Title: Back In Stars Hollow

Chapter 5: Searching In The Dark

A/N: I'm writing the next chapter as you read.

I know a lot of you don't like Mark, and the fact that I brought Mark back, but I'm going to recite something that I said during the last story…about every chapter. "Nothing and no one is quite as it seems."

While the romance is still a very big part of this story, in order to have it actually go somewhere, I'm going to put a little mystery back into it. And eventually I will fast forward and write the story in a period of weeks instead of days…because in case no one noticed, the last story pretty much took place over a few days, and this one picked directly up. Anyway, since it's before noon, I'm probably gonna write all day, so either this will be a long chapter or two short chapters.

And—an extra chapter if anyone can tell me what book Jess and Rory are reading. A long chapter for any extra details, i.e. the author, the movie, actors/actresses, etc.

Sorry, I almost got by without a rant, but now I have to put a rant here because of something that's going into the story.

Okay, so I was watching "Say Goodnight, Gracie" the other day…fine, it was a while ago, but there was one thing that struck me as odd. In Luke and Jess' apartment, when they're gesticulating wildly and screaming at each other, a pale wood, unfinished acoustic guitar is standing against a wall in the background. It's not in Luke's side, it's not in Jess' side; it's in the middle. Now, Jess didn't bring it with him, and he didn't take it with him, and he's never mentioned playing a guitar before. This would, of course, go with his "bad boy" image, if he played guitar (although my mom says drum players are the ones to look out for—and I believe her), but he never mentioned a thing about the guitar. We don't even know if he can play. And if he could play, I don't think he'd be playing acoustic, or an unfinished acoustic, at that. Is it Luke's? Does Luke play the guitar? It'd be one of his "softie" qualities, if he did…cause once again, it's acoustic, not electric. But can Luke play? Can Scott Patterson play? Can Milo Ventimiglia play? Did the set dressers steal it from Dave/Adam Brody? Are the set dressers just idiots? Did a crew person leave it there, and we weren't supposed to see it?

Oh, and one more thing: I read that Keiko Agena actually plays the drums. Good for her.

End of rant. Beginning of story.

"'But from a narrative point of view, in one hundred five pages, nothing happens. Except this: "What with one thing and another, three years passed."'" Jess flipped the page. "Chapter Five: The Announcement. 'The Great Square of Florin City was filled as never before, awaiting the introduction of Prince Humperdinck's bride-to-be, Princess Buttercup of Hammersmith.'"

"Wait," Rory lifted a hand in front of the book. "Can we maybe go find Mom and Luke? I'm hungry."

"Sure. You didn't have to interrupt me, though."

Rory smiled at Jess' mock-scowl. "I'm sorry," she apologized as he placed the book back into the bookstore bag.

"Well…I guess, if you're sorry…." Jess grinned and used his arms already around Rory to give her a hug.

"All is forgiven," Rory smiled.

"Yep." Jess stood up, and then pulled Rory up. "Off to find the parental units."

"They're probably still at Mom's."

"And let's not think about what they're doing," Jess pleaded, a disgusted look on his face. Rory laughed.

"Deal." She leaned into his body, and he wrapped both of his arms around her, as if to protect her.

"I need to get to the diner," Luke said, sliding from under the covers and grabbing his hat from the floor of Lorelai's room.

"Okay. I'll come with you."

Luke hesitated—it was slight, but she noticed anyway.

"Luke? Do you…not want me to come with you?"

He sighed. "No. I mean, yes. I mean…this is new territory for us."

She stood from the bed and faced him, grabbing his head to make him look at her. "Yeah. Us. We're in this together."

He sighed, and ran his hands from her shoulders down to her waist. "I just…don't want to be one of those touchy feely couples."

She laughed. "Luke. I've known you for years. Believe me, I'm not expecting you to become touchy feely just because we've kissed." She laughed again.

He shifted a little uncomfortably. "I wouldn't mind being a little touchy feely."

She grinned. "Just not in public."

"Right."

"I got it. I understand completely." She interlaced her fingers behind his neck. "And we're not in public," she whispered.

He grinned and leaned in. She also grinned and met him halfway.

"Mom!" Rory yelled from downstairs, slamming the front door. Both adults sighed, and reluctantly pulled apart.

"Diner," Luke said simply.

"Dinner," Lorelai said back. She grinned, and slid her hand down his arm until it was nestled in his hand. He situated his hat on his head and allowed himself to be pulled downstairs.

"Hi!" Lorelai greeted Rory and Jess, who were standing in the entranceway. "How was your trip through the storm?"

"Okay," Rory grinned, noticing how Luke was gripping Lorelai's hand tightly. "The Inn lost power, though."

"Oh, God. Was Sookie there?"

Rory nodded.

"Okay. So, she's not going to have to come into work for a week. I've been late for the past two days."

"Me, too." Luke added.

"You know what, Mom? I think if you just explained things to her, she might understand."

Lorelai grinned as she got Rory's meaning. As she and Luke reached the bottom of the stairs, she released his hand and ran to her daughter. They were whispering and giggling in seconds. Then Lorelai looked up.

"Luke? I think Rory and I are going to check out the situation at the Inn."

Luke nodded. "Jess and I'll check out the diner."

"Kay. Bye." Lorelai walked back over to Luke and pecked him on the cheek. He blushed slightly, noticing the eyebrow raise Rory gave Jess. But then Rory gave Jess his own goodbye peck, and the girls left, waiting to close the door until the boys walked from the house. Then everyone exchanged a second goodbye kiss, and headed their separate ways.

Inside the house, Lorelai's phone was ringing.

"I'm just a simple girl, in a high tech digital world. It's not hard to understand, just follow this simple plan! Follow your heart, your intuition, it will lead you in the right—beep!" Lorelai's song on the answering machine was cut off.

"Uh, Lorelai?" A male voice asked. "Uh, Lorelai Gilmore? This is Mark. Mark Miller. I'm Rory's boyfriend. I've tried calling her cell phone, but she's not answering. So, if you could get her a message from me, that'd be great. Uh, I'm gonna be in Hartford next week, and I'd really like to see her. She knows my number. Th—"

Beep!

Rory was sitting on a sofa in the lobby of the Dragonfly Inn reading by candlelight and Lorelai was rushing around, barking emergency orders at everyone, when suddenly every light in the entire inn turned on. A few people cheered, and Rory grinned and blew her candle out, closing the book and setting it back on the table she'd lifted it from.

"Mom?" she asked as she walked over.

"Hey, sweets! Looks like we can head home in a little while."

Rory nodded. "Anything I can do?"

"Uh, yeah. Rooms 4, 5, and 7 are all empty. If you could turn the lights off in those rooms, that'd be great."

"You got it." Rory walked to the first of the rooms her mother had indicated and entered. Every light was on, from when Sookie had gone around the Inn after the power had first gone out, turning the lights on and giving out candles. Rory moved around the room, turning off both bedside lamps, the lights in the bathroom, and the overhead lights before heading to the second room her mother had mentioned. She repeated the routine twice, but before she left the third room, she stood by the window and looked over the grounds. There were gardeners with flashlights scoping the entire place, picking up branches and setting up benches again. One of the men kicked a stone accidentally, and it flew into the pond, making large ripples. Rory watched as the perfect reflection of the night sky wavered and scrambled itself. She kept her eyes focused on the pond until the water reflected the black sky with its pinpoints of stars once again, and then exited the room.

"Ready?" Lorelai smiled, shrugging into her coat, as Rory walked up to her.

"Yeah. Thanks." Rory took her coat from her mother and they left the Inn.

Luke emerged from the kitchen into the empty diner and shoved two plates at Jess, before walking directly back into the kitchen again. He returned seconds later, holding two more plates.

"Put the plates at a table and get in there and clean up." Luke nodded toward the kitchen. Jess rolled his eyes.

"I don't think so." He set the plates on the counter and picked his book up again. Luke put the plates he was carrying on a table, and then walked over to Jess and grabbed his book.

"Clean up!" he yelled, pointing to the kitchen.

"Yes, sir," Jess mock-saluted and exited.

"How has he remained a teenager for the last five years?" Luke shook his head, and then left the diner.

There was silence for a minute or two.

"Ah! Shit!" Jess yelled from the back, at the exact second Rory and Lorelai entered the diner. They glanced at each other and giggled.

"Jess?" Rory called, handing her coat to her mother and walking towards where she'd heard his voice.

"Rory?" he asked.

"I'm gonna head upstairs," Lorelai said. Rory nodded, and pushed through the door to the kitchen.

"Luke?" Lorelai asked as she neared his apartment door. It was dark. She screwed up her face in thought. He obviously wasn't there, but he hadn't been downstairs, either. Was he in the kitchen? She turned around to head downstairs, but then turned back.

This was Luke's apartment. She'd seen it thousands of times before…even a few nights ago, when she and Rory had eaten there. But she'd never before spent an entire afternoon doing…what she'd done with Luke that afternoon. She grinned and tried the doorknob. Unlocked.

She practically cackled gleefully, but caught herself before she acted too much like a Wicked Witch. The apartment was dark, but she'd seen that through the door. She ignored the part of the place she knew to have been Jess' at one point, and started walking through the dark to Luke's side. She ran into something, hitting her shin, and covered her mouth to keep from screaming and alerting Rory and Jess to her presence up there, but whatever she ran into fell to the floor with a musical clang.

"A guitar?" she asked through her hand. "I cannot see Luke with a guitar." She thought she heard feet on the stairs, and paused, ready to bolt, but there was nothing. She let out a deep and exaggerated sigh of relief, and then giggled at herself. As she continued edging toward Luke's room, she realized that she felt high on the possibility of getting caught. She continued giggling as she hit Luke's bed, and collapsed on it. She crawled to his pillow, and inhaled his scent, and hugged it to her as she lay there, still giggling quietly.

Luke edged nervously toward Lorelai's house, worried that someone would find out that he was there, what he was doing, what he'd done with Lorelai that afternoon. He glanced at the Dells' home…Morey seemed to be playing jazz piano, and it sounded like Babette was scatting along. He steeled his nerves and entered the house—it was unlocked, like he knew it would be—and made his way to Rory's room.

He felt uncomfortable in the younger Gilmore's bedroom; always had. He felt like he was intruding, but this was where Lorelai had turned on the stereo for the past two nights, and this was where Lorelai left her CDs.

He awkwardly walked to Rory's desk, mirroring Lorelai's movements from the night before. There was a CD book on top of the stereo, and in the…left-hand, second drawer, the rest of the CDs were kept. Luke picked up the book first, and flipped through. She'd called that CD "sappy fun", that one "romantic", and that one "perfect proposal music". Luke paused before slipping the third one from its spot. After a second, he transferred it to the Ziplock bag he'd brought with him, only to transfer it back in a matter of mere seconds.

With the first two CDs in the plastic bag, he tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, and then left the room, hopefully with nothing different—except for the missing CDs, of course.

Making his way from the house, he decided to leave by the back door, for fear of too much exposure the front way. As he walked through her yard to the street, he marveled at how familiar he was with her home, and Lorelai herself. It seemed as if they'd been on a "first date" for years, and were only now getting to the good stuff.

As Lorelai's giggling subsided, she reached up and turned on Luke's bedside lamp. She returned the pillow to its proper place on his bed, before walking over to where the guitar had fallen. She stood it back up, leaning against the wall, and mentally mapped out a route for her to take when she left the apartment. Satisfied that she wouldn't run into anything this time, she walked back to the bed to turn off Luke's lamp. A sheet of paper with her name on it caught her eye, however, and she glanced around the empty apartment before cautiously picking it up to read it.

Lorelai and Rory reunion dinner

Music: Lorelai's favorite romantic singers: Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, "all the old greats". (what does that mean?) Ask Jess about Rory.

Food: Coffee (decaf for Rory), cheeseburgers, fries, etc. Nothing fancy, and nothing healthy.

Place: Diner? Apartment? Her house?

Atmosphere: Tablecloths, candles. Music should be soft.

How to get them here?

Lorelai's giggles returned.

"He's making me dinner!" She hugged the sheet of paper to herself, before putting it back on the nightstand, turning off the lamp, and walking out of the apartment.

Rory put the last pot into the dishwasher, poured soap in as directed, and closed the door with an accomplished flourish. She turned to Jess to tell him how she'd done it herself, when she realized she'd gotten her sleeve caught in the door.

"Urk…Jess," she called plaintively, unable to bend to open the dishwasher again. Jess turned from the corner where he was mopping and burst out laughing. She glared.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he apologized, leaning the mop against the wall and walking over to her in order to release her.

"You will be," she said cryptically. He chuckled.

"'You will be'," he mocked. "That sounds so stupid."

She hit him, newly released. "Don't be mean."

"That wasn't mean. It really does sound stupid."

She glared, like a little kid who hadn't gotten what she'd wanted. He laughed, again, and as she was opening her mouth to ream him, he leaned in and kissed her, softly, sweetly. She tried to glare as they parted, but she couldn't. She sighed.

"You are very evil."

"Yet I'm a good kisser."

"Yes, it's rather confusing," she said, using the affected accent on the word 'rather'.

He rolled his eyes, and used his own affected accent when he answered her. "Yes, rather."

She giggled and leaned in to kiss him again.

Lorelai was coming downstairs from Luke's apartment when Luke was walking into the diner from Lorelai's house. They caught each other's eyes, and then glanced away, before Lorelai rushed over to him and threw her arms around him.

"You are too sweet," she said after they separated from their first initial round of kisses.

"I'm not sweet," he said roughly.

She grinned. "Of course not." She was attacking him with another round of kisses when Rory and Jess entered from the kitchen.

"A-Hem," Rory said loudly, grinning.

"Oh!" Lorelai and Luke separated, but she kept her arms around his neck. "I didn't see you there!"

"Obviously," Rory answered her mother.

Luke cleared his throat, and awkwardly ducked underneath Lorelai's arms. "Uh, why don't you take Rory for a walk or something. Just about ten minutes."

Lorelai grinned and threw her arms around his neck again. "Anything." She covered him with a flurry of kisses, and eventually Rory had to peel her mother off of Luke. Luke nodded when she did, and then Rory steered Lorelai out of the diner.

Jess looked at Luke with a questioning look on his face. Luke ignored it.

"Go upstairs and get the radio."

"Why?"

"For dinner."

"O-kay," Jess said hesitantly, before turning and heading upstairs.

"Luke's so dreamy," Lorelai said as Rory steered her to the gazebo.

"Are you okay?"

Lorelai nodded. "He's so sweet."

"Okay, did you hit your head or something when you were in Luke's apartment? Cause Jess and I heard the clang, but when you didn't scream, we figured either you were unconscious, or didn't want us to come up." Rory shrugged. "I took a chance."

"Aw. You must love me so much."

"That I do."

"Anyway, no, I didn't hit my head, but I did happen to see a very sweet note, concerning us!" Lorelai squealed.

"And what might that note have been?"

"Luke…" Lorelai paused for dramatic effect, "is cooking…dinner…for us…complete with music, and tablecloths, and candles!" Lorelai squealed again, and this time Rory joined in.

"That's so sweet!"

"I know!"

Ten minutes later, Luke and Jess walked out to the gazebo.

"Excuse me, madam," Jess started in his affected accent, holding out his arm to Rory, "might I request your presence at the diner?"

"Why, yes, you may," Rory said in her affected accent, taking Jess' arm. The younger couple started to the diner, and Luke turned to Lorelai.

"It's ready," he said roughly.

"Too sweet!" Lorelai yelled, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him. When they separated, they were both flushed from the kiss. "Let's go."

"Let's."

Lorelai grabbed Luke's arm with both of hers, and they followed the path Rory and Jess had taken.

"Oh, wow," Lorelai breathed as they got closer to the diner. Through the window she could see the multitude of candles spread around the place. She kissed Luke quickly on the cheek, and he pushed the door open. A slow Sam Phillips song quietly sang from the radio set on the counter—one of Rory's choices. Lorelai located Rory in a corner with Jess; she was laughing while he was talking to her stomach, one hand firmly placed on it. Lorelai smiled, but immediately forgot about her daughter when Luke showed her their table.

Lorelai, Rory, and Jess left the diner over an hour later. Luke was going to spend the night in his own apartment, because he'd opened late the day before and not at all that day, and he couldn't afford many more days like that. After a few minutes, Lorelai kissed her daughter on the cheek and left them to their own devices, wishing them to have a romantic walk back to the Inn. She watched them wander arm in arm down the street, laughing and looking at the stars, and then pulled her cell phone from her purse.

"Luke?" she asked after he answered.

"I'm staying here, Lorelai."

"I know. I just…wanted to tell you that I really loved the dinner. That was a wonderful gesture."

"I'm glad you think so, Lorelai."

She could tell he was grinning, and that made her grin. She started in with idle chit-chat, and they talked as she walked all the way home, and even after she'd reached her house.

"It's such a nice night," Rory observed as she and Jess weaved from side to side down the road, walking as if they were drunk, when really they were so in love they couldn't see straight.

"It was a nice dinner."

Rory nodded. "The perfect end to a perfect day."

"With the perfect weather."

Rory grinned. "I know you're being sarcastic, but it really is nice to have a storm every once in a while."

"I know what you mean. It's also nice to curl up in bed all day."

"And then read until the light's gone."

"Don't you mean 'get read to'?"

Rory smiled. "Yeah, I guess so."

"It's okay; I liked it."

"Good, cause I did too."

"You're the one who made me do it."

"Maybe."

Jess laughed. "You wanna read some more before we go to sleep?"

"Yes." Rory nodded, and they curled into each other a little more as a breeze was stirred up.

A/N: Okay, even with the original long Author's Note, this chapter is over eleven pages long on Word. That's about five pages longer than usual! And I think I've got enough time left over to start the next chapter tonight. You guys are so lucky!