I Keep Coming Back to You (Pt. 1)
Title: I Keep on Coming Back to You (Pt. 1)
Author: md123
Pairing: Jack/Liz, reference to Jack/Others
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,116 in this part
Spoilers: "Corporate Crush", General Character Development through Season 5
Summary: Hank Hooper orders Jack to marry. Sort of a post-ep for "Corporate Crush".
Note: I know where this story is going, but I'm not sure how many parts it's going to be.
It's almost an exact replay of five years before.
To be truthful, Jack was a little angry when Hank Hooper practically ordered him to get remarried. Where did he get off giving Jack such a personal instruction? He was no Don Geiss! But Kabletown was a family company, and having a family, by Hank's definition, apparently didn't include single fatherhood. Which was outrageous -- Jack stopped himself. He's starting to sound like Lemon. Or worse yet, Milton. That just made him angrier.
And it is anger that brings him to Sbarros, where he is absentmindedly consuming a slice of pizza. And he has Jonathan send for Lemon, just as he had five years before.
**
That time, he'd been more depressed than angry. Depressed, because Geiss had taken away the microwave division, and also because the implied judgment on Jack's lifestyle hit much harder coming from Don. Most of all, his initial consideration of who he could marry had come up aggravatingly short.
Jack's parade of beautiful women had always given him a vague sense of security that should he ever decide to settle down, he'd have plenty of good options. Not that he would ever want to settle down. But now, in the moment he needed it, he found all of his options totally inadequate. None of them were relationship material, much less marriage material. Attractive, yes, but boring to talk to, shallow, stupid, vain, uncultured, or all of the above. Perhaps he'd arranged it that way, to avoid the temptation to repeat his mistakes with Bianca. Condi was probably the only one who didn't fit that profile, and he'd thoroughly sabotaged that. Breaking up by text was enough to make sure that that door was closed, even if he still didn't harbor suspicions about her and Putin.
And so, passing through his mental rolodex, he came to Liz Lemon. An outrageous suggestion, someone at her station in life -- and a mere 8 -- being with him. She certainly had several obvious flaws, and he could catalog -- and had cataloged, to her -- all of them. But, he could stand talking to her for hours on end, and had done so for a year without growing weary. That was rare enough. Rarer still was the way that Lemon had gotten under his skin. He couldn't describe the hold that woman held on him; it didn't make any sense to him, anyway. He simply felt drawn to her -- not sexually, not really, although she had charms he did his best to ignore. There was something infectious about her, something he was trying hard to identify, and it kept him coming back for more.
And that maybe was the best he could do. Someone with long-term potential that could grow into something real. But there was one obvious problem. Lemon was hung up on this person in the building, this "flower guy," hung up enough that she had abandoned him during the fireworks fiasco. He could hardly blame her for taking his advice and devoting time to her personal life, but it hurt a bit that a furtive attraction was enough for her to forget all about him. That he was her boss should have been enough, but given that he'd thought they had a deep connection, it was even more appalling.
Liz had, obliviously, introduced her new man to Jack, and he selfishly tried to wreck things from within. As Floyd gushed over him, the path was obvious: he played the third wheel, putting space between them. It was a mean thing to do to Lemon, and to Floyd, whom he liked, but he was playing for keeps here.
But Lemon was a sharper adversary than he reckoned. She warned him off, and it seemed clear that her bond with Floyd was simply too strong for him to break.
Just in time, Phoebe indicated her interest, and she seemed to have so many of the qualities that his other women lacked. She was elegant, intelligent, and beautiful, if a little strange. In a panic, he convinced himself she was the one, and proposed in a matter of days.
When the engagement to Phoebe thankfully collapsed, he realized the folly of simply grabbing the nearest available woman, so his mania subsided for a while. But the influence of his mentor remained: combined with Lemon's endless yammering about marriage and kids, it led Jack to view all his women through that prism. He was almost ready to propose to CC, in spite of it terminating his career; it'd caused him to jump the gun a bit in proposing to Elisa, having convinced himself that she was "the one," and not just because it was the only way they could have sex.
He didn't really see another promising candidate until two arrived almost simultaneously. Although Geiss was already dead, he couldn't help but evaluate both Nancy and Avery as marriage material, and was willing to lead himself down that road with both. Jack thought that the old him -- or indeed a normal man -- wouldn't have gotten so swept up thinking about a future with them.
The results were, again, nearly catastrophic. Were Avery not so clearly willing to do or accept anything to be with him, or had the pregnancy not forced his hand, his tendency to equate any multidimensional attraction with true love would have wrecked things with both of them.
The plus side of his state of mind was that when Nancy was removed as an option, he was able to throw himself completely into engagement and marriage with Avery, overlooking her faults and embracing what it was that he liked about her. And in truth, although some part of his soul wasn't fulfilled by partnering with her, he probably could've been happy with Avery and Liddy through the end of his life.
**
Five years later, everything has changed and nothing has changed. He still has no good options but Liz Lemon, but over the years his relationship with her has blossomed into something unique and unexpected. In some ways it transcends what even most married couples share; it is simultaneously too developed, and not developed enough, to consider marriage.
Jack's past relationships have either been women he knew when he was young (Bianca, Nancy); extremely accomplished women his own age (Condi, CC); or women a decade younger who were also 10s (Elisa, Phoebe, Avery). Lemon doesn't really fit into any of those categories, although there's a little bit of each in her. But there is something about her, something that's drawn him to her from almost the very beginning.
Whatever he should call her, Liz Lemon is walking into Sbarros now. He is going to have dust off his ancient plan, update it, and give it a try.
TBC....
Author: md123
Pairing: Jack/Liz, reference to Jack/Others
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,116 in this part
Spoilers: "Corporate Crush", General Character Development through Season 5
Summary: Hank Hooper orders Jack to marry. Sort of a post-ep for "Corporate Crush".
Note: I know where this story is going, but I'm not sure how many parts it's going to be.
It's almost an exact replay of five years before.
To be truthful, Jack was a little angry when Hank Hooper practically ordered him to get remarried. Where did he get off giving Jack such a personal instruction? He was no Don Geiss! But Kabletown was a family company, and having a family, by Hank's definition, apparently didn't include single fatherhood. Which was outrageous -- Jack stopped himself. He's starting to sound like Lemon. Or worse yet, Milton. That just made him angrier.
And it is anger that brings him to Sbarros, where he is absentmindedly consuming a slice of pizza. And he has Jonathan send for Lemon, just as he had five years before.
**
That time, he'd been more depressed than angry. Depressed, because Geiss had taken away the microwave division, and also because the implied judgment on Jack's lifestyle hit much harder coming from Don. Most of all, his initial consideration of who he could marry had come up aggravatingly short.
Jack's parade of beautiful women had always given him a vague sense of security that should he ever decide to settle down, he'd have plenty of good options. Not that he would ever want to settle down. But now, in the moment he needed it, he found all of his options totally inadequate. None of them were relationship material, much less marriage material. Attractive, yes, but boring to talk to, shallow, stupid, vain, uncultured, or all of the above. Perhaps he'd arranged it that way, to avoid the temptation to repeat his mistakes with Bianca. Condi was probably the only one who didn't fit that profile, and he'd thoroughly sabotaged that. Breaking up by text was enough to make sure that that door was closed, even if he still didn't harbor suspicions about her and Putin.
And so, passing through his mental rolodex, he came to Liz Lemon. An outrageous suggestion, someone at her station in life -- and a mere 8 -- being with him. She certainly had several obvious flaws, and he could catalog -- and had cataloged, to her -- all of them. But, he could stand talking to her for hours on end, and had done so for a year without growing weary. That was rare enough. Rarer still was the way that Lemon had gotten under his skin. He couldn't describe the hold that woman held on him; it didn't make any sense to him, anyway. He simply felt drawn to her -- not sexually, not really, although she had charms he did his best to ignore. There was something infectious about her, something he was trying hard to identify, and it kept him coming back for more.
And that maybe was the best he could do. Someone with long-term potential that could grow into something real. But there was one obvious problem. Lemon was hung up on this person in the building, this "flower guy," hung up enough that she had abandoned him during the fireworks fiasco. He could hardly blame her for taking his advice and devoting time to her personal life, but it hurt a bit that a furtive attraction was enough for her to forget all about him. That he was her boss should have been enough, but given that he'd thought they had a deep connection, it was even more appalling.
Liz had, obliviously, introduced her new man to Jack, and he selfishly tried to wreck things from within. As Floyd gushed over him, the path was obvious: he played the third wheel, putting space between them. It was a mean thing to do to Lemon, and to Floyd, whom he liked, but he was playing for keeps here.
But Lemon was a sharper adversary than he reckoned. She warned him off, and it seemed clear that her bond with Floyd was simply too strong for him to break.
Just in time, Phoebe indicated her interest, and she seemed to have so many of the qualities that his other women lacked. She was elegant, intelligent, and beautiful, if a little strange. In a panic, he convinced himself she was the one, and proposed in a matter of days.
When the engagement to Phoebe thankfully collapsed, he realized the folly of simply grabbing the nearest available woman, so his mania subsided for a while. But the influence of his mentor remained: combined with Lemon's endless yammering about marriage and kids, it led Jack to view all his women through that prism. He was almost ready to propose to CC, in spite of it terminating his career; it'd caused him to jump the gun a bit in proposing to Elisa, having convinced himself that she was "the one," and not just because it was the only way they could have sex.
He didn't really see another promising candidate until two arrived almost simultaneously. Although Geiss was already dead, he couldn't help but evaluate both Nancy and Avery as marriage material, and was willing to lead himself down that road with both. Jack thought that the old him -- or indeed a normal man -- wouldn't have gotten so swept up thinking about a future with them.
The results were, again, nearly catastrophic. Were Avery not so clearly willing to do or accept anything to be with him, or had the pregnancy not forced his hand, his tendency to equate any multidimensional attraction with true love would have wrecked things with both of them.
The plus side of his state of mind was that when Nancy was removed as an option, he was able to throw himself completely into engagement and marriage with Avery, overlooking her faults and embracing what it was that he liked about her. And in truth, although some part of his soul wasn't fulfilled by partnering with her, he probably could've been happy with Avery and Liddy through the end of his life.
**
Five years later, everything has changed and nothing has changed. He still has no good options but Liz Lemon, but over the years his relationship with her has blossomed into something unique and unexpected. In some ways it transcends what even most married couples share; it is simultaneously too developed, and not developed enough, to consider marriage.
Jack's past relationships have either been women he knew when he was young (Bianca, Nancy); extremely accomplished women his own age (Condi, CC); or women a decade younger who were also 10s (Elisa, Phoebe, Avery). Lemon doesn't really fit into any of those categories, although there's a little bit of each in her. But there is something about her, something that's drawn him to her from almost the very beginning.
Whatever he should call her, Liz Lemon is walking into Sbarros now. He is going to have dust off his ancient plan, update it, and give it a try.
TBC....