GG Fic: Sometimes You Do 33/40

[faye_dartmouth]

A/N: I'm still working on review replies. Not much Dean in this chapter but a good helping of Luke and Lorelai. For anyone who was wondering what was up between them, I think this is the closest this story gets to explaining my take on it. Rory's got some pondering to do, so more important decisions will be coming up very soon, though this chapter doesn't quite get us there yet. Thanks!  Previous parts here.

Also, a very happy birthday to

pinkphoenix1985 !

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

One of the nice things about Stars Hollow was that there was always a distraction. Always something to take her mind off things.

And, truth be told, Rory really wanted a distraction right then. From Dean to her mother to everything, she really just wanted to think about something else. Anything else.

So, a bake sale in the town square? Ideal.

She was contentedly browsing through a varied selection of brownies when she browsed right into Nancy and her notebook.

“What are you doing here?” Nancy asked, accusingly and with a haughty tilt of her head.

“Oh,” Rory said. “Looking for a good bargain. Sometimes there’s peanut butter fudge, which is really the best thing to get, though I am rather interested in those caramel brownies. But a dollar a crack? Seems a bit steep, even for caramel brownies.”

“No,” Nancy said. “What are you doing here? This is my event. I know Ned’s been giving you a lot of free reign, but this one’s mine.”

Competition was good for her, it really was, but at a certain point, it was also rather ridiculous. It was like Paris hating her for simply being present. Nancy was accusing her of invading on her turf, which may have been a valid point, were it not a bake sale. Fighting over an editorial, maybe. Fighting over Dean’s self-respect, sure. But over a bake sale?

There was no amount of PMS in the world that could make Rory that petty. Especially these days.

“Nancy, I assure you, my intentions here are entirely dietary,” she said. “Accidental, even. I was just taking a walk--”

“You can explain it any way you like,” Nancy interrupted, “but I’m pretty sure there are no accidents when it comes to your pursuit of all things related to the paper. It certainly didn’t take you any time to waltz back into town and try to take over my domain.”

“Last I checked, you don’t own the paper.”

“No, I don’t,” Nancy agreed. “But you walk back in and you act like you own the place. Like you haven’t gotten everything you’ve ever wanted just by blinking. Any guy you want, you flit in and out. Everyone knows that when things get rough for you in the simple life you like to have, there’s always money backing you up. Nothing’s good enough for you and I just wish you’d stay away from me.”

Well, that was a rant she hadn’t been expecting and one she was pretty sure she didn’t quite deserve. Not quite, but...

Okay. So. Maybe.

Because there was something to it all. Something Rory had never really thought about. That life went on without her--that it existed without her on all fronts. That was the point that her mother and Luke had been hammering on her, and maybe now it was making sense.

Dean had changed. Dean was different. She couldn’t come back and think that he was still waiting for her like he was still nineteen.

Moreover, people had lives. People like Ned and Conrad and Lyman. Even Nancy. And when Rory walked into the Gazette’s office, she’d only been concerned about herself. She’d thought that people would be grateful for her presence, and true enough, most of them were. But Nancy had a job, had a place, had a role, and Rory hadn’t thought about that when she came back.

Not to mention that Nancy wasn’t the only one who was on the offensive. Rory’s entire pursuit of her career was an offense by default, no matter how pure her intentions may have been.

And the really simple thing was, the fact that she’d been avoiding since her first day at Chilton, was that she thrived in conflict.

It was true. She may not have sought out Paris to torment, but the moment Paris stood up to her presence, Rory made it her goal to flourish.

In so many ways, her job at the Gazette had become so much more when Nancy rose up in opposition to her easy conquering of the landscape.

This was a two-way street, even if Nancy was the one who was wrong. She may have been wrong, but she wasn’t wrong in a vacuum.

Rory sighed. “I don’t even have my notebook with me,” she pointed out. “I promise you, right now, I am not trying to get in your way. Other times, maybe, but right now, all I want is some sugar and some caffeine.”

Nancy pursed her lips, straightening herself. “I know you think this is your town,” she said. “But I’ve lived here just as long and I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am to be uprooted by you. So, if you don’t mind, don’t insult me with your pleasantries. You do your job and I’ll do mine and we’ll spare ourselves the small battles so we can fight the bigger ones when we need to.”

With that, Nancy turned, stalking off down the row of baked items. Rory watched her go. It wasn’t totally undeserved--Nancy’s attack--but that didn’t mean that Rory wanted to deal with it.

It was like Paris, all over again. The immediate disdain, the fear that underpinned it, Rory’s innate desire to both combat it and overcome it.

It was oddly reassuring and frustrating, all at once.

-o-

She needed to eat.

True, this was a common problem. Not really a problem. She liked food after all. Food of all varieties. Healthy, junky, dinner, breakfast. She was well-versed when it came to food.

Sadly, the Gilmore kitchen was not well-versed in storing food. Apparently, her mother no longer valued going to the store--she was too busy gardening or crocheting or doing whatever her mother did these days. And Rory certainly didn't frequent the grocery store, at least not to buy actual groceries.

Therefore, their cabinets were a bit on the barren side. She could have a package of stale saltines. There was a jar of peanut butter. Some instant rice was stashed in the back. And if she wanted to season anything, there were spices galore, even a little rosemary and thyme and Rory couldn't stop thinking about Simon and Garfunkel.

Her musings were interrupted by the back door opening.

She was a little surprised to see Luke there.

To be fair, he looked a little surprised to see her.

"Hi," she said, wondering if she had entered some alternate world, one where her mother actually had initiated some kind of domestic partnership without her knowledge. Because, yes, they were close to Luke, but she'd never seen him walk in like that before. Like he belonged there. Of course, Rory had been gone for some years, but it seemed like she should know that her mother and Luke were at the entering-without-knocking stage.

"Hi," he replied, closing the door behind him. He looked at her and clearly understood her blank expression. "Your mother lets me come in."

"Oh," she said, and she should have said something more, but she couldn't think of anything more. Because what exactly did this mean? Her mother and Luke meant something to each other, but they didn't want to get married, or they weren't ready to get married, but they surely did stuff and why was Rory thinking about this at all?

And why was Luke just staring at her?

Probably because she was staring at him.

"Uh, your mom and I are going out for dinner."

Rory nodded absently. "That'd be nice," she said. "I was just looking and we certainly don't have any food. Well, we have some food but unless you feel like having peanut butter and crackers, you're kind of out of luck. Though if you do like peanut butter and crackers, then you're in luck, because we have plenty, and then I'd just go out and you two could enjoy your peanut butter and crackers and whatnot in peace."

Luke's brow furrowed and he scratched the back of his head. "Uh. Right."

“But I guess peanut butter and crackers really isn’t dinner, huh?” Rory asked, shuffling her feet awkwardly.

Luke looked at Rory then at the passageway to the living room before settling on his feet.

Rory chewed her lip.

This was ridiculous.

First of all, this was Luke. She knew Luke. She knew Luke well. And the simple fact of the matter was that even if she wanted to take all of her long standing history with Luke for granted, this was her mother’s boyfriend. Yes. Her mother’s boyfriend. No one seemed to want to say it or to really acknowledge it, which was fine if it was okay with them, but it wasn’t okay with her. Because this was her house, too, and this was her mother she was talking about, and so, yes, a little more definitive line really would help her figure out just how she felt about all this. She was all for her mother’s happiness, she truly, honestly was, but she needed to know just what the heck to call this thing to make her own peace with it.

“Are you going to marry my mother?”

Okay, so that wasn’t really what she wanted to say, mostly because it made her sound like she was twelve and looking for a new daddy. She wasn’t twelve, she was a grown woman, and she had a daddy that she got along with just fine. But that was the question, wasn’t it? Just how serious he was. If she needed to work on making more room for him not only in the house, but her in her heart as well.

Luke looked a little panicked, his face tight and red. “Uh. I. Um.”

“Not necessarily are you getting married because I know you’ve been there and done that, or at least tried to with her before. But I just mean, where is this going? Are you two for real for real? How long can two people just sort of be together but not quite together and make it last? Don’t you want more? Don’t you want to know exactly what you are to one another? And if you love her and she loves you then what on earth is the problem?”

It was all coming out now, all of it. Every doubt about her mother’s relationship with Luke. Her mother’s relationship with anyone besides her. And something else, something--

“I mean, do you realize just how lucky you are to know that? To love someone and have them love you back? You’ve already got that and I can’t imagine having that anymore and not wanting to act on it.”

And there it was. The crux of it all. To be in love and be loved in return. Very Moulin Rouge and Christian and his forsaken little typewriter. The thing she wanted and still couldn’t get.

It was about her mother and Luke, but it was more about her and Dean. Too bad for Luke that he just happened to be standing there, mouth open and brow creased.

As if on cue, the front door opened with a cluttered bang and the sound of scuffling followed. “I am so late,” Lorelai called. “Late and I’m supposed to be ready for dinner--”

When her mother entered the kitchen, her voice stopped short, taking in the stare down between the flustered Luke and the overwrought Rory.

“I didn’t realize my tardiness was that traumatic,” her mother said uncertainly. “A little annoying, maybe, but I’d figure that you two sort of expected that by now.”

Rory looked at her mother and looked at Luke. Her mother, still dressed from work, a skirt and a blouse and heels. Luke, with a button up over his t-shirt and surprisingly clean-looking khakis. They looked from one to another and then back at her.

“So, something I should know about?” her mother hedged.

Luke just swallowed.

Rory said, “I think we need to talk.”

-o-

They ended up at the kitchen table, all hunched over it, biting their lower lips and wondering who wanted to speak first.

Which really, was probably a rarity in and of itself. That no one was talking. With two Gilmore women and Luke, that simply didn’t happen all that often.

Of course, usually they weren’t sitting around trying to define whatever whacked out interpersonal dynamics had been lurking in the background since Rory’s less than stellar homecoming.

“So,” her mother said. “You wanted to talk?”

Rory swallowed. She had been hoping they’d forget she was the one who had demanded this awkward session in communication. “Where is all this going?” she finally blurted.

Her mother raised her eyebrows and glanced at Luke who just shrugged in deference. “Where’s what going?”

“This,” Rory said, nodding at the table. “You and Luke and me and all of us together and apart.”

“Honey, you know Luke and I--”

“Yeah, I know you and Luke are you and Luke. But I don’t get it. I don’t get what you’re doing. You’re serious with each other but you’re not ready to move in. You seem to love each other but there’s no talk of marriage. You completely work together but every time it even seems to come to a head, we don’t want to talk about it. He has a key to our backdoor. A key. What happened to him just breaking in all the time? And I never see you two, you know.”

“Well, honey, we don’t really like company--”

“That’s not what I mean,” Rory snapped. “I mean, here? Or his place? Have you been contemplating major purchases together? Do you plan vacations together? Do you even go on vacations? Why are there huge parts of your life that I don’t know about?”

And that was the crux of the issues she had when it came to her mother. Her mom’s new peaceful vagueness was adult perhaps, and she was all for that, as long as she was in on it. She was supposed to know her mother. She just was. There had been times, of course, when it had been strained. Her break from Yale was a prime example. But they’d gotten past it. They had. She knew her mom. She knew Luke. She knew Stars Hollow. And she had come home because it was supposed to be safe and familiar and something she could predict and just know.

“You were gone,” Lorelai reminded her gently. “Detroit, remember? You got busy. There wasn’t time to tell you everything.”

“Yeah, but I needed to know this.”

“What?” her mom asked. “That Luke and I love each other? That we’re just happy and that’s what we’re sticking with? We’ve tried it before, kid. We’ve tried it with rings and wedding dresses and this time--I don’t know. This time it’s just simpler this way. We’re not saying it’ll never be more, but we understand it the way it is now.”

“Well, I don’t,” Rory said, frowning a little. And there was issue number two. “I mean, you two are so right for each other. You complete each other. You make sense together. And it’s all right there for you.”

“Well, I think this is why I haven’t seen the need to define it all, sort out the details. We’re both on the same page. And it’s been just the two of us for so long.”

“You mean you like when I randomly attack your boyfriend with weird lines of questioning that make him feel like he’s stealing some little girl’s mommy?”

Luke hedged a little bit. “Actually, it was more like an angry would-be mother-in-law attacking me for not making a decent woman out of her daughter.”

“That too,” Rory said. “You two are rather scandalous.”

“And you’re both missing the point,” her mother interjected. “I haven’t felt like I’ve had to define all this, me and Luke, me and Rory, Rory and Luke, because it just is what it is. We’re already family in our own dysfunctional way. And that’s what family is.”

“Dysfunction?” Rory asked.

“Of the most dysfunctional kind.”

“Dysfunctional dysfunction would actually be function,” Luke pointed out.

“And again,” her mother said with a smile. “I make my point.”

And she had. Lorelai was right. Luke was as much a part of them as Stars Hollow, as this house, as each other. He fit. Even when they fought, even when they did stupid things, her mother was made for Luke and Rory could see that now, had seen it all along, and the only reason she’d really been so obsessed with defining it was because she didn’t know how she fit into it.

Jealousy. Of her mom and Luke and the closeness they shared that she’d missed out on, that she hadn’t been a part of.

Jealousy that they had the thing she wanted.

“So,” her mother ventured softly. “Are we okay?”

Luke just raised his eyebrows. “I already know that what I feel about this isn’t nearly as important as what you two have going on in your heads.”

“You learn quick,” her mother grinned. “Rory?”

Jealousy didn’t change things with Dean. And it shouldn’t change things between her mom and Luke. Between herself and the both of them. This was family and for that much stability in her life, she had to be grateful. “Yeah,” she said. “I think I’m okay.”

“Then it’s settled,” her mother said, rubbing her hands together. “Now, if we’re all good, I do believe we have a dinner date.”

“And I’m not invited?” Rory asked.

“Well, the dinner is only part of the date,” her mother said as Luke blanched.

“You’re getting kinky in your old age.”

“You’re just jealous,” her mother said.

Of some things, yes. Of that? “Hardly,” Rory replied. “I think I have an article to write anyway. So, please. Go have your dinner and your date and please don’t let me know when you’re done, alright?”

“Sure thing, kid,” her mother said, getting to her feet. “You ready to go?”

“You have no idea,” Luke replied.

Rory watched them go, down the hall, bickering and flirting and talking and suddenly it felt good to Rory. Good that in all the mess of her life, all the mess of the world, at least one thing made sense.

-o-

The summer was fleeting.

That was always a bittersweet time, for anyone, really. The dwindling days of warmth, with school approaching and the turn of autumn. Rory wasn't in school anymore, but she still felt the change, the shift in momentum, from the crazy antics in summer heat to the gentle monotony of fall.

She kept writing. Articles came and articles went out and people read her with the same voracity as ever. She found home become a new kind of normal. Understanding her mother's relationship with Luke was never easy, but understanding that her mother was happy, peaceful in a way she never had been before was enough.

And even her old room was hers again: like it had been, but different. Just like the entire experience. Just like her.

She still looked for jobs. Her grandparents’ check was in the bank just waiting to be used. But Rory wanted to find just the right thing, make just the right decision and she still wasn't sure what that was. She put some feelers out, a few applications with news organizations and service groups, all with options for international travel. It seemed like the only thing she hadn't done yet, which was probably why it sounded appealing. But, she had to admit, she didn't pursue them as tenaciously as she had everything else in her life. No late nights obsessing over the details. No excessive phone calls to see if all her application materials had been received. What would happen, would happen, and she was oddly content to just let that be.

There was one other thing, though, still not sorted, and the more she thought about it, the more she realized that world travel wasn't the only thing she hadn't done yet in her life.

She'd never opened herself up completely--to anyone, much less a guy. She'd tried before, because it had seemed like the right thing to do, but she'd never felt it spring up naturally like she'd always supposed it should. Along those lines, maybe she'd never really been in love, not in the kind of love she saw in her mother's eyes when she talked about Luke, not the kind of love she saw in Dean when he talked about his family.

That was the thing that she really couldn't figure out. Dean. Not just who he was or who they were together, but what she really wanted in the end. Because she could fill out job applications and she could write articles, but there was no simple formula to figuring out how to talk to Dean about what she wanted, about what she felt.

The fact was, she knew that it'd never be easy. She knew that Dean was never leaving Stars Hollow. She knew that Dean was going to run the stereo shop, live in his mother's house, put his sister through college. He would pay the mortgage, finish off his father's debts, and be the son his family needed. She wasn't sure he'd ever be truly happy with that, but he would do it, for once and for always. Because Dean was faithful. He'd stumbled once, betrayed the trust put in him once, and she could see it in his eyes--he'd never do it again. Not for his own dreams and certainly not for Rory.

So, it would never work. Her and Dean, it couldn't work. Because Rory was going to leave Stars Hollow again, some time soon, and Dean would never come with her. And she was pretty sure that he wouldn't promise her anything. Maybe before, but not now. Not with their history.

Yet, there was something between them. Since the night of Dean's breakdown, he hadn't avoided her. Even after Rory’s misguided attempt to bail him out monetarily, there was still something there. They'd talked, they'd met for coffee and he'd smiled when she visited him at the store. He was no longer saying they were off-limits. She figured they'd been through too much for that. But they didn't take it further. She asked for nothing from him and he asked for nothing from her and it seemed to work.

But Rory wanted more.

It didn't make sense, it would never work, but Rory wanted more.

She wanted to tell him how much she loved him. She wanted to tell him how much she appreciated him. She wanted to tell him that she'd never realized just how amazing he was, just how much he could do. She wanted to tell him that his ability to fix things blew her mind. She wanted to tell him that the way he talked to customers was so natural, so sincere. She wanted to tell him that the stereo shop was doing better business than ever. She wanted to tell him that he was a success, that he was doing so well, that his family was so lucky to have him.

She wanted to say she was sorry. That she was sorry she'd never figured it out before, that she'd never told him that before, that she'd never looked past the end of her own nose and the beating of her own heart to see just who he was and what he had to offer. She was sorry that she'd found him boring. She was sorry that she’d let Jess convince her that he was less than he was and that she’d compared him to Logan and found him lacking. She was sorry that she'd never taken the time to really know him.

She wanted a lot. But she couldn't always get what she wanted. No amount of education, no amount of planning, no amount of money could make that happen.

No, it came down to choices. To her decisions. About what she really wanted.

It occurred to her, though, in her many nights of sitting up late and staring at her blank computer screen, that that was sort of what being an adult was all about. About making decisions, about making the hard decisions, about figuring out what was worth it and what wasn't. Life wasn't perfect, not even for people born with silver spoons in their mouths. She had to make her own way, do her own thing, and she'd always believed that. But life wasn't lived in isolation. Decisions shouldn't be made that way, either.

Her mother told her that love was about sacrifice.

Too bad love and sacrifice were still two things that scared her, two things she still wasn't sure she could quite grasp.

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