A Shattered Mess
Luke finds clarity over a broken bottle of wine.
Takes place during some point post "Partings", in early season 7.
"Well, shit."
Luke stared at the bottle of wine shattered and spilled across his kitchen floor. He should have been hurrying to clean it up, but he couldn't help but watch the liquid move into tiny streams as it spread across the freshly cleaned wood. He would definitely need to mop again.
It was a special bottle - one of the few wines he actually liked, and one he'd had a hard time finding. When he and Lorelai first started dating, he'd told her about it, and had begun looking for it. He'd given up until one day he stumbled across it just outside Stars Hollow. He'd saved it, intending to share it with Lorelai.
But the timing never seemed right. There was always some reason to save it for later, so he moved it around his kitchen and eventually stuck it in the back of his pantry, hoping he'd remember it was there when the right moment presented itself.
Inevitably, he forgot about it.
The day arrived when, out of things with which to occupy himself, he decided to clean out his pantry. It served the purpose of removing all things sugary that had migrated there over the past two years, and would hopefully give the ache in his chest a chance to begin dissipating.
He'd reached back to grab the tall, unfamiliar bottle in the back, and the second he realized what it was, it slipped and shattered. This was not a wine meant for aging, it was meant to be enjoyed. And the blood red mess marring his kitchen floor had, at some point over the last few years, begun turning into vinegar.
The bottle of wine, he realized, was the perfect metaphor for his relationship with Lorelai. He'd moved her around his life, expecting she'd be there waiting for him. Then, when he should have been putting her front and center, he moved her to the very back of his priorities. Things changed between them. Turned sour. But he wasn't able to see it, she wasn't in his direct line of sight anymore, so he hadn't noticed. He didn't realize she was pulling away. Worse, he didn't realize he'd done it first...
...until she was standing in the street begging and pleading with him to notice. So caught up in his own life he was, that he hadn't realized that was the moment she'd slipped from him and shattered until he finally awoke in the early light of morning and saw the tiny pieces of Lorelai that had been left behind.
For a moment, he was determined to believe that they were still together.
But no.
Like the dusty bottle of wine, he failed to recognize it before it was gone. He hadn't noticed anything...
...The look on her face.
...The things she was trying to tell him.
...The deafening silence over the last few months.
...The growing distance between them.
...His time spent alone at his apartment.
Lorelai had warned him that when they were married he couldn't hide in his clubhouse. Since they weren't married, he set up a fort there. One that allowed only daughters, and not fiancées... except during specific times.
He'd hidden from her to wallow in his insecurities. About Christopher, first, and later about April. The difference was, he'd let her come to him about Christopher. They'd talked. They'd made promises to have no secrets. With April, he subsequently broke the no secrets vow, and therefore refused to allow Lorelai in. Because of the way he'd handled everything April, she'd run to Christopher.
It was a sickening circle.
Luke slid to the floor, leaning against his cabinets, his focus less on the pieces of glass shining in the afternoon light, and more on the broken memories of his relationship.
The consequence for forgetting about something important to you, and then mishandling it entirely was a shattered mess.
At least the wine was something he could clean up.
Author's Notes: Li'l bit different from "Defining All In", if ya read that thing.
I had to watch a lot of season 6 and 7 while writing it, which was really hard, as so many of those episodes are so full of angst and heartache. I wrote this while stuck on some chapter of "DAI" while moping over "Partings" and "The Long Morrow". For some reason, I tend to have a morbid fascination with angst and heartache, especially with this show, probably because Lauren acts the holy effing crap out of it. Anyway. Luke needed some time to wallow and so did I, so... this happened. Poor, sad Luke. Poor, sad us.