Author's Note- This story is the reason I finally got an account. I've been reading Gilmore fic for ages, and I finally got an idea for a story, and here it is. Yes, I know the concept requires Jess to be slightly OOC, but I actually think it makes sense for his character. If you want to know why, I have a very well thought-out argument for why this makes sense.

The lyrics in this chapter are from "Scream" by Kill Hannah. Fantastic band. Look them up.

1. Howl

Jess shoved tingling fingertips into his pockets, stalking through the nighttime streets of Philadelphia. His head was throbbing and his throat burned. Two hours and four beers had not been sufficient to erase the taste of her from his lips, and if he was honest with himself, he wasn't that interested in doing so anyway.

God, he was pathetic. If someone had told him when he was sixteen that in four years he'd be a sorry mess over a girl he'd only seen a handful of times since he was in high school, he'd have laughed derisively right in their face. But Rory Gilmore had gone and reeled him in and now he was screwed.

He had been doing alright, too. He'd been just fine for the last few years. He'd been able to distract himself with helping Matt and Chris build up Truncheon from the work-from-our-living-room operation it had been when he first met them to the respectable business it was today. His love- yes, love. Even after all this time apart, he still thought it deserved that label- for Rory had faded into a vague white background noise in his thoughts. When he'd been younger, he hadn't been able to block it out at all. He hadn't been able to cope with his all-consuming need for her (and he didn't even mean that in the physical sense, though there was certainly that, too), and his desperation had made him rave like a madman in her presence and driven her away.

But as years passed, he'd learned to push her to the back of his thoughts. Now, she only put in an appearance in his mind's eye about four or five times a day. Five times his heart practically stopped beating from the shock her sudden presence, intangible though it was. He was living with a ghost, but it had better than it had been.

Today had brought it all rushing back. The moment he had seen her, he had fallen in love with her all over again. That was how it had always been, even when they were still together- he would be away from her for a few hours, and when he saw her again, he fell even harder. She had lingered to the end of the open house, and with each passing minute, his fragile hope that at last, at last, she was coming back to him had grown. By the time they were the only two left in Truncheon, he had been confident enough of her intentions to actually risk making the first move.

And he'd been wrong. She wasn't there to be with him. She was there to use him. How could he have been so stupid? He'd blown his one chance with her, and he knew that now. He should have known it before, but their story always seemed so incomplete, like there ought to be one last chapter...

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He should have known better. Through the slight fog that was descending on his mind as an effect of the alcohol, he recalled a song he had heard once, and laughed at the appropriateness of the lyrics he had once thought melodramatic and overblown...

Somehow I feel that it's my destiny to fall
Get dried and hung upon a gallery wall
Holding on by just a thread to my heart

So now I scream
And hope it's a dream
It's hard just to breathe
When we said goodbye

He hummed the haunting melody that accompanied the words, able to tell, even drunk, that he was off-key. He laughed bitterly. Screaming didn't help; he'd tried that in California, when the ache of letting her go was still raw and weeping. Usually alcohol numbed it for awhile, though. Tonight it wasn't helping, not even a little bit, not with the feeling of her lips fresh against his.

As he again became hyperaware of his mouth, a sudden thought knocked him literally off his feet. He sat down heavily on the pavement right where he was, staring in agonized shock at his surroundings and seeing none of it. Tonight was the first time they had kissed since that fateful night in a bedroom at some party... Had he really not kissed her in over three years?

How had he even survived this long without that? There was a time when going even twenty-four hours without kissing her was just too much (not that she'd known that). Three years he'd managed to struggle through, and he'd been (almost) alright. But now he'd had one last bittersweet taste of what he could have had, if he'd only been able to get his shit together. It was a reminder, and a brand. He was marked. For the rest of his life, he knew, what ifs would torture him (more than they already did).

Fuck, three years had been absolute agony, looking back. And how he had the rest of his life to go through.

How the hell was he going to survive?

Numbly, Jess got back to his feet and walked the last few blocks to the apartment above Truncheon. He barely gave a thought to where he was going, just moving on autopilot and paying special attention to the burning inside. He stumbled up the stairs and collapsed on the ragtag sofa in the shared living room. For some twenty minutes he stared at the wall, trying to settle the pounding in his head and the sick wrenching in his heart. He felt nauseous, dizzy. It was always like this after an encounter with her. He felt physically ill for days. Tonight, though, it felt worse than ever before.

It never occurred to him that the alcohol might be compounding the effects of his heartbreak. That thought never crossed his mind. All he knew that he was in agony, physically, emotionally, mentally, and he just wanted it to stop.

Swaying, he made his way to the cramped bathroom and began rummaging in the medicine cabinet, looking for some Nyquil or something else with strong depressants, to knock himself out for a few hours. Instead, he came up with a full bottle of prescription painkillers. Matthew had migraines, and the pills were his.

Jess stared at the bottle, reading the warning label that blurred before his drunken eyes. Then, without taking a second longer to think about this, he popped the lid off the pills and tipped the lot of them down his throat...

A/N2- No, that's not the end! Leave a review, and I might be persuaded to post the next chapter a little sooner...