So in typical humble fashion, I have decided to approach the most exalted of Gilmore Girls fanfic categories: the post (original series!) finale reassembling of Luke and Lorelai's damaged relationship and getting them to a place where they can live out their happily ever after.

There have been dozens of iterations of this type of story, and virtually all of them are probably far superior to anything I have to contribute.

However, in a post AYITL world, a lot of us had to adjust our expectations: almost all of the stories out there focus on Luke and Lorelai striving for that traditional life as soon as possible: marriage, babies, the middle. As we all know, those are now officially AU stories.

I love those stories. However, at this point sticking close to canon requires something a little different. We know that Luke and Lorelai's middle wasn't what a lot of people expected or wanted, even if it made them happy. They didn't want marriage or babies in the same way that they had before, but they did want a life together, and they were happy once they got that life.

This story is about how they were able to get there.

Few enterprises seemed to be designed with a specific target in mind quite as much as Facebook was for Lorelai Gilmore.

It caught her a little by surprise. Sure, she knew the basics of using a computer to run her business and control her finances. She could be disciplined and organized when she absolutely needed to be, and there was little use in clinging to outdated technology. Still, she had never really seen the appeal of that slightly dusty black box beyond its more practical aspects. There was a shinier and infinitely more interesting electric device in her household called the television, one that rewarded her with imaginary (well mostly imaginary: who knew about the denizens of that uniquely modern phenomenon called reality TV) people to simultaneously obsess over and ridicule. The television didn't sit in silence and mock her with empty white space when the words pouring out from her head to the keyboard never seemed quite professional enough or when the numbers on the spreadsheet didn't balance out in a way that would keep her business and home afloat. It sustained her, it entertained her, and if things got a little too banal or repetitive for her tastes, there was always the DVD player.

Of course, the real life gossip maven that she prided herself on being couldn't help but being drawn in by the charms of what was essentially the modern version of the party line. Somehow she once again had another way to know everything about everyone before it happened, and she loved it. She could jeer at her high school classmates, surreptitiously stalk her middle school boyfriends, and finagle a way to spy on the increasingly sullen teenage girl who resided in the bedroom down the hall from her. This was in between the increasingly bloody fake gangland empire she was building bit by bit.

After all, she was too old to pretend to kill zombies or jack cars. She had to find a way to amuse herself somehow.

Luke's barely contained exasperation at this latest hobby took on the much same form as it did for all of her pop culture obsessions, which meant that he begrudgingly tolerated it and made it part of his own routine. They shared a home now, and their life had become one of cozy, amiable domesticity. He cooked dinner in the newly expanded kitchen (a man needed space for his expanded oven and mysterious cooking utensils, after all), they settled down in the living room to eat and talk about their days, and the early evenings often concluded with him curled up next to her to watch some TV show or movie he pretended to understand. That routine had been adjusted a bit to allow Lorelai to embark on a not-so-clandestine gossip/spy mission on her laptop while he did paperwork or watched a game, but not much else has changed in their daily lives.

It wasn't a glamorous life, but it was the one they wanted. They'd fought hard for it.

Which is why the notification in the corner of her screen caught her off guard.

Christopher.

Was asking to be included in your (barely) ex wife's daily updates really part of post breakup etiquette these days?

It hadn't escaped Lorelai that her Facebook obsession wasn't at all unusual for a certain type of woman her age looking to relive past connections and romances. However, that kind of person certainly wasn't her. She didn't know why Christopher thought it was her. Hadn't they lived out that particular fantasy to devastating effect a year ago?

It wasn't like Christopher didn't know that she was permanently settled with Luke. Both she and Rory had told him so themselves. And if he somehow felt that the situation had changed, the fact that her profile picture was of them together could leave no doubt in his mind.

She didn't talk to him anymore. He knew exactly why she didn't talk to him anymore.

Part of her considered that the request might be innocent. Conversing with people you used to know behind the safety of a computer screen often made it easier to let things go. She'd been happy to add to her feed the boy who humiliated and dumped her on her thirteenth birthday or the classmates who had made fun of her as a pregnant teenager. She had let the maids who had been once rude to her toddler daughter get a pass, and she had even added the overprotective mom who once chided her for not thinking of her only child and life's pride as a mistake. Maybe she just did it to mock and spy on those people, but she also felt like a bigger person for being able to let such ancient slights go. After all, it wasn't as if she would be spending a lot of time with those people outside of her computer screen.

Of course, she knew by bitter experience that sometimes what had always seemed innocent could turn out to be the one thing that could almost destroy your happiness for good.