Note – The first of approximately ten Johnny & Nadine one shots pertaining to the story The Right Girl. If you have not read that (completed) story, these will not make proper sense to you. All of these one-shots take place after that story ends.

#1: Bedtime Blues

Johnny Zacchara awoke with a start and blinked when he found his bedroom invaded by sunshine. He was at his apartment, this much was clear, and he was in bed, and he wasn't alone. He looked over to the side and saw Nadine sleeping peacefully, and the corner of his mouth curved down.

A quick glance at the clock told him her alarm would be going off in two minutes. Carefully, so as not to wake her prematurely, Johnny lifted the sheets and took a peek. He was wearing a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, no socks. He tugged a little and crossed his fingers as he looked over at her. Nadine was wearing her drawstring pants and a pink t-shirt, also no socks.

Oh, shit.

Oh, shit, shit, shit.

He exhaled slowly and lay back, numb. It had happened. He'd been dreading this day, and it was finally upon him. And the worst part was that nothing could be done to change it. He just had to accept this like a man and face the consequences, face what this all meant.

Oh, shit, shit, shit.

Johnny cringed when the alarm went back and slowly roughly, feeling her stir next to him. Nadine let out a singing sigh and stretched, holding the position for three counts before relaxing. She propped herself up on her elbow, and her golden bangs fell in face. She smiled at him and tilted her head to the side.

"Mm. Morning."

Thankfully, she saved him from having to reply by stretching again, arching her back up like a cat. While Johnny appreciated the view, he was in no state to be nearly as responsive as he would have been otherwise.

"Wow, I can't believe how tired I was last night," she murmured, sitting up in bed. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked out the windows at the harbor. "Just a crazy shift. So, what are your plans for the day?"

His tongue felt thick in his mouth. "Uh, work."

"What a coincidence," Nadine smirked, throwing one leg off the side of the bed. "Same here. You don't have to leave for another two hours, right? In that case, I'm going to take my shower 

now. I said I'd meet Elizabeth and the girls for breakfast before work – she said she had something really big to tell us. I think she might be pregnant. You don't mind, do you?"

"That she's pregnant?"

His mind just wasn't working well right now.

"No," Nadine laughed aloud. "That I'm running off and leaving you all by your lonesome."

"Oh. Uh, no, no." Johnny cleared his throat. "You, um, you go ahead."

She stood up and frowned lightly down at him. "You all right?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Why, uh, why wouldn't I be?"

Nadine shrugged. "I don't know, you just sound a little weird. A little…dazed. Slow. You sure you managed to get some sleep last night?"

That was all they did, he thought to himself. "Yeah, yeah, I did. I'm fine."

She shot him a skeptical look but couldn't stay long, and Johnny relaxed only when he heard her turn the shower on. He settled back in bed and closed his eyes, shaking his head to himself.

Oh, shit, shit, shit.

"There's something seriously wrong with him."

Maxie took a big bite out of her roast beef sandwich and blinked at her. She and Nadine hadn't been able to hang out very much recently, so when Nadine invited her to have lunch with her in the hospital, Maxie had readily agreed.

"Like what?"

"I don't know." The nurse poked at her own turkey sub. "He was weird all day yesterday and all day today. I was going to go over to his place last night but he said something about having to work a little late, so we didn't even get to meet up. And this morning I had the late shift, but he just stayed at his place in Crimson Pointe, so I haven't seen him. And he returned my call, but just left me a short message saying he saw my missed call or whatever."

"Whenever Spinelli gets weird, I tell him to stop it," she announced, trying to be helpful as she nibbled on a French fry. "It works pretty well, 'cause he stops it."

"I don't think it's going to be that easy with Johnny," Nadine admitted, smiling despite herself. "He can be very…brooding. Very quiet and introspective."

"Sounds hot."

"It's not when something's obviously wrong and he won't tell me what," she sighed, pushing away her plate.

Maxie pushed it back at her and motioned for her to keep eating. "Okay, let's do this. Why don't you tell me when you first noticed that something was bothering him?"

"Well…" Nadine clicked her nails on the porcelain. "Yesterday, we woke up and he just seemed out of it. He was talking slow, looking confused or dazed or whatever, giving me really short answers. I asked him then if something was wrong and he said it wasn't anything."

Maxie, who had never been known for her bluntness. "Did you guys have sex the night before?"

Nadine blinked. "What?"

She leaned forward a little. "Did he do something you didn't like? Or vice versa? Did you fake it, and somehow he found out? Or…did he have trouble getting it up?"

"No! No, of course not, not any of those…things." Nadine shook her head vigorously. "In fact, we didn't even have sex. It was a perfectly normal, otherwise lovely night. I came over to his place after work, I ate dinner on his couch while he watched TV, he rubbed my shoulders, and then we went to bed. That's all."

"No sex, huh?" Maxie waved her fry in the air, crinkling her nose. "Is the sex bad?"

The nurse shuddered at her sympathetic tone. "No, not at all. The sex-" She lowered her voice slightly just in case anyone could overhear. "The sex is great. It's never been a problem. We're still kind of in that can't-keep-our-hands-off-each-other phase. The sex is just fine – and frequent."

"And yet, you say you didn't have sex that night."

"Well, no." She took a small bite of her sandwich just because she thought she should. "I mean, I got home late, he'd already eaten because he knew I was working late, and we were tired so we went to bed."

"You ever been at his place and not had sex?"

"Sure," Nadine scoffed. "Plenty of times. We've hung out, we've eaten there, gone out afterwards-"

"No, no." Maxie was smirking now, as if she had some idea of what was really going on. "I meant, have you ever spent the night at his place and not had sex?"

She stopped and thought about it before slowly replying, "…No, I guess not."

"And has he ever spent the night at your place when you two didn't have sex?"

"…No."

"So what that means…" Maxie took a big bite of her sandwich, which seemed to Nadine to be perfectly horrendous timing, and the nurse had no choice but to sit and wait until her friend was done chewing. "Every time you've spent the night together, you've had sex."

"That's being a little crude, but-"

"And yet that night, you slept together but you didn't sleep together." She arched a brow at her friend. "And you honestly don't see why he's being weird? From what you told me, you guys have been going at it hot and heavy, can't keep your hands off each other, that sort of thing. You've always had sex if you spent the night together. And then suddenly you didn't, and he's not used to that, so now he's afraid that the sexual connection or whatever is fizzling out of your relationship and it's going to be all Pottery Barns and TV dinners and watching each other pee. Spinelli got like that the first time we slept together without actually doing anything, so I just jumped his bones two days later and he was happy. Then I told him he was an idiot, but he was still happy. He's like a little woodland creature, always happy."

Nadine's lips parted in surprise, and she was clearly still processing the first bit of information. "You mean, he's freaked out that we spent one night together where we didn't have sex? Seriously?!"

Maxie shrugged. "Boys are weird."

"Oh, my freaking…" She shook her head briskly. "Jeez, I never would have come up with that on my own. That boy's seriously freaked out because we spent one night together and I didn't do him. Unbelievable."

"Like I said." She took a bite of her sandwich and spoke around it. "Weird."

Nadine's lips were pressed together in a disgruntled, peevish line. "Un-freaking-believable. That stupid boy."

Maxie leaned forward when she saw her pull out her phone and flip it open. "What are you doing?"

Nadine smirked and started a new text message. "Fixing him."

Johnny sat at his piano, his hands poised on the keys, and tried to come up with something he wanted to play. He'd been sitting this way for the past ten minute, trying to come up with something, but the perfect tune evaded him.

All he could think about was the time that he was playing a Beethoven piece on this very piano about a month or so ago. He'd been so engrossed in it that he hadn't heard Nadine come in, and was taken altogether by surprise when interrupted his progress by slipping into his lap and straddling him silently. They got creative that night and ended up having sex right on the piano bench, all without saying a single word. It had been the hottest thing ever.

A part of him told him that he was being ridiculous, that one night of just sleeping together didn't mean that Nadine was bored with him, that he wasn't doing enough to please and excite her in bed anymore, that they were going to fall into a rut from which they'd never recover. But a larger part of him felt that this was legitimate cause for alarm.

It was also trying frantically to come up with something to play on this damn fucking piano.

He was saved from this dilemma, or so it seemed, by the buzzing of his phone. He wasn't getting a call, rather, but a text message. Johnny flipped his phone open and clicked the button to see the following:

Hey you. I was so tired the night I crashed your place that I didn't even get to do what I'd been thinking about all day. Watch out when I come over tonight. I plan on totally jumping you. Love.

Johnny grinned at Nadine's perfectly punctuated text message and flicked the phone closed. He set it on top of the piano, still smiling, and finally let out a contented sigh. Resting his fingers on the keys once more, he cleared his throat and began to play.