It's hard enough to control the tics she's had since childhood, (Well, birth. She is sure some portion of her neuroses can be blamed on genetics.) So Paris doesn't need any more nervous energy. That's why Rory's nerve-wracking behavior must stop.

"Could you stop doing that?"

Rory glances away from her book. "What was I doing?"

Paris stares as she tries to put a name to why Rory's presence is driving her crazy, "You're too quiet, " she says finally, and it makes sense to her.

To Rory, it is an amusement.

"Is that in an eerie sense?" Rory says. "Because I shall assure you I'm not attempting to be ominous. If I were, my eyes would be shifty, and there would be music, But I have unshifty eyes and the silence that is quite lacking in the organ music I require when I turn evil." She stops and studies Paris in that oh-so-concerned way that only people like she can pull off effortlessly, "Are you okay?"

"Me? You're the one who's being quiet."

"But it's not ominous, And I'm reading. Also, it's not like you were making a lot of noise."

At this point, Paris knows she seems like she's standing right at the edge of sanity, preparing to leap into Crazytown. Then it occurs to her that this is something Rory would say and she thinks: Yes, Rory's driven me insane. Burrowed herself into my brain until my thoughts are in her syntax, And if I make any reference to bad Patrick Swayze films verbally or in a firing synapse in the back of my brain that never makes it to spoken word, I will.... "Forget about it. Be as quiet as you wish."

Paris buries her face into her book. There's another stretch of obscene quiet, a stretch that is in no way spent thinking in Rory-speak or even looking at the originator -- or, perhaps she's more a disciple of Lorelai-speak.

Paris bristles at the failure of her brain to shut off the part that has anything to do with Rory. Just a few years ago, she was without anything related to Gilmore, and her brain was working fine. Better, perhaps, as then her brain wasn't littered with pop culture references like the apparent wrongness of putting Baby in a corner. She was fine, and now she can't get Rory out of her mind.

Then she starts thinking out of Rory-speak, and into Paris-analysis. There are reasons why people can't stop thinking of others. There's all consuming hate, which is not what she feels for Rory, 'Dirty Dancing' mentions aside. There's envy, which is not what she feels for Rory, 'Dirty Dancing' mentions front and center. There's competition, which is not something she wishes to engage Rory in. Well, not obsessively. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a little bit smarter than one's friends.

That leaves... well, it leaves many other things. The human mind can find a lot of reasons for pointless obsession. But Paris doesn't like to dawdle too much when it's obvious what's in her head. She's infatuated with Rory Gilmore. (Again, 'Dirty Dancing' aside.) And it annoys the hell out of her because Rory Gilmore and her silence and her syntax are not things that should be infatuation aspiring. But damn it, that's how this has ended up.

The silence has never been so loud,

END