Title- Just Two Lonely Ships Passing
Author- Kàra
Rating- T 'cause Jess has a potty mouth and ought to be featured in one of those Orbit commercials
Summary- Instead of going to Christopher in Partings, Lorelai decides to drown her sorrows at a roadside bar. Running across another heartbroken, lonely soul was not on the agenda... especially not this particular heartbroken, lonely soul... JJ and Lit.
A/N- This is a very strange piece. I'm not sure where it came from, but there it is. Also, I'm sure some of you will raise hue and cry over Jess revealing so much, but let's face it: mature!Jess + alcohol + broken heart = one of those epic freakouts where he says anything and everything that's on his mind, a la Here Comes The Son.
"I will go down with this ship,
And I won't put my hands up and surrender.
There will be no white flag above my door.
I'm in love and always will be."
-Dido
It's not like the books and movies always said. Her heart doesn't hurt.
She's just... empty.
She wants, or maybe she needs to find something to make it better. She needs a plug for the giant hole in the dam which for years has kept all her fear and her pain hidden away from those who would tear her down for showing weakness, before the pressure breaks the whole dam apart and sends her rushing down a slope she can't climb back up again. Already she feels like a scolded child, crying in her room, desperate for affection to bathe the wounds.
The little girl inside reaches for what it always does- Christopher. He was her lifeline back when that child was her reality, and that part of her just wants to run back to something safe and familiar.
But the adult in her balks at that. Chris never grew up, not really. He's not the kind of support he needs for her troubles as a grown woman. The trouble is... her support system as an adult consists of Luke, Luke, and some more of Luke. She can't go to him now.
Of course, by the time she realizes this, she's already on the highway. But instead of heading north to Boston, she drives south, not really sure of her destination, but sure that she has to get out. Out, out, away from the town that's still echoing with Luke's "no."
Actually, he didn't even have the balls to say no. He just equivocated and demanded to "talk about this" and said "you know I can't do this" and "I don't like ultimatums" and a dozen other scalding phrases that added up to the same thing without actually coming out and saying it.
Normally that's her job.
It figures it would be at the end of their relationship that their roles would reverse themselves.
Lorelai fights to drive back the burning in her eyes.
She's an hour out of New York when she sees a bright flashing sign directing her to a seedy roadside bar called The Neon Moon. Alcohol might be just the thing she needs right now, she thinks. Her internal danger radar goes off at the sight of the gaggle of irreputable-looking men leaning against the outside wall, smoking, but the need to fill in her blank places overrules it. If she gets too intoxicated to drive (which she undoubtedly will), she can just lock herself in her car and pass out for a few hours.
She enters the bar, holding her purse close enough to be safe, and slaps her hand on the bar, demanding a double shot of tequila. The bartender, a tall, muscular man a few years older than herself, slides it down to her quickly, and she downs it.
"Another," she hisses through the liquor's burn, slamming the empty shotglass down on the bartop.
He doesn't question her, just gets her the refill, which she throws back double-time.
"Another," she demands again.
The bartender gives it to her.
Once she has thrown back a third shot, she decides to slow it down a little. "J&B on the rocks," she orders. It's a drink her father would approve of, she thinks dizzily. She throws some bills on the counter to cover the cost of the scotch and the shots while the bartender prepares her drink. She takes a sip and makes a face at the bitter taste. She's not a scotch girl. Martinis and manhattans are more her speed. But tonight she wants something bitter and strong and masculine.
It can be her substitute Luke.
Time goes fuzzy then and she lets her mind go away for awhile because trying not to think of him is impossible and so the best thing to do is to just not think at all. The next thing she's really aware of is the young couple who had been sitting at the bar getting up to leave, weaving a little, giggling with their arms around each other, bumping into her drunkenly on their way out. As they go, she can see through the space where they were to the man, hardly more than a boy, sitting on the other side.
It's shocking to her, and it's something to take her mind a little further away. It might not seem like that; the young man she's sway-walking towards is the person she associates most with Luke. But Jess Mariano has a whole host of other associations, few of them pleasant.
She doesn't want any pleasant associations with tonight.
"Hello," she says, drawing out the 'o' more than necessary.
He looks up out of his glass of bourbon and stares at her for about five seconds. It gives her time to notice that his face is covered in stubble, his hair is greasy, and his eyes are bloodshot. She doesn't know if it's from drink or from the smoky bar air or from crying.
Then he bursts out laughing, strained, slightly hysterical laughter that grates on her ears. "Figures you'd be here," he says, slurring a little, still giggling bitterly.
Lorelai sits next to him. "I thought you were in Philadelphia," she says.
"Was," he tells her shortly. "The guys got sick of me. Told me I had to quit 'moping' so they sent me on a road trip to clear my goddamn head."
"So you're drinking," she says, half-question. "Great strategy."
He shrugs and takes another swig.
"What brings you around here, not-so-sober Gilmore?"
Her stomach does a maneuver a contortionist would envy and she's glad she's sitting down because her knees feel liquid. But the tequila has oiled her tongue. "Your uncle won't marry me," she whines.
He raises an eyebrow. "Doubt it," he says.
To her horror, that burning is back in her eyes. She can't let the dam give way here, not with her old nemesis sitting right there, waiting to tear her down. "It's true!" she protests, feeling the crack in her throat. "I told him tonight, it was now or never, and he chose never!" She stares back down into her scotch. Debates swallowing the rest. Doesn't. "Should've known better," she mumbles to herself. "I was the one who proposed, I should've known it wasn't for real."
She looks back up at Jess, shaking her head with a caustic smile on her face. "I really thought this was it," she says. "I really thought he was the one. But the only people who want to marry Lorelai Gilmore, Lorelai doesn't want to marry back!"
Jess is looking at her, very amused. "I doubt that. Luke's been hung up on you as long as I've known him," he tells her candidly. Then his expression stumbles back a step to morose and exhausted. "Guess the Fitzgeraldean pining thing is genetic," he mutters. "Fucking figures."
"What figures?" she asks. "What's your story?"
"Same damn story as it always is," he says. "Isn't every story about a girl? Figured you'd know, though. Don't you two talk about everything? Shouldn't you be with her somewhere, having a good laugh at me for being such a fucking pathetic loser?"
Part of her, which is not drunk, latches onto this. "Rory?" she asks. Thinks he's joking. Looks at his face. Reevaluates.
"I know, right?" He's laughing bitterly under his words again. "Twenty-two and I'm still in love with the same damn girl I was in love with when I was seventeen."
"Jess..." Lorelai says, no ideas coming to save her. Her quick tongue has failed her.
He shrugs and takes another drink of the bourbon. "Wouldn't be so bad if she weren't in love with that cheating bastard. Doesn't deserve her, he doesn't even know how much she hates Hemingway." He looks up at her almost pleadingly. "I'm fucking pathetic," he says again. "You know she came to see me? Yeah, a month ago. And she's there alone and she spends the whole fucking day with me and she kisses me and then it's 'Oh, by the way, I'm still in love with my rich playboy boyfriend.' Fucking hell, what part of 'mixed signals' doesn't she get?"
She's never heard him talk this much, and it's disconcerting. But then, he's drunk. Actually, she's pretty sure she is, too. Whatever. She needs to talk to Rory later about acceptable treatment of boys, especially ex-boyfriends. Not that she's really one to talk right now, but what she did tonight was different. She only did what she had to.
Meanwhile... Jess. The mother in her sees how broken he is and wants to fix it.
"She didn't date for a year after you left," she says. "The one date she went on, I had to talk her into agreeing to."
He doesn't react.
"She had three whole pages of 'Mrs. Marianos' and 'Rory Marianos' and 'Mrs. Rory Marianos' scribbled in her calculus notebook," she tells him honestly. "It scared the hell out of me, 'cause I always knew you were gonna run and she was gonna get her heart broken. She burned those pages two days after you left. She was crying. I don't think she knew I was watching." She doesn't know why she's telling him all this, because it's definitely not going to help him feel any better... but maybe she's still feeling a little vindictive over that one broken heart Rory never really managed to patch up?
"Shit," he mumbles, and finishes his drink.
"Maybe you just... need to let go."
His head snaps up and his eyes are burning with something like rage. "Don't you think I've fucking tried?" he spits. "I've done everything I can do to make it go away but I can't! She's it for me. The One, or whatever shit like that. I don't need you, the queen of failed relationships, here preaching to me about letting go and moving on. Sometimes it just doesn't work like that, dammit! I'm ruined now. I was always fucking defective, but if this is the price of getting fixed, it's worse!"
Lorelai feels sick. It's not the alcohol. It's knowing that her daughter, her beautiful child, is capable of wreaking such destruction so easily, and she feels those tears she's been holding back all evening stream down at last.
So much for her mascara.
"Three a.m. people, closing time!" the bartender shouts suddenly.
Lorelai is stunned to realize that he's right.
"Time to wrap my car around a tree or something," Jess grumbles. He gets to his feet. He very nearly loses his feet. Lorelai wonders how much he's had.
"Oh no you don't," she snarls, grabbing his elbow. "I'm not letting you drive like this. You might kill somebody."
She hauls him out to her Jeep and pushes him into the passenger seat, then evaluates. She didn't touch her drink after approaching Jess, and that was awhile ago. She's had quite a bit, but she's feeling alright. It's probably stupid, but she thinks she's good to drive. She climbs into her side of the car.
She doesn't really know where to go, though. She doesn't want to take him back to Philadelphia. She doesn't want to go back to the Hollow just yet. So she takes her cue from him and closes her eyes. Just for a few minutes.
A/N- There will eventually be a companion piece/sequel to this, but I think this is best left as a oneshot. It's got a better effect that way. REVIEW!