Disclaimer: Insert clever way of saying 'they're not mine' here.
Author's Note: Thank you so much for all of the wonderful feedback about this story. I'm sorry to have drawn it out so long, but thank you for being patient and I hope you enjoy this final chapter. I also want to thank Once Upon A Whim for a challenging (in a good way) prompt, which is included at the end. And of course, I can't forget the amazing betas: CineFille, iheartbridges, and Lula Bo.
He can feel her heartbeat start to slow and hear her breathing even out as he pulls her back against his chest.
It all seems so much simpler when she's lying here in his arms, with her warm soft skin pressed against his, her silky hair brushing his cheek, and her pretty, pretty smell enveloping him.
He knows things with a renewed certainty: he loves her, he wants her back, and he doesn't ever want to lose her again. There it is – the bare-bones truth – without any messy details to muck it up.
This isn't where he expected to be tonight. Not with her next to him in his bed. Not with this level of conviction in his heart. He'd thought they would talk, maybe figure out where to go from here. But when she was here and they were talking, eating, when it was obvious to him that she was putting off the harder topics, he went ahead and let her because it felt comfortable and right and them, and he'd been so worried that they'd never be able to find that again, that he'd ruined it during his moment of utter stupidity the other night.
It had been casual and fun and most of all friendly, and not in the superficial polite meaning of the word, but with all the warmth and understanding imbued in the word 'friendship.' And he'd let the comfort of it all take the agenda off the table for a bit.
That might have been it, he thinks. They might have just put it off, had another dinner, talked another time, if it hadn't been for that heart-stopping moment when she'd been caught off guard and let him see her desire in all of its buck-naked glory. And he hadn't been quick enough to stop her from seeing his.
He wonders if he should regret it, even as he knows that he doesn't. As close as they've become, as much as they've depended on one another, it's been a very long time since they've been as honest with each other as they were while making love tonight.
She shifts a little, snuggling closer to him and he tightens his arm protectively around her, as he whispers close to her ear, "That was…" He pauses, trying to choose the best superlative. Amazing, maybe? Or incredible?
Before he can finish, though, she's gone tense in his arms, her back rigid, no longer fluid against his chest. "No, please," she pleads softly. "Don't say anything. Please don't."
Her words are desperate, scared and he's so taken aback that all he can say is, "What? Why?"
"We were supposed to talk," she says, her breath hitching between words. "To figure things out. We weren't supposed to do this, and if you're going to say it was a mistake, can you just wait? Please? Just wait a few more minutes?"
"Lorelai," he breathes, smoothing his hand down her arm and pressing kisses to her temple. "I don't…I don't think it was a mistake."
"How can you not?" she asks, her voice raspy. "The other night you said you can't. I should…I should have respected that."
Propping his head up on his hand, he lets out a sigh before pulling her over on her back and resting his hand against her cheek so that he can look her in the eye. "I was an idiot the other night. I'd be even more of an idiot if I let you go now."
She watches him for a moment, her expression conflicted, fearful. Then she shakes her head slowly back and forth, knocking his hand out of the way. "You can't mean that. You can't really want…"
He stares back at her in disbelief. "How can you think that? After we talked…" He can hear his voice soften, becoming more strained. "After tonight?"
She opens her mouth as if to speak, but then squeezes her eyes closed and shakes her head again.
"What are you afraid of?" he asks, his voice gentle.
"You're going to change your mind." She says this with such certainty – there's no hypothetical in her voice.
"I'm not-" he protests, but he's cut off by her hand over his mouth.
"No, don't say it."
He grasps her hand, curling his fingers around hers and looks at her, incredulous. "What?"
"Just, don't make promises," she says, pleading. "We made all sorts of promises and we broke them. I don't trust promises right now."
He brushes the back of his fingers across her forehead and down to her cheek, curling a few strands of hair around her ear. He almost asks her if she trusts him, but he's afraid of her answer, not sure if it would be worse if she said 'no' and meant it, or if she said 'yes' in order to keep from hurting him. So instead of asking, he makes an admission of his own. "I'm scared too, you know," he says, his eyes focused on a spot just past her ear, where his fingers are twisting around a lock of her hair.
"Of what?" he hears her ask. When he doesn't answer right away, she presses two fingers against his jaw and brings his eyes to hers, flattening her palm on his cheek. Her eyes are wide, questioning as she looks back at him.
He flicks his eyes away, glancing at her lips, her chin, and her shoulders before sighing and meeting her gaze again. "I don't know if I can be enough for you." He pauses for a long moment. "If you can trust me."
"Luke," she says, her voice insistent, "you've never not been-"
He shushes her as he covers her mouth with his hand. "Remember? You said no promises." He smiles, trying to lighten the mood, but he's only able to coax an uncertain half-smile from her, and he's suddenly at a loss about what to say next.
The moment lengthens, and the silence, once gentle, grows heavy. He sees her bite her lip nervously and her eyes skitter back and forth. She starts to sit up, saying, "I should…" as she points toward her scattered clothes.
He shakes his head. "Don't go."
She lets out a long sigh, her eyes closing as her shoulders fall. "I don't know. This is…I just don't know…" Her voice trails off helplessly.
He wants to reassure her, to tell her what he saw in his heart when he wrapped her in his arms earlier. To tell her that he wants to find what they've lost. But she doesn't want words. She doesn't want promises.
"I don't have all the answers either, but here's what I do know," he says softly, running his fingers up and down her arm. "I want to wake up next to you tomorrow. I want you to stay with me."
She watches him with uncertain eyes for a moment, her chest rising and falling with her breaths. He resists the urge to pull her into his arms and plead, because he can see how fragile her grasp is on the thread of hope that she's clinging to, and he wants her to decide to hold on tighter. So he waits patiently while she takes everything in: the kitchen, where it all started; the trail of clothing littering the floor; the rumpled bedsheets; and finally, the man lying next to her. She doesn't quite meet his eyes, but he can feel her taking him in, as though to confirm that he's not some kind of mirage.
Finally, she lets out a small huff of air, and asks slowly, "Are you sure?"
He doesn't move except to give her a small nod, and after watching him silently for a long moment she gives him a small smile and a nod before curling herself against his chest and letting him run his fingers up and down her spine. Neither says another word, and though he lies there waiting to hear her breath fall into the predictable rhythm of deep sleep, he can't be sure he's not the one who falls asleep first.
When he wakes the next morning it's with a disturbing sense of familiarity. Disturbing because he has to go back so far in his mind to find a moment they've had like this, simply waking up together. Disturbing because, as he reminds himself, they're still in a precarious place. They're still not quite prepared to believe each other's words. They still have so much to figure out.
But for now, in the dim, pre-dawn light, he lets himself revel in the fact of her next to him. And when he feels her stir, she's doing the same, stretching, like a contented cat against him. It's not until she turns toward him that it seems to hit her, and a mask of doubt falls over her face.
He responds quickly to reassure her, running his thumb along her jaw and leaning in to press a kiss to her kips. When he pulls back, she gives him a tentative smile then ducks her head shyly. He can see her lower lip between her teeth and after a moment she looks up. "I've got to," she says hesitantly, gesturing with her thumb, "bathroom."
He nods and she starts to slip from under the covers, looking around for the closest piece of clothing to pull on. Just as she turns and sits up, Luke sees a large, angry purple bruise on her right side, just above her hip. Lorelai reaches for a flannel shirt that's hanging on the bedpost, but before she can put it on, he grasps her wrist gently and pulls her back towards him.
"Lorelai, wait."
She glances back at him, confused. "What?"
Sitting up, he tugs her around so that he can see the bruised side more clearly. Reaching out, he traces one finger over the outline of the mark. "Did I do this?"
She twists her head to look and then gives him a wry smile, saying softly, "Well, I guess that's sort of the side effect of the whole 'I've been in a dungeon for 10 years and I've just been let out for my conjugal visit' aspect of the evening."
She's joking and he knows this, but he doesn't smile, instead just smoothing his fingers over the raised welt as gently as possible. "I hurt you. I didn't realize..."
"It's just a flesh wound," she says mockingly, but when he fails to laugh, she sobers. "Okay, I get it. No Monty Python jokes. It's just…" She picks at the edge of the sheet and then looks at him. "It's no big deal. It's just a bruise. And I hurt you too," she says, pressing one finger lightly to his bottom lip, and then running her hand over a few angry scratches that run across his shoulder and down one arm. "I hurt you too."
Luke runs his tongue along his lower lip as he drops his gaze back to her hip. Even though he hears her words, and registers them, he's still stunned by what he's done to her, by the physical evidence of it in front of him. His shoulders rise and fall as he lets out a long sigh. "I'm so sorry," he says softly, his voice breaking a bit, "I didn't realize I could do that to you."
He knows that when he'd started his apology he'd been talking about the night before, but somewhere in the midst of his sentence the larger meaning of his words hits him. That he's no longer talking about the minor injury that's right in front of him, but rather about his part in what went wrong between them. About how much damage he'd done to their relationship by not paying attention to what was happening right in front of him.
It's just that he'd never have dreamed that he had the power to break her, to shred her self-confidence so thoroughly. He's always been attracted to her strength, her independence, and it's always been the thing that has scared him just a little bit. Because of those moments in which he'd watch her, so poised and confident, and think about how she didn't really need him. Not the way he'd needed her.
And, in fact, when she'd walked away into the arms of another man, he'd thought she'd just proved him right, that it showed just how little Luke had meant to her after all. But, he thinks he might finally understand after all. She wasn't with Christopher because she wanted him more than Luke. She was with him because he couldn't hurt her as much as Luke.
He takes one of her hands in both of his, running his thumb and forefingers over each one of her fingers in turn, still never taking his eyes off that spot on her hip. He hears her question him, "Luke?"
Shaking his head a few times, he squeezes her hand gently. "I never would have thought I could hurt you that much."
And that's what it's really all about. She'd given her whole self to him, trusted him in ways that he thinks she'd never even trusted Rory, never even trusted her husband. When they'd first started this relationship, he'd known she'd need his patience; she didn't give her trust immediately or easily. But he'd been surprised by how much she had given him, and that when they broke up (the first time, he cringes) it wasn't because she ran, but because he did. And that when it came time for them to really commit, she's the one who had put herself out there and asked him to marry her so that they could start to build a life together.
In his more bitter moments, when he's come up with reason after reason to hate her, he's asked himself why it was okay for Lorelai to put off setting a wedding date, but when he'd wanted to delay their wedding she hadn't been able to be patient. He's let himself be angry about that even though he knows it's not a completely fair comparison. Lorelai had asked to wait to make decisions until things were right with Rory, but in other ways they'd been moving forward, renovating what would be their house, melding their lives. And all the while she'd been sharing her hurt with him, letting him all the way into her heart.
It's a dangerous thing to do, trusting like that and the thing is, he thinks, if you get that lucky, if you find that person who's willing to bare herself to you like that, you need to recognize the risk she's taking and take at least a little responsibility for protecting her when she is so exposed.
Because when the tables were turned, when his life had been turned upside down, he'd pulled away, kept her away from his daughter, let her think that he didn't care. He'd depended on her love and understanding, had taken it for granted, but hadn't really returned it in kind.
"Luke, don't," he hears her say, and at the insistence in her voice he's finally able to tear his gaze away from her bruised skin. "I hurt you. I…" She's not looking at him. Instead her eyes are focused on a point over his shoulder as her fingers search out the welts on the back of his arm. She pauses, fear in her expression.
"It's okay," he whispers, running his fingers down her spine.
She shakes her head and he can see her blinking back tears. No, Luke. This is…it's important." She takes a deep breath. "I didn't intend to hurt you. I didn't plan it out to get back at you." As she speaks, her words coming out slowly, hesitantly, as though she's building to an admission, her fingers each match up with the individual marks on his arm. But even as she's seeking out these new wounds, he knows that she's talking about the old ones.
"But…but when it was happening, I knew…" Her voice breaks, but she takes in a sharp breath as if steeling herself for what she needs to say. "I knew it would hurt you. I knew…" This time he hears her fighting against actual sobs, trying desperately to regain her composure. "I knew it was the worst thing I could do to you, and I did it anyway."
He can see tears freely flowing down her cheeks and he pulls her toward his chest, but she resists, shaking her head again. "And I know. I know that you can't get over it. That…that you shouldn't be able to."
He can sense how afraid she is of this admission, that after everything they've screamed and hurled at each other, and all the ways they'd given themselves to each other the night before, she still thinks this can be the final straw. All he can do in response is crush her to him so forcefully that she's unable to fight back, unable to move, as he runs his hand up and down her back. "Too late," he says softly.
He hears her let out a shaky breath and feels her weight collapse against him. She breathes deeply as he holds her, finally saying softly, "I wish we could go back."
"So do I," he says, nodding slowly, then giving a long sigh, "but we can't go back." At the words, he can feel her stiffen in his arms, start to pull away, so he whispers, "We can only go forward."
Gradually, he can feel the tension leaving her body, and he can feel faith and hope in the way that her body melts against his, and in the way that her head falls to rest on his shoulder. He pulls back to look at her, and when she meets his eyes he's pleased to see that her smile is freer and happier than he's seen in quite some time.
He smiles back, taking her hand in his and kissing the backs of her fingers where they're wrapped around his thumb. He continues, kissing the base of her palm and then down her wrist. When he hears her contented sigh, he lets his tongue and lips work their way up along her arm as he starts to push her back on the bed.
"Luke," she mumbles.
"Mmmm?" he asks, making his way across her shoulder to the sensitive skin of her neck.
"Luke," she says, a touch more insistently.
He pauses a moment to look at her. "What?"
"That whole getting up to go to the bathroom thing?"
"Yeah?"
"Your kisses," she says, moving to sit up, "as magical as they are, don't have the power to make the bladder less full."
"Ah, bathroom," he says, finally understanding.
She gives him a sheepish smile. "Yeah. Besides," she adds, pointing at his clock, "don't you have to open the diner at six?"
He frowns. "Rather stay here with you."
She flashes him another one of her genuine smiles. "Can't say that I'd argue." She shrugs. "But you can make it up to me when you take me out tonight."
"Oh," he smirks, "I'm taking you out tonight, am I?"
He sees a tentative look flicker over her face so briefly he's almost sure he imagined it, but she says hesitantly, "I hope so."
Giving what he hopes is a reassuring grin, he asks teasingly, "And did you have a particular place in mind?"
She grins back. "I figured I'd leave that to you."
"Ahh. How thoughtful," he says wryly.
She just gives him another smile as she grabs the flannel she'd dropped before and wraps it around her body before heading toward the bathroom. And this time the familiarity of the moment is comforting, like so many mornings they've had before and many more he hopes to have.
Fin
Ficathon request:
Written for Once Upon A Whim
Three things you'd like to see:
A full-on, preferably all-night, no-holds-barred, conversation that happens randomly and in which Luke finally 'gets' where he went wrong
The two L's taking it slowly, as in uncomfortable, awkward dating to get back to where they were
Kitchen time (meaning L&L cooking together for some occasion or event, but feel free to put the smut there too...)
Three things you don't want to see:
Rory, because she's a sniveling idiot lately
Lorelai getting pregnant
Anyone's wedding