THE OBLIVIOUS MODE
By Yih

Chapter 3

Escaping pleasant dreams was not my idea of a wakeup call. My mobile was vibrating and if I waited a ring or two the voicemail would pick up. There was a reason though, I hadn't turned it off. Logan was home, he'd driven me home from Madeline's last night. It wasn't that. Oh hell… Marty.

Grab. Flip. "Marty!"

"G'morning."

His cheery voice was on. Something was amiss. "How many times did you call?" I demanded.

"Only a few."

"How many?"

There's a pause. "Do you want me to count how the times I called the landline?" I groaned. "Is that a yes?" I sighed. "7."

"Logan must have been annoyed," I muttered. "How many times did you call the penthouse?"

"3."

The clock blared 8:57. "How long have you been trying?"

"Since 7."

"You're tenacious."

Marty chuckled. "With morning calls and you, I have to be."

I rolled my eyes. I wasn't that late of a weekend dozer. I decided to ignore the gibe. "How was the gig?"

"Exhausting." Now that I was a bit more in tune with everything, I could hear the worn nuance of his voice. It was difficult to imagine Marty tired. He had too much energy; energy enough to make me exhausted thinking about what he'd want to do when he got back. "I think when I get back I want to sleep for a week or two."

That wasn't going to happen. "Oh really?"

"Maybe a day or two," he amended.

That sounded plausible. "So when are you getting back?"

"Tonight."

"Really?" I was excited. He was coming back early. The projected return was Monday morning. Sunday night was an unexpected present. "When? Where do you want to meet? How?"

"Hold up. That was way too many questions." He took a deep breath. "Yes, I really am coming back. Tonight, I've already told you the approximate when. Exactly when? I haven't the faintest idea, depends on the insufferable traffic. I can meet you wherever you want, darling. And how? By train, of course, or did you mean how am I done so early? You really must specify the direction of your questions. I'm finished, that's how."

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to be angry at his nerve, but most of all I wanted to hug his boyish self. "The definition of patronizing."

"How can I be patronizing when you live with Logan Huntzberger?"

Intelligent inquiry. It demanded justification that I could have come up with if I lived with anyone but a Huntzberger. As the penthouse was the definitive Huntzberger, there was nothing to do but to give in gracefully. And grace had very much to do with switching the subject and ignoring any attempts for a switcheroo. "Would you like me to meet you at your flat with some tummy yum-yum?"

"Hmm…" Fake consideration. "I suppose."

"Would you like to give me a time frame?"

"I ought to make you get there an hour early," he muttered. "That way you'll be
there before I get there with the food."

"I'm not always late!"

"8 to 10?"

"I'll try to be there at 8."

"You'll get there at 9 probably."

"8," I promised.

"I know you'll try your best."

"Don't I always?" I said in my best irresistibly innocent voice.

Marty's sighs were so resigned. "There are times when I feel utterly sorry for the poor sod that you call your best friend and flat-mate, but then I forget about certain things."

"Like what?" Insatiable curiosity that has gotten me in trouble more than once
triggered the question. My mom was always amused by it; and my grandparents lamented it. My spirits sank. I missed them still and it's been what? Four years?

"That you are Rory Gilmore and there's no one else like you out there," he said heavily, sincerely, fervently. "If you were any other way than what you are, I wouldn't have ever glanced your way."

"I fell onto the stage, which stopped you from staring at your guitarist's ass."

I loved his laugh, it started deep within him and rumbled out. Tingles started from my toes and surged upward. Shivers began at my neck and met the tingles in the middle. "If not for you," his voice was a caress, "I would still be stuck on Lane."

"Is it any better to be stuck on me?"

"It's worse."

"Hey!"

"Joshing you. If I must be stuck on anyone, it has to be you."

How not sweet. "That's very unromantic."

"I'm no knight in shining armor."

"I would hope not." I'm intentionally appalled. "All that metal and iron is quite out of fashion. If Logan saw you wearing such garb, he'd force you to undergo a shopping spree with him."

"I'd rather visit my mom." That was torture indeed. There wasn't a more unpleasant woman that I had the displeasure of meeting than Kirsten Kincaid. At least with Logan's parents, they were the definition of polite and dignified as befit their standards of proper behavior. With Marty's widowed mom, there was no such decorum.

"I don't think a shopping trip with Logan is quite that bad."

"But you're his best friend," Marty mutters. "You aren't a good judge."

I shrug. "I'm his friend not his girlfriend, I'm not that biased."

"Sometimes, I wonder about you two," he remarks. "I've always thought he was more than a friend to you."

"Logan? Logan's like my brother!" To think of Logan as a boyfriend, as anything but a best friend and brother in everything, would be eerie. He's always been there, especially when my mom and grandparents died and he became only family I had left. "No serious relationship at all."

"I wasn't referring to a romantic one, just commenting on the closeness you share. You two enjoy an unusual friendship that has transcended time and any difficulties on the way. It's enviable."

"Jealous, aren't you?" I teased.

"Very much so."

"I miss you, Marty."

"That was random."

"I'm a random sort of girl."

"I know, and I adore you for it. I'll see you tonight, all right?"

I smiled; he couldn't see and I didn't care. I was giddy at the thought of seeing him again, even though we had only been parted for 47 hours, 45 minutes and some seconds. "Anything specifically you want for a late dinner?"

"You."

I giggled. "Be serious."

"I don't care as long as no one in the penthouse tries to cook it."

I pouted. "I don't cook that bad."

"I'm not sure who learned to cook from whom, but both you and Logan are
horrible." In his tone, a shudder was perceptible. "Order me takeout, I don't care where. You know my stomach isn't picky."

"Chinese?"

"Does that mean eggrolls?"

"Yes, that means eggrolls even if that's very unhealthy."

"You're a health nut."

"I just like my arteries unclogged."

Marty cursed. "Rory, I've got to go. The boys want to get something to eat for breakfast. I'll call you later if…" The line went dead. His offhand mention of breakfast was enough to set my tummy rumbling. But if Logan was cooking, blegh, appetite killer. He did make a mean bit of coffee though and that was worth getting out of bed for. All I needed was to find my darn glasses.

-

Breakfast was a wild success, only because we went to Harry's. While I was happily munching on my kippers, Logan was watching me as he idly mashed his scrambled eggs. Watching him was a mild eating deterrent, but not enough of one to get me to stop chewing.

"This Sunday, no Marty," he mused, "so what are you going to do?"

"Are you busy?"

"I'm always busy."

"Even on Sunday?"

"Even on Sunday," he affirmed.

I pouted. Pouts were effective tools. They were one of my only feminine wiles. Logan invariably fell for it nearly every time, and the only time he didn't were extremely rare situations. "Sunday is fun day."

"Nice play on words."

"I'd rather play with you."

If he'd been eating, I daresay he would have choked. He dropped the fork instead. Logan being clumsy was a big no-no. It never happened ever. I choked instead, surprised as I was by the fork dropping. He slid the water over. "Are you okay?"

I gasped, "Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"If you play with me, I am."

There was one blink and then he smiled slowly. "You're manipulative."

"Like you're vain."

He shrugged. "What kind of play do you have in mind?"

"You'll play?"

"Are you giving me an option?"

I clutched his hand. "Of course not!"

"Then I don't have a choice, do I?"

"No you don't."

His fingers rubbed my knuckles. "So what then?"

"I honestly don't know."

"Then maybe I should work."

My fingers tightened over his. "I'll think of something."

"Are you sure?" His eyes were peering into mine with that reading insight that seared into my soul and revealed all to him for his perusal. If it were anyone but him, I would have felt embarrassingly naked. Instead, I felt only a bewildering bare.

"How about a stroll in Central Park?"

"Right now?" Logan's voice was dubious and unwilling. He wasn't a big fan of Mother Nature and neither was I. But Central Park wasn't really nature; there was too much concrete and fat pigeons eating people crumbs for that.

"A nice morning walk would do you wonders."

"I'm not the one that needs to work off the kipper calories."

I scowled and he grinned. "I have an excellent metabolism." His eyes drifted down toward my not so flat stomach. "I'm working on that!" He clucked his tongue like a disapproving mother hen. "I just don't have the time."

"Excuses, and more excuses."

Dropping a twenty, I pulled him to his feet and dragged him reluctantly in the
direction of pigeon poop and shrieking strollers. "While we walk we can talk," I declared, linking my arm through his. "We haven't really talked in forever."

"I thought that was what we were doing at breakfast," he remarked wryly. "Not to mention what we do everyday."

"Not real deep conversation, but that was mindless argumentative babble. And
we don't really talk the way I want to talk everyday."

"If you say so."

"You know it's true! There simply is no time."

"We aren't children anymore, Rory."

I sighed. I leaned against him. "Life was much simpler back then."

"I like complications."

"You would," I retorted.

He smiled and threaded his fingers through mine. "It makes life interesting."

"And difficult."

"Such pessimism for an optimist, isn't that?"

My eyes stared at the cracks in the pavement. "I guess, but it's hard to be
optimistic all the time. I do have my pessimistic moments even though I try to be the more optimistic of us."

"You are the more optimistic one," he corrected, his fingers squeezing mine.

"I suppose." I swung both of our arms with childish glee. I would have liked to skip into the park, but Logan would have mightily objected. "Isn't it beautiful here?"

He wrinkled his nose in a decisive no. "If you like the sight of too many street merchants and an indecent amount of children clinging to mothers, then I guess it might be a pretty picture. But I personally am adverse to the sight of so many people in one place at one time when I have the option of enjoying the luxury of my spacious penthouse in cramped New York City."

"I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, would you?"

"Despite the horrible cramped conditions, I would have to say no," he responded in a prim very Huntzberger tone. "There is no where else I could imagine myself being."

"This is home, isn't it?"

"Yes," he agreed, "this is home."

I spied a vacant bench and pointed like a navigator. "Let's sit."

"I thought the point of this Central Park trip was for us to walk and talk." His voice was overwhelmingly pompous, and if it were anyone but him saying something like that in that kind of tone I would have done something that would have made my mom cringe. But it was Logan and Logan being who he was and I knowing how he tended to be, it was not so hard to overlook his arrogant misgiving.

"We are and we did, but," I gestured at the air over my feet, "I did not wear proper shoes for long distance walking and because of that my feet hurt an extraordinary amount. To recover so that I can walk back, I must sit now."

"Or I could always wave us a taxi and we could head back to the penthouse."

"No," I gestured, "sit down."

He sighed. "So what does your random mind want to talk about?"

"I have no idea." We were sitting, side by side in a position that was reminiscent of how we used to sit on my bed thigh to thigh. "Do you have anything you want to talk about?"

"Not particularly, but I wasn't the one that suggested that we walk and talk," he
replied blandly. "Is there anything you'd like to discuss?"

"I miss our silly conversations." Suddenly I did, I ached for them. It wasn't as if we were old. By any standard, we were young at 24. Yet we were not as young as we had been, and we were not young enough that wasting time was seen as a necessary divergence instead of a cruel yearning. We might want to squander time, but we knew better than to. "And considering the type of chattering we used to do, we could talk about your love life."

"My lack of one," he amended. "But we could always discuss your thriving one."

I blushed. "Why don't you have a girlfriend?"

His blue eyes stared. "Why does your boyfriend call at an absurdly early hour
when he knows that you won't be getting up that early unless something dire has happened?"

"He's impatient," I answered without thinking. If I had been thinking, I would waited until he'd answered mine first. This was truly an impairment of mine; I often said things without thinking. Curse my tongue. "Not unlike you."

"Do you really think we're much alike?"

"In some ways, you are."

"What ways?"

I frowned. "I thought I was going to ask you about your love life, instead you're asking me about mine."

"As I said before, I lack one and you did ask me what I'd like to talk about and I've decided I very much would like to talk about your current relationship." Those lips were curved in full smugness. He'd gotten the one up on me again. "So shall we?"

I wanted to say no, but the fact of the mater was I had asked him. "If we must."

"We must."