A/N- It's funny how inspiration strikes for these. I'm just watching an episode, and suddenly it hits me how, if one single line had been changed, Jess and Rory's story might've had a very different ending. And while the ending of Swan Song definitely made the dinner fiasco worth it, I just can't help but think that it could've gone so much better.
Swan Song
Rory knows she can never hope for her grandmother to actually like Jess, but maybe if this dinner goes well, Emily Gilmore will at least approve of him. At least she was impressed, rather than put off, by Jess' disapproval of cell phones, so that's a good start at least. That's what she's thinking as she opens the door of the Gilmore house.
"What-?"
"Sorry I'm late," Jess mumbles, already feeling uncomfortable. It's bad enough having to show up for this stupid dinner in this stupid, prissy mansion, without having to do it with a black eye to round off the wonderful day he's been having.
"Oh, that's alright. Come in, come in, it's cold out," Emily commands, brushing right over Rory's opening to question him.
Opportunity lost, she instead does the polite thing. "Grandma, this is Jess," she says, closing the door behind him. "Jess, my grandmother."
"Nice to meet you."
"Same here," Jess says, feeling claustrophobic.
Rory can't put it off any longer. She has to know. "Uh, what happened to your eye?" she questions.
"It's a long story. I don't wanna bore you," he responds, just a little bit coldly. It's fucking embarrassing is what it is.
"Oh, this is new?" Emily asks, and Jess swears he can hear something mocking in her tone.
"Brand new," Rory answers for him.
"It looks bad. Does it hurt?"
Jess shakes his head. "I'm fine," he responds. Of course it hurts! It's a goddamn black eye!
"Is it why you were late?" Rory asks, unable to stop herself even though there's something in Jess' expression that tells her she shouldn't press it.
God, why can't Rory just leave it alone? he wonders. "No, uh, 84 was jammed," he responds.
"We knew that, too," Emily interjects. "There was something with a big rig. Oh! Those things, they scare the life out of me! And apparently all the men who drive them are hopped up on bennies and goofballs." Yeah, Liz had a boyfriend once who was a trucker, and 'hopped up' was just the right term to apply to him. "Come, come, have a seat at the table. I'll go check on dinner." She hurries away, and the room suddenly has more air in it, though he doesn't feel any better for that.
Jess is about to follow her out of the foyer, but Rory stops him. "Shouldn't we go with her?" he asks.
Rory hesitates. She has her suspicions about this black eye, about how he got it, and she's very, very certain that Dean gave it to him. Just as she's about to give voice to the thought, though, a little spark of conscience lights up in her mind. She should give Jess the benefit of the doubt. After all, she always trusted Dean implicitly, and she doesn't want to be the kind of girl who treats a new boyfriend any differently simply because her mother thinks she should. So rather than asking if he was in a fight, she instead asks, "Are you okay?"
"Not really," he responds, disproportionately grateful that she's asked, for once. "Physically I'm fine, though."
She shakes her head. "I know you don't really wanna be here," she begins, wishing that this had been scheduled any other Friday night.
Jess shrugs. "It was important to you," he mumbles, not able to look her in the eye.
Rory is more touched by his words than she can express out loud, so she just plants a soft kiss on his lips. "Thank you," she says quietly after the kiss. "Will you tell me later how you got that?"
He absolutely does not want to. "It's embarrassing," he says.
"Well now you're going to have to tell me," she responds in a teasing tone.
Jess gives her a look that tells her just how much he doesn't want to. "Maybe," he says in a low voice. "Look, let's not get into it now."
His behavior makes her suspicions worse, but she decides to let it slide until after dinner. It's more important to give her grandmother a good first impression of Jess than to make a big deal out of a little black eye, no matter how he got it. "Okay," she agrees, kissing him again.
"Your grandmother's waiting."
"Yes, I suppose she is."
The dinner goes... well. Surprisingly so. It's not exactly Brady Bunch material, Rory thinks, but Jess is reasonably polite and Emily is reasonably polite and no one shouts, so it's a step up from most Friday night dinners. Two hours later, they walk out of the Gilmore mansion. "Please never make me do that again," Jess groans, putting a hand on the small of her back as he steers her to the car.
"Hopefully meeting you will appease her," Rory agrees. The dinner might have gone well, but she felt tense and fidgety the entire time, terrified that the unexpected calm might be shattered at any moment by the wrong word from any party. "And if it doesn't, well, next time Grandpa will probably be home. He'll like you. He likes smart people."
"Good to know," Jess says. "So how'd we do?"
Rory smiles. "I don't think she'll be throwing flaming darts at your picture or making voodoo dolls with your hair anytime soon," she responds.
"Good to hear."
They drive home in relative silence, just the sound of the radio to fill the time. Eventually they arrive at the Crap Shack and he walks her to the door, which would seem alarmingly gentleman-like, except that she knows he's only doing it for the kiss. She leads him into the house, which surprises even herself, and they spend some time kissing deeply on the couch in the hopes that the others' mouth will be able to erase the bitter taste of a very nerve-wracking evening.
But now that the painful part of the evening has passed, she absolutely has to know. Breaking away from him, she asks, "So... are you gonna tell me what happened to your eye?"
"Nope."
"Then I'm going to have to guess. Caesar hit you in the face with a frying pan?"
"No."
"Hit in the eye with a ball?"
"No."
"Fight?"
He shakes his head. "Nope."
"You sure about that?"
"Been trying to put my Karate Kid days behind me," he says sourly.
"Please just tell me what happened!"
"Like I told you, it's embarrassing and I don't want to talk about it."
Rory tried a different tactic. "Would it help if I promised not to laugh?"
Something about her sincere tone sways him. "Fine. But you've got to promise not to mock me- ever- and... please don't tell anyone else."
"Promise."
Part of him wants to lie. He can think of at least three convincing stories off the top of his head. But at the last second he looks in her blue eyes and his heart does that stuttering thing he'll never admit to, and somehow the truth just falls accidentally out of his mouth. "I, uh... I got beaked in the eye by a swan." He looks away, too embarrassed to meet her eyes.
She stares at him and fights to hold back a smile, but she loses her battle. "A swan?" she stutters, her voice revealing just how much she wants to laugh. "Are you serious?"
"You promised not to mock me," he warns, sounding a little angry.
"The mocking has left the building," she affirms, and surprises him with a kiss.
Jess loses himself completely in the feel of the kiss as he feels that same impossible desire she always awakens flare up within him. Somehow they've become stretched out on the couch, her beneath him, hands wandering, mouths hot and open. He leaves her lips and kisses down the warm column of her neck, stopping when he reaches her collarbone. Her hands, tangled in his hair, pull gently to bring his mouth back up to find hers, and as soon as their lips are once again fused together, her hands abandon his hair. Tracing down the side of his face, down his neck, across his shoulders, they eventually settle on his chest and before he realizes what's happening, her nimble fingers are undoing the buttons on his shirt.
Though he's more turned on than he's ever been in his entire life, Jess pulls back in shock. "Rory...?" he asks, voice quivering just a little (he'll deny that later).
"Shhh," she tells him, smiling gently, and she continues to work on removing his shirt.
"What-?" He can't wrap his mind around what's happening. Surely she's not thinking what he's thinking...!
Rory looks up at him, propped up on his elbows above her, his expression stunned and just a bit confused, and she thinks his consternation is absolutely adorable (not that he'd appreciate the thought). But regardless of what she told her mother earlier, she has been thinking about it. A lot. And after everything that's happened tonight, she's suddenly sure. "I'm ready," she tells him.
Jess stares at her. "It's... your first time...?" It's not really a question. He knows she never had sex with Dean, but at the same time, he can't believe that this amazing, incredible girl is willing to give her virginity up for him.
She nods. "I want it to be you," she informs him frankly.
Jess feels himself instantly grow harder. "I, uh, I don't have a condom," he whispers sheepishly, trying very, very hard to stay sane and not succeeding particularly well.
"There are some upstairs," she tells him, kissing him softly. "I'll go get one."
He rolls off of her and allows her to get up from the couch, watching as she climbs the stairs. This whole event seems dreamlike, and he pinches himself to reassure himself that this isn't (yet another) incredible fantasy. It isn't.
A few minutes later Rory returns to the living room, and she hands him the little package she fished out of her mother's bedside drawer after very carefully checking and double-checking all the information on the box and making sure the foil hadn't been ripped from its stint in the drawer. She feels incredibly nervous, but she's also sure about this. It's right, with Jess. And so she kisses him again, more urgently this time, and he responds, pulling her full against him, and she feels all the evidence of his arousal through his jeans. His lips leave hers, tracing along her jawline, hitting all the delicate spots he knows will drive her mad. "Maybe we should take this somewhere else," he whispers in her ear. Rory's entire body erupts in goosebumps and she's incapable of speech, so she just nods and pulls him gently backward out of the living room, guiding him by instinct towards her bedroom as their lips lock again.
Her bed is small, but there's just room enough for both of them as they lie entwined. Rory wonders if Jess would be much of a cuddler if the bed were larger. Something about the way he always loves to be close to her says probably.
She feels his lips brush against her hair. "You okay?" he asks.
Rory nods, feeling too deliciously exhausted to summon words just now. He kisses the top of her head again, then pulls her closer. For many long moments, they lie like that, tangled together, both of them in a dreamy state of awe: Rory, because this was her first time and she's sorting out the new hyperreality she's discovered, and Jess because he's still trying to figure out how the hell he got this lucky.
When she feels his breathing even out, slipping towards sleep, she knows she has to find the energy to ask now or she'll lose her nerve when daylight comes. The curiosity has been prickling at her for some hours now, and she has to know. "Jess?" she whispers.
"Mm?"
"Did you mean it?"
"Mean what?" he murmurs.
She feels her face heat up. "Um... what you said. Earlier. When we were... you know..." He tenses in her arms and she instinctively puts a hand on his chest, soothing him.
Finally, after a long pause, he says, "Yeah, I meant it."
A brilliant smile breaks out across her face and she disentangles herself enough to kiss him quickly. When she pulls back, she's still grinning. "Just so you know," she says quietly, snuggling back up against him, "I love you, too."