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"C'mon Jess, sing me a song."
It must have been the millionth time she'd said it, trying on varying degrees of sugary and stern and sad—as it turned out, Rory could not cry on command, but she could blink a lot and wobble her lip (it didn't succeed in getting a song out of him, but it did succeed in getting him to do other things).
He was sitting on Luke's couch, guitar sitting on his leg while his hands hung lazily over it, fingers smoothing against the strings without bothering to play the instrument. He'd barely played the guitar at all, and who knew why he'd gotten it out in the first place, but in the very least: the view of Jess with a guitar was a good one, and Rory was taking great joy in it.
"I already sang you a song," he told her, lying through his teeth.
She sat with her feet tucked under her, facing him completely. "No, you said the beginning of Know Your Rights, but you didn't even play me it," Rory retorted, "We just kissed for two minutes." It had been extremely distracting, but now she was determined to stay on task.
He gave her a lazy, boyish smile. He drew himself closer to her, slowly began tucking the guitar away. "Are you complaining?"—She pushed him back and a pursed frown settled on her face, accompanied by a petulant glare, which was easily returned.
"Sing me a song, and we can do whatever you want for the next ten minutes," Rory bargained, trying on her best diplomatic look.
He cocked his eyebrows at her, and absolutely nothing about that look was diplomatic.
She sized him up and tacked on, "With limitations."
Jess just cracked half a smile, dipping the angle of his head. He strummed a chord, eyeing her. He said, "I'll play you a song."
"If it involves singing, you've got some horizontal kissing on your horizon, mister." She smiled ever so sweetly at him, leaning the side of her head on the back of the couch.
He squinted at her. "Really don't like you calling me mister."
"You can call me miss," she suggested heartily.
"I'll stick with Rory."
She gave him a sharp nod. "Alright, Mr. Knightley."
"Now I'm really not singing you a song."
"But thinking about yourself in tights probably doesn't make you wanna kiss me very much, so we're at a stalemate," she pointed out with a sympathetic twist on her lips, her eyebrows scrunched together.
"Well, that depends. Do you like the tights? Because I could survive if I'm wearing the tights for you.”
Rory sat up straight and beamed. "So you'll sing me a song because it'd be for me and it'd make me really happy?"
He gave her what Rory could only call a stink eye. He turned his attention to the guitar, playing the introduction to, surely, another Clash song. He lifted his gaze to hers and half-sang: "No."
She levelled him with a very serious stare. "Well, then I think the next obvious step here is to break up."
His eyes immediately shifted, and she didn't mind, was fascinated by it really, but what she really wanted was for him to sing. However, Jess had other plans, and was pretty good at diverting her attention. With the guitar between them, he took the line of her jaw into his palm, took her in, and touched his mouth against hers, they both closed their eyes. The kiss was soft, he tasted good. She broke away, pressing her lips together.
"You're only supposed to kiss me after you've sang," she murmured, chastising him.
"I'm a bit of a rule breaker," he replied, kissing her again, and they moved to each other's rhythm, her hand coming to his hair. The guitar came to be a very annoying obstacle. He went to put it away, but she grabbed his wrist and drew her lips away, leaning her forehead against his, drinking in his eyes. And then she leaned back and crossed her arms.
"Okay, now play."
Jess groaned, sinking into the couch. "Rory."
"I promised you a change in angle if you played a song, didn't I? Not even a song. A line." She went in again, pecking him softly on the lips to no complaint. "That was just an incentive."
"One way of putting it," he grumbled, sitting up.
"C'mon, Jess, this deal is beneficial to the both of us. You sing, I get to hear you sing..."
"And then I get to make out with you, yeah, yeah, I hear you."
"I was going to say and then you get to spend some quality time with your girlfriend, but sure, layman's terms."
He snorted, and repositioned his hands on the guitar, concentrating on his finger placement. He started strumming, and then looked at Rory, suddenly unsure. She smiled at him, adoration uncontainable.
Jess drew on a very serious expression, one that meant he was focussing, and one that, to be honest, Rory usually only saw when they were kissing. She'd like to see that expression more often, but maybe that was just conditioning, a train of thought connecting to another track. She'd like to see him do his homework; she liked the idea of watching him do algebra, how his expression might pinch and how he'd draw his numbers—she made a mental note to make him write down his numbers from one to nine later, he always wrote them out in margins and she wondered how they looked, she felt that was information that they should know about each other—but she was considerably sure that Jess had zero interest in having her watch him do his homework.
And now wasn't the time to ask, anyway.
He licked his lips, he swallowed. He looked like he was going to start a few times, but didn't. And then, finally, blessedly, Jess sang, "Linger on." His voice was low smooth gravel, and not unlike his speaking voice. He started off quiet, unsure, but finished solid: "Your pale blue eyes."
Jess' voice wasn't going to be on the radio, but her smile spread, because it was him, and she could hear the potential in it, how good he could be and how good she thought he was right then. Besides, it wasn't like he'd want to be on the radio. She hoped that she wouldn't lose this memory for a while yet. If she could convince him to sing the rest, she would, but she knew how far she could push him, and the rest of the song was a few minutes over his limit. She played his sound over and over again in her head, hoping that would keep it closer to her in the future.
"You happy now?" he asked, playing it cool but clearly a little embarrassed. He was cute, not that he'd want to hear it.
Impossibly, her smile grew bigger. "Incredibly." She could see his cheeks were a little red.
He nodded and ducked his head, a habit of his, and he fiddled with his watch. He jumped to move when he saw the numbers. "Luke incoming."
She leaned back on the couch. They weren't doing anything they wouldn't want to be caught doing, so Rory wasn't exactly scrambling. Unlike some other people. "Shucks."
"You did not just say shucks." He dashed to hide the guitar under the couch.
"He does know you have a guitar, right?" Rory asked, watching him in amusement. He seemed to care more about getting caught with the guitar in his arms than he did about kissing her; he was always telling her that they had just one more second to go before Luke walked in on them. Not that she minded. She liked her seconds and minutes with him.
"He just thinks it's for decoration."
Jess grabbed Rory's book off the table, and minimized the space between him and her. She glanced at him confused, then watched the entrance. She could see Luke's shadow begin to fall on the window of the door, a familiar shape by now.
"We're reading the same book together," he told her, putting it between them.
Rory furrowed her eyebrows. "What? Just grab yours—"
"I'm sitting on it—"
"If you'd just—"
"Don't grab my ass—"
Luke burst in. "Forgot my spatula."
Dryly, Jess said, "Oh no." His eyes were set on the words he'd put in front of them. They didn't read the same book at the same time, they read the same books but with their own copies, and raced each other to see who could reach the end faster. Rory kept winning, and Jess kept protesting that it was only because he was stopping to write notes (which was completely his own choice, and while she adored him for it: Rory was a winner, and that was the point).
What kind of person read the same book at the same time with another person anyway? Jess slid his arm around her shoulders, which wasn't a move he pulled often—he preferred her leaning on his chest (he'd play with her hair), his head on her lap (she'd play with his hair), or simply leaning on each other—and the lengths that he was going to for the appearance of "normal" was ridiculous, like getting caught with a guitar on his knee was somehow comparable to a criminal act.
Rory, studying the pages of the book, piped up, "What colour is it?" She knew full well what colour it was. She'd seen Luke forget his spatula quite a few times by then.
Luke blinked at her. He grabbed it out of the drawer, flipped it around once in his hand. "Blue."
Rory, still not looking up, asked, "Pale?"
"Uh, I guess? I mean, it's kind of a primary blue—"
Jess silently lifted a page, threateningly poised to dog-ear it.
"Don't you dare," Rory hissed.
Luke, eyeing them suspiciously, said, "So you guys are...?"
"Reading a book together," Rory said brightly, raising her head, flipping her hair out of her face.
"Aren't we darling?" Jess added on, putting on an expression of absolute sunshine.
She turned her sweetest smile onto him. "Oh, mister, aren't we?"
Luke stared at them for a moment longer, and then left the apartment confused, with the (pale) blue spatula.
Jess shut the paperback and stared incredulously at his girlfriend. “Mister?”
Rory stared incredulously at her boyfriend. “Darling?”
“Well, we are," he said, turning his eyes deeper into hers.
Rory shook her head affectionately, a smirk begging onto her lips. “Whatever you say, Mr. Knightley.” She kissed him before he could complain. Jess took care of the change in angle, and both of them made the quick and customary check of his watch—they had ten minutes to go, and they were going to use them wisely.