Disclaimer: ASP owns it. So, when I wow you with my brilliance, bow down to the proper master, the inventor of it all… I am merely a tyro to her.

A/N: The end has come… and the real end is quite near. Am I the only one who is not wanting Tuesday to come? That means the end for 3 whole months! I don't know how I will handle that… maybe it wasn't so good writing this fic then! Only bringing the great event much earlier! Well, I hope you enjoy this. I promised you you would have it by today, so here it is. I spent probably 4 hours just writing this chapter. Man it was hard! So please read and review… I really truly hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I swear, I almost had a few tears form just from writing this! Enjoy, enjoy!

And again thank you to all my reviewers—it really means the world to me that you took the time to review! I'm glad you all like the story. Your comments definitely helped me get through this long long chapter… haha.


Ch. 4: Everything in Time

Luke was about to bring Lorelai a large cup of coffee and one large piece of boysenberry pie. This should last her a while... wait, who am I kidding? Luke stopped and cut another piece of pie before walking back to her. Lorelai watched him from her spot at the table and smiled when she saw Luke rethink the pie quota he was about to deliver.

God, I love him… Being able to say it without hesitation, even though it was in her head, made Lorelai tear up for the first time since her meltdown on the road earlier.

But tearing up this time was different. This time it wasn't out of anger for her parents, it wasn't out of frustration with Rory, and not out of disappointment with herself—all situations which would make her eyes red with flowing tears, and turn a gloomy shade of indigo blue. Nope, this time the tears made her eyes glitter and caused the color to turn more crystal blue than ever—an aspect of her that can only be caused by Luke love. And not in a dirty sense… although sometimes it was… but more in a shocking way, in an inspirational way, whenever she has some mind blowing revelation in their relationship… And all of this from pie? Wow… I must have it bad for this man… or maybe, maybe he's just really good… What a quandary.

"Hey…" Luke said soothingly, startling her from her thoughts as he placed the pie and coffee down in front of her, "Don't cry, babe."

"I'm not, promise. Happy tears, I swear…" she looked up at him with a small smile, "Oooh, boysenberry, my fave!" she said softly before she scooped up a piece of the pie, but then did not bring the fork to her lips. She stopped, halfway between the plate and her mouth when she realized she was—"Not hungry?" Luke said, completing her exact thought.

The fact that it was so natural for him to do so, was just so... Luke. Again with the tears! God dammit Lorelai! Are you sure you're not pregnant because you're acting like a crazy hormonal woman… She tensed up, You're not pregnant—your Ovearian Operating System was just rebooted… yesterday at the hospital! So… no blaming it on that…

Lorelai tried her best to suppress the tears, but there was no getting past Luke. He sat down in the chair next to her and turns around to face her. Lorelai's chair was slid in perfectly perpendicular to the table, and she sat upright facing straight ahead. Luke turned his chair half way around to face her side, letting his knees brush against her half covered thigh and placing an arm around the back of her chair. He let his hand graze over her opposite shoulder.

She glanced over at him, again with a slight smile, I may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but he always is able to pull me back from jumping off the cliff with his words… he deserves the smile at least, "Nope, not hungry. Maybe in a bit."

She sighed and returned to face straight ahead. After a minute of silence, Lorelai reached over and placed her right arm over his legs, intertwining her fingers with his as she grabbed his hand resting in his lap. She sighed deeply before shifting slightly in her seat.

"She's leaving Yale," she admitted softly. Lorelai knew he would be angry—Luke has always been so involved in her life, in her education… The thought made her suddenly more sad, having to admit Rory's sudden change to him, the man who had gone to Rory's graduation, had even cried during her Valedictorian speech, who had helped move her stuff to Yale, back home, and then back again.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his perfect coloring pale in its… well… perfect color, "What—um…, who is leaving Yale?" he said in an incredulous tone, knowing full well but not accepting the fact until he hears her name and "leaving Yale" in the same sentence.

Lorelai rolled her eyes. She replied sarcastically, "Natalie Portman is leaving Yale! Oh no, wait, she graduated like two years ago or something…"

"Lorelai…" Luke said warningly.

"Rory, Luke. Rory is leaving Yale."

And that's all the confirmation he needs—Luke gives her a slight squeeze on her shoulder and stands himself up, using his knees to push off from. He quickly walks over to the diner door and vigorously locks the doors two bolts, gives it a good tug making sure not even Hulk-like pulling will not open it, pulls down the blinds, and finishes by dragging one of the tables in front of the entrance, pushing it right up next to the door.

Lorelai was bewildered. She didn't know whether to be scared or amused. His back still facing her, he dropped his head and took a sharp breath in, and turned around. Lorelai noted that his perfect color that had just so recently gone pale, was now red… like the fires of Mordor, she thought inwardly. So this is what Lane was talking about during… during our… dark period.

"Luke, hun… um—what the hell was that?"

Luke walked back over to Lorelai and sat down forcibly in his chair. She turned to him as he sat down.

His face still red as crazy-people-with-tons-of-rage could be, he said nonchalantly, "That," he points to the door, "is so when you tell me why…" stopping to say the words, and instead attempting to use his hands to symbolize Rory dropping out of Yale, but only ending up with a flick of his wrist and a clap of his hands, "that table, and the locks will give you time to pull me back and stop me from going and hurting whatever moron has influenced this."

Lorelai gave raised an eyebrow to him. On second though… "Umm, but in the case of Richard or Emily, it will just stop me from going over there and… explaining… to them why this is crazy."

Lorelai just stared at the huge obstacle he placed between the outside world and the two of them, "and what's with the blind closing?"

The "anger red" on Luke's face and neck seemed to lighten up a bit into a more "blushing red" before he spoke. "Um, I'm not sure… it just seemed right. Privacy from Stars Hollow seems necessary at a time like this," Luke said sincerely.

Lorelai smiled slightly, "Thank you."

But Luke needed to know now before he exploded, "Lorelai, what happened? What happened tonight?"

"Well, today when we went to Weston's—Rory and I—she told me…" she took a breath. She knew she couldn't cry any more about the situation, but she felt exhausted and emotionally drained. Luke, knowing this, placed a hand on her hip as he faced her and she faced him, reassuring her that he was there.

"God, I can't even remember what she told me. I just remember there being a weird tension between us. At first I rationed that it was because of her little Bonny and Clyde stint with Logan… I thought she was just stressed and guilt-ridden and all… but then she just dropped it on me. She just said it—as if she was declaring 'I'm not going to buy that cute bathing suit you said I should get but I put it on hold instead…'—knowing full well I'd be pissed but not really giving a damn because her mind was already set. And as soon as she said it, I just lost it…" Lorelai paused, breathing is necessary when telling this story, remember that for future reference, she noted before taking the necessary breath.

Luke again squeezed her hip again. He grabbed her hand with his free one resting it in her lap, trying as hard as possible to relax her. Lorelai continued while looking down, playing with his calloused but velvety fingers, "I said things, she said things… it was awful Luke."

She looked up at him again, "Anyways… we both left, separately. At the time I just thought she was going to see Logan or Lane or someone… I just expected that she wouldn't show up for dinner at the Gilmore's… But she went—well… first, um, I went early to my parents house… maybe an hour before dinner. I thought they would without a doubt help me, see my defense… But when I got there, they called me into the living room… they were very serious, which kind of freaked me out. They sat me down, and right as I was about to open my mouth, to explain to them the audacity of it all, persuade them to help me get back in there… they told me that—" Lorelai swallowed, but the tightness of her throat hardly allowed it. Slowly, the sadness tears formed in her eyes, fogging them of their clarity, and tricked down her cheek.

Luke let Lorelai continue, As much as you wanna hug her right now, kiss her, take the pain away, just let her do it… He knew she needed to let it out, so he rubbed his thumb over the top of her hand and let her go on… "They told me that Rory showed up sometime after our Weston's bitch fight. She explained it to them, told them she needed it, needed this opportunity to regroup and find some new dream or goal or something… to get out of her old—her old ways…" Lorelai was able to choke this last part out. The tears had not gotten worse, but they continued at the same pace.

Luke could not believe what she was saying… he simply could not stand seeing this woman, the love of his life, Self-proclaimed Wonderwoman for Christ's sake!, he thought—seeing her so distressed and vulnerable. He leaned from his seat, allowing Lorelai's legs to go in between his as he slid forward. He placed his hands on her stomach, allowing his fingers to soothe the knots he knew were inside, and placed a tender kiss on her jaw line… and then one on her forehead. He let his lips remain there as he soothed her, "I'm here, Lorelai. Don't worry, I'm here…"

The words seemed to help as Lorelai's crying ceased. Just the way he says it—he's here for me. He's the only one now… He really is the only constant in my life.

He brought his eyes down to look at Lorelai and gave her a reassuring smile, one that she returned, before sliding back into his seat and waiting for her to continue. Wow, I really didn't think it would help that much… at least she's stopped crying… It's not that Luke felt uncomfortable in any way around a crying Lorelai, he loved her in any form, it was that Luke couldn't stand to see her so defeated.

Lorelai found the strength from Luke's actions and continued, "I don't know exactly how they reacted to her news though… they seemed to be pretty firm on the idea. They told me that the plans had changed, that their plans had changed… but who the hell cares about my plans, right? I mean, I'm sure they must have been upset, but how they can just let live there…"

"Live where?" Luke quietly interrupted.

"Oh, well, Rory wasn't there with them when they told me…" Luke's eyes widened with this news, but Lorelai explained, "She was outside, in the pool house, moving in!" Lorelai admitted with animosity.

"She what!" Luke was starting to remember his red "fires of Mordor" face from before… but Lorelai continues, "I couldn't take it. I couldn't hear any more from them. What were they expecting me to do? Stay and have lamb while my daughter moves in outside? I just had to get out of there…"

She looks down at Luke's hands again and nervously picks up his fingers one by one, "So I left… But, I don't know why… maybe I just couldn't believe that my baby girl, my Rory, had actually gone to her grandparents for help—she's always come to me, we've always been able to work everything out—so I walked out the back door and out through to the pool…"

Lorelai sighed and looked up, "I just stood there Luke, looking in through the window, watching her put her books on the shelf… I couldn't believe it—well, actually at that moment I truly could believe that it was all happening."

She was suddenly very thirsty from her long venting session, so she took a long sip of the lukewarm coffee. Hehe, lukewarm, the perfect mix of cold and hot with all the same tastiness, just like my Luke… she thought inwardly, surprised at her stupidly funny comparison she had made. And after she watched Luke studying her sipping her coffee, his brows furrowed, for a minute of so, she realized that she had finished the cup.

She extended the cup to him, "Oh, look, all out. I really was thirsty… Can I have another cup please?"

Luke stood up without taking the cup from her and began pacing back and forth in front of her, between the counter and her table.

"Luke… coffee? Here's my cup… I know how annoyed you get when you have to do excess cleaning of my many used cups, so here you—"

But Luke cut her off… Let the ranting begin, Lorelai thought as she listened to the words begin to flow out of his mouth…

"How can your parents just do that! Allow her to drop out and then let her just waste her time by lounging in the pool house all day! You would think—I mean, they were obsessed with her at Chilton, they were proud of every paper, every article, everything she did there! They cried at her graduation… they paid for it all! They pushed and pushed for her to go to Yale… they paid for that too! They introduced her to plenty of people, trying to help her along! And it was all in the name of education? Ha! Yeah, education my ass! They only cared about marrying her off to some inbred heir with a fancy car and three vacation homes on the east coast…"

Okay, well, no stopping him now. Lorelai reclined slightly as she watched him pace. Her eyes were still red from the tears, but the dark indigo they change from "angry tears" slowly seemed to turn to the "love tears" crystal blue color. He really does care… Well, of course you knew he cared Lorelai, hello! He just listed it all—listed everything he was there for, everything he had some part in. He loves her, you know that. It must break his heart just as much as it does yours to see this happening to… his… Rory.

Apparently, some time during Lorelai's thoughts Luke's rant had slowed down a bit and when she focused back on him. He had his hands on his hips, twisting the tee shirt between his fingers roughly, and the muscles in his neck were tightened severely, forcing his head down to the ground as he paced back and forth in front of her. He was shaking his head and mumbling inaudibly to Lorelai.

Finally he stopped and turned to face her, looking a little less enraged and a little more calmed and in control. He spoke firmly as he explained his plan, but in his voice remained a soft and caring tone, "Okay, here is what we're gonna do. Rory is pissed right now, she is going to be stubborn and reluctant, probably something she gets from seeing the two of us," Something she, possibly, gets two of us…? Lorelai thought, her heart pulsing with love for him when he included himself, making it a 'we' thing, for solving the problem, something which moved her significantly, "We can think of your parents as holding Rory hostage, although she is willingly staying there, so that kind of opposes the whole idea of her being a hostage…" he shakes his head and refocuses on his objective,

"Whatever! Doesn't matter," he says moving his arms to reinforce his meaning,

"Anyways, what do you do with a hostage? You steal them back! So that's what we'll do—we're going to take Rory back, kidnap her if you will, and make her see how much we love her and how important we believe Yale is for her and once she just hears us, I know she'll understand because she knows it… deep down in her heart or behind one of the lobes of her brain or something, where ever it might be… she knows how hard she worked—how hard you worked—all her life to get to where she was. And dropping out is just not going to work—it will throw her all off track and she will end up regretting it!" Luke took a deep, deep breath, running a hand through his hair and readjusting his stance. He felt like he was boring holes through the floor he was standing so firmly.

Lorelai sat on the edge of her seat, her eyes watching him intently. Her look was a mixture of so many she reserved solely for Luke: a look of love, adoration, awe, inspiration, reverence… and so much more. The accumulation of such feelings and emotion for this man gave her a feeling unknown to her.

But Luke hardly noticed the look she was giving him. He continued pacing while explaining his plan, stopping every now and then when he arrived at a particular word to look at her… to reinforce his unfailing commitment to her, "She can stay at the house, she can stay upstairs in the apartment… but she has to stay in this town! Where we can watch her, and then we can take her to classes… because if we just make her live on campus, she'll probably just ditch and drive to New York or to the Hamptons with Logan," He spoke the name with pure annoyance and hatred, "and then she'll miss her classes and really be in trouble. But ohhh, let me tell you! She will be going to classes! We can take turns driving her, walking her to classes, making sure she's going to them… Although she might get a little pissed and use the fact that we are treating her like a little kid as an excuse for a rebellion…" He stops and thinks of this, before quickly shaking his head and resuming, "Nope! She needs to understand how amazing she can be—how amazing she is! She doesn't need a damn blond hair richie prep to make her a housewife!"

Luke took one final breath and took a few steps closer to Lorelai before crouching in front of her. He saw her eyes glittering with tears. He knew she was not going to cry however, but, Not to be conceited he promised himself, he knew the tears were her "happy Luke tears" he would see every now and then. In fact he was almost positive now that he had seen them a bit earlier on in their conversation.

He took her hands in both of his, still crouching in front of her seat, and spoke sincerely but firmly, hoping to reassure any last uncertainties she had, "You have made her to be so much stronger than that, Lorelai. You are an amazing mother, you have instilled so much strength in her—always assuring her that she can achieve anything, that the world is waiting for her…"

I am so in love with this man. This wonderfully beautiful man. However, her smile stayed the same, possibly because of the overwhelming flood of even more emotions she had just received. She continued watching him just as intently as before. He kissed her cheek before rising as she gripped his forearm.

His eyes drifted from hers quickly and spotted the empty coffee cup sitting on the table next to her, "Oh, sorry. You wanted some more coffee," he said reaching for it.

Luke pushed off her knees and went behind the counter to refill the cup. He walked around to his spot behind the counter and focused on the coffee for a moment. To Lorelai, looking at him in that spot, behind the counter, fixing her coffee, with no one else around… well that was just about the most beautiful picture she had ever seen. It was perfect.

Perfect... Perfection, actually, doesn't apply to us at all. We have our faults, but that's what molds us together at the end of each day. I just cannot fathom doing this without him. I'm sure if he wasn't in my life—and when I say in my life, Lorelai, I mean not even existing, because you know that even if you weren't together, you'd still be here, in his diner, with him right by your side—but if he wasn't around, I'd probably be curled up in bed… or God, still stuck on the side of the road, frozen in my car… He's my guidepost, my rock, my diner man, my coffee supplier… he's everything to me.

She watched him move behind the counter, putting the finishing touches on her coffee. I don't know how I'd even be able to get up in the morning without him, literally. Even before he was physically getting me out of bed, She grinned at this, for years before he was here, making the coffee for me, pulling me to him. I can't believe I wasted all the time doing… God knows what… and now… Now we are together and its not perfection… just the way we like it. I can't ever lose him again because I know this time, after that damned wedding fiasco, this time I don't think I would be able to survive the torture I went though without him…

So this is what I want… the unknown feeling… She remembered, referring to the feeling unknown to her before when the sudden accumulation of all those feelings hit her like a massively over the top Visa bill. But she was sure of it now—Lorelai was ready to accept this feeling. She wanted it more than anything, and not just at this moment or for this moment, but since… forever… and for forever. And nothing—not her sudden loss of her best girlfriend, sudden falling out with her daughter, or yet another deceitful act by her parents—none of that influenced the sudden certainty she had for the man standing before her. She loved him, something she had never been so sure of than at this very minute. And that's all that mattered. Her life was starting… now. Screw single grownup womanhood… I am ready for this, and 'now' is the right time. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, and the rest of her life was starting now, at this moment.

Luke, finally done with the coffee, I put so much damn coffee in this stuff it will probably even rot her iron-clad stomach… she better enjoy it. Even as Luke tried to convince his conscious that he hated feeding her addiction, he knew he secretly loved the fact that he had the one thing that could win her over at the end of the day… a fact that made him almost forget the crisis at hand.

He made his way over to her, not looking in her eyes until he placed the coffee down on the table… but the coffee went untouched.

"There's your coffee," he told her, but she remained facing him, staring at him with a look he had never seen on her before.

Lorelai's heart was beating faster than ever, if she was not focusing on Luke so intently she probably would have had to reach for a Valium. But she remained secure and steady: I love him, I need him, I want this forever… Wow I'm doing this… I'm doing this?

Luke was confused, and slightly freaked out, by Lorelai's fixation on him, rather than the coffee awaiting her only a few inches in the opposite direction. Why is she looking at me like that, "What?" He asked quietly, standing a few feet away and looking at her intently with amused eyes.

I am so doing this. With a earnest face, filled with hope and sincerity, she asked sincerely, keeping her voice soft "Luke… will you marry me?"

Silence. He tried to form words, but none could be formed. He watched her expression: her eyes glistened with tears, a Mona Lisa type smile played a game on her lips, her look… the look in her eyes…

And then his face could be defined: shocked and confused, but curious. He spoke, just as softly as she had, trying to hold his words without shaking, "Wha—what?"


Thanks for reading! Review, review please!

A/N: I was thinking about doing a follow up, basically just episode one, or maybe just the scene following this in ep.1 of the next season… after the damned long hiatus… just to connect it all together. Anyone that has any ideas, or was thinking of doing something following this scene… Oh, I'm sure it will be like the post-R&R fic splurge of 2004, so I wanted to get it done early before the masses and masses of fics exactly like it come out. Either review and leave your email, or email moi: miqueena(at)mac(dot)com