Dedication: This is for Rachel's little Lorelai. Get well, sweetie!
Spoilers/Timeline: Set within 518, "Live and Let Diorama". No spoilers for future episodes.
A/N: Do read and review.
Same thing
'This was just great,' thought Dean as he loaded his tools back into his van. Like it wasn't bad enough he had to take this job working for Taylor again just to make rent this month, but having to deal with Luke? Dean shook his head as he gave the guy the evil eye. Seriously, the man had a problem - Dean remembered the time when Luke had tackled him in the street with no clear understanding of what had happened between Rory and him during their first breakup. He rubbed the back of his neck with the memory. What was his deal? It wasn't like it was any of his business what happened between Rory and him - if Lorelai wanted to hate him, fine, at least that made sense - but Luke? He wasn't even dating Lorelai at that time.
Luke and Lorelai. Lorelai and Luke. Dean snorted softly under his breath as old high school lessons on alliteration came to mind. Did Luke really think he could sustain this relationship with Lorelai? He was so wrong. He was just like Dean, waiting on Rory, only to find out, painfully, that it just wasn't possible. Entering the museum again to look for his good hammer, Dean pursed his lips as he remembered when he had gone to Hartford to pick Rory up. When they broke up for good. His words echoed in his mind again.
"What am I doing here, Rory?"
Rory couldn't meet his eyes. "Picking me up?"
"I don't belong here. Not anymore. Do I?"
It was a rhetorical question. He saw the death in her eyes, the desperation pleading with him not to articulate what they both knew but refused to acknowledge: that somehow, over the course of a year, she had grown out of his league. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew that the day would come when they would have to face reality and see that the years had opened an unnamable chasm between them that love and affection couldn't bridge. He thought that he had one-up on Rory, moving on and getting married while she was still going to school, like a little girl - but she had the last laugh, he supposed. He laughed mirthlessly at his naivete. "One-up" and "last laugh"- who was he trying to impress? He'd only ended up hurting himself, his family, and Lindsey and her family. And dumping his future down the toilet, and giving that handle a good, sharp yank.
"Your situation's no different from mine, buddy."
Which was why he was only trying to warn Luke against the same danger. He and Luke were alike - both small town hicks trying to keep up with high society girls. America may be a democracy, but Marx still ran the deep-rooted streams of social reality in New England. Luke just didn't get it, and Dean was just trying to be a good guy, warning him about the hurt that could happen if he hoped to aspire above his station.
"Just go back to your girlfriend... while you still got one."
Lorelai was Rory, only older. Rory had wanted to travel the world, see things, and dreamt of reporting from the Middle East, Asia and Europe. He'd listened to those dreams in high school, and smiled proudly as he gained an insight into the world of possibility that Rory saw. Dean sighed as he lay on the floor to pick his hammer up, which had fallen into the black abyss of the cannonball hole in the floor. Somehow, to hear Rory speak about the things that she wanted to do... he could imagine himself there beside her, in a technical capacity, like being the mechanical enginner for the aircraft which was flying her to Sudan, or the computer analyst who was helping her with a high-tech story. He thought that it would have been a great partnership. In retrospect, Dean rued, all the roles he had envisioned himself in were sidekick roles - never an equal partner.
"It's not different. You and me - same thing."
Luke would end up being in the same boat, he reasoned as he snagged his hammer and stood up, dusting himself off. He'd just be Lorelai's Stars Hollow companion until her highness decided that it was high time she returned to the mansion she grew up in, with her crystal glasses and little black dresses with diamond-encrusted tiaras and other men in tuxedos waiting in the background. Luke would just be "that guy I hung out with, back in the 2000s", and she'd be living the life, jetting off to Germany for vacations, skiing in the Alps, and wandering the Champs-Elyseés on long weekends.
"This town - it's all you are, and it's not enough."
Nothing Luke could do would ever be enough for her. Couldn't Luke see that? He could offer her coffee everyday and put up with her general craziness and insane eating habits, but he just didn't have the capacity for her potential. This town - it wasn't enough for her, couldn't he see that? What, did he think that having great coffee could make her stay? Did he think that just being here and loving her was going to be enough for Lorelai? That she wouldn't want more, after a couple of years? Luke didn't have it in him to give her more. He was just... Stars Hollow. He wasn't going to move, go anywhere, do bigger things. He just had his small-town life, and that was it. Luke was deluding himself if he thought that he was anything more than just a fling to her.
He knew, without a doubt, Luke was going to be stuck here forever.
A/N II: I think that Dean is too bitter to be thinking straight. He's obviously projecting in this fic.