A/N: Glad you liked the Mrs R chapter. Now, how about a little bit more father-son bonding of the Jess-Jack kind? This one takes place within 'Stars Hollow: The Next Generation', between Chapters 35 & 36, if you want to know :)

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

14. Boys to Men - 23rd March 2022

Jess had insisted that Rory let him go downstairs alone when they heard movement in the house around midnight. It wasn't because he thought they were being burglarised and fancied at playing action hero, though he would do that in those circumstances, actually. They both knew who was crashing around in the kitchen, not least because they just checked his bedroom and found it empty.

"Hey, Charlie Kane, this isn't Susan's room," said Jess, flipping on the kitchen light and finding Jack on his hands and knees amongst a mess of fallen pots and pans.

"Ha-ha," said his son, with all the inherited dead-pan he could muster. "I'm not exactly trashing the place. I just opened the cabinet door and everything fell out."

"Because you were desperate to cook at midnight? What, you were trying to feed the Gremlins before it was too late?"

"Could you please not be IMDb right now?" said Jack, rubbing his forehead with his hand a moment. "I can't do the whole jokey movie quote fest thing."

Jess always knew that he and Jack shared certain personality traits - they were father and son, it was going to happen - but it was usually Tori who echoed his own teenage attitude problems. Jack was most often like Rory, quiet sometimes, rambly in other moments, very rarely out-and-out snippy or defensive with the dark moods. That was what made Jess take so much notice of this behaviour recently.

"Happy birthday, by the way," he said, pulling up a chair at the kitchen table. "I'm guessing whatever it is you're doing has something to do with the fact today is your birthday?"

"Not entirely," Jack muttered, piling cookware back into the cupboard as quietly as possible. "Kind of, I guess."

Jess nodded but didn't say any more, at least not at first. It was strange that he and Rory were awake on purpose, about to give Jack the 'day you were born' speech for the seventeenth time, whilst their son was similarly up and at 'em at some ungodly hour, but for very different reasons. In lieu of anything else to say, Jess chose to go with the original plan.

"So, you know I'm going to tell you the story again, right? About the race to the hospital, your mom screaming, me having a very unmanly panic attack because, hey, I was about to be a father at the age of twenty, and that was not a plan."

"You do realise that at some point before I'm a legal adult, you should really stop with the traditional tale of the day of my birth, right?" said Jack, closing the cabinet door and joining Jess at the table.

"Hey, I'll stop, but I make no promises about your mom," said Jess, hands raised in mock surrender.

He smiled and his son smiled back, but the look didn't entirely make it to Jack's eyes. He looked tired, and not just because they were up at midnight having this conversation. It was a deeper kind of tired, a suffering of a type that Jess well understood. Women trouble, it took its toll on a man, all the worse when the guy in question was head-over-heels in love and the girl in the situation could care less.

"I'm sorry, Dad" said Jack eventually. "Seriously, I'm not... I'm not sleeping so well right now. I thought a snack would help, but then I didn't really want anything. I can't seem to... Please, just tell me this gets easier."

"It does," Jess promised him. "Usually, anyway. Look, Jack, I know Alison did a number on you, and it's not cool, but that's relationships. It's also being a teenager," he considered. "It'll get easier. Right now, this feels like the end of the world, and I'm not trying to say you shouldn't be hurt or feel whatever you're feeling. This matters and it's painful, I get that," he promised, "but time moves on, other stuff happens, you get some perspective. Y'know I thought the worst thing that could happen to me was the day your mom told me she didn't want to be with me. I swear, something broke in me right in that moment, and I never thought I'd get over it."

"But then you got back together. I do not see that happening with me and Alison."

"That's not my point," Jess countered, shaking his head. "See, even after we got back together, I still thought the scariest thing would be if Rory walked away from me, but I was wrong. You were born, and let me tell you, that was pretty scary too. Seeing your mom in pain, dealing with this tiny little person that meant so much to us," he said, smiling fondly at a highly embarrassed Jack. "And then Tori came along, and there were all those complications... You were so young, you had no idea, but that was... We came so close to losing them both," he said, voice cracking even now as he recalled it. "That was the scariest moment of my whole life. Knowing I could lose my wife, my daughter, in a way that there was absolutely no coming back from. Knowing I would have to raise you alone and be everything you needed. Right then, I was genuinely terrified."

Jack was amazed by what he was hearing. Sure, he knew things had got bad when Tori was born, he had been told the story before, but this was something else. He really wasn't so dumb as to think that men never got scared, that his dad never worried about anything. They were all human beings and it was natural to feel that way sometimes. Still, Jack couldn't remember his father ever being quite so candid about something this serious, with the small exception of when Jess gave him the birds and the bees. That had been kind of intense too, but nothing like this.

"Y'know, obviously, I'm glad we have mom and Toria. I would never want to be without them, even when Toria is driving me crazy," he said with a smirk. "But for what it's worth, I think you would've done okay raising me alone, if you had to. Can't imagine having a better or cooler dad than you."

Jess smiled at the compliment, almost feeling embarrassed by it. They were men, after all, and this was all getting a little mushy.

"Hey, if this is you trying to get on my good side for some expensive birthday present, you left it kinda late," he joked, glad when Jack broke out into a grin.

They were both just a little bit uncomfortable, even if Jack had meant what he said and Jess had been glad to hear it. The minor laughter broke the minor tension. That was good.

"I guess I should get back to bed for a while," said Jack then, running a hand back through his hair, making it stick up at all angles. "Not that I expect to sleep."

Jess reached over and ruffled his son's hair on the pretext of flattening it out a little.

"You'll sleep," he promised. "If not tonight, then eventually. You gotta give it time."

Jack nodded in understanding and then stood up to go. He stopped short of the door and looked back at his father.

"You met Mom when you were seventeen, right? You couldn't have known then that your life would turn out this way?"

Jess laughed at that. "I never even expected your mom to want to be with me. I hoped she would, because I knew from the first look that I was going to be in love with her for the rest of my life, but no, I had no idea what was coming. First you and then your sister; Luke and Lorelai being together, and Billy. Life has thrown us a whole lot of curveballs and twists in the road. The short answer is no, I had no clue this was how my life would turn out, but I wouldn't change it."

"Not even the bad parts?"

"Not even them. If I'd had a different start in life - a father that stuck around, a mother that gave a crap - then I wouldn't have come here to stay with your Grandpa Luke. Never would've met your mom, never would've had you two kids. Sometimes the bad stuff is worth it, even if it doesn't seem like it when it happens to you."

Jack nodded that he understood and this time when he went towards the door he kept on walking. Though hearing all his father's stories and advice didn't fix the dull pain of heartache that had settled in when Alison Forester screwed him over, it did give him a little perspective. Things could be worse. Life could be a hell of a lot harder. Someday, he was going to get past this and feel better.

"Jack? Are you okay, honey?" asked Rory when he hit the landing.

"Yeah, I'm okay, Mom," he promised her, finding a smile, stopping a moment to kiss her cheek. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, and happy birthday," she said, hand briefly as his shoulder as he passed by to his room.

She was still standing there, shivering in her robe, when Jess got back upstairs.

"Hey, you okay?"

"Sure, so long as you two are," she said, glancing at Jack's now closed door.

"I'm fine, and he'll live," Jess promised her. "Just don't push too hard for him to be ecstatically happy about his birthday tomorrow. He got his heart broken, maybe a little more than we thought. It's going to take a while."

"I know." Rory sighed, glad of her husband's arms around her as they returned to bed. "Being seventeen is tough, I remember."

"Tougher for guys, trust me," he said, kissing her hair as they settled down to sleep. "Although seventeen was pretty good for me in a lot of ways."

Rory smiled wide, snuggling in closer to Jess.

"For me too," she said happily, before sleep claimed the both of them for a few more hours.