A/N: I decided to post this now to get the story started. Some of you might make the connection to a certain book, but I can assure you: No aliens, no science experiments and no Dopeys in here.
Thank you for your reviews!
Thanks to Grizzly for betaing. You rock!
Chapter 1: Shock
When Luke woke up the next morning he immediately knew that something was different. He heard the beeping sound of the alarm clock and part of him wanted to turn it off, but another part of him didn't seem awake enough to even move. It was strange for him that shutting off the alarm seemed like such a hard thing to do.
For the last 20 years his alarm went off every morning at a quarter to five and every morning he would hear the alarm, roll over and turn it off before he sat up, stretched and yawned, rubbing his hands over his face to wipe the sleep away. Then he usually walked over to the kitchen counter and started the water heater, which he had filled with water the night before.
He would take a shower and when he came back into the kitchen the water would have just cooled down enough to drink his tea without burning his tongue.
He wondered if he was getting sick, and slowly rubbed his forehead with the back of his right hand, trying to rub away the numbness that seemed to have his brain in a vice grip. He couldn't really focus on anything and just turning the alarm off seemed like an impossible effort. He felt like he was caught in his sleeping body.
He asked himself if this were the aftershocks of the horrible fight with Lorelai the evening before. After she had thrown him out of her house he had been too upset to go straight home and had wandered around town. He had sat down on the bridge by the lake and had stared out at the water. He had tried to make sense of his feelings and his thoughts but everything was just one big mess and he couldn't think straight.
So he had gone back to his apartment and the feeling of grief had settled slowly in his heart, while his gut had told him to stay angry, because using anger as a self protection mechanism was the only thing that could help him now.
He had gone to bed a lot later than he usually did and had doubted that he would be able to sleep at all. However his thoughts had stopped the moment he had closed his eyes and he had fallen into a deep sleep.
He forced himself to sit up and the bed spring of his old single bed creaked under his weight. He always wondered why the creaking didn't wake him up at night, but he must have grown used to it over the years. The bed had creaked since he'd rebuilt it after Rachel moved out. He just couldn't sleep in the big bed alone and Liz's old bed had been in perfect shape up in the attic.
He moved his arm to finally turn off the shrill beeping sound blaring from the alarm-clock. He stretched his arms and yawned widely, squeezing his eyes shut for another second. He opened them again and looked at the red numbers on the display of his alarm. The numbers were blurry for a second while his eyes adjusted to the red light before he was able to read them. It was 4:56.
"Who the heck would wake me at such an ungodly hour? MUST KILL HIM!" Luke heard a voice say that he recognized as Lorelai's and jumped in surprise. She sounded sleepy. Confused he looked around the dark room and tried to find her, but he couldn't. What was she doing in his apartment? Had she followed him and slept here? Why would she do that?
"What I am doing in Luke's apartment?" was the next thing he heard and again he looked around.
"Lorelai! This is not funny!" he said aloud and switched on the lamp on the bedside table. Last night she had thrown him out of her house and now she was barging into his apartment? Was this another one of her jokes?
"Luke?" came the answer but he still couldn't see her. She sounded innocent and confused. You are a damn good actress Lorelai Gilmore, he thought.
"Hey!" she protested as if she had heard what he had been thinking.
"Where are you?" he asked angrily. After all he was still mad at her. What she had done yesterday. Leading him on and then rejecting him was the most hurtful thing anybody had ever deliberately done to him.
"Where am I? " she asked. "I'm on your bed. Where are you?" came the snotty answer. Luke turned around and looked at the other side of his bed, but it was empty.
"This is not funny!" he grumbled and got up and walked to the kitchen to start the water-heater. He would just ignore her, wouldn't speak to her. He would just pretend that she wasn't there. She had hurt him last night and if this was her idea of how they could make up again, then she would have to see that it wasn't that easy.
"Grump," Lorelai immediately replied and Luke looked around the room one more time, but couldn't find her. He plugged the water heater in and turned it on and then walked into the bathroom. With a resigned sigh he switched on the light and closed the door behind him.
"Urgh, too bright," he heard Lorelai complain and wrinkled his forehead in confusion. Her voice was just as clear as it had been in his bedroom. It wasn't muted by the closed door as it should have been. This was starting to freak him out. He tiptoed to his bathtub and yanked the shower curtain back, but the bathtub was empty, Lorelai wasn't in there.
He sighed again and went over to the sink to brush his teeth before he showered. He had never understood why some people brushed their teeth in the shower. The thought of standing in the foam he had just spat out crept him out so much, that he hadn't ever considered it.
Should he really shower? Lorelai was acting really strange and who knew where she really was. Anything was possible when Lorelai Gilmore was around. She would probably even stomp into the bathroom just to make him feel uncomfortable and have her fun with it. He heard her snort. This was really freaking him out, but he shook his head and decided again to just ignore the voice.
He took his blue toothbrush out of the holder and squeezed some toothpaste on it. He held it under the water for a second and started to brush his teeth while he turned the water off again. The fact that he wasn't feeling completely himself this morning, was not the fault of the environment, he decided.
"Urgh! That's mint-toothpaste," he heard Lorelai say suddenly and his toothbrush fell noisily into the sink. The shock was slow to wear off. He lifted his head in slow motion, suddenly afraid of what he might see in the mirror.
"Please don't let this be Freaky Friday re-enacted!" he heard Lorelai's toneless voice again but had no idea what she was talking about or where she was.
His eyes were still focused on the sink and carefully he peeked at the mirror.
Of course the only thing he saw was his own, tired face. He had bags under his eyes, his hair was sticking out and he still wore the same green shirt he had gone to sleep in the night before. His stubble was a bit too long and he would need a shave today. He was still Luke Danes.
Relief flooded him. This was no alternate universe and he still looked like himself. For a second he had expected to see Lorelai when he looked into the mirror, although that was impossible. Things like that only happened in movies, but not in real life.
"No!" he heard Lorelai exclaim and part of him felt shocked all of a sudden. It felt like he was split right in the middle. One part was relieved, the other shocked. Lorelai was shocked. He could feel her shock and panic like it was his own, but his own feeling of relief was still there at the same time. Was he losing his mind? Was he still asleep? He was confused and he could feel that she was confused as well.
"I can hear what you're saying," Luke said stunned and stared wide eyed into the mirror, as if he could see her in his eyes. They were still as blue as they had always been, no miniature Lorelai in there.
"I can see what you are seeing, feel what you are feeling and hear what you are thinking," Lorelai's frantic voice replied, while he kept staring into the mirror with wide eyes.
I'm losing my mind, they thought and said at the same moment and Luke's body shuddered in horror.
"Oh god!" they both exclaimed at the same time, Luke aloud, Lorelai in his head.
TBC