Soli Deo Gloria

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Gilmore Girls. Or, funnily enough, The New York Times. Or White Castle. :D

"That place had to be the worst spot to have an evening at out ever. The cocktail hour was definitely not an hour, the owner kept yelling at the wait staff, the food was cold and totally sophisticated and I couldn't pronounce any of the names of the desserts, and there was no valet. Also, did I mention the owners? Completely standoffish, insulting, and unappreciative of my special complex humor. Is it possible to give a place less than one-star? I would not recommend them to any of my friends or anyone I have the slightest inclination to show human decency to," Lorelai growled. Her hands tightened around the Jeep's steering wheel.

"Well, I'll concede that Grandpa and Grandma weren't on their best game tonight," Rory allowed. The argument between Grandma and Lorelai had run straight through the unspeakable desserts and into the living room for the reminder of their visit. At one point they stopped, folded their arms, and refused to address each other. Poor Rory and Richard were left to lame attempts at a regular conversation in the midst of a tension-filled air. They needed to defuse the invisible fog they all felt hanging around them. They, unfortunately, failed terrifically, leading to a cut-short visit.

"'Not on their best game?' We are rich, now very annoyed, critically-acclaimed food critics. They are going to get lambasted in the article we print in The New York Times tomorrow," Lorelai said vengefully.

"Since when are we critically-acclaimed, loveable, readable food critics for The New York Times?" Rory inquired.

"Since we received a lackluster welcome and were treated like we'd murdered someone just because we inadvertently insulted one of the owners' weirdo rich friends," Lorelai said defensively.

"'Inadvertently?' I heard the whole thing. The insult sounded pretty deliberate," Rory pointed out.

"Whoa-ho, she's turned my own offspring against me? Do you want to walk home? Those are not words you want to say to your underappreciated chauffeur—and mother," Lorelai countered.

"Hey, hey, I'm just saying, if you call Grandma's friend a 'thoughtless old windpipe who probably couldn't tell a White Castle and an actual white-colored castle apart', Grandma has the right to take offense to that," Rory reasoned soothingly.

"I was merely stating a fact, but she holds it against me the whole evening!" Lorelai shouted, raising her hands from the steering wheel.

"You did say it within the first minute of us coming through the door," Rory reminded her.

"But not a single word of apology or defense would appease her. She's vindictive and biased and that's the truth," Lorelai said angrily.

"'Biased?'" Rory wondered.

"Biased is exactly the word for the situation, young offspring. She's always out to get me, and won't miss a single opportunity of me slipping up to rub the wrongness of my mistake in my face! She's always done it and she did it again and she will always do it like the sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, like clockwork," Lorelai bristled.

"While I know Grandma does that a lot—"

"Oh, oh, my young offspring is mounting a defense for the woman who's always been nitpicking and clucking and tsking at me my whole life! What kind of lawyer will my young offspring make? Is it a career she should pursue? Can she do it? Can she exonerate the justly accused against my unfair and biased accusations?"

"You know, I'd prefer it if you'd stop referring to me as 'my young offspring'," Rory said, off-subject.

"Would 'fruit of my womb' be better for you?"

"'My young offspring' can stand, provided you call me Rory on special occasions, like when we're in the presence of any other people."

"Ahhh, you strike a hard bargain, my young offspring. It's almost impossible to meet those demanding terms."

"I demand them just the same."

"Fine—fine! I take the deal!"

"Excellent. Now, look, I can advocate a certain argument and win. Am I a good lawyer?" Rory smirked.

Lorelai sighed but conceded. "I guess you don't have to walk home."

"And I made you forget about Grandma."

"Oh, Grandma. Mom! I forgot. Let me get back to my ranting."

"Mom." Rory threw Lorelai a look, making her mom grin.

"Fine, fine, you won the battle, kid. It's a never-ending war between me and my mother, but, today, you prove the winner," Lorelai conceded.

"I feel like you or Grandma should be the winner, not me," Rory observed.

"You're a mercenary. You're easily bought by things like school tuition and rides home from Hartford," Lorelai said, patting the ol' Jeep.

"Are you sure that isn't bribery rather than regular payment?" Rory said.

"I dunno."

"'Cause you're been blackmailing me with half-baked promises of me walking home for the past five minutes—"

"Well if I keep saying something like that, someday I might actually mean it. You'll never know when that day will come. It could be now, it could be five years from now. I am the mother who will cry wolf so many times you'll be surprised on the day I actually mean it." Just as Lorelai's words died away, so did the Jeep's engine die away. Several popping and thumping and all around concerning noises emitted from the engine, and was that smoke?

"Mom?!" Rory said worriedly.

"Whoa, wait, wait, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it!" Lorelai pleaded, even as she steered her dying car onto a shoulder of the busy highway. They came crawling to a stop as more smoke billowed out from the inside of the engine.

Lorelai and Rory sat, dumbstruck, for a few seconds, watching their new chimney blow out smoke right in front of their eyes.

"It could be now," Rory repeated, echoing her mother's bantering words.

"I didn't mean it. I swear, I didn't mean it," Lorelai repeated dumbly.

"Let's get out before the car blows up." Rory, in the midst of the mind-numbing crisis, showed especial wisdom and level-headedness.

"Yeah, let's." Lorelai stuck on her hazard lights and they hurriedly fled the Jeep.

Rory folded her arms around herself against the November wind as she looked out over the highway. Cars whizzed past them, their headlights half-blinding them as they rushed past at 55 MPH, fun and fancy-free compared to the predicament these unfortunate Gilmores were stuck in.

Those unfortunate Gilmores looked exasperatedly at the Jeep, all sad and smoking. It looked like it had stood abandoned on the side of the highway for months, all old and decrepit and lifeless.

"I can't believe this! I just got it inspected!" Lorelai said, waving her hands up and down. "I am definitely going to give mechanic Joe an insult or two dozen. Constant, constant assurances that the 'Jeep is fine! Working better than the day you bought it, Ms. Gilmore!' Well, I'll show you something that's working better than the day I bought it: spoiler alert, it's my heel!"

"Maybe we should call for help," Rory said, even as Lorelai touched the hot hood of the Jeep and flung her hand away. "Get a tow truck or something."

"Yeah, you're right," Lorelai sighed. "I value our lives enough to not endanger them by trying to start up this death machine again."

Both Gilmores searched their purses for their phones. Lorelai said, disgruntled, "Ugh, I have no signal. What about you? You're the one with the fancier, more expensive phone. Got anything?"

"I've got low battery. Seriously?! I have enough battery to make five phone calls to tow truck companies, but my phone's shut itself off in some stupid and inane attempt to conserve the battery. What for? Why are we saving the battery? It's not like we need it to make phone calls or anything!" Rory complained angrily.

"Hey, calm down, kid. You're supposed to be the level-headed one while it's my voice growing annoyingly higher-pitched," Lorelai said, putting a calm hand on Rory's arm.

"So what do we do? Walk around searching vainly for a signal? Or do we walk along the highway like hobos and jut out our thumbs, hoping for someone to take pity on us and give us a ride to the nearest payphone?" Rory bemoaned dramatically, laying her head against her mother's comforting shoulder.

"Buck up there, damsel in distress. Though that plan is actually our best option. You can go searching for a signal while I risk getting hit by drivers with bad peripheral vision trying to flag down someone with a phone or some mechanic's skills." Lorelai handed Rory her phone and Rory said, "We'll be home in bed in two hours, right?"

"Yes, yes, yes! First, cocoa. Just keep telling yourself that, okay?" Lorelai sent her daughter on her way with her arm reaching up towards the sky, vainly searching for some kind of cellphone signal along the wooded curbs outside of Hartford. Meanwhile, she threw a wrinkled nose at her stupid car and tucked a white tissue to the side of her door. The wind pushed it against the door, out of line of sight from incoming traffic. Lorelai groaned. What a totally lame distress signal.

A few minutes of Lorelai waving her arms didn't arouse any sympathy from the indifferent onslaught of cars (didn't help that it was pitch-dark out and she wore her leather jacket and her brown hair out). Rory, however, found better luck. She called from a highway attractions sign, "Mom! Mom! I got a signal!"

"Good! Call the cavalry! Call Scotland Yard! Call the Hartford fire department! Anyone!" Lorelai yelled over the static noise of passing cars.

"How about a tow truck company?" Rory yelled.

"Oh, good idea. Hurry!"

A moment later, "Mom, where are we?! Closer to Hartford or Stars Hollow?"

Lorelai thought for a second before yelling back, "Um, on Highway 5—read that mile marker next to you!"

A minute or two passed. Then, "Mom, can you come like a hundred feet closer? I'm losing my voice!"

Seeing as her position as car-flagging-downer wasn't working out too well, Lorelai leaped over ditches over to her daughter. "Okay. I'm here. What's the prognosis, doctor?"

"I called Gypsy's. She'll be here with a tow truck in fifteen minutes."

Lorelai put a hand over her heart. "Thank God you didn't call a tow truck from Hartford. If you did, I would've made you walk home."

"Mom, that's not funny anymore," Rory said.

"Yeah, true. Okay, I don't supposed there'd be enough room in Gyspy's front seat to hold us, which means we need to turn on our best feminine charm and call someone else to come take us home before we become a modern Donner Party," Lorelai said. Rory opened her mouth to speak but Lorelai said, "And don't even suggest calling your grandparents. I don't care if we're literally at the exact halfway point between Stars Hollow and Hartford. You'll have to drag me back every step kicking and screaming."

"All I was going to say was that Gyspy said she was going to ask Luke to bring his truck to take us home. That was all, but you jumped the gun and assumed, which was terribly presumptive of you," Rory said.

Lorelai immediately melted. "Oh, Rory, how could I have ever doubted your loyalties! You get dibs on whichever seat you want in Luke's truck."

"Wow, thanks."

Lorelai wrapped an arm around her daughter's thin shoulders and they walked over to their smoking car, both sighing and feeling the cold chill of a relentless November freeze them through.

"Is that snow I smell?" Rory wondered.

"Yes. It is. I can correctly identify snow in a desert," Lorelai said dejectedly.

"Anyone could identify snow in a desert," Rory pointed out.

"Stop being a smart ass and hold up your tired mommy," Lorelai commanded her young offspring.

Rory supported her slumping mother until two cars pulled in behind their smoking Jeep—one, to their relief, sporting towing equipment.

"Is this the bright light at the end of the tunnel?" Lorelai wondered, just before Gypsy turned off her brights. "Oh, there it goes. Are we back on Earth again?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Rory said.

Luke came hurrying out of the cab of his truck, blowing heavily against his thick gloves. "Yay, we're saved!" Lorelai cheered.

"You two realize it's freezing out here?" he said as he and Gypsy came up to them.

"I know. We planned this entire thing down to the last annoying detail. Isn't he a handsome knight in shining armor?" Lorelai giggled to Rory.

"Hey Luke," Rory said calmly.

"Rory," Luke said pleasantly.

Gypsy meanwhile pulled out a flashlight and tsked to herself as she walked around the Jeep, taking in a full eye of the damage. "Your engine's full blown-out. Smells like a mortgage payment and a new toilet to me," she observed.

"Is it a nice toilet or like one you'd find in a public restroom?" Lorelai moaned.

"A nice one," Gypsy said cruelly.

In five minutes Luke had Lorelai and Rory huddling together in his truck with the heater on blast; Gypsy hooked up the forlorn Jeep onto the back of her tow truck and smoothly entered traffic. The Jeep disappeared around the bend looking like a naughty puppy being dragged back home to be chained to the doghouse.

"Okay, let's get you guys home," Luke said, settling into his seat and slamming his car door.

"Wait, wait, cocoa," Rory said in a pleading voice to Lorelai.

"Oh, yeah. Oh, Luke, I kinda made a deal with Rory. It was kind of a beacon leading her on until the end of this ordeal," Lorelai said.

"We're not at the end of this ordeal yet," Luke pointed out factually.

"But we need a little pick-me-up. You picked us up in your pick-up and now we need a pick-me-up," Lorelai said, delighted at her words.

Luke sighed, but silently conceded. "We'll go to the diner first."

"Yay! Cocoa!" Rory said, delighted.

"You don't need to take us home afterwards. Just a stop for something to give us strength, then we'll trudge through the blizzard and hope we end up at our doorstep in time to keep from freezing to death," Lorelai said breezily.

"You can't just phrase it like that. It makes me look like a monster if I don't take you home, too."

Lorelai looked at Rory and nodded, raising her eyebrows at Luke. "A true gentleman."

"They'll write love ballads about you and your stunning steed, Luke. You'll become a legend in American history," Rory quipped.

"We don't have knights," Luke muttered, though silently pleased. He had Rory page Jess to make a batch of hot chocolate ("Your pager was working this entire time?! Remind to take away your worthless cellphone," Lorelai admonished. "Hey, you forgot about your pager, too! Plus, you can't just page a towing company," Rory said defensively.) When they arrived at Luke's, Jess was there at the door to turn the closed sign and lock the door, brushing a kiss on Rory's cheek as she passed by him.

"Lame! Lame kiss! That was totally lame!" Lorelai, now not stranded on the side of the highway, found her enjoyment in her humor back quite naturally.

"What, would you rather have them make out in front of my diner's front door?" Luke wondered incredulously. He pulled mugs out and lined them up on the counter. He waved a hand to the two teens lost in their own conversation and said, "Can you not encourage them?"

"I can't help it. I have eyes and a few years of experience. And that. Was. Lame."

"Don't make me regret not leaving you on the side of the highway," Luke growled.

Lorelai settled on a bar stool and cradling her hot cocoa, said, "Hey, Luke?"

He stopped taking off his jacket. "Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming to get us. We really appreciate it." She smiled a little and raised her hot cocoa. "This is appreciated, too."

Luke didn't want to betray how pleased he was by her heartfelt words. He settled for saying, "Well, I just did what anyone else would've done. It's not like I could've left you out in the cold."

"However tempted you were," Lorelai reminded him.

"However tempted I was," Luke conceded. He waved a hand to her. "I still have coffee left. Want some in your cocoa?"

"Do you even have to ask?" Lorelai said.

He tipped coffee into her mug. His eyes flitted back and forth from her staring eyes and her coffee mug. "What?" he said, putting down the carafe. Did he have something on his face? She made him feel warm and self-conscious.

"Do you think you can wear the baseball cap under your helmet or not?" she mused teasingly.

Luke scoffed and Lorelai grinned.

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