AN: I can't do it! I just can't! Five chapters wasn't enough to get to some important conversations. I suck at one or five-shots aparently. So I no longer have a plan how long this will be... there... :)
But there is this issue right now that I am not seeing most of the reviews (this seems to happen about once a year, something with the servers). But I am a total review junky - so that sucks for me. If even a fraction of you would pm me your thoughts, I'd be just over the moon.
Chapter 5
The beginning of the semester hadn't exactly gone as Rory had expected. She'd returned to Yale only to discover that summer holidays were no longer just about the holidays like hers had been but most people had been working their asses off trying to get and do internships, work or take summer classes. Paris had had this whole other life in the UK, and was now in mourning after Asher's passing.
And while she had been happy to run into Marty again, seeing they lived in the same dorm again - her mother's words from last spring, after she'd talked a little about him to her, how she believed that Marty had a crush on Rory were now coming more and more clearly back into her mind. She'd begun to see that too - just the way he was around her. She'd done the healthy thing - outright told him that he was her friend and after that he'd just sort of pulled away, and she'd gotten the hint too and had stopped inviting him to do things with her as friends.
Rory was just at the Yale Daily News pitching a row of ideas to her editor, attempting to make up for some of the missed time from the summer, and determined to write some of her best work this year.
"Okay, well, first I thought I could do an update on unionizing the janitorial staff," Rory began, knowing the story wasn't the hottest thing out there, but since she'd done the first piece last spring, she knew it was probably her responsibility to cover it anyways. "You know, a classic power struggle - haves versus have-nots," she explained, but could already see Doyle blink heavily as if he was bored.
"Uh-uh…," Doyle encouraged, unexcitedly.
"Or, and I already have a headline for this one - 'Yale's Liberal Activists Network - a thing of the past?'" Rory read out the headoline.
"Catchy-catchy," Doyle nodded along.
"Then there's the issue of illegal music downloading on campus which, I imagine, is a major…," Rory began but could just see Doyle go white in his face all of a sudden. She wasn't quite sure what it was about, but then again she wasn't seeing what he was seeing.
"Oh, no…," Doyle sighed, like something horrible had happened.
"What?" Rory asked and turned to look.
She probably looked just as pale at the sight of Logan kissing some brunette goodbye as Doyle did, even though for completely different reasons. Sure, he'd looked powerful and cocky before, but this was just… like he was putting on a show, parading her. The sight looked so fake to Rory.
"He's back," Doyle noted.
Logan said his goodbyes to the chick he'd been with and only then his eyes landed on Doyle, then more deliberately on Rory, the sight of her definitely catching both of them by surprise. But it was Rory who showed it more, desperately hoping she didn't, while Logan conjured out the perfect poker face, appearing as if seeing her wasn't a surprise at all.
"Well, Doyle, my friend," Logan began, and Rory observed her editor nearly melt into an ass-kissing puddle right in front of them as they shook hands.
Rory couldn't really follow what the men spoke about, her mind going a million miles a minute instead. Was she seriously going to have to work together with Logan this semester? Did he seriously go to Yale? What were the odds?
As a self protection mechanism, Rory was nearly starting to think that perhaps she was just dreaming this, or maybe it was some Logan's doppelganger who had just walked in. But eventually, having sat down at his desk, Logan said, "Rory, nice to see you," when she finally registered that this was very real. He was sitting there all smug, his leg up on the table, like he had zero respect for the paper nor Doyle.
Rory was just at a loss for words. Both the sight of him and the sight of him with the leggy brunette - she just had no words. For the first time she felt cheap for having slept with him, she hadn't once regretted it until now. And now there seemed to be this whole reputation thing attached to him and the girls who fell for him. That she didn't like.
What was worse - he still looked handsome as ever, despite having changed his summer wardrobe against turtlenecks and suits, apparently.
"You know Logan? How do you know Logan?" Doyle walked over quickly and demanded to know from her, out of Logan's earshot.
Rory was very reluctant to admit to anyone she'd been that girl.
"No, I don't know him. I've met him," was all she managed. She truly felt like maybe she didn't know him after all. They hadn't just had sex, either times, there had been talk about lives and the world too just on a pretty generic level. She'd felt like she knew him a little, but perhaps she had been wrong.
"So, you're not friends?" Doyle asked.
"No, definitely not friends," Rory replied, really not feeling like being Logan's friend if he continued to put up this charade of someone she didn't believe he was.
"That guy's a real piece of work. He took last year off with a bunch of his friends. He was gonna sail daddy's yacht around the world until he sank it," Doyle described the rumor.
"He sank his father's yacht?" Rory reflected, nearly wanting to correct that it had been Finn's dad's boat instead. She remembered the story alright.
"Right off of Fiji," Doyle said.
Technically, Indonesia - but whatever - Rory thought.
"They spent six months gallivanting and partying and God knows what in there till daddy sent one of his planes to bring them back," Doyle continued.
"I'm guessing his father's rich," Rory reflected, not wanting to give anything about the fact that she already knew that away.
"His father's Mitchum Huntzberger," Doyle spelled it out for her.
"Mitchum Huntzberger. The newspaper guy?" Rory said, and her heart sank even more.
"The newspaper magnet," Doyle specified. "The man owns at least 12 different papers. I spent two years kissing Logan's butt," Doyle confessed.
"Don't you mean ass?" Rory got distracted by Doyle's use of words.
"Whatever," Doyle replied and added, "I guess it's time to pucker up again. Man, I hate those kind of guys."
"What kind of guys?" Rory asked
"Those privileged white males," Doyle said with contempt in his tone.
"Doyle, you're a privileged white male," Rory pointed out.
"Well, he's more privileged and way more whiter," Doyle replied, before he went on a rant about why he was even talking to Gilmore. They exchanged a few more lines about the story, but Rory was already very distracted by all that had just happened so she barely remembered what she had pitched.
As on cue Logan decided to be an even more of a jerk.
"Hello? City desk? Smitty here. Take this down," Logan said into a phone, comically, having found an old fashioned 'Press' hat somewhere. "I got a hot scoop on a tall blonde and I gotta put it to bed on the double," Logan added, keeping up the sketch, his eyes drilling into Rory's as if looking for her reaction.
Doyle almost rolled his eyes at him, but kept himself neutral for the sake of ass-kissing, but Logan remained unshaken by his authority.
It was then Logan winked at Rory, when she truly realized how hard this semester was going to be. She almost felt like Logan had this scoop on her that could ruin her reputation, and make her life very difficult both at the paper and at Yale in general. She'd always been the good girl, the responsible girl. She didn't date guys like him. And honestly, she tried very hard to hate him, and hold back her smile. His sketch, however, had been at least a little funny, so she just tried to not show her amusement much.
Thankfully, Logan let her be after that, and pretended to go to sleep at his desk. Maybe there was some unexpectedness in that moment for him too? Had he known she went to Yale? Had he know she'd be at the paper?
Several days later Rory stepped into a bathroom at a Berkeley college, needing a moment. The illegal downloading story was a bust - Rory knew it.
She splashed some cold water onto her face, hoping it was just the lateness of the hour of this particular interview why she kept losing her train of thought. But she was pretty sure it wasn't. Thankfully, she hadn't seen Logan around all week which was a relief, allowing her to go on with her day-to-day. Maybe seeing him wouldn't become this constant reminder of her bad judgement?
She leaned against the wall of the bathroom for a second, and wiped her face dry with a paper towel, when she heard someone enter.
To her surprise it was a girl dressed in a burgundy ball gown and a gorilla mask. Not something you see every day. The girl underneath the mask was a pretty blonde, who continued to fix her lipstick until she saw her, then hushed her, as if asking her to keep a secret, and made her exit. Rory followed her, needing to go in that direction anyways, and honestly - she wasn't sure why, but it perhaps it was her journalistic intuition that she felt like following her. She stepped outside and watched the girl slip into a black SUV, just before getting in yelling, "In Omnia Paratus'.
Rory observed the car pull off, but surprisingly it came to a very rapid halt only about 6 feet down the road as if it had forgotten something. The door to the opposite side of the passenger seat where the girl had sat flew open and Rory's mouth must've dropped open.
It was Logan, wearing a tux. God, why did he have to look so good in a tux?
"Rory!" Logan called out. "Come on, there's room for one more," he encouraged, against some objections from inside.
"It's fine guys, she's cool," Logan told them, gesturing with his hand for her to come.
"What is all this? Where...?" Rory exclaimed, not knowing what to think, as she walked slowly and tentatively up to the car.
"Well then I would have to kill you, wouldn't I?" Logan smirked.
"I'm not dressed for… whatever this is..," Rory said, still not understanding why on Earth he would be inviting her along. He was far more genuine now than he'd been at the Yale Daily News, but perhaps it was the booze talking.
"Come on! Live a little," Logan encouraged. There was that twinkle in his eyes just like he'd had the last two times they'd been around each other.
Rory was just about to argue that she'd had a long night and she was dressed all wrong and fib that she had an early class tomorrow, despite tomorrow being a Sunday. Plus there was that added fight inside of her, not liking how Logan could just pull her strings and get her to go anywhere he wanted with him. It might have worked in Rome... but here they didn't feel as equal somehow. She didn't like that.
"I promise it'll be fun!" Logan assured, speaking a little more intimately now, as if just for a moment letting some of his bold facade slip down in front of her.
It did sound like an adventure, even if Rory mostly was just picturing them going to some restaurant for a meal or going to a club, as she'd seen the guys do the last time, the tuxes, dresses and masks only made it more attractive. And she couldn't argue - the guys had been fun to be around too.
Logan had also known just how to make it sound mysterious. She knew she wanted to talk to him, ask what this was - what seeing him meant and that it didn't automatically mean she'd jump at his every command. She also wanted to know whether his connection to the newspaper world would negatively influence her future even perhaps. Hell - she was blabbering even in her thoughts.
"Well?" Logan asked, and held out his hand for her. He must've seen the gears in Rory's head turn, her impression looking puzzled and concerned rather than excited.
"Fine," Rory exhaled, giving in, still sounding a little reluctant. She wondered whether Logan had ever actually had to ask anyone to come away with him twice before, she almost hoped he hadn't, wanting to be a little hard to get this time. She had some pride at least - the brunette from the newsroom still freshly in mind.
"Excellent!" Logan cheered, guiding Rory into the back seat of the SUV, to sit between himself and the girl from earlier. "Everyone - this is Rory," he introduced her.
"Hi," Rory said, humbly.
"Logan, the elders won't approve of this, you know that right?" Colin pointed out.
"Who cares about the elders," Logan scoffed. "We're going to the after party, just put away your masks and don't say anything - is that really so hard?" he added, candidly.
"Logan!" Colin and the girl scolded him in unison.
"What is this, some secret sorority thing? A costume party? Skull and bones type of thing?" Rory asked, feeling entertained.
"Great, just great, Logan!" Colin scolded him.
"Now I really am going to have to kill you afterwards," Logan said to Rory, chuckling lightly. Naturally Rory got that he was kidding. "Just drive, Colin…," Logan added.
"I'm Stephanie, by the way," the blonde introduced herself, smelling very intoxicated already.
"Why is Finn not in a tux?" Rory began to ask, and began to lean forward to check whether he was in some other costume, which was a big mistake. "Why is Finn naked!?" Rory exclaimed, covering her eyes, having seen a little too much, causing the group to burst into laughter.
"It was a bet," Finn explained and went on to explain the rules - essentially he was to remain nude or covered up for class but in anything both actual clothing for a month.
"So you know these guys too? I thought you were just Logan's...," Stephanie began.
"Yeah, we all met at spring break," Logan explained. cutting Stephanie's words short, and Rory could tell he was trying to downplay his smile a little. He was kind of cute like that, wasn't he? And despite the lingering smell of scotch he still smelled incredible up close.
"And I ran into them again in Rome this summer," Rory added, keeping things PG-13.
"So how have you been?" Logan asked, struggling to remain casual. The close proximity in the car hardly helped.
"Good, good," Rory nodded, and went on to explain a little where she'd gone after Rome.
"What were you doing out this late?" Logan inquired. Rory couldn't be sure, but she sensed something in him - worry, curiosity or maybe even jealousy?
"Just working on a story. Oh crap, the guy I was interviewing is probably still waiting for me to get back," Rory suddenly realized, being the responsible girl through and through.
"Ah, a reporter girl," Finn noted knowingly.
"That's called the Huntzberger draw, just so you know. He's distracted girls from more important things..." Stephanie commented audibly enough for Rory to hear but not quite reaching Logan's ears.
"He'll be fine! Just enjoy," Logan tried to calm her.
"What exactly am I supposed to enjoy? Where are we going? I am not dressed for anything…," Rory began to fret, wanting to say 'something fancy' but soon realized that if Finn was going nude, it couldn't have been anywhere that strict.
"Just to a houseparty - relax! Stephanie - how's the champagne, or did you drink it all?" Logan teased.
"There's a little," Stephanie said and found a half-empty bottle from the door compartment, and handed to Rory.
Rory accepted it with some reluctance and confusion - the label Dom Pérignon definitely catching her attention.
It was a small assuring touch against her thigh she felt from Logan then, that truly made her give up some of her defenses. It did sound like fun. A house party of a potential secret sorority. Maybe there was even potential in this for a story for the paper?
Rory gulped down a generous sip, the bubbles making her hiccup briefly and Logan chuckle at her cuteness.
"In Omnia Paratus!" Finn declared ceremoniously, everybody knowing by now that she'd already heard the catch phrase earlier.