"I got his gum!" Rory screamed into the phone.
"You got whose gum?" Jess asked, confused.
"Obama's!"
"I'm sorry, you got his –how?"
"Before my one-on-one with him, he was chewing –"
"Your what? Way to bury the lead, Ror. Are you serious? Did you tell your mom and Luke? What about Lane?"
"Yeah; the whole town is freaking –people aren't going to have windows left to look out of, they're so busy plastering my stories up."
"Paris?"
"Is so jealous. Doyle can't even talk her down. He says he misses the good old days, when she broke up with him."
"Your grandparents?"
"Couldn't be prouder. The story'll be up by the time you get here. Can I get back to the gum now?" Rory asked.
"Sorry," Jess laughed. "You were saying?"
"Before our sit down, he was chewing gum and he needed to spit it out before the interview started, but he didn't have a tissue –"
"But you did."
"But I did. I have his gum!"
"You kept a wadded up tissue with gum in it?"
"Of course."
"Part of me is grossed out but –"
"The other part…?"
"Knows exactly why you kept that tissue; I would do the same thing," Jess laughed again. "This isn't just any gum, this is gum with presidential DNA; the forty-fourth President and the first African-American to be elected to the highest office in the land."
"Precisely my thinking. I'm gum buddies with the President!" Rory squealed.
"Yes, you are," Jess said, sighing deeply and closing his eyes. "Hey, Ror?"
"What?"
"We made it, sweet girl," he whispered.
"Yeah, we did. I love you Jess. It sucks that you're not here. Grant Park is gonna be –"
"I love you too and you know I wish I could've swung it –but with finals coming, there was no way. The guys and I and Daniel are going to wander up and down Locust and through downtown –should be quite the scene, I'm looking forward to it, actually, witnessing the joyful fruits of Obama's mission to unify this great country of ours. But I'll be with you in a few days and we get one more weekend in Chicago. The perfect way to close this chapter if you ask me, in the city that was so good to us this summer."
"That reminds me, I have a surprise for you," Rory teased.
"You do?"
"I do, but I'm telling you nothing, so even your best tricks cannot get it out of me. When Lydia and I pick you and Daniel up at the airport on Friday, all will be revealed."
"Rory –we won't have to say goodbye. At the end of the weekend, you'll be leaving Chicago with me and coming to Philadelphia –to stay," Jess said quietly. "Our days of emotional goodbyes and long distance are over."
"I'll be coming home," Rory smiled into the receiver. "I know Lydia and I have another three weeks before we officially take possession, but we did luck out in that they're willing to give us the keys mid-month because the apartment is unoccupied –which will definitely make the moving in process easier because we can do it in stages. But I'm coming home. I'm excited to spend some time in Stars Hollow before –"
"It'll be great for you Ror. I'm so glad that taking possession worked out that way –allowing you to spend quality time with your mom and Luke and Lane and your grandparents. They've missed you so much. I know it's important to you, spending as much time with everyone as you can before you move to Philadelphia, as well it should be. I myself am excited to spend some time with the non-crazy minority of Stars Hollow, helping you get stuff ready for your move."
"Non-crazy being…"
"Luke, your mom, Lane, the babies and small doses of Sookie and Liz. That's pretty much it," Jess chuckled. "And it'll be nice to see your grandparents again –my God, hell really has frozen over."
"Jess?"
"Yeah?"
"We really made it," Rory whispered. "I love you so much."
"Yeah, we really did," Jess said softly. "I love you too, Rory –now more than ever."
It was November fourth 2008; Barack Obama had just made history by becoming the first African-American to be elected President of the United States. In a matter of moments he would deliver a victory speech to thousands of supporters in Chicago's Grant Park –a crowd that would be screaming and cheering as if they were awaiting Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin or The Beatles rather than the President-elect.
"I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington –it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.
"It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give five dollars and ten dollars and twenty dollars to this cause. It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organized, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from this Earth. This is your victory.
"I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime –two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us. There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for college. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created, new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.
"The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America –I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you –we as a people will get there.
"There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years –block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
"What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek –it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.
"So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers –in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.
"Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long. Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House –a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity. Those are values we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, 'We are not enemies, but friends... though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.' And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn –I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."
"Is there usually celebrating in the street like this when election results are revealed?" Daniel asked as he wandered through the streets of downtown Philadelphia with Jess and the rest of the guys from Truncheon.
"Not in recent memory," Jess chuckled. "I mean sure, people celebrate –"
"But nothing like this," Chris said.
"You picked a good place to be Jess," Matt said.
"Come again?" Jess asked.
"Well, I know it sucks that you're not in Chicago right now, but if you had to be anywhere else… Pennsylvania went a huge way in helping Obama win this thing. It's a good runner-up location to bask in the glow of his victory."
"Yeah, it is. God it's crazy out here. This is unreal," Jess said, looking around in disbelief.
"What about you Daniel?" Andrew asked. "Do people dance in the streets after your elections? What do you have up there, a –?"
"A Prime Minister," Daniel answered. "And no, no one dances in the streets for Stephen Harper. Maybe with the next election –but as long as he's living at twenty-four Sussex, there's no dancing."
"Well, when's your next election?"
"We don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know? How can you not know?" Joe asked.
"We don't have set terms for the Prime Minister like there are for the President. An election in Canada can be called at any time, not necessarily after a four year term –it could be before the four year mark, it could be after. I mean usually it works out to be every four years or so, but like I said, we don't have term limits, so if a political party has the same leader for a long time, that leader can stay in power or run to keep his power time and time again –no one's ousted after two terms."
"That seems weird."
"It's not weird, but it does get tricky if you disagree with the party in power. Change in leadership can get convoluted. The same way things get convoluted here, really –the same, but, different. Plus, we don't vote for the Prime Minister directly."
"I don't understand. Then who do you vote for?" Chris asked.
"Local members of parliament. Votes are counted towards the party that the member of parliament belongs to. The leader of whatever party wins the majority becomes Prime Minister."
"So there's no love for this Harper dude?" Matt asked.
"Not much," Daniel chuckled.
"And you have no idea how long you're stuck with him?"
"Nope."
"Maybe you should become an American, Frenchie. After all, hope is dawning on our great land. People are dancing in the streets –literally!" Jess smiled.
"Maybe I should. Wanna dance, Jess?" Daniel winked.
"I don't dance. Besides, you're not really my type."
"You're not mine either, but Rory and Lydia aren't here and all we have is each other."
"I'll pass."
"You're no fun."
"I'll dance with you, Daniel," Matt said, taking his hand.
"Andrew, shall we?" Joe asked.
"Yes, let's," Andrew said.
"May I cut in?" Chris said to Daniel, putting a gentle hand on Matt's shoulder. "I've always wanted to dance with a Frenchman."
Jess watched his friends dancing and twirling playfully around him and he couldn't help but laugh. "You guys are disturbingly graceful, did you know that?"
"How are you affording this, Ror?" Jess asked.
"The same way you did. Are you forgetting how good I am at scrimping?" Rory smiled.
"No, I haven't forgotten at all."
"I just thought it'd be nice if we closed out this crazy chapter of our lives here. After all, this was the site of our best date ever and where you seriously outdid yourself."
"That it is," Jess laughed. They stood together in room five ninety-six of Chicago's Ritz Carlton. "How did you get a room at the Ritz? Now? How did you get this room, no less?"
"I may have booked it way in advance of us making this plan –you know, just in case."
"I'm sorry I missed Grant Park," he said softly.
"Me too. It was unbelievable. It was the most amazing thing," Rory said. "But Philadelphia was a good place to be. Pennsylvania was a clincher for Obama, without that he might not have won. I bet it was quite the scene. I hear there was dancing in the streets."
"That there was. It was quite the spectacle."
"I also have it on good authority that you didn't."
"Didn't what?"
"Dance in the streets."
"You heard about the dancing?"
"I did."
"From who?"
"All of them. They all took turns laughing at you for being such a spoiled sport. And apparently very sensitive, lest your dancing not measure up," Rory laughed.
"I'm whacking them all upside the head when we get home," Jess sighed.
"Say it again, Jess," Rory whispered, hugging him tighter and pressing her forehead against his.
Jess' lips curled up into a beautiful crooked smile. "When we get home," he breathed.
"When we get home," Rory repeated.
"For the record…"
"Hm?"
"You're the only person I care about dancing with –no one else. Rory, what you've done here, reporting on this campaign –you're amazing. I love you so much and I'm so proud of you," Jess whispered, holding her face gently. "I can't believe we got here, you're moving to Philadelphia. We get to be boring –and see each other all the time."
"If you hadn't pushed me and supported me, I might not have done it, so thank you."
"It was pretty selfless of me, wasn't it?" he mused. "You should probably thank me a lot. Like, all night."
Rory laughed. "As long as I'm not working alone."
"Never."
"You might get sick of me."
"What?"
"It might be downright weird, for things to be so easy for us."
"Maybe, but it'll be the best kind of weird."
"You might get sick of me –seeing me all the time."
"Again I say –never. Do you feel okay Rory, about moving?" Jess asked gently.
"I feel better than okay, Jess. This is what's next for us. I'm ready; I've been ready for a while," Rory assured him.
Jess held Rory close and smirked against her skin, chuckling softly before capturing her lips in a deep kiss. He hadn't been intending to, but as their tongues tangled together and they breathed each other in, his hands fisted her hair greedily and started pulling hard. He tilted her head sharply enough to make her gasp as he moved his lips to suck on her neck.
Rory pushed back against him until he was forced to start stumbling backwards. When Jess' legs hit the bed, she grabbed his shirt in both fists and dragged her lips across his face. "Take your pants off," she whispered.
"You too," Jess said, fiddling with her pants with one hand while divesting himself of his own with the other. "Christ," he breathed when he saw what she was wearing.
Rory giggled as she finished pulling her shirt over her head and kicking her pants aside. "We're bookending this campaign with sex in the exact same hotel room we were in back in July –did you really think I'd be wearing something else?"
Jess raked his eyes greedily across Rory's body, growing impossibly hard at the sight of her. "I hoped you wouldn't be."
"You still can't rip them," she warned.
"I would never… but just to be safe, I'll let you take the underwear off yourself," Jess whispered with a smile, kissing her slowly as he sat down on the bed and pulled Rory with him.
Rory removed her panties and Jess' boxers before he was able to sit down fully. His shirt was the last thing to go. When she moved her hands to unclasp her bra, he stopped her and held her wrists firmly as he swept his tongue into her mouth once more and pulled her back into his lap.
When the kiss broke, Rory showered hot kisses down Jess' neck and licked the hollow of his throat before swirling her tongue around his nipples, pulling one softly between her teeth.
"Down, girl," he said playfully.
She smiled against his skin and laughed quietly before lowering herself onto him and taking him all in.
"Fuck," Jess cursed.
"You were saying?" Rory asked teasingly.
Jess sat up slightly, rendering Rory breathless as she realized he was not filling her as fully as she thought. Laughing softly, Jess unclasped Rory's bra, pulled it away and threw it in the corner. As he started to thrust, he lowered his head against her breast and caught a nipple between his teeth and bit down –harder than she was expecting.
"Ah, Jess," she whimpered.
"Be careful, two can play," he said breathlessly, moving his hands to grasp her hips.
"Tighter –grip me tighter."
"God I love you," he whispered as he gripped her more forcefully, controlling the rhythm with which she rode him.
"Jess," Rory panted, running her fingers roughly through his short hair and beard, "I love you." She started to feel that ever-elusive tickle, and so she chased it.
As Rory picked up her pace, she tightened her legs on either side of Jess' hips –almost painfully. Jess encouraged it all, digging his fingers harder into her flesh and forcing her back and forth faster, sharper. Capturing her lips in a kiss, they cried loudly into each other's mouths as they both came.
"Just think," Jess said with a deep sigh as Rory curled up into his side, "now we can do that every day."
"Yes please," Rory giggled. "I love you, Jess," she said sincerely.
"More than anything," he whispered. "I love you more than… anything."
The rest of November was a busy, blissful blur. After leaving Chicago, Rory went home to Stars Hollow to recharge her batteries, pack her things and catch up with the town. Mid-month, she met Lydia in Philadelphia to get their keys –the rental office agreed to give them over early seeing that the unit they were moving into was already empty- and the boys were enlisted to help with the moving.
Rory brought Lydia back with her to Stars Hollow for a few days and Lorelai gleefully told Lydia about Daniel being 'the Chip and Dale guy,'; Lorelai also concluded that Lydia was the most adorable human she'd ever met –who wasn't also the fruit of her loins- and decreed that she was more than worthy of Daniel.
Jess and Daniel pooled a little bit of extra money to get the girls a gift card to Ikea to help them furnish their apartment. Once keys were in hand, the boys spent every evening and weekend at the apartment putting together furniture and inventing new curse words when none of the instructions made sense. One day when Rory was in Stars Hollow and Lydia was in Ottawa, Jess tripped over one of the back panels to a tall, narrow DVD tower, cracking the wood.
"Shit," he cursed.
"Way to go, Tinker Bell," Daniel laughed. "What are we gonna do now?"
"It's only one section and the wood didn't crack all the way through. We finish putting it together and we fill it with crap, that's what we do. They'll never know –guaranteed. I am not standing in line at Ikea to return this thing and bring another one back here that I have to build. I'll murder someone."
"I don't blame you. Hell, I might start murdering people."
"That I'd like to see," Jess chuckled.
"I'll give you your due Jess, this is a beautiful building," Daniel said. "I might even look into one bedroom vacancies to move in next summer. I don't really want to live in residence past my second year. My job as a sous chef will more than cover the rent."
"You work as a sous chef? I thought you were only a line cook…"
"Well, technically –on paper I'm a line cook, but they give me a lot of sous chef responsibilities. The head chef kinda took me under his wing and he's teaching me a lot of the intricacies of creating a fine dining experience that most line cooks never get to learn.
"I almost went to culinary school, the best one in Ontario actually –went through the interview process and cooked my best meal as a type of entrance exam to be let in, but I decided not to go. I wanted to study English Lit."
"Wow, man. That's amazing. So, if the English Lit thing doesn't lead to a job you can probably go back to the culinary thing –skip the training by the sounds of it, even. The pay wouldn't suck either.
"So –wait –Dani Boy, do you make –pretty food? Like the kind of food that people don't want to eat because it's basically art on a plate?"
"The prettiest," Daniel winked. "One of these days Lydia and Rory are bound to want to cook for us –you've told me just how good Rory isn't with cooking and while I think Lydia can fare a little better, she's not exactly at home in the kitchen. It won't be long before you get to taste my cooking, when the inevitable saving-the-girls-from-burning-down-the-building happens."
"Aw man it would be so great if you lived here," Jess said earnestly. "The four of us living in the same building would be so awesome. Usually I'm less genuinely happy about the idea of my life becoming a sitcom –but this really would be great."
"It does have a certain sitcomy vibe to it, doesn't it?" Daniel laughed. "Friends, Will & Grace, The Big Bang Theory, Seinfeld –all an abundance of examples of art imitating our life, our ideal lives imitating art."
"I will happily have you as my Kramer, Frenchie," Jess cackled. "Hey, how's Lydia doing with the job search?"
"Great!" Daniel said excitedly. "She was hired by a mid-sized weekly. She's really happy about it. What about Rory –how's she doing?"
"Also great," Jess smiled. "She got a job writing for the online sister publication of the Philadelphia Inquirer."
"Wow, the Inquirer is like, the only daily game in town, isn't it?"
"It's the biggest, most widely circulated paper. They told her that if she maintains such high quality pieces and work ethic, she's pretty much guaranteed a promotion to become a full-time columnist with the daily, hardcopy Inquirer."
"That's amazing! Our women are hard-core," Daniel said proudly.
"Yeah," Jess agreed quietly and sincerely, "they really are."
Rory landed a job with Philly dot com, the online subsidiary of the Philadelphia Inquirer. If the calibre of her writing remained as high as her reports on the campaign, she was promised a promotion to the hardcopy Inquirer within the year. They were very understanding of her continued commitment to Hugo until Obama's inauguration and promised her leeway to honour her devotion to the assignment in order to see it through.
Lydia was hired with The Public Record, a Philadelphia weekly with about forty thousand in circulation.
December first was official move in day; the official beginning of the next phase in their lives. Jess and Rory would be living in the same city, just a short commute away from each other by public transit, car or bike –permanently- for the first time in the nearly three years since the night Rory showed up at Truncheon, the night when Jess and Rory promised to stop running from each other –the night that changed everything. They both loved each other more than they thought to be possible and even though they didn't jump right into living together, it was an amazing feeling to finally be in the same city; this was a big shift –a shift for the better, which had been a long time coming. If the campaign went on any longer, their relationship ran the risk of not being able to withstand the separation. Jess and Rory both knew there would be an adjustment period –not only to the drastic change in their relationship dynamic, but also to Rory adapting to life in a new city and starting a new job. They understood it wouldn't be smooth sailing all the time; they knew that getting stuck in the odd rut was inevitable –but this was the most exciting time in their young lives. This was their long awaited calm after the storm.
For Daniel and Lydia it was also a new beginning –but in the sense it was the true beginning of their life as a couple –a coupley couple who, unlike Jess and Rory, were making their first foray into finding normalcy of any kind. No more trying to get to know each other while being separated by the entire country. From now on, they had the luxury of taking things slow if they wanted –lots of movie nights, dinner dates, romantic strolls and curling up for a relaxing evening in. They knew beyond any doubt, despite the unconventional way in which it happened, that they were absolutely in love with each other –and now, for the first time, they could bask in that love and let it grow, spending time together the way normal couples do, cuddling and falling asleep together in front of the TV. Now they could finally be a couple, in every sense of the word.
Lydia would be making a lot of similar adjustments to what Rory would be going through –adjusting to a new job and a new home. Lydia and Daniel were very much in love but they had to build a strong foundation in the midst of all of these big changes whereas Rory and Jess' foundations had been built over the last two and a half years. It wouldn't be easy and idyllic all the time, but the love that they had for each other was strong enough to see them through whatever bumps in the road might lie ahead.
For now though, the girls had to focus on the smaller things rather than the big things. They were each starting their new jobs on Thursday December forth, only two days after officially moving in. As excited as they were, they also understood that they were wading into unknown territory and they were anxious and nervous about what lay ahead.
It was the beginning of a new chapter, one in which –at long last- Jess and Rory didn't have distance to contend with. It would be a luxury and a gift to fall into a quiet, domesticated routine and to be able to see each other nearly every day instead of just on weekends. This was something they'd been talking about and looking forward to for a long time –the simplest things were what they wanted most and it would be the little things that so many others took for granted that Rory and Jess would covet and cherish.
Now, rather than melding two separate lives, Jess and Rory could begin building one life together. Neither of them knew what the future held, but they couldn't wait to find out. This was a long awaited beginning of a wonderful journey –life had more than a few surprises in store for them.
A/N: And so we transition into the final phase. Now is when we start pushing toward a finish line. Welcome to the final act, kiddos! :)
