Work Text:
“I want an answer, dammit!” Nick yells, his voice echoing in the small space of his bedroom. He can’t believe they’re arguing over this. It’s absurd. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And yet it’s been digging underneath his skin for weeks now, no matter how many times he tries to write it off. “How come you won’t knit things for me?”
Nick doesn’t think of himself as a very needy kind of person. Set him up in a room with a six-pack and ESPN and he’ll be good for hours. He’s not the clingy kind of boyfriend who needs the constant attention of the girl he’s dating to make him feel good about himself. But there’s something about this that really hits home for some reason.
Jess takes gift giving crazy seriously, and he’s seen the intensity she puts into her projects. So yeah, he’d like the confirmation that she likes him enough to think he’s worthy of something that she put all that work into. It’d be a real ego boost to know that she spent all those hours thinking about him as she made every one of those stitches. He’d like to have something that he could point out to strangers and say, “Hey, my girlfriend made this. Isn’t she amazing?”
“I just don’t have the time!” Jess insists, planting her hands on her hips and glaring at him.
“That’s bullshit.” Nick frowns and crosses his arms over his chest. “Everyone else you know has something you made for them.”
She scoffs. “That’s not true-”
It is. Schmidt has a scarf with some funky texture in the stitches, Winston has a pair of mittens with kittens on them, and Cece’s entire winter wardrobe is made out of things Jess has given her over the years. To prove Nick’s point even further, Ferguson chooses that exact moment to sneak into the room, still wearing the wool vest that Jess had finished this morning and then wrangled him into.
“See! Even the damn cat has something!”
Jess cringes and looks back to Nick apologetically. “Okay, fine. I haven’t made something for you.” She shrugs dismissively. “What’s the big deal?”
Nick’s frown deepens. “Fine, Jess. I get it.”
“Get what?”
“That apparently I’m not worth your time. It’s fine.”
“No!” she says in surprise. “No, Nick, that’s not it at all.”
“Then what is it?” he asks, a bitter edge to his voice. “Am I not good enough? Do you think I’d just ruin it?”
“No!”
“Just tell me, Jessica.”
“I don’t want us to break up!” she yells.
Wait, what? Nick’s brow furrows and he stares at her in confusion.
“Look, it’s a thing, okay. An old knitting wive’s tale. The curse of the love sweater.”
Nick laughs, “The what?”
Jess flushes, embarrassed. “Shut up. It’s real.”
“You think that if you knit something for me that I’ll break up with you? Because of a knitting curse?” He laughs again.
“I didn’t think it was real either!” Jess says insistently. “But then in college I made a sweater for my boyfriend. And what happened one week later?”
“It shrunk in the wash?” Nick teases.
“He dumped me for his lab partner!”
Nick laughs and Jess frowns. He can’t believe he was so freaked out about this. If only he’d known it was this simple. Of course he’s not going to break up with Jess because of something she made him. Even the idea of it is absurd.
“Look,” Jess says quietly and stares up at the ceiling. “I like you, Nick. I really like you. And I just- I know it sounds silly, but I don’t want to risk it.”
“Jess,” he says gently, and pulls her into his arms. “I really like you, too. You don’t have to make me anything if you don’t want to. And I promise that I’ll only make fun of you a little for believing in a weird knitting superstition.”
She jabs him in the side in retaliation and Nick huffs a short laugh.
---
Two days later there’s a gray hat sitting on his desk, made out of a thick yarn that’s soft to the touch. It fits his head perfectly, and he wears it all day, even when Schmidt complains about how it’s November and barely even cold yet.
“There’s no excuse to be wearing cold weather gear while indoors, Nicholas!” he says in disgust. Nick just shrugs him off and plops down on the couch.
Nick catches Jess looking at him out the corner of his eye, a gleam of something like pride in her eyes. She bites down on her lip and sneaks back to her room, reappearing a moment later with her knitting bag. Jess settles beside him on the couch and curls up into the crook of his arm. He queues up the next episode of Homeland as she works on a dark green scarf, holding it up to his neck every few minutes to check her progress.
He gets the scarf after a week, and Nick wears it everywhere he goes. He eventually gets pizza sauce on it and he frantically scrubs at the greasy stain with a napkin. When he gets home he consults Schmidt, who scolds him for being so careless, but helps him get it out anyways. It’s nice, and he likes the way that wearing it reminds him of Jess throughout the day. An elderly woman at the farmer’s market compliments him on it one afternoon, and he beams when he tells her that his girlfriend made it for him.
---
They exchange “I love you”s and Nick’s sure that this is the happiest he’s ever been. That Jess is it for him. But he doesn’t think about what that means too much, because the future is still this terrifying abyss that he can only speculate about abstractly and unrealistically so that way it doesn’t overwhelm him. He focuses on the day-to-day, because that’s what really matters.
Jess’ sister comes to town, and she’s pretty much a mess. Nick and Jess move into the same bedroom, which feels a little fast to him. But Jess seems so excited and determined to make it work that he decides not to push his luck.
As they’re moving her stuff into his room he comes across a maroon bundle hidden away in the back of her closet. “What’s this?”
“Oh, I was trying to hide that,” Jess says disappointedly.
Nick holds it up. It’s a sweater. A handmade sweater that’s his size with this fancy pattern on the arms and front.
“I was going to save it for our one year anniversary,” she explains. “But I guess the surprise is ruined.”
He looks up at her in awe. “I love it.”
“Really? You don’t have to say it if you don’t. It’s fine. I’ll frog it and use the yarn for some other project or-”
“Jess.” He pulls her into a kiss. “I love it.”
---
They break up three weeks later.