A/N- Hello all! I'm glad you seemed to enjoy the bantering chapter so much. I love writing that kind of dialog. It's my own self-indulgence so I'm glad it worked for you. Anyway, this one goes out to the JavaJunkies specifically. You're getting a fair share next, though Lit has plenty coming, I promise. Please keep reading and reviewing, especially since this is from a differently-focused perspective so it's nice to hear what you think. I do not own Gilmore Girls or any of its characters or concepts, but I did at one point own a sweater that may have been identical to one Rory Gilmore wore in an early season of GG. By accident.
Chapter 69
Getting in his truck, Luke turned around to watch his nephew talk to Rory. The smile on Jess' face lit him up in a way that Luke had really never seen before. The closest thing he could remember was when he first started to date Rory, but even then there was an awkwardness, a fear, a distance. Now he watched a man who, since his youth, refused to be close to someone, to try to be, to be open, even to the only people who helped him. And that was changed. There was nothing fearful in his eyes and he knew that Rory was ready to receive him and he was ready to give of himself. If Jess could be brave, given everything he'd gone through…Luke gripped the steering wheel tightly as he pulled away. It was time.
There weren't going to be a thousand yellow daisies or a thousand bacon strips. There wouldn't be champagne. There probably wouldn't even be a plan. But Luke knew that it was happening, that it was time, that soon enough he'd do the thing he'd been wanting to do since the first time he really gazed into the blue orbs begging him for a fifth cup of coffee.
It had been too long, so long. And she had been waiting. She'd been patient, so patient, ever since the first thing, the reconciliation. She didn't bring it up often, and when she did it was usually accidental or apologetic but necessary. She was as graceful about the matter as she could possibly be, especially since he knew exactly how much she wanted it. He'd seen the wedding dress still hanging in the back of her closet, not put away in a box or even covered in some sort of garment bag but only by a clear protective layer, and he'd notice the way her eye would get caught on it as she tried to select something to wear, the quick flash of need and sadness and why not, why not yet. He knew it was hurting her and he'd known it for a long time now. But he'd done it anyway.
Jess was a lot of it. For a long time, when Luke knew that Lorelai didn't accept Jess, couldn't accept Jess, wouldn't accept Jess…it pained him more than he would admit to anyone. The fact that when they got married Jess wouldn't be standing by him, the idea that their children might not be raised to like him, Luke just couldn't deal. Sure, his relationship with Jess wasn't perfect. Definitely not back then, and still not. But he had one and he knew who the man was at core and the way he could be and the fact that he was on the path, and he wanted Jess to be a big part of his life and any new life that he created for himself. He needed him to be. Jess wasn't his nephew and he really hadn't been.
He thought back to the few times he'd seen Jess as a kid, and even then he felt compelled to take him in, keep him safe, teach him, show him, shape him. Someone had to, he knew what could happen. And he could see the potential in the kid's eyes from the first fleeting glance. Luke always knew that Jess was smarter than he was, even as a kid. That he always would be. And that he desperately wanted something other than the shithole life that Liz had provided him, he wanted a way out, an escape into something where he could be a man, a real man, the kind he only read about in books as opposed to the creatures that he woke up to find sleeping on his couch. Luke knew all this, and knew that as much as his life would be incomplete without Lorelai, it would be just as incomplete without Jess.
But recently that excuse had faded into nothingness, and he'd been waiting for Jess to call him on it. He knew it was coming, but not when. God, everyone wanted to. He could imagine that it drove Rory crazy, watching her mom wait for something that never seemed to come when she knew she deserved it, more than anyone. And it made Luke sick to keep it from her. But marriage was a horse of a different color. Marriage was something that no one seemed to do right anymore, and marriage was forever, and marriage was a promise that you couldn't break and a coupon drawer that wasn't always easy to talk about. Family was a time bomb. You start having expectations and you start being disappointed. You start caring and you start losing. Worse, someone you love is disappointed. Someone you love loses. And it's your fault.
Luke thought back to when his dad died, how much he hated the man, cursed whatever place he'd gone to for leaving him to take care of a tramp like Liz, when they didn't have a mother anymore either. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right, and the tornado that was grief would still topple him sometimes, shoving his body to the ground and leaving him scratched, bruised, and bleeding. It wasn't his father's fault that he died, but it didn't stop the bleeding. He'd watched Jess bleed. He'd watched Rory bleed. He couldn't be the one to cause it. If it was a choice between a scrape on Lorelai's arm and her getting the wind knocked out of her and her skin torn in shreds, he knew it had to be the lesser of two evils.
But Lorelai Gilmore wasn't a static object. She didn't just sit there and assimilate to his pontification. She wasn't water, she was lightning and when she struck she struck and when she sparked a flame nothing could put out the fire except the rain. She wasn't going to leave him and if he fell, she would still be scraping broken glass out of her arms and her legs, no matter whether or not she wore a ring while she did it. At first he thought marriage was her everything, the ruination of their relationship. Because he wouldn't address it they were doomed to fail. But now Lorelai stood tall at his side, every day, planning to the rest of his life, and her only white dress was the daily coffee he offered her. There was no tangible proof that he would stay, that she would stay. But now they both knew. He couldn't keep her safe, she wanted to stand in the midst of the storm with him, security be damned in favor of what they had, and according to her he didn't get to say a damn thing about it. Luke smiled in spite of himself at her stubbornness.
So when Jess said it was time, Luke knew he was right. He knew it was a long time coming. And he knew it was coming now.
