Title: Girl Like That
Authors: Mrs. Witter (Jamie) and ChristineCS (Chris, duh)
Disclaimer: Jamie and I, despite the harem we own (we know it creates mass confusion about the ownership thing), do not own Gilmore Girls, their characters, matchbox twenty, their songs or Rob's awesome writing talent so we do not own the lyrics in the chapter title. We also don't own Mark Paul Gosselaar or Emilie De Raven, but you'll have to think about why that is added. We do however claim ownership on our own writing. So consider yourself warned.
Rating: PG – 13
Pairing: Rory/Tristan
Chapter 4: Would you believe in anything that comes from me that I didn't hear from you?
Darks in the washing machine? Check. Her copy of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle? Check, and reading. Her Discman with the latest matchbox twenty disc? Check, and on. Her Milky Way Lite bar? Check, and nibbling on. Vaughn was set and ready to go for the next hour or so of laundry. She smoothed out her usual laundry attire- a Strawberry Shortcake t-shirt proclaiming, "Life is delicious" and a red skirt. Laundry time was the best part of her week, for it was Vaughn-time. Just her, Upton and Rob Thomas.
Okay, so Cole had led a privileged life. He admitted that he had always had his work done for him – first by the many servants on the Montgomery payroll and then later, at Browning, his roommate was duped into doing a lot of his bidding. Hey, he couldn't let his inherent charm and killer smile go to waste, could he? It wasn't a gift meant to squander. He frowned. But his list of talents did not include doing laundry. He stared at the washing machine. Oh, hell.
In the novels, though not this one since it was mainly about the atrocious nature of the meat packing industry, they always talked about the sixth sense about knowing when a person was there. So maybe that was what prompted Vaughn to look up from her novel, or maybe it was the novel itself since it was at a rather graphic part. But how she ended up looking up was not of importance rather, that she had was. Because she had, she found herself looking at none other Cole Montgomery. The bastard didn't even know where his own laundry room was, why should he have been able to find this one? Maybe if she ignored him, he'd go away.
It was the shirt he noticed first. It was kind of hard not to notice it, the bright red strawberry in the middle, the doll on top of it…the word delicious. Then of course, he let his gaze travel up the rest of her, resting on those eyes. Annoyed Schuyler. He couldn't resist. "Pretending I'm not here isn't going to make me go away, Claymore."
Vaughn knew that, she had been trying since she was nine. So she sighed reluctantly, put down The Jungle, and slid her headphones off her ears and led it settle around her neck. "Couldn't find a poor unsuspecting fool to do your laundry for you?"
His lips twisted into an unwilling, unrepentant grin. It amazed him that she knew exactly what he was thinking. Actually, it unnerved him. But he wasn't going to let her know that. "Unfortunately, people at Yale are actually smart and DuGrey doesn't take too kindly to being manipulated. I am in a rut."
And she was going to enjoy every moment of it. There was nothing so amusing as watching a rich boy attempt to do laundry for the first time. Especially when said rich boy was Montgomery. In fact this might surpass the time she watched her brother, Leo, turn his clothes pink. "Imagine that," she pondered out loud. "People at Yale are actually intelligent. Who'da thunk it?"
He knew this would never work on her, but he tried anyway; he was desperate. He smiled at her, the smile he heard some girls describe as devastating. "Schuyler Vaughn - "
"Finish that sentence and I may fall to the floor, laughing," Vaughn interrupted him. "And while I'm not against such mirth, it is inappropriate in the laundry room, so I ask you to strongly consider revising what you are going to say. For both our sakes."
"Well at least I can still make you laugh." As soon as those words were out of his mouth, he realized his mistake. He heard the wistfulness in his own voice and could have cringed. But, instead, he ignored his own words and her reaction to it and bent down to open the lid of the washing machine. "There's a first time for everything."
"So there is," Vaughn agreed for lack of better words to use. For example, this was the first time when words had actually failed her so that she was left with the deflated sound of her voice as she used a common phrase or reply. The first time she didn't have an acerbic comment to return to Cole. The first time she really didn't care to make one.
Good, she sounded indifferent. He was a master at playing it cool. "Okay, so the lid is open. Now what do I do?"
Vaughn raised an eyebrow, or tried to. Serious eyebrow raising wasn't exactly her forte, "I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where I was helping you. And to answer your question, you stand in the middle of it and turn it on."
He scratched the back of his head. "Is that before or after you put in the clothes? And how much detergent do you use? And that whole separating thing? I never understood it. C'mon Schuyler, you don't wanna see me beg."
"Yes I do," Vaughn automatically replied. "And detergent first, then the standing, then the turning on, and then the clothes. Separating is a myth. But this all comes after the begging."
Huh. He'd never stoop so low as to beg. Especially not when the person on the receiving end was Schuyler Vaughn. She'd given him a lot of information. And he wasn't a complete idiot. He grinned and reached for the small box of Tide. "I lied."
"Color me shocked," but she still watched the box with a hint of wariness.
"Shot through the heart, and you're to blame. You give love a bad name!" He opened the box and poured in some detergent.
Oh, he was going to do the singing thing. Vaughn could put her headphones on again, but she feared that Cole's voice would drown out Rob Thomas's, thus ruining matchbox twenty for her forever. That left only one or two options, render him speechless or murder him. The latter was far more appealing, but the whole arrest and trial thing would suck. "So, I hear red heads are good in bed. Since I'm strawberry blonde does that mean I'm only semi-passionate?"
His hand stopped, mid-air as the detergent kept tumbling out of the box and into the machine. He was pretty sure his pulse was racing because suddenly, images of Schuyler in bed were running through his mind. Semi-passionate? With a tongue like that? Not in a million years. Damn, now he was thinking about her tongue. Clearing his throat, he said the only thing he knew would stop her from ever discussing sex with him again. "Who knows? With all the ice running through your veins someone may never find out."
Her eyes narrowed but she quickly recovered. She was who she was, and whatever Montgomery said didn't matter. He didn't know her, least of all carnally. Never would either. So she shrugged, "I'm sure I could find out. But all that hassle of going through my address books just seems like a waste of time."
When the thought of burning her alleged black book crossed his mind, he ignored it. He didn't care what, and more importantly, who, Schuyler did. He shrugged too and twisted his lips in mock regret. "Poor bastard missed out on an opportunity of a lifetime."
"Actually he didn't," Vaughn's lips twisted into a half smirk. "Unless you're counting the phone call as a major event."
Cole snorted. "Yeah well, I'd expect that little from you." He knew it was mean and probably a line he shouldn't have crossed, but that had never stopped him before.
"As opposed to the pump-'em-and-dump-'em rule of the Montgomery men?" She paused, and added simply because she knew almost nothing would piss him off more. "Excluding Nicky, of course."
He could have fell to the floor with laughter. Nicholas Montgomery had broken more hearts – and pried apart more legs, than anyone he had ever known. But of course, Schuyler would never believe that. He gave her a grin and dumped his clothes into the machine. "Oh, that's right. You're in love with Nick. I had forgotten."
Actually she hadn't thought of him since she had arrived at St. Helene's, but it was the only thing she could pull out on such quick notice. "About as much as you're in love with Leo."
"Speaking of whom," he said as he turned the knob on, hoping for the best. "How is that brother of yours? As I recall, he was the only Claymore that I could stand."
That's because Leo nice to everyone. Including Montgomerys. "Married with a kid."
Oh yeah. He remembered Nick telling him that Leo had fallen head over heels for some doctor with great legs. He watched somewhat intrigued as the clothes started to spin in the machine. Well, he did it. "All done."
"Yeah, too bad you put too much detergent in it," Vaughn commented as her washing machine came to a stop. She opened up the top and started digging through the clothes. Bras went on top of the dryer, because in the dryer was bad. Everything else, in the dryer. Yeah, she had learned that the hard way.
He tried really hard not to look at her bras and to concentrate on her comment. "Uh, is that bad? What's going to happen?"
"You're going to explode," she shrugged as she threw the last of it in the dryer and turned it on. "Or at least create a very bubbly mess."
The first one was bad, but he'd risk it. Nothing he could do about it now. The second was less problematic. "Ah, someone will clean it up."
Vaughn checked her watch as she tossed the rest of her stuff into a laundry bag, good she had about a half an hour to grab a meal before coming back to pick up her clothes. "Yeah, you." She grinned at him before walking out of the laundry room.
~*~
The sun attacked Rory's eyes and she immediately shielded them with one hand as the other dug into her book bag to retrieve her sunglasses. She turned to Tristan who sauntered out behind her, looking incredulous. "I can't believe you! You made so much noise in there that they were about to throw us out! Can I take you anywhere?"
Tristan put on his own sunglasses before answering, "The Ritz, darling, The Ritz." He smiled at her. "Anything less doesn't deserve to have their rules followed."
She rolled her eyes and slipped her glasses on. "Well, it's not the Ritz and if you promise to behave I'll take you to lunch to this nice like bistro thingy I saw near the Starbucks."
"You'll take me to lunch?" Tristan questioned, stroking his jaw. "I think I could afford it on my own, but thanks."
"It's not everyday I take you to lunch, Tristan," she replied with a smile as they headed down the pavement, through lines of trees. "Count your lucky stars."
"Well I was taught not be ungrateful," Tristan gave in, and followed her towards the way of the café. "So I may as well start counting."
She let out a laugh and when he looked at her inquisitively, she explained, "It's just funny; this situation. A year ago if someone told me we'd be having lunch together I would have…well, I would have laughed."
He shrugged, but smiled at her comment. "If someone had told me, I would have accepted it for the alternate universe that I would have to entered for such an event to take place."
"It's not that far-fetched," she replied, a little uncomfortable. "I mean we are actually on our way to lunch and look, its still pretty much reality. The same universe. I just meant, with the way we left things off…the play and everything."
"Oh yes, the era of my stupidity, as I like to call it," Tristan replied. "So did Paris ever recover?"
"She survived," Rory replied with a grin as they neared the café. "Just don't ask me if she ever forgave you. Have you talked to her, or anyone from Chilton for that matter?"
He nodded, "Of course. To others, I went home for the summer actually. Didn't exactly see Paris around though."
"She was probably busy packing her stuff to get of the mansion as fast as she could," she informed him with another quick grin. They got to the café and he held the door open for her. She smiled shyly and entered as he followed. "Ooh, this is nice."
"You won't think that when you get the bill," he teasingly warned her. "So what did you spend the summer doing?"
"My mother and I rearranged furniture quite a bit," she answered automatically as they waited to be seated. He brows furrowed. "But we ended up putting everything where it was in the first place. On a more serious note, I spent a few days with my father, my step-mother and my baby sister in Boston."
"My parents did something like that when I was eight. Except they had people do it for them, never did work for us again," Tristan told her. "How old is your baby sister?"
"Almost seven months," Rory replied, a little proudly. They were seated five minutes later, at a table near the window. "What about you? You doing anything adventurous this summer?"
"Same old society thing, which sort of bored me so much that I picked my piano lessons back up. Even considered learning the violin to add to my talents, but after one attempt my fingers ached too much and my piano teacher yelled at me for cutting my fingers," Tristan took a sip of the water that had been placed in front of him when they had sat down. "She said I had very nice hands and it'd be a shame if I ruined them."
She opened up a menu and scanned over some of them items. He was right; it was expensive. She hoped she had brought enough money. But she didn't need to let him know she was concerned. She smiled at him brightly. "It all looks good. I didn't realize how I hungry I was until now. Those Snickers commercials? Completely untrue."
"I could have told you that Gilmore," Tristan told her with a smile, but then another thought occurred to him. It was weird, since it was completely random. "So, when you went to that Starbucks with Cole. Was it a date thing? Did you finally drop Bag Boy?"
"Cole and I were not on a date," she answered, shaking her head. At least, she didn't think of it as one. The she gave him a pointed look. "And Dean and I haven't been dating for a long time, now."
The surprise was there, but he dramatized it a little, "You mean you found someone strong enough to pull you out of Dean's clutches?"
"Although I don't appreciate your tone, Tristan, but yes, I did." It was weird how easily that came out. She hadn't seen this guy for more than a year and she was already comfortable enough to talk about her relationships. Strange. "His name is Jess."
"Well that explains why I never had a chance in high school. You go for one-syllable names," He tested his own, exaggerating it. "Tris-tan. The tan was the death of me." At her increasingly annoyed look. "All right, I'm done lamenting. Now tell me about Jess. Was he tall, too?"
"Why are you people so obsessed with height?" she asked rhetorically. The waitress came to take their order, preventing her from answering his question. Once they ordered, she addressed the question. "Jess wasn't as tall as Dean. In fact, he's shorter than you. But does that matter? What matters is what's on the inside."
"I was just worried about your health. You keep going around kissing tall boys like you were with Dean, and you may cause serious damage on your spinal cord."
"Of course, my health." She smiled at him as he chuckled. She folded her arms on the table, looking at him contemplatively. "Something's different about you, yet still the same. Does that make any sense?"
It made sense; he'd noticed it since he started attending military school. His Grandfather told him that he was becoming the man he was going to be the rest of his life. Freaky. "Maybe it means I'm growing up."
"That's good," she replied, fingering her napkin and giving him another huge grin. "I like Grown-up-Tristan."
He shifted uncomfortably under such praise. Tristan now remembered why she hadn't fit in with the crowd at Chilton. She was too genuine, too real. "Uh, yeah. So what was your relationship like with Jess?"
