Title: Silence
Author: fallingfables
Rating: PG-13 for language
Pairing: Luke/Lorelai
Spoilers: Through 5.14, "Say Something"
Summary: She lied to him and she's promising him the world now; he only likes promises that can be kept.
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You let me down
It's no use deceiving
Neither of us wanna be alone
"Lonelily" - Damien Rice
-
She couldn't sleep.
The first night she tried to fight the gnawing pain in her stomach, crawling into bed around one while blaming the Vivian Leigh marathon on TCM. When she couldn't get herself to fall asleep, she pulled out a few copies of Newsweek (Rory's subscription; they hadn't quite gotten around to canceling it) and started reading, figuring that a four page article on Indo-Pakistani relations would put her to sleep faster than you could say Nyquil. But two hours later, Stars Hollow's new expert on current world politics lay in bed with fresh sheets, the softest pajamas she could find, and a mug of hot milk by her side, still sleepless. Relaxing her body completely only served to make her even more exhausted, the breathe-in-breathe-out exercises made her feel like she was in a Lamaze class, and when she resorted to counting sheep, well, she flicked on the TV and started watching Emeril reruns and Tony Little infomercials until daylight filtered through her blinds.
She went to work the next day tired but seemingly fine; it wasn't until Sookie had told her the story of the couple who had found each other after 40 years that she had realized she didn't want to be separated from Luke for any amount of time, period.
-
He couldn't sleep.
He'd been resigned, resolute, when he had told Lorelai in the theater that he needed space to get his head together, to give them a chance to figure out where, exactly, he fit into her life with her parents' disapproval and—he tries not to think too much about this part—how Christopher works into the whole equation. He's not sure what he's waiting for, but he is tired, dammit; tired of trying to analyze her parents, her relationship with Rory's father, trying to figure out why she talks too much when she's covering up her half-truths, and why she speaks too little when another man is tearing him down. The last one, he thinks, hurts more than anything the elder Gilmores or Rory's father could throw at him; she uses more words than anyone he knows, but when he needed them, she was silent.
He shakes the thought away, tries to focus on cleaning the tiles. Working off his frustration, he scrubs so hard that the grout all but sparkles.
He hears Lorelai's voice in his head: Can grout sparkle?
Huffing in annoyance, he tosses the brush in the sink and glances at the clock. He's got an hour before he has to get the bread delivery anyway; he knows he's not going to sleep now. But he goes back upstairs, tries anyway, and wonders how his sheets can possibly smell like her when he had just bought them this morning.
-
Walking past Weston's, the arcade, the Italian restaurant, she saw the ribbons and her heart stopped beating. And there was Luke and she followed him, poured out everything, begging him, wanting him, so close she could feel his breath, hot and angry on her face and could hear his heartbeat, too fast and too loud and too much. And it still took everything she had not to follow him out of Doose's because, as she tried to remind herself as she was standing there trying not to let her tears spill over, staring too hard at a shelf of Jones' soda while trying to ignore Mrs. Cassini's eyes peering at her from the next aisle, you are not that kind of girl.
Only it wasn't her voice saying it, it was Emily's, and she swore loudly and walked out, eyes red from the tears she was holding in, Taylor shaking his head disapprovingly behind her.
-
He heads into Doose's for some extra eggs; he catches a flash of dark, curly hair and his entire body seizes up. She explains and pleads and says things he doesn't quite understand, and he wants so badly to believe her when she says, I want a middle.
But the next words out of her mouth are all in, and he remembers their first date and her silence after he'd said what he had wanted to say for years. Something snaps inside him and he is angry, so he says the words he's been biting back and leaves her crushed and confused in the drinks aisle, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed.
That night, instead of sleeping, he lies down and thinks, breathes her in.
He's waited for her for years, for half his life, it seems, and though it should feel like the weight he's been carrying around his chest has been lifted, he feels like instead it's been multiplied. He wants her, dammit; he wanted her in Doose's, when tears were glittering in her eyes and she told him that she was willing to do whatever it took for them; he wanted to hold her close and tell her that he forgave her, that Christopher and her parents and the damn town didn't matter, because he's loved her for years and will love her until the day he dies, and if it's possible, he'll love her after then, too.
But he's not going to be responsible for the hurt the Gilmores will feel, the aching emptiness that will strike Lorelai when she is standing over her parents' graves with tears in her eyes and the familiar mantra of would-have-could-have-should-have running through her head. If he thinks about the situation, he finds it ironic that it's him in pain instead of Lorelai's parents, those people that he's never liked in the first place, but stops himself before he hops on the self-pity train: Don't martyr yourself, Danes.
And it's not even that, really. She lied to him and she's promising him the world, now; he only likes promises that can be kept.
Why don't you just come home? He had asked Rachel, 23 years old and worried sick. It was unfathomable to him, how she could put her life on the line for a few shocking pictures. And sure, he knew she didn't exactly love Stars Hollow, but it had to be better than staying in a war-torn African nation with death and blood and terror and fear everywhere you turned.
Don't worry, she had assured him, I'll come back in one piece.
Looking back at it, she came out of it in one piece all right, but it was the coming back she'd always had problems with. He remembers, once, how he'd compared Rachel and Lorelai and said how different they were, but he thinks now that they're not that different at all. Lorelai's still in Stars Hollow, but she might as well be in Fiji or Mozambique or Antarctica, because she's not here, with him.
-
She'd kept up the act for her daughter's sake, closed her eyes though she hadn't gotten to sleep 'til five: I'm fine, don't worry, go back to Yale. Because if she had said, Well Rory, it feels like Mommy's inner organs have been torn out, ripped apart, doused in rubbing alcohol and stuffed back in again, Rory probably would have been a little more reluctant to leave.
So she smiles bravely, exaggerates how well she's feeling (she can't lie to Rory, not anymore) and waits for Frank's honk before she lets herself dissolve again. She wants comfort so badly she considers calling him, just to feel strong arms around her, to not feel so weightless and lost, floating aimlessly; she wants him to pull her back down to earth. But hours later, as she gives in to her instinct and even as the words are spilling out of her mouth, please come over, please, it's all wrong and she can't stop herself from moving closer to the edge; she's never had the best self-control.
What she can do, though, is steal his answering machine tape, and realization hits her halfway home where he might be, and she sees him coming out of the house and her lungs stop working.
-
As he lay in bed, at midnight, he hears the phone ring distantly. He knows who it is, and he steels himself, closes his eyes and grits his teeth in resistance.
He's not prepared for the tears in her throat, her deep, shaky breaths, the need in her voice saying please come over, so he gets up in his sweats, jams his feet in his shoes and heads for the door, knowing he's an idiot for giving in. When Lorelai's broken, he fixes her.
It's what I've done for eight years, he thinks bitterly as he puts on his coat.
-
His eyes are concerned and frustrated and a million other emotions all at once, but she realizes that it's not fair to ask Luke to be a friend to her now (she should've known it would have ended like this); it's the risk they both took when they decided to head into this relationship. Besides, she has to start letting go because if she hangs on, she'll only be torturing both of them and she'll never be able to start piecing herself together again.
So she swallows the sour taste in her mouth, apologizes, manages to talk without letting her tears spill over, and she hands him the tape and can't quite look him in the eye. She wants so badly to touch him, to feel his flannel or the shape of his fingers, but he's too far away now and she's left, trembling, in an empty house.
It's the right thing to do, she tells herself over and over again, while she's waiting for the sun to rise.
-
He tosses and turns all night, and when he gets up, all he can see is blue. Literally.
"I'm with you, man." Kirk says, loudly, clapping him on the back in a show of false masculinity, causing him to spill coffee all over the floor. "We gotta stick together." Kirk fails to mention that just yesterday, he was wearing a pink ribbon pinned to his jacket.
"Blue ribbons are for winners." Bootsy pipes up, as Luke's cleaning the mess. "And it's good luck if you're Aquarius. You an Aquarius, Luke?"
And on it goes, all day, but the blue only reminds him of Lorelai's eyes, tear-filled and hurt, and suddenly he can't take it anymore, can't humor this fucked-up town a second longer.
"Anyone who's wearing a goddamn ribbon, get the hell out of my diner!"
-
The night was bad enough, but the actual day part was hellish: even worse than the sympathetic clucks and the hushed voices, now that the breakup was confirmed, Lorelai found herself fielding questions from the nosy (but well-meaning, she constantly reminded herself) townies, who had somehow found out that she and Luke were no longer the Brad and Jen—oops, she meant Reese and Ryan—of Stars Hollow. Yes, she and Luke had broken up. No, as far as she knew, he wasn't going to move (the thought alone nauseates her stomach, burns her throat). Yes, she hoped everything would work out. No, Kirk, she would not reveal "who dumped who" even if there was a betting pool involved. Yes, she wasn't feeling well, but no, it didn't have to do with him.
"I'm just tired." She said loudly, stepping into Al's for the second time that day. Nobody was around to hear her, but a pink ribbon, discarded on the sidewalk, fluttered in reply.
-
The end of February fades to March; the town's buzzing now about the April Fool's pranks the Banyan boys are sure to pull (not that he cares). He gets up every day (though the sleeping part needs some work), he takes orders, he yells at Caesar. He restocks. He cleans. He eats the day's leftovers (what's the point in being healthy now?). He drinks beer and doesn't have the heart to work on his dad's boat anymore, even after the backordered stuff finally, finally came. He puts a cloth over the TV in his bedroom, he takes down Lorelai's shelf and packs all her stuff in closet, her CDs in a stack next to Rachel's pictures.
The best part of his day is crossing it off the calendar.
-
She only does what is absolutely necessary now; the bare minimum. She eats (barely), she drinks (water), she goes to work (she's not sure whether she's sad or relieved that Sookie's too far along to work at the Dragonfly now), she tries to sleep (sometimes). Her smiles at passerby no longer reach her eyes; she dodges Rory's phone calls and wonders how the message on her answering machine can be so damn perky. She ignores her parents completely, doesn't respond to any of Christopher's messages. At 4 am, she passes the mirror on the way to the bathroom and is shocked by the dark circles under her eyes, her pale skin, her collarbones that jut out far more than they should.
She turns away.
-
They run into each other again a month later, on a late-night Doose's run; he's not prepared for how fragile she seems, she's not prepared for the haunted look in his eyes.
"H-hi."
"Hi."
They stand there and stare at each other for a moment longer. Her eyes dart to the aisle with soda, remembering, before she clears her throat. "I gotta…uh…"
"Oh. Sorry." He moves to the side. She grabs a few boxes of Pop-Tarts. He catches a glimpse of her face and thinks she looks more tired than he's ever seen her. Then again, he's probably hoping, projecting a little too much.
"Breakfast of champions." She cracks, without a hint of a smile; in fact, her voice is becoming a little ragged.
He's unsure how to respond, so he settles for a "Yeah."
After picking the junk-food aisle clean, she draws herself up and gives him an oddly formal nod. "See you," she says, brushing past him.
The contact makes him jump; without thinking, he grabs her elbow and pulls her close to him. "Lorelai." He whispers urgently, instinctively, and she glances up at him, a little fearful.
"Sorry. I—I just—would you like some coffee?" He stutters, releasing her quickly.
"Okay." She says, so quietly he can barely hear her.
-
The diner is deserted, and in the emptiness is the tension, the sheer weight of their expectation and attraction and tragedy is moving all around them.
"I hate this." She says, after she takes the first sip; she doesn't mention that she hasn't had coffee in days.
"Really?" He's made the coffee the way she likes it, so he's a little confused.
She waves a dismissive hand over her mug. "Not that. Just…you and me. This."
"Yeah." He agrees, not knowing what else to say, and she takes another sip.
"Why couldn't we make it work, Luke?" Her voice is full of sadness, and she suddenly appears much older than her 37 years.
He's anticipated this segueway, but he's still not sure how to answer. "I don't know. I just—I thought, you know, that all that mattered was whether we loved each other." His voice is quiet and uneven on the last few words, and he takes a breath to compose himself. "I guess—"
"Do you love me?" She says, and her voice wavers.
He notices the question's phrased in the present, not past tense. Still, he doesn't answer her directly, but says instead, "Eight years."
She sucks in her breath. "Eight years." She says, in a whisper, and she looks fully into his eyes for the first time in forever. "God, Luke…"
And he understands finally that it's no longer a repetition, it's a response, and he moves around the counter, reaches for her, shaking. She sags into him, aching, wanting, their hands intertwined and his stubble scratching her cheek. When they separate, she leans her head on his shoulder and thinks that the sore on her heart has started to heal. He holds her tightly, kisses her tears away, and thinks that her silence says more than all the words in the world.
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fin
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