"Tell me about your first time."
Her head shot up, fully distracted from the paper she was perusing. "Why do you want to know Logan? I told you about the Dean thing."
He shrugged his shoulders but kept his voice direct. "Tell me about your first time. I want to hear about it aside from the other woman thing."
She sighed and looked down at the table, like he expected her to. He knew she wasn't comfortable discussing this with him, but he needed to prove a point to both of them, and he was at a loss as to how to go about it.
"Okay, it was the night of the Dragonfly's opening, Dean and I had been talking a lot as of late, he was having problems with his marriage, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was wrapped up in a sheet trying to pick a song for us."
He narrowed his eyes at her, puzzled by what she meant. "Is that some Stars Hollow vernacular I missed here?"
She blushed but continued, "No, after 'it' was over, I got it into my head that we needed a song to remind us of that night, so I was very engrossed in proper musical selection. I blame my friendship with Lane for that one."
He wanted to keep the conversation a little bit lighter for her sake, so he said the first thing that popped into his head. "I hope you went with Highway to Hell."
She dropped her head on the table, groaning at both the inappropriateness and truth in his statement. "Logan, I still feel guilty about it. I will always feel guilty about it. I thought I loved him, I thought having sex meant he loved me too."
He frowned a little; "Sex doesn't necessarily mean love."
Here she pulled her head up and stared straight into his eyes, throwing him off-balance. "To people who never learned to separate the two, it does."
He was taken aback slightly. "What does that mean?"
She held her gaze, which he knew signified the importance of the topic for her. "I never learned to separate sex and love, and I don't think I should have either. Sex in the absence of love is empty, meaningless, a physical reinforcement of every insecurity I've ever felt. Did I try to separate them? I attempted at it, especially when we started dating casually, since I knew it wasn't fair to either of us for me to always believe the two were linked. In some ways, I needed to keep telling myself that having sex with you meant something, it meant a whole lot to me, and I thought if I could understand its message enough for the both of us, every morning the bed was cold didn't hurt as much."
He hung his head guiltily, feeling a wave of sadness wash over him as he remembered their first few nights together. "It meant something to me, Rory. I was the exact opposite, I never learned to equate sex with love, and to me they were two distinctly different entities. Please don't think it didn't mean anything to me, that I liked leaving your room in the middle of the night. I was just scared that it wasn't just sex anymore; I never had to deal with having feelings linked to that. Just sex I could handle, making love was really really scary to me."
She turned the tables on him, playing her own version of twenty questions. "When was the first time you made love?"
He scrubbed his face, tugged a bit at his hair and bit his lip. "Honestly? The night we had that awful dinner with my parents, where they kept going on and on about how I couldn't marry you."
She snorted. "Why on earth would you pick that time?"
He got defensive: "Hey, you asked me, I answered, and now I will explain. You are the first girl I have run away from and come back to, voluntarily. When my mother started ranting about how you couldn't marry me, I got pissed that this was yet another thing they were trying to decide for me. So when I basically ditched you on campus to clear my head, I evaluated my choices. I realized it was my choice to come back to you, and it was something I wanted apart from everyone else. Being with you that night was my first experience with making love, because it stopped being about sex. It was about how you made me feel, how I made you feel. Why, when was yours?"
"The night I told my mom I wasn't going back to Yale."
"And you belittle me for my choice?"
She shot back, "Hey, you asked me, I answered, and now I will explain. Don't misunderstand me; it was never just sex with you. But that night, I was so broken, and all you wanted to do was put me back together again. That's when I gave my whole heart to you; you proved to me that you stopped running."
They both sat silently, contemplating the ground that had been covered between them. Their communication varied; sometimes it was teasing, sometimes it was pointless banter, but rarely had they both let their guards down so completely during daylight hours. There was something so raw about the sunshine; it gave them no cover or shelter from certain things, like the darkness did. He came to the conclusion that now their secret-telling reflected both of their personalities: nighttime for Rory, easing her way into accepting things, admitting things, always shy, and daytime for him, the bluntness easier without shadows.
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What he had hopes for as an idyllic summer in London with Rory was quickly becoming an adventure through different airports. Fortunately she had been able to travel with him, sightseeing occasionally, but usually attending meetings with him, for which he was grateful. They had honed their system; the pair of then worked well together, Yale had proven that. Without proper introductions to the various staff, most had assumed Rory was an editor that he liked to bring along on his visits. She preferred it this way, never being one to capitalize on her name, or his, for that matter. In fact, she only permitted a lengthier explanation of their relationship after she had visited the office, at some social function they were required to attend. He remembered the last dinner they had with the editorial board of their German investments.
"So, Fraulein Gilmore, how long have you worked for the Huntzberger Media?"
"Not that long, I just graduated from Yale, but my first internship was with Mitchum at a paper my sophomore year."
She glanced at him and they exchanged secret smiles, both thinking about her tirade against Mitchum and the disastrous internship. Now they could laugh about it, but it had been a long and arduous journey to find humor in what was once a very bleak situation.
"And what paper are you employed at?"
She danced around the question a little, allowing only that she concentrated on whatever presented a problem, relying on the Hong Kong merger as her primary example. Inevitably, someone would ask about her marital status, noticing her ring, usually instantly if she had the Huntzberger one on if there was a society crowd. Like always, she looked to him to smooth over the conversation. The pair of them relied on a subtle signal if they were separated at these events, which happened far more frequently than he liked. The first time it happened, her uncertainty was palpable, but only noticeable to him though. She had been cornered by a particularly aggressive socialite wife, whose eyes had nearly hit the floor when she grabbed Rory's hand and turned the ring around so that the stones were visible. Rory balked at the woman's forcefulness, frantically searching for him to rescue her. Somehow he managed to swoop in and extricate her from the crowd of crows that had gravitated towards the blinding object. With his arm around her waist reassuringly, she relaxed into his strong embrace. Later that evening, after they had returned to their suite and gone to bed, he woke up to find the sheets cold and weak light emanating from the under the bathroom door. He found her slumped in the Jacuzzi tub, a blanket pulled around her, muffling the soft tears that fell.
"Hi." She mumbled when she looked up at him, hastily trying to wipe away tear tracks. "Did I wake you?"
He smiled wryly as he motioned for her to scoot over so he could climb into the sunken basin. "No, the unfamiliarity of being able to actually move more than four inches in bed did. Want to enlighten me as to why you're in the tub and not trying to push me out of bed for sharing the covers?"
"Um, the tub looked comfy?"
"Rory."
She looked away, suddenly fixated on the waterfall faucet. Quietly, she spoke: "When will I be good enough? When I sit behind you, thinking about how much of your money I can spend this time, or when I gossip at parties with the other society wives about which secretary you're sleeping with this week? I don't want to do that; I want to be good enough right now."
Her eyes were glued to the faucet, unblinking, while her fingers traced the hem of the blanket. He figured it would be best to match her tone, soothing her little by little so she wasn't provoked. "You are good enough, you're better than those vultures, trust me, I wouldn't have looked twice if I thought you were like those awful girls."
She shifted minutely to look at him. "Logan, your mother hates me, Your grandfather hates me, your past conquests hate me, inevitably, half the world will hate me and I have no idea what I've done or what I can do about it. I don't want you to suffer because I'm inept."
It hit him, the perfect argument against her. "But you're a Gilmore, you went to Chilton, had a coming out party, your ancestors came over on the Mayflower! You were the editor of the most prestigious college newspaper, and you forget two important things: I love you and my father loves you. And let's not forget who planned the most successful DAR event last year?"
She weakly smiled, mildly protesting him. "I served mac and cheese, hardly society-appropriate food."
"Hey, even Hartford socialites get sick of foie gras and caviar."
She continued matter-of-factly; "Your mother still hates me."
"Ace, if my mother liked you, I would have run away faster than you could say 'that lovely Fallon girl'. Besides, do you honestly want my mother to like you? My gold-digging, social-climbing, boozehound of a mother?"
She admonished him; "Logan! That's your mother you're talking about!"
He shrugged. "It's true, isn't it?"
She shook her head. "Every girl wants their mother-in-law to like them, it just seems like I'll never win with her; I go to Yale, I'm a career woman and will embarrass you, I drop out and plan parties like my grandmother, I'm a gold-digger who only wants your money."
"Why should it bother you so much that Shira Huntzberger doesn't like you?"
She threw up her hands in frustration. "Because, Logan, she's a) your mother and b) Shira Huntzberger. And not to quote my grandmother, but there are people and then there are Huntzbergers!"
"I'm still missing it. Are you or are you not going to be Rory Huntzberger?"
"Well, yes, I guess Lorelai sounds better though, right?"
"So, you implied that Huntzbergers are different than other people, right?"
"According to Hartford society, yes."
"Well, Mrs. Soon-to-be Lorelai Huntzberger, I'm not seeing the problem."
"Your mother hates me and nobody thinks I'm good enough!"
"I think you're good enough, Honor and Dad think you're good enough, our entire Eastern European division want to build a fracking shrine to you, so believe me when I say this, you are better than a lot of people! How many people can say they were mentioned in the Wall Street Journal before they graduated college?"
"Elian Gonzalez."
"Can you stop fighting me for like two seconds and acknowledge that we're lying in a hotel bathtub at four in the morning?"
She shrugged nonchalantly and settled further into the recessed backrest. He moved closer to her, pressing his cheek to her temple. "Do you want the bottom line on this?"
"Hit me with your best shot."
"Okay, I love you, you love me, we're good together, and whatever anybody else thinks doesn't matter, and we'll fight to get through this together."
She pulled back to look him in the eye, maintaining a straight face while telling him "Love is a battlefield."
"And we are young, Miss Benatar, but the night is not, so let's get some sleep, okay?" He took her in his arms and they lay together, falling asleep in the bathtub.
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He hated that his life had become a blur, marked by meetings, business dinners and blaring alarms. He stopped looking at his calendar, depressed by the multitude of activities that outlined his days. He hadn't yet gone so far as to have to schedule couple time with Rory, but between the two of them, it was out of sheer will that they could find more than a scattered hour or two together. He felt bad that she didn't have an official title, well, even an official job yet, and he knew he was being selfish keeping her with him when he traveled. She hadn't been back to see her mother, or her town, or even her goddaughter in months. He wasn't sure if she was really happy in London, so far from everyone. He knew she even missed Friday night dinners, although his only evidence was a few sighs every now and then. They both were busy; one quick glance at his Blackberry inbox alerted him to that fact. He resolved to clear her schedule and send her home for a good, junk-food coma courtesy of Lorelai.
He turned the lock, hearing the metal on metal echo through the darkened apartment. His calls for her were met with silence, so he headed into the kitchen to search for a note. There, pinned on the fridge, in between take-out menus and random flea market magnets, were her instructions:
-Meet me at the Chelsea House, wear tuxedo pants and a shirt, I sent your jacket to the cleaners and I'll have it with me-
Shit, he thought, he forgot about this event. He rushed around to get ready, wracking his brain to remember if she told him about it. He figured it was probably some stuffy fund raiser, although the party planners chose well with the Chelsea House. Shoving his keys back into his pants, he hurried downstairs to grab the car he called.
He walked in the club, searching for some indication of where the event was being held, but just stumbled through dark hallways. Finally, he flagged down an employee, who conferred with the manager and informed him that the doors he needed were to his left. Sighing inwardly at the unnecessary actions of the club employees, he mentally prepared himself for what lay behind the door he gingerly pushed open. The inside was dark, which only added to his utter confusion. With a sharp hissing noise, the cavernous space exploded with light from thousands of sparklers, illuminating the once-hidden crowd. Thunderous cheers and hoots followed, 'surprise' reverberating in his ears. The lights were flipped on and Rory rushed towards him, glee written all over her face. Catching his puzzled look, she laughingly kissed him and said, "Surprise! Boy, we thought you'd never get here!"
"Ace, what is all this? And why the surprise?"
Her face fell as realization hit her. "Oh Logan, you can't be serious. You forgot your own birthday?"
Now it was his turn for facial contortions brought on by sadness. He looked around before mumbling a quiet 'I guess so'.
"Well, looks like this party was timed perfectly to act as an intervention. Now here!" She gestured for him to put on his jacket, which was a full-length tailcoat lined with red satin. As he adjusted the coat over his shoulders, she pressed a top hat and gloves in his hands.
"What am I wearing? Better yet, what are you wearing?"
"You think I'd throw a party without a theme? I'm hurt that you don't think I am creative enough to do more than organize a fancy-schmancy dinner."
"I didn't say that, you did. I merely wanted to inquire about the oddity of our ensembles."
"Well, welcome to your life, also known as a three-ring circus. And what does every circus need?"
He followed her train of thought, undisturbed by the ease in which he understood her logic. "So I'm the ringmaster?"
"Bravo, Sherlock, Barnum and Bailey would be proud."
The pair was interrupted by Finn, Colin and Lorelai rushing over to join in their fun. He took in the motley crew's outfits; Finn and Colin wearing comically large ties and small hats, Lorelai dressed in a leotard with a sparkly headdress on. He shifted his gaze to Rory, who was clad in a red outfit with crossed straps and a small umbrella over one shoulder. "So you two decided to send in the clowns, but Lorelai, you look like a reject from the Tropicana."
"If it wasn't your birthday, I'd yell at you, but for a present, I will merely correct you." She stepped back with a flourish, effectively drawing attention to herself. "I am the great Flying Wallenda!"
Rory snorted behind him, her arms now wrapped firmly around his waist. "You do know that the Flying Wallendas are a family of tight rope walkers, and not just one person, right?"
"Save it, you used a children's story as your excuse!"
"Hey, it's juvenile literature, rooted in historical fact, thank you very much!"
"Yeah, Ace, what are you?"
"I happen to be Mireille, the famous French wire-walker. It was one of the books I got for Honor when she had the baby."
"Well, as long as you found justification. This party is amazing, Ace, thank you, I love it."
She blushed, matching the red sequined design around her eyes. "It's your birthday, Logan, something which some of us find hard to forget."
He heard a whip crack somewhere behind him; spinning around, it revealed the rest of his family. He spotted Honor, Josh and the baby, and behind them, much to his surprise, his parents, in some semblance of a costume. Of course, their outfits probably were outrageously expensive and authentic, but they were dressed nella thema for the bash and he appreciated it. Laughing, he extended his arms to take his niece from his sister and brother-in-law. "Honor, Josh, you guys, what are you doing here? Mom, Dad, you too!"
His sister shook her head, her curls bouncing around her shoulders as she cooed at her daughter. "Rory called us a while ago to clear a date that we all could make it and Emma's doctor said she could fly, so here we are! Don't you just love what I'm wearing?" She spun around, almost knocking Josh over in the process.
"Let's see, you have a large whip and crazy construction boots with heels on, so you're a Trump employee?"
"Ha, ha, Mister Funny Man, I am a lion tamer and of course, my sweet cub as my lion." Logan looked down at the tiny bundle in his arms, tucked into a mass of soft fur with a tail trailing bows. "So where's your chair? All good lion tamers carry chairs. And why a lion tamer?"
"I called Cartier and had them make me a chair pendant", she gestured to her necklace, "and I thought there was no better way to utilize my Manolo Blahnik boots again, since a respectable amount of time has passed since Jennifer Lopez ruined them in that moronic Jenny from the block thing, anyway, Emma looked too cute not to dress her up."
Rory came up behind him, only seeing Honor and Josh. "Is that my godbaby? Logan, are you trying to steal Emma from her godmama? That is not okay, even on your birthday. Bring her to me! Godmama commands it!"
He passed the squirming girl into Rory's arms, where she immediately broke out into a giant grin when Rory showered her with kisses. Spinning around with the baby, Rory and the rest of the group were interrupted by Mitchum's chuckle. "Hello son, happy birthday, hello Rory, or should I say godmama?"
Rory abruptly stilled when she spied Shira next to Mitchum. "Mitchum, Mrs. Huntzberger, so good to see you, glad you could make it. Excuse me; I think Emma needs to be changed."
Honor spoke up quickly; "Oh, I'll go with you Rory, I love having someone to chat with again in the bathroom."
Seeing the two women depart, Josh mumbled something about finding the bar and fled, leaving Logan with his parents.
"Mom, Dad, I can't believe you came!" He hugged his father, and then moved to kiss his mother politely on the cheek.
"Of course we came, Logan, it's your birthday. It wouldn't be proper to just mail your gift, now would it?"
"Of course not, Mother, what was I thinking?" He bit back his true thoughts, that she mailed birthdays 11-17 and thought that was perfectly acceptable."
His father leaned in to whisper softly in his ear. "I'm sorry about her, I'll go find Rory and say a real hello to her. Do you think you can manage her for ten minutes while I go round up the sane members of our family?" Changing his voice into a louder tone, he turned towards Shira; "I believe I'll join Joshua at the bar, may I order you a drink, Shira?"
"Belvedere on the rocks, Mitchum. I suppose you'll leave the present for me to give, right?"
"You're much better picking out cards, dear. I'll return shortly." Mitchum exited after pecking Shira on the cheek.
"So, Mom, have a nice flight over? Where are you staying?"
She waved her hand airily; "The usual small talk I see. So is there anyone else besides your friends here? Did Rory extend the invitation to the Gilmores or the Haydens?"
He curled his lips in distaste; of course his mother was only interested in the guest list to see how many society points she could tally. "No, Richard and Emily sent their regrets and Rory isn't on speaking terms with Francine."
"But she is a Hayden, is she not? Has a paternity test ever been performed? I mean, that girl was conceived when her parents were mere children, I'm not sure I see the family resemblance."
"Mother, it is my birthday. My fiancée, that girl, you know, the one I love, invited you because she believes it is important to have family at celebrations. If the guest list had been left up to me, you would have been excluded. My advice to you; learn to like Rory for more than her bloodline. Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe the people that I actually want to see on my birthday are waiting by the cake." He turned on his heel swiftly, almost colliding with his father returning with the drinks. "Logan, Shira, what's going on?"
"Mom was just being her usual self, you know, despising Rory because she's smart, talented and motivated by love instead of blind pursuit of money."
"Shira," Mitchum spat out menacingly, "the fact that our entire family likes Rory more than you should serve as some sort of warning to you. You will like my daughter, or you won't be welcome in the Hartford house anymore."
Logan saw his mother's face flame up, the redness trailing down to her expensively decorated collarbone. "What do you mean your daughter, Mitchum? You only have one daughter, Honor, unless you're finally admitting your infidelity and breaking the pre-nup."
"I mean Rory, Shira, Logan's fiancée and my daughter, the minute she said yes to Logan's proposal she became part of this family, and you will behave towards her."
"Honestly, boys, must you be so dramatic? I just wanted to wish Logan a happy birthday and talk to Rory about the wedding. I thought she might want to use Sophia, since Honor loved her so much."
Both Logan and Mitchum remained silent yet dubious; they couldn't attack her since she technically gave them no cause, but every gesture she made screamed her disapproval. Rory unknowingly walked straight into the family conflict, obliviously bouncing the baby in the air. "Hey, Dad, the little lion was looking for her grandpa."
Logan silently caught her eye, willing her to stay quiet and feel his support. Unfortunately, Shira struck again before the two men could intervene.
"Rory, dear, how are wedding plans going? You just have to come to Hartford for a while, planning a wedding across the Atlantic must be so difficult, especially with all that work you must have. Tell me, where are your bylines? They must be published in the editions I don't have delivered to the main house."
The Huntzberger men snorted indelicately at Shira's sickly sweet tone and casual jabs at Rory. In that little exchange, his mother skillfully insulted Rory's party planning as well as writing. If Shira had been in the media business, Logan would have insisted she be on Huntzberger staff: she was far too lethal to be classified as an enemy. Adopting a forced casual stance, Rory shifted the baby to her opposite hip and squared her shoulders. The tension between the two women crackled in the air, and Logan moved to place his hand on Rory's back, rubbing his thumb along the exposed skin.
"Actually, Shira, thank you so much for your concern about the event. You're so right about it!"
Logan saw the shock that registered on all three Huntzberger faces. "She's right?"
Rory turned and gave him a look that he read as 'please, give me a little credit here.'
"Of course your mother is right, Logan! She planned Honor's spectacular wedding. Shira, I could really use your help finding good bartenders for the wedding. I'm sure you know where to get a man who mixes a good martini, right?"
Oh, his Ace was good. Beneath the pasted smiles, he could practically hear the barbs being launched: 'inept gold-digger who will ruin our family' vs. 'boozy, bored socialite who could get lost finding her way out of a paper bag'.
"Now, Rory, is your mother helping you, since you're soo busy in London?"
Even Logan felt the insinuation made, like a punch to the solar plexus. Rory merely cocked her head to the side and smiled: "Actually, my grandmother has been instrumental in the whole affair, apparently, it's been the talk of the DAR for months, I'm sure Constance and Nora have had little else to discuss, you know."
Logan was impressed by her composure; Shira had insulted her birth and the fact that her bloodline was pockmarked by that scandal, and Rory shot right back with the fact that Shira still couldn't get into the DAR while Rory was practically born into it. Glancing briefly at his father, the two men had a wordless discussion about how to break up the women. Emma, however, chose to do it for them. Letting out a loud wail, Rory instantly concentrated on her, forgetting about Shira. Pushing back the costume's hood, Rory soothingly brushed the little girl's head, pressing their cheeks together, whispering softly in her ear. Logan's heart did a strange flip; he wanted the baby to be his own daughter, be the love between Rory and himself. Rory always said that she wasn't any good with babies, citing Sookie's pregnancies and her awful tale of Gigi's mother's labor. He knew better though; her discomfort surrounding babies stemmed more from than the situation rather than the child. Watching her with Emma, he saw the love that radiated from her eyes.
Shira interrupted the moment, her eyes cast over with an indecipherable gleam: "Rory, why don't you and I take Emma to find Honor and maybe have some girl time?"
Logan started to protest but Rory leaned back to silence him. "Sure, Shira, that would be wonderful. Would you like to hold Emma? I think I've spotted Honor over with Colin and Finn." Rory passed Emma to Shira, and the two women set off to gather up their third.
Logan and his father exchanged confused glances, both speaking at the same time.
"Did you see that?"
"What the hell just happened?"
"One minute they were hurling insults and the next they're playing nice and talking about girl time?"
"The mind of a woman is a terribly difficult thing to understand. Let's go to the bar."
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He was in a meeting, trying to keep his mind on the task at hand, but couldn't help his eyes from wandering out the conference room windows to steal a glance at Rory. They had had their worst fight last night, and although they slept in the same bed, all was not well when they went to the office this morning.
"Mmm." She had no idea how sexy her little mumbles were to him, especially when they came from his simplest actions. He thought she deserved a foot rub after the ridiculous publishers' dinner they had to attend last night, with her once again surrounded by socialites who wanted to talk about the latest handbags.
"So, we haven't talked about babies in a while."
She sat up, knocking his hands away from her toes. "Well, that was blunt. What do you want to talk about?"
"Let's have one."
"I'm generally in that camp, you know that, we've talked about names with practically our entire families."
"No, I mean, let's have one now."
"Logan, no. We aren't married yet, and I do not want to find out the implications of a Huntzberger baby born out of wedlock, and I am not going to be fat in my wedding dress!"
"Why can't we? I mean, you haven't even said anything about any dates, you fed my mother all those lies about how far the planning was, so why can't we just elope or something and then nine months later we can have our own baby!"
"God, they're not like Netflix, Logan, you can't just order one and then send it back when you're finished with it! If we have a baby now, it means for the next eighteen years, we are directly responsible for it, and then for an entire lifetime after that."
"I know that, Rory, don't you think I know what having a baby means?"
"No. I really don't think you do, Logan, otherwise you wouldn't want to rush into this, you'd want to wait and plan out the best time to have one! It's not like having a baby is going to be like an LDB stunt, there's no such thing as pretend fatherhood!"
"Oh, like you'd really be an expert about that, it's not like Lorelai didn't spend your entire childhood convincing you that you didn't need a dad."
"Do not bring my mother or my upbringing into this, you arrogant ass. Yes, for you, a baby might be all fun and games, but what about for me? I have maternity leave to consider, how my assignments will be affected, how my entire career will be shaped! Add to that the fact that once we have kids, I highly doubt anyone in Hartford will expect me to work, and I am finally in a position where I can have the career I want."
"So this is all about you, isn't it? It always is. I can't believe you're so selfish, Rory."
"Oh, great, you're the one lecturing me about being selfish? I'm sorry, Mr. I had my life handed to me, Mr. Sleeps with anything with legs, Mr. is that the bottom of the Scotch bottle?"
"You know, I never thought you would be so petty, Rory, but I guess you're still a Hartford society bitch at heart, right? Like mother like daughter?"
There wasn't a verbal response to his last retort, but the smash of the glass picture frame hitting the wall behind him.
"Really cute, Ror, you throw like a girl."
"Logan! I need you to not be in my face right now. I'm going to say a lot of things I don't mean and I do not want the baby discussion to be a fight that breaks us up. So I'm going to go take a bath and you're going to, ugh, I don't even know, but you will give me an hour to cool down, an hour which I think you need as well."
As she shut the door, Logan sank to the floor beside it, wondering how a simple conversation had escalated into the gigantic fight.
When he had finally crept into bed much later, she had constructed a pillow barricade between their sides and was firmly wrapped in all the blankets, leaving him bare sheets. He noticed, though, how she shifted towards his body when the bed creaked slightly under his weight, and how her hand snaked across her feather Maginot to find his. By the time he opened his eyes, her side was neatly made up and a terse note on her pillow informing him that she had gone to a doctor's appointment and would see him at the office. He knew that she wasn't really and truly mad at him, just like he wasn't mad at her, but they needed cooling off and an evaluation period to think about the points the other had brought up. Maybe he didn't really understand the demands of a baby, but he knew that his overwhelming love and enthusiasm for his own kid would compensate. He knew that if she had a baby right now, it would be difficult to manage a career, and how much value she placed on 'making something more' of herself. If only he could get through her head that she didn't need to place all this extra pressure on herself to prove that her mother's decision to have her at sixteen wasn't a mistake; that she was worth Lorelai's sacrifice. He pondered how he could make her see that, but then realized she had to find that out on her own. At the moment, she was busying herself at her desk, stacking paperwork around her like a work barrier. His own meeting adjourned and he started to move out of the room towards the elevators to head up to his own office. He saw Paul gathered with some male staffers he didn't recognize, and he noticed one of them was gesturing towards Rory, bunkered in at her desk. As Paul's eyes narrowed slightly, Logan thought whatever work chit-chat was occurring would be benefited by his presence. He walked up behind Paul in time to hear the unknown man lick his lips and say lasciviously "She looks right for a mid-day tumble, eh?"
Paul started to shake his head and warn the poor sod, but before he even opened his mouth, Logan pounced.
"Excuse me?"
The man turned and looked at him, obviously unaware that he was treading on very unstable ground. "Yeah, mate? The boys and I here were just discussing which one of these birds we fancied. I prefer that tiny little brunette, looks like her mouth isn't just for words, eh?"
It took every fiber of Logan's self-control to not punch the idiot. How dare he even think of Rory like that?
"You have exactly one hour to clear your desk and vacate the premises before I call security."
"Who the hell do you think you are, mate? Logan bloody Huntzberger?"
"Yes," he sneered, "I am Logan bloody Huntzberger, and that brunette you happen to fancy is my bloody wife. So I'll repeat myself again, slowly, clear your desk and vacate the premises before I have security remove you."
"Logan." He heard the venom in her voice and winced while he turned to face her.
"Yes, Ace?"
Her eyes filled him with fear; they burned with a white-hot anger he had rarely seen on her before.
"Did you just fire this man? For no reason other than he said something crude about me?"
"Yes, Ace."
"Are you serious?"
"Very."
"You ass! He didn't deserve to be fired! So what, he made a stupid comment about me. You can't go around firing people just because they say something you don't like!"
"Since I'm in charge of this paper, actually, I can do just that. I fired him for sexual harassment; I would have done the same thing if anyone else had made the same remarks about any other employee. The fact that he was discussing you just made the matter more urgent."
She stomped her foot in frustration at him, although they both knew she had no real reason to be angry at him, save for the fact that he was playing the jealously card a little more zealously than the situation required. "Ugh. You disgust me. I'm taking the rest of the day off. Think about things, would you? You rushing to action without even a second of hesitation makes me wonder what will happen with the baby!"
She spun on her heel and strode determinedly towards the elevator bank, leaving colleagues scurrying in her wake. The imbecile who had caused this mess slinked away, probably heading to gather his things before Logan had another meltdown. Logan wasn't upset about the fight, he was more perturbed by what Rory said to him, that he was impulsive and headstrong and somehow that translated into him not being ready to be a father. Fine, he thought, he could play her game as well. He missed Paul's congratulatory slap on the back as he stalked to his office to convince Rory he was anything but serious, both about their life together and about a future with a baby.
He found her in the home office, busy typing away since she had left the office early for the day. "I know you think that I'm being rash and impulsive and that I don't understand the demands of a baby, so I did a Rory thing and I made a pro-con list. Now before you can even butt in, yes, you're right, having a baby right now isn't the best idea. We're not married yet, and I don't really want to know the implications of having a child out of wedlock, even though I couldn't care less about it. If it were up to me, we could just elope and be done with the whole thing, but we can't. And you're right; you're in a really good place with your career, and I can't ask you to put your dreams on hold for me just because I want a baby right now. So the baby issue is shelved right now, okay? Maybe we can revisit it after you win a Pulitzer."
She looked up at him, smirking at his rambling and said simply; "I'm pregnant."