Thanks, forever to underthepiano. She's so fierce.
A no-no is a baseball game in which one team has no hits. In Major League Baseball, the team must be without hits during the entire game, and the game must be at least nine innings.
For the first few moments, it's uncomfortable. When you give someone a goodbye hug when it doesn't actually turn out to be a goodbye moment, it's awkward. It's really just super awkward because she'd enjoyed the hug more than she should have, and that's obviously a no-no and now she's stuck in a car with a man who is not her boyfriend, who is also not available and she's feeling feelings that she doesn't want to feel.
So she's awkwardly tucked into the car, thinking about Carol, thinking about Jack, thinking about how awful Newark is and she's confused.
What makes it even more confusing is that Liz was one-hundred percent ready to jump Carol on a baby-changing station in a handicapped stall. Because Jack had been so freaking convincing.
She was in the zone. He'd gotten her there.
Now, now, she's slightly randy, pressed for time, being whisked across town by a slightly-unsettled driver and an antsy and overcome Jack.
"Of course, Lemon. I give you a top-notch psych up speech and-"
"Shut it. It'll all be over soon, so just, let's not." There's a pause and she glances over; his jaw and clenched tightly. "And hey, you've Reaganed, so shouldn't you, I don't know, be calling Trump to shove it in his face?" There's a tension in the car, and it's obvious and she's trying to cut through it carefully with flat humor.
"Trump will never Reagan, Lemon. I don't want to break the man's spirit," he says it like, duh, she should know that and for some reason, it pisses her off. Maybe she's pissed off because in her fifteen years of being sexually active, she couldn't sort out her own intimacy issues and Jack saw through them in a second. Maybe she's pissed off because he knows her so well.
But maybe she's pissed off because she's ready now, she's totally set to bone and with the way traffic is looking, it's going to be another four hours to get her to Queens. Her fingers drum against the leather on the arm rest and her leg begins to sewing machine. Soon, she's biting at the nails on her other hand, looking from her window to Jack's.
Antsy.
"Lemon, for the love of god, stop. What is wrong with you?"
Her words come quickly, before she has any opportunity to sensor them. "Maybe your psych up speech was good, maybe it was too good Jack because right now all I can think about-" But she stops. Liz Lemon doesn't talk about sex- this past day being a very strange, therapeutic exception-and so she goes no further.
And how weird would it be, anyway to admit to her boss that she-
"Lemon, are you, as they say, 'good to go'?" Jack says it with that air of amusement he usually reserves for when she surprised him by wearing slight heels, or he catches her eating her fourth hot dog of the day. But he's also enthralled; the notion is amusing but surprising to him and the thought that he's surprised and inquisitive about her being 'good to go' is well, weird.
"What? No, you're... weird," is all she can think to say because yes, she's good to go and that's rendered her brain just the tiniest bit fuzzy. This is new to her, she doesn't know how to overcome it.
Liz looks at him because when you're sitting in the backseat of a car with someone, well, what else is there to look at? When she does, well, she realizes what a bad idea it was. Jack's eyes are twinkling, and he's smiling at her, lips parted slightly.
And he's not surprised and he's not enthralled, he's encompassed by the idea. That she's turned on, that he'd Reaganed her so hard she'd actually allowed herself to be turned on, to want sex.
And oh god, if this seat could just swallow her whole right this second, she would just... that would be great.
Liz bites out a forced laugh and tears her eyes away. "Jack no, I..."
"You are!" and his voice is breathy and fast and for one second, she allows herself to think what it would be like to just, just, oh hell, just jump him.
"I most certainly am not," Liz replies quickly, indignantly. "I just really... need to go to the bathroom!" And now that it's in her head, the idea of jumping Jack (jumping Jacks, she's sure he's made some sort of sex game out of that before), she can't get it out and she thinks about pregnant Avery, and how he's been such a loyal and devoted partner to her and Liz just feels awful for entertaining the notion of sexing him up.
Not that thinking about it is wrong really (oh but it is, so wrong) it's just the guilt, she feels better if these thoughts are accompanied by guilt, just a reminder that they're bad, and not to think them.
They haven't said anything in minutes, and it's starting to settle over her, the silence. It strikes her that he's watching her and she's worried that it's written all over her face.
"Dear God Lemon, are you thinking about me!" His voice still holds that hint of amusement but it's deeper now, gravelly.
And yeah, it's written all over her face.
This? This, this is a nightmare.
She swallows, thickly because her mouth has gone dry and her stomach is turning and this is the worst thing that's ever happened to her; she'll never live this down. Liz says nothing, nothing, just tries to contort her face into a "Oh please/you're crazy/stop talking" type of visage but she's pretty sure she doesn't pull it off.
Her voice is high, "This is all new to me Jack, I don't know how to process it," and she slips into badger faces and begins to hyperventilate.
She needs to hold it together, because as this is an extension of her earlier problem... technically it's not solved and he didn't successfully Reagan her and she cares about him and she doesn't want to take that away from him and she can't get enough air-
"Breathe, woman!" he demands, hand on her back, soothing. Jack is touching her and it's, it's too much. Imagining that hand sliding down her arm, to her thigh, unbuttoning her-
No.
"Stop," Liz manages, digs her nails into her thighs and squeezes her eyes tight. "Sex is just..." she doesn't want to say it, but she reiterates, "AWFUL."
He shushes her, but in a nice way, and she refrains from settling her face into her hands. "I'm going to fix this."
And she lets him fix it because, well, she would hate to be the one to come between him and a perfect game.
...or something.