Paramour du Jour, a gilmore girls fanfic

Title: Paramour du Jour

Rating: Mature

Date Started: 6-11-08

Date Finished: 6-17-08

Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls; it all belongs to Amy Sherman-Palladino and the folks at the WB. I don't own the poem "The Bones of Woe"; it belongs to Stan Rice, master poet and painter that he is.

Summary: Her upper lip quivers, she tries to quell the wave of nausea that rises up from her stomach. She feels like an intruder now, a home-wrecker, a wanton divorcée. Rory blinks, swallows. "Your daughter is very beautiful."

Request: Written for the 08 summer Lit Ficathon for Pencilgal. Book references, glasses, a diner (preferably not Luke's), and post-series. Beta read by the wonderful Keliana LeFey.

Of weeping fathers whom we drink

And mothers milk and final stink

We can dream but cannot think.

Golden bones encrust the brink.

Golden silver copper silk.

Woe is water shocked by milk.

Heart attack, assassin, cancer.

Who would think these bones such dancers.

--Stan Rice, exert of "The Bones of Woe" from Some Lamb.

She rings the bell. It takes a kind of compartmentalization that she acquired during study sessions and hectic work schedules. She chooses not to think, to act. A path of prior recklessness that has led her to his doorstep.

A little girl answers, all brown curls and round green eyes. She recognizes a fragmented part of her, the basic framework of the child's face. It stings with increasing intensity the longer she looks.

She crouches down so she's on the same level as the girl. "Is your father here?" she asks, now hoping that the girl will say no, will say it quickly so she can escape from the disaster that she is now able to recognize.

"Who are you?" The little girl looks at her curiously, her thin pink lips curving in a funny way.

"I'm Rory," she answers. "I'm a friend of your father, from a long time ago. What's your name?" Rory asks.

"Lo," she says, holding onto the door handle, tugging on the hem of her green dress, scuffing in her Mary Janes and lacy socks.

"Just Lo?"

The girl nods, her curls swinging. "It's what my daddy calls me."

And then, with the girl looking at her—wide yellow-green eyes, olive oil skin and haughty brown curls—it is much, much worse than she thought.

Lo walks from the door and leaves it open, clumsily making her way down the hall in her neat girly clothes and boyish gait. Rory follows, hoping that there is a stranger behind the door at the end of the hall and not the man she is expecting.

The door is open but the girl stops, her shiny black shoes toeing the line where the hallway ends and the room begins. Rory can see the arching slope of bookshelves, of a lamp and reading chair. Lo knocks on the doorframe with her tiny knuckles, her lips a soft pink line.

"Daddy," the girl says softly, but loud enough for Rory to hear. "There's a lady here to see you."

Rory steps into the room, past Lo, her heels making sounds that were intended to be soft but slip into metso forte. She remembers A Doll's House and Mrs. Linde and Mr. Krogstad, a reference for her past humiliations. She forgets why she's here. Briefly, like the fear of something lost. Blonde-haired Alice falling into nonsensical dreams.

But it's when she sees him—papers skewn across his desk, the trappings of a manuscript in a pile of hand-written pages—that is when she really feels that she's in trouble.

She's Margaret Russell, being reintroduced to her husband after six years of estrangement. But she hasn't and it hasn't and they aren't. She knows this.

"Hello, Jess," Rory says. He's leaning back and looking at her, unsurprised and perhaps a little knowing.

Her upper lip quivers, she tries to quell the wave of nausea that rises up from her stomach. She feels like an intruder now, a home-wrecker, a wanton divorcée. Rory blinks, swallows. "Your daughter is very beautiful."

Her blue eyes watch him while he makes her coffee. Jeans. Boots. Clothes she imagines him wearing for more than a season. He's still lean and thin like a cat, slinking and prowling with his wild hair and wry fingers. She fiddles with the mug when he hands it to her, the sugar and the spoon.

He looks at her left hand, the one that's resting on the table. "You're empty," he remarks, noting her ring finger.

"I sent it to him in the mail," she says, gazing loftily at her bare hand. "I'm not sure if he got it through. Maybe he didn't even notice."

"It's good to see you," he traces the pads of his fingers over the tops of hers. "Like this."

She doesn't think about his hands on hers, taking it at face value: two old friends, relatives, almost-lovers. It's now that she misses his aggressive side.

His kitchen is clean, most likely from lack of use. "How old is she?" Rory asks.

"Four," Jess answers, looking at her unblinkingly.

She does the math in her head and formulates a mental time-line. She was engaged for a year and married for another, recently divorced. Rory notes that Lo came into existence possibly months within her acceptance of Logan's proposal.

"Where is your wife, Jess?"

He looks at her, keenly now, appraising her, pulling on her heartstrings like a master harp player. "I have no wife."

She's sipping at her drink, a glass of golden-stemmed champagne. She leaves it on a table, unfinished. There are guests all throughout the reception area, mostly Stars Hollow townsfolk and friends whose name Rory knows. She's a wallflower, idle with her bridesmaid dress and her engagement ring.

"You're full."

Rory looks up, her candy mouth coated with makeup. "What?"

He nods his head to her left hand, her ring finger. "Married?" He asks, easy, easier than she would have expected.

"Engaged," she corrects politely, approachably. She's already seen the auburn-haired woman chatting with Luke.

Jess doesn't ask for his name. It appears that he already knows.

"Then what are you doing all by your lonesome?" He teases. It's the first time she's ever seen him in a respectable suit, wearing a skinny cut black jacket and tie. She wonders if he wore it willingly or if he was forced.

"He's in Seattle," Rory explains. Curiosity gets the better of her. "Are you here with anyone?"

"Yeah. Cecilia's here, she wants to meet you."

She holds her hands behind her back, bites her lip. "Would you mind introducing me?"

"Of course," Jess replies, leading her away.

Amsterdam, he tells her. She has always loved Amsterdam.

Cecilia was the assistant to a diplomat of some kind; Jess doesn't go into much detail, he was never the best orator. She died a year after Lo was born, killed in a minefield in the Middle East. He says all of it calmly, like it's something he's been through in his mind with enough frequency to numb any feeling, redundancy as mental morphine.

Jess remembers living in the Netherlands, living in Europe, writing for his money and learning languages. Rory listens attentively while he explains it to her, feeling like the reader of some tragic novel or a spectator at the Théâtre des Vampires.

She says nothing. She knows that he isn't searching for her pity or her help, but she can't stop the monologue of apologies rocketing through her brain. Rory wants to tell him that she's sorry, that it must be unbearable for him, that she wants to help. But they are all thought for the wrong reasons. She knows this.

There is a silence. He's watching her unashamedly. "How long?"

Rory knows what he means. "Two years," she says ruefully, shakes her head. "It was mutual."

"Well you know what they say," Jess adds sarcastically, "all's fair in love and war."

It's then that she's reminded that Cecilia is dead, dead for some senseless conflict, another murder sucked into the curving graph of a black hole in the globe, the sound of flesh and X-Rays screaming.

Fair, Rory thinks, ended a long time ago.

"Are you staying?" Lo asks, her green eyes on her crayons and drawings.

"Yes," Rory says, watching the young girl color. "I hope so."

"Will you be my friend?" She's coloring in the letters of her name, a big, almost illegible orange scribble. Lots of slashes and clumsy first attempts.

"If you want me to."

The four-year-old finishes with a flourish; Rory is surprised that she can even write the few letters she has on the page.

"L-O-L-A. Lo." She says. This makes Rory laugh.

"Lola," she giggles, "is that your real name?"

The girl sticks her chin up, proud and defiant. Older and the look would be considered haughty. "My name is Lo." She's adamant.

"Who taught you how to write your name?" She knows the answer but she wants to hear it, to imagine this.

"My daddy," Lola answers easily. Rory hands her another crayon while Jess watches closely from the doorway.

Her box at the post office is close to empty. There's a late Christmas card from her mother and Luke, a few bills—water, rent, electric—and a four-by-nine security tinted envelope, so discrete that she almost misses the mailing address. Philadelphia. A dot on a map that looks closer than she wants to admit.

J. V. Mariano, it reads, written in slanted, script-like black ink. The kind of penmanship that came with line after line of punishment in Catholic school detention, having sore wrists from Nuns brandishing rulers, never forgetting how to write like a seventeenth century nobleman.

She remembers him telling that story.

The letter tucked into her purse, Rory walks home—all twelve blocks—too cautious to open it in the street where it could get blown away or in public where someone could read over her shoulder. She treats it like a ticking package, respectful and terrified.

Mrs. Rank is more than happy to take Lo for the evening. Jess only has to mention her name and Lola lights up, drops her crayons, babbles almost incoherently that she wants her friends to meet. It takes him a second to catch what she's saying, but he gets it: she means Rory.

He hesitates for a moment, looks at her and then at his daughter and agrees. It's the first time that Lo has met one of his girls; he's glad that it's Rory and not someone else.

She stands next to him while Lo skips down the front steps and onto the sidewalk, her yellow backpack hanging from her shoulders. Sheila Rank's house is only across the street so he lets Lola frolic. There aren't any passing cars.

"Sheila can't have children," he explains to Rory, his hands in his pockets. "She loves having her around. Besides, I never wanted Lola to walk in on me with anyone. She has enough mom problems to deal with."

And again Rory wants to say something, but there isn't and they aren't and she won't. "I know," she settles. She doesn't want to make him explain it to her, so she touches his arm, works her way down to his wrist, feels for the warmth of his hand. She does what she can.

Fitzgerald would write about this, she thinks, or Hemingway. Lonely men filled with wine and words.

"This wasn't what I was expecting," Rory says, her glass half colored by a deep red. She drinks some more and swallows too quickly, the liquid burning her throat on its way down.

Jess looks at her and she catches it, his smirk, subtler than his teenage gloating. "What did you expect?"

She likes what has happened to his voice. It's become roughened by tobacco, warmer, golden from use. She blushes because they are them and little Lo is gone—no distractions, nothing—and she feels lightheaded, wine silly and girlishly naïve, inescapably seventeen.

Her voice is small. "You wrote me a love letter."

"Yes," Jess answers. She thinks that he should be the one to feel embarrassed, but he isn't. "It would be accurate to call it that."

"I," she stammers. Standing by the counter, he touches the curve of her hip; the other side of her waist is pressed into the cold granite. Jess contemplates making love to her in his kitchen, but it's more of an after-thought, something to experiment with if things go the way he wants them to. "I thought you were still married," she confesses. "I didn't know Cecilia was dead."

He fixes her with an honest look. "I knew you were divorced, but I probably would have sent that letter anyway. It just would have taken me a bit longer to work up the nerve."

This doesn't surprise her. "That sounds like you."

"Yeah, if you had a four-year-old son this would be a literary cliché."

She remembers reading Emily Bronte, turning the pages of Wuthering Heights and missing the meaning the first time around. Rory reminds herself to read the classics again. I'm living it, she concludes, what could be more gothic than two estranged lovers who reconcile after death and divorce?

"The thing is," she says, remembering her previously quelled guilt, "I would have come to you anyway."

She's being honest and he spots it easily. Rory pushes her wine glass to the back of the counter, moving it out of the way. Jess copies her movements.

"Well you know what they say," he repeats, "always try things twice."

He wants to undress her, to lay her out on his bed and feel himself between her thighs. "You didn't answer my question," Jess says, "what did you expect?"

Rory looks at some fixed point. "I expected you were in need of a Mistress," she answers, "I suppose I thought myself qualified."

He looks at her, darkly, sinuously. "You're only half wrong."

When he kisses her it isn't slow. He touches her cheek and holds her in place with his hips, letting his tongue flick against hers lightly enough to make each movement undeniably distinct. It comes back to them like an innate skill, an instinct. She moans into his mouth, knowing that even when he was with someone else a part of him was hers.

She's grateful that she went with the flimsy dress, thin and fit for Spring Time, light enough for her to feel the pressure of Jess against her body. She likes that he's a little rough with her, trusting in her status as his equal. He looks at her eyes while he undresses her, savoring the feel of her hair in his hands and her naked breasts against his chest.

She is Dagny Taggart playing the submissive to Hank Reardon; Rory keens and digs her nails in while Jess fucks her. She wants to obliterate the standing of any and every other woman in his life, to fuck out any thoughts of Lo or Cecilia, to erase her competition.

They fuck and sleep, soundly, deeply, briefly. It continues like that, each time distinct, their evening evaporating.

He wakes to the feeling of her hand on him, between his legs. He can't help but laugh; her lips on his obscure it. The clock on his nightstand reads just past seven-thirty. Mrs. Rank doesn't expect him until ten.

He wants to spend his days like this, to make love to Rory and walk Lo to pre-school and write in the silence of his home. He says this to her before he can convince himself otherwise. She is flattered, touched, swooning from the intimate tone of his voice.

She wants to tell him that he has it, that it's his, but it's too early and it's them. She knows this.

Sitting on her knees, Lo sits at the vinyl booth toying with the plastic menu. Mrs. Rank has dressed her perfectly, reveling in the doll-like quality of her babyish arms and curls. Lola carefully drinks from her cup of orange juice, her big green eyes traveling from the other diner patrons and then to the two adults across from her.

Lo giggles a little when Jess flicks a scrap of paper at her from across the table, content in the presence of her father but curious at the sight of Rory. She observes her openly, untroubled by the commotion in the diner.

The waitress arrives with their orders: pancakes, eggs and bacon, sugar-sweet French toast. Their triad experiences a momentary lull during the clang and clatter of plates and forks, quiet save the sound of scraping cutlery while the busboy tidies up a few surrounding tables.

"Can I try some?"

Lo points to the mug that Rory holds, to the cup of hot coffee, two creams and two sugars. Rory's blue eyes get round, startled. Jess cocks his head to the side to watch.

In her day old dress and finger-combed hair, Rory pushes her cup across the linoleum tabletop, careful not to spill it, holding her mug with both hands.

"Careful," she warns, "It's hot."

Lo brings it to her lips, drinks, and swallows.

Fin.

A/N: I had to account for a few changes, however minor, from the original request. I was unsure whether 'glasses' meant drinking glasses or reading glasses, so I took a poetic license and chose for myself. As far as I can tell, all the kinks have been beaten out of this story, with much appreciated help from my amazing beta Keliana LeFey. I hope everyone enjoyed reading this. Reviews are always appreciated.