Disclaimer: Quote in the resume - not mine; quotes in italic, surrounded by "~"-s - not mine, either; characters - not mine. As you can see, I own nothing, except for, sometimes, my free will...
A/N: Here - I've changed the status of this story, marking curiosity's victory march over my humble self. I'm just curious where this may lead, and I'm about to explore it, in a second chapter, as it seems... not sure if there's gonna be another one, this was so planned to be a one-shot... Anyway, the courage to update this has been strongly assisted by those of you who reviewed:) Special thanks to everyone who demanded this sequel... Hope you enjoy!
~"It's a terrible love that I'm walking with spiders..."~
Rory shifts into a more comfortable position and his fingers follow her movement, absentmindedly raking through her hair.
She's lying on the sofa, her head resting against his torso, using him as a pillow, her legs propped against the armrest. She's watching the movie and he's been playing with her hair ever since the opening credits, looping strands round his thumb and slightly pressing them between his fingers before letting them fall back to her shoulder.
As she shifts, her ear presses against his ribs and she listens to the steady rhythm of life's march through his body. She's grown used to the sound, the way even kids are born with the knowledge that this is what life sounds like. And to her, life sounds just like that - quiet evenings in the living room, watching a movie, reading, talking. Discussing literature or music, movies or politics, debating over conceptual art or Stars Hollow's most recent festival.
They have fallen into an easy routine and last Monday she realized he had his coffee mug in her mother's cupboard and his shelf in the bathroom.
'Turns out he's a killer of children,' Rory says and Jess almost chokes on his beer, his right hand freezing with the bottle just above her head.
He hasn't been paying much attention to the movie ever since the opening credits. He's been concentrated on her regular breathing, instead. The way it settles when she rests her head against his ribs. He needs to make contact, just hold on to something that's her, without any of them feeling awkward or uncomfortable, so he likes the way her hair feels between his fingers.
'I like that,' she continues and he realizes she's referring to a quote from the movie they've been watching (well, okay, she's been watching), what was it, again? Oh. Right. 'Me and You and Everyone We Know'. Some weird film Lorelai made Rory check on, cause 'Luke didn't get a clue, it's an absolute must see, grasshopper.'
'It summarizes disappointment so well,' she concludes pensively and Jess wonders what she's been thinking about. Tonight she's quieter and he can't come up with a certain reason why.
Rory listens to his heartbeat. She closes her eyes to the soft thump and she's sitting on the porch again, wrapped in a shawl, reading, and he's making notes in the margins of a new manuscript he received mere hours ago, a pencil stuck behind his ear. Sometimes he reaches for his smoke in the ashtray on the coffee table before him and tries to scribble something with it, and another time he tries to smoke his pencil and her laughter rolls down her lips from the rocking chair she made Lorelai sneak for her from the Inn. The raindrops play hide and seek with autumn leaves in this windless afternoon just a few feet from them, and the air smells like rain and oncoming winter and like his unfinished smoke in the ashtray. Rory opens her eyes and concentrates back on the movie.
As the final credits start floating up the screen, neither of them shifts and they remain still, enjoying each other's company in silence neither of them wants to break. It's more of a mutual understanding, than it's pretending to be asleep. It's keeping contact without the need to search for an excuse. Just... being.
The screen has automatically turned off for more than ten minutes now and Jess shifts slightly as Rory stifles a yawn.
As he stands up and scoops her up, she breathes in and keeps him in her lungs for as long as possible. There is his cologne and cigarettes and coffee and the overall trail of beer.
She closes her eyes as he carries her up the stairs and imagines what he tastes like, right now. She can almost feel the astringent aftertaste from his beer as he leans into her so he can put her on the bed.
It sends chills down her spine when their cheeks touch briefly and his stubble grazes against her skin. It ignites a spark she knows is a slow fire burning, creeping up her cheeks, turning her stomach inside out every time she passes by his room /his room? the guest room... the guest room, right/ and sees him type on his laptop bare-chested, his fingertips flying over the keys, his black rimmed glasses /she laughed for at least half an hour when she saw him, Mariano wearing nerdy glasses, so uncool, she would tease/ slightly tilted to the side, his hair messy, the tip of his tongue barely touching his lower lip...
Sometimes she tries to remember what kissing him tasted like, four years ago. She can't name it, though, it's just a feeling of him she's kept through the years, no particular smell or taste or sound to remember him by, only the memory of losing yourself to somebody, a hint of tobacco and excitement, and sometimes she thinks she wants to lose herself again...
Then, the worm of reality emerges, gnawing at her senses, biting at her lips, reminding her that all of this, whatever it is they have, is stolen time, almost unreal, sneaked in between the events of real life. And if she is trying to take a firmer grip of him, crossing the border of friendship every now and then by these little gestures of physical closeness, it's only because she knows that every passing minute moves her closer to the time when she'll have to let him go. This honeymoon-like utopia they've been floating in can't go on forever. Better keep it vague and simple. Better keep a distance. Cause, how many times will you be able to catch up with him on these wheels? She lets a breath out and turns her back to him as soon as she feels her head press against the mattress of her bed.
Jess rubs the back of his neck and leaves his smoke rest in the ashtray, replacing it with a cup of no longer hot coffee. He's staying on the porch; Paul Anka is lying under the small coffee table, keeping him quiet company.
Dark grey clouds float closer, carrying oncoming rain and he wonders if it's gonna be raining the whole day.
His reading glasses are perched on his nose and a gust of wind lifts up the ancient knit dark green pullover Lorelai blackmail-forced him to put over his shoulders in return for coffee. He sniffs, suppressing a sneeze, the damp air passing through his body bristly.
Last night she was gonna kiss him. He was sure. No evident reason. He just knew. There was this short moment of compressed time when the room stood still, concentrating, and the silence held a breath, the air thick with anticipation, blood speeding up, shivers down the spine, but then she turned away.
All that time during the past couple of weeks they were lingering between friendship and something more, all that time they were a bare inch from giving this unvoiced intimacy some substance, a kiss from defining it as something real, beyond stolen glances and that feeble feeling of belonging that could break in a single touch.
'Snowing already?' Lorelai asks when he walks into the kitchen, leaving his empty cup on the counter.
'Raining.' Jess answers as he takes his glasses off and starts wiping them in his shirt, his eyes searching for Rory around the living room. 'Just started,' he adds absentmindedly as he sees her sitting in the wheelchair next to the french windows, reading.
She managed to maintain a standing position this morning, though most of her weight was placed on the walking aids and the physiotherapist supported her all along. She collapsed on the ground the next moment, when she tried to move. When he and Lorelai ran to help her climb back up, she hissed them to keep the hell away.
He makes a few reluctant steps in her direction and stops to have a look. Her body has changed through the past weeks. Her legs are even thinner than before, but her upper body has grown more wiry and not so slender, her shoulders clearly shaped under the elastic of her blouse.
He has his own Braille when he is reading her body. Her shoulders are sharp and stiff as she's reading the book, her elbows are resting sharp against the wheelchair and he can tell she's in a sore mood. As he turns back to leave the room, he meets Lorelai's gaze. She doesn't say anything, just keeps wiping the plates in the kitchen and her features don't register judgement when her eyes follow him as he goes up the stairs.
Rory stops the wheelchair in the corridor, right before his door. The guest room door. Whatever.
She takes a breath. There are two ways that this may go. It can go like this: she cows and turns the chair around, and she goes back to her room and finishes that chapter of 'Rooftops of Tehran' where she had left off. Or it can go like that: she confronts him and seeks a resolution.
She needs to know if there is, if even the faintest, chance, so that she has time to prepare her heart to be milled. Cause there is no chance, an inner voice reminds her. But she needs to find out for herself, have something actually existing to point and say 'Look, that's why we won't work out'.
Her hands are sweaty over the wheels as she bends and engages the hill-holder. Then she wipes her palms in her jeans. She can barely feel the touch over her thighs. It's been over a month since she renewed physiotherapy and all she can think of is that she's condemned to two ghosts of legs. Barely feels, barely moves. Barely lives. But she knows that, if, if she can move up to stand, if even for a short goddamn second she can have her feet back, she'll have hope, she'll know there is a chance.
She closes her eyes and tries to imagine what it will feel like to slowly and unsteadily rise up and reach a standing position, then lean against the door frame and knock on his door. She thinks what his eyes would look like if he sees her standing, but then shakes her head. The image is just too painful to imagine now, while sitting in the chair, gripping at the wheels.
If she can do this now, she promises herself to ask him for a chance, she promises herself to fight for one.
She takes a breath and pushes herself up off the chair.
Jess jumps with the sound of someone stumbling right at his door and pushes his chair back from the desk immediately. As he opens the door, he sees her lying on the floor, her face hidden behind a curtain of hair as she pushes her upper body to a sitting position, using her trembling hands for support.
He suppresses the urge to lift her. He knows better. If he does, she'll send him away, and he's tired of this on and off dynamic she has established. She's pulling him closer just to push him away the next moment, and he can't handle this in and out thing, it's happening much too fast for him to adapt. And he knows that, right now, she has all these insecurity issues, nothing is the same after the accident, but she has to make up her mind. He cannot be switched on and off, he's not a lamp. Even if he could, he wouldn't let anyone push his buttons for much too long. Even her.
She must have tried to stand up. Jeez, what was she thinking? It's been just a month since she started physiotherapy, what was she trying to prove?
He lets out a sigh and sits down, leaning his back against the door frame. If he was at his apartment back at Truncheon, he would've lit a cigarette. He's not, so he just sits idly, staring ahead.
"Do you take pride in your hurt?" he quotes and she stiffens, pressing her palms harder against the corridor carpet. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience, she finishes the quote inwardly and her heart cringes.
'Sometimes I feel grateful for the accident,' he says so quietly she thinks she might have imagined it. But then he continues. 'Like, for once, I know why I'm the mess you chose, cause...' he breaths out through his nose, refusing to look at her, '... cause you're in a worse place right now.'
Her breath hitches in her throat and her eyes squeeze shut.
'You're doing this the wrong way,' he continues in cold logic, and she's suffocating. 'You're looking for an excuse to quit and that's not the way to do this.'
Rory's chin is quivering, but she doesn't feel the tears coming. They are there somewhere, but they're not in drops, they have formed a mist and she's sailing inside it, inside a hundred mists, and she wants to scream, she's been keeping this cry in her throat for so long, and now she realizes it will come out the moment she stops hearing his voice. His voice is the only thing she can cling to, but it's tearing her apart in his merciless analysis.
'You're picking unrealistic aims,' Jess continues in the same distant, coldblooded voice, dissecting her, 'and base your hope on their achievement. You're trying to prove there is no chance, making sure you'll fail so that you don't have to fear you might fail. Hope is too painful to bear, so you're trying to rationalize your retreat.'
The mist is so thick, Rory feels her head is about to explode, blood rushing in her head, she starts seeing red, her eyes squeezing wildly.
'I'm not gonna watch you do this to yourself,' he says after a pause, sadly but determinedly, and it's a cold shower that pours over her, his words screaming 'leaving' in her head; and there it is, mist condenses and drops start drowning her.
He presses his palms against his knees and stands up.
"Let him help you so that he knows that you love him," she quotes quietly in a ragged voice and her tongue stings with the salt of her own fears.
He pauses and suddenly his throat is tightening and he's lost for words, so he just stands numbly, waiting for her to make her decision. She does.
She's so tired of rejecting him, of trying to hurt herself using him as a pretext, of repeating 'He deserves better, I want him to get someone better' when in fact she only wants him for herself. She has no strength in her, it only is enough to ask one question, and once the question is shot in the air, all strength will be gone.
'Will you help me, Jess?' she looks up but doesn't see him. She's drowning.
And then she's pulled out of that terrible salty despair and she's coughing and taking a breath while he's holding her up and she's holding on to him.
Quotes used: 'Terrible love', Birdy; "East of Eden" ( 1952, written by J. Steinbeck, ); "East of Eden" (1955, directed by Elia Kazan,) ;
A/N: Review?:)