ARNM 11 Seeing Red
The window began to glow with the first lights of morning. At four a.m. Luke was awake, earlier than he needed to be to open the diner. Leaving the bathroom, he padded quietly in his bare feet over to the light.
37 Maple Street was a much quieter street than the diner's location right on the town square. Not that the Stars Hollow square was a hotbed of activity at four in the morning; there were, however, a few street lights on and Luke only had to glance out the window to see who was up in the middle of the night.
Maple Street's big night life problem was Big Pete's son Petey, who worked the night shift at a milk factory in Woodbury and let his ancient beagle out after he got home. Luke watched the beagle plod down the street, do his business at one of the rental properties Taylor owned, then plod back home, followed by Petey, who was grateful that his kids were out of diapers and he didn't have to go back inside and change those before going to bed.
He drained his water glass, wishing he could drain his mind of his worries about yesterday evening. His relief at Lorelai's assurances that she chose him couldn't stop the niggling concern that Emily wasn't done yet. His thumb worried the glass as he involuntarily checked it for cracks as if he were in the diner.
Luke had been convinced that he'd figured everything out in the years before he and Lorelai found their way to each other. Loving someone with a kid wasn't something he'd imagined he would do one day, but loving Lorelai and Rory was easy. Even her pop-culture laced chatter and the constant smell of coffee surrounding them had been far easier to adjust to than he expected.
He knew how to love Lorelai; he knew how to be her co-parent of Rory. What he hadn't anticipated was being actively disliked and unwanted by her parents; for all intents and purposes he was the 'no-good son-in-law.' He couldn't figure out how to fix that, but he didn't need their approval to be happy.
His empty water glass began to shine like his counter in the diner.
"Luke." Lorelai stretched like a cat, rolled over, then curled up in his spot, hugging his pillow.
He turned to face the center of the universe. Her eyes were sleepy and half open, but her smile was love itself.
"I need you." Her arm stretched out to him, pulling him in as surely as if she had a tractor beam. "You're wearing my favorite outfit," she noted as she lifted his corner of the sheet.
He slid his naked body across the mattress, warming himself on her equally unadorned form, still scented with the intensity of their lovemaking earlier that night.
"I love you," he said as he buried his face in her hair.
Belly to belly, he could feel her diaphragm contract with an unspoken chuckle. "You've just accomplished a week's worth of 'I love yous' in a few waking hours this evening," she said, realizing what must be on his mind.
She pushed up on one elbow. "Luke, you have got to build some stamina."
"Hey! I heard the opposite earlier tonight," he grumbled.
She grinned lopsidedly as she ran her finger down his nose. "Yeah, that was nice. I'm talking about dealing with my parents. You're new to the Gilmores and their crafty ways. If we zig, they'll zag. If we tug on the rope, they'll let go so we fall on our asses."
Lorelai watched Luke roll sideways, folding his hands behind his head as he looked off into space.
"You know this is not about you," she said. "It's about me not doing what they think I should do."
"I want to fix it." He sighed and pulled her head onto his shoulder. "You're an adult. They don't have any right to do this."
"I know," she replied, playing with the curls on his chest. "Me too. Sometimes I wish my parents respected me and my life, but they don't. They proved that tonight, especially my father. But Rory needs to keep a relationship with them, so I have to make compromises." She nodded decisively, still trying to convince herself.
"You mean we have to make compromises. We're in this together."
"But they're my insanely manipulative parents. I should save you from them."
"I'm an adult too. We're stronger together; anyway I'm going to need you when my sister pops up again. She makes the Gilmores look like Donna Reed."
"That's our little corner of the world. We'll deal with it as it comes. Now go to sleep, I don't want to deal with a grumpy diner owner as well."
She snuggled deeper into his arms, quickly huffing the tiny breaths that indicated sleep. Luke continued boring holes into the darkness until he, too, eventually fell into a restless sleep.
"I'll get the truck," said Luke, happy for a chance to escape Tillie's invasive questioning. He kissed Lorelai on the cheek, knowing that the kiss would be broadcast to the furthest corners of Stars Hollow long before they had arrived at the movie theater in Woodbridge.
"OK, bye, hon," said Lorelai distractedly, reluctantly letting his hand slide out of hers. Even though Lorelai had become an expert at dodging the snoopiness that was prevalent in their town, Tillie's questioning never ended. Even Miss Patty and Babette had to stop to breathe on occasion, but not Tillie. She must have gills somewhere, thought Lorelai as she looked around her, waiting for a convenient break.
People bustled along the street as dusk fell. Luke glanced at his watch, calculating the chances of reaching the theater in time to get Lorelai's favorite seats without having to arrive all sweaty and grumpy.
He walked a bit faster, enjoying the feel of his lined wool pants as they slid over his thighs. The new clothes Lorelai had chosen for him made him feel more attractive and comfortable in his body. Maybe he should have a few nicer outfits for the diner as well, he thought.
"Oh hell, no!" he snorted under his breath. "I'll leave the metrosexual stuff to Christopher." He jammed his hand into his pocket, looking for his keys in a manly fashion.
He couldn't, however, repress the thought that a few more date outfits wouldn't hurt; maybe even a couple more suits. He did like the elegantly comfortable look Lorelai had chosen. She really was a great shopper and had a good eye for clothes. He wondered if he could convince her to go without him.
Looking through the window of the diner as he approached, Luke could see that the evening was winding down smoothly. His employees moved efficiently around the busy tables, handling filled plates and stacks of dirty dishes without a mishap.
He wasn't so lucky, though, as his toe caught on a suitcase someone had carelessly tossed on the sidewalk underneath his feet. His athletic grace derived from years of baseball and track and maintained over the years by his commitment to fitness saved him from landing unceremoniously on the sidewalk. He looked back down the street and saw Lorelai's grin as she watched him nearly topple. Her beautiful smile was the last thing he saw before everything in front of his eyes turned red.
Finally free of Tillie as the town gossip noticed Taylor Doose nosing suspiciously around the trashcans behind Andrew's bookstore, Lorelai moved toward the diner as well. Not in nearly as much of a hurry as Luke, she had been enjoying the view of him as he moved quickly ahead of her.
Until she saw red as well.
The cloud of red curls that attacked Luke was connected to a pair of red lips which suddenly decided to attach themselves to his lips. A familiar pair of red lips.
He stepped back, stunned.
"Luke! I almost didn't recognize you," said Rachel happily. "You look fantastic. Sexy." She stepped closer to him, reaching out and wrapping her arms around him again. She pulled her body close to his, but her lips whiffed. No home run this time.
"Rachel."
"That's me," she said, eyes shining. "I'm back for good. I missed you too much to stay away a moment longer."
"You're back?" Two words this time.
She raised her eyebrows. "You don't look all that happy to see me," she observed. She knew her Luke. When words failed him, something was wrong.
"Oh, he's happy to see you, I'm sure," said a voice from behind Rachel.
Rachel turned to see who belonged to that unfamiliar voice, never letting go of Luke's waist.
"You're Rachel?" Lorelai asked without needing confirmation. She had seen pictures when she and Luke had looked through photo albums in his apartment one night. The pictures hadn't done her justice. She was more than Elle MacPherson pretty, she was airbrushed Elle MacPherson beautiful. She cocked her head to the side and half-smiled. "Luke's Rachel?"
"Yeah," she answered. "Luke's Rachel," moving closer to him and looking lovingly up at his face.
Coming faster to his senses than to his speaking capability, Luke stepped away from Rachel, breaking her grasp, and went over to Lorelai. Struggling to form a complete sentence, he could only manage, "My Lorelai," awkwardly putting an arm around her waist.
"Your Lorelai? You have a Lorelai?" asked Rachel stupidly, only now realizing that this woman wasn't just another townie.
Lorelai looked at Luke nervously. He doesn't deal well with surprises, and this could easily be one of the biggest surprises of his life. She tilted her head and smiled at him, letting him answer, refusing to listen to that corner of her brain which wondered 'what if he prefers his Rachel to his Lorelai?' Determined to not let this moment faze her, she patted his back devotedly.
He caught Lorelai's eye, finally feeling grounded again. The smile which Rachel observed on his face had blossomed in his eyes as he connected with the woman he loved. Rachel hadn't seen a look like that from Luke since long before she left the first time.
"My Lorelai," he repeated confidently pulling her tighter. Lorelai breathed a silent sigh of relief, and took control of the situation the same way she did earlier with Tillie.
"Lorelai Gilmore," she said. "I run the Independence Inn, and live here in Stars Hollow."
"Hey, how's it going?" Rachel asked, looking between the two of them as she assessed the situation.
"Tell her about Rory," he blurted, a little out of sync with the conversation; nonetheless, he was quite pleased to achieve four words and his first full sentence since leaving Tillie.
"Rory's my daughter," said Lorelai.
"You have a daughter?" asked Rachel, looking at Luke confusedly. Could it be possible? Could Luke have a child?
Without thinking, Luke replied, "She's the greatest. A really nice kid."
Tempted to let this discussion go on until Luke figured out what he was accidentally implying, Lorelai took pity on Rachel, who seemed to be a very nice person, if one could forget the part where she kissed Lorelai's boyfriend on the street. Lorelai couldn't quite forget that part.
"She adores Luke, thinks he hangs the sun and the moon." Lorelai indulged herself one last time, knowing she couldn't let it go any further.
Rachel looked at Luke, then Lorelai, then Luke again before looking down, where she noticed her bags on the sidewalk. It was too late. Hard, no IMPOSSIBLE to imagine Luke as a father.
"Uh then, well, um," Rachel stuttered, looking for an escape route. "I think I'd better be going," she finally said.
Flipping through her wallet, Lorelai searched until she found a snapshot of Luke and Rory from the visit to the cabin. "Here's a picture of Rory," said Lorelai kindly. "She's sixteen."
Rachel's cheeks paled, then flushed. She looked up at Luke again, completely disoriented. "So, um, …" she couldn't think of a way to just ask.
"Luke is like a father to Rory. Her biological father lives in California," explained Lorelai patiently.
Luke finally caught up to the conversation, but wisely realized that this might be a good time to be monosyllabic.
"Great kid," he reiterated, still out of sync. "Going to Harvard one day."
The moment had passed, thought Rachel. All their moments had passed. Time to move on. Maybe. "I really am going to go," she said as she began loading her bags back into her rental car.
"Where are you staying?" asked Lorelai politely, recognizing that Rachel had planned to stay in Luke's apartment with him.
"Um, I'm going over to my brother's; see how it's going with him." Rachel could not get the car loaded fast enough. Luke picked up the suitcase he'd tripped over and put it in the trunk.
"OK, so we'll be seeing you around Stars Hollow, then?" asked Lorelai, hoping for a 'no' answer.
"Sure, sure, I'll be around for a while. Never really know with me, right Luke?" Rachel's eyebrows raised in that look that told Luke their conversation was far from over.
He responded with a mixed look on his face, but no words. Oh crap, she really did say that thing earlier.
"Luke, we ought to go. Are you ready?" prompted Lorelai, tucking her hand inside his elbow.
"Uh, yeah." He looked at his watch. "Damn, we're late." He took the first step in the direction of the truck.
After they turned the corner, Lorelai took one last glance, only to see Rachel looking directly at her. She shook off the feeling of impending doom, then realized that she was wound up tight as a spring.
"Walk," she said, deliberately monosyllabic in an effort to calm herself down.
"Movie?" he asked.
"No. Dinner," was her reply.
"Good. Here?"
"Hartford. Steak." A little nearly-raw meat might still the inexplicable bloodlust she had.
"Fleming's?"
"Morton's."
"Deal."
Luke was beginning to feel very uncomfortable as he helped a flinty Lorelai into the truck.
He got in on his side and slid the key into the ignition before she put her hand over his, preventing him from starting the engine.
"You have a Lorelai?" she asked.
"Sounds like a disease, doesn't it?"
"You're just digging the hole deeper, my friend," she cautioned him with a tight smile.
Luke banged his head on the steering wheel. "Lorelai …" he began.
"Drive. I want to sink my teeth into a hunk of dead cow."
"Better than a hunk of Luke," he thought to himself. Hearing Lorelai's giggle, he added, "I just said that out loud, didn't I?"
"Oh yeah. So dirty."
Dinner was a stilted affair until about halfway through, when Lorelai said, "There's at least one good thing about it."
Luke looked up suddenly. He'd been counting the minutes, hoping that the moment for this discussion had passed.
"It? What it?" he asked.
"That's a pathetic attempt at deflection, honey."
He set his fork down, wiped his hands on the napkin and sat back, his legs extending past the table on Lorelai's side. "You're gonna have to help me out here."
"What do you mean, help you out? How could you not know what the subject of this conversation is?"
"I know the subject; I just don't know what you want to know." His color rose as he confessed, "I never had to talk about an old girlfriend to a new, er, um current … oh shit! You know you scare the hell out of me sometimes!"
Lorelai repressed a grin as she observed Luke's honest cluelessness. It didn't stop her from sharpening her scalpel as she pondered all the things she might say.
Before she could speak, Luke blurted, "The love of my life! That's it! That's what I was trying to say." He pulled his feet back toward him so he had something to concentrate on as he looked at the ground.
"Uh-huh," she said, butterflies fluttering in her stomach as she saw how important it was to him to not screw this up. "Luke, get a hold of yourself. Drink some wine. Breathe. Think of cute fuzzy puppies or something. This is not going to be as hard as you think."
Lorelai's heart melted when his eyes met hers; she saw anxiety, but also raw, unadulterated love, so raw that her hand shook as she set her glass down quickly.
Luke's left leg was bouncing perceptibly. "Can we walk?" he asked. "This place is too damn stuffy. I can't breathe."
A giant portion of Morton's best chocolate cake to go was wrapped up, and they were out the door. Still stressed and nervous about the discussion to come, Luke moved quickly with Lorelai going in double time to keep up.
In a desperate effort to slow him down, she grabbed at him, her fingers latching onto the back of his belt. Her arm jerked upward, inadvertently giving him a wedgie. With a grunt that sounded a lot like a rather macho 'Meep,' he halted abruptly, nearly tripping Lorelai in the process.
"Hey, Luke," Lorelai gasped, "This isn't The Fugitive. No one's chasing us. Stop and smell the roses."
Still grasping his abdomen, which had been bruised by his belt buckle, he managed to reply. "Oh sorry! I was just, uh …"
"Running away?"
He scowled at that possibility. "No! Clearing my head."
Still panting from her Luke chase, she dragged him to the nearest bench and sat down, holding onto his hand. A tug on his hand convinced him to sit next to her. He rubbed his abdomen again where his belt had pressed too hard when she stopped him.
She sat there for a moment catching her breath and wondering what he meant when he said 'Meep.' Eventually it registered deep in her brain that Luke was still talking. Still talking nonsense, because she was sure she heard him discuss having babies. With her.
"Seriously, Luke, are you kidding me?"
"What now?"
Lorelai face palmed. "You'd really rather talk about our future children than your relationship with Rachel?"
"Well, sure." Luke really didn't understand why this was even a question. "Our future is incredible, amazing and all kinds of wonderful crap, while the past is filled with me doing a shitload of pathetic loser things that I would rather forget completely and never speak of again."
'All kinds of wonderful crap.' Such a Lukeism. "Luke, honey, you're way too worried about this whole Rachel thing."
"Well, then, for god's sake ask me some questions so we can get it over with!"
"Why did she kiss you in the middle of the street, Mr. No PDA?"
"I don't know," he replied too quickly.
Her skeptical stare was relentless and her arched eyebrow stabbed him in his guilt zone.
He sighed. "She missed me and figured that I'd be available."
"Rachel hasn't been here for years. Why would she think that hottie Luke Danes, most eligible bachelor of Stars Hollow and environs, would still be available years after she left?"
"Track record. Every other time she's come back, I've been, um, available." Here was some of that pathetic loser-ness he'd hoped he wouldn't have to discuss.
"You never moved on?"
He deliberately looked at her through his should-be-a-crime-for-a-man-to-have-such-long-dark eyelashes. "I was waiting for a Lorelai."
She chuckled and nudged his shoulder. "Such a load of romantic BS. You're just lucky that romantic BS works on me. How many times did she leave?"
"Huh, not sure. Three, maybe four times if you count the trip with her father she made in high school. She broke up with me right before prom and took off to Morocco when her dad went on an archaeological dig. At least I dodged the prom bullet."
"When was the last time?"
"Now that one I remember. She'd come back from Mauritius or Indonesia or someplace like that. Said it was true love, home to stay, and like the fool I was I took her back. That time 'forever' lasted almost four weeks." Luke harrumphed as he pondered further. "Must have been just a few weeks before a crazy, caffeine-addicted woman blew up my whole life."
"Wow, she's better than Christopher. This is the longest he's ever held out."
Luke curled his lip in distaste at the thought of Christopher. "So, are we good? Can we go home now?"
"Sure," she smirked. "We have a nice long drive home and we can continue that talk you started about babies."
Luke began walking with a wide stance as if he was in pain as he grinned at her mischievously. "You might have answered that whole question already with that wedgie you gave me."
"You know, I read in Cosmo that it's possible to extract sperm with a needle, so I think we're good," she replied with too-innocent eyes.
"I hate needles as much as I hate hospitals," he groaned.
"Well, I do have a couple of other ideas to try first," she suggested. "A little one-on-one therapy, perhaps?"
"Now you're talking," he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder as she put her arm around his waist. "I could get into that."
"Dirty!" she giggled.
A/N: DSLeo's story Chris Dies Again (and again and again and) inspired me to break through my writer's block to finish this chapter. Sadly for Luke, it required the wedgie. With any luck, the family jewels are still OK and he and Lorelai will still be able to have kids one day.