Gilmore Girls Fanfiction - Gone Wild

[sibyllevance]

Title: Gone Wild
Rating/Warnings: PG
Characters/Pairing: Rory/Paris
Summary: Kissing Rory was intellectual curiosity. Set the night after the kiss in 4x17 Girls Gone Wild and Boys Doin' the Twist.
Word Count: 643
Author's Notes: Story written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon and originally posted here. The prompt was 'Paris/Rory, intellectual curiosity'.

'What are you doing? Are you crazy?'

Rory pushed Paris away, hard. It's not the rejection itself that hurt, it's the word, 'crazy'.

That night when the girls prepare for bed, Rory doesn't bring it up. She avoids Paris' stare and takes a little too much time folding her clothes to postpone the moment when inevitably, they'd have to talk.

'I didn't mean it that way.' Paris says finally.

Rory carefully finishes folding the bathrobe she's already taken care of twice before turning to face Paris.

'What are you talking about?'

'Oh come on, Rory, you know full well what I'm talking about. Stop being so coy, it's annoying.'

'You didn't mean to kiss me, out of the blue in a night club while we were merely dancing? Because if that's it, then wow, you really missed the point.'

Paris goes to sit on the soft bed and looks vaguely around the room:

'It's been great with you here. Almost like the boarding school we never had... or something.'

Rory chuckles:

'Yes. Frankly if Chilton was a boarding school neither of us would have made it to Yale. No, wait - neither of us would have made it in the world, actually. You'd have killed me first.'

'My copy of Jane Austen's complete works would have crushed you so fast. That stuff was heavy.'

They both laugh.

'A new edition of Sanditon's coming out.' she resumes as Rory comes to sit on the bed right next to her. She's so light the balance barely shifts.

'Yeah, I know, I read the article. I'm really looking forward to the new introduction.'

Unexpectedly, Paris stands up violently and starts pacing from the TV set to the bed, gesticulating wildly and yelling. It takes Rory a few seconds to emerge from her surprise and when she finally focuses, Paris is already in the middle of a monologue.

'... like that. The least we could do is acknowledge it and be done with it. All these years of banter, now lie to me and tell me you didn't enjoy that. Because I did. I did enjoy it and that kiss tonight? I wasn't trying to use you to emulate Madelyn and Louise but it's just too much sometimes. Think of it as intellectual curiosity.'

Rory blinks but she's careful not to smile:

'As what?'

'Intellectual curiosity. I wanted to know what it felt like. And frankly it seemed like the only logical development in our relationship.'

But Rory frowns:

'The logical development in our relationship? Paris, I won't deny it's been, well, interesting to say the least, to know you all these years and yes, I heard you before - intellectually stimulating but I 'm not sure going down that... route... is the next step.'

'How is it any different from what Jess and you had?'

The question takes Rory by surprise. She crosses her arms on her chest.

'It's not. It's closer,' she admits.

Paris' look is inquisitive. As if she'd been dying to investigate this for ages.

'A little too close? Right out of a screwball comedy? Like I'm Nora and you're Nick?' she nods - clearly she's waiting for confirmation of her suspicions.

'Well, yes.' Rory replies.

'And aren't you curious to know, Rory? Logically, it makes sense. It's the hypothesis and every hypothesis must be tested in an experiment. You know that.'

'I guess' she then stares at Paris. Her face is flustered from all the yelling, not in a bad way and she sees the possibilities. What harm can it possibly do? 'Yes, you're right. Let's try this.' she resumes, more resolute.

Paris sits back on the bed and Rory shifts to face her.

'On the count of three. One, two...'