In the end, Rory's baby makes his entrance almost two weeks late, in the middle of a sweltering, early summer night.

("A true Gilmore!" Lorelai crows as they jam themselves into the Jeep, Rory's contractions getting too close and too painful to bear.)

Luke's actually in and out of the delivery room for the thing - which makes his stomach flip-flop, with the needles and the moaning and the fluids - doing his best to help by supporting Rory as she hobbles around the hospital floor to keep her labour moving, and getting ice chips from the lounge, and running home when she goes through her third pair of yoga pants in an hour and oh my god childbirth is disgusting.

Well, it's not just that. It's kinda beautiful and incredible and awe-inspiring, and his already-healthy respect for Rory - and hell, women in general - goes up by one trillion per cent when he sees the pain she's soldiering through. But Luke's still a little relieved when, just as things start to get really rough, she turns to him and roars to get the hell out; can't you see I'm pushing a baby out of my vagina?!

He makes a quick exit to the waiting room, and passes the time alternately shredding the hospital's magazines into tiny, nervous strips, pacing the hallway, and sending out text updates to Logan (itching to jump on a plane; Rory didn't want him at the birth but acquiesced to a visit as soon as the baby is born) and Emily (delayed by a sudden storm in Nantucket and currently screeching at her driver somewhere on the I84) and Sookie and Lane (flailing at home, waiting for the word to come visit) and April (who keeps sending him more disgusting birth facts) and Jess (who's been helping Rory with the book and popping in to visit lately more than the last five years combined).

Lorelai comes to get him once the baby's been weighed and measured and cleaned up, and Rory is sitting back in her hospital bed, exhausted but glowing, fumbling through her first attempts at nursing and swearing that if she hears one comment about her propriety after 17 hours of labour she's going to punch them in the throat.

("I read the books!" Luke protests, hands up in the air. "Big fan of Ina May!")

Eventually he makes another run to the house to get a few things that didn't make it into hospital bag, plus two giant cups of fresh coffee and a jumbo package of Red Vines. By the time he gets back Rory's out cold, Lorelai standing next to her bed with the baby swaddled in her embrace.

"Hi," she whispers, looking up at him with still-teary eyes.

"Hi yourself. How is she?"

"Good. Sore. Exhausted. Amazing. Did I mention sore?"

Luke drops the bag on a chair, the coffee on the bedside table, and walks up to join her.

"And how's the little guy?"

He pulls the blanket back with careful fingers, watching the tiny, wrinkly face relaxed in sleep, a knit cap pulled tight over his head of jet-black hair.

"Sleepy and adorable. He's barely made a peep since you left." Lorelai turns to him, carefully pressing the bundle into his arms. "Here - you haven't had a chance to hold him yet."

All of Luke's protests die away as soon as she hands him over. It's wonderful, and painful, holding the baby. Feeling his love for Rory multiply - by a million; by infinity - as he gently bounces him in his arms. Wondering if he'll inherit the same blue eyes, if he'll want to play baseball, if he'll teach him how to make pancakes. But then the what ifs creep in, as much as he tries to keep them at bay; what it would've been like to hold April the same way, or his and Lorelai's kid, or -

Those memories are like a punch to the gut. He's happy, truly - he'd meant what he said to Lorelai, a thousand times over - but the endless disparate threads of what could have been still haunt him a little, still make a distant ache of longing take root and blossom in his joy.

Ah. Well.

He nods down at the papers spread across Rory's feet, more as a distraction than anything else.

"What's all this stuff?"

"Oh, just some paperwork for the baby." Lorelai starts grabbing at the pile and haphazardly shuffling it away. "She passed out from exhaustion after the 25th form."

It's weird, the way she's shovelling the jumble of paper into her arms as fast as she can, but not much beyond the usual Lorelai craziness, so Luke doesn't think much of it until one sheaf of paper starts to slip out from the rest. A word - a name - jumps out at him and he reads it again, and again, and suddenly it's like a tidal swell of feeling everything at once (the glare of the hospital lights, the baby's soft in-out breathing, how hot his face's gotten in the last thirty seconds) and then receding, only leaving that name in its wake.

"Why -" he starts, faintly, then stops because his throat's apparently turned into freaking sandpaper, and he has to gulp hard before he can keep going. "Why does it say William?"

Lorelai sighs, dropping the paperwork onto the side table. "It was supposed to be a surprise."

"It says William." He gazes down at the sleeping, squishy bundle in his arms, still in blank shock. "His name's William."

"Well, Rory wanted to use a family name, and she couldn't deal with the thought of her son being called Dicky." Lorelai's expression turns soft, the joke fading away. "She loves you, Luke. You're as much her father as Christopher ever was. She knew how much it would mean to you."

"My dad," he whispers, hoarse. His heart thuds in his ears and godammit his eyes are burning but he is not going to cry. "She named him after my dad?"

"William Richard Gilmore."

Hearing her say it makes it real, and the smile that slips out turns into a laugh-sob, and then he is crying, in a way he hasn't since Rory's graduation or when April got accepted to MIT or when Jess's book cracked the top-10 list in some weird indie magazine. (Okay, so maybe he cries more than he thinks. Real men admit their feelings, dammit.)

Lorelai's tearing up again at his tears, which makes him cry more, and just before he's convinced they're going to be stuck in some weepy feedback loop for all of eternity she leans forward and touches the baby again.

"We're your grandma and grandpa, little guy. And we're always gonna be here for you, okay? Us and your mom and your dad and your great-grandmother and your step-aunt and step-cousin-whatever, and the whole town."

Her gaze lifts from the baby and shifts to him. It's a funny look, one he can't decipher.

"You know," she starts, treading carefully. "I'm not going to go full-on Mommy's Little Girl crazy grandma or anything, but we'll be in his life. We'll get to help raise him, and I'll sneak him Pop-Tarts while he's still way too young and you can teach him how to use a hammer and complain about stuff, and he won't be our baby obviously but he is a baby. And I know you're happy and you're satisfied - I get that now, I do - and that the baby thing didn't work out for us, but he's like the icing on the cake. The, uh, metaphorical baby cake."

Luke grins at her, blinking back more tears.

"Yeah," he musters, because anything more and he'll be crying again. "He is."

Lorelai smiles and steps closer to him, one arm threading around his middle, resting her head against his shoulder. They both watch their grandson start to squirm, impossibly tiny fingers opening and curling back up. Then two dark eyes blink open, and if Luke thought his heart couldn't get any fuller before he swears now it's about to burst out of his chest.

And he thinks about how damn grateful he is that 21 years ago, a crazy lady desperate for a caffeine fix wandered into his diner.

"Hi William," he whispers. "Welcome to the family."