Author Note: This is an expanded moment from episode 5x03 "Written in the Stars" when Lorelai and Luke go on their first real date, out to dinner at his friend's restaurant. The "All In" scene. Tiny change in canon in that she knows about his dad's boat kept in that secret garage before the first date. I've been writing my fic in first person present but this came out third past. Go figure.

I'm changing her first date outfit from jeans to a skirt. Artistic license.

Ghosts of Love's Future

"I'm in. I'm all in," Luke said.

Lorelai started to smile. He rarely sounded hesitant. It was one of the things she liked most about him. He knew what he thought and he wasn't shy about sharing. If she needled him enough, all those thoughts would come tumbling out at once: from hairspray ruining everything from hair to the ozone layer and then straight on through to New York's slovenly trash collection habits.

But she really liked that the most certain he had ever sounded about anything was what he just said to her.

"Are you, you know…scared?" he asked.

She peeked up at him, because he was waiting for the cold feet to kick in, and so was she, and every second they didn't, her smile grew.

It was good that they weren't just dating, because she'd never been very good at dating. And it was nice that even this early, he wasn't playing any games. She liked things she could count on, and Luke was something she could count on. Other guys pressing for commitment always made her mad or twitchy, because she enjoyed her life and she didn't necessarily want to give up any of it for them. But Luke was already in her life, and she was starting to think she might want him to be in even more parts of it.

To be the guy she danced with at weddings, as well as the one who sat with her so they could mock the ceremony.

She should be scared, but instead, there was a settling in her like she just found the exact right position on the couch. And maybe that wasn't a racy thing to say about a relationship, but she liked her routines. She re-watched movies, ate the same things every week. Luke had definite opinions about things, but she could be just as set in her ways when it came to what she liked.

He was still watching her. Not necessarily jittery; he was a grown man and too tough for that. But curious.

She fumbled for something to say, something to explain the rightness of hearing those words from him. After he said exactly the right thing, she didn't want to say something almost right. What phrase did she want him to remember her by, forever?

"Are you two ready to order?" the waiter swooped up to their table, smiling expectantly.

She blurted out an order for way too much food, and at least two semi-awkward jokes the waiter didn't get. When he left, Luke took a grimacing sip of his champagne and commented about the bread, and the moment was gone. It belonged to him, not her, but she already wanted it back, so she reached out and under the table, she took his hand.

#

"No," Lorelai said when he went to make the turn toward her house. "Just go to the diner."

He frowned. "I don't want you walking home this late. And if I'm going to walk you anyway, why don't we drive?"

"I walk home from the diner at night all the time. It's Stars Hollow."

"This is different. It's later and this is a date and it's different." He scowled at her. "If you want to walk, I'll walk you."

She stopped arguing. She was only doing it out of habit anyway, and because there was a funny little tickle in her throat and teasing him distracted her from it for a second. "I have to do a thing, okay?"

He frowned, confused. "You hungry?"

She smiled and patted his knee.

"All right," he said on an exhale, like she'd worn him down.

She could tell he was watching her out of the corner of his eye as he opened her truck door and they walked up to the doorstep of the diner. She caught his arm before he unlocked the door. "I had a really good time tonight. Even better than Liz's wedding, if that's possible."

"Well, nobody threw tights at us, so that was a good start."

She slid her hand up over his smoothly-shaven jaw and pulled him into a kiss. It was supposed to be slow and sweet, but an undercurrent of tension took hold of her. His chest tensed under her hands, pressing closer to her body, and before she'd quite knew how it had happened, they were gripping each other, the kiss gone feverish and mouth-bruisingly hard.

She broke away, sucking in a big lungful of air and watching him do the same, his blue eyes a little dazed. Nothing like the laconic, cynical diner owner she'd been used to all this time.

"Wow," she gasped out. "I knew we had a spark, but I kind of thought the whole comfortable-happy thing we've got going went along with the kind of kisses like, 'Oh, that was nice,' not 'I'm surprised I still have my clothes on.'"

"So you made me bring you back to the diner so you could kiss me on my doorstep and then tell me you expected me to be a bad kisser?"

She quieted, remembering her original plan now that she wasn't thrown by the kiss. "Invite me up."

"Lorelai…"

"Fine, I'll do it myself." She pushed up onto her toes and snatched his spare key from above the doorstep, then let herself into the diner, the closed sign rattling against the glass.

"Lorelai, we shouldn't—"

"It's okay."

"It's too fast."

"Eight years is too fast?"

"Eight years for me," he said, a look in his eyes she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to decipher. "Not for you."

"Kind of." She locked the door and grabbed him by the front of his jacket, dragging him toward the stairs.

"What does that mean, 'kind of'?"

"It means that there are a lot of things going on in my head at any given time." She started up the stairs. "There's the stuff going on up front, and bunch of extra business in the middle, and I think there's a room in the back where it's nothing but I Love Lucy reruns. Then there's the sludgy basement I don't think about except after a particularly bad Friday dinner, and then there's the…I don't know, I'm out of rooms. The garage you pay the rent on and never open, maybe? But what's inside is something that's more important than all the rooms you track dirt into and out of every day."

She stopped outside the door to his apartment.

She reached for the knob and he brushed the hair back out of her face. "We don't have to go in yet. I want to hear the rest of what you're saying."

"You will." She opened the door and hesitated again. "The first time I ever came up here, I got such a thrill. Of course, Rachel was there that first time, so that put a little bit of a dent in it, but still."

"You got a 'thrill' out of my dad's old office?" he asked skeptically.

"Because it was like, Secret Luke, you know? Everybody knows Diner Luke, we see him every day. Most of us know when you're going to smile and when you're going to snap. I know exactly how you arrange food on a plate. But this was like, something not everybody had access to. But you let me. I felt…special, different."

"You do like to feel important." His eyes softened a bit.

"I do."

She slung her purse onto a chair, then took off her coat.

His eyes followed her movements, weighing them. "You're sure this is not too soon…"

"So for eight years, you had that horoscope in your wallet. And in my secret garage, I had that irritated, half-fond little smile you only gave me. I knew that you'd let me get away with things you never let anybody else get away with. You let me drive your truck even after I took it through the whole town backwards because I didn't know what a clutch was."

"Clutch is replaceable," he muttered.

"Everybody told me, Luke, how you felt. Even my mother and she's never been accused of being especially in tune with other people's emotions. But I couldn't hear them because…" She turned away, wandering through his kitchen. Her fingers walked across the edges of his dish drainer, skimmed a dish towel. "You know Helen of Troy? Inspired her lovers to launch a thousand ships, right? Well, I'm Infatuation Girl. I can rev a guy into a really hot, really fast infatuation."

"A thousand yellow daisies infatuation."

"Yup. But it doesn't last." She worked to keep her voice light, to smooth over the hot needle of pain that the thought always stuck through her chest. "It's not because of them. It's because of me. I couldn't let you fall in love with me, because that meant someday you'd stop."

He crossed his arms. Didn't try to reassure her, just stayed. Steady and so Luke-like.

She started to smile. "But then you asked me if I was scared tonight, and I wasn't. I didn't want to be in the separate garage anymore. I wanted to be up here, in your secret room with you."

She crossed the room and hooked a finger in his shirt collar. It was silk, a different kind of soft from his time-worn flannels. This one soft because it had so rarely been worn. She flicked open the button.

"The night I was crying in the diner and you said you knew I'd get the whole package…I wanted you to ask me then. And the other time, when you were fixing your watch and I told you there weren't many people in my life and I needed you to be one of them… Then, I was asking you not to ask me." Her eyes narrowed and she studied his face, trying to see past the familiar to all the things about him she was only starting to realize she'd been missing. "I don't know how you knew the exact right time when I'd finally be ready—"

"I didn't. I just couldn't wait anymore. I was…"

"What?"

"Lonely."

Her fingers faltered on the buttons of his shirt.

His hand came up to cover hers. "Hey, don't be like that. I'm fine. You know I'm fine."

"I've always been with you, Luke. For so long I don't remember when you went from being Diner Luke to being my friend. But I would have stayed at arm's length forever if it meant you'd never go further away than that."

He half-smiled. "Litchfield."

"What?"

"You lost your damn mind when I moved to Litchfield. It's ten minutes away."

"It's a lot further than arm's reach."

"You want me closer than that, all you got to do is say the word." He nodded toward her hand, where it had snuck inside his shirt and was just resting in place, not going any further.

Her eyes slipped closed and she took a jagged breath. "Old habits die hard."

She took another breath and he moved closer, hands cupping her shoulders and thumbs rubbing soothingly over her arms.

"You don't have to say it. I'm not going anywhere, Lorelai. I'll be here when you're ready. I'll be here the first time you freak out and go flying off to Rory's, telling her you need to move to Florida because you're not sure it will work out and I'm going to hate you forever." He kissed her forehead. "I'll be here when you come back. I'm not your parents, and I'm not Christopher. I'm not going to ditch you."

"I don't want you to be Max, either."

"Because you ditched him?"

"Mm-hmm." Her voice was so tight now she wasn't entirely sure she wasn't crying.

He hugged her into his chest, and her cheek pressed against the part of his shirt she had opened. "Okay," he said.

"Okay? I've got a damn chuppah in my yard for a wedding that never happened and he can't even stand to be in the same room with me. How is that okay?"

"Because I'm not Max. I saw the look on your face the morning after he proposed," Luke said, his voice as no-nonsense as always. "And I saw the look on your face at dinner tonight. Me and Max got even less in common than I thought."

She smiled, a tear slipping down to dampen the spot between her cheek and his chest. "I am doing a terrible job of seducing you."

"I've got no complaints." His voice was warm, like a smile.

She slumped into his chest, and he really seemed okay to just…hug. How had she not known that Luke gave the best hugs in the universe? All solid and warm, like you could just drift off to sleep standing up.

"Did I know you could hug like this?" she murmured drowsily.

The light pressure of a kiss touched her hair. "What, so now you're going to tell me how you always thought I'd be a bad hugger, too? You really know how to woo a guy."

"No, I just…" She sighed, and whatever she'd been about to say didn't seem as important.

"What'd you come up here to tell me?" Luke asked. "Seemed like you had a whole scheme. Kiss on the diner's doorstep, I invite you up…"

"Crazy first date sex," she murmured. "Clothes flying out the windows, hickies on your neck for Miss Patty to giggle over tomorrow. You limping bow-legged into work so Cesar starts chuckling and you yell at him."

Luke shifted and her eyes popped open as the world spun. His arm came under her knees as he lifted her.

She smiled, her head resting against his shoulder. "Liked that image, did you?"

"It's one of the many scenarios I imagined over the years." He carried her to bed, sounding impressively matter-of-fact. "Which piece of clothing flew out the window?"

He sat her on the edge of the bed and she slumped back against the prop of her hands. Her coffee must have worn off really suddenly, because she was that muzzy, warm drowsy you get when you wake up on Saturday morning and there's nowhere you have to be, and the blankets and pillows are all swirled around you just right.

"Probably my bra. I figured it would land right on the side mirror of your truck, hanging by the shoulder strap, and violating at least three town ordinances that Taylor would have ticketed you for by sunrise."

"I'd frame the ticket."

He knelt and pulled off her heels, setting them aside in the little shelf under his nightstand, as if that was their place.

He blurred before her eyes, a soft mix of blues and browns, and she thought she was smiling, but that might be a feeling just inside her, not one that actually made it to her face.

His apartment was a secret little nook where he went when no one else in town could see him, and within the nook her shoes had their own little nook. She had half a mind to walk home barefoot so the shoes could stay there forever because no one else would know they were there, but she would know. And Luke would know. And when they smiled at each other in the morning over coffee, her shoes would be tucked away up here, right in the heart of his home.

A swirl of dizziness overtook her, like that falling sensation right before you jerked back awake, but this time, she didn't jerk. Warm arms came around her and a hand cradled her head and she went from falling to being lowered.

Soft pillow. Smelled like Luke.

"Don't take this the wrong way," his voice muttered. It mixed oddly with the vision in her head of them smiling at each other over coffee in the diner.

Hands reached under her skirt. In the vision, suddenly she was perched up on the counter and all the diner lights were off, Luke's hat knocked askew as he kissed her passionately, his fingers tugging at the waistband of her panties. Her hips curled with sudden desire.

The pinch of tightness around her waist lessened, and then she registered the gossamer kiss of pantyhose tickling down her legs, her panties staying in place. As soon as they were gone, a scratchy knitted blanket settled over her, her hair brushing away from her cheek.

She exhaled and she wasn't in the diner anymore.

She was in her own kitchen but it smelled like Luke's. Sizzling bacon and coffee so good she knew she hadn't made it herself. She was sniping at Luke for trying to feed her decaf again and he rested a hand over her softly curved belly as he kissed her.

Luke.

It was an old dream, but she recognized the feeling of it, because it was the same feeling that had come over her at a restaurant table tonight when he said in his utterly practical voice that he was all in. Like it was a fact, not a romantic declaration. And certainly not a pick-up line. She wasn't even sure Luke knew any lines.

And that sense of him breathed life into the whole dream. Safety. Warmth. Laughter. The whole package. She knew how to make him smile, and she knew she could always make him smile.

The sound of toothbrushing blurred into the kitchen scene and it changed again. Lorelai was in her own bedroom, hugging her knees as she called through the open bathroom door, "Are you sure you hid it well enough?"

The faucet ran, and he said, "For the last time, Lorelai, it's hidden! It doesn't matter how late Rory comes in, she'll never see her present."

"Sorry." She pouted, and he came to the bathroom door. Shirtless, wearing just pajama pants. "She just hasn't been home in forever because she's been off on assignment for the paper and I'm really excited about Christmas this year."

He shook his head, amused and irritated. "You Gilmore girls are all the same. Rory called me three times about your present, and your mother has called twice to be sure I'm making all the right pies for Christmas dinner. Lemon for Rory, Boysenberry for you, and she changes the one for Richard every time she calls. At this rate I'm going to have to cut off the regular menu and serve dessert only for the whole week after Christmas to get rid of all the different pies I've made for that woman."

Lorelai grinned. "It's the Emily Gilmore stamp of approval. After she went through the 365 days of different chefs trying to find one that could beat your pies, you're going to be on the hook for holiday desserts forever, with all the pain and suffering that entails."

He snorted. "Last time she called, she asked me to make marzipan. Little marzipan golf clubs."

"Do you know how to make marzipan?"

"Of course I do!" he snapped. The image glitched as the bed dipped under his weight, even though she hadn't seen him cross the room. "But if I tell your mother that, I'll never have another moment's peace, so you better not give it away."

"I don't know," she said, bouncing onto her side. "I'm kind of curious. Marzipan is so disgusting but you never make anything disgusting, so now I kind of have to know what Luke's marzipan would taste like."

"If you eat your vegetables on Christmas, I'll make you some for New Years." He settled in beside her, the blankets tugging and resettling over her as he rearranged them so they could share. "But don't tell your mother."

"Can you make me a Patrick Swayze one?"

"No."

"Please? Roadhouse Patrick Swayze, not Dirty Dancing. The abs were the same but the hair…" She shuddered.

"It's wrong to ask your husband to make you a marzipan model of another man. Now go to sleep and when you wake up, Rory will be here."

"We're married?" Lorelai whispered, and tears wavered in her eyes as the smile spread across her face. And spread and spread, like she could stay happy forever.

"What?" Luke asked, his voice louder now somehow. "Lorelai, did you say something?"

She opened her eyes and for a second she didn't know where she was. The room was dark, but Luke's face was there, a little younger than it had been a minute ago, but he was on the same side of the bed he had been…in the dream.

She blinked again, the whirl of memories rearranging themselves into dreams.

Making out in the diner, kissing in the kitchen as he touched her pregnant belly, bickering over Rory's Christmas present in the bedroom of her house… She'd dreamed their whole, beautiful life together and there she was again, in his bed on the moment of their second first date, before they'd ever even had sex.

"Hi," she whispered.

"Hi," he murmured back, looking a little worried. "Is this okay? I can sleep on Jess's bed. You fell asleep before I could ask you."

"I know." She smiled. "You gave me sex dreams from taking off my pantyhose."

A little gleam lit up his eyes. "I think that's my favorite thing I've ever heard you say."

She hooked a knee over his hip and rolled up to straddling him, his sweatpants soft against her bare thighs as her skirt bunched up toward her waist. "My favorite thing I've ever heard you say was…" She paused, caught between three. "'You do.'"

He frowned. "What? What does that even mean?"

"When I said I didn't have many people in my life, and I said I had Rory and Sookie and you…or at least I thought I had you, and you were mad at me at the time, but you didn't even let me finish before you said 'You do' in this really final and deep-sexy voice."

He smiled and because she was sitting directly on his lap, she felt him harden a little at her words. "It was a deep-sexy voice, huh?"

She shook out her hair and he flexed against her again. "Oh yeah."

His hands came to rest on her thighs, natural and comforting like they chatted in this position all the time. "What was that little pause?"

"I was trying to decide between three quotes. Oh, maybe four."

He raised his eyebrows, his thumbs stroking her bare thighs just under the edge of her skirt. It was sexy and so natural it wasn't even flirtatious, and it still made her breath stagger in her throat. "Come on, you can't tease me like that."

"Au contraire, Mr. Danes." She tilted her hips, just enough to rub the center of her panties up the rapidly swelling length of him. "I'm an exquisite tease."

Now his breath was staggering, and his hands weren't so relaxed as they had been a moment ago, his fingers starting to dig thoughtlessly into her legs. He had a hell of a grip from all those years of pliers and power tools, and she liked him using it on her.

She placed a hand by his head and leaned down, her hair a riot of pillow-tossed curls all around them. " 'I'm all in' was a damn close second."

He smiled, his eyes a little dazed.

"Followed by, 'You are infuriating.'" She matched his aggravated tone exactly. "And 'You will. Now eat your doughnut.'" She sighed and lifted a tiny kiss from his lips. "And every time you've ever told me it would be okay. And when you said, 'We should do it again sometime.' All nonchalant, like you couldn't have knocked me over with a feather right then."

"That's way more than three," he said huskily, his hands climbing over her hopelessly wrinkled skirt to her hips.

She kissed him. His hands tightened and hers gripped and she got lost in the intimacy of being allowed to touch his tongue with hers and all the beautiful things his knew how to do that she'd never known about.

When she pulled back, she was panting and her nipples were hard, her whole body achy and urgent and she was so damned glad she'd made him take her back to the diner because if he'd been all gentlemanly and dropped her off at home, this would have been a fresh batteries and two kinds of vibrator kind of night. She told him that, and he started to laugh.

Full belly, delighted laugh that shook her whole body atop his.

He kissed her on the cheek. "How am I not surprised you own more than two kinds of vibrators?"

"Come over sometime, cowboy. I'll let you play with all my toys if you promise to share."

He reached down with a wince to adjust the waistband of his pants, but he was still smiling. "I thought that's where we were heading, but then you just fell asleep!"

"Yeah, that was weird." She frowned. "It was like one of those nights when you've been driving for hours and hours on icy roads and you're all tense and you finally get home and it's dark and warm inside and you just collapse on the couch because you're so glad to be home that you can't even make it upstairs."

He brushed a hair behind her ear, a little smile on his lips as he listened to her. "I was kinda offended, but when I saw how you looked in my bed, I decided I could deal."

"I dreamed about us." She leaned down, so there were only inches between them, their own private little fort in the darkness. "About our life. With Rory and—" She couldn't bring herself to say baby out loud. It was like having a wish that you wanted so bad you couldn't tell anyone even after you got the biggest side of the wishbone, because you didn't want to jinx it.

She smiled, and it felt wider and more brilliant than any other smile. Luke blinked, his gaze flicking down to her mouth.

"And then I woke up in your bed." Goosebumps thrilled down her back and she pushed her hands under his shirt so she could feel his skin. His chest was just as firm and manly-hairy as she'd seen it in her dream. "And I feel like I've lived with you for twenty years and we're happy and bickery and we have a thousand inside jokes and suddenly now I get to have our first time together all over again."

Her inner muscles clenched and tingly warmth gathered, as if it was all a special kind of magic waiting for his hand to rub the ache away.

"That sounds nice," he said hoarsely.

"Oh, it better be more than nice, Butch." She rolled him on top of her. He propped his weight up on his elbows, but she wanted to feel it all against her. She reached into his pants and drew out his cock.

His eyes never wavered from her face, even as they grew hazy with desire, little lines appearing at the edges like he was in pain, or about to be in tears, or something momentous.

She stroked him, her grip strong and sure, learning the length of him for the first time that she'd come to know so well in the years to come.

"I'm dizzy," she whispered. "Like I'm in our past and future and present all at the same time."

"Which one's the best?" he asked, just before his brow creased and his jaw flexed to hold in a moan.

"All of them." She pushed up to kiss his neck, leaving a bite mark there so she could admire it in the morning. "I love all of them."

Author's Note: If you liked this fic, try out that author follow button, because I have another one shot coming for these two, to cover The Moment when the moon was full and Luke gave her the ring. Thanks so much to all the lovely reviewers and super friendly people in this fandom!