A/N: Thanks for reading and reviewing! Here's a season 5 opener I could have lived with.

Take Two: Dallas Was on to Something

"What are you going to do now? Rory?" Lorelai asked, following Rory through the house.

"I hate that you're ruining this for me!" Rory said petulantly, storming out of the house and sitting on the front stoop. She just had her first time and all her mother was worried about was Dean's 'wife', if Lindsay could even still be called that. Why didn't her mother understand that their marriage wasn't working?

She found Dean's number on her phone and dialed it. After a moment, someone picked up, but it wasn't Dean.

"Hello?" Lindsay answered. "Hello."

Rory gasped and opened her eyes abruptly. Her heart was pounding in her chest and she was out of breath. She sat up and looked around her surroundings. The hostile was dark and quiet, as everyone was asleep, save her. They were in Europe, but at the moment, she couldn't remember what country. She shook her mother's shoulder. "Mom, wake up."

Lorelai groaned and didn't wake up right away. It took some coaxing before she was cognizant. "What is it?" she asked, groggy and not at all happy to have her slumber disrupted.

"I just had the worse dream," Rory said.

Lorelai squinted to try to make out Rory in the dark. "You woke me up in the middle of the night because of a scary dream? What are you, five?"

"Mom, I'm serious, it was so real."

Lorelai sighed in resignation and sat up. "What happened?"

"It was awful. I dreamed we got back home from Europe and found out I wrote down the wrong date for when I have to be at Yale." Rory reached down at her feet to pull her backpack up so she could rummage in it for her schedule.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for my calendar," she answered, exasperated. Wasn't it obvious? She found her planner and leafed through the pages. She looked at the August page hard, trying to see in the dark. She wrote a big note to herself to call Yale to double check the move-in date.

"Is that all? Can I go back to sleep now?" Lorelai asked. "Not that this wasn't quite the thriller. If you turn it into a novel I'm sure it'll get optioned for a movie in no time."

Rory put her calendar back in the bag and tossed it aside. "Oh my god, that was only the beginning. Everything kept getting worse from there." With wide eyes full of concern, she said, "Mom, I slept with Dean."

"What? You slept with Dean?"

Rory glanced around frantically and shushed her mother. "Be quiet. Someone might hear."

Lorelai looked at her like she was crazy. "Calm down, it was a dream. And it really isn't even a big deal if it happened in real life. I mean, I don't want to think about you sleeping with anyone ever, but it won't be the end of the world when you do."

"No, Mom, listen. He was married. And I slept with him anyway."

"You wouldn't do that," Lorelai said, rolling her eyes.

Rory argued, "But I did do it. He married Lindsay and I slept with him anyway—like I didn't even care." She held up her hands in a gesture of helplessness and leaned in to hiss, "I had an affair with him."

Lorelai struggled for a moment, buy gave into the laughter. "Okay, so you're dream skank?" She laughed more.

"Mom, it isn't funny." She wrapped her arms around her knees for comfort.

"It's a little funny, you should see yourself right now," Lorelai said. "It was just a ridiculous dream. You are Rory."

"So?"

"So, you are the last person on the planet who would ever do something like that."

Rory lifted her shoulder. "In the dream I did. I thought Dean was still mine. I didn't care about Lindsay or their marriage and I wasn't dating anyone else, so—oh, Jess showed up a few times."

Lorelai softened. "Jess? Honey, he's in California, you know that."

"Well he came back to tell me he loves me and to beg me to run away with him—that was before I slept with Dean. I was almost finished with finals for the year too," Rory said ruefully.

"As in spring finals—a year from now?" Lorelai asked, amused.

"Yes," Rory said, her straight face contrasting Lorelai's comical one. "Give or take a couple months."

"Dean and Jess were still dueling for your attention a year from now even after one got married and the other moved to the other side of the country?"

Rory wished she hadn't said anything. Maybe she should have calmed herself down before casually mentioning it in the morning. Her mother was going to have too much fun mocking her about this for the rest of the summer, if not the rest of her life.

"My, my, your subconscious thinks very highly of yourself," Lorelai commented.

"Mom," Rory groaned.

"What? Rory, I don't know what you want me to say here. You did this in a dream, not real life."

"But if my subconscious is coming up with this stuff, then maybe I'm capable of doing it in my waking hours. If I can dream it, maybe I can do it."

"Just because Walt Disney said it, doesn't make it true. Rory, be serious here, dreams are nonsense. They don't follow logic. But do you know what the good part about dreams are?"

"What?"

"You wake up. None of it happened—or will ever happen, because you wouldn't sleep with a married guy, no matter how much you regret losing Dean."

Rory's shoulders drooped. "I never said that."

"You may as well have. You spent months wishing Jess was more like Dean." Lorelai proceeded cautiously, "Maybe you haven't taken the time to get closure with those guys. It did all end with a bang. A tiny part of you might not have let go of them yet."

"Maybe," Rory admitted quietly. "I know I don't want to go through it all again. Once was enough."

Lorelai put her arm around her daughter's shoulders. "Don't worry about any of this. We will call Yale and you will get there on time, with everything you need. And you are going to have a great freshman year of college, just like we always planned—without any encounters from ghosts of boyfriends past. There'll be more boys at college then you'll know what to do with."

"Thanks Mom," Rory said, the relief starting to slowly wash over her. Abruptly, another thought came to mind. "When we call the school, we have to make sure Paris isn't my roommate."

Lorelai looked at her, real concern on her face now. "You dreamed Paris was your roommate at Yale?"

"Yes, and she hooked up with a professor who's as old as Grandpa. I saw them making out!"

"Rory, you didn't have a dream. That's the definition of a nightmare." She soothed Rory and saw that she got back to sleep okay, shaking her head at her daughter's overactive imagination.

Fin