A/N: I recommend listening to Leonard Cohen's Is This What You Wanted (Or The Last Shadow Puppet's cover of it) as this fic was heavily inspired by the song. Also AYITL was never super clear on dates so ignore logic and time I guess.
Is This What You Wanted?
The warm lights of dawn were dancing on leftover puddles from last night's rain, as Logan walked the streets of London. It had been a couple of hours since he had parted with his friends in the airport. As per usual, Finn suggested they continue the party by flying to Costa Rica but Logan said he needed to go home. After his long flight back to London, all he wanted to do was take a shower and nap for an hour so he could be functional the rest of the day. He had already cleared his schedule for a few more days, hoping Rory would suggest he extend his visit but now that it didn't work out the way he had hoped, he probably needed to attend to the dynasty. He sleepily unlocked his apartment door. The apartment always smelled a certain way whenever he returned from a trip. Odette was in Paris as well, the whole moving in plan was not working out as smoothly as it was hoped. The silence and the familiar surroundings welcomed him into a calmer state of mind. He dropped his keys on the coffee table and laid down on the couch, too tired to make it to his bed. Mindlessly he reached for the grey blanked on the couch and as soon as he got under it, the fuzzy texture reminded him of why this grey blanket was now his favorite.
A few months ago, Rory was in between articles and feeling confused about her future. She had called Logan to ask if she could visit and he was more than happy to oblige. While Rory didn't have much to do in London, Logan still needed to go to work. One afternoon when he got home from work, he found Rory sitting on the very couch he was now laying on, under this grey blanket, clasped on to it for dear life. She watching some crappy horror movie. Logan had immediately chuckled at the image, much to Rory's dislike.
"Hi Logan," Rory said without looking away from the TV.
"Hey Ace, I would have brought more suitable snacks if I knew we were doing a movie night." He said as he placed the takeout food he got from Rory's favorite Italian bistro near his office.
"This is perfectly fine." She said and kissed him lightly on his lips as he joined her under the blanket. At the end of the movie, Logan was ready to go to sleep but Rory, probably due to her countless intake of caffeine, was wide awake.
"I can't go to sleep!" she had protested.
"Ace, it's 3 in the morning." Logan had complained as he softly placed kisses on her hand.
"I can't! That horrible monster is out on the loose, Logan." Rory frowned.
"That horrible monster was horrible CGI," Logan pointed out the obvious "And I promise I'll always protect you from horrible CGI." He had smiled and kissed her. Soon enough, they were entangled under the blanket, asleep. Logan missed work the next day but ever since waking up next to Rory under that blanket, the blanket had become his favorite.
Remembering how it used to be with Rory was not helping him fall asleep. He got up from the couch to pour himself a glass of whiskey. His body was still in Eastern Time Zone anyway. He slowly flipped through his records next to his bar cart. He landed on a Leonard Cohen album. It had been so long that he had forgotten he even owned it. He picked it up and gently dusted it off. The memory of him buying it immediately brought a smile on his face. Rory and Logan were walking by the Thames river, alongside the pop-up stands selling second hand things like books and records. This was before Rory had ever been to his place in London. It was the first time they were meeting in London actually. Rory was going through the records, Logan remembered looking at her as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear mindlessly. He was just about to go over to her when he heard her laugh with joy. "Leonard Cohen!" she was holding the record and showing it to Logan. Rory had gone through a Leonard Cohen phase when they were dating in college and Logan mocked her quite a bit before he actually developed a taste for him too. "New Skin for The Old Ceremony, Logan! You need to get this." She was nodding her head frantically now. Logan had laughed at her enthusiasm. He actually bought it and after twenty minutes of comparing Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, Rory asked: "Do you even have a record player?" to which Logan just said "Ace..." and smiled as if to say "C'mon". They went back to his place mockingly singing, Lover Lover Lover.
"I asked my father…" Rory was terribly off key, which made it even better.
He put the record on and sat back down on his couch as the lyrics to Is This What You Wanted filled the room. He sipped his drink, assuming having alcohol in his already tired system would push it over the edge and let him sleep even though Rory's presence in his house seemed to be inescapable. He put his glass down on the coaster and God, even the coasters, He thought to himself. She had picked them out for him. Not on purpose, obviously. She tried her best to stay out of Logan's domestic life. Yet, one night she had woken up to get a glass of water and Logan was still jetlagged from his latest trip. Rory had peeked to see what he was doing up that late on his laptop.
"You're online shopping… Coasters? Hunztberger, what has life made of you?" she had mocked him.
"Adulting, hardcore." Logan mimicked slang and tried not to feel too old. Rory had laughed at his impression and casually mentioned that she liked the blue one on the far right end. Without giving it a second thought he had bought them. How was it that Logan lived here and not Rory but this place felt more hers than his? She would never leave anything behind. She was far too careful about that. She didn't like seeing anything of anyone else's so she also didn't leave anything of hers behind but somehow everything he owned felt more like they were hers.
Curious as to what else she had an influence on he started to look for them in his house. It felt like he was prolonging their goodbye. He was taking comfort in knowing Rory Gilmore couldn't leave his life just like that.
The books were the obvious one's of course. She had basically filled an entire bookshelf with her suggestions. Logan never read every single one of her recommendations. He devoured them in her absence. Her recommendations ranged from Sartre's No Exit to Jonathan Safran Foer's Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close. Whenever her trips were near, he would go to the most obscure, independent bookstores of London and pick out books for Rory. So she would have new books to read when she was over. One time she was in his apartment, she was going through his pile of books and picked out one that he had bought with her in mind, Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse. He was fairly certain that she had not read this one so he stood by the doorsill, watching her with a quiet smugness. She sighed with a hint of nostalgia and said "Oh, it's been so long since I read this one," and proceeded to sit on the couch and look over it. Logan chuckled at his own innocence, he should have known better than to underestimate Rory's literary dept.
He walked to his bedroom and laughed upon seeing the framed Twilight Zone poster hung above his dresser. He laughed because it was so obvious. He had bought that when he was first designing this apartment. It was even before he had run into Rory in Hamburg. He had convinced himself that he was buying it because he liked it, it was going to look retro and cool in his new pad in London. The truth was he wanted to have something that reminded him of Rory. Something subtle enough so that only he would know, and perhaps Rory, much like his parting gift to Rory all those years ago, the Rocket. Unfortunately, he couldn't find a poster from that episode but still he hung the generic poster above his dresser and he looked at it every morning, for years. His eyes now glanced over to the scarf on his arm chair near the dresser. It was his lucky scarf. Just like Rory's lucky outfit, he had a lucky scarf. He had that scarf on the day they met in Hamburg and because he loved everything Rory had ever touched; the scarf immediately became his favorite. He had that scarf on when Rory called him out of the blue one day.
"There's this concert hall in Vienna," she just started talking without any pleasantries, like she always did when she was too excited about something. "And I'm thinking I can fly over to London and we can fly over together. Or if your schedule is too tight, I'll just meet you there."
Before Logan knew what was going on, he was dancing with her in Vienna. They planned the trip in the span of three days. He wanted to end things with Odette, there and then. As they were dancing to rhythm of a Viennese waltz, he wanted to tell Rory that he never stopped loving her. Before he could, she said:
"I'm so glad I get to do this with you." And Logan leaned in to kiss her. The moment itself was so perfect that he didn't want to taint it with anyone else's name. Rory never really explained why she wanted to go to Vienna with him on a whim but he guessed it had something to do with Richard Gilmore's recent passing.
He picked the scarf up from the arm chair, folded it and put it back in his dresser.
Ah, the snow globe, he thought to himself as he reached for the snow globe on his dresser. Now that was gift. Not from Rory but for Rory. He had just picked it up the next time he was in Hamburg on a whim. He bought it from an overpriced gift shop. It was tacky but it was sentimental. He assumed she would have loved it. By the time he had the opportunity to give it to her, the snow globe had been sitting on his dresser for over 3 months. This was the very beginning of their "Vegas" situation and the second time she had come to visit him in London. He decided he didn't want to seem clingy or overeager about the whole situation and just left it there. He never moved it. To his knowledge, Rory didn't acknowledge it, or ask about it. This was much worse than her leaving a bracelet or a lipstick in his apartment. She had left her memories; she had left her unshakeable influence on everything he had grown to like.
Like his coffee, of course. That one she actually fought him on. He guessed she didn't consider the brand of coffee he drank too domestic of an issue for her to interfere in. He liked Nespresso, she hated it with a passion. She said that it didn't have character, and that it was too articulated. Logan brushed it off as Rory refusing the "finer things in life" as usual but agreed to switch to her favorite independent "single-origin" coffee brand in London when she was in town, if that meant she would stay longer. However, he slowly started making himself coffee with that brand when Rory wasn't around too. First time It was because he was out of Nespresso and too desperate for coffee. The second time was because he liked the smell. It gave him comfort somehow. After a while he stopped buying Nespresso, he kept the machine for appearances still. Odette didn't drink coffee, she preferred tea, so she never noticed.
The fact was inescapable. He had made a home for Rory. His towels were the soft ones she liked, his laundry detergent was the lily scented one because she mentioned she liked it, he had an extra phone charger in case she forgot hers. It really was the small things. The tiny details that made a house a home. He realized he had been living in Rory's home for months now. Is this what you wanted? He asked to himself as Leonard Cohen sang the very same words. Did he want to live in house he had put together for Rory. Did he want to let go without giving what they had his best shot? Rory brought out the best in him. He knew what he had to do since the moment he saw her again in Hamburg. He had to swallow his pride and not give up on the love of his life. A love so divine that it made him a better person, a love so strong that it never diminished or disappeared for more than a decade, a love so natural that he didn't even realize it as it absorbed his whole life. He didn't doubt for a second that Rory knew he loved her and was waiting for her to ask him to drop everything but maybe he had to say it. He realized maybe the biggest gesture he could make was to just be honest about how he felt. He decided to get his affairs in order first. He had to call Odette and break it off with her, he had to talk to his father and regain the sovereignty of his own life, he had to be his own man again before he could talk to Rory.
As plans and thoughts were buzzing in his head, his phone rang and he picked it up before looking at the caller id.
"Yeah?" he answered the phone dismissively.
"Logan, is.." It was Rory "Is this a good time? I can call later."
"Rory!" Logan was surprised "It is, yes, it is." He said hastily
"Good, I have some news."
A/N: So this wasn't beta'd because it's a busy time for everyone and I just wanted to post this. I apologize for any grammatical mistakes. (Not a native speaker). Thanks for reading!