A/N: Don't know if anybody had a chance to miss me while I was gone, but here I am now, letting you all know I'm back and with a new story to share. Something a little different and I'm not 100% sure where it's going yet, but hey, let's go ahead and see what happens! Please let me know in a review if you like it so far :)

Summary: When Jess sees someone he recognises in his local coffee shop, he doesn't want to get involved, but knows he must. Unfortunately, helping out this particular troubled teen is going to lead him down a path he's been trying to avoid for years, and make another trip back to Stars Hollow, and Rory Gilmore, suddenly seem unavoidable.

Disclaimer: All recognisable characters and dialogue from Gilmore Girls belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino and other folks who aren't me.

Chapter 1

It wasn't a great situation and Jess was almost certain he wasn't going to make it any better by getting in the middle of it. At the same time, he wasn't sure he could bear to stand idly by either. After all, he knew this kid. He had been this kid, in a strange way. Of course, he knew he wouldn't have appreciated the interference at that age, but he also knew that, when it did come, it was for his own good.

Fourteen was such a crappy age to be. Too old to be a child, too young to be an adult. Everything's changing. Nothing fits, nothing works, nothing is exactly how you want it to be, and the worst of it is nobody seems to understand how you're feeling. It was definitely the point where Jess had gone downhill. When things with Liz had gotten so much worse. He was old enough by then to know too much of what she did, but still wasn't in a position where he could stop her or help her, not really.

Not that he thought this kid had those kinds of problems. No, he had his own stuff going on. Stuff that Jess didn't think he should ask about, and yet he already knew he was going to, because what other choice did he really have? No choice at all, that was the truth of it.

Sitting back in his seat, he side-eyed the far table one more time. It was so damn obvious this kid wasn't used to the city. He certainly not used to being alone in a strange place. Trying to look confident, almost cocky, but the fidgeting and fussing, no matter how subtle, gave him away to those that knew.

He kept on checking his phone, over and over, with this frown that proved he didn't like what he was seeing, or maybe what he wasn't seeing. A lack of funds could be an issue. A lack of response to a message perhaps. Could even be a negative reply. Somebody who he hoped would help him out, saying now they couldn't give him a bed for the night or spot him some money.

"You know him, don't you?"

The unassuming waitress put his empty plate and balled up napkins onto her tray to take away. She looked up at the mirror on the opposite wall, watching the kid that way for a moment, then her eyes shifted back to Jess. Her expression was nothing but curious and kind. After all, she knew him pretty well at this point. Knew he wasn't a man she had to worry about keeping an eye on somebody else's kid.

"Enough that I have to help," he said, heaving a sigh. "Wish me luck."

"You don't need it." Greta shook her head, patted him on the shoulder as he slipped by her.

Jess moved to the table alongside the one where the kid was frowning at his cell all over again. When he noticed he had company, or close enough anyway, he squirmed in his seat, made a big deal about pulling his bag closer across the table, turning his back a little bit. After a minute of Jess trying to decide how to start a conversation, the kid made up his mind for him.

"What are you looking at, old man?" he asked, complete with a strangely familiar stare that some might even call withering.

It made Jess smile without even meaning to. "You know, you look a lot like your mother when you do that."

"Get lost, jerk. You want me to call the cops on you?"

"And you sound a lot like your father when you talk like that." Jess sighed, getting up from his seat to move over to the kid's table.

He raised his hands in mock surrender when it was clear he was getting ready to bolt. That was the very last thing this situation needed.

"Relax. I'm not a weirdo or a pervert or a pothead or anything."

"You know that's exactly what weirdos, perverts, and potheads say, right?"

"Good point." Jess nodded as he considered a moment. "But in this case, it's true. I'm really not any of those things, and I really do know your parents, Noah."

The spark of recognition at the sound of his name proved to Jess that he hadn't got the wrong kid (as if that would happen) and also that the boy wasn't the practised liar that his father had always been either. Of course, that kind of thing could be genetic, but Jess always suspected the influence of a person's parents, or whoever else raised them, probably had the bigger impact. Noah's mother was honest as the day was long, except for that one time when she had an affair with an engaged man...

"Just because you know my name doesn't mean-"

"How's your Grandpa Luke doing?" Jess cut in before anymore of the semi-angry and indignant speech made it out of Noah's mouth. "I know he did the whole 'I'm fine' thing after his fall, but you and I both know that it was a pretty nasty fracture he had. At his age, bones just don't heal as fast or as strong sometimes. God, I'll bet he was hell to be around for a while, huh? He does a good grumpy old man, even when he's healthy."

Noah's expression was almost comical as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. How Jess could possibly know so much about his grandpa. How it had come to pass that he ended up running away to a place where some guy he couldn't identify was there to meet him. That last one had Jess a little puzzled too, but now really wasn't the time to dwell on it.

"You know Grandpa Luke?" Noah asked carefully. "For real?"

Jess nodded his head. "He's my uncle."

That got the wide eyes and gaping mouth that was almost expected. It also made Jess notice just how blue those eyes were, so very much like Rory's eyes, it was almost scary. Then he saw a light dawn in those same eyes, a sigh of relief making Noah's shoulders sag.

"You're Jess."

"I'm Jess," he confirmed. "I would've led with that, but I wasn't so sure..."

"They talk about you," Noah told him without pause. "Sometimes a lot. I always think Grandma Lorelai doesn't like you much, but then she just... I don't know, it's like she wishes she didn't like you, but she does."

Jess smirked hard. "Yeah, that sounds right. Well, now the formalities are out of the way, you wanna tell me what you're doing here, more than a hundred miles away from your mom, who is probably freaking out right about now?"

Noah's eyes hardened. "From the stories I've heard about you, I really don't think you have room to talk."

There were a million reponses to that remark, Jess knew, and also, a few dozen sources that Noah could have gotten his information from. Luke, Lorelai, Rory, Liz, and maybe a few more besides. He didn't come off well in any tales from his teenage years, Jess knew that much. Still, that wasn't the point right now.

"You're not me," he said coolly, "and you don't have my parents, so you don't have my reasons for acting like hell on wheels, like I did when I was your age. I know your mom well enough to know that she did not raise you to be thoughtless, and she did nothing bad enough to make you wanna run away from her, without so much as a goodbye."

"How do you know I didn't say goodbye?"

Jess' smirk came back, stronger than ever, as he leaned closer across the table towards the kid. "Because Rory is way too smart to wave her fourteen-year-old off into the sunset on some crazy adventure in the big city all by himself," he said definitely. "Come on, you think I'm dumb enough to believe that she would? I've known her a lot longer than you have."

That was probably a stupid thing to say. Jess knew that before he ever saw the boy bristle. He had no idea what Noah knew about the relationship between himself and Rory from before. If she had said they were friends, if he knew there had been a teenage romance, if he even had a clue they were more than passing acquaintances, barely connected through the marriage of her mom and his uncle. All Jess really knew for certain was that Noah shouldn't be in New York by himself and that, somehow, he had to convince him to go home, now.

"You think you know so much, Jess Mariano," he said pointedly, clearly trying to show off that he at least knew the last name of this man he just met. "You don't know as much about me or my mom as you think you do, and I'll bet you don't know anything at all about my dad."

At that, Jess bit his lip. He actually knew more about Noah's father that he wanted to, and most of it not at all good. If he said that, he could see an awkward situation getting twice as bad in a matter of seconds. Treading carefully was his only real way forward, but what could he really say about Logan Huntzberger that wasn't insulting?

The blond dick that Rory met at Yale, with the flashy car and the bad attitude. Who saw drinking and partying as a perfectly reasonable hobby to indulge in on a twenty-four-seven basis, when the mood took him. A guy who got a good job because daddy handed it to him, and believed that having his cake and eating it too was just par for the course. A fancy family-approved fiancé in one country, an ex-girlfriend to keep the bed warm elsewhere, and then, when there were consequences to his actions, what did he do? Promised the earth and didn't deliver even a fraction of it.

Absent fathers. Jess and Noah had that in common, but now didn't seem the best time to mention it. Sure, there was every chance that he could track Logan down, that maybe Huntzberger would even be happy to see his kid. Maybe he would apologise, give a speech about how he just wasn't cut out to be a dad, but that wasn't anybody's fault, it was just the way God made him. Maybe Jess was just transferring. Logan wasn't really anything like Jimmy, absence aside. At least, he had to assume that he wasn't. It had been quite a while since he crossed paths with Logan. Thank God.

"You're right," he said eventually. "I don't know your father all that well, but I do know who he is. We met before, a few times."

Noah's lips twitched like he wanted to say something, but no words came. If Jess was a betting man, he would put a few bucks on a fair guess that the poor kid was about to say Jess had done better than him. Noah didn't know his father all that well either. In fact, he had never really met him, not in a way that he would remember clearly. He would be almost as much of a stranger to him as Jess had been, until a few minutes ago.

"Look, whatever is going on here, we both know that somebody needs to call your mom and let her know where you are and that you're safe," he said, unwilling to take any arguments on that point, at least.

"I can't call her." Noah shook his head, looking down. "Uh, my phone died."

That was something Jess absolutely wasn't buying, but he would let it go for now. Maybe it was better if somebody else called Rory, although he knew he didn't want it to be him, any more than Noah wanted the privelege.

"Okay." He sighed, getting up from his seat. "Are you gonna stay there for the next five minutes while I make a call?"

He eyed the kid suspiciously and with good reason. There was nothing to say that as soon as he turned his back, Noah wouldn't bolt. Maybe that wasn't the kind of thing Rory would do as a teen, but he could imagine Logan had been just that slippery.

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't."

Jess rolled his eyes. "Let's put it this way, if you're not here when I get back, my next call is going to be to the cops. They take runaway teens pretty seriously, and it's not like I can't give them plenty of information about you and..." He lifted his cell fast and snapped a picture. "Now, I have a very recent photograph too. You run, it's your choice, but now, you know the consequences."

Before Noah could say anything else, Jess moved away from him, already scrolling through the contacts on his phone. He didn't have a direct number for Rory. There was a cell number still there, but he was 99% sure it didn't work. He didn't have the number for her house at all. Of course, he had numbers in Stars Hollow he could call, but for so many reasons, because of so many conversations he really didn't want to have, he skipped by all of them. Returning to the top-end of his contact list, he hit call before he could change his mind again.

"It's not my birthday."

He smirked at her opening gambit, unable to help it. "I do not only call you on your birthday."

"True, but you've never exactly been chatty. What's up, cous?" April asked him then.

Jess took a deep breath, glanced in the mirror to see Noah squirming in his seat, then closed his eyes before he spoke. "I need you to call Rory."

"O-kay," said April awkwardly. "And what exactly do you want me to say to her when I call? 'Jess says hey'? I mean, no offence, but I really think you should be able to do that for yourself at forty-six years old..."

"This isn't about me," he told her fast. "It's about her kid. Since the distress flares aren't flying yet, I'm guessing they don't know he's gone so far, but Stars Hollow to New York is a couple of hours journey minimum, and we're a pretty good distance from the depot here... Can you just call her, please? Tell her... Tell her that Noah decided to take a bus ride in search of the absent father, but that he's okay."

"He's okay, because he's with you," said April, with a look he could just hear. "How'd that happen?"

"If I believed in fate and destiny, I'd have an answer for you," he countered, peering over his shoulder for a second and feeling equal parts relieved and awkward to see his new ward was still there. "As it is, call it pure dumb luck. I just need you to let Rory know what's going on. I... I don't want her to worry."

The silence that followed meant that his cousin was trying to find the right words to tell him something he probably wouldn't want to hear. He knew her well enough to be certain of that. Lo and behold, April proved him right, less than thirty seconds later.

"You know, I could give you her number-"

"Just call her, please?" he urged her one more time. "I don't exactly ask you for a lot of favours, and if we're going to start tallying up the number of times that I-"

"I'll do it," April told him fast. "Geez, you're gonna hold that stuff against me forever, aren't you?"

"Only when I need the leverage," Jess told her straight, "but seriously, April, thanks for this."

"You're welcome." She sighed heavily. "Okay, he's in New York, he went looking for the ass that is Huntzberger, and he's safe with you. Anything else? I mean, does she need to come pick him up or are you escorting him home?"

Jess opened his mouth to reply but no words came out. He hadn't thought that far ahead. Of course, they had to have a plan for getting Noah back where he belonged. Either someone had to collect him or Jess had to deliver him, because nobody was going to trust the kid to go where he was supposed to after this, not for a good long while, if ever again.

"Jess?"

"I don't know yet." He shook his head, even though it was pointless, since April couldn't see. "There is no plan, at least not beyond I'm going to take him to my place and keep him there, as long as I can. I think he trusts me enough for that, but knowing stubborn teenagers like I do..."

"I get it," April agreed. "Okay, I'll call Rory right now."

Their conversation ended, Jess headed back to the table but didn't sit back down. "This all your stuff?" he asked, tilting his head at the duffel Noah held.

"I travel light." He nodded. "Are you taking me to see my dad?"

"Not right now," said Jess, choosing his words carefully. "I've left a message for your mom saying we're going to be at my place. So, until we hear anything back, that's where we need to be."

He gave him a look that dared the kid to argue, hoping it was as impressive as the kind he used to get from Luke, once upon a time. Not that they had exactly had the desired effect when he was seventeen, but Jess was banking on the fact that Noah was that bit younger, and also, made of a better quality of DNA, on one side of his family tree, if not the other.

"Fine," Noah huffed, getting up to go, "but you should know that I am not going home until I see my dad. That is non-negotiable."

Jess would love to argue with him, he really would, but it was hardly his place. Besides, it would make him kind of a hypocrite if he tried. After all, he had gone cross-country, rather than just one state over, to find his own absent father, many moons ago. Sure, he had been eighteen at the time, not a minor, like Noah was now, but still.

"Save the negotiations for later," he advised, pulling out his wallet to put the necessary extra couple of bucks on Noah's bill. "Greta works hard, so she gets a tip, always," he said by way of explanation, when the kid gave him a weird look.

"Whatever," he muttered then, hustling on out the door.

"Whatever," Jess echoed, following on behind.

To Be Continued...