Summary: Season 6 written a little bit differently. Rory and Jess have always had chemistry; it just took them a couple of hours and a few of spectators to realize how much.
Working Man
In all of her teenage fantasies she had never thought of him like this, she didn't have the capacity to imagine what he would look like as a finished, self-made adult. Any traces of the angry seventeen-year-old were gone, replaced with a smarter, wealthier, scrappier version of the Jess she'd known before. A part of him was still feral, unwilling to be tamed and keenly observant. Jess had been on the wrong end of a blade enough times to know how they worked, and know the feeling of the switch clicking and the determined crunch of his fingers beneath the guard. It was the kind of information that never left you; she could tell. He pulled up to her grandparents' house in a Benz, but he still stepped out in a streamlined leather jacket and boots.
"You ready?" He asked, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, unlit for now. He tucked the Marlboro behind his ear. "Or do you need to clear it with grandma first?" Jess smirked jokingly, staring up at her grandparents' house with mostly disguised disapproval. She looked at him for a second before smiling.
The practical side of her couldn't see how he could afford something like that. Jess was a drop out. The car he drove amounted to more than most teachers' annual salary.
"Where'd you get the car?"
"Dealership," he threw her the keys. "You can try it out if you want."
"Did you pay for it?" She asked, remembering that little was beneath the Jess she used to know. Apparently a lot of tax brackets were beneath him now.
"Yeah. It's new."
It was sleek and white, the kind of car that you drove while learning back in your chair, hands loose on the steering wheel. Driving a Mercedes Benz, anywhere was a good destination, according to Jess.
He ended up driving, pulling out of Richard and Emily's fountain adorned driveway. "Where do you want to go?" he asked, the soft lull of the engine easier to deal with than the radio. Rory didn't like to have lots of background noise when she was thinking.
Before she could answer her cell phone glowed blue and demanding on her lap. "Do you mind?" she asked.
"Go ahead."
"Hello." She said at first, letting whoever it was talk her into a contorted expression. "Okay, I guess we can meet you. No. We're on Ellington Street. I'm sorry, Logan. What do you want me to say?" A pause. Her tone went from elevated to polite. "It's fine. I'm glad that your flight went alright. See you in ten minutes. I love you."
Suddenly, the silence in the car was too intense. "That was Logan—"
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"Yes. He just got back from Nebraska on business, and he wants to meet up for dinner."
Jess gradually let up on the accelerator. "Do you need me to drive you anywhere? I didn't realize it was a bad time."
"No, I'm sorry," Rory apologized. "That's not what I meant. I want you to come."
Glancing sideways, she could see the playful arch of his right eyebrow. "Where are we headed," he asked, leaving the obvious unspoken. They both knew what he wanted to say: you sure?
"Turn right up here," she pointed, "and follow Point Street until you hit the canal. Then swing another right."
His music taste was similar, but it had been expanded to other genres besides furious, vein-bulging hardcore. Jess played 50 Cent in the car; the raw tracks on The Massacre flowed through his speakers. Rory remembered driving through Hartford with him back in high school, checking out a record store on the south side, cruising with Lane in the backseat, all of them wailing the Marilyn Manson version of "Sweet Dreams" at the top of their lungs. She smiled in spite of herself.
"Have you checked out any new bands lately?" Rory asked. Jess had a somewhat precarious talent for finding good underground music.
"Oh yeah, I'll have to make you a list. Actually, finding bands is kind of my job now."
"Really?"
"I write a column for the Alternative Press."
"Jess, that's really cool. Do you get paid for that? Sorry. That was rude."
He chuckled. "I get paid for a lot of things, column included."
Whereas Jess went for acts like Black Flag, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Liars where lyrical content was the mainstaple, Logan was more about atmosphere and overall sound. Her boyfriend listened to a lot of British rock bands that sounded like the lovechild of Pete Doherty and Jack White, but he heard about most of them in magazines.
They were approaching the pub, one of Hartford's only establishments targeted toward the younger generation. Rory checked herself in the visor mirror, examining her reflection while Jess parked his Benz. When she flipped the visor up she caught Jess looking at her. "What?" Rory asked.
"Nothing." She couldn't see his face very well in the dark. His round yellowish eyes stared back at her, slanted like a cat's. "Lets go."
--
Back when he was nineteen in Venice Beach, lingering after the infamous Summer of Jimmy, Jess could tell you all the meth dealers on the boardwalk. He knew the names of the Puerto Rican babyfaced fifteen-year-olds who would take boxes of Sudafed in exchange for crank. He spent most of his time sleep deprived, roaming at night in the morning all day for three days. Eventually it got to be too much for him—flying all the time, feeling like he was about to launch himself into a clear, perfect oblivion—so he packed up and headed north to Oregon, hoping he'd be able to detox and head back to New York. He slept for a couple days, smoked as much sinsemilla as he could pack into his bowl, and headed home. He hadn't touched it since.
Meeting Logan Huntzburger for the first time made him want to get blitzed. This was who Rory was fucking? He'd only spent a fraction of his advance on the car; that left enough to easily support a three hundred dollar a day crank habit. He wanted to step outside, get some air, and head for the nearest drug dealer.
"So did you guys date?" Logan asked, looking back and forth between Rory and Jess.
"Yeah," Jess inhaled on his cigarette deeply, filling his lungs with tar, nicotine, and mint. "But that was a while ago."
Logan gulped down half of his beer while Rory tried to look away. "We dated in high school," she clarified.
"What brings you to Hartford?" He continued, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, spreading the scent of ale. "Family, business, pleasure," Logan quipped.
"I'm here checking out bookstores for readings. I've got a book coming out in March."
"You write? I shouldn't be surprised. Everyone does nowadays. Don't you have an agent or something? My father owns a publishing company and most of our authors don't do that kind of work. We get interns for that kind of thing."
"Actually, I'm working as my own agent on this project," Jess clarified.
"That's really interesting," Rory tried to straddle the dichotomy between them. "So do you go around and talk to chain booksellers? I've always liked privately owned stores better—"
"What was your publishing company, again?" Logan pressed. "I don't remember."
"That's because I didn't tell you." Jess blew a cool plume of sidestream smoke towards an empty table. "It's Henry Holt and Company."
"Nice," Logan toasted. "Not great, but adequate."
"I'm not hungry anymore," Rory said, throwing her napkin down. "Jess," she slung her purse over her shoulder, "you ready?"
He dropped his burning Marlboro into one of Logan's empty beer mugs. "Nice meeting you."
Sensing defeat, Logan followed the pair as they walked out of the pub, a meter or two in their wake. Jess flipped up the collar of his jacket and lit another cigarette.
"Ace, what's your problem?" He grabbed the cuff of her arm. "Wait."
"Stop it. Go home," Rory instructed, albeit crossly. "Go get some rest, take some Ambien, whatever. If you can't be nice to someone that I have sincerely missed seeing and talking to, then you just need to go home. I wish you had told me when you were actually coming back."
"I was trying to surprise you but obviously you don't appreciate it."
"I'd appreciate it if you got out of my way," Jess deadpanned. "It's a nice car but it can't drive itself."
"Can we please talk?" He ignored the thickness in the air, the dizzying fumes of a combustion waiting to happen. "I'm sorry."
"Don't lie." She opened the passenger door and slid in; Rory almost expected the seats to still be warm.
--
They drove in silence for a while until she started fiddling with the radio dial. Rory stopped when she heart Kurt Cobain crooning: come / as you are / as you were / as I want you to be / as a friend / as a friend / as a known enemy.
"You still like him?"
"What?" Rory asked, startled.
"Kurt Cobain," Jess continued. "Do you still listen to him like you used to?"
Her emotions breathed a sigh of relief. "Not so much anymore, actually."
"Me neither. But I might start again since I've seen Courtney."
And they were friends again. He drove her around, let her try one of his clove cigarettes, played some old stuff that neither of them had heard since the '90s.
"I miss the old Trent Reznor," she said. "You know, pre-With Teeth."
He cracked a smile. "I know what you mean. Sobriety just makes him sound like a putz."
With his arms crossed behind his head, his body pressed flat against the roof of his car while they both stared at the dim sky lights, Jess could smell her like a cruel dream. "I'm Waiting for the Man" and its simple guitar riff weakened him to the point of expectation; when he thought of the Velvet Underground it reminded him of teenage sex with Rory. The kind of blind, limitless groping they'd missed out on.
"Is anyone going to notice that you aren't home?" he asked. They'd glided into a warm silence above the poppies and the yew berries. She didn't want to ruin it.
Rory shook her head. "My grandpa's out of town, and my grandma thinks I'm at Paris' house."
He waited for it, knew it was coming.
"But I should probably go home."
There were times when he spoke, when Jess made a strong pulling sound with his larynx, that she could hear the silence and the strain pressing down on them from all directions.
--
AN: I'm hoping to turn this into a multi-chapter fic, but it'll probably top out at five parts. I like hearing what you have to say. Thanks for reading.