"Well, this doesn't look at all suspicious." Max expression didn't give way to much surprise.

"Luke was worried about me." Lorelai's words didn't sound as sure as usual. She caught falling gaze and followed it to her stomach, remembering what was there.

"Oh, um." Lorelai brushed Luke's embrace off softly, blushing in the action.

"Clearly."

Lorelai opened her mouth to speak but closed it again, whispering, "I'm really sorry Max."

Rory looked between her mom and her teacher, and then to Luke. He seemed to be feeling as out of place as her. She could see that if he stayed to hear her mom and Max argue or make up that something could go wrong, so she approached him, staying close to the hallway wall.

Luke heard Rory speak to him, trying to signal him to follow her. He turned to walk after her, turning another corner and looked back at Lorelai and Max, who were currently still in a small silence with Lorelai looking down and Max staring at her. His expression unreadable. Turning after Rory, he followed.

"Would you care to tell me what exactly has been going on these past few days?" Max was still going over how Luke had gotten there before him, and the headache that he had had wasn't getting any better after just seeing his fiancé's and the "He's just a friend" that he had heard so much about, in that particular position. Not to mention the pictures of the other positions they might have been in while he was stuck in that stupid closet.

"I can't marry you Max." Lorelai had been dreading this. She had hoped that the word of him coming hadn't ever happened and that she were still up in the room with Luke, but apparently reality had it's own ideas about what she needed to be doing.

"So I gathered."

Rory pulled Luke into one of the dining rooms as Max and Lorelai got out of earshot. "What are your intentions?"

The question caught Luke off guard, it wasn't what he expected on hearing right after she had just witnessed the chaos that seemed set on happening. "Um." Luke looked around nervously while trying to avoid Rory's stare.

"I need to know if my leading around Mr. Medina and getting stuck in a luggage closet was worth it or not. I need a recommendation letter and a good grade to get to Harvard you know."

Rory tried stating her qualms as calmly as she could under the circumstances. She would have loved having Mr. Medina as a stepfather, he may not really have ever been on the Gilmore's same page but he did seem to bring some kind of steadiness to their usually wacky lifestyle.

"You did that?"

He had been wondering where she and Max had been all that time he was up in the room with Lorelai, but he didn't think that Rory would have been deliberately been trying to avert him away. If Rory hadn't, the moment upstairs might not have gone so smoothly. He made sure to take a mental note of giving Rory coffee whenever she asked from then on.

"As difficult a task of accidentally getting locked in a closet with your teacher is, yes I did. So was this in vain or not?"

"I'm not sure about answering this without your mom present, but I think, no I know, I know it was." Luke seemed to be going through quite a lot of conflicting versions of what might have gone up on the bed a few minutes ago and on the stair case and what was going on in the hallway not so far away.

"Glad to see you're so sure." Rory couldn't help but smile at Luke's awkwardness, like he had no clue what so ever of what was going on.

Which he didn't.

Luke kept on thinking that what had happened might have been a fluke, "a very long and carried out fluke, but a fluke non the less. She was getting married, to her daughter's teacher no less, and it was supposed to be in a few days!"

"What were you guys doing up there to make you think, maybe, yes it was worth it."

Rory smiled. She enjoyed messing around with Luke like this. It felt like she were teasing an older brother or friend about how a date went. "Father wouldn't be quite the correct term for that analogy, because that would imply that he wasn't with mom…" this train thought intrigued her.

Luke blushed at this and tried to hide the smile that was threatening to spread across his face.

Seeing this Rory beamed. "I'm so happy for you!" With that she hugged him, she may have liked Max as a maybe constant but Luke seemed to fit better, know their quirks and manage to get by them by only having to roll his eyes or make a remark about an early death count pertaining to other's with their eating habits.

Luke froze as Rory gave him a quick hug. With an awkward laugh returned it.

"How'd he get here so fast? Did you give him directions?"

Lorelai doubled back is she heard the question. "She had just been thinking about the best way to explain everything that had been going on, that he unfortunately had to put on hold, and now she asks her how Luke got there at the speed he did?" This was an odd turn of conversation.

"He drove here I'm guessing, and know, he showed up without much warning."

"I left right after I saw him too…" Max was beginning to mumble now Lorelai noticed.

"You saw him?"

"Yep, right before I left to come here I went to his apartment to see if you were there…"

Lorelai tensed up at this.

"Why would I have been there?"

She didn't know whether to feel insulted at the insinuation or give a sigh of relief that the thing between her and Luke wouldn't be such a shock. Not that she was particularly sure what the "thing" was exactly. She was still on a buzz from the whole situation of earlier and Max had always hinted that he had suspicious before. "Alright, so suspicious might be an understatement. He had practically accused her of being with him during their previous break up, but that didn't mean that he thought that what didn't happen then was still carrying over since then."

"You're kidding me right?"

Max seemed so sure that he had hit this on the head, and it showed as he spoke. It was like he had already accepted it but was still reluctant to admit that he had loss. Lorelai felt awful that he had really trusted her so little, but in the affect of the current events of the evening, it didn't seem like he should have.

"There really wasn't anything before." It was her last defense. The argument couldn't seem to get any stronger than that. There was nothing else that she could say with out digging a deeper hole than she already had.

Rory and Luke had dodged into another hallway as a stray guest had walked by, still humming something or other. Rory thought she recognized it as a Bowie tune but was to busy finding an exit to mention it, the reference would probably go wasted on Luke. She didn't seem to get the same pleasure from his "Jeeze" as her mother did, which was probably for the best.

"So are you and mom together now?"

"I thought we were."

He seemed so sad. He and mom and shared something up there. Rory didn't exactly want to picture anything, but knowing how her mom and Luke seemed to click, like the door and the lock coincidentally, she knew it had to have been something that she would hear about later, hopefully edited and abridged.

"I think you are."

"You think so?"

It still seemed kind of odd to Luke to be having this conversation with his somewhat surrogate daughter, but it was nice to have some kind of reassurance. He wasn't sure when he'd get any more.

"I know so."

They continued walking down the hall, passing several rain-laced windows. She hoped so.

-TBC-

Sorry for the shortness again, I had to recover from loosing half of my day to running around without purpose. As well as yesterday, or the day before's , now that it's half past midnight. My mom got back from Atlanta when I was about to post it so it's a little late now I hope that you guys forgive easily.

Thank you again Cooperboom107, Luke's Girl, and goclo I couldn't do this without you. Cravingcoffee as well!

If I don't catch all of grammar errors, I'm sorry to say that they're like Jess, please tell me, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get around to fixing them.

RORY: Maybe, like, you could limit the reports to just significant sightings. If you see him a hundred yards away, disappearing around a corner, I really don't need to know that. If he comes up to you and spits in your face, report that.

LORELAI: Permission to spit back?

You're turn now Copper, doubly so lol,

En