Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls, characters, or any original dialogue from our lovely ASP — this is for fun!

Rated M for swearing, suggestive themes, and sexual content in later chapters.

...

Chapter 3: Maybe They Would

Soundtrack: Stars - Hum 1995 | Earn Enough For Us - XTC 1986

The next few days went by in a haze for Rory. She was emotionally wrought. The only place she felt comfortable was in her room. After she cleared out and packed all of Dean's mementos in a box, her room became a cocoon. She needed solitude and time to process so many unfamiliar feelings. Nearly every emotion a person could have if she were honest with herself.

One moment, she was relaxed on a beach with the sun making new freckles on her shoulders. The sand had sometimes irritated, or a bug had bit, but it was still a sweet, ignorant bliss. The next moment, she had been bowled over by a rogue wave — rolled, tumbled, and pulled under. Over and over again, she struggled and swam for the surface. Finally, she returned to shore, her throat raw and her muscles exhausted.

Rory's only consolation was remembering that she hadn't been alone. Jess and Luke had been there for her. Her adoration for both of them was at the forefront of her emotions. Rory was aware that she was raised in a town where everyone looked out for her, but ultimately, she knew it was just her and her mom. No one else had ever breached their small but unbreakable bubble. Max had come close but to no avail. After the night she slept curled under Luke's arm, she was conscious that Luke was already part of her bubble. She wanted Jess to be part of it too.

She had awoken the morning after to more evidence of Luke, the ever-present. The kitchen table was cleared of the Indian and diner food, and a new spread of Luke's pancakes and bacon was waiting for her. She was grateful to not have to brave the town. Lorelai had left a post-it beside the pancakes that said she needed to run errands. She was also thankful to not have to brave Lorelei's questions, at least not until she could properly make a pro-con list of her feelings.

...

Lorelei's particular errand the morning after consisted of removing the car Dean had gifted Rory from their driveway and returning it. She knew it had been an extravagant gift, and she had reservations about Rory keeping it, but they were overshadowed by Richard's objections. Lorelai's instincts would always be to oppose her parents, so she fought for Dean's gift when she should have been fighting for Rory's interests. She had seen the car through the rose-colored glasses of a mom thankful her daughter had a "perfect first boyfriend." After Jess' description of the infamous night, she had seen the car through the clear blue eyes of a woman experienced with too-good-to-be-true situations. The car was a hefty bargaining chip that would always weigh the scales in Dean's favour. She wouldn't have this hunk of metal mocking her or Rory from the driveway any longer than necessary.

She knew confronting Dean would be a bad idea until she calmed down and reflected. She hastily parked the car on the street outside of his house with the title lying on the front seat. She stepped out of the vehicle and vaulted the keys toward the front door without concern for where they landed. It may have appeared immature, but she knew it was the only mature route; she couldn't guarantee Narcolepsy Boy coming out with all of his appendages intact.

...

The week went by in contrast to the night that turned everything inside out. Everyone went to work or school as usual, and the status quo returned. Rory and Lorelai spoke in hushed fragments throughout the week until Rory had reached a comfortable internal resolution, and Lorelai had most of her questions answered. Rory felt, simultaneously, still childlike as the little girl who needed her Mommy and mature beyond seventeen. Simultaneously, Lorelai felt fierce like a mother bear and irrelevant as a parent.

...

Luke and Jess didn't talk to each other about that night. However, a new respect was established for one another. They also gained a new yearning that neither of them could verbalize. Luke had felt the desire to be paternal, and Jess had felt the desire to be familial.

Luke had always stood on the edge of parenthood. He watched out for Rory from behind the counter at the diner. Even when Jess moved in, Luke thought Jess felt more like a roommate. But Luke had forged on and ignited a fatherly flame when he yelled at Jess, "I am not letting you just fall off the face of the earth. You will not drift. I won't let it happen." Jess wanted to be enraged, but he had never had anyone care enough to say those things. Luke wasn't calling him stupid or worthless like his mom usually did after he fucked up. Instead, Luke was saying he wasn't going to give up. Consequently, Jess became so disoriented that he just got up and walked out but as soon as he opened the door, he felt an unfamiliar tenderness creep into his chest.

...

Their yearnings were tested soon enough when Luke received word that his Uncle Louie had passed away, and he had to arrange the funeral. Luke was on the phone with the mortuary while a diner full of customers vied for his attention. Lorelai and Rory walked in agape at the chaos and quickly sprang into action serving food and making sure the patrons didn't get decapitated by the phone cord.

Rory looked around through the crowd and realized Jess wasn't in the diner. "Hey Luke, where's Jess?"

"I don't know."

"School?"

Luke rolled his eyes, "Please. He's probably upstairs."

"Really?" Rory asked incredulously, "Excuse me." She dipped behind the curtain and bounded up the stairs. She knocked on the apartment door but received no answer. She heard Jeannie trying to get Major Healey out of whatever scrape he was in that episode and became annoyed that Jess would be lounging in front of the television instead of helping Luke downstairs. She turned the doorknob and cracked the door. She spied Jess sitting at the kitchen table, bent over a book.

It was a sight she was accustomed to seeing regularly. Like Rory, Jess never went anywhere without a book, usually tucked into his back pocket if he was walking or working. The book would be perched in his hand or propped on his knee when he wasn't doing either. It was an extension of himself. The world could move past him at full tilt like a marching band playing on a rollercoaster, and he wouldn't feel the gust pull at his clothing as it sped past unless it was being described by the author within the story. Rory knew this feeling intimately. She lived in two worlds too. One was tangible, and the other was transcendental. She loathed to extract herself from the written world, so she empathized with him.

Rory wasn't, however, accustomed to finding Jess so unguarded and took the opportunity to observe him. First, his brow would furrow, and his face would contort, emphasizing his crooked lower lip as he read. Then his face would soften in understanding. Finally, he turned the page, and she watched as his lean muscular forearms tensed and relaxed. She was enthralled reading him. And just like if she were reading an actual book, she had no idea that he was now aware of her presence.

"My, aren't we bright-eyed and bushy-tailed."

Rory met Jess' eyes, and startled, she blurted out, "Luke needs you downstairs."

"Why?"

"Oh, because he's on the phone with someone, and Caesar's off today, and the place is packed, and he needs help. There's only so much Mom, and I can do."

"I'll be down in a minute."

"No, now."

"I'm in the middle of something… something that YOU assigned me." He held up the book — The Fountainhead.

"You're trying it again!" Rory couldn't resist the smile that crept onto her face, "You remembered."

"Yeah, and it isn't making any more sense the second time. I still hold that Ayn Rand is a political nut." Jess flashed a warm smile, and Rory swore she saw his eyes twinkle, "…and you will be making it up to me."

Jess' statement vibrated off the tiny apartment's walls, and Rory nodded in agreement. Rory was sure that her blush blushed. How would she make it up to him?

In the distance, Rory heard Jeannie, "Oh, Master! I try to please, but everything I do turns out wrong." Then she recalled that she had come up in here in urgency and had forgotten her task. She couldn't calculate for how long, but Luke & her mom had probably been carried off by an angry mob by now. So she motioned to Jess with a tilt of her head, "Diner."

Jess stood from the table, tucking the book in his back pocket and stretching the stiffness out of his body. His shirt lifted from the top of his pants as he reached up, and Rory's eyes swept across his exposed skin. Her mouth went dry, and she ducked her head as Jess walked toward the door.

A weight of disappointment was settling onto Jess. After the night at the Gilmore's, he had yet to talk to Rory. He knew she needed space and time and the last thing he would want to do was be Rory's rebound. He had been a rebound plenty of times before. Who could be upset with a bit of fun and short-term attachment? But he knew Rory wasn't a short-term kind of girl, and he didn't want a fleeting involvement if he were given a chance to be with her. Geez, Mariano, get a freakin' grip. Since Rory was just here fetching him for Luke, he worried that her prior flirtations were only a rebellion against the control freak to which she was tethered. No matter, Jess still felt a weird compulsion to do as she asked. What is happening to me?

At Jess' proximity, Rory thought back to holding onto him the night he returned for her. Without any barriers this time, she pulled him into an embrace, not anguished like the last but no less desperate. Since Jess arrived in her little corner of the world, he had shaken things up. He was the rising action in her stagnant story. He was the contrast. Rory had grown up in an idyllic setting, and the only antagonists present were those in the novels she read. When Jess arrived, he became the juxtaposing energy her story needed to progress. Jess was the omniscient narrator who saw her in a way she hadn't seen herself. And with minimal prompting and no force, he revealed to her a more compelling storyline. She knew that she had changed her own course, but he had bolstered her character. She finally felt like her life was a book she couldn't put down. Rory breathily mumbled into the crook of Jess' neck, "Thank you, Jess." And with this, she unintentionally secured his hope for something more.

Jess settled his arms around Rory and took a deep breath into her hair. No one in his life had ever been so vulnerable with him. She had not only seen the cracks in his facade, she had created one. He had grown up in a world of distrust, but he had isolated himself from most people, so it hadn't mattered. When Jess walked back into the Gilmore house the night Dean showed up, he had chosen to attach himself to Rory. He knew she would be the girl from whom he never recovered.

From downstairs, they heard Lorelai yell, "Hey Pumpkin & Honey Bunny, if you two don't get your butts down here in the next two seconds, we're going to start filming the sequel to Pulp Fiction in this diner, and it's going end very differently for you this time."

Rory pulled back and chuckled, "Shall we?"

Jess guided her toward the stairs with his arm slung around her shoulders. He leaned in and softly acquiesced, "As you wish."

...

The next day the chaos had not subsided. Lorelai was pulling double duty at the inn and the diner while she helped Sookie recover from the Emily-Gilmore-induced wedding hysteria. And like Bloody Mary in a mirror, Lorelai spoke her name, and Emily appeared in the diner. Emily was perturbed at being shut out of the extravagant event she organized with Sookie. Lorelai explained that it wasn't what Sookie & Jackson wanted and that Sookie was swept up in the fun. Lorelai then accused Emily of using this wedding as a ruse, "You weren't planning Sookie's wedding, Mom."

"Well, then, whose wedding was I planning?"

"Mine."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Mom, your vision for this wedding and all the over-the-top stuff and the gazillion dollar flowers and bunting and champagne fountain and the Haute Couture dress, who's wearing that wedding dress in your mind's eye, Mom? Is it Sookie, or is it me?"

"I wasn't planning your wedding, Lorelai. I know that in a million years, you would never let me plan your wedding. I gave up on that dream a long time ago. Yours was going to be a Russian winter theme. The Romanovs."

"Before the firing squad, I assume?"

Immune to Lorelei's jesting, Emily continued, "Snow white roses, trees with white lights and candles, snow everywhere, you arriving in a silver sleigh with white horses." Emily studied Lorelei's skeptical face and added, "And you hate the idea."

"No, no, I just… it just doesn't seem like me."

"Yes, well, it would've been beautiful."

"I'm sure it would've been."

"Anyhow, it's obvious that wouldn't even be appropriate anymore, being as I'm probably standing in your reception hall."

Lorelai was taken aback, "Excuse me?"

"Burgers and fries for the dinner? The bride walks down the aisle with a ketchup dispenser in her hand."

Lorelai didn't think it would be a terrible idea to have Luke's burgers anytime, let alone for a reception, but she couldn't follow Emily's logic, "Please tell me what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about Luke."

"Luke?" Lorelai questioned but suddenly understood, "Mom!"

"Well, it's obvious, Lorelai."

"No, it's not, Mom."

"You're with him constantly."

"He feeds me." And I enjoy being with him — don't say that out loud.

"You bring up his name constantly."

"Once again, he feeds me." And I enjoy talking about him — don't say that out loud.

"The moment he calls, you run to his side."

Emily had a point — that wasn't because Luke fed Lorelai. Lorelai delineated, "He's my friend. He needed me. I had to be there." I wanted to be there — don't say that out loud.

"Yes, I know you did." Emily held a knowing smile as Luke walked up behind the counter. "I have to go. I'll see you for dinner tonight, Lorelai. And Luke, I'm sure I'll see you again soon." She turned as she made it to the door to ask Luke, "What do you think of the Romanovs?"

"They probably had it coming."

"A match made in heaven." Emily had said it in jest, but Lorelai had thought it earnestly. Lorelai didn't see her mother walk out the door because she was too busy thinking about Luke.

...

Lorelai carried her thoughts through the funeral. Luke was lost in his concern for not becoming like his uncle. He didn't want to admit it, but the war reenactors had wormed their way into his head that he was an unloveable, cranky loner and would end up dying alone like Louie with no one concerned.

Lorelai broke through his brooding, "It was a nice service. Nice and, um, intimate." Intimate, given that it was only Luke, Lorelai, and the reverend present.

"I guess everybody deserves something at the end. Thanks for coming."

"I wouldn't have missed it," Lorelai answered honestly.

After a beat, Luke asked nervously, "That ain't me, is it?"

"What are you talking about?"

"What Taylor said about me being like Louie, a loner, never being married and stuff. I mean, I am getting crankier as I get older. He's not so far off."

"You are not your uncle. I mean, would Louie ever build someone a chuppah, help fix things around someone's house without being asked, or make a special coffee cake with balloons for a girl's sixteenth birthday?"

"Rory told you about that, huh?"

"Yes. And would Louie have taken in his sister's kid without hesitating and without asking for anything in return?"

"No one would've trusted Louie with their kid. He probably would've forgotten to feed him or something."

"Would Louie have rushed to a girl's aid after her floppy-haired bag boy boyfriend had accosted her?" She caught Luke's gaze as she recounted the number of times Luke had been there for her and Rory over the years and felt herself go misty-eyed. She was overwhelmed with recent events. She hadn't been there for Rory. Not just the night Dean showed up but during their relationship. She should have given Rory better judgment where boyfriends were concerned. Instead of chalking it up to teenage immaturity, Lorelai should have called out Dean's behavior. She felt like her failed romantic relationships had doomed her to be unable to guide Rory properly. The only constant she had was Luke. Seeing him that night with Rory both broke and healed her heart. She wanted Rory to have that every day for the rest of her life. And she wanted to shed tears for all the days Rory had missed out on having that with Chris.

Lorelai had the perfect guise of being at a funeral to cry, but Luke knew that it wasn't her grief overcoming her. She pulled Luke down into a hug, and in her sniffles, Luke heard her mumble, "Thank you, Luke." It dawned on him that if he could keep Lorelai in his life in whatever way, he would never become like Louie.

They walked back to town together, arm in arm, having a silly conversation about the ability to kick someone's butt while in heaven. When they stepped off the curb to cross the street to the diner, a blue flash of metal and tires blew past them and squealed around the corner. Luke and Lorelai nearly fell backward and caught a glimpse of a smug teenage boy behind the wheel. They gave each other a knowing, infuriated look but continued to the diner, full of people.

Luke & Lorelai were confused about what was going on, so they asked Rory as she came over to meet them at the door. It was a wake, and Rory thought Lorelai had set it up, but she hadn't. Luke hadn't either, which only left one person who could be accountable — Jess. Rory went to find him while Lorelai and Luke took in the scene.

"This is unexpected," Luke confessed. "Don't you have wakes for people you like?"

"I think it might be for you," Lorelai nudged.

"Am I dead?"

"Face it, Luke, people like you."

"Shut up."

"And with charm like that, how can they resist?" Lorelai knew she couldn't any longer.

Across the diner, Rory walked up beside Jess, who was serving himself from the potluck buffet. "Nice spread."

"People have too much free time in this town."

"You did a good thing." Rory looked at Jess like she had caught him with his hand in the cookie jar.

After the past couple of weeks, Jess was learning to appreciate his circumstance a little better, but he wasn't going to turn out to be Wally Cleaver at any point in his life, so he still felt the need to defend his altruism. "Look, the crazy ballet teacher called and asked when Luke was getting back from the funeral if I could unlock the door. So I came down, unlocked the door, then went back upstairs and back to sleep."

"So you did do a little something."

"I unlocked the door."

"So that people could come in here and put this together. Nice."

"Nice for them, not for me."

"You facilitated it. You made it happen, so I guess that means you're officially a part of our town now," Rory joyfully teased.

"Hey, wait a minute. I am not part of this town." In theory, he didn't want to be but in practice, he would willingly participate in every ridiculous town event Rory would be a part of.

"See you for some tree planting over at the Arbor Day Festival, buddy."

"Yeah, I could knock over a liquor store while everyone else is planting those stupid trees."

"As long as it's a liquor store in town, neighbor."

Jess caught Rory by the elbow as she was about to walk away. He stroked his thumb across the bend of her arm, and lowly spoke, "Would you go with me?"

Rory was frustrated that she was constantly being overtaken by her burning cheeks — she wanted the upper hand for once. She tugged on her bottom lip with her teeth, then caught Jess' eyes dart down to watch her movement. At once, she was aware of her advantage. She stepped closer, nearly purring, "Maybe I would."

Jess's mouth went dry, and he shuddered with delight. He watched her sashay away. Maybe I would, he repeated to himself. Maybe they all would.