Carpe Diem, Baby

-Fadeaway Windwaker-

"It is now my duty to completely drain you…" –Nirvana "Drain You"

She was never the same, after he left. She changed, and everyone could see it. And living in Stars Hollow meant that everyone knew why, too.

The heels of her shoes became longer as her skirts hiked up her thighs. The mouth that pouted was never without lipstick; the eyes that now gazed half-lidded into the darkest dusty corners with practiced seduction were always lined in midnight. The only thing that could have made her more striking was letting her hair down, something she refused to do because it was what he had liked about her.

She had a reputation for leading a guy on to the very brink, driving him wild with the gyrations of her hips and the breathy moans that escaped her painted mouth, only to break away and run before he could have her. It was hard to believe that she was still a virgin, with the way she got around, but she would only go to the very edge and no farther. It became a sort of contest to the male teenage population of Stars Hollow: who could get her closest to the act before she bolted.

She was waiting for him to come back, everybody assumed. She wanted him to be her first. Of course they never got any sort of confirmation of this-she seemed deaf to the whispers that started whenever she entered a public place-but they claimed they could see it in her eyes, that she was holding out for him. After all, they mused as they sipped their morning coffee, what other explanation could there be?

Some said it was her mother's influence. "She's taking after Lorelai," they nodded to each other, looking sympathetic. "The poor girl, really. She was so smart." And so they clucked their tongues in disapproval every time Lorelai passed through their sights, an action the Gilmore woman managed to ignore only because she did not want to push her daughter further than she had already gone. She believed it when the eighteen-year-old girl told her she was still a virgin, which was the only reason why she didn't try to talk her daughter out of anything she was doing.

It had started a few days after her second boyfriend left her, "breaking her heart," they said. But nobody could know what he had really done to her. Nobody could see how profoundly he had bruised her, how every breath after his departure came a little slower, needing to be pushed, as if she had forgotten how to do it on her own. The change in her was not only superficial. It dug deep, straight down to her heartstrings. It was in the blood that came when she bit her lip at night, calling out his name. It was in her eyes, once so sharp and blue, that were slowly turning gray with each day that passed where he did not return.

She wanted to be better for him when he came. She wanted to be what he wanted, fulfill his every desire. She wanted him to need her.

And so she altered her skirts, and she teased her hair, and she practiced.

Dean Forrester was the first.

She said he could let himself in and so he did, closing the door behind him and taking in the silence of the house. He took a step forward, moving towards her room. "Rory?" His voice sounded small and uncertain in the emptiness.

"Yes?" A soft voice came from his right, and he turned to see her leaning against the doorframe of the entrance to the kitchen. She was looking straight at him, one nearly bare leg curved around the edge of the wall. He took a deep breath at the sight, shuddering slightly with the momentum.

"Rory?" He wondered how long she had been staring at him. He swallowed hard, his heart seeming to skip. "What…what are you…" His eyes were fixed on the fluid movements of her body as she shifted positions.

A coy smile played on her glossy pink lips as she stretched out one vanilla leg, cropped denim skirt sliding even farther up her thigh. "You're acting like you've never seen a girl in a skirt before," she told him, looking directly into his eyes as she licked her lips. He felt a distinct stirring in his stomach and flinched, taking an involuntary step back. "Rory, I-"

"Came for your CD," she finished, twirling a piece of stray hair around her finger as she looked at him. "It's in my room." Her hand left her hair and traveled down, sweeping slowly over her chest and down to her stomach. Satisfaction flashed in her stare as she watched his eyes follow the movements, taking note of the way he swayed slightly, the way his fingers formed fists, as if holding himself back. His eyes slowly came back to hers and she looked at him pointedly. "Come get it," she said before disappearing behind the wall.

The thought of leaving was a brief one, and before he could stop himself he was moving towards her bedroom, his mind consumed by the strip of bare stomach peeking out from between her skirt and halter top. He and Rory had broken up several months ago but this seemed a trivial detail compared to the way her fingers teased him, touching everywhere he could not. Though their relationship had died off upon another boy's arrival his feelings for her had not, and right now the picture her seduction was painting in his mind was one far too tempting to taint with thoughts of what was right and wrong.

When he reached the door to her room he found it open, and the girl inside sitting on her desk chair with her legs spread wide, skirt leaving nothing to the imagination. Her tongue slid slowly over her upper lip, and before it could do the same to the bottom one he was pulling her from the chair and crushing her against him, kissing her with a harsh, forceful passion radically different from the gentle way he had cradled her cheeks when they were boyfriend and girlfriend. For she was not his former girlfriend, Rory Gilmore, anymore.

She was Lorelai Leigh, a temptress, and he was only her slave. She drove him wildly beyond the safe, careful boyfriend that he had been with her and twisted his actions around so that afterwards, when he looked back on it, he would barely be able to believe that it had happened.

He was leading her towards the bed, her legs wrapped around his waist and depending on his arms to hold her up. His hands traveled everywhere her fingers had been as she seduced him, raking up over her milky legs and under the thick fabric of her skirt, tracing patterns on her inner thigh and smiling at the way it made her breathing escalate. She was not willing to let him take control, however, and proved this when she rolled over and straddled him, grinding her hips against his.

"Rory," he murmured roughly, hands gripping her thighs, and her mouth curved in satisfaction. For that, her name, was what she wanted to hear. She remembered the coarse, whispery way in which he used to groan it in her ear, struggling to breathe regularly. It was the only time she ever felt she was what he wanted. Any girl could give him what she could, and most every girl could do it far better than she. But when he was moaning, in the very throes of passion, it was her name that he called out. And that was what kept her going. In those moments she was the one he begged for, no one else. That was what mattered.

She thrived on it. He had told her once that he loved her, before he left. And she had looked into his eyes, and started to believe that she could be enough for him.

"I love you, too, Jess," she had told him quietly, and then she was in his arms, and he was saying her name in her ear, rough and wet, and she was shaking with the shock of everything happening at once.

The sudden sensation of Dean's hands slipping up her chest and slowly removing her top jerked her out of the reverie, and she tore away, leaping from the bed and backing up against her door, breathing heavily. Her crystal blue eyes wide with tainted innocence studied him as she smoothed her nearly nonexistent skirt, trying to process what had happened and what she had done. It took him a moment to collect himself and realize his chest was free of her weight, and when his hands fell from roaming air he sat up and stared at her, unable to speak.

She was shaking, and for a moment he could see her again, Rory, what she used to be. The innocent bookworm, the pride and joy of Stars Hollow, heart untainted by the badness in the world. Then this image wavered and disappeared, and her expression was blank. She looked up at him. "You'd better go." Her voice was soft, defeated. He felt a sudden inclination to apologize, though she had been the one to spark the escapade. Instead he moved slowly, tentatively toward the door that supported her, watching as she moved wordlessly aside to let him pass.

"Rory, I-"

She shook her head, not wanting him to speak. "Go," she said simply. He sighed, resigning to her decision. She followed, keeping quiet until he had reached the front door and opened it. "Dean." He turned around, looking at the hands unconsciously playing with the hem of her shirt, not realizing the extra skin she was exposing. He tried to avert his eyes. She looked at him, her sapphire eyes glassy. "Don't forget me."

And then he was standing on her porch, the door closed behind him, and his head was spinning, and all he could remember was the picture of Rory sitting on her desk chair with her legs apart, waiting for him to come to her.

It would haunt his dreams for months afterward. He saw her less and less often after it happened, each time having to look a little longer to assure himself that it truly was her, Rory. She would not talk to him. He guessed she was ashamed.

If he only knew.

She was disgusted with herself afterwards, for panicking the way she did when she opened her eyes and realized it was Dean beneath her, and that he was about to take the next step. But blocking out the world and only feeling, listening as he moaned her name aloud, made her start to believe that it was Jess, the way things had been before, and finding out not only that it wasn't, but that it was her first boyfriend was too much to take. She guessed she should have started with someone easier, someone she could pick up off the streets, a nameless face to begin her practice. Even better was when the person did not know her name, and so could not speak it and start to lead her mind away.

Keeping these things in mind her second "victim," as the town liked to refer to those boys she pulled into side rooms and darkened corners, managed to progress past the point where she had stopped Dean, and the one after that even farther. And soon she was used to it, comfortable, and she became used to playing the role of the temptress. Her reputation spread like weeds in a flowerbed, and sometimes it was the males who came to her, hoping for a free ride. And though she played quite a game with their heads and their hormones, she would not let them take her.

It was almost a year later, a year since he had left. When she looked in the mirror she could finally see the kind of girl he wanted, the one who could give him the things he sought without questions or hesitation. And he was going to be the only one, the sole person she gave herself to.

When he came, she was ready.

He kept a picture of her in his pocket.

It was creased, and torn on one corner, and it made him feel stupid to be carrying it around, the way ostentatious parents carried pictures of their kids in their wallets to flaunt to random passers-by. But somehow he could not make himself let go, and in those moments when the pain started to still his heart he would reach in his pocket and grip it tight, squeezing it between his fingers, trying to feel her there. And he would hear her voice in his head, telling him that it was all right, it was going to be okay, and slowly his heart would start beating again.

He believed she saved his life like that.

It had been nearly a full year since he last entered Luke's diner but as the same annoying bell clanged above his head as he passed through the door he could see not much had changed. In a way this comforted him; change was too much and too often in the city, and it was calming to find that some things could stay familiar even after he had been gone so long. He was soon to recall this thought, and grimace at the irony behind it.

He was sitting at the counter drinking a coffee when she came in. He had his back to the door and heard the shrill of the bells, but did not care to look. It was only after he felt the hushed shadow that had fallen over the room that he turned around to see why time had stopped. At first glance his lungs stopped working.

She stood in the center of the diner, seeming unaffected by the silence her presence had thrown upon the crowd. Elegant black leather boots snaked up to her knees, a black mini skirt barely covered the slender vanilla of her thighs. Her top was tight, dark green, with three buttons from her collar to her chest, left undone. Pouty pink lips led up to sapphire orbs outlined in green and black shadows, slightly obscured by the wavy chestnut tresses that fell from the bun on top of her head. He shook his head slightly, trying to remember how to breathe.

Her eyes swept the perimeter of the room, seeming to search every place but where he sat, staring at the picture of seduction she made. When the half-lidded sky blue orbs finally landed on his figure there was no change in her expression; she simply sidled over to him and draped herself over one shoulder.

"Follow me," she whispered in his ear, pressing her chest against his back. He gripped the counter, trying to fight the shiver that shot through his body at her moist breath on his skin. When he had left he had convinced himself that his feelings for this girl had faded; he had not come to Stars Hollow to pick up with her where they had left off. He had decided on the bus to find some semblance of closure, figuring he owed her that much, but nothing else. Now, watching her figure disappear behind the curtain and up the stairs to Luke's apartment, he realized that his affections were not nearly as diminished as he'd thought. Slowly, legs that weren't his own rose from the stool and traced her footsteps.

When he opened the door he found her leaning lazily against the far wall, her eyes fixed on his as she twirled a piece of loose hair around her finger. "Jess…" she breathed, staring as if he were a figment of her imagination. "I've waited…I've waited so long…" She reached up, pulling a tie from her hair and letting it fall to her shoulders. He watched, mesmerized. Then he shook his head.

The initial shock had worn off, and he was realizing that this was not Rory Gilmore, the girl he had loved and left behind. The woman who stood before him was someone he did not recognize, and though her appearance tempted him he found himself drawing away…she was not what he remembered, and uncertainty kept him rooted to the spot.

She realized this after a few seconds and so she came to him, playing the one step forward, one step back game until he was up against the door and she was pressing into him, her lips against his ear. "It's me, Jess," she murmured, fingers sneaking around to the back of his head and threading through his hair. She brought her eyes up to look into his, blinking lazily. "Don't you want me?" Her hands swept over his shoulders, down his chest to the waistband of his jeans. He inhaled shakily as her fingers began working the single button and reached out, grabbing her wrists before she could get it undone. Her eyes met his once more, and confusion colored them gray before they slipped back into blank cobalt.

"I changed for you," she whispered solemnly. She shifted, slipping one of her legs in between his and watching the careful way in which he closed his eyes, inhaling sharply and trying to pretend this did not affect him. Her index fingers bent and made little circles on his hands, slower and slower until the motion made him shudder and he released her wrists, trying to catch his breath.

"R-Rory," he choked out, flinching as she moved her leg slowly up and down, rubbing against his inner thighs. "What are you doing?"

She stared straight into his eyes as one hand slid over her breast and down to the bottom of her shirt, where she proceeded to slowly raise the fabric an inch at a time. "What does it look like I'm doing?" she asked quietly, taking one of his hands and pressing it to her bare stomach, pleased with the way his breathing escalated. She leaned in, waves of rich chestnut hair swaying as she moved, teasing the skin of his throat. "I'm hurting you," she breathed roughly in his ear.

Her mouth covered his before he could reply, taking advantage of the fact that he had opened it to speak. Any logical thought that his brain had been hopelessly forming was banished, memory sweeping over him like a song, confusing him in that he knew the lyrics but could not recall the melody. His hands slid to her waist, fitting perfectly around her hips. He sensed the futility of fighting in her kiss, in the way her tongue drove itself through his mouth, and so decided to wait until she needed to breathe to refuse her advances.

This would have been easy enough with Rory Gilmore, but with Lorelai Leigh it would be entirely different. For when she came away to take a breath her mouth would not stray more than an inch from his, and her hands moved to slip under his shirt, and he was so distracted by the hot, moist breath on his chin and the fingers slipping across his chest that the moment of opportunity came and went before he was even aware of its presence. And then her lips connected with his again, and by this time it was too late.

Or almost. He tried, one more time. When her mouth left his and went down to his throat, burying and kissing deep into his neck, he tried. "Rory," he spoke, voice hoarse but still firm. "Rory, stop." His hands came to her shoulders and attempted to push her away but she was holding him too tightly, and would not be moved. Instead she continued sprinkling fire across his skin, prolonging each motion, each sweep of her tongue. "Rory," he grunted, low in his throat, his breathing shallow. "Stop. We can't do this."

She looked up, her sapphire eyes discolored with a wild shine that he didn't recognize. She shook her head, slowly. "I've waited too long," she told him tonelessly. She tried to pull her shirt up over her head but his hand shot out and stopped her. She then began swinging her hips, gently, gently, swaying back and forth, captivating him. "I'm what you want now, Jess." She bent her head, spirit of a kiss across his throat. "So take me."

"No." He shook his head, trying to step around her. "I won't."

For the second time that day the confusion flickered in her depths, slightly more noticeable. He thought he saw them turn wet. "What? Am I not enough? I can change," she told him, staring in his eyes. "Tell me how."

"Rory…" His head was spinning, dizzy with astonishment. "Why? Why are you doing this?"

"Because," and her voice broke, the first authentic sign of emotion he'd seen since they were in the diner. "I want to be what you want." She was crumbling now, falling against him and burying her face in his shoulder. "I wasn't good enough before. That's…that's why you left me."

"Rory…" He couldn't say anything else. His arms moved to embrace her, caressing her hair and back as her body shivered with dry tears. For several minutes she just shook, clutching at his shirt sleeves and trying to steady herself. Then her voice came again, small and whispery.

"You left me, and I waited…I waited so long. No one would say my name, and it was hard to breathe. I needed to make myself better." She pulled away, looking out at him from red-rimmed eyes, rivers of midnight flowing down her cheeks. "It was for you, Jess," she whispered quietly, gesturing at her appearance. "It was all for you. And now…now I'm just like all the other girls." A slow, hesitant hand came up to his face, stroking his cheek as fresh tears streamed down. "Why don't you want me?"

He was silent for a moment, cradling the broken spirit in his arms. Then he gently lifted her from the ground and carried her to the bed, sitting down and pulling her into his lap. He kissed the top of her head unconsciously, as if in a trance. Then he took one of her hands and held it, running his thumb over her knuckles. He lifted her chin, and looked into her eyes. "You shouldn't wear eye makeup if you're going to cry like that," he told her quietly.

She threw her arms around his neck, embracing him with the last strains of energy she possessed. Her chest heaved, choking on laughter and sorrow. "Did you love me?"

"I did," he told her softly. "I always did."

"But you didn't want me," she clarified, looking at him carefully.

"Rory!" He groaned. "It's not a matter of 'wanting' somebody. It's not about you giving me what I want. You loved me. You shouldn't have had to change."

"But I have," she insisted, broken. She studied him, trying to read his eyes. "I'm not the person you loved anymore, am I?"

He took a deep breath, his heart shifting. "No." He looked at her, shaking his head tentatively. "You're not Rory."

She looked down at his hand, fingers interlocked with her own. "I still love you."

"I know you do."

Her eyes came to meet his. "Could I ever be her again?"

He gripped her hand tighter, wondering if he would be able to let go when the time came. "She's still in you." His free hand reached into his pocket, clutching at the picture, the angel of his first love. "You can bring her back."

Her eyes shone with a tentativeness characteristic of the Rory he had known. "You won't leave me?"

He sighed, falling back into the bed and bringing her with him. His arm came around her waist, holding her tightly. "No…I won't." She moved in closer against him, their noses brushing against each other. They lay in silence for a few moments before she spoke.

"Jess…" Her voice was careful, like she was afraid about how he would respond. She reached out, playing with the top button on his collar. "Why did you love me?"

He looked at her without blinking. "Why are you asking me that?"

"Because…I want to know how to change." He shook his head at her, loosening his grip slightly. Fear flashed in her eyes and he sighed, reaffirming his hold to keep her calm.

"Just let her come, Rory," he told her gently, reaching over and brushing rebel strands out of her eyes. "Don't push anything."

The girl beside him closed her eyes and breathed deliberately, in and out until he was falling asleep listening to the rhythm. Just as his eyes were closing he heard her speak.

"I feel her coming," she told him reverently, eyes still closed. She gripped his hand, as if needing support.

He squeezed her hand back, smiling slightly in spite of himself. The innocence in her face was something he had always liked about her. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." She smiled. She opened her eyes and turned to him. "She doesn't know much about love." Jess reached out a hand and rubbed out a smudge of mascara under her eye, letting his thumb linger on the sensitive area.

"That's why I'm going to teach her."

A/N: I never get tired of this. Really.