The seconds slid by on the wall clock in front of him. And though he felt thoroughly exhausted, his eyelids refused to close with that heavy, pitch-black finality he craved.

His eyes drifting closed and snapping back open, he glanced again through the half-open door of his bedroom, waiting for something concrete to give him another excuse.

He wanted more than anything to go check on her; his ears were attuned to the creak of the floorboards, or maybe a muffled sob, or something. Her voice calling his name.

But no, just that infuriatingly steady silence.

Sitting halfway up, he listened intently, idly scratching his calf. He considered going for a walk, or doing push-ups, or anything that would tire him out, at least to be able to stop worrying over her so incessantly.

Maybe he could make a lanyard; there was still a drawer in the kitchen full of half-finished ones from Liz.

He'd been lying in bed like this for hours. Approximately two and a half hours, the clock told him. He glanced outside his window, checked to see if the moon was still stubbornly hanging in the sky. The sooner she was awake, the sooner he could talk to her again.

Using his stomach muscles to pull himself up, he righted himself and shuffled quietly to the door. Fetch some water.

On his way to the little tiled kitchenette, he paused by her room, ever so briefly, and peered into the darkness.

Nothing.

Continuing down the hall, he filled a glass from the tap and squeaked by as quietly as he could, again stopping in front of her half-open door. Silence.

And then, "What, Luke?" Her sharp voice came from inside.

Caught. Startled, but managing a grip on his water, he searched for her figure in the darkness. It sounded like she was in the back corner of the room, but his eyes refused to adjust quickly enough.

Luke gripped the door frame sheepishly. "Sorry," he mumbled at the floor.

She sniffled and sighed, wiping her nose. "It's fine." She sounded exasperated. "You can come in if you want to."

Glancing down at the water at his hand, he offered her the glass. "Here."

She arched her body upward, pulling down the cord to lift the blinds. The outline of the room became clear, illuminated with faint moonlight.

"Thanks," she said into the cup, sipping and setting it down. Lorelai was sitting on the bed, her back up against the corner of the room, huddled with the quilt around her shoulders.

"Need Kleenex?"

"Yes, please."

Reaching into one of the closets in her room, he pulled out an old, unopened box and set it beside her.

"Anything else?"

She held her palms to her eyes, trying to physically stop the flow of tears. "Why did you keep coming by here?"

"I didn't," he said quickly.

"Luke, you've walked past my room at least a hundred times tonight."

He grunted, glad she couldn't see well enough to distinguish the color in his face. "Well, you might have needed something."

"I didn't."

There was an awkward silence, and Luke decided it counted as an invitation. He squeaked onto the edge of the mattress with her.

"You needed tissues," he said, an I-told-you-so in his voice.

She was blowing her nose as he said it and gave a half-hearted laugh.

There was silence for some time after that. A wall clock identical to his hung across from her bed, ticking by the same seconds, which seemed to have sped up considerably. Luke picked at the loose thread at the bottom of his t-shirt, waiting for her to kick him out.

Instead, she swiveled and turned, her back to the mattress, her head in his lap. She stared up at him for a moment, and he down at her, until she found the position too intimate. Flipping onto her side, her left temple to his left thigh, and bunched the fabric of his sweatpants in her fists. Feeling like crying again.

And when he began stroking her hair softly, tucking and organizing her errant curls behind her ear, she did.

He soothed her as best he could, though each sniffly hiccup only served to tighten the vise in his chest. "It's okay," he murmured, feeling an incomprehensible, overwhelming mixture of anger and sadness. She, the girl who never suffered, who always bore her burden with a certain light-hearted grace. Inconsolable.

She wasn't exactly crying audibly, but the tears slipping down her cheeks were soaking through the cotton she was pressed against, dampening his skin.

It was fifteen or twenty minutes, he imagined, before she began to calm down. He ran his fingers through her hair again, waiting patiently for her to fall asleep, for her breathing to slow, for the opportunity to lie beside her.

Instead, much to his surprise, she cleared her throat and adjusted herself onto her back, her weight still bearing on him.

Looking up at him with clear, though moist, eyes, she began speaking in a painfully soft voice.

"We decided..." Pause.

"..."

Try again.

"Okay." Sigh. "Christopher and I decided we were going to be together."

So that's where she was going with this. He removed his hands from her completely.

"Finally, you know? We were going to be together, after so many years. Told Rory and everything, that this was it."

After another deep breath, Lorelai continued speaking, her words coming at an increasingly steady clip.

"And then... um, today, he got a call from his girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend or whatever, saying that she was actually, uh, pregnant. And he was drunk, I mean really drunk, and we got in a fight, like a bad fight, about what he should do with... his girlfriend and the pregnancy and all that, you know like the baby and everything, and then he... got physical, I guess, or whatever, and I ran out. And then you saw me."

Luke didn't move.

These were details he'd wanted to hear so badly, to find out exactly what had happened to her, find out how he could better resolve the situation, and now he couldn't bear to listen.

So instead, he reached for her hand, which was balled in a fist on her stomach. Luke loosened her grip and slid his thumb under her palm, squeezing gently. It was the only thing he could think to offer.

"He's out of your life for good?" Luke's fear of sounding overeager, as if this hadn't been the first and last question in his mind, manifested itself in a pubescent falter.

She reached down and pulled the quilt up over her head, burying her face with it and trying to suppress the overwhelming, hopefully momentary, impulse to scream. Instead she opened her mouth, bit down on the blanket and expelled all the breath left in her lungs. It felt like she was channeling a panel from Cathy, tearing her two-dimensional hair out, frozen droplets of angst poised above her head.

She stuttered for a moment before actually getting out the words, "I have no idea."

Luke, always the paper tiger, was beginning to resent his futility with regard to her decisions.

"Because of Rory?"

"Yeah."
The potential for projectile anger was increasing by the second. "Look," he started. "There is no reason whatsoever for you to have any further contact this guy. I mean, for God's sake, get a restraining order, or-- or-- hire a hitman or something, because this guy shouldn't even be breathing right now."

"Rory knows what happened," she responded quietly. "She can make her own decisions. I mean, I would hope she's smart enough to know not to ever even think about him again-- but you know, in the future, once she gets older and gets married and... I just want her to have the option of sending him a wedding announcement, at least, or using the blender he gets her or whatever. It's her choice, Luke."

Without warning, he was lifting her by the shoulder blades and sliding himself off the bed. Luke marched straight into his room and slammed the door, the wooden furniture in Lorelai's room trembling in the aftershock.

His sudden movements had startled her, and she rubbed her sternum absent-mindedly in an effort to ease the thudding against her rib cage.

The paint was peeling on the ceiling.

Sheets a bit musty.

Little sprigs of wildflowers on the wallpaper.

Don't cry.

She heard him open the door to the other room just as forcefully as he'd closed it. His strides were long as he walked right up to where she was lying, jamming a finger in her face.

"Oh, yeah? And what if he does this to Rory?"

She closed her eyes, hearing his receding footsteps. Slam.

"Luke!"

She jumped up after him, ignoring the soreness in her body, and flung open his door. He was pacing back and forth in his room.
"You don't understand the situation, okay? And you have no right to question my judgment. I know Christopher better than he knows himself, he would never do anything to hurt Rory."

He glared at her, holding back a sneer. "Then how come, seeing as you know him so goddamn well, you didn't see this coming?"
She stared at him, wishing she hadn't set herself up for that.

Knowing she had no recourse, he continued. "I know exactly what's going to happen. You'll ignore him for awhile, then something or someone crappy will come along and you'll get all swept up in all that bullshit again-- the thought of you guys being a family, of having a happy ending to all the crap you two have been through together."

"No, I--"

"And I'm sure it's tempting, it's a nice thought that Rory could have a dad around to give her... whatever her dad could give her, baseball tips or dictionaries or whatever, but I'm just waiting." His voice dropped. "I'm just waiting for you to realize that Rory having a dad doesn't necessarily have to mean Christopher. That jackass has never done her any good, and you know it."

His accusatory finger dropped to his side and he retreated, sitting back down on the bed.

Lorelai, her hands upturned on her waist, crossed the room and joined him. A calm, sympathetic, insistent hand went to his knee.
"I understand that Rory doesn't necessarily need Christopher in her life to have a father, Luke. I get that. But he's... he's a part of her. Whether I can help that or not, he's half the reason she exists and nothing can change that."

He continued to stare at his hands, clasped across his lap.
"Well, Chris is about a third of the reason, actually. I'm another third. The rest of the responsibility might be shouldered by Jose Cuervo."

His lack of response, or even faint hint of acknowledgment, only widened the chasm.

"And as for he and I-- you know."

"Getting back together," he supplied.

"Yes. Right, getting back together. It's out of the question, completely. I mean, what's so painful about this whole thing isn't necessarily the fact that he... you know, hit me. Of course, yeah, he hit me-- if it were just that, and Rory weren't in the picture somehow, I would've had him drawn and quartered anyway-- but he revoked any chance I had at being with someone real, finally having a partner I can trust and confide in and... you know, all that relationshippy stuff I never really got to have."

"And you wanted that with him?"

She was silent. And she knew she shouldn't have been for that long. Or at all. "He was... familiar. He was someone I didn't have to get to know all over again as an adult."

Luke exhaled long, audibly, like one does when something is finally understood. By the other person.

"Oh, God. That sounds so pathetic. Does that sound pathetic?" It made her cringe that she even had to ask. She buried her face in her hands. Pathetic. Didn't want to hear Luke's response.

When he did speak, it was from somewhere that felt far, far behind her. "Well, no, I understand the whole dating thing. You try to avoid that whenever possible."

He waited. She groaned into her hands.

"And you already knew someone who met all the criteria. In most respects."

"So... you get it?" She turned her head just enough to see him out of the corner of her eye. He was leaning back, hands on the mattress behind him.

"Well, I didn't before."

"But it turned out that way?"

He glanced at her quickly then sat himself up. Didn't answer.

Didn't have to. Pathetic.

"You wanted companionship. Someone to share things with."

"Yeah."

"Someone who knows you really well. Already. Without spending time plowing his way through the convoluted synapses of your mind."

"Yeah..."

"Someone who, ahem, tolerates your yammering and needling and pointless banter and diatribes and--"

"Yeah," she interrupted.

He was quiet, poking curiously, intently, at a threadbare spot in the blanket. "But it didn't have to be Chris."

He eyed her cautiously as she removed her head from her hands, resting her chin on a fist. "No. It didn't."

She looked at him then. Right at his eyes, because she knew what he meant. He stared back at her just as intensely. This was one of those times when she'd look away, or he would. But neither did.

"But I didn't know that." She hadn't planned on saying that, but there it was. A hushed whisper between them.

"You should have." It thrummed in her chest. His voice; low and quiet and reverberating.

She swallowed, peripherally picking out silhouettes of furniture around the room while her eyes stayed fixed on him. Her chest tightening, voice faltering. "Why did you bring me here?"
He leaned in, reaching out a hand and scarcely brushing his fingertips across the skin under her eye. She was stilled. Lips parted. Breathing silently.

"Because you needed me to." He squinted in the darkness, barely recognizing the shadow around her eye.

She pictured his face in front of hers, dimly lit by the Stars Hollow streetlamp. She remembered his eyes searching her body, his thumb tracing the stains down her cheek. She felt her feet ache against the warm cement.

Smelled his flannel as he carried her to his truck, arms gripping tightly her back, her legs.

Smelled his soap as he sat next to her now. Held her breath, body tense and flushed in the thick silence. Frightened.

She wanted him to reach for her, pull her close, let her curl up in his lap. Fall asleep while he stroked her hair again, because he'd only done it twice tonight, yet she could still feel his fingers against her skin. She could still feel his chest rising and falling steadily; solidly.

She wanted him to hold her.

She waited under his stare for him to move. He didn't. He sat there, unflinching. And breathing hard. She felt like screaming.
She clasped her hands around his, pulling it away from her face and into her lap. He shifted in place then, the mattress squeaking beneath. The crickets and the wall clock suddenly becoming audible as though they weren't before.

"Well. Thank you, then. You know, for... tolerating the synapses of my mind." She smirked, rising hesitantly from the bed. Wobbly and unbalanced in the darkness.

"Oh, anytime." He slipped his hand from hers. Immediately drew it back to the fray. "You should know by now that I'm used to it."
She stood in the doorway, watching him toy nervously with the blanket. Couldn't make out his eyes anymore. "Oh, I do. " She spoke to his shadow.

He looked up just as she turned to leave, just catching the faintest smile on her lips.