Summary: It didn't hurt, but it was a shock when they collided. Lit. Say Goodnight, Gracie AU.

Disclaimer: Gilmore Girls belongs to Amy Sherman-Palladino and the WB/CW.

Hearing his knock, she made the effort to slow herself down. Legs. Walking. (Heart unslowable.) But the door still opened faster than he'd anticipated, not least because he'd been checking over his shoulder for twitching in Babette's window, seeing none.

So it was mainly that which she saw as she greeted him but couldn't identify: deliberately unstartled. Not dissimilar to her own travesty of casualness as she said, "Hey," and got it returned, though she was in the process of drawing back from the kiss she'd intended because of the box in his arms.

Awkward.

Until he passed by her and she laid a restraining hand on his arm, lifting needlessly on her toes and pressing her lips where his cheek had been but lips were now; he'd looked round when she'd stopped him.

Still awkward.

Shocked eyes closing. Instinct's kick. Press of response.

Eased more when he smiled.

"Hi," climbed notes higher than she wanted as she dropped back on her heels. He didn't call out her redundancy, but she felt it and skipped a pace in front of him, heading towards the kitchen, asking, "What did you bring? Apart from a lot, that is."

"Yeah, well," he shrugged, dropping the box on the table and unloading it as she joined him. "Wanted to make sure you got what you wanted. I've seen that look when you want to try what everyone else is getting. Or -"

"Hey, I don't do -"

"- -Ordered, I mean."

"Fine, maybe I do. Sit then. Soda?"

"Nothing stronger?"

"Jess."

"Relax. I'm kidding. Soda's fine."

"Eat then, Mr. Hicks, before I crack a rib," she said, seating herself and absentmindedly unscrewing the ketchup bottletop. "You don't normally have to be told twice."

"Huh. You know I quit, right?"

"Quit what, eating? Drinking? It's not ketchup, is it? Because I don't think -"

"Jeez, I meant smoking, but you know what, maybe I did hear something once about 'ole Bill's problem with the red stuff."

"Right, smoking. Because you never picked up that nasty segue habit everybody else has, did you?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

"That must be it. And I'm still going to think you've given up eating unless you put something on that plate there, mister."

"Never not a despot," he said, reaching for a takeout box with Ch/B on its lid in felt marker.

"Cram it. Oh, and you smoke when you're nervous, so there."

"Think you got me confused with someone else."

"Oh, sure."

"What? Said you didn't want me to die a slow and painful death, remember? Probably up there somewhere as one of the most romantic things anyone ever said to me."

"Aww, don't be cruel."

"Who's being cruel? Not wanting me dead? I'd say that's gotta mean something pretty big."

"Maybe I was just saying you deserved quick and painless."

"Nice. Real nice, Rory. You're heartless, you know that?"

"Fine. I don't want you to die in any way, shape, or form. Happy?"

"Ecstatic. Think I'll add it to the list of declarations for the ages."

"Good. But before you do that, eat. Before it gets all cold and gross."

"You're one to talk," he said, gesturing at her plate. "But are you gonna eat the fry or snap it into a million pieces? What, you figure you can keep the others in line with a public execution?"

"They need to know I can't be crossed." It was meant to be a menacing frown.

He sighed theatrically. "And only one day from retirement."

"With a family and saintly mother to support, I heard."

"Ketchup really adds something," he said, framing her plate with his hands.

"Oh, the humanity." But her brow re-furrowed, then she tried, "Frymanity?"

"Don't look at me. I think you're nuts."

"Ah," she said, "but you love it." Snapping down on a fry for the first time. Laughing in her eyes.

He feigned indifference as he slung an arm over the back of his chair and leaned back. "'Spite of it, maybe."

"Oh, now that one definitely tops my list."

"Huh. Good to know."

She pointed an accusing fry in his direction. "And you started personifying -"

"No, you started it," he remonstrated, launching himself forward and gesticulating, "when you made your plate a bloodbath."

"It is a massacre, isn't it?" Looking down at it and wrinkling her nose.

"Yep."

"Okay, but can we stop the commentary now? Or I'll be forced to analyse what you're doing to that burger."

"Autopsy?"

"Yes, and moreover, eww. But, please, just -"

"Okay, okay," he said, and returned to picking over the fragments of salad and sesame seeds that littered his plate. Reaching for the salt he said, "So I was thinking about what you said about poetry -"

"Wow, Mom and I are going to be living off leftovers for a month," she remarked as she layered containers in the refrigerator.

He passed her another off the counter. "Looks like it."

Straightening, she said, "You could take some back if you wanted."

"Nah. Luke doesn't eat that stuff."

"No, he doesn't." She pressed the door and it closed with quiet suction. "I forgot."

Twisting her fingers, she cast her eye around the room, not quite balanced on the outsides of her feet. Beside her, he braced himself against the counter-top behind him. Followed her eyes to take his own look around the kitchen.

Waiting.

Her bedroom door was open as she looked over her shoulder. The living room was dark.

Before she drew blood in her lip, she tore out, "You want to watch a movie, maybe?"

Eyes harder to force up but finally managed.

Him caught staring at her fingers, drawing a breath before meeting her eye with a short nod. "Sure. Okay."

She curled a finger around one of his as she headed into the next room. "You can pick."

But when she loosed her hold and stood in front of the shelves that housed the Gilmores' cinematic library, he dropped onto the couch and shrugged one shoulder, saying, "S'okay. You choose."

"Okay, um ... I don't know. Maybe ... um, no. What about ... probably not. Wait, how about, um -"

"Rory, relax. You're gonna give yourself an aneurysm or something."

"And that would be bad."

"Probably."

"So..."

"Whatever's good. It doesn't matter." Dismissed with a hand's wave from where his arm rested along the couch-back.

"But -"

"Okay, close your eyes."

"What?"

"Close your eyes."

"Fine."

"Now put out your hand. Pick that."

"Psycho?"

"Like I said, doesn't matter."

"But ... the screaming. The hacking. The Oedipus complex."

Another shrug. "I don't care. Do you?"

"No, but -"

"Then put it on and c'mere."

Their faces, the room, lit only in monochrome. Rory pressed the back of her head further into his shoulder when she said, "It's brave, isn't it?"

The arm around her tightened in response as he looked round at her. "What?"

"To kill her off so soon," she clarified, linking their fingers where his fell on her shoulder.

A mute nod and he returned his attention to the movie. Seemingly absorbed even as he observed blandly, "Guy who gives himself a cameo in every movie has some balls."

She sniggered, drawing down eyes that widened in amusement and were unfazed by the soft dig in his ribs from her elbow.

"But he's playing on all our fears too," she said. "Of strange, lonely places ..."

"On your own," he added.

"With weirdos."

"With weirdos who watch."

The scandalized tone made her laugh, though the look that he turned on her would have been enough on its own.

Calming, Rory gestured at the screen. "And she's at her most vulnerable. In the - -Like that."

"Naked?"

"Yep." Brevity standing in for breeziness. "That's the one."

Her gaze had become uncannily fixed straight ahead, so he simply said, "Right," and reapplied himself to the unfolding scene.

Regular breathing was the first to return. Then her weight relaxed into his side again, and it was safe to resume his thumb's rhythm against that inch of skin by her knuckle allowed by the tangle of fingers.

Focus broke down soon after her free hand discovered distracted spirals on his thigh.

Screen-flicker, dark still. Movement in the shadows cast. Palest things easiest to see. Closed eyes opening. Hands. Sudden gleam of skin in the flash of exposure.

"Jess?"

"Mmm?" His mouth where her shirt ruched. Now-stayed knuckles high on his back where she gripped the hem of his.

"I think ... I think - -I don't want to worry about picking up our clothes from around here before tomorrow or losing something and Mom finding it, and -"

"So, through there?" he said, hauling himself upright and gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder.

"Yeah," she breathed, a smile forming as he bobbed his head acceptingly and rose off the couch.

With a last squint into the darkness with the aim of gathering herself and anything incriminating, she turned back and noticed him, battered sneakers dangling in one hand and the other reaching out towards her.

He sat heavily on her bed as she stowed her shoes in the closet then approached him. Nervous hands rising uncertainly until he took both of them out of the air and held them suspended near his shoulders.

Her eyes on his mouth as he said, "So, just 'cos you got me where you want me now, doesn't mean anything has to happen, you know?"

She coloured but nodded, holding his gaze while his fingers worked on hers. Loosing one of her hands that came to rest on his neck, his travelled to the small of her back, and he added with a smirk, "So go easy on me, okay?"

Fierce kiss, stifling any more he might say.

Piqued.

Intentionally, maybe.

Frustration overbalanced nerves.

Bedside lamp long fumbled off, it was dark.

His voice. Above her. "You're sure?"

So close but straining to watch her as she nodded. Bit her lip. A second and an unexpected question back.

"Are you?" she said.

"Me?" Her piercing eyes. Swallowing against his thudding heart. "I'm sure."

No room for incredulity.

"Okay." A smile that moved long fingers all the way down his spine. "Me too."

Slow, breathtaking shift.

Stillness settling in the still dark.

Darker still inside closed eyes.

Hearing a resettling creak before the contrast of thumb-soft touch on her jaw with his half-hoarse, "Rory?"

"Yeah?"

"You okay?"

"I love you."

Eyes opened to catch the serious look fracture into something she couldn't see because he kissed her. Though she felt the smirk on her shoulder when he mumbled, "Is that a yes?"

"Yes, it's a yes."

"Good."

"You?"

Still unexpected and more time now to grin unseen in the crook of her neck before composing his face. To look her in the eye and say, "I'm good."

"Good," she said, sending hands to find him.

So late it was early, she rolled out from beside him and switched on the lamp. Taking a robe by the scruff off the back of her door she said, "I'm starving. You want ice-cream?"

He stretched lazily, following her with his eyes as she waited at the foot of the bed. "Found your appetite?"

"Hssht," she said, holding out a finger as if it covered his lips from six feet away. "So, you want anything?"

"Yeah," came out in that 'still stretching' voice as he folded hands behind his head. "But I could eat, I guess."

A pointed look curtailed as she passed through the door, leaving it open and making out he called to her, "Don't s'pose you've got cones?"

She raised her voice to call back, "We did yesterday! I'll see, okay?"

His was an undertone, unheard. "Perfect."

Small hours. Fastest hours. Not late enough for light.

Turned away but held by the arm round her waist, over and down the edge of the bed she finally let fall, "Jess?"

"Mmm?" Lips not removed from her shoulder, the spread hand on her stomach brushed fingers beside her hip-bone.

"You've - -Have you, um, ever done that ... before? Not, um - -Because you told me, so - -I mean, specifically."

"Which part?" he said a little thickly.

"Oh, the - -The first-time part. Being someone's ... you know ..."

"Yeah."

He didn't flinch. Didn't hesitate. But she couldn't see that he squeezed his eyes shut in the dark, like he was awaiting an inevitable blow. The shatter of the glass just dropped.

She had steeled herself against flinching too. "Right. I - -Okay." The effort not to move tensed everything instead.

He felt it.

A long breath losing its intensity on her skin as he drew back slightly, "Look, this isn't - -This -"

"No, it's fine," she cut in. "Really. I don't know why I - -I shouldn't've asked. And it's not like it should matter, and it doesn't, so I don't -"

"Rory."

Shifting up to look down at her. Watching the fleck of light in her visible eye go out as she blinked. And blinked.

Two eyes blinking as she turned her face only a few degrees towards him.

"This is different, alright?" he said. "I know you don't want that stuff to matter - -And, seriously, it doesn't. But this does." The hand firmer in the dip of her waist. "But you know that already. Or I - -You do, right?"

The almost imperceptible movement of her head made him sigh, sounding louder in the quiet as he slipped fingers round the elbow by her face. "C'mere."

She turned towards him, feeling her way up the length of his arm, and settled at clutching the taut roll of his shoulder. Biting the inside of her lips.

He skimmed the silhouette of her side a couple of times as he thought, hand-heel pressed on his temple.

"So listen," he said. "This - -It's ..."

And she was listening, deep into the pause as he watched his hand glide against her.

"I love you, okay? So it's that," he said, cryptic if it wasn't for the way his eyes fastened suddenly on hers. "First time for that, so ..."

The breath he'd held that drew his voice from somewhere higher in his throat came out until she stopped it. Barely time to smile, let alone laugh. Anchoring herself to him as the light feeling rose.

Rising more with the curve of his mouth.

A/N: This could be an ending. Think of it like that if you like. There are probably others though. Or other stops along the road, maybe.

Thanks for reading and reviewing.