A/N-Thanks for reviews yet again! Sorry this has been so confusing. As you know, this is chapter 14, so I'm looking at just one more chapter for this story and then I'm starting a directly consecutive sequel. I'm looking to call it And I Kind of Like You Driving Me Crazy, but I'm not sure. Feedback? I could use it for that part.
As usual, thanks to just hidden, music4mysoul, mezz, riotgirllina.
Spinaround-Sorry, I know this is really confusing. I switch back and forth, but the last chapter was in 2003, when she's still at Chilton and before Thanksgiving. Some chapters do happen in 2004 when she's at Yale, but I totally went out on a limb and made it so that Jess is there with her. So where I'm going with this is that I'm rewriting seasons 3 and 4 for the most part. Sorry to be confusing, the sequels won't be, I promise to try.
Someone5-I absolutely LOVE the new Wallflowers album, I went and bought it the day it came out, but I'm a hardcore fan. It's a lot like Breach, not as fast-paced at Red Letter Days in some parts. Thanks for yet another amazing review! And uh-mazing (misspelled on purpose) job on Watercolors of the Past.
Kat461-Ahh, and that review as a great Christmas present as well. Much thanks!
Brokenheart34-God Says Nothing Back is definitely one of my favorites on there too. But you're right, the whole album is great. Thanks for taking the time to review!
Regina Halliwell-Wow, I loved your review. Very Outer Limitsy, I was just about to post this when I got your review. Thanks SO much for the rave, I love it.
"Oh my God!" Lorelai exclaimed. Rory nodded with her arms crossed across her chest.
"I told you."
"He's BEAUTIFUL! Why have you been hiding this man from me?" Lorelai said as she started, wide-eyed at the picture of Jakob Dylan that Rory had handed to her.
"I haven't been hiding him, I've been listening to them for years. You can't put me at fault for your ignorance." Rory paused and they stood in awe-ridden silence. "Can you believe that he's Bob Dylan's son?"
Lorelai dropped the sheet of paper. "Please tell me you are joking. There is no way that Bob Dylan, while a musical genius and not entirely unattractive, actually, anyone for that matter, besides myself, to have a child this beautiful."
"I like that compliment to both of us thrown in there. And it is possible. His mom was a Playboy Bunny," Rory said, grinning widely. Lorelai put the picture down slightly and nodded in understanding.
"That must be it. They say all the pretty genes come from mommy."
"Again," Rory observed.
"And the witty ones," Lorelai threw in. Rory pretended to be playing the trumpet and Lorelai rolled her eyes. "It's not just tooting my own horn missy, I'm paying you the proper respect by introducing me to this picture. Go to Luke's and tell him that if he can't handle my emotional attachment to this picture then he has to go and find a new girlfriend."
"In less than a minute you have developed an emotional attachment to this picture of Jakob Dylan?"
"That's what I'm saying." Rory opened her mouth to retort when they both heard a knock at the door from where they were both standing in the middle of the living room, both brought to their feet by Rory's gift to her mother. Now, both fully standing and facing the door, gave one another questioning looks.
"Are we expecting anybody?" Rory asked uncertainly.
"I don't know?" There was another knock.
"It's probably someone who lives nearby."
"Why are we so panicky? It's just the door."
"It's not the door, it's who's behind it," Rory said, just as they heard the door open and watched Lane walk in.
"Geez, you two aren't very perceptive today. Who else comes to your house in the middle of the day? And since when don't you answer the door?" Lane rambled dismissively while she took off her jacket and shoes.
"How am I supposed to know? We've had weirder things happen," Rory said as she sat on the couch.
"But why did you not answer the door?"
"Laziness," Lorelai said, she and Lane sitting both on the couch at the same time. They all sat in companionable silence for a few moments before Lane spoke again.
"Zack and Brian found out about Dave and I."
"There's a new development," Lorelai said, looking over, eyes wide.
"We had to find Brian's inhaler. You can't give that kid news. Ever."
"Are you really going out now?" Lorelai inquired. Lane grinned largely.
"Yup."
"See, all that harassing paid off."
xxx
Jess sat on his bed, quietly reciting in his head all the reasons he wasn't out and about. Since they had gotten back from Brooklyn, he took breaks during the day to reorganize himself. Even on days that he spent time with Rory it was hard for him to be emotionally stable. He didn't want to shoulder his pains onto her. Her problems could be transferred and he would take them like blessed burdens and kiss them as he tucked them under his arms, the weight feeling deliciously much. His burdens were dirty, used, too much for even the rightful bearer. She didn't have the grit to secure the strength to shoulder his evils. Only he could hold them and handle them absentmindedly, sometimes forgetting the weight.
His bed sagged comfortably under his shifting weight and a fleeting image of Rory passed through his brain. The weights became weights again and not emotional struggles. They would be trained with and accustomed to in the future. The tears became smiles and the sad little shakes that he made in his sobbing became kisses under the stars, on the bridge, under God, atop Satan, in entirely lavish limbo.
Sad, minute song lyrics meant touches and cigarettes meant sharing and everything in his world reorganized when he spent his ten minutes alone. And the fleeting image of Rory set it off.
Sometimes the picture changed. Sometimes it was the moment he saw her in her room the first night that he spent in Stars Hollow. Sometimes it was little stolen glances in the diner with a coffee cup in her hand and a book in the other. Sometimes it was her walking out of the hotel room in Brooklyn in her concert t shirt and boy shorts. Sometimes it was the look on her face when he caught her eyes at the hospital. Usually though, it was the look on her face when Jess would place his hand on her hip and kiss her, gently pushing them closer. The look of total trust, want, maybe a hint of admiration, and happiness.
His minutes were without music and nicotine unlike many other stolen moments and he usually laid on his bed and contemplated. At seventeen years old, Jess had taken his baggage with him many places. Some, he vowed never to return to. Others, he had done the same to and returned anyway. Sometimes Jess left his baggage with pieces of him that he left in those places. He might come back to get it one day, but that was only if nobody stumbled across it and found in endearing.
He wasn't going to get back the baggage adorned piece of him that Rory found. Rory found the piece and walked around it for a while, quietly assessing it when eyes weren't prodding her. Sometimes reaching out to touch but probably knowing better than to get burned. Other times she walked by, her hand gripping something more tightly, her soul holding a little more steadfast to a different conviction. But she never moved the piece of Jess that she wrapped her soul around even though she needed the space. She left it, lying in the middle, ignored perhaps but not forgotten.
Then one day somebody rocked her boat. And the steadfast pieces fell and broke into hundreds of pieces. They scattered into the recesses of her soul, a little too cumbersome to retrieve. Eventually, they would become annoying and tread upon accidentally, maybe brought together and maybe broken more. But for the most part, they were forgotten and she came upon that little shred of Jess again.
She picked up the baggage and threw it in her back pocket, maybe like a lucky penny, she would get some small, superficial, superstitious good fortune from the fact that his life had been hard. And before either of them knew what the other was doing, they were there, before one another, without the luxury of baggage or frosting and the only thing that existed between them to block the discomfort was chemistry.
Jess rolled over onto his back and sighed, sitting up suddenly and pacing across the floor in front of his bed. He needed to put things back in their places, remember to forget about all of his demons. He turned on the music during one of his passes and the music started to shove things back into their respective areas of his subconscious.
"Jess?" he heard Luke call up the stairs. Jess sighed one last time, turned off the music, and exited the apartment.
"Same time tomorrow?" he asked the room rhetorically as he exited backwards. He waited a minute and nodded, going back to the real world and the weights became emotional struggles once more.
xxx
Lorelai walked into the diner that evening, her purse in tow, swinging her hips upon entering, walking slowly to the counter where Luke was at work. He caught a glimpse of her as she walked through the door and his eyes caught hers as she grinned playfully and sat at the counter before him. They did a quick check of the diner to make sure that Rory and Jess weren't lurking in disgust and leaned across the counter to one another to exchange a quick kiss.
"You're in a good mood," Luke commented as he reached under the counter and retrieved a mug.
"That I am," Lorelai said, still grinning while she sat. There was a short pause while Luke glanced up at her and filled the mug before her with coffee.
"Care to elaborate as to why?"
"I met the love of my life today," she sighed. Lorelai closed her eyes and drew on her coffee.
"Come again?" Luke said, squinting his eyes curiously in her direction.
"Well, remember that girly band that I was making fun of Jess for listening to this morning?"
"Vaguely. I think you went into hysterics and I started to ignore you after that. Not to mention the entire conversation. I already had an indistinct discussion with Jess about his completely bizarre musical tastes and I came to the conclusion that I have no idea how he distinguishes good music from noise."
Lorelai blinked twice at him. "Moving on." Luke smiled at her in submission and she continued. "Rory printed me out a picture of the lead singer from the band website." Lorelai grinned so big that her ears almost wrapped around her head. "It's unnatural how gorgeous that man is."
Luke grimaced. "You can't be serious."
"I wish I was kidding. I tried to get Rory to come down here and tell you that if you couldn't handle my newfound obsession that you would have to find a new girlfriend, but she blatantly refused."
"Gee, I wonder why." Luke started to walk away down the counter.
"You'd better watch out, a new album means a new tour and you know how I am about rock stars!" Lorelai called in a desperate effort to call attention to herself. Luke rolled his eyes at her persistence and returned to work, filling coffee mugs around the diner systematically.
Lorelai took a second to watch the way Luke moved, his work ethic shown stonily through his efforts to please but keep unbiased and unwaveringly disciplined. At the same time, Lorelai was well aware that beneath the organized film that Luke so readily portrayed as reality, that he was unique, a creative artistic soul without question. Years of imaginatively dancing around the topic of her had proved this point, bar none.
Sometimes Luke would stop a moment or two to gape at someone's idiocy or to smile at an old person and then regret the gesture a few steps later. She would catch him without question looking up at the curtain to the apartment, wondering when and if Jess was going to come down and get to work. Once she swore she almost saw him open his mouth to yell, but for lack of better term, he held off until the matter became pressing.
"Like what you see or did you get a freak attack of hysterical blindness and aren't aware that you're staring at my uncle's ass?" she heard Jess whisper. Lorelai jumped slightly at the newfound company and turned to see him, smiling like a satisfied cat with his forearms resting on the counter.
"Not that it's any of your business, but I can see just fine. And your uncle happens to be my boyfriend. Staring at his ass, if I was doing so, is a right that I think I can reserve."
"Duly noted. But the question was only half answered."
"No it wasn't, I said none of your business," Lorelai said, shaking her head at him like he was a total moron.
"Actually," Jess started, leaning in for confidentialities' sake, "you said that it wasn't any of my business that you could see fine. You said if you were staring at his ass, that you reserve the right to begin with."
"Someone's been hitting the good memory juice lately," Lorelai commented acquiescently as she sipped her coffee, another movement of defeat.
"Ten minutes alone will do a lot for someone's mental state."
"You seriously spend your breaks upstairs by yourself?" Lorelai paused while the thought processed. "That's actually way more disgusting than spending it with my daughter, sorry about that."
"Mind in the gutter much?" Jess asked, taken aback slightly.
"More than you know." Lorelai looked at Jess as he shook off her comment and checked behind him for orders. "What do you do on your break? I thought you just sat in the square and smoked and read and occasionally took passerby hostage."
"The only passerby that I took hostage was your daughter, and it was a mutual decision, therefore, there weren't any activities to suggest that I was taking a hostage."
"First of all, ew. Secondly, you avoided the question, and I know it." Jess looked at her, trying to come up with a decent argument and coming up short.
"I like to go upstairs and listen to music. Catch up on my crocheting, maybe catch the last few minutes of Martha Stewart, bake a power-pie and come back down in time to serve the lovely people of Stars Hollow."
"No need to be brazen with me. I'm officially letting you into mine and my daughter's very vulnerable lives without kicking and screaming hardly at all." She paused with a lack of anything else apparent to say and cut to the chase. "I really am sorry about your mom. If it's any consolation, I think you're holding up amazingly. Really kid, it's incredible."
Jess looked at Lorelai with a mix of utter confusion and the brink of mocking. He thought better of it as the straight look on her face and her demeanor maintained and he squirmed under the pressure of proper response.
"Thanks." Lorelai smiled at him empathetically and Jess looked over her shoulder while Rory walked in. He acknowledged her presence quickly and scanned the diner for Luke.
"Kirk, you can't seriously want the meat on the side of the burger. That entirely defeats the purpose of the meal!" Luke said, frustrated at Kirk who was arguing fantastically.
"Luke, I'm going. Make it up later, I'll polish the silver or hock it or something," Jess said as he saw his way out and grabbed his jacket, rushing he and Rory out the door before Luke could rightfully protest.
"In a hurry?" Rory said as Jess dragged her around the corner away from seeing eyes and pressed her to the building, kissing her within an inch of sanity.
"'I'm not drunk, and I'm not sad, there's nothing inside that I want back,'" Jess quoted, eagerly directing Rory to her line.
"'Let me touch your lips, let me see where you're at," Rory whispered throatily as she snaked up a hand and touched his bottom lip affectionately.
"'Do you wonder how I am tonight?'" he prodded further.
"'Then don't lose time looking in my eyes'," Rory said, a tear forming gently as she wrapped her arms around his neck. This was Jess's way of saying he loved her. And she was dying just to hear him recite every beautiful word.
"'Not every tear means you're gonna cry'," Jess said as he wiped her eye and kissed her again, Rory smiling like a fool the entire time.
That little ditty was a part of From the Bottom of My Heart, by the Wallflowers. I plan on using more lyrics for the next part. It was a little cheesy, but it's 1:20 a.m. where I'm from, and cheesy sometimes is all you can manage. The brilliance train stops running at about 11.
Hit the magical button!