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When they both came home from work and found the living room unusually quiet, they decided to take up the couch for once and cuddle it out there instead of on one of their beds that made annoying creaky noises with every inch they moved. They changed into something more comfortable (“Not that kind of comfortable,” Jess quickly said, “I don’t need anyone else to know what I look like naked.” Nick acted disappointed, but was understanding.), and Jess took a blanket from her room, plus a few pillows, and set up camp.
“This is not how I saw this play out, but I like it.”
They’re both under a blanket, as Nick asked her to bring him one too, and his head is in her lap while he takes up almost the entire length of the couch, while Jess is sitting (sort of) upright, legs stretched out on the long seat. Both have their feet resting on their respective pillows, which Nick has agreed to wash afterwards to get any lingering foot scent out of them.
Jess has one hand in Nick’s hair, gently combing through it, and the other buried under both of his, resting on his chest. The feeling of the rise and fall as he breathes is comforting, and just what she needed after a day of handling kids being kids.
“Thank god,” Nick says, “’cause I don’t think I can move for the next couple hours.”
Jess chuckles. She totally gets it; her own legs feel like lead, but the comfortable, warm kind, if that exists, and her mind is at peace in a way it hasn’t been for a while.
“Any idea where Winston and Schmidt are?” she asks him.
She definitely expected at least one of them to catch them while they were getting settled on the sofa, but no doors opened, not even the front, so they’re definitely not home. Jess swears they have a sixth sense for walking in on their private time (Schmidt almost seems to do it on purpose when they’re in the bathroom, but that makes some sense at least), so the fact that there hasn’t been a peep from either of them so far means they’re simply not home. Kind of unusual for a Tuesday, but definitely welcome.
“Not a clue,” Nick answers. “Don’t care either. The longer they stay out, the better.”
Jess looks at him and finds his eyes are closed. Taking the opportunity of his unguarded state, she lets her gaze linger on his face and tries to take it all in. The crook of his nose that makes his face so characteristic. The beauty mark on his cheek. The wrinkles on his forehead. Around the corner of his mouth. His lips, soft to the touch but used so roughly sometimes, making all thoughts fly out of her head instantaneously. His hands being the exact opposite, yet achieving the same result.
She rubs her thumb across his chest, and a smile tugs at the corners of Nick’s mouth. Jess mirrors the expression and leans down to kiss his forehead, causing his smile to widen significantly. His eyes open and they find hers, and then he lifts his chin at her in a familiar motion and Jess leans down again, this time planting a kiss on his lips. The sound of their lips meeting (or parting?) is loud in the silence of the loft. It’s kind of awesome how alone they are right now.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nick asks as Jess gently rubs the tip of her nose against his.
She can feel his breath on her face when he talks. He radiates a warmth that makes her want to crawl under his clothes and soak it all up, but she pushes her thoughts towards what he said instead before they go down a path that isn’t appropriate for the living room.
“I doubt that very much,” Jess replies. Nick looks at her curiously but she simply looks back, and he’s nice enough to let it go.
“Well I was thinking it’s a shame I can’t undress you right here and now and have my way with you.”
Eyes widened, Jess presses her lips tightly together, yet she can’t keep herself from smiling (and blushing profusely). Nick breaks out laughing and moves a hand to the side of her face.
“I’m just messin’ with ya, honey,” he admits gleefully. “I wanted to see how you’d react.”
Jess turns her head towards his hand and tries to bite it. She only ends up grazing his skin, as he quickly catches on and pulls the hand away, letting it rest on his chest again. Choosing not to try and punish him any further, Jess leans back against the couch, resuming her gentle touch in Nick’s hair.
“That was mean even for you, Miller,” she jokes (a little). “What if someone walked in right as you were saying that?”
Nick shrugs, eyes closed once more. “Who cares. Like Schmidt didn’t desecrate this couch already.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Jess says, nose scrunched up. The mere idea of it is nothing short of disgusting.
“I’m not,” Nick says, looking up at her to show he’s serious, “I’m one hundred percent sure Schmidt has already had sex on this couch.”
There is a moment of silence, during which Jess contemplates getting away from the piece of furniture until she’s forgotten about that revolting fact, or staying on it and accepting her fate. And since there’s no other comfy couch around…
“Wait,” she says, “how are you one hundred percent sure about it?”
A frown crosses Nick’s face. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
Too late for that. “Well you brought it up. Did you catch him in the act or something?”
“Or something,” Nick replies curtly.
O-kay. That sounds like nightmare material, so Jess is going to let that one slide right by. Then Nick rubs the top of his head against her fingers, which hadn’t resumed their caressing yet, and Jess focuses on doing just that in hopes of stopping her imagination from leaping to places that will scar her for life.
Nick’s cute little hum at her touch is a nice distraction. It reminds her of all the other unexpected sounds he’s made with her so far. While he’s typically not a moaner, he does let out a few high pitched ones when he’s close to orgasm sometimes, more often when she’s giving head. Or his low, deep grumble when she wakes him up too early at any given time of day, which he insists is him telling her ‘five more minutes’ and she insists is his unintended imitation of a bear being woken up from hibernation. She wonders what unexpected sounds she makes with him. Does she want to know?
“You’re doing that thing again.”
Oh crap, did she say that out loud? She doesn’t remember hearing her own voice.
“What?” Jess decides to ask. Maybe it’s not what she thinks it is.
Nick is looking at her with a smile she can’t decipher. He doesn’t seem to be making fun of her again, though, so that’s good.
“You’re twirling your finger around my hair until it’s ready to be pulled out,” Nick clarifies, though he doesn’t seem unhappy about it.
“Oh my god.” Jess moves her hand away from his head immediately. “I’m so sorry, I had no idea I was doing that.”
“I know,” Nick says, still no anger or annoyance in sight, “It’s that thing you do when you’re thinkin’ too much.”
“What?”
Now that she didn’t see coming. There are things she does? On a regular enough basis that even Nick notices and remembers? Or does he just remember because he’s been her unwilling victim this whole time?
“Don’t worry!” Nick blindly reaches for her hand and puts it back in his hair, looking nothing short of happy to have it there. He fixes her with another one of those mysterious smiles. “I don’t mind.” Jess raises an eyebrow at him. “Much,” he adds. “As long as you tell me what’s got your gears grinding.”
“Oh.”
Oh, no. He doesn’t need to know of her internal monologue about him.
“No thanks,” Jess quickly says. “I’m good.”
Nick grins at her. “Were you having nasty thoughts, miss Day?”
Oh god, him calling her that immediately creates a whole new train of thought. She’ll have to keep that in mind for, uh, later times. She forces out a scoff, that sounds convincing enough, and shakes her head.
“Men are all the same,” she comments. “I was thinking about how you sound like a bear when I wake you up.”
The surprised look on his face accompanied with a frown is a good sign. She’s given him just enough truth for him to be distracted by it, ensuring she won’t have to tell him about the other sounds he makes that she was recalling.
“I do?” he asks.
“Not the bad kind,” Jess quickly says. “Like the kind that just woke up from his deep slumber and is very, very vocal about it.”
She’s laughing by the end of her explanation and Nick is beaming at her.
“What are you smiling about?” she can’t help but ask. “Last time anyone compared you to an animal, you weren’t too happy about it.”
“That was Winston,” Nick says, “and he compared me to his cat. Not just any cat, his specifically. How insulting can you get?!”
Jess recalls vividly how he basically threw a tantrum and almost kidnapped Furguson up to the roof to “Mufasa him off of it”, as he called it. It was hard to be on his side then, but she was. Barely.
“Thank god that’s all over now,” Jess says.
Nick scoffs in what she thinks is agreement, and they fall silent again. God, it’s good to have no one else home. It feels like they’re living alone, almost, if the living room didn’t have a very obvious guy scent to it. And barely any decorations. But it’s a nice thought, one that makes Jess’s chest feel even warmer, so she does something she usually doesn’t with Nick.
“I could get used to this, just us two.”
She is met with a soft groan, and sees Nick has closed his eyes again to enjoy Jess’s fingers in his hair. That went better than she thought already, but it could go even better. Hopefully.
“Don’t you think we’d be good at living together?”
“We are living together,” is the immediate, and obvious, response. He sounds calm though. Maybe she found a magic spot with her fingers? Found his panic button and turned it off? That’d be something.
“I know,” Jess says casually, while her heartrate picks up, “I meant living together without roommates.”
There is a pause. “Ah,” Nick says. That’s all he says.
“Yep.”
Jess is bad at leaving silences when she wants a conversation. Or anything more than what is more a noise than a word, really. But she knows Nick, and even though he’s still not jumping off the couch with a fake task to do that brings him far away from this talk, she has a steady eye on him now.
“Obviously I don’t think we should do that right away,” she eventually caves. It’s true, she’d just rather heard his thoughts first before going all in with hers.
“Oh.”
Another sound, equally emotionless and thus equally difficult to decipher. Impossible, even. He’s not even tensing up or anything.
“That’s a relief.”
Jess tries not to vocalize the pang she feels in her chest. At least he’s talking? She nods at him and his closed eyes, as if somehow he’ll pick up on the movement anyway and be encourage to speak more, use more words that are maybe less painful to hear.
“This is pretty perfect already,” Nick continues. “Can hardly get better in my book.”
A light frown crosses his face briefly. Jess catches it but is too happy hearing his thoughts and how positive they are to really pay attention to it. Then he suddenly cracks an eye open and looks up at her.
“Is that too cheesy?”
Jess gives him a smile and shakes her head. “Not at all. Just the perfect amount of cheese, I’d say. Right up my alley.”
Nick smiles too. “It’s not a pizza, Jess,” he says playfully. “I’m being serious over here.”
“So am I,” Jess replies seriously, although somehow it comes out like she’s kidding. “I love cheesy! Both my pizza’s and my men.”
“Your men?” Now he’s got both his eyes fixated on her, an amused twinkle in them. “How many guys do you wanna live with?”
“I’d say three’s my limit.”
Jess can keep a straight face for several seconds before she cracks at the look of surprise on Nick, dissolving into stupid giggles she can’t control.
“Did you seriously forget about Schmidt and Winston?” she asks through her laughter, and the look of relief and embarrassment taking over Nick’s face is enough of an answer.
He only takes a couple of moments to recover and soon enough he’s chuckling along, and the sound of their laughter mixed together sounds like music to Jess’s ears. If she could turn it into a song, it’d be a number one hit for sure, and Nick would never hear it because he hates anything that’s popular. He might like this, though.
“I love you, Jess.”
Scratch that, he might love it. Jess beams at him; if only she could tell him how it makes her feel to hear him say that, unprompted, no reason, and not because she said it first. Nick suddenly sits up and turns to her, cups her face in his hands and brings their lips together. He goes slow, and it’s like Jess can feel every part of his mouth, soft or hard, dry or wet, and it’s a whole new experience to kiss him like this.
She starts feeling tingly all the way down to her toes, which is the moment Nick pulls back, so Jess leans forward and grabs his neck to push him back where he belongs. He goes along with it and she feels him smile against her mouth before they resume what has to be Jess’s most intimate kiss to date, so she’s going to make it last a while.
And it does last, until Nick is once again the one to stop, but he’s still holding her face in his hands when he does and looks deeply into her eyes, his own so dark and brown Jess almost feels like melting.
“I mean it, Jess,” he says, and Jess has no idea what he’s on about until he continues. “I really love you.”
And a puddle she has become. She smiles at him, caressing his neck with her thumb. “I really love you too, Nick.”
She thinks Nick looks a lot like her, with that dopey grin spreading across his lips as if no one has ever told him something this important. And she gets it, because she feels the same way, though saying that out loud might be too much too soon. She settles on patting the pillow that’s still half on her lap instead, a gesture Nick complies with almost immediately (proof of how mushy he’s feeling) as he lies down again and rests his head on the pillow. He grabs her hand and traps it on his chest with both of his, and gives her one more smile before closing his eyes.
Jess settles in as well and uses her free hand to gently caress his hair.
The loft is silent.
They sigh in unison.