In the Era of Film
Summary: Life isn't a movie. But then, sometimes it doesn't have to be. Luke and Lorelai slowly find their way back to each other.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls, so don't sue me. If you want the big bucks, go after the Kenneth Lay estate.
Rating: T, just to be safe
Author's Notes: I started this story after That's What You Get Folks, For Making Whoopi, and it may incorporate some elements from the later episodes as they air (like L/C dating), but it's supposed to deviate. Basically this is my wishful-thinking, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel way of resolving season 7. No spoilers, but fair warning: I'm going to try and limit Christopher appearances as much as possible, but there will be a goodly amount of April. And L/L interaction to come.
Chapter 1: The Story of Us
Luke had never been a movie guy.
To him, they had always been just a lot of made-up stories with two-dimensional characters played by over-paid actors doing things on screen that were not even remotely plausible in real life. Dinosaurs cloned and brought to life just to chase people around remote islands. Killer aliens taking over the world. War movies with all kinds of people dying and being ripped to shreds, and yet the main character always manages to dodge the bullets and goes home with only a few scrapes.
No, Luke had never been a movie guy, but he had been willing to change that for Lorelai. In hindsight it seemed kind of silly, really. He didn't know Kevin Costner from Kevin Kline or Jennifer Aniston from Jennifer Lopez. He laughed during the sad movies, thought the comedies were idiotic, and the romance movies... those were the worst.
"People don't just meet and suddenly fall in love!" he had once ranted to Lorelai after sitting through one such 'chick flick' with her. The movie was called Fate or Kismet or something like that. "They don't just see each other, spend a few hours together, decide 'she's the one,' and then wait for each other forever. That's just not realistic."
"Says the guy with a horoscope in his wallet," she had retorted, grinning in delight. But Luke just rolled his eyes.
"That's different."
"How so?"
He had never been able to come up with an answer to that question that satisfied Lorelai. But no matter how many Meg Ryan or John Cusack movies she made him sit through, he had never changed his mind. Love was not that easy, not that cut-and-dry. In the real world, sometimes people simply were not right for each other, no matter how much they wanted to be.
Or so Luke told himself after they broke up. Broke up. The words hardly seemed real to him, and yet they were so inadequate. Broke up. Like they were some small, fragile thing that could not stand up to the wear and tear of daily life. Luke snorted to himself at the thought. No, he and Lorelai had not broken up. They had crashed and burned, exploded, self-destructed. Like Kirk driving Taylor's car into the side of his diner, taking out everything in its path. The wall, the tables, the irreplaceable items he had gotten from his father's store. All of it was gone in a second, one violent instant when someone stopped paying attention and failed to be careful with their actions.
Maybe they were never meant to be after all. Life was not a movie, and no matter how hard he tried, Luke would never be a movie guy. Maybe he could never be the man Lorelai wanted, needed in her life. Maybe there was no such thing as 'meant to be' at all. The whole concept was a made up fantasy to appease the unhappy, lonely people of the world.
Luke only wished that the aching pain in his gut felt a little less real as well.
Life went on. As the weeks passed they saw each other on the street, at Doose's, and occasionally at town meetings. They exchanged polite but guarded hello's or simply nodded acknowledgments. But Lorelai never came to the diner for coffee, and for that Luke was secretly grateful. No matter how numb he felt to the end of their relationship, he doubted that they could never go back to just being friends.
He realized that he was over her when he found out she had officially gotten together with Christopher. It surprised him really, that all the rage and hurt was gone, leaving only a void where he knew his heart had been. On some level he should have felt betrayed that she had gone back to him, to the man who had hurt her and left her time after time. Bitterly, he even supposed that Lorelai was meant to be with Christopher, that he could make her happy. In the end, that was what he wanted – for her to be happy.
And then he would remind himself that he was fine, that he felt okay about the whole situation. No reason to feel sad or angry when the person that he had lost was never meant to be his in the first place.
In the mean time, Luke distracted himself with work and with April. He ate dinner at Liz and TJ's house at least twice a week, and when he was not at the diner he could sometimes be found at Sniffy's Tavern. While there was an initial outcry when the rumor mill finally got wind of the break-up, the townspeople quickly learned to leave him alone. And within weeks it seemed as though everything had gotten back to normal.
Well, pre-Lorelai normal.
"You miss her, don't you?" April asked him one day as she sat at the counter doing her homework. She had been surprised to learn about the break-up but asked few questions about it, obviously realizing it was a subject Luke wanted to avoid.
"Sometimes," he admitted.
"Are you two still friends?" Luke shrugged in uncertainty, and she added, "It would be cool if you could stay friends. That way maybe we could all hang out again sometime, like on my birthday."
He merely said in reply, "I don't know if that's going to work..."
This time, April shrugged indifferently, switching topics to something science-related she had learned at school. Their conversation – or rather her fast-paced ramblings – steered from school to the diner to the town, as they so often did. Luke marveled at the depth of her observations and her ability to articulate what she saw in the world around her. For such a young person, she seemed wise beyond her years.
"So when do I get to meet my aunt?" she him asked.
"What?" he said in confusion, caught off guard.
"Your sister, Liz. When do I get to meet her?"
"Um..." He had not thought to introduce them, what with Liz dealing with the pregnancy and TJ, plus his recent break-up with Lorelai. "Whenever you want," he said finally.
"You said you have dinner with them every week. How about this week? I could go to dinner with you," she suggested.
"Yeah, okay," he agreed. "How about tomorrow? I'm sure Liz would love to see you."
As it turned out, Liz was thrilled with the idea when Luke phoned her from the diner to confirm. She immediately started peppering him with questions about April's favorite foods and the things she disliked. Hoping to head off another disastrous cooking venture, Luke talked her into letting him cook for the four of them, although he gave her the responsibility of making some kind of suitable dessert, suggesting jello as a suitable venture for her culinary talents.
As he hung up, Luke could not help but feel hopeful with this new turn of events. Lorelai may not have been in his life any longer, but he still had a family. He still had friends and his business. Life went on.
Later that night, Luke received a phone call from Anna.
"April tells me she's having dinner with your sister on Thursday," she said tersely by way of greeting.
"Anna, hey... Yeah, she said she wanted to meet Liz, so I invited her to dinner. April said tomorrow was good for her schedule, so-"
"Well, you should have checked with me first." While her voice was carefully controlled, she sounded angry.
"Sorry," Luke said after a few seconds. "It sort of slipped my mind. We make plans during the week all the time, so I didn't think it would be a big deal."
"Not a big deal?" she parroted back at him. "The diner is one thing, but taking my kid to see strange people is quite another."
"Liz is my sister. She's April's aunt," he stressed. "I don't understand what you're so upset about."
Taking a deep breath, Anna adopted the tone of feigned reasonableness she so often used with him. "Luke, from everything you've told me about your sister, she sounds nice, but... a little unstable. I'm just not sure it's a good idea to expose a thirteen-year-old girl to that so soon, even if she is family."
"First you don't want her spending time with my fiance, and now she can't see my sister? She's my daughter too!" Luke exclaimed in disbelief.
"Well, just look how well that situation turned out," Anna said.
"What situation?"
"You and that fiance who isn't your fiance anymore. April said you to broke up."
He sighed at the reminder. "Yeah, we broke up."
"I'm sorry, Luke. I really am. But look at it from my perspective. What if April had gotten attached to her before you two split up? Then she'd be really upset right now about losing someone she was close to."
The anger and annoyance Luke had been feeling with regard to Anna shifted entirely into sadness at her words. They cut deep, serving both as a remembrance of what he had lost and a reprimand for having contributed to its absense.
"I think if they had gotten close, none of this would have ever happened," he said softly, more to himself than to her.
"What, you're blaming me now for your break-up?" Anna demanded angrily. "That's real mature, Luke, dumping your problems on someone else."
"Well your whole speech about treating April like a sweater didn't help any!" he said bitterly. "And saying whatever you did to Lorelai about how she wouldn't be accepted until we got married."
"I'm just protecting my daughter-"
"She's my daughter, too!" Luke shouted into the phone. "She's my daughter too, and I'm sick of being treated like some bumbling idiot who has no idea how to be a father because you never gave me the chance!"
"Luke-"
"Ever since she has come into my life, I have put April first. I put her before my wedding, before my relationship with Lorelai, before everything that means anything to me. So I may not be the perfect father, but I'm trying. And April's trying. And..." He trailed off, floundering for the ultimate point he was trying to make. "And I'm taking her to have dinner with my sister tomorrow!" he concluded, slamming the phone down.
"Mom's mad," April told him the next evening as she came into the diner. Usually when Anna would bring her over, she would come in as well, but this time she had simply dropped her daughter off outside and left.
Luke nodded. "Yeah, I know."
"She's a little over-protective sometimes," she said knowingly.
Her comment forced Luke to give classic parental response. "She just wants what's best for you."
April just shrugged in response.
When they arrived for dinner, Liz very nearly squealed in excitement at meeting April and immediately enveloped the girl in a hug. "You're so big!" she exclaimed. "I can't believe how big you are. Isn't she big, TJ?"
"Yeah, she's huge," he agreed unenthusiastically.
"Liz..." Luke began warningly, not wanting April to be smothered, but his sister waived him off.
"Go make dinner, Luke. My niece and I are going to catch up. My niece. Oh, that's so much fun to say!"
While Luke began cooking (thankfully having overseen the repair of their oven several weeks before), Liz pulled April over to the couch and bombarded her with a long series of questions and compliments. For her part, April suffered the attention well and showed herself to be a diverse conversationalist as she described her interests and educational ambitions to an aunt and uncle she had never met before. Liz was suitably impressed, but TJ was quickly annoyed by April's obvious intelligence. However, she managed to win him over by commenting on the historic accuracy of the renaissance costumes and other items he had hung around the house.
Before TJ could dominate the conversation with his prowess as a craftsman, Liz remarked on how much April resembled her and Luke's mother. Or course, this thought led her to get out the photo albums to demonstrate the point, and just the mention of pouring over old pictures sent TJ into the kitchen to 'help' Luke.
"Is that your dad?" April asked, pointing to a photo of an older man with a young boy standing in front of the diner (then hardware store).
"Hey, look at that!" Liz said brightly. "I forgot I had that picture."
Overhearing, Luke asked, "What picture?"
"The one of you and dad in front of the store. The one with your favorite shirt."
"Oh, that one," he said, his voice dropping as he returned to the stove.
"Luke hates this picture," she told April quietly.
"Why?"
"It was taken the year our mom died, and Luke was pretty upset. He wore the same shirt every day for the whole year."
"I did not," Luke called from the kitchen. Then, addressing TJ, who was trying to taste something cooking on the stove, he yelled, "Get out of here! You're gonna burn yourself and then we'll have to go to the hospital!"
Liz continued on, ignoring the commotion behind her. "Dad made him wash it every night, and eventually the thing just fell apart. But this is him wearing it in the picture."
"It's plaid," April commented in amusement, to which Liz simply rolled her eyes.
"Our mom made it for him. She was really good at sewing and cooking, and all that domestic stuff I can't do. But Luke's good at it," she added, glancing back at her brother in the kitchen as he proceeded to threaten TJ further with bodily harm. Then she whispered softly to April so he could not overhear, "That shirt was the last thing she made him before he died. He was so upset when he had to throw it away."
She simply nodded, glad for information about grandparents she would never get the chance to meet. "Is that her?" she asked, pointing at another picture.
Liz smiled brightly. "Yep, that's her. I think you look like her a little."
April did not see her resemblance to the fair-haired woman in the picture, but she nodded in agreement anyway. "And who's this?" she inquired of the man standing next to her grandmother.
"Oh, that's Uncle Lewie, Dad's brother. He died a few years ago..." She trailed off as tears sprang to her eyes and she instantly began sobbing. This action had the unintended consequence of immediately scaring April.
"Are you okay?" she asked. Reaching over to the coffee table, she grabbed a tissue and held it out to Liz. Then, looking between her aunt and the photo in the book, she speculated, "You and your uncle must have been very close."
This comment made Liz cry harder, and April seemed disturbed that neither Luke nor TJ noticed her distress as they bickered in the kitchen. But after a few moments, the pregnant woman managed to compose herself enough to say, "No, Lewie was a jerk. I was just thinking about you, and how you'll never get to meet him and see for yourself what a jerk he was. Or meet our parents. That's so sad. They would have loved you."
Sensing her hysterics had more to do with her pregnancy than anything else, April tried to quickly steer the conversation away from dead relatives as they moved further into the photo album. Liz gushed over baby pictures of Jess, plus a few random snap-shots taken of Luke over the years. But there was a sizable gap between those and her wedding pictures, which were the next to appear in the album. "I was never very good at taking pictures. Or getting them developed," she explained. "But here's me and TJ at our wedding. We had it in town, right in front of the gazebo."
"Cool renaissance theme," April remarked.
"Yeah, that way all our friends could be there and participate. Besides, we already had most of the clothes and stuff. Doesn't TJ look handsome?"
She nodded in agreement, although she thought the tights were a bit over-the-top for a grown man. "I don't know much about the renaissance," she said. "I once read a book about it, but that was a long time ago and I'm not sure about how accurate they were with the details."
"We'll have to take you to the fair when the season starts up again," Liz decided. "You'll love it. They have shows and demonstrations, and I'm sure someone has a book lying around somewhere."
"I'm not telling you again, TJ!" they heard Luke shout. "Get out of the kitchen, or so help me...!"
"Hey, it's my kitchen!" the other man responded.
Luke growled in frustration, and Liz quickly intervened. "TJ, come here," she called. "I'm showing April pictures from our wedding."
"Oh, did you show her the one of me in the air-pants?" he asked, but they both ignored him.
"This is a good picture," April said, seeing one of her father in a suit standing by his sister. It struck her suddenly that she always saw Luke in his usual diner ensemble: jeans, plaid flannel shirt, and blue baseball cap. Well, since the break-up he had been wearing a black baseball cap, as though he were in mourning over his split with Lorelai.
"Oh, here's my favorite picture of him," Liz said, turning the page. She pointed to a photo of Luke from the wedding, a candid shot of him dancing with a dark-haired woman April immediately recognized as his ex-fiance. The angle of the picture caught Luke's profile, but his smile was natural and his enjoyment of the moment obvious. In fact, she felt certain that she had never seen him quite so relaxed and at ease.
"He looks happy," April said with a sad smile. She had not seen Luke smile much since his break-up with Lorelai, and certainly not in so open and unforced a manner.
"Yeah, he does," Liz agreed.
"Of course he does," TJ contributed, perhaps a little too loudly. "Lorelai was hot."
"What are you talking about?" Luke called, overhearing the familiar name but not the context in which it was used. He set the pots on the stove to simmer and walked into the living room.
Liz flashed him a smile. "I was just showing April some family pictures," she said, gesturing to the album.
"Ah," he acknowledged, his face falling as he laid eyes on the picture they had been looking at. He used to have a copy of that same picture in a frame at his apartment, but it had since been relegated it to storage along with everything else that reminded him of her.
"Which reminds me, we need some pictures of April!" Liz suggested excitedly.
"Why?" TJ asked in confusion. "We only just met her."
"She's Luke's daughter," she said, drawing out the last word with all due impatience. "And I need pictures."
Liz used a disposable camera as the batteries in her digital camera had long since died and she still had yet to buy new ones. She took several shots of Luke perched awkwardly on the couch next to his daughter before taking some of just her. The camera was handed around as each of them took a turn in a picture with April, who smiled good-naturedly through the impromptu-photo shoot. But then she insisted on taking pictures of Liz and Luke, Liz and TJ, and even one of Luke and TJ. Thankfully, the camera ran out of exposures just as Luke's dinner was ready to serve, and they all sat down to eat.
Several years passed before Liz remembered to get the pictures on the disposable camera developed.
TBC