Notes: This is actually a record. I've never written a second chapter to anything this fast before in my entire ten-year long tenure of doing this whole fanfiction deal. I blame you guys-you were so encouraging for another chapter, I couldn't help but comply.
I went back and forth for a while on who to make Rory's roommate. I know Stephanie is overused and highly cliched in Rogan fanfic, but I didn't think Rose or Juliet suited my purposes-nor was I ever too fond of them-and I didn't want to create an entirely new character. There's enough AU in this story as it is. I can assure you that the path I'm taking her on in this story is one that you won't see coming.
Rory and Jess' backstory is something that is going to be revealed through character conversations and flashbacks as time goes on. It's something I think you will all enjoy learning more as Logan learns about it, rather than having me simply tell you straightforward before that. I hope you end up agreeing.
Disclaimer: Gilmore Girls, its characters, plot lines and premise belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino, Warner Brothers and their affiliates. There are some lines taken in this directly from 5x03, 'Written in the Stars'. I do not own anything detailed in this story, and I make no monetary profit by these writings. The song lyrics depicted in this chapter come from the song 'Entropy' and belong to the bands 'Bleachers', 'Grimes' the writers of the song itself, and 2015 RCA Records. All rights reserved to respective parties.
Everything I've ever known is wrong
Oh, what's the matter with me?
Did I even want it?
Did I just assume that's how it had to be?
Their house had always been small. They liked it that way from the very beginning—cramped, close quarters, with sharp corners and soft edges, a feeling of comfort embedded within the thin walls. It was a security blanket—something you wrapped tightly around yourself on cold, lonely nights that would alleviate whatever pain you were going through. It had served her well in the past.
Tonight, that blanket felt like it was suffocating her.
After her mother's many insistences on wallowing their sorrows in long hours of movies and junk food—("Come on, Ror—just Goodfellas, then. You've lived in New York now—I'm sure you got all up close and personal with the mob scene, and, at the very least, you can shed a whole new perspective on Henry's mindset.")—Rory finally convinced her mother that she was too tired to gorge in cinematic therapy, more emotionally than physically, but she wisely left that last part out.
She lay in bed for three hours pretending to be asleep until her mother finally relented idly flipping flimsy magazine pages in the living room to crawl into bed herself. Once she was absolutely certain her mother was asleep, she pushed her bedroom window open, unhooked the latch—("Don't think about Jess, don't think about Jess," her mind supplied unhelpfully.)—and stepped out into the muggy August air.
She wandered around town for a while, ignoring the 'No loitering' signs that Taylor had been campaigning to put on every street corner since she was a baby. She wasn't loitering, she was lamenting. They were two very different animals.
Finding herself on this particular bridge wasn't accidental. She had a lot of pleasant memories of Jess that came from this bridge, and she aspired to ruin them all with the simple flick of a lit match. Now, she wasn't preparing to burn the bridge down—she hadn't gone that insane. It was metaphoric. Lighting a match, watching it burn down to the stub and throwing it in the lake was meant to rid her consciousness of any regret, of any uncertainty—of Jess. It was meant to rid her mind of anything Jess had ever meant to her.
He hadn't gone after her. She half expected him to call, text—something, but in the thirteen hours she'd been home, nothing. Her phone had buzzed once two hours ago to alert her of an alarm she'd forgotten to turn off, and the beep had sent her scrambling into a frenzy to check it immediately, only to be stabbed with the soft, slow, torturous knife of rejection.
She wonders if that's how Jess felt when she slammed the door in his face.
Gritting her teeth together in anger, she reminds herself she doesn't care what Jess thinks anymore. She doesn't care how he feels. She doesn't care what he does. She doesn't care about him at all anymore.
She lights the match, stares at the luminous flame flickering against the pale moonlight and she can hear her own voice in her head, so light, so young, so naïve, so different—"Why are you only nice to me?"—and she squints her eyes shut. She pictures him in the back of her mind—cool, practiced indifference, his patented leather jacket and his muss of dark hair, the smell of stale cigarettes on his fingers as he combs them through her hair, and she throws the match in the lake.
And with that single match, she throws away all of it—all the unspoken anger, all the passion and frustration and resentment, all the emotion. Everything he is, everything he was—everything they were, and everything they will now never be.
Rory Gilmore throws every emotion she has into that lake, and when she looks away from it, there are no tears. There is a darkness in her warm, blue eyes that give them a harsh edge that doesn't belong on her face.
She quirks her lips in wry amusement when she remembers Jess' suggestion so many moons ago—"You want to push me in the lake? It's cathartic, I hear."
Well, what do you know, she thinks sarcastically—Jess was right about one thing.
Did I really need it?
How can something so free feel so rehearsed?
"If you'd given me more than a days notice, I would've gladly kicked scab-face ballerina out to the curb, and with a gleeful sort of honesty, really. Someone has got to tell that girl that if she wants to aspire to the New York Ballet Company, she's going to have to develop a set of coordination skills, and oh, I don't know—some talent. Today's youth is so depressingly disillusioned about how great they are. All Mommy and Daddy ever told them is what a great little champion tyke was because he played fair on the field and didn't knock somebody's elbow out of their sockets. That's the only way to get ahead in this world, Rory—you know that, don't you? Bend more than a few elbows without regard for how they'll heal, and you'll go far, kid. I mean, really—"
"Paris," Rory interrupted forcefully, weary and a little frightened. A full year without Paris Geller had certainly reversed the desensitization process she'd endured during three years of high school. She had known Paris to be abrasive and difficult to deal with for long periods of time, but she never remembered her voice being quite so shrill.
But perhaps that was just Rory's reaction to everything after a full day and a half without a cup of coffee.
She was walking around the Yale campus, a few bags stuffed haphazardly under her arms, a laptop bag swung around her shoulders, her phone resting dangerously between right shoulder and reverberating ear, her newly minted I.D. card wedged between her teeth.
"As I was saying," Paris continued smoothly, as though the interruption had never occurred, "I would much rather have you as a roommate than suicidal, talentless ballerina 'I only eat nuts for breakfast' Barbie, but you gave me no warning. Housing would never allow it. They've assigned you a roommate already, haven't they?"
"Mhm," Rory muttered in assent, "A Stephanie something-or-other. I'm going to meet her now. Look, can I call you back? We'll meet somewhere once I get settled in, 'kay?" She hoped the lilt in her voice sounded sincere, because the words that came out were anything but. She didn't have any intention to 'hang out' with anyone for a good, long while.
Paris, not one for heartfelt gestures, simply bid her an abrupt goodbye, telling her to call back when she had time. Rory breathed in an audible sigh of relief. Normally, she was a fairly good people person, but, as of late, her charitable, friendly personality had diminished and withered into one of cold apathy. Her mother had noticed it immediately, but had wisely kept her mouth shut—Rory needed to grieve, and if this was her daughter's way of grieving, so be it. She'd be back to her old self in no time.
Rory wasn't sure she shared the same conviction.
She fiddled in her bag for the room key, but before she could produce it, the door swung open and a gaggle of giggling girls exited, eyeing Rory with interest but none of them saying a word to her, brushing past her easily. What the hell had she gotten herself into?
Knocking on the door, she called out, "Stephanie—" and paused, what was this girl's last name again? She fumbled with the piece of paper that had her room assignment on it, but before she could make out the name smudged in dark ink at the bottom of the page, a blonde girl appeared in front of her, a tentative smile on her face.
"Vanderbilt," she supplied in amusement. "And you must be Rory Gilmore."
"I am." Not offering anything else, nor feeling particularly chatty, she pointed to the two doors on the left side of the room and raised an eyebrow in inquisition. "Which one's mine?"
Stephanie seemed offended by the clipped nature of Rory's tone, but briskly pointed to the one closest to the common room windows. "Make yourself at home," she said, "After all—this is your home now."
Rory made a murmur of assent and that seemed to raise Stephanie's bristles even further.
For once in her life, Rory couldn't say she particularly cared that was being rude to this girl. All she wanted to do was bury herself in a book and forget that people outside of old, printed paperback pages existed. She was so done with people lately—the whole hermit lifestyle was starting to have its appeal. What she needed was this girl's cooperation, not her friendship.
Stephanie grabbed her jacket, seemingly deciding that if Rory wasn't going to talk, she'd talk for the both of them. "Well, I'm headed out. Enjoy yourself, there's food and wine in the fridge, and if you dig deep enough, there might be some vodka left too. I wouldn't drink that though; Rose will have your head. I'll be back 'round 1 tonight, so I'll try not to wake you."
"You won't," is all Rory responded with a small smile—a brief gesture just to expedite this painful process. Stephanie's frown was openly apparent, but her voice was still sweet when she bid her goodbye.
Rory sighed, flopped onto her new sheetless bed and flipped open her worn and weathered copy of 'War and Peace' and didn't look up again for several hours.
Halfway into the sixth chapter, she began to feel bad about the way she had treated Stephanie just now. She had no right to project her feelings of anger onto undeserving people, and she resolved to apologize tomorrow.
Right—it would get better. This whole experience would get better. But, first and foremost, she and Tolstoy needed to get very reacquainted very fast.
But it hadn't gotten better. When Stephanie returned the next day, Rory's apology had fallen on deaf and offended ears. So, Rory being the self-conscious person that she was, took the other girl's snide attitude and condescending tone personally and retreated once again to her bedroom.
If she wanted drama and hostility, she would've roomed with Paris and talentless ballerina girl.
Calculate the entropy,
running out of energy,
a lack of love or empathy,
leave me lonely.
Four days later, they were all having drinks at the Pub. Logan was nursing a heavy dose of scotch after a rather aggressive conversation with his father and Finn and Colin were hitting on the same girl at the bar.
"So, Steph—how's the new roommate?" Logan looked up immediately—Steph had a new roommate? What had happened to… Lauren? Larissa? Louisa? What the fuck was that girl's name again?
Clearly, by the sneer of Stephanie's lips, Rose's question had been answered non-verbally.
"She's—I don't know, she's this anti-social, holier than thou hermit-girl. All she does is hole up in her room and read god knows what, does god knows what. After I was perfectly nice to her, she gives me this passive-aggressive apology like it's some high honor to be graced with her repentance." She paused briefly, a spark of anger in her eyes—Logan knew that look very well. Steph hated being disliked, by anybody—and this girl had clearly given the wrong first impressions. Steph was known to hold grudges longer than lifetimes. "She's an uptight robot, anyway—it's not like I wanted to be friends with her in the first place. Just a little more than monosyllabic mutterings would've been preferable."
Tuning them out completely now, Logan blinked back a blinding headache coming on full force. The formidable Mitchum Huntzberger had reamed Logan out for sinking the yacht in Fiji—that, he had expected. What he hadn't expected was his father's insistence that he finally get serious about 'the business'—what, were they mafia bosses now?—and take an internship position at one of his Stanford papers. The last thing Logan wanted was to be stuffed away in a sweaty, oppressive office with a suffocating tie, shuffling around papers and making coffee. Fuck, he was awful at making coffee.
He'd never had the balls to stand up to his father—not on matters like this. He couldn't care less about stock meetings and the dying art of journalism. If it was up to him, he'd be an entrepreneur. An architect, a lawyer, a businessman, carving his own way with his own legacy. Hell, he'd be a fighter pilot. A barista. A guy selling wool knit hats in Central Park.
As long as he was anything but Mitchum Huntzberger Junior. He shuddered at the thought, taking another large gulp of scotch.
Finn's heavily accented drawl broke the haze of Logan's reverie—"What has got our dear Steph all angered and stressed? Is it a boy, love? We'll kick his ass, won't we men?" He clapped Logan on the shoulder, and he gave a remarkably well-faked smile. Colin stood on the other side of Finn, just as boisterous and just as drunk.
"No, it's my roommate. She's a stuck-up priss with no life and, apparently, she doesn't even have the common decency to pretend to be cordial with me."
"Ah, sounds like this girl would be perfect for Colin," Logan joked with a wry smile, trying to rid himself of incessant and unproductive thoughts of his father. Colin playfully took a swing at his shoulder and Logan ducked in an exaggerated movement, laughing his worries away as he did so.
"Guys, this is not funny."
"Of course not," Rose sympathized with a sly smile; "Finally, there's one person in the world that doesn't love Stephanie Vanderbilt, and it's got you seeing red."
"Fuck off, Rose," Steph said simply before she got up and marched to the bar.
"I really want to meet this girl," Finn proclaimed happily as he took Steph's vacated seat and downed the rest of his beer in one gulp.
Rory had met Marty at the bookstore about three hours earlier, and although she had a rather mean streak going lately, this guy seemed to melt it right off her. For the first time in weeks she was genuinely laughing and enjoying herself—this guy was like a puppy dog. Cute, harmless and endlessly entertaining. Not her type, certainly—well, no one was or is going to be her type for a long time in the aftermath of the Jess debacle—but she could see them being friends. Friends, good—she needed a few of those. She'd been stuck in a rut of self-destructive pity and scorn since she'd left New York, and it was high time she dug herself out of it.
They were conversing about Marty's Anthropology class when someone bumped into him and they both turned to face head on a posh guy in a red sweatervest and khakis with an entourage following behind him. "No seriously, you couldn't see me there?"
Rory felt her anger flare up again—just when she thought she could get some relief and fall back into her usual routine, some rich Chilton-esque jerks had to add fuel to the fire.
"Not everyone's staring at you, Colin," a heavily accented Australian with messy dark hair and a lackadaisical attitude about him leaned forward, smirking with genuine mirth.
The blonde guy draped disgustingly over his girlfriend spoke now, pointing to Marty condescendingly—"Hey, I know you. Wait, wait, don't tell me—I've seen you in a uniform of some sort."
"Maytag Repairman," the Australian supplied with amusement, his eyes dancing with mischief.
Rory was so busy being angry at these pretentious assholes that she hadn't even thought to look at Marty's expression—when she did, she could clearly see his trepidation.
"I've bartended for you—for some of your parties," Marty shifted awkwardly under their scrutiny, and although it was not Rory's place to intervene, she was about one snide comment away from giving these guys a piece of her mind.
The blonde's face lit up at this, finally realizing where he knew Marty. "That's right, you have." Turning to face Rory now, he exclaimed, "He's a talented man—makes a kick-ass margarita." Rory only nodded skeptically, refraining from saying anything but narrowing her eyes in blatant dislike of this guy's pompousness.
"It's good to see you again, what's your name?"
"Marty," he answered quietly; "Uh, this is Rory."
The guy only acknowledged her for a half of a second, but it was more time with his eyes lingering on her than she would've liked. He and his snotty attitude made her feel dirty and cheap. She'd bet all the money in her purse they made Marty feel similarly.
By the time they left, Marty looked visibly defeated. "I kind of hate those guys," he admitted sheepishly.
"Really?" Rory asked sarcastically; "Can't see why…"
Calculate the entropy,
Lit a path in front of me,
Don't need a friend or enemy,
just leave me lonely.
"Who the fuck does he think he is?!"
Steph stopped short in the doorway, staring at her roommate, sitting cross-legged on floor, a cell phone in her lap, waving her hands frantically and the undeniable signs of tears welling in her eyes. "He hasn't said a damn thing in weeks, nothing—not a letter, a text, a phone call, morse code, pigeon mail—and all the sudden, this!" She gestured to the cell phone in her hand and it nearly flew out of her grasp with the force of her gesticulation. "Come back to New York, Rory; I love you, Rory—you can't walk out on us, Rory. Here's a lesson for you, Jess," Rory choked back a sob in her throat, "When something is broken for the twentieth time, you don't try to fix it, you let it go. Seventeen messages, for God sakes—seventeen."
Still staring incredulously—was this the same girl that had said less than thirty emotionless, monosyllabic words to her the entire week they'd lived together?—Steph sat down on the couch and proffered, "Ex-boyfriend, I assume?"
Rory sighed, looking up at Steph with a defeated smile. "Ex-everything. Ex-boyfriend, ex-city, ex-school, ex-life. I uprooted my entire existence, sullied all my relationships, let him change everything about me because I fell in love with the idea that he could be it for me."
When Steph didn't say anything, Rory continued—"And I know I've been awful to you, I don't expect you to care. You were trying to be nice and I was a first rate bitch. I just have so much aggression and no one to take it out on, so I've been taking it out on everyone. I'm not normally like this, I swear. I'm a pretty mellow person, although occasionally I can be kind of high-strung, although not as much as Paris." With a chuckle, she added, "No one is as high strung as Paris. But yeah, I took out my frustration on you and that was wrong and I really meant it when I apologized and there's just a lot I haven't dealt with yet and I just moved back here and everything's new and foreign and God, I've been here for a week and I don't even know where the library is," she gasped at this sudden realization as though it were a cardinal sin. "I have to—"
Steph grabbed her arm as soon as she stood up and yanked her back down to the couch. "My God, would you take a breath? What you need is a glass of wine and a chill pill, girl."
Visibly relaxing into the couch a little bit more, Rory shifted her legs awkwardly and tried to regain enough confidence to retain eye-contact with the other girl. "Stephanie, look—I haven't been myself in a long time, and I've kind of just been spiraling into this dark, angry state because it's the only way I know how to let out all this aggression I've never had to deal with before. I'm sorry I took it out on you, but I hate hostility and I'd really like to wind this back a week and start over. Can we do that?"
Steph's anger couldn't help but subside at this. Despite her initial impression, Rory was kind of endearing when she wasn't being a tense, one-note bitch. "On one condition," she answered, her voice gravely serious. Her austere expression quickly mollified into a beaming smile and she laughed, "Call me Steph. I don't go 'round letting people I like call me 'Stephanie', and if you want to be one of those people, you'll have to abide by that rule."
Feeling a huge weight lifted off her shoulders, Rory smiled—"You've got yourself a deal."
Did I let it bleed me?
Did I hit it back until it bled itself?
By a week later, Rory was feeling remarkably better about the Yale situation. She'd called her Mom and made movie-night plans for the weekend, Sookie had sent her a care-package full of all sorts of delicious chocolates and she even had a standing dinner to see her grandparents who she hadn't seen in nearly a year. Hell, she'd even made it to the library several times despite her full schedule of classes. And boy, what a library it was. Quiet, serene and filled with all she could ever imagine wanting to learn. The library at Columbia was a shoebox in comparison. She was starting to get the eerie sensation that if she hadn't factored Jess so strongly into her pro/con lists, she may have ended up here a year earlier.
But she didn't let herself ruminate on that. It was high time to get back to being Rory Gilmore, and not Jess Mariano's disenchanted girlfriend.
Her first class on Wednesday was at eight-thirty in the morning, and she was a little bleary-eyed and uncoordinated so early in the morning, so when she ran headfirst into someone coming out of her dorm room, she yelped in surprise.
"Ah, geez!"
"Sorry, sorry—we're just looking for Steph."
Seriously… this guy didn't remember her? She looked at the ponce in question with disgust in her eyes, remembering very clearly their first meeting with Marty the week earlier.
"Yes, we need a heavy dose of aspirin and a dark room to lie in to get away from this ungodly light God heaves upon us every twelve hours—see, it was quite a party they had upstairs last night, love." And there was the goofy, spirited Australian. What, did these three assholes run in a pack?
The blonde smirked, "You'll have to ignore my friend, he means no harm, he just has to learn that Guinness and blondes don't mix." ("Redheads!" the Australian piped in from behind them.) "So… you're—uh… are you the roommate?"
"You're friends with Steph?" She asked, disbelieving. Sure, she and Steph had gotten off to a rocky start but now she considered the girl to have a little more sense than to run around with these idiots. "I would've thought she'd have more sense than that."
Logan tilted his head in inquisition now, not exactly offended, but definitely intrigued. Besides, Steph never let anyone call her that unless she genuinely liked them, and from last he knew, Steph and her roommate were in the middle of World War III. "You don't like me—you don't know me, but you don't like me."
"I know you," she spat out harshly.
"You do?"
"We met last week, with Marty—he bartended for you. We met, at the coffee stand—you ridiculed him for being 'the help'—any of this ringing a bell?"
"Yes, of course I met you with Marty—it's nice to see you again…"
"Rory," she supplied angrily.
"Nice to see you again Rory, you're looking well. Angry works for you."
And he wasn't the slightest bit kidding. This girl was making a lot of assumptions about him, sure, and she wasn't the first to do so, but she was certainly the first to have the gumption to call him out on any of them, especially to his face. It definitely didn't help that the stubborn stance she was holding herself with and the way her cheeks flared red when she was angry was a major turn on. She definitely wasn't plain to look at, that was for sure. With those striking blue eyes, creamy skin and heart-shaped face, she was definitely a sight that he'd like to see twice.
"I'm not angry, I'm just irritated."
"By me? Because I forgot for a moment who you were?"
Rory couldn't believe the gall of this guy—did he hear the sound of his own voice?
"No, because you speak to people as if they're below you."
"People?"
"Marty," she explained slowly.
"Ah, your friend Marty."
"We're not friends, he was just showing me around. Look, I've known a lot of guys like you—rich, arrogant, think they own the world because Daddy can get them out of whatever trouble they think will make them seem the most reckless; it's idiotic, it's shallow and it's pretentious. You can waste away your life by yourself, fine—that hurts no one but you. But don't you dare go around bullying others into feeling inferior because they don't have a fancy name or a prestigious family."
Logan stared in awe—this was Steph's roommate? She sure as hell didn't present the way Steph had described her.
"What did I say that was so bad? I said 'Hello' and I think I said 'He makes a kick-ass margarita."
Rory sighed—it was way too early in the morning for this. "It's not what you said, it's how you said it."
"And how did I say it?" Logan bantered back, beginning to enjoy this.
"Like Judi Dench," she declared, a twitch of the smallest smile on her lips. He couldn't help but grin—she was enjoying this too.
Oh yes, there was something thick and tangible between them here, and it wasn't all anger.
"Ouch," he supplied in amusement.
"Marty is not inferior to you just because he doesn't have your family."
"I agree," Logan responded despondently—this girl didn't know the half of it. In Logan's eyes, Marty was superior for not having to deal with his family.
"And just because you pay somebody doesn't mean you can speak to them as if they're beneath you," Rory asserted, making sure this guy knew she was not going to fold on this matter.
Now Logan just wanted to see her riled up for the sake of it—this was far more entertaining than Finn's Passion of the Christ on his best day. "Actually, the fact that this is a free country means that I can speak to anyone in any manner in which I choose. However, the rules of a civilized society may frown upon an obvious show of snobbery, so if that's your argument—"
"I don't want to have an argument, it's eight in the fucking morning and I have to go to class!" She snapped, having had enough of this.
"So you concede," he grinned, enjoying having won this little victory. He had a feeling this was only the first battle in an impending war.
"I have to get to class. Enjoy your hangover," she waited for him to supply a name…
"Logan," he answered with a smirk.
"Logan," she repeated with an amused lilt to her voice. Her lips curved into a cruel smirk; "And if I ever hear you talking down to someone again, trust me, this will not be the last time we discuss this."
"I think we've got a serious debater in our midst," he teased.
"Oh, you've seen nothing yet, Logan," she threw back at him before she slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away.
Finn clapped Logan on the shoulder, whistling as Rory walked away. "That's Steph's roommate?"
Logan could only make a murmur of assent as he watched the sway of Rory's hips walking away.
"The anti-social hermit who only speaks in monosyllabic mutterings?" he clarified.
"That would be the one," Logan responded with a laugh.
"Well, goddamn," Finn breathed out in a sly smile, he joked, "I'll bet two thousand dollars she's one hellcat in bed."
Logan let out a boisterous laugh, feeling entirely re-energized by his verbal sparring session with Rory. Rory—he liked the way her name formed on his tongue. It was unique, but it wasn't trashy. "Finn, my friend, I'm afraid that's a bet I can't take. It looks plainly obvious that neither one of us is ever going to find out."
How the birds can sing a tuneless song?
How can they stay in the sky?
Maybe they're just screaming—
Maybe it's not music and it's all a lie.
Notes: So... what'd you think? I'm nervous about how you guys are going to feel about this one. I still don't know how I feel about it. :/ I'm still not entirely confident with writing Rogan at the moment.
Thank you for reading, and please leave a review if you enjoyed, have comments, suggestions or constructive criticism. :)