Author: Nat

Rating: PG13

Spoilers: I'm Australian and because we're so far behind I don't think it applies… besides, it's mostly AU anyways.

Pairing: Rory/Tristan

Standard disclaimer applies

A/N: Thanks again to Sur & Sus for betaing. This fic would be nowhere near as readable without them. Thanks to Panda, Angel, Inf & and absentee Jewls for the late late night brainstorm. Thanks to those who review each chapter, 45 reviews already! I'm amazed by this. There can't possibly be a more supportive fandom out there. Feedback is appreciated and feeds the muse!

Enjoy!

- The Life and Times of an Unwelcome Third Wheel -

My mother is bipolar. For as long as I can remember she's been medicated for the problem. She's fine when she's on her meds, a little distant, a little detached from the reality of things that are going on around her. But she's fine. She can function in social situations and stuff.

She loves to dress up. She always seems to shine just a little bit brighter when she's wearing diamonds.

The symptoms started to develop when I was about 4 I guess. I can't really remember a time before she got sick, so I was fairly young. 

Anyway, the Doctor decided to try her on a new medication and she didn't like it. So she went off the meds all together and started to flush the pills so Dad wouldn't know. Tristan went on about how we should have known and stuff, but Dad kept saying that there was no way we could have known. She knew how to hide the symptoms from us, she'd had years of practice.

She knew that staying on the meds was the best thing for her and she was generally good with taking them, but something would happen and she'd miss a day or two and then she'd miss more and then she'd start to avoid taking them, then everything in our house would fall apart again. Because as hard as it was on her, it was just as hard on us.

I'd never seen Tristan cry before.

Rory was lying out on the couch, her head on Tristan's lap as they watched Mel Gibson's Hamlet talk to Glenn Close's Gertrude on the big screen in the games room. Jordan lay sprawled over a chair, his foot bouncing in and out of Tristan's line of sight.

"Jordan! Either keep your foot still or move it!"

"Make me." Jordan smirked in Rory's direction knowing that Tristan wasn't going to move. Three heads turned towards the door at the sound of glass smashing. Turning her attention back to the movie, Rory shrugged it off as one of the maids having an accident. Tristan's hand was wound in her hair slowly lulling her to sleep and her eyes were just drifting shut, when there was a knock at the door.

"Tristan?" The maid's timid voice sounded and he turned to face the door.

"What is it?"

"It's Mrs Dugrey-"

Tristan and Jordan were out the door within seconds. "Where is she?"

"She's in the master bedroom."

They were in the room by the time Rory got halfway there, and she didn't see much as Jordan came out and closed the door behind him. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down the stairs. She sat in the sitting room as Jordan grabbed the phone.

In her mind there was so much blood. More than she knew she had actually seen.

Jordan ended the call to his father and opened the large front door before going to pace at the bottom of the stairs. Rory could see the tension run through his body with each step.

"I thought she was ok." Jordan's eyes snapped up to meet hers. "Tristan told me she was ok with the medication."

Jordan jumped. "I guess she hasn't been taking them again."

He shrugged his shoulders irritably moving towards the door, as the sirens of the ambulance got closer. Rory sat quietly, her heart aching for this young boy who had worked his way into her heart in such a short time.

The ambulance pulled up and Rory remained sitting as Jordan led them up the stairs to where Tristan was with their mother.

David Dugrey came rushing into the house and went straight up the stairs.

Rory had never felt so useless in her life.

A short time later, Cecille Dugrey had been taken out on a stretcher with David Dugrey at her side. Jordan had locked himself in his room and Tristan was showering. He had come down the stairs looking for her with blood all over him. He gave Rory a distracted kiss goodbye and told her he would see her tomorrow before walking Rory to the door.

And as much as Rory was worried about him, she knew there was nothing she could do for him until he decided that he wanted to talk about it. So when he turned up at the doorway of her home in Stars Hollow an hour after she got home she was more than a little shocked to see he had brought Jordan with him.

He never let Jordan go anywhere with him unless Rory convinced him to. She silently held the door open to them.

She pulled Jordan to her, giving him a hug as he came through the door before Tristan. "Are you alright?"

He smiled at her. "Sure."

And Rory knew he really was okay. He moved on into the living room settling down on the couch as Tristan wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight to him. "And how about you? Are you alright?"

Tristan smiled at her. "Sure."

And she knew he wasn't okay. Pulling him inside and closing the door behind him, she pushed him down onto the couch. She moved to grab the remote but Tristan pulled her back onto his lap and wrapped himself around her again. With her hands in his hair she felt him start to shake.

And then she felt the warm wet tears run over her collarbone from where his head was buried in her neck.

Looking over at Jordan who was sitting ramrod straight avoiding all eye contact with any part of Tristan she gave a small smile. "If you want, Luke promised to give you a free meal if you could convince Lorelai to drink something other than coffee. She's there now if you wanted to see her."

Jordan nodded and bolted out the door.

"Babe?" Rory leaned back, pulling Tristan slightly away from her and her heart broke as she saw the look of utter desolation in his eyes.

"I dunno why I'm crying. I hate crying."

"You don't know why you're crying?" Rory asked in disbelief.

"I've seen it before. Plenty of times, its like an annual thing you know, there's Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Save Your Mother's Life, your birthday, prom."

"Jesus Tristan, it's not wrong to cry about something like this you know?" Tristan shrugged and Rory let it go. "How come you brought Jordan with you?"

"Just didn't want to leave him alone in the house for when Dad got home."

"Why not? Your dad is a nice guy Tristan." Tristan wiped the last of his tears from his eyes.

"To you. To us, not so much. He's going to be in a rotten mood for weeks, especially while his wife is still in the clinic. And he'll take it all out on Jordan."

"Not you?" Rory's hands were gently massaging the back of Tristan's neck.

"Not me." Running his hands down to her hips and turning her so she was straddling him, Tristan pulled her closer to him, his lips lightly brushing hers. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

"No?"

"No." Rory moved her mouth to his neck, licking, sucking and biting along the corded muscle as he dropped his head back.

So he didn't want to talk about, she wasn't really surprised, he never really wanted to talk about anything that mattered. He didn't like to talk about his problems, he didn't like pity and he didn't like sympathy. But he was upset, and she did know one form of comfort he would accept.

Standing up and pulling him to his feet, Rory moved to him letting him lift her to wrap her legs around his waist, carrying her to her bedroom. He turned and sat on the bed with Rory still wrapped around him, grinding hard against his arousal. Rory moved her hands down his arms to his waist, pulling his shirt up and over his head before moving her mouth down over his chest. Her fingers worked at his belt even as he roughly pulled her top off.

The front door slammed.

"Rory? Tristan?"

Tristan flopped back on the bed, his eyes closed and mouth screwed up in annoyance. "Jordan."

I totally flipped it.

I mean, that was my big brother. Crying. He doesn't cry.

And I just didn't get it. We've seen it before. It's not the first time our mother has cut herself up.

But then, he always did send me out of the room, 'Go call Dad', 'Go call an ambulance', 'Go see if the maid is alright'.

'Go stay with Rory for me' was the latest to keep me out of the room.

And I was grateful for it. I didn't want to see her bleeding to death on the $12,000 Oriental rug.

I knew that she would talk to him when I wasn't in the room. I could hear the murmur of her voice as he made her speak to him. I always wondered what she said to him. I once was able to distinguish the words 'hate you' but I never knew if the words before it were 'I don't' or 'I do'.

I'd never really thought about it before, but Tristan must have remembered what she was like before she got sick.

He must have remembered what it was like to have a mother.