A/N: So many shifting relationships in this fic makes me a little dizzy. Hopefully I can handle it without screwing up. You guys will tell me if I do, right? ;) Really appreciating all the feedback so far. This fic is going to be another long one, peops, so I hope you're ready for that! Now, are Rory & Jess having a son or a daughter..? It's scan time!

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 20

Shelving books at Andrew's store, Rory was in her element. This was maybe the most comfortable and happy she had felt in weeks, well, outside of lying in Jess' arms in their bed of course. They had been back for a while now and the town seemed to have adjusted in no small part to both their presence and their situation. People had decided, on the whole, to be kind and supportive. Rory supposed she should never have suspected they would be anything else.

Babette and Maury, Miss Patty, Sookie and Jackson, these were people who had helped raise Rory in their own ways, and now they seemed ready and willing to pitch in when it came to the baby she and Jess would have in a few months time. That meant such a lot to the young Miss Gilmore, especially when her actual family were having a tougher time dealing.

It wasn't her mom or Luke that were the problem. Actually they were being incredibly supportive and helpful, probably more than Rory and Jess deserved, if she were honest with herself. They had both run out on those that cared about them at one time or another, and when they returned, it wasn't in the most favourable of circumstances. Lorelai had put a roof over their heads, Luke had provided work for Jess. Both were ready and willing with all the love and sound advice they had to give. It made Rory want to cry, she was so happy, relieved, and overwhelmed.

The problem was the grandparents. Rory never expected Richard and Emily to react all that well when she told them she needed to take a year off from Yale, to have a baby no less! She didn't even think they would take kindly to Jess, especially given the circumstances. Grandpa had surprised her by remaining calm and civil throughout. He was still offering to pay for school when Rory went back, and he and Jess got into a deep and meaningful conversation over Hemingway that gave her real hope for them getting along well in the future. Grandma was still a hurdle to be conquered.

Lorelai had been gone for a long time trying to talk to Emily on Friday night. Once again, dinner ended up abandoned, and Lorelai took the kids home to the diner so Luke could feed them all. There she had explained how upset Emily had gotten, and how much of it wasn't even about Rory and Jess. She was heartbroken over being estranged from her husband, and suspected Richard was even seeing other people. Rory thought that was highly unlikely, and honestly would rather not consider either of her grandparents dating, because that was just strange, especially when they quite clearly belonged back together.

Though Lorelai told Rory she was sure Emily was sorry for the way she spoke to them all the Friday before, Rory stood firm and said she was not going to face her grandmother until she got an apology. Jess refused to have an opinion in front of Luke and Lorelai, but later that night, lying in bed together, Rory pressed him for his point of view. He had said then that he actually understood both sides of the whole thing. Whilst he did not appreciate the way Emily spoke to Rory, he at least saw that she was disappointed things hadn't worked out to the plan, and he well understood why she would react badly to the sight of him in particular. As he readily admitted, they did not get off to the best start when they met a couple of years go. There was no denying that was true enough, Rory knew, but she still held onto some hope of building bridges eventually. If her grandma could just understand this time, the way she never could when her daughter left home - happiness was so much more important than sticking to some big plan of everyone else's ideals.

Finishing rearranging the shelf she was stood in front of, Rory moved to the next and checked the alphabetisation. She muttered mild expletives when she found a volume of Austen's greatest works between two Dickens novels, and actually growled when a modern crime thriller showed itself amongst the rest of the classics.

"Y'know I don't know what's sexier," said a voice from the door. "The fact you're surrounded by books or the sounds you're making while you sort them."

Rory could hear the smirk in Jess' voice before she ever turned to glance at him, only glad nobody else was in the store right now to hear him.

"Do people not understand the concept of genre?!" she asked him, waving around the erroneous book that had so annoyed her. "And if that's too much for them, you would at least think they could handle the alphabet. It's pretty much the first thing any kid learns at school, and besides, this is a book store! People who come here can read for God's sake. If you can read, then you know your A to Z!" she grumbled, reshelving at least half a dozen books that had gotten into the wrong places.

Jess wandered over and just watched her a while. She was adorable when she rambled, and hot when she was talking about books in just about any way at all. Her hair had grown out, almost to the length it had been when they first met, and yet she looked older, in a good way. Like a woman rather than a girl, and yet just the same as always at the same time. There wasn't a thing about Rory that Jess didn't find attractive, from the very beginning and still now. He wondered if there would ever be a time in his life when she wasn't the most important person in the world to him. Jess suspected the only time anybody else would matter as much was when their baby was born. As much as he was doing all that needed to be done, the concept that he was going to have a son or daughter in the coming months still kind of blew his mind.

"Jess?" prompted Rory when she turned and found him leaning on the next bookcase over just staring at her with a weird smile on his lips. "What?"

"You're beautiful," he told her without a moment's hesitation.

Still Rory found that she couldn't help but blush when his compliments came so out of the blue like that. Jess loved her, she knew that, and there were times when he happily told her how much, but to just stand there and blurt out that she was beautiful, that was rare. She didn't doubt he thought these things but admitting them aloud without warning was scarce and random. It made it all the more special somehow.

"Um, we can't leave yet," she said, looking around. "Andrew isn't here. He knows we have the scan today, so he shouldn't be long..."

"It's okay, I'm early," Jess nodded, reaching out to Rory then and pulling her closer to kiss her hello. "Your mom got caught up at the inn so she's gonna meet us at the doctor's office."

Rory nodded that was fine and within a minute Andrew arrived to take over the book store. The young couple left hand in hand, electing to walk to the doctors since it really wasn't far. Jess said before that he never regretted selling his car, but Rory knew how much it had meant to him. It wasn't really practical in New York anyway, but once he found out Rory was pregnant, he knew he would never used it again. The thing was all but a death-trap which was fine for just Jess, even for Rory if she chose to get in it. Everything changed when they knew she was having a baby. It made them both grow up much faster than they ever thought possible. In the end, Jess had sold the car for as much as he could get (which wasn't much) and added the money to the savings they both knew they were going to need.

"This feels so weird," said Rory as they walked along together. "We're going to see our baby. Okay, so just a fuzzy picture of a little tiny person not half so big as he or she will be when they get out into the world, but still... Feels weird," she admitted.

"Y'know that's something we didn't talk about," said Jess suddenly. "We keep saying 'he or she', but if I remember biology class right, don't we find out one way or the other today? I mean, if we want to?"

"Er, yeah, I guess," Rory considered. "Um, we want to know, right?"

"There are advantages," said Jess thoughtfully. "I mean, you know which half of the baby names book to focus on. No chance of buying a bunch of pink stuff and traumatising a boy," he smirked.

"True," his girlfriend agreed. "On the other hand, it might be nice to be surprised. I mean, for so long there were no scans or anything, and people found out what they were having when he or she came out into the world. That could be nice too."

Jess tried not to smile at the way she said it. Though he wasn't entirely sure why, Rory had clearly decided she didn't want to know the sex of their baby until the day it was born, she just didn't want to make that decision by herself and have Jess feel he was cut out of it. The truth was, he didn't really mind either way. Finding out the kid was healthy and developing properly was priority one, everything else was whatever.

"We can wait and see what we get," he assured her, leaning in to kiss her temple. "I don't mind."

"You sure?" she checked. "Because we can keep weighing up the options..."

"Rory," he stopped them both walking and faced her. "The doctor's office is a five minute walk. Your pro-con lists usually take days. You do the math," he smiled indulgently at her. "Now I appreciate that you want to include me in the decision making and I expect to be consulted when it's important, but this is what it is. We find out now, we find out in five or six months, it doesn't matter to me"

"I love you, you know that, right?" she said, gazing up at him.

"Kinda figured," he shrugged, smirking all over his face as they leaned in and shared a kiss.

"Really? You guys couldn't even get from the book store to the doctor's office without stopping for that?" asked Lorelai as the Jeep suddenly pulled up beside the kissing couple, putting an end to their activities very abruptly.

Rory blushed in spite of herself. Jess just smiled politely.

"Lorelai," he nodded once. "Good timing," he deadpanned.

"Isn't it though?" she grinned. "You guys wanna hop in?" she suggested, popping the lock on the passenger door.

Rory and Jess got into the car, however pointless it seemed when they were so close to their destination. It made sense to all arrive together and to go home the same way when they were done. No doubt a trip to the diner would be in order, because Luke wanted to know how things went at the scan. Somehow, Jess figured his uncle would prefer a description devoid of any real detail, but he was going to want to know if the baby was healthy and such. That was all any of them really wanted to hear right now.

It was ten minutes later that Rory was being led into an exam room, followed by both her boyfriend and her mother. She hopped up onto the table, as instructed by the doctor, an older man with kind eyes and a smile. Jess couldn't help but think if he just had a white beard he'd make a good Santa Claus as crazy as that sounded. Still, a man that seemed to have a decent amount of experience and a grandfatherly air was a preferable doctor choice for his girlfriend, he supposed. No judgmental types or potentially handsy creeps were coming near Rory and his unborn child, Jess was certain on that.

"You okay there, slugger?" Lorelai asked him as they sat either side of the bed and watched whilst the sonogram was switched on and gel spread over Rory's abdomen.

"I'm not the one being poked and prodded," he shrugged, eyes fixed on his nervous-looking girlfriend.

Lorelai just smiled, watching him reach for Rory's other hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. The young couple shared a smile and tears welled in Lorelai's eyes then. She never expected to be here like this, not whilst Rory was still so young, and certainly not with Jess playing Daddy. Still, she couldn't deny the obvious love between these two, and she was more than happy to see it. A little jealous if she were brutally honest, because she would have loved for Christopher and herself to have been this in love and happy when her own pregnancy occurred. On the other hand, if they had felt that deeply, things never would have worked out like they had now. Lorelai had her own life in Stars Hollow, the best relationship with her daughter, an inn to call her own, and she had Luke now. She had never been happier than she was in her new relationship and there was just so much in her life to be thankful for. Maybe things were exactly as they were supposed to be.

"Oh my God!" Rory gasped and suddenly Lorelai's attention was back on the matter at hand as her fingers were gripped tight in her daughter's own.

Lorelai looked towards the screen and there was the baby, a fuzzy green-hued picture but as the doctor pointed out a leg, an arm, the head, it was so very clearly a child. A very small baby's form. Her grandson or granddaughter. Lorelai bit back a sob she couldn't explain at the very idea.

"Would you like to know the sex?" asked the doctor.

"No," said Jess when Rory's voice seemed to have left her completely, tears on he cheeks proving how overwhelmed she was by this whole experience. "We talked about it but we'd rather wait and see what comes out on the day."

"That's perfectly fine," the doctor smiled, a little amused by the wording, but happy enough to keep the baby's sex to himself if that was the wish of the parents-to-be. "Well, what I can tell you is that you have a very healthy little baby growing inside of you, Miss Gilmore," he told her then. "No problems whatsoever that I can see. Now, let's take a picture..."

"Two please," said Lorelai, perhaps a little too loudly and suddenly. "I mean, if you guys don't mind."

"No, you should have a picture," Rory sniffled, smiling through the tears - Lorelai reached into her purse and produced a wad of tissue for her baby girl - "I mean this, you're going to be part of their life too."

"Yeah, grandma," said Jess with a grin he couldn't help.

"Don't think you can make me mad with talk like that, Mariano," she told him with a look. "I have never been more proud of a title in my life."

"Wow," Luke gasped when he was handed in the sonogram picture by his nephew. "That's... that's amazing," he admitted, staring intently at the fuzzy shape of a baby for what felt like forever.

"Kind of is," Jess agreed with a strange smile on his lips the like of which Luke knew was rarely ever there.

Jess wasn't the sentimental type, not a romantic or anything, and yet he was so completely in love with Rory, from practically the first moment they met, and Luke knew it. He got this soft look in his eyes sometimes when he looked at the woman he loved, sometimes even when he talked about her, but this was new. This was pride and love, things that a person could only really feel for a child of their own, Luke suspected, though honestly, right now he felt all these things about Jess. He wouldn't tell him, that wasn't what Danes men did, but it was there, no doubt about it. He had no idea how much this kid would come to mean in his life when all he'd seen of him was a picture similar to the one in his hand right now. How things changed.

"So, er... everything is good? Healthy, happy?" he checked then, snapping out of a daze as he handed the picture back to Jess.

"All good," Rory confirmed from the next stool over.

"Better than good," sighed Lorelai staring at her own copy of the sonogram on the other side of her daughter. "But just so you know, you're dating a grandma now."

"The hottest one in town," said Luke reassuringly as he leaned over the counter to kiss her.

Rory giggled whilst Jess looked away. Luke looked visibly embarrassed when he processed what he just said and in front of whom. He recovered fast and asked whether the baby was a boy or a girl, but Rory shook her head.

"We don't know. We decided to wait and see what we get."

"I mean, so long as the kid has ten fingers and ten toes, that's the important thing," added Jess, putting his arm around Rory's shoulders to hug her close. "Gender is whatever."

"For the kid's sake, I hope their gender isn't whatever," said Lorelai thoughtfully. "Far easier if they're one thing or the other, I always think."

Jess rolled his eyes almost in perfect unison with his uncle as Rory laughed and then turned her attention back to the sonogram picture her boyfriend had slipped into her hand. They were having a baby, it hit her all over again every time she saw the image, and as scary as it was, it was pretty damn amazing too.

"Oh, is that the baby?" asked Miss Patty, suddenly at Rory's shoulder.

She was all over the picture in a second, calling to Lulu to come see. Kirk came over with his girlfriend, and then two or three other patrons of the diner. Rory didn't mind, not when they were all saying such nice things, and checking all was well with both her and the baby. She wasn't sure she necessarily deserved all this kindness, but she was glad to have it all the same.

To Be Continued...