I'm sorry for the delay in this chapter! I was in NYC (I saw "Hamilton"!) then Seattle at Emerald City Comicon, so I wasn't able to return to this story until I got back home. Unfortunately, it also coincided with this being the hardest chapter in the story to write, so this took a bit longer than I expected. The good news: this story is almost done, and it'll not have just one but two sequels.

I'm also raising the rating in this story as of this chapter. I've been torn between a T and an M-rating for what happens next, but I'm going to play it on the safe side and raise the rating.

Huge, huge thanks to Meags09, who helped me wrangle this mess of a chapter into coherency.

Chapter 10: A Day in the Strife

The next few hours ranked among the most bizarre in Lorelai's life, and considering she'd witnessed the times Kirk decided to mix a 5-year-old bottle of Crystal Pepsi with Kix and announced he was going to write a book about all the things you could do on top of a dining room table, that was saying something.

Really, things were going about how she expected with her mother. It was the Great Spa Day of 2002 all over again. Emily kept up a stream of running commentary about any and every thing as they clomped from one historic site to another. A good bit of it was some sort of critical jab: other tourists, the deterioration of the sites, Italians themselves, Lorelai, Lorelai, oh and Lorelai. She very pointedly did not mention Luke at all, which unnerved Lorelai more than anything. The lack of commentary meant that her mother was stewing, and when Emily came back for round 2, it was always with a bigger punch.

It hardly seemed that it was just a few hours ago that it was her, Rory, and Luke on their own, and the contrast was jarring. The three of them spent the majority of their time together, trying to cram in as much as possible. They spent their days hunched over Rory's guidebooks or going where locals suggested, abandoning the beaten path altogether. But no, not sightseeing with her parents. There was an agenda far more rigid that Rory's itinerary, and they were sticking to it.

Emily's commentary got so incessant that Lorelai made an excuse to find a bathroom and purposefully separated from her family just long enough to find her center, or at least calm down to the point where she was less likely to commit matricide.

She stepped out of the public restroom to find that the already thick crowds had swarmed even more, all clustered around a slow-moving vehicle with a familiar-looking bubble on top and a short man clad in white inside.

Maybe she could at least touch the hem of his robes.

It took every ounce of Lorelai's flirting ability to keep herself from getting arrested, and she dashed back through the crowd hoping that no one had noticed her little escapade. She stopped long enough to grab two coffees from a cart, one for her and one for Rory.

"Ah, there you are, Lorelai," Richard said, as Lorelai threaded her way through the crowd.

"How's the camera?" she asked, nodding to the Canon he held in his hands.

"Slowly getting there," he admitted. "I can at least take pictures without them being completely out of focus."

Emily turned to Lorelai, peering over the rim of her sunglasses. "Where on earth did you go?"

"Told you, bathroom. Here, kid." Lorelai passed off one of the coffees.

"Bless you," Rory said, immediately gulping down a sip of heaven - or the closest thing they could get to it outside of their hotel room, since Luke refused to bring the portable coffee supplies with him when they went sightseeing.

"That was quite a long time to be gone to the bathroom," Emily observed.

"We're not talking about this, Mom," Lorelai muttered and turned away to focus on the view of St. Peter's Basilica. Instead, she found herself staring up at Luke, who giving her his patented look of amusement and exasperation. She suspected he invented it especially for her.

"What?" she asked.

He leaned in toward her, and she caught a whiff of the cologne he'd splashed on that morning. Another cruel reminder that the only place they'd been planning to tour that day was each other's bodies. She nearly whimpered.

He whispered in her ear so her mother couldn't hear. "The pope, huh?"

"How did you …"

Luke tapped Rory's camera, which had somehow been passed over to him while she was gone. His fingers drummed along the zoom lens especially. Lorelai huffed, realizing Rory must have asked him to take pictures of the popemobile going through the area. It was a good thing that her father had been too busy fussing with his own camera to even attempt the same shots.

"I was about to go down there when you saved yourself," he said. "Now, behave."

She stuck her tongue at him.

The afternoon continued in its weirdness, with Lorelai more often than not at loose ends because for some strange reason, her father had found common ground with Luke. Or, more specifically, their cameras. The two of them, along with Rory, kept up a discussion about aperture and focal lengths, which somehow evolved into observations on the architecture around them. Lorelai absently wondered at one point, remembering Luke's fascination with Chilton, if he had wanted to be an architect before life got in the way.

They made it through dinner before the battle resumed, the discussion carefully threaded around what they saw in the city that day. They made it back to the hotel where Richard and Emily were staying, Richard eager to show off the view from their balcony. Lorelai highly doubted it matched the one they'd had in Paris at the hostel, but that particular view would always hold a special place in her memory.

She only had enough time to glimpse flowers through the open balcony door when her mother spoke up.

"Lorelai, we need to talk," Emily said, then proceeded to veer off into one of the bedrooms without bothering to see if she would follow.

And here we go. Lorelai scanned the room for the drinks cart, spotting a bar on the back wall. She dashed over to it, pulling open the mini-fridge to see a bottle of wine chilling. Perfect. She grabbed it.

"Lorelai, we don't have time for that," Emily said.

She gave the much-needed alcohol a forlorn look, then shot that same look at Rory and Luke, who were carefully staying out of the way. The two glanced at each other, and some sort of silent communication passed between them. Rory jerked her head at the bedroom, mouthing, "Want us in there?" Lorelai shook her head and left the wine sitting out. No, she would go do the falling on the sword this go around. She was quite used to it.

"Do you realize how inappropriate this situation is?" Emily demanded to know as soon as Lorelai stepped in the room, pulling the door ajar.

"Gee, Mom, it's not like Rory and I decided to adopt Ted Bundy off the street and keep him in our hotel room."

Emily frowned. "That's not even funny, Lorelai. Do you have any idea of this man's history?"

Lorelai gaped at her. "Are you crazy? Rory and I have known Luke for seven years! That's a whole cycle of mirror bad luck there, not to mention the entire run of JAG so far."

"That doesn't say a thing."

"He's kind," Lorelai said, ticking off everything good she could think of about him. "He's grumpy, but he lets me slide on the food tabs. He doesn't think I know, but I do. He's literally kept the roof from falling down around mine and Rory's heads, and need I remind you that he flew across the ocean to give us money?"

"Lorelai, we're just worried about your safety. What would it say about me and your father if we ignored the fact that a strange man is in the same room as you and Rory on your trip?"

The thing that was absolutely galling was that if Lorelai had walked in on a similar situation with Rory, she would be questioning the same thing. Still. "Mom, he's not a strange man! You know that very well!"

"Yes, and I know the way you look at him and he looks at you." Emily sighed with no small amount of regret. "You and Christopher -"

"Aren't a thing! He made his choice, Mom, he married Sherry. He has a kid with her."

"Well, it should have been you!" Emily shot at her.

"But it wasn't!" Lorelai protested. "We had this exact same argument months ago! It's not me, it's never going to be me. And you get no say in who I get to spend time with! The only person who gets a say is Rory, because she's my kid and she comes first. Always."

"If Rory really came first, you'd tell him to go home."

"And if Rory wanted Luke to go home, she'd say so! But she didn't. She's been fine with all of this. You saw them together. Luke's been in her life nearly every single day for the past seven years, Mom. You don't know even a fraction of the things he's done for her."

"Lorelai, he is a diner owner," Emily pressed on. "He's uneducated and nowhere near a proper stepfather for Rory."

"Rory and I are the ones who decide that, not you! Besides, when did you start caring about that? You were practically throwing us together at Rory's 16th birthday party!"

Her mother all but ignored her. "He's completely unsuitable for you! If not Christopher, then at least choose someone respectable, like that Chilton teacher you were engaged to. He was at least educated."

"Again, not your decision!"

"You are capable of greatness, Lorelai! You have always been capable of that, and you threw that all away once and took Rory with you as well. Now Rory's going to Yale and you're starting your own business! I don't want you with anyone that's going to hold you back."

Tears pressed in, and for a horrible moment, she was worried she might start to cry. "Luke doesn't hold me back, Mom. He's the one that keeps telling me to fly."

"Mom."

Lorelai whipped around, and her heart leaped into her throat. Rory and her father hovered near the door, witnesses to the entire scene. Granted, with the sound of their voices, half of Rome probably got an earful of the latest Gilmore drama. But one member of their group was conspicuously absent.

"How much did you hear?"

"Most of it." Rory hedged for a moment. Then she sighed. "All of it."

"And …" She couldn't bring herself to fully ask, and her stomach lurched.

Rory nodded toward the sitting room. "Right after the comment about Mr. Medina."

Lorelai didn't wait for Rory to finish her sentence. She ran into the sitting room and saw the door to the balcony was ajar.

Emily started to follow. "Lorelai, we have not finished our discussion yet."

"Grandma." Rory stepped in front of her, cutting off her pursuit of Lorelai.

"Rory," Emily said. She started to move around Rory, but she shifted until she blocked her grandmother once more.

"I think we've done enough," Rory said.

Emily sighed in exasperation. "I want what's best for your mother."

"So do I. I've wanted them to get together since I was a kid."

"Rory," Richard said gently.

"I didn't want Mom to date him unless she was serious about it, because I don't want to lose him either. But what you're doing, Grandma, that's what's going to do it. And if you lose him, you lose Mom." Rory let her own fury show now. "And you lose me."

—

Luke wanted to go home.

He stared blankly over the balcony at Rome, absently thinking it wasn't anywhere near as magical as the view from atop the hostel in Paris. He leaned on the wide stone railing and buried his face in his hands.

Everything in him told him to just go, that he truly wasn't wanted here. It warred with the memory of Lorelai asking him to stay in Paris with her and Rory, of the warmth and disbelief that filled him because they had actually wanted him. The days that followed seemed like they came from another life, one that definitely wasn't his, and reality had slammed back into him in the form of Emily and Richard Gilmore. Of course it was too good to last. Wasn't that the pattern his life took? Little snatches of paradise before reality smacked him out of a dream world.

Emily especially reminded him of Nicole's parents, and he remembered how he'd floundered around them, of their disapproval because they couldn't see past his profession to him. He wasn't ashamed of anything. His parents had been good, honest people. He'd built his own business from the ground up. He had money in the bank and, thanks to Lorelai, even some real estate investments. But that clearly wasn't good enough for people like the Gilmores. Luke had no doubt in his mind that had it been Christopher who showed up in Paris, Emily would be writing the wedding invitations right now.

He heard the balcony door slide open, caught the whiff of floral perfume, as light footsteps crossed to his side. Lorelai leaned on the railing next to him. With a sigh, Luke let his hands drop.

"So …" She worried her bottom lip between her teeth.

"I had to get out of there."

"You didn't get very far."

He waved at the city sprawling before them. "I'm halfway across the world from home where nothing is in my language. I didn't have a lot of options." He closed his eyes, unable to look at her. "I think I should go home."

"What?" He flinched at the shock and hurt in her voice. "You don't need to do that."

"Clearly, I'm in the way by staying. Don't want me to go all Ted Bundy on you, do we?" Luke asked, punctuating every word with bitterness, letting her know that he'd heard everything. At least until the point he couldn't take anymore and he just had to go.

For the first time, he let himself take her in. The breeze blew tendrils of her hair around her face, and she looked about two seconds from breaking down. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. "This is just going to happen again, isn't it? Your mother has made it very clear how she feels about anyone with you who isn't Christopher."

"Who isn't even a factor!" Lorelai shot back.

"But he was just a year ago," Luke reminded her. "He came to Sookie's wedding, and we both know what happened then. What if his marriage ends? I don't want to be a bargain basement stand-in while you're holding out hope for Christopher or waiting for someone better to come along!"

The pain in her eyes was replaced with anger, and she stepped toward him, so close now that her hair tickled his nose. "Do you think so little of me that I would do that to you?"

"Well your track record isn't particularly good in that area now, is it?"

Luke regretted the words the moment he said them, eyes widening in horror as she took a step back in reflex, as if he slapped her. "Look, I didn't mean to-"

"Yes, you did." Lorelai turned away from him, hugging herself as if to ward off any further blows.

"No, I-"

"You wouldn't have said it if you didn't think it at one point," she bit out.

Everything Luke ever wanted to tell her caught in his throat. About how Rachel urged him to tell her how he felt. About standing there as her best friend, falling more and more in love with her and fighting it every step of the way, determined not to be one of those guys who pressured her into returning his feelings. It was why he couldn't stand Max, couldn't stand Christopher. He thought about how he'd wanted to scream in frustration at her when he'd realized she was asking him to teach her how to fish so she could date someone else. He thought about how he'd looked in the mirror and knew every god-damn day that he wasn't good enough for her. He didn't have the wealth or the connections or the storied last name or anything that her parents desired. He just loved her. Loved Rory.

Lorelai's breath hitched as she sighed. "I am so tired of being judged for the people I choose to date. Do you know why I never dated very long when Rory was younger? Specifically the last seven years? Reason no. 1 was Rory. Guys see a kid in the picture, and they exit as fast as they possible. Or they think you're easy, and I'm not. Do you want to know the last time I had sex before Max? Do you? I think El Niño had gone through a cycle or two at least."

She spun back to him, all anger and fury. "And the other reason? It's all you, pal. Because somehow people can't see a man and a woman in the same room together and think they can just be friends. Do you know why I didn't marry Max?"

He was terrified to hear the answer.

"I mean there were a lot of things," Lorelai continued, not waiting for his response. "I didn't want to wear the dress. I didn't want him sleeping in my bed, making decisions about Rory. But then you came to the house, and you had that chuppah, and you actually said something real about marriage and it made me realize it wasn't going to happen with Max. I didn't think at the time that it could be you instead, maybe it was there subconsciously. But I knew it wasn't him and I stopped the wedding."

The words were a punch to the gut, and Luke found himself leaning back against the balcony for support. "You stopped your wedding because of me?"

Her hands fluttered as she tried to make her point. "I stopped my wedding because of me. You just made me realize that I want more." She let her hands drop. "And I want it with you."

He simply broke. Every bit of self-control he'd hoarded over the years crumbled as he caught her face between his hands and kissed her. He'd thought the kiss in Paris had been heady, that the stolen afternoon in Pisa was intense, but this put them all to shame. Everything he wanted to tell her was put into that kiss, and common sense told him he actually needed to give her the words, that they needed to finish talking this all out.

But words had never been his strength. She could find them so easily, but they eluded him at such a level that it left him paralyzed for years when it came to even asking her on a date. But this … this. He'd loved her for so long, wanted her so much, that his sanity simply fled. He never wanted anything so badly as he wanted her to be by his side. Did she have any clue what this meant to him, to know that she wanted him?

He backed them up a few steps, keeping his mouth on hers as he pressed her into the stone railing, letting her feel exactly how much he wanted her. He'd never changed out of the date clothes, and the trousers didn't hide a damn thing. His fingers toyed with the hem of her dress, pushing the cotton material up just enough to brush the edges of her underwear. Aroused as hell and slightly overwhelmed, he instead moved his hand from the danger zone and skimmed it over her hip, trace the dip in her waist, just to the curve of her breast.

She pulled away from the kiss as his hand closed over her breast, and they stood, his brow resting against hers, trying to catch their breaths. For a brief moment, he considered lifting her onto that stone railing and … he dropped his head to her shoulder, trying to compose himself further. No, not with Rory just a few feet away, not to mention the elder Gilmores. Someone had to be a mature adult, but for once he wished it wasn't him.

Thankfully, she wrestled the decision from him. She kissed his temple, threading her fingers through the curls at the base of his neck before reluctantly pulling away. "We can't do this here," she said.

"No," he agreed. "Not with your family right inside."

She chuckled. "No, not even that. It was that, but not just that. Me and balconies … let's say it's a cycle I don't exactly want to repeat."

Lorelai walked over to the railing, absently pulling her disheveled curls back with a band she had in her pocket as she studied the ground below.

"We are not climbing over the railing," Luke informed her.

"It's not that far of a jump. You'd catch me, wouldn't you?"

He rolled his eyes and instead all but pushed her back into the suite. The suspiciously quiet suite where no one was waiting to dress them down or call them out over storming out of the room. Instead, a note was propped next to Lorelai's purse, and she picked it up.

"Mom— I convinced Grandma and Grandpa into getting dessert and doing a little nighttime sightseeing while you two were "talking." Please don't kill each other, I'm rather fond of you both. I think I'll bunk here tonight. Don't let my sacrifice go to waste. Rory."

She laughed and showed it to him. "I have the best kid."

"Not arguing with you there."

They left the hotel, arm in arm as they walked out into the balmy summer evening. She rested her head on his shoulder as they lazily walked to the end of the street, where it intersected with a larger, busier road. They stood in silence, watching the traffic meander its way down the road.

"So, given how our previous conversation went, neither of us have a clue how to get back to the B&B, do we?" Lorelai observed.

Luke squeezed her closer. "Nope."

"Well, we'll figure it out."

"We usually do."

She suddenly jerked upright. "Oh, go right!"

His gaze tracked where she pointed. "What? Is that the way?"

"No clue. But there's a café, and it's open, and I want coffee sans lecture."

Luke was in too good of a mood to lecture her anyhow. Lorelai could ask him to break the Guinness record for biggest ice cream sundae and he'd figure out a way to do it. Because it involved crossing the street, they reluctantly parted but kept their hands linked as they dashed through traffic and into the café where she got an iced coffee.

"We never finished having that conversation." She took a long sip, closing her eyes in pleasure as she enjoyed the drink. "So what are we now?"

Luke shrugged, hating how high school this all felt. "We're a couple."

Lorelai cracked an eye open. "A couple of what?"

He smirked at her. "Exactly."

She grinned.