a/n: The second of three stories prompted by my dear friend for her birthday. The prompt for this one was the song 'Hotels (Tk)' by Mr. Carter Davis. The scenario I dreamed up to match it is this, an alternate overview of how I think Rogan could have gone if not dragged out and drama-ed up. Some of the details overlap my other post-AYITL story because this is actually where that started. Sort of. I don't know, I'm working on a sleep deficit of about seven years here.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls. I just rewrite them from time to time.
in every dream, you're by my side
Things have happened at a record-breaking pace. The end of the semester is always a force of its own kind of nature, and Rory learned quickly (as always) that the last one is the worst one in terms of what needs to get done and the time you have to do it. She's only been good at not pressuring herself when she had someone reminding her to slow down, someone distracting her when she needed it most and letting her go when she needed to get things done. She knew she was at least a little bit screwed when he was the first removal from the equation. The equation ended up being more minuses than plusses and she thinks she and this opportunity to prove herself are the only things on the other side of the post-graduation equals sign. It divided everything into this before and after she's not so sure she likes it once she's firmly in the after – after graduation, after all the goodbyes, after the tears and teary promises have washed away the excitement and left behind a unique kind of exhaustion.
She holds strong in the wake of the breakup and come-apart of the life she knew before, including saying goodbye to Lorelai as she embarks on her first real grown-up job, the one that will make phone and internet contact their only haphazard options. The stoic strength lasts for about four hours in to the first day on the bus full of other reporters, when she hasn't managed to talk to anyone, she's had to ditch her pantyhose because those are almost always a disaster, and she had to twist the tanktop underneath her blazer around due to a coffee-related mishap. At least there was coffee, so she feels like she can't complain. Four hours into day one, though, she hasn't talked to anyone and she feels like she's going to explode from the build up of needs for reassurance and all the observations she's making. The feeling has only one result, one equal, and she gives in a month after their split, willing to be the first one who calls and waves a white flag.
On the outside, it's probably just as repulsive as a Taylor Swift song because they fight, they break up, they kiss, they make up – but she doesn't care. She's weighed her mother's advice for too long. While it's good advice, it's also biased. Lorelai is fierce, independent, certain. Lorelai has always been independent to the point it colors her choices and makes her hard to live with. As it turns out, Rory is a lot more moderate and she realizes it way too late. It's a month of balancing her need to observe and talk freely with her mother's advice. In this situation, it was kind of terrible. She'll honestly never know it's right to get married because she won't want to hesitate. She'll always hesitate because she's a hesitator. That's what she does. She's a talk-it-througher, not a jump-first-and-ask-questions-laterer.
Ultimately, though, this one's on her. She took Lorelai's advice and thought she had her reasons for doing it. She turned down Logan's proposal because she wanted to be free, to be unencumbered, to follow the future she'd partially thought she was after and partially told could be hers. Lorelai and Richard, in particular, made her believe she could do anything. The thing is, she's actually more pragmatic than that. She's the one who cleaned the bathroom while Lorelai was busy watching movies. She's the one who learned to cook, in part aided by Logan's insistence a well-rounded individual knew how to make at least two or three decent meals. She's the one who studied hard and worked hard, rather than played hard. But she's more open to possibility, more willing to engage in adventure as long as it balances on risk and reward. She's more likely to ask questions, to organize, to plan first.
The learning to cook, to be fair, might have been that Logan had times when his social butterfly took a weekend off and he wanted to stay in the apartment with her and without clothes. Details. The rest of it, she's pretty sure, is part of what makes her more moderate and practical than her mother.
After she breaks both of their hearts because she doesn't think she wants to be tied down, she has nothing but time on a bus to think. While she didn't want to crutch on him… she doesn't necessarily want what Lorelai has now, either. She doesn't want to be alone, to confound and frustrate even the steadiest guy. While settling at twenty-two isn't exactly the goal, she's seen enough of her grandparents to know it may not be the worst thing if she's doing it for the right person. They're happy, they've found their own niches and succeeded in their own ways, and they've consistently supported and chosen one another.
Maybe, unlike her mother, she wants something like that if she can get it. She wants something consistent and he was offering marriage, which is consistent by definition (if not always perfect in practice. They really are a Taylor Swift song.)
She calls him at the end of June. She doesn't even make it a full month and she can't bring herself to wonder what her mom would have to say about it. The campaign trail has her in Hartford, though, and it reminds her of him and them and everything just a little too much. Between nostalgia and wine, it seems like a good idea.
Hearing his voice is the first time she's felt connected to anything in almost a month.
"You should come here," is all he says when she admits she has almost two weeks off.
It's a little harder to blame her sudden sentimental streak for the fact she gets onto a plane at 5:45 the next morning. The wine might still get some credit, because she lets him book a ticket for her.
She'll find a way to pay him back.
California is more like an island than the left-leaning left side of the country, Logan realizes, and it doesn't take him very long at all. He's been here less than a month and everything that he could've loved about it stayed in Connecticut. He knows how to go through the motions without enjoying them because he's practiced being divided that way more than he admits to almost anyone. With this island-style isolation, he feels it more than he anticipated.
He heard through the talky Colin-and-Finn grapevine that she got a job on the campaign trail, hot on the heels of the intriguing mess of an upstart from Illinois. He envisions her fitting in easily, made to be a part of the indistinguishable Burberry-knockoff-and-heels herd following around a would-be president. Even if her spot is somewhere near the middle-back of the group and her words are all going to be Google-searchable, rather than in print, he feels pride he knows he has no right to feel and it chokes him up. It's not about doubt, because he never doubted her ability to do what she said she wanted to do. He doubted she would have the self-confidence to really go for it, though, and he's glad she has a foot in the door without a lot of need for a bolder approach. He wants her to know he's proud of her. He just wanted to translate their partnership into a supportive marriage to boost him and to open doors for her. Parts of him still wants it, can see it, can envision how well it would work even though she turned him down. How's that for pathetic?
Not only can he envision it, he dreams about it more than once. His conscience and subconscious are assholes that way. It just rubs salt into open wounds, and there are a lot of wounds to choose from. As much as he has the ability to look unaffected, to continue on and fill his contact list with businessmen and women, colleagues and potential clients, it's only because he can disconnect below the surface. He's busy doing the equivalent of falling flat on his face and then bouncing up, insisting he's fine and hoping no one saw him fall. The ultimate 'I meant to do that, really.' It takes a lot of nose to the old grindstone, a lot of Scotch, and apparently longer than a month.
He gets hit on more than once, his athletic build, smirky smile, and effortless charm catching up to him. He finds himself with something a little stronger than disinterest at the thought, a bit of a visceral reaction that has him calling it a night on the early side each time it happens. Colin and Finn bust on him for it, tell him he's old and boring, but somewhere between the fronting and the dreams of the life they could be living if only she'd agreed, he doesn't care. Maybe he is old and boring. He was ready to settle down and that feeling isn't something that just goes away.
It resurfaces pretty quick when she calls him, which tells him it hadn't sunk all that deep. He can't be mad at her because she's just as miserable as he is when they're not together. When she doesn't apologize, and she's almost immediately and patently herslf, he finds it easy to go with it all because he's getting what he wants.
The offer to play host for her week off, even though she could just go home because it's a lot closer, slips out of his mouth before he realizes what he's saying. As she stumbles through a protest about money, he's got the ticket purchased before she can actually say no. It's probably disgusting, like he can hear the ball-busting from Finn in the back of his mind saying so, that he remembers all her personal information.
For all that she's traveled, she's never been to the West coast. She's sure it's on the campaign itinerary at some point, but not in any of the dates she's looked at. Even then, she hasn't been doing this long enough she feels comfortable leaving the relative safety of the group of reporters to explore. There's not many of them just yet because they've been bouncing like a bussed Ping-Pong ball around the Eastern half of the country. Iowa doesn't strike her as a place with a night life. Washington D.C. isn't safe to explore alone. She's spent most of her time in the "business" area of whatever budget-friendly motel they're in, doing research and writing her articles. She wants to be good at this, needs to be good at it, more than anything she's ever done. At least she knows what she's doing when she's lost in the words on a page, and it's better than focusing on all the other places she's lost right now.
Once she steps off the plane, bright eyed because she slept for most of the flight and all she needs is like four hours to get back to fighting shape, she feels something lift off her chest. Maybe it's the self-imposed pressure, or maybe it's the self-doubt and the things that have plagued her since her gamble and loss on the New York Times fellowship didn't go her way. Either way, it feels great.
She can breathe.
So, Logan works hard when he's at the office. He's been carving out a reputation for himself. In a hard-earned desire not to be Mitchum, he's taken to setting his own days off and the only reason someone should call during that time is if the entire office is burning down. In an argument with the company owner pretty early on in his tenure, he cites research that people are more productive and successful, better company performers, when they have consecutive days off. The debate is protracted, but he wins, and that makes Logan inordinately glad he works for Luisa rather than for his father (who has probably never taken an actual day or hour off in his life.)
So when she arrives on Sunday, he claims mental health time and emails in the notification that he's taking a couple of days off while he doesn't have any pressing projects or meetings. He rents a car, because he doesn't actually have one of those yet. Now that it's in process, he wants to take off with her. It's only sort of running away, because he knows they'll come back, but it'll create some room for breathing. They were denied a trip to Asia that would have done the same things and he wants to show her the West coast to make up for it. He kind of wants to see it himself, and not from a boat that will sink later on in the week. He's become more reliable than that, even if this plan is still a little half-baked and he doesn't have any particular destination in mind.
The first time they see each other at the airport is only awkward because they don't know what this is. They had a brief foray into Justfriendsland, but for the vast majority of the time he's known her, he's been at least halfway in love with her. He thinks she was at least infatuated with him. They've never been that neutral kind of friends. A month after he proposed and she turned him down, they aren't sure how to manage something as important as personal space.
They're both smiling as they eventually settle into a hug, though. He feels a lot of things as he holds onto her, but awkward isn't one of them.
She laughs when she sees the admittedly flashy car he rented. His financial status has some perks. The agency he calls when he needs a car delivered the convertible sports car to his apartment building just in time for him to come pick her up even though it's a Sunday morning. He thought for a second about hiring a driver, too, but what fun would that be?
He wants to have her to himself.
He pulls the door open for her in the parking garage at the airport, and she sets her hand on his arm. "You don't have to do all this for me," she protests. "I'm a last-minute gatecrasher and we probably have a lot to ta-"
His eyes bounce from her hand to her face and, instead of words, he kisses her for the fourth first time. Or something. He's lost count and he's beyond caring. He doesn't want her to finish her sentence, either, because he knows what she was going to say. She's not wrong, but talking through their recent history isn't something he wants to do in one agonizing conversation. He just wants to kiss her, hold her hand, debate something as inane as the secret meanings laid into songs that come up on the radio, and drive with no particular place in mind.
Honestly, he's always been pretty good at getting what he wants, or at least seizing the momentnwhen it presents itself. He's pretty sure she's getting better at it.
But practice never hurt anyone.
Just because she wasn't sure about marriage doesn't mean she wasn't sure about him. It was a 'not yet' more than a 'not you.' Their weekend driving up the coast via Highway One makes that perfectly clear. He clicks back into place in her life in a way that feels very right and it makes her wonder how she operated without him. She's not really that dependent, exactly, but being around him with his impulsive optimism (about everything except his dad) is a good thing. It's a very good thing.
Even when she was getting off the plane, she thought she was just going to see where he lives now. Maybe sneak into his office, wait for him to get home from work on some fancy couch, and try a new restaurant or two, and that would be how she lived out her week in San Francisco.
As per his usual, though, he turned their reconnection into something spontaneous and exactly what she needed. He's not so reckless, with a side of self-destructive, any more. She thinks the grown-up thing works well for him. It's clear he's been working hard because it's clear he needed the sun.
God, it's only been a month.
She shows him some of the articles she's written. He shows her an app he's been working on developing so it's ready for the open market. He's not the tech genius as much as he could sell ice to an Eskimo. But he's making it work and parlaying his abilities into a small fortune.
And he's teasing her about splitting her infinitives in an article.
(She didn't.)
She just tells him he's been out of school too long to know what that means anymore or to recognize it when he sees it.
Her week off ends, but their meet-ups don't. There's something sexy about a different hotel every other weekend, finding fun in all the different places she ends up in and his black AmEx provides access to. She even gets him to stay in some of the cheaper hotel rooms her stipend from the publisher will cover and she thinks it's the first time he's slept somewhere with an extraneous 'e' at the end of its name.
It's fun.
He doesn't tell Colin and Finn, even when they accuse him of meeting someone because of the drastic improvement in his mood.
She doesn't tell anyone. She doesn't really have much of anyone, besides her mom, to tell. But she even stays mum then in spite of one close call when he was coming out of the bathroom talking about an article on McCain's running mates while she was finishing up a call.
"I feel like a Mommy-blogger," she complains one night, snuggled against his bare chest in bed, in the room he checked into earlier in the evening while she was still at the College Democrats of America thing.
He lets out a soft laugh and kisses the top of her head. "I don't think many Mom-bloggers are capable of the athletic performance you just put on." It sounds teasing because of the laughter, but he's serious.
"Logan," she says softly, a protest that isn't as squealing as it could be. She turns her face into his chest even though it's probably too hot for this much closeness. He wraps his arm around her a little tighter.
"I'm just saying, that blog would require an age limit and a password. Definitely not kid-friendly and not something I want to think about my mom reading." He pauses for effect. "Your mom on the other hand…"
"I really don't want to know where you're going with that." Her protest is immediate and so is his laugh.
Once they've settled down a little bit, a few golden moments of silence lingering before where he has to fight the urge to ask for her phone number or push to make this more than it is, he gets serious. "Is that your way of saying you're disappointed in what you're doing?"
She sighs. "Yes and no. I guess I just hoped I'd be reaching a wider audience. And I never imagined my first real job would be uploading sound bytes and commentary on a speech given by a guy whom no one expects to win a nomination." There's a long pause. "He talked about finding jobs to pay off student debt. Maybe this is what I have to do instead – but it's not CNN."
While he was being a little impatient about her, she was being impatient with herself and he realizes that now in a way he didn't before he spoke the words. He knew she was practically made of quiet ambition, not always low-key but definitely always there. She's sort of the opposite of him in that way. He just wants to be comfortable, to stay where he's comfortable. He shifts them so he can lay on top of her
(Yes, again. It's Thursday and he only has 24 hours, give or take.)
"Have I told you I'm proud of you?" He says, his voice lower and more serious. He doesn't want to get maudlin. He wants to find somewhere here for them to go, hidden within the gigantic Angel Oak they checked out earlier in the day before she had places to be. He doesn't want to let her go. "You're not a mom-blogger. You're a published journalist. It's not a traditional newspaper, but it's still a good thing. And I think technically you have to be a mom before you can be a mom-blogger. You can write about what you heard tonight because you were just a college student. And you're a democrat."
"Have I told you I'm glad you're here?" She counters.
"No, but I think you showed me," he says with a grin. "Three or four times."
That's the closest they ever get to exchanging real, serious thoughts. They don't get into things like future plans or I love you. It's there, it's underlying in almost everything and especially the sex, but it's not loud and it's not going anywhere.
Election night is a whirlwind. In the last couple of weeks, she's talked to no one and seen no one and it's a Tuesday and the last thing she expects is to see him in Chicago. Most of the reporters, young and hungry and about to be out of a job just like she is, don't have a plus one. Two or three of them, including one of the guys, hits on him, but she doesn't care.
He came when she didn't ask him to and didn't expect him.
In that moment, she swears they're going to make it through whatever he needs, whatever she needs, and they'll come out together on the other side of it.
She starts freelancing and he moves to London, more permanently this time than the time he didn't want to go.
It's her turn to go to him and it becomes a little irregular, matching her schedule and her life, but she really doesn't mind. She kind of likes it, this patchwork and feeling of a home base even as she moves around. The freedom is kind of nice and she can't bring herself to tell her mother or her grandmother that she might not be built for their life.
Then again, he's not asking her to step into that kind of life either. She thinks maybe there's more acceptance and trepidation in that than she wants to see or he wants to admit.
He's standing in a bed and breakfast in Rhode Island after a shaky phone call with Lorelai, and not the one he's intimately acquainted with.
There's been a whole chain of events, but this is the one that pulled him full-circle and into the present and he doesn't know why he's doing this here, but he is. The last ten years of their lives have been defined by hotels, by the things that happened between the walls of no less than fifty locations, important in their own right. The only thing that wasn't generic about most of them was the couple inside. It feels right to do this here.
Plus, you know, Finn still owns the place.
"You're probably the last person I expected to hear from," she says as they both take a seat.
That's her greeting.
He's nervous.
"I can see that," he replies and smiles. That smile has opened doors and dropped pants, and he's hoping for the former more than the latter. She doesn't smile back. He tucks it away for later. "Rory's pregnant."
"I know," Lorelai says, taking a seat the table he's casually at. The apparent ease is deceptive, because his heart rate is not healthy and his blood pressure is high enough he can hear the blood rushing through his ears. This matters more to him than even his heartfelt, off-the-cuff plea to Rory ten years ago when he offered to fly her out to California.
"This is where it happened," he says. He looks around the dining room area, less homey than what he remembers of the Dragonfly, but not as lame as the 'business' area of a Super 8 where it's almost as likely they could've had this conversation at some other point. "That's not the point. The point is, there's nothing sketchy about you vetting a bed and breakfast so I could get you here under the radar."
He sees her eyes dart around and he knows she's doing exactly what he said – she's sizing the place up with the eye of a competitive veteran. She doesn't retort, which is practically a miracle.
"I want to ask Rory to marry me again," he continues. "I didn't exactly ask permission when I invited her out to California after she started her job, but that was a little more casual."
"And if she says no? Like she obviously didn't about a trip to California. Or other things." She tilts her head. "Or are you going to persuade her to move to London? Because I think she'd be better off here."
"I agree. I don't know the particulars just yet," he admits. "But I want the chance to work them out with her. And I'd like as little resistance as possible. Maybe even…encouragement? The only constants for her since college have been phone calls home to you and traveling to meet up with me. I know we kept it all a secret, but that doesn't mean I'm going to bail on her now. I couldn't if I tried."
"You're not Christopher," Lorelai says eventually.
"No. That would be gross."
When she laughs, he knows he has her.
"You should come here," she calls from the other room.
There's no reason he wants to, though.
She and Lorelai have been getting the baby ready for the wedding. It's kind of schmaltzy to admit his one-year-old son is going to be his best man, and that he trusts Finn to carry Rico down the aisle and to roll with it if something happens. That doesn't mean he wants to be involved in the 'getting ready' process.
Which, with these ladies, is a process. He thinks it's a sign of good breeding and successful education that he's just been staying out of their way.
But then he feels a little guilty, in his suit sharing a bottle of Scotch with Colin and Christopher, thinking they might need his help. He sighs and gets off his lazy ass, shooting them a look that says he'll kill them if they mess with his drink, and goes into the bedroom in their hotel suite that's been designated for Rory and Rico to get ready.
Rico is apparently as bored with the proceedings as he is, because their baby is asleep, his head very nearly falling off the bed and his legs pulled up underneath him, his suit-covered ass in the air.
He has to stifle a laugh.
Even over Emily's admonition they should wake the baby up because he'll mess up his hair and his suit will be wrinkled.
Logan's eyes shift to Rory, and even though he's technically seen her wedding dress because they had to determine which one would be the easiest to get off her for science, she's beautiful and they're coming full circle.
That's why his wedding vows are simple – you jump, I jump, Jack. What else is there to say at this point?
"Ace?" He says. She smiles over her shoulder in the mirror, but doesn't turn around.
"Will you just make sure he doesn't fall off the bed?" She asks, bypassing everything else. They can communicate well enough with the eye contact now that it isn't necessary. Emily starts talking about waking the boy, but it falls on deaf ears. "I'd like to get through our wedding without a head injury."
"Oh. Does that apply to the reception, too? Because Finn's here and he's already drinking," he jokes as he sits and pulls Rico into his lap.
Their honeymoon is a road trip. The car he rented (bought, she doesn't know that yet) is packed to the very small gills with all the things their little family needs to wander for a while, with no particular destination in mind.
Really, it's the best way to start any phase of life.
They can figure it out as they go.