You said you're burnin' up inside, and no one seems to tell/You’re living from a personalized manual from hell/ Life seems pretty easy when it's from my easy chair/And you're burnin' up inside and no one's cares.

Dallie was never one particularly given to procrastination but he felt he had earned it today, plus it was a good way to figure out if there was a God or not. Because if there were, Lola would have gotten tired of waiting for him and just left. He wouldn’t mind walking the few miles or so to the DuGrey mansion. The parking lot was nearly abandoned, which had to be a good sign.

Bloody hell, there was the familiar convertible, though not so much so with the top on. No Lola in sight though. Good sign. May as well wait in the car though, since it looked like he had no other alternative other than being forced into an enclosed space with Lorelai Emily DuGrey for about ten minutes, depending on the traffic. Splendid.

He opened the door and ended up coming face to face with a half clad Lola. The last thing he really needed to know was that she was wearing electric blue satin bikini underwear with a matching bra.

“Don’t turn red on me now, Mariano,” Lola warned him, sitting up while pulling the white dress on. “You saw more the other night.”

“You should have locked the door,” Dallie pointed out, sliding into the passenger seat.

“Keep forgetting these damned doors manually lock.” She turned her back to him, “While you’re here, zip me.”

With as little physical contact as he could manage, he pulled the zipper up. “You couldn’t have waited until we got back to your house to do that?”

“We’re not going to my house,” Lola replied, combing her hair with her hands quickly. “Grab me a holder from the glove department.”

For reasons he didn’t really understand he did what he was bid to, “What do you mean we’re not going back?”

She looped her hair through once before answering. “Grandpapa is in Stars Hollow. We’re dining at Rory’s tonight.”

“Since when?”

“Since my dad called me at lunch and told me,” Lola checked her low ponytail in the mirror; once satisfied she started the car and pushed on her sunglasses.

Dallie shed his coat, pulled off his tie, and un-tucked his shirt. If he was going straight to Stars Hollow, he sure as hell wasn’t going to spend the entire night in full Chilton uniform.

Silence just plain sucked. Dallie could never stand it, and always had his music or the television on when he was alone in his room. His mother told him he had gotten it from his father, but had at least her good taste where music was concerned. Though he couldn’t actually remember his mother actually ever listening to Bruce Springsteen or Miles Davis, he went along with the idea that he listened to the same music as her. Especially since he wasn’t sure if it was true or not considering that he had never heard his mother listen to music.

But getting back to silence, the absence of noise was threatening to drive Dallie mad. Striking a conversation with Lola was out of the question, for obvious reasons, so maybe she’d let him turn on the radio. She was rather protective of her car, and he swore that he’d heard her refer to it as Vellie once. It was probably a man’s name, one she liked because her tastes ran to the weird like that. He was not one to talk considering that he was named after a city, but at least that hadn’t been his choice. It figured her car would be male for it was Lola after all.

“Can I turn on the radio?” He finally asked before he could leap off the unstable edge of sanity he seemed to be standing on.

She didn’t seem to hear him at first, she’d been withdrawn and a little out of it the entire car ride. But then she blinked, and he reckoned that the question had penetrated. “Go ahead.”

The reply was flat and un-Lola like. By goodness, could last night have possibly affected her? The mere concept seemed completely unfathomable to Dallie. Which was the reason why he was a little slow in switching the radio on, but he did not only to rid the car of the silence that had once encompassed them once more but to also get his mind off what could possibly be wrong with Lola.

I like you the way you are/When we're, driving in my car/ And you're talking to me/One on one/But you become/ Somebody else/'Round everyone else/ Watchin' your back/Like you can't relax/ You're tryin' to be cool/You look like a fool/To me.

It took him a full minute to notice that the car had pulled over and stopped. Dallie froze; there was nothing more in the world that got to him quicker than a vulnerable Lola DuGrey. Since it was such a rare occurrence, he usually never had to worry about it but right now she looked rather pale, as she leaned back in her seat.

“Something wrong with the car?” He asked weakly, though he had meant to sound casual. He definitely wouldn’t be winning any acting awards during this lifetime.

“No, just give me a moment,” she told him, her fingers moving up to fiddle with the hinge of her sunglasses.

Dallie knew better than to ask her how she was, for she’d just lie and say she was fine. Even a blind man could see that she wasn’t, but he wasn’t up for arguing with her right now. He was tired of arguing, tired of living his own little lie, both of which were where Lola DuGrey was concerned. It maddened him, of course, to know all her faults. From knowing that she actually got a kick out of lying to the fact that the box of condoms in her room was nearly empty. To know what she was capable of and still want to be with her was nothing short of insanity. But then again, he knew the other end. What else she was capable of being but didn’t dare attempt to be. For some reason, she blocked off the bits of her that were inherited from her mother. Had she not been born with her father’s hair color, Dallie suspected she would have dyed it.

“Do you ever wonder about…things?” she asked suddenly, turning towards him. At least she started to, but was hindered by the seat buckle so she undid and then turned toward him.

This was going to be a long night, wasn’t it? Dallie unbuckled his own seat belt. “I wonder about things all the time, you’re going to have to be more specific.”

Lola sucked her lower lip in instead of answering, and he wondered how long they were going to be stuck in this weird, Twilight Zone moment. “Okay.” She said as if she had reached the answer she was looking for from him. It was odd, considering that he still didn’t know what the question was.

A moment later though, he found out what it was because his lips were being seized by hers. It was nothing at all like it had been the night before, where it could have been mistaken for sweetness. This was hard and demanding, and even a little searching. And by his own weakness he found himself kissing her back. So much for being cold to her.

The least he could do was not let her dominate him so thoroughly, and he was glad he had all ready unbuckled his seat belt. But then no sooner than he had pressed her back into the soft leather of the driver’s seat, did she gently push him away and start the car again.

“Well that answers that,” she muttered under her breath.

He really needed to start controlling his reaction to her. There was no way in hell that he was going to become Lola’s latest willing sex toy. Though he may just be able to live with himself if he convinced himself that he was unwilling. Because Lord knew everyone would believe that.