She's So Halogen

Chapter Eight

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-- This chapter basically has gotten a terminal case of the cutes. ::shakes head::

*

Rory had won the Pulitzer Prize. She didn't like to think about it a whole lot, but the fact was that she was an award-winning journalist before she was a novelist. She did have obligations to a magazine (American Woman) and to a newspaper she occasionally wrote for (The New York Times). They wanted her talent. But they understood that she didn't write because she had to. She had plenty of money; she had no need for a real job.

She won the award for her disturbing piece on prisons, and how they do more harm than good for drug addicts. She didn't sketch the typical portrait of a prisoner with her words and she ignored the violent criminals. She focused her article solely on the men who needed help but didn't get any. Her article, published first in the Times, then in USA Today, then finally in Time Magazine, caught a lot of attention and eventually earned her a bevy of awards. They hung on the wall of her office in her Cape May house, their glass gleaming in the seashore sunshine. And, the only thing she really wanted to come of her work happened, someone made changes. Huge reforms were made in the prison system to rehabilitate persons convicted of certain crimes rather than merely punish them.

The opening sentence of the article had been, "An auto mechanic in a small town once said, 'You got to fix the problem right the first time, r'else you'll just be cuttin' holes in your pockets to just patch the problem over and over.' This is very wise advice." It struck a chord in an American public formerly content to ignore the problem growing in their dark streets. Many of the men she mentioned were not hardened drug dealers or evil men. They were middle class, and a few were upper class even, most were young. They all shook horribly when she spoke with them, they all told her terrible stories about withdrawal and loss and need and most importantly, addiction. Most of them were just average people who had fallen on hard times, who had succumbed to peer pressure, and who had simply lost the will to succeed.

She wasn't stupid. She knew that most of the reason her books had ever been even noticed amid the sea of thousands of other books published each year was her Pulitzer for "The Men Apart." But that's not to say she wasn't grateful. Her mother always told her to be the best, but also not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Blackbird had been a lovely, whimsical story to write. She wrote it to cheer Lane up after her breakup with Dave. A Melted Crayon had been moody and intense and very sad in places. She wrote it to prove to herself that she could do it.

She was on an airplane, staring at the small screen of her laptop, willing the words to flow through her fingers like they always did. She had found her story for Cape May. She was delighted, and for this reason she was on a plane. But for the first time in her life, she couldn't form a single word when she set out to. It made her angry and she didn't want to be angry.

She tapped her fingers on the keys, but didn't type a single letter. The man next to her had his headset turned up too loud, and she could clearly hear every note of "Rhapsody in Blue", or whatever the song he was playing was called. She sighed and stared past her blank computer screen and contemplated how she would begin the first love story she would ever write.

They met in Cape May. . . seemed to be a suitable beginning, she decided. They met in the summertime, when the tourists are out and the seagulls are angry and plump. It was five o'clock in the afternoon on what wasn't a terribly hot day, so the air conditioned eateries were largely vacant in favor of the Washington Street Mall and the lovely beach.

Margaret Dowry, a twenty-something woman of medium height and medium build, was having a boring day. She had come to Cape May for excitement, which she got plenty of on the steamy days. But she didn't care much anymore.

Margaret was waiting on her only table, a crotchety old Vietnamese woman with beady black eyes and a gravelly voice. Mrs. Li was a recurring nightmare in the small resort town. Margaret, being the newest bit of meat on the floor, was forced to wait on her. It wasn't that Mrs. Li was rude, because she wasn't overtly, just she didn't tip very well, and she was weird. She was always talking about fate and fortune and luck. Margaret truthfully didn't mind, and Mrs. Li gave her something to keep her mind occupied, telling stories about her homeland and the war and the good fortune she'd had to meet an American boy.

Margaret's own luck would soon change.

*

Dave rubbed his head with the towel Manny had handed him the moment he stepped off of the stage. His hair was matted to his head with sweat from the intense spotlights. He felt heavy and dense and exhilarated. The crowd had been terrific. They responded properly to everything, and the response to "Someplace Cold" had been phenomenal. He hadn't expected it to be accepted with arms so wide open.

He watched Lane hug José's fairly well-adjusted son Jax, despite her being sweaty and most likely smelly from the show. He wondered fleetingly if she didn't love the boy more than the man. Maybe that was their whole attraction. Maybe if Dave had gone out and gotten a kid things would have been different. Maybe, but probably not.

Manny was giving towels to Brian and Zach when he caught Dave's eye and grinned. Dave thought that was kind of weird. It was an "I know something you don't know" kind of grin. Dave personally thought that there was nothing on earth that Manny should know more about than him. Manny could tune any guitar perfectly in five minutes, but there was no way he would could tell you the answer to five times five.

Manny and his grin were quickly forgotten, though, by the time Dave got back to his dressing room. He was coming to love bigger venues like Royal Albert Hall. Each band member got his or her own dressing room, which meant he didn't have to share with Brian. Brian was a slob. A bunch of fans wanting autographs lined the hallway toward the dressing rooms. He looked back at Zach, who was right behind him, and sighed. Zach smiled and shrugged in typical Zach fashion.

He signed a few CD liner notes, a woman's tee shirt, and a glossy eight-by-ten of the band without paying much attention and retreated to the safety of his dressing room. He shut the door behind him and then leaned against it, his forehead pressed against the white-painted wood. He hadn't noticed until his hand his the doorknob, but he was completely exhausted.

"You look about as good as I feel," a voice from behind him said, rupturing the almost-silence of the room.

He picked his head up off of the door, the loss of contact between wood and skin making a small sucking noise, and froze. He stared at the white paint and blinked a few times. "Lovely," he muttered. "A crazed fan and an overly long concert in the same night."

"Oh, shut up and turn around," she told him.

He immediately connected voice to person and turned around. Now he understood why Manny had grinned at him. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I came to see you," she replied, wringing her hands. "Obviously."

"Why? Is something wrong? Are you pregnant?" Dave's mind was starting to skip like a scratched CD. He felt dizzy.

"Maybe." His eyebrows nearly disappeared into his hairline. He felt dizzier. She grinned. "Actually, probably not. Although I have learned that anything is possible. After all, you wrote a song and I've swallowed my pride."

He swallowed hard and met her startlingly blue eyes. "What are you doing here?" he repeated.

She got up off the couch and stood in front of him. "I came across the Atlantic Ocean to see you, Dave," she told him. "And, I might add, completely against my better judgment. But I broke up with Jared and I was sitting there in my house thinking and I called my mother and she did that quiz thing Joey did on Friends once asked me a bunch of random questions and then one of them was what I felt towards you and I said that I was in love with you, completely against my better judgment because I know that you're still in love with Lane and she's with José and you probably hate me immensely right now because of what I did to you . . ." She stopped and took a deep breath. She noticed his neutral expression and looked down at her hands, obviously feeling rejected and humiliated. "And I can see now that I've made a complete ass of myself, so if you'll excuse me, I'll be getting on the next train back to La Guardia and I promise to never bother you again, even if I am pregnant."

She had the door open and one foot outside before he moved. He hadn't been able to process her run-on sentence. By the time he had blinked back to life, she was gone, the door closed behind her. He sprang into action and threw the door open. He looked up and down the narrow corridor, craning his neck to see around this roadie or that fan, but he didn't see her anywhere. He cursed himself. He cursed Lane. He cursed Manny and God and José and Rory's pride and her ability to make him feel completely unworthy, like the lowest scrap of rubbish on the face of the earth. He turned back into the room and shook his head. "You're a fucking idiot," he told himself.

"I agree," her voice again. He wondered if it was in his head after all. "I'm sorry." He looked back and she was standing there again, wisps of hair coming out of its formerly tidy ponytail from her sprint up and down the corridor. He knew what an obstacle course that could be. Her cheeks were pink and she was smiling sheepishly. "I couldn't just leave it like that," she said.

"Really?" he asked. This girl was ballsier than he was. Then again, Lane frequently told him he had no balls at all, and he wasn't sure if he found that insulting or not. Lane meant that he was too nice, and perhaps he was.

"Really," she confirmed.

He grinned. "That's fabulous." He crossed the corridor and picked her up by her waist. She giggled and wrapped her arms around his neck. He pinned her against the far wall and kissed her thoroughly.

A few hours later, when they were lying in the bed in his hotel room together, he asked her the obvious, if a little vague, question. "So are you?"

"I think I already told you that it was a very slim chance. And it's been almost six weeks. I'd be well into my morning sickness by now I was pregnant."

He made a face at her. "Well, pardon me, Miss Know-It-All. I've never been pregnant before."

She laughed. "Do you really want to have a baby?"

He rolled away, onto his back, and looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know. With Lane, we never considered it."

"Yeah, but you're thirty years old now. You were still a kid when you were with her," Rory pointed out.

"Don't you think we should get married before we consider children?" he asked.

"Then we get married as soon as possible," she advised. "Because you never know. When Mom was pregnant with the twins, she didn't get sick until her second month. Of course, Mother Nature bit her in the ass with twice the misery, but still."

"Do you want to have a baby?"

"Not especially," she said, making a face. "I don't want to go through the whole birth thing. It seems scary and horrible. I promised myself after the twins were born that I would never have kids."

"That was ten years ago," he pointed out. "A lot can happen in ten years."

"Why are we talking about this now?" she asked. "We have much better things to talk about than babies and families, don't we?"

He shrugged and looked over at her. "Have you been writing lately?"

She grinned and started to tell him about Margaret and her luck.

*

Lane Kim-Lopez was used to disappointment by that point. But all the various disappointments she'd suffered in recent years, that had to be the absolute, bar-none worst. She was so angry and so hurt she was shaking. She almost tripped herself twice walking down the hallway to Dave's door. She knocked. "David Andrew Rygalski!" she yelled, beating on the door.

Inside, Dave stirred from a particularly restful sleep, in which he had been dreaming about. . . the girl in the bed next to him. He looked over at her and smiled. She was still asleep, but he knew that. She could sleep through anything. As he was sitting up and blinking sleepily, Lane continued to pound on the door.

Finally, it connected in his mind and he jumped out of bed and struggled to locate his pants. He hopped on one awkward foot across the room and opened the door before he had his fly properly done up. He pushed Lane out into the hall and shut the door quietly behind him. "What do you want?" he asked, eyes wild.

She whimpered. "I'm so sorry, Dave!" she said. He looked down at her, his anger rapidly depleting. She looked horrible. Her dark hair was matted and dull and her makeup from the night before hadn't been washed off before she went to bed, so it was in flecks all down her cheeks. She was wearing her glasses, something she never did anymore. Dave had always preferred her wearing glasses. Anyway, as soon as she launched herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, he forgot about Rory on the other side of the door.

"What's wrong?" he asked, concerned.

She sniffed. "You were right. Everyone was right."

"I'm always right, but that's not the point."

"José is an ass," she said, then let out another shrieking sob.

"Yes, yes. Took you long enough to figure out," he said. He was aware that his words weren't exactly soothing, and he didn't care. He didn't know what to make of this situation.

"Last night, Jax and I came back to the hotel after going out to eat and I found José and Jax's mother. . ." She trailed off and cried harder at the image of José and his hateful ex.

Dave drew back away from her, quite unsure what he could possibly say.

Lane choked and looked up at him. "I'm so sorry about everything I've done to you," she said. "Everything."

"I don't know what to say," he told her earnestly.

"Then don't say anything," she said. She closed the space between them and grabbed him by the back of the neck, drawing his mouth to hers. For a moment he kissed her back, but then it occurred to him what exactly he was doing.

What exactly did he want? He had pined for Lane for five years, but she hadn't wanted anything to do with him. Nothing. For a whole year after their breakup, she hadn't even spoken to him unless she had to. She had even married someone else to spite him, someone she had claimed to be in love with, someone who would ultimately hurt her anyway. But, as he realized with a jolt, he was happy for the first time in a long time, and it had nothing to do with Lane. Nothing at all. He had found someone else, someone who wasn't selfish or flighty.

And that's why he pulled away from Lane then, holding her arms' length away from him. She stared up at him in surprise, clearly flabbergasted that Dave had rebuffed her. "What?" she asked.

"You aren't going to do this to me," he told her. "You are not going to fuck with me this time."

"I'm not fucking with you," she snapped back. "I thought long and hard about this. I slept out in this hallway last night and I realized what I'd been denying all these years. I'm still in love with you."

"That isn't fair, Lane."

"It's never fair. What's the matter with you?" Obviously, something was. "What's changed?"

"Everything," he hissed. "Everything has changed. I moved on, Lane. I have someone new. She's in my bed right now, actually. I don't need you anymore. I don't need the trauma you've caused me. It isn't all about you."

She mouthed the name, 'Rory,' and started to cry all over again, realization coming over her. "Unbelievable," she muttered. She looked up at the ceiling. "Why do you hate me? Are you punishing me for not obeying my mother? Huh?"

"Lane, shut up," he told her. "I'm not going to listen anymore."

"She's a bad influence on you," Lane said, grasping wildly for straws. "You used to be so sweet, so perfect. Look at yourself now, Dave Rygalski! You're a heartless--"

He turned his back on her, opening the door and reentering the room. "Thank you," he said, and shut the door behind him. Out in the hallway, Lane sank to the floor and leaned against the wall beside the door. She noticed Brian standing in his doorway across the way, shaking his head.

"What are you looking at?" she snapped at him. He shrugged and went back inside.

Inside, the first thing Dave noticed was that Rory was sitting up in bed, the sheets wrapped around her. She saw him and smiled. She scratched her scalp. "What was the little screaming match in the hallway about?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. "José cheated on her and she decided she wanted me back."

Rory crawled closer and wrapped her arms around his neck from behind. She brushed his ear with her lips. "What did you tell her?" she asked.

"That she couldn't do that to me anymore," he said. "That I had finally moved on."

"You're welcome," Rory said. She kissed his cheek.

He turned around and looked at her. "Oh, so you're going to take credit for this, then?" he asked, feigning being taken aback.

"Of course," she said, rolling her eyes. "You're the idiot here."

"I am not!" he insisted.

She kissed him lightly on the lips. "It's okay. I can forgive idiocy."

---------chapter finis

Oh, and she's not really pregnant. Thought I should clear that up. Anyone who reviews asking if she is will only be made an ass out of in the last chapter.

Just an epilogue left. Can't believe it. Completely cannot believe it. I finished writing this thing the first week of June and it's only now done being posted. . . Yes, fully aware of how completely pathetic this makes me. Fully.

The epilogue takes place sixteen months later. It's a tight third person point of view on Lorelai, her perception of the Rory/Dave dynamic down the road from the hotel room in London (where we left off; if you're confused, reread the last two chapters). And you get to meet the twins, finally.

Thank you so much for everything over the course of my posting this story. Everyone will be thanked individually for wordy reviews later.

--T. Henneth / story completed 12 June 2003 / chapter posted 15 September 2003