Chapter 21:

"I feel so stupid." Kate muttered under her breath, so quiet that Jack could only just hear it. There was an annoyance in her voice that he had to admit was rather cute.

"Why?" He asked, surpressing the urge to laugh softly, but knew that she might feel the need to push him under a car if he did so.

"Why?" She asked incredulously. "Because I'm carrying a goddamn doll down the street like a five year old." She explained.

Jack looked at her. "Why does that make you feel stupid? The rest of the people down the street are carrying them too."

True to his word, most of the people walking down the street were carrying the same plastic dolls. It seemed that more than just their science class were given the experiement. They were surrounded by people - the girls looking excited, and the boys looking somewhat depressed...quite the opposite of what Jack and Kate were looking like.

"But all these girls probably played with their dolls when they were kids." Kate reminded him. "I never did that."

Kate was more of a tomboy growing up, and was too busy climbing trees and rolling around in the mud with the rest of the boys rather than playing with her dolls with Shannon and Claire.

"It's not a doll, Kate, it's our baby for the week." He corrected her.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye with a raised eyebrow. "You're starting to sound like Charlie." She told him.

"C'mon, relax, it's going to be fun." He assured her, putting his arm around her shoulder as they walked. Surprisingly she didn't pull away from him.

"Please explain to me how you worked that one out?"

"Think about it, Kate..." He started. "...This doll is our baby for the week. Mine and yours."

"I thought you said that people like me shouldn't be allowed to breed." She said, repeating her words from last week, but at the same time, having to smile a little at the excitement in Jack's eyes.

"I told you the other day that if it had my genetics, it would balance it out." Jack reminded.

"This doesn't have our genetics, Jack..." She said, nodding down at the doll. "It's plastic."

"Well, we have to pretend that it's a real baby." He said.

Kate sighed heavily. "Can't we put it up for adoption?"

They stopped walking, and Jack gave her a serious look, which made Kate hang her head a little. "Kate, I know for a fact that you would never put your baby up for adoption." He told her surely.

There was a long silence in which Kate couldn't answer. He was right - he always was. She never would, because she heard Wayne talking one night to her mother, saying how he wished that Diane had put Kate up for adoption at birth. She was only seven when she heard that. She had gone around to Jack's for dinner the next day, and casually asked Jack's mother over dinner what 'adoption' meant. Margo had been shocked. The conversation she overheard that in was the same one where she learned that Wayne was her real dad, not Sam, who she had believed to be.

"I know..." She muttered. "I just...feel stupid, 'cause it's not real, you know." She admitted.

Jack smiled at her, and shook his head. "That doesn't matter. You've got the imagination of ten kids, Kate, you can do this."

She grinned back at him, and bit her lip for a moment. "Do you want to hold her for a while?" She asked him.

Jack gave her that happy smile, one that she couldn't help but reply to. "So, she's a 'her' now and not an 'it' anymore." He teased playfully.

She shrugged. "You said to pretend that it's real." She muttered as an excuse.

Jack took the baby doll, and held it in his arms like he would hold a real baby. The thing that disheartened him a little was that he no longer had his arm around Kate's shoulders, however, she solved this problem by walking so close beside him that their upper arms were brushed against each other with every step.

"So..." He said, after a few minutes in silence. "That was quite a deal you made with Shannon earlier."

Kate laughed. "I had to do something - she wouldn't drop it!" She explained

"She was right though." Jack said simply, as he was probably the only person she would admit that to.

"Yeah, but I couldn't tell her that." She pointed it out. "She's never let me live it down."

Jack laughed, shaking his head. "I can't believe that she promised to drop everything if we do better than them."

"They must really be sure that we're going to do worse." She agreed.

"Well, if you were so sure that you're going to fail this, why did you make the bet?" He asked her.

"Because...nevermind." She said, changing her mind and shaking her head.

"No, come on, I'm curious." He tempted, nudging her shoulder as they walked.

She shook her head again. "I just want them to stop trying to force us together." She said to him. "I mean, I want it to happen on it's own. It's going to be our relationship, so I don't see why it should start out because of other people interfering."

That was probably the most sense she'd made all day.

"'going to be'?" He quoted with a grin.

She nodded. "Yeah."

"So, it's going to happen?" He asked, trying not to jump up and down with excitement.

She gave him a smile, looking at him while they walked. "Jack, I told you the other night, I want it to happen. I just need a while to sort my head out, and when that's done, I'm all yours." She tld him.

"All mine...woah..." He said quietly.

"What?"

"After all these years, it feels really weird to think that I can call you mine." He revealed.

She nudged his shoulder again, both of them grinning like idiots. "I'm already yours, Jack."

The sound of a baby crying split the air, and Kate paced Jack's bedroom floor insanely rocking the doll. Jack heard the baby crying from the bathroom, and when he came back, saw Kate looking stressed. He had taken a shower while the baby was asleep and Kate insisted that she would be fine for a while, but now it seemed quite different.

She looked up when she saw him enter and gave him a tired glance. "Jaaaack! Help...she won't stop crying!" She begged. "I've fed her, changed her, burped her, everything! She just won't stop!"

He crossed the room, and she passed the doll over to him. "There has to be something that we haven't checked." He thought.

Kate shook her head, sitting down on the bed in surrender. "We've done everything, Jack...we went through the manual three times and did everything before you showered!" She told him. "What do we do?"

Jack thought for a moment, holding the screaming doll. He remembered holding his cousin, Amanda, like this once, and his mother had told him to do something that had stopped her crying. Maybe it would work on the doll.

"Maybe, we should...just...hold her?" He suggested.

Kate looked at him as if he had suggested that they put the doll in a pasta strainer. "What?"

"These dolls react to things in the same way that a real baby would, right?" He remembered.

Kate nodded. "Yeah." She was still giving him that insane look.

"Well, when we were looking after my cousin, Amanda, Mom taught me this trick." He said, going over to the bed beside Kate, where one of the blankets from their baby pack was, and lay it out on the bed, before putting the doll down on it. "You're meant to swaddle them."

"What?" Kate asked again.

"You wrap the blanket really tight around them, but not tight enough to hurt them, because they like the security." Jack explained, swaddling the baby as he explained it, and then handed the doll back to Kate. After a few seconds, the baby stopped crying.

"Wow...it worked!" She said, looking up at Jack. "You're a genius." He was still standing up beside her, looking down at her admirably. "What?" She asked.

"Nothing." He said, crossing the room and putting the rest of the baby pack beside the bed.

"You were staring." She said, not dropping the subject.

Jack straightened up, and looked at her again. "I was just...y'know, as much as you hate this idea, you actually look really natural like that." He explained, giving her the same smile again.

"Sitting on your bed holding plastic against my chest?" She questioned.

"No, holding a baby in your arms." He corrected quietly, and then dropped his voice to mutter, even though Kate still heard him. "Our baby..."

She shook her head slowly. "Maybe holding them, but everything else I'm useless with." She realised.

Jack smiled sadly at her, and then went and sat right next to her. "Everyone's useless to start off with...that's how we learn."

"I wish it came naturally though, like it does with you." She said.

"It will do." He assured her, putting his arm around her shoulder again, only this time, she leaned her head down to his shoulder. "It comes naturally when you experience the real thing. I've been around babies a lot, so I learned on the spot." He explained to her.

"So when you're a Dad one day, you'll be great straight away." She finished for him, even though that wasn't what he was going to say.

"And when you become a Mom, you'll be fantastic as well." He added.

"I bet I won't." She said.

"Well, if for some strange reason you're not, you don't have to worry, because I'll be there helping you out all the way." He assured her. "Because there's no way I'm not going to see my best friend's kid." Although secretly, they were both thinking that any kid of Kate's would be his.

Margo stuck her head around the open door, and smiled at the pose they were in. "Aw, look at the two of you." They raised their heads and looked at her. "Makes me feel like a Grandmother already." She said giddily, and then remembered what she was there for. "Dinner's ready, kids."

A/N: Sorry it's taken me a while to update this one! I've got another chapter that I'll probably upload tomorrow night or later on today, it depends how busy I am...hope you like it!
Coming soon:
Kate gets a phonecall, and a new home
The dance
What's that you say, Charlie Pace? A wedding? What on earth are you talking about you crazy rocker?
"it's a wedding! I say that certain people need a wedding!
Whatever you say, crazy boy...