"You like him."
---
Who: Julia, Lorelai, Tyler
What: Cheating, or the lack thereof.
Where: The Howell House
When: A few days after meeting AJ
Why: Because its fun.
How: However the hell they want.
Words: 2,764
"Yeah baby, just like that!"
"God damnit, Julia." Tyler rolled his eyes, playfully dropping her onto her bed while he set down his things in the same corner by the door where he always left them when he planned on staying the night. "Say it again as loud as you just did, and your mother is going to come in here to hand me my ass, and what am I going to say to her in my defense?"
"Hmm. Well..." Julia hesitated, grinning and thinking this one over while she pulled down the covers and smoothed over the sheets. It was one of the few things that she was picky about when it came to sharing her bed. The sheets had to look perfect on impact. It didn't matter how they ended up in the morning, the messier the better, but if someone else was going to be spending the night in her territory, she wanted it to at least be neat territory.
And that was her excuse.
"You can say that its only for the night." She replied, pushing her skirt down around her ankles, picking it up and rolling it into a ball, and then throwing it on the floor with Tyler's bag. Usually it was a bad idea to mix their stuff together, but Julia thought she stood a good chance of staying semi-clothed on this particular night, and to her that meant that she wouldn't have another incident where Lorelai looked like she was about to burst into tears because someone decided to be funny and ship some of her underwear back to her.
Which, truthfully, she thought was pretty amusing in and of itself.
"I don't think that makes it much better." Tyler laughed, sitting down on the edge of the bed to take off his socks and shoes while he contemplated losing the shirt too. The demon hunting activities of the night had left him with a decent amount of cuts, claw marks, and bruises, and he could feel one scratch on his back that he definitely didn't want Julia to see. She worried too much when she saw what fighting did to him, and he didn't want to ruin the eight hours he had to spend with her by getting her upset over something that he considered the bad part of an average night out on the job. Not everyone had pyrokinesis to defend themselves with. Julia was just one of the lucky ones.
"Then you can tell her that I'm two years past the age of consent." Julia reminded him, throwing her bra on the floor, but keeping her shirt and underwear on, which felt like a good compromise to her. "That's a lot better than how things were when we started doing this."
"Not just better, legal." Tyler commented, opting to take off his shirt after all. His eyes immediately darted to Julia's while she took in the damage, and he was relieved when she only wasted a few seconds staring at them.
Apparently she'd toughened up a little more since his last visit.
"Legal." She echoed, leaning over to fluff up the pillows on his side of the bed. She didn't like the idea of letting Tyler stay injured, but she also wasn't about to go wake Junior up to come give him help that he didn't want. She'd tried offering the services of a healing family member to Tyler in the past, and it frustrated the hell out of her that he was too proud for it. He should have wanted to get better, not suffer through to prove how macho he was.
"Will you stop that?" He smirked, nipping Julia's Florence Nightingale moment in the bud by laying down and resting his head back against the pillows that she had just attempted to fix. Then he leaned over, moving his mouth close to her ear, and lowered his voice to calmy utter the words "I'm fine" while Julia gave in and got comfortable beside him.
"I know." She sighed, admitting defeat. "I know. I just--" Her trail of thought ended as abruptly as her comment when Tyler started kissing her, and she moved in even closer, letting him hold her until the kisses slowed and the need for air became too obvious to ignore.
If this was any indication of how the night was going to go, Julia didn't think she stood much of a chance at keeping the rest of her clothes on.
And for some reason, she was more worried than excited about that this time around.
"Hey." Tyler moved back when her expression registered to him as a bad one. Something was wrong, and whether stopping was the right thing to do or not, he had to do it. He didn't know how else to react to her, because in all the time that he'd known Julia, he had never seen her look uncomfortable about kissing him. "You okay?"
By now Julia was starting to feel stupid, and she tried to kiss him to prove just how okay she was. But Tyler ducked away at the last second, and that made her feel even more idiotic.
Why couldn't he just take the kissing and run with it?
"I'm good." She nodded, figuring that it was best not to try anything too physical again unless Tyler initiated it. She hated looking like the dumb one, especially over something like this, so it was easier for her to just settle into his arms, and explain what was on her mind. Even if she didn't want to.
"Its just that I'm kind of...Okay. I had lunch with a guy yesterday, and we're supposed to go out to dinner tomorrow night. Me and that guy. The same one who I went to lunch with." Julia knew how it must have sounded to Tyler, but she kept going anyway. "I knew him when I was little. We met at a funeral, and we ran into each other the other night at a party, but we didn't recognize each other until we got to his apartment and The Nightmare Before Christmas popped up between the couch cushions."
Coming from Julia, this story made perfect sense to Tyler, and he nodded in understanding, still placing a kiss on the top of her head.
"You like him."
"I--"
"Its like I said. You like him. I get it." Tyler sighed, trying to figure out what to make of this new development. "This is what's called 'guilt', Jules." As well as thinking of the other guy while she was supposed to be thinking of him, but Tyler didn't want to get into that one. His ego was taking enough of a blow by the guilt alone. He didn't need to mention the rest.
"Look, for all I know, he thinks of me as a friend. I do like him, but...I don't feel guilty. Not really. I just wanted you to know in case things are...if anything is different the next time you're around..." She doubted that it would be, but the part of her that was hopeful enough to feel guilty was also hopeful enough to consider the possibility that something could happen anyway.
"I don't expect this of you." He told her, shifting so that he could move his arm back around her. "I never have, and I never will. I never did before, did I?"
That was all the reassurance that Julia needed, and she eagerly moved closer to Tyler. Starting off with some light kisses, she let her hands move carefully against his chest and back, mindful of the stupid marks that he wouldn't let her get someone to take care of.
Neither one of them was concerned with the future once all of the fun feelings kicked in, and that was why no one heard the door opening when Lorelai entered, stumbling over the bags on the floor and just barely catching her balance.
"Ow! Why was that..."She froze, having one of those out of body experiences, and stared over at her sister, unable to do anything else at the moment.
"Since when is it alright to come in my room without knocking?" Julia asked irritatedly, sitting up and burying her head in her hands. She knew where this was going. Lorelai always had a tough time with the idea of Julia having a boyfriend. The best they could hope for with her was minimal panicking, and currently it looked like they were in for more than that.
It took Lorelai a few seconds to process the question, and a few more to figure out exactly what she was supposed to say. Then there was more of the obligatory staring, and even Tyler was getting embarrassed by Lorelai's look of terror.
"I...uh...I..I thought you were alone." She muttered, her eyes widening when it occured to her that Julia was getting cozy with not just a guy, but the wrong one at that. "And what's Tyler doing here? I thought you liked the italian one?!"
To that Tyler could only flop back and rub his eyes, leaving Julia to deal with the teenager who was talking at least three times louder than she should have been given the time of night, with the door to her bedroom still open. He would have mentioned that Julia neglected to tell him that this guy was italian, but he didn't want to look like a sore loser.
When the girl who he went 700 miles out of the way to visit had already explained about someone else and was starting to reward him for taking it well, the last thing he was going to do was wreck it by asking for more details than he wanted.
"Hallway. Now." Julia ordered, jumping up and quickly following her sister out of her room. "Anything that you have to say, just keep it to a freakin' whisper, will you?!"
"I didn't know!" Lorelai whispered back sharply, still trying to get the image of her sister and the traveling demon hunter out of her head. "Which I guess means that Mom and Dad and Junior don't know, so this isn't my fault! You're being sneaky and you're cheating on AJ!"
Julia shook her head at the accusation, putting her hands on her hips while she worked on keeping her temper to a minimum. She was trying to remind herself that Lorelai was only fifteen, had no experience whatsoever when it came to boys, and didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but the situation annoyed her anyway.
All she wanted was to spend some time with a friend. And really, given the friend, was that so much to ask? It wasn't like she got to do things like this all the time.
"First of all, Lor, I'm twenty years old. I can have guests in my house. And second? AJ is a friend. We went out to lunch. He is not my boyfriend, and he has no claim on me. Understand?"
"But--"
"Understand?"
"No!" Lorelai yelled in the volume of a whisper, wishing the whole thing had happened an hour earlier so she wouldn't be too tired to fight with her big sister. She was good at fighting when she was at one hundred percent, and the argument would have been easier to win if she was fully alert instead of exhausted. Besides, if it had happened earlier, she definitely would have had Junior on her side. He was the one who had set the thing with AJ in motion. He had an opinion on this too, and he would have been just as ashamed and disgusted with Julia as she was, just a little quieter about it. "You're not supposed to go out with one guy and bring home another! I don't care if youre twenty. He's...he's like thirty! You shouldn't be bringing home anyone, and you especially shouldn't be bringing home someone that old when you're going out with the young italian guy!"
"He's twenty six!" Julia didn't know why she was bothering, but she felt like that point was one that needed to be made. She wasn't seeing some middle-aged man, she was being paid a visit by a slightly older friend. There wasn't anything wrong with that in her book. "He's not old, and he's just a friend!" A close, personal friend who she sometimes slept with.
"Sure he is, Julia. You kiss all of your friends like that and put them in your bed and--EW!" Lorelai yelled, her thoughts starting to get ahead of her words, resulting in too many disgusting mental pictures. "This is really, really gross. You should be ashamed of yourself!"
"Keep. It. Down." Fighting down a flame or two, Julia grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into her bedroom, slamming the door on her way in. "Crap." She mumbled under her breath, pausing and looking in the direction of the door to see if anyone was going to walk in.
Nothing.
"I can't believe you'd do that!" Lorelai continued, sitting down on her bed. "And wear that!" She added, pointing at Julia's clothes. If they were going to get into it, she figured she might as well get that one out while she could.
"There's nothing wrong with what I'm wearing! I was supposed to be going to bed!" Julia was about to give up and tell Lorelai to mind her own business, but she didn't want her going to tell Junior, or worse, their Mom, about what was going on. Because Julia knew that as much as she liked Tyler, her Mom would like him a lot less if she knew that he showed up after midnight to use their house as a Best Western.
"Its skanky. Really skanky. And I thought you were going out with AJ tomorrow night?" She knew she was losing the battle, but at this rate, Lorelai didn't want to shut up without a fight.
"I am. But I don't see why that means I can't sp--"
"Because its gross. You can't go from having your lips all over Tyler to..." And that image, finally, was enough to break her. "Whatever. I can't talk about this. Its nasty. I need to go brush my teeth and vomit before I go to bed." Lorelai rolled her eyes and started out.
"Hey..."
"Yeah?" She turned back, leaning tiredly against the doorway.
"What did you want in the first place?" Julia asked, running a hand through her hair and catching a glimpse of herself in Lorelai's mirror. The outfit wasn't half as bad as she was making it out to be. Lorelai just didn't understand what looked good.
"AJ called while you were out. He asked if you could call him back in the morning." She shrugged and covered a yawn, which meant it was well past time for her to go to bed. "Goodnight Jules."
"Goodnight." Julia replied, heading out of Lorelai's room and back towards her own. She could have done without knowing about the call until morning, but if she left "morning" to Lorelai in the summer, she wouldn't have known that AJ was trying to reach her until at least noon. As weird as the situation was, she was better off this way.
She just hated the guilt. Tyler was right, that was exactly what it was. And it sucked.
Pushing open her door the rest of the way, Julia walked into her room to find that someone else had taken her spot in the bed, much to Tyler's amusement.
"You're replacing me with a dog?" She shook her head in disbelief, going over to Tyler's side of the bed and climbing right on top of him, since it was just plain crazy to try and move Lucky when he was sleeping. The dog was as much of a lump as her father and her sister when it came to waking him up.
"You're replacing me with an italian guy." He smiled, giving her a kiss. "I thought it was only fair."
"He's a friend." Julia repeated for what felt like the millionth time, returning the kiss and then resting her head against his chest. In the past few hours she had nearly gotten her ass kicked by a demon, actually had been busted by Lorelai, and last but not least, had to give up her side of the bed to Lucky. It was time to sleep.
"He's a friend. He's a friend like I'm a friend." Tyler laughed, closing his eyes.
"Yeah, but you're a good friend." Julia mumbled, smiling as she drifted off to sleep. She didn't think she had anything to worry about. After all, it couldn't be cheating if you were just friends, right?
Right.
---
Who: Julia, Lorelai, Tyler
What: Cheating, or the lack thereof.
Where: The Howell House
When: A few days after meeting AJ
Why: Because its fun.
How: However the hell they want.
Words: 2,764
"Yeah baby, just like that!"
"God damnit, Julia." Tyler rolled his eyes, playfully dropping her onto her bed while he set down his things in the same corner by the door where he always left them when he planned on staying the night. "Say it again as loud as you just did, and your mother is going to come in here to hand me my ass, and what am I going to say to her in my defense?"
"Hmm. Well..." Julia hesitated, grinning and thinking this one over while she pulled down the covers and smoothed over the sheets. It was one of the few things that she was picky about when it came to sharing her bed. The sheets had to look perfect on impact. It didn't matter how they ended up in the morning, the messier the better, but if someone else was going to be spending the night in her territory, she wanted it to at least be neat territory.
And that was her excuse.
"You can say that its only for the night." She replied, pushing her skirt down around her ankles, picking it up and rolling it into a ball, and then throwing it on the floor with Tyler's bag. Usually it was a bad idea to mix their stuff together, but Julia thought she stood a good chance of staying semi-clothed on this particular night, and to her that meant that she wouldn't have another incident where Lorelai looked like she was about to burst into tears because someone decided to be funny and ship some of her underwear back to her.
Which, truthfully, she thought was pretty amusing in and of itself.
"I don't think that makes it much better." Tyler laughed, sitting down on the edge of the bed to take off his socks and shoes while he contemplated losing the shirt too. The demon hunting activities of the night had left him with a decent amount of cuts, claw marks, and bruises, and he could feel one scratch on his back that he definitely didn't want Julia to see. She worried too much when she saw what fighting did to him, and he didn't want to ruin the eight hours he had to spend with her by getting her upset over something that he considered the bad part of an average night out on the job. Not everyone had pyrokinesis to defend themselves with. Julia was just one of the lucky ones.
"Then you can tell her that I'm two years past the age of consent." Julia reminded him, throwing her bra on the floor, but keeping her shirt and underwear on, which felt like a good compromise to her. "That's a lot better than how things were when we started doing this."
"Not just better, legal." Tyler commented, opting to take off his shirt after all. His eyes immediately darted to Julia's while she took in the damage, and he was relieved when she only wasted a few seconds staring at them.
Apparently she'd toughened up a little more since his last visit.
"Legal." She echoed, leaning over to fluff up the pillows on his side of the bed. She didn't like the idea of letting Tyler stay injured, but she also wasn't about to go wake Junior up to come give him help that he didn't want. She'd tried offering the services of a healing family member to Tyler in the past, and it frustrated the hell out of her that he was too proud for it. He should have wanted to get better, not suffer through to prove how macho he was.
"Will you stop that?" He smirked, nipping Julia's Florence Nightingale moment in the bud by laying down and resting his head back against the pillows that she had just attempted to fix. Then he leaned over, moving his mouth close to her ear, and lowered his voice to calmy utter the words "I'm fine" while Julia gave in and got comfortable beside him.
"I know." She sighed, admitting defeat. "I know. I just--" Her trail of thought ended as abruptly as her comment when Tyler started kissing her, and she moved in even closer, letting him hold her until the kisses slowed and the need for air became too obvious to ignore.
If this was any indication of how the night was going to go, Julia didn't think she stood much of a chance at keeping the rest of her clothes on.
And for some reason, she was more worried than excited about that this time around.
"Hey." Tyler moved back when her expression registered to him as a bad one. Something was wrong, and whether stopping was the right thing to do or not, he had to do it. He didn't know how else to react to her, because in all the time that he'd known Julia, he had never seen her look uncomfortable about kissing him. "You okay?"
By now Julia was starting to feel stupid, and she tried to kiss him to prove just how okay she was. But Tyler ducked away at the last second, and that made her feel even more idiotic.
Why couldn't he just take the kissing and run with it?
"I'm good." She nodded, figuring that it was best not to try anything too physical again unless Tyler initiated it. She hated looking like the dumb one, especially over something like this, so it was easier for her to just settle into his arms, and explain what was on her mind. Even if she didn't want to.
"Its just that I'm kind of...Okay. I had lunch with a guy yesterday, and we're supposed to go out to dinner tomorrow night. Me and that guy. The same one who I went to lunch with." Julia knew how it must have sounded to Tyler, but she kept going anyway. "I knew him when I was little. We met at a funeral, and we ran into each other the other night at a party, but we didn't recognize each other until we got to his apartment and The Nightmare Before Christmas popped up between the couch cushions."
Coming from Julia, this story made perfect sense to Tyler, and he nodded in understanding, still placing a kiss on the top of her head.
"You like him."
"I--"
"Its like I said. You like him. I get it." Tyler sighed, trying to figure out what to make of this new development. "This is what's called 'guilt', Jules." As well as thinking of the other guy while she was supposed to be thinking of him, but Tyler didn't want to get into that one. His ego was taking enough of a blow by the guilt alone. He didn't need to mention the rest.
"Look, for all I know, he thinks of me as a friend. I do like him, but...I don't feel guilty. Not really. I just wanted you to know in case things are...if anything is different the next time you're around..." She doubted that it would be, but the part of her that was hopeful enough to feel guilty was also hopeful enough to consider the possibility that something could happen anyway.
"I don't expect this of you." He told her, shifting so that he could move his arm back around her. "I never have, and I never will. I never did before, did I?"
That was all the reassurance that Julia needed, and she eagerly moved closer to Tyler. Starting off with some light kisses, she let her hands move carefully against his chest and back, mindful of the stupid marks that he wouldn't let her get someone to take care of.
Neither one of them was concerned with the future once all of the fun feelings kicked in, and that was why no one heard the door opening when Lorelai entered, stumbling over the bags on the floor and just barely catching her balance.
"Ow! Why was that..."She froze, having one of those out of body experiences, and stared over at her sister, unable to do anything else at the moment.
"Since when is it alright to come in my room without knocking?" Julia asked irritatedly, sitting up and burying her head in her hands. She knew where this was going. Lorelai always had a tough time with the idea of Julia having a boyfriend. The best they could hope for with her was minimal panicking, and currently it looked like they were in for more than that.
It took Lorelai a few seconds to process the question, and a few more to figure out exactly what she was supposed to say. Then there was more of the obligatory staring, and even Tyler was getting embarrassed by Lorelai's look of terror.
"I...uh...I..I thought you were alone." She muttered, her eyes widening when it occured to her that Julia was getting cozy with not just a guy, but the wrong one at that. "And what's Tyler doing here? I thought you liked the italian one?!"
To that Tyler could only flop back and rub his eyes, leaving Julia to deal with the teenager who was talking at least three times louder than she should have been given the time of night, with the door to her bedroom still open. He would have mentioned that Julia neglected to tell him that this guy was italian, but he didn't want to look like a sore loser.
When the girl who he went 700 miles out of the way to visit had already explained about someone else and was starting to reward him for taking it well, the last thing he was going to do was wreck it by asking for more details than he wanted.
"Hallway. Now." Julia ordered, jumping up and quickly following her sister out of her room. "Anything that you have to say, just keep it to a freakin' whisper, will you?!"
"I didn't know!" Lorelai whispered back sharply, still trying to get the image of her sister and the traveling demon hunter out of her head. "Which I guess means that Mom and Dad and Junior don't know, so this isn't my fault! You're being sneaky and you're cheating on AJ!"
Julia shook her head at the accusation, putting her hands on her hips while she worked on keeping her temper to a minimum. She was trying to remind herself that Lorelai was only fifteen, had no experience whatsoever when it came to boys, and didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but the situation annoyed her anyway.
All she wanted was to spend some time with a friend. And really, given the friend, was that so much to ask? It wasn't like she got to do things like this all the time.
"First of all, Lor, I'm twenty years old. I can have guests in my house. And second? AJ is a friend. We went out to lunch. He is not my boyfriend, and he has no claim on me. Understand?"
"But--"
"Understand?"
"No!" Lorelai yelled in the volume of a whisper, wishing the whole thing had happened an hour earlier so she wouldn't be too tired to fight with her big sister. She was good at fighting when she was at one hundred percent, and the argument would have been easier to win if she was fully alert instead of exhausted. Besides, if it had happened earlier, she definitely would have had Junior on her side. He was the one who had set the thing with AJ in motion. He had an opinion on this too, and he would have been just as ashamed and disgusted with Julia as she was, just a little quieter about it. "You're not supposed to go out with one guy and bring home another! I don't care if youre twenty. He's...he's like thirty! You shouldn't be bringing home anyone, and you especially shouldn't be bringing home someone that old when you're going out with the young italian guy!"
"He's twenty six!" Julia didn't know why she was bothering, but she felt like that point was one that needed to be made. She wasn't seeing some middle-aged man, she was being paid a visit by a slightly older friend. There wasn't anything wrong with that in her book. "He's not old, and he's just a friend!" A close, personal friend who she sometimes slept with.
"Sure he is, Julia. You kiss all of your friends like that and put them in your bed and--EW!" Lorelai yelled, her thoughts starting to get ahead of her words, resulting in too many disgusting mental pictures. "This is really, really gross. You should be ashamed of yourself!"
"Keep. It. Down." Fighting down a flame or two, Julia grabbed her by the arm and dragged her into her bedroom, slamming the door on her way in. "Crap." She mumbled under her breath, pausing and looking in the direction of the door to see if anyone was going to walk in.
Nothing.
"I can't believe you'd do that!" Lorelai continued, sitting down on her bed. "And wear that!" She added, pointing at Julia's clothes. If they were going to get into it, she figured she might as well get that one out while she could.
"There's nothing wrong with what I'm wearing! I was supposed to be going to bed!" Julia was about to give up and tell Lorelai to mind her own business, but she didn't want her going to tell Junior, or worse, their Mom, about what was going on. Because Julia knew that as much as she liked Tyler, her Mom would like him a lot less if she knew that he showed up after midnight to use their house as a Best Western.
"Its skanky. Really skanky. And I thought you were going out with AJ tomorrow night?" She knew she was losing the battle, but at this rate, Lorelai didn't want to shut up without a fight.
"I am. But I don't see why that means I can't sp--"
"Because its gross. You can't go from having your lips all over Tyler to..." And that image, finally, was enough to break her. "Whatever. I can't talk about this. Its nasty. I need to go brush my teeth and vomit before I go to bed." Lorelai rolled her eyes and started out.
"Hey..."
"Yeah?" She turned back, leaning tiredly against the doorway.
"What did you want in the first place?" Julia asked, running a hand through her hair and catching a glimpse of herself in Lorelai's mirror. The outfit wasn't half as bad as she was making it out to be. Lorelai just didn't understand what looked good.
"AJ called while you were out. He asked if you could call him back in the morning." She shrugged and covered a yawn, which meant it was well past time for her to go to bed. "Goodnight Jules."
"Goodnight." Julia replied, heading out of Lorelai's room and back towards her own. She could have done without knowing about the call until morning, but if she left "morning" to Lorelai in the summer, she wouldn't have known that AJ was trying to reach her until at least noon. As weird as the situation was, she was better off this way.
She just hated the guilt. Tyler was right, that was exactly what it was. And it sucked.
Pushing open her door the rest of the way, Julia walked into her room to find that someone else had taken her spot in the bed, much to Tyler's amusement.
"You're replacing me with a dog?" She shook her head in disbelief, going over to Tyler's side of the bed and climbing right on top of him, since it was just plain crazy to try and move Lucky when he was sleeping. The dog was as much of a lump as her father and her sister when it came to waking him up.
"You're replacing me with an italian guy." He smiled, giving her a kiss. "I thought it was only fair."
"He's a friend." Julia repeated for what felt like the millionth time, returning the kiss and then resting her head against his chest. In the past few hours she had nearly gotten her ass kicked by a demon, actually had been busted by Lorelai, and last but not least, had to give up her side of the bed to Lucky. It was time to sleep.
"He's a friend. He's a friend like I'm a friend." Tyler laughed, closing his eyes.
"Yeah, but you're a good friend." Julia mumbled, smiling as she drifted off to sleep. She didn't think she had anything to worry about. After all, it couldn't be cheating if you were just friends, right?
Right.
---