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Chapter Text

In retrospect, maybe asking Nick to go with her to The Crafters’ Castle the day after he almost nailed her on the dining room table wasn’t Jess’s brightest idea ever.

But in her defense, she really thought it might make sense in a rip-the-bandaid-off, get-back-on-the-horse kind of way.

It’s true that yes, last night, Nick Miller basically made her feel like she had been struck by a bolt of sexy lightning.

And that yes, in the dimly-lit kitchen, he dared her first to admit and then to prove her attraction to him, his voice a dangerous rasp that made her toes curl in her ballet flats.

It’s also true that when she pressed her lips and then the rest of her body against him, he responded by basically devouring her face and maneuvering her across the room to where he wanted to take her, his hands so big and strong and rough it was like he was the Beast and she was Belle.

And yes, when he laid her down on the table and ordered her to take off her clothes, her lady parts turned into freaking Niagara Falls and soaked her panties and the crotch of her tights completely through.

And finally, yes, if it weren’t for Nick accidentally smashing Schmidt’s stupid fishtank, Jess would have let him smash her, in what she’s pretty sure would’ve been the hottest sex of her life.

But that was last night and this is the morning, and as Jess’s mom would chirp when she was growing up, “Everything looks different in the light of day.”

You are a strong and capable woman, Jess tells herself, and also... you live with Nick. So until you figure out what the heck this thing is that’s going on between you, you just have to be able to coexist without things being weird.

It stands to reason that the weirdness will just get worse, a gas expanding to fill whatever container it’s in, the longer she waits to face him again.

So clearly, the only practical way forward is to suck it up and face him again sooner rather than later.

And what could be a better, more non-sexual opportunity than enlisting him to come along on a supply run to the LA area’s premier crafting emporium?

After all, Jess has a rare, 40-percent-off-your-entire-purchase coupon that’s about to expire, and she’d never forgive herself if she let it go to waste like some absolute arts-and-crafts amateur.

Plus, it’s a public place, so there’s no way the two of them can get into any trouble of the, um, lusty variety.

***

Last night, alone on her bed in her room, Jess couldn’t stop thinking about a.) what had just happened, and b.) what had nearly just happened.

Because Nick Miller was gearing up to give it to her good and hard and strong, the way she’s realized only recently, in her early 30s, that she really, really wants it. And if she’s being honest with herself, ever since The Hallway Kiss That Changed Everything, Nick is the only man from whom she is interested in getting it.

In some ways, it makes very little sense: this is the same irritating, semi-hapless Nick Miller who finds butterflies “suspicious,” and insists the correct pronunciation of “albums” is “al-blums,” and who will argue for hours on end that “science has proven” beer to be more hydrating than water.

But he also has a very good face, and very good hands, and a very good mouth, and — underneath a facade of stubborn gruffness — what she’s discovered to be a very good heart.

And holy wow: the power emanating from him — on the night he first grabbed her and kissed her, and then again in the kitchen as they danced on the edge of doing much more — practically had its own gravitational pull, drawing her in and obliterating everything except the undeniable fact of her desire.

And his.

She could feel his hardness against her through his pants when he used his body like a wall of heat to move her over to the table. And then again when — dear God — he locked his eyes on hers and lifted her up to spread her out before him on the dark wood. And then again when they smashed their bodies into each other for one last furious kiss in the hallway before retreating to their separate bedrooms for the night.

She has always found it disgusting when guys say they have “blue balls” (because, ewww). But now, for the first time, she understands the feeling they’re talking about. She almost went back out and burst into Nick’s room and threw herself at him, her hunger shocking and desperate and obvious, but she couldn’t let him win.

Stubborn is as stubborn does.

So, her mind and heart rate racing, the area between her legs humiliatingly wet, she replayed the chaos and thrill of The Dining Room Table Almost-Eff over and over again in her head, touching herself until she came, trying to stay quiet as she did.

This is what sent her over the edge: She realized at a certain point that across the hall, Nick was probably doing the same.

***

Jess still wakes up at I-teach-middle-school hours, even though she’s now teaching adult ed in the afternoons.

It’s a good thing in this case, because she can slip out of her room and shower before Nick even wakes up.

While she’s in there, secretly scrubbing herself with some of Schmidt’s body chutney because dammit, she could really use a “high-end, spa-like experience” this morning, she — again — replays the insane events of last night in her mind. And now that she’s slightly removed from them and not in a state of wild arousal, she’s struck by something subtle: how thoughtful and maybe even brave Nick was in how he broke it to her that while hopped up on pain pills, she had told him she wanted to have sex with him.

In a one-two punch, he both gave her an easy, embarrassment-minimizing out, should she want to take it — “If it’s something you were just saying, that’s fine, that’s cool; we’ll move on and not talk about it” — and went out on a limb to make his own feelings clear: “But it is something that I’ve thought a lot about.”

That’s right. He said that, and she heard it: Nick Miller has thought about having sex with me, a lot. And he declared it to her before waiting for a clear answer about whether she’d meant what she said, knowing full well that she might take the out he’d given her and say “Ugh, no, Nick; it was just the pills.”

(It wasn’t. Not in the slightest. Even now, taking what she intended to be an innocent shower, she’s feeling twinges of arousal, remembering the look on his face when — before everything else that followed — he asked her, point-blank, “Do you want to have sex with me, yes or no?” and she answered, “Yes.”)

She shaves her legs and what’s between them, just in case.

And then she heads out of the bathroom to get dressed and to start to clean up the mess that awaits her: In the dizzying haze of Everything Else, she’s just now remembered the shattered fishtank.

Chapter Text

It’s still just 7:15 am (“Only birds keep your kind of hours, Jess,” Nick once told her), and it’s a Sunday morning, and there’s absolutely no reason anyone else in the loft should be up and awake right now.

But as Jess opens the bathroom door and starts walking to her room, she hears noises coming from the main living space.

When she rounds the corner and sees who and what’s making them, she almost loses her footing.

It’s Nick.

Nick, who almost full-on took her last night just inches from the same spot where he’s now cleaning up shards of glass and aquarium rocks and coral.

And not only is he cleaning up, but he is really concentrating and looking very serious, and instead of using some annoying Nick Miller workaround involving duct tape or paper plates or a spatula, there’s a mop leaning against the table and he is cleaning with an actual broom and a dustpan, and what on earth?! She didn’t even know he knew where those were stored.

She lets out a small squeak of shock that vaguely resembles his name, involuntarily announcing her presence.

Nick looks up at her across the room, his mouth falling slightly open as his eyes drag down her body and back up again: The only thing covering her is a mint-green towel that ends a good foot above her knees.

And dang it, she knew she’d have to face him again soon. She was gearing up for it! She was making a plan! But she didn’t expect to be almost naked, and she certainly wasn’t prepared for this: Nick Miller at 7:15 in the morning, all scruffy and responsible, being the one to take the lead on cleaning up their mess — and checking her out as if it’s still last night as he does so.

He speaks first, after clearing his throat: “Uh, hey, Jess. How’d ya sleep?” 

It’s just her luck that his morning voice is almost as raspy as what she now thinks of as his Ordering-Me-to-Take-Off-My-Clothes voice.

She can feel her cheeks flushing and her breath quickening, threatening to give her away.

And dammit, he is leaning on the broom and cocking his head to the side as he looks at her, and she has always had a thing for Dick van Dyke as Bert in “Mary Poppins,” and other than some missing soot, she’ll be damned if right now Nick Miller doesn’t look exactly like a sexy and mischievous chimney sweep —

Holy shiz, Day; get your act together.

She clutches her towel and tightens her lips into a firm line before speaking, trying to get herself into a nice, comfortable Nick-Miller-is-so-annoying mindset instead of this new-ish and terrifying I-want-Nick-Miller-real-bad one.

She kind of overcompensates. Instead of answering him calmly, like a reasonable human being who is not in fact aroused and trying to hide it, she yells at him: “Nick, how are you awake right now? I have never seen you up before 8 am in my life.”

“Couldn’t sleep, Jess,” he says simply, eyes on hers, and she notices just how big his hand looks wrapped around the slim stem of the broom. “Thought I’d get a jump on cleaning up our mess.”

And hoo boy, how dare Nick Miller choose this morning of all mornings to suddenly take initiative and be a man who cleans up messes instead of just creating them? Because it is really not helping her rapidly-developing between-the-legs situation, or the way the skin around her collarbone is tingling the way it always does when she’s turned on, or the voice in her head that is telling her: Jessica Day, if you don’t do the dirty tango with this man soon, you’re going to explode.

Dammit.

She had hoped against hope that somehow, after last night, it would be like her fever had broken and things could maybe just go back to normal, but no, instead it’s like her fever has had sex with another fever and multiplied, and aaaaahhhhh, who has she become and why are the combined concepts of NICK and SEX — in gigantic, flashing neon letters — the only thing she can think about right now?

She looks for solid ground and finds a grain of irritation to hold onto; something to turn into a pearl that will keep what she’s really thinking and feeling hidden.

“Our mess?” she hisses. “Nick, the last time I checked, I wasn’t the one swinging a freaking hammer around right next to a giant glass fishtank!”

He clenches his jaw and brings one hand to his face, swiping his fingers across the bruise on his cheekbone. He’s gonna yell back at me, she thinks, really give it to me good — and crap, why does that thought make her bare and increasingly wet lady business pulse with anticipation beneath her towel?

But Nick Miller is full of surprises this morning: he doesn’t raise his voice to match hers.

Instead, he says roughly, “All right, Jess, I’m sorry,” sounding almost pained.

And this — an apology?! an admission that he’s primarily responsible for the destruction of the fishtank?! — is not what she expected from Nick Miller, the king of doubling down; of never admitting he’s wrong.

(She should know, because she is the queen.)

“You’re... sorry?” she asks in disbelief.

“Jesus, Day,” he responds, looking at her with exasperation but also a very clear hunger, his voice now almost a growl. “Of course I am. You think I wanted to break this damn fishtank last night instead of finishing what we started?”

A thrill runs through her body.

And now it’s official: he’s not gonna go the route of pretending what they said and almost did to each other last night didn’t happen, or say that he regrets admitting that he wants her, or play it like last night was one of their normal heated arguments that got out of hand and nothing more.

But what route is she gonna take?

She feels slightly dizzy, like she’s on the side of a cliff, scrambling for purchase. It’s too early, and she wants him, bad, but the part of her brain that controls what she says hasn’t quite caught up with what’s coursing through her body. (Her body that is still wrapped only in a tiny towel!) And she wasn’t expecting to have this conversation with him right now, and this is too confusing and intense, and she doesn’t know what all of this is gonna mean for her and for him and the ecosystem of Apartment 4D — and (oh, yeah) he was sleeping with his boss until yesterday.

So she tries to delay and change the subject, sputtering out something and realizing even as she says it that she’s made the worst possible choice of words: “What about the wetness?”

Nick’s jaw — that manly freaking jaw that she inexplicably wants to lick — drops in incredulity, and he repeats her words back to her: “What about the wetness, Jessica?”

And Jesus Christ, this is mortifying, and she starts gesticulating wildly towards the wet floor around his stupid flip-flops: “I meant the water! From the fishtank! How are you gonna clean it up, Nick?”

There’s the slightest hint of a smirk on his face — damn him, he’s enjoying the way she’s squirming, and damn her, because that’s just making her even more turned on — but then he lets her off the hook.

“OK, Jess,” he says. “Fine. I’ve actually got it all figured out. First, I’m sweeping up all the glass and little fish-rocks and stuff. And then I’ll sop up most of the water with this“ — he gestures at what she realizes is his bedspread, currently balled up on the dining room table — “and then just throw it in the washer and dryer.”

(That’s right; he told her the other day that he was “super excited about laundry now.”)

“And then,” he finishes, “I’ve got that mop over there to handle whatever’s left. That work for ya, Day?”

As much as she wants to keep yelling at him, it’s actually… not the worst cleanup plan in the entire world? And he suddenly looks so proud of himself, so shyly eager for her approval, that it dawns on her: the reason he’s out here doing this right now is less about proving her wrong, and more just about her.

There’s a warmth in her chest now, something other and bigger than all the sexy urges she’s been feeling and fighting.

Which isn’t to say it doesn’t intensify them, or that she’s not noticing the way his maroon T-shirt clings to his broad chest, or that she’s not thinking about what his morning scruff would feel like between her thighs, or that she’s not remembering just how effortlessly he hoisted her up last night after she screamed at him to “kiss me like a man.”

“OK, Nick,” she says with a sigh. “Thank you for cleaning up. Let me help. This isn’t all on you.”

He looks surprised — just like she did a moment ago, when he apologized instead of taking the easy, argue-with-me bait — and he swallows and tilts his head slightly, the way he does when he's trying to figure something out.

She feels a huge, crazy rush of fondness, one that helps her to finally, finally get just the tiniest bit bold.

“And, um, I’m sorry, too,” she whispers. “You know. That we were. Um, interrupted.”

Shocked and delighted, he lets go of the broom; it falls to the ground with a loud crack.

Even at the noise, he doesn’t take his eyes off hers. His mouth — his stupid, wonderful mouth — starts to curve into a sly smile.

And then the door of Schmidt’s room flies open.

Chapter Text

When Schmidt bursts out of his bedroom, he’s bristling with a highly irritated version of his typical Blanche-Devereaux-meets-90s-boy-band-member energy.

“What in the name of Michael John Douglas Keaton is going on out here?” he yells. “When Winston and I got in last night, I was in haze of painkillers from a jellyfish sting, and I hoped I was just hallucinating when I saw that my top-of-the-line aquarium had met its end. But now, in the cruel light of day, I see that—“

“Wait, you got stung by a damn jellyfish?” Nick interrupts. “Are you OK? How the hell—“

“Yes, never mind, it’s not important. Winston helped me take care of it, because he is my true friend, while you were apparently hell-bent on spending my time of need destroying my Aqueon Aquarium 2000,” Schmidt spits out. “What in Kanye West’s America is wrong with you?”

Schmidt barely seems to have noticed Jess; for one cowardly second, she thinks about just bolting for her room and leaving Nick to face the music alone. But as much as she wants to, she can’t: both because it would be a crappy thing to do — and because she needs to keep an eye on things out here: Nick Miller is no good at lying, and Jess is in no way ready for Schmidt to know what really went down last night.

That it was very nearly her.

Even right now, as Schmidt berates Nick, Jess is remembering the inexplicable hotness of she and Nick berating each other while making out less than 12 hours ago — the feeling of the table at her back; of Nick’s hardness pressed against her through their clothes. She can’t help herself: she’s thinking about what that same hardness would feel like inside the warmth between her legs, or down her throat. And good Lord in heaven, when did she become this super-sexed-up-and-uninhibited version of herself (Jessica… Lay?). She can’t stop looking at the solid sweep of Nick’s shoulders and thinking about how much she liked it when he manhandled her and bossed her around and took control, and how, in the considerable heat of the moment, even as she yelled back at him, she would have done pretty much any dirty and delicious thing he told her to—

Dammit, Day! she scolds herself. Now is very much NOT THE TIME! You’ve gotta hop off the Perv Train to Pervtown, stat! Be cool! These next few moments will be critical in determining whether or not this thing between you and Nick will have the chance to unfold without Schmidt’s knowledge and interference — which could make all the difference in whether this thing between you and Nick unfolds at all.

Jess shifts her weight from one foot to the other and wraps herself tighter in her towel, trying to convince herself she’s in control. But her motions kinda backfire, sending cool air to meet the undeniable, non-shower-related dampness between her legs — making it very clear that try as she might, there is just no escaping her attraction to Nick Miller right now.

The very same Nick Miller who hasn’t yet answered Schmidt, and who is notoriously awful at telling effective lies, and who could blow up everything if his responses evoke suspicion-of-sex.

Schmidt presses onward: “Be honest, Nicholas: Did you smash it in a jealous fit of rage? Because you thought my affection for a sea creature would replace my affection for you? In that case, I’m touched, and I forgive you.”

“Blecch, Schmidtty, no, it was definitely not that.”

Schmidt slams his hand down on the kitchen counter: “Then I retract my forgiveness!”

It’s only at that point that Jess’s presence seems to register with Schmidt. “Jess,” he says, “why are you lurking over there?”

“I’m not lurking,” she says defensively. “I was in the shower, and then I came out and saw this happening, and— Nick Miller cleaning something up? I had to keep watching to make sure it was actually real, you know?”

She hates herself as she says it; she hopes Nick understands that her in-the-moment meanness is an attempt to throw Schmidt off their almost-sex trail and nothing more. Nick makes eye contact with her briefly. It’s a look she can’t quite read; it sends fresh sparks dancing down the column of her spine regardless.

“Well, if only he were doing some normal Sunday morning cleaning, instead of using his damn sleeping bag of a comforter to deal with the remains of my busted fishtank!” Schmidt yells. “Out with it, Nicholas Miller! What happened here?”

Jess sucks in her breath. It’s the moment of truth. (Or, more accurately, the moment of please-God-let-it-be successful obfuscation.)

Come on Nick, she wills him silently, you can do this.

To her delight, he does.

“All right, all right, Schmidt, calm down,” Nick says. “I’m sorry I broke your damn fish tank, OK? Here’s what happened: Guy’s Night at the Griffin was a fucking disaster, and when I got home, I started swinging some tools around and angry-fixing some stuff in the kitchen to let my damn stress out. I’m not proud of it, but I got a little carried away, and I forgot that the new big glass fish-box was there, and now here we are.”

“Damnit, Nicholas! Every time you angry-fix things, you end up angry-breaking things!” Schmidt says, and he’s still kind of yelling, but the intensity is starting to drop: he’s clearly buying Nick’s story. “Will you never learn?”

“I know, I know. I’ll clean it up, OK? And then I’ll make it up to ya somehow. In drinks at the bar? I’ll even make ya some of those Midori Sours—”

Schmidt lets out a dramatic sigh: “All I can say, Nicholas, is that you are very lucky this purchase was nonrefundable, and that because I decided Fish Cece needed to swim free, I was going to have to get rid of the tank anyway—“

“Oh, you were?” Jess can’t help but interrupt, the strategic imperative to stay the heck out of it overridden by her guilt over being a party to the broken fishtank, her relief that Schmidt isn’t going to make Nick buy him a new one, and her ongoing shock at just how well Nick covered their tracks. “Well, that’s great news!”

Both Nick and Schmidt turn and stare at her — the former with a what-are-you-doing face, the latter with a wait-why-do-you-care face, and oh crap: after Nick freaking nailed this, now she’s the one screwing things up with her pathological need to insert herself?!

“Because, I mean, you know how I feel about animals in zoos and cages and, um, fishtanks,” she says quickly. “They should all be free! In nature, where they belong! Just like— wait, did you say Fish Cece?”

“Yes, I did, but I’ll say no more on it now; my pain is too fresh,” Schmidt says. “But in the meantime” — he looks back and forth between Nick and Jess — “something’s going on with you two, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

Jess’s stomach drops. She and Nick both say variations of “nothing’s going on” and “everything’s totally normal” at the same time, and then Jess keeps on going: “In fact, uh, hey, Nick. I was going to ask you: will you come along with me on a craft run this afternoon?”

“Sure, Jess, as long as there’s some lunch in it for me. Like, a burrito. Or maybe two, depending on whether we’re talkin’ the little ones from El Pelón, or the big ones from La Taqueria. I would also accept a slice of pizza, or—”

Schmidt interrupts: “Wait a minute, why do you two always seem to be running errands together these days?”

“Since one of our cars is usually either broken, or right about to break,” Nick answers quickly.

(Hot damn, Jess thinks, when did Nick freaking Miller get so smooth?)

“Yeah, both sets ‘o wheels are real lemons,” she chimes in. “Never safe to go more than a mile by yourself, really, just in case. You know, Nick, they should really make a new category of AAA for cars like ours: Quadruple A.”

“Ugh, Jess,” Nick says, “Does that even qualify as a joke?”

“I’ll submit it to the committee and get back to you!” she chirps; he rolls his eyes.

(This is normal, she thinks. We’re behaving normally. We can do this.)

Schmidt glances back and forth between the two of them with suspicion for a few seconds before speaking. Nick scratches the side of his face. Jess makes her already wide eyes wider, trying to convey pure and total innocence and praying it’s working.

“Well,” Schmidt says slowly, “That checks out. I guess not every car can be as reliable and, let’s face it, sexy as the Manbulance, especially those Flintstones-esque junk-heaps the two of you drive around. Nick, doesn’t yours literally have a hole in the floor?”

“Only until I duct-taped it.”

Schmidt makes a noise of disgust. “Ugh, Nicholas, you’re a regular MacGyver. Anyway, I’m going back to bed while you deal with this fishtank-tastrophe. We’ll discuss the number of free Midori Sours this atrocity requires at a later hour.”

“Sounds good, man,” Nick says.

Schmidt walks back towards his bedroom door.

Oh my God, Jess thinks, we actually pulled this off. (OK, technically, Nick did, and I almost screwed it up. But anyway.) She looks at Nick and mouths “phew” silently, drawing her fingers across her forehead like a silent film actress from the ‘20s as she exhales. His look back at her is part shared relief, part cocky you-shouldn’t-have-underestimated-me, Day — and oh boy, that second part: she could get used to being on the receiving end of that.

But then Schmidt spins on his heel — “A-ha!” he says, triumphant. “I figured it out!” — and Jess’s internal monologue swiftly converts to a steady stream of OhCrapOhCrapOhCrapOhCrap.

She’s frozen, and Nick looks like he is, too: this is it. Schmidt knows. So much for getting to figure this thing out, just the two of them. Her mouth opens and closes a few times, like she’s a guppy (speaking of fishtanks!), and in desperation, she and Nick blurt out, “Schmidt, wait—“ simultaneously (and if the stakes of this moment weren’t so high, Jess would be noticing: huh, we really are in sync).

Their pleas overlap with Schmidt’s triumphant proclamation: “You two know how upset I am about Cece’s engagement and you’re planning some sort of special surprise to cheer me up!”

Oh, thank you, God, for Schmidt’s boundless narcissism.

Jess doesn’t need to look at Nick to feel his relief from across the room, or to know that his shoulders, like hers, are now relaxing, or to sense that they’re on the same page about exactly how they’re going to play this.

Feigning intense disappointment, tapping into all the acting advice she’s honed while overseeing truly abysmal middle school plays, she forces her face to fall.

“Oh, Schmidt! Dammit — you’re onto us,” she says. “Ugh, Nick, he figured us out, just like you said he would.”

“He’s just too good, Jess,” Nick says, shaking his head. “We never stood a chance.”

Schmidt is positively gleeful. “You know what, you two? It’s been a rough couple of days, but I’m truly touched and delighted. Now, what can you tell me? Give me a hint.”

“No, Schmidt!” Jess yells, petulant. “Come on, no wrecking the rest of the surprise, too!”

“Yeah, man, c’mon,” Nick echoes. “She’s real excited about this. Let’s keep it a secret; it’ll be better that way.”

Schmidt sighs. “All right, all right. You’re real mensches, and that includes the both of you, even though you destroyed my fishtank, Nick.”

Nick inclines his head in gratitude. “Thanks, man. I appreciate that.”

Jess and Nick wait to exhale until they hear the click of Schmidt’s door closing behind him. Jess doesn’t say anything for a good 10 seconds; she’s processing how close they just came to disaster, and how glad she is to have averted it.

“Holy crap, Miller,” Jess whispers. “Good job.”

He smiles at her, his eyes going all crinkly around the edges, but stays silent.

“Here,” she says at a more normal volume, “let me help you,” and she takes a step towards him (she’s somehow been rooted to one spot for this whole dang five-minutes-that’s-felt-like-five-hours).

“Jess,” he says, quiet but firm, “I got it.”

His eyes are flashing a warning: they’ve already pushed their luck. If Schmidt is listening through his door, or if he emerges again and sees Jess helping Nick, or if Winston wakes up and does the same, they’ll face whole new rounds of questioning.

Jess gets it.

“Well,” she says in a voice that’s awkwardly loud, “Good luck with the ol' fishtank cleanup, Miller. Let’s plan to go to The Crafters’ Castle around 10 to get what we need for Schmidt’s surprise. I’m gonna go put some clothes on.”

“You do that, Day,” Nick says, his voice measured, his gaze intense, and oh God.

She is thinking again about when he told her to take her clothes off.

She can feel his eyes on her back as she walks to her room.

Chapter Text

In the 2.5 hours before she and a certain rumpled, gravel-voiced gruffster of a roommate are due to head to The Crafters' Castle, Jess doesn’t leave her room: she wants to minimize further close-call conversations with Nick in front of either Schmidt or Winston that might reveal their secret.

And oh, what a secret it is.

Nick Miller makes her laugh harder than anyone else, makes her angrier than anyone else — and after the events of the past 12 hours, she’s pretty sure he’d also make her come harder than anyone else.

She wants to put that theory to the test so badly it’s almost a little bit scary.

After all, this is Nick. The same Nick who believes utensils are “highly overrated” and will argue for hours that the correct pronunciation of UPS is “ups” (“Yes, Jess, as in ‘big ups for delivering all of those packages on time”). The same Nick who is her best friend other than Cece. The same Nick who lives three feet across the hall and with whom things could get very awkward, very quickly if they cross this line.

But oh, who are you kidding, Day? she thinks. After last night and this morning, it’s not an if. It’s a when.

To her surprise, the scariness of that thought — at least in this particular moment — is far outweighed by her desire for it to be true.

For now, she makes do with her own company, staying as quiet as she can as she gets busy with herself for the second time in 12 hours (a Jessica Day solo sexy-time record!).

She thinks about how Nick’s hands felt cupping her ass as he hoisted her up last night: rough and confident and strong.

How this morning, as he casually spun Schmidt a fake tale of why the fishtank met its end, he rubbed the top of the broomstick with his thumb.

How her own hand is so very much smaller than his.

***

This is good! Jess thinks afterwards. I’ve let off some sexy steam! I’ve cooled myself down! I’ll be less of a lusty maniac when I see Nick again — strategic self-pleasure for the win! Now, I just need to think about things other than Nick’s mouth and Nick’s hands and Nick’s general existence for the next couple of hours.

She does her level best.

First and foremost, she realizes she’s starving. Since there’s no freaking way she’s venturing back out into the common area until she absolutely has to, it’s a good thing that, like any reputable teacher, she always has a stash of granola bars handy. After crunching her way through some Nature Valley goodness, she throws on her pink robe (picking out an actual outfit right now is too overwhelming), grabs a notebook, and starts brainstorming about Schmidt’s surprise — because oh, yeah, she and Nick need to pull that off or else their whole house of cards collapses.

She’s happy to take the lead. It’s a pleasantly distracting diversion that’s kind of (ok, totally) in her wheelhouse anyway. Plus, she owes Nick one for how adroitly he covered up the real reason the fishtank broke.

By 8:45, she has some perfectly respectable ideas jotted down, the winning contender being “Schmidt’s Special Sushi Supper” (surprise Schmidt with his favorite food: sushi takeout / decorate the loft with felt-crafted sushi rolls that have iron-on decals of Schmidt’s face on them / as we eat together, share our favorite things about Schmidt and why they make him so special). By 9, she’s completed a list of what she already has on hand and what additional supplies she’ll need to get at The Crafters’ Castle.

The Crafters’ Castle, where she’s heading with Nick in — she checks the clock on her phone — just about an hour.

Crap crap crap crap crap: She’s made a good effort, but now she’s thinking again about Nick and how astonishingly badly she wants him, and where the heck this is going, and what the heck it could mean for her living situation and her life in general, and aaaahhhhhhhh, she is most definitely spiraling.

I’ve gotta talk to Cece, she thinks. Is 9 late enough on a Sunday morning to call a friend about something that’s not technically an emergency? I mean, this is kind of a sex emergency of sorts, right?

Jess shuts herself in her closet as she makes the call, hoping the skirts and purses surrounding her will provide some soundproofing. Cece — bless her — answers on the second ring.

“Cece!” Jess whispers. “It’s me! Thank God you picked up!”

“Oh my God, Jess, are you ok?” Cece asks, sounding groggy. “What’s going on? Where are you? Are you OK? Why are you whispering? Are you trapped somewhere? If someone did something to you, I swear to God I’ll—“

“No, no, Cees, it’s OK, I’m fine!” Jess says. “I’m just in my closet, trying to be quiet so Nick can’t hear me.”

“Oh, thank God,” Cece says. “You scared the hell outta me. Wait, why are you in your closet hiding from Nick? Did he kiss you again? I thought you wanted him to—”

It all comes out in a rush: “Well, yes, but I kissed him first this time, and then Cece, we almost had sex on the freaking dining room table! And we totally would have, if he hadn’t accidentally smashed Schmidt’s stupid fishtank. And even though we didn’t go all the way, it was still somehow… the best sex of my life? How is that even possible when it wasn’t even actual sex? He manhandled me and he picked me up and he told me to take off my clothes, and Cece, I freaking loved it and I can’t stop thinking about it, and I don’t know what to do—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jess,” Cece interrupts. “Take a deep breath, OK?”

“OK,” Jess whispers. She breathes in and out slowly, the way she teaches her students to when they’re feeling overwhelmed.

“I’m gonna need to know more about ‘Schmidt’s stupid fishtank’ when it’s not the asscrack of dawn on Sunday freaking morning,” Cece continues. “In the meantime, Jess, I’ve gotta tell you, I’m not really sure what the problem is here.”

“The problem is that it’s Nick!” Jess whisper-shouts back. “My roommate, who I live with, who drives me freaking crazy half the time! And Cece, I think he might actually really like me, because he told me last night that having sex with me is something he’s been thinking about for a long time, not just some spur-of-the-moment impulse!”

There’s silence for a few seconds on the other end of the line, and then a question from an exasperated-sounding Cece: “And you are surprised by this?”

“Well, yeah,” Jess sputters. “Aren’t you?”

“Jess, I have spent more than 5 minutes in the loft, so it would have been impossible for me not to notice the way he looks at you,” Cece says. “You are the only thing he likes more than beer and Chicago and flannel shirts. Dude is freaking into you.”

(The wheels in Jess’s brain are turning. In flashes, she’s remembering the pained look on Nick’s face when she asked him to be nice to Paul because he’s “the first guy I’ve liked since Spencer.” His eyes when he decided not to move in with Caroline after all and she told him, “Welcome back, you clown.” How serious he looked when he told her “you should be with somebody who’s crazy about you” after Sam ended things at the haunted house — and oh my God, was he talking about himself?!)

“Oh,” Jess says softly.

“Yeah,” Cece replies. “And I’m pretty sure you are kind of into him, too.”

Hearing it from Cece — her oldest, dearest friend — somehow makes it real in a way it wasn't before.

“Crap,” she whispers. “So what do I do, Cece?”

“Him,” Cece says. “You want him. He wants you. You’re adults. Just go for it already. You can figure the rest out later.”

***

After she hangs up with Cece, Jess gets dressed. She can’t be 100-percent sure, but she’s nearly certain she heard Nick say “you are so annoying with those little shorts” as they were having almost-sex last night.

So, a pair of little shorts is exactly what she puts on.

She skips her usual tights underneath, telling herself it’s just because it’s hot out (but a small, secret part of her thinks with a dirty little thrill: easy access).

She does her makeup and her hair.

She spends the rest of the time before 10 a.m. engaged in her longtime go-to tactic for handling sexual frustration and/or stress in general: knitting.

***

When she emerges from her room, it’s as if she’s walking into a perfectly normal Sunday morning at the loft.

Nick and Winston are on the couch watching TV, bantering about the starting lineup for that night’s Bears game, and eating bowls of shredded wheat. (Since moving into Apartment 4D, Jess has learned that “Sunday Morning Cereal Time and Football Talk” is a Nick-and-Winston tradition that dates back to their childhoods and must not be questioned.)

Behind them is — nothing.

Clearly, Nick not only successfully executed on his plan to clean up the floor, but also hauled the busted fishtank frame out of the apartment.

It’s as if the whole dang aquarium — intact, shattered or otherwise — was never even there.

Unfortunately, the same is not true of her desire for Nick Miller.

When he looks up at her, his spoon a flash of silver in his mouth, her insides liquefy.

Focus on Winston, she tells herself. Your friend, Winston! The roommate on this couch with whom you did not almost get it on last night. Just be cool!

But being cool has never really been Jessica Day’s specialty.

“Greetings, gentlemen,” she says in an inexplicable British accent, doing a weird little hand flourish and a combination bow-curtsy.

Nick raises his eyebrows and just stares at her (and God, why is even his look of skepticism so freaking loaded right now?) (because duh, they almost did it last night). But Winston — God bless him — returns the hand flourish and mirrors her faux-British accent in his reply: “And good day to you, m’lady.”

“You guys are so weird,” Nick says, but he’s looking at Jess as he speaks, and his lips quirk up in a fond smile.

“And proud of it,” Jess says. “Anyway, Winston, I just wanted to say that it sounds like you were a really great friend to Schmidt yesterday.”

“Oh, man,” Winston says, “It was not the day I expected to have. Nick said you guys are planning a surprise for him, to cheer him up?”

Jess nods.

“I’m in,” Winston says. “The man needs it. He’s gone off his damn rocker ever since Cece and Shivrang got engaged. Jess, did you know he asked me to pee on him yesterday?”

“What?” Jess says, her voice almost a shriek.

“Well, it was because of a jellyfish sting. But still,” Winston responds.

“It’s a real crazy story, Jess,” Nick says. “Winston told me everything. I’ll fill you in in the car. We’ve gotta go, right?”

“Yup,” Jess responds, just a little too loudly. “Gotta get to The Crafters’ Castle before the Sunday rush.”

“The Sunday rush at The Crafters’ Castle? Is that really a thing?” Winston asks.

“Winston, if you’d ever experienced it yourself, you’d know that it is very, very real,” Jess says.

“All right, man,” Nick says to Winston. “I’ll see ya later.”

Then Nick stands up and hot damn. His maroon t-shirt is kind of tucked into the front of his jeans, and she doesn’t know why it’s so hot, but it’s like it’s speaking to her and saying untuck me, Jessica. And also, um, something-that-rhymes-with-the-last-two-syllables-of-‘untuck me,’ Jessica, but that message is coming from Nick, not his shirt, because that would be weird. And good Lord, he’s wearing a belt, and why does that really do it for her, too?

(Because Nick really does it for her, she admits to herself.)

“Your car or mine?” she says as they head towards the door of the apartment, and she didn’t mean it to be an innuendo; really, she didn’t.

But the way Nick is looking at her — did you really just say that, Jess? — makes her instantly blush.

“Mine,” he says, and he opens the door.

Chapter Text

There’s a new and delicious subtext to every single thing either Jess or Nick says in the car as they head to The Crafters’ Castle — a subtext consisting of both the secret, shared knowledge of What Almost Happened Last Night, and the fact that they’ve agreed (out loud! to each other!) that the “almost” part was a darn shame.

But to Jess’s surprise, on the surface, their banter — at least for the first part of the trip — isn’t really all that different than usual.

“So where am I driving ya, Jess? Where is this Castle o’ Crafts, anyway? And are ya 100 percent sure it’s real?”

“Nicholas, it’s The Crafters’ Castle, not the Castle o’ Crafts. And it is a Los Angeles icon.”

“Sure, Jess, right up there with the Hollywood sign.”

“Ugh, Nick, it has the largest selection of pipe cleaners, fabric, and yarn east of the Mississippi. The trifecta! It is absolute heaven,” she says loftily, “for those of the creative mind.”   

“Are you saying I don’t have a creative mind?” he responds. “Because, oh, Jessica. You’d be surprised.”

And Jesus, he probably didn’t mean for that last part to be sexual (unless, maybe, he did), but there’s an aching pulse starting up between her thighs, and an accompanying desire for him to call her Jessica in other and, um, very naked contexts.

(Oh my God, she thinks to herself, is it possible that we’ve actually been flirting with each other the entire time we’ve known each other? That our back-and-forth has always had this electric current crackling underneath it, and I just wasn’t ready to acknowledge it until now? That every argument we’ve ever had has actually been, at least in part, foreplay?)

She’s tempted to respond by throwing back his words from last night — “Then prove it” — and doing something really reckless, like putting her hand on his thigh.

But they’re about to get on the highway, and Nick should really be concentrating on the road, and getting all vixen-y on him at this exact moment would probably not be the wisest move.

So she makes an attempt to keep things PG-rated instead.

“I guess that means you’ll be helping me make the felt sushi rolls for Schmidt’s Special Sushi Supper,” she says, aiming for a smug, breezy gotcha.

“Sure, Jess, that’s what I meant,” he responds, kinda gruff, and the corner of his mouth curves up in a sly smile that says it very much isn’t. And hell’s bells: now she’s thinking about how last night, Nick suddenly turned a mundane and ordinary dining room table into a sexy sexy surface for sex, and if that isn’t creative repurposing, she doesn’t know what is.

The heat between her legs is spreading upwards towards her belly.

She shifts in her seat and tries to act all nonchalant, like she isn’t putty in his (very large) hands; like if he pulled over and growled “let’s get creative right now” she wouldn’t climb over the center console and straddle him and start making the heck out with him and maybe even do a lot more — right then, right there, in broad daylight.

And whoa, whoa, whoa: these are not ordinary Sunday-morning thoughts (or any-morning thoughts) for Jessica Day.

What is wrong with me? I am not this wild!, she thinks. Another, smaller voice inside of her answers, Nothing. And maybe you are.

She looks over at Nick, whose eyes are on the road.

He drives with his left hand on the steering wheel, loose and easy, his right arm resting on the center console. She, by contrast, is a hands-at-10-and-2, gripping-the-wheel-tightly kinda gal, and has a habit of nattering on to anyone who will listen about why it’s the safest and most effective way to drive. But somehow, she feels comfortable with Nick’s driving style, even though it doesn’t match her own.

She is keenly aware of how close they are to each other right now. She can smell his Irish Spring soap (he must have showered after completing The Great Fishtank Cleaning and Removal), and gender norms suck and all that, but there’s just something so freaking masculine about Nick Miller's scent.

It is delicious.

She inhales, repeatedly, a swirl of pleasure intensifying between her legs.

And apparently, she gets a little carried away, because Nick asks, “Jess, why are ya breathing like that?

“I, um, thought I smelled a skunk?” she responds, her heart pounding.

“So you breathed it in as hard as you could?”

“It’s the only way to know,” she says, as if that were in any way logical or true.

But he buys it, or seems to: “Ok, weirdo,” he says, his voice fond.

As he steers the car onto the exit ramp, a muscle between his inner elbow and his wrist flexes, and hot damn: when did she become a card-carrying member of the Nick Miller Hands and Forearms Appreciation Society?

She looks up, trying to distract herself from the aforementioned hand and forearm excellence, but now she’s seeing his profile. He’s biting his lower lip for some reason — probably just in concentration (it’s a tricky off-ramp), but that doesn’t  make it any less hot. And oh, that nose. It is magnificently broken — a nose to be studied and appreciated; an intense nose; a nose that she thinks would feel very, very good against her if she were sitting on his face—

Aaaaah! Jessica Day! she scolds herself. Get ahold of yourself! Get a freaking grip!

But the only thing she wants to get a freaking grip on is him.

And she simply can’t stop glancing at his profile and thinking about his freaking sexy nose, and before she can muster the sense to talk herself out of it, she blurts out, “How’d you break it?”

“Break what?”

“Your nose.”

She can see his eyebrow rise in surprise, and oh, shit. Unless he’s the one to bring it up, Nick doesn’t like to talk about his childhood, which is when she assumes his whole broken nose thing happened. Has she made a huge mistake? Is he about to go all turtle-faced and closed-off and quiet on her?

Nope.

Nick Miller runs his right hand over his nose once, and then he talks.

“I actually broke it twice, Jess,” he says. “The first time, I was seven, and Jamie and I were at the circus with my dad. It was an amazing day, and I was on a real cotton-candy high, and I was goofing around as my dad tried to win us a giant stuffed animal at one of those carnival games where you test your strength and try to hit the pad so hard you ring the bell up top. You know what I mean? They had those in Portland, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean,” she says.

“When my dad swung the big rubber mallet behind him, he didn’t realize I was right behind him and he accidentally hit me in the nose with it,” he says.

He’s laughing a little, but it doesn’t extend to his eyes.

Jess’s heart breaks as she imagines a seven-year-old version of the man sitting next to her — a little boy thrilled to be spending time with his often-absent father; a day together that was supposed to be special instead ending in disaster.

“Oh my God, Nick,” she says softly. “That must have been so painful.”

“Oh, it was,” Nick says, wry. “I remember looking down and seeing blood in my cotton candy.”

He clears his throat.

“It was still one of the best days of my life,” he says quietly.

Jess feels like she’s about to cry — both at this story, and at the fact that Nick is actually opening up to her like this. It kind of makes sense that it’s happening, though: Last night, when they each admitted they wanted to sleep with each other, it felt like they had crossed a new threshold of intimacy and vulnerability, one that would maybe lead to them sharing things like this with each other, too.

Plus, when she thinks about it, she’s noticed that he seems to have an easier time talking about serious things or his feelings when he’s also doing something else — pouring drinks, or watching TV, or in this case, driving.

“What was the second time?” she asks.

“Three years later,” he says. “At a Little League game. There was a real asshole of a bully on the opposing team who was being a total dick to one of my buddies because English was his second language and he didn’t speak it really well. And that just didn’t sit right with me, ya know? So I got into a fight with the asshole, right there on the field, and that’s how”— he brings his hand up to his nose and taps the bump closest to his nostrils— “this ol’ schnoz got rearranged a second time.”

Jess is quiet, her heart swelling as she takes it all in (Nick Miller: standing up for the people he cares about since 1983), and for a second, Nick interprets her silence as disapproval.

“I know, I know, Jess, violence is not the answer; I should’ve just called him out and left it at that,” he says. “But I was just a kid. And you know what? He deserved it. And I have no regrets.”

“Nick,” she says. “You’re pretty amazing, you know that?”

At her praise, he suddenly seems uncomfortable; he turns to the brand of self-deprecation she’s realized he uses as a shield.

“Jeez, I’m not Captain America or anything, Jess,” he says. “I just stood up for someone once.”

Something comes over her — an almost overwhelming surge of affection for Nick; a deeper understanding of how, beneath his gruff exterior, there’s a fundamental strand of decency and loyalty that makes him who he is.

And then she does something crazy.

She reaches for his hand on the center console and takes it in hers.

And this, this is truly uncharted territory.

Because Nick Miller does not like being touched. Back before he kissed her and changed everything, she’d lost count of how many times he’d rebuffed her friendly attempts at hugs. It would not have been shocking if, now, he recoiled, offering her only a disgusted, “Blecch, Jess, what are ya doing?”

But that’s not what happens.

His body visibly tenses. For a few seconds, he keeps his hand completely still beneath hers. She feels like they’re in a snowglobe that’s just been shaken, the flecks suspended before they start to fall.

And then he rubs his thumb against her pinkie finger — slow, appreciative, tender.

She thinks this might just be the best moment of her life.

The flecks in the snowglobe are crashing into each other now and exploding, setting off tiny fireworks, and everything inside her — affection and wonder and lust — is colliding. The world as she knew it has changed. She wants to keep her hand on his, and to exist in this breathtaking moment of possibility, forever.

But as Nick is about to use his non-occupied hand to make the turn into The Crafters’ Castle parking lot, an idiot in a VW Beetle cuts in front of them and very nearly sideswipes Nick’s car.

“Dammit!” he yells, tearing his hand from hers and slamming on the horn. “Go back to Woodstock, ya hippie!”

She feels an almost-insurmountable urge to laugh, mixed with an urge to jump out of the car and throttle the driver of the VW bug for ruining her and Nick’s moment.

But maybe our moment is just beginning.

She smiles to herself and adjusts her shorts as they pull into the parking lot. She can feel his eyes flickering over to her as she does it, resting for just a second on the place where hemline meets skin.

“By the way, Jess,” he says, “I like your little shorts.”

A jolt of electricity zips up her spine.

“You do, Miller?” she asks. “I could’ve sworn you said last night that they were annoying.”

He makes a noise that’s a combination of a laugh and a groan: “Come on, Jess, are you really gonna make me say it?”

Now she flutters her eyelids, the picture of innocence: “Make you say what, Miller?”

He brings the car to a stop in the spot and turns off the key in the ignition.

“Your little shorts are annoyingly hot, Day, ok?” he says. “Your little skirts, too. And when you prance around the loft in them, it’s just too damn much for me sometimes, all right? It makes me want to do things to ya.”

Her heart is pounding.

“What kind of things?” she says, her voice almost a whisper.

And oh my God, he’s leaning in towards her, and he’s reaching down, and oh my God—

—he pops the button to release her seatbelt.

She looks down in shock as the belt retracts across her body, and then brings her eyes back to Nick.

He’s grinning like the cat that ate the freaking canary.

“Come on, Day,” he says. “I’ll tell you later. We’re here at your favorite place, right? Don’t you have tubs of glitter to look for? Or sparkly markers? Or balls of yarn?”

“Ugh, Miller,” she says, exasperated. “You’re a freaking ball of yarn.”

He puts his hand on the small of her back as they walk towards the store.

Chapter Text

In a figurative sense — the sense of wanting it to happen all the dang time from here on out — Jess could really get used to having Nick’s hand on the small of her back.

In a literal sense, though, she doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to this feeling.

How could she, when his hand is as large as a freaking baseball mitt and is exerting the most delicious pressure on the low curve of her spine?

When it feels like his warm palm is a magnet that’s finding electric currents deep inside her and drawing them up to the surface of her skin?

When the way he’s steering her feels nothing short of proprietary, but in a stunningly hot way — a way that, instead of raising her feminist hackles, defuses all of her qualms and just gets her turned way the heck on?

Because holy shizballs, she really is turned way the heck on — a fact she can feel between her legs with every step she takes.

I want him I want him I want him, she thinks in a rhythm that matches the hammering of her heart.

And then: Oh God, I was an idiot to bring him here with me. How on earth will I be able to concentrate on getting what I need craft-supply-wise, when all I can think about is getting what I need sex-with-Nick-Miller-wise?

If she weren’t so foggy with lust (and maybe, secretly, another four-letter word starting with L, one that her conscious mind won’t yet go anywhere near), she might’ve noticed that her categorization of her Feelings Towards Nick Miller had just progressed, seamlessly, from want to need.

But she doesn’t pick up on the shift. Blame the distracting confidence of his stride, or what she thought he was about to do to her in the parked car, or the infuriatingly hot presence of his hand on her back.

Which — dammit — he removes once they walk through The Crafters’ Castle’s automatic doors.

The sudden absence draws from her first an involuntary sigh, and then an irrational surge of multi-directional anger. She’s mad at him for removing his hand, and she’s mad at herself for craving his touch badly enough that she’d react this way. And feeling mad is bringing her right back to last night, to how close they came to screwing each other while also shouting at each other—

Her cheeks are burning. She is a mess of frustrated desire, right there in the entryway of the Los Angeles area’s largest crafting emporium.

Yet Nick Miller — stupid, sexy Nick Miller — looks as calm and cool and collected as she’s ever seen him.

Damn him.

As Nick looks around and gets the lay of the land, he runs the fingers of one hand — the same hand she wishes so badly was still on her — across the stubble along his jawline.

She wants to reach out and follow his fingers with her own.

She resists.

“Wow, Day, so here we are. The famous Crafters’ Castle,” he says, sounding bemused in a way that’s somehow both irritating and arousing.

(Both Irritating and Arousing: The Nick Miller Story, Jess thinks.)

“I gotta say,” he continues, “I was hoping it’d be made of stone and we’d have to cross a moat or something to get in, or that there’d be one of those guys in the clown outfits selling turkey legs.”

(He’s still Nick, she tells herself, smiling a little, even if I want him to rip off my underwear with his teeth.)

The thought is a comfort, one that frees up just enough mental space for her to a.) act like a functioning human being would upon entering her favorite store, and b.) figure out how to parry back on multiple fronts.

“‘Those guys in the clown outfits’ are called jesters, Miller,” she says, rolling her eyes, grabbing a basket and slinging it over her arm. “And who needs a jester when you have 48 glorious aisles of pure craft-supply goodness?”

“48 aisles? Seriously?! Why so many? Are there even that many categories of crafts?”

“Oh, Nick,” she says, going for a tone that’s wise and all-knowing. “So much to learn, you have.”

She knows it doesn’t make sense, but she can’t help herself: as she speaks, she squares herself to face him, tosses her hair behind her shoulders, and juts out her chest (she’d be lying if she said “it shows the perfect amount of cleavage” wasn’t the reason she chose this top today).

His eyes flicker down her décolletage and then back up.

“Is that— I don’t get it— are you— Jess, are you doing some sort of sexy Yoda thing right now?” he asks.

He’s looking at her with a combination of earnest confusion and lust and fondness, like she’s a weird, sexy, delightful mystery.

His weird, sexy, delightful mystery.

She doesn’t answer him. Instead, emboldened, her heart swelling with a feeling she won’t name, she swings around and sways her hips in what she hopes is a sexy strut as she heads towards aisle 35, where she knows she’ll find the perfect accoutrements for Schmidt’s decorative felt sushi rolls.

When she glances back, Nick is shaking his head and grinning as he starts to follow her.

To her immense satisfaction, just as she’d hoped, his eyes are trained on her ass.

***

It turns out that even if you really, really love craft supplies, concentrating on shopping for them is indeed pretty difficult when you’re preoccupied by the idea of shakin’ the sheets with the very same person with whom you’re shopping.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that Jess makes rookie mistake after rookie mistake: Grabbing the smaller-sized fabric glue instead of the big one, even though she knows the latter is more economical and would definitely get used. Picking out sequins that have the wrong diameter. Knocking the whole stupid row of puffy paints over onto the floor, like some rank amateur, as she reaches for just one of them.

Nick kneels to help her clean up the fallen bottles (why is he so good at cleaning up messes all of a sudden?), and she’s freaking entranced by how his maroon shirt clings to his broad back. The muscles stretching and rolling beneath the soft, thin layer of cotton are unexpectedly sculptural, given that they belong to a guy who thinks beer is one of the five main food groups.

And now, of course, she’s thinking again about how effortlessly he lifted her up last night, like it was the easiest thing in the world; like she was weightless.

He usually keeps it hidden, she thinks, but the reality is: Nick Miller is really, truly strong.

And that is really, truly hot.

She bites her lower lip and gets a little bit daring.

As she picks out a small-ish barrel of acrylic glitter pom-poms, she muses, “God, the lids on these are always so freaking tight. Will you help me open this jar when I need it later?”

She could be wrong, but she’s pretty sure her request — and its implied acknowledgment that he’s bigger and stronger than she is — has worked.

Which is to say: that it’s turning him on, the same way it is her.

There’s a dangerous-in-a-good-way look flashing in his eyes as he replies, “Sure, Jess, I’ll help ya,” and a resolute set to his jaw.

And yes, the next time he speaks, the rasp factor in his voice — which Jess is realizing is directly proportional to how close he is to being overcome by desire — is on the rise.

“By the way, Day,” he says as they turn down an empty aisle, “‘the Sunday rush’? You way overstated that to Winston. We’re basically the only people here.”

“What was I supposed to tell him, Nick?” she responds, intentionally defiant in an attempt to keep his buttons pressed. “‘Sorry, Winston; Nick and I need to get out of here right now because we almost had sex on the table last night, and we need to figure out what the heck happens next ourselves, without you or Schmidt overhearing?’”

“OK,” Nick says, “Fair point.”

Then he continues: “Ya know, we sure did almost have sex last night.”

And oh, hearing the word sex come out of Nick’s mouth has a highly distracting impact between Jess’s thighs; she shifts from one leg to the other, desperate for even the smallest bit of friction.

(It isn’t enough. It’s not even close.)

“Yyyyyup,” she says. “That happened. Er, almost happened. You know what I mean. The ticket was punched. The destination was clear. That steam engine was gonna make it up the hill.”

“Jess,” he grins, “why are ya talking about trains right now?”

For some unknown reason, she responds by lifting her arm, tugging the string of an invisible bell, and saying, “All aboard.”

He raises his eyebrows and looks her straight in the eye: “So you want me to board ya, Jess?”

Her cheeks flush red. She sputters. She’s speechless.

What happens next is pretty much inevitable.

He grins, cocky, clearly loving watching her squirm, and steps closer, never taking his eyes off hers as he lowers the basket to the floor.

He breaks his gaze to look quickly up and down the aisle, confirming that yes, they’re still alone.

And then he closes the remaining space between them, backs her up against the aisle shelving, and rasps out, “Jesus, Jessica, you’re killing me. I can’t wait another fucking minute. I’ve gotta kiss you again, right now.”

So he does. He kisses her good and hard and strong — right there, in public, where anyone could see.

And this is now the third time she and Nick Miller have kissed (not that she’s counting) (she’s totally counting) and Christ almighty, it’s official: if kissing were an Olympic sport, the man would own the freaking podium. Like, he’d win the gold medal, of course, but also the silver and bronze, because no one else could even freaking compare.

Nick kisses like it is his calling.

He kisses Jess like he wants to consume her.

He kisses like he knows he’s about to be arrested for a crime that will land him in prison for life, and now is the only moment that matters, and he has to make it count.

He involves his entire body in the process, his hands spanning her back and then her waist and then her ass and pressing her against him so that there’s no space between their bodies other than the cruel millimeters forced by their dumb clothes. (Jessica Day usually loves clothes — making them! Perusing vintage shops for them! Organizing them by color and style in her closet! — but right now, there’s no question: Burn them all.)

And, um, speaking of burning, Nick kisses with the urgency of a really excellent firefighter responding to a five-alarm blaze. (Though perhaps that’s not the best comparison, since in this case he’s also the one who set the fire and the one who is stoking it: if it weren’t conveniently soaked, Jessica Day’s cotton polka-dot underwear might just go up in flames.) 

Oh my God, she thinks — to the degree that thinking is possible with Nick’s mouth on her mouth and Nick’s hands traveling all over her body and Nick’s hardening length pressed against her in a perfect echo of last night — If Nick Miller fucks anything at all like he kisses, I am in for one hell of a ride.

(And yup, that’s right: she, Jessica Day, just used the actual f-word in her inner monologue. The train has left the station. She is officially out of her mind with desire.)

And that’s exactly when — good Lord in heaven — Nick slides his thigh between her legs.

She outright moans, grinding herself down on him instinctually and immediately, and fuck, it feels so unbelievably good.

And so unbelievably risky: She is riding Nick Miller’s thigh in the aisle of a craft store where she has a lifetime membership card! One stray elbow could send a truly astonishing number and variety of synthetic feathers crashing to the ground! At any given moment, a scrapbooking enthusiast — or, God forbid, a Crafters’ Castle employee — could round the corner of the aisle and see her moaning as she rubs her cunt against Nick’s thigh through their clothes; see the way he’s moving one hand to her breasts and grasping roughly; see how he’s sliding the other up her thigh and then slipping his fingers beneath the hem of her shorts.

But here’s the thing: Jessica Day wants this so badly that she simply does not care that they might get caught.

And Nick Miller — whose stiffening cock is now taunting her through his jeans — clearly feels the very same way.

“Jess,” he grits out into her ear, “I meant what I said last night.”

“Which thing?” she pants, her arms thrown over his shoulders, her hands now fists grasping at his shirt.

“That I’ve wanted you for a long fucking time. And that I only ever went elsewhere because I thought the door was closed.”

Jess feels a lot of things in that moment: A sense of joy so boundless it borders on elation. A surge of warm and deep affection that she’d rather not categorize; not yet, not yet. But most of all: A desire for him to be inside her as soon as humanly possible.

“Nick,” she gasps, “you clown, my door is very much open for you.”

She can feel him smiling into her neck. She can’t help but smile, too. And then an idea hits her, like a bolt from above. (Or maybe— below? Wherever the cosmic region is that Great Sex-Related Ideas come from.)

“There’s a bathroom over by the far end of aisle 17,” she pants. “Meet me there in two minutes.”

He pulls back from her neck and looks at her with wonder and reverence — like she’s perfection; like he can’t believe this is really happening; like this is the best moment of his life

And then his face falls.

“Shit,” he says, “Dammit. You wouldn’t— you don’t by any chance have a condom on ya, do ya, Jess? Or, uh, do they sell ‘em here, maybe?”

“Wwwwwwhat?” she asks. “Are you serious right now, Miller?”

He suddenly looks frightened, like he thinks he might have somehow read this — read her — all wrong.

“I mean, that’s what you meant— about the door being open? And the bathroom. Right? You were saying you want to? Do that? With me? Right now?”

She thinks she might literally explode from frustration, sexual and otherwise.

“Yes, Miller,” she hisses. “That’s what I meant. But apparently, we can’t. And really? You get me all wanton and worked up, say you’ve been wanting this forever, and yet you don’t have a damn condom? What were you thinking?”

(She’s still grinding her cunt on his thigh. It feels too good to stop.)

Suddenly, roughly, he jerks both of his hands to her waist, holding her still on his thigh, and fuck if that act of control isn’t wildly hot.

“I thought you’d be pissed if I brought one here with me, Jessica,” he growls. “I didn’t want to be a presumptuous jerk” — and on that word, he presses her down hard against his thigh, and oh fuck, she’s so wet she’s pretty sure she’s soaked through both her underwear and her shorts at this point — “and assume that just because you wanted to have sex with me last night, that meant you’d want to have sex with me today, all right?”

“WELL, I DO!” she hisses, as at-the-top-of-her-lungs as a hiss can get, shifting her pelvis forward and backward desperately, even though his iron grip only allows her a few torturous centimeters’ worth of range of motion.

And then stupid, sexy Nick Miller grins. And it’s freaking contagious, and she’s grinning, too, even though she’s still mad.

And then he’s kissing her again, deep and hard and confident, like he has a plan.

Because he does.

“Jessica,” he murmurs, shoving one hand between the denim of his jeans and her wet, clothed cunt and palming it, the new, upwards pressure very nearly sending her over the edge, “we can still do other stuff.”

“I mean...” he trails off.

And then a look that can only be described as wicked crosses his face.

“... you promised me lunch.”

Chapter Text

It’s really a very good thing that Jess is perched on Nick’s thigh when he says those filthy, delicious words and presses his palm against her cunt.

Otherwise, with the way her traitorous knees give out beneath her, she’d have ended up splayed out on the floor, giving the knocked-over puffy-paint bottles of 10 minutes ago a run for their money in terms of The Biggest Messes The Crafters’ Castle Has Endured Today (Or This Week) (Or Possibly Ever).

Instead — thankfully, torturously — her legs’ collapse just means her weight and her slit are bearing down even harder on the thigh that’s both supporting and teasing her; the thigh that belongs to the man she’s realizing is very, very good at doing those same things.

Right now, any sort of reaction involving coherent speech is beyond her.

All she can manage is an unintelligible gasp-squeak-moan of pure want, one that draws from Nick — who is full-on studying her face with an intensity that sends waves of heat throughout her body — a slow and smoldering grin of satisfaction.

He slowly drags the hand that’s not cupping her pussy up over her breast (hello, erect nipple popping out of the cup of her bra as a result of all that prior heavy petting!) and then her throat, ending by cradling her chin and her cheeks.

His hand is big enough to frame almost the entire perimeter of her face.

He kisses her again, then, more gently than before, and she knows they’re both thinking about where his mouth will travel next — someplace so very intimate, and so very ready.

***

“You go first, Jess,” Nick breathes, “and I’ll be right behind you.”

For several sexy yet confusing seconds, she thinks he’s talking about coming. The both of them. Right there in the aisle.

(She, for one, is close enough; another minute or so of dry-humping and leg-squeezing and Nick’s giant, perfect hand pressed right there should do the trick. As far as him, though, really? right now?! right here?! like, in his pants?! how is that gonna work?!)

When he starts to pull away from her and glances around, she realizes he’s — duh — referring to the bathroom. Specifically, getting the two of them in there without arousing suspicion.

She also realizes something else: The fact that he’s telling her what to do doesn’t piss her off, not even a little.

Instead, it just makes her (even more) turned on.

On unsteady legs, she does what he says.

***

When she enters the bathroom, she doesn’t lock the door behind her.

Nick slips in about half a minute after her, and he does.

For a span of several seconds, perched on a precipice of sorts, they just stare at each other: Is this — are we — really, truly happening?

The only sound is their breathing, heavy and amplified by their tile surroundings.

Jess feels suddenly shy, despite the fact that she’s soaked through and is pretty sure he knows it. Despite the fact that they were just making out hardcore in the middle of the store. Despite the fact that some hidden part of her knows that she and Nick have been headed toward some version of this moment for a long time.

“Well,” she says softly, “we made it, Miller. Here we are. Just you and me.”

Just you and me.

At that last phrase, his lips quirk up in a multi-phase smile so adoring and then so hopeful and then so wicked that she thinks her heart (and, um, other parts of her) might explode.

She smiles back, because how can she not?

And then he is on her, and everything else — sudden-onset shyness, space, time — is suddenly and completely irrelevant.

He backs her up against the wall (which features a floor-to-ceiling painted mural of sunflowers, because this is The Crafters’ Castle and every surface is a canvas) and easily pins both of her wrists above her head with one hand. (Holy fuckballs, why does every part of her that he touches becomes an erogenous zone? Add wrists to the list.)

He kisses her with hunger, with fierceness, with a confidence that’s sexy-as-all-get-out. He presses every inch of his body against hers, especially the inches around his, um, midsection, and oh, he is so hard, so hard for her that she almost can’t believe it. (And crap, what is going to happen with that? she wonders for a second. Since we can’t have actual sex?)

But getting himself off is not Nick’s focus right now.

Not by a long shot.

She gasps as he rips off her little shorts one-handed, expertly popping the button (a preview of what’s next?) and yanking them far enough down her legs that they drop the rest of the way to the floor on their own.

“Step out of ‘em, Jess,” he says gruffly, still pinning her hands over her head.

She obeys.

Then he releases her wrists and drops to his knees.

And oh my God, Nick Miller is face-level with her cunt in the bathroom of The Crafters’ Castle.

She knows that she is astonishingly wet; that the crotch of her light, mint-green panties must be fully, visibly saturated with her arousal; that now Nick must know that, too.

And yes; yes, he does. He’s staring at her soaked, panty-covered cunt with a combination of reverence and fire, like something in him is about to be unleashed.

“Jesus, Jessica,” he breathes, his hands wrapping around her calves, just below the knee. “You are so fucking wet.”

And then — oh, oh — he runs his magnificent hands slowly up the backs of her legs until they reach her ass, and he lightly spanks one of her cheeks — and oh Jesus, she is dead, right? She just died. She must have, because this is freaking heaven, and she is starting to literally writhe against the painted tile wall at her back.

“Good girl,” he murmurs approvingly.

The two words hit her throbbing clit like an electric shock.

And then he looks straight up at her and says, “Jessica, I have been fucking dying to taste you ever since I saw everything.”

Dazed, literally panting with arousal, she somehow still manages to put two and two together: Oh my God, he’s talking about the naked incident. But that was ages ago, just weeks after she moved into the loft — is he really admitting that he wanted her even way back then, and that he’s fantasized about going down on her ever since?

(Yes.)

Something comes over her, and before she can talk herself out of it, she gasps out, “Then what are you waiting for, Miller?”

And oh, oh. She’s poked the bear, fully summoning the Nick who ordered her to take off her clothes last night; the Nick who takes what he wants.

Exactly, precisely as she’d hoped.

“Oh, Jessica,” he says, his voice low and even, sliding one hand around to her trembling inner thigh. “I’ll do what I want to do to this perfect little pussy, when I want to do it, you understand me?”

“Yes,” she pants, and oh God, with him talking like that, there’s a very real danger she’s gonna come the second he first licks her slit. “Yes, please, Nick. Yes.”

He flashes her a quick, reassuring, genuine smile, one she returns.

He brings two of his fingers to his mouth, coating them with saliva, his eyes still on hers.

And then, oh God oh God oh God, he yanks the crotch of her panties to the side and slides one finger inside her.

Followed, almost immediately, by the second.

She’s glad she has the wall to lean on, because the feeling of Nick’s fingers entering her (and stretching her — has she mentioned how flabbergastingly big the man’s hands are?) is so overwhelming and wonderful that otherwise, she’d probably collapse. Her head falls back against the tile. She barely notices, because right now it’s like she is all cunt, the sensation of her wet warmth pulsing around his fingers taking over her entire body.

Then he adds his mouth to the equation, and so long, life as she knew it.

It’s like all that time she thought he was just farting around in his room or working at the bar, he was actually enrolled in some top-secret and highly effective Cunnilingus Academy, and damn, did he graduate at the top of his class.

He kisses her cunt the same way he kisses her mouth, with fierceness and skill and somehow, also, tenderness; with a hunger that’s consuming and purposeful. It’s like he’s worshipping and owning her pussy at the same time — twisting his fingers as he sweeps his tongue up the full length of her slit; zeroing in on her swollen clit like his mouth is a precision-guided pleasure missile; varying the pressure and the rhythm of it all in ways that drive her absolutely fucking insane.

When she feels him shifting to bury his tongue deep inside her and realizes oh my God, that pressure on my clit right now is the ridge of his fucking sexy broken nose, and he is using it on me like a fucking sex toy, she comes harder than she ever has.

Ever.

And wow, it turns out all of those climax-related cliches — choirs of angels singing! eyes rolling to the back of one’s head! volcanoes erupting! opera singers hitting a stunningly high note! — exist for a reason.

Stunned, shattered, delirious, she goes boneless, collapsing and sliding down the wall.

Nick Miller — apparent, secret master of both oral sex and its aftermath — is there to catch her before she hits the ground, wrapping one strong arm around her waist and holding her steady. With his other hand — the one that was working her pussy until seconds ago — he grabs for her shorts, spreading them out beneath her so that she can come to rest on something other than the bare bathroom floor.

And then — “it’s OK, Jess, I’ve got ya” — he lowers her slowly, all gentleness now, his face and his chin so shiny and sweaty and oh—

That’s not sweat, she realizes. It’s me.

It’s the same liquid that’s wetting her inner thighs, and she can’t remember there ever being so much of it before.

“Oh my God,” she says, dazed, blissed-out. “Nick. You— what— that— I—“

She can’t form a full sentence yet.

He steps in for her.

“You, Jessica Day, are fucking delicious,” he says, and he leans his forehead against hers.

Then they’re laughing, together, between kisses, because what better way to process the wonderful insanity — and the wonderful inevitability — of what just happened?

She can taste her slightly sour tang on his lips and his tongue.

***

After the fog of her orgasm clears, her happiness doesn’t. It keeps growing, a ball of light in her chest, radiant and new.

***

“Hey, Miller,” she says teasingly, once her brain will allow her to string multiple words together again. “What about you?”

He looks at her quizzically, not quite sure what she’s asking.

She moves her hand to the bulge in his jeans and makes it clear.

His eyes go wide.

“Jess, it’s OK, really. Just give me a few minutes and it’ll, uh, calm down and we can go. Or leave me alone in here for a bit and I’ll take care of it. It’s my fault that we don’t have a condom. We can go home. Ya don’t have to do this for me here, ok?”

That he’s being so selfless right after giving her the best orgasm of her life (in a freaking craft store bathroom, no less) just makes her even more determined.

“I know I don’t have to,” she says, moving her hand up and down his length over the denim of his jeans. “I want to.”

The look he gives her then is about more than just her hand on his dick.

It’s a look that says, You’ll never stop surprising me, and I’ll never stop being amazed.

That ball of happiness in her chest expands again.

It turns out he’s not the only one who can drop a stunningly sexy statement accompanied by a wicked grin: “Nick Miller,” she continues, “I want to know how you taste, too.”

And this, this is not something that The Jessica Day of a Month Ago — or even The Jessica Day of 24 Hours Ago — would have even thought about a guy, let alone had the courage to say out loud. If by some bizarre chance she had, she would’ve felt like she was impersonating someone sexy, not actually being someone sexy.

But there’s something about Nick that changes things; that gives her both the desire and the confidence to think it, mean it, feel it, say it.

It’s mainly the fact that he’s Nick.

Nick, whose unexpected love for “world-renowned Chicago actor” Joe Mantegna (“He is an American genius, Jessica”) made her laugh so hard the other night that she peed a little. Whose small kindnesses to the lost-soul types at the Griffin — an extra bowl of bar peanuts; a listening ear — he thinks she doesn’t notice, but she does. Who knew exactly where to find her, and how to comfort her, when she was laid off and freaking out about it.

Who built her a dresser.

Who told her she was the kind of girl a guy would come back for.

Who kisses her like she’s the best thing that ever happened to him.

She already knows him. She already trusts him. And yes, they’re two of the roommates in a four-person loft, so this is bound to get complicated. But he wants her, and she wants him, and he just made her come so hard that she basically lost her mind and then caught her when she fell, and the possibilities here for what the two of them could do and be to each other from here on out are just, wow.

She feels bolder and sexier than ever before: a version of herself that has always been there, shimmering beneath the surface, and is only now coming into focus.

As she starts to unbuckle Nick’s belt, he’s gazing at her in disbelief and wonder, still processing her declaration.

“Jesus,” he breathes. “You are so fucking sexy, Jessica. I— I—”

His eyes drop to her mouth.

So she slowly, deliberately licks her lips (Vixen!Jess strikes again).

He groans.

“Jess,” he asks her one more time, his breathing heavy, “you’re absolutely sure ya want to do this here? Like, kneeling on the bathroom floor? You don’t have pants to cover ‘em — your knees, I mean — and I know how you are about dirty surfaces, and—”

She takes a page out of his playbook, leaning in and kissing him to shut him up.

“Just stand up already, Miller,” she tells him. “I’ll kneel on my shorts.”

“And I’ll have you know,” she continues as they swap positions so that he’s the one leaning against the sunflower-painted wall, “one of the many things I love about The Crafters’ Castle is its commitment to hygiene. You see that checklist right there?” (She gestures at a clipboard hanging on the back of the door.) “Someone cleans this bathroom once an hour.”

It hits them both at the same time: Oh, crap.

“Well, shit, Jess,” he says, his voice low and raspy and amused. He reaches down and tangles one hand in her hair. “Then you’d better get started.”

And fuck, why is that so sexy? Her cunt is once again starting to throb.

She reaches out to finish with his belt, unzip his fly, and free his cock.

And now it’s her turn to stare in disbelief.

Because she saw him, um, at rest, during the naked incident, way back when, and he was quite respectable. But oh, holy fuck. This — Nick, aroused — is another story entirely.

A very large and very long and very thick story, with a subtle arc that makes the phrase “curved for her pleasure” flit through her head.

She is no penis expert, but she can say definitively that once they have access to a condom and can finally go to poundtown, Nick’s will be the biggest dick she’s ever taken.

She’s always giggled at the word girthy; found it funny. Not any more.

That thing is big enough to wreck her.

The thought thrills her instead of frightening her.

Because — she admits it to herself, now — a rough, hurts-so-good edge to things is what she wants.

What she’s wanted, if she’s being honest, ever since he first grabbed her and kissed her in the hallway.

“Well, howdy there, pardner,” she drawls, staring at Nick’s erection, tipping an invisible cowboy hat, because even this vixenish version of herself is still Jess.

Nick groans, and it’s part-arousal for sure, but also part-are-you-kidding-me-right-now, Jessica?

“What? It’s polite to introduce yourself,” she pouts, fluttering her eyelashes as she looks up at him.

“To penises, Jessica?!” he grunts. “Besides, you’ve already seen it.”

“Not like this,” she says. “Not in this state.”

“That’s true,” he says, reaching down with the hand that’s not in her hair to grip the base of his cock.

“Jess,” he says, his voice low and even, “do you like what you see?”

“Yes, sir,” she replies without thinking, and she intends it in an old-timey way, but she realizes even as she says it what she’s done.

“Good girl,” he breathes, his eyes suddenly dangerous, and she feels a new surge of wetness between her legs, and good Christ, how the heck is there even any of that left?!

Somehow, she has the presence of mind to try to take her glasses off before getting down to business, but he intercepts her wrist with his hand.

“On,” he says.

It’s because he’s imagined this, she realizes with a dirty thrill, and in those fantasies, I was wearing them.

So she makes a point of looking straight up at him through the lenses as she leans forward and licks a slow, deliberate stripe up the underside of his cock.

As she swirls her tongue around the tip.

And ultimately, as he guides his dick into her throat with one hand at its base and the other in her hair.

***

Jessica Day has never particularly enjoyed giving blow jobs before, but today is the day that a lot of things change.

She has never, ever felt sexier than she does as she acquaints her mouth and throat with Nick’s cock.

Her struggle to fully accommodate his intimidating length and girth is wildly arousing to them both. So are the strings of thick saliva that stretch between her mouth and his dick whenever she comes up for air, how delicate and small her hand looks when she grips him, and the moments of eye contact along the way as she — Jessica Day, newly-minted supervixen — goes the fuck to town on Nick Miller.

When he explodes in her mouth after only two or three minutes, she feels as proud as if she’s just won an academic decathlon, or earned the top prize at a knitting derby, or invented something amazing.

She swallows every drop.

***

They stagger their exits from the bathroom.

As they wait in the checkout line, they’re both grinning like absolute fools (which, coincidentally, they are).

When they walk to the car, Nick insisting on carrying three bags on each arm instead of using a cart because “using a cart is admitting defeat,” a thought occurs to Jess:

The Crafters’ Castle is my happy place, yes.

But I think Nick might be, too.

Chapter Text

Once the bags of craft supplies are in the trunk of the car and Nick and Jess are buckled in, Nick turns the key in the ignition and Jess thinks they’re about to back out of their parking spot.

Instead, before Nick reaches for the gearshift, he leans across the console and reaches for her.

“C’mere, you,” he says, grinning.

He runs his hand up her arm (oh, hi, goosebumps!) and then cups her face, bringing his lips to hers.

It’s softer and gentler than any of their kisses inside The Crafters’ Castle, and way softer and gentler than any of their kisses during last night’s furiously hot dining table almost-fuck.

Even so, with every Nick Miller Kiss (yes, at this point, it’s clear to Jess that they’re a proper-noun-demanding genre unto themselves), there’s an underlying current of intensity, vivid and thrumming and serious. Her body detects and responds to it instantly, of its own volition, on a level different from and deeper than conscious thought.

As her skin goes all tingly, all over, she lets out a slight, quiet moan.

Nick deepens the kiss in response, licking into her mouth and then taking her lower lip into his teeth as he strokes her cheek with his thumb.

Oh my God, she realizes, each of our mouths still taste like the other’s come.

***

The adage that all good things must come to an end is true of this kiss.

Because — dang it — the contours of their situation haven’t changed.

No matter how good this kiss is (the answer is: very), and how excellent it would feel to keep going right now (the answer, once again, is: very), a car ride still stands between them and a condom. Between this moment, and finding out a.) what Nick Miller’s considerable dick feels like inside her, and b.) whatever crazy, wonderful thing she and Nick might — or maybe even will? — become after that.

That psychological experiment with kids about willpower pops into Jess’s brain — the one where you can either have one marshmallow right away, or two later, if you’re willing to wait.

I want the two marshmallows, she thinks.

At least, she thinks she thinks it.

In reality, she says it out loud. Because apparently, Nick Miller Kisses alter her brain chemistry and blur all sorts of previously taken-for-granted lines, including the one between thinking and speaking.

“Jess,” he says, pulling back from her face and looking at her with a furrowed brow, “did you just say you want to ‘do marshmallows’? What is that? Is that some kind of sex thing? I mean, whatever you want, I’m in, but what does it involve, exactly?”

It’s impossible not to smile at his earnest confusion; not to feel a warm glow at those words: Whatever you want, I’m in.

“You,” she says. “It just involves you.”

He scrutinizes her face, which is still cupped in his hand, studying her expression to try to figure out what it is she’s really saying; what it is she really means.

Even she is not entirely sure. But she knows it’s warm and hopeful and big and real and good.

“So…” he says slowly, “it… is a sex thing?”

Yes, she thinks, and also more.

She smiles like a sphinx, bringing her hand up to his on her cheek, leaving it there for several seconds. She interweaves her fingers with his much bigger ones.

And then she brings their joined hands down to the console.

“Miller,” she says, “I was thinking of that experiment they do with little kids. The one where if they’re patient, they get twice the reward. Two marshmallows instead of one.”

“Wait, I thought it was cookies?” he says, scrunching his face up, trying to remember. “And the scientists did it with rats?”

“You thought a bunch of scientists gave rats cookies, Miller?”

“Why wouldn’t they, Day? Everyone loves cookies.”

She smiles, because their little arguments over dumb stuff like this have always been really, really fun, and it turns out they’re even more so now that there’s a mutually acknowledged layer of we want each other, bad, right underneath.

“Aaaaanyway,” she says. “I was thinking of the marshmallows” — she emphasizes that word, as if to say, not cookies, you clown — “because as good as it feels, we have to stop making out right now, right? So that we can get home. And, um, like, you know”— she gets bashful and tongue-tied, but only for a second —“do what feels even better.”

“A-ha! So I was right,” he says, triumphant. “It is a sex thing. Sex is the two marshmallows. Sex with me, specifically.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling: “Don’t get cocky, Miller.”

“Oh, Day,” he says, smirking slightly, “I think you like it when I get cocky.”

She blushes, hard, and squirms in her seat.

It’s tough to argue with that.

***

“So long, Crafters’ Castle,” Jess intones as they pull out of the parking lot. “I didn’t know you had it in you to be such a sexy place.”

“What are ya talking about, Jess?” Nick asks, incredulous. “Castles are very sexy places. I mean, Sir ‘Lance-a-lot’? C’mon, that’s a porn name before there were even porn names. And everyone’s always talking about unlocking chastity belts all the damn time. And there’s so many corsets. And all those busty wenches. And busty maidens. And, uh, I guess, just a lot of general… bustiness?”

Jess smacks his arm in playful irritation.

“Ow, Jess, I’m driving, ya maniac!”

“Well, then, concentrate on the road and stop babbling about busts.”

“I’m just saying! Castles are sexy, Jess. What you and me did in there— we became part of a centuries-old legacy of hotness.“

“But it’s not an actual castle, Nick,” Jess says. “And I mean, I freaking love crafting, and even I never would have thought of The Crafters’ Castle as a sexy place, until you got me all hot and bothered there today.”

“Until I got you all hot and bothered?” he responds. “Excuse me, Jessica. You knew exactly what you were doing in those little shorts, flouncing all over the damn glitter aisle, begging me to help ya open a damn jar.”

(A-ha! She was right.)

“So that’s what does it for you, huh, Miller?” she asks, knowing the answer already, but wanting to hear him say it.

“Jess,” he says, suddenly serious, “you are what does it for me.”

Her whole body goes warm.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Miller,” she says.

Smiling, she looks out the window, at a world that’s both the same and very, very different than it was two hours ago.

(Is this how I’ll divide time now? she asks herself. B.C. and A.C.? Before & after the castle?

Then she remembers — duh — that a more natural before-and-after dividing line is right around the corner:

Her and Nick’s first time.)

Without even realizing it, she’s started quietly humming Hungry Eyes.

“Why are ya humming right now, Jess?” Nick asks.

“I hum when I’m happy,” she says.

She leaves this unspoken: And I’m happy because of you.

He understands it anyway, and he smiles.

***

She’s still in such a giddy daze — Nick Miller ate me out at the craft store! And I, um, reciprocated! And it was all really, really, really, mindblowingly good! And I honestly didn’t even know I was capable of coming that hard! And we are on our way home to have sex! And it feels so flipping good to be out of that will-we-won’t-we stage; for this me-and-Nick thing, whatever it is, to be really, truly happening! — that it only hits her when they’re 10 minutes away from home:

Oh, crap. Our roommates.

“Nick,” she blurts out, “what are we gonna tell Winston and Schmidt? About us?”

For a second, time freezes. It dawns on her — too late — that it may have sounded like she was asking Nick, right now, to define exactly what they are to each other. When really, she just wants the chance for the two of them to figure that out together, without Schmidt or Winston interfering.

“I mean, I know we haven’t even gone to Bonk City yet,” she says in a rush, trying to save face.

“Wait, Bonk City? Is that another craft store you like? Do ya really want to go there right now, Jess? I mean, I kinda thought we were pretty, uh, eager to get home—”

“No, Miller,” she interrupts. “I meant— you know what I meant.”

“Oh my God,” Nick says, affectionately disgusted. “Please do not call sex ‘going to Bonk City,’ Jessica.”

“Well, what do you want me to call it?”

“SEX!,” he says. “Sex! Or fucking. Or literally anything but ‘going to Bonk City.’”

“Ok, fine,” she says, trying to stay focused, trying not to get distracted by the ache that’s starting up again between her thighs just at hearing Nick say fucking. “I just mean— it hasn’t happened yet. And I don’t want them to get in the way. Of that, or of figuring out everything else. Schmidt was such a dick about us kissing, you know?”

“Yeah,” Nick says. “And Winston wasn’t awesome, either.”

“So what are we gonna do?” Jess asks.

Nick Miller, habitual panic moonwalker, is somehow weirdly calm.

She sees his knuckles tighten on the steering wheel, and he looks like he’s in the process of making some sort of mental call.

“Well, Jess, here’s what we’re gonna do,” he says, and oh, it’s his sex voice, from the Crafters’ Castle bathroom, and the dining room table, and when he said I meant something like that.

She knows, she knows, something excruciatingly hot is about to come out of his mouth. Her cunt clenches in anticipation.

“We’re gonna go home,” he continues, “and then I’m gonna bend you over and fuck you good and hard, Jessica Day. The way I’ve wanted to ever since you first walked into the loft.”

Ohshitohshitohshit yesyesyesyespleaseyesyesyes.

Her panties would be drenched all over again, were she actually still wearing them.

(They’re in the trashcan of The Crafters’ Castle bathroom, so soaked she decided they weren’t worth the discomfort of keeping on for the trip back.)

“But what if they’re home?” she asks, her voice trembling, trying to resist the urge to start tilting her pelvis forward and backward, rubbing her shorts-covered, increasingly wet crotch against the seat of Nick’s car.

“Screw it,” he rasps. “This has been a long time coming. We’ll figure it out. And I’m gonna fucking take you, Jessica, whether Schmidt and Winston are home or not.”

***

When they get back to their building and approach Apartment 4D, Jess’s heart is hammering.

Nick opens the door.

“Schmitty? Winston?” he calls out.

Jess wants — needs — Nick so badly that she would've been fully on board with their first time happening in her or Nick's bedroom while the other roommates were home, Nick's big hand covering her mouth to keep her quiet.

But she's still happy to hear only silence.

She’s about to be even happier.

Because — oh, yes — there it is: that sudden and resolute set to Nick’s jaw, the one she’s realizing is a reliable signal that he’s about to take charge in an extremely sexy way.

That is exactly what he does.

He drops the bags of supplies from The Crafters’ Castle on the floor, and from there, it takes him less than three seconds to bend down and sweep Jess up in a full-on bridal carry, one arm beneath the curve of her knees and the other spanning her back.

She gasps and throws her arms around his neck, staring straight into his eyes.

They meet hers with as much seriousness and intensity as she’s ever seen from him.

Heat ignites like a flame between her legs, curling up towards her lower belly.

And then Nick Miller steps into the loft with Jessica Day in his arms, like he’s carrying her across a threshold.

Which, of course, he is.

“Jessica,” he says, “let’s finish what we started.”

Chapter Text

Jess has entered Apartment 4D a thousand times, but never like this.

The table in the entranceway where they lay their mail, the hooks on the wall where they hang their coats, the corner where the hallway becomes the common area: All of these things, Jess learns, are reduced to indistinction and rendered irrelevant when you’ve just been literally swept off your feet by the roommate whose saliva is still inside your dripping cunt, who has vowed to basically fuck the living daylights out of you and is about to make good on that promise, and who has told you he’s dreamed of taking you ever since the first time he laid eyes on you.

That last little tidbit from in the car is still reverberating across Jess’s synapses, which, along with certain other parts of her, are getting one hell of a workout today.

If she had her wits about her, she’d recognize that she shouldn’t be so surprised; that he’s been leaving accumulating hints ever since that first, fateful “Not like this.”

But in her fevered-with-arousal state, she can barely believe that Nick Miller — who until very recently, she’d teased (mercilessly!) as a chronic avoider of Talking About Feelings, Showing Vulnerability, and/or Taking Interpersonal Risks — essentially laid it all on the line, telling her, in the sexiest possible way, that he has wanted her since the very, very beginning.

She’ll process what this admission means in full when Little Jess isn’t simultaneously, oxymoronically, sopping wet and on fucking fire, but she knows that the secret ball of happiness in her chest has expanded to become something like the sun, warming and changing everything it touches.

As Nick strides across the loft with Jess in his arms, he never takes his eyes off of hers, and she can’t stop staring back at him. With lust, yes, but also wonder, and something else that she’s not yet ready to name.

She knows her mouth has fallen open dumbly, and her glasses have slid down the bridge of her nose in a way that can’t be sexy, and one of her black ballet flats has dropped to the floor, and she’s basically whimpering with embarrassingly desperate arousal, and if you asked her her birthplace right now, she’d have maybe a 50/50 shot at getting it right (and that is, perhaps, generous).

But she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care about any of that, not in the slightest.

Because she is in Nick Miller’s arms and, she’s realizing, maybe even kind of in his heart.

And maybe he is kind of in hers, too.

***

In the stretch of seconds that follows, she registers that Nick meant Let’s finish what we started quite literally.

He’s carrying her not into one of their bedrooms, but towards the dining room table.

And ohGodohGodohGod, she’s flooded with sense-memories from last night: the press of his hardening cock against her as he muscled her from the kitchen counter to the table with an apparent disregard for her comfort that was somehow stupefyingly hot. The warmth of his huge hands on her arms and her back and then, finally her ass, after she yelled at him to kiss her like a man and he lifted her up roughly in a way that said: Oh, Day, be careful what you wish for.

The rasp of his voice as he ordered her to take off her clothes and she began, unthinkingly, to obey.

And now they’re back in the same spot they were before the now-absent fishtank ruined everything, somehow possessed of a second chance that feels nothing short of miraculous.

Nick looks down at the table, and then back at her, as if he’s asking permission.

Not trusting herself to speak coherently, she nods instead.

The slow smile that spreads across his face in response almost makes her cry: It’s as if — out of self-protection; out of some dating-back-to-childhood belief that good things within his grasp won’t ever stay there — he hadn’t truly allowed himself to believe that this was really, actually happening until right now.

She tightens her arms around his neck so that she has the leverage she needs to lift her face towards his.

And then she initiates a kiss that says yes, yes, fuck, yes.

***

She knows from last night that this table is the perfect height for what they’re about to do.

It’s almost like it was actually designed for Nick to fuck her on, and all this time it’s kept its true purpose hidden, masquerading blandly as just a place to read the paper and drink tea and eat takeout.

No longer.

As their mouths smash against each other, hard and messy, Nick lowers her ass onto the cool wood, perching her near the edge with her knees splayed out around him. And then he jerks her hips forward and presses himself up against her so that — oh, oh — she can feel how impossibly hard and ready he is beneath his jeans.

“Jessica Day,” he breathes, “Can you feel what you do to me?”

She moans a yes into his mouth, feeling one of his hands travel up her back to the nape of her neck as he continues:

“Do you know what a gorgeous woman you are? How hard you make my fucking cock?”

(And Christ, how is he so good at dirty talk? It isn’t fair! Talking, in general, is her thing! Like, she could normally list “talking nonstop” or “speaking eloquently” as special skills on her resume. Had “Most Likely to Talk Your Ear Off” been a high school superlative, she would’ve run away with it, son! But right now, her cunt is a fucking flood zone and she’s so turned on that she can barely string words together, her brain-to-mouth pipeline all fogged up with arousal. And Nick, meanwhile, is very much winning the talking-during-sexy-times competition, dropping fully-formed sentences so wildly hot they hit like the press of a finger to her clit.)

She tries to redeem herself, to answer him with more than a single word.

Really, she does.

“Oh,” she says, breathless and blushing as his teeth and stubble scrape her chin. “Yeah. Bigtime. I mean — crap — not the gorgeous thing? The cock thing. Roger that. I mean, wow. Whoa, Nellie. That’s”— she gasps as he rolls his hips into her —“a big, fat yes on the hardness question—“

He pulls back slightly from her face, looking at her with a mixture of amusement and fondness and fire.

And then comes the hottest thing she’s ever experienced in her life (though Nick has already raised that bar about five times in the past 16 or so hours):

He interrupts her awkward stammering by tugging her hair.

He tugs her fucking hair with his giant fucking hand, sending a shockwave straight to her clit, pulling her head back so that her mouth falls open in surprise and she has no choice but to stare up at him.

Her surge of pleasure at the way he’s taking control is almost overwhelming.

She can’t speak any more right now, she can’t; she won’t even try. It’s like she’s forgotten how.

But she can still feel things. Things like the bead of saliva — hers or his, she’s not sure — that’s running slowly down the side of her chin from the corner of her mouth. 

And see, ordinarily, she’d find that totally and completely gross. Because: Eww. But somehow, right now, the idea that she is being reduced to a helpless mess in Nick Miller’s hands (with what’s essentially spit dripping down her face! Spit!) is instead turning her way the fuck on. And, oh, it’s clearly doing the same for him — she can feel him rocking into her, the pressure delicious — and there’s a look on his face that says, Just you wait.

Still keeping her head immobile, he leans down and runs the flat of his tongue along her jawline, and then — oh my God — uses it to lap up the trail of saliva in reverse, his tongue rasping — slowly, slowly — from the side of her chin northwards.

It is intimate and tender and absolutely fucking filthy, all at the same time — a combination that she is very much into, and that she is rapidly coming to associate with Nick Miller. Which is just nuts. Nuts! Because this is the same guy who until recently, she primarily associated, at least consciously, with not making his bed, and with 30-minute-long arguments over whether “the sleeping guy from the myth” is named “Rick van Winkle,” and with insisting that the correct phrase is not “mind-boggling” but “mind-bottling.”

Well, he’s boggling-slash-bottling her mind right now, that’s for damn sure.

When he reaches her open, gasping mouth, he licks into it just once before withdrawing his tongue — damn him —and leaving her empty again.

And then — oh, holy bejeezus — with the hand that’s not holding her still via her hair, Nick reaches down and rips off her shorts for the second time that day.

This time, there’s nothing underneath them but her cunt (RIP, mint-green panties, and may your final resting place, the trashcan in the bathroom of The Crafter’s Castle, be good to you. Amen.) And oh Lord, she can tell that a small patch of the table is instantly slippery beneath her, because she’s so wet she almost can’t believe it, so wet it’s insane.

But Nick doesn’t know that yet.

At least, not until he reaches down and sticks a finger inside her.

And this, this is not like in The Crafters’ Castle bathroom. This is not about her pleasure. This, she realizes in a rush of clarity, is about inspecting her pussy, gauging its wetness (and, she realizes, its tightness). Because she is about to get fucked good and hard and strong, and Nick’s dick is nothing to sneeze at (unless you’re, um, allergic to big penii?), and he wants to see how close she is to ready.

That this is just a casual cunt-check doesn’t, of course, make it any less hot (in fact, in some weird way she’ll try to unpack later, it maybe makes it… even hotter?). Nor does it stop Jess from clenching hard around Nick’s finger (and what is the average circumference of a normal finger, anyway? Because Nick is way, way above that), or grinding down onto his hand, or moaning out some garbled version of his name and God’s name and a curse and also the word please.

***

He doesn’t listen.

“Jess,” he says as — damn him — he slides his finger out from inside her, leaving the walls of her pussy clutching at empty air. “Do you care about your shirt?”

And — wait, what? What on God’s green earth is he even talking about right now?

“My shirt?” she asks, genuinely not sure if she’s heard him right, feeling the hand that just abandoned her cunt dragging up to her waist, one finger trailing a distinct wet streak on her skin.

“Yeah, your shirt,” he repeats back to her, grinning at her confusion. “Do you care about it?”

His hand travels up over her breasts to her low neckline, and now she understands.

“No,” she says. “No, I don’t.”

He gives her a look that reminds her of a wave about to break.

In one fluid motion, he releases her hair and with both hands rips her shirt open and wrestles it off her. Three pearlescent buttons go flying, along with any remaining shreds of her dignity, and grunting, he rocks her down onto the table. She gasps — the surface is so cool and so smooth against her back; such a contrast to the solid heat that is Nick’s body on top of her — and she wraps her legs around his hips and pulls him into her, bringing his hard dick as close as it can possibly get to her slit when it’s still walled-off behind his stupid jeans.

Because, yes, somehow, she is writhing and naked underneath him excerpt for the slight satin of her bra, while he is still wearing all of his damn clothes. And that fact, that differential, is hot — it’s so hot. Why is it so hot?! — but it’s also very annoying: She wants to see and feel all of him, and she wants it now.

She tries to push her hands between their bodies to start unbuckling his stupid belt, but the mechanics of it don’t work. He’s bearing down on her too heavily, and the angle she’s reaching from doesn’t give her enough leverage. So she extends a silent fuck-you-very-much to physics and gravity and things of that nature, and moves her hands to the hemline of his T-shirt and starts yanking it up, and oh, thank God, this is working much, much better.

He breaks their kiss so that she can pull the soft maroon fabric up over his arms and head (because, yes, throughout all of this they’ve still been kissing! Kissing so furiously she knows her lips are puffy and swollen and even starting to go a little bit numb!), and then he’s naked from the waist up, his chest hair reminding her vaguely of the Brawny Man — that rugged guy from the paper towels, about whom she had sexual feelings before she even knew what sexual feelings were (and who was also a frequent and excellent wearer of flannel, now that she thinks about it).

She runs her hands over Nick’s shoulders, down his back, realizing this is the first time she’s ever touched him there without a layer of clothing in the way. He groans into her mouth, and then his muscles tense beneath her hands, and noooooooooooooo, it’s because he’s pushing himself up and away from her, and why and how dare he? and this is torture.

He’s saying her name over and over, all low and quiet — “JessJessJessJess” — and standing between her legs, pressing one spread hand against her abdomen to hold her flat against the table, running the other through his hair and exhaling slowly, trying to gather himself. And how can the same man who eats leftover pizza cold because reheating it “takes too long,” who once told her, dead serious, that “all movies should be no more than 60 minutes,” be this infuriatingly patient right now? 

“Jess,” he says, “Just— wait. Shit. We need— I need to— I gotta go to my room and get a condom.”

Aaaahhhhhhhhhh that’s right, that’s true, but it’s not gonna make the wait any less excruciating.

She wants to whine, to pout, to yell at him for not getting the condom before he had her all spread out and desperate, but that would just waste time (and plus, if she’s being honest, she’s been dripping for him since the second he picked her up like, well, the fucking Brawny Man and crossed into the loft with her; no matter when he pulled away from her to find a condom in his room, it would’ve been torture).

So, her breath hitching in her throat, she whimpers out a plea: “Please, Miller, please, get it fast. I— I really need you.”

At those last four words, he looks down at her with something approaching reverence, like she’s something precious and rare, a gift he can’t believe he gets to open.

Like he’s been waiting to hear those words from her for his entire life.

And then — oh, holy motherflipping geez — he slides his hand down from her abdomen to cup her cunt.

“I need you too, Day,” he rasps, his index finger brushing her clit once, twice. “I’ll be right back. Don’t you dare move”— he pulses his whole hand against her; she almost screams — “and don’t you dare touch yourself, except to take off that damn bra, you hear me?”

She moans her agreement.

***

As Nick raids his condom stash, Jess lies completely naked on the table waiting for him, her entire body a live-wire of anticipation and arousal. Her now-braless tits are really, truly heaving — something she thought only happened in romance novels (and maybe to opera singers).

She’s not gonna disobey Nick by moving in any significant way. Certainly not by slipping a finger inside herself, or by circling her clit with her thumb in the way that’s always a shortcut to getting herself off.

But she is gonna subtly squeeze her legs together, generating whatever friction and pressure she can against her fevered cunt, because she simply can’t help it.

As she waits, she remembers their other roommates for the first time since she and Nick entered the loft.

Oh my God, she thinks, what would happen if Winston or Schmidt walked in right now and saw me like this? 

And then she knows she’s got it bad, because her initial thought isn’t about how mortified she’d be.

It’s about how freaking terrible it would be for anything to delay what’s gonna happen — what needs to happen — once Nick walks back out of his room.

***

She hears his returning footsteps before she sees him, each thud making her pussy pound.

He enters her field of vision, and dammit, he’s still wearing his jeans.

But ah, thankfully, he’s unbuckling his belt as he walks, the sound of it absolutely fucking tantalizing.

And with every step, he’s looking straight at her cunt — so wet, so warm, so ready.

“Good girl, Jessica,” he murmurs when he reaches the space between her spread thighs and drops his jeans and boxers to the floor.

Oh, Christ.

Maybe it’s the angle (she has to sort of press her chin into her neck awkwardly to tilt her head up far enough to see), but his cock looks even bigger than she remembers from The Crafters’ Castle bathroom. He’s rolling a condom onto it, and she hopes he brought lube out with him, too, because, really: How is that thing going to fit inside her? It’s so thick, and so long, and it’s got the sexiest fucking curve to it —

But oh, sweet Jesus: she’s wet enough that he actually just uses her to lube himself up — pressing his condom-covered cock against her pussy with his hand, running it slowly up and down the length of her slit and then side-to-side, coating his length with the slickness that’s saturating even her outermost folds.

He dips the tips of three fingers into her shallowly and then removes them, spreading the resulting glaze across any parts of his sheathed cock that aren’t yet glistening with her arousal.

Then he kind of slaps his dick against her, the sound of it wet and messy, and she flat-out loses her mind — arching her back, tilting her pelvis up, needing more: more pressure, more friction.

More of his cock.

She is fucking desperate to be filled by him.

So she starts to beg.

“Oh my God, Miller,” she gasps out, her voice scratchy. “Please, please, for the love of God, will you just fuck me already?!”

And oh, there it is again: that insanely hot be-careful-what-you-wish-for look from last night. The one that is not just a panty-dropper but a panty-incinerator. And yes, normal-Jess has been known to pontificate at length on the offensiveness of the former phrase, but vixen-Jess says: fuck it. Because Nick’s cock is close, so close, to finally being inside her, and right now she needs to feel his dick slamming into her pussy the same way she needs oxygen, and he’s staring down at her with a wicked, complicated look that says both You’re beautiful and I could fucking ruin you, and she wants him to —

And then one of his hands travels to her neck, to her throat, and just stays there as he watches her reaction and the corners of his mouth curve up, sly and knowing.

She never really got the whole choking thing, light or otherwise — like, what? Really? How could that be enjoyable?!

She gets it now. Oh, she gets it now.

And the crazy thing is, Nick isn’t even doing anything with his hand — certainly nothing anywhere near choking. It’s almost like he’s just resting it there, with a pressure that seems calibrated to be firm yet light.

But Jesus Christ, the latent power in that hand.

It spans her throat effortlessly and completely, thumb notched below the right edge of her jawline, fingers wrapped softly below the left.

It holds her in place gently as Nick nudges her thighs apart wider, preparing to enter her.

And she can suddenly see the appeal of that hand gripping her neck and holding her down tightly rather than lightly.

But that’s a (strange and unexpected) feeling to file away and explore further in the future. Because now, Nick is moving his hand up from her throat to cup her cheek and bracing his elbow on the table as he leans in to kiss her hard and deep.

He rests his forehead against hers, the same way he did in the hallway weeks ago, the first time he crossed the line.

“Jess,” he says, his breathing ragged, his cock still poised at her entrance, “I should’ve said this sooner, but if anything is too much, just tell me, ok?”

“Yeah. I know. I will,” she says, breathless. And then, smiling: “Apricots. I’ll say apricots.”

They’re both laughing, then, together, and she could almost cry from happiness. Because in addition to the crazy-intense lust Nick Miller inspires in her, she feels so freaking connected to him, so much overwhelming affection, that it’s a little bit bonkers. And the “apricots” thing is the catalyst for a much bigger realization: In so many ways, they’ve been building the foundation for this exact moment for weeks, for months. Maybe even from the start.

Now, this exact moment is finally, finally here.

And Jessica Day is elated to find out that Nick Miller does, in fact, fuck just as well as he kisses.

***

Standing between her legs, one hand firm on her thigh, he grips the base of his cock and guides its head inside her desperate and quivering cunt.

And oh my God, this is only the first two inches of him — there is so much more to go — and yet he’s already stretching her, his width obscene. She wishes she could see what he’s seeing, what it looks like as he starts to push himself inside her and fucking impale her with his dick. But she’ll settle for feeling it, oh God, as he slowly pushes in another inch, as the walls of her pussy grasp at him, as she makes a guttural noise she doesn’t recognize, as — oh, fuck — no — why — he slides himself out of her. And fuck, this is the kind of absence you mourn. But thank God, thank God, it only lasts a second and then he’s shoving himself into her again, rougher this time, going further, further, and Jesus, she’s never had anything this big inside her, and it hurts a little, in a way that adds a raw and exquisite edge to her arousal —

—and then, fuck, he’s pulling all the way out again, and she hates it, but she also loves it, because it means she gets to feel him entering her again, opening her up. And that is a feeling that could get addictive, that — oh, who is she kidding? — already is. 

This time, she’s pretty sure he’s forcing his entire length inside her, inch by delicious inch, and it’s a fullness she’s never before experienced, and she’s moaning all ragged and husky and low as she takes him, as she takes all of him. (This has to be all of him, right? Because his giant fucking cock is bumping against her cervix, and there’s no more space inside her for him to fill.) But oh, fuck, it wasn’t; it wasn’t all of him. The pressure inside her cunt is still somehow increasing and — fuck — he’s filling her up, he’s filling her all the way up for real now, and even if he barely moves from here on out, she’s pretty sure she won’t be able to walk right tomorrow.

She’s also pretty sure — no, absolutely sure — she won’t care.

Because Nick Miller is inside her, all the way inside her, and nothing else in her life has ever felt so right.

Now that his cock is fully sheathed in her pussy, he stills and brings both of his hands to her thighs, gripping her so hard she thinks she’ll bruise, holding on like he never wants to let go.

“Jesus, Jess,” he groans,  “You’re so fucking tight.”

And apparently being stuffed full of Nick’s dick brings vixen-Jess out in full force and shunts awkward-Jess to the side, at least temporarily. Because even though she’s breathing hard and shallow, even though his cock is splitting her open, even though she’s close to coming (she is, she really is! And he’s barely even moved inside her!), she has the presence of mind to look up at him and reply:

“Only because you’re so fucking big.”

Oh, he likes that, his eyes going all hungry, his hands adjusting on her thighs to brace himself for what’s coming; to maybe brace them both.

And then he starts to roll his hips, to fuck into her for real.

“Oh, Jessica” — thrust — “is that” — thrust — “so?”

And oh Jesus God, this, this, right now, is everything, the pleasure as his cock drives into her cunt so outrageous it’s almost indescribable. He’s hitting places inside her she didn’t know were there, burying his length inside her again and again, varying the rhythm and intensity at first, and then — oh — finding a pace that’s steady and hard, so hard, so just right, and his dick really is curved for her pleasure, and she can see the muscles in his neck clenching as he fucks her and she thinks dimly that she wants to bite down on them.

He pauses for just a second to lift up her legs and drape them over his shoulders, and the slight change in angle when he starts rocking into her again is almost too much to handle. She tries to say his name, to tell him that she’s close. It comes out as an unintelligible gurgle, but somehow, he gets it, he gets her, and he says her name — “Jessica” — and there’s a new set to his jaw. And as he continues to fuck her, he starts rubbing slow circles around her clit, and on his thumb’s fourth circuit:

She comes.

She comes hard all over Nick Miller’s cock and his hand.

She comes in a way that feels like one of those montages representing an orgasm in the movies, with rockets launching and glass shattering and waves crashing.

It’s an explosion of pleasure so intense that it remakes her world, leaves her somehow different.

And even though she’s the one experiencing it, she feels like it belongs to them both.

As she comes back to herself, boneless and breathless and giddy, she realizes she must have been thrashing: strands of her hair are in her mouth, and her glasses have flown off her face and skidded to the side of the table. That means Nick’s fuzzier, now, when she looks up at him, but even so, she can tell that he’s gazing down at her in awe.

“Fuck,” he breathes. “Fuck. Jess. You— that— that was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

He brings his thumb from her clit up to his mouth and sucks it clean.

She just came. She literally just came. You’d think that shell-shocked cunt of hers would need some sort of refractory period; some sort of necessary pause to gather its proverbial wits. But no, her pussy immediately starts to clench again around his stilled cock, and he fucking feels it. So he grins and starts thrusting again, slowly at first, before gripping her at the waist and just slamming himself into her — once, twice, five times — and how is it possible that she can already feel a second orgasm starting to build? How?

Then — agony — he pulls out of her. But — ecstasy — it’s so he can slide her legs off his shoulders, grab her and pull her up off the table, spin her around, and bend her over on it.

The grain of the table is cool and smooth against her cheek.

One of his hands holds her down via the small of her back.

She can sense his eyes on her exposed and dripping slit, on her ass.

And then, just once, he spanks her, the sound of the slap and her resulting gasp reverberating through the apartment.

“Told ya I was gonna bend you over and fuck you hard, Jess,” he grunts, nudging her legs further apart, spreading her wider. “And I’m keeping my word.”

***

He does, he does, and it’s so unbelievably good.

He fucks her like her cunt is something he owns, like it belongs to him, and also, somehow, like it — like she — is the most valuable thing in the whole damn universe.

Drool is dripping down onto the table from both her open, moaning mouth and from her pussy, and she doesn’t even care, because she’s seeing herself through Nick’s eyes and she feels like an absolute fucking goddess: vixen-Jess, unleashed. He’s drilling into her so hard, and it’s what she needs, what she’s needed, what she’ll never stop needing.

She thinks about the soreness she’ll wake up with in the morning, and she wants it, and she tells him: Please. Harder.

He slaps her ass again — shit, fuck, yes — and grabs her wrists and pins them behind her on the low slope of her back, using them like a handle, getting the leverage he needs to give her what they both want.

In this position, her mound is pushed up against the table, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing with Nick’s every jarring thrust. And it doesn’t take long, it doesn’t take long at all, before she’s coming again, and before he’s coming, too, and calling out her name.

***

It’s his turn to pretty much collapse, now.

His cock softening inside her, he releases her wrists and leans over and folds himself down on the arc of her body, resting against her, his forehead dropping against the curve of her shoulder, his breath hot and ragged on her back.

The weight of him is a beautiful thing.

His fingers trace a slow pattern along the side of her body, and she would say it’s like he’s mapping her, except she’s pretty sure he already has her all figured out.

***

As soon as Nick knots the condom and pulls his boxers and jeans back on, he goes and gets Jess a glass of water.

While she waits, she shimmies back into her shorts and fastens herself back into her bra, sitting up on the edge of the table, swinging her legs like a little kid who’s really, really happy.

He joins her there, handing her the glass and then sliding his arm around her back, his hand resting lightly on her upper arm, his thumb stroking her soft skin.

She takes a giant, enormous sip of water, because it turns out getting nailed good and hard by your roommate-turned-friend-turned-something-else will make a girl ridiculously thirsty, and then she tries to figure out what to say next.

She settles on aiming for a breezy, you-just-completely-rocked-my-world-but-I’m-keepin’-it-totally-cool vibe.

“Well, Miller,” she says, “that was a pretty darn good trip to the bone zone.”

“The bone zone?!” he says, incredulous. “What are ya, a shock jock?”

“I’ll shock your jock,” she says, poking him in the chest with her finger, grinning.

“You are ridiculous, Day,” he says fondly, tangling his fingers in her hair, pressing a kiss to her forehead, easy, as if that’s just something he does now.

“And you love it,” she responds, teasing.

And — crap! — she instantly regrets it. Because yeah, it was just a casual, flirty comment — her pushing his buttons, not pushing him into some grand and premature proclamation! But even so, she just introduced the freaking l-word right after they had sex for the first time, like some absolute idiot, and what was she thinking?! Why didn’t she just say like?! There is no possible way things aren’t about to get really, really awkward.

But Nick doesn’t freak out; he doesn’t panic-moonwalk away.

He just smiles back at her and pulls her in closer.

“Yeah, Jess, yeah,” he says. “I kind of do.”

Chapter Text

Prior to the commencement of Ongoing and Highly Erotic Events Involving Nick Miller, Jess wouldn’t have thought it was possible for a dude to essentially go straight from one astoundingly hot roll in the hay into the next.

Spencer was a once-a-week kinda guy. Romps with Russell had very clear beginnings, middles and endings. Sam was Mr. Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Ma’am, even when they were dating and not just hooking up.

Nick, though. Nick. Wow.

Somehow, impossibly, the same guy who insists that “running a 5K is 5 K’s too many” and who avoids the gym because he “doesn’t trust treadmills” appears to have an endless supply of stamina for sexy times with Jessica Day.

Or at the very least, a lot of pent-up demand.

Because even though they’ve barely caught their breath from a freaking epic first time in which Nick basically fucked Jess halfway to the moon, it’s only a matter of minutes before he’s kissing her again, hard.

Like, really kissing her. Intensely. In a sex-is-not-just-behind-us-but-also-imminent kind of way.

And she’s kissing him back, deliriously happy, her mouth — and the rest of her — pliant, languorous, very much his for the taking. (The thought rises inside her like a wisp of smoke: Again. All the time. Whenever he damn well wants.)

He moves one of his hands to her bra-covered tits, first cupping, then squeezing.

“You’re insatiable, Miller,” she breathes, fond laughter bubbling in her throat, because who knew? And because it just feels so good and so natural to tease him, even as she arches her back to push her chest into his hand; even as her nipples harden; even as her cunt starts, once again, to throb.

He pulls his face back from hers and looks her straight in the eyes.

“Can’t get enough of ya, Jess,” he says simply.

***

(So, yeah. Holy freaking cannoli.

If it wasn’t already clear to Jess before, it is now: what just happened on the table was not some one-time, get-it-out-of-their-systems, scratch-that-itch-and-move-on kind of thing.

Instead, it seems that for both of them, said itch isn’t really an itch at all; it’s more of a need. One that’s about sex, yes, but not just.

It’s about each other, the vast and fundamental connection between them, a warm and mysterious alchemy that keeps on growing, growing, getting brighter.)

***

Her tongue is tied.

She wants to say something — the right thing — back to him, but she’s not sure what it is, because these feelings are big and overwhelming, and she doesn’t want to make the wrong move. And crap, she’s overthinking this! She’s overthinking this, the way she always overthinks everything, dangit! And meanwhile, he’s looking at her with such open, disarming sincerity as he waits for a reply, and — oh, great — now a truly awkward number of seconds have passed without her offering one. And she’s just not smooth, she’s never been smooth, so ultimately she just kind of lunges at his face and kisses him, catching his bottom lip pretty clumsily in her teeth—

At the warmth of his resulting smile, at his slight chuckle, at how he brings the hand that’s not kneading her tits up to cup her chin gently and bring their faces into balance, her racing thoughts subside and clarity emerges:

Duh. Just a few minutes ago, he said he kinda loves how weird I am. Maybe, with Nick, I don’t need to be smooth. Maybe I can just be… me.

The thought is freeing. True. Obvious. And oddly enough, she’s immediately able to deliver a line that actually is pretty darn slick.

“The feeling, Miller,” she mumbles into his mouth, “is mutual.”

***

They take their mutual feelings into Nick’s bedroom.

He’s clearly got a thing for carrying her, because that’s how they get there.

This time, she’s not draped in his arms as if he’s caught her mid-swoon. Instead, her legs are wrapped around his waist, his hands are supporting her thighs just below her ass, and her arms are locked around his neck. It’s a position that means his stride isn’t as smooth as before — it’s more of a stagger — but Jess has a grand total of zero complaints. Having her feet off the ground for Nick-related reasons is fast becoming something she craves. God, he makes her feel so desired — and also so tiny relative to him that it’s almost magical, like she’s Jack(ie?) climbing an abnormally sexy beanstalk.

When they get to the hallway and he veers left into his bedroom instead of right into hers, she can’t help but give him some sass.

“You sure?” she says, raising her eyebrows. “Mine’s cleaner, Nick. Like, a lot cleaner.”

He tightens his grip on her thighs and thrusts his hips forward and then kind of tosses her up higher on him by an inch or two, making her gasp and kind of bounce against his body, his body that is so much stronger than hers.

“Day,” he says, his voice rough and low, “I washed my comforter this morning, remember? It smells like a damn mountain spring.”

And then — God, she should really be expecting this by now — he freaking floors her, yet again, by saying something so direct and so sexy that she has no choice, absolutely no choice, but to moan.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he growls, “and it’s finally happening, and there’s no way in hell the next place I fuck you isn’t gonna be my bed.”

***

It hasn’t even been 30 minutes since he railed her into kingdom come.

But as he maneuvers her towards and then onto his bed (he’s right! It does smell like a damn mountain spring!), she can feel his semi-stiffness through his jeans.

Mixed in with her arousal is pride.

This is what I do to him, she marvels. Me! Jessica Day! Singer of madrigals! Maker of puns! Knitter of scarves! Somehow, I am also the instigator of a never-ending sequence of Nick Miller erections!

She’s long felt like most of the guys she’s dated found her cute rather than drop-dead sexy, and resigned herself to the idea that they probably had a point. But Nick makes her feel like she’s way, way more of a temptress than she’d thought. And it’s not just about how he reacts to her; it's about how he anticipates her, like he somehow just knows the things she really, truly wants.

The things she’s only recently begun to fully acknowledge to herself.

“Nick,” she says, breathy, as he deposits her on the bed, “how did you know how much I’d like it when you, um. Like. Talked to me like that? And really, um... took control?”

“I had a feeling,” he says, working the clasp of her bra open with one hand. “And then last night, when you told me to ‘kiss you like a man,’ that pretty much sealed the damn deal.”

He takes this opportunity to, well, kiss her like a man again, in a way that’s becoming familiar but will never, ever get old, and to rip her little shorts off for the third time that day. She responds by reaching for his belt and jeans to unbuckle and unzip them, to pull them down, and he lets her, and God, yeah, his freaking magnificent dick is very much on the rebound, already more than halfway to full-mast.

“Plus, um. I saw ya with Sam,” he says gruffly as she pants into his mouth.

Hearing Sam’s name come out of Nick’s lips right now — just as she was about to spit into her hand and reach for his cock — is not what she was expecting.

“What do you mean?” she asks — shocked, wide-eyed.

“Oh, come on, Jess,” he growls. “I live with ya. You really think I didn’t notice how you reacted when he’d tug your hair or grab your ass? I could tell how much you liked it, and Christ, it was killing me.”

She’s briefly mortified. Because yeah, she and Sam had tried the rough stuff (they broke her dresser, for goodness’ sake), and that dynamic turned her on, and he gave her what until very, very recently was the best sex of her life — but she didn’t realize quite how much of all this Nick was noticing.

Just as quickly, her embarrassment turns to something else: Yup, holy wow, she’s aroused by the thought of Nick studying her and Sam so closely, so jealously.

She wonders if Nick picked up on what she now knows was missing with Sam: enough trust between them, enough deep and true affection, for her to ever truly let go. 

Plus, Sam’s dick had nothing on Nick’s, nothing at all.

She grins briefly to herself, delighted — I can’t tell him that. He’ll be insufferable. — and then admonishes herself, Focus, Day, Focus.

She does. Vixen-Jess reports for duty.

“So, Nick, what did you do about it?” she asks, fluttering her eyelashes, as sultry and coquettish as she knows how.

Nick’s brow creases in momentary confusion.

“Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me, Jess?” he asks slowly.

At her nod, he continues, a new glint in his eyes.

“So you wanna know if I went and jerked off, replaying your little noises and thinking about taking my turn?”

(Fuck, why does that last part hit her as so filthy and so hot?)

“You wanna know if I pretended it was your little hand wrapped around my cock?”

And fuck, he grips her wrist and moves her hand to his dick, and then wraps his hand around hers and starts moving them up and down, up and down — and this is an act that doesn’t even need spit because he’s uncut, and also because he’s already leaking precum, and oh my God, the sight and the feeling of both of their hands doing this together is just— it's hypnotizingly hot.

“Yes, Day, I did. All the goddamn time,” he grunts, increasing the pace of their joined hands. “You wanna know what else?”

She can’t stop staring down, entranced. She doesn’t trust herself to speak, so she nods instead, her mouth an O, his dick so unbelievably thick and warm and hard in her fist (which, in turn, is in his fist).

“I could hear you in your room when he was fucking you, Jessica,” he says, his grip tightening. “And I tried to distract myself, I really did, but it was impossible. So I would sit right fucking here and stroke myself like this, imagining what it would be like to be the one inside you, imagining that my fist was your hot little cunt.”

(Fuck. How does every new sex-related thing Nick says to her somehow unseat the previous one to become the hottest thing she’s ever heard?)

“Nick,” Jess says, a woman on fire or maybe reborn, “You don’t have to imagine it any more.”

***

This time, Jess is on top, riding Nick’s dick like it’s what she was made for.

She rolls a condom onto him first, of course. (Turns out he keeps a stash in one of the cinderblocks that hold up his bookshelves. Along with lube, because with a prize hog like that, you’ve just gotta.)

“Sit on me, Jess,” he grits out. “Christ, you’re beautiful. I wanna watch ya take my cock.”

She obeys, dripping with both fresh arousal and the remnants of her two tabletop orgasms (and oh yeah, probably the one in the Crafters’ Castle bathroom, too, because, hey, that also happened!).

The look on his face as she settles herself onto his hard length — as she takes him in, moaning; as his cock disappears into her cunt — is something she’ll never forget: Intense. Overjoyed. Awed.

She’s stretched out and ready, thanks to how he fucking worked her on the dining room table, but the fullness of his dick inside her is still startling and gorgeous and obscene.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever really get used to it. She doesn’t really want to.

She has never loved this position, has always felt awkwardly on display, but with Nick, so many things are different.

They move together like the moon and the tides, like this intertwined push and pull is what their bodies have always been meant for.

His hands grip her hips hard enough to bruise.

She throws her head back when she comes, her hair cascading like a dark wild wave.

***

Afterwards, they stay in his bed — her giggly and giddy and loose-limbed and suddenly shy; him tracing the curve of her cheek with his thumb, looking at her like he can barely believe she’s real.

“Well, that was really fun,” she says, blushing.

“Yeah, it really was,” he responds, moving his hand to the curve of her shoulder.

She can see his Adam’s apple working, and he looks like he’s making up his mind about something.

“I—“

He clears his throat, and then he comes out and says it: “I like ya a lot, Jess.”

And that sounds familiar, really familiar, and oh — that’s because it’s word-for-word what he told her that night on the beach last year when they thought he might be dying of cancer, the ocean stretching out dark and wide before them.

Now she realizes what he really meant, how deep the current runs.

The realization scares her to some degree, but nowhere near as much as it exhilarates and emboldens her.

So she takes the plunge. She tells him the truth.

“Well, I like you a lot too, Miller,” she says, slowly at first; then the words gather, pick up steam, start flying out on their own. “And I want to see where this goes. And you know what, it’s probably gonna be weird and complicated, because we’re roommates and we’re us, but screw it. I’m all in, if you are.”

She didn’t know until this moment that Nick Miller’s face was capable of beaming.

“Yeah, Jess,” he says, “Yeah, I am.”

He leans in to kiss her—

—and that’s when she unexpectedly sneezes and accidentally elbows him in the face as she reflexively attempts to cover her mouth and nose.

“Oh crap, Nick, I’m so sorry!” she says as he howls (hopefully in surprise more than in pain?) and brings his hands to his face.

“Ya tryin’ to break my nose a third time, Day?” he asks — but oh, good, he’s ok; the corners of his mouth are curving up in a smile.

“Nah,” she says. “I like your nose exactly the way it is.”

***

It’s only 2 pm, but it’s been a long day of shattered-fishtank-aftermath and sex-having, on top of a long night of fishtank-shattering and almost-sex-having.

So the next thing they do is take a nap, together, right where they are — both of them naked, Jess resting in the crook of Nick’s arm.

“Goodnight, honey,” he murmurs before drifting off.

“It’s not night, Nick,” she says back, drowsy and fond.

He falls asleep first.

Her eyelids growing heavy, she thinks about the next phase of her life and how it suddenly looks a lot more like a romance novel than it has at any other time she can remember. Either that, or a super-twirly, NC-17 version of a Dr. Seuss book: Nick can fuck me on the bar! Nick can fuck me in his car! Nick can fuck me on the beach! Nick can eat me like a peach!

Smiling to herself like she’s a sleepy, sex-exhausted version of the Mona Lisa who has capital-F-Feelings for the guy who just painted her, she thinks for a second about grabbing her phone and texting Cece — something like, OMG we did it TWICE and it was UNBELIEVABLY GOOD AAAAAAAHHHH and also I think we really like each other?!?!?!? And I think this could be the start of something really amazing?!?!?!

She holds off. As she drifts into sleep, she decides she wants to stay in this beautiful bubble of limitless possibility, to keep this Nick-Jess-sex-magic (she mentally apologizes to her California comrades, the Red Hot Chili Peppers) a secret, just between them, for a little while longer.

***

Fate has other plans.

In the haze of all the feelings and all the fucking and all the finally, Jess has completely forgotten that five bags of supplies from The Crafters’ Castle are sitting abandoned outside the loft door.

She’s also completely forgotten that both her and Nick’s shirts are strewn somewhere within a five-foot-radius of the dining room table — and that hers is literally ripped apart, a piece of obvious detritus from a Sex Tornado.

Should there be any doubt, a condom wrapper on the floor completes the picture.

Winston and Schmidt aren’t Sherlock Holmes by any stretch of the imagination.

But once they arrive home and see what they see, they probably won’t have to be.

***

When the door to Apartment 4D slams shut a little after 3, Jess is jolted out of her sleep — and then gets another jolt as she remembers where she is, and what has happened over the course of the past 16 or so hours, and what’s likely to happen next.

“Oh, crap, Nick,” she says, her voice scratchy with sleep and with panic. “Wake up. They’re home.”

He groans as he enters consciousness, rubbing one of his fists over his eyes and then opening them to see Jess in his bed.

A slow smile stretching across his face, he runs his other hand down the smooth length of her arm.

“What’s the big deal, Jess?” he says. “So are we.”

Chapter Text

In the hours since Jess and Nick last saw Schmidt and Winston, Many Big Steps have been taken.

The needle on the Times-Nick-and-Jess-Have-Had-Sex-O-Meter has gone from zero to two. (Maybe even three, if you count what went down in The Crafters’ Castle bathroom. Specifically, Nick, followed by Jess.)

Nick has made her come no fewer than four times, first with his mouth and his hands and his freaking nose, and then with his, um, manhood — both the piece o’ pipe itself (who knew Ol’ Nick Miller would be a regular Harvard University, endowment-wise?), and also his embrace of yeah-Day-I’ll-kiss-(and-fuck)-you-like-a-manhood to exactly the degree she desires.

Interspersed with All the Crazy-Hot Sex Stuff, there’ve been Confessions of Feelings, and Broken Nose Origin Stories, and Holding of Hands, and Other Assorted Displays of Tenderness.

In short: Major, major stuff! Giant leaps forward! Thresholds — both literal and figurative — crossed in dramatic and memorable fashion!

Yet once they began unfolding, all of these developments with Nick felt somehow… natural? Predestined? Like there was some force — gravity, or fate, or inevitability — doing the heavy lifting, and Jess was (happily, gratefully) floating along on a ride that was already in motion.

Facing Winston and Schmidt, by contrast, feels to Jess like it’s gonna require some serious effort; some very intense pedaling or pushing or climbing.

It feels like the Biggest, Most Daunting Step of Them All.

***

Launching herself out of Nick’s arms and Nick’s bed, Jess scrambles to pull herself together, to re-clothe herself piece by piece.

She comes up short.

“Oh my God, Nick,” she whispers, her heart pounding. “My shirt.”

“What about it?” Nick replies, hopping from one foot to another as he shimmies into his boxers and jeans.

“It’s not here,” she hisses, fastening her bra. “It’s still out there. What am I gonna do?”

And oh, damn him: He’s smirking.

He’s enjoying watching her squirm; enjoying the position he’s put her in; enjoying the fact that she’s in this predicament because he ripped the shirt off her body and tossed it to the ground — ruined; forgotten — right before he fucked her brainless on the dining room table.

He reaches for a green henley that’s draped over the back of his desk chair and pulls it over his head.

“Just wear one of my flannel shirts, Day,” he tells her. “It’ll fit ya like one of those robes you like so much.”

The way he says this tells her two things: This isn’t the first time he’s thought about what she’d look like wearing one of his shirts. And it’s also not the first time he’s made the mental comparison to a certain other piece of her clothing while doing so.

The realization relaxes her enough to make her a little flirty, reminding her that no matter what happens when they come clean to Schmidt and Winston (and hey, who made those two the arbiters of what constitutes appropriate Apartment 4D roommate relations, anyway?! Did Schmidt not ask Winston to pee on him just yesterday?!), a long runway has led up to this moment. What’s between her and Nick has been building over time, layer by layer. It’s real and it’s good, and it isn’t going to just dissolve in the face of some Winston-Schmidt disapproval.

She’s not going to let it.

But first, she’s gotta get dressed.

“Um, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person in this room who’s a fan of my robes, Mr. ‘Those-Things-Are-My-Catnip’,” she says as she strides over to Nick’s closet, tossing a playful glance at him over her shoulder.

(He’s smiling, looking surprised and pleased that she paid close enough attention to his comment from weeks ago to remember it now.)

Working quickly, she picks out a blue-and-green plaid flannel and puts it on. She buttons the most essential buttons and leaves the rest undone; she rolls up the cuffs of the much-too-long sleeves.

When she turns around, she can tell that seeing her in his shirt like this does something to Nick; scratches a possessive itch that runs deep.

He runs a hand over the bruise on his cheekbone as his eyes sweep her body.

“I’m not gonna lie, Jess,” he says, “This right here— seeing you like this— it’s kinda been a fantasy of mine for a while. And it’s a damn shame those two clowns just got home, because otherwise I’d take ya again, right now.”

Oh, oh. Yes.

Even though they have roommates to level with, even though she should really be putting all her energy into formulating exactly what she’s going to say and how she’s going to say it, she can’t resist swaying her hips and biting her lip as she walks back towards Nick, each step loaded and deliberate.

“Raincheck?” she purrs.

“Jessica Day,” he says, taking her in, hungrily, “you might actually kill me.”

***

It’s then that Jess remembers something highly irritating and highly inconvenient.

“Nick,” she says, fresh panic in her eyes, “crap. What about the no-nail oath? Schmidt was insistent that it was a ‘legally binding document.’”

“Jess, I was almost a lawyer, remember? I’ll get us out of this,” Nick responds. “Loopholes. There’s always a loophole. It’s all about the loopholes.”

“Miller, are you hoping that by saying ‘loophole’ over and over again you’ll, like, summon one or something?”

“What? No. Who’d’ya think I am, Jess? Harry Plotter?”

Grateful for the distraction from the Impending Roommate Confrontation, grateful to Nick for being so perfectly, reassuringly himself, she starts quietly laughing.

“Did you just say Harry Plotter?” she asks.

“Yeah, the little wizard guy. With the wand, and the lightning, and the glasses that kinda look like yours.”

“Oh my God,” she says, rolling her eyes behind her (apparently magical?) glasses. “It’s Potter, Nick. Not Plotter.”   

“Well, if it isn’t Plotter, it should be, right?” he responds, as if he’s explaining the most obvious thing on the planet. “He’s always plotting about how to bring down the evil guy whose name no one will say.”

Oh God, she thinks. I must be in this thing deep, because what he’s saying is actually… kind of making sense to me?

But some things haven’t changed: she’s still not gonna let him win.

“You’re crazy, Miller,” she says fondly, shaking her head.

“Oh, shut up, Day,” he grins, his voice going gruff.

And then he presses her up against his door and kisses her hard and deep, his hand sliding up her inner thigh, like there aren’t two confused and possibly angry roommates right on the other side, like they have all the time in the world.

***

They don’t.

At that exact moment, there’s a sharp rap on Nick’s door. It startles Jess to the extent that she a.) jerks her head forward, bumping Nick’s nose for the second time in the past several hours (prompting a “Dammit, Jessica!”), and b.) lets out a loud yelp of her own.

Even as these two elements of Jess’s reaction unfold, she’s mentally kicking herself.

Because on the off-chance that Schmidt and Winston hadn’t pieced things together already, there’s no doubt they have now:

The woman in Nick Miller’s bedroom is Jessica Day.

***

Schmidt’s voice is the next thing Jess hears, the words clipped and short and furious.

“Well, well, well. Nicholas. Jessica. You think you know somebody.”

(The somebodies Schmidt thought he knew stare at each other, frozen for a second, and don’t reply. Then Jess brings a finger to her lips in an instinctual shh symbol, as if that will change anything at all; Nick makes an are-you-kidding-me-Day face at her in response and rubs his bumped nose.)

“Oh, come on,” Schmidt says, his voice rising. “I know you’re in there, you horny, deceitful idiots. I just heard you both. And you will be joining me and Winston for a loft meeting on the couch, immediately— ”

There’s a slight pause, and then Schmidt builds to a crescendo.

“— unless, that is, you’re naked, in which case, put on some goddamn clothes before you emerge from your little den of sex and lies!”

***

Before they emerge from their little den of sex and lies, Nick and Jess share a private moment of reassurance.

“We’ve got this, right?” he asks her, studying her face like he’s trying to convince himself she’s actually real.

She can tell that he’s grappling with a sudden, rapid surge of self-doubt; that he’s listening to that Tom Waits voice in his head that tells him anything good is too good to be true.

She brings her hand to his cheek and kisses him, firm and confident and sure.

“We’ve got this, Miller,” she says.

And then they open the door.

Chapter Text

When Nick and Jess emerge from his room to face their fate, he has her back.

Literally.

Steering her gently but firmly towards their other two roommates (who are seated, stone-faced, on what Jess is now thinking of as the Couch of Confrontation), he presses his hand against the low curve of her spine as if to say, I’m here. I’ve got ya.

Even through the flannel of his shirt on her back, Jess can feel the soft heat of his palm, the wide splay of his fingers.

The sensations ground her like a deep breath, like a new center of gravity, like certainty itself.

***

Nick starts whispering to her as they walk.

“No matter what they say, Jess, do not sit down on the couch with ‘em,” he says. “We’ve gotta stay standing.”

Her first thought is, Um, you nailed me so good and hard that that might be difficult. (She’s registering, with every step she takes, the wonderful soreness of her well-worked lady business, and how untethered-by-gravity and pumped-full-of-dopamine the rest of her body still feels.)

Her second thought — the one she actually expresses — is, “Why?!”

“It’s about power,” he whispers back. “That’s how George Washington would always win debates. He’d be standing and the other guys would be sitting. Boom. Victory.”

I am sleeping with a ridiculous human, Jess thinks with a smile she can’t suppress.

“Fine, Nick, we’ll stand,” she whispers. “But we are rectifying your knowledge of American history later.”

“OK, teach,” he says quietly, and he winks at her. He winks. And really, how can she not blush? And how can she not let out a small, breathy giggle, as if they’re the only people in the room? And how can she not bump her hip against him from the side, the contact surprising and delighting him and throwing him slightly off-balance, his fingertips reflexively pressing harder against the small of her back —

The crack of Schmidt’s hand smacking the coffee table brings an abrupt end to this Extremely Flirty Moment.

“Oh, come on!” Schmidt yells as Winston shakes his head. “Can you two horny traitors not stop the damn mooning-over-each-other for five freaking seconds?!”

Instead of being alarmed by the fury in Schmidt’s voice, Jess has the strangest urge to laugh (and to tell him that “Two Horny Traitors” and “Five Freaking Seconds” are phrases that sound like they belong in an adults-only parody of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”) She resists — I’ll share my brilliant observation with Nick later — making a strategic decision to instead shift into teacher-managing-high-strung-children mode.

First, though, she takes hold of Nick’s hand (he’d dropped it from her back, startled, when Schmidt smacked the table), and squeezes twice for some reason. Nick squeezes back two times with no hesitation, as if he and Jess are communicating in some secret code, as if maybe they have been for a while.

Winston’s eyebrows jump an inch higher on his forehead. Schmidt outright gags into his fist.

“Oh my God, Winston,” Schmidt says, in disgust; in disbelief. “They’re holding hands.”

We sure are, Jess thinks, and oh, gentlemen, if you only knew what else these hands of ours have been up to today—

But oh, that’s right: In a general sense, they already kind of do.

Displayed on the coffee table, like evidence at a police precinct, are five bags from The Crafters’ Castle, Jess’s destroyed shirt and Nick’s intact one, and an empty condom packet.

There’s also — oh, crap — a sheaf of paper, bound with a binder clip.

Jess recognizes it immediately as the No-Nail Oath.

Her grip on Nick’s hand tightens.

***

She intends to start speaking.

Her plan is to grease the wheels a bit by dialing up the flattery (“Schmidt, Winston, you know I’ve always thought of you as wise, thoughtful men — ‘better angels,’ if you will”) before the conversation gets serious.

Instead, she clears her throat so dramatically that she triggers a coughing fit.

For a brief moment in time, it works to her advantage: As Nick asks her softly, “Whoa, Jess, ya OK?”, she can see that Schmidt and Winston are looking up at her with concern instead of irritation.

“I’m fine,” she croaks out, her eyes watering. “It’ll pass.”

She decides that this is an opportunity to break the ice, to bring the intensity level down, to reassure Schmidt and Winston that while she and Nick are now sleeping together, she’s still herself — still the same old Jess they know and love (and sometimes hate).

So the next thing she says is in an old-timey British accent: “‘Tis likely but a minor touch of ye olde consumption.”

“Consumption, Jess?” Schmidt says, incredulous. “Are you really making one of your bizarre ‘jokes’ referencing the Victorian era right now?”

Jess nods in response to Schmidt, but it’s Winston she’s looking at, pleadingly. Winston, who’s ordinarily powerless to resist a clear invitation to bust out a bad British accent.

Yeah, not this time. He just shakes his head, his lips a firm line, staring at Jess silently, like he’s a disappointed parent.

Ouch.

“Come to think of it, that’s oddly appropriate,“ Schmidt continues. “This place does feel like a 19th-century insane asylum or whorehouse right now, thanks to you two! The way you’re swanning around, with your freaking garments strewn all over the place, like this is your personal brothel—“

That’s when it happens: Nick Miller explodes.

“All right, all right, enough already, Schmidt,” he yells. “Just quit it, man. Why are you being such an asshole? Let’s talk about this like goddamn adults.”

(And oh, there’s a vein in Nick’s neck that pops out when he’s angry, thrumming like a thick guitar string. Jess’s eyes were drawn to it last night, when he was muscling her over to the dining room table. Now, like then, she has the strongest, strangest urge to lick it from bottom to top. To take it in her teeth and oh-so-gently bite.

All in due time, Day, she tells herself as Nick Miller-induced arousal — apparently, the most renewable of resources — begins once again to wet the walls of her well-used cunt.)

“Oh, so now we’re adults, Nicholas?” Schmidt hisses, his eyes narrowing. “Was it not just three days ago that you threw a shit-fit over ‘age discrimination’ because you were mad you weren’t allowed to vote in the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards?”

“Standing up for principles is a very adult thing, Schmidt!” Nick yells back.

“Not when the ‘principle’ is ‘I, too, should be eligible to vote for Taylor Swift to get slimed, because I think it would be hot!’” Schmidt shouts.

Weirdly, he’s looking straight at Jess instead of Nick — and oh, she realizes, it’s because he thinks he’s landed a winning jab. One that will goad her and Nick into arguing. That will prompt her to launch into a rant about how he should be ashamed for “objectifying a wholesome, smart and talented musician who just happens to be a woman.” That will maybe even make her start to question why the hell she’s sleeping with him.

Not gonna happen, Jess thinks, feeling a surge of confidence; of power. I see right through you, Schmidt.

Plus, even if she were to take the bait and run with it, the joke’s still on him: for her and Nick, fighting isn’t fighting. It’s foreplay.

“Didn’t know green slime and Taylor Swift did it for you, Miller,” she says, turning her head to look at him, grinning slyly.

Returning his hand to the small of her back — as if to say, Schmidt, you’re not gonna drive a wedge between us that easily — he flashes her a small, wicked smile.

Then he looks back at Schmidt with a very different expression.

“I said that in confidence, ya jackass,” he growls, the hand that’s not on Jess’s back becoming an intermittent fist, clenching and releasing at his side.

“You’re the jackass,” Schmidt parries back, his voice rising. “You’re the one betraying the confidence of your roommates, OK? How can we ever trust anything you say ever again? That surprise you said you were planning for me— was it actually just, ‘Guess what, Schmidt, Me and Jess are secretly banging?’”

Schmidt’s voice cracks a little during that last phrase, and that’s when Jess puts the pieces together: what’s really driving his disproportionate anger, turning him into the worst possible version of himself right now, isn’t actually judgment. It’s fear — fear coupled with insecurity. Because Cece’s getting married to someone who isn’t him, and now his best friend is sleeping with one of their other two roommates and he didn’t know, and he’s afraid the world he knew is turning in a way that’s leaving him behind.

It doesn’t excuse his Severe Case of Extreme Dickishness. It does, however, explain it.

So Jess jumps in to offer something she thinks might help.

“Schmidt, this literally just happened today, OK? It’s not like we’ve been sneaking around behind your back for weeks or even days, I promise. And I’m sorry you and Winston found out this way. I know it must’ve be kind of a shock to walk in and see our, um, stuff” — she gestures at what’s spread out on the coffee table — “all over the place.”

“You’re damn right it was,” Schmidt huffs. “It was like walking into a freaking sex hurricane! I didn’t know I was living with Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee!” And now things are really getting chaotic, because at the same time Schmidt’s speaking, Nick’s saying loudly, “Ya don’t have to apologize, Jess. We live here, too, and we’ve got nothing to apologize for. Schmidt’s just being a—“

That’s when Winston enters the fray and suddenly, completely dominates it.

In a voice louder than they’ve ever before heard from him, one that out-decibels both Nick and Schmidt by a mile, he yells out, “Oh my God, would you all just shut up for a second? All of you. Damn. I swear, if you don’t calm the hell down, I will prank each and every one of you every damn day for the next year.”

Jess, Nick, and Schmidt all stare at Winston, stunned into silence, contemplating a fate worse than death.

“Well, Winston,” Jess says slowly, “I think you’ve hit on something we can all agree on: to avoid that, we’ll do anything.”

***

Nick’s hand on Jess’s back grows slightly more relaxed as Winston’s intervention achieves what Jess’s attempts at de-escalation couldn’t: a pause in the build towards what was starting to feel like an impending fistfight. Both Schmidt and Nick still seem highly irritated, but they’re looking at Winston instead of each other, and — for the moment, at least — they’re both quiet.

Why, Winston Bishop, you’re a regular Winston Churchill!, Jess thinks. Really, the guy appears to be stepping into the role of master diplomat like he was born for it.

And then he opens his mouth.

“OK, first, Nick, Jess: Even though I’m freaked the hell out by what’s apparently happening between you, I love you both. And let me be the first to say that I’m very relieved that you were not, in fact, abducted by aliens,” Winston says.

“Wait, aliens?” Nick asks. “I mean, I’m not saying they’re not real—“

“—you’d better not be,” Winston says, deadly serious.

“—but why’d you think they’d taken us, man?”

“Well, when Schmidt and I got back from the gym and saw these craft store bags abandoned in the hallway right in front of our door, ’they were abducted by aliens’ was clearly the most logical explanation,” Winston explains. “I mean, you know how Jess gets about her craft supplies. She’d never willingly leave a damn pipe cleaner unattended, let alone five damn bags of ‘em.”

(Except to let Nick Miller take me like a man, Jess thinks with a naughty thrill.)

“Hold up, hold up— you guys go to the gym together now?” Nick asks.

“We really bonded yesterday, Nicholas,” Schmidt says, haughty. “And oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, the sting of betrayal is even worse than the sting of a jellyfish.”

“Schmidt!” Winston yells. “Let me finish. And you, too, Nick. Stop interrupting.”

Schmidt and Nick hold their tongues.

“Anyway,” Winston says, “I can’t say I’m shocked by this. Jess, I’ve seen the way you look at Nick when he’s gargling his beer or angry-fixing the sink, and Nick, I’ve seen the way you look at Jess pretty much all the damn time.”

(Oh my God, Jess thinks, her mouth falling open, Winston had our number even before we did.)

“I just really hope y’all have thought this through,” he continues. “We’ve got a damn good thing going here in Apartment 4D, the four of us. And if things with the two of you go wrong—“

He shakes his head. He stares first Jess and then Nick right in the eye.

“Don’t screw this up,” he says.

***

For the first time since she and Nick left his room, Jess has a moment of doubt.

Because Winston’s right: If things between her and Nick go south — like, in a bad way, not in a sexy way — it could ruin everything.

Then Nick speaks, and she’s reminded that she already knows he’s worth the risk.

“You know me, man,” he tells Winston, the pressure of his fingers on Jess’s back steady and firm. “I’m never sure about anything. But with Jess, it’s just— I’m all in, OK? How could I not be?”

Jess wants to kiss him hard, right then and there — to throw her arms around his shoulders and climb him; to end up with her legs wrapped around his waist and his hands gripping her ass as he maneuvers her up against the nearest wall and takes her.

Instead, bowing to propriety, she weaves her right arm behind Nick’s back.

She looks straight at Winston.

She says, “Me, too.”

***

It’s a really sweet moment. Sincere. Heartfelt. Moving.   

Until the clapping of Schmidt’s hands — slow and sarcastic — starts to echo through the loft.

“Bravo, you two,” he says, his voice dripping with disdain. “Really beautiful.”

“Easy, man,” Winston warns him.

But this time, Schmidt doesn’t let up.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” he spits out. “Seriously, how is this going to work? Nick, you are a Chicago hobo, and Jess, you are a human version of Hello Kitty. But you know what, what I think doesn’t even matter, since it’s not even up to me,” he continues, grabbing the No-Nail Oath off the coffee table, waving it around in his hand. “This is a matter for the law.”

Instead of getting mad, instead of raising his voice, Nick Miller starts to laugh. Not in a mean way; in an almost affectionate one.

“Ah, gimme a break, Schmidtty,” he says, sounding confident and magnanimous, and Jess realizes it’s because the exchange they just had with Winston — and, indirectly, with each other — has freed up enough space inside him to make that possible. “You know that’s a total nothingburger.”

“Oh, Nicholas, it is very much a somethingburger,” Schmidt responds. “A somethingburger that you, my friend, have violated.”

Jess holds her breath for a second, not sure exactly where and how this is gonna go.

But when Nick starts to speak, she starts to smile.

Loopholes.

“C’mon, man. You remember what we did in the runup to creating and signing that? You and me and Coach drank an entire bottle of Scotch while we watched The Karate Kid. We were not of sound mind when we signed it, and therefore, it is invalid.”

“But,” Schmidt stammers, “but—“

“And plus,” Nick continues, triumphant, “even if we hadn’t been a buncha drunk idiots when we signed it, this contract was null and void once one of the signatories vacated the residence — so, once Coach moved out and Winston moved in.”

(“Told ya, Jess,” he says under his breath, just for her. “Loopholes. That’s what two years of law school will get ya.”)

Schmidt looks like he’s been punched in the gut: the last card he had to play wasn’t even a card at all.

Finally, finally, his guard comes down.

“Crap,” he says. “I’m the dumbest boy in school.”

At that, Nick’s expression softens. “C’mon, buddy,” he says. “Me and Jess like each other, all right? A couple of pieces of paper were never gonna stop it. And I know you’re freaked out, and I know you’re going through a lot, but it’d mean a lot to me if ya could be a little bit less of a dick about it.”

“You ‘like each other’? What is this, summer camp?” Schmidt says, but the anger is leaving his words, the sharpness of his tone receding.

Sighing, he looks from Nick to Jess.

“Jessica,” he says, “Are you sure about this? Have you seen the soles of this man’s feet? I think the last time he washed them was during the Clinton administration. Has he brainwashed you? Did he learn hypnosis? Is he—“

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jess interjects. “I am a strong, independent woman, Schmidt. I have a freaking master’s degree. I think for myself, OK? I know what I want.”

“And what you want is Nick?” Schmidt asks quietly.

Jess answers with an emphatic, “Yes.”

She turns her head and stares at Nick as she says it.

The look of wonder on his face is something she’ll remember forever.

It fills her with a warmth that’s generous and kind and good, that helps inspire what she says next.

“And it’s also this. You. Us,” she says, gesturing at Winston and Schmidt with the arm that’s not wrapped around Nick’s back. “We’re a family. The good kind. The kind you choose, you know? Like people always say about pets.”

Schmidt lets out a dramatic “Ugh,” one it’s clear he doesn’t really mean.

“Please don’t compare us to pets, Jess,” Winston says, but he’s smiling.

“It’s a compliment, ya idiots,” Nick says, and he’s smiling, too.

“It is,” Jess insists. “I love you guys.”

“All right, all right, we love you, too,” Schmidt sighs, as Winston nods his approval. “Both of you. So don’t you dare let whatever this is mess everything up.”

Nick pulses his hand against Jess’s back— once, twice — and she returns the gesture.

***

There are still no guarantees that Jess and Nick becoming Jess-and-Nick won’t ruin everything.

And it’s not like they have Schmidt and Winston’s blessing, exactly.

But they’ve crossed the threshold, and are still standing now that they've reached the other side.

***

“OK, fine,” Schmidt says. “If we’re really doing this thing, we’re going to have some rules. First of all, there will be a relationship probationary period, starting now, and then Winston and I will determine if you are allowed to continue fornicating.”

Hearing Schmidt use the word relationship to describe what’s happening between her and Nick makes Jess so happy she can almost overlook the rest of his ridiculous declaration.

Almost.

“Schmidt,” she yells. “That is not how this works. You are out of your mind.”

At the same time, Nick groans, “Oh my God, Schmiddty. Boundaries,” and Winston says, “Yeah, that’s a hard no, Schmidt. I’m out.”

“Fine,” Schmidt says, put-upon. “Can we at least agree that there will be no more sex-having by you two in the loft common areas?”

Nick catches Jess’s eye before answering, a hint of a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth.

“No, we absolutely cannot,” he says.

“But we will do a better job of picking up after ourselves, I swear,” Jess adds.

“Please,” Schmidt says. “With the things you wear, it looked like a vintage store barfed all over itself.”

“Oh my God, Schmidt,” Jess says. “It was one shirt.”

(We're gonna be OK, she thinks. This feels good.)

Nick seems to agree. “Jess,” he whispers in her ear, “I think we pulled it off. And I really want to fuck you again, like, right now” — she shivers, delighted, the phrase making up for lost time flitting through her mind — “but I think the guys need us. Should we sit?”

***

They do, after clearing the craft supplies and sex detritus off the coffee table and then ordering some pizza.

Because getting it on following days (weeks? months?) of simmering sexual tension burns a whole lot of energy — as does navigating dramatic reckonings with one’s roommates about said getting-it-on — and Jess has only eaten a granola bar so far today, and she and Nick are both freaking starving.

When they join Winston and Schmidt on the couch, all four of them put their feet up. They spend the next two hours laughing together, watching reruns of Law & Order, and arguing over which pizza topping reigns supreme — and it could almost be any of the Sunday afternoons that came before, except for the way Nick’s hand rests on Jess’s thigh like a promise.

Jess texts Cece, “OMG CECE IT HAPPENED (TWICE) AND IT WAS AMAZING AND I THINK WE ARE A THING AAAHHHHHHH and I’ll call you later, OK?,” followed by a string of about 15 thumbs-up emojis.

At one point, Nick pinky-swears with Schmidt that yes, they’ll still have their evening chats when the latter gets home from work.

At another, he vows to Winston that yes, Sunday morning cereal-time-and-football-talk will remain unchanged.

Jess’s heart swells at the extent to which Nick is the glue of the loft — the one who holds them all together, in ways both large and small.

***

Around 5:30, the group disperses.

By some unspoken agreement, Nick and Jess make their way to her room.

She’s stiff when she gets up off the couch after two hours of sitting — sore between her legs, her gait abnormal — and oh my God, she thinks with a rush of arousal, Nick really and truly fucked me so hard I can’t walk straight.

He notices.

It turns him way the fuck on.

“Jessica,” he growls, his hand dropping to her ass, pushing her forward as they approach her bedroom, “is walking hard for you some reason?”

She is very, very thankful her shorts aren’t made of flammable material.

But two can play at that game.

“A very big reason, Miller,” she says, breathy and coquettish.

He groans in answer, tightening his grip on her ass with one hand, pushing open the door to her room with the other.

They step inside.

“So, welcome to my room,” she says, wincing slightly as she does an exaggerated curtsy, then gesturing towards her bed. “This is where ol’ Jessica Day sleeps.”

He closes the door behind him.

Then, staring at her, he locks it, the sound making her cunt clench.

He grins and steps closer. “Jess, I’ve been in your room before. I know what your bed looks like.”

He moves one hand to her waist and pulls her back into him, his voice low and rough in her ear, his erection pressing against her ass. With his other hand, he cradles her jawline, turning her face to the left so that her eyes fall on—

“I built ya that damn dresser.”

Thinking back to that day — the first time they each acknowledged a sliver of what they were really feeling for each other — deepens the heat between her legs. 

“You sure did, Miller,” she breathes. “You hammered it good and hard and strong.”

She hears a low chuckle at her ear, feels his hot breath on her neck.

“What am I gonna do with you, Day?” he murmurs.

She turns her head to look up at him over her shoulder, giving him a calculated, wide-eyed stare that’s innocent but also not.

“Miller,” she says, “whatever you want.”

Chapter Text

When Jess says those words — anything you want — Nick slides his hand down from her waist to first cup and then grip her cunt, firmly, through her shorts and her panties. (She’d ducked out briefly from the post-loft meeting pizzafest to shimmy into fresh pairs of both.)

He makes the move smoothly, with no hesitation, like there’s simply no question that the delta between her thighs is where his palm, his fingers, his flexing wrist belong. 

It’s as if he’s claiming her cunt — its wet heat humiliatingly, instantly obvious even through the two layers of fabric — as something that’s his.

The thought that enters Jess’s mind next — And it is. Fuck, yes, it’s his. — is unbidden, a little bit frightening in its pure submissiveness. 

It’s also insanely arousing.

And it’s in that instant of juxtaposition that things fall into place for Jessica Day.

Her mouth (so well-kissed and well-used today!) curves into a grin.

Because somewhere deep-down and wicked and wonderful — somewhere that’s been there, always, but that only came fully and finally to life when Nick ordered her to take off her clothes last night and she obeyed — she knows this particular dynamic is exactly what she wants, what she needs, and what he needs, too.

There’s no use in denying it.

It is the sexiest possible click of two complementary pieces into place: him the top, and her the bottom.

If she’s being completely honest with herself, she’s known these were their inevitable, wildly hot roles ever since he first kissed her. Since several seconds before then, really. Because before the kiss came the grab — the way he pulled her into him, his grip on her arm strong and rough and certain — and the way she responded: surrendering completely, her nipples pebbling against the soft pink fabric of her robe, her arms flung around his shoulders, her legs almost giving out beneath her. 

But this is the first time she’s admitted and articulated the facts to herself — Nick’s dominant in bed, I’m submissive, we’re freaking combustible together, and I freaking love it — in such clear and straightforward terms.

Crap! Do I have to turn in my NOW membership card?, she wonders for two brief, hazy seconds. Does this make me a bad feminist?

(Nick presses the heel of his palm against her clit through her shorts. She lets out a small, involuntary groan.)

No, she answers herself, fighting valiantly to resolve her internal conversation before her brain is too fucked-out to function. I’m still the one in charge outside the bedroom, assertive maybe to the point of being obnoxious — a “super-annoying know-it-all,” as the stupidly sexy roommate who’s currently manhandling me might say.

(Her confidence grows as she tilts her small pelvis up against the press of Nick’s large right hand; as the fingers of his left tighten along her jawline.) 

And actually, she continues, maybe embracing this whole Nick’s-the-boss-during-sexy-time thing makes me a good feminist, dangit! Because I’ve figured out what I want and what brings me pleasure, and it’s not hurting anyone, so I’m going after it and I’m not judging myself for it! Dudes certainly don’t judge themselves for whatever they’re into, and sometimes it’s some pretty weird stuff. I mean, American Pie was all about guys having sex with baked goods —

Her train of thought is interrupted there.

Because as Nick holds Jess in place by the cunt and by the chin, he growls, low and feral, the sound setting her synapses on fire. 

And then he nips at the soft lobe of her ear before slowly, deliberately tongueing it as if it’s her clit. 

Through some new, Miller-activated quirk in her wiring, she reacts as if it actually is — arousal jolting her body, her slit starting to seep.

Jessica Christopher Day fucking melts.

She whimpers and writhes, collapsing back against him, gasping out his name in a way that’s so breathy and needy she surprises even herself. 

In answer, he smirks into her hair, his cock pressed against her ass and growing stiffer by the second at how she’s responding to him.

He obviously knows she can feel his dick, the hot, hard curve of it. So he probably also knows that she’s thinking about what he might do to her with it next, and — oh, God — what he’s already done, and how good and big and thick it felt earlier today as he stretched her out, as he opened her up —

Fevered, dizzied, now practically panting, she waits.

After all, since telling Nick he could do whatever he wanted with her, she’s had an entire mental conversation with herself — but Nick hasn’t yet uttered a word.

When he finally speaks, seconds later, she is not disappointed.

“In that case, Day,” he says, “I’m gonna go ahead and give it to you good.” 

A delicious tingle runs down her spine.

“And you’re—

(Her chin framed by his hand, he turns her head back towards a certain piece of furniture.)

“— gonna—“

(He pushes his dick closer against her ass, his hand harder against her mound — he’s got the core of her surrounded.)

— “take it.”

(She moans, thinking of and welcoming how sore her cunt’s gonna be in the morning; how she’ll be reminded, with every movement, of just how good Nick is at filling her up with his cock —)

“You’re about to get fucked on your dresser, Jessica Day,” Nick finishes.

His declaration is made with the same air of casual, total confidence with which, in other circumstances, he’ll often state the sort of Nick Miller Fact that’s usually wildly wrong: A man only really needs three shirts total, or burritos are the only truly perfect food, or all plumbers are also con artists (“every last one of ‘em, Jessica”).

So maybe it’s instinct telling her to argue, Jess, argue before she inevitably submits — even as her slit grows ever slicker beneath the pressure of his palm; even as he starts to muscle her over towards the IKEA-ware in question.

Or maybe it’s something else that’s spurring her to talk back. 

Something more like the remembered flashes of sharp pleasure from hours earlier, when he slapped her ass while he fucked her on the dining room table. Or the night before, in the same spot, when her bratty challenges resulted in him picking her up like she weighed no more than a couple of bar rags, his intention — to shut her up by fucking her rough and hard — as clear as the glass of the damn fishtank.

She knows she might be playing with fire. But she also knows that she trusts Nick, and that if she wants to, she can say apricots at any point to call the whole dance off.

Her decision is made.

“Miller,” she says, breathy, “You sure you built it sturdy enough to handle that? You didn’t cut corners and use, like, duct tape instead of nails, or something?”

Ohyesohyesohyes, she calculated correctly. 

Within the next eight to ten exquisite seconds, he has ripped her shorts halfway down her legs, yanked her panties to the side, and shoved two fingers up inside her, where she’s so wet, so ready, it’s almost embarrassing.

Her head falls back against his shoulder.

He slides in a third digit.

Then he withdraws them all, and — oh, fuck, yes — his hand meets the right cheek of her ass in a smack made all the more resounding by the wetness of his fingers. (In what’s turned out to be a prescient move — way to go, Day! — she’d chosen to put on her very skimpiest pair of panties: so low-coverage, ass-wise, that they’re nearly a thong, leaving her cheeks almost fully exposed to the sting of Nick’s hand.)

She cries out — in pain, in pleasure, in what she thinks is victory.

But as it turns out, he has her number.

“You’re so fucking obvious, Jessica Day,” Nick grits out, his breath warm on her neck, his knowing smirk audible and hot as hell even though she can’t quite see his face. “I know exactly what you’re doing, taunting me like that. May as well be saying, ‘Nick, I want you to turn my pretty little ass red” — smack — “and then fuck the sass right outta me.’”

(Her mouth falls open in shock. He knows her so goddamn well, it’s not even fair.)

“Well, luckily for you, Day,” he says as he delivers another sharp slap, his voice rough and low but somehow also amused, “I happen to feel like giving you what you want.”

He spins her around, then, and kisses her hard and deep, bending at the knees to slot his body perfectly against hers, grabbing handfuls of her reddened ass as she moans into his mouth. Then he moves his hands between their bodies, roughly unbuttoning her shirt (which is really his shirt), and pulling it off her and flinging it to the ground, and the whole time, he never stops kissing her. And fuck, he’s such a good kisser, a life-changingly good kisser, really, and — wait, why is he breaking the kiss? And, whoa, why is he bending down like that and wrapping his arms around her legs, halfway up her flushed thighs, so that she starts to topple over onto him? 

“Miller,” she says, “what do you think you’re—“

Her breathless question turns into a squeak, one that no longer needs an answer, because it’s suddenly clear that what he’s doing is this: 

Picking her up and throwing her over his fucking shoulder, in order to carry her over to the dresser on which he intends to have his way with her.

It is a move straight out of her fantasies. 

Is this real? she wonders for a second, slightly dizzy now that she’s draped over him like this, blood rushing to her head. Is Nick secretly a fireman? Am I dreaming?

She registers her shorts falling from her knees, to her ankles, to the ground. She knows her ass, spanked pink, is jutting into the air. And she’s pretty sure her cunt — pressed flush against Nick’s left pec, the crotch of her barely-there panties still pulled to the side of her folds — is gonna leave a wet patch on his shirt.

“God, Jess,” he murmurs as he travels her across the room, “I can fucking smell you. Smell how bad you want this. Fucked you twice already today and still ya need more. Just can’t get enough, can ya?”

And — oh, God — he’s right: she can’t, she really can’t.

So when he reaches her dresser and unloads her on it, perching her on its edge with a grunt, she’s hoping he’ll do the very thing he does next: push apart her knees, plant himself between them, and unbuckle his belt.

She watches, breathless with anticipation, as he frees his cock from his boxers and jeans, grabs a condom out of his pocket (Good planning, Miller, she thinks foggily), and rolls it on. He’s so hard, so thick, and she still can’t get over her good fortune that this is what he’s packing, that this is what’s gonna be inside her again, hopefully in a matter of seconds — 

It’s only when he asks her “Please what, Jessica?,” his voice husky — one hand at the base of his cock, the other curved beneath one of her knees — that she realizes she’s been uttering pleasepleasepleaseplease out loud. 

With a firmness that makes her cunt tingle, he tells her, “Wanna hear you say it.” 

So she does, looking up from his dick to his eyes.

“I need you inside me, Miller,” she tells him, her inhibitions dead and gone, something freeing and powerful and true rising from their ashes. “Please fuck me. Please. I— I want you so bad. I can’t wait another second—”

She doesn’t have to. Because in response to her acquiescence, her shameless begging, he’s pushing the head of his cock up inside her eager pussy, and then — fuck — he’s adding another couple of inches, and for a few seconds she can’t even form words, has forgotten what words are; she can’t do anything but moan, ragged and low.

“Day, you’re so wet for me, so fucking wet,” he says, looking down at where his cock is disappearing into her tight warmth. Something she can’t quite identify flashes across his eyes, and then — oh, sweet Jesus — he flexes his hips and drives his entire length up inside her. Her arms, propping her up with palms flat on the dresser, almost give out on her, because the fullness, the sudden fucking fullness: It’s almost unreal. It’s almost too much.

It isn’t, though. It’s just fucking right. So is what Nick does and says next.

Seeing that her arms are shaking, he slides both his hands around her waist to her lower back, interlocking his fingers, holding her steady. He leans back slightly, showing her that now, with his hands bracing her, she can actually do the same: they’re each the other one’s counterweight, balancing each other perfectly. 

Then, he starts to rock his dick up and down, up and down, inside her hot, saturated cunt. And Lord have mercy, she’s a mess for him already, she’s drenched, and she’s pretty sure some of her arousal is actually spilling out around his cock and dripping onto her dresser.

Damn him: he notices. 

“Do you always get this wet when you get fucked on your dresser, huh, Day?” he asks. “Or is this soaked little cunt only for me?”  

His words reverberate through her body like a wave, one that both starts and ends at her swollen clit.

Oh my God, it’s the Sam thing again, she realizes amid the rush of pleasure. Nick’s asserting his dominance over my former sexual partner. And yes, male territory battles are stupid and cause wars, and also, I’m not ‘territory’; I’m a fucking woman! But crap, I can’t help it: instead of pissing me off, this is really, really turning me on.

Before she can talk herself out of it, she locks eyes with Nick and speaks (or rather, moans out) the honest-to-God truth: “No, Nick, fuck, no. It’s only for you.”

And oh, that’s clearly what he wanted to hear. Because he stares back at her in triumph and in awe, and he growls out “that’s what I thought,” and he starts fucking into her for real, the thrust and curve of his dick outlandishly satisfying. She throws her head back, not thinking, just feeling, and it’s so good, so fucking good. He drives up and into her with confidence and purpose, the head of his dick bumping her cervix, her slick walls gripping his thickness like a fist. Her eyes are half-closed, maybe even rolling back in her head a little bit, and she’s lost in sensation when Nick’s voice interrupts her reverie. 

“Jess, look,” he says, “Fuck.” 

She follows his eyes down, thinking at first he’s talking about the fact that her panties are still on, just shoved to the side. And he’s right; the implied urgency is fucking hot, somehow more wanton than if she were wearing nothing at all. 

But oh, then she sees what he really meant. 

And when she does, she almost comes. 

Because she can’t just feel the swell of his cock low in her belly. She’s so fucking petite and he’s so fucking big that she can actually see it — a swath of her abdomen, from just above her cunt to just below her belly button, going obscenely convex as he pushes in; then dropping back to flatness as he draws out.

“Oh my God, Nick,” she breathes. “Oh my fucking God.”

They’re both suspended in a shared moment of filthy wonder.

And then Jess speaks again. Begs, really, because she knows exactly what effect doing so has on them both: 

“Please, Nick. Please don’t stop.” 

He doesn’t. Not until they’ve both come and she’s collapsed forward onto him, his chest rising as hers falls, the dresser still solid and intact.

***

Later, as they’re lounging in Jess’s bed, she compliments one of Nick’s recently-revealed hidden talents.

“Hey, by the way, nice work picking me up over there, Miller,” she says, pointing in the direction of where he hoisted her over his shoulder. 

“Hauling kegs around at the bar every day has its benefits,” he replies. “Helped me get ya over there to your burrow with no fuss.”

For a second, she’s confused, and then it clicks.  

“Nick,” she says slowly, teasingly, “did you just pronounce bureau like burrow?”

“Um, yeah, Jessica. Because that’s how it’s pronounced.”

“No it’s not, Nick. It’s bureau.”

“Well, burrow is how we say it in Chicago.”

“Miller, I’m a freaking English teacher,” Jess huffs. “Trust me on this one.”

“You drive me crazy, Day,” Nick says, grinning fondly, tracing the line of her arm with his hand. “I should’ve just kept on calling it a dresser instead of getting fancy. Whatever it’s called, I had a damn good time on it with ya.”

Jess takes this as a victory. Satisfied, a little bit smug, she curls her body up against his, resting her head in the crook of his arm. 

Her eyes fall on her clock, one of those vintage cats with moving eyes (“that thing’s creepy as hell, Jess,” Nick has told her more than once). 

It’s 10:15. She smiles.

“Miller,” she says, “right around this time last night, we broke the fishtank.”

(Talking about herself and Nick as a we is really, really nice.)

“So we did,” he murmurs, his hand now in her hair, at the nape of her neck.

(She’s pretty darn sure he likes saying we, too.)

“I still can’t believe how good you were at lying to Schmidt about it. About keeping our secret,” she says.

He leans in and kisses her.

“Anything for you, Jess,” he says simply.

***

They end up having sex one more time that night: in Jess’s bed, comparatively sweet and straightforward.

It’s missionary, nothing too crazy, but even that standard position feels extraordinary when the cock that’s filling Jess up is Nick’s.

He holds her wrists down, one on each side of her head, and he works himself in and out of her, making sure she can feel every inch. His rhythm is unhurried this time, the strokes slow and deep, and as it turns out, getting fucked at this speed by Nick Miller is erotic as hell. There’s something obscenely intimate about it, and also something wickedly sexy — something to do with the contrast between his cool self-control and even pace and her increasingly desperate moans; something to do with the fact that even when he’s dicking her down almost lazily, he can still drive her out of her mind with his cock.

She can’t read his thoughts, but she doesn’t really have to, because she can read his face, and the adoration on it as he watches and feels her fall apart around his dick speaks volumes.

“Jessica Day,” he tells her afterwards, before he pulls out, “you are an amazing woman.”

Blushing, suddenly shy, she looks up at him.

“Stay the night, Miller?” she asks.

He answers her with a kiss.

***

Four days later, Schmidt’s surprise sushi supper is a rousing success. 

And also, for Jess, an a-rousing one.

Beneath the drape of the tablecloth, as Schmidt is giving an epically long self-toast and a three-sake-bombs-in Winston is encouraging him to “know your worth, man!”, Nick slips a finger inside Jess, knuckle deep. For about 30 secret seconds, he works her — cocky, confident, not even looking at her. And when he brings his hand back up above table-level, he swipes it across his mouth.

It’s not enough to make her come. It is enough to make her think about nothing except coming, until the loft dinner finally ends and Nick can finish what he started.

“I helped ya make those damn glitter sushi decorations, Jess,” he growls teasingly as he fucks her from behind in his bed, rubbing her clit between his thumb and forefinger. “Gotta reassert my manhood now, ya know?”

“Miller,” she gasps out, rolling both her eyes and her hips, “real men like crafting.”

“I don’t know about that, Day,” he says, his dick deep inside her, “but fuck, I really like you.”

***

Almost two years to the day later, they go to the Crafters’ Castle together again.

This time, it’s so Jess can gather the supplies she needs to make the favors for their wedding.

They have full-on sex in the bathroom, not just oral, and it’s wild and excellent.

The mural’s still there.

They decide Jess’s bouquet will be sunflowers.

— end —