Title: Cigarettes

Author: Sassy
Rating: PG

Disclaimer: I don't own them, A S-P does.

Pairing: I suppose you could say it was a Literati story, but not quite.

Summary; Jess finds himself studying a burning cigarette and finds that he associates with it more than he would have thought. Set a while after Jess' last episode in Season Four.

Cigarettes

He found something oddly poetic about the incineration of a cigarette. A small, hot flame licked at the end of snow white paper, evaporating it into wisps of smoke. The flames made something once great into something less than useful as it disappeared from existence. The heat siphoned away at the tobacco and paper, chipping burned paper and used tobacco. Watching his own cigarette burn away without taking a single puff had him waxing philosophical about the cigarette, even comparing himself to the thing, white stick.

Earlier, he would have pictured Rory as the cigarette, white and untouched by any harmful substances (other than the darkness hidden away deep inside). But along came the bright flame, flickering, lighting it with a heat previously unknown, bring out the almost harmful darkness inside of it. He would have seen himself as the flame, licking the edges of the whiteness, blackening the perfection that had always been in front of him. The classic tale of good versus evil, white versus black. He would have been able to see the battle between the two, as the black teased the white, pulling it into the charred sides of obscurity and enjoyment. He had always seen the burning of a cigarette as something beautiful as he inhaled the smoke with no care. Rory's purity was beginning to black around the edges and he liked to think it was because of him, that he was helping educate Rory about non-Stars Hollow living. But he wasn't so sure it was him that had been doing the educating, not anymore. Rory was much more dangerous, like the flame, than he had always believed. She was more aware of her power than it seemed and when he had believed he was influencing her life, it was more likely it was the other way around.

Jess had never seen himself as an innocent, not the unassuming white that he always associated innocence with. But when he saw the cigarette now, he saw himself, dark yet white that often battled for power with the hot flame that wanted to tease him, chip away at his previously mundane existence. Rory was the flame, he knew now. It had taken him long enough to see it, but Rory was the one that affected his life. He had suddenly wanted to entertain her, bring her out of her shell, but he wondered if she had been manipulating him and making him think that everything was his idea. Rory knew exactly how to play him, all she had to do was blink her wide beautiful doe eyes and he was putty in her hands, though, of course, she never acted like she did play him. She subtly burned away at his existence and brought out something toxic in him that no one could explain. Suddenly, his stoic personality was coming out in ways that he couldn’t explain. He wanted to make Rory love him and he hadn't even known what was happening. And Rory, as dangerous as a flame, making him foolishly fall in love with her, she extinguished her flame. She no longer wanted anything to do with him and he was left a charred, half-used toxic stick of tobacco, not white or black, not new or finished, just left burning with nothing left to do but be used and turn into smoke.

When he smoked a cigarette now, he thought of her. Not of the good times when they had been happy for a moment, or of the times that she begged him to stop smoking because his health would deteriorate if he didn’t quit. He thought of her in her dorm room, shaking her head emphatically, no longer wanting to play the game with him. He was angry and hurt and there was no describing how it made him feel. Worse than he had before, when his mother had rejected him. Because Rory knew how to play and burn away at the last bit of hope he had. She had ignited a fire to start something new and good and then she took it away with a single breath. He considered quitting now more than he ever had, because he had a new appreciation for the destruction of a cigarette. After all, he was destroyed now.