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Rory hated airports. Actually, hate was probably a little strong, but she really wasn’t a fan of the places, as a rule. Maybe it came from spending too many hours just waiting, for planes, for people. Of course, sometimes, it was a good opportunity to read, but even the great reader that was Rory Gilmore tired of the written word occasionally. It was rare, but it was true.
When she just couldn’t read, she listened to music, and on the odd occasion when nothing, not one single genre, seemed to suit her mood, she gave up and people watched. Rory wasn’t quite up to her mother’s standard when it came to giving colour commentary on all the human life that wandered by. Not that she had an audience to perform to most of the time, she wouldn’t be so bored if that were the case, but even so, in her head, Rory could never come up with as interesting things as she knew Lorelai would if she were present.
It was a sad confession for an author, that she struggled to find the words, but the strange thing was, Rory could do it when she had to put what she thought into text. She wasn’t so good at off the cuff, not about strangers, not in the same way Lorelai was. It made her feel judgemental and weird, even if it was all inside her head.
“When did this happen to me?” she muttered to herself, blushing when she realised the guy two seats over had heard and was now looking at her like she was a little crazy.
Maybe she was. Too much time alone. Too much time spent in airports. Definitely too much.
Heaving a sigh, Rory set herself up to stare off in the opposite direction. People were streaming through from a newly arrived flight and she took note of each one. An older lady, a little past her prime but clearly still believing she was just so glamourous, and because she thought it, it was almost true. A younger man, eyes fixed on his cell, to the point where he almost ploughed into three other people, a row of seats, and a pillar, with a look of disgust that any of them dared to cross his path.
A young family next - mom, dad, and baby - her looking harried, him just so at ease, a hand on her back as he leaned down to her much shorter height and said something that made her laugh. Rory’s attention was so totally taken by the three as they stopped moving, mother going around to the front of the stroller to check on the baby. They looked like they should be in a magazine and yet strangely normal at the same time. A little too good-looking for reality but so sweet and homely somehow that Rory had to smile, even as her chest ached in a way she didn’t want to dig into, especially when the dad crouched down to the kid’s height too, and then the couple were kissing as the child clapped and laughed.
“Rory?”
She was so startled to hear her name and then so very confused when she looked up into a face she knew so well and found it blurry.
“Jess,” she said, shaking her head in surprise, immediately mortified to realise she was crying. “I was... Um, what are you doing here?”
“Would you believe catching a plane?” he asked, the usual smirk appearing on his lips - Rory never had gotten past how sexy that was.
“Right, obviously,” she said, rolling her eyes as her brain finally caught up with the rest of her and she got to her feet, arms out ready to wrap around him. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too,” he said as they hugged it out.
It was still weird when this happened. Rory had tried to adjust to Jess being a part of her life that had very little to do with either of them. He was Luke’s nephew and Luke and her mom had been a pretty permanent arrangement the past nine years or so. That meant sometimes Jess was in Stars Hollow when Rory was there. It meant they ran across each other in places and interacted like friends might, even though they had never entirely found that middle ground. When someone else was there, they managed, but times like this, when they were left alone, to their own devices, it was weird. It was harder to pretend she didn’t feel what she felt.
Rory was well aware she was making it worse with the hugging, especially since she hadn’t let go yet and really probably should have. She hadn’t quite realised how much she needed a hug, how much difference it made that it was him. It was so easy to be in Jess’ arms and just revel in the feelings it brought to her.
“Hey, so, you’re okay, right?” Jess asked as they finally parted, head tilting a little as he stared at her.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” said Rory, nonchalant and breezy as she waved her hand in a ‘forget it, whatever’ kind of a gesture. “I was just... Um, it’s nothing,” she insisted, sitting back down, pulling her bag out of the next seat so Jess could join her.
“Yeah, because you always come to airports for a good cry,” he said, sarcastic as ever as he sat down beside her. “C’mon, Ror, this is me you’re talking to.”
They could’ve been seventeen again, except they weren’t all that good at talking even then. Sometimes, maybe. Ironically, mostly before they started dating. Maybe then they had been friends, and when friends became more, it should’ve been better, but it wasn’t. Dean had been a factor, and Shane, and her mom’s crazy dislike for rebels because she knew how that could turn out, not to mention Jess’ issues.
“I’m thirty-two years old,” she suddenly blurted out, eyes focused on a blank space somewhere between Jess and the floor, because somehow, that was easier. “When my mom was the age I am now, I was already sixteen. She had a great job at the Independence, a plan to start the Dragonfly with Sookie, a fiancé for a little while, even if that didn’t work out. We had a house, we had neighbours and friends and... and she had a life. She wasn’t happy one hundred percent of the time, but things were good.”
“And what? Things aren’t good for you?” asked Jess, a simple question, or it should’ve been.
Rory smiled in spite of the answer she had to give. “They’re not not good,” she said, not even caring how bad that particular piece of grammar was. “I have a job, I have an apartment, I have family, kind of - Mom, Luke, April, Grandma and Grandpa, Lane and Zack, Sookie and Jackson, all the kids...”
“I’m about to be insulted,” said Jess when she trailed off, his own name noticeably absent from her rambling about family.
It wasn’t as if Rory didn’t know she missed him from her list. It was deliberate, though in no way to hurt him. Turning around, her eyes searched for the young family she had seen before, but of course, they were long gone.
“There was a couple with a kid,” she told Jess, still staring at the spot where she had seen them. “The woman was pretty, the guy was... well, let’s be honest, he was hot, and they had this adorable little boy in a stroller. They were probably our age and they just looked happy. Happy like my mom at that age. I was just thinking, ‘Why aren’t I that happy?’ It’s been years and I keep thinking, surely, it’ll happen someday. The right place, the right time... the right guy,” she added, just at the moment she turned back around to face Jess.
That part really hadn’t been a plan, and yet. Looking at him then, meeting his eyes and letting herself seriously consider the possibility, Rory couldn’t help but think if, subconsciously at least, she had meant it. Wasn’t Jess the right guy? Hadn’t he always been, if she were honest? Hadn’t she always used him as the yardstick by which to measure every other guy she dated since?
The irony that half the problems in her teen romance with Jess had been her comparing him to Dean, but after that, with Logan, with Paul, with a handful of others that had lasted anywhere from one date to a six month relationship (but never longer), hadn’t she always made comparisons with Jess?
“Rory, what is going on?” he asked her then, concern showing in his whole face as his hand landed on her arm. “Did something happen?”
“No,” she said immediately, shaking her head. “No, nothing happened, and maybe that’s the problem. Jess, don’t you ever think about it?” she asked, realising when he continued to frown at her that she really was not being clear. “I mean, about us? About what might’ve been?”
His lips twitched as if the smirk wanted to come back but wasn’t quite sure if he was welcome.
“Are you kidding?” he checked. “Sometimes it’s all I think about,” he admitted, hand sliding from her arm as he sat back in his chair then, apparently defeated by his own confession. “Geez, Rory,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose as if she was giving him a headache. “You’re just... You were the one woman in my life I ever felt that way about, and at seventeen, I did not know what to do with that. I guess I figured that, somewhere down the road, it’d happen again but...”
“It didn’t,” she said for him, watching him as his hand dropped away from his face, as he looked at her with that same piercing stare that used to pin her to the spot and make her want to run at the same time - it still worked just the same.
“It didn’t,” he agreed softly.
There was a moment when she was sure he was going to kiss her and another moment right after when she decided, what the hell, maybe she would just kiss him. Then a voice came over the loudspeaker, announcing the flight was boarding.
“That’s me.”
They said it at the exact same moment, got to their feet in unison, then both laughed when they realised what happened. Waiting for the same flight and not even knowing it.
“Right place, right time,” said Jess, smirk in full effect.
“Right guy,” Rory added, swallowing hard. “Right?”
Two seconds that felt like an hour passed as she watched Jess blink once, and then he was closer, his arm around her waist and his lips on hers. He kissed her like he used to and she kissed back just the same. Her fingers tangled in his hair and his hands moved over her body as they got lost in the moment. Rory was drowning, not in the mire of what her life had been recently - the not knowing, the waiting, the longing - but in the blissful feeling of knowing this was right, that she had come home, without leaving the airport, that this was exactly how things were supposed to be.
Sure, there was a lot to figure out. Logistics and living arrangements and family entanglements, but Rory didn’t care, she couldn’t. There was her and there was Jess, and if they were together, if they could find a way, then it was okay. It was more than okay. It was good and she was happy.
“Geez, get a room.”
Rory came up for air in time to see the couple and their baby from before, the woman rolling her eyes at the PDA she just walked by, while her husband told her, ‘Like we’re not just the same sometimes, doc.’ Rory laughed, so loud she startled other passers-by, and then she looked at Jess and all the humour slipped away again.
“You think it can really work this time?” she asked him, searching his eyes for the truth that she trusted him to give her, alongside the love she was already so certain of somehow.
“Probably,” he told her, nodding his head. “If we don’t try, we’ll never know.”
Rory nodded at that too. “Works for me,” she said, moving in to kiss him one more time.
If they called the flight again, she didn’t hear, and presumed Jess didn’t either. It didn’t matter. Everything else could wait. All Rory knew was Jess and this moment and how great the future was going to be now that he was a guaranteed part of it. One thing was more certain than all others. Rory loved airports. Actually, love was probably a little strong, but she really was a fan of the places now, and was sure she always would be.