Notes: I'm re-watching the entire series at the moment and find myself shipping this for whatever reasons that have not occurred to me during the last thirty times I saw the show. I think I'm getting old.
"You enjoyed watching, didn't you?" Tristan sighs a quiet laugh. "Everybody did."
"No," Rory says. She pities him because it's easier than pitying herself.
He looks up at her, eyes big and glassy and so unlike himself she finds herself sitting down beside him in awestruck bewilderment.
"Where's your boyfriend?" Tristan asks, challenging, measuring. Rory can see the calculations in his head, the endless circles of self-loathing, jealousy and hurt forming a fatal spiraling vortex. She could be like him, she realizes. Maybe she already is. She takes a moment to ponder about whether that is a good thing or not before answering.
"He's not my boyfriend anymore," she replies, choked by the crushing reality that it takes just five words to communicate that Dean (Dean, just a Dean, not her Dean but Dean) no longer wants her.
Something flits over Tristan's face. Rory thinks it might have been genuine, shocked sympathy, not because he used to like her but because pain is and always has been the best glue to link two people together.
"Idiot," Tristan says.
"Summer is too," Rory agrees, and she knows then that they're going to kiss, that this has to happen because it's impulsive and self-destructive and dumb and exactly what teenagers do.
Tristan leans into her, brushing his lips against hers. Rory draws in a breath and kisses him back.
