Summary: Trory. Set Season One Post-TBP2 and Pre-LDAT. The Kiss at Madeline's Party never happened for the purposes of this fic.

Disclaimer: I own no rights to anything that is mentioned in my stories, including the main characters that I've borrowed for my plot manipulations.

Rating: T (might be bumped up with future chapters. The jury's still out.)

Story Title: Untouched

Chapter Title: Part Two

AN: Well, the majority of you seemed willing to read more, and I got some pesky ideas in my head, so voila! Enjoy! Oh, and thanks to everyone that took the time to let me know how they felt, and the reviews are never discouraged.

She was a smart girl.

She was well-rounded in her intelligence and could speak at length on any topic from the political ramifications of the new overseas trade agreement to The Powerpuff Girls. She was an excellent judge of character and kept people around her that encouraged her knowledge to flourish.

Her idea of a crazy night was staying in with her mother and her best friend, eating an entire box of Mallomars by herself, all the while reenacting a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode using Plan Nine from Outer Space and Catwoman as their test subjects.

She loved her life. She loved her knowledge. She loved her fun.

She hated doubting that she wouldn't last one hour during a crazy night alongside him.

Stories about his reckless nights were no secret among the hallowed halls of their school. Hell, they were legendary. Thousands in therapy bills would be spent a decade from now because of them. Novels would be written, movies made. The girls that might have spoken in hushed tones about other boys they'd hooked up with the weekend before couldn't seem to contain the sheer exhilaration that they'd experienced, seemingly for the first time, with him. He knew what he was doing. He was like nothing else on this earth.

His ears never burned—his smirk just got set harder in stone.

She'd discovered during her first few hours at school that the girls were dying to find themselves underneath him and the boys were dying to find themselves at his right-hand side.

He was everything that she wasn't.

She loathed him. His arrogance. His inflated, though earned, ego.

He'd been sitting across from her at the largest dining room table in the known universe for the last half an hour, silent as a clam, and reading from one of the many books she'd brought in contribution to their project. They'd agreed to pick out a number of classic American novels, and then exchange them at their first meeting to decide together the merits of each contribution. He turned the page and scratched his jaw absently with an unimpressed look on his face.

She was beginning to question her sanity for agreeing to this meeting at all.

He seemed to have a game plan. A well thought out, if patronizing, reason for his suggestion. He'd wanted to meet at his house, as he reasoned it was closer to the Hartford library, and therefore they wouldn't have to waste any precious time should they need any extra reference materials. Despite the daggers that she shot him from her eyes, he maintained that Hartford's collection was probably substantially more complete than the one-room lean-to that her Revolutionary War town called a library.

She consented that she would meet him as he wished, but appeased herself by planning to make a voodoo doll of him when she got home from their study session.

"Just say it."

"Excuse me?" he looked up from his page, marking his place with his finger out of habit.

"You can't veto Fitzgerald. He encapsulated the 20s in America with his writing."

"I don't remember saying anything against Fitzgerald."

She rolled her eyes and looked at the stack of books he'd placed in front of her. Hemingway, Joyce, Sinclair, and others stared back at her from their spines. She'd previously read all the novels that he'd given her to peruse through. For her own pleasure. Well, except the Hemingway. She'd tried several times with The Sun Also Rises, to no avail. Reading that novel had been like talking with Tristan. Frustrating and leading nowhere, until she gave up altogether. Unfortunately that was not an option right now, but she'd be damned if she was to be subjected to both at once.

"I realize it's hard to keep your eyes off of me, but I thought you wanted to get an A," he commented as she continued to watch him read.

"I've read all of these before," she said high-handedly.

"Like I haven't read the books you've chosen?"

"I don't know, I mean when could you ever find time to read, what with your busy schedule of smoking underneath the bleachers and nailing the next bimbo in your car after the big game?"

"I'll have you know I smoke in my car and nail the bimbos under the bleachers," he smirked at her, tossing Tender Is The Night closed onto the table.

It was becoming ever more increasingly lucid to her that she'd lost her mind yesterday in his car. For a brief window, just a flash of time as she sat in his car with him, she thought perhaps he would let his guard down with her long enough to get through this assignment. That he could be serious and care about something other than himself for just the amount of time it would take for them to choose some books, discuss why they were important to the points they had to cover for their presentation, and decide who would say what. It could have been simple.

But, unlike her, he didn't like simple things.

"Is that your way of saying that my being here is interrupting your Friday night plans?"

"You are my Friday night plans," he winked at her.

"That's it, I'm out of here," she said, standing up and picking her jacket off of the back of the antique dining chair she'd been sitting in.

"Sit back down. We haven't chosen our books," he sighed, picking up The Bluest Eye and reading over the back cover. Despite the fact he'd read it and knew what the title was in reference to, since he met her he couldn't help but be reminded of her when he caught sight of the title.

"Please, it's obvious that you're only interested in misogynistic, single-minded writers," she said, still standing, but locked in place as she stared at him, "I'd hardly call your selection wide enough."

"Well, at least I didn't get my list from Oprah's Book Club," he held up Toni Morrison's book.

"She happens to be one of the most inspired and thought-provoking American authors of all time."

"And just how are my novelists single-minded?" he tested her.

She held up each book one by one. "War. Race. Class struggles. Need I go on?"

"You're going to anyway, why should I bother to stop you?" he leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest in anticipation of the next string of stinging words to come out of her mouth.

She was quiet, partially out of not wanting to give him the satisfaction about being right in his judgments of her, and partially out of having nothing else to say to him. He'd been effective in taking the wind out of her sails by talking her into circles.

"I take your silence to mean that you agree with me, upon further contemplation, that all of the things you just mentioned are classic American themes, brought to light and understood more fully by these novels that lay before you right now? That I myself have brought in contribution to this project. Or is your pride just too damn important to admit something like that?"

"My pride? Because I'm the one with the overblown ego in this room?" she practically yelled in disbelief.

"Your words, not mine," his hands went up in innocence.

Her ears always burned. Uncontainable flames.

"I don't have an ego problem. I have an entirely different problem," she said, pointing her slender index finger across the table at him.

He grinned. "You're right. And I have just the thing to amend that for you," he stood up and motioned for her to put her jacket that she still held in one hand on. "We're taking a break."

She shook her head. "If I walk out that door, I'm headed home."

"Is that an invitation? Not what I had in mind, but . . . ."

"That's it!" she cried out in frustration, slamming her hands down on the dining room table, and setting off a chain reaction to cause the water in their glasses to ripple. If either had been paying attention to the finer details, perhaps they would have taken note of the symbolism of the stirred up water.

Her storm was breaking.

"We have to get through this, and I'm not going to be able to do that with Smartass Tristan. I need you to dig deep and cut the crap, even if it's just long enough to have an exchange of words with me that doesn't leave me feeling the need to rip your throat out. After this project is done, if you feel the need to be an asshole to me, fine. Bring on your worst. But for now, I just need it to stop. Just pretend to be a normal human being."

He stared at her, but didn't allow his emotions to show on his face. He simply nodded and held his hand out toward the exit to the room. "Coffee. We'll talk. I promise not to do anything to encourage you ripping my throat out. Knowingly," he smirked.

She knew she should say no. But there was something about his tone that reminded her of the way he was with her the day before, in his car outside the gas station mini-mart. She unconsciously licked her lips, as if expecting to taste the same sweet taste of the cloves mixed with what she assumed to be him after she'd taken the single puff off his cigarette.

She gave an unconscious shiver at the thought of knowing what he tasted like.

"Fine, but no cigarettes this time," she said decisively, walking around the table to lead him out to the garage.

"As you wish," he said softly, following her out to his car.

--&--

She came out of the bathroom still wiping her not quite dry hands on her jeans and paused as she got to the end of the small hallway. She spied him placing money into the tip jar before smiling and thanking the guy behind the counter as he took hold of their drinks.

"I sincerely hope you aren't planning on going into any investigative reporting where stealth is involved," he slid the larger of the two cups in front of her as she sat down across from him at the small café table he'd sought out.

"Excuse me?"

"I saw you watching me."

"I wasn't watching you," she stressed the last word.

"What were you doing, then?"

"I was . . . fine. I was watching you. But not for the reasons you think I was," she informed him, chastising herself inwardly at her inability to lie. Sarcasm came easily to her, but lies were her kryptonite.

She was sure he had no such afflictions.

"You had reasons?" his eyebrows raised with his interest level.

"You think I would just look at you for the sake of looking? Like art?" she choked back a laugh.

"It's been known to happen," he contested, though his voice faltered.

"I was just thinking, well, wondering actually."

"Wondering what? If you tell me, I might be able to help you out. After all, I know me pretty well."

She took a sip of her coffee and shook her head. "It's not important."

"Rory, I thought this was a goodwill effort," he reminded her. "I'm trying, but you gotta help me out."

She smiled at the correct usage of her name, and the blush began creeping up her cheeks at the words she knew she was going to say.

"It's just, from what I've heard about you, I didn't expect you to act like this."

"I don't understand," he propped his elbows up on the table to lean closer to her. "How am I supposed to act?"

"I just meant, that this obviously isn't your first choice of things to do on a Friday night, and you seem like you're trying to do what you can to facilitate our project getting done. I had envisioned you racing through it to ditch me and get to your date or something. Instead you're here, buying me coffee, and debating the validity of the books you've chosen."

He scratched the back of his head with one hand. "I don't go out every Friday night. Even someone with," he paused and smiled—unable to help himself, "my reputation has to take breather every now and then. You know, to recharge."

"Right."

"So, what's a normal Friday night for you?"

"Uh, well, Fridays are the grandparent dinners. I came here straight from there, actually. It's why I couldn't meet right after school," she bit her lip.

"You have dinner with your grandparents every Friday night? Wow, you must be really close," he commented.

"Not really. I mean, my grandpa's cool, and we have a lot in common, but we're sort of obligated, my mother and I."

"Obligated? Now you're starting to sound like my family," he let out a huff of indignance. "Is that why you're never at any of the parties?"

"What?"

"The parties, there's one almost every weekend. And don't tell me you're not invited. I have proof to the contrary," he said, reminding her that he was right there when Madeline handed out the fliers for her last party and specifically asked her to come. "You like Madeline, I thought you'd be there."

Rory shrugged and took the lid off of her to-go, standard, chain-issue coffee cup to dip her finger into the whipped cream that had been added to the top of her caramel macchiato. She licked it off the tip of her finger and looked up at him. They exchanged a knowing look for a beat before she looked away and he shifted in his seat, trying to regain his composure. Realizing he'd been staring at her unconsciously suggestive actions, with a dropped open mouth and curious eyes, she suppressed a giggle at the thought that she could evoke such a response from him.

She had no idea.

"I thought about it actually, it just didn't work out."

"Your, uh, boyfriend didn't want to go?" he made boyfriend sound like a four letter word to her ears. She could definitely agree with the sentiment.

"I'm sure he didn't, since we broke up the night before."

Tristan's eyes flew back up to meet hers. It was clear to her then that he hadn't heard about the break up. It surprised her, as Paris and her underlings had found out, and she figured it'd be all over school by now. Especially after the way Rory had unwillingly bested Paris at the Winter Formal. Paris loved paybacks.

"Well, you should come to the next one," he suggested. "There's one next weekend, I think it's even at Louise's house."

"I'll think about it," she nodded in promise to consider it.

"So, what's with the obligation? Your inheritance in jeopardy if you don't check in or something?"

She shook her head, almost embarrassed to tell him the real reason. No one outside of Stars Hollow knew why they had to go to the elder Gilmore estate every week. "No, uh, when I got into Chilton, it was sort of a long shot, and my mother was short on the amount of money they wanted up front for my enrollment, so she had to go to my grandparents for the money. They agreed to pay for my schooling, if we agreed to the dinners. My mother sort of ran away from home when she was my age, with me, and they only usually saw us at Christmas from then on, until last September."

"No wonder you're so serious about school," he sat back and offered her a weak smile. He cleared his throat after a moment of uncomfortable silence. "I'm sorry that I've been so hard on you, you know, since you started."

"You are not," she smiled back. "You get some sick satisfaction in teasing me."

"I wouldn't call it satisfaction," he countered. "So, we should probably get back, to work and all," he said.

"Yeah, probably," she bit her lip out of habit when she wasn't sure what to say.

"Unless you wanted to, I don't know, hang out for a while. Do you need to be home soon?"

She checked her watch to take a moment to decide what to say. She knew exactly how late it was. She just didn't know how smart it was to agree to hanging out with Tristan DuGrey on a Friday night when they should be getting right back to study.

"I could go for another coffee," she smiled, causing him to nod and go back up to the counter to fulfill her request.

She was a smart girl, except when it came to him.