Schmidt stood outside a pile of rubble, pounding his fists on it and screaming. Not a single noise was coming out as he screamed and he could feel panic bubbling up inside him. A strong wind plucked at his clothes and tried to push him back. He couldn't get a grip on a single stone. His hands slipped off as though the rocks were made out of glass.

He screamed and screamed for his friends, Nick and Jess, but he couldn't get any noise to come out of his mouth. He kept on screaming, pushing harder until he could feel his throat grow raw.

He looked at the stones and realized that he couldn't grip them because they were coated in slick layers of blood. His hands were covered in it.

He tried to wipe his hands clean on his shirt, but he couldn't. His whole body was coated in blood. It made his eyes sting and dripped into his mouth, leaving a warm metallic tang on his tongue.

He tried to run away, but his feet were locked in place, not budging even a millimeter as he pulled with all his might. As he screamed, the rocks grew veins and the blood gushed towards him in an unctuous wave. Finally his screams came out as a sound and he crashed into darkness.

Schmidt took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and saw that he was in CeCe's bedroom. He was absolutely drenched in cold sweat and sat bolt upright, the ghosts of images haunting him from the dream he had just had.

CeCe stroked his back tiredly. "You were having that same dream again," she told him.

"I'm sorry I woke you," he said quickly, pulling his hand roughly across his face to make himself feel more connected to reality.

"I understand, Schmidt."

That was all she needed to say to make him feel a little better. He laid back down and stared at the ceiling. The nightmare had grown. The first night after the accident, it had been Nick and Jess trapped behind an impenetrable wall. As time had gone on, it had become a bigger wall, with sharper stones sticking out of it. Now, this scene had developed.

Schmidt had decided that the only way to move on from it was to go see the apartment and face his demons. He had thought that being able to get into the place where his friends had been trapped and very nearly killed would prove to whatever it was inside him that they were safe and it was just a pile of bricks.

He couldn't have been more wrong. He had seen the puddle of blood where Nick had been and it had made the nightmare so much worse than it had been. He didn't want to talk to Jess or Nick about it as they had enough to deal with, but almost losing them had taken its toll on him.

He turned over and snuggled into CeCe, trying to lull himself back to sleep.

Jess unpacked her clothes with a flourish, happily putting them in the hotel's rather spartan wardrobe. She put a few trinkets around the room and smiled, feeling a little bit more at home. Nick smiled over at her.

"Should we talk about earlier?" Jess asked, quietly, her smile dulling down a notch.

"I guess we should," Nick replied in the dullest, flattest voice that Jess had ever heard.

"We survived," she said slowly. "By some miracle, from the looks of it."

"Yeah," Nick said incredibly softly. "It's the kind of thing you see in the movies or on TV. That's not our place."

"It certainly doesn't feel like home anymore, huh?"

"I don't know, I guess if we were going to be in a situation like that, at least it was somewhere we know."

"I guess," Jess muttered. She needed to be near Nick. She had a sudden wave of remembrance of the hollow loneliness that she had felt that night. She sat next to him on the bed, as close as she could possibly get to him without crawling on his lap, and snuggled under his arm. His warmth comforted her.

Nick saw Jess's eyes darken and knew she'd flitted back. It had been so much harder on her because she had lived every second of it and he had just dipped in and out, senses and emotions dulled by his lack of clarity. He felt oddly lucky.

He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. Jess looked up at his face as he pulled back and her eyes roved across his scruffy stubble and up to his deep brown eyes. Nick locked eyes with her, feeling his face crinkle into a small smile. Jess matched it, her bright blue eyes lighting up as she saw his smile reach his eyes.

Nick brought his hand up to her cheek and cupped it gently, stroking the soft peachy skin on her cheekbone. They sat that way for what seemed like hours, completely comfortable in the silence. Nick put his forehead to hers. They were so close that they could feel each others' breath playing on their skin.

A shiver of anticipation ran down Jess's spine. Nick felt her shudder and grinned lightly. He bridged the last few centimeters between them slowly and steadily, bringing his lips softly to hers. They both closed their eyes and parted their lips, reveling in the familiar warmth of each others' touch. Jess's toes went a little numb and her chest constricted as she saw stars in the darkness.

Nick poured every ounce of gratitude and love that he felt for the woman in his arms into the embrace. He buried his hand in her hair and pulled her in close to him. As they parted, Nick breathed in a deep lungful of her flowery, womanly scent and he barely suppressed a gasp.

They opened their eyes, immediately locking on to each others' smiling gaze. They relaxed into the bed, Nick's arm tightly hugging Jess beside him.

After a few minutes of silence, Nick felt a warm tear splash on his arm. He quickly pulled back to look at Jess, whose face had crumpled. Tears coursed down her face, eerily silent.

"Hey, what's wrong, Jess?" Nick asked in a quietly soothing voice.

She just shook her head in response and covered her eyes with her hands. She brought her knees up to her chest, trying to make herself as tiny as possible.

"Come on, sweetheart," he implored. "Get it out. You'll feel better, I promise."

Jess looked up at Nick, giving him a stark stare straight in his eyes. She looked as though she was trying to work out if he meant that.

"I just..." she trailed off, floundering for the words she wanted. He gave her a squeeze of reassurance. "I just remember how lost and alone I felt. I keep trying to push it away, but every time I do it pops back, even worse than the last time."

"You don't have to feel like that again," Nick told her with a quiet authority. "I'm here and going nowhere for as long as you want me. We're in this together now, in each others' hearts. You're not alone, Jess."

Jess's eyes remained fixed on his. Old Nick would never had said these things to her or anyone else, but new Nick was something else. She knew that he had feelings buried way down deep, but now they were right at the surface. Although, she mused, her feelings were as close to the surface as they could be and were spilling out all over. Perhaps his feelings finding a voice would be temporary.

Nick could see that his words were filtering through. The back part of his brain, the bit that tickled when you thought really hard, was where his feelings usually lived. They were squashed and ignored, put away where they couldn't hurt him. But being buried and then feeling his life draining away from him had given him a moment of absolute clarity.

He always knew he loved Jess and was mostly happy to be friends who drove each other nuts and sometimes were incredibly attracted to each other. However, knowing that she wouldn't give up on him and would fight with absolutely everything that she had to keep him galvanized him into showing his feelings and taking a leap with her. The risk of getting hurt emotionally somehow didn't matter to him anymore.

"I've been having nightmares," Jess whispered, dropping her eyes from his face.

"I'd honestly be surprised if you didn't, Jess," Nick said softly and warmly. "You went through a lot that day. It's a wonder you've come out of it as right as you are."

The acknowledgement that it was ok to feel how she did, said so matter-of-factly, made Jess's eyebrows rise towards her hairline. She had thought that she should push her feelings away and had been forcing them to the back of her mind rather severely. Nick sensed that she needed him to say a little more.

"While you were in the situation, you put all your feelings in a box, Jess," he explained. "You needed to so that you could get through it. It's a coping mechanism. But the thing about doing that is you need to come back and open the box up otherwise it starts spilling out when you don't expect it."

"H-how do you know all of that?" Jess asked, her forehead wrinkled in confusion.

"I'm a barman," he told her simply. "I've seen people do it both ways and I can tell ya, if you don't take everything out of the box it can screw you up completely." He took Jess's chin gently between his thumb and forefinger and pulled her face up so that her eyes were level with his. "I can't let you screw yourself up, so I'm here to help you let it out."

Nick felt her chin quake beneath his touch and saw the tears spill down her cheeks unfettered. He pulled her on to his lap, balancing most of her weight on his good leg, squeezing her in as tight as he could, letting his presence comfort her as much as he could.

Jess murmured, letting her fears spill out of her. Nick gave as many reassurances as he could, for all of the questions and worries that were coherent. He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead, wiping her tears away with his fingers.

Gradually her tears subsided and she took deep shaky breaths. She took herself off his lap and walked to the bathroom, blowing her nose with a loud trumpet that seemed at odds with how serious the atmosphere was in the room. She came back in and met Nick's worried gaze.

Jess looked somehow lighter for having let some of her fear and anguish out. She felt as though she was a little bit healed somehow. She didn't have the shadow of frightening emotions lurking behind her. For the first time since the explosion happened, she felt hopeful that everything was actually going to be ok.