title: Away, you devils!
author: Keren Ziv
rating: PG
spoilers: Raincoats and Recipes
disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls, and I make no profit from this.
summary: "Can I help it if I'm having copious amounts of sex?" Written for the Luke/Lorelai ficathon. For danieatcake.

author's note: to make this work, I had to set this several weeks into the summer and pretend that little things were ironed out -- that is to say, Rory, Jess, Emily, Richard, Nicole, Jason, and even Dean are basically assumed to be neutral characters. And, hey, all, check out Kieyra's GG NC-17 challenge at geocities. com/kieyra/smutchallenge.htm

She woke Rory with tickling. The girl tried to ignore it at first: she lay still, barely breathing; she yawned and shifted as if still in slumber; she even scrunched up her eyes tighter, until her nose wrinkled. Lorelai, however, was not fooled. She had not raised this kid for almost twenty years to be tricked by her now!

"Wake up."

"Go away."

Lorelai stopped tickling, but crawled into bed with her daughter, shifting and making herself as comfortable as she feasible while at the same time agitating Rory. She used an elbow in her daughter's rib to push herself up a bit and watch her apparently sleep-talking daughter.

She tipped her head and, mouth in Rory's ear, whispered, "Guess what?"

"I repeat: go away; and submit as an addendum: morning breath."

"Rory, this game is no fun if you don't play."

Rory opened her eyes and stared up at her mother, a frown of early morning upon her face. Lorelai tried to look as innocent and put upon as plausible. However, Rory too was not duped by her mother's outward placidity.

"I already know how this goes. You say, guess what? and I answer, what? and you reply, I'm having secret sex with Luke."

"I know! Isn't it fun?" Without waiting for an answer Lorelai squealed a peal of laughter, clapped her hands together, and jumped off of the bed. She danced around the room in her t-shirt and pajama bottom for several moments before collapsing upon the bed again. "I'm having secret sex and having it with Luke."

"Yes, yes, we all know this."

"Actually, no, you all don't, that's the whole point of it being secret."

Rory stepped out of bed, groping her way to her wardrobe, her eyes half-closed and filled with fairy boogers. She stumbled into her desk, turned slightly, and continued on her path.

"I'm going to get dressed," she told her mother. "You go shower so that you don't have dog breath when you have your indecent liaison in the place where my breakfast is cooked, okay?"

"Honestly, Rory, stop being so melodramatic. Your breakfast is not prepared on Luke's kitchen table. Though, you know, I'm guessing that his is ..."

"Mother!"

"I'm off to the shower!"

She stepped out of the room and made her way upstairs, stopping every few steps to grin at herself and think: secret sex with Luke. There was a nice alliteration thing going on in the phrase. Secret sex. Though the best part was definitely the end. With Luke. Secret sex with Luke!

Thirty minutes later, she and Rory entered Luke's diner as nonchalantly as they could. Which, in Lorelai's case, meant wearing as sad a face as she could possibly manage, which, when countered with her happy smirk that she wanted to use, evened out into a tired look for her. Nobody, Rory had assured her, would suspect a person wearing such an expression of having a hidden affair with her diner man.

"Acicio coffee," she cried out before seating.

"Headed your way."

"Our Luke is a nice Luke," Rory remarked. "He gives us coffee."

"Yeah, we should market him and make millions."

"But what would we name him?"

This took some thought, this naming of Luke's action figure. Lorelai bit her lip.

"How about Grumpy?" she suggested

"But isn't that already taken by Disney and Carebears?"

"Grouchy?"

"Or was that the Carebear?"

"Well, I'm flummoxed. Are you sure that he was a Carebear before he was the Diner Man?"

Rory put her head into her hands and gazed thoughtfully at Lorelai while contemplating the answer.

"I'm not sure. You wouldn't ever buy me any Carebears."

"Wouldn't buy you any?" Lorelai was indignant. "All you wanted was Hello Kitty!"

"But what's more popular now, huh? Carebears or Hello Kitty? I could have made a killing on eBay selling all of my original Carebear plushies, could have paid for next semester's books."

"That's your fault, missy, so don't go blaming it on me."

Luke returned with their coffees, and this gave Lorelai ample opportunity to grin up at him like a fool. From the corner of her eye, she could see Rory shaking her head and muttering to herself. Lorelai ignored that, though, and, after a quick glance that nobody was watching, gave Luke her best fluttering of eyelashes.

"Here's your coffee. And you might want to do something about that tic."

"Sure," Lorelai said, because she knew that Luke was teasing her a bit. "Mm, my favorite. Black."

"Y'know, this stuff will kill you one of these days, and when it does, don't come crying to me, because I'm going to be having an I-told-you-so-party in your honors."

"Check," said Rory, gulping down her first drink. "Okay -- we're here for your white chocolate chip and banana nut muffins. So give them up, Muffin Man."

"I don't have any."

Lorelai rounded on Luke like he'd just told her that he's secretly Doc Ock and had decided that Gothom City was next on the list of his targets. Her mouth dropped open in a little O, and a sort of half-groan, half-whine was uttered from her lips.

"What do you mean, you don't have any? You had some last Saturday!"

"Yeah!" Rory added. "We waited all week for a repeat performance."

"Well, this Saturday, I have those," and he motioned to the baked goods display, where several pastry sort of things were stacked, tongs awaiting. "I'll get you guys some."

Rory wrinkled her nose. "Only if you're certain that you don't have any white chocolate chip and banana nut muffins."

"I'm positive."

He placed the pastries on their plate, and Lorelai poked at it with her finger, eyeing it dubiously. It didn't jiggle like jell-o, which was a plus, but neither did it spring up quite like a white chocolate and banana nut muffin would have.

"What is this?" asked Lorelai in a petulant voice.

"A kolacky."

"Bless you."

"Just eat!"

Carefully, she took a bit, chewed, and, finally, shuddered in horror.

"Luke! Luke! There's fruit in my cold hackly!"

Set off by her mother's exclamation, Rory immediately split open her own kolacky and saw the terrible fillings. She gasped.

"Were you trying to poison her, Luke?"

"Eat your kolacky!"

Pinching her nose, Lorelai gobbled down the kolacky in record time. Rory followed suit in a manner more sedate. Luke sighed and shook his head.

"Are you absolutely, positively certain that you have no more muffins?" Lorelai asked. "Because they didn't have fruit in them."

"Bananas are fruit," Rory pointed out.

"Shut up! Not when they're combined with walnuts and chocolate. Then they are just ... bananas."

"I have a quarter of a bagful of white chocolate chips up in my apartment -- that's it."

Lorelai looked at her plate and at the remains of her kolacky, which consisted of half of the fillings, carefully scraped out of the pastry.

"Well, I was pretty much filled by the coal tacky," she said, looking meaningfully at Luke, "but it might be that I'll get hungry later on."

Catching on quickly, Luke nodded sagely. "You probably will."

"And if I did, I would probably come here."

"That does seem to generally be the case," he agreed. "You could probably come up and have some, when you're hungry."

"I might be hungry at around eleven."

"Oh geeze," Rory moaned, her voice tolerably low. "I hate it when you two plan your nights right in front of me. That's my mommy you've been ravishing."

To his credit, Luke turned incredibly red. Against hers, Lorelai chuckled.

"Why do you have to talk about it with Rory?" he asked, miserable.

"Because she can't tell Sookie," explained the indirect object of that sentence.

"Why not?"

"Because Sookie will tell Jackson," offered Lorelai, "and Jackson is the Mr. Patty of Stars Hollow."

"And you don't want this getting out yet," Luke said. "For your own strange reasons."

"I like having secret sex with you."

"And I'll be over there," Luke gestured emphatically to the other end of the diner, "taking orders and pretending that Rory wasn't paying attention."

"Attention to what?"

"Good girl," he said.

Lorelai snickered at his swift departure, and Rory grinned good-naturedly.

"Stop teasing the poor man, Mom," she said. "And stop talking about your sex life with me. Whatever happened to the days when you wanted to spare me the horror and details?"

"Can I help it if I'm having copious amounts of sex?"

Rory sighed, unable to reply. Lorelai snatched a piece of kolacky that didn't look as if it had too much fruit filling in it off of her daughter's plate.

"Rory," Lorelai began, trying to explain, "this is a perpeteia in the book of my life."

"Not exactly unexpected, nor a reversal, so I'm not seeing the perpeteia."

"I didn't expect it!"

"Yeah, but it we were a television show, the viewers would have," Rory pointed out. "And isn't that what matters in the grand scheme? Whether or not your television show would have had the obvious unrelieved sexual tension or not?"

"What would our show be called?"

"The Lorelais."

"Can't we just call it Lorelai Gilmore's Secret Sex with Luke?"

"Okay, changing the conversation fast," Rory said. "I wonder how Grandma is going to take this news." She posed the question in a meditative tone. "Your concealed romance. I bet that she'll be pretty angry."

"Yes, Rory, but I'm not going to be sober for that."

"My mother the bacchante."

"That's such a prettier word than drunkard."

"I try."

Lorelai started beeping, a signal that she had just received a text message. Glancing at her cell phone, she cursed.

"Crap. I've gotta head to the Dragonfly. The night manager just paged me."

"He couldn't have waited an extra half hour until you arrived at work at the normal time?"

"Apparently not." Lorelai shrugged. "Anyway, I'm out."

"I'd better go to Grandma's anyway. She asked that I drop by so that we could talk about our plans for Europe."

They started walking out the door and toward Lorelai's vehicle.

"Oh, yes, Emily Gilmore's famous preparations. If she suggests taking a suicide pill in the event of kidnapping, I'd substitute the bottle with aspirins if I were you."

"I think that we're talking about clothes." Rory pushed her hair out of her face as she stood by the car door while her mother opened it up.

"That sounds even more dangerous than suicide pact."

"Grandma swears that the last time that she went to Britain, the government was monitoring her shopping."

"What does this have to do with clothes?"

"She said, and I quote, 'When M16 is following you, dress nicely.'"

Lorelai laughed. "Remember, to your grandmother, nothing is as classy as the A-line dress."

Lorelai loved sneaking into Luke's through the back alley. It made her feel like that chick from Alias, all secret agent and decked in a wig, though, truly, Lorelai wasn't actually wearing one. Luke had told her time and again that she could just come in through the front of the diner, but Lorelai had rejected that idea as too much of a risk that their relationship would be found out. Luke, as usual, accepted this with somewhat good humor.

Currently, they were sitting on Luke's couch, making out. While a shirtless Luke was busy with her throat (causing some purrs that she hadn't known were in her to be called forth), Lorelai started talking. This was not an unusual occurrence -- Lorelai kept a running commentary up when watching movies in a theatre; sex and its foreplay were no exceptions to the Gilmore way.

"I like this," she stated.

"You like what?" Luke asked from her hollow of her neck.

"This." She swept her arm around the room, and Luke lifted his head to look around."Being in your apartment, snogging you like a hormonal teenager on break from juvey."

"Oh, this this."

"Yeah, I like it, cuz it leads to sex."

"And you really like sex."

"Only because you're so good at it." Lorelai grinned down at Luke. "And when I say good? I mean really, really good at sex."

"You inspire," Luke said graciously, kissing her nose. He put his hands at the hem of her shirt, dancing his fingers along her skin. "Every time, Lorelai, I get this chill."

Lorelai breathed heavily. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, me too."

He raised her shirt up, and she slithered out of it. Placing a hand on her bra strap (black, which Lorelai was loving at that moment, because it made her feel that much more sexy), he started kissing her again while sliding the strap off of her shoulder.

The door behind them banged, and she heard someone fumbling about in the semi-darkness for the light switch.

"Don't worry, Uncle Luke, it's just me."

It was Jess.

"Oh, no," muttered Luke. "Um -- Jess -- "

But it was too late: the light was switched on, exposing the barechested Luke and brassier-clad Lorelai on the sofa.

"Sorry, Luke," Jess chuckled. "Didn't mean to interrupt you and -- is that Lorelai?"

"Yeah. Hey, Jess."

"Oh my God!"

"Ah!" cried Lorelai. "Why did you scream?"

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" screeched Jess in a high voice before he turned tail and ran.

"Well, it is technically Sunday," Luke commented, trying to put his shirt on. "Perhaps he's suddenly found religion."

Lorelai had much more practice at getting dressed in a hurry -- she had to have, considering the time she got up in the morning in relation to the time that it was imperative for her to leave the house -- and so was out of Luke's apartment first, sprinting down the steps at the rapidly departing, though still screaming, Jess.

"My eyes!" Jess said, opening the door of the diner. "They're burning, my eyes."

He made it to the gazebo before Luke managed to tackle him to the ground.

"Good thing you were in practice because of Kirk," Lorelai remarked, several paces behind him.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" asked Luke. "Running out of my apartment because I'm with a woman is not the way to act. Be more mature than that."

"Why didn't you tell me that you were seeing Lorelai?" he demanded. "I would have slept in my car rather than risk seeing that. That's Rory's mom. She's not a woman, Luke! She's Rory's mother!"

Lorelai was amused. So Jess was slightly freaked out because his ex-girlfriend's mother and his uncle were having sex like bunnies? Though, of course, Jess didn't know about the frequent sex. All he could do was infer on that aspect of their relationship through what he had walked in on. She grinned.

"Well, that's the short way of putting it," Luke said.

"Isn't it weird how periphrase and paraphrase are antonyms?" asked Lorelai.

"If you don't stay quiet, I may kill you," Luke said.

"Paraphrase."

"If he doesn't kill you, I will. With my shoe," added Jess in a surly tone.

"Periphrase."

Sirens suddenly blared from behind them, and they were immersed in the sudden shower of flood lights being aimed at them.

"This is Taylor Doose with the Stars Hollow Community Watch. I am here in response to reports of a disturbance at the town gazebo. Please stay right where you are and state your business."

"Well, if we weren't creating a disturbance then, we certainly are now," Lorelai muttered. "I have a feeling that this is going to be the end of our secret sex, Luke."

"You guys were having secret sex?" Jess said. "That's ... that's just disgusting."

"Turn off the floodlights!" Luke yelled. "We can't see a damn them."

The floodlights dimmed marginally.

"Taylor, so help me, if you don't turn those completely off, I'm going to bludgeon you to death with a hot one."

They snuffed out.

"Luke Danes," Taylor said, marching up importantly. "What in the world are you doing in the gazebo at midnight with two such cohorts as Lorelai and Jess? This is an odd gathering if there ever were one."

"Hmm," Lorelai said. "Maybe this won't change anything." After all, Taylor had not jumped to the conclusion that Luke and Lorelai were engaging in foreplay to sex and had Jess walk in on them, had he? He hadn't!

"It's my fault," Jess started, and Lorelai gifted him with a radiant smile of gratitude. Her secret sex was safe! "I walked in on Uncle Luke and Lorelai making out on his couch like a couple of teenagers, and I overreacted. Next time, I won't run screaming from the building. I'll just quietly spoon out my own eyes."

Of course Taylor didn't need to jump to those conclusions. Jess told it to him, plain as day.

Taylor's brows rose several centimeters.

"Making out on the couch?" he asked.

Appearing from nowhere, Miss Patty stepped forth.

"Who was, dear?"

Lorelai dropped her hands to her said and moaned. "This is the end! The end, I tell you. And it's all Jess's fault."

"Hey, don't go blaming this on me!" Jess exclaimed. "I'm not the one who was having secret sex with Luke."

"What is with your family and incestuous remarks?" demanded Lorelai.

"You and Luke were having secret sex?" cried Miss Patti. "Oh, dears, that's wonderful."

"Not a secret anymore," Lorelai muttered sullenly.

"Lorelai," came the unmistakable tone of Kirk, "you and Luke certainly pulled the wool over our eyes. We had no idea that you were engaging in bedroom activity."

Lorelai grinned. Kirk was so meaning to be dirty, not making the mark, but managing to be dirty in an entirely different way. Gosh, was he fun.

"Not necessarily bedroom activity," she said, "but I get the point."

"Will you please not say that in front of the holy men?" Luke asked, motioning with his head to the reverend and the rabbi standing not three paces from the center of the group, which consisted of Jess, Lorelai, and himself.

"Congratulations," Mrs. Kim said stiffly from somewhere behind them. "I expect that you'll be needing some antique candlesticks for your wedding reception. I just received several matching pairs of German origin."

"Gee, I dunno, candles are so dangerous," Luke said. "Especially when young children around."

"Ah," said Mrs. Kim, this time where Lorelai could see her, "but that is where you specify on your invitations that no children will be allowed to go to the reception."

Lorelai closed her eyes and spun once on her feet. "Hocus Pocus, you're out of focus, make this all a dream that's bogus! Now, away, you devils!" She opened her eye. "Drats."

"For half a second," Jess admitted to her, "I thought that it was going to work."

"This is a melee of madness," Lorelai said. "Everybody in the town is here."

"Not everybody," replied Luke, casting an eye about the crowd. "I don't see Rory or Kirk's mother."

"Oh, God," Lorelai moaned. "What I wouldn't give for a draught of nepenthe."

"Of -- what is this, Shakespeare?" asked Jess. "A draught of nepenthe, honestly."

"I'm just saying," Lorelai told him aside. "Amnesia or euthanasia would not go awry in these circumstances. I'm an either/or kind of gal."

"They only do that to dogs and cats, Lorelai," Jess said.

"Stop mocking! This is no mocking matter!" decried she of him.

"Do I appear to be cachinnating?" he asked.

"I am quite the perspicacious person, I'll have you know," she sulked, humoring him only slightly. She sighed. "I see no hysterical laughter. None. I withdraw my complaint."

"If you wish, Lorelai, I will laugh hysterically."

"Don't be a gooney bird, Kirk."

"Have you ever even seen the Pacific Ocean?" Kirk demanded.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Gooney birds are found in the Pacific Ocean," he explained in a stately manner.

"If I wanted some obscure information, Kirk, I'd phone my daughter."

"No need, I'm here."

"Rory! Babe! I'm on the horns of dilemma here. Help a girl out."

"Sorry," replied Rory. "I'm having too much fun watching your secret sex become the next issue of our paper's front page."

"You traitor! I'll have you up in gyves, daughter or no."

"Metal is the new pink."

"Hey, Lorelai, do you like to use bondage with Luke?" called Babette from somewhere in the middle of the crowd.

That set off something. People started tossing questions up at those in the gazebo with a frightening noise level. Lorelai couldn't distinguish one voice from another, much less decipher the words, but she was glad. She had not had any that when the town found out that they would be so vested in the relationship!

She scrambled onto one of the benches inside of the gazebo, then cupped her hands around her mouth to form a makeshift amplifier.

"Can you be quiet?" she yelled over the top of them. Of one accord, the mob stopped pre-riot mod and simmered down into the shifting of feet and the quiet murmurs of whispers. "All right, that's it! This is my protective spot. This is the safe house. This is the holy ground; my church, my kirk, my..."

"Your fane."

"Thank you, Rory. My fane! This is Fane Lorelai, and I am God!"

"Here, here!" cried Babette, Maury's tall frame being the only way of estimating her location. "You tell 'em, sistah!"

"Why did you ask them to be quiet?" Luke hissed at her. "We could have made a run for it when they weren't paying attention."

"We've gotta say something," she explained to him in a low voice. "This is the best way. I think."

"On a gazebo's bench in front of the whole town?"

"Yeah."

"Say nothing about our sex life."

"Shan't say nothing!" Lorelai ahemed, then spoke in a loud voice. "Let's see... all that you need to know: Luke and I are seeing each other and having fantastic sex. The end."

"Well, aren't you the fanfaron?"

"Didn't mean to be, Miss Patty." She paused. "Well, yes, I did, because the sex is great."

"Stop, you're making me jealous!"

"Me too," added Babette.

"Lorelai!" Luke pulled her down off of the bench. "I thought that you said that you wouldn't say anything."

"No," she said. "I said that I wouldn't say nothing."

"You were tricked by the double negatives," Jess scoffed. "Amateur."

Luke threw his hands in the air.

"No more!" he exclaimed. "That's it, we're going home. Everybody, go back to your beds and get a nice night's sleep. Tomorrow, you can make all the inappropriate remarks that you want. Tonight, however, it is almost one in the morning, and I am tired. So leave, write down whatever questions-slash-comments that you'll think that you may forget, and see us in the morning."

Muttering, the crowd dispersed.

"Wow," Jess said. "We could use you two for crowd patrol on parade days." Mimicking his uncle, he said, "'Move along, folks. Move along!'"

Rory wandered on up to the gazebo (and Jess averted his gaze), eyes wide with fatigue and the effort of keeping them open.

"Ready?" she asked, slipping her arm into her mother's.

"Yeah," Lorelai replied. "This is enough excitement for one night." They began to walk in a leisurely fashion, but stopped after only a few paces. "Luke," she said, "there's no bed for you at the diner on account of Jess. Come home."

"Yeah, Uncle Luke," Jess said, hand on the doorframe of the diner. "Besides, I want to sleep, and I don't know how I'm going to do that with you in the room. I'll keep thinking of you and Lorelai doing the naughty."

"I know how you feel," Rory said, shuddering. "I was the only one let in on the secret, and Mom wouldn't stop filling my ears with innuendos."

"Well?" Lorelai asked. "Luke?"

"Okay, I'm coming."

Together, the three of them walked home: Luke, Lorelai, and Rory. All three were yawning.