A/N- Thanks for your reviews, guys. I figured we need some fluff on this site. I'm glad you guys like. Don't be shy about reviewing this chapter too.
Dedicated- To Papa. And my best friend Ally, because she knows without me having to say anything.
Disclaimer: I bought Donnie Darko on DVD yesterday. I never bought Gilmore Girls. Still belongs to AS-P.
Daddies
"Luke, have you seen my keys?"
"Ugh, Lorelai, not again!"
"What? I swear I put them down on the kitchen counter!... Or the coffee table... Or in Ava's room?" Luke sighed,
"Third time, Lorelai! The third time this week!"
"I've found them every time, though."
"No you haven't. One of the kids has found them every time." Lorelai shook her head,
"Oh, no. Come. Help me look in the den." As Luke lifted the ottoman and Lorelai threw the couch cushions askew, the front door opened.
"Hello? Anybody home?"
"In here, Ella!" Six-year-old Ella skipped in,
"Hi Papa," she kissed her grandfather's cheek and then her grandmother's, "Hi Grandma," Ella fished into her pockets and pulled out a shiny keychain, "Grandma, you left your keys in the door."
"Ah! Bless you, child. Jack! Ava! Call off the search! Ella found them." Jack and Ava came running down the stairs, each looking more than slightly disheveled.
"Sure, Ella's here two seconds and she finds the keys," Jack quipped.
"Luck," Ava groaned, rubbing at her feet, sore from running from place to place, trying to find her mother's keys. As Lorelai carefully put her keys into her purse, Luke turned to his granddaughter,
"Where are your mom and dad?"
"In the car. They'll be out in a second. Mommy took out daddy's Led Zeppelin and replaced it with The Who. Daddy's fighting to get his Zeppelin back."
"Ok." Ella ran up the stairs to Ava and Jack, and the three excitedly climbed the stairs to Ava's room, which was next door to the room that Ella had claimed as her own for the nights she'd spent over.
As Lorelai pulled on her coat, the front door opened,
"Mom? Dad?"
"In here, Rory!" Rory rounded the corner, kissing each of her parents on the cheek,
"Where are the kids?"
"Upstairs."
"Ok, we should get going." Jess came through the front door,
"Hey, Luke. Hey, Lorelai."
"Hey, honey. You ready for a fun-filled day of elementary school kids?"
"Always." Lorelai called up the stairs,
"Kids?"
"We're in Ella's room!" Luke rolled his eyes; his granddaughter had not only claimed the room as her own, but she'd managed to redesign it without lifting a paintbrush. Pictures of her family, drawings she'd made, and her own schoolwork adorned the wall. Her toys were in a toy chest against the wall. The bedspread had become Ava's spare Little Mermaid sheets. Ella slept over anywhere between two and four times a month, just to give her parents a night to themselves, and Jack and Ava occasionally slept at Rory and Jess' house.
"Well, come down! We need to talk to you!" Three sets of small footsteps approached the stairs and barreled down.
"You're going?" asked Jack.
"Yeah."
"Mommy, who's going again?" Ava asked, scratching at a scab on her arm.
"Ave, mommy and Rory are going out for a girls' day. Daddy and Jess are watching you. And stop picking that thing." Ava's hands fell to her side,
"Sorry."
"It's ok. Come. We're going. Hugs and kisses all around." The kids skipped down the stairs and threw their arms around their mothers, then switching and saying goodbye to their respective sister or grandmother. The two women waved goodbye to their husbands and children, who turned to Luke and Jess.
"Let's play a game," suggested Jack.
The two men and three children sat around the coffee table for the next two hours, playing two games of Clue (Of which Ava and Ella each won one), one game of Life (won by Jess), and a game of Pretty, Pretty Princess (won by a very conflicted Jack). When Ella announced, climbing onto her father's lap,
"I'm bored." Luke stood up and stretched,
"What do you guys wanna do now?" Ava shrugged,
"Can we cook something, daddy?" Luke nodded,
"I don't see why not."
"Yeah, well, while you're doing that, I'm gonna clean up the board games," announced Jess as the others stood up. The girls skipped to the kitchen and Jack and Luke walked side-by-side.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, Jack?"
"Don't tell mom about the Pretty, Pretty Princess thing." Luke laughed,
"It'll be our secret, Jacky."
"And make sure the girls don't either!"
"I will."
"Thank you, dad."
"No problem," They entered the kitchen to find the girls pulling everything out of the fridge. Luke stepped back, "Woah, woah! Itchy, Scratchy! What are you doing?"
"Getting ready to cook, daddy."
"Yeah, papa. We're getting the ingredients."
"No, no, girls. If you're gonna cook, the first thing you do is get out the cookbook and read the ingredients." Ella shrugged,
"I thought we were gonna cook something that we created."
"Tell you what. I have a recipe in there that I cooked for your mommy when she got pregnant with you. We'll cook that." Ava put her hands on her hips,
"What about something that's mine?"
"That is yours, Ave. We found out Rory was gonna have Ella the day that you came home from the hospital. This cake is the 'Ava's birth-Jack's a big brother-Rory's having a baby' cake," the kids stared at him, "Your moms named it."
"Oh."
"Jack, Ava, go find my cookbook."
"Which?"
"The one that has mom and Rory's drawings on the front." Jack and Ava ran off to the den, where Jess was finishing cleaning up the game.
"Papa?"
"Yeah, Bel?"
"How come it's 'Ava's being born' cake, 'Jack's big brother' cake, but not an 'Ella' anything cake?"
"What? Ella, I told you that I made that cake when we found out that your mommy was gonna have you."
"No," Ella said, badly hiding the tears welling up in her eyes, "You said you made it when you found out mommy was having a baby. Not me. That wasn't a cake for me."
"Oh, Ella, it was," he said, picking her up.
"Then how come my name wasn't on it?"
"Because we didn't know you were gonna be you, Bel."
"But it's still partly my cake?"
"Of course, Bella."
"Ok," she wiped at her eyes and Luke squeezed her, kissing her temple.
Jack and Ava re-entered the kitchen, cookbook in hand,
"We found it, daddy."
"Did you put the rest of the books back the way they were?" Ava coyly shook her head, a mischievous grin overtaking her features, "Fix them, please. Both of you."
Jack dropped the book and he and Ava ran back out as Jess sauntered into the kitchen,
"What happened in here?" Luke put Ella down,
"The girls decided that to make cake, we need bacon."
"What?"
"They pulled everything out of the fridge."
"Ella, did you do that?" Jess asked, turning to his daughter.
"Yes, daddy. But we didn't know what we were going to be cooking." Jess rolled his eyes,
"Well, clean up," he instructed, pushing a stray hair away from his daughter's face and kissing her forehead. As she put the bacon away and Luke pulled out the pans for the cake, Jess whispered to him,
"What happened?"
"Nothing big. But I'd suggest putting her to sleep early tonight."
"Ok." Ava and Jack came back in and Luke instructed them and Ella to wash their hands.
The two men pulled up chairs for the three children and helped them cook, pouring the ingredients into the bowl. Each child broke an egg, and Luke went to get the chocolate chips to put in, but he stopped when he heard the doorbell ring.
"I'll be right back. Jess, two cups of chocolate chips." Luke opened the front door to Kirk, standing with a little girl, a virtual clone of her father.
"Kirk," Luke greeted. Then, with an impatient sigh, he added, "Kirkette."
"Luke, yes, hello."
"What can I do for you?" Luke asked, closing the door behind him.
"I would like to speak to you about your daughter and granddaughter."
"What about them, Kirk?"
"Well, according to my Kirkette, your Ella borrowed her pen and didn't return it."
"What?"
"Ella. Little girl. Your daughter." Luke narrowed his eyes,
"Ella's my granddaughter."
"What?"
"Ella. She's my granddaughter."
"Ok, I'm confused. Who are your children again? I know that there's one named Joe..."
"Get to the point, Kirk."
"Well, one of them... Ella... Avon... borrowed a pen from my daughter and did not give it back."
"Well, I'll ask them about it, Kirk."
"And the other," Kirk forged on, "promised to play with Kirkette at recess and never did. I ask that you speak to the children about their behavior."
"I'll get right on that."
"Good. Now, may I interest you in some Girl Scout cookies?" Luke was about to respond with failing patience, but he heard Jess' distressed calls from inside,
"Luke, I think you'd better come in here!" Luke looked at Kirk and Kirkette,
"I've gotta go. I'll talk to the girls about it. Goodbye, Kirk. Kirkette." Luke spun and opened the door to the house, jogging to the kitchen.
"What happened here?" Jess stood in the corner laughing,
"I went to answer my cell phone in the den and I came back and... well, you can see what happened."
Ella and Ava, each sporting a Cheshire-cat grin, were covered in cake batter. It was on their noses, in their hair, on their shirts, and all over their hands.
"Girls, what did you do?"
"We wanted some batter."
"I tried to stop them, dad," Jack said, shaking his head. He was clean save for a spot of batter on his cheek.
"Ava, Ella, bath. Now."
"But daddy..."
"Ava. Now."
"Papa, I..."
"Ella. Go."
"Daddy?" Ella asked, turning to her father.
"Go, El. I'm with your papa on this one." The girls stomped upstairs, whispering to each other,
"Now we can't help bake the cake!"
"We're not that messy!" Luke ran upstairs and turned the water on for the girls, instructing them to turn it off when it got to the line that he and Lorelai had drawn on the tub. He ran back downstairs, where Jess was cleaning up.
"I got that."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Why don't you help Jack pour the batter into the pan?"
"Ok."
Luke mopped up the mess and, ten minutes later, ran upstairs to check on the girls. He pulled them out of the tub and sent them into their bedrooms, pulling out pajamas from each of their drawers. As he helped Ava button her 'Cinderella' pajama top, they heard the front door open,
"Hello?"
"Anybody here?"
"Mommy!" Ava called, breaking away and running down the stairs. Ella followed her, skipping the stairs two at a time.
"Hi, girls!" Lorelai greeted, opening her arms to hug them, Jack, already there, shifting to her right. Jess came in and kissed his wife,
"How was your day?"
"Good. How were they?"
"They were... exciting." Rory kissed Ella's head and pulled back,
"Did you take a bath?"
"Papa and daddy made Ava and me take a bath."
"How come?" Luke kissed Lorelai,
"They... took two baths."
"Dad, what happened?"
"One in cake batter and one in a tub." Lorelai and Rory looked at each other,
"There's cake?" Luke laughed,
"For after dinner."
"So what did you do today?" asked Lorelai, putting her arm around her son and taking her youngest daughter's hand in hers as they all walked into the kitchen.
"We played games! And I won Clue, and Ava won Clue," Ella said excitedly from her mother's hip.
"You both won Clue?"
"We played twice. And Jess won Life," announced Ava, "And Jacky won..."
"Nothing! I didn't win anything!" Jack said defensively. Ella leaned over to Jack,
"Don't worry, Jack. I think you're the prettiest princess."