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Jess wants to sleep with him, and Nick can barely believe that it’s happening, because he’s been dreaming of this moment ever since she moved in. So he doesn’t second-guess it, he doesn’t stop to think, he just pulls her into his room and kisses her, his arms wrapped tight around her waist and eyes closed as their lips glide over each other.

“This is just a one time thing,” she says as she pulls off her top, and Nick’s almost too distracted by the luminescent glow of her bare skin to hear what she says, because she’s so fucking beautiful that it

hurts.

And yeah, maybe it’s pretty self-destructive to agree to a one-night-stand with the girl he’s in love with, but this just might be the only shot the he has with Jess, and he’d be a dead man before he turned her down. So he throws caution to the mind and gives into the temptation, chasing after the sweet taste of mouth as he hoists her up into his arms and carries her to his bed.

Nick peels her off the rest of her clothing and worships every inch of her, runs his hands over any part of her that he can reach, tastes her sweet skin and strains his ears to hear every gasp and moan that slips past her lips. He commits every single second to memory so that after Jess moves on he can play it over and over in his head when he jerks himself off, trying to ignore the sound of her fucking some other guy just across the hall.

She kisses him so deep that it steals his breath away, and she’s absolutely

dripping

with want for him, and she looks so gorgeous when she’s fucking herself on his dick that it’s absolutely

obscene

. Nick does his best to keep up, gives her everything he can in the fruitless hope that it’ll change her mind and she’ll want to come back to him, that she’ll think he’s decent enough to justify another round.

Jess finishes with a muffled scream and Nick tumbles after her, his face pressed into the slick curve of her neck as he comes harder than he ever has.

He lies there for a moment, breathless and sweaty, his skin sticking to hers as he bites down hard on his lower lip so he doesn’t say something stupid like

“I’m crazy about ya, Jess,”

or even worse,

“I love you.”

“You’re not the one for me,” Jess insists after he rolls off her, and there’s a visceral pain in his chest as his heart breaks. But then she asks to stay the night, and he’s enough of a dumbass to agree, to pull her right into his arms so that her back is plastered to his front, bury his face in her sweet-smelling hair and pretend like she’s his for more than just one night.

---

The next morning he wakes up alone in bed, and he’s convinced it was all just a dream until he finds one of her long, curling hairs on his pillow, and it’s truly pathetic that he has to convince himself not to keep it. Nick scrubs his hands over his face and forces himself out of bed. It won’t do him any good to spend the afternoon moping around and pining after a girl that he can’t have. He knows that much from experience.

He finds her in the bathroom, and she doesn’t want anything to do with him. It’s exactly what he expected to happen, but it hits him like a slap in the face all the same. Nick stares at the hickey he left on her neck, the mark that says that she’s

his

, and he can’t help the angry edge to his tone when he bites out, “You’ve got something on your neck, by the way,” before storming out.

---

Nick makes sure to be a little extra mean to her for a few days until one day Winston smacks him upside the head and tells him to quit being such an ass. He mutters that he’s sorry one night over dinner, and Jess gives him a soft smile as she forgives him just like that. It’s ridiculous how quick she is to forgive, to give people a second chance even after all the shit they put her through. Nick could never be like that, he’s got too many grudges piled up on his shoulders to give in that easily. He knows how awful people can be, he’s not naive enough to give anyone the benefit of the doubt.

Well, except Jess. She seems to be his exception to most things. It’d take something truly awful for him not to come running back to her and let her back into his life. It’s terrifying that he can’t think of anything that would be a deal breaker to him.

---

They fall back into their easy rhythm after that, where Jess is her bright, beautiful self and Nick has to constantly hold himself back from letting his gaze linger too long or reaching out to stroke the soft skin of her cheek or kiss the smile right off her pink lips.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Things are weird after, and not good weird like the annoyingly cutesy way Jess puts this odd little spin on everything she does. They don’t talk about that night at all, which is totally out of character for Jess, who never seems to shut up about anything. It’s driving him crazy. He’s tempted to dig up the splintered remains of her feelings stick and shove it into her hands and demand that she give him some sort of explanation as to why she even came to him in the first place. But then he chickens out when he realizes he has no idea what he’d actually say to her and that he’s not even sure if he’s ready to hear the answers she has for him.

It ends up being a whole lot like the naked incident, where they both shove it aside and mutually decide to never bring it up ever again. Only that time they actually had a half-conversation about it, even if Jess couldn’t bring herself to actually say the word penis for the majority of it. But at least she acknowledged what happened and then they were able to move on.

Nick gives it a handful of days, and it quickly becomes apparent that neither of them are willingly going to address the elephant in the room any time soon. So he resigns himself to the reality that they’ll never talk about it and he’ll never get the answers he wants. But that doesn’t stop it from keeping him up late at night, tossing and turning in his empty bed as he tries to work out exactly what happened that fateful night.

Why would she sleep with him? Of all the guys on this planet, of all the hundreds of men who would give anything for even just fifteen minutes with her, why

him?

He has his suspicions: a combination of too much rosé, a lapse in judgement, and him being the only available guy in the loft. It’s the only way he can reason out why Jess would sleep with a guy as painfully mediocre as him.

Nick regrets saying yes to her. He doesn’t regret their night together, because it was fucking amazing and better than everything he ever dreamed. But Nick wishes that for once in his life he would’ve had the foresight to realize what a

horrible

idea it was to agree to a one-night-stand with Jessica Day: his beautiful, weird roommate. Because now the dynamic between them is all out of whack, this complicated shade to their tentatively growing friendship that’s messing with his head.

Like the other day in the bathroom when he was brushing his teeth and Jess came out of the shower all clean and sweet-smelling in that girly way that made his mouth water and his sweatpants feel a little snugger. He stared at her out of the corner of his eye as he tried to act casual and not get all sweatback-y as she walked by, her cheeks slightly flushed as she tightened her grip on the towel and pointedly avoided his eye contact. This kind of thing wasn’t weird

before

, but now he knows what all those gleaming, wet curves feel like beneath his palms and suddenly the whole mood is off. He’s a

man

, and she can’t keep parading her perfect little self all over the place like she doesn’t know what that does to him. She’s a fucking piece of artwork that he desperately wants to get his grubby hands all over.

He tries to talk to her about it a handful of times, all when he’s about two to three beers away from sober and doesn’t have the common sense to keep his damn mouth shut. But every time he goes to say something she gives him this

look

, like she’s a deer trapped in headlights and he’s about to run her down. But then again, with Jess’ huge blue eyes it’s kinda hard to tell when she’s actually afraid and when she’s just being her naive, pretty self.

Regardless of whatever convoluted feeling that’s bubbling up in his chest, the complicated mess that he can’t make heads or tails of because he’s never been good at the whole emotions thing, he still doesn’t make a move. He’s Nick Miller: washed-up failure of an almost-lawyer turned broke bartender who never does anything. He’s the guy standing in the sand to guard the wallets and Jess is the pretty girl who goes running into the salty ocean spray because she’s brave and bold and doesn’t care about whatever anyone has to say about her.

---

It’s been about three weeks (twenty three days, but it’s not like he’s counting) since

it

happened. He’s working a Saturday evening shift and Jess keeps staring at him from across the room, not even paying attention to whatever idiotic story that Schmidt’s friend is trying to tell her. Her eyes are impossibly dark as she sips her pink wine while her gaze travels over Nick, lingering on where he’s rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt to leave his forearms bare.

Nick pours himself another shot of tequila and knocks it back without thinking, fighting back the urge to grimace at the burn of it. This is all in his head, because Jess told him that she didn’t want him like that. The one time they slept together was an outlier and didn’t mean anything. It was just a friend helping a friend scratch an itch. And then they silently agreed to never bring it up ever again. Nick gives his head a little shake and then turns back to wiping down the bar, the edges of his vision starting to shimmer as the alcohol starts to work its magic. He spares one last glance up at Jess, and his heart stops dead in his tracks when her tongue darts out to lick over her lips.

She doesn’t go home with Peter that night.

Instead it’s Nick’s bed that she ends up in:

his

sheets she has a death grip on,

his

pillow she buries her face in to muffle her gasps and groans,

his

dick that fucks her until she begs to come. It’s Nick’s name that she moans as he fucks her from behind, his fingers buried in her hair as his hips snap into hers, keeping up a ruthless pace as she arches her back to get a better angle.

“That’s it, baby,” Nick groans as he sinks into her a little deeper. He tugs on her hair and Jess lets out this mangled, breathy gasp that’s so fucking gorgeous that Nick can’t help but do it again.

He knows this is gonna end painfully the next morning, that he’ll fall back into the trap of heartbreak after Jess leaves him and goes right back to acting like they’re friends and nothing more. But he doesn’t care. He’s a little bit drunk and Jess feels so goddamn good and all that matters is right here and right now. Not tomorrow morning, not what the guys would say if they found out, not the no-nail oath, not even the cute music teacher Jess told him about at dinner the other night. All he cares about is her. This is the last time he’ll have her like this, and Nick’s gonna do everything in his power to make it worth it.

Jess is moaning and gasping every time he drives into her, rocking her ass back into him as he starts to stutter in their steady rhythm. He shifts his grip to her hips to pull her harder against him and Jess whimpers,

“Yes, yes, yes

.” Her delicate hand drifts down between her legs to rub her clit in time to Nick’s frantic thrusts and it’s so, so fucking hot. It’s crazy to think of her as synonymous with the girl who a month ago couldn’t wrap her mouth around the word penis, and yet here she is: on her knees with her ass up and face down in the bed, building herself up to an orgasm as he pounds into her from behind.

“God, Jess. You feel so good.” Nick grits out as he grips her hips a little tighter. His calves are burning and sweat is dripping down his forehead but he couldn’t give any less of a damn. “So

fucking

good, honey.”

“Nick,”

she cries out, high pitched and needy, and that’s all it takes for him to come.

He flips her over and finishes her off with his fingers. Jess squirms beneath him as he sucks on her neck and thrusts three of his fingers inside her, curling them to try and find that spot that will make her moan and toss her head back against the pillow. It’s not long before she’s panting and fumbling for his arm, trying to find purchase on the slick muscles of his back as she gets closer and closer to the edge. Nick bites down on the skin above her pulse point and she finally falls apart, his name tumbling past her lips as she squeezes tight around him.

Nick reluctantly pulls away and sits up to clean himself up a little, wiping his hand off on the corner of his sheets and tugging off the used condom. He lazily chucks the tied-off condom in the direction of the trash can and then glances down at Jess. She’s still sprawled out on the mattress with her eyes fluttered shut and looking absolutely ravished: her hair in disarray, love bites down her neck, limbs loose and lazy. It’s more than a little bit of an ego boost, because

he

did that to her. He’s the reason for the satisfied, sleepy smile on her kiss-bruised lips. Nick crawls back into bed beside her and presses a few kisses up the long line of her neck, and Jess hums in approval as she curls up into him.

He knows that there’s no chance, that she meant it the first time when she said that they weren’t meant to be together. He’s been burned before, by Caroline and a string of other girlfriends and hookups who dumped him the second they realized what a loser he is. But there’s this little part of him that wants to believe in something sweeter. It’s funny, because he’s never been the type of guy to believe in empty promises or unrealistic futures. At least, not until cheery, optimistic Jess moved in. Nick wonders if she’s rubbing off on him (in more ways than one) or if she’s taken over that part of his heart that’s fallen in love with her and plastered her infectiously happy energy all over that tiny portion of his grumpy, hardened self. It’s terrifying to admit, but he knows that it’s the latter.

“This is a one-time fluke,” Jess mutters as she nestles closer against him.

Two-time fluke

, Nick corrects in his head, but he knows better than to push his luck when there’s a beautiful woman in his arms. “Sure, Jess,” he murmurs back.

He presses a kiss to her forehead and Jess sighs in response as he threads one of his hands through her hair and uses his other arm to pull her closer in towards him. Not even ten minutes pass before Jess is fast asleep, her face squished against his bare chest and arms wrapped around his middle. Nick takes the moment to admire the sight and lets himself hope that she’ll still be there when he wakes up in the morning.

---

She isn’t.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

A few days later Nick’s sitting in his usual spot on the couch, some football game on tv that he isn’t really watching because he’s more than a little distracted by what’s going on just a few feet away from him.

“I’m on a new workout regimen,” Jess explains, her hands placed on top of her head in a way that showcases the firm curve of her breasts. She places one foot far out in front of her and slowly lowers her back knee to the ground before rising back up as she completes her twenty sixth deep lunge of the afternoon. “Cece and I are training for a 5k.”

“Uh huh,” Nick agrees, his throat dry. He stares at the muscles of her thighs as they stretch into the pose, wondering how that tiny slip of stretchy fabric she’s wearing is considered to be a pair of shorts.

Jess finishes her workout and Nick stares at the way the fabric of her ‘shorts’ clings to her ass as she leaves. He sits on the couch for an excruciating fifteen minutes as he tries to think of anything except how desperately he wants her. They’re not a

thing

. She’s told him as much. Jess knows better than to shack up with a guy like him.

“Nick!” her voice echoes out of her bedroom. “I need your help for something!”

The rational voice in his head tells him to ignore her, to take an ice cold shower and then pick up some floozy tonight after his shift at the bar. But it’s

Jess

, and he’d do anything for her. She says jump, he asks how high. It’s pathetic.

Nick groans and gives himself a slap on each cheek before pushing up off the couch. Odds are she needs him to help her with some complicated stretch where he has to help her balance while she twists up into some weird position that puts those long, sleek legs of hers on display. At least it’ll give him some inspiration that will factor heavily into tonight's Nick-on-Nick time. He already knows his Google history is gonna be filled with dark haired girls doing deep lunges, might as well add a little yoga to the mix.

But when he rounds the corner into her room Jess pushes him up against her bedroom door and kisses him frantically, her hands threading through his hair as she slides her tongue into his mouth. It takes him a second to realize exactly what’s going on, but once he does he returns the kiss with vigor, slipping his hand up underneath her flimsy tank top to feel the sweat-slick curve of her lower back as he pulls her in closer to him.

“Finally,” she groans when he tips her head back to kiss down her line of her jaw. “I thought I was gonna have to do a hundred lunges before you got the hint.”

Nick smiles at that, his lips still pressed against her neck. She still has the faint remains of a hickey he left on her just last week, the slightest hint of bruising over her pulsepoint. When he sucks on the tender skin Jess moans in response, her hands fisting in the worn material of his shirt as they maneuver towards the bed. He rucks her tank top up underneath her arms and she breaks away from him just long enough to pull it off before kissing him again.

He rips off those tiny shorts as they kiss frantically, her mouth open and wet beneath his as he scrambles to unbutton and remove his shirt. The back of his knees hit the edge of her mattress and Jess gently pushes at his shoulders until he willingly falls back onto the bed, panting as he struggles to catch his breath. Jess eyes him for a moment, her gaze lingering on his bare skin as a flicker of a smile passes over her lips. Nick goes to reach for her dresser where he would think she keeps a stash of condoms, but Jess shakes her head.

“Pill,” she explains, her eyes dark with lust, and Nick curses under his breath. It’s risky and irresponsible, but so is everything else about this fleeting affair they have and he doesn’t want to break the mood by arguing with her about something she literally teaches to middle schoolers.

So instead he just nods in assent, tugging his belt open as he gestures for her to come closer. Jess grins as she shoves his jeans down past his thighs and crawls into his lap, hands braced on his chest as she rides him hard and fast, her breasts bouncing in her neon pink sports bra. Her face twists up in concentration as she chases after her orgasm, teeth sinking into the plump swell of her lower lip and cheeks flushed the prettiest shade of pink. Nick grabs onto her hips and just takes it all in, marveling up at her and wondering how on Earth he got so lucky to have her, even for one final time.

The guys are both at work, which means they have the loft all to themselves, and Jess doesn’t even try to hold back her litany of sighs and gasps and groans as she gets closer and closer to coming. She lets out a breathy whimper each time she bottoms out, and the sound of her pleasured cries and the dirty noise of their fucking echoes off her bedroom walls.

“Oh my god, Nick,”

she moans, and her voice sounds absolutely

wrecked

. “You’re so good at this-

ohh.

I didn’t even think sex could be this good.” Nick groans and slides his hand off her hip to rub at her clit, and Jess lets out a high pitched whine of approval.

“Yeah, yeah, right there.

Harder, please Nick, I need-”

Jess cuts off with a gasp as Nick thrusts his hips up. Her jaw drops open and she leans down to brace her forearms on the mattress as he fucks into her, sucking on her neck until she comes with a whimpered,

“Oh, god.”

She lets him slide out of her and then presses tight up against his side, kissing him deeply as she jerks him off, his dick wet with her own slick. “I want you to...” Jess whispers in his ear, her teeth grazing the skin at the corner of his jaw as she tightens her grip. “I want you to come.” There’s the slightest edge of nervousness to her voice, like she’s afraid she’ll get in trouble for saying a bad word. It’s so quintessentially

Jess

that Nick does just that, spilling over her fist and onto his stomach as she kisses him.

Nick brings his hand up to cradle her jaw and draws the kiss out, even though they’ve both gotten off and this is usually where things end with them. His eyes drift shut and for a moment this isn’t just some casual fling that they’ll never speak of again. His mouth moves slowly over hers and he brushes back a lock of hair that’s escaped from her ponytail, allowing himself to revel in the fantasy until Jess pulls away to lie on her side of the bed, letting out a long sigh as she stretches her arms up above her head.

“Oh gosh,” she breathes, her eyes cloudy as she stares up at the ceiling.

He chuckles and cranes his neck to look at her. “That was fun.”

“Yeah,” Jess agrees. “

Just

fun.”

Nick gazes at her from across the bed, incredibly close but impossibly far. He’d hoped that this would be the time that she said something different, that she would actually acknowledge what’s happening between the two of them and that this is something more than just a drunken mistake she swears will never happen again. The mature voice in his head says that he should stop being such a coward and actually tell her how he feels instead of just waiting for her to guess what he wants. But another part of him wants to give her a taste of her own medicine, to make her the one who wakes up alone, grasping at empty sheets and wishing he’d stuck around.

It’s a hell of a lot easier to be mean than vulnerable.

“I need to go move my car,” he lies, grabbing a tissue to wipe up the mess on his stomach before getting up off her bed and hiking his pants back up.

“Oh.” Jess looks at him for a moment, and Nick swears there’s a flash of something like disappointment in her eyes before she tucks herself beneath her comforter and picks her phone up from where she abandoned it on the nightstand. “Okay.”

He waits to see if she has anything else to say to him, and after an uncomfortably extended silence he finally gives up, scoops his shirt up off the floor and shrugs it on. Nick frowns as he refastens his belt buckle, wondering why he expected anything else. He puts a little too much force into closing the door to her bedroom, but the resounding thud of it slamming shut doesn’t do anything to lessen the resentment slowly building up in his gut. Instead he just feels like an ass.

Nick gets to his car and slides into the front seat, his forehead resting against the steering wheel as he wonders how the fuck he let himself get wrapped up in this buttmunch of a situation. This is all his dick’s fault. He should’ve said no the first time. He should’ve turned down her offer of casual, meaningless sex and just gone about his normal life: flirting with other blue-eyed, dark-haired girls at the bar and trying not to think about Jess too much when he was getting himself off.

Instead he caved faster than a folding chair, and all it took was one bat of her eyelashes to convince him. Nick groans again and slumps back into the seat, scrubbing his face with his hands. He needs to stop this. Jess is still vulnerable from Spencer, even though Nick doesn’t have the slightest clue why a bean-pole dickhead like him would ever be with someone as incredible as Jess. He

knows

it wasn’t the sex, not if what Jess has told him is true. Nick might be almost half-decent in bed, but he’s not some kind of sex god.

Jess is just reeling from heartbreak, something Nick is well acquainted with in the aftermath of getting dumped by Caroline. And if he’s being honest, he’s still recovering from the breakup, even though it’s been nearly eight months since it happened. He needs to be the bigger man here. He needs to stop giving into the temptation the minute Jess flashes those big blue eyes at him. It’s what’s best for them both.

---

He dreams of her that night, squirming beneath him, gasping and moaning his name as her fingernails sink into his shoulders.

“You’re so good,”

Dream Jess whispers in what he’s come to know as her breathy sex voice.

“So big and hard inside me. So good at fucking me. I want you. I need you. You’re all I want. Fuck me harder, please, Nick,”

she begs as he thrusts into her, just as bossy in bed as she is any other time. He knows this is all just a fantasy because Real Jess is never this explicit, but it doesn’t matter because it’s hot as fuck.

“Just like that sweetheart. Fuck. Nick, yes, yes, fuck yes. Oh god, I’m so close, baby, please. I want you to come for me, Nick. I need it. I love you. I love you. I love- ohh...”

Nick wakes up then, and he doesn’t even hesitate before shoving his hand down this boxers, the memory of the dream replaying over and over in his head blurred together with the reality of the three times they actually slept together. The scene in his mind is crystal clear: Jess’ head thrown back in pleasure, the litany of sounds that spill out of her mouth because she just can’t help it, the way she clenches around him when she comes, the whisper of her voice echoing in his ears, “

I love you

.”

It’s not until after he comes that he realizes just how fucked he is, how he’s fallen for her unlike anyone else.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Nick attempts to make good on his promise to stop this thing between him and Jess, to fulfill her guarantee that it was never going to happen ever again. He steals a tomato plant from the hardware store, not as difficult of a task as you might think, and then sets it up on the roof. Then whenever he starts to think of Jess he shoves the thought aside and then goes up to water his plants.

Literally

water them, not some weird gross euphemism like some kind of perverted sicko.

It becomes a sort of routine, heading up to the roof any time that he might accidentally do something stupid. Jess doesn’t make it easy on him, with her ridiculously tiny skirts and how she always needs his help opening a jar or restarting the internet. There’s that time he accidentally catches her coming out of the shower, skin gleaming and her hair all tied up in a poofy bun, and the way she smiled politely at him before heading off to her room, leaving him itching to yank down her towel and crowd her up against the tile of the shower. Then a few hours later she went out of her way to save him a few of the brownies she made for the birthday of some teacher at her school, smiling brightly at him when she set beside his elbow and then leaned up against his doorway as if it wasn’t any big deal at all for her to be so nice to him. And later that evening they stood side by side to brush their teeth together and Jess offered him some of her toothpaste, all sweet and thoughtful in a way that made his heart ache a little.

The plant dies after a week, the soil practically soaked through. Nick knows that it’s his fault, but he blames Jess anyways. He’s trying to get over her, to replace her with something that won’t end up biting him in the ass further down the line. Instead she keeps being so... so...

Jess

, and it’s driving him crazy. If she wasn’t so damn pretty and sweet and sexy then none of this would’ve happened.

But he knows that’s not true. Jess hasn’t even stepped foot out here this whole time.

He’s

the one who ruined the damn plants, who couldn’t keep himself together for even a fucking week.

He’s

the one who can’t turn her down, who’s become creepily obsessed with a girl who wants nothing to do with him.

Nick dumps the waterlogged planter into the trash and then rides the elevator back down to the loft. He’s fucked. Royally, absolutely fucked. There’s nothing he can do now but wait it out, hoping that what they have will fade into something he can make a joke out of.

Hey, remember that time you fell in love with a girl the minute she walked into your life? And then how you slept together a handful of times only for her to want nothing more, effectively breaking your heart in the process? Hilarious, right?

He’s so fucking screwed.

---

They’re playing a game of True American that quickly gets out of hand, because True American always gets out of hand. There are never any real ‘winners’ in True American, at least not the morning after when he’s nursing a massive hangover and sober enough to remember most of what he did while completely shitfaced. But it never matters in the moment, because the future is

eons

away, and it’s far better to live in the present where Jess has her arms wrapped around his middle as she tries to keep her balance on the tiny ottoman.

Nick’s drunk, too drunk, because instead of keeping to himself he reaches right back towards her. He grabs her proffered hand, rests his hand on the small of her back, presses up against her when they land on the same game piece. He’s playing with fire and he knows it, but he’s too drunk to care. Besides, how is he supposed to keep his hands to himself when she looks like

that:

the long curls of her hair bouncing all over the place, her blue eyes big and dark from one too many beers, her cheeks bright pink from jumping all around the loft. Jess keeps staring at him with that dangerous look of want in her eyes, yelling instructions at him in her self-assured and almost bossy teacher-voice, which he shouldn’t find hot but he absolutely

does

.

The game eventually starts to wind down, Winston and Schmidt so trashed that they barely manage to stumble off to their respective bedrooms, leaving Nick and Jess all alone with the remaining bottle of Jack. It all happens so fast, before he can even realize and try to hit the brakes. Jess’ hand is casually resting on his arm as she giggles over some dumb story about him and Schmidt in college, and he’s letting his gaze linger too long on the way her lips wrap around the bottle when she takes a swig of whiskey, and his fingertips are brushing over the soft skin of her cheek as he wipes away a stray eyelash, and her breath is catching as her eyes flick down to his mouth. Then all of a sudden the nearly-empty bottle is on the ground and she’s crawling into his lap to kiss him, her hands sliding up the front of his chest and her lips ghosting over his ear when she whispers,

“Let’s go to my room.”

They’re both leagues away from sober, and he

knows

that he’s supposed to say no, that they need to stop doing this before they both get hurt.

But he doesn’t.

“The floor is lava!” Jess says with a drunken laugh as she hops on top of her dresser, and Nick is grinning like an idiot as he stands between her legs, feet precariously balanced on one of her throw pillows.

He grabs onto her hips and pulls her right up to the edge of the dresser. Jess tips her head back and giggles, her hands fisting in the material of his shirt. Nick takes the opportunity to kiss the lean line of her neck while his hands travel up her skirt, rucking it up around her hips.

“You’re not wearing underwear,” he says in surprise, his thumb rubbing between her slick folds, completely exposed underneath her tiny black skirt.

Jess’ blush deepens and she leans in towards him. “I took ‘em off in the bathroom,” she whispers in some raspy, old-timey voice that ends with a out-of-character giggle.

“How naughty,” he tries in a weird voice of his own. But instead of laughing along her pupils dilate even wider as she sinks her teeth into her lower lip. It sends a wave of blood rushing down to his dick and suddenly the moment is far more serious than funny.

“Condom,” she says breathlessly, hands fumbling for the top drawer of the dresser.

Nick nods in frantic agreement and yanks his shirt off. It takes him an extra few seconds when the fabric gets all caught up around his head, and Jess giggles as her hands roam over the exposed skin of his chest. Despite her attempts to distract him, he eventually manages to free himself and then scrambles to open the drawer. It won’t budge after two tugs, and then he laughs when he realizes that it’s because Jess’ legs are still draped over the edge. He taps the bottom of her feet and she quickly pulls her legs up and out of the way.

The drawer is full of her underthings, careful stacks of panties and bras, and Nick feels like he should linger on them, to see if there’s any he recognizes or wants to see on her. But instead he just digs through it, trying to find the box of condoms and not paying attention to the mess he’s making. It feels poetic in a way that he’s too drunk to appreciate, his attention split between the feel of all that lace beneath his fingers and the enticing sight of Jess’ bare legs all folded up on top of the dresser.

“Try the bottom one,” Jess offers after a few minutes, fidgeting impatiently on top of the dresser as she undoes the buttons of her blouse.

He gets down on his knees, still carefully balancing on the pillow because the floor is lava. After a few clumsy tries he finally gets the bottom drawer open and spots the ridiculously oversized box shoved in the back corner. He snags a condom before shoving the drawer most of the way closed as he grins up at her victoriously.

Jess’ feet are still up on top of the dresser, her skirt hiked up past her thighs and it’s almost like she’s spread wide open for him. Nick smiles mischievously as he places his hands on the insides of her thighs and leans in to lick up the length of her folds. Jess gasps in surprise, a breathless noise that echoes in his ears. He smirks against her before doing it again, pressing down enough to open her up to him and Jess moans as she threads her fingers through his hair.

Nick feels like he’s pretty drunk, which means that he’s probably even less sober than he actually feels, so finess isn’t really on his side here in his quest to get her off. He decides to settle for the basics, messily burying his face between her legs, his hands keeping her open as she grinds up against his mouth. Jess doesn’t seem to care too much about his technique, whining and moaning something like his name as she rocks her hips forward against his face. She tugs on his hair with one hand, the other holding onto the edge of the dresser hard enough to make her knuckles bright white.

“Oh

,” she gasps when he swirls his tongue over her clit. Nick repeats the action and her grip on his hair tightens, holding him in place as she comes.

Jess is panting afterwards, and she yanks him back up between her legs, shoves his pants down, and rolls on the condom in a matter of seconds. Their kiss is messy and frantic as he drives into her, his grip firm on her thighs as her fingernails dig into his shoulders.

Nick suddenly loses his balance on the throw pillow but manages to catch himself with his left foot on the semi-open drawer of her dresser. He gives Jess an apologetic look but her eyes are shut tight, her head thrown back in pleasure as she clenches around his dick. He groans and starts a sloppy trail of kisses down her neck, using his newfound leverage to fuck her even harder.

At some point there’s a distressingly loud creaking and snapping noise from the dresser, but then Jess squeezes around him and he’s too busy coming to hear anything except her crying out his name. The sound of her release rings in his ears despite her attempt to muffle it by biting down on his shoulder, and it shoves him over the edge and makes him come even harder than he thought possible.

“Wow,” Jess mumbles once they’re done, her arms draped over his shoulders. “I think we broke the dresser.”

Nick hums, his forehead pressed above her sternum, his head still spinning as he listens to the steady thumping of her heart. Jess giggles, still well-past tipsy, and Nick pulls back to smile at her. She’s wearing her signature hundred-watt grin, and he can feel himself fall even more impossibly in love with her.

“I think we did,” he says once his brain finally registers the question, and Jess giggles again as he sheepishly apologizes, “Sorry.”

He stumbles backwards, and Jess clings to him with her legs wrapped around his waist as he carries her over to the bed. It’s nice, to keep her close afterwards, even if the extra effort makes his arms go dangerously noodle-y. They tumble back onto her still-made bed, Jess clinging to him as she settles back against the pillows. Nick reluctantly breaks away to carefully pull off the used condom. He wraps it in a tissue and drops it in the nearby wastebasket before crawling right back into her arms, too lazy and tired to do anything responsible like drink some water or brush his teeth.

They pass out like that: Nick’s pants pushed down just enough to get his dick out, Jess’ shirt undone and bra askew, their legs all tangled up together and his arm casually draped over her waist. Some little responsible voice in the back of his head says that they really ought to pull themselves together, that if someone were to catch them in their incriminating position then it would lead to assured disaster. But Jess feels nice like this: all sleepy and soft and willing to let him into her life.

“Goodnight, honey,” he mutters drowsily, exhaustion suddenly washing over him.

Jess hums and snuggles in a little closer to him. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”

He’s a hair's breadth away from asleep, but her words ring through him all the same, and he finally passes out with a stupid grin on his face.

—-

The next morning he feels a little bit like he’s dying. Everything in his body hurts. The sun shining through the windows burns his eyes and makes the throbbing in his skull even worse. There’s the faint remnants of a memory from last night starting to assemble themselves in the back of his head, something about him and folding chairs and a pretty girl with crystal blue eyes who’s sweeter than anyone he’s ever met. But he’s exhausted and dehydrated and he doesn’t have the strength to try and puzzle out what kind of drunken mistake he’s stumbled into.

“Nick,” the alarm clock hisses insistently. “Nick.”

He groans and reaches up to shut it off, but his hand lands on a face. Jess’ face, he remembers a moment later. Right. They fucked last night. Broke something. Her dresser? His resolve to not let this spiral any more out of control? Both? “Shhh...” he whispers, patting her face gently.

“We gotta get up,” she mutters, sounding more than a little worse for wear.

“Five more minutes,” he insists, rolling over so that he’s half on top of her, his face buried in her shoulder and the dark curls of her hair. Jess half-heartedly tries to squirm out from under him, but then gives up when Nick slings his leg over her, pinning her hips down beneath his thigh.

“Mmm...” Jess hums, her fingers sliding up into his hair. Nick still feels like he’s been run over by a steamroller, but the feeling of her fingernails gently scratching against his scalp is doing wonders for the pounding in his head. He can dimly remember when she did the same thing last night, when he buried his face between her legs and did all he could to get her off. It’s not something he’ll be forgetting any time soon: the taste of her on his lips, his mouth and chin slick from her juices, the muscles of her thighs quivering under his palms.

His arm flexes around her waist, holding her against him as they sneak in a few more moments of sleep. He’s so hungover that it takes him a while to realize that there’s something very different here. It hits him slowly, then all at once. Jess stayed. She

stayed

. Given, it is her bedroom, so it’s not like she could just bail to curl up in her own bed after she was finished with him. But still, she could’ve gotten up to shower or make breakfast or even crash on the couch. After the out-of-control night of drinking they had, no one in the loft would’ve judged her for passing out in the middle of the living room.

It’s probably just because she’s hungover. Last night she got so drunk that she temporarily forgot about all the reasons why he’s completely unworthy of her. And now, the morning after, she just sees him as the vaguely Nick-shaped guy she slept with last night who’s soft like a towel and is just chubby enough that he isn’t half bad to cuddle with. Nick doesn’t really care too much, not when he’s in this much pain, and he’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. This is all he’s wanted ever since they first did this: to wake up with her in his arms, the sweet smell of her hair clouding his senses and the soft press of her curves beneath him.

Nick cranes his neck to plant a gentle kiss just beneath her jaw and he’s pleasantly surprised when Jess leans in a half-inch closer into him in response. It’s a quiet moment, sweet and simple, and it makes him think of what they

could

be, if they woke up every Saturday morning like this, although hopefully a lot less hungover. He can imagine it: blinking his eyes open to Jess snoring softly and curled up beside him, the fabric of her ridiculous pajama outfit soft against his touch and her bare skin even softer when he coaxed her out of her clothes with lazy kisses down the column of her delicate neck. Jess’ breathless moans echoing in the quiet of her room as he rocked into her, easy and gentle as he whispered in her ear about just how pretty she looked in the early morning sunlight.

It doesn’t feel so impossible, not with Jess still here, not when she actually stayed the night with him. Not when she seems so content to be with him in this lingering moment, the kind of thing that doesn’t happen during a one-night-stand. He pries his eyes open to look up at her, the gentle curves of her face shimmering in the light filtering in from her windows. A part of him

knows

, knows that he shouldn’t get his hopes up, that he has absolutely no reason to believe that this won’t be like the three other times before it.

But he can’t help it.

“Hey, Jess,” he starts, but before he can say anything else he’s interrupted by a distant yelling from the living room.

“Jess! Are you home?”

“Oh my god.” Jess sits up suddenly in bed with enough force that it makes Nick roll off of her. “Oh my god, that’s Cece.”

“Fuck,” Nick mutters, slowly rising up from where he’s fallen on the mattress beside her. Of course this moment was too good to be true.

“You have to go,” she says quickly, scrambling to adjust her bra and redo the buttons on her shirt. It hits him like a punch to the gut, even though he doesn’t have any reason to be surprised. Of course Jess doesn’t want to be seen with him: her drunken mistake. He doesn’t blame her for being ashamed of him. He’s a washed-up bartender who only does laundry on nationally recognized holidays.

“Should I just-”

There’s a knock on her door and Jess’ eyes widen with panic.

“Jess, please, it’s an emergency.”

“Yeah! One minute!” Jess yells back and then turns to Nick to hiss, “closet.”

“Got it.”

Nick tumbles out of her bed, nearly tripping on his undone jeans as he stumbles over to hide in the closet. Jess crawls out of bed after him, scooping his shirt off the ground and chucking it at him. He manages to catch it and shrugs it on before sliding the closet door shut. She gives him a wary gaze and then mimes zipping her lips shut as he disappears. Once he’s safely hidden away, Nick finishes hiking up his pants and then slumps down onto the floor, rubbing at his aching head as he leans up against a box labeled

Crafting (miscellaneous) 4 of 7.

“Cece!” she says chipperly, and the shrill sound exacerbates the pounding in his skull, even though her voice is muffled by the metal door of her closet. Nick has no idea how she’s able to be so painfully effervescent after all they drank last night and she’s presumably just as hungover as he is. “What are you doing here?”

There’s the sound of Cece’s high-heeled footsteps as she crosses into Jess’ room followed by the squeak as she falls back to sit on the bed. “

Ugh

, it’s Kyle.”

“You’re still together with that guy?” Jess says, her tone dripping with distaste as she drops onto the mattress to sit with Cece. Nick realizes that he’s going to be here for a while and settles into his spot on the floor, wondering if he could get away with a quick nap while he’s waiting for the all clear.

“Yeah. He texted me last night when he was on mushrooms and honestly I’m just so sick of-” Cece cuts off suddenly, her tone shifting from annoyance to enthusiastic in a matter of seconds, “Oh my god, did you have someone over last night?”

“What!?” Jess squeaks. His thoughts drift to the hickey he sucked into her neck and the broken dresser in the corner of the room, and he knows that there’s no way for Jess to deny that some serious hanky panky went down last night. Nick’s heart has come to a sudden stop in his chest, alarm sirens wailing in his head as he scrambles for some kind of excuse for why he’s hiding in her closet, his clothes all wrinkled from sleeping in them and his hair still mussed up from when she ran her fingers through it.

“Oh my god, you did!” There’s another squeak of the bed as she excitedly continues, “C’mon... tell me all about it.”

Nick perks up slightly, curious to hear what Jess has to say. If he’s lucky then maybe Cece will weedle all the answers he wants out of Jess. He can finally know why she keeps coming to him and whether she secretly thinks this could be turning into something more. Then he can either have his closure on this whole affair or he’ll have the confidence to finally come clean about his feelings.

“It’s no big deal,” Jess says, mock-casually. “Really.”

Cece scoffs. “No big deal? Jess, you once called me because a guy at the library said that he liked your glasses.”

“Historical Fiction Greg was

very

suave about it,” she insists, and Nick can practically hear Cece’s eye roll. “But honestly, last night wasn’t anything. It was one-night sex, that’s all.”

“You don't have one-night stands.” Cece says skeptically. “You get way too attached. I mean, you could have an emotional connection with a shoe on the side of the road.”

“Oh, one shoe? I hate that.” Jess says remorsefully, and Nick bites back a laugh so he won’t give away his position.

At the same time it fans the little flame in his chest, the hope he’s been holding out all this time. Jess isn’t the type of girl who does one-night-stands. She’s the kind of girl who he wants to bring as a date to weddings and spend disastrous Thanksgivings with. She’s the girl who bakes him desserts and insists on dragging him along with her to the drugstore where she buys glaucoma sunglasses because they made him laugh when she tried them on. And last night she

stayed

. She woke up beside him and let him pull her back into his arms, gently played with his hair as they drifted back towards sleep.

“See? And you usually tell me

everything

.” Cece almost sounds hurt. “This just doesn’t seem like you.”

Jess huffs. “Maybe that’s it, Cece. Maybe I need to be less like myself.”

“Wait, what?” Cece steals the words right out of his mouth. Why would she not want to be herself? She’s

Jess

. Everyone else in this world tries so hard to be better and tougher and she’s always just been her strong, smart, passionate self. She’s real in a way that’s so hard to find these days, so confident in her weird, quicky, sing-songy way of going through life.

“Just...” Jess sighs, sounding defeated. “What I had with Spencer was simple and steady and-”

“Boring?”

“

Reliable

,” Jess continues, unimpressed by Cece’s addition. “But then he went and cheated on me. And now I want the opposite, you know? Something fun and uncomplicated that doesn’t have any strings attached to it.”

So that’s what this is about. Nick takes in a slow, tired breath and scrubs his face with his hands. Why didn’t he see it before? Jess isn’t actually interested in him. She’s just looking for a rebound, and he happened to be around when she needed one. He’s unexciting and nonthreatening, exactly the kind of guy that she can sleep with without worrying about developing feelings for him. He’s just her in-between, her way of easing out of a long-term relationship because she’s afraid to be alone and afraid to get hurt again by something she thought was serious. He’s her chance to have casual sex after a six-year dry spell with wizard-hair Spencer.

“No strings attached? Jess, you know how I feel about rebound sex and meaningless hookups. But you’re not like me. You

like

the strings and the feelings. You’re good at being in a relationship.”
There’s a slightly remorseful tone to her voice, and Nick can’t help but sympathize with her. He doesn’t have the best track record with relationships either. But that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to try again. Not when it’s Jess on the line. Although at this rate it looks like he’s not even going to get to try.

“Am I? I mean, I couldn’t even hold down

Spencer

, and he doesn’t even own a car.”

“Well Spencer’s an idiot.” The bed squeaks again, presumably as Cece pulls Jess in for a hug. “Just be careful, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t,” Jess promises, her voice muffled by Cece’s embrace. “Besides, what happened last night, it’s not like a real relationship. It was just a one-night-stand that’s totally over.”

“Sure,” Cece says skeptically as she pulls away from Jess.

“It

is

,” she repeats insistently. “It’s totally over.”

Whatever hope that had grown over the course of the moment is immediately snuffed out. It’s over. She doesn’t want him. She’s never going to want him. Nick needs to get that into his head, to stop saying yes to her when they’re both drunk and he should know better. The rejection stings, but it’s not like he’s all that surprised. He knew this was coming, that it was just a matter of time before Jess realized he’s just the weird detour women take before they find the guy you want to be with. All he does is help women realize that they could do a lot better.

“If you say so,” Cece relents, but she still doesn’t seem convinced. “Well you’re still giving me all the dirty details.”

“Can we do this over brunch? I’m

so

hungover, and if I don’t have coffee in the next fifteen minutes I might just die.”

She laughs. “Of course.”

Cece leaves the room to let Jess get ready. Once she’s gone, Jess hauls the closet door open to reveal Nick still lying on the ground. “Sorry about that,” she apologizes, offering her hand out to help him out.

“It’s fine.” Nick shoves himself off the ground, and Jess drops her hand back down to her side, looking almost hurt by his rejection. It makes him feel a little guilty, but then he thinks about how Jess doesn’t really care about him, and suddenly he doesn’t feel so bad.

“Um...” Jess nervously rocks back on her heels, looking around her closet to avoid his eyes. “So uh, Cece and I are leaving soon, and then the coast will be all clear.”

Nick shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, gritting his teeth and trying not to let himself feel disappointed by this completely expected turn of events. “Sure.”

Jess shifts her gaze to look at him, and for a moment he almost thinks that she’s going to say something else. But then she clears her throat and grabs a sweater off the shelf just over his shoulder. “Thanks, Nick.”

He’s not sure what she’s supposed to mean by that, if she’s thanking him for the sex last night or for hiding away from her friend. It’s weird and awkward and exactly the kind of thing he was trying to avoid by putting an end to this. But instead he just keeps giving in to her, even though he knows it’s just going to hurt him time and time again. Nick shrugs and gives her a half smile. “Sure, Jess.”

She gives him a small smile of her own before ducking back into her room to get changed. Nick watches her go, his heart aching in his chest.

It’s for the best

, he reminds himself.

You’re better off as friends, anyways.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Jess is smiling as she walks up to him, hips swaying enticingly as she approaches the foot of the mattress. Nick sits up in bed, mouth watering at the sight of her, that tiny blue robe doing wonders to her slim curves. The short hem shows off the length of her sleek legs and the dip of the neckline allows him a glimpse of what he’d discover if he could tug off that flimsy belt wrapped around her tiny waist.

She climbs onto the mattress, her eyes dark and her gaze almost predatory as she crawls towards him. Jess draws closer and Nick can feel his heart begin to pick up as he watches her in surprised awe. A flicker of a smirk appears on her lips and she says, “I’m not attracted to you.”

Nick’s brow furrows in confusion as he reels at her unexpected comment. “What?”

“I don't think you're sexy,” Jess elaborates, even as her hands trail up his thighs, her touch burning into his skin. Her words are crystal clear in their meaning, but her voice is a husky whisper and she’s looking at him like he’s a cut of prime rib that she can’t wait to sink her teeth into. It doesn’t do anything to clarify what’s happening, her signals all crossed and mixed up and Nick’s head is a murky mess trying to puzzle out what she means.

He leans away from her but she just chases after him, desire still in her eyes as she teases her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “Jess, why are you-”

She ignores his response, settling into his lap and grinding her ass down against him, her palms resting on his chest. “I don't want to have sex with you.”

Her words cut him deep, and not even the feel of her against him is enough to soothe the sting. Nick grimaces at the insult and turns his face away from her as he mutters, “Okay, I get it.”

Jess doesn’t let up at all, ignoring him as she tugs at the fabric of his shirt and leans in to whisper in her sex voice, “I think you're a fat, fat, fatty, fat-”

“Okay!” Nick bites back, and Jess vanishes with a wink.

---

Nick wakes up a second later, groggy from his impromptu nap and his thoughts all jumbled up from Dream Jess’ contradictory words and actions. He rolls over in bed with a groan and scrubs his hands over his face, trying to shake off what his subconscious dredged up while he was trying to sneak in a few more minutes of much-needed sleep.

Real Jess has been all over the place lately. She runs so hot, hotter than he even thought possible, but then in the blink of an eye she’s so fucking cold, almost unrecognizable from the girl who he fell for when she first moved in across the hall. He never knows where he stands with her, if she’s interested in him or wants nothing to do with him, if she sees him as roommate Nick or sex partner Nick or Nick the stranger. It’s exhausting, and he’s tired of being yanked around like this, trying to guess if he’s allowed to touch her or if she can’t even bring herself to look him in the eye.

“Last night wasn’t anything. It was one-night sex, that’s all.”

Her words from that morning echo in the back of his head, bouncing off the walls of his mind and taunting him with her rejection. She keeps saying that, that what they had was a one-time mistake she would never repeat. But then

she’s

the one who keeps coming back to him, the one who kisses him until he’s breathless and willing to do anything for her, like letting her pull off his clothes and take him to bed even when he knows that she’s just going to hurt him time and time again.

He just needs to know what she wants from him. If she wants him to start turning her down or if she wants to turn this into a friends-with-benefits situation, or better yet, an actual relationship. He wishes Jess would give him a fucking answer for once, to make up her mind about whether she wants him or not. He could live with not being with her in the way he wants, but he hates not knowing where they stand in the relationship, hates trying to guess at what she’s feeling and hoping that she’ll eventually pick up on his feelings for her. He wants her to stop treating him like some kind of toy that she can pick up whenever she wants and then toss aside the minute she loses interest.

“It’s totally over.”

Nick sighs. That’s what she wants. For this to be over. It’s not what he wants, but at least it’s an answer. He drags himself out of bed, swearing off Jess yet again, but this time with the intent to actually follow through.

---

It turns out that quitting Jess is like trying not to breathe. He didn’t realize how much of his life she took up until he scooped her out of it, leaving this gaping wound in his side that he doesn’t know how to fill. His chest is aching from the loss, his lungs burning and vision swimming. And she’s so temptingly close, just across the hall from him. Every time he walks by he has to shake off the impulse to throw open her door and take in a heaving gasp of her, bask in the sweet relief of her bright smile and cheery, “Hey, Nick!”

But he can’t. She doesn’t want him, or maybe she does, or maybe she’s not sure. No matter the answer, the uncertainty of it makes his headache even worse.

He just wants things to go back to normal, to when it was uncomplicated and easy and he was actually kinda friends with Jess. Back when they were settling into the relationship, when they had inside jokes and shared smiles and gave each other rides places. When Jess would come to the bar during his shift and he’d pour her glass after glass of rosé, reveling in the way she started to get a little flirty with him by her second or third drink. Then later that night he’d replay it all in his head, wondering if she’d meant any of it or if there was any slim chance that she might possibly return his feelings for her that were quickly spiralling out of control.

Except he had to go and ruin things, just like he ruins everything else. Nick shoves the thoughts aside, clenching his jaw as he brushes his teeth, pointedly avoiding acknowledging how odd it feels to not have Jess at his side. He rinses and spits, his toothbrush rattling when he drops it into the cup on the sink with more force than is really necessary. This is honestly ridiculous at this point. It hasn’t even been a full day and he’s acting so fucking whiny about it, pining over Jess like she’s his fiancée on the homefront and he’s gone off to the war.

Nick gives his head a little shake as he leaves the bathroom, trying to clear out all of his thoughts that have become corrupted by her. Only when he rounds the corner into the hallway she’s

there

, leaning up against the wall just outside the door, already in her pajamas and staring down at the floor with her arms crossed over her chest.

Jess lets out a squeak of surprise when she spots him. “Just waiting for the bathroom,” she says, and before he has a chance to ask why she’s already darted inside.

He frowns at the empty space where she was standing. So now he’s back to being Nick the stranger and she can’t even stand to be in the same room as him.

Fucking fantastic.

---

Day two of his Jess detox is somehow even shittier than the first.

He’s cranky and irrationally upset and no matter how many times he tries to angry fix the sink that churning in the pit of his stomach just gets worse and worse. Nick keeps a steady intake of beer all day, not that it helps any, and the buzz only makes him mull over the whole situation more. He snaps at anyone who’s stupid enough to get in his way, taking out the brunt of his frustration on an undeserving Winston and Schmidt.

“Would you cut it out?” Schmidt finally says, calling him out over some bullshit complaint about his two-week old pizza leftovers getting thrown out. “Nicholas, you know I love your curmudgeon ways, but that ‘za had created new life. Green, fuzzy, disgusting life.”

“Jar,” Nick snaps back before storming out, ignoring Schmidt’s look of concern or pity or what the fuck ever in favor of slamming his bedroom door behind him.

---

It’s day three when Jess shows up at the bar again. She slides him a five and asks for a glass of rosé with a sheepish half-smile.

Nick stares at her for a long moment, his stubborn self-pride wrestling against his feelings for her. He’s supposed to be pissed off. The ball’s in his court and it’s his turn to reject her, just like she did the morning after True American, when she acted like their time together was completely meaningless, as if she wasn’t the one who flirted with him all night and called him sweetheart before falling asleep wrapped up in his arms. He’s supposed to break off from her for the good of both of them. And there’s also this immature, indignant part of him that wants to make her feel the same hurt that she’s caused him.

But it’s

Jess

.

He pushes her money back across the bar. A flicker of disappointment crosses over her face, but it disappears a second later when he sets her wine in front of her with a muttered, “You really think I’d make you pay, Jessica?”

The smile that spreads over her face hits him like a punch to the gut, but in a good way. It knocks the wind out of him and he finally feels like he can breathe again.

---

For the next week Jess is everywhere that he goes, offering up a plethora of enticing baked goods, roping him back into being a part of “Team Drugstore,” lurking in the hallway so that she can ambush him with her typical saccharine friendliness. Nick would normally complain about her excessive hovering, but he’s mostly just glad to be friends with her again.

He missed having her around, even more than he missed the sex. He could live with the whole ‘just friends’ thing, as long as it meant they actually got to hang out together. He likes Jess, likes that she’s sweet and cares about people and that she’s genuinely her in a world of people who are trying to be something else. It’s the reason why he fell for her in the first place.

They jump right back into being friends and it’s almost like the whole thing never happened. He goes to her bells thing in the park and they start regularly getting dinner together and he insists on an impromptu movie night when he finds out that she hasn’t seen

any

of the

Die Hard

movies. She comes to the bar during his shifts to keep him company and he even surprises her one day during her lunch break at school.

It’s fun and easy and Nick finds himself happier than he has been in a long time.

---

Saturday morning rolls around and for once he actually has the day off from work, meaning he has a long day ahead of him filled with looking up weird things on his computer and getting drunk off his ass with Jess later that night. It’s a little before noon and Nick’s just getting out of the shower as Winston complains to him about the weird boss at his latest temp job.

“Hey guys!” Jess says cheerily as she walks into the bathroom.

Nick smiles back at her. “Hey, Jess.”

“So I’m making a trip to Ikea today.” She leans past him to get some of her hand lotion, and a breeze of her perfume floats past him, soft and sweet. It might be his imagination, but her gaze lingers for a few extra seconds on the bare patch of his chest not covered by his robe. But before he can say anything about it, she picks up her hairbrush to work out a few tangles in her curling hair. “Not to get too blue, but I did break my dresser during intercourse a few weeks ago.”

“Come on,” Winston protests, his face twisting up in disgust. “Why would you say that?”

“Yeah,” Nick stammers, trying to keep his cool despite the way Jess catches his gaze in the mirror, a knowing glimmer in her eyes that he had been sure that he would never see again. “Gross.”

“

Anyways

, I got paid this week so now I can finally afford to replace it.” Jess spins around to look at them, leaning back against the sink and smiling sweetly, her cheeks flushed slightly pink. Nick’s not sure if it’s embarrassment or arousal, but either way the color makes his throat feel a little tight, especially when she gives him a once-over that’s so brief he almost doubts that it actually happened. “Full disclosure, the one I want isn’t available at the closest Ikea, but it is available at the second-closest Ikea, which is about 45 minutes... if we could drive over the reservoir. But we can't, so it's about an hour and a half. Either of you two in?”

He shrugs. “Sure, I'm not doing anything. But don't let me lay my eyes on the Malm collection. I can't afford it, and I'm a sucker for it every time.” Jess laughs at his joke, tilting her head back ever so slightly, putting her elegant neck on display in a way that sends a shiver racing through him. Nick tries to shake it off, because he promised himself that he wouldn’t get roped back into this again, but Jess looks so pretty and she’s being all nice to him and he’s always been a sucker for her.

“I’ll pass,” Winston says quickly, glancing over towards Nick with a look of pity, as if he didn’t know what he was getting into when agreeing to run an errand with Jess.

“I’m going to go get my golf pencils.” She breezes past him and her hand gently brushes over his arm in a gesture that he swears is just a touch more than friendly. “Let me know when you’re ready, Nick.”

He watches her go, still reeling from the brief interaction. He’s been so convinced that the door on that whole portion of their relationship was closed, but now he’s not so sure. And even though he should know better by now, he can’t deny that there’s a part of him that’s

very

interested in this new development.

“Dude.” Winston’s voice interrupts his thoughts.

Nick looks at him, worried that he just accidentally gave away their secret. They weren’t exactly subtle. His throat goes tight as his mind reels for an excuse and barely manages to stammer out, “Yeah?”

“Seriously?” Winston says, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “You and Jess. A line has been crossed, alright? You, my friend, have become her fluffer.”

Wait, what?

Nick’s brow furrows. “Like in porn?”

“An emotional fluffer,” he clarifies, ignoring Nick’s resulting scoff. “You're fulfilling every single need of hers, doing all the things that a boyfriend would do for some other dude who ain't doing nothing.”

Some other dude

. Nick fights off the urge to laugh. Part of him wants to tell Winston, to get an outsider perspective on the whole situation. Winston’s his best friend, has been since elementary school. It feels wrong on some level to keep this from him. But he supposes that it’s good the guys don’t know about him and Jess. Their whole affair is a pretty clear opposition to the No Nail Oath. The two would undoubtedly smack him upside the head and berate him for being such an idiot, even though Nick thinks he’s got that job pretty much under control.

“How do you know she’s been seeing someone else?”

Winston scoffs and crosses his arms over his chest. “The walls of this loft are pretty thin, pal. Don’t act like you haven’t you heard her and this guy going at it like rabbits lately.”

Fuck

. Of course they heard them. He’d done his best to try and keep quiet, but it’s hard to do in the moment when Jess’ breathy moans and gasps are music to his ears. Nick’s back is quickly approaching full slip and slide territory, and he tries to regain control and steer the conversation back into safer waters. “I'm her

friend

. That’s all. You’re just reading into it. Guys and girls can be friends.”

“You're her

boyfriend

without the rewards,” Winston corrects, leaning back against the sink.

Nick fights down the urge to correct him. He’s not even sure why this is bothering him so much. It’s just a secret. A secret between him and Jess that would ruin the loft dynamic if they told anyone. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Look,” Winston sighs. “I know it’s hard to see when you’re in the middle of it, but-”

“No,” Nick insists, all the frustration of the past few months that’s been bubbling up to the surface finally bursting. Winston thinks he knows everything, but he’s just out of the loop as Nick is. He doesn’t have the right to tell him about something he doesn’t even know the half of. “You have no fucking idea what’s going on with me and Jess. So you can butt the fuck out, alright?”

Winston reels at Nick’s suddenly aggressive tone. He holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, man, chill. I was just trying to help.”

“Yeah, well I don’t fucking need it, alright?” he snaps back before storming out of the bathroom, leaving a confused and mildly hurt Winston in his wake.

---

He finishes getting ready in his room, guilt settling into the pit of his stomach over what just happened. Winston was just trying to help, and honestly, Nick needs it. He’s been a trainwreck these past few days, few months, really. This Jess thing is throwing his whole life into disarray. He’s all over the place: one week he’s feeling great about their friendship, and the next he’s disastrously reeling from her rejection. Winston bringing up his relationship with Jess tapped into all that frustration that he’s been keeping bottled up, as if that will do anything to help clear his head of all the chaos going on.

Nick’s oddly quiet on the ride to Ikea, mulling over everything that’s happened between them and wondering if Winston might actually have a point. Things between him and Jess aren’t straight-forward anymore. Sure, Nick has feelings for her, but he kept them to himself and didn’t let them get in the way of their newly built friendship, even though he would occasionally let his mind linger on the instances where the scales started to tip towards something deeper.

And yeah, maybe some of the stuff he’s been doing for her lately falls a little outside of the lines of friendship, but he’s not her

‘emotional fluffer.’

That’s just absurd, just Winston misinterpreting what’s going on because he’s only working with half the facts.

Sure, he could give up on all the things between them that’s borderline boyfriend stuff. He could stop giving her hugs or pats on the shoulder when she looks like she’s feeling a little run-down. He could stop giving her free drinks at the bar until she’s tipsy enough to get a little flirty with him. He could stop calling her phone when she can’t find it and making her cups of tea when he’s in the kitchen anyways.

But the truth of it is that he doesn’t

want

to. He doesn’t do that stuff because he’s trying to get into her pants. He does that stuff because he’s never been really good with words the way she is and he wants to show that he cares about her.

As a friend. He cares about her

as a friend

. They’re

friends

.

---

Later that night he builds her the dresser, even though Winston gives him a dirty look when he passes by the open door of Jess’ bedroom. Nick just ignores it, and nudges the door shut after he returns from the kitchen with his second beer.

Jess keeps him company while he works, perched on top of her bed with her feet restlessly swinging back and forth, the toe of her flats dragging over the corner of her rug. She went out for dinner with Cece after they got back, so she’s changed into a soft white sweater that’s a stark contrast to the dark curls of her hair and her stupidly short black skirt. The dark fabric of her tights shimmers under the lamplight, and Nick has to fight to keep his eyes on his work instead of skating up the sleek line of her legs.

They don’t really say much. He’s too focused on trying to decipher the mess of instructions and Jess seems oddly content with the silence, just humming under her breath as she watches him put the dresser together.

Her gaze travels all over him, lingering on his hands and wrists before traveling up the gray sleeves of his sweater to his chest. Nick tries to keep his head down and focus, but it’s hard to do when he swears that she’s checking him out, just like earlier today after he got out of the shower. The idea of her actually being interested in him like

that

makes him feel dizzy and his heart starts to pick up its steady pace, thumping against his ribcage as Nick does his best to keep his hands steady.

Nick isn’t sure if it’s the way she acted around him in the bathroom this morning, or if it’s what Winston said to him afterwards, but suddenly he’s seeing all those interactions between them over the past few weeks in a different light, and he can’t help but wonder if she meant something else by them the whole time. Maybe all those times she smiled at him and let her touch linger on his arm or leg was her flirting with him, maybe those dinners they shared were supposed to be dates, maybe all that time she spent hanging out with him was her trying to make an opening for him to make a move on her. He’s not sure how he feels about it all, because there’s still some stupid part of him that hopes things might be different this time. He can feel himself being lured back into her trap even though he knows damn well this is only going to bite him in the ass.

“Hey, Jess,” he finally says, breaking the moment. She looks at him expectantly, and Nick wrings the screwdriver in his hands before continuing, “We’re friends, right?”

“Yeah, of course we are,” she replies quickly, barely even hesitating. Her answer sends a wave of relief through him, and Nick can feel a knot of tension between his shoulders that’s been bothering him all day finally relax. The question sinks in and a look of concern draws over Jess’ face. “Why do you ask? Do you think we’re not...”

“What? No!” Nick swallows nervously, trying to choose the right words to dig him out of this mess. “I had this weird talk with Winston and I was... I dunno,” he finishes lamely, turning back to the dresser. He doesn’t really have anything else to say. He got his answer, and now he finally knows where he stands with her. But that doesn’t quite explain why there’s still this weird feeling of discontent in the pit of his stomach at her response.

Jess hums thoughtfully, worrying her lower lip between her teeth as she regards him with an uncharacteristic uncertainty. “Look, Nick, about... everything-”

“You don’t have to say anything, Jess. It’s over.” Nick clenches his jaw and tries to focus on tightening the screw connecting the inner railing of the dresser instead of the way his heart aches at his own admission. It’s the truth, he might as well accept it.

“No.” She frowns a little at him, a look of concern drawing over her features as she watches him continue to work on the dresser. “I’m sorry. For-”

“Don’t apologize, Jess,” he insists. He doesn’t want her pity, or to hear her try and lie to him. What’s done is done, and it won’t do them any good to keep dredging up past mistakes. Nick just wants them to move forward, to establish healthy boundaries and leave this disastrous mistake behind them. He wants to stop wasting all his energy trying to deal with the mess he’s made of their relationship and instead focus on rebuilding their friendship and trying to find some other girl to help him get over her.

“I just...” Jess sighs and looks down at her lap as she threads her fingers together. A few seconds of silence linger as she tries to figure out what to say. Nick glances up from the dresser to see her looking at him, her eyes sad and her face serious. “I don’t want to screw up what I have with you. You’re too important to me.”

Nick turns his attention back to the dresser, clenching his teeth together so he doesn’t say anything stupid. He’s not sure what the hell she means by that, if she’s apologizing for sleeping with him and throwing their dynamic out of whack or if she’s saying that she wants things to be different between them. The realist in him says that Jess just wants them to be friends, and that what they have now is good. But the fact that Jess thinks he’s important to her makes the part of his heart that’s still in love with her stutter back to life.

The truth of it is that Nick’s not even sure what he wants from her anymore. He used to think that any chance for a relationship with her would be worth the risk of putting himself out there, but now he’s not so sure. As much as he wants to be with Jess, he can’t keep up with this rollercoaster of acceptance and rejection. It’s only a matter of time before he finally mans up and stops letting her drag him around.

“Things between us used to be simple and straightforward. But now they’re...” Jess pauses as she struggles to find the right word. Nick tilts his head up to look at Jess and her eyes travel over his face contemplatively. “Complicated.”

“Yeah,” Nick agrees with a self-depreciating chuckle.

That’s one way to put it.

The corner of Jess’ mouth quirks up in a ghost of a half-smile, but it feels more sad than genuine. “I've always had relationships in different boxes. Friends in one box... boyfriends in another,” she pauses for a moment, her words hanging over their heads like a guillotine ready to drop. “But now...”

Nick’s heart skips a beat. All this time she’s never acknowledged that part of their relationship outside of the handful of times they actually slept together. This feels like a step, even if she still hasn’t fully addressed what’s happening between them. And it’s not just sex that she mentioned, she specifically said

boyfriend

. As incredibly naive and stupid it is, there’s a part of him that can’t help but wonder if she sees him that way, if she’s ever thought about their relationship as becoming something more.

He looks at her seriously, almost afraid of what she’ll say next. “Yeah?”

Jess clears her throat, breaking the tension between them to finish her point, “It's messy.” She shrugs, her gaze dropping back down to her lap as she wrings her hands together. “I used to think I knew what I was doing. But now, after Spencer, I just don’t know anymore. And... I’m scared, you know? I don’t want to get hurt.”

There’s a pang in his chest at the look on her face, the way she crumples into herself at the admission. He can remember when she first moved in, how she’d gone through box after box of tissues as she sobbed along to the lyrics of

Dirty Dancing

. He can’t even imagine doing something that would hurt her like that. “Jess, you know I wouldn’t-”

“I know,” she answers quickly, and Nick raises a skeptical eyebrow at her. “I do, really. It’s just, you know, easier to not take the risk.”

“Right.” Nick’s hopes sink another inch closer to his stomach.

“Because if you let someone in, if it’s

real

.” Jess chews on her lower lip, and the way she looks at him, almost like she’s afraid to tell him how she feels, nearly knocks the wind out of him. The expression looks foreign on her features, and it hits Nick once again how much he fucking

hates

Spencer. “Then they can just walk right out. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Nick stares at her, his heart aching for her. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

There’s a tense moment of quiet between them, nothing but the soft sound of their breathing to fill the emptiness that settles into the room. Nick drops his head down and frowns down at the innards of the dresser. This is exactly what he was trying to avoid. No matter what he does, they keep stumbling into these awkward stretches of time where they’re suddenly faced with all the things they refuse to acknowledge in favor of tiptoeing around them, instead half-addressing their actual worries.

He sighs, a long exhale that makes his chest deflate all at once. “Y’know, Jess.” Nick keeps his eyes trained on the screwdriver as he finishes attaching the railing of the dresser, ignoring the way his hands tremble with nerves as he does. “For a gal who’s so afraid of getting hurt by all this,” he takes another deep breath and musters every ounce of courage he has to continue, “you don’t seem so afraid with me.”

“Well...” Jess pauses for few seconds, and Nick can barely hear her words over the rush of his blood thundering in his ears. “It’s

you

.”

His heart stops. Nick ducks his head down towards the dresser, trying to hide his attempt to stifle a grin. He knows he’s probably being naive, but Jess is talking about boyfriends and how she cares about him, without him having to try his luck by asking her. It’s what he’s wanted this whole time, and her response sinks deep into his skin and sets off a spark of hope that radiates warmth through his whole body. The reason she keeps running away isn’t because of

him

. The reason she doesn’t want a relationship is because she doesn’t want to get hurt again. That’s something he can sympathize with far too well.

Nick tilts his head up to look at her again, and they stare at each other for a moment, their eye contact oddly intense and sincere. Part of him knows that this is his chance, to tell her how he feels about her, or that he wants this to be something more. He opens his mouth to say something, but his bravery disappears at the last second and he falters, suddenly realizing that he’s not quite sure what he even wants to say. His jaw just hangs open for a long moment as Jess waits anxiously for his response to her admissions.

“Pass me that nut wrench, will ya?” he says instead, turning back to the dresser like a coward.

Just like that, the tension between them snaps and Jess seems to relax, but there’s a flicker of something like disappointment that crosses over her face as she bends over to dig through his tool box. Nick has to hold himself back from correcting himself, instead digging back to being elbows-deep in the guts of her nearly-complete dresser. He knows that he should’ve said more, but he’s still tentatively happy with what they actually did manage to say to each other. Jess doesn’t think that

he’s

the problem, she’s afraid of the pain that comes from losing a relationship. Nick just has to prove himself to her, show her that he would never ever consider cheating on her and that she can put her trust in him. Of course, that’s a whole lot easier said than done.

“

The Humpty Dance

does it for you, Nick?” Jess asks, completely out of the blue.

His head snaps up, and lo and behold, there’s the incriminating evidence right in her hands.

Shit

. He could’ve sworn that he’d gotten rid of that thing years ago. “Hey, that’s personal.”

“No, I

have

to hear this!” she exclaims, leaping off the bed and rushing over towards her desk.

“Jess!” he hauls himself from the floor and tries to catch up to her before she can embarrass him any further.

“C’mon!” Jess laughs and reaches for her cd player. “Don’t keep me from

Nick’s Sexy Mix

!”

“I made that when I was in college,” Nick counters, wrapping his arm around Jess’ waist and trying to pull her away from the desk as he reaches out with his other arm to try and snatch the cd from her.

But he’s too late, because Jess manages to squirm in his grasp and drop the cd into place and hit play. She laughs again as

I Wanna Sex You Up

starts to play out of the speakers, and Nick groans in embarrassment. He does his best to stretch around her to shut it off, but Jess somehow manages to block all of his attempts, much to his dismay.

And it’s not intentional. It

isn’t

. But in the span of one heartbeat the mood shifts drastically. One moment he’s just trying to wrestle the cd out of her grasp, and then the next he’s suddenly aware of how Jess is pressed tight against his front with her ass backed into his groin, his forearm holding her in place with one hand over her hip while his other hand runs up the soft, sensitive skin of her inner wrist. His breath is hot against her neck, the flowery-scented curls of her hair framing brushing up against his cheek. Nick freezes up, his mind reeling for what his next move is.

Jess’ breath hitches as she seems to come to the same conclusion as he has. She turns her head to look at him, surprise and interest dancing in her eyes, her lips slightly parted. “Nick,” she whispers breathlessly, her eyes darting down to his mouth before snapping back up to his eyes a half-second after.

He

knows

better, but his thoughts are clouded by

her

and there’s nothing he can do to stop himself from closing the gap between them and kissing her, the gentlest press of his lips to hers in case he read too much into this. But Jess melts right into the kiss, craning her neck back over her shoulder as she opens her mouth beneath his. Her lips glide over his, sending that familiar and exhilarating rush down his spine, and Nick realizes just how much he missed kissing her since the last time they did this.

The song is still playing in the background, but he’s barely even aware of it as he lets his hands roam over Jess’ back as she spins around to wrap her arms around his neck, lifting up on her tiptoes to reach a better angle as their kisses become deeper and more passionate. Nick’s used this cd before, back when he first made it in college and sex was all about getting the straw into the coconut, just him blindly fumbling his way around in the dark with some girl in the bottom bunk of his twin bed. He’s older now, slightly more comfortable in his body and he knows one or two moves that are beyond the basics. But there’s something about being with Jess makes him feel just as overwhelmed as those first few times.

They fall back onto the bed, Jess’ hair floating all over her pillows like she’s some kind of goddess, a vision spread out for him on top of her floral comforter. He eases her out of her clothes to the tune of

Careless Whisper

, only breaking his line of kisses down her neck when she tugs at the bottom hem of his shirt, and he picks up right where he left off the second he’s undressed. Jess giggles when she recognizes the song, and Nick smiles against her skin before nipping at her collarbone, making her gasp and her toes curl in response. Nick nudges her legs open with his knee, pinning her thigh down to the mattress as he slides his hand down to tease his fingers over her, groaning against the curve of her shoulder when he feels just how wet she is. Jess moans breathlessly as the traces the tip of his finger up the length of her folds, squirming beneath him as her eyelids flutter shut.

Nick slips two of his fingers into her, thumb ghosting over her clit as he leans in to whisper-sing along to

Groove Is In The Heart

.

“Oh, god,” Jess whimpers, annoyed and aroused in equal measure as her hands grapple for purchase on his back.

“You wanted to hear it,” Nick teases, grinning as he slides his fingers in and out of her and rubs painfully slow circles over her clit.

Jess doesn’t have a smart-ass comment to match his, just a soft, broken moan as she rocks her hips into his touch, straining against his weight that’s holding her open to him. He takes her earlobe between his teeth and Jess whimpers, threading her fingers up into his hair and tugging just enough to be a tease. Nick groans and kisses her, slow and purposeful as he fingers her, absently grinding his dick against the curve of her hip.

She breaks off the kiss, her eyelids still fluttered shut and voice rough when she whispers, “Please.”

Nick moans in agreement, slipping his fingers out of her. Jess drops her legs open for him to settle in between them and Nick falls into place, revelling at the feel of their hot skin finally pressed together. He hovers over her for a moment, taking the time to appreciate her perfect, slender curves as he blindly reaches for a condom out of her bedside table. Jess takes the foil packet out of his hand before he even has a chance to open it and gives him a kiss, her lips barely brushing over his. She tears off the edge of the wrapper and rolls the condom onto his dick, stroking the length of him as she leans up to press a few brief kisses below his jaw.

“Fuck,

Jess

,”

he mutters, trying to focus on Mariah Carey’s warbling rendition of

Touch My Body

instead of the feel of Jess’ palm sliding up his length of his dick and her thumb teasing over the head, because he wants this to actually last for more than a minute.

Jess guides him down to her entrance, and when he pushes into her she lets out this sharp little gasp that rings in his ears and echoes off the walls of her bedroom. Once he’s all the way inside her, Nick pauses to recollect himself, his forehead pressed against Jess’ as the song fades out until all that’s left is the sound of them struggling for breath.

Bah bum bum bum

Bah bum bum bum

The unmistakable intro to

You Can Call Me Al

starts up and Jess laughs at the tune, turning her head away from him as she stretches her arms up above her head. But then Nick rolls his hips into her, and suddenly she isn’t laughing any more.

“Oh

,” Jess gasps, voice rough, rocking up to meet his steady thrusts, arching up beneath him as her hands scrabble to grasp the sheets.

Nick gives a little half-nod in agreement, already upsettingly close to coming after only a few thrusts into her. He slides his hands up her curves, tracing over her hips and waist. She leans up into his touch, as he briefly teases over her nipples before continuing up her arms. He gets to her wrists and almost instinctively threads their fingers together, but then thinks better of it, instead pinning her wrists down to the mattress as he picks up the pace of his thrusts.

But then, much to his surprise, Jess shifts her hands beneath him and interlocks their fingers, squeezing them briefly. Nick stutters in their rhythm at the gesture, and he briefly looks up at their joined hands before kissing her, his eyelids falling shut at the messy glide of her open mouth against his as Jess rocks her hips up into his newly erratic thrusts.

He breaks off for air, their foreheads resting against each other again, and Nick pries his eyes open so he can look at Jess. She surprises him once more, because when he opens his eyes she’s gazing fondly at him, and the intensity of their shared eye contact catches him off guard and hits him like a punch to the gut. Nick squeezes her hands and Jess wraps her legs around his waist, pulling him further inside of her, all the while still staring impossibly deep into his eyes.

They build back up into their steady rhythm, Nick fucking into Jess as she clings to him, her cheeks flushed red and her blue eyes dark with lust. He has to fight to keep his eyes open, sweat starting to pool at his temples and the feeling of Jess clenching tight around him so incredibly overwhelming. It’s incredible, the way that something as simple as her looking at him ramps everything up to this whole new level, setting his nerves alight as he struggles to hold out for a few more thrusts.

Nick’s close, so ridiculously close, and he can tell Jess is almost there too, based on the slight haze in her eyes and the wavering moan she makes when he thrusts deep into her and manages to hit that spot that drives her wild. Normally he’d rub at her clit to be sure, but he can’t bear thought of letting go of even one of her hands. So instead he shifts his angle of his hips so he can grind slightly more against her as he captures her lips in another kiss, squeezing their hands together as he gives a few final thrusts before giving into the white hot pleasure that sends his mind blank.

He drifts back into consciousness, and Jess is heaving for breath beneath him, a semi-dazed look about her features as she recovers from her own orgasm. The corners of his mouth turn up in a only slightly cocky smile, and Nick drops his head into the curve of her shoulder to press a few lazy kisses to her neck. Jess hums in approval, turning her head to kiss his temple as she sinks into the mattress, weighed down by his body still lying on top of her.

After a few more moments of basking in the post-sex bliss, Nick rolls off to lie beside her. His hand still rests just above her stomach, reluctant to completely let go of her even as they catch their breath.

“Wowza,” Jess murmurs, and it’s her exact mix of quirky and honest that Nick can’t fight the smile that spreads over his face.

“Yeah,” he agrees, shifting to lie on his side as he tugs the blanket until it’s covering them.

Jess hums again with a satisfied smile of her own, and a wave of pride washes over Nick at the sight of her: thoroughly ravaged with her hair a mess, cheeks pink from exertion, and lips red from his kisses. His hand flexes slightly on her side as she nestles into bed, eyes drifting shut with a big yawn.

“Mmm, I have work early tomorrow,” she mumbles half-heartedly. Nick holds his breath, waiting for her to kick him out of her bed now that he’s done the job.

But it never comes. Jess drifts off to sleep without another word, her smile lingering on her lips as she settles her head on the pillow. Nick slowly releases his breath, his hand drifting up to brush a stray lock of her hair behind her ear. She looks so peaceful in her sleep, all relaxed in a way she never appears to be when she’s awake. Jess is constantly moving during the day, jumping from one project to the next like an overly hyper puppy that seemingly never runs out of steam. Nick, on the other hand, never really does anything. He just lives his life one hour to the next, working at the bar because it gives some structure to his weeks while he wastes the rest of his days messing around and doing nothing remarkable.

He supposes Jess gives his life meaning, too. Spending time with her makes him feel far better than anything else, even if they’re just goofing around and doing nothing in particular. He likes being her friend, and the last thing he wants is to lose that. Nick looks at Jess as she sleeps, and a part of him understands why this must be so difficult for her. They’ve entered this new phase of their relationship, a delicate balance that’s, to use her words, complicated. He doesn’t want to ask for more than she’s ready to give him, to push things too far and send her running.

Nick knows what she wants: an uncomplicated pseudo-relationship where she’s guaranteed not to get hurt. And although he wants more than that, he has to respect what she wants. He

wants

to respect what she wants. What’s more, he wants to preserve their friendship, the fledgling of a relationship that, if he plays his cards right, could possibly turn into something more one day. Even if it doesn’t, her friendship means a lot to him, and he doesn’t want to jeopardize all the work they’ve put into building something that’s pretty great. He respects Jess, more than he does almost anyone else, and he wants to prioritize her feelings above all else.

And even though they’re still in the same limbo of more than friends but not dating, tonight was a significant change in that development, a turning of a page that feels pretty significant. He’s finally sure that Jess wants him, at least as a friend. No matter what, he wants to preserve at least that part of their relationship. And maybe if he gives this a little more time and space to develop, well maybe Jess might change her mind.

So even though it goes against every one of his instincts, Nick leans in to give Jess a quick kiss on her forehead before carefully climbing out of her bed. He gets rid of the condom and then pulls on his shirt and boxers. He balls up his jeans and tucks them underneath his arm, hoping that he won’t run into either Winston or Schmidt in the ten foot journey back to his room. Nick lingers at the door, looking over his shoulder at where Jess is still fast asleep. He smiles at her, only a touch sad, and then flips off the light before quietly sneaking out into the hall.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

There’s a new manager at the bar named Shane. She’s mean in a way that’s almost kinda hot, a way that makes Nick almost want to push back against her orders to see how she would punish him for being a bad boy. She makes him stay late one night to give the bar an extra deep cleaning, and Nick’s dimly aware that this might be her way of coming on to him. But when he thinks about making a move he remembers the way Jess smiled at him just a few days ago over breakfast, a knowing sparkle in her eyes when she caught him staring at the faded remains of a hickey he left on her neck the night before.

So instead he keeps his head down, focuses on trying to keep up with the stricter policies that don’t let him slack off nearly as much as he used to. He closes the bar more, enough times that Shane promotes him to a key-holder position, which comes along with a half decent pay raise. He’s nowhere near Schmidt’s ridiculously high income, but it’s still nice to have a little extra cash to toss around every two weeks.

It also means he’s a little busier, so he has to cut down on the amount of time he can spend with Jess. He still does his best to make time for her, and he applauds himself for managing to maintain their friendship even though he has to cancel on their weekly dinners more often than he can make it. Jess seems slightly disappointed by his new schedule, but she understands how important the bar is to him, and she’s almost proud of his new responsibilities.

They haven’t slept together since the mixtape. And although that doesn’t really surprise him, he can’t help but be a little disappointed that nothing more has happened since. That night was intense, and not just physically. Sex like that isn’t the kind of thing that happens in a casual fling. It was more like making love than any of their previous encounters, the kind of slow, sweet sex that he would expect in the kind of real relationship that she’s so hesitant to admit she wants. And then there was their conversation beforehand, where Jess revealed so many of her own insecurities and finally let him peer inside the tiny box of fears she keeps hidden away from the world.

To be entirely honest, the intensity of it all scared him a little, which is part of why he ended up leaving. He was just trying to give her what she wanted, leaving before she had to be the one who kicked him out. And now he can only imagine how Jess is feeling about all this, especially when she was the one who made herself vulnerable just to wake up alone. The hickey on her neck faded after a day or two, and she retreated back into her shell just as quickly. Then just like that they were back to ‘normal.’ There’s still something between them, you’d have to be blind not to see it, but they’ve let it slide to the backburner, out of sight and out of mind, save for the occasional passing moment.

There’s a part of him that wishes things were different, that he’d chosen to stay that night instead of going back to his own room. He wishes that Jess wanted more than what they were, an uncomplicated fling that won’t turn into something messy because feelings got involved. This way she can’t get hurt again, just like she did when she was with that dick Spencer. Nick doesn’t completely agree with her, because he wants them to take a chance with each other, even if it might make things complicated, he thinks it’s still worth it just for the chance to be with her. But he understands the logic behind her reasoning, and the last thing he would ever want to do is hurt her. Besides, things are good between them as-is, and Nick’s glad to not have messed things up by trying to meet her half-way only to fall on his face when she got scared and ran away.

---

Just when things felt like they were somewhat under control, Nick catches their newest hire Amanda trying to double her tips by stealing from the cash register. Shane fires her on the spot, leaving them extra short-handed since Gina is still out on maternity leave. The whole staff has to pick up even more of the slack, splitting up the newly empty shifts between Nick, Mike and Big Bob with Shane working nearly around the clock. It’s exhausting, because now Shane’s extra cautious about hiring someone new so it’s taking

forever

to find a replacement. Nick works double and triple shifts nearly every day, picking up more and more hours to cover all the gaps in the schedule.

He rarely sees Jess anymore. She’s already in bed and asleep by the time he gets home most nights, and he’s too sleep deprived to wake up in time to catch her before she leaves for school early in the morning. The few times he manages to run into her are when he’s rushing out the door, and he barely has enough time to ask how she’s doing before he has to dash. The look of disappointment on her face sticks to the back of his head but it gets pushed to the side when he clocks in for his shift and is swamped with a mile-long to-do list from a frazzled Shane.

One night Jess tries to swing by the bar to hang out with him, but he only manages to get a few words in before Big Bob calls him over to help with mixing nearly a dozen complicated cocktails for a bachelorette party. Nick gives her an apologetic smile before leaving, a guilty feeling settling into the pit of his gut when he walks away, leaving her all by herself at the corner of the bar with a forced smile that she uses to hide the hurt in her eyes. He tries to go back to her once things slow down, but then a keg spills and he has to mop up the mess, and then he has to help Big Bob kick out some creepy douchebag who keeps harassing girls, and then he gets swept up in another round of drink orders. By the time he finally manages to get his bearings, Jess is long gone, nothing but her empty glass and a few bills to prove that she was ever there at all.

Nick frowns down at the empty barstool, but he only has a few seconds to miss her before some drunk yells loudly at him for a beer.

---

The days go on like that, stretching out into nearly two weeks where he barely sees her at all. Nick misses Jess like a hole in his side, and it’s not enough to just get a passing glance at her when they’re in the bathroom or a few moments when she gets a chance to stop by the bar after work before Shane yells at him to help her with something. He knows that this is just temporary, and that’s about the only thing that’s getting him through it. Just a couple more weeks and Gina will be back to working part-time and hopefully Shane will

finally

have found someone to fill in the remaining gaps in the schedule.

Nick gets home from working his third consecutive double-shift, and he’s absolutely exhausted as he tugs his flannel over his head and kicks off his jeans. He barely manages to wrangle himself into a clean enough t-shirt and pair of sweatpants before collapsing into bed. His head hits the pillow and the moan of pleasure he lets out in response is borderline sexual, his whole body melting into the mattress as he revels in finally being horizontal after over twelve hours on his feet.

There’s a knock on his door, and Nick groans in frustration. He

just

got home. It’s like the world can’t even give him fifteen minutes to himself. Nick considers feigning sleep, but whoever’s at the door knocks again, the second time even more insistent. He hauls himself out of bed with a groan and shuffles towards the door, scrubbing at one of his bleary eyes with the heel of his hand.

The door swings open to reveal Jess. She’s leaning up against the edge of his door frame, a shy smile on her lips as she whispers, “Hey.”

“Jess,” Nick groans in exasperation. He doesn’t have time for this. He stupidly agreed to cover the opening shift tomorrow so Big Bob could go to his niece’s first birthday party and if he doesn’t fall asleep in the next thirty minutes he’s gonna be dead on his feet tomorrow. “You’re a big girl, you can watch

The Walking Dead

alone.”

“No, it’s not that.” Jess bats her eyelashes at him, crossing her arms over her chest as she nervously shifts her weight back and forth between her feet. “I need your help.”

Nick sighs. Of course she does. But it’s not like he's gonna shove her away. He never does. “What do you need?”

“I, um...” She fiddles with a lock of her hair. Her curls look all soft and silky, like a pillow. A warm, cozy pillow, and Nick can feel his eyes drooping shut. “I need you to help me check my fantasy football.”

His brow furrows. “You don’t know what that means.”

Jess huffs, upset that he called her bluff. “No, sir. I do not know what that means.”

Nick fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Goodnight, Jess” he insists, closing the door on whatever mess she’s trying to drag him into in favor of a half-decent night’s sleep.

“Don’t!” She catches the door before it manages to shut, and Nick exhales in exasperation as his head drops down to look at the floor between them. Jess’ bare feet are pointed towards him, her toes painted a bright pink that’s a stark contrast to his sock-covered ones.

He drags his eyes back up to her face, so tired that he barely manages to take note of the curvy length of her bare legs that stretch beyond the short hem of her robe, all soft and pink in a way that’s right on the edge of sexy, precariously balanced on the fence between innocence and the promise of something more risque. Nick’s seen her tarting around in it before, when he wasn’t exhausted to his bones. He’s thought about her in it more times than he can remember: standing beneath the hot spray of the shower as he jerked himself off to the fantasy of lifting her up onto the edge of bathroom sink so he could run his palms up her tantalizingly bare thighs and fuck her right then and there, desperate to hear the way she whimpers his name when she’s right on the brink of coming.

Nick blinks slowly, struggling to clear his head and keep his eyes open for much longer. “What?” he asks again, impatient for Jess to elaborate.

“Um...” She fiddles with the tie of her robe. “I need my tires rotated.”

“You... what?” Nick frowns at her, even more confused.

“You know...” Jess insists, anxiously swaying back and forth on the heels of her feet. “I need you to... brew me like a fine chamomile.”

“You want me to make you tea?” Nick’s frown deepens as he reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose before rubbing at his eye again. “Jess, it’s almost three in the morning, can’t you do this your damn self?”

“No, not-” Jess lets out a short exhale of frustration, her head tipped back to stare at the ceiling. “

You’re

the one who needs to show me how the sausage gets made.”

“Wait, sausage?” He stares at her in confusion, but Jess just gives him this expectant look, like she’s disappointed that he hasn’t caught on to the cryptic messages she’s sending him. “I thought this was about tea.”

Jess lets out another disappointed huff, her arms crossed petulantly over her chest. “Forget the tea and the sausage, it’s... it’s a

metaphor

,” she half-explains, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Except she’s not being clear

at all

and Nick’s sleep-deprived and exhausted brain is only working at about ten percent capacity.

“C’mon, Jess,” he complains, barely managing to keep his eyes ever so slightly open. “You can’t expect me to read your mind here. I’m fucking exhausted and I just want to get some shut-eye. So can we please just get this over with?”

Her eyes travel over his face contemplatively. “I...” she starts, but then falters, suddenly unsure as she struggles for the words she means to say.

Nick yawns again, awaiting her response. He dimly wonders how much longer he has to stand here for, and he’s about to shut the door on her when she finally speaks up.

“You know what?” Jess bites down hard on her lower lip, dropping her gaze back down to the floor. There’s something like tears welling up in her eyes, and her voice is disheartened as she mutters, “Just forget about it.”

“Jess...” Nick sighs. He didn’t mean to upset her. He hates seeing her upset. “I don’t mean it like that.”

“No, it’s fine,” she lies, voice wavering ever so slightly.

“Hey.” Nick reaches out to tug on the hem of her sleeve, and Jess looks up at him, almost surprised. “Just tell me what you want from me.”

She opens her mouth again, but after a few seconds of extended silence she lets out an exasperated sigh. “Look, I don’t know what to do,” Jess admits for what must be the first time ever. “I’m terrible at casual sex.”

He perks up at that, her words sending a shock of surprise that kicks his brain back into action.

So this isn’t about food

.
“Oh?” he asks, eyebrows raised high on his forehead and a slight quirk to the corner of his mouth as he crosses his arms over his chest.

Well, that’s an unexpected turn of events.

He’d been convinced that this door was closed, that whatever was going on between them was in the past and forgotten, so closed that he had almost forgotten Jess even thought about him like

that

anymore.

She huffs, suddenly embarrassed, though Nick’s not sure why. “I just... I don’t know what I’m

doing

with all this.” She absent mindedly fusses with her hair, tucking a few stray strands back behind her ear before letting her hand fall down to her collar bone. Nick’s eyes follow the gesture, appreciating the gentle slope of her neck even though his brain’s still sluggishly operating a few steps behind.

“I dunno,” he mutters, fighting through his exhaustion in favor of his newfound arousal. “‘Cause if I remember right, then you were pretty good at the whole sex thing.”

Jess drops her head to stare down at her feet, her cheeks pink to match her tiny robe. “Yeah, well, you too.”

Nick’s exhausted, but her compliment somehow still manages to sink in and make swell his ego an extra inch. He likes to think he’s half-decent in bed, but so does every other guy on the planet, and they can’t

all

be right. And yeah, he doesn’t have Winston’s

sex mojo

or use any of Schmidt’s plethora of german-manufactured sex toys and lubricants. But he’s got a few moves in the sack, and he’s never had any complaints.

No matter what, for a girl like Jess to be even somewhat impressed by him is one hell of a compliment. Anything that he can do to impress Jess sparks up this good feeling in his chest, especially when she rewards him with one of her perfect, vibrant smiles.

Except now she’s not smiling. Her face is all downcast, her arms crossed over her chest as she takes a half step backwards so she can anxiously kick at the edge of the hallway rug with her toes. “But I mean, obviously you’re not interested in me anymore so...”

“Wait, what?” He doesn’t mean to say it aloud, but it slips out all the same because the filter between his thoughts and words isn’t too great right now.

She rolls her eyes and then looks at him, a flicker of hurt in her eyes. “I’m not an idiot, Nick.”

“Never said you were.” He’d never say something like that to her, not seriously anyways. She’s brilliant, one of the smartest and sharpest and know-it-all people he’s ever met. He doesn’t even hold a candle to her.

Jess flushes a little deeper and lets out a slightly-flustered exhale. “I saw you with your new boss, okay?”

Nick’s brow furrows as his sleep-starved brain struggles to make sense of this new information. “Shane?”

“Yeah.”

“You thought I was...” he thinks aloud, the pieces clicking into place. “No, Jess, it’s not like that. I swear.”

It could’ve been, but he couldn’t go through with it. Not after Jess. She whipped his whole life up into disarray and then left him standing in the chaotic rubble and wondering how he was ever going to put the pieces back into some semblance of how they were before. After being with Jess, things with Shane just felt so forced, like he was just trying to find anything to replace the cavernous rift that Jess left behind. Jess was the kind of girl you meet once in your lifetime, the kind of girl who makes you see the world differently, the kind of girl who is always going to be the one you want because no one else compares to her.

“I mean, it’s okay if it

is

, you know?” Jess says with clearly-forced nonchalance as she chews on her lower lip, and Nick’s gaze lingers on her mouth, arousal tugging at the pit of his stomach. “You’re a free man, so...”

“Jess,” he says seriously. “Honestly, there isn’t anyone else. I promise.”

Her eyes light up, almost surprised by his answer. “Oh.”

Nick stares at her for a contemplative moment, weighing the options in his head. On one hand: a restful night’s sleep and maintaining his newly re-established friendship with Jess. They’re in a good place now, settled into a steady relationship that he won’t allow his feelings for her to ruin. Things between them are a delicate balance, and there’s only so many hits they can take before what they have is completely irreparable.

On the other hand: getting laid. The douchebag voice in his head that sounds upsettingly similar to Schmidt reminds him that it’s been

weeks

since he got any, but Nick doesn’t want to reduce Jess down to that. She means too much to him. Being with her is different than being with some random girl from the bar, it’s sweet and actually means something to him and makes him feel better than any fleeting hookup ever could.

Jess’ eyes drift back up to meet his, her head still shyly ducked down towards the floor. He’s always been a sucker for her blue eyes.

“Ya wanna come in?”

Her signature sparkling smile spreads over her face, and Nick’s heart skips a beat.

---

They fall back onto his bed, and it takes every ounce of Nick’s willpower to not immediately fall asleep the moment his back hits the mattress. But then Jess is crawling into bed to lay beside him, and her hands are on his chest as she slots her thigh between his legs and that’s just enough motivation for him to stay awake.

Jess smiles down at him for a split second before leaning in to kiss him, and it’s so heart-achingly close to what he wants from this relationship that Nick isn’t entirely convinced this isn’t some fantasy his self-destructive subconscious has cooked up for him. But he’s too tired to care, so he succumbs to it the pull of it, lets himself drown in whatever alternate world he’s stumbled into and breathes in the water of what it’s like to have Jess be in his life once again.

His hands slide up the length of her back, feeling out the curves he’s now intimately familiar with. He rests one on the outer swell of her ribs, his thumb brushing up against her lower breast, and she’s

definitely

not wearing a bra under this robe, which begs of question of what, if anything, she actually has on underneath. Nick kisses her again, tipping his chin up to better press against her mouth as his other hand caresses the soft skin of the back of her neck. Jess sighs into the kiss, her nails gently scratching at his stubble as her other hand tugs at the material of his shirt, right about his frantically beating heart.

They kiss for what feels like forever, and Nick dimly realizes how fucking good it feels to be able to kiss her again. He feels like he could spend an eternity just kissing her, the gentle ebb and flow of their mouths pushing and pulling against each other. It’s so easy to kiss her, like it’s almost second nature, and Nick wonders why he waited so damn long to do it, why he didn’t just grab her in the hallway late one night, why he waited so many gut wrenchingly painful weeks for her to make a move when he could’ve stopped being such a coward and just done it. He thinks about all the kisses he’s missed as a result, but before he has time to dwell on it any further Jess’ tongue slips up against his own and all those insignificant thoughts fly out the window.

She breaks away a few moments later, and his ego preens at the way her cheeks are all flushed as she struggles to catch her breath. It’s certainly helping with his dick’s valiant attempt to fight off his exhaustion, goaded on by the pressure of her thigh between his legs. Jess is beautiful in the dimly lit room, the delicate shape of her face cast into valleys of shadow and hills of her pale skin cast aglow in the light of his lamp. She’s so beautiful that it

hurts

, it makes his chest ache something awful and he never wants to let go of her ever again, never wants to leave this moment.

Jess’ eyes dart over his face and then a flicker of confusion draws over her expression. “What are you thinking about?”

Nick’s fingers slip a little lower down on her back, tugging at the soft fabric of her robe. “I missed kissing you,” he says before his tired head has a chance to catch up and realize what he’s just admitted. Whatever. It’s true.

Jess’ lips stretch into a smile. “You’re a good kisser.” There’s a tint of sadness in the corners of her eyes that makes his heart sting, a dull pain between his ribs. He wonders why she’s sad, if he did or said something wrong and if there’s something he can do to fix it. Nick looks at her again, searching for an answer in her expression and finding nothing but a conflicted, complicated tangle that disappears in an instant.

She closes her eyes and leans in to kiss him again. The hand she has on his chest pushes him back down against the mattress as Jess shifts her weight to straddle his thigh. It takes a moment for his sleep-deprived brain to latch onto what she said, or more importantly, what she

didn’t

say. He told her he missed her, but Jess didn’t say it back. She didn’t miss him. She came back into his bed because she thinks that he’s good at this, not because she wants

him

.

It hits him like a punch to the gut and suddenly this isn’t his fantasy. This isn’t him coming home from a long shift at the bar to find Jess waiting up for him. This isn’t a lazy makeout session before a well-deserved night of sleep spent in her arms, his head cradled to her chest while he pulls her tight into his own embrace.

This is a hookup. A ‘one night only’ deal where Nick is always the one who draws the short end of the stick. He’s a dumbass who keeps falling into the same exact trap over and over again, stupidly thinking that the end result is going to be different this time, even though it never is. They’re friends and nothing more, and periodically sleeping with each other isn’t going to change anything, no matter how much he hopes and wishes it will. Jess is never going to care about him like the way he loves her. The realization kills the mood like a bucket of cold water and whatever boner magic he’d managed to summon dissipates just like that.

Jess pulls away from his lips with a wet noise that echoes in the suddenly silence of his bedroom. A concrete brick of dread drops into the pit of his stomach, and Nick keeps his eyes carefully trained on the neckline of her shirt to avoid her critical gaze. Her eyes drop down in the direction of his sweatpants before flicking back up to his face. “Uh oh.”

Nick doesn’t say anything. His throat is tight from equal parts embarrassment and hurt. What kind of man loses an erection midway through a makeout session with a beautiful woman who’s sitting in his lap? The kind of guy that said woman doesn’t think is good enough to be boyfriend material, someone she can use when she wants and then toss away without any second thought, like he’s a tissue instead of an actual person with feelings for her.

“Looks like we got ourselves a Groundhog’s Day situation,” she jokes, and

God

, leave it to Jess to be painfully perky even in a situation like this. It makes his turtle-faced frown deepen as he stares up at the ceiling to avoid having to look her in the eyes. “Six more weeks of winter!” It’s so quintessentially

Jess

that his heart actually finds it somewhat endearing. He hates that he loves her sometimes.

“”M just really tired,” he mumbles, a shitty excuse that’s only half-true. Of course he can’t tell her the real truth, that he knows she doesn’t actually care about him.

But she doesn’t poke any more fun at him, and she wasn’t really laughing at

him

to begin with. She’s still smiling, but there’s something soft to it. Nick blames the late night hour that’s making her pity him. “Don’t worry.” She gives him a little pat on the chest. “I got this. Lie back and let me take care of you.”

Nick’s dumb heart stutters in his chest, and Jess winks at him as she starts to slide down his body. He drops his head back against the pillow and tries not to overthink, even as his mind tries to churn up a meaning for why she would say that she wants to take care of him if she really only wants him for sex. He’s being stupid. He knows it. Of course she doesn’t mean it that way. That’s the opposite of literally every other thing she’s done since they started doing this.

She doesn’t love you

, that insidious voice in the back of his head whispers insistently,

Jess would never love a guy like you. She could do so much better. You’re just the closest guy around, and the minute she’s done with you she’ll go right back to pretending you don’t even exist.

He gives his head a little shake to dash away those thoughts, at least for now, instead focusing on the way that the bed dips as Jess settles on her stomach in the gap between his legs. Her fingers slip up under the hem of his shirt, the tips dancing over his lower stomach and making him squirm, half-ticklish and half-anticipation. Nick props himself up on one elbow so he can watch her as she rucks his shirt up a few inches before dipping her fingers into the waistband of his sweatpants. Jess glances up at him and her eyes sparkle mischievously as she drops her head to lick a line up over the crest of his hip.

“Fuck,”

Nick mutters, his free hand drifting down to brush a few loose tendrils of her hair back behind her ear.

She kisses him again, lips soft against the sensitive skin of his hip, and it’s so sweet and tender that for a second he forgets that this is even a hookup, falling back into the pretend world where she’s his girlfriend and not his room-sex-friend. He tries to remind himself why he’s upset with her, why he can’t keep pretending this is something it isn’t, but then Jess slides one hand down his stomach to feel up his slowly-hardening dick through his sweatpants. It’s hard to remember she’s not actually interested in him when she’s smiling up at him as she drags his sweatpants down so she can mouth at the curve of his dick beneath his boxers. Nick curses under his breath and his grip tightens on the fabric of his sheets.

“Well hello there, Punxsutawney Phil,” Jess jokes as she pulls his dick out from the elastic waistband of his boxers.

Nick drops his head back and groans, but it’s only half annoyance. “C’mon, Jess.”

But she just grins cheesily at him and gives his dick a slow stroke. It’s insane, because this should be the textbook opposite of a turn-on. What kind of idiot would get turned on by having his dick made equivalent to a fucking weather-predicting groundhog? And yet here he is: rock hard and leaking precome into Jess’ fist as she leans in to press a feather-light kiss to the crease of his thigh.

It’s because it’s

her

. He can’t imagine a Jess who doesn’t have weird euphemisms for genitalia and makes sing-songy jokes about national holidays during inopportune moments. He likes those things about her because they’re genuine and real and he’s never met someone like Jess before, someone who was so sure of herself and didn’t try to conform to what people expected or wanted her to be. He likes her,

like

likes her, as if he’s still in high school and she’s the cute girl in his science class who got assigned to be his lab partner. And try as he might, he can’t get rid of his stupid crush on her. Even though she’s weird and quirky and drives him crazy, he keeps coming back to her over and over again.

“Shit, Jess,”

he groans as she drags her thumb over the tip of his dick, his hips bucking up off the mattress.

Jess smiles up at him and gives the base of his dick a squeeze, and Nick can’t help the moan that tumbles out of his mouth. She looks so pretty like this, eyes all soft and bright with something painfully close to affection. “Yeah?” she asks, her voice surprisingly shy given that she’s literally got his dick in her hand.

“C’mere,” he rasps, grabbing at her wrist and tugging her towards him, and Jess obliges, crawling into his lap and giving him a good view down the front of her robe, revealing that he was right earlier and she isn’t wearing a damn thing under it. “Spring’s coming early this year,” he mutters, and Jess giggles at him playing along, her laugh bubbly and infectious until Nick cuts her off with a kiss that’s also half a smile.

Nick kicks off his pants and underwear as he kisses her, and Jess’ hands fumble for the tie of her robe. She tries to draw back to slip it off her shoulders, but Nick keeps her close, kissing her insistently as his hands slide up underneath the loose fabric to palm her breast and tease over her clit. Jess gasps into his mouth and then rolls her ass back into his lap, her hands fisting in the fabric of his shirt that’s now hiked all the way up under his armpits. She shuffles back a little further to grind down on his dick, sliding up between her impossibly wet folds.

“Yeah,” he pants against her lips as he shifts his grip from the soft swell of her hip to her ass, the fabric of her robe draped over his wrist. He rolls his hips up into hers and Jess lets out a moan that might be the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard, one hand sliding up into his hair while the other grips the fabric of his shirt like a lifeline. “Can I?”

“Uh huh,” Jess agrees, her voice a wavering, breathless whimper. She wiggles a little before letting go of his shirt to reach back and guide him inside of her and

holy fuck

, he missed this.

“Fuck,”

he groans, and then tilts his head to capture her lips in a sloppy kiss.

Jess moans into his mouth as she rocks her hips back, guiding him another inch inside of her. She’s tight and wet around him, and Nick squeezes her ass and pinches her nipple, reveling in the gasp Jess makes in response. He kisses her again, already feeling breathless and dizzy from the feel of her. Jess tugs at his hair and he lets out a groan as he reflexively thrusts up into her, and he can feel her smirk when she does it again.

She breaks off the kiss to pull away and out of his reach. Nick lets out a whine, his eyes opening to look at her in betrayal as his hands fall down to his sides. Jess giggles and gives him a sympathetic pat on the chest before sitting up so she’s perched up on her knees. Nick props himself up on his elbows and Jess smiles at him as she slips her robe off her shoulders, leaving her completely bare, her creamy curves gleaming as she teases her lower lip with her teeth.

“Take your shirt off,” she says insistently, and Nick’s quick to obey, tugging it over his head before falling back onto the mattress, and Jess follows after him, her mouth hot as she presses kisses down his newly bare skin. She blazes a fiery-hot trail down his neck and lands at his collarbone, and Nick groans as she sinks her teeth into the skin there, her fingers ghosting over his nipple.

Jess gives him one last kiss beneath his jaw and then shifts back into his lap. She braces her hands on his chest and then sinks all the way onto him, letting out this breathy little gasp when she bottoms out. Nick grabs onto her hips, but he lets her stay in control of the rhythm, a steady swivel that’s driving him out of his mind. Her head is bowed down towards him, the long curls of her hair falling down around them like a flower-scented curtain. Nick looks up at Jess in amazement, taking in the flush of her cheeks and how she’s biting down hard on her lower lip to try and stay quiet, even though she still lets out these faint moans when he hits a particularly good spot inside of her.

“God, Jess,” he moans, his hand sliding up to rest in the dip of her back. “You’re so beautiful.”

The corners of her mouth quirk up, and Jess opens her eyes to glance up at him with that same almost-shy look from earlier. Nick smiles at her and reaches up to cup her jaw, coaxing her to lean forward and kiss him again. She obliges, rocking her hips back as his tongue slips up beside hers, his teeth teasing over her lower lip like her own did earlier.

It’s different from their other times, which felt like frantic sprints where Nick could feel the intensity of finishing hit him like a freight train. Instead this is slower, sweeter, with Jess curled over him as they rock together, kissing messily as they build each other up and up and up. His orgasm catches him by surprise, building up slowly like water behind a dam that suddenly bursts when he feels Jess clench hard around him when she comes a soft

“Oh!”

He quickly pulls out of her once he realizes, and he gives himself a final few tugs before coming. It sticks to Jess’ stomach when she relaxes on top of him, her head ducked into the curve of his shoulder and her breath hot against his neck.

Nick wipes his hand off on the sheets and then reaches out to twine his fingers with hers, and Jess hums and gently presses her lips to his pulse point. They lie there together for a while, legs tangled up and their chests squished tight together. His eyes droop shut and Nick can feel himself starting to doze off, too tired to really care about the sticky mess on his stomach that’s going to be a real pain to deal with in the morning. But that’s a problem for Future Nick. Present Nick wants to stay in this moment forever, all wrapped up in Jess and post-sex lazy and content.

Jess shifts in his arms, and Nick lets out another whine before using the arm around her waist to pull her back into him. She tries again after a moment, but Nick wraps tighter around her, using his larger size to his advantage as he shifts so that she’s lying half-under him.

“I have to go,” she says, trying to worm her way out of his arms.

“No you don’t,” he counters, pressing his face into the curve of her neck. She keeps trying to get rid of him by leaving or kicking him out, and he’s tired of it. He’s tired in general, exhausted from work and sex and he just wants Jess to stay the night for once.

She wiggles again, half-heartedly trying to pry his arm off of her waist. “Nick, c’mon, I can’t stay.”

He huffs, but he doesn’t relent. “Why are you running away?”

Jess freezes up at that, suddenly very still. “I... I don’t know,” she admits, her voice timid and unsure, a hushed noise in the nearly silent room.

Nick hums and softly kisses her shoulder, and Jess hesitantly relaxes into it. “Then stay.”

There’s a long pause, nothing but the sound of his steady breathing to be heard. Jess lets out a slightly-shaky exhale, a breath he didn’t know she was holding. “Okay,” she whispers back and settles into him.

He smiles in approval and gives her another kiss before reaching over towards his nightstand to turn off the light. Nick snags his abandoned shirt off the floor and hands it to Jess, and she swabs at the mess on both of their stomachs while he fishes around for the edge of his comforter. She shifts in bed beside him, dropping the dirty shirt off the edge of the mattress before lying back on her side, facing away from him.

Once they’re tucked in and cozy, Nick wraps his arm around her waist and pulls her close, until she’s spooned up tight against him, every inch pressed together possible. Her dainty ankles are tangled up with his man-ones, his fingers laced with hers where their hands rest on her hip.

“Goodnight.”

Nick smiles against the soft skin of her neck and whispers back, “Goodnight darling.”

He’s ninety-eight percent asleep, but he swears he hears her inhale sharply before she tentatively whispers back,

“Sweetheart.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Oh my god ,” Jess gasps as she falls back against the pillows, her face lit up with disbelief and amazement.Nick slumps onto the mattress beside her and nods in assent, still struggling for breath himself. “ That is how you have sex, America,” he says triumphantly, slinging his arm over towards his bedside table to fumble for the emergency bottle of water he keeps there.“That was amazing ,” Jess reiterates, and Nick lets out a noise of agreement as he goes to take a drink of water, but ends up splashing his face instead. He squirts an extra bit over his tongue for good measure, because although he loves to eat her out, it leaves a salty-sour taste in the back of his throat afterwards that’s a little less than pleasant when they’re not in the heat of the moment. “Like, I want to film it, but I don't want to film it 'cause that would be porn.”Nick huffs a lazy half-laugh and sprawls back onto the bed. He could be down for that. Although he’s pretty sure the concept of it would be a lot hotter than the reality of seeing his sweaty, kinda-chubby ass on the recording. Jess would probably look amazing, though, and that just might be enough to convince him to go along with it. She could convince him to do just about anything, if he’s being completely honest with himself.“And that time, I think I figured out what that thing underneath the thing was.” She grins proudly and shifts her head to look over at him.“Yeah, you did,” he agrees, letting his gaze linger on the soft curves of her face, her mussed up hair, the way the afternoon light dances in her eyes.Jess is still beaming at him, and it fans the warm spark in his chest. “And whoa, right?”Nick chuckles and lazily flops his hand over towards her so he can twiddle a stand of her hair between his fingers. “Yeah, whoa.”They’ve been fucking on the regular now, have been ever since the ‘groundhog incident.’ For all intents and purposes they’re friends with benefits, which he knows is probably a terrible idea that’s going to end badly for him, but the middle part sure is great. And things seem to be shifting between them lately, drifting further away from one-night-stand and increasingly closer towards something that’s a lot more real. The sex is just as great as ever, but there’s this vibe to it that’s almost as fun as it is serious, like they genuinely enjoy being with each other and making each other feel good. It makes him wonder if this could ever turn into something more, if Jess could ever feel the way he does about her, if she could eventually fall in love with him.What they have is genuine and fun in a way that Nick has never really had in a relationship before. Like right now, the two of them lying in his bed with the blankets shoved down around their waists as they catch their breath, falling into their friendly, jokey banter as if it’s any normal Saturday and they’re sitting at the kitchen island, Jess fresh from the farmer’s market and him half-way through a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But instead they’re naked in his bed, and his hair is messy from where Jess tugged on it when he went down on her and there’s a fresh hickey on the top of her left breast where he sucked on her skin as he fucked her.He likes being with her like this. He likes having her in his bed, smiley and giggling as he kisses down the column of her throat while his hands roam over her soft curves, fingers teasing over the spots he knows are ticklish just to see her squirm. He likes the weird jokes she makes, likes that she’s quirky and ridiculous and that part of the post-sex afterglow is just him listening to her ramble about whatever she wants while he gently strokes whatever bit of her bare skin he can reach. And yeah, it’s probably weird that her country lawyer voice turns him on, but he doesn’t care.“Well,” she sighs and reaches over to give him a pat on the shoulder. “I should get going.” Jess sits up and swings her legs over the side of his bed, and Nick misses her the moment she’s out of his reach.He shifts so he’s propped up on one elbow, appreciatively staring at the slope of Jess’ back and the curve of her ass when she bends over to pick her bra up off the floor. He clears his throat, trying to hide his nervousness. “I’m closing tonight, but I should be home late, if you want to stay up...” he trails off, hoping Jess will pick up on the meaning behind his words.Jess gives a noncommittal hum as she hooks her bra back on. Nick frowns at her bare back, unsure what she means by her response, if she’s turning him down or if she’s just distracted by some other thought and can’t be bothered to answer him.Nick wishes she would actually give him a solid answer for once, that she would let him into her head so he could actually understand the complicated, nuanced reasoning to her apparent madness. Because the infuriatingly frustrating part of what’s been going on between them is that Jess is still in denial of it all, adamantly refusing to acknowledge what’s going on right in front of her face. She acts like they’re nothing, but then she shows up in his room again, and again, and again, just like clockwork. If she wasn’t so stubborn she would realize that this is clearly something more than just a hookup or a one-time drunken mistake.He wishes she would just drop this act, because he likes where they’re at relationship-wise, but he can’t handle this whole back and forth game she’s playing with him. He’s not asking for much, just a label or something to finally acknowledge that what’s going on is something , to identify it as a tangible, clearly-defined relationship that he could makes heads or tails of.There’s another odd stretch of silence as he flounders for the right words. Nick drops his gaze down to his comforter as he picks at a loose thread by the zipper. Why is this so difficult all of a sudden? He was fine not even a minute ago, but now that Jess is pulling away from him he feels at a loss.Nick had forgotten about how awkward things between them could get in these odd little transitions. All of their most recent encounters have been late at night, either when he gets home from work or after Winston and Schmidt are both fast asleep and sequestered in their respective rooms. Lately Jess actually spends the night with him, lets him pull her close and bury his face in her flowery-smelling hair as they drift off to sleep, too tired to do anything else but nestle into each other’s arms. And while it’s sweet and comforting in the moment, it means that they don’t really have a chance to talk about what’s going on with all of this. Then in the morning Jess gives him a soft kiss to the forehead before she sneaks away, and Nick’s head is too groggy with sleep to catch her by the wrist and pull her back into his bed and coax an answer out of her.It suddenly hits him that this is the first midday hookup they’ve had in weeks, and there’s a abrupt, sneaking suspicion that maybe it’s not a coincidence. Jess is the one who comes to him for sex, and he can’t deny that there seems to be a pretty clear pattern going on here. Maybe she’s avoiding him on purpose, just another tactic for her to dodge any kind of responsibility or accountability for acknowledging what’s become of them. The realization burrows its way into his chest, and the uncomfortable feeling pushes Nick to finally say what he’s been thinking about ever since they started sleeping together.“So, um... Are we ever going to talk about what’s going on here? Between us?”Jess freezes up in the middle of tugging her shirt on, her arms still up in the air and face obscured by the bright orange material. The room falls deadly silent, nothing but their breathing to fill the empty air between them. After a tense few seconds Jess finally resumes getting dressed, her head popping out from the shirt as she finishes putting it on. But she still doesn’t say anything, just sits on the edge of his bed, worrying her lower lip with her teeth, her expression unreadable and her hands tense where they rest on the edge of the mattress. She’s finicky, switching from the Jess who laughs in bed and holds him close and has really good sex with him to the aloof, detached Jess in an instant. It’s funny, except it really isn’t.“Nick...” she finally says, and there’s definitely something like pity or hesitation in her tone, like she feels bad about what she’s about to say even though she doesn’t really know what it’s going to be. “This was just...” She gestures vaguely between them before dropping her hand back down onto the mattress and turning away from him once again.He frowns at her, his brow furrowing. “Just what?”There’s a moment of pause where Jess seems to struggle for the right word. Nick can see her grasping at the fabric of his bedspread, and the visual is significantly less pleasant than it was not even an hour ago. That version of Jess actually liked him and wanted him so bad that she practically jumped him the moment they got home from the hardware store. But now she’s shoving him away again, running away even though she told him that she doesn’t know why she keeps doing it.“You know,” she finally answers with a sigh.Except it’s not really an answer, just a passive, meaningless phrase that he’s supposed to figure out. She keeps doing this, keeps managing to duck out of taking any responsibility of her actions. It’s like she’s not even living in the same reality as him, like she doesn’t know how to be a real adult who has something like this. She’s the one who initiates this, but then she avoids the aftermath of it, planning out their hookups so that she can sneak away just in time and wiggle out of having the conversation. He’s tired of it.“Know what?” he counters, his tone all cocky the way he knows will ruffle her feathers.Jess stiffens and stares at the door of his bedroom, almost like she’s sizing up her chances of a successful escape. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” There’s a frustrated edge to her voice, and Nick gives himself a mental high-five over his success.“Do I?”Her head whips around to glare at him from over her shoulder. “Yes, you do!”“No. I don’t know,” Nick asserts, not fighting the resentment that’s slowly leaking into his words. “Because you won’t ever talk about it.”Jess lets out a huff, rolling the hem of her shirt between her fingers, still mostly faced away from him, her bare legs dangling over the side of the bed. “We’re not a thing .”“Yeah, but here’s the thing , Jessica.” Nick pushes himself up so he’s sitting on his side of the bed. “You keep saying that, but then you keep coming back to me over and over.”She pouts at that, and he knows that she knows he’s right. But she’s far too stubborn to ever admit he’s right. About this and in general. It’s as endearing as it is infuriating. “That’s... It’s not like...”“Just admit it,” he says insistently, refusing to let her worm her way out this time around.“There’s nothing to admit.”Nick lets out a skeptical huff. “Sure, Jess.”“There isn’t .” Jess spins around to face him, and Nick’s man enough to admit that it’s kinda hot to see her like this: bare from the waist down and a stubborn fire in her eyes. It makes him want to push her even more, until she finally breaks and pins him down to the bed in frustration, her gaze alight with anger and aggravation and want as she demands that he admit he’s wrong.Nick shakes off that line of thought, because that’s exactly the kind of daydream that keeps landing him in this kind of situation, where he gives in to whatever she says and never gets the answer he wants. He keeps letting his want for Jess overpower any semblance of rational self-preservation he has left. “Look, Jess. This is fine with me, what’s going on here. But you have to realize that this isn’t just a one time thing.”She opens her mouth, undoubtedly to assert yet again that this isn’t what it actually is, but then she falters. Her jaw just hangs open, leaving her gaping awkwardly like a fish. It sends a rush of satisfaction coursing through him, which is what Nick blames for what he says next.“Just admit it, Jess. This is a relationship.”That seems to be the magic word, because there’s a wave of steely determination that rushes over her, her expression steely and shoulders tense. “It’s not .”“You can’t keep pretending like not putting a label on it will make it what it isn’t.” he continues, crossing his arms over his chest and not even bothering to hold back the exasperation and bitterness that he’s been shoving away up until this moment. “Why can’t you just admit that we’re ‘Friends with Benefits’ or whatever? Is it really that awful to say it out loud?”“Because... Because that’s not what this is!” Jess frowns at him, her face all scrunched up. “We don’t need a label because we aren’t anything.”Her words hit him like a slap to the face, leaving his cheek stinging as his heart drops into the pit of his chest. He’s such a fucking idiot. Nick matches her frown with a turtleface of his own, trying to cover up his hurt. “We’re not?”There’s a flicker of something almost apologetic in Jess’ eyes, but then her jaw clenches and she bites out, “We’re not .”Nick bites down on the inside of his cheek, shoving aside the pain from his freshly splintered heart and instead channeling his anger from before. “So let me get this straight.” He counts out his points on his fingers, like Jess is up on the witness stand and he’s making his point to the jury. “We’re friends , people who get along and spend time together because we like being around each other. And on a pretty regular basis you come to me for sex, a benefit that’s outside of what a friendship would normally entail.”Jess doesn’t have a snappy comeback for that, and instead levels him with an unimpressed look as she crosses her arms tight over her chest. After a few seconds she tilts her head back to stare up at the ceiling and lets out an exasperated huff that makes the ends of her bangs flutter. Then she drops her gaze back to him, her face closed off the way she gets right before she leaves him alone in bed and brokenhearted. “You’re being ridiculous.”“C’mon, Jess. You’re not an idiot. You know I’m right.”“We don’t need a label,” Jess argues persistently, refusing to budge from her current position. She turns her back on him, disappearing once again as she makes a grab for her discarded panties. “Look, Nick, I don’t want to talk about this.”Nick’s frown deepens, and that ugly, upset feeling ties itself up into a knot beneath his heart, which is what he blames for why he doesn’t just let it go and instead continues to pick at the fight, like a scab he knows is just going to bleed all over him and then take twice as long to heal back over. “I know you don’t. You never do.”Jess reappears, her brows furrowed. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”“It means exactly what it means.” Nick grits his teeth together. “You keep sleeping with me when you know you can get away with not having to talk about what happened. And then you bail the next morning before I get a chance to call you out on it.”Her face sours in distaste and she reels back slightly, offended. “That’s not what I do.”“It is!”“It’s not!” “God,” he huffs in exasperation. “Why can’t you just be an adult about this? You can’t keep avoiding this conversation and expect me not to bring it up.”“I’m not avoiding anything.”“You’re kidding me, right?”There’s a tension building up in the room, like the seconds before disaster strikes. Their responses are clipped and bitter, Jess’ face is increasingly red with anger, and Nick can tell that they’re about to hit their breaking point any second now. Except normally when they fight, it ends with them begrudgingly making up and then Jess coming to visit him during his shift later that night with a new fact or nuance to her argument that she thought up in order to bolster her position while he stubbornly defends his stance. But there’s a sick feeling in his stomach that knows this won’t end like that. Instead Jess will just shut him out and he’ll be left alone on the sidelines and feeling like shit for the way he treated her.“ If I was avoiding anything, which I’m not ,” Jess counters, using the extra emphasis to further assert that she’s still not convinced that he’s in the right. “Then wouldn’t I just avoid you all together?”Nick sets his jaw firmly, his hands balled up into fists where they sit on top of his knees. His chest is aching something awful, and he feels raw and wrug out. He usually likes fighting with Jess, because she gets all passionate and worked up and it sends a thrill running through him for some ridiculous reason. But this isn’t just any fight. This is him finally airing out the grievances that have been weighing down his shoulders for the past however many months it’s been since this whole mess began and she’s carelessly stomping all over them. He’s finally let himself be vulnerable with her, and she’s rewarded his efforts by sending his heart through the wringer.“But here’s the thing, Jess.” Nick clenches his jaw, his hands balling up into fists. “You can’t do that.”“And why not?” There’s a flicker of nervousness in her eyes, her words slightly shaky.He stares her down directly, his tone dead serious as he drops the bomb, “You need me to have sex.”There’s a suddenly silent stillness that falls between them. Jess freezes up, her mouth dropping open slightly, distress and shock evident in her face. She looks taken aback, as if she can’t believe what he said. Or maybe she does believe it, it’s just that she never considered the possibility that he would ever be this upfront about it, that he would never actually throw it in her face. There’s a part of him that revels in the hurt that blossoms on her face at his accusation, and Nick simultaneously shoves down the guilt that bubbles up in the pit of his stomach from knowing he’s the one who’s making her feel that way.“That's what you think?” Jess scoffs, but the way she says it has lost all of the angry passion she had earlier, her tone more unsure than mean.“Yeah.” Nick stares her down, unwavering in his conviction. “Yeah, I do.”She looks at him for a moment, a storm in her eyes and the shimmer of tears in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t need you. You’re not the only guy in LA who wants to get all up in this.”“Then why do you keep coming to me?”Jess doesn’t have a response to that question, just clenches her jaw like she’s trying not to say something she’ll regret, and Nick’s not sure if it would come out mean or emotionally vulnerable. After a moment she finally manages to collect herself, and she hops up off the bed to slip into her underwear before pulling on those tiny navy shorts she was wearing this morning, the ones she let him tear off of her not even an hour ago, when they were moaning and laughing in equal measure between sloppy kisses. “I don’t need you ,” she asserts again, pointedly avoiding meeting his eyes, and Nick’s not quite sure if she’s trying to convince him or herself.“Sure,” he says skeptically.“I mean it.” Jess whirls around to look at him, arms firmly crossed over her chest and a dangerous fire in her eyes. “And tonight I’m going to go out, and I’m going to find myself a one-night stand. And there’s nothing that you can do about it.”“Fine.”“Fine!”Jess slams his bedroom door behind her when she storms out, not even sparing him a last glance as she goes. Nick falls back onto his empty bed, arms spread wide and his chest aching from where his heart is shattered into a dozen pieces. He stares up at the ceiling and wonders why he always has to be such a dumbass about everything when it comes to Jess.---Nick scowls at the streaky beer glass in his hand, wiping it down for what must be the third time this evening. He doesn’t even need to be doing this, but he already cleared all the tables and refilled the ice and cut limes and finished every single busy task that he usually tries to pawn off onto one of the other people working that night. But he’s running out of things to do that will keep him distracted from what’s going on just across the bar.Jess is sitting in a booth with some hot stranger she met, pushed up close beside him as she listens intently to whatever he’s talking about. She’s doing all of those stereotypical girl flirting things, like giggling at everything he says and playing with the sleeve of his leather jacket. It sparks up a fiery blaze of jealousy in Nick’s stomach, because he can distinctly remember the times where she treated him like that, even if she hadn’t been intentionally flirting the way she is with that dickwad.He looks back down at his glass. This is his own damn fault. He should’ve known not to get too cocky about what they had, but he had been so afraid of losing her that he ended up shoving her away and straight into someone else’s arms. Jess can do so much better than him, and tonight’s the proof of it. A part of him has always known that, but he had been stupid enough to hope that maybe Jess really did need him, or that the reason she kept coming back to him was because it was him that she wanted, not some random guy from the bar. But the truth is that she doesn’t need him, that she never has. It was only a matter of time before she realized that, and Nick’s royal fuck-up managed to help her along the way.It’s over now. He finally has an answer as to what they are: there’s nothing between them, just like she said this morning. It’s about time that he opened his eyes and started living in reality instead of letting himself dream about what could be. Jess is finally out of her ‘Nick Miller Phase’ and is moving on to bigger and better things. The thought sends a sour, sinking feeling into his heart that makes his frown deepen as he sets the glass down on the drying rack.Nick grabs another towel up off the counter to wipe down the other end of the bar and shoves his self-pitying thoughts aside, trying to find the silver lining to this whole mess. Now that he knows how Jess feels about him, he can finally get over her. It’s not like Jess is the only one who can move on, right? Maybe he’ll finally take Shane up on her offer, that is, if it still stands. But even the idea of it feels forced. Not that Shane isn’t great. She’s the kind of woman that plenty of men would kill to have a chance with, but she isn’t Jess . And at the end of the day, he’d rather be alone in bed than with someone who isn’t the one he really wants.His gaze inevitably drifts back to Jess, because no matter how hard he tries to stay away from her, he always ends up returning to her eventually. He’s pathetic. Even now, when she’s made it explicitly clear that it’s over between them, his dumb ass still can’t help but pine after her. She catches his eye from over the top of her nearly-empty wine glass, and look she gives him screams “I told you so.” Nick clenches his jaw and tightens his grip on the towel in his hands. Jess turns back to whisper something close to the guy’s ear before sliding out of the booth and heading over towards the bar.“Can I get another glass of wine?” she asks sweetly, batting her eyelashes. Even though he’s pissed at her, and himself mostly, there’s no way he can say no to that face.He holds back a resigned sigh as he drops the towel back down onto the counter. She won. It’s time he manned up and admitted it. But that doesn’t mean he has to be pleased about it. Nick maintains his slight scowl and grabs the bottle of wine he opened for her earlier. “So how’s your little friend?” “Oh, Sam?” Jess innocently twirls the end of a lock of her hair between her fingers. Nick keeps his eyes trained on the glass, biting down hard on the inside of his lip as he tries not to think about how just this morning he was the one playing with her hair. “He’s so hot , isn’t he?”He makes a noncommittal noise and nudges the newly-refilled glass towards her. Jess is just showing off at this point. She already won. She ditched him and found someone else, someone better, just like she said she would. It makes Nick’s stomach churn with jealousy and hurt. He bites down a little harder on the inside of his cheek, and there’s a salty taste in his mouth that he dimly recognizes is blood.“And he’s a doctor ,” Jess continues smugly, like the cat that ate the canary. “At a children’s hospital.”“Yeah, he sounds great, Jess,” Nick says sourly. He tosses his damp rag over his shoulder and looks up from the bar to meet her gaze.
“I think I’m going to invite him back to the loft.” Jess looks all pleased with herself as she smiles assuredly at him and takes a sip of her wine. “Or is that too forward?”So, this is really it, huh? Jess was right all along: she doesn’t need him to have sex. He hates being wrong, but he hates this even more. He thought for sure that there was something between them, something real. But now Jess has taken whatever hope he had for them and shattered it without even blinking an eye. Of course she doesn’t care about him the same way he cares about her. How could she? The reality of it makes his heart constrict painfully in his chest.But then it suddenly occurs to him that she’s here talking to him , while hot Sam sits alone in his booth. If Sam is as great as she says he is, then why is she lingering at the bar to rub it in Nick’s face when she should be over there trying to get lucky with the hot doc? Maybe he isn’t completely wrong after all. Nick glances over her shoulder and a smile of his own tugs at the corners of his mouth, that stormy cloud over his head clearing up. “Not so sure if that’s going to work, Jess.”“Oh yeah?” she asks challengingly.He nods his chin over towards the booth she just left. Jess spins around to see what he’s talking about, and her confident facade drops the second she sees Dr. Sam, who is mid-lip lock with some random girl wearing a Creed t-shirt.“Son of a bitch.”Nick feels bad, but he can’t help but laugh a little at her outburst. Jess spins on her heel to glare at him, and he ducks his head and covers up his laugh with a cough, like he was clearing his throat the whole time.---Jess goes back to mingling, but she keeps undermining herself by constantly coming back to him at the bar to rub her ‘success’ in his face. It’s like no matter how much she flirts with some other guy, she eventually ends up with him again. And in her absence, the guy she’d been talking to gets bored and moves on to something or someone else. A part of Nick wonders if they see what Jess is too stubborn to acknowledge, that she’s clearly interested in him and no one else. It sparks up a little flicker of hope in his chest, the foolish part of him that thinks that Jess might actually care about him a lot more than she wants to admit.After a long string of strikeouts, Jess finally retires to the bench. Nick gives her a sympathetic half-smile as he pours her a fresh glass of consolatory wine, which she takes with a soft sigh. Her exuberance and confidence from earlier is long-gone. Now she just looks downtrodden and sad, so much so that it makes his heart ache for her.Nick feels a little bit like an ass. He didn’t want to see her go home with someone else, but he hadn’t thought about what the alternative option was. And now Jess is alone and hurting, and it’s all because of him.“Is there something wrong with me?” Jess asks, pensively looking at the rim of her glass as she twists the stem between her thumb and forefinger.His brow furrows. “What are you talking about?”“I just...” She sighs, her frown drooping another fraction of an inch. “What if Spencer was my only chance, you know?”“Okay, now you’re just being ridiculous,” Nick scoffs and wipes his hands off on the dishrag on his shoulder. He sets his hands on the edge of the bar and leans in towards her, his voice serious.Jess looks up at him, her eyes shimmering with sadness, like she’s about to cry. God, he hates it when she cries.“Look, Jess, you’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna meet someone, and you’re gonna fall in love,” his voice wavers slightly on that part, but Nick shoves it down and pushes through, ignoring the knowing look that Jess gives him. “And whoever it is will be a thousand times better than that scrunchie-wearing dickhole.”She smiles a little at that and lets out a watery chuckle. “Yeah?”“Yeah.” Nick breaks off their eye contact and stands up again, drawing away from her as he pulls the dishrag off his shoulder so he can wring it in his hands. It’s taking every ounce of his willpower not to say that it’s him , that he’s the one who’s fallen for her harder than he ever thought possible. Except she doesn’t want him. She made that more than clear this afternoon, and although he doesn’t fully believe her, he still wants to respect what she told him and give her the space she claims she wants.“Thanks, Nick.” Her grin is back, dazzling even though it’s only at half of her usual luminescence. Jess’ blue eyes sparkle in the low light of the bar with a tinge of lingering sadness and there’s a pull in his gut that tells him to reach out for her, to hug her tight to his chest and stroke her soft hair and tell her that things will all work out alright.But instead Nick bites down hard on the inside of his cheek and keeps his hands firmly wrapped around the dishrag. She still wants to find that someone, that perfect guy who isn’t him. He’s never going to be able to be that guy for her. And even though it kills him to say it, he knows it’s the truth. So instead he just smiles back at her and ignores the way his hand itches to reach out and take one of hers reassuringly.Jess looks at him like she’s about to say something, and that stupidly optimistic part of his heart stutters to life, reeling at the potential still hanging in the air. He can almost hear her whisper, “It’s you, Nick. You’re the man I want.” But it all must be in his imagination, because Jess doesn’t actually say anything. And then some guy takes a seat at the bar beside her and compliments her glasses and Jess giggles and makes some joke that the guy chuckles at, leaving Nick feeling like an awkward third wheel.He slips away to give the two of them some space and tries not to take it to heart that Jess doesn’t seem to notice that he’s left.---The rest of his shift goes by reasonably quickly. Things start to pick up once the late-night crowd drifts in, and Nick finds himself plenty distracted by the uptick of drink orders and clearing out the quickly-accumulating racks of empty bottles and glasses that get sent back to the kitchen. Nick loses track of Jess in the crowd, and while he misses her presence, he’s glad that he doesn’t have to watch first-hand as she finally manages to hit it off with some perfectly nice guy.Nick tries not to be too downtrodden when things finally begin to clear out and he realizes that Jess isn’t around anymore. She probably went home with that guy Ted, or whatever his name was, and now Nick’s stuck behind to clean up the mess and go home alone, hoping he won’t have to hear any noises echoing out of Jess’ room as he treks to his own.He scrubs a hand over his face. He’s an idiot. He’s a stupid, lovesick clown who’s fallen for a girl who doesn’t even care about him. Nick lets out a resigned sigh and gives himself a slap on the cheek. Jess has moved on. It’s time for him to accept that. Maybe it’s him who’s been in denial this whole time. Jess was never going to view what was going on between them as anything more than a one-night stand. And he was the fool for believing that it would turn out to be anything else.Well, this is it, then. Things are truly over between them. The reality of it finally sinks into him, and Nick’s skin feels itchy and too-tight, like he needs to get away but doesn’t have anywhere to go.“Hey.” Big Bob gives him a slap on the shoulder, seeming to sense his melancholy. “Everything alright, man?”“Yeah,” Nick lies.There’s a part of him that wants to lay his soul bare to Big Bob, to finally get everything off his chest after months of holding his breath to keep his relationship with Jess a secret from everyone and his feelings for Jess a secret from her. But they don’t really have the time to get into it, and he really ought to spare Big Bob the sob story anyways. He’s nothing special in the grand scheme of things. Heartbreaks happen all the time. Just because Jess meant the world to him doesn’t mean that she would ever feel the same way.Big Bob doesn’t seem convinced, but he doesn’t push the issue. “Alright. I’m gonna go clear tables, can you check out the bathrooms?”“Sure.” Nick really must be bummed out, because he doesn’t even try to wheedle his way out of one of the worst parts of closing up. He’s still all caught up in his head, mulling over Jess and how pathetic he is, as he makes his way to the bathroom. He swings the door open and-“Ah!” a strangely familiar, girlish squeal catches him off guard, and Nick reels back, feeling like he just got hit by a bucket of cold water.“Jess?!” he finally splutters, staring at her in confusion.“Nick!” she says in surprise, fully dressed and awkwardly perched on the toilet seat. “What are you doing here?”“What are you doing here?” he counters, still bewildered by this turn of events. “It’s the men’s room!”Jess cringes and gives a sad little shrug. She looks incredibly embarrassed, which she probably should be, given that she’s apparently camping out on a toilet in the men’s room. But Nick still feels kinda bad for her, in part because he knows that Jess has a tendency to get herself into odd situations like this, but also because there’s that same sadness in her expression that she had earlier at the bar when she asked him what was wrong with her.So he lets out a resigned sigh and gestures for her to scooch over. She obliges and he carefully drops down to sit on the other half of the seat, his fingers threaded together and elbows resting on his thighs. It’s probably not his greatest moment, sitting side by side with Jess on a men’s toilet, but he’s had worse.“So what are you doing?” he asks her, trying to be nice while also pointing out how ridiculous their situation truly is. “Just hiding in the bathroom?”“Kind of,” she answers sheepishly, and Nick nods in understanding. He’s camped out in a bathroom a few times before. Like that disastrous double date in ‘99 where Schmidt tried to convince him to have a foursome. Or the Miller family Christmas where he accidentally set his Aunt Sylvia’s hair on fire. To his credit, he hadn’t known it was fake and probably shouldn’t have been put in charge of lighting the candles on their dining table.“What happened?”“I don’t really know.” Jess shrugs. “Things were going well and then somehow I ended up freaking out and following him into the bathroom. And now I’m here. On the toilet.”“Right,” Nick says, still not quite following her line of logic.She lets out a long sigh, shoulders deflating. “I know I'm supposed to, like, ‘get back out there,’ you know, now that things with Spencer are over. But maybe I'm just not built for it.”Nick nods in understanding. It took months after his breakup with Caroline before Schmidt could convince him to try and move on from her. It wasn’t until he met Jess that he really started to feel like he could let go of his past. But then life just kicked him right back down into the mud, because Jess rejected him before he ever truly got a chance to tell her how he felt. He can’t even imagine how long it’ll take him to get over her. He wouldn’t be surprised if he never got over her.“I guess this is who I really am,” Jess says with another resigned sigh. “I’m a toilet person.”“Hey,” he counters, because that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “You’re not a toilet person.”Jess lets out a semi-sad giggle. Her shoulder bumps up against his and after a few seconds of hesitation, Nick tentatively sets one of his hands on her knee, his thumb brushing over the bare skin where her skirt has ridden up a little. He stares at it for a moment, his broad hand on top of her knee, seemingly out of place where it rests on the white fabric of her skirt. It reminds him of what she’s been saying this whole time, about how they aren’t meant to be together, that they aren’t anything serious.But when he goes to draw it away, Jess’ hand lands on top of his, her fingers delicately resting on the back of his hand. It’s the slightest bit of contact between them, especially since they’ve done things that were a whole lot more explicit, but it feels incredibly intimate all the same. The feeling sets his heart alight, a nervous tapping that makes it hard to think about anything else. When he looks up he realizes she’s also been staring at their hands, and Nick clears his throat before dropping his gaze back down to the tiled floor of the bathroom.“Look, Jess.” He coughs again, still feeling nervous, though he’s not quite sure why. “You’re amazing, okay? Just be yourself, and if he's not into Jessica Day, then there's something wrong with him.”“You really mean that?” her voice is soft, unsure.Nick gives her knee a reassuring squeeze. “Yeah. I do.”They’re quiet for a moment, just the two of them sitting in a stall of the men’s bathroom. It feels like a them moment: weird and heartfelt in equal measure. It’s moments like these that he realizes just how much he likes Jess, both as a friend and as something more. Sure, she’s sexy in a way that makes his blood boil, but she’s also just a genuinely sweet and caring person. That’s what keeps drawing him back in to her over and over again. His feelings for her are more than just physical.He loves her. He loves her so much that it terrifies him sometimes. And yet as inconvenient and shitty as it can be to love her sometimes, he still wouldn’t give her up. Nick would do just about anything for Jess, even though he knows she doesn’t feel the same way. Maybe that’s what love really is: being willing to give up everything for that one person who makes it all seem worthwhile.Nick gives her knee one final squeeze, letting his fingers linger on her skin for an extra second simply because he’s not sure when the next time he will get a chance to touch her will be. Then he slowly rises to his feet, stretching his back out a little as he turns to face her.“C’mon, Jess,” he says, offering her a hand to help her up. He intends for the words to come out serious and a little grumpy, because they’re closing in about half an hour and she can’t stay in the bathroom all night, but instead it sounds softer, more genuine.Jess doesn’t say anything, just stares at his proffered hand, and he honestly can’t make heads or tails of her expression. There’s a tense moment where she just looks at him, and he can practically see the wheels turning in her head. She seems to come to a decision, but her face is otherwise unreadable as she stands up and reaches past him for the handle of the stall door. Nick’s more than a little confused, and also a little offended that she wouldn’t let him help her up, but then the stall door’s lock clicks shut and he barely has a second to register it before Jess’ mouth is on his.It barely takes him a second to recover before he’s kissing her back, his hands wrapped around her waist as Jess throws her arms around his neck and reaches up on her tiptoes to reach him better. His eyes flutter shut as he matches the hurried pace of her kiss, still surprised by this turn of events but more than willing to see where this is all going. Her mouth is open and wet against his, their lips gliding over each other as he tilts his chin down and bends his knees a little so he can kiss her deeper and pull her flush up against him. Nick slips his tongue into her mouth and Jess moans and pushes even closer into him, crowding his back up against the stall door.The pace of the kiss slows slightly as things start to heat up even more, his tongue tangling up with Jess’ before teasing over the back of her teeth just to make her gasp into his mouth. He lets one of his hands ride up the curve of her spine and around her ribcage to fondle one of her breasts and Jess sucks in a sharp inhale as she arches into his touch. The sound sends a shock running through him and Nick slips his other hand up under the hem of her orange sweater to stroke the bare skin of her back. Jess tugs at the collar of his shirt while she runs her fingers through his hair, and he groans when she teases her teeth over his lower lip. He can feel her smiling against his lips as she gives him a softer kiss before diving back in to lick into his mouth.After they’ve kissed for a while, alternating between gentle, closed-mouth kisses and sloppy, wet open mouthed ones, she pulls away from him and Nick lets out an involuntary whine at the loss, grasping at the places where his hands are still on her body to try and pull her back into his embrace. She nudges his wrists and Nick obligingly lets go, his hands dropping down to hang down at his sides as he props his weight up against the wall of the bathroom stall. It hits him that Jess has probably realized that what they’re doing is a very bad idea, and he starts to mentally prepare himself for her rejection as he drops his head back against the bathroom stall with a dull thud, chest heaving as he struggles to catch his breath and his dick half-hard in his jeans.But Jess doesn’t go running. Instead she gives him a devilish smile as she undos the buttons of her sweater and shoves it down her arms so it bunches around her middle, revealing her sparkly, bright pink bra. Nick can feel his eyes go wide as he takes her all in, the reality of this situation finally starting to hit him as Jess reaches up for his neck again and pulls him in for another frantic kiss, and he’s quick to grasp for her again and close the gap between them until she’s plastered to his front as she runs her tongue over his lips and he opens his mouth in response.His hands roam over her bare skin as he kisses her back, messy and passionate as he tries to pull her as close to him as possible in the oddly confined space of the stall. He slots a thigh in between her legs and Jess rocks her hips into him, grinding down against the slight pressure as she pants into his mouth. Nick rocks into her to match her rhythm, his dick achingly hard against her hip, trapped a mile beneath the fabric of his jeans, and suddenly he wants everything off, to feel every inch of her bare skin pressed to hers. The fact that they’re literally in the public restroom of the bar he works at only dimly registers in his head, which is too cloudy with lust and Jess to really care about much else.Jess moans when he gropes her ass, and Nick chuckles before craning his neck to smear a line of kisses down her throat. She lets out another breathy gasp when he nips at the skin over her pulsepoint, her fingers tangled in his hair again and tugging encouragingly. The sensation sends another shiver down his spine, and Nick bites a little harder just to make her do it again.“So I guess I was right then?” he teases her as he slides his hand off her ass and up underneath her skirt to skim over the outer curve of her thigh. He feels like he’s burning up, even as Jess’ hands scramble to tug open the front of his flannel to roam up the plane of his bare chest.“Huh?” Jess sounds dazed and more than a little out of breath. It makes his head feel dizzy, to know that he can do that to her, that he can cause such a strong reaction just from kissing the living daylights out of her. But then again, he feels the exact same way towards her, his whole body desperate to be with her, leaning into her touch and his toes curling in his shoes when she teases her thumb over his nipple.He chuckles and bites at her collarbone, reveling in the broken moan Jess lets out in response. He leans back to admire his work and then kisses the corner of her jaw before leaning in close to whisper in her ear, “You do need me to have sex.”She lets out an annoyed huff, the breath fluttering up the ends of her bangs. But she doesn’t shove him away. Instead she pushes up even closer to him, her breath warm against the side of his cheek. “Shut up,” she mutters, blushing bright red.Nick just grins cheekily at her, one hand high on her bare thigh and the other spanning the outer curve of her waist. His hands feel hot against her bare skin, and his dick throbs from beneath the stupid fabric of his jeans, dying to feel the press of her hip against him without all of the ridiculous layers of clothing they have in the way.Jess rests her palms flat on his pecs and draws back to look at him for a moment, gnawing on her lower lip in contemplation. Then she pulls all the way out of his reach, and Nick opens his mouth to say something more, to apologize for being a smartass or say that he was only teasing, but then Jess is sinking down onto her knees in front of him and oh shit- “Uh, Jess?” he stammers, and she smirks at the way his voice cracks a little when he says her name. She gives him a wink and reaches for his belt buckle and Nick can literally feel his frantic heart beating a hole out of his chest.Her fingers dance over the waistband of his jeans before flicking open the button, and she leans in to drag down the zipper using her teeth and Nick nearly comes then and there. He lets out a wavering groan of appreciation and Jess sucks her lower lip in between her teeth, looking up at him through her eyelashes as she peels down his pants until they’re caught up around his knees. Nick goes to kick them down the rest of the way, but then Jess leans in and mouths at his erection through the material of his boxer briefs and every coherent thought he has left in his brain immediately flies out the window.Jess’ mouth is warm and wet, even through the fabric, and she sucks at the damp spot by the head of his dick where his precome is soaking through the fabric. Nick’s fully panting by now, fighting to keep his eyes open because he’d be damned if he missed even a second of this performance. Her hands slide up his legs, her palms starting at his knees and then following the upper curve of his thighs as she nudges him back against the wall of the stall and fuck , they’re really doing this here, in public , which is nerve wracking in a kinda hot way but also terrifying because what if someone walks in on them? But there’s no way he’s pulling the plug on this, not with the way Jess’ tongue is drawing a teasing figure-eight over the sticky fabric covering the head of his dick while her fingertips dip into the waistband of his underwear.“This okay?” she asks him, voice a little rough and god , like he would ever say no to that.“Yeah, yes, all good, this is good,” he stammers, and the want and desperation evident in his voice should be embarrassing, but Jess just smiles proudly at him and tugs his boxer briefs down with a torturous slowness.His underwear joins his jeans where they’re bunched up around his knees, but Nick doesn’t really care about that all that much anymore, because Jess is looking at his dick, her eyes even bigger than they usually are and her lips slightly parted, lipstick already a little smeared from where he kissed her earlier. Her gaze flicks up to his face, and he must be wearing some kind of awestruck expression, because Jess’ blush deepens and she shly ducks her head a little. She ignores his dick at first, instead leaning in to press feather-light kisses on his upper thigh that light his skin on fire and make him clench his hands into fists where they’re dangling at his sides. As she travels up to tease her tongue on the inside of his thigh his dick brushes up against her cheek and expects her to lean away, but instead she kinda nuzzles into it, making an involuntary groan tumble out of his mouth.Jess looks up at him again as she licks her lips, and fuck if that isn’t all kinds of hot. She leans in and brushes her mouth up against the head of his dick, her warm breath ghosting over him and Nick bites hard on the inside of his cheek because he really, really wants this to last for more than a minute. But then she takes him into her mouth and all bets are off, and his head falls back against the rickety stall door with a hollow thump. She looks like a fucking dream, and Nick definitely agrees with her thing earlier about kinda wanting to film them, because this is a moment he wants to replay over and over in his head until the day he dies. Her eyes flutter closed as she takes another inch of him into her mouth and sucks , and Nick lets out another wavering moan as his toes curl inside of his shoes. He tentatively reaches out a hand to caress her hair and Jess moans in approval, raising her own hand to guide him to support the back of her head. Then she takes the base of his dick in her hand and starts to bob up and down, starting up a messy rhythm that is legitimately causing his brain to melt. “Fuck ,” he mutters, struggling for breath as he can feel his impending orgasm start to coil up in the pit of his stomach. “Jess, I’m gonna...”There’s a wet pop as she lets him fall out of her mouth, her hand stroking him steadily. “Yeah?” she asks, voice raspy as she looks up at him, eyes dark and pupils blown wide. Nick groans at the sight, his fingers tightening their grip on her hair.“Uh huh,” he says quickly.She sucks her lower lip in between her teeth and tightens her grip ever so slightly. “You wanna put it on me?”
“Fuck.”
He remembers telling her that the other morning, when she was fussing with her bangs in the mirror and he was still drowsy and half-asleep from working the Saturday closing shift the night before. Jess had given him this kinda-confused, kinda-grossed out look, and Nick had tried to awkwardly laugh it off before panic moonwalking into the shower, still fully dressed. Nick had assumed that would be the last of it, but then she snuck into his room that night, wearing nothing but that soft pink robe he likes so much. She had asked him about it then, her voice a breathy whisper as he rocked into her, and Nick had confessed into the curve of her neck as he rubbed her clit and felt her clench tight around him. “Holy shit,” he mutters, fully lost in the depths of want for her and not even remotely capable of thinking straight. “ Yes , god yes, honey. Please.” Jess smiles up at him as she lowers her hand and Nick quickly replaces it with his own, stroking himself fast and practiced. She tilts her chin up, opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue, looking up at Nick through her eyelashes, and god , he thought she looked hot before, but now she’s practically pornographic . The slick sound of him jerking off echoes in the tiny bathroom and they’re gonna get caught but he doesn’t care, his entire world has closed down into this moment and the way his vision is kinda fuzzy on the edges and the way Jess looks absolutely gorgeous on her knees. “Fucking hell,” Nick groans, too clouded by lust to have any control over the mindless babbling tumbling out of his mouth. “Jess, you look so fucking hot right now. Shit . Shit shit shit, fuck . Jess ,” he grits out her name as he comes, his vision going white in a sudden starburst of pleasure.After what feels like an eternity he finally drifts back to reality, still gasping for breath and feeling like he’s been electrocuted. He pries his eyes open and looks down at Jess, and his throat goes dry at the sight of her. There’s a splatter of his come on her cheek, another dripping down her lips and chin, and he can see the bob of her throat as she swallows whatever amount actually landed in her mouth.Nick stares down at her, mesmerized, as his brain tries to process what’s right in front of him. He tentatively slides his hand out of her hair and drags his thumb through the mess of come on her cheek before bringing it to her mouth. Jess looks straight into his eyes as she purses her lips around his thumb and sucks it clean, and Nick lets out a low groan in response, and his can feel his softening dick twitch in the loose grip of his fist.He opens his mouth to say something, anything, even though he’s not even sure he’s capable of speech right now, but he’s interrupted by the loud squeal of the bathroom door swinging open. Jess’ eyes go wide and Nick’s brain switches into panic mode as he hauls her up to her feet and crowds her back into the corner of the stall. He hikes his pants back up to his waist faster than he ever has in his entire life, hoping to God and whatever deity might be listening that whoever just stumbled in is some unobservant drunk and not Big Bob here to check in on him.Jess is still looking at him in bug-eyed panic, as if he has any idea what to do in this situation and isn’t just as clueless as her. She leans in to whisper something and Nick claps a hand over her mouth so she won’t blow their cover, and he bites down hard on his lip to smother the moan that threatens to spill out of him when he feels the remnants of his come smear against his palm. He squeezes his eyes shut, as if that would help any if they actually were caught, and then opens them in relief when he hears the unmistakable sound of someone pissing over at the urinals. They stay absolutely silent and as still as possible as they listen to the flush of the urinal before the guy stumbles out of the bathroom.Nick lets go of Jess and steps away from her with a sigh of relief, his heart still racing and his chest heaving as he takes a few gasping breaths. “That was close.”“I can’t believe he didn’t wash his hands,” Jess says in disgust as she shrugs her sweater back on.He laughs at that, probably a little too loud, and hauls Jess in for a kiss, and he doesn’t even complain about the lingering taste of his jizz on her tongue.---They have to make a hasty exit from the bathroom because neither of them want to risk another close call of being caught. Nick obligingly washes his hands and tries to apologize to Jess for not getting a chance to return the favor, but she just waves him off and tells him not to worry about it. He leaves first, trying to act casual about the whole thing even though he knows Jess stayed behind to wash away the remnants of his come from her face, and even the thought of it sets his whole body on fire.Big Bob gives him a knowing glance when he walks up to the bar, and Nick clears his throat before saying that the bathrooms were all clear, hoping that he isn’t completely obvious. It’s not until Big Bob walks away that he realizes his shirt’s buttoned wrong and his fly is down, but he’s still too dazed by what just happened to care all that much. Jess doesn’t stop by the bar to check in with him before leaving, but he manages to catch her eye from across the room, and she blushes bright red when she sees him and then gives him a flash of a smile before she disappears out the door.He ends up volunteering for all the shit jobs in order to make it up to Big Bob, which manages to earn him a nod of approval from the gruff man when he offers to be the one who mops up once all their patrons have cleared out. Nick wears a stupid grin all through the rest of his shift, staring down at the freshly-mopped floors like he just won the lottery. He’s still dimly aware that he didn’t get an actual answer out of Jess this time around, but it’s close enough. Jess kissed him . She could’ve gone home with any guy tonight, but instead it was him that she ended up with.The thing is, even when she’s given the opportunity to sleep with other people, Jess keeps coming back to him. Like earlier this afternoon, how she claimed that she didn’t need him to have sex. Which is true in a way, because there are plenty of other guys who would be more than happy to assist her in her quest for meaningless sex. But although she’s had more than enough chances to find that someone else who could be “the one,” she always, always went home with him.And now that he thinks about it, that’s how things have always been between them. On the night of their second-ever hookup, Jess had spent the night flirting with that P-Funk guy, but it was Nick who she went home with. And there had been other guys on her radar, too, like that music teacher at her school, but she never actually followed through with that potential. Up until now Nick had just assumed that was about Jess not feeling ready for a ‘real relationship,’ and that he was just an easy way for her to ‘scratch an itch.’But if it was really just about the sex, well then it wouldn’t matter if it was him or any other guy. She told him that she was afraid of rejection and being cheated on because of what that piece-of-shit Spencer did to her, which helped to explain most of why she kept trying to push him away. And yet she kept coming back to him anyways, even though she technically would’ve been ‘safer’ from heartbreak if she had just found some random, forgettable guy from the bar that she would never have to see ever again. Instead she chose him , and then she chose him again, and again .He’d done his best to prove that he was worthy of her choice, despite her insistence that he wasn’t the one for her. It wasn’t like it was particularly taxing for him, not when he was so stupidly in love with her that there wasn’t anyone else he would even consider. That very first night when she came to his room had been simultaneously the easiest and most difficult decision of his life. To have even one chance to be with Jess was something that he would give up just about anything for, even though he knew how horrible it would be to have to watch her get swept away by someone else when he was intimately familiar with what it was like to be hers. And although there was a part of him that knew that from the moment they started, hearing Jess say it out loud was the confirmation that snapped his heart in half.But ever since they started sleeping together, neither of them have actually brought anyone else home. Not like he ever wanted to, because there was never anyone who could compare to Jess. The closest he ever got was Shane, and although things between them never really panned out, that would’ve been the perfect way for him to bring an end to whatever was going on between him and Jess. It would’ve given Jess the clean break that she wanted and allowed Nick to move on to someone who wanted more than just a one-night stand.Shane was the tipping point for both of them, because it made Nick realize that he wasn’t going to be happy with someone who wasn’t Jess. And while Jess kept trying to maintain that things between her and Nick were nothing more than a breezy, no-consequences hookup, she certainly took it to heart when she thought he was no longer interested in her. It was that point where he realized that Jess wanted more than just meaningless sex, she wanted to be wanted , and it was Nick who she wanted to want her.Then once Jess realized something seemed to be going on between Nick and Shane, rather than shove him away to avoid being burned by some loser guy yet again, instead she came to him in the middle of the night, shy and unsure. She’d kissed him sweetly and took care of him, and it was all that Nick had ever wanted from her since the first day they met.Jess had put her trust in him, and he had honored that. When he was building her dresser, Jess had told him about how she was afraid to open herself up to heartbreak. Although they weren’t in anything even close to a relationship, Nick hadn’t wavered in his dedication to Jess, even when he was presented with another, less-complicated option. She had been running away from him out of the fear that he would hurt her, and when he demonstrated that he would never do that to her, suddenly she didn’t have a reason to leave.Ever since that night, things have been shifting between them, and tonight was the culmination of that. Because now Jess isn’t as afraid to let him in, to be more open about how she feels and leave herself vulnerable to getting hurt again. But when Nick pushed her on the point she was so afraid of that she’d been dodging it for weeks, it scared her so much that she’d pushed him away and tried to prove him wrong by making his worst fears come true.But even then she was her own worst enemy, because she ended up losing whatever guy she’d been talking to when she went back to see Nick at the bar and gloat over her ‘victory.’ After everything that happened, with the gauntlet thrown down and all those fears finally brought into the light of day, Jess still chose him. He’d given her the option to leave the bathroom and chase after some other guy, but instead she’d stuck around with him.And god , had she stuck around. But the sex between them isn’t just physical, not that it ever really was, not for him, at least. There’s something about the way Jess looks at him. Her eyes go dark with want, desire and lust mixing together in a way that’s so hot he thinks he might melt. But there’s something else there too, almost a sort of longing that feels like more than just her feeling ‘twirly.’ Like it’s him that she wants, not anyone else. And maybe it’s all in his head, but there’s a part of him that dares to hope that she could have feelings for him, too.---He doesn’t get home until late, and he yawns and stretches his arms over his head as he makes his way down the hall. The light under the door to Jess’ bedroom is turned off, and Nick pauses for a moment and considers sneaking in to see if she’ll let him return the favor from earlier, but then he figures it’s probably for the best to let her get some well-deserved rest. Maybe in another world he would be able to let himself in, to call her honey and give her a kiss goodnight before curling up in bed beside her. But instead he lets out a soft sigh and continues his trek towards the bathroom.Nick rounds the corner into the bathroom and runs right into Jess. She lets out a little squeak of surprise as she crashes into him, bumping against the front of his chest as his hand reflexively flies up to grab at her elbow to steady her. After a second of floundering, he manages to let go of her and take a step back, only barely managing not to run into the bathroom door as it swings shut. Jess pulls away as well, leaning against the edge of the blue stall door as she fiddles with her pajama sleeve.“Sorry,” she says quickly, her voice high-pitched and a little nervous. Jess’ eyes drift up to his as she brushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear.Now it’s his turn to regard her silently. He stares at her for a drawn-out moment, just trying to take in the reality of what happened earlier between them and reconcile it with where they are now. It almost feels like he’s looking at a totally different Jess, a more familiar version than the one she’d been at the bar. She’s in one of her weird pajama outfits, her big glasses precariously perched on the bridge of her nose, and her face all shiny and pink from being freshly scrubbed clean. She looks like the girl he’s used to seeing around the loft, the girl who he can imagine himself crawling into bed with after a rough day, who would gently run her fingers through his hair while he pressed his face into her chest and let all the stress just drain out of him as he breathed in the sweet smell of her laundry detergent.His gaze lands on her her face again, lingering on how her teeth scrape over the swell of her lower lip as she waits for him to say something. His head feels blissfully blank, and yet too empty to come up with any feasible plan of action that would propel them out of this stagnant moment that he’s created. Jess raises one eyebrow at him expectantly, and Nick takes a deep breath before coming to a decision.He reaches out for her again, one broad hand circling around her waist while the other reaches up to cradle her jaw. Jess lets out a sharp gasp of surprise just before he closes his mouth over hers, and her breath tastes like peppermint toothpaste and the sharp bite of her mouthwash. Nick slides his hand up into her hair and hauls her in closer to him, crowding up into her space as Jess throws her arms up around his neck and kisses him back with equal fervor. He teases her upper lip with his tongue before licking into her open mouth and Jess moans as her hand scrabbles for purchase on the fabric of his shirt.Nick stumbles forward, trying to find some kind of surface to press Jess up against so he can kiss her even deeper. His hand reluctantly slips out of her hair and lands on the edge of the stall door, and Jess rises up on her tiptoes to meet him, desperately pushing even closer as the kiss becomes more frantic. He manages to maneuver them into the stall, one thigh between Jess’ legs to push her up off the ground and back against the cold, tiled wall of the bathroom. She swings a leg up around his hip and grinds down against him, already desperate for him to give her more. Nick tilts his head to improve the angle of the kiss, and she tangles a hand in his hair as the other scratches at his shoulders.“Oh god , Nick,” she gasps as he shifts his head to leave sloppy kisses down her neck, one hand braced on the wall over her shoulder and the other gripping the curve of her hip like a lifeline.He hums against her collarbone and Jess whines as she rolls her hips down into his thigh. Nick uses his nose to nudge the neckline of her pajamas out of the way so he can drag his tongue over the dip of her throat and Jess lets out another broken moan as she arches into him. His hand trails down off her hip, tugging loosely at the waistband of her cotton pajamas, and Jess whines again before scraping her teeth over his lower lip. The rhythmic swivel of her hips stutters as he drags his thumb purposefully over the skin of her lower stomach, the fabric of her pajama top draped over his wrist.He dips his fingertips down under the waistband of her pajamas as he asks, “Yeah?” “Yes ,” she whimpers. “Please, yes.” Nick chases after her lips again, kissing her wet and messy as he slips his hand down into her pants, his palm pressed up between her legs so that he can feel the heat of her through the thin fabric of her underwear. Her panties are nearly soaked through, and he slides his fingers against her folds, slowly dragging the slick fabric back and forth over her clit. Jess’ eyes are squeezed shut as she struggles for breath, her thigh trembling where she’s hiked it up around his hip. She’s already so worked up all because of him , and the intensity of the realization sends a shudder down his spine as he leans in to nip at her earlobe.“Do you want this?” he whispers into her ear, and the roughness of his tone echoes in his own ears. “Uh huh ,” Jess rasps, arching closer into his touch.Nick kisses the corner of her jaw and presses down harder on her clit, drawing another moan out of Jess. He drops his head down towards her shoulder, his lips ghosting over the bit of bare skin where the collar of her pajama top has been tugged to the side. Jess is clinging to him like she never wants to let go, and Nick’s head drifts back to his thoughts from earlier, the answers he still wants to hear from her.
“Do you want me?” he asks her, hoping she can’t hear the insecurity that makes his voice waver on the second half of the question. “Yes ,” she says with a certainty that shakes him all the way down to his core. Nick’s head shoots up to look at her, expecting her to try and walk back her statement or be otherwise too lost in pleasure to realize what she’s saying. But Jess is looking right at him, her gaze intense and full of want, and he could swear that there’s something more there, but he doesn’t know if he can dare to get his hopes up.She pulls him in for another kiss, her fingers tangled in his hair. There’s still an urgent edge to the kiss, but it’s also slower in a way, her open mouth gliding over his as she rocks into the pressure of his palm. Nick kisses her back, matching her intensity as he tugs the crotch of her panties to the side so he can slip a finger inside of her. Jess’ head drops back against the bathroom wall in response, and her shuddering gasp rings in his ears.Jess responds beautifully to him as he fingers her, gasping and moaning his name as she grips his shoulder like it’s the only thing grounding her in reality. Nick kisses all over her neck as he builds her steadily up to the edge, smiling at the way she arches into his touch and rocks her hips along to the rhythm he sets with his fingers.He’s three fingers deep inside of her when the bathroom door swings open, and Nick freezes up, looking up at Jess in stunned silence. Jess doesn’t say anything, her mouth hanging open even as she involuntarily squeezes around his fingers. Miraculously, they manage not to be noticed, and the sound of Winston’s cheery whistle echoes off the walls of the bathroom as the shower squeals to life.Nick looks back to Jess, and there’s almost a flash of disappointment on her face when she realizes they’re going to have to call it quits before she has a chance to finish. But instead he gives her a mischievous grin and curls his fingers up inside her. Jess bites down hard on her lower lip, struggling to stay quiet even as he flicks his thumb over her clit just the way she likes.Her knuckles are white where she has a deathgrip on the fabric on his shirt, and Nick can feel her clenching hard around his fingers as a whimper manages to slip past her lips. He leans in and kisses her, desperate and messy to muffle the moan Jess makes as she finally comes apart, her arms flung around his neck to him in as close to her as possible.Jess buries her face in his shoulder afterwards, and Nick carefully slides his fingers out of her before discreetly wiping them off on the fabric of his jeans. His touch lingers on her, gently caressing her thighs as he keeps her propped up against the tile wall. He feels the press of her lips to his neck, soft and sweet in a way that’s almost a surprise. Nick leans away to look at her, and Jess just smiles at him before brushing a hand through his hair, her thumb ghosting over the arch of his cheekbone. It makes his heart ache something awful, and he’s definitely not imagining that shimmer in her eyes.He tries to open his
mouth to ask her about it, but then Jess presses her finger to his lips with a meaningful glance over his shoulder. She leans in to give him one final kiss to the cheek and then quietly lowers her feet to the ground before stealthily sneaking out of the bathroom.Nick watches as she goes, and this is normally the part where he would lament over how she was gone for good, or that he had squandered his last chance to convince her to stay. But it doesn’t feel like those other times. It doesn’t feel like an ending that leaves a sour feeling in his gut.It feels like the start of something.