I had a tough time with this one, since Chris (not Lorelai's Chris, the other one) got about two minutes of screen time, but I hope you like what I came up with. I had to rewrite this because FFn logged me out and deleted the entire story (I really need to get out of the habit of writing my fic IN the document manager, but I just like the way it looks better than my word processor, and this is very important to my train of thought). It's a bit longer, because there's more story to tell, but there it is.

With The Flow

Chris Anderson was always the laid-back friend. The one who went with the flow and was mostly just there, taking up space. He was the extra body in the room, and the funny guy. He didn't do important things. He was just there.

When he was nineteen, he decided he'd had enough of Boston and moved to Philadelphia. He wanted to get away from his parents. His mother, Ann, was a teacher. His father, Timothy, was an electrical engineer. They wanted him to grow up, go to college, and do something "practical."

Chris wanted to paint. Or maybe play guitar. He wasn't sure yet.

Of course, being nineteen and relatively unsuitable for any job that required more training than the ability to say "Would you like fries with that?" he couldn't really afford an apartment on his own. By some stroke of luck, he encountered Matthew Barnes, an old friend from primary school whose family had moved to Philadelphia when they were twelve. Matthew was also having trouble paying his rent. Apparently his job as an "assistant" (meaning secretary) at a large publishing firm didn't pay so well.

The two of them lived together in the mid-sized apartment, getting by as well as they could and each cherishing their separate dreams. And then disaster, as it always does, crept up on them. Matthew lost his job. Without the money he brought in, they were going to have to find a smaller apartment or worse, give up their ambitions. Chris worked like a maniac at his menial day job, but it did no good.

Then the miracle happened. Matthew's uncle died and bequeathed his nephew the three rickety book presses he had in his possession.

Matthew spent three days complaining about where they would possibly have room to fit the large machines, but Chris wasn't really listening. His head was awhirl with a sudden vision of what they could do with this unexpected windfall. He imagined a sort of art house/publishing company/bookstore, some kind of haven for Philly's steadily growing bohemian underground.

At first, Matthew was skeptical. But he had made friends with a few poets while working for the publishing firm, and he managed to lure them away from the big corporation with the promise of personal treatment and respect of their artistic vision. He began editing their work.

Chris started painting again. He sold his art on street corners in order to bring in enough extra cash to sign a lease on the large empty space on the ground floor of their building.

And somehow, over the course of a few years, Truncheon Books took off, and for the first time in his life, Chris was really, truly happy. He wasn't just the funny guy anymore. He wasn't just taking up space. He had Done Something.

A year later, Matthew brought to their doorstep a starving genius named Jess Mariano...