A/N: It's going to be a long, long summer, Newbies. So I'm going to spend it writing drabbles/short one-shots, about Nick and Jess and how they work through their crazy. The first one here picks up right after the finale.
The title – Cotton-Eyed Summer – is obviously a nod to the song used in the finale. But I like it because I looked up what "cotton-eyed" meant – and though the term is contested, it most usually means either "drunk" or "having large whites in your eyes and therefore appearing permanently surprised." And both these definitions apply to my sweetheart/angel/love-of-my-life Nick Miller, and to an extent Jess, so I was very pleased.
This drabble – and, really, this whole project – is for my girl Mina (Wilhelmina Willoughby), one of the sweetest people I know. Summer is for smiling; I hope I can make you smile with Ness silliness.
Enjoy, sweets. x
Cotton-Eyed Summer
By: Zayz
I. Jasmine and Seaweed
"You should take a left here."
"No, Jess. I'm taking a right. And then I'm going to take another right."
"I think that's a highway coming up. Which highway is it?"
"I don't know. We'll find out as we keep driving."
"What exit are we going to take from it?"
"I don't know."
"Is there anything you do know, Nick?"
A red light looms ahead. Nick stops obediently before the line, and turns to grin at Jess. His smile is luminous – he seems to glow from the inside out. His joy radiates off of him like heat.
He leans in and kisses her, just because he can.
"I know that right now, I'm happy – and I don't care where we're going, because we get to figure it out together."
They're still kissing when the light turns green and a chorus of car horns behind them jerks them back to reality.
"I'm starving, Miller. Can we please stop at a gas station or something? I never got to eat at the wedding, I was too busy chasing you clowns around and hanging out in the air vents."
"That was your own damn fault."
"How was it my fault?!"
"You chose to come in after us. And you being in there made the vent collapse."
"Someone had to stop you!"
"I was handling it."
"Yeah. Okay."
Nick pulls into the gas station, a full fifty five minutes since they impulsively set off from the wedding. He takes off his jacket and begins pumping the gas. Jess, still wearing her beautiful turquoise sari, negotiates her heeled shoes out of the car and into the little store. Her feet are throbbing with pain, and she's getting weird looks from the cashier, but she picks up dinner – a bag of cashews, a couple of bars of chocolate, and an extra-large blueberry slushie.
She brings her wares to Nick, who has filled up the tank halfway and is waiting for her in the car. He surveys the loot, and wrinkles his nose.
"You know I hate blueberry drinks. Why couldn't you have gotten strawberry or something?"
She rolls her eyes and opens the bag of cashews.
"But I like peanuts."
"You're a moron," Jess announces, snarfing five cashews just for the pleasure of seeing his face contort with disgust.
They drive around aimlessly for hours, eating cashews (Jess) and chocolate (Nick), taking turns with the slushie, trying to figure out where they are going. He drives until he's bored of the direction they're going on, and then takes an unexpected turn to another part of town. They drive through several darkened neighborhoods and fluorescently-powered shopping plazas, and try to guess the name of the towns they pass through.
Somehow, they make it to the beach. Nick sees signs advertising ocean views on the highway and decides to follow them. They park in an empty parking lot and find that they are barred from the water by only the flimsiest of metal gates, which is rusted and old and easy to climb over. Jess unpins her sari, revealing the cropped blouse and boy shorts she was wearing underneath. Her skin glowed, pearly and beautiful, in the California moonlight. The night was balmy, with little wind. Nick leaves his jacket in the car, and the two of them climb over the fence like children on a playground, and run towards the water.
Last time Nick ran into the ocean, it was cold and uninviting and he did it alone, in the name of being spontaneous and living, really living, his life. But this time, Jess is holding his hand, and Jess is running right beside him, and the water isn't quite as cold when she is next to him, screaming as they take the plunge together.
She clings to him in the water, beads of ocean water dotting her face, dripping from her bangs and her ponytail. Her blouse is thin cotton, so it's soaked through, and he can see that she isn't wearing a bra underneath. His own shirt is white cotton, and she can see the lines of his chest beneath the sodden, clingy fabric.
Her breath hitches as she kisses him fiercely, right then and there standing in the ocean, her hands clutching his wet hair. Both of them are shivering madly in the cold, but he unhooks the back of her blouse and tosses it behind them into the sand. In turn, she unbuttons his shirt and peels it off his body. His hand cups her breast, and she presses up against him, her face in his neck. She smells like jasmine and seaweed, and it's a strangely alluring combination.
She kisses him again, frank and earnest, and love surges in his veins like it's never done before. The stars twinkle as their witnesses, as she hops up and wraps her legs around his waist.
It's all mesmerizing, utterly romantic – until Nick loses his balance with Jess's weight so heavy upon him, and both of them fall into the water, shrieking as they go under.
But they resurface at once, and Jess starts laughing, truly laughing – her nose crinkles and she doubles over and she sounds like she's choking, but then she starts crying, her tears mixing with the ocean water on her cheeks.
"God, Miller, I think I love you," she says.
He chuckles – half-embarrassed, half-awed. Gently, he tilts her chin up, and kisses her once more, achingly sweet.
"Right back at you," he tells her.
Neither of them knows how long they spend like that, splashing around in the water and then kissing in the sand. Physically, it's uncomfortable – the ocean's plant life is slimy and muddy, and the sand is cold and gritty against their skin, and they are dotted all over with goosebumps – but they are so simply, genuinely, unbelievably happy that it doesn't matter. Because he is with her, and she is with him, and this night – it is everything, everything.
"This is crazy," says Jess. "We are crazy. What are we doing? How is this a Thing? God, we still have to get back. I have work. So do you."
"I don't know, Jess," Nick says.
"Should I be concerned about that? All you've said since we started out is that you don't know – you don't know what this is, you don't know what it means, you don't know where we're going."
"I don't have to know, Jess." He strokes her wet cheek with his index finger, and sends a thrill down her spine. "We have time to figure it out."
The control freak in her is still concerned, but the rest of her likes the sound of that. She likes the idea of time – the way everything's kind of a mess right now, but it's okay, because there's something here that is amazing and beautiful and worth fighting for. And they will fight for it, in the coming days and weeks and months. What else is really worth knowing? They have so much time – like the sky bringing daylight, extending through the universe indefinitely.
They lay on the beach and count the stars for hours. They don't know any constellations, so they make them up. Jess finds a clown, but Nick doesn't see it. Nick finds a starfish, but Jess thinks it looks like a cupcake. They argue about it, in soft boygirl whispers and giggles and the occasional yelp. She rests her head on his chest, and he runs his fingers through her damp hair, and they keep each other warm through the coolness of the night.
When the sky begins to light up at the horizon, and sunrise is near, they get up from the beach and head back to their car. Nick gives Jess the jacket he left behind – her blouse is still too wet to wear – and she falls asleep in the front seat as Nick struggles to use the GPS on her phone to get them home.
They make it after a while, as the sun comes up for real. Nick gently shakes Jess awake, and they troop upstairs to take showers. The aftermath of their romantic getaway is significantly less than romantic – they have sand everywhere, and they smell like ocean water and cashews, and their clothes are wet, rumpled horrors.
Nick is grateful that Schmidt and Winston are not awake to see them like this – but also because now, this gets to remain his moment with Jess. No one else is around to intrude. The apartment is quiet and sunny and theirs for the morning. He takes a certain solace in that. The magic can last longer, before they have to go back to being themselves.
He lets Jess use the shower first. But as she is about to enter the bathroom, he grabs her wrist and pulls her into him, and kisses her one last time, hard and deep and delicious. She still smells like seaweed and jasmine, and he wants just a little more of that fragrance to keep, weird as that sounds – because now, their first adventure as a couple smells like seaweed and jasmine and he almost doesn't want it to end.
She returns his kiss eagerly – and when they break apart, she grins, and says, "How about we conserve a little water and just take one shower?"
He laughs at that, surprised and thrilled by her boldness. "Gotta save the environment, of course."
"Of course."
She laughs too, and pulls him into the bathroom with her. The door locks behind them with a satisfying click.
