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[30 rock] (would you, could you) won't you be my sandwich? - pg (for ncc_gqmf)
Title: (Would You, Could You) Won't You Be My Sandwich?
Rating: PG
Length: 3200 words
Fandom: 30 Rock (Liz/Carol, Liz/Wesley)
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ncc_gqmf
A/N: This is forncc_gqmf who a million years ago made a very generous donation for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_pakistan and asked for Liz/Wesley, "something funny and full of annoyances and bad Britishisms." Unfortunately due to my inability to finish in a timely fashion it's now also full of jossings. I only wish it were adequate thanks for your generosity and patience! (Thanks as always to inkdot for holding my hand lo these many, many months of self-doubt and fits of deletion ♥)
Read it at AO3
So Liz remembers time in sandwiches, whatever. That's not weirder than anything else she does.
151. meatball sub, extra bread
After almost a year of dating, Liz was pretty much used to the random crying jags.
Heh, jags.
But the crying? It still made her feel weird, sure, like someone was brushing her hair from inside her head. Or that time she tried to eat only sugar-free cookies. But it didn't bother her. Much.
They were settling in for a nice long, romantic evening of meatball subs and the season one DVDs of The Mentalist that had accidentally found their way into her Amazon cart, when Carol's sobbing suddenly coalesced into words.
"It's you, Liz," he choked out. "It's all you."
Whoa, what? Was that a good "it's you" or a bad one? It was hard enough for her to tell which was which but with Carol, sometimes the crying was because things were going so well between them—Vegas had been mostly soft weeping, no matter what she told Jack.
And what was she supposed to say to that? Was this an affectionate it's-you or a break-up one? Damn it, she couldn't read signals! This was why she needed Dr Phil!
She opted for the neutral ground of trying to comfort him and reluctantly put down her plate. Carol sagged into her when she moved closer on the couch, giving her room to give him a stiff-armed hug and a few pats on his back.
See? Take that, Kenneth! She was totally capable of touching another person in a somewhat nurturing and comforting manner, even if he was revolting at the moment.
But Carol was having none of it. He pushed away and sniffled, a loud, long, disgusting clearing of his throat. Liz tried to turn her involuntary gag into a pained grimace she hoped was more suitable to whatever the conversation was supposed to be.
"I can't do this anymore," Carol said. He looked her in the eye, all calm and steady and bloodshot and gross.
The extra bread from her meatball sub turned to stone. "We can watch Psych instead!" she bargained. "I don't even like Simon Baker, or his weird eye!"
He sniffled again, swiping a hand across his nose. "That's not what I mean. I looo—like you, Liz, a lot, but my best years are running out. I'm only a mustache and a sweater away from Ned Flanders here."
He had a point. His hair was getting pretty ... helmet-y.
"I can change! Uh... Uh, you can totally have the bathroom after me in the morning! It might mean an end to All You Can Eat Burrito night, but I'm willing—"
"I'm really sorry, Liz. It's just not enough for me anymore."
And that was that. Twenty minutes later, he and his overnight bag were gone and Liz was staring at the microwave as her sub went around and around.
The timer dinged and the light went out. ALL DONE, the display blinked.
"Oh, don't start," she warned.
1. sausage roll, extra cheese
Liz waited for Tracy to storm off the stage at the end of dress rehearsal before she gathered up her script revisions and signaled to the stage manager to call lunch.
"You can't avoid me forever!" Jenna shook off the wardrobe assistant and chased after her. "And you can't keep bottling these things up, Liz. It's not good for a woman your age."
"Our age, Jenna. And I'm fine! I'm better off without him, really. My nights are my own again and I have, like, four hundred thousand frequent flyer miles to trade in now. Plus I don't have to spend them going all the way to stupid Burbank for a sixteen hour weekend."
Jenna clasped her hands under her prosthetic chin and beamed. "Yes, anger! That's so healthy. Keep going."
It was the last thing Liz wanted to do but once the words started she couldn't stop.
"And you know how he cried all the time?" She screwed up her face. "Your magazines lie, Jenna. Crying's only cute on a guy the first time you watch The Celeste Cunningham Story together. We saw it six times."
Five minutes later, she was still going strong—and she hadn't even started on Carol's unhealthy attachment to bamboo socks—but over Jenna's shoulder she saw Kenneth stepping out of the elevator. She started toward him and juggled her binders and laptop from one arm to the other so she could pull a huge wad of cash out of her pocket. She'd confiscated it earlier from the cockfighting ring the crew had set up in Josh's abandoned dressing room.
Apparently recognizing the lull in the diatribe as her opening, Jenna poured on the pout. "I still can't believe they gave that movie to Candice van der Shark. In my audition tape, I actually did have part of my face bitten off by a dog. That's dedication!"
She wilted with feigned heartbreak, then stole a look as if to gauge the sympathy levels she was getting. But Liz had already turned away to snag Kenneth as he passed. She shoved the money in his hand.
"Miz Lemon," he gasped, all wrinkled brow and wide eyes. "Did you rob a stagecoach?"
Liz side-eyed him, head on. "Just, make sure this goes to a good charity, not one of your crappy ones."
He bobbed his head happily and turned to skip off, leaving Liz to yell after him, "And not the Comedian's Widows and Orphans fund. I know what they do with that money!"
Jenna, tired of being ignored, dug her nails into Liz's upper arms like talons. "You know what you need? A couple dozen Spanx, a push-up bra, and a 19-year-old Computer Science major from Columbia!"
"Whoa, no. No no no no no." Liz backed away so fast she knocked over an entire rack of bedazzled tracksuits. "Hold it right there, bucko. First of all, I only need two pairs of Spanx, thank you very much, because I haven't eaten anything but egg whites for three weeks. So there. And second of all, ew."
"Just because the last time you tried to go cougaring, you wound up with your own doppel-son-ganger—"
"Neither of those are actual words."
"All I'm saying is, you need to get back on that horse! I mean, you can't possibly look like everyone's mom."
Liz hissed, "Ixnay on the om-may!"
"Tomorrow night, ten o'clock. I'm going to go call Sasha! He's dating two of the bartenders at Puma Town."
"Puma Town? Seriously? Jenna, no."
At some point, one assumed, Liz would have learned that saying no to Jenna was a complete waste of her breath. But if fifteen years of friendship hadn't been enough to teach the lesson, occasionally being dragged along for post-breakup consolation clubbing wasn't going to do it either.
---
The club was everything she dreaded: too loud, too dark, too crowded, too lacking in snacks bigger than a peanut. She dodged a platinum blonde poured into a skintight leather catsuit who was grinding against a boy less than a third her age and made her way to where Jenna was perched on a bar stool.
"I think I'm going to take off!"
"Liz, no!" Jenna pointed toward the stage opposite the bar. "Get up there before you take your top off."
"I'm not—Okay!" She grinned and gave a double thumbs-up.
It took Liz another ten minutes to make her way through the crush of gyrating bodies and out onto the street. The stink of Axe clung to her hair as she carefully picked her way down the sidewalk, weaving between the illegally parked mopeds. She grumbled her way all the way down the block to the deli on the corner, the dancing neon cup in the window beckoning her inside.
"Heyyy, sad dancey lady!" cried the woman behind the counter. "You stay away too long!"
As the woman continued to talk like they were old friends, catching her up on what sounded like the latest in a long line of her son-in-law's get rich quick schemes, Liz remembered why the dancing cup seemed so familiar. Since they'd moved to New York, Jenna had adopted this neighborhood for all her cheering-up-Liz clubbing needs. Maybe for all her other clubbing needs too, for all Liz knew, despite the fact that it hadn't had a single A-list hotspot since Derek Jeter caught an after-hours club and Jenna's hair on fire.
So these semi-mean streets had witnessed every single post-breakup cheer-up escape Liz made. And with this particular shop seeming to be the only one in several blocks open to cater to the drunk and lonely late into the night...
This was her breakup deli! Usually at this point she was so plastered on sweet, fizzy cocktails that all she remembered the next morning was a vague sense of belonging and needing to buy more Tums.
The woman clapped her hands. "You look hungry, Dancey. Wait, wait! I get you hugenormous sandwich right away!"
"No, really, I don't need..." Liz paused as the woman lifted the lid of a food warmer and the smell of hot, spicy sausage rolled out on a billow of steam. "I need all of that. All of it."
As she watched, the woman filled a soft white roll to overflowing with sausage, onions, hot peppers, cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, and more onions. A second helping of cheese and another half-roll went on top, then the whole thing was wrapped in crisp white paper with two pickles. Full on pickles, too, as thick as her wrist, dripping brine all over the counter, adding a stinging vinegary note to the mouth-watering aromas that beckoned her closer and closer, until she was nearly plastered against the cashier's cage. She thrust a fistful of bills at the young man slumped behind the register and snatched up the wrapped sandwich, holding it to her nose for just one more whiff of that delicious, greasy sausage smell.
"You are my guardian angel," she purred to the woman.
"That has to be," came a voice from behind her, "the most grotesque sarnie I've ever seen. You aren't going to eat that, are you?"
Of all the late-night delis, in all the meatpacking districts, in all the world....
"Mr Snipes!" the sandwich woman cried, with every bit as much enthusiasm as she used on Liz. "Your tongue soup, all ready!"
Not turning to run screaming into the street was, quite possibly, the hardest thing Liz had ever done. But she was drunk on the promise of mayonnaise, and the look on Wesley's face suddenly made her remember how he could be weirdly sympathetic to whatever she was whining about, right up until he started talking and ruined everything.
And, okay, maybe she had one too many fizzy cougar cocktails after all, because she felt her mouth open to say, "Do you want to eat? Here?"
Wesley's forehead wrinkled up like a old tomato. "At the counter? I don't think standing is an aid to digestion..."
"I meant with me."
"Oh," he said, in the least Colin Firthy kind of way imaginable, "are you not still dating that... that doorman, then?"
Liz scowled.
"Well, I suppose I have nothing better to do. Yes, why not?"
It was amazing how much she wanted to strangle him when he smiled.
---
It was also amazing how much she didn't regret inviting him home.
She blamed the sausage roll. For a lot of things.
---
Jenna was lying in wait at the elevator bank when Liz arrived at work on Monday morning.
It was kind of sweet, the way Jenna had been watching out for her since the breakup. Once you got past the annoyance factor, anyway. Almost like when they were back in Little Armenia and sitting up together late into the night—okay, until eleven. The most recent time Jenna had stalked her was much less pleasant and resulted in a lot more prying doors off their hinges.
"So what happened to you the other night? Tell me everything! You totally disappeared after your striptease."
Frank dropped his coffee mug in the sink with a loud clank. "Striptease? Where?"
"There was no striptease," Liz corrected. Frank looked torn between disappointment and horror when he realized who was talking. She made a face at him and turned to Jenna. "And I went home. Alone."
"Li-iz! What happened to that cute English major? He was totally into you."
"No, he was totally into correcting my grammar. Which, by the way, are doing real good without his help, thanks."
"Uh-huh." Jenna leaned closer and peered at her. "You swear you didn't go home with anyone? Because you didn't answer your phone yesterday and you look like..."
Liz put her head down like a charging bull and powered down the hallway toward the writers' room.
Jenna gasped. "You didn't!"
"Didn't what?" Her fake laugh was way too loud. "I didn't do a lot of things this weekend. Like, for instance, I did not forget that I have to go. To over there. To talk to Pete. Now."
She almost threw herself the rest of the way down the hallway, dodging PAs left and right.
"What's with her?" Pete asked as he came up behind Jenna, folding his arms across the binder he held to his chest.
"I think she got laid," Jenna said, her arch tone completely at odds with the way she was bouncing up and down like someone had just given her The Situation's private number.
"Fine," Frank said. "Don't tell us."
6. ice cream sandwich, chocolate dipped
"You seem oddly enthusiastic today, Lemon."
"Well, that's because I got la—"
"Zzzt!" Jack said, waving a hand as if to swat her away. "As your boss, your mentor, and your friend as long as I don't have to declare it publicly until after Kabletown announces the new Global Leadership Team, I beg you not to finish that sentence."
"Ladyfingers, Jack. Wesley Snipes took me to an all-you-can-eat, twenty-four-hour dessert buffet. Boo. Yah." She fistbumped herself, complete with fireworks.
Jack recoiled and threw his back against the wall of the elevator as if to get away. He slapped a hand against the hidden emergency stop button, the one that didn't trigger the alarm but did turn off the security feed in case of sensitive negotiations. "Good God, you can't date Wesley Snipes! It's certainly not unusual for a woman your age to turn to a prison pen pal, but—"
"No! English Wesley Snipes, not Demolition Man."
"Oh, that's right. The one from the wedding. The white one."
Liz stuck her nose in the air. "I don't see the world through that lens, Jack. And who said anything about dating? I'm just a single lady, enjoying having an infuriating man pay for my meals sometimes. There's no shame in that. It doesn't violate any of my convictions, no sirree. None at all."
"Lemon," he rumbled in his Jack Donaghy, Executive voice. The voice that had broken hundreds of spirits and single-handedly boosted the Dow Industrial Average by almost 97 points just asking for another whisky at Jack Welch's retirement party.
"I don't know what to do," she cried. "He's awful and I want to punch him all the time! But a twenty-four-hour dessert buffet! How am I supposed to resist? I can't resist!"
Jack let go of the emergency button and the elevator jerked into motion once again. "I'd offer advice, but we all know how you'd only manage to twist it around to suit whatever self-destructive impulse strikes you next."
"Point."
"Instead, a question: has he seen you eat pizza yet? One with 'lover' in the name?"
She gagged at the word but nodded.
"And presumably after that ordeal he's still willing to not only continue to spend intimate time—"
"Ugh, no, no say that."
"—with you but actually pays for you to consume more food?"
Liz ground out a reluctant acknowledgment and Jack nodded. The elevator doors sprang open as if at his command. He stepped between them and whirled, his suit coat flaring dramatically.
Pointing at her, he exclaimed, "You, Liz Lemon, are dating English Wesley Snipes. And you like it."
"Noooo," she wailed, as he moved back and let the doors close. "Do not want!"
17. tuna fish, extra mayonnaise
Liz put down the last bit of her sandwich with a groan. "Please, will you just stop talking."
"Oh, but I wanted to finish telling you about the mating habits of the toads of Upper Tippington! Last night didn't begin to cover the very interesting way they—"
"I'm trying to eat!"
"How utterly shocking," Wesley muttered.
His face started to do the wrinkled old tomato thing again. Liz stuffed the last bite in her mouth and chewed much longer than the food lasted.
"You know, last night was our seventeenth tryst." He gave her one of the exaggerated winks that she was almost starting to find more charming than embarrassing.
"Ugh, stop calling it that. 'Trysts' sounds like something a doctor removes. Without anesthesia."
He ignored her, something he was getting much better at doing the longer their ... whatever it was lasted.
"In some countries, we would be welcoming the birth of our first child by now."
"And in some countries, I would have smothered you in your sleep by now," she shot back.
Wesley sat back, looking far more pleased than he had any right to look after a Lemon Zinger Special.
(Oh yeah, she went there. Trademark infringement, her ass, Celestial Seasonings!)
Suspicious, she checked her wineglass. The last time he looked so happy, she had to listen to a half hour on the merits of the 2010 Ballachulish pinot grigio over the Muckle Flugga.
"What?"
"Sounds like someone already knows about the mating habits of the Tippington toads."
So maybe sometimes she snuck onto his incredibly outdated laptop ("Individualised Googler, Liz, really," came the echo of his exasperated correction) while he was sleeping to look up the weird trivia bombs he kept dropping. Big whoop.
18. grilled cheese
Twenty minutes after he kissed her goodbye and headed home, Liz wrestled her way out of the Snuggie and pulled up Wesley's number in her phone.
The text she sent:
The text she got back:
"Ugh, what is wrong with you?" she groaned, but that was definitely a smile she felt. And it wasn't because of all the night cheese melting on the George Foreman grill, either.
63. meatloaf, double gravy
Rosemary Howard's one-woman play was running at a dumpy dinner theater on the outskirts of Little Chechnya for three nights only. Liz wanted to sneak in and out without anyone seeing them, the better to avoid awkward questions and potential kidnapping attempts, but Wesley was so enthralled by the unfolding of Rosemary's Sweater of Tyranny that they missed their chance.
"That jumper was simply astonishing. She really has a keen insight into the despair of wool. Reminds me of that balladeer, Justin Bieber." He caught her look almost before it left her face. "The other one. The proper one."
Liz had heard weirder, usually from him.
As the lights came up, revealing the peeling paint and stained curtains that framed the stage, Liz pretended to be fascinated by the remnants of dinner that she hadn't been able to force down. All the gravy in the world couldn't mask the stale taste of old bread.
Wesley kept quiet while the small crowd around them got up and left, grumbling about the show as they went.
He folded his napkin and tucked it under the edge of his plate. "Shall we go talk to some different food about this, do you think?"
Sure, weirder, she'd heard. But better would be hard to find.
Rating: PG
Length: 3200 words
Fandom: 30 Rock (Liz/Carol, Liz/Wesley)
Recipient:
ncc_gqmfA/N: This is for
ncc_gqmf who a million years ago made a very generous donation for help_pakistan and asked for Liz/Wesley, "something funny and full of annoyances and bad Britishisms." Unfortunately due to my inability to finish in a timely fashion it's now also full of jossings. I only wish it were adequate thanks for your generosity and patience! (Thanks as always to inkdot for holding my hand lo these many, many months of self-doubt and fits of deletion ♥)Read it at AO3
So Liz remembers time in sandwiches, whatever. That's not weirder than anything else she does.
After almost a year of dating, Liz was pretty much used to the random crying jags.
Heh, jags.
But the crying? It still made her feel weird, sure, like someone was brushing her hair from inside her head. Or that time she tried to eat only sugar-free cookies. But it didn't bother her. Much.
They were settling in for a nice long, romantic evening of meatball subs and the season one DVDs of The Mentalist that had accidentally found their way into her Amazon cart, when Carol's sobbing suddenly coalesced into words.
"It's you, Liz," he choked out. "It's all you."
Whoa, what? Was that a good "it's you" or a bad one? It was hard enough for her to tell which was which but with Carol, sometimes the crying was because things were going so well between them—Vegas had been mostly soft weeping, no matter what she told Jack.
And what was she supposed to say to that? Was this an affectionate it's-you or a break-up one? Damn it, she couldn't read signals! This was why she needed Dr Phil!
She opted for the neutral ground of trying to comfort him and reluctantly put down her plate. Carol sagged into her when she moved closer on the couch, giving her room to give him a stiff-armed hug and a few pats on his back.
See? Take that, Kenneth! She was totally capable of touching another person in a somewhat nurturing and comforting manner, even if he was revolting at the moment.
But Carol was having none of it. He pushed away and sniffled, a loud, long, disgusting clearing of his throat. Liz tried to turn her involuntary gag into a pained grimace she hoped was more suitable to whatever the conversation was supposed to be.
"I can't do this anymore," Carol said. He looked her in the eye, all calm and steady and bloodshot and gross.
The extra bread from her meatball sub turned to stone. "We can watch Psych instead!" she bargained. "I don't even like Simon Baker, or his weird eye!"
He sniffled again, swiping a hand across his nose. "That's not what I mean. I looo—like you, Liz, a lot, but my best years are running out. I'm only a mustache and a sweater away from Ned Flanders here."
He had a point. His hair was getting pretty ... helmet-y.
"I can change! Uh... Uh, you can totally have the bathroom after me in the morning! It might mean an end to All You Can Eat Burrito night, but I'm willing—"
"I'm really sorry, Liz. It's just not enough for me anymore."
And that was that. Twenty minutes later, he and his overnight bag were gone and Liz was staring at the microwave as her sub went around and around.
The timer dinged and the light went out. ALL DONE, the display blinked.
"Oh, don't start," she warned.
Liz waited for Tracy to storm off the stage at the end of dress rehearsal before she gathered up her script revisions and signaled to the stage manager to call lunch.
"You can't avoid me forever!" Jenna shook off the wardrobe assistant and chased after her. "And you can't keep bottling these things up, Liz. It's not good for a woman your age."
"Our age, Jenna. And I'm fine! I'm better off without him, really. My nights are my own again and I have, like, four hundred thousand frequent flyer miles to trade in now. Plus I don't have to spend them going all the way to stupid Burbank for a sixteen hour weekend."
Jenna clasped her hands under her prosthetic chin and beamed. "Yes, anger! That's so healthy. Keep going."
It was the last thing Liz wanted to do but once the words started she couldn't stop.
"And you know how he cried all the time?" She screwed up her face. "Your magazines lie, Jenna. Crying's only cute on a guy the first time you watch The Celeste Cunningham Story together. We saw it six times."
Five minutes later, she was still going strong—and she hadn't even started on Carol's unhealthy attachment to bamboo socks—but over Jenna's shoulder she saw Kenneth stepping out of the elevator. She started toward him and juggled her binders and laptop from one arm to the other so she could pull a huge wad of cash out of her pocket. She'd confiscated it earlier from the cockfighting ring the crew had set up in Josh's abandoned dressing room.
Apparently recognizing the lull in the diatribe as her opening, Jenna poured on the pout. "I still can't believe they gave that movie to Candice van der Shark. In my audition tape, I actually did have part of my face bitten off by a dog. That's dedication!"
She wilted with feigned heartbreak, then stole a look as if to gauge the sympathy levels she was getting. But Liz had already turned away to snag Kenneth as he passed. She shoved the money in his hand.
"Miz Lemon," he gasped, all wrinkled brow and wide eyes. "Did you rob a stagecoach?"
Liz side-eyed him, head on. "Just, make sure this goes to a good charity, not one of your crappy ones."
He bobbed his head happily and turned to skip off, leaving Liz to yell after him, "And not the Comedian's Widows and Orphans fund. I know what they do with that money!"
Jenna, tired of being ignored, dug her nails into Liz's upper arms like talons. "You know what you need? A couple dozen Spanx, a push-up bra, and a 19-year-old Computer Science major from Columbia!"
"Whoa, no. No no no no no." Liz backed away so fast she knocked over an entire rack of bedazzled tracksuits. "Hold it right there, bucko. First of all, I only need two pairs of Spanx, thank you very much, because I haven't eaten anything but egg whites for three weeks. So there. And second of all, ew."
"Just because the last time you tried to go cougaring, you wound up with your own doppel-son-ganger—"
"Neither of those are actual words."
"All I'm saying is, you need to get back on that horse! I mean, you can't possibly look like everyone's mom."
Liz hissed, "Ixnay on the om-may!"
"Tomorrow night, ten o'clock. I'm going to go call Sasha! He's dating two of the bartenders at Puma Town."
"Puma Town? Seriously? Jenna, no."
At some point, one assumed, Liz would have learned that saying no to Jenna was a complete waste of her breath. But if fifteen years of friendship hadn't been enough to teach the lesson, occasionally being dragged along for post-breakup consolation clubbing wasn't going to do it either.
---
The club was everything she dreaded: too loud, too dark, too crowded, too lacking in snacks bigger than a peanut. She dodged a platinum blonde poured into a skintight leather catsuit who was grinding against a boy less than a third her age and made her way to where Jenna was perched on a bar stool.
"I think I'm going to take off!"
"Liz, no!" Jenna pointed toward the stage opposite the bar. "Get up there before you take your top off."
"I'm not—Okay!" She grinned and gave a double thumbs-up.
It took Liz another ten minutes to make her way through the crush of gyrating bodies and out onto the street. The stink of Axe clung to her hair as she carefully picked her way down the sidewalk, weaving between the illegally parked mopeds. She grumbled her way all the way down the block to the deli on the corner, the dancing neon cup in the window beckoning her inside.
"Heyyy, sad dancey lady!" cried the woman behind the counter. "You stay away too long!"
As the woman continued to talk like they were old friends, catching her up on what sounded like the latest in a long line of her son-in-law's get rich quick schemes, Liz remembered why the dancing cup seemed so familiar. Since they'd moved to New York, Jenna had adopted this neighborhood for all her cheering-up-Liz clubbing needs. Maybe for all her other clubbing needs too, for all Liz knew, despite the fact that it hadn't had a single A-list hotspot since Derek Jeter caught an after-hours club and Jenna's hair on fire.
So these semi-mean streets had witnessed every single post-breakup cheer-up escape Liz made. And with this particular shop seeming to be the only one in several blocks open to cater to the drunk and lonely late into the night...
This was her breakup deli! Usually at this point she was so plastered on sweet, fizzy cocktails that all she remembered the next morning was a vague sense of belonging and needing to buy more Tums.
The woman clapped her hands. "You look hungry, Dancey. Wait, wait! I get you hugenormous sandwich right away!"
"No, really, I don't need..." Liz paused as the woman lifted the lid of a food warmer and the smell of hot, spicy sausage rolled out on a billow of steam. "I need all of that. All of it."
As she watched, the woman filled a soft white roll to overflowing with sausage, onions, hot peppers, cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, and more onions. A second helping of cheese and another half-roll went on top, then the whole thing was wrapped in crisp white paper with two pickles. Full on pickles, too, as thick as her wrist, dripping brine all over the counter, adding a stinging vinegary note to the mouth-watering aromas that beckoned her closer and closer, until she was nearly plastered against the cashier's cage. She thrust a fistful of bills at the young man slumped behind the register and snatched up the wrapped sandwich, holding it to her nose for just one more whiff of that delicious, greasy sausage smell.
"You are my guardian angel," she purred to the woman.
"That has to be," came a voice from behind her, "the most grotesque sarnie I've ever seen. You aren't going to eat that, are you?"
Of all the late-night delis, in all the meatpacking districts, in all the world....
"Mr Snipes!" the sandwich woman cried, with every bit as much enthusiasm as she used on Liz. "Your tongue soup, all ready!"
Not turning to run screaming into the street was, quite possibly, the hardest thing Liz had ever done. But she was drunk on the promise of mayonnaise, and the look on Wesley's face suddenly made her remember how he could be weirdly sympathetic to whatever she was whining about, right up until he started talking and ruined everything.
And, okay, maybe she had one too many fizzy cougar cocktails after all, because she felt her mouth open to say, "Do you want to eat? Here?"
Wesley's forehead wrinkled up like a old tomato. "At the counter? I don't think standing is an aid to digestion..."
"I meant with me."
"Oh," he said, in the least Colin Firthy kind of way imaginable, "are you not still dating that... that doorman, then?"
Liz scowled.
"Well, I suppose I have nothing better to do. Yes, why not?"
It was amazing how much she wanted to strangle him when he smiled.
---
It was also amazing how much she didn't regret inviting him home.
She blamed the sausage roll. For a lot of things.
---
Jenna was lying in wait at the elevator bank when Liz arrived at work on Monday morning.
It was kind of sweet, the way Jenna had been watching out for her since the breakup. Once you got past the annoyance factor, anyway. Almost like when they were back in Little Armenia and sitting up together late into the night—okay, until eleven. The most recent time Jenna had stalked her was much less pleasant and resulted in a lot more prying doors off their hinges.
"So what happened to you the other night? Tell me everything! You totally disappeared after your striptease."
Frank dropped his coffee mug in the sink with a loud clank. "Striptease? Where?"
"There was no striptease," Liz corrected. Frank looked torn between disappointment and horror when he realized who was talking. She made a face at him and turned to Jenna. "And I went home. Alone."
"Li-iz! What happened to that cute English major? He was totally into you."
"No, he was totally into correcting my grammar. Which, by the way, are doing real good without his help, thanks."
"Uh-huh." Jenna leaned closer and peered at her. "You swear you didn't go home with anyone? Because you didn't answer your phone yesterday and you look like..."
Liz put her head down like a charging bull and powered down the hallway toward the writers' room.
Jenna gasped. "You didn't!"
"Didn't what?" Her fake laugh was way too loud. "I didn't do a lot of things this weekend. Like, for instance, I did not forget that I have to go. To over there. To talk to Pete. Now."
She almost threw herself the rest of the way down the hallway, dodging PAs left and right.
"What's with her?" Pete asked as he came up behind Jenna, folding his arms across the binder he held to his chest.
"I think she got laid," Jenna said, her arch tone completely at odds with the way she was bouncing up and down like someone had just given her The Situation's private number.
"Fine," Frank said. "Don't tell us."
"You seem oddly enthusiastic today, Lemon."
"Well, that's because I got la—"
"Zzzt!" Jack said, waving a hand as if to swat her away. "As your boss, your mentor, and your friend as long as I don't have to declare it publicly until after Kabletown announces the new Global Leadership Team, I beg you not to finish that sentence."
"Ladyfingers, Jack. Wesley Snipes took me to an all-you-can-eat, twenty-four-hour dessert buffet. Boo. Yah." She fistbumped herself, complete with fireworks.
Jack recoiled and threw his back against the wall of the elevator as if to get away. He slapped a hand against the hidden emergency stop button, the one that didn't trigger the alarm but did turn off the security feed in case of sensitive negotiations. "Good God, you can't date Wesley Snipes! It's certainly not unusual for a woman your age to turn to a prison pen pal, but—"
"No! English Wesley Snipes, not Demolition Man."
"Oh, that's right. The one from the wedding. The white one."
Liz stuck her nose in the air. "I don't see the world through that lens, Jack. And who said anything about dating? I'm just a single lady, enjoying having an infuriating man pay for my meals sometimes. There's no shame in that. It doesn't violate any of my convictions, no sirree. None at all."
"Lemon," he rumbled in his Jack Donaghy, Executive voice. The voice that had broken hundreds of spirits and single-handedly boosted the Dow Industrial Average by almost 97 points just asking for another whisky at Jack Welch's retirement party.
"I don't know what to do," she cried. "He's awful and I want to punch him all the time! But a twenty-four-hour dessert buffet! How am I supposed to resist? I can't resist!"
Jack let go of the emergency button and the elevator jerked into motion once again. "I'd offer advice, but we all know how you'd only manage to twist it around to suit whatever self-destructive impulse strikes you next."
"Point."
"Instead, a question: has he seen you eat pizza yet? One with 'lover' in the name?"
She gagged at the word but nodded.
"And presumably after that ordeal he's still willing to not only continue to spend intimate time—"
"Ugh, no, no say that."
"—with you but actually pays for you to consume more food?"
Liz ground out a reluctant acknowledgment and Jack nodded. The elevator doors sprang open as if at his command. He stepped between them and whirled, his suit coat flaring dramatically.
Pointing at her, he exclaimed, "You, Liz Lemon, are dating English Wesley Snipes. And you like it."
"Noooo," she wailed, as he moved back and let the doors close. "Do not want!"
Liz put down the last bit of her sandwich with a groan. "Please, will you just stop talking."
"Oh, but I wanted to finish telling you about the mating habits of the toads of Upper Tippington! Last night didn't begin to cover the very interesting way they—"
"I'm trying to eat!"
"How utterly shocking," Wesley muttered.
His face started to do the wrinkled old tomato thing again. Liz stuffed the last bite in her mouth and chewed much longer than the food lasted.
"You know, last night was our seventeenth tryst." He gave her one of the exaggerated winks that she was almost starting to find more charming than embarrassing.
"Ugh, stop calling it that. 'Trysts' sounds like something a doctor removes. Without anesthesia."
He ignored her, something he was getting much better at doing the longer their ... whatever it was lasted.
"In some countries, we would be welcoming the birth of our first child by now."
"And in some countries, I would have smothered you in your sleep by now," she shot back.
Wesley sat back, looking far more pleased than he had any right to look after a Lemon Zinger Special.
(Oh yeah, she went there. Trademark infringement, her ass, Celestial Seasonings!)
Suspicious, she checked her wineglass. The last time he looked so happy, she had to listen to a half hour on the merits of the 2010 Ballachulish pinot grigio over the Muckle Flugga.
"What?"
"Sounds like someone already knows about the mating habits of the Tippington toads."
So maybe sometimes she snuck onto his incredibly outdated laptop ("Individualised Googler, Liz, really," came the echo of his exasperated correction) while he was sleeping to look up the weird trivia bombs he kept dropping. Big whoop.
Twenty minutes after he kissed her goodbye and headed home, Liz wrestled her way out of the Snuggie and pulled up Wesley's number in her phone.
The text she sent:
I wouldn't really smother you in your sleep.
The text she got back:
HPY2HEARIT ｡ʘ‿ʘ｡
"Ugh, what is wrong with you?" she groaned, but that was definitely a smile she felt. And it wasn't because of all the night cheese melting on the George Foreman grill, either.
Rosemary Howard's one-woman play was running at a dumpy dinner theater on the outskirts of Little Chechnya for three nights only. Liz wanted to sneak in and out without anyone seeing them, the better to avoid awkward questions and potential kidnapping attempts, but Wesley was so enthralled by the unfolding of Rosemary's Sweater of Tyranny that they missed their chance.
"That jumper was simply astonishing. She really has a keen insight into the despair of wool. Reminds me of that balladeer, Justin Bieber." He caught her look almost before it left her face. "The other one. The proper one."
Liz had heard weirder, usually from him.
As the lights came up, revealing the peeling paint and stained curtains that framed the stage, Liz pretended to be fascinated by the remnants of dinner that she hadn't been able to force down. All the gravy in the world couldn't mask the stale taste of old bread.
Wesley kept quiet while the small crowd around them got up and left, grumbling about the show as they went.
He folded his napkin and tucked it under the edge of his plate. "Shall we go talk to some different food about this, do you think?"
Sure, weirder, she'd heard. But better would be hard to find.