Author's note: This story follows continuity as established in AIYTL. Even though the router is apparently downstairs in 2016, this story takes place in 2011, so I'm using creative license here and let's say "Fall" was not the first time a router was destroyed at the diner.
The Stars Hollow Wi-Fi War
It began the day Lorelai walked into the diner juggling several boxes and a couple of shopping bags.
"Been shopping, dear?" Patty asked as she held the door open for her, eying the shiny white bags with the Apple logo on them.
"Yeah, just grabbed something for the diner."
"Oh? What is it?" Patty craned her neck to peek in the bags.
Lorelai winked at her. "It's a surprise," she said and sailed into the room, weaving her way through the tables with ease.
Luke nearly missed her entirely, busy dropping off orders. He knew she was there. He always knew when she was there. The very air changed in the place the moment she opened the door. He caught sight of her just as she ducked through the curtain and saw the boxes in her arms. He ran through his mental calendar. As far as he was aware, there wasn't anyone's birthdays or holidays requiring gift exchanges in the near future.
Curious, he finished delivering plates and followed her up the stairs, noticing the door to his old apartment swinging open. It had become something of a stock overflow room and small office, with his old bed still there in case someone needed to crash or Lorelai decided they could use a little "afternoon delight," as she termed it. When he walked in, he nearly forgot to breathe. Even after all these years, there were certain things Lorelai could do that stopped his heart and redirected the blood flow from his brain.
She was kneeling on the floor, upper body under the desk. She was doing something that was causing her to wriggle about, and Luke mentally thanked every deity he could think of that she had chosen to wear a skirt that day. It did an excellent job at showing off certain curves, and oh happy joy, it could easily be swept out of the way. Maybe he could talk her into making sure his old bed was still in good shape. With a slight smirk, he approached her with a very suggestive quip on the tip of his tongue when he caught sight of the box.
"What's this?" he asked, picking it up. It was something called an Airport Time Capsule, and he flipped it to the back to read the specs.
"It's a wi-fi router," Lorelai's muffled voice replied. "Actually, it's a router and a backup hard drive in the same device, so it's really quite handy."
Any carnal thoughts instantly fled. "Oh no," Luke growled. "I am not having one of those things installed in here."
"All finished!" Lorelai backed out from under the desk and patted her hair. She gingerly pulled out dust bunnies from her curls. "Gross!"
"No, no, take it out right now!" Luke dropped to the floor, determined to yank the demon device out of the wall himself, and Lorelai quickly shifted to block his access.
"Babe, it's 2011," she said calmly. "Eventually, you have got to get into the 21st century."
"I'm here!" Luke yanked his phone out of his back pocket. "I got one of these damn smartphones you're always going on about."
"The diner, Luke, not just you. Besides, I'm the one who got that for you to begin with and the only reason you even consented was because Kirk managed to drop your old phone in one of the fryers."
"Oh, no." He pointed a finger at her. "Don't you know what having a wi-fi router will do to this place? It'll make everyone and their grandmothers just sit here and tool around on their phones and computers for hours and hours. This is a diner, not Starbucks."
Lorelai rolled her eyes. "No, they won't."
"How do you know that?"
"Just don't give them the password."
It was an entirely logical conclusion, but he wasn't ready to concede anything to her. "I don't see why the diner needs wi-fi at all."
"Because," Lorelai said, getting back to her feet, "April's starting MIT this fall."
"So?"
She tugged on Luke's shirt until he looked up at her. "Most of her coursework is going to be done through the Internet, far more than what Rory did at Yale. She's going to need access to the Internet all the time. I've got a router for the house, too."
"But-"
"Wouldn't you rather have April spend her time here actually with you? She can sit downstairs and do her homework instead of going to the library or the Starbucks in Woodbridge or anywhere else with available wi-fi. Do you want her to choose not to visit at all because she doesn't have the ability to keep up with her studies? And what about me or Rory? A lot more of our work centers around the Internet these days as well."
Luke opened his mouth to retort, realized she was absolutely right, and narrowed his eyes. "You don't fight fair."
"I know." Lorelai leaned down to kiss him. "I'll write down the password and leave it on a sticky note on the monitor. The only people to know it will be you, me, Rory, and April. You don't have to give to anyone else."
The next morning, Kirk sauntered into the diner and slid onto the barstool. "Hey, Luke."
"What'll you have, Kirk?" Luke replied, not bothering to look up from his order pad, mentally calculating the tab for an elderly couple who had shared an order of biscuits and gravy and a couple glasses of juice.
"Two eggs, pancakes, and the wi-fi password, please."
Luke's head snapped up, eyes narrowing suspiciously at Kirk. "I'm sorry?" he said in a voice slightly above arctic.
"Two eggs, pancakes, and the wi-fi password," Kirk repeated patiently.
"How do you know there's a wi-fi router in here?"
Kirk rolled his eyes, pulled out his smartphone, and flicked through a couple of screens before showing it to Luke. "See? It's right there at the top of the available hotspot list. JavaKingButch. I saw it pop up on the list around mid-afternoon yesterday afternoon and considering the signal is strongest here, I was able to triangulate it and figure out the hotspot is somewhere in the diner. So, what's the password?"
"I'm not giving it to you," Luke snarled.
Kirk folded his hands on the counter. "You have to give it to me. It's the law."
"It's not the law, Kirk!"
"The law of human decency."
"Get out!" Luke barked and, fuming, stormed into the kitchen, not bothering to see if Kirk was actually paying attention or not.
Kirk was the first to ask for the password, but he wasn't the last. Not by a long shot. Approximately every third customer in the diner that day and in the week that followed asked about wi-fi router password. Wi-fi wasn't exactly a novelty. But, seemingly by osmosis, everyone in Stars Hollow and the surrounding vicinity knew that the diner had a wi-fi router somewhere on the premises. There weren't that many routers in the town. The library had one, so did the bookstore, and there were a few private networks scattered about various homes. But no other businesses had wi-fi in it beyond those, and everyone felt they were entitled to the diner's wi-fi password
"Say, Uncle Luke," Jess said a few days later, swinging by the diner while driving from Philadelphia to Boston, "I heard you got a wi-fi router."
"You're not getting the password," Luke replied.
"Aw, come on. I lived here for ages, and you won't give it to me?"
"No," he said shortly, about five seconds from going upstairs and ripping out all the equipment. But doing so was a very fast track to having a blazing fight with Lorelai, and a quick Google search had revealed just how much she had spent on the equipment. The things you do for love, he thought a bit sardonically.
But the day he saw April with her laptop, going over the beginning of her MIT coursework, Luke very nearly changed his mind completely.
"I didn't think you'd ever get a hotspot in here," April said, face lit up as she peered over the monitor at him. "I was worried that I wouldn't make it down here much because of lack of Internet access, but Lorelai assured me she would take care of it."
Luke decided that Lorelai was an absolute angel and knew that the ability to see April more often was worth putting up with that damn router.
Lorelai was the devil. She was a devil with a sexy smile and bewitching eyes who wound the world, and especially him, around her fingertip.
"This," Luke barked as he stormed into their bedroom, "is all your fault."
Lorelai arched her eyebrows, peering at him over her reading glasses from where she was paging through a magazine. She lay in bed wearing pajamas that had a pink top and pants with oversized sunglasses in various shades pink on them and would have looked cute if he hadn't been seeing red. "Sorry?"
He yanked his shirt open. "That damn wi-fi router. You're the one who installed it, so it's all your fault."
"What's wrong with it now?"
"Because Taylor and I are in agreement about something." Luke pulled off the shirt and dropped it in the hamper. He mingled changing for bed with pacing, making sure not to make eye contact with her. Because if she happened to be checking him out, he would lose his mad and he wanted to hold onto it as long as possible. "Taylor and I never agree about anything. It pisses me off that Taylor and I think the same way about something, and it's all your fault."
Lorelai set her magazine and the glasses aside, deciding not to comment on the fact that she was most definitely was checking Luke out. She'd have to be dead not to. "So, we've determined Armageddon is happening. Before I go check on the state of Mom's panic room, what do you two agree on?"
"Banning wi-fi routers." Luke dropped to the bed, punched his pillow, then laid down in a huff. "Taylor came in the diner as I was closing and started ranting about how wi-fi routers were driving Stars Hollow down a road toward sin and perdition, and that the town's reputation as a charming getaway was at stake with the proliferation of these devices. And then he blamed me for it. Me when you were the one who started it. After you installed that thing, they began popping up all over the square."
"Did you tell Taylor that only the two of us, April, and Rory have the password?"
"He wouldn't give me a chance. Apparently, he saw some high school kid using a hotspot to access porn on his cell phone while in the market, and that's what set him off."
"Smartphone, babe. All you need is a cell signal. Not that it matters here." Lorelai reached for her smartphone and grumbled at the bars. Once the networks began adding higher-speed bandwidths, Stars Hollow had been left in the dust. She had to change their cellular networks three times to find one with a signal strong enough in town. She dropped it back on the nightstand.
"Oh, Taylor wants to outlaw those too. He's calling a special town meeting to pass an ordinance to restrict businesses from installing wi-fi routers and says it's mandatory I come. See? Your fault."
"Mmm hmm." Lorelai ran her hand through Luke's hair, absently scratching his scalp. Part of him wanted to petulantly pull away, but the majority of him just wanted to close his eyes and purr like a cat. He settled for closing his eyes and not pulling away before realizing that Lorelai wasn't talking. At all. Lorelai not talking was an anomaly on the scale of the blackout that had hit the East Coast nearly a decade earlier. It unnerved him more than a little bit that she wasn't talking.
"You're being remarkably unopinionated about this," he said nonchalantly, hoping his voice wasn't bordering on panic.
"That's because I'm saving the ammunition for when I go up against Taylor on this." Lorelai dropped a kiss to the top of his head. "The router's staying."
Luke pulled his pillow over his head and groaned. Lorelai Gilmore not talking was always, always trouble.
"OK, people," Taylor announced from the selectman's podium. "The next item on the agenda is a serious one."
"They're all serious to you, Taylor," Gypsy called out.
"But this is especially serious given that it affects every person in this town. As many of you have noticed, an extremely poor precedent has been set by one of the town's leading businesses regarding the unauthorized installation of a wi-fi router."
The words circling inside Luke's head weren't anywhere near civilized enough to say at a town meeting. Not that he didn't mind cussing at Taylor. But he actually respected some of the other people in town, and he thought he saw the Melville children in the crowd at one point. So he folded his arms over his chest and leveled his best glare at the front of the room.
"It wasn't unauthorized Taylor," Luke objected. "You don't need permission from the selectmen to install a router anywhere."
Taylor flicked a glance at him. "Oh? And have you read the bylaws lately?"
"Yes, I have," Luke replied tersely. He hadn't been about to go into the latest Taylor Doose grudge match without ammunition. When one had Rory Gilmore and April Nardini in your life, you learned how to research anything. "There's nothing in there about wi-fi routers."
"Yes, but there is a section on unauthorized improvements to a business when it affects the entire town. Like when you didn't run the paint colors by the selectmen before you repainted the diner in 2001 and in 2007."
Luke sprang to his feet. "For god's sake, Taylor, that was years ago! Besides, Kirk had just taken out a damn wall. I had to repaint after that!"
"You still didn't get my approval!" Taylor scolded him.
"I don't need your approval, Taylor!" Luke shouted back. "Besides, I don't want the router either! This was all Lorelai's idea!"
"And just where is she, Luke, hmm?"
That was a very good question. Lorelai had called from the inn, saying she would meet him at Miss Patty's for the meeting. But she hadn't gotten there by the time it started, forcing him to sit by himself. Oh sure, he'd done that before, but now it just felt odd to not have Lorelai by his side with snacks and elbowing him in the ribs to get him to behave or sharing observations. Besides, he needed her at this second because it was her harebrained idea and he wasn't going to defend it on her behalf.
"Hi, sorry I'm late!" Lorelai slid open the door and wrestled a couple of large posters through the door. She was still dressed in work clothes, but her makeup had been touched up. She bestowed a sunny smile on the rest of the room and dragged her posters forward. "I heard my name invoked, and like a genie, here I am to grant you three wishes." Her gaze met Luke's and her voice dropped to a sultry whisper. "But only if you've been very good." She winked at him.
He was not blushing. He was not blushing.
"Nice shade of red you've got going on there, Uncle Luke."
Luke glared at Jess. No, instead of Lorelai, he wound up with his nephew on another pass through Stars Hollow. Doula had the chicken pox, and Liz had sent Jess along to the meeting in her stead. Rory at some point had texted, begging Jess to give her the blow-by-blow on how it was going down. His entire family was against him, even April. Jess had both girls in some sort of group chat as he gave them updates.
Jess smirked at Luke, held up his iPhone, and snapped a picture of his blushing, cross face. "At least five shades of red going on there," he observed, tapping it into the phone. Luke very nearly lunged for it.
"Lorelai, if you would save your inappropriate flirting for outside the town meeting," Taylor cut in, pulling Luke's attention back to the meeting.
Lorelai gave him her best wide-eyed innocent look. "But, I didn't say anything inappropriate, Taylor!"
"No, honey, but that eye sex you were just having with Luke," Babette cut in, waving her hand in front of her. "Morey, we've got to try that some time."
"People, please," Taylor yelled. "Lorelai, sit down."
"I'm not sitting. I'm here to show you how the town benefits from businesses having wi-fi routers." Lorelai stepped up to the chart holder and plopped a poster on it. The numbers on it were painstakingly shaped out of Red Vines. "It's been shown that available wi-fi has a positive effect on tourism, especially when you utilize it to showcase what your town has to offer. In our case, each business offering public wi-fi would direct users to a portal page that would have links to various town businesses: your store, the ice cream shoppe, the diner, the bookstore, the inn, and so on."
She pinned Taylor with a serious look. "There's expected to be a couple billion smartphones across the world within the next few years. One in 10 people will leave a business because there's no wi-fi. In Stars Hollow, this could lead to a potential loss of revenue. To put it simply …"
She pulled out her second poster and carefully propped it up. M&Ms had been glued to circles made out of more Red Vines. "Each M&M represents $1,000. This is what we currently bring in via tourism dollars. I checked, Taylor," she said before he could cut in.
"The number's accurate," Taylor muttered.
"This is a projection of additional revenue we could bring in by offering amenities such as public wi-fi." Lorelai tapped the second circle. "And this is the amount of revenue we're losing by not offering it at all. It benefits the town by having businesses install wi-fi routers, whether they're public or not."
"But the risks of exposure to pornography ..."
Lorelai interjected before Taylor could get any further. "Aren't going away just because there's no wi-fi routers."
Taylor huffed and tried again. "But the lack of turnover in business …"
"Outweighs that of offering it." Lorelai pointed to one last circle. "People who come in and camp out to use wi-fi will actually pay to stick around, Taylor."
"I …"
"You have me convinced," Patty spoke up. "All in favor of the town businesses keeping their wi-fi routers?"
Three quarters of the room raised their hands. "What," Jess said when Luke glowered at him when he raised his. "I'm voting in place of my mom. And Rory. And April. Really, this hand is good for three votes."
"Right," Luke muttered and left the town meeting before he had to interact with anyone else.
He stewed the rest of the night. He went to bed as soon as he got home so he didn't have to interact with Lorelai, and he stewed even more the next morning as he dressed for work without waking her and stormed out of the house as quietly as he could.
On one hand, Luke was proud of her. Really, really proud of her. In her Lorelai way, she had taken Taylor down several pegs, and that alone was cause for celebration. She constantly insisted that Rory didn't get her smarts from her, but displays like that? Rory was most certainly Lorelai's daughter.
On the other hand, now Luke was stuck with the wi-fi router that he didn't even want, and he was going to have to put up with it and all the damn questions from customers. He informed Lorelai of just this when she showed up at the diner in the afternoon, not even letting her greet him.
"I don't want the damn router," Luke all but yelled at her as soon as she came in, at the same time pulling down her favorite mug and filling it to the brim with coffee.
"I know you don't, but I figured you'd at least appreciate the presentation." A wounded look flashed in Lorelai's eyes as she took a seat at the counter, accepting her coffee.
Luke softened, guilt twisting in his gut. "It was a good presentation," he said gruffly.
Lorelai perked up. "Really?"
He gave her a small smile. "Yeah. Especially the part where you pulled the Red Vine off and ate it in front of Taylor as he sputtered."
"Oh, I thought you missed that part."
"I saw it as I left."
Lorelai leaned across the counter to kiss him at that point, and any annoyance he'd hoarded slipped away. Oh, it would be back. It would come back as soon as someone walked in the diner and demanded the wi-fi password. But for now, Luke was putty in Lorelai Gilmore's hands, and he knew he would always be. "I still don't want it," he murmured, then moved around the counter to clean tables before the dinner rush started.
"It's staying," Lorelai said.
Luke shook his head. "It's gonna cost nothing but trouble."
Lorelai beamed. "If you let it stay, I'll let you put up a new sign full of things people can't do."
He scowled at her. "It's my diner. I deign if a new sign goes up or not, and I'll decide if a wi-fi router stays or goes!"
From the opposite end of the counter, where he had camped out with a book and a burger, Jess merely winged an eyebrow. Luke swung around and pointed to him. "Shut up!" he barked.
"I didn't stay a word," Jess replied, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"A new sign could be fun," Lorelai said. "It could involve headphones. You hate it when people blare music through their headphones. I'll even letter it for you. You like my handwriting."
Luke threw up his hands. "What's with that anyhow? The purpose for headphones is to listen to music without disrupting the other people around you. Instead, you're blasting the things so loud that you might as well be standing in the middle of the room with a boombox, bass shaking the glass until it cracks for all it matters. Do you know many decibels it takes to ruin your hearing with headphones? Six! Only six! That's going on the sign."
"Feel better?" Lorelai asked when he paused to take a breath.
Luke considered her question, then nodded. "Yeah, I actually do."
"Not bad," Jess mused. "I'd give that at least a seven on the rant scale."
Lorelai sipped at her coffee. "Oh, is this a seven on the general rant scale or the patented Luke Danes rant scale? It's weighted like AP courses."
"I regret the day the two of you decided to get along," Luke muttered.
"We only did out of our love for you," Lorelai replied.
"You mean your love to harass me."
"Teasing. There's a difference."
"It's just plain harassment in my book," Jess said.
Luke sighed, adjusted chairs at one of the table, then picked up a salt shaker to check it, noticing it was half empty. "I'm still not happy with this wi-fi stuff. People are already asking me all the time what the stupid thing is."
"I keep telling you, you don't have to give it out." Lorelai held out her hand, and he passed the salt shaker over. She slipped out of her chair to retrieve the salt and the tiny funnel to refill it. She set both on the counter.
"That's yet to stop Kirk!"
Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Well, then just make up a password and give it to him!"
Luke stopped in his combination of pacing and cleaning to gape at her.
"What?" Lorelai asked, confused.
"I'm an idiot," Luke breathed. In two large steps, he had crossed the diner back over to her, moving behind the counter. Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her in a public show of affection that nearly made her wonder if he'd suddenly taken ill. Granted, public at the moment meant only Jess. Still, it was daylight, the blinds were up, and he was kissing her in the way that normally led to them finding the nearest horizontal surface. He broke the kiss before it could quite get that far and just smiled at her. "I love you," he said with such heartfelt sincerity that her eyes went soft with emotion.
"I love you too," Lorelai breathed as Luke resumed cleaning, a wicked light in his eyes. Stunned, she stared at the salt in her hand, then down the counter at Jess. "What just happened?"
"I believe, Auntie Lorelai," Jess replied, "you just created a monster."