Author's notes: This has been an ongoing project for months now. This was originally part of the Rory ficathon, but the "deadline" for that was back in September. So… better late than never!
First and foremost, I need to thank fulfilled, who is the best beta ever. This story was a mess before she got her hands on it, and she kept up the encouragement when so many times I was ready to scrap it.
I also want to thank my friend marlaas, even though she doesn't go by that name any longer. She also kept me going a few times. Thanks for being so encouraging and being my cheerleader!
After All
-----January 20, 2008-----
"Hi, Luke!" Rory called, trying to sound cheerful as she walked into the diner. "I've actually got some extra time this morning!" she continued, plopping down on a stool at the counter, and dropping her bag on the floor. "I think I'm in the mood for pancakes." She had spent the night at her mom's again… seemed she was there more often than she was at her own place. She convinced herself that it had to be temporary, even though she didn't know how or when it would change. Otherwise, she would have looked into finding a roommate – anything to keep the deafening silence away. Ever since she and Logan had split, nothing had felt quite right in her life, and Rory didn't know if she could go back to having "just a roommate." Not after sharing a life with someone.
When someone appeared from the back area of the diner, she looked up shortly and had to catch herself from falling off the stool. "You're not Luke," she said, feeling stupid.
"No, I'm not," Jess agreed with a small smirk. "What can I get for you?"
"Just… coffee." Rory creased her brow, staring at him. "What are you doing here?"
"You know that guy who owns the place – flannel shirt, backwards baseball cap – that's my uncle."
Rory rolled her eyes with a small smile. "Jess…"
"I had a few days, so I came by to visit Liz and the baby, and I'm helping out Luke a little," he explained, pouring coffee into a large mug. "What about you? What are you doing in this neck of the woods? I emphasize woods," he added quickly.
"Oh, I've been spending a lot of time with my mom lately," she said vaguely. "You know our codependency!" she joked and forced a chuckle.
Jess nodded, and Rory appreciated that he didn't call her out on the charade, but as usual with him, he didn't laugh along with it, either. "Right," he agreed.
Rory caught sight of the clock above the shelves. "Oh, no," she said, standing up. "I really have to go; I have a meeting this morning that I forgot all about. Listen," she said, slipping her bag over her shoulder, "will you be around later? "We've got to stop this not-talking-for-two-years thing." She smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll be here." He chuckled lightly as she looked between the coffee and the clock. "Take it, bring it back later," he told her with a wave of his hand.
"Thanks!" Rory called over her shoulder, grabbing the mug and dashing for the door.
"So, what's going on?" Jess asked conversationally, leaning back in his chair. "I keep hearing about 'Rory Gilmore, the famous reporter'."
"Oh, I'm not really famous," Rory protested. "This town exaggerates everything." Jess nodded in agreement. "I'm working for a small paper in Fairfield – it's no Hartford Courant—"
"Not yet," Jess interjected
"—but it's not exactly The Stars Hollow Gazette, either," she continued, smiling slightly at his remark.
"Anyway, it's small, but it's great. And I've been told it's a good stepping stone."
"That's great," Jess told her, holding her gaze for a few seconds. "I always knew you'd make it."
Rory blushed slightly and looked down. "Well, I'm not there yet."
"You're getting there, though," he insisted. "You still pushing for the international thing?"
"I don't know," Rory began, pausing to take a bite of pie. "I don't really think so. I still love travel, and of course journalism, but I don't think I like the two together. I'm still interested in what's going on out there, but the more I think about it, the less I can picture myself actually doing that." She took a sip of her coffee.
Jess nodded, stacking up some sugar packets. "You commute to Fairfield every day from here? That's a trip."
Rory shook her head, swallowing. "Excuse me. I don't really commute every day – I have a small apartment near work – it's convenient, but I find myself back here a lot. I guess you can take the girl out of the small town…" she left off with a small smile. "You know the rest. But what's going with you? Are you still at Truncheon?"
"Yeah, it's really growing." A note of pride crept into Jess' voice and Rory smiled. "We've got a new office – we outgrew the old one."
"That's really great!" Rory's smile was genuine. "And what about your writing? You're still writing, aren't you?"
Jess chuckled lightly. "I didn't think I would – I thought I'd said all I needed to in the first one."
"But…" Rory prompted.
"But," Jess continued, "I just gave my second manuscript to the editors yesterday. That's kind of why I'm here – gave myself a few days off to celebrate it being done."
"That's fantastic, Jess, really." Rory smiled, her eyes sparkling with excitement for the first time in a long time.
A moment of comfortable silence passed between them, and Rory marveled to herself at how easy it felt to be around him. "So do you see Liz and the baby a lot?" she asked.
"Hmm… kind of," Jess said. "Work keeps me pretty busy, but I see everyone a lot more than I used to. I try to come by as often as I can. Gary grows so much in between visits, I can't keep up!"
Rory nodded. Jess, the family man? Stranger things have happened, she thought to herself. "How old is Gary now? It must be weird to be a big brother." Rory hardly ever saw her sister – in fact, it was strange to even think about the fact that she had a sister at all.
"Oh, let's see… he's fourteen, almost fifteen months now. He's getting so big." Jess smiled. "But it's weirder to see Liz be a mom," Jess said, pushing an errant lock of hair back. "I mean, it doesn't really feel like I have a sibling – I'm not competing for Liz' attention or anything. It's just surreal to watch her act like a real mom."
Rory nodded, understanding. She obviously hadn't known Liz as a parent the first time around, but she had gotten enough of an impression from Jess and Luke – and a little bit from Liz herself – to have a general idea of Liz' non-parenting when Jess was growing up.
Jess caught a glimpse of his watch and stood, taking out his wallet. "Hey, listen, I promised Like I'd help him out with the dinner rush today, so I'd better get going."
"Oh, okay." Rory reached for her purse, trying to calculate how much she owed.
"It was good to see you," Jess said in a low voice, reaching out to touch her arm briefly
"Yeah, you too," Rory agreed with a smile. "Let's not make it another two years before we do it again."
"Absolutely," Jess agreed. He took a card out of his wallet, scribbled something on the back and handed it to Rory. "That's my cell," he told her, indicating the handwritten number. "And my email's on the front."
Rory looked it over. jess. it read. "Ooh, a business card!" she teased, her eyes twinkling. "Jess Mariano, Associate Managing Editor. Look at you, the professional businessman!"
Jess chuckled. "Yeah, hard to believe, I know.
Rory searched through her purse, trying to find a piece of paper. Eventually, she surfaced with a receipt from three months ago. "Can I use your pen? Thanks," she said when he handed it to her. "There's my info," she told him, handing him the receipt and his pen. "I'm horrible at returning emails," she warned him, "so you're better off with the phone."
"I'll see you around," Jess said with a small smile and a touch on her arm.
"Yeah, I'll talk to you soon," she agreed, and walked out of Weston's feeling lighter than she had in months.
-----March 29, 2009-----
Rory is hit with loud punk music as soon as she opens the door, and she grins to herself. "Hello!" she calls into the apartment. She kicks off her heels by the door and maneuvers her way around the boxes littering the living room. "I'm home!" The purse follows the shoes on the floor and Rory grabs a hair tie from the table next to the door, twisting her hair up off her face.
She follows the music into the bedroom, finding Jess lying on the floor, typing on his laptop. One leg of his sweatpants is pushed up to the knee and he rubs his calf with the other foot.
"Hey," she says, placing a gentle hand on his bare back.
Jess jumps, and then catches himself. "I didn't hear you come in," he says sheepishly, lowering the music.
"So I see," Rory comments, amused. She leans down to kiss him quickly, and then peels off her stockings, tossing them in the direction of the hamper.
"What time is it?" Jess asks, standing and stretching.
"Almost six," Rory replies. "How long have you been down there?"
"All afternoon," Jess groans.
"You do know," Rory chides him gently, "that the desk and the coffee table in the living room are not among the things that we haven't unpacked."
Jess shrugs. "It was comfortable at first," he says. "Then I didn't want to move because I was in a good writing place."
"So I guess that's why the boxes are all in the same state they were in this morning?"
Jess tilts his head slightly, looking at Rory unapologetically. "You're the same way when you're working on a story," he tells her. "Worse, actually. I have to try three or four times to get your attention."
"Yeah, I know," Rory admits with a small smile.
Jess stretches his arms above his head and twists to crack his back. He reaches out and closes the lid of his computer with his toe. "I think I'm one big knot," he complains.
"Jess," Rory says, slipping out of her skirt and pulling on a pair of sweatpants, "I have no sympathy for you. You could have gotten up at any time."
Jess catches her eye, widening his eyes in innocence. "Is there any way I can convince you to give me a back rub?" He gives her a little pout, accentuating the sympathetic look.
"Maybe," Rory allows, fighting a smile. She'll cave, and he knows it, but she'll at least put up a good fight first. "Hey, I'll tell you what," she says, getting an idea. "If we get two boxes unpacked, with everything in them put away where they belong – I'll give you a really good back rub."
"Deal," Jess agrees, shaking her hand to seal it. "What do you feel like eating tonight?" he calls over his shoulder as he heads into the kitchen.
"How about we just call for pizza?" Rory suggests, sinking into a kitchen chair. "I'm too tired to think."
"Cool," Jess grabs the cordless phone from the counter and dials quickly. "You look beat," he observes as Rory's eyes flutter shut.
"I'm a little tired," Rory admits, "but I'll feel better once I eat."
"Yeah, I skipped lunch." Jess says, pulling a chair over to Rory's and sitting down.
Rory shakes her head affectionately. "What am I going to do with you, huh?"
"I bet I could come up with a few ideas," Jess says with a smirk. "Some of the things you did last night, actually."
"Jess!" Rory blushes furiously.
He laughs and leans over to kiss her cheek. "We have twenty minutes until the pizza gets here. Quick shoulder rub?" he asks hopefully.
"We could get a nice bit of unpacking done in twenty minutes," she counters. "We'll do the fun boxes first. I'll do books, you do music."
"Nope." Jess shakes his head. "Other way around. If you try to unpack the books, you'll end up spending most of the time reading them."
"I will not!" Rory protests.
"Come on," Jess says, giving her a look. "I was there when you packed them away in the first place!"
"Fine," Rory relents, heading for the boxes. "No complaints if the music is sorted wrong, though."
"You won't hear a peep from me," Jess promises.
Rory places the last picture on the mantel, then stands back to admire them all. There's a few of Lorelai, some with Rory, some alone. There's one of herself with Lane, taken on the first day of junior high. On the other side, there's the pictures she insisted Jess have – one of himself and Luke at the diner (she had snapped that one without their knowledge), one of Liz and the Gary from the hospital the day he was born, and one of Liz and "her guys" – Jess, Luke, TJ, and Gary. In the middle stands Rory's favorite picture – she and Jess, lost in their own world, the intimate moment caught by Lane's camera.
She smiles as she feels Jess' arms slip around her waist. "Are we done for today?" he asks. "I hate unpacking. Almost as much as I hate packing."
"A necessary evil," she reminds him, turning around to lock her arms around his neck. "And the quicker we get everything put away, the quicker it'll be done."
Jess chuckles, resting his forehead against hers. "That makes a lot of sense."
"It does!" Rory insists. "I just mean that I want it done because then it'll feel like…"
"I know," Jess says softly. "I know what you mean."
"This is the first place that's ours," she explains. "It's no longer yours or mine or Mom's or Luke's place."
Jess nods with understanding. "Kinda cool," he admits. "But now," he says, taking her hands in his, "you promised me a back rub."
Rory idly traces patterns on Jess' bare chest, feeling the coolness of the evening breeze come though the open window. "Are you happy?" she asks him softly.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, are you happy," she repeats, craning her neck to look up at him.
"Yeah," he says with a shrug.
"No, I…" Rory pauses, trying to find the exact words. "I don't mean just now, I mean in general – with everything."
"What brought this up?" he asks, matching her low tone.
She shrugs. "I was just thinking. About you, and me…" She shakes her head. "I think there's something about this time of day – even the word is kind of thoughtful and dreamy. Dusk," she says, drawing out the word, not leaving out any letter's sound.
Jess chuckles, a low rumbling in his chest.
"Don't laugh at me!" Rory cries, poking him.
"I'm not," Jess tells her seriously, planting a kiss on top of her head. "It's a nice thought."
"I never thought we'd end up here," Rory admits.
Jess smirks. "We end up here a lot."
She swats at his chest. "Not in bed! That's not what I meant, and you know it! I mean here." She sweeps her arm around the still mostly empty bedroom and shivers slightly, remembering her Fairfield apartment. There was a reason she hadn't spent many nights there—the nights she did sleep there, she'd ended up crying herself to sleep, drifting off on a wet pillow. That place had never felt quite right. She'd never even gotten around to putting up decorations—not even the posters that had graced her dorm room walls made it up there.
Their new place is still littered with boxes, but her atlas poster sits in its frame leaning against the wall opposite the bed. It's part of her, part of her dreams. Next to it, there's a poster that Paris gave them—"Books are the Carriers of Civilization." Rory smiles to herself, trying to figure out the perfect place for each poster, lost in her thoughts until she feels Jess' hand drifting along her back, bringing her back to the moment.
"Us. Together. After everything that happened," she says, shrugging and gesturing vaguely. "There I was," she begins in a slightly wistful tone, "alone again, yet another relationship not working out, and then you came back into my life, and that was it – I had no choice but to fall in love with you again. Just like I had no choice the first time." She tilts her face up, giving him a soft smile. He leans down, capturing her lips with his.
------------------------
Author's notes, part 2: This was written for brucasnaleyfan1.
2-4 line story prompt:
"The last time my heart was broken, I thought that it was through, I swore I'd never love again and believed that this was true, but then you walked into my life again and the second your eyes met mine, I knew that you were worth loving, just one more time."
One thing you would like to see in the story: I would love to see Rory and Jess finally happy together.
One thing you don't want to see in the story: lots of tears or fights.