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: I have nothing to say but the usual: thanks so much for all the reviews, please keep them coming! I've been feeling a bit under the weather lately and that's curtailed my writing a bit, but I promise not to ever forget this fic again, no matter how long it is between udpates.

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: To Live and Let Diorama

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

Rory had lived in Stars Hollow for as long as she could remember, and by now she had a pretty good idea of how town functions went down, their basic ins and outs, their beginnings, middles, and ends. Needless to say, ending up sobbing on her bathroom floor after one such event was outside of her scope of experience. And yet, shortly after leaving the Stars Hollow Grand Museum Opening, there she was.

Now, the reasons for this veering away from the usual course of events were varied: for one, she was still feeling residually weirded out by the whole Tarantino marathon assumed abandonment thing, and for another, it was hard not to live with a Paris who felt herself to be scorned and not absorb some of the emotional volatility. But perhaps the most significant ingredient at work here was the infamous Founders Day Punch. And yes, it deserved every one of those capitalisations, such were its effects.

She'd never intended to touch the stuff, she knew very well from her mother's various embarrassing-slash-entertaining encounters with it that it was not exactly conducive to the type of rational behaviour she liked to think she exhibited. But, what with the aforementioned circumstances, she wasn't feeling at her most rational and had decided one drink couldn't hurt. And such is the punch's potency that one drink is strong enough to make the drinker think that another drink couldn't hurt either, and so on it goes.

Before Rory had fully processed what was happening, she'd found herself outside the museum, sitting between Lane and Paris as they complained (increasingly incoherently) about the men in their lives. And at first Rory had just listened, and sipped. But then the sips had become more frequent, and as her sense of reason and inhibition slowly drained away, she couldn't help but be reminded of her own boy troubles. And so, when before she'd only really chipped into the conversation to comment on the other women's love lives, she found herself feeling more and more tempted to expound on her own.

At this point, Lane had gotten onto the subject of honesty, a topic which Paris had been only too happy to build on, "You'd think they'd stumble onto the truth. Just accidentally. Say something like two plus two equals four. Just because they say so many things just accidentally, that's like – man!" Paris ranted, gesticulating a bit too wildly for someone who was holding a half full glass of punch.

"And then they just leave!" Rory suddenly chimed in, only realising she'd actually come out with that after seeing her companions' taken aback expressions.

Recovering quickly from her surprise at Rory's abrupt intermission, Paris jumped back in, "Yes! They just- they just take what they want and then vanish, like the wisps of noxious gas that they are!"

Hardly noticing that Paris had spoken, Rory continued, "And even if they stop lying, and they actually say something real for once, they still just disappear: 'Oh, please stop running, Rory, I want to talk, I love you', and then – poof! Gone again!" She said, taking another swig of her drink. "And now it's all different, of course, but I'm never going to not think he's going to leave. I mean, it's happened three times. Three. That's why they call it a rule of three, right? Because that's when it becomes a rule," she rambled on, starting to lose the thread of what she was saying.

"Ugh, typical," Paris replied, "the next time that rich, blond asshole shows his face at the paper…" and she trailed off, evidently delighting in ways she could take revenge on the guy who'd wronged her best friend.

"What? Who?" Rory replied, confused.

"Huntzberger," Paris replied, condescendingly slowly, "that's who we're talking about, right? You two were all flirty and now he's disappeared?"

"What? No!" Rory said, surprised to hear Logan's name after having not thought about him in so long. "I haven't spoken to him since we almost hooked up at my grandparents' vow renewal and I freaked out and ran away, he probably thinks I'm a repressed catholic who's Brideshead Revisiting him or something."

"No, she's talking about Jess," Lane chimed in, having pieced together the particulars from Rory's first outburst. "So, Jess is still thing?"

"Oh, yeah," Paris confirmed, "that guy – he is definitely a thing, they've been having book dates and cutesy movie marathons for weeks now."

"They were not dates," Rory clarified impatiently, "we were just hanging out, we're friends."

"Friends don't typically freak out when their friends leave. I mean, you left abruptly for Europe over the summer and I didn't start drunkenly rambling about you," Lane pointed out.

"I was definitely coming back, I wasn't moving to New York, or all the way across the freaking country. And just because we're friends now doesn't erase all the emotional baggage! I mean, yes, I've forgiven him, I really have, but I don't know how to suddenly turn the trust back on. How do you do that?"

"You can't," Lane replied, and Rory could tell by the drunken fury in her voice that this had gotten her back onto Zach, "how are you supposed to trust someone who randomly starts having affairs with music shop owners when you're out buying cleaning supplies?"

"Doyle's probably off with some CD-pushing Mrs Robinson, right now," Paris said, glaring down at her rapidly emptying drink.

And just like that they were back to their romantic woes again, and Rory retreated back into herself as she watched them both work themselves up enough to take off, Paris in search of a pay phone and Lane in search of Zach. And Rory's cocktail of emotions churned on inside her, and this was soon accompanied by the literal churning of her stomach as it finally rebelled against the tar-stripping acid that was being constantly poured into it.

The rest of the day was something of a blur, but at some point she must have found her mother, who had taken one look at her and helped her stumble back home where she'd then crumpled, sobbing, onto the bathroom floor as Lorelai did her best to comfort her while trying to ascertain what the hell was going on.

Which brings us back to the following morning, when Rory woke up on the cold, questionably hygienic tile and pondered the circumstances that had brought her there. And as she traced the series of unfortunate events that was the day before, she stopped in her tracks just before the part where she passed out as she came to the chilling realisation that Lorelai had been there the night before, as she cried on this very floor and mumbled about god knows what. She tried desperately to remember what she'd said, but try as she might she could only remember the crying, and the headache sure as hell wasn't helping.

Right. There was nothing for it but to get up off the bathroom floor, which was seeming more and more inviting in its coolness the longer she pondered what was waiting for her on the other side of the door, and confront reality. Do it. Get up off the floor.

It took her going back in her head to the last solid memory she had of her mother cleaning the bathroom floor (when she was seven and had thrown up on it after coming down with the flu) to motivate her to leave it. She pulled herself up, gave her mouth a quick rinse with some mouthwash – it felt like the inside of a lint-filled vacuum – and headed out to face the world, as represented by Lorelai Gilmore.

Paris and Kirk (neither of whose presence she could remember the reason for in her current state) provided a brief, but welcome buffer, but this couldn't last forever, and sure enough, when she wandered out of the kitchen to look for her book bag, her mother followed her out.

With a resigned sigh, she took a seat next to her mother on the couch, grabbing the hangover burrito Lorelai was offering to her in the hopes it would bolster her defences. "Thanks, mom."

"Now, honey, there is no one on this earth that understands the effects of Patty's punch more than me, and I realise that your vocabulary has been reduced by approximately seventy-three per cent – and believe me, that's going to be eighty-two when the second wave of hangover hits – but I'm afraid I'm going to need a little more than that."

"I'm sorry, mom," Rory said, quietly, picking at the foil wrapping of her burrito.

"I hate seeing you like that, kid."

"I hate you seeing me like that."

"So, are we going to talk about that stuff you were saying?"

"You might have to fill me in on the finer details."

"Well, it wasn't exactly Ibsen, most of it was pretty incomprehensible, in fact, but I seem to remember Jess being the recurring theme."

"Ah."

"So, can we clarify? Can I go back to hating him now? Because I remember our many talks on the subject of me not hating him, but I've got to tell you, when my beautiful, brainy, fabulous daughter is crying on the bathroom floor in connection to some guy, every instinct in my caffeine processor of a body is telling me to hate him."

Rory sighed again, "We don't hate him."

"We don't?"

"If anything, we hate me right now."

"So what you're asking me is to hate you and side with Jess? Would you also like me to go on a six month cruise with my mother and take up jogging while you're at it?"

"Mom…"

"Because that honestly makes the whole jogging thing seem doable in comparison."

"Well, if it'll provide you with the motivation you need…"

"Do you want to explain to me why I'm supposed to hate you now?"

Rory looked at her mother, who was gazing piercingly at her, really trying to understand what was going on. She cast a glance at the kitchen to make sure that Paris and Kirk were still occupied. Seeing that they were engaged in what appeared to be some kind of fierce debate, she took a deep breath, unable to keep up the pretence anymore. "I slept with Jess."

Lorelai blinked, stunned, and repeated back in monotone, "You slept with Jess."

"That is what I just said, yes."

"As in, you went to see Jess, and you were really tired out from the long drive, and he was really tired out from scowling all day, and you both just fell asleep?"

Rory rolled her eyes, "As in I slept with Jess. I went to see Jess and then sex happened."

"Gah!" Lorelai cried in disgust, holding her hands to her ears as if trying to pull Rory's words back out. "That's enough, that's as much detail as I will ever need. So you slept with Jess."

"Oh my god, mom, yes, I slept with Jess, I feel like I'm in a Doctor Seuss book."

"Well, I really do hope you would not, could not on a train, tree, car, etc…"

"Do you have to do that now?"

"Sorry. Oh wait, no I'm not, because you had a sex for the first time and you didn't tell me," Lorelai said, and Rory could see how hurt her mother was at this.

"I know," she said, softly.

"You promised you would talk to me about it first."

"I know," she repeated. "Bet jogging's not looking so easy in comparison anymore, huh?"

"When? When did this happen?"

Rory took to examining her untouched burrito again as she mumbled, "After Grandma and Grandpa's vow renewal."

"Over a month ago?"

"Yes," Rory admitted, sheepishly. "And I'm so sorry, Mom, I just couldn't tell you, I couldn't find the words to explain it to myself, let alone you."

Lorelai let out a deep breath, trying to exhale all the whirling questions battling it out for top billing and simply asking, "Honey, what happened?"

"It was true, what I told you. Well, partly. I was with Logan that night and something in me just kind of snapped, and all of a sudden I couldn't stop thinking about Jess, and I just started crying – God, it was so embarrassing. And then all these memories that I'd been suppressing for over a year just wouldn't stop – I was going crazy, and so I got in my car and drove to New York."

"Going to New York on a Jess-related mission during an important family event, sounds familiar."

Rory sighed, rubbing her dry, cried out eyes, "I don't know why he has this effect on me, Mom, I really don't."

"It sounds more about you than it does him, babe. There always seems to be something going on with you that makes you deny your own feelings when they come to him, and then they all come to the surface at inconvenient times," Lorelai said, making a gargantuan effort towards sympathy rather than judgement, given her daughter's clearly lessened state. "So, you drove to New York…"

"And then I found his apartment, and I knocked and then he was just…there."

"As one tends to be at one's apartment."

"Yeah, but I'd only been speaking to him over the phone for months, I hadn't actually seen him. And what with everything I was feeling at the time, suddenly seeing him again it just, set something off in me, and I kissed him."

"Spontaneous kissing: another hallmark of your relationship."

"And then it just…didn't stop."

"Yeah, I'm going to stop you there on that one. Look, I know Jess has been a sore subject with me historically, but I really have been trying to keep an open mind ever since we talked about you guys being in touch again. And I admit, this would have thrown me, but it's really painful to think that you were so averse to talking to me about this that you felt ashamed it happened at all."

"That's not the shameful part," Rory murmured.

"Oh boy."

"After it happened, I woke up, and he was still asleep, and…"

"You freaked out?"

"Another relationship hallmark, I know. I just still felt so hurt and mad at him for everything that had happened, and my feelings towards him were so complicated back then, and I just panicked, and I left."

"You left?"

"I got in my car and drove back here."

"Wait a minute, 'back then'?"

"Huh?"

"Just now you said, 'my feelings towards him were so complicated back then' – what's changed since then?"

"We met up afterwards, to talk things over."

"And did you actually talk this time, or do I have to add another square onto the bingo card that is your relationship?"

"We talked. We talked a lot, actually. About the past, about what he did wrong, about what I did wrong. And I think we made some actual progress. I really feel like I can move past it all, all the messy romantic stuff in the past and just be his friend."

Lorelai resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at that last part – another conversation for another time – and instead ploughed on, "And which part of that exactly led to the sobbing on the bathroom floor?"

"No matter how far we've come, and how much I truly believe he's changed, and I've changed, I still feel like I don't really know him, like he's just going to disappear again one day. And I don't know how I can truly trust him until that feeling goes away. And then I feel awful for feeling that way when I was the one that disappeared on him after we slept together, and I just go into this downward spiral of awfulness. Hence the drinking and the vomiting and the crying."

"And hence why we're supposed to hate you."

"Exactly."

"Well, tough, because I'm still not feeling the hatred, kid."

"Well, I can hate me enough for the both of us."

"Honey, you don't have to hate yourself for this – it sure doesn't sound like Jess does."

"And that just makes me feel worse."

"Look, you two have a long history of doing crappy things to each other, and if you've both managed to move on then so much the better. But trust isn't something you can just flip off and on, it comes with time. It sounds like something that needs re-building on both sides. Have you tried talking to him about this?"

"Not since we talked everything out. It just seems so hypocritical at this point."

"He still deserves to know how you're feeling. If you bottle this up again who knows what'll happen, maybe you'll end up skipping your own graduation to go see him this time."

Rory sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that conversation, "You're right."

"Of course I'm right, I'm Lorelai Gilmore, purveyor of hangover food and sage wisdom."

"How could I forget." Rory paused and scrutinised her mother, suspiciously, "And that's your whole advice? You have no further comments to offer about Jess? The guy who you hated for two years and who went on to deflower your daughter?"

"There may be some choice words in store down the line, but I don't think they'd make it through the fog of alcohol still hanging around you," Lorelai replied. "Besides, it's hard to maintain my former level of hatred towards Jess and be in a relationship with Luke at the same time, you've never heard a defensive Luke rant."

"I've heard part of one and I never wish to relive the experience as long as I live."

"Amen, sister," Lorelai said, before pausing to eye Rory's burrito, "now are you planning on actually eating this thing? If not, pass it to me, I'm starting to feel hungover just inhaling the fumes coming off you."

A/N: As always, please review!