Chapter 158

April 23rd, 2022

"Is it weird that I'm going?" Logan asked, thoughtfully, after a lenghty silence, as he was packing up his small suitcase. He was leaving for London the next morning to help his sister out with a few projects she seemed to be struggling with and had wanted a second opinion on. Technically he was just a volunteer advisory at this point, but it didn't feel like it.

Rory was just brushing her teeth, at the same time using her other hand to gather up any dirty items of clothing to put into the laundry basket that she hadn't had the time to put away earlier that day. She wasn't a prime example of a tidy person, but thankfully she liked the process of decluttering before going to bed just the same, which felt like a good compromize for Logan, who was used to much neater settings.

"Is it weird for you?" Rory asked in return, taking the toothbrush from her mouth for a moment. Had it been anywhere else than London, it wouldn't have been weird at all. But London was the epicenter of pain for him, and truthfully Rory was worried.

"A little," Logan said, placing his packing cube of socks, t-shirts and underwear into the gray Delsey Turenne suitcase he'd recently purchased. He was mentally trying to go in as fresh as possible, which meant different clothes, several notches down from the uptight suit and dress-shirt combination his father used to require at the office usually. He knew there was no real rule other than his word, and he wanted to show another type of atmosphere and attitude, even if it wasn't under his or the company's control anymore. But as a consultant he had that freedom to make a statement that he didn't necessarily belong. He was also a little concerned about what the other employees would think. Did they consider him the traitor who'd abandoned ship? Was his return something to give them the wrong kind of hope?

Rory headed for the bathroom to rinse her mouth and as she returned, she approached from behind him and wrapped her arms around his torso, holding him, her chin resting on his shoulder for a minute.

"I do wish I could come," Rory sighed. She had a similarly negative connotation with London even if not as severe. She hadn't been there since that one last time late spring 2016. It almost would've felt like they were doing something forbidden had she went along. It took a lot of mental assurance to make sure she remembered that they no longer had anything to be ashamed of, that sort of guilt, along with self-loathing, didn't just go away.

While she wanted to join him, support him, she knew she had Em to take care of, especially since Jess was going to Philadelphia next week as well, and there was her work too, naturally, though it was likely nobody would've even batted an eye if she took out a few of her sick days. But with Em still giving her the silent treatment on the topic of the baby, despite her efforts - watching topical movies, getting her some new books - she knew the girl needed her around right now, assuring that she'd always love her.

"Yeah, me too," Logan sighed, understandingly.

"I worry," Rory admitted with a sigh.

"Well what's the worst that can happen?" Logan added, lightly, wanting to remain optimistic.

Rory cast him a look of warning, being able to imagine a number of things that could happen.

"Are you going to see her?" Rory asked a moment later, after she'd just sat down on her bed and observed Logan finish packing. This was what she worried about the most. She believed Honor to be very capable in keeping Logan in check under work conditions - noticing the red flags if there were any, and in that sense she loved that Logan was just going in unofficially, not with actual obligation.

"I haven't planned to. I doubt I'll just run into her…," Logan replied, speaking of was a big city. For a while he'd been thinking about it - that perhaps she needed to talk to her to bury the hatchet, but nobody had really supported this idea besides Birdie even if Rory was understanding about it. He wasn't sure if he wanted to anymore, almost feeling like now he was protecting Rory and their child if he didn't touch the topic again. But it did feel unfinished. He didn't want to rub his happiness in, and he feared the toxicity of that interaction, unsure if he was strong enough for it.

"Well - if you do, if you... feel you need to - I get it," Rory said, with a deep breath.

"I appreciate that," Logan replied, kissing her as he joined her in bed, but added, "but I probably won't," as the kiss broke. Maybe some stones were better left unturned?

"And bring me something from Layla's, okay?" Rory requested, with that cute little smile of hers. Layla's was one of her favorite bakeries in London, a place they often visited when she'd been over. This was definitely a part of what she missed sometimes.

"Anything you - you two - want," Logan said, pulling her close again and laid his lips on hers again, not getting enough of her and the idea of their baby.

"Aha… you better not forget three, Em will never forgive you otherwise," Rory teased, shaking her head, knowing he probably wouldn't, but she was just especially conscious at the moment not to exclude Em from anything.

"Yeah, I know," Logan replied.

"You know what else I'd want…?" Rory whispered, her head resting on his shoulder, not making direct eye contact.

"What?" Logan pulled back a little, wanting to look at her face.

"Sex..," she replied hesitantly, feeling some unexplained embarrassment for asking that. Since the bleeding, almost three weeks ago, they'd just done oral and that too had been cautious, mostly sticking to the exterior when it came to her. She loved how caring Logan was, how he could make her feel great, but was he really never going to touch her again in fear of something that the doctors had been considered normal and not dangerous? Besides - a whole new set of hormones seemed to be kicking in and her little vibrator which she'd already tried a couple of times, both together and alone, was not what she really craved, not liking its coldness.

Logan sighed, cautious of that sexy smile of hers.

"I don't want to hurt you," Logan replied. He especially didn't want to hurt her now before he was about to leave, he wanted to be around to make sure she was alright. It didn't seem worth it. But that alone was another symptom of his self-sacrificing nature, which he had been working on with his therapist.

"I'm fine. I've been perfectly fine. We'll be careful," Rory continued, nearly begging.

"I'm just not sure I can...," Logan replied. It had really scared him too, and he'd felt the direct blame. Rory could tell he wasn't referring to his physical capabilities.

"What, we're just not going to have sex for the rest of the pregnancy? You realize it's a few months, several months, after that I'll probably not feel up to it either, right?" Rory said, sounding a little accusatory and pouty. Sure, she understood how he could feel the blame, but so did she. She'd even talked about it to him. But she wasn't entirely rational with her raging hormones and she'd asked every single time she'd been to a doctor since and they'd all give her the green light to resume sexual activity.

"I don't know," Logan shrugged.

"You seriously don't want to? What do I look that disgusting to you already?" Rory said to him, dissapointedly, half-deliberately making a bigger deal of it than it was. But again there were the hormones talking.

"Of course I want you!" Logan defended himself. "And you look incredible," Logan assured, stroking her upper arm.

"Then prove it," Rory teased, whispering it to him up close, desperately hoping this would work. She couldn't take much longer of this starvation - oral without the real thing just felt like endless teasing, even if she did eventually get off.

Her hormone-infused brain was also thinking of all sorts of odd scenarios, like what if his plane crashed or he returned as a completely different person, or having decided to return to the HPG headquaters in London full time. While realistically thinking she knew these to be unlikely scenarios, in a way she just wanted to have him before he left, like a good send off.

"Fine," Logan relented at her words that were now accompanied by physical advances.

"You've got to do better than that, Huntzberger," she added with a light pout to her lip, speaking sensually into his ear.

"You're not seriously suggesting I'm losing my touch, are you, Ace?" he shot back, adapting the fake it till you make it attitude to get him going. He was just going to have to not think about what could go wrong for a moment. He knew she was right - if they were going to regain that part of their relationship he too needed to stop worrying, and trying was supposedly a good start.

They had no trouble getting turned on, the kissing, the touching and the licking quickly beginning to guide them instead of their brains. But naturally, they were more conscious about being careful, but that provided a much similar style to lovemaking just like trying to do it very quietly did. Just finding that fine line between cautious and pleasurable took some effort, Rory craving for more on several occasions while finding Logan holding her back just a little. It was a delicate dance of low speeds, and different intensities as he caressed her - the assurance of eye contact of what felt good or dangerously delicious being key. For most of the time it ended up being her on the top, both facing him and later the other way around, moving slowly and carefully. But it did provide one hell of a build up for the culmination of it. Absence certainly had made it feel even better.

Afterwards they lingered there, laughing about the caution they'd put into it, but also inspected Rory with great care to make sure there was no bleeding. There wasn't. It was a new kind of intimacy - understanding the female physic for more than just the purpose of pleasure. And Logan thought it to be an amazing thing - being able to grow another human inside of her. Logan could by now tell some change on the size of her tiny bump, loving to let his hand linger on top of it.

"Sorry about that. I just felt so guilty before," Logan explained, as he was no longer breathing heavily.

"We're in this together, it'd never be just your fault. It wouldn't be anyone's fault if...," Rory exhaled. It had taken a whole session at Birdie's to talk about self blame a few weeks ago. Because Rory had found out she had been pregnant for longer than she'd believed to be, meant she'd built up a share of guilt herself, and not just about the bleeding. She'd had alcohol, even if not tons of it, in the early weeks, also more caffeine that was probably advisable, even some sushi. But it had all gone under the 'nothing you could've done differently because you didn't know' clause.

"Don't you even dare…," Logan replied, kissing her shoulder, not wanting to think of any bad scenarios. He was already too attached to the idea.

"I won't," Rory promised, not wanting to think about it either. It felt amazing to see him care so much already.

For a while they just stayed there, enjoying the touch of the other on their skin.

"I talked to Paris today," Rory decided to share.

"Oh yeah?" Logan asked, not minding if they talked about her. The two had a lot of pregnancy related topics to share, including those concerning the older kids accepting the newcomer, hence she'd been talking to her a lot these past few weeks.

"They're talking names," Rory said a little dreamily. Paris was expecting a baby girl. Finding that out had been followed by an intense ramble how it was still so much harder for a woman to make it in life, but eventually Rory had talked her down, assuring that if there was any household for a girl to grow into, it was certainly hers with a role model like her and the baby's siblings. Rory also thought it'd be kind of perfect for Finn to get a daughter - as he knew all about the bad boys that he'd need to fight off in the future.

"Knowing the sex would help in our case," Logan replied, understanding what she was going at. "I mean you could probably get that extra ultrasound," he suggested, recalling what Honor had said the other day.

"I've read it's not that good to have it more often than necessary. But I don't know - since it feels different, I guess my gut feeling tells me it's a boy," Rory admitted. "If it's not, it's fine - but I don't know, just if I think of the baby I think of a boy," she added.

To Logan it was still a little challenging to think of the baby as anything concrete - but putting a sex to it - even if an imaginary one - actually helped.

"A boy," he repeated. He might have a son by the end of this year - that still felt so unbelievable.

"Had Em been a boy, I would've called him Richard probably, but now… I don't know. While I'll always love him, his loss not as sharply on my mind anymore as Emily was back then. And I just don't like the idea of calling the two of them Emily and Richard. It's too much of a pairing, and they're not the same people, it'd just be too weird," Rory explained.

"Honestly… for me the name part would've been a lot easier if it was a girl," Logan replied, sitting up a little more, the blanket draped over his legs.

"Really?" Rory asked, having not expected that.

"Honor's middle name. She doesn't use it much," Logan replied. "Josephine," he added, realizing Rory didn't even know it. It was only really in her passport and it was perhaps just a few times she'd heard someone refer to her as that, her wedding being a prime example which Rory had unfortunately missed.

"It's nice," Rory agreed, not thinking of a single thing wrong with it. It felt neutral enough, and Rory knew Honor meant a lot to him.

"But I'm not a huge fan of Joseph for a boy if we go by that logic...," Logan admitted, as if reading her mind.

"We could play a practical joke on your mother next time and say we're naming him José?" Rory suggested with a burst of laughter. "Or better yet - Yosif," she added, as if a series of lightbulbs were being lit in her brain one after another, providing a lenghty discussion topic for weeks to come.

Logan chuckled along.

"Did I tell you about the time my mom compared my grandmother to Stalin and Mussolini during an interview for a magazine?" Rory continued, aiming to enjoy their last night together for nearly a week. She was going to miss his company immensely.

It was as she laughed, she suddenly felt it. And she pulled his hand onto her tiny bump unsure if he'd feel anything.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Uh-uh, I think I felt a flutter," Rory replied, keeping his hand still under hers.

Logan couldn't feel it, it was too soon, but he loved listening to her describe what it was like and when she could sense it, making the evening pretty perfect before his departure.