A/N-Upon request, this next chapter is going to be from Yale. I already said things were going to get better. I'm thinking only a few more chapters for this story and then I'm going to start a new one for the series. And yes, the title will mean something.

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Just hidden-this one's for you!

Rory grabbed Jess's hand and dragged him across the courtyard, back toward her dorm room, him shuffling his feet, displeased.

"Jess, come on, help me out a little here," Rory said, slowing down and turning to speak to him.

"Let the record show that she is forcing me to leave my dormitory to go to an unknown destination!" Jess said loudly, hoping another renegade student would hear and get caught in the flirty crossfire.

"Since when did we become a defense attorney?" Rory said, dragging him along a little further.

"Do you know what time it is?"

Rory checked her watch. "Ten."

"Ten is too late to be dragging me out of my dorm," Jess complained. Rory openly sighed and began to explain.

"You need a distraction. No two ways around it. Things will be fine if you just let them be fine Jess. I'm not going to drag you back to Star's Hollow tonight and feel free to lynch me if I ever try to take you back to Brooklyn. We're going to get ice cream and drive in circles." She smirked at the look of remembrance on his face. "Hopefully this time the four-legged furry things will be out of the street and your cone won't drip."

Jess actually smiled. "I promise I'll study when we get back," he said a little over-enthusiastically.

Rory looked at him suspiciously. "You weren't actually going to study, were you?"

"Chances were slim."

"What about now? Are you going to study when we get back?"

"Chances are non-existent. I may be an Ivy League-er, but there's not a chance I'm studying when we get back. Especially if I get to take you with me," he said, reaching out a hand to grab hers and pulling her to him, in the middle of the courtyard, in the middle of a Friday night blow-out party.

Rory felt nothing of the light and the sounds and the smells around her when he took her hand. He did this to her every time he laid a hand on her, no matter how long they had been together or how upset she was. He steadied the threat of the world taking her over and made everything seem like if she could hold onto him for just a moment longer she could conquer everything. Her demons, her fears, her failures.

Jess knew the affect that he had on her all too well. Rory made Jess feel electrified when the emptiness of everything around him threatened to lull him into the submissive pain. Instead she made every touch intensify, every sound seem sweet, every color seem incredible and unique. Jess no longer saw in an auburn sheen, Jess lived in Technicolor.

He pulled her close and settled one hand on the small of her back, the other resting around the middle. Their bodies were flush and she snaked her arms up around his neck, giving him a playful grin despite the fact that he was openly distracting her from her plan. Partly the grin was there because she knew that he was doing better, even if just for now. The rest of the grin was because she remembered all the ways he could make her feel and the reasons for all of them.

"Do I get to drive you car this time?" he asked quietly as he drew their mouths unnoticeably closer with every painfully intoxicating moment of it.

Rory smiled brightly, her laughter ringing in every word. "Not a chance." Jess quickly painted on a look of hurt and pulled back slightly.

"Ouch."

"Hey, last time you totaled it," Rory said, her every word getting quieter in direct correlation to how close they were getting. "Why take my chances?"

"Maybe it wasn't my fault last time. Maybe it was the piece of shit that what's-his-face built for you," he said, a slightly evil grin played across his face, now only a breath away from Rory's.

Rory thought back for a moment. "His name was Dean, and in retrospect it was kind of a piece of shit. Regardless, it drove fine."

Jess shook his head. "No, if I remember correctly it pulled just slightly to the left and sometimes shook when it got above ten miles an hour." He smiled at her trivial eye roll. He found every movement of her every being to be extraordinarily enticing, so at this movement he took it upon himself to close the space between them and kiss her.

Rory inwardly gave a content sigh. She opened her mouth to allow him the access they both craved and the feelings that were blazing off of her every nerve ending made her head swim.

He was going to be fine.

xxx

"Luke?" Lorelai asked upon entering the house. He grunted quietly to signal his presence and she entered the house. Still clueless as to his location, she called out again. "Marco?"

"Polo," he said from the kitchen. Happily Lorelai skipped into the kitchen to greet her fiancé. He was standing over the stove, cooking dinner as usual.

"Do you ever think one day our kids will be confused as to who wears the pants in the family?" she said, standing behind him and circling her hands around his waist.

Luke looked up, remembering that Lorelai had walked out of the room this morning in a grey dress that did nothing but make him crazy.

"You're in a dress, why would any child mistake that for wearing pants?" he wanted to know.

"I mean, you cook dinner every night, you're a billion times more tidy than I am, why wouldn't a kid think of you as wearing the second, less worky pair of pants?"

"I own a diner."

"You cook me dinner when I get home from work. I should cook you dinner."

"Number one, if you ever cook me dinner when I get home from work, I may just have to pass. I love you, but you can burn water. Number two, you are the most feministic charged woman I have ever shared a bed with. Why would me cooking concern you?" he said, turning to see her, but never breaking their contact.

Lorelai contemplated for a moment and then smiled. "Point well taken. What're we having?" Luke chuckled at her quick-achieved submission.

"Tortellini. Nothing special."

"Food is always special," Lorelai said, kissing him briefly on the lips before she went upstairs to change.

xxx

"Did you seriously just get Superman ice cream?" Jess asked Rory, looking at her like the kid on the playground who couldn't ride a two-wheeler. Rory smiled as she quickly licked the cone on the way back to the car, juggling her car keys.

"I love Superman ice cream! It's all pretty and yummy…," she said as she stuffed more of it into her mouth.

"It looks like a cartoon threw up," Jess said as he buckled himself in and licked a renegade drip.

"Well, you went all boring on me and got chocolate. That's a waste of a cone," Rory said all-knowingly as she started the car.

"There is no such thing as a waste of a cone. Cones are proof that God wants us to be happy."

"I don't think that's quite the proof that God wants us to be happy."

"What do you think is then?" Jess asked.

"Books, Thai food, and the fact that you can't live without me," she said with a playful grin across her face through the moonlight. Jess leaned across the console and kissed her, tasting the mixture of ice cream and something all-too Rory on her lips, and it drove him crazy. His free hand took its usual place on her hip and tried to pull her closer in an attempt to ignore the fact that they were in a car.

Rory, thankful that the car was in park made an attempt while kissing him to reach out and touch him, but the fear of falling ice cream cones kept her feeling tame. When Jess finally pulled away, he looked at her, panting slightly. He smiled at her and licked away the ice cream that was threatening to run down his hand and Rory turned away, flushed. Never did he fail to elicit a girlish innocence in her that was quickly stifled by the simple fact that their attraction physically superceded any shred of shyness within either of them. Their mental relationship was the strongest yet though. They were connected at the core, and that made all the difference in the world. She and Jess shared more passion over ice cream than most couples ever would in bed.

Jess settled himself back in the seat, inwardly congratulating himself. After their first year of dating, it was a miracle that they even spoke anymore. After Liz had died, they become shockingly closer, even though now he wanted more than anything to try to push her away for fear of getting hurt. Throughout the year they had done their best not to let their pasts, Liz's death, or Luke and Lorelai's relationship get in the way. It was inevitable however, that there would be a few tangles.

So here they were, at 19 and still together.

"Jess!" Rory said again, getting aggravated at the smug look on his face and his obvious oblivion.

"Yeah?" he said, turning to see her.

"Take the wheel?" she said with a devilish slant to her smile.

xxx

"I know it's hard, but it'll only be for a few more agonizing seconds," Lorelai said to Luke, who was forced to sit, eyes closed, on the couch while Lorelai frantically stuck pins into the dress that was currently adorning the mannequin that still had a home in the living room.

"I honestly do not understand what I see in you or why I see it," Luke said, sighing.

"You find me enchanting," Lorelai said dismissively as she stood to observe her work. Proudly, she stepped back and took Luke's hand from his face so he could see the masterpiece.

Luke opened his eyes quickly and took a moment to soak in the dress that was on the mannequin. It was a satin, auburn gown with a halter top and a plunging back. There was a sewn in piece of black satin on the side that offset the monotonous mindset of the red and seemed all too not-bridesmaid.

"Do you think Rory'll like it?" Lorelai asked, rushing over and smoothing out a few more wrinkles.

"I don't see how she couldn't," Luke said, taken aback.

"Are you sure it's not too…dark for a wedding?"

"They're musicians. And you followed Lane's instructions, so what could be wrong about it?" Luke asked clearly. Lorelai sat down and smiled in a drunken way, looping her arm through Luke's.

"I can't believe Lane and Dave are getting married. It seems like just the other day she was sitting on this couch and calling him and hanging up before he could find out it was her. And they're only 19, I mean, I'm 35 and just getting married. It's so bizarre." She looked up at Luke for a beat as a smile formed on his lips and he nodded along to her ramblings. "Do you think Rory and Jess will get married?"

Luke looked down at her, a little shell-shocked. He regained his composure. "I have almost no doubt. They're happy together, they're as good as attached at the hip, and he's got a Gilmore woman tolerance that even I am yet to match. Not to mention Rory having tolerance for him. If they don't get married to one another, they'll just be torturing some other innocent people out there with one another."

Lorelai grinned fully. "You are so optimistic it makes me ill."

"I'm all about sunshine, daisies, free love, and all that hippie crap today. Must be in the water."

"Better than Jess was doing this morning," Lorelai said, frowning.

"I imagine he's fine now. He's still coming into town on Monday, right?"

"Plans haven't changed since I talked to Rory the other night. Even though she did let Jess punk out on dinner."

"Did she say she was going to bring him?"

"No, she refused profusely. But usually I wear her down without knowing it."

"Didn't she not go either?" Luke asked, somewhat confused.

"No, she didn't. It was just me, Emily, Richard, Ana the Maid, and the demons that possess the house."

"How did Rory get out of it?"

"The usual. 'But Grandma, Yale has me so busy, I just can't find the time to come to Hartford this weekend,'" Lorelai mocked in her high-pitched, sounds-too-much-like-someone-named-Bambi voice.

"Doesn't it?"

"School is code word for, 'I want to lay in bed with my boyfriend all day and make mad hot love until I get put in a history book for biggest lie to have sex in Yale history,'" Lorelai said, exasperatedly throwing her hands into the air.

"That's disgusting. Why did you just say that to me? You know I don't like discussing my nephew's sex life with his girlfriend's mother," said Luke, thoroughly disgusted.

"I'm just your fiancée. Don't think of me as Rory's mom. Besides, he was sleeping with Rory and Shane in the apartment above your diner where they serve food, while you were downstairs working," Lorelai said, eyes wide, all knowing.

"You make me entirely ill." Lorelai pouted and he bent down to kiss her. She became submissive to his movements and he sighed.

"Do I still make you sick?" she asked teasingly.

"Shut up."

(See! Getting better, I promised! Only about 3 more chapters in this story! Can you handle it?)