Plans of Reunion

Summary: The S.H.B.A., S.H.T.B., S.H.N.W.O., S.H.C.C.S.H.C., aka Taylor, want the town sweethearts together again. When he mentions it at a town meeting, everyone starts plotting, and Miss Patty has a plan that just might work. Narco future fic.

Pairing: Rory/Dean with mentioned Luke/Lorelai.

Disclaimer: If I were Amy Sherman-Palladino I'd have better things to do than write fan fiction. And you'd be seeing this story unfold onscreen soon. Well, actually you wouldn't, because Rory and Dean would never have broken up in the first place, so the town wouldn't need to plot to get them back together.

AN: Sorry, I know I'm rushing the plot, but I want to finish the story before I lose my inspiration. It's already partly gone.

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Rory and Dean were locked into Miss Patty's.

The practices after the first one were no better. Rory and Dean hadn't spoken two words in a row to each other, and their dancing skills weren't any better than they had been in the first practice. Patty and Taylor were on their last nerves, and they were beginning to doubt their plan. After a month, during a Friday practice, Miss Patty snapped. She yelled that she was going to lock them in until they could talk to each other. So she threw a couple loaves of bread into the studio and padlocked all of the doors. They hadn't even known that Miss Patty had padlocks.

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"This is awful!" Rory exclaimed after an hour of silence.

"I know," Dean grumbled.

"No, not being locked in. Us! Even when we weren't together, we could always be friends." Dean looked up at her, meeting her gaze for the first time since they'd begun the lessons.

"You still want to be friends?"

"Of course. Do you?" her voice wavered.

"Sure, I just didn't think you did."

"Why would you think that?"

"You never called."

"Neither did you."

"But I broke up with you. I didn't know if you'd be upset."

"Yes, you broke up with me. I thought you must be upset to do that."

"I wasn't."

"Then why did you break up with me?"

"The guilt," he said, looking down on at his hands. "I couldn't look at you without feeling awful for what happened with Lindsay. It was always there, always hanging over us." Rory looked at him, shocked. She hadn't known that. She'd thought he hadn't loved her after all. Would she have thrown herself into her destructive relationship with Logan if she had? "Well, now I've told you my big secret," he half-joked. "Your turn."

"I..." she started. Could she actually tell him this? "I was actually excited when Miss Patty said she was locking us in here." Dean looked at her, a bit taken aback.

"I meant what you were feeling back then."

"Oh," she said, embarrassed.

"But since you mentioned it, why?"

"Well, I wanted us to be friends again, and it didn't seem like that was going to happen." Even in the poor lighting in the dance studio, he could see in her eyes that there was another reason.

"And?" he prompted.

"And nothing," she said too quickly. She knew he didn't believe her, and suddenly she knew that she wanted him to know. "And I wanted to have an excuse to get away from my boyfriend," she admitted. His jaw practically dropped to the floor. "I'll bet you weren't expecting that."

"If I you had made me guess, it would have been pretty low down on my list of guesses. Why don't you break up with him?"

"Because my grandparents love him. They need me with someone they love, after Mom married Luke." Dean turned his head and chuckled disbelievingly into the darkness. "What?"

"Well, just look at you."

"What do you mean?"

"Here you are, in school a year after you should have graduated, dating a guy you don't like just to make your grandparents happy because your mother married the man she was obviously supposed to marry. I just...I expected better from you."

"What about you? You should have graduated last year, too, and you should be working some good job now, or be coaching a sports team, with some beautiful deserving blonde, who I would no doubt hate instantly, as your girlfriend.. You could have done anything with your life, why are you still working at Doose's?"