A/N: So it was Valentine's Day this week. This was going to be posted on the actual day because I had zero plans, but I ended up having a great date with my best friend near a lake. We even interrupted people in a car having sex! Then I went home and watched some Jess-centric season 2 episodes. What a grand day it was! Hope the rest of you were luckier in love than myself. If not, feel free to live vicariously through this one-shot as I shall be doing. Enjoy!
No Fights, It's the Firelight
"So you're telling me that not only are we going to a stupid Stars Hollow event, which would be almost tolerable if we weren't one more full day of snow away from being a part of an ice age, but that this event falls straight on Valentine's Day, the one day I've sworn to ignore my entire life?"
"That's pretty much the gist of it, yeah."
"No."
It had been the same argument they'd been having all week. Stars Hollow's annual Firelight Festival was being held Valentine's Day weekend, and Rory was incredibly eager to go. She'd missed it the last two years due to work, and now she had an entire month off and she wanted to spend the weekend in her hometown. This would be accomplished easily if not for the stubborn man in front of her, who had his arms crossed and was frowning. Arguments tended to happen when they were snowed in like this.
"Jessica William Mariano, you will-"
"Did you just call me Jessica?"
"You're in trouble; therefore I have to make your name as long as possible."
"But my name isn't Jessica."
"It is when you're in trouble."
"Yes ma'am."
"As I was saying, you will come to this event. You will smile at whoever says hello. Hell, you don't even have to smile, just nod politely! You will talk to my mother and Luke, play with Doula and Ritchie, and everything will be great!"
"Lorelai Leigh Gilmore-Mariano, you think-"
"God that's a mouthful."
"That's your name."
"So I'm in trouble now?"
"Maybe. Look Ror, we've already had to put off this whole honeymoon thing for months because of work, do you really think I want to spend our first weekend together in ages holed up in that mental asylum placating the inmates?"
"Yes?"
"I'm not getting a choice, am I?"
"I can go without you." Rory said with a shrug, bored with the repetitive argument and choosing instead to collapse onto the couch in their living room. Jess looked down at her and decided to join her, putting his arms around her and somehow managing to pull her onto his lap.
"Nuh-uh." He replied simply before pulling her in for a small (but still overwhelming on Rory's part) kiss. She had enough wits to figure out what he was trying to do, though. This was his way of distracting her whenever she wanted something he didn't. It may have worked when he wanted Thai instead of Chinese, but it wasn't going to work now. Suddenly inspiration struck her as she figured out how to get her way and keep her husband happy.
"I've got a compromise in mind." She whispered into his ear. His ears were his weak spot, and she knew it. A simple bite to the earlobe would more than likely to guarantee her success, but she felt like playing by the rules tonight.
"Let's hear it then." Jess said as his hands slipped inside of her t-shirt and up her back.
"You spend the weekend in Stars Hollow, and you can visit that bar in France that Hemingway wrote at that we read about." Rory said a little triumphantly, and she could tell that the writer and Hemingway fanboy in Jess really wanted this.
"I'm allowed to stay as long as I like? Even if it's a whole day? Because you know once I start writing I don't stop until I fall asleep."
"But you have to be polite to everyone. Even Taylor."
"But-"
"It'll freak him out more than if you were rude to him."
"This is true."
"Plus… We'll have the apartment above Luke's all to ourselves." She grinned devilishly and started to unbuckle the belt he was wearing.
"You have a 'no sex at Luke's' rule. I've been told this about five thousand times in the last four years."
"But what are rules if not things that should be broken?"
"Huh. Guess that's why I love you, isn't it?"
"Probably."
"And then I had apple juice and cookies and Mr Brian took us to the park and there were swans and one of them chased Steve!" Out of breath after her tale, Doula looked up at her older brother expectantly. Somehow Jess had become the centre of attention at the Firelight Festival for not only his little sister, but Steve, Kwan and Sookie's youngest daughter Vivian. Ritchie sat quietly nearby, equally as interested in his brother-in-law/cousin, but much more shy about it. Jess looked sympathetically at Steve, knowing very well the horrors of the swans in Stars Hollow.
"Those swans are mean!" Steve shouted angrily.
"Nuh-uh, you're just stupid!" Doula shouted back, which caused Steve to hit her. Doula, being the five year old drama queen that she was, started to cry.
"Wow, we leave you with them for ten seconds and anarchy ensues." Rory said as she walked over, shaking her head at the scene. Secretly though she'd been watching for a good ten minutes, ignoring her mother's anecdote about a battle between bees and ants in favour of watching her husband have seemingly all the patience in the world with a bunch of kids who she was pretty sure were hyped up on sugar courtesy of Brian.
"Rory, Steve hit me!"
"She said I was stupid!"
"Because swans aren't scary! Are they, Jess?" Doula said suddenly, turning to her brother for his sage advice. Jess merely looked Rory in the eye which caused her to break out into hysterical giggles, both of them thinking back to a time many years ago, a place with black eyes, beakings and ladles.
Before Rory could humiliate Jess further the children started being rounded up by their parents and taken to Mrs Kim's home where they were having a massive sleepover while the adults got drunk and celebrated Valentine's Day. The place where Doula was sitting next to her brother now vacated, Rory sat next to Jess and rested her head on his shoulder, one of his arms snaking around her waist. Together they watched the town go about its borderline crazy business, which included Miss Patty getting Taylor incredibly drunk, as groups of people sat around fires to protect themselves from the harshness the February night air could bring.
"So Brian babysat all the kids so everyone could have sex today, and now Mrs Kim is taking them so they can all have sex tonight?" Jess asked with his trademark smirk, making Rory roll his eyes at him.
"I think it's more about adult time." Rory started, before Jess opened his mouth to say something. "Don't say 'dirty!' or any variation of that, you know what I mean."
"Why do the kids all flock to me, anyway?"
"Well, I know Doula adores you because you write her bedtime stories."
"I thought we agreed never to speak of that."
"Right, I forgot what a rumour like that would do to your street cred."
"What street cred? I'm a twenty-seven year old business owner who owns an apartment in New York. Not to mention the whole being happily married thing."
"Very good answer." Rory said with a grin as she leant in to kiss him softly, they were interrupted by a flash and someone yelling 'cheese!'
"What are you doing, Nardini?" Jess asked with exasperation to his cousin.
"What does it look like, Mariano?" April replied with equal amounts of snark. It wasn't hard to tell these two were related. Rory remembered a time not so long ago where April had been brought to the diner in a police car after being at a cop-raided party with a guy who everyone later found out she'd secretly been dating for months. But like Jess she'd come out of her teenage rebellion nicely and was now a freshman at Harvard hoping to have a career in biology. "Stupid Harvard makes me do stupid electives, so I'm taking photos of stuff. I'm a regular Robert fucking Capa."
"Can the two of you stop being so creepily similar? That'd be great, thanks." Rory laughed as the two shouted reasons on how they were in no way similar. Judging by April's current trend of wearing leather jackets and smoking (something Luke had no idea about), Rory believed that the younger woman was merely arguing to disguise her overall respect and possible idolisation she held for her cousin.
"Well it's a good thing the two of you are really cute together, this picture will piss Heath 'I'm so indie because my dreadlocks smell of weed' Forster off when I beat him in the assignment." April said with a grin before bouncing off, probably to smuggle some liquor from under the ever-watchful eyes of her father. Rory wanted very much to disapprove of it, but she had to remind herself that the girl was eighteen and just wanted to experience parts of the world that Rory herself had been too timid to embrace until she met Logan.
"What are the odds she ends up dating this Heath guy?" Jess asked as he lit a cigarette. Rory responded by moving away from him, the disapproval of his habit clear. "Sorry. Last one for a month, okay?"
"I don't believe you. But yes, April does have terrible taste in men."
"Hopefully Doula will never date."
"Aw, you're cute. I hope when we have kids you're just as overprotective." Rory smiled, but noticing Jess' eyes widen she realised her critical mistake. "Not that we've actually really talked about kids beyond hypothetically, and I did say 'when' instead of 'if' and that sounds like it's a sure thing but it's okay if you don't want any and I wasn't really thinking and-"
"Kids are good." Jess cut her off mid-ramble.
"Kids… good?"
"You think I haven't thought about us having kids?"
"Your deer in the headlights look a moment ago says otherwise."
"Just a bit weird hearing the 'if' turn into a 'when', I guess."
"But… there's going to be a 'when'?"
"Yeah."
"I love you, Jess."
"We could start practising tonight, if you want." He replied with a grin that just screamed 'dirty!' in Rory's mind.
"You're insufferable. You just turned one of the sweetest things you've ever said into something wildly inappropriate."
"It would've been even more inappropriate if I had my hands down your pants."
"Jess!" Rory whispered, scandalised as she looked around, hoping none of the townspeople (or god forbid, Luke) heard him.
"What? It's true." Jess said with the most innocent face he could muster. Rory just looked down at him with amusement as he finally finished his cigarette, which caused her to sit back down next to him and rummage around in her bag for some mints to give to him. At first the taste of tobacco had been intriguing to her as it was something she linked to Jess in her mind, but eventually the bad taste won out and she now refused to kiss him if he tasted like he'd been smoking.
"Is it too late to get an annulment?"
"The marriage was successfully consummated, several times in the one night I might add, so yeah."
"Oh darn." Rory sighed as she practically force-fed Jess the mint, before he took advantage of her closeness and brought her in for a kiss. Unlike the several they had shared throughout the day, this kiss felt intense, passionate and full of things Rory Gilmore (Rory Gilmore-Mariano, she reminded herself) tended to avoid naming lest she turn as bright red as a tomato.
"Could you please stop defiling my daughter, designated town hoodlum?" Lorelai said in a bright, cheery voice as she pulled an embarrassed-looking Luke behind her. Ever since a certain incident at the diner apartment a year ago (the only time Rory had ever come close to breaking the 'no sex at Luke's' rule) he seemed to blush whenever Rory and Jess so much as held hands. It was particularly hilarious on their wedding day to see him turn all sorts of crazy colours.
"Mom! I thought you and Luke would be too busy sucking face all night to even acknowledge our existence!" Rory retorted with a wink in Jess' direction, which gave him an odd desire to want to high-five her. He was not a high-fiving type of guy, but that particular piece of teamwork was brilliant on her part.
"Hush, foolish daughter who is clearly under some sort of spell from a warlock. Mommy wants to hear all about what you've got planned for the honeymoon that better be worth postponing it by nearly half a year."
"So, was it as terrible as you anticipated?" Rory asked later that night as they both were getting ready for bed. He was currently in possession of the bathroom and she was hiding the surprise she had for him.
"Taylor was too drunk to recognise me, Kirk was absent because apparently some woman felt sorry enough for him to let herself get knocked up by him, and your mother only made about twelve allusions to how I am corrupting her only daughter- I know she's joking, by the way- so I would chalk it up as a bearable night."
"Good. Thanks for this, Jess." Rory said with a small smile as she sat on the edge of the bed. Jess exited the bathroom in his usual bedtime attire of boxers and nothing else, reminding Rory of how lucky she was to have found a man who both wrote books that ended up on bestseller lists and looked like a model without even trying. Maybe she was exaggerating, but it was hard to think clearly when he was in this state of undress around her.
"Don't. I'm sorry I was such a jerk about coming here. Stars Hollow doesn't hold the best memories for me."
"But it holds some okay ones, right?"
"Oh, you mean like certain after-school make out sessions on a bridge where we easily could've gotten caught, but my seduction skills were too amazing to ignore?"
"Something like that." Rory said with a grin. "I've still got my Chilton uniform somewhere, if you're interested."
"Surely you've gotten taller since then, it might be too short to meet the school's standards." Jess smirked as he collapsed onto the bed and pulled Rory on top of him, before making quick work of her t-shirt and bra. "Maybe I could get Lorelai to shrink it in the dryer and make it really short."
"I'm sure my mother would aide you in your quest to turn me into a sexual fantasy."
"You are my sexual fantasy, Ror."
"Cute. Or dirty, I can't decide. Oh, speaking of which!" Rory jumped from her position of straddling Jess, running into the bathroom with a bundle of clothing.
"This better be good, I was told the whole sexless marriage thing didn't happen until after the honeymoon." Jess grumbled as he stood up and waited by the bathroom door.
"It's good… I hope." Rory mumbled as he heard her stumble around the place. Eventually he got bored of waiting and went to sit back on the bed, hoping whatever she was doing didn't involve them going straight to sleep.
A moment later Rory stepped out into the light of the apartment, at first self-conscious but that was soon lost when she saw the look on Jess' face. She'd redone her makeup into something more applicable to a night out: dark eyes and bright lips which had quirked up into a smile. The part she was more worried about, and the part that Jess couldn't keep his eyes off, was the outfit. Usually she wore a t-shirt and pants to bed, but it seemed tonight she had opted for a much sexier look. A white and pink corset with matching underwear and overly tall black stilettos were the order for the night, and Jess couldn't decide which part to stare at: the cleavage that was very rarely on display, or the legs that seemed to have grown a mile long.
"Are you trying to kill me?" Jess finally spoke, in a voice much huskier than usual. Rory did an internal cheer and walked towards her husband, and he met her in the middle of the room. They were the exact same height with the shoes, and it was something both decided to take full advantage of.
"You like it?"
"As much as I do, I still think it'd look better on the floor."
"Get to it, then."
"Yes, ma'am."
And fade to black! This was a random little fluff piece that I made up as I went along. The focus was going to be more on the actual festival than Rory/Jess, but then this happened. Oh well! Reviews are tasty!