Rory. Jess. A one-bed apartment in New York. Literati fluff. Oneshot. Set after the end of the show.
Title taken from the poem of the same name by John Donne, the last two stanzas of which are included in this piece.
The characters aren't mine; they belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino
The Good-Morrow
Everything was quiet in the small one-bed apartment in New York. Outside, it would have been a lie to say it was quiet because, being quite honest, New York was as close to never quiet as you could get, even in the wee small hours of the morning.
The noise didn't disturb the inhabitants of the apartment however or the calm peace they had achieved. The only noises here were the sounds of breathing and of creaking bed springs when one adjusted that inch closer to the other. Rory Gilmore and Jess Mariano were asleep. Together. In New York. A scenario they both would have thought, if not impossible, highly improbable this time... Did it really matter how many years ago it was? They were together now. Sure, it had taken them both a fair few exes, mistakes and successes to get here but now here they were and finally, emfinally/em, it was right time.
Jess stirred, his eyelids fluttering in a way that would have made him blush had he been able to see them. He had been in that halfway stage between waking and sleeping for a fair amount of time but hadn't moved for fear of waking Rory and, though he didn't like to admit it to himself, for fear of waking to find that this, he and Rory, was just an elaborate dream. Having woken sufficiently now to feel the very real warmth of her next to him however he was confident enough to open his eyes. /span/p
Upon opening them, he was unsurprised to see Rory's startlingly blue ones watching him in turn. After all, Rory had always watched out for him. They stayed that way, gazing at each other, for long minutes, though it could have been hours. Time was not an object in this room. They mapped out the planes of each others faces, finding comfort and exhilaration in equal measure as they discovered honesty and openness in places they hadn't known those traits could dwell.
'How can a nose look honest?' Rory would ask herself as they lay there and later ask her mother as they spoke on the phone. Rory knew this time things were different with Jess. And she couldn't ignore or deny how different things were for her too. In many ways, perhaps more than she would have liked, she was different to that girl who had pulled Jess to her in the gardens of the Independence Inn. Having said that, she didn't think she would have altered that fact because, when it came down to it, all those changes had led her here to Jess and to a relationship that couldn't have worked sooner, not really, no matter how much they had both wished it to work.
"You read any John Donne?"
Jess' voice, quiet and low, didn't so much as break the silence as transition it carefully to another natural evolution of being. He didn't take her eyes off hers.
"No man is an island?"
They were so close together that neither had any need to strain their voice, even the smallest amount./span/p
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Just thinking of another poem of his."
Rory raised her eyebrows expectantly./span/p
"You're going to make me get of this bed, aren't you?"
"You can't just tease me with a poem and get away with it Mariano."
"Damn you, Gilmore."
Reluctantly, Jess slid out of the bed, his bare feet brushing smoothly against the worn wood beneath them. Books were piled haphazardly around the room but they must have been organised using some kind of system as Jess was back under the covers before Rory could count to sixty. He wriggled down, back to the position in which he had been before, flicked expertly through the book and began to read:
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.