Sleight of Hand
Chapter 2: So Pull Another Rabbit Out of Your Hat
Disclaimer: I don't have the talent of an Amy Sherman-Palladino or an E.E. Cummings. I'm just borrowing.
A/N: Still post 6.16 but for the purposes of this fic, Rory and Logan were broken up for longer than thirty seconds.
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A year ago, at three o'clock in the morning, Logan would have been out somewhere, drinking and partying and generally enjoying himself. Tonight, he lies alone in a bed that feels empty, trying to calm the voices in his head long enough to let him go to sleep.
He would have a nightcap, except that he's trying not to drink. It's not out of a sudden desire to experience life sober all the time, but rather the awareness that if he starts drinking, he doesn't know when he'll stop. It would be easy to fall into a stupor caused by alcohol, to pretend that this past week has been nothing but a conjuring trick created by an especially malicious magician. At three o'clock in the morning, however, it's harder to lie to yourself than it is during the day. Shadows take on a life of their own, and he knows he won't get out of paying for his stupid decisions.
Logan has had nothing but time to think about the last time he saw Rory. Colin and Finn have offered drinks, long games of poker, and the chance to meet beautiful girls, but he has turned them down, preferring instead to sulk by himself. Pity party for one, indeed.
At first, Rory's anger had seemed excessive. They were broken up, for God's sake. It turned out that, according to Rory, he had been on a break by himself, but wasn't that all just semantics? They had had a fight – she couldn't dispute that – in which he had brought great glory to the Huntzberger name by yelling at his girlfriend in a random bar, and had parted angrily, after which they hadn't spoken for a few weeks. It sounded like breaking up to him, but he's not exactly a veteran of long-term relationships. The weakness of his excuse had been driven home when he was finally able to escape into his room in the hotel after Honor's wedding; he had gone over it again in his head, freeze-framing that image of Rory right before she walked out, as proud and stiff as Emily Gilmore herself could be, and made himself see past the anger and disbelief to the devastation in her eyes.
Love is not a commodity that is priced very highly in the circles his family frequents. Lust, secret affairs, hushed up scandals, yes: they break the monotony. But love? Too unpredictable, too liable to blow up in your face.
He is pretty damn sure that he gave her too much of himself, let her get too close, and now it's come back to bite him in the ass. What was it his father used to tell him? Only invest in sure things? Thanks, Dad; lesson learned, don't let it happen again. It's a little too late to fall back on his father's advice and, worst of all, Logan can't bring himself to regret anything he shared with Rory.
He knows that she has gone to Stars Hollow for a few days and is emailing her articles to the Daily News. He dismisses the option of enlisting Lorelai's help almost before he thinks it; if she hated him before, he can only bet that she's trying to find a guillotine with his name on it now. This time, there is no conveniently in trouble newspaper to save. Being a hero won't be enough to get Rory back again and he doesn't even bother considering flowers, coffee carts and fruit baskets. She's not going to forgive him based on his same old tricks.
He doesn't know how to convince Rory that it was all a mistake, stupid decisions based on the dangerous combination of alcohol, loneliness and familiarity. He doesn't know how to explain that they were all just attempts to rid himself of the taste of ashes in his mouth.
Thanksgiving was supposed to have been his epiphany: a sudden realization, full of bright white lights, that he couldn't go back to having sex with a string of girls whose names he knew but not how they took their coffee or the colour of their eyes (the bluest he's ever seen). It was like that stupid saying about how after trying fine wine you can't go back to the bottles with the screwed on caps. (Not that he would know, since the price of the wine he drinks runs into four digits). He can rail against God, or fate, or whomever, but what keeps him awake is the knowledge that the fact that one side of the bed is conspicuously empty is all his fault.
--
Logan is stuck in a meeting with his father that is running past midnight and he has to stifle the urge to yawn. Mitchum is explaining the finer details of some business deal or other, pointedly mentioning how it almost fell through because of Logan's desire to "play house with his little girlfriend". He wants to tell his father to go to hell - Dante's preferably- but the words get stuck in his mouth, weighed down by family obligation and duty, by the knowledge that the life he lives depends on his father's goodwill. And let's face it, he has no desire to suddenly have to work, or drive his own car. This is the only life he's ever known.
He leaves the office tense and angry, rubbing his temples tiredly. It's getting harder not to let his father's expectations affect him now that they could affect someone else, too. He reaches their apartment at one a.m. and tries to muffle the soft 'click' of the door closing because he assumes Rory is asleep. Instead, there she is, wide awake and working. He's starting to understand her organizing system (she has insisted there is an order to the way the textbooks are strewn about) and he smirks.
"Ace. You're like the horse in Animal Farm – and you know how he ended up."
Her smile is gentle and understanding as she keeps the conversation light. She's better at reading him then he would have once been comfortable with, but right now, all he feels is sheer relief that here is someone who apparently loves him for himself. She pauses, extending a silent invitation to unburden himself to her, and he will, soon, but not tonight. It is enough for now that he finally understands how a house can be a haven.
Logan knows that Rory has completely lost track of time, so he reminds her that sleep is more important than correcting articles about the intrigues of various faculty members. Eventually, she acquiesces, and they head into their bedroom. He was right: Rory is practically falling asleep on her feet, but it is the good kind of tired, the one that goes along with a feeling of accomplishment. They slip into bed and she turns her body towards his, pale skin against tanned, as he says something about his plans for the next day to which her only response is an "Hmm?" He brushes the hair off her face and she mumbles something incoherent, teetering on the precipice between sleep and waking.
Her eyes drift shut as Logan looks at her, subconsciously noting the way she isn't afraid to let him see her like this, in all her "intense fragility". Lightly, he brushes his lips against hers, a silent 'good night' or perhaps something else. He feels a little lightheaded, but he can't blame it on alcohol, because he didn't drink tonight. (Anyway, by now, it takes a lot of liquor to make him tipsy.) It is a surge of something he can't quite grasp, a desire to protect her mixed in with a wish to give her the world. It is still relatively new, this feeling of someone else's happiness determining his own, and it unsettles him, so he lies there, arm draped loosely around Rory, until the sound of her breathing lulls him to sleep.
--
This is the real epiphany: that being in a relationship is another type of risk, different from the Life and Death Brigade. Without Rory, his senses are dulled and he hates the idea of just going through the motions. She will never be just another girl, not to him, and this is what Logan will tell her. He doesn't want to entertain the possibility that that might not be enough. For tonight, he will let his exhausted mind play its hopeful tricks; he will let himself believe that Rory still loves him, impossible as it may seem.