Title- Then She Appeared
Author- Kàra
Rating- T, leaning towards M
Summary- Sequel to It Was Supposed To Be You. Rory has Jess' phone number and address. But will she use them?

A/N- Yes, this *is* the song that was playing during Jess and Rory's first "real" kiss. Also, I have fudged a little with the timeline in Jess' life... because, frankly, we really don't know any of the details about what happened during the terrifyingly Jess-less S5, so why should I obey reality? XP

"And the sun which formerly shone in the clearest summer sky
Suddenly just changed address, now shines from her blue eyes..."
-XTC

Rory set her textbooks down on her mattress, letting out a sigh of relief. Her first week back at Yale had been exhausting, and not even a bibliophile like herself could fail to be exhausted by the time her one o'clock class finally let out. As she followed her books down onto the bed, however, a Post-it note tucked between the pages of a very worn novel on her shelf caught her eye. She stared at the little yellow scrap of paper for a full minute, feeling the discomfort it prodded awake in her stomach.

She had been in possession of this particular Post-It since the day after the Dragonfly's grand opening. It had been originally Michel's, and now here it was, burning a hole in her backup copy of Howl. Written on it in Luke's neat, precise hand was a phone number and an address. Jess' address.

It was easy to remember that night, when she had cried herself out in her mother's arms after first losing her virginity to Dean and then the horrible realization that followed shortly thereafter that the only reason she had slept with her (very married) ex in the first place was out of reaction to her encounter with Jess the night before that. That night went up to very near the top of her list of Worst Days Ever. And the very next day, she had returned to the Inn and begged Luke for Jess' contact info. She had to see him, talk to him, try to explain what had happened. Try to... something. She wasn't sure what she wanted.

And that was why she'd sat on the address all summer. When her grandmother had invited her on a trip to Europe, it had been the perfect excuse to procrastinate- not Rory's usual style, but she was as nonconfrontational as it was possible to be, and she was scared of what Jess would say if (when?) she finally worked up the guts to call him. And so she had been gone all summer. Then she had thought she would do it when she got home, but she just hadn't been able to get the time, what with preparing for the beginning of the new semester.

It's the weekend now... a sibilant voice in the back of her head whispered. Plenty of time to take a trip to New York...

And without being conscious of having made it up, Rory's mind was set on a course. She had to do this. It was a weight on her chest and a painful distraction and... dear god she missed him. She wanted to see him. She grabbed the little piece of sticky paper from its place, tucked it into her pocket, and grabbed her purse.

On her way out the door, she dialed Lorelai. "Hi, Mom, I'm not sure I'm gonna be home this weekend like we planned after all..."

She stared around skeptically at the building she was standing in. For lack of a better term, it was a dump. Her heart broke to think of Jess living here, in this mess, while she was safe and comfortable in her dorms.

As she was thinking disparaging thoughts about the property, a prematurely bald man emerged from one of the apartments, which had Landlord scrawled across the lintel with white chalk. "Can I help you, Sweetheart?" he said, not entirely politely.

"I'm, uh... I'm looking for Jess Mariano," she said uncertainly, glancing down at the crumpled Post-it in her hand.

The man grinned- well, more like leered. "Yeah, he's gone," he said shortly.

"Oh."

"Moved out about three months back. Weird guy. Bit of a loner, know what I mean?"

She nodded, swallowing hard. "Did he leave a forwarding address or anything?"

He looked at her appraisingly for a minute. "S'matter of fact, he did, in case some uncle of his wanted to contact him."

"And...?"

"And what, Sweetheart?"

Rory sighed impatiently. "Can I get the address?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On how much you got on you."

Her eyes widened. She supposed she should have expected something along these lines when she saw the condition of the building, but it still caught her by surprise. "Um... would thirty do it?" she asked tentatively, naming a number far lower than what she carried with her.

He sighed, as if he were extremely put out. "For you, Sweetheart--" he said, running his eyes appreciatively across her figure. "--I guess it'll have to do."

Careful not to show the man the true amount of cash in her purse, she pulled out three ten-dollar bills and handed them across to the man. "Now, the address?" she demanded.

"Alright, he sent it on to me about two months ago. It's care of some publishing place thing in Philadelphia..."

It had been late as it was when she arrived in New York, but by the time she got to Philadelphia it was early morning and Rory was exhausted. She knew that turning up on Jess' doorstep at two a.m. would not only be unwelcome, it was not the way she wanted this to go. She had to be well-rested, she had to be able to think clearly... and, as silly as it was to admit it, she wanted to look good. It was shallow, but she wanted to be pretty for Jess. And five consecutive hours of driving was not exactly the best way to go about that.

So she had checked into a hotel and stayed the night, with the added bonus of a hot shower and a fresh change of clothes. By ten in the morning, she was checked out and positively twitching with nervous energy.

This was crazy. She was crazy. Why had she thought this was a good idea?

Because you love him.

Oh. Yeah. That might have something to do with why. She sighed, and looked down at the copy of Huckleberry Finn she was carrying. In the left margin of the first page, an address was scribbled. For a few moments, she stared at it indecisively, then in a moment of bravery, she began walking down the street, heading in what she hoped was the direction of Locust Street...

Rory located a small publishing house/bookstore, with a weather-beaten sign over the door reading Truncheon Books. She stared up at the building nervously. It was entirely possible that Jess was here. Or if he wasn't here, someone inside knew how to find him. She was close now.

As she climbed the concrete steps to the door, she wondered what Jess had to do with this place. A publishing company... thinking it over, that was just exactly the kind of place where she might expect to find Jess Mariano. When she stepped inside, she was certain of it. Though a little dingy, the place had a feeling of Big Thoughts And Art. The whole room, with its bizarre abstract paintings and shelves and shelves and shelves of books gave off a distinct Jess-like vibe. She could see him being here.

As she stood in the doorway, gaping around her, a dark-skinned young man came hurrying out from a back room, with the distinct look of someone who had not been doing his job only moments before. "Hi, uh, welcome to Truncheon," he said, a little out-of-breath. "You here to see Summers'? 'Cause you're a little early..."

His flustered, yet easy manner instantly made Rory feel a little more secure. "Uh, no, I'm not expected," she said. "I'm actually looking for Jess Mariano. I was told I can find him here...?"

As she said Jess' name, the young man nodded in sudden understanding. "Ah," he said knowingly. "Yeah, Jess is around here somewhere. Lazy bum probably hasn't done a damn thing all day, but then, neither have I." He winked confidentially at Rory. "Want me to dig him up for you?"

"Um..." She had come all this way. She couldn't turn back now. "Yeah, sure."

He disappeared again and a few seconds later she could hear him shouting, "Oi, Mariano! Get your ass out here, there's somebody wanting to see you!"

Rory's eyes widened. A year ago, he wouldn't have taken orders from anyone (except perhaps Luke, and even then only with an air of "I would have done this even if you hadn't told me to"). Things had apparently changed, however, because a few seconds later a familiar husky voice called back, "Tell 'em I'll be out in a sec, will ya?" The sound of his voice all but stopped her heart, and she barely registered the other man's reemergence.

"He'll be out pretty quickly."

"So I heard," she managed to stutter.

And then he appeared in the doorway, looking over his shoulder to speak to some still-unseen person in the back. "--and we should give Carter one more call. Matthew can sweet-talk her back if all else fails but..." Then he turned around. His eyes fell on her. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared. All the color drained from his face.

"I thought about calling," Rory said. "I have your number, from Luke. But I wanted to see you in person."

"Yeah," Jess replied. His voice was soft, though from what emotion, she couldn't tell.

She nodded. "So..."

"So..."

At that point, the other man chose to say, "I think I'll give you a chance to... yeah," and duck out of sight, smirking like the cat that ate the canary.

Jess grimaced at his coworker's retreating back. "Jeez," he muttered in irritation. Then his gaze returned to Rory, and she could see his nerves and confusion in his eyes. "There's, um, an apartment upstairs. A couple of us guys live up there. We could...?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Privacy. No interruptions. Good idea."

He led the way upstairs to a small apartment, and Rory studied the space surreptitiously as she entered. It was cramped and messy- what else could she expect from a bunch of young guys living la vie bohéme?- but there was something that felt welcoming and homey nonetheless. And there were books everywhere. Scattered across the furniture, stacked on the floor, she even spied a few in the kitchen sink. She did notice, however, that the piles grew taller the closer they got to a closed door off the hall, and she suspected that it was Jess' bedroom.

They went into the living room, and Jess chucked a couple of novels off the sofa to make room for her to sit down. She studied the titles as they hit the floor.

"Leskov?" she asked, desperate to break the tense silence between them. "Your tastes change?"

"Nah, that's Matthew's," he informed her as he perched on the edge of the coffee table. "He's got a thing for obscurity."

"Right."

Silence established itself heavily over them once again; Jess stared at Rory with wide, vulnerable eyes (it was a look she had never seen him wear before) and she stared right back.

"Coffee!" Jess blurted out. "Um, you want some?"

Rory was reminded, slightly hysterically, of when they first began dating and the awkward encounter in Luke's apartment. "No, I'm okay," she told him. Coffee would be a stalling tactic, and now that she was here, with Jess Mariano real and solid before her, she didn't want to put this off anymore. "I did something stupid," she said sadly, struggling to hold his gaze.

"Yeah?" he asked.

Losing her fight with eye contact, she stared at her shoes. "I slept with Dean. Right after... the day after you came to my dorm at Yale." She could practically hear him sinking as she said it.

"And just when I thought I couldn't possibly feel any worse..." Jess said sarcastically. This time, she recognized the statement for what it was- his sarcasm was his defense mechanism, his way of hiding his pain from a world he assumed would be indifferent. But Rory wasn't indifferent, not to him. That was physically impossible.

Bizarrely, she drew strength from the pain he thought he was hiding. Knowing that her transgressions still hurt him meant he still cared. She didn't destroy his feelings for her by shouting "no." There was still a chance she could reach him. The knowledge gave her the ability to look up from the floor and meet his gaze again.

She wasn't prepared for the cold, dead look in his eyes. It cut her to the core and she had to take a heavy breath before speaking again. When she did, though, her voice was steady.

"It was a mistake," she said firmly. "Afterwards, I cried for hours. It wasn't because I wasn't ready or anything. It was because... because it wasn't right with Dean. He was never supposed to be my first time. It was..." Rory had to take another deep breath. Putting your heart on the line was hard. "It was always supposed to be you. It's been you from the beginning. So I guess what I'm trying to say is... if you don't hate me for the way I treated you the last time we saw each other... I love you, Jess. I love you, and I want to be with you. I want to be your girlfriend again."

He stared at her for a very long time with an indecipherable expression on his face before he said, "But you said--"

"I lied," she interrupted. "I was scared and upset and tired of hurting over you. For a whole year I'd just been dead on the inside, and I didn't want to ever feel like that again. I think I thought if I could destroy the possibility of us for good, I'd be able to let it go. Obviously that didn't work, and I'm sorry that it hurt you in the process. Jess, the look in your eyes when you walked away that night..." Rory drew in a shuddering breath, willing herself not to cry. "It broke my heart all over again. It felt like my whole world was coming down around my ears, and I went looking for stable ground. But it turns out that the only stable ground is you, which is completely terrifying because you're kind of a flake, but I just... can't stay away. And now I'm sitting here, pouring out my heart and hoping you'll eventually say something so that I can stop talking."

Jess nodded. "Okay," he said simply.

"What does 'okay' mean?"

He shrugged. "It means 'I'm sorry I hurt you like that' and it means 'I accept your apology' and it means 'I love you.'"

She couldn't believe he said it so calmly, but it prompted her next statement. "Who knew two syllables could convey so much meaning?" she said, a teasing note in her voice. She needed to lighten the atmosphere after the tension her rambling declarations had created.

"Eh, well, I've always had a way with words," he replied, smirking.

"According to who?" Rory asked incredulously.

"Matt and Chris and the rest of the morons downstairs," Jess said, moving from his seat on the table to take up residence next to her on the sofa. "I personally think they're cracked, but if they want to print crappy novels, more power to 'em."

Rory narrowed her eyes, sensing there was more to his statement than met the eye. "Is there something you're not telling me?" she asked.

He looked a little shy all of a sudden. "I kinda... wrote a book," he said quietly.

Her jaw dropped. "A book? An actual book?"

"It's not much," Jess replied, brushing it off. "I wrote it over the last couple of months, after I moved out of New York. I had some serious shit to get off my chest, and it all just sort of... came out. Personally, I can't see why anyone would want to read it, but it fell out of my bag in this coffeeshop and Matthew, nosy bastard that he is, picked it up, and I wound up with a job while Chris edits the manuscript."

Rory shook her head. "I knew it!" she exclaimed. "I knew you could do something amazing like this!"

"Like I said, it's not very good. And it's really short."

"But it's yours, and whatever you say, I bet you're really proud of it deep down, aren't you?"

Jess flashed her a smirk with a hint of a genuine smile underneath it. "Guess so," he replied quietly, as his expression turned a little more serious. "Rory?"

"Yeah?"

"Am I allowed to kiss you now?"

"If you want to live, you'd better."

His lips crashed against hers, and over a year of pent-up longing and sexual tension exploded between them. Rory ran her hands across his chest, then gripped his shoulders, pulling him closer. Jess' hands wandered, seemingly of their own will, and Rory let out a soft gasp as his palm brushed against her breast through the thin material of her bra. His mouth moved away from hers, kissing along her jawline and down onto her neck, finding that familiar spot just beneath her ear that he knew drove her absolutely crazy.

Fire exploded all across Rory's skin and a deep throbbing began between her thighs. She needed Jess, desperately, passionately, like the air she breathed. This was what everything had been building up to since the moment they had first laid eyes on each other, and she knew it. "Bedroom," she commanded breathlessly. "Now."

Jess pulled back, and though his eyes were dark with obvious desire, he looked uncertain. "Rory, are you sure...?"

"Now," she directed, before attacking his mouth again.

"Uh-huh," he mumbled against her lips, and as her legs wrapped around his waist he stood up, somehow managing to maneuver them the short distance down the hall, past the titanic stacks of books and into the room she had correctly guessed was his. They fell together onto his small bed...

Some time later, they were curled up together. Rory nuzzled a little closer into Jess' bare chest, unable to contain her wide smile. "Love you," she said softly.

"Love you, too," he assured her, fingers playing idly with her hair. "When do you have to be back to school?"

She frowned. "Way to kill the mood," she grumbled. "I don't want to leave."

"So don't."

"Ugh," Rory sighed. "I'll have to go tomorrow afternoon."

"That's soon," Jess said quietly, and she could hear in his tone that he was distressed. She glanced up at him and saw that his face was strained.

"I'll be back next weekend," she promised, kissing him softly.

His face relaxed slightly, and he nodded. "I know. I guess it's just a little too much to take in."

"Yeah, I guess so. I've had all summer to worry about this while I worked up the guts to actually come here, and I'm still kind of amazed. I can't imagine what it's like for you." She snuggled up a little closer to him.

"For me? It's probably the single most amazing moment of my life," he said quietly.

Rory looked up at him. "That was sappy," she told him, smiling.

"It was."

"I think I like sappy."

Jess grinned, kissing the top of her head. "Yeah, well, you make it way too easy to be a hopelessly romantic moron."

"Still sappy."

"Nah, just happy."

"And now we're rhyming."

"I hear that happens, sometimes."

"Especially with writers," Rory mused.

Jess didn't reply, he simply pulled the girl he loved a little closer to him, and closed his eyes as he drifted off to sleep, completely happy for the first time he could remember.