Luke rushed into the house through the front door, making a beeline for the kitchen. He diverted for just a second to swing by the coffee table, where his fingers automatically touched the head of the duck decoy sitting proudly in the middle. Lorelai had placed it there the day after their return from Maryland, getting rid of the wooden bowl filled with ancient nuts that she and Rory had kept out as a joke for years. He wasn't sure why he had to do that every time he went through the room, but he did. Superstition had nothing to do with it. It was more like he needed to feel the smooth carvings under his fingers to reassure himself that the past few weeks hadn't been a dream. They were married, and this was his house, and he was happier than he had any right to be.
He flicked on the light in the kitchen and opened the freezer door on the refrigerator, pulling out a baggie full of meatballs. Lorelai had had an intense craving for spaghetti and meatballs over the weekend and he'd made a double batch. He hoped that still sounded good to her.
He grabbed a pot for the spaghetti and took time to quickly wash his hands before filling it with water and setting it over a burner on the stove.
When they first got home from Maryland they'd talked about how important it was for them to find time to be together. They'd figured out a schedule but soon found out it wasn't necessary. They craved time together. They were impatient with anything that forced them to be apart. They found ingenious ways to make their schedules jive as much as possible. Tonight, for example, Lorelai was working later at the inn, while Luke had arranged for Caesar to close so that he could get home and fix dinner for them. In the morning, Caesar would open and Lorelai wouldn't need to get to the Dragonfly until after 10.
The honeymoon - Thank God - was still in full swing.
Soon another pan filled with tomato sauce joined the waiting-to-boil water on the stove and the meatballs were defrosting in the microwave. He moved to the sink, washing salad greens, and something outside caught his eye.
Babette was waving at him madly, and when he casually acknowledged her she beamed with delight before she went back to watering the geraniums surrounding her gnomes.
The response to their marriage from the citizens of Stars Hollow had been remarkably low-key. It was obvious they were happy for them, and he'd received more than one pat on the back and had heard the comment numerous times that things were now back the way they were supposed to be. Sookie had done an admirable job as their spokesperson until even she had had enough. She'd created an online blog, posting all of the pertinent facts about their elopement, including pictures and an eye-witness account from Rory. Now when inquiries were directed to her she just handed out cards she'd printed up with the web address.
He wondered how crazy things would get when the baby news was added to the pot. So far Rory was still the only one who knew. Lorelai's parents had been away on a trip, which meant they'd only had one Friday night dinner to contend with and everyone on that night had been ultra-polite and cautious with the desire not to rock any boats, enabling them to escape any further prying. He knew that wouldn't last much longer. Lorelai wouldn't be able to use the excuse again that she didn't want a drink because of some cold medication she was using. They'd be forced to tell soon.
Her first doctor's appointment was next week. The reminder card was stuck to the front of the refrigerator, right next to the calendar April had printed up for them, listing the dates when Rory would be home.
He had to chuckle a little bit to himself as he remembered the look on Rory's face last weekend, when April had attached herself to Rory and couldn't be pried away. Rory had turned into a exemplary big sister, though, and had answered all of April's countless questions with good humor. The two girls appeared to be off to a great start in their relationship.
The front door opened and a small spot of constant apprehension disappeared when Luke heard it.
In moments, Lorelai's arms were snaked around his waist, her mouth against his neck. She sniffed in appreciation.
"Smells good, huh?" he observed, leaning his head over to rub against hers.
"We should bottle it," she replied, a sultry note in her voice.
"It's just spaghetti sauce," he reminded her.
"I'm talking about you," she informed him, letting her hands roam. "I can smell every single thing you cooked today, plus your shower soap from this morning. You smell good, Babe."
He rolled his eyes. "I thought pregnant women were supposed to be all nauseous from cooking smells, not turned on."
"Just goes to show you how wrong those books can be."
He turned around to look her over, searching for any signs that she wasn't as chipper as she appeared. "How have you been today?" he asked anxiously, pushing her hair back while he studied her eyes.
"I'm fine, Luke," she sighed.
He could hear the impatience creeping into her voice. She'd had an unexpected return of morning sickness the week before, and ever since then he knew he'd been driving her crazy with his concern.
"You'd tell me, right, if you weren't?" he asked, needing to hear her reassurance again.
"I'm really tired, but I feel great," she confirmed. "Michel found me nodding off at my desk this afternoon. But otherwise, I feel fantastic. I think it's all the sex," she confided to him.
He smirked at that, even as he shook his head. "That's something else the books got wrong. You're not supposed to be like that until the second trimester."
"See? You can't believe everything you read," she commented, patting his cheek. "OK, I'm running up to change. How soon do we eat? Because if it's not like really soon, I'm gonna need a snack to tide me over."
"I'll have something on the table by the time you get back down here," he promised, starting to turn back to the stove.
She grabbed him and spun him back around. "Maybe I'll just snack on you," she said breathlessly, helping herself to a kiss.
Things heated up quickly in the kitchen, including the pan of boiling water. It was the sound of the water sizzling on the hot burner as it jumped out of the steaming pot that finally got Luke's attention.
"Go," he ordered, tearing himself away from her. He turned down the heat under the pot and grabbed for the spaghetti. "Let me finish making dinner and we can snack later."
"OK," Lorelai said happily, and rushed out of the room.
Later, when he thought back on it, he didn't know how he'd even heard her.
The sauce was bubbling and the microwave was running and his boots were clomping over the floor as he moved about, putting the finishing touches on their dinner. But somehow he heard her faint, anguished voice, calling him from somewhere in the house.
"Luke," he heard. That was all.
Dread chilled him through to the bone. He knew. Somehow, he just knew.
He had enough presence of mind to shut off the burners. Then he turned and ran.
He saw her standing at the top of the stairs and he took them two at a time, not able to get to her fast enough. He searched her face that was so dead white it looked as though every bit of blood had drained out of her.
"Luke," she whispered again, her eyes huge and frightened. She bit at her lips for a moment before she could force anything else out. "I'm bleeding."
His eyes drilled into hers. He couldn't comprehend what she was saying. With a jolt he grabbed her arms and turned them over, looking for blood dripping from a vein.
"No, no!" she cried, pulling her arms back. "No, Luke. The baby." When he still looked at her dumbly, she added, heartbreakingly, "I'm bleeding."
"Oh, God." It burst out of him as it hit him. He got his arms around her and turned, pulling her down the stairs with him.
He sat her down on the couch while he shoved a pair of flip-flops on her feet. He blinked at the duck on the coffee table and turned away abruptly, unable to look at the symbol of their happiness that seemed to be mocking him now. He felt her starting to shiver uncontrollably and he grabbed the fleece throw from the back of the couch while he started her towards the door.
"Purse," she told him, and for a moment he thought she was speaking a foreign language. "Insurance card," she added, and then he understood and grabbed her purse as they went by the desk.
The Jeep was blocking his truck, so he guided her into the passenger side of it. He bundled her in, tucking the throw around her shivering shoulders.
"It's gonna be OK," he mumbled automatically, and then cringed while he raced around to the driver's side. He didn't know that it was going to be OK at all.
He floored the Jeep the second they were outside the city limits. He cursed the budget cuts that had closed the Stars Hollow clinic years ago, forcing it to merge with the urgent care facility in Litchfield. He couldn't believe that he was now flying down the road that he used to drive at a snail's pace, back when it led to Nicole. His head thundered with regrets.
With effort, he ignored them, and concentrated instead on his driving and on Lorelai, sitting motionless and mute beside him.
He reached over and found her icy hand. He clasped it tightly.
"It's OK," he made himself say again. "It's gonna be OK, Lorelai."
She squeezed her eyes shut and gave the tiniest shake of her head, as though conserving movement was somehow going to make a difference.
At last he spotted the sign for the clinic. The tires squealed as he made the turn into the parking lot.
It turned out that practically carrying Lorelai into the clinic all bundled up and with her dead-white face garnered them instant attention. They were both hustled back into an examining room immediately, where a clerk asked him dozens of questions from a clipboard while two others assisted Lorelai. He answered the questions distractedly, trying hard to follow what they were doing and saying to Lorelai.
"Next of kin?"
"What?" he asked, in a haze.
"Next of kin?" The young woman with the clipboard repeated her question patiently, her pen hovering over the paper.
Luke tore his eyes away from the medical personnel helping Lorelai up onto the examining table.
"Um, that'd be her daughter. Rory. Rory Gilmore. Wait…" He fumbled at his pocket, trying to pull out his phone.
"Babe."
"I've got her number; just give me a second…" His fingers didn't want to work as he tried to scroll through the numbers.
"Luke."
This time he heard her and his head jerked around. Thankfully he saw that she was giving him a shallow smile from where her head rested on the thin pillow on the table. Now that the doctor was with her, she seemed calmer.
"Luke. You're my next of kin, Babe."
"Oh." He blinked rapidly a few times, before turning back to the young clerk and her clipboard. "Yeah, that'd be me."
Lorelai found the strength to smile at the doctor and nurse attending to her. She pointed at her wedding band. "This whole 'being married' thing is still kinda new to us," she explained.
"Well, congratulations," the nurse murmured to her, helping her move into position for the doctor.
In actuality the exam only took a few minutes, but to Luke it might as well have been days.
"Well, good news!" the doctor said briskly, after taking a quick assessment. "It's not a miscarriage."
"Oh!" Lorelai's body relaxed visibly, rustling against the scratchy paper sheet on the exam table. Her eyes quivered closed while she took a deep breath.
Luke made his way to the head of the table, where he was able to stroke her hair. The relief shooting through him made him shaky. Lorelai reached her hand up to him and he took it and held on fiercely. She was able to tip her head back enough to see him, giving him one of those blinding smiles of hers, and that more than anything let him know that things were OK.
"You've got an errant piece of tissue up here," the doctor continued, poking around some more. "Normally not a big deal at all, but the crazy pregnancy hormones have got it all inflamed, and it's bleeding. When do you see your doctor?"
"Next week," Lorelai sighed, still holding Luke in her gaze.
"Well, he or she might want to take care of that for you, just so it doesn't scare you again. But everything else looks good."
"She's OK?" Luke's voice came out harsher than he intended. "The baby's OK?"
The doctor studied him a moment from her spot between Lorelai's legs. She shifted her attention back to Lorelai. "How far along are you?"
"Eight weeks," Lorelai replied instantly.
"Hey, Marcie," she said to the nurse, "let's try something to see if we can give them some reassurance here."
She helped Lorelai down from the stirrups and then pulled the sheet down a little, exposing a portion of her stomach, while the nurse rummaged through a drawer.
"This might not work," the doctor warned them. "It's awfully early, and we don't have the fancy equipment your ob-gyn does. But you're a skinny-minnie, so we might have a shot here."
The nurse handed the doctor a white wand, then squeezed a blob of gel onto Lorelai's skin. The doctor pressed the wand below Lorelai's navel, but above her pubic bone, listening intently.
"What―" Luke started to ask, just as a loud, impossibly fast, 'whoosha-whoosha' sound filled the room.
"Oh!" Lorelai gasped out, squeezing his hand tighter than ever, her face transfixed in joy.
"What is that?" In his heart, Luke thought he knew, but he was still too shaken to make assumptions.
"It's her!" Lorelai quavered. "Or him! It's the baby, Luke!"
Marcie, being a good, experienced nurse, knew to slide a stool under his butt at that exact moment. He plopped down onto it gratefully, still holding onto Lorelai as if their baby depended on it. He listened to the amplified heartbeat in absolute wonder.
"It's supposed to be that fast?" he asked, his forehead still creased in worry.
"Yes. It sounds just the way it's supposed to," the doctor told him, smiling kindly. "I think everything's right on track."
"Thank God." And Luke, not wanting all of the women in the room to see him collapse in relief, laid his head down next to Lorelai's, pressing her soft, dark curls against his damp face, as the beats from their baby's heart washed over him.
They held it together while they got Lorelai dressed. They listened, nodding, when they were told what to mention to Lorelai's doctor the next week. They chatted with the receptionist as they completed the never-ending paperwork and paid the bill. They walked out to the Jeep, Luke carefully guiding Lorelai still, the blanket now neatly folded over his arm.
He helped her into the car. And that was as far as he could keep up the charade. He latched his arms around her, drawing her into him, gasping for breath while he tried to keep from losing it completely.
She clung to him, patting his back soothingly, making nonsense sounds of reassurance.
"I was so scared," she finally whispered to him, her voice breaking.
"Me, too," he admitted, his voice as shaky as his arms.
"I kind of figured that," she said. She pulled back enough to look at him, and her eyes were starting to twinkle again. "I heard the way you landed on that stool."
"Yeah, well, you were flat on your back. You didn't have to worry about falling on the floor," he pointed out.
They traded smiles, neither of them quite ready to leave the comfort of each other's arms yet.
Finally Lorelai sighed. "Are you in any shape to drive?"
"I'll be fine." He gave her temple one last kiss and made his way around to the driver's side.
He sat in front of the steering wheel for a few moments, thinking what a pleasure it would be to drive and only worry about the traffic, nothing else. He reached over and grasped Lorelai's shoulder, kneading it tenderly. She leaned her cheek against his hand, gently sighing. With one last pat on her shoulder, he fired up the car.
Partway home, he realized that Lorelai was very quiet. Eerily quiet. Very un-Lorelai-like quiet. The sort of quiet that made him tense and nervous. He glanced over at her. It was dark, but he could see that she was staring blankly out of her window, biting her lip.
"Hey." He laid his hand on her knee. "What's going on?"
She closed her eyes and looked down, rubbing her forehead briefly. "Usually I think of these things, you know?"
"What things?"
"Things that can go wrong." Her voice was brittle. "I try to be prepared for any contingency. But this time, I didn't. It never even occurred to me that something could go wrong and I wouldn't have the baby. I thought the baby was a given."
Luke felt his heart speeding up. He was sensing that bad things were coming. "The baby's fine," he stated, trying to cut off whatever apprehension was eating at her.
"But…it could happen, Luke! It could! And I didn't even give that a thought. That was…careless of me. It was something we should have discussed, before the wedding. It could have been part of our agreement."
"Our agreement?" He already felt the anger tensing inside of him.
"I'm just saying," she said, oh-so-coolly, "that I wouldn't expect you to stay if I'd lose the baby."
He thought his head might explode. "I suggest," he said, his own voice icy, "that you very carefully choose what you're going to say next."
"It's just…" She stopped, swallowed hard, and tried to go back to sounding unconcerned, but failed. "I want to be fair to you. The agreement was you were marrying me because of the baby. If there's no baby, there's no marriage, right?"
His jaw was clenched so tightly it wouldn't have surprised him to hear it shatter. "Honestly?" he growled. "That's what you think of me? You think I stood there that day with Sondra and said the things I did, and promised you the things I did, and then I'd cut and run as soon as things go wrong? Nice to know how I rate," he told her heatedly.
"No, Luke, that's not…" She shook her head. "I'm just saying I wouldn't expect you to stay."
The Jeep passed under a streetlight and he could see her face, tired and pale and heartsick. And he suddenly realized that this was what she always did. Anytime she thought there was a chance that she'd get hurt she'd try to get herself out in front of it. She'd do the hurting first, if necessary, just to avoid the pain of the unexpected. It all suddenly clicked, and he pulled over, as far off of the roadway as he could get.
He turned on the emergency flashers and sat with his hands dangling over the top of the steering wheel, listening to his heart racing in his chest. He took a deep breath and turned to her.
"Lorelai, if you don't want to be married to me, then that's a conversation we need to have. But I think that the woman I've been waking up with every morning for the last month is happy being married. And I know that I'm happy being married to you."
She started to say something, but he cut her off.
"If something were to happen to the baby…" He trailed off, shaking his head. He cleared his throat, but the words still came out husky. "That's something I can't even talk about. It would be a tragedy that I don't know how we'd get through. But the one thing I do know is that the last thing I'd want after that pain would be to lose you, too."
She drew in a sharp breath. He could see her mouth opening and closing. "But we got married because of the baby." She was still stubbornly trying to argue her point.
He sighed. "The baby was the―what's the word April uses? The precipitate. The baby caused us to get back together and get married. But that doesn't mean the baby is the only thing holding us together, does it? I mean, love counts, right?"
He could see she was blinking back tears now. "You'd want to stay married to me, even if there wasn't a baby?" she quavered.
"Ah, Lorelai." He reached over and pulled her against him, stroking her head. "You are so exasperating! Of course I'd want to stay married to you! I love you! You know that, right?"
"Yes?" Her voice was muffled by his chest, but he could hear the uncertainty.
"Look." He took her by her shoulders and turned her so he could look into her face. "I need you to forget about that guy that was masquerading as me from November on. Can you do that? He was an idiot. You need to remember the guy that used to take care of you, and fixed your house, and carried around a ridiculous horoscope for eight long years. The guy who said he was all in. Do you remember him?"
"Yes," she said softly, the tension leaving her face. "I have a vague recollection. He was cute. Really hot. Never really understood the whole baseball cap thing, though."
He rolled his eyes, but nodded. "Would that guy abandon you?"
"No," she said, awe easing into her voice.
"OK," he exhaled. "Are we clear on that, then?"
She nodded, the smile starting to shine on her face again.
He cleared his throat again, and looked down, fighting his own insecurity.
"Hey." She put her hand on the back of his neck, under the too-long hair starting to curl there. She stroked his skin gently. "What's going on in your head?"
"You never said." He pressed his lips together as his eyes darted around the interior of the car. "Do you want to be married to me?"
"Oh, Luke," she crooned. She undid her seatbelt, throwing herself over into his lap as much as she could in the cramped quarters. She brought his mouth to hers and kissed him long, sweet and deep. "More than you can ever imagine," she whispered against his mouth, after the kiss ended.
He took a calming breath, trying to slow his racing heart. "And we're in this, right? Long-term, no matter what?"
"No matter what," she agreed.
"Then," he sighed with contentment, "let's go home."
They walked through the door, exhausted, Luke's arm still hovering around Lorelai's waist just in case. They both paused without comment as they entered the living room, letting the quiet and the peacefulness of just being home provide some rejuvenation.
Luke swung Lorelai around to him, holding her tightly against him, even as one hand pushed its way in-between them to cup her stomach. He rubbed gently, wishing he could somehow feel those heartbeats that had provided such reassurance back in the clinic tonight.
"Hungry?" he asked.
"Do you have to ask?" she joked, but weakly. He felt her sigh against him. "Actually, I'm so tired I don't know if I am or not, but I bet if you put food in front of me, I'd eat it."
"Then let's go find some food to put in front of you," he agreed, heading them towards the kitchen.
She stopped by the stairs. "I think I'm going to run upstairs first and get cleaned up some, if that's OK. I'm feeling pretty grungy here."
"Sure." Luke had to bite down on his impulse to go with her; to follow her; to make certain he was right there the next time her face went dead-white and she needed him. "I'll go scrounge us up some dinner," he made himself say instead.
He watched while she dragged herself upstairs, disappearing into their bedroom. Then he turned and stumbled over to kneel by the coffee table, where he placed both hands over the head of the carved wooden duck, bowing his head reverently.
Notes: Alex, I'm sure this tension-filled chapter wasn't what you had in mind when you requested it, but I wish you a very happy birthday in any case! Have a happy 23!