A/N: I know. Another one-shot when any of my readers who are still around want me to finish my many WIPs (particularly "Pay the Piper" and "EverFixed Mark"). I can only assure you that they are and always will be my literary children, and as such, I'm not now or ever abandoning them. I know "House Rules" isn't one of my more popular stories, and if you don't like it, I get it. But, I did post two new chapters recently and mostly heard *crickets*. Thank you to those who did read and review, and those who message me occasionally about my other stories. If it weren't for you, I'd seriously wonder if anyone was interested in my writing anymore.

So, enough whining! You came here for a story. I have no idea where this one came from. Sometimes Jess and Rory just start having random conversations in my head. Hope you like hearing them. ;-D

Enjoy!

The vinyl couch had cracks in it; not so bad that you'd really notice if you weren't looking, or if the inner side of your forearm wasn't getting scratched by them each time your girlfriend leaned into the kiss. Presently, Rory leaned backward, just a little, making the scratch go the other way. Jess ignored the abrasion in favor of pleasanter sensations rushing through him at her nearness. In her eyes was the sense of falling; not of fear but of weightlessness and drifting, like he was looking at the earth from space, the jewel, the swirling oceans, buoyant and carried by nothingness with a heavy hollow awestruck feeling in his lungs and in the pit of his stomach.

Her tapered, soft fingers slipped from where they had tangled in his hair and cupped the side of his face. He leaned into the gentle warmth of it and the corners of her mouth curled upward. Next, her fingertips went exploring, touching the places on his face and neck that caught her interest. The dark spot just beneath his jawline, complaining that he didn't have enough freckles - with her own, they came too thickly for any proper dot-to-dot, and with his...too ridiculously far apart - "Do you even have any others?" He rolled his eyes and refrained from anatomical comments. She fingered the irregularity in his eyebrow, rumpling it back and forth.

He raised it at the peculiarities of her current exploration. It slipped from her finger and as she moved to "catch" it he started raising and lowering both brows quickly dodging her playful forefinger.

"Hold still!" she said in a mock peevish tone that made him laugh - laugh at the whole thing 'cause it was ridiculous playing tag with his eyebrows. Rory started to laugh with him, but got distracted, her intent look half returning with hesitant inquisitiveness. Her hand slid down his face a moment after the intent expression, and he felt the ridges of her fingertip softly along the contour of the misshapen portion of his lower lip.

His smile faded, and with it the oddity in shape.

"Was it that way when you were born?"

The way she said it didn't come across as prying overmuch. After all, these were the kinds of things people usually knew about their boyfriend or girlfriend, right? Normal things. Still, his gaze dodged rebelliously away when he tried to keep looking her in the eye, and his far shoulder shifted as if it wanted to slip off the couch by itself and hide in the closet. It would be easier to say it was a birth defect. And it wasn't likely it would come up in conversation with Luke, but lying inconsistently always comes back to bite you one way or another.

"Nah," he said, more of an audible accessory to the twitching grimace and slight shake of the head. "Stupid accident when I was seven or eight. No big deal." With his free hand, he wiped his eye as he spoke, as if remnants of sleep remained there.

"What happened?" Concern creased the midpoint of her forehead, just above her eyes.

The story had gotten more succinct and believable since he'd told it to Luke when he was nine. "Kid shoved me when we got off at the bus stop, and some moron driver thought it was cool to pass a school bus with its lights flashing."

"You got hit by a car!?" Rory's mouth hung open in shock and he felt worse about the lying. It didn't have the baggage that the truth did, though. The lie wouldn't hurt her or anybody else like the truth would.

"Eh," he shrugged it off, "I just hit the pavement kinda hard. It looked like it was only a scrape, and I didn't usually talk much anyway, so they didn't realize right away it was because I couldn't. I dunno what happened with the driver. I was too out of it." He shrugged again in place of the unnecessary parts of the story. "Jaw was dislocated. Had to drink food through a straw for awhile."

"So did the dislocated jaw damage the nerves, or...?"

He nodded. That part of the story, at least, was true.

"Did you at least get some kind of insurance settlement from the driver who hit you? You'd think they would've ended up in court at least!"

Jess shook his head and shrugged. "Nothing like that, that I know of. But, I was eight," he explained. "Not much makes sense from when I was eight. I mostly remember the drinking food part. Blech!"

Dodging was that easy. Focus on the common human experience, if you can find it. People will believe anything if you add the right details...usually the details that are true and vivid in the senses, even while the rest of the story is fabricated...people buy it. He kept himself from frowning, the telltale that he couldn't stand lying to her about real things.

Usually, he was good at evasions that he knew that she knew were evasions, and it was like winking at her - a silent agreement that she'd accept what was blatantly untrue for the sake of his privacy or his pride...that she wouldn't ask. It was okay. It was like a code. They'd never talked about it, and most people would say he was being some sort of compulsive liar, but that wasn't it. It was like an inside joke. Like the football instead of the swan, or the wake for Louie for Luke that was "Patty's" idea. Things he might tell her someday, but she really knew anyway. Her eyes would flash in a kind of triumph. They told him, "I could MAKE you tell. But, I don't have to. I'm onto you."

He couldn't do that with this. She was asking for honesty. And, ironically, that was what forced him to lie in earnest. Mostly for Luke's sake. If he knew the real story, and all the real stories it would lead to, Luke would honestly, literally wish himself dead. So certain lies had to stay true. Maybe forever.

Thankfully, the topic of liquid food took Rory back to when she was a preteen and had her braces tightened monthly. "Thank God for Luke and Sookie! Without them, I would have eaten nothing but jello and milkshakes for two days every month! Not exactly starvation, I know, but there was no way I could eat blender take-out, which was all Mom could come up with. She burnt up Sookie's blender trying to do it, too!"

"Oh, man!" Jess laughed, relieved that the exploration and interview had come to a close. He even shared some of his own kid-on-a-liquid-diet, crazy horror stories - the apartment sprayed soaked with canned soup, the stomach-churning baby food through a straw, and so forth.

When Luke came up for his every-other-day pocket knife retrieval, he stopped with a stunned but glad look on his face, hearing Rory's laughter and seeing Jess in full story-mode, complete with one-handed, wild gestures. He exhaled a kind of a laugh and didn't bother with the pocket knife.

Better if they didn't particularly notice he'd come in. Better that they stayed happy like they were. He'd never...absolutely never heard Jess just sit and talk like this. Rory beamed like nothing he'd ever seen, despite the semi-gruesome descriptions, like some kind of a shell had fallen away from her, and Jess... Wow, was Rory good for him!

Luke closed the door quietly behind him and came down the stairs with his eyes twinkling.

Lorelai looked half-worried.

"You didn't bring anything down. Why didn't you bring anything down? You might actually manage to keep them on guard if they can't set their watches by you, and you don't keep losing the mustard!"

One corner of his mouth lifted and the twinkling eyes regarded her for half a second while he refilled the napkin dispensers.

"They're fine."

A/N: I'd love to hear what you think.