FIC: Strange Love (Gilmore Girls, PG-13)
Strange Love
by Shaye
SUMMARY: Every day is like Sunday.
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Sherman Palladino & CW own everything except the summary, which is all Morrissey.
TIMELINE: Set mid-season five.
WORD COUNT: 4500
NOTES: Going on two years ago, gatefiction pretty much dared me to write Gilmore Girls apocafic. This is what happened. Beta by leadensky andannavtree, who may well be wondering where this story got to. Thanks, ladies, and I apologize for those places where I totally ignored your suggestions.
Crossposted to apocalypse_latr.
+++
Lorelai was amazing, predictably enough. She and Sookie and Jackson turned the Dragonfly into a distribution center for all kinds of things: whatever food they could round up, medicines acquired through questionable means. There wasn't really an official decision - that was probably the only town meeting Lorelai had ever refused to attend. While Taylor was still standing around arguing about how they were going to handle things, Lorelai just did it.
Three days later, Lane had watched her make a very compelling argument that the Inn was hers, and she could do with it what she liked. And then she very politely invited Taylor to get the hell off her property. It was like an episode of The Waltons, if the Waltons had been sleeping refugees in all the bedrooms, not to mention the barn.
There had been a steady stream of them over the last few weeks, staggering in from the area surrounding New York City. Nobody had cars after the first couple of days. Even if the police hadn't set up road blocks, there wasn't any gas.
People almost welcomed them, at first. Word of mouth was the most reliable news source anymore. Some of them had radiation poisoning and were being directed to a big Red Cross facility outside Hartford. The others found shelter where they could, and in Stars Hollow, that meant the Dragonfly.
Lane was delivering a big load of stale buns and bread loaves in Luke's pickup that afternoon. They didn't drive it much, and anyway, it turned out that Gypsy had been making biodiesel in the back of her shop for years, and was willing to trade for Luke's old barrels of used cooking oil.
It was weird to be the only vehicle on the road. It was so quiet, and everyone could hear her coming for miles around. There was already a small crowd waiting when Lane pulled up to the front door. A minute later, as she was unlashing the load, a brick flew through the back window, missing her head by half an inch.
She jumped and whirled to see where it had come from, but not quickly enough to dodge the second volley. The brick smashed into the side of her head.
Blood covered her glasses, and she couldn't see who'd thrown it, but she heard his voice loud and clear: "God damned dirty fucking Korean bitch!" The voice was getting closer, and Lane scrambled in the gravel at her feet trying to get up, but her head was pounding and she felt like she was sinking through the ground. Oh God, what if he had another brick, or what if he picked up the one he'd just thrown, or what if he saw that shovel stuck in the flower bed across the yard, or what if...
The screen door slammed open and the loudest sound Lane had ever heard cut through the refugee's tirade. She jerked at the sound, but he hadn't shot her; surely, she'd be able to feel that, right?
Lane fumbled with her glasses, trying to wipe them on a clean corner of her shirt. Lorelai's voice broke the ringing silence, steely and cold as ice.
"You get the hell off my property, and you don't come back. If I see you again, I won't miss. Are we clear?"
Lane finally got her red-smudged glasses back on, in time to see Lorelai, holding an honest-to-God musket, facing down a guy easily twice her size.
He eyed the musket and Lorelai's face, and it looked like he was considering taking her on. Finally he deflated, spat in the direction of Lorelai's shoes, and stalked away muttering, "Fuck this commie bullshit."
As soon as he was out of sight down the drive, Lorelai was on her knees at Lane's feet. "Michel!" she called, "I need some rags out here now!"
Lane's vision was starting to blacken at the edges. "I feel funny."
Lorelai grabbed Lane's hand and squeezed tightly. "I know you do, sweetie." She reached up and took Lane's glasses from her face.
That was frustrating; she'd worked so hard to get her glasses clean. By that time Michel had appeared with what might have been a pristine white hotel towel. Probably the last clean rag they had, Lane thought muzzily.
"I don't know why I'm so tired all of a sudden," she slurred, and dimly heard Michel exclaim that he would bring some water.
A sharp sting on her cheek startled her, and she opened her eyes. "You hit me," she said accusingly.
Michel was back with a bottle of water, and Lorelai wet the towel before putting the bottle to Lane's lips. "Yeah. Drink this." Lane did, and felt the cool water flow down her throat.
Lorelai's steady hands dabbed at the blood on her head, face all concentrated concern. "Michel, I need a first aid kit, please."
Lane relaxed against the warm tire of the pickup. "In the cab, behind the driver's seat," she said.
Luke's first aid kit was old and dusty, but characteristically well-stocked. Lorelai brushed Lane's hair out of her face, pressed the towel to the wound, and brought Lane's hand up to hold it. "Press tight on that." She picked through the kit until she found an alcohol wipe. Lane winced at the sting. Next, Lorelai produced a butterfly bandage and began peeling away the wax-paper wrapper.
"How bad is it?" Lane asked, squinting.
"It's only a flesh wound," Lorelai said, in a silly Monty Python voice.
"For real," Lane said.
"For real," Lorelai said firmly. "It just bled a lot." She fished a packet of aspirin out of the kit and made Lane swallow them with the rest of the water.
"My brains aren't going to ooze out my eye sockets?"
Michel made a disgusted noise and said, "The emergency has obviously passed. I'm going back inside."
"No brains," Lorelai said, ignoring him. She applied the butterfly bandage and helped Lane to her feet. "Let's get you inside." She glanced over her shoulder where a handful of refugees had gathered at the barn door to watch the spectacle. "You should rest," she added, a little louder than necessary. She very deliberately reached down to retrieve the musket before she offered Lane her arm.
"Where'd you get the musket?" Lane asked.
Lorelai smirked. "Luke. It was his dad's, from the historical reenactment."
"I'm surprised it works."
"Me too, although considering how anal Luke is about everything else, I guess I shouldn't be surprised about antique firearm maintenance." They made it inside, and Lorelai set her up on the loveseat in her own office, surrounded by fluffy pillows. She even had a clean shirt for Lane to change into. "Between you and me, I'm not sure I could hit the side of a barn with that thing."
"I'm pretty sure you did hit the side of the barn."
Lorelai smiled. "You've got to stay awake, Lane. Can you do that? I'll have Jackson help me unload the truck. And then we'll talk. Okay?"
Lane felt bile rise in her throat, but she choked it down. "Okay."
Lorelai frowned at her, taking her chin and peering closely. "I think I saw Lulu around here somewhere. I'm going to see if I can get her to sit with you and make sure you stay awake."
Lulu was actually a great person for the job. Of course, she was a grade school teacher, so babysitting was roughly half of her job already. But as soon as the truck was unloaded, there was something else Lorelai had to get done, and another, and another, and finally it was starting to get dark and Kirk came by on his tandem bicycle and made Lulu come home. Lane hadn't seen Lorelai for more than two minutes all day.
An hour later, she slumped into the kitchen while Lane was washing dishes by candlelight.
"Hey Miss Industrious, you should be resting."
Lane brushed the hair out of her face with a soapy hand. "I had to do something. I'd have fallen asleep if I just sat there any longer."
Lorelai nodded and took one of the stale buns out of its plastic bag. She looked at it dubiously and knocked it against the counter. A few pieces of crust flaked off, but otherwise it seemed rock-solid.
"Soak it in tea," Lane suggested.
"That's not a bad idea, actually. If by 'tea,' you mean 'coffee.'" She put the kettle on the old cast-iron woodstove to heat. "Where did these come from, anyway?"
The kitchen screen door opened, and Luke answered from the doorway. "Bread guy cleaned out their warehouse. I told him I'd take anything he had. He said we were lucky the day-old bread place in Hartford shut down last month. This is the stuff that was already stale when it happened."
"Explains the passing resemblance to a chunk of granite. You walk?"
Luke shrugged. "It's not far."
"You keep saying that, but I really don't believe you."
Luke looked to Lane. "When you didn't come back I thought maybe you'd taken the truck and run for the border."
"That's just begging for an inappropriate Taco Bell joke," Lorelai said as she stoked the fire.
Lane said, "Oh God, don't even mention Taco Bell. I'm going to start craving quesadillas." Reaching forward for another pot, she must have leaned into the candle's pool of light, because Luke suddenly straightened and his jaw went tight.
"What happened to you?" he demanded.
"It was nothing." Lane picked up a huge pot that once held potato soup, overbalanced, and staggered backward.
Luke caught one arm, and Lorelai the other. They tipped her upright again and Luke turned an alarming shade of red, she could see that even in the candlelight. "What happened to you?"
"Psychotic racist bastard who thought hitting a Korean girl with a brick was going to take back a nuclear holocaust," Lorelai said tersely. "Or maybe he just thought it would make him feel better."
Lane set the pot down and sighed in silent relief; she didn't want to have to explain it. She didn't know if she could explain it.
"WHAT?" Luke let go of Lane's arm and started back out the door, but Lorelai was faster, she'd anticipated it, she whirled around and grabbed him by the shoulder, was hauling him back inside before he even had the screen door halfway open.
"Luke, he's gone. He's gone now, I made sure of that."
"What? What did you do?"
"I shot at him with your father's musket."
"I can't believe some goddamn redneck would --"
"You can't believe it? Oh God, Luke, you can too. We can all believe it. It's, there's nothing we can do. The guy's gone. Just, deal with it. Calm down."
He sank onto one of the stools at the island. "There's nothing I can do." It wavered on the edge of a question.
"No," Lane said, finally. "It's just the way it is."
Luke buried his face in his hands. Lane filled the stew pot with recycled dishwater and scrubbed so hard it made her dizzy.
The kettle whistled. Lorelai tore her hands away from Luke's shoulders to retrieve it.
The coffee grounds were at least three days old. Lane had watched yesterday while Lorelai carefully squeezed out the excess water and spread them worshipfully on an dirty paper towel to dry, so they wouldn't mold. Sookie made sure to give them a wide berth.
Lane had a tea bag she'd been using since the day last week when Lorelai invited her to stay for an hour in the evening. She'd tacked it in the window sash to dry in the sun the next morning; Lane retrieved the bag from where it still hung. Yesterday, the liquid it yielded was so weak it probably couldn't even be called tea anymore.
Lorelai laid a gentle hand on her wrist, stopping her. She offered a fresh tea bag; Lane almost refused until she saw a similar new bag steeping in a mug for Luke.
Lane dunked her tea bag three times, then hung it in the window. She didn't throw out the old one. You never could tell when you might need it.
Lorelai set the steaming mug down in front of Luke, and draped herself over his back. He still hadn't looked up, but neither of them were shaking anymore.
Lane abandoned the pot and sat, watching vaguely tea-scented clouds waft upward. She broke apart a stale bun and dipped it briefly in her mug, until it was soft enough to chew.
Finally Lorelai lifted her head. "Was there any word from Hartford?" she asked.
Luke shook his head briefly. "Roads are still blockaded, according to some guy who rode through on a mountain bike this afternoon. Nobody's...I mean, the cities are worse," he said quietly. His voice was still muffled by his hands.
"Riots?" Lorelai asked.
"Some. And supplies are shorter, probably."
"I'm sure she's okay," Lane said suddenly, impulsively.
Lorelai glanced up, her eyes shadowed and her face astonishingly old in the wavering light. She tried to smile. "I know."
Luke lifted his head, the sound of his rough hands rasping against his straggly beard. "The radio worked for about an hour today," he said.
Lane could see Lorelai's knuckles go white on a fistful of Luke's shirt. "And?"
"Denver. Seattle. Houston. Since Tuesday."
"God."
"That's not all."
The stale bun started to feel even heavier in Lane's stomach. "Let me guess," she said softly. "Pyongyang, Hamhung, Chongjin."
"Got it in one," Luke said, sounding bone-weary with defeat.
Lorelai heaved a sigh and sat, finally, squeezing some anemic-looking coffee from her french press. She broke off a huge piece of stale bun and dropped it into the mug. They all stared as it slowly turned a slightly darker shade of tan.
Luke shook his head and reached for his tea, almost oblivious to what he was doing. Lane ate another chunk of soggy biscuit and watched as Lorelai fished hers out of the coffee mug.
"I always knew I should take up some kind of colonialist hobby," Lorelai said suddenly.
"What?" Luke looked up from his contemplation of the tabletop.
"You know, like knitting. Or...churning butter."
"You'd have to milk a cow before you could churn butter," Lane pointed out.
"You'd have to own a cow before you could churn butter," Luke said.
"That would be okay. We'd call her Bessie, you know, stick with the classics. She could live in the barn. Jackson probably knows how to milk a cow."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Well, we can't go on like this forever, can we? Pretty soon we'll be living off the land like pilgrims. You, you're practically an Eagle Scout, you'll be fine."
"I was an Eagle Scout."
"But I could have been learning basketweaving or something useful, and instead I collected Bangles memorabilia and perfected the art of irritating my mother."
"Hey." Luke reached out and gripped her arm tightly. "You're doing what you do best. You're taking care of people. And for everything else, you don't have to worry. I'll take care of you."
Lorelai stared him down, her eyes glittering in the candlelight. "Will you really chop wood for me in the winter and build me a little log cabin when looters tear this place apart board by board?" Her voice quavered weirdly, like she was trying to be flippant but might cry instead at any moment. Her fists were clenched tight in the dark plaid of Luke's shirt. Lane had the feeling this was something she shouldn't be witnessing.
Luke didn't say anything, he just got up and backed Lorelai against the wall and curled his arm around her waist. For a minute Lane thought he was just going to hold her like that for awhile, but no; he kissed her, and he kissed her deep and hard like in the movies. Like Lane didn't think anybody actually kissed in real life. Lorelai buried her hands in Luke's hair and kissed him back.
Lane's mouth went dry and she took her stale bun and her tea out onto the porch, where there was a bench and an old wrought-iron table. She took off her glasses and closed her eyes. Her head still felt big and heavy, but she couldn't tell if that was the concussion or just a residual headache. Her glasses sat crookedly on her face now, and she couldn't get them bent back the right way. It was probably a lucky thing that they weren't broken. She wondered how long it would be before she could safely go to sleep. Burrowing under a mountain of blankets sounded really good right now.
The screen door creaked. "Lane?"
She glanced up; Lorelai looked blurry and shadowed. "Yeah?" Lane put on her glasses and Lorelai's moonlit face resolved into a frown.
"I'm sorry. That couldn't have been any more tactless if I'd had 'It's the End of the World As We Know It' playing in the background."
"Those hacks? Please, it should be 'London Calling' at the very least." Personally, Lane had listened to a lot of Morrissey, until the batteries on her stereo ran down.
Lorelai sat down, sighing. "We shouldn't have done that."
Lane looked away. "No, it's fine. You should do whatever you want."
"We shouldn't make you uncomfortable."
Lane had no response to that. She took a sip of tea.
"Come on," Lorelai said. "Come back to the kitchen." She looked around to check for anyone listening, and added, "I have a secret stash of Oreos."
"Is this because somebody tried to kill me today?" Lane asked.
Lorelai stared at her for a moment, and then she smiled, almost genuinely. "Yes, it's the new rule. If someone tries to kill you, you get chocolate."
"Sounds like a good rule to me."
"You bet your ass it is."
Lane stood up to follow Lorelai back to the kitchen. Her stomach felt strange, in a way that had nothing to do with her head wound. It took a second to realize that Lorelai had almost been mothering her, after her own fashion. Lorelai in full-on mother mode was nothing like Lane's own mother; Mama thought Oreos were the work of the devil, for one thing. Still, Lane recognized the sentiment. She'd witnessed it too often to forget.
For a moment she was tempted to pretend like this was normal. But no, it wouldn't feel the same, even if it had been a long time since she'd had so much as a civil conversation with Mama.
And she couldn't let Lorelai treat her like a long-lost daughter. That was far too much like giving up.
In the kitchen, Luke was hard at work finishing the rest of the dishes. The candlelight made it hard to see him, but Lane had worked for Luke long enough to recognize his embarrassment when she saw it, even in bad lighting.
"He broke the back window of the truck," Lane said, as if in confession.
Luke looked up and met her eyes, the embarrassment apparently gone or set aside. "What?"
"The guy who threw the brick. The first one went through the back window of your truck."
The muscle in Luke's jaw tensed again, and he said, "I'll see if I can get Gypsy to fix it."
Lane sat down, and Lorelai sat beside her, a package of Oreos crinkling in her hand. Lane dunked an Oreo in her tea and tried not to think.
After two cookies, Luke was finished with the dishes. He looked like he didn't know what to do with himself; he kept flexing his hands like maybe he wanted to hit somebody.
"Hey," Lorelai said, and he looked at her. "Come here." She held out an arm, and after a moment's hesitation he came over to take her hand. She drew him in, turned sideways on her stool and buried her head against his chest.
One more Oreo, Lane thought. There had to be some kind of sliding scale for how many cookies you deserved. Nothing short of broken limbs merited four.
"You can't fix everything," Lorelai said to Luke. He just held her tighter.
After a few minutes Lorelai sighed and pulled away to finish the rest of her coffee. "How do you feel?" she asked Lane.
"Tired," Lane said. "Just tired." She didn't mention the headache or the nausea; they weren't that bad anyway.
Lorelai pressed her lips together. "Dizzy?"
"Not for hours. Do you think I can sleep now? I feel fine, honestly."
She looked to Luke, helplessly. He grimaced and made Lane come stand in front of him so he could check her pupils. "You'll probably be okay," he said, but even he sounded uncertain. "Do you think you could drive back to town on your own?"
Lane gave this a moment's consideration. It wouldn't do to survive nuclear war and then die in a fiery car accident.
"I think so," she said. "You're not coming back to town?"
Luke glanced briefly at Lorelai; it was like his version of a Freudian slip. He stared into his tea mug as he said, "I think I'd better stay here tonight. That guy might come back and it wouldn't be safe if they were on their own." He looked up at her, though, totally prepared to go with her if she needed it. "You really think you can get home okay? I can drive you home and come back."
Lane hesitated, then shook her head. "No, that's a waste of diesel. I'll be fine." She drained the last of her tea.
Luke squinted at her. "Walk a straight line," he said.
"What?"
"You know, like if you got pulled over for drinking."
"I doubt I'm in danger of a DUI."
"Just do it."
Lane sighed, and did as he asked, walking across the kitchen with one foot exactly in front of the other. He grudgingly admitted that she couldn't have been straighter if she were walking on a tightrope.
"I guess I'll be going then," she said. The more she thought about it, the more the idea of her bed sounded like heaven.
Lorelai smoothed Lane's hair back from her face, and tilted her face closer to the candlelight to get one last look at Lane's forehead. "It looks like it'll heal okay," she said. Lane looked at her, frozen for a moment, then pulled away before Lorelai could hug her. It seemed obscene.
"Keys?" she asked. She had no idea what had happened to them after the brick incident.
"Right," Lorelai said, and went to get them from her office.
Lane glanced at Luke. "It's not the end of the world," she said, briefly touching her bandage.
Luke scowled. "You don't know that," he said, and it took her a moment to realize he didn't mean her head.
She sighed, and hesitated only briefly before squeezing his hand. Lorelai came back in with the keys, and they bundled her out the door with instructions to head straight home and send word via carrier pigeon when she got there safe. Well, the last part was all Lorelai.
Nothing was wrong with the truck but a broken back window; it started right up. It rumbled thunderously in the still night. She put it in gear and turned around in the driveway before she put on the truck's headlights.
She glanced in the rearview mirror, and in the moonlight, she could see Luke and Lorelai on the porch, her head on his shoulder and his arms clutched around her waist.
The drive back to town was short. She parked the truck in Luke's usual space behind the restaurant, and started off across the square toward her apartment.
There was a dim square of candlelight visible in their window. Zach and Brian had done nothing but get on her nerves lately; Brian kept trying to debate politics while Zach wondered about the fates of his favorite bands, Twinkies, and Dave Rogowski. It wasn't late enough to expect that they might be asleep; on the other hand, there was always the possibility that in the absence of Nintendo they'd just killed one another.
Lane, fumbling with her keys in the dark, dropped them jangling on the ground. She sighed and made a grab for the key that was easiest to reach, angled upward from the sidewalk. Her fingers closed around it and she stopped, the shape and feel of that particular key a strong sense memory in her hands. It was an older key, sort of outdated, but that was okay. There was a deadbolt to accompany it. It was the key to her mother's house.
She turned to look at it, across the square. The Kim's Antiques sign had been removed some days ago, though Lane could only guess as to why. It did seem like a good idea, with the threat of looters everywhere. They hadn't seen any in Stars Hollow yet, but Mama always erred on the side of caution.
She let herself in by the front door. Once inside, she took off her shoes and relocked the door, then crept up the stairs silently.
Mama was asleep, just like Lane had expected. She kept an early bedtime, believing early risers to be virtuous and closer to God. Lane's grip on things unseen had never been very strong, but she had no doubt that Mama wouldn't have let a little thing like nuclear war come between her and the Almighty.
Lane paused a moment in the doorway, watching her mother sleep. She looked troubled and uneasy. Lane crept closer, almost in a daze, until she was standing at the side of the bed.
Moonlight picked out the lines on her mother's face, illuminated the deep frown that hadn't smoothed out even in sleep.
Lane's head swam, and her headache suddenly felt ten times worse. She choked trying to get a breath, and crawled in beside her mother.
Mama stirred when she lay down beside her, but she didn't really wake up until Lane snuggled in close. Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at Lane uncertainly. Her hand came up to smooth back Lane's hair, and the gesture was a hundred times more comforting from her than it had been from Lorelai. She still felt sick, and confused, but it would pass. Laying here beside her mother, she was sure it would pass.
Mama's fingers danced over the bandage on Lane's forehead, but though her expression turned very serious, she didn't say anything. Evidently, she understood.
Lane buried her head in her mother's shoulder, and finally, after what seemed like days of waiting, went to sleep.
--
end
by Shaye
SUMMARY: Every day is like Sunday.
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: Sherman Palladino & CW own everything except the summary, which is all Morrissey.
TIMELINE: Set mid-season five.
WORD COUNT: 4500
NOTES: Going on two years ago, gatefiction pretty much dared me to write Gilmore Girls apocafic. This is what happened. Beta by leadensky andannavtree, who may well be wondering where this story got to. Thanks, ladies, and I apologize for those places where I totally ignored your suggestions.
Crossposted to apocalypse_latr.
+++
Lorelai was amazing, predictably enough. She and Sookie and Jackson turned the Dragonfly into a distribution center for all kinds of things: whatever food they could round up, medicines acquired through questionable means. There wasn't really an official decision - that was probably the only town meeting Lorelai had ever refused to attend. While Taylor was still standing around arguing about how they were going to handle things, Lorelai just did it.
Three days later, Lane had watched her make a very compelling argument that the Inn was hers, and she could do with it what she liked. And then she very politely invited Taylor to get the hell off her property. It was like an episode of The Waltons, if the Waltons had been sleeping refugees in all the bedrooms, not to mention the barn.
There had been a steady stream of them over the last few weeks, staggering in from the area surrounding New York City. Nobody had cars after the first couple of days. Even if the police hadn't set up road blocks, there wasn't any gas.
People almost welcomed them, at first. Word of mouth was the most reliable news source anymore. Some of them had radiation poisoning and were being directed to a big Red Cross facility outside Hartford. The others found shelter where they could, and in Stars Hollow, that meant the Dragonfly.
Lane was delivering a big load of stale buns and bread loaves in Luke's pickup that afternoon. They didn't drive it much, and anyway, it turned out that Gypsy had been making biodiesel in the back of her shop for years, and was willing to trade for Luke's old barrels of used cooking oil.
It was weird to be the only vehicle on the road. It was so quiet, and everyone could hear her coming for miles around. There was already a small crowd waiting when Lane pulled up to the front door. A minute later, as she was unlashing the load, a brick flew through the back window, missing her head by half an inch.
She jumped and whirled to see where it had come from, but not quickly enough to dodge the second volley. The brick smashed into the side of her head.
Blood covered her glasses, and she couldn't see who'd thrown it, but she heard his voice loud and clear: "God damned dirty fucking Korean bitch!" The voice was getting closer, and Lane scrambled in the gravel at her feet trying to get up, but her head was pounding and she felt like she was sinking through the ground. Oh God, what if he had another brick, or what if he picked up the one he'd just thrown, or what if he saw that shovel stuck in the flower bed across the yard, or what if...
The screen door slammed open and the loudest sound Lane had ever heard cut through the refugee's tirade. She jerked at the sound, but he hadn't shot her; surely, she'd be able to feel that, right?
Lane fumbled with her glasses, trying to wipe them on a clean corner of her shirt. Lorelai's voice broke the ringing silence, steely and cold as ice.
"You get the hell off my property, and you don't come back. If I see you again, I won't miss. Are we clear?"
Lane finally got her red-smudged glasses back on, in time to see Lorelai, holding an honest-to-God musket, facing down a guy easily twice her size.
He eyed the musket and Lorelai's face, and it looked like he was considering taking her on. Finally he deflated, spat in the direction of Lorelai's shoes, and stalked away muttering, "Fuck this commie bullshit."
As soon as he was out of sight down the drive, Lorelai was on her knees at Lane's feet. "Michel!" she called, "I need some rags out here now!"
Lane's vision was starting to blacken at the edges. "I feel funny."
Lorelai grabbed Lane's hand and squeezed tightly. "I know you do, sweetie." She reached up and took Lane's glasses from her face.
That was frustrating; she'd worked so hard to get her glasses clean. By that time Michel had appeared with what might have been a pristine white hotel towel. Probably the last clean rag they had, Lane thought muzzily.
"I don't know why I'm so tired all of a sudden," she slurred, and dimly heard Michel exclaim that he would bring some water.
A sharp sting on her cheek startled her, and she opened her eyes. "You hit me," she said accusingly.
Michel was back with a bottle of water, and Lorelai wet the towel before putting the bottle to Lane's lips. "Yeah. Drink this." Lane did, and felt the cool water flow down her throat.
Lorelai's steady hands dabbed at the blood on her head, face all concentrated concern. "Michel, I need a first aid kit, please."
Lane relaxed against the warm tire of the pickup. "In the cab, behind the driver's seat," she said.
Luke's first aid kit was old and dusty, but characteristically well-stocked. Lorelai brushed Lane's hair out of her face, pressed the towel to the wound, and brought Lane's hand up to hold it. "Press tight on that." She picked through the kit until she found an alcohol wipe. Lane winced at the sting. Next, Lorelai produced a butterfly bandage and began peeling away the wax-paper wrapper.
"How bad is it?" Lane asked, squinting.
"It's only a flesh wound," Lorelai said, in a silly Monty Python voice.
"For real," Lane said.
"For real," Lorelai said firmly. "It just bled a lot." She fished a packet of aspirin out of the kit and made Lane swallow them with the rest of the water.
"My brains aren't going to ooze out my eye sockets?"
Michel made a disgusted noise and said, "The emergency has obviously passed. I'm going back inside."
"No brains," Lorelai said, ignoring him. She applied the butterfly bandage and helped Lane to her feet. "Let's get you inside." She glanced over her shoulder where a handful of refugees had gathered at the barn door to watch the spectacle. "You should rest," she added, a little louder than necessary. She very deliberately reached down to retrieve the musket before she offered Lane her arm.
"Where'd you get the musket?" Lane asked.
Lorelai smirked. "Luke. It was his dad's, from the historical reenactment."
"I'm surprised it works."
"Me too, although considering how anal Luke is about everything else, I guess I shouldn't be surprised about antique firearm maintenance." They made it inside, and Lorelai set her up on the loveseat in her own office, surrounded by fluffy pillows. She even had a clean shirt for Lane to change into. "Between you and me, I'm not sure I could hit the side of a barn with that thing."
"I'm pretty sure you did hit the side of the barn."
Lorelai smiled. "You've got to stay awake, Lane. Can you do that? I'll have Jackson help me unload the truck. And then we'll talk. Okay?"
Lane felt bile rise in her throat, but she choked it down. "Okay."
Lorelai frowned at her, taking her chin and peering closely. "I think I saw Lulu around here somewhere. I'm going to see if I can get her to sit with you and make sure you stay awake."
Lulu was actually a great person for the job. Of course, she was a grade school teacher, so babysitting was roughly half of her job already. But as soon as the truck was unloaded, there was something else Lorelai had to get done, and another, and another, and finally it was starting to get dark and Kirk came by on his tandem bicycle and made Lulu come home. Lane hadn't seen Lorelai for more than two minutes all day.
An hour later, she slumped into the kitchen while Lane was washing dishes by candlelight.
"Hey Miss Industrious, you should be resting."
Lane brushed the hair out of her face with a soapy hand. "I had to do something. I'd have fallen asleep if I just sat there any longer."
Lorelai nodded and took one of the stale buns out of its plastic bag. She looked at it dubiously and knocked it against the counter. A few pieces of crust flaked off, but otherwise it seemed rock-solid.
"Soak it in tea," Lane suggested.
"That's not a bad idea, actually. If by 'tea,' you mean 'coffee.'" She put the kettle on the old cast-iron woodstove to heat. "Where did these come from, anyway?"
The kitchen screen door opened, and Luke answered from the doorway. "Bread guy cleaned out their warehouse. I told him I'd take anything he had. He said we were lucky the day-old bread place in Hartford shut down last month. This is the stuff that was already stale when it happened."
"Explains the passing resemblance to a chunk of granite. You walk?"
Luke shrugged. "It's not far."
"You keep saying that, but I really don't believe you."
Luke looked to Lane. "When you didn't come back I thought maybe you'd taken the truck and run for the border."
"That's just begging for an inappropriate Taco Bell joke," Lorelai said as she stoked the fire.
Lane said, "Oh God, don't even mention Taco Bell. I'm going to start craving quesadillas." Reaching forward for another pot, she must have leaned into the candle's pool of light, because Luke suddenly straightened and his jaw went tight.
"What happened to you?" he demanded.
"It was nothing." Lane picked up a huge pot that once held potato soup, overbalanced, and staggered backward.
Luke caught one arm, and Lorelai the other. They tipped her upright again and Luke turned an alarming shade of red, she could see that even in the candlelight. "What happened to you?"
"Psychotic racist bastard who thought hitting a Korean girl with a brick was going to take back a nuclear holocaust," Lorelai said tersely. "Or maybe he just thought it would make him feel better."
Lane set the pot down and sighed in silent relief; she didn't want to have to explain it. She didn't know if she could explain it.
"WHAT?" Luke let go of Lane's arm and started back out the door, but Lorelai was faster, she'd anticipated it, she whirled around and grabbed him by the shoulder, was hauling him back inside before he even had the screen door halfway open.
"Luke, he's gone. He's gone now, I made sure of that."
"What? What did you do?"
"I shot at him with your father's musket."
"I can't believe some goddamn redneck would --"
"You can't believe it? Oh God, Luke, you can too. We can all believe it. It's, there's nothing we can do. The guy's gone. Just, deal with it. Calm down."
He sank onto one of the stools at the island. "There's nothing I can do." It wavered on the edge of a question.
"No," Lane said, finally. "It's just the way it is."
Luke buried his face in his hands. Lane filled the stew pot with recycled dishwater and scrubbed so hard it made her dizzy.
The kettle whistled. Lorelai tore her hands away from Luke's shoulders to retrieve it.
The coffee grounds were at least three days old. Lane had watched yesterday while Lorelai carefully squeezed out the excess water and spread them worshipfully on an dirty paper towel to dry, so they wouldn't mold. Sookie made sure to give them a wide berth.
Lane had a tea bag she'd been using since the day last week when Lorelai invited her to stay for an hour in the evening. She'd tacked it in the window sash to dry in the sun the next morning; Lane retrieved the bag from where it still hung. Yesterday, the liquid it yielded was so weak it probably couldn't even be called tea anymore.
Lorelai laid a gentle hand on her wrist, stopping her. She offered a fresh tea bag; Lane almost refused until she saw a similar new bag steeping in a mug for Luke.
Lane dunked her tea bag three times, then hung it in the window. She didn't throw out the old one. You never could tell when you might need it.
Lorelai set the steaming mug down in front of Luke, and draped herself over his back. He still hadn't looked up, but neither of them were shaking anymore.
Lane abandoned the pot and sat, watching vaguely tea-scented clouds waft upward. She broke apart a stale bun and dipped it briefly in her mug, until it was soft enough to chew.
Finally Lorelai lifted her head. "Was there any word from Hartford?" she asked.
Luke shook his head briefly. "Roads are still blockaded, according to some guy who rode through on a mountain bike this afternoon. Nobody's...I mean, the cities are worse," he said quietly. His voice was still muffled by his hands.
"Riots?" Lorelai asked.
"Some. And supplies are shorter, probably."
"I'm sure she's okay," Lane said suddenly, impulsively.
Lorelai glanced up, her eyes shadowed and her face astonishingly old in the wavering light. She tried to smile. "I know."
Luke lifted his head, the sound of his rough hands rasping against his straggly beard. "The radio worked for about an hour today," he said.
Lane could see Lorelai's knuckles go white on a fistful of Luke's shirt. "And?"
"Denver. Seattle. Houston. Since Tuesday."
"God."
"That's not all."
The stale bun started to feel even heavier in Lane's stomach. "Let me guess," she said softly. "Pyongyang, Hamhung, Chongjin."
"Got it in one," Luke said, sounding bone-weary with defeat.
Lorelai heaved a sigh and sat, finally, squeezing some anemic-looking coffee from her french press. She broke off a huge piece of stale bun and dropped it into the mug. They all stared as it slowly turned a slightly darker shade of tan.
Luke shook his head and reached for his tea, almost oblivious to what he was doing. Lane ate another chunk of soggy biscuit and watched as Lorelai fished hers out of the coffee mug.
"I always knew I should take up some kind of colonialist hobby," Lorelai said suddenly.
"What?" Luke looked up from his contemplation of the tabletop.
"You know, like knitting. Or...churning butter."
"You'd have to milk a cow before you could churn butter," Lane pointed out.
"You'd have to own a cow before you could churn butter," Luke said.
"That would be okay. We'd call her Bessie, you know, stick with the classics. She could live in the barn. Jackson probably knows how to milk a cow."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Well, we can't go on like this forever, can we? Pretty soon we'll be living off the land like pilgrims. You, you're practically an Eagle Scout, you'll be fine."
"I was an Eagle Scout."
"But I could have been learning basketweaving or something useful, and instead I collected Bangles memorabilia and perfected the art of irritating my mother."
"Hey." Luke reached out and gripped her arm tightly. "You're doing what you do best. You're taking care of people. And for everything else, you don't have to worry. I'll take care of you."
Lorelai stared him down, her eyes glittering in the candlelight. "Will you really chop wood for me in the winter and build me a little log cabin when looters tear this place apart board by board?" Her voice quavered weirdly, like she was trying to be flippant but might cry instead at any moment. Her fists were clenched tight in the dark plaid of Luke's shirt. Lane had the feeling this was something she shouldn't be witnessing.
Luke didn't say anything, he just got up and backed Lorelai against the wall and curled his arm around her waist. For a minute Lane thought he was just going to hold her like that for awhile, but no; he kissed her, and he kissed her deep and hard like in the movies. Like Lane didn't think anybody actually kissed in real life. Lorelai buried her hands in Luke's hair and kissed him back.
Lane's mouth went dry and she took her stale bun and her tea out onto the porch, where there was a bench and an old wrought-iron table. She took off her glasses and closed her eyes. Her head still felt big and heavy, but she couldn't tell if that was the concussion or just a residual headache. Her glasses sat crookedly on her face now, and she couldn't get them bent back the right way. It was probably a lucky thing that they weren't broken. She wondered how long it would be before she could safely go to sleep. Burrowing under a mountain of blankets sounded really good right now.
The screen door creaked. "Lane?"
She glanced up; Lorelai looked blurry and shadowed. "Yeah?" Lane put on her glasses and Lorelai's moonlit face resolved into a frown.
"I'm sorry. That couldn't have been any more tactless if I'd had 'It's the End of the World As We Know It' playing in the background."
"Those hacks? Please, it should be 'London Calling' at the very least." Personally, Lane had listened to a lot of Morrissey, until the batteries on her stereo ran down.
Lorelai sat down, sighing. "We shouldn't have done that."
Lane looked away. "No, it's fine. You should do whatever you want."
"We shouldn't make you uncomfortable."
Lane had no response to that. She took a sip of tea.
"Come on," Lorelai said. "Come back to the kitchen." She looked around to check for anyone listening, and added, "I have a secret stash of Oreos."
"Is this because somebody tried to kill me today?" Lane asked.
Lorelai stared at her for a moment, and then she smiled, almost genuinely. "Yes, it's the new rule. If someone tries to kill you, you get chocolate."
"Sounds like a good rule to me."
"You bet your ass it is."
Lane stood up to follow Lorelai back to the kitchen. Her stomach felt strange, in a way that had nothing to do with her head wound. It took a second to realize that Lorelai had almost been mothering her, after her own fashion. Lorelai in full-on mother mode was nothing like Lane's own mother; Mama thought Oreos were the work of the devil, for one thing. Still, Lane recognized the sentiment. She'd witnessed it too often to forget.
For a moment she was tempted to pretend like this was normal. But no, it wouldn't feel the same, even if it had been a long time since she'd had so much as a civil conversation with Mama.
And she couldn't let Lorelai treat her like a long-lost daughter. That was far too much like giving up.
In the kitchen, Luke was hard at work finishing the rest of the dishes. The candlelight made it hard to see him, but Lane had worked for Luke long enough to recognize his embarrassment when she saw it, even in bad lighting.
"He broke the back window of the truck," Lane said, as if in confession.
Luke looked up and met her eyes, the embarrassment apparently gone or set aside. "What?"
"The guy who threw the brick. The first one went through the back window of your truck."
The muscle in Luke's jaw tensed again, and he said, "I'll see if I can get Gypsy to fix it."
Lane sat down, and Lorelai sat beside her, a package of Oreos crinkling in her hand. Lane dunked an Oreo in her tea and tried not to think.
After two cookies, Luke was finished with the dishes. He looked like he didn't know what to do with himself; he kept flexing his hands like maybe he wanted to hit somebody.
"Hey," Lorelai said, and he looked at her. "Come here." She held out an arm, and after a moment's hesitation he came over to take her hand. She drew him in, turned sideways on her stool and buried her head against his chest.
One more Oreo, Lane thought. There had to be some kind of sliding scale for how many cookies you deserved. Nothing short of broken limbs merited four.
"You can't fix everything," Lorelai said to Luke. He just held her tighter.
After a few minutes Lorelai sighed and pulled away to finish the rest of her coffee. "How do you feel?" she asked Lane.
"Tired," Lane said. "Just tired." She didn't mention the headache or the nausea; they weren't that bad anyway.
Lorelai pressed her lips together. "Dizzy?"
"Not for hours. Do you think I can sleep now? I feel fine, honestly."
She looked to Luke, helplessly. He grimaced and made Lane come stand in front of him so he could check her pupils. "You'll probably be okay," he said, but even he sounded uncertain. "Do you think you could drive back to town on your own?"
Lane gave this a moment's consideration. It wouldn't do to survive nuclear war and then die in a fiery car accident.
"I think so," she said. "You're not coming back to town?"
Luke glanced briefly at Lorelai; it was like his version of a Freudian slip. He stared into his tea mug as he said, "I think I'd better stay here tonight. That guy might come back and it wouldn't be safe if they were on their own." He looked up at her, though, totally prepared to go with her if she needed it. "You really think you can get home okay? I can drive you home and come back."
Lane hesitated, then shook her head. "No, that's a waste of diesel. I'll be fine." She drained the last of her tea.
Luke squinted at her. "Walk a straight line," he said.
"What?"
"You know, like if you got pulled over for drinking."
"I doubt I'm in danger of a DUI."
"Just do it."
Lane sighed, and did as he asked, walking across the kitchen with one foot exactly in front of the other. He grudgingly admitted that she couldn't have been straighter if she were walking on a tightrope.
"I guess I'll be going then," she said. The more she thought about it, the more the idea of her bed sounded like heaven.
Lorelai smoothed Lane's hair back from her face, and tilted her face closer to the candlelight to get one last look at Lane's forehead. "It looks like it'll heal okay," she said. Lane looked at her, frozen for a moment, then pulled away before Lorelai could hug her. It seemed obscene.
"Keys?" she asked. She had no idea what had happened to them after the brick incident.
"Right," Lorelai said, and went to get them from her office.
Lane glanced at Luke. "It's not the end of the world," she said, briefly touching her bandage.
Luke scowled. "You don't know that," he said, and it took her a moment to realize he didn't mean her head.
She sighed, and hesitated only briefly before squeezing his hand. Lorelai came back in with the keys, and they bundled her out the door with instructions to head straight home and send word via carrier pigeon when she got there safe. Well, the last part was all Lorelai.
Nothing was wrong with the truck but a broken back window; it started right up. It rumbled thunderously in the still night. She put it in gear and turned around in the driveway before she put on the truck's headlights.
She glanced in the rearview mirror, and in the moonlight, she could see Luke and Lorelai on the porch, her head on his shoulder and his arms clutched around her waist.
The drive back to town was short. She parked the truck in Luke's usual space behind the restaurant, and started off across the square toward her apartment.
There was a dim square of candlelight visible in their window. Zach and Brian had done nothing but get on her nerves lately; Brian kept trying to debate politics while Zach wondered about the fates of his favorite bands, Twinkies, and Dave Rogowski. It wasn't late enough to expect that they might be asleep; on the other hand, there was always the possibility that in the absence of Nintendo they'd just killed one another.
Lane, fumbling with her keys in the dark, dropped them jangling on the ground. She sighed and made a grab for the key that was easiest to reach, angled upward from the sidewalk. Her fingers closed around it and she stopped, the shape and feel of that particular key a strong sense memory in her hands. It was an older key, sort of outdated, but that was okay. There was a deadbolt to accompany it. It was the key to her mother's house.
She turned to look at it, across the square. The Kim's Antiques sign had been removed some days ago, though Lane could only guess as to why. It did seem like a good idea, with the threat of looters everywhere. They hadn't seen any in Stars Hollow yet, but Mama always erred on the side of caution.
She let herself in by the front door. Once inside, she took off her shoes and relocked the door, then crept up the stairs silently.
Mama was asleep, just like Lane had expected. She kept an early bedtime, believing early risers to be virtuous and closer to God. Lane's grip on things unseen had never been very strong, but she had no doubt that Mama wouldn't have let a little thing like nuclear war come between her and the Almighty.
Lane paused a moment in the doorway, watching her mother sleep. She looked troubled and uneasy. Lane crept closer, almost in a daze, until she was standing at the side of the bed.
Moonlight picked out the lines on her mother's face, illuminated the deep frown that hadn't smoothed out even in sleep.
Lane's head swam, and her headache suddenly felt ten times worse. She choked trying to get a breath, and crawled in beside her mother.
Mama stirred when she lay down beside her, but she didn't really wake up until Lane snuggled in close. Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at Lane uncertainly. Her hand came up to smooth back Lane's hair, and the gesture was a hundred times more comforting from her than it had been from Lorelai. She still felt sick, and confused, but it would pass. Laying here beside her mother, she was sure it would pass.
Mama's fingers danced over the bandage on Lane's forehead, but though her expression turned very serious, she didn't say anything. Evidently, she understood.
Lane buried her head in her mother's shoulder, and finally, after what seemed like days of waiting, went to sleep.
--
end