"I'd get muddy hands doing that, right?" Boone asked as he sorted laundry on the bed, clearly put off.
"Sorry, didn't realise you were a pris," Jack said offhandedly, looking over the remaining options. There weren't many. Boone was a fussy man.
"I'm not a pris. Just cos I don't wanna put my hands in mud," Boone replied. "Or people's chest cavities," he added.
Jack looked over at him. "I don't actually put my hands in people's chest cavities as much as you'd think," he said, turning back to the task in hand. "How do you feel about children?" he asked.
"Children? Messy. And chaotic. And really needlessly noisy," Boone said. "And a lot of them smell."
Jack looked over at him again. "Children do not smell," he said.
"The little ones do," Boone insisted.
"You mean babies?" Jack asked dryly.
"Yeah, them," Boone said, sounding uninterested.
"Right. So I guess fatherhood isn't on your list of things to do anytime soon," Jack said, careful not to phrase it as a question, more a subtle observation. Thing about Boone, things either went completely over his head or he'd pick up on some tiny little detail and obsess about it for days.
"Yeah, us as parents, can you see that?" Boone asked sarcastically.
Not anymore, Jack thought. But then, really, what did he expect? Stupid Jack and his stupid baby obsession. It's just that he couldn't help it. Ever since Sarah had lost that baby, Jack could never really comprehend what had happened to it. Yeah, he knew all the medical jargon, he knew that down to a tee, but what about his baby? He just never got to have it? He never got to be a father because Sarah tripped over her pumps going to answer the door and separated her placenta from her uterus wall? That was it? But Jack didn't believe in fate or destiny or the afterlife so he'd cheated himself out of his own second chance.
"I mean, Shannon having a baby has got to upset the universe enough, I don't think we should be getting in on the act," Boone continued. "Anyway, how would that even work?"
"Surrogacy and adoption are the most common methods," Jack said adsently. He really had put far too much thought into it.
"Mmm," Boone said, sounding uninterested. "There anything else?"
"What?" Jack asked, coming out of a daze.
"Jobs? The paper?" Boone reminded him.
"Oh, right," Jack said. He looked down at the paper and then back up at Boone. "You know what, this is stupid, you wanna go do something?" he asked, putting the paper down on the desk in front of him.
"But you were the one who said we should sit down and find me a job," Boone pointed out. "Plus, I gotta do this laundry."
"The laundry can wait, and you're never gonna find a job," Jack said, standing up.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Boone asked.
Oh God, he was doing that stupid wounded look again. Jack felt sorry for Boone and everything but the 'woe is me' routine was starting to wear a little thin.
"Boone, you need to work out what you want from life. Me sitting here reading you jobs from the newspaper is only helping us find out what you don't want apparently," Jack pointed out as gently as he could.
"I don't know what I want, that's the point," Boone explained.
"Well, personally, I wanna get out of this room," Jack stated.
Boone was looking a little pissed off. Oh well, it was better than wounded, Jack reasoned. Jack wasn't going to respond though. No. He was going to make Boone say something, it was his turn to talk. Jack wasn't going to run over and make things better, Boone could use his big boy words. Why wasn't Boone saying anything? Oh, for God's sake...
"What?" Jack asked, more irritated than he intended it to be.
"Nothing," Boone said, going back to folding the laundry.
Great, now he was looking wounded again. Jack should have struck on pissed off. Maybe Jack could piss him off again.
"You know what? You're prissy and spoilt and really immature," Jack said, sounding much like a five year old himself, he noted.
Boone looked back up at him but he didn't look particularly pissed off. In fact he looked a little confused. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"I'm trying to piss you off," Jack replied. Hmm, maybe telling Boone that would affect his result.
Boone just continued to look at him. "Why?" he asked.
All right, Jack was getting pretty pissed off himself at this point. "Because I want you to get angry at me. I want you to yell at me," Jack explained, his own volume starting to near on yelling now.
"Why would you want me to yell at you?" Boone asked.
This was clearly going to be one of the subjects that went over Boone's head. "Because you never do. Whenever I upset you, or anything upsets you, you just look all sad and say, 'oh, it doesn't matter'. It does matter! So when I piss you off you should damn well let me know. Now shout at me." Jack instructed.
"I don't want to shout at you," Boone replied.
"Why not?" Jack asked, getting more exasperated by the second.
"Because I happen to be in love with you!" Boone yelled.
That one stopped Jack in his tracks. Not that it was new information but it wasn't something they said very often either. Jack didn't know why. It's not like they were in denial. And if someone asked Jack he would tell them in a second how much he loved Boone. But they just didn't share it between themselves very often. Maybe it didn't need to be said. Or maybe it was because they were two men. Was the woman usually the one that initiated the whole 'I love you' thing?
And then Jack realised he hadn't spoken for about a minute, which was quite rude under the circumstances, and Boone was staring at him. Right, focus, Jack told himself.
"I..." and then he stopped. Why did he stop? He did love Boone. He really, really did. So why the hell had he stopped talking. The more time he stood here in silence the worse it was looking. For God's sake, finish the sentence, Jack.
"I love you," he finally got. "Too," he added. "I love you too."
"Oh, great," Boone replied. "It only took you five minutes to come to that conclusion."
"It didn't," Jack insisted.
"Then why did you stop talking?" Boone asked.
"I... have no idea," Jack admitted.
Boone rolled his eyes. He wasn't looking wounded though, Jack observed. But right now he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. If Boone had done that to him he was pretty sure he'd be looking wounded right now. Maybe Boone didn't mean it as much as he thought. No, he shouted it in an argument. Things you shout in arguments are the things you tend to mean. You can always trust what someone says to you in an argument much more than you can with pillow talk. So why wasn't Boone more upset? Unless he never expected to be loved back.
"Do you know that I love you?" Jack asked.
"I hope that you do," Boone replied.
"That's not the same thing," Jack pointed out.
"No, it's not," Boone allowed.
"So, what are we going to do about that?" Jack asked.
Boone looked at him levelly. He seemed a little tired. He seemed like he didn't really want to have this conversation right now. Tough, Jack thought, they were doing this.
"You're scared of been left," Jack stated. "Like Sabrina, you're scared of being on your own."
"Have you ever had a relationship that didn't end?" Boone asked.
Well that wasn't fair, Jack thought. How was he supposed to argue with that? He was about to reply but Boone cut him off.
"You got married," Boone pointed out. "Marriage is supposed to last forever, remember? The fact that your here with me right now suggests that it didn't work out that way."
"Look, there were circumstances there," Jack began, really not wanting to get into that whole thing again.
"I know, all right, and I don't really care," Boone replied, and he really sounded like he didn't care all that much. "Relationships end. Everything ends. I love you and I think that you love me so we'll take it from there and see where it goes."
Okay, what happened? How did that turn around to Boone lecturing Jack? Wasn't Jack trying to make Boone feel better? So apparently Jack really sucked at this. But Boone seemed to be feeling better so he guessed that was something.
Jack went back over to the desk and picked up the newspaper, sitting down. "Accountant?" Jack suggested.
"Numbers? Boring," Boone stated as he turned his attention back to folding the laundry.