A bit more frivolous than the last one. Enjoy~

baby, we've been here before

Or: Five Ways That Lorelai Gilmore Does Not Meet Luke Danes

1. 1990, Woodbury.

It's great that Miss Patty is letting Rory take cheer leading lessons at a discount, really, but it would be extra nice if constant matchmaking on Lorelai's behalf could have somehow been left out of the equation. The woman loves love, which is lovely, really, but Lorelai is obviously the definition of a hot mama and can get her own dates just fine, thank you very much.

And if she's not getting any dates, well, it's only because she's busy. She's a working woman and a single mom and frankly, a little short on both time and cash, and dating can be more that a little awkward when you live with your six-year-old daughter in what is literally a refurbished garden shed.

But all of that is beside the point, which is that Lorelai categorically does not need Miss Patty to get her a date. The only reason she agrees to this one is to get the woman off her back, and she's not expecting much. After a long day on her feet, all she really feels like doing is snuggling up with Rory and watching The Little Mermaid for the thousandth time, not sitting through an awkward dinner with some stranger, choking back sub-par pasta and the foot that she will inevitably put in her mouth.

Still, she's got a rep to uphold and there's no need to be rude, so she bites the bullet, puts on a killer blue dress, and pins her hair back from her face, letting it curl at her shoulders.

"How do I look?" she asks, doing a little twirl in the bedroom of Sookie's tiny apartment.

"Hot," Sookie replies, raising her eyebrows suggestively.

"Pretty," Rory concurs, her smile missing half its teeth. "You are a very pretty lady."

"Not in the Julia Roberts way," Sookie adds quickly.

"That was Pretty Woman," Lorelai retorts, turning to the mirror to fix her mascara. "And Julia Roberts is smoking in that movie. But thank you kindly."

She borrows Sookie's car to drive to Woodbury, because there is no way she is riding the bus to a dinner date, and cranks the radio up as she peels out of town, her bag and her heels on the seat next to her. It's not far to the restaurant; she parks the car around the corner, and even though she's already ten minutes late, she takes a moment to put on some lipstick. It's her favorite, a dark red Chanel she treated herself to a few months ago, and she examines herself critically in the rear view mirror, swipes at her bottom lip, turns her head to make sure her hair is still in place.

God, is she nervous? Yeah, okay, it's been a while, but man, she doesn't even know this guy. Didn't Patty say he was born-and-bred Stars Hollow? He's gonna be harmless. Harmless, she tells herself, walking up to the restaurant, and probably short to boot. She shouldn't have worn heels. Oh, god, no, what if he's short and he tries to kiss her goodnight and he can't even reach?

She tries to shake off the nerves as she steps through the door. The restaurant is clearly trying to be a bistro and is not exactly succeeding, but it's nice, cozy, with dark wooden chairs and candles on the tables. She waits at the door while the server seats the couple in front of her, shifting her weight, shuffling her feet against the carpet, and holds a hand to her stomach, trying to soothe the sudden butterflies fluttering against her ribcage. They don't go away, though—not when the waitress asks for her name; not when she leads her through the room, around a corner, past couples and families, a slew of faces she barely registers; not as they move towards the back, where a dark-haired guy in a blue shirt is sitting by himself in the corner, and there's no way they're heading to that table because he is way too good-looking to be here on a blind date with her and holy shit that's exactly where they're going.

"I'll just bring you your menus then, okay?" chirps the waitress, but Lorelai isn't paying attention anymore. The guy looks up, his eyes widening as he takes her in, and she is suddenly exquisitely aware of the tightness of her dress, and the bare skin of her throat, which tingles as what feels like a blush rises up her chest. He stands up, and oh god, he's not short at all, and she holds out her hand mechanically, suddenly tongue-tied.

He takes it, his palm warm and rough against hers, and squeezes her fingers gently, clearing his throat. "Luke Danes," he says firmly, pushing his hair out of his eyes with his other hand, and she tries for a smile.

"Uh, Lorelai."

"Hey."

"Hi."

"You wanna, uh," he begins awkwardly, licking his lips. "You wanna sit down?"

"Yeah," she replies quickly. "Yeah, sitting is—great. Sitting down. Great."

"Great," he echoes, and waits for her to settle in before dropping back down across from her, his knee knocking against hers. "Sorry," he says, grimacing in a 'what can you do?' kind of way, and she smiles, bumping her leg back against his.

"God, Patty is really dedicated to the whole matchmaking thing," she says conversationally, figuring they may as well address the elephant in the room.

He smiles. "She been hounding you too?"

"Only every day."

"And of course she picks a restaurant where it's impossible not to play footsie," he says wryly as his foot bumps into hers again.

"She's incorrigible. Bad to the bone," Lorelai sighs, shaking her head in mock disapproval, and Luke bites his lip, ducking his head.

"Yeah, she's something." He looks up at her then, handsome, smooth-faced, his eyes a clear blue beneath his eyelashes, and smiles as though despite himself. "But I gotta say, I mean—I'm glad."

"Yeah," she says, leaning her chin onto her hand and grinning at him. "Yeah, me too."

2. 1980, Harvey's Beach.

On her list of best friends, Trish usually comes in at a solid third. In the summertime, though, Chris goes to Europe for a month, and Amanda is always at horseback riding camp, while Trish's family starts going to the beach every weekend. Going to the beach and, crucially, taking Lorelai with them. So from June to August every year, Trish is bumped straight up to number one.

They're sitting under a couple of beach umbrellas, smearing sunscreen on each others backs, and Lorelai's starting to get that special beach feeling, that creeping joy that stretches all the way from the tips of her fingertips to the bottoms of her feet. The sun is out, the sky is blue, and she can feel the crisp ocean air on her skin, can taste salt on the back of her tongue. She's wearing a brand new ruffly swimsuit and her favorite red heart-shaped sunglasses, which her mom thinks are tacky but she thinks are glamorous. It's gonna be a good day, she thinks.

And then a volleyball hits her in the back of the head.

Her glasses fall into the sand at her feet, and she crouches down to grope around for them, one hand rubbing at the back of her skull, completely disoriented. "Are you okay?" Trish shrieks, and she grimaces, blinking away tears.

"Yeah," she says after a minute, and reaches over to pick up the ball from where it's rolled to a stop in the sand a few feet away. "I think."

"Hey, are you hurt?" asks a male voice, and suddenly there's a guy standing in front of them, tall and broad, probably in high school, wearing blue shorts and a backwards baseball hat. He makes as though to touch the back of her head and changes course halfway through, reaching up to readjust his hat. "Hey, I'm really sorry," he continues. "Jeremy can't volley to save his life."

She blinks a few times, rubs at her eyes, and—hot dog.

If there's one thing that Lorelai has learned about being twelve years old, it is that a lot of time is suddenly devoted to deciding which guys are hot, and which are not. And, boy, she and Trish have been giggling at the snack stand guy all summer, but this guy blows him right out of the water. He's got a nice clean jaw and bright blue eyes, and she can see all sorts of muscles in his arms and in his stomach (which is apparently what it's all about). She likes the color of his hair, the way it curls around his ears; likes the freckles on his arms, the hint of sunburn on his shoulders. He's still looking at her, his eyes all squinty against the sun, and she reacts to it all in the only way she knows how.

"Hey!" she shouts belatedly. His face shifts into a frown. "Watch what you're doing!"

"Sorry," he repeats again, annoyance coloring his tone. "Really. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she replies snootily, flipping her braid over her shoulder. "No thanks to you."

"Okay," he says. "Well. Glad to hear it. Can I, uh, have the ball back?"

Instead of handing it to him, Lorelai wraps her arms around it and presses it to her stomach. "Give me one reason why I should give it back."

"Because it's mine," he says slowly, crossing his arms.

"So? Finders, keepers."

"That's not how that works."

"Well, what'll you give me for it?"

"What?" he sputters, blinking, his hands dropping to his sides in surprise.

"You heard me."

"Are you trying to sell my volleyball back to me?"

"It's a dog eat dog world, pal."

"What? That's not—" He sighs, clearly exasperated, and she feels a little thrill run through her as he fixes her with a glare. "Well," he says heavily, looking around, as though hoping someone else might step in. "What do you want?"

Which, Lorelai will admit, is an excellent question. Okay, so maybe she didn't exactly think this whole confrontation through. What does she want?

"Ice cream," Trish supplies helpfully, and Lorelai nods in what she hopes is a convincing way, as though that was what she had wanted the whole time.

"Yeah," she says loudly. "Ice cream."

The guy looks up, taking a deep breath, before closing his eyes and saying: "This is insane."

"No such thing as a free lunch."

"That's not what that means," he mutters, opening his eyes, but there's something that looks suspiciously like a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and she grins triumphantly, holding the ball out to him.

"So we have a deal?"

"Yeah, whatever," he grumbles, turning and leading the way to the snack stand. "You're a crazy kid."

"Lorelai," she says brightly, trailing behind him with Trish in tow.

"What?"

"That's my name. Lorelai."

"Luke," he says, and she exchanges a quick look with Trish, raising her eyebrows. Today is gonna be a great day, she thinks, and smiles.

3. 1992, Stars Hollow Elementary School

Picking Rory up from school is consistently the best and worst part of her day.

The best is being reunited with her loving daughter, her heart of hearts, her greatest creation, the light of her life, her reason for being. The worst is having to stand around and decide between making awkward small talk and being judged or it, or not making awkward small talk and being judged for it. She'll be the first to admit that she doesn't give a shit about husbands and mortgages and table cloth patterns, and that she sucks at pretending to care; and for god's sake, if Sarah Fortescue gives her that guacamole recipe one more time, she is going to lose it.

And of course, every day is exactly the same routine. She's gonna be standing by those doors ten minutes a day, five days a week, no matter what she does, so she's learned to entertain herself. She's counted all the bricks in the courtyard and all the windowpanes on the front of the school. She's learned how to say the alphabet backwards. She's gotten very good at doing monthly budgets in her head. She even tried playing solitaire for a while, but the wind kept blowing her cards away, and besides, it was kind of lonely. She's come to accept the boredom, though, as well as the fact that every school day for the foreseeable future is going to look exactly the same.

Which is why it's so jarring when one day it's suddenly different.

She gets off the bus and walks over to the school like she always does, and sits down on the bench to the right of the doors, like she always does. What is different is that there is a man sitting on the other end, and she does a double-take, convinced, for a wild moment, that she's imagined him. He's wearing a beat up denim jacket and a red flannel shirt, scuffed work boots, and a black baseball hat pushed backwards, the strap snug against his forehead. He's actually kind of hot, she muses; a bit scruffy, unshaven, but with a nice sharp profile, looking appealingly world-weary as he leans on his elbows and looks down at his hands.

What the hell, she thinks, and opens her mouth. "Are you lost?"

He startles, looking up sharply, before relaxing and giving her a disbelieving look. "In Stars Hollow?" he snorts, raising his eyebrows. "You take three left turns and you're back in the center of town. There's nowhere to get lost."

"Point taken," she concedes, pushing her hair back and turning towards him. "It's just that I haven't seen you here before, and uh, you don't really fit in with the usual crowd."

"Usual crowd?"

"You know. Permed hair, tight jeans, thirty-ish. Perky. Female. Probably named Pam." Lorelai already sticks out, with her long dark hair and her miniskirt; this man may as well have stepped off another planet—or maybe out of a home hardware magazine.

He snorts. "Yeah, definitely not a Pam. I'm Luke," he says, sticking out his hand, and she shakes it, trying not to ogle him too much. (What? She's a mother, not a nun, and damn, if she isn't a sucker for blue eyes. Anyway.)

"Lorelai," she supplies, smiling.

"You live around here?"

"Something like that," she says, because it's basically true. "You?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah."

"So, what? The wife not feeling well? Or is this more of a Kramer versus Kramer kind of thing?"

"What? Oh, uh, no, Jess isn't my kid. I'm just his uncle."

"Babysitting?"

"Something like that," he echoes. "And you're picking up…your sister?"

"My daughter," she says firmly, smiling pointedly. "Teen pregnancy—it's not just in the movies anymore."

"Oh, sure. Sorry," he says, shifting. "I just—nevermind." He looks away for a minute, rubbing at his neck. "My sister had Jess when she was nineteen, so."

"Oh," she says, deflating a bit.

"Yeah. I'm actually not, uh, babysitting, exactly. He's staying with us for a while. You know, with my dad. But he has a whole store to run, so I'm just helping out a bit." He shrugs a bit, lacing his fingers together.

"Uh huh," she says slowly.

"It's actually his first day here," Luke says, jabbing his thumb at the school. "Second grade."

"Ooh, Rory's in second grade. Maybe they'll be in the same class!"

He raises his eyebrows at her excitement. "Yeah, maybe."

They fall into silence. Lorelai eyes the other moms; Luke looks at his watch. "Are you worried about him?" Lorelai asks softly after a few minutes, and Luke looks up at her, frowning. "It's just, you know, when I left Rory here for the first time, I was a wreck. I was worried the other kids would like, take her lunch money, and make her eat glue, and challenge her to duels after school, and stuff."

"Jess is more likely to take the other kids' lunch money," Luke says ruefully, a smile twisting at his mouth. "But, I don't know. Yeah. Maybe."

"He'll be fine," Lorelai says, trying to sound soothing, and Luke looks at her from the corner of his eye.

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah," she says, trying for a reassuring smile. "Well, welcome to the after school Godot club. Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a deck of cards on you, would you?"

4. 1984, St. Joseph's Hospital.

The day's been nine months coming, and she doesn't know what, exactly, she'd been expecting, but this definitely isn't it. She'd thought the whole thing would be more—well, dramatic. And, okay, a pregnant teenager without a driver's license tearing through Hartford in the middle of the night in a Jaguar sounds pretty fucking dramatic, but she's practically got her license anyway, so really it had been no big deal. Overall, though, she'd definitely expected the whole thing to be more emotional. Frantic. Possibly with an award-winning orchestral score in the background. Instead, once she signs in at the nurses' station, she's basically just told to sit down and wait.

And, wouldn't you know it, she's forgotten her Walkman.

She looks around. Across from her, an old man is coughing into a handkerchief, wheezing with each breath; a few seats to her left, a middle-aged woman with braids and bags under her eyes is trying to get her two kids to stop fighting; to her right—a prospect! A tall guy in sweatpants and a Nike sweatshirt, with brown, wavy hair and a nice jaw, maybe college-aged, maybe older. He's got a pair of crutches leaning against the seat next to him and a paperback in his hand, the cover folded back, his eyes flicking back and forth as he frowns at it. He apparently also has either a hearing defect, or truly impressive powers of concentration, because she has to clear her throat three times before he finally looks up.

"Hi," she says brightly, going for her most charming smile. She imagines the effect is somewhat dampened by the puffiness of her face, the rat's nest that is her hair, and the general fatigue that has basically been her defining trait for weeks now, but hey. She's trying.

"Hi," he parrots, nodding his head.

"So, what are you in for?"

"What?" He's even better-looking up close, his eyes a pretty blue, the shadow of stubble darkening his chin; but he looks tired, too, like he hasn't slept well in a while. She can relate.

"What are you in for?" she repeats. "Like, why are you here?"

"Oh." He motions to his right leg, stretched stiffly out in front of him. "Getting a cast off." He pauses for a moment, looking uncomfortable and distinctly out of his depth. "How about you?"

"Giving birth," she answers matter-of-factly, shrugging. "You know how it is."

"Wow. Wait, right now?" he asks, eyebrows rising as he stares at her stomach. "Shouldn't you be, I mean—where—why aren't you—?" He's rising out of his seat, looking frantically between her and the nurses' station, and she smiles.

"They told me to wait," she answers graciously, and he relaxes back into his seat. "It like, just started."

"Oh. That's uh—that's good, I guess." They're silent for a moment, and he shifts, clearing his throat. "You know, my sister just had a kid."

"Congratulations," she says flatly, her mood suddenly dropping. She doesn't mean to be cranky, but it's sort of difficult to think about happy families having happy babies and living happy lives when her life as she knows it is about to come to an end. If he notices her tone, he ignores it.

"Yeah, thanks," he says, squinting at the wall. "The baby—Jess—he's seven weeks now."

"I hear that's a great week."

He gives her a funny look, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "Really? I heard sixteen is really where it's at."

"Well, I'll let you know when I get there," she sighs. She feels a contraction rolling through her body and winces, pressing her hands against her stomach. The guy's eyes follow the movement, and he looks her over critically, his eyebrows drawing together in concern.

"Hey, are you okay? Can I get you something?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she grits out, breathing out through her teeth. "Besides, isn't your leg broken?"

He makes a face. "Well, it's healed now, hence the whole getting-the-cast-off thing. But yeah, my mobility's not great." He shoots her half a smile, before looking around. "By the way, where's your—uh, boyfriend? Husband?"

"Probably cramming for his SATs," she quips.

"Damn. Your parents?"

"Asleep, I guess? I dunno. They were at some party, but they're probably home by now." She watches his eyes getting wider as she talks, and swallows hard when she's done, suddenly regretting her flippant tone and the worried look on his face. "It's fine," she adds quickly, reaching out and briefly touching his arm. "Really. I'm used to doing things on my own."

"Sure," he says softly. "You sure I can't do anything for you, though? Seriously."

"You can distract me from the fact that I am about to expel a human being from my body," she offers, and he grimaces. "Trust me, I'm not looking forward to it either."

"Okay," he says, nodding a bit. "And how do I do that?"

"Ooh, tell me a story," she says, fluttering her eyelashes, and he rolls his eyes. "For example: how'd you break your leg?"

"It's a pretty boring story," he warns her, setting his book down on the chair beside him.

"So spice it up, it's not like I'll know the difference," she says, trying to get comfortable and frowning as she feels another contraction. "Besides—I'm not going anywhere."

5. 2004, Luke's Diner.

Lorelai doesn't remember who suggested it first, but basically, they both really need a vacation; and since Rory has finals coming up, vacation is pretty much looking like a weekend away at best. So Lorelai gets out her laptop and Rory gets hers out too, and they sit next to each other on the couch, looking at destinations.

"You sure you don't want to go to New York?" Lorelai asks, biting into an After Eight.

"Mom, we've been to New York like a zillion times."

"If Hollywood can make a thousand and one movies about falling in love in New York, it's clearly a place worth revisiting."

"Mm, how about Boston?"

"Ugh, no," Lorelai answers, rolling her eyes. "Your grandpa's gonna be there next week, remember? He'll totally make us have dinner with him every night."

"He does love his family dinners," Rory agrees, tipping her head in agreement.

"He loves showing off his perfect, pretty little granddaughter."

"Harsh," Rory says reproachfully.

"That was not a slight at you. I just don't think there's any need for a nineteen-year-old girl to spend so much time being introduced to sixty-year-old insurance moguls."

"Amen." Rory types something into her computer and leans back, frowning thoughtfully. "I think we need to think smaller."

"What do you mean?"

"You know, like bed and breakfasts, or something."

"Ooh, yeah, a weekend in the countryside. Small towns, dairy farms, handsome lumberjack men. The simple life."

Which is how they end up at the Independence Inn for a weekend, in some nowhere town called Stars Hollow, which doesn't seem like it should be allowed to be a real place, but there it is. The inn is pretty and has great food (although the manager is kind of asshole, and a little too French to be believable), and in the morning they decide to walk into town. It's a pretty day for March, leaves just blooming on the trees, the smell of spring in the air.

"Wow, can you imagine living here?" Rory asks as they walk out of the bookshop, her arms weighed down with two bags of paperbacks. "I mean, look at that gazebo! Or, oh my gosh, is that a soda shop? It's so cute!"

"It's very picturesque," Lorelai agrees. "Maybe a little too Pleasantville."

"Nah," Rory says, looking around and smiling. "I think it's great."

"Yeah. Your dad would have hated it here, though."

"He didn't like Hartford much, either," Rory says simply, and Lorelai feels the familiar ache in her stomach that appears anytime Christopher comes to mind. It's her own fault—she brought him up.

"True," she sighs, and casts around for a different topic. "Hey, where do you think we can get some coffee?"

"There's a diner up there," Rory says, nodding her head towards the soda shop, where a yellow sign reading Luke's hangs from the adjacent wall. "It looks pretty nice."

"Second breakfast, here we come," Lorelai says, and they cross the street, arm in arm.

The diner looks like somebody gave up halfway through renovating it, with an old sign above the door reading William's Hardware and a collection of mismatched tables scattered in front of the counter. They take a seat by the window, and an energetic girl with black hair and glasses takes their orders. Rory takes the opportunity to take her new books out of their bags, looking each one over before stacking them carefully on the table in front of her.

"Buyer's remorse?" Lorelai asks fondly, and Rory shakes her head, smiling.

"On the contrary," she says happily. "I just wanted to look at them. Hey, wait a minute—" She grabs the receipt off the table, and holds it up next to the book in her other hand, frowning. "We didn't pay for this."

"What? How?"

"The cashier must have made a mistake. I'm gonna go pay for it, okay? I'll be right back."

"Sure, hon. I'll be here," she calls, as Rory grabs her coat and bolts out the door.

The town really is adorable, Lorelai thinks, leaning her head on her hand and looking out the window. The diner's mostly empty, but the square is full of people, walking, talking, playing. There's some girls in tutus lining up on the gazebo to do stretches, and Lorelai pictures little Rory with them, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked, waving her arms and pointing her toes. She tries to imagine a life here, but she has no idea what she would do all day, day in, day out, waiting at home while Chris commuted to Hartford. Maybe if she'd never married him—but even then, she would have had to get a job. What could she have done here? What would that life have looked like?

She reaches for her ring finger and finds, like she has every other time for months now, that she can't fiddle with her wedding band because it's not there. She'd been ready to get divorced, of course, had wanted it; but she hadn't been counting on having to rearrange her nervous tics on top of everything else that had changed.

She's startled out of her reverie by a gruff voice asking: "Chocolate pancakes, double bacon on the side?"

"Ooh, me," she replies automatically, and reaches up to take the plate from a burly man wearing a plaid flannel shirt and a scowl.

"And is the strawberry french toast also for you?" he deadpans, raising an eyebrow, and she smiles with all her teeth, fluttering her eyelashes at him.

"You know just how to talk to a woman," she simpers, moving back so he can set the plate in front of Rory's chair. "It's for my daughter, actually, she just stepped out. Although I can't guarantee it'll still be here when she gets back."

"Should I set up an honor guard?"

"They probably couldn't stop me."

"Well, there's more where that came from. Can I get you anything else?" he asks, a twist to his mouth.

"Coffee, please. Make it two."

"You got it," he says, nodding, and she tries to convince herself she's not checking him out as he walks away.

.

Rory gets back when she's halfway through her second pancake and throws herself into her chair, reaching wildly for her coffee. "Aah," she says happily, licking her lips after taking her first sip. "Sweet, sweet caffeine."

"I was about to send out a search party."

"I was just talking to Andrew."

"Who?"

"The bookstore guy." She grabs her fork and digs into the pile of french toast in front of her. "God, this is great."

"Yeah? And the coffee's amazing," Lorelai adds conspiratorially.

"Top tier. Is that the famous Luke?" she asks, nodding to the counter, where the flannel man is wrestling with a toaster.

"Seems a likely contender."

"You know, he's kinda cute," Rory says quickly, looking at her plate, going for nonchalant and overshooting by about half a mile.

"Yeah, I guess, if you're into the whole lumberjack thing."

"Wasn't that the whole point of this trip?"

"Uh, no, the point was to escape from the misery of our daily lives. It was either this or murder-suicide." Still, she leans her cheek against her wrist and considers. He is pretty handsome, actually, beneath the flannel and the stupid gray baseball hat; he has a long nose, a strong chin, a nice mouth. Good shoulders. Tall, too. And he can apparently cook, which is an obvious plus.

"Well?" Rory asks, watching her watch him, and Lorelai blinks, turning back to her plate.

"You have gotten way too invested in my love life, Missy."

"Somebody has to be," she counters.

"You're supposed to be grossed out by your mother dating."

"I'm saddened by my mother wallowing around the house all day without me."

"I don't wallow," Lorelai retorts, pouting. "I have my things. I relax. I'm a woman of leisure, and, wow, no, you're right, it's definitely time. But I'm sorry, kid," she continues, lowering her voice. "The alleged Luke over there doesn't seem a likely prospect, surly lumberjack charms and all."

"Why not?" Rory urges.

"Uh, I don't know anything about him? We don't live in the same town? I don't even know if his name is actually Luke?"

"Well, go ask him."

"What?"

"Go get a refill on you coffee and ask him."

"My cup is still half full," Lorelai says, and then watches dumbly as Rory grabs it and swallows the rest of it back in one go, wiping her lip off with the back of her hand.

"Now it's all empty," she says pointedly, dropping the mug back onto the table. "Go."

"O-kay," Lorelai says uncertainly, standing up, suddenly feeling very tall. She walks over to the counter, doing her best not to look as self-conscious as she feels, and leans up against a stool where maybe-Luke is elbow deep in toaster.

Wow, it's been a while. She looks down, takes a deep breath, and goes for it.

"Please sir," she says in a quivering British falsetto. "I want some more."

"More?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Wow, your Mr. Bumble is spot on."

"Wait 'til you see my Fagin," he says, shrugging, and she smiles, pleased. He wipes his hands off on a rag and reaches behind him for a coffee pot. "That was fast."

"It was good."

"Thanks," he says, pouring out another cup full. "You two from out of town?"

"What gave us away?"

"Well, I've never seen you here before, and I see pretty much the whole town on a weekly basis, so."

"Does that make you the eponymous Luke?"

"I am he," he says, placing his hands flat against the counter, and cocking his head.

"I'm Lorelai," she says, smiling, and she watches his eyes dart to her mouth for a second, so quickly she almost misses it.

"Nice to meet you, Lorelai," he says mock-formally. "Oh, uh, when you're done with the pancakes, I've got an apple pie just out of the oven. If you want."

"Luke," she says seriously. "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

.

(Months later, they'll be lying in bed, warm and sated, the sheets damp where they lie tangled around their ankles, and he will brush her hair back from her forehead and offer her coffee.

"God," she'll say, kissing him once, twice, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth. "Where have you been all my life?")