a/n: Thank you again for the response to this story. It's really something and I appreciate the time each and every one of you are taking to read, reply, and discuss. I think especially the second part of this chapter might be my favorite of the story so far. Writing Lorelai is something that makes me very nervous and doubtful, so I hope you feel I got her right in some way. I did take some guidance from their interactions in season seven, even if that development seemed largely ignored in the revival.

disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls. No harm or infringement is intended. Apparently I'm also not in charge of the brain space this tale is taking up. Story title and chapter titles have all come from the beautiful and haunting 'Empire Builder' by Laura Gibson.

chapter 4: and you wondered why my love songs are always the grieving kind

Rory is trying not to panic that she hasn't talked to him in a week. It isn't as though she hasn't heard from him at all. It's compounded by the fact she has the sketchiest cell phone reception ever in the Hollow. It seems like with so much going on, though, he should be making more of an effort to make contact. And they've texted, so she knows he doesn't think (or hope) she dropped off the face of the earth. He's asked how she's feeling, and she admitted to being nauseous most of the time but inexplicably craving oranges always. He made an offer to buy her an orange grove that she isn't sure was tongue-in-cheek.

He also knew she had a doctor's appointment, her second, today. Maybe it wasn't explicitly stated, but he's never needed things spelled out for him. He's actually pretty smart and, in addition to being good with innuendo, he's good at hints most of the time. Or he was. Maybe that's changed.

Though it's early, she finds her eyes starting to close around seven-thirty and she finds herself closing her computer and heading for bed. She's generally more exhausted these days, but that applies with the hour at which she's ready for bed. Neither her mom or Luke have even come home from their jobs yet and she swears they're both actually older than she is. She thinks not for the first time she should at least try to rent her own apartment or something. She thinks, not for the first time, she'll look into it tomorrow.

She misses the headlights in the driveway, or deems them insignificant, but the person visible through the door actually startles her awake. For a moment before she remembers she's in Stars Hollow and not, like, anywhere else, she debates reaching for Luke's baseball bat.

The one that's upstairs. She's resourceful, damn it. She could make it work.

Even through the distorting power of beveled glass, she makes out all the angles of Logan's head, shoulders and torso before he rings the doorbell. She actually has the grace to feel a little ashamed for doubting him. He may have fumbled through a few aspects of their ancient history relationship, but so did she and he's never really let her down or inexplicably flaked out.

"Brothel in Amsterdam?" She asks when she tugs the door open. Their suggestions for locations have gotten a little more brazen/insane with the uptick in number of calls. No, she can't really suppress her smile. This wasn't the plan, but it's the best possible violation of it.

He laughs, but he looks exhausted and it barely reaches his eyes. "I thought you referred to this as the crapshack. If it's a brothel, I might have taken a wrong turn."

She arches an eyebrow. "You look terrible. I surprised you even know where you're standing right now."

"That's not actually the worst greeting I've had in recent memory." He accepts her teasing with a lingering smile. "Am I headed before a firing squad if I ask to come inside?"

"No," she confirms, swinging the door open a little wider so he can actually come in. Everything in the way he moves is heavy and there's an unusual slope to his shoulders. She's not sure anyone else would notice it, but she does, and she doesn't like it. "I'm actually the only one home. My mom and Luke both have longer hours than I do these days."

He's both uncertain and comfortingly confident as he rests his hand against her elbow and then kisses her cheek gently before he passes. She's both brazen and hesitant as she catches him and puts her arms around his neck, burying her face and breathing him in just a little because she hasn't seen him since the last time she saw him and she thought that was the actual last time. It makes her a little dizzy to think about it all, really. That doubles when he latches onto her, too. She has no idea how long they stand there in her foyer, but it's a long time and it's so much better to see him than a phone call would have been.

Logan's entire aim was to surprise Rory and show up in time for her doctor's appointment, but his life hadn't exactly finishing burning down after he'd torched it all, so he didn't make the flight he needed to be on. His week devolved into an endless parade of berating, meetings, long 'soul searching' talks and lawyer time. He didn't say anything about it to her, planning to catch her up in person. It's only when he's standing on Lorelai's doorstep and she looks exhausted that he thinks he went about things all wrong.

After the world's longest hug, which actually feels pretty fucking fantastic, they sit together on the couch and he proceeds to explain how things went. Odette was stoic and cold, but his visit to the States is affording her time to go back to Paris. She promises her attorneys will be in touch with him and swears he just ruined his life. Mitchum is inclined to agree and offer input on why Logan and Rory will never be able to make an arrangement that works – namely because the only place he thinks Logan will continue to flourish is in London. Mitchum has nothing against Rory, quite the opposite, but he doesn't see her settling down and especially doesn't see her doing it in London.

Logan is pretty sure he falls asleep midsentence as he's explaining it all. There's a lot and she has a million questions because she's her. A hug didn't even broach the tip of that iceberg. Not a literally iceberg because she isn't freezing him out, but she wants explanations. They sit facing one another on Lorelai's striped couch with their heads pushed against the plush cushions along the back. He tells her about the conversation he had with Odette before he went to his father. That meeting was surprisingly short, because Logan was very one-note with Herr Huntzberger about wanting to be part of his child's life, part of Rory's life. He starts on the meeting with the lawyers, but he doesn't finish before he dozes off. The next thing he knows, Lorelai is waking him up and looking at him like she wasn't expecting to see a multimillionaire playboy, still wearing his leather jacket, sleeping on a couch worth less than the shoes he kicked off to pull his legs up in a mirror of Rory's posture.

That isn't arrogance. He just knows the price of things and he knows her and her disdain for the luxury he lives with like it's not a burden. It's not to him.

Also, she probably wasn't planning to find him there. It works out because he wasn't expecting to be left here.

He sits up slowly because he did more than just doze off. He was really asleep and it felt great and vaguely familiar. Now that he's waking up, he isn't comfortable at all. He digs the heel of his hand into his eye. "Hi, Lorelai. Where'd Rory go? She was… here."

"She went to bed," Lorelai answers, looking confused and maybe a little amused. "Where'd you come from? Last I heard, you were across the pond with a fancy fiancée and a fancy job."

"Two of those things are still true," he says slowly. He sighs. "One of them is still true, I guess. Rory called. I came. It wasn't quite that streamlined, but you get the idea." He shifts, still awkward and mostly asleep and he wishes Rory were here to be a buffer, though he's not selfish enough to go wake her.

He's had conversations with Lorelai before, conversations in which he thinks his work ethic and devotion to her daughter hopefully put him on her good side. He can probably survive this one. Of course, some things have gone down since then. A lot of them. A decade's worth. Nothing is really the same anymore, except that he knows how to work hard and he's devoted to Rory, and now to their baby and whatever it is they're going to try to do here.

"Got it. How long are you going to be around?" She asks.

Yeah, there's some bite to her voice now that she's waking up. The two things about him that are still true like they were eight years ago aren't going to save him. They aren't even going to help him here. Tough crowd.

"I'm… in this," he says. "As for work, I'm still sorting it out. Right now I have about a week. I'm in the middle of a project. Once it's done, I'll be more present." He absolutely isn't pointing out that he'd cleared his schedule because he was supposed to get married. He's sure she knows that, is sure Rory gave her the entire play-by-play as they lived it.

"Mmm," she says with a tight-lipped nod. There's a lot of things that aren't being said here and they're all screaming at him. He doesn't know if it'll be better to argue points or to wait for her to say what she wants to say. With Rory, it would be the first. With Lorelai, he thinks it might be the second. He stays silent. "Rory spent a lot of time waiting for her father to set other commitments aside for her. She shouldn't have to do it with you, too. She can do this on her own and it'll probably be a hell of a lot easier than waiting for someone who was willing to get married because daddy said so."

He doesn't know how much of that is from Rory. It makes him sigh and drag a hand over his face. "I can't imagine what you two went through back then. Rory has told me some, but not much. I think she's saving it for her book." An involuntary flicker happens in his mouth, almost like a smile, but too quick to be one. "Anyway, I can't imagine. I know it made the two of you solid and I'm an outsider. I get it. But what you don't know about me is I'm not my dad. I'm not Christopher. I'm here. I'm not going away. I have other obligations to deal with, and I will sort them out. It's going to take me some time. Rory told me she wants to be here with you while she's pregnant, so I'm going to do everything she'll let me do to make it happen. I'm going to be here as much as I can."

"Breaking off a marriage isn't fun. It isn't something to take lightly."

He nods. "I know. I already did it. The lawyers are having a field day and I'm probably going to get sued. A lot." He issues a long glance at Lorelai, trying to figure out how to explain what he wants to say to her. She's easily the most intimidating person he knows, and a lot of that is because he knows Rory gives her opinion so much weight. "My sister set me up with her. Rory and I had our… arrangement… because she wanted to be free to develop her career but she said she didn't want to completely walk away from me, either. I agreed because my life is better with her in it and, as pathetic as it probably sounds, I'll take what I can get. Whatever she's willing to give me. In the past, I rose to the occasion. In the present, I accepted a lot less than I wanted to give her space.

"The getting married stuff isn't something I can make excuses for. There are stipulations about it in my trust funds. My dad wants to retire and he doesn't feel like he can do that unless my life is set. Once he's retired, I won't be able to take off for six months because I have a kid. I won't have the flexibility I have even now, and I told him I wanted to be part of my own life in a way he never was. So, in the end, I agreed to get married because I didn't know if the person I wanted would ever be ready."

"Do you know how sad that all sounds?" She asks.

All he can do is nod. He didn't sleep as much as he probably needed to on the flight because he was thinking about all this stuff. His feelings, his history with Rory, things his sister and his father had said, and grenades Odette had launched during their conversation. Her steely calm had been fronting a lot. She knows him better than he gave her credit for and he can't deny that some of her truths hurt to hear. So yes, he knows. He's feeling the full weight of the mess he's made, and part of that is allowing Rory to do whatever she wanted while he was at least halfway in love with her.

"I suppose you get points for showing up," she finally says reluctantly. "After my daughter was relegated to the dirty mistress, that's more than I wanted to give you."

He wants to argue a bit, say Rory wasn't relegated as much as she put herself in that role. Somehow, like the time they committed a felony by joy-riding on a yacht, he doesn't think it would do any good. He can bear the blame if need be. That doesn't make him a victim, it just means he knows he isn't going to change her mind. He will always be the problem to Lorelai, at least a little. It never has been and never will be a black and white scenario. Plus, he's way more used to being the fuck up than Rory is. Lorelai will never see her that way, and for him, that's all his family has ever seen. It's going better now, it's more settled, but on some level it's still true.

It's a long pause before he speaks. "Well, I'll still take it. Thank you."

They sit there for a bit longer but don't say much else. There isn't a lot to talk about, because he can't really say what he will or won't do to Lorelai. Those are conversations he and Rory will have in the upcoming days, weeks, and months. She eventually excuses herself and leaves him sitting there, thinking. He doesn't get back to sleep.