title: Watercolors of the Past
disclaimer: Let's just say that if I owned GG, things would be drastically different. Starting with more Michel! And Milo, of course.
notes: Lets get this rolling again, shall we?
chapter.eight: stagehand lovers
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"Give me a pen," she beamed, looking up at him through squinted eyes caused by an uncontrollable smile.
Rolling his eyes, he repeated the only two words he'd said in the past twenty minutes. "Absolutely not."
They had just finished dinner at a gorgeously antiquated little restaurant where he had told her stories – fact or fictitious, she didn't care – of the beatniks who use to hang out there, after which they took a walk down the same streets Grace Kelly had so many years before. It was then that he made the mistake of pointing out a bookstore belonging to a friend of his and she took the opportunity to revisit her mission to locate The Subsect. And locate it she had.
"Come on, Jess. Please?" She tugged at his shirtsleeve impatiently, causing the woman next to them to put down the paperback copy of He's Just Not That Into You she was examining and roll her eyes distastefully as she moved to the 'Romance Novel' section of the small bookstore. Jess noticed her stalk off and smirked, but Rory remained focused on him, now fumbling through his jacket, desperately in search of a pen.
"Whoa," he mumbled when her right hand entered his left jean pocket. Smiling innocently up at him, she reassured him that she was just looking for a writing utensil of some sort.
He leaned down close to her face, and, for a moment, she thought he was going to kiss her – an attempt to make her forget about her mission, no doubt. (Not that she'd mind a kiss, of course.) His eyes trained on hers before darting to her lips just for a moment. Her tongue flicked out to moisten them subconsciously before he dipped closer. But she needed to find a…a…a whatwasitagain?
"I don't have a pen, Rory," he whispered, barely an inch away from her face.
Pen. Of course.
"You're a writer," she countered just as softly, her heart rate quickening with every shaky breath she took. "Writers…writers always have pens with them, don't they?"
He shook his head slowly, an amused smile on his face. "Nope."
"Oh," she sighed, at a loss for words. She saw his gaze wander down to her mouth again and she couldn't help but smile a little bit. Pulling her closer, he caught her lips just as the corners turned up, gracefully caressing her tongue with his own.
Suddenly, she couldn't even remember why she wanted the pen in the first place.
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The sight that presented itself before Lorelai was one that she could not have imagined, nor believed, had she not seen it with her own eyes.
Lucas Danes, love of her life but all around surly man, was crouched low in the hallway closet, delicately moving a 'Bop-It' aside and setting it down soundlessly. Next, an old set of Dumbbells emerged (When had she bought those?), the weight of them catching him off guard, causing him to let them slip from his fingers only to clamor to the floor. A string of hushed curses followed as he rolled them out of his way as quietly as he could.
"What are you doing?" she asked incredulously, causing her fiancée to jump suddenly, a stray box of board games getting caught in the movement and toppling to the floor.
"Don't scare me like that."
"Luke?" She settled her hands on her hips, an amused expression overtaking her features.
"I'm getting my toolbox."
She gestured at his crouching form, "I repeat, what are you doing?"
"Being quiet."
A short laugh escaped her. The stern glare she received in return only made it stronger. "Why?" she questioned, amused by his seriousness.
"Well, I mean, Rory doesn't know that I've been sleeping over here and stuff – well, I'm sure she does, but she hasn't seen it, and she's not used to me being here, and I don't want to make her uncomfortable, so…" he trailed off with a sweeping hand gesture, feeling that the reasoning behind his actions were justified as well as obvious.
"So you climbed in through my bedroom window?" she nodded, sober and unsmiling, head tilted upwards contemplatively.
"I don't want her to think that I just come and go as I please," Luke explained.
"But you do," Lorelai stressed, enunciating each word slowly. "We're getting married; she's going to notice when you're living here full time, you know."
"Of course I know."
"You've got bulk, Luke. Bulk is hard to hide, especially considering that I strategically store shoes in every possible crawl space in this house. I'm afraid there's nowhere left to hide," she shrugged.
"But she just got back, and I want to give you two space. You know, to talk…" he paused, searching, "about…womanly things that women talk about."
"Have you ever even met a woman, Lucas?"
He ignored her playful jab and stood up, gathering his things. "I'm gonna go."
"You should stay."
"But, I-" He motioned to Rory's room, not that she was in there, he knew, but he figured Lorelai would get the gist behind his reluctance.
"She's not here."
Luke's eyes went from Lorelai to the kitchen to Lorelai again, his face scrunched up in a pinched look of confusion. "Rory's not here?" he repeated.
She crossed her arms across her chest in an almost defensive stance. Perhaps it was a pensive one. "Nope."
"You two didn't have another fight?" he asked cautiously. Even the densest of men would be able to tell that this was still a very sore subject in her opinion. He desperately searched her face for any sort of tell – anything that would sate his fears. Not a fight, not a fight.
"No," she said, and he looked visibly relieved, emitting a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Lorelai's expression never wavered, though. In fact, her eyes became more distant as she continued. "She's…she went to Philadelphia. To spend some time with Jess."
"Oh. Oh," he realized, the conversation he and Lorelai had just days before coming back to him. She slept with Jess. Not necessarily something he wanted to know, but… "Wow. Well, that's good, I guess. Right?"
"I don't think so."
His bit his tongue literally and figuratively, offering a neutral, "Oh." Best to keep his opinion out of this one.
"She shouldn't be diving into another relationship, especially this one," Lorelai continued, shaking her head in disappointment.
"I know how you feel about Jess-"
"This relationship already has baggage, Luke, and she doesn't need that. I'd feel the same if it was Jess or not," she countered.
"But the fact that it's Jess makes it worse." He was right. He knew he was, and it broke his heart, for himself and for Rory.
"Well, of course it does," she admitted matter-of-factly. She must have realized how cold that sounded, though, because her expression shifted from one of controlled anger to a pensive frown. A flickering of sadness behind her eyes. Emotions of every degree coursing through. All except for one.
She was never good at indifference, especially when it came to her daughter. Or Jess, for that matter.
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A werewolf moon encroached upon his tiny box of a bedroom, reflecting of off the pale walls and lighting the space as if it were midday on a Thursday afternoon. The bright burned her eyelids and she woke slowly, unwillingly, but recent living arrangements and subconscious guilt for too many things had turned her into a light sleeper. With labored effort, she turned towards the window, the man in the moon peering back mockingly. Jess slept soundly beside her and she groaned enviously. Rory shifted softly, disentangling herself from his strong embrace, and pulled on a discarded t-shirt (his, hers?) lying at her feet.
She left the moon behind with the steady rhythm of Jess' breathing and the moment the bedroom door closed behind her she missed the even regularity. The rest of the apartment was quiet, save for the humming of the refrigerator. That pregnant moon reappeared in the living room, though, glaring through the window and casting his abundant glow across the breadth of the carpet. Pale carpet, tan or off-white, indescribably soft; downy, almost. Carefully, she settled herself down onto the feathery whiteness, angling her body directly in front of one of the trio of bookcases. Fingers traced the spines with a gentle caress hovering momentarily on a specific volume for a moment's time every few seconds. Memories flooded back to her all at once, days spent with Anna Karenina and Madam Bovary. How long had it been since she'd picked up one of her favorite books, even just to re-read a particular passage or two? Months, maybe even close to a year. The very thought brought a sharp sting of tears to her eyes.
What had been her purpose this last year and a half? She hadn't even spent her time off from Yale doing anything that she liked, let alone loved. No books, no movies, no junk food or retro albums. Just Logan; and before that, Dean, the traumatic spectacle that it was. 'No strings' and stealing boats. Community service and the DAR. What had been her rationale behind it all?
The moon was chased away by a cloud then, the contemptuous bastard. Her initial appreciation gave way to irrational apprehension, though, as her world plummeted into total darkness. A streak of panic rose up in her chest, her childhood fear of the dark revisiting her in a momentary wave.
But the cloud sailed on and the angry glare of the moon returned, submerging the small room into a sea of blue. And there he was. Standing in the hallway, leaning against the door jam with a sleepy smile on his face.
"You're naked," she giggled.
"Do you have a problem with that?" Jess questioned, skeptically, feeling just smug enough to know the answer. He pushed himself up off the wall and moved around the coffee table, her eyes following every subtle movement of his exposed body.
"No. It's just that…you just walk around naked?"
"It is my apartment. I have the right to be naked whenever I want to."
She stumbled, still caught off-guard by his passive reaction. She wasn't used to naked people. Not ones who just walk around their house uncaring.
"I've never just…walked around naked before," she stated, suddenly at a loss for words. "I've never really even thought about it."
As she spoke, he sat down behind her, pulling her back between his outstretched legs and covering them with a brown knit blanket from the couch, creating an intimate cocoon of warmth. "It's liberating," he whispered, dangerously close to her ear. So close that she could feel his lips curve up into a smirk, obvious to her discomfort. So close that she could feel his eyelashes fall across the curve of her neck as he blinked.
"You have Dracula next to Elementary Pali," she told him, gesturing towards the bookshelf before her. "The Boy Allies at the Somme is tucked in between The Scarab Murder Case and The Idiot. Fear and Trembling is on top of Shot Through the Heart."
With a kiss to her left temple, her replied with a perplexed-sounding "So?"
"So you don't have a system."
"I don't need a system."
"You do too need a system," she argued lamely, though matter-of-factly. The retort almost sounded like a full-fledged argument, she was so indignant about it.
"I like my system," Jess decided thoughtfully.
"But you just said it's not a system."
"Exactly."
"You're confusing."
"Am I?"
She could feel her eyelids growing heavier, the rhythmic pressure of his rising chest against her back lulling her into a much-needed sleep. She fought it off though, wanting to keep the conversation going, wanting to spend just a few more coveted moments with him, cursing the days for being too short. Triumphantly, she lifted up a book to their shared eye level, the contemptuous moon just bright enough to see the cover.
"Have you read this one?"
"I hated it," he groaned, rolling his head back as if the experience of reading it put him in actual, physical pain.
She turned over his copy of A Million Little Pieces in her hands to read the back cover, not quite ready to trust an Ayn Rand disbeliever on literature. "I've heard of it, but I haven't read it."
"I would've thought you'd get it right away," he reflected. And really, she would have. Had things not been so screwed up, she would have been out to purchase it right away, just to see what all the hype was about; just to be able to discuss its merits (or lack thereof) with a classmate. But there were no classmates because she wasn't in school and there were no books because she had English teas to prepare for instead.
"It's better that you didn't read it," he continued, anxious by her silence. He could tell that she was thinking by the way her shoulders tensed; thinking too hard and too critically. She eased at the sound of his voice, though, and he saw her eyes brighten out of the corner of his.
"Did you see him on Oprah?" she grinned. "I saw him on Oprah."
He countered her smile with an eye roll and a nudge of the shoulder. "Right, 'cause I'm known for my love of Oprah."
Laughing softly, she put the book back on the shelf she got it from before wondering why she bothered to do so. His 'system' would allow it to be placed anywhere while being in its place. She wished she could be that versatile.
"What are you doing out here, anyway?" he asked after a few moments, her head lulling back into the cushion of his chest.
"I couldn't sleep and the moon was mocking me and the books are overflowing" was her slurred reply. Her speech became such as she grew tired, he had noticed, as did her sentences become nonsensical. He liked that he knew that about her.
He had missed knowing such things about her.
"I don't want to go tomorrow," she yawned after a few moments, barely above a whisper.
He noticed how she left out the word 'home.'
"Then don't."
She shook her head softly, her hair sweeping back and forth against his bare chest. "You make it sound so easy."
"It is." He kissed her cheek and wrapped his arms around her body, linking them in the front, pulling her even closer still. "Stay. I want you to stay."
"And why is that?" she countered, her voice heavy with sleep.
"I'm afraid that you won't come back," he confided, leaving an affectionate kiss on the curve of her neck.
"I thought that about you once," she responded, turning in his arms to face him. Jess kissed her nose, then her mouth, gently coaxing her into his arms.
The whispered word "Stay" fell against her lips, spoken so delicately that her only reply could be to nod in agreement. Stay stay stay he repeated in between kisses, over and over, needing to hear her say that she would.
Only say no if you really don't want to be with me.
She said yes.
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notes: Originally, this was twice as long, and I am sorry for the length of this chapter. I was having such a hard time incorporating everything that I had written; I just finally had to break it up in order to get something out to you guys. I sincerely apologize for the wait – I had no intention of letting this fic fall into limbo, but it seems I failed miserably. However, since I cut so much from the original version of this installment, the next chapter should write itself. I do promise that I'm picking this one back up again, and that updates should be more frequent. Thank you so much for reading, even after all this time. :) I'd love a review, if you could find it in your hearts to share with me. ;)