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“You’re kidding,” Jess deadpans, looking from Paris to Rory. Paris already had her arms crossed, and at his words, Rory joins her in a pout.
“You said I could make conditions, too. Well,” Rory tries to sound firm, but she has to glance at Paris for reassurance to finish, “these are my conditions. She’s my condition.”
Jess looks dumbfounded. Paris looks smug. Rory knows Paris had actually been sickeningly nervous over the whole affair this morning, but Jess is speechless and that never fails to make Paris all smug and happy.
All three of them are standing in the Gilmore’s entryway, but having just arrived, Jess is the only one still in shoes. He shifts until his boots are toe to toe with Paris’s striped socks, forcing her to meet his eye. “You? You actually want to do this? You’re ready?”
In response to his questions, Paris rolls her eyes. “We’re just trying marijuana, Jack, not exactly jumping into the crackhouse feet first.”
Jess continues to examine Paris for another moment, searching her eyes, face, body language for any tells. Paris stares blankly back at him, unwavering, and something about her must change his mind, because he steps back and leans into a slow smile. “Okay then, Jane,” Jess accepts, only a slightly mischievous glint in his eyes, “I can’t wait to see you relax for once.”
Paris starts a bickering match about how capable she is of relaxation, and Rory watches her boyfriend tease her girlfriend with a swell of warm-fuzzies and the full realization that this was the perfect condition. She’s totally going to survive this night, thanks to her Jack and Jane — hearing them use those stupid nicknames happened to be a large motivating factor of her blossoming confidence. One time (one singular, offhanded time), Rory joked that Paris was her Jane Austen and Jess was her Jack Kerouac, and despite both of them instantly protesting that they’d each read both authors and that didn’t make any sense, they stole the nicknames and let them stick anyways. The dynamic is and always has been both of them separately dating Rory, but as she watches them trade barbs and nicknames back and forth, she wonders — not for the first time — if they’d try dating each other, too.
“Rory, back me up,” Paris whines, pulling Rory up and out of her daydream. Rory uncrosses her arms to wrap one around Paris’s waist.
“I would, but I wasn’t listening,” she says with a small smile, then a giant smile when they both look at her unimpressed and mildly annoyed. She ignores them and leans over to thread her other arm around Jess’s waist, dragging him closer. “Cute when you two bicker.”
She’s kind of hoping for a double-cheek-kiss moment where they both thank her for being so sweet and plant simultaneously timed kisses to prove it, but instead they both grumble and pull out of her grip to head towards the couch. She laughs.
They watch some Joesph Campbell and The Power of Myth first; that was Rory’s other condition. They pile in a heap on the couch, both Paris and Rory trying not to think too hard about what they’re planning on doing later in the night. Lorelai is in New York for the weekend to pick up something for the Independence Inn, but Rory still has trouble shaking the clinging feeling of dread that they’ll get caught.
But that’s for later, she reminds herself. For now, Paris and Rory both mouth along to their favorite lines from the interview while Jess rolls his eyes. He’s not quite as dazzled by the two old white academics as they both swore he would be, and he certainly protests whenever someone floats the idea to binge all six episodes, but there are some parts that he has to admit do interest him.
———
“Like this,” Jess says, his jaw clenching in concentration as he rolls up the little paper resting on his thigh. He’s sitting on the back porch with his back up against the exterior of the Gilmore house, legs splayed to accommodate Rory and Paris both sitting cross-legged and leaning in to watch. It’s times like these, delicately balancing a half-rolled joint on his jeans, that he misses the rolling trays his New York friends had. He would have his own by now if he thought any store in a twenty mile radius of Stars Hollow would sell paraphernalia. He probably should have just asked for a dinner plate, to be honest.
But maybe he doesn’t totally mind watching the awe on the girls’ faces at his meticulous work. He’s got both of the goody-two-shoes riveted, and he can’t hold back his smirk. Especially knowing that up next is the whole sealing the joint part. Okay, so maybe he’s a little bit of a douche for doing so, but he’s been planning on making eye contact with Rory when he licks the paper. He’s kind of been excited about this night since Rory agreed a month ago.
Unsurprisingly, when he brings to joint up to his lips and carefully runs the tip of his tongue across the thin paper, Rory stares at his mouth wide-eyed. Surprisingly, Paris is staring too — right back into his eyes. Her eyes are big and blue and her gaze is steady and intense, not slack-jawed like Rory, but something off-kilter there too; like she’s just as surprised as he is to be staring into each others’ eyes while he drags his tongue along a joint. He lowers the joint and absentmindedly wraps up the end, unable to look away from where him and Paris are apparently mind-melding. They’re both thinking about what strange turns their lives have taken to bring them to this porch, coming from opposite directions.
Rory, however, is thinking about weed. She giggles, “Okay, and we just… light up now, yeah?”
Jess has to laugh back, shaking his head and looking down to break whatever connection was going on between him and Paris. “So funny hearing you say stuff like ‘light up.’ Yeah, let me grab my lighter.”
Rory and Paris share a glance, each raising their eyebrows and grinning through their mutually churning mess of nervous-excited. Jess flicks on his lighter and Rory snaps her hand out to hold Paris’s, who squeezes back reassuringly. Once it’s lit up and smoldering, Jess studies the joint for a second before holding it out to Rory.
“Okay, you’re gonna take the filter end between your lips and suck air in. You only need to inhale for a second or two, just focus on getting smoke in your lungs instead of your cheeks. Don’t worry about taking a super long breath or anything,” Jess explains, and Rory nods along seriously. One more flash of a smile at Jess, one more encouraging squeeze from Paris in her other hand, and Rory does as she’s told and brings the joint to her lips.
Jess is already fighting a laugh when she inhales with her eyes crossed to look down at the joint, and when she instantly pulls it away to start coughing, he loses the fight. Paris glares at him and rubs Rory’s back while she recovers, but Jess waves the protectiveness off.
“Coughing is normal, you did great,” he reassures, taking the joint from Rory’s hand anyways. “Feel okay still?”
“Only embarrassed,” Rory says in a thin voice, cheeks flushing red as she clears her throat again. Jess shifts his outstretched leg to lightly bump against her knee.
“S’natural, trust me. Everyone coughs, especially the first time,” he says, getting her to smile again and look up at him through her eyelashes. He jerks his head towards Paris and says mock-conspiratorially, “Besides. That’s nothing compared to the lung that little miss Jane’s probably gonna cough up.”
“What is it about me that makes you think I’m more likely to cough, exactly?” Paris says, hand instantly leaving Rory’s back to cross over her chest. Jess just smiles lazily at her and holds out the weed for her turn.
“Uptight,” Jess shrugs. Paris mutters something biting in return, but it doesn’t escape either Jess or Rory’s notice that her hand is a little shaky when she takes the joint. They share a millisecond of concerned eye contact before jumping to their places in this little play. Rory steals Paris’s free hand in both of hers and Jess calmly re-explains the whole quick inhale to your lungs, not cheeks philosophy. Paris rolls her eyes at them like her heart isn’t racing.
She coughs like crazy. Rory and Jess only laugh a little.
“Nice work, initiates,” Jess appraises, a bit mocking and mostly sincere. Paris shoves the joint back at him like it’s poison while she chugs from her plastic water bottle. He takes it with an easy laugh. “Feeling any effects?”
Paris and Rory look at each other and consider before they both shake their heads. Jess passes the joint to Rory to fix that, and Paris furrows her brows.
“What? You’re too good to partake with newbies, cowboy?”
“Jess isn’t having any,” Rory explains with a wicked smile that makes Jess want to melt into a puddle right where he sits. “He wants to be there for us, all sober guardian angel like.”
“Aw, how quaint and sexist,” Paris mocks in a sugary voice to match Rory’s. Jess huffs off their dual attention, fiddling with his lighter instead.
“Just can’t have you getting paranoid and running off on me,” he says. He hopes it sounds nonchalant, because in reality, the ability to be Rory’s sober sitter was his own strict condition in order for this to happen. Not that he wants to talk about it, or even particularly think about it, but the first time he got high, he was too young and stupid to resist the egging on of the older kids at that party and he ended up in a bad way, only thirteen and stumbling back to Liz’s apartment at five in the morning. Admittedly, Rory’s back porch where she’s seventeen with her bed and oodles of junk food conveniently close by is not quite the same situation, but still. He feels strongly about it.
He shakes off the already-hazy memory with a small forced smile. Then he looks up to see Rory trying to take a second hit and his smile grows exponentially. Paris is watching carefully, too, and they each let out a happy breath to match when Rory smoothly blows out a small puff of smoke, no cough. Jess kind of feels like clapping, but figures that would be a little insulting, so he just laughs and tells her good job again.
“Woof, now I feel an effect,” Rory says, lightly touching her temple and giggling. She looks up to Jess for reassurance, “Lightheaded is okay, right?”
“Lightheaded is okay. Drink your water,” Jess directs. All hope of playing anything cool is gone; she’s so cute, he’s never going to be able to stop smiling. She’s starting to giggle more, too, and it almost makes Jess wish he was high to feel that specific giddiness with her. Something to look forward to, he reminds himself.
Paris must be thinking along the same lines, because she snatches up the joint from Rory. Her exhale isn’t as smooth as her girlfriend’s — she coughs again — but Jess can tell it was a much deeper breath than her first attempt. He happily holds the j for them again while she sips her water.
“What exactly am I supposed to be feeling, again?” Paris squints at Jess in the dimming light. Light streaming out from the window in the kitchen door illuminates Rory and Paris, but Paris’s eyes have to work harder to adjust as the sun finally sets.
“Well, a little lightheaded,” Jess starts, with a glance at Rory. “It’s different for everyone, but this strain typically gives me a pretty good body high, kind of like a floating.”
“And what strain is this?” Paris asks, plucking the joint from Jess’s hands to squint at that, too, like it’s going to have the answer written there. Jess laughs.
“There’s no quiz on this later, Gellar,” he says. Paris takes another drag and only has to clear her throat after.
“If I’m going to do weed, I’m going to do it right,” she declares, and Rory nods while taking another hit like that’s very sensible reasoning.
Jess thinks they’re both ridiculous, but he explains it all to them anyways — everything he knows about sativa versus indica, bongs versus joints, even some of his more polished anecdotes of better times getting high with friends in New York. He only tells them because they’re steadily getting better at a smooth puffing and passing routine and Rory somehow ends up more or less sitting in his lap. Even sober, he can feel himself unraveling right along with them. Rory’s warm back pressed up against the length of his chest doesn’t help, diffusing the cold summer evening air and making the butterflies in his stomach rowdy.
And Paris is taking to this surprisingly well, Jess thinks. If anyone was going to be the paranoid type, it wouldn’t surprise him if it had been her. But by the time they’ve burned through half the joint and Jess quietly flicks off the cherry to cut them off, she’s splayed out on the porch deck with her head in Rory’s lap. Her dirty blonde hair is fanned out over Rory’s thigh, and Rory is absentmindedly running her fingers through it while they sit in easy silence listening to the cicadas’ backing chorus. It’s almost disturbingly intimate. Jess thinks about how just being this close to Rory, dead sober, feels perfect, and wonders how she must feel riding her first high sandwiched between her girlfriend and her boyfriend. Must be a head rush for her. He kisses her temple and she hums a wordless happy sound that tells him it totally is a head rush for her.
Their silence is peaceful — about as close to inner peace as Jess has ever allowed himself to imagine — until about five minutes later when Paris jolts upright and declares, “I’m so hungry.”
“Oooh,” Rory chimes in, turning back to Jess with her eyes lit up. “Are we on schedule for munchies?”
“Right on schedule,” Jess confirms, laughing. He uses both hands to help pull the girls to their feet at the same time, and they giggle and wobble holding onto each other as he goes ahead of them back into the house. In the kitchen, he leans against the dining table, content to watch as Rory roots through cupboards and drawers for food — mallo cups, Oreos, strawberry pop tarts, and cheese puffs for an appetizer. Paris leans close over her shoulder, pointing out all the sweets she’s never tried and voting for which ones she wants. It’s only when they both turn to face him, their arms full of colorfully packaged food, that he gets a rush of his own creepy-voyeur vibes.
Not noticing or not caring, Rory and Paris both beam at him and then scurry, still giggling, off to collapse on the couch. He breathes out, shaking his head. Then he follows.
———
Paris wakes up around two in the morning, feeling bleary but definitively sober. She’s buried in a Jess-Rory-pop tart wrapper pile on the couch, and it takes her limbs a second to wake up with her and tell her where they are. Soft light from the now-muted television flashes over the scene, and she remembers that it’s actually mostly Jess in her lap. She’s on her back, head propped up on the armrest, and Jess is lying on his stomach, his face buried in her stomach. Rory’s similarly on top of Jess, snoring and probably also drooling on the back shoulder of his t-shirt. Paris alerts all her senses to double check that Jess isn’t leaving a matching drool puddle on her pajama shirt, but he’s safe and she lets herself breathe again.
It’s strange how easy it is for her to breathe with two people laying on top of her. She should feel suffocated, stifled. Looking down at them sleeping in the pink light of a Pepto-Bismol commercial, all she can muster up is affection with a sprinkling of gratitude.
Like her body feels the need to interrupt the frankly sickening amount of snappiness building up, she suddenly realizes she urgently needs to pee.
At first, she tries to slither out without waking either of them. She plants her hands on either side of the couch cushion she’s on and pushes up, hoping she can slide out and… somersault over the back of the armrest or whatever, she hasn’t gotten that far in the strategy yet. And Jess is groaning and shifting now, so she freezes like a deer in the headlights before she gets any further.
Rory’s back continues to rise in perfect, even breaths, but Jess is awake. “Hm?” He murmurs, twisting his neck to blink up at Paris through thick lashes. All over again, Paris’s nerves light up and all she can focus on is the heat of Jess’s cheek through her pajama shirt, an old ratty thing from some summer camp she used to volunteer at. She stares down at him and his black Metallica t-shirt and marvels one more time at the chain reaction that brought her into such close proximity with a cool boy. Rory laughed and jokingly shoved her when Paris called him that once — a cool boy. Paris had blushed and told her to shut up then, but she still thinks it’s true. His hair is a bird’s nest, doubly mussed from sleeping, and she imagines his tongue darting out to lick the rolling paper again. He listens to Metallica and smokes weed and lives with his uncle, not his parents, because whatever his home situation was, Rory only ever alluded to it with tight-lipped anger.
“Take a picture, hm? Lasts longer,” Jess whispers, and suddenly Paris is flushing beet red and forcing herself to look away from his cool-boy smirk. And she still needs to pee.
“Just get off me, please,” she mumbles, still not meeting his gaze. It takes him a minute, but he doesn’t make fun of her any more as he maneuvers to let her out. He manages to get in a wobbly sort of plank, lifting Rory with a grunt while Paris pulls herself to sitting and slides her legs out. By the time Jess is collapsed back on his stomach and Paris is standing over the couch, Rory has only let out a tiny incoherent mumble and is back to her perfect, even breathing. Jess and Paris share a quick look of amusement in the tv glow, but then Paris really does have to run off to the bathroom.
After washing her hands, Paris smooths down her frizzy hair in the mirror and examines her ugly old pajamas: the camp counselor shirt is a bright orange that hurts her eyes in the bathroom light and her non-matching pajama shorts reveal the stubble already growing again on her legs. She never cared much about impressing Rory; they’d been together for two years now, and since they had pretty foolproof birth control going with the double uteruses, neither of their parents had ever been averse to sleepovers. Even though she knew Rory’s boyfriend would be joining them tonight, she had successfully compartmentalized all the drug-anticipation anxiety and packed up this afternoon as if tonight would be normal. Waking up with a cool boy practically nuzzling her stomach did not feel normal.
To be truly honest — more honest than Paris necessarily wants to be with herself, but she can’t help it, it’s 2:12 a.m. — she had always wondered, after Rory, if she was really a lesbian and the whole Tristan thing since elementary school had been compulsory heterosexuality. She turns Tristan over in her mind for a minute. The unbidden image of Jess and the rolling paper interrupts and she blushes down to her neck. Right.
She leaves the bathroom before the bright lights and the mirror can make her realize anything else about herself, but the consequence is that she walks softly into the living room and only then remembers that she has nowhere to put herself. She highly doubts that Jess, whose eyes are already closed again, is going to tell her to crawl right back in. In fact, now that she has the wherewithal to worry about it, she realizes with shame that he probably already felt the stubble on her legs when she was crawling out from underneath him. She turns on her heel and hurries to the kitchen.
Twenty minutes later, sitting at the table and nursing her second glass of lukewarm water, Paris is thinking that the dark kitchen may actually be worse than the bright bathroom when it comes to unwanted self reflection. Unfortunately — or fortunately, she hasn’t decided yet — her train of thought is interrupted by Jess joining her.
He comes in rubbing the back of his neck, stupid Metallica shirt pulling loose at the collar and stupid flannel pants looking soft. And stupid bed head. Paris takes another gulp of water. It’s unfortunate, she decides.
“She always sleep through anything?” Jess asks, voice just above a whisper. Paris’s brain delays.
“What?”
“Rory. Still sleeping after both of us left,” Jess explains with a jerk of his head towards the living room as if Paris has forgotten where Rory is. Which, at this rate, maybe she has. But she shakes it off, looks away, and smiles to herself thinking of Rory again.
“Yeah, through anything,” Paris replies with a nod. Jess smiles at that and comes around the table to sit down next to her. She doesn’t know what else to say. She could probably offer some other fact about Rory that they could smile over, but it feels weird knowing that she knows things about Rory’s sleeping habits that Jess doesn’t know. Or—didn’t know, until tonight. She drinks more water and does not look at him.
“Not still feeling high, are you?” Jess asks. He’s squinting at her with vague concern and she bristles.
“Hardly. I sobered up before we even fell asleep,” Paris defends, not keen on Jess seeing her as some bumbling lightweight. But then she realizes she’s just admitted to being sober-ish while they cuddled without the typical Rory barrier between them and she has to take another drink of water.
Jess just nods, looking aimlessly around the kitchen like he can tell she needs a break. He thrums his fingertips on the table then looks back at her. He tilts his head a little. Paris is going to run out of water to gulp soon.
“So this is just you in the middle of the night, then?”
“What?”
“You know. The spacey-staring-silent thing you’ve got going on. Just checking if that’s normal for you this time of night,” Jess says quietly, matter-of-fact, still thrumming his fingers like he’s asking about the weather. Paris nearly chokes on a sip of water.
“I am not spacey or staring or silent,” Paris says, forgetting to whisper. Jess just quirks up an eyebrow. “I am not,” she reiterates, volume controlled again. She downs the last bit of water and stands to refill it at the water jug.
The bastard doesn’t say anything the entire time she watches the water pour. She can see him out of the corner of her eye, just sitting there in the dark and openly staring at her. It didn’t take this long to fill this glass five minutes ago.
When she sits back down, he doesn’t waver, doesn’t care that she’s clearly caught him staring, so she pulls herself together and looks right back. She’ll show him what she’s like when she’s actually staring. She holds eye contact even when she tips her glass back to drink more water. She holds eye contact even when she can feel the blood starting to run to her cheeks. She holds eye contact until a very distracting smile starts twitching at the corners of his mouth, threatening to cool-boy smirk again, and she has no choice but to look away so she doesn’t stare at those lips.
“Huh,” he says in that annoying way of his that’s simultaneously incomprehensible and laced with meaning. Paris considers pinching herself just to test if this is a nightmare. Then she considers pinching him. He suddenly asks, “Wanna finish the joint?”
“What?” Paris hates that her eyes go wide again.
“Helps me sleep sometimes,” he shrugs.
“You’re having trouble sleeping?” Paris asks, thinking of him with his eyes closed in the pink light again. He smiles at her strangely.
“Not really,” he says. He doesn’t seem like he’s planning on saying anything else. Paris gives him her best expectant and confused look and he returns it. “Figured that’s why you were sitting here drinking water instead of coming back to the couch. Trouble sleeping.”
“Oh. Right. Guess so,” Paris nods. Yeah, she prefers that explanation over busy questioning my sexuality. And a little more of that floating feeling to send her back to sleep actually sounds like just the remedy for her troubles, so she agrees.
They tiptoe back into the foyer to get their jackets and only stop to stare at Rory’s sweet sleeping face for a few seconds. On the back porch again, both of them leaning up against the wall this time, Jess fishes the lighter and half-finished j back out of his pocket. Paris reverently watches him relight it.
Paris is a little surprised when Jess takes the first hit himself. She raises an eyebrow at him as he inhales, but then he tilts his head back against the wall and exhales ribbons of smoke into the moonlight and she quickly looks away. Fuck. And she had thought watching Rory do this was overwhelming.
“Thought you weren’t having trouble sleeping,” she chokes out, darting her eyes back up to furtively look at him. He holds out the j for her. She takes it, but before she smokes, she adds, “Thought you were sober guardian angel.”
“You seemed to handle yourself fine earlier,” he says, shrugging. When Paris still doesn’t take a hit, he does a double take, gently looks her tense body up and down. “Unless you’re uncomfortable without a sober sitter. We can go back inside.”
“No,” Paris shakes her head. She knows he means it; they could go inside right now and none of this would matter. “No, it’s fine.” She finally takes her pull, a long one, long enough to worry that she’s going to splutter when she exhales, but she doesn’t. She watches the smoke blow up in front of her face. It doesn’t do that billowy thing that it did when Jess was exhaling, but it’s still kind of neat. Without thinking about it, she takes another hit so she can watch it again, wondering what Jess did to get the pretty wisps. She’s about to try one more time when she remembers herself and pulls the paper back away from her mouth. She holds it out to Jess sheepishly.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. He pauses for a moment, then shakes his head and takes it.
“Relax. You never heard of puff, puff, pass?” Paris shoots him a look and Jess laughs. “Right, yeah, of course you haven’t.”
He doesn’t explain it any further, but when he takes two hits before passing it back to her, she gets the picture. Okay. Puff, puff, pass. She can do that. And they do, for a while. She’s good at it now. She can smoke with her girlfriend’s boyfriend alone on a summer night. She can ignore the schoolgirl thought that her mouth is going where his mouth just was and they’re basically kissing across this joint. That also had Rory’s mouth on it. Her life is very, very normal. She’s not thinking at all about how Jess’s arm is resting against hers. She’s not thinking about how she’s not wearing a bra and her legs aren’t shaved and she’s alone with a boy. She’s not freaking out. She’s not bisexual. And, okay, if she was bisexual, why should she freak out? She’s already in a polyamorous relationship, that should be way harder to wrap her mind around than a crush on a guy. Is that what this is—a crush on Jess? Is she cheating on Rory?
“Hey,” Jess nudges her arm with his arm and she snaps her head to look at him. His brown eyes look black in the moonlight and they’re filled with so much concern that Paris feels the urge to touch his stupid chiseled cheek. “You okay, Jane?”
Damn.
This must be what Rory feels when she looks at Jess.
Weirdly enough, this is not what Paris feels when she looks at Rory.
Rory is kind of like this floating feeling, feet off the ground, drifting in a raft down a lazy river thing.
Jess is more like staring at yourself in the mirror and feeling your heart drop, watching the floor disappear, falling into a ravine thing.
———
Jess is starting to worry that he really shouldn’t have joined in on the festivities because he’s feeling a little foggy. And he needs to be not foggy because he can tell that smoking has somehow amplified Paris’s weird spacey-staring-silent thing, not eased it. They’re almost at the point where it gets awkward to hold the roach anyways, so he just stubs it out on the porch and decides to worry about the potential ash mark at a time that is not three in the morning. All he can think about right now is how Paris is going to kill him tomorrow for turning her into a zombie tonight. And he’s going to deserve it.
“Paris? You okay?” Jess checks again. At the sound of her name, Jess watches something click back on behind Paris’s eyes and she suddenly shuffles to face him.
“Can I tell you something?” Paris is looking as intense as he’s ever seen her. His gut screams that his answer should really be no, he should really stop her from making whatever high confession is on the tip of her tongue. But she’s got blue doe eyes that remind him of Rory’s and he just nods.
“I’ve always thought that you call me Jane cause you think I’m like Austen,” Paris starts to explain, hand motions included, and Jess blinks in shock. “I know I look the part of a blonde schoolgirl in the Chilton uniform, but we both know I am in fact highly skilled at — well, everything, but mostly cutting people down to size, and Austen always had that sweet-surface-slash-sardonic-undertone thing,” Paris is talking so fast and so far out of left field that Jess wonders if he’s mishearing her. “But I feel compelled to tell you that I mostly just call you Jack because it sounds like I’m messing up Jess and it seemed like it really annoyed you when I started. I don’t really think you’re Kerouac.”
Jess stares at Paris with both eyebrows raised. She exhales, closes her eyes, and leans back against the wall again like she’s taken a weight off of her shoulders. Jess follows her lead and looks straight ahead again. Alright then.
They sit in silence for a little while. The cicadas are quiet now.
“Well. Say something,” Paris commands. Jess looks at her in surprise, but she’s exactly where he thought she was: still leaning back with her chin tilted up and her eyes closed like she’s relaxed. But he watches her swallow hard and figures she’s probably not all that relaxed. He should say something nice.
“I don’t think you’re Austen.”
Paris opens one singular eye to glare at him in the dark. Okay, that was admittedly not the most relaxing thing he could have said. He meant to add the word ‘just’ in there — don’t think you’re just Austen. Oops. He tries to stifle his laugh. He really does. But Paris is being really weird and now she’s looking at him with one squinty eye and he’s a little buzzed so it’s not his fault.
Next thing he knows, they’re both giggling. And then they’re laughing. And they damn near reach howling, but Jess bites his lips into his mouth. He tries to shush her, too, but that only makes her laugh harder.
“Paris, come on, you’ll wake Rory,” Jess says like he isn’t still half-laughing himself. Paris just shakes her head.
“Sleeps through anything,” she retorts.
“The neighbors,” Jess feebly protests, gesturing towards Babette and Morey’s house. But honestly, he’s served Morey in the diner late at night and no way that dude isn’t baked all the time, too. Still, one of the key tenets of smoking shit you’re not supposed to have is not getting caught.
“Don’t care,” Paris says, looking up at him, clutching her stomach, still giggling away. Jess realizes he doesn’t really want her to stop laughing either. He’s never seen her like this. Like any of this — first so happy and sweet while Rory played with her hair, which, okay, yes, Jess obviously knew that the Paris had settings other than bicker mode, but it was still odd to see it so up close and personal. And then he woke up with her staring down at him, and even with his ear just on her stomach, he could hear her heart rate spiking. Then he had this grand idea to help her calm down that clearly worked out perfectly. Except maybe it did because now she’s looking at him all happy and sweet and Jess doesn’t really know what to do with all this new Paris he’s seeing.
“Jess,” Paris breathes out between giggles. And Jess is thinking about that — about how you can just breathe a word, a name — when Paris says, “I think we should kiss.”
“Woah!” Jess exclaims, sitting up and feeling suddenly sober. He winces as he watches Paris flinch at his response; almost reaches his hand out to touch her, then thinks better of it. Okay, damage control, quickly. “Paris,” Jess says very carefully, “you are high. It’s really late.”
He expects her to start crying or something, because that would be just his luck, but when she looks back up at him from behind a curtain of blonde hair, her brow is furrowed in annoyance.
“You’re high, too,” she counters. Jess laughs incredulously.
“I happen to have a slightly higher tolerance than you. We are not the same kind of high,” Jess says, but it comes out more condescending than he intended. He softens with a begrudging sigh, “Look, probably a better idea to just go back to bed now, okay?”
“Cuddling again is a better alternative to kissing?” Paris raises an eyebrow, and damn, maybe she’s not as high as Jess thought, because that’s her trademark debate skill at work. Then he kicks himself to remember that she’s debating in favor of kissing him and very much high.
“Okay,” Jess concedes. Hoping he’ll just come up with a better alternative while he’s speaking, he starts, “But-”
“Just an experiment. Purely scientific. I have a hypothesis. We kiss, I test my hypothesis, we all gather results and then move on,” Paris interrupts. Jess has never had someone ask to kiss him quite so matter-of-fact. He swallows. Pointedly not asking what her hypothesis is, Jess stands and brushes off the back of his flannel pants.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” is the only solution he can come up with. She’s glaring up at him, but she accepts his outstretched hand to pull herself up anyways.
“Oh,” Jess breathes. Because when he pulled Paris to her feet, he also accidentally pulled her right into his personal space, and now her face is just inches from his face. He can feel her warm breath fanning over his cheeks, followed by the heat of his own blush.
“You want to kiss me too,” Paris whispers, her face a constantly shifting mix of smug and curious and in awe. Jess tells his brain to ignore her, but his eyes move of their own volition to look at her lips.
“Rory,” he says, only realizing he was thinking it when he hears it out loud. But he is thinking about Rory, and how she’s always really good at mediating their negotiations or keeping him feeling sane when the thought of having a girlfriend with a girlfriend occasionally still sends him reeling. And the urge to kiss his girlfriend’s girlfriend is making him feel mighty insane.
Paris steps back. Now she actually does look like she might cry. “Of course. Rory,” she echoes miserably. Call it getting to know Paris better than he thought, call it faith in Rory, but somehow Jess knows instantly that she’s disappointed in herself for forgetting about Rory, not disappointed to remember her.
It’s probably a little risky, all things considered, but Jess doesn’t regret wrapping his arm around Paris’s shoulders to guide her inside. They walk in silence back to the living room. Rory is fast asleep. A piece of her brown hair has fallen into her face and it waves in the tv glow every time Rory gently breathes out. Without thinking, without saying anything, without even taking her jacket off, Paris pushes back the stray section of hair and lowers herself onto the couch alongside Rory.
Jess eventually settles on the floor below them, balling up his jacket as a pillow. He wants to lie there and reanalyze the whole night, going over everything he missed that led to Paris wanting to kiss him, but he was being honest about the way weed affects him; he’s asleep seconds after he closes his eyes.
———
Paris and Jess are acting odd.
Rory first noticed it when she woke up next to Paris and not Jess despite swearing that they were all together when she fell asleep. Okay, maybe Jess just got up to go to the bathroom at some point in the night, not that odd. Then she notices that they both have their jackets with them and that’s a little odd. Then she stretches and yawns, says something about how fun last night was, and they both just look away and mumble agreement. Definitely odd. Rory gets up and goes to bathroom and returns to find them each laying exactly where she left them. Paris is typically the one waking Rory, always jumping up annoyingly eager to start the day, so Rory decides she’ll start there.
“Paris, why don’t you come help me with breakfast?” Rory asks. She doubts that either of them think it’s anything other than a request to talk to Paris in private, but they all pretend anyways. Jess rolls over onto his front and Paris quickly steps over him to follow Rory into the kitchen.
Once they’ve rounded the corner, Rory wastes no time in grabbing Paris’s elbows to pull her in close enough to whisper. “What’s up?”
Not that she wants a long-winded pre-gossip debate, per se, but Rory is at least a little surprised when it takes zero effort to make Paris spill.
“I think I like Jess,” Paris hisses, leaning in even closer. Her eyes are wide with terror. Rory glances from side to side.
“….Good?” Rory responds in a now confused whisper, unsure of the significance here. Paris liked to play at fighting with Jess, calling him stupid stuff like Cool Boy behind his back, but Rory has known for a long time that the mutual dislike is mutually faked.
Paris sighs. She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against Rory’s. Rory can’t tell if she’s trying to beam her meaning across their skulls through sheer force of will or building the courage to actually explain what she means. She’s taking deep breaths and Rory realizes this might be an outside type of talk. She drags Paris with her out onto the back porch, not caring that Jess can definitely hear the door closing behind them. She trusts him, he can deal.
“Okay, you like Jess,” Rory repeats, still whispering, and saying it out loud is like flipping a light switch. “Oh! You like Jess!”
Paris winces and Rory recognizes that last bit was slightly more than a whisper. Paris is looking like a wounded bird and Rory flits through more emotions than she knows how to name. Despite the glum look her girlfriend is giving her, she lands on happy. She thinks of falling asleep on top of both of them last night and actually giggles.
Paris snaps up to watch Rory’s smile, wounded bird face narrowing into a hawk’s watchful eye.
“You’re… not mad?” Paris questions, and Rory laughs again. Rory grabs her girlfriend’s face in her hands and pulls her in for a firm kiss, just enough open mouth to be the kind of kiss that always wins arguments with Paris.
“I love you,” Rory punctuates her words with a peck on the lips. “I love him.” Another kiss. “You know I always thought you two should try it out.” Kiss.
But Paris yanks herself back from the kiss, dropping her jaw at Rory. “You have not always thought that.”
Rory rolls her eyes. “Sure, Jane.”
They kiss and argue about who likes who for a little while longer. Paris explains everything that happened last night and Rory has to hold onto her, that’s how hard she laughs.
Sighing and giggling to herself, Rory says, “Okay, okay, I should probably go talk to Jack, too.”
Paris scrunches up her nose at that. Rory starts in on a lecture about how if Paris got a private confidential chat about the current situation, it was only fair to let Jess have one too, but Paris shakes her head.
“Just… that’s what I call him,” Paris explains, clearly pained at her own pain. Less than 24 hours of knowing she likes him and already she’s possessive. Rory laughs and kisses her once more for good measure. She pats Paris’s pouty cheek and sends her to sit at one of the chairs or benches on the porch while she goes back inside to talk to Jess.
Inside, Jess is still flopped on his stomach with his face in the carpet. When he hears her footsteps stop behind him, he lazily rolls over and throws an arm over his head.
“Where’s breakfast?” He asks dryly. Rory tsks and pokes his calf with her socked toe.
“None of that now. Up,” she commands, planting herself on the couch and waiting patiently while he climbs up to join her. He shoves himself deep into the cushions then shoves his hands deep into his pants pockets. Rory turns to face him and waits.
Jess is pretty good at waiting, too, so he sighs and stares straight ahead for a minute. But he’s not as good as Rory.
Exasperated, he blurts out, “She was high.”
“I know,” Rory nods. Jess glances at her to gauge her reaction and isn’t sure what to make of that small smile.
“She didn’t know what she was saying.”
“Paris always knows what she’s saying,” Rory counters. She means it to actually reassure him, but Jess detects the twinge of defensiveness and sinks somehow deeper into the couch. It’s just now dawning on Rory that Jess may possibly not like Paris back. She… hadn’t considered that contingent. The way Paris described it, Paris being high and Rory not being aware were Jess’s sticking points with kissing Paris. Watching him slouch now, Rory wonders if he was actually hoping it was just the weed talking. Now Rory is imagining having to watch her boyfriend reject her girlfriend and okay, maybe she was being a little too cavalier before.
“I can’t believe this,” Rory says, mostly to herself, sitting back. Jess, in turn, surprises her by sitting up aggressively.
“You just don’t get to be mad at her. It was-”
“I’m not,” Rory instantly cuts him off. He freezes, hand still pointed at her accusingly.
“…What?”
“I’m not mad at her,” Rory repeats, clear as day. “And you’re not mad at her?” She checks. Jess huffs out a laugh and leans slowly back.
“No. I’m not,” he says with a deep exhale. He still looks heavy, but Rory is feeling all pleasant and cavalier again. Jess clocks her stupid wide grin and rolls his eyes at his own stupidity. “I’m really, really not.”
“So… what are you feeling at her?” Rory asks, giving his arm a playful push. Jess shakes his head, running his hands through his hair and laughing to himself. Rory sighs happily. She knows that feeling well. “She asked to kiss you as an experiment, huh?”
“Yeah,” Jess huffs out, ducking to hide his face. Rory leans against his shoulder.
“She’s crazy,” she says wistfully. Jess barks out a laugh.
“Yeah. Crazy.”
Rory is content to sit there and bask together, but after a minute, she senses Jess waiting to speak. She turns to look up at him and he clears his throat.
“So, she’s still… she feels the same way this morning still?” He feels like the words hang in his throat, forcing him to hold his breath until she answers.
Rory gives him a look. “Paris always says what she means.”
“Yeah,” he laughs again. “Yeah, I should know that.”
“You should,” Rory agrees and gives him a knowing closed-mouth smile.
“She’s still on the porch?”
“Yep.” Rory can’t help it, she’s beaming now.
“And you’re okay with-”
“Just go kiss her, idiot.”
———
It is an epoch before Paris hears a door open again. An era. An eon.
She’s not sure who she’s hoping for more, but when she stops pacing to whip around towards the sound, it’s Jess by himself closing the back door behind him. He’s still wearing the frustratingly loose Metallica t-shirt and damningly soft flannel pants. Maybe he catches her looking at his outfit because he promptly sticks his hands in his pockets and looks down before walking to meet her.
“Hi,” she says, breathless and frozen in place. He could say anything.
“Hi,” he replies. He looks up at her through his thick lashes and it punches all the remaining wind from her sails.
Then he shoots her that cool-guy smirk. “Wanna do an experiment?”
They kiss. Paris more or less tumbles into a ravine, but Jess is gently holding the back of her neck as she falls, so she doesn’t mind so much.