A/N: I don't own GG.

What Do You Want from Me?

"Superlatives?" Rory asked. She glared at the three boys, her hands on her hips and the tilt of her chin bespoke her irritation.

"Of the highest kind; exaggerated in language or style; of the highest kind; extreme – "

"I know what a superlative is, Logan," Rory growled over his litany.

Logan threw his arms up in surrender while the other two boys laughed behind their hands. "Alright, Ace. Didn't mean to throw you, just wanted to help clarify."

"What I don't know, Logan, is why I need to compile a list of superlatives for my article," Rory continued.

"I can't tell you," Logan answered.

"Can't or won't?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes."

"Both."

"You wouldn't tell me even if you could."

"Exactly."

"Mean."

"Adventure, Ace. Just doing my part to increase your quota."

"Logan, after this weekend, I'll never need to do another adventurous thing in my life if you keep 'surprising' me."

He smiled at her use of air quotes. It still amazed him how easy it was to fluster her, to make her live her life based on moment-to-moment decisions.

"Look Gilmore, you can spend the next two hours obsessing about the possibilities of your feat of glory or you can come and enjoy the mindless, but over the top activities we have planned," Colin offered.

"Come," Finn said as he offered Rory his arm, "Let us go and join the festivities. You are too sober for a soon-to-be Brigadier."

Rory smiled as she linked her arm through Finn's. "You're goal in life is to see me drunk, isn't it?"

"Everyone should have a goal," Finn told her with a wink. He led her way from Colin and Logan. There was a plan; divide and conquer. Colin lost the coin toss, so he was stuck with Logan while Finn was fortunate enough to be the one to talk with Rory.

"It's okay to like him, love," Finn told Rory once they were a good distance away from the stage.

"Him?"

"Ah, now don't be coy, love. Even a drunkard like me can see the sparks between you and Master Huntzberger," Finn chastised.

"Sparks? There are no sparks, Finn. Logan and I are friends. We decided that last night," Rory told him.

Finn led them over to a buffet table. Arranged on the table was a spread that even Sookie would have been proud of, but she would have rearranged the food to fix the flow for the table. She reached down with her free arm and filled her plate with pastries. The food tasted like a dream. Finn handed her a glass of champagne, and knowing the persistence he would demonstrate, she accepted it without a fuss.

"Call it what you want, love," Finn said once she'd taken a sip of her drink. "Eventually being friends won't do anymore. Logan's a good guy; known him my whole life."

"Why do you care?" Rory finally asked the question she'd been contemplating all weekend. Colin, Stephanie and now Finn all seemed overly interested in the status of her…relationship with Logan. She wondered if the three of them were going to decided what her dowry would look like. Would she be worth half of the place in the Hamptons? Or at least the little house on Cape Cod? She shook the absurd thoughts from her head. She couldn't even contemplate dating Logan, let alone any sort of lifelong, legally binding arrangement.

"Logan's different around you. I know he's stuck his idiotic head up his arse, but when his affliction passes, you two could have something," Finn told her.

She'd never seen Finn this serious. Even when he'd been acting as the master of ceremonies, there had been that slightly goofy glint in his eyes. Now, he was deadly serious.

"Finn," Rory started, not sure how to word everything she needed, but feared saying, "Logan can't be my boyfriend."

"I know."

"Then why is everyone acting like…cupid?"

"Just because he can't be your boyfriend doesn't mean he doesn't want to be your boyfriend," Finn informed her.

She had no response to Finn's statement. She wanted to refute it. She wanted to confront Logan about it. She wanted to forget Finn had ever said it. She wanted to believe it. Ultimately, she decided to simply ignore it. Logan couldn't be a relationship guy, that was his decision. If he wanted to be her boyfriend, he'd had his chance to announce that last night. He didn't. Chance gone. She'd given him the opportunity, she'd offered him half of the friendship cookie…he'd settled for just friends. A small voice in the back of her mind mocked her, told her she was delusional; she knew the chemistry was there. The chemistry had been there with Dean, too. Acting on that urge would have been disastrous; same as it would be if she allowed herself to be spontaneous adventure girl with Logan. She knew what it was like to be dismissed by a boy when it was convenient for him to do so. Jess had taught her that lesson, and she wasn't going to put herself in a situation where she knew the guy would bolt at the first spook. Jess had been her crazy, spontaneous boyfriend; the one she could never quite figure out, the boy she couldn't keep up with…and he'd just left her.

Finn looked down at Rory. She'd been far too quiet for far too long. He felt like a complete and utter jerk; he felt responsible for the desolate look on her face. Rory Gilmore had her own demons to deal with; he wondered if she knew how much she and Logan had in common.

"It's time for me to be the target, love," Finn said as he led her to the group. "I'll let you shoot."

A quizzical frown replaced the melancholy on Rory's face.

There was a giant mat where the boys who leapt off the table landed. Several hundred yards in front of the mat, other boys stood with paintball guns.

"Oh my God," Rory exclaimed once she realized what they were doing. "You're going to let me shoot you with a paintball gun."

"Yes, yes I am."

"I can't shoot…I've never shot anything before. A deer hit my car once, and that has nothing to do with shooting, but I've never been hunting or shot guns or seen guns and why would you want someone to shoot you with a paintball as you fly through the air like a crazy Jules Léotard?"

"Human skeet shooting…haven't you ever heard of it, love?" Finn asked as he took a paintball gun from one of the other tuxedo-wearing gentlemen.

"I don't think anyone outside of this group has ever heard of it, Finn," Rory answered with a small shake of her head.

Finn moved around behind Rory and placed the gun in her hands. From the way she fumbled around with it, he knew she'd never shot anything, including a slingshot. He helped her bring the butt of the gun up to her shoulder and showed her where to look in order to aim properly. He then helped her mold her fingers around the trigger at which point he could feel Logan's eyes burning through the back of his head. If he didn't know better, which he did, he'd call Logan jealous.

"I'll take it from here," Logan growled at his friend.

Finn smirked before turning around. "All right, I'm bored. I want to be a target."

"You're always a target, Finn," Logan told him. It wasn't normal for him to react so – violently. Finn wasn't interested in Rory; she wasn't a redhead, and Logan knew this. When he'd seen Finn standing behind Rory, whispering in her ear something inside him had snapped. The only sane thought in his head involved getting Finn away from Rory.

He relaxed once Finn was in line with the other idiots who thought it was a brilliant plan to leap into the air before being pelted with paintballs. He also usurped Finn's earlier position behind Rory. Unconsciously, one of his hands had landed on the curve of her hip while the other helped her hold the rifle steady. He moved a bit closer, not that there was much space to begin with, to make it easier to whisper directions in her ear.

"When Finn gets up there, he'll yell…something. You aim, and squeeze the trigger – don't pull it. Before you fire though, yell pull – that's Finn's cue to jump."

Unable to speak, Rory nodded. She could practically feel Logan's lips on her skin as he whispered in her ear. "Just because he can't be your boyfriend doesn't mean he doesn't want to be your boyfriend." Just as Stephanie's words had haunted her, Finn's now haunted her too. She was pretty sure that the way Logan was holding her broke the "just friends" barrier, not that she had a whole lot of practice, but she'd never felt anything like this when she'd been around Marty…and she'd fallen asleep on his bed. It also hadn't excepted her notices that Logan had materialized right when Finn was showing her how to use the gun. Also, she could assume with a more than average amount of certainty that Logan's voice had held strong traces of jealousy when he'd addressed Finn. The thought made her smile and caused a warm, fuzzy feeling to envelope her. For a brief, almost nonexistent moment, Rory considered calling Logan on his "just friends" stance, but knew she would spook him and ruin the moment. It was a reckless decision and she should be shoving him away from her as fast as she could, but she didn't want to…she just kept reminding herself that these actions, these small, harmless actions, were actually…harmless – which they weren't.

"In Omnia Paratus!" Finn yelled.

"Moment of truth, Ace," Logan whispered in her ear.

They both ignored the deeper, multiple meanings behind his statement. Instead, they both focused on firing a paintball at Finn. Rory adjusted the rifle on her shoulder, and Logan adjusted his hand around Rory's where it rested near the trigger.

"Yell 'pull', breath out and squeeze the trigger," Logan coached.

"Pull!" Rory yelled, amazed her voice was strong enough to carry across the field.

Rory watched as Finn leaped into the air, seeming to be without a care in the world. She took aim, leading the target (a phrase she'd heard Luke use), released the breath she'd been holding for dear life, and gently squeezed the trigger…

She heard a splat and saw a red mark appear on Finn's no-longer clean, white dress shirt.

"Nice shot, Ace."

"Just call me Annie Oakley."

Logan glanced down at his watch. "I hope you came up with your list, Ace. It's time."

Rory gulped. Finn's master plan had worked, she'd not thought about the feat of glory.

She allowed Logan to take her hand and lead her to the site for her task. At least Logan had to complete the feat of glory, too. If she had to do it alone, article or no article, she'd back out faster than they could say chicken. Logan led her to a different part of the field. People were massed around a large tower. There were four people already on top of the tower and they were holding umbrellas. The scene looked vaguely familiar to her, but she couldn't quite figure out why.

"What are the people up there going to do?" Rory asked.

"What do you think they're going to do?" Logan asked in return.

"They're not going to jump!" Rory exclaimed, afraid for them.

"Of course they're going to jump."

"That's like seven stories – they'll die!"

"We're all going to die one day."

Rory rolled her eyes at his sarcastic, devil-may-care response. "But those four are today."

"Six."

"I see four."

Logan watched her face. He knew the moment she connected the dots. She began to shake her head back and forth as if the action could erase the realization she'd just made. He smiled at her; it was cute when she was in shock.

"You two ready?" Colin asked as he approached the pair.

Rory turned her wide eyes on Colin. "You have to come, too. In fact – " She looked around, "So does Finn."

Colin and Logan exchanged a look. "Gilmore, it's tradition for only the first to complete the feat of glory with the inductee…and Finn had a bit of an accident with the mat."

"Accident?"

"He missed."

Rory's mouth formed a silent "o".

"Give us a minute, Colin," Logan instructed.

Colin nodded and strode off to get himself a good place to see the event. He also pulled Rory's camera from his pocket. Logan had given it to him last night with strict instructions to catalogue the events so Rory could enjoy the photos personally. He'd assured Colin the photos would not be published.

"I'm not going to jump," Rory protested as Logan dragged her closer to the tower of death and doom.

"Look, thanks for the offer, but I'm here as a journalist. An observer. Journalists do not participate," Rory continued when she realized Logan was simply going to ignore her.

"Since when?"

"Since forever."

"George Plimpton never participated?" Logan asked.

"What?" Rory asked, confused.

"His best stuff put him in the think of it. Fighting Sugar Ray Robinson, quarterbacking for the Lions, skating for the Bruins."

"So he participated," Rory insisted.

"Bill Buford lived with soccer hooligans in Among The Thugs. Ernie Pyle was so deep in the action in World War II, he was killed by a Japanese sniper, not that you gotta go that far," Logan added the last bit so as not to completely scare her off.

"Buford, Pyle. I know," Rory said, fearing she was going to lose the battle.

"Richard Hottelet was four months in a Nazi prison working for the U.P. Hunter Thompson lived with the Hell's Angels. Got in the muck, didn't just orbit around it, and it drove his writing. He put you in those biker's parties. He put you in those biker's heads," Logan's voice became more emphatic as his litany continued.

"All right, all right, so, those guys participated. I got it, but I – " Rory began.

"You're scared."

"Well, yeah!" Rory pointed to the tower.

"And that stops the greats?"

"It's stopping this great!"

"Come on, you look like you need a little adventure."

"I've been having 'a little adventure' all weekend, Logan."

"It'll be fun, it'll be a thrill. Something stupid, something bad for you. Just something different." Logan paused when he saw Rory smile. He pushed on before he lost her. "Isn't this the point of being young? It's your choice, Ace. People can live a hundred years without really living for a minute. You climb up here with me, it's one less minute you haven't lived."

"If I die, my mother will kill you. Slowly. And she has a whole town full of crazy people to help her."

"You won't die."

"Let's go."

Logan smiled. "Let's go."

Once they were on the top of the tower, Rory began to rethink this choice. It wasn't perhaps the best life choice she'd ever made.

"We are very…high."

"I've been higher," Logan said absently.

Rory glowered at him. "I meant distance from the ground."

Logan shrugged. "That, too." He held her shoulders and looked at her face. "You can back out; no one will judge."

Rory saw the sincerity in his eyes and blessed him for the out, but she was up here. She was jumping. Decision made, she took his hand and the offered umbrella in her other hand. "You jump, I jump, Jack."

Logan squeezed her hand as he catapulted them off the tower. They held each other's hand for dear life as the ground rose up to meet them. Rory had never felt such an exhilarating feeling as she plummeted to the ground. Somehow, she felt safe…and she knew it was because Logan was holding her hand. When her feet hit the ground, she knew her world had changed forever. Logan pulled Rory close to him, relieved beyond measure that she'd decided to jump with him. He pulled their joined hands to his chest.

"You did good, Ace."

"Once in a lifetime experience."

He breathed her in and stared into her blue eyes. "Only if you want it to be."

Rory held his gaze. The only two people in the world were them. They both stood there, panting to catch their breath. She looked down at her hand where it was nestled against his chest; their fingers entwined looked natural. When she peered back up at him, she knew she was Alice and this was her rabbit hole.

When she leaned up onto her toes and became impossibly closer to him, Logan forgot how to breathe. When her lips touched his, ever so softly, he decided Nirvana chose their name from kisses just like this one. Not knowing what the next minute would bring, and not caring, he hauled her against him and deepened the kiss. Her lips were warm, soft and pliant against his as he drank her in knowing no other kiss would ever compare.

The need for air forced them to pull apart. Both panting, but for a completely different reason this time. Rory knew kissing him was a mistake, but she couldn't deny the way his lips felt on hers. She was about to reach up and kiss him again when she remembered he wasn't her boyfriend. Just a week ago, he'd been in the arms of a different blonde and tomorrow her Cinderella experience would be over and he'd be with a different blonde because she wasn't in the line.

"I shouldn't have kissed you," Rory told Logan.

She dashed off into the woods, not looking back.

This is a longer chapter than normal, but this whole scene needed to be done together! But, the first kiss as promised. I wasn't quite sure where it was going to go, but it fit nicely here...so Merry Christmas! Let me know if you liked it!