Pairing: Louise/Dean
Disclaimer: Aye, I do not own the Gilmore Girls. But more importantly I do not own Louise or Dean, or the actors who portray them. Nor do I own Paris, the character not the city, who makes a small cameo in the ficlet. There, all the legalities aside, I think.
A/N: I blame this pairing all on Nate. ;)
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The car was sputtering again then it whined and then it stopped. Louise Grant was in the middle of nowhere, USA. Bloody hell.
"How is it that a car that costs more than those little houses, break down?" She let out a frustrated groan as she got out of the car. Louise looked around for a sign, anything to give away where the hell she was. Stars Hollow. Sounded familiar…oh right, Rory Gilmore lived here.
"Now who to call?" she mumbled to herself, as she pulled out her cell phone. Her mother was in Hawaii with her latest lover so she was a tad out of reach. Her father would take away the car if he found out she had broken down, not to mention the fact that she had left Hartford in the first place. Madeline was too flaky, so that left only person. With a sigh, Louise reluctantly dialed the number.
"Paris Gellar." Came the curt reply.
"Paris, it's Louise," She began.
"What'd you do?" Paris cut her off before Louise could continue. Paris knew her far too well.
"It's not what I did," Louise pointed out first. "It's more like what my car did."
Louise could literally hear Paris
thinking out the pros and cons in her head, weighing what the best thing would
be to do. "I'll ask my driver to see if he can pick you up. Where are you?"
"Stars Hollow." Louise grimaced.
"What are you doing there?"
"Passing through."
"Fine. Go look for the auto shop," Paris told her. "And then stay there. Not only will I get a driver, I'll get someone to wait until the car's fixed for you. It may take awhile, the driver's out with my mom right now. Keep your cell phone on."
She flinched as the dial tone came on, signaling that Paris had ended the call in her usual abrupt way. Stuffing her phone back into her purse, she looked around wondering how she was to find an auto shop around here, until she looked down and realized she had a new problem: she had to walk.
Well, that'd teach her to drive in three-inch heels.
*
Stars Hollow was a small town, but apparently not small enough. Louise looked down sadly at her feet that were going to be completely marred by the time she had a chance to take them off.
So far she had passed by three stores that seemed to specialize in the selling of glass unicorns. Thus scaring Louise far too much to go in and ask for directions to the auto shop. Then she had seen a Hardware Store, alas, she had looked in and saw a diner inside. She tended to stay away from anything that could potentially confuse her, so that was out of the question.
Louise could, however, finish walking to the Gilmore household, which she knew to be a few blocks away, but her poor feet yelled at her to stop and ask the next store she saw for direction. Whether it be glass unicorns or a diner, or even a diner that served food in glass unicorns.
Market. Sure it had an odd name, Doose's Market, but hell, it said market and there appeared to be a market inside it. Good enough for her. And then he came out. She recognized him, because she had a photographic memory whenever she met a hot guy. It was rather accurate, Louise could tell anyone about the shape and size of the birthmark on the small of Tristan DuGrey's back that she had seen three summers ago at the Country Club's swimming pool. Unfortunately this memory didn't extend to names.
"Rory's boyfriend!" She finally called out to him, giving up on trying to remember it.
He stopped in mid-step and turned around to look at her oddly.
She hobbled over to him, making a mental note to herself never to buy this brand of shoes ever again. "Hi, I'm Louise Grant. I go to school with Rory. We met at a dance last year. Sort of."
"Hi," He said slowly, still looking at her like she had grown five heads in the past thirty seconds. "Dean. As in no longer Rory's boyfriend."
"Oh," Her lips formed the words but noise never left her mouth. "That's okay, this has nothing to do with her."
"What does?" Dean asked her, tugging on one of the buttons of his leather jacket.
Between the leather jacket and longish hair that screamed rebel, and from his actions at the dance, with a soft hair, Louise wondered absently if he had been named after the ultimate rebel. James Dean. "My car. It went something."
"Something?" His face began to lose some of its confusion.
"It stopped purring and started sputtering," Louise explained. "I yelled at it and then he just shut down."
"He?" Now Dean seemed slightly amused.
"Yes, he," She replied haughtily. "We fight a lot, and it usually ends up with him shutting down. Like a guy, hence the he."
"How often has this happened?" Dean asked her, his expression growing slightly more serious.
Oh, a wannabe mechanic! For the first time today, Louise felt like she had hit the jackpot, and with a little bonus if you added in his good looks. "Just a few times before."
"Why didn't your parents just buy you a new one?"
Blah, he had to be one of those who thought rich kids got whatever they wanted if they just gave their parents some puppy dog eyes. "They don't know."
"You didn't tell them?"
"They never asked." Louise stated this matter-of-factly, like he was stupid for even asking it.
"Where is your car?" Dean asked her, abruptly changing the conversation back to the reason why she was Stars Hollow in the first place. "We can stop by at Gypsy's and then I'll fix her, er, him up enough to bring him into Gypsy's shop so he can get worked up to new."
"You mean I have to walk all the way back there?" Louise was aghast. Stranded was not her deal, she decided there and then. It wasn't anything like that happened in the movies where they happened to by right by a diner and then some nice trucker would help her out. The only consolation was that she had something better and cuter than a trucker for a helper.
"Can't take a little walking?"
She used all the strength left in her lower legs to lift up her right foot for him to see. "Not in these shoes."
"You should've worn sensible shoes then," Dean stated, holding her elbow gently as he lead her to Gypsy's.
Louise narrowed her eyes and glared at him. "What did you think when I got dressed this morning? Have a premonition that told me that I'd breakdown on the edge of some small town a half an hour away from home and I'd have to walk across town and back a few dozen times. I don't think so."
"When you're talking about Stars Hollow it's not that big of a deal."
Louise didn't reply to that, only pouted. Pain made her irritable and a bitch, not flirtatious and coy like her usual self. Of all the times to lose that particular skills…
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TBC
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