Disclaimer: I don't own any of these character, just the story idea.
Rated: R
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It was almost two weeks later, and she hadn’t spoken to Luke since the night he’d gone off on her. Rory was at Lane’s and the house felt empty. Graduation was next week. Soon they’d be back-packing and then they’d be home and then Rory would leave and then she’d be alone for good. Well, she’d have Sookie, but after the baby came there would be less and less time available for her. “God, I’m sad. Jealous of a baby, not yet even born.”
Lorelai lay on her bed and tried not to think of her growling stomach. It was nine-thirty. On a Saturday. In all likelihood, Luke would be out with Nicole and Caesar would be closing up the diner soon. Maybe she could just swing by for something to-go. She and Rory had ordered pizza the last three nights in a row and she couldn’t bear the thought of it again. She needed the burger. Needed it.
Standing, Lorelai shoved some bills into her jeans pocket, smoothed her Speed Racer t-shirt and took off at a trot for Luke’s. It took her about three minutes to get there and she could see from outside that no other customers were there. She tried the door and it opened easily. Caesar wasn’t at the counter, but neither was Luke. “Hello?” she called.
“Be right out,” came back a voice. It was a muffled voice, but she was pretty sure it was Caesar.
She sat at the counter and got her money out. While she waited she toyed with the bills in her hand. She was concentrating so hard on making Abe Lincoln kiss George Washington that she didn’t see Luke come out of the kitchen.
“We’re closing in fifteen minutes, so tell me what you want fast.”
Her head snapped up and he was standing there in jeans and flannel, just like he always did. She gulped and stuttered, “Oh…uh, yeah, right. Right, I thought it would be Caesar ‘cause it’s Saturday, but yeah, you’ll do.” She winced at her own words. He’d do? God, what was wrong with her? “Sorry, uh, burger, fries, coffee to go please.”
Without answering her, Luke walked back into the kitchen and she could hear him preparing her food. “Thought you’d be out tonight,” she called trying to make her ‘you’ll do’ comment understood. He didn’t answer. He must be really mad. She sat in silence until he re-emerged with a Styrofoam box full of food and a to-go container of coffee. He was definitely mad if he wasn’t going to argue with her about coffee.
“You know,” she tried, “Styrofoam is bad for the environment. I’m surprised at you, Mr. Health-conscious.” She nervously laughed and pulled at the hem of her shirt.
“That’ll be eight fifty-nine.”
Fine. Fine! “Fine,” she said a little too snippily and handed him her five and four ones. He handed her back her change and she pocketed it.
Then she just stood there. He stood there, too. “Anything else?” His eyes met hers but there was something wrong with them. Something was missing.
“No. I, uh, no. I’m good.”
“Well, we’re closing so….” He let the words hang.
“Right. Right, I forgot.” His hands were on his hips.
“So you can feel free to leave whenever you want.”
His words stung. “So this is it?” She was suddenly very angry. “This is the way it’s gonna be?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
He just stared at her and moved his arms to cross them in front of his chest.
Infuriated, she said, “Just because you think I’m…what…hung up on you, you won’t be my friend anymore?”
He said nothing. “Fine!” She shouted. “Fine. Nicole can be your friend. Perfect Nicole with her perfect HAIRcut and her perfect OUTfits and her perfect NAME.”
Instead of answering her, he walked away. “Hey!” she yelled at him. “Where do you think you’re going? You dump all this crap on me and then walk away and now I’m answering you and you still walk away!”
He headed for the stairs to his apartment. She followed him and caught up to him on the fourth step. Tugging on his arm, she raced past him so the she was one step up and they eye-to-eye. “Don’t walk away from me when I’m yelling at you. You yelled at me and I listened.”
He looked at her and said, “No, you didn’t. You didn’t hear a word I said.”
“Yes I did.” She realized she was still holding his arm. She let it go and brought her face close to his. “I…I was scared, okay? I mean, yeah, of course I felt it. Of course there’s something here,” she gestured with her hands between their chests. A muscle in his cheek twitched and she thought she saw the thing that was missing come back into his eyes. “But timing is everything and I just…I just never wanted to mess up what we have. And then perfect Nicole comes along and every time I see her with you I want to throw her in the trunk of a car and driver her to the desert where I can bury her alive. I hate feeling this way. I hate it.”
“So don’t. You’ve been able to turn it off for years. Turn it off now.” The thing was gone again. She’s missed it. The window of opportunity had closed.
“I…can’t. I want to. But I can’t. I know I’ve been a jackass, but is there any way that we can make this work?”
“I don’t know. Too much time has passed. Nicole and I….”
She studied his eyes and said, “Please Luke, I know I’m not perfect, but I’m asking for a chance. I can’t promise that it’ll work, but I want to try.”
Luke took a deep breath and hated that her scent was all he could smell. She smelled like flowers, for God’s sake. Flowers! He wanted to be strong. It wasn’t fair to Nicole.
When Lorelai didn’t get an answer right away, she decided that all bets were off. Using the fact that they were eye-to-eye to her advantage brought her hands to his face and her mouth to his. Unlike the stubble that was under her hands, his lips were incredibly soft. She never would have guessed that.
Unable to stop herself, she kissed him harder and pressed her body against his. His hands found her waist and she could feel him kiss her back.
Lorelai’s hands moved from his face to the back of his head where they pushed through his hair. He pulled her tight against him as she took off his ball cap and flung it down the stairs. From her waist, his hands trailed slowly, as if to give her every opportunity to stop him, down to her bottom.
Lorelai moaned into his mouth and he kissed her harder. She opened her mouth to moan and he used the opportunity to press his tongue against hers. Pushed against his obvious arousal, she continued to kiss him while moving her hands down to the buttons of his flannel. First one, then another, and another and finally, the fourth and last one came undone. When she reached the final button, she let her hand brush against the front of his jeans and she noted his sharp intake of breath with satisfaction. Pushing the flannel off his shoulders her hands moved back to his chest, now covered just by a plain white t-shirt.
From her bottom, his hands moved up to the hem of her shirt. His fingertips traced the smooth skin of her stomach and when he tugged at her t-shirt she lifted her arms. He deftly pulled it off, revealing a black lacy bra.
“Jesus,” he muttered and kissed her again. Luke’s brain had completely turned off. All he could think about was how good she smelled and felt. Her skin was so soft it made him forget that they were standing half-way up the stairs of his apartment and the front door of the diner was unlocked. His right hand cupped her left breast. She moaned as he pinched her nipple through the lacy fabric and he listened to her breathing as it turned ragged and shallow.
“God, I want you,” she whispered against his mouth.
She heard him groan and felt his mouth pull away, trailing kisses down the side of her neck.
His hands left her breasts long enough to undo the snap of her jeans and push them down to her ankles where she kicked them off. Thank God for slip-on shoes, she thought to herself, as she helped him out of his jeans, too.
Lowering themselves to the steps she felt him remove her underwear as they continued to kiss. She pushed his boxers down to his knees. If she’d been in any frame of mind she would have stopped to say, “Wait, we’re doing it on steps? What the hell?” But she wasn’t able to form any kind of coherent sentence at this point and neither was he. Somehow, they made it happen. On the steps leading up to his apartment. His boxers never completely came off and his t-shirt and her bra were both still completely on when they caught their breath a few minutes later.
“Damn,” she said as she pulled up her underwear. “Never did that before.”
Luke looked at her still catching his breath. “Yeah, me too.” And that’s when it occurred to him.
“Lorelai,” he began, unsure of himself. “You’re…on something, right? Because….”
Her eyes widened as she stared back at him. She pulled on her jeans and said, “Uh, no, but it’s the wrong time of the month, so probably it’ll be nothing to worry about.”
“Probably?”
How that HELL had she let this happen to herself? Again!
She wiggled into her Speed Racer shirt and said, “Yeah, probably. I can’t believe we forgot to….”
He put his jeans on and sighed, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “Shit.”
“I…I don’t know what to say. I guess if something does happen, you know, I certainly won’t force you to be apart of it….”
Luke stared at her in disbelief. “Oh, you are so not pulling that.”
“Pulling what?”
“Pulling the ‘I can do it myself’ routine. You already proved that you can raise a baby alone. Rory is a living example of how well you can do it. But if this turns into something neither of us expected, I will NOT happily walk away like that Christopher.”
“That’s not what I meant! I just…I don’t want you to feel like….”
“Like what? Like I have some sort of misguided feeling of responsibility to my child and the woman who gives birth to it? That is such bull shit!”
Lorelai stared at him and shouted, “You know what? I’m sorry I came here tonight. I’m sorry I tried to make up with you and I’m sorry this ever happened!” She started to storm down the steps.
Luke trailed behind her. “Oh yeah, well, you’re not sorrier that I am! No one is as sorry as me!”
Lorelai stormed past her food still in the Styrofoam container on the counter and headed straight for the door.
Luke locked it behind her and tossed her food and coffee in the garbage can, and picked up his discarded hat from the floor on his way upstairs. He called Nicole that night and broke up with her. She was not surprised and he felt guilty that she wasn’t surprised. “Look, I just don’t think this is working out.”
She didn’t argue with him. He hung up, took a shower, and went to bed where he didn’t sleep. Toward the early hours of morning he dozed and dreamt that he was at the hospital. Lorelai was on a table panting and screaming. He was holding her hand. She was squeezing it so tightly that he thought she might rip it off. There were doctors down between her legs and for the first time he noted that her legs were bent at the knee and opened wide. “I hate you for doing this to meeeeeeeeeee!” she shrieked.
“Breathe, honey, just breathe. Soon. They’ll be out soon!”
She screamed again and the doctor said, “Okay, we’ve got a head. One more big push Lorelai and you’ll be half way there.”
She must have pushed because the next thing he knew a nurse was handing him a pair of scissors and saying, “Do you wanna cut the cords, Dad?”
He looked at what she was gesturing to and he saw two babies. Girls. Wriggling around on a stainless steal counter top, but it wasn’t stainless steal anymore. Now it was the countertop at the diner. Their eyes were open and they looked at him. Then one of them said, “You’re our dad? Mom said we didn’t have a dad.”
He awoke with a start to his alarm clock. He turned it off and sat up. That was NOT going to happen.