Possibly Better
Title: Possibly Better
Written for: fanfic100
Fandom: Gilmore Girls
Character(s): Jess Mariano (Rory Gilmore)
Prompt: 084. He.
Word Count: 2125
Rating: PG (I think)
Summary: She asks and he remembers.
Author's Notes: I’m not sure where this came from, but I sat down to write and this is what it became.
Disclaimer: I never have and (sadly) never will own anything related to Gilmore Girls or Jess Mariano.
It is late afternoon, or possibly early night. It might even be late night. They are sitting on opposite sides of the couch in Luke’s apartment, reading and discussing their books. Once in a while they swap so the other can read a favorite section.
They have been there for hours now, but neither have really noticed the time fly by. The only thing to really measure the time by has been Luke’s regular visits, but even those seem to have been less regular lately, or they just have not noticed him come up, which is an entirely possible option.
He looks up again, just as he has once in a while since they sat down, and looks over at her. Normally he would find her engrossed in her book, but this time she is looking right back at him, a thoughtful expression on her face. He smiles a little and sits up to move over to her.
“What was it like to grow up in New York?” she asks suddenly, her words reaching him in mid move, making him stop abruptly and fall back the short distance to the arm rest of the couch, charging a memory from deep inside.
---
He is five and the smell he feels when he comes home to the apartment makes him want to throw up. It makes him angry for no apparent reason, for he has yet to learn what it is.
All he knows is that he has to make it to his room fast if he is gonna keep what little he ate for lunch today down.
So he hurries through the apartment, willing himself not to see the more and more frequent image of his mother lying face down on the couch, surrounded by bottles and small plastic bags, everything covered with spots of white powder.
A few days earlier his curiosity became too much and he wanted to know what it was. It looked kind of like flour, only not quite, but he wasn’t sure because he had not come across flour that often.
He had wet his finger with his tongue and put it in one of the bigger piles, just like he had a month earlier with the sugar in an open packet at the store on the corner.
At first it had not tasted that much, but then he thought he felt a sting on his tongue and had quickly spit it out. He had not stopped spitting until he reached the sink in the kitchen where he crawled up with the help of a chair, turned the faucet on and rinsed his mouth for over a minute.
He had cringed at the taste of the water, the usual chemical taste of it even more bitter than usual. But at the moment anything had been better than the taste in his mouth.
---
“What?” he asks, stunned by the memory that her words brought out in his mind, not aware until now that he even remembered it, and definitely not sure what to answer.
“I just wondered what it was like to grow up in New York,” she repeats, frowning at the suddenly guarded expression on his face. “I mean, I don’t really know that much about your life before you came here. I’d like to know more.”
---
He is seven and he is too afraid to go back to the apartment. The almost black sky above him is a promise of a cold and wet night, but nothing can make him go back there.
Not as long as Jack is there. Not as long as his mother is looking at him as if he were some kind of insect she would like to crush with the heal of her shoe.
The sky he thought could not get any darker proves him wrong and then he feels the first drops of rain. Or is it snow? Or hail? He isn’t sure; he only knows that he should have worn something warmer than the thin sweatshirt he put on that morning.
It only takes a couple of minutes for the world around him to turn grey as big, wet flakes of snow starts to fall all around him.
And then the wind picks up and he is starting to get really cold and feels like screaming every profanity he has ever heard in his life to the world.
He almost does, but the air is too cold when he opens his mouth, so he shuts it again, clutching his arms tightly around him, looking for a place with some sort of shelter from the snow and wind that has now picked up even more.
He finally finds a deserted alley with less snow than the street he came from and on shaky legs he walks in and almost falls to the ground from exhaustion. He drags himself a few feet in and is almost about to thank God for the torn cardboard box he finds.
But he remembers that he does not believe in God and only wraps the wet and soggy paper around him, thankful that he is out of the wind.
---
He shakes his head to clear his mind of the images, surprised at how vivid they are, how clearly he remembers that day. He had thought he had suppressed the memory together with the rest of them, but obviously he has not done a very good job.
Then again, since he arrived in Stars Hollow no one has really asked him about his past. Most people took one look at him and had their image clear already, and the others have either not dared or not bothered to find out the truth. Until now that is.
He is actually a little surprised, now that he thinks about it, that she has never asked before. But at the same time he is grateful that he has been able to forget for this long, even though it looks like the peaceful time without memories has now come to a rather abrupt end.
“You don’t want to know,” he says slowly, his voice barely above a whisper, and he can see her strain herself to hear his words. But he quickly looks away, does not want to meet her eyes for fear of what she might see in his.
“Of course I want to know,” she says quietly and he can feel her eyes on him, burning into him like two fires, and he wonders briefly how blue can be that warm. “I want to know if you loved books as much as you do now when you were eight. I want to know…” But her words are drowning in the images in his head.
---
He is eight and he wishes he had not been so damn curious. He is lying on his back on the floor outside the bathroom, head throbbing and trying to keep his insides from spilling out again.
The wet, sticky substances he is already lying in is far enough.
Had his head not felt so foggy he would have gladly pulled himself up and went to take a shower and put some clean clothes on.
But he does not think he has any clean clothes, has not had in a while, not since the last time he dragged a load of them down to the Laundromat a block away. He can not remember when that was.
And he is not sure there would be any warm water in the shower today. It has rarely been anything but freezing for the past year.
He thinks he can feel himself float and closes his eyes, only to realize they are already closed. Almost as an afterthought he tries to grab onto something to keep himself from flying away, but the only thing he finds is the bottle he dropped a while ago and it does not offer much support.
---
“You don’t want to know,” he repeats, his voice this time is louder and more forceful, and this time he looks up at her, not caring about the desperation, anger, pain and sadness he knows is clearly visible in his eyes, mixed with countless of other emotions.
If she is surprised by his expression she does not show it and he thinks he is grateful for that. But he does not get that much time to think about it before she is at his side of the couch, her arms around him, hugging him tightly.
He slowly raises his arms and returns her hug, holding her close and buries his head in her hair, accepting the hug even though it makes him feel slightly awkward. She stays quiet and he thinks he is even more grateful for that.
He closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of her hair, letting it calm him. He feels like he is about to cry, but he has not cried in so long time that he is not sure what it feels like. Either way there are no tears and he thinks that maybe it would have been better if there were.
Behind his closed eyes the memories keep flying by and he does not know how to turn them off. He sees himself grow older, sees all the places he has lived, all the people he has encountered, all the things he has tried to forget.
---
He is thirteen and he wakes up in a hospital bed, an old man with an all too friendly smile leaning over him, appearing to be busy checking his heartbeat.
He has a blurry memory of what happened before waking up here and he is unable to stop himself from wincing as his head clears and he gets his feeling back.
He remembers Liz’s latest catch looming over him with a menacing look on his face. And he remembers the pain all over his body and the sickening feeling of blood running down his face. And he remembers the last kick he received in his already painfully sore ribs before passing out.
And as the old man he assumes is a doctor continues to examine him, all the time with that almost nauseatingly friendly smile on his face and concerned questions about how he is feeling, he decides he does not care anymore.
---
He closes his eyes more tightly and he can feel something trickle down his cheek, at first wondering what it is. Then he tastes salt and he realizes that the tears have finally arrived. He is relieved, he thinks, and holds on to her tightly as they continue to silently fall down his cheeks, wetting her hair.
If she notices she does not say anything, but he thinks she holds him a little closer too and he feels her lips softly move against his neck.
---
He is ten and he is standing outside the school with a huge grin on his face, clutching the framed piece of paper closely to his chest.
He has been waiting for this day for a few weeks now, ever since he turned in his essay to his teacher. Every day he has gotten a little more nervous, a little more afraid that it will not be good enough.
It has been a couple weeks where he has not been able to concentrate on his normal school work quite as hard as he has wanted to. He promises that he will make up for it now.
The frame is black with a gold lining; he realizes it is not real gold, but for him it could just as well have been. Inside the frame, behind the glass, is a paper, of much higher quality than he has ever seen before, and on it is the evidence that his story won.
He walks home with a smile on his face, all the way clutching the framed diploma as if it is his most treasured possession. He feels a little bit closer to the people he admires the most, all the authors of his most loved books. And he thinks that maybe one day he can actually become one of them.
---
He smiles into her hair at the memory, remembering that day so clearly. It has been almost eight years, but it still seems like yesterday. And at the same time it feels like another lifetime. He opens his eyes again, feeling the last remaining tears slip out of the clutch of his eyelashes. As they fall he thinks he can feel part of his anger, his pain, fall with them.
“I won a writing competition when I was ten,” he says quietly into her hair. “I think I still have the diploma somewhere.”
Some day he will tell her about the painful memories, but today he will tell her the happy ones.
Written for: fanfic100
Fandom: Gilmore Girls
Character(s): Jess Mariano (Rory Gilmore)
Prompt: 084. He.
Word Count: 2125
Rating: PG (I think)
Summary: She asks and he remembers.
Author's Notes: I’m not sure where this came from, but I sat down to write and this is what it became.
Disclaimer: I never have and (sadly) never will own anything related to Gilmore Girls or Jess Mariano.
It is late afternoon, or possibly early night. It might even be late night. They are sitting on opposite sides of the couch in Luke’s apartment, reading and discussing their books. Once in a while they swap so the other can read a favorite section.
They have been there for hours now, but neither have really noticed the time fly by. The only thing to really measure the time by has been Luke’s regular visits, but even those seem to have been less regular lately, or they just have not noticed him come up, which is an entirely possible option.
He looks up again, just as he has once in a while since they sat down, and looks over at her. Normally he would find her engrossed in her book, but this time she is looking right back at him, a thoughtful expression on her face. He smiles a little and sits up to move over to her.
“What was it like to grow up in New York?” she asks suddenly, her words reaching him in mid move, making him stop abruptly and fall back the short distance to the arm rest of the couch, charging a memory from deep inside.
---
He is five and the smell he feels when he comes home to the apartment makes him want to throw up. It makes him angry for no apparent reason, for he has yet to learn what it is.
All he knows is that he has to make it to his room fast if he is gonna keep what little he ate for lunch today down.
So he hurries through the apartment, willing himself not to see the more and more frequent image of his mother lying face down on the couch, surrounded by bottles and small plastic bags, everything covered with spots of white powder.
A few days earlier his curiosity became too much and he wanted to know what it was. It looked kind of like flour, only not quite, but he wasn’t sure because he had not come across flour that often.
He had wet his finger with his tongue and put it in one of the bigger piles, just like he had a month earlier with the sugar in an open packet at the store on the corner.
At first it had not tasted that much, but then he thought he felt a sting on his tongue and had quickly spit it out. He had not stopped spitting until he reached the sink in the kitchen where he crawled up with the help of a chair, turned the faucet on and rinsed his mouth for over a minute.
He had cringed at the taste of the water, the usual chemical taste of it even more bitter than usual. But at the moment anything had been better than the taste in his mouth.
---
“What?” he asks, stunned by the memory that her words brought out in his mind, not aware until now that he even remembered it, and definitely not sure what to answer.
“I just wondered what it was like to grow up in New York,” she repeats, frowning at the suddenly guarded expression on his face. “I mean, I don’t really know that much about your life before you came here. I’d like to know more.”
---
He is seven and he is too afraid to go back to the apartment. The almost black sky above him is a promise of a cold and wet night, but nothing can make him go back there.
Not as long as Jack is there. Not as long as his mother is looking at him as if he were some kind of insect she would like to crush with the heal of her shoe.
The sky he thought could not get any darker proves him wrong and then he feels the first drops of rain. Or is it snow? Or hail? He isn’t sure; he only knows that he should have worn something warmer than the thin sweatshirt he put on that morning.
It only takes a couple of minutes for the world around him to turn grey as big, wet flakes of snow starts to fall all around him.
And then the wind picks up and he is starting to get really cold and feels like screaming every profanity he has ever heard in his life to the world.
He almost does, but the air is too cold when he opens his mouth, so he shuts it again, clutching his arms tightly around him, looking for a place with some sort of shelter from the snow and wind that has now picked up even more.
He finally finds a deserted alley with less snow than the street he came from and on shaky legs he walks in and almost falls to the ground from exhaustion. He drags himself a few feet in and is almost about to thank God for the torn cardboard box he finds.
But he remembers that he does not believe in God and only wraps the wet and soggy paper around him, thankful that he is out of the wind.
---
He shakes his head to clear his mind of the images, surprised at how vivid they are, how clearly he remembers that day. He had thought he had suppressed the memory together with the rest of them, but obviously he has not done a very good job.
Then again, since he arrived in Stars Hollow no one has really asked him about his past. Most people took one look at him and had their image clear already, and the others have either not dared or not bothered to find out the truth. Until now that is.
He is actually a little surprised, now that he thinks about it, that she has never asked before. But at the same time he is grateful that he has been able to forget for this long, even though it looks like the peaceful time without memories has now come to a rather abrupt end.
“You don’t want to know,” he says slowly, his voice barely above a whisper, and he can see her strain herself to hear his words. But he quickly looks away, does not want to meet her eyes for fear of what she might see in his.
“Of course I want to know,” she says quietly and he can feel her eyes on him, burning into him like two fires, and he wonders briefly how blue can be that warm. “I want to know if you loved books as much as you do now when you were eight. I want to know…” But her words are drowning in the images in his head.
---
He is eight and he wishes he had not been so damn curious. He is lying on his back on the floor outside the bathroom, head throbbing and trying to keep his insides from spilling out again.
The wet, sticky substances he is already lying in is far enough.
Had his head not felt so foggy he would have gladly pulled himself up and went to take a shower and put some clean clothes on.
But he does not think he has any clean clothes, has not had in a while, not since the last time he dragged a load of them down to the Laundromat a block away. He can not remember when that was.
And he is not sure there would be any warm water in the shower today. It has rarely been anything but freezing for the past year.
He thinks he can feel himself float and closes his eyes, only to realize they are already closed. Almost as an afterthought he tries to grab onto something to keep himself from flying away, but the only thing he finds is the bottle he dropped a while ago and it does not offer much support.
---
“You don’t want to know,” he repeats, his voice this time is louder and more forceful, and this time he looks up at her, not caring about the desperation, anger, pain and sadness he knows is clearly visible in his eyes, mixed with countless of other emotions.
If she is surprised by his expression she does not show it and he thinks he is grateful for that. But he does not get that much time to think about it before she is at his side of the couch, her arms around him, hugging him tightly.
He slowly raises his arms and returns her hug, holding her close and buries his head in her hair, accepting the hug even though it makes him feel slightly awkward. She stays quiet and he thinks he is even more grateful for that.
He closes his eyes and breathes in the smell of her hair, letting it calm him. He feels like he is about to cry, but he has not cried in so long time that he is not sure what it feels like. Either way there are no tears and he thinks that maybe it would have been better if there were.
Behind his closed eyes the memories keep flying by and he does not know how to turn them off. He sees himself grow older, sees all the places he has lived, all the people he has encountered, all the things he has tried to forget.
---
He is thirteen and he wakes up in a hospital bed, an old man with an all too friendly smile leaning over him, appearing to be busy checking his heartbeat.
He has a blurry memory of what happened before waking up here and he is unable to stop himself from wincing as his head clears and he gets his feeling back.
He remembers Liz’s latest catch looming over him with a menacing look on his face. And he remembers the pain all over his body and the sickening feeling of blood running down his face. And he remembers the last kick he received in his already painfully sore ribs before passing out.
And as the old man he assumes is a doctor continues to examine him, all the time with that almost nauseatingly friendly smile on his face and concerned questions about how he is feeling, he decides he does not care anymore.
---
He closes his eyes more tightly and he can feel something trickle down his cheek, at first wondering what it is. Then he tastes salt and he realizes that the tears have finally arrived. He is relieved, he thinks, and holds on to her tightly as they continue to silently fall down his cheeks, wetting her hair.
If she notices she does not say anything, but he thinks she holds him a little closer too and he feels her lips softly move against his neck.
---
He is ten and he is standing outside the school with a huge grin on his face, clutching the framed piece of paper closely to his chest.
He has been waiting for this day for a few weeks now, ever since he turned in his essay to his teacher. Every day he has gotten a little more nervous, a little more afraid that it will not be good enough.
It has been a couple weeks where he has not been able to concentrate on his normal school work quite as hard as he has wanted to. He promises that he will make up for it now.
The frame is black with a gold lining; he realizes it is not real gold, but for him it could just as well have been. Inside the frame, behind the glass, is a paper, of much higher quality than he has ever seen before, and on it is the evidence that his story won.
He walks home with a smile on his face, all the way clutching the framed diploma as if it is his most treasured possession. He feels a little bit closer to the people he admires the most, all the authors of his most loved books. And he thinks that maybe one day he can actually become one of them.
---
He smiles into her hair at the memory, remembering that day so clearly. It has been almost eight years, but it still seems like yesterday. And at the same time it feels like another lifetime. He opens his eyes again, feeling the last remaining tears slip out of the clutch of his eyelashes. As they fall he thinks he can feel part of his anger, his pain, fall with them.
“I won a writing competition when I was ten,” he says quietly into her hair. “I think I still have the diploma somewhere.”
Some day he will tell her about the painful memories, but today he will tell her the happy ones.