Welcome to the sequel to "A Special Brand of Crazy"! If you haven't read that story, you really want to start there or you might be lost. Or, if you want the tl;dr version: Luke and Lorelai wind up becoming a couple after a series of events starting in "Red Light on the Wedding Night" and ending at "Run Away, Little Boy" with Rory having a major revelation about herself. The rating on this story has also been kicked up from the first, as well ... we have a newly hooked up couple here. They'll be getting up to some shenanigans. As indicated by the chapter title, this story begins roughly a month after the end of the previous one.
Chapter 1: Thirty Five Days
What a crazy year.
The thought swirled through Lorelai's brain as she stared blankly at the Christmas tree, the second week of December. She hadn't had time in the past few weeks to think about how everything had changed since last December. The changes then had been staggering enough, with Rory starting Chilton and her parents re-entrenching themselves in her life.
At least she wasn't sitting in a hospital waiting room this year, frantic with worry over her father's heart.
There were four stockings hung on the fireplace mantel this year, two of them brand new, because she insisted upon it. Well, "insisted" was shorthand for following Luke around the diner for an hour, pestering him to give Jess a real Christmas for the first time in probably ever. He managed to finally stop her when he backed her into the storeroom, agreed to it, then kissed her into silence.
Her toes curled into the carpet. That had been a magnificent kiss.
And wasn't that the weirdest thing about this year? She had started the year single, had been engaged by the end of May, had broke it off in August, and now was seven weeks into dating Luke. Luke! If she had been Ghost of Christmas Future visiting herself last year, she wouldn't had believed it. Actually, the correct thing would be to say that the mere thought of it would had terrified the absolute hell out of her. Because Luke had tried asking her on a date once, in a very offhanded way, during Sookie and Jackson's first date. Her brain had literally broken at the possibility.
She knew dating him would be serious. Oh, not in that way. The dates themselves had been a lot of fun. Half of them involved Rory and Jess, especially after the first movie night ended with Rory and Jess conspiring to rewrite Fiddler on the Roof and somehow getting the elementary school to stage it. Even without the teenage chaperones, they had fun. And kisses. Lots and lots of heat-searing kisses.
And not much else.
Damn the teenage chaperones. It was hard to get it on when one of them shared the equivalent of a studio apartment with his nephew, and Rory had suddenly turned into a hermit.
But dating Luke was still serious. As Rory had said, if things went wrong, they both would lose him. Losing Max had stung. If she lost Luke? Lorelai didn't think she would survive the fallout.
"Lorelai, are you even listening to me?"
Lorelai turned her attention back to the phone she had tucked under her chin, where she has done a very good job at ignoring her mother for at least the past 10 minutes. "What do you think, Mom?"
"Well, stop your woolgathering and give me your opinion. Honestly, I don't call you just to hear myself talk."
Lorelai begged to differ, but Emily seemed to sense her oncoming retort because she plowed straight ahead. "Now, do you think I should urge the party guests to make a donation to the American Heart Association to mark the one-year anniversary of your father's recovery or Toys for Tots?"
The annual Gilmore holiday bash, being held tastefully early because her parents had decided to spend the actual holiday on a cruise, happened this year to include a helpful reminder to give to charity. Or, Lorelai thought, it would be her mother's version of reminding, which was constant badgering masked with a veneer of politeness. "Just give them a choice, Mom. Look, why don't you hire one of those bell ringers to stand on the porch with a bucket for people to drop their checks into as they arrive?"
"Really, Lorelai, can you be any more crass? Don't answer."
Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Way to take the thunder out of my sails!"
"I will see you Friday night and at the party on Saturday," Emily said, clearly ignoring the fact that Lorelai had spoken at all.
"We will be there at our usual time." Maybe this year, she could actually score some apple tarts.
"Lorelai, this is important. Try to come a little early so you can help me with the plans."
"If it was so important, you would have not uninvited me last year."
"Lorelai, honestly, why are you still bringing that up?"
Because it clearly got under her mother's skin, that's why.
"Now, are you bringing a date?"
"No." Her Christmas gift to Luke was to spare him from this annual spectacle. At least the first year. Come December 2002, all bets were off.
Emily's long-winded sigh came down the line like a gale-force wind. "Lorelai, you must start dating again. People are talking. Bitty Charleston said there is a rumor going around the school that you cheated on Rory's teacher with the diner guy. If you are dating someone appropriate, those rumors will die down, and hopefully Rory won't hear them."
Lorelai rolled her eyes again, then put the phone on speaker. "Hey, kid," she yelled toward Rory's room. "your teachers are saying I cheated on Max with Luke."
"You're just now hearing that one?" Rory hollered back. "You're supposedly pregnant with his love child right now."
"Luke's or Max's?"
"Yes!"
Lorelai turned the phone off of speaker. "You're behind the times, Mom."
"Lorelai, you must take this seriously. Your reputation at the school directly affects Rory's. It's bad enough that you don't volunteer-"
A third eye roll. If she made it to five, Lorelai decided she was rewarding herself with her hoarded stash of Mallomars that Rory had yet to discover. "Um, hello, remember my newfound eternal servitude to the Booster Club?"
"-but you can't just do what you did and expect there to be no consequences. Besides, people are still talking about what happened during Rory's debut."
"Mom," Lorelai said quietly, "there were consequences. First of all, the debut? That's all on Chris. Luke saved us from a very bad situation when Dad couldn't be found either. Second, what happened with Max is between me and Max. Nobody else. I'm fully aware Rory is taking the brunt of that, but what would you have me do? Get stuck in a bad marriage?"
"Lorelai-"
"And third," she spoke over Emily, her voice gaining steam, "I did not cheat on Max with Luke or anyone else. Furthermore, I've only been dating Luke since the beginning of November, so don't blame any of this on him. I'll see you Friday." She turned off the phone, glared at it, then yanked the battery out of the back.
"I'm going out," Lorelai announced, sailing into Rory's room and dumping the phone and battery on her bed.
Rory poked at the parts. "When do you want me to put it back together?"
"Give her a good 20 minutes. I dropped the bomb."
"About you and Luke?"
"If you have to ask, you're not eavesdropping like the good daughter I thought you were."
Rory winced. "I thought you were going to receive that particular 'I told you so' in person."
"I'm still going to get it." She had gotten off light after the ball, but Lorelai suspected that was because her mother was so caught up in whatever was going on between her and her father that reverse Parent Trap had been placed on the back burner … and the gig was now up.
Lorelai fished her cellphone out of her pocket and dropped it on Rory's desk. "Switch?"
"Please." Rory waved toward the closet, and Lorelai found Rory's phone buried behind a stack of old textbooks from middle school.
She flipped the cover up and winced at the number of missed calls from Dean. "Kid …"
"I'll deal with him tomorrow."
Lorelai closed the phone. "You've been saying that for weeks."
Rory absently played with the portable phone battery. "I just need time to think."
"He needs to know what's going on." Lorelai slid the phone into her back pocket.
"Like you're exceptionally gifted in that department?"
Lorelai closed her eyes. "First of all, ouch. Second, completely different situation." Her reticence in all things - with Max, with telling Luke about her engagement - was an entirely different league from trying to figure out her own sexuality. "Rory, at some point, you have to say something other than blowing him off. Dean doesn't deserve that. Only," she hastily added when Rory opened her mouth to protest, "since if the situation was reversed, you'd want the same thing from him."
Rory huffed, nodded, and went back to her book.
Five minutes later, Lorelai was at the diner, about to snag the key off of the top of the door when she noticed movement inside. She winged an eyebrow at the lone figure sitting among the overturned chairs and tested the handle. It gave easily, and she slipped inside, locking the door behind her.
Luke sat at one of the tables, hunched over a book with a notepad next to him. He was frowning down at it, pencil in hand as he marked a paragraph. He glanced up at her at the sound of the door being locked, his eyes lighting up in the same way they lit up every time she walked into a room since she agreed to go on a date five weeks earlier. If she was really honest with herself, they had been lighting up a lot longer than that. He had merely hidden it behind his normal grumpy bluster.
"Didn't want Jess to know you could read?" she teased.
"I didn't want him to know what I was reading."
"Is this where I find out you're super into Nora Roberts?" Lorelai picked up the book and her heart promptly flipped over numerous times when she read the cover. "Oh."
Luke shrugged in that way that meant what he was doing wasn't that big of a deal to him. But it was to her. "I was over in Hartford getting some stuff and had some time to kill, so stopped by the bookstore. Kid working there recommended it. There's some pie left." He left the table, leaving Lorelai holding a book on parenting queer kids. Her throat seized when she noticed the pamphlet he was using for a bookmark. She absently noted the name PFLAG and reminded herself to go look them up.
"I didn't think Rory would want anyone knowing yet, so didn't want to tip Jess off." Luke handed her the plate, and she put the book back on the table.
She dropped into a seat. "I think you have more answers than Rory does at the moment."
"Still avoiding Dean?"
"Yeah. He's at least stopped coming to the house." Lorelai absently toyed with the pie. "I'm all for Rory exploring what she wants in all things that are legal, and her happiness is basically what I live and breathe. But she's got to at least clue Dean in. Yes," she hastily added, "I waffled on Max for months until it got down to the last second, but she can't live in limbo until college."
"Not that Dean has a lot going for him, but I can see that."
Lorelai dove into the pie then, hiding her smile as she absently reading through the PFLAG pamphlet. She doubt she would ever forget Luke getting into a fight with Dean after Dean broke up with Rory for her inability to voice her feelings. Dean really didn't have a stellar history to recommend him in that department. Still.
"Can I borrow the book when you're done?" Lorelai asked, flipping the pamphlet between bites of pie.
Luke merely handed over a plastic bag with a second book inside before returning his attention to his own copy.
It was then that she made the decision. Well, there was no doubt what the decision was going to be, considering they had been dating for exactly 35 days and the sexual tension between them had been building for going-on six years. It was going surprisingly well, considering she had a confused daughter that was avoiding the world around her and he had a nephew running an underground news operation while evading school officials and serving parole.
No one ever said their lives were especially dull.
But it was still the decision, and it meant they were going to cross the threshold of dinner, movie, heated kisses, and intense longing to relationship. Because, quite frankly, she wanted to jump his bones. Right that second. The floor of the diner would do quite nicely.
She hugged the bag to her chest. "You should take me on a date."
Luke opened his mouth to respond when he glanced up. Something on her face must had told him everything, because he swallowed. Hard. "When?" he asked hoarsely, and she knew that he knew exactly how that date was going to end.
Right now, her hormones screamed. They could have magnificent table sex she could brag to their grandkids one day about while he blushed incessantly.
"Soon," she replied and laid a hand over his. He turned his palm up to lace his fingers through hers, and it was the most erotic touch she had felt in a long time.
It was well after 10 by the time Luke headed upstairs, trying to ignore the fact that eight hours of sleep was not a concept he would experience in his near future. Nor had it been in his recent past, thanks to sharing close quarters with Jess. He was counting himself lucky if he got a solid six-and-a-half hours and merely dealt with the fallout from lack of sleep. None of this 20-minute power nap thing. You either slept or you didn't.
It was worth it to spend the time with Lorelai, listening to her talk about auditions and getting ready for that insurance group from Chicago who wanted to stage some sort of medieval dinner for Christmas. Or was it 19th century? She and Sookie seemed to be going back and forth on it. One day, it was Chaucer, the next it was Carroll. He didn't need her narrative to know that Sookie was on the verge of losing it. Two days earlier, Sookie had thrown open the door to the diner and shouted, "Peas!," then fled to Doose's.
And that had been one of the relatively sane moments of his day.
Things were going good between them. He nearly pinched himself several times when he actually stopped and thought about it. Never in Luke's wildest dreams had he thought he and Lorelai would actually give the whole dating thing a shot. Part of him was bracing for the other shoe to drop, but she seemed genuinely happy. He was content to let her steer the direction of the relationship. He knew what he wanted, had known for months. When she was ready to let things progress, she would let him know. And she had.
He wondered if she knew how very close she'd been to having vastly memorable sex on the diner floor, health inspector be damned.
But she deserved better than that, and quite frankly, so did he. He had been waiting for nearly six years for this. He wanted to spend an entire night with her, because there was no way that one time would be nearly enough. Luke never really allowed himself to want. It was just opening all sorts of doors to disappointment. But he did fantasize about this, and since that kiss in front of the high school, he allowed his imagination free rein.
Correction. One night wasn't nearly going to be enough.
Luke opened the door to find Jess upside down on the couch, legs slung over the back as he stared at the ceiling, arms crossed over his chest. He winged his gaze skyward to see if there was something wrong. No leaks, and he put a new roof on the place three years earlier. No cracks in the paint, drywall seemed fine.
"Something interesting, or am I missing an existential crisis?" he asked as he hastily walked with the bookstore bag behind the partition. He shoved the whole thing in his nightstand quickly.
"Just mulling over some things," Jess replied. "You really don't have to hide your porn from me. Or your condoms."
"Jess!"
"Safe sex is very important," he said solemnly.
Luke rolled his eyes. "So what's worth all the blood rushing to your brain?"
"I think they're onto me."
Luke opened a dresser drawer to pull out a T-shirt and sweatpants. "The government? Men in black?"
"The school."
Jess had been spending the past couple months running an underground newspaper in Stars Hollow High, utilizing the school's computers and a complicated system of getting articles and distributing the finished product. The school thought he was pushing drugs, no thanks to his arrest for doing just that a year earlier. Both he and Jess knew that he hadn't been using, and that the dealing had been a means of survival. Not that the school actually believed the kid or anything.
Luke very much rather have Jess pushing rogue literature than heroin.
Jess flipped off the couch, his face red from the blood pooling. "They've started locking the door to the copy room. They never lock that door. You know how I was assembling the final product, right?"
"Using that old mimeograph machine?"
"Right. Those stencils Rory found on eBay were great. Anyhow, Lane got a peek inside the copy room yesterday when the door was unlocked, and the machine's gone."
Luke headed into the bathroom to change, leaving the door open a crack to continue the conversation. "It never occur to you they just decided to get rid of the thing? That machine was older than me."
"This is Stars Hollow. When do they get rid of anything?"
Kid had a point. "Well, you've gotta find another place to run off those papers. Why not the library?"
"50 cents a page," Jess grunted. "Mailboxes, Etc. is cheaper, but it's Kirk. Might as well hire that stupid troubadour that walks around to go singing the news. Besides, what's so underground about running off the newspaper at the library? Might as well take out a billboard."
Luke walked out of the bathroom, flipping off the lights on his side of the room as he did so. Jess turned off the main light, leaving the lamp on his nightstand on.
Luke got into bed, closed his eyes, let his mind drift. It went to the same place it had gone to for months - all thoughts circling around Lorelai. The past few weeks had added plenty of fuel to the fantasies, and it was just enough to let him drift off.
"Hey, Luke?"
Or not. "Yeah?" he muttered sleepily.
Jess didn't answer, and Luke rolled his eyes. The kid really needed to learn how to follow through, especially when it came to-
"Have you heard from Liz?"
Oh.
Wide awake now, Luke hesitated. For a very quick moment, he thought about lying. Why sure, he'd heard from his sister. She practically begged Jess to go to New York for Christmas, but he felt it was better for Jess to stay in Stars Hollow. Then the parenting voice in the back of his head, which also suspiciously sounded like Lorelai, gave a firm 'no.'
He sighed. "No, I haven't."
"Oh. Just wondering."
Crap. Luke could all but feel the hurt radiating from Jess' side of the apartment. What parent didn't want to be around their kid for Christmas? For the first time, he was grateful that Lorelai insisted on including both of them in her and Rory's Christmas plans. If it was just him, well, he was used to spending holidays by himself. Actually having people who cared for him around was a little bit weird. Nice, but weird. Like Lorelai giving him the baseball cap the previous year, and the girls had popped into the diner singing at the top of their lungs on his birthday in late October.
But Jess? The kid deserved some sort of decent holiday. No thanks to Liz, whatever childlike innocence Jess had was a thing of the past. But he deserved a good Christmas.
Luke listened to Jess turn pages in whatever book he was reading. He could barely hear the music he was playing, which meant Jess was listening to eardrum-shattering music through his headphones. Instead of slipping back into his pleasant fantasies, he stared at the ceiling, guilt kicking him in the gut for not doing more for Jess sooner. Resigned to insomnia, he flicked on the lamp next to bed and leaned over to grab a book off the shelving unit that divided his bedroom from the rest of the apartment.
The worst part about her mother being right was … her mother being right.
Not that there was anything wrong with her mother being right. Underneath all the silliness and the pop culture references, Lorelai Gilmore was a wise woman. Rory would gladly throw herself in front of a bicycle pedaled by Kirk for her. It was just in this case, it put Rory's nerves on edge that her mother was most definitely right.
Rory had spent the past five weeks going through a myriad of emotions. First had been sheer and utter panic. Because it was Paris she was having these feelings about, and it shocked her beyond her ability to quip about it all. Worse, there was the little problem of Dean being a thing in her life.
Somewhere around day 7, her panic had morphed into deductive reasoning. There were no less than 25 pro-con lists shoved under her mattress looking at every aspect of the situation. A lot of things suddenly made sense, including her initial inability to vocalize her feelings for Dean. In the moments when she was being really honest with herself, Rory admitted that the words still got lodged in her throat. And when Dean wanted to try anything beyond kissing, she gently but firmly put the kibosh on it. She thought her sexual awakening was simply arriving at a later date - the effect of her mother having her so young.
Hahahaha, no.
Around day 16, Rory simply fell into feeling sorry for herself. She had managed to keep up the charade around Dean for the first two weeks. But for more than three weeks now, she had managed to evade him, ignore his calls, accidentally delete his emails, and begged her mom to please get him off their front lawn when he kept trying to show up at the house. It helped that Dean's family had been gone to Chicago for 10 days for Thanksgiving.
All her pro-con lists, all of her thinking and research had arrived at one simple answer - she didn't have one. All Rory knew was that the kiss Paris gave her during the play had awoken parts of her she didn't even know existed. And the dreams she'd had in the weeks since? It had taken all of Rory's resolve to look Paris in the eye the next day. She wondered if Paris thought the same thing, but there had been nothing in the other girl's manner to even indicate that the kiss had been anything other than the means to an end. Granted, Paris either tended to be horrifically direct or hold the cards so close to her chest that she would be deadly in a poker game.
In any case, Lorelai was right. Rory couldn't leave Dean in the dark. No matter what happened with Paris, she simply couldn't stay with him.
First thing's first.
Rory sneaked into Stars Hollow High using the back entrance through the gym, darting into the girls locker room before there was any chance of Dean seeing her. She found exactly what she was looking for - the band members changing out of their uniforms before heading home for the night. She hissed to Lane, who was at the last locker.
Lane startled, covered herself, then rolled her eyes. "What are you doing here?"
"I need to talk to you, and I don't want to go out there." Rory waved in the direction of the front of the building.
"What, in public?" Lane finished dressing and closed the locker. "Is this about you hiding from Dean?"
"Yes. But I want you to hear it first."
Lane shushed her, and the girls waited for the locker room to empty. When the last person was out, Lane rushed to the door and locked it. Turning her back to it, she leaned against the door as Rory worried her lip. She wanted to go anywhere but in here, but even if they headed back to Lane's house, she knew she would lose her nerve.
"Rory?" Lane asked.
"I think I'm gay," Rory blurted, and it sounded so weird to actually say that out loud for the first time.
Lane didn't say anything for so long that Rory wondered if she had crossed the threshold that would end their friendship. Or Mrs. Kim would suddenly pop out of a locker and start smacking her upside the head with a Bible. There was precedence.
"Huh," Lane finally said. "That explains everything."
For the first time in weeks, Rory laughed.