Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N - been in the mood for a melodramatic/miserablist/run in circles kind of story. You've been warned.

He runs a hand through his hair, then flips a cigarette out of the pack. Two more smokes. He casts a look at the 24-minimarket across the street.

It's almost eight, she must be out any minute now. It's getting dark and the street is starting to sink into the usual Friday night afterwork fuss. People hurrying towards lives they tossed away just so they could reach their high placed life goals. How oxymoronic is that?

Sometimes he wonders if they are those irreplaceable parts of each other's self destruction plan. Whenever he needs to feel alive, she's the blade that manages to stab him to awareness. Whenever he needs to feel anything at all. She's that blade.

The streetlamps light on one by one. A bunch of her colleagues go out of the building. He recognizes a face or two. Not that it matters if he knows any of those career-set, coffee-high yuppies. He's above that. Above money. Or career. Or ambition. Above normalcy. He's a low-paid independent columnist for that short story subsection of a worldly unknown daily, aiming to live and die unnoticed. And he'll never really admit it, but he envies each small careerist soul, set out to find its place in a world of greed and power and dictated thinking. He envies how simple small people lives are, how simple their aims. He envies them, while despising them immensely. He's such a snob about snobs. Unlike her. She's an universal fit, a natural people-pleaser. Rory Gilmore, Ivy League graduate and good granddaughter of Emily. It almost sounds like an eulogy.

He puffs out the smoke and tastes a portion of March New York air. It's crispy and thick with dirt and smells like disappointment. She came here to shine. He came here to hide. Seems like both were wrong.

He casts another look at her office. Seventh floor, fourth window to the left. The lights are still on.

Time after time, he promises himself this has to stop. Tomorrow, maybe. Yeah, tomorrow this is finally gonna end. He's gonna stop waiting around, stop lurking, stop hoping. This is gonna end.

Or not. Tomorrow has been due forever. This twisted routine they share has been going on for several months now. Started one October night, after they got drunk. He sent her home, she teased him about that book she still owed him and he never got back, and he went upstairs to take it. As he waited, leaning back against the doorframe, he watched her sway towards the kitchen and thought her corridor was really narrow. She came back, carrying said book, but instead of giving it to him, she leaned on the opposite side of the doorframe, twiddling with the paperback in her hands. He kept staring at her. He always stared at her. Even when he wasn't looking. His mind was so damn fixed on her.

Why did you come here?

To your apartment?

To New York.

Needed some space.

From Philly?

In general. Plus, you asked me to, remember?

That's right. She had been in between jobs, in between boyfriends, and she called him to whine. She asked him to come, just for the weekend, sort her out with one of his trademark friendly yelling sessions. The weekend stretched into a week. He had his return ticket for tomorrow morning.

I did ask you, didn't I?

Rory, what is this about?

I want you to stay.

What?

I want you to stay here, in New York.

You're drunk.

Not enough.

You know what? I'm outta here.

He went out, leaving her in her much too narrow corridor, holding the book with a title he couldn't remember anymore. He went into the elevator, pressing the ground floor button repeatedly. When it reached the foyer, the doors slid open and he just stood there, looking at the doorman blindly. Sir, you okay? He blinked confusion away, then finally pressed fifth floor again, finding her at the exact same spot he had left her in.

Why did you tell me all this?

Because this last week has been the best thing about New York since I came here.

Every day, he promises this has to stop. He's never been good at keeping a promise, anyway.

There's something delicious about the way she destructs each piece of determination in him. Something personal about the way she can cause those shifts with the slightest of effort. One look. One sigh. A whispered word or two. You wouldn't believe the gravity her eyelashes possess. That's all it takes to have him hanging off the tip of her little finger again. He's used to that sour feeling, the one she leaves in each bittersweet scar. There's something in her cruelty that feels familiar. It's similar to how cruel he is to himself. And it feels right. Kind of.

It all started that October night, after they got drunk. But it didn't. It started years ago, when he saw a picture. And then she was sitting on a wooden chair. When she asked him to trust her.

I don't even know you.

Well, don't I look trustworthy?

Maybe.

It felt like the most natural thing on Earth. Big mistake.

He inspects the lit cigarette in his hand and wonders of he's always been that bad at leaving bad habits. He lifts the smoke to his lips and closes his mouth around the thin piece of poison as he hangs his head back. Then pulls a long drag and remembers he's still alive.

I'm leaving you tonight, he whispered in her hair last week.

You're gonna hang around like crazy, trying to get me out of your head, she answered, and the bluntness of her answer caught him by surprise.

You know me that well? he rose an eyebrow.

She shook her head, a sad smile on her lips.

I know me.

They made love twice that night.

Love, huh? He never brought himself to call it anything else. At least in his head. He liked to tease her, saying she was in for a raw fuck, a manipulative liar hiding behind the good girl exterior.

Just to make her crazy, he would talk dirty. Or rude. Or spiteful. She was making believe. She was never really fitted to the big bad world of journalism. She was just a lonely Stars Hollower in New York and he was that temporary mend for her broken small-town illusions. Sex was a distraction from a life she didn't want for herself. He couldn't make himself really believe it, of course. It would kill him to. Because there were those moments when she would press her palm against his cheek and he would close his eyes and lean in. And she wouldn't say a word, but there would be that shift in her eyes, a brief stolen moment he would try to remember later on, when lying alone in that same bed she would leave early next morning.

You can be so unbelievably nice.

When am I not?

When you pretend to be a brute.

You can cut your hand slapping that face.

I can cut my hand caressing it and the damage will be just the same, Sherlock.

He leans back against the building opposite her block of flats. When did it get so late? It's three hours since she went out of her office building and caught a cab. He took that long walk his feet knew too well. Her office. Her apartment. Forty minutes walk. You're gonna hang around going crazy, trying to get me out of your head. He narrows his eyes as he pulls another drag.

Why are we doing this? she had asked once.

He had shrugged. Does it matter?

Maybe it's fate. We couldn't make it work once. We're lost in our efforts trying.

That's crap, he shook his head. You can't blame one's stupidity on fate.

He loved how her breath hitched for a second. The stiffness of her jaw as she gave him that look. That stung, full of surprise look. He loved each small evidence that he could affect her. That maybe he could leave a mark. He was always afraid she was unaffected.

She had tried to set her rules. He had done his best to break each of them.

I thought we agreed not to bring our work here.

He had ignored her, continuing his furious typing. She had muttered something inaudible and went to bed. He was surprised to hear her talk in her sleep, hours later, tearing his attention off the screen of his laptop. When she suddenly woke up and called his name, his stomach jumped. A sudden reminiscence he existed.

Jess?

Again.

Jess...

That was his name, right?

It was late and he had barely looked at her since she came up in the hotel room after that business dinner she'd been attending. Her hair was still up in that complex bun she wore on those meetings, her make-up slightly smudged from the pillow. She had fallen asleep while waiting for him to finish whatever he was writing.

Come here.

Train a puppy, he thought, but her voice came out desperate.

Come.

Woof. His body obeyed before his brain had enough time to mock her sudden vulnerability and he found himself next to her, his arms closing round her by their own will. Instead of sticking it in her face, he caught that moment of need and wrapped it in his arms, holding on to it. He was just that naive.

Stay.

Okay.

Stay with me.

I hate I can't leave.

Okay. Stay though.

I hate this.

Show me how much.

She couldn't hear his voice anymore. There was only blazing light behind her lids and the feel of his body sheltering hers.

Make this last.

Make it stop.

She would often try to do this, hide in him. Relish into the feeling of burning inside out. Because she's afraid she has become cold. She came to New York to shine, build a self she has been planning out for years, but all that time she's been feeling like a lie. He is the only true thing in this sleepless city, a constant she couldn't, wouldn't erase.

As to him, it's just scratching an itch. An itch in the heart. His heart just needs to feel close to something, anything. Anything that feels true. And absurd, and close, and so many things at once.

They tried living together, but it only resulted into a disastrous succession of feisty fights. They tried breaking up, but it only lasted this far. A week. A plane ticket. A wordless phone call. And as life goes on, measuring time between two goodbyes, each circle leaves them swearing there won't be another round. And then there is another. Maybe, tomorrow, they're gonna finally end this. But tomorrow has been due forever.