Lightning
A/N: You know what's weird? If I had died, you wouldn't have known. You would have just assumed that I was another asshole fanficer who had gotten bored and stopped writing a story that you were enjoying. Of course, the reality of the situation is that I didn't die, I really am just an asshole, but that doesn't change the fact that I could have been dead; but I'm not. Yay! Sorry. I was trying to distract you from my shittiness with a profoundly morbid idea. Did it work?
A/N2: I hate Bush.
Chapter Thirteen: What? Part One
"So what were they like?" Lorelai asked into the phone on Monday night, from where she sat, perched on the kitchen counter, waiting for her coffee to brew.
"They were really-" Rory paused. What was the word? "Cool. They were very cool." She decided with a nod.
"Cool?" Lorelai raised an eyebrow.
"I know it doesn't seem like a helpful adjective, but if you meet them, you'll understand." Rory clarified.
"Ok. I guess that works." Lorelai conceded with a shrug.
"I think you'd really like his brother, Essien and Essien's boyfriend, Mark. It makes me feel even closer to Tade, knowing that he spent his teenage years with them as his guardians because they are so much like you and Luke, you know, just that they're men, and gay." Rory rambled. She desperately wanted her mother to understand.
"Something tells me it wasn't exactly the same." Lorelai smiled. She loved that Rory was so happy.
"Of course not. I mean, he grew up in New York City, while I was out in the sticks." Rory was still amazed by New York. She'd been a few times, but she'd never really done New York before.
"How was the rest of your time in the City anyway?" Lorelai asked, sensing that there was more.
"Oh it was fabulous." Rory gushed. "He took me to the Met and then we went to a really great Japanese restaurant and he took me to the Strand and we went to see "Mamma Mia!" and then we went to the Magnolia Bakery to get their famously delicious cupcakes, and then, on Sunday, we had tea at the Plaza. Oh! I didn't even mention that we stayed at the Plaza! The Plaza! I felt like Eloise!" Rory was actually standing on her bed and bouncing around as she told her mother about her terrific weekend.
"That's the coolest thing I've ever heard!" Lorelai was jumping around the kitchen.
"I know! He completely surprised me. I thought we were going to be stuffed into the apartment with his brothers, but the Plaza! Ah! He got us champagne, but not in some skeevy way or anything, cause he got French fries and cake too and then we watched "101 Dalmations."" Rory babbled with glee.
"Oh, that's so exciting, and sweet, and ugh, you're so lucky, I can't even grasp it all." Lorelai grinned.
"I know! My life is totally perfect right now!" Rory hopped in circles on her bed because her smile couldn't get any bigger and she needed to expel her happiness somehow.
"Oh, babe, I'm so happy that you're happy. I just want you to know that. This time last year you were so not happy, and so, just I'm glad things are working out. Please give Tade my thanks for making you happy, in a not creepy, dirty way." Lorelai rambled with a smile.
"I will try." Rory smiled at her crazy mother.
"That's all I ask, sweets." Lorelai shook her head at her own nuttiness.
"Anyway, I've got crap to do, so I'm going to say goodbye now. Say "hi" to Luke for me." Rory said.
"Will do. Bye kid." Lorelai finished.
"Bye." Rory bounced into a sitting position on her bed, hung up the phone, and opened a textbook with a grin.
XXXXX
The next evening, Rory and Tade were sprawled on his bed watching "It Happened One Night".
"Did you know that after this movie came out the undershirt market plummeted because Clark Gable didn't wear an undershirt?" Tade asked without taking his eyes from the screen.
"No." Rory smiled at him. "I didn't know that Clark's bare chest had disturbed the previously thriving undershirt industry." She turned to meet his gaze.
"Are you mocking me?" He asked with an arched eyebrow.
"Maybe." Rory grinned. "It's how I show my love." She kissed his cheek.
"If that's the case, our kids are going to be seriously messed up." Tade mumbled as a joke before he realized what he had said.
"What?" Rory was trying to stay cool, but was failing miserably. Had he just said "our kids"?
"What?" Tade was looking anywhere but at Rory. Had he just said "our kids"?
"What?" This was getting repetitive, but she couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Sorry." He met her eyes with a pained look. "I don't know where that came from. I was joking and then it was just like vomit, I couldn't stop it. Just bleh, it spilled out. Sorry." Tade rambled his apology. He felt an apology was in order. Why? He didn't know. The look on Rory's face, perhaps. The fear. The giant eyes. The fear.
"No. It's ok." She stopped him by taking his hand, but she still looked distracted. "I just, uh, didn't-" Rory's words drifted off. She didn't know what to say. Why the hell was she freaking out so much? Tade looked at her with concern for a moment before they both looked back at the screen. By far, the easiest way to kill an evening was to let slip those two frightening words. Our kids.
XXXXX
"He just said it?" Lane asked incredulously over the phone.
"Yeah. No warning whatsoever. One moment we were just hanging out and the next thing I know it's "our kids." How the hell do you respond to that?" Rory's eyes were wide as she paced around her dorm room.
"I don't know. I've never been in that situation. What did you do?" Lane inquired with inexorable attention.
"I said "what" then he said "what" then I said "what" again and then he apologized because, apparently I looked so freaked out that he felt the need to apologize for letting it slip that he thinks about our future and the kids that we will have in this future." Rory babbled.
"Oh. Why were you so freaked out?" Lane asked quietly, afraid that it might be the wrong thing to ask.
"Because! Kids! I'm twenty years old. I've never spent any time around kids. In fact, they scare the shit out of me. Not to mention the fact that my entire upbringing has been based around this huge fear of untimely pregnancy, which, in turn translated into a giant fear of ever having children!" Rory let out in a rapid stream of psychoanalysis.
"Wow. And I thought my childhood was scarring." Lane mumbled.
"See! And I totally freaked Tade out with my freak out and so now we're both freaking out, but we're pretending like we're not so that we don't need to talk about it because apparently we can talk about everything except our future breeding (yuck). I mean, how could we ever discuss this? Why would we? We're still children ourselves! And we've only been dating for a few months and is he even allowed to marry me? And he is one of ten kids, how many kids does he want? Because I'm sure as hell not having ten kids." Rory thought aloud.
"Huh." Lane said after a moment of silence.
"What?" Rory was confused.
"You just went from freaking out about having children in general to deciding that you just didn't want to have ten of Tade's kids." Lane summarized.
"And?" Rory questioned.
"And nothing. I just find it interesting how your thoughts unfolded." Lane tried not to cause any conflict.
"Yeah, well, don't read too much into things, I'm just babbling like an idiot. I'm sure everything will work itself out." Rory said, mostly to herself.
"I'm sure it will." Lane said with a small smirk in her voice. "Anyway, I have to go to work. Call me if there are any, uh, developments." She cringed at the word choice. "You're coming home on the fourth though, right?" she inquired.
"Yeah, I'll talk to you later. Bye." Rory said distractedly. What was the date today? She rifled through her planner. Uh-oh.
"Bye." Lane said with hesitation before the line went dead. That was weird.
Rory let the phone slip from her hand as she became engrossed with her day planner. She flipped the pages, furiously scanning for the information that would mollify her worrying mind. No. No. No. No. This couldn't be right. It must be stress that's throwing everything out of whack. But she wasn't stressed. Well, now she was, but she hadn't been before. Or was she? She couldn't remember anything anymore. All she knew was that she needed to stay calm and that she needed to call her mother. No. She couldn't call her mother. She should call Tade. Tade or Lorelai? She was torn. What was one supposed to do in a situation like this?
XXXXX
Tade sat in class and listened to some old guy talk about Puritans. He wasn't really listening. No. He was mentally slapping himself. What kind of a guy starts talking about his future children with his girlfriend of three months? He knew he freaked her out. As he got to know her more and more, he noticed her general uneasiness around kids, mostly babies. He supposed it had to do with Lorelai and that whole story. He understood, but some tiny portion of his brain, it wasn't even his brain, it was his heart, yes, a tiny portion of his heart couldn't help but feel rejected. Did she never think about their future? Not even a little? He thought about it. He didn't dwell on it or anything, but sometimes, late at night or when he saw a blue-eyed child he would let his imagination wander.
XXXXX
She was in the drug store, surreptitiously nearing the aisle she needed. She had carefully inspected toothbrushes and shampoo until she rounded the corner and came face to face with a pack of diapers. They were just diapers, but they made a chill run through her back and her feet come to a halt on the linoleum floor. She had only ever thought about babies with fear. To her they had always represented a ruined future and the disappointment of family. She had never really let herself think of them as anything she might hope for one day. This seemed weird to her now. For many people procreation was the ultimate goal. She didn't think this was a healthy way to go through life, but she slowly realized that her view wasn't much better. She clenched her fists in an effort to exert some control over her thoughts. No matter how she felt about kids or the prospect of having kids, she had to deal with the chance that she could, in fact, be pregnant at that very moment. The P word gave her a jolt of courage and her hand shot out and grabbed a pregnancy test from the shelf. She marched to the counter and paid for the item without making eye contact with the cashier. With the semi-translucent bag in hand, she got back into her car.
As she drove back to her dorm, she felt a familiar sensation that she had always dreaded, but, at this moment, brought her more relief than she could ever have imagined. Her period. James Joyce had once referred to it as "the strange humiliation of women's nature." Rory had always thought this was the most accurate description, but not today. Today it was a godsend. A second chance at life. Essentially, that's what it was. The future that could have been destroyed was safe for at least a little while longer.
She let a small squeal of delight escape her lips before flipping on the radio to an old Backstreet Boys song that actually made her smile as she sang the words that she pretended she didn't know.
XXXX
After making a pit-stop at her dorm room, Rory pulled her car into a space where she wasn't supposed to park, and got out. She spotted Tade's graceful form emerging from the large building in front of her and she took off running in his direction. He was staring at his feet when she slapped the notebook out of his hands. He raised his eyes in anger until he saw the devilish grin on Rory's face and she wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted her feet off the ground, and gave him a soft, smiling kiss.
"Hi." She let her feet settle back on the ground but kept her arms around his neck.
"Do I know you? You look so familiar. Are you an actress?" He joked with a huge grin.
"No, but I play one on TV." She played along. God, she could play along with him forever. Where did that thought come from?
"Not that I'm complaining, but to what do I owe this much appreciated greeting?" Tade asked with a smirk.
"Oh," Rory's smile wavered. Should she tell him? "I just had a little scare earlier, but everything's ok now." She smiled warmly at him.
"What happened?" She knew he would ask this. His tone was full of concern as he played with the end of her ponytail.
"It's not important." She said, hoping he wouldn't press the matter. With this she turned and led him back to her car. She gave him one more peck on the cheek before getting in her side of the car. The passenger side door opened and then there was silence. No movement whatsoever. Rory looked over to see what the hold up was and caught sight of what had captured Tade's gaze. "Damn." She muttered.
Tade just stood there. Through the semi-translucent bag on the passenger's seat he saw a box with a picture of a baby and the words "Pregnancy Test" across the front. He didn't hear Rory's muttering, but he did see her small hand snatch the bag off the seat and chuck it behind her. He didn't know what to do. "Was that the scare or is this something else?" He heard himself ask before he sat gingerly in the seat with one leg still outside of the car.
"That was the scare. I'm not-" Rory wasn't able to say the word out loud. It was like a four letter word that happened to be spelled with eight.
"But how do you know? You didn't take the test." Tade hadn't blinked once. His mind couldn't put together normal thoughts. He looked like a little boy.
"Uh," Rory blushed and looked at her hands. "There are other ways to find out." She scratched her eyebrow uncomfortably.
"Oh." Tade's turn to be embarrassed. He pulled his right leg into the car and shut the door so as to have something else to look at. Rory started the car in motion. After a few moments of silence he looked at her. Really looked at her. His eyes took in her familiar face and drifted down her body and settled on her abdomen. He was entranced. That's where his kid could have been. She had the ability to have children. Of course he knew this, but he hadn't really known it until that moment. She seemed so much more fragile and so much stronger at the same time.
"What?" Rory could feel his eyes on her and turned to catch him looking at her stomach. She was suddenly afraid. Of what? That he wouldn't find her attractive anymore? That he would be frightened of her? Why would she think this? Because she sort of felt that way about herself.
"Sometimes I forget just how magical women are." He answered without thinking. He was suddenly embarrassed by this overly honest response, but when he saw the almost relieved smile on Rory's lips, he smiled back.
"Thanks." She said sincerely. With those honest and childish words he had wiped away all her fears.
"For what?" He asked with genuine bewilderment.
"For being you." She grinned at his perplexed features.
Tade didn't know how to respond to that. He didn't understand how he had just cheered Rory up when he'd thought he was saying the wrong thing. He didn't know how he was supposed to react. Should they talk about it? What sort of thoughts had run through Rory's head? Had she been scared? Was he scared or did he just feel like he was supposed to be scared?
"Were you scared?" His voice came out in a whisper that sounded too loud for the silence in the car.
"Yeah." She answered in a similar tone. She glanced at him and saw that he was looking somewhere she couldn't see. He was in his own thoughts and trying to understand. "Were you scared, just then, when you saw that on the seat?" She asked quietly.
"No." He said it before he had known it was true, but it was. He hadn't been scared. He was afraid of what Rory's reaction would be. He was afraid that Rory was upset, that he had ruined her life, but he wasn't afraid of the possibility of a baby. A baby. Why didn't he find that scary?
"Oh. You looked scared." She murmured.
"I was afraid of you, not of it." He didn't even know if he was making sense anymore.
"Me?" She didn't understand. She wasn't offended. She couldn't be. He was being so honest, like he didn't even realize what he was saying.
"I was afraid that I had made your worst nightmares come true. I can't imagine what sort of position this put you in, what sort of thoughts went through your head. That's a lie, I can imagine your thoughts and that's what scares me." He tore his gaze away from his thoughts and let himself look at her, but by the time he did, she had already drifted into her own thoughts.
"I was really scared, but I'm glad. This sounds insane, but I needed to let myself think those things. I've pushed them away for so long because they had become some sort of taboo in my mind, but I needed to really think. I needed something this frightening to make me think about things without organization. No lists. No weighing the good against the bad, just pure thought." She shared.
"Uh, what did you learn from these thoughts?" He asked tentatively.
"That I need to think more. " She paused and Tade hoped that she wasn't done. He knew she had more to say and just hoped she would say it to him. "I felt like I had been granted a second chance at life when I found out I wasn't Ð" she still couldn't say it. "I can't approach this second chance with the same views as the first. To me, children have always meant good-bye to foreign correspondence, hello to cleaning toilets. I can't think like that anymore. It's just not healthy. I can't think about my future the same way I did when I was twelve." She paused.
"Just," Tade cut in, "Just don't give up all your twelve year old thoughts. Don't become jaded. You can do anything you want. Don't ever forget that. No matter what happens, "He met her eyes, "You can do anything. If you had been pregnant, "He said it because he knew she wouldn't, "I would have done anything and everything to make sure your dreams still came true." He smiled shyly at her and she smiled back.
After a few nice minutes of warm silence, Rory felt compelled to speak again.
"Do you like babies?" As soon as she asked it she wanted to slap herself. For some reason she didn't think it was the right thing to ask at that moment. Perhaps it was the word "babies" that left an unwelcomed taste in her mouth.
"Uh," Tade rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow. "I don't really know. I know that someday I want to have kids, but I've never spent a lot of time around babies." He noticed Rory visibly relax and felt that he should try to lighten the mood. "I mean, I know babies are great and you can't not like babies, but there's just something about them that's strange." He saw the small smile form on Rory's lips. "It may be the frightening and generally repulsive circumstance under which they come into being that makes me feel this way, though. Or maybe it has something to do with that feeling you get when someone totally A-sexual like your high school math teacher tells you she's pregnant and you just feel overwhelmed by a need to vomit at the thought that someone like Mrs. Carson had sex in the recent past." Tade's ramble ended when he heard Rory's snort of laughter.
"The worst is when someone tells you that she's "trying" and you're just like, ew, that's great. You just told me that you spend all of your free time having lots of unprotected sex with your significant other. Thanks." Tade laughed with her. They were both glad that the weirdness was over.
"I honestly believe that the grossest phrase in the English language is "making babies." Can we say yuck?" He joked. They both laughed and shook their heads at the thought of all those fools in the mixed-up world of babies.
To Be Continued.
I'll post Part Two tomorrow. If you give me lots of reviews, I may just update sooner.