***And here's the moment I decided this shouldn't be a oneshot anymore. Now, excuse me while I go to my next class. I wrote this over my break between chem and earth science ;) <3 See ya!***

***(Nya's POV)***

Why the heck am I even here?

Jay leads me up the staircase to his apartment, chattering on about some essay he's writing for a mid-semester project. I think I've pretty much learned his whole life story in the course of the hour we've known each other.

Again, why am I here?

Jay's a criminal justice major. He makes sure people like me pay for their wrongs. That means he's probably waiting for me to confess everything as soon as we get in his apartment.

And the sad thing is, it might actually work. Jay really is charming, in his own special way. I know it's just a ploy, though – he wants to charm me just enough to get me to admit I've stolen and been an active participant in an armed robbery.

Yeah, I'm not proud of that. It's amazing what you'll do, though, when you're high on drugs. Especially the kind Cole came up with then – they weren't typically available on the street, but he had good sources. He simply referred to the drug as "DM".

And I don't remember a lot of what happened, but I know it was bad. I didn't shoot anybody – I know that from the news reports – but I was so suggestible on DM, I'm sure Cole got me to injure people in other ways.

I vaguely remember jamming the butt of my gun right over someone's head. The pedestrian fell like a sack of potatoes.

But I don't do that – not anymore.

Jay opens up his door for me, puffing out a breath into the cold air. "Kind of chilly, don't you think?"

"Yeah." I can feel the heat blasting from his apartment, and it draws me in like a moth to a light.

But I will not be drawn in so easily by his charm. I'm not just going to give myself away like that.

Jay closes the door behind us. "Do you want to leave your coat on?"

I bite my lip. My wool coat is kind of like a security blanket – I brought it with me when I left home, and it reminds me of Kai. I try to take good care of it.

Which means I really don't want to take it off.

But is that another ploy of Jay's? A psychological trick? Does wearing my coat show him I'm on guard, and he needs to up his game if he wants answers out of me?

The last thing I need is upped game. I know very well what that looked like for Cole's friends, and it's not happening again.

I begin to shrug out of my jacket, but Jay gently takes the cuff of my sleeve in one hand and my shoulder in the other. He starts pulling off my coat for me, a warm blush lighting his cheeks.

I swallow. Gosh, he's good with charm. He even makes himself look like he cares.

Jay clears his throat. "So, uh...are you...hungry?"

"Not really." I don't just accept food and drink from strangers. It took me a while to get up the nerve to even purchase my drink at the coffee shop – I was always concerned with what was in it. Cole and I used to visit some places where I never should've consumed anything they gave me.

But I did, and that led to my downhill spiral.

Jay finishes removing my coat and hangs it on a peg on the wall, then does the same with his own. "Is it too warm? Do you need me to turn down the heat at all? I mean, my bill's going to be so high when it comes in, I should probably lower the heating settings anyway." He plays with the knob on the wall monitor until he fixes the temperature a little lower.

"I'm fine with whatever," I say vaguely, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my jeans.

"Oh, cool." He turns to me. "You wanna sit down? I'll grab you some bandages and antiseptic and be back in a jiff. Well, not a jiff. Did you know that a 'jiff', in scientific terms, usually refers to a hundredth of a second? But it can also be an unspecified time." He laughs nervously, running a hand through his hair.

I frown. Why is he nervous? Is it because I'm his first criminal?

I gingerly take a seat on his sofa, curling my legs under myself and tucking my arms around my stomach. I'm not comfortable with being in guys' apartments anymore. Alone.

But then, I'm also stronger than I was in high school. I haven't been able to take self-defense classes – there's too much police interaction with those – but I've toughened up. I'm quicker on my feet and in my thinking. Getting off drugs really helps the latter.

And I'll be ready if Jay tries anything. Something tells me, though, that Jay the criminal justice major isn't a panty-stealer. Or at least, he wants me to think he isn't. I wonder if that's one of his tactics to get information out of people?

Does Jay even have a tactic?

"I'm back," he smiles, sitting down beside me. "Good thing you were wearing a coat when you fell. Your scrapes don't travel that far down your arms." He gently runs his finger over my wrist, causing me to inhale sharply.

"Sorry," he apologizes, looking up at me. "Did I hurt you?"

No. "Yeah, but it's fine." I just somehow find you attractive, even though you want me to tell you all my dark secrets.

He grabs a rag, pours a little antiseptic on it, and runs it over my beat-up forearm. "So...tell me about yourself."

"What do you want to know?"

He chuckles to himself. "Everything?"

I am not telling him everything. "Can you ask me something a little less open-ended?"

"Yeah, of course. Um...if you could go anywhere in Ninjago, where would it be?

Home.

But I'm not about to tell him that, so I think on my feet. "Uh, the...coffee shop. It's one of my favorite places to go."

"It is pretty awesome, isn't it?" He hums to himself, applying a sticky bandage to one of my cuts.

His fingers feel like sparks along my skin – pleasant sparks. Sparks you want to get close to, but you're absolutely petrified of.

"Do you like inventing?" he asks out of the blue.

I blink. "Uh...why?"

"Look around," he smiles, waving one finger in the air.

I cautiously do as he asks. That's when I take in the amount of junk he has laying around.

Why would a criminal justice major live in...a mess like this? I guess Jay must be a bit of a slob. And an inventor, apparently – I see dozens of half-built and half-broken contraptions scattered around his living room.

What strikes me most are the number of clocks he has on the wall. They all appear old, yet refurbished.

"You must be a pretty punctual person," I muse.

"You mean with all the clocks?" He scratches the back of his head. "Yeah, my mom – my real mom, not my birth mother – she likes collecting clocks at garage sales. Of course, she has too many of them now, and most of them are broken. I take whatever my dad can sneak out of the house, and my mom usually never knows they're missing."

"Why don't you just...throw them away?" I wonder.

"Because I figure she likes them for a reason," he shrugs. "And when she comes over and sees them all ticking in perfect sync, hung wherever they fit on the walls...it makes her happy. She doesn't know they once belonged to her; she just thinks that I share her love of collections."

I smile in spite of myself. "That's kind of sweet."

"You think?" he beams, glancing up from my hand to look at me.

"Yeah." I don't meet his gaze. I'm sure telling me innocent stories about his life is just another way for him to get me to let down my guard.

He finishes bandaging my left hand in silence. Apparently, he's not pressing me to talk if I don't want to. Or maybe he just thinks he can scare me into blabbering everything by staying quiet.

"There's a little piece of gravel stuck in your hand," he finally says.

"Not surprising. I could've been stuck to a train, if it'd hit me." I breathe out a sigh. That was an experience I never want to repeat.

"But you weren't," Jay says. "You're safe now – with me, you're safe."

"Uh-huh." See, I watched this movie one time with Kai. The bad guys were the ones who told you that you were 'safe' and 'secure'. According to the protagonist, when the bad guys start saying that kind of thing, it means they plan on killing you.***

But in this case, I'm the bad guy.

"You do know you're safe with me, right?" Jay asks.

He really needs to stop using that 'safe' word.

"I...don't know what to believe," I admit.

***So, that movie would be "Knight and Day", a Tom Cruise film I think everyone should watch at some point. It's PG-13. It's great. Watch it.

***I'm going to class now LOL***