I'll Be Your Mirror

As he'd done most nights since his arrival in California, Jess slipped away from the dinner table and went back into Jimmy's study.

There was something bizarre about this room. Jess felt like he was looking at a place that should be his. The books were his kind of books (no Dan Brown novels here). There was a collection of vinyl and CD's that seemed to cover all of his favourite eras and styles of music from the past sixty years. Jess knew the track listings on a lot of them off by heart. He couldn't help but wonder how Lane would react to seeing this.

He quelled that thought quickly though. Thoughts of Lane could only lead to one thing and Jess wasn't ready to deal with that - her - yet.

No. Better to stay focused on what was in front of him. It seemed there was proof in this room that genetics was responsible for more than just aesthetic details. It had to be. This man should have had no more influence on Jess's upbringing other than leaving him fatherless. It would be different if he'd read him bed time stories from Grimm's Fairy Tales, or given him a copy of Catcher in the Rye for his twelfth birthday; if he'd wandered around the house singing I Wanna Be Sedated or blasted music from The Clash during dinner times; maybe even driven his kid mad with endless hours of flicking the radio playing 'Who sings this?' and showing off his musical knowledge. But Jimmy hadn't done any of that for Jess. He'd abandoned him. Full stop. The end.

So it had to be genetics, because how else could one explain the freakish similarities between the contents of these shelves and the contents of Jess's duffel bag? The well worn copy of Howl that had been left on the desk…

…Rory. Damn it! No! He wasn't going to think about her. Not yet.

But no matter where he looked in the room, Howl still sat there, mocking him. And thinking about Rory was no longer a matter of choice.

By the time they'd met his passions and interests were well cemented. He didn't need influencing. And yet he remembered her curled up on the sofa with him at Luke's one night, reading A Farewell to Arms to him, because she'd lost a bet. He remembered her buying him a copy of Titans of Venus, because he'd admitted that he'd never read it. She'd made him sing London Calling to her, while they made out, because it amused her that he was wearing Joe Strummer's leather jacket. One afternoon they'd driven out to the middle of nowhere and just played with the car radio for hours, trying to outdo each other on who could name the song and the singer first. Eventually she'd lost and his chest clenched now as he remembered how she'd blushed when he claimed his 'prize.'

And just like that, his argument that DNA had to responsible for the contents of his duffel bag was forgotten. There was no DNA shared between him and Rory (save the kind that transfers while kissing and other such activities), and yet she had shared as much with him as Jimmy might. Possibly more, Jess mused, noticing for the first time the distinct lack of Russian authors on the shelves. There were no novels from Gogol or Dostoyevsky here…no Rand either. He smirked suddenly. Rory would likely kick Jimmy's butt if she heard about the missing sections of his collection.

'Once she's finished kicking mine,' he mumbled, reminding himself that he'd taken off, deserted her, without so much as a phone call. He'd let her down, he knew. She'd been the only person in that damn town that had really gotten to know him and seen who he was. He always felt like she saw more in him than he did in himself. But he'd let her down. He'd proved everyone else right.

He placed an album on Jimmy's turntable and closed his eyes for a moment as Nico's ethereal voice filled the room, before grabbing Gone With the Wind from the shelf and sinking into the old, leather recliner. He'd once thought of Rory as Scarlett O'Hara. He liked that idea. Not that Rory should go around using any guy that was available to get what she wanted, but the idea that, like Scarlett, Rory was strong and capable. She'd get by and do what needed doing. She'd forget him. She had to.

Because Scarlett O'Hara had never loved Rhett Butler the way that he'd loved her.

A/N: Wasn't sure what to do with this chapter, or how to do it so in the end I just babbled. Hopefully it comes out making some sort of sense!