Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time it happens, he's not even looking at her, and she is still certain that his expression is weird. He sidles out of his room one morning and bolts past her door, like she's wailing a dirge instead of gifting the apartment with her best Patrick Swayze. There's funny business written all over that hustle, and all over the edge to his jabs at the bar that night, and especially all over the way he mixes her drink with extra-earnest, super-resentful precision. Kayleigh-Ann in the third row is exactly the same when she forgets to get her awful mother to sign her workbook.  

Well, Kayleigh-Ann doesn't mix her a really good drink, obviously, but she scowls at the board all period and then draws her something, usually a flower, to say sorry. It's fundamentally the same thing, and Jess smiles at Nick to say she understands. His returning frown makes her snort explosively; heads turn all across the bar and her next drink is much weaker, if equally delicious.  

Deciphering the look turns into a game, eventually, one she's been thinking would work prett-y well in the classroom: Expression Detectives! They could do it during quiet time, to promote peer engagement! Good, good, she's already writing it up in grant-speak. And maybe it would normalize the kids who are always staring anyway, and distract the loud ones into actually being quiet during quiet time. Plus, as  a very, very, minor side benefit, definitely not the major motivator, she could make an amazing poster for it. A cartoon of Nick with his most exaggerated frown - they could work a geometry lesson in there - on one side, and a magnifying glass on the other. 

It's not really that he frowns, on the mystery mornings, but there's no way she can capture his actual expression on posterboard. A lot of people give her blank looks, ok, she knows what it looks like when she's sending out a signal and no one's dialin' in. (And great, now it's gonna be Joni Mitchell for the whole rest of the day. Maybe the week.) This face is more...like if he had two incompatible super-powers at once, like he's scanning her with laser eyes and making himself invisible at the same time, and they counteract each other to turn into what someone might call a blank look without her level of expertise. 

Man, the Marvel movies are getting to her stream-of-consciousness and she hasn't even seen any of them, she's pretty sure; pop culture saturation is something else.

Anyway, it's just an idle mystery for down times until the night Winston takes pity on passed-out-Nick and starts to lever him off the couch. She wedges in and takes a side because Nick is solid, and Winston would never ask but she's here for equal roommate relocating, she can bro. Her internal monologue might go a little panicked - bro as a verb, ehhh - but, again, solid. And warm. And then suddenly handsy, not in the creepy old man way but in the way that makes her think of how long its been since she had a non-platonic backrub, and as soon as she shakes that thought off Winston's edging out Nick's bedroom door, eyebrows last, like the Cheshire Cat. She was sort of guiltily enjoying the panic before that but those eyebrows were pretty suggestive and  then Nick mumbles, "thanks, hon," with his Texas-sized palm warm against her back and she realizes she is making the face.

She can just feel it, though she doesn't know how. Laser eyes, invisibility. Boom. On her face. She bolts from the room - similar behavior! further evidence! - then takes cover from Winston's scrutiny by grabbing her favorite floral pillow and bringing it back to Nick like that was her plan all along.

The subterfuge is calming, and by the time she's back in his room, she has stored the whole situation under Things to Think About In The Morning. For all she knows, this is a dream, right? An Expression Detective never jumps to conclusions. She tucks the pillow under the crown of Nick's head, doing her good deed while minimizing the possibility of drool, and he shifts a little and tells her softly to watch out for zombies.