AN: Just a little bit of fun, brought to you by boredom and cold medicine. One-shot.
AN2: For those of you who have been reading "Suspension of Disbelief", expect an update soon. I've got several chapters finished, just having some trouble polishing them.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don't sue.
Nicole traces her fingers along the edge of his collar, and he pulls away.
He knows, by now, a certain number of appropriate excuses for such a thing. Not that he does this a lot (he is, after all, human), but when things are too weird or too strained or simply too late, he knows things to say.
I've got a headache being the stereotypical one, so he doesn't use it; I've got an early delivery tomorrow works better.
Or I'm coming down with a cold (the problem being, then you actually have to come down with one), or I've got a strained muscle in my leg, or my back is out. The back being out is naturally the best one, as it's non-specific and flexible on time.
The one thing he can't say, and he knows it: because the toaster will see us.
"Luke Danes?" The guy in the brown shorts raises his voice at the end, turns it into a question.
"I don't have another delivery scheduled today," Luke says, and goes back to taking an order.
"Where do you want it?" The UPS guy asks, undeterred, and starts toward Luke with one of those annoying electronic-sign things. Luke's never trusted them.
"What is it?" Luke, against his better judgement, tucks the order pad into his belt and takes the box in his hands. It's got his name on it and the return address is a pre-printed label from some frou-frou yuppie kitchen store Nicole's always raving about. He's never had any interest in the place, it's filled with muffin pans shaped like flowers and multi-colored spatulas and other useless things, the kind of place where they paint a perfectly good mixer purple and then charge you an extra hundred bucks because it's purple. He wants nothing to do with it.
"I didn't order this," he says, and sets it down on the table. Which is a mistake, it gives brown-shorts guy an opening to shove that electronic-signature thing at him.
"I just deliver. You'll have to take it up with the sender."
"I can send it back?"
The guy shrugs. "If you didn't order it, I guess."
Table four is shooting him death-glares by this point, and a guy at the counter is not-so-subtly playing with his empty coffee cup, so Luke sighs and signs the damn thing and carries the suspicious package back to the storeroom.
It's another fifteen minutes before he gets a break – not that he's really trying – and gets a chance to open the unwanted box.
It's a toaster. Stainless-steel and modern, it's got knobs and dials and a little light to let you know when the toast is done. In case you case you can't seem to figure that out when it pops up, he guesses. There's an instruction book to go with it, packed in the bottom of the box. An instruction book. For a toaster.
Looks like the kind of thing Nicole would order; looks like the kind of thing she would love. What he can't figure is why she would have it sent here.
That's when he sees it – a tiny white card sticking up out of the styrofoam. There's a note.
Congratulations.
-Lorelai.
Sometimes, he thinks it would be easier to just kill her and have it done with.
But then he'd have to find a place to hide the body.
"Coffee, and a burger, and extra fries on the side."
She sits at the counter, and that's the only thing she says for a minute. Not a hi, not a hello, just an order. Which wouldn't be remarkable, except that those are the first words she's spoken to him in three weeks.
He has to step closer to her to fill the coffee mug; it can't be avoided.
"So, did you get it?" She's not meeting his eyes.
"Get what?"
"It. It. Your townhousewarming present."
"Oh. Is that what that was?"
"Well, it could be a wedding present, but it's a little too late for that. You're supposed to send it within a month of the wedding. Or is it three months? My mother would know. It could be a year, but then you've only got a year to write the thank-you cards, so I guess if you're a troublemaker you slip it in under the wire and then the couple has to write the thank-you note immediately or face some sort of Miss-Manners-approved punishment. Like being uninvited from the DAR luncheon."
"I got the toaster."
She looks at him over the edge of her cup, eyes half-hopeful. "Did you like it?"
He should, really, know how to answer this question, but he's not sure at the moment if did you like it means did you like it or will you forgive me or are we okay now or hey, you want to kiss me now? But now he's thinking like her, and he's pretty certain he just made that last one up.
So he shrugs. "It came with an instruction book."
"Fifty pages. And on the reverse pages, it's in French."
"I don't speak French."
"Nicole might."
"Nicole does."
She seems, inexplicably, disappointed in this.
"Well, that's good then, she can read the French part and you can read the non-French part."
"I don't think we need instructions for a toaster."
"It has dials. And lights."
"It makes toast."
"But, it might not make that toast perfectly without the dials and lights. They might be vital to the proper toast-making operation."
"Eat your burger." He grabs it from the pass-though and sets it down in front of her. The one good thing about Lorelai's appetite: she occasionally has to stop talking long enough to eat.
"Why? Why don't you want me to move?"
"Because you'll be living with Nicole." She practically shouts it, and her face is twisted, as if she's confused, or about to scream.
He shuts up at that, mouth still part-open, sucking in a deep breath.
He doesn't get the chance to move before she starts toward him, and he's still frozen when she reaches up and takes his face in both hands, pulls herself towards him, and he thinks—
"Lorelai—"
She freezes, and there's an expression on her face he's never seen, and then she jerks back.
"—what are you doing?"
"Nothing, I'm—" she steps backwards. "Nothing."
She turns around and practically runs out of the church.
So he does the only thing he can do – pick up his toolbox, curse at the floor, and break the bells.