A/N: Wow. I almost forgot what this story was about. Sorry for not updating sooner, but I've been hit with an insane and cruel barrage of School, Homework, Computer Virus, Loss of Harddrive, and Writer's Block. (Also perhaps a small bit of procrastination ;D) Sorry. Be prepared – this is one hell of a long author's note...sorry again. THREE very important things:
I am very aware that this is a chapter set in December with a vague Christmas theme. I'm nuts. I've been lacking in inspiration for a while and the fact that I had no ideas for chapter 14 was eating at me. I have a good idea of where I'm going with this, and had all chapters 'planned' except for this one. I know that a more appropriate setting would be something Novemberish, but bear with me. As a result, it skips ahead more or less 2 months.
This is so fluffy that it's shape and feel reminds me of Snuggle laundry commercials. But I posted you two! Don't worry – next time, the plot will kick into A-Little-Faster-Gear.
A little note: Everyone with sanity should read I Think Of Ice Cubes by Rebekah D.
Thank you Sara dearest for your excellent betaing, as usual. Love you. You kick a lot of ass. ;)
--- Anastasia Athene --- Clear a shelf, because the trophies are piling up. And I'm glad you like Fingering Smoky Thoughts. Totally puts a spark in my day. :blows kisses:
--- someone5 --- thanks for your fantabulous review! Lovetylovetyloved it. And thanks for reading FST.
--- smile1, Rebekah D, Christie, all other reviewers --- I will look to my dear friends Phish. "If I don't get enough of you, I'm a lighter shade of me!" I couldn't have said it better.
Holy Cannoli, I'm exhausted. Chapter 14...
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DECEMBER
Cold was a cowardly fierceness, clawing at the thick car windows but never fully releasing its wrath upon the glass. A firm icing of crystals glittering upon the cake-frosted windshield and tipaclaping down the sides of the car when cleared away, brought Rory's mind back to James Bond. When she closed her eyes, she was sinking in a white porcelain bathtub, drowning in gleaming diamonds of infinite facets. She was counting her own facets. When she reluctantly pulled her heavy pink eyelids open, they met an icebox trapped behind a myriad of starbright rhinestones.
As the windshield wiper scraped dutifully across the glass, a knife to frosting, Jess imagined a shattered window repairing itself, wiping away the scratches. He liked windows that were clean, scratch-free – windows that he could see. He would like to be a scratch-free window. But today, he was Jess the scratch-resistant window. It would have to do.
With the windshield, Rory's classic Connery daydream was scraped away roughly. Alongside the perfect individuality of the windshield frosting went her perception of their car – a cramped ocher Firebird, closing in on its thirteenth birthday. What was underneath the frosting of snowflakes was barely usable and extremely uncomfortable. She squirmed in the ribbed black leather seat, the cushion torn on one corner. A tiny amount of yellow sponge had squeezed itself out into the open frigidness of the front seat and shook with the sporadic streams of air coming from the heating vents.
Jess yanked on the stick shift and pulled brusquely out from the side of the curb. Scattered flurrying downpours had kept most inside on that Saturday morning, a rarity in the city, and he maneuvered the sputtering vehicle through truck-lined asphalt. It was a river of blacktop with an abundance of branches and this morning he could not seem to figure out which led where.
He averted his eyes from the road for a moment, catching a momentary glimpse of Rory. She was slumped lower in the passenger chair, the gray seatbelt clinging tightly over her bright red sweatshirt and molding it over her still tiny frame. Loose, damp tangles of deep brown hair spread themselves in a crescent-moon shape around her rosy neck, lightly curling around at the very ends. A well-worn yellow copy of A Brave New World hung loosely in her hands. The fine art of drinking her in for a split second in the early hours of the morning had been mastered at 7:12:33 on Saturday, December 21. He liked knowing he was an artist. He had always thought so, anyway.
He pulled his eyes back to the bright yellow lines in front of him, putting a shock of color onto the dull black pavement, and studied the next traffic light before the concrete pipe of the Lincoln Tunnel. Jess could feel his lip twitch slightly when he felt her opening her eyes again, reaching back into the world after a trademarked catnap. His peripheral vision caught her arms stretching above her head, her fingers bending ever so slightly, pressing themselves on the soft gray ceiling. A catnap indeed.
"Huxley?" he inquired, not meeting her loose, relaxed gaze as Rory studied him through a lethargic silver fog. She pulled previous thoughts out and aligned them in front of her aqua eyes – Diamonds Are Forever; birthday cake; the long, disgusting face of the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning...in the book. That was what he meant. She grinned knowingly – a daybreak grin that seemed to absorb every color of the brilliantly blazing harvest orange sun. Jess could feel his numb insides release their pent-up freezing-point tension.
"Why do you ask?" She replied, voice husky and low with a slight sandy undertone. He was rubbing off on her every hour.
"Dunno..." he shrugged lifelessly, contorting his mouth into an odd series of knots to control the smile threatening to jump over the pile of cinderblocks. Jess swallowed quickly and removed his hand from the steering wheel to play absentmindedly with Rory's hair. She squirmed like a small infant, rolling her head to one side to trap his hand between her shoulder and cheek for fear of a slightly rich tickling sensation. His palm felt warm satin. His knuckles felt warm satin. He studied each molecule in isolation, without attempting to slide his hand out. With her butter shoulders, he could do so – but stayed anyway.
"Jess, keep your hands on the steering wheel," she whispered, her hot cinnamon breath setting a match to his hand. Heat radiating from her body, her skin, her presence...it was burning him. He slipped his hand out and it came from between her satin easily. She hugged her arms over her chest and hunched over, a tulip still asleep after a night closed to the daylight. "Please, Jess," she complained as his fingers lingered on her shoulder. The sweatshirt was yanked to one side, running up the right side of her neck and allowing for her shoulder to emit massive waves of sonorous warmth.
He trailed his finger up her shoulder to her chin, then down her neck. His finger had wheels, but they were rusty and had to move slow, protracted in motion. Over the round, full curve of her chest, it paused at the center of her stomach (Bigger? No. Yes. He grinned inside), pressing the thick cotton against it, outlining her hips. He spread his hand in an arc shape, flattening his palm against her for a moment...but not long enough. Rory sighed deeply as he traced an ongoing stripe between her hipbones, then pulled away as asked.
"Answer the question," he murmured, clearing his throat as though his fingers had stayed firmly clasped around the steering wheel for that last seven minutes of precious morning time.
"I like this book," she stated simply, turning her thumb to see which page she had stopped at. Sixteen.
"It's that...you know...holiday." He cleared his throat. "Christmas. And you're...you know, we're...why aren't you reading Dickens or somethin'?" He straightened the sinuous streak he was weaving through the now kinetic air. "Huxley wrote of a world where people are manufactured; where procreation has been replaced by a microscope and IVF without the I and the V. Where everything moral is impossible to comprehend...a seemingly utopian society with a really twisted way of conceiving."
Rory studied his face for briefly, fluidly tracing the shape of his eyes. This was the Jess she loved the best – the Jess who opened up his cinderblock wall long enough to tell her his opinion on satirical novels. He was open Jess. Open mouth, open discussion. An open black hole that she sometimes wished she could pull him through to the other side in. But Jess had a gravitational force stronger than any hole. So she took what she could get.
"But much like ours, ours as individual people making choices," she snapped back(fueling her fire), "Brave New World had good intentions. We may not be always deciding the right things to better our lives, but our instincts are to blame. Ironically, it's an uplifting book by comparison...except that John ends up killing himself." She let out a whistle of air, a sign of defeat. He was always at the point before she was...another thing she liked about him. She had to chase him, or she wouldn't know the answers to anything at all.
Jess removed a cinderblock at a stop sign and sat on top of it.
SAME DAY; STARS HOLLOW 5:00 PM
Uneventful returns to Stars Hollow were believed to be criminal local offenses; but today, Jess thanked whatever power that there was for their mostly unpublicized drive through the quaint town. Rory decided miracles did exist when not a head in the center gazebo turned to the sound of the sputtering Firebird and the eternal exhalation of the exhaust pipe.
They pulled into the Gilmore driveway to see Lorelai, bundled in an emerald-green knit shawl that was very large for her size, rocking back and forth on the white wooden bench swing with an ironstone china mug. Rory was still emanating rich circular yellowness and the outside was a bitter, icy desert. Jess was not sure if his wife's childhood home was cold or warm. To him, it was always somewhere in between. He was always in between.
Rory made a deep growl in the depths of her throat, her neck moving as the sound resonated through her lips. She unbuckled her seatbelt and let it slip back, releasing her. Opening her eyes and adjusting them to the glacial temperatures of a car with no heat, she analyzed Lorelai's position and let free an excited yelp.
Jess pulled her paperback out of the glove compartment and thumbed through it, his index finger rippling like pebbles on brook water as the yellowed sheets sifted underneath his skin. He turned to watch Rory walking, his half-asleep tulip, up towards the front porch. Lorelai was waving excitedly, outstretched hand flapping like a sail in sea wind.
He figured that Rory was his Linda in every way and closed the book around his thumb, the argument concluded only to himself now.
"Caroline." Rory smiled, her lips only a little dry and wind worn. She stood on the step before the porch, bouncing on her heels and running her long, limber dancing fingers over the pilly red fuzz on her sweatshirt.
"Jenny." Lorelai balanced her mug on the banister and wrapped Rory in a hug – a tight December hug that twisted them together safely like a no-salt pretzel. Rory sniffed in the stinging air, and she remembered lots of hugs.
Jess managed to pull himself out of the car, the door creaking shut behind him and making a noise that a tinfoil car would make. Popping open the brown tinfoil trunk, he carefully lifted two duffel bags over his shoulders. Looking up as he locked the Firebird, all he saw were miles and miles of endless blue sky. The richest blue – like seven oceans in tandem, one ceaseless ream of sea silk. His heart reminded him a little of why he truly liked Stars Hollow. Only here would he see Rory's eyes in the sky for Christmas.
Rory's favorite part about the holidays was the garnet blown glass bowl full of honey almonds placed appropriately on the end-table next to the living room couch. Lorelai had the most endearing habit of turning the couch to face the fireplace in the winter, and blue firefly bursts erupting into white smoke shadows on antique brick always made her feel warm inside. Curled like a callow five-year-old on the worn, broken-in sofa, Lorelai's dark green shawl wrapped around her shoulders, Rory traced the uneven patterns of the garnet glass bowl with the tips of her fingers, a honey almond sleeping in her cheek and letting her taste rosy red and gold.
It was as though she had crossed ten mountains and eons of deserts to when she was five years old, and she did not have to close her eyes but for the memory of a plum slipcover over the sofa cushions. Everything had stayed unchanged – the beautiful garnet glass bowl, the hills of honey almonds, the yellow fireworks nestled safely in a mound of gray wooden logs, telling stories and showing dancing nutcracker ballerinas on the wall.
She felt five. She remembered five years old as her favorite year – lots of her mother's pirate jokes, and a strange love for yellow rice with blue food coloring in it, and hanging raspberry candy canes on a tree, and being a blissful, warm, safe, fuzzy five-year-old wrapped in her mother's shawl on the plum slipcover, writing raw poems in her mind of ballerinas and snowmen and fairies while she rolled honey almonds around her mouth.
And somehow she knew a better year would come. A better year five years from now when she would not be the only person feeling five, when she would have to share the green afghan and the garnet bowl of almonds and all of the nightdreams that would come from the dancing fireplace.
Rory thought she might like sharing. Sugar was not exactly beneficial to teeth, and body heat is always warmer than stiff old wool.
Warm feelings.
It was early night when Jess went back in. He had ventured into the biting ten o'clock air soon after Lorelai had relented in her time-transcending entertainment strategies and galloped in a groggy state up the stairs to phone the diner. Thin flutes of snow whistled nothing, whispering conspiratorially as they cleaned the air of itself, leaving nothing but the oboe of winds and the hollow shells of snowflake flautists. It was impossible to distinguish the world on which he stood from the sky. All was black wine, and nothing could separate the starbrights from the snow crystals. The four yards between the feather-warm sensation of the house and the frame that was his automobile was a midnight desert.
He closed his eyes and let himself drop, muscles resting. Jess' body landed with a dry, subdued thunup onto a mound of soft, fresh flurryfall. It hurt at first, and he could have sworn that he felt a purple bruise forming on his hip, but he slid onto his back and stuck his hands out in the air, becoming a large X in the snow.
Find me. (200 paces to the left) Find me.
No sound. Water flowed past his ears but there was none, just snow. He felt, heard, smelled seven seasons before – the same quiet nothingness. The same noise that was not there, that was only heard by him because he wanted to, lingered, and like melting icicles, dripped onto his face. He felt snowflakes nipping on his eyebrows and rolling down his face. His ears were numb and he could hear better because of it. Seven seasons, winters ago – the first time he did this because he wanted her.
Air is a perfect kind of wave that hits the flesh of the ear with such a force that in seconds it is gone, and all that is left is the shadow of something you never found.
Jess thought. He got colder and the snow began to spiral like hot coils and he thought more. He tried to think about the future. He didn't like the future very much because it was something he didn't know. But out here, he decided to give it a chance. And he saw faces. All different kinds with different hair and eyes and some with little black glasses and some with freckles and some that were smiling and some that were not. Some he had remembered from the past and was using as a reference; others, he was creating in those minutes, making a dream for himself so that five years later, he would not be surprised.
He thought about Rory, bundled in her mother's blanket on the couch and writing novels in the solitude of her heart, an Eskimo. He thought about little Eskimo children sitting with Rory under her blanket and he thought about Rory and a little Eskimo child telling fireplace stories. He cursed himself for resorting to schmaltz and sap at twelve o'clock at night on December twenty-second.
He thought about the stack of books at home, welcome family always boarding in that office room, and their musty October smell and how he thought Rory would like it if she was not the only one who would sit in the corner of the room at dusk, lilac luminescence lilting languidly through the window, holding an old, damp book to her face and breathing.
The one she breathed in the most was Oliver Twist. It was a given, and her favorite, if only for the sheer sentiment it brought with it. Modern scales weighed it at 18.9 ounces, but it weighed so much more in actuality. He remembered the very first pages of the beloved book, the ink of his black ballpoint pen in the margins turning grayer with each year.
"And Oliver gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carefully flung over the iron bedstead rustling."
And Jane gave this first proof of the free and proper action of her lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carefully flung over the iron bedstead rustling.
"Rory."
She rolled onto her side, outlines of hearth fireflies dancing on her claret temples and berry cheeks. He crept closer to the sofa, and noticing her fingers wrapped around the rim of the garnet bowl, slowly pried them off and put the bowl on the table with a clanking, glass-to-glass chink. Rory stretched her arm subconsciously, balling her fingers into a tight fist. She hummed an A-minor to herself in the shape of a deep sigh, her body straightening itself and the thick green blanket bunching around her hipbones, outlining her stomach. He had noticed before and a quick remembrance of June made him think that there were only six months. As quickly as she had stretched, she curled up and lapsed back into silence. He ran a sly thumb down her neck and along her shoulder. Zipper...
Her soft pillow lips became a curling ellipse, white in the burn of the fireplace. "Hmm, Jess," she murmured. His face stayed solemn and rigid and when her eyes flickered open, frosted with thoughts of snow and Eskimos in fur hoods, they were paler but not less ardent. She saw him standing in front of her, and she attempted to sit up, propping her head on her elbow which was effectively propped on a red cushion. He jerked his head slowly in the direction of the front door.
"You don't look like Jenny," he said brusquely, watching as she gathered the shawl around her shoulders and wrapped the ends into an awkward bow at the neck. She put the hood of the sweater over her head, concealing the flaxen wisps of her fleecy brown curls in red, and decisively yanked on the drawstrings. He thought that she looked like a cross between Yente and...an Eskimo.
"I thought you said you didn't read that book," she countered drowsily. He shoved his fingers into his pockets, palms reddening.
"I didn't." He smirked and turned towards the door. She slipped her feet back into the red canvas Chuck Taylors and traipsed after him. Rory couldn't help but think that maybe he liked being a Cerberus to her, because it didn't mean having to sacrifice his image for the sake of her happiness.
She liked better the thought that he kept his leather-jacket image because he knew she wouldn't have him any other way.
Outside, the flutes of snowflakes still drifted down from the sky and spoke in hushed tones and tongues. Rory let her feet fall over the plank front steps and into the new inches of snow, and immediately scolded herself for wearing canvas in mounds of frozen water. Jess was already standing in the dead center of the front yard, staring into space. At any other time of day, it would be light enough to see the outlines of the houses, but twelve thirty was a wild blindness. It was now when Jess thought he could see the best because he didn't have to take anything for its literal worth.
Except for when Rory appeared in front of him, a plastic pocket flashlight shining concentrated on the spot right above his nose and between his eyes. He closed one eye, glaring at her with the other.
"You could blind a person like that, you know," he snapped grumpily, in a tone so monotonous and detached that she could picture his voice being the same pitch in the closets of her mind at age eighteen.
"Would it make a difference out here?" she retorted, her voice less dull and more excitable, pleased that she had come up with something to say.
"About a billion differences," he shot back, though, voice cool and low and rigorous to the very letter. She smiled, pulling air through her teeth and making the roof of her mouth ache a little bit, knowing what he meant.
"What are you thinking about?" Her voice still sent shivers down his spine. Jess didn't answer, but he moved his eyes to hers and kept the gaze tight and solid, steel gossamer, for what seemed like many more winters.
"Are you counting?" She knew he wouldn't answer, so she continued to whisper. Rory thought that maybe she was whispering because she didn't want to disturb the unheard music that the snow was making. "I am. Six months." His eyebrow twitched a little.
Rory knew for certain, more than anything, that he was holding a smile in. At least he was smiling.
Snow flautists and the outline of his face and her nimble fingers holding a plastic pocket flashlight and the darker hue that wet Converse shoes seemed to take when immersed in snow. All invisible, and only four of a billion differences. She leaned her head on his shoulder and he could feel her snow-flecked hair dampening the black cotton of his shirt just a little bit.
"This was a nice present," she whispered. She was practicing to be a snow flautist. He shifted his feet in the snow and pulled a hand from his pocket to play with the tendrils of hair splayed over his shoulder and down around his torso.
"Huh," he replied, hardly a flute-like sound. Far from it. It was scratchy and rough and hollow and pure Jess. She liked that he stayed constant.
"Merry Christmas, Jess," she whispered back. She knew it would get to him. She would bet a lot of things on it.
His whole self had been warped, standing there in the cold quiet, back to rebellious eighteen, seven seasons ago, but the constancy was that he was still not one for the spoken word. It was terse but he meant it. "'Christmas, Rory," he stated evenly.
She turned and kissed him bluntly on the lips, and discovered a very nice surprise – that here in the cold, his lips stayed warm and inviting even when his being screamed for solitude and a respected sharing of his world. They were gentle, even when the rest of him was calloused, and when she pulled away he stared back at her, drunkenly happy but in awe that she had been his for seven seasons.
The next one was warm and slow and cavernous, and Rory's feet weren't nearly as cold and Jess wasn't nearly as solitary. She put her hand on the nape of his neck and he felt her fingers on the small curls of dark hair there, and his fingers began to wheel themselves, in turn, over her shoulders and down her arms, and around her stomach (brief pause) and then on her hips to stay.
Seven seasons is a long time, and people can still leave and not come back but they haven't nearly as many real reasons to.
So since seven seasons has warmed them up (only slightly) to the notions of Eskimos and numbing snowfalls and those literate girls in the green shawls, and the thought that Jane Austen not only wrote well but had a nice name, they figure that leaving all of those warmed-up notions would be a waste of time.
Rory was happy that she was sharing the first snowfall with Jess that year.
A/N: I PROMISE that the chapters following this will be MUCH more EVENTFUL. I'm just working my way up to them. They'll be so much better than this plotless...stuff. Stay tuned! ;) Please review.