Chapter Text
When the bus had pulled up in stars hollow on that afternoon, Luke hadn’t quite known what to expect. The last time he’d seen his nephew was when Jess was three, and Liz still lived near town. Luke had never seen children in his future, he definitely hadn’t expected himself to become the guardian of his nephew and if you’d have told him any of this even a few months ago he wouldn’t have believed it. But then Liz called, her careless attitude highly apparent, and stated that she simply couldn’t deal with Jess anymore because he’d been getting in more trouble and could she just send him to Luke to “straighten him out”. He had been shocked and wasn’t happy about the idea, but regardless he thought he’d try and get the kid some help. Liz was never really cut out to be a good mother anyway. But then the bus had pulled up. And instead of the small child Like had remembered, a fully grown, punk, pissed off seventeen year old boy had gotten off. Luke realised he in much deeper shit than he’d first thought.
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When Jess had gotten onto the bus, he’d been angry. More than angry. Hurt. Why had it taken Liz seventeen years of absence and poor parenthood to then suddenly turn around and decide no, your too much for me I can’t deal with you, I’m shipping you off to live with your uncle? How was that fair? He’d fucked up properly one time and she’d just decided she’d had enough? But then again, that was just Liz. There’d been a screaming match in their apartment the evening she told him. But then Liz’s new boyfriend had shown up and threatened to permanently shut him up and that was that; the decision had been made. She’d chosen a stranger over her own son. It wasn’t fair. None of this was. He didn’t think his mom would actually send him away. She’d threatened to before, sure, but this time she’d actually gone through with it. He was simply too fucked up for even her to deal with. And now he was being shipped accross states to some tiny town in Connecticut whilst she got to play the victim. Why did he have to leave everything behind? All his friends, his school- hell, his life? When the bus approached Stars Hollow, Jess started to feel more pissed off at the entire situation. He decided he wouldn’t like the town and he wouldn’t care about how anyone or anything viewed him. He’d get through this by not caring about anything at all. He didn’t need to, he just needed himself.
Slowly, he stepped off the bus and was met with the haggard, slightly nervous face of his uncle. He hopes to god Luke hasn’t been told the reason as to why he’s been sent away. He can just about deal with anger but he couldn’t bear it if he was met with pity.
“Jess?” “Luke.”
The silence that followed was deafening. They both stood there, staring at each other awkwardly for a few awful seconds until Luke finally spoke,
“Ok, so uh-”, he gestured towards the way in which they needed to walk. Jess followed wordlessly. This was going to be so much worse than he thought.
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“So, this is my diner”
“Huh”
“Belonged to your grandpa”
“Huh”
Jesus this was painful. Luke was completely over his head and he was becoming more and more aware of his awkwardness. Getting this kid to talk was like pulling teeth out. The whole ‘monosyllabic thing’ was going to get tiring very quickly. The two made their way up the stairs in thick silence, Jess trailing behind in a way that made it clear he’d rather be anywhere else.
The apartment was small, and Jess didn’t even have a proper place to sleep, just some inflatable thing right by Luke’s bed. Great. He dumped out the moderately small bag of his possessions onto the bed, making a comment of how “Lizzie’s sending the rest of his stuff over”. Luke didn’t seem to like that too much. Good.
“Look, I’ve got to get back to the diner, but we close at 10 so-” “I’ll be back at 10”. And with that, Jess grabbed a book and walked out of the apartment. “You’ll need keys?” “No I won’t!”
Luke really did not want to know what that meant.
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Stepping outside the diner, Jess looked around at his surroundings, the full extent of his situation becoming clear. There were families and children everywhere, old people chatting and asking each other about stupid things and decorations were being put up for fall and this was his absolute depiction of hell. Jess didn’t know a single thing about this stupid town, but all he knew was that there were too many people around and every single one of them were staring at him, making their judgements before even meeting him. News spreads fast in small towns, he supposed. But fine, if what they were expecting was some kind of delinquent, he would deliver and play the role they all presumed him too. He’d only arrived less than half an hour ago, but he was itching to get away as soon as possible. This was going to be a complete nightmare and nothing good would come of it, he was sure. Keeping his head down, he kept walking as far as he could until there was no one around and he could finally be alone. He’d found himself at a small clearing with a bridge over a lake, which in all it’s normality felt like a safe space away from all the obvious craziness of Stars Hollow. Lighting a cigarette, he opened his book and started to read.
Reading was one of his ways of escape. Escape from life, from reality, from his mom and whatever god awful boyfriend she was dating at the time; just an escape from everything. He liked seeing how an author thought, and why they wrote that particular story. He was interested in the subtext behind the classical novels, and covered practically every page with notes in the margins. Sometimes it was critique, sometimes questions, sometimes it was just his thoughts about a particular part of the book. But it made the book his, and hence every book he owned became very personal and not something he would willingly share with others, and he liked it that way. The influence that literature had on culture and society made him understand the world a little better, and it gave him something to distract him from the numbing tediousness of life.
But not even reading could fully take his mind off the situation he’d been placed in. He sat there on the bridge for a couple hours, chain smoking. He pulled up his sleeve and stared at his arm. The deep scar down his wrist was slowly beginning to heal, but it was still fairly fresh and made him feel slightly sick to look at. He traced it with his finger as he thought about how his fucking actions had caused all this to happen. Next time he’s going to fucking succeed. His uncle can’t find out about this. No one in this hell hole can.
Jess finally headed back to Luke’s after a while of simply walking around. The town was so small, he didn’t even have a chance to use the excuse of getting lost. The realisation began to dawn on him that he was going to have to stay here for the indefinite future, away from New York and everything he’d known. That thought put him in an even worse mood than he had been all day, and all he wanted to do was get inside and not talk to anyone. Of course, that wasn’t possible, as when he entered the diner he was ambushed by a very loud, chatty woman, sitting at the table next to Luke. Girlfriend? Mabye, mabye not. Could be girlfriend. He desperately hoped Luke didn’t have a girlfriend. Either way, she decided then would be an excellent time to introduce herself to him.
“Hey, I’m Lorrelai! I just wanted to meet you before Luke and a chance to fill your head with all kinds of lies about me!”
“Hi.”
He really didn’t want to talk to anyone, and quite frankly didn’t care if he was being rude or not. This town, these people meant nothing to him, he owed them nothing and therefore full sentences or elongated conversations weren’t required. The stranger, Lorrelai, mentioned having a daughter his age. Great, a forced friendship is exactly what he wants and needs right now. He was just so sick of everyone else choosing what happened in his life and everything that had happened today so he just shut off entirely and didn’t reply to her, only stared. Luckily she seemed to get the message, and he made his way upstairs to apartment without another word. He’s feels so tired, like his body is made out of lead. The voice at the back of his head is nagging at him incessantly to give in to it. He sits on the floor leaning against the wall trying to fight it, but ultimately he fails. Slowly, he makes his way to the bathroom, takes a razor blade out of his back pocket and locks the door.
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Luke finally made it up to the apartment at around half 10 that evening. Jess was on his inflatable bed, smoking and shuffling cards with a book in his lap. Luke didn’t know how to talk to the kid without getting shut down or ignored, so he tried asking questions. He really wanted to succeed in this, he really did.
“So you got unpacked?”
“Yup”. God, Jess just wanted to be left alone, was it really that hard?
“Got enough space in the closet?” What kind of a question is that? It was obvious to the both of them that Luke had absolutely no clue what he was doing.
“Plenty”. Luke wished he could get something more than a one word answer from the kid.
“You hungry?”. That seemed to strike a nerve, as Jess called out “18!”, blowing out smoke into a cloud above him. Luke’s confusion seemed to be apparent on his face, as Jess continued, “just counting how many questions you’re gonna ask until we get to twenty.”
Luke was ready to defend himself or say anything at all in response to that stupid observation, but the phone begun to ring and cut him off. It was Liz. He reassured her that Jess got to Stars Hollow fine. Jess laughed quietly and called out “got here at ten this morning!”. The point in itself whilst true, did not need to be added in Luke’s opinion, so he chose to ignore it. Jess was the one who had to live with his sister, not him, he had to remind himself. The phone call was short, as Jess refused to speak to his mother, which made Luke question just how much trouble Jess had been in back in New York. He didn’t know that Jess physically couldn’t speak to his mom without her bringing up the incident and he just couldn’t deal with that right now.
Luke hung up the phone when Liz seemed to be done talking, and he thought he really should address a few issues surrounding Jess. There didn’t seem to be a better time to do it, so might as well get it out of the way.
“Y’know, your mom thinks this is, uh, for the best, for your own good and- anyhow, I guess you’ll just call her when you feel like it. She said you’d been in some kind of trouble? Jess, what have you done to get you sent of here?”. The boy looked at him, full eye contact, for the first time.
“ I haven’t done anything”, he stated, and when Luke didn’t believe him, he laughed. “You really want me to believe that?”
“Well I don’t know! It’s the truth, take it or leave it- I. Have. Done. Nothing”. It wasn’t a complete lie. Sure he’d done a combination of things she didn’t agree with. And her boyfriend. But he came back after being discharged from the hospital and had just been told to pack his bags and leave in the morning. Luke however was clearly oblivious to this whole situation.
Luke just stared at him, dumbfounded at the minor outburst, and decided to ignore it and pretend like that conversation hadn’t just happened.
“So,” he began to ramble, “listen, Lorrelai- you met her today, remeber? Anyhow, um, she invited us to her house tomorrow night for dinner, and uh, her daughter, Rory- who you didn’t meet but you’d like, cause, she’s a lot like Lorrelai, but uh, she’s got a slightly tighter grasp on reality. Anyhow, she’ll be there, and y’know, I’d be- I don’t know, it would be a chance for you to meet more people, and so I- I said yes.”
Jess stared at him, an unreadable expression on his face. Suddenly, he grabbed his book and stormed out, not saying a single word. Luke didn’t know where he had gone wrong. This was proving to be a much larger and aggravating task than he had first anticipated.
Jess felt like he couldn’t fucking breathe. He ran back to the bridge he’d found this morning and tried to regulate his breathing. It wasn’t working nothing was fucking working. He felt around in his pocket for a smoke, until he realised he had his lighter on him. Desperately he pulled up his sleeve and ignited the flame. Sometimes he felt disgusted by how much he craves the pain, but he knows he deserves it. It makes him feel better. His arms are covered with cuts and burns, leading all the way up to his shoulders. Each a varying degree of severity, the worst being the vertical one down his wrist. He’s been doing this for years. He’s not going to stop now. Fuck this.