Jess Mariano: Are you mad or something?
Rory Gilmore: I just don't want to be in a fight with Dean.
Jess Mariano: I'm sorry about that. Do you want to push me in a lake?
Rory Gilmore: Maybe later.

.***.

When Luke started talking about moving, Jess knew this had to have something to do with him. So he went along with the apartment visits and the arguing about fireplaces, he tried to defer to his uncle and keep his head down. Every time Luke asked someone how much something cost (which was every three or four minutes, the man was a walking cash register) Jess would mentally split the number in half. How much was he going to owe his uncle after this little misadventure? Ten thousand dollars? Thirty thousand?

"I just spent one hundred thousand dollars today!" Uncle Luke raged at the end of it, "and it's all your fault!"

Granted, in that situation, the 'your' was Lorelei Gilmore, but Jess couldn't help but think that she was just someone for Luke to take his rage out on without resorting to physical violence (okay, that was unwarranted, Luke had never hit him. Yet.) But still, Jess split the number in half, and fifty thousand dollars was more that he or his mother had ever had Jess's whole life. He'd be paying Luke back for years.

Even though Luke had staunchly refused money, and had looked sad enough each time Jess offered it that Jess had just stopped offering, the younger man was always aware that Luke would be perfectly in his rights to demand payback at any time. What kind of guy took on a parasite for free? So Jess didn't say a word when they apartment hunted, when Luke decided to buy the place next door. He didn't even say a word when Luke took a sledge hammer to the wall, just cringed at the noise, arm flying up automatically to protect his face.

Keep your head down and it hurts less, Jess knew. So he kept his head down, and tried not to wonder why Luke really wanted a bigger apartment. It certainly shouldn't be to comfort his ungrateful nephew.

.***.

"Two bedrooms," Luke would growl every morning when the construction crew traipsed through the small apartment. Jess would nod, thinking that with two bedrooms, another bathroom, he could lock the door all the time and never be afraid that someone would walk in on him when his shirt was off.

"You know what that means, kiddo?" Luke asked, just as Jess was fantasizing about locks again, and Jess, for an instant, thought the man was reading his mind. Then Luke winked at him, and the gesture was so uncharacteristic, reminded him so much of the guys that Liz used to bring by, their sly smiles, their come-hither winks, that Jess realized, suddenly, that two bedrooms meant dating, that Luke would be bringing by women.

Well, women can't be any worse than men, right?

.***.

Jess was re-reading Howl and didn't even notice Rory until she was right on top of him. What was it about Ginsberg ("who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,") that made him want to rip off his skin and seep into the background radiation of all the lives he wasn't living? Ginsberg always made him feel like, even if Stars Hollow didn't work out, there were worse things that could happen, and he was stronger than this place, and he was already broken, all these things at once, and he was still thinking of poetry and feeling of poetry when Rory was in front of him, a pint of ice cream the only thing in her pale hand.

"Your dinner?" he guessed, bundling Howl to the back corner of his mind to be turned over, tonight, in bed, when he couldn't sleep. "Alone tonight?"

"How'd you guess?" Rory asked, sounding actually curious.

"Well, that's too little ice cream to possibly be split between both Gilmore Girls." Jess put his book in his back pocket, kept his hands there, or else he'd reach out and see if Rory's hair was as smooth as it looked. "Where's good ol' Dean-o?"

"Away baseball game."

"And you're not hoo-rahing on the sideline?"

"That's Lane's job," Rory sounded suddenly dark, or wistful, or something.

Jess pushed past it, "And your mom?"

"On a date," Rory said, with absolutely no inflection in her voice.

Jess winced enough for both of them. "That sucks."

Rory gave him a look that was more confused than curious this time. "Why? It's a guy from her night class, not a twenty-five year old this time. They're going to see Lord of the Rings-his idea, not mom's, she tends to laugh at the pointy ears."

"Then we finally have something in common," Jess said, smoothly, "Still, if you need some place to crash if it gets hot and heavy, come knock on my window."

Rory's perplexity had reached a new level. "Mom never brings guys back to our place," she tucked her arms under her armpit. It was cold. "If she stays out, she always goes back to the guy's. Not that I'd mind. I think it's just old habits, you know?"

Not willing to let on just how much he didn't know about having a mother who thought children, toddlers, shouldn't be exposed to an endless parade of sex and strangers and drugs and booze, Jess plastered a smile on his face. "Well, if you need to escape incessant hobbit complaining..."

"I'll find you," Rory finished. She'd never stopped looking puzzled. "Jess-"

But he was already leaving, pausing under a streetlamp, looking into Howl because he was beginning to think he'd figured it out, what Ginsberg meant when he wrote about the men who'd "journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,"

Lonesome, that was the word. Lonely and alone and lonesome.

.***.

And you'd think he'd have learned his lesson but when Luke, stuttering, hand rubbing the back of his neck, told Jess that he was going on a date, don't wait up, Jess had said, "Don't worry, I won't be here when you're back."

"Oh," Luke said, too quickly, "it's not that kind of date."

Jess rolled his eyes, "The apartment is done. We finally have that double bed, all ready to share. Do I need to explain to you why I insisted on the double bed?"

"No, but-"

"Then I won't be here," Jess said, taking Confederacy of Dunces with him, because it was good and thick, because he never minded reading it, even when he was sitting in a gazebo, waiting for someone to come back down the stairs, slip out the door, the signal that it was safe to go home.

.***.

Lorelei found Jess on the bench of the gazebo, huddled into his too-light coat, the dampness in the air doing something to his hair, making it limp and wilted, plastered to his forehead, and at once he looked young, preteen, and Lorelei could see the boy inside the delinquent, and she leaned forward, meaning to brush the hair away from the squeezed-shut eyes, but when her hand was hovering over the boy's face he flinched, hard, and nearly fell off the bench.

Jess grabbed the back of his head, "Ow, fuck ow."

"Hey," Lorelei snapped, from some motherly instinct, "language."

Jess looked up at her with one bleary eye and tugged his coat tighter around his small frame.

Lorelei waited for his reply and, when one didn't seem to be coming, she said, "It's cold."

"I've noticed."

"Your bed is a hundred yards away."

Jess shrugged. He didn't look at her. In the moonlight, the residual light from the lamps, she could see the parts of him that looked like Luke. There, in the end of the nose, the tilt of the chin, and the talklessness, as if he were saving all of his words for when he needed them. "Luke's probably worried."

"He has company," Jess muttered.

Lorelei blinked at how sad that sentence made her, the obvious female attached to the word company, the implications, if Jess had been exiled or had exiled himself from the apartment. She knew it was unfair to think Luke would simply pine for her, until she was ready, but to think of him with some other Stars Hollow single lady, doing the horizontal mambo...no, actually. She preferred not to think about it. "Does he know that Jack Frost is paying us a visit tonight?"

Jess shrugged, pulled his hands inside his sleeves in a gesture that seemed very juvenile. "I'm not cold. You can leave if you are."

Or, Lorelei could hear (you didn't have to be a master to read between the lines) you could just leave. And she thought about it, but instead she sat down on the bench next to Jess. Because, as hokey as it sounded, she didn't know what she would do if this was Rory, sent away to an uncle, sitting in the cold, waiting to go back inside. "Did, um, did Luke tell you not to come home tonight?"

Jess snorted. Then shrugged. "He said he'd have company. I knew the score."

"Yes, but did he tell you the score? Did he say that he and his lady-friend were going to be occupying the bedroom or did he say that, hey, I'm bringing someone back tonight, do you want to meet her?"

She noticed, when Jess looked up at her, that his lips were turning blue. He needed a heavier coat, and Lorelei wondered why men, even amazing, gentle men like Luke, never seemed to notice the glaringly obvious: that Jess was hurting, that his clothes were worn, that he was unraveling at the seams.

Although, to be fair, she hadn't noticed, either, not until this second.

"It might have been more along the lines of the second one," Jess said.

"That's what I thought," Lorelei stood, and motioned until Jess was standing, too. He was as small as her, smaller. Muscled, sure, but drawn and thin. If Jess were a girl, Lorelei would suspect anorexia. With Jess, she suspected neglect, malnutrition, a lack of funds until recently, and then a distaste of the mega-health foods Luke pressed upon everyone at all times. "I want to feed you a cake."

"What?" Jess asked. His hands were fisted in his pockets. He looked like a puppy someone had left out in the rain.

And for the first time, Lorelei thought that maybe that's what Jess was. Not a delinquent, not the bad boyfriend, not the kid smirking in the back of the classroom. Just some kid, who no one had ever wanted, and who was trying the best he could. So Lorelei said, "You want to go see what floosy Luke has back at the apartment?"

Was that the hint of a smile? Just the shadow, but it was a win in Lorelei's book. She led the way out of the dark night and back into the diner.

.***.

After that night, Lorelei could not stop bothering Luke about his nephew. "I'm just asking how much you know about his life with Liz, especially when it comes to her dating."

"I think I preferred it when you wanted to drive him out of town with torches and pitchforks," Luke muttered, staring pointedly the food in his hands, meant for other people. "What do you want me to say? He doesn't talk much."

"Yeah, I gathered," Lorelei said, following him, of course, to his next table. "I'm not asking you to start your 'Who's on First' routine, I'm asking if you've spoken to him, at all, about his life before Stars Hollow."

Luke put the plates in front of his customers, threw the pad on the counter, and pulled Lorelei into the alley the diner shared with Dosie's market. "Why?" He said, letting go of the Gilmore mother's elbow, crossing his arms, looking suddenly, alarmingly, serious. "Why? Have you noticed anything?"

"Have you noticed anything?" Lorelei retorted.

"I asked you first!" But Luke sighed, pulled the cap off his head, began worrying it between his big hands. "It's just-I mean, it's probably nothing, but there was the rent thing, you know about that," he didn't wait for Lorelei to nod, "And he keeps doing it, asking about paying rent, just slipping twenties in my pocket. And then there's the cleaning thing."

"Jess cleans?"

"I mean, I haven't been around a lot of teenage boys-"

"Thank God," Lorelei put in.

"You can't even help yourself, can you?" Luke rolled his eyes, "Anyway, if the rumors are true they're supposed to make their surroundings into pigsties. And Jess cleans constantly. He does laundry, he does dishes, and then he walks out the door. And then there's the flinching."

"That I've noticed," Lorelei said, glad to be contributing something. "Did Liz...I mean, was she strict?"

"I don't know," Luke bit out. "I don't know if she sprinkled Jess with rainbows or beat him with a broomstick because I didn't know where she lived until she called me to say Jess was staying in Stars Hollow."

Of course, at that moment, their alley's entrance was blocked by a tall, thin, teenage boy. "You talking about me?" Jess demanded. And Lorelei, because she was a coward, because she was not blood, because she'd gotten what she wanted, fled.

.***.

"I'm gonna kill her," Luke said, and the way he said it, hand clenching the glass in his hand, eyes hard, voice hard, made Jess think that he actually might.

Which was a problem, because after everything, he still loved his mother. "Don't," Jess sighed. He'd talked a lot today, and his voice was sore, and he reached for the ginger ale and poured it into his glass. They were both drinking ginger ale, and there was an empty plate that used to hold French fries in front of them. They'd been talking ever since Jess saw Luke and Lorelei in the alley, ever since Luke had bodily dragged him inside the diner, held his arm as Luke told Caesar to watch the diner, thrust Jess ahead of him up the stairs and through the door to their apartment.

And, finally, he'd let go, and Jess whirled around, hands moving protectively out and up to his face. "Please," he'd said. "I'm sorry," he'd said.

That was almost an hour ago, and Jess still couldn't believe that Luke hadn't just wailed on him, that instead Luke had gotten the ginger ale out of the fridge and two glasses out of the cabinets and asked him, in a voice so soft, what his life had been like with Liz.

Which is how they got here, to Jess defending the mother who'd always hurt him. "Don't tell anyone. She doesn't belong in jail."

"I beg to differ," Luke said.

Jess sighed, "She's my mom, you know?"

Luke looked like he did know. "She doesn't deserve you. You hear me, Jess? She never fucking deserved you."

He'd never heard his uncle curse before, and Jess gaped at that before he thought to be surprised at the sentiment behind the words. Then he looked down at his hands, embarrassed, "I mean, like I said, she didn't do most of the stuff anyway. If was her boyfriends..."

"That she brought in the house, Jess, don't try to rationalize this."

"I'm not!" Jess said, "I'm not, I knew it was wrong when I was eight, okay? Obviously raping little kids is messed up, but I chose to stay with Liz because it was better than the alternative, and I chose to keep my mouth shut, and I let it keep happening, you know? Like, six months ago it was still happening, and raping little kids is wrong but when it happens to teenagers you gotta start wondering if, you know, they brought it on themselves."

He didn't realize he was crying until he looked up at his uncle and Luke looked like a kaleidoscope portrait. But Jess didn't cry in front of people, so he wiped his eyes with the end of his sleeve and held very still when Luke put a hand on his cheek. "Jess," Luke said, "I need you to believe me when I say that you did not bring it on yourself. You did nothing wrong."

"How do you know?" Jess muttered, "I can't seem to do anything right in this town, so..."

A tear leaked onto Luke's hand, and Luke stood up, and Luke said, "Hey, come here," and held out his arms so that when Jess stood up between them, they were already there for a hug. They stayed like that, hugging, for a while.

"Hey," Luke kept saying, his voice so low, one hand between Jess's shoulder blades, the other gripping Jess's head tight, "Hey, it's gonna be okay. You're okay now. It's gonna be okay."

.***.

well there's the house hunting so i guess the next chapter is the car accident.