Lorelai missed having Rory around, she really did. She loved her kid more than anything and liked nothing better than spending time with her.

The situation, however, was not entirely without its plus sides. For one thing, she could now blast the radio while making her breakfast without having to worry about waking her sleep monster teenager of a daughter. Life was full of trade-offs.

Speaking of trade-offs… The Pop-Tarts were taking too long to toast. Pop-Tarts equal good, waiting for them to toast equals bad. Trade-offs. Lorelai stared at the toaster, willing the hot red thingies inside of it to burn hotter. Did a watched toaster ever toast? Was it like the boiling water thing? She looked away from the toaster, just in case. Nothing to see here, nope, don't mind me...

As part of her calculated insouciance she started bopping her hips in time to the music coming from the radio, stilled momentarily when she realized the music in question was a Beyonce song, then started up again when she realized no one was there to see her embarrass herself. Trade-offs.

"Got me lookin' so crazy right now --" she mumbled along with the music. This song wasn't all bad, come to think of it. Besides, it's not like it was Destiny's Child, it was solo Beyonce, Jay-Z's girlfriend Beyonce, and plus the girl could do that wacky thing with her butt, kind of like this -- no, more like this -- not bad, Gilmore --

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Iwasn'tdancingtoBeyonce!" she yelled, spinning around.

Luke raised his eyebrows at her; they shot up to just beneath the lip of his baseball cap. "What?"

"Uh...nothing," Lorelai said suavely, and shut off the radio. "Hey, Pop-Tarts are done!" Apparently the secret was to stop watching the toaster. She filed the information away for future use. "What are you doing here?"

"You asked me to come by and fix the sink in the bathroom, remember?" He held up his toolbox.

"Bathroom. Right. Yes. Leak in the bathroom. Large leak, very dangerous." She paused. Nope, he didn't get the Star Wars reference. So sad. "So, uh, why don't you go do that, and I'm going to eat my Pop-Tarts and not dance to any of the music coming out of the radio."

"Whatever," Luke said with a long-suffering shake of his head, and headed for the stairs.

Lorelai took the Pop-Tarts out of the toaster, laying them down quickly on a paper towel because the suckers were hot. She blew on them impatiently and finally picked one up and nibbled at the edge to make sure the proper temperature had been achieved.

Yep. Brown sugar cinnamon bliss.

She took a larger bite out of the toasted treat, then wrapped the paper towel around both Tarts and made her way up to the bathroom. Luke was already on his back under the sink, with some sort of tool in his hand.

Heh. Tool.

"So what's the diagnosis?" she asked, perching on the edge of the bathtub and taking another bite of deliciously warm pastry.

"As far as I can tell, it's just a loose screw," he said.

"Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one around here with a screw loose," she said. "Ba dump bump."

"No comment. If I'm right, all I have to do is turn this and --"

Lorelai heard a loud clunk, and a gush of water burst forth from the pipe, spraying haphazardly all over the bathroom with maniacal verve. She leaped off the edge of the tub and ran out of the room as Luke struggled to reattach the pipe. Somehow he managed to hold it in place with one hand and scrabble in his toolbox for a screw to replace the one that had apparently snapped out of its moorings. Lorelai jumped up and down, more excited than she'd been in days. "Look at my man, wrasslin' that pipe!" she crowed.

He ignored her, intent on his task, and finally the screws were tightened and the pipe was no longer re-enacting the Jamestown Flood and he pulled himself out from underneath the sink and "Oh wow, you're drenched," she observed. "And so are my Pop-Tarts," she realized. Tragedy! She distastefully tossed the soggy treats into the wastebasket.

Luke looked down at himself, at his flannel shirt now plastered to his skin, and sniffed. "I hope I'm getting hazard pay for this."

"Absolutely," Lorelai said. She started walking toward her bedroom, motioned for him to follow. "All that and more, I promise. Come on, I'm sure I have a t-shirt you can wear or something."

"You have a t-shirt that's going to fit me?" Luke asked skeptically, shaking excess water off his sleeves.

"You wouldn't believe how many oversized t-shirts I own," Lorelai said. "I buy them at concerts and use them to sleep in. I'm like the cat lady of concert shirts." She rooted through her "things I sleep in sometimes" drawer and pulled out a large black Pantera t-shirt. "Voila!"

"Pantera?"

"Do not mock the Pantera," she said sternly. "You haven't earned it. I've seen your music collection, such as it is."

"Yeah, let's not re-live that discussion," he said. She threw the t-shirt on the bed as Luke peeled off his flannel shirt, and then the soaked t-shirt he wore underneath, and then he was bare-chested and wet and just wearing his jeans and oh my. She swallowed, tried to bring moisture back to her mouth. Ahem.

"Hey, Luke?" she asked, overly casual. She backed up a couple of steps and leaned against the edge of the bureau.

"What?" he asked back, not looking at her, preoccupied with using the one dry corner of his t-shirt to wipe down the front of his chest. His pecs glistened with moisture in a way that was not at all like an oiled-up bodybuilder but much more like Colin Firth in Pride and Prejudice.

Lorelai tossed her hair back like a vixen and narrowed her eyes in what she hoped was a seductive fashion. "I was just thinking, you're already half-undressed, seems like it would be a shame to waste the opportunity."

"Opportunity for what?" He took off his baseball cap and set it on the nightstand, scrubbed his fingers through his hair.

Instead of answering, she looked at him meaningfully. At least, she hoped he would realize that she was looking at him meaningfully, and not auditioning for the role of Charles Manson in a telepic based upon his life.

It took him a moment longer than she would have liked, but: "Oh," he said, and he gave her a smile that held just the faintest tinge of smugness. She was willing to let the smugness slide since he'd just wrassled her sink and all.

"Why don't you come on over here and fix my pipes," she drawled, batting her lashes coquettishly. Not so much Bette Davis as Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind, really.

"Now that was bad," he said as he walked toward her.

She slumped. "I know. Too many sex thoughts. Cutting down on wit capacity. Quickly losing ability to form complete sentences."

"Then shut up already," he growled, and kissed her.

As she kissed him back, Lorelai wondered if she'd ever stop being thankful that Luke was a good kisser. There was nothing worse than being really into a guy but suffering through his kisses and waiting for him to get to the main event because his tongue in your mouth just wasn't doing anything for you. But Luke did it right, Luke applied just the right amount of pressure with his lips and probed with his tongue without it feeling too aggressive or orthodontic in nature, and he did this thing where he nipped at the corner of her mouth and --

"Bed," he muttered against her mouth.

-- and he had such a way with words.

They stumbled in tandem toward her bed, falling down on to it ungraciously, fingers now moving purposefully in search of buttons and zippers, bodies wriggling and hips shimmying and now his hand on her breast and her palms against his shoulders and yes. He slipped one hand between her legs and pressed her clit; she gasped and arched up against him and drew the skin of his shoulder briefly between her teeth.

"You like that?" he rasped.

"You know I do." She smiled, then let her head fall back and just reveled in what he was doing to her for long moments, her breathing growing heavier, the delicious pressure building inside of her. A little more, and just a little more, and then without warning she flipped him over on to his back and straddled him quickly, grinning at the surprised but hungry look on his face. She took hold of his now impressively hard cock and centered herself over it, then slowly wriggled down until he was buried inside of her. She clenched her muscles, and Luke let out a satisfied sigh.

"You like that?" she asked.

"You know I do." He reached up to run his hands over her front, up and down her stomach, over her breasts. As she began to move above him, forward and backwards, up and down, and he matched her movements with steady thrusts up inside of her, he settled one hand on her hip and cupped her breast with the other. She covered the hand on her breast with her own, urging him to squeeze the nipple, and he complied, his roughened fingertips on her hardened peak sending electric currents right down to her clit, which was having a pretty damn good time of it already.

By unspoken agreement this wasn't soft romance novel lovemaking, this was hard, urgent, and Luke jerked his hips upward faster and faster as she bounced atop of him and their moans mingled in the otherwise quiet house. As the pace grew ever more energetic Lorelai put her hands down behind her, gripping Luke's thighs in order to brace herself as she writhed above him, and he reached up to pinch both of her nipples and she watched him do it, and she looked down at him and her gaze fell on the cryptic tattoo on his arm and it made her think of how dangerous it made him seem, and how silly that was because Luke wasn't dangerous at all, except sometimes the way he looked at her, like he was now, his blue eyes flashing dark, sent a shiver through her that wasn't entirely unlike fear, and the muscles in his arm rippled beneath the tattoo and god, was that her who was moaning so loudly? and "Luke," she muttered, and oh god he felt so good, so hard and hot and she couldn't take it anymore, she put all her weight on one arm and with the other stroked her clit, yearning for release, faster and faster until sparks behind her eyelids and short staccato screams and god, god, so so so good.

Luke kept pumping up into her, both of his hands gripping her hips now, thumbs bruising her flesh, mattress springs squeaking and "Almost there," she heard him whisper through her haze, and then he was coming too, spending himself inside of her in a hot rush.

She collapsed down on top of him and he wrapped his arms around her, both of them breathing hard, both of them now wet with sweat instead of renegade pipe water. "That was awesome," she mumbled against his skin.

He shifted beneath her and his "Yeah" was a soft rumble against her cheek. "You sure got loud at the end, there," he said bemusedly.

"I guess it's because Rory isn't home," she said. "One of the few benefits of her not being around full-time."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth Luke shot up in bed, evicting Lorelai from her comfortable spot on top of him. She groaned and rolled over onto the mattress. "Oh my god," Luke said, "what if she had just walked in on us? What if Rory decided to come home from school this weekend without telling you and she came in here, and she heard us, and -- I think I just managed to traumatize myself."

"She went somewhere with Logan this weekend," Lorelai said, reaching around her to try to ascertain where the top sheet had gone. Chilly. "Wouldn't happen. I might get a call from her at the police station, of course, as we both know there is precedent for that experience, but she isn't going to just show up here unannounced. Not this weekend. Trust me."

"I mean, don't get me wrong, your whole…performance there at the end was very entertaining for me," Luke said. "I just wouldn't want it to go to a very scary place, if you know what I'm saying."

"I do," Lorelai said. "Trade-offs."

"Huh?"

"Never mind." She managed to pull the sheet up over them and then snuggled against Luke's side. He lifted up his arm so she could scoot under; lying there with her head on his chest and his arm around her was without a doubt the best feeling in the world as far as Lorelai was concerned. "You're a good guy, Luke," she said sleepily. "Your tattoo isn't fooling anyone."

"Eh, maybe," he said. He stroked her hair with a gentleness that was most definitely good guy.

There's just one bad thing about being with a good guy, Lorelai mused. And it's that if and when he leaves you, it's that much more devastating.

Trade-offs.

She impatiently pushed the thought out of her mind and closed her eyes. Luke's breathing was slow and steady beneath her cheek. Constant.

End.