Communication
Disclaimer: To sue me would be to lose. Don't bother. The song "Communication" is by The Cardigans.
A/N: Jess and Rory kept in contact after 6.18. (Note: political opinions have nothing to do with this. I have my own suspicions about Jess' politics as a character and to some degree we know – his fantastic line in s4, snicker snicker – but fictional characters' views on the '08 election don't matter here. Let's talk writing.)
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i hold a record for being patient / with your kind of hesitation
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He calls her only after receiving irritating correspondence from his editor, because secret midnight sex would be clichéd.
That idea disgusts him less than it ought to, but this makes the truth no less true. Constant calls would be clichéd, too.
He calls her after a comma is replaced and he ("writers are really fuckin' powerless, you know," he says, and she responds, "only before the book is published; you know that") is told that's final, and they don't talk about the things she does in her bedroom either. What that means is that they don't talk about the person with whom she does them – his opinion of Logan hasn't changed.
He calls because she sympathizes: a wrong semicolon is, in fact, the end of the world. He patiently allows her to be melodramatic on his behalf and then releases a question. Each question of his is calculated to result in a long enough answer to allow him to again memorize the sound of her voice. He saves one for each conversation; mostly, they have to do with Yale. Sometimes, they are about Luke, Taylor, or Stars Hollow in general, and they are never to do with Lorelai.
She is awfully good at spotting games like this one. And "Let's just make it a taboo topic," she says easily, one afternoon.
He isn't paying full attention, sorting orders in manila folders into piles on the table to his left. "What?"
"Our lives," she says, folding her ankles under herself on Logan's chair. "You tell me about punctuation and not the golden-haired geniuses you watch in Truncheon and have coffee with. I'll tell you about burnt burgers and not about Logan's silly jaunts and my mother's failing relationship with Luke."
"I know about that last," he tells her before she can explain.
"What?"
"I know about Luke and Lorelai," he says, calm as always. "I don't only have a phone line to you, you know."
He doesn't call again for a long time.
"I don't ever want to edit your book," he says when he does.
"Excuse me?"
"The self-made writer edits the educated student one time friend's novel, is enchanted, invites her over for a drink, and ends up going down on her." He says it like a fact.
"Excuse me?" Rory says again, coughing. She sets down her glass, feeling abruptly guilty for drinking and distinctly displeased.
"That's not what I want," he continues. "Not ever."
"Are you reassuring me?" She isn't surprised that he's called suddenly. She couldn't explain why, but she's never quite surprised when he does things like this. All that calm, placid subtlety over the phone over the past months; she never truly doubted that he was still himself.
"No." She is wrong now, though. "I'm making this clear to you: I'm not for – " The waiting accusation feels so nearly undeserved that he cannot bring himself to finish the sentence. He is angry still, suddenly and inexplicably: a mature kind of anger.
"Surprising as it may be to you, I don't want to fuck you, Jess," she snaps.
She begins to screen her calls. It takes her a long time to tire of cautious avoidance.
"I expected you to drunk-dial me at least once over four years," he remarks, just weeks before her graduation. "I'm impressed. All of college." She makes a noncommittal noise. "Who'd you call?" he asks blandly, leaving out the "instead." For a split second he is afraid that he is genuinely curious.
"Dean," she informs him. Then, "I have a call waiting."
"Oh," he says. "Sure, yeah."
He hangs up while she's on the other line. She is mildly relieved.
"Get the job at the Times?" is the next thing she hears him say.
He shoves his hands in his pockets when he speaks to her in exactly the same way he always did, even when it is just a phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder that bridges the gap between them. Her voice causes this: his voice gets a little lower and his mannerisms regress by years. She is easy to blame.
"I didn't tell you – "
"I knew," he says simply, opening his mouth to begin something else. She won't let go:
"Luke didn't know…"
"I didn't say anyone told me," he explains, no less patient. "I knew, Rory."
She has to tell him no, she didn't. He shrugs even though she can't see him and isn't all that sorry. She hesitates but decides she understands. She doesn't really want to hear congratulations from him, anyway.
She tells him because she feels she should: "Logan and I aren't together anymore."
"Taboo," he replies, but it's a quiet day at Truncheon and so he sits down and pays a little more attention to the phone.
"He asked me to marry him."
"What are you giving all these men?" he teases her.
"Shut up, Jess," she says. It makes him smile. "And Dean never – "
"Asked a girl to marry him, didn't he? I'd have worried if you'd wanted it to be you."
She groans and snorts rather than mentioning that they were dating then, she and Jess. Then, "Just because I can laugh – I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't still feel like – " she sighs.
"I know."
"You don't."
He is silent for a while. "Yeah."
The silence after this is more uncomfortable than she remembers it being before.
The reception fades in and out on her phone in the Philadelphia International Airport when she calls to tell him that the clichés they moaned over together once upon a time are coming true, haunting her, and he asks her – once having made out what she says from garbled static – what she means.
"I got a job on Barack Obama's campaign trail," she begins.
"Really? Gonna provoke him into – "
"C'mon, Jess." She laughs. "I got a job!" She sobers quickly. "I don't know how long I'll be gone, or how – "
"Not seeing cliché." He says it coolly, as if he isn't thinking anything. He doesn't ask about her graduation, about the rest of the town, about how her mother's taken her new employment. "Care to elaborate?"
She wants to leave him hanging but she's torturing herself, and so "My layover's in Philadelphia." She tries to drawl but he can hear a giggle behind it. "Now," she continues. "I'm here now. I'm in the plane." She means to tell him how she's worried and what she wants from this and what she's thinking, but she can't: she waits for him to respond (he is deciding between "you know, I could've met you at the airport" and "what, you changed your mind?" and "up for coffee?") and then she says "Drink?" herself because she is impatient.
"Sure." He isn't about to pace in front of a mirror putting on different shirts: he'll do his job until she arrives. She'll deal.
She stares at her phone for a while after it's closed and quiet. It is the aftershock of a bumpy flight; her hand isn't trembling.
"Motherfucking capitalization" is what bounds out of the door as she opens it.
"Geez, Jess."
He shrugs unapologetically, turning away from Matt and letting proof pages slide to the floor. "Rough business."
"I see that."
"How long're you here for?"
"Several hours."
Situations run through both their heads, rapid sensual filmstrips of possibility. She shifts her weight onto her right foot; he eyes the way she holds herself. It's different: whether it is more comfortable, he can't decide.
"Several hours," he repeats. "Where're you ending up?"
"Iowa."
"Iowa."
"Cows," she offers.
"Possible president."
"That too."
"I sit there," he says abruptly, jerking his thumb to a back corner. "Usually."
"What?"
"With the cordless phone," he explains.
"When you call me," she says, nodding.
"When I call anyone," he corrects, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. His arm hovers near her waist, but its position isn't awkward. Her hipbone tingles and she chokes back a smile.
She feels her face flush with pleasure. He traces her spine, stopping halfway down her back and holding his hand there; she holds her breath. "I knew – " she opens her mouth, closes it again. "I don't know how to tell you this." She is blushing on and off. His heart beats a little bit more quickly, and for a moment he wants to hold her ear to his chest, stand back, let her dress and leave and smile bitterly.
She looks up at him, hope like a cool breeze on her sweaty face. "What, you want to take a shower without me?" he smirks.
She laughs. "I feel like I should tell you who I lost my virginity to. Isn't that silly?"
"I knew the look on that rich dick's face was all f – " He is cut off by her shove. She tells him never mind. He snorts in response.
He covers her with his body. "Punctuated perfectly," she breathes. He touches the tip of his nose, then his lips, to her collarbone. He nearly expects himself to tremble, but all of him that he can control is statue still.
"Rory," he says softly. She opens her mouth to snark back at him but he covers it with his own, kissing her intensely and she yells, muffled by his mouth and his shoulder. He knows he hasn't hurt her and he doesn't ask.
She says "I wish there were time for again" in place of "goodbye." It means the same thing.
"Lots of firsts in a first job," he remarks on the phone.
"I think I'm losing you," she says. "I'm on the highway."
"But," he tells her, pretending she hasn't said a thing, and he growls at her over the phone.
She jumps slightly in her seat with surprise. "I'm not alone," she says, a little too loudly.
"Tell Barack hi for me."
"I'm hanging up."
She keeps her phone on silent for days because another reporter asks her to with a holier-than-thou sort of snappishness. She fumbles for it hurriedly when she's asked, nervous and pale from the effort of first impressions, and shuts it off just as it rings. Her face heats up, whether from anger or frustration or restrained loneliness, she is not sure. She keeps it off for a while still, remembering only to use it when she calls someone else (interviews, and contacts and once, her mother), and for these few days, bombarded with requests and things to become accustomed to, she doesn't call him.
He calls because he'd like to talk to her. He speaks before she has time to tell him she's sorry, really –
"Rory," he says. She is quiet. "I'm a little proud. Didn't tell you."
She waits for ten minutes, the phone held to her ear, smiling. "Can you hear the way I'm looking at you?" She blushes. "I sound all…all choked up and silly, I don't sound like a reporter."
He answers, evenly; she can hear papers being shuffled in the background. "Are you joking?"
She smiles.
He is about to pick up the phone and dial when it rings.
"Hello, stranger," she says.