Written during early Season 2, December 2012.
Fifty in the Jar
by lostlikealice/thinkatory
So Jess is kind of into this. Kind of. She's kind of the kind of person who would be into this, because it's not like Schmidt is ugly, and Sam freaked out on her, and Schmidt has his issues right now with Cece and blah, blah, blah, the point is, someone's hands are on her boobs and that is awesome.
Even if it's Schmidt.
Oh my god it's Schmidt. It's Schmidt and his hands are on her boobs.
"Ahh," Jess cries out, and scrambles back, and Schmidt just looks at her with that sort of adorable confused look of his where he's almost indignant. She's crammed up against her headboard and hoping that this is some weird dream that will disappear if she pinches herself or what did they do in Inception? Dunk themselves in water? Kill themselves? Those don't feel like options right now.
"Is... something wrong?" Schmidt asks, and she just stares back at him, wide-eyed. "Did I tweak your nipple wrong or something?"
"Schmidt. Schmidt, we should not be doing this. This is weird and wrong."
"The best stuff always is, Jess."
"No! Don't use your sexy voice on me," she commands. "You are ... not wearing pants! Or a shirt! And I am pretty much naked!"
"You've still got panties on," Schmidt points out.
Now she's offended on principle. "Am I not naked enough for you, Schmidt?"
"I don't know what the right answer to that question is right now," he confesses.
She hits him with a pillow. "Why are we having sex?"
"Well if you want to be technical we're not - "
A pointed look shuts him up. "All right! Now why are we almost having sex?" she demands.
That gives Schmidt pause. "Because... I don't know, but I'm actually pretty horny right now, Jess, can we please just - "
"Your reason is 'I'm horny,'" she repeats.
"The more you use the sarcastic voice the less horny I get," he warns her.
She throws her hands up. "Oh! Well that's good to know!"
"Jess!" he whines.
"I want a good reason to have sex with my roommate who is my friend and who I've never ever thought about having sex with, ever, no offense," Jess argues, "and 'I'm horny' is not a good reason!"
"Being horny is the best reason to have sex with people who you can get you horny who will also let you have sex with them," Schmidt tries to explain. "How is this a hard concept?"
She hits him in the arm. "What?" he demands.
"That - that was not a funny joke."
He glances down at his erection at the same time she does, and there's a long pause. Then Schmidt puts his hand on her thigh and she almost, sort of shies away, except she doesn't, and he eases her onto the bed.
He's a good kisser, and his fingers are in her panties now and suddenly she's really stopped caring about whether or not this might be intensely weird, which it clearly still is, but now it's sexy weird. "You're a rockstar, Jess," he whispers to her as they tag-team sliding her panties off. "A weird, hot rockstar."
"Okay," she whimpers happily, and adds a genuine "Thanks, Schmidt" before he goes down on her.
She squeaks, and to his credit, he doesn't laugh. Much.
So it happened! So she slept with Schmidt, and that's okay, actually it was pretty great, even though there's the weird he-dated-Cece-and-told-her-he-loved-her thing, and also he's Schmidt, but the point is she had two whole orgasms and banged like a champ!
Yeah, that's the way to look at it. Jessica Day just had awesome, no-strings sex.
With her roommate.
Who is her best friend's ex.
"Ohhh no," she says into the bathroom mirror, and her pout deepens until she begins to panic. "No no no no no."
"Everything okay in there?" Nick calls in to the bathroom.
"Fine! It's fine!" Jess calls back, strained.
"Because if you're pregnant it's not like we won't figure it out!"
"I'm not pregnant, Nick!" Oh god, what if she's pregnant? What if she's pregnant with a mini-Schmidt? "Shut up! Go away!"
"You got your period, didn't you?"
"Nick I will punch you and everything you love!"
"I'll take that as a yes," he says.
She opens the door and glowers at him, then gives into her concern. "Eat ice cream with me."
Nick looks like he's just seen the bear trap clamp over his foot. "No."
Jess worries at him actively with her hands and her face and her eyes and everything. "Please, Nick?"
"The last time you talked me into eating ice cream with you I had to watch Clueless," he points out.
"Clueless is the greatest," she retorts.
"Why ice cream?" he cuts her off with, and doesn't even miss a beat before saying, "Why... did I ask? Why do I ask."
Jess sort of just looks at Nick for a second, opens her mouth, realizes what she's about to say and who she's about to say it to, shuts it tightly, then goes, "Yeah! Never mind! You get the ice cream, I'll get the VHS."
As she bounds away to avoid looking at him, Nick calls after her, "I'm not watching Clueless!"
Cece just has to look at Jess in her polka-dot jammies and it's like she's made of glass. "Oh my god, what did you do?"
Jess kind of wants to cry, but the situation doesn't really merit it, not really, because it's not like Schmidt took advantage of her, they sort of just tab-A slot-B'd their way through some pretty great sex and AGH, Cece's ex-boyfriend! Cece's ex-boyfriend put his tab-A into her slot-B! She's such a slot.
She buries her face into a pillow. "Nothing," she mutters into it.
"Nothing my ass." Cece sits on the bed and pats her head. "Come on. Tell Mama Cece everything."
"I didn't do anything," Jess keeps on sullenly mouthing into the pillow.
Cece sighs. "Jess?"
Okay, so she looks up. "Hi," she offers.
"You look like hell," Cece says frankly.
"I knooooow."
"Why." It's not even a question, more like a demand.
Jess takes a deep breath, lets it out, and tells the truth.
"I slept with Schmidt."
When Cece gets mad, it's kind of like a tornado touching down, and there's this awkward silence before she yells, "Are you freaking SERIOUS THOUGH?"
Jess winces. "It was a - "
"What?" Cece challenges. "What was it?"
That's a good question. She probably should've had an end to that sentence before she started saying it. "We - I think we kind of like each other," is what comes out of Jess's mouth, and that's... not right at all, but boy, it is way less embarrassing than I just kind of wanted to have sex and he was there, okay?
Cece stares at her. "You... like him."
"Yes!" She's blushing. "Now just, let us figure it out, okay?" Oh god, she's such a bad liar. Oh god, she's not into Schmidt, what is she doing? Salvage what you can, Captain, she tells herself in her best mental pirate voice, and sits up. "I should eat. Do you want a sandwich?"
The look on Cece's face and her clenched teeth give the general impression to Jess that she should go now. "Fine," she grinds out, and Jess flees ahead of her, running headlong into the kitchen without a second thought.
Nick is on the couch, Winston's reading the newspaper, and Schmidt is there, in the kitchen, right in her way.
"Hi!" she says, unable to help herself.
"Hi," he agrees, and they're just looking at each other like Oh crap, what have we wrought? and then Cece shows up, and he instantly looks at her. "Cece! Hi!"
"Hello, Schmidt," Cece says flatly, and walks to the door. "Actually, Jess, I'm going to go - "
"What? Already?" Jess asks, strained.
Schmidt sends her a questioning look that clearly says You told her, didn't you? and she just shrugs hopelessly, and then Cece just snaps.
"I cannot believe you slept with my best friend," she tells Schmidt, and advances on him, apparently abandoning her coat on the coat rack. "I can't believe what you'd stoop to to get me back - "
"Wait," Nick says, at long last interjecting and making Jess bury her face in her hands. "Wait, Schmidt slept with who?"
"I didn't tell anyone," Schmidt points out to Jess.
Nick looks simultaneously horrified and entertained. "You slept with Schmidt?"
Jess flails her hands away from her face and just panicks. "Shut up! Shut up, everyone shut up - "
"Yeah, she slept with Schmidt. Yeah, I slept with Jess. So what?" Schmidt demands of the room, with a come at me bro gesture with his hands.
"You need to put like a fifty in the jar," Nick says.
"I am not putting money in the jar just for having sex with a friend who is hot who I could totally date if we weren't you know dealing with different things," Schmidt rambles.
"Yeah! We could totally date!" Jess cuts in, liking this argument. "We're really into each other, and, stuff!"
Nick stares at the two of them and Jess wants to crawl into a hole and die. Then he turns to Winston. "They think we're stupid."
"They think we're incredibly stupid," Cece agrees shortly.
"Oh stop being so judgey," Jess protests. "All of you! You have all done really stupid things before! Why can't I ever do stupid things?"
"Jess, you do stupid things all the time," Nick points out.
"You! You are not helping! You are a black hole sucking all the helpfulness out of this room!" she declares.
Cece scoffs. "Oh, don't blame Nick just because you're a - "
"Don't say it," Jess cuts her off, warning. "Don't."
"Slut," Cece says.
"Woah, no," Nick interjects. "It's not Jess's fault. It's Schmidt's. He's trying to get back at you."
"I am not!" Schmidt protests.
"Are you?" Jess demands of him.
"No! I totally wanted to sleep with you and it wasn't about Cece at all!"
"Okay!" She looks back to the crowd, then pauses. "Winston, are you okay?"
"This?" Winston gestures between her and Schmidt. "This is not okay. This is all sorts of wrong. This is dogs humping cats sort of wrong."
Jess winces. "Winston - "
"No, really, if there's anyone here you should be screwing..." Winston starts.
"Wooooooah," Nick interrupts, and puts a manly, warning hand on his friend's shoulder. "Let's cool our jets."
"You cool your jet," Winston answers, as though it's a snappy retort.
"Wait, in this metaphor, am I a tomcat or a dog?" Schmidt feels the need to ask.
"What?" Jess asks, confused.
"Definitely the dog," Cece says, and storms out, grabbing her coat before she leaves.
Jess throws her hands up once the door shuts behind her. "Well - well great! Now I'm dating my best friend's ex and - "
Nick coughs his way through a gulp of beer he'd mistakenly taken just then, and half-shouts, "You two are dating?"
"Yes!" Schmidt says, with manly pride and a puffed up chest, and what is she supposed to do but move closer to him and put an arm around him like she agrees. "We're dating!"
"Schmidt, Jess, don't be stupid. If this is a prank, it's a really dumb one," Nick explains.
"I can confirm she does make the same sounds during orgasm as she does when she finds her purple kneesocks or whatever in the morning," Schmidt says.
"Oh my god," Jess yelps, and hits her head on the counter, once, and then again.
"Yeah, you're so not dating," Winston says to Schmidt. "If you were dating, you'd still be having sex."
"God," Nick curses at the image, pressing his face into his hands.
"I am not wrong and we both know it!"
"I'm going to my room now," Jess declares, looking up from the counter.
"To have sex with Schmidt?" Nick asks.
She wants to throw her hands in the air dramatically and go Whyyyyyy. "And what if I am?"
Schmidt looks at her, looks at the guys, and says, "You'd do it too."
"I would not," Nick says instantly, and gets a sideways look from Winston. "What? I wouldn't."
"We're not dating but no judging," Schmidt tells them, and reaches for his wallet to take out a fifty. Then he puts it in the jar.
Jess watches him go. "Schmidt!" she chides.
"Nope!" he answers succinctly, gives a honey badger don't care look to the other guys, and goes into his room.
There's dead silence for a long, long second.
"Oops?" Jess offers finally.
"I thought you had better taste," Nick says.
It's like they're in a Mexican standoff. Except it's about weirdness instead of guns. Weirdness rays coming out of their eyes and freezing the other one there. Something like that. "So did I."
"I'm going to... yeah," Winston says, stands, and grabs his coat before he leaves.
And then it's just the two of them. Wow-wow-wow, dun-dun-dun... "So!" Jess says.
"Whatever. Good to know finally," Nick says, flippant. "I was wondering when you'd get around to a yes or no."
"To what?" Jess demands.
Nick makes a face at her. "To what do you think?"
"If you can't even say it - you can't!" she accuses. "So! So! Don't blame me!"
"Who am I supposed to blame?"
Jess flails. "You! And your girlfriends! And your old man grumpy attitude which means you can never ever have fun with someone like me. It has to be like - sexy and casual and she can't like you, not as much as I do, because then you might actually have to commit!"
There's dead silence again.
"Wow," Nick says.
"Shut up," Jess retorts, going red. "I'm going out."
Nick looks skeptical. "Where?"
"Wherever I want," she says primly.
"You know, for a smart girl, you're pretty stupid," he says.
"I hate you," she tells him.
There's like a hundred feet of apartment between them and she wants to punch all of it in the face, plus things the apartment space loves.
"So bye," Nick offers, after the next stretch of silence.
Jess snatches up her wallet with the ten dollars she has to her name, and tells Nick, "Say it or don't. I'm way over this whatever. I'm done." Then, she leaves.
It'd be perfectly dramatic if she had anywhere to go after the door was closed. Diner coffee it is!