By the time Nick got back to the loft he was hurting with muscles he'd forgotten his body even possessed, and his hand trembled slightly as he tried to fit his key in the door. The batting cages had at least served the purpose of exhausting him, he reflected. Bone weary in body and mind, he only wanted to get a cold beer and a badly needed shower, before collapsing in bed. Maybe his sleep would at least be dreamless that night.

But his shaky fumbling at the lock was cut short by Jess snatching the door open for him, and for some reason, as beaten-down as he was feeling, something in his spirit immediately turned up at the edges.

Which really made no sense, because she was pissed.

PIIIIIIIIIIISSED.

More pissed than he'd ever seen her.

Her fists were on her flannel-clad hips, she looked suspiciously like she might have been crying, and her hair was hanging loose and flying around her in a crazy aura of ire. The phrase "madder than a wet hen" popped into his head, and it's aptness nearly made him smile. But he didn't. The last thing he wanted to do was make her MORE pissed.

Because she was really pissed.

"NICK MILLER, where the HELL have you been?"

Pissed enough to cuss, and Jess never cussed.

"I had some stuff I needed to think about and..."

"I WAS WORRIED SICK ABOUT YOU! I was afraid you'd gone down to talk to Remy, and I couldn't get Winston or Schmidt to take me seriously, and you wouldn't answer me, and..."

"Hey, HEY!" Nick said gently, grabbing her by the shoulders. A few tears did escape the corners of her irate eyes, but she dashed them away angrily, so he lowered his hands and acted like he didn't see them. "You didn't go down there, did you?"

"Down where?"

"Remy's basement!"

"NOOOO," she wailed forlornly, and angrily, and rather desperately, "YOU TOLD ME NOT TOOOOOO!"

He hid another little smile at that, and started to lie, "I'm sorry, I still haven't figured out my new phone, and..."

"Don't you DARE hand me that kind of line, Miller!" She was poking him hard in the chest now, and it kinda hurt. "You were ignoring me all night and you know it!"

"Okay...well...Jess...I just...I was just blowing off some steam. Had a lot on my mind."

"Oh, BLOWING OFF STEAM," she waved her hands around as she ranted sarcastically, "Is that what we're calling it now?!"

But then she suddenly stilled, seeming to realize for the first time that he did not, in fact, reek of alcohol. He watched her continue to eye him assessively, taking note of the fact that, other than being pretty sweaty, slightly gritty, and very tired, he appeared to be all in one piece. And a little of the anger seemed to drain out of her, her shoulders visibly relaxing as she lost her head of steam and fumbled verbally, "Ok...well...but don't DO that to me again, ok?!"

Funny how the very fact that she was so upset had somehow, perversely, cheered him up. He felt so much better, in fact, that he couldn't resist poking a little fun at her: "What happened to not caring so much about me anymore, Jessica?!"

"OHHH," her temper flared again, and she stomped a muted stomp with a slippered foot before throwing up her hands, turning on her heel, and heading towards her room, "GO TO HELL, Nick."

He almost had time to regret the impulsiveness of his gentle teasing before she stopped short and merely stood with her back to him for several seconds. And then her head dropped, her shoulders drooped, and she did an about-face. Her wild hair hung forward and almost hid her pout as she shuffle-marched back over to him and merely leaned against him for a second or two, straight-armed, like a recalcitrant child begging to be hugged.

And then suddenly her last vestiges of stubbornness melted away as she laid her head on his chest, and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, whispering in that little-girl voice that he always found so irresistible, "I don't want to fight with you anymore."

For a few seconds his hands just hovered around her back and shoulders, not knowing what to do or where to rest. But then they finally seemed to move of their own volition, and when they did, they unerringly wrapped her up, suddenly seeming to know exactly how best to mold themselves around her angles and curves.

"I don't want to fight with you anymore either, baby girl" he murmured huskily, ignoring the fact that technically, he wasn't the one who had been doing the fighting. Debating that point seemed a little trivial in light of the fact that his cheek was now unhesitatingly finding its home on the top of her head.

"I promise I'll try...I'll try...not to worry about you. Much." Her whisper came back muffled, and he could feel her hot, moist breath through his shirt where her messy head was buried in his chest. But he was more focused on what she wasn't saying, but what he could hear in her voice: the awareness that Something Not Good was going on with him. Something Worth Worrying About. And feeling SEEN (by HER) that way did more to loosen the tight screw of tension that had been twisting in his head than the entire night at the batting cage had.

He smiled grimly and resisted the urge to move his mouth the scant inch it would take to press a kiss into her hair. "Someone needs to worry about me," he confessed.

"Ok...well...just don't do something like that again..." she repeated herself aimlessly.

"I'm sorry, Jess. That I didn't answer my phone. I was just in a bad head-space."

"Ok...well...OK..." She'd pulled away from him, and was punching him in the stomach with soft and awkward hits that barely landed.

He slid his hands down her arms and grabbed those tiny, balled, embarrassed fists and raised them, leaning forward and forcing her to look him in the eyes for the first time.

And as her uneasy gaze skittered away from his and back again, he found that there was so much he wanted to say to her that there was no way he could even begin to say any of it. So he just took in her beautiful, red, swollen, slightly snotty nose, and those gorgeous blood-shot eyes with their wet and tangled lashes, and told her with a little smile, "You look like crap."

And she punched him in the chest for kinda realz this time, laughing a little at her own misery while hiccuping defensively, "It's all your fault!" But in the next second she was slipping away from him, more sure of herself now, a little of her customary sass and frass back in place as she sashayed off to bed. "By the way Nicholas, I don't know what you've been doing, but you smell like an old dirty-gym-socks-wearing goat."

He took a whiff of an underarm, and had to turtle-face in agreement with her. Then it occurred to him that there he'd been, holding her in his arms, the girl (literally) of his dreams...and he hadn't had a single sexual thought about it at all.

He'd been too busy thinking about how right it had felt, and about how somehow that tiny little wisp of a girl always had the ability to beat his demons into submission, and about how her arms around him had made him feel braver and stronger than he could remember feeling in a long, long time.

Heck, he realized, past the chastest of impulses he hadn't even had the urge to kiss her while he almost certainly (he knew intuitively) could have.

You really are a Nancy Boy aren't you, Miller, he sniffed at himself.

But somehow, as he headed off to clean up, he couldn't be too mad at himself about it.

In fact, in a rather spectacular change of mood...a pendulum that had been on the up-swing ever since Jess had yanked open the door and cussed him out...he now found himself unable to keep a silly little smile off his face. He'd forgotten all about that beer he was supposed to have, and even found himself having to resist the urge to start singing, as he turned the knobs in the shower.

He reflected on these surreal matters thoughtfully as he stood there waiting for the temperature to get just right before jumping in, and contemplated that maybe he really was losing his sanity.

But then again, maybe...just maybe...he was on his way to finally finding it.