Disclaimer, rating and information about spoilers can be found in the first chapter.

Notes: Heh. As I'm writing this, the same Rooney song I was listening to and quoted in the previous authour's note is playing. Me = still obsessed. I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed. Especially those who say the pairing is growing on them. Convert to the Rory/Dave side. You know you want to (Rory/Dave is the new black, hee!) And to the person, (sorry I forget the name and I'm writing this in a not 'net connected computer) who said that they liked Dave because he was the best parts of Jess and Dean – thank you! That's exactly what I think, though I've never been able to articulate it that well, though.

Also, those of you who have read my previous stories must be like, what the hell? Why is she updating so much! Since usually, getting an update from me is like getting the peacocks to leave you alone (local thing, I was at the Zoo today and they let the peacocks wander free and one kept chasing us. It was freaky) i.e impossible. When I began to write this I intended for it to be a one shot thing. Next thing I know it's 5000+ words. I decided to break it up into a multi-chaptered thing. I had one to three done when I posted the first bit. So now whenever I finish one I post the next. I.e I finished part six, so here's four.

Enough from me, happy reading!

Part Four: Owning Up

And it didn't. Dave broke first. Yesterday, Sunday morning Rory had woken up to the smell of coffee. An unusual occurrence. Sunday, Lorelai liked to sleep as late as possible so Rory was invariably the one up first and made the coffee herself. But not today, apparently. Maybe her mom had had another crazy dream. Rory threw off the covers and padded barefoot into the kitchen fully intending to tell her mother that she was the best mom in the whole world.

Lorelai wasn't there.

But Dave was.

He was sitting at her kitchen table hands palm down looking more nervous than she had ever before seen him. She smiled, happy to see him, before she realized that it was her fault that she hadn't seen him and that she really shouldn't be so happy to see him. She had avoided him on purpose for nearly three days afraid of what she might say or do in his presence, because she had developed some freakish hormonal imbalance.

Rory had done a great deal of thinking in those past few days (while avoiding Dave, her entertainment options were even more limited) and had come to annoyingly few conclusions. That she felt something more than friendship for Dave was the only thing she was certain of. What exactly that something was, and the degree, to which she felt it, were cloudier.

Her mother had, wisely, given her the time and space to figure things out for herself, not mentioning Dave, or Rory's possible (probable, in her mind) feelings for Dave again. Rory was grateful for this, though she wasn't sure that dealing with it in silence was the best course of action. She had resorted to a list, a chart really, in an attempt to make sense of the situation.

The reasons she shouldn't pursue the thing with Dave (and yes, she had taken to referring to it as 'the thing' because she lacked a better term): Lane.

Reasons she should: he was smart, and funny, and cute in a dorky Ethan Embry (circa Can't Hardly Wait) kind of way (she was not made of stone, such shallowness was not beneath her), he was passionate about music, he had a little sister whom he adored, he respected her ambitions, and previous evidence had shown him to be an ideal boyfriend. There were many, many more, but she had stopped the list there. Because that one little reason (Lane) seemed to cancel out all of the others. Lane was her friend and she would do nothing, could do nothing, to jeopardize that, ever.

Then there was also the fact that she was sure Dave was in love with Lane and couldn't possibly feel anything for her beyond friendship. And that by even entertaining other possibilities she was being the worst kind of idiot. The deluded kind.

And so she forced the smile off of her face and ignored the way her heart began to race and that twinge in her stomach. She was undercaffeinated and hungry, nothing more.

Dave smiled at her tentatively, "Hey."

Rory managed a polite, but not welcoming, "Hello."

Dave stopped smiling, perceiving the thinly veiled 'leave' signals, "I made coffee."

Rory nodded, "Thanks."

Dave nodded back, suddenly at a loss. He had not thought that it would be like this strained, with a tension that had never been present between them before. He absolutely hated it. He too had thought long and hard about the situation he was currently in.

Dave was notoriously picky when it came to girls, always had been. His closest friends, Brian and Zack mocked him for it constantly. For Zack nothing mattered beyond a girls cup size and skirt length. Brian was slightly more evolved. But only very slightly. Anyway, it took a lot to affect Dave. Lane had been the first girl in a long time to do just that. It was how she talked about music that had done him in. She loved everything about it in a way that Dave recognized since he loved it the same way. After that there were little things that just made him like her more. Her spastic rants, they way she played the drums as if it were the most important thing n the world, the look in her eyes after he kissed her… And so he had done anything he could to be with her, never questioning the extremes.

At first, anyway. Eventually, he had wished she would just stand up to her mother, once and for all. He knew that she hated having to be two different people. He had asked her about that once and all her had gotten was a weary sigh and a, "You wouldn't understand, Dave. It's a family thing." And that had burned him a little, that she wouldn't confide in him, to try to make him understand. But he had ignored it, told himself that she would confide in him when she was ready. As time wore on he wondered if she ever would be.

Whenever he thought about the future with Lane he got a little depressed and so he tried to concentrate on the present, telling himself that it was better to live for the moment anyway. Because when he was truthful with himself he knew that Mrs. Kim would never truly accept him. He was never going to be Korean or a doctor and therefore, he wasn't worthy of her daughter. And he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when it came down to it, if forced to choose, Lane would choose her mother. And he didn't blame her for that at all.

And then lately, things had gotten strained. He had been shocked at her choice of schools and had questioned her. What about the band? What about us? Me? Lane had answered noncommittally and he had stopped asking, feeling foolish and clingy. But they lingered in his brain. He was going to be living at home, attending the University of Hartford. It had a decent music program and staying at home would allow him to live cheaply until, hopefully, the band got off the ground. Lane would be in a dorm at her school and under the watchful eye of Mrs. Kim when she came home. It seemed hopeless when he actually allowed himself to think about it.

And now her postcards could from Korea came at what could only be described as infrequent intervals. And they contained nothing more than a travelogue, as if she were writing to an acquaintance or business associate rather that her boyfriend. He had chalked it up to her being busy but he had glanced at a letter she had written Rory. Five pages single-spaced. He hadn't read it, though, he couldn't invade either Rory's or Lane's privacy like that. It was all very confusing and dramatic. And then of course, adding another wrinkle, was Rory herself. He supposed his hope to get out of teenhood without any melodramatic Dawson's Creek-esque catastrophes was shot to hell now.

Speaking of, there she was pouring herself a cup of coffee, refusing to look him in they eye. She didn't seem to be too eager to make conversation.

"Your mother let me in on her way out," he told her, though she didn't ask. You'd think she'd have wondered why she was sitting at her kitchen table relatively early on a Sunday morning.

"Out? Where was she…" Rory's eye caught on the Hello Kitty stationary stuck to the fridge. It read in her mother's scrawl, "Meeting Mia. Love Mom." Oh. Right. In her self-absorption she had forgotten that Mia, one of her absolute favorite people, surrogate grandma before she'd known her own, was in town. Well that was just great. She really was going to the dark side. And so she snapped a little. "I suck."

"What?" Dave asked, shocked, "no you don't."

"Yes. I do. I really do," she set down her coffee and started pacing the kitchen. "What's happened to me? I used to be the nicest person ever! Responsible! And now, I haven't returned my grandfather's last call, which was on Tuesday, by the way, I haven't begun looking over my textbooks. That's really unacceptable, by the way. I'm going to Yale! They expect you to be prepared there, you know."

"I'm sure they do," Dave agreed, mildly bewildered.

They definitely do. You know how in Legally Blonde, Reese gets kicked out of class for not having done the reading? That'll be me."

"I'm afraid I've never seen it."

"Well you should! Meanwhile I'll have just blown huge chunks of my grandparent's money. I haven't returned my library books. I haven't talked to Dean since I got back, even though I promised myself I would be a better friend to him than I was a girlfriend. I have lied to my mother, several times in recent memory, to be honest."

"I'm sure she understand."

"She does understand. Because she's Lorelai and she's great. And now Mia's in town and I forgot."

"Who's Mia?" he asked. Dave, for his part, found the whole scene rather fascinating. He'd never seen her so emotional before, eyes unnaturally blue, cheeks flushed, gesticulating wildly. She was amazing. And he wished there was something, anything, he could do to take away the stress she was obviously feeling.

"Only the reason why we don't live in a shack on the wrong side of the tracks. Nevermind that Stars Hollow doesn't have a wrong side. Or worse, I'd be one of those snotty rich girls at Chilton that I really, really don't like. I'd be Francie! I never told them that I didn't like them, of course, but I'd rather rip out my own fingernails with needle-nose pliers than talk to one of them for an extended period of time.

Dave cringed, "Nice imagery."

By now Rory had pretty much forgotten he was there. She was so caught up in her rant she had forgotten she was in her kitchen, in her pink pajamas, and that her coffee was rapidly getting cold. "And," Rory said, sobering slightly, "it's all because of you."