A/N: All ye who respond, ROCK. No kidding, I love you all. :)

I don't however love the formatting on this site. It takes out all my scene breaks. Meh.

Part III:

It had been eight minutes at the very least and she was working on getting it to fifteen. Standing on the doorstep of her parents' house for serious lengths of time really should be counted as an Olympic sport. Lorelai had it pretty much down to an art by now, so much so that she was considering taking out copyright. Getting paid every time someone does the patented Lorelai-parent-avoidance-routine? Sounds like a good deal.

She was up to a good ten minutes of watching the rain fall outside the porch before she gave in, realising that Rory was not going to arrive in the near future and if she didn't want to freeze to death she was just going to have to knock, whether she liked it or not.

The door was opened just moments later by a stiff looking maid. She'd come to the conclusion that it was difficult not to look like someone had shoved a large branch somewhere uncomfortable when working for the Gilmore's. Either that or it was a trait trained into every maid before they graduated hospitality school. She wasn't really sure at this point.

Lorelai scanned the hall, and seeing no sign of either of her parents, made her way into the drawing room.

Emily was sitting in a chair a glass of wine dangling effortlessly from her hand. She motioned at the trolley in the corner of the room, making the obligatory beverage offer, "drink?"

Nodding briefly Lorelai ordered a vodka martini with a distracted sigh, and plonked herself unceremoniously onto one end of the ornate-looking couch.

Emily sat herself on the seat opposite, giving her daughter a well honed upraising look and taking a sip of her drink. There were several long moments where absolutely nothing was said. Lorelai was quite contented with that arrangement for once. If nothing was said until Rory arrived she would be a happy camper. Her luck obviously wasn't playing nice tonight.

Emily dragged her eyes critically over Lorelai, who shifted uncomfortably and crossed and re-crossed her legs a couple of times. "You look very healthy today," she stated.

"Uh, thanks. Good to know, Mom," Lorelai muttered guardedly, looking a little bewildered.

"Did you start a fitness routine?" The question threw Lorelai off a little. Emily Gilmore was not known to play a motherly role often, and questions like this, about her health or her fitness, normally had ulterior motives.

"No," she answered abruptly, folding her arms around her body as if in defence.

There was a long pause, but Emily was not one to give up easily when she had a subject she liked and could see was making Lorelai squirm. "Eating more salads?"

"No, Mom. It's probably just the springtime sun," she gave a quick fake smile and peered into her martini glass. She had a sudden realisation, and put it down far away from temptation on the coffee table in front of her.

Emily all but rolled her eyes at the remark. "Don't be ridiculous. It's been solid rain for the last week."

Lorelai responded quickly, "Not where I've been." She smoothed out imagined wrinkles from her dress as she spoke.

"Stars Hollow is hardly Hawaii, Lorelai." She fixed her daughter with a derisive look.

"Freak weather, what can I say." The endless questions were beginning to get to her. This is why she liked arriving late to Friday night dinners. It gave Rory a chance to arrive before she resorted to strangling her own mother. Lorelai gave her martini a lingering look, and pushed it several inches further away from her on the table.

Emily gave her a withering stare, deciding to give up on that line of enquiry, there was a long moment of silence, during which she delicately took a sip from her drink and checked her watch. She then looked back up at Lorelai, frowning.

"Are you intending to drink that or just out stare it?" Emily questioned. She took a sip of her wine, looking at Lorelai the whole time. It was a unique talent to be able to drink and keep eye contact at the same time. It was also somewhat unnerving.

"It just doesn't have that blinking thing down. I lose every time," Lorelai retorted, causing Emily's frown to deepen. "I'll drink it, in a minute."

"You can't order a drink and then not touch it, its bad manners." Emily's frustration at the way the evening was going was beginning to show in her words.

"Where's Dad?" she queried, hoping against all reason that it would distract her.

"Out of town," Emily answered, staring pointedly at the glass on the table.

Lorelai frowned, "I'll drink it later, Mom." Ordinarily she didn't like being tag teamed by both parents when she was alone, but right now it would have been nice to have a buffer in the form of her father at the very least.

"The maid might have accidentally cleared it later." The doorbell chimed at that moment, and Lorelai thought fleetingly of Saved by the Bell, and just how appropriate that phrase was right at this moment. Emily stood, placing her drink on the side table. "That must be Rory!" she exclaimed, and walked away to the front door to meet her.

"Oh, thank God," Lorelai muttered, checking her mother was occupied and looking the other way and tipping her drink subtly into the nearest vase, which happened to be full to the brim of scented lilies. She had unfortunately chosen a transparent glass jug, and the water now had a distinctly murky hue. She put her empty glass down on the table, and walked speedily to greet Rory, plastering an innocent look on her face. She hoped like hell that her mother didn't notice and that she hadn't just killed off the only life in the whole stuffy house.

"Hi Grandma," Rory was in the middle of a polite grandparently hug when Lorelai got to the hall. She glanced over her shoulder to the room she had just left, where the maid was removing the vase along with Rory's coat, presumably to change the water. Working for the Gilmore's obviously also heightens the senses as a side effect. She decided that was a far more useful skill than the 'misplaced stick' expression.

"Let's see if you can't be better company than your mother." Lorelai looked rather affronted, and Emily simply added, "Well it's true. The phrase wet blanket was coined with you in mind tonight."

Rory smiled politely, not really knowing how to proceed. Emily stopped her from having to make the choice, "your Grandfather is in Chicago for the week. I don't know why he insists on having the most inappropriate timing." She wandered off towards the dining room as she spoke.

Lorelai grabbed Rory's elbow as the walked through to dinner, "where have you been?" she hissed. Rory just widened her eyes meaningfully at her, and Lorelai huffed. "You were supposed to protect me. I'm never giving you the position as my bodyguard when I'm famous."

The dinner table conversation wasn't a huge amount more successful. As far as action packed evenings at the Gilmore house went, this was not high up on the rankings.

"So, Rory how is Yale?" Emily paused in the middle of her salad, asking their typical fallback question in desperation.

"It's good Grandma," Rory smiled dutifully, but didn't elaborate.

"Anything exciting going on?" she asked hopefully, trying to inject some life into the room.

"Nope, it's been really quiet," Rory continued to chew on some fish. There was no way she was mentioning the appearance of Jess, oddly enough that was the main happening of her week.

"—and you. Everything's going well with the inn?"

Lorelai looked up from her food momentarily to answer, "yeah, its fine Mom. It's still there."

Emily looked between the two of them. "I give up. Honestly, I don't know what's got into you two tonight." She gestured at Lorelai who was prodding her seafood experimentally. "I tell you, you look nice and you snub me—"

Lorelai cut her off, "actually, you said I looked healthy… which can be construed as 'you look fat'."

"Oh, good Lord Lorelai," Emily put her fork down on the table rather harder than was necessary. "You're not fat, you're just glowing, and you knew exactly what I meant." Lorelai looked a little perturbed. The description did nothing to improve her mood.

"It's supposed to be a complement." She continued, directing her attention at Rory, "and you're not much better tonight."

"Hey!" Rory objected.

Emily didn't stop, apparently not hearing Rory's exclamation. She was on a tirade and might as well maintain it. "Have you two completely misplaced your verbal skills tonight? It's like getting conversation out of rocks." Her eyes darted back and forth between the two in frustration.

"Sorry," Rory shrugged apologetically, while Lorelai just stared at her plate, stabbing a tomato vindictively. "I have a paper due on the patterns of unemployment in central America and its affect on the current government, for tomorrow," she added hopefully, as if this might spark a scintillating conversation.

Emily sighed resignedly. This was going to be a long evening.

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Lorelai dumped her keys on the table by the phone as she passed. She pressed her own preoccupations to the back of her mind momentarily, there were less scary things to be dealing with, like Rory's problems.

"So, about this J-thing, I want that deal explained." Shrugging her coat off as she walked, Lorelai hung it on the back of a kitchen chair and pulled a pack of pop-tarts from a cupboard. It was far more appealing than the slightly questionable, slimy looking fish they'd eaten (or in Lorelai's case, pretended to eat) earlier that evening.

Rory set to work on the coffee part of the equation. They had a highly polished routine worked out which always had them both supplied with coffee and food in less than five minutes. "You call him J-thing, now?"

"No, but it sounded cooler in my head. Spill, spill." She wriggled her fingers towards herself, as if the story could be encouraged that way.

"Right, well… he's here." Rory dumped a measure full of coffee into the pot and began to fill it with water.

Lorelai dropped the pop-tarts into the toaster, then stopped suddenly and turned at Rory's words. "Here, here?"

Rory frowned pulling two large mugs from a cupboard and turning back to her mother. "You have this weird habit of repeating words right now."

"Really, really?" She was just teasing now, they both knew it.

"Oh, stop it."

She then turned away to the toaster, fiddling with the settings and pressing the necessary levers. "Seriously, Jess is where?"

"Last I saw him, outside our apartment." Rory checked the coffee, putting it back in frustration when it turned out it obviously wasn't done. "He's been hanging around a lot this last week, though."

She gasped in pseudo-shock. "It's J to the R stalker."

"That doesn't even make sense, and he's not stalking." Rory pulled the jug out again to inspect it and apparently decided it was done, or even if it wasn't, that she didn't really care.

Lorelai looked amused. "When it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…"

"It's a pigeon?" Rory interjected, mentally rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of this entire conversation. She started to pour the coffee, the conversation didn't even falter. Oh, the joys of femininity and the ability to multitask.

"You didn't feed it breadcrumbs did you?" Lorelai deadpanned. "It's never going to leave now." She peered into the toaster, mentally urging it to get on and pop already. She suddenly broke into a grin. "Ooh, is he coming to the egg rolling? I bet Kirk has a chicken costume lying around going spare."

Rory pulled a face sliding the mugs of coffee onto the table. "Okay, can we stop referring to my ex-boyfriend as birds? It's creepy."

"Well, if it leaves a baby on your doorstep, don't say I didn't warn you." She shrugged plucking the food from the toaster onto the waiting napkins. "Strange men loitering around, it's just what comes to mind."

She wasn't really sure she wanted to know just how strange men could be related to birds and babies, so she chose to disregard the thought. Quickly attempting to divert the conversation Rory tried to ignore the unasked question of 'Why?' she was sure were about to come. "Speaking of… where's Luke?" She didn't really feel like talking about Jess's motivations when there were many far easier and more comforting conversational topics.

"Are you calling my fiancé a strange man?" Lorelai raised an eyebrow, breaking her pop-tart in half as she started to eat it.

All she got from Rory was a shrug and quirked grin in response. Her smile broadened as she began with, "well if it walks li—"

Lorelai interrupted her quickly. "Not a duck, I swear, and uh, I assume he's back at his apartment." She checked the clock on the wall. Yep, he's probably in bed and fast asleep knowing him. Luke was definitely of the 'early to bed, early to rise' school of thought.

"He still hasn't moved in? I thought that was the point of extending the bedroom, re-doing the place." She waved a hand to illustrate her point the popped some food into her mouth. The awkwardness between the two since the postponement was getting ridiculous. She had a plan to just keep prodding, in the hope they'd both get over themselves and sort it out.

"Yeah, well. We're creeping up on that really, really slowly." Lorelai's eyebrows knitted together in reflection. She didn't really like the direction her thoughts were going, so she took a sip of her coffee and decided not to go into any more detail. The conversation wasn't exactly instilling calm in her mind. If anything it was doing exactly the opposite.

"Apparently." Rory looked pensive as she watched the emotions playing over her mother's face. "You two have really got to get that sorted before the wedding." She unwittingly mimicked Lorelai's motions, breaking little pieces off her pop-tart to eat.

Pulling herself out of her thoughts Lorelai quickly responded. "Hey, hey. If you're going to poke holes in my relationship, I think calling Jess bird-boy is totally within my rights." She was quickly back to mocking amusement. This compartmentalisation thing was getting easier and easier by the day.

Rory finished the last of her pop-tart and stood to leave with her coffee. "No way." She walked straight out of the kitchen towards the rest of the house. Her departure was almost certainly the best way to ensure her point was made.

"Seriously, I won't say it to his face or anything." Lorelai called over her shoulder with a smirk. Not call him bird-boy? Ha. Of course she would.

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A/N: I think in this case a Stalk(-er) can be classified a bird. (stork-stalk ;) Oh man, you should run from my bad bird puns while you still can.