AN: This is my first foray into Gilmore Girls fanfiction. While I have very mixed feelings about the revival, this is one scene that popped into my head immediately after watching it last fall and has refused to go away. I figured I better at least try to get it down on paper. It takes place a few months after the last revival episode. I own nothing you recognize here, of course.

Rory is seated at the counter in the lull of the afternoon, belly burgeoning so it is just becoming obvious through the loosest of shirts. She's nursing a hot chocolate to go with her slice of pie as she scribbles notes in the margins of her manuscript and crosses out sentences and replaces them with new ones.

She's alternating thoughtfully between looking at the words on the pages and watching her stepfather's movements around the diner when her words finally break loose.

"Do you think I'm ever going to have a luke?"

Luke eyes her strangely.

"You have a Luke," he says, jabbing his finger into his chest, "I'm Luke."

Rory laughs ruefully.

"Not you Luke, my own luke. Like mom has you."

Luke's brows furrow still further.

"Well, it'd be kinda weird if his name was Luke."

Rory laughs again. "Not someone named Luke. A luke."

Luke's brow remains fixed in the furrowed position, confused as he is at this line of conversation. He shouldn't be surprised, really. He's been perpetually confused basically since he started trying to follow conversations with the Gilmore girls decades earlier.

"What exactly is a luke, then?"

Rory looks at him tenderly. "You really don't know, do you?"

His lifted eyebrows and bewildered expression are an unasked question, so she continues.

"By the time she was my age, Mom already had you, whether she knew it or not. It was already you. And I want that. Someone who will just... Always be there. Who will want me for me and wait for me and love my baby and want to protect us and take care of us and put up with all our crazy." Staring at the man who has been more a father to her than her own ever was, she wills him to understand just how much he has shaped what she is looking for in the man she will spend her life with. "Someone who will be my friend and my partner, who will forgive me when I make stupid mistakes and not let me go, who believes in my dreams more than I do, and loves me more than I know how to love myself. Someone to count on. Someone to love me like you love Mom. I want that. A luke."

It's a long moment of Luke staring down at the counter before his brain can process what she's said and consider responding. Even when he does speak, he does so without looking up from the countertop.

Finally, in a voice that he's proud only cracks a little bit, he manages, "Really? That's... what you want?" Unspoken is the alternate question, That's how you think of me?

Rory's voice forces him to meet her eyes as she smiles gently at him. "My mom never really loved anybody but you, Luke. It was always you. Every guy I've dated as an adult, it hasn't been my dad I compared them to. It's always been you. We don't need the polish and the other trimmings. In the end, we just want someone who will love us for us and who we can depend on to do life beside us. And we both know that means a luke."

Luke's ears have gone deep red.

Unbidden, the face of a sullen teenager who had become a sharp-eyed man flits through his mind. He's pretty sure Jess is not quite so "over that" as he would have people believe, and though there is plenty of rough ground in their history, he is ridiculously proud of the man that he has become. He allows himself to wonder, just briefly, if maybe Rory already has a luke and just doesn't realize it yet.

Eventually, all he says is, "You'll have a luke."

"How do you know? It's not just that easy."

Luke laughs ruefully. He, of all people, knows that it's not just that easy. Laying a large hand on her shoulder, he glances down at the manuscript laying forgotten in front of her, much of it bearing testament to just how complicated it can be, but also how much it is worth it.

He smiles, remembering the way he'd been mesmerized by his own Gilmore girl when she walked into his heart, the ways her brilliance had lit up his dull world in ways he had never known he needed. He remembers the unending dark days when she had been absent from his life, the myriad of mistakes they've both made, and he squeezes the shoulder of this girl who is finally, finally, his stepdaughter, who will soon give birth to the first child he will call his grandchild.

"I know because Lukes need Gilmore girls."

AN: There are a few points here where Rory's voice doesn't sound quite right to me, but I've reached the point where I think this is as good as it's going to get. I'd love to hear your feedback! I may possibly turn this into a small collection of Luke-centric oneshots if I ever get the other couple that are in my brain finished and ready to post. :)