*                                              *                                  *

Ch. 5: Jay English, Luke Raider

*                                              *                                  *

Sookie was trying to get the crowd to be quiet. It was a task that was nearly impossible, as she stood near the front door and waved her arms frantically in an effort to grab their attention.

"Okay, Lorelai text-messaged me and they're five minutes away, so I need you all to just keep it down! It's not a surprise if Rory can hear you two miles down the road."

No one listened to her. Sookie grunted, and went to the kitchen. She returned wielding a pot and ladle, then clanged them together. That got everyone's attention.

"She's almost here, so lights out, voices down, and find somewhere to hide!"

Emily looked around. "I'm not getting on the floor."

"You can stay on the couch, then. Everyone else hide."

Richard spoke up from the chair. "I'm fine here."

Sookie rephrased. "Anyone not related to Rory by blood, hide." She noticed Luke come in the backdoor; he must have decided to leave the diner after all. Good. Poor Jay had been fending off Bootsy for the past half hour. Jackson had eventually engaged her in a conversation about organic gardening that kept the others away.

Luke walked around Sookie and into the living room. She grabbed his arm and veered him in the direction of Jay. "Over there," she instructed. He handed off a plate of brownies to her.

"…and so, if you just make sure your compost has a seventy percent ratio of the same material, it makes better fertilizer. I mean, you can't throw any old thing on there and expect it to work!" Jackson was reaching epic levels of excitement.

Jay was also excited, although no one could get as excited about organic fertilizing as Jackson could. "Do you sell to individuals, or just wholesale?"

"Wholesale, for the most part. But if you let me know what you want, we can work something out." Jackson looked up and saw Luke's looming presence. "Hi, Luke."

Luke nodded in greeting. Jackson stood up. "So, well, better get back over to Sookie now. Looks like she might need help in convincing Kirk to hide." Jackson left, knowing subtlety was not his strong point.

"He's nice," Jay said about the departed fruit and vegetable grower.

"Yeah, he's one of the better ones. Good fruit, too."

"Gotta love fruit."

Luke wasn't comfortable with talking to new people one on one. He mumbled a 'see you later' but she grabbed his arm.

"You don't have to talk to me, but I'd appreciate it a whole lot if you pretended to, so that Bootie guy doesn't come back over here."

"Who, Bootsy?" He glanced around the room, where Bootsy was indeed, looking like he intended to make his way over. "I'll stay." To spite Bootsy, that was all.

"Thank you." She looked over his shoulder, where Sookie was waving. "I think she wants us to hide."

Luke turned his head. "I'm sure Rory already knows." But he complied, sitting on the floor next to the side of the couch. Jay sat down next to him.

"Who is Rory, by the way? Lorelai invited me but I didn't get a chance to ask."

"Lorelai's daughter. Great kid. She went to some summer thing in D.C. I'm not really sure on all the details, but it probably had something to do with putting it on her Harvard application."

Jay's eyebrows drew together. Luke noticed her eyes were blue, but much paler and greyer than Lorelai's. Not that he sat around thinking of and memorizing the color of Lorelai's eyes; they were just a good color for comparison. "She's in high school? I thought Lorelai was my age."

"Thirty-three. She had Rory young, like my sister and her kid."

"The nephew who lives with you?" Jay recalled one of Lorelai's comments at the store.

"Yeah, Jess. Whom you might have the pleasure," Luke stressed that word with a deep amount of sarcasm, "of knowing since he goes to the high school. You teaching anything in the senior level?"

Jay nodded. "I've got two senior classes and three junior classes."

"He pulls anything, you let me know right away."

"Ah, one of those kids."

"You have no idea." Something she'd said earlier stood out at him. "How old are you?" Then he got uncomfortable. "Sorry. I always forget women have some thing about age. You don't have to answer."

"No, it's okay. Aging is natural." She smirked. "How old do I look?"

Luke shrugged and fixed his hat. "I don't know, I'm not very good at those things." If he had to, he'd say twenty-three. Which would make her thirteen years younger than him.

"Twenty-seven."

Nine years. Slightly better. Not that he was thinking of anything…

He heard Lorelai's jeep pull up in the driveway, then voices on the porch. The door opened.

Rory was in mid-sentence when Sookie flicked on the main lights and everyone jumped up, yelling surprise. Everyone except Luke, who wasn't the jump up and yell surprise kind of guy, Jay, because she was talking to Luke and hadn't noticed the door open, and Emily, who was on the couch listening to them talk. But also because she thought it was somewhat tasteless to jump out at a person and shout at them.

Rory gasped. "Ooh! A surprise party!"

Lorelai grinned and put her arm around Rory's shoulders. "Aren't you surprised?"

"Totally."

"Really?"

"No." Rory smiled at her mom. "Duh, like I didn't see you text messaging five minutes away from the house. You should have at least called and used code words."

"Or British slang. No one understands the British anyhow." She pushed Rory. "Go, meet and greet and mingle."

Rory went off to say hello to everyone. Lorelai supposed she should go over and talk to her parents. "Hi, Mom, Dad, glad you could make it."

Richard barely looked up from the paper he was reading, but he did give her a smile. "Well, Sunday night is generally the least social of nights, so we weren't busy."

"Lorelai, sit." Emily said.

"Hi to you too."

Emily leaned in close to Lorelai once she had sat. "Who is the Iceman talking to?"

Lorelai looked in the direction that Emily's eyes were trained. She saw Luke and Jay talking, now away from the couch and sitting on chairs.

"Oh, that's the new substitute science teacher."

"She will be teaching impressionable youngsters?"

"She seems okay," Lorelai shrugged. "What's wrong with her?"

"I just can't see her as a teacher."

"It's all the blonde hair," Lorelai conceded. Jay was wearing it down for the first time that Lorelai had seen, and it went to her waist.

"She looks like a Playmate."

"She does not."

"Well, Luke seems to like her." There were implications in the tone of voice Emily used.

"For the millionth time, Mom, I'm not dating Luke."

"Well, you and I tend to define 'dating' in different ways. Who really knows what you're doing with him? I was just keeping an eye out."

"Hey, you know what? I'm gonna go find your granddaughter and shove her over this way because I just can't have this conversation anymore." Lorelai got up and looked for Rory, whom she spotted talking excitedly with Lane.

"Lane, sweetie," Lorelai said, "I'm taking Rory away for the greater good. Which is my good, really. I need her to entertain her grandmother so that I don't beat her with a punch ladle."

Lane nodded. "I understand completely."

Rory was heading over to Emily when she saw Luke talking to a blonde lady. She nudged her mom. "That her?"

Lorelai had briefly mentioned Jay on the ride back from D.C. "Yep."

"She looks like that, and has a love of baseball and health food, and Luke hasn't married her yet?"

Lorelai grimaced. Not Rory, too. "Well it's only been a few days. Now go, be the beautiful granddaughter."

Rory smiled. "It's a role I perform well," she said, then joined Emily and Richard.

Lorelai watched Rory go, and snuck a glance at Luke and Jay. It didn't look like they were flirting. It pacified her a little, and she went to stock up on some party food.

"Ooh, brownies." She grabbed three.

*                                                          *                                              *

"You're staring," Sookie accused, handing Lorelai another glass of punch, which happily was laced with vodka.

"Am not," Lorelai said, immediately jerking her gaze away from Luke. He and Jay had been talking for two straight hours. Luke could go an entire day and talk less than that. She hadn't been eavesdropping intentionally, but she'd passed them a few times in the course of her mingling. They'd talked about baseball and pollution, which digressed into politics, from what she could hear. She would have died from boredom.

"It might just be the liquor talking, but I'm going to be super blunt right now. Do you want to start a relationship with Luke?"

"He's barely started talking to me again."

"That wasn't what I asked."

Lorelai took a nice, deep swig of punch. "I don't know. It's not that I want him for myself, in that way. I just have a fear that he's going to find some woman, and she's not going to like him being friends with another woman, and he'll distance himself for her sake." That, for the most part was true.

"That's silly. Rachel didn't do that."

"I didn't say it was a logical thing. It's just the way I feel."

"So, you'd begrudge him happiness because, basically, it might infringe upon your coffee time."

Lorelai frowned. "Sure, when you say it like that it sounds all petty."

"I just think that a girlfriend might be a good thing for him right now. Maybe even put him in a better mood, which you could benefit from. He has been friendlier since she's gotten here."

"Coincidence."

"If that's how you want to see it. But I needed to ask you, because you're my best friend and I don't intentionally want to hurt you by supporting anything that might happen between them."

Sookie was in newlywed bliss, and was currently going through the stage where she thought everyone should share her happiness, so she was snatching up every matchmaking opportunity. Just last week, she'd sworn she found the perfect girl for Michel.

Lorelai took a firm stance, even though it was on shaky ground. "I'm okay with Luke dating."

Sookie accepted this. "Fine."

"Besides, it's not like a guarantee or anything that something's going to happen between them." Lorelai pointed out.

"That's true. Luke hasn't been known to be very bold with the risk taking. Captain Kirk he's not."

Lorelai wasn't quite done with her reassurances. "I mean, just because she looks like a blonde Lara Croft doesn't mean she'll be raiding Luke's tomb any time soon."

Sookie got a look on her face, the same one she got whenever she bore witness to Lorelai's semi-annual fridge cleanings. Luke had been her friend for years, and she never really wanted to think about him in that way. "Please don't mention 'raiding Luke's tomb' again."

-end ch. 5-

The titles only get weirder from here on out…

Note: I've never been big on original characters being main characters in fanfic. I just can't be bring myself to care about them as much as the real characters (and yes, I understand that's an oxymoron g) So even though Jay will be in this fic, it will not be about her. Most of the Luke/Jay stuff coming up is either offscreen, or seen through Lorelai's perspective. So anyone worried they'd be reading about the Adventures of Jay and Luke can breathe a sigh of relief ;)