Make the Call

Some fun flufficity just because.

"No! I don't want to!" cried Rory. "You guys need some alone time."

A wedding-dress-clad Lorelai dragged Rory up the stairs of the porch. "No way. We've been alone together the past nine years while you've been gallivanting around the world. The three of us can spend one evening together."

"Ew! It's your wedding night! I don't want to be in this house for that!"

"Of course not, I'm kicking you out right before the wild monkey sex begins. In the meantime, we'll eat leftover cake, talk about the baby, and start to make plans." Lorelai clapped her hands when she saw that Rory was giving in.

They entered the foyer and Lorelai kicked off her heels. "Come upstairs and help me change. Luke will be here soon with the food."

"Help you change? God, you guys really do act like you've been married for a decade. Isn't your husband supposed to do that?" cringed Rory.

"He did that already last night after the non-fake wedding. That dress was the cause of …"

"Stop right there! If I wanted to know what happened afterward, I wouldn't have crashed at Lane's."

Lorelai changed quickly while Rory carefully hung her wedding dress back on its hanger. By the time she was changed into a hoodie and jeans, Luke had finished bringing the reception leftovers into the kitchen. He passed the girls on the stairs as he went up to change out of his suit. Lorelai grabbed him by his belt on the landing and kissed him.

Smiling, Rory said, "I'm gonna change and get first dibs on the leftovers."

"Sure, sure," mumbled her mother. "I'll be there in a minute. I've got a husband who hasn't been kissed enough yet tonight." She pushed the very willing man against the wall and began undoing his tie.

"Oh my god, he really did it," breathed Rory when she and her mother made it to the kitchen. "There is a huge chunk of every one of Sookie's wedding cakes."

Lorelai simpered and fluttered her hand before her heart. "Mah man knows how to take care of his precious little woman," she drawled. The coffee maker had just finished and she lifted the pot and carried it to the table.

"I'm not going to stay long," promised Rory as Luke, also changed into sweats and a pullover, came into the kitchen. "Luke, honest, I'll be out of your hair in no time."

Feeling like an unmatched sock in the drawer, Rory turned to her mom. "It's not fair to Luke for me to stay. It's your wedding night."

"Technically, last night was our wedding night. I can still tell you that story. It involved a silk scarf, my Pedobear hiking cap and …"

"Mom!"

"Hon, if Luke wants you to leave because of the sex, he'll let you know. Sit down and have a cup of coffee." Smirking, Lorelai was pleased that she was bringing Rory out of the pregnancy funk she had been in all day.

Rory tilted her head and regarded her mother blankly. "You know Luke, Mom; he'll suffer through almost anything if he thinks it makes you happy. I just need a sign from him to know that he's really OK with me staying."

At that moment a silent Luke plopped a dinner plate piled high with cake in front of Rory. Years of practice with the girls in the diner had him attuned to the right moments to take action. He went back to slicing cake.

"It's a sign from the diner gods, child! Praise the Lord! You have been given a sign!"

Rory and Luke exchanged eye rolls. "Got it, Luke, thanks. I'll stay for a while."

Luke placed an equally large plate of cake in front of Lorelai and pulled two mugs off the shelf he'd recently repaired, setting them down in front of the girls. He then turned back to the counter and continued to put food away.

Lorelai pulled the sugar flower off a cupcake and stuck the whole thing in her mouth, letting the sugar dissolve on her tongue. A moment after the sugar high began to kick in, she said, "Let's start with the most important thing first. Am I going to be the hottest grandma ever, or is Luke going to be the hottest grandpa?"

"Luke! Help!" cried Rory, slumping onto the table in pretend despair.

He simply turned and looked at her, shook his head, then continued preparing his own food.

"Seriously, though, the number one thing to look at is your insurance. You're still officially an employee of the Dragonfly and I've been paying your insurance for the past few years. That means you are covered for the birth and pre-natal care. April's got the same deal with Luke and the diner. It was Luke's idea. That husband of mine is both handsome and smart." Lorelai smiled at Luke's grunt of acknowledgement.

"Good. I've still got my card, so I'll use that the next time I go to the doctor." Rory pulled out a small notebook and began writing.

"Are you going to tell him?" asked Lorelai, first peeling off the 'L,' then cutting into her piece of the Luke cake with her fork.

"Don't know. Next question."

"Where are you going to live while you're pregnant?"

"No idea." Rory jotted another note.

"What about after my grandbaby is born? Where will you live? Close enough for Papaw Luke to babysit?"

Luke brought his plate and a beer to the table and after giving Lorelai a warning look about the Papaw label, sat down to enjoy his crudités, cold cuts and whole wheat bread.

"I wanna be your birth coach!" Lorelai exclaimed. "If you're not going to tell the dad until after the birth, you're gonna need someone in the delivery room with you."

"Mom as birth coach," scribed Rory obediently.

Both women missed Luke's raised eyebrows as he focused on his food. He listened to them as they worked out both the emotional and the practical side to the next few months. Grateful for the food that kept him occupied so he didn't jump in and cut the discussion off, he assembled a small sandwich and took a bite. Once Lorelai had gotten her sparkle back after her California trip, she let him clearly know that his dismissing her feelings about Michel had not been helpful.

"Are you going to tell him after the birth? Before the birth?" repeated Lorelai. Rory had been avoiding the paternity topic ever since she told her mother about the pregnancy this morning.

"Sometime, yes, for sure. I just don't know when." Rory poked at her cake. "You know, I think that the milestone cake was the best looking, but the white and black cake with the raspberry filling tastes best."

"Money. How will you support yourself? I know you've got your Stars Hollow Gazette windfall, but still, there might be the occasional item you want or need."

"Windfall? More like a fart. There's no salary, Mom. I'm back to tapping the last of my trust fund and the travel money Grandpa left me. Still, it's enough to get by on." She shrugged. "There's always Dad. Every time I see him, he offers me more money. I think he's trying to make sure Gigi and I receive equal shares."

"More coffee, please," said Rory as she stood up and stretched. "Where are you guys going on your honeymoon?"

"Luke is taking me hiking for real." Lorelai laughed. "He quizzed me before I left and I proved to him that I had prepared myself for my "Wild" journey. We're going to get 'Wild' together," she giggled.

"Book, right?"

"Of course. I read it that weekend we were at the pool."

"So I can stay here for a while?"

Relieved to hear that Rory wasn't going to run off to London again, she replied, "Stay as long as you like. We'll be there to take care of you and little peanut Gilmore." Lorelai topped off her own as well as Rory's coffee. "So why don't you want to tell him?"

"What good would it do? I can't ask him to take this on. Who wants a guy who's only going to be there out of obligation?"

"Well, he's the dad. He needs to know," said Lorelai. Luke's barely perceptible nod of agreement was noticed only by his wife.

"I know, Mom, and I will tell him. Sometime. It's just that I don't think it's good for the baby to have his, her, its? parents figuring out what to do. It's so stressful. I mean, what if he doesn't want to be involved? What if he wants to be too involved? I mean, all the drama. He's not exactly the fatherly type."

"Yeah, hon, but, … he's still the dad," said Lorelai. She leaned over and squeezed Luke's knee under the table for support. Luke had stopped eating altogether as he struggled to let Lorelai handle this.

"Do you think he'll do what Dad did? It wasn't easy with him coming and going like that," said Rory sadly. "He's not really predictable." The further she got from her discussion with Christopher a few days ago, the more she became convinced that he had once again told her a lot of bull that she had eagerly accepted. She idly wondered if maybe that sulfur cloud wasn't such a bad way after all to introduce him in the book.

Lorelai reached out to hold Rory. "Listen, kid, you haven't seen many dads who've actually been there for their kids, especially as babies. I mean, even Mr. Kim was hardly around when Lane was growing up, what with his black market smuggling of people across the Demilitarized Zone in Korea."

"Yeah, and we turned out alright," argued Rory. "I can go this alone."

Lorelai squeezed her daughter tightly. "As long as alone means Luke and I are there every step of the way with you, then, sure, go it alone."

"That's what I meant. I know I can count on you guys, and I'm gonna need you both." Rory buried her face on her mother's shoulder.

"Mom. I don't know if he even wants to be a father," said Rory sadly.

Luke clenched his fists under the table as he watched his stepdaughter waffle over this big decision. Thoughts of Anna's harsh words after he first found out about April were pushed away as he remembered that they had been through all of the Anna business before, and that was in the past. Rory and her situation were here, now and needed to be dealt with.

He slowly unclenched his hands, choosing to physically relax even as his beloved stepdaughter nearly broke his heart. Could this have been the debate Anna had? She hadn't always been a bitch, or he never would have dated her. Could a few careless but true words about kids two decades before have been the rationale she used to choose to hate him and keep his daughter a secret?

"He doesn't have a choice about that anymore. All he can do is decide how much he's going to be involved." Seeing that Luke was processing something very painful, and guessing what it was, Lorelai continued to hold Rory praying that she couldn't feel the conflict Lorelai had as she wanted to comfort both at once.

"I don't want to pressure him into being a part of the kid's life. But I don't want my baby to not have contact with his dad either." She squeezed her arms tightly around her mom's waist, then added. "I think I'm gonna decide later."

No more. The mere thought that Rory's procrastination might lead her to make a decision that would one day turn her into another Anna was too much. Luke launched himself from his chair, stalked to the hallway and returned, phone in hand.

"Make the call," he demanded, shoving the phone under her nose.

Rory's eyes grew big. Luke had sat through this whole discussion without making a single comment, and now he was insisting that she call the father.

He shook the phone at her. "Make the call." His voice was hoarse and his face haggard.

"I can't," Rory said weakly, hurting as she saw the pain she was causing Luke.

"Yes you can," he said. "What you can't do is create another April/Anna situation. Make the call."

Tears rose in Rory's eyes. "I'm sorry Luke. I didn't think of it that way."

She took the phone from him and began dialing. Lorelai convinced a still-shaking Luke to sit down.

"Hi. It's me," Rory said, her free hand crumpling the paper napkin she held. She paced, avoiding Luke at all costs.

"Yeah." She looked at her mother who had wrapped her arms around Luke's shoulders and was watching Rory carefully. Luke put his head in his hands and looked toward the floor.

"We need to talk about something important." Rory listened a moment longer. "You're in the car?"

Lorelai looked at her watch. "Middle of the day in London," she commented softly as she paced back and forth behind Luke, rubbing his shoulders comfortingly before taking her seat next to him.

"Face to face is better, yeah," said Rory. "I'm glad you can come. On Wednesday, then?"

She twirled a strand of her hair so hard it hurt. "Uh-huh. Yeah. I got it."

Luke finally looked up and caught Rory's eyes. Still uncertain, her fear began to ebb as the despair in his eyes slowly changed to warmth and happiness.

Lorelai felt Luke begin to relax as he saw Rory's confidence rise. He grasped his wife's hand and kissed her hair as he hugged her, hiding the moisture on his face.

"OK, then," said Rory. "I'll see you on Wednesday, Jess."

FIN

A/N: What? It could happen! I mean, she slept with a Wookie! Jess is way hotter than most Wookies.