So thank you for the lovely reviews ^-^ I know I haven't been putting quite enough interaction in these fics, but I'm finding it hard to compete with some of the content the other writers have been putting in. This one, hopefully, should suffice. I've added a lot less romance into this one, so I could fit in more dialogue between the three guys. I also always found it cute when guys nurse girls when they're sick. I don't know why, but I just think it's adorable.

Okay, onto chapter 4.

Disclaimer: I don't own New Girl, the characters or the storyline. But if I did I'd be the happiest girl on earth (:


The next day started off as usual. Winston was still asleep from his long night of moping over Shelby. Schmidt was being, well, Schmidt, and was complaining about how he had to get over Cece the hard way, without lying in bed all morning, and Nick was sitting at the kitchen island with a cup of coffee.

"Wow Schmidt, you're a real hero. Now could ya shut up I'm tryna hear the scores." He pointed at the TV, which had recently gone lopsided again.

"Where the hell is Jess?" Schmidt groaned, taking Nick's now empty cup and putting it into the dishwasher. "She was in charge of the chores this morning."

"Maybe she saw that apron and got creeped out. Really Schmidt, I mean isn't it bad enough we have to face your half naked body every time you get out of the shower without you putting it on an apron?"

"You may be a chubby, old man dude, but I, a handsome young Adonis, want to embrace these abs of steel. If you were this built you'd understand." He gestured at his biceps, smiling proudly.

"Jar!" A sleepy looking Winston yelled as he walked limply into the kitchen. He grabbed the box of cornflakes from the shelf and narrowed his eyes. The clock read 11:49am.

"Where's Jess? Doesn't she have work?"

The guys exchanged looks, with Nick holding back on answering with something dumb. He remembered the day before and how Jess had reacted to it. Had he scared her into locking herself into her room? No. She was probably just extra tired. She had been up late that night, grading her students' papers.

"You wanna go check on her, Nick?"

"Why me?"

"You're good at getting around women, especially Jess. She never listens to us. It's like you have some kind of power over her, man."

Schmidt smirked, raising an eyebrow. "You think? I mean he did sock her in the face just last month."

"It was reflexes."

"You were scared bro, admit it."

Nick made his turtle face, raising both hands in order to defend his masculinity.

"I don't have to take this from you clowns. I'm gonna go get Jess."

"Be careful you don't accidently break her jaw!"

"Whatever."


Jess was curled up in bed, hugging the pillow underneath her head. Her throat was burning and she felt absolutely drained. Her hair was a tousled mess and she felt as though she was going to be sick at any given moment. The most sleep she'd gotten that night was when she'd resorted to taking some of Schmidt's 'mystery oil' which was really just a lavender and rose water solution taken with warm milk. It hurt to move in any way and she was stiff from being in one position for the last three hours. The most she could have done in that time was pray that one of the guys noticed she wasn't up and would come for her, which luckily, they did. Eventually.

"Jess, hey you okay in there?"

He hadn't expected a response, assuming she was still just asleep, but heard a very faint moan of discomfort come from the other side of the door. He turned the handle and scanned the room for a worn down looking Jess. Tucked under her blanket, she looked like a sleepy kitten, just very pale and with red-rimmed eyes, Nick prayed weren't from crying.

"Jess, are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm doin' just freaking dandy." Her voice sounded raw and raspy from where he was.

"You sound awful. You need me to get you an aspirin? Or something to drink?"

Jess slowly lifted her head from her pillow, revealing what a mess she was. Would she ever be able to wake up feeling well this week?

"Nick." She paused, biting her lip. "Can we talk about last night?"

"Are you crazy Jess? You're as sick as a dog."

"I'm fine."

"To hell you're fine. I'm callin' your boss and telling them you're not coming in today."

"No Nick, I can do that on my own. Anyway, I'll be fine. I just need to freshen up, have a hot shower, do my hair and I'll be-"

She stopped. A sudden bout of nausea swept over her, causing Nick to pull out the drawer from her bedside table in a fluster of panic, which thankfully, was empty.

Once she'd emptied the contents of her stomach, she laid back down on her bed, covering her face with her hands.

"Schmidt!" he shouted out Jess' door. "Bring in some water and an aspirin."

"Did she get it on the carpet, because she'll be cleaning that up herself!"
Nick rolled his eyes. And he was the unsympathetic one?

"Ah, shut up, Schmidt."

He turned his attention back to Jess, who'd started to allow tears to fall from her eyes. Vomiting had made the pain in her throat worse.

"Jess." he sighed, planting himself down beside her. "Is it that bad?" Even when she was on her 'menzies' she'd never been this upset. He placed a hand on her head, cringing at how hot she was.

"You need to see a doctor."

"I'm okay Nick, I swear. I probably just ate a bad sushi roll or something."

"You touched Schmidt's sushi?"

"She what?!"

In came Schmidt, who shook his head grudgingly at the smell. The one Nick hadn't noticed until now. He handed Nick the water and popped an aspirin from the pack.

"You're the closest room to the bathroom Jess. You really need to work on containing it til you get there. We have to live in this loft too. And my sushi is off the chain. If anything made her sick, it's the build up of dust in here. Air borne viruses, very dangerous, look it up."

"Get out!" Nick protested, assisting his roommate in re-hydrating herself.

"If he cared so much he'd have put emergency bowls and air fresheners in our rooms." He joked, attempting to restore some of Jess' usual optimistic attitude. This time though, all she offered him was a bleak grin.

"Nick, the kiss."

"Sssh, Jess. We don't have to talk about it right now. Just get your rest and I'll call up one of Schmidt's doctors." He ran his fingers lightly through her hair, relaxing her into a light sleepiness.

"Thanks Nick." She smiled, eyes fixated on her suddenly empathetic roommate.

"And you're not going to work either." He turned to walk out of her room, patting her gently on the shoulder before doing so.

"Yes dad." She muffled, huddling back under her blanket.

Yep, he'd definitely turned into a softie.


"Hey Schmidt, you got that number for the weird doctor you took me to in college?"

"Oh, so now you need my contacts. What about all the 'Schmidt, your books are bulking up the shelves' and the 'Schmidt, no sane man needs that many numbers' Comments. "

Nick pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Just give me the damn number ya goofball."

Schmidt pursed his lips and retrieved a red notebook from the top of the bookshelf. "Put it back immediately when you're done with it. It's got all the essential information of the eighty-three women I've slept with in the past five years, so as not to run into difficulty. TrĂªs valuable"

"Ten bucks, jar."

He frowned, took a twenty from his pocket and stuffed it into the already full douche-bag jar.

"Keep the change."


"Jess, come on, you almost ready?"

"Almost!"

She appeared out of her room dressed in a red turtle-neck, plaid skirt and sheer black tights. Her hair had been thrown back and she hadn't bothered to brush out her bangs. It was the first time she'd worn make-up leaving the house, which Nick never really understood about her, because even without make-up, she was twice as beautiful.

"Okay, let's go. Are you sure you're warm enough?"

"Nick, If I were any warmer I'd be on fire."

"Just makin' sure. You have your emergency basin?"

"Yeah" she replied, holding up the white plastic basin to him. "All set."

"Awesome. I'll see you guys later!" He acknowledged Schmidt and Winston, who'd been spending an unhealthy amount of time on the couch. As he opened the door, he felt Jess grasp his wrist and pull him back. She chewed on her lower lip. To Nick, it was one of her cutest traits, and the one that told him she was nervous. Had the guys not been in the room, he would have wrapped her up in his arms and kissed her once again.

"What is it Jess?"

"Um. When we get there, would you mind maybe explaining this whole thing to the doctor for me. I haven't been since I was fifteen and my mom always did the talking for me."

Nick smiled at her. At heart, the quirky, confident, happy Jess, was still a child in her own little ways. It was a mystery as to how she became a teacher in the first place with her mini attacks of shyness. Then again, it was usually around men she didn't know all too well or wasn't attracted to that they happened to her.

"No problem, come on." He placed his arm around her lower back and escorted her out of the door.

"Thanks Nick." She let out a little cough and rested her head on his shoulder as they walked to the elevator. "I really love you sometimes."


"Well Miss Day, it looks like glandular fever." Jess closed her mouth as the doctor withdrew his, whatever medical tool he'd used in there. "Glandular fever? How?"

Nick sat on the chair beside her, massaging her arm. She'd been sick twice since they'd got there, so that basin definitely came in handy.

"It can be passed on by coming into contact with the saliva of someone who is currently infected with the condition. As may occur when kissing, hence its other name - the kissing disease, via coughs and sneezes and when sharing cutlery and crockery, such as cups, plates and spoons."

Jess looked at Nick, horrified. "Do you think you may have come into contact with someone contracting the disease in the last seventy-two hours Miss. Day?" She shook her head, not wanting to believe that someone as careful as Nick could have given her such an awful illness. "No sir, but we live with two other guys." The doctor smiled, looking at both of them. "Well, it is vital that you're honest with me or we can't carry out the correct treatment on you, or the person you may have contracted it from.." This time, he was addressing Nick. "Miss. Day do you think you could step outside for a moment."

The two shared glances. Taking Nick's hand, she squeezed it tightly in hers. "It's not your fault Nick. Just do whatever the doctor tells you." She wrapped her free hand loosely around her throat, wincing at the pain she was getting from every word. She freed her grasp from him and smoothed out her skirt, before walking out of the door.

How could this have happened? Nick? Surely he'd have known he had the 'kissing disease'. No, it was definitely that night when she accidently took Cece's drink instead of her own when they were at the bar last Saturday. That had to have been it. She felt tears spring to her eyes as she watched the door. The sea-green seats were rubbery and constantly made a squeaking noise if she dared move. Nick could so easily be scolded, just for kissing, by that insane doctor with ornaments of stone mice littering his desk. An innocent human reaction to when you like someone. The time she had out in the waiting room, which was equivalent to that of a ghost town, gave her some time to ponder about the kiss. Possibly one of the nicest moments of her time in the loft. Apart from the time the guys and Cece woke up an entire neighbourhood at 2am to turn on their lights on Christmas Eve. She knew she'd always felt something for Nick. Something Schmidt had made clear was never to happen. Something that would throw the roommate dynamic completely out of whack. But she could never quite describe it. It wasn't like with Russell or Sam. This was different. A kind of warm, excited feeling whenever she saw him, but at the same time wanted to hit him across the head with a newspaper. He knew how to annoy her, and make her go to mush all at once. It was the kind of passion she'd never experienced with Russell, which had caused their relationship to crash and burn. Even if he had given her this disease, that forced her to be sick every ten minutes and caused her to burn up under a cold shower, she'd forgive him. Let's face it, if she could get over him peeing on all her pretty dresses, she could forgive him for this.


The ride home was tense. Nick didn't make eye contact with Jess the entire way, and had turned up the radio to an unusually high level. Every few minutes, Jess would go to say something to him, to reassure him that it was fine and the doctor had said it would only last a week or two. Or three. But she never did. Nick was known to be a person who experienced guilt a lot more than he should. Something that the majority of the time never shone through. At least not until now.

"So." she said, as melodiously as possible. "Glaaaandular fever. We're the fever buddies." She nudged him, putting on a smile that looked plastered on, badly.

"Yeah Jess. Fever buddies." he unenthusiasticly threw his fist in the air, not taking his eyes off the road to meet hers.

Jess frowned. "Nick this isn't your-"

"Yes it is Jess." He interrupted. "You're sick and it's all 'cause I'm an idiot who never considers his God Damn actions before he does them."

"But-"

"There's no buts, Jess. We're gonna go to the pharmacy, get you your antibiotics and get you home, back to bed. I'm sorry, Jess. I'm an idiot, I should've known better."

"Known what? Nick, you didn't even know you had it, why are you blaming yourself?" She had begun to raise her voice before a shoot of burning pain scratched across it and she began to massage it again. "Yeah, great, I'm stuck with this for another month, along with the red devil in my belly. But can't you consider for just one minute that maybe, just maybe, I enjoyed getting that disease, if it meant getting to kiss you?" She halted, realising what she'd just said. She'd suddenly gained an interest in a strand of hair that'd fallen loose while they were in the doctor's office.

"You enjoyed it?" He brought the car to a stop on the sidewalk, almost hitting two teenagers who'd clearly been enjoying their gossip before being rudely intruded upon. "You're not mad?"

"Hell yeah I'm mad!"

"Wait what?" He looked deeply into her eyes. Those big blue saucers she kept all her emotions in, and let out at moments like these.

"Why didn't we talk about the kiss, Nick? Why can't we just talk about it now. Because right now, I think we kind of have to." Her bottom lip began to quiver. How did he do so much, but so little to her all the time?

"Okay Jess, you wanna talk about the kiss, let's talk about the damn kiss."

"Good!"

"I care about you Jess. I always have, I always will. I kissed you because it felt right. It felt right at the time and it felt right pretty much all night that night. Hell, I'm still kinda ridin' a high from it. That night we thought I had cancer, I wanted to kiss you so badly. I wanted to let you know how I felt about you. I wanted you to feel the same, so that if I did die, at least I'd die a happy man, and not the grumpy guy Caroline turned me into." He closed his eyes and contemplated how to put the next few words. Jess was now in the middle of one of her happy/sad crying sessions where she would smile, and then frown and look at her feet. "I love you Jess."

She looked up at him, teary eyed and flustered. Through his expression, she could tell part of him felt relieved. She delved forward and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her head into his shoulder.

"I love you too, Nicholas."


To be continued...

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