Takes place during Rory's first year at Yale. This is an ideal, the past is coming in the coming installments (i.e., this is in the future to most of the story). Rory and Jess are together (duh).

Possession is Nine-Tenths of the Law

She leaned over the textbook, hunched over on her small, dorm-suite bed. She absent-mindedly chewed the end of the highlighter, going through a paper and highlighting facts for revision.

"I really cannot seem to comprehend why you insist upon making constant remarks under your breath," Paris said, quite loudly from the common room. Rory looked up from the work, closing her eyes for a moment as another rift in the peace of her studies formed as Paris criticized Tanna.

Tanna mumbled something incoherently. Rory suppressed a laugh.

"The incessant mumbling really must end," Paris said frantically. "It bores me to tears how you seem to think that I will stand for this behavior. I am a 4.0 student; your distractions harm the reputation of this establishment."

"Paris!" Rory called from the room. The door was cracked open and she heard the quite chattering argument halt for a moment. "Do you really have nothing better to do?"

"What would make you think that?" she asked, opening the door fully.

"You just yelled at Tanna for mumbling."

"Have you heard it? It's like she in another room."

"Hey Jamie!" Rory joked, looking distractedly over Paris' shoulder as she rose, ready to close the door. Paris turned at the mention of her boyfriend just as Rory slammed and locked the door.

"You will pay Gilmore."

Rory smiled, accomplished and returned to her studies as her cell phone rang on the bedside table.

"Hello?" she asked, not expecting a call at 8:30 in the evening.

"Daughter! Offspring! One whose name I call my own!" Lorelai exclaimed enthusiastically.

"Hi mom," Rory returned calmly.

"How's school?" she asked maliciously.

Rory sighed openly. "What?" she asked.

"Mean!" Lorelai retorted mockingly.

"Mom," Rory whined.

"So, Gilmore dinner tomorrow…"

"And?" Rory said, capping the highlighter and dropping in on the bedside table.

"I think mom said we're having lamb," she said.

"Forget it," Rory said obstinately.

"Forget what?" Lorelai said cluelessly.

"I am not bringing him over as bait. Luke is a big boy. He can handle grandma and grandpa," Rory said, matter of fact.

"But it's so much more fun to watch him squirm and get all fidgety when my mother talks," Lorelai said, whining.

Rory was indignant. "This is my boyfriend that you're talking about. My very sweet, very cute, very loving, very, very, very short tempered boyfriend. My very precious, one-in-a-million boyfriend, and you want me to dangle him in front of Emily Gilmore like he's the last sausage at Oktoberfest and she's two-thousand German people."

"Not the last, Luke will be there," Lorelai said, ignoring most of the pleading.

"Do you really think that upsetting Jess is going to help at all with his school stuff?" Rory said, laying the blame on thick to Lorelai's shiny mood.

"If he can't handle Emily and Richard Gilmore for one night, what makes him think that he can make it through freshman year at Yale?" Lorelai wondered.

"Because he hasn't been conditioned as I have to dodge their criticism."

"Neither has Luke!" Lorelai said, frantic now.

"Luke is dating you," Rory pointed out. "I'm sure by now he's developed some

skill to not only dodge your pointed remarks, but possibly respond."

"Not a chance," Lorelai said smugly.

The silence fell and Rory could hear Lorelai open her mouth to ask again.

"No. Absolutely not."

"The cruelty!" Lorelai said.

"Bye mom," Rory responded.

"My own daughter," Lorelai said, shaking her head. Rory closed the phone and stared at it for a moment.

"Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt the riveting stare-contest," Paris said, looking down at Rory.

"Paris, how did you get in here?"

"It is my room that you wrongfully barricaded yourself in," she pointed out.

"There was nothing wrongful about locking the door to our room," Rory said as she stood and pulled her pair of Adidas on. She stood and Paris eyed her suspiciously.

"Where are you going?" she asked, arms crossed.

"Paris, I am 19 years old, if I feel like leaving my dorm room after dark, I'm pretty sure nobody would have anything to say about it," Rory said, turning with her hands stuffed in the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

"Fine, go canoodle with the delinquent," Paris said after Rory as she walked out of the door to their room.

"Hi Rory," Tanna said flatly as she hemmed a modest, knee length blue skirt.

"Hey Tanna," she said as she rifled around on the coffee table for her car keys.

Tanna looked up for a second and squinted at her. "Are you going out?"

"Yeah, I'm just looking for my keys, did you see them?"

"Paris installed a coat rack for some reason. They're hanging from one of the key hooks."

"Thanks, see you later," Rory said as she walked out the door. The hallway was buzzing faintly with the prospect of weekend socialization, a far cry from the party that ripped through the dormitory the night before. It was October now, the leaves had all fallen from the trees in New Haven and there was a perpetual bog-like quality to the ground.

Rory stuffed her hands in the front pocket of her Yale sweatshirt and quickened her gait to her car, across the park and into the student parking lot. The darkness and casual coolness of Halloween season alerted her senses and made her feel more awake than she had all day.

She reached the small, silver car and looked across the lot. It was only a quarter

of a mile to Jess's dorm, so she dropped the keys back into her pocket and changed her

direction, smiling acutely to herself.

Jess sat on his bed, reading Pablo Neruda, taking a much needed break in studying. He had picked up an extra class to accommodate his late registration and had since been locked in his single room, writing paper after paper.

Rory hadn't been by yet today, making him a little uneasy. She often found it hard to go a few hours without interrupting his studies, but he wasn't annoyed. Probably her unwavering focus rubbed off on him a little when she left, but when she was there he was lucky if he remembered his own name.

He returned to the book, drinking in his words, applying them to himself. He took his pencil from behind his ear to mark a note in the margin when he heard the door open.

"Hey," she said, smiling as she set her keys on his desk and crawled across the bed to kiss him.

"Hi," he said, finishing the note and kissing her back. He stuffed the pencil back behind his ear and put the book on the floor offhandedly.

"So, tomorrow is Friday," she mentioned, trying to sound casual.

"That's the way the week goes," he said, looking at her, ignoring her bait.

"And we both know that on Friday's I'm forced to commute to Hartford for dinner with my grandparents. Which really isn't fair. I did, after all, pick Yale over Harvard, they should be more than happy to pay for my education," she rambled.

"Rory-," Jess said, cutting off her rambling. She looked at him, apologetic. "I told you already that I'll go," he said, settling a protective hand on her hip. "But I have conditions."

"Luke's coming too," she added, snuggling unnoticeably closer.

Jess nodded in response. He studied her slim figure, looking slim even underneath his oversized sweatshirt that she had stolen earlier in the week. Her blue eyes twinkled as her plan to wrangle him into the car tomorrow afternoon unfolded beautifully in front of her.

"I was thinking," she said, interrupting his musings, "if my mom and Luke ever got married, we'd be legal cousins."

Jess's hand fell from her hip and he gave her a look of complete mock-horror.

"Wow," he said, staring off into space, playing his character very well. "I didn't ever think I'd know what it felt like to be from Kentucky. I'll be sure to thank Luke and Lorelai for that tomorrow," Jess said, in shock.

"Icky!" Rory exclaimed, smiling at him with her nose crinkled. "But, there's no direct blood relation," she said, trying to justify the thoughts she was having about what was beneath Jess's grey sweater and jeans.

"I'd actually rather just not dwell on Luke and Lorelai together," Jess said, smiling slightly.

"Ewww," Rory said. "I think we should probably pretend the last minute never happened," she gestured to indicate wiping the air clean.

"What minute? You just got here," he said, playing along fantastically.

She smiled brilliantly, her liquid blue eyes shining. "How was your day?"

He sighed. "School. I finished my essays for the evening about twenty minutes ago," he said, gesturing with his head in the direction of his desk. On it sat his textbooks, a pile of notebooks, and a computer that he bought with the money he had saved up the summer before. She grinned at his efforts.

He watched her eying his desk with a sort of motherly pride while she scooted closer to him. The little movements that her body made as she wriggled across the bed promptly chased any word pertaining to anyone's mother out of his head. She took a moment to let him lace their legs together and she laid her head back on his pillow.

"How was your day?" he asked her, gazing down at her, his eyes pools of fluid chocolate behind his curtain of eyelashes.

"Long-ish," she said, raising an arm to put behind her head. "Paris and Tanna argued about mumbling, my mother begged me into making you come for bait tomorrow night, and my new Clash CD has a huge, Grand Canyon sized, crater-scratch in it," she pouted.

"Aw, poor thing," he said as he finally closed the last inch of space between them. Her breath flew out of her chest swiftly, feeling his body clearly beyond his thin, ribbed sweater. His belt buckle felt cold and steely against the band of bare skin that had formed between the top of her jeans and the bottom of the sweatshirt. His sweatshirt.

"Please, have pity upon my soul," she joked as he kissed her neck, breathing in her aphrodisiac perfume.

"I don't know," he said jokingly. "You did steal my sweatshirt. That's a federal offense, darlin'," he said, sliding his hands underneath it. She smiled and knit her eyebrows together, finally her face falling in a pleading pout.

"But isn't possession nine tenths of the law? And I only wore it because you hid my shirt," she argued.

Jess rolled his eyes. "Two weeks ago," he said, pressing her closer. "Time to give it up."

"Ooh ooh!" she cried. "Double entendre!"

Jess scoffed teasingly. "You're turning into your mother."

"Thank you," she said, grinning broadly.

"Just so you know, your mom doesn't do much for me," Jess said, pausing before he moved the positioning of his hands. Rory let the grin fall from her face and replaced it with her own brand of smirk.

"Rory again," she said, finally sliding her hands up the back of his sweater, fingering his muscles and the ribs that were pronounced even in his back.

"Good to know," he said, sliding his hands down her legs and up to her waist. Rory sighed dreamily and buried her head in his chest. She could get lost in these moments forever.