Hey guys! Thanks for all of the feedback so far. I wanted to give it a while before I wrote something that was really Jess and Nick focused so I could feel like I had a better grip on the characters, and here it is. This all takes place after the end of season two, this chapter taking place the night of the wedding.
archipelago of kisses is titled after a Jeffrey McDaniel poem of the same name (which I recommend looking up, not because it has to do with the story at all, it's just a really good poem). It's split up into more than one part because it's long. I'll probably throw a chapter or two in between parts, but for now, I hope you enjoy the beginning!
Disclaimer: I don't own New Girl or Archipelago of Kisses (the poem).
As always, feedback is more than welcome and I can feel myself becoming a better writer because of it. Thank you, always.
archipelago of kisses (i) – bury me in an avalanche of tingles
Nick peeled out of the parking lot with a hard right while Jess cried out in protest. This great wonderful thing they had started out with them going the wrong way entirely. That's the kind of detail that would turn out to be foreshadowing in sad stories. Thankfully, Nick Miller and Jessica Day were due for a happy one.
"Why would you wanna go slower?" Jess shouted, incredulous at Nick's bizarre choice of route, but laughing far more than when she normally shouted at him.
He was laughing fairly hard too, but shouting along himself so he wouldn't be outmatched, saying, "We're going to the same place! What's the big deal?"
Jess was laughing so hard she was crying. The nighttime city lights were blurring into one glorious long strip of radiance. She started speaking in her Judy Garland voice because it just seemed like the right thing to do. "The big deal, Nicholas, is that I don't remember if I locked the apartment door, and also, that I want to do things with you."
"Oh, you want to do things with me now, what kind of things are we talking here?"
Her laughter died down. "With you, to you… sideways things. Dirty horizontal dancing things. Maybe even vertical things. Are you ready, Nicholas Miller?" she asked, with a challenging eyebrow raise.
He had noticeably picked up speed since she started talking. "Alright, so I'll be taking the quick way from here then," he said, his voice coming close to cracking between quick and way, the same time she slipped her fingers over the hand he had resting on the center console.
Jess wiped the lingering tears of laughter from her eyes but the city lights were still a blur, the avenues looking as if they were infinitely long and endlessly bright. They were comfortably silent for a few minutes while their fingers gradually laced together. He steered easily, occasionally glancing down at their hands, and then to her, and back to the road with a broad smile.
"To answer your question, I went this way because it looks nice at night. With the way the lights are and all." His voice sounded foreign, even to him. Softer than usual.
Jess wasn't expecting him to break the silence, so she responded, "Hm?" in the way you do when your brain heard them but is taking a few seconds to actually understand what was said, before following up with, "Oh, okay," when she caught up. She chuckled to herself for a moment. "You're such a…" she trailed off, looking him in the eye.
"I'm such a what?" he challenged, his head jumping to conclusions like goofball or child or poor navigator.
Jess shook her head. "I don't know what you are, Nicholas." Her lips curled into a smile as she continued, "You're my favorite." He liked that answer. It made him feel warm. She raised their clasped hands to her mouth before kissing his knuckles with lips, so softly he wouldn't know if she was even doing it if he hadn't seen out of the corner of his eye. And for all the gentleness of the kiss, he could feel it, shooting up his arm.
She kept going, pressing soft kisses to two more knuckles before turning his hand over and moving down to his wrist. Her mouth was pressed to his pulse when he pulled into a parking space, and her eyes shot up at the sudden stop. She didn't move and they sat there for a second, eye contact firm, his veins thudding hard under her lips. Her head moved up ever so slightly and the light suction sound broke the silence that had enveloped them as soon as he pulled up.
His one hand felt so large in both of hers, and sudden hand-holding felt so foreign to her, like something she had never done before and had no idea how to do in the first place. She pressed the pads of her fingers to the heel of his palm, digging her nails in slightly while he released a long breath. When he finally said, "We should go upstairs," his voice sounded as hoarse as it did after he had to lift something heavy, which Jess knew from all the times she had watched him lift heavy things. She loved his voice like that. At the sound of it, she took a second to dig her fingertips in the slightest bit deeper before quickly releasing.
They were a flurry of motion, hands flying to their seatbelts to undo them and get out of the car. Jess couldn't get the lock right, which was ridiculous because it was her car, and by the time she did Nick was yanking her door open and pulling her out by the hand. They hustled to the door of the building, Jess basically skipping in her sari, and ran to the elevator which was mercifully ready for them on the first floor. They stepped inside and Nick was against a wall, furiously pulling her body towards him until every part of them was touching at once.
Dale, the night guard, had seen some hot and heavy stuff from the elevator security camera. This was nothing like that. This looked desperate, with Nick's hands being unable to decide where exactly they should go to best pull Jess into him and Jess trying to press her mouth into his so hard it looked like she was trying to go through him, like they had been the first in all humankind to discover the kiss (\ˈkis\, noun) and felt in to be their duty to make up for centuries of lost time. Frankly, Dale thought they could work on their technique.
The elevator bell dinged and neither of them noticed, absorbed in each other's faces. Nick finally cracked an eye open and saw that the door had opened and grabbed her by the shoulders and squeezed a bit. Her eyes shot open and she looked behind her, taking a step out of the elevator and dragging him with her, hand in hand. When they got to the door, she turned her back to it and started kissing his neck while he fumbled for his keys. Front right pants pocket, no, front left, no, how was he supposed to focus like this, not in the back pockets, she was still going, jacket pockets, what was he looking for again, screw it, this isn't working. Frustrated with the entire existence of locks and keys, he grabbed her by the waist and kissed her, like an elevator kiss, like the first time they kissed in the hall, but now with her back pressed against the door and her feet on their toes, struggling to push as much of her body up into him as she could.
"Give me a second here," he rasped out as he broke the kiss off, their foreheads touching. She gave a weak nod, strangely aware of the warmth his lips left on hers. He finally remembered the inner pockets of his jacket and found them there, where he had stuffed them earlier in the day. He was just so happy to have inner jacket pockets that he stuffed everything in them – phone, keys, wallet – just in case he had to pretend to be Miami Vice and whip something out like a gun.
(When he was leaving the bathroom earlier, he did exactly that to the mirror and looked totally badass, which is coincidentally when he decided he needed more jackets with pockets on the inside.)
He got the key in the lock and they both burst into the empty apartment. Schmidt was probably hiding behind a large fern or ficus somewhere or something and Winston was – wait, there was something important to remember about Winston, and now was a terrible time to do it with her sitting on the counter and kissing him furiously, wrapping her legs around him as well as the sari would allow for.
They broke from kissing just for long enough for Jess to ask, "Bedroom?", Nick to respond, "Whose?" and her to answer, "Does it matter?" followed by two smiles and another kiss. Nick carried her to his bed because they used her car earlier and in his extremely clouded mind, that was the soundest of logic for the situation. He dropped her on the suit he wore earlier in the morning that he was going to burn first thing after he woke up because the jacket had no pockets on the inside.
They were in his bed now, the both of them. She was in a gorgeous sari and he was stylin' and profilin' and wearing Schmidt and soon they were gonna be in nothing cause they were SO gonna bang. Jess smiled again against his lips at the thought. They were gonna get it oooooooonnnnn- "Wait."
Why. Why wait. Wait? Why wait why.
"There's something I wanna say, Jess," Nick whispered into her mouth. They laid parallel on his bed, faces close to touching, silence hanging heavy in the room, lights dim while they breathed in the same air. And here was Nick, choosing now of all times to share his feelings.
"Like, right now?" she asked, just to make sure.
He nodded, not moving his head. "Yeah, I think I need to say this now." Jess swallowed and nodded and waited for him to go on, but he just kept looking her in the eyes.
The suspense was killing her. "And this definitely isn't something you could've said in the car? Because the car ride took twenty minutes longer than usual, just saying."
He smiled sheepishly at that. "Oops. But, no, I need to say this now." She gave him a few more seconds while he freaked out internally in a mix of not remembering exactly what he wanted to say and not having the force to just come out and say it.
"Hold on- I want to hear what you have to say," she started, keeping her mouth inches from his, whispering her words right into his lips, "But can we just take a second to appreciate how, in this situation, I am definitely not being your cooler right now?"
He chuckled for a second. "Okay Jess, you aren't my cooler right now."
"Good. And, for this very second, you're being your own cooler?"
"Alright, alright, I'm my cooler sometimes, you win."
She smirked at his eye roll. "Good. Cause I am trying soooooo hard to get you some action."
"Look, I practiced this with Tran, okay, so just let me say it," he said now, at full volume with his frustration rising, even though she was still inches from his face. He was going to be fine. She was trying to get him some action now.
This was just Jessica Day, and everything was going to be all alright. He let out a long, calming breath at the thought.
"Jess – Jessica. You are a beautiful woman, and my life has not been the same since I met ya, and you just – you make me feel ways that I didn't think were even real. I'm Nick Miller. I bought a pair of jeans when I was 22 and I got rid of them because they ripped in the crotch when I was 27 and nowhere in those five years did I wash them and being around you makes me want to learn about art and figure out the difference between sunny side up and over easy and you're just so annoying in a way I've gotten so used to and – and I can't imagine being without."
She began to tear up as he went on and when he finished she gave him a watery smile and choked out, "Nicholas, that has to be the sweetest thing –"
"No no no no don't cry don't cry we're totally gonna get freaky now!" he said, trying to kiss her to stem the tears. She kissed him while she laughed into his mouth at his attempt to match her use of euphemisms.
She just kept laughing though, and soon he was laughing too even though he had no idea what exactly was so funny. "What is it, am I doing this wrong or something?" he asked, half-jokingly offended.
"No, no, not at all, this is all… this is all wonderful," she assured him, laying her hand on his chest. "It's just, I was picturing you saying all of this to Tran."
He laughed harder now. "Yeah, some of that was improvised. Sometimes I look at you and I can't really control what I'm saying. Still, I guess it was a pretty intense moment for me and Tran."
She went on, "Yeah, you guys just relaxing with some water meditation in the pool, and you turn to him and intimately say-"
"No! No no no," he yelled, his face grimacing, "Don't make it weird Jess, he's just like – my dad, if my dad was Asian and ever listened to me, it's just, it's, it's complicated –"
Jess just laughed lightly again, a throaty laugh that seemed to remind the both of them that they were lying next to each other on his bed. "Oh you," she said, a lazy smile matched with heavy-lidded half-closed eyes, "Come here." She pulled him the requisite two inches it took to get him into a kiss. Things were getting hubba-hubba hot 'n' heavy until, of course, Nick interrupted the action again.
"Wait, wait –" But Jess was not having it.
"What now, Nick, what is it now, please tell me this can just wait because I don't think you really grasp just how much underwear I'm not wearing at this very moment –"
Nick's eyes just got a little wide from surprise at her outburst. "I just wanted to ask if I could put on Cotton-Eyed Joe."
He laughed while her nostrils flared and her eyes went a little wider in rage (how could they even get any bigger?). Before she could respond, he kissed her again and rolled away, pulling her on top of him. She seemed a lot less angry at that and kissed him back, forgiving him for his little joke. As it would turn out, that would be the last (coherent) thought he would vocalize that night.
They laid there for a long while, wrapped up in each other, discovering the kiss. \ˈkis\, noun, something with lips. \ˈkis\, noun, something with lips and pressing and need. And hands. Hands everywhere, hands to pull close and to keep hold so the kiss can grab root and grow. Nick, and Jess, the flowers from this kiss, blossoming into fruits like passion and desire, fruits like happiness, and love, maybe even fruits like marriage, fruits like…
Like family.