Please note rating change.
It ain't for violence.
___
Lorelai comes into Luke's on Wednesday night after the dinner rush has emptied out. Luke is surprised; it is an unusual time for her to come in. She was already in after work today.
And to make things a little stranger, she's wearing a long black coat, tied closed, and high heels. And she's got an evil-Lorelai glint in her eye. Luke watches her carefully as she walks up to the empty counter and takes a seat.
He walks around the counter, leans against the stool next to hers.
"Hello," he says. "Anything going on?"
"You mean, why am I here at almost ten on a weeknight?"
"Something like that."
Lorelai glances behind her at the two customers remaining at one of the window tables, back at Luke.
"Well," she says, "I just wanted to tell you that Rory will be out of town this weekend, visiting her father and her new half-sister and her future stepmother. I'll have the house all to myself. But since you haven't asked me out on a second date yet, I thought I'd show you what I'll be wearing to dinner with Kirk." She unties the coat's belt, lets it fall open a little. She is wearing the little black dress Luke bought her last weekend, her ivory legs crossed demurely as she perches on the barstool. Luke just stares. Lorelai grins. Luke has barely taken in the vision before she shrugs the coat closed again, ties the belt, and stands up.
"Bye now!" she says, still grinning, and starts to walk away.
Luke's a little startled; not enough to let her get away with it. "Lorelai!" he calls at her retreating back.
She turns. "Yes?" she asks, all innocence and raised eyebrows.
"Can I talk to you in back for a minute?" He gestures with a thumb over his shoulder.
"About what?" She takes a step closer.
"I just want to talk you in back," he says. "For a minute."
Lorelai looks at her watch, makes a clicking sound with her tongue. "I don't know, Luke. I should get home. Rory will worry. Oh! And I should really call Kirk and make sure he's made us reservations for someplace nice this weekend."
"I promise, it'll be fast. I certainly wouldn't want to get in the way of your blossoming romance."
Lorelai sighs. "All right."
She follows him back into the storeroom. Once there, she crosses her arms, still feigning innocence. "Well?"
She starts to say more, but Luke silences her by taking her by the shoulders and kissing her. She stiffens for a moment, but then the innocent act is gone and she responds quite nicely, and somehow the coat has come untied and is sort of falling off her bare shoulders. And so Luke breaks away from Lorelai's lips and tongue, and instead trails kisses down her neck to her collarbone. She gasps softly, turns her head away to give him better access. His lips feel goosebumps rising on her skin and he feels her nails digging into his back. Aha, thinks Luke. The neck is clearly a weak spot. This is important information to have.
And so he continues kissing her neck, just using his lips at first; then the slightest touch of his teeth. She Mmmms. And he realizes he can feel her nipples brushing against his chest, and then he knows for sure they really need to stop. Someone is going to hear them, or walk in. That, and they've almost knocked over one of the storage shelves.
And he stops biting her neck, and they separate by six or eight inches as he leans against a shelf and Lorelai leans against him.
"So," says Luke, in between breaths, "You busy this weekend?"
***
So they make plans for Saturday, but Luke doesn't tell Lorelai the real reason he didn't ask her sooner: He's been distracted, thinking about Jess and the letter from his father.
Jess doesn't want to talk about it, won't tell Luke what's in the letter, just broods and broods. Luke has a bad, nauseating feeling about it. He knows these stories all follow a common theme: Long-lost parent wants to meet the kid they abandoned. And Make It All Up to them. And it makes Luke angry. Where was this guy all along? Luke's gotten Jess through a year now, a year that's had a few bad spots, but has on the whole been a lot less painful than it might have been. The kid works a couple of jobs, he's stopped the petty vandalism, doesn't have a drug problem that Luke knows of, he's more interested in reading than almost anything, and he's won the heart of Rory Gilmore. And now that Luke has spent all this time and effort trying to turn the kid into something resembling a functional human being, his "biological" father is going to come along and...
Luke stares down at the counter. He realizes he's been standing here for fifteen minutes, fists clenched.
There's no point worrying about something that hasn't happened yet. Right?
He locks the diner's front door and goes to bed.
***
Lorelai comes in Friday night, lateish.
"Hey lady, we're closed," says Luke. "Read the sign."
But instead of getting indignant or backtalking him, Lorelai just marches up to the counter, thunks down her purse and keys.
"Luuuke," she whines. "I'm bored."
"Rory's already left town, eh?"
"Yes. I had to have dinner with Richard and Emily alone. And then I had to spend an hour explaining why I was allowing Rory to spend the weekend with "that awful woman"."
"Sounds grim."
"I was forced to pretend I was choking to death on a piece of asparagus just to get them to shut up about it."
"Uh-huh." Luke is never sure how much of these stories are true.
"The maid actually tried to perform the Heimlich maneuver on me," Lorelai continues.
"Uh-huh."
"But I started laughing and ruined the whole act."
"I bet your folks weren't amused."
Lorelai grins. "Neither was Claudette."
"Claudette?"
"The maid."
"Ah."
"I think she was just trying to cop a feel anyway."
Luke blinks and shakes his head. "Right. So, what can I do to alleviate your boredom?" He leans over the counter towards her. "You know, as a restaurant professional, I am fully trained in the Heimlich manuever."
She smirks at him. "I'll keep that in mind."
He gets her a cup of coffee, and she thanks him, takes a long sip.
"Luke," she begins.
"Hmm?"
"I know our next official date isn't until tomorrow but..."
"Yeah?"
"Do you want to come over tonight? For a little while? I mean, I know you have to get up early and open the diner, so we'll have to shotgun beers another time, but..."
Luke nods. "Don't want to be alone in the house?"
She looks at him, cocks her head. "That's not it," she says. "I just want you to come over."
Luke stops refilling the salt shaker, and Lorelai continues: "I know we see each other practically every day, in the diner, and we've talked on the phone a couple of times this week, and boy does that make me feel fifteen again, but... this once-a-week thing thing isn't enough. You know?"
He does know, but since he's a guy it's not something he feels comfortable expressing in depth.
"Sure," he says. "Just let me finish up here and grab a shower."
***
It's a nice night, it's really warmed up in the last couple of days, and after he has showered and thrown on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, Luke walks to Lorelai's house. He's in a good mood. It would be impossible for him not to be in a good mood. All week long - when he hasn't been worrying about the Jess situation - he's been either missing Lorelai horribly, or seeing her in the diner and not really being able to touch her. And now they get to spend some time alone, and a day earlier than expected. He's a little nervous, and conscious of the condom in his wallet, but he's trying not to make any assumptions about anything, just looking forward to seeing her. Really, he'd be perfectly content spending another evening sleeping with her on the living room floor, if it came down to it.
Lorelai answers the door wearing a blue tank top and shorts. "Hey," she says. "Fancy meetin' you here." She looks him up and down. "Wow."
"Hi. What?"
"I'm not used to you seeing wear anything with short sleeves. Nice arms."
"Oh. Thanks, I grew them myself."
"You're welcome. Come in."
He follows her into the living room, sees that the coffee table is back to normal and the sleeping bag is gone. Oh well. He sits down.
"Want a beer?" she asks.
"Sure. That'd be good."
She comes back with two beers, hands him one. They both take swallows; set their beers down on the coffee table.
"Thanks for coming over," says Lorelai.
"Thanks for inviting me." Then he musters up the courage to say, "I've missed you this week."
Lorelai smiles at him; her real, pleased smile. She leans over and kisses him once, just a peck. "I know what you mean," she says. Then she gets her mischievious look. "And my neck has missed you too. I slept wrong last night. Do you think you could rub it for me again? I promise not to fall asleep this time."
"So you admit you were the one who fell asleep first?"
"Shut up and rub my neck."
She twists around on the couch so that her back is to him; leans over on the arm of the couch.
"Slave driver." Luke brushes aside her hair and begins to massage the muscles of her neck and shoulders.
"Mmmm... Perfect. I knew there was a reason I was keeping you around all this time."
"I thought it had more to do with coffee and fried dough products."
"The list just keeps getting longer. Mmmmmm."
He keeps rubbing, finds the knotted muscle on the side of her neck, manages to loosen it up a bit. "You really did sleep on this wrong, didn't you?"
"Did you think I was making it up?"
"Well..."
She laughs. "If I just wanted you to touch me, would I need to make up an excuse?"
She's got a point. "I guess not."
Her hair falls back in his way again, and he brushes it aside a second time, exposing the back of her neck.
Lorelai shivers.
"Not that I don't want you to..." she says.
And Luke cannot help himself; he leans over and brushes his lips against the nape of her neck, and she gasps and stiffens. He slides a hand around in front of her, spreads his palm across her flat stomach, just below her breasts, and pulls her back closer to him.
"Oh, Claudette, harder," says Lorelai softly.
Luke laughs against her neck.
But then she says, more seriously: "Hey, I didn't say you could stop."
So he kisses the back of her neck, then the side, then just below her earlobe, while her breathing becomes sharper. He kisses along her collarbone, still slowly but with increasing pressure. Her whole body is tensed, like she's waiting for something, and so he tries biting again, like the other night in the storeroom. Not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough for her to know. And she makes a noise somewhere between a moan and a yelp.
Ah, yes. He hasn't forgotten how to do this. Thanks, Rachel.
He continues, alternating between kissing and biting her neck softly, randomly so she doesn't know which is coming, and she's sort of writhing back against him, clinging to his arm around her waist, and there's a note of disbelief in her moans, like she can't quite believe Luke is making her feel this way. Gotta watch out for us loners, thinks Luke. We can surprise you sometimes. She moans a little louder, and Luke holds her tighter, bites a tiny bit harder.
And then it seems she can't take it anymore, because she turns around and reaches for him and buries her tongue in his mouth, sucks his tongue into hers, and now he's breathing as hard as she is. She breaks the kiss, pushes him back so he's sitting back on the couch, then climbs onto his lap, straddling him. Her bare thighs are warm against his denim-clad ones. "Payback time," she whispers, and kisses his neck, upwards; then exhales softly into his ear, sending a hurricane of shivers down every inch of his skin. And he steels himself for the assault, figuring she's going return the neck biting, but instead she sits back a little, looks into his eyes, catches her breath.
Then she takes his right hand in both of hers, brings it up to her mouth. She kisses his palm softly and wetly, which causes another, unfamiliar wave of shivers. And then, never breaking eye contact, she takes his index finger and slowly sucks it into her mouth, sliding it across across her tongue.
Luke opens his mouth and takes a swallow of air. His eyes unfocus a little.
She withdraws his finger most of the way, runs the tip of her tongue across his fingertip.
This is really, really, really unfair.
She sucks his finger back into her mouth, and neither of them are doing so hot with the breathing, and she's rubbing against him as she straddles him, in a way that really makes him wish they weren't so clothed. And there's not much he can do but sit there and take it.
Then Lorelai takes Luke's free hand, currently resting on her hip, and places it on her breast.
Luke brushes his thumb across the fabric covering her nipple, looks up at her.
She leans over and breathes into his ear again. "Now," she whispers in answer to his unspoken question. "Tonight."
***
He's never been in her bedroom before, but he's too distracted to take in any of the little details, because Lorelai is pulling him down onto the bed. And then there is the matter of buttons and zippers and bra hooks to deal with, all of which are unusually cooperative, as though the universe has specifically sanctioned this event.
When they're both naked under her blanket in her unmade bed, she stops kissing him long enough to ask, "Is this all right?" and there is enough light spilling in from the hallway that Luke can see she looks worried, like maybe she's going too fast for him.
He doesn't think any spoken answer would be enough, so he just reaches up and strokes her cheek gently with his fingertips, runs the ball of his thumb along her lower lip, and goes back to kissing her. Their kissing is pretty much fully compatible by this point; and right now it's very wet and free-form.
Luke realizes his wallet is somewhere in his jeans on the floor just before Lorelai breaks the kiss again, and turns over and rummages in her nightstand drawer.
"One little foil-wrapped spontaneity-killer coming right up," she says, with a grin, handing it to him.
And strangely, that turns out to be the only joke she makes. Luke always figured that making love to Lorelai the first time would involve lots of nervous little jokes to defuse the awkwardness. Maybe a striptease. Some sparklers. A theme song.
But they both seem to be caught up in a serious scary intensity, like they're on a rollercoaster cresting that first huge drop, and it's all beyond their control now; all they can do is hold on.
Like they're falling into deep, deep water.
Luke expected this from himself because he's been in love with her for years; but he didn't expect it from Lorelai, who treats almost nothing with reverence. But there it is: in between kisses, and while he puts on the damned condom, she looks just as scared and intense and passionate as Luke feels. And then he remembers Rory's words: She totally lets her guard down around you.
And then he gets it. It's so obvious, he cant believe he never saw it before, a forest-for-the-trees thing: The jokes and the babbling are Lorelai's defense mechanisms, the way she copes with the world, the way she stays sane and the way she keeps things - and people - at arms' length when she doesn't want to deal with them.
And right now, she's dropped all that. For him.
She's letting him see the real Lorelai, the person underneath the wall of jokes, and she knows he sees it; and then the emotional and the physical intensity get all tangled up with each other, something Luke never more than half-believed actually happened for anyone during sex. And he just wants to be inside her.
And once he is, all the way, even though she has wrapped her arms around his shoulderblades and her legs around the backs of his knees, he wants to be closer. It doesn't feel like they can get close enough; it's just not physically possible.
But they try.
They take what they can get.
***
Afterwards, after Lorelai has put on Luke's t-shirt and gone and fetched ice cream and glasses of water, and started making jokes again, Luke sits next to her on the edge of the bed and all of a sudden it all just comes out: The thing with Jess and the letter and his real father and how scared Luke is of what's going to happen. And while he's talking she pulls him gently back into bed, under the blankets. And she holds him and listens, and murmurs words of reassurance.
And then they lie in the darkness and talk about other things, and joke around; and when she gets too uppity he takes a shot at tickling her, and hey, she does put up a good fight.
And as Luke falls asleep, Lorelai's back fitted nicely against his chest and his face nuzzled against her neck, he thinks to himself that Lorelai's bed is just the right size.
***
Continued in Chapter Ten
It ain't for violence.
___
Lorelai comes into Luke's on Wednesday night after the dinner rush has emptied out. Luke is surprised; it is an unusual time for her to come in. She was already in after work today.
And to make things a little stranger, she's wearing a long black coat, tied closed, and high heels. And she's got an evil-Lorelai glint in her eye. Luke watches her carefully as she walks up to the empty counter and takes a seat.
He walks around the counter, leans against the stool next to hers.
"Hello," he says. "Anything going on?"
"You mean, why am I here at almost ten on a weeknight?"
"Something like that."
Lorelai glances behind her at the two customers remaining at one of the window tables, back at Luke.
"Well," she says, "I just wanted to tell you that Rory will be out of town this weekend, visiting her father and her new half-sister and her future stepmother. I'll have the house all to myself. But since you haven't asked me out on a second date yet, I thought I'd show you what I'll be wearing to dinner with Kirk." She unties the coat's belt, lets it fall open a little. She is wearing the little black dress Luke bought her last weekend, her ivory legs crossed demurely as she perches on the barstool. Luke just stares. Lorelai grins. Luke has barely taken in the vision before she shrugs the coat closed again, ties the belt, and stands up.
"Bye now!" she says, still grinning, and starts to walk away.
Luke's a little startled; not enough to let her get away with it. "Lorelai!" he calls at her retreating back.
She turns. "Yes?" she asks, all innocence and raised eyebrows.
"Can I talk to you in back for a minute?" He gestures with a thumb over his shoulder.
"About what?" She takes a step closer.
"I just want to talk you in back," he says. "For a minute."
Lorelai looks at her watch, makes a clicking sound with her tongue. "I don't know, Luke. I should get home. Rory will worry. Oh! And I should really call Kirk and make sure he's made us reservations for someplace nice this weekend."
"I promise, it'll be fast. I certainly wouldn't want to get in the way of your blossoming romance."
Lorelai sighs. "All right."
She follows him back into the storeroom. Once there, she crosses her arms, still feigning innocence. "Well?"
She starts to say more, but Luke silences her by taking her by the shoulders and kissing her. She stiffens for a moment, but then the innocent act is gone and she responds quite nicely, and somehow the coat has come untied and is sort of falling off her bare shoulders. And so Luke breaks away from Lorelai's lips and tongue, and instead trails kisses down her neck to her collarbone. She gasps softly, turns her head away to give him better access. His lips feel goosebumps rising on her skin and he feels her nails digging into his back. Aha, thinks Luke. The neck is clearly a weak spot. This is important information to have.
And so he continues kissing her neck, just using his lips at first; then the slightest touch of his teeth. She Mmmms. And he realizes he can feel her nipples brushing against his chest, and then he knows for sure they really need to stop. Someone is going to hear them, or walk in. That, and they've almost knocked over one of the storage shelves.
And he stops biting her neck, and they separate by six or eight inches as he leans against a shelf and Lorelai leans against him.
"So," says Luke, in between breaths, "You busy this weekend?"
***
So they make plans for Saturday, but Luke doesn't tell Lorelai the real reason he didn't ask her sooner: He's been distracted, thinking about Jess and the letter from his father.
Jess doesn't want to talk about it, won't tell Luke what's in the letter, just broods and broods. Luke has a bad, nauseating feeling about it. He knows these stories all follow a common theme: Long-lost parent wants to meet the kid they abandoned. And Make It All Up to them. And it makes Luke angry. Where was this guy all along? Luke's gotten Jess through a year now, a year that's had a few bad spots, but has on the whole been a lot less painful than it might have been. The kid works a couple of jobs, he's stopped the petty vandalism, doesn't have a drug problem that Luke knows of, he's more interested in reading than almost anything, and he's won the heart of Rory Gilmore. And now that Luke has spent all this time and effort trying to turn the kid into something resembling a functional human being, his "biological" father is going to come along and...
Luke stares down at the counter. He realizes he's been standing here for fifteen minutes, fists clenched.
There's no point worrying about something that hasn't happened yet. Right?
He locks the diner's front door and goes to bed.
***
Lorelai comes in Friday night, lateish.
"Hey lady, we're closed," says Luke. "Read the sign."
But instead of getting indignant or backtalking him, Lorelai just marches up to the counter, thunks down her purse and keys.
"Luuuke," she whines. "I'm bored."
"Rory's already left town, eh?"
"Yes. I had to have dinner with Richard and Emily alone. And then I had to spend an hour explaining why I was allowing Rory to spend the weekend with "that awful woman"."
"Sounds grim."
"I was forced to pretend I was choking to death on a piece of asparagus just to get them to shut up about it."
"Uh-huh." Luke is never sure how much of these stories are true.
"The maid actually tried to perform the Heimlich maneuver on me," Lorelai continues.
"Uh-huh."
"But I started laughing and ruined the whole act."
"I bet your folks weren't amused."
Lorelai grins. "Neither was Claudette."
"Claudette?"
"The maid."
"Ah."
"I think she was just trying to cop a feel anyway."
Luke blinks and shakes his head. "Right. So, what can I do to alleviate your boredom?" He leans over the counter towards her. "You know, as a restaurant professional, I am fully trained in the Heimlich manuever."
She smirks at him. "I'll keep that in mind."
He gets her a cup of coffee, and she thanks him, takes a long sip.
"Luke," she begins.
"Hmm?"
"I know our next official date isn't until tomorrow but..."
"Yeah?"
"Do you want to come over tonight? For a little while? I mean, I know you have to get up early and open the diner, so we'll have to shotgun beers another time, but..."
Luke nods. "Don't want to be alone in the house?"
She looks at him, cocks her head. "That's not it," she says. "I just want you to come over."
Luke stops refilling the salt shaker, and Lorelai continues: "I know we see each other practically every day, in the diner, and we've talked on the phone a couple of times this week, and boy does that make me feel fifteen again, but... this once-a-week thing thing isn't enough. You know?"
He does know, but since he's a guy it's not something he feels comfortable expressing in depth.
"Sure," he says. "Just let me finish up here and grab a shower."
***
It's a nice night, it's really warmed up in the last couple of days, and after he has showered and thrown on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, Luke walks to Lorelai's house. He's in a good mood. It would be impossible for him not to be in a good mood. All week long - when he hasn't been worrying about the Jess situation - he's been either missing Lorelai horribly, or seeing her in the diner and not really being able to touch her. And now they get to spend some time alone, and a day earlier than expected. He's a little nervous, and conscious of the condom in his wallet, but he's trying not to make any assumptions about anything, just looking forward to seeing her. Really, he'd be perfectly content spending another evening sleeping with her on the living room floor, if it came down to it.
Lorelai answers the door wearing a blue tank top and shorts. "Hey," she says. "Fancy meetin' you here." She looks him up and down. "Wow."
"Hi. What?"
"I'm not used to you seeing wear anything with short sleeves. Nice arms."
"Oh. Thanks, I grew them myself."
"You're welcome. Come in."
He follows her into the living room, sees that the coffee table is back to normal and the sleeping bag is gone. Oh well. He sits down.
"Want a beer?" she asks.
"Sure. That'd be good."
She comes back with two beers, hands him one. They both take swallows; set their beers down on the coffee table.
"Thanks for coming over," says Lorelai.
"Thanks for inviting me." Then he musters up the courage to say, "I've missed you this week."
Lorelai smiles at him; her real, pleased smile. She leans over and kisses him once, just a peck. "I know what you mean," she says. Then she gets her mischievious look. "And my neck has missed you too. I slept wrong last night. Do you think you could rub it for me again? I promise not to fall asleep this time."
"So you admit you were the one who fell asleep first?"
"Shut up and rub my neck."
She twists around on the couch so that her back is to him; leans over on the arm of the couch.
"Slave driver." Luke brushes aside her hair and begins to massage the muscles of her neck and shoulders.
"Mmmm... Perfect. I knew there was a reason I was keeping you around all this time."
"I thought it had more to do with coffee and fried dough products."
"The list just keeps getting longer. Mmmmmm."
He keeps rubbing, finds the knotted muscle on the side of her neck, manages to loosen it up a bit. "You really did sleep on this wrong, didn't you?"
"Did you think I was making it up?"
"Well..."
She laughs. "If I just wanted you to touch me, would I need to make up an excuse?"
She's got a point. "I guess not."
Her hair falls back in his way again, and he brushes it aside a second time, exposing the back of her neck.
Lorelai shivers.
"Not that I don't want you to..." she says.
And Luke cannot help himself; he leans over and brushes his lips against the nape of her neck, and she gasps and stiffens. He slides a hand around in front of her, spreads his palm across her flat stomach, just below her breasts, and pulls her back closer to him.
"Oh, Claudette, harder," says Lorelai softly.
Luke laughs against her neck.
But then she says, more seriously: "Hey, I didn't say you could stop."
So he kisses the back of her neck, then the side, then just below her earlobe, while her breathing becomes sharper. He kisses along her collarbone, still slowly but with increasing pressure. Her whole body is tensed, like she's waiting for something, and so he tries biting again, like the other night in the storeroom. Not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough for her to know. And she makes a noise somewhere between a moan and a yelp.
Ah, yes. He hasn't forgotten how to do this. Thanks, Rachel.
He continues, alternating between kissing and biting her neck softly, randomly so she doesn't know which is coming, and she's sort of writhing back against him, clinging to his arm around her waist, and there's a note of disbelief in her moans, like she can't quite believe Luke is making her feel this way. Gotta watch out for us loners, thinks Luke. We can surprise you sometimes. She moans a little louder, and Luke holds her tighter, bites a tiny bit harder.
And then it seems she can't take it anymore, because she turns around and reaches for him and buries her tongue in his mouth, sucks his tongue into hers, and now he's breathing as hard as she is. She breaks the kiss, pushes him back so he's sitting back on the couch, then climbs onto his lap, straddling him. Her bare thighs are warm against his denim-clad ones. "Payback time," she whispers, and kisses his neck, upwards; then exhales softly into his ear, sending a hurricane of shivers down every inch of his skin. And he steels himself for the assault, figuring she's going return the neck biting, but instead she sits back a little, looks into his eyes, catches her breath.
Then she takes his right hand in both of hers, brings it up to her mouth. She kisses his palm softly and wetly, which causes another, unfamiliar wave of shivers. And then, never breaking eye contact, she takes his index finger and slowly sucks it into her mouth, sliding it across across her tongue.
Luke opens his mouth and takes a swallow of air. His eyes unfocus a little.
She withdraws his finger most of the way, runs the tip of her tongue across his fingertip.
This is really, really, really unfair.
She sucks his finger back into her mouth, and neither of them are doing so hot with the breathing, and she's rubbing against him as she straddles him, in a way that really makes him wish they weren't so clothed. And there's not much he can do but sit there and take it.
Then Lorelai takes Luke's free hand, currently resting on her hip, and places it on her breast.
Luke brushes his thumb across the fabric covering her nipple, looks up at her.
She leans over and breathes into his ear again. "Now," she whispers in answer to his unspoken question. "Tonight."
***
He's never been in her bedroom before, but he's too distracted to take in any of the little details, because Lorelai is pulling him down onto the bed. And then there is the matter of buttons and zippers and bra hooks to deal with, all of which are unusually cooperative, as though the universe has specifically sanctioned this event.
When they're both naked under her blanket in her unmade bed, she stops kissing him long enough to ask, "Is this all right?" and there is enough light spilling in from the hallway that Luke can see she looks worried, like maybe she's going too fast for him.
He doesn't think any spoken answer would be enough, so he just reaches up and strokes her cheek gently with his fingertips, runs the ball of his thumb along her lower lip, and goes back to kissing her. Their kissing is pretty much fully compatible by this point; and right now it's very wet and free-form.
Luke realizes his wallet is somewhere in his jeans on the floor just before Lorelai breaks the kiss again, and turns over and rummages in her nightstand drawer.
"One little foil-wrapped spontaneity-killer coming right up," she says, with a grin, handing it to him.
And strangely, that turns out to be the only joke she makes. Luke always figured that making love to Lorelai the first time would involve lots of nervous little jokes to defuse the awkwardness. Maybe a striptease. Some sparklers. A theme song.
But they both seem to be caught up in a serious scary intensity, like they're on a rollercoaster cresting that first huge drop, and it's all beyond their control now; all they can do is hold on.
Like they're falling into deep, deep water.
Luke expected this from himself because he's been in love with her for years; but he didn't expect it from Lorelai, who treats almost nothing with reverence. But there it is: in between kisses, and while he puts on the damned condom, she looks just as scared and intense and passionate as Luke feels. And then he remembers Rory's words: She totally lets her guard down around you.
And then he gets it. It's so obvious, he cant believe he never saw it before, a forest-for-the-trees thing: The jokes and the babbling are Lorelai's defense mechanisms, the way she copes with the world, the way she stays sane and the way she keeps things - and people - at arms' length when she doesn't want to deal with them.
And right now, she's dropped all that. For him.
She's letting him see the real Lorelai, the person underneath the wall of jokes, and she knows he sees it; and then the emotional and the physical intensity get all tangled up with each other, something Luke never more than half-believed actually happened for anyone during sex. And he just wants to be inside her.
And once he is, all the way, even though she has wrapped her arms around his shoulderblades and her legs around the backs of his knees, he wants to be closer. It doesn't feel like they can get close enough; it's just not physically possible.
But they try.
They take what they can get.
***
Afterwards, after Lorelai has put on Luke's t-shirt and gone and fetched ice cream and glasses of water, and started making jokes again, Luke sits next to her on the edge of the bed and all of a sudden it all just comes out: The thing with Jess and the letter and his real father and how scared Luke is of what's going to happen. And while he's talking she pulls him gently back into bed, under the blankets. And she holds him and listens, and murmurs words of reassurance.
And then they lie in the darkness and talk about other things, and joke around; and when she gets too uppity he takes a shot at tickling her, and hey, she does put up a good fight.
And as Luke falls asleep, Lorelai's back fitted nicely against his chest and his face nuzzled against her neck, he thinks to himself that Lorelai's bed is just the right size.
***
Continued in Chapter Ten