A/N: Thanks for reading. Will update soon!

I am not really known for ever being speechless

But now, but now somehow my words roll off my tongue right onto your lips, oh

I'm keeping cool while you keep smiling saying all the things I'm thinking

I am like you so I want proof I'm what you're feeling

Cause if I want you, and I want you, babe

Ain't going backwards, won't ask for space

Cause space was just a word made up by someone who's afraid to get too close, ooh

-Close, Nick Jonas feat. Tove Lo

The Runaway Chick

Lorelai couldn't help the few stray tears that flew down her cheeks as she walked home. She made no move to wipe them away, preferring instead to just let them fall. It wasn't fair. She didn't want to feel like she did, angry and sad and empty, all at the same time.

It hadn't been easy for her to resist him like she had. Luke Danes had the effect on her. When he had leaned in that little bit further, it had taken everything in to her to pull away. She had wanted him to kiss her. That was a fact. But letting him kiss her would have ruined everything she had worked for in this town. She had a good life with good friends and a stable job. Kissing Luke would have been the first step in throwing herself down a cliff. Worse, she would have dragged down Rory with her.

But the truth was, she could still smell his intoxicating scent. She could still picture his vividly intense eyes in her mind. She could still feel the smooth skin of his cheek against her lips.

"God, stop," Lorelai told herself angrily.

What was she doing, thinking about Luke like that?

And what the hell did he mean? He wanted 'more'? More, what?

More of her? That didn't even make sense to her.

How could anyone want more of her, anyway? She was a hot mess on the best of days, and definitely not in the good kind of way.

Lorelai walked faster, needing to get home. It wasn't long before she was practically running up the porch steps of her house. She fumbled with the lock for a few seconds efore she finally managed to make it inside.

She was suddenly very glad that Rory was over at Babette's looking after her new kitten. She wouldn't be around to see her mother moping around.

Lorelai changed out of her jeans and her t-shirt, and pulled on the first pair of pajamas she found. Heading downstairs, she couldn't help but wonder if Luke was okay. Had she hurt him by refusing to give him the 'more' he had asked for? Probably. That's just who she was, Hurricane Lorelai, the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens. She ripped through places and through people, leaving only debris and broken hearts in her wake.

She managed a small smile for herself. It felt good to wallow, even if it was just for a moment. Lorelai headed into the kitchen, wondering if she had any Chinese takeout left. That was when she noticed the glaringly obvious lack of life coming from the cage on the kitchen table.

"Oh, no. No, no. okay. Stella, do something. Show yourself. Molt or chirp or something. Oh this is so not funny. Not funny, not funny. Oh this is so unbelievable. All day long, just chirps like a maniac at the top of her lungs. Now, nothing. Silence. Marcel Marceau chicken. Okay, that's okay," Lorelai tells herself, trying to calm her frantically racing heart. "I can fix this. We can fix this," She reminded herself, going to the phone and starting to dial the all too familiar number.

"I'm going to make this better. I'm going to fix…" Lorelai repeated to herself, until she heard the click of someone answering the phone at the other end, "Hello?"

"Yeah?" She heard that cool voice ask in return.

"Luke? Stella got out and I don't know - do I put seed on the floor? Do I make cheeping sounds? Or do I pull a Lucy Ricardo and walk like a chicken so she thinks I'm her mother?" Lorelai asked, vaguely aware of how insanely crazy she sounded.

"Who the hell is this?" Luke asked her, sounding confused.

"What do you mean who is this? It's Lorelai. Who else would call you looking for her baby chick?" Lorelai asked, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

She could hear Luke sigh through the phone before he admitted, "You're right. I'm the idiot. Go on."

"Could you come over here, please, and help me?" Lorelai asked him.

"Uh, yeah, okay. I'll be right there," Luke answered, trying not to think about the tone of desperation in her voice and the things that her tone implied would happen when he got over to her house.

"Okay, hurry!" Lorelai told him, before hanging up and continuing her frantic search for Stella, the missing chick.

It wasn't very long till Lorelai heard a knock on the door.

"Thank God," Lorelai said, quickly opening the door and pulling him in by his collar. She shut the door again just as quickly as she had opened it, not wanting to give Stella the chance to escape.

"This place is a disaster. What's going on?" Luke asked, confused by the state of the place. He couldn't help but think that she didn't really need to make up some insane situation to get him in bed with her. All she had to do as bat those dark, long lashes of hers and he would do whatever she asked of him.

"Okay," Lorelai started to explain, unaware of the thoughts that were going through his head. She pulled him with her as she started to walk, continuing, "The last sighting was here, by the InStyle magazine. But then she burrowed through the Glamour and jumped over the Cosmo and knocked over a brand new bottle of nail polish so all I can tell you is if there was any doubt that this chick was a girl, well, there isn't anymore."

Before Luke could reply, he heard a soft chirp.

"Okay, there she is!" Lorelai said quickly and excitedly, trying to trace where the sound came from.

"Jeez," Luke said, "What was that?"

Lorelai didn't hear his questioning, far more focused on finding the chick. "Stella! Stella!" She called, as if the chick would recognize her name like a dog or any other domesticated animal.

"You really do have a chick loose in here," Luke stated dumbly.

"Yeah, I told you I had a chick loose in here," Lorelai replied, before spotting the chick, "There she goes by the kitchen!"

Lorelai quickly ran after the chick, not wanting to lose sight of her. Luke followed behind quickly, trying not to think about the fact that Lorelai didn't ring him to come over and jump his bones like he had suspected.

"Don't step on her!" Lorelai yelled at him.

"She cut right in front of me!" Luke argued back.

"Okay well she's being graded so let's not squash her."

"Well then tell her to watch where she's going," Luke told her, giving her a shove towards the runaway chick.

An hour later, they were still trying to get Stella back into her cage. The house was far messier than it was before, but that was the furthest thing from their minds.

"I swear, she went over there," Lorelai told Luke, pointing towards a chair in the lounge.

"We looked over there," Luke reminded her, picking up a couple of pillows and moving them aside so he could keep looking.

"Well, she went under that chair and she didn't come out," Lorelai answered, following behind him to see what he was doing.

"We moved the chair, we searched the floor, nothing."

Lorelai sighed, "Well then she went under the chair and through a hole in the floor."

"There is no hole in the floor," He told her, again thinking about how ridiculous this night as. He had come over thinking that maybe she had changed her mind, that maybe she wanted him. But here he was, trying to find a chicken.

Lorelai thought for a second before suggesting, "Well maybe there was a hole in the floor and she crawled through it and fixed it."

This time it was Luke's turn to sigh. "So she's s super intelligent chick with great physical and deductive skills?" He asked Lorelai.

"Yes," She deadpanned.

"Oh, this is not a chick I want to find."

Lorelai didn't respond but instead finally worked up the nerve to ask him what had been on her mind for a while now. "Hey, Luke, what did you mean earlier?"

Luke turned to look at her, confused, "What are you talking about?"

"When you got here. You made some comment about me not really having a chick in the house," Lorelai mentioned with a little shrug.

"Hmm," Luke answered, noncommitting in his response.

Lorelai took that as a sign to continue where she was going with her question, "I mean, if I didn't have a chick here, why did you think I was calling?"

Luke tried not to freeze. He couldn't tell her what he had really thought, so he decided in a split second to deny any other motive for coming to her rescue, "No, I thought you were calling about the chick."

"It didn't seem like it," Lorelai commented, raising her brows and looking at him rather pointedly with her blue eyes.

"Well maybe it didn't seem like it but it was."

Lorelai was suddenly confused again so she asked, "Was what?"

Luke sighed out of frustration this time. "Was what I thought," He told her, before asking, "Can we just keep looking?"

"OK. I just still think that…" Lorelai started before she was interrupted by Luke's well timed shout of, "There she is!"

"Where?"

"There!" Luke told her, pointing towards a lamp. He moved and dived to grab the chick before she ran away again.

Lorelai winced at the resounding crash that followed. "Careful," She told him ironically with a grin as he turned his head to scowl at her.

Luke handed the struggling chick to her before he stood up. Lorelai headed back to the kitchen to return her to her cage, saying as she went, "She's never going anywhere ever again. I'm thinking of slipping some super glue on the bottom of the cage. That would be bad, right? I mean, I know staples are bad but what's the verdict on super glue?"

"Ask Stella," Luke told her, following her in with the broken lamp shoved into a cardboard box.

"Oh, you don't have to do that," Lorelai said, seeing him with the box.

Luke answered her with a shrug, nonchalantly telling her, "This stuff is sharp. I want to get it out of the way."

"Well, thanks for helping," She said quietly, with a soft smile stretched across her lips.

"No problem. I'm going to throw this stuff outside," He said, stepping out and leaving Lorelai to her thoughts again.

Lorelai found herself thinking back to what she had asked him earlier. Why had he sounded so surprised that there was a chick running rampant throughout her house? She had asked him to come look for the chick. She thought she had made that perfectly clear when she had called him. So why the hell didn't he think that was why she asked him to come over. It honestly made no sense to her.

Before she could mull his positive motives over in her mind, Luke came back inside.

"I'm going to head home now," Luke told her with a nod of his head.

"Oh, no," Lorelai said. "Stay, have a beer."

Luke paused for a second before saying, "Alright. One couldn't hurt."

"Good," Lorelai said, grabbing two bears from the fridge. She opened them both then handed one to Luke.

"Thanks, Lorelai," Luke told her, taking a seat at the kitchen table. Lorelai followed suit, taking a sip from her bear as she did.

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment before Lorelai finished the sentence she had been in the middle of saying when Luke had spotted Stella.

"Luke, I still don't think you came over because you thought I needed help finding Stella," She stated, her eyes looking up from underneath her lashes to gauge his reaction. She watched as his jaw tightened.

"Well, I did," Luke responded tightly, not offering anything else.

"No, you didn't," Lorelai said flatly.

"Okay, I'm going home now," Luke told her, standing and leaving his unfinished bear on the table. He started to head out the door, but was stopped by the feel her fingers gripping his arm.

"No, please don't go, Luke," Lorelai said softly. "Just tell me why you came over. I won't laugh or anything, I promise. It can't be that bad, can it?"

Luke sighed, not turning around to face her. He didn't want to see her blue eyes looking up at him, filled with questions he didn't think he could answer without feeling like he had overstepped the line stupid, imaginary line she had been talking about earlier in the diner.

"Luke…"

"I can't tell you, Lorelai," Luke responded finally. "You won't like it."

"I don't care, Luke," Lorelai told him, getting more and more concerned. Why wouldn't he just tell her?

Luke said nothing, just stood there, hoping that she would release her tight grip on his arm so he could leave. He knew that she probably wouldn't. She was always stubborn like that.

"Why won't you just tell me? Luke? Come on!" She said, her voice rising in volume as she started to get angry at his silence. What the hell was his problem?

"Fine!" He yelled back, turning to face her, and pulling him hard against her. He covered her lips with his before she could react, kissing her with only a hint of the desire he felt for her. Luke pulled his lips back from hers after a moment, letting his hands drop from her waist. He said nothing, giving her a chance to gather her thoughts, but from the blank expression on her face, he gathered that it might take a while.

"Oh," Lorelai said, unable to manage anything else. Had he really just kissed her? She raised her fingers to her lips to touch them gently. She could still remember how perfectly his lips had fitted against hers, how warm his breath was on her skin. The weirdest thing for her was that him kissing her felt so natural, so normal.

"Oh?" Luke asked, just watching her try to process what had just happened.

"Oh," Lorelai repeated dumbly. She didn't know what to say to him because she didn't even know what to think about him kissing her.

Luke gave a few more minutes before he said softly, "I'm going to go now."

Lorelai nodded, looking at him, expression still blank.

"Um, ring me," Luke told her, "If you want to talk or anything." He looked at her one last time before he turned and slipped out the back door, leaving her alone and uncomprehending in her kitchen.