Mason-Dixon.
Archiving: just ask.Rating: PG.
Pairing: Jess/Rory, Gilmore Girls.
Date Written: August 18, 2005
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: for
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cercaluna, who asked for Jess, and who is in Seattle (having a great time, I hope!) but who will hopefully see this when she is back. ♥
Jess likes Thomas Pynchon because no one else reads Thomas Pynchon. Not even Rory has read Thomas Pynchon. When she sees the book he's holding she pouts and wrinkles her nose. "I was going to read Pynchon!" she says. "I can't get into Harvard without reading Pynchon!" And the next time Jess sees her, there she is lugging around a huge copy of Mason-Dixon in hardcover. That kills him about her, the way she wants to read everything, do everything, be everything at once.
He doesn't say that; instead he slides his arm around her and says, "Careful not to drool on the pages."
"Learning is fun!" she answers in her little-kid voice, and he lets her keep reading.
Later on he makes up for it by distracting her so thoroughly she leaves the book in the floorboard of his car. When she is gone he takes it and studies the way she has written her name on the frontispiece--"Rory Gilmore" in a hand so smooth he can feel the touch of it.
He ignores the "If found, please return to" in front of her name.
Six months later, when he finds the book again in the bottom of the bag he has taken with him to California, he feels the touch of her hand all over again, and briefly ponders mailing it back to her, before throwing the book in the trash.