Luke Danes, Babysitter

Disclaimer: We know, you know, they know. Not mine. Theirs.

Summary: An AU prequel, wherein Luke babysits, resulting in chaos, mayhem, and a call to Wonder Woman, with fluffy results.

AN: For PurryCat.

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The desk phone at the Independence Inn rang. Glaring at Michel, who had turned his back on aforementioned telephone in order to flip through the latest Sharper Image catalogue, Lorelai Gilmore snatched up the receiver before the dreaded fourth ring. By that one, people were not going to be in a mood to book a room, but might hang up after a few choice words.

"Independence Inn, this is Lorelai, how may I…"

"Lorelai?" squawked a muffled, desperate baritone. "It's me."

"Hello, me, how can I help me today?"

Michel rolled his eyes, muttered in French, and ambled off to, presumably, dust his loafers.

"Stop…Ing…Ound!"

"Luke?" asked Lorelai, genuinely concerned. "Hey, what is it, what's wrong? Are you in a closet or something?"

"Yes!"

Few things rendered Lorelai speechless, mostly because speech gave her time to think, which gave her time to plan, which gave her time, which gave her… Speech.

"Wait, what? Where are you?"

"Your house!"

"My house," said Lorelai forbiddingly. She was not that long ago the proud signer of a mortgage on that house, and while she called it the Crap Shack with love, nobody else could use that tone of voice about her house. "And why…"

"Look, you'd know, right?"

"Know what?" cried Lorelai, increasingly bewildered, and that was saying quite a lot for a woman whose childhood had included appropriate knowledge of six forks, four spoons, and three knives, at any given place setting. Not much could bewilder someone who knew that by age five.

"How to get this door open!"

"What… Never mind, I'm coming over."

Lorelai hung up, glanced around to be sure no guests would hear, and yelled, "Michel get your snooty French derriere back here right now!"

"Mai oui, my dear personal Hitler, how may I serve you?" drawled Michel. He ambled across the lobby carrying what looked to be a flawless cappuccino in an inn that had a cappuccino machine best known for making armpit noises.

Lorelai pointed imperiously. "Cover. Desk. Or. Lose. Job."

"Problems, my dear Lorelai?"

"Apparently, someone is locked into my house," said Lorelai, snatching her purse and coat out of the office.

"Wait, you mean locked out."

"No, I really don't," said Lorelai, and left a mystified Michel wondering what was going on, and where precisely his cappuccino had gone. The latter, naturally, was a very silly question. It was a coffee drink in vicinity of Lorelai. Those disappeared more regularly than ships entering the Bermuda Triangle.

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Lorelai unlocked her front door, wielding both heeled shoes in one hand as a makeshift weapon.

"Someone's been eating my porridge," she muttered to bolster her courage, although the truth was that they were watching her television (at the loudest possible volume), and squealing laughter in between what Lorelai profoundly prayed were sound effects.

She opened the door, yelling, "Heeeee-yah!"

A naked boy of about ten stopped bouncing on her couch. He dropped the box of Sugar-Coated Sugar Flakes. The floor, couch, and half the knick-knacks were already covered in them. He stared at her with huge dark eyes, dark curling hair standing on end, and screeched.

Lorelai clapped her hands to her ears, forgetting her shoes, and nearly gave herself an eardrum-ectomy by way of secondhand Nine Wests. Indignity enough of itself without a terrified naked boy-child streaking into her laundry room and slamming the door.

She looked at her watch, and slid her shoes back onto her feet. "Okay. That's definitely not Rory. She'd never leave school before the last bell, and she's going to study with Lane until supper. And why am I telling myself what I know? Right, shock. And my mother thought I was a handful."

A faint thudding was heard. Lorelai wondered if the child knew the laundry room door opened outward, wedged a chair under it just in case, and followed the angry thumps to her bedroom.

To her closet.

"Oh boy," she sighed, and glared at the offending door. She called, "Stop it!"

The thumping stopped.

She twisted the doorknob completely to the right, while shoving her hip against the door, and followed that with a brisk palm-swat to the trim.

The door swung open.

Luke Danes, covered in her clothing, toppled against her.

"…hell…?" he managed.

"I never shut it because it takes Houdini to open it, and it's not lefty-loosey, it's righty-mighty."

"That makes no sense," spat the diner owner, face red under a day's stubble. "Where's my hat?"

She picked up a battered ball cap and passed it to him. "You might want to get my good slip off first."

Luke all but levitated as he snatched a thin silky beige garment off his head. He held it between thumb and forefinger. "What. Is. This. For?!"

Lorelai swallowed her laughter, but the smirk could not be avoided, much as she tried. "It's a slip. They go under unlined skirts, for the sake of propriety, comfort, and in this climate, extra warmth in winter."

"It looks…" Luke scrunched up his face in disgust, revealing a family resemblance to the naked kid in her laundry room. "Sexy."

Blushing, perhaps from the way he implied so much while saying so little, Lorelai snapped, "Oh for… It's nude!"

Luke flung away the slip. "I didn't need to hear that!"

"That's the color description!"

"What? Who calls a color nude? That means nothing on! So it's not any color! It should be called skin!"

Lorelai skipped to the point. She had not known Luke Danes very long, although she'd heard the name for a few years. Mia mentioned him as a friend's adult child, a few others mentioned a diner named Luke's with good coffee, and that had led her eventually to the door under the sign reading "William's Hardware". Which, all things considered, made as much sense for a diner as the description "nude" did for "beige". He was nice, he was immune to her (self-admittedly clumsy) flirting, and he never charged for Rory's food. Lorelai could nurse many cups of coffee with free refills while watching her daughter eat, and none the wiser but herself and the irate diner owner in her bedroom. She could endure a rant or ten for all that, but she had more immediate concerns than pondering the kindness of Luke Danes.

"Why is there a naked kid in my house?"

Luke stopped mid-rant about asinine color monikers. "Naked?"

Mimicking his posture, arms folded, foot set to tap, Lorelai narrowed her blue eyes on his and said, "Yep."

Luke abruptly turned away from her, and started picking up clothing, willy-nilly. "Um, let me clean this up. It's, um, do I need to dry clean anything? I mean, it's not a big closet, with too much stuff, and that's not my business, what you have in your closet…"

"Do I look like I can afford a dry cleaning bill?"

Luke's shoulders hunched. "Uh."

"Drop the clothes, they're all wash-and-go, once we get the junior nudist out of my laundry room, I can fluff it all in the dryer, it'll be fine."

"Oh geez, Lorelai, I'm sorry," said Luke wearily and gently placed the armload of her clothing on her bed. "He's my sister's kid. She's got… Uh…"

"Problems," Lorelai interjected kindly, and pointed. "C'mon, tell me downstairs."

"Thank God," said Luke in a mumble. Offended that her bedroom was such distasteful territory for a male of the species, Lorelai stuck out her tongue. Sadly, Luke did not see it, being halfway down the stairs.

When she arrived in the living room, Luke stood amidst the carnage. His dark blue eyes hit hers in a look of utter despair.

"Porch."

Luke went to her porch, commenting, "I need to fix that railing. And that step is loose again."

"Okay, first, no, you don't need to do anything, and second, talk, mister. I know that's asking a lot of you, but…"

"He's Jess. My sister's kid. He's Jess," blurted Luke, pacing the dirt path from porch to parked jeep and back. "She's doing seventy-two hours on a psychiatric hold for her damn drinking again, and he showed up on the bus with a note first thing this morning, and he wouldn't eat eggs and toast, who doesn't eat eggs and toast, even I eat eggs and toast, okay, egg whites and toast, if it's whole grain stone-ground flour and there's no butter…"

"Wow," said Lorelai in wonder, "you do come unglued."

"Then he asked why the orange juice tasted like fruit, what the hell is it supposed to taste like?"

"Tang," said Lorelai.

Luke stopped his gesturing and walking, forehead knotting up. "Fruit has a tangy flavor."

"No, the astronaut drink. Tang. Powder in a can, add water, poof, instant, um, well, orange stuff," said Lorelai patiently. "You've never had a kid around before, have you. As in, had to take care of one for more than ten minutes."

Luke's mouth opened, then shut. He shook his head.

"Oh boy. She doesn't cook?"

He shook his head again, twisting his ball cap. The gesture of frustration was becoming quickly familiar to Lorelai.

"And she sent him here on a bus alone overnight from wherever she is."

"Geez, Lorelai, this isn't your problem…"

"Not my monkey, no, but the house is my circus," sighed Lorelai, and pointed him to the steps. "Sit. C'mon. You're having parent panic. I know it well."

Luke sat. Luke heaved in air, and when Lorelai smacked his back, it all rushed out in a "Hey!"

"Sorry, but if you don't exhale, you can't inhale. I read a book on Lamaze when I was pregnant. Didn't do me any good, but the breathing stuff was interesting."

"Did you see how skinny he is?" whispered Luke, head in hands, elbows on knees.

Lorelai rubbed small slow circles on his upper back. It worked with Rory, and she had a feeling the distress here was similar, even if Luke was a few decades past a case of colic. "Shh."

"He was filthy, his clothes were covered in… I had to get them off him and wash them, they weren't even… And I think he has flea bites."

The last tiny broken whisper shot Lorelai through the heart. "Oh no."

"She never calls except when she needs bail, I don't see her, we don't… she's… I didn't know it was that bad. I didn't ask."

She hugged him sideways, chin on his shoulder as she hummed a crooning note, again a sure-fire Rory-soother. By the tension level of Luke's muscles, it worked on him, too.

"He screamed when I told him he was getting a shower. He screamed. And ran. And he ended up here. You should lock your back door."

"Broken," said Lorelai by rote.

"I'll fix it," said Luke, meaning much more than the door. "He locked me in your closet. I'll… It's… Why didn't he want a shower? Did something happen to him?"

"He's a male."

"What?"

"Girls have that phase too sometimes," Lorelai explained patiently, and shifted to allow her back-rubbing hand some rest. "No bathing. Rory hit it when she was four, I had to use pink soap, pink bath water, pink towels…"

Baffled, Luke asked, "How'd you find all that stuff in pink?"

"Soap was easy, the bath water was a drop or two of food coloring, and the towels were leftovers from the inn, someone threw them into the load of wash with the servers' vests, and that's why Mia got rid of the vests, because after that, the towels were pink and the vests were sort of… Um… Sorry, I know you hate silly color names, but all I got is 'flaming disaster'."

Luke chuckled roughly, and straightened, visibly giving himself a shake. "Yeah, that covers it. Okay. Food?"

"Disguise it. Sookie helped me out on this one, I couldn't figure out how to get Rory to eat anything but pasta for about two months."

Astonished, Luke protested, "Rory? She never fusses."

Lorelai snorted. "Yeah, well, you know her now. Try her age four. Five. She'd give my mother a run for the money. Wrong color, wrong smell, wrong wrong wrong. Anyway, how old is… Jess?"

"Eleven."

Lorelai frowned. "He's a little small."

"Hey!" yipped Luke, indignant on behalf of all men everywhere at that description.

"For his age," laughed Lorelai. "By the way, the color you're turning is called puce."

Growling, Luke subsided. "Food?"

"Kids eat anything covered in cheese. Or cheese-type powdery stuff. Sookie would give me really finely chopped broccoli and I'd sneak it into the boxed macaroni and cheese."

"That stuff isn't good food for a kid."

Rolling her eyes, Lorelai gritted, "I'm aware, but I used real milk and real cheese, I just let Rory see the box so she'd…"

"Oh!" exclaimed Luke, light belatedly dawning. He grinned. "Devious."

Lorelai flushed, smoothing her skirt with her palms, eyes downcast. "Parenting is a long process of learning you're an idiot, and finding ways to keep your kid from figuring that out."

"Hey."

Lorelai looked up reluctantly.

Luke said solemnly, "You're not an idiot. You're a great mom. Now how do we get my nephew out of your laundry room and into a shower?"

"Watch and learn, Grasshopper."

"Geez," said Luke but it was reflex.

"Luke. Think. It's July. It's hot. What did you like to do when you were a kid?"

"Play ball, go swimming, run through the…" Luke grimaced, nearly face-palming. "Run through the lawn sprinkler."

"The other big trick to child care is to never forget what you did as a kid," Lorelai said, "and pray your kid does better. Okay, you get the hose, I'll be out in a minute."

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Some ten minutes later, Lorelai was dressed in a swimsuit (faded) and shorts (also faded) and squealing as Luke hit her with the mist of the garden hose. A few times, Luke let himself take a solid cold splash from a water pistol, his face shouting that he felt completely ridiculous when he wasn't laughing.

The back door opened. A small naked boy crept outside.

He watched with bright eyes.

At last, he accused, "You locked me in!"

"You broke into my house," countered Lorelai and squirted at him, missing deliberately. She then ignored his presence to taunt Luke.

The boy slid closer and closer to his uncle, who had shed his flannel shirt and draped it over a long-suffering flower bush of some unknown variety.

He tugged at his uncle's jeans. Lorelai hid a smirk and then yelped as Luke twisted the hose nozzle from spray to blasting jets of ice.

"Hey, Jess," said Luke, very neutrally, while Lorelai nodded approval.

"Can I play?" he asked softly.

"Sure," said Luke. "Wanna help wash the jeep?"

"You have a jeep?"

"Lorelai does."

"Girls drive jeeps?"

"That one does."

"That's cool," said Jess, affecting nonchalance, rather difficult to attain in one's birthday suit.

"Hey, what's the next game?" asked Lorelai, bounding up as if she had no clue.

"Jeep."

"I'll get the bucket and sponge and stuff."

Some twenty minutes later, Jess was coated in soap and water, the jeep was being washed in Mr. Bubble that Lorelai hastily tore the label from lest Jess read it, and Jess was very happily not noticing the sponge war between the adults caught him in the crossfire often enough that he was squeaky clean.

Draped in his uncle's flannel shirt, he sat on the porch steps with a peanut butter sandwich in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. He drank the milk with a sour face, eyes stuck on the cellophane-encased snack cake that was clearly to be his reward.

Safely out of view courtesy Lorelai's jeep, Luke sagged in exhaustion. "Geez! No wonder you need so much coffee. How the hell do you do it?"

Toweling her curls, Lorelai said simply, "It's funny what you do for love."

When she tossed aside the towel, Luke was staring at her as if he'd received a Divine Revelation.

"What? Bubbles on my face?"

"No," said Luke, "there's absolutely nothing wrong with your face."

For the second time in a day, Lorelai was speechless.

Then Jess's voice broke into the moment. "Ew! Are you gonna kiss?"

"No," said Luke, smiling, and ruffled his nephew's damp curls. "Not yet. Maybe after our first date."

Eyes wide, Lorelai wheezed in a noise rather like "Meep?"

"Oh, okay," said Jess, shrugging. "Am I in trouble?"

"Nope."

"Should I help clean up?"

"Yep."

"You're really not gonna kiss, right? That's gross."

Over Jess's head, Lorelai answered firmly, "Maybe after our first date."

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AN: No point, just fluff. Fluffy fluffety fluff fluffiness. LL early and often!