5x13: "Where the Hell Were You?"

"I think we need to talk," Luke told Lorelai as he followed her down the halls.

"I know, I know, I just…. let me try to find…" Lorelai promised, too busy on searching for her missing daughter in the middle of this wedding renewal that her parents had thrown together to think about what he was telling her. Trying the very next door, she walked in as Rory and some blonde guy jumped apart. Lorelai paused to collect herself. "Grandma wants a picture."

"Of this?" Rory practically squeaked.

"Rory, what are you doing?"

"Mom…."

"You're at your grandparents wedding…. renewal…. vow…. thing, whatever! They're right out there! God, Rory, I swear!"

"Rory?" Christopher's voice could be heard coming down the hall. Before Lorelai could stop him, he appeared in the doorway. "OK, don't, Chris, it's all right…."

Too late. Christopher's eyes had set on the blonde interloper. "What the hell are you doing in here with my daughter?" Chris asked, his chirpy voice barely masking a dangerous fury.

"I…." the blondie tried to stammer out.

"You stay away from her….. That is my daughter! I will kick your ass! I will kick your ass, you little weasel!"

"All right…." Lorelai pulled Chris away before he could go for the blonde and threw him out of the room before following him. "Get out!"

"What the hell's going on?!" Luke asked, from where he had waited for Lorelai.

"Who's that guy, Lorelai?" Chris demanded.

"Christopher, calm down! You're drunk!"

"Calm down?! There's a guy in there pawing my daughter!"

"What guy? There's a guy in there with Rory?!" Luke acted without thinking. He charged into the room; Lorelai could do nothing to stop him.

"Oh my God, Luke….." she cried, mortified as she ran after him.

"HEY! GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER; I MEAN IT! RIGHT NOW! HANDS IN THE AIR! I WANT TO SEE HANDS IN THE AIR!" Luke continued with his verbal abuse and promises to kill that hooligan even as Lorelai now threw him out of the room, too.

"Out!" the mother bellowed, slamming the door and locking it. She turned to the teenagers. "I think you'd guys better use the back way out of here," she suggested as diplomatically as she could.

"But, Dad…. Luke…." Rory yelped, indicating the raised voices of the two men just outside the door.

"I will take care of Dad and Luke," Lorelai promised. "Please go. Now!"

Rory left, leaving Lorelai to deal with her boyfriend.

"You must be Logan. I'm Lorelai," she smiled icky-poo sweetly.

"Nice to meet you," Logan helplessly, sheepishly, shrugged, even as he listened to not one, but two men – Rory's father and…. uncle, maybe? - arguing over who would have the pleasure of burying him six feet under and dancing a jig on his grave.

"I'm gonna kill him!"

"No, I'm gonna kill him!"

"I'd better….." Logan mumbled.

"Yeah," Lorelai nodded, and Logan ducked away.

The argument still had not abated many minutes after Rory and Logan had made their escape.

"You shouldn't have done that," Christopher shook his head. "You should have left him to me."

"Right, like you could have kicked the shit out of him while you're falling down drunk!" Luke hurled back. "Hell, the only reason you're hot and bothered about some motherfucker groping your daughter is because you are drunk! I was ready to bash his face in, and I'm stone-cold sober!"

Christopher was drunk, there was no denying that. But he still had enough of his faculties to understand what Luke was saying. "How dare you!" he thundered. "This is not your decision to make! It is not your place to protect Rory! I needed to be there to save her; I'm her father!"

"Needed to be there? You're her father?" Luke gawked, sensing, and deciding to pounce on, the trap Christopher had essentially laid for himself. "Oh yeah? Where the hell were you when she got the chicken pox and would only eat mashed potatoes for a week? Where were you when she graduated high school – or started college? Huh? Who the hell moved her mattress into her dorm, and out of her dorm, and back into her dorm again?"

Christopher shifted his hands through his pockets, his mouth drawn in a tight line as he barely refrained from physically attacking Luke. But Luke didn't care. His shots had gone home, as well they should have, and he knew it. No longer was he going to let Christopher take credit for rearing Rory, even though it was his name on the birth certificate, his blood flowing through Rory's veins. For the first time, Luke was going to stake his claim - claim Rory as partially his. For it was true. She was like a daughter to him, and he would murder in cold blood any boy who tried to touch her as if she truly was his own child. And he could do that wretched deed probably worse than Christopher ever could. These thoughts filled Luke with an almost delirious pride, that he could rightfully attach his name to Rory's, and identify her as his. Reveal to the whole world that he – Luke – was the closest thing Rory had to a father. He had always considered Rory to be a little bit his, just as April biologically was, just as Jess symbolically was. Why not add Rory to that pantheon of a legacy? Shout it for the heavens to hear? Well, now he would, and Luke would do so for the rest of his life.