Fran died. This simple fact triggered more controversy than one might imagine.

"I…I can't believe it…" Lorelai sniffed, turning around to wipe her nose guiltlessly on her daughters' sweatshirt, "Poor Fran… she died so lonely. And old. All she had were her little cakes and frosting tops…" at that point her voice broke, but no, not even that could stop Lorelai Gilmore from sobbing hysterically in the crux of a Sunday afternoon church service.

Rory soon found herself left to singlehandedly fend off several annoyed glares their direction as she mentally scolded her temporarily short-sighted brain for not sticking a paper bag over her head to prevent angry churchgoers from throwing expired pastry dishes at her the next time she's in public.

Enter stage right: A flustered Luke with a not-any-less flustered Jess in tow.

"This is the last time I'm going to say this with a level, fastened head," he sat a disgruntled Jess beside an even more disgruntled Rory, who started to get up and move but failed to do so when a pastry indeed went flying at her head. Luke continued shake his finger in a way that even Auntie Em would be proud, "You steal from the donation jar, you go to church. You steal from the tip jar, you go to church. You take cash from my wallet, I run you into the ground with a Mac truck. And then you will go to church, do I make myself clear?"

Lorelai immediately perked up at the sound of her Good Samaritan, "Yes sir, Coach Boone."

Scowl, "Lorelai I can't teach this kid morals with you making cracks about a football movie behind my back."

"Oh no, I'm right in front of your face, Coach," to prove her point, she whacked him across the nose, "See? Hey Rory! I just hit Luke on the nose!"

That was not the best thing to say in a church considering there was a woman sitting a couple feet from them wishing the lot of them to hell.

Rory shifted disgracefully in her seat as the man sitting in front of her turned around to shoot daggers her direction. It was quite disturbing, she half expected fireballs to come blaring through his eye sockets.

But apparently no fireballs could match up to Jess' shriveling glare and, "Hey, either take a picture or go jack off to Lolita if you're so interested in little girls in Sunday skirts."

Lorelai, now having surpassed her temporary phase of 'haha-call-Luke-names' had once again resorted to tears and was in fact, in the very midst of sticking her head in her befuddled Good Samaritan's jacket sobbing with ever ounce of her steadfast willpower.

Luke could very well feel his face contorting into a scowl as the distressed woman continued her tirade of blubbering loudly into the only tux he owned. Luke had always been rather anti-social. At an early age, he would be caught rolling out windows and hiding under tables at Tupperware parties. He and Jess had that in common. It was generic, probably.

And when it came to life, he found that scowling 24/7 tended to make him less approachable. Thus, the infamous Luke face was born. I'm sure you've seen it time to time, your father had the Luke face on when he found out about the flavored contraptions you keep stuffed in your purse—you know, for just in case.

And so far, much to his content, the Luke face served Luke's with plenty of days dwelling alone upstairs in his apartment. Well, alone plus a crying screaming nephew he affectionately (though it has been hard to tell at times) referred to as 'the damn thing' in it's adolescent years. Par say, "The damn thing won't stop crying!' or "I gotta get the damn thing to the hospital, I don't care what Lorelai says, refrigerator magnets don't belong in the digestive system."

Speaking of which…

Ah, Lorelai Gilmore. A rare exception in Luke's anti-anything-perky formula. The two made an unlikely head-scratching pair of friends. And Luke's gruff behavior often fascinated her beyond means.

Her sobbing at this point, had subsided, "Hey Luke," she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, "Do you like Tupperware parties?"

"No, not at all," he drawled.

"Oh. Good news, I'm not having a Tupperware party."

"Hurray for upscale society, then."

"Okay. I'll see you at five. Bring those sandwich things you made the other day with those toothpicks sticking out of the top."

"All r—wait, what? What happened to--"

He never got to finish that thought because Jess had chosen that particular moment to bash the previously mentioned man who needed to "jack off to Lolita" sitting in front of them across the face.

OOOOOOOOOOOO

"Mom, when normal people host funeral parties, they generally don't include balloons that say, 'Congratulations, it's a girl!'"

Obviously not caring much for the difference between a baby shower and a deathbed, Lorelai brushed off the statement off disinterestedly, "Shush daughter, don't disturb me when I'm microwaving kabobs."

Oh yes, it was unanimous. Fran was going to haunt them forever. "Do you realize that very few requiem services serve cocktails on Spice Girls collectible plates? If we wake up the next day with knifes hanging over our beds and the words 'Fran was here' scrawled over our headboards in virgin blood, I will not hesitate to point fingers."

Lorelai's head popped up from her reclined position on the floor, "Sweetie, do you like having a house?"

"Yes I am rather fond of it."

"Well you can only continue living in a house as long as your dear precious mommy doesn't burn it down with her severe lack of culinary art skills. Now leave her in peace so she could decipher the usages of all these funny little buttons on this device we call the microwave," she glanced briefly toward the sound of yammering voices in the front yard, "Hey I know, you could go open the door so our guests won't have to stand around on the porch with their batches of food wondering if they have the right house anymore."

Rory obliged. Despite the fact leaving her mother alone with a domestic device was usually a, pardon the pun, recipe for disaster.

"I thought this was a funeral," Clara quipped once inside, staring blankly at the baby balloons.

"Oh it is a funeral," Luke replied relentlessly, he pointed to the casket on the left, "See that thing right there? That's where they put the dead person."

Eyes wide, her head turned towards the burly diner owner in arrested confusion, "But my mommy said Fran was in heaven."

"Heaven don't exist, kid. I think the whole Jehovah's Witness thing proves that."

"What about God?"

"Man created God. He's a figment of our pathetic imagination. Toaster not working? Let's blame God! The economy is collapsing? God's fault! Kids from third world countries stabbed to death by tyrant kings? God! See? It works quite well."

Any shred of Clara's lasting innocence was saved thanks to the fact Rory had rushed over to steer her away, "What he meant to say was actually 'honk twice if you love Jesus.' He's just kind of strange sometimes. I uh…Clara I think you'd better go play with the other little children before Luke here causes you to go through years of painful mental therapy in the future," she turned back to the latter, "Hey Luke, where's Jess?"

"I'd rather not know," Stepping easily over a very concentrated Lorelai sitting hunched over her instructions manual, Luke dropped the plate of colorful sandwiches with a clatter, "Here we go, I had to rush through the morning orders, which led eventually to my shoe getting caught and ripped from the seams into a batch of pancake batter but I did manage to make the eighty eight sandwiches you wanted."

Eighty eight. There were less white keys on a piano.

"Luke," Rory began, "We only really needed about thirty. Forty at most."

Two pairs of accusing eyes simultaneously turned to stare pointedly at the lady and the microwave.

"Have you seen our refrigerator?" was Lorelai's defense, "There's more food in a malnourished tribe on Timbuktu."

"What are you doing?" Forget Timbuktu, his attention was focused on the microwave now, "Is that the main frequency wire? Did you take out the frequency wire?" Aha, so that's what it was. "What are you trying to do, electrocute yourself? Give yourself a nice, Don King light bulb fueled hair-do?"

"Long live the king!" Lorelai avowed rather giddily, pointing a spark inducing frequency wire into the air. An action that obviously couldn't have been too smart considered it made Luke lunge 3 feet across the floor to wrestle the fatal wire from her grasp.

Deciding it would be more or less safe enough to leave her mother in the watchful hands of a guy who owned more tools than Tim Taylor himself, Rory found herself wandering about a good crowd of mournful, Cheese-Puff munching Fran-lovers before finally deciding it'd be best to retreat into her room and spend the rest of her days building poor Fran a shrine for the sad way this funeral was turning out. And maybe while she was at it, write a letter to the government explaining way she wouldn't want her mother ever, ever catering or associating in anyway with her burial ceremony if she died pre-maturely.

However, her plans were wretched into a screeching halt once discovering Jess sprawled nonchalantly across her bed, a good way through her beloved Franny and Zooey, "Why hello Jess, shock bumping into you here."

"Oh yeah. Big shock," he replied backhandedly, stealing the half-eaten sandwich she'd previously been chewing on.

"Well I'm glad to know the cootie-epitome has worn off at least," she muttered, watching him polish off the rest of her lovely sandwich. Her gaze wandered over to her curiously unlatched window, "So I take it you're pulling an Abbe Faria?"

"Who, me? Never."

"Hm," a beat, "Window opens the other way."

He was up and out before she so much as say, 'hey you stole my book', casting her a brief glance and, "Leave your window open tonight."

The colorful imagery of Jess crawling in to strangle her in her sleep flashed briefly through her mind before she gathered enough kudos to ask, "…Why?"

"I'm still hungry."

He was rewarded with a day old peanut butter sandwich she'd stashed under her bed in case of natural disaster thrown at his head.

OOO

Whether it was because of Lorelai's atrocious hosting skills or her frozen kabobs, Rory didn't know. All that she could figure out was she came out of her short trip to Doose's for Red Vines and ended up arriving home at a nearly empty house. A bewildering contrary to the fact the place had just been bustling with bored funeral-goers half an hour before.

And poking her head subtly into the kitchen, Rory was met with the sight of Luke trying his very best to keep Lorelai (and himself for that matter) alive while trying to fix the disintegrated microwave.

"So you take this wire and stick it into the cable marker… you got that?"

Lorelai nodded delightfully, "Stick the lime in the coconut, got it Harry Nilsson."

"All right then moving on…"

She somehow doubted Luke would live to see morning. But at least they had a casket sitting conveniently right there in their living room if indeed, a freak-fire were to occur.

But never mind that. With a content sigh, Rory plopped back onto her bed, gleefully apprehending the upcoming hours of color-coding her sock drawer, a leisure pursuit she'd been waiting to execute all week.

Unfortunately the tap on her window begged to differ, and against her better judgment, Rory swung it open. Finding herself face to face with Jess. Who was bleeding in six different places. Again.

He greeted her with the ever so charming, "I thought you said you'd leave the window open."

"Yes," was her dry reply, "but that was before I wasted on you my only weapon against starvation if a snowstorm were to isolate me from the rest of rational society."

"You really think half a peanut butter sandwich would've saved you from malnutrition?"

"Hm, now that you mention it, the entire concept of salvation through the separation of mankind does seem rather skeptical," she reached towards the latch, "I should start now then. Get some practice in. Good night Jess--

"Hey hey hey…" his arm was now unfortunately blocking her hand from it's original holy attempt of slamming the window shut, "I'm sorry. I won't ever question your survival tactics again. Will you let me in now?"

"You should really consider raiding the pharmacy as opposed to those porcelain unicorn stores you're so fond of. Then you wouldn't have to spend your time rolling in and out of my backbreakingly inaccessible windows."

"And miss our lovely tirade in which you glue on my limbs in a process that causes me to scream out in nonsensical pain? No way."

Guess color-coordinating her sock drawer would just have to wait, "Climb in. I'll get the adhesive tape."