Summary: Luke told Rory and Lorelai not to go to Dean's wedding. Years later, while dating Lorelai, the subject comes up.
Don't Go
By Potterworm
After a movie marathon and a marathon of another sort, Lorelai is lying in bed, her body covered with sheets and her arm draped around Luke. "Luke," she says.
Half-asleep, he makes a sound acknowledging her, but doesn't open his eyes. She runs her hands up his body and caresses his scruff. He blinks awake. "Yes, Lorelai?"
"Remember when Dean got married," she says.
His look very blatantly says duh.
"I was just thinking about this, since I ran into his at Doose's earlier today. Why did you tell Rory we shouldn't go to the wedding?" And she has been thinking about it.
It was one of the great unsolved mysteries of Luke pre-relationship. That had been a strange day, but Rory accepted Luke's advice whole-heartedly, and so did Lorelai, so there was no wedding for them. Lorelai knew it had caused a fight for Rory and Dean when they dated again, where he – hurt evident – asked why she hadn't come. Rory hadn't known how to explain to him that she trusted Luke's advice almost more than she trusted books. The fight had ended simply out of ridiculousness – Dean couldn't be mad at her for not going to his wedding to a different woman.
"Ah," Luke says and runs a hand over his eyes. He pauses.
Lorelai shakes her head at that weird behavior. "Luuuke," she prompts.
"I knew Dean was still in love with Rory," he says, and his eyes flutter shut again.
When nothing else is forthcoming, Lorelai pokes him. "Hey there, Mr. Big Revelation. You don't get to just rip that Band-Aid off and go back to sleep. What do you mean?" She sits up in bed.
He sighs and props himself up as well. "Dean and his buddies stopped in the diner after his bachelor party, and he ended up crashing at my place. He was really drunk, and he kept talking about Rory. About her hair, how smart she was, how much he missed her."
Lorelai released a quiet "whoa."
"And I just knew – I knew that Rory still cared for him, but he was trying to move on. Trying to be someone different. I didn't want him standing in that church, saying his vows to Lindsey, but secretly be looking at Rory in the audience, you know?"
Lorelai is quiet – for a moment too long. Luke looks over at her. "Are you mad?"
"At you? No," she says. "I just can't believe that Dean was in love with Rory the whole time. I mean, we all knew he had to have been – to do what he did – but the fact that he seemed to know it the whole time. That's the worst part."
Luke nods and slips back into bed. Lorelai does too, but she stays awake for a while, thinking about her daughter's first time and the wrong time and all the things that went wrong that year.
She looks over at Luke and thinks about the way that he had tried to protect not just Rory, but even Dean and Lindsey too.
She drapes an arm around him and goes back to bed, feeling safe. She wonders if she will tell Rory about this in the morning.
Author's Note: For an AU version of the Dean/Rory fight, read my fanfiction "The Fight."