Sleight of Hand

Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls, nor am I George Orwell. There's a GG reference you may recognize in here.

A/N: This is part one of a two-piece set dealing with Rory and Logan post "Bridesmaids Revisited", and completely just my projections because I don't read spoilers. The second part will be from Logan's perspective. Italics indicate flashbacks.

It is three o'clock in the morning and Rory can't sleep. She lies completely still on her bed, for fear of even the slightest noise waking Paris, who would immediately employ her self-defense skills and Rory is currently not in the mood to fend off a saucepan-brandishing roommate.

It is hard to hold onto strength born only out of anger and humiliation, and all that keeps her from breaking down is her pride. A week has gone by since Honor's wedding and she is alone with her self-hate, her foolish belief that love made you happy. She recalls bitterly that she had told her mother only a few weeks ago that she thought Logan might be The One. Now, she knows that he's not interested in One and Onlys, that she was an idiot to ask him to have a real relationship. (And yet it was always him who was unable to let her go, but she will not think of this, she doesn't want to dilute her anger with grief.)

Humiliated is an accurate description of how she still feels. She can't bear to be made ridiculous and her face burns red at the thought of all of Honor's friends casually discussing who had had sex with Logan more often, their smiles of false sympathy and real contempt when they realized she was Logan's girlfriend. Suddenly her dress had seemed ugly and the room far too small, as she was exposed as a little girl playing dress up, someone not yet grown up enough for their world.

Restlessly, she turns over and then freezes, afraid that Paris will hear her and demand to know why she should have to suffer just because Rory's love life is in a shambles. Paris is still angry with Doyle, so it takes even less than usual to set her off. Rory's thoughts turn from Doyle to the paper to Logan. (Of course.) She has spent a great deal of time this week imagining different scenarios that could occur when she sees him: she could throw her coffee in his face; ignore him; lie blatantly and say that she had tons of men on the side, too; be more mature than she feels and have a civil conversation; or run away (a personal favourite). Everything seems to bring her back to Logan. She closes her eyes, willing herself to think of anything - the Oscars, the seemingly endless supply of 'I wish I could quit you' jokes - anything but the person who had helped her bear this year of not talking to her mother, of dropping out of Yale, of the disappointment she had seen in everyone's eyes, of a sudden lack of direction after years of knowing exactly what she was going to do.

He lied to her. He lied and then acted as if it wasn't his fault at all, and it doesn't matter that she's lied before, that she's cheated, that she had sex with someone else's husband, because she didn't know it hurt like this; she didn't know.

"I didn't cheat on you because we were broken up!"

"He was my boyfriend first!"

(She is sorry now. She has been sorry ever since Lindsey picked up the phone. Sorry sorry sorry. Why had she ever thought sorry was enough?)

It doesn't matter that hearing Logan say I love you, the words tentative because he has never said them to another girl, slows her heartbeat and makes tears prick in her eyes. It doesn't matter that she misses him already and that she's never been good at moving on (witness the three times she tried with Dean), because she's stupid and pathetic. All that matters is the buzzing in her head that has been there for a week, ever since Honor's wedding, senseless white noise that won't leave her alone.

She tries to remember him, angry and drunk, yelling at her in the bar after Jess left, throwing money on the table, because that's good, who would miss someone like that? Who would love someone like that? Instead, unbidden, another more recent memory surfaces: the way Logan looked at her before the panel when he told her she was beautiful and to knock 'em dead. At the time, she thought she saw love and pride in his eyes and it had washed over her: a wave of happiness, and a sense of things falling into place. It scares her now, this idea that she might need him to be whole. She rejects the notion immediately; after all, she's a self-sufficient, educated woman in the twenty-first century, her sense of completeness shouldn't rest with anyone other than herself.

She begins to list her favourite authors in reverse alphabetical order, but that doesn't work, just like listing the major newspapers in the world didn't work. Nothing works, so Rory lies awake with this cocktail of doubt, anger and pain that, instead of making her drowsy, renders her unable to sink into the oblivion of sleep.

--

Her perfectionism tends to catch up with her at night; at 1 a.m., she sits on a couch in what she still forgets is their apartment, red pen behind her ear and yellow highlighter in hand as she edits articles for the Daily News. Logan comes in the door, fresh from a talk with his father and as she greets him she notices the set of his shoulders and the anger lurking in his eyes. She won't press him now, but she will ask him later, try to make him feel better. His glance moves over the living room, strewn with papers and textbooks, and he smirks.

"Ace. You're like the horse in Animal Farm – and you know how he ended up."

She matches his light tone and asks, "Are you going to send me to the slaughterhouse?"

"The thought has crossed my mind. I know the intrigues of various faculty members are fascinating and that it would be a shame to deprive people of the latest concert review, but it's one in the morning. I have no desire to deal with a cranky Rory in the morning."

"I'll have you know, I'm never cranky. I'm a personal ray of sunshine in the lives of all who know me. Birds dress me in the morning."

Logan finally persuades her to come to bed and she acquiesces after muttering that she bet Doyle understood when Paris stayed up all night on paper business. He replies that he is perfectly happy with where his knowledge of Paris and Doyle's home life sits – at nothing. She laughs; after more than two years with Paris as a roommate, it almost feels like she's sleeping with Doyle, too. Logan's face is priceless: complete horror and disgust.

Laughing, she remarks, "And on that note, sweet dreams."

In bed, she glances at him next to her, his torso bare. His shoulders are her favourite part of his anatomy: broad and smooth and lightly tanned. She is comfortable here, with him; he makes her feel both secure and excited, and it is a tantalizing combination. Logan is saying something, but she missed it and only utters a sleepy "Hmm?" He smiles and brushes her hair off her face as her eyelids grow increasingly heavy; it is moments like this when she believes that he really does love her, when it's not hard to tag the word 'forever' to the picture the two of them make, limbs entwined on Logan's king size bed.

Rory mumbles a sleepy thanks but before she can tell him for what (for being him, for being there), she is asleep.

--

In the morning, she will think that it is surely tears of anger that have left her pillow wet.