To A Daydream Believer And A Homecoming Queen
Dean had fantasies. Of course he had fantasies. He was sixteen years old, and the apex of his sexual experience was falling asleep next to Rory Gilmore. Not that he hadn't gone farther with Beth, but there was something about having lots of people think you'd had sex that seemed more risque than feeling up a girl he'd known since third grade.
The fantasies should have been about Rory. He wanted to be having red-blooded, American-teenager fantasies about his new girlfriend: the smartest, prettiest girl in town, sweetheart of Stars Hollow. The unfortunate thing was, for all Rory's fine qualities, up to and including her unusually endearing manner of shoplifting cornstarch and her insights into Oompa Loompa culture, Rory wasn't sexy.
He'd tested this. He'd locked himself in his bedroom with his dick in his hand and tried to think sexy Rory thoughts. He'd had a pretty good mental picture of her taking her pilgrim costume off slowly, to reveal that she had nothing on underneath. Problem was, she'd had nothing much underneath, period, and he'd wound up lying on his bed with a pathetic semi-erection, feeling like an idiot for ever having kissed her.
He'd lain back in desperation, trying to clear his mind, let the picture shift away from Rory's disappointing, if hypothetical, nude form.
It had been a week, and he still didn't know what the problem was. He was enjoying a scintillating Tuesday evening of geometry homework, and he could do all the sample proofs. But he couldn't work out the logic of his dick, if his dick had any logic at all.
The current genital logic was "to hell with math homework," so he leaned back in the desk chair, closed his eyes, and-- same pilgrim outfit, same striptease, absolutely the wrong Gilmore peeling herself out of it.
He was headed for a very special kind of hell for masturbating to the mental image of his girlfriend's mother naked. He was supposed to be having healthy teenage fantasies about healthy teenage girls, not warped, guilty ones about women who would go to jail if they said yes to him.
He was hard, and if it was all in his head, it didn't hurt anyone. Lorelai-- it seemed wrong to call her that, but what else did he have? "Mrs. Gilmore" wasn't even accurate. Lorelai had a red lace bra on under her pilgrim costume, and a matching red lace thong. She dug the heel of her pilgrim shoe into his chest and told him she wanted to conquer all his land and territory.
She dissolved into a wad of Kleenex, and he finished his homework.
He took Rory out that Friday night, feeling like a liar. He kissed her and wondered if her mom tasted like that-- if kissing ran in families. Which of course it couldn't, because crappy kissers would have been less likely to reproduce. Anyway, they seemed like the kind of mother and daughter that shared flavored lip gloss.
Then, he went home, made sure his bedroom door was locked, and added to the library of Lorelai fantasies. His Lorelai had nipples with skin that was soft like raspberries. She liked to climb on top of him and tell him how good his dick felt inside her. She liked to close her lived-in eyes while she sucked him off in the canned goods aisle, after hours with the fluorescent lights reflecting off her hair.
His Lorelai wasn't the one who answered the door when he came to pick Rory up Sunday afternoon. This one wore t-shirts that said "Princess" in silver glitter and told him that his jacket made him look responsible.
"Thanks," he said, like there wasn't any better compliment in the world. This was the part of the fantasy where she told him he could get comfortable on the couch and meant "Take off all your clothes." He almost didn't mind that this was the part of reality where she meant, "Take off your responsible jacket and have a handful of Fritos while you wait for Rory to change her top for the fourteenth time."
"So," he said, nibbling a corn chip, "seen any good movies?"
"Good-good or so-bad-it's-good?" Lorelai said.
"I don't know," he said. "Whichever."
"Wow," she said.
"Is that new?"
"Is what new?" she said.
"Wow. I was asking if 'wow' was-- never mind."
"Oh." Her fake laugh was more than polite. "No, it was 'wow' as in 'wow.' But I take it back now."
"Why?" He was disappointed at no longer meriting a wow.
"Because if you remain wow-worthy, you deserve to know the reason, and if you know the reason, my daughter will never see you again because you'll be two towns away before she picks a sweater."
"Okay," he said. He didn't want to push it. If there were horrible Gilmore secrets, Lorelai had the right to keep them that way. Secret.
"There are times," she said, "there are times when you really remind me of Rory's dad. And that-- that was all the wow was."
Rory had a dad. He knew Rory had a dad, somewhere: as sweet and perfect as she was, she was almost definitely not the Second Coming. But now Rory's dad was a person, complete with a personality. A personality, in fact, like Dean's. And judging from how old Lorelai looked, Rory's dad was probably about Dean's age at-- at the time.
He didn't care how responsible his jacket looked. He wasn't ready to be somebody that reminded somebody of somebody's dad.
Rory appeared in a green top that made her neck incredibly graceful. He stood up and kissed her cheek, and she blushed like the kind of girl you were supposed to go out with in high school. Dean said goodbye to Rory's mom so he could take this safe, cute girl out for safe, teenage pizza.
He knew that the fantasies would fill a few more pieces of Kleenex before he found someone else to daydream about. He liked them there, in his head, the way he liked Rory here, holding his hand under the table. The thing about fantasy women was that they faded away, and the thing about Rory was that, picking pepperoni off her slice and then apologizing for being gross, she seemed like she never would.