Welcome to Quantum Leap, Luke
Luke wasn't sure what he had just witnessed, it all seemed like some weird dream. One moment he was wiping down his counter, waiting and hoping that Lorelai would come by after Friday Night Dinner like she so often did. He desperately wanted to talk to her, needed to talk to her, Anna had just dropped a bomb on him, saying that she was taking April and going to New Mexico. Lorelai had immediately come to mind. He trusted her judgement and even with all her fantastical stories and tangents, she always shot straight with him when it came to the important stuff… well except for April. He knew the way he had been handling the April situation was wrong, and was planning to tell her that tonight, but in the blink of an eye, he found himself in a brightly lit room no longer wearing his comfortable jeans and flannel, instead he wore a pure white body suit.
He had just taken a look at his reflection, surprised to not find his face, but that of another man's staring back from the reflective surface. "It's a real kick in the pants, ain't it?" An older man with a thick cigar startled him, "Admiral Al Calavicci, and you are?"
"Um, Luke?" He responded, still not sure if he was talking to a real person or if he was in some weird dream. "Where am I?"
"Where is not nearly as important as when." Al countered, "It's 2025 here, just so you know. The where is slightly less confusing, as we are a couple hours outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico; welcome to Project Quantum Leap."
"Yeah, being transported in an instant across time and space is not confusing at all," Luke scoffed.
"It's just another day in the office for us." Al shrugged.
"You said something about a project?" Luke queried, "Sounded like this show I used to watch in high school."
"You and nearly everyone else who has come here in the past couple decades." Al chuckled, "In all honesty the project lead originally got the idea from watching that show, - Time Jump, wasn't it? - as a kid."
"Jeez," Luke sighed, "So what you're saying is that this guy," he pointed to his reflection, "Is in my body and I am in his?"
"Correctomundo." Al confirmed.
"I have got to be dreaming." Luke shook his head in disbelief, "I must have fallen on one of those grease patches I keep telling Caesar to clean up and knocked myself out or something."
"Nope," Al shook his head, "This is all real, I can assure you. I do have to get some information from you, though to plug into our computer so we can fill Sam - that's Dr. Sam Beckett, the man you switched with – in on the pertinent information."
"Oh, what the hell, I'll play along." Luke huffed, turning back to the older man who looked suspiciously like John Cavil, a Cylon from a remake of one of his favorite childhood shows. "If this is all a dream, I'll eventually wake up and get on with my normal life. What do you want to know?"
Over the course of the next 30 minutes Luke answered Al's questions as simply as he could. In a feat rare of the usually monosyllabic diner owner, he became quite verbose as he gave his history, as well as Lorelai's. Talked about how they met and how their relationship had developed from proprietor and customer, to best friends, and eventually to their current day status. He told Al about Rory, making it no secret about how he felt about the idiot she'd been seeing for the past couple years since the whole Dean debacle. Finally he moved on to the portion of his life that brought him joy, anger, frustration, and sorrow; his daughter April. He told about how shocked he was when she had shown up, how nervous and overwhelmed but overall, happy he was when he discovered this brilliant little girl was his long-lost daughter. The frustration and anger he had when he found out that Anna had willfully kept April's existence from him and the continued frustration over her restrictions on allowing, or rather not allowing his fiancée to be involved with April. Finally the sadness and sorrow that came with the current situation; his relationship with Lorelai had suffered since April came into his life, granted it wasn't her fault, he took full responsibility for that, at first it was that he wanted to figure out the whole parenting thing by himself without Supermom swooping in to help him.
Sure Luke had taken in Jess, but he was all grown and set in his ways by the time he reached Stars Hollow, there really wasn't much raising Luke had to do. April was much younger, and Luke had a real shot at influencing her life in way he never had, or ever would be able to do for Jess who, despite being his nephew, he thought of as a son of sorts. He also was still trying to figure out what to do about New Mexico, she had already denied his suggestion of shared custody, but since Anna never put his name on April's birth certificate, he had to prove he had legal claim to force the issue. To make matters worse, since April's 13th birthday when Lorelai helped out, Anna had been denying him access to his daughter in one way or another. He outlined his plan to take Anna to court and sue her for partial custody to Al before the older gentlemen stood and left the room, leaving Luke alone with his thoughts.
Al had returned a little less than an hour later, requesting that Luke come with him to another room that was called the 'imaging chamber,' the older man pressed a button on a hand-held device and ushered Luke into the room. "Now they won't be able to see you. Sam will see me because we were able to link his alpha waves to the trans-time feed on which this room broadcasts. If you touch me, he'll be able to see you, but Lorelai will not. They won't be able to hear you either, although we will be able to hear them, so you will just be a silent observer. This is highly irregular, we've only done this a few times when it was of great importance that the subject be involved. Sam requested you join me, he said that you should probably hear what Lorelai has to say. Once we've linked over, you will see holograms of the setting and of Lorelai and Sam."
Almost immediately the room began to shift and he suddenly found himself standing in Lorelai's living room, agreeing whole heartedly with everything Sam was saying. He fought to hold back tears as he listened to Lorelai talk about their relationship. It broke his heart that he was hurting her so much, but he was almost just as mad that she had waited this long to say anything. He had heard the rumors about her drunken toast a few weeks ago at Lane's wedding. Eventually he watched as Sam stood from the couch and allowed Lorelai to kiss his cheek before heading toward the kitchen. His eyes quickly darted to Lorelai, who stood on the first landing, a thoughtful look across her face. She knows something's up, he thought watching her think a moment longer then head the rest of the way up the stairs.
He was tempted to follow her up the stairs, but Al had explained it was impossible for two observers to be at different elevations within the imaging chamber. Taking one more deep breath, he followed Al and Sam into the kitchen where Sam had found some pasta and cream sauce and was cooking up chicken to add once the pasta was done boiling. He didn't need a sense of smell to know the meal would be delicious and nodded his approval to the Quantum Physicist. He listened to Al and Sam discuss what their next move should be while reflecting on how intuitive Dr. Beckett seemed to be. Al had informed him about getting to Sam too late to give him any pertinent information about Luke and Lorelai's relationship before Lorelai had presumably offered an ultimatum, elope or call it quits, yet somehow Sam was able to glean enough information from Lorelai's rant to gather that they had been friends for a long time and lovers for just the last little bit, were engaged to be married, that there had been trouble with their oldest daughter (Luke had always considered Rory to be a daughter to him, which became even more clear with every idiot she dated, even his nephew), and that there was a custody issue with his younger daughter's mother, even if Lorelai didn't know the specifics.
He was pleasantly surprised when he heard Sam mentioned suing for joint custody of his daughter and asking Lorelai to submit a character reference and, by way of Al, voiced his agreement. The men continued to discuss the particulars of the situation a bit longer with Luke feeding Sam any pertinent information he could think of before Al informed him it was time to go. Lorelai reentered the kitchen dressed in black yoga pants and the blue flannel she had stolen from him when they first had gotten together. In all his life he had never seen her looking so beautiful, sure he had seen her dressed that way many times before, often without the benefit of the pants, but he supposed absence really did make the heart grow fonder. He released a wistful, but manly, sigh as the imaging chamber door closed, cutting her from his sights.
"Man you got it bad." Al chuckled, "You were looking at her the way I used to look at a porterhouse steak, and my first wife for that matter."
"Would it surprise you to find out you're not the first person to say that?" Luke looked at the older man, "My would-be mother-in-law made the same comment to Lorelai the first night she met me."
"I don't think there's a straight man of legal age on this planet who wouldn't notice how beautiful she is. Not to mention the ones not yet of legal age." Al chuckled, "Do us both a favor when Sam's job is done and you go back; don't ever let her go. I've been married five times, but none of them measured up to the first. Beth was the love of my life, sure I've loved all my wives, but she could have been it, Kid. Trust me, when you find that one special girl, you should do anything and everything in your power to keep her."
"I'm starting to realize that," Luke nodded as they made their way back to the waiting room, "If you don't mind me asking, what happened with you and Beth?"
"Same old story, boy joins the Navy, boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy gets shipped off to Viet Nam where he is subsequently captured as a prisoner of war for four years, boy is declared dead by his higher ups, girl mourns then meets a new guy and remarries, boy comes back to an empty home and broken heart." Al's fake nonchalance doing nothing to hide the pain he still felt over the loss of his first wife even nearly a half century later.
"I'm sorry," Luke replied earnestly.
"Me too, Kid, me too." Al nodded as they reached the waiting room and Luke went in, "Try not to worry too much. Your girls are in good hands with Sam, I can guarantee he will do his best to get you back to them as soon as he can.
"Thanks," Luke nodded before settling in on the bed that was provided to try to get some sleep, he'd had a long day before this and witnessing Lorelai's breakdown while being in a position where he couldn't comfort her was even more draining on him than the stress of the past few months.