A/N: Ah, hello, dear readers. I hope you enjoy this little post-ep for 6-20 I Get a Sidekick Out of You. It was just a spur-of-the-moment type of thing; I was inspired, and it's been awhile, but my muse decided to briefly visit. Here's the (insert negative or positive adjective of your choice here)result, however ill-conceived it may be.
And here's a word to my love, Muffin Is Injured, without whom the detrimental effects of Amy's Season 6 plot rampage of death would be unbearable.
Disclaimer:In lieu of not being able to come up with anything outstandingly witty at two o'clock in the morning, I'll just state the obvious: not mine.
She wakes up startled, convinced there is an anvil resting on her head.
Or- she argues in short-lived spurts- has an anvil simply taken over her head, invaded it, making it blocky and clunky, urging the walls of her skull to break? She can't say, she lacks the ability to think in anything but a meaningless stream of blurbs, jumping from coffee to cooking oil to cantaloupe, a subject that she dwells on a second too long to wonder why she's thinking about it. Her head pounds, drifts away from pain, pounds harder. The word anvil pops up in her mind repeatedly, steadily overriding anything else, like a blimp with fireworks to match. Gruesomely, tiredly, with her eyes half squinting in the glare of natural light she wonders at ways to destroy the pain in her head, to destroy the anvil. She craves numbness. She pins it down on lighter fluid and matches.
I need dynamite.
Chris is up before she realizes her mouth is open and moving, that the familiar streams of air beginning in her throat are words, that the vowels in dynamite are her own. He rests a cool hand on her forehead. She is suddenly, alertly aware that his hand is touching skin, that the skin is her own, that she is not an anvil. The thought process raises bile in her throat, slimy and in her mouth bitter, biting. She slaps a hand over her lips, and his hands reach carefully below her knees and shoulders.
"Come on, Lorelai," he mutters, pulling her up. "You're a big girl."
"Mmmmm," she manages, keeping her mouth closed firmly, trying to slap his hands away, but producing more of a light tap against his cufflinks. Shefalls from his heavy arms to the stone-cold bathroom floor, which spins momentarily in a blur of blue and white. The ocean, frothing crests of waves appears before her, rapidly rotating behind her eyes until she opens them, one at a time, and watches her pupils contract in the glint of the mirror. It's much too bright in there, a tight net of wavelengths that jab at her skull like knives, and a stench she can't place until she's on her knees, wiping her mouth of it.
"Christopher?" she mumbles, her eyes groping for his shape against the shifting walls. She falls forward and her palms slap cold tile.
He's in the bathroom doorway, rubbing his eyes. "You up, Lor?"
"I feel like an anvil."
It had sounded more profound in her head.
"Nothing a few tacos and several million pots of coffee can't fix. Oopsie daisy," he adds, as if he is talking to his daughter. He's touching her skin again, this time her forearm, clutching her flesh and pulling her up, his fingers firm and surprisingly callused. It still feels funny, the way walking quickly into air conditioning always does during the summer when it's so hot her cheeks feel like melted pools of crayons. Her chin presses against the rough cotton of his dress shirt, and the heavy scents of cologne and beer float up her nose. She stumbles, with his guiding support, down the stairs and into the kitchen. She appreciates the lack of light, the drawn blinds. Christopher understands the human hangover.
Tacos are set up on the table. He's put them in a pattern, she notices, a checkerboard of chicken and beef, with the chicken ones diagonal and the beef straight. She's alert enough for humor, fuzzy though it is; she glances at him inquisitively.
"Hey, I do have an artistic side."
"Ha-ha," she counters wittily, pressing her knuckles into her forehead and taking her seat. "What time is it?" She grabs a taco.
"12:30."
"Shit." Chew. Gulp.
"Yeah, you've been out for awhile, Vodka McGee."
"Clever," she chokes.
"Says the girl who just used onomatopoeia as a comeback."
He smiles. She's always been comforted by his smile, the same curved lips she smattered with all her 15 flavors of Lipsmackers when she was eleven, giggling with curls in her eyes, blowing them awkwardly toward her eyebrows. Here, she wants to point with her index finger against his lips, here is where I kissed him when I was 16. And there, the corner of his mouth, slanting horizontally, brushing lips. And there.
Luke, she thinks suddenly, guiltily. She shouldn't even think…
And then she feels a block in her mind, a cloud, then a tug of familiarity, an ounce of dread. She remembers; speech, crowd, call; a blur, then vomit and heaviness.
She drops the taco, where it flops open. Meat falls onto the tabletop.
"Hey," says Chris, alarmed.
She stands up and her legs wobble like buoys, but she forces balance. "Chris, did Luke call last night?"
"Yeah. Around 10:30, I think. Lor?"
"Uh…" Her eyelids press hard on each other and she gropes her hair, searching for words, actions, but she wants to scream. "He's coming here, Chris. Luke. He's on his way."
Christopher stands up immediately. She tries to read his expression… hurt? Concerned? But the urge to yell is too exhausting.
She takes a deep breath. The smell of oil and tacos is suddenly too strong. "I think… Chris, I think you should leave. Please." The sound of her voice is harsh and grating- the please she adds on sounds like an insult. She wants to let him know this is not his fault- she tries. "I mean… I don't want the first thing that Luke sees when he walks in here you and me, hungover, eating tacos in our dress clothes like we're an eccentric party couple. You know?" she says desperately.
"Yeah," Christopher breathes, checking his pocket for his keys. "I'd better go. You'll be fine?"
She's not sure. "Yeah, I'll be fine."
"Lorelai?" The door slams behind him as Luke steps in, his arms full of bananas. "I brought bananas. I know you don't like them, but I do, so I figured we could at least make some use out of them here." He lifts one banana comically to his forehead, in a weird ceremony of thought. "Banana splits! You like banana splits." He strides into the living room and dumps them in a bag he finds on the coffee table.
She whips her eyes up on him and half-grins. "Well, first of all- dirty. Of all sundae confections, I do believe the banana split is the dirtiest. And second of all- yes. I love banana splits." She's in sweats and a t-shirt with a towel around her head. She sees her reflection in the TV and spots mascara residue running in rivulets down her cheek, her wet hair the source. She looks sad, undetermined. Savagely, she wipes the gray patch away, but now it's on her palm, and it didn't change a thing.
"So, how was Lane's wedding?" He sits down opposite her and folds his arms, occasionally rubbing his right thumb and index finger together. He's the psychiatrist, she the patient, scrutinizing her eyes with his. She's never felt this before. This is her house, her life, but right now he's the one with the power.
"Oh, beautiful. Both of them." She chuckles softly.
He lets out a short, fragmented laugh. "Both?"
He is wearing the slacks she sent along with him. They're pressed, the creases straight as knives. He ironed them. He ironed them himself. She's not sure why this bothers her, gnaws at her heart louder than her head's anvil. They're his fucking slacks, never mind that he'd surrendered to ownership of them through her arguments, their banter, her charms, a long-fought battle dotted with his regular feigned exasperation and her cloying remarks. He was wearing them now; so what?
"Yeah, apparently the feeling of overwhelming religious entitlement runs in the Kim family. Mama Kim's Mama Kimis a Buddhist. Imagine the controversy."
He whistles. "Didn't see that one coming."
"I believe that's what Shakespeare will title the play."
He is happy, one might even place him in the category of animated, at a stretch. This man isn't Luke, town cynic with his grudging, unconditional love and mask of smirks and callous words- this slack-wearing, jovial man with a monochromatic color scheme from collar to heel. He's Luke, father, power soccer science fair dad extravaganza, who has magnets on his refrigerator, who goes to work to provide for his kid.
That's great, Lorelai insists to the gnaw, it's great, and how perfectly Luke of him to take responsibility.
It's just great.
"So- uh- the trip was good."
Ah, and feel how the cloak of awkwardness falls upon the room.
"Good! Good, I'm glad. So- April's warming up to you, huh?"
"Yeah…" he scratches the back of his neck. "Yeah, I'd say she's getting more comfortable around me- I mean, we're getting to know each other more. She's a great kid."
"So I've heard." It doesn't sound bitter, but blunt. End of conversation.
They sit in silence. There isn't even a clock ticking, or crickets cricketing, or musack playing in a distant elevator. There's nothing but she and him, their quiet laps and hands and eyes, swerving to avoid.
Lorelai feels frustration strangle her, and fury burrows into her stomach. She places her leg on the couch, puts it down again. She moves a pillow so it covers her stomach and watches as Luke watches it move slowly up and down with every breath, watches it as it gets slightly faster, less steady. She puts it back and fluffs it, smiling stupidly like an obsessed housewife. Her face is contradictory to her body in that moment; her Juicy sweats, her unbrushed, wet hair piled high in a pink towel, still dripping in tiny splats on her shirt, as dark on the gray as inkblots. She's felt more and more like this lately. Her face is plastic, it moves with out her; it's automatic. Her mouth configures easily into a content smile; her eyes know how to widen when concerned. Her voice is softer. She's slowing down. She feels, in this instant, as insignificant as wallpaper. She's been programmed to please; it's against her nature. Her head is pounding again; ironically, now it's because of the quiet.
"Look, I promised April I'd help her with a science project, let her borrow a few of my cooking materials."
"Oh." Her eyes move rapidly from her fretting hands to his face. "Okay."
He does not dwell on the subtleties on her features, but jumps from block to block; her perfect, curved, accepting smile, to what she says- "Have fun, Luke." He ignores what he doesn't want to hear- her uncertainty, that pleading undertone that only a few people, a few people who have hugged Lorelai, hard, who have cried with her, who have discovered the subtle magic of anything with her; of coffee beans, of new snow, can hear. He's one of the few, but has become an optimist. He has stopped analyzing, he is focusing on the positive, he tells himself. Has he ever analyzed?
When he turns away her smile collapses deftly. His eyes snag the beginning of a blank mouth, a straight line. He feels something in his stomach like churning concrete, a sack of coal. Nerves, he dismisses quickly, wanting to be rid of it. Nerves.
A/N: Now, that review button is tempting, isn't it?