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: Thanks again for all the kind words! I know a few of us differ on how to apportion blame for the events of season three (I'm mostly of the opinion that, while Rory wasn't a great girlfriend and was often unfair and passive aggressive, it's hard to overlook the Kyle's bedroom thing, the lying, and the leaving without a word, as much as I adore Jess and think that he ends up achieving far more growth and redemption than Rory herself, but I know that's not the only take on how things went down), I appreciate you sticking around to read anyway. Hopefully this one's a bit less tough on you, though no guarantees…

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: Say Something – Jews and Chinese Food

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

This really wasn't what she'd come to do. She hadn't really had any clear plan in her head when she set out on her way here, other than to see him, out of some sort of confused conviction that the only way to banish the torrent of memories and feelings that had claimed all her reason was to confront their source. And then she'd seen him, and she'd had to know. Because what if she never felt the way she'd felt with him again? What if she was doomed to spend the rest of her life re-living the nothingness she'd felt kissing Logan? Had all the repressing and the compartmentalising finally caused something inside of her to break, never to be fixed again?

And so she kissed him. And she didn't stop.

Rory shook her head, trying to banish the fresh memories that kept replaying themselves before her eyes as she drove back to Stars Hollow. She couldn't believe what she'd just done. Not just the sex, but the leaving – there was no rationalisation for it this time, no matter how Jess had treated her in the past, leaving was an unequivocally awful thing to do, no matter which way she thought about it. And she couldn't stop thinking about it…

Of course all her worries were immediately proved wrong, because there it was again, the same fire as before, but this time stronger, hungrier for all the time it hadn't been stoked. It felt like a mirror image of that first kiss, so long ago now – her grabbing him unawares, him taking a moment to react before pulling her to him, pressing himself against her. Only while that one was tentative and clumsy and full of nervous innocence, this was made up of rawness and over a year's worth of longing, all compacted into the contact between their two bodies.

Rory had just enough self-possession to kick the door shut behind her as they stumbled back through the studio, his hands on her waist, in her hair, clutching at her back, darting desperately over her as if trying to commit every part of her to memory again before the spell broke and this moment ended. Rory could barely catch her breath, scared that parting her lips from his for a second would allow him to finish his original question, a question she'd had hours to think about in the car yet still couldn't devise a sensical answer to.

And still it wasn't enough, nothing was enough, it was like the years she'd been deprived of this feeling had allowed it to grow quietly, in some hidden corner of her subconscious, until now upon being released, it was all-consuming and inescapable. All of the tentativeness from her encounter with Logan now gone completely, as if it belonged to another person altogether, she reached down to the hem of his t-shirt and pulled it over his head in one fluid motion. In that brief moment when their lips parted, she was surprised to find what she imagined was her own expression mirrored back at her on Jess' face, all the confusion from before now vanished into something new. And she knew that he felt it too, whatever it was that was wordlessly consuming her, and she pulled him back to her, her fingers trailing hungrily over his bare torso.

Gradually, he guided them to the bed, and they collapsed on it together, barely noticing the impact as their kisses grew more urgent still.

Rory blinked, pulling herself out of it again, knowing that if she allowed her mind to go back over the next part, she couldn't trust herself to keep to the road. Instead, her mind skipped over the next events, reluctantly coming back to the part of the encounter that filled her with self-loathing, rising up like bile in her throat.

She watched the rise and fall of his chest as he slept, mesmerised by the movement, and the vulnerability she saw in his sleeping face. And yet, with every minute that went by, she felt the fire and the ecstasy of before drain out of her, and the emptiness set in. And with that came the fear. Because what had she done? She'd complicated what was already the messiest relationship in her life. Nothing had changed: this was still a guy that it'd been proven she couldn't sustain a healthy relationship with, all she'd done was wreak havoc on both of their feelings.

And the panic didn't stop there. She'd had sex with him. For the first time. God – she was supposed to tell her mom first, but how could she ever talk to her mom about this? How could she talk to anyone? She felt like she was back on the front porch, waiting for her mother to come home from the graduation she'd missed, stuck wondering at her own insanity and irresponsibility. She felt like she couldn't breathe, she was shivering – clothes, she needed her clothes. Careful not to wake Jess, she slipped out of his arms and got up, darting around the room to retrieve her things and clumsily slipping back into her best man's outfit, which seemed all the more farcical in this context. But it was no good, she was still shivering, and the apartment was seeming smaller and more oppressive by the second, it was like the walls were closing in on her.

Out. She had to get out. She couldn't stay in that claustrophobic little box a second longer with nothing but her own mounting anxiety and the sleeping manifestation of her very worst decisions for company. Without thinking, barely breathing, even, she slipped out the door, and darted back down the stairs, thanking whatever higher powers might be listening that her car hadn't been stolen or towed, given the highly illegal place she'd parked it. She climbed into the car, cursing her shaking hands as she tried to shove the keys into the ignition before at last succeeding and speeding off into the night, as if she'd never been there.

It had taken about an hour for the panic to wear off and the self-loathing to set in. She thought of Jess, waking up alone and confused, and had to swipe tears from her eyes as she drove. Part of her wanted to drive back and apologise, but she couldn't do it, she couldn't face the mess she'd made head on and try to find a way to account for it, because in the end what was Rory Gilmore if not a coward when it came to her own feelings.

Eventually, she found her way back to Stars Hollow, unable to face the possibility that Paris would wake up and question her upon her return to Yale, and knowing it likely that Lorelai would sleep at Luke's, leaving her an empty house. There was also a part of her that just wanted to curl up in her childhood bedroom and forget, allowing the comforting power of the familiar to soothe her. And yet, when she finally pulled into the driveway, clambered out of the car into the house and collapsed on her bed, the only thing her room reminded her of was her first meeting with Jess, the encounter that had set off this whole chain of events. She curled up into a ball, and this time, when she felt the tears start to prick the corners of her eyes, she let them come.

At some point she must have fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew, unwelcome light was streaming in through the curtains she'd neglected to close the night before. The turmoil of that night had been replaced by a sort of numbness that allowed her to climb mechanically out of bed and start formulating how she was going to explain her sudden departure to her mother, who she could hear moving around the kitchen. She was still in the clothes from the night before, she realised, and so she began to change into some pyjamas, so as not to appear too conspicuously off-kilter. Her skin also had the uncomfortably tight feeling that comes when a gloopy mixture of tears and mascara has been allowed to dry on it and settle in for the night. She quickly retrieved a make-up wipe and started scrubbing.

When she was satisfied that she looked no different than she would after a perfectly normal night's sleep, she paused outside her door, willing herself to feel as normal internally as she'd made herself look. Summoning up an approximation of her normal self, she braced herself for the onslaught of questions, and opened the door.

"Hey, Mom," she said, stifling a fake yawn, stealing one of her mother's pop tarts and taking a seat at the kitchen table.

"Hey, Mom?" Lorelai quoted back at her in disbelief.

"Were you expecting something more formal?"

"I was expecting something more acknowledging of your disappearing act last night."

"So, you noticed that, huh?" Rory asked, mustering up all the energy she could to keep up her casual act.

"Oh, yes. I noticed, Logan noticed – and we're going to circle back to his exiting the room you Roadrunnered out of in just a bit – but do you know who noticed most of all?"

"Grandma?" Rory asked, wincing.

"Grandma noticed. She noticed so much, in fact, that she just couldn't get the pictures taken, not without Rory. So I hope you're looking forward to getting dressed up in exactly the same regalia, getting dragged back to the same Edith Warton novel of a venue, and posing in fifty similar but subtly different positions, all the while pretending this is really the night of the vow renewal, because I'm sure not."

"I'm sorry, Mom," Rory said, squeezing all the sincerity she could from her drained emotional faculties.

"So, do you want to explain what happened back there? And how exactly it involved a certain Huntzberger?"

"Want? Not particularly."

"I'm sorry, I misspoke. I am going to have to spend multiple hours more with my mother than strictly necessary, all because for the first time in your life you decided running is your sport, so would you like to add just a shade of context to this heinous betrayal before I finalise the disownment papers?"

Rory sighed, "I was in that room with Logan…"

"Yes, I gathered that much."

"And, I don't know, I just freaked out. Things were getting kind of intense, and since I'm not exactly the most experienced in these things, I just wigged and bailed. You know how I was after my first kiss, this is pretty standard behaviour for me," Rory said, lying through her teeth. In her current state she knew she couldn't handle the dose of reality that Lorelai was bound to give her if she relayed the actual events of the night before. Besides which, she was still utterly ashamed of herself, and needed time to deal with the horrible thing she'd done herself before her mother joined in on the condemnation (although she suspected it wouldn't be the leaving so much as what had happened just before that would upset Lorelai).

Lorelai paused, obviously taken aback; although it was true she'd suspected Rory might be hiding an attraction for the guy, she hadn't expected things with Logan to take such a sudden jolt forward. But seeing her daughter's rather shaken demeanour, she softened slightly and took a seat next to her at the table. "Are you okay? He wasn't pressuring you or anything…?"

"No, no, he was fine, it was all me – I thought I wanted it, but as soon as I was actually faced with the reality…"

"Roadrunner."

"Yup."

"Do you want to talk some more about it? I can share some less-than-stellar teenage Lorelai stories if that'll make you feel better?"

"I think for now I'd prefer not to relive my utter humiliation, thank you very much."

"But we'll talk about this later, okay? Because I think somehow I'm probably missing some dots somewhere between 'I hate this guy' and 'I'm going to lose my virginity to him – breaking my promise to talk about it with my mother first, by the way – at my Grandparents' vow renewal'."

"I promise, I'd just like to wait until it's not so fresh. But I am sorry about Grandma, I'll call her up later to apologise, and I'll try to get you out of doing the picture thing."

"No, it's okay, wearing it a second time will make me feel better about how much that dress cost."

"That's the spirit."

"However…" Lorelai started, a sardonic glint in her eye.

"Yes?"

"If you did want to make up for the awful pain that you have inflicted upon me, would you mind running Luke's tools over to him at the school? I roped him into helping with the Fiddler on the Roof sets, and he just called to say he'd left some of his tools here from the last tool-related errand I had him do, wonderful girlfriend that I am. And I was just contemplating having to lug those heavy bits of metal all the way over there, when my lovely daughter, who happens to owe me a significant favour, emerged."

Rory gave an exaggerated sigh, but in a way she was relieved to have an excuse to get out of the house, she didn't know how long she could sustain this normal act. "Okay, fine, let me just go get dressed," she said, retreating to her room.

"Thank you," Lorelai crooned, "tools are under the sink, if you need me I'll be in the bathroom, dyeing a bunch of Santa beards dark. Don't ask."

"Wasn't going to," Rory called back, letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding as she heard her mother's footsteps disappearing off upstairs.

Okay, maybe alone time wasn't actually the ideal course of action. It turned out any train of thought could be re-routed back to the events of the previous night, which threatened to tip her unpleasant but practical numbness back into the full on self-loathing and shame that had caused her to collapse onto her bed, shaking with sobs, the night before. By the time she'd reached the school, she was looking forward to getting to pretend to be normal again in one of her customary laconic exchanges with Luke.

She saw him talking uncomfortably to one of the kids, and approached him, waving the bag of tools, "Hey, Luke, I think these might be of use."

"Oh, hey, Rory, thanks," he said, taking the tools off her. But for some reason he seemed more uncomfortable than usual, and Rory noticed that he wouldn't meet her eye.

"Is everything okay, Luke?"

"What? Oh, yeah, I'm fine, I just…"

"Yes…?" she prompted.

He sighed, growing visibly less comfortable by the second, "I just, I talked to Jess this morning."

Rory drew in a sharp intake of breath. "You- you did?" she stuttered out, and now it was her turn to look anywhere but at the father figure in front of her, mortified on several levels that Luke should have any inkling of what had happened the night before.

"Yeah, we talk about once a week," and Rory felt a brief crack in the general horror that was presiding over her to feel touched that Luke and Jess were back in regular contact. "Anyway, he didn't say anything specific-" Oh, thank God, Rory thought, her body untensing with relief, "-but he did seem kind of off, as much as someone can be off who only communicates in a series of 'huh's and 'okay's, anyway. And I don't want to go accusing anyone of anything here, but I know you guys have been talking again on and off, and I just wondered if you knew anything at all that might be bothering him?"

"We, uh, haven't really talked in a while," Rory said, reassuring herself that she technically wasn't lying, as talking hadn't really featured on that night's activity list.

"Okay, then, thanks anyway," Luke said, and Rory turned to leave. "But, uh, if you guys do start talking again, could you- could you just be careful? And believe me, he's gotten this same speech tenfold, but I think he's really trying to change, you know? And he's kind of in a vulnerable spot right now, and you just- you can have quite an effect."

Feeling all the guilt and shame of the last twelve hours multiplying at an alarming rate in response to this awkward, yet heartfelt plea, she replied, "I will, Luke, I promise I will," and she meant it.

"Okay," Luke replied, "okay, thanks, Rory. I won't bring this up again, I just…I don't know, his Mom's never really been that great at looking out for him and…"

"No, I get it," Rory replied, mustering a genuine smile, "you've been a really great Uncle to him."

Luke smiled back, avoiding her eye with his customary gruff, self-effacing awkwardness during these types of emotionally intimate moments, "Anyway, thanks for dropping off the tools, I should probably actually start doing something around here."

"No problem," Rory replied. "Bye, Luke."

He gave a wave goodbye as she turned to leave, making her way out of the school before stopping outside. She didn't know why, but something about Luke's sincere and honest concern had shamed her out of her cowardice, and she knew what she needed to do. Before she could stop herself, she pulled out her phone, typed, Can we meet?, and pressed send.

A/N: These are getting a bit too teasey, so this time I'll just stick with a classic: please review? :D