Winning is Losing Chapter Four

Disclaimer: Said it before. Wash, rinse, repeat.

AN: Final chapter. If you stuck it out this long, I am extremely grateful, and am incredibly thankful for all reviews and PMs, positive, negative or otherwise. We're all here to fill in the blanks left by the show.

Just to clarify: This occurs well after the events of the first three chapters, and I probably should've split it into two chapters, but I lost my nerve. Also, I am posting again so soon in order to prevent myself from re-writing this a fifteenth time. *headdesk*

GG GG GG

"I can't do this!" wailed Lane, and bit her lower lip. "The boys are fussing, I'm exhausted, I'm not a musician, I'm mammary glands that wait tables!"

Luke turned to tell Lane to watch her language around customers, but the diner was empty, other himself, Caesar, and Lane's husband, Zach.

Who walked to Lane, took the tub of lunch-rush dishes from her hands, and held those hands. "Hey, babe. You are still the heppest of Hep Alien, now go home, get a nap, and go to rehearsal, okay? Mama Kim's got the boys, I've got your shift."

"But you have to rehearse for the gig!" moaned Lane against his chest.

"Hey. You're the muse of Hep Alien, and no one drums the heart like you. Home. Sleep. Spend some time with the skins." Zach grinned the doofus grin that Luke had often considered proof of intoxication, but was merely natural tendency. "Love you, babe."

"You mean it?" Lane whispered, eyes big behind her glasses. "I gotta feel some rock and roll or…"

"Go on, Luke won't mind, right, dude?"

Lane was a better employee, but Luke shrugged. "Yeah. Go on."

Lane squealed, leapt up to kiss Zach briefly on the lips. "You. Are. The. Best. Have I told you today I love you?"

"Yeah, but I don't mind hearing it again."

The exchange gave Luke an urge to brush his teeth against sugar rot, and bile-green envy.

Zach whistled under his breath as he took the tub of dishes into the back, apron tied neatly around him by his loving wife.

Luke wiped tables without seeing them. Without seeing the calendar telling him it was now the end of August, April was gone to New Mexico, and here he remained. Wiping tables. In Stars Hollow. No loving wife. No banter. No understanding hands.

He hadn't seen Lorelai, spoken to Lorelai, since the argument. He no longer looked up when the bells jingled, expecting to see her. He no longer kept her mug out where it could be used. It had been an eerie return to the previous summer, minus Christopher Hayden.

He'd gone to Jess to rant. Ended up nursing Jess through a few days of booze and a break-up. Come home to the same emptiness he'd left, blindly going through the routine of his days. Broken by a few weeks with April. Out on the boat. Fishing. Talking. Realizing this teenager he loved was still a stranger in many ways, an infinitely precious mystery. She'd worried about her hair. And sunblock. And things that the April he'd first met wouldn't consider. She'd asked him about lip gloss colors. He'd had to nix her wearing a two-piece swimsuit, mortified by the mere idea of it. Bikinis were for sexually desirable females, not his kid. She'd only seemed familiar when she enthused at the coastal habitat reserve, gone on about water ecology, and identified species using the guidebook he had bought her.

At Lorelai's suggestion. Before the argument. Before he'd said You're a joke.

All in all, Luke had not had the best summer. So much so that even Taylor failed to rile him. It had taken him three days to notice a flyer in his window, and another two to bother taking it down.

The door's bells jangled.

He didn't look up. Zach could handle customers.

Lorelai said, "Luke. I need to talk to you for a minute. Do you have time?"

Lorelai never asked if he had time. Luke concluded this was a hallucination, and scrubbed at a jelly stain left by Kirk. He knew it to be Kirk's doing, since it was a heart with Lulu's name in it.

A check appeared in front of his eyes.

The dollar amount stunned him into a "Geez!" Then a rasping, "Fifty…"

Lorelai ticked off on her fingers. "The investment in the Dragonfly, and the house improvements."

"You don't have…"

"I sold the house."

His blood seemed to have changed to bubbling ice water. "What?"

Arms tight around her middle, Lorelai reddened, but her voice remained steady. "You remember my dad said a few months ago things could go bad. Wall Street, he meant. And a lot of my guests are that crowd. Or want to be. Or work for them. He suggested I get a cash reserve built up for the inn to cover any bad times, and all I had to sell was the house. Someone wanted a fixer-upper summer home as a wedding gift for their son." Lorelai's smile was as wintry as her gray business suit, which gave Luke an eerie flashback to Nicole. Buttoned down and suited was appropriate, but it was not Lorelai.

He waited for a punchline. It never came.

It was not a joke. None of this was a joke.

He groped for something to say besides the obvious, and resorted to the obvious. "Where're you living?"

"Well, to keep a cash reserve for the inn, and still pay back what I owe you," Lorelai replied, nerves showing in the sudden fidgeting with her purse, "with my parents. But next month I have my own place again. One of the apartments on Second."

Luke slapped the cleaning rag on the table, scowling. "Those are tiny, you'll never fit all your junk in one of those!"

"All my junk," answered Lorelai, jaw tightening, "is either in a dumpster or stored in the basement at the inn."

"That basement can flood."

Lorelai said sensibly, "Everything is in plastic bins."

Out of objections, of discernible emotions, Luke studied the check. "How'd you sell the house that fast, without Miss Patty and Babette knowing?" Unspoken was his "Without my hearing about it?"

"Mom. She told my dad she could have buyers in three days when he started lecturing her about minding her own business, and well, never mind, you've met them, you know how they are." Lorelai's fingers tied themselves into knots around her purse strap. "And they paid market, so… Anyway, I wanted you to have your money back."

Of the thousand things to say, he managed a mere, pained, "Lorelai."

"Things are better, with my parents. Mom and I had some good talks, real talks, no yelling or anything, and, y'know, we're doing better, and she doesn't criticize everything I do every time I do anything, and I don't assume she's trying to put me down every time she opens her mouth. Even if she makes me crazy, it makes Dad happy for us to get along, and that's good, so anyway, there's your money, and I'm sorry. About us. About everything. About… About me, I guess." Her hand flew to her hair, but she could not tuck it behind an ear as she often did. It was smoothed back into some sort of clip, no sign of unruly curls.

Desperate to stop these awful words, he blurted, "Coffee?"

"No. Thanks, though."

He tried again. "Lorelai."

"Luke, if you'd said that, when you first knew about April, we could've talked about it, but..." Lorelai swallowed so hard that Luke heard the gulp, but her face maintained a terrible façade of calm. "When Rory hit high school, I felt like I finally had a chance to do what everyone else did in their twenties. Only…" She sighed, shrugged one shoulder. "Only that's not how life works, and I just made a big mess of everything, and I'm not going to be married with another kid, I get that now. I don't regret giving up anything for Rory," she added viciously, glaring at him as if he'd said she should. "I'm sorry, I'm babbling, I had a speech, it was only fifty words, Sookie counted to make sure, but I forgot it when I came in."

Luke held the check out to her. "You need this for the inn."

"You need it," she countered, back to that brisk business-like tone, which reminded him uncomfortably of Nicole and Anna. "For April's education."

Taking refuge in anger, Luke snarled, "Why're you doing this?"

"It's the right thing to do." Her mouth smiled. The blue eyes did not. "Take care, Luke."

Luke crumpled the check in his hand, tossing it on the table. "Take care? That's it? That's all? Everything we went through, and I get take care?"

"It's all I have left," Lorelai said tightly, and walked quickly, forlornly out of the diner.

Luke wasn't a fool. He knew that Lorelai had enthused about kittens, snowflakes, cartoons, because they were, to her, what she'd never had when a person should have them. In childhood. When magic was allowed, though adults were the ones who needed it. Yet she'd stopped. The irrepressible Lorelai had stopped.

She'd frustrated him for years. That refusal to act her age.

He acted his age. What had it gotten him?

A check for fifty thousand dollars, a string of exes, and a diner.

Luke tried to smooth the check, the looping letters of her signature at least the same as always.

"Hey, man, you okay?" asked Zach.

Luke stared stonily at the kid who was, technically, of an age to be his own biological child. He was, after all, not a virgin nor a monk, and he hadn't waited for marriage. He hadn't waited for his eighteenth birthday. He'd stood in this self-same spot when his father lectured him on that and the perils of teen parenthood.

"Want some advice from a happily married man?"

Luke bit out, "You're…" and shut up. Zach was happy, married, and legally a man. Correct on all points, to Luke's seething dismay.

"You can be right, or you can be happy, but sometimes, dude," said Zach, patting him on the back, "you can't be both."

"You ever see a happy loser?" snapped Luke, echoing a dozen coaches of track and baseball he'd known in his life.

"Dunno, what's a loser?" shrugged Zach, and calmly went about refilling ketchup bottles.

GG GG GG

Lorelai rocked on the porch of the inn, a cup of coffee growing cold in her hands.

She'd thought she'd become an adult when the stick turned pink. Maturity, however, didn't happen that quickly. Or, she reflected, simply. Nor easily. In fact, it basically sucked.

A party, a kiss, a chuppah, a slice of pie, a promise of lobster, and there she sat, with what she truly had to call her own. An inn that might not survive an economic downturn, a daughter grown up and away, a best friend who would always be fine because nobody would refuse to pay for Sookie's cooking, a neurotic dog who wouldn't come out from under the porch. Possibly ever. There was also a small matter of aging parents, but somehow, the dog under the porch bothered her more. She could possibly do something about the dog.

A board creaked as someone walked along the porch. Lorelai mentally added it to her list of Things to Pay Someone to Fix. "What now, Tobin?"

A too-familiar voice rumbled, "Not Tobin."

Lorelai buried her face in the mug of tepid coffee. "It's your money, Luke. Fair and square."

"It was your house."

"Not really, no, not in the end, and that's why I gave you the money," explained Lorelai brightly, clinging frantically to the mug. "I don't want you to lose the money you put into the inn if things go bad. And I know how expensive it is for kids to get a good education, or I'd never have had Friday night dinners with my parents and I'm babbling again, I apologize."

Eyes narrowed, Luke snapped, "I don't need help paying for April's education!"

"Then buy new kitchen stuff for the diner," Lorelai replied dully, "or take a building away from Taylor, whatever you want."

"Why the hell is the dog under the porch?"

She shrugged. There was a certain freedom in not taking up the challenge radiating from Luke. In not falling into the dance of their give-and-take, yell-and-pout, love-and-lose.

He perched on the rail, arms crossed, and bit out, "I did think about that. Rory's stuff. And when I look back, yeah, it was part of the whole…" His hand flicked the air. "Things I didn't say. That I should've said. And not said the way I said them."

"It's okay. You're right. Rory made some big mistakes, so have I, we're not great role models."

"Yeah, but I went to Liz."

The hurt of that still burned. Lorelai finished the last of the flavorless coffee and set down the mug. She bundled herself deeper into her cardigan. "She's family."

"I look back on it, and I don't recognize myself. Jess said a lot, you've said a lot, hell, everyone's had a say, even April, but…" Luke gave an expressive grimace to accompany an equally eloquent shrug. "I have no good reason for why I acted like that. Did that. Said that. Not when I found out about April, not in the diner a couple months ago, none of it. All I've got is… I felt attacked."

Anger uncoiled in Lorelai's chest, but she kept it from her voice and face, looking at the evening sky to calm herself. "By…?"

"All of it." Luke jammed his hands into his pockets, removed them. "Let me say this."

She nodded. She had her say. Now he had his. It was fair, no matter how unfair she wanted to be.

Luke wrung his ball cap into an unrecognizable lump. His eyes would not meet hers. "I always talked about how I hated kids, and suddenly..."

Frowning slightly, Lorelai risked a timid, "You mean, suddenly you realized people take what you say seriously? That one caught up to me…" She stopped herself, gave her head a sharp shake. "Right, not about me."

Luke thumped a fist on his thigh. "I've said a lot." He slouched, untangling the wreck he'd made of his hat. "And suddenly there's marriage vows, and a daughter, and everything I say is serious. It's forever serious."

As his voice cracked and fell, Lorelai leapt up, a hand on his hard-tensed shoulder. "Luke? Breathe. Small slow breaths, c'mon, breathe, it's okay, I know, I looked at Rory and, God, this person will take everything you say, and remember it forever, and it..."

"It makes them," shuddered Luke, snaring her in an unexpected hug. "Finding out was like… Losing. Losing me."

Struggling against his embrace, then surrendering to it, Lorelai soothed, "It's okay. it's in the past, it's forgiven and..."

He turned away so abruptly that she stumbled and nearly fell. The rocker caught her, as she stared at him wide-eyed and afraid.

"I don't want us to be in the past!"

Lorelai bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to stop the retorts that rose by reflex. She and her mother had come to the point where her father laughed to see them screw up their faces against the habit of argument for the sake of argument. Unattractive, but good practice for this moment.

Luke slammed the mutilated ball cap onto his head, his hands dancing in the air. "Here, April, look, I can give you family! Auntie Liz and Uncle Weirdo and Cousin Jess! That's what you're supposed to have for your kids, family! And she didn't have it, because of something I screwed up, I thought I had to fix it for her, make it perfect! I'm not a guy who changes but then there's a kid and she's mine, and I can't be that guy but I am that guy!"

Hands to her ears, Lorelai shouted, "Stop it!"

A moment later, a whining Paul Anka scampered up to her, cowering against her legs, and she reached down, rubbing his ears until her tears were under control.

"Just stop it, Luke, please." Lorelai crouched, holding the dog to her as a shield and for solace. He licked her face before hiding his cold nose between her breasts. "It doesn't matter now. It happened, we can't make it un-happen. I hate it. But I'm trying to be happy with what I have, can we please just stop this?"

The last came out of her as a wrenching sob, and she buried her face in Paul Anka's fur. He crooned a whine at her.

Luke's voice was low, difficult for her to hear. "I don't want us to stop."

"We already did," she wept into her dog's furry head.

"I'm trying to fix this! Talk it out, do that whole communicating thing!"

Cradling her dog and her losses, Lorelai cried, "Why?"

"I love you!"

"Until when?" Lorelai yelled, fury overtaking grief. The dog retreated again into the night, avoiding the light at which a few moths battered. "Until Rachel comes back again? Until I have a bad day and you don't want to deal with me? Until April visits?"

He was a shadow among shadows when he answered roughly, "Until always."

Amputation seemed best, phantom pains and all. Lorelai raised the verbal axe over herself, let it fall. "I married Chris, remember?"

"Yeah," Luke said coolly, "and I saw your face, Lorelai. When he wasn't at the hospital for you. With your dad. I saw it was all still the same, married or not, he still wasn't there."

Scrubbing her face with her sleeve, grateful the dark hid the carnage wrought on her mascara, Lorelai mumbled, "And you were. I know." She hiccupped into stillness, her hard-won composure splintered at her feet.

"What're you trying to win?"

The solemnity of his question shocked Lorelai into a brief and honest, "Peace."

She couldn't read his expression when he replied slowly, "At any price."

She nodded vigorously. Extreme as it was, it did simplify matters.

He slid into view, looking at her much as he had the day she told him she had slept with Christopher. "So you've given up? On all of it? Snowflakes, kittens, happy middles, happy endings, quoting movies no one knows?"

For once, she resorted to monosyllables. "Yes."

The kitchen staff had gone home by the time their silence regenerated into speech.

"I'll never move to New Mexico."

"Okay," replied Lorelai, pushing herself into the rocker with a wince for body parts unaccustomed to sitting on hard wood planks.

"I apologize. For what I said about you being a joke. A bad mom."

"Oh, Luke," she said kindly as she stood, "I..."

"And," he interrupted brutally, "I don't want peace at any price."

Wishing she could hide with her dog, Lorelai said sternly, "I'm not going to take back the check."

"It's not about the damn check!"

Recoiling, Lorelai bumped into the inn's front door. She softly muttered an involuntary, "Ow."

"I want to negotiate," stated Luke, locking his eyes onto hers. "A fair and lasting peace."

Lorelai drew a shaky breath. She forced herself to ask, "Why?"

A strange expression overtook Luke's face, something between sorrow and hope. "I'm tired of you and me. I want us."

The man who had said things capable of tearing her world to shreds, if he said anything, found the exact words that told her own truth.

Luke had always known her too well. He immediately pressed his advantage. "Tomorrow night. Six o'clock. Sniffy's. I'll pick you up here at five-thirty."

She didn't bother to glare. "I don't get a say?"

"Sure," answered Luke, with a sudden grin. "Do you want it to be a date, or a not-date?"

Much remained to be said. Negotiated, as Luke had aptly put it. She stalled, scowling as she tried for banter. "I dunno, what's your gut say? Am I the kind of person your gut says…"

"My gut got me Nicole and Anna, to hell with my gut," said Luke brusquely. "So?"

"Not-date." Before he could react, Lorelai concluded, "We can discuss terms of a possible date after that."

"Okay, that's a start," said Luke, and a decade fell from him when he smiled. "Stand still."

She froze as his hand came at her face, overwhelmed by memory and fear.

His thumb very lightly wiped something off her cheek. "Dog hair. See you tomorrow."

Lorelai stood on the steps of the porch of the inn, watching Luke stroll into the night, and eventually touched her cheek. "Tomorrow," she said softly, and did not dread the word.

GG GG GG

END

AN: Anyway, there it is. Let's all assume negotiating got them many happy years, lots of hot va-va-voom, and an emotionally stable golden retriever. Possibly they adopt a group of children to save them from a life of air pants and "Huzzah!" Luke realizes he doesn't have to stick to something because "that's who he is", and Lorelai realizes she doesn't have to self-destruct, and someone sings "Lalalalala" in the background.

I want it to be clear that I did not want either L to take "more" or "less" blame or responsibility. The dynamics of the duo had to change. This was how I did it.

Cheers.