Title: Return to Stars Hollow
Author: PKNight
Spoilers: absolutely none this chapter. Completely AU after There's The Rub, actually…
Author's Note: Yes! She returns from the grave!…or at least the realm of not-updated stories… Okay, so this took a very, very long time. Just think of it as how long Jess had to cope with Rory not being there, if you combine the show and my continuum. I know this story is now completely and totally AU, instead of just the semi-AU it was before the new season. I don't know if I'm going to try to work any of the new season stuff in or not. We'll see. Though I did have Jess yelling at Luke about…well that would be a spoiler, wouldn't it?…before the show did. Anyway…
This is mostly a filler chapter until I can get the next part done (which has been in the works for a while now, almost since I stopped posting last on this), but I promise that when it is done, it will be really, really good. So, please, please, please review. I love reviews of all kinds. Anyway, to all my loyal readers (all two of you…joking) thanks for being so patient, and I hope I can still satisfy with fanfic.
Oh, and don't blame me if I got the time-zone-stuff wrong. It's always made my head hurt. Especially since, apparently, flying from the US to Australia you actually cease to exist for a day…gah, aspirin!
**********
Return to Stars Hollow
"I hate cities," Luke muttered darkly under his breath, standing awkwardly with a bunch of flowers in his hand. He'd reluctantly picked a bouquet of roses, whereas Jess had a handful of small sunflowers. "I hate crowds," Luke continued. "I hate airports. I hate tourists." He glowered at a family of four who were looking through guidebooks and talking excitedly.
"But you hide it so well," Jess said sardonically, having heard the litany more times than he cared to throughout the drive to Hartford Airport, the aimless wandering to find a parking spot, the trek through security, and the maze of stores and gates. Jess, being used to New York, felt much more comfortable in this environment than his uncle.
There were only two things that could bring the Diner Duo to Hartford: their girlfriends, who were coming home.
The speaker near them announced another flight coming in. "Is that them?" Jess demanded, pointing at the plane coasting towards the gate.
"According to the numbers, yeah," Luke said darkly. He'd missed Lorelai a lot more than he'd thought he would. Every day for six weeks he didn't hear her begging him for coffee, or hear her ranting about something or other about life or the world in general.
The ever-present ring in his pocket was practically screaming at him, "Use me! Use me!"
"Now I'm even thinking like her," he said under his breath, wincing at the vivid image of a yelling engagement ring.
"What?" Jess asked, tearing his eyes away from the windows on the plane.
"Nothing."
Silence enveloped the pair as they waited for long minutes until the doors opened and passengers began flooding off the plane. Several travelers deplaned before two familiar, tall brunets appeared. After they'd caught sight of Luke and Jess standing in the waiting area, they began to push rudely through the people. As one, both women dropped their suitcases a few feet from their men and jumped into their arms.
"Luke!" Lorelai cried before she nearly choked him with the strength of her hug.
Rory took the time to kiss Jess on the cheek before hugging him tightly to her.
Reflexively, both men hugged back, happy to have their loves in their arms again.
"So, you got us flowers?" Rory said, smiling hugely as she pulled back. Jess thought, for just one moment, that he saw her eyes were wet. Jess held up the bouquet of miniature sunflowers out to her, and she took them. "They're beautiful," she told him, then smiled.
"Hmm," Lorelai breathed in the scent of roses. "I concur wholeheartedly. Thank you, Luke."
Luke said nothing in response to that. "So, how much luggage did you guys end up sending back?"
"Not much," Rory answered. "A few bags each. And our carry-ons. We had to put most of our presents in the suitcases, though, 'cause they wouldn't all fit in my backpack."
Jess and Luke picked up the carry-on bags and began leading Lorelai and Rory to the baggage claim area. "Ooh, Rory, why don't you go get one of those luggage carts?" Lorelai suggested. "I don't want to break our guys' backs just when we've returned to them."
"Good idea. There's one!" She dashed through the crowd to get it, and only barely managed to snatch it away from the grasp of a twenty-something woman. Rory comforted herself with the fact that the woman hadn't needed it: her luggage had wheels.
"Did you leave anything in Europe?" Jess asked them both as he hauled the last bag onto the over full luggage cart.
"Yeah. The Swiss Mountains were so beautiful, but they just wouldn't fit, so we're having them air-mailed, COD. You'll have enough to cover it, won't you Luke? They should be here tonight." Lorelai rolled her eyes. "We didn't pack that much, guys."
"You should see all the stuff I got for Lane," Rory told Jess. "I saw where Jim Morrison was buried, and I got a rubbing of his tombstone. Then the amount of vinyl you can get there is amazing! I found this vintage Sex Pistols LP, and a whole bunch of new CDs from some great bands in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Germany."
Jess grinned. "Wow. I assume some of that's for you, too, right?"
"Of course," Rory said. "Besides, Lane would make me copies even if they were just for her." Jess nodded.
"We're parked in some obscure section," Luke said. "I wrote it down, somewhere, so let's just head for an exit. Any exit."
"Aw, poor Luke," Lorelai said, and twirled some of his hair between her fingers. He jerked his head away and glared at her slightly. "He so hates crowds and noise. We'll be back in good ol' Stars Hollow before you know it."
"Ooh, on the way home, let's remember to drop off the film," Rory said. "We want to have our slideshow as soon as possible."
"Naturally," Lorelai said.
**********
"Ahh, the Crap Shack," Lorelai cried upon seeing her house for the first time in six weeks. "How I have missed thee!" She threw open her door and ran towards the house, leaving her bags in the car. Rory was almost right behind her, but she was thoughtful enough to grab her carry-on. She hauled the bag into her room, flung it into a corner, then collapsed gratefully onto her own bed.
"Not that the hostels weren't great," she said to Jess, who entered with two more of her bags and placed them near the door. "But do you have any idea how it feels to sleep in your own bed after so long?"
Jess merely shrugged in reply, then sat next to her. "So, I guess you're going to start talking about the trip sometime, huh?"
"Eventually," she said, then yawned. "Right now, I think I'm running on fumes alone. It was about ten at night when we took off from France, and it's been a long time since then."
"Ah," Jess said. "But here it's about noon."
"Yeah, and I will never understand why they had to create time zones just to confuse people worldwide. Ugh." Rory dropped her head onto her arm, then raised her head up again. "Nope. I've gotta fight this. Let's finish unloading the car." She hopped off her bed, and had barely passed Jess when he pulled her back.
"I think you should probably sleep right now, unless you want to just faint on your lawn." Jess yanked her back until she fell onto the bed. He pulled off her shoes, then covered her with a blanket. "Don't worry about your bags. I can handle them."
"Hmm," Rory said. Jess moved to leave the room when she stopped him. "Come here," she told him. When he did, she pulled him down for a long, gentle kiss. "I missed you," she murmured sleepily as she collapsed back onto her pillow. She was soon asleep, and Jess allowed himself one goofy smile down at her before he left to finish unloading the car.
He met Luke at the car. "Lorelai conk out on you?" Jess asked, noting his uncle's slightly sour look. Luke nodded. "It's like they never left."
**********
Neither of the Gilmores woke until the next morning. "Oh, jeez!" Rory said to her mother as they met at the kitchen table for coffee. "I can't believe we didn't even stay awake to spend time with our boyfriends."
"We'll make it up to them today," Lorelai answered with a decidedly NC-17 gleam in her eye.
"Just don't give me any details," Rory told her sternly.
"Same goes." Lorelai took a gulp of coffee. "Well, I imagine they're going to be busy until tonight. So…what do we do?"
"Well, I should probably write what it feels like to be home."
"Yeah. That journal idea was great. You must have written ten pages every day. Wow. That's like…a lot of pages."
"And Lorelai Gilmore's stellar math brain strikes again." Rory grinned at her mother. "We have to wrap presents. Although how I wrap a gravestone rubbing, I don't know."
"You frame it, then wrap it," her mother answered wisely.
"Okay. How do we frame it?"
"Uh…we ask Luke to do it."
"Huh," Rory nodded. "Kinda defeats the purpose of us framing it."
"No semantics this early in the morning. God. How long do you think its going to take to get used to this time zone again?"
"I don't know. How long did it take us to adjust to Europe?"
"I don't know. I think we broke our personal records on coffee drinkage, though. A couple days, maybe."
"Cool." Rory fought a yawn. "This is ridiculous! I can't still be tired. I just slept for twenty hours!"
"Well, let's get up and do something," Lorelai suggested.
"We could take a walk around Stars Hollow and see what hasn't changed," Rory said. They agreed on that, and walked out the door.
**********
That night, they separated and dragged their respective guys out for their first dates in six weeks. Jess and Rory went to a movie in Hartford.
As they were driving home, Rory said, "That was such a good movie!"
"But it didn't even stay remotely close to the book."
"Yeah, it did," Rory protested. "The ending was the same, so was much of the dialogue. How long has it been since you read it?"
Jess thought before he answered. "About ten years."
Rory pursed her lips. "If you weren't you, I'd be more suspicious that you don't remember everything in the book. But…"
"Since I have a mind like a steel trap?"
"Rusty and illegal in forty states?"
"You should know," Jess said, and leered at her. Rory blushed, but she looked happy about it. When they reached Stars Hollow she parked in front of the diner. Wordlessly, she and Jess made their way up to the apartment, and Jess' room.
As soon as the door was closed behind them, Jess pulled Rory closer to him and kissed her, long and slow. Minutes later, as she pulled away, she murmured, "Now, that was a 'hello, I've missed you' kiss."
"So what's this?" he asked, then simultaneously kissed her and pulled her gently down onto the mattress, lying them both on the bed side-by-side.
"That was an 'I love you, and I'm happy you're home' kiss," Rory said, just before she got aggressive. "I wish you could have come with us," she said between kisses. "I saw so many things you would have loved, and I would have loved to see with you. There were the ruins of ancient Greece, the vineyards in France, Trafalgar Square in England. And the bookstores! You wouldn't believe the bookstores they had on this one street in London. And the clubs and the music," she added as she slid his shirt from him. "The people we saw. I didn't know people could have that many piercings! I mean, sharing it with mom was great, but it would have been extra wonderful if you could have been there." She kissed him hard, then sat up, quickly divesting herself of clothes.
Jess sat back and watched her. He almost hated to admit how much he had missed her. There had been many, many letters, including several that she'd mailed before she'd even left. There had also been plenty of phone calls, with varying degrees of clarity. But it wasn't the same as seeing her smiling face, feeling her against him, just being with her. His head fell back against his headboard as he realized, not for the first time, that he was oh-so-very in love with her.
"I love you," Jess said, and ended conversation for a long while.
**********
"I kept a journal," Rory murmured into his shoulder.
"Hmm?" he asked, unconcerned. She was curled up against him, using one of his arms for a pillow. Not that he minded. One of his arms was resting over her waist, and their legs were tangled together. Right now, neither really wanted to tell whose leg was who's. Due to the summer heat, he only had a light sheet on his bed, and they were covered only in the thin cotton.
"I said I kept a journal. A very thorough record, if I do say so myself, of stuff that we saw, people we talked to, and things we did." As she talked, Jess free hand moved some of her hair up towards his nose. She smiled. "I missed you so much," she said quietly.
"I missed you, too," he mumbled, not looking at her, and she began grinning. Yep, she thought happily. Nothing's changed.
**********
Lorelai and Rory's party was a huge hit. The drinks--both alcoholic and non--were flowing freely, Sookie's wonderful food was of course a hit, and the slide show had gone off with only a few hitches involving upside down or reversed slides.
Lorelai waved her frou-frou drink around happily, a little buzzed, but not knee-walking drunk. Since Luke knew it was likely only a matter of time until that happened, he decided he'd better make his move. He pulled Lorelai out of conversation with someone else from Stars Hollow who had also been to Paris, and pulled her into the entryway of her house.
"Lorelai, I love you," he said quickly, before she could ask what he was doing. "And I think that you and I are really good together. We sort of…balance each other out. I mean, I'm quiet, you're loud…er. And, uh, you are good with people, where I'm, you know, not. Um…" He suddenly looked down at the floor, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm not saying what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say, I love you, and the conversation we had the night you told me you loved me has been on repeat in my mind since the day you left. All those somedays…but someday is now, and I mean…." Luke finally just swallowed past the lump in his throat and jerked the ring box out of his pocket. He flipped it open and held it up to her face and blurted out, "Wanna get married?"
Lorelai stared at the beautiful ring nestled in blue-black velvet. It was an absolutely gorgeous flower, with an opal center and petals of stones that matched the flecks of color in the opal ringing it, all set in a gold band.
For the first time that she could remember, Lorelai couldn't find any words. She rapidly looked from Luke to the ring, ring to Luke, Luke to ring, over and over again, until she looked like one of the bobbing dogs on a dashboard.
Luke began to sweat when she didn't say anything. Why didn't she say something? He knew he'd done it wrong, he'd said it wrong, wrong time, wrong place, wrong, wrong, wrong!
But then Lorelai just took the ring out of the box, and slipped it onto her finger, where it fit perfectly. She looked straight at Luke with tears in her eyes while she waited for him to process the news.
Luke gulped hard, then said, "Does this mean…?" Lorelai nodded frantically, then leapt into Luke's arms, kissing him, crying at the same time.
Suddenly, everyone in the house was clapping. Rory and Jess were standing in front of a rather large crowd huddled in the doorway. Luke and Lorelai broke from their embrace, both of them red in the face, and smiling broadly.
Rory ran the few steps between her and her mother and hugged Lorelai fiercely. Sookie soon joined in the celebration, and then the party went back into full swing, everyone congratulating the couple then going to get more food.
"I'm gonna get married," Lorelai said happily to her daughter.
"I know!" Rory said, grinning like the Mad Hatter.
"You didn't have anything to do with this, now did you?" Lorelai demanded, suddenly suspicious at her offspring's lack of surprise.
"Me?" Rory looked innocent. "No!…Well, yes, but Luke needed help picking out the ring. Or he thought he did. He picked that one out on his own. Let me see. I haven't seen it for months."
"Months?" Lorelai demanded. "When exactly did he buy this?"
"Before we left. I expected him to propose at my graduation party." Rory began matching each stone with the corresponding color in the opal. "Ooh, there's the pink one, and the red one, and the light green one, that's called a citrine, I think." Lorelai looked over at Luke, who was once again standing apart from the crowd.
"I never suspected," Lorelai said in wonder. "I can't believe I didn't suspect it. I didn't know Luke was so good at hiding things." Rory paid no attention to her, and had to be physically dragged away from Lorelai by Jess.
"Congratulations," Jess said to Lorelai, smiling slightly, pushing Rory back towards the party.
"Uh-huh," Lorelai said. "And what are your thoughts on marriage, buster?" She sent him a mock-stern look.
"Me? No thoughts. No thoughts at all. Just sailing along on a cloud of blissful ignorance of the wedded state." Jess looked completely innocent, but Lorelai knew from doing it that the totally trustworthy look wasn't. She glared at Jess, this time for real. He sighed, and edged closer so he could talk quietly. "Not until after she finishes school. I know that for sure."
"Uh-huh," Lorelai said again. "And what are you going to be doing while she's at school?"
Jess' expression immediately blanked. "Whatever," he said vaguely, and beat a hasty retreat. Lorelai shook her head, then greeted all the women who'd been waiting until they could get a good look at the ring.
**********
Author's Note 2: Okay. This was rushed, and it probably shows. So, expect some editing on this chapter after I read through it a couple times and find the bee-lyuns and bee-lyuns of mistakes therein. (And the fanfic points for this one go out to the person who can tell me the book, and author, if you want, that I got "bee-lyuns" from, exact spelling.) And yes, the title was a somewhat-deliberate play on Welcome to Stars Hollow. And yes, the movie she and Jess went to see was Tuck Everlasting. I couldn't resist. Really.