Disclaimer: Do WB execs surf the net just to pick on penniless and unemployed uni students? Yeah. I didn't think so.
Summary: Set Season 1 a couple of weeks before Love Daisies-- Tristan pesters Rory in the library, during study period. He comes away with some useful information.
AN: I am trying very hard to write the fourth chapter to 'Where Pop Culture Fails' and it's coming. In the meantime, I hope this tides you over.
Thanks muchly to the wonderful Elaida who BETA'd. Here's where I do my David Cassidy impersonation, "I think I love you…."
The Way We Weren't
Chapter 1: Flirting With Disaster
He trails her pert arse as she sashays through the door and the soft strains from her headphones float over the oppressive silence of the library to his ears. The track, something with gritty vocals and indie guitar plays out, barely audible, over the shuffle of pages, the clack of computer keys, the tap of pens on plastic tabletops, like an accompanying soundtrack to his fascination. Time slows and his mouth goes dry as she bends down to her backpack, retrieving her books before seating herself not ten feet from where he sits staring dumbly, toes curling inside Italian leather.
Louise walks past and throws him a puzzled look, quirking an eyebrow and twisting her lips into a wry smile before slipping out of sight. Caught red-handed (and somewhat red-faced) he tries to act nonchalant, grabbing aimlessly at his papers, trying to shake off his Rory-induced haze.
This was the first study period he had attended this year, because, he reasoned, skipping study period was easier than skipping any other class and he preferred to embark on more pleasurable pursuits; disappearing behind the back of the school, out past the tennis courts or up to the hot box above the auditorium with a willing female participant. However, somewhere along the line, pleasurable pursuits had become sitting alone in the library watching the brown-haired girl with the slow chemical smile tilting her head in time to music.
He couldn't explain it. He didn't want to. He reveled in his denial and how there was always one tiny marvel to unravel him, like the invitation to her birthday party all those months ago. Tasting her name on his lips, her real name, written in sweeping script on stiff card, just begging to be pronounced. Lorelai, the name was sex painted in words, rolling nicely off the tongue, like other things he could think of that would roll nicely off the tongue, specifically her tongue.
Because of a secret penchant for the History Channel, he knew that a Lorelai was a Germanic legend, a siren; whose hypnotic song lured sailors to meet their destruction on the rocks. Okay, so this time, it was some whiny chick rock leaking out her Discman that was turning his thoughts to dust, but the premise was the same.
He lifts his gaze to look at her again, his eye line sliding all too easily from his Chemistry notes to observe the soft flutter of her downcast eyelids reading from the US History text. They slip down further to her pulpy lips, further, to trace the soft line of her breasts underneath her Chilton uniform. Down again, venturing under the small table, where from the blue tartan that covers her crossed legs peeks a tiny triangle swath of her white panties.
Unaware of the intense scrutiny she's under, she absently scribbles down a sentence or two from the textbook, her finger underlining the printed passage as she writes. She bops along to the rise and fall of the music in her ears and her lips curve around the words as she mouths the lyrics.
God, she had to know what she was doing to him, making his insides unravel with a swish of skirt as she stalked past - without so much as a glance. How he spent his days, wandering the halls, hoping to run into her; the most naked person with clothes on he'd ever seen. How each morning, he'd look for her and the front doors would swing open, her face floating forward before it would rearrange itself into another girl's.
There was only so much lingering at the drink fountain and leaning on her locker he could do before it became painfully obvious, before the entire student body began to regard his behaviour as odd.
"You're really odd. You know that?"
"Thank you"
Soft lips. Like butter.
A Hint of Tongue.
Like the most craven of junkies, his thoughts would always return to that first hit, that quick hot rush in his veins. And fuelled by the memory of that soft kiss on the piano bench, he pushes himself up off the desk, determination set in his features. He closes his binder before tucking his books under his arm and sauntering purposefully towards her table, patented swagger in place, eyes fixed resolutely on her form.
He leans over her, assaulted by the fruity scent of her shampoo as he inspects the loops and curls of her cursive.
She visibly tenses as he gingerly removes the earpiece of her headphones.
"Nice penmanship," he teases. His husky voice prickles the shell of her ear. Artlessly, he slides into the seat next to her, shifting a pile of her books to the far side of the table and plonking her backpack on the ground. Attempting disaffected casual, he smirks and loosely arranges himself on the chair; slinging an arm around the back to rest ever so slightly on her shoulder.
"Do you mind?!" she hisses furiously, gritting her teeth as she moves to retrieve her books.
He unabashedly looks her up and down as she stretches to gather the hardbacks now littering the tabletop. She tries to settle back in the seat of her chair but he moves in closer and confesses hotly in her ear, "Not at all."
The intimacy of the gesture infuriates her. She shrugs off his hold, the looped arm around her shoulders and she matches his closeness with furrowed brows and accusing eyes. He feels the subtle moisture of her breathy words on his face as she jabs a pointed finger at him in the air, "I think its time to back off, with your tail planted firmly between your legs, before I--"
"That's not my tail." he injects smoothly, his voice dripping with innuendo, eyebrows waggling.
"God! Do you live perpetually in the gutter!" she questions, maddened by his gall and his stupid hair-in-eyes charm.
"We're all in the gutter Rory, its just some of us are looking at the stars." He stares at her fixedly, with such disarming intensity that for a moment she can't find her voice. After a time, he seems to catch himself and his mouth turns up into an unmistakable smirk.
The moment is broken, and she matches his sleaze with biting incredulity, "Quoting Oscar Wilde? Are you kidding me? You took a breath in between cheerleaders to actually do the required reading?"
"Actually, I took a breath in between cheerleaders to clock in some quality you and me time." He punctuates his implication with a wink.
"I do love our little library chats." Her voice drips with sarcasm and she exhales crossly.
"If it's going so well, maybe we should think about moving this into the bedroom," he leers with little ceremony, and though it seems near impossible he manages to invade her personal space further.
"Isn't there anyone else you can annoy?" She throws him yet another caustic look and attempts to create some distance between them.
"Plenty of people," he grins at her and she finds the expression strangely endearing. It's fitting then that he chooses that exact moment to pluck her student planner from the pile, flicking through it offhandedly to stop on the week beginning the 21st of April.
"--but I choose you. Does that make you feel special?"
She watches him wearily as he rummages through her pencil case and extracts a blue ballpoint. He grips the pen too close to the tip like a little kid and in his tiny messy scrawl he writes across the page, 'Tristan's birthday: Perform for him 1 sexual favour in honor of the occasion.'
All thoughts of redemption suddenly fly out the second story window.
"More like supremely irritated," she seethes and makes a grab for her planner, snatching it from his clutches, scribbling frantically over his words.
He shrugs and grins like a madman, "I'll take what I can get."
"A knee to the groin and a fat lip?" she suggests tartly. "Go bother Paris. I'm sure she'd love to play your little game of 'lets-deface-other-people's-property' with you."
He chuckles. "I'm sure that's not the only thing she'd like to play with."
He receives only an unerring scowl in response and for reasons even unknown to him, he continues digging his hole.
"But what about you and Paris huh? Is she still looking at you with eyes like the fiery pits of Mordor on passing?" He smiles, but the action seems almost tentative, even a little apologetic.
"Ours is a forbidden love," she jokes sarcastically.
"You happen to get any of that forbidden love on camera?" he asks, watching her from the corner of his eye, spinning her pen between his fingers.
She eyes him disparagingly but she's smiling. "Wait. Let me guess. We'd call it... One night in Paris?"
Her suggestion produces his patented leer.
"Only one night? Maybe you'll build up your stamina with practice. With the right teacher of course."
She rolls her eyes and turns away from him, putting on her headphones, pressing play and drowning out his relentless flirtations.
He drinks her in appreciatively and she feels his eyes on her. She wonders for the umpteenth time what he's playing at --as if she didn't feel 'small town' enough without his eyes cataloguing her every move.
He feels her gaze flit to watch him and he runs with the subtle show of interest, pulling her back into this screwed up excuse for a conversation. He plucks the earpiece from her ear and she swats at his hand unsucessfully.
"Are you listening to our song?" he asks teasingly, motioning to the Discman resting on the desktop.
"There's a song called 'I-want-to-extinguish-a-lit-cigarette-in-your-eye-before-I-douse-you-in-lighter-fuel-and–throw-you-into-the-fiery-pits-of-HELL'?" she deadpans acerbically.
He laughs and indiscernibly replaces his arms around the back of her chair.
"Ours is a forbidden love." Tristan echoes her previous words with mock-wistfulness, his hand placed expertly on his heart.
She looks at him side-on, a tiny smile playing at the edges of her mouth, before she erupts in genuine laughter.
It breaks through the artificial silence of the library. An elderly librarian gives them a stern glare through her owl-like glasses. She eyes them suspiciously from behind a huge, oak desk, as the two seemingly turn to bury their noses back in the notes, trying to suppress their smiles.
The Discman springs open at her touch and she spins the CD round absently in the device. She watches the movements of the indignant librarian before turning into him, as if she's about to tell him a deep dark secret.
"Its PJ Harvey. My one guilty pleasure," she whispers, and crinkles her nose in a delightfully adorable way.
"I thought I was your guilty pleasure." He whispers back conspiratorially, cocking an eyebrow and snaking an arm back around her shoulders.
She scoffs appropriately but is visibly rattled at his nearness
"Guilty of being a delusional self-serving ego maniac maybe?"
"Hey now..." he warns playfully, shaking his index finger at her, "Nine out of ten sophomore girls don't lie..."
"What about the tenth girl then?" she says, her eyebrows arched wickedly. Her smile fits her face, but her eyes hold something else entirely.
They smile softly to each other, speaking in the unerring language of eye contact as he looks at her intently.
"She's in denial. Deep, deep denial."
So much fun to write! If you liked it, leave me a review to tell me.
Oh, and there's more. ;) Reviews are guilt inducing, so if you want more. Guilt-induce away.