Just Duck-y (or, A Devil of a Time)

(In no way related to 'Just Duckie' by River Run, which was also written for this ficathon – just a bizarre coincidence)

Because apparently my mind goes to absolutely ridiculous places when prompted in ficathons. And because it's so much fun to torture Lorelai by turning her into skittish-jumpy-Lorelai. Thanks to llano for the beta – two sets of overworked brain cells are better than one.

Takes place after episode 321. Chapter 1 is June 4th, 2003, if you want to get really specific.

One minor, but crucial, tweak to the back story, which will become obvious toward the end.

Ficathon prompt/requests will appear at the end of the last chapter.

Focused intently on the laptop screen in front of her, Lorelai wondered how on earth she could be expected to make such a weighty decision just like that. So many choices… She was so wrapped up in her conundrum that she didn't even notice Luke entering the diner. She furrowed her brow, gnawing anxiously on her lower lip as Luke surveyed the scene from behind her.

A few seconds later, it was Luke's exasperated "What the hell is this?" that finally drew her out of her contemplative state.

She looked up, unfazed as Luke gestured in annoyance to the array of wires and adapters she'd strung across the counter in order to plug in her computer. "I need a name," she explained cryptically, going right back to staring at her screen

Still glowering in the direction of the hazardously-placed wires, Luke gruffly stated the obvious as he rounded the counter. "You have a name."

"I need a different name," Lorelai replied, adding no further explanation as she refocused on the laptop's screen.

"George?" Luke suggested wryly, ducking under her wires to clear some empty plates from the other end of the counter.

Lorelai rolled her eyes at Luke's classically weak attempt at humor before she clarified, "No, an e-bay name."

Luke's eyebrows shot up skeptically as he handed the plates over to Caesar. "E-bay?" he asked.

"Only the world's premier online auction site," Lorelai grinned, her smile fading into a frown as the website informed her that 'StarbucksSlut' was already taken.

Luke shook his head at Lorelai's confirmation. He managed to bite his tongue for a whole ten seconds before launching into a typical tirade, "Why the hell do people insist on buying junk they've never even seen from people that could be drug dealers, identity thieves, God knows what? It's like one of those stupid garage sales, but you don't even get to see the crap before you buy it. What the hell happened to garage sales? Why the hell would you want to buy something on there?"

Lorelai smirked, having anticipated just such a reaction, "I'm not buying, I'm selling."

"No one wants your junk," Luke chastised, wiping up the counter around her.

"It's not junk," Lorelai protested, "I have it on good authority that somewhere out there, probably in a remote town in Canada, there is some poor soul who actually likes hockey."

Luke immediately stopped the wiping. Eyeing Lorelai quizzically, he asked with more than a touch of doubt in his voice, "Hockey?"

"Yes, hockey," Lorelai nodded, not paying all that much attention to Luke's sudden interest – she was still focused intently on inventing her e-bay pseudonym. JuanValdezWhore? "The sport on ice that's not figure skating, bobsled, curling, or shoveling my driveway," she continued distractedly, all the while trying out various coffee-oriented names on the website. "There's skates involved. And sticks, I think. I actually don't know."

Luke glowered, "I know what hockey is."

"Then why the questions, Trebek?" Lorelai shot back, all the while wondering incredulously how on earth 'SqueegieBeckenheim' could already be in use on e-bay.

Abandoning his job of cleaning the counter, Luke circled around to the stool next to Lorelai. Peering over her shoulder, he wondered aloud, "I'm just trying to figure out what in the hell you could have to sell that is in any way related to hockey?"

"Tickets," Lorelai replied, flashing said product in front of his face without her gaze ever departing her screen.

"You have hockey tickets?" Luke scoffed in disbelief.

"No," Lorelai huffed, finally giving up on the task at hand and facing Luke, "I thought I'd give that scam artist stuff you were ranting about a try. See what kind of suckers are out there. Yes, I have hockey tickets." She waved them around again for emphasis.

"How did you get hockey tickets?" Luke demanded, twisting his face in confusion, "And tickets for what? It's June, there's no hockey in June."

With a sigh, Lorelai shrugged. "Don't ask," she lamented, pausing to gulp down some coffee for creative inspiration. "For some reason, my father got them from some corporate insurance guy who insures the hockeying people and the stadiums where all the hockeying transpires."

"Arenas," Luke corrected.

Blank stare from Lorelai: "Huh?"

"Forget it," was Luke's reaction.

"Whatever… seems like a bad move to me, don't hockey people always knock teeth out, or something disgusting and Neanderthal like that?" She didn't even pause for any sort of response from Luke before continuing with her ticket acquisition tale. "I don't know, but Dad got them somehow, thought it would be brilliant to give them to Rory, because apparently he's never met her and doesn't know that she knows less about hockey than me, not to mention the fact that she's had her nose in books 24/7 for the past three weeks. I guess he thought she might have friends who'd want them. But she's too busy to even find out if anyone wants them. So now I have them, and I have to get rid of them. I was seriously tempted to just toss the stupid things, but this way I get some cash. Thus the e-bay."

As punctuation, she turned back to her computer. Only as an afterthought did she whirl back around with a grin, "And hey, did you know that the Mighty Ducks are an actual team? I swear, someone is trying to mess with me, because the last time I checked, they were only real in those cheesy Disney movies. Seriously cheesy. But Emilio? Dreamy as ever." She fluttered her eyelashes melodramatically, clasping her hands together in front of her chest in adoration for her favorite Brat Pack member.

As soon as she finished speaking, Luke forced out a wide-eyed, spluttered, "You have Mighty Ducks tickets?"

"Yeah, seriously!" Lorelai gestured wildly, not quite catching the gravity with which Luke had spoken his previous question. "What's with the blurring of reality and movies? Next they're gonna tell me that if I just click the heels of my red sparkly shoes together, I can just teleport myself around everywhere." She paused, taking in Luke's non-reaction, "They are real, right?" she inquired skeptically.

Luke ignored her question. "That the finals," he stammered in disbelief, "Those are Stanley Cup finals tickets?"

Finally aware of the odd timbre his voice had taken on, Lorelai eyed Luke suspiciously, unsure of what could have warranted such a reaction from the normally stoic coffee provider. "Yeah, that's what's on the tickets," she confirmed warily. And frowning, she wrinkled her nose, bewildered, "Who the hell is Stanley?"

Again, Luke failed to register Lorelai's question. "You have Stanley Cup finals tickets?" he demanded, "Devils/Ducks?"

"That's what they say…" Lorelai squinted at Luke in confusion, drawing her words out. Finally, the proverbial light bulb lit up and realization washed over her face. "Do you want them?"

"What?" Luke asked shakily, looking like he was still processing the fact that the tickets were in Lorelai's possession, never mind the fact that she was offering them to him.

Lorelai herself could barely process what was going on – she'd witnessed Luke get emotional in an angry sense after last year's car crashing incident, pensive at his uncle's funeral, but never ever had she seen him resemble a giddy, dumbstruck, late 90's teeny-bopper at a Backstreet Boys concert. She could barely stifle the giggles as she rephrased to Luke, "Well, I thought with the hat and the… thing…" she gestured vaguely in the direction of the town's baseball field, "that you were a baseball guy. Or I would have just given them to you."

"I had a hockey phase," Luke admitted.

Lorelai shrugged. One less thing for her to deal with if he wanted them. She slid the pair of tickets across the counter in Luke's direction, "Take 'em then. Saves me from the evil, evil task of picking an ebay name," she groaned, lifting an elbow in the direction of her computer. "It's hard," she insisted.

Luke didn't even pick up the tickets right away, appearing quite dubious about Lorelai's offer. "Are you sure?" he hesitated, "I'll pay…" When he finally picked up the tickets, his next word was spoken much more harshly, "Lorelai."

Lorelai's head jerked back up from where she was closing the e-bay window on her screen, "Huh?"

"These are for a game in California," Luke informed her sternly.

For the first time in the course of the conversation, it was Lorelai's jaw that dropped. "It said New Jersey," she gasped in confusion, snatching the tickets back from Luke to confirm.

"That's the other team," Luke explained with a roll of his eyes. "The game is in Anaheim."

Lorelai's shoulders dropped visibly in defeat. "Oh," she pouted, forcing her lower lip out. "Sorry. Back to ebaying…" As she began the sign-in process on the website once again, she muttered to herself, "California… What in the hell was my father thinking?"

She was just beginning to ponder a name yet again when she felt Luke's hand rest tentatively on her arm.

He cleared his throat, and awkwardly spoke up, "Hey."

Lorelai looked up, surprised, "What?"

Faltering only slightly, Luke said with a sheepish shrug, "We could go."

Lorelai shook her head, as if she hadn't quite heard Luke correctly. Which she really didn't think she had. "You could go?" She squeaked, "To California?" What in the hell had spurred him to even think about that? He may as well have said it in Japanese for as much sense the previous statement had made, given who it was coming from. "Nicole's that big of a hockey fan that you're going to schlep across the country for one game?" She shuddered inwardly as she tried to reconcile the mental picture of Nicole having anything to do with big, bad, violent hockey, "Never pictured her as a hockey girl."

Taking a deep breath, Luke wrung his hands together in an act of nervousness that was too subtle for Lorelai to notice. "We," he clarified, "We…" Luke repeated, waving his hand at the space between his stool and Lorelai's.

Lorelai barely missed a beat before she burst out laughing at the absurdity of what Luke had said. "You think I'm going?" she exclaimed.

Luke reddened slightly in the face at her outburst, but he quickly tried to save face by rationalizing, "I can't take both tickets, you know how much those are probably worth? The game's in three days. And it's game 6. Someone could win at that point."

Lorelai regarded Luke carefully; perhaps she hadn't considered the situation properly. Financially speaking… Though it wasn't as if it mattered now that she'd offered and if Luke really did want the tickets. "Well judging by that, maybe I should sell them…" she teased. "Then whoo-hoo, sephora-dot-com here I come, baby."

Luke, taking her seriously, pushed the tickets across the counter in her direction, "Here."

"No, no, no, no," Lorelai grinned, shoving the tickets back at him. "As much as I can't picture you dropping everything and taking off for California for a completely frivolous trip, I also would have never pictured you looking this excited about a freakin' hockey ticket. Just keep them." Then she smirked, adding "But just don't think you'll ever get away with lecturing me about the coffee drinking anymore. You owe me."

"I am not taking them both," Luke affirmed with a vigorous shake of his head. "You are using one." Separating the two tickets, he leaned over and tucked one between the keys of Lorelai's laptop.

"Right," Lorelai laughed, plucking the ticket from her keyboard, "Because I'm so much more of a hockey girl than Nicole is. If you're gonna be dragging one of the least sports-oriented people in Connecticut across three time zones for a game, you might as well make it your girlfriend."

"Would you stop with Nicole?" Luke snapped.

Taken aback slightly, a surprised expression crossed Lorelai's face. She was just about to mutter an obligatory apology – though what exactly for, she wasn't sure – when Luke, his own expression hesitant as if he didn't know how to react to his own words, spoke up again. "I asked you," he explained flatly, the edge gone from his voice.

Lorelai got the sense that that wasn't all he'd been toying with saying, but she didn't press the issue. For one thing, it seemed far more important to get the utterly ridiculous notion of her going on a cross-country jaunt for a hockey game out of Luke's head. "Luke, I don't have the money anyway," she brushed him off casually. "As you know, since the fire the Inn is rather shaky financially, not to mention probably structurally too. And we can't forget the bazillion dollars I forked over for plane tickets to Europe for me and Rory." Mimicking his keyboard gesture, she animatedly slipped the ticket into the front pocket of his flannel shirt, patting it for good measure.

Sitting silently, Luke watched Lorelai shut down her computer and begin to pack up her things. After a moment, he pulled the second ticket from his pocket and stared at the pair of them pensively. "Ok, here's the deal," he finally stated. "I'll take both tickets. And since you won't let me pay, you will use one, and I'll pay for the trip."

"What?" Lorelai spun on her stool, gaping at Luke. What?

"I'll pay," Luke reiterated firmly. "You said it yourself, with all the fire stuff at the Inn, and Rory's graduation, and the Europe thing – you need a break," he pointed out. "Come to the game."

Lorelai protested immediately, "Luke… It's across the country…"

"There will be disgusting junk food in disgusting amounts," Luke goaded her with half a grin.

"Rory has finals," Lorelai countered, though she couldn't help crack a smile in return.

"Finals?" Luke scoffed, "And you actually have a role in that?

Lorelai did have to admit Luke had her on that one. Woefully, she admitted, "She did threaten to beat me into a coma with her math book for talking too much yesterday morning and bothering her when she was in study-mode."

Luke chuckled, "And that's different from normal how?"

"I wasn't bugging her! I asked if she'd had breakfast yet!" Lorelai cried in her own defense. Crossing her arms playfully in front of her chest, she groused, "The 'bothering' criteria are way off during finals."

"So come to the game," Luke repeated, a hint of smugness creeping into his expression.

Lorelai was defeated, she knew it. He had her. She had no excuse, especially if he was going to pay… Which meant she was going to California! Fun! For hockey… But still California! She fought valiantly against the goofy smile threatening on her face as she clarified the last sticking point in the negotiation, "You'll let me have nachos? In all their fake cheesy digustingness?"

Luke grimaced even as he nodded, "Just warn me ahead of time so I don't have to watch."

"I could probably get a last-minute deal from Emily's travel agent…" Lorelai acquiesced, her words reluctantly slow, though her bright eyes betrayed her apparent lack of enthusiasm.

Luke smiled. "Ok then."

"Ok then…" Lorelai echoed with a smile of her own as Luke got up to head back to work. As she finished packing up, she called after Luke into the kitchen, "Hey, what do you wear to hockey?"