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 always, thanks so much for reviewing! It really motivates me to write, knowing there are people out there waiting for the next chapter. Sorry again, this is another relatively short one, but it's also quite plotty, so enjoy…

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: Wedding Bell Blues

Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, this would be a lot better written.

At some point, Rory stopped counting the days since she'd last spoken to Jess, and life began to take its usual shape again. And she genuinely believed this was for the best for both of them: he would no longer have to deal with being in the purgatory of the friendly but unforgiven, and she would no longer have to wrestle with feelings of resentment mixed with a craving for connection. And, truth be told, with her return to Yale came certain distractions that helped put their whole failed friendship experiment out of her mind. Namely Logan. The wish to escape the complicated knot of her feelings towards Jess might well have been the final push it took to look past the qualities in Logan that she had initially found so repellent and begin to pursue him for the very uncomplicated sense of excitement and adventure that he brought out in her.

By the time her Grandparents' vow renewal rolled around, this pursuit had taken its most active form yet, and in fact resulted in her leading the young heir to the Huntzberger throne into one of the more secluded rooms. As she crossed the dancefloor, their fingers interlaced, looking for somewhere more private, the thought crossed her mind that it had never occurred to her that she would end up losing her virginity tucked away in some back room, with the sound of Emily and Richard's vow renewal setlist singing out softly in the background. And let's be real, she was heading somewhere private with Yale's chief womaniser, with whom she'd just expressed a wish to have 'some fun': that was what was likely to happen. But right then she found she didn't really care; for all that she'd built this moment up in her head, wondering if it might happen with Dean, and then being so sure it was going to happen with Jess, it was beginning to feel like more of a burden than anything. And the fact that it had almost happened with both aforementioned guys in less than desirable circumstances had rather taken away from any grand romantic notions she'd had about her "virtue". In a way, this was kind of ideal: losing it in the most casual, uncomplicated way possible, and to a guy who definitely knew what he was doing, but to whom there were no messy mixed feelings attached.

That being said, as they found their deserted room, she couldn't help feeling a bit nervous; in addition to the standard nerves that come with such an experience, she'd also resolved at the beginning of this that she wasn't going to tell him that this was her first time, lest he use it as another reason why she couldn't possibly want something casual from him. And while the omission in itself didn't make her that uncomfortable, she was slightly worried about the level of experience that might be expected from her, not to mention the potential pain involved…

And so, as they shut the door behind them, passing a bottle of champagne between them, she was already feeling more than a little bit jittery, but in an effort to convince both him and herself of her grasp of the situation, when he questioned whether she was sure she wanted to do this, she adopted a confident tone of voice and replied, only somewhat haltingly, "I just want to know what it would be like," and kissed him.

And then a lot of things happened at once. The feeling she was able to distinguish most clearly was that of an anti-climax. All the build-up and the flirtation and now it was finally happening and she felt nothing. And that was the least alarming of the things going on in her head. Because almost as soon as their lips made contact, a series of memories had jolted through her like an electric current, ones that she had been suppressing for months, because even more so than the bad memories it was truly intolerable to dwell on the good ones, the ones that made her yearn to feel that alive again and to which her current situation paled in comparison. Because yes, as much as she hated to admit it, these were memories of Jess. And while, throughout the course of their re-kindled friendship, she had pretty successfully pushed back all thoughts of the romantic side of their former relationship, buried as it was under all the hurt and torment that it had led to, for some reason this was the catalyst to bring it all crashing back.

She pulled away, trying to regroup. Logan made some comment about how it felt like he was kissing a guy, and she hoped she managed to pass off her troubled expression as a reaction to that rather than the maelstrom of things raging in her psyche before pulling him back in for another kiss, hoping for different results.

But no, if anything, the longer she allowed it to go on, the more intense everything got. And suddenly, amid the tide of good memories, Kyle's bedroom reared its ugly head again, and she found to her horror that, as Logan began trying to lower her down onto the couch, in her mind she was on Kyle's bed again, struggling out from under Jess. To her complete mortification, she felt tears starting to prick away at the corner of her eyes, and she jerked back abruptly, turning away slightly to try to hide her shock and embarrassment.

"Hey, what's wrong?" She heard Logan ask, still angled slightly away from him. And then, with growing concern, "Ace, are you okay?"

Not daring to look at him, she replied, "I- I'm fine, I just- I have to go."

"You do?" he asked, confusion and undeniable disappointment in his voice.

"I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry, but I can't stay here, I need to go," she repeated, and before she knew what she was doing she was darting to the door, sparing one look at the bemused blond on the sofa before hurrying out, not even stopping as she saw her mother approaching, saying something about pictures.

She kept going, breaking into a run now, until she was outside, and the cold air brought her back to herself somewhat. She got into her car and leaned her head against the steering wheel, crying in earnest now as the good and bad memories continued to coarse through her, irreversibly entwined. She took a breath, wiped her eyes, and pulled out her phone.

It was only by pure chance that she knew where to go. On one of their weekly calls, Jess had mentioned offhand that he'd finally managed to shed his roommates and get his own place after finding a slightly better paid job than the messenger gig. He'd joked about how one of the most rundown apartment buildings in Brooklyn could share a name with the luxurious de Winter manor from Rebecca: Manderley Towers. And the name had stuck in Rory's mind (Rebecca was her favourite Du Maurier, after all). And so, as she'd sat there, crying in her car, with a slightly shaky hand she'd typed 'Manderley Towers Brooklyn' into Google, and the address had popped up right away.

Her hands were still shaking as she stood outside the building a few hours later, her finger hovering over the buzzer labelled with his name. And yet even after coming all this way, she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. But then there was a gust of wind and the door shuddered, and she realised the locking mechanism didn't even work (again, not really living up to your namesake there, building), and it seemed almost like fate. She gave it a tentative push, confirming her suspicions, and slipped into the dark building, carried up the stairs by the same trance that had brought her there. At last, she found herself outside the right apartment, and carried on by the same feeling of inevitability that the open door had brought about in her, she gave it a sharp knock.

After a few minutes of silence (it was by now the middle of the night, after all), she knocked again, more insistently, and this time with a start she realised that she could hear the muffled sounds of movement from beyond the door.

A moment later and there he was, his initial expression of sleepy anger dissolving into pure confusion as he recognised his late-night visitor.

He started to ask, "Rory, what are you-", but was immediately cut off her stepping forward, grabbing the collar of the band t-shirt he'd been sleeping in, and bringing her lips to his.

That night, Rory Gilmore lost her virginity in a studio apartment in downtown Brooklyn.

The following morning, she silently gathered her things together and left.

A/N: Long term game plan, yadda, yadda, yadda…

Also, if that ending seemed anti-climactically rushed, don't worry, the next update's going to fill in a few details there (but not too many, this is just a T, after all).