Hey everyone! I'm in the hiatus-busting mood, so I'm gonna write some one-shots to take us through until we get to September (provided I can keep coming up with ideas). Feel free to give me some input on the writing, or maybe something you'd like to see!

This chapter is just some short scenes that take place randomly through the two seasons that have already happened and a little bit into the future. They're not really related, but they're kind of in order. Most of the rest of the one-shots will be missing moments scenes that have already happened through the seasons we've got.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the rights to New Girl, or any of the songs or cds mentioned within this chapter.

Schmidt loved Queen. Queen was the soundtrack to his life. Freddie Mercury was the saint he prayed to when he had to get out of a crazy situation. Or into a crazy situation. Yeaaaah. After he got skinny he was Freddie Mercury for three straight Halloweens. When he first started working out, Bicycle got him through rough elliptical days. He once self-completed to Under Pressure. We Are the Champions was still the song he listened to before a date to pump himself up. When Cece asked Schmidt if he was humming Fat Bottom Girls while they made out, he responded,

"Hell yeah I am. Hell yeah. I am," and put on their Greatest Hits. Volume One. They finished during Seven Seas of Rhye and despite herself, Cece loved every single second of it.

It bears repeating: Hell. Yeah.

Winston is like ninety percent sure that before him, Latvia had never heard rap music or the Wicked soundtrack. One of his teammates hears him singing Popular in the showers one day and then the next day during warm ups, they play Defying Gravity as a joke on him, but he takes it in stride. He feels unstoppable, sinking threes like nothing. It becomes his theme song of sorts, no matter how many he tries to convince him that in America, they call him Big Poppa.

He's no Biggie here. He's no Kanye or Hova or Rick Ross the Boss. But that's fine, because no wizard that there is or was is ever gonna bring him down.

One afternoon Jess walks in from school and the couch is packed. There are the guys, of course, Winston and Schmidt and Nick, and Nick's brother is visiting, too, and Remy is there, why in the hell is Remy there, and what are they watching?

They're focused on the tv like it's the Super Stanley Series or something but it's just some kids singing and dancing. "Uhh, guys, why are you watching High School Musical?"

"Oh hey new girl," answer's Nick's brother. This is the first time they're meeting and he doesn't even turn away from the tv, just waves in her vague direction. Schmidt is mildly offended with her question, saying, "Ugh, Jess, this is not High School Musical, come on."

She gives it another shot. "Glee?"

Now all of them groan, Remy even throws his hands up in the air and corrects her, saying, "No! This is Victorious."

On one hand, she wants to know what Victorious is, but on the other hand, there's a really good chance she doesn't. What she definitely wants to know, though, is why five grown men are watching a Nick show. "So, what's up with watching this? Are you just really into the music?"

Winston shakes his head. "Nah, we're watching it for the plot." The rest nod in agreement and Jess frowns confusedly and just goes to her room to grade papers where things are normal.

Weirdos.

The worst thing about living with Jessica Day is how she gets in your head. Nick talks about it sometimes and Winston says, "Nah, man, I think you just wanna get up on that," because Nick is very blatantly in craaaaaving some Day-time entertainment.

But then one day he's switching his whites to the dryer and he's suddenly singing Jess's laundry song and he realizes that Nick isn't being emotional about it, Jessica literally gets stuck in your head and he knows it's going to drive him crazy, isn't it?

A few days later he's on the phone with Coach who is working in Santa Monica and thinking of visiting. "Hey, man, I know you weren't around Jess much, but you remember the way she sings stuff all the time?"

Coach is cracking up on the other side of the line and when he stops laughing he goes, "Let me guess man, her cupcake making song is haunting your nightmares?"

The two laugh and compare notes, deciding that if Coach ever moves back to LA, they're gonna record these and either put out a children's album or use them for hypnosis purposes.

Nick hates Taylor Swift and everything she stands for and the way she dresses and sings and her songs. Forever. Just because. Why? Just because, that's why. And in the same way she thinks that everybody is good and anyone can be redeemed, Jess thinks that she can bring Nick around to liking Taylor Swift.

What's weird though is that one day, she finds a T-Swift cd case in his car and when he's confronted about it he says it belonged to an ex of his and blows her off, but she wants to get to the bottom of it. So she devises a devious plan that is far subtler than she can normally pull off because she's really curious and not at all nosy so don't look at her like that, okay?

Nick is watching the six o'clock news one day because he's basically a seventy year old man and she decides to sit next to him on the couch. Under her breath she starts singing, "I knew you were trouble when you walked innnn…" and shortly after her starts looking uncomfortable and makes an excuse and goes to the bathroom.

Day three, he's talking with Schmidt in the kitchen and she comes up to them lightly singing, "It's a love story, baby just say… yesssss." Schmidt just looks confused, but Nick stops talking mid-sentence and says he's going to do laundry.

"You know how to do laundry?" Schmidt calls to Nick, but Nick is already at his door and ignores it. Veeeeery interesting. The plot thickens for Detective Day.

By day 6 Jess is getting a little discouraged and maybe all of the weirdness is just coincidental, because she's been giving it her all and usually Nick would have exploded in a Nick rant by now. Deciding to give it one more shot, she gets him while she's helping him fix a leak high on the wall. She's holding a ladder for him so he's cornered and she starts singing, "I don't know about you, but I'm feeling thirty-twooooo!" and finally Nick just can't take it anymore. He grumbles and basically jumps off the ladder and rounds on her with his grumpy fury ablaze in his eyes.

"It's TWENTY-TWO! It's twenty-two and can you please stop singing Taylor Swift all over the place you're getting it stuck in my head and I hate it, I hate it I hate it I hate it!" This is the deepest she has ever seen Nick turtle face. It seems like the edges of his mouth are actually below his chin.

Jess just stares at him, wide-eyed and shock, and oh yeah, it was twenty-two. Crap. But he knew that. He knew he had been singing Taylor Swift songs all week.

AHA!

"So you do know I've been singing! Which means you know her music! Which means you listen to Taylor Swift!"

Nick knows he's caught and continues ranting, "I can't get it out of my head and I hate myself for listening to it but I can't help it anymore." He leaves the room again and she's left there, alone with the ladder. What is she even going to do with this ladder, she had no idea they even had a ladder let alone where they keep it.

She leaves it there for Schmidt to clean up and goes off to plot how she's going to slip Taylor Swift lyrics into causal conversations to drive Nick up a wall. Turtles are fun if you have fun with them.

Save Me was supposed to be the song that Schmidt and Nick toasted to at their ten year anniversary party. Not gonna lie, if things got really changed up down the line and they ended up marrying (for tax benefits, natch), that would definitely be their first dance.

Instead, Save Me is the background noise when he has an out of body experience that night. He's watching himself lose Cece in slow motion. Nick cheers him up in a hot air balloon and Schmidt takes a shower that night that's so hot it burns him a little while he feels himself coming open at the seams. Everything's wet so he's not positive as to whether or not he's crying, but he sings Somebody to Love to the bathroom and just doesn't care who hears it. He has a beautiful voice. They should be so lucky.

Cece should be so lucky. Damn her. She should be so lucky.

In a really weird moment in the chronicle of weird moments that Nick and Jess share is this one day that Nick comes home from the bar late. Winston and Schmidt are both out of the house all weekend, Winston for radio station travel work and Schmidt to visit his family, so Jess is in a tank top and skirt dancing around the apartment when Nick walks through the door in the middle of the night. The lights are dim but they can both clearly see each other and when they make eye contact, Jess freezes mid dance and Nick stands still. He wonders how a girl so short can have legs that long.

Jess feels really awkward, being caught dancing around the loft like she was insane, and says the first thing that pops into her head- "Come here often, sailor?"

This breaks the ice a little as Nick rolls his eyes and unfreezes. Just Jess being Jess. "What are you listening to?"

"Just a mix tape I made myself a while back that I dance to sometimes when I'm alone," she answers, turning the volume down a bit. Nick nods and throws his keys on the bar. He took a near-empty bottle of Jameson home with him and polished it off after he parked his car to help him sleep, and now he's starting to feel it. Things have been weird between him and Jess lately. He's been feeling bizarrely uncomfortable around Sam and he doesn't know why. She's been looking different in a way he can't quite put his finger on.

He feels entirely unlike himself when he asks, "Just when you're alone?" and Jess doesn't know how to respond. The song is winding down and another one is coming up when he walks up to her and stands less than a foot in front of her face. Their mouths are completely dry and he tentatively lays a hand on her hip, like she'll bolt for bed any second, or Sam will pop out from behind the fridge and be all, "what the hell man?" But Sam isn't here.

The only sound is Dancing in the Moonlight playing on the speaker and Jess reaches out for his hand that he's kinda just holding up and they start moving in time with the music.

This was always an innocent song that her dad used to play and now that she's moving along with Nick in an empty apartment at three in the morning, she hears it for the first time and she's starting to flush.

We get it almost every night, when that moon gets big and bright it's a supernatural delight.

Everybody was dancing in the moonlight.

They make eye contact for a bit but it's feeling a little too intense for both of them so she lays his head on his chest while they sway. Halfway through the song they trip and the spell is broken out of nowhere and instead of being cool and dancing with Jess, Nick realizes they're just touching and swaying and it feels so weird and he feels this weird pressure in his chest and he's staring at her lips now. He's felt like this before around her and he's never had any idea why, but it's a stronger feeling now and he literally can't rip his eyes away, and he's fairly positive that for some reason, he wants to kiss her.

He can't take it anymore. He chokes out, "Night, Jess," and walks away. She's a little annoyed that he left because the song was done but there's also something else. She didn't want him to just stay for the song. She wanted him to do more. She stays there, standing still until the song is finished.

Dancing in the Moonlight is the song he keeps hearing now when he thinks about her. When he dreams about her he hears it too, and he's never noticed that he has dreams about her until now. It freaks him out a little. In three weeks they actually kiss after a game and that freaks him out a lot, but when all is said and done, it's the song that comforts him at night.

Winston still plays the hand bells when nobody else is around. He has a small collection of them now and is pretty spectacular with him if he does say so himself. This is his little secret, except one day Nick catches him playing and it's their little secret from then on.

For Winston, Nick can stay quiet.

They take a group trip to Wal-mart at some point because Schmidt has deduced they're out of literally everything it takes to survive and while he can stop at Whole Foods for his normal person meals later on, the Cro-Magnons he lives with are entirely fine surviving off of Wheat Thins and two-ply toilet tissue. It's just easier to buy it all at one place.

Don't Stop Believin comes on and by the end of it they're all singing along (and in Jess's case, dancing out the sunroof) so Schmidt gets an idea and shifts from radio to cd player. He switches disks until they're on his Queen Greatest Hits (the fourth copy he's had to buy since getting his first Walkman when he was twelve) and soon, they're belting out Bohemian Rhapsody. Nobody even notices that Schmidt spends four minutes "looking for parking" so they get through the entire thing.

For him, it's kind of a dream come true.

Coach moves back in sometime after Cece doesn't get married because he misses living with the guys. Jess moves into Nick's room and within three days he stops freaking out about it, which makes him impressed with even himself, and nobody is going to tell Remy that five people are living here now, got it?

Jess used to have this Sunday morning ritual where she would put on Motown music and dance around and grade papers and stuff and finally leave her room at like noon feeling refreshed and accomplished and all boogey-ed down.

"DJ Nick knows the importance of music in people's lives" is what she said one time to mock him, but wouldn't you know it, he's thrown a mix cd together and the first Sunday after moving in she wakes up to The Miracles and Nick crooning You Really Got a Hold On Me. She joins in and soon they're wrapped up in each other.

When her back arches and all the air feels sucked from her mouth, they're listening to I Feel the Earth Move and the whole thing is just surreal. Nick co-completes with her and collapses onto her chest, and Jess feels like there's something there that wasn't before. She's tumbling down.

Tumbling down.

Tumbling down.

Tumbling down.