Green Bunnies on Toast
Disclaimer: Duh. Never mine.
Summary: Random AU-ish one-shot, wherein Lorelai and her pet virus entertain observers. Set when LL were happy. In honor of all who are unwell, for whatever reason.
Genre: Humor
AN: So I didn't get a flu shot. Guess what I did get? Yeah. Apparently, my fever spiked fairly high, while laying me very low. Ergo, this ficlet erupted.
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Lorelai Gilmore swung open the door to Luke's Diner with a flourish, and caroled, "Good morning!"
Without turning, Luke Danes replied, "It's two in the afternoon."
"Morning, sunshines!"
"Lorelai," he growled, still focused upon scrubbing a mangled mix of ketchup, mustard, and melted cheese from the wall near the kitchen pass-through. "Not the time for one of your bits."
Before Lorelai could answer, Miss Patty said in an oddly intense way, "Luke, honey, you should turn around now."
Setting down the bottle of cleaner that failed to clean to his standards, Luke tossed the dirty rag into an empty dishpan and turned around. His hands were already shifting into Rant Position when two facts registered.
One was the utter silence in the diner, although Taylor, Miss Patty, and Babette were all at the same table. That was, by the laws of nature, supposed to be impossible.
The second fact was that Lorelai was wearing yellow ducky pajama bottoms tucked into thick red and green socks adorned by little fuzzy balls around their tops. Her tank top was faded pink, and traces of glitter on it indicated it once read Sizzle, though Luke only knew that because she'd told him. Over that she wore nothing, not even a coat, despite the thin layer of snow on the ground outside. But she did, he noticed, have a hat on her head. It was possibly a beret at some point in its long and storied past, but currently resembled nothing so much as a collapsed two-crust pie, minus filling.
"Hi, Handsome!" chirped Lorelai, climbing onto her usual stool and swinging her legs enthusiastically. "Long time no see!"
"Uh," said Luke, stunned. "What. Er. Uh."
"Oh, Monosyllable Man, you charmer," she yodeled, beaming at him. "Luke's a poet and doesn't even know it, ooh, I rhymed!"
He glanced at Miss Patty, whose eyes were huge and expressive of Do something, you idiot.
Reflex took over. "What can I get you?"
"No kissy, no huggy, no sugar for the sugar?" pouted Lorelai, trying to spin the stool, which was not designed to spin. "Wow, I take a day off, one measly-peasly itsy-bitsy teensy-weensy spider up the waterspout day, just one…" She measured off teensy-weensy with two fingers a few hairs apart, before poking a finger in his direction. "Just. One. To. Nurse. My. Sick. Kid…"
"Oh geez," muttered Luke. He vaguely recalled Lorelai crawling into bed late, mumbling that Rory was over the worst of the flu after a day of loving care and Luke's mother's chicken soup that only family could ever have. Happy to know she'd made it home before midnight, all well with his world, he'd dropped off again, slipped out to open the diner that morning without a second thought for how hard she'd been sleeping. Now he knew. And it was not good. Very not good. Lorelai could mismatch on laundry days, but she had left the house without shoes. Lorelai Gilmore, minus shoes?
"Why don't I make you some tissues and get you some tea?" he offered, jumbling his verbs slightly in his panic.
"Want coffee!" she snorted, and he cringed to hear how thick and phlegmy that sounded. "And green bunnies on toast!"
Caesar's head popped out of the kitchen. He didn't speak. Nobody could speak. Not even Babette had a squawk or a squeak to contribute.
"Green bunnies on toast," repeated Luke warily. "Okay. That's. Okay. Good. Don't move. I'll, uh, here, have some, uh, coffee."
"Oooh! Coffee! Hot hot hot!" Her voice rasped a little and she apparently had discovered some tune to attempt that involved the lyrics hot hot hot, because she was bobbing her head and chanting "Something something hot hot hot."
Luke ducked into the kitchen. He leaned briefly on the sink. "Green bunnies? What's on the menu that could be green bunnies?"
"It's your menu!"
Luke gestured energetically, and took off his hat, to smack it hard against the edge of the counter. "I know, help me out here, what the hell're green bunnies? Is it some kind of junk food? One of her weird diner slang things?"
"No, definitely no green bunnies in diner lingo."
Relieved, Luke slumped briefly. "Okay. Okay. Green bunnies. On toast. I gotta get her home. How do I get her home? She's not wearing shoes!"
"Want my opinion?"
Normally, Luke would snarl, "No," and grump through the crisis. Faced by a happily singing, foot-swinging, head-dancing Lorelai, he said limply, "Shoot."
"Call 911."
Luke's horror levitated him a fair distance off the floor, to judge by the vertigo he suddenly experienced. "What? Why? What is it?"
Caesar nodded, wide-eyed, toward Lorelai, and lowered his voice. "Luke, man, you gave her decaf. And she's drinking it."
Luke's urge was the same most people experienced when faced by a tornado warning. When they lived in a trailer park in Oklahoma. The universe had stuck a "Kick me" sign on him, he knew it, and he needed a deep hole to hide in. Now.
Caesar shook his arm a little. "Hey, you still with me?"
"Waheep," said Luke in a gasp. "Yeah. Here. Geez. Okay. Green bunnies. Decaf. Do me a favor, call… Uh, who do we call?"
"Ghostbusters!" shouted Lorelai, her voice croaking, and she fell back laughing hysterically as Luke shot forward, banging his hip into a pot that then clanged and clattered to the floor. Luke had a horrible flashback to the Incident of the Bells, glared Caesar out of sniggering, and took Lorelai gingerly by the shoulders.
"Green bunnies?" she asked hopefully.
He put the back of his hand to her forehead. He hissed. "Geez! C'mon, let's get you home."
"But I want green bunnies on toast!" she protested, lower lip stuck out.
"I'll make green bunnies on toast at home."
She nodded, walked two steps past the counter, and sneezed explosively.
Miss Patty, Babette, and Taylor leapt up and away, their table screeching over the floor.
Lorelai frowned at them. "What do you say?" she admonished.
"Gesundheit," said Taylor primly, "and good-bye."
"Very good," approved Lorelai sunnily and seemed to not notice that they drew back as if she carried bubonic plague. "Have a nice evening!"
"Luke," started Taylor.
"Save it, I know," snapped Luke. "On the house, get out. Caesar? Fumigate the place, would ya?"
"Sure thing. Early closing?"
"And sterilize everything," said Luke, trying not to think about what had been sneezed across half his business establishment. He looked around to discover Lorelai was already outside, swinging around a lamp post, trying and failing to sing, "Baby, it's cold outside!"
For a moment, Luke contemplated throwing her over his shoulder, then concluded he'd sooner not risk his lumbar vertebrae. He put a hand on her back and steered her in the general direction of his truck. "Aw, geez, you're really sick," he muttered as he helped her in, and fastened her seat belt for her. "What'd Rory give you?"
"Dunno," rasped Lorelai, sniffling, "but baby, you give me fever…" She sneezed again, that time into her cupped hands, for what little comfort that gave Luke.
"Yeah, don't think it was me," he said, hurrying to the driver's side. He jumped in just in time to prevent her jumping out, though the seat belt had a lot to do with it, as well. "Where're you going?"
Lorelai pointed. "I left my coffee!"
"It'd be cold by now," he improvised wildly, threw the truck into gear, and wondered if this once he could break a speed limit or five. Lorelai drunk? Okay, he could cope. Lorelai high on life? Absolutely fine by him. Lorelai caffeinated? Didn't know her any other way. Lorelai talking about green bunnies on toast and drinking decaf without noticing? No.
She'd subsided into what he prayed was a doze, but as he approached the community medical center, she startled him by announcing, "I named it!"
He turned crimson, thinking she referred to something best left between two lovesick adults in bed, alone, in the dark, alone, far from other ears, alone, and never ever to be mentioned in the light of day, even alone, in bed, far from other ears.
"I'm calling it…" She sniffled, sneezed into her bare bicep, and finished, "Olga."
Luke came very near standing on the brake. Then he realized she was not talking about what he thought she was talking about, and his masculinity was not under attack. "Olga?"
"Olga," agreed Lorelai, smiling, her face very pale where it was not very flushed. "Like some evil bad guy girl agent in the movies. Olga, the… Oh. Olga doesn't work. Elsa! That's it! Elsa! Wait, no, that's Ingrid Bergman." Her eyebrows knotted, and her mouth puckered. "Luke, I have to have a name for it!"
Hoping there was an entry in the medical books that covered Lorelai, Luke asked with dread, "Name for what?"
"My new pet virus," sighed Lorelai. "Duh!"
She began a litany of names he more or less tuned out in favor of safely driving into a parking lot, situating the truck, feeding the parking meter an extortionate number of coins, and leading Lorelai to the doors under the bright red Emergency sign.
The triage nurse took the information without looking at either of them. The person at registration handed over a little bracelet and stuck its ends together around Lorelai's wrist, without a sign of concern. Beginning to calm in the miasma of their apathy, Luke perched Lorelai in a chair in the grimy waiting room, wondering why hospitals had such filthy waiting rooms, and was pleased when a person with a white lab coat called, "Lorelai Gilmore?"
"That's it!" said Lorelai with a squeal.
"That's her," said Luke wearily, and lifted her under the arms, then steered her to the white-coated person. "Please tell me you can cure this."
"Fever, congestion, fatigue?"
Nettled, Luke corrected, "Lorelai Gilmore, and those are her symptoms. She's babbling about…" He stopped, considered, and rephrased. "She's babbling weirder-than-usual."
"Uh-huh. Did she have her flu shot this year?"
Proudly, Luke affirmed she did. It had taken boysenberry pie to convince her, and a beer for him to withstand the ordeal.
"Well, then, it didn't work."
"Green bunnies," whined Lorelai. "I want my green bunnies on toast!"
Luke cringed. "Uh. She's, uh, not making any, um…"
"Sir, are you a blood relative?"
"No, but…"
"Wait outside."
"Hey!"
The door marked Personnel Only remained shut.
Snarling under his breath, Luke decided to call someone. Rory was still ill. Emily would show up with private physicians and feather pillows. That left Sookie.
To his shock, she took the news with aplomb. "Oh, green bunnies on toast, sure, no problem."
"What?" he squawked into Lorelai's phone. How he had that, and her purse, but not her, was still puzzling him. And the hospital air made him itch. There were dead people's last breaths on it, and that couldn't be sanitary. He was sure of it.
Sookie giggled. "Asparagus, Luke. On toast. With butter. You know how Lorelai only craves healthy food if something's wrong?"
"I thought that's only if she's…" Luke whitened. "Uh."
"No, she gets cravings when she's sick, too," sniggered Sookie. "When we were first working together, she had a really bad cold, all she wanted was pears and oatmeal and orange juice for three days. Mia was sure it was the end of the world."
Luke sympathized, and noted mentally to call Mia. "Green bunnies?"
"Oh, we had a guest with a, hold on… Manny! Whip, not pulverize! Where was I? Oh, a guest with a little boy who insisted he'd only eat meat, and his mother told him asparagus spears were green bunny ears on toast. Ooh, and broccoli was…"
"Never mind," interrupted Luke with a shudder. "Thanks, Sookie."
"Will she be okay?"
He heard a dim but definitely Gilmore shout of "Hey! Watch it, buddy! I'm spoken for! That better not be a needle! Hey!"
"She'll be fine," he said, and hung up.
He very gingerly sat down.
He stared at the purse on his knees.
He felt ridiculous.
He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and tried to find a happy place in his head. Mostly, the happy place was bed, the sunlight peeking across Lorelai's sleeping face, and no world outside that. Deciding a nap would help his immune system, he set himself to doze.
"Mr. Gilmore?"
"Close enough," said Luke, and bounced to his feet. "Is she okay?"
The white-coated individual gestured for Luke to follow. "She'll be fine. It's a nasty virus, and she's dehydrated, as well as running a high fever. We've given her intravenous fluids, something for the fever, and a mild sedative."
Luke's eyebrows quirked up. The other man harrumphed. It was clear the sedative had been for the benefit of the hospital staff, and not necessarily the patient.
"Rest, fluids, and she'll be back to normal in a week." The other man lowered his voice outside a curtained cubicle. "We can call in a psychiatric consult, if you want, she seemed very convinced of the existence of green rabbits."
"Green bunnies," said Luke with hostile dignity. "It's asparagus on toast, everyone knows that. When can I take her home?"
"Soon is good," said the other man, and bustled away muttering about paperwork.
Luke settled in on the edge of the narrow treatment bed, pleased that Lorelai's forehead already felt cooler to the touch. He busied himself rummaging her purse, knowing she would have everything in there except a kitchen sink and a soy protein bar. When he heard her yawn and coo, "Luke? How sick am I?", he was halfway through his task.
"You didn't get enough fluids. Coffee is not a fluid, Lorelai. Water, yes. Juice, yes. But when you don't feel well, coffee is not a fluid."
"Is it a gas or a solid, then?" she countered.
He huffed.
She groaned. "Okay. Okay. Can I have coffee-flavored juice, then? In a mug? Steaming hot? Oh, and I'm craving…"
"Asparagus, I know," said Luke smoothly, holding up her Hello Kitty notebook and neon green pen. "Shopping list."
"How'd you know… Never mind," shrugged Lorelai, cuddling around him on her side. "I'm sorry. I must've been really out of it for you to bring me here. Are you okay?"
"Yes," said Luke with conviction. "Just don't sneeze on me, and you can have all the green bunnies on toast that you want."
She smiled drowsily. "You. Best. Love. G'night."
As her eyes shut, Luke whispered, "Back at ya," and added oranges to the list after he very faintly but distinctly sneezed.
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AN: Believe it or not, green bunny ears is how my cousin describes asparagus spears. I'm from an odd family, if you hadn't already guessed.