Author's Note: First, the disclaimer, so the lawyers will be happy. I don't own these characters, they're not mine. Not even the truck. I'm not making a penny off of this, it's all just for fun. So, in short, please don't sue me!
Thanks again to everyone who took the time to review! I finally found the little setting that allows unsigned reviews (who knew this was an option?), so thanks to the reviewer who pointed that out. I hope you're enjoying the fic so far, and that you'll continue to read until it's done… uh, whenever that is! Sorry for the slow updates, but I'm still pretty new to this and had a busy week with family. Hope everyone had a great Holiday! And now back to our favorite characters in their winter wonderland…
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It was oddly quiet inside the cabin, and Luke's feet scuffled loudly as he tried to set Lorelai down as gently as possible on the dusty wooden floorboards. He didn't succeed, losing his balance at the last minute and dumping her unceremoniously in a heap beside the door. She giggled and let her head fall back against the wall of the cabin with a thud. "Ow!" she exclaimed, somehow surprised that the wall she was leaning against would be too solid to be a good cushion for her head. She reached up to touch the back of her head, but she was still shivering too much to be very coordinated. All she wanted to do was go to sleep – she vaguely remembered having a dream about living with bears, and it seemed really fun. She wanted to get back to that dream, where it was warm.
"Watch it" Luke quipped under his breath, "You knock that wall down and I'm making you carry me back to the truck." He grimaced as he flexed the strained muscles of his right arm and shoulder, and made a mental note to feed her fewer pancakes from now on. In the time it took him to think up a teasing comment about how she was heavier than she looked, Lorelai fell asleep. He thought about rousing her, maybe it wasn't good for her to sleep when she had… hypothermia or whatever it was that making her act so wacky. Instead, he removed his gloves and carefully brushed the snow from her hair and the collar of her coat. He drew the loose ends of the quilt up around her - the parts of it that she wasn't sitting on, anyway. She didn't seem to be shivering as violently as before, and he assumed that meant that she was feeling warmer. Her dark curls tumbled over the threadbare quilt, and the cold and exertion had brought a slight flush to her cheeks that was undeniably beautiful. He couldn't help himself. He touched her face, briefly and tenderly, causing her dark lashes to flutter slightly. She remained asleep, though, and his moment of weakness went completely unnoticed – just like every other hint he'd ever offered her about his true feelings toward her. Mystery unsolved, case closed. Luke sighed and reached for his gloves. Maybe it wasn't as cold in the cabin as it had been in the truck, but it was far from warm. If he didn't get down to business, and fast, they were going to freeze.
A quick glance around the one-room dwelling revealed a rickety table and chair in one corner, and several braided oval rugs strewn around the floor. There was a small stone fireplace in the end wall to his right, with a wooden bench in front of it at an angle. No firewood was piled at the grate, but a good-sized axe was leaning against the wall beside the hearth. Built into the wall beside the fireplace, there was a single bunk with a lumpy-looking mattress and no bedding. The wall opposite the fireplace held a coat rack, a gun rack, and a large metal trunk that was latched shut, but not locked. Always the curious type, Luke decided to start with the trunk.
He was rewarded handsomely for his curiosity. In addition to a thick layer of cobwebs and some mouse droppings, the trunk contained at least 20 cans of food! Luke examined several cans and found that they weren't damaged or swollen – nothing to indicate that they were spoiled. Some of the labels were missing, but others advertised stew, chili, canned pasta, and even fruit cocktail. He was sure that Lorelai would be disappointed to find out that they weren't going to have to survive on chocolate bars, but Luke was relieved as hell. There was no way they were getting out of here anytime soon, and starving seemed even worse than freezing on his list of crummy ways to buy the farm.
The trunk also offered up a half-gallon can of what smelled like lamp oil, but Luke didn't see a lamp. The light was fading so fast, he was going to need it sooner rather than later. Time to set some priorities, Danes. In a room this small, the lamp couldn't be all that hard to find, but it still took him a few minutes in the dim light to locate it on a rough shelf near the table. It already had a fair bit of oil in it, so he adjusted the wick and pulled the box of matches out of the coat pocket where he'd been keeping them since lighting the candles in the truck. He'd never lit a lamp like this in his life, and he briefly considered whether or not the lamp would explode if he did this wrong. Probably a very low chance of that, he thought, considering how few wild west pioneers you ever hear about who blew themselves to kingdom come with their hurricane lamps. The wick caught easily and the lamp cast a warm and cheery glow around the entire room. Luke replaced the lamp on the corner shelf and returned to the metal trunk.
Even with the additional lighting, he found nothing else of interest in the trunk. The biggest priority right now was getting the fire started, and that was going to mean going outside to chop some wood. He grabbed the axe from the hearth and hefted its weight. At least he had the right tools for the job, he thought, steeling himself for cold he knew was waiting for him on the other side of the door. He pulled the latch and stepped out into the frosty twilight.
Less than a minute later, the door reopened to admit a huge armload of split firewood carried by a man wearing a grin from ear to ear. When he'd walked around the cabin to find a good place to fell a small tree, Luke had found a sizable woodpile already cut and stacked against the back of the cabin! He staggered toward the fireplace to unload.
"Oooooo… there really is a Santa Claus!" came an excited voice from the corner of the room. Luke was so startled that he almost jumped out of his thermal undergarments.
"Good God!" he cried, "I thought you were sleeping!"
"I was! I just got up!" Lorelai cried defensively, "I didn't mean to scare you."
"You didn't" he said quickly. "I mean, you just startled me, it's okay. How are you feeling?"
"You don't want to know, believe me. What does frostbite feel like?"
"Why?" Luke looked concerned. "Do you think you have frostbite?"
"Well, do you think that frostbite hurts really, really bad and makes you wish you had just stayed outside in a snowbank where your hands and feet would've stayed numb?"
Luke let out the breath he'd been holding and began stacking his armload of firewood beside the fireplace. "No," he chuckled, "What you're describing sounds a lot more like chillblains. Painful, but not serious. If you said that you didn't feel a thing, I'd be worried." He arranged several logs in the grate and looked around for something to help get the fire started.
Lorelai was perturbed. She had just told him that she was in extreme pain, and he was laughing at her! She pulled the chair roughly back from the table and threw herself down on it in frustration. "Since you obviously don't have anything helpful to say about my pain and suffering, maybe you could take a minute to explain where the heck we are? The last time I remember anything clearly, we were looking for a cave or something? Fill in the blanks, here, Diner Man."
Geez, she was in a mood. Luke had had chillblains before, many times, especially as a kid. He knew they were kind of painful, but how was being all snarky with him going to make her feel any better? But, he did manage to stop himself from smirking at her drama-queen tendencies, and quickly straightened out her story. "Um, actually, we were looking for this cabin. I don't remember anything about a cave, but if that's what you were looking for, maybe you'd like to head back out and see if you can find one?" She shot him a look as frigid as the weather outside. He grinned back. "Nothing much to tell, really. You got a little loopy out there, I guess it was from the cold or something, and I brought you in here and wrapped you up in the quilt. It looks like you're able to stand up and speak in full sentences again, so I must've done something right." Lorelai's glare softened a bit. "No need to thank me", he finished in a grumble.
She felt a bit sheepish, griping at him when he'd been busy saving her life for the past few hours. "I don't know what the cave thing was all about, I must've been dreaming. Thanks for finding this place. It's…" she glanced around with distain, "… uh, really great". She forced a smile, in spite of her throbbing extremities.
"Don't mention it", Luke replied gruffly, looking away. He was still looking for some paper to light underneath the logs to get the fire going. Lorelai pulled a fistful of something out of her coat pocket and offered it to him – it was paper! Receipts from Doose's, from his diner, and from gas stations, as well as ticket stubs from various movies, several post-it notes, and a few gum wrappers. "This is perfect!" he crowed, "Thanks!" With the paper crumpled into a tight wad and ignited under the logs, the fire caught slowly and began to crackle as the ice and snow on the logs melted and was evaporated in the growing flames.
"Now we just have to keep adding logs to make sure that it doesn't go out" he stated, and stood back to admire his creation.
Lorelai was suitably impressed. She quickly joined him in front of the hearth, and dropped her gloves beside his on the low bench so that she could warm her bare hands in the glow. "Wow." she said appreciatively, "Momma always said I should marry a Boy Scout".
"I thought your mother wanted you to marry Christopher" Luke challenged.
"Yeah, well, I think that had a lot more to do with his 'Birds and Bees' badge than his 'Campfire' badge, if you get my drift." She was trying to be funny, but the familiar bitter tone crept into her voice that was always there when she spoke about her relationship with Rory's father.
Luke quickly changed the subject. "We've got a fire going, and I found that lamp up there" he indicated the shelf above the table, "so at least we're not going to be sitting here in the dark. What's next?"
"What, there's more than this?" Lorelai was still rubbing her hands together very gingerly.
He pulled the bench up behind her and gestured for her to sit down. He sat beside her and bent to work on untying the frozen laces of his workboots. He stretched his stocking feet out toward the hearth, wincing at the twinges of pain he felt as the blood returned to his chilled toes. Lorelai was still fumbling with the side zippers on her high-heeled boots. It was obvious that she wasn't able to use her fingers very well yet. Without a word, Luke knelt down to help. He drew her feet slowly out of her boots, mentally shaking his finger at her for her choice of footwear and her thin cotton socks. He could tell that her feet were much worse than he'd realized, and that her initial questions about frostbite might not have been all that far from the mark. He bit the inside of his cheek in consternation, what the heck did people do about frostbite anyway? The only thing he could think of was to warm her up, but he knew that she wasn't going to like it. If it really was frostbite – even a mild case - thawing her out was going to hurt like hell, and her feet were going to swell up like balloons for at least a day or two. She wouldn't be able to get her boots back on until the swelling went down. He looked up and met her eyes, and he could see that she was already starting to feel the beginnings of itching, burning pain. The vague prickling that she'd felt up until now was going to seem pleasant by comparison. His concern showed in his eyes, and Lorelai knew she should be nervous. If Luke was concerned, there was definitely something to worry about, she thought. And she was right.
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A/N: Ok, that was Ch 3. Is Lorelai okay? Will they really be stuck in the cabin for days? Who EVER is going to sleep in that tiny little bed??? hehe