Title: The Venerable Ugly Doll
Author: Connecticut Junkie
Summary: Jack is fascinated by the Obama girls
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own 30 Rock, NBC, or any other subsidiary of the Sheinhardt Wig Corporation
Notes: Just a quick little ficlet I had to write after watching the Daily Show a few nights back.
Jack is fascinated by the Obama girls. Liz enters his office to find him transfixed in front of FOX news (he won't watch MSNBC even though it is part of the Sheinhardt Wig corporation) a look of adoration and is it-yes it definitely is- longing on his face.
Longing.
Liz is confused.
"You okay there, big guy?"
Why does she call him big guy? She is confused again, this time by her own actions.
"Ugly doll," Jack says reverentially, as if that explains it.
"Well, I've been called worse pet names, so uh, thanks."
This manages to get his attention from the TV and his eyes turn to her for the first time since she entered the room. After a brief, disappointing flick to her chest (she was wearing a turtleneck today), he gave her a look of pity. "It's a toy hanging from Sasha's backpack. But really, Lemon, you've got to stop dating losers."
"That last guy wasn't a loser. He was a businessman!"
"He sold hot dogs on the street."
"That's a legitimate business."
"You worry me."
"I worry you? You're the one who can't stop watching the Obama girls going to school!"
"I envy them," Jack says, and he says each word slowly and deliberately, as if Liz doesn't understand English.
"It's 'cause they're getting a puppy, isn't it?"
He ignores her sarcastic jab. "Can you imagine being eight years old and living in the White House? Waking up in the middle of the night for some chocolate milk and stumbling across Lincoln's ghost as he raids the kitchen for a ham sandwich on rye? Sneaking in to the Oval Office to read the President's Book of Secrets?"
Liz tries to point out that was from a stupid Nicholas Cage movie, but Jack keeps talking over her.
"Stumbling upon Bill Clinton's hidden porn stash-"
"Yeah, I don't think that's gonna be a great thing for little girls to find-"
He continues to ignore her. "Having the whole country- no, the world!- wondering what your science fair project will be. I can tell you, Lemon, what it won't be. It certainly won't be 'How Whiskey Affects Colleen Donaghy' featuring a graph emphasizing the exponential relationship between excess consumption and little Jackie Boy's humiliation."
"Wow."
"It won second place. Another Jack Donaghy failure in her eyes."
Liz starts to understand how his atypical childhood would make him yearn for one that was normal and yet atypical in an infinitely better way. Now she pities him, which always makes her feel weird, because she knows Jack would hate to be pitied. It's the guilt over pitying him that makes her give him a hug, as ethnic as that might be.
"Thank you," he says as she pulls away, having returned to his cool, collected self.
"Hey, that's what friends are for."
The look on Jack's face becomes contemplative, and Liz gets that feeling in the pit of her stomach she gets when she knows he's going to suggest something completely insane.
"Whatever your thinking, the answer is no."
"Let's make a child."
Liz tries to say something but just chokes on her spit instead. Jack watches her struggle for air with a raised eyebrow and the infinite patience of Buddha. Finally she comes up with, "Why?" and for a word with only three letters, she seems to stretch it out in an incredibly long high pitched screech.
"I feel I can do better than most parents. I have a vast skill set, not to mention handsome genes, that I can pass along. A child born of my loins will be born with an innate advantage and can quite possibly rule the world if given enough opportunity."
"Plus you'd get a tax break."
"Only poor people pay taxes, Lemon."
"Oh." There is a long pause as she tries to figure out a proper escape plan. Maybe then she can mix all the alcohol the writers have hidden around the office into what's left of her morning coffee, drink it down, and forget all this ever happened.
"I'm gonna go," is the best she can come up with. "Because. There are things. And I have to go. To do the things."
Jack is again ignoring her babble. He focuses his laser eyes at her, a calculating look upon his face. "Are you ovulating yet, Lemon?"
She puts a protective hand over each of her ovaries (or where she assumes her ovaries are because what the hell does she know about anatomy) in the off chance he can impregnate her with that horribly piercing laser eye glare. The one that has a gleam of insanity in it. Taking a few steps back towards the door, she points at the TV.
"Look, they're going over the lunch menu for their schools!"
The age old distraction works, and Jack focuses on the TV instead of her lady plumbing. As she continues to take steps towards the door, Jack heads for the TV, running his fingers over the screen.
"Cheese tortellini with fresh marinara," he whispers. As she makes it out into the hallway, she can hear him sigh. "I want to go to there."