Wires and Waves
Summary: 4x21. Rory has enough money for a cab and so doesn't call Dean for a ride home. Jess shows up too early and, while waiting outside her dorm, has a chance to re-think his proposal. Season 5 re-write: What if Rory stayed in touch with Jess throughout his transformation into the guy we see in Season 6?
A/N: As usual, thanks so much for all your support, it really makes me want to write more, and is a big factor in the furious pace with which I'm getting through this! Sorry, bit of a short one today – I still have my master plan from when I plotted this out years ago, and some parts just have more plot allotted than others. But, if things keep going as they are, there will be more very soon!
A quick apology to continuity-pedants: the timing here is not always going to be completely true to the show, for the sake of the plot. Sorry! I'll always mention the episode to give a vague idea of where we are in the series, even though the plots won't always track, and I'll be skipping over or combining a few.
Episodes: Women of Questionable Morals
Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, this would be a lot better written.
It'd been two weeks and three days since she'd hung up on Jess that morning, and so far they'd both stayed true to their word. Rory, ever the excellent organiser, had tried her best to file away their brief foray back into friendship into the mental file entitled 'Jess-related mistakes' (and, oh, what a file…), but every now and then bits of their argument would just pop into her head. And then – bam – she was angry all over again, and this wasn't just anger at the things he'd said, no, this was the particularly persistent anger of the person who knows they are somewhat in the wrong and would rather double down on the things they do have to be angry about than cede that argumentative ground. As a result, she'd been in something of a bad mood on and off for the past couple of weeks, actually snapping back at Paris instead of responding to her with her usual ironic indulgence, being sulky at Friday night dinners, and not being able to match her mother quip for quip.
This was particularly evident the day after she'd found out about the death of Straub Hayden and gone to comfort her father. Now, not only was she carrying the barely-acknowledged guilt of how she'd handled the Jess situation, but she also got to feel like human garbage for how poorly she'd treated her Dad when he'd shown up Yale right before Straub died. This was also compounded by the fact that Lorelai, whose cheerful demeanour was usually enough to bring her out of her two week funk, wasn't exactly sunshine and roses herself, what with the hangover she was carrying after her own comfort session with Christopher.
And while the sight of Kirk being a harlot of questionable nomenclature (or whatever official title the powers that be had landed upon) was enough to lift her mother's mood, Rory could barely muster a smile throughout the whole spectacle.
This appeared to be the last straw for Lorelai, who, on the way home, fixed her daughter with an accusing look and asked, "Okay, what is up with you?"
Rory, who'd been looking dispiritedly at the grey slush bordering the roads and wondering how she was supposed to drive back to Yale in this, started, taken aback, "Huh?"
"You've been monosyllabic the whole time you've been here, and even before that, over the phone – it's like suddenly I'm living with Marcel Marceau – tell me what's going on."
"I'm totally fine, you're just hungover and paranoid."
"Rory, come on, Kirk just emerged in a red gown and seduced Taylor into a barn, and you stood there like you were watching The English Patient, what is with you?"
"I liked The English Patient," Rory replied, in a small, sulky voice, feeling like a petulant thirteen year old.
"Honey, the very fact that you're not launching into a long and impassioned defence of it and its merits as an adaptation tell me that something is up, will you please just talk to me?"
And Rory knew that Lorelai was going to keep pushing and pushing until she got an answer, and she also knew that her energy reserves were far too depleted to keep brushing her off, or invent some other plausible reason for her mood. Bracing herself for the avalanche she was about to unleash upon herself, she mumbled, "I had a fight with Jess."
Hovering at the edge of incredulity, Lorelai asked, "I'm sorry, you what?" And then, when Rory repeated herself more clearly: "And which Jess would that be? Chastain? Biel? Spano?"
"You know which Jess."
"No, honey, I really don't, because the only other Jess that springs to mind hasn't been a part of your life since he lobbed a confession of love at you and then fled the scene."
"That's the one," Rory replied, drily.
"So, this is either a very delayed emotional response or…"
Rory sighed, readying herself for the impact, "Or we've been talking."
"Talking," Lorelai repeated, sceptically.
"Yes, and I didn't tell you because of that face," Rory said, gesturing at her mother's expression.
"Face? I don't have a face."
"You do too, you have Jess face."
"Oh, so you mean I've started smirking and doing supercilious things with my eyebrows?"
"See? Those associations with the name Jess are the verbal representation of Jess face: dismissive with a smattering of contempt."
"I'm sorry if I think I've earned the right to a bit of contempt here – need I run through the events of the past three years?"
"My memory is fine, thank you."
"Oh really? Because I thought maybe he'd taken you on another one of your joy rides and this time instead of fracturing your wrist you hit your head and lost a good chunk of memory in addition to your sanity – that's one of the few scenarios in which it would be bordering on reasonable for you to even entertain the possibility of letting that punk back into your life."
"You do realise that was a classic Emily Gilmore speech, right?" Rory regretted that rejoinder immediately upon seeing how clearly stung Lorelai was. Dialling back a bit, she said, "Look, all I'm saying is I know your thoughts on Jess, and I know that nothing will ever change them, therefore there's no point ever really mentioning him to you because I know exactly what you're going to say."
Lorelai paused for a moment, then responded in a more measured tone, "I don't like the idea that there are big things going on in your life that you can't talk to me about."
"Neither do I," Rory agreed.
"But I do have good reasons for feeling the way I do about Jess, you can only hurt a person's daughter so much before their perspective is forever tainted."
"I know, and I get that, it just doesn't allow for the possibility that people are capable of change."
"And you're saying he's changed?"
"I don't know, maybe, a couple of times it seemed like…but it doesn't matter now, because I'm pretty sure it's all over."
"And that's a bad thing?"
"Yes, no…I don't know. It's probably for the best, I know that, the only reason I suggested that we start talking again was because I hated how things were whenever we ran into each other, but there's probably not all that much reason for that to happen now."
"And yet you're not happy."
"It was an ugly fight," she began, and gave a brief rundown of what had happened at the Gilmore household and the phone call the following morning. "And I know I acted like a bit of a jerk, okay, but I still can't bring myself to grovel over a relatively small thing, when he treated me like dirt for the better part of a year and then abandoned me," she said, drawing to the end of her speech. After a few moments of silence, she asked, "What, you have no opinion on all this?"
Lorelai replied hesitantly, "I'm trying to reach a point of objectivity here."
"Want to verbalise this journey?"
"Look, as your aforementioned wronged mother, I'm all for Jess getting whatever he deserves after everything he put you through. But, if I'm being forced to look at this all objectively…"
"Yes?" Rory prompted at her mother's hesitation.
"Just because someone treats you like dirt, it doesn't really give you the licence to treat them like dirt. You can either forgive them (and wronged-mother-Lorelai has several thoughts on that course of action, believe me), or cut them out of your life, but aiming for some sort of middle ground where you can act friendly but also treat them however you want because they wronged you in the past isn't really a viable option."
"You really think what I did was that bad?" Rory asked, hating how much she sounded like a little girl.
"I think that Jess, whatever his considerable flaws, does have genuine feelings for you, and it's cruel to flaunt a new potential boyfriend-"
"What? Logan and I aren't-"
"Another conversation for another time," Lorelai said, briefly rolling her eyes at her daughter's denial. "But even if that isn't the case, it probably seems that way to Jess."
"I just wanted to go back to being friends," Rory said, weakly.
"And maybe you can," Lorelai said, although it seemed to physically pain her to do so, "as ill-advised as that may be, but if that's ever going to happen, you're going to have to find a way to forgive him, and own up to it when you behave insensitively without getting angry about stuff from the past."
"Who are you?" Rory asked, incredulously.
"Hey, I'm still very much in favour of the cutting him out of your life option."
Rory paused, and for a moment allowed herself to think back to the rockier parts of her relationship with Jess that she usually tried her hardest to repress, and at once a new wave of hurt and anger swept through her. Quietly, she admitted, "I don't know if I can ever forgive him, Mom."
"Well, then, you have your answer."
And then, as if by magic, once she got home, she pulled her phone out of her purse and saw one new message from Jess, as if summoned into being by breaking the kibosh on discussing him with Lorelai. She immediately went to open it, but then the conversation she'd just had echoed through her mind, as well as the residue of the emotional chaos that had ensued when thinking back on all that had happened between them. Her finger hovered over the open button for a moment longer, but then images of two years ago began to flit through her mind again in quick succession, always returning to that fight in Kyle's bedroom, and before she knew it she'd deleted the text, unopened, and was heading to the living room to spend an evening gorging herself on junk food with her mother and putting the events of the last few months conclusively out of her mind.
A/N: Yeah, I'm pretty sure you know what I have to say down here by now…