Title: Nine Months.
Author: Professional Scatterbrain
Rating: Pg - 13
Couple: R/T
Summary: Tristan returns to Chilton, and to the game, but Rory's not playing.
Note: Tristan left later on in Rory's first year at Chilton, so therefore the whole nine-month thing works (a little hint, it's a metaphor for the fic). After Tristan left Rory formed a fledgling friendship with Paris, Louise and Madeline, and by the time senior years rolls up there good friends, well, most of the time at least. Everything that happened with Dean and Jess happened except it happened all before senior year. At the end of the year before Rory told Jess she loved him, and he left suddenly straight afterwards.
I made Chilton darker, because I found the whole picture perfect school depicted on the show nice, yet unrealistic. I tried to model it around my High School, showing the competitiveness, the cruelty, and self delusion within my environment. I go to a girls school though, so the guy thing still might take me a while to work out. Suggestions would be nice as this is my first GG fic.
Chp 16: The only constant is change
On Monday there was a lot of awkwardness between the sexes. Rory felt out of it, as the minutes flickered past she waited at his locker, unsure, confused, and missing him. An ink blot girl. She wanted to know what had happened with him, why he freaked at her words. It sounded so simple. Yet it was so complex. One query or two.
So she lingered for him.
She waited until the class bell when.
But he didn't come.
Standing there, occasionally reaching down to pull up her knee high socks, or straightening her watch, she pretended that wasn't waiting, pretended that it was all so casual, and she didn't notice the mad mass of students walking past watching her as she waited for him. But it wasn't casual, and as she tightened the elastic holding her hair, she wanted more than anything to walk away. But she couldn't. She couldn't after forcing herself to confront him. Forcing herself out of her bus, forcing herself to move past the obvious distractions to where she had to go.
What a Dr Phil move.
Confronting him, asking for answers.
But he wasn't here.
She felt stupid and naive, embarrassed and all too young and . . . she missed him.
"Your boy avoiding you?" Summer leered as she passed, her eyes flashing with dangerous fury that Rory remembered seeing echoed in her own eyes.
Or maybe it was different.
But perhaps it was the same.
"What's it to you?" Rory found herself snapping, the words leaving her mouth like ice and glass, cutting her lips, surprising both of the brunettes, making them both recoil.
But Summer recovered quickly. She always did. She always would. Her face was too thin, as was she, but among other imperfections she hadn't really bothered to note extensively, she had managed to put together a girl that was more than half way to the perfect polite presentation that was needed in her habitat of the torn butterflies and the black abyss men. More then halfway. But not there yet.
Yet.
She didn't like to smile. She was more at home stretching her face for photographs, and stretching her limbs for other needs. She was a blank mess of a girl, covered in finger prints of people who didn't bother to handle her with care.
She wasn't sweet.
She wasn't perfect enough.
She might even be the bitch Tristan said she was.
She only seemed to smile in photographs.
A girl covered in other peoples fingerprints.
Yes, she had to recover quickly.
Or at least try to.
Or at least try to, you know, for the cameras.
"Nothing, I just find it fun to watch you waiting for him. It's a change in your routine." Summer mocked, but a crack in her shield was clearly apparent to Rory, and perhaps that's why Rory wasn't afraid of the brunette with her highlighted hair and almost neatly arranged eyes.
But maybe it was more than that, more than the hair and the slip in her shield.
Maybe it was the fact that Rory wasn't that sweet either.
Maybe . . .
"It's fun to watch you pine for Tristan too, but would me letting you know I notice your puppy dog eyes be changing routine?" Rory retorted sarcastically with a bright smile pasted onto her pretty face, before she stalked away, her footsteps joining the chaotic noise of the other students as they made there way to class.
Rory so didn't want to deal with Summer today. What was with that girl? Rory had seen how she looked at Tristan. Always under heavy eyes. Always with a glint of something Rory had no trouble properly placing. If Rory didn't trust Tristan she might have even felt nervous because of Summer's attention to Tristan. Well . . . more nervous. But Tristan was better than her, he was better than all the fakes, all the phonies, all the beautiful and damned faces and their dizzy eyes, he was himself, and over and over again he proved to her how much he cared for her, only her.
Only her.
Finding her way to her seat in class next to Paris and Madeline, Rory looked over expecting to see Louise. But the pretty blonde was missing. Louise was never away on a Monday, it was her favourite day of the school week. The day where she thrived on the gossip and news from the deceased weekend and moved throughout the different cliché in the school with a calculated ease. Or was it a practiced one? Rory didn't know. Rory never was quite sure with Louise. Madeline saw Rory's questioning gaze and sighed a little, her slim shoulders slumping in a way that seemed unnatural, as if her holiday finishing school should have removed that habit.
"Brad." She stated in one word, her raven hair slipping around the fine velvet ribbon tied tightly around her head, spilling over her porcelain face.
Paris seemed to react harshly at the name. Her shoulders stiffened, as if she was a coined spring about to shatter. Her long hair covered her face, sticking to her cheek bones and knotting itself around the badges and buttons on her school blazer. She looked like repressed energy in a person much older than she was, and with her gaze firmly fixed past her two friends and onto the clear blackboard at the front of the classroom she spoke.
"Now she'd done him, that only leaves Giles before she's fucked all the eligible guys in Chilton," Paris spat coldly. Her hazel eyes refused to meet Madeline or Rory, speaking depths that neither girl understood.
Or pretended not too.
Madeline's eyes narrowed, and her face, although restrained just like Paris,' showed her anger at her friend's flippant remark, "Why do you always have to act like a bitch Gellar? Just because your middle name is 'frigid Bridget' doesn't mean you can say shit like that."
At Madeline's remark, Paris turned, those hazel eyes of hers now choosing to meet the other girls suddenly powerful blue orbs. Paris face was cold and detached, and for a second she calculatedly examined the other girl. A girl, whom in the past had always been so submissive towards her. From her seat Rory squirmed a little, part of her told her to break in and stop this all before it got worse, but a mean part of her wanted to see what her friends were capable of, the mean part didn't want to get involved.
Or be involved.
Tapping her fingers rhythmically on her desk, Paris radiated authority, "At least my sexually history isn't document on the back of the guys toilets."
Madeline's eyes flashed with rarely seen malice, "At least it wasn't recorded on C-Span, or was that another hypocrite who announced to the world how she let her boyfriend fuck her after a night of homework? Your standards must be dropping after years of telling Louise and I to wait."
"Look where that got Louise; the lovely reputation of the sluttiest trophy wife wannabe in Hartford, or is she only a runner up to you?"
"That's enough guys," Rory finally broke in, quickly seeing how far this could really go with neither girl willing to back down.
Guilt diffused into her, and Rory felt disgusted by what she had allowed to happen.
"Shut up Rory," Paris spat, with her dangerously dark eyes flickering from Madeline to Rory, "This conversation is reserved for people who aren't oblivious to guys' bullshit,"
Madeline rolled her eyes, "Attacking Rory now, isn't that classy, feels like old times."
Paris leaned forward intimidatingly, "Now you mention it, everything is like the old times. Louise getting fucked over by drop kicks them running home crying, and you about to get used by whichever guys got the nicest car, or is it trust funds? I don't know anymore just how deeply shallow you are."
Madeline blushed, her face stained and her voice, although wavering a little, was more detached than ever before, and while gathering her few school books, she spoke with cool certainly, "You're a bitch Paris."
Standing up, she stalked away. Her jet hair glinting in the light as she sat with Summer and her group of dazzling smiles and perfect manicures. She smiled in greeting, lazily ran a hand through her hair, and made a comment that obviously was far from what had come from her moth moments ago. She didn't even look back. She wasn't one to anyway. Leaving Paris with stuttering motions, she instead of glancing at Madeline as Rory was, she instead opened her books, she begin to take notes, with her body ridged with anger, while Rory tried to disappear.
Maybe they weren't old times.
Or maybe they were.
Or maybe it didn't matter.
Rory saw Tristan at the end of the day.
She'd figured out pretty quickly that he'd been avoiding her all day. She just didn't know why. It was like she knew, but she didn't know what she knew. She hated herself for caring, for being worried. She'd always told herself never to get worked up over a guy. In her life she'd seen how guys messed everything up. Her father and mother's relationship was a prime example of how people could continually fuck each other over. For her whole life all she'd had of her father was a half an hour phone call at the end of the week. She'd listen to him make small talk, and know instinctively that every five minutes he'd be looking at his watch to check the time. Just like she was. God, she hated how obsessed he was with Georgina, how he would talk for hours on how perfect she was, and how he 'missed' all that with his first daughter. Utter bullshit. If he wanted to be there he would have. He chose not to be part of her life. Just like Lorelei chose to allow him to make that choice.
Sometimes Rory wished her mother had run away with Christopher. Sometimes she wished that he'd come after Lorelei, and begged and begged and told her everything she hadn't wanted to hear. But, sometimes, late at night when her mind was too active and out of her tendrils of control, she wished that he never existed.
Because in the end, he was a person on the other end of the phone line who called her each week.
In the end she hated thinking about him, because it was simply easier not to.
It was easier to spend her days doing homework and shopping and not missing a person that had never been there to begin with. A person that Luke, Richard, nor any guy Lorelei dated unsuccessfully could ever be. She hated herself for longing for someone that never existed, an entity that was foreign for her, and one that Lorelei would never want her daughter to long for.
Because if she did, then Lorelei couldn't pretend either.
And neither Lorelei were ready for what came after one could no longer pretend.
Rory watched him. Once again. Just like she always did. His body was lean and liquid, his motions fluent as if he was moving through water. A glint of arrogance and mischief carefully placed in his eyes as he spoke fleetingly to friends and acquaintances, and with long even strides, she forced herself to approach him, and to join his side only after it was just the two of them left.
"Ror," he acknowledged as she neared him, his eyes glacier and painful to look directly at.
"I missed you in Legal class today," she stated, and winced at how stupid she sounded, taking a breath she spoke again, not bothering with the small talk that seemed to make up her life, "Don't avoid me,"
He didn't make an excuse; he just looked at her, his diamond eyes giving way something almost like lov-
She blinked and it was gone, fleeting and ambiguous like words of poems she was too young to understand.
"I've got swim team practice," he told her, running his hand through his thick blonde hair in a nervous gesture she recognised from the amount of time they had spent together.
"Skip it," she told his bluntly.
Coach Andrews words played out in his mind, "I'm not going to suggest anything, as it's clear you don't want to do anything extra." No longer did they just seem to apply to swimming. Two things in his life meant something too him, and at the moment he was looking at the person that had abruptly taken precedent over swimming. He looked at her again, with her steady eyes, and serious face; god he wanted her. But she was asking more of him that just bunking one swimming practice and what scared him was the fact she knew it too, she was giving him the opportunity to come with her, to make them work.
An opportunity for far more than anything anyone else could give him.
She was vulnerable, open and waiting.
Suddenly acutely uncomfortable, she watched him, wanting him to speak.
More than wanting.
"I shouldn't," he replied, watching her eyes dull for second, then snap back into focus.
Walking over to him she took his keys and unlocked his car, sliding into the seats. Rory bit her lip to stop it from trembling. She didn't turn around in case he wasn't following, and as the seconds past she felt more ridicules and childish for expecting this out of him. Then a few minutes later, he wordlessly slipped into the driver's seat and took the keys from her, his fingers lightly touching hers in a way that made him something he never thought he could feel.
The drive was quiet; she turned on his radio and flipped from station to station never quite finding any music she wanted. His hands gripped the steering wheel, his eyes focused on the road while his mind raced with confusion and fear. Part of him mind yelled at him for letting things go this far, for not dumping her before things got so serious and risky for him. The other half of him just wanted her, with her smiles and stupid jokes, and mockingly deceptive innocent actions.
"Lorelei's home," she announced as they reached her street, "Let's go somewhere else."
Something always got to him when she called her mother Lorelei, from her it sounded odd. At first it fitted the image in his mind that they were more like best friends than mother and daughter, but as time pasted it worried him. Rory never was easy to understand, for mere seconds he would see parts of her she hid, and then would move back into the confusion that everyone else lived in around her. But he was learning, everything was adapting to fit her, and he just wondered what would happen after.
As they reach the Stars Hollow town centre, she took his hand and led him into the grassy park like area pulling him down to sit next to her. His fingers were linked with hers, and she moved closer to him, for some reason knowing not ever to distance herself from him when she needed to affect him.
"Don't ignore me," she whispered, her voice becoming lost by the time the remaining murmur reached the ears of the eavesdropping towns' people. "You don't have to say anything but . . ."
His thumb rubbed circles on her knuckles, her trailed off sentence weakening him more than would ever admit, "I just-"
"No excuses," she interrupted, seeing that look in his eyes that took over when he started to lie.
"Don't make me into someone I'm not," he warned her.
Her thoughts flashed back to the day after the party at her house. How he reacted when she called him a good person. She wanted to tell him again that he was, that he was decent and better than them, but she held her tongue, it was better to wait. She had known for a while how he hated parts of himself, and she wished he wouldn't, but her wishes didn't mean anything to him at the moment. So all she did was take his hand and kiss his palm sweetly and fleetingly.
"I want to understand you," she told him softly, "So don't ignore me,"
"I'm sorry,"
His second apology to her she noted. This time though it meant something more to her. It told her he would try. It didn't mean he would open up, or that she would either, but it was a start. A start they could work from. His eyes, dark slate grey, so much like his fathers and grandfather shifted and glittered under the light of the afternoon sun, and she felt herself falling for him not for the first time.
The terrifying thing about that was the certainty that she'd continue to do so in the future.
His lips were soft as he pulled her onto his lap and started laying gentle kisses along her cheekbone, and jaw line. She was shuddering under his touch. So was he under hers. His eyes fluttered closed, and her eyes followed as he brought up his hand to cup her cheek as he move on to lightly kiss her lips in way that made her feel so fragile. Every touch seemed chaste, but the undercurrent was there, they just chose not to act on it. The undercurrent was always there. After a few minutes they broke apart and she lay her head on his shoulder, close enough to his neck to feel his pulse beat steadily. From the corner of eye she saw a flash of dark hair and midnight eyes.
Jess.
He was back.
Next Chp: Severely lacking
"I missed you," he stated, but as he did both of them wished he hadn't.
She broke away from his hold; her arms crossed over her chest, not reacting in the way he though she might, just holding herself back, her eyes telling him to be more careful with what he said.
Thanks to Belle and all my reviewers.
Wishing all of you happy holidays with your family and friends,
Professional Scatterbrain
