Summary: "Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves." – Walter Anderson
Disclaimer: It's a sad truth to accept, but Jess and Rory and their entire universe do not belong to me. They belong to a lovely woman named Amy Sherman-Palladino. I just like to play in the sandbox that is her creative genius. Also, I do not own any of the songs featured. (I do, however, encourage a quick visit to YouTube)
A/N: This story has been on my hard drive for a long time and I finally felt inspired to finish it and show it to the world – or the fifteen or so people that will read it. Whichever comes first. This takes place three years after the final episode (Bon Voyage), and Rory is slightly OOC here. You'll see why.
"Our lives improve only when we take chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves." - Walter Anderson
Rory has always been a hard sleeper, like her mother. 'Dead to the world' is an expression often used when describing her sleeping habits. More like well-honed survival instincts, she figures. After all, her house was nothing if not a place of constant action and noise, what with the blaring television, the blasting of the Go-Go's, or the knock-knock-knocks from Luke fixing up the house at ungodly hours in the morning. She learned early on you were either jerked awake by some unregistered sound or you slept through it all.
It's because of this well-known ability to sleep through the apocalypse that leaves Rory curious… why then is she always so aware when sleeping in the same bed with Jess? It was never like this. Logan would have to spend at least a minute nudging her awake before she finally became aware enough to his clues for morning sex. Dean hadn't fared much better. Rarely fared at all, really. Why is it, then, that all Rory needs is a hand ghosting down her thigh before she's practically pouncing on her dark-haired and surly boyfriend?
It has to be him, she figures, for no one else has ever had this effect on her. She's always so delightfully aware when it comes to Jess Mariano. Like now, she muses with her eyes closed, as he tightens his hold on her waist, bringing her closer to his warmth as he hugs her from behind. She'd just been dreaming about snow and carriage rides when a firm but gentle tug had her slowly leaving the dream world to enter the waking one, and she scoots back further into him, relishing the way his body fits against hers and the delicious warmth he provides.
Slowly she breathes in a deep sigh and opens her eyes, adjusting them to the soft light before flicking up to look at the clock by the bed on the end table – 7:20 a.m. Fairly early, considering it's a Sunday. She turns around in Jess's arms to lay on her left side so she can face him, taking in his peaceful expression. It's a rare sight and she takes her time, allowing her eyes to trace the lines of his face, pausing at his relaxed eyelids and soft mouth. She loves seeing him like this – so unguarded. He's an intense person, her Jess. Never blank, never without an expression. He's always whirring with life. It's what makes him different from a lot of other people – her mother is also like that.
It had taken Lorelai a while to get used to them getting back together. A lot of explaining, a lot of convincing and two movie nights (of which Jess had grudgingly agreed to attend) were needed in order to finally convince her that Jess has changed and is indeed a good man for Rory. It certainly helped when Rory explained Jess's involvement in her going back to Yale.
Nothing about them is ever easy. She smiles – she likes it though. All the crap they went through only makes her realize how much she loves the man beside her.
Rory's lips curve upwards in a slow smile before she lifts her hand to sweep her fingers through his jet-black hair.
His brows furrow slightly before he grunts softly. He slowly stirs, angling his face towards the palm of her hand and brushing softly up against it.
They have a complicated relationship – even before getting together. Nothing normal ever fits them. She frowns at that sudden realization. Nothing normal ever fits them. Surely there has to be something…
Nope.
They met – she was taken. They flirted, argued and kissed until she wasn't taken… then they flirted, argued and kissed some more. But it's okay, she supposes. Dysfunctional sort of works for them. Nobody's perfect. Least of all them. And even though they have to work at their relationship every day, she knows that this is the most rewarding thing she has ever entered. She loves him more than she knew she was capable of and knows that there is no one else for her. They just fit.
That in itself might be the only thing that's normal for them. Then she realizes how even that is odd. How often do people find that one person that they are completely happy with and just fit? Not often. And the fact that they found each other so young, that's not normal at all. She wonders… can they not have at least one normal thing?
"Jess," she whispers.
"Hmm," he responds, sleepily.
"Jess. Wake up."
His eyes pop open and he looks at her inquisitively.
"We don't have a song. All couples should have a song."
"Is that so?" he responds teasingly. "Should we also make love by a meadow and scatter rose petals along our apartment?"
Rory rolls her eyes. "I'm serious. We should have a song."
"We do."
"We do?" she asks, surprised. Surely she couldn't have missed that.
"Guns of Brixton," he replies, smirking.
She shouldn't be surprised. He remembers everything. Annoyingly so, at times. Nevertheless, she awards him with a chaste kiss, showing him that she is enormously touched that he remembers something so small from so long ago. "First of all," she starts, "that was years ago and we weren't even dating then. Secondly, I'm not quite sure I want to associate what we have with oppression and riots."
"All right," he says before getting up to grab her hand and lead them to the living room where their stereo and CDs are located. "Let's get on it then."
She grins, loving how her hand fits in his.
An hour and a half later finds them both sitting on the floor of the living room of their apartment with Rory looking through a rack of CDs in front of her and Jess leaning against the back of the couch, looking at the back of a CD case. They're both sitting cross legged and facing towards each other with three different piles of at least twenty-five CD cases in between them. More are scattered around, and small piles litter their floor space, some cases open, some closed, but most of the CDs are in one of the two towering piles off to the side. Rory groans loudly. "This is impossible," she exclaims. "It can't possibly be this hard to find one song that fits us."
He smirks, "Yet surprisingly believable. It's actually quite fitting."
She laughs. "You're right. There isn't a song in the history of the world that can describe what we have."
It's like kissing him, she thinks.
No matter how hard she tries, she can never find the right words to describe that feeling she gets when her lips met his. And on that note… she braces herself as she leans forward and meets his lips in a sweet and tantalizing kiss. He responds immediately.
She breaks the kiss, giving a small peck before leaning back, smiling to herself - her lips still tingling. Yup. No words. Indescribable.
"Okay," she announces, putting another disk into the player. "How about this one?"
The beginning chords of the song she picks filters out of the speakers before Al Green's easy and soulful voice appears, instantly filling Rory with a need to sway her hips from side to side.
"A little soul is necessary in life," Jess mumbles, still looking at the CD cover in his hands.
Rory gasps, her eyes wide in shock. "I cannot believe you've seen that movie."
"Liz had a Freddie Prinze Jr. thing for a while. Al Green was the only decent part of that horrible movie. And no we are not making our song Let's Stay Together."
"Fine. Oh. How about this one, then?"
"Since I've Been Lovin' You?" he asks.
"Not unless I make your life a drag," she responds distractedly, flipping through Patti Smith tracks.
"Rain Song? All My Love?"
"Don't think you can sneak in Led Zeppelin just because of good titles. I'd like a song with lyrics that made me actually think you loved me," she states as she puts in another disk.
Jess cracks a smile as he pushes his Zeppelin collection towards the pile on the right and picks up another CD case in between them.
"Edith Piaf?" she asks as Non, je ne regrette rien fills the apartment. "A classic," she states confidently. "And impossibly romantic."
"No way," he snorts. "The woman was grief-stricken, depressed, and French. Hardly words that I imagine when I think of you," he says as he stops the song and replaces the disk with another while Rory rolls her eyes.
Many would assume that Come Together or Revolution is Jess's favorite Beatles song… 'Jess' and 'Rebellion'are practically synonymous. Rory, however, is one of the few who knows that And I Love Her is actually his favorite and looks up and smiles at him as it begins playing. She'd always known their more popular songs, the hits, but it wasn't until Jess that she'd started listening to and come to love their lesser known ballads.
"Hey, where's your Creed CD?"
"Weathered or Human Clay?" Jess asks, reaching over to look behind him at a pile he created to his left.
"Umm, Weathered, I think."
He grabs the case and hands it to her. Rory takes the Beatles disk out when the song comes to a close and puts it back in its case, placing it on one of the two huge stacks, the left one, before putting the CD Jess handed her into the player and finding the track she wants. "This one?" she asks.
He smiles softly as Lullaby begins playing. It's one of their softest songs, and though it is alarmingly uncharacteristic of him, it's also one of his favorites of theirs. He tells her to put it on top of the left stack.
Rory grins mischievously and takes out the Van Morrison CD playing Tupelo Honey that Jess put in before placing in her own disk.
Jess looks up and upon seeing her grin, throws her a wary gaze. As soon as he hears the song, however, he throws his head back and laughs aloud having recognized the song instantly from the sweeping orchestral beginning of At Last by Etta James. "Cheeky," he tells her after calming down.
She giggles, knowing it could never be an option as it is far too cliché for them, but just had to play it once she came across it.
They lapse into a period of silence when the song closes, just flipping through the CDs that they both own, comfortable with their own thoughts and the silence that surrounds the apartment.
It's never awkward with them, Rory thinks to herself. Being together is always exhilarating and passionate, but there is always an underlying sense of comfort that she could never find with another person besides her mother. She had always felt the need to talk or do something while with Dean. Logan was almost no different. She could never just be while with them.
It's different with Jess though. It always has been. Even when they were kids, she could remember countless hours spent just sitting with him on the couch, them reading their own books. Nothing had to be said. Nothing had to be done, simply being together was comfortable and it hasn't changed.
Jess smiles softly as he puts the next contender into the CD player. He knows she'll love this one. He does too.
It's the song that had been playing when he came over after they had been dating again for a while. He had finally worked up the courage to tell her and came over immediately. When he'd used his 'emergency key' to get through the door, he found her sprawled out on her bed reading a book she'd borrowed from him with Ribbon in the Sky playing in the background (she'd said she'd been in a Stevie Wonder mood after being asked). He had crawled onto the bed, grabbed the book out of her hands and kissed her full on the mouth before pulling back to tell her he loved her. Her eyes had lit up and a slow smile had worked its way onto her face before she'd told him she loved him too and kissed him again.
He turns it to the right track, and as the song starts to play she stops what she's doing and smiles gently. He can see the emotions dance across her face and is riveted by the love he sees there.
She looks up at him then and grins before leaning over to kiss him. "It's definitely an option," she whispers before getting up to head to the kitchen. "You want anything?" she calls back. "I'm grabbing chips."
"Just a soda," he shouts back as he stops the song and takes out the CD to put it back in its case before placing it on top of the ever-growing maybe stack they had been compiling for the past two hours. Next to it on the right is an even bigger stack that he dubbed definitely not that holds most of her country selection and quite a bit of his death rocker CDs that Rory insists gives her chills, and not in the good way. Before she comes back out he grabs another disk and places it into the player to be judged as an option.
Rory walks back in and hands Jess his Coke before setting down the bowl of chips on the table. When she sees that the small pile of CDs between them has dwindled down to only two cases, she walks over to the bin of vinyl records they own to give them a look.
As she flips through the selections, she hears a very familiar song come from the speakers as a pair of strong arms wrap around her from behind, a soft kiss placed at the nape of her neck.
"I love you."
She turns around to wrap her arms around him and says softly, "I love you, too," before giving him a kiss. He wraps his arms tighter around her, bringing her closer into his body, before starting to sway softly to Songbird, the Eva Cassidy version. They spend the next few minutes absorbed in each other as Rory thinks back to the moment in their history that this closely parallels and gives it voice just as the song ends. "That's the song we danced to at Mom and Luke's wedding."
"Yeah," he responds. He leans down to bury his face in her hair before giving a quick kiss to her neck. "That's when I knew I couldn't let you go again."
Her eyes immediately water. She'd been thinking the same thing. Right there on the dance floor of her mother's wedding was when she'd realized the man holding her was it – she loved him and wouldn't stop.
She squeezes her arms to bring herself closer to him and whispers, "Me too."
They hadn't 'officially' gotten back together until about two weeks later but it was inevitable after the wedding. They spent the entire evening sitting next to each other talking and learning about each other again. It was easy, comfortable and she'd felt more like herself with him than she had in the past few years.
She presses her face to his shoulder and lets his shirt soak up her tears before pulling back and looking at him. She smiles and kisses him softly. "I think we found a winner."
...Rory bolted upright in her bed, heart pounding and eyes wide...
A/N2: The movie Jess quotes above during Al Green's Let's Stay Together is Down To You (2000) starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Julia Stiles. I thought it appropriate to mention, since I did get the idea of Jess and Rory picking out their song from a scene in the movie where Al and Imogen go through his parent's records looking for 'their' song.
Part two is up next.