Story Title: Razor

Chapter Title: Patience, My Dear

Pairing: Lit

Rating: T (for now); some language

Summary: Future Lit; Rory's trying to get a foot in the door in the journalism world and she's dragging Jess along with her against his will. If past performance is the indicator, he wants to avoid any contact with her; professional or otherwise. Story and Chapter titles taken from the Foo Fighter's song, Razor off In Your Honor.

Jess had left New York as soon as he could manage. It'd taken telling a few white lies to his agent about the non-existent interview that he'd had with a certain brunette reporter. He couldn't exactly tell him the truth; who would believe that said reporter, a.k.a. his ex-girlfriend, would have gone drinking with him, followed him to his apartment, and that nothing happened? Jess believed it, but then he'd experienced a lot of moments with Rory that were tense, uncomfortable, and left them both on the verge of doing or saying too much. They were the definition of an anti-climax.

He relished in being back to his regular life. The morning he woke up in his own bed, he wasted some time ignoring a few phone messages, reading the entire newspaper from cover to cover, and drinking milk right from the carton. This last action drew protests from Charlie, the neatest of his roommates, which only meant that he poured his drinks into glasses, but he didn't care if the dirty glasses sat in the sink for a month.

Jess turned to face him, still holding the jug in his hand, a slight ring of white on his upper lip. "What?"

"I said that's disgusting. We don't need your germs."

Jess pointed to the mountain of dishes that heaped over the sink. "I'm not the one that has to resort to the 2am crowd at Tranny Manny's for some action. Are you waiting for the dishes to grow something akin to arms so that they'll wash themselves?"

"We're swamped downstairs. We haven't had time for housework. We got five more titles coming out next March, do you have any idea what that means?"

Jess shrugged. "Means we'll have enough extra income to hire an office assistant, or maybe a maid would be more worth our while."

"Can we get a French maid?" Jack came in from down the hall, yawning.

"You're just getting up?" Jess took another swig of his liquid breakfast.

"Just going to bed. Some of us have been working, not taking extended vacations paid for by fancy agents."

Jess rolled his eyes. "Geez. You know, you're getting a bigger royalty check than I am out of this book deal of mine."

"Does that mean we'll have enough for an office assistant and a French maid?" Charlie asked.

"So, what was the hold up in New York? Meet a girl?" Jack sat down on the couch that most often doubled as a transitory camp for anyone too tired to make it to their own bed.

Jess sucked in air through his teeth, rolled his eyes, and grabbed an apple. "I'll be downstairs. If my agent calls, tell him I'm busy."

Jack and Charlie shared a look, but neither got another word out before Jess headed to the stairs, taking them two at a time to bury himself in work that didn't involve being inside his own head or answering questions about his personal life. Recently all that had revolved around Rory, and he wasn't keen on allowing it to mess with his head. Until she'd written the now infamous article, he believed that by writing his book he finally put her behind him. He was done. He refused to be pulled into her melodrama of a relationship or used to advance her career. That hadn't been what their relationship was about, and he had come to grips with what they'd been. He saw no reason to tear apart those memories or try to make it more than it was.

Hours passed while Jess put his focus into the press' most pertinent project at the moment, qualified in their small firm as the one closest to a promised deadline. He didn't notice the need to stop working until his stomach growled, at which time he jogged upstairs to make himself a sandwich. He had a half-eaten ham and Swiss on rye in one hand and used the other to carry a soda and a banana, heading right back to his workstation when he heard one of his co-workers call out for his attention.

"Jess, visitor," was all he said, but it was enough to halt him in place. Looking at her across the room was surreal. This was the one place that she didn't belong in his life; the present. He had found that out in New York. This was his real life, not one in which he dreamed or wrote of, and it took him longer than it should have to reconcile the two.

She didn't wait for him to respond before she made her way to where he stood, still holding the remnants of his lunch. He looked down at his arms and held the fruit toward her in offering.

"Banana?"

"Um, no, thanks," she frowned. "Is this a bad time?"

She was dressed in a business suit, similar to what she'd worn for their first unsuccessful interview. Smart, but not stuffy. She had the same look in her eyes as she had that first day as well—survival.

"As a matter of fact, it is."

She arched a brow. "Funny, because according to your agent, you were free."

He let out a sigh. "No one cleared--," he began.

"Maybe you should learn to check your messages. You'll find at least one from him, and two from me. One, asking if it was alright, and another confirming the appointment after I spoke with your representation."

It was all so… clinical. She was sticking to her credentials like a life raft in a hurricane. He could make it much stormier, which she knew too well. She also knew that this would be a surprise attack and figured she would have the upper hand. He let his gaze go lax and gave her a non-committal shrug.

"You can understand why I didn't think it was necessary, after what happened in New York," he tossed off easily, sitting down on his chair and freeing his hands of everything but his sandwich. He took a bigger bite than normal and waited for her to regain her composure.

"Look," she clicked her manicured nails against her oversized handbag. "I came all this way, I'm fully prepared, so the interview shouldn't take all that long, but if you're really so busy, name the time and I'll come back."

"What happened to the phone interview? Wouldn't it be easier; for you I mean?"

He was doing his best to undermine her, if only to mask how much it unnerved him to see her here, where he lived and worked, looking like she owned the place. He could tell that she'd made up with the boyfriend. The rich, arrogant boyfriend that hated him on principle, which was the only thing they shared. He wondered if the blonde prick from Yale knew that it had been Jess' pep talk had driven her all the way into his clutches; if he was smart enough to figure out that what had made her need a bolstering of self confidence was the time she'd spent in his hotel room, spending time trying to recapture the past.

"Should we do it here or would upstairs be better?" she took her bag off her shoulder and pulled a chair up to the other side of his desk. She pulled out a small tape recorder, a legal pad, and a pen before looking up at him expectantly.

He took a swig of his soda and decided that if she was going to continue to play the part of the detached reporter, he would be a willing interviewee. If she could kill him with her polite demeanor, something she used as a shield to keep him at bay, then he could inflict details on her. He'd done it before after all, and while he wouldn't say it was easy, it wasn't exactly going against his nature, either.

"Okay, Reporter Lady, do your worst," he took another bite of his sandwich. "Do you want something to drink?" he offered, through his mouthful.

"No thanks, I'm fine," she flickered her gaze to him momentarily before returning to her overly organized notes. "So, Jess, it's very clear that you had a great inspiration for your novel."

"It takes a level of motivation to write a novel, yes," he nodded, seeing his heroine in his head; her hair loose and flowing across her shoulders, preferring that vision of her much more than the restrained version of her that sat across the desk at the moment.

"Your heroine, Carissa, she's a very unique creation. You've managed to make her this dichotomy of strength and fragility. She wasn't afraid of anything, but she had no idea the limitlessness of her capabilities at the same time."

He couldn't help but be pleased that the way he saw her came across so clearly in print. By that very definition, he knew she couldn't see herself in the pages. "That's a very apt description."

She scribbled something on her notebook. "Most authors take one of two tactics when they create such a vivid character. Either they use themselves as a base, changing some major factor of their personality—such as their gender—or they are telling a fictionalized account of a real person, changing only enough to make it a stunning similarity. Making a socialite a pauper, or giving someone of average appearance some great, striking physical characteristic. Which was the case with Carissa?"

He smiled. "I honestly didn't change that much. In fact, she could probably sue me for libel."

She nodded and scribbled some more. "This woman didn't mind you sharing such intimate details about her like that?"

He wasn't going to tell her that some of the most revealing facts were ones that he had imagined, spurred on in his imagination from real life moments. She'd shifted in her seat when he admitted that the woman from his imagination had been real. She'd been hoping against that truth, but still she persisted.

"She hasn't hired a lawyer or anything to my knowledge," he smirked.

"Was it hard not to turn it into a run-of-the-mill love story?" she hammered on.

"It was never about happily ever after, if that's what you mean."

"It's a common trap, actually. Even if that wasn't the original intent of the author, to tie it up with a happy ending is tempting, not only for them to change what they couldn't change in real life, but to make their readers happy."

"Ah, but you're implying that the story ends where the book does. Just because they didn't end up together doesn't mean their story is any less than it is."

She uncrossed her legs and tucked her right ankle behind the left. She looked like she wished she had something else to distract her, so she didn't have to look him in the eyes.

"Just because two people aren't physically together anymore, that doesn't mean that what they had, what they experienced together, is over. Once you go through certain things with someone," he paused, noting that she wasn't just listening to his response, but rather trying to feel it. He took a pause after he broke off, as if he was searching for the right word instead of extending her agony. "They become a part of one another."

He saw the way she swallowed his words. If he wanted to make her sorry for showing up as this other man's version of herself, it was well in his grasp. The longer it took her to get another question out, the more affected she was—her reaction time to pull herself together after his words washed over her, or perhaps sunk in a little too deeply, would only lengthen.

"The setting is ambiguous," she seemed to force her lips to form the words. "Well defined within their world, but clearly fictitious in its origins. Despite the fact that there was a big city around them, the neighborhood it was set it made it feel as safe and familiar as a small town. Was there a reason for that?"

"It was the nature of the people. It's a microcosm of any large city; in fact, I've lived in small towns and major metropolitan areas, but no matter where you are, there are local characters, people who almost never leave the confines of certain dividing lines. You can experience small town life anywhere there is a real sense of community."

She nodded and took more notes. "Hence the title of your book?"

Jess shrugged. "I didn't even pick that title."

She tipped her head to one side. "Who did?"

He pointed across the room, where two of his co-workers were arguing over the font and page layout for a book of local photography. "And they say you're only as strong as your weakest link," he muttered.

"How did they happen upon your book?"

"I imagine they finally opened their mail. I'd actually forgotten I'd sent it here. I sent about fifteen queries out. I got fourteen rejections from the big houses, you know the ones that have unpaid interns read two paragraphs before they tell you to keep your minimum wage job."

She could handle that answer. "Or in your case, three minimum wage jobs."

She was attempting to breed familiarity. His skin prickled at the sound of her voice. It was time to remind her that walking into his life didn't make up for time spent apart. He wasn't the same guy she'd known once upon a time. "Anyhow, now that I work here, I realize that it was just four guys, piled under mountains of manuscripts. I think the reason they hired me was that I read about five times faster than any of the rest of them do."

"So, is this your happily ever after? What can the public expect from you next?"

"My agent keeps bugging me to write more. That's the thing about writing a well-received novel, even if it takes a while to become that way. Someone is going to try to capitalize on the fact that if you did it once and statistically you could do it again. Which is why I have a newfound respect for Harper Lee."

"So, no stops by Oprah's couch to jump on and off the bestseller lists for the next year or so?"

She definitely knew better than that. She was teasing him. "Let's just say if I find myself as inspired as I was before, I'll write. If not, I have a life here."

She wanted to encourage his writing, to tell him how much she believed in him. He could see it in her eyes. She'd done it so often in the past, when he was realistic instead of idealistic. All she needed to do was look down at her clothes to remind herself that she was no longer the girl that played the part of his cheerleader.

"So, is that all? Because I really do have a lot of work to do, no matter what my agent promised."

"No, that's about it. Just one other thing, really."

He looked up. "What's that?"

"Well, it's just, when I talked to your agent, I asked him a few questions, merely background information, things I didn't want to have to bother you with," she rambled quickly.

"And?"

"And he bet me a hundred bucks that I couldn't get you to reveal the name of the real Carissa."

"Sounds like a sucker's bet."

Her eyes lit up. "So you'll tell me?"

"I didn't say he was the sucker," he finished off his sandwich, brushing the crumbs off his lap. "I didn't pick his name out of a hat."

"I'm not going to print it—I don't actually want you to get sued," she smiled, doing her best to charm him. She didn't need to sugarcoat anything to attract his favor. It was just her assumption that his memories and base reactions to her had faded with time. It took muscle control to sit inches from her, pretending not to care at all.

"Then you don't need it anyhow."

"Jess," she sighed. He didn't have to look at her to know that her eyes had widened and her lips were pouted together. Not overtly, just enough to have an effect on him if he were to look at her. Was it better to turn to stone or melt into a puddle on the floor?

"She deserves her privacy; something I haven't given away already."

"If you wanted to protect her from the world, you wouldn't have written such an eloquent, sure to be reprinted billions of times book about her."

"I never imagined," he took a breath, trying to select words so she'd understand. "I wrote this for me. So when I'm 85 and can't remember it on my own, I can read it and remember that there was a time in my life where I was free."

She looked down at her notebook, but her pen didn't move. "You really loved her."

He didn't blink. "I thought that was fairly well outlined in the book."

"One more question?"

He sighed. "Why not?"

"Your book ends with him leaving. In your mind, why did she let him go?"

"Because she wasn't as selfish as he was."

She made another note in her notebook, turned off her recorder and stood up. He stood as well, and they stood there unsure as to what was a proper parting. Shaking hands seemed too pedestrian, but putting their bodies in closer contact wasn't a good idea either. She broke the ice.

"She probably still loves you, you know. You don't have a tendency to romanticize things, and even through your eyes it was clear she wanted to be with you."

He shrugged, hoping that the desire to see if she still loved him wasn't showing in his eyes. It would be so easy to grab her and kiss her and find out. Even if she could manage to keep her eyes guarded, her kiss always gave her away. "I'm not the only one that's moved on. She's happy. And as soon as this media storm is over, I will be too."

Her back stiffened. "Well. The article should be done soon. It's set to run next Friday."

He nodded. "Try not to stir up too much interest, will ya?"

She cracked a soft smile. Almost the smile that he remembered. He could almost see her in jeans and her bulky blue jacket, walking around in their snow globe of a town and snuggling under his arm for warmth. "I should get going."

He nodded. She didn't need him to tell her that she didn't belong here. She belonged in New York, in the penthouse apartment that her boyfriend owned, taking meetings and tracking stories. Her life was in the big time, not in the small little world he'd made for himself. He never planned on making room for her.

He walked her out the door and to her car. She was still a small town girl, after all, and he couldn't imagine she ever risked much safety climbing in and out of hired cars. She packed her bags into the back of her car and shut the door.

Once again, they just stood there, appraising one another. He raked his bottom lip with his teeth and rolled his eyes. "What?"

"I'm sorry about last time," she said genuinely.

"Don't worry about it."

She shook her head. "I'm still sorry."

"Okay."

"Do you think," she bit her lip hesitantly.

He cocked his head, not sure where she was going with this. "What do you want, Rory?"

"Do you think we could ever be friends?"

He'd never intended to be her friend. He had made a decision, long ago, that if he couldn't be there for her in all the ways he wanted to be, it was best to remove himself from her life entirely. Not to make things easier on her, but because he was selfish and hated the pain involved in watching idly by.

"Friends?"

She nodded. "You know, sending Christmas cards, keeping the other up to date when we do something major, like write a book. Have an occasional dinner."

"I don't send Christmas cards."

"I do."

He let out a sigh. "It could take some time."

"I've got time."

It wasn't that he didn't believe this was what she wanted. He just wasn't sure he could deal with all it entailed, being her friend. The shoulder that she cried on when things went bad and not getting to celebrate with her as much as the boyfriend did when things were going great. It was easier not to know any of it. She broke his thoughts again.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"About the book. Me, of all people," she shook her head sadly. Did she know? He was fairly certain she believed Carissa to be some woman that came after her; a woman she would never run into face to face on the street, let alone see when she looked into the mirror. "That's what we shared, Jess."

The hurt in her eyes was enough to make him want to give a full confession. "Rory," he began warily.

"I always knew you had that in you, and you had to know I'd stumble upon it some time. I just thought you would have told me yourself that you got a book published."

His sweat turned cold with relief, and he smiled. "I guess we could work on the friend thing."

Her smile brightened. "That's all I'm asking for."

"I'm not promising much."

"Understood."

"Okay, then."

"So," she looked back to her car.

"I have a lot of work to do."

"Me too. But, I'll call you. Or you can call me the next time you have to be in New York. We could have lunch or something."

"Sure," he said, not really believing it would happen. He didn't believe either of them was ready for this step. He wasn't sure they would ever be ready. But as much as he wanted to keep her away, he wanted to let her think that he wanted the same things she did. He wanted her to be happy, when it came down to it. No one was ever happy while living in the past.

"Great," she touched his elbow lightly and walked around to get into her car. "Bye, Jess."

"Bye, Rory," he said, knowing full well the traps that came along with not telling her goodbye.

He watched her drive away, feeling how his nerves had been frayed from trying to keep his emotions in check during her visit. He went back upstairs, intent on burying himself in working on someone else's book to submerge his heroine back into his subconscious.