My Brother

Disclaimer: See first chapter.

Setting: See first chapter.

Note: I don't know how many times I'll have to say this, but here it is again: Please review! Your reviews, though you may not believe it, determine what I think of my story: If there are many reviews, I can safely think that people like it. So, the question is…: Do you like it? And the way to answer is to review!

He was lying in his bed, rolled up tightly in a protective ball, reflecting. Had he done the right thing in kissing her? Or had he made a dreadful mistake? His assurance of the day before had vanished, and his dreams had been haunted by Rory's 'I hate you!'s. He didn't want to get up. He didn't feel like going to school. What if Rory really did hate him?

"Tristan?" a gentle voice called. He didn't move, even though he knew it to be Robert's. "Look, I know you're in here, little brother. And I didn't come in to torture you, or to make you go to school or anything. I just thought that maybe having a second person to discuss your thoughts with and give you an opinion on them might be helpful. Will you accept me as that person?"

Tristan slowly slid out of his rolled-up position and sat up straight, facing Robert, who was standing in the doorway. "Yes," he told his brother softly, watching as Robert walked over to the bed and sat down next to him.

"So, Tristan, are you worried about Rory? Are you thinking about the kiss you shared? Regretting it perhaps?" Robert asked him, placing a hand on his little brother's knee, displaying an act of affection that had never been introduced by Tristan's father, or anyone else. Startled, the younger boy jerked his leg away and then put it back, feeling ashamed. But Robert didn't seem as though he'd been slighted; he looked understanding. "Ah. So our dearest Papa never did that to you either," he commented dryly.

Changing the subject after nodding, Tristan put in, "Yes, I am worried about Rory, and the kiss, as well as its impact." He paused here, looked Robert in the eyes, and knew he could trust him utterly. "When I did it, I thought it was perfect, and I thought it was the right thing. And I didn't force her; I let go of her wrists, letting her go if she wanted to. But now I think that maybe I was forcing her, and maybe she'll feel extremely awkward around me now. Plus…she has a boyfriend named Dean, who works as a Bag Boy in Stars Hollow. And I'm afraid that maybe my kissing her – a second time, too – will ruin her relationship and she'll hate me."

Robert seemed to be thinking everything over for a while during a companionable pause and then observed, "Well…I think that maybe the best thing to do would be to…devote your full attention to the project you've been assigned to work on with Rory."

Tristan looked at him expectantly, searching for an explanation in his brother's face. "See, Rory is probably feeling awkward about the kiss and perhaps she wants to avoid you because of it." Tristan's face fell considerably, as did his mood. "But if you approach her and ask, or say, something about the project, then she might feel a bit more at ease. And if, tomorrow, when you go to work at her house, you work hard, shoot for an A, she'll be grateful, surprised, and will feel less awkward. Because another thing Miss Gilmore is feeling right now is probably worry that because she has been paired with you, she'll fail the project. Prove her wrong, Tris; I know you can."

Tristan absorbed this information and looked forward to following it. And for the first time in his life he felt as though he was close to someone, and that someone was his brother. My best friend. My confidante. My brother.

(…)

The receding murmurs of the kids filing out of the school joined the hubbub and the general chaos of the end of the day as everyone sprinted for the main doors and pushed their way outside. Rory wisely waited by her locker and didn't let herself get carried away by the crowds, waiting for most people, or at least the biggest groups, to leave the building before she herself left. She had always hated mixing herself in with huge crowds like the one pushing its way through the doors, and most definitely wasn't ready to risk some unnecessary bruises here and there, or worse, just to get out of the door first.

She clutched her backpack to her chest with one hand and held onto her open locker door with the other, and resisted the pull of the group surging around her. For a moment Rory closed her eyes tightly and imagined that she was in the middle of an ant hill, just a single insect among thousands, insignificant, overlooked…

The moment of peace was broken as a familiar voice called to her. The phrase, perhaps the key phrase, it could be called, that was used many times to make her jump, was repeated once again…"Hey, Mary."

Rory slowly turned around to face a single boy, his hands in his pockets, the only person left in the once-crowded corridor aside from her. No, this was no Tucker pretending to be Tristan; this was the real deal. "Tristan." She said it simply, not knowing what else to say to this certainly unexpected figure appearing out of the blue after a day of absence.

He grinned at her, but this time even her mind couldn't warp it into 'a cocky smirk'. It was a smile, plain and simple. Tristan DuGrey was smiling at her. And then she remembered the kiss and had to resist the urge to run, holding on tightly to her locker door as though it were a life-line, her knees threatening to collapse underneath her. Tristan must have seen her turn red.

"I mean Rory," he said very softly, in a way which she would have interpreted as seducing if he had moved closer, which he didn't. Her second reaction was surprise; Tristan was correcting himself! And about her name, too, something he usually substituted with an annoying 'Mary' to purposefully bother her.

"Listen, I just wanted to clarify; your house, tomorrow, researching. Right?" he asked her, pulling his hands out of his pockets and hesitating, as though trying to think of a place to put them aside from his pockets. Rory was surprised once more; Tristan hadn't come over to tease her, to flirt with her, or even to embarrass her. No, he'd come to clarify on the subject of schoolwork.

"Uh, yeah. Tomorrow, my house, at around…Is twelve-o'clock OK with you?" She let go of her locker door and clutched her orange backpack tighter, feeling her cheeks pale from red to their normal color as she realized that Tristan was here, honestly, for nothing else than simple schoolwork verification.

"Yeah, that's cool with me," he told her in a sort of offhand manner. Rory smiled before she could stop herself and almost giggled aloud: Tristan may be acting honest and proper, but above all else he must preserve his 'coolness'.

He seemed glad that she was smiling and no longer looked so awkward. "Oh, before you go," Rory called to his retreating back. "Why weren't you at school today?" She peered at him curiously as he turned back around to face her and shrugged his shoulders, hands in his pockets once more.

"I…uh…had some work to do," he told her. He looked at her for a few moments longer, and then broke the gaze and turned to leave once again. Rory was feeling doubtful as to how true that statement was, though she felt as though a tiny seed of trust was growing inside her, nurtured by the light and water of Tristan's new attitude towards her.

(…)

"So…How did it go?" Robert asked, trying to suppress his eagerness as they drove back to the mansion, Tristan sitting beside his brother and fidgeting in his car-seat as though there were ants in his jeans. Robert looked away from the road momentarily to take a peek at his brother's face.

"Well…I think it went well. She looked really out-of-place at first, but then it seemed as though she cooled down and…accepted me. Is that good?" Tristan peered at his brother uncertainly, his legs moving from side to side unconsciously as a gesture of anxiousness.

Robert smiled at how much this girl seemed to mean to his brother. Had Lorelai ever meant that much to him? He couldn't remember, but he didn't think so. His infatuation with Lorelai had been…infatuation. Tristan's attachment to this girl, this Rory, seemed like love. "Yes, that's good," he told his brother quietly, noting the pleased smile that spread across Tristan's face.

The simple phrase, "Yes, that's good," pertained to so many things in Robert's life. Helga, his family, his position in life now, his brother, his feelings, his respect for himself. And he hoped, sincerely, that someday it would relate to more things in Tristan's life than it did now. And he found that he cared, more than he would have thought, about Tristan, his brother. He cared that his brother got the life, the end result, he wanted, though it might come to him in an unexpected way. He cared about Tristan. It should be a natural thing; brother caring for brother. Unfortunately it wasn't, or hadn't been, in their case, as they had never seen each other before until recently. But now, after a few days, things seemed to be going well. Robert had a wife, a child, a family, happiness…and now he had a brother as well. My brother, he thought, noting how much pride was put into those two words. My brother.