This story starts in "In the Clamor and the Clangor" and goes wildly AU from there.
"Piranha"
Lorelai wonders if she's a piranha.
She stands atop the CN Tower, ignoring the tourists as she stares out over the expanse of the city. It feels like she can see forever from this view, and her phone is in hand to call Rory and tell her. But international long distance on a cell phone is akin to paying $15,000 to repair termite damage on the house, so she doesn't press the speed dial as much as she wants to.
She looks down at the small screen on her phone, the contact list displayed with associated speed dialing. Her daughter, always, is no. 1. But no. 2 isn't her parents. It isn't Chris. It isn't even Sookie. It's a man she has no right to because he's married and moving to god-damn Litchfield.
She presses her hand to her mouth, holding back a hysterical sob before the security guard decides she's a risk to public safety.
She has to be a piranha, right? Or maybe she's more like a Venus fly-trap, snapping and trying to capture whatever affection she could get. She did it a year and a half ago with Chris, when she believed him when he said things were over with Sherry. She wanted to believe in that lie so badly, because she had pushed away her closest male friend in a moment of emotional stupidity. For months, she wrestled with her choice to be with Chris that one night before it all fell apart. Had Chris been unfaithful to Sherry? Had she provoked it? Had Chris really been single or trying to live a lie, just like she was?
And now … her fingers trail over her bottom lip. Now there was no question. More emotional stupidity. Stupid, stupid Lorelai, not thinking before she acts. Not thinking before she grabbed her best friend by the arms of his plaid shirt and kissed him within an inch of their lives. Not thinking before she fled the church, fled Stars Hollow, fled the state, fled the damn country. She hadn't even packed. The only reason she made it to Canada in the first place was because her passport had been stashed in the glove box of her Jeep. Her car had wound its way through the interstate system until she was crossing the border in Buffalo, babbling about a weekend of shopping.
Good thing American money goes a lot farther in Canada. That was another mistake there. She can barely afford her mortgage, so why the hell is she in Toronto?
More mistakes. Why can't she just wish him well in his marriage? Why had he tried again? What did Nicole offer that she didn't other than a great deal more sanity? No, it was like God had stood next to her in the church and literally smacked her upside the head with the uncomfortable truth. She was in love - really in love - for the first time in her adult life. A true, pure love she had only experienced one other time, when her daughter was placed in her arms for the first time. She was in love with someone whom everyone told her had loved her for years and years but had finally stopped waiting for her. And now …
She hugs herself as tears stream down her cheeks. She wonders if she could see to Stars Hollow from here. It's entirely silly and not possible, but she like impossible dreams.
She has a good life, she reminds herself. She has the inn that was opening in the spring. She has Rory. Until yesterday, she had a boyfriend, but she broke it off with him somewhere along I-90. She couldn't remain with him, not after staring the truth in the face. Not after kissing a married man after he yelled at her, wondering why she suddenly cared so much that he was moving.
It had been the best kiss of her life.
She remembers the feel of him against her, his erection pressing into her hip as they kissed like they were in the climax of a apocalyptic movie and there would be no tomorrow. She wonders how close they were to him pushing her down onto one of the nearby pews, though to be honest, she would be dragging him on top of her. She closes her eyes and imagines, not for the first time, what it would feel like. Him inside her, that sweet ache of penetration, finding pleasure again and again. Shame wars with the pleasure, because it is so, so wrong to even think that way about him.
It had been the bells that stopped them. Those damn bells that drove them to the church in the first place, ringing to remind them of their purpose of going to the church in the first place. Seconds after they sprang apart, Reverend Skinner had walked in, and she had just run. Run, run, run, because she was excellent at running. She ran away from home with an infant. She ran away after breaking things off with Max. She ran to Chris after shattering her friendship.
You don't run all the time, a voice that sounded suspiciously like his said in her mind. You didn't run when I was having issues with Jess. You didn't run when my uncle died. You didn't run from Rory. You didn't run when the inn burned down.
She finally heads back to the street, emerging among the tourists and wondering, what do I do now?
She drives to New Haven once she's back in the states, reassuring Rory that everything was fine and she was actually in Canada to do some shopping for the inn. That hadn't been entirely wrong, as Lorelai took the chance to order the sinks for the guest rooms and snagged some things for the lobby. It is on the tip of her tongue to tell Rory everything, but she just can't. Not this time.
She avoids driving home by going to Hartford.
She drives past her parents' house and she sees Jason's car sitting in the driveway. She quickly drives away.
She goes to the inn. Her place. She walks through the halls and inspects the work that Tom's team has done. She makes some notes about changes and feels a bit more normal. She unloads her purchases, stacks them in the future supply room, and tacks a picture of the sinks to the wall in the kitchen for Sookie to see.
She places a postcard of the CN Tower in her office and smiles sadly.
There's no other way around it. She has to go home. Has to resume her life. She was out of clean underwear.
She skillfully avoids her neighbors, the town square, town meetings, the diner. She takes long, meandering walks to Sookie's house. Her friend is still so wrapped up in Davey that she accepts her excuses.
She holds the baby, thinks what could have been had she not been so stupid, and she cries. She blames her period.
February turns into March, and winter makes a last attempt at sticking around. She knows it's the final snowfall of the year, but she is still too sad to deal with it. Why the hell was she mourning so hard? It wasn't like they were ever together. But, oh, they had been - even of just emotionally - for the better part of eight years.
She bundles into layers of blankets, making a cocoon for herself because the heater isn't working, and she can't afford to call anyone to service it. She sleeps on the couch like she has every night since her return from Canada, because the thought of her bed makes her want to cry. She remembers the dreams - of kisses and decaf coffee and twins, and why the hell hadn't she recognized her own feelings back then?
Because she was running from him.
She wakes up to warmth singing through the house, the blankets tossed to the floor because she had gotten too hot in her sleep. And she knows who fixed her furnace.
March turns into April, and her grandmother dies. The inn is struggling, and she feels guilty over that mad trip to Canada six weeks earlier. But suddenly an anonymous gift is made, the $30,000 covering the bills and giving them just enough so the inn can open. And she knows who did it.
April turns into May, and the inn is oh-so-close to opening. And she sits at the table, invitations spread out for the trial run, one name conspicuously missing. When Rory points it out, she lies and says she sent it already. When Michel asks her if the burly man in flannel and the unkempt face is coming, she breezily explains he's too busy with his wife in Litchfield and wouldn't be attending.
She doesn't ask when Michel gives her a strange look and disappears into the kitchen. Sookie emerges, wiping a hand on her towel, concern writ across her face.
"Sweetie, we need to talk," she says soothingly, but Lorelai dismisses her and flees to run errands in Hartford.
May turns into June, and Rory goes to Europe with her mother, and Lorelai doesn't do a thing to stop it. What could she say? Like mother, like daughter? The only reason she hadn't slept with a married man herself four months earlier was because of divine intervention. So she remains quiet and encourages the trip, along with Rory's scorn, and hates herself a little more every day.
June turns into July, and Lorelai is asked on a date by a very charming inn guest. She starts to say yes, but when he suggests the diner, she gently turns him down.
July turns into August, and she keeps wanting this feeling to go away. It has for the most part. New habits become ingrained, and avoiding the town square was second nature now. She attempts a town meeting, but sees a familiar hat among those already seated. Tears leap into her eyes, and she runs once again.
The longing strikes when she least wants it, usually when she's trying to sleep. She's back in her bed, because Rory was home, but she keeps staring at the empty space next to her and wonders what might have been.
August turns into September, and she writes a check for the first payment back to the not-so-anonymous benefactor. It's returned unopened.
September turns into October and October into November, and she takes flowers to a grave she once spotted in the cemetery. She pats the headstone and tells the occupant that he raised a fine son, and she hopes he's happy. And he'll remain happy as long as she stays out of his life.
November turns into December, and she remembers that with serious break-ups that there was a saying that it took one month per year of a relationship to emotionally recover. Well, she had exceeded things there. Eight years, 10 months, and they were never in a real relationship to begin with. It was time.
She walks into the town square and stares at the diner, waiting for her heart to crack. When it doesn't, she takes a deep breath and walks home.
The next day, she makes it to the sidewalk in front. She peers through the window and sees Lane waiting on tables and Kirk at the counter. Patty and Babette share a large order of fries and gossip, and Gypsy is arguing with Andrew over something.
Her hand is on the door when she sees him emerge from the kitchen with plates in his arms, her first glimpse of him in months. He stares through the window, straight into her eyes, and he starts to move. She sees him throw plates in front of the first table he gets to, trying to unload his burden as fast as possible.
But she is faster, unhampered by waiting customers and tables. Her heel snaps somewhere around Weston's, and she merely steps out of her shoes and keeps going. She makes it home, her feet in bloody tatters and her heart aching like a rotted tooth.
God damn it, why can't she stop loving him?
She sobs on the couch as Rory rushes from her bedroom. She sobs as Sookie arrives and holds her in her arms. She sobs as Lane tucks a blanket around her as she curls into a fetal position and cries herself to sleep.
But the last thing she hears is as she drifts off is, "She doesn't know?"
"I thought you told her."
"I thought everyone knew."
"You need to tell her."
"Tell me what?" she asks in a murmur, and Rory sits on the coffee table.
"Mom," she says quietly, "Luke's divorce was finalized nine months ago."
December creeps toward Christmas, and she wrestles with guilt and possibility. The entire story comes out of Lane, Sookie, and Rory. While she had been in Toronto, Nicole had come into the diner and they had it out in the apartment upstairs. He had reinstated the divorce papers, and he wouldn't tell her why. Nicole had said a number of nasty things about her that had resulted in her getting thrown out. The divorce had been finalized by the end of March.
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" she whispers.
"Because," Rory says, "you wouldn't even talk about him. We tried."
And she remembers when Rory brought him up during the invitations for the trial run, how Sookie tried to talk to her in the inn.
"What's he been doing since?" The question bursts from her before she takes it back.
"Waiting for you," Lane replies.
It takes a ridiculously long time to unbreak the bells, because she has to figure out how to reconnect the clappers. She finally wrestles them into place, removes the wedge from the main mechanism, and flees just as the bells begin to ring.
She sits on a pew and waits.
He arrives after 30 minutes, dropping Burt as he stares at her waiting in the front pew. The bells ring, and they are lost in each other, drinking the sight of the other in like water in the Sahara. The bells ring and ring, because while she got them unstuck, she also didn't reset the mechanism, so they didn't stop ringing.
He grabs tools and disappears into the bell tower. Minutes later, blessed silence fills the room.
He warily approaches her, and when she doesn't move, he sits next to her. "Why?" he blurts, and it means so many things, but first and foremost - why had she run from him for so long?
"I thought I ruined your marriage. You cheated on your wife because I pushed you into it." Tears ran down her cheeks. "I thought your life would be better without me."
"My life isn't real unless you're in it." His voice is hoarse, and she turns her head to catch the sheen of tears in his eyes.
"I just want you to be happy." The words come out as a sob, but she's determined to get through this. "I didn't know … I didn't." Anger rolls through her, drying up the tears, and she pushes at his arm. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I thought your life would be better without me." He gives her a sad smile. "I just want you to be happy, too."
They once broke four months of silence with a donut.
They break it now by stripping the layers of clothes from each other's bodies. It feels like a dream that she thought would be snatched away the moment she opens her eyes, but his touch is too real for her not to believe in it.
There are months of pain and anger they need to work through, but they need this connection too badly for them to abstain from it. She doesn't remark on his new bed, bought during the long summer months when he still had hope. He doesn't comment on the slight curve to her stomach, born of too many ice cream pints consumed in the depths of her misery. He treats her like spun glass, and she touches him like the dolls in the dollhouse she was forbidden from playing with as a child.
But then he needs her too badly to be gentle, and she wants quick and fierce. She feels like she has no right to the orgasm that simply overwhelms her, or to the second that follows in short succession. As she gasps and cries, her eyes remain on his as they cloud over and he follows her into the sweetest of oblivions.
They lay in the dark, his arms around hers, and her heart gives a jolt as she watches the first snowfall outside. She runs her toes along his leg.
"I thought I was a piranha," she confesses into the dark. "I was taking something that didn't belong to me. What I did was wrong."
"You're not," he insists, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "And what we did was wrong, but you also showed me that no matter what I did, I was just making things worse for Nicole. I'd rather live a hundred years alone than live without you." He brushes an errant lock of hair behind her ear and scowls. "How schmatzy is that?"
"It's not." Because if she has learned anything over the past year, it's that she feels the same. "If I'm not a piranha, then what am I?"
"I don't know. Let's take the next 50 years or so to find out."