A/N: Many thanks for the comments—feedback is always appreciated. And demanded. But mostly appreciated. This one's mostly set-up to get us to the good stuff (well, I say good stuff) in October and beyond, hence the brevity. I love my exposition.

A/N 2: You've heard me sing the praises of my badass beta, all things holy, a thousand million times. There's more! She and I have jointly written a fic that we would love for you to read—it's set to go out on Wednesday, and the title is "The Presence of Absence," under our joint account name Holy Lulalicious. Please give it a read and tell us what you think.

Disclaimer: I love the Lorelais and all their folk, but they don't belong to me. Thanks, Amy. They rock.

September

The first of the month fell on a Wednesday. A convention of bird watchers came to town and filled the Dragonfly, and Lorelai smiled her best plastic smile for them as they trouped through the lobby. In her head she was calculating a flower order for an engagement party the following week and trying to remember which phone call she had to make before three o'clock or else something important wouldn't happen. The less serious part of her brain was listening to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" on loop and trying to get her to dance while simultaneously choreographing an altogether different sort of dance with Luke as a featured player. The thought dully occurred to her that it was more action than either of them had seen for the last month. She retreated to the kitchen for coffee and something sweet, rolling her eyes.

While her mother was precariously balancing her workload, Rory was still figuring hers out. She wasn't much looking forward to Shopping Week, as her course load for the fall had pretty much picked itself—everything she'd need to take in the next year and a half had a prerequisite, and she'd loaded herself up for them now. She had signed up on a whim for a music theory course as well, but when she returned from Europe, she'd gone through the course guide and discovered Writing 220: Memoir and the Created World. The next three weeks were spent pestering the professor via email to get a seat in the already full class. She'd sent a writing sample and numerous pleas, but Professor Flynn wouldn't budge: there was a waiting list, and Rory wasn't at the top.

She went to class the first day in spite of this and parked herself at the end of the long seminar table, a notebook before her. She doodled as other students meandered in and found themselves seats; she was startled by a touch at her elbow just before the professor walked in. She looked up to see Marty sitting beside her, a goofy grin on his face.

"I didn't know you were in this class," Marty said.

Rory smiled sheepishly. "I'm not, yet."

He was about to reply when Professor Flynn bustled in, kicking the door shut behind her before she installed herself at the head of the table. She called roll and at the end asked if there were any names she'd missed. Rory wasn't tentative—she raised her hand immediately and almost felt compelled to get out of her seat, as though she were at Chilton and required to stand to give an answer.

"And you are?"

"Lorelai Gilmore," she said. "Rory."

Flynn stared at Rory over her glasses a moment. "Perseverance, thy name is Gilmore," she said. "There's still a waiting list, you realize, Miss Gilmore."

"I do," she said. "But I really, really want to be in this class."

"So I see," the professor said. She pursed her lips. "You can stay this afternoon. Come see me in my office tomorrow morning and we'll discuss it."

At the end of class, Rory's hand was cramped and stiff from freewriting and taking notes, her mind a scattered mess of words and phrases, cracked images and half ideas. Marty walked with her out of the building, enthusing about the class and how great he'd heard Flynn was.

"Where are you headed?"

"Kellynch Hall," she said.

"Hey, me too," Marty said, "third floor."

"Second."

He nodded and hitched his bag up on his shoulder a little. "So, when you get in the class, you want to partner up for peer reading?"

Rory's mouth fell open slightly as she tried to think of a polite denial. She didn't want to hurt his feelings, and while she knew he was smart, she also knew she was neurotically particular about her writing.

"I don't want to count my chickens, you know? I still might not get in."

"But if you do?"

"Ah, well, then, sure," she stuttered, unable to say no to someone so eager.

That evening, she rehearsed what she would say to the professor, how she would pitch herself and worm her way to the top of the waiting list, what her reply would be to each possible rebuttal. She planned on thoroughly being a pain in the ass; she thought her mother would be proud.

She rapped on the door of Professor Flynn's office just after nine the next morning and stepped in when commanded.

"Ah, Miss Gilmore," Flynn said. Her office was a cube of chaos—books and papers piled everywhere, empty coffee cups and take-out containers, posters still rolled and waiting to be hung, even shoes and jackets discarded and forgotten about. She wore her hair in a high, messy knot and cat's eye glasses. "Congratulations. You just convinced me. You're in."

"I'm sorry?" Rory asked, her brow furrowed. "That's it?"

"You're disappointed? I thought you wanted to be in this class, Miss Gilmore. Very well, that's fine, I can—"

"No," Rory said quickly, stepping forward. "I just—I thought I was going to have to work a little harder than that."

Flynn took off her glasses and squinted at them, seeming to examine their state of cleanliness. "No one else on the list showed up to class, sent a writing sample or pestered me about how important this class was to her, so I thought if you showed today, I'd take mercy on you and let you in." She rubbed her lenses with the hem of her shirt as she spoke.

Rory smiled gratefully. "Thank you so much, Professor Flynn, I can't tell you—"

She waved her hand and put her glasses back on, seating herself behind her desk and reaching for a legal pad. "Then don't. I'll see you in class Friday afternoon."

At the end of the day, after a rather trying dinner with Paris—who was compiling a list of discussion groups and clubs they had to join in the coming weeks, all of which had separate reading lists and presentations on top of her five classes—Rory curled up on her bed with her cell phone and dialed.

He was on his way out the door when the phone rang. She'd told him she didn't need food, that she'd taken care of it, and he'd grudgingly assented until he opened her fridge and saw the dismal state it was in. He stopped, his hand on the doorknob, and sighed before he turned and answered. "Hello?"

Rory furrowed her brow. "Luke?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, it's Rory," she said.

Luke passed a hand over his face, suddenly embarrassed. "Hi, Rory. How's it going?"

"Pretty well—classes have started and so far they all seem really interesting and the professors are cool, so I think it's going to be a good semester."

"Good. That's good."

"I think so," Rory said. She paused, and without meaning to slightly cleared her throat. She winced. "How are you?"

"Oh, you know," he said. "The same."

"Good." She waited, swallowed. "So... is Herself around?"

"Nah, she's still at the inn," Luke said. "You, ah, want me to have her call you back?"

Rory considered it a beat. "Um, you know what? No, that's okay. It's late already and I'm sure she's tired. She's been working so hard lately." She sighed. "Just—I guess tell her I called, and if she doesn't want to call back, I'll just see her tomorrow at dinner."

"Sure, Rory. Have a good one."

"You, too—and Luke?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell her—make her take it easy. Even if it's just tonight."

"I'll try," he said.

They hung up and Luke made to leave again; he was startled to open the door and find Joe standing on the porch, a pizza box on one arm and a large paper bag in his other hand. He smiled broadly at Luke.

"Hey, dude. I bring provisions," Joe said.

"Don't call me dude," Luke said, "and I didn't order this."

Joe shoved it at him. "Lorelai did. It's a Lorelai special. And other stuff, too. Paid for and everything."

Luke tipped Joe and brought the food to the kitchen. He heard her come in a few moments later as he laid things out on plates and poured drinks. She shuffled around quietly, pulling off her shoes and flopping heavily onto the couch. She smiled sleepily at him when he appeared at the end of the hall.

"Hey. Did the food come?"

"Food came," he said. He leaned against the wall. "How're you doing?"

She closed her eyes. "I'm tired. But I'm almost caught up on everything I have to do. Almost," she sighed. "Do you mind if we eat out here? I don't think I can get up again."

A Lorelai special, he discovered, was a pizza with extra everything, hot buffalo wings, and fried mozzarella sticks. The "other stuff" was for him—a green salad with vinaigrette dressing and a grilled chicken sub with extra hot peppers, the things she knew he'd like, or at least eat. They chatted idly as they ate and drank their beer. When she'd eaten her fill, she stretched out on the couch, her cheek pillowed on Luke's thigh as he played his fingers through her hair. He could see she was on the edge of dozing, about to drift off, when he remembered Rory had called. When he told her, she lifted her head to look at him.

"Am I the worst mother in the world for not wanting to call her back because I'm too tired?" she asked.

Luke slid his finger down the side of her face, regarding her sadly. "No."

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Good."

"Come on," he said, rising. He held out his hand. "Let's get you settled, and then I'll go."

She furrowed her brow, pouting. "Go?"

"So you can sleep."

"You can stay and I can sleep at the same time," she said.

"You just said you were tired."

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Too tired to talk to anyone, even Rory, but not too tired to spend some down time with my fella," she said.

Luke pulled her to her feet and led her to the stairs. "Your fella? What sort of down time are we talking about, here?" he asked, and she laughed.

As she changed into her pajamas and completed her other nightly rituals, Lorelai idly wondered if she should call and check in on her mother. She was, she knew, definitely too tired for that. She felt a slight pang of guilt as she curled up next to Luke and he turned off the light, but she was asleep before she had time to think about it.

Emily was sitting in her new living room, which was also her dining room and bedroom, reading by the light of a very dim bulb. If, she thought, you could call staring blankly at the pages, seeing nothing, reading. Her lunch with Richard that day had been unpleasant at best. She knew telling him she'd moved from the Inn to an apartment in town would be difficult, but she hadn't anticipated the angry glint of tears, the swell of wounded pride. They hadn't spoken much as they ate, and he hadn't stayed long after.

The worst of it, she thought, was that she didn't really care if she made it up to him. Not yet. She didn't know quite what she was waiting for, but she'd know it when it came. Until then, she could be patient. That, at least, was something she was good at.

The rest of the month slipped past all too quickly for Lorelai. She would look at her calendar at the end of every day and run her fingers across the dates and deadlines, the rapidly decreasing number of days. As September drew to a close, she shut her planner with a sigh and staredblankly ahead of her a long moment each night. The older she got, she thought, the harder it was to account for the time that passed.

Time moved more swiftly for Rory and her grandmother. Rory settled back easily into the grind of study and work, newspaper meetings and Parisian rants; she found a study nook in the library where she could read in solitude, one with a chair of the perfect level of squishiness and a table to rest her feet on. Emily's routine continued very much unchanged, though it had taken her some time to learn the best way to poach an egg. She worked doggedly on the house, spending her evenings alone with her thoughts and, more often than not, a glass of scotch. She and Richard continued their slow, awkward dance, advancing and retreating, advancing and retreating. Friday night dinners were still Friday night dinners, Stars Hollow was Stars Hollow, and the Gilmore women still liked their coffee strong and often.