A/N: Thanks for the nice reviews and the not-so-nice. I'll take it all baby! Sorry to those who were confused to the ending of the last chapter. Tristan didn't die. Grandpappy Dugrey died. AND they didn't sleep together in the pantry. I myself, cannot fathom vertical sex in a pantry so last chapter heavy kissage only.

Sorry for the wait. But in between chapters I finished highschool and started my uni degree, lived, breathed, loved etc… I lost my way with this fic for a while, I wasn't ready to write this chapter… but it was the only way I could see to direct the plot. Thanks especially to those who reviewed in the last couple of months, it induced guilt and got me off my arse.

Thanks eternal to the wonderful Elaida, my beta, who should be rightly credited for a lot of the dialogue in this chapter. She wastes too much of her time and talent helping me out of scrapes and repositioning my commas. Thank you, dear friend.

Thanks also to Kat86 for the lovely PM yesterday. Screw exams. This chapter is dedicated to you.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS STORY IS NOT LONGER CLASSIFIED UNDER A T RATING AND THIS CHAPTER IS RATED M FOR SEXUAL SITUATIONS. IF THAT OFFENDS, PLEASE DON'T READ ON.

Chapter 4: A Spectacular Fall From Grace

The sun blazes through the tree overhead. It litters the balcony tiles with floating sun-filtered forms and casts a dappled light over his detached figure.

He is a pale shadow of his usual self. Inertia has taken him over; unfurled his fists, unclenched his jaw. There is nothing of his familiar fire, he looks small and lost, only sad eyes lay testament to the years he has aged since he received the news of his grandfather's death on Wednesday.

The cushioned chaise lounge is reclined completely but he is sitting up, poised rigidly on the edge of the stained timber frame. Face upturned, eyes narrowed in the glare, he stares unblinkingly up into the canopy. He isn't crying, only folded in with anger and self-pity. He won't give himself over to the luxury of tears.

She watches him as he rips himself away from his thoughts and closes his eyes heavily, the black material of his blazer creasing into uneven folds at his elbows as he lays his head in his hands.

His performance plays through the glass door like a black and white movie, flicking through each feeling like photographic stills.

The glass panes reflect her own agitation; her eyes burn with the picture of his private grief and her small hand rests unsurely on the handle.

She wants to walk him out of hell, holding his hand. This inherent need to be always saving someone, to save him, wins over her reluctance.

The track of the sliding door leading from his bedroom to the balcony squeaks as she pushes it back. He listens to the soft click of her heels across the tile and looks up at her approaching form – startled, displeased, irritated --all these things. And as she moves to stand above him in the modest black dress she wears, her face is the very picture of concern.

She glances at his stately profile; the handsome features, disheveled hair and the sad eyes, a cerulean blue that makes her think of his namesake.

"It was a beautiful ceremony," she murmurs inadequately. The words ring out inert and disconnected into the abyss of their surroundings; the muffled sounds of the wake downstairs, the far-off clink of glasses and low indistinct voices floating up from French doors below.

His eyes study the mosaic of the balcony tiles but the funeral plays out behind themHis mother, her stifled sobs, heaving against his father's chest but all the while inwardly calculating their portion of the inheritance; her newly acquired Boston Townhouse-- about removing the living room interior wall, to open up the space.

They were a lot alike really, he muses bitterly, his mother and Rory. Their cries, be it feigned pleasure or projected grief, both hitting false notes.

And when he thinks back to the way Rory had kissed him into oblivion at that party, pleading incoherencies before she pushed him away… her dirty words and tacit promises of something more still suspended in the stale air of the pantry, he gives over to anger, cold and hard.

"I never knew you'd met my grandfather," he says sharply, indignantly, and sits up a little bit straighter.

She balks visibly at the cut of his words; the sting of the implicit 'you shouldn't be here' and 'I don't want you here.'

He is thinking of the last time he saw his grandfather. He'd gone to his office after school and talked to him for hours. The old man had asked about the girl he'd mentioned last time. He'd remembered that passing reference; something about a project for government class and her clown doughnuts… and he'd asked about her.

"She won't have you? Doesn't she know who you are?"

"I think that's the problem."

"She really is a keeper then."

If only she could be kept.

Tristan had forgotten he'd even told him. The thought should make him smile and miss and talk in his head. Instead, he levels cold eyes at her and she takes in the square set of his jaw.

She pulls nervously at her dress. The hem skims well past her knees but she tugs at it anyway.

She falters. "I came with my Grandparents. I tried to find you downstairs, I-I- wanted to say how sorry…"

"--Spare me the sympathy act," he seethes.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Her voice catches and that quiet smile on her face cracks.

"Come on, Rory. What are you doing here?"

"I… I came for you," she implores and he can't help but think that she's trying to convince herself just as much as she's trying to convince him.

"Why, you looking to pick up where we left off? Sorry, but the pantry isn't going to be too private right now. With the catering staff going in and out. But maybe that's what was missing last time. An audience for your little performance."

He laughs cruelly and her eyes prickle with tears.

"Well, I thought you might need me to? Want me to-"

"You thought wrong."

She flinches.

He hated her. Yes, he did. He hated her. He loved her too, but it was a hard hating kind of love.

"I'm sorry. I'll go then," she manages with surprising vacuity, turning on her heels, staggering to the glass door. She wrenches at the handle to drag the door open and makes it halfway across the plush carpet of his room.

Something rips through him and suddenly he is standing behind her. His hands, both urgent and hesitant at once, reach for her, spinning her round to possess her. His lips brutally find her own and the kiss is frenzied, warping time. Morphing, shaping, changing everything she knows. She feels tiny hairs she didn't know existed, prickling in their follicles and her lungs ache with stale air. She knows she should want to resist; to pull away or to purse her lips against his delicious onslaught but she can't.

She is filled with this hard aching need, for him, for how the world could be, for how they could be, but aren't. So, she plays pretend. It's so easy, playing pretend, when there are red leaves and bird songs and such pliant lips. Button by button, peeling back his blazer, his dress shirt. There's always more to strip away.

Layer after layer, shimmying out of that modest black dress, modesty shot to hell. It was so wrong, but wrong in all the right ways.

She feels herself descending slowly, a spectacular fall from grace, down, down, down.

She sets him on fire as she kisses him hard on the mouth. Collapsing onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, she hovers above him, floating face down. Her long hair is a curtain, sweeping across his face, as she takes him inside of her with hesitant hands.

He moves over her, settling into the ache between her thighs. She dissolves under his touch, his callus hands tracing the contours of her person, the rises and falls, cupping softly at her breasts.

They don't speak. Not like last time. Words are wasted breath. Silence is more profound. And he wants to make it burn so hot that she will feel exactly what he feels. He doesn't need words. All that is really said between them is the low guttural sound he makes when she touches him there. And that sharp intake of breath she makes at the sudden stab of pain deep inside her, as he slides in deeper. He adjusts his positioning and touches her softly, in silent reassurance. She bites down on the pain and grabs fistfuls of his hair, pulling him closer with a feverish kiss. He can feel his blood moving, so much heated blood, and fingernails raking across his back. He breaths unevenly in her ear and his fingertips dig into the skin at her hip.

She seems luminous in the descending daylight, like she's radioactive as he pounds into her, long strokes that leave her wanting. Her body yields to the cadence he sets and under the cotton of the sheets he makes her glow in the dark. Her breathing starts to fall in short rasps and she stares up at the ceiling. Hot silk is stretched tight around him and she arches her back feeling something surging inside of her, a kind of thrumming and she's stretched so thin that she's going to break, teetering on the brink, suspended between awkwardness and euphoria.

Stars collapse and time goes slow as he pours into her, taking in her mouth and submerging her silky moan as she peaks. Her legs buckle and she feels an exquisite sensation seize her. Velvet muscles of soft walls contract around him, he feels her fall apart in his hands and he knows he won't want to find the pieces to put her back together again.

The pleasure fans out, sweeping over her in a flood, ebb and flow, ebb and flow and she wished she had written the English language so she could say exactly how she feels, to paint this exquisiteness with words… she feels like her bones are melting into the mattress, she feels as if she's spinning off the edge of the earth and everything weighs less than nothing. She squeezes her eyes shut and makes herself believe that he doesn't hate her… and that she doesn't hate herself.

The darkness steals over the sky and he takes her in amidst the tangle of bed sheets; the dampness of her hair from the exertion… the tiny kissable dent of her bottom lip, the way her feet tuck around his, and her slow steady breathing as she sleeps. He draws a soft line on her cheek with the bulb of his thumb and she unconsciously moves deeper into the folds of his arms. The longer he watches her, the more the pleasant numbness fades away, and suddenly all he is left with is the clammy heat of her body pressed up against him and then the embittered realization that history is repeating. She'll run. She'll hear the call and she'll run. He feels world-weary and squeezes his eyes shut, finding surface comfort in the embrace, her head resting on his heart and her hands in his hair.

When he wakes an hour or so later, she is sitting up, pulling on her black heels and fixing the strap tightly around her foot. He recovers his clothes, lying crumpled on the plush carpet next to the bed. In those few minutes, they skillfully avoid eye contact, busying themselves with buttons and zips and buckles and invisible lint. He tugs on his dress shirt and she attempts to smooth the wrinkles out of the once modest black dress. She gets to her feet, limping ever so slightly as she crosses the room. She stops at the doorframe, but doesn't turn around. Her fingers wrap around the handle and she is unable to hold in her shaky breath.

But her wordless sigh carries with it all the weight of the unsaid things.

And, as the door clicks closed, he feels her move further and further away.

AN: So much for holding his hand Rory… Geez… ;)

So, comfort sex isn't the solution it promises to be… the road to "something more" for our young lovers is full of potholes and sticky tar and rocks and glass and other pointy road-dwelling things that puncture the proverbial tire in the journey to reconciliation along the highway love. However, to get them there faster, you must review. If we were to continue the stupid road/car analogy, reviews are like petrol/gas… they 'fuel' my muse… they start the ignition of the next chapter… Yes. I win the award for the most horrible analogy EVER.

Next chapter: The 'cycle' continues but the next location is more than a little unexpected and unconventional. Please place your bets in your reviews and if you get right, you will get…

…Bragging rights and the acknowledgment that you possess some kind of psychic ability.