A/ N: Man I hope I can do their crazy pop culture riddled dialogue justice. This is a Rory/Finn/Colin story. I'm not sure who she's going to end up with, that's whats so exciting about writing this. I have to send out my eternal love to Iscah for their willingness to beta this unoffically. Still my hero.

Den Mother: The boxes call me names

New York, Rory loved New York.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of her ex-boyfriend's apartment surrounded by all her worldly possessions...that she did not love.

She stood there looking up at the building, feeling like she was on the wrong end of a romance movie.

"So did he throw all your stuff out the window?" Lorelei asked on the other end of the line, "Was he crying?" She was laughing and Rory could hear Luke in the background, asking her if he needed to go to New York. Rory smiled at Luke's fatherly gesture.

"Mom, can you stop laughing? He wasn't crying, I'm not even sure if he's in there. All I know is, when I left this morning, all my stuff was in the apartment, and when I got back, it wasn't, and my key doesn't work. What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?"

"Don't think about it today. Think about it tomorrow...at Tara." Lorelei practically swooned on the other end of the phone.

"Mom! It's not funny I'm standing on the street surrounded by boxes of books and suitcases. He even labelled the boxes..." Rory leaned down to look at her ex's tidy writing, "This box says Fiction, aka lies, aka every word that comes out of your mouth."

"What did you do?" She asked through stifled laughter.

"I honestly don't know, but if he labelled every box like this, I must have done something."

"Can you get a friend to help you, or do you want Luke to come up?" Rory listened hard to the background noises. She thought she could hear Luke pick up his keys.

"I'm sure someone can help me out. I'll be fine." Rory smiled, but it was strained as she looked at the label on another box, "Biographies – people you loved more than me."

"Call us if you need anything. Okay, honey?"

"Thanks, Mom." Rory hung up, and, sitting on a throne made of boxes, looked through her contact list.

Lucy – she had just moved into a tiny one room apartment, and frankly Rory didn't feel like sharing a bed with a girl.

Olivia – she had just moved out of New York with her shiny, new husband.

Kevin – he would never help her with something like this. He was her editor. He wanted her to stay alive, but they didn't have the kind of relationship that this kind of help required.

Grandma & Grandpa – that was a can of worms she was not willing to open.

Colin McCrae

Why was he still in her phone? She hadn't seen him in a year, when out of nowhere he had called her to bail him and Finn out of jail. She had, of course, gone down to the police station in question, paid the shockingly steep fee and drove them home. But, the car ride had been pretty silent, and after making sure that they got safely to their apartment, she left without a word.

A cold wind swept across the street, and she remembered how large and warm their apartment had been, and how much they totally owed her.

"Hello, love?" A carefree Australian voice came over the line.

"Finn?"

"Yes...Caroline?"

"Rory."

"Rory? Gilmore?"

"Yes."

"Is this a booty call?" Rory's mouth dropped in shock, but before she could say anything, Finn continued, "'I'm hurt you would call Colin and not me..." She could practically hear him pouting, "his loss...where are you?"

She told him the address.

"It's a little far, but I'll be there shortly, love." He hung up the phone and she stared at it, amazed both at Finn and at herself. At Finn for automaticly assuming that it was a call of less than pure motives, and herself for not correcting him. She supposed it would be easier to convince him to take her in temporarily in person.

She didn't have to wait very long. She sat on the boxes, refusing to look at them more closely and finding more terrible labels. She was incredibly pleased to find that Finn had arrived in an SUV.

"Hello love, what's all this?" Finn asked, getting out of the car and gesturing fluidly at the boxes and suitcases. He came up close to her and put a hand on her head like she was a small child, leaning down to look at the labels on the boxes. "Rory Gilmore – lying neglectful slut...well, well..."

She whipped her head around to look at the box. She hadn't read that one. It was becoming more and more clear what she had apparently done to get herself removed from her residence. "I didn't see that one"

"Okay, kitten, why am I really here?"

"I was kicked out."

Finn shook his head and played with a piece of her smooth brown hair. Rory blushed at his attention. She looked up at Finn-just the same carefree, handsome, flirt he had been in college, green eyes bright, and seemingly eternally amused. He was in the ruffled remains of a tuxedo, leading her to believe that he hadn't been to sleep yet. "And you want to live with me and Colin? How adorable."

Rory pulled his hand gently away from her hair, and stood up from the throne of insulting boxes. "I need a place to stay temporarily, and I remember your apartment being quite large."

"When have you been to the apartment?"

"When I bailed you and Colin out of jail..."

Finn looked confusedly out into space before the realization cleared his face."Oh the night of the drunken monkeys..." He looked oddly uncomfortable.

She had a feeling that was a lot more literal than it should have been, and it did explain why their bail had been outrageously expensive.

"This is everything?" She smiled as he leaned down to pick up a box, and then frowned when she discovered that that particular box named her a cold, unfeeling whore.

"I think so. At the very least, it's all that he threw out of the apartment..." She picked up a suitcase and followed him to the car. It had been surprisingly easy to talk her way into their house. She fought the impulse to create a pro/con list in her head. She needed to have a roof over her head tonight, and a physical pro/con list could come after that. Right now, the only item in her internal pro/con list, was printed in big, bright letters in the PRO column: NOT FREEZING TO DEATH!

She helped Finn pack the car with her worldly possessions before getting into the car with him.

After securing his seat-belt, Finn turned to the small brunette who had apparently not telephoned for a booty call.

"What?" she asked, nervously turning to look at him. Finn grabbed her chin and turned her face toward him, studying it, looking for something.

"You haven't cried. You're taking this very well."

Rory pushed his hand away, and turned in her seat, wishing he would start the car and leave. "Maybe the boxes are right," she whispered, staring blankly at the building that, until this afternoon, had housed her and a man she thought she was in love with. Finn started the car and headed toward the apartment he shared with Colin.

"Gilmore? What are you doing here? And with a suitcase?" Colin asked, his voice as clear and sharp as ever. He stood between her and the apartment, leaning causally against the door frame in what looked like a slept-in tux, his bow tie untied and hanging lazily around his neck. He smirked down at her as he drained his tumbler of an amber liquid she was sure was scotch. She remembered enough about him to know that.

"I..." Rory looked down, ashamed.

Finn came up behind her holding several small heavy boxes with Rory's name on them. Colin looked between them both, "I thought you were going out for a tryst, not a roommate." Colin turned away from the door and walked into the kitchen, refilling his tumbler with scotch.

"Well it seems that the saviour of The Night of the Drunken Monkeys got forcibly removed from her flat." Finn said, moving past the nervous Rory into the large apartment. He disappeared down a hallway, and she could vaguely hear him putting the boxes down.

"You can come all the way in, Gilmore." Colin smirked from the counter, where he was watching her, his blue eyes sharper and brighter than she remembered them. She cleared her throat, trying to force herself to be brave.

It was only Colin and Finn.

This nervous energy was just silly.

She put her suitcase down in the hallway, looking at Colin move around the kitchen, opening cupboards, looking in drawers.

"So, you got thrown out? Roommate, rent or other?"

"What?"

"Why were you thrown out? Late rent? Roommate troubles? Or other?"

"Oh um... I guess, a little of column B, a little of column C." It was at this point that Finn reappeared.

"Boyfriend tossed 'er, you can check the boxes if you want more." He smirked and exited the apartment, motioning for Rory to follow him.

By the time Rory and Finn got all of her things moved into the guest room, Colin had disappeared. On the nightstand of the room that was to be Rory's, there was a fresh glass of scotch and a house key.

"Well, I'll leave you to sort yourself out, love...long night." He smiled lopsidedly at her, gesturing to the remains of his suit. "If you get lonely tonight, my room is across the hall." He winked before he left her.

Rory sat heavily on the soft bed and pulled her phone out.

"Mom?"

"Oh-no, she's just in the bathroom. She told me to answer the phone if it was you." Luke sounded wonderfully uncomfortable with talking about Lorelei in the bathroom.

'Is that Rory!' Rory could hear her mother yell in the background, muffled, apparently from the bathroom door.

'Yes!' Luke yelled, away from the phone. "Is everything okay Rory? Do you need me to come get you?" He sounded worried, in that strained, trying-not-to-sound-worried, fatherly way.

"No, I found a place to stay for now. That's why I'm calling. Everything is fine." Rory took the glass of scotch off the dark wood and put it to her mouth. It tasted a little like rubbing alcohol, but it burned in a beautiful way down her throat.

"Are you okay?" Luke asked softly. His heavy, comforting voice wrapped around her and warmed her right along with the scotch.

"I will be..."

'Gimme!' She could hear her mother scramble for the phone.

'Did you wash your hands?' Luke asked, his voice distorted by the sound of the phone being wildly moved around.

'Of course!' "Sweets?"

"Hi, Mom."

"Where are you? Everything okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm at Colin and Finn's."

"Colin and Finn? Those jerk friends of Logan's?" She sounded astonished. "I thought you said you were fine."

"I am. They have a huge apartment and they owed me."

"From when you bailed them out last year?"

"Yeah... apparently I am the saviour of 'The Night of the Drunken Monkeys'."

"That sounds like it should be a kung-foo zombie movie...oh, that sounds great!"

Rory smiled softly at the idea of it, and drained the last of the scotch, "I have to get to bed, big day tomorrow."

"Oh of course, love you, pumpkin."

"Love you, honey bunny."Rory listened to her mother giggle a little before she hung up.

Rory took the empty glass to the kitchen before she turned in for the night. She closed her eyes tightly, blocking out the insults the boxes were shouting. Turning her face into the lush pillow, she cried herself to sleep.