Chapter Text
Dark skinned, old, long greying dreadlocks, a still somewhat copper beard, and curved wrinkles on his face that stood out as his booming laugh echoed down the bus and he slapped his knees jovially.
That man had gotten off two stops after he’d got on.
Purple hair, half of it jagged and shaved, the other cascading down her back in almost unrealistic ringlets. Her face cleared of anything false – makeup, piercings, not even a hint of a scar, except one tattoo that reached from under her shaved hair and tickling the centre of her cheekbone as an elaborate flower.
She’d exited an hour into the journey, and Jess almost followed her off with his curiosity.
Glasses, a crisply ironed suit, a briefcase and newspaper, middle-aged and a tan-line on his wedding finger. He was smiling as he leant against the window, pretending to read the financial section of the news, but his eyes were closed and his headphones blaring the music of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name,” on repeat.
He had jolted out of his seat and ran for the door minutes before the bus set off again on its final leg of the journey.
Jess slipped down in his seat, his legs up against the one in front of him and Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ open in his hand – his notes scribbled over every blank space in that book, and he grimaced at the irony of the book he had grabbed.
This was one bus journey that he was sure Sal Paradise would have despised. It seemed that every interesting person had found their spot far before Stars Hollow was even considered on the itinerary. All that were left were old pensioners with canes and false teeth, spitting and drooling as they spoke. Or crisply dressed business men and women who were ignoring everybody be staring blankly at the seat patterns in front of them.
He'd been on the bus for too long, looking for hope amongst Kerouac’s words, but no matter how many time the man romanticized his time on the road, the new people to be met at each corner and the way the sun lit the sky in a new and completely different way as another field went by, Jess couldn’t feel optimistic.
Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
The book didn’t fool him. He knew that he was on this bus for reasons beyond his control. He was being forced to live with a stranger because his mother had considered him one. He was leaving behind his comfortable chaos for this uncomfortable suburbia.
With the sun beating down hard on his face, and the threat of the looming boredom that will become of his life ever-closer, Jess settled further down into the seat and placed the book over his face to shield his eyes from the sun.
Kerouac. What a Lying son of a bitch.