CHAPTER #3

If you judge people you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

"We feed on love. We let go of our anger. We say no to violence. Grow from pain. Say it with me people--Grow from pain."

Doyle had decided to indulge Paris, echoing along with her, "Grow from pain."

Logan rolled his eyes, wondering how on earth he had been cajoled to this particular situation. He was Logan Huntzberger. He drank when the occasion called for it, debated eloquently and intellectually whenever the chance, and delightfully manifested his stereotypical belief with snobbery. He did not let a short, though very Francis Farmer-esque, lunatic cajole him into joining a meditation circle. "What the fu–"

Paris raised a patronizing eyebrow. "There is no need for profanity in the circle of meditation, Huntzberger."

Logan scowled prettily, and turned to Rory, who shrugged helplessly. The four of were sitting in a circle, all with their legs crossed and their arms outstretched, their palms upward and eyes closed, each of them having their index finger connect with their thumb. How had Paris talked them into this, anyway? The only reason Logan was even staying was for the sole purpose of seeing Rory Gilmore.

"Concentrate!" Paris shouted.

That and the fact that he feared Paris' blow.

Paris regained composure, moving her head from one side to the next to relieve the stress, and inhaled deeply. "Now, sometimes it helps to use a visual, not only what it is but what it represents, and how you feel about it. I want each of you to think of your favorite place, or something that reminds you of a time of what you like and feel comfortable with. It has to please you, it needs to demand your attention. And pick a color," Paris instructed.

Paris noticed the silence, opening her eyes and observing the reluctant faces. Glaring at Doyle, he hastily answered. "Green."

Paris turned to Rory expectantly. "Um... blue?"

Paris rolled her eyes. "Typical."

The three turned and looked at Logan expectantly. "Well?"

Rory nudged Logan with her elbow, who sighed with exasperation. "Gold."

Their expectant looks turned to one of confusion.

"What? I like it," Logan defended.

"You would," Doyle muttered grumpily.

Logan grinned at him cheekily. "Some have better taste then others. It is a gift. You might acquire it one day, my good friend, Doyle."

Doyle bit his inner lip and attempted to return a smile.

"Okay. Connect with the color. You are a stream of water. Be the color. Your fingers are feathers," Paris breathed, seeming really into it.

"I'll show you a finger," Logan muttered.

Rory tried to hide a smirk, until Paris glowered at her, and she closed her eyes again, tightly shut.

"You have each picked a color that is unique to you for personal reasons. You must keep it locked in your mind, focus on your breathing, and wonder why you chose it. What is the personal meaning behind the color?"

Before any of them could answer, there was an insistent knock on Paris and Rory's dorm room. Paris grumpily looked at it, standing up and turning to her three apprentices. "Don't move. And continue connecting with your color!"

Logan turned to Rory with fright. "Her deranged craze interlaced with psychotic instability is seriously beginning to disturb me."

Paris opened the door and turned to the two men expectantly. "You're interrupting a very important meeting."

"We're here for Rory and Logan," one said, with an Australian accent.

"They're busy."

"Interesting..."

"Do you have a point?" Paris asked with frustration.

Finn grinned felinely. "Feisty. I like."

"Answer quickly."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Logan and Rory will meet you when we're done."

"But–"

Paris shut the door before Finn could finish.

"That was rude," Logan huffed.

Paris ignored him, going back to her place of nirvana on the floor. "Now, where were we? Oh, yes..."

Logan sighed. Enough was enough. He was Logan, and he wouldn't stand for being handled around by a short midget with mental issues. Rolling his eyes, he jabbed Rory gently. She opened one eye and turned to him. Logan was walking towards the door, motioning for Rory to follow him. She looked over at Paris and Doyle, who seemed completely submersed in the meditation. Quietly she got up, Logan grabbed her hand and the two fled from the room.

"Open yourself to the message. What does it bring you?" Paris asked.

"I feel familiar," Doyle suggested.

They were met with silence.

Paris opened her eyes and later sighed with annoyance. "Where'd the lovebirds go?"

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Outside of the dorm, Rory and Logan were still laughing as they walked away. Finn and Colin were standing near by, still with perturbed looks on their faces.

"What on earth was going on there?" Colin asked as the four walked to where Rory knew would lead them to the pub.

"My friend, I'd tell you, but I'd have to kill you," Logan quipped.

The morning had prolonged for Rory, who had surprisingly finished her essay quickly after Logan's little stunt. The afternoon had rolled by, and that was when she had found Paris talking to Doyle and Logan, who'd just entered the dorm room.

A fatal mistake, he'd assured her with forlorn.

"It seemed mighty fun," Finn quipped with curiosity. "And the girl's a hellion."

"It was a blast," Logan quipped with sarcasm. "But Ace saw a different side to me, didn't you Ace?"

"You're not that bad to hang around when you get past the egotistical narcissism."

"Thanks, there, Ace," Logan responded dryly.

Rory shrugged her shoulders. "I try."

Rory took off her scarf as she sat down, Colin and Finn joining her while Logan stayed standing up, looking at her expectantly. "So, what will you have?"

Before Rory opened her mouth, Logan was snapping his fingers. "Right. Coffee. Coming up."

Rory stared after him thoughtfully. True to his 'rep', he was a smart ass aleck with quick wits and cocky tendencies. Other times, though… she noticed he was calm, pensive, quiet. He was definitely a moving force, a storm on its wake. She reckoned all his life he'd been used to stirring the pot. And when their eyes met-it was unsettling, in a really weird, good kind of way. No one had ever unsettled her before, no one ever made her entire body feel hot just by a look. It made her nervous, it threw her off balance, it kept her on her toes–and she wasn't quite sure she liked it very much. Rory just didn't know how to deal with it. She knew everything she needed to know about biology, about numbers, about almost every literary book known to mankind. She liked taking the complicated root of life, but humanity was totally out of her reach in that sense. Especially when it came to the opposite gender.

"She's doing the lip thing," Rory heard Colin whisper to Finn.

"Could she be bored with us?"

"Ignoring us?"

"Still irrefutably clinging to our prank, you think?"

"Most obviously."

"It'll take something big to get her talking."

"Logan related, of course."

"The Beefy Bertha story?"

Colin gasped. "Not that story. Logan would wring our necks."

Rory smiled in amusement. "Beefy Bertha story?"

Both quieted down in unison, their heads flipping towards her.

"Should we risk it?" Colin asked in a high whisper.

Finn grinned. "Indubitably."

Rory raised her eyebrow. Indubitably? Irrefutably? Maybe Logan was right and she was misjudging them entirely.

She grinned mischievously. "A Bertha story, huh? Pray tell."

"Logan's really good at pool, right? It's a smokescreen trick of ours, we go to a bar, we act like we suck, some fellas there 'bully' us into playing with them, and the stakes are always high, right?" Colin began.

"So," Finn continued. "Logan beat their butts. On top of having their money, they also had to buy the three of us a round of beer each time Logan embarrassingly out-best them, of course."

"Of course," Rory smiled teasingly.

"So while Logan ended up wasted, the bartender's wife Beefy Bertha took a liking to him."

"Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh is right," Finn agreed, chuckling at the memory. "Beefy Bertha was a four-hundred pound nightmare whose enormous hair-covered mole fell unbecoming on her face."

Colin shuddered. "She had a third chin, Gilmore."

"But Logan was too wasted to really see it clearly," Finn laughed. "And so by the end of the night, he and Beefy Bertha were dancing up on one of the tables. Poor Beefy Bertha broke it–and took Logan with her. Ended up in the ER, we did-and of course, Bertha asking for his phone number. They ended up as hospital roomies. Bertha's husband wasn't very fond of that."

By the time Logan came back, the three of them were in hysterics, tears of mirth filling their eyes as he sat down hesitantly, looking at each of them suspiciously. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," the three answered immediately.

"I just didn't know... burly women were really your type, Logan," Rory finally said.

Finn spit his drink out, and the three began laughing again.

Logan glared at his two idiotic friends accusingly. "You told her the Beefy Bertha story, didn't you?"

Rory laughed, clamping her hand in her mouth. Logan, who was beet red with embarrassment, mumbled something incoherently under his breath.

"Aww, come on. Did you give her the Master and Commander line too?" Rory cooed, grabbing his cheek.

"Can it, Gilmore."

"The Beefy Bertha story was critical to our objective," Finn answered non-apologetically, winking at Rory who chuckled again.

"Now you're going to hang this over my head for as long as possible, aren't you?" Logan groaned.

"Assuredly," Rory answered chirpily, drinking her coffee with unabashed glee.

"So you forgive us?" Colin answered.

Finn pouted. "Pretty, pretty please."

"We really feel bad you didn't take it so well."

Finn nodded. "But you have to forgive us. Or me, at least. Because, I'm exotic."

Rory laughed. "No foul."

Logan gave her a toothy grin. "Excellent."

"Besides," Colin added, "you got Logan back good."

Rory beamed at them, clinking cups with both. "I'd like to thank the Academy."

"Yeah, yeah. Can we move on past this 'Let's-embarrass-Logan-Day?' It's not very fun for me, you know."

Rory grinned, knowing perfectly well Logan wasn't as angry as he was seeming. In fact, as Finn and Colin continued badgering him, he was being a perfectly good sport about it.

Rory wouldn't take those things so lightly. Which meant Logan may have been, up to a certain point, a little correct on his assumption. She was a little too uptight. And if she was finally honest with herself, she liked it.

She loved his never-ending impulses, loved the way that he embraced life, all its changes and always managed to laugh at it. Never once being left to run after it, but always managing to make the world follow him. Logan was quite possibly the only person that could ever out-talk her in the mile-a-minute fashion. Even what she intensely disliked she was attracted to. His recklessness, his presumed charm, even his incredulous arrogance.

Rory wondered what it was like, to be like Logan. A free spirit who through all worries into the wind with abandon.

She smiled into her coffee mug, listening to their inane rambling. Rory was a little surprised. Surprised that their conversations were actually interesting, that they weren't always immature when they were just being themselves. More importantly, that she was having so much fun.

"I need a refill," Colin stated, looking at his empty glass.

"And I concur," Finn added, joining him.

"Having fun, Ace?" Logan asked pointedly, a victorious smile adorning his face.

"Actually, yes."

"No impulse to go book-smelling at the library?"

Rory glared at him. "Actually, no."

"So you accept tomorrow's proposition?" Logan asked triumphantly.

"I'm open to the idea of skating, if that's what you're asking."

"And you confess to having judgmental misconceived notions of my person?"

Rory looked at him dubiously. "See, the jury's still out there on that one."

"It is?"

"Logan, it's no secret you're extremely successful with girls, very well aware of that fact, and use it much to your advantage. You and the female gender go hand in hand. In fact, there could not be a closer relationship then Logan Huntzberger and the female gender. You should even have a tattoo on your forehead that says you're completely and totally enamored with the female gender."

"Must you say female gender so much? It's repetitive and you really did drive home the fact the first time."

"Logan! My point is you just... you look... trampy."

He couldn't stifle his laughter, chuckling out loud. "Trampy? For someone who thrives on enriching her vocabulary, trampy was not exactly what I would have expected from you. If only you would open yourself up to new experiences and new people, then trust me, Ace, you would never regret it! And, for the record, a few girls here and there a tramp does not one make."

"Listen, Yoda-"

"Certainly I'd be a tramp if I had a flavor-of-the-day whose name he does not remember, such as Finn. Finn's a tramp. He even had a thing with a school teacher back in the day. That's a tramp. I am just... widely open to more then one options."

"See, now I can only wonder what led Finn to take that course of action. And the mere thought of Finn getting it on with the school faculty is just all kinds of wrong."

"You're neurotic."

Her eyes flashed something fierce, and Logan took a step back, well aware of the violent spasms she was sometimes afflicted with. "I am not neurotic."

"Woman, you've far passed borderline neurotic. You have surpassed the line, jumped leaps and bounds away from it, escalated to such a position where you have created a new line and stayed there by your lonesome."

Rory stuck her tongue out at him. "You suck."

Logan flashed her a pearly smile. "Admit it, Gilmore, you like having me around."

She didn't answer him, and suddenly became interested in her coffee.

And Logan tried hiding his smile, because her silence was all the answer he needed.