Synopsis: A few weeks after he walked away at graduation, Rory Gilmore discovers she is pregnant. What does their life look like twelve years after the birth of their first child.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls
AN: Alright, well...this has been in my head, so here it is. Read, review, enjoy. This is the only story where the pandemic will be touched on. So the first real chapter will take place in March 2020 (What a time to be alive).
Prologue: Here's to you, Daddy
Logan Huntzberger was pacing, of course he was pacing. His life was about to change in a way he had never imagined. Sure, he had imagined kids. Having kids one day. He had imagined getting engaged and getting married and then somewhere down the line having a couple of kids and a dog. He continued pacing, positive that the same repetitive path he was taking would cause premature thinning of the carpeted area. He also had to question who made the decision to carpet this waiting room. He had to assume on at least a couple of occasions people had been sick on these floors. Surely linoleum would've been simpler to clean. He shook his head at the thought and looked at his watch. He had left the delivery room a few minutes earlier at Rory's request. She had felt beyond uncomfortable at the notion of anyone else seeing her while her cervix was being checked and so she had sent her mother for a snack, and she had sent Logan to the waiting room.
As he paced, he took a moment to consider how things were, what the reality of his situation was versus the way he had planned it, the way he had thought about it when he had asked Rory to marry him nine months earlier. When he had asked her, he had imagined their life. He imagined an avocado tree, he had imagined California and sunshine, and then one day in a few years he would have imagined a little blue eyed, blonde haired girl running around the yard with a golden retriever chasing behind her. He supposed some of those things could still be true. There could still be a golden retriever, he hadn't bought one yet though. There could still be a head of blonde hair and blue eyes running around the backyard, although it would be a boy and not a girl. There was still an avocado tree. But there was no them. Logan could still remember vividly when Rory had called him. He had changed his number of course. Too afraid after their breakup that she would be able to break his heart all over again. So when her number popped up on his Blackberry, he had been surprised. He would find out later that it was his father who gave it to her. It was then, between sobs that Rory told him she was pregnant. The breakup was still fresh. Having only occurred some eight weeks earlier. Rory explained that she was now about ten weeks pregnant. She had put off her late period as being due to stress, but as the days ticked on, she had gone to Planned Parenthood on one of her campaign stops where it was confirmed. Rory Gilmore and Logan Huntzberger were having a baby. He had of course offered to fly her to California, but they both knew she would decline that offer. His next instinct was to offer to fly wherever she was. He would meet her and they could make a plan. She spoke first though.
This doesn't change anything…we just…we need to decide what to do next.
Rory had spoken between sobs. They had stayed on the phone for hours that night. Rory in a hotel room somewhere on the trail, he had never actually asked her exactly where, and he had sat in what was supposed to be their bedroom in Palo Alto. There were silences, moments that all they could hear was each other breathing. Then there were suggestions. Ideas of how to make this work. The things they could do to figure this out.
This is your choice Ace, but I'm in. I will be a good dad. I will support our child, I will help you. I will be present.
Her retort, as he had expected was something about how could he support them if he was on the other side of the country and she was living on a bus. After a few hours though it was decided. They were going to have a baby. They would figure out how to have a baby and not be together. In the weeks and months that followed, Rory had gone back home to Stars Hollow and Logan had flown back a few times to meet up with her. He had gone to appointments and they had figured out what they thought they could do in terms of being friends.
The decision that was hardest, one that had only been made a few weeks earlier was that Logan wouldn't move home. Rory had been insistent. She had seen how much he had grown. How being in California had given Logan a sense of purpose he didn't have before. He had fought her, of course. He had said he could find a job in New York, or Hartford, he could go back to Huntzberger, he wanted to be with them. She had refused. Instead they had made a plan. A plan where Logan would never go more than two weeks without seeing his son. Sometimes that meant Rory would fly to Palo Alto and stay in the house with the avocado tree, and others it meant that Logan would arrange to work from Hartford on a Friday after flying back on Thursday to spend the weekend with the baby. Once the baby was a year old, they would revisit plans to have Logan take him on his own for weekends. There were lawyers, of course, but in responsible way, a way that kept everyone's interests protected.
All of that seemed useless now as Logan paced the waiting room. His phone buzzed in his pocket. A message from his father indicating that he was on his way. What was? 1960? Did grandparents still come to wait for the child to be born? Rory and Logan had discussed their plan, of course. It was to have a bit of alone time with the baby before introducing him to any other family members. They wanted to bond in their own way, the little family unit they had created before everyone else got involved. Logan looked up when he heard footsteps. It was the nurse. He smiled at her nervously and stopped his movement, waiting for her to speak.
"She's good, she's asking for you," the nurse told him. Her hair was pulled back tightly in a ponytail and the name tag on her scrubs had told him earlier that her name was Heather. She seemed to be Rory's favourite nurse so far.
"Thanks," Logan nodded his head and took a breath, steadying himself before he went back in. He walked back into the room. Suite 1508, although, having spent a good portion of his life in various suites, this was not something that deserved that title. The lighting was garbage, the small window gave a view of a parking lot. There was a small bassinet that looked like an incubator without the heat lamps on it. Rory's bag tossed in the corner as she furiously wrote in a notebook. "How ya doin Ace?" he asked, a bright smile on his face, he toned that down when he saw the way her eyes turned to daggers when she saw him.
"How am I doing?" Rory glared, closing her notebook and placing it more forcefully than she had intended on the rolling table behind her. "There is a bowling ball trying to escape a very small space and it hurts and I have been doing this for almost a full day and I feel like we," Rory paused and put her hand on her round stomach, wincing at the pain. Logan took steps forward and offered his hand which Rory gladly took and squeezed the life out of. "You did this to me!"
"I'm sorry," Logan gave her a sympathetic smile as the contraction ended. He handed Rory the chapstick that she had been using all day because her lips were dry. "What did the doctor say when he was….y'know?"
"When he was elbow deep in my uterus?" Rory shot back and Logan shrugged. "Soon. He says I'm at a seven, and it should be soon which is funny because I know I was never interested in medical school, but I am confident soon is not actually an amount of time!"
"Can I get you anything?" Logan asked, another contraction was hitting her based on the way her body tensed and she tried to breathe calmly through it.
Rory shook her head, trying to focus on her breathing. "It hurts," she told him, tears in her eyes.
"I'm sorry Ace," he told her again, leaning forward to give her a kiss on the forehead.
The next hour and a half went by slowly. Too slowly for his liking. At some point Heather, the nurse, had told him that his parents were there, and had also told Lorelai that her parents were there. At Rory's request, Lorelai had gone to manage the two couples and await the arrival of Christopher, meaning that when it came time to push, it was just Rory, Logan and a team or doctors and nurses. It felt fast, Logan would always think that part went fast, although he would never dare to tell Rory who would assure him for years to come that it was an absolutely traumatic experience that seemed to last forever.
"You can do this Ace," he told her. It was the last thing he would tell her until tiny shrieks filled the air and Rory leaned back, exhausted on the bed. A slimy, red and white human was placed on her chest and it felt worth it. To both of them. All of the pain, all of the struggle of the last nine months, the uncertainty, the confusion, the hurt…it felt worth it because the second Logan set eyes on his son, he was certain he could feel the earth shift. "You did it," he told Rory. He stared at her for a few minutes, watching as Rory gushed over the tiny face, his tiny fingers and tiny toes, Logan just watched. He waited. He knew his time would come, and he would have a lifetime of moments like this.
"Daddy," Heather finally spoke after a few minutes had passed. She confirmed of course what they already knew, "it's a boy."
