30 Rock- Nice is Nice Enough
Title: Nice is Nice Enough
Prompt: Dennis/Liz, you're with him?
Rating: PG-13
Community: Thoughtsicles
A/N: Eh, I don't know. I seem to be made of fail in this fandom. Here.
---
At nine o’clock on a Friday night, Liz Lemon is out on a date, and it is actually going well for once.
Well, you know. For a date.
“Hey, Dummy, are you gonna eat the rest of that popcorn?”
With Dennis.
Yes, she’s on a date with Dennis Duffy. The recently re-employed Beeper King. Who isn’t her Baby-Daddy, thank God. Because she hasn’t got a baby. She can do that, you know. Go out with him. It’s not like it’s against the law or anything. Besides, just because she’s out on one date with him, that doesn’t mean she’s dating him.
“So, we going back to your place?”
Yet.
“Dennis, your place is so much closer, can’t we just go there? My apartment is, like, thirty blocks away.”
“Listen, Liz,” he says, grabbing the popcorn bucket from her hands, and shoving a large fistful of it in his mouth. “That movie sucked, it’s cold outside, and I don’t think either of us wants to go back to an apartment full of Mexican beeper dealers.”
“What? Dennis, why are there a bunch of Mexican beeper dealers in your apartment?" She tries for a joke he might actually get. "I mean, do they even use pagers in Mexico?”
“That is so racist, Liz!” Dennis burps disapprovingly and chucks the now-empty bucket at a trashcan, missing. He keeps on walking. “There’s a beeper conference up in Hoboken on Wednesday. Now hurry up and hail a cab so we can go to your place. I need somewhere to stash my nacho cheese so they don't eat it all.” He points at the large lump in his jacket pocket, which, Liz now knows, is a jar of nacho cheese, and really, it’s kind of comforting, considering all the other things it could be. Seriously. She’d been worrying about it all night.
She doesn’t even bother saying ‘Now who’s racist?’, because with Dennis there’s just no point. Besides, it is cold, and the movie did suck. They step up to the curb, and she begins to wave at passing cabs that, like always, ignore her, while Dennis picks popcorn husks out of his teeth . “Dennis, could you help me out, here?”
“I would, Liz, but I’ve gotta get these things out of my teeth-- you know I have very sensitive gums.” He makes a horrible sucking noise through his back molars. “Stupid popcorn!”
“Right. Hey, Taxi!” Another yellow car zooms past her without pause. “Aw, nerds!”
Behind the taxicab comes a black limousine that, upon nearing Liz, begins to slow down, pulling to a stop at the curb right in front of her. Though there is no reason at all for him to be in this part of town, she knows it’s Jack, even before he rolls down his window, because her luck just sucks that way. She glances back at Dennis, checking to make sure he’s still preoccupied with sticking his fingers in his mouth, and steps up to the limo.
"What're you doing here, Jack?"
“Well, good evening, Lemon! I'm merely making my bi-monthly perusal of lower-middle class New York. It's important to know one's target audience, after all. It’s nice to see you out for once on a Friday night. Have you given up working on that scarf again?”
“No. I’m just…out of yarn. And it’s a toboggan, Jack, so suck it.”
He smiles his ‘Poor Lemon’ smile at her, and says, “Either way, it would seem you could use a ride someplace.”
Liz hesitates. Apparently Jack hasn’t noticed Dennis yet, or he would never be making the offer. “Jack, I appreciate it, but--” Dennis suddenly lets out a noise of frustration and makes another horrible sucking sound behind her. Liz winces.
Immediately, Jack’s expression loses all its pleasantness, and takes on the disgusted bearing of someone who has just stepped in dog doo. “You’re with him?”
“No. I mean, yeah, sort of. We’re on a date. But we’re not, like, dating dating, or anything. We went to a movie.” Jack’s face doesn’t clear up in the slightest. “What?”
“Lemon, surely even you ought to know better than this by now.”
His tone makes her feel like she has to defend Dennis, which is just wrong. “Well, look, it was just a movie! We ran into each other on the--” She breaks off here without saying the word ’subway’, because she‘s never really gotten around to telling Jack about the previous incident with Dennis involving a subway. You know, when he’d tried to kill her. “Anyway, he said how much he liked my new top, which no one else even noticed--”
“I noticed that curious article of fabric some clever sales clerk apparently convinced you could pass as a sweater, Lemon. I’d hoped, by not saying anything, you might be encouraged to donate it to charity voluntarily,” he cuts in testily, but she’s got a weird feeling it’s not really about the top.
“Yeah, thanks. So, as you can see, unlike you and the rest of the world, Dennis was actually nice to me, so…we went to a movie.”
Jack looks like he doesn’t know whether to be nauseous or pitying. “Lemon, the fact that you are currently feeling so neglected within your own life as to use ‘nice’ and ‘Dennis’ in the same sentence is both disturbing and sad.”
“Liz, come on, any moron can hail a cab!” Dennis yells over suddenly, and Liz winces as Jack sends her a pointed look. “Oy, Jack! Is that you, you big dummy?”
And then Dennis is sort-of shoving her aside to stick his face in the open window. “Dennis, how the heck are ya?” Jack asks in his overly-friendly voice that Liz has only ever heard him use when dealing with upper-level GE employees that he detests.
“Liz and I just finished seeing a movie,” Dennis says in that blockhead voice Liz hates. “It sucked,” he adds, before Jack can even ask, not that he was going to. “I mean, how stupid is a movie about trying to assassinate Hitler? You already know how it ends. Jeeze.” He rolls his eyes, and Liz remembers why she never went anywhere with Dennis in public. “But Dummy over here paid for the tickets, so we just had to go see it.”
He shakes his head again, and Jack gives a very distant “Ah” in answer. “But listen, Jack, I don’t have time for small talk right now. I have to go back to Liz’s apartment so I can put my cheese in her fridge. And it’s cold out here, and she can’t even get us a cab.” He leans further into the window, and lowers his voice the tiniest bit so that, ostensibly, Liz can’t hear him anymore. “And if she stays out here in the cold, she’s going to get all cranky, and then I’m not going to be able to convince her to have sex with me.”
What the what? She grabs the back of Dennis‘s jacket to try and pull him away from the window and Jack, and keep him from saying all the other embarrassing things that he will say if this goes on. “Uh, yeah, Dennis, that is so not happening!” Not now, anyway.
Dennis shrugs her off, looking irritated, and leans back in to Jack, who is pretty successfully pulling off ‘politely horrified‘. “You see what I mean?” He shakes his head some more. “She’s all cold and stuff, pretending not to want me. Will you get a load of that? Like any woman doesn’t want a piece of Dennis Duffy, the newly reinstated Beeper King. But it’s like my Uncle Patrick’s pet iguana--”
“Dennis!” Totally pissed now, Liz pulls harder on his coat, successfully pulling him a foot away from the limo, just in time to see a weird expression disappear from Jack’s face. Whatever it was, it looked sort of…ugly and dangerous, like right before he answers a call from Colleen. It’s probably lucky for Dennis he got pulled back when he did.
“What, Dummy? He knows you’re just messin’ with me! Nobody can resist The Duff!” And then he’s got her in a headlock, and the noogie begins.
“Dennis! Uck, Dennis, get off of me!“ Laughing, he does, and now Liz has a headache to deal with on top of all this. “What is your problem?” She asks, rubbing her head.
“My problem? Your problem,” He tells her, starting to look ticked, and Liz wants to punch him and leave and never have to look at Jack ever again. Before she can do any of it, Dennis is back at the window. “So how ‘bout it, Jack? Give us a ride back to her place?”
“I would love to, Dennis, but unfortunately, I’m on my way to a very important political convention.” The lie stings Liz a little, even if she can totally understand Jack not wanting to be in a car with Dennis. She doesn’t even really want to be in a car with Dennis. “It’s hosted by Hillary Clinton.” Ouch. Now that was just mean. Jack knows Liz is very aware of his Hillary-phobia.
“Well, okay then. But hey, if you get a chance, when you’re talking to all those big stupid politic-types,” Dennis leans even further into the window, reaching in his other coat pocket, “will you give ‘em these?” He hands Jack a stack of Beeper King business cards. “2009, the year of the beeper come-back, I guarantee it!” Liz wants to die.
“I’m sure,” Jack says, tucking the cards courteously into his own finely tailored pocket. He finally looks at Liz again, and his expression is really hard to read. “Well, Lemon,” he says finally, “enjoy the rest of your…’nice’ date.” He doesn’t have to use finger quotes for her to hear them around the word anyway.
“Yeah.”
Dennis puts his arm around her, and something sort of close to concern seems to appear on Jack’s face for a bare second. “You have my number.”
Weird. “Yeah…”
Jack opens his mouth, hesitates, looks from her to Dennis, and hesitates again. “Yes, well. You have it.” And then he nods like he’s actually just said anything that makes sense. “Goodnight, then, Lemon. Dennis.” And then the window rolls up, to the image of Jack shaking his head in some unnamed dismay.
“’Night Jack!” Dennis yells at the black tinted glass, just before the limousine pulls away from the curb with startling speed, taking Jack, and all Liz’s even mildly good feelings about the evening with it. “Can we go home, now? My cheese is freezing.” Even as Liz nods, she knows how sad it is that this is her life. They will go home, and he will eat all her food, trash her apartment, force her to watch more horrible movies just so he can call them stupid, and then call out for subs at three in the morning, just the way she likes them, using her credit card. “You going to actually get us a cab now, or just leave it to the man to do all the work, like always?”
She sighs, totally exhausted. “I’ve got it, Dennis.”
He smiles at her winningly, and begins sucking at his teeth again. Yeah, definitely no sex. Ever.
Standing out in the cold winter air, trying to hail a cab so she can continue this absolutely stupid date that is, like usual, going pretty horribly, Liz looks down at the slush-covered ground in resignation, catching a glance of her outfit as she does. As with everything else, Jack is right:
It is kind of an ugly sweater.
Prompt: Dennis/Liz, you're with him?
Rating: PG-13
Community: Thoughtsicles
A/N: Eh, I don't know. I seem to be made of fail in this fandom. Here.
---
At nine o’clock on a Friday night, Liz Lemon is out on a date, and it is actually going well for once.
Well, you know. For a date.
“Hey, Dummy, are you gonna eat the rest of that popcorn?”
With Dennis.
Yes, she’s on a date with Dennis Duffy. The recently re-employed Beeper King. Who isn’t her Baby-Daddy, thank God. Because she hasn’t got a baby. She can do that, you know. Go out with him. It’s not like it’s against the law or anything. Besides, just because she’s out on one date with him, that doesn’t mean she’s dating him.
“So, we going back to your place?”
Yet.
“Dennis, your place is so much closer, can’t we just go there? My apartment is, like, thirty blocks away.”
“Listen, Liz,” he says, grabbing the popcorn bucket from her hands, and shoving a large fistful of it in his mouth. “That movie sucked, it’s cold outside, and I don’t think either of us wants to go back to an apartment full of Mexican beeper dealers.”
“What? Dennis, why are there a bunch of Mexican beeper dealers in your apartment?" She tries for a joke he might actually get. "I mean, do they even use pagers in Mexico?”
“That is so racist, Liz!” Dennis burps disapprovingly and chucks the now-empty bucket at a trashcan, missing. He keeps on walking. “There’s a beeper conference up in Hoboken on Wednesday. Now hurry up and hail a cab so we can go to your place. I need somewhere to stash my nacho cheese so they don't eat it all.” He points at the large lump in his jacket pocket, which, Liz now knows, is a jar of nacho cheese, and really, it’s kind of comforting, considering all the other things it could be. Seriously. She’d been worrying about it all night.
She doesn’t even bother saying ‘Now who’s racist?’, because with Dennis there’s just no point. Besides, it is cold, and the movie did suck. They step up to the curb, and she begins to wave at passing cabs that, like always, ignore her, while Dennis picks popcorn husks out of his teeth . “Dennis, could you help me out, here?”
“I would, Liz, but I’ve gotta get these things out of my teeth-- you know I have very sensitive gums.” He makes a horrible sucking noise through his back molars. “Stupid popcorn!”
“Right. Hey, Taxi!” Another yellow car zooms past her without pause. “Aw, nerds!”
Behind the taxicab comes a black limousine that, upon nearing Liz, begins to slow down, pulling to a stop at the curb right in front of her. Though there is no reason at all for him to be in this part of town, she knows it’s Jack, even before he rolls down his window, because her luck just sucks that way. She glances back at Dennis, checking to make sure he’s still preoccupied with sticking his fingers in his mouth, and steps up to the limo.
"What're you doing here, Jack?"
“Well, good evening, Lemon! I'm merely making my bi-monthly perusal of lower-middle class New York. It's important to know one's target audience, after all. It’s nice to see you out for once on a Friday night. Have you given up working on that scarf again?”
“No. I’m just…out of yarn. And it’s a toboggan, Jack, so suck it.”
He smiles his ‘Poor Lemon’ smile at her, and says, “Either way, it would seem you could use a ride someplace.”
Liz hesitates. Apparently Jack hasn’t noticed Dennis yet, or he would never be making the offer. “Jack, I appreciate it, but--” Dennis suddenly lets out a noise of frustration and makes another horrible sucking sound behind her. Liz winces.
Immediately, Jack’s expression loses all its pleasantness, and takes on the disgusted bearing of someone who has just stepped in dog doo. “You’re with him?”
“No. I mean, yeah, sort of. We’re on a date. But we’re not, like, dating dating, or anything. We went to a movie.” Jack’s face doesn’t clear up in the slightest. “What?”
“Lemon, surely even you ought to know better than this by now.”
His tone makes her feel like she has to defend Dennis, which is just wrong. “Well, look, it was just a movie! We ran into each other on the--” She breaks off here without saying the word ’subway’, because she‘s never really gotten around to telling Jack about the previous incident with Dennis involving a subway. You know, when he’d tried to kill her. “Anyway, he said how much he liked my new top, which no one else even noticed--”
“I noticed that curious article of fabric some clever sales clerk apparently convinced you could pass as a sweater, Lemon. I’d hoped, by not saying anything, you might be encouraged to donate it to charity voluntarily,” he cuts in testily, but she’s got a weird feeling it’s not really about the top.
“Yeah, thanks. So, as you can see, unlike you and the rest of the world, Dennis was actually nice to me, so…we went to a movie.”
Jack looks like he doesn’t know whether to be nauseous or pitying. “Lemon, the fact that you are currently feeling so neglected within your own life as to use ‘nice’ and ‘Dennis’ in the same sentence is both disturbing and sad.”
“Liz, come on, any moron can hail a cab!” Dennis yells over suddenly, and Liz winces as Jack sends her a pointed look. “Oy, Jack! Is that you, you big dummy?”
And then Dennis is sort-of shoving her aside to stick his face in the open window. “Dennis, how the heck are ya?” Jack asks in his overly-friendly voice that Liz has only ever heard him use when dealing with upper-level GE employees that he detests.
“Liz and I just finished seeing a movie,” Dennis says in that blockhead voice Liz hates. “It sucked,” he adds, before Jack can even ask, not that he was going to. “I mean, how stupid is a movie about trying to assassinate Hitler? You already know how it ends. Jeeze.” He rolls his eyes, and Liz remembers why she never went anywhere with Dennis in public. “But Dummy over here paid for the tickets, so we just had to go see it.”
He shakes his head again, and Jack gives a very distant “Ah” in answer. “But listen, Jack, I don’t have time for small talk right now. I have to go back to Liz’s apartment so I can put my cheese in her fridge. And it’s cold out here, and she can’t even get us a cab.” He leans further into the window, and lowers his voice the tiniest bit so that, ostensibly, Liz can’t hear him anymore. “And if she stays out here in the cold, she’s going to get all cranky, and then I’m not going to be able to convince her to have sex with me.”
What the what? She grabs the back of Dennis‘s jacket to try and pull him away from the window and Jack, and keep him from saying all the other embarrassing things that he will say if this goes on. “Uh, yeah, Dennis, that is so not happening!” Not now, anyway.
Dennis shrugs her off, looking irritated, and leans back in to Jack, who is pretty successfully pulling off ‘politely horrified‘. “You see what I mean?” He shakes his head some more. “She’s all cold and stuff, pretending not to want me. Will you get a load of that? Like any woman doesn’t want a piece of Dennis Duffy, the newly reinstated Beeper King. But it’s like my Uncle Patrick’s pet iguana--”
“Dennis!” Totally pissed now, Liz pulls harder on his coat, successfully pulling him a foot away from the limo, just in time to see a weird expression disappear from Jack’s face. Whatever it was, it looked sort of…ugly and dangerous, like right before he answers a call from Colleen. It’s probably lucky for Dennis he got pulled back when he did.
“What, Dummy? He knows you’re just messin’ with me! Nobody can resist The Duff!” And then he’s got her in a headlock, and the noogie begins.
“Dennis! Uck, Dennis, get off of me!“ Laughing, he does, and now Liz has a headache to deal with on top of all this. “What is your problem?” She asks, rubbing her head.
“My problem? Your problem,” He tells her, starting to look ticked, and Liz wants to punch him and leave and never have to look at Jack ever again. Before she can do any of it, Dennis is back at the window. “So how ‘bout it, Jack? Give us a ride back to her place?”
“I would love to, Dennis, but unfortunately, I’m on my way to a very important political convention.” The lie stings Liz a little, even if she can totally understand Jack not wanting to be in a car with Dennis. She doesn’t even really want to be in a car with Dennis. “It’s hosted by Hillary Clinton.” Ouch. Now that was just mean. Jack knows Liz is very aware of his Hillary-phobia.
“Well, okay then. But hey, if you get a chance, when you’re talking to all those big stupid politic-types,” Dennis leans even further into the window, reaching in his other coat pocket, “will you give ‘em these?” He hands Jack a stack of Beeper King business cards. “2009, the year of the beeper come-back, I guarantee it!” Liz wants to die.
“I’m sure,” Jack says, tucking the cards courteously into his own finely tailored pocket. He finally looks at Liz again, and his expression is really hard to read. “Well, Lemon,” he says finally, “enjoy the rest of your…’nice’ date.” He doesn’t have to use finger quotes for her to hear them around the word anyway.
“Yeah.”
Dennis puts his arm around her, and something sort of close to concern seems to appear on Jack’s face for a bare second. “You have my number.”
Weird. “Yeah…”
Jack opens his mouth, hesitates, looks from her to Dennis, and hesitates again. “Yes, well. You have it.” And then he nods like he’s actually just said anything that makes sense. “Goodnight, then, Lemon. Dennis.” And then the window rolls up, to the image of Jack shaking his head in some unnamed dismay.
“’Night Jack!” Dennis yells at the black tinted glass, just before the limousine pulls away from the curb with startling speed, taking Jack, and all Liz’s even mildly good feelings about the evening with it. “Can we go home, now? My cheese is freezing.” Even as Liz nods, she knows how sad it is that this is her life. They will go home, and he will eat all her food, trash her apartment, force her to watch more horrible movies just so he can call them stupid, and then call out for subs at three in the morning, just the way she likes them, using her credit card. “You going to actually get us a cab now, or just leave it to the man to do all the work, like always?”
She sighs, totally exhausted. “I’ve got it, Dennis.”
He smiles at her winningly, and begins sucking at his teeth again. Yeah, definitely no sex. Ever.
Standing out in the cold winter air, trying to hail a cab so she can continue this absolutely stupid date that is, like usual, going pretty horribly, Liz looks down at the slush-covered ground in resignation, catching a glance of her outfit as she does. As with everything else, Jack is right:
It is kind of an ugly sweater.