Title: 348.2 Miles
Author: Amanda (fromiftowhen LJ)
Pairing: Rory/Jess; future fic.
Spoilers: This is all together a cuter story if you remember the "22.8 miles" exchange in "Happy Birthday, Baby."
Disclaimer: Not mine. Clearly.
Note: I wrote this in response to a prompt on an LJ comment-ficathon last year. The prompt was "Effortless love."
Rory is 26 when she reconnects with Jess. Sure, they kind of kept in touch throughout the years - Jess was at her mom and Luke's wedding, of course; she called and congratulated him on the release of his second book - but nothing concrete.
They run into each other in the middle of Faneuil Hall, on a ridiculously gorgeous Boston day. She thinks she sees someone who looks like him, but this is Boston, it's crawling with people, and she's running on so little sleep she's surprised she's still standing. And then he's standing in front of her, same smirk, with just a hint of surprise.
She's in town with a few Obama staffers and a couple other reporters, and she's surprised to learn he lives here now.
They grab a quick lunch and he takes her on a fifty cent tour of the city he's really only started calling home in the last six months.
Their conversation comes quick, easy, like so many years ago when they first found each other. She tells him as much as she can about the campaign trail, and he waves away her congratulations on a third book option as they walk down North End backstreets.
By the time she leaves town the next afternoon, they're more together than they ever were at 17.
The first few months of their relationship are an adjustment period. Every moment they're together - and they are few and far between - is unashamedly spent in bed, but sometimes they really just talk, and sometimes, he just lets her sleep with her head on his chest as he reads. But when they part, he sometimes hates her job, and she always hates that he refuses to be her "journalist groupie."
There's a lot of texting, and she always calls him sometime between collapsing into bed and falling asleep. They go over their days together, and after they hang up, she's always a little sad and a little unsure of what the next phase of their relationship will bring.
They fight already, and they don't even see each other everyday. And sometimes she still sees flashes of the monosyllabic boy who stole beer from her mom's fridge, but she tries to gloss those memories over with more recent, happier ones.
She always dreamed that when she found the right person, their love would be effortless. And sometimes, after a fight with Jess, her confidence is shaken, and she doubts that he's the right one. Because their love is not effortless; it's anything but, really.
But after every fight, she'll get a text from him along the lines of, "You're 348.2 miles away from me already. Don't let me make it farther."
And she knows; it might not be effortless, but it is worth all the effort.