A/N- Mostly up to this point I've been writing Important, Earth-Shattering Scenes of Importance for this series. Yeah. This one, however, is a bit different. Rather than being a rewrite that would alter Jess and Rory's many tiny endings, this little gem is my way of giving them a better beginning. No, not Nick & Nora, silly! The real beginning! Just me setting a different tone for the start of their relationship, something I've wanted to do for awhile. Blame Luke and his stupid sweater comment for this one.
I think, all in all, it's maybe a bit too sappy (okay, a LOT too sappy), but I've really been hitting the Jess-is-a-Marshmallow hypothesis hard lately, so you get what you get. I actually have a very extensive marshmallow analogy for anyone who wants to hear it.
Let The Games Begin
The cigarette in his hand is staring at him. He swears it is.
Jess has been leaning against the gas pump, staring at the cigarette- the one that's staring back- for about five minutes now and he's about to lose his mind with nerves. He's starting to feel a little pathetic.
Scratch that. A lot pathetic.
He's never been this way over a girl before. He's good-looking and he knows it, and back in New York, that was sufficient to get him any girl he took a passing fancy to. This, though... different. There's probably a word for this stupid mushy feeling that Rory Gilmore gives him, but he's not going to think about it. Every time his wandering thoughts get close, the way they did that day in New York all those months ago, klaxons go off in his head and he shuts down on the thought, on the feeling, before things get out of hand. Jess Mariano wasn't meant to fall.
Except he is.
And then suddenly she's approaching from the corner of his vision, and he straightens up to look at her more fully and that stupid XTC song that always kind of annoyed him on the radio is playing in his head and he sees her eyes and he's gone..
Rory swallows hard against the bubbly excitement threatening to deprive her to coherency. "So are you going to smoke that or mind-meld with it?" she asks, nodding to the cigarette he was studying so intently just seconds before.
"Depends," he says with a shrug.
"So where's the part for your car?" Rory asks, even though she knows it was a lie and he knows it was a lie and they both know the other knows it was a lie. He gives her that infuriatingly adorable smirk of his in response.
"Huh. I dunno. Gypsy said she was gonna leave it for me," he says, looking around in an ostentatious, superficial display of concern. He likes this, the way they know what they're saying even when they're using words so far removed from what they mean, they might as well be speaking Esperanto. "Guess she forgot."
Rory has to fight to contain her grin. "She's bad that way."
Jess pushes away from the gas pump, stepping closer to her. "Guess I'll just have to take my business elsewhere," he says.
"Looks that way," she mumbles, fighting to keep her sanity as he and the melt-inducing smirk grow nearer.
And now he's lost for words. Again. He's a quiet person by nature, but it's confounding to him how she always manages to shut his brain down and fill up the space with her, depriving him of anything worth saying. "So," he says, just to fill the silence.
"So," she responds.
"Here we are," he tells her, feeling a sense of deja vú from this morning.
A smile escapes the self-control she's exerted over her expression. "Yeah. Here we are." But now the pressure of his gaze becomes too much, as it always does, and she has to look down at her feet to avoid turning scarlet from the thoughts his eyes provoke.
As her eyes turn down, Jess finds himself also looking away bashfully and knows that if the person he was a year and a half ago could see him now, he'd soundly beat himself.
"So what's your decision about smoking that depending on?" Rory asks, needing to say something.
Their eyes meet again. "On what's gonna happen," he tells her, because he's feeling stupid and romantic and there's that mushy feeling again.
"When?" she asks. She knows what he'll say, but she still wants to hear him say it.
"Now," he says.
And then, without either one quite knowing how they got there, it's happening. Jess marvels at the feel of her lips beneath his, warm and responsive and sweet, at her tiny hands wandering across his shoulders and eventually into his hair. He nearly loses his breath from the softness of the moment, and has to pull her closer to get it back.
They slide apart slowly, and Jess rests his forehead against hers. "I'm glad you didn't smoke it," she breathes out, and as she meets his gaze she's amazed by the delighted smile on his face. She's never seen him smile like this before. That delectable smirk, yes. His scowl to be directed at the vast majority of townies, certainly. An occasional upward twitch of his lips, as if a grin were fighting to escape but couldn't quite make its way through, rarely. But this was something new to her- this open, honest, happy smile- and she wants to see it there more often.
"Oh yeah?" Jess says, feeling his insides jump excitedly. He can't help but want to taste her again, and fumbles to slide the cigarette back into his pocket even as he's reaching for her.
The kiss is deeper this time. They've established familiarity, and this time it's less about exploring than it is connecting. She presses herself close to him before he can even think about pulling her in.
When they break away from each other at last, it's because neither of them can stand the heights to which their heartbeats have been elevated any longer. Jess takes her hands as they move back the tiniest fraction, holding onto her, and she can't help but smile a little at the sweetness of the gesture. This is so much better than kissing Dean...
At that thought, guilt hits her. She shouldn't feel guilty, should she? After all, this is a perfectly legitimate tryst. She's free to kiss whomever she pleases (as long as that someone is Jess). She glances away, trying to reign in her explosive emotions.
He sees her expression change, and panic floods his gut. Suddenly it's hitting him that, because he has it, he can lose it, and he doesn't know what to do with that. He's never really had anything worth keeping before. "What?" he asks softly, praying she isn't suddenly, inexplicably, rethinking everything.
The smile goes away. As she brings her head around again to look at him, she suddenly finds herself able to read his eyes so clearly. He's terrified. For a moment, she wonders why, and then realizes that her face must have given away some of what she was thinking (her mother has always told her she has a very open face). It takes her by surprise that he's so invested in her; half of the reason she's feeling so guilty is because she knows she dragged so much on Dean's heart while she was pining for Jess, and the reason she was pining, rather than being with him, was because she was too unsure of Jess' feelings. Clearly, he's not as indifferent as she supposed.
"Nothing," she says, trying to soothe him. "It was, I just... I had a weird thought for a second, that's all."
Jess feels relief, and with it comes the urge to kiss her again. He's not sure he'll ever get enough, now that he's allowed to do it. And so he does just that, a softer kiss than before. She tastes like coffee and Juicy Fruit and peach and it's making him feel positively giddy, which is not something he's used to. It's definitely something he could grow to like, though, he thinks as her fingers once again bury themselves in his hair.
This time the kiss only ends when they're both completely breathless and too oxygen-deprived to continue.
"You wanna walk around for awhile?" he asks.
Rory smiles. "For awhile," she agrees. There's nothing she'd like better.
It's so natural for his arm to find its way around her waist, it feels like it belongs there. They walk for a few minutes in comfortable silence until they reach, predictably, the bridge. She glances up at him, giving him a smirk of her own. "Getting a bit repetitive, aren't we?" she teases. "Keep it up and you're gonna make me think you only know one good place to take a girl."
"Well, why mess with a good thing?" he deadpans.
She giggles and sits down in the middle of the bridge, pulling him down next to her. He settles in and they take to silently watching the little ripples across the surface of the lake. Jess doesn't feel the need to say anything, and she seems content to just enjoy the quiet as well.
After a few minutes, Jess notices that she's shivering. It's a pretty cold night, being November, and she must have left her sweater in the diner. Without thinking twice about it, Jess scoots closer to her and tucks her close to him, rubbing a hand up and down her arm to warm her.
Rory smiles at the gesture. You're sweet, she thinks, but doesn't say. Jess, she notices, is like a walking furnace. He seems to radiate heat, and within minutes, her shivering has subsided. She does not, however, allow him to remove the warm arm he has placed around her shoulders.
"Tell me something," she says suddenly. "Something about you."
Once again, the alarms are ringing in his head, but this moment is too nice to spoil, and Jess senses that denying her request would upset her. "I've never ridden a roller coaster," he says, because it's the first thing that pops into his head.
She looks at him, surprised. "Really?"
He shrugs. "They're pretty scarce in New York, and Liz didn't take me outside the city too often."
Rory decides right then and there that when the weather warms up, she's going to take him to Magic Mountain and ride every single roller coaster in the park with him. "I love roller coasters," she says. He doesn't say anything more, so she fills in the silence with, "I hate those chocolate-flavored marshmallows."
"Does Lorelai know?" he asks wryly, imagining the elder Gilmore's melodramatic overreaction to such a defect in her sugar-junkie daughter.
"You tell her, you're a dead man," Rory said in a playfully threatening tone.
Jess chuckles. Then he surprises even himself when he voluntarily continues the sharing. "I once snuck into the Metropolitan Opera House and saw Madame Butterfly."
"When I was ten, I thought I discovered U2."
He can't help himself- he laughs outright. She blushes in annoyance and embarrassment, which he finds adorable, and kisses her cheek. Apparently mollified, she snuggles a little closer to him. She's sitting so close now, she might as well be in his lap, with her head tucked up against his shoulder. Jess can't remember the last time he was this... happy?
"I've never felt like this," he blurts out.
Rory looks sharply up at him. "What?"
Now he wishes he'd just kept his big mouth shut. Part of him wishes she would just leave it alone and accept what he feels able to give her. The rest of him is full of that mushy feeling and he irrationally wants to tell her anything and everything to keep that sweet-eyed look on her face. He kisses her softly to mask the warring factions in his head. "You're something else, Gilmore," he says quietly as their lips part.
Heart full, Rory leans back against him with an overwhelmed smile on her face. She thinks she knows what he's trying to say. He's not like Dean, she suddenly realizes. For whatever reason, he's damaged, and he's not so good at saying what's on his mind. But he's given her enough to infer what he's feeling, and somehow it's more special for going unsaid. It's sweet, in its own way.
If this didn't feel so damn good, he'd probably be hating himself for being such a freaking sap tonight. Having Rory Gilmore in his arms feels so right, though, and he's perfectly content to sit back and enjoy the fruits of his long chase for the time being. There'll be plenty of time for second-guessing himself later. Tonight, Jess feels...
He doesn't know. But he likes it.
A/N- I never thought Rory treated Jess particularly well. She always ignored his needs and feelings while expecting him to cater to her whims. I wanted to give them a beginning that casts a little better omen for their future. Enjoy!