Chapter 169

April 30th, 2022

For a moment time moved in slow motion for Logan, even if it really was just a couple of seconds. He'd just stepped through the door, greeted by the familiar smells, barely managing to place down his suitcase and laptop bag, as he was nearly run down by a 4-year-old, dressed up as forest fairy of somesort, and a millisecond later by Loki, the girl having had a head start. Through the door of the study, just across from the front door, he could observe Rory getting up from behind her study desk, her outfit of leggings and a simple strechy top not hiding the curve of her bump one bit. Rory smiled and walked over, allowing Em to finish hugging him as a greeting first. At the same time Loki bounced in place like a ball from excitement.

It was a sight for sore eyes, a rush of positive emotions - the true meaning of coming home. The perfect ending to 14 hours and 40 minutes in either airplanes or airports, due to increased security checks at Heathrow on his way out and a delay at Dulles. Home - finally. He wasn't used to feeling that.

He had expected this kind of a greeting from Loki, but not really from Em. But he was glad - these past four months that they'd been living like this had certainly made them grow closer. Loki rushed back to his nest on the ground floor to fetch his favorite toy showing him how much he wanted to play with him.

As time finally began to move at a normal speed, he tossed the toy for Loki to catch, knowing he'd probably have to do that at least twenty time that night.

"Hey, Em," Logan greeted her, gently stroking the top of her hair as a response.

Rory moved closer, giving Logan a quick peck and a smile, and his hand slipped around her. She didn't want to linger too long in his arms right then and there for Em's sake as on top of everything else kissing was increasingly becoming gross in Em's opinion.

"What did you bring?" Em asked, impatiently, partially revealing that her affection was not just about being genuinely glad about his return but in part selfish too. But what would you expect from a 4-year-old, right?

"Ah..," Logan let his head fall back, smiling widely. "I do have something in here somewhere," he said, gesturing towards his suitcase, playing oblivious.

Em already rolled his suitcase towards the living room.

"Come on, Em, let him be… he's had a very long day," Rory cautioned Em gently, and gave Logan another quick peck. "Sometimes when I used to travel to London, I felt like I could fall asleep on my feet and sleep for the whole day," she tried to make the girl understand how tiresome travelling could be.

"When did you go to London, mommy?" Em asked, having gotten a grand tour on Google maps where London was the other day without these explanations. Rory had also shown her also the London that was located in Ontario, the Paris in France, and the one in Texas, mostly talking about how people named things after what they admired.

"When I didn't have you…," Rory replied with a lungful of air. "I went there for work, sometimes to see friends," she added. Rory and Logan suddenly felt awkward, and cast a look at each-other as Rory realized she'd perhaps slipped a little with her words.

"One time with grandma Lorelai, once with great-grandma Emily too... and when you're a little older I'll go with you too," Rory promised, turning things around so she wouldn't have to explain. She was beginning to realize how explaining her and Logan's relationship was one day going to be a big thing to explain to Em…. to both her kids. She still was not used to thinking there'd be two, sometimes still nearly forgetting it.

"I've had worse flights, I'm fine," Logan commented nonchalantly, and threw his coat into the rack, aiming to stretch out the day a little so he'd go to sleep at a more or less normal hour to skip the jet lag. He placed his suitcase down and opened its zipper, exposing on top of everything a bag of almond croissants and some chocolate chip cookies Rory loved. "Here you go," he handed the somewhat wrinkly bag over to Em, who passed it on to Rory

"Yum...thank you," Rory replied, accepting the bag with a lot more gratitude than Em was showing, rolled the bag open and took a deep whiff of air, letting her nostrils fill with the sweetness of these items, even if not the freshest anymore. It wasn't anything one couldn't technically get from New York City or Boston, but it was sentimental. At least one good sentimental thing she had left from London that didn't come with negative connotations. She wondered whether those negatives would ever go away.

The look on Em's face was priceless, speaking - "Is that it?"

"I do believe I have something else in here…," Logan dug deeper into the layers of his suitcase. He pulled out a children's book, knowing well what the girl liked by now, and this certainly already had the welcome effect.

"Thank you, thank you," the girl jumped at her place with the book in her arms.

"And then there's this…," Logan added, handing the girl a small velvet pouch. "But you've got to be careful with this, but maybe someday when there's a big party you can wear it. But let your mom help to put it on in that case, okay?" Logan continued.

Em opened up the little draw sting pouch that held her broch. It was a gold and blue bumblebee in fine detailing.

"Wow!" Em exhaled, completely in awe of it. "Mommy look!" she said, showing off what she'd gotten.

"It's very pretty honey!" Rory praised mouthing a thank you to Logan, while she herself had already bit into a cookie, having been unable to wait. Making Em feel like she was the most prescious girl in the world was certainly a team effort now with the baby on the way.

They both watched Em explore and admire her little piece of jewelry for several minutes. She loved the way that it sparkled in different lights and how she remembered how they'd just talked about the importance of bees at school the other day. The effect was a welcome one - making the girl feel special, and that was exactly what was needed right now.

As Em scattered off to read her book, taking her bee with her, Logan pulled out another tote, the bag having taken far too much space in his suitcase so that he'd actually ended up shipping a few of the books he'd bought by courier so everything would fit.

"And this… this is for kid number two," Logan exhaled humbly. Truthfully he wasn't sure if shopping for the baby was something Rory wanted to do by herself - maybe she had special brands and items that she wanted to get? Maybe this was something better left for nesting mothers? He held his breath, hoping he hadn't crossed some line he didn't know about.

"Logan!" Rory's voice chimed, in awe. Rory opened the bag, recognizing the brand even if she'd never stepped inside that store before. It was not like she'd shopped in London when she was expecting Em. Rory was definitely suppressing some comments on practicality - knowing many of these items needed to be washed extra gently which was likely to be a pain with a baby. But she appreciated the sentiment - they were incredibly cute and soft. "These are incredible, Logan," she said, feeling the fabric of a beige onesie on her cheek. All of the clothes were in neutral beiges, yellows and whites. This was certainly something that Jess had never done while she'd been expecting Em - Jess never liked to shop. Jess had, however, been great at assembling thing and fixing the few used items they'd bought last time. But this didn't make one better or worse than the other, they and always would be just different.

"Still some room to grow into," Logan commented as Rory without intention placed the onesie down on her bump, demonstrating well how the bump was still very small in comparison.

"Tell me about it," Rory rolled her eyes, smilingly.

"And then I got you this," Logan said, taking out a blue velvet jewelry box next.

"Logan!" Rory scolded him now… "You know you didn't have to…," she added, pleadingly.

"I wanted to…," Logan said, and watched as she opened it up to find the antique necklace inside.

"It's incredible… but this is… this is just too much," Rory said, knowing vintage when she saw one. She also knew more or less the price range for something like this. And while she loved it, despite not really knowing when she'd get the opportunity to wear it, she really did feel it was too much. It almost felt like…. She couldn't quite put her finger on it.

"Nothing's too much for you," Logan said, placing his arms around her and pulling her closed for another, longer, kiss.

"Thank you," Rory said, smilingly, trying to ignore the lingering sour feeling she had left in her gut, trying to focus on the positive of Logan being back home.


February 10th, 2006

"That dessert was so good," Rory commented as she landed on the bed next to Logan who had one of their travel books open in front of him. Both her and Logan and Luke and Lorelai had retreated into their rooms at the Vineyard after a large dinner. She was pleasantly buzzing from the wine and as it had gotten a little chilly outside her cheeks felt a little flushed, as she'd finished clearing the table outside, not wanting to leave it out there for the entire night because of birds and well.. Stan. Logan had offered to do it himself, but she'd said it was fine, wanting Logan to go over some of their travel plans that she'd been working on.

"Yeah?" Logan reflected. Logan had just gotten around to reading though, as he'd spent several minutes lighting the fireplace in their bedroom, and the room would soon be beginninng to get nice and toasty.

"Uh-uh," Rory replied. "So, what's the verdict?" she replied, sitting up, curious to see what he thought of her planning skills.

"You could be a very good travel agent," Logan said, mocking her slightly.

"Oh, you," Rory punched him playfully.

"Hey, all I'm saying is that it takes a certain type of effort to plan things down to an hour," Logan continued to tease, laughingly.

"I have not. It's just I went by estimates on how long it takes to get around Thailand on a Tuk Tuk. It's good to have estimates. And you see each day I have left several hours spare time for unforeseen incidents and leisure," Rory explained.

"Uh-uh," Logan teased.

"Hey, I survived an entire summer backpacking with my mother. I'm nothing but of the moment when I want to be," Rory defended herself, her nose slightly in the air.

"I don't doubt that for a minute," Logan assured, intertwining his fingers into the back of her hair and stretching out his neck to kiss her, that line bringing back some pretty hot memories from a certain vow renewal.

He returned to going over the list after the kiss broke.

"But I think I do want to add Sukhothai Old City in between here somewhere. It gets the most amazing foggy sunrises," Logan said, trying to write the place in their preliminary schedule with the pen Rory had tucked between her notebook.

"Sunrises?" Rory replied dramatically. "I don't know anyone who would like to get up before sunrise, not even for a pretty picture," she exclaimed, playfully.

"Who says you have to wake up, we can just stay up all night and sleep all day…," Logan suggested an alternative.

Rory loved that idea. The thought of taking walks around street markets at night, eating delicious food, boating at night with the cities all lit, moonlight talks on a beach somewhere with a warm ocean breeze on her skin, hot sticky sex at some beach hut somewhere when they couldn't sleep. It sounded divine. There was nothing more she wanted than to do Asia with Logan this summer. She loved to travel, but the thought of travelling with him was the most exciting thing in the world. Butterflies in her stomach, adventures like she'd never dare to take by herself...dreamy.

"This pen is dead," Logan said after having tried it on several different surfaces, not getting a line out of it.

"Where do you keep them? I'll go grab one," Rory suggested, still having some energy in her. Besides, she liked planning things with him and she wasn't tired enough to go to bed yet anyways.

"Try my dad's study," Logan suggested.

"Okay," Rory replied, already heading out of the bedroom.

She made it down the hall, heading to a room she'd only ever been in once when Logan had given her the grand tour when she'd been over here sometime in September for the first time. The room had the best view of the ocean.

The desk was mostly cleared, just a table lamp, a phone, and an antique figurine of a seagull, which didn't really look like Mitchum's style to her. There were shelves full of books in that room - old, new and everything in between.

She opened a couple of drawers, looking for the pen, but by accident came by a drawer holding several boxes that looked like jewelry boxes. Not a drawer-full of them, nothing like that. Just two - one smaller and one fit for a necklace of some sort. The Hermes sign on the box left little for imagination, and she felt it was too nosy to start peeking into them, so she left it at that, finding a spare pen in the next drawer. She found it peculiar how in this household things like that weren't even tucked away in a safe like it would've been at her grandmother's place.

"Got it," she declared as she returned, closing the bedroom door behind her.

Logan wrote in the location of his choosing into their preliminary itinerary and added another one, he'd in the meantime looked up, explaining it briefly to Rory as well.

"Hey, why does your dad have jewelry in his drawers and not in his safe or somewhere...?" Rory asked, hesitantly, knowing it wasn't really her business, as there was a moment of silence some minutes later. She'd at the last minute decided to phrase the question like this, not asking what she directly wanted to know - what she really was curious about was why he had stocked up on jewelry in the first place.

"Those just mean a lot more to whomever he's gifting them to than to him, I guess. And there's always the insurance, not that there's ever been a break in here. He's never been really very paranoid about stuff… He'd rather keep documents in the safe, things - not so much," Logan explained briefly.

The way Logan spoke about it - first of all considering having jewelry laying around just in case one might need it normal and secondly that clearly his father had more than one possible recipient to those gifts beyond Honor and Shira, Rory wasn't really sure what to think of it, and she tried to brush it aside. It was best not to overthink it - she figured and kept repeating to herself that Logan wasn't Mitchum. She knew what Logan had been like before they got together officially - and she also knew that his father's and his friends' role models really were the only models in any of this he had. But in her eyes Logan was so different, he'd proven to her to be different...she believed him to be different. He'd even told her how annoying it had been to hear Finn and Colin both tease and caution him every step through their summer vacation in Europe about him being a taken man and how Rory was the old ball-n-chain. Rory had found that quite amusing, in fact, still finding the concept that she'd 'tamed' Logan rather far-fetched.

But it did leave her with an alternative way of thinking towards the tennis bracelet around her wrist. It probably meant a lot less to Logan than it had to her earlier that evening. Grand gestures weren't as special to him as to their recipients. She could only wonder how much these gifts held ulterior agendas - asking for forgiveness, shedding of guilt, looking for assurance of her love for him, not knowing how else to ask for it.


AN: Please review. Love reading what you think!