Title: Bruins and Rebels | Chapter Five | Volleyballs and
Superbeds
Author: Nate
Pairing: Paris/Jess, Brianna/Doug and couplings with the ancillary characters introduced in later chapters.
Spoilers: The big one would be the Jess/Milo spin-off series, which takes the Jess character to Venice, CA with his father. Otherwise it's unlikely I'm spoiling any of the upcoming plots. The earth-shattering and horrible news from The Big One is included and a major factor in the story.
Rating: PG-13 (swearing, sexual innuendo and thoughts).
Disclaimer: Amy Sherman-Palladino, Hofflund-Pollone and Warner Bros. Television along with the newer companies involved with the spin-off own the Paris and Jess characters. Other trademarks are owned by their respective companies. Sadly my offer to give Liza 26 birthday kisses for $2,600 was rejected by the WB as too low.
Archiving: Usual suspects; FF.net and LWL. Make sure to ask if you want to archive it yourself.
Summary: Paris gets her first gig for UCLA's Daily Bruin newspaper, but it's in a field she has no expertise in, so Brianna has to help her out. Meanwhile Doug is starting to slowly woo Brianna into his arms and Jess is trying to make Paris a larger part of his life.
Author's Notes: This update is coming out on June 5th, 2003, which is Liza Weil's 26th birthday, so this update had to come out on this day or else, heh. Happy birthday to her, and I'll try to keep the obsessive AN comments about her to minimum, except to say that thank goodness the elder Weils had a fun month in September of '76, or else I might be talking about another actress playing Paris instead (shudders). The usual thanks to my betas (Ash, Chris and Jamie), along with all those who left feedback, thanks a lot. Hopefully this will sate your thirst until I update once I get out of my temporary writer's block. Enjoy :)!
Paris was in good spirits as she walked into Kerckhoff Hall the Wednesday after Labor Day, carrying a leather portfolio full of all her best articles for the Franklin, and the letters to the editor she frequently contributed to the Hartford Courant and the New Haven Register. Also along for the walk were her many journalistic achievement awards, along with the trusty red pencil she used for two years to edit New England's oldest student newspaper. She deduced that the chief of the Daily Bruin would ask her to prove she was one of the best high school editors in America, and there was no way she'd leave any doubt in Diane Broughton's mind that to have such a hard worker on her staff would pay off when it came to beating their crosstown rivals at the Daily Trojan at their own game and when it came to winning the highest honors college journalism could offer.
She knew that in the next four years, there was going to be a lot of hard work to do in order to take the editor's chair, and that she was starting right back on the bottom as a freshman. College students had different needs when it came to what they wanted to read in a paper, and stories like the ones she did back in Hartford wouldn't fly at a college newspaper. She remembered her first day on the Franklin staff as one of the worst she ever had. She had come in expecting to be giving the big stories right away, but by the time the day ended, Paris found herself as 'chore girl'. It was a unforgiving task, where she had to pick up snacks at the vending machine for the senior staff and run copy back and forth between the offset press on one end of the building and the Franklin offices on the other. By the time that night ended, Paris vowed that she had no future in journalism, but somehow found the strength to soldier on. She kept at it, and despite an offer of promotion by the faculty adviser later in the year, she refused it, saying that she would rather earn it with experience than just the position being handed to her. Paris continued to toil for the next three years, moving up the ranks from production staff and graphics, then as a student reporter until her hard work was rewarded with her becoming editor in junior year. Paris wasn't expecting any less from UCLA's newspaper, and expected to have to crawl her way up to the top for four years.
There was also the added challenge that she didn't know the lay of the land as well as a native Californian would. Paris would need to prove that her smarts and attention to detail, and the fact that she learned at an accelerated rate in order to impress her superiors at the newspaper she was about to apply to work for.
She stood in front of the door leading into room 118, and tried to determine for herself how many people were already in the room. It was audition day, and her fellow journalists were also waiting to walk into the Bruin offices. The scene seemed more fitting for a Hollywood casting call than it did for trying to get work on a student newspaper, less the whiny kids vying to be the next spokeskid for Oscar Mayer by singing their insipid jingle.
"I'm sorry miss, you'll have to sit down until we call your name," a woman said as she approached Paris. Paris turned to make eye contact with the faculty member, smiling.
"Sorry ma'am, am I too early for staffing day?"
"Not at all, you're just on time actually. The big staffing part is over, so the Nikkis and the Carmens have already been sent away."
"Should I be familiar with those girls?" Paris asked, not understanding the woman's reference.
"I take it you're not a watcher of American Idol," the woman said, laughing.
"Oh, I got it. Sorry, I only watch television for some soap operas and political shows, the whole earning fame by doing something like karaoke or eating inedible things in a national forum really doesn't appeal to me." Paris straightened and started walking towards a bench off to the side of the door.
"Wait," the woman said, her eyes widening. "Can I have your name?"
Paris turned back around. "I'm Paris Gellar from Hartford, Connecticut, I ran the Chilton Academy Franklin for two years."
The woman smiled as the familiarity of the name hit her. "Ahhh, I've been expecting you Miss Gellar, you're one of my biggest gets of the year. My gosh, I didn't think you'd take to UCLA after you read my recommendation since you seemed destined for Harvard."
"Mrs. Broughton?" she asked, walking back towards the woman and extending her hand out to shake the faculty chief's hand.
"Nice to finally meet you Paris, I'm surprised you decided to accept the invitation to come out west."
"Well considering the sunny skies and history of crime, greed and political scandal, not to mention the environmental issues affecting southern California, how could I not come out here, this is one of America's journalistic hotbeds." Paris shook Mrs. Broughton's hand, and smiled at the woman who changed her life and got her out to Los Angeles in the first place.
"I suppose I could bring you up to the front of the line and get you all settled in, why don't you come with me and we'll chat more in my office?"
Wow, that was fast, I didn't even need to open the portfolio. "You mean that's it, I'm in?" Paris was shocked she wouldn't need to 'audition' her work.
"Mm-hmm, I'm not turning down an Oppenheimer award-winning writer who managed to become editor of her school paper one year earlier than the status quo. As Lou Grant would say, you've got spunk, and in droves."
Paris smiled, Mrs. Broughton was confident that she would do well working on the Bruin's staff. "Miss Peters thought I was a little pushy when I ran the paper, but how else are you going to turn out a quality product? I didn't want to see the circulation of the Franklindwindle and have a student-run guerilla newspaper cannibalize my audience, so I had to balance out the viewpoints and keep the controversy level low, that's why under my leadership the paper did so well. I just hope my successor keeps my ideals in mind when she takes over in a couple of days."
"I think we're going to get along well Miss Gellar, you were like me when I was back in high school." Mrs. Broughton recalled her glory days of high school journalism from the early 80s. "Back when I was in Grand Rapids and running the Catholic Central Crusader, when I came in that broadsheet was kissing the ass of athletics way too much and glorifying the incompetent administration so much it made me throw up, not to mention ten of the twenty-four pages were devoted to advertising. Once I took charge, that little paper ousted the faculty and put their precious little football program on probation because my reporters found out about recruiting violations and many, many drinking parties that the coach held for the players. By the time I graduated I'd made a lot of enemies in western Michigan, but lived up to the name on the masthead. To this day the administration and AD still consult the editor of the paper before they even make one move, in a way taking the temperature of the student body."
"Journalism at it's best," Paris agreed. She and Mrs. Broughton walked into the Daily Bruin newsroom together, debating about how similar the editorial policies of Hartford's Courant and the Los Angeles Times were now that the Tribune Corporation in Chicago owned both of the dailies, and the conflicts of interests that were springing up because they also owned television stations in each market.
"So, what assignment am I going to get first?" Paris was beaming after ending her conversation/interview with Mrs. Broughton, which ended up lasting about an hour. "Can I cover the USAC meetings, do a piece on where each dollar of your tuition goes to? I can even write a human interest piece on what a shift in the information technology department is like, including trying to somehow satisfy the RIAA that sharing an inane song by Cosign 75 or one of those stupid 'I hate my dad' punk bands helps more than it hurts the record industry? I'll do anything for you Diane, you just name the venue and direction my piece should go."
She's got spunk alright, maybe a little too much of it for a freshman, Mrs. Broughton thought. As much as she wanted to crown Paris her top reporter moments after she walked in, she knew if Paris was to get right into the trenches, the girl could be eaten up for applying the concepts which worked so well in Hartford to a story that might alienate the fraternities. At best the Bruin had a very tentative on-the-line relationship with the Greek houses, and after Paris rallied on Brianna's behalf about the girl's forced pledging, Diane knew that if Paris got her hands on a pencil and wrote a negative story about the Greeks, that peace would be shattered and Murphy Hall was going to have her head in a vise. She had also seen other freshmen reporters who had Paris' same eagerness crash and burn from trying to take on so much responsibility so fast.
I can't do that to Gellar, she'll be an important member of the staff when next year rolls around, but for now, I'll start her with something easy. She's going to hate me for awhile, but you never make friends when you're campaigning for the truth.
Mrs. Broughton make eye contact with Paris, and proceeded to tell her what her first assignment was going to be. "I have to start you small for now since you're an Eastern Seaboard transplant, so I want you to cover the women's volleyball game on Friday night against Cal State-Northridge. You'll have to drive to Northridge yourself, but I'm sending you with a photographer so she can take pictures of the Lady Bruins and she can help you out somewhat."
Paris, moments before smiling, now was feeling her grin fade and being replaced with a frown, along with a stare of confusion. "Excuse me Diane, you want me to cover what?'"
"The UCLA-Cal State-Northridge volleyball game, it's a non-conference game and the Matadors are usually beaten pretty convincingly, it's not a tough assignment."
Paris was in a total state of shock, and upon hearing her assignment, turned white, then found words coming to her slowly. "But, I can't cover volleyball, it's not my field, no sport is. Why don't you put me on for something else?" She shook her head, not believing this assignment was true.
"Paris, it's not that I don't have any confidence in your abilities, but right now my priority is using my experienced reporters to produce editions of the Bruin in the next month that will help the '06ers and '07ers get used to our high caliber of coverage, and to attract the eyeballs our advertisers need to sell their establishments, it's more about getting students to read our paper right now than to cover issues that we can save for the important editions later in the year. Also, you seem to have nothing when it comes to reporting on sports at all, I went through the online Franklin a few days ago, and found nothing under your name about athletics."
"That's because I suck at sports and I don't like them!" Paris yelled. "What's wrong with making a decision not to cover sports in high school?"
Mrs. Broughton pushed back her seat and stood up in front of her desk. "Nothing, but it doesn't make for a well-rounded reporter." She opened her arms and made a rainbow gesture. "You have to broaden your horizons Paris, and you're not going to do that stuck on the op-ed or student life pages. Take Mitch Albom for instance. He started out as a sportswriter, then moved on to a column. After he wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch realized he had a gift, a way with words. People would stop him on the street and ask his opinions about subjects other than sports, they asked him about politics and the news of the day. Pretty soon he had a national radio show out of Detroit and his sports column was nationally syndicated. Yet he still is an important voice in the land when it comes to non-sports items. There are other examples of sportswriters becoming general journalists, and reporters deciding that the regular news was stifling, so they moved to the press box and covered the gridiron."
"I don't care about Mitch Albom, he got a lucky break! I hate sports and sports hate me! This was the way divvying sides was in my gym class." She started imitating an average jock guy. "Uhh, two more players to go? I'll take the Jenny the asthmatic with the social anxiety disorder, a set of issues larger than a stack of National Geographics, and the 200/200 corrective vision goggles. Betsy?" She rose her voice up, whining. "No, I have to take Paris?! What a nerd, she sucks! Her idea of defense is ducking and holding her calculus book up begging the fielder not to throw the ball so hard or the center to pass her the ball, she's short and couldn't block a Hollywood Square. Can't we just take the injured boy with the crutches sitting out in the bleachers and put him in the middle so he doesn't have to participate? We can claim that Gellar would lose brain cells if she participated in this game."
Diane turned deadly serious, staring down Paris. "Listen Miss Gellar, I am the faculty chief of this paper, and if I want to have you cover a volleyball game, you'll cover a volleyball game, and you'll do it just as damned well as a student election. I don't care about your concerns with gym and athletics, and that your jaded view of the games is just to get the ball/puck/stone/whatever from point A to point B in a pointless exercise to impress others. This is the big leagues honey, and to make it to the 25-man roster you have to prove yourself in spring training, and this time you can't go crawling back to AAA Hartford wanting your precious Franklin back."
"But--" Paris tried to argue her position for not wanting a sports story, but found herself interrupted.
"But nothing Paris! I'm not Miss Peters, and I'm not going to stand aside letting your view become that of the student body's. I'm here for one reason and one reason only, to make sure that our brand of journalism is the best in the nation and that our paper is a kaleidoscope of student life at UCLA. You got that acceptance letter in January because your writing is second to none, but I had 49 other boys and girls I said the same thing to, and 22 of them took up my challenge along with you. Now if you feel like you don't want to cover the meet, the door is right over there, you can use it at anytime. If you walk out of it though, don't expect me to take you back except for having you write pithy little press releases about a new parking lot and having to scrounge up entries for the community calendar with no hope of promotion. If you take that road, the only rag you'll work for is the Santa Clarita Shopper/Used Car Gazette."
The 40 year-old's hazel eyes stared directly in the blonde's pupils, as if she was shooting lasers into the center of each eyeball. She issued Paris an ultimatum.
"You prove yourself Friday night, or you never prove yourself to me at all." Mrs. Broughton's words struck Paris right in her gut.
Paris cringed and felt acid rise up from her stomach. Her face tightened up, and she felt like at any moment her dormant tear ducts would be aroused. She felt her spirit being crushed in that instant, and that Mrs. Broughton was being unnecessarily cruel to her by having her write a story about a topic she loathed.
But her conscious set her straight, and brought back her façade of determination. You better take it on the chin. Who knows, maybe you'll like it. Volleyball is a religion out here, and she's doing you a favor by giving you what might be a small story in our world, but in California is as big as football in some cities. Just grin and bear it, and hope for the best next time.
She sat up straight in her seat, and tried to keep the grudge out of her response. "Fine Mrs. Broughton, you'll have a story about the Bruins/Matadors match on your desk Sunday evening at 7:30 before press time."
"And?" Diane looked at her again directly.
Paris hesitated, and then answered the unasked question. "And I'll put just as much strong effort into the story as one of my editorials in the past."
"It should be easy for you, and if you need any help, feel free to ask anyone on the sports staff." Diane's stoic front fell, and she was back to the cheerful talkative self Paris had first met in the hallway.
Paris smiled as she realized that perhaps she wouldn't need any help from the staff, and the person who could teach her volleyball basics was only one bed away. "Actually, I should be fine..." The editor and cub reporter walked out of the office, and they started on a meet-and-greet of the Bruin staff, where Paris met her photojournalist for Friday night, Mai Lyn Vang.
Three hours later...
"Brianna, I need you to tell me everything you know about volleyball, and I need you to do it in forty-eight hours!" Paris burst into the dorm room guns blazing, and on the prowl. Brianna was studying her literature homework and was in a particularly tough passage of Chaucer when her concentration was interrupted by Paris' demand. She turned around with her mind in a daze.
"What the hell--" Paris venting about Mrs. Broughton quickly shut up Brianna.
"I can't believe it, I was the editor of the oldest student newspaper in New England, and what am I reduced to when I apply for the Bruin? I get fucking scorekeeper duty for the UCLA/Cal State-Northridge game on Friday night, she might as well have assigned me to a story where I go in-depth to figure out what animal the mystery meat in the cafeteria comes from! Goddamnit I hate her smug little attitude, all I have to write is if UCLA won/lost the game, the score, and the highlights, but she expects me to write it as if the Pope visited the student union!" She slumped down onto her bed and lay on it, looking at the ceiling and frustrated with her journalistic side.
Brianna's assignment on the Canterbury Tales was quickly forgotten as she walked over to the side of her roommate's bed. "You're not athletic though, why would she assign you a story in a field in which you're not talented at all?"
"Mrs. Broughton wanted me to 'broaden my horizons', so she's making me write about volleyball. At least I don't have to write a feature about the cheerleading team bringing it on at nationals." She rolled her eyes. "It's not that I hate volleyball, those girls seem pretty intelligent. It's just that when I was in gym, even with my 165 IQ I got confused about all the concepts and rotating that was probably second nature to you. Volleyball was out of my element along with gym altogether, and when I served I only got it as far as the net, where the ball would bounce off and then slide down to the floor with a thud."
"Aww, sorry Par, I wish I could help you out with not having to write that story," Brianna said back to her sincerely. "But since you're stuck with it, I suppose I could come out of retirement to help you learn all the basics and strategies of the game." She immediately noticed Paris start to frown, possibly because she might have to do some kind of physical activity besides some nice and safe jogging.
"You're not going to make me play the game, are you?" she asked, worried.
Brianna smiled back, and laughed. "I'm afraid there's no way you'll become Holly McPeak in two days, so no you'll never be forced to touch a volleyball. I'll just explain things to you, have you read books, watch tapes, that kind of thing."
"Sounds like a riot Daugherty," Paris joked. "Instead of studying journalism, I get to study the wonderful world of beach volleyball."
"Oh please, that league these days is as believable as wrestling, we're going to do the real thing, six-by-six on an indoor court. As a matter of fact, do you have a video store card?"
"Uh, a Hollywood Video card from back in Hartford, but they said it would work out here..."
"Perfect!" Brianna smiled. "You get yourself out to the video store and rent World Team Volleyball for the Playstation 2, then when you get back we'll pop the game in and I can explain to you sets, serving, rally scoring and everything that should make you a sideline expert, and I can have fun kicking your butt at the game."
"That's great and all Bree, but there's one thing you're forgetting, we don't own a video game system." As much as Brianna's idea was good, it would be pretty useless to rent a game and have nothing to play it on.
"No, but Doug has a PS2, I'm sure he'd lend it to us."
Paris wrinkled her nose, but accepted Brianna's offer nonetheless. "Fine, but stop by Von's and pick up some Lysol, you don't know what that boy's touched and gotten on that controller."
He's not that gross Paris, Brianna thought secretly to herself. She hoped the feud between Paris and Doug would start to fizzle soon, considering her mixed and burgeoning feelings for the boy. "Will do, now get up and rent that video game, up, up, up!"
"I can't believe I'm about to learn things from something I once described as 'a deplorable form of entertainment only meant to arouse the anger of the anti-social'." Paris got up from her bed and started brushing her hair to freshen up from the hectic day she spent at the Bruin.
"Things change, even the army uses them to train soldiers these days, plus it increases your hand-eye coordination and peripheral vision." Brianna smiled at her proof, which made Paris question if she actually knew everything in the world.
"Sometimes your too smart for even me Brianna." She grabbed her purse off the nightstand and walked towards the door. "See you in a while then."
"Bye." Brianna waved her friend out, and moved towards the TV to figure out which jacks went with which when hooking up a video game system. After careful examination, she left the room and headed towards 319 in order to proffer Doug's PS2.
A feeling of nervousness washed over her, as she recalled last Friday's events once again. Brianna had been avoiding Doug since that night in an attempt to keep the sexual feelings she was having for him contained. Labor Day she decided to catch the A's in Anaheim, using the early afternoon Angels game as an excuse to leave the dorm so she wouldn't bump into Doug, still busy studying for his sports medicine quiz. And the last two days she left for classes at seven instead of her usual 7:30, under the guise of catching a few extra minutes of study time in the classroom before the lecture started at 8:30. In truth, she didn't want to bump into Doug when he came to drop off her and Paris' doughnuts for the morning, and she hadn't said anything to her roommate about the awkward meeting of Doug in his bath towel. Out of sight, out of mind was becoming her motto about Doug, and she hoped she could ask permission for the system, get it and flee away from 319 as soon as she could.
Her dreams however, were another story. True, Doug managed to avoid her REM state on both Friday and Saturday, but Sunday was another story. The dream actually started as a nightmare, with her attempted initiation into TKS the focus. It was far worse than the real thing, with the sisters forcing her to drink an extreme amount of alcohol, and to sit in an empty room with a TV playing Britney Spears videos and interviews ad nauseum. The combination of shrilly pop and darkness was driving Brianna insane, and she struggled to open the door to the rest of the house. At the midpoint, she was huddled up fetally in a corner of a room, crying and wishing for Paris to come in and rescue her from the brutality of the sorority.
Then, without rhyme or reason, the door opened, and Doug walked in, and upon seeing Brianna in her state felt a pang of concern for his floormate. She was looking at him with her blue eyes wide, pleading with him to help her out of the horrid situation she was forced into. He scooped her up into his arms, and then tried opening the door. Once again though, the door was stuck, and the boy had to resort to brute strength to force it door open. For good measure he kicked the TV off it's stand after pulling the plug, causing a few sparks to fly out of the plastic casing of the tube as it hit the hard concrete below.
The door came off the hinges as Doug's shoulder hit the weak middle point of the honeycomb door, and him and Brianna burst out into the living room of the TKS house. They were met by a gaggle of sorority sisters trying to keep her in the fold against her will, and chanting something about Christina Aguilera being their queen and goddess and that they needed to sacrifice Brianna in her honor. Doug bravely fought off the depraved girls, and ran with his the girl out of the house and towards the Saxons, desperate for her to snap out of the haze fueled by Jack Daniels, Coke, and Franzia.
The dream fast-forwarded to the morning after, with Brianna sleeping in Doug's bed and him lying on the couch. She woke up, took in her surroundings, and was about to wring Doug's neck for taking advantage of her while she was drunk, when she found she was still in her formal dress from the night before. Wrinkled up and clinging to her fevered body like a second skin, but the dress had stayed on all night. She slowly got up from the bed, handled the post-hangover headache of seeing first sunlight as well as she could, and she walked towards the cupboard, taking a glass out and putting it under the faucet to strip her mouth of the malty and dry aftertaste of the night before. She drank it all up, then made her way to the side of Doug's couch. She shook him awake, and smiled at him, her eyes full of tears at how thankful she was that Doug came in at the right time.
"Hey, feeling good? The Tylenols should've taken effect around four," he said to her as he woke up, his eyes fluttering open and closed to diffuse the light shock.
"Much better, I don't remember much about last night except that I was thankful you were there, and that I'm driving only with you or Paris along from now on."
Doug laughed at Brianna's little gem. "I just happened to see your car pulling into the wrong lot on my way back from the student union, and thought that wasn't you, since you really hate the sororities as much as I hate the frats." He tucked a stray strand of Brianna's hair behind her right ear, and started running his fingers through the long raven strands of her coif.
"So you followed my car in and snuck into the house, being careful not to arouse suspicion?"
"Everything I could without having to go all Bosom Buddies and walk in wearing a dress and horrible wig."
"You'd look good as a woman, well, except for the biceps and the...lower portion of your body," Brianna joked. He laughed back at her, glad the sarcastic and witty Brianna he had known for a week was coming back.
It was then a breath caught in her throat. Doug was completely clothed in the dream, so it wasn't an erotic dream in Brianna's world, but there was something about his dark blue eyes that was doing things to her thought processes. She moved closer to Doug, her gaze not leaving his, now stuck on her lips. They were being consumed by something that was alien to them both.
"I want to thank you for saving me Doug, and this seems to be the best way to do it." In a very cavalier move, she closed the distance, and found herself kissing Doug. He managed out something himself before the rest of the dream ended up with them making out.
"A very nice reward Bree," he muttered before he started nipping the girl's plump upper lip erotically with his teeth. The dream ended moments later, and Brianna woke up in her bed with a start around 3:30am, a sheen of perspiration coating her face. She found her body aroused, the hair on her arms standing on end as she struggled to regain her breath. She rose up on the bed and examined what the dream meant when she recalled what she could remember about it. At the time, she chalked it up to the shock of being alone and away from Antioch for the first time, and not being able to run to her mother to ask what the dream meant to her, and the shock of not having her father discourage her from dating like he usually did. It can't be anything sexual, it's just trying to find comfort in a face I'm starting to find familiar, that's all, she thought to herself as she went back to bed, and somehow fell back to sleep.
Brianna found herself back in front of 319 as she came back into reality, facing the door.
"Here goes nothing, you better lend us that video game system Doug," she said to herself as she knocked on the door lightly. She waited about a minute, and then Doug answered the door. He had a sort of straight face on as he opened the door, until he caught sight of Brianna's beautiful eyes.
He almost melted into a puddle of goo on sight. His smile widened, and he tried to avert his gaze from below her face, which wasn't easy seeing as Brianna had on a blue button-down blouse opened two buttons down with the slightest hint of cleavage peeking out from beneath. Unlike Friday's meeting when she was wearing loose sweatpants, she had on a pair of cutoff jean shorts, which accentuated the length of her legs.
Stop, stop, stop Doug, she's here for something else, not you, he thought to himself, building up his defenses against Brianna's beauty. He tried to stay distant from her as he invited her in.
"So, what'd you need?" Doug asked as Brianna leaned against the counter.
"Paris is an unathletic girl who has to write a story about volleyball on Friday night for the Bruin, so she went and rented a volleyball game from the video store. Problem is we don't have a console to play it on, and I have trust issues about renting video store equipment."
"What's wrong with video store consoles?"
"Besides the insane deposit you have to put down just to get it out the door, the controller feels too soft or too hard when you play the game on a rental unit, the cables that are included are usually damaged or of poor quality because Jimmy Bob from the trailer court on Hiawatha attempted to plug all three RCA jacks into the little ancient antenna jack where you have to screw the contacts in, and the system has been bumped more times than a piece of luggage at Denver's airport, thus making it unusable."
"And you came in here to fume about renting an X-Box from the video store why?" Doug was happy, but confused.
"Sorry," Brianna mumbled, blushing at how she was losing her mind in front of him. "I need to use your Playstation so me and Paris can play said volleyball game. You'll have it back by Friday night, I promise you."
"Why didn't you ask that in the first place?" Doug said. "I have too much on my mind to play video games anyway, so it's cool."
"Really? Thanks, you're a lifesaver." She smiled and they headed towards the TV corner. "If I wouldn't have gotten it Paris would've come back later and had a fencing match in the commons with you over the system."
All Doug did was look at Brianna weirdly. He couldn't really say anything except, "Huh?" Brianna laughed at his reaction.
"I'm afraid I'm not kidding about that, she came to blows with a friend holding a foil because she accidentally told some other friends about a boyfriend she was trying to keep secret."
"I would not want to be that girl then."
"Me either." The awkwardness had come back between Brianna and Doug, as he went over to disconnect the Playstation 2 from the TV. Brianna just sat on the chair, watching him and trying to keep any inappropriate thoughts out of her system. She decided to take her mind off of him by taking another look at his dorm. The pin-up girl posters were still up on the walls on his side of the room. However, his roommate's area looked very bare. There was nothing on their side of the wall, and the covers on the other bed seemed thin and institutional, like the blankets UCLA issued only because California law required them to give students 'room and board', which meant bare-bones sheets and blankets were issued on the first day. Brianna and Paris noticed that Doug never mentioned his roommate at all, only Ronnie from across the hall.
Deciding to take a risk, Brianna decided to ask Doug about his roommate.
"Hey, where's your roommate?"
"Him? He's on one of those daytime soap operas, The Bold and the Beautiful I think," he responded non-chalantly as he handed Brianna the console and controllers. "There you go, enjoy."
"Hey, whoa, you have a soap star as your roommate?" Brianna was curious about this mystery hunk who happened to share the room with Doug.
"No, I have a soap star as a roommate who claims to live here 24/7, but only is my 'roommate' so he can ward off the Star and Soap Opera Digest from learning where he really lives so they can bug him for spoilers. He was here for two days, then went back to his Malibu mansion with the blessing of the administration to die down the media."
"They understand what?" Brianna didn't know what he meant by the actor being able to keep a room at UCLA and still live at home.
"Understand that if they have an actor from a popular soap going to their school they'll get free publicity. All his publicist has to do is say that he lives here at the Saxons each time they ask about where he lives and is going to school, and you have the female boosters addicted to bad acting and bad sex sending the checks to UCLA in droves so their favorite character receives the best education possible." He hesitated and wished that Brianna would leave, because he didn't really want to tell her all this.
"So basically because of some brainless hunk who acts on a really bad show, you're living in this dorm alone?" Brianna felt agitated, and was trying to figure out how to fix this situation. "Why don't they switch him and Ronnie around, you two are such good friends and would make fine roommates."
"Oh we've tried, but admissions and Piper keep saying no to us," he huffed. "That would make Ronnie's rommie Jake the odd man out with a dorm alone, and though they really want to fill the space, they just can't until the inevitable flunk-out of the soap hunk because his housing's paid up for the year."
"His housing is paid up for the year all right, but he's not living here--" Brianna was going to start to rant, when she felt Doug pat her on the shoulder.
"It's alright though, I don't mind having my own dorm Bree, and it's fine. Sure, I don't have a true roommate, but look at it this way, at least I won't have to listen to him recite his inane dialogue into all hours of the night, and I have a lot of room to stretch out, without him being here I was able to fit an actual couch in this room."
She laughed at his explanation. "Knowing soap opera stars on CBS, he probably would've Ikea'ed the room beyond belief, and your seating would've consisted of those painful knee chairs."
"And if I get a girl in here, there's no need for them to have to share my cramped bed, they can just lay on his for the night," he joked to her.
Instead of laughing back at Doug however, Brianna felt something else altogether. Butterflies fluttering in her stomach, and a shot of arousal going through her at the mention of Doug and his bed. Also, a small feeling of jealousy at any girl he would invite to spend the evening with him.
I don't want to be that girl, she thought to herself, trying to keep any thoughts that would go above the MPAA's rating scale out of her head.
"Or an even better idea, you can combine the two beds together and create a huge superbed to do the deed." After hearing her own words, said without thinking, Brianna flushed red. Yeah, that got him out of your head Daugherty.
"I could, but I'm more of a guy who takes advantage of a spur-of-the-moment opportunity." Doug's voice was rather husky, and he too was starting to say things without running his thoughts through a filter. His eyes were drifting lower and lower from Brianna's neck, lingering for a small bit on her chest before falling down to her legs. He remembered how on Friday night when they were chatting in the lobby he found himself drawn to her thin yet curvy gams peeking out from behind her dress. His concentration remained fully on the conversation, but a little part of him continued to be obsessed with Brianna's legs. The stimuli from remembering that conversation was starting to arouse him, along with the way Brianna sat in the chair. Her shirt was wrinkling as she leaned towards the right side, and Doug tried to take his mind of the fact that between each of the blouse's buttons towards the middle, he could see slivers of peach lace and cotton from her bra.
Oh my God, get yourself under control Doug! If she sees you all flustered and staring at her inappropriately, you'll never have a shot with her, he thought to himself, thankful that there was another distraction he could deal with before Brianna left his dorm with the PS2.
"Er, I forgot to take my game out before I unplugged it, do you mind?" He held out his hands to try to get the unit back from Brianna.
"Which game?"
"Vice City, probably not yours or Paris' tastes," he said non-chalantly. However, Brianna firmed up, and she kept the system in her hands.
"And what makes you think that, just because it's a game where an anti-social mobster takes out his aggression on an entire Floridian metropolis with multiple weapons, cars and motorcycles, it's not my taste? What, you think the only video games I play are those that appeal to women like shitty Barbie titles, and that I've never played a round of Quake Arena in my life?"
Doug stumbled for a response, not knowing what to say. "I didn't say that, I just--"
"Just what, thought girly little Brianna doesn't know an anti-tank missile from a plasma gun? Well let me tell you something Doug, I bet you that if we had a game night one of these evenings after I'm done teaching Paris her volleyball basics, I could cream you at Vice City or one of those games where the object is to maim as many men as possible. This," She pointed to the top of her head. "This not only knows just about every fact anyone could throw at me about the academic process, but this mind also knows the best strategy to capture the flag during a particularly heated internet gaming session, where I spent many a night after my homework was done and there was no charity project to finish or do."
Doug didn't know how much more of Brianna he could take. Damn it, she's beautiful, smart, and now I learn she's a gamer just like I am. Why doesn't God smite me right about now so I can die a happy man? He knew if he continued on the conversation, he might want to start ramping up the silent flirting going on between them to a higher level. But there was the problem right there. Were they actually flirting, or was this just a friend wanting a friend? Doug didn't know for sure, and neither did Brianna. There was so much confusion, as this was the first time the two had really chatted since that sexually charged Friday night caused by Doug's towel.
Brianna found Doug was speechless, and attributed it to her just-finished tangent. She decided it was better to save face and just leave rather than waiting for him to respond somehow.
"So," she said. "I think I'm going to go hook this up, you don't mind if I keep GTA Vice City, do you? Not like you'll be able to play it for the next two days."
"No, go ahead, sorry about that," he stumbled out as he guided Brianna to the door. "And I hope you give Paris a lot of hard knocks in the volleyball game, you seem to be a very talented player."
"Thanks, I'll be sure to give her a butt-kicking just for you." She smiled back at him and turned to walk out, when she felt his hand on her shoulder.
"By the way Bree? I'd be honored to take you on in a gaming session. Say, Friday night while Paris is in Northridge?"
Her resolve to get through his invitation was strong, and she kept her composure. "Sure, can't wait. I'll see you then Doug."
"You too Bree, take good care of my unit."
"Will do." Doug shut the door, and Brianna started walking back to 343 with a bright smile on her face. It may not be an official date, but it's a way to get to know him closer, she thought to herself, almost giddy with excitement. Any thoughts about the past and Leonard were forgotten as she walked into her dorm and set up the video game system.
Doug just sighed to himself and slumped onto the couch, letting his thoughts regather as he took in what happened in the last ten minutes.
I think I've finally moved on from Claudia, this has to be for real. Brianna's just an all-around wonderful girl, and she's got this stubbornness that's a downright turn on. He let his thoughts fade back towards school and his regular life outside of school as a rerun of Pokemon started unraveling its very thin and seizure-inducing plot on his television.
"I can't wait till Friday night, you're mine Brianna," he said to himself, then quickly corrected himself to take out any possessive connection with his words. "Er, I'm going to beat you at Halo, I mean." He went back to watching dorkily animated kids using cute cartoon animals to vent their anger.
Paris stood in line waiting to be checked out at the video store, her copy of World Team Volleyball in hand. When she went in she was hoping it wouldn't take her more than five minutes to rent the game, but as she walked in, the employees were swamped in by a mid-evening rush as Angelinos took advantage of one of the last weeks before the fall television season began to rent DVDs. Thus after she picked up the game, she ended up in a line that would take about ten minutes to clear. She fumed for a moment, and being the star pupil of her charm school when she was younger, waited patiently to pay for her game, whiny children coming from flag football behind her with Daddy Day Care be damned.
She didn't look up while she waited in the queue for the first few moments, preferring to go over the assignment on Friday night in her mind and how she would write up the story. She deduced one of two styles, focusing on UCLA's #1 player and her actions in the match, or the entire team with a basic rundown of the highlights of the match along with statistics and poll rankings in order to give a scientific spin to the story. The stat geeks should have a ball reading my stories, she thought to herself as she read the instructions printed on the back cover of the rental box. X button, circle and square button, analog stick? I thought I was playing a game, not studying for a geometry final. She hoped that this gaming session with Brianna would answer all her questions about the rules and regulations of the game, and didn't sound like a total idiot in any volleyball article she'd write.
She was looking up at the price list when felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket. Paris took it out and looked at the caller ID display on the front. The quartz display showed the caller as J MARIANO, and immediately she smiled when she realized who it was. Opening the phone and putting it to her ear, she took the call as she waited in line.
"Hello, Paris here."
"What's up Delirious P?" Jess asked her in a normal voice. Paris tried to hold back a laugh and take the call in a serious matter, but found herself laughing at his greeting.
"You're never going to let me live down my attempt at being urban, are you?" She amusingly rolled her eyes.
"Afraid not Paris, you're stuck with it forever. What I would've given for a tape recording of you representing the HFD."
"At least you have the memories Jess," she responded, trying to start the conversation. "So, first things first, how did the biology test end up?"
"You're not going to kill me if I said I got an 87, I know you wanted me to get all of them right."
Paris smiled and took pride in her new pupil. "A B+, not bad, and definitely an improvement on your 49 you got in your last science class in the Hollow. See what I told you Jess, you put your nose to the grindstone and you'll receive a great grade in the end. All you need to do is keep that up in biology and all of your other classes, and more importantly, take your homework seriously. I don't like it myself, but it teaches you that academic life isn't a confined seven hour block divided into periods, its 24/7. Trust me when I say that you'll understand things more when you do your homework than when you just listen to the lesson and don't do anything else."
"So you're happy with my grade?" Jess' apprehension about divulging the grade that wasn't quite 90 faded.
"If you got a 100 I might've been a little suspicious that you peeked at your neighbor's paper, but I was expecting either an 87 or 91 to be honest. Those two questions about the origins of the DNA theory were stymieing you throughout the session, and there was that stray one that got away where you mixed up Salk and Watson as to who discovered DNA."
"Well I'm not the only one who didn't know about the DNA theory questions, only two girls in the entire class managed to get them right, and even then the answers seemed to be exactly like the passage from the book, so they took it right from memory."
"Next," the clerk at the counter said, and Paris found herself at the head of the queue. Paris handed the woman the game to scan, along with her debit card.
"Hold on a moment Jess, I have to check out, OK?" She struggled to hold the phone up to her ear, and Jess could hear in the background the sounds of Paris trying to dig a pen out from the deep reaches of her purse.
"Sure, you've got your hands full, I'll wait." It took a few minutes to check out though, because Paris needed to re-register her membership so that her information was updated. She then remembered that a stop at the DMV would be needed soon, since her Connecticut driver's license and plates would expire in about thirty days. After divulging so much information to the clerk that she felt like Sydney Bristow being interrogated by SD-6, she was finally able to rent the video game and leave Hollywood Video, with the assurance from the clerk that next time wouldn't take so long. She hoped not, judging from the dirty looks being doled out towards her from the flag football kids.
Paris left the store and got in her car, starting the conversation with Jess again.
"So what's up, there's another reason you called me besides telling me your quiz scores, wasn't there?"
"Actually, there is. You know my dad Jimmy from the phone call on Friday, right?"
"How could I forget, the guy hung up on me twice thinking I was a French national." She laughed as she shifted into first gear and merged onto Westwood Blvd.
"Yeah, he's sorry for that by the way, he's not a fan of either telemarketers or foodservice companies trying to sell him the next great mass hot dog cooker. He was wondering though, do you have anything to do on Friday night?"
Paris dreaded answering Jess' question immediately. "Why?" she asked shakily.
"Because he wanted to invite you to dinner with him and me at our house, I don't know. He's been teasing me the last couple of days about being whipped by you and stuff."
"Aww, how adorable, is he singing the spiel about love, marriage and the baby carriage yet?" She tried keeping a happy face on everything before she had to turn him down.
"He will be by Friday night, and he seems eager to meet you Par. Would you be able to come down here?" He seemed to have a pleading tone to his voice, as if the dinner would only be a small portion of the night. Paris imagined them curling up on Jess' couch and repeating the movie portion of the night from last week once again, along with the silent and teasing flirting both of them were doing to each other, especially towards the end of the evening.
Damn it Broughton, I've never put my social life before work before, and the one time I want to you blocked it! She wished there was some way to fit in both the story in Northridge and Jess into one night, but she couldn't see it happening at all unless Jess wanted to eat at midnight. She breathed harshly into the phone's mic, and dreaded turning him down.
"I have newspaper work Friday night and I won't be home until late Jess, I'm sorry. If I could get out of it I would, but I have to really impress my editor, otherwise I'll be stuck doing the community calendar for the rest of the year."
"It's OK Smartie, I'll let Jimmy know not to expect you on Friday." Jess sounded almost sad over the phone, and Paris could sense it behind his chauvinistic tone of voice.
"Jess," she pleaded, "If you would've called earlier, there would be no hesitation that I would've said yes and I would've tried to get out of my story up in Northridge if it was thrown on me. But this doesn't mean I don't want to come down to Venice, maybe next week I'll come down there and visit you and Jimmy, I'm sorry I couldn't this Friday. It's just that though I don't want to be UCLA's #1 student, I do want to be chief editor of the Bruin, and it's going to take a lot of hard work to impress the faculty chief, she's starting me out on sports and the sooner I finish these assignments, the greater my freedom will be when it comes to story choice and subject matter." She turned right onto the first side street she came to, and pulled the car off the road. "Please say you're not mad at me Reb, your friendship means so much to me right now."
"I knew what I was getting into when I decided to befriend you Par, there's no way I could be mad at you at all. You're driven beyond all belief and there's no way I'd be able to stop you from getting your hands on the prize." He shifted in the chair he was sitting in, the clank of the forklifts muffled by the drywalls of Target's employee breakroom. "Look, I know that it's tough learning to settle into a new city and a new school, and look how that ended up in the Hollow when I was there. Right now, you're not feeling all that control of your world yet, and you have to get used to a whole new set of people and friends telling you what you should and shouldn't do. I just don't want to be a distraction if you don't want me to--"
"Jess, that is the last thing in the world you are to me!" She said into the phone sternly. "Don't ever put yourself down like that ever again. You are far from a distraction to me, and God, without you here to confide in about things, I'd feel so alone among the palms and the sunshine. Sure I have Brianna as a roommate, but she don't understand me all that well yet, you've had several doses of me to digest. I'm not going to give up on being a good friend and mentor to you Reb, even if I have to juggle it with school and the Bruin." She was about at the point of near tears; no boy and his friendship had ever affected her so much in her life, even Tristan's. The growing feelings of love for Jess inside of her heart were also getting to her, and all she wanted is for Jess to strive to be the best he could.
Jess was silent over the phone for about a minute, trying to figure out what meaning there was behind her wanting to be a friend and mentor. When Jimmy had asked him to invite Paris over, there wasn't even hesitation or whining to try to make the elder Mariano change his mind, Jess looked forward to Paris next to him at the dinner table. His first thought when he had come home from school was to call Paris and tell her the good news, until he remembered that this was day one for the Bruin staff. He decided to call later, and hope against hope that whatever assignment wouldn't interfere with Friday night.
But Paris wasn't coming over on Friday night, and though it wasn't her fault, Jess was still hurt. Until he remembered the hurdles of his past relationships. With the nameless women he saw in Brooklyn, the reasons ranged from revulsion from being seen with such a guy to being cheated on harshly and without regard to his feelings. One relationship Jess had even ended acrimoniously because the girl refused his simple request for a condom because she wanted to feel him 'naturally' despite her mother's plea not to have reckless sex. There was his time with Rory, where the reasons ranged from the hatred by the townspeople of the Hollow for pursuing their princess, Dean, Lorelai, and the entire accident, along with the summer in Washington. Not to mention Luke and Lorelai's silent flirting, which made Jess feel at times like he was Billy Bob eyeing his first cousin Sophie Mae when he thought of Rory...in that way.
This is the smallest obstacle ever, and she'll still be here in the morning, he thought to himself as he realized that a relationship with Paris might be hard at first, but the barriers in trying to pursue a friendship and even more would be easily passable. There was the whole issue of Rory finding out, but him and Paris would cross that bridge later, along with the blessings of the elder Gellars and her nanny. The only impediment was their schedules, and even with that they both could scrounge up time somewhere to meet. Brianna and Jimmy, the closest people to Paris and Jess respectively in Los Angeles both endorsed their friendship completely, no strings attached, and were encouraging it further.
Of course, no thought like this couldn't be completed without something impure, and Jess came up with a doozy, which involved him and Paris copulating after a passionate argument about something little that almost turned into a bar brawl between them. Right on the counter of her kitchenette. With Brianna walking in on them. The ugly red vest he had to wear to work with a bullseye on the right breast was suddenly Jess' best defense against his colleagues noticing he was having unbecoming thoughts about the girl he was talking to on the phone.
"Jess? You still there?" Paris asked after a bit, after checking her battery and finding the juice fully charged up. She heard Jess cough and clear his throat.
"Yeah, I'm here, sorry. And I completely understand, I'm sorry if I made it seem as if I was an annoying part of your life. It's just I don't want to ruin this like I did back in Stars Hollow with Rory. You're a great chick and although we didn't know each other that well in Connecticut, I'd love to know you a lot more than through run-ins with each other when you had to be in town for Rory."
She smiled, happy that little bump had been negotiated by both of them masterfully. "Yeah, me too Jess, I never really understood why everyone hated you so much in the first place, you were just a victim of circumstance, that's all."
"What about when I kidnapped the lawn gnome?"
"If you were on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and found yourself next to a cow, your first instinct would be to 'blank'?" She asked him, emphasizing blank like Gene Rayburn would do on Match Game '74.
"Tip the cow over?"
"Correct. See, you were a city guy relocated to a suburban setting and with a history of mischief making. My argument if you were prosecuted for the theft would be you were a moth driven to the flame and you had to kidnap the gnome, it was in your nature and ingrained in your mind to cause chaos via that method, and if you didn't you'd be driven insane with fury each time you passed Babbette's house. If she owned a dairy in rural Connecticut, the gnome would be a cow and you'd end up tipping her over to cause trouble."
"You think about this stuff way too much, don't you?" He laughed at her defense theory.
"Got to have something to do between classes, my shortest walk is eight minutes between buildings, and a between period break is twenty long minutes."
"Glad to know none of your brain power is going to waste." Paris suddenly heard a loud tone in the background, indicating the end of Jess' break. "Damn, back to the salt mines, or as the Dayton-Hudson Corporation likes to call it the toys and games department. God I can't wait till a position in electronics opens up so I can get a promotion, some of these kids are annoying."
"Now, now Jess, they're being fed that they have to be that way by the Mattel and Hasbro corporations in cooperation with Nickelodeon, if it wasn't for them childhood would be downright boring."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. I should get going then, it's almost rush hour and my boss needs everyone on the floor."
"Have a good rest of the day, and I'll talk to you later Jess." Before she hung up, she needed to make sure that Jess' dinner table invitation was still open. "By the way, Jess?"
"Yeah?" He was rushed yet still sticking to Paris' every word.
"I'll take a raincheck on dinner in Venice, say next week Friday to meet Jimmy?"
"Yeah, he's already looking forward to it." He smiled, happy that the conversation ended on a high note. "Talk to you soon Paris."
"You too, goodbye Jess."
"Bye Paris." Even in the larval stages of love, Paris kept her ear on the phone until she heard the last click of the hang-up and her cell reverted to the sound of a dial tone.
"Darn my father for giving me that hopeless romantic gene," she cursed to herself as she U-turned on La Grange and turned back onto Westwood. She brought herself back into her journalistic state of mind, and prepared for the predicted drubbing of her ass by Brianna that would be repeated about 93 times in the next two days.
To be continued...
Next Chapter: Paris takes on Brianna in the volleyball video game and confronts her about her game of avoidance with Doug, and Brianna will have to face up to the fact that she's in love. And at the game Paris makes a new friend in her photographer, can they get along and keep Mrs. Broughton satisfied? Well with Paris thinking about what she's missing in Venice, it might not be as easy as she may have thought. Hopefully Jess can stop by the dorm and make her feel happy somehow.
Author: Nate
Pairing: Paris/Jess, Brianna/Doug and couplings with the ancillary characters introduced in later chapters.
Spoilers: The big one would be the Jess/Milo spin-off series, which takes the Jess character to Venice, CA with his father. Otherwise it's unlikely I'm spoiling any of the upcoming plots. The earth-shattering and horrible news from The Big One is included and a major factor in the story.
Rating: PG-13 (swearing, sexual innuendo and thoughts).
Disclaimer: Amy Sherman-Palladino, Hofflund-Pollone and Warner Bros. Television along with the newer companies involved with the spin-off own the Paris and Jess characters. Other trademarks are owned by their respective companies. Sadly my offer to give Liza 26 birthday kisses for $2,600 was rejected by the WB as too low.
Archiving: Usual suspects; FF.net and LWL. Make sure to ask if you want to archive it yourself.
Summary: Paris gets her first gig for UCLA's Daily Bruin newspaper, but it's in a field she has no expertise in, so Brianna has to help her out. Meanwhile Doug is starting to slowly woo Brianna into his arms and Jess is trying to make Paris a larger part of his life.
Author's Notes: This update is coming out on June 5th, 2003, which is Liza Weil's 26th birthday, so this update had to come out on this day or else, heh. Happy birthday to her, and I'll try to keep the obsessive AN comments about her to minimum, except to say that thank goodness the elder Weils had a fun month in September of '76, or else I might be talking about another actress playing Paris instead (shudders). The usual thanks to my betas (Ash, Chris and Jamie), along with all those who left feedback, thanks a lot. Hopefully this will sate your thirst until I update once I get out of my temporary writer's block. Enjoy :)!
Paris was in good spirits as she walked into Kerckhoff Hall the Wednesday after Labor Day, carrying a leather portfolio full of all her best articles for the Franklin, and the letters to the editor she frequently contributed to the Hartford Courant and the New Haven Register. Also along for the walk were her many journalistic achievement awards, along with the trusty red pencil she used for two years to edit New England's oldest student newspaper. She deduced that the chief of the Daily Bruin would ask her to prove she was one of the best high school editors in America, and there was no way she'd leave any doubt in Diane Broughton's mind that to have such a hard worker on her staff would pay off when it came to beating their crosstown rivals at the Daily Trojan at their own game and when it came to winning the highest honors college journalism could offer.
She knew that in the next four years, there was going to be a lot of hard work to do in order to take the editor's chair, and that she was starting right back on the bottom as a freshman. College students had different needs when it came to what they wanted to read in a paper, and stories like the ones she did back in Hartford wouldn't fly at a college newspaper. She remembered her first day on the Franklin staff as one of the worst she ever had. She had come in expecting to be giving the big stories right away, but by the time the day ended, Paris found herself as 'chore girl'. It was a unforgiving task, where she had to pick up snacks at the vending machine for the senior staff and run copy back and forth between the offset press on one end of the building and the Franklin offices on the other. By the time that night ended, Paris vowed that she had no future in journalism, but somehow found the strength to soldier on. She kept at it, and despite an offer of promotion by the faculty adviser later in the year, she refused it, saying that she would rather earn it with experience than just the position being handed to her. Paris continued to toil for the next three years, moving up the ranks from production staff and graphics, then as a student reporter until her hard work was rewarded with her becoming editor in junior year. Paris wasn't expecting any less from UCLA's newspaper, and expected to have to crawl her way up to the top for four years.
There was also the added challenge that she didn't know the lay of the land as well as a native Californian would. Paris would need to prove that her smarts and attention to detail, and the fact that she learned at an accelerated rate in order to impress her superiors at the newspaper she was about to apply to work for.
She stood in front of the door leading into room 118, and tried to determine for herself how many people were already in the room. It was audition day, and her fellow journalists were also waiting to walk into the Bruin offices. The scene seemed more fitting for a Hollywood casting call than it did for trying to get work on a student newspaper, less the whiny kids vying to be the next spokeskid for Oscar Mayer by singing their insipid jingle.
"I'm sorry miss, you'll have to sit down until we call your name," a woman said as she approached Paris. Paris turned to make eye contact with the faculty member, smiling.
"Sorry ma'am, am I too early for staffing day?"
"Not at all, you're just on time actually. The big staffing part is over, so the Nikkis and the Carmens have already been sent away."
"Should I be familiar with those girls?" Paris asked, not understanding the woman's reference.
"I take it you're not a watcher of American Idol," the woman said, laughing.
"Oh, I got it. Sorry, I only watch television for some soap operas and political shows, the whole earning fame by doing something like karaoke or eating inedible things in a national forum really doesn't appeal to me." Paris straightened and started walking towards a bench off to the side of the door.
"Wait," the woman said, her eyes widening. "Can I have your name?"
Paris turned back around. "I'm Paris Gellar from Hartford, Connecticut, I ran the Chilton Academy Franklin for two years."
The woman smiled as the familiarity of the name hit her. "Ahhh, I've been expecting you Miss Gellar, you're one of my biggest gets of the year. My gosh, I didn't think you'd take to UCLA after you read my recommendation since you seemed destined for Harvard."
"Mrs. Broughton?" she asked, walking back towards the woman and extending her hand out to shake the faculty chief's hand.
"Nice to finally meet you Paris, I'm surprised you decided to accept the invitation to come out west."
"Well considering the sunny skies and history of crime, greed and political scandal, not to mention the environmental issues affecting southern California, how could I not come out here, this is one of America's journalistic hotbeds." Paris shook Mrs. Broughton's hand, and smiled at the woman who changed her life and got her out to Los Angeles in the first place.
"I suppose I could bring you up to the front of the line and get you all settled in, why don't you come with me and we'll chat more in my office?"
Wow, that was fast, I didn't even need to open the portfolio. "You mean that's it, I'm in?" Paris was shocked she wouldn't need to 'audition' her work.
"Mm-hmm, I'm not turning down an Oppenheimer award-winning writer who managed to become editor of her school paper one year earlier than the status quo. As Lou Grant would say, you've got spunk, and in droves."
Paris smiled, Mrs. Broughton was confident that she would do well working on the Bruin's staff. "Miss Peters thought I was a little pushy when I ran the paper, but how else are you going to turn out a quality product? I didn't want to see the circulation of the Franklindwindle and have a student-run guerilla newspaper cannibalize my audience, so I had to balance out the viewpoints and keep the controversy level low, that's why under my leadership the paper did so well. I just hope my successor keeps my ideals in mind when she takes over in a couple of days."
"I think we're going to get along well Miss Gellar, you were like me when I was back in high school." Mrs. Broughton recalled her glory days of high school journalism from the early 80s. "Back when I was in Grand Rapids and running the Catholic Central Crusader, when I came in that broadsheet was kissing the ass of athletics way too much and glorifying the incompetent administration so much it made me throw up, not to mention ten of the twenty-four pages were devoted to advertising. Once I took charge, that little paper ousted the faculty and put their precious little football program on probation because my reporters found out about recruiting violations and many, many drinking parties that the coach held for the players. By the time I graduated I'd made a lot of enemies in western Michigan, but lived up to the name on the masthead. To this day the administration and AD still consult the editor of the paper before they even make one move, in a way taking the temperature of the student body."
"Journalism at it's best," Paris agreed. She and Mrs. Broughton walked into the Daily Bruin newsroom together, debating about how similar the editorial policies of Hartford's Courant and the Los Angeles Times were now that the Tribune Corporation in Chicago owned both of the dailies, and the conflicts of interests that were springing up because they also owned television stations in each market.
"So, what assignment am I going to get first?" Paris was beaming after ending her conversation/interview with Mrs. Broughton, which ended up lasting about an hour. "Can I cover the USAC meetings, do a piece on where each dollar of your tuition goes to? I can even write a human interest piece on what a shift in the information technology department is like, including trying to somehow satisfy the RIAA that sharing an inane song by Cosign 75 or one of those stupid 'I hate my dad' punk bands helps more than it hurts the record industry? I'll do anything for you Diane, you just name the venue and direction my piece should go."
She's got spunk alright, maybe a little too much of it for a freshman, Mrs. Broughton thought. As much as she wanted to crown Paris her top reporter moments after she walked in, she knew if Paris was to get right into the trenches, the girl could be eaten up for applying the concepts which worked so well in Hartford to a story that might alienate the fraternities. At best the Bruin had a very tentative on-the-line relationship with the Greek houses, and after Paris rallied on Brianna's behalf about the girl's forced pledging, Diane knew that if Paris got her hands on a pencil and wrote a negative story about the Greeks, that peace would be shattered and Murphy Hall was going to have her head in a vise. She had also seen other freshmen reporters who had Paris' same eagerness crash and burn from trying to take on so much responsibility so fast.
I can't do that to Gellar, she'll be an important member of the staff when next year rolls around, but for now, I'll start her with something easy. She's going to hate me for awhile, but you never make friends when you're campaigning for the truth.
Mrs. Broughton make eye contact with Paris, and proceeded to tell her what her first assignment was going to be. "I have to start you small for now since you're an Eastern Seaboard transplant, so I want you to cover the women's volleyball game on Friday night against Cal State-Northridge. You'll have to drive to Northridge yourself, but I'm sending you with a photographer so she can take pictures of the Lady Bruins and she can help you out somewhat."
Paris, moments before smiling, now was feeling her grin fade and being replaced with a frown, along with a stare of confusion. "Excuse me Diane, you want me to cover what?'"
"The UCLA-Cal State-Northridge volleyball game, it's a non-conference game and the Matadors are usually beaten pretty convincingly, it's not a tough assignment."
Paris was in a total state of shock, and upon hearing her assignment, turned white, then found words coming to her slowly. "But, I can't cover volleyball, it's not my field, no sport is. Why don't you put me on for something else?" She shook her head, not believing this assignment was true.
"Paris, it's not that I don't have any confidence in your abilities, but right now my priority is using my experienced reporters to produce editions of the Bruin in the next month that will help the '06ers and '07ers get used to our high caliber of coverage, and to attract the eyeballs our advertisers need to sell their establishments, it's more about getting students to read our paper right now than to cover issues that we can save for the important editions later in the year. Also, you seem to have nothing when it comes to reporting on sports at all, I went through the online Franklin a few days ago, and found nothing under your name about athletics."
"That's because I suck at sports and I don't like them!" Paris yelled. "What's wrong with making a decision not to cover sports in high school?"
Mrs. Broughton pushed back her seat and stood up in front of her desk. "Nothing, but it doesn't make for a well-rounded reporter." She opened her arms and made a rainbow gesture. "You have to broaden your horizons Paris, and you're not going to do that stuck on the op-ed or student life pages. Take Mitch Albom for instance. He started out as a sportswriter, then moved on to a column. After he wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch realized he had a gift, a way with words. People would stop him on the street and ask his opinions about subjects other than sports, they asked him about politics and the news of the day. Pretty soon he had a national radio show out of Detroit and his sports column was nationally syndicated. Yet he still is an important voice in the land when it comes to non-sports items. There are other examples of sportswriters becoming general journalists, and reporters deciding that the regular news was stifling, so they moved to the press box and covered the gridiron."
"I don't care about Mitch Albom, he got a lucky break! I hate sports and sports hate me! This was the way divvying sides was in my gym class." She started imitating an average jock guy. "Uhh, two more players to go? I'll take the Jenny the asthmatic with the social anxiety disorder, a set of issues larger than a stack of National Geographics, and the 200/200 corrective vision goggles. Betsy?" She rose her voice up, whining. "No, I have to take Paris?! What a nerd, she sucks! Her idea of defense is ducking and holding her calculus book up begging the fielder not to throw the ball so hard or the center to pass her the ball, she's short and couldn't block a Hollywood Square. Can't we just take the injured boy with the crutches sitting out in the bleachers and put him in the middle so he doesn't have to participate? We can claim that Gellar would lose brain cells if she participated in this game."
Diane turned deadly serious, staring down Paris. "Listen Miss Gellar, I am the faculty chief of this paper, and if I want to have you cover a volleyball game, you'll cover a volleyball game, and you'll do it just as damned well as a student election. I don't care about your concerns with gym and athletics, and that your jaded view of the games is just to get the ball/puck/stone/whatever from point A to point B in a pointless exercise to impress others. This is the big leagues honey, and to make it to the 25-man roster you have to prove yourself in spring training, and this time you can't go crawling back to AAA Hartford wanting your precious Franklin back."
"But--" Paris tried to argue her position for not wanting a sports story, but found herself interrupted.
"But nothing Paris! I'm not Miss Peters, and I'm not going to stand aside letting your view become that of the student body's. I'm here for one reason and one reason only, to make sure that our brand of journalism is the best in the nation and that our paper is a kaleidoscope of student life at UCLA. You got that acceptance letter in January because your writing is second to none, but I had 49 other boys and girls I said the same thing to, and 22 of them took up my challenge along with you. Now if you feel like you don't want to cover the meet, the door is right over there, you can use it at anytime. If you walk out of it though, don't expect me to take you back except for having you write pithy little press releases about a new parking lot and having to scrounge up entries for the community calendar with no hope of promotion. If you take that road, the only rag you'll work for is the Santa Clarita Shopper/Used Car Gazette."
The 40 year-old's hazel eyes stared directly in the blonde's pupils, as if she was shooting lasers into the center of each eyeball. She issued Paris an ultimatum.
"You prove yourself Friday night, or you never prove yourself to me at all." Mrs. Broughton's words struck Paris right in her gut.
Paris cringed and felt acid rise up from her stomach. Her face tightened up, and she felt like at any moment her dormant tear ducts would be aroused. She felt her spirit being crushed in that instant, and that Mrs. Broughton was being unnecessarily cruel to her by having her write a story about a topic she loathed.
But her conscious set her straight, and brought back her façade of determination. You better take it on the chin. Who knows, maybe you'll like it. Volleyball is a religion out here, and she's doing you a favor by giving you what might be a small story in our world, but in California is as big as football in some cities. Just grin and bear it, and hope for the best next time.
She sat up straight in her seat, and tried to keep the grudge out of her response. "Fine Mrs. Broughton, you'll have a story about the Bruins/Matadors match on your desk Sunday evening at 7:30 before press time."
"And?" Diane looked at her again directly.
Paris hesitated, and then answered the unasked question. "And I'll put just as much strong effort into the story as one of my editorials in the past."
"It should be easy for you, and if you need any help, feel free to ask anyone on the sports staff." Diane's stoic front fell, and she was back to the cheerful talkative self Paris had first met in the hallway.
Paris smiled as she realized that perhaps she wouldn't need any help from the staff, and the person who could teach her volleyball basics was only one bed away. "Actually, I should be fine..." The editor and cub reporter walked out of the office, and they started on a meet-and-greet of the Bruin staff, where Paris met her photojournalist for Friday night, Mai Lyn Vang.
Three hours later...
"Brianna, I need you to tell me everything you know about volleyball, and I need you to do it in forty-eight hours!" Paris burst into the dorm room guns blazing, and on the prowl. Brianna was studying her literature homework and was in a particularly tough passage of Chaucer when her concentration was interrupted by Paris' demand. She turned around with her mind in a daze.
"What the hell--" Paris venting about Mrs. Broughton quickly shut up Brianna.
"I can't believe it, I was the editor of the oldest student newspaper in New England, and what am I reduced to when I apply for the Bruin? I get fucking scorekeeper duty for the UCLA/Cal State-Northridge game on Friday night, she might as well have assigned me to a story where I go in-depth to figure out what animal the mystery meat in the cafeteria comes from! Goddamnit I hate her smug little attitude, all I have to write is if UCLA won/lost the game, the score, and the highlights, but she expects me to write it as if the Pope visited the student union!" She slumped down onto her bed and lay on it, looking at the ceiling and frustrated with her journalistic side.
Brianna's assignment on the Canterbury Tales was quickly forgotten as she walked over to the side of her roommate's bed. "You're not athletic though, why would she assign you a story in a field in which you're not talented at all?"
"Mrs. Broughton wanted me to 'broaden my horizons', so she's making me write about volleyball. At least I don't have to write a feature about the cheerleading team bringing it on at nationals." She rolled her eyes. "It's not that I hate volleyball, those girls seem pretty intelligent. It's just that when I was in gym, even with my 165 IQ I got confused about all the concepts and rotating that was probably second nature to you. Volleyball was out of my element along with gym altogether, and when I served I only got it as far as the net, where the ball would bounce off and then slide down to the floor with a thud."
"Aww, sorry Par, I wish I could help you out with not having to write that story," Brianna said back to her sincerely. "But since you're stuck with it, I suppose I could come out of retirement to help you learn all the basics and strategies of the game." She immediately noticed Paris start to frown, possibly because she might have to do some kind of physical activity besides some nice and safe jogging.
"You're not going to make me play the game, are you?" she asked, worried.
Brianna smiled back, and laughed. "I'm afraid there's no way you'll become Holly McPeak in two days, so no you'll never be forced to touch a volleyball. I'll just explain things to you, have you read books, watch tapes, that kind of thing."
"Sounds like a riot Daugherty," Paris joked. "Instead of studying journalism, I get to study the wonderful world of beach volleyball."
"Oh please, that league these days is as believable as wrestling, we're going to do the real thing, six-by-six on an indoor court. As a matter of fact, do you have a video store card?"
"Uh, a Hollywood Video card from back in Hartford, but they said it would work out here..."
"Perfect!" Brianna smiled. "You get yourself out to the video store and rent World Team Volleyball for the Playstation 2, then when you get back we'll pop the game in and I can explain to you sets, serving, rally scoring and everything that should make you a sideline expert, and I can have fun kicking your butt at the game."
"That's great and all Bree, but there's one thing you're forgetting, we don't own a video game system." As much as Brianna's idea was good, it would be pretty useless to rent a game and have nothing to play it on.
"No, but Doug has a PS2, I'm sure he'd lend it to us."
Paris wrinkled her nose, but accepted Brianna's offer nonetheless. "Fine, but stop by Von's and pick up some Lysol, you don't know what that boy's touched and gotten on that controller."
He's not that gross Paris, Brianna thought secretly to herself. She hoped the feud between Paris and Doug would start to fizzle soon, considering her mixed and burgeoning feelings for the boy. "Will do, now get up and rent that video game, up, up, up!"
"I can't believe I'm about to learn things from something I once described as 'a deplorable form of entertainment only meant to arouse the anger of the anti-social'." Paris got up from her bed and started brushing her hair to freshen up from the hectic day she spent at the Bruin.
"Things change, even the army uses them to train soldiers these days, plus it increases your hand-eye coordination and peripheral vision." Brianna smiled at her proof, which made Paris question if she actually knew everything in the world.
"Sometimes your too smart for even me Brianna." She grabbed her purse off the nightstand and walked towards the door. "See you in a while then."
"Bye." Brianna waved her friend out, and moved towards the TV to figure out which jacks went with which when hooking up a video game system. After careful examination, she left the room and headed towards 319 in order to proffer Doug's PS2.
A feeling of nervousness washed over her, as she recalled last Friday's events once again. Brianna had been avoiding Doug since that night in an attempt to keep the sexual feelings she was having for him contained. Labor Day she decided to catch the A's in Anaheim, using the early afternoon Angels game as an excuse to leave the dorm so she wouldn't bump into Doug, still busy studying for his sports medicine quiz. And the last two days she left for classes at seven instead of her usual 7:30, under the guise of catching a few extra minutes of study time in the classroom before the lecture started at 8:30. In truth, she didn't want to bump into Doug when he came to drop off her and Paris' doughnuts for the morning, and she hadn't said anything to her roommate about the awkward meeting of Doug in his bath towel. Out of sight, out of mind was becoming her motto about Doug, and she hoped she could ask permission for the system, get it and flee away from 319 as soon as she could.
Her dreams however, were another story. True, Doug managed to avoid her REM state on both Friday and Saturday, but Sunday was another story. The dream actually started as a nightmare, with her attempted initiation into TKS the focus. It was far worse than the real thing, with the sisters forcing her to drink an extreme amount of alcohol, and to sit in an empty room with a TV playing Britney Spears videos and interviews ad nauseum. The combination of shrilly pop and darkness was driving Brianna insane, and she struggled to open the door to the rest of the house. At the midpoint, she was huddled up fetally in a corner of a room, crying and wishing for Paris to come in and rescue her from the brutality of the sorority.
Then, without rhyme or reason, the door opened, and Doug walked in, and upon seeing Brianna in her state felt a pang of concern for his floormate. She was looking at him with her blue eyes wide, pleading with him to help her out of the horrid situation she was forced into. He scooped her up into his arms, and then tried opening the door. Once again though, the door was stuck, and the boy had to resort to brute strength to force it door open. For good measure he kicked the TV off it's stand after pulling the plug, causing a few sparks to fly out of the plastic casing of the tube as it hit the hard concrete below.
The door came off the hinges as Doug's shoulder hit the weak middle point of the honeycomb door, and him and Brianna burst out into the living room of the TKS house. They were met by a gaggle of sorority sisters trying to keep her in the fold against her will, and chanting something about Christina Aguilera being their queen and goddess and that they needed to sacrifice Brianna in her honor. Doug bravely fought off the depraved girls, and ran with his the girl out of the house and towards the Saxons, desperate for her to snap out of the haze fueled by Jack Daniels, Coke, and Franzia.
The dream fast-forwarded to the morning after, with Brianna sleeping in Doug's bed and him lying on the couch. She woke up, took in her surroundings, and was about to wring Doug's neck for taking advantage of her while she was drunk, when she found she was still in her formal dress from the night before. Wrinkled up and clinging to her fevered body like a second skin, but the dress had stayed on all night. She slowly got up from the bed, handled the post-hangover headache of seeing first sunlight as well as she could, and she walked towards the cupboard, taking a glass out and putting it under the faucet to strip her mouth of the malty and dry aftertaste of the night before. She drank it all up, then made her way to the side of Doug's couch. She shook him awake, and smiled at him, her eyes full of tears at how thankful she was that Doug came in at the right time.
"Hey, feeling good? The Tylenols should've taken effect around four," he said to her as he woke up, his eyes fluttering open and closed to diffuse the light shock.
"Much better, I don't remember much about last night except that I was thankful you were there, and that I'm driving only with you or Paris along from now on."
Doug laughed at Brianna's little gem. "I just happened to see your car pulling into the wrong lot on my way back from the student union, and thought that wasn't you, since you really hate the sororities as much as I hate the frats." He tucked a stray strand of Brianna's hair behind her right ear, and started running his fingers through the long raven strands of her coif.
"So you followed my car in and snuck into the house, being careful not to arouse suspicion?"
"Everything I could without having to go all Bosom Buddies and walk in wearing a dress and horrible wig."
"You'd look good as a woman, well, except for the biceps and the...lower portion of your body," Brianna joked. He laughed back at her, glad the sarcastic and witty Brianna he had known for a week was coming back.
It was then a breath caught in her throat. Doug was completely clothed in the dream, so it wasn't an erotic dream in Brianna's world, but there was something about his dark blue eyes that was doing things to her thought processes. She moved closer to Doug, her gaze not leaving his, now stuck on her lips. They were being consumed by something that was alien to them both.
"I want to thank you for saving me Doug, and this seems to be the best way to do it." In a very cavalier move, she closed the distance, and found herself kissing Doug. He managed out something himself before the rest of the dream ended up with them making out.
"A very nice reward Bree," he muttered before he started nipping the girl's plump upper lip erotically with his teeth. The dream ended moments later, and Brianna woke up in her bed with a start around 3:30am, a sheen of perspiration coating her face. She found her body aroused, the hair on her arms standing on end as she struggled to regain her breath. She rose up on the bed and examined what the dream meant when she recalled what she could remember about it. At the time, she chalked it up to the shock of being alone and away from Antioch for the first time, and not being able to run to her mother to ask what the dream meant to her, and the shock of not having her father discourage her from dating like he usually did. It can't be anything sexual, it's just trying to find comfort in a face I'm starting to find familiar, that's all, she thought to herself as she went back to bed, and somehow fell back to sleep.
Brianna found herself back in front of 319 as she came back into reality, facing the door.
"Here goes nothing, you better lend us that video game system Doug," she said to herself as she knocked on the door lightly. She waited about a minute, and then Doug answered the door. He had a sort of straight face on as he opened the door, until he caught sight of Brianna's beautiful eyes.
He almost melted into a puddle of goo on sight. His smile widened, and he tried to avert his gaze from below her face, which wasn't easy seeing as Brianna had on a blue button-down blouse opened two buttons down with the slightest hint of cleavage peeking out from beneath. Unlike Friday's meeting when she was wearing loose sweatpants, she had on a pair of cutoff jean shorts, which accentuated the length of her legs.
Stop, stop, stop Doug, she's here for something else, not you, he thought to himself, building up his defenses against Brianna's beauty. He tried to stay distant from her as he invited her in.
"So, what'd you need?" Doug asked as Brianna leaned against the counter.
"Paris is an unathletic girl who has to write a story about volleyball on Friday night for the Bruin, so she went and rented a volleyball game from the video store. Problem is we don't have a console to play it on, and I have trust issues about renting video store equipment."
"What's wrong with video store consoles?"
"Besides the insane deposit you have to put down just to get it out the door, the controller feels too soft or too hard when you play the game on a rental unit, the cables that are included are usually damaged or of poor quality because Jimmy Bob from the trailer court on Hiawatha attempted to plug all three RCA jacks into the little ancient antenna jack where you have to screw the contacts in, and the system has been bumped more times than a piece of luggage at Denver's airport, thus making it unusable."
"And you came in here to fume about renting an X-Box from the video store why?" Doug was happy, but confused.
"Sorry," Brianna mumbled, blushing at how she was losing her mind in front of him. "I need to use your Playstation so me and Paris can play said volleyball game. You'll have it back by Friday night, I promise you."
"Why didn't you ask that in the first place?" Doug said. "I have too much on my mind to play video games anyway, so it's cool."
"Really? Thanks, you're a lifesaver." She smiled and they headed towards the TV corner. "If I wouldn't have gotten it Paris would've come back later and had a fencing match in the commons with you over the system."
All Doug did was look at Brianna weirdly. He couldn't really say anything except, "Huh?" Brianna laughed at his reaction.
"I'm afraid I'm not kidding about that, she came to blows with a friend holding a foil because she accidentally told some other friends about a boyfriend she was trying to keep secret."
"I would not want to be that girl then."
"Me either." The awkwardness had come back between Brianna and Doug, as he went over to disconnect the Playstation 2 from the TV. Brianna just sat on the chair, watching him and trying to keep any inappropriate thoughts out of her system. She decided to take her mind off of him by taking another look at his dorm. The pin-up girl posters were still up on the walls on his side of the room. However, his roommate's area looked very bare. There was nothing on their side of the wall, and the covers on the other bed seemed thin and institutional, like the blankets UCLA issued only because California law required them to give students 'room and board', which meant bare-bones sheets and blankets were issued on the first day. Brianna and Paris noticed that Doug never mentioned his roommate at all, only Ronnie from across the hall.
Deciding to take a risk, Brianna decided to ask Doug about his roommate.
"Hey, where's your roommate?"
"Him? He's on one of those daytime soap operas, The Bold and the Beautiful I think," he responded non-chalantly as he handed Brianna the console and controllers. "There you go, enjoy."
"Hey, whoa, you have a soap star as your roommate?" Brianna was curious about this mystery hunk who happened to share the room with Doug.
"No, I have a soap star as a roommate who claims to live here 24/7, but only is my 'roommate' so he can ward off the Star and Soap Opera Digest from learning where he really lives so they can bug him for spoilers. He was here for two days, then went back to his Malibu mansion with the blessing of the administration to die down the media."
"They understand what?" Brianna didn't know what he meant by the actor being able to keep a room at UCLA and still live at home.
"Understand that if they have an actor from a popular soap going to their school they'll get free publicity. All his publicist has to do is say that he lives here at the Saxons each time they ask about where he lives and is going to school, and you have the female boosters addicted to bad acting and bad sex sending the checks to UCLA in droves so their favorite character receives the best education possible." He hesitated and wished that Brianna would leave, because he didn't really want to tell her all this.
"So basically because of some brainless hunk who acts on a really bad show, you're living in this dorm alone?" Brianna felt agitated, and was trying to figure out how to fix this situation. "Why don't they switch him and Ronnie around, you two are such good friends and would make fine roommates."
"Oh we've tried, but admissions and Piper keep saying no to us," he huffed. "That would make Ronnie's rommie Jake the odd man out with a dorm alone, and though they really want to fill the space, they just can't until the inevitable flunk-out of the soap hunk because his housing's paid up for the year."
"His housing is paid up for the year all right, but he's not living here--" Brianna was going to start to rant, when she felt Doug pat her on the shoulder.
"It's alright though, I don't mind having my own dorm Bree, and it's fine. Sure, I don't have a true roommate, but look at it this way, at least I won't have to listen to him recite his inane dialogue into all hours of the night, and I have a lot of room to stretch out, without him being here I was able to fit an actual couch in this room."
She laughed at his explanation. "Knowing soap opera stars on CBS, he probably would've Ikea'ed the room beyond belief, and your seating would've consisted of those painful knee chairs."
"And if I get a girl in here, there's no need for them to have to share my cramped bed, they can just lay on his for the night," he joked to her.
Instead of laughing back at Doug however, Brianna felt something else altogether. Butterflies fluttering in her stomach, and a shot of arousal going through her at the mention of Doug and his bed. Also, a small feeling of jealousy at any girl he would invite to spend the evening with him.
I don't want to be that girl, she thought to herself, trying to keep any thoughts that would go above the MPAA's rating scale out of her head.
"Or an even better idea, you can combine the two beds together and create a huge superbed to do the deed." After hearing her own words, said without thinking, Brianna flushed red. Yeah, that got him out of your head Daugherty.
"I could, but I'm more of a guy who takes advantage of a spur-of-the-moment opportunity." Doug's voice was rather husky, and he too was starting to say things without running his thoughts through a filter. His eyes were drifting lower and lower from Brianna's neck, lingering for a small bit on her chest before falling down to her legs. He remembered how on Friday night when they were chatting in the lobby he found himself drawn to her thin yet curvy gams peeking out from behind her dress. His concentration remained fully on the conversation, but a little part of him continued to be obsessed with Brianna's legs. The stimuli from remembering that conversation was starting to arouse him, along with the way Brianna sat in the chair. Her shirt was wrinkling as she leaned towards the right side, and Doug tried to take his mind of the fact that between each of the blouse's buttons towards the middle, he could see slivers of peach lace and cotton from her bra.
Oh my God, get yourself under control Doug! If she sees you all flustered and staring at her inappropriately, you'll never have a shot with her, he thought to himself, thankful that there was another distraction he could deal with before Brianna left his dorm with the PS2.
"Er, I forgot to take my game out before I unplugged it, do you mind?" He held out his hands to try to get the unit back from Brianna.
"Which game?"
"Vice City, probably not yours or Paris' tastes," he said non-chalantly. However, Brianna firmed up, and she kept the system in her hands.
"And what makes you think that, just because it's a game where an anti-social mobster takes out his aggression on an entire Floridian metropolis with multiple weapons, cars and motorcycles, it's not my taste? What, you think the only video games I play are those that appeal to women like shitty Barbie titles, and that I've never played a round of Quake Arena in my life?"
Doug stumbled for a response, not knowing what to say. "I didn't say that, I just--"
"Just what, thought girly little Brianna doesn't know an anti-tank missile from a plasma gun? Well let me tell you something Doug, I bet you that if we had a game night one of these evenings after I'm done teaching Paris her volleyball basics, I could cream you at Vice City or one of those games where the object is to maim as many men as possible. This," She pointed to the top of her head. "This not only knows just about every fact anyone could throw at me about the academic process, but this mind also knows the best strategy to capture the flag during a particularly heated internet gaming session, where I spent many a night after my homework was done and there was no charity project to finish or do."
Doug didn't know how much more of Brianna he could take. Damn it, she's beautiful, smart, and now I learn she's a gamer just like I am. Why doesn't God smite me right about now so I can die a happy man? He knew if he continued on the conversation, he might want to start ramping up the silent flirting going on between them to a higher level. But there was the problem right there. Were they actually flirting, or was this just a friend wanting a friend? Doug didn't know for sure, and neither did Brianna. There was so much confusion, as this was the first time the two had really chatted since that sexually charged Friday night caused by Doug's towel.
Brianna found Doug was speechless, and attributed it to her just-finished tangent. She decided it was better to save face and just leave rather than waiting for him to respond somehow.
"So," she said. "I think I'm going to go hook this up, you don't mind if I keep GTA Vice City, do you? Not like you'll be able to play it for the next two days."
"No, go ahead, sorry about that," he stumbled out as he guided Brianna to the door. "And I hope you give Paris a lot of hard knocks in the volleyball game, you seem to be a very talented player."
"Thanks, I'll be sure to give her a butt-kicking just for you." She smiled back at him and turned to walk out, when she felt his hand on her shoulder.
"By the way Bree? I'd be honored to take you on in a gaming session. Say, Friday night while Paris is in Northridge?"
Her resolve to get through his invitation was strong, and she kept her composure. "Sure, can't wait. I'll see you then Doug."
"You too Bree, take good care of my unit."
"Will do." Doug shut the door, and Brianna started walking back to 343 with a bright smile on her face. It may not be an official date, but it's a way to get to know him closer, she thought to herself, almost giddy with excitement. Any thoughts about the past and Leonard were forgotten as she walked into her dorm and set up the video game system.
Doug just sighed to himself and slumped onto the couch, letting his thoughts regather as he took in what happened in the last ten minutes.
I think I've finally moved on from Claudia, this has to be for real. Brianna's just an all-around wonderful girl, and she's got this stubbornness that's a downright turn on. He let his thoughts fade back towards school and his regular life outside of school as a rerun of Pokemon started unraveling its very thin and seizure-inducing plot on his television.
"I can't wait till Friday night, you're mine Brianna," he said to himself, then quickly corrected himself to take out any possessive connection with his words. "Er, I'm going to beat you at Halo, I mean." He went back to watching dorkily animated kids using cute cartoon animals to vent their anger.
Paris stood in line waiting to be checked out at the video store, her copy of World Team Volleyball in hand. When she went in she was hoping it wouldn't take her more than five minutes to rent the game, but as she walked in, the employees were swamped in by a mid-evening rush as Angelinos took advantage of one of the last weeks before the fall television season began to rent DVDs. Thus after she picked up the game, she ended up in a line that would take about ten minutes to clear. She fumed for a moment, and being the star pupil of her charm school when she was younger, waited patiently to pay for her game, whiny children coming from flag football behind her with Daddy Day Care be damned.
She didn't look up while she waited in the queue for the first few moments, preferring to go over the assignment on Friday night in her mind and how she would write up the story. She deduced one of two styles, focusing on UCLA's #1 player and her actions in the match, or the entire team with a basic rundown of the highlights of the match along with statistics and poll rankings in order to give a scientific spin to the story. The stat geeks should have a ball reading my stories, she thought to herself as she read the instructions printed on the back cover of the rental box. X button, circle and square button, analog stick? I thought I was playing a game, not studying for a geometry final. She hoped that this gaming session with Brianna would answer all her questions about the rules and regulations of the game, and didn't sound like a total idiot in any volleyball article she'd write.
She was looking up at the price list when felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket. Paris took it out and looked at the caller ID display on the front. The quartz display showed the caller as J MARIANO, and immediately she smiled when she realized who it was. Opening the phone and putting it to her ear, she took the call as she waited in line.
"Hello, Paris here."
"What's up Delirious P?" Jess asked her in a normal voice. Paris tried to hold back a laugh and take the call in a serious matter, but found herself laughing at his greeting.
"You're never going to let me live down my attempt at being urban, are you?" She amusingly rolled her eyes.
"Afraid not Paris, you're stuck with it forever. What I would've given for a tape recording of you representing the HFD."
"At least you have the memories Jess," she responded, trying to start the conversation. "So, first things first, how did the biology test end up?"
"You're not going to kill me if I said I got an 87, I know you wanted me to get all of them right."
Paris smiled and took pride in her new pupil. "A B+, not bad, and definitely an improvement on your 49 you got in your last science class in the Hollow. See what I told you Jess, you put your nose to the grindstone and you'll receive a great grade in the end. All you need to do is keep that up in biology and all of your other classes, and more importantly, take your homework seriously. I don't like it myself, but it teaches you that academic life isn't a confined seven hour block divided into periods, its 24/7. Trust me when I say that you'll understand things more when you do your homework than when you just listen to the lesson and don't do anything else."
"So you're happy with my grade?" Jess' apprehension about divulging the grade that wasn't quite 90 faded.
"If you got a 100 I might've been a little suspicious that you peeked at your neighbor's paper, but I was expecting either an 87 or 91 to be honest. Those two questions about the origins of the DNA theory were stymieing you throughout the session, and there was that stray one that got away where you mixed up Salk and Watson as to who discovered DNA."
"Well I'm not the only one who didn't know about the DNA theory questions, only two girls in the entire class managed to get them right, and even then the answers seemed to be exactly like the passage from the book, so they took it right from memory."
"Next," the clerk at the counter said, and Paris found herself at the head of the queue. Paris handed the woman the game to scan, along with her debit card.
"Hold on a moment Jess, I have to check out, OK?" She struggled to hold the phone up to her ear, and Jess could hear in the background the sounds of Paris trying to dig a pen out from the deep reaches of her purse.
"Sure, you've got your hands full, I'll wait." It took a few minutes to check out though, because Paris needed to re-register her membership so that her information was updated. She then remembered that a stop at the DMV would be needed soon, since her Connecticut driver's license and plates would expire in about thirty days. After divulging so much information to the clerk that she felt like Sydney Bristow being interrogated by SD-6, she was finally able to rent the video game and leave Hollywood Video, with the assurance from the clerk that next time wouldn't take so long. She hoped not, judging from the dirty looks being doled out towards her from the flag football kids.
Paris left the store and got in her car, starting the conversation with Jess again.
"So what's up, there's another reason you called me besides telling me your quiz scores, wasn't there?"
"Actually, there is. You know my dad Jimmy from the phone call on Friday, right?"
"How could I forget, the guy hung up on me twice thinking I was a French national." She laughed as she shifted into first gear and merged onto Westwood Blvd.
"Yeah, he's sorry for that by the way, he's not a fan of either telemarketers or foodservice companies trying to sell him the next great mass hot dog cooker. He was wondering though, do you have anything to do on Friday night?"
Paris dreaded answering Jess' question immediately. "Why?" she asked shakily.
"Because he wanted to invite you to dinner with him and me at our house, I don't know. He's been teasing me the last couple of days about being whipped by you and stuff."
"Aww, how adorable, is he singing the spiel about love, marriage and the baby carriage yet?" She tried keeping a happy face on everything before she had to turn him down.
"He will be by Friday night, and he seems eager to meet you Par. Would you be able to come down here?" He seemed to have a pleading tone to his voice, as if the dinner would only be a small portion of the night. Paris imagined them curling up on Jess' couch and repeating the movie portion of the night from last week once again, along with the silent and teasing flirting both of them were doing to each other, especially towards the end of the evening.
Damn it Broughton, I've never put my social life before work before, and the one time I want to you blocked it! She wished there was some way to fit in both the story in Northridge and Jess into one night, but she couldn't see it happening at all unless Jess wanted to eat at midnight. She breathed harshly into the phone's mic, and dreaded turning him down.
"I have newspaper work Friday night and I won't be home until late Jess, I'm sorry. If I could get out of it I would, but I have to really impress my editor, otherwise I'll be stuck doing the community calendar for the rest of the year."
"It's OK Smartie, I'll let Jimmy know not to expect you on Friday." Jess sounded almost sad over the phone, and Paris could sense it behind his chauvinistic tone of voice.
"Jess," she pleaded, "If you would've called earlier, there would be no hesitation that I would've said yes and I would've tried to get out of my story up in Northridge if it was thrown on me. But this doesn't mean I don't want to come down to Venice, maybe next week I'll come down there and visit you and Jimmy, I'm sorry I couldn't this Friday. It's just that though I don't want to be UCLA's #1 student, I do want to be chief editor of the Bruin, and it's going to take a lot of hard work to impress the faculty chief, she's starting me out on sports and the sooner I finish these assignments, the greater my freedom will be when it comes to story choice and subject matter." She turned right onto the first side street she came to, and pulled the car off the road. "Please say you're not mad at me Reb, your friendship means so much to me right now."
"I knew what I was getting into when I decided to befriend you Par, there's no way I could be mad at you at all. You're driven beyond all belief and there's no way I'd be able to stop you from getting your hands on the prize." He shifted in the chair he was sitting in, the clank of the forklifts muffled by the drywalls of Target's employee breakroom. "Look, I know that it's tough learning to settle into a new city and a new school, and look how that ended up in the Hollow when I was there. Right now, you're not feeling all that control of your world yet, and you have to get used to a whole new set of people and friends telling you what you should and shouldn't do. I just don't want to be a distraction if you don't want me to--"
"Jess, that is the last thing in the world you are to me!" She said into the phone sternly. "Don't ever put yourself down like that ever again. You are far from a distraction to me, and God, without you here to confide in about things, I'd feel so alone among the palms and the sunshine. Sure I have Brianna as a roommate, but she don't understand me all that well yet, you've had several doses of me to digest. I'm not going to give up on being a good friend and mentor to you Reb, even if I have to juggle it with school and the Bruin." She was about at the point of near tears; no boy and his friendship had ever affected her so much in her life, even Tristan's. The growing feelings of love for Jess inside of her heart were also getting to her, and all she wanted is for Jess to strive to be the best he could.
Jess was silent over the phone for about a minute, trying to figure out what meaning there was behind her wanting to be a friend and mentor. When Jimmy had asked him to invite Paris over, there wasn't even hesitation or whining to try to make the elder Mariano change his mind, Jess looked forward to Paris next to him at the dinner table. His first thought when he had come home from school was to call Paris and tell her the good news, until he remembered that this was day one for the Bruin staff. He decided to call later, and hope against hope that whatever assignment wouldn't interfere with Friday night.
But Paris wasn't coming over on Friday night, and though it wasn't her fault, Jess was still hurt. Until he remembered the hurdles of his past relationships. With the nameless women he saw in Brooklyn, the reasons ranged from revulsion from being seen with such a guy to being cheated on harshly and without regard to his feelings. One relationship Jess had even ended acrimoniously because the girl refused his simple request for a condom because she wanted to feel him 'naturally' despite her mother's plea not to have reckless sex. There was his time with Rory, where the reasons ranged from the hatred by the townspeople of the Hollow for pursuing their princess, Dean, Lorelai, and the entire accident, along with the summer in Washington. Not to mention Luke and Lorelai's silent flirting, which made Jess feel at times like he was Billy Bob eyeing his first cousin Sophie Mae when he thought of Rory...in that way.
This is the smallest obstacle ever, and she'll still be here in the morning, he thought to himself as he realized that a relationship with Paris might be hard at first, but the barriers in trying to pursue a friendship and even more would be easily passable. There was the whole issue of Rory finding out, but him and Paris would cross that bridge later, along with the blessings of the elder Gellars and her nanny. The only impediment was their schedules, and even with that they both could scrounge up time somewhere to meet. Brianna and Jimmy, the closest people to Paris and Jess respectively in Los Angeles both endorsed their friendship completely, no strings attached, and were encouraging it further.
Of course, no thought like this couldn't be completed without something impure, and Jess came up with a doozy, which involved him and Paris copulating after a passionate argument about something little that almost turned into a bar brawl between them. Right on the counter of her kitchenette. With Brianna walking in on them. The ugly red vest he had to wear to work with a bullseye on the right breast was suddenly Jess' best defense against his colleagues noticing he was having unbecoming thoughts about the girl he was talking to on the phone.
"Jess? You still there?" Paris asked after a bit, after checking her battery and finding the juice fully charged up. She heard Jess cough and clear his throat.
"Yeah, I'm here, sorry. And I completely understand, I'm sorry if I made it seem as if I was an annoying part of your life. It's just I don't want to ruin this like I did back in Stars Hollow with Rory. You're a great chick and although we didn't know each other that well in Connecticut, I'd love to know you a lot more than through run-ins with each other when you had to be in town for Rory."
She smiled, happy that little bump had been negotiated by both of them masterfully. "Yeah, me too Jess, I never really understood why everyone hated you so much in the first place, you were just a victim of circumstance, that's all."
"What about when I kidnapped the lawn gnome?"
"If you were on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and found yourself next to a cow, your first instinct would be to 'blank'?" She asked him, emphasizing blank like Gene Rayburn would do on Match Game '74.
"Tip the cow over?"
"Correct. See, you were a city guy relocated to a suburban setting and with a history of mischief making. My argument if you were prosecuted for the theft would be you were a moth driven to the flame and you had to kidnap the gnome, it was in your nature and ingrained in your mind to cause chaos via that method, and if you didn't you'd be driven insane with fury each time you passed Babbette's house. If she owned a dairy in rural Connecticut, the gnome would be a cow and you'd end up tipping her over to cause trouble."
"You think about this stuff way too much, don't you?" He laughed at her defense theory.
"Got to have something to do between classes, my shortest walk is eight minutes between buildings, and a between period break is twenty long minutes."
"Glad to know none of your brain power is going to waste." Paris suddenly heard a loud tone in the background, indicating the end of Jess' break. "Damn, back to the salt mines, or as the Dayton-Hudson Corporation likes to call it the toys and games department. God I can't wait till a position in electronics opens up so I can get a promotion, some of these kids are annoying."
"Now, now Jess, they're being fed that they have to be that way by the Mattel and Hasbro corporations in cooperation with Nickelodeon, if it wasn't for them childhood would be downright boring."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. I should get going then, it's almost rush hour and my boss needs everyone on the floor."
"Have a good rest of the day, and I'll talk to you later Jess." Before she hung up, she needed to make sure that Jess' dinner table invitation was still open. "By the way, Jess?"
"Yeah?" He was rushed yet still sticking to Paris' every word.
"I'll take a raincheck on dinner in Venice, say next week Friday to meet Jimmy?"
"Yeah, he's already looking forward to it." He smiled, happy that the conversation ended on a high note. "Talk to you soon Paris."
"You too, goodbye Jess."
"Bye Paris." Even in the larval stages of love, Paris kept her ear on the phone until she heard the last click of the hang-up and her cell reverted to the sound of a dial tone.
"Darn my father for giving me that hopeless romantic gene," she cursed to herself as she U-turned on La Grange and turned back onto Westwood. She brought herself back into her journalistic state of mind, and prepared for the predicted drubbing of her ass by Brianna that would be repeated about 93 times in the next two days.
To be continued...
Next Chapter: Paris takes on Brianna in the volleyball video game and confronts her about her game of avoidance with Doug, and Brianna will have to face up to the fact that she's in love. And at the game Paris makes a new friend in her photographer, can they get along and keep Mrs. Broughton satisfied? Well with Paris thinking about what she's missing in Venice, it might not be as easy as she may have thought. Hopefully Jess can stop by the dorm and make her feel happy somehow.