Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls. I just have a very fertile imagination. This is my take on what could have happened if Rory realized, before Tristan left, that she wanted him to kiss her goodbye. I decided to change the rating just to be on the safe side. Enjoy.
Two days later she was looking at his door at around ten o'clock in the night. She spent the whole drive thinking that maybe he'd changed his mind, and that coming over was a mistake, but she had to try anyway. Not being with him when she was not sure about his feelings was one thing, because she could easily lie to herself. But not being with him when he told her he loved her, wanted her, was just plain stupid. It was not something she could ignore any longer. So, she gathered all the courage she could muster, and knocked on his door.
"Rory?" Tristan asked, surprised to see her at his door. "What are you doing here? Is everything okay?"
"I want to be with you." She blurted out, before she could lose her nerve. "I... I love you, and I want to be with you."
Tristan couldn't believe what he was hearing, and that was the only reason to why he failed to react immediately. But as soon as his body caught up with his mind, he took her in his arms and kissed her. When it dawned on him that they were making out in front of an audience, he pulled her inside and kicked the door shut and started kissing her again.
Rory was in heaven. Tristan's kisses were wreaking havoc with her mind, making it impossible to think about anything at all but kissing him. But when she picked up on where this kind of kissing would lead on, she decided it was time to stop. It was not a very good idea to go to bed with him again, before they figured out where they stood. They needed to talk.
"Tristan," she tried, but it came out more like a moan than a request to stop, and her body decided to betray her, making her tilt her head to the side and give him room to start nibbling on her neck.
"Oh God, Tristan, I..." She tried again, but the words died in her mouth before she could finish the sentence and say that she needed him to stop. Instead, she raked her fingers through his back, scratching him, as she was washed with those feelings that she spent so much time trying to suppress.
"This was not what I came here for..." She said, taking a step back before things got really out of hand. "I mean, I wanted to talk to you, you know, before... doing that again."
"You can say 'sleeping with you' you know, or even 'going to bed' if you prefer." He teased her. "The night's young, Mary, there's plenty of time for talking." He told her, trying to kiss her again.
"I'm serious, Tristan. We have to talk about it. We can't just... you know... do that again... without talking. I mean, we can't keep fooling around like that..." She said, still not comfortable enough talking about it.
"Is that what we're doing here? Fooling around?" He asked her, starting to get angry. "I told you I loved you, and that I wanted to be with you. I'm not fooling around, I'm not screwing you, and for God's sake, stop saying 'doing that' like there is something fundamentally wrong about it.
"It's not that. I know we're not just fooling around, or... or doing something wrong. Why can't you just understand that this is difficult to me?" She said in a small voice. "This is all new to me." She told him, trying to make her point.
"I'm sorry if being with me is difficult for you." He said, bitterly, misunderstanding what she was trying to say.
"Talking about it is difficult for me, Tristan. Being with you is the easiest part. I feel like, I don't know, my body just takes over and, it fits. I fit, with you." She told him, in an attempt to ease his worries. "I love you. I want to be with you, you know, not just date you, I mean. Really be with you."
"Was that so difficult?" He asked sarcastically.
"I've never talked about it with anyone. Not even mom, although I promised her I'd talk to her before, you know, having sex. I guess getting drunk and having an affair with a married ex-boyfriend was not how any of us envisioned my first time being..." She muttered the last part, knowing that it was not something she wanted to tell him about.
"You what?" He asked her, not really managing to keep the bitterness from his voice.
"I... " She started, but hadn't enough courage to look him in the eyes and say it again.
"You were drunk? What the hell were you thinking?" He all but yelled at her. He should have made her tell him the whole story back then, but he was so angry and so jealous at the thought of another man touching her that he just hang up the phone and didn't talk to her for weeks. He wanted to kill Dean right now.
"I wasn't thinking. I didn't want to think. If I were thinking, I wouldn't have done that. I just wanted to forget..." She started saying, but stopped before she could tell him the whole truth. He was already angry enough with her without knowing it all.
"Forget what?" He asked her, when she didn't continue.
"Never mind..." She muttered, avoiding the question.
"Forget what Rory? What were you trying so hard to forget that had you getting drunk, and putting yourself in that position?" He asked her, wanting to get to the bottom of it. They should have had this conversation a long time ago.
"You." There. She told him. "I was trying to forget the fact that you were out on a date with someone that wasn't me." She explained. "I spent most of that dinner hearing grandma gushing about the two of you, and it bothered me, but I didn't even noticed that I was drinking that much more than usual. I was looking for mom at the Dragonfly after dinner when I ran into Dean, and he asked me if I wanted to talk about what was bothering me. When I realized what I was doing, it just hurt so much to think about you and her together that I just wanted to do something and stop thinking about it..." She told him, ashamed.
"But I never slept with Lynn. I took her out on one date, after that concert, and I didn't even kiss her goodbye." He told her, not wanting to dwell on the subject.
"I didn't know that." She murmured, crestfallen. "And then, the next day, when Dean came to my house, wanting to talk about it, I couldn't even look him in the face. He told me he was leaving Lindsay for me, and all I could think about was that he wasn't you." She confessed. "And even before I could tell him that it was a mistake, mom barged it, and he just left. And well, you know the end to that story." She finally told him.
"The next thing I know, Lindsay is yelling at me that Dean wanted a divorce because we were having an affair, and the whole town heard about it, and it was not even true. We weren't having an affair, it was just one stupid mistake. A one-time, really stupid mistake."
Tristan couldn't believe what he was hearing. One time? They had slept together one time? When she was drunk enough to think it was a good idea? It wasn't an affair. That's when it all made sense.
"You told Jess. That's why he almost put Dean in the hospital. You told Jess, and you didn't tell me."
"I couldn't tell you that." She argued.
"You'd have to tell me you loved me, that's why you thought you couldn't tell me." He concluded. "You should have told me."
"You know now." She said. "Do you still want to be with me?" She asked him, afraid of the answer, afraid that he hated her now that knew the real reason that she did that terrible thing.
"Of course I do. I love you. That's not going to change so soon. Don't you get it? I've loved you for a long time, Mary."
"We're both stupid." She said, thinking about all the time they lost, that they could be together. "So, how are we going to do that?"
"Well. It's october now. We'll see each other at Thanksgiving and Christmas break, because daddy dearest already requested my presence in Hartford. Then, we'll have enough time to figure out the rest." He told her.
"You promise?" She asked, looking at him with those big, blue eyes.
"I do, babe. I promise. We'll figure it out. Now can I kiss my girlfriend?" He asked her.
"Am I your girlfriend now, then?"
"I thought that was the point of this whole conversation..." He said, confused.
"And here I thought that it was customary to ask the girl first, you know?" She teased.
"I'm positive that by morning you'll have it all figured out..." He told her, putting his arms around her and pulling her close to him, so that he could kiss her.
"I like being your girlfriend." She said, out of breath.
