One Less Mistake

Summary: What if Lorelai hadn't gotten pregnant until she was 20? What if she had agreed to marry Christopher when she did? AU.

Pairings: Rory/Dean, with Lor/Luke later on

Disclaimer: All of these characters belong to Amy Sherman-Palladino and the WB

AN: I just realized, Emily and Richard Gilmore have yet to make an appearance. This chapter is devoted to bits of Narco fluff and Luke and Lor's first meeting, so I'll work them into the next chapter. I'm really sorry if this gets confusing. There's a lot of dialogue.

Rory felt like she was flying. She wondered if all kisses did this to a person, or just Dean's. She was willing to put a lot of money on the latter. After what felt like seconds, and hours at the same time, she fell back onto her heels as he straightened up.

"That was nice." she whispered, breathless.

"Yeah." he smiled, and wrapped his arms around her.

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"You really miss him, don't you." Lorelai said, snapping Rory out of her dreamy daze.

"I shouldn't. He's only been gone since Thursday night, and he comes back on Monday. That's only two days away."

"One day without him and you're in withdrawal. You should tell him."

"Haha."

"We could go visit him, wherever he is."

"In Stars Hollow? It's only twenty minutes away, and he did say Luke's place has the best coffee in the world..."

"Excellent. We'll just say we wanted coffee. Really, really good coffee."

"Are you insane? He'll know."

"That we wanted really, really good coffee? Of course he will, we're the Lorelais."

"That I was pining for him. And if he wasn't missing me, I'll feel stupid."

"Oh, Rory, darling, love of my life. You told me about Luke's where the happy coffee is, you cannot cut me off from it. I want it. Oh, I wonder if he does Danish Day?"

"Mom! We can't go. I'll feel stupid."

"Then I'm going without you."

"You can't go without me! Then he'll know that I'm not only pining after him, I don't trust him enough to tell him that I'm pining after him, or that I don't care about him enough to drive twenty minutes to see him. He drove twenty minutes to get me something he could have gotten two minutes away if he didn't care so much about the quality."

"Well, I care just as much about the quality as Dean, so I'm driving twenty minutes to get the coffee. You know, he's probably missing you just as much as you're missing him. New girlfriend and all that. And anyways, he'll believe you if you say you offhandedly told me that Dean's staying at a place with the best coffee on earth, and I just had to go get a cup, and of course you came along. You like good coffee almost as much as I do, plus, your boyfriend was going to be there, so why would you stay home?" Rory's eyes lit up.

"Should we tell Dad and Topher?"

"Let them freak out."

"I don't know..." Lorelai took out her keys and swung them in front of Rory's face.

"You know you want to, all the cool kids are doing it."

"Let's go."

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"So, Dean, what's new in your life?" Luke asked. They were sitting at the table in Luke's apartment above his diner wiht Jess and Lindsay.

"He's got a new girlfriend. She's twelve." Jess said with his mouth full.

"Seventeen." Dean corrected. "She turns eighteen in about three weeks."

"Same thing. They're sleeping together." Jess continued.

"No we're not."

"She answered his door at six in the morning in his clothes right after she woke up." Dean glared at him. "Sorry."

"So, what's this new girlfriend like?" Luke asked.

"She's really nice. Really pretty, really smart. She's probably going to Harvard next year. She has a coffee dependency. She's kind of shy, but she can be really talkative. In a good way."

"Oh, man." Jess groaned.

"What?" Dean asked.

"You miss her already, don't you? You two have been apart for what, twenty-five hours, and you already miss her."

"You're really one to talk."

"Me?"

"I seem to recall a certain incident almost two years and a half years ago where-"

"You're misrecalling."

"Misrecalling is not a word. So anyways, as I was saying-"

"Hey, does anyone else want a beer? Because I'm getting really-" Lindsay covered his mouth with her hand.

"Go on, Dean," she said, a wicked gleam in her eye, "I want to hear this."

"Of course. So two an a half years ago, I went with Jess to visit his father in California. So, we're driving out west, because neither of us could afford a plane ticket, and it's probably been about a day or so, this is a four or five day car ride, by the way, when Jess says really suddenly, 'what do you think she's doing right now?' so I ask him what he's talking about, naturally, and he goes on for about five hours about Lindsay, and how much he misses her. For the rest of the trip he sings along with every sappy country song on the radio, every little thing we see that is remotely pretty reminds him of her. He saw this tortoise, with a kind of pretty shell, and-"

"No, no, no, you are not telling that part!"

"He says, 'oh, that shell is so pretty, just like Lindsay. I miss her. Hey Dean? Do you think she's missing me right now?'" Luke and Lindsay burst into laughter. "Four days of this. In a car. With no escape route."

"Oh, Dean, you need to come back more often." Lindsay laughed.

"No, he can't, he'd miss his girlfriend too much, then we'd be stuck with 'oh, that pillow is so pretty, just like Rory. I miss her. Hey Jess? Luke? Lindsay? Do you think she misses me?'" Jess said waspishly.

"Well, as much as I hate to leave just when things are getting interesting, Ceasar needs to take his dinner break, so I need to get back to work." Luke said.

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Rory followed Lorelai into the diner just as a man in a flannel shirt and backwards baseball cap walked past the door with a pot of coffee. He collided with Lorelai, splashing the coffee all over her.

"Oh, I am so sorry." he said, looking at her shirt.

"No, it's okay. I practically live on the stuff, it's very fitting that I be clothed in it as well."

"Well, good. I have a bathroom around there, if you want to clean up."

"Okay, thanks."

"I heard a scream." Jess said as he walked down the stairs and into the diner.

"Jess?" Rory asked.

"Dean! Your girlfriend's here! You can stop comparing the pillows to her now!" he yelled up the stairs.

"That was definitely you!" Dean yelled back as he ran down the stairs. "Rory! You really are here!"

"Yeah. I am. What was that about the pillows?"

"Oh, well, Jess here once missed his girlfriend so much, he thought a turtle with a pretty shell looked like her."

"And you told everyone, so he had to get back at you."

"Yes. But he made up the pillow thing."

"Good. I don't think it's very flattering to be compared to a pillow, but on the other hand, if a pillow reminded you of me, then everything must have reminded you of me." he laughed.

"Come here!" she ran to him, and he twirled her up in the air, kissing her.

"Hmm, I like having a tall boyfriend who can spin me around."

"Well, that works, because I like having a girlfriend who is small enough to be spun around."

"And you teased me for being a sap." Jess pitched in.

"You're a closet sap. I'm an open sap." Dean rebutted.

"Yeah, Jess, you are a sap." Lindsay laughed.

"Okay, come here." Jess said, opening his arms.

"I'm taller than you are. You won't be able to spin me like that."

"Oh, great, I love having my nose rubbed in that."

"I'm guessing you're Lindsay, Jess' fiancee." Rory asked.

"Yup. You must be Rory." she replied.

"Yeah. Good to meet you."

"You too."

"And the man in the flannel who thought my mom would look good in brown would be Luke." Rory announced.

"Yup, I've heard a lot about you, Rory." Luke said. "I'd hug you, but I'm not too big on hugs."

"That's fine."

"Rory, how would you like a tour of the town?" Dean asked.

"I would love one."

"We can come too." Lindsay offered. "Not for all of it, just a little bit."

"Sounds good."

"Hey, what'd I miss?" Lorelai asked as she bounced eagerly into the room.

"Mom, this is Dean, as you know." Rory started the introductions.

"Yes, I do."

"And Jess, Jess' fiancee Lindsay, and Luke."

"Luke himself, maker of the good coffee?"

"Yes, that Luke."

"So, what do you say? Table in the corner so no one can come up behind us and whack us over the head with a cannolli?"

"Actually, Dean was going to give me a tour of the town."

"Is this an actual tour, or a 'let's go make out and call it a tour' tour?"

"You can't come."

"Okay. Bye." Rory, Dean, Jess, and Lindsay left the diner. "Hey wait! Why can they go? That's not fair!"

"So, Luke, do you have any danishes?"

"Yes."

"Any coffee that's not on me?"

"Yes."

"Can I have some?"

"Maybe, if you tell me what's with the cannolli thing."

"Because he left the gun and took the cannolli. Coffee and danish, please."

"You drove all the way out here for coffee and a danish that you didn't even know if I had?"

"Yes. Give it over."

"Twenty minutes for a potential coffee and danish?"

"Yes. Give me the damn food!"

"Coffee's not food."

"Please. I live off coffee. My life is coffee, good, Rory, good, Emily, bad."

"The only things you need in your life is coffee, Rory and a lack of Emilies, which I'm not even going to ask about. That cannolli thing was lame."

"Actually, now that I think about it, I need hamburgers, poptarts, any type of deep-fried potatoes, pizza..."

"I get the feeling you could go on for hours."

"I could. And the Emily thing wasn't a Godfather reference."

"The cannolli bit was from the Godfather? No wonder it was so lame."

"Yes, well, Emily Post Gilmore is my mother."

"Your mother's Emily Post?"

"No, my mother is Emily Gilmore. She just thinks she's Emily Post. She yelled at me for returning hoity-toity crystal candlesticks, and exchanging them for a crazy hat. Then she looked at my husband and smiled at him, and went on about how he was a lovely young man, with a fine upbringing, whose mother was a dear friend of hers, and how he should help me learn my manners. Then she turned on my poor kids, who were only ten and eight, by the way, and enrolled them in manner lessons."

"Emily Post would have taught them herself."

"Yeah, well, my mother's a failure at everything she does. Such as raising me, impersonating a dead woman."

"She pretended to be a ghost? That sounds like a good story."

"I meant Emily Post. Who died about forty something years ago."

"Oh, right I knew that."

"You totally did not know that."

"How much do you wanna bet?"

"That doesn't work, because you can just pretend you knew, even if you really didn't know."

"Coffee?"

"Yes. And a danish, please."