Running After Kansas by Oregano
Living with Disappointment is always an ordeal. However, being said Disappointment itself had to be more difficult. He didn't exactly know why, either, but this was some grudge Luke Danes was carrying. He actually felt shorter carrying all this bitterness towards Jess for all these years.
Now the boy was coming up the stairs, his heavy footsteps probably breaking the floorboards little by little. He straightened up on the couch once he heard the thin, almost plastic-like sound of the door open and close at Jess's arrival. Still staring at the blank television screen, he opened his mouth. "You're an ass."
His nephew looked up at that warm greeting and rolled his eyes. "Oh, that Luke Danes—what a sweet old man!"
"I asked you not to stay, you're here. I asked you not to hire Nicholai, he's here. I asked you to stay away from Rory, and yet, I'm pretty sure I'll be seeing a lot of her in the coming days. Why don't you ever listen, Jess? Why?"
It wasn't delivered with his usual gusto and rage that made Luke snort once he took a deep breath. Quite the contrary. There was a feeling of hopelessness in his voice, a tired voice that was on the edge of giving up. Suddenly, he turned his face and looked at Jess. Forty years old, but still very much like a boy. "What do I have to do to get you to listen to me?"
The younger man stood by the door, frozen to the spot at his uncle's question. He countered it with a question of his own. "What do I have to do to get you to trust me?"
Luke started to answer, opening his mouth to speak, but nothing would come out. His lips parted and took form of a gaping hole, silent and unsure. He closed them again.
With that, Jess tossed him a sardonic chuckle and took his leave towards his side of the apartment.
Things had fallen into place quickly after the incident with Rory and Jess and the blind date from the Underworld. Tables were waited, people came in for muffins, and Luke's furrowed eyebrows eased more and more after each passing day. The initial fear that gripped him was falling away, and quite honestly, Luke Danes did not know how to deal with that.
He also did not know how to deal with the huge amount of free time that had suddenly presented itself before him. He was still a virile man. He could still walk. He could still run. He didn't eat meat. He always ate the right food to make sure that he could live up to a hundred years old.
And now, well, he was starting to regret it. Day after day, he would just sit in the diner, reading the paper, eating his complimentary-for-life waffle. Once the paper was read and the waffle was eaten, he would watch Nicholai and Jess work.
He felt like Kirk.
One day, as Jess was wiping the counter down, he noticed his uncle staring almost boredly at his plate of maple syrup. Was that...? Was Luke Danes trying to spell his name with a fork and leftover syrup?
"What's wrong with you, old man?"
"Don't call me that, you jerk."
The younger man smirked at his uncle's reply and ceased wiping for a moment. He leaned his hip onto the counter and crossed his arms in front of him. "Are you bored, Your Highness?"
There was a small pause as Luke took a giant huff. "Of course I'm bored! I hate retirement."
"Get a hobby."
"This is my hobby."
"Writing, 'Lake Dunes' on your plate?" Jess asked with a curious peer over his uncle's shoulder.
"The syrup dripped on 'Luke' and I ran out by 'Danes.'"
Jess nodded at Luke's explanation. "Okay."
Luke's head whipped towards his nephew's face. "I'm not senile!" The comment was yelled wrapped in defensiveness and maybe even panic.
He put his hands in front of him in his own defense. "I didn't say you were!" Laughter was starting to bubble inside Jess's chest, but he knew better than to let it out in front of Mr. Lake Dunes. "Then get out of retirement. It's not like it's hard. Make a pancake."
"But that'd mean I'd be working for you." He shuddered at the thought.
Jess smiled at that and shrugged. "Just an added perk."
He mulled it over in his head a bit. He could always boss him around as his uncle if Jess was being an ass. "Let's go, Luke. The batter's waiting for you."
It took all of Luke's resistance and stamina to say it, and when he did, his teeth were so gritted that they almost screeched as he spoke. "Gimme that spatula. Get out of my way, Caesar."
Young Love was always an adorable concept. It had happened to Jess and Rory, no doubt, but that quickly crumbled into a world of angst and regret. Everyone could keep blaming Jess for everything, and he wouldn't stop them because a part of him knew that they were right.
Rory Gilmore deserved better. He didn't.
And that was what exactly played out. Rory married a nice young man and became happy, and Jess floated in and out of relationships with the mystique of a ghost. Some people (mostly women) found it alluring, but Jess hated the crap out of it.
However, it seemed that Young Love was being given another chance. It happened exactly after Luke entered the kitchen and shoved Caesar aside. The door jingled, and little Nicholai Stratt looked up. Everyone else saw a girl, but he saw something a bit more extraordinary than that.
She was tall, had wavy dark hair and the most amazing pair of almond-shaped eyes. His hand hovered over the order pad, clutching a pencil tightly. Of course, as a guy, he didn't stare open-mouthed at her. He tried to keep it cool. He was cool, for God's sake! Nicholai turned his attention back to the elder couple, quickly took their orders down and almost ran to the counter where the girl was presently sitting.
Once behind the counter, he ambled towards her, like, "Hey, I'm just doing my job, man." Well, he was doing his job, and enjoyed the hell out of it, but the enjoying-the-hell-out-of-it part was the one he was trying to conceal.
And then was frustratingly blocked by Mr. Mariano as he flatly asked for her order.
He frowned at this. But then she started to talk.
"A blueberry bagel and cream cheese, please."
He felt like swaying at the lyrical intonations of her vowels. Oh, God, to be that bagel.
"Nicholai, I can't read this." Caesar's thick Caesar-accent broke through the magic like the blood in Carrietta White's prom dress. If only he could lift things with his mind, then Caesar would have a mug-shaped bruise on his face.
Luckily, the door announced yet another customer, and this created a distraction for Jess's part, leaving Nicholai on the verge of a happy dance.
He approached her from behind the counter. He gave her a slight lift of his eyebrows and spoke in the most bored tone he could muster. "Hey."
The girl smiled at him a bit and pointed towards Caesar. "I've already ordered. And I think he's still waiting for that clarification on the one you gave him."
Nicholai squinted an eye and pursed his lips before turning around to face Caesar. "Ham and cheese sandwich."
"Looks like 'Jam clothes Gringo' to me," Caesar mumbled as he went back to cooking.
Just as the boy was about to say something to the girl, a man's voice cut through the magic. It was the man who came in earlier.
This was Pete Townsend. He wore a tie, carried a briefcase, and bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Sheffield from The Nanny. But he was not English. He had a small Southern twang to his speech, which was always a hit with women. And he had been on Luke Danes' ass for the past eight months about the diner. Lawson Land wanted to turn it into one of those Starbucks empires, with more franchises than Robin Williams had hair.
Luke Danes hated corporate buttheads, Starbucks and Robin Williams. Luke Danes wasn't one to be charmed by a tie-wearing cowboy. His answers ranged from a colourful diatribe on the sick commercialism strategies of big-time companies such as Lawson Land, to a simple, "Get out of my diner, jackass."
However, this was different. This was Jess Mariano, and he didn't really mind Robin Williams all that much. "We're offering a hefty amount of money to turn this into a franchise, Mr. Mariano. We've been after this place for a long, long time. And your uncle and the company couldn't compromise into an agreement. And, well, we thought that since you own this place now and you can do anything you want..."
Suddenly, Kirk Gleason interrupted the man's little speech. "Look, Kroener, the funeral home's a few blocks down peach. He is not selling this diner." It was said in soft volume, but spoken with a matter-of-fact briskness.
But then his face quickly changed into worry as he shifted his gaze towards Jess's silence. "You're... not... right?"
And just like that, Jess Mariano's first true test of loyalty had presented itself. Where the hell was Glinda when you needed her, dammit?