rubykatewriting (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rubykatewriting) wrote2005-11-08 03:45 pm
rubykatewriting) wrote2005-11-08 03:45 pm
Fic: Home - Chapter Nine, General (GG)
TITLE: Home
AUTHOR:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rubykatewriting
PAIRING: This fic features Lorelai and Luke in an established relationship with children; Sookie and Jackson are still doing what they're doing; and Jess is a widower; it will eventually end up Rory/Jess.
RATING: R (sex)
SUMMARY: Now he can’t imagine calling any other place home. Jess returns to Stars Hollow.
DISCLAIMER: Luke Danes, Lorelai Gilmore, Jess Mariano, Sookie St. James, Jackson Belleville, Emily and Richard Gilmore and Rory Gilmore belong to others. I am only borrowing them. No harm intended.
WARNING: Major character death pre-fic, which is discussed and dealt with through remainder of fic.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Multiple chapters.
It’s late, just after two in the morning, but the reception was still going strong when she left. Her feet are killing her, but she doesn’t take off her high heels. She won’t be able to get them back on if she does. Yawning, she curls her toes under and watches the scenery blur, remembering the last time she found herself barreling through the wintry morning stillness. More than anything, she wants to be back in Stars Hollow.
Most of her apartment is packed; it is quite the accomplishment, considering how many books she’s acquired over the years. The driver turns onto her street. “It’s just ahead, on the right,” she tells him unnecessarily. He was the one who picked her up. She opens her tiny purse (stained to match her dress) and pulls out a ten. He is out of the car like a shot, and she wonders, with a good deal of jealousy, how many coffees he’s had tonight. He opens her door and she takes his hand to climb out with as much grace as she has left at this hour. “Thank you,” she says, handing him the bill.
He pockets the money and fidgets, eyeing her. “Do you want me to walk you to the door? It’s late.” His accent reminds her of every mob movie she has ever seen, heavy on the Guido-ease.
She shakes her head. “That’s okay. It’s just right there, and I’m sure Eusebio is at the front desk.”
“All right, Ms. Gilmore. You have a good night.”
“You too.” She smiles, feeling vaguely uncomfortable with the way he’s staring. It has to be the bodice; her breasts are nearly to her chin. When the car finally pulls away from the curb, she breathes a sigh of relief. Oh, Eusebio, you are going to pay if you’re in there watching Cristina, she fumes. Standing straight, she rolls her shoulders, staring at the front door of her building. She is dressed to the nines in a dress she spent nearly six hundred dollars on, in a pair of killer shoes (both figurative and literal), and she will walk like a woman who knows how fine she looks. Her mother would never forgive her otherwise. “No time like the present, Gilmore,” she mutters. “The faster you get inside, the faster you get these torture devices off your feet.”
“Talking to yourself, Rory?”
Rory lets out a yelp of surprise as Jess appears under the awning over the entrance. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” She teeters, nearly falling on her ass. “Jess! Oh my God – if you scare me one more time! Jesus, Jess! Ten years off my life, in like two weeks.”
“Sorry.” He has the decency to look contrite, but her heart still sits somewhere just below her tonsils. She isn’t even close to forgiving him yet.
For a moment she just stares at him, and he bounces on the balls of his feet, hands stuffed into his coat pockets. She wants to ask what brought him to New York, but part of her doesn’t want to know if it’s for any other reason than her. It would burst the perfect bubble she’s been living in these past few days. A gust of wind comes out of nowhere, icy, going straight to her bones, and she realizes she forgot to put on her coat. It can’t be above thirty, and she is standing, shoulders bare, in her bridesmaid dress. She starts for the door but he doesn’t move. He reaches out, taking her hand, and it’s different than she expects, or imagined a thousand times since that day she turned around to find him walking into the diner. Fast-forward two months, and reality is so much better. They should be drenched when the bubble pops, and it’s like when she was a kid, blowing bubbles and watching them until she couldn’t stand the anticipation anymore. With one push of her finger, they would rupture, and it always left her with such a sad feeling.
“Rory –"
For the second time in her life, she feels the irrepressible urge to kiss him and she acts on it.
-
It’s dark in the entry way. The bulb went out in the wall sconce the day she came back and she keeps forgetting to replace it – until a moment like this, when she would give anything to see. Instead, she pulls him close and tries to memorize him with her mouth and her hands.
Her apartment feels different. He seems to lend her life and her world a vibrant reality, everything – from her smile to her thoughts. As if she isn’t real, but a character in some lifeless book, her usual self made of the dullest paper, full of too many words and much too little action. But as soon as she is around Jess, she expands, popping out, colors bleeding into her, and she gasps air, at last alive, thrillingly alive. Only now, she doesn’t mind it; it doesn’t scare her. For the first time, she is starting to realize how desperately she may need this, need him.
They bump into something – one of the many boxes strewn about her living room – as she tries to steer them through towards her bedroom. A nervous giggle bubbles out of her; she tries to muffle it with her hand. His breath is warm on her face, smelling of strong herbal tea and winter. They wander closer to her room. She always leaves on the lamp on her nightstand and its faraway rose light fills in some of his shadows. He grins and his teeth are a familiar flash of white.
“What?” she asks, holding tightly to his arms as she kicks off her shoes.
He shakes his head, his shoulders moving up in a shrug. “You,” he replies simply. His fingertips graze her skin, a faint drumming along her cheek. He’s reading her like Braille.
“My head is all fuzzy,” she whispers.
“Glad to hear I still have that effect on you,” he says hoarsely, his eyes still hidden from her.
“You never stopped,” she confesses, pressing her face into the hollow of his throat. Her face feels so hot. “I thought about you...” Her eyes close as his hands skim down her bare back. She slips her hands inside his coat, undoing the buttons of his shirt by touch. “You know, just a random thing would pop into my brain,” she whispers, “and I would go blank. Lost on this trail of thoughts – the way your tongue felt against my lips, how you would hover above me when we made out on Luke’s couch – always so careful not to push too far –"
“It wasn’t easy,” he admits, kissing her cheek tenderly.
She slants under his kiss, trying to remember what she was talking about. Sighing, she fiddles with his earlobe, one hand cupping his neck. “...And the way your hair curled at the nape – right here,” she twists her fingers in the soft whorls. “Sometimes you just seemed to consume me until I swore I could smell you on my clothes, taste you in my mouth.” She shakes her head, dazed, not even a little bit embarrassed. There is silence, and she savors it; just as she savors the way he leans into her, his hips heavy against hers.
“God, Jess, I don’t think I ever recovered from you.”
Jess sneaks her skirt up, one hand slipping up her thigh. She’s wearing a garter belt and stockings, and sheer cheeky panties. His hand curves over her buttock. “Rory –"
“No, don’t stop this.” She holds him tight, keeps him locked in place. She will not bear it if he pulls away.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. “Not this time.”
Rory nods, eyes clenched tight even as she relaxes against him. She shivers and wonders how it will be. He is kissing the curve where her shoulder meets her neck, mouth and tongue finding that spot just below her ear, and any bit of thought sails clear out of her head. Streaks of color, like this rainbow she saw when she was a kid, bright as fireworks on the 4th of July, pass behind her eyelids. Her head falls back and the only thing keeping her standing up is his hands on her back, her arms around his shoulders. He murmurs something and she hums.
“Rory?” he croons.
“What?”
They’re still standing on the threshold of her bedroom. Smiling almost shyly, she backs into the room, away from him. A mixture of nerves and anticipation make her belly hop, and she closes her eyes, drawing in a healthy breath. She reaches behind her, undoing the clasp at her nape, then pulls the zipper down on her right side. The dress, a pale blush color, slides down her as if she is shedding a skin. It pools at her feet and she stands there, topless, in only her stockings, panties and garter belt. Finally, she meets his gaze and tries to look as calm as possible. She’s not the naïve virgin anymore!
His face is unreadable and she falters, raising her arm to cover herself. He halts the movement, stepping close, pulling her into his embrace. “Rory –" He pauses, dragging in a mouthful of air. “God – you’re so...” His heartbeat is rough against her breast.
A small smile curves her lips, but impatience wins out over her vanity. “I want to see you too,” she tells him. Obligingly, Jess steps back and shrugs out of his jacket and button-down shirt. He lifts his arms, and she tugs his long john top over his head. His hair is messed up, brushed forward by the fabric, and once again she finds herself giggling, like some cotton-headed ninny. Grabbing her around the waist, he kisses her again, silencing her laughter, and she likes how familiar he is of her mouth.
They stagger towards the bed, his palm warm as it glides along her belly. The mattress dips under his weight. Thoughts flitter through her head as she moves between his legs. This is going to change everything, and as much as she wants change, craves it, there is also fear, mixed in with the excitement. This is going to change everything.
“Come here,” he whispers, lying back on the bed. He reaches out to her, and she takes his hand. Using her other hand to balance, she sets her knees on either side of his hips, marveling at how narrow they are. Sitting back on his thighs, she gazes down at him, taking him all in. He is still well-built but not so perfectly etched. He’s softer now, more touchable and she traces the curve of one pec, then the other. His nipples harden, darkening. An idea strikes her. Biting her lip suggestively, she arches her back, linking her hands behind her head. His eyes glaze over.
“Uncle,” he groans
Rory stretches out, lying on top of him. Her laughter is delicate, utterly feminine; a gentle quake of breast and belly against his. “You’re so easy,” she teases.
“You may be used to this body of yours," his fingertips pounce lightly along her spine, “but I am not.”
Her voice is soft. “Oh, Jess, you have no idea, do you?”
He shakes his head, hands gently cupping her face. “Rory, you will always be the what-if girl.”
-
“I wrote you a letter once.”
Rory turns towards his voice, tugging the covers up to her chin. Her skin is starting to chill. “You did? What did it say?”
When he speaks she can hear his grin. “I was unpacking one night – maybe a week or two after I got to Jimmy’s, I guess. And I realized I had two copies of The Box Garden –"
“You remember what book it was?”
“I’m trying to tell a story here,” he admonishes. “Anyway, so I opened them up and realized one of them was yours. That was my excuse to write to you since I couldn’t get up enough balls to just write you to write you.” He rolls onto his side and she can feel the heat of his body intensify as he shifts closer.
His hands are starting to drift, making it difficult to follow the thread of conversation. “How did you know it was mine?” she asks breathlessly.
The mattress moves beneath her and then he is above her. “No writing in the margin.”
She loops her arms around his shoulders, laughing lightly in the darkness. “Of course.”
-
Rory watches him, trying to gage his mood. He is completely absorbed in the Sunday paper, and the silence has given her time to think. No more hazy, post-coital musings. In a way, they are still in that bubble. Reality is only in pieces. There should be more awkwardness than there is. They shouldn’t be able to slip so easily into a routine, with so many questions unanswered, so much left to discuss. “Jess?”
“Hmm?”
She decides to plunge in head-first. “Why her?”
He folds the top half of the paper forward and it moves with his Adam’s apple when he speaks. “Why who?”
“Why her? Why Shelby?”
“It’s complicated,” he says cryptically and flips the paper back up.
Childishly, she wants to yank the paper away (it is her paper) so badly her fingertips itch. “Well?”
“I don’t want to get into this right now,” he tells her, voice distant.
She sets her coffee cup down a little too hard. Some of it splashes over the side, but she doesn’t try to clean it up. “You can’t just say ‘it’s complicated’ and not elaborate.”
“Come on, Rory,” he cajoles, finally setting the paper down, “we’re having a good breakfast, reading the newspaper. Let’s drop this.”
“No, Jess.” Rory pauses, trying to remain firm. “I can’t, okay? After last night...things are different now. And – and I just need to know.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. His breathing comes out in quick, annoyed bursts. “Please, Rory, just –"
“Would you just spill it already?” she pleads.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He smiles mirthlessly. “You.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Agitated, Jess leans forward and his expression reminds her of that boy, long ago. She forgot how angry he used to be. “I couldn’t lose someone else, Rory. I couldn’t fuck up like I did with you. Not again.”
Her fury leaves her speechless for a full minute. She tries to speak, several times, but his words spin around in her head, and she only gets angrier. “You didn’t lose me, Jess,” she says at last, shakily. “You let me go. You ran as far and as fast as you could get without leaving the North American Continent.”
“Rory, I knew I wasn’t good enough. You were going to Yale and I was going to fail out of high school.”
She remembers a day, on the way home from the video store. How love swelled inside her chest when he admitted looking up the distance from Stars Hollow to Yale. Thoughts, some silly and others not so, had filled her head of their future together. And that had made her all the more giddy – that they had a future together to even fantasize about. She would have floated home, if not for the anchor of his arm around her shoulders. “That didn’t matter to me. It never did.”
Only hours before, she was waking up to him, too blissful for words. He had helped himself to her keys and gone out to the A&P down the street, since all she had in the house was some questionable leftover takeout. He had crawled back into the bed, fully clothed, bringing the chill from outside with him. She had burrowed deeper under the covers, but somehow he had managed to get close enough to press his cold face into the curve of her neck, nuzzling her with his red nose. She had squealed in outrage, making him laugh. “Come on, already. I’m making breakfast,” he had told her, leaving her in a rumpled heap on the bed.
Glancing down at her plate, she picks the tomato slice off the other half of her toasted bagel, which pulls most of the cheese off with it. It’s no matter; her appetite has abandoned her.
He clears his throat and she looks up. “What you thought of it was immaterial.” He won’t meet her eyes. Instead he rubs his finger over a nick in the kitchen table. “I was never going to be able to let go of that nagging fear, forever needling me in the back of my mind.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shakes his head derisively. “You’d wise up. Realize what an asshole I was and leave me.”
“But…do you know what you did to me?” Her eyes well up and she shakes under the remembered weight of being left behind. All the years melt away and she is that girl again, sitting in the car and not feeling the least bit real as her mother tells her Jess is gone. He’s left. He’s left her. “I was seventeen.”
“You certainly sounded fine on the phone.”
It takes every bit of her self-control not to pop him, and she’s never been a violent person. “Ever hear of false bravado, assface?”
Jess scoots his chair around the table until he is sitting in front of her. Her thighs are bare, her t-shirt incredibly short, and she wishes she had put on her underwear. “That’s what I love about you, Rory,” he whispers, smiling slightly. He presses a warm kiss on her mouth.
She slaps his chest, hard. “Don’t do that! I’m still angry.”
He sobers a bit. “I get that. I do,” he promises. “But here’s the truth, Rory. I left them. Or rather, Shelby left me. Or she was just following my lead – I don’t know.”
Rory studies his faraway expression, wondering what he isn’t saying. Even as devastated as she is, she takes his hand in hers. She wants to anchor him here, in the present. Jess meets her eyes briefly, and she yearns to know everything. Every moment that has brought him back to her; brought the both of them here.
His finger traces the lines of her palm absently. “But I missed her. I missed my daughter, and that made everything else irrelevant. I needed to be with her.” His voice grows heavy with significance. “I love Shelby. I always will. She was an amazing friend to me when I have never needed one more.”
He is quiet for a moment, and she pushes an errant curl from his forehead. “Wren was what kept us together in the beginning, Rory. It wasn’t until later that I truly fell in love with her. We made this life and a family, and I still mourn her.”
The chair scrapes against the tiles as he tugs her closer still. Her knees fit snuggly between his parted thighs and his hands are warm on her skin. “But I want to move on with you,” he whispers. “I’m not that boy anymore, Rory. I promise not to break your heart.”
A part of her – the very part he promises not to break – flutters at his vow, but she smiles wistfully. “You can’t promise me that, Jess.”
He smiles back at her, and it goes all the way to his eyes. “I can promise to try.”
She blinks back tears. “Okay.”
“I love you, you know,” he tells her as he pulls her into his lap.
It seems so simple, almost throwaway, the way he says it, but those tiny words are more powerful than everything else. The talk of forever, the promise – they are nothing compared to hearing him tell her that he loves her.
“I love you too.”
chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four
chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter ten
AUTHOR:
rubykatewritingPAIRING: This fic features Lorelai and Luke in an established relationship with children; Sookie and Jackson are still doing what they're doing; and Jess is a widower; it will eventually end up Rory/Jess.
RATING: R (sex)
SUMMARY: Now he can’t imagine calling any other place home. Jess returns to Stars Hollow.
DISCLAIMER: Luke Danes, Lorelai Gilmore, Jess Mariano, Sookie St. James, Jackson Belleville, Emily and Richard Gilmore and Rory Gilmore belong to others. I am only borrowing them. No harm intended.
WARNING: Major character death pre-fic, which is discussed and dealt with through remainder of fic.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Multiple chapters.
It’s late, just after two in the morning, but the reception was still going strong when she left. Her feet are killing her, but she doesn’t take off her high heels. She won’t be able to get them back on if she does. Yawning, she curls her toes under and watches the scenery blur, remembering the last time she found herself barreling through the wintry morning stillness. More than anything, she wants to be back in Stars Hollow.
Most of her apartment is packed; it is quite the accomplishment, considering how many books she’s acquired over the years. The driver turns onto her street. “It’s just ahead, on the right,” she tells him unnecessarily. He was the one who picked her up. She opens her tiny purse (stained to match her dress) and pulls out a ten. He is out of the car like a shot, and she wonders, with a good deal of jealousy, how many coffees he’s had tonight. He opens her door and she takes his hand to climb out with as much grace as she has left at this hour. “Thank you,” she says, handing him the bill.
He pockets the money and fidgets, eyeing her. “Do you want me to walk you to the door? It’s late.” His accent reminds her of every mob movie she has ever seen, heavy on the Guido-ease.
She shakes her head. “That’s okay. It’s just right there, and I’m sure Eusebio is at the front desk.”
“All right, Ms. Gilmore. You have a good night.”
“You too.” She smiles, feeling vaguely uncomfortable with the way he’s staring. It has to be the bodice; her breasts are nearly to her chin. When the car finally pulls away from the curb, she breathes a sigh of relief. Oh, Eusebio, you are going to pay if you’re in there watching Cristina, she fumes. Standing straight, she rolls her shoulders, staring at the front door of her building. She is dressed to the nines in a dress she spent nearly six hundred dollars on, in a pair of killer shoes (both figurative and literal), and she will walk like a woman who knows how fine she looks. Her mother would never forgive her otherwise. “No time like the present, Gilmore,” she mutters. “The faster you get inside, the faster you get these torture devices off your feet.”
“Talking to yourself, Rory?”
Rory lets out a yelp of surprise as Jess appears under the awning over the entrance. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” She teeters, nearly falling on her ass. “Jess! Oh my God – if you scare me one more time! Jesus, Jess! Ten years off my life, in like two weeks.”
“Sorry.” He has the decency to look contrite, but her heart still sits somewhere just below her tonsils. She isn’t even close to forgiving him yet.
For a moment she just stares at him, and he bounces on the balls of his feet, hands stuffed into his coat pockets. She wants to ask what brought him to New York, but part of her doesn’t want to know if it’s for any other reason than her. It would burst the perfect bubble she’s been living in these past few days. A gust of wind comes out of nowhere, icy, going straight to her bones, and she realizes she forgot to put on her coat. It can’t be above thirty, and she is standing, shoulders bare, in her bridesmaid dress. She starts for the door but he doesn’t move. He reaches out, taking her hand, and it’s different than she expects, or imagined a thousand times since that day she turned around to find him walking into the diner. Fast-forward two months, and reality is so much better. They should be drenched when the bubble pops, and it’s like when she was a kid, blowing bubbles and watching them until she couldn’t stand the anticipation anymore. With one push of her finger, they would rupture, and it always left her with such a sad feeling.
“Rory –"
For the second time in her life, she feels the irrepressible urge to kiss him and she acts on it.
-
It’s dark in the entry way. The bulb went out in the wall sconce the day she came back and she keeps forgetting to replace it – until a moment like this, when she would give anything to see. Instead, she pulls him close and tries to memorize him with her mouth and her hands.
Her apartment feels different. He seems to lend her life and her world a vibrant reality, everything – from her smile to her thoughts. As if she isn’t real, but a character in some lifeless book, her usual self made of the dullest paper, full of too many words and much too little action. But as soon as she is around Jess, she expands, popping out, colors bleeding into her, and she gasps air, at last alive, thrillingly alive. Only now, she doesn’t mind it; it doesn’t scare her. For the first time, she is starting to realize how desperately she may need this, need him.
They bump into something – one of the many boxes strewn about her living room – as she tries to steer them through towards her bedroom. A nervous giggle bubbles out of her; she tries to muffle it with her hand. His breath is warm on her face, smelling of strong herbal tea and winter. They wander closer to her room. She always leaves on the lamp on her nightstand and its faraway rose light fills in some of his shadows. He grins and his teeth are a familiar flash of white.
“What?” she asks, holding tightly to his arms as she kicks off her shoes.
He shakes his head, his shoulders moving up in a shrug. “You,” he replies simply. His fingertips graze her skin, a faint drumming along her cheek. He’s reading her like Braille.
“My head is all fuzzy,” she whispers.
“Glad to hear I still have that effect on you,” he says hoarsely, his eyes still hidden from her.
“You never stopped,” she confesses, pressing her face into the hollow of his throat. Her face feels so hot. “I thought about you...” Her eyes close as his hands skim down her bare back. She slips her hands inside his coat, undoing the buttons of his shirt by touch. “You know, just a random thing would pop into my brain,” she whispers, “and I would go blank. Lost on this trail of thoughts – the way your tongue felt against my lips, how you would hover above me when we made out on Luke’s couch – always so careful not to push too far –"
“It wasn’t easy,” he admits, kissing her cheek tenderly.
She slants under his kiss, trying to remember what she was talking about. Sighing, she fiddles with his earlobe, one hand cupping his neck. “...And the way your hair curled at the nape – right here,” she twists her fingers in the soft whorls. “Sometimes you just seemed to consume me until I swore I could smell you on my clothes, taste you in my mouth.” She shakes her head, dazed, not even a little bit embarrassed. There is silence, and she savors it; just as she savors the way he leans into her, his hips heavy against hers.
“God, Jess, I don’t think I ever recovered from you.”
Jess sneaks her skirt up, one hand slipping up her thigh. She’s wearing a garter belt and stockings, and sheer cheeky panties. His hand curves over her buttock. “Rory –"
“No, don’t stop this.” She holds him tight, keeps him locked in place. She will not bear it if he pulls away.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. “Not this time.”
Rory nods, eyes clenched tight even as she relaxes against him. She shivers and wonders how it will be. He is kissing the curve where her shoulder meets her neck, mouth and tongue finding that spot just below her ear, and any bit of thought sails clear out of her head. Streaks of color, like this rainbow she saw when she was a kid, bright as fireworks on the 4th of July, pass behind her eyelids. Her head falls back and the only thing keeping her standing up is his hands on her back, her arms around his shoulders. He murmurs something and she hums.
“Rory?” he croons.
“What?”
They’re still standing on the threshold of her bedroom. Smiling almost shyly, she backs into the room, away from him. A mixture of nerves and anticipation make her belly hop, and she closes her eyes, drawing in a healthy breath. She reaches behind her, undoing the clasp at her nape, then pulls the zipper down on her right side. The dress, a pale blush color, slides down her as if she is shedding a skin. It pools at her feet and she stands there, topless, in only her stockings, panties and garter belt. Finally, she meets his gaze and tries to look as calm as possible. She’s not the naïve virgin anymore!
His face is unreadable and she falters, raising her arm to cover herself. He halts the movement, stepping close, pulling her into his embrace. “Rory –" He pauses, dragging in a mouthful of air. “God – you’re so...” His heartbeat is rough against her breast.
A small smile curves her lips, but impatience wins out over her vanity. “I want to see you too,” she tells him. Obligingly, Jess steps back and shrugs out of his jacket and button-down shirt. He lifts his arms, and she tugs his long john top over his head. His hair is messed up, brushed forward by the fabric, and once again she finds herself giggling, like some cotton-headed ninny. Grabbing her around the waist, he kisses her again, silencing her laughter, and she likes how familiar he is of her mouth.
They stagger towards the bed, his palm warm as it glides along her belly. The mattress dips under his weight. Thoughts flitter through her head as she moves between his legs. This is going to change everything, and as much as she wants change, craves it, there is also fear, mixed in with the excitement. This is going to change everything.
“Come here,” he whispers, lying back on the bed. He reaches out to her, and she takes his hand. Using her other hand to balance, she sets her knees on either side of his hips, marveling at how narrow they are. Sitting back on his thighs, she gazes down at him, taking him all in. He is still well-built but not so perfectly etched. He’s softer now, more touchable and she traces the curve of one pec, then the other. His nipples harden, darkening. An idea strikes her. Biting her lip suggestively, she arches her back, linking her hands behind her head. His eyes glaze over.
“Uncle,” he groans
Rory stretches out, lying on top of him. Her laughter is delicate, utterly feminine; a gentle quake of breast and belly against his. “You’re so easy,” she teases.
“You may be used to this body of yours," his fingertips pounce lightly along her spine, “but I am not.”
Her voice is soft. “Oh, Jess, you have no idea, do you?”
He shakes his head, hands gently cupping her face. “Rory, you will always be the what-if girl.”
-
“I wrote you a letter once.”
Rory turns towards his voice, tugging the covers up to her chin. Her skin is starting to chill. “You did? What did it say?”
When he speaks she can hear his grin. “I was unpacking one night – maybe a week or two after I got to Jimmy’s, I guess. And I realized I had two copies of The Box Garden –"
“You remember what book it was?”
“I’m trying to tell a story here,” he admonishes. “Anyway, so I opened them up and realized one of them was yours. That was my excuse to write to you since I couldn’t get up enough balls to just write you to write you.” He rolls onto his side and she can feel the heat of his body intensify as he shifts closer.
His hands are starting to drift, making it difficult to follow the thread of conversation. “How did you know it was mine?” she asks breathlessly.
The mattress moves beneath her and then he is above her. “No writing in the margin.”
She loops her arms around his shoulders, laughing lightly in the darkness. “Of course.”
-
Rory watches him, trying to gage his mood. He is completely absorbed in the Sunday paper, and the silence has given her time to think. No more hazy, post-coital musings. In a way, they are still in that bubble. Reality is only in pieces. There should be more awkwardness than there is. They shouldn’t be able to slip so easily into a routine, with so many questions unanswered, so much left to discuss. “Jess?”
“Hmm?”
She decides to plunge in head-first. “Why her?”
He folds the top half of the paper forward and it moves with his Adam’s apple when he speaks. “Why who?”
“Why her? Why Shelby?”
“It’s complicated,” he says cryptically and flips the paper back up.
Childishly, she wants to yank the paper away (it is her paper) so badly her fingertips itch. “Well?”
“I don’t want to get into this right now,” he tells her, voice distant.
She sets her coffee cup down a little too hard. Some of it splashes over the side, but she doesn’t try to clean it up. “You can’t just say ‘it’s complicated’ and not elaborate.”
“Come on, Rory,” he cajoles, finally setting the paper down, “we’re having a good breakfast, reading the newspaper. Let’s drop this.”
“No, Jess.” Rory pauses, trying to remain firm. “I can’t, okay? After last night...things are different now. And – and I just need to know.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. His breathing comes out in quick, annoyed bursts. “Please, Rory, just –"
“Would you just spill it already?” she pleads.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He smiles mirthlessly. “You.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Agitated, Jess leans forward and his expression reminds her of that boy, long ago. She forgot how angry he used to be. “I couldn’t lose someone else, Rory. I couldn’t fuck up like I did with you. Not again.”
Her fury leaves her speechless for a full minute. She tries to speak, several times, but his words spin around in her head, and she only gets angrier. “You didn’t lose me, Jess,” she says at last, shakily. “You let me go. You ran as far and as fast as you could get without leaving the North American Continent.”
“Rory, I knew I wasn’t good enough. You were going to Yale and I was going to fail out of high school.”
She remembers a day, on the way home from the video store. How love swelled inside her chest when he admitted looking up the distance from Stars Hollow to Yale. Thoughts, some silly and others not so, had filled her head of their future together. And that had made her all the more giddy – that they had a future together to even fantasize about. She would have floated home, if not for the anchor of his arm around her shoulders. “That didn’t matter to me. It never did.”
Only hours before, she was waking up to him, too blissful for words. He had helped himself to her keys and gone out to the A&P down the street, since all she had in the house was some questionable leftover takeout. He had crawled back into the bed, fully clothed, bringing the chill from outside with him. She had burrowed deeper under the covers, but somehow he had managed to get close enough to press his cold face into the curve of her neck, nuzzling her with his red nose. She had squealed in outrage, making him laugh. “Come on, already. I’m making breakfast,” he had told her, leaving her in a rumpled heap on the bed.
Glancing down at her plate, she picks the tomato slice off the other half of her toasted bagel, which pulls most of the cheese off with it. It’s no matter; her appetite has abandoned her.
He clears his throat and she looks up. “What you thought of it was immaterial.” He won’t meet her eyes. Instead he rubs his finger over a nick in the kitchen table. “I was never going to be able to let go of that nagging fear, forever needling me in the back of my mind.”
“What are you talking about?”
He shakes his head derisively. “You’d wise up. Realize what an asshole I was and leave me.”
“But…do you know what you did to me?” Her eyes well up and she shakes under the remembered weight of being left behind. All the years melt away and she is that girl again, sitting in the car and not feeling the least bit real as her mother tells her Jess is gone. He’s left. He’s left her. “I was seventeen.”
“You certainly sounded fine on the phone.”
It takes every bit of her self-control not to pop him, and she’s never been a violent person. “Ever hear of false bravado, assface?”
Jess scoots his chair around the table until he is sitting in front of her. Her thighs are bare, her t-shirt incredibly short, and she wishes she had put on her underwear. “That’s what I love about you, Rory,” he whispers, smiling slightly. He presses a warm kiss on her mouth.
She slaps his chest, hard. “Don’t do that! I’m still angry.”
He sobers a bit. “I get that. I do,” he promises. “But here’s the truth, Rory. I left them. Or rather, Shelby left me. Or she was just following my lead – I don’t know.”
Rory studies his faraway expression, wondering what he isn’t saying. Even as devastated as she is, she takes his hand in hers. She wants to anchor him here, in the present. Jess meets her eyes briefly, and she yearns to know everything. Every moment that has brought him back to her; brought the both of them here.
His finger traces the lines of her palm absently. “But I missed her. I missed my daughter, and that made everything else irrelevant. I needed to be with her.” His voice grows heavy with significance. “I love Shelby. I always will. She was an amazing friend to me when I have never needed one more.”
He is quiet for a moment, and she pushes an errant curl from his forehead. “Wren was what kept us together in the beginning, Rory. It wasn’t until later that I truly fell in love with her. We made this life and a family, and I still mourn her.”
The chair scrapes against the tiles as he tugs her closer still. Her knees fit snuggly between his parted thighs and his hands are warm on her skin. “But I want to move on with you,” he whispers. “I’m not that boy anymore, Rory. I promise not to break your heart.”
A part of her – the very part he promises not to break – flutters at his vow, but she smiles wistfully. “You can’t promise me that, Jess.”
He smiles back at her, and it goes all the way to his eyes. “I can promise to try.”
She blinks back tears. “Okay.”
“I love you, you know,” he tells her as he pulls her into his lap.
It seems so simple, almost throwaway, the way he says it, but those tiny words are more powerful than everything else. The talk of forever, the promise – they are nothing compared to hearing him tell her that he loves her.
“I love you too.”
chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter ten