fic: berlin without the wall (rory/jess, rory/logan, gilmore girls)
berlin without the wall
fandom: gilmore girls
disclaimer: not mine
rating: light r
word count: 1859
pairing: rory/jess, rory/logan
summary: her passport might be full, but he'll still smile at her and tell her she hasn't gone anywhere at all.
notes: for
adria_harrison, because i feel like i've been teasing you about writing rory/jess for forever. here it is, babe. there are virtually no spoilers, but this is future-fic.
-
they filmed the beatings
on their mobile phones -
she said, ‘ i will not listen, and i won’t be told;
england is mine, i will take what i want - '
(bloc party)
-
"Are you sure?" her mother had asked.
There had been a hand on her hip and a slight frown; Lorelai glanced at the clock.
"Of course," she answered, her head bowed there.
She adjusted her veil. Her grandmother smiled.
-
She wears a linen suit. It wrinkles on the plane.
She reads the latest New Yorker as the plane takes off (Logan takes her hand; her engagement ring twists on her fourth finger and digs into her palm as her ears pop - she feels light-headed).
She reads James Joyce as the plane taxis onto the runway; the pilot says he welcomes them to Algiers International Airport -
Joyce says:
he tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet’s soul.
Her answer? It wasn’t, but like a good journalist - able to pick out the facts from the fictions - that might just be a time-tried bias speaking.
She unbuckles her seatbelt.
-
Before:
Walking the terminal of JFK International Airport, her flats pinching her toes, they stopped and handed the security guard their identification.
The woman (tight ponytail at the nape of her neck, her walkie-talkie squawking) eyed Rory with a funny smile and a quirked eyebrow.
"Sweetheart, ain’t no way in hell you’re thirty-five."
Rory tried to laugh.
-
Graduation came with spring and rain and job offers that sounded prettier inside the envelope as opposed to the cold offices with the wood paneling and the banal interview questions.
"Miss Gilmore, what is it, that you feel, you could bring to us and our publication?"
There was always a window behind their head (balding, more often than not, bad tie, expensive suit picked out for the name instead of the style) and sometimes there would be other buildings, taller than this one, sometime there would be only sky and sun.
"I can bring words," she would want to say with a shy smile.
She was never quite sure what that meant.
They shook hands.
-
Grandma used to say, "baby," loaded with expectations and empty photo albums.
Logan would compliment her on the foie gras and her wine selection; he’d pat her knee under the table - ‘what kind of lucky bastard am I?’
-
Graduation came with spring and then summer and after that came London.
-
She had stayed at the Crowne Plaza St. James in Westminster and for one night he had stayed there with her.
Dark hair and white sheets stark against that tawny skin - she had wanted him to quote Salinger (For Esme - With Love and Squalor ringing in her ears - he hadn’t -
Note: Logan has a great aunt named Esme and the woman hates her. To the day she died Rory could never look her in the eye without thinking her name, without thinking him).
They had listened to the Clash and she had hummed "London Calling" against his sharp collarbone. He had called her a cliché. She had called him a skinny boy, poking at his ribs with her small fingers.
He caught her hand by the wrist.
-
Their hotel here is nice and the wheels of her suitcase rattle on the shined floors. The man behind the desk speaks French and she answers in stuttering, unsure breaths (oui; merci; non, non, monsieur;, une semaine? oui, merci beaucoup) while Logan raises his voice, his cellphone against his ear.
"I said we’re here, Dad." Pause. "Yeah, I know this is a big fucking deal. No need to keep reminding me, Dad." Another pause. "The flight was fine." Pause. "Yes, Rory is happy to be here. She wanted to come."
She plays with tour guide brochures and runs through French conjugations in her head.
-
This is their ten-year wedding anniversary. She wore Vera Wang.
(They were married in New York, at the Plaza, in the spring, almost the summer. Her mother had made Eloise jokes the entire week up until the wedding -
neither of the two found them all that funny. They laughed all the same.
Over morning mimosas Rory had said, ‘I love him.’
She had meant it.)
-
These things happen in accidents.
Not the way you’re thinking though.
-
She had wanted some lunch; this is how it starts again - this is that next awaited chapter.
The hotel has a café and Logan has a meeting, and at eight that morning (she couldn’t even tell you what time that would be at home) he had kissed her on the forehead, her arms crossed against her chest, head against the pillow - ‘you be alright, Ace?’
She scratched her diamond ring (emerald cut, Tiffany’s, Audrey) against her thigh as she got dressed two hours later; her skirt bothers it as it swishes against her knees.
He appears after she asks for a glass of ice water.
-
Dean once made her a bracelet and Logan keeps trying to buy her the world.
-
He takes the chair across from her and before that there’s a moment where it’s unclear how the one is supposed to greet the other. She sits still, surprised, awkward smile, and he kisses her on the cheek.
The waiter brings her water; Jess orders a tango beer (it’s not yet noon).
"I give you a minute," he says and she smiles, brushing loose hair off her forehead.
She stares at the menu. Finally, it’s "Algeria, Rory?" he says.
"Business," and there’s that close-mouthed smile of hers.
He laughs, and it’s a short, brief bark of a laugh and Jess has always worn bitterness well. "His or yours?"
She stares at the tablecloth. The waiter sets his drink down by his elbow. She orders the couscous. He does the same.
She’s not looking at him.
"So, you don’t write anymore?"
"I was never very good," she says with a blush and as though she doesn’t have three cocktail napkins decorated with her tight, neat penmanship floating in the bottom of her bag.
-
Things to know:
Rory had a job, a real job, for three years after she graduated. She married a Huntzberger at 25, and tired, jet-lagged, she had said ‘okay,’ when Logan mentioned she should maybe settle down.
Rory was a reporter and she wrote. They sent her abroad, to London.
Jess is a success, the kind of success that makes men in suits and ties shake their heads in a weird kind of jealousy as he, Jess, runs through desert and sand and can tell you in full-blown epic description what exactly a shell exploding into your hotel sounds like.
He’s won awards. She got married.
The most important thing to know:
She’s not really sure how any of this happened.
-
She chews slowly. He watches closely.
She doesn’t say anything like, ‘I’ve read your work - it’s wonderful,’ both because she’s still not that bold a girl (woman), but more so because it’d be a lie.
She has yet to read a single piece of his writing.
She still remembers that first time, spotting his name stenciled below the headline (by Jess Mariano) and her tongue had tasted funny in her mouth and a strange little melody of ‘this isn’t how it’s supposed to go’ slipped its way through her head.
She has yet to read anything he’s written, and try as she might, she can never seem to get her eyes to move past the TEHRAN - , the BEIJING - , the SEOUL - , right before his opening line (it’s like receiving cold, sad postcards from places you’ll never know).
-
See, here’s the thing. She kept them all, each article, clipped neatly from its source, shiny scissors and her pale pink nails. She kept them all, filed away between the pages of a journal she will never write in, and she’ll throw them in this bag (Kate Spade) and that bag (Coach) and she won’t read them but they’ll be there (and in her head she’ll he’ll say: ‘this one will bring you luck’ like a song).
-
Their lunch lasts for two hours, complete with hand gestures and crumbs on the white tablecloth.
She had forgotten she knew how to do this.
She still hates Hemingway. That fact still makes him smile.
-
London was Theirs, the kind of ownership only capitalization can quite lend itself to.
It was purely accidental. And therein, she would say (like an English lit professor, tight bun and prim glasses perched on that pale nose of hers, leaning against the podium instead of hidden behind it), lies its importance.
In all really, truly great stories, the hero and its heroine meet up in a roundabout, head-on collision, inevitable way, with ‘fate’ scribbled messy somewhere in the margins.
There was a pub, not quite after hours, and there was thick smoke and thick beer, and she had barely skimmed a little off the top, quick swallow, skinny arms, when she had looked up.
He had smiled first.
She had thought Casablanca - of course.
-
They weren’t drunk that first (read: only) time they slept together.
He had tasted of the pub, like beer and smoke, thick, hot, and it was her who pulled at their clothing first, shaking fingers digging in next to the buttons of his shirt.
He didn’t kiss the same as she remembered; always self-assured, but this time, almost scared (you know what she’s talking about here: that desperation in a man, that last night on earth attitude where the fingers slip a little too rough and brutality masquerades as romance).
There had been the city outside her window - London - the blinds still open from this morning, and the leg of her panties had stayed wrapped around her ankle, her knees bent, his tongue in her mouth, as he thrust in that first time.
(Time stops, hips buck: she’s twenty-four.
In a year, she’s a married woman).
-
He walks her to the lobby, talking about leaving this evening and Somalia and Mogadishu. Her heels echo and he watches her feet.
There’s a hand on the crook of her elbow.
(Sometimes, sometimes she still thinks of diners and hot coffee and men boys that value words like currency. Sometimes she thinks - )
"Good luck, Rory."
He kisses her lips and she tastes sixteen.
The elevator doors close behind him; the lobby is empty, save for her.
-
Six days after - she breaths Mogadishu in her sleep like some kind of misguided prayer - she boards the airplane with Logan, flying back home to New York City:
She pulls the journal from her bag, drags her palm across it’s plain, clean front. She opens it and pages flutter out, dried newspaper, not yet yellowed with age (and for this she is grateful).
A dim smile, and ‘LONDON - ’ it says.
She reads on.
(see, eternal optimist: you’re allowed to start again from here).
-
fin.
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