Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Gilmore Girls or the perfection that is Rory Gilmore and Jess Mariano. The title is taken from the Anberlin song, Dismantle Repair.
dismantle repair
He never promised her the world.
But somewhere far away, somewhere hidden along with memories of their tangled tongues and the accidental whispers of you're beautiful, you're so beautiful, she assumed he was forever.
He's looking at her now. Her eyes are saying everything that her heart is scared to, and a look of confusion and fear and desperation cross the pallor of her face. It's cold out here - why is she out here? Firelights twinkle in his peripherals and for a split second he's filled with a rush of familiarity and it is soon replaced with disgust. He supposes he'll always feel this way about Stars Hollow, the only place he could possibly feel the extremities of sweet and raw emotion.
A few seconds have passed since his revelation. She hasn't said a word, no form of rebuttal, a swift change from her heated demeanour of not thirty seconds earlier. He begins to understand that she's not going to reply, she has nothing to say, has she ever had anything to say?
I think I may have loved you. Her tone resonates in his head everyday, his response always on the tip of his tongue, but never being able tell her such because he, too, is frightened out of his wits.
He nods slowly, staring her right in the eyes, affirming what he's just told her. The soft curves of her face are drawn downwards as she looks back at him. He backs up slowly, towards the direction of his car, his hunk of shit scrap metal car that he wouldn't have even cared about retrieving had it not been in this town. If there hadn't been the slightest chance that he would have seen her. An excuse to talk to her because he wouldn't have deserved to initiate it otherwise.
He turns, trying to ignore the fact that this is probably the last time he'll ever see her, that he should leave her to live her dreams that surely exist with or without him.
He settles in the driver's seat and turns on the car. It rumbles as smoothly as Gypsy could render it. He's trying to block the last minute and a half out of his mind, unwilling to face the hangover that will surely occur after this binge of emotions. Let it happen miles down the interstate. Let it happen far away from the one person he could ever hope to cure it.
But he can never be cured.
As he's pulling away from the body shop, her silhouette appears by his window.
He thinks he's cursing her when he utters fuck you under his breath, but he's really cursing himself because he knows there's no way in hell he isn't going to roll down the window.
Her eyes are glistening, but she's not crying. He wonders if she's ever cried over him. Probably not, but it doesn't matter, because he's never cried over her either.
For a moment nothing is said. She avoids his glance until he looks away, and then stares at him intently. The contour of his jawline. The scruff of his face. His tight black jacket, zipped snuggly over a grey sweatshirt and a book on his dashboard.
He doesn't say anything, just swallows and avoids eye contact with her. He leans forward on his steering wheel, looks up at the night sky through his dashboard, a bit difficult to see because of the firelights that are lighting up the town to uncomfortable heights. Still, he doesn't look at her.
"I'm sorry for yelling," she finally says.
He almost laughs. Almost. Her, apologizing. Apologizing for what? Everything she said, every pang of guilt she made him feel was nothing new. He'd been reminding himself of all those things, and more, constantly, for the past six months. He nods instead.
"Was that a new scenario, at least?" he asks. After all, you've imagined hundreds of them.
"No," she replies, and shakes her head. "Just one of the more far-fetched ones."
Again with the suppressed laughter. Far-fetched? Perhaps for her, but he's been living it day in and day out since the first time he saw her. He sees her now, too. Her hair is a bit shorter than he remembers, and he can't help but be fascinated by it.
"Is there anything else you want to talk about, Jess?"
You. What you feel, what you think, what you do now that we've been ripped apart. Not by choice, he knows, because in a world that was fair he would have never chosen to leave her.
Instead he shrugs.
She nods.
"Okay," she says. She's trying. She really is. That is so much more than can be said for him. She sighs and feels the burning in her throat, her eyes, her diaphragm. Her heart beats to the rhythm of his silent apologies.
"Jess," she says, looking at him. A split second passes before he meets her eyes. Her glistening blue eyes.
A single tear rolls down her cheek and she barely manages to gasp, "Why did you leave?"
This reunion is quieter than he had ever imagined. He's saying less than he's ever wanted to. And maybe there's truth in that. She's sitting beside him in his car, a familiar place for her. He's driving aimlessly around the outskirts of town, scared to stop because then he'll have to look at her.
"Did you not trust me?" she whispers.
It hurts more than he expects. Trust her?
"It had nothing to do with trust, Rory," he replies.
"Then what, Jess?"
He swallows, a difficult task considering the dryness of his throat, and says, "You didn't need me."
Her face seems to crumble at these words, and she breathes, "You don't know that. How could you possibly have known what I needed? You never talked to me."
He's silent. She sighs a heavy sigh.
"I think you were scared. I think you were terrified to feel something for me," she says.
Not true. Maybe a little bit true.
"Why do you never say anything? Why do you never talk?"
"The verbal thing comes and goes, I guess," he says nonchalantly.
"I've missed you, Jess," she says, a ton of weight being lifted off of her chest as the words leave her. "I've missed you so much, sometimes I think you were just a figment of my imagination. Like you were something I created, something unfathomable."
"You were that for me," he says, not hesitating. "You were everything I wasn't."
"I loved you," Rory says suddenly, and for the first time since they began driving, he looks at her, reminded of a car ride years ago that ended in the least favourable of circumstances but one that solidified everything she was to him.
He feels the burning in his eyes.
"All I wanted was for you to be honest with me," she says.
Honesty? You want honesty?
He slows down the car and pulls over onto the gravel shoulder.
"You want honesty, Rory? Will that make you happy?" Jess says.
She looks at him and says nothing.
"The first time I saw you, I knew there was something about you. I knew you were different. I had to know you, I had to talk to you. I was so immediately attached to you that I wasn't all that sure what I was feeling half the time. And you were with Dean, and everything was complicated, but I knew that you were it for me. I didn't give up on you. I haven't."
She continues to look at him, taking in all this information with a look on her face that reads I know I know I know.
"You are the only one I dream about," he says, the most real thing that he thinks he's ever told her.
Again, she says, "Then why did you leave?"
"I left because I had to learn to love myself before I could love you." His eyes are beginning to swell.
She places her hand on his right cheek, stroking the scruff on his face. Her brush is so familiar and it sends fireworks through his body.
"Do you think you could love me, now?" Rory says.
He covers her hand with his, and leans in, slowly, waiting for her to respond to his gesture. She leans in too, and inches her mouth towards his. Their mouths collide in a kiss that they have both been waiting for for months. When they pull away, he knows he has to be honest with her.
"I could never love you the way you deserve."
She nods as though she understands, but then she says, "Does that mean you should run away, and never try?"
They spend the evening in the back seat of his car, on the shoulder of the dirt road outside of Stars Hollow. They are both bundled up, she is resting her head on his chest and he's kissing the top of her head. Worshipping, more like. He wants nothing more than this.
They discuss books and Yale, writing and the world. The fire hasn't been diminished inside of her. It's only rising. They sneak a kiss, occasionally, nothing grandiose but just enough to let the other know that they're there. For now, tonight, they can just be Rory and Jess, two kids who fell in love at the wrong time. Who met each other too early. Who loved each other too soon.
"I love you, Jess," Rory says into his jacket. Love. In the present. The words he's been longing for for years, the reassurance that it was not just him who experienced the transcending feeling of being in love with the other.
"I'll always come back for you, Rory," he says after a few hours of this, this closeness, this longing, this contentment. She's fallen asleep a few times but is always woken up by the sound of his rapid heartbeat. He feels her nod.
"I don't expect the same to be true for you."
She doesn't say anything, just pulls herself tighter into his body. She wants this forever, too.
"You're leaving again, aren't you?" she says.
He doesn't say a word.
He drops her off at home. However hard it is for her, he feels it ten times worse and a hundred times quieter. He's stoic.
He kisses her forehead as she exits the car, and he watches her in the rearview mirror as she walks up the steps. He feels a headache coming on and reaches in the glove compartment in hopes of finding a stray aspirin. Instead, he finds a single scrap of paper.
In Rory's handwriting, that oh-so-familiar writing, he reads: I will always want you to come back for me.
That's when the tears begin to fall.