Chapter Text
“How does it feel to live here? How does it feel to leave here?”
When Paris found out that Lane and Jess were keeping in touch, she was furious. Not because she was jealous. Not because she hadn’t heard from that no-good-wannabe-punk-jerk-wad since before he left Connecticut for good. Not because she felt left out and like Lane didn’t trust her to stay cool. Not because it made her worry that maybe neither of them had ever wanted to be friends with her and they just pretended to for Rory’s sake. Certainly not because she thought she was more of his academically intellectual equal and that she wished he’d reached out to her first.
No, Paris was angry on behalf of Rory. She was angry because Lane was repeating inside jokes with the enemy. The treachery. This went against the Good Friday Agreement. This went against the Dayton Accords. Against the Geneva Conventions themselves.
This was breaking girl code.
“It’s not what you think,” Lane insisted, like a traitor. “He’d gone completely ghost, not even Luke knew where he was!” “Well now you do, so you can stop!” Paris countered. “I- Someone has to stay in touch with him! Make sure he’s still alive!”
“And why isn’t Sam Malone the one doing that?”
“They’re sort of not on speaking terms right now.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this, Lane, and under our roof – under Rory’s roof!”
“That’s not- don’t you dare call my loyalty into question, Paris. Rory is my Mia Toretto!”
“Then what are you doing calling Paul Walker!?”
“He’s been through a lot, okay, and he needs me. Or someone, at least!”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Really, Paris, he wasn’t allowed to graduate-”
“Because he was a flake.”
“He couldn’t take Rory to prom-”
“Travelling across the country to avoid a high school dance, poor baby.”
“He had nowhere else to go-”
“He had that Luke guy-”
“Luke kicked him out!”
Paris paused. “What?” It came out weaker than she wanted it too. She wanted to sound firm. Neglectful. Apathetic. “Luke kicked him out. He didn’t have a home in Stars Hollow anymore. His mom shipped him away to begin with, and he didn’t have nearly enough money to provide for himself,” Lane explained. The phone-call had been cancelled ages ago, but she still held on to the receiver like a stress ball. “So, he went to his dad.” “His dad,” Paris repeated. “Yes.”
“In California.”
“He runs a hot dog stand.”
“Huh.”
“He’s got a girlfriend. His dad that is. She’s got a house and a dog and a daughter that isn’t his- at least not biologically.” Lane shrugged a little. “She’s answered the phone a couple times, she sounds really nice,” she added shyly.
“Oh.” Paris’ fighting spirit felt deflated. She wanted to be angry – was angry – at the poofy haired asshole who had broken their best friend’s heart and ran away from the fallout with his tail tucked between his legs. And sure, parents can absolutely suck. But Paris didn’t give up on the world just because her mom cared more about interior design than her human offspring and her dad kind of just paid to avoid her. Then again, she did have Nanny and a staff and a roof over her head- no! No sympathy for the devil! she tried to convince herself. “We still don’t forgive him!” Paris pointed at Lane. She shook her head passionately. “We don’t.” “I certainly don’t,” Paris declared. “Me neither,” Lane agreed. “Then why did you talk to him like that?” Lane looked down at the phone and furrowed her brows. Then she looked up earnestly at Paris. “Because he’s my friend too. And I want to help my friends.”
Paris digested the words. They made sense, she knew, in the grand scheme of things. Terrance had helped her understand that the world isn’t only not politically black and white, but not emotionally black and white either. Good people could do crappy things. Bad people could be kind once in a while. But there was this ugly pain in her stomach still. “And here I thought he was only nice to us to get into Rory’s pants,” she muttered bitterly and marched into her room to sulk.
She wouldn’t speak to Lane for two days straight, until the black-haired girl had barged into her room with a personalized coffee order, a DIY-ed macaroni mosaic art piece and a sincere apology.
-
Two weeks later Paris checked her mail to find a slightly larger and thicker envelope. She opened it, and a whiff of musty air blew out of it. Looking inside, Paris found a book. The Apology of Socrates. Curious yet absentminded she began to flip through the pages. She was about to look out the window for potential stalkers when her eyes caught the sight of letters scribbled by hand on the blank page between the contents list and the first chapter.
‘Sorry I didn’t try to get in your pants.’
Paris found herself smiling. And then when she realized, she frowned.
-
‘-sexist, womanizing, no-good jack-off Tennessee Williams after school special PSA motherfricking beatnik fanboy.’ Jess couldn’t stop grinning at Paris’ letter. His roommate of three weeks had dropped the letter to the ground and grunted Jess’ name while he went to the “kitchen” for frozen pizza this morning. Jess’d had to crawl out of his mattress to get to it. Right now though, he thought the embarrassment of being on all fours was worth it.
The letter contained only one three-lines long sentence of insults, but it was in pristine condition. The words were carefully and daintily written in cursive, placed perfectly at the center of the clean, white, unwrinkled page. And the sheet had been sharply folded to fit the matching envelope with a fancy, swirly-patterned grid around the edges. It even smelled nice. Something expensive, the kind of perfume that said ‘I’m too rich for obvious scents’. He’d always admired her inability to half ass things.
As Jess sat there on the floor of the shitty studio apartment that he still didn’t know how many he shared with, he started to wonder why it had taken him so long to reach out. Sure, there was girl code, but him and Paris had never been on friendly-friendly terms. Their relationship was one built on spite, disgust and passive aggressive respect for the other’s intelligence. Then again, it was Lane who travelled through telephone wires and dragged him by the ear back into their friendship. She had even kind of started this one now, when she’d told him about how Paris “caught” her consorting with “the enemy” and how “hurt” Lane thought she was that he hadn’t picked things up with her too.
Why did she even care? Had Jess left that much of an impression on some private school blonde? You know she’s never been a Daisy Buchanan, he reminded himself, thinking back to all the reports Rory would bring him of school paper dictatorships and election campaigns and Harvard CV-prepping. Paris was an oddball, not really fitting into that rich and easy stereotype she was born into. Those girls would have taken an interest in Jess, sure. But it would have been about smoking and hooking up with someone from the wrong side of the tracks, not literary debates and fast-food munching. Salt n pepper mixes and nanny-approved mac n cheese. Jess grinned at the memory.
Shit. He’d liked Paris Geller. He missed Paris Geller. He missed getting his ear chewed off about male chauvinist writers and the country’s general health policies. He missed quick ‘small talk’ when he’d pick Rory up from Chilton for a book-shopping date in Hartford, and pretending to mess with her coffee when she’d stop by Luke’s after an all-nighter of studying. That weird loud chick had become part of his life, like Gipsy’s pricey car-repairs and the extra room Luke made for him. Like Lane.
The second he was done with his first shift of the day he ran over to the nearest run-down thrift store and perused the bookshelves for anything funny to get Paris. The selection was trash, as most thrift store selections were, but he figured he could at least find something with a fitting title… but he found nothing. Not even in the foreign language section. He was just about to give up when a loud cover caught his attention. It was a yellow tinted page with a half-naked blonde man and some red-lipped woman in a nightgown spread across it, lying on fur and satin and gripping each other seductively. The title said Secret Fire.
An idea popped into Jess’ mind. A very risky, possibly embarrassing but undeniably fun idea. He grabbed the book as a surprised laugh escaped him. He hadn’t felt this excited since he’d pulled of the 500 baseball-feat back in junior year. Paris was going to be fuming. He had to do it.
After he bought it, Jess went straight home, flipping through the pages to see how the previous owner had treated the thing. Whoever they were they had been a margin-doodler, and their favorite motif must have been bottles. He fished out a pen from his jacket while he walked into the apartment building. On the first blank page he could find, he wrote ‘What, never written ‘fuck’ on paper before?’
-
‘FUCK you.’ was the only thing the next letter said. Jess smiled so big when he read it that roommate #4 asked him if he’d gotten a full-blown Twin Peaks melt-down. God, he should have started sending her books sooner, when he was still trying to pull a Kerouac. He could have made a whole thing out of it. One book for every city he was in. Maybe he’d do it in the future, whenever he’d get tired of running three minimum wage jobs and one under just to make mattress rent in New York. He didn’t think this fall would be his last time ‘On the Road’. But he’d like a car next time. That’s what he was saving for, since the old scrap metal had pulled a Houdini back in Stars Hollow.
Jumping up and putting on his shoes, Jess didn’t even wait until after his shift to run to Goodwill over on Brooklyn and buy a new bodice ripper for Paris.
“How does it feel to come home? I wish you had a home.”
This book-letter exchange was getting stupid. And really bad for Paris’ shelf space.
After the swear-letter, Mariano had gotten some new fire under his ass and decided to send his messages through shlocky bodice rippers exclusively. On The Flame and the Flower he’d applauded her on writing ‘fuck’ for what he assumed was the first time ever (it wasn’t, she swore). On Lions and Lace he gave her a list of creative curses he’d overheard on the streets of New York, including quoting a certain The Exorcist line. Paris had begged him to switch to a classic letter format in her next one to him, but it only fueled the damn fire.
On Sweet Savage Love he wrote: “Tell me if this one’s better than the Dollars Trilogy.”
On Devil’s Desire he wrote: “Is the coffee any good in New Haven?”
On While Passion Sleeps (a fricking sequel) he wrote: “Roomate #5 is clipping his toenails as I write this. They’re so long.”
Before she knew it, she had 15 bodice rippers in her bookshelf. Paris was furious. She wanted to throw them out, but no book deserved such cruelty, even supermarket erotica. She’d tried reading them, but the writing made her furious and the hate-reading was starting to get in the way of her assigned literature. But the last straw was when Rory started to notice the books.
“Is this some new hobby from Terrance?” Paris shook her head in fury. “No! He would never recommend this trash to me!” Rory smirked. “So you’re reading harlequins… because you want to?” Paris stepped back aghast: “No, no! These are not mine!” “Then why do you have them?”
Paris opened her mouth to answer but stopped. If she continued, she was going to spill about Jess. Which would lead to spilling about her own letters. Which would lead to snitching on Lane. All of which would make Rory very sad and very hurt and make Paris feel like a terrible friend. And considering that Rory was single for the first time since Paris had known her and pretending not to struggle with all the assignments and not really making any new friends (Paris wasn’t either but this wasn’t about her), it felt like a bad idea to add another weight on her back.
“I…” Paris trailed off, struggling to come up with a cover. Rory grinned and rolled her eyes. “You do you, just maybe stick to reading them while I’m out of the dorm.” Then she left their room to grab coffee with some awkward shy guy named Artie or something. Paris exhaled her stress out and closed her eyes. This had to stop.
-
After Wicked Loving Lies, Paris finally seemed to have enough of the housewife porn and sent him her email and her phone number. Jess was never gonna admit how seamless the transition to digital communication was.
In fact, if somebody had told him two years ago that he would be emailing Paris Geller on a daily basis, talking about work and school and the merits of Focault’s literary criticism, he would’ve punched them in the face and warned them to never say something so stupid ever again. But there he was. Talking and texting and writing as winter turned to spring. Telling her about his mattress. Exchanging book recommendations. Hearing about her affair with a professor.
“How old is he?” he’d asked on one of their phone calls. It was a weekend; he was without a shift for the night and Paris was waiting for the aforementioned professor to ask if she wanted to go out (and Rory was back in Stars Hollow for Friday night dinner, but neither of them mentioned that). “A little over sixty,” Paris had mumbled into the receiver. “Older than Henry Higgins himself, you minx,” he’d joked at that. Paris had ignored the bait, but not completely. “I’m starting to think I’m too mature for anybody under forty. Asher is a man, intelligent and kind and responsible and altogether what a man ought to be. Guys our age are little boys.”
That had gotten Jess howling. “So you were the one with a teacher-student thing all along,” he’d laughed, alone in his apartment, sitting right by the heater for extra warmth. Paris had been shocked and offended. “I’m not some wandering coquette stereotype, Asher is not my daddy!” “You’re the one who said daddy, not me.” “Wait, who did you think had a teacher-student thing?” Jess had swallowed hard at that. “I don’t know,” he’d muttered, trying not to let emotion slip into his voice. “I’ve forgotten at this point.”
“This feels weird,” Paris said suddenly. “What does?” “Talking to you like I’ll see you after seminars on Monday when we haven’t been in the same room for a year.” Well, that left a sting in his chest. “Yeah,” he said as he exhaled, realizing she was right. But not wanting to own up to it he quipped: “Yeah I really should be over there taking classes in phenomenology and stealing ‘Asher’ from right under your nose.” “Jess, seriously.” He rubbed his temple, feeling cornered for some reason. “Isn’t that-” he tried. “Wouldn’t that break some basic rule of friendship or something?” He struggled to put her name on his tongue. “With Rory?”
It felt like ages since he’d said her name. It had been. Just thinking it put a stone in his stomach. He was starting to get used to it now that he was talking with Lane and Paris every day, but actually saying her name felt like throwing another stone on top. He could hear Paris breathe nervously on the other end. This whole thing was starting to feel like some fucked up affair. A sexless, loveless, tragically intellectual affair. “Did you and Lane talk a lot about what happened when I caught you two talking?” Jess frowned in confusion. “She mentioned something about starting World War 3 and you being jealous.” “I wasn’t jealous.” “Whatever you say.”
“When I asked her why, why she would stay in touch with you after everything you’d done to Rory, after leaving us all without a word, after knowing you were safe anyway and that this would hurt Rory so much even though she’d act like it wouldn’t…” Paris breathed a deep sigh. “She said you were her friend too.” Jess’ mouth was dry. His chest was warm. Probably the radiator. “Oh?” He managed to utter. “You’re my friend too, Jess.”
“Oh,” was all he could say. Shit. He had friends. Plural. Breathing got harder. He wasn’t sure if he was so happy he could die or so guilt-ridden he would let someone bludgeon him to death. “So let’s meet,” Paris declared on the other end. “All three of us. We could come to New York or you and Lane could come to New Haven some Saturday.” Jess leaned back against the wall. It actually scared him, how much he liked the idea of seeing them again. “We could check out Cafe9,” he offered, not able to say yes any other way. It’s like he could hear Paris smile through the phone. “We could get mac n cheese,” she said softly, audibly grinning. “Sounds like a plan,” he grinned back.
Jess looked around himself, at the messy little room with mattresses strewn around. At the fort of paperbacks he’d made around his own, and the uniform thrown over his duvet. “I’m kind of busy for a while, a lot of night shifts,” he said. “Oh, yeah, I didn’t mean right now, I have a lot of stuff to do too,” Paris nearly interrupted. “Lots of papers, lots of parties, lots off… booty- calls, anyway I’m busy.” Jess chuckled silently. “How about I tell you when I’ve got an opening and we’ll see if our schedules align?” he proposed. “That’s good, sure.”
-
After another month he found an opening. “April 30th,” he told Paris over the phone. A little because she was going over spring break for the third day in a row – which was mostly about how Asher didn’t contact her over the break or invite her with him. It was also impossible to not mention Rory, but she kept it to a minimum. They’d never talked about what happened over winter, but Jess suspected she’d heard something from Rory. But mostly he sprung the date on her because he was excited.
“What about it?” Paris asked, thrown off her rhythm. “I’m completely free. No shifts, I’ve got enough money right now to afford a day off, and I’ve only got a night shift on Saturday.” “Perfect,” Paris whispered in astonishment. “That’s perfect! Rory will be busy with her grandparents, Asher’s swamped with work but I’ve got free space between cramming and- oh no.” “What?” Jess asked, frowning by himself. “Lane’s busy.”
“With what?”
“Gig.”
“A gig?”
“Yeah with that band of hers, Hepatitis A.”
“Hep Alien.”
“Yeah that.” Jess grinned to himself. “She did it. That crazy son of a bitch, she did it,” he declared out loud.
“Sure, but that means Friday’s a no go. At least with Lane. I mean we could just do the two of us, but that feels like going behind Lane’s back somehow, even if she knows, and that’s just too much two-timing for me.” Jess was too busy tasting the pride swelling within him to listen to Paris. Lane had done it. She’d risked it all. She’d been kicked out by her mom, she was living with two jackasses, she’d lost her boyfriend to California (he somehow felt guilty by parallel), but she did it. She was going to rock out on some stage. But he had to find out from Paris.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” he asked before he could think. Paris sounded nonchalant: “Guess she thought you wouldn’t be able to come anyway. She also invited Rory, so maybe she was scared to have you both in the same place. I actually had to hear it from her, I didn’t get invited.” “Wait, is Rory going?” He felt his breath hitch, another stone falling into the load. “No, it’s a Friday, remember?” Jess furrowed his brows. “So… Lane didn’t invite anybody.” “I guess not,” Paris sighed.
A smirk grew on Jess’ face. “Paris?” “Hm.” “Pariiis.” “What?” He paused for effect. “Come on, what is it?” He smiled, mischief in his eyes. “Up for crashing a rock concert?”