Work Text:
NOVEMBER 2001
"Nice to see you, Lucas," Mia says, smiling.
Luke is smiling. Rory is smiling.
Lorelai's ears are buzzing with static and all she can do is stare.
FEBRUARY 1989
For the first time in all the years they've known each other, Luke looks at Rachel and sees a stranger.
"It's National Geographic, Luke. Do you understand what this means for me?" She's lit up like a sunset, radiant with excitement, but all he feels is cold.
"I understand it means you'll be gone for a year," he says flatly.
"Can't you at least be a little excited for me? This is such an amazing opportunity."
But he can't. Not this time. He did his best when she was gone for three months, or four months, or when those turned into six months. And every time she came home and told him it wouldn't be so long the next time, he believed her. Because he wanted to. But now he's all out of pretend.
"Rachel, what do you want from me? You know how I feel. Nothing's changed."
"No," she says quietly. "Nothing's changed."
"And that's the problem, isn't it? This town's not enough for you. I'm not enough for you."
"This is my dream, Luke! Someone is going to pay me to travel around the world doing what I love! What I'm good at and what I've worked at for years! Why can't you be happy for me?"
"I've been happy for you!" he yells. "Every assignment, every article, every cover, I've been happy for you, and I've supported you. When is it my turn, Rachel? When are you gonna be happy for me, support me?" He pauses, breathing hard, struggling to rein himself in.
Rachel looks stunned. "I didn't know you were so unhappy."
He snorts. "Guess I'm a better actor than I thought."
"I'm sorry, Luke."
And she is; he knows she is. She never means to hurt him. The problem is that she always does. He sinks down on the edge of the bed and rests his head in his hands. "So now what? I'm supposed to just sit around for a year waiting for you?" The question comes out sounding more defeated than he meant it to.
Rachel crouches down in front of him. "No."
He looks up in shock. "What?"
"I don't want you to wait for me."
"What are you saying, Rachel?"
She takes a deep breath. "I love you, Luke, I do, but this—" she gestures between them "—isn't working. It's never going to work. We're not soulmates."
"You don't know that!" he says fiercely. This is a fight they've had too many times before.
"We'd already have our names by now if we were." Her voice is tender but resolute. "You know it's true."
"So this is it? It's just over? You've decided and I don't even get a say?" Luke crosses to the window and grips the frame tightly, trying to find something to anchor himself. "What if I said I'll wait? I'll wait for you as long as it takes."
She walks up behind him and presses against his back, her arms wrapping around his waist. "Please don't make that kind of promise, Luke. Don't lay that kind of guilt on me. This is the right thing for both of us. One day you'll get your name and you'll find your soulmate. You'll be happy and I'll be happy for you."
"Rachel, don't," he whispers, his voice breaking.
But she does.
APRIL 1995
Two days after her 27th birthday, Lorelai's soulmark appears.
Rory's going through a butterfly phase (Lepidoptera, Mom!) and the sparkly hair clip that went missing last week is conveniently right there on the floor for Lorelai to step on as she gets out of bed. It's actually more shock than pain that makes her howl and hop around on one foot dramatically. Rory, angelic child that she is, drops her half-eaten PopTart and rushes to her mother's side.
Lorelai falls back onto the bed and cradles her wounded foot while her daughter apologizes with breathless remorse. "It's okay, sweets," she says, hugging Rory. "But now you have to wear it today so my terrible suffering won't be in vain."
While Rory finishes her PopTart, Lorelai examines the tender ball of her foot. Her gaze drifts up and there, just under the crease of her big toe, is a name. Lucas. She stares at it for a few seconds, unsure what she's feeling. Somehow, despite everything, a part of her has spent these last eleven years believing the name on her skin would be Christopher.
Then, like butterfly wings, a little flutter of happiness, of relief, quivers inside her. Gently, she traces the shape of the letters with the tip of one finger. She was right, after all, not to marry him, not to tie their futures together with more than Rory. Joy bubbles up inside her, a humming anticipation. Now she knows: there's someone out there who one day soon is going to walk into her life and just fit.
It's the second most wonderful thing that's ever happened to her.
*
Luke finds his in the shower. He's bleary-eyed in the early morning, washing in a mindless, routine way, when he glances down and sees the letters strung along the jut of his hip. Lorelai. For a few suspended seconds his mind goes blank; he has no idea what he's looking at.
Then a squeezing agony grips his chest, his gut. He stumbles back against the wet tile as his knees give out, and with the warm water pouring down over him he finds himself sobbing for everything he's lost. His mother, his father, his sister, and now the last tiny spark of hope for a future with Rachel.
When the water begins to cool his throat aches but he's stopped crying. He dries himself, gets dressed, and trudges downstairs to begin another pointless day.
AUGUST 1995
It's been four years since Rachel's last return to Stars Hollow. She'd been full of regrets and promises that Luke had been only too happy to believe. They'd fallen into each other like no time had passed and for a little while he'd allowed himself the hope that this time, finally, she meant it.
Six months later she was gone.
This time Luke manages to hold out for two weeks before she's back in his bed. Well, on his couch. His pants droop around his ankles and she's pressing wet kisses along the inside of his thigh. Her hands flirt with the edge of his t-shirt, rucking it up over her wrists to get to his cock.
The light coming through the windows glows orange as the sun sets behind a massed bank of storm clouds. He's dizzy with how good it feels to let himself want her, love her, again. In that moment he can't remember why he was fighting it so long.
It takes a few seconds for him to notice she's gone completely still. When he opens his eyes she's staring at his hip, and he's so far gone he can't figure out why.
Then her eyes flick up to his and it all comes crumbling down.
"Lorelai."
*
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks quietly when they're both completely clothed and sitting a polite distance apart on the couch.
"Because it doesn't matter. I don't care about some woman I've never even heard of, some woman I might not ever meet."
Rachel sighs. "You know that 92% of soulmates who don't already know each other meet within a year of—"
He lunges to his feet. "Don't quote statistics at me, damn it! This isn't about numbers; this is about you and me. I love you. I want to be with you."
"Oh, Luke. That will change."
"No it won't!"
"Yes," she says firmly, "it will. I've seen it happen over and over, across different countries and different cultures. It changes you. It changes everything."
"I don't want anything to change," he whispers. "It hurts too much."
"I know. Oh, baby, I know."
Rachel takes his hand and leads him to his bed. She undresses him so tenderly it brings the sting of tears to his eyes. They make love with a solemnity he's never known in all their years together. He falls asleep cradled against Rachel's breast, her hand stroking through his hair.
When he wakes the next morning to her absence he's not even a little bit surprised.
JULY 1996
On the crazy woman's second visit to the diner, she's slightly less obnoxious. But not by much.
"So you must be the eponymous Luke," she says.
"Must be," is all Luke says before grabbing an order for another table. He couldn't be less interested in her, he tells himself, no matter how pretty she is. Between the catastrophe of his relationship with Rachel and his short-lived fling with Anna, Luke's sworn off the whole female gender for at least a decade.
It's not until almost a week later that he learns the obnoxious woman's name. For the first time since the day he opened the diner, Luke feels like he might pass out when he hears Patty say something to Taylor about Lorelai.
"Who?" he chokes out, the table he's wiping down completely forgotten.
"Lorelai, dear. Lorelai Gilmore. She's moved into the house next to Babette and Morey with her daughter. Rory is just the sweetest little thing, though she's got no rhythm to speak of, poor child. Have you met the lovely Lorelai?" Patty asks slyly. "Dark hair, bright blue eyes, legs for days?"
"What? No. I mean, yes, I think so," he stammers, suddenly flustered for some reason. "She's been in here a few times but I didn't know who she was."
Patty nods in a way that seems to imply several things, none of which Luke wants to consider. "Gorgeous girl. Assistant Manager at the Independence Inn. She started out as a maid, you know, and worked her way up. All while raising her little girl on her own. I don't know how she's done it."
"Very civic-minded, too," Taylor chimes in. "She's already been to two town meetings and volunteered to help with costumes for this year's Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days Festival. You could stand to take a leaf from her book, Luke."
"Sounds like she's one leaf short already," Luke mutters as he stalks back to the safety of the kitchen. His head's spinning and there's a sour taste in his mouth. This is the woman who's ruined any chance he had with Rachel? This caffeine junkie with verbal diarrhea who acts like a middle-schooler on a sugar high is supposed to be his soulmate? It's got to be the universe's idea of a colossal joke.
The next time he sees her she calls him Duke and that's fine with him. She clearly wants no more to do with this soulmate crap than he does. It just might be the only thing they agree on. So he's deliberately rude to her and she's deliberately annoying to him, and after a while it becomes sort of routine. Lorelai and her daughter are in the diner almost daily, and Luke's surprised to discover that he actually likes the kid. He even almost likes Lorelai when he sees how she is with Rory. He grudgingly admits (to himself, never to her) that she's a great mom. He has to respect her for that.
In the end Luke finds it just takes too much energy to hate her. And it's not as if it's her fault. Nobody gets to choose their soulmate, after all.
From there the change is so gradual he doesn't even notice it; just a series of days with lots of routine in between. There's the day she coaxes a laugh out of him and they're both surprised; the day she starts calling him Luke again for good; the day he hears her talking about a leaky pipe in her house and offers to take a look at it for her.
Somehow those single days add up until their sum is a comfortable sort of friendship. Not all soulmates are romantic, Luke tells himself. And it's good to have a friend. Someone he looks forward to seeing even if he'd never admit it, someone who can make him laugh even though he tries to hide it.
Those days go on accumulating when he's not paying attention.
MARCH 2001
"So that's her?" Rachel asks.
"That's her."
"But you're not...?"
It's a small tear on his heart to say it. "No."
"Because you don't want to be?"
Luke sighs. "Rachel, why are you here?"
"I missed you. And I'd heard through the grapevine that you still weren't with anyone. So I thought maybe we could try one more time."
NOVEMBER 2001
[Lorelai comes barging into the diner]
"You knew! All this time you knew!"
Luke looks at her as if she's sprouted an extra head. "Knew what?"
She stalks toward him, ignoring his "Hey!" when she corners him behind the counter. "Where is it?" she yells, grabbing at the front of his shirt.
"Lorelai, what the hell is wrong with you?" he demands, trying to pull her hands away. "Where's what?"
"My name."
[later]
"So, what, you've just been waiting for Rachel to come back all this time?"
"Rachel?" he asks, incredulous. "What's Rachel got to do with this?"
"Well everyone says you've been pining for her for years."
"I haven't been pining for her, damn it! I loved her and she left me. A lot. And the last time she came back was when the soulmark came through. When she left that time, I knew she wasn't coming back. So, yeah, it hurt. It hurt a lot. But I got over it. Rachel's got nothing to do with how I feel about you."
[more arguing]
"Jesus, Lorelai, don't you get it?"
"Obviously not! What is it I'm supposed to be getting from all this?" she demands.
Somehow the heat of her frustration boils his own away to nothing. "I just... I thought you knew," he says helplessly.
"How could I? No one calls you Lucas. I didn't even know it was your real name until this morning." She looks up at him and there's something fragile about her when she asks, "Why didn't you ever say anything, Luke?"
"By the time I knew your name you'd already started call me 'Duke'." He shrugs. "I figured that was your way of telling me you weren't interested."