Note: This is from post 4x22, the days after Luke and Lorelai's first kiss. I wrote this before I watched forward, so this is all purely my interpretation.

Also, my timeline isn't canon. In Season 5, they say Luke and Lorelai have only known each other for 8 years but to me, that doesn't make sense bc Luke has lived in Stars Hollow his whole life and if Lorelai moved there when Rory was born, it seems like they would have met before 8 years previous.

Dedicated to Goldnox, because Gilmore Girls and L&L make her very happy, and I do like to keep my favorite writing buddy happy.

Lorelai POV

I toy with my coffee cup, staring past a table of out-of-towners and the diner's counter with a faint headache gathering in the center of my forehead. I remember to blink and my brows unbunch, dissolving the headache.

Don't frown so much, Lorelai. It gives you wrinkles.

"Thanks, Emily," I mumble to my flashback version of my mother's voice, attempting to wash it away with a sip of coffee that turns out to be stone cold. What? My coffee is never cold at Luke's. It rarely stays in the cup long enough to get cold anywhere, but it hasn't been cold at Luke's since he fired that stoner kid for doing Nirvana impressions on the table tops. Plus, who does Luke think he is, yelling at me for having a boyfriend I don't have and then kissing me in front of my Inn and a pillow-clad Kirk, and then not keeping up with my coffee refills? Am I that bad of a kisser?

I glare down at my cup, realizing it's full to the brim. No wonder Luke hasn't refilled it.

He glances over to my table and my head whips up, but even with reflexes on full-curiosity speed, I'm not fast enough to catch anything in his expression other than the sort of absent vigilance that's second nature for monitoring customer's drinks in food service.

How can he look at me all cool and blasé, and also kiss the way he did last night? It wasn't like, "Oh, okay this is a French kiss, so I guess I'll put my tongue and a little effort into it." It was an electric-storm worthy shock, like fate stuck one of its more personal parts into a light socket. How could all that electricity have been hidden inside a man I've seen three times a day for my entire adult life?

His hands on my waist last night felt like a revelation, like the first time I discovered my clit. But those same hands have fixed my window and taught me how to fish and bought me the Dragonfly Inn—or at least rooms four through seven and the bathroom upgrade. They're not new hands.

My headache pinches in the center of my forehead, but I can't spare enough attention to smooth my eyebrows again. Has he been working out? He's had that green plaid shirt for at least three years, because I remember sewing the top button back on while Rory was getting ready for her junior formal. It seems like it fits the same, but his shoulders look wider beneath it. His eyes a little brighter blue.

He catches me staring again and comes over, pulling his order pad out of his pocket. His sleeves are rolled back, veins branching across the muscles of his forearms. Has he ever rolled up his sleeves before? Then again, it is kind of hot in here. How did I not notice how hot it's getting in here?

"You get hungry after all?"

"No! Why, do I look hungry?" Was I looking hungrily at him? I glance around, gauging responses. Kirk's eating slowly at the next table, staring at my left earlobe. I move on, checking for any out of the ordinary expressions.

"No, you look mad."

"Mad? I'm not mad." My headache eases as I pull a wide smile on. It's bad enough I was apparently a terrible kisser. I don't want him to think I'm angry with him, too.

Then again, he was going in for a third round when Kirk and his big pillow and bigger lungs came barreling down the stairs, so even if I'm awful, he's forgiving. My smile melts a little and his eyes are drawn downward, then flick back up to mine.

His expression is totally bland beneath the baseball cap I gave him, but he doesn't quite look the same.

My headache returns as I stare, trying to make the two versions of him line up. The new, Kissing Luke who has a little spark in his eye and a gentleness around his mouth when he looks at me. Who wears sweaters and takes off his hat, and doesn't snore at all in the room next to mine at the Inn last night.

I love a man who doesn't snore.

No tossing and turning either, so at least he doesn't have sleep issues that will require me to sleep in a fancy guest room with a Jetson's TV console. Luke doesn't even have a guest room. I smile again.

He puts down his pad. "Okay, I give."

"Give me what? A free donut?" I flutter my eyelashes. "Why, Butch Danes, you charmer."

"You said you didn't want my donuts because they don't have sprinkles today. No, I give because you're staring at me like I've got something in my teeth but I've been upstairs to floss twice already and haven't eaten anything since. You're glaring one minute and smiling the next." He sighs. "So just give and tell me what's going on, or get out of here so I can get some work done instead of flossing my damn teeth again."

"Fine, be like that. But you owe me extra popcorn at the movies tonight." I unhook my purse off the chair and slide to my feet.

"That stuff is junk," he grouses. "You might as well eat the skimmings out of the fryer. That'd be closer to food."

I purse my lips to blow him an air kiss. "Gotta keep up my girlish figure."

Something gentles in his expression.

"There!" I blurt, missing my shoulder with my purse and nearly hooking it onto my ear instead.

He looks behind him, then back to me, frowning like I'm crazy, which is so normal it's practically Resting Luke Face. But for a flash, there he was. The different man I saw last night at the Inn. A zing rattles through my throat and my tongue goes dry, my nipples hardening under my shirt. I glance at the table but there's no water, only coffee, and I've got to get out of here because the two Lukes keep swapping in and out of focus. New Sexy Kissing Luke and Old Grouchy Luke.

I back up a step, still watching for that spark to come back into his eyes, and the chair behind me goes over. I stumble, the chair leg digging into the hollow at the back of my knee, and I pull a quick skip-hop to keep from falling.

"Lorelai!" Luke leaps forward to catch me and his order pen writes a jagged line on my sleeve as his hand closes over my arm.

Warm. Big. Were his hands always this big? I straighten to show him I've got this and my shoulder rams the glass door.

I'm hurting in at least half a dozen places now but all I can feel is his hand, my skin pulsing underneath it like I've developed a second heartbeat in my forearm. I can't have double vision and two hearts. I'm self-employed; I don't even have health insurance. God even knows how they'd hook up the EKG for a double heart test but it would cost the earth, and my wallet barely contains the state of Delaware right now.

Luke lets me go and rights the chair, frowning. "You want to take a rain check on that movie tonight? You probably shouldn't be eating all that greasy junk if you're not feeling well."

"Fine, feeling fine!" I grab a handful of Venetian blinds, then swap them for the doorknob and let myself out, walking away strong and confident.

I pause to take a deep breath of air. I've got this. I can date Luke. I can totally date Luke. Who would be easier to date than Luke? I already spend more time with him than I spend with my own daughter.

"Lorelai!" Miss Patty calls.

I swivel toward her voice.

"Yes?" That's better. Suave, in-charge. Business owning independent single woman me. I've got this.

"You're standing right in the street!" She hurries out, impressive bosom bouncing, and takes my arm. I glance around. And okay, yeah, this is the street, but there's not a car in sight.

"I was crossing. Well, taking a short hiatus from crossing. I was going to get around to the rest of the crossing really soon, though, I promise."

"Uh-huh." She pats my arm. "Sweetie, you know what you need?"

"Patty, you know I don't like those special brownies your nephew sends. They're a little too…uh, vegetably for me." And musty. Like her nephew swept closet dust into the brownies along with the marijuana.

"Sex," she says, smoothing my sleeve back into place.

"Come again?"

She nods approvingly. "The more orgasms, the better. Luke's still young and he may not look it, but he's got some stamina. He carried in my new washer and dryer last week. I say, let him fuck all that haze out of your head." She smiles. "If you do it right, you'll be able to concentrate long enough cross the street again, but you won't be able to walk that far."

With that little gem, she turns and strolls away.

I take stock of my body. All my skin is feverishly flushed. I'm already on my second pair of panties for the day, and they're damp straight through, like I was ogling Luke in his shower not his diner. I can't keep a whole sentence in my head that doesn't include the word "strip" and I haven't slept in three days.

First, because I was getting everything together for the trial run at the Inn, and then because I was trying to hear through the wall if Luke was sleeping, and also because I could hear Rory's stuffy little nose in the bed next to mine. I couldn't stand that she was crying not because Dean screwed up, but because of her own bad choices. Maybe for the first time ever.

I don't want to think about Rory and Dean. I don't want to think about how much concentration it would take to safely navigate back to my house to get a third dry pair of panties. I do want to think more about the way Luke kissed me last night.

I turn and march back toward the diner. When has Miss Patty ever steered me wrong? Except for the naked crowd surfing. But really, anybody could have made that mistake.

The diner door flings open and I try not to look proud that I worked the doorknob correctly on my first try. Miss Patty was clearly right about what I needed to clear the fog out of what passed for my brain today.

We are adults. If we can date, we can fuck. And if he put all this fog into my brain, it's his responsibility to fuck it all away again.

Luke's brows go up at my dramatic re-entrance. His eyes jump back to the table where I'd been sitting, probably to see if I left my purse or a folder of Inn paperwork.

"I need to talk to you," I say from across the room, because everyone's gone silent anyway.

"Okay," Luke says. "Just let me finish up this order and—"

I slam the door and sweep across the crowded diner, not hitting a single table, chair, or gaping local. A fierce smile takes my face. This plan is already clearing my head.

"Or now, I guess," he mutters. "Be right back," he says to the barber from Plum Street. What's his name? Stan? Hilary? Who cares. He could have the face of a large-mouth bass and the voice of a parakeet right now, and I wouldn't notice.

I fly up the stairs, all my coordination restored by the promise of sex. If Luke sexes like he kisses, he better hope those floor beams are sturdy. Otherwise, his customers are going to need umbrellas to keep the drywall dust out of their pancakes. Again.

I pause inside his apartment. Luke's apartment. Oh sweet God, I'm going to have sex with Luke.

The doorknob acts as moral—and physical—support as my knees forget a lifetime of training in how to be knees.

"Whoa, whoa." Luke catches me around the waist just as the hinges start to creak a protest. "Are you okay?" He shifts me to one arm and closes the door with the other. "You getting sick or something?"

The heat from his hands is too much. I break out in a sweat, my second heartbeat moving from my forearm to somewhere much lower. Spinning away from him, I strip off my cashmere cardigan, the one I chose because the edges hang just right to highlight my breasts and I was hoping he'd look today. Not that he did. But looking at him made my nipples so sensitive I could feel exactly where the cardigan was laying.

I send the cardigan flying across his perfectly swept floor.

"You have to have sex with me. Miss Patty said it's the only way to get rid of this…" I wave my hands, trying to express a tingles-hot-flashes-dry-mouth-forget-how-to-walk-two-pairs-of-panties kind of feeling.

Luke stares at me for one heartbeat, two, ten. My second heart is starting to scream for the defibrillator by the time he shrugs and starts unbuttoning his belt.

At the clink of it, my libido revs to hurricane force. As does my panic.

"What—what are you doing?!" I stare at the leather as he pulls it out of the buckle.

I asked for it, I thought it, but I never in a thousand years expected Luke to just do it. Like I'd requested a side of eggs instead of hot, sweaty, frenzied— I try to swallow but my throat is temporarily out of order.

"Obviously this is the only way to get you to stop running into stuff," he says, patient and a little irritated, but willing. "I was going to take it slow, but if Patty already knows more about our sex life than I do, then I'm putting my foot down."

He pulls off his hat, tossing it to land on the chair and leaving his head bare, which it never is except for special occasions.

His hat. His hat is off and his belt is unbuckled. Some part of me is waiting for my mother to come slamming into the room, shrieking at my nerve for even thinking this is acceptable behavior. Anything this good has to be firmly banned by the Emily Gilmore Life Committee.

"Why'd you ask?" he says. "What'd you think I was doing?"

"Um, changing your hat?" My voice sounds like I ordered it all the way from Bangladesh and the connection was bad. "I mean, for all I know you have a whole closet full of identical blue hats. That would explain why it never gets dirty or oily, even though you wear it every day and you work in a diner and—"

"I wash it," he says. "It's not dirty because I wash it. You gave me that hat, remember?"

Wash. Shower. Water droplets. Body. Luke's body. Oh god, I'm about to see Luke's body. Will it be Diner Luke's body or New Luke's body, with the penis equivalent of that spark in his eye, just for me?

My vision goes black around the edges, all the blood in my brain clearly elsewhere engaged. "I umngh oh god," I say loudly and go for the door.

"Lorelai." It's New Luke's voice. I can tell without even turning around because it's gentle and hard all at once, with more emotion than has ever crept past of his plaid-locked reserve before.

What's left of my cognitive functions register the sound of his belt being buckled again, then the heat of his body right behind mine, his fingertips just skimming my waistline like he wants to be right there if I fall.

"It was a joke. The sex thing. Well, not a joke, but you're basically hysterical and I doubt I'd live through it if I slapped you so…the belt thing. Thought that would snap you out of it." He waits, and after a moment I don't feel his fingertips at my waist anymore. The loss wrings my heart like one of those old fashioned laundry squeezers.

Who am I, that Luke's fingertips moving an inch away can all but cripple me? Have these feelings been inside me this entire time, waiting to be woken with a kiss like a Disney princess? And if so, why don't squirrels ever clean my damn house?

If I kiss him again, will I wake up even more, or will it all go back to sleep, like a cartoon bird hit twice on the head with the same anvil?

I try to make sense of my new reality using every cartoon-based philosophy I can muster, but my brain function is limited right now. Mostly by how clearly I can feel his body right behind mine. I can't even remember if he got hard last night, I was that distracted by his mouth. I lick my paper-dry lips.

"If you want to call this off, we can." His voice is barely a sound, the whisper so private I know if I reached for the doorknob right now, he'd serve me coffee until we both went gray and he'd never mention it again. But I'd know. I'd have the agony of his voice wrapped up in my heart like a needle, for decades.

I whirl just at the same moment that he reaches for me. Our lips crash together, a wordless understanding hitting me in the same instant.

He wasn't waiting for my answer.

For once, patient, grouchy-sweet Luke wasn't going to let me make the call. He wanted me too much to wait.

This kiss is desperate, his body grinding into mine with the door at my back and the rim of the window digging into my ribs. I rip at his shirt. I sewed the buttons on once, and I can do it again. That is, if we ever find them all, because they skitter across the floor like hail. And why the hell do men wear a shirt under a shirt? I shove the tee shirt up, my palms claiming his chest like his tongue is claiming mine, rubbing rough into every intimate place I don't think I've ever shared in a simple kiss.

He's hard now. Oh god is he hard now, like he hasn't had a woman in years. I hook my fingers in his belt loops and yank him to me, ripping one loop off his jeans. He growls and his fingers tangle in my hair. My scalp comes alight with tingles that sparkle over my entire body, but I'm suffocated in clothes and everything I want is covered in at least thirteen miles of denim.

I try to hop on one foot to toe off my boots and end up biting his lip. He grunts in protest, and I taste blood but he keeps kissing me.

"Luke, clothes. Not hair. Focus." I pull his hand from my hair and plant it directly over the fly of my jeans. I love the way he does that: cradles my head so gentle and firm that I feel like the center of the entire earth. I want him to do it for months, maybe a full season or two. Right after he fucks me half-deaf and totally blind. I rip his belt open, the libido-spiking clink of it lost in the thundering of my heart.

Do I have three hearts now? Four?

Whatever it is, it's not enough. Not for this.

I wrestle his jeans down and as soon as I get him in my hand, his hips buck, driving his erection into my fist.

I grin, half-delirious with how ungentlemanly and honest he is about it. Just like, Yes. Touch. Now.

I give him an approving squeeze, my inner muscles clenching in heartfelt envy. Then his hands are inside my jeans, skimming under my panties and over my ass. No fucking way were his hands this big and warm before yesterday.

I have to let go of his cock when he kneels to pull my too-tight jeans off. He gets them off one ankle and goes after the next but I can't wait that long. As soon as the cool air hits overheated skin, I pulse even warmer, wetter. The fog isn't in my brain now, it's covering the entire state of Connecticut.

I grab the shoulders of Luke's ruined plaid shirt and jerk him back to standing. Without waiting for him to get his balance, I leap, wrapping my legs around him and locking him into exactly where I want him to be.

"I, oh—" he says, then the head of his cock slips into me. I think by accident, I'm that wet. And just like that, he loses it entirely.

His hips slam against me, the door slams against its jam, and I'm stretched full of him. That electric zing rockets all the way up from the center of me and paralyzes my throat, even as my chest expands impossibly huge. My eyelashes flutter with the pressure of all the emotion inside me and I clutch his shoulders.

He hammers into me, brain-meltingly fast and hard. Just like everything else right now it's entirely too much and perfect and inconceivably un-labelable all at once. My head falls to his neck, with his pulse crashing against my cheek and sweat damp between us. Little gasps of air escape his mouth and I wouldn't be sure how to interpret them except the exact same sound is throbbing inside my chest right now.

I clench around his cock, too wet to hold him in and spasming with too much pleasure to let him go. He powers back into the fierce grip of me, finding a place that turns a dark key inside of me and I don't even have to reach down to my own clit before I'm coming.

"Lore—" He doesn't have enough breath for my whole name, and I love even half of it more than I ever have.

A bone-melting thrust cracks something inside the door and his dick swells even bigger inside of me, catching the last wave of my orgasm. He ducks his head, seeking my mouth, but as soon as our lips touch, his breath breaks. He grits his teeth to hold in a sound so visceral I would know exactly what it meant even if I couldn't feel the hot burst of his release inside of me.

One more thrust rocks him against me, so hard it feels almost involuntary, and I clench my legs to hold him close, not wanting to let go of that electric-fate feeling. Worried it will disappear along with my orgasm and I'll never feel like this again. Never feel as true as this again.

My toes curl inside the wad of my dangling jeans, rubbing against his bare ass where his own jeans have started to fall down.

"I'm so—rry." He's gasping so hard the apology comes out as three words, and I freeze so fast I'm surprised his cock doesn't get frostbite as it slides out of me.

I want to say "What?" I want to say "Fuck you." I want to say "I knew it couldn't last." But it's as much as I can do to sort out the frappe'ed muscles in my legs to try and stand.

My half-shucked jeans wind around my ankles and trip me up but I don't fall because Luke hasn't let me go. His thumbs rub apologetically over the line on my back imprinted by the window in his door.

"I didn't mean—to do that without a condom." He's catching his breath faster than I'd have expected after all that. Then again, Patty did say he moved the washer and the dryer.

"IUD." I say it to reassure the worry in his voice before it even clicks that he's not actually apologizing for having sex with me.

My eyes flicker back to his, the headache threatening as I search him for proof that he's not sorry. His face softens, his eyes going deep and warm. "Hey," he whispers. "You okay?"

I think I nod. I might not move at all. I might blurt out my entire life story. It feels like he could reach into my chest right now and steal all of me. Instead, he kisses my lips. Soft and sweet, with no pressure at all.

"Let me get you a towel," he says, pulls up his jeans, and tucks his cock back into them.

I blink.

I just stand there while he buttons his jeans and goes to a cupboard for a clean hand towel. I stand there while he runs the water until it gets warm so he can dampen the towel for me. I stand there with my bra off one boob and my jeans off one leg, even though I'm starting to drip, because he looks exactly the same zipping his fly as he does pouring my coffee, and that means this man has been there my entire adult life. Close enough to kiss, even though I never did.

And I don't know if that realization makes me feel horribly stupid and wrenchingly alone, or if it makes me feel safer than I ever knew I was.

Author's Note: I don't know if there's anybody still reading Gilmore Girls fanfic, but if there is, I'd love for you to leave a review, or even just click favorite to let me know I should keep posting instead of just sending to my beloved beta. There are a few more chapters of this to come, with lots more romance. Things get pretty intense, so make good use of that follow button!