Dean was an idiot.
Honestly, he made it kinda hard to feel sorry for him sometimes. No, really. Jess tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, even after Rory but some days he couldn't help but wonder if there was a single thought behind those eyes. Big, empty brown eyes that followed you around and made you sick. It was like having a puppy that was 10 feet tall dangling over your head and Jess just couldn't seem to resist the urge to kick said puppy in the proverbial balls. Like, now, for instance.
Jess thrummed his pencil into faded paper and scoffed under his breath. His mouth twisted into a smirk and took a second to give a side glance to the boy in the chair behind him. Jess felt his IQ points drop by the second as Dean's gaze beamed into the back of his skull. Jess shifted in his seat and tapped the pencil harder. The teacher's monologue faded audibly into the background as did the words on the page in front of him. Jess shifted again, his mind begging Dante Alighieri to magically make this coked-out nightmare of a town disappear. Thanks to Gigantor two feet behind him, he couldn't seem to even make the room disappear. He closed the dented cover of Inferno and did his best Gumby impersonation.
Jess's face gave Dean a blank expression with a handful of aggressive blinks.
Dean caught his hard stare (honestly it was hard to miss) and changed his dopey attitude into one of annoyance.
Jess didn't come here to make friends. Get a clue, Columbo. He turned back around and flipped the pages back open. He didn't want to come here period but no one gave a fuck about what he wanted.
Liz never cared what he wanted.
Jess furrowed his brow and slammed his book closed when the bell rang. He shot up and made his way for the EXIT.
He zipped up his jacket and rolled his book up until it fit right into his back pocket. The snow outside crunched under his feet as he enthusiastically carved his way to freedom.
No assholes in sight. Something about the first day of Winter Break turned all the Stars Hallow students into shrapnel. The snow would have turned a muddy brown in New York by now. Hopefully, Liz was buried in it.
He made a B-line for Luke's, resisting the urge to circle the block a couple of times. Luke would freak if Jess was late today. The guy had been PMSing all morning about something or another. Christmas Eve, Lorelei, friends, and obligations, what have you. Luke thought he was masking his anxiety about the whole Liz-Christmas situation but Jess didn't have the heart to tell the poor guy Bush was a better liar than he was, and that was on a good day.
The boy took to the other side of the street past the psychotic line of snowmen and oddly enough snow women. Huh. It had character, he would admit that much. No doubt tainted by the hands of the senior Gilmore but something extra that could only have been done by the younger of the two women.
Luke was picking up chairs and placing them on the tables when he got there. The bell knocked some ice onto the floor when the door opened, immediately becoming a series of shoe-shaped indents.
Luke perked up like a damn puppy dog and said, "Jess! Great, you're back," awkwardness suddenly fell into his delivery, "I'm just closing up shop early, I thought you and I could try out some Danes-Mariano Christmas traditions or something."
Jess noticed his straight path to the door behind the curtain was partially blocked. He knew he wouldn't hear the end of it if he didn't at least acknowledge the man's existence.
Luke's awkwardness was proving fatal. He waited for half a beat for Jess to respond.
Jess blinked and nodded.
Luke mirrored his response and continued blocking his exit, "You know since you're staying here with me over Winter Break I thought…well, I thought we haven't had the chance to uh-"
Jess kept staring.
Luke finally gave in and said, "Who am I kidding? You'll probably disappear into a book or the TV and I'll just be down here, doing inventory-"
"Great," he said and took his leave behind the curtain.
He unzipped his jacket as he ran up the stairs and let gravity crush the door back into its wooden frame. Jess proceeded to drop his possessions randomly around the apartment, hoping for some kind of latent reaction from the older man but then guilt cut into his well-crafted plan. Luke was trying to protect him, for whatever reason.
It was weird. No one had ever tried to protect him like Luke. Then again, no one was like Luke. Not even the man himself. Poor guy was probably whacked out on whatever vegan crap he had religiously pledged himself to. Jess winced, he hated to say it, or think it but Luke could really stand to get laid. The senior Gilmore had her panties all in a bunch when he suggested it but honestly at this point, their salivating was just getting plain old sad. Not to mention the longing, innocent Bambi doe-eyes they both had when they didn't think the other adult was looking. Jess wanted to impale his eyes out every time he was trapped in a room with his uncle and Lorelai.
He sighed, opening and closing the fridge, hoping there would be some kind of epiphany after the hundredth action. Jess brushed an ungelled hair strand behind his ear and opened the door again. Maybe it was a magical door that would take him to a fairyland with winter-themed witches and fauns who knitted red scarves and horribly confused children. Better yet, maybe he'd win $50 or somehow make all the stale health junk food disappear. All Jess managed to do was let the cold air out and wrack up Luke's electric bill.
Unlike Liz, Luke wasn't one to skip paying the electricity. He wasn't one to skip any bill. Jess got the impression that the older man could always afford to. The teenager left the fridge well enough alone and began pacing, his skin crawling and itching to get out of there.
Get out of here.
Jess closed his eyes. He ignored the line dancing in his stomach and crawled over his inflatable mattress to turn on his music. The mattress flattened quickly with his footprint and then bent again roughly with an additional knee.
Enter Sandman became the loudest thing in the apartment. Juxtaposed to the restless feeling that burned at the end of every nerve and fiber in his limbs: it became pretty damn loud. Jess wiped a hand across his face as he settled into the mattress and moth-scented blankets. He pulled a dented yet well cared for roll of pages out from underneath him, mentally counting the minutes before Luke would storm upstairs in a lumberjack-sized tangent. It'd be something about fucking up his hearing or disturbing the town square or something equally demented. Jess traced over the lines in Dante's Inferno and kept counting.
His absence rang in Jess's ears louder than any tangent ever could. It almost made him wonder if Luke knew that he knew. Maybe. He kinda doubted it, Luke's interpersonal intelligence was almost as horrifying as his level of self-awareness. Almost. Jess closed his eyes, willing away his life and his environment for one penned on paper. But the itch still crawled, the apartment was Luke-less and Metallica somehow wasn't loud enough to take his mind off of Liz.
She didn't care what anyone thought, so why waste time on that nut job?
Jess scribbled in the pages with his pencil. The fine charcoal became aggressive until he bolted up and grabbed his leather jacket off the floor.
It wasn't ten seconds later before he almost jogged down the wooden steps to the open diner.
Luke called from the back room, "Jess?"
He flew towards the door before unlocking the bolts and ripping it open, "I'm going out!"
"Don't forget we have to be at the inn by-"
Snow fell to the ground with a slam and the silence was deafening.