Wires and Waves

Summary: 4x21. Rory has enough money for a cab and so doesn't call Dean for a ride home. Jess shows up too early and, while waiting outside her dorm, has a chance to re-think his proposal. Season 5 re-write: What if Rory stayed in touch with Jess throughout his transformation into the guy we see in Season 6?

A/N: Hello! So, this idea came into my head the other day and I just had to write the first chapter; since I have one half-finished fic and another still in need of an epilogue, I'll probably leave it up to the response this gets as to whether I continue it in the near future. A couple of notes on the format: I'm planning to stick to a lot of the canon at the beginning, just with added Jess, but about two thirds of the way through it should veer away dramatically. Each chapter will be focussed on a Season 5 episode (and initially the last two of Season 4) with some combined and some skipped over in order to avoid too much filler. If I continue, chapters are probably going to be quite short, as there's a lot of ground to cover and not always that many situations where I can plausibly rig the plot, but this means that updates would probably be more regular. That's all, hope you like it!

Episode: Last Week Fights, This Week Tights

Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, this would be a lot better written.

Prologue: Pathetic

Rory looked down at the almost full table of food in front of her with a sigh. According to the cab company, she still had a good one and a half hour wait ahead of her before a car showed up (they're probably all stuck in traffic due to the inevitable car crash caused by my charming escorts of the evening, Rory thought to herself, bitterly), and so she'd decided to take her frustration out on the open tab her so-called date had left in his wake. Not that she ever really objected to being presented with an inordinate amount of food but, as someone who'd been all-too-regularly reminded of their own singleness of late, helping herself to a meal for four on her own table at a crowded pub on date night wasn't the biggest esteem builder.

Ignoring the pitying looks of the wait staff, she started to tuck into her meal, letting the situation settle over her in all its pathetic glory. This catastrophe of an evening had been her second date of the whole year, and it amazed her that it had managed to beat out the first in terms of suck factor – in fact, it would have qualified as the worst of her life had it not been for Kyle's party... No, that was not a memory that she was going to dwell on – not now, not in a bar filled with couples in various degrees of flirtation, and preferably not ever. That memory was to be kept filed away with all of the others in the compartment of her brain it had been allotted back when she had left for Europe with a broken heart and a promise to herself not to cry over it. She'd broken that promise several times since, but since starting at Yale she'd grown better at keeping it (that is, until a certain reappearance around Christmas which had since been shoved into the aforementioned compartment).

So, instead, her mind, now lodged firmly on her love life (a moment of silence for the departed), turned to Dean. Dean had, after all, never left her emotionally clobbered and biting her fist in a hostel bathroom in Rome so that her mother didn't hear her crying. Ever since the events of the last year, and even more so once her life had been uprooted to New Haven, she'd longed for the security that had come from her relationship with Dean to the extent that she'd begun to associate it with being at home – I guess you could call that love? She reflected to herself. Of course, it didn't matter how she felt about that particular ex – every time she saw him with Lindsay she was reminded of the proverbial neon sign hanging over his head: 'unattainable'. Still, she'd take the dull ache of thinking about her first love over the jagged pang that came from prodding the mental compartment into which she'd shoved her second.

With another sigh, she checked her watch: an hour left until her cab. This was the longest night of her life.

His blood pumping with the momentum of the decision he'd made back when he'd jumped into his car in Stars Hollow, Jess parked at record speed in a faculty only spot, jumped out of the car and, without locking it, started to seek his destination. The hand clenched around the address that he'd torn from Luke's fridge was shaking slightly as he looked around at each intimidating-looking building, searching for the name that matched the scribbled down one currently burning a hole in his hand. He finally found a match; he walked up to the building, squaring himself before the door, took a deep breath and pushed it open. Upon being confronted with a deserted, dark corridor, he unclenched his fist (his knuckles cracked at the sudden release of tension) and consulted the address again (which was pretty damn pointless, considering his eyes had combed that stupid scrap of paper about two hundred times before finally gathering the nerve to drive here). A few moments later he was standing outside her door. Another deep breath. He knocked.

And was greeted by complete silence – no shuffling from behind the door, no nothing. The whole building was dead. Another knock. Nothing.

Fuck. He turned around and his back made contact with the door before sliding down as he slowly sunk into a sitting position, still leaning against the decidedly closed door. Of course she wasn't here. Just because he hadn't seen her around town while he was there didn't mean she hadn't already come home – hell, she'd probably heard that he was in town and gone into hiding, such was her hatred of him. As he sat there, all of the plans he'd made on the frenzied drive up began to seem more and more ridiculous. After a week of Luke's self-help books (and a couple of his own, purchased out of town during one of the most embarrassing trips to Barnes and Noble of his life), his head had been filled with reconciliation and reciprocation, and all the other polysyllabic words beginning with 'r' that the author so loved to bandy around, and, with all this in mind, he'd got in his car and driven straight to Yale to ask the girl he loved to run away with him. What better way was there to show that he was committed, that he was ready, he'd reasoned. And all of those factors that had driven them apart the first time – her mother, her ex-boyfriend, and that psych experiment of a town – wouldn't even come into it.

But, sitting alone in an abandoned building, all of his frantic logic was wearing away by the second. How was he supposed to claim to have changed when all he was offering was to remove her from all the reasons that he had to change? The people that she loved, people that hadn't lied to her, refused to talk to her and bailed on her twice. How could he possibly ask her to leave that – as well as the future she'd always dreamed of, the one she deserved – behind in order to be with someone who she probably never wanted to see again?

The longer he sat there, the clearer it became to him that he'd wilfully misinterpreted everything he'd read in the past week in order to provide a motive for this selfish suicide mission. Feeling perhaps the most pathetic he'd ever felt in his life, he got back up on his feet and headed towards the door of the building.

Only for it to swing open as Rory walked in, her head hanging low after her debacle of an evening.

Jess stopped in his tracks, remaining glued to the spot in a stunned stupor as Rory approached. It wasn't until she'd practically walked into him that she became aware of the fact that she wasn't alone. Her head immediately snapped up and Jess saw shock register on her face, before quickly turning to anger.

"What are you doing here?" she asked in the most hostile tone she could muster, her whole body tensing up.

"I..." Jess started, not knowing how the hell to begin to explain the delusional thought process that had led him there that evening. "I honestly don't know."

"You don't know?" Rory repeated, incredulously. "You decided to take a huge and unnecessary detour on the way back to New York in order to what – check out the Yale architecture?"

"You knew I was in Stars Hollow?" he asked, in spite of himself. His question was met with a glare and a stony silence. "Look, I- I'm just gonna go."

And with that, he side stepped round her and headed towards the door. Still completely thrown by the whole situation, Rory turned around to watch him go. She didn't know what the hell caused her next words – perhaps the sudden panic she now felt whenever she saw his retreating back, or maybe the fact that she had been thinking about him that night, despite her every effort – but she suddenly heard herself shouting out, "Jess, wait!"

She watched as he stopped and slowly turning around, looking at her with a mixture of confusion and the tiniest bit of hope. Tentatively, she took a few steps forward, until they were within about five feet of each other (first of all, we should try to get within, say, a foot of each other- she quickly shoved that memory back into the mental box). The next words out of her mouth were as unexpected as the last: "Do you have a cell?"

He stared at her blankly for a moment. "What?"

"A phone," she clarified, staring resolutely a patch of floor about two feet to his left. "Do you have one?"

His wits slowly returning to him, he replied, "Uh, yeah – I kind of have to, for work."

Her curiosity immediately peaked upon hearing mention of his work, but she quashed it, reminding herself of the towering resentment she still felt towards him. In such a small voice that he barely heard her, she asked, "Can I- can I have the number?"

Thinking he must have misheard her, he repeated, "What?"

"Look – I can't keep doing this, okay? Yes, I'm pissed at you, but I can't keep going through the motions of you coming back, me being mad at you, and you disappearing again, it's messing with my head," she let out, her gaze rising back up to meet his, defiantly. "You're Luke's nephew, so I figure you're always going to be in my life one way or another, and I think we both need to find a way to deal with that. So, I figure, maybe we can try talking, from the safe distance of a state away. All I know is it feels like my life would be a lot easier if we could figure out a way to be civil." Also, I miss you, she added, silently. When he continued to look at her in surprise, she threw her hands up in air in exasperation, "Fine then, looks like we'll have to resort to Plan B of just never seeing each other again – works for me." She turned back and headed towards her door, fishing around in her bag for her keys. This task turned out to be easier said than done and after a moment of probing her bag for the elusive objects, she realised she still hadn't heard the door shut behind him. She turned back to see him still there, scribbling something on a square of paper he'd pulled from his pocket, leaning it against the wall in order to write.

When he'd finished, he turned back to her, took a few steps towards her and stretched out his arm. Knowing that words were pretty dangerous things right then, all he said was, "Here," as he held out his cell number.

Being very careful not to brush his hand, she grabbed it from him, before meeting his gaze briefly – he noticed it was the first time she'd looked at him with anything other than bitterness since the year before. Softly, she said a simple, "Thanks."

Backing away again, not wanting to ruin the nicest moment they'd had in months, he said the only thing he could think to say: "Bye, Rory." With that, he turned away for a second time and left.

Rory watched the door swing shut behind him, her head swarming with different emotions, and muttered, "Bye, Jess." After a moment, her gaze turned to the scrap of paper lying in the palm of her hand. Upon seeing that his canvas of choice was a Barnes and Noble receipt, her curiosity got the better of her and she sought the answer to the question that had probably been uttered the most in their relationship: What had he been reading?

Out of everything that had happened that night, looking back she had to say the most surprising thing was turning over that receipt and seeing a list of self-help book titles.

A/N: Thanks for reading, let me know if you want me to continue!