A/N: The good news:I did say there would be an epilogue, and there now exists an epilogue. The bad news: I said that two months ago! I really have no excuses, other than I go through intense fluctuations with my creative inspirations and my obsessions. And also two months ago is about the time I decided to start watching Grey's Anatomy from the beginning - wow, by the way. But I digress. Thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, favorited, or followed this story. I may never be a published author, but you guys make me feel somewhat gratified for the amount of time I spend hunched over this keyboard.

(P.S. This is fluffy fluffy marshmallow fluff. I can't help it - L/L do that to me!)

Enjoy! x

When Lorelai thinks of her former relationships, she is reminded overwhelmingly of her fifteenth birthday, the last time she ever went shopping with her mother. She had tried on a dress which technically fit her but which she had found unflattering. It just didn't fit, she had explained to Emily over and over again.

"Of course it FITS, Lorelai," she had replied in exasperation, already motioning the salesgirl over to ring up the purchase, "I'm looking at you in it right now, honestly, 'it doesn't fit.'"

But the dress didn't fit.

Naturally, it hadn't mattered, and Lorelai had worn the dress to whatever social event demanded her presence that week. And for the duration of the dinner, she had felt awkward and completely lacking in self-confidence, which was not a feeling Lorelai Gilmore had often, even at age fifteen.

She was pregnant a few months later, and the time for self-doubt was gone. Lorelai's life over the next few years was comprised of much more important decisions than the ones that presented themselves during shopping excursions with her mother. Yet she never forgot that stupid blue dress, or how it had bunched around her hips and made her armpits look fat, or how wrong it had felt on her.

Even now she occasionally thinks of that dress, usually in quiet moments when she is surrounded by her daughter, her friends, her town, her Luke. She knows her life is where it was meant to go; she knows she is in the right place, and Luke is no small part of that feeling.

He fits her. He hugs her. His presence makes her better. She has a hard time putting it into words, and the only thing she can think to compare it to is that ill-fitting blue dress.

Christopher was the blue dress. In his alternating dependence and aloofness, in his inability to make a commitment, in his lack of communication, he made her worse.

Max was the blue dress. She felt his judgment in some of her habits – always subtle, never verbalized, and yet still keenly felt – and she lacked her trademark confidence as a result.

Jason was the blue dress. She could technically have continued to date him. But she would have always felt wrong. She could not hide their lack of connection, even from herself.

Luke is decidedly not the puffy, pasty, unflattering blue dress.

She made the mistake of telling him this anecdote once, in the early stages of their relationship. She stuttered through it, realizing too late how ridiculous the analogy sounded, and she ended the rambling attempt at emotional expression by saying, "But you are like, NOT the blue dress. You're the opposite. You're like the dark green dress I wore to the Christmas party a few years ago, the one that made my boobs look really good."

And Luke laughed at her, as she had expected, and the awkwardness was diffused with several jokes about sexual acts performed while Luke was partially clothed in a short blue dress. Then she ate a cheeseburger and left, hoping fervently that the conversation would be forgotten.

But a few months later, as they are laying quietly in bed together, his arm poured over her waist, his body completely relaxed around her, Luke mumbles in half-sleep, "You're good pants."

Confused and also bleary, Lorelai turns herself reluctantly to face him. "What are you talking about?" she asks, tiredly running her hand through his bangs, tugging gently on his earlobe, and bringing her thin fingers to rest on his cheek.

He grumbles at being forced to talk again, but eventually his eyes open minutely and he sighs. "You said I was a good dress. You said I was the green dress."

She closes her eyes in mortification, biting her lower lip.

"You remember?" Luke asks.

"Unfortunately," she says with an awkward laugh, her eyes still pinched firmly together.

Luke grasps her hip and tugs her even closer to him, attempting to force the intimacy between them. When she still won't open her eyes, he plunges ahead.

"Well, I've never worn a dress. But I have had pants that didn't fit right."

Lorelai begins to comprehend where he is going with this unimaginably weird late-night conversation about their respective wardrobes, and she chances a glance at him. He smiles at her sleepily and she is momentarily distracted by the warm, crinkling valleys that form around his eyes.

He squeezes her side gently and finally finishes his speech: "I've had bad pants. And you…" he clears his throat, glancing down before meeting her eyes again, "You're good pants."

Lorelai says nothing. She is lethargic and contented in the cradle of his arms, and she fears that anything she says will make this moment somehow less. She presses her face under his neck, knowing he can feel her smile, and occupies herself with counting the slow, deep thumps of his heart as he drifts finally into sleep.

He's the green dress, and she's good pants, and it won't make any sense to anyone else. But maybe, she thinks sleepily, that is precisely the point.