By Stew Pid
Rating: Should be okay.
Disclaimer: I only own the Stew Pid stuff.
A/N: It's a rainy Wednesday at Luke's. This is another one of my boring fics where nothing really happens and you have to do a lot of reading 'twixt the lines to leave with something vaguely in the range of a meaning. I'd be great at advertising toothpaste, wouldn't I?
They weren't exactly like the Gilmore pair. They didn't share interests, habits, similar sense of humor or fashion. They didn't even share last names. They didn't have that intimate knowledge into the other's mind and soul. Conversations between them were short and functional, more guttural than verbal. Still, after almost a year together they had come to a silent agreement—you will never understand me and I will never understand you, so let's agree on that if nothing else and do our own thing in our own space. They had come to a rhythm with bathroom use, television privileges, and even operations in the diner. Secretly, they had come to respect each other, sometimes, however rarely, even appreciate each other. At the heart of that rare appreciation was the common discipline of not pretending to know what they didn't. In a town like Stars Hollow, it was a relief for both of them to have someone who respected their privacy, their secrecy, their mystery. It was again that silent agreement. You will never understand me and I will never understand you. The only drawback to the agreement was that it prevented them from realizing how much the other could understand.
It was a Wednesday. Between the pragmatism of Monday and the romanticism of the weekend was the limbo of Wednesday, perfect for examination, rumination, philosophy. The Wednesday evening rhythm was that Luke would have the diner all to himself (with the exception of a few silent, nameless customers) to explore his own philosophy, while Jess would carry his own discourse outside, most often to the bridge. But on this particular Wednesday God, or the Fates, or Plato conspired and with the use of rain and a hex of flu on Caesar, kept the two men together indoors. There was something discomfiting about the silence in the diner. Both were used to silence at that time of day, even preferred it, but this silence was oppressing. It gave the both of them an unusual urge to speak, and they were embarrassed by these strange urges. The urges were impossible to ignore but impossible to yield to. To comply would be to break the silent agreement that had been so pivotal to the "success" of their relationship.
Jess flipped laboriously through a copy of Steinbeck, often looking up for a cup of coffee that needed to be refilled. Luke paced about often checking on the customers to see if everything was okay, something he rarely ever did. It had reached such a desperate point that he even wished Taylor would come in to complain about something. He avoided looking at Jess reading, knowing that if his eyes caught the view, his mouth would open with the dreaded question.
Alas, he caught the sight while refilling the sugar decanters, and the lamentable question came forth.
"What are you reading?"
Normally, Jess would have replied with some sarcastic or dismissive remark, alerting Luke to the fact that he was transgressing the bounds of the silent agreement. This time, however, the transgression was a relief, so his response was simply honest and matter-of-fact.
"Of Mice and Men."
"Steinbeck?"
Again Jess had to bite back the sarcasm, knowing that it would send Luke into retreat and call back the oppressive silence. Instead, he nodded, not stand-offish, but not engaging either. Luke wondered if he should continue now that the damage had already been done. He took Jess's lack of sarcasm as an invitation, and casually proceeded.
"I read that once, I think. Didn't understand it, though."
"Maybe you should have read it again," Jess shot back, not able to repress the sarcasm in his tone. He smirked in order to convey an intended humor, marginally engaging. Luke noticed this and responded with a shrug.
"Aah. What's the point? At least I graduated," Luke retorted, conveying a similar humor in his tone.
"And look where that diploma brought you."
It was meant in jest, but it brought both of them back to the sad realities of their lives. Look where they both were! Working the diner on a rainy Wednesday night avoiding a silence that whispered a truth that both of them were not really as content in their aloneness as they pretended to be, that both of them were, in fact, lonely, that neither of them was satisfied with being arcane, that both of them wanted to be understood.
Luke tried to resume the humor, "You mean all this." Even those words rang with a deeper meaning than was intended. All this, which really meant very little. Luke already knew that when he went upstairs he would find rain spilling down from a crack in the roof right over his bed. "I didn't even get a chance to patch that hole in the roof," he informed Jess.
"Hey, not every man can brag about wet sheets Thursday morning."
It was confirmed. Humor was a lost cause. It seemed every attempt was cursed with a poignant twinge of seriousness.
Relief was a customer calling for a refill of coffee. Jess walked over, for the first time, gladly. He might have even tried to be congenial if not for the fact that he hadn't completely lost it. The last drop of coffee dripped into the mug. It seemed significant.
Jess walked back to the counter with the empty coffeepot.
"The coffee's finished," he reported back to Luke. "Should I make more?"
"I don't think so," Luke said, looking at the clock. "We close in ten minutes, and I don't think anyone else is coming." His voice dropped with that last part so subtly so as to be undetectable by anyone except one who also suffered from the disappointment it conveyed.
"Guess not," Jess said in the same faintly dejected tone. Silence returned, still somewhat strained, but more satisfied. It seemed to be waiting to accomplish just one more thing.
"Yesterday Liz said she would call you this morning so she's probably going to call in a few minutes. Why don't you go upstairs and find something important to do so that I won't actually be lying when she asks to speak to you? I can clean up here."
"Yeah. I'll see what I can do about that hole in the roof."
"Good. Thanks. I'll be up in a bit to give you a hand."
"Okay."
Jess unties the apron from around his waist and smacks it on the counter. Just before he runs upstairs, he turns back, the smirk returning to his face.
"I'll do the whole fix-the-roof together thing, but I draw the line when it comes to holding hands and skipping."
Luke grins dimly and nods.
Really, they might as well have held hands and skipped upstairs together. Drawing lines was pointless now. They had already crossed the lines that separated them. The silent agreement was lost that moment, but they found something else. They found silent understanding.