There was no way in hell that Rory Gilmore wasn't going to fall for him; it was just a matter of when. Jess Mariano was everything that Rory had dreamed about and nothing like what she expected. Jess was handsome; rugged, even, with that look that simultaneously said 'don't fuck with me' and 'come closer and see what happens'. After being the good girl with Dean for so long until their break-up over Linsdey last week, she yearned – without knowing it – for danger. She was done with wanting to feel safe and guarded. She wanted danger…she wanted someone to be rough with her and not treat her like one of her grandmother's breakable glass ornaments. She wanted to be thrown up against a wall or tossed down onto a bed. She needed someone to make her feel alive again.

Dean and his gentle kisses had irked her. They did the exact opposite of making her feel content and fulfilled – they made her realise, yet again, that something was missing. That she didn't want to be treated like a china doll. That she was passed the good-girl stage. She was seventeen and she needed more than Dean could've given her. In a way, she was glad that Lindsey had come between them. As much as it hurt her to lose Dean – her first kiss, her first boyfriend, and her first love – she recognised that she now had a chance for new experiences and a chance to see what was out there.

What was out there, of course, was Jess Mariano. For a bright, smart and together girl, Rory went remarkably to pieces whenever she was around Jess. Having already promised Luke that she would tutor him and being a girl of her word, she showed up at the diner for the first time a week after her break-up with Dean and loving the fact that he was wearing her favourite, bad-boy leather jacket. Tucking her books more carefully under her arm, she walked towards him, fighting the impulse to check her hair in the reflective windows of the diner. She fought her feelings of self-consciousness to the point where she could almost relax in his prescence. Almost.

Not that he'd ever talked to her before. He'd been in town almost a month, but she'd never had so much as a word from Jess adressed in her direction. He mainly skulked; outside Doose's, outside Stars Hollow High, or outisde the diner. Once, she and her mother had walked into the diner and Luke had glared so ferociously at his nephew that he'd nodded in their direction before staring straight at his pad as he took their order. There was no conceivable reason, that Rory could see, that would warrant her having any attraction to the boy whatsoever. Yet, there it was. Rory Gilmore: irrationally and completely head over heels for Jess Mariano.

"So…you're going to make me as smart as you." It wasn't a question. At the sound of his voice, Rory felt even worse than she had a few minutes ago. Placing the books on the table, she straightened them so that their edges lined up – just to have something to do with her hands. Jess dropped himself into the nearnest chair and pulled a pen from behind his ear. Rory found that disturbingly sexy. Shrugging off his jacket, his arm muscles flexed and relaxed as he draped it over the back of his chair.

"Right, so. English. Romeo and Juliet. Yes." Rory was unusually flustered, not to mention completely distracted by the movements of his pen as he twirled it between his clever fingers, brow furrowed slightly in concentration.

"Can you pass me the essay you've started, please?" Rory asked him. Even in her most confused state, she never failed to be polite. Even when she didn't want to be. She didn't want to be polite to Jess because he confused her. He made her question her judgements and her feelings, made her unsure of how she looked and what she said. She wanted him to go away and leave her alone. She wanted him to not make her feel like this. She also happened to want him to turn around and realise that she was there and that she wanted him. Of course, he wasn't going to. Right? Yeah, right.

"I haven't done it."

"Haven't done…what?" Rory had completely lost her train of thought, not to mention what she had in mind to say next. Trying to gather her thoughts, she composed herself slightly.

"Right…then we'll have to start from the beginning. Topic sentence?" Jess didn't say anything. He just leant back a little in his chair and continued to twirl his pen with those quick movements of his long, knowledgeable fingers. Rory swallowed, realising that this was going to be more work than she had anticipated when Luke had begged her to take on his nephew. Not that she minded. She'd never have said it out loud, of course, but any excuse to sit with Jess Mariano was fine by her. She decided to change the subject to see if she could get more than a five-word answer from him.

"I'm Rory," she ventured.

"I know. Luke told me that." Way to go Jess, she thought, six words this time. Congratulations. This definitely wasn't going to be easy. She tried to glare at him, but failed because she wasn't angry with him. Not in the slightest. But he must have noticed, because he looked down suddenly and tried to make amends.

"My uncle – Luke, he's close with your mom." Eight words this time.

"Why did you even agree to this?" Determined as she had been to play it as casual as she could, her natural curiosrity got the better of her as she stared at Jess. She couldn't figure him out. He'd never talked to her before; he'd glanced in her direction once because Luke would've death-glared him until he did. And now, here he was, reasonably calmly sitting across the table from her, still infuriatingly twirling his pen. Rory had to swallow hard and drag her mind away from imagining those fingers stroking her, touching…

Shaking her head visibly to clear it, she noticed Jess staring straight at her. Rory violently hoped that her eyes hadn't betrayed her imagination's fantasies to the object of said fantasies. Jess seemed to be considering how to answer her question. Finally, he said carefully,

"It's important to Luke that I graduate on time. Otherwise, I get sent back to live with my mum. And I'd rather stay with Luke."

Rory shook her head in wonder at the anger that was threatending to course through her. What had she expected? That he would admit that he'd wanted to study with her because he was in love with her and he'd do anything to be in the same room as her? For a sensible and rational girl, Rory had been acting very close to a girl with a teenage crush. On Jess Mariano, no less. Self-consciously touching her hair, she pushed Romeo and Juliet back towards Jess, who smiled out of one side of his mouth. Dropping his eyes towards the text briefly, he smiled back up at Rory.

"Have chosen which speech you want to write about yet?" Rory asked him carefully.

"Yes, teach." Rory clenched one fist under the table, frustrated for the first time since sitting down in in the diner. Jess spun the pen in his left hand; while his right was propped under his chin, elbow resting on the table. He must have read something in her eyes, because he dropped his eyes back to the book open in front of him. His mouth moved soundlessly as he read one of Juliet's speeches, pen spinning all the while.

Finally, Rory unclenched her fist, and – in one quick movement – reached out across the table and flicked the pen out of his hand. Loudly. It clattered noisily to the diner floor and rolled to a stop against Rory's red Doc Martins. Jess's mouth was half-open in shock, but there was a trace of something else in his brown eyes that Rory couldn't quite place. Slowly, she leant down and took the pen between her fingers, straigtened up and lay it symetrically in the middle of the table. Jess reached for it just as she moved her hand away. There was the briefest of seconds where their hands brushed each other's, before Jess moved away. Flipping the pen right way up, he put it to his blank sheet of paper and began to write.