Story Title: Falling Away With You
Chapter Title: Bathwater (No Doubt)
Summary: It wasn't as if the memories themselves were bad; not all of them. It was more the fact that she was ripping the top off of a tank of compressed emotion and it poured out unrelentingly. There was nothing she could do to stop the flow once it started; it was volcanic in behavior
Notes: I know—this has taken me an OBSCENELY long time to finish, but it is nice and long (colossal in fact)! Pam Halliwell gets MAJOR shout outs for this, as does my beloved Nikki ).
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Amy Sherman-Palladino, any of the writers, producers, directors or others employed by Warner Bros. and Gilmore Girls. K? Good.
"Ugh," she groaned the following morning, holding her head in memoriam to a preceding night of cheap wine and dusty memories.
"Ha! See, old boyfriends will do that to you," Lorelai said, prancing happily around the kitchen in her sweats. Rory rolled her eyes at her and slumped against the doorway to her bedroom.
"I think that it was more the wine, less the old boyfriend," she said, quietly, happily. Though the pain beat against the back of her eyes and pushed outward on her skull, she still smiled.
Old boyfriend was no longer chained exclusively to her past. Old boyfriend was here, flying freely at the forefront of her mind and her memory, swimming through Arbor Mist and books she had vowed how many years ago never to open again.
"Wine?" Lorelai asked, finally peering into the sink. "No glasses." She paused for a second, looking puzzled until realization finally struck. Her gaze lost focus and she smiled reminiscently at the cabinets, a look of laughter in her eyes. "Ahh," she drew out, giggling a little as Rory rested her head on her arm which was laid across the table.
"Hmph," she grunted, moving only slightly.
"Someone found the emergency alcohol stores," Lorelai teased.
"Yes, I did. And could you get any cheaper?" Rory quipped, opening an eye and glancing at her mother.
"No one said the emergency alcohol stores needed to be fancy. It's just about getting the job done," Lorelai defended, though not offended. Rory smiled for a second.
"'It's about who lasts the longest, not how fancy you are getting there,'" Rory jibed.
"Aw, how cute. Quoting Mommy while hungover. I was thinking maybe I'd make some nice, slightly undercooked eggs and some very, very dry wheat toast. Then I thought I'd get out every pan and shoebox in this kitchen, bang it on a hollow metallic surface a few times, and put it away extremely noisily," Lorelai retorted, grinning.
You and your museum of lovers
The precious collection you've housed in your covers
My simpleness threatened
By my own admission
She finished reading the note from her mother and touched the top of the box for just a second, rethinking how smart it would be for her to open it again.
When she sat with it on her bed and finally cut through the thick tape, she got one whiff of his cologne and the diner and cigarette smoke all mixed together before she realized she needed to dull the blow.
With the bottle open in her hand and the other reaching in blindly, she clenched her eyes closed, a little afraid of what she'd reveal first.
Oliver Twist had required a good 5 second chug from the bottle. Distillers tickets help her make it to an even half-bottle all on her own.
But when she saw the red Solo beer cup from the party, she drained it all, letting the heat from the alcohol rip through the ice cold feeling of regret in the pit of her stomach.
It wasn't as if the memories themselves were bad; not all of them. It was more the fact that she was ripping the top off of a tank of compressed emotion and it poured out unrelentingly. There was nothing she could do to stop the flow once it started; it was volcanic in behavior.
The bottle of questionably old Arbor Mist was doing very little to douse the lava as it poured out of the cardboard, even seeping from the cracks. But very little was better than nothing, so she kept on drinking.
There were moments throughout that she laughed. When she was trying to figure out why there was a crumpled paper napkin inside, she remembered that she had shoved it in her pocket when they were on the picnic, while he picked through, disgustedly of course, the remains of what food was in their refrigerator.
She stuck her hands in her pockets as they walked in and out of the bookstore, into the pizza parlor. She was afraid that if her arms swung freely, she might accidentally take hold of his hand and be too pleased by it to let go. She had almost pretended, at a very early point in their relationship, that this paper napkin from her kitchen was his hand.
Rory set it aside gently with the other things and stuck her hand in once more, the wine starting slowly to hit her.
She pulled out the belt buckle that had gotten in his way that night at Kyle's party. She felt its contours for a few moments and tried to quell the bile rising in her throat.
Just the sight of it brought back the panic of trying to figure out what to tell him. Did she want to? Yes. Did she? No. No she said "Not here." Did the regret sneak up on her from time to time when she thought of him and how lost he looked when he showed up at her dorm that night? Of course.
Not even her hurl-worthy regret could change moments long since past, however. Nothing would erase her words or his anger or his ejection from high school. She wished for years and years afterwards that it might, but she knew just the same that it couldn't.
Her keeping him at a distance was her anger with 2003 Jess and Rory for not trying to lay the groundwork for a 2004 Jess and Rory or a 2006 Jess and Rory.
Rory Gilmore felt like she had to keep some promise with herself, even if that meant shutting him out indefinitely. She could never have guessed that she'd unlock the door on her life to him at any point, and especially not now. Maybe the Subsect had been the key. Perhaps, all along, it was proof of his efforts and his devotion that she was looking for, no matter what avenue he chose to execute them in.
And the bags are much too heavy
In my insecure condition
My pregnant mind is fat full with envy again
Lorelai set the cup down as quietly as possible in front of her daughter, whose face had gone an even whiter shade of pale than a few minutes before when she stumbled out of the room and held her head onto her neck with great conscious effort.
"You're not looking so hot, babe," Lorelai said, squatting down to get a better look at her daughter who was breathing lightly and blinking slowly.
She bounced back from the memories far slower than the rate at which she fell into them, slowly blinking herself back into existing as she was in the moment, even if that meant a pounding headache and subhuman nausea.
She only nodded and lifted her head up far enough to draw a long drink from the cup, hoping it would calm the roll rippling in her stomach. Rory Gilmore even entertained the idea of throwing up in hopes that purging all the leftover wine and nothing would help, but she knew that it wasn't just the wine that was making her sick. It was the time he spent without her from 2003 to 2006. It was the way her imagination was running away with her down a very logical yet very scary path.
Jess Mariano was never one to twiddle his thumbs, especially when it came to her. As little as two months had passed between them without correspondence and he was already fucking the girl that worked at the cosmetics store. It didn't matter that she was rude or skanky or stupid or blonde. In fact, it made missing her a little easier. Rory even wondered how long that relationship with Shane would have lasted had she and Dean not broken up so fiercely that night. Wondered what she'd be like now if her mother had not insisted upon wearing vintage shoes and had not snapped the heel and had not demanded that they be fixed before she continued dancing.
But no. The path of her whole life did not dangle on that one night. She and Dean were done for anyway, and Jess would have been the obvious choice afterwards no matter what.
Three years? There was almost no telling what three years of nothing from her had held. She even attempted figuring it out mathematically by averaging the lengths of his relationships, figuring in the fact that he would mature and sometimes feel vindictive. Still, she never felt like she got the right estimate.
The number seemed to come out much lower than she imagined it would be. No number of years she had spent in Calculus or Advanced Placement Statistics could tell her about him more than her observations and intuition.
It was scary though, that her intuition had told her the number was more than five and definitely more than eight. Maybe even fifteen and, god forbid she even think it, twenty one.
Rory sat up and tried to get her blood flowing again, downing the rest of the coffee and refusing to be sickened further by her hangover or his immediate past. All she wanted was a shower and to talk to him once more before they both parted ways again and had to trust one another. What was there to trust right now? She trusted him when he said that he still loved her, but they weren't bound by a title or even small amounts of space. Everything was huge and wide open, just like the cut that he made in her heart when he left for California without saying goodbye.
She stood in the shower, too weak to raise her arms to her head to wash her hair. She let the water scald her back and run down her neck.
She imagined for a few seconds that the water was like his fingertips, gently caressing her body. But the water was not hot enough. His fingers burned her much more severely. Her skin would blister after their bodies disconnected and the only thing she could think to sooth it with were more of his touches or kisses on her ailing body.
Maybe it was twenty minutes. Maybe it was most of the day. She wasn't sure how long she was in there, exhausting her mother's hot water heater and easing her knotted muscles. Eventually she opened her eyes. Time was of the essence. Both of them were to return back to their respective corners tomorrow and she refused to sit out the sixteenth round.
But I still love to wash in
Your old bathwater
Love to think that you couldn't love another
I can't help it…you're my kind of man
"Hey stranger," Lorelai said as she stepped out onto their front porch and closed the door behind her, her arms crossed over her chest. She was still in her pajamas—Sunday clothes at the Gilmore's. Showered and made up notwithstanding, she was still as casual as flannel.
Jess looked up from the ground, his heart stopping for a moment. She sounded like Rory for a second there and he realized, with agony, that it had scared him that she was coming out of the house. He was scared shitless that he was just in this for the proximity, not the conversation.
But no. He refused to believe that.
"Lorelai," Jess said, giving her the smallest possible grin that was anything but jovial. It was painful.
"Watcha doing?" she asked, mischievous questioning in her narrowed blue eyes. Eyes that Jess knew she had given to her only daughter 21 years ago.
He took in a deep breath, feigning a lengthy explanation and maybe even a sigh, but instead all that came out was a difficultly expressed, "I don't know."
Lorelai pretended that she sort of got it. Rory still hadn't told her what had happened the other night when she left the house and inevitably went to meet him, but she was sure something had. Something that had dragged Jess to their house and Rory to the bottle. Probably it wasn't bad. But the communication between those two. It had never been good.
"I think I might," Lorelai said, trying to coax it out of him.
She moved for the door and Jess galvanized into action, on his feet before he knew it and reaching a hand out to her. A plea. An olive branch.
"Don't tell Rory I'm here. Just…don't." She nodded and went inside, closing the door behind her softly. He sat back on the porch and repressed a scream, messing up his hair in frustration with his idle fingers.
Wanted and adored by attractive women
Bountiful selection at your discretion
I know I'm diving into my own destruction
"Why did you just go outside?" Rory asked, coming out of her room.
She had on jeans and a nice shirt. Her hair was done. Makeup was date quality. Lorelai had the sneaking suspicion that she knew.
Maybe not outright. Maybe it was only intrinsic and intuitive. But Rory knew something. Something Lorelai hadn't picked up on all the way yet.
She stuttered for a second, her words snagging on her flannel pants and fuzzy socks. "I wanted to see if the paper came."
"We get the paper?"
"Luke does sometimes."
"Wouldn't he have picked it up on his way to work this morning?"
"Kirk delivers it. When we actually get it delivered is pretty arbitrary."
"So you were just checking for it?"
"Yup."
"Was it there?"
"No," Lorelai hesitated. Rory caught it immediately. Their rapport was too rapid-fire for her not to notice the half-second breach of habit.
"Mom?" she asked, drawing out the word, her face paling after having finally regained some color with her shower.
"No paper," Lorelai said, smiling a tiny bit. Rory looked stressed but Lorelai did not take back the grin. She smiled. She was happy.
Rory put on her shoes and walked out onto the porch without a jacket, probably swinging the door open louder than she would have normally.
Probably because she suspected that he was there already.
"Wh-wh-…," Rory said as she shut the door quietly behind her and went to sit beside him.
Close enough to touch. Far enough away to rule out their illicit kisses. Space would babysit them for now. Not Paris Gellar or her mother or Luke or Taylor.
Just space and prior knowledge.
"I can leave if you want," he said quickly. She cut him off with a wave of her hand.
"Don't. I'm glad you came. I just don't know why yet."
He wasn't cut by the comment. It was this Rory he had never seen before. Flustered and blunt and trying desperately to hold everything together. However, she had perfected the façade. He could only tell in her voice. The deepness, the quaver.
"Okay," he said quietly as he looked at her, speaking intimately and carefully. They were both determined to handle the situation like broken glass and neither was quite sure how well they were doing.
She took a breath to force down all of her accusations and rants. Numbers. Statistics that she had compiled about him and his relationships. She pushed it down into her stomach and forced it to stay put. Her face was pale with hangover and repression so much so that she doubted she surpassed bleached paper in coloring.
They both looked straight ahead for a while, breathing quietly so as to not draw attention to themselves.
"I opened your box last night."
"I paced behind the diner all night."
They had overlapped one another gracelessly yet again. Rory thought it felt like falling into his arms and Jess thought it felt like fate.
Silence pressed between them easily for a few moments as they both grinned sheepishly at one another, their minds racing in an attempt to recover from the stumble.
"Box?" he asked quietly.
"All night?" she asked, smiling at the incredulity, sure that it was an exaggeration.
"Well, until three or four."
"You're joking," she demanded, her face falling. He shook his head easily, his gaze never dropping from her eyes, though he desperately wanted to glance at her mouth as she took her bottom lip between her teeth and watch as the emotions sped across her face. "Wow," she said breathily.
"About that box…," he said, trying to casually allude and slip her mention back into the conversation.
The color rushed back into her face when he spoke again. He watched as her eyes clearly wanted to look other places. She held them on his face. Restraining herself.
"My mom dug it out of my old closet last night and left it on the kitchen table. She thought I might want to open it." He nodded and pleasant calmness took over his face. He was serene after all.
Rory jumped headfirst into phase two of her explanation, seeing that he had nothing more to say for now. She saw her lane and took it. She just hoped she didn't sound like a fool.
"I'm not sure why I didn't take it to college with me. I think it was because I was trying not to take you with me. You broke my heart when you called after graduation and I know I probably did nothing to help yours. I'm damn sure in fact." She paused, looking out onto the street. "It was the look in your eyes when you came back. When I had that awful haircut and didn't know what I wanted. It was the puppy eyes. That's how I knew I had broken your heart, too.
"Your box sat in my closet here for a long time. Next to Dean's. Completely defied Gilmore rules by setting things that clearly wouldn't get along beside each other. I think it was a time and proximity issue there. I just…shoved it up there and hoped that one day I could open it and reminisce and not want to puke. Not want to go and find you or that maybe I would even be able to figure out what happened.
"I guess what I'm trying to get at here in an extraordinarily existentialist manner is that I opened that box last night and downed my mom's emergency bottle of Arbor Mist and it made me remember for a second what it felt like to love someone totally. And after the fact, I pushed it aside because knowing that I had it hurt. It hurt so bad, Jess."
She had finally broken into sobs.
He envisioned himself reaching out and rubbing her back, reassuring her that he had recovered and that they could love again like that. That time would be kinder to them this time than last time. But he couldn't. It had already been too cruel.
So why do we choose the boys that are naughty?
I don't fit in so why do you want me?
I know I can't change you, but I just keep trying
For a minute or two neither said anything and she quietly sobbed on her front porch, looking out onto the morning. The sun was up. Birds were chirping. People were walking with dumbbells in their hands and ignoring the supernova on that porch.
"I'm not sure if what I left in Philadelphia is my past or not. All I know is that I'm here now, and that I've made mistakes lately.
"I came here on pure whim. My roommate actually spent a while trying to talk me out of it." He smiled and she gave a short laugh through her tears, though not yet looking up at him.
"It's not like I have real unfinished business there. Nothing I need to 'take care of.' But my life lately is there. The good and the bad."
"How many?" she asked, after slowly wiping the saline off of her face and looking at him stoically. He pulled his eyebrows together to beg the question and she continued to stare.
"How many what?" he asked, the door on his emotions slamming shut. She heard it now just like she did back then. Evenness of town, hardness of eyes, weakness in syllables. He was crazy if he thought she didn't know. Her eyes narrowed too.
"How many women, Jess?"
He hadn't been expecting it. He dropped his guard as if he had been struck in the back of the head while holding it precariously, like it was fragile.
"Rory, I don't think-," she cut him off.
"How many?" her voice was louder, but infinitely weaker. Her voice trembled like the skinny, virgin legs of a newborn calf and her eyes were always that of a doe's but blue.
He didn't answer her but gave her a pained look. She scoffed, her smile wry.
"That many, huh?" The devil was in her grin as she move to stand up.
His hand reached out and gripped at her arm as he stood up partially, finally reaching out and determined to hold on. Rory's hair whipped across her porcelain face as she turned to see what had held her from her retreat back into the house, tears bubbling up in her throat, pushed up by her accusation and feeling stupid.
"Please. You have to let me figure out how to do this for a second. I was patient with you just now. Please."
Jess Mariano had just pleaded with her twice, with his eyes wide and almost full of tears. His touch was hot with panic and the feverous need to explain. Her departure would ice him over and he was so sick of being cold.
This year, spring would mean more than tulips for him. He was determined.
"Fine," she said, sounding unwilling.
"It doesn't matter. And you don't want to know. I know you think you do, but we both know that you don't. And honestly, I don't want to tell you, because I refuse to ever see that look on your face again as long as I live. That look that means you think you caught me in a lie. I plan on looking at your face a lot for the rest of my life, but I don't plan on lying."
"Does anyone?" she asked bitterly, slicing through his apology easily.
"Yeah, I think so," he said, pushing himself up off of the porch and launching himself definitively in the direction of the diner.
"Did you?" she asked, calling out to him.
This time she would plea. How long they could play this game, nobody knew.
He turned, his eyes low but not yet to the ground, hands hanging at his side instead of defensively thrown into his pockets.
"I don't know. It was a long time ago. I think I always did. No matter how much I loved you." She nodded and stood to walk up to him.
'Cause I love to wash in your old bathwater
Love to think that you couldn't love another
I'm on your list with all your other women
But I still love to wash in your old bathwater
You make me feel like I couldn't love another
I can't help it…you're my kind of man
"I don't want to know. I'm scared. And I'm afraid to tell you about my life up until now because I'm scared that you'll run. I would run. I won't, but if I were you, I would," she explained, fourteen inches from his face.
"Take comfort in the fact that you're not alone."
Her face lightened when he said that and he smiled kindly, but timidly. There were some things that they could easily do, others that they couldn't.
Yelling, yes.
Smiling and laughing, no.
"I'm going back to Yale tomorrow." He nodded curtly.
"I have to get back to Philly sometime tomorrow afternoon, too."
They both wanted to sigh.
Why do the good girls always want the bad boys?
"So what now?"
He shrugged. "I've wondered that all weekend."
"I've never done this before. With you, I always wanted to. But I haven't."
"Me neither. I'm not big on reintroductions usually."
"I've noticed," she said, smiling fully for the first time, ironically.
He returned the smile and laughed a little at the sky. It finally seemed blue to him.
"C'mere," he said, gesturing with his head slightly and reaching out his arms slowly to wrap her between them.
This time there was not the impending explosion of her breakup with Logan to rest between their touches as he restrained her. There was nothing.
She burned like hell when he touched her, and she felt a small but important muscle just at the junction between her neck and back relax completely.
So I pacify problems with kisses and cuddles
Diligently doubtful through all kinds of trouble
Then I find myself choking on all my contradictions
As they slowly wove their limbs together, touching gently and reveling in the feelings and torrent of emotions, Jess came up with a game plan.
He was going to kiss her again, and he wanted her to know it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Rory almost moved to nestle her head in the space that he had fitted for her between his jaw and shoulder, but changed her mind when she found her lips eager for his.
This time would be their first time, when they told the story again to friends and children and grandchildren. Not on the gazebo or at Sookie's wedding or next to a gas pump at Gypsy's. This was it. Something made it more real. More all-consuming.
'Cause I still love to wash in your old bathwater
Love to think that you couldn't love another
Share a toothbrush, you're my kind of man
But I still love to wash in your old bathwater
You make me feel like I couldn't love another
I can't help it…you're my kind of man
On his first pass of her face, all he did was brush his lips past the delicate patch of skin right in front of her ear, dipping down just slightly blow on the spot below it. He heard her breath hitch in her chest and smiled.
Moving to the other side, he ran his lips, this time a little more firmly along her jawline, scraping his teeth gently against a vein in her exposed neck.
The breath that had gotten caught flew out swiftly as her eyes fluttered shut and her clutch on his jacket intensified.
He stayed measured, however, as he slowly released his hands from her sides and back, moving them to her face to cup her jaw while tilting her head just a little further.
Then he kissed her. Slow at first, barely touching. She moved toward him to add to it and he smiled against her mouth while she smiled against his, finally surrendering.
She sighed.
No I can't help myself
I can't help myself
I still love to wash in your old bathwater
The next chapter is about halfway done, but I wanted to add something to this. Review and you get your update!! Happy New Year ).