there are a million ways to bleed, but you are, by far, my favorite.
x
he's visiting luke during the few days that the publishing house releases him for Christmas and that is when he notices.
(jess works the diner morning shift, pouring coffee, slinging hash, rolling his eyes at kirk, and dodging out of the way when patty aims perfect slaps at the apple of his ass.
the gilmore girls come in and order every conceivable carbohydrate on the menu, three orders of bacon, one cheddar omlette, and half of a grapefruit, which he has to go get from doose's as lorelai smirks something from long ago that earns a groan from her husband as he refills the coffee maker before leaving out the door to meet jackson and sookie.
after his delivery, jess tops off their coffee, pouring lorelai's to the brim, but rory puts a hand over her mug and shakes her head, blue eyes wide and scared in a way that he hasn't seen since they were eighteen and he was running out of a yale dorm room, shame and desperation hot in his heels and thrumming hummingbirds in his chest. she had looked at him like that then and now it's been over a decade and he hasn't seen that fear in years.
she puckers her lips, decaf, please, jess?
he narrows his eyes and gets the pot from the back burner. gilmore girls drink decaf only when forced by his uncle's hand or when they're pregnant and luke isn't even in the diner at the minute. he's getting lectured on organic, pesticide free vegetables by Jackson in the town square. and then he sees it,
rory rubs a hand on her stomach absentmindedly and he drops the pot on the floor with a splashing crash.
it's the sound heard round the entire fucking world and when he pops his head up from behind the counter, he meets lorelai's eyes and hears the bell clang on the front door simultaneously, wind knocked out of him, coffee seeping into the material of his jeans. she smiles sadly and pokes at the untouched grapefruit. jess turns his back.)
x
by some kind of cosmic joke, rory comes to a reading of the subsect while she's in philly covering something for a freelance job. it's February and her stomach is just a little bit swollen, but no one else is looking there except him. she's still so beautiful that it makes his heart ache and when she sees him, her grin takes over her whole face with excitement, taking a seat in the front row. the crowd is sparse; he wrote the book long ago, but the publishing house can still capitalize on him when they need the extra cash, so here they are doing just that.
hi, I'm jess mariano, the author of the subsect, and I'll be doing a reading this afternoon.
he clears his throat, gruffs a hand over the scruff on his cheeks, straightens his blazer, sitting on the stool, feet in the rungs. rory makes eye contact and he can't help the smile that flips his mouth just so.
in one timeline, we kiss and the world crumbles between our fingertips at the thought of romeo and Juliet getting a happy ending. in another one, you're the spring bride and I'm a runaway groom with bare feet and it's easy to love you more than I love myself. in one other, you burn the world and I perish in the flames. another features us in an epic battle that ends with a confession on ashen lips and spear in my side. but most of all, there has to be one , there has to be, where I love you without question and you love me in return in a way that makes the audience catch burning ember in their throats. that maybe is where I have lived since we were eighteen, he intones, amber eyes flaming and acutely aware of every nerve in his body.
when he finally looks up, her lips are bitten roses, drawing crimson, snow white skin paler if possible; the forget me not eyes drawn with realization, and god, when it comes to her it's like he never left high school.
she leaves, the swish of her blush coat in her wake and when he checks his phone after the reading is over, whiskey in hand, he finds one message.
I'm sorry I never read it. I meant to. God, we really loved each other didn't we.
he sighs and finishes the glass, the lies thick on his tongue.
yeah, we did, didn't we gilmore.
x
jess mariano sits at his computer that night, half drunk on whiskey, half drunk on her, and writes for the first time in ten years.
(it is a burden to love like this.)
rory gilmore sits at her computer that night, half sober on the growing bean in her stomach, half drunk on what ifs.
(it is a burden to be loved like this.)
x
when he lays eyes on her at the firelight festival, there's no hiding it anymore. her stomach is pronounced beyond belief, protruding from her slim frame without apology. oddly enough, paris is with her looking severe as hell, as usual.
honestly, he's seen her a few times since that day in truncheon when all their progress over a decade was shot to shit in five minutes. he's even been reading chapters for her, making notes in the margins, but this way is so different than when they were young.
paris marches up to him, the four inch heels she's sporting sticking in the grass, but she's clearly isn't going to let mother nature win. woman is a fucking beast. she sniffs daintily to get his attention and when he doesn't acknowledge her, she swings her handbag into him so hard that he loses equilibrium and then smiles in a way that he is sure won her the seat in congress in 2020 and the current vice presidency on her road to running the patriarchy into the ground. he smirks; he's always liked paris.
yes, he asks, brushing grass off his jacket sleeve, meeting her gaze head on.
our girl rory is due to pop in about a month here and that no good, piece of shit ex-boyfriend of hers is sending checks and asking to attend doctor's visits, even though he's married and living abroad, but I digress, and I was just wondering if you could give rory a goddamn reality check because for some reason she listens to you, which I don't really understand when her best friend is the vice president and we could take the presidency next term like we did in high school cause she has that whole blue bird dressing vibe. so, talk to her for fuck sake, she spits out in one breath .
and jess looks at her incredulously and then replies with a quick yes because even if she's vice president that is not his main reason to be afraid of her. he remembers being seventeen and sitting at the kitchen table in the gilmore house and talking about Kerouac and literally feeling his balls shrivel up when she started in on austen and ginsberg together. paris Gellar deserves to be feared, and respected, but mostly feared.
yes ma'm, he tells her, as if he would ever say anything else.
good, she replies, well good. hey, is he single? she asks suddenly, pointing to bryan, who's moving in odd time to the movement of the fire, more than likely propelled by miss patty's punch.
really? he looks at her and then seeing her glare narrow, he quickly replies, yep, absolutely. kill it.
I intend to, paris replies and stalks towards bryan, menacing as hell, but still hot, he considers.
the sky is clear and the weather still has that cold bite to it, but the fire is warm and the punch hasn't melted his internal organs yet, so he's pretty happy. in the background he hears paris proposition bryan and snorts into his cup, barely noticing rory sliding up on his left. she notices the interaction and rolls her eyes and then widens them at the sudden PDA that the stars hollow community has never seen before and that's saying something. they begin to laugh openly together, wheezing in the cold air and gripping arms and her hair falling into her face and his nose red from the cold.
the next day, when he can't get out of bed and luke plays bluegrass as loud as he can to be a jackass, rory comes over and they watch Saturday night fever and eat Chinese food. they sit on the couch side by side, close enough to feel the heat from her skin until it gets dark out.
he lets her fall asleep on his lap. he'll talk to her about it tomorrow.
x
the next day, he walks to the Gilmores (Danes? he should really ask luke about this) and finds her curled up in a chair on the front porch reading anna Karenina. her toenails are fire engine red and her hair is falling out of its bun; she's wearing leggings and an oversize sweater to mask the baby bump.
hey, she says when she sees him, dog-earing the book and leaping up from her seat.
hey, he replies, sitting on the porch railing. paris wanted me to talk to you, he starts, no bullshit.
she sighs enormously, spins around and sits back on the chair, and looks up at him. I ripped up the checks. I don't need him to be a part of this. I can do it myself.
jess nods. he was expecting this. she's lorelai 2.0 and based on the look luke gave him over dinner last night, this whole thing was going to blow up in his face. rory continues and he doesn't stop her.
Christopher gave half my life blood to me, she tells him, eyes steady, but he wasn't my father for many years. he wasn't really until after the divorce; then I could believe what he was saying, that it was going to be alright. that's the job of a father isn't it? she asks without waiting for an answer that he already knows the question to.
jimmy isn't your father, not really, she says. he swallows hard at that one. luke is he thinks, luke who never threw me out, luke who made sure I ate and went to school, luke who believed in me when no one else would.
I know, he grounds out, shifting on the railing. what're you gonna do?
she shrugs, unworried. and then she laughs, the sound loud bouncing off baseboards. I am my mother, she says, looking at him, wringing her hands together.
that's not necessarily a bad thing, he replies and she gives him the look that he associates with the time he tried to con her into ice cream in cones and illegal driving at seventeen.
ironic that you say that now, but she had luke from the moment he saw her, she says, her voice small and tinny. she never had to worry, never had to stress, and even if she never knew it, she loved him far before she ever realized. I've never had anyone like that she says.
jess chokes on the breath in his throat. since you've never read the subsect, I'll have to tell you what happens at the end, he says, scolding, and he looks at her and her eyes are clouded over.
as a boy I believed that nothing could hurt me, as a grown man I know better, with one exception. it doesn't matter where I am, I am yours, the boy tells her, the scent of books surrounding them, years of experience telling him to run but his feet stay rooted to that moment, rooted to her. always rooted to her, he expels in one long breath and rory looks up at him with doubt.
we really loved each other didn't we, she asks him, watery smile, splintering with the lies thick on her tongue.
he laughs, the present tense getting stuck in his mouth, yeah we did, didn't we?
x
rory delivers a girl at 4:33 am on june third. lorelai emily gilmore.
she is released from the hospital two days later and returns to the diner loft to find jess sleeping on the couch with a baby book on his chest.
she smiles, sits at the kitchen table and opens the subsect while her daughter sleeps peacefully.
you know we're supposed to be together, he says, desperation creeping into his words, suffocating. I knew it the first time I saw you. he inches closer, locks burning amber eyes with her azure ones. and you know it too.
rory sighs; she's smarter in literature.
I know, the girls stutters, voice barely a whisper. I know.
x
epilogue:
he believed they would always share a destiny.
and so they did.