Gilmore Girls Fic: "Good Girls Do" - Rory/Dean - R/NC17
Title: Good Girls Do
Author: femmenerd
Pairing: Rory/Dean, Gilmore Girls
Rating: R/NC17
Summary: Set in a nebulous future with spoilers up to the last time we saw Dean, so S5. The thoughts in her head race around madly, swirling up to surprise her: Are you married again? Do you hate me? Is it too late for you to be the Gilbert Blythe to my Anne Shirley?
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit. Don't sue.
Author's Note: I'm actually being a bad girl and posting this without beta-ing because if I tweak it anymore I may never do anything else again. mcee gets credit for encouragement though and for facilitating me having every Jared scene from S1 and 2 on my HD. And this thing is shippy and total wish-fulfillment. You have been warned. Oh, and I plagiarized a description of JP's smile off of myself, because I, uh, wasn't done with it yet. *hides*
Word Count: 3600-ish.
*****
Dean is the very first person Rory runs into when she comes back to Stars Hollow for good.
She’s in the hardware store, contemplating bookshelves, because what kind of home doesn't have bookshelves? And there he is, looking tall and beautiful, indescribably familiar yet out of reach. He smiles and says, “Hey,” his voice low and soft and molasses-y, and she thinks about how odd it is that Dean had that same deep voice back before he’d grown into his long limbs-back when he used to love her.
“Hi!” Rory says, blinking, all acquired graces from a half decade of city life dissolving in the impromptu nervous tension buzzing from her brown, lace-up boots up on through the sleeves of her mom’s old, red sweater.
Then, because she might be cursed, Rory accidentally drops a hammer on his foot. Dean swears under his breath at the impact and the way he slurs over the “shhhh” sound in “shit” is really hot. Rory can’t remember if she’s ever heard him curse before. She wonders when he started doing that--if he does it often, or just when ex-girlfriends try and do him bodily harm.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she says, scrambling to do...something.
“It’s okay,” Dean says, settling her somewhat. Then, if possible, an even softer, “Welcome home, Rory.”
The thoughts in her head race around madly, swirling up to surprise her: Are you married again? Do you hate me? Is it too late for you to be the Gilbert Blythe to my Anne Shirley?
There should be a statute of limitations on this kind of regret. Especially when you thought you’d forgotten all about it, doing all kinds of other things-like trying to make a name for yourself as a journalist until you realize that those aren't the stories you want to tell, falling in and out of love multiple times since, exploring foreign lands--those kinds of really important, moving forward stuff.
“Thank you,” Rory demurs, and sucks a breath in slowly. Then out of her mouth bubbles, “I’m moving back! To try and write a book. It’s probably a bad idea-to quit my job-but I thought about it a lot and this is what I want. So...yeah.” After that, she clams up.
Dean does that squished-down, suppressed smile thing, and she remembers. He cocks his head to one side and looks at her like he's listening to her face. “I know that already, Rory. I live here, remember?”
“Right. Of course.” She's actually missed that part of small town life.
Dean grabs her upper arm, fingers circling it all the way around. His hand is warm and firm-even through layers of cotton and sweater. “But it’s good to hear it from you,” he says, looking down to where he's touching her, then drawing his hand back. “It’s...good to see you.”
“You too,” she says, and knows that it's true.
“See you around.”
And then he’s walking off down the aisle, looking totally at home among the bins of nails and screws. Rory picks up the fallen hammer and shakes her head.
Bookshelves. Very important. Check.
*****
Once you’re from a small town, you’re always from a small town. Rory quickly slips into a quiet groove. She moves into the back part of the Inn, the place where she lived as a baby. She eats breakfast with her mom at Luke’s almost every morning. During the day she types, types, types. Sometimes at night she goes over to Lane’s for dinner and watches the Lane-as-Mommy show. Other nights she rents old movies, wears pajamas, and enjoys feeling wistful.
And these normal, ordinary life things-walking down the street to Taylor’s for cereal and TV dinners, getting more printer ink, reporting on her various life adventures to everyone in town-keep being punctuated by Dean appearances. He’s everywhere, it seems. Which is strange, because she could count on the fingers of one hand the times she's seen him in between then-the last then-and now. And awkward as it is, there's something right-seeming about it-Dean Forester as ubiquity.
“I’m building a house,” he tells her when they bump into each other one day at the gas station.
“Oh!” she says, “that’s great.” So grown up, she thinks. And probably requiring lots of sweatiness and heavy lifting. How exactly was she so good when they were kids? He didn’t sport a tool belt back then, she remembers. That’s got to be it.
*****
“So this book you’re writing-am I in it?” Dean asks another day at the diner, looking over her shoulder towards her laptop screen.
“Do you want to be?” she lobs back, snapping the computer shut.
Dean just grins quietly and waves to Gypsy across the room.
“Depends,” he says, sweeping his gaze back down to her. “Is there going to be a happy ending?”
And that’s when Rory feels the first flicker of hope.
*****
“Are we friends again?” Rory asks. They’re eating together this time. Sitting at the same table at the same time. It wasn’t premeditated or anything, but still.
Dean automatically gives her his extra sausage just like he always used to, and she wants to grab his hand in hers as it passes over her plate. She wants to squeeze his fingers tight for remembering the details of her.
He quirks a brow and deliberately finishes chewing. “Of course,” he answers easily. “Why wouldn’t we be?” And Rory’s heart plummets deep into the recesses of her chest.
Because I broke your heart a few times and then you broke mine when I wasn’t paying attention. That’s why, she thinks, jutting her chin up. Suddenly she wants him to still be angry with her.
*****
“Friends” means hanging out in public with lots of other people around. It means hearing about all the plans for this house he’s building for himself. It means never mentioning any of the people that came between them before.
And for Rory, it also means being plagued by dirty thoughts she’d never say out loud, even if she does have dog-eared copies of Anais Nin and D.H. Lawrence unapologetically stacked on those bookshelves she finally put up all by herself.
Dean was the first boy who ever kissed her. Then later-at the wrong time-he was the first man she let inside her. She can’t forget.
*****
“I’m not always good, you know,” Rory slurs one night at the bar. She’s had a few too many whiskey sours and is feeling punchy.
Dean drinks slowly from his beer bottle, glancing over at her with amused eyes. “Oh yeah? Did you go on a crime spree while you were gone that I don’t know about?”
“No,” Rory says, and hiccups. “But I could have!” She purses her mouth thoughtfully. “I did do a lot of jaywalking though. I’m impatient about traffic signals it turns out.”
“I’m sure you could be very bad if you put your mind to it. Nothing stops a Gilmore,” Dean says, chuckling and taking another big gulp of beer. Rory watches his adam’s apple move as he swallows and thinks, You have no idea. The implications of that thought blossom and grow in her booze-fuzzy head, making her feel both maudlin and unseasonably warm down below.
“What about you?” she asks impulsively, to deflect. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
Dean looks away and runs a hand through his hair before answering seriously, “I married a woman I wasn’t in love with.”
“Right. Of course,” Rory mumbles, and stares into her lap. What they did to Lindsay still weighs on her conscience to this day.
*****
Dean stays away from her for awhile after that. Rory's got writer’s block something fierce and she thinks about him every day in the shower when she’s getting herself off with slippery fingers, eyes shut tight. It’s a hold over from when she was young-masturbating with eyes closed-because when she was eleven and first figured out that she could make herself feel good that way, she and Lorelei had been watching a lot of scary movies and so Rory was convinced that there were ghosts watching her every time she touched herself.
She wants to tell Dean things like that, wants to update him on all the minutiae of her world, let him in deeper than before. But he’s not around. And he doesn’t want her anymore. That much is clear.
*****
“You’re avoiding me!” Rory says in her best loud, authoritative voice as she clomps through the empty doorframe of Dean’s new house. She honed that tone editing the paper at Yale and she hopes she’s still got it down pat. But it’s kind of hard to keep one’s dignity intact while getting caught and tangled in the protective tarp he’s got tacked up.
Dean turns around from where he’s been hammering something or other and frowns. “I’ve just got a lot to do around here, Rory. That’s all.”
“But-” she sputters. Rory can feel the itching in her arms that means she’s going to start waving them about soon. “But you haven’t been into the diner for coffee in days. Coffee! Am I so terrible that I’m keeping you from coffee?”
Sure enough, she’s gesticulating madly. Dean smiles dimly though, breaking through Rory’s panic with his dimples. “Coffee isn’t the life or death issue for everyone that is for you.”
“Oh, well. Okay,” Rory says, feeling like she’s lost control of the plot here. Then she remembers-heated confrontation! All right, back on track. “But you’re still avoiding me. I know it.”
Dean sighs and leans back against a wooden post, wiping sweat from his brow and kicking the ground with one large boot. God, she loves the way he leans. “Okay,” he admits. “I’m avoiding you.”
“Oh,” she says, pausing. “I’m not going to jump on you like a rabid beast, if that’s what you’re worried about. I mean, you do insist on wearing those pants with the pockets and loops so that I want to, and Oh no.” She claps her hand over her mouth.
Dean’s face ripples like he doesn’t know if he’s going to laugh or cry. “They’re work pants, Rory.” He’s breathing heavily out of his mouth as he walks towards her. “And it’s not like I don’t want you to. You have no idea how much I want to...”
Rory steps closer. “Want to?” she says helpfully, catching her bottom lip between her teeth.
“It’s nothing like that,” Dean continues, clearing his throat and taking another long stride forward. It’s like magnetism, like they’re marionettes, how they keep moving towards each other as if by accident.
“I don’t deserve you,” Rory says then, voice small and halting. Suddenly there’s so much truth in this unfinished room.
“No, Rory, No! It’s not that either.” He groans. Dean’s only a foot away now, and she has to look up to see his lips moving. “I think we cancelled each other out being jerks a long time ago. And I couldn’t be mad at you for that long. I never could. Besides, we were so young then.”
Rory’s listening, and what he’s saying is important and could mean everything, but her mind is full of the smell of him. She wants to run her hands up under his shirt and find out how his body’s changed. She wants to touch his hair where it curls at the ends, boyish and unruly.
“I want you so much.” Rory listens to her own voice coming out of her mouth, surprised by how it shoots up high at the end. She sounds so brazen.
Dean closes his eyes. He starts to reach for her, then pulls back jerky and slow, grimacing.
“It’s just-if we did this and then you just left again, I don’t-I don’t want to feel like that ever again. Not about you.” Rory gulps. “So I was just trying to pull myself together. Take a breather. To keep myself from dragging you into the bathroom at Luke’s or something insane like that.” Rory shivers. Dean shoves his hands behind his back. And suddenly everything seems simple to her. Beautiful even.
“Dean,” she says.
“Yeah?” he answers.
“I’m not going anywhere. But I’ll wait. You’ll see.”
*****
“Waiting” means doing pretty much all of the same things they were doing together before, only now with added “inadvertant” touching, and clammy hands and prickles of heat rushing up between her thighs.
It certainly doesn’t mean any less frequency of dirty thoughts. She blushes secret and hot when they’re at the make-shift movies ignoring Kirk snoring in the corner. And the first time they hold hands again, it’s like her insides are turning to liquid flashfast, churning like they did when she was sixteen and she caught the slightest hint of his soap-boy-Dean smell. Except her imagination’s so much more vivid now that she knows a few things about men. Not enough about him though. Not like that.
So Rory licks her lips and smiles, pretending it’s just the three scoop sundae in front of her that has her mouth watering.
The inevitability of Dean’s hands on her body-making her feel both tiny and big-of his long frame taking up half of her bed, of all the ways she’s going to make up the years apart is heady and perfect. Because it is inevitable-Rory’s made up her mind.
*****
Rory finds that she’s falling in love with being herself again. As much as she has enjoyed and learned from fast, she's comfortable now with slow. She reads books late into the night with cold french fries and chocolate milk for company. She futzes and organizes and daydreams. She walks down the streets of her town and feels like she’s a part of somewhere again.
And as she stops worrying that she’s too skinny or that she’s going to put her foot in her mouth, and as the anxiety dreams fade, Rory remembers that this is part and parcel of what she always liked most about Dean-the way he always loved her for being exactly the way she was. Dared her to do it too. He’s not a challenge for the sake of being a challenge; he's a man who loves her.
And he still lets her pick all the movies. There's always that as well.
*****
Dean kisses like he means it, like there’s nothing else going on in his world except for his lips against hers, his hands holding her head in place, tongue dipping into her mouth like he lost something there.
This hasn’t changed, Rory discovers, when finally-finally-he turns to her and says, “The problem with you waiting is that as a result, I’m waiting too.”
*****
They’re in his house, which is almost finished, but there’s still no furniture and saw dust everywhere. Dean has his hand up her skirt, fingertips stroking circles into her skin. Her own hand is skirting around his fly, feeling how much he wants her, by alternates timid and daring as she squeezes his cock through his pants then shifts to just petting lightly, overwhelmed.
He pants her name into her ear, breath wet and warm. She whimpers. It would be embarrassing if this were anyone but him.
“Dean!” she says as he starts kissing down her neck purposefully, tonguing the valley between her breasts. “Wait!”
He groans quietly and scrubs his face with his palm. “I thought we were done with waiting. Jesus, Rory I-” She looks into his face then and sees an apology there. Rory wants to be done with apologies...for a little while at least.
So she kisses him, hard, fumbling her way into his lap. He thrusts up into her minutely when their crotches meet. “God, I’m acting like a horny teenager,” he says and smiles at her blindingly, man-sweet.
“You didn’t do this when we were in high school,” Rory exclaims as he starts mouthing her nipples through the thin cotton of her shirt.
“Mmmph,” Dean says by way of answer, looking up as he suckles over her clothes, biting lightly. “I was a nice boy then,” he adds once he’s unlatched.
“And you’re not now?” she whispers, grinding herself down and reveling in the way his eyes start to roll back into his head.
“I still am,” Dean concedes. “But if I don’t see you naked pretty soon, I might not be.” He laughs, then hesitates. “Actually, I’m incurable-please, tell me, why do you want to wait?”
At first Rory can’t actually remember, because he’s warm and solid beneath her and she hasn’t felt this powerful and safe in forever. “It’s just-” she starts. “I want this to be perfect. Candles and music and planning! Not in a barn, or on a dirty floor, or with-” She shudders. “My mother catching us after.”
Dean laughs again ruefully, and catches her knuckles with his lips. “Okay,” he says, and kisses her chastely. “But you know,” he goes on, eyes twinkling, “I’ve been using that time in Miss Patty’s barn like other guys use Playboy for years now.”
“So have I,” Rory says softly, and his eyes grow big.
“Are you sure the safety candles in the back of my truck and my iPod aren’t enough planning?”
*****
The first time is fast and desperate anyway, despite the presence of Rory’s stereo and tapered candles burning low. It feels so good to have him covering her, grabbing her shoulders as he comes inside her, mouth open wide and gasping.
“God, I love you,” Dean mutters into her skin as Rory lies back happy, clasping her thighs tightly around his waist, holding him in. "I always have."
“You didn't, did you?” he asks a minute later, lifting his head.
Rory shakes her head no, but says, “I’m sure I’m going to though. 'Cause I'm not in any way done with you yet.”
*****
She's hungry for him, insatiable yet strangely relaxed. And now Rory understands the real meaning of that euphemism-what it feels like to experience desire that loops in on itself. Weeks and months-years, really-of fantasies feed into every touch as she explores his body with her hands, inquisitive.
“Do you know how much I want you?” she breathes into his ear, her honest question almost calling up years of reserve and holding back. Dean shudders but doesn't answer verbally, just slides a thick hand between her legs, as if searching for physical proof. “Do you?” she repeats, suddenly feeling the weight of their past pushing down. She needs for him to know that this is a two-way street, a four lane highway even.
“Because,” Rory goes on, moving her hand down to touch his cock, still wet from her and hardening again, “I've been thinking a lot about this-about you.”
“Yeah?” Dean says on an exhale, pushing two fingers inside her body and gazing at her with that look, the one she never should have taken for granted. How he notices her. “Do you know what I want?” he asks, not waiting for a response. “I want to watch you, uh, you know.”
“You want to watch me come.” She says it as a statement not a question, with only a hint of a blush prickling her cheeks. Dean closes his eyes and licks his lips, and as his eyelashes flutter down, Rory marvels at how her boy sweetheart has grown into this beautiful man.
She does come, three times over. First he gets her off with his fingers, staying close so he can kiss her, wet and open and dirty, yet still, because he is Dean, with impossible sweetness. They lock eyes when Rory's at almost, and the dazed, worshipful expression on his face is what really takes her there.
The second time they fuck, Rory coaxes Dean behind her, because she wants him deep, wants to fill herself with him. She touches herself as he moves inside her, and Dean moans long and low when he realizes what she's doing.
Good girls do, she thinks. Then, This is what I want. This is what I want forever.
Dean imprints the curve of her spine with open-mouthed kisses and she knows that it was worth it-the waiting, the mishaps, the other options she tried on for size-if it means that she can be this certain.
The last time, she's perched on top of him, her movements languid-feeling queenly as Dean grips her narrow hips between the wide expanse of his hands. He says over and over, “This can’t be happening.”
“Shhhhh,” she whispers between his open lips, and when her orgasm floods through her Rory has Dean's tongue in her mouth and her hand on his heart.
“It is happening,” she assures him all the same, after, when she's curling her body around his bigger one. Rory’s never been more sure of anything in her life. Other than the fact that when someone knows everything bad about you as well as the good and still loves you, it’s real.
Or at least a good place to start again.
*****
Author: femmenerd
Pairing: Rory/Dean, Gilmore Girls
Rating: R/NC17
Summary: Set in a nebulous future with spoilers up to the last time we saw Dean, so S5. The thoughts in her head race around madly, swirling up to surprise her: Are you married again? Do you hate me? Is it too late for you to be the Gilbert Blythe to my Anne Shirley?
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit. Don't sue.
Author's Note: I'm actually being a bad girl and posting this without beta-ing because if I tweak it anymore I may never do anything else again. mcee gets credit for encouragement though and for facilitating me having every Jared scene from S1 and 2 on my HD. And this thing is shippy and total wish-fulfillment. You have been warned. Oh, and I plagiarized a description of JP's smile off of myself, because I, uh, wasn't done with it yet. *hides*
Word Count: 3600-ish.
*****
Dean is the very first person Rory runs into when she comes back to Stars Hollow for good.
She’s in the hardware store, contemplating bookshelves, because what kind of home doesn't have bookshelves? And there he is, looking tall and beautiful, indescribably familiar yet out of reach. He smiles and says, “Hey,” his voice low and soft and molasses-y, and she thinks about how odd it is that Dean had that same deep voice back before he’d grown into his long limbs-back when he used to love her.
“Hi!” Rory says, blinking, all acquired graces from a half decade of city life dissolving in the impromptu nervous tension buzzing from her brown, lace-up boots up on through the sleeves of her mom’s old, red sweater.
Then, because she might be cursed, Rory accidentally drops a hammer on his foot. Dean swears under his breath at the impact and the way he slurs over the “shhhh” sound in “shit” is really hot. Rory can’t remember if she’s ever heard him curse before. She wonders when he started doing that--if he does it often, or just when ex-girlfriends try and do him bodily harm.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she says, scrambling to do...something.
“It’s okay,” Dean says, settling her somewhat. Then, if possible, an even softer, “Welcome home, Rory.”
The thoughts in her head race around madly, swirling up to surprise her: Are you married again? Do you hate me? Is it too late for you to be the Gilbert Blythe to my Anne Shirley?
There should be a statute of limitations on this kind of regret. Especially when you thought you’d forgotten all about it, doing all kinds of other things-like trying to make a name for yourself as a journalist until you realize that those aren't the stories you want to tell, falling in and out of love multiple times since, exploring foreign lands--those kinds of really important, moving forward stuff.
“Thank you,” Rory demurs, and sucks a breath in slowly. Then out of her mouth bubbles, “I’m moving back! To try and write a book. It’s probably a bad idea-to quit my job-but I thought about it a lot and this is what I want. So...yeah.” After that, she clams up.
Dean does that squished-down, suppressed smile thing, and she remembers. He cocks his head to one side and looks at her like he's listening to her face. “I know that already, Rory. I live here, remember?”
“Right. Of course.” She's actually missed that part of small town life.
Dean grabs her upper arm, fingers circling it all the way around. His hand is warm and firm-even through layers of cotton and sweater. “But it’s good to hear it from you,” he says, looking down to where he's touching her, then drawing his hand back. “It’s...good to see you.”
“You too,” she says, and knows that it's true.
“See you around.”
And then he’s walking off down the aisle, looking totally at home among the bins of nails and screws. Rory picks up the fallen hammer and shakes her head.
Bookshelves. Very important. Check.
*****
Once you’re from a small town, you’re always from a small town. Rory quickly slips into a quiet groove. She moves into the back part of the Inn, the place where she lived as a baby. She eats breakfast with her mom at Luke’s almost every morning. During the day she types, types, types. Sometimes at night she goes over to Lane’s for dinner and watches the Lane-as-Mommy show. Other nights she rents old movies, wears pajamas, and enjoys feeling wistful.
And these normal, ordinary life things-walking down the street to Taylor’s for cereal and TV dinners, getting more printer ink, reporting on her various life adventures to everyone in town-keep being punctuated by Dean appearances. He’s everywhere, it seems. Which is strange, because she could count on the fingers of one hand the times she's seen him in between then-the last then-and now. And awkward as it is, there's something right-seeming about it-Dean Forester as ubiquity.
“I’m building a house,” he tells her when they bump into each other one day at the gas station.
“Oh!” she says, “that’s great.” So grown up, she thinks. And probably requiring lots of sweatiness and heavy lifting. How exactly was she so good when they were kids? He didn’t sport a tool belt back then, she remembers. That’s got to be it.
*****
“So this book you’re writing-am I in it?” Dean asks another day at the diner, looking over her shoulder towards her laptop screen.
“Do you want to be?” she lobs back, snapping the computer shut.
Dean just grins quietly and waves to Gypsy across the room.
“Depends,” he says, sweeping his gaze back down to her. “Is there going to be a happy ending?”
And that’s when Rory feels the first flicker of hope.
*****
“Are we friends again?” Rory asks. They’re eating together this time. Sitting at the same table at the same time. It wasn’t premeditated or anything, but still.
Dean automatically gives her his extra sausage just like he always used to, and she wants to grab his hand in hers as it passes over her plate. She wants to squeeze his fingers tight for remembering the details of her.
He quirks a brow and deliberately finishes chewing. “Of course,” he answers easily. “Why wouldn’t we be?” And Rory’s heart plummets deep into the recesses of her chest.
Because I broke your heart a few times and then you broke mine when I wasn’t paying attention. That’s why, she thinks, jutting her chin up. Suddenly she wants him to still be angry with her.
*****
“Friends” means hanging out in public with lots of other people around. It means hearing about all the plans for this house he’s building for himself. It means never mentioning any of the people that came between them before.
And for Rory, it also means being plagued by dirty thoughts she’d never say out loud, even if she does have dog-eared copies of Anais Nin and D.H. Lawrence unapologetically stacked on those bookshelves she finally put up all by herself.
Dean was the first boy who ever kissed her. Then later-at the wrong time-he was the first man she let inside her. She can’t forget.
*****
“I’m not always good, you know,” Rory slurs one night at the bar. She’s had a few too many whiskey sours and is feeling punchy.
Dean drinks slowly from his beer bottle, glancing over at her with amused eyes. “Oh yeah? Did you go on a crime spree while you were gone that I don’t know about?”
“No,” Rory says, and hiccups. “But I could have!” She purses her mouth thoughtfully. “I did do a lot of jaywalking though. I’m impatient about traffic signals it turns out.”
“I’m sure you could be very bad if you put your mind to it. Nothing stops a Gilmore,” Dean says, chuckling and taking another big gulp of beer. Rory watches his adam’s apple move as he swallows and thinks, You have no idea. The implications of that thought blossom and grow in her booze-fuzzy head, making her feel both maudlin and unseasonably warm down below.
“What about you?” she asks impulsively, to deflect. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?”
Dean looks away and runs a hand through his hair before answering seriously, “I married a woman I wasn’t in love with.”
“Right. Of course,” Rory mumbles, and stares into her lap. What they did to Lindsay still weighs on her conscience to this day.
*****
Dean stays away from her for awhile after that. Rory's got writer’s block something fierce and she thinks about him every day in the shower when she’s getting herself off with slippery fingers, eyes shut tight. It’s a hold over from when she was young-masturbating with eyes closed-because when she was eleven and first figured out that she could make herself feel good that way, she and Lorelei had been watching a lot of scary movies and so Rory was convinced that there were ghosts watching her every time she touched herself.
She wants to tell Dean things like that, wants to update him on all the minutiae of her world, let him in deeper than before. But he’s not around. And he doesn’t want her anymore. That much is clear.
*****
“You’re avoiding me!” Rory says in her best loud, authoritative voice as she clomps through the empty doorframe of Dean’s new house. She honed that tone editing the paper at Yale and she hopes she’s still got it down pat. But it’s kind of hard to keep one’s dignity intact while getting caught and tangled in the protective tarp he’s got tacked up.
Dean turns around from where he’s been hammering something or other and frowns. “I’ve just got a lot to do around here, Rory. That’s all.”
“But-” she sputters. Rory can feel the itching in her arms that means she’s going to start waving them about soon. “But you haven’t been into the diner for coffee in days. Coffee! Am I so terrible that I’m keeping you from coffee?”
Sure enough, she’s gesticulating madly. Dean smiles dimly though, breaking through Rory’s panic with his dimples. “Coffee isn’t the life or death issue for everyone that is for you.”
“Oh, well. Okay,” Rory says, feeling like she’s lost control of the plot here. Then she remembers-heated confrontation! All right, back on track. “But you’re still avoiding me. I know it.”
Dean sighs and leans back against a wooden post, wiping sweat from his brow and kicking the ground with one large boot. God, she loves the way he leans. “Okay,” he admits. “I’m avoiding you.”
“Oh,” she says, pausing. “I’m not going to jump on you like a rabid beast, if that’s what you’re worried about. I mean, you do insist on wearing those pants with the pockets and loops so that I want to, and Oh no.” She claps her hand over her mouth.
Dean’s face ripples like he doesn’t know if he’s going to laugh or cry. “They’re work pants, Rory.” He’s breathing heavily out of his mouth as he walks towards her. “And it’s not like I don’t want you to. You have no idea how much I want to...”
Rory steps closer. “Want to?” she says helpfully, catching her bottom lip between her teeth.
“It’s nothing like that,” Dean continues, clearing his throat and taking another long stride forward. It’s like magnetism, like they’re marionettes, how they keep moving towards each other as if by accident.
“I don’t deserve you,” Rory says then, voice small and halting. Suddenly there’s so much truth in this unfinished room.
“No, Rory, No! It’s not that either.” He groans. Dean’s only a foot away now, and she has to look up to see his lips moving. “I think we cancelled each other out being jerks a long time ago. And I couldn’t be mad at you for that long. I never could. Besides, we were so young then.”
Rory’s listening, and what he’s saying is important and could mean everything, but her mind is full of the smell of him. She wants to run her hands up under his shirt and find out how his body’s changed. She wants to touch his hair where it curls at the ends, boyish and unruly.
“I want you so much.” Rory listens to her own voice coming out of her mouth, surprised by how it shoots up high at the end. She sounds so brazen.
Dean closes his eyes. He starts to reach for her, then pulls back jerky and slow, grimacing.
“It’s just-if we did this and then you just left again, I don’t-I don’t want to feel like that ever again. Not about you.” Rory gulps. “So I was just trying to pull myself together. Take a breather. To keep myself from dragging you into the bathroom at Luke’s or something insane like that.” Rory shivers. Dean shoves his hands behind his back. And suddenly everything seems simple to her. Beautiful even.
“Dean,” she says.
“Yeah?” he answers.
“I’m not going anywhere. But I’ll wait. You’ll see.”
*****
“Waiting” means doing pretty much all of the same things they were doing together before, only now with added “inadvertant” touching, and clammy hands and prickles of heat rushing up between her thighs.
It certainly doesn’t mean any less frequency of dirty thoughts. She blushes secret and hot when they’re at the make-shift movies ignoring Kirk snoring in the corner. And the first time they hold hands again, it’s like her insides are turning to liquid flashfast, churning like they did when she was sixteen and she caught the slightest hint of his soap-boy-Dean smell. Except her imagination’s so much more vivid now that she knows a few things about men. Not enough about him though. Not like that.
So Rory licks her lips and smiles, pretending it’s just the three scoop sundae in front of her that has her mouth watering.
The inevitability of Dean’s hands on her body-making her feel both tiny and big-of his long frame taking up half of her bed, of all the ways she’s going to make up the years apart is heady and perfect. Because it is inevitable-Rory’s made up her mind.
*****
Rory finds that she’s falling in love with being herself again. As much as she has enjoyed and learned from fast, she's comfortable now with slow. She reads books late into the night with cold french fries and chocolate milk for company. She futzes and organizes and daydreams. She walks down the streets of her town and feels like she’s a part of somewhere again.
And as she stops worrying that she’s too skinny or that she’s going to put her foot in her mouth, and as the anxiety dreams fade, Rory remembers that this is part and parcel of what she always liked most about Dean-the way he always loved her for being exactly the way she was. Dared her to do it too. He’s not a challenge for the sake of being a challenge; he's a man who loves her.
And he still lets her pick all the movies. There's always that as well.
*****
Dean kisses like he means it, like there’s nothing else going on in his world except for his lips against hers, his hands holding her head in place, tongue dipping into her mouth like he lost something there.
This hasn’t changed, Rory discovers, when finally-finally-he turns to her and says, “The problem with you waiting is that as a result, I’m waiting too.”
*****
They’re in his house, which is almost finished, but there’s still no furniture and saw dust everywhere. Dean has his hand up her skirt, fingertips stroking circles into her skin. Her own hand is skirting around his fly, feeling how much he wants her, by alternates timid and daring as she squeezes his cock through his pants then shifts to just petting lightly, overwhelmed.
He pants her name into her ear, breath wet and warm. She whimpers. It would be embarrassing if this were anyone but him.
“Dean!” she says as he starts kissing down her neck purposefully, tonguing the valley between her breasts. “Wait!”
He groans quietly and scrubs his face with his palm. “I thought we were done with waiting. Jesus, Rory I-” She looks into his face then and sees an apology there. Rory wants to be done with apologies...for a little while at least.
So she kisses him, hard, fumbling her way into his lap. He thrusts up into her minutely when their crotches meet. “God, I’m acting like a horny teenager,” he says and smiles at her blindingly, man-sweet.
“You didn’t do this when we were in high school,” Rory exclaims as he starts mouthing her nipples through the thin cotton of her shirt.
“Mmmph,” Dean says by way of answer, looking up as he suckles over her clothes, biting lightly. “I was a nice boy then,” he adds once he’s unlatched.
“And you’re not now?” she whispers, grinding herself down and reveling in the way his eyes start to roll back into his head.
“I still am,” Dean concedes. “But if I don’t see you naked pretty soon, I might not be.” He laughs, then hesitates. “Actually, I’m incurable-please, tell me, why do you want to wait?”
At first Rory can’t actually remember, because he’s warm and solid beneath her and she hasn’t felt this powerful and safe in forever. “It’s just-” she starts. “I want this to be perfect. Candles and music and planning! Not in a barn, or on a dirty floor, or with-” She shudders. “My mother catching us after.”
Dean laughs again ruefully, and catches her knuckles with his lips. “Okay,” he says, and kisses her chastely. “But you know,” he goes on, eyes twinkling, “I’ve been using that time in Miss Patty’s barn like other guys use Playboy for years now.”
“So have I,” Rory says softly, and his eyes grow big.
“Are you sure the safety candles in the back of my truck and my iPod aren’t enough planning?”
*****
The first time is fast and desperate anyway, despite the presence of Rory’s stereo and tapered candles burning low. It feels so good to have him covering her, grabbing her shoulders as he comes inside her, mouth open wide and gasping.
“God, I love you,” Dean mutters into her skin as Rory lies back happy, clasping her thighs tightly around his waist, holding him in. "I always have."
“You didn't, did you?” he asks a minute later, lifting his head.
Rory shakes her head no, but says, “I’m sure I’m going to though. 'Cause I'm not in any way done with you yet.”
*****
She's hungry for him, insatiable yet strangely relaxed. And now Rory understands the real meaning of that euphemism-what it feels like to experience desire that loops in on itself. Weeks and months-years, really-of fantasies feed into every touch as she explores his body with her hands, inquisitive.
“Do you know how much I want you?” she breathes into his ear, her honest question almost calling up years of reserve and holding back. Dean shudders but doesn't answer verbally, just slides a thick hand between her legs, as if searching for physical proof. “Do you?” she repeats, suddenly feeling the weight of their past pushing down. She needs for him to know that this is a two-way street, a four lane highway even.
“Because,” Rory goes on, moving her hand down to touch his cock, still wet from her and hardening again, “I've been thinking a lot about this-about you.”
“Yeah?” Dean says on an exhale, pushing two fingers inside her body and gazing at her with that look, the one she never should have taken for granted. How he notices her. “Do you know what I want?” he asks, not waiting for a response. “I want to watch you, uh, you know.”
“You want to watch me come.” She says it as a statement not a question, with only a hint of a blush prickling her cheeks. Dean closes his eyes and licks his lips, and as his eyelashes flutter down, Rory marvels at how her boy sweetheart has grown into this beautiful man.
She does come, three times over. First he gets her off with his fingers, staying close so he can kiss her, wet and open and dirty, yet still, because he is Dean, with impossible sweetness. They lock eyes when Rory's at almost, and the dazed, worshipful expression on his face is what really takes her there.
The second time they fuck, Rory coaxes Dean behind her, because she wants him deep, wants to fill herself with him. She touches herself as he moves inside her, and Dean moans long and low when he realizes what she's doing.
Good girls do, she thinks. Then, This is what I want. This is what I want forever.
Dean imprints the curve of her spine with open-mouthed kisses and she knows that it was worth it-the waiting, the mishaps, the other options she tried on for size-if it means that she can be this certain.
The last time, she's perched on top of him, her movements languid-feeling queenly as Dean grips her narrow hips between the wide expanse of his hands. He says over and over, “This can’t be happening.”
“Shhhhh,” she whispers between his open lips, and when her orgasm floods through her Rory has Dean's tongue in her mouth and her hand on his heart.
“It is happening,” she assures him all the same, after, when she's curling her body around his bigger one. Rory’s never been more sure of anything in her life. Other than the fact that when someone knows everything bad about you as well as the good and still loves you, it’s real.
Or at least a good place to start again.
*****