Unfinished GG Fic: So Maybe It Was Just a Letter, Rory/Jess

[isthisthelasttime]

Okay, first of all, it sucks to lose your interest in the fandom that first got you into writing. But, alas, that is what has come for me. This is the first in a series of three unfinished fic/ficlets. Hope you enjoy. Feedback appreciated.

Working Title: So Maybe It Was Just a Letter
Author: learnthemusic
Rating: R
Pairing: Rory/Jess implied.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: After a few months, the pink of her cheeks was the pooling blood at his nose. Canon. Incomplete.
Prompts: This was for ava_leigh_fitz. However, no prompts are incorporated and the story itself is incomplete.

A/N: Sorry it’s unfinished. I lost my muse a long time ago.

 

 

I was only sixteen. That’s all I think anyone should ever know about it and that’s all you’ll ever get out of me because, Christ, I was only sixteen.

Wasn’t my fault, never could’ve been my fault because I was sober and he was drunk and wouldn’t give me the keys. But I’ve already told you too much, so fuck off.

---

When I got back to school the following Monday, everyone looked at me like a murderer and some scumbag that didn’t even deserve to live. To them, I was just a dead mosquito on a windowsill. 

See, no one understood me then, as punkish as that may sound. It’s the naked truth and I’m sure, in a couple years at the reunion, no one will remember me as that guy, the one that did that, how could he?

None of the teachers ever wanted to listen to me, never asked me how I felt, even though I wasn’t about to go all happy and spill every single thing I was feeling. C’mon, I was depressed not fruity and most definitely not on a new Dr. Phil. Shit, if I’d even tried to talk to anyone, I probably would’ve been arrested. The school cops were constantly trying to find some hard evidence to coin me with. 

---

So, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going, right? Actually, I still don’t really understand what that means. Sure, I can attribute it to myself and say I ran from my problems and the problems only worsened, but somehow it makes no sense. ’Cuz I didn’t really run from my problems, they just happened to disappear and managed to become more problematic. 

The going got tough, though, all right? I constantly found myself out of place, surrounded by the wrong people and pushed out of my own thoughts by the will of other external forces. It was probably around the time my eyes were always swollen that my mother decided her brother could turn me around.

The transaction was pretty quick, surprisingly enough. I got on the bus, I rode the bus, I didn’t even think of getting off the bus until reaching my destination because I had the right company (and by company, I don’t mean people and I’m not insane) and the right company always got me pretty far. Besides, the drive was under three hours. 

It was a happy-go-lucky town, Stars Hollow, small population city of fairy tales and idyllic novels. Kids ran around happily, teenagers shared milkshakes and it almost felt like I’d gone back in time in a flying DeLorean. The town was the textbook-definition of perfect and the number one on lists of family-friendly places.

For years, I did my best to deny that Stars Hollow was the best thing that happened to me. 

---

An instant connection, a click, the x-marks-the-spot of my salvation. Her name was Rory Gilmore. She was beautiful, had blue eyes, auburn hair, full lips and the face of an angel. She was the other half of my balance, kept me in check the first couple of months we dated. 

Then I was a fucking 18-year-old screw-up that worked in Wal-Mart and skipped school for an extra hundred bucks. That’s probably about the time she found my stash and kind of, well, withdrew herself from me. She was slipping through my fingers like fog in the hills and I couldn’t think of anything to do.

Things obviously worsened because I was more eager to find that corner every afternoon that passed and hardly made it back to Stars Hollow in time to keep my cover. But it did that to me, drew me back, slowed me down, choked me. 

It was hopeless for me to escape That Night, even three years later, and as much as I wanted Rory to save me, after a few months the lightning blue of her eyes were flashes of cop lights alongside a New York highway at midnight. After a few months, the pink of her cheeks was the pooling blood at his nose.

Fuck. Brian Landis was my best friend and it was not my fault. 

---

She probably thought it was her fault, my leaving, and I always knew she was pretty vain but that had nothing to do with her, whatsoever. It was probably what prompted me not to talk to her whenever I tried to. I just couldn’t swallow past the knot and force myself to reassure her because three thousand miles was a lot of ground to cover and I was certain it would make no difference to her if I apologized.

So I let her ramble instead; I listened and I thought she’d love me forever because the resignation in her voice resonated through my head for months until I could recreate it every night before I went to bed.

I had every reason to think Rory Gilmore was my guardian angel until I met her at her grandparents’ house in Hartford after she turned twenty-one. She wasn’t the Rory I knew or remembered and I didn’t know if I’d ever really know her again. But I showed her my book anyway and I felt that hitch I buried after leaving Connecticut when she told me she was proud of me.

I still had marks, though. She would never have found them, under my shirtsleeves, at the crooks of my elbows, and it made me nervous because everyone but her was able to tell.

I avoided her eyes as best I could the entire time I was there. 

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