title: only love could ever hit this hard
fandom: gilmore girls
characters: rory gilmore/logan huntzberger
information: post-ayitl | 1620 words | oneshot
summary: The moment Rory threw her graduation cap into the air, she imagined herself as more Amanpour and less Kerouac. She was going to write about stories that mattered, on the cusp of moving the world in a way only tectonic plates could.
( we went in circles somewhere else )
The problem with Vegas is that Vegas was never Vegas.
London is a home with four walls and a king-sized bed and shipping boxes in the linen closet—pieces of the great jagged jigsaw puzzle that is Rory's vagabond life.
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There's an engagement ring in the picture. One that's not on her finger.
She waits for him to say something, say anything, say you won't marry her and you want to make this work because you believe in us despite it all—and the silence that follows has to speak for itself.
The words hang dry in her mouth.
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She remembers the quiet moments between hello at the airport and goodbye at the restaurant, wrapped in soft sheets with his body splayed out next to hers. The way he would look at her when he thought she was sleeping, but then she would open one eye and burst into laughter. The way he laughed too, a rumbling sound emerging from deep within his chest, a beautiful and satisfied sound.
"Rory, what do you want?" he asks, curious and eyes-twinkling. He thinks he would capture the stars if she asked him to, if she wanted, if money and his soul could grant her wishes.
The thing is, nobody had ever asked her that. What she wanted.
She always knew what Rory Gilmore should want, or what others wanted Rory Gilmore to want. Rory Gilmore herself doesn't know what she wants.
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A pink plus appears on a stick and her world spins.
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Rory remembers she once had a plan on the timeline between twenty-two and thirty-two. Now it's a treasure hunt to find x, find where it all went right or wrong.
The moment Rory threw her graduation cap into the air, she imagined herself as more Amanpour and less Kerouac. She was going to write about stories that mattered, on the cusp of moving the world in a way only tectonic plates could.
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Ten years, four words, and seventeen letters later—for possibly the first time in Rory's lifetime, Lorelai doesn't know what to say to her daughter.
Rory talks to her mom about it, sort of. She skirts around some of the more decisive details, but Lorelai is perceptive enough to get the full picture. Lorelai supports Rory and her decisions; it's the Gilmore way of life.
At the end of the day, they're still the Gilmores. Sometimes their family shrinks a little, other times it grows.
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"My strict Asian mother literally preached abstinence from the day I was born, but then the universe told me to get married, have sex once, and congratulations Lane Kim, you're pregnant," Lane deadpans. "With twins."
"Twins? I totally forgot I could be carrying not just one, but two humans inside of me. What if I'm responsible for additional lives?" Rory rambled. "I still haven't found my underwear."
"Still?" Lane raised an eyebrow. "It's almost been a year, what have you been doing this entire time? Better yet, what have you been wearing this entire time?"
Rory waved her off. "I bought some, but they're not the same. Underwear is a loyal species; replacing an entire drawer of underwear feels like infidelity. I can't be unfaithful to the polka dots."
"Undergarments do not take adultery lightly," laughs Lane.
Rory stiffens. Something inside her unsettles and catches in her throat. "No, they don't," she replies softly.
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London or New York or Stars Hollow or so many other cities and towns on a map. Rory wishes she could close her eyes and spin a globe and find her roots.
She thinks of spending the rest of her life in Stars Hollow: walking the same streets, greeting the same people, watching the seasons change in the same small town snow globe. She wants to shake the snow globe, rattle its edges and turn it upside down. Rory thought she could do that once when she was young, (young and stupid, but still young), but she isn't so sure anymore.
New York is that cramped one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where the rent was half of her article royalties. London is the house across the ocean, the home that doesn't belong to her.
Once again, Rory Gilmore finds herself rootless.
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Luke is the one who makes her call.
"If I were him—and I have been that guy—I would want to know. I would want the ability to make a choice, to decide whether or not to be part of this kid's life. You can't make the decision for him, Rory." Luke refills her coffee mug, her third cup of the day and it wasn't even noon yet, and Rory nods in appreciation.
"Would it be better if—." Rory can't find the words to finish her sentence and takes a sip of her hot coffee instead. She probably shouldn't be ingesting this much coffee while pregnant, but she wouldn't mind much if there were more caffeine than hemoglobin running in her baby's veins. Rory makes a mental note to google when babies develop a circulatory system.
"It's not better." Luke has never been particularly taken with any of Rory's suitors, but he wouldn't any of them to become a repeat April situation. Luke found out on a tri-fold poster board titled 'A Daughter's DNA Homecoming." The least Rory can do is save the guy from a similar fate.
She's scared. Rory's scared that if she calls everything will suddenly be more real and she can't predict how he will react. She doesn't know whether she wants him to react, or how, or what he could possibly do or say. Rory has been terrible at predicting her life lately, and one more phone call only adds more unpredictability into the existing chaos.
Luke notices the conflict on her face "Fatherhood shouldn't be a middle school science project."
"Okay," Rory says and takes a deep breath. "Okay."
Luke squeezes her arm. He's here, and if the past three decades have been any indication, he's not going anywhere.
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"Logan?"
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Logan always loved the idea of dynasties. He took AP European History his junior year of prep school and even if he never did the homework and got kicked out of class for being disruptive too many times to count, he respected the subject. He appreciated the glory and the spectacle of preserving wealth and gold in a bloodline, that crowns were passed down from father to son (and occasionally daughter); that it was all within the family, because families were empires in themselves. They were dynasties, and the fact of the dynasty is that it holds strong.
If you consulted his junior year history textbook and read between the lines, it would say there is no room for love in grand, dynastic schemes.
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Logan answers his phone and to hell with history.
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When she was twenty-two, they would have looked good together. It's what Emily Gilmore said and what Shira Huntzberger half-said. They were the union of two wealthy, powerful families and their children would belong to the intersecting dynastic branches of insurance and media moguls.
Of course, as the old story of heartbreak goes, he proposed and she ran.
She ran to Iowa and to the caucuses and to the primaries, state-hopping and occasionally bed-hopping. She ran for herself, so that she could fill her lungs with the freedom of the press and the callouses on her feet would tell tales of roads well-traveled.
He stayed. Stayed in the dynastic plot, the told-you-so's from Shira, the told-you-what from Mitchum, the life plan plotted out for him for the next several decades until he has a son and his son has a son and it never ends. It doesn't end for him: there are no dingy charter buses with other tourists, no late-night drinks at the seedy bar around the corner. His feet remain planted and he buries the once-upon-a-time he could have had with a girl from college.
She ran, he stayed, and they collide in Hamburg.
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Logan bought a ring the first time. Giving Rory a Huntzberger ring didn't feel right. She wasn't interested in gaudy stones, not in the way Shira was obsessed with them. A simple diamond, beautiful and bold, encased in a small velvet box. He thought it would have done the trick.
(She said no, but that's ancient history by now.)
The second time around, Mitchum all but takes the ring off Shira's finger and proposes to Odette himself. The ring catches rays of sunlight and sets rainbows cascading in all directions, too bright and too blinding.
Logan finds the old velvet box and puts it in his pocket when he leaves.
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"So," starts Rory.
"So," Logan echoes.
It's all they need to begin again.
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Rory is no longer a nomad. She has moving parts to her life, but she's going to stay still for a while. Logan is restless, for good reason. They're no longer playing house in a fantasy Vegas. They have lives now, a life together.
"I think it's going to be a girl," Logan says sleepily. He's tracing lazy patterns onto the skin of her belly, and Rory secretly loves it when he does that. The nightstand is piled high with baby books.
"Really?" Rory asks, smiling. "What if it's a boy?"
"Can we name a boy Lorelai?" he asks, half-joking.
"I don't know if the world is ready for three Lorelai's at once," replies Rory.
Rory has decided she does not want to know the gender until birth, but boy or girl, she has an idea of what she would like to name her newborn. She smiles at the thought of another young Lorelai, ready to take on the world.
"You Gilmore girls can be quite the handful."
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"Mom?"
"Yeah?"
"Meet Richard."
+ author's note
am I still bitter about the revival? yes. do I wish it had ended differently? definitely.
did I just reappropriate ASP's last four words? 100%. (my personal headcanon says if rory does have a son, she'd name it richard to honor her grandfather's memory.)
This is something I've wanted to finish writing since Thanksgiving weekend (please don't make me dig up my old logan/rory au fic), but I have recently made peace with AYITL and accept ASP's ending for what it is.