Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls or any of the characters involved with it.
Author's Note: Not entirely sure where this came from. It just kind of popped into my head and there you have it. Let me know what you think because reviews can only help me to be a better writer. Good or bad are welcome. Criticism is not the enemy it only helps me improve.
He doesn't believe in love. (Love is for the weak and he is not weak.)
He tells himself he runs away from her because he does not want to hurt her. (It's partly true, at least.) He does not run away from her because he loves her and it frightens him. Nothing frightens him because he is the tough guy, the rebel, the town bad ass. Besides, he doesn't believe in love.
Love can only bring disappointment and pain and he just does not have time for either of those. He had hardened himself against pain and he would not let a tiny girl with bright blue eyes and chestnut hair ruin that. He would not let her tear down his only defense against the harshness of reality because it was all he had. He didn't know who he was with out it. It didn't matter anyways. He did not love her. (He didn't.) He certainly didn't care if she loved him. (He didn't.)
He left because he hated that town. He hated that town and those people with their prying words and judging eyes. He hated Luke always trying to tell him what to do. He hated being around all those happy smiles and corny festivals. He tells himself that all that love and caring almost suffocated him until he could barely breath. He tells himself that he never wanted them to accept him. (Who needs acceptance?) He tells himself that it didn't bother him when they looked at him in such a disapproving way whenever he walked past with their precious town princess. He doesn't care. (After all, he is not weak like them.)
She pretends that she is fine when Lorelei questions her about how she is. (She is fine.) She says that she knew he would leave at some point, anyways, and she was prepared for it. She says it doesn't matter and that she doesn't need him. (She doesn't need him.) She says that he was just a phase, just a disease she had to get out of her system and now she is healthy again.
She does not share her tears with any of them. She waits for the darkness to envelope her, with only his Led Zepplin t-shirt and her pillow for comfort. Her tears soak into her pale blue sheets and when she wakes the next morning she tastes salt on her lips. She pretends that these nights never happen and that she does not cry for him.
She does not wish that she could be like him. She does not wish that she could simply pack a bag and leave everything behind. (Everyone behind.) She does not envy his cold, unfeeling, ruthlessness. (She doesn't.) She is not so weak as to leave. She is not the weak one.
He was always weak, she tells herself. She wraps her arms around herself, desperately wishing that she was not wishing that it was his arms around her trembling shoulders.
He takes walks in the early morning down the beach. He never wears shoes. He likes the feel of the sand on his bare feet and sometimes he goes to the edge of the water and simply watches as the tide covers his toes over and over in a rhythmic motion. He does not think about her as he watches the sun rise over the horizon. The sun shines brightly over the deep blue of the ocean and it does not remind him of her eyes. (He never thinks of her eyes.)
She does not love him and he does not love her. He does not believe in love and he knows he is not the guy that girls fall in love with. He is the guy that girls date to piss off their parents. He is the guy who is a constant bad influence. He is the stepping stone between trying to figure out what you want and finally knowing what you do want. He's never the something that anyone wants. (Never.)
He does not think of her every morning when he wakes, nor does he see her face in his dreams. When he wakes up with wet cheeks and a pain in his chest where his heart should be he tells himself that he must have dreamed that he was visiting Liz and TJ. He tells himself that the emptiness in his soul has always been there. (After all the devil has no soul.)
He does not love her because he does not believe in love. (Love is weak and he is not weak.)
Days seem to melt together until she barely knows what time it is, let alone if it's Wednesday or Saturday. Tears are held constantly in her cerulean eyes, but she does not let them fall anymore. She tells herself that she will not cry over him ever again. (She doesn't.) She does not care about him. (How could one care about someone so unfeeling?) She tells herself that she never loved him to begin with. (She does not know what love is anyway.)
She never wonders if he thinks about her sometimes. She does not let herself dwell on the question of whether he left because of her or for some unknown reason that he would not share with her. She will not pine for him because she is not the pining type. She is the get over it type. She is a bouncy ball and by God she will keep bouncing back if it kills her. She will not let him destroy her. (She won't.)
Her bags are almost all the way packed and she does not feel sadness. She knows that she should because, after all, she is leaving home for the first time. She will no longer live in the Crap Shack with Lorelei, her mother, her best friend. She will come back only during summer and on her small breaks. She is now a Yale student. She is a dorm girl.
She can't wait to leave. She needs an escape from his memory.
He sees a street vendor out of the corner of his eye and something makes him stop. Their are small souvenirs lined up on a counter top and postcards hanging by clothes pins on a line. One catches his eye and he tries to walk away, but he can't. Instead of towering buildings and bright city lights like most of the postcards, this one shows a small village upon rolling green hills. He tries not to think of a town just like it, but he fails miserably. (He always was a failure.) He hands the vendor a dollar and takes the postcard, stuffing it into his back jeans pocket and walking away. (It does not remind him of her.)
That night he goes for a walk because he can't sleep. He passes a telephone booth, but stops and then walks back to it. His hand rests on the black receiver for several minutes before he finally picks it up. He slides a quarter into the slot and his fingers dial the familiar numbers, him barely conscious of what he's doing. He does not care if she answers. (He doesn't.)
She answers on the first ring, her voice like a song through the receiver. She sounds like she'd been sleeping, but he's not entirely sure. He doesn't say anything because if he says something then he cares. (He wants desperately not to care.) She keeps saying hello, not hanging up like anyone else would. Just one word, stuck on repeat, until finally she says she can't handle prank calls without her morning coffee first and then he hears the dial tone. He tells himself he does not give a shit that she hung up. It's not like he loves her.
He does not believe in love.
She puts the last box into her car and then turns to her mother. She lets herself be hugged and even stays still as Lorelei holds on a little longer than necessary. Her voice is emotionless as she says her good-byes and her I love you's. She gets behind the wheel and eyes the road with excitement. She is finally free. She is on her own.
She starts driving the, now familiar, road towards Yale, but when it's time for her to take her exit she just keeps driving. She does not know where she is going and she does not care. She just knows that she needs to be away. Away from home and Yale and pressure. Away from memories and fading chocolate eyes.
She does not realize that she is heading for California. She does not intend to go that way. She doesn't want to be there. (She does NOT.) But she keeps driving and her hands won't listen because they don't turn when she tells them to and her head begins to hurt from the strain of denial. She is afraid because she has never felt this way and this is not something that she does, but she needs to do this. She does not want to be like him. She does not want to be a runner.
She has always been a runner.
He wakes up to Jimmy's girlfriend's kid staring down at him. She is asking who the girl is that Jess keeps calling out her name, but he does not answer her and he simply throws her out of his room. He did not dream of her. (Again.) He does not miss her. (He does...doesn't.) She was wrong to think they could be happy and he should not have let it go on as long as it did.
He knows he is always supposed to be alone. He doesn't want to be happy. (Scowling looks good on him.) He does not want to change. (Change, for him, has always been bad.) He tells himself he only chased after her as long as he did because it was funny to piss off the eight foot man. He stayed with her because it was a good way to pass the time until he had to leave. It doesn't matter to him that he didn't graduate high school and it certainly doesn't matter that he knew it would disappoint her.
He tells himself he'd glad he left her. He tells himself that he hated her innocence and destroying it was the best thing he could have ever done. (It was.) He tells himself that he uses her picture as a book mark so that he can slam the book on her face and revel in squashing her out once again. He tells himself that she means nothing to him. Meant nothing to him.
After all, he doesn't believe in being weak. (Love is weak.)
She pulls up to a small house with a fenced yard. There are flowers every where and a small vegetable garden on the far right side. She feels her body taking her out of the car and walking towards the door painted a god-awful pea-green. She tells herself she is only here because he deserves to be yelled at. Deserves to be hurt. (She wants him to hurt.)
She knocks loudly on the door, squaring her shoulders as she does so. He opens the door and before she realizes what she's doing her palm has come into contact with his cheek and a sickening crack sounds in the air. She is not sorry and she will not act like she is. (She isn't and she doesn't.) He looks at her with surprise and she thinks she sees a hint of fear, but then it is gone and she knows she must have imagined it.
She tells him that she never cared about him. She screams at him that her mother was (is) right and he is nothing but a hoodlum. She goes on to rant about lies and nights spent waiting for him to call and a ruined relationship with the perfect guy. (Dean was so perfect.) She goes on to say that he is a burn out, a drop out, a waste of precious oxygen.
His eyes flicker with pain for a moment before it's gone, but she saw it and so she smiles.
When he opened the door to find her there he froze. She'd cut her hair. That was the thought that ran through his mind just before she slapped him, hard, across the face. Now he was only stunned as she did not even blink and began to yell at him. He told himself that she wasn't hurting him and that her words were only words. She would not bring him pain.
She finally stopped yelling and he still made no move to say anything. He just stared into her eyes, dark into light and wondered why she was smiling in such a cruel way. He'd never seen her smile like that, but it did not scare him. (He wasn't scared of anything.) She finally whispered something that he pretended not to hear. (I love you.) He did not flinch when she turned away. He did not call out for her or run to catch her. He watched her small shoulders begin to tremble as she slowly walked away from him. He did not think of her after that moment. (He did not care enough.) He did not dream of her, waking up with tears on his face. (Men did not cry.)
He told himself he didn't love her, that he had never loved her. (Love was for the weak.) He told himself that he did not wish he had never left or that he had not just stood by and watched her walk away. Loving someone else was weak and she was weak. He hated weakness. (He hated her.)
He does not believe in love. (Love is for the weak and he is not weak.)
She is standing in front of her dorm room with Dean beside her when he comes. She does not know what she says, but Dean finally leaves and she doesn't even care that anger radiates off of him. He is standing in front of her, saying something, but she barely registers the words and she does not realize what she's saying back to him.
She hears him say that he wants her to leave with him. He says something about being able to count on him. (She doesn't care.) She tells him no. She just keeps repeating that word over and over. No. No. No. It becomes her mantra and she can say nothing else. (Nothing.) His eyes become defeated, but she does not notice.
She watches him walk away after she says no one last time. No. No. No. She lets herself sink onto the closest cardboard box and puts her head in her hands. She tells herself that she didn't (doesn't) want to leave with him. She tells herself that the only answer she could truly give was "no". She tells herself she does not love him. Never loved him. (She hates him.)
He taught her not to believe in love. (Love is for the weak and she is not weak.)