"Check, no teddies," Jack nodded.
They walked down the wallpaper aisle and browsed all the kiddie suggestions. All of which were just so uninventive in Boone's eyes. He hated all this kid's stuff. It was all teddy bears and dolls and clowns and alphabets and 123's.
"What's your view on trains?" Jack asked him, picking a roll up.
"No trains," Boone said. "And trains don't even look like that so it's just uneducational."
"Steam trains look like that," Jack pointed out, replacing the roll to the shelf.
"Yeah, and when was the last time you saw a steam train, Jack?" Boone asked him.
Jack shrugged a little as they continued down the aisle. "Okay, so what are we looking for here? Could you give me a clue?"
"I'm hoping I'll know when I see it," Boone replied. "I just don't want something stereotypical, I want something nice."
"What you think is nice and what kid's think are nice are two very different things," Jack pointed out. "I mean, what did you have when you were a kid?"
"Are you kidding? You think Sabrina would let me mess with her interior design? My walls were Empire Blue, eggshell finish," Boone explained.
Jack looked at him. "She never let you have any fun wallpaper or anything?" he asked.
"She spent a fortune on that place and there was no way I was gonna mess it up," Boone went on.
"God, no wonder you're so repressed," Jack said, turning back to the wallpapers.
Boone looked at him. "I am not repressed," he insisted. "Why would you think I was repressed?"
Jack just raised his eyebrows at him and continued browsing. Boone wasn't repressed. Well, he was fairly sure he wasn't repressed. He was just controlled and grown-up is all. He had maturity and grace. So he didn't like things out of place and he didn't talk about his sex life and he had that slight meltdown the time that Jack put an entry into his phone book and messed up his system. But that didn't make him repressed. He was having sex with a man, that wasn't very repressed of him.
"Maybe you should break with tradition and go with something a little more exciting," Jack suggested. "You can't make a kid live with boring paint shades."
"Maybe," Boone agreed. Half agreed. Well, he was considering it.
"Balloons?" Jack asked, offering another one up to him.
Boone shook his head. "No, not balloons," he said. "Balloons don't make any sense.
"What's that supposed to mean, 'balloon's don't make any sense'?" Jack asked. "What sense do you expect them to make, they're balloons."
"I just don't get why someone would want to look at balloons all day," Boone wondered. "I mean, balloons don't mean anything."
"They're not supposed to mean anything, Boone, they're supposed to look nice," Jack explained. He put the choice down and moved on.
"Do you really think I'm repressed?" Boone asked.
Jack gave him a look. "Why don't you pick something out," he suggested.
Boone looked at the selection. "I'm just looking for something a little more..."
"Grown-up?" Jack finished. "Because you're shopping for a child, remember."
"Newborns can't even see that far, can they? They won't be able to check out the wallpaper from the crib," Boone said.
"No, but that's not going to last very long. The eyesight does improve," Jack explained. "And quit stalling."
"I wasn't stalling," Boone said, resisting the urge to pout. He looked the selection over again. Crap, crap, crap. There was nothing here that even slightly took his interest. And he knew he wasn't shopping for himself but contemplating what someone who wasn't even born yet would like was even more impossible than trying to buy a Christmas present for Shannon. "Maybe we should wait," Boone suggested. "I mean, we don't even know if it's a boy or a girl yet, how are we supposed to pick something out?"
"You're the one who wanted to have it all finished," Jack reminded him. "Finish the nursery and you've finished the house."
"That's not true," Boone told him. "I still have a bunch of tinkering to do elsewhere."
"I think you should try and keep your tinkering to a minimum," Jack suggested.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Boone asked, a little offended.
"Last weekend you were tinkering with the fuse box and you made all the lights go out. For four hours."
"That could have happened to anyone," Boone dismissed, looking back to the wallpapers.
"Had to happen to you though, didn't it?" Jack joked.
"Can we concentrate, please?" Boone requested. "We're supposed to be picking out some wallpaper here."
"I thought you wanted to wait," Jack said.
"I changed my mind, let's just find something," Boone replied.
"Okay, Mr. Contradiction, what are we going for?" Jack asked.
"I don't know," Boone said, more than a little put off. "I want something that means something."
"To who?" Jack questioned.
"Well, preferably our child but as we haven't met them yet I'm guessing that's a bit of a long shot," Boone replied. "So something that means something to us, I guess. I want something that's not just a generic pattern, something a little more personal."
"Maybe we should ditch the wallpaper idea then," Jack suggested. "We could always paint something, a mural."
"Art was never my strong point," Boone admitted. "You?"
"Practically flunked it in high school," Jack replied. "So wallpaper it is then," he said, looking back to the selection. He then suddenly moved away from Boone and grabbed something off the shelf, hiding it behind his back. "Okay, I got it," he declared.
"What are you doing?" Boone asked. Jack was acting like a big kid, which really wasn't like Jack.
"Think about our history together," Jack requested. "What could mean something to us? What brought us together? What bonded us?"
Boone thought about it. "Aeroplane disaster?" he ventured.
Jack pulled a face. "Close."
"Aeroplanes that haven't been in an aeroplane disaster?" Boone guessed.
Jack gave him a look. "Think post-aeroplane disaster."
"Crazy island?" Boone suggested.
"Can you be a little more specific?" Jack asked.
"Not really, I don't know where the hell the island was. Still. And don't you think that's a little bit strange by the way?"
"Boone, focus. Where did we spend time on the island?"
"Beach?" Boone suggested.
"And...?"
"Cavetown?"
"And...?"
Okay, Boone was getting a little lost, they were running out of locations fast. He looked at Jack who rolled his eyes. "Oh, jungle," Boone said suddenly. Why didn't he think of that? There was a hell of a lot of jungle.
"Right, thank you," Jack exclaimed. "Remember our first kiss?"
Remember? Like Boone was ever going to forget that. Boone was heading back from the caves to the beach after half a day of hunting with Locke when Jack decided he would make a water run to the people still living on the beach. Which Boone thought was strange because he knew for a fact that Jack did a run earlier that day with Kate and Sayid and he couldn't imagine why they'd need more water bringing. But he was happy to have Jack's company for the walk so he went along with it. The two of them had been spending time together and there'd definitely been some flirting but Boone still didn't think much of it. Even after Shannon's teasing drew attention to the fact that Jack was rather more friendly with Boone than he was with Kate, Boone still didn't really think that meant anything. Jack was straight, end of story. But then, when they were about half way through the walk and sufficiently in the middle of the jungle, Jack stopped Boone. And then he said something that Boone can't remember. And then he kissed him. And it was strong and gentle at the same time but one thing that really struck Boone was that there was no hesitation. It was short and sweet and rather chaste but it certainly opened a door. In fact it ripped the door off it's hinges and left it for firewood.
"Okay, the jungle's personal," Boone agreed. "There any polar bears on it?"
Jack took the paper from behind his back and looked it over. "Lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, but no polar bears."
"Well, it's not entirely accurate then, but I guess it'll do," Boone said with a smile.
"Okay then," Jack said, picking up a few rolls and heading for the tills.
"Hey, Jack?" Boone asked.
Jack turned to look at him as they walked down the aisle. "Yeah?"
"Do you really think I'm repressed?"
Jack smiled. "You could try and prove me wrong when we get home," he suggested.
Boone smiled. He could do that.