run it into the ground."

"I would." Joe was joking, Jack was not. He pulled out a cigar from his pocket. "Want one?"

Joe shook his head. "Do you really just keep those in your pockets for whenever you feel like a smoke?"

"Mmhm." Jack mumbled as he stuck the cigar in his mouth and lit it. He took a puff. "You should see them on laundry day, Mom has a fit."

Joe laughed, not so much at the sentiment but at the sight of Jack with half a cigar in his mouth trying to speak.

"Come on," Joe jerked his head toward the street. They were, at present, standing in an alleyway outside the pub. "Kick will be furious if we aren't back in time for dinner."

He swung his arm around Jack and loudly whistled for a taxi in an uncouth manner their father would have scolded him for.

Wealthy people don't take cabs. He would say. They take their own private cars. We don't want to give people the wrong idea about us.

Jack laughed. Little moments like this took him back to when they lived in London, back when their Dad was an ambassador, before he decided to negotiate with the Nazis and earned the wrath of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

For a man who adamantly protested discrimination again Irish Catholics in Boston he sure was anti-Semitic.

**

"You know if the two of you had told me you were going to be raging drunks the whole time you were here I wouldn't have invited you."

Kick had been furious when her brothers had returned home from their afternoon walk drunk with cigars hanging from their mouths.

"We figured we'd connect with our Irish roots and go to a pub." Joe protested in between shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth.

"In London?" Kick glowered at her older brother. She was the only sibling Joe had ever really let boss him around, and those occasions were far and in between.

Joe shrugged, clearly giving up on his argument and leaving Kick to Jack, who was still puffing from a cigar, almost methodically.

"The dining room is filled with smoke Jack. Put that out."

Jack rolled his eyes and stuck the cigar in the ash tray. "I thought that as a war hero I would be allowed to smoke cigars at the table."

Joe stifled his laughter, prompting another glower from Kick.

**

After dinner and three cups of coffee Kick forced down her brother's throats she went to bed. She woke up the next morning to a report from the chef that the boys had come in to wash the dishes after she went to sleep.

**

"Why don't I ever get to do anything fun?"

Bobby was laying on the living room couch, where he had created a mock therapy session with Ted, age 12, who was listening patiently on the armchair across from him.

"Jack got to be in the army. He got to be in the Navy and he was sick as a cow all the time. I'm perfectly healthy but Dad decides that I'm not going t see any action in one foul swoop."

Jack was standing in the corner, watching the amusing situation from afar. He wondered if Bobby knew how ridiculous it was for a 19-year-old to pour his heart and soul out to his 12-year-old brother, who looked like he was about to fall asleep.

"It was my fault, Bobby." Jack walked over and sat next to Ted, who readjusted himself to sit on Jack's lap. "I wrote Dad and told him you'd be better off doing stuff here."

"But why?" Bobby asked.

"I'm going to let you in on a secret Bobby." Bobby leaned in closer, his childish impishness left over from his gangly teenage years evident. "Both Joe and me were already overseas and I didn't want Dad to have to worry anymore, but now that I'm home I'll put in a good word for you."

Bobby rolled his eyes. Jack's promises were hardly ever kept, and he knew that Jack was just trying to spare his feelings.

He was right.

**

Later that night Bobby curled up in his bed using an old flashlight, hunched over a sketch pad. Bobby had never been particularly artistic, in fact he only resorted to art when it was absolutely necessary.

The products of his effort was a cartoonish drawing of Jack, styled like the cartoons were in the newspaper, depicted so thin that when he fell off the boat in Bobby's "comic," he floated.

Bobby slipped it under Jack's door that night.

**

A/N: If you're an avid Kennedy person you probably already know Joe Sr. was pretty anti-Semitic but for those of you who don't know he was and that wasn't fabricated. The quote at the beginning of the chapter will always relate to something in the chapter (which was inspired by likeadove on AO3). In this case you can relate it to either Joe & Jack or Jack & Bobby's future relationship.