Author's note: First, I just wanted to apologize for such a delayed update. I kind-of lost my way here and I had to erase and re-write. I think I finally know where it's going, which is sort of scary. I want to thank everyone sticking by this one and tell you all that I appreciate the reviews and even the act of placing me on your story-alert list gives me a nice bump to keep on writing. As always, I ask that you please let me know what you think. This is, I have to admit, my favorite story, my baby, and as such, it's harder to put it out there. Anything you may have to say (be it encouragement, critique, wild guesses or flames) will be much welcome. Now that the violins stopped playing, I give you....

We are the subsect

CHAPTER 5

Regardless

There was a girl in Jess Mariano's room.

Chris and Matt had a feel for such things, and they knew as soon as Jess walked in with a blonde in tow that something was wrong, that there was trouble.

It had been months since Jess had last had any girl over. Year's since one-night-stand material had walked through his door.

The sounds of fucking could be heard through the walls. Blonde-chick's voice.

That was part of what was wrong. Jess was usually private. He didn't pick loud girls. He always picked blondes, but quiet ones.

This was not private.

Even if Jess was never actually heard through the wall.

The blonde left two hours later, disappointed by Jess's growling. Even more disappointed by the fact that he didn't want her there to begin with.

Jess followed the romp with a two-hour shower.

Not that either one of them would say anything, but Matt and Chris knew.

Trouble was in the air.

When he finally got out of the shower, dressed and sullen, Matt pushed a cup of coffee towards him. Chris slid a pack of cigarettes over to him.

Two cups of coffee and half a pack later, Jess finally spoke, leaning into the counter.

Simple words.

"Rory's in town."

It was as they had predicted. Trouble.

- - - - - - - - -

"Mom?" Rory said, shakily.

"Honey, what's wrong?" Lorelai asked. She could recognize Rory's panic voice over the phone lines, across states. In a way, she felt relieved. She'd heard a Rory so cold the past few months, she was beginning to think she'd been taken by the Body Snatchers.

"I'm... Jess..." Rory attempted.

"Did you see him?"

"Yes."

"And?"

Rory took a deep breath before bursting into tears. "I don't know."

- - - - - - - - - -

Signposts and painted lines on the road, they all speed past us.

We get closer to home, closer by the minute.

When they say there's no place like home, it doesn't have to be a bad thing.


When they say you can never go home again, it doesn't have to be negative.

But we ride, we return, we are going back.

And I fear the place more than I fear the word itself. And she can smell the fear on me.

Home: it always smells like murder.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Truncheon looked empty when Rory approached. No bustling open house, no bad poetry being screamed over the microphone. She was, in a sense, grateful.

But the second she stepped out of the rain and entered Truncheon, she decided she liked it better full of people.

This way, empty and with just a few customers browsing through the books, Rory could feel Matt's eyes on the back of her neck as she closed her umbrella.

Chris looked at her with a mixture of contempt and pity.

She wasn't entirely sure which was worse.

Jess greeted her with a sullen nod. He walked the two steps it took to get to her and she sensed it instantly. A hostility she hadn't known in years.

"I shouldn't have-" she said, before darting out of the bookstore.

- - - - - - - - - -

By the time Jess reached her, she was already soaking wet. She had learned little about Philadelphia in the time she'd lived there. Rain was one of the things she hadn't learned about.

She had dropped her umbrella somewhere in mid-run and now she stood at the bus-stop, freezing and dripping.

"Rory..."

"I get it, Jess. I didn't need to have it spelled out in withering stares," Rory answered, sticking her arm out. The cabbie avoided her.

"Matt and Chris can be..."

"I said I get it. I know when I'm in the way. I'll get a cab and I'll go home and -"

"No, you don't get it, Rory. The cabs won't stop because it's raining and you're soaked. And the rain won't stop until tomorrow morning."

"Fucking Philly," she muttered.

Jess wanted to smile but held his countenance. "You'll learn."

"I'll just wait for a bus, then."

"You have to cross the street," Jess pointed out. "The buses here go uptown."

"You have any great suggestions?"

"I can drive you."

- - - - - - - - -

Rory rode silently in the passenger's seat, fully aware of every drop of water that dripped off her and onto the floor of his car.

The roof leaked, so that was some consolation.

"I'm sorry. About Matt and Chris. They're just-"

"Bulldogs?" Rory asked.

Jess shrugged. "Overprotective."

"I get it," she said, almost a whisper.

Jess felt his temper flare up and he didn't have the energy to push it back down. "Stop saying you get it, because you don't. You don't get this city and you don't get me. You say you know when you're not welcome, but... Do you know why Matt and Chris got like that? It's because of you. I told them you were here, but they already knew something was wrong. I had a one-night stand with some random girl last night, Rory. The last time I had a one-night stand was three years ago. The night you revenge-kissed me."

Rory's eyes widened in anger. "Well, I'm so sorry I push you into having meaningless sex with a stranger. I'm really fucking sorry I ruined your evening."

"You don't... I was fine before you came along."

"Stop the car," Rory said.

"What?"

"Stop the damn car."

"We're five miles from your apartment and it's pouring out."

"Let me out of the car, Jess. So you were better off without me? So much better that you started correspondence with a book reviewer in hopes of validation? Who are you kidding?" Rory grabbed the steering wheel and veered it right. "Pull over."

A car honked loud and long as it sped past, barely missing them. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Maybe. I have to be out of my mind, right? Asking you to be friends with me." Rory shook her head in annoyance. "But I can't be your buddy, I can't hear about one-night stands and how I hurt you until you bled. I'm too fucked up to deal with it, Jess. I can't. So just pull over."

"I'm not asking you to fucking deal with anything. You just don't get a word I'm saying, do you? I did what I did last night because I'm fucking scared of you. You always leave me drained, Rory. And you do leave."

"You leave, too."

"Not anymore, Rory," Jess said, pulling over. "Don't get out of the car."

"You stopped," Rory said, confused.

Jess nodded. "Don't get out."

Rory sat, arms crossed, staring at the windshield wipers go back and forth. Back and forth. "Why?"

"Because it's raining just as hard out there."

For fifteen minutes, she stared at the windshield wipers squeeze the water off the glass, leaving a clear path for drops to crash back on the surface.

Jess started the car again.

- - - - - - - - -

He offered to walk out to the door with her, but she didn't want him to.

Or else she did, but for all the wrong reasons.

Jess watched her gather her wet purse, her dripping sweater, and he reached across to unlock the door for her.

She turned to open the door, but paused and faced him instead. "If it makes you feel any better, which it probably doesn't - and you probably don't care about this... you shouldn't, why should you? Anyway, in the whole brutally honest spirit of sharing, if it's worth anything, I haven't been with anyone... had sex since I moved to Philadelphia."

And with that, she threw open the door and disappeared under a curtain of rain.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Dave coughs every hour on the hour, a dry, dead cough that tells the time as we rush by the cornfields.

If she were to ask me, I'd tell her it's this place we're going to, I'd tell her that is what's killing him.

It would be a lie.

It's one of Dave's quirks, his body is a human clock, we can tell the time by his coughs. It's a human compass, his shivers telling us we're going in the right direction.

He's decaying, decomposing.

He's dying.

And here we are, in a car, driving him to his grave. Not because the place is killing him, but because he wants to die there.

A promise is a promise.

A home is a grave.

We are the subsect.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

He'd sat still, watching Rory's apartment for hours before finding the energy to move.

He finally started the car back up and drove home under the incessant pelting.

Truncheon was closed early, and the lights in the apartment told Jess that Matt and Chris were having a conference about him.

If the weather hadn't been so miserable, he might have gone a couple more rounds around the block so they could finish, but he was cold and wet and at least as miserable as the damn weather, so they would have to talk about him with him present.

He walked up the stairs and kicked off his shoes before pushing the door open, his actions purposely loud to warn Matt and Chris of his presence.

Matt and Chris knew no such thing as subtlety, so instead of quickly changing the subject, they remained silent, looking at Jess as he crossed the living room without a word and walked into his room. With the door open, Jess changed out of his dripping clothes into a pair of sweats and a t-shirt before joining them in the kitchen.

"Hey," he said, and they took it for what it was. Permission to speak freely.

Matt handed Jess a cereal box and the milk, Chris placed a bowl and a spoon in front of him. Their version of the we're here for you speech.

"She living here?" Matt asked. Chris elbowed him in the ribs. Matt glared.

"Yup," Jess said, pouring milk on his cereal, refusing to look at them.

"And she came to see you..."

"Not exactly." My, how interesting his cereal seemed.

"She came here, today, to see you," Matt insisted.

"You were there," Jess replied, noncommittal.

"So?" Chris asked this time, curiosity getting the better of him.

"So she's here," Jess answered. "Don't ask me what that means, because I don't know."

"Did you... you know..." Matt started.

"No, of course not," Jess said angrily.

Matt raised his arms in the air. "Had to ask."

"No, you didn't," Jess countered.

"Do you want some advice?" Chris asked.

"No, I don't," Jess answered.

"She broke you before, Mariano. As your editor, I have to admit you've never been more productive than the three days after she kissed you. As your friend, I'd have to say I've never seen a more pathetic excuse for a man than you were those three days," Chris said anyway.

Matt concurred. "As your publisher, I'm also obligated to add that your work since that night has been crap and that you never finished what you wrote those three days. Don't know how that affects the balance, though."

Jess let the spoon slip from his fingers, the tip disappearing farther into the depths of milk and Cheerios. "Fine, comments from the peanut gallery duly noted. Now I'm going to have to ask you both to butt out as my friends and as my editor and publisher." He took a deep breath, his hands gripping the counter nervously. "I need to figure this out for myself, ok?"

"We're just trying to-"

"Don't, Matt. Don't try to help me, or help her, don't go Parent Trap on us, don't expect anything. I never ask you for anything, guys, but I'm asking now. Stay out of it until further notice."

And without another word or glance, he stalked off to his room and shut the door.

- - - - - - - - - -

Jess, of course, had them dead-on. Matt and Chris were already halfway through debating Parent-Trap-style schemes the second Jess walked through the front door.

But it was the clicking of keyboard strokes filtering through the closed door of Jess's room that sealed the deal.

Jess Mariano was typing.

Jess Mariano was writing.

Matt and Chris exchanged knowing glances.

- - - - - - - -

Rory kept her eyes trained on the telephone. Three hours since Jess had dropped her off, two hours since she'd gotten out of the bathtub, one hour since she'd started to look at the damned thing.

She didn't expect it to ring. She expected nothing less of Jess but the complete transfer of his assets to an offshore account and for him to haul ass out of Pennsylvania.

But she hoped.

It was different, to hope and to expect.

Still, she kept her eyes on the phone.

- - - - - - - - -

There is a sign at the exact spot where every town starts.

It is a cheerful sign, a sign that says "This is a new place".

It is a sign that says, "We're glad to see you."

It is a sign that reads, "Welcome to -"

Our town has one, too.

It's rusted, and outdated, and it sits in the center of town, because the small town grew once, in ways no one ever expected it too, leaving the sign to welcome those who were already there.

The people that made the town grow were the people that left it to die, long ago, left the empty houses and overgrown lawns and dried fruit trees in their wake. The town gave and gave until it could give no more.

She smiles and points when she sees the sign.

She feels welcome.

Dave coughs and shivers and keeps right on sleeping.

Me?

I drive through the dead streets, the empty corners, the rusted trailers.

I drive by the closed factories, the broken store windows, the Oldsmobiles.

I drive over a dead rat that's already been flattened by a tractor.

I drive under the swarm of dragonflies that whisper of the rain that is to come.

I drive home.

I try not to show it.

I try not to die.

Welcome home.

- - - - - - - - -

By midnight she had already reached the final third of The Subsect. Her notes bordered on psychotic, and even though she was trying not to, at times she reproached him, at times she was confessional. Every other page, she cried, and a tear had already smudged some writing.

It was impossible for her to separate Jess from the book's Joshua, the troubled man from the troubled boy, the what-could-have-been with the what-is.

She knew the end of the book was near and she couldn't deal with it in this closed city, this empty place where she knew no one, smelled nothing familiar. Jess was right, she didn't know this city and it sure as hell didn't seem to like her.

If she was to keep his promise, keep good on her word of reviewing The Subsect the whole way through, she would need one thing.

She picked up the phone that did not ring, no matter how hard she hoped, and dialed the number she could never forget, no matter how far away she was.

"Mom?" she said into the receiver.

A call to a cab, an e-mail to her boss, a message on her answering machine.

And she was gone.

Welcome home.

TBC...

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