*Author's Note * Okay, guys, I'm back--and this is just a random thing that I started last night. Don't blame me if you don't like it...although I hope you do. I'm not done with it, and honestly I don't know where to go with it, exactly, but I just had to write it down. Isn't that what all of us do anyway? Randomly write down stuff that's in our brains so that it doesn't drive us crazy? ...or maybe it's just me = ) Anyway, please, review. (But don't pull that 'constructive criticism' crap--there's never anything constructive about criticism) Also, if you have any ideas of where I should take this, they're always welcome! Anyway, it's really short, I know, but read on...if you will!--Annest *

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Rory leaned her head into the cradle of her hands and sighed. A strand of long, chestnut hair fell into her face from its precarious placement behind her ear, and she blew it gently up and away from its position on her nose. Tristan, getting up on his knees, turned around in his seat.
"Daydreaming about me, Rory?" he asked with a grin, running long fingers through his hair.
"Yes, Tristan," the twenty-seven year-old answered slyly. "I'm daydreaming about you. All the while being very--I emphasize very--grateful that the airline mixup meant that we don't have seats next to each other. Now...can I go back to my magazine?"
"Well of course you can, Ms. Gilmore. But tell me one thing first?" Rory nodded with a patronizing frown.
"You're welcome to go back to your magazine, Rory...but how do you plan to do that if your magazine is sticking out of your carry-on?" Tristan threw a casual glance to the black attache that sat three seats away from Rory in the empty row. She grinned sheepishly, a break that Tristan often saw when they were all alone.
"Come on then, Tristan," Rory consented, rolling her sparkling eyes. She, too, nodded to the empty row in which she sat. "Come sit by me." Tristan, in his charcoal-gray pinstripe, practically jumped over the seat to sit next to his traveling companion. "Could you be any more of a child, Tristan? Next thing I know, you'll be begging me for candy!"
A familiar gleam came into Tristan's still-breathtaking blue eyes. "Rooooory," he dragged her name out huskily, leaned in to her. "Gimme some candy," Tristan said on a growl. Rory flushed and leaned as far away as she could, before she ran into the wall of the plane.
"I don't have any, Tristan. And stop the banter. There are other people on this plane, you know," Rory told him.
"Oh...do you think they have any candy?" he asked her with a grin.
"Tristan..." Rory said, laughing, and she was glad that the tension was once again broken. He leaned back into his seat, and their elbows brushed and then rested against each other. Rory wondered silently if he noticed the electric contact that she had--she looked over--perhaps he had--
His eyes were closed. He even looked like a little boy. Rory smiled in spite of herself. But her mind wandered to much more than what he looked like. Though God knew she thought about that enough, she told herself with a grin.
Lately...Rory couldn't exactly put her finger on it. Their job took them places, every place, any place. Work that neither of them expected to go into was something they ended up in simultaneously. At twenty-seven and twenty-eight, respectively, Rory and Tristan were both well-respected businesspeople. Rory's Harvard studies in communications and Tristan's Yale degree in marketing had brought them together at their annual Chilton reunion a year after graduation from college. Tristan unexpectedly showed up at Rory's house, thankfully not waking Lorelei and Luke, but only Rory, to whom he presented a somewhat-odd proposition; a joint marketing venture in Boston. Rory was, at first, reluctant. She and Tristan sat on her porch all night, until four in the morning when finally he crashed on the couch and she in the bed. They had agreed to go into business together.
No one would have thought that Rory and Tristan could go into business together, without killing each other in the process. Not to mention a highly-sucessful one that already emplyed 30+ employees. Their travels were often together...car trips up to New York, frequent flights to Chicago and Toronto, and the occasional "red-eyes" to London, Paris or L.A. Tristan and Rory's family connections meant that a number of national and international companies relied on their marketing and communications work for many campaigns and problems.
But it was lately, as she had been thinking....lately, she and Tristan had been traveling more than usual, and their main communication with the "home office" was via video phone, cells, email and fax. Their banter was more frequent, and far more innuendo-laden then even Rory remembered it being back in high school, at Chilton. Many times she and Tristan had shared after dinner drinks in a hotel room, or the lounge; many nights had she slept against his shoulder on the plane, and visa versa. Rory just wasn't sure what her feeling was when their conversations turned in that direction. She sighed, and Tristan stirred next to her.
"Daydreaming again, Rory?" he asked sleepily, his tousled hair more so than usual. She smiled weakly at his just-out-of-bed grin, and her heart pounded inexplicably.
"I don't know what I'm doing, Tristan." He nodded absently and dozed off again, laying his blonde head down on her shoulder. Rory, a puzzled look on her face, merely gazed with unseeing eyes out of the plane window.