A/N: I know what you're all thinking - just when Ultra had a good fic going and was updating every week without fail, she goes and starts another one and messes everything up! Well, actually, I hope that's not what you're thinking, because I'd like to think my regular readers would be excited to know they'll be getting TWO Lit fics from me... though it will probably mean that there'll be a slightly bigger gap between updates on Finding a Place. Oops? Sorry, peops, but I couldn't help myself. This idea isn't going away - I simply have to write and post it!

Disclaimer: All recognisable characters from Gilmore Girls belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino and other folks who aren't me.

Chapter 1

It really was not what Rory had in mind when she called Logan and asked if he wanted to hang out. Her assumption was a very one-on-one situation, especially after what had happened at her grandparents' vow renewal. As soon as the guy who opened the door moved aside and she stepped into Logan's dorm, she realised her mistake. It was more Reno than romance. Half a dozen guys or more spread around the place, with the drinking and the gambling.

Not that Rory had a problem with a game of poker and a few beers, it just hadn't been what she was expecting. She thought she covered her disappointment fairly well, didn't even make a fuss when Logan called her 'kiddo' or his buddy Robert started questioning if she was reporting on the whole event.

She figured she would stay for just a little bit and then leave, sure that neither Logan nor anybody else was likely to notice. She wasn't about to even attempt to join in the card game and she really wasn't much of a drinker, so there was little point in her staying, or so Rory thought, until suddenly she spotted the odd man out.

Getting up from her seat beside Logan, he didn't seem to react at all as Rory moved towards the couch and stopped stock still in front of the guy sat alone there, his nose in a book she knew very well. Maybe she got in his light, because when he glanced up at her over the top of his book, he didn't exactly look thrilled to see her.

"Can I help you?" he asked shortly.

"'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,'" she quoted without pause from the thin tome in his hand.

She got a smirk for her trouble.

"Huh," said the guy with the book, staring at her in the most disarming way. "I thought they said you were a girl scout."

Rory rolled her eyes and tilted her head towards the offending person who had opened the door to her knock and described her exactly that way to Logan.

"That guy doesn't even know me," she insisted. "I love Ginsberg. Howl is just so revolutionary, so epic."

"Can't argue with that," he said, moving over a little on the couch.

An invitation to join him, Rory assumed, and immediately dropped down beside him.

"So, you're a friend of Logan's, right?" he asked her as she did so.

"Aren't you?" she countered.

"Not in the same way," he replied quickly, that same smirk on his lips that Rory was already enjoying more than she probably should. "I'm Jess."

"Rory," she told him, shaking hands. "You don't play poker?"

"Sometimes." Jess shrugged. "But with these guys, the money gets stupid too fast."

"I noticed that." Rory nodded. "Two thousand dollars on one hand?"

"Wait until the scotch really kicks in." Jess rolled his eyes. "So, you've read Howl, and more than once."

"Easily forty times. You?"

"Probably the same."

It was that simple. It started in San Francisco, together in Rockland, but the conversation quickly travelled through a hundred other worlds, via every book from one end of the library to the other. Jess liked the Beats, Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, and books about the history of punk music, but he had also read Jane Austen, the Russians, and had some pretty strong views on poetry.

Rory was in awe. When it came to talking books, she really only had Paris who could keep up with her. Sure, Logan was well-read and could hold his own, but Jess was something else entirely. She kept expecting to lose him somewhere when she got deep into all her favourites, but he never missed a beat. Though she was trying not to be big-headed about it, she had a feeling her own knowledge might just have been impressing him too.

"You read The Fountainhead when you were ten?"

Rory laughed. "I did, but I didn't understand a word of it, so I had to re-read it when I was fifteen."

"You make me feel bad. I have yet to make it through."

"You have to try again. Nobody can write a forty-page monologue like Ayn Rand."

They were so deep in conversation, Rory had almost forgotten the poker game going on a few feet away, until suddenly Robert's winning streak seemed to come to an end, or at least a pause. The crash of chips flying across the table as he cursed colourfully certainly was an attention grabber. The tantrum was brief, however, and the guys were soon back to their game.

Rory looked back at Jess, who rolled his eyes at the antics of the others.

"So, when do you think you'll get your dorm back?" asked Rory, settling into the couch a little more comfortably beside him, even as he frowned at her. "This is your place too, right? You share with Logan?"

"Yes and no," Jess admitted. "I don't go to Yale," he explained then. "I actually live in Hartford right now, at the Huntzberger house."

"Oh," Rory wasn't sure what to make of that. "So, you guys are... related?" she checked, feeling very confused.

After all, Logan hadn't mentioned a brother or even a cousin or anyone like that who might be living at his house. Plus, she had never seen Jess hanging out with the guys before. She supposed since she had mostly been around the Life and Death Brigade at their events, she wouldn't have seen him, since he didn't go to Yale, but it still seemed weird.

"Me and Logan, we go way back," he said, waving his hand in some absent gesture to show just how far. "Long story short, he's letting me crash at his place until I figure out where to go next. I mean, it's not like he doesn't have the room, right?"

Since she had never been to the Huntzberger place, Rory couldn't say for sure, but she was willing to bet Jess was absolutely right. Their house was likely to be even bigger than her grandparents place, and that was pretty big.

The journalist in her wanted to ask a hundred other questions about Jess and his connection to Logan. After all, 'we go way back' really could mean just about anything, any amount of time, any kind of connection. Did they know each other from boarding school perhaps? Were their families tied together by a marriage or something? She opened her mouth to ask these and many more interrogating questions, but never actually got the chance.

"Tonight, there was way too much drama going on at home, so I came over to Yale, thinking I could steal Huntzberger's place while he was out doing whatever he does with his secret society buddies."

Rory was surprised to hear him say that, even if he did lower his voice a little.

"I don't think you're supposed to talk to me about that," she replied, just as quietly.

Jess smirked again. "What? You're not the same Rory who wrote the article in the paper about the LDB?"

"You read that?"

"Logan left it lying around the house somewhere," Jess told her, shrugging nonchalantly. "I was curious, I read it. You know, you're a pretty decent reporter."

"Thank you." Rory smiled. "I like to think so, since I do want to be a journalist after college."

"Paula Zahn?" asked Jess.

"Christianne Amanpour," she told him with a grin.

The impressed look was back on Jess' face. Rory was just trying to decide if she would rank that as better than the smirk or not when suddenly she felt a hand on her shoulder. Craning her neck, she looked up to see Logan stood behind her, smiling tightly.

"Hey, you two getting better acquainted?"

"Seemed that way," Jess told him, reaching for his book from the table.

"Well, that's great," said Logan, "but I could use having my good luck charm back. What do you say, Ace? Come help me win my fortune back from Robert and Colin?"

"Oh, well..."

She started to say maybe she could just stay talking with Jess, but when she turned to glance at him again, he was back to the book reading, almost as if their whole conversation had never happened at all. Blinking a couple of times out of surprise, she looked back to Logan then and forced a smile.

"Uh, sure, yeah, I could come help you out, I guess," she offered, taking the hand he offered her and returning to the poker table.

It would be foolish not to go. After all, she had come over specifically to hang out with Logan and had felt pretty put out when he didn't seem as keen to spend time with her. Now he was asking for her company, it wouldn't make sense to say no, and yet, Rory wasn't exactly thrilled about being stuck on the outer rim of a poker game with ridiculous stakes and players that had got a lot more drunk since the last hand she had spectated.

As Logan and Robert started bickering again, with Colin paying referee, Rory stole another glance at Jess, only to find him still engrossed by Howl and Other Poems. She heaved a sigh without really meaning to.

This night really hadn't been at all what she thought it was going to be. So much for spontaneity and being of the moment, Rory was starting to wonder if maybe she had made a big mistake in ever calling Logan and asking if he wanted to hang out.

Still, she had to admit that it had probably been worth it. After all, she had a really interesting talk with a really interesting (and very good looking) guy and that was an unexpected treat, even if the guy in question wasn't Logan, and even if she never saw said guy ever again.

To Be Continued...

A/N2: As you can probably tell, this fic is canon-divergent AU kind of thing, so, basically, everything up to this point happened exactly as you saw it on the show, except for one major change - Jess was never there. In fact, he has never even been mentioned. So, what do you think so far? :)