Title: The Hyena at the Back of the Pack
Author: Dala
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rory/Jess
Archive: Ask me if you'd like it
Setting: Post-"They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?", otherwise known as the Dance Marathon; specifically, the Monday morning after
Feedback: Please? This is my first (and probably only) "Gilmore Girls" fic, so I'm really needy
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of this fanfic belong to the creators and the WB, yadda yadda, I make no profits, etc.
Rory was dreaming about having a game of croquet with Carl Sandburg when the phone rang. Diving under the pillows, she wished it a thousand curses and waited for somebody -- Lorelai, one of Babette's gnomes, the Pope, *anyone* -- to pick it up. There was a distinct bang, no doubt her mother dropping something heavy in the kitchen, before the phone was cut off mid-ring. She breathed a sigh of relief into her pillow and started to drift off back to sleep, trying to find the same dream. It had been full of imagery and she suspected that the balls might soon turn into hedgehogs, which was always fun.
Thus she was a bit disappointed when Lorelai shook her shoulder gently. "For you, Blue."
"Nghhhh," Rory said.
Lorelai, correctly interpreting this to mean "It's too early and I feel like barfing," said softly, "I think you want to take this call."
Rory finally poked her head out and blinked up at her mother. "Who 's it?" she croaked, rubbing her throat. If it was Lane, the drum set was a goner.
Lorelai said nothing, only held out the silent phone. Rory blinked and looked closer at her face. Uh-oh. Definitely like one of the Unhappy Faces, and it bore a strong resemblance to the Jess and My Daughter Face.
Sighing, Rory groped for the phone and muttered, "Hello."
"Morning."
She groaned. "Jess, this is the kind of hour they call 'unGodly'."
"Aren't we a little packet of sunshine? Besides, you're supposed to be getting ready for school right now."
She would not be surprised if he'd memorized her entire schedule. Because it was Jess, this failed to creep her out; normally it would have given her a guilty thrill, but she hadn't the energy for that at the moment. "I'm sick."
Jess shifted the phone from one ear to the other, feeling a little bad about waking her. Luke glanced up from frying eggs to fix Jess with an exasperated look. Of course he'd had the bad judgment to use the diner phone. He turned his back to his uncle.
"Yeah, I can hear that. You've got a whole Lauren Bacall thing going." Jess paused for effect before adding a deadpan, "Sexy."
Despite herself, Rory felt a grin twitch at the corners of her mouth. Lorelai, on the other hand, was not smiling, and she clearly refused to leave Rory alone with Jess's voice.
"Listen, if you just called for the weird half-compliment thing, can we reschedule?"
"Why? Is the anti-Christ recording this conversation in order to play it backwards at a later date?"
"Jess." This time her voice was absolutely sincere. "That's not exactly the sort of comment that gets you brownie points with me." This reminded Rory of her own truncated Girl Scout career, but it obviously alarmed Lorelai a great deal, because she crossed and re-crossed her arms over her chest four times in a row.
"Sorry," Jess said immediately. Now would just be the perfect time to fuck things up. "I was actually calling to see if you wanted to do something this afternoon, but I guess that's out."
Behind him, Luke cleared his throat, tapped a prepared plate, and stabbed his finger in the direction of a waiting table. Jess mouthed an "okay already" before turning his attention back to Rory.
"Jess," she said with a heavy sigh, secretly thinking how good it felt to say his name without all the mixed emotions and pain of the last few months, "I'd really like to go back to sleep now."
"You're staying home?"
"Yes," Rory said through gritted teeth. He may have been . . . special, was the word she would use, but that did not interfere with her ability to grump at him. "In my Loony Tunes pajamas, with a bottle of Robitussin next to my bed, since you're so interested."
"Call you later, then?"
That was *it*? No 'I hope you feel better,' no 'drink lots of fluids,' no 'aww, poor baby'?
It suddenly occurred to Rory, for the umpteenth time since yesterday morning, that she and Jess had some definite talk-time coming up.
"Sure," she said. Jess hung up and Rory relinquished the phone. She waited for the storm to break.
"That was Jess," Lorelai said in a clipped tone.
"Uh-huh," Rory replied, voice once again muffled by pillow.
"Is he *aware* that you're sick, that you need your sleep?"
"He wasn't, which is pretty much why I said 'I'm sick.' And Mom, *you're* keeping me from sleep right now."
Lorelai began to pace, twisting the phone in her hands. "He *disturbed* your *rest*!"
"How dare he," said Rory in a tone of mock indignation, abandoning her down tunnel long enough to roll her eyes. "I'm not exactly on my deathbed here."
"But you could be!" Lorelai cried with an expansive arm motion. "What if you were deathly ill with scarlet fever or -- or syphilis -- "
"Syphilis?" her daughter replied doubtfully.
"Yes, syphilis," Lorelai repeated, "and plus, you're a massive insomniac and you've just spent six and a half hours trying to get to sleep, with your dear sweet mother's help of course -- I've given you warm milk and fluffed your pillows and sung you 'Swing low, sweet chariot'!"
"Mom," Rory said calmly, "promise me that under no circumstances will you *ever* sing 'Swing low, sweet chariot' to me."
Tripping over a stray boot did nothing to halt Lorelai's tirade. "This is serious, Rory! The boy has no regard for your feelings!"
"I don't see why you're attacking me right now!" Rory exclaimed.
"I'm not attacking!" Lorelai snapped. "If I were a hyena, I'd be that old sickly one in the back of the pack that's scared of its own smell and never attacks anything!"
"A hyena. Right."
Lorelai mercifully stopped pacing and plopped herself down in a chair, looking very put-out. "I could be a hyena."
"Of course you could," said Rory soothingly, sitting up now. "Look, can we please get into the whole Jess thing later?" She coughed and Lorelai instantly dropped her anger.
Reaching over to hug Rory, she said, "I'm sorry, hon. I really am. I shouldn't have blown up at you like that when you're sick."
"And when I haven't done anything to deserve it," Rory added.
Lorelai pulled back and looked at her searchingly. She pursed her lips. "But you *are* going to do something, aren't you?" she said softly. "You're going to start seeing Jess."
Rory shrugged uncomfortably. It would take a lot of time and energy to get to the bottom of her feelings for Jess, and she wasn't sure that Lorelai would want to hear all of it. But the feelings, they were there, and they'd been there for a long time. She'd stopping hoping that they'd go away, and now that Dean had saved her the trouble of acting -- for which she was more ashamed than grateful -- she knew that she would have to explore those feelings.
"Yes," Rory replied, looking her mother in the eye, "I'm going to start seeing Jess."
Lorelai bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes for a moment. God, how much that frightened her. Rory was so different from Lorelai herself as a teenager, but how easy it would be to push her over the line, into rebellion, into making the sorts of choices that would affect the rest of her life. For the first time in their intensely close relationship, Lorelai would have to tread carefully because someone else was threatening to break the link. Dean was one thing. Lorelai was certain that Rory had genuinely loved him, and vice versa, but not even she could deny that the connection between Jess and Rory was different.
And Lorelai was terrified of it.
"Mom?" Rory's hesitant voice broke off her musings. Lorelai opened her eyes, smiling, and brushed Rory's hair back from her face.
"Okay."
Rory was understandably suspicious. Tilting her head to one side, she said warily, "Really?"
Lorelai took a deep breath. "I . . . I'm trying to be okay with it, Rory. I'm trying really hard."
Rory squeezed her hand. "I know you are, Mom. And I swear to you that whatever happens to Jess and me, you'll always know where we are, and I'll never sneak out of the house to see him, and we'll be . . . we'll be careful. About everything," she emphasized, remembering the car incident.
*You don't understand how easy it would be to break those promises, sweetheart*, Lorelai thought sadly. *And it wouldn't be your fault alone.*
Aloud she said, "Thank you for that. Can I get you anything before I leave? Coffee? A doughnut? World peace?"
Rory settled back into her blankets with a smile. "No, no, and I'll be working on that someday."
Lorelai paused at the doorframe, looking down at her sleepy child and feeling as though her heart would break for love. "I believe that, Rory. Call me at the Inn if you need anything." Rory murmured an assent.
After a moment she burst back into the room. "Um, one more thing."
Opening one eye, Rory said, "What?"
"Can I get some of that yellow 'Caution' tape to put across your forehead? Or better yet, across Jess's forehead? With thumbtacks?"
Rory waved a hand at her. "Knock yourself out."
"'Kay. Bye. Love you!" Lorelai darted across the bedroom to plant a kiss on Rory's forehead before finally leaving the room. Rory listened to the front door shut and the car start up before nodding off again. She was awakened not thirty seconds later by a tap on her window.
*What the hell?!* thought Rory, who didn't usually succumb to profanity. Dragging herself out of bed, she padded over to the window and drew the blinds to glare at the intruder.
"Hey," said Jess through the glass. "So you really do have Loony Tunes pajamas."
~~~~~~~~
(to be continued: look forward to crappy morning talk shows, chicken soup, discussions of the ugliest band in rock and roll, and phone calls from both Paris and Michel -- plus, of course, Literati cuteness :)
Author: Dala
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rory/Jess
Archive: Ask me if you'd like it
Setting: Post-"They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?", otherwise known as the Dance Marathon; specifically, the Monday morning after
Feedback: Please? This is my first (and probably only) "Gilmore Girls" fic, so I'm really needy
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of this fanfic belong to the creators and the WB, yadda yadda, I make no profits, etc.
Rory was dreaming about having a game of croquet with Carl Sandburg when the phone rang. Diving under the pillows, she wished it a thousand curses and waited for somebody -- Lorelai, one of Babette's gnomes, the Pope, *anyone* -- to pick it up. There was a distinct bang, no doubt her mother dropping something heavy in the kitchen, before the phone was cut off mid-ring. She breathed a sigh of relief into her pillow and started to drift off back to sleep, trying to find the same dream. It had been full of imagery and she suspected that the balls might soon turn into hedgehogs, which was always fun.
Thus she was a bit disappointed when Lorelai shook her shoulder gently. "For you, Blue."
"Nghhhh," Rory said.
Lorelai, correctly interpreting this to mean "It's too early and I feel like barfing," said softly, "I think you want to take this call."
Rory finally poked her head out and blinked up at her mother. "Who 's it?" she croaked, rubbing her throat. If it was Lane, the drum set was a goner.
Lorelai said nothing, only held out the silent phone. Rory blinked and looked closer at her face. Uh-oh. Definitely like one of the Unhappy Faces, and it bore a strong resemblance to the Jess and My Daughter Face.
Sighing, Rory groped for the phone and muttered, "Hello."
"Morning."
She groaned. "Jess, this is the kind of hour they call 'unGodly'."
"Aren't we a little packet of sunshine? Besides, you're supposed to be getting ready for school right now."
She would not be surprised if he'd memorized her entire schedule. Because it was Jess, this failed to creep her out; normally it would have given her a guilty thrill, but she hadn't the energy for that at the moment. "I'm sick."
Jess shifted the phone from one ear to the other, feeling a little bad about waking her. Luke glanced up from frying eggs to fix Jess with an exasperated look. Of course he'd had the bad judgment to use the diner phone. He turned his back to his uncle.
"Yeah, I can hear that. You've got a whole Lauren Bacall thing going." Jess paused for effect before adding a deadpan, "Sexy."
Despite herself, Rory felt a grin twitch at the corners of her mouth. Lorelai, on the other hand, was not smiling, and she clearly refused to leave Rory alone with Jess's voice.
"Listen, if you just called for the weird half-compliment thing, can we reschedule?"
"Why? Is the anti-Christ recording this conversation in order to play it backwards at a later date?"
"Jess." This time her voice was absolutely sincere. "That's not exactly the sort of comment that gets you brownie points with me." This reminded Rory of her own truncated Girl Scout career, but it obviously alarmed Lorelai a great deal, because she crossed and re-crossed her arms over her chest four times in a row.
"Sorry," Jess said immediately. Now would just be the perfect time to fuck things up. "I was actually calling to see if you wanted to do something this afternoon, but I guess that's out."
Behind him, Luke cleared his throat, tapped a prepared plate, and stabbed his finger in the direction of a waiting table. Jess mouthed an "okay already" before turning his attention back to Rory.
"Jess," she said with a heavy sigh, secretly thinking how good it felt to say his name without all the mixed emotions and pain of the last few months, "I'd really like to go back to sleep now."
"You're staying home?"
"Yes," Rory said through gritted teeth. He may have been . . . special, was the word she would use, but that did not interfere with her ability to grump at him. "In my Loony Tunes pajamas, with a bottle of Robitussin next to my bed, since you're so interested."
"Call you later, then?"
That was *it*? No 'I hope you feel better,' no 'drink lots of fluids,' no 'aww, poor baby'?
It suddenly occurred to Rory, for the umpteenth time since yesterday morning, that she and Jess had some definite talk-time coming up.
"Sure," she said. Jess hung up and Rory relinquished the phone. She waited for the storm to break.
"That was Jess," Lorelai said in a clipped tone.
"Uh-huh," Rory replied, voice once again muffled by pillow.
"Is he *aware* that you're sick, that you need your sleep?"
"He wasn't, which is pretty much why I said 'I'm sick.' And Mom, *you're* keeping me from sleep right now."
Lorelai began to pace, twisting the phone in her hands. "He *disturbed* your *rest*!"
"How dare he," said Rory in a tone of mock indignation, abandoning her down tunnel long enough to roll her eyes. "I'm not exactly on my deathbed here."
"But you could be!" Lorelai cried with an expansive arm motion. "What if you were deathly ill with scarlet fever or -- or syphilis -- "
"Syphilis?" her daughter replied doubtfully.
"Yes, syphilis," Lorelai repeated, "and plus, you're a massive insomniac and you've just spent six and a half hours trying to get to sleep, with your dear sweet mother's help of course -- I've given you warm milk and fluffed your pillows and sung you 'Swing low, sweet chariot'!"
"Mom," Rory said calmly, "promise me that under no circumstances will you *ever* sing 'Swing low, sweet chariot' to me."
Tripping over a stray boot did nothing to halt Lorelai's tirade. "This is serious, Rory! The boy has no regard for your feelings!"
"I don't see why you're attacking me right now!" Rory exclaimed.
"I'm not attacking!" Lorelai snapped. "If I were a hyena, I'd be that old sickly one in the back of the pack that's scared of its own smell and never attacks anything!"
"A hyena. Right."
Lorelai mercifully stopped pacing and plopped herself down in a chair, looking very put-out. "I could be a hyena."
"Of course you could," said Rory soothingly, sitting up now. "Look, can we please get into the whole Jess thing later?" She coughed and Lorelai instantly dropped her anger.
Reaching over to hug Rory, she said, "I'm sorry, hon. I really am. I shouldn't have blown up at you like that when you're sick."
"And when I haven't done anything to deserve it," Rory added.
Lorelai pulled back and looked at her searchingly. She pursed her lips. "But you *are* going to do something, aren't you?" she said softly. "You're going to start seeing Jess."
Rory shrugged uncomfortably. It would take a lot of time and energy to get to the bottom of her feelings for Jess, and she wasn't sure that Lorelai would want to hear all of it. But the feelings, they were there, and they'd been there for a long time. She'd stopping hoping that they'd go away, and now that Dean had saved her the trouble of acting -- for which she was more ashamed than grateful -- she knew that she would have to explore those feelings.
"Yes," Rory replied, looking her mother in the eye, "I'm going to start seeing Jess."
Lorelai bit her bottom lip and closed her eyes for a moment. God, how much that frightened her. Rory was so different from Lorelai herself as a teenager, but how easy it would be to push her over the line, into rebellion, into making the sorts of choices that would affect the rest of her life. For the first time in their intensely close relationship, Lorelai would have to tread carefully because someone else was threatening to break the link. Dean was one thing. Lorelai was certain that Rory had genuinely loved him, and vice versa, but not even she could deny that the connection between Jess and Rory was different.
And Lorelai was terrified of it.
"Mom?" Rory's hesitant voice broke off her musings. Lorelai opened her eyes, smiling, and brushed Rory's hair back from her face.
"Okay."
Rory was understandably suspicious. Tilting her head to one side, she said warily, "Really?"
Lorelai took a deep breath. "I . . . I'm trying to be okay with it, Rory. I'm trying really hard."
Rory squeezed her hand. "I know you are, Mom. And I swear to you that whatever happens to Jess and me, you'll always know where we are, and I'll never sneak out of the house to see him, and we'll be . . . we'll be careful. About everything," she emphasized, remembering the car incident.
*You don't understand how easy it would be to break those promises, sweetheart*, Lorelai thought sadly. *And it wouldn't be your fault alone.*
Aloud she said, "Thank you for that. Can I get you anything before I leave? Coffee? A doughnut? World peace?"
Rory settled back into her blankets with a smile. "No, no, and I'll be working on that someday."
Lorelai paused at the doorframe, looking down at her sleepy child and feeling as though her heart would break for love. "I believe that, Rory. Call me at the Inn if you need anything." Rory murmured an assent.
After a moment she burst back into the room. "Um, one more thing."
Opening one eye, Rory said, "What?"
"Can I get some of that yellow 'Caution' tape to put across your forehead? Or better yet, across Jess's forehead? With thumbtacks?"
Rory waved a hand at her. "Knock yourself out."
"'Kay. Bye. Love you!" Lorelai darted across the bedroom to plant a kiss on Rory's forehead before finally leaving the room. Rory listened to the front door shut and the car start up before nodding off again. She was awakened not thirty seconds later by a tap on her window.
*What the hell?!* thought Rory, who didn't usually succumb to profanity. Dragging herself out of bed, she padded over to the window and drew the blinds to glare at the intruder.
"Hey," said Jess through the glass. "So you really do have Loony Tunes pajamas."
~~~~~~~~
(to be continued: look forward to crappy morning talk shows, chicken soup, discussions of the ugliest band in rock and roll, and phone calls from both Paris and Michel -- plus, of course, Literati cuteness :)