Lorelai, Luke, Rory, and Jess all sit back and let out a big sigh from being so full.

Luke: "wow I'm so full I don't think I'll be able to move in a week."
Jess: "me too"
Lorelai: "Give me five minutes and I'll be ready for pie."
Rory: "no way could you be ready to eat in 5 minutes! I eat like you do and even I'm too full to think about food for at least an hour."
"oh dear sweet child of mine. You have so much to learn. I am an experience eater so therefore my stomach can digest faster."
Luke "In what medical journal does that say."
"The Lorelai journal"
"You are going to kill yourself one of these days from an explosive stomach."
"oh really? I bet you 20 bucks that I can eat a piece of pie in the next three minutes."
"why so you can prove my point and die?"
"No so I can live up to the gilmore standards of the Christmas feast."
"You don't have to prove anything to us. We all know you are a pig."
"Pig? Did you just call me a Pig?"
Rory: "In all fairness, mom you did call our house a pig sty earlier."
"Calling a house a sty is one thing but to insult a person. Well that's just.....that's just wrong." She started laughing and putting on her best southern bell voice she could muster.
Luke "all right so I was a bit harsh. You aren't a pig, you're a lover of foods."
"dirty"
Jess: "JEESH!!! Would you two give it up already. I swear if I have to hear you two flirt this entire time I'm going to blow my head off with a shot gun!!" Realizing he just exploded and that he wasn't exactly on his turf he backed down quickly.

Lorelai: "well don't let me stop you."
Rory: "Mom! That wasn't a very christmassy thing to say."
Luke: "Jess, what did I say before. To be on your best behavior but you couldn't last till the presents could you? Now I want you to apologize right now."
Jess just rolled his eyes. "whatever." He got up and stormed into rory's room slamming the door. Rory quickly got up and followed him into her room.

"I'm so sorry Lorelai. I don't know what got into him. I..we..shouldn't have come. I'll just collect our coats and be on our way."
"No wait. I don't want to you go. Just give me 2 minutes with him to see if I can straighten him out."
"Uh well are you sure about that? I really think we should just go."
"No he was hostile before because he didn't think I liked him so I should go talk to him. Just promise me one thing."
"I'm scared to ask but what?"
"Don't interrupt us. No matter who yells what let us get it out."
Luke didn't like this one bit. He knew Jess and he didn't know why he blew up and he didn't think getting a lecture from Lorelai would help much but seeing as nothing could make it worse he decided to let them duke it out. "sure. Just don't strangle him."
"oh I'm going to do something much worse than strangling. I'm gonna make him have a conversation."

Meanwhile in the bedroom.

Rory: "Jess, why did you just blow up like that?" "I just couldn't take the flirting anymore."
"They were just doing the usual banter stuff. They do that everyday and you don't blow up then."
"Well it was starting to build up."
"I think you should apologize to both of them."
"Oh come on ror. What good is that going to do? They are still going to be mad. An apology won't erase anything."
"No but it will fix things. It's the right thing to do."
"Oh right. You should know too cuz you are miss perfect. Miss I do everything right so everyone will love me."
"Jess what has gotten into you?"
"nothing. Can I just be alone?"

Just then Lorelai opened up the door and was standing there with her arms folded leaning against the door frame.

"Rory I need to speak to Jess. Alone."
Rory: "uh yes ma'am." She looks at lor and then at Jess and walks out. "Luke? Has she gone in there to kill him?" "I hope not cuz then it was a waste to feed him"

Lorelai slowly closed the door and paced back and forth in front of the door.

Jess: "you do realize I could just climb out the window."
"I would catch you before you got away."
"So what is this, an interrogation?"
"Interesting how you decided to run into my daughters bedroom. Get a good look cuz I don't want you in here again."
"Is that suppose to scare me?"
"I'm not here to scare you. I'm here to get this splinter out from between us."
"How very metaphoric of ya."
"So what's your deal? Why the constant attitude? Cuz If I were the punk dating a well beloved girl I would at least try to make nice with her mom but you seem to be a true rebel and still disrespect me. In my own home no less. So what is it?"
"No deal I just don't suck up to people no matter who they are related to."
"ah how noble." She realized she may have been going at this the wrong way. "you do know I don't hate you."
"Yea right. You've disliked me since the beginning and now that I'm dating rory you are going to continue to dislike me even more. And don't give me this bullshit where you say 'no I just don't trust you' cuz that's a load and you know it. You don't trust me cuz you don't like me, end of story."
"you know you carry around this big attitude against me like I did something to you well let me tell you that I am not the cause of this. Sure I'm the adult and should take the high road but screw the high road you never respected me so in turn I never respected you. If you would just put down that chip on your shoulder you might be able to make a friend here or at least a lasting relationship."
"Why would I want you to be my friend? And even more important why would you be my friend? This is all completely stupid! You act like we can just shake hands and be best buds and skip down the street. That's not me so stop trying."
"I don't think that we will ever be best buds but I do think that by working together we could learn from each other. Of course what, I don't know since I'm not a big reader or anything. But I'm sure we could find some common ground to start from."
"Why?"
"What do you mean, why?"
"Why are you trying to be my buddy."
"Because us fighting isn't fair to Luke and Rory. And I'm willing to put my pride to the side for their sake."
Just at that moment the lights went out.
Lor: "What in the hell?"
Luke calls out: "The lights went out."
Lor: "Oh thank god we have a man here to point out the obvious but why?"
Luke: "I think with all the snow and ice something must have happened to the power lines."
"snow can't destroy the lights. Snow is our friend. It's magical."
Jess: "I guess it just lost it's magic. Oh jeez would ya look at that."
Lor: "Holy shamoly that's a lot of snow. There must be 5 feet out there."
Luke: "Not quite 5 feet but if it keeps going like it is it won't be long before it will get there. Do you have wood for the fire place?"
Rory: "yea we have some in that basket thingy next to the fire place."
Luke: "I know about that. I meant more wood and hopefully kept in a dry place."
Lor: "oh yea it's outside next to the porch."
"but there is snow there? That means all the wood is wet."
"Oh no the guy who drops it off always makes sure there is a tarp covering it to keep it dry."
Jess: "You have a guy that gives you wood?"
Lor: "well yea. I mean could you see one of us chopping and stacking wood?" Lorelai and Rory both him big puppy dog eyes.
Jess: "No I can't even fathom that."
Luke: "Well looks like we're going to have to dig through the snow to get to the wood. Jess, I'm going to need your help. Lorelai, I think we should keep a bunch of wood in the house so we don't have to go out there to reload so where should we keep it?"
"Oh um, I guess in the kitchen would be fine. Rory and I will make sure there is a spot cleared on the floor."

The guys worked outside while the girls cleared the table and then moved the table to the corner so there would be enough room. Luke informed her to make sure she grabbed a couple pots (although she had no clue why), turn the water on so it was just more than drizzle, and make sure that everything she needed from the kitchen was out. She also collected all the blankets and pillows, moved the couch so it was facing towards the fireplace but far back enough that there was barely enough room to get to the stairs. She knew that they were all going to be stuck in the living room for quite some time and wanted to make sure that there was enough room for all four people to be comfortable.

Luke and Jess came in after spending what seemed like forever out in the snow.

Luke: "We should get a fire started now or it will get really cold in here. In fact we should have done that the first moment we lost power."
Jess: "man I'm frozen. I've never seen a blizzard like this one."
Lorelai: "It looks really bad out there. I would make up some coffee or hot chocolate for ya guys but in order for me to do that I need electricity."
Rory: "How long do you think the power will be out?"
Jess: "well, one time in Canada there was this massive ice storm and everybody lost power for months I think. I know it was a long time and there were even deaths. It was real awful."
Lorelai: "I think we just ruled out motivation speaker for you."
Rory: "Yea next time we are in a crisis remind me not to ask you for good news."
Jess: "Sorry, I was watching the weather channel the other day and Storm Stories was on."

Luke walks back in from starting the fire.
"ok well I got it started. We'll have to keep an eye on it for a while so you two stay in the living room and try to stay warm. If the flames look too low and appear to be going out get one of us. I don't want you to mess with it."
Rory: "aye aye sir"
Lor: "You don't think we could handle a fire?"
Luke: "uh no."
Lor. "I have you know that I can get a pretty damn good fire started. Just throw a couple magazines in there with some lighter fluid and light that baby up."
"Do you know how incredibly dangerous that is?"
"Gets the job done so why complain."
"Rory, you are in charge while I'm gone."
Rory grins from ear to ear while Lorelai just stands there with her mouth agape.
"I'm not going to take this abuse."
Luke: "Come on Jess let's get this done so we can get warm again."
After an hour of moving wood into the kitchen Luke decides they had a sufficient amount. He made sure the rest of the wood was carefully covered and went inside. Jess was already in the living room trying his best to get his body to room temp.

Rory: "Aw you poor baby. You're lips are even blue." She sits real close to him rubbing his arms helping him get back to normal.
Jess: "I'll be...ok....in a....bit." He said in between shivers.

Even Luke the big manly man was blue and shivering.

Lorelai: "Here lets wrap you up in blankets. First take off anything that's wet. You too, Jess. We'll find something for you to wear."
Rory: "I think we have a couple of dad's shirts upstairs but I don't know about sweatpants."
Lor: "there is one pair so Luke can have those. Jess can wear one of mine. They should fit, at least the ones that are really baggy on me."

Rory runs up stairs to collect the clothes when her batteries die and she tumbles over a pile of clothes her mom had.

"Are you ok up there?"
"yea mom just ran out of light. Ok here we go, nice dry clothes." Just then she notices Jess in just his boxers and she looks away but not after she has a lingering glance. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were practically naked. Mom why is my boyfriend practically naked in my living room."
"well hun not only is your boyfriend in his skivvies so is his uncle so could you throw the clothes over here."

Everything happened in a blur while Rory went upstairs. All Lorelai knew was that she saw them soaking wet so she told them to take off the wet articles and they did. Turns out everything was wet including their underwear but neither Luke nor Jess was going to take it that far. Both feeling very vulnerable and Lorelai gawking a bit too much and Luke in the nude, or at least almost nude, and yet Luke didn't care seeing as he was so cold he thought all the shivering would finally break his spinal cord. Needless to say both guys were thrilled to have clothing again.

Lor: "well that was an adventure."
Luke "uh yea."
Jess "sure was"
Rory "yes indeed"

Everyone was just a bit embarrassed about the previous encounter so no one said anything for a while. They just sat there and tried to get warm.

Lor: "Hey we still have presents to open!"
Luke "I'm not really in the Christmas mood at the moment."
Rory: "Me either."
Jess: "I don't know, it sounds like fun."

Everyone was in total shock and just stared at him.

Jess "what?"
Lor: "well, first of all you just agreed with me and secondly you said the word fun and thirdly you sound excited about Christmas festivities."
"yea well I just thought it might get our minds off the current situation. Plus there might be a sweater in there."
A/N Next chapter isn't so dramatic as this one was. Hopefully I'll post that one soon.