Author's Note: Hi everyone! Remember me? Almost certainly not, it's been FOREVER and I know, this isn't even my regular fandom. But I couldn't resist (and also, Goldnox made me do it). Keep your expectations nice and low, because this is un-beta'ed, I'm exhausted today, and I haven't written fic in an age. If there's anyone out there still reading GG fanfic, be gentle.

This takes place during the end of episode 3x19 (Dean/Jess fight) and an expanded, romantic moment afterward. Porch swing is creative license. Dean POV.

Hot dogs. When I see Rory, I'm standing on the landing on the stairs, my stomach is rumbling and I'm thinking about the hot dogs in the kitchen, because Lindsay hates them and if I eat one, she won't kiss me. But I'm hungry and I'm trying to decide if it's worth it.

Rory comes up the stairs, the risers not even creaking under her slight weight, and ducks her head behind a curtain of shiny hair rather than say hi to me and Lindsay. Jess isn't with her—probably he's a lot more interested in that keg in the kitchen than I am.

My stomach stops rumbling and I try not to look at her, but that weird part of me that doesn't have a name follows her all the way up the stairs. It's not my eyes, or even my ears. It is more like just…all of me. All electric under my skin in a way that peaked when she went by and twisted all the more uncomfortably the farther away she got.

I'd hoped, when we broke up, that that part would begin to fade. Some things had—like the hint of shame that came over me every time I saw her with Jess, that petulant scowl on his face even when he had his arm around Rory, the best girl in the county. I glance at Lindsay, as if she might have overheard my thought, and she smiles.

She smiled. Just because I looked at her.

I smile back and reach for her hand, adding a comment to her story about her cousin. She'd told it to me last week, so even though I feel a little guilty for not listening, it wasn't anything like what I would have felt if she knew I wasn't listening.

I don't feel bad when I see Jess with Rory anymore. Used to be, all I could focus on was, she thinks that is better than me. That pouty, cruel kid with his thoughtless pranks and all the gray hairs that he's put on Luke's head since he moved here.

I try to be a good guy. I mean, sometimes I'd rather go home and watch TV than help Miss Patty stack boxes of dusty sequined bumblebee costumes, but I make myself stay. When Rory and Jess wrecked her car, I didn't yell. Not even when every part that I spent my Saturdays scrounging from specialty dealers and junkyards across two states went right back in the junkyard again.

It sucks that I wasn't enough. That even me, at my best, trying my hardest, couldn't measure up to him in her eyes, when he didn't try at all. But then I met Lindsay, who's a great girl and not-Rory smart but not dumb by any stretch, and she smiles when I look at her. So I figure, maybe it's not just me. Plus, the entire town knows Jess is a jerk and Rory can't resist someone who needs help. No wonder she went for him.

I skim my thumb over Lindsay's fingernails, painted freshly candy pink tonight because she wanted to look good for me.

I don't love Rory anymore. She's not those crazy, wing-fluttery feelings all over inside me when I see her. Now, she's this heavy, throbbing ache. In the bottom left side of my heart, whatever that means.

She's gone now, disappeared up the stairs. Probably, that hyperawareness is just an old habit, like going by Lorelai's every Tuesday even if I had to work because I knew the water bottle would need to be changed. Neither of the girls can lift the forty-pound jugs and they'll just stop drinking water and live on coffee if I don't come over. Granted, I haven't shaken that habit. I just go over before Rory's bus gets back from school. Lorelai leaves the kitchen door unlocked for me, and we both pretend the time when I did chores around the house is over and gone, a thing of the past like me and Rory.

Everyone starts to laugh at the end of Lindsay's story and I laugh, too. Why not? It was funny, last week when she told it to me for the first time. Plus, she pinkens a little around the cheeks and looks down when I laugh, and I know she feels it too—that thing that happens in my stomach when she smiles for me. I like that I make her feel good like that.

"I'm gonna…I'll be right back." Lindsay blushes more brightly and I squeeze her hand before I let her go. I don't know why she's so shy about saying she has to go to the bathroom. I mean, she doesn't have to be like Lorelai, snatching the remote away from me and shouting. "Wait wait wait I gotta pee and I want to watch Willy open the silverwear drawer when I get back!" or whatever other ridiculous favorite moment she's chosen from the movie of the night we're rewatching for the four billionth time. I mean, Lorelai's a little flamboyant for me, not that she's not great. But I've told Lindsay it's fine to say the word bathroom to me, and she just blushes like I'm supposed to think her house doesn't even have one or something.

She hurries away downstairs and Kenny tips his chin up to me. "What you think about Coach's call at practice on Friday?"

"I don't know. It's a good idea if you think about our—" I start and then Rory comes flying down the stairs, her hair mussed but not enough to obscure her face, crumpled with emotion. Tears glisten on her cheeks.

"Rory?" I duck my head so it's at her level so I can see her face, make sure I didn't imagine it. "Are you okay?"

She hides her face in her hands. Kenny gives me an alarmed look and escapes down the stairs like girl's tears are contagious. She wipes at her eyes, her breath catching. "Yes. No. I don't know."

I reach for her, but pause with my hands hanging in midair because she's jittering in place, and I can't quite catch her still long enough to touch her. This isn't like, second-tape-of-Titanic crying. This is serious. Rory doesn't cry for real very much. Everyone she's ever met loves her, and she doesn't screw up very often. For the most part, her life's pretty gentle. She wasn't even that upset about the car crash. But this is like…she's hurt. The ache in the lower left portion of my heart spreads to my whole chest, throbbing like a wound.

"Whoa, tell me what happened."

A sob catches in her throat and Jess appears behind her. He's not upset, doesn't even look curious about what has cracked apart Rory's beautiful life and twisted her familiar face into this tear-swollen mess. He just sneers, like always. Disgusted with everything in life but himself.

He doesn't even look at her. He looks at me. "Figures."

When he glances at Rory, she shrinks a little away, turning her thin shoulder like that will protect her. And that's when I realize. They came from upstairs. From the bedrooms.

He takes off, and I explode down the stairs after him.

There aren't even words in my head, just concepts.

Bed.

Rory.

Hurt.

That sneer on his face the opposite of compassion, of gentleness, of love. Of everything he should have toward Rory, especially when they're alone together.

I grab his shoulder and rip him around because I'm not going to give him a chance to throw down a couple of insults and stomp away this time. My fist takes out his whole face and I don't pull the punch once it's connected. I let it power him all the way to the floor.

He stumbles, but doesn't go all the way down. Instead he throws himself at me in a full tackle, and when I barely budge he throws a punch that snaps my head to the side. Quick and strong, but without any weight behind it.

He's tiny, Rory's size. It's half the reason I haven't hit him before, despite grinding ten years off my molars trying to hold back. I saw a woman on TV once, with a bruised face. A little bit of a thing, her wrists no bigger than two of my fingers. My dad paused the show and he looked at me and said, "When you're big, you've got a responsibility to control yourself, to never get too mad, to protect everyone who's smaller." So I did. And as much as Jess deserved it, I never hit him because he was too small for it to be fair.

Now, I don't hold back. Rory chose him to be alone with her in a bedroom and he hurt her and he's not even sorry. Well, he's going to feel what sorry is if I have to punch it into him.

To my shock, he doesn't go down. That just lights me up even more. Screw you, Dad. This little idiot doesn't need protecting. He needs to be shown that girls like Rory may be tiny, and too sweet to ever hit him, but she's got people looking out for her. We will not allow her to be harmed. Not now. Not ever.

I smash him into the refrigerator so hard it tips like it might come over on us. I don't care. I feel like the whole house could fall on top of me and I wouldn't mind as long as it crushed him, too.

I reach for him and all I get is a fistful of denim jacket and hoodie, fabric disguising the slight width of the chest underneath. I hurl him away from me, and somehow on wiry strength alone, he comes back at me. I pound his face with my knuckles, every burst of pain inadequate. I growl as I shove him back. When we don't hit a wall, I just keep going. I'll shove this jerk all the way to the ocean and drop him in, and good riddance.

Every time I land a punch, his head snaps back like his neck will break, but then he dives in and bear hugs me, so much strength in his skinny little arms that I can't pry him off, can't get a grip on anything except his stupid baggie hoodlum clothes. I hurl him to the ground, only then realizing we're outside, somehow. Good. I don't want to break the house. Just want to break him. Break him.

I shake him loose and hit him in the cheek. The whole weight of my fist and my shoulder and my body swinging in a perfect arc. This time, the only thing that keeps him from his knees is somebody catching him. He sags and I wonder if I knocked him out. Something deep in the center of my brain flames bright and triumphant, like a birthday candle with one perfect wish.

Then he turns. Slow, like he can't take much more. His eyes flash sullenly at me. He looks betrayed, like an animal who can't escape the boot seeking out its side. What?

I only hesitate for a second, confused by his response, and mine. Into the silence pops the first note of a siren. Police. The keg in the kitchen. I need to get Rory out of here before they think she's involved in this.

I grit my teeth and glare at Jess, wondering if I have time for just one more punch before the cops get here. I want to get him a good one in the ribs, like one of the hits I've taken in practice that you feel for weeks because every way you move, it pulls on the sore muscles. I want him to remember the pain that he gave to Rory and I gave back to him.

But now the cops are here and they're annoyed, raising their voices half-heartedly to clear out the house. It's Simonton and Haines and they aren't going to arrest anyone because then they'd have to spend the rest of their shift at the station, not comparing fantasy football scores in their favorite hiding spot behind Martha Wyatt's hedge. It's their favorite because all the speeders know to slow down there and that way, they don't ever have to pull anyone over.

"Jess!" Rory appears outside, and she calls his name.

His name.

That hit goes deeper than any of the ones his small, quick fists have managed to land tonight. Suddenly bruises spring to life all over my body, aching like belated injuries. I feel like death.

He turns toward her, and I tense. If he goes near her, I'll put his head through the window of the police car itself. But I don't step between them because she asked for him, not me.

I can't read the look on his face. The sneer is gone, but so is everything else. His eyes wide with…what? I nearly turn to look at Rory, because I could read her with my eyes closed, but I wouldn't put it past him to sucker punch me when I wasn't looking. Besides, those bruises are kicking bile up from my abused stomach into my burning throat. I taste vomit, and cocktail weiners, and only now do I remember I snuck one when Lindsay was out of the room.

Jess turns and goes without me having to make him, and I'm sorry he didn't give me the excuse.

The sound of something thick splattering the ground has me clenching my teeth, trying not to breathe so I don't join the lucky soul who's losing their share of the keg into the petunias.

"Lane!" Rory bounds up onto the porch and scrapes back her friend's hair.

I can't even process the fact that it was Lane who drank too much, because the name Rory called wasn't mine. Again. And that makes it so glass-slicingly clear that I wanted it to be.

I brace my hands on my knees and stare down at the grass, ripped up from our fight. The hurt has spread from the lower left hand corner of my heart to all of me. My skinned knuckles, my burning jaw, the puffy skin of my split lip and the swelling place by my eye.

"Dean?" Lindsay's hand touches my back. Only then does Rory look up, her hands tangled in Lane's hair as she stares across the porch at me, red and blue flashing lights sliding over her flawless skin. "Oh my god, are you okay?"

I straighten before she thinks I'm hurt. "I'm fine." I'm pleased that I'm not even breathing hard. Jess sure was, when he scuttled away. Apparently lifting a coffee carafe can't measure up to the cardio of running endless suicide drills. I take a look at Lindsay's face to make sure she's not mad. She's got a little of that tension around her eyes, like she always does when Rory's in the room, but mostly she just looks concerned. I lower my voice. "Jess hurt Rory, and I hit him."

Her eyes fly wide, and she glances to Rory on the porch, who is helping Lane inside. Lane's babbling about the track lineup on the Beatles' fourth album. Making a pretty good argument, actually, that they should have moved "Eight Days A Week."

"Is she okay?" Lindsay whispers.

"Yeah," I say automatically, then shove a hand through my hair, which catches on a tangle. I pull my fingers back out without fixing it. "Actually, I don't know. I should check. There was Jess, and then the police, then—" I gesture toward the porch.

"I could, um, check on her," Lindsay offers.

"No." They can't even have a conversation about a magnet shaped like Mark Twain's head. A deeper conversation, about whatever emotional and possibly even physical wound Jess caused Rory…that would definitely not go well. The smell of Lane's vomit is getting stronger, or maybe the thought of Jess is making my stomach weaker. I throw a glance toward the house, and the officers are coming back out. "I'd better do it. She'll be embarrassed, and she'll need—" I break off. "I better just do it."

"Oh."

I check back on Lindsay, who is looking at the lawn, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"Really?" I soften my voice. "Come on, it's not just because it was Rory. If a girl came down those stairs crying, with a guy like Jess after them, you know I'd step in. No matter who it was."

"I know." She looks up at me, and smiles, a little wobbly. But then she squeezes my arm. "I do know. But I'm going to go. It's late. Text me when you get home, okay?"

"I will." I bend and kiss her cheek, then pull away, wincing at my cut lip. "Ouch."

"Get some ice on that soon." She walks across the lawn. I should maybe go with her, but it's only two houses down. Her parents knew she was going to the party, but since I promised them we wouldn't drink, they were okay with it. They might be mad for a minute about the sirens, but nothing really happened. Hopefully they didn't see the fight.

I stare at Kyle's front door, people straggling outside. Rory obviously doesn't want to talk to me. She didn't even ask if I was okay. It used to be, when I'd stub my toe or whack my finger with a hammer, she'd say ouch, like it had happened to her. Guess she's mad that I hit Jess. Why do girls get so irrational about jerks like him? Still, whether she wants me or not, I can't leave her alone like this. Lane's not going to be of any help tonight, unless it's with arranging the perfect track line up for a Beatles' Greatest Hits Album. Rory's mom might be good—Lorelai hates Jess as much as I do, and she always knows how to get through to Rory. But I have to get her home first, and that's a good twenty minute walk from here, when Jess could be lurking sulkily around any one of those dark corners. What if he's mad at me and he takes it out on her somehow? Who knows what he's capable of?

I straighten my shirt and go back inside, wiping the back of my hand over my face to get rid of any blood. There's a red streak on my hand—better be his—and I make a pit stop in the bathroom to wash up so I won't worry Rory.

Lane's sleeping on the couch when I come back out, Dave tucking an afghan around her while the rest of their band picks up her scattered drum kit. I wince.

"Did I do that?"

"Yes, you definitely did," Dave says, but tonight even his extreme mellowness is tainted by irritation.

"Don't tell Lane?"

He glances at her, his eyes lingering on her sleeping face. "Trust me, by morning she'll feel so guilty, she'll convince herself she did it."

"Is uh…" I stuff my hands in my pockets. "Rory around here somewhere?"

"She went home."

My heart jumps. Jess. Dark corners. "Okay, thanks!" I'm jogging out the door before the words are out of my mouth. Her house is a right turn, but from Kyle's house, Rory always goes left and takes the long way around so she can see her favorite tree in the Warner's yard. Then again, she's upset and maybe not thinking about trees. I dodge right and break into a full out run.

Rory's got great legs, but she's never been much for exercise and our team took regionals last year. I catch her in half a block, just past Lindsay's house. Her bedroom window's already dark.

"Hey."

Rory glances up, then down at the sidewalk. "He didn't do anything wrong, you know."

"Yeah, well, he didn't do anything right, either." I grit my teeth. How can she be defending him, after everything that's happened?

She doesn't answer, and when I bend to check her expression, her lips are trembling even though they're pressed tightly together.

"Hey," I say as gently as I can. "Let's not fight. It's been a long day. Let me just walk you home."

"I'm okay," she chokes out, and turns and starts walking quickly. "It's Stars Hollow. I'll be fine."

"All right." I fall into step, slowing so I won't outpace her. "But the direction you're headed, you'll get to Hartford before your house."

She looks around, turns, and goes back for the cross street. I shove my hands into my pockets and walk next to her, keeping a sharp eye out when we pass alleys and bushes.

We're all the way to Rory's street before she speaks. "Is Lindsay going to be mad that you're alone with me?"

"She knows. She wanted to check on you herself."

She exhales and looks away—one of those short, incredulous nose sounds like girls make when they don't like what you just said.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just…you talked to her. You guys worked it out. Of course you did."

"Yeah…" Is this a trick question?

Rory climbs the steps of the porch and turns to face me. I thought she was calming down, but now tears are pooling at the edge of her lashes, glittering in the low light. She flashes a smile so broken it doesn't even look like a smile. "Thanks for walking me home."

"I'll wait until you get inside." I always wait until she gets inside. Has she forgotten that already? It's not that I think somebody's going to snatch her off her porch. Babette always used to watch out her window to see if we'd kiss—I could hear her squeal with delight when we did—so I know she'd watch out for Rory even if I left before she was safely inside.

Mostly, I used to wait so I could get one more minute with her. All those extra stolen minutes feel like nothing, now. Like they never even happened.

"I'm going to sit out here for a while," Rory says, her voice strangled as she refuses to meet my eyes, like somehow that will keep me from seeing the tears slipping down her cheeks.

"I'll sit with you."

"I'm okay." It comes out squeaky.

"Rory." My voice gets lower when she's around. Softer. I can't help it, not even now. I bend and dip my hands under her hair, pushing it back and cradling her face so she can't pretend I'm not seeing how sad she is. Rory had never been too embarrassed to tell me when she had to use the bathroom. Not like Lindsay. With my thumbs, I brush away the tears that have already fallen, hoping that'll be enough to comfort her so more don't take their place. "I'm not going to leave you like this. If you don't want to talk about what happened, that's okay. But whatever it was, it wasn't your fault."

"You don't know that." Her face falls.

"I do." I wipe away more tears. "You wouldn't hurt anybody on purpose." I huff out a half-irritated breath. "Not even Jess."

The sob she's been trying to hold breaks free, and I put my arm around her and lead her across the porch. A few weeks ago, I'd have done this just for the excuse to touch her, but now I'm just afraid she'll fall if I don't.

I guide her to sit on the porch swing.

"I don't get what I'm doing wrong!" she bursts out. "All that stuff I felt when I was around him, it felt like it meant something, like we were supposed to get together, but nothing has worked out the way I thought it would."

I sit very still and concentrate on breathing. She felt all that "stuff" while she was still in my arms. I remember the way they looked at each other at the dance marathon. I was holding up all her weight that night and I might as well have not even existed. Suddenly, it's hard to remember why I'm sitting on her porch again.

Rory's still talking. "It's like we have nothing in common. We both like to read, yeah, but when we're not reading, he hates everything I like to do and he doesn't even bother to pretend to like it." She swings out a hand, then arrests the movement. "That sounds horrible."

I swallow back whatever's stuck in my throat. My heart, maybe the shreds of whatever pride I thought I still had. I'm here to comfort Rory. That's what I ought to be doing. But I can't think of anything comforting.

"Not horrible. It sounds…true." I try to rein in my own thoughts on the matter and be objective, but I can't tell if it's working. "He looked pretty miserable at the party tonight."

If he'd go to school once in a while, he might know more people, but I don't say that. Besides, with his personality, he could go to every class plus summer school and not scrape up a friend.

Rory's face twists. "He went upstairs and sat alone rather than hang out with me. But then he was plenty happy to—"

Rage flushes into me and I nearly jump off the porch swing. "To what?"

"Nothing," she mutters.

"Not nothing. What did he do to make you cry?" I face her directly now, and written all over her face is the knowledge that it's terrible and she's trying to protect him. But then she takes a breath and my anger eases a little because I can see her making the decision to confide in me.

"He won't talk to me!"

I shake my head, not sure I heard right.

"He was upset, and when I asked why, he just yelled at me." She jams hair back behind her ears. "I knew he hated the party, but you used to go places with me that you didn't like, and even when you were bored, I could tell it made you happy that I was happy. Me and mom never let you pick the movie for movie night, but you always showed up, and no matter what, it seemed like you liked spending time with me."

"Of course I did." I don't know where this is going, but I'm a little mollified that she's talking about us now, not Jess. I smile a little and nudge her with my knee. "I still do."

She smiles back at me, her eyes drying a little, but then her gaze drifts back to the porch floor and she falls silent. I take a breath and try to brace myself to hear more about Jess. Is this helping? Should I just go and spare myself? I push my hands against my thighs, half-ready to stand up.

"I could tell when he kissed me, he was really into it, so I thought everything else would work itself out over time."

Her voice is so quiet now, so small that there's no way I could leave her. Not even with Lorelai and five pounds of Red Vines and a terrible movie and a blanket fort. I'd have to see with my own eyes that she was happy again after hearing her voice like this. It's who I am. It's the part of me that will always belong to her.

I sit back.

"But….what if he doesn't like me at all? What if he was just kissing me because that was the fastest way to get to—"

She stops, but I'm already imagining his teeth exploding into splinters against my knuckles. I should never have let him go. I should have stuffed him into the back of that cop car and locked the door because he doesn't deserve to walk free in a world with girls like Rory that he can—

I take a breath and force every thought out of my mind. She matters right now. Nothing else. "Did he pressure you?"

Rory glances at me, her eyes big and blue and scared.

"You can tell me." My gentle voice is clearly malfunctioning at the moment, so I change tack and try to make a joke. "I won't kill him. I'll turn him over to Lorelai. That'll be much more fun."

It must work, because a smile tugs at the corner of her pale lips. "Luke might be worse. Every time we're alone for eight minutes, he forgets a screwdriver."

I chuckle just a little at the thought of the vein popping out in the little backwards baseball cap window on Luke's forehead. "I don't think I want to know what that means."

I lean my elbows forward on my knees. She seems better, but I don't want to go yet. Being here with her, I can close my eyes and almost think everything's back to those perfect days when it was just me and her and a thousand inside jokes. So many days, we sat on this porch swing, Rory reading with her feet in my lap and me pretending to read so she wouldn't take her feet out of my lap.

In my peripheral vision, Rory's hands start to twist together, and I know that those days are gone. She never used to fidget like this when we were together. Maybe she wants me to go, so she can be alone.

Or so she can call Jess.

"Dean, can I ask you a question?"

My scalp prickles and I swallow, like I'm savoring some particularly amazing flavor. But it's just her, saying my name again like it's normal. "Sure, yeah. What's up?"

"I mean, you don't have to answer."

"Okay…" I take a look at her, narrowing my eyes.

"Like, at all." She waves her hands, palms down, like she's in debate. "Free pass. No big deal. Just blink twice if you're not going to answer."

"Or I could say that I'm not going to answer." Amusement creeps into my voice even though I'm pretty sure I'm going to hate this question. She's just so cute when she's nervous. She used to get this way when she was going to ask me for something, like she was afraid I'd say no.

I never did.

She's back to avoiding my eyes. "All those times we were kissing," she says to the porch floor, "did you ever want to…you know?"

I blink. Swallow. My heart beats. At least, I think it does, because beneath the fly of my pants, I feel myself start to swell. "Yeah," I say hoarsely, then clear my throat. Fast, so she won't hear. "Of course. Why? Didn't you?" Why did I say that? Why didn't I blink twice and then make an excuse about my curfew?

All those times, on her couch or after football practice, in the loading dock of the library…I always kept a pillow or a throw blanket stuffed between us, or my hips flexed a little back from hers so she wouldn't feel the press of how rocket-hard I was. It seemed crude, somehow, like a demand rather than an invitation.

Her hair curtains her face, and as beautiful as it is, I want her eyes instead. "Why didn't we?" she asks the porch floor. "I mean, why didn't we ever even…start?"

"It wasn't the right time." The words bruise, because now it'll never be the right time. But that doesn't make it less true. "I mean, I wasn't going to do it on some couch, or even in your room while your mom was at work. I didn't want it to be something we had to hide, you know?" I let my head fall forward. "That sounds stupid."

"It really doesn't," she whispers, her elbows clenched in tight to her sides as she tugs at her necklace.

I clasp my hands together, staring down at them. She's still fidgeting, and I'll look like a first class idiot if I say this, but I don't care. The smallest and most invisible I've ever felt was on the steps just a few feet away from us, and Rory wasn't even here, then.

She likes Jess, doesn't she?

She was with Jess that night. It's not like she doesn't know how it flattened me when we broke up, so what dignity am I preserving? If I can make her feel better, it's worth my pride.

"Prom." I swallow. "I thought maybe we could, at prom, if you wanted. I knew you'd look amazing, and you'd want a limo and flowers. You'd say that part didn't matter, that you just wanted to be with me and Lane, and I would get them anyway. Miss Patty offered months ago to rent us a hotel room. She snuck a fresh box of condoms into my apron at the market once a month." I smile, trying to make it into a joke. "We would have had enough for a few decades' worth of proms."

But of course, she hadn't gone to prom. Jess didn't take her, so she didn't even want to go. Even Lane got to go to senior prom, but not Rory, even though she'd been pointing out potential prom dresses in windows ever since I'd met her.

She touches me.

The shock of it sizzles through my chest, so it takes a second to sort out that it's her palm, on my jaw, exerting pressure to turn my face toward hers. I resist at first, because I'm not ready. I can admit my stupid prom plans to her—I could admit anything if it would make her smile—but I can't look at her after I say it. Not yet.

But she's Rory and she's never given up on anything she tried for. She turns my head and then her blue eyes are there, lighter and brighter and more beautiful than I even remember and so close…

Her lips touch mine and my eyes fall closed out of sheer surprise. Our tongues come together like they remember that skim then devour maneuver we could never get enough of. She tastes different and her hands tug at my face, my neck. She wants me.

My breath breaks and I kiss her like I'm dying of it. The ache in the lower left side of my heart pumps once and spreads—through my heaving lungs and my burning abs and the bruises over my ribs. Through the veins pounding in my neck and pressing out against her hands that hold me close to her.

The pain is so strong now, it's not like pain at all. It's like light. Fourth of July sparklers, tiny fizzing explosions along my scalp and my skin and my lips and my fingertips.

I plunge my hands into her hair because I've missed its softness and weight. She doesn't stop me. I kiss her until black spots dance before my eyelids from lack of oxygen and I love that I'm the first one to pull away.

"Oh," she says, blinking hazily. "I thought…I thought it would be different."

It was better. It was the same and better and the best. "How?" The question is one syllable, but it's all I can manage and I'm already afraid because my thoughts are sinking back down to earth, every breath washing the lightheadedness out of me like oxygen is the cure for happiness.

"I thought it wouldn't, that we wouldn't—anymore," she stutters, as incoherent as I am. "Why can't I have kisses like that AND a guy who likes me even when we're not kissing?"

I look at her, and she breaks a little, pain and desire filling her face.

"Dean…" she whispers.

It's my name. On her lips, echoed in her eyes. And I know her question isn't about Jess.

I curl my hand around the back of her neck, her silky hair cradling my raw knuckles. "You can." And I draw her back to my lips, and back into my life.

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading, all of you. I've missed fanfiction SO MUCH. The original fiction world is different...and hard. My agent is shopping two different books to publishers for me right now, so cross your fingers for me-I'm making this dream happen, people, no matter how long it takes. If you want to keep track of me, come find me on Twitter as [at symbol] michellehazen I really like to keep in touch with my fanfiction people. You guys made me (and make me) WANT to write. Now let's get out of here before I start singing Bette Midler or some shit.