Disclaimer: Don't own it. Don't sue me.
AN: Another one shot, I know. And more Jess angst, like I haven't written enough. Oh well, this is a bit different at least. Scary part is...I may have been asleep when I came up with this. What? I'm not weird...
Glimpses.
She was crushing into him.
Her weight leans against his, a welcome burden. Her lips press against his, she tastes like strawberry lip-gloss with a faint trace of coffee. Her hair spills over her shoulders and brushes against his own. The smooth silk of her dress feels cool beneath his arm. It is thin enough so that he can feel her underneath it, feel the slope of her back.
She is crushing, melding into him. They fit perfectly, like the last puzzle piece.
She was what was missing. She completed him. (As sickening as it sounds, he feels it is true, in that moment.)
And now she was pulling away. Slowly, slowly. Everything was moving so painfully slow.
ooooo
Jess woke up panicked. He searched around the room, trying to find her, trying to prove the dream wasn't true.
Of course, it was. She wasn't there, and most likely never would be again. And it was his fault. He let her slip away. He was and idiot, letting her go.
The job at Wal-Mart, the lies, failing, going to find his dad, none of it had been worth the pain of losing her. It wasn't worth feeling like a piece of shit now because she wasn't lying beside him. He knew that now, when it was too late, when she wouldn't (couldn't, shouldn't) take him back.
All that was left were those little glimpses of what he had. Those torturous little glimpses, leaving him thirsty for her touch, for the unobtainable.
He sank back a little further on his filthy mattress, shutting his eyes tightly.
ooooo
They aren't even touching, but her laughter fills the air, and it is enough.
She came to him, her blue eyes brighter than he remembers, a striking contrast to the gray of her school sweater.
She is out of her element now, relying on him, hanging on to his words like a lost child.
It is a coveted feeling, that of being needed. And of all people, it was Rory Gilmore who needed him.
ooooo
She was kissing him again, another melding kiss; a kiss that seemed to utterly connect them. They were no longer Rory and Jess, but RoryJess, a single perfect imperfection. Completely wrong, but he sincerely hoped that it would be right.
And in moments like this, kisses like this, he thought that maybe it would be.
She had pulled him into aforementioned kiss in one swift motion, so sudden that he was taken aback.
He had heard the expression 'kissed senseless', but had always thought of it as idiotic sap. Still did, but the way his breath was caught, how he had dropped the garbage bag formally slung over his shoulder, the way all thoughts fled his mind (except that of further entangling himself in her kiss)...it made him wonder.
ooooo
Damn that Rory Gilmore.
She had been his life for the past two years, plaguing his mind when she wasn't present, making his heart skip when she was.
His heart skip? Sweet mother, what had this girl done to him?
He wasn't used to wanting someone like this. His lips were burning from the long absence of her kiss, his ears stinging with the faded residue of her laugh.
Why couldn't she leave him alone, let him go numb?
Damn her, damn her and the inability to grasp his current (depressing) reality she had left him with.
Giving up on sleep, he went into the kitchen (or what passes for one in such a rat hole) and starts to make some coffee. All of the sudden, it dawned on him.
Coffee.
Rory.
Shit.
The coffee pot slipped out of his grasp, falling slowly (too damn slow), towards the linoleum floor.
ooooo
A dark room, bitter kisses. Falling, falling onto an unfamiliar bed. He plays with the hem of her shirt, feeling a cool sliver of her skin.
She is pushing him away, upset.
And he is falling, falling. He wants her to catch him, but he doesn't know how to ask.
So his says nothing, lets himself fall further and further, until she's too far away to pull him back.
ooooo
He was brought back to reality by the sound of the coffee pot shattering. He bent down to pick up the pieces, accidentally brushing his hand along the sharp edge of one, drawing a bit of blood out of a small cut.
He looked at his cut, and then back down at the broken pieces scattered across the floor.
ooooo
She only looked at him for a slight moment before stepping off of the bus. But that look was one of the most painful things he had ever experienced. Her eyes seemed to bore holes into his skull.
That look was filled with accusations, ones that he undoubtedly deserved.
That look was a look of realization, for both of them. The realization that RoryJess was broken, and that broken pieces can't always come back together again.
ooooo
He got up and went to the sink; let the cool water wash away the blood on his finger. It was gone now, the cut could be forgotten. As if nothing ever happened.
He swept up the broken pieces of the coffee pot and moved to throw them in the trash. Once he stood over the trashcan, however, he stopped. Once he threw the pieces away, the little incident could be forgotten. Like it never happened, like the coffee pot had never existed.
It almost scared him, the thought that you could erase something that easily.
ooooo
Her face was begging him, pleading him to leave. She didn't want him here, didn't want him.
She wanted it all to be over.
So he left.
ooooo
Maybe some things were better forgotten.
Slowly (everything seemed to be moving slowly these days) he let the pieces drop from his hand, into the trashcan, like nothing ever happened.
ooooo
She could be here, sitting beside him, windows rolled down, hair tangled and floating in the wind.
But she wasn't, and she would never be.
He glanced at the leather seat beside him. Nobody would be able to tell that it wasn't supposed to be empty.
ooooo
Jess backed out of the kitchen, feeling slightly numb. Nothing had ever happened.
Except it had.
The residue just didn't have to be there. But it had happened.
Doesn't mean he had to feel it.
He went back to his bed, and opened his previously squeezed shut hand, revealing a solitary piece of broken glass.
You couldn't fix anything with one piece. But maybe you didn't have to fix anything. Maybe you just had to remember.
It was still there, but it didn't have to be everything.
The small glass falling from his hand, Jess finally drifted to sleep.
END.