SUMMARY: "I think Luke asked me out." Spoilers for "Last Week Fights, This Week Tights."
THANKS: To Lulu, Em, and austin for comments.
This one's for austin, who donated to the Kerry campaign. Written for fan_the_vote.
***
Lorelai watched Luke walk away, her mind struggling to catch up. Had he just--? Had she just--?
Puzzled, she turned and headed up the steps and into the house. Thinking back on the day, she wondered if they'd actually--
Man, this was confusing.
She tossed her garland onto the desk, shrugged out of her wrap and reached for the phone. Rory? No. Rory was a little sensitive about dating just now. Lorelai shivered a little: Dating. Was she really thinking that she and Luke were--?
Dialing, Lorelai's mind wandered back over the day -- Luke's nervousness, which she'd attributed to the occasion, not the company; their dance, which had started out awkwardly and become... really, really good.
"Hello?"
"Jackson," Lorelai greeted. "Is Sookie around?"
"She's in the kitchen with a soufflé. Let me get her."
"Oh, no, Jackson, don't interrupt--" But he was gone. Lorelai paced her living room. Luke had been looking at her rather... intensely, now that she thought about it. And he'd held her really closely when--
"Lorelai!" Sookie chirped. "The soufflé is at a critical stage, and I really need for you to taste it tomorrow and tell me whether I should replace the crème brulée with it, so--"
"I think Luke asked me out," Lorelai interrupted, the words tumbling out in a rush. Now that she said it out loud, it sounded ridiculous. She was imagining things, blowing things out of proportion. This was Luke, after all.
Sookie made a choked noise at the other end of the phone.
"Sookie? You okay?"
"Sure," Sookie croaked, and Lorelai could perfectly picture the look on her face. Her eyes were round as those floral saucers she'd insisted upon for the inn. "You just -- Did you just say--?"
"I think Luke asked me out," Lorelai repeated, her face screwed up in anticipation as she awaited Sookie's response.
"Oh, my God!" Sookie squealed. "Oh, my God!"
"Sookie--"
"Oh, my God! Finally."
"Sookie!" Lorelai sputtered.
"Tell me every word," Sookie insisted. "Full descriptions of his expression, his tone of voice, everything."
"Sookie--"
"No, wait." Sookie didn't move the phone away from her ear when she hollered, "JACKSON!"
"Ow!" Lorelai yelped. "Sookie!"
"Take this out in fourteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds," Sookie ordered her husband. "Not fourteen minutes and thirty-EIGHT seconds or fourteen minutes and thirty-SIX seconds, but fourteen minutes and thirty-SEVEN seconds. Well, okay, now it's fourteen minutes and eleven seconds. Nine seconds. Seven--"
"SOOKIE!"
"Ow!" Sookie yelped. "Lorelai, I'll be right over."
"You don't have to--" Lorelai winced at the dial tone buzzing in her ear. "Okay, then."
As she waited for Hurricane Sookie to arrive, Lorelai paced the living room, nervously straightening the magazines tossed haphazardly on the coffee table and the precarious stack of CDs next to the stereo. She was staring at the dusty mantle, wondering if she had any sort of dusting rag or polish or whatever was required to dust a mantle when the sound of squealing tires started her laughing.
Sookie.
Lorelai glanced out the window, still giggling as Sookie jumped out of her car and kicked the door shut before running pell-mell toward the front door. "Lorelai!" she called. "I'm here."
With a flourish, Lorelai opened the door and let Sookie in. "You didn't have to come racing over here, Sookie."
Sookie snorted and held a small Tupperware tray aloft. "I brought cookies. Get the ice cream," she ordered. "And tell me every word."
Lorelai dutifully pulled out the economy-sized pint of mint chocolate chip and joined Sookie on the couch.
"Every word," Sookie reminded her, accepting the proffered spoon. Then she studied Lorelai carefully. "Why are you dressed like that?"
"Like what?" Lorelai scoffed, reaching for the cookies. "Are these chocolate chip?"
Sookie snatched them away, fixing Lorelai with a suspicious look. "You went to Liz's wedding."
Lorelai flushed. "Yes."
"You went with Luke," Sookie guessed, eyes widening.
"Technically, I went to the wedding with a whole lot of people. Well, not a whole lot, but there were probably about forty or fifty," Lorelai said, talking fast. "And I have got to tell you about the outfits, because TJ was wearing tights -- or air pants, as he called them -- with this really silly--"
"You are not changing the subject," Sookie interrupted impatiently. "You went to the wedding with Luke. On a date."
"No!" Lorelai argued, shaking her head emphatically. "No, no, no. There was no date. There was just, you know, wedding attendance. But at the end of the evening--"
"Oh, my God," Sookie shrieked. "He kissed you!" She clapped excitedly, knocking the cookies onto the floor. "Was it great? Was it, like, a really hot, I-must-have-you-now kiss? Oh, I hope it was one of those!"
"He did not kiss me, Sookie." Scooping up the scattered cookies, Lorelai shrugged, "Three second rule." She piled them back into their container.
"Okay, sweetie," Sookie said, her hand clamping over Lorelai's. "Put the cookies down and start talking before somebody gets hurt."
"This is silly," Lorelai decided, moving the cookies to relative safety on the coffee table. "I'm overreacting."
"To what?" Sookie demanded. "Don't make me call Luke and ask him."
Lorelai choked on a spoonful of ice cream. "Sookie! You wouldn't."
With a grin, Sookie said, "Not if you tell me before my impatience gets the best of me."
Pursing her lips, Lorelai took a moment to figure out the best way to frame the issue. "Well," she began finally, "Luke and I happened to be in attendance at Liz's wedding--"
"And how did that just happen?" Sookie demanded, digging into the ice cream without taking her rapt gaze from Lorelai's face.
"He felt bad for me," Lorelai tried. "Remember when we slept with the zucchini?"
"Of course."
"I bumped into Luke that morning--"
"Bumped into him where?" Sookie interrupted, nearly bouncing on the couch in her excitement.
Frowning, Lorelai admitted, "Well... at my house."
"Ha!"
"No. No 'Ha!' No nothing. He was just stopping by to--" But now that she thought about it, Luke had acted a little oddly that morning. Like some strange cross between Never Before Seen Suave Luke and Nervous and Kinda Twitchy Luke. Was it possible that he'd been asking her-- "Oh, God."
"Ha!" Sookie repeated gleefully. "I knew it! Okay, what did he say that morning?"
"The morning of the zucchinis?"
"Yes, which would be kind of a funny name for a movie. Like Silence of the Lambs, only less creepy. Not that zucchinis are any less creepy than lambs, taken alone, but when you add in Anthony Hopkins--"
"Sookie!"
Sookie gave her friend a contrite look. "I'm sorry. I'm just so excited for you, honey!"
Shaking her head rather desperately, Lorelai said, "Please, don't be excited for me. Not yet. I'm still trying to figure out if Luke asked me out."
With an empathetic nod, Sookie reached out and patted Lorelai's hand. "Sweetie, the man showed up pretty early in the morning at your house and asked you to go to his sister's wedding with him. That's a date."
"No," Lorelai countered. "See, he said I should take a breather from the Dragonfly preparations and go to the wedding."
Sookie gave her a look. "With him."
"Well, yes," Lorelai conceded. "But he was just trying to be nice."
"He was just trying to ask you out on a date," Sookie countered. "To his sister's wedding."
"Why do you keep saying it like that?" Lorelai demanded.
"Saying what like that?"
"His sister's wedding," Lorelai mimicked Sookie's dramatic intonation.
"Lorelai, don't be stupid."
Stung, Lorelai said, "Not like I have an option, apparently."
Sookie moved closer on the couch, touching Lorelai's wrist. "Oh, sweetie, you know I didn't mean it like that. You're being purposefully obtuse. Luke asked you to his sister's wedding, which is a pretty serious event for your first date."
"It wasn't a date," Lorelai protested without much conviction. She scraped her spoon through the ice cream, then looked up at Sookie. "Was it?"
"I think it was," Sookie answered, that irrepressible grin of hers out in full force. "Now tell me what happened."
Lorelai shoved the spoonful of ice cream in her mouth and made an exaggeratedly sad face. A face that said, Sorry, can't speak with my mouth full, what would Emily Gilmore say if she saw me do that?
"Okay, fine," Sookie said, rubbing her palms together. "I'll ask questions, and you answer with nods if it happened, okay?" Lorelai gave her friend an emphatic head shake. In the negative. Which Sookie blithely ignored. "Did he pick you up at your place?"
Lorelai smirked and shook her head no.
"Did you meet him at his place?"
Lorelai started to answer no, but technically, since he lived above the diner, yeah, she kind of had met him at his place. But only because it was closer to the town square. Not because it was some sort of date.
"Okay, so you met him at the diner," Sookie inferred from her confused silence. "And you stuck together the entire time, right?" Before Lorelai could answer in the negative, Sookie held up a peremptory hand and added, "Save the occasional foray for food or restroom facilities."
Swallowing a spoonful of ice cream, Lorelai said, "And I had to go help Liz with her dress at one point. I left Luke fending off advances from Crazy Carrie."
Sookie grimaced. "The one with the husband and the boobs?"
"The very one."
"Poor Luke." Sookie tilted her head quizzically. "So you were with Luke when Crazy Carrie arrived?" Lorelai nodded and Sookie asked, "How'd she act toward you?"
"You know, she kind of sneered at me a little," Lorelai answered thoughtfully. Then she frowned. "Wait--"
"See?" Sookie gloated. "Even Crazy Carrie knew you were on a date with her hunka hunka burnin' love."
"Please, Sookie, don't ever refer to Luke as a hunka hunka burnin' love ever again," Lorelai pleaded, shuddering a little.
"Oh, come on," Sookie protested. "Luke is really handsome. You know, in a manly man, scruffy, flannel kind of way."
"He wore a suit," Lorelai said, remembering how strangely good he looked in the suit. "Today. To the wedding. The suit I bought him, actually." She realized belatedly that she was smiling daftly. "Still scruffy, though," she added, but it was too late. Sookie was positively beaming at her.
"Oh, you two are just so cute!" Sookie cooed.
"We are not," Lorelai answered. "We're not even 'us two.' We're just friends."
Sookie snorted. "Did you dance?"
Flushing, Lorelai looked down and studied the ice cream rather intently. "Oh, look. This is starting to melt. I'd better put it away."
She started to stand, but Sookie caught her arm and held her in place. "Lorelai."
She remembered her hand held gently in Luke's, his palm splayed across her lower back, the gentle sway of their bodies. But mostly, she remembered the intensity of his gaze. "We danced," she admitted quietly. She'd danced. With Luke. Her friend Luke, who'd held her so carefully and gazed at her like she was Elizabeth and he was Mr. Darcy all grateful that she'd saved his poor sister embarrassment at the mention of that reprobate Mr. Wickham. And, wow, how had she never realized that she considered Luke in the same category as Colin Firth?
Hmmm, Luke diving into a lake...
Lorelai dragged her mind back to the subject at hand with some reluctance. Because while she wasn't certain how she felt about the possibility of dating Luke, she knew for damn sure that being with him, like that, had felt... really, really good. "Oh, God, Sookie," she murmured. "He was just so..."
Sookie's grip on her arm tightened slightly, but when she answered, her voice was quiet, "You like him, Lorelai," Sookie pointed out gently. "You have for years, and so has he, but you've both been so..." Sookie threw her hands into the air, at a loss for the proper adjective.
Lorelai swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat. "Stupid?" she suggested with a watery chuckle.
"I was going to say willfully blind," Sookie answered, grinning.
"I don't know if I can do this," Lorelai admitted, focusing intently on the melting ice cream. She drew patterns in it with her spoon.
"You can," Sookie told her. "And it'll probably be a lot easier than trying so hard to ignore it for years and years and years."
Lorelai considered her friend's advice. But what if--? "I don't know, Sookie. He's Luke, you know? He's my Luke. And if we tried to change things and it didn't work--" She stopped, overcome at the thought. It'd been bad enough during the Great Car Accident Fallout of 2002. Then, they'd clashed over their kids; she couldn't imagine the consequences if they fought about each other. What would she do without Luke?
"Lorelai?" Sookie asked quietly.
"Yeah?"
"Cookie?" Sookie held the container out, an understanding smile on her face.
Sniffling, Lorelai snagged one. "Thanks."
"Can I say something?"
"Sure."
Sookie put the cookies back on the coffee table and clasped her hands carefully in her lap. "If Luke thinks tonight was a date, and if he asked you out again and you said yes, things are already changing between you," Sookie explained. "I know it's scary, but I don't think ignoring it and hoping it'll go away is an option at this point."
Damn. Lorelai considered Sookie's points carefully. Luke had been acting like she figured he would on a date -- Normal Luke with a Touch of Attentiveness. When, she wondered, had she pondered what Luke would be like on a date, anyway?
"Lorelai?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you want Luke?" Sookie asked. "Like that?"
For the first time in a long time, Lorelai let herself think about that question. Did she want Luke, with his grumpy rants and his incredible coffee and his gentle hands and his generous heart and his surprisingly sexy self?
She blinked. "I think--" She shrugged, a little bit awed. "I think I do." Wow, she was really good at that whole repression thing, because once she let herself think about, she discovered a depth of feeling for Luke that was truly astonishing. He was so many things to her already. "Wow," she whispered.
Sookie was beaming again. "I know!" she squealed, her exuberance back in full force. "I'm so excited!"
"Sookie," Lorelai cautioned. "This might all be me reading into things."
"Ha!" Sookie scoffed. "For Luke's feelings for you to have beaten through all of your Luke Is Just a Friend walls, he must've been fifty miles past obvious."
Lorlelai blinked. "Okay, I don't know what that means."
Sookie danced around a little in her seat. "Please, please, please, will you tell me what happened tonight?"
"Oh, that," Lorelai answered, deliberately drawing out her words to tease Sookie. "Well, he walked me home."
"Oh, my God!"
"And we stood out there talking--"
"Oh, my God!"
Laughing, Lorelai asked, "Are you going to interrupt after every sentence?"
"Yes." Sookie grinned. "Now tell me everything!"