She's So Halogen
Chapter Two
Author-- Tinuviel Henneth
Summary-- Future-fic: One beautiful, reluctant, Pulitzer Prize-winning muse + a depressed and creatively stuck songwriter + a bevy of selfish exes, substantial egos, and senseless evasion = A good, old-fashioned romance. Unconventional 'ship alert!
Disclaimer-- I don't own any of the people you recognize. José and Katie belong to themselves, although they have been borrowed for this fic against their will. They're real people! Everybody else is fictional and was either invented by Amy Sherman-Palladino (who owns all of GG) or myself (who owns nothing). So there.
Author's Note-- Thank you so much for the overwhelming support for this fic! I was afraid no one would read it, or I would get loads of flames from those of you Lane/Dave shippers. Thank you so much for pleasantly surprising me! If you offered to beta, I'm sorry I wasn't able to get back to you as of yet. This chapter was read over by Celewyn Evenstar, who doesn't exactly watch GG, but she's an English major. Those are always good to have around. Thanks due to Cel.
*
Later that night. . .
"You know, I've been in the band since I was a junior in high school. We've been famous since I was twenty. I've lived in this city since I was twenty-one. And, in the past nine years, I have never once seen any of the things you showed me tonight," Dave said, looking at Rory appreciatively. She beamed up at him.
"Don't you have a new respect for the machine?" she asked.
"Definitely. I didn't even know some of that stuff existed."
They were standing on the front stoop of her building. The sky was starting to grow light, but neither Dave nor Rory was really tired. For the first time, she noticed what he was wearing. "Dave, why are you wearing a tie?"
He looked down and shrugged. "Because it seemed silly to wear the shirt without one. I'm not Michael Vartan and this isn't a Drew Barrymore movie."
Rory giggled. . . well, not 'giggled' specifically, but made some sort of a laughing noise. "There's your first true pop culture reference for the night. You just happen to be about fifteen years too late." She dug around in her purse for her key card and eventually found it wrapped up in a roll of five dollar bills. "Do you want to come up?" she asked.
"I don't know. It's starting to get light out." He pointed at the sky.
"So it is," she said faintly, as if noticing it for the first time. Then she turned back to the door. "All the more reason for you to come up. My cat will love you forever if you do."
"With an offer like that, how could I refuse?"
She jammed the card into the slot. It gave her a red light. "Damn it." She tried again. She ended up trying four times before the temperamental device allowed them entrance. "Sometimes it takes longer than that," she explained as she led him across the lobby. Her heels clicked on the marble floor. "Hello, Rita," she greeted the concierge behind the desk, a tired-looking woman with bleached blonde hair and a maroon vest.
"Morning, Ms. Gilmore," Rita called out half-heartedly. She was reading something.
"Reading another story about a darkly-handsome titled British rake, approximately thirty years of age, with a troubled past and a thing about ejaculation although he has a lot of sex falling in love with a spirited, twenty-one year old virgin from a loving, but financially troubled family?" Rory asked with a smirk.
"Oh shut up," Rita said good-naturedly. "This one's set in France."
"Someday, Rita, I will convert you from the dark side of literature."
"We'll see, Ms. Gilmore," Rita said.
Rory rolled her eyes and then gestured to Dave to follow her to the elevators. "There's a couch inside," she said in a conspiratorial whisper after she'd punched the up arrow button. His shiny, gunmetal blue silk tie reflected the orange light of the button.
"Really? A full couch? That's impressive. I don't think the elevators in my building even have a chair. I feel shorted now," he said. He looked down and started to fidget with his tie.
"You should. Your building probably cost more than mine."
The doors opened, an older woman in jogging clothes stepped off, and they got on in her wake. "Morning, Mrs. Porthos," Rory said to the woman.
"Oh, good morning, Ms. Gilmore," Mrs. Porthos replied. She looked Dave up and down and grinned. "Looks like you're going to be having more fun than I will." On that, the doors slid closed and she walked away.
"That was sexual innuendo! Rory, that woman just made an insinuation," Dave said, slightly aghast. He'd never been insinuated about by a perfect stranger at five thirty in the morning before.
"You're a prude," Rory said. "That's just Mrs. Porthos. She's always like that. You should have seen her when I was dating Beau Murphy, the model guy. She kept insinuating that he's gay-- he's actually bisexual-- and I think she was a contributing factor to our breakup."
"Oh my," Dave said. A pause ensued. "What floor do you live on?"
Rory looked at the pad of illuminated numbers on the wall. "The one that's glowing the brightest," she said. "Seventeen."
"Oh, right. Silly question." He turned around to survey the spacious elevator. "That is quite a couch, there. When you said couch, I was thinking more along the lines of love seat. But that's definitely a couch."
"You doubted me?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. "I'm hurt. Stung, actually. I shan't ever recover." She fanned herself and her fake Southern accent.
"That's ridiculous," he admonished. He retreated back to the couch and gingerly sat down. "It's very comfortable, too." It was upholstered in cream-colored velvet and had pale green velvet piping at the seams to match the decor of the elevator, and by extension, the entire building.
"It's very, very comfortable, actually," Rory said. "The most comfortable couch in the world."
"You're mocking me. How dare you mock me?" he said, trying not to laugh at something he didn't consider to be all that funny.
"Me?" she said with perfect innocence. "Mock you? Where would you get an idea like that?"
"You're still doing in, you demon," he said.
The doors slid open to reveal a hallway, decorated in-- what else?-- creams, pale greens, and mauve-ish pinks. The hallway was long and ran the whole length of the building and ended with a small window and a pretty vase of flowers. The funny thing was, there were only four doors along the entire length.
"Those are some big apartments," he said, his eyes wide.
"They're even bigger one floor up, only two to a floor," she said, leading him to the second door on the left. "I love this building."
"I'm starting to love this building, too," he said with a grin. She got out her key card again and began a five-minute-long battle with the lock on her door. Dave stood back, leaning against the opposite wall to be exact, and watched. She had a welcome mat in front of her door that had a big blue coffee cup print on it. The letters of 'welcome' were spelled out in white on the cup's side. "Cute mat," he said.
"Oh, yeah. I found it when I was doing research for Blackbird in New Orleans. At a flea market, actually. New Orleans is a crazy-- You evil thing! I demand you let us in." She started to just pound on the door, the card still in the red-lit slot.
"Have you tried 'Open Sesame?'" Dave offered.
She shot him a venomous look. "My card is scratched, so sometimes it doesn't work."
"Why don't you get a new one, then?"
"Because, they cost fifteen dollars to replace, and this is my fourth one in two years." She flushed and turned back to the door.
"Right," he said, looking down at his feet. His left shoe was scuffed from when he tripped getting into Brian's car earlier that night. He tripped over stuff a lot. He was quite a clumsy boy.
She tried the card again, and the result was the same. "You know, why don't you try it. It clearly hates me."
"Um. . . okay," he said. He pushed off of the wall and took the proffered card. He stuck it into the slot once and quickly pulled it out again. Immediately, the light turned green, the door buzzed, and the dead bolt retracted. He gave her a superior look.
She glared at him. "Even my door likes you better than me. This is so unfair."
"Shut up and go in," he told her.
"Bossy, bossy," she said absently, turning the doorknob and pushing the heavy steel door open. A fat, furry orange head poked out. "Vladmir!" she shrieked and stooped down to snatch up what turned out to be an enormous cat. The largest cat Dave had ever seen up close. He had big, sleepy green eyes.
"Your cat is Russian?" he asked, looking at the ball of fur.
"With a buzz," she said. They entered and she set the cat down. He waddled away.
"That cat is the perfect size of most beach balls, Rory," he said.
She didn't respond. In fact, she seemed to have disappeared. The entryway was shadowy, so Dave couldn't really tell what the apartment looked like, but he was fairly sure he would be impressed.
"My mother got him for me when he was a kitten a few years ago, and we named him after that Vladmir cartoon off those tee shirts. You know, the line with the fat orange cat that laughs at this stick figure on crutches?"
"Oh, right," Dave said. "But I'm not sure your cat could justify laughing at anyone. He's practically got his own zip code. His own climate, actually."
The lights suddenly flipped on. Dave jumped and blinked. He looked around and, as predicted, was impressed by the tasteful and eccentric decor. The floor was dark wood, worn and obviously original to the building. There was a sheepskin rug in the middle of the main room, in front of a big navy blue couch. There weren't really defined rooms so much as designated areas. There was a spiral wrought iron staircase on either side of the entry hall going up to two loft bedrooms. Both staircases were littered with discarded clothes. To the right of the hall was a kitchen area, to the left was door to an office. Farther back, there was a bathroom and a wide open space with a dining room table and eight matching chairs. The back wall was made up of tall windows with blue gossamer curtains. On pretty much every empty space of wall there was a bookcase, stuffed to maximum capacity with books of all sizes.
She seemed to have gone into the kitchen, so he walked in that direction. The kitchen was beautiful, and looked well lived in (although the stove looked rather neglected). A laptop computer was open but on standby on the island in the middle of the room. Several stacks of miscellaneous papers littered most of the rest of the surface. The counters were made of pale beige granite. The tile floor gleamed almondish white. The cabinetry was wood to match the floor in the rest of the apartment. Her appliances were brushed stainless steel, and the entire surface of the refrigerator was papered with bits of paper and photographs.
She was sitting on the counter beside a double-well stainless sink, eating a purple Popsicle. The right side of the sink was quite full of dirty dishes. She grinned at him when she spotted him. Vladmir was below her feet, lapping water from a blue ceramic bowl. "What do you think?" she asked.
"It's very you," he said. "It's much more charming than mine."
"Yeah, but you're never in yours, always touring," she pointed out. "I'm here approximately twenty-five weeks out of the year. My house in Cape May is a disaster."
"I can imagine," he said. "It's controlled mess, though. It's exactly what I would expect from you, actually. I would be disconcerted if it was cleaner."
She grinned and tossed the empty Popsicle stick into the sink beside her. "I have track lighting, too. It's a newer addition, so I'm still not very used to it." She hopped down (nearly landing on Vladmir's tail) and bounced over to him. She grabbed his hand and dragged him bodily out into the main room. "My mother is opposed to my rug, which I can kind of agree with, but it's not real sheepskin. No sheep died to put it there!"
He looked down at the plush white rug. "It looks real."
"I paid enough for the thing, it damn well better look genuine," she said. She tugged him in the direction of her office, and stubbed her toe on the corner of the glass-top coffee table. Cursing under her breath, she flipped on the light and proudly presented him with her favorite room.
It was small, tucked into a niche roughly ten feet wide by eight feet long, windowless, and rather dark. The walls were papered with some semi-faded toile-patterned paper, and none of the furniture matched in the least. Personally, Dave didn't find the combination terribly charming, and he definitely wouldn't have willingly decorated it in such a way himself. However, he couldn't help but notice the comforting air the room contained.
"My mother says this room is depressing," she said, sitting down on a yellow leather armchair in the corner next to the door. "She's kind of right, actually, but I love it here anyway."
There was a bookcase along the back wall, filled beyond capacity, and a desk with a flat-screed monitor on it. The wastebasket next to the desk was overflowing, but the desktop was completely clear. He was willing to bet an exorbitant amount of money that the stacks of paper littering the kitchen counter usually inhabited this room.
He sat down on the revolving chair in the middle of the room for a moment and spun around a few times. She grinned at him and perched herself on a well-worn wooden stool nearby. "I wrote most of Crayon in here, which probably is why the story's so citified."
He looked around the room and his eyes fell on a poster that seemed to be trying to hide behind the bookshelf. The only problem was, someone had carefully tacked one corner up so that the poster was tilted at a forty-five degree angle and the subject's head had vanished behind the shelves. "Rory, is that a poster of a naked man?" he asked seriously.
She turned a peculiar shade of pink and started to laugh self-consciously. "Um, well, sort of. Mom and Lane bought that for me a few years ago when I first got this apartment. They hung it up there, and I attempted to cover it up with the bookcase, but Mom caught me and tacked part of it up so I can't help but have my eyes land on naughty parts of his anatomy every time I want my dictionary."
"Dictionary, indeed," Dave said, putting emphasis on the first syllable with an evil grin. She coughed to stifle another sound. "You could take it down, you know."
"No I couldn't." She was serious, resigned to the fact she would have Naked Man hanging there for eternity.
"Why not?"
"Because, inevitably Mom would know and she'd plaster the whole place with other pictures from Playgirl. Trust me. It's better to have one half-hidden behind a bookcase than fifty thousand littering every surface. I don't really want visitors thinking I'm some sort of perv." She shrugged. "Besides, he's quite nice to look at."
Dave shook his head. "I think I've got a little on him," he said slowly.
She looked at him strangely, eyes widened. "Um, that's lovely. Congratulations."
"Thanks," he said. "It's completely light out now." He was looking out through the doorway, out the windows across the apartment. Rory raised her eyebrows and leaned forward to see for herself.
"Wow, so it is," she said, sounding somewhat disappointed.
"I have to be at rehearsal at two," he said.
"Do you have a show tonight?" she asked. She couldn't remember. She was finally starting to feel tired.
He shook his head. "No, but we still have to do the rehearsal thing." They both stood and walked towards the door. "Say, do you want to go out to dinner or something tonight?" he asked, a hopeful smile on his lips.
She hugged him around his middle, suddenly too tired to raise her arms enough to put them around his neck. "I'd love to," she said. "I had a lot of fun ton-last night."
"Me too," he said.
They stood there, arms around each other, for just a minute too long. The mood in the air shifted, he pulled back, and for a second she thought he was going to lean down a bit and actually kiss her. But he didn't. He pushed her hair out of her face and behind her ears, then grinned and detached himself completely.
"I'll pick you up out front at and quarter after eight, okay?" he said, his hand on the doorknob.
Standing a few paces back, she smiled and nodded. "Of course. How should I dress? For dinner, I mean."
He thought for a moment. "Semi-formal, but still comfortable."
"You're going to wear another tie, aren't you?"
"Maybe," he said. "I fail to see why that's so wrong."
She rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you still don't get it. You are just not a tie type of person. You're too. . . carefree-looking. You're too-- for lack of a better word from this severely sleep-deprived brain-- fun."
Fun. Dave could deal with being fun. He'd have preferred something a little more flattering and ego-stroking, but he'd settle for fun for now. He nodded. "So I'll see you tonight."
"Tonight," she confirmed.
After the door shut behind him, she sagged against the wall at her side. Had she really almost kissed him?
*
"I'm trying to decide which is bigger, my ego or my dick," José Lopez was saying to Henry, but Henry didn't seem remotely interested in what his bandmate was saying.
Nearby, José's wife Lane was sitting, reading an issue of Cosmo. "Definitely your ego," she said. "Dave's got about four inches on you down there."
José and Henry both turned to her with raised eyebrows, evidently having forgotten she was there. José seemed rattled for a moment, then swallowed and smiled grimly. "Lane, baby, this is not the issue."
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "Are you writing a song?"
"Dude," Henry broke in, "that would be a good line. I don't know which one's bigger. . . We have to tell the other guys about this. Gary could probably get us a bass line in ten minutes." He stood up and left the room, singing the line in various ways. José watched him go, then snapped his eyes back to Lane.
"What the fuck was that about?" he snapped.
She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn't raise her eyes off the page she was reading. "I was stating a fact. Dave is well endowed. You're just an ego with legs and nice hair." She looked up and adjusted her glasses. "But, that's what I love about you. You're confident."
That seemed to placate him. She delivered her lines with such perfect sincerity, anyway. "Thank you," he said finally. "What are you going to do during the show tonight?"
She shrugged. "Rory and I were planning on going out, since we leave after tomorrow night's show and I won't see her again until March. And, before you say anything, it would be a girls' night out thing, only completely innocent with large amounts of alcohol involved. I intend to find her a man before I leave."
José nodded, his hair falling into his eyes with the movement. After raking it backwards, he regarded her fully. "Katie's bringing Jax by tonight," he said. Katie was his beautiful former girlfriend. Jax was their nine-year-old son. He favored his father heavily, having dark hair and dark eyes. His mother was red-haired with blue eyes. Lane was somewhat convinced that José never really got over the fact he had been in love with Katie. She felt for a fact many of his band's songs were about their relationship and subsequent breakups. She also felt Katie thought he was an idiot. (His band had actually done a song about that very subject, Katie contributing her own lyrics and vocals to it).
"I guess you're going to want father-son bonding time," Lane said. She smiled perkily. "It all works out in the end."
"I should go help them out. I'll see you later," he said, rising and leaving the room. He kissed her cheek on his way.
She smiled to herself and turned the page.
---chapter finis
José is meant to be crude. The real José isn't quite so extreme, but fiction is all about exaggeration.
Vladmir, the cat that laughs at a stick figure on crutches, is a cartoon character invented by yours truly to go along with my friend Amy's cartoon of "Cripple!Andy." Andy is a poor, stupid boy who broke both ankles this past year on two separate occasions. He also lost his baseball scholarship because he couldn't play this year. Dumb, dumb. In the cartoon, stick figure!Andy is always being laughed at by Vladmir, hence the slogan, "Vladmir laughs at cripples." Anyway, Amy and I are starting a tee shirt company, and C!A and Vladmir have their own division. We even did a special prom edition this year. We didn't do a graduation edition because Andy, like the moron he is, failed English IV and had to take summer school-- not graduating with the rest of the senior class. ::shakes head:: We may get around to setting up a website for our company, affectionately called Sparky the Toast, if we're not too lazy.
Tinuviel Henneth / story completed 12 June 2003 / chapter posted 25 June 2003
