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“Hi.” Nick drops his bags right inside the door.
“Yo,” Winston says. Schmidt waves. Cece’s the only one who looks up and even then all she says is, “I thought you had a washing machine at your new place.”
Jess comes wandering out of her room and literally double takes, looks from Nick to the bags to Nick again. “Is it laundry day already?”
“No,” is all he says, and yeah, maybe he cries, but whatever, he has his reasons and sure, Schmidt calls him the Prodigal Son for a few weeks, but he only says “I told you so” fifteen times so it’s not even the worst break-up with Caroline he’s ever had.
**
It’s ten o’clock on a Tuesday when Jess bellies up to the bar with a look that Nick knows means trouble. She sighs loudly and tips sideways, her whole body sagging into Cece. Schmidt waves to Nick, gesturing for a drink, and Nick has to grit his teeth before heading over. Shit’s been weird between them since he moved back in -- since he moved out, really, but whatever. They’re adults. They’re friends. They’re roommates. They’re dealing with this shit by not talking about it just like adults do. So what if sometimes Nick wants to shake Jess until she understands where he’s coming from.
“What?” he asks, sliding Jess’s usual over to her.
She sighs. “I have a problem.” They all must look alarmed because all of a sudden she’s waving her hands. “Not like an ‘I’m sick and I need your kidney’ problem, just a work problem.”
“Okay,” Nick says, warily.
“Help me,’ she says, all pitiful. Nick makes a face.
“Are you sure you’re not dying?” Schmidt asks. “Because this sounds like that time we all thought Nick was going to bite it.”
Everyone glares at him.
“What, are we not talking about that yet? This is ridiculous!” He throws his arms up.
“I’m not dying. I’m just -- you know how as part of my punishment for the whole Brianna science fair thing I have to help chaperone the DC trip next month?”
“I have noticed you’ve been practicing your George Washington impression a lot more lately,” Winston says.
“Right-o,” she says, tipping an imaginary hat. He winces.
“That’s not --”
“No.”
“Didn’t he wear wigs?” Nick asks.
“And wooden teeth,” Schmidt says. “Oh god, Jess, you’re not going to use your prop teeth again, are you?”
This time it’s Cece’s glare that shuts everyone up. “The DC trip?” she prompts, resting her hand on Jess’s shoulder.
“Right. So stupid Mrs. Feldhoffer, who was supposed to chaperone with me tripped and broke her dumb back --”
“Oh my god, is she okay?” Schmidt looks legitimately worried. Jess waves it off.
“She’s fine, she doesn’t even need surgery, but she can’t fly and I’m going to have to cancel the trip if I can’t find another chaperone in time.”
Her lip starts to do that thing where it sticks out like ten times farther than normal. There’s little Nick hates more in this world than that bottom lip.
“What about Paul? Isn’t that what Genz are for,” he suggests. He doesn’t even know why he’s helping.
“Ha, nice.” Winston high fives him. Jess just frowns.
“Niiiiick, you know that’d be too weird. Plus none of the other teachers can just up and leave their classes, it’s too short notice.”
“You said it was next month.”
“Yeah, May is in like two weeks, buddy,” Winston says. Nick frowns.
“Shit, I think I have some bills to pay.”
Winston stares at him for a beat and then just shakes his head. “You are a grown-ass man.”
Schmidt and Cece throw out a bunch of names and Nick half-heartedly listens to Jess reject each one while he wipes down the bar. After a minute, Jess grabs his wrist.
“Help me. Please?”
“What do you want me to do? Put up a sign? ‘Chaperone’s wanted. Must like historical walks and screaming children. Registered sex offenders need not apply.’ Because I gotta tell ya, Jess, I don’t think that’ll get you a lot of offers. Legitimate ones, anyway.”
“What if you did it?”
“Put up the sign?”
“No, dummy, what if you were my co-chaperone?”
“Sure, because what every parent wants is a bartender taking their kids cross-country.”
“But what if it was a substitute teacher who bartends when he’s not teaching?” Jess asks.
Fuck. “Damn it, Schmidt!”
“What? You know I don’t believe in keeping secrets between roommates and when Jess asked me if I wanted to go on the trip I said that there was no way I was qualified. It’s not my fault you spent two months thinking you could be Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society before you remembered you hate kids.”
“See --” Jess starts. Nick holds up one hand.
“No.”
“It’s only one weekend!”
“No.”
“It’s a free plane ride and a free hotel and free history, all you need is a photo ID, which I know you have. Please? If you say no then I’ll have to cancel.” Her fingers dig into his wrist a little, which is how he knows she’s actually desperate.
He sighs. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Winston answer his phone all, “Hey, Shelby, I miss you too, how was your day? Did you wear the blue shirt or the red one? The red one? Aww. She wore the red one.” The last part is directed to Nick, who literally could not care less, not even if his life depended on it.
“Ooh, the red one,” Jess says, her eyes locked on Nick.
“The black ones?” Winston says. “Hey, Nick, Shelby wore the shoes I helped her pick out the other day, the ones I was telling you about. Remember I showed you a picture?”
“You showed me a lot of pictures, buddy.” Nick ignores the way Jess is looking at him, all smug and smirky.
“Do you not remember? Let me find it again. Shelby, hang on --”
Nick grits his teeth and thinks, this is what it feels like to be pushed over the brink. He turns to Jess. “Alright, when do we leave?”
“Yay!” She claps and beams at him and for a split second he thinks hey, maybe it won’t be so bad. Then he realizes yes, it probably will be.
**
There’s a printed itinerary taped to his bedroom door the next morning.
“Uh, Jess?” he says, regret already creeping into his bones.
“No backsies,” she says, popping her head out of the bathroom. Her mouth is full of toothpaste. She disappears but keeps talking. “Oh, and there’s a meeting with the parents after school today so you should be there at four.”
“What?”
“Four,” she says, reappearing.
“Yeah, that’ll go well.”
She grins and gives him a thumbs up before ducking back into the bathroom.
“WHY IS MY TOWEL DAMP?” Schmidt yells, which is when Nick makes the executive decision to go back to bed. Possibly forever.
**
“No.” Jess crosses her arms over her chest. Their flight’s supposed to leave in the morning. Nick’s been briefed and debriefed and rebriefed and he has a list of kids names that he’s never going to remember and emergency numbers he thinks maybe he should have tattooed on his body just in case and there are literally a hundred thousand things Jess should be worrying about but none of them are this, right here.
“What? It’s fine, no one cares.”
“I care. The TSA definitely cares. The parents of the children you’re supposed to be responsible for --”
“Because you TRICKED ME --”
“There was no tricking,” she says, pointing at him. “And all those people? Care. You cannot use a shopping bag as your luggage.”
“Well I’m going to,” he says, crossing his arms. The bag tips a little but nothing spills out so whatever. Jess’s eyes flick from him to the bag and then back again.
“SCHMIDT, NICK’S TRYING TO USE GROCERY BAGS AS LUGGAGE.”
“Aw, come on, Jess, what the --”
The rest of Nick’s grumbling is drowned out by Schmidt’s minor breakdown when he sees how Nick’s packed.
**
It’s ungodly, the hour they have to be at the school to leave.
“Why couldn’t we just meet them at the airport?” Nick whines.
“Because they’re children.” That’s been her answer for everything this morning. They can’t go to DC alone because they’re children. They have a nightly curfew because they're children. They can't cancel the trip to the Washington monument and go to a bar instead because they're children. If you ask Nick, kids today are fucking pansies.
Nick’s stupid Louis Vuitton suitcase catches on some loose gravel and tips over. He screams through his teeth and gives it a good hard kick in the side.
“Careful, Schmidt’s gonna fine you for that.”
Nick glares at Jess and she reaches out and rubs his shoulder soothingly. “Come on, there’ll be bagels and coffee inside.”
“I’m not hungry,” Nick says, even though he is. Jess just pats his shoulder and leans down to right his suitcase. She hooks her arm through his and starts walking.
“If it makes you feel better, yours will probably be the nicest suitcase on the trip.”
“Yeah?”
She shrugs. “Maybe not, some of these kids are pretty classy.”
Nick laughs even though the thought of a bunch of fancy middle schoolers terrifies him.
“Hey,” he says, pulling open the door for her. “Do you think Russell would like my suitcase?”
She eyes it for a minute. “I think Russell has that suitcase.”
“Yes,” Nick whispers, allowing himself a tiny fist pump. Take that, middle schoolers.
**
It takes all of Nick’s energy to wrangle a bunch of over-excited kids onto a bus, through airport security, and then onto an airplane. He’s never met people who have voices so shrill or who’ve had to pee as many times as these monsters. Between head counts and ticket checks and “yes, you have to take off your shoes, take off your shoes, TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES,” Nick is going to kill someone. Probably himself. It doesn’t help that every time he looks over at Jess she’s got her kids in a neat, shoeless line and no one’s asking a TSA agent if they can go through the x-ray scanner on the conveyer belt instead of the normal way.
“I want to trade,” he says, when their lines bend back towards each other. “I want your kids. You take these.”
“You’ll be fine,” Jess says, “Just don’t let them see any weakness.”
“What? What weakness?” But she’s already moving away, herding kids through the security, and then Nick’s got to decide if he wants to go through first and leave them all on the LA side or go through last and risk one of them making a break for it in the terminals.
“This was a terrible idea,” he says to the old lady behind him. “Connor, is that your name? Whoever you are, cut it out, that’s a security rope, not a tightrope.”
**
“We made it!” Jess high fives him once they’re all off the plane and firmly on DC ground. “What, what’s wrong?”
“It was a five hour plane ride and I sat next to Madison A. and Madison K. Thanks to them, I now know everything there is to know about One Direction.” He makes a face. “That’s one million more things than I wish I ever knew, Jess.”
She doesn’t even pretend to look sympathetic which is fine, whatever, Nick was pretty sure when she’d pointed him to his seat when they’d boarded that it was on purpose, like a weird, passive-aggressive test. This just basically confirms it. And means Nick isn’t going to complain about it ever again because he refuses to give her the satisfaction.
“They’re actually a pretty coordinated group of guys,” he says, “there’s some real talent there. This is their time.”
Jess stares at him for a minute before she pats his chest. “Sure it is,” she laughs and then leads him by the hoodie string to baggage claim, the kids following behind them like ducklings.
**
Nick spends the bus ride to the hotel reading the itinerary over Jess’s shoulder and humming one of the songs the Madisons played for him a hundred times on the plane. She doesn’t say a word about it. She doesn’t say a word at all until they’re in the hallway, and then it’s only to direct pairs of kids into their rooms.
Finally she unlocks one of the doors on the end and holds it open for Nick.
“It’s not going to work,” she says as he goes in.
“What?”
“Your dumb little humming thing. I’ve been subjected to that band for weeks now, I spend every morning listening to that song. I know the dance moves. You can’t break me because I’m already broken.”
The way her voice trails off at the end makes Nick think that maybe she isn’t entirely proud of that fact, but she still has a point.
“I want the bed by the window,” is all he says. “And I get the suitcase rack. Schmidt made me promise his suitcase wouldn’t touch the carpet.”
“Fine.”
“Good.”
His victory is depressingly unsatisfying.
**
It’s weird because Nick remembers being thirteen but he doesn’t remember going on cool trips like this. He got to see the top of the Sears Tower and take a boat ride around Lake Michigan but no one sent him to DC for a long weekend, at least not without his parents.
He realizes why when they’re eating dinner: thirteen year-olds are universally terrible. It’s the airport all over again, people whining and yelling and complaining that they just want McDonald’s. He doesn’t even get to sit near Jess because they’re stuck refereeing shit from opposite sides of the room. Nick spends the whole meal five seconds from turning into his father and threatening to turn this whole trip around. It’s madness.
Once all the kids are locked in their rooms, duct tape on the doors so he and Jess can tell if anyone sneaks out, Jess leans against the wall. She looks as exhausted as Nick feels.
“Do you need a drink?”
“God, yes,” he says.
“Good.” She tosses him the roll of duct tape and pulls some singles out of her pocket. “You figure out how to open the mini bar. I’ll get supplies from the vending machine.”
“You’re beautiful and I love you,” he calls after her as she jogs down the hallway. “Don’t forget ice!”
**
The first thing Nick does is take a long, long drink. Then he looks right at Jess and says, “I hate kids.”
She laughs and makes a face like she’s remembering dinner. “Me too.”
He thinks of the way she’d had them all calmly lined up this morning, the way they listen to her most of the time. The way she’d watched them, beaming, as they craned their necks to look up at the Washington Monument, awed and silent for the first time all day. In that moment he’d kind of understood why she likes teaching so much.
“No, you don’t,” he says.
She knocks back a tiny bottle of peppermint schnapps. “No, I don’t.”
Nick laughs and hands her another bottle, peach this time. He makes himself another Jack and Coke (heavy on the Jack) and they both relish in the quiet.
“That was pretty sneaky with the airplane seats,” he says eventually. He holds out three alcohol bottles and waits for Jess to pick one.
“Yeah, well,” she laughs, unscrewing the cap on some vodka. “Trial by fire and all. If you can get through that then you’re golden.” She taps the neck of her vodka bottle against his Bacardi. “Congratulations, Nick Miller, you are a survivor.”
“Yay,” he says, in a tiny sarcastic voice that has them both laughing and choking as they knock back their shots.
“This is going to hurt in the morning,” Nick says, much later, when he looks at the clock and realizes it’s almost three.
“We’ll be fine.” Jess reaches up from where she’s sprawled on the floor, soda cans and airplane bottles strewn around her, and clumsily pats Nick on the shoulder. “We can sleep on the bus.”
“I think that would be setting a bad example,” he points out.
She thinks about it for a minute and sighs. “Probably.”
“But we could -- oh, hang on,” he says, fishing around the blankets to find his phone. “Caroline?” He hasn’t heard from her since, well. Since the last time she threw a plate at him and he moved out.
“Niiiiick,” she yells, loud and drunk and already talking about it’s weird but she she kind of misses him. “The place is so empty without you!”
And since he’s been drinking, too, he laughs and says, “Yeah? I kind of miss you, too. Why is it so loud where you are?”
“I’m at your bar!”
He watches Jess roll to her feet and start throwing things out, loud clangs as the cans bounce off each other.
“Hey,” he whispers. He wants to tell her to leave it, that he’ll help, but when he reaches for her arm she waves him off.
“I’m going to do a bed check,” she says, slipping her shoes on and grabbing her key off the dresser.
“Wait,” Nick says, because he wants to be there in case she busts some little fucker, but the door’s already closing and Caroline’s in his ear asking why she needs to wait. “Not you.”
“Oh, okay. I’m at your bar! I’m at your bar and you’re not here!”
“I’m in DC.”
“What? Why?” Her voice gets all high and confused and Nick starts to laugh.
“I’m a chaperone!” Just saying it out loud is the funniest fucking thing, it’s so ridiculous, he’s a chaperone. Up until a few months ago he didn’t even have a real wallet and now he’s watching a bunch of people’s kids. Caroline’s laughing, too, the two of them cackling at each other and Nick has to lie down, he’s laughing so hard. “It’s so weird!”
“Chaperone is a weird word.”
Nick stops laughing and thinks about it for a second. It is a weird word. He says it out loud a few times, Caroline echoing him until they’re laughing and repeating it. When Jess comes back in he sits up a little.
“Chaperone!” he yells, and then cracks up. Jess doesn’t crack a smile; she barely looks at him. She keeps her head down as she grabs stuff from her suitcase and ducks into the bathroom.
“Jess,” he says, but all he gets is a slam of the door. “Listen, Caroline, I gotta go.”
“Okay. Don’t let anyone die!”
“Jess!” He knocks on the bathroom door but all he gets in response is the shower turning on. He crawls into bed and leans back against the headboard, listening to the shower and waiting for Jess to come back out, but she must stay in there a long time because the next thing he knows his alarm’s going off.
**
“Okay!” Jess claps her hands and doesn’t wince like Nick does, so either she’s less hungover and exhausted or she’s just better at hiding it than he is. “First stop, Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Who’s ready to see how money is made?”
About half the kids cheer, which is better than none, so.
**
Halfway through the tour, their guide reads off some fact about how often money circulates.
“So theoretically you could be getting the same old nickel every time,” Jess says, staring at Nick over the kids’ heads. “Every time you’d give it away and it’d end up right back in your hands, the same ungrateful nickel that you’ve been with with for forever. And you never realize what other coins are out there -- quarters, dimes, maybe a Susan B. Anthony -- because you’re stuck on that same terrible nickel.”
“Well.” The guide blinks. “We don’t produce coins here, the Mint is in Denver, but either way, that’s... highly unlikely.”
“You’d be surprised,” Jess says, crossing her arms. Their guide, to her credit, shrugs it off and starts in on counterfeiting while herding everyone along.
Nick grabs Jess by the arm and waits for everyone to get a few feet ahead before whispering, “What the hell?”
“What?” She stares at him, all big, innocent eyes. He kind of wants to strangle her.
“You know what!”
Their guide clears her throat to get their attention.
“Yup, alright, sorry, just a little chaperone one-on-one,” Nick says, waving at her. To Jess he says, “This is not over.”
**
The problem with being on this stupid trip is that there’s never any time for the two of them to like, hash it out. They go from the money place to lunch to a bunch of memorials and everywhere there are kids and tour guides and bathroom trips and “you have to be quiet out of respect to the deceased” lectures and “don’t climb on that, do not climb on that, GET DOWN FROM THERE” lectures it’s nighttime again before Nick has more than five minutes to talk to Jess.
“So that was a weird thing that happened at the Mint,” Jess says once they’re back in the room.
“It wasn’t the Mint,” Nick says automatically, because at least the lady drilled that into him, “but yeah, it was weird.”
“I don’t know why, but I kinda lost my cool.” She fidgets with her shirt hem for a second, this stupid pajama outfit that’s all matching stripes and still somehow manages to not look completely outrageous. “But to make up for it, I bought you something.”
“You can’t buy my forgiveness, Jess.”
“Are you sure?” she asks in that singsong voice she gets sometimes. “What if it was with my very own currency?”
“It would have to be like a magic currency. Like rubies. Or galleons.”
“What about --” she ducks into the bathroom and then reappears with a six pack, “Bud-dollars?”
Nick winces at the pun and Jess flinches.
“I’m sorry, it was the only kind they had in the gift shop. I didn’t have time to go to a real store.”
He’s exhausted from the day, just sitting on this super comfortable bed is making him want to fall asleep, and Jess is holding out a cold beer so all he says is, “That works, too,” and he’s pretty sure the breath Jess lets out is relieved.
He doesn’t say anything when she sits on the bed next to him and flicks on SportsCenter without a word, but it’s nice, sitting and drinking and not yelling at anyone. This bed is definitely nicer than his bed at home. Maybe he could steal one of the pillows.
“I am sorry,” Jess says during a commercial. Nick’s half asleep and her voice is thick like she is, too. “For that whole... thing.”
“Water under the bridge.” Nick knocks his beer can against hers and then finishes off the last sip. “I forgive you for making me come on this whole trip.”
“I did not make you,” Jess says, shoving at his side. Nick laughs and catches her wrist and holds it to keep her from pushing him anymore.
“Finish your beer or give it to me,” he says. She takes one more sip before handing it to him. He can taste her lip gloss that was left on the can, cherry and beer when he licks his lips. It’s surprising, even though it shouldn’t be.
**
The TV’s still on when he wakes up at three-thirty, groggy and having to piss like a racehorse. Jess is sound asleep in his bed, curled into a tiny ball. There’s a minute, after he pees, where he thinks about crawling into the empty bed, but her suitcase is on it and the A/C kicks on and he shivers and crawls back into his already warm bed. Whatever, it was his first.
**
“WHAT?” he yells at breakfast, bits of egg flying out of his mouth. Jess makes a disgusted drags him into the hallway.
“Jess! I’m not prepared for this! You didn’t say I’d have to be alone with them!”
“It’s just some of them. Half.”
“That’s half more than I expected! I expected none, Jess. NONE.”
“I know. But I believe in you.” She pats his arm. “Plus, I’ll let you pick which tour you want. It’s Air and Space or the Holocaust Museum.”
“SPACE!” he yells immediately, without thinking, because obviously.
Jess blinks. “Okay, that’s cool.” She makes like she’s going back to breakfast and then turns around. “It’s just -- are you sure? I mean, I’m only asking because I hear that the Holocaust Museum is pretty amazing and everyone comes away a better person, it’s really powerful.”
The thing is Nick knows she’s trying to guilt trip him into switching but that doesn’t mean she’s not really good at it. It’s her big sad eyes. Nick’s pretty sure they can hypnotize people. He’s actually thinking about switching when she says, “Plus I think the Madisons signed up for Space, so... I mean, whatever you want to do, it’s your decision, obviously.”
That snaps him out of it and even though he really doesn’t want to spend the day learning more about some dumb boy band and even thinking about it has that song stuck in his head again, it’s not enough to trump outer space.
“Nice try,” he says, ignoring the way she smirks a little. He walks back to where the kids are eating and yells, “SPACE NERDS, WITH ME, LET’S GO.”
He swipes a bagel off the table and points to the door, clapping when they don’t move fast enough. “Come on, the planets aren’t going to be around forever. Look what happened to Pluto!”
**
He’s on the bus, triple-checking that he has the right number of kids with him, when Caroline texts him.
are u really in dc or did i imagine that?
im really here, he sends back, chaperoning w jess.
wtf seriously? she says and he means to respond but someone’s got his entire upper body out the bus window and he kind of forgets.
**
No one locks themselves in the bathroom crying and no one gets kicked out of the museum so Nick is riding pretty high when they get back to the hotel in the late afternoon.
“Alright, everybody go find your bathing suit and we’ll meet by the elevators in fifteen minutes for some light pre-dinner swimming,” he says, and he’s impressed by the way the kids actually file into the elevator without shoving or tripping each other. Maybe he should become a teacher.
these kids are really taking a shine to me he texts Caroline, because she’s been texting him all day and the one time he texted Jess (SPACE IS AWESOME!!!) she never responded. i think i’ve found my calling. i could be their mr. feeny.
ha, is all he gets back.
“Well that was uncalled for,” he says to the empty room.
Jess is already by the pool when they get downstairs, sitting on a lounge chair while her troop of idiots splashes in the deep end.
“How’d it go?” he asks, sitting down next to her.
“Oh, fine.” When she looks up he notices her eyes are rimmed red.
“Aw, no, Jess, don’t --”
“I’m fine,” she says, biting her lip as she looks away.
And because Nick is fucking fantastic in awkward situations he says, “I got you this,” and tosses the package into her lap.
Her face lights up. “Space ice cream! Thanks,” she says, reaching out to squeeze Nick’s arm. He shrugs because it was nothing, really, he was already buying some for himself (and Winston and Schmidt, whatever).
“CANNONBALL!” someone yells and three kids jump in at once, splashing the entire pool deck.
“Aw, come on!” Nick yells. “This is my good shirt!” He’s soaked.
“I think there are some towels over there.” She points to an unmanned desk in the corner.
“Do you think I can still wear this to dinner?” he asks when he gets back from wringing most of the water out of his clothes. Jess nudges his phone across the table towards him so he notices the screen lit up with a text notification.
He reaches for it and Jess says, “So, Caroline again?”
“What?” Nick looks up from his phone. “Oh, sometimes, I guess.”
Jess makes this irritating, judgmental noise in the back of her throat.
“What was that?” Nick asks, annoyed, because what the fuck.
“What?”
“That, that ‘hmm,’ noise you just made.”
“I didn’t make a noise. There were no noises except normal mouth noises.”
“Yes, there were, I heard it. ‘Hmm,’” he imitates again and Jess mimics it back, both of them leaning across the tiny plastic table between their lounge chairs. “Yes, that! That!”
Jess shakes her head. “I didn’t do that.”
“You did, I heard you.”
“Then you should get your hearing checked.”
“You should get your throat checked.”
“You’re crazy,” she says, and he stares at her.
“You’re crazy,” he says, louder, palm smacking on the table.
She opens her mouth to say something when some kid goes careening past and they both yell, “NO RUNNING.”
It’s as good a place as any to end a conversation, Nick supposes.
**
Dinner is a tense affair. It’s the dumbest fucking thing.
Nick spends it angrily cutting his chicken and making the noise Jess made after her every sentence. They’re sitting at separate tables, their backs to each other, close enough that he can hear everything she says. He knows she can hear him. He forgets that other people can hear him, too, until one of the kids at his table makes a weird face and says, “Are you okay?”
“Why?” Nick asks, “Does it sound like I’m annoyed?”
The kid looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Kinda, yeah.”
“HUH,” Nick says, loudly, and with his head tipped towards Jess’s direction. He doesn’t need to see her to know that she rolls her eyes.
“Don’t mind Mr. Miller, guys,” she says, leaning over to his table. “He’s just a little homesick.”
The kids laugh, loudly and kind of meanly, that evil edge he knows they can get, and Nick can see all his hard work trying to get them to listen to him fading away.
Jess pats his back, fake supportively, and Nick has to grit his teeth. He picks up his phone and texts Schmidt THIS IS A DISASTER.
All he gets is a picture of Cece’s naked back for his trouble.
It helps a little.
**
Back at the hotel the kids are all bouncing around, hopped up on dessert and parentlessness. Everyone’s supposed to go to bed early so they can fly home at the crack of dawn but judging from all the running up and down the hallways there’s going to be a lot of dragging feet at security.
At least they’ll be quiet, Nick figures. He’s so busy scrolling through his missed texts that he almost walks into the door to his room.
“Oh my god, seriously?” Jess says. She plucks his phone out of his hand and tucks it into the back pocket of her jeans.
For a second he’s too thrown by what just happened to even respond, and when he recovers all he can think of is, “What the hell, Jess?”
“No cell phones allowed,” she says.
“It might come as a shock to you, but you can’t boss me around! I’m not twelve!”
“I know. Twelve year olds have more common sense.”
“YOU’RE ONE,” he starts to yell before he remembers they’re in the middle of the hallway. He lowers his voice and reaches past her to unlock the door. “You’re one to talk!” he whisper-yells, crowding up close to her so she backs into the room.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I have plenty of common sense.”
“I have common sense falling out my butt!” Nick says. It’s punctuated by the door swinging shut behind him.
“You wanted to pack your clothes in grocery bags!”
“YOU WANTED TO PACK A COLONIAL DRESS.”
“That was RELEVANT -- ”
“Yeah, in the SEVENTEEN HUNDREDS.”
“-- and at least I wanted to TRY something instead of being stuck in the same boring old rut all the time.”
“Oh, is that me? I’m the boring one?”
Jess shrugs. “I don’t know, you tell me, who here’s the one who keeps doing the same thing over and over, like one of those rats that can’t figure out the maze so it just gives up and dies before it gets to the cheese? Who here goes back to the same jerky girlfriend every six months and gives up on a tomato garden and --”
“WHY ARE YOU STILL TALKING ABOUT THE STUPID TOMATOES?”
“Can’t you just finish something for once? One thing, Nick.”
“Why? Why is it so important to you? You’re the one who just showed up on our doorstep one day and cried to Dirty Dancing -- which ISN’T EVEN A SAD MOVIE --”
“It is sad!”
“It is NOT,” he yells. “And now you’re acting like some jealous ex-girlfriend,”
“I am NOT jealous,” she yells, and when he snorts derisively she shoves him a little.
“Don’t shove me,” he says, making a face.
“I WILL IF I WANT TO.” She does it again. He starts to shove back but doesn’t, ends up with his hands curled around her biceps.
“You’re a crazy person.”
She tries to shake him off but he holds on tighter. “YOU’RE a crazy person,” she says. “Like, the textbook definition of crazy. If you look up crazy on Wikipedia, there’s a picture of you, and I know that because I HELPED SCHMIDT PUT IT THERE.”
“You put my picture on Wikipedia? You can’t do that!”
“Yes you can, that’s the whole point of Wikipedia.”
“Well if that’s the whole point then I’m going to change it so it’s YOUR picture on the crazy page.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Good, because I’m going to try and I’m going to succeed.”
“GOOD,” she yells, right in his face, and Nick really wants to put her picture up on the internet just to show her.
“GREAT,” he yells back because fuck her if she thinks she’s getting the last say. He didn’t go to half of law school and not learn how to argue.
The room seems quiet now that they’re not yelling. He’s suddenly really aware of how hard she’s breathing, the way her arm muscles are tense under his palms. What he wants to do is push away from her, find a computer, and have Schmidt explain the ins and outs of Wikipedia editing to him so he can put a horribly embarrassing picture up.
What he does is take half a step forward, notice the way Jess gasps, a sharp little intake of breath, and he will go to his grave swearing that she’s the one who kissed him.
Not that it matters who kissed who, though, because Nick follows through, takes a full step forward and then another, until he’s got her pressed up against the wall, her cherry lip gloss smearing sticky and sweet against his mouth. She makes that little noise again and he groans, his hands tightening on her hips.
When she pushes at him he takes a step back and thinks that’s it but she follows him, chasing his mouth with hers, her chest and knees bumping against his until he hits the bed.
“So.” Jess gets one knee on the bed, next to his hip. Nick runs his palms down the backs of her legs; she huffs out a laugh and shivers at the same time. “This is happening,”
“Okay,” he says. He must have some sort of dopey look on his face because Jess smiles, presses her hand to his cheek and leans down to kiss him again, slow and searching, until he gets fed up and rolls them, using the momentum to slide her up the bed a little.
“Nice,” she says. “Was that your move?”
“That’s one of my moves, but it’s not like, my big move,” he says, mouth against her neck.
“Just checking.” She guides his mouth back to hers.
He breaks the kiss after a minute, breathless. It’s too hot in the room now, his skin prickling up with heat and anticipation.
“The kids are supposed to be in bed,” Jess says. She’s got Nick’s t-shirt rucked up to his armpits so he doesn’t really care about anything chaperone-y right now. He drops his forehead to her shoulder, kisses the skin there.
“It’s the last night, let them stay up late.”
Jess tilts her head to the side, giving him better access. “They would be quieter on the plane.”
“Exactly,” he says, sitting up and ungracefully shimmying out of his shirt. But it’s less than five minutes before Jess is putting her hand on his chest, pushing him away and frowning.
“Nick.”
“They’re fine.”
“We forgot last night.”
“Alright alright, hold on.” He sits on the edge of the bed for a minute and then grabs his flannel off the floor, shrugging it back on so he doesn’t traumatize anyone and get his name on one of those sexual predator websites.
He wrenches open the door and takes one step into the hallway and yells, “BED CHECK. EVERYONE IN THEIR ROOM, LIGHTS OUT, NOW, OR YOU ALL GET F’S.” He waits, arms crossed, while a couple doors open and shut and kids scurry back to their rooms, avoiding his eyes as they run past. Then he steps back inside, slamming the door behind him, and stalking back to where Jess is still sprawled on the bed. She’s managed to shimmy out of her dress while he was gone and he ends up standing there, staring, until she pokes him with her toes.
“Did you just come here to sightsee?”
“I don’t know, I think I have to consult my itinerary.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder and makes like he’s going to check. Jess sits up and catches him by the arm. Her fingers are warm when she tucks them into his waistband.
“C’mon, Nick, you can’t get a girl all twirly and leave her hanging.”
“Twirly, huh?” She nods and he laughs and lets her shove him so he’s on his back. It’s like a switch is flicked, a dial cranked all the way up, and everything goes from lazy and funny to urgent, and it seems like no time at all before Jess is closing her eyes and guiding his cock into her. Nick watches her face change as she sinks down and he has to bite hard on his lip to keep from thrusting up into her. His fingers dig into her hip; he’s pretty sure it’s going to leave bruises on her skin, she’s so pale it’s unreal, and then she lifts up and sinks back down and Nick can’t hold it back anymore, his hips jerk up and she breathes out, “Yeah.” Her eyes flutter open and hand braces on his chest and everything speeds back up.
With Jess’s knees digging into his sides, her hair falling in her face, stuck to her forehead with sweat, it manages to be everything and nothing like Nick’s imagined. She bites her lip and makes small, encouraging noises and Nick’s pretty sure she’s actively trying to be quiet. It makes him want to see what she’s like not in a hotel room, technically on the clock, and that thought alone is enough to make him groan. Above him, Jess smiles, grinds her hips down, again and again, like she’s trying to wrench the same sound from him, and he doesn’t want her to win so he presses his thumb to her clit and tries to make her groan first.
She stays quiet, but she comes first, mouth open, gasping for air, and her thighs shaking. Nick’s not too far behind and when he feels Jess clenching around him, deep inside, he chokes on nothing trying to stay quiet.
**
Jess’s alarm goes off entirely too early, in Nick’s opinion. He turns it off automatically, rolls over and buries his face against the back of her neck. When his goes off an hour later, she bolts up.
“Nick! Why is it so late?” A pillow smacks him in the face and he whines pathetically and bats it away. “Get up!” she yells, pulling all the sheets off the bed.
“Hey!” he says, because he’s cold and still mostly asleep and Jess is running around the room in her underwear, throwing things into their suitcases indiscriminately. She turns the shower on and comes back out and throws his sneakers into her bag, throws a pile of dirty clothes into his.
It’s possible he falls back asleep while she’s in the shower because he jerks awake when a tiny bottle of shampoo hits him in the chest, right next to a bite mark he didn’t know he had until just now.
“Huh,” he says, pressing his thumb to the bruise.
He smiles and Jess stares at him, unblinking, for a full ten seconds before she smacks his shoulder. She yells, “YOU HAVE TO SHOWER. NOW,” and starts pulling at his arm, trying to get him off the bed, and it’s like nothing even changed.
**
“This is your fault,” Jess hisses when Nick complains about a cramp in his side. They’re running through the airport and Nick would say it’s exactly like that scene in Home Alone where everyone’s racing for the plane because they overslept only Nick and Jess are the ones responsible for not losing Kevin so it’s a hundred thousand times more stressful.
“Hey! You’re the one who -- ow.”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll tell someone I saw you leave your suitcase unattended.”
“Fine,” he says, panting, because fuck this is a giant airport. “What is this place, the never-ending airport?”
“It’s like that staircase from Inception.”
“Maybe this is all a dream,” Nick says, and Jess smacks his arm. “Ow!”
“Oh, good, you’re not dreaming!” She smiles and he’d glare at her if he weren’t bent over, gasping for breath. He glares at the floor instead, and pinches his side as he limps after her, his suitcase dragging pitifully behind him. It’s weird, he thinks, that nothing’s changed at all. Weird, but good.
**
He’s the last one on the plane which means he has all the time in the world to text CODE ORANGE to Winston and Schmidt while he’s waiting. He gets back !!!!! and WHAT.
WHAT.
NICK. DETAILS.
NICK, I REQUIRE DETAILS.
NICHOLAS MILLER. before he turns off his phone.
There’s a kid already sitting next to Jess, which is bullshit, so Nick walks right up to him and says, “Hey, Kyle, you’re in my seat.”
Jess smiles at him when he sits down. The flight attendant is telling everyone to buckle their seatbelts when she holds up her phone.
“Why is Schmidt texting me about a Code Orange?”
**
Nick pretends to fall asleep somewhere over Ohio. Jess really falls asleep around Kansas, her hand on his arm and her head tipped onto his shoulder. Madison K. leans across the aisle and offers Nick her iPod; that stupid song from the flight out is already queued up and Nick lets it play. It’s not the worst thing in the world.