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Nick Miller was never good with being cornered.

Almost everyone outside chanting knew that about him. Jess, by now, knew that about him. And yet there he was, with everyone insisting on him doing something that he really did not want to do, for reasons he had no inclination to think hard about. Thinking too deeply about things, after all, was also firmly in the things he avoided at all costs. Keep it simple. Old Nick liked it that way, and the coat could really only pull him so far away from that.

The coat was amazing, but not that amazing.

"Okay, let's just do this already. Just kiss me," Jess said, now getting a lot more demanding and impatient. It was the kind of tone that made him want to shrink away from this even more.

"No, I'm not going to kiss you," he insisted. Stand his ground, that's something Trench-coat Nick would do. He liked that. Now if he could just ignore the twisting in his stomach that came with the idea of their first kiss being forced and awkward, he'd be set here.

"Kiss me!" she shot back, and he was all too familiar with the look he was receiving. It was a look she only got when she wasn't going to stop pushing, and she had to. She absolutely had to.

"Jess, stop," he said, and it came out more pleading than he meant it to. How weird it all felt was enough to mess with him, and he didn't like it. In fact, it was the kind of thing he would've retreated from a long time ago, except he was stuck here and she was not budging even an inch.

"God, Miller, just kiss me already!"

She wasn't going to stop. It was as infuriating as it was serving a reminder of exactly why he was so against this. With all of his usual available options to escape the situation, it was really only a matter of time before he did something incredibly stupid. He didn't actually consciously think about what that might be until it slipped out of his mouth.

"No, not like this."

It took him a beat or two to realize that a, he had been thinking that at all (and he had been, apparently, the phrase repeating over and over in the back of his head, just quiet enough for him to completely ignore it) and b, he had said it out loud. Actually, b wasn't even a thing until he realized the 'I am going to be a pain in your ass' look was gone and replaced by something else.

Something more terrifying. Something that showed she had rewound what he had just said and was digesting it and probably making it into something that it wasn't. Or was. He didn't know, and he sure as hell didn't want to know. He cleared his throat, but the lump that was quickly forming in his throat wouldn't go away.

"Th - that -" he stammered, feeling the panic start setting in. No, he was not having this conversation here or ever and wow, when did it get so suffocatingly warm around them?

"What? What does that mean?" she prompted. Of course she wasn't going to let it go. He had no idea why he'd briefly hoped she'd just drop it.

"No, I didn't -" he continued, trying desperately to come up with something on the fly to explain himself. It wasn't helping she was still giving him the look and he wished she'd stop. It also wasn't helping the alcohol he'd drank was more than enough to make him fuzzy-headed to begin with. "- That - nothing! I just, I didn't mean it like - I just, we can't like that because, that's not - do you know like - It's very like, you don't, that's not what I..."

Digging himself into a deeper hole. Every word he was saying was making it worst. Every word he was saying made him realize everything he was saying was complete bullshit, and that only served to freak him out more. Outside, he could hear the faint chanting continue, and it was in that moment he saw only one option in front of him.

Literally in front of him. The door was shut tight, sure, but the window? No one could stop him from going out the window. It was insane, he knew it was insane, but there was only two options and one of them was something he refused to think about. There was only so far you could push him before he snapped, and there was definite snapping going on.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, brushing past her with the stride of a man on a crazy, crazy mission. He could heard Jess protesting behind him, and he could even hear himself replying, though all he could focus on at that point was freedom. If freedom meant a window ledge, so be it. Putting aside the melon head version of himself, he got to work without a second thought.

"Okay, this makes sense," he said more to himself than anyone else, and he swore he almost laughed as he unlatched the window and started to step outside. It would totally be fine, absolutely fine, even as he had to unsteadily lean over to fit out through it and step out onto the ledge.

He was completely fine.

It was exactly what he needed, air. Beautiful, wonderful air, which he really hadn't been getting a few seconds ago.

The good feeling lasted all of maybe five seconds, with everything that had been causing him stress far away. Then he looked down, and remembered just how high a couple stories up actually was. Pretty high, terrifyingly high, as it turned out. His legs felt like jelly for a whole new reason as he turned around and pressed his body against the glass instead. shuffling along the edge toward the other window.

"Help! Help me!" he yelled as loud as humanly possible as he kept shuffling over. The chanting came to a quick halt. He couldn't really see inside, so he kept yelling, "I made a very bad mistake! Somebody open this window!"

The yelling that replaced the chanting was enough of an indication he got their attention. He had no idea who swung the window open, but he didn't care. What he cared about was getting inside, and he unsteadily shuffled (which, for the record? A whole lot harder when he was only in his socks) close enough to grasp the edge, pulling himself inside. He only opened his eyes when his feet were firmly on the not-ledge ground.

Except when he opened his eyes, everyone was gone.

And the apartment was gone, because the room he was in was definitely not anything in their apartment.

And it was suddenly really, really dark.

And there was something rubbing against his legs.

That last one was the first thing that snapped him out of his shock. His reaction was immediately to jump away, which only served to make him stumble into something and fall backwards, landing hard on his ass. He heard something scamper away from him as he looked around, trying to spot anything familiar. Even in the dark, he could tell he wasn't going to be successful in that.

Did he somehow enter a neighbor's place? No, that was stupid. Did he finally get thrown off the deep end and was hallucinating? It was worrying how possible that might be, given the circumstances.

"Hello?" he finally called out, trying not to sound freaked out. He absolutely sounded freaked out.

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"I mean, we're actually in a city called Darrow, which I know sounds super Dickensian, but it isn't. It's actually a pretty boring city that people just end up in without meaning to and no one knows how to leave. Also, I hear there might be vampires, but that could just be a rumor. Mostly, all I've encountered is cats, which you can clearly see."

She gestures to all the cats in the room with a dramatic flourish, not unlike something a magician's assistant might do. The cats, of course, don't take much notice, and continue to investigate Nick as best they can.

And besides the not leaving and the hypothetical vampires, there's also a fortune teller machine that Jess suspects is kind of a jerk.

"And yes, I have seen the pockets. They're perfect for hiding tampons in, in case of emergency."

"It sounds super crazy," he deadpanned, though he was glancing out the window warily at that point. It really didn't look anything like where they were from. There was a draft that wasn't normal coming from the window, too. As much as he wanted to continue to think she was really drunk (and he was really going insane), the evidence was stacking up.

That panic that sort of subsided from the shock of ending up in this place was quickly coming back.

"Okay, let's say I believe you. You're acting like you've been here for a while. I just saw you," he said, eyeing one of the closer cats. He was pretty sure it was planning something and he didn't like it. "I mean, I'm talking not even five minutes ago."

It was dangerous bringing that up, but at least he had the time while his life flashed before his eyes on that ledge to come up with a plausible response to what he said. Even her crazy explanation wasn't adding up, and that was a problem.

"No, Sergeant Pepper! Don't!" Jess shouts at the cat nearest Nick, a little black one who seems too interested in his socks than is probably safe. But he has a lonely heart, he's a little clingier than some of the other kitties. She walks over and picks him up, even as he starts flailing his little legs, trying to get free.

"And I sound like I've been here for a while because I have been here a while, Nick," she says, and it sinks in again for her, just how lonely she's been, stuck in Darrow all by herself. Even moving from Portland to Los Angeles, there was Cece. This time, there was nobody at all.

"I've been here over a week. By myself. And I thought you were dead."

"You named them?" he asked, that realization enough to distract him, even momentarily. It was one thing for all of them to exist in her place right now, it was another to think she had enough time to name them all.

Though, speaking of time -

"Wait, what?" he asked, raising a brow. He could say what the last thing he remembered, but he wasn't an idiot. Instead, he tried to pry without looking interested, which probably just made him look even more suspicious. "Jess, what exactly is the last thing you remember?"

"Of course I named them. Why wouldn't I?" she says, setting Sergeant Pepper down near her feet, where he doesn't waste any time before bolting off down the hall. In fact, all twenty-five cats had names. Most of them were adorable and creative, like P. Kitty and The Notorious C.A.T.

Well, except for Twenty-four and Twenty-five, who hadn't gotten named until Jess had gotten tired of coming up with them.

"And the last time I saw you, we were in Edgar's weird murder garage and I think he was about to kill you. Or his mom was about to kill you. Or possibly, there was going to be some kind of weird tag-team murder scenario going on... either way, it wasn't pretty. I got pepper sprayed, and suddenly I was here."

"Because you don't name things you're not going to keep. You're not keeping these, are you?" he asked. Because that would be a problem. Was he supposed to live with her again? He wasn't sharing an apartment that had at least a dozen cats in it. He knew her tendency to get lonely, with the weird melon version of himself he found, but somehow he didn't think it extended to the point she'd become a cat hoarder.

At least not in a week.

But that discussion would have to wait a second. He had thought she was being weirdly calm about what happened, and suddenly he was beginning to see why. It made no sense, since she definitely just didn't disappear after that, but it did explain things. "You're being serious with me right now. That's the last thing you remember?"

"Believe me, Nick, I wish I had a choice. I keep putting them out, and somehow, they keep finding their way back in. I've closed the windows and put blankets under the doors and no matter what I do, there's Sergeant Pepper's butt in my face when I'm trying to sleep. I wish I could get rid of them."

For a while, they'd been kind of adorable. Jess had taken at least a dozen pictures of each of them on her cell phone while she was naming them and coming up with cat backstories. But that was before they'd started pooping.

Poop changes a lot of things. Like adorableness.

"And yes, I'm being serious with you right now. Why? Should it not be the last thing I remember? Because I definitely don't remember your girl coat."

He was about to say that doesn't make sense, but at that point, was it really something he could question? Everything else wasn't really adding up either. Like her confirming she wasn't messing around, even when that absolutely happened in the past. It meant she really did have no idea what happened probably an hour or two ago at most. Nothing. There was some relief just knowing that, but not as relieved as he expected he would be.

"Will you stop calling it that?" he asked with an irritated sigh. "It's just weird. That happened already. We got out and it turned out he wasn't crazy, just really weird. And that also wasn't his mother, by the way."

He made a face bringing that up.

"And you were there after all that," he continued. "So I have no idea how you could be here and there at the same time."

The idea of two of her existing, for the record? A little terrifying.

"That's his name, Nick! I can't call him anything but his name!" Jess protests, because she can't just call him by something else. That'd be like if she just decided to start calling Nick something else out of the blue. Like Mark. Or Abraham. Or Bruce.

No one should ever be named Bruce.

"And no, I wasn't there. I was here. It's weird and I don't really know how it works, but I've been stuck here ever since the murder garage. There's something weird about the way time works here, which isn't something I ever thought I'd get to say. For the record, it's not as cool as I thought it'd be."

The cats could wait. Or the ones who were leaving him alone, anyway. There were a few he kept glancing at because they were getting uncomfortably close to him and were looking like they were planning some kind of coordinated attack. Could hey do that? He wouldn't be surprised.

What couldn't wait was what she was saying, and unsurprisingly it still didn't make any sense. But he could keep arguing with her or he could just go along with it, and he was to the point where he was tired enough to just go with it. That he still had a bit of an alcoholic haze going from their game of True American also didn't help him want to keep arguing. Also, he was pretty sure the more he heard, the more he was going to get dangerously close to starting to really freak out.

He'd probably do that later, anyway.

"I'm not going to understand any of this, so I am going to stop asking questions. Wait, except one. What now? I don't even have pants," he stated the obvious, motioning to himself. Of all the problems he imagined having that night, the fact he was almost naked hadn't been one of them.

"I was going to ask about that, but I really didn't want to," Jess replies, and she's trying not to look at his legs, really hoping he's at least got underpants on. She doesn't want to know what kind of weird stuff was going on back home that meant Nick was wearing no pants and a ladies' coat.

Unless he was with a lady when he'd ended up in Darrow.

"You weren't... before you got here, you weren't with a..." Jess stops, really not wanting to imagine it or even ask, "I mean, there's an underwear buffer between your little Nick and your lady coat, right?" She points in the vague direction of what she's talking about, hoping she doesn't have to elaborate more.

"What? No, and yes there's something under the coat," he replied, making sure to make a point to mention that. It would've made what happened between them infinitely more awkward. A moment she apparently had no idea about, so he tried really, really hard not to look suspicious. It involved not exactly looking at her in the eye, which would be weird if not for he fact he could just act like he was focusing on making sure the cats weren't about to claw him if she asked.

"We were all playing a slightly altered game of True American. And then I ended up here," he continued, shrugging to show just how not a big deal it was. Because it wasn't. He said something stupid and hey, now he had a chance for her to never know about it. "Surrounded by your cats."

"What?" Jess says, and for a moment, she's completely lost the issue at hand: the fact that Nick's not wearing much under his lady coat and that he's trapped here just the same as she is. And Emma Stone. Though Jess still isn't sure what movie she thinks she's from. At least it's not Superbad.

"You played True American without me! Not cool, Nick!"

"Hey, don't get mad at me," Nick replied, immediately scowling. He could see getting yelled at for a lot of things, but this was something completely out of his control. "You were there. Not you you, but the one that was back with all of us and not here. How was I supposed to know you were also somewhere else surrounded by cats? Normal people don't go around thinking 'Oh, better invite the other version of my roommate just in case one exists'."

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