disclaimer in part one
a note to the reviewer talking about Mrs. Kim -- I do think that Mama Kim has the brass to speak so candidly about the subject: she is without shame when she feels that she is in the right. She would appreciate what she saw as "moral" behavior from the otherwise "immoral" Lorelai and would commend it. She's kooky like that. :-P

Ah ... the fic...


All he was doing was browsing books at the local bookstore. Minding his own business, really. He was standing there, reading the dust jackets and trying to decide which ones to purchase, when he saw her out of the corner of his eye. He almost ignores it, but glances over to where it is that he thought that he saw her, and suddenly, there she is, with her head wrapped in a scarf and heavy watch on making her look like Jackie O, pursuing books in the children's section. He guiltily moves out of self improvement and decides to saunter over and say hi.

"Lorelai," he begins, because that's the way to begin things, to say someone's name, to catch their attention.

Except this causes Lorelai to drop the book she was holding ("Are You My Mother?") and to jump.

"Oh, Jason, hi!" she says too brightly, smiling a stretch too widely. "You surprised me."

Jason tries his own semblance of a smile, but he's afraid that it comes out more as a grimace. He drops that and just reaches over to pick up the fallen book.

"I'll try not to do that next time," he says, and then he winces at how lame he sounds. Idiot! Idiot! "So, are you looking for some light summer reading for Rory?"

Lorelai laughs, and he can tell how she forces it a little in the beginning before it finds its rhythm (he can also tell that she's got some sort of hard candy in her mouth). Some perverse part of him is willing him to stay, to watch how uncomfortable and nervous he is able to make her.

"No, actually, Rory's in Europe with my mother."

"Wow, didn't see that coming." He's talking double entendres: he never expected that Lorelai would allow Rory to go on a trip to Massachusetts alone with Emily Gilmore, much less go to another continent, and he never thought that he would evict so much information out of her. He has a feeling that he surprised her into babbling.

"Yeah, well, she's nineteen. She's an adult."

Lorelai seems to be on the defensive here (case in point: she's just crunched down on whatever sort of sweet upon which she had been sucking), and this amuses Jason to no end. It appears that he has a sadistic side; it's a masochistic side as well, because seeing her here and knowing that she didn't choose him is killing him. He wonders if she's thought about what it would have been like if she had let their relationship have another chance.

He knows that he has. It's only been three weeks, which, in theory, should be enough time to get over your ex-girlfriend and talk to her in a book store, but he's just realized how tight his chest is and how much he cannot look at her face, at her eyes.

He turns to exit nearest exit, calling over his shoulder, "Good-bye, Lorelai."

To him she looks rather bewildered.

Luke arrives at the house before Lorelai does and spends a good five or so minutes eyeing the window panes and wondering how they had gotten passed him in previous ministrations to the house. When Lorelai does show up, he can barely see her eyes over the top of a large brown bag (he can, however, see a large expanse of her stomach, as she's got her arms raised far enough to pull up her tiny shirt). He puts his boxes of food down and rushes forward to gather the sack out of her arms.

"Geez, Lorelai, you could have told me that you were planning on keeping us here for a week. I would have brought more food."

"You mean that you didn't bring enough food to last two normal people for seven days?"

"Normal people, yes. Lorelai Gilmore, no."

He stumbles a bit as he makes it up the steps, and she puts a hand on his arm to steady him. He likes how she doesn't have to pull it away immediately and make some joke but can pull herself even closer and walk up the steps with him. Once on the porch, they pause for a moment, and he enjoys this closeness that they're having, where their breathing is synchronized and his heart pounds in his ears.

He wonders how long it will be before he ever stops feeling this way, this dizzying, scary way that makes it where sometimes he wonders if he breathes at all when she isn't there. Luke suspects that this feeling, this lightheadedness, is the reason that Lorelai keeps stumbling into things. He almost doesn't want it to end at all, but he's running out of cups at the diner.

She opens the door -- it wasn't even locked! Luke bites his tongue -- and motions him through. He puts the bag on the end table behind some sort of dying foliage and turns to the door to get the food that he left out on the porch. Too late! Lorelai's already located the food and has taken up the boxes in her arms and is headed toward the kitchen.

"Movies are in the bag," she says as she passes.

"I gathered."

After taking off his jacket, Luke wanders over to check out her selections, hesitant to see the B-movie fest that she's decided to inflict upon them both. It appears that the bag filled with several DVDs and VHS tapes, which would explain for the space that is being taken up. Lorelai is in the kitchen, but starts calling out the movies before he's even halfway through a cursory glance.

"Stargate, the movie, because that one guy is really hot and half-naked most of the time. Then I invested in a couple of DVDs of the show, because the question of which Daniel is the Ultimate Daniel will never be solved but always is a fun debate."

"Sounds good." It doesn't sound too terrible, actually, and Luke doesn't mind listening to Lorelai talk through a movie that he's not going to pay much attention to anyway. He walks into the kitchen, because there is no use going through the bag if Lorelai has its contents memorized.

"Star Wars IV, V, and VI, because those are the only ones without Jar Jar Binks. I hate him like Elton John hates complementary colors, and Rory and I have made a pact that if whichever one of us meets Jar Jar Binks first will choke him to death with our bare hands and then hang his carcass from the capital building. And Han Solo is a hottie."

"I agree with you there. Not about the Han thing -- about strangling and the stringing at the capital."

Lorelai stretches and stands and tiptoe and makes soft noises of exertion over by counter. Luke helps her reach the cups in the top of the cabinet, and though he suspects that she's faking her height, he doesn't mind. She takes the cups and places them on the table, then, out of the refrigerator, Lorelai pulls two bottles of Evian.

"Total Recall, because 'Ahnold ees soh cyoot' in that one. And it's all deep and psychological ... that, and did I mention how gorgeous Schwartzenegger is in this film?"

"I'm beginning to see a pattern in these movies."

Lorelai chooses to ignore his comment, instead making no small amount of noise at the table as she delves into the packages of food that he's brought with him.

"Mmmm, fries," she says. "Then, uh, some Johnny Depp movie, because when is a Johnny Depp movie not good?"

"It's not Edward Scissor-hands, is it? Because that is one of the most --"

"Don't worry! I don't think that these movies were even made in the same decade, okay?"

She's dished out food onto both of their plates, though Luke knows that he's going to probably lose more than half of his to an assault from Camp Lorelai. They take their plates into the living room, and Lorelai disappears behind a wilted-looking potted plant as she rummages through the bag.

"I thought that you said that the movies were action and science fiction?" Luke teased. "So far, all that I have seen is science fiction."

"You said no to the Matrix, Luke McFussy!" Lorelai snaps playfully at him as she pokes half of her head from behind a decrepit leaf. "And the Johnny Depp is action. Anyway, I got the first movies and thought that I'd go with a theme."

"Which movies did you get first?" Luke has a feeling that he's missing something here, but he's often as a comfortable level of disquiet when in her presence.

"The theme is space, thank you for asking Mr. Potted-Plant."

"Okay, so the theme is space. I sort of figured that out."

"Why is the theme space? That's a good question, Mr. Potted-Plant! May I call you Fred? I really feel that you and I have been growing closer over the past week --"

"-- you've only had that plant for a week and have already killed it? --"

"-- so I feel that we're on a first name basis. You can call me Lorelai. Okay, so, Fred." She pauses, glancing sideways at Luke, then winking at the dying fichus. "The theme is space because the first movies that I got were ... and I have it on good authority from Jackson that these are the best of the series ... " Lorelai pulls something from the very bottom of the bag and makes trumpeting sounds. "Dun dunt dun duh! Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek: The Search for Spock!"

Luke's manliness gives a small shout of protest.

"Lorelai, have you ever seen the Wrath of Khan?" Lorelai shakes her head, hair flying about in her own personal tornado. He feels like that hair sometimes; a causality in her exuberance, yet still tethered firmly to her. "Well, it's just a very intense movie."

"Intensity is good. I like intensity."

He sighs.

"It's not exactly a nice sort of intensity, though, Lorelai. It's more of --"

"--oh, is this an intensity like the Matrix? Is that why you're not wanting to watch this? Luke, you already blackballed Keanu and Carrie, you are not getting rid of the Spork!"

"It's Spock," he tells her.

"I'm not talking about any one character."

It takes Luke a moment to get it, but he does, and it makes him grimace.

"Lorelai, there will be no Sporking near me!"

"Dirrty."

In an effort to distract her from her current train of thought -- Luke shudders, because Captain Kirk's face is being replaced by Stars Hollow's own Kirk's face -- he turns back to the original point of the conversation: convincing Lorelai to forgo the Star Trek.

"The Wrath of Khan just isn't a happy film, Lorelai. People have been known to ... cry."

Lorelai's face breaks into an expression of understanding.

"Oh, Luke," she says, "do you cry during this movie?"

No!

"No!"

Not since the first time that he saw the movie, anyway. That's something that he's not going to share with Lorelai, though, even if he was only a teenager, and even it had been because if he'd wanted to be Spock when he grew up.

"Fine, we'll not watch those, but we're going to watch the Johnny Depp instead."

This is fine with him, and they gather together their plates and food and head into the living room. He arranges himself on the couch to a comfortable position while Lorelai puts the DVD in the player. While her back is to him, Luke glories in the unhindered right to look at and admire Lorelai Gilmore from afar -- and close up -- and midway between afar and close up.

She slides into position next to him and presses her lips to his briefly for a kiss before grabbing the remote and turning on the player. He slips an arm around her and holds her to him, because she's made in such a way that she fits perfectly there, and there is no reason to ignore that.

As the beginning scenes start, Lorelai turns to face him, biting her lip.

"I saw Jason today."

Wow. He'd been expecting another kiss.

"What?"

"In Hartford," she says. "I was at the bookstore, looking at Dr. Seuss for Davy, because Sookie's got the complete set of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the crossovers, but she doesn't have any "Green Eggs 'n' Ham" or "Cat in the Hat." So I was looking at "Are You My Mother" -- which, by the way, not Seuss, but Rory really liked it when she was three, and, God, I had to read that book about eighty billion times even after she memorized it -- and then he said, uh, hi. And it was Jason."

"He just walked up to you in a bookstore and said hi?"

Lorelai nods.

"Don't be mad."

"I'm not mad."

"I was very uncomfortable. He looked mean."

"...what?! He looked mean? Lorelai, the man is pathetic and slightly petty, and he doesn't know how to make business business and personal personal, but he is not mean!"

"Okay," she agrees. "He didn't look mean. He looked embarrassed and upset and a little angry with me."

This catches Luke's attention. 'Mean' and 'angry' are two different things entirely. She calls him mean all the time, but Lorelai has very rarely ever used the word angry when describing him. He realizes that he's tensed up; Lorelai has apparently realized it too, because she edges closer to him and makes him feel as if they are one body, many limbs.

"What did he say?"

"I dunno. I was too busy thinking about my hot boyfriend."

"Lorelai."

"He said ... something about Rory, and I said something back, and then he ran out of there. I think that maybe he could see what I was picturing in my head and got scared." Luke is still tense. Lorelai is back to biting her lip."I wanted to tell you, because it's nothing. I just thought that you'd like to know. Because," and Lorelai shifts, and Luke realizes that she's halfway on top of him, "I'd like to know if you ran into Nicole."

She leans down from her perch and kisses him, and all that Luke can think about is how soft her lips are and where he ought to put his hands. The baby-tee that he had been admiring earlier doesn't quite meet her jeans, and he touches the soft flesh between the hem and waistband. He moves a bit, getting a more comfortable position, and pulls Lorelai more fully onto his lap.

He's pretty sure that it was her knee that pressed into the remote.

"My God!" and Lorelai bolts up as the static noises assault her and Luke. She mutes the TV and then switches back to the movie, which they had forgotten. She pauses it. She starts chuckling, then laughing full out.

Luke attacks her, kissing her collarbone while she laughs, he on top of her this time. He makes his way up her throat, kiss by kiss, and feels her deep chuckles vibrating her throat. When he reaches her lips, he pauses.

"We could always finish our movie, Lorelai."

She stops laughing and pushes herself up on her elbows as if considering this idea. "I dunno, Luke. It's pretty close there. Maybe you could wear a little bit of eyeliner to break the tie."

"Lorelai."

"What?"

"Billy Crystal didn't call him a slightly gay pirate for nothing. I'm not wearing anything that my sister would ever wear, and that's final."

They've sat up, and they're back to that glued-to-each-other position where it's dizzying and gorgeous to be next to her. He holds her tightly to him and buries his nose in her hair.

"Putting aside my astonishment that you watch awards shows, I guess that means that you can fulfill that dream of yours about wearing a bra, huh?"

"This is where I put my foot down on this vein of conversation."

"I betcha never said anything like that to any of your other girls."

"Yes, because I let all those other girls walk all over me, and you I restrict."

"I knew it!"

Lorelai snuggles her head closer into his shoulder and sneaks an arm around his waist. He thinks nowt of it until the television screen flickers and a man -- the make-up wearing man, Luke notes -- jumps off of the mast of his ship and onto a pier. He decides not to say anything, and instead enjoys the feel of her breathing.

A thought crosses his mind, and he leans down, teasing, to voice it.

"You know, though ... not a one of them gave up coffee."

"Then it wasn't love."

He's a little surprised that she said it first. Not said, exactly, but heavily alluded to it. He doesn't know with what to reply for a few seconds, so he stares at her. Her eyes are crinkled up in a smile, and she doesn't look at all uncomfortable, even though he would have thought that Lorelai would run out of the door rather than be the one to make any relationship fixed. But maybe it is exactly what she said; Luke knows that for him it is.

"Yeah." He clears his throat. "It wasn't."

He's looking into her eyes, and he's pretty sure that he's about to actually say it. Lorelai does look more serious, less ... not less certain, but less cocky, that's for sure, and Luke's got this strange feeling that this is his life, this woman sitting right in front of him, waiting for a declaration of love. From which of them is she waiting for?

"Lorelai..."

She reaches about to pull him down to him when, suddenly, there is a tinkering of breaking glass, he's rather wet about the head and neck, and a shrill ringing noise starts. They disentangle themselves to find that Lorelai's broken a vase ("My mother will kill me, I'm pretty sure that was an antique! Why did I have an antique in this house?"), the water has dripped all over Luke and her sofa, and her home phone is ringing.

"Turned off the cell, forgot about the home phone," Lorelai groans. "We'll let the machine get it -- c'mon, let's get you cleaned up..."

The answering machine clicks on as she's sponging off the back of his neck. He listens to her cheery message (it's sort of cheesy and completely like her, he thinks), and then the beep sounds for to signify the caller to begin speaking.

"Mom?" It's Rory, and her voice sounds a little stressed. "Mom, are you there? Your cell is off, and --"

Lorelai dives for the phone, still holding Luke by the collar.

"Rory!" She scrubs a little too enthusiastically on his hairline as she listens. "Aw, babe, I'm sorry. Look, calm down, maybe you can just talk to her." Luke detangles himself from Lorelai, making motions with his hands to indicate that he's just going to pick up and leave. He's not too certain that Lorelai will get it (he has to admit, she's never been one for clear hand signals, either giving or reading), but when he picks up his jacket, she raises a hand. "Babe, just a second, okay?"

Lorelai puts the phone to her chest and smiles.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey. Sorry 'bout the ... vase. And the remote. And having to take this call."

"I'm gonna go."

"Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow."

He doesn't find it odd that he can hear Rory's humming over the phone as he and Lorelai kiss good-bye, because it's just another Gilmore thing.


to be continued ...
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