Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the story of Gilmore Girls. They belong to the WB and to Amy Sherman-Palladino.
Author's Note: Just a short little story I wrote when I was inspired by lucia marin's fabulous writing. This is a new direction of writing for me, and an experiment of sorts, so please let me know what you think. Enjoy!
PossessionShe doesn't really know what possessed her to come here, at night, to ring his doorbell. She thinks she's crazy; she doesn't have any verifiable proof but she's fairly certain that coming to his house at three o'clock in the morning without a purpose is pretty insane.
The house is big, she thinks. Huge, even. A mansion, like one you'd picture in tales about the aristocracy in the nineteenth century. She doesn't like it. She prefers her own house, her cozy little home back in Stars Hollow, with her mother and her colorful rug and their tattered couch and their broken coffee pot. She doubts anyone has ever called this place home.
And yet she's here.
Possessed. That's the word she used, and that's how she's going to think of this later, when she has time to sit down and analyze this, carefully, logically—logically? She doesn't think it will ever be possible to look at this logically. Insanity, that's what it is, a break in her normal way of thinking, some sort of strange twist in her normally ordinary life.
Even the weather is crazy today. It's dry, drier than anything they've seen in months, a hot dryness that makes her want to open her mouth wider to breathe in more air, the hot dryness that makes her wish for rain or water or an ice pack. It's even too hot for coffee.
She hears thunder in the distance. She heard somewhere that this is the most dangerous weather, where lightning can strike anything and set it on fire instantly, and she thinks that it's a paradox, this dry weather with the sounds of what should bring rain but doesn't.
She rings the doorbell again. It doesn't occur to her to wonder if anyone's home. It was a blind certainty that led her here, a focus and concentration that astonished her as she got out of bed and got into her car—her mother's car—and drove.
Tunnel vision. That's what it feels like, this intense need to be in his house, in his arms, right now, this minute, an hour ago. It's as if everything else has disappeared slowly and all that's left is him, somewhere behind this thick solid door, and she needs to find him.
She sees a flash of lightning in the sky. She sees it exactly three seconds before she hears the thunder. She counts automatically as she watches the remains of the thin silver jagged line fade away in the night sky. Three seconds. That means the storm hasn't arrived yet.
The wind whips through her hair. Dry, so dry that it doesn't bring her any relief and she feels like she's standing in a desert, her lips chapped, her long legs bare, the shorts that were once pants ending far above her knees.
Dark. It's almost dark, and she wishes the light above the doorway would flicker out because she hates seeing its artificial light on a night like this when everything should be natural, real, carnal, raw.
The door opens. It's him, and she's startled because this house—this mansion—doesn't seem to be the type where the residents would open the doors by themselves. She almost expected a fat butler to open the door and ask her whom she's here for, but then again, butlers have to sleep, too. She didn't really consider that.
He's not wearing a shirt. That's understandable, she thinks, on a night like this. She doesn't want to be wearing a shirt, either.
He looks surprised to see her. She can't blame him. Maybe they could discuss whatever she came her for—whenever she finds out what that is—and then tomorrow morning he'll think he dreamed it. He looks sleepy enough, tired enough, and she thinks that if he showed up on her doorstep and then disappeared by the morning, then she'd probably think it was a dream, too.
It wouldn't be her first.
He opens the door wider, silently, the open space beckoning her to come in, and she does. He puts a finger up to his lips and turns, and she follows him, silently, as they make countless turns through the maze of doorways and hallways and darkened rooms. I could get lost in here, she muses, and then thinks, I'd like to.
She's seen this house before. They were doing a history project, and of course the powers that be had paired them and forced them to work together. It wasn't the kind of project you could do over the phone, and so she'd spend time here, flopping herself down on her stomach on the rug and taking out her papers and folders and books. There had been a lot of work, and so they had not argued.
They make it to another glass door and she somehow knows that this is the last one. She peers through it and sees the blue light of the pool shimmering, reflecting the pale glow of the moon and the flickering of the lightning-filled sky. She follows him outside, back into the stifling dryness that is still better than the artificial cold inside.
He turns to face her. She stays silent.
So does he.
She's never been good at silences. She starts speaking first, catching the silence of the moment and taking it away, throwing it out, filling the empty space in front of her, avoiding an awkward silence because she doesn't think she could take one, not with him, not now. She'd rather talk.
And so she talks.
"I came here because… well, I don't know, because I'm crazy, I think, and because I couldn't sleep and I hate this weather, and I woke up tonight thinking that my blanket was too warm and that we've graduated and I might not ever see you again. And that made me wonder if I'd be sad if I'd never see you again, and I thought that since I was thinking about you it must mean that I care at least a little, or maybe I did. And I remembered those nights, in Madeline's piano room and then in Louise's library, between the shelves, do you remember?" she pauses for a breath, the gap between her words shortened through years of practice. "And I don't want to leave and not know, you know? Because what if I never find another corner of a library, another gap between two shelves, and I'll always look for that feeling of my back, crammed into the edge of a shelf, the sound of books falling, and it won't be there?"
She looks up at him, her breath short, nervous, and she knows that now that she's said everything, her insane courage won't last her very long and she should leave now, while she can without her cheeks turning red and her nervous clumsiness returning, and his face is surprised but otherwise expressionless and she's prepared but not really for the mortification she'll feel in the morning when she wakes up and realizes what she's done, what she's said.
It takes him several minutes.
"I remember," he says.
"Okay," she nods, and starts to turn. He grabs her arm.
"Wait," he says. "Is that all you came here for?"
"I don't know," she answers him.
"You don't know?" he looks at her, uncomprehending.
She doesn't think she can explain to him about the tunnel vision, the intense need she felt when she got out of bed to go and see him one last time, so she just says it again.
"I don't know." She licks her chapped lips and feels his gaze travel down to them, to the cracks in the dry skin and her tongue flitting out to moisten them, and before she knows it his mouth is covering hers and her arms are around his neck, tight, the fingers of her right hand clutching at his hair.
She feels his bare chest against her, the wide expanse of muscle and bone and flesh, and she is pressed hard against him, the thin layer of her tank top insignificant, and she thinks that maybe if two people are sharing this dry weather then it's not so bad, not so dry and hot or maybe just not so noticeable, and then all continuous thought flees as his tongue slips into her mouth and his palms, rough and soft at the same time, are traveling down her arms, to her hips, and pull her even closer.
Her long brown hair comes tumbling down from the loose ponytail it was in and she hears the metal part of the hair band clank against the cement floor somewhere in the background. It's wild, her hair, wild and long and dark, and it covers both their faces, tickling their cheeks and eyes, as the wind blows stronger and she feels the first few droplets of rain.
The flashes of light are disregarded now as she forgets to count the seconds, doesn't register that the thunder sounds immediately after and that it is starting to pour, not until she rakes her hands through his blond hair and realizes that it's wet, that they're wet, that her thin shirt is soaked and is clinging to her body, that water is pouring down his back in torrents of small drops. They pull apart to breathe, just slightly, the space between them just large enough to allow air to go through, and she looks at him, her eyes wide and blue and his eyes darker, deeper, water clinging to their eyelashes and dripping down their noses, and then he kisses her one more time, slowly, and whispers, "Hi."
And she smiles at him, understanding his greeting, his attempt at politeness in the middle of whatever they have created between them, and says it back. "Hi."
And then he lowers his mouth to hers again, the claps of thunder loud and the space around them dark now that the moon has hidden behind the clouds, naturally dark except for the bursts of light from the brilliant zigzags that are decorating the sky, and she thinks now that maybe they're both crazy, insane, but it doesn't seem to matter anymore a she closes her eyes and tastes only caramel and water and the undecipherable taste of him.