Title: In April

Rating: PG

Pairing: Lorelai/Christopher

Feedback: Hate it? Let me know: hitokamei@yahoo.co.uk

Disclaimer: Not mine. The show belongs to ASP and the WB. 'Westering Home' is a poem by Bernard O'Donoghue and belongs to him. All titles are taken from the poem.

*

I want to marry you, he says. I want to marry you.

She stares for a moment, sure she's misheard, but he just stares back. She thinks about repeating his words back to him, knows she has when he replies. It's a reply she knows that she's not going to give, even though she wants to. She wants to, and he wants her to, he wants her, and she thinks he's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, knowing that he isn't, not really, not even close.

But he wants her. He wants her with the baby and everything, and not because of it, and she hadn't been sure of either of those things, but she'd hoped. He's glowing through his terror, hoping, and imagining and wanting. She's imagined too. She's wanted, and now she has what she wants.

So even as her stomach sinks, knowing it's the wrong thing, the worst possible thing, and feeling sick with wanting it, she says yes, even though she's imagined this, even though she knows that it will never happen. She tells him that it will.

*

Lorelai stared mournfully out the window. She'd told Rory that they would go to the beach today, and she fully intended to do that. The steady drizzle, the encroaching dusk, and Rory's crazy ideas of practicality were all facetious things that should be completely ignored.

Rory had been saying that she wanted to go to California and see surfers — or maybe Vermont or Maine, wherever it was the Gellars had a house — just because it was something that she would never ever do herself. Lorelai had sworn never to play the Beach Boys again, or encourage Rory to broaden her horizons, but she'd agreed to forsake her comfortable sofa and safe junk-food for messy sand and the dangerous junk-food sold in makeshift huts that probably wouldn't be open now, so really, she'd be starving herself. There wouldn't even be surfers. But Lorelai was hoping that getting slapped in the face with sea breeze and stinging grains of sand would dissuade Rory from the proposed trip. It was their last summer before Rory grew up, and Lorelai wasn't a fan of the beach, especially in California. Too much like nature with models.

Her gaze focused on a figure waving at her through the glass. Chris, jogging towards the doors. Her mood switched abruptly from self-indulgent mournfulness to real unhappiness. She hadn't seen Chris since he'd returned from his visit to Sherry, and she didn't much want to.

He spilled into the reception, shaking himself off before he was in, scattering drops of rain.

"Hey."

"Hi." He grinned at her, glanced around the empty room. "Are you busy?"

"Dead."

"Good."

"Thanks. I'll be laying myself off soon. Nice that you care."

"I wanted to talk to you. Can you leave?"

"Not yet. And I have plans with Rory later. What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Can you take a break?"

"This is not leading me to believe that nothing is wrong. Hold on."

Lorelai found the new girl, the one who couldn't yet be left alone for more than ten minutes, dumped her behind the desk, ruthlessly ignored her terrified look, and carried Chris off to the restaurant. She glanced out the window again on her way, at the splattered raindrops running down the pane, and thought that it might be a beautiful night for a walk, that it would be wonderful to do something different with Rory, even if it meant getting soaked and catching pneumonia when summer was coming.

There was one waitress, idly wrapping knives and forks in a corner. Hundreds of wrapped pairs were lying in a huge pile on the table in front of her, more than Lorelai had thought they had. She led the way to the opposite corner.

"So." Lorelai hated the water from the big jugs, but she poured herself some anyway. She didn't really have time to eat. The sun had set, and she needed to get home soon. She should have had Rory come to the Inn after school. Fifteen minutes until her shift was over.

"Hi."

"We've done this."

"Yeah." He leant forward, hands smoothing out the tablecloth, studying the wrinkles in the linen and glancing up at her uncertainly. He said, "I want to marry you."

He couldn't have said that. She couldn't have heard that. Not really, not out loud. She'd wandered into a waking dream. It always felt like that after a certain sort of rain, when the world was so sharply defined that she thought it couldn't be real, that she'd changed, that everything had. When everything was so sharp she thought she'd cut herself on the blades of grass, the edges of leaves, edges of air.

But she was indoors, and it was still raining, and warmth was spreading through her chest. "What?"

"I want to marry you. Ball and chain, next great adventure—"

"That's death."

She thought for a moment that she had to be dreaming. There could be no other explanation. No other acceptable explanation.

"That's the last great adventure. The greatest. Are you planning to kill me?"

"It's quite possible."

"It'd be a pity, after all this time."

"Straw that broke the—" She couldn't finish. She felt glazed, dipped in sticky varnish, and hardening. "Marry you," she said. "You think that I should marry you."

"I want you to marry me."

"Why? Why would I do such a thing?"

"Because you love me? You do love me, don't you?"

"Why on earth would you think this is a good idea?"

"I think we could make it work, you—"

"How dare you?"

She was shaking, and it was rage, but it was also shock and terror and other things that were too fleeting to identify. She thought her heart was going to fail; it was beating so fast and strong that it had to collapse. Her heart would collapse and her blood would surge, and strings cut, she'd fall.

"How dare I? I didn't think it was that big a leap, really. I didn't think it required that much daring."

"You just thought I'd accept."

His surprise had passed; now apologeticness was warring with frustration. "No—"

"Yes."

"Maybe. The signs seemed to be pointing that way."

She couldn't let him rationalise his way out of this. "The signs. You know, I can't deny that there have been signs. There have been very clear signs of exactly how much you've messed me up over the years, how much you're still messing with my mind. You really know how to leave your mark, Chris. And I told you, I told you not to do this to me again."

She was angrier than she thought she had a right to be, but it was true, it was. He always did this to her.

The fork he'd been toying with hit his empty wineglass with a ting, and the music floated briefly in the air, before he broke in on it.

"You know, I really can't do anything about the imaginary version of me you have in your head. That's not my fault."

"It's not imaginary, Chris."

"I don't know what you expect from me."

"Or maybe it is, because the other one, the one I thought you were, sure as hell isn't here."

"That's what I—"

"And I can't deal with this. I can't deal with you anymore. I told you."

"I wasn't aware I was acting in—"

"Well you are. I told you, and you still are. This isn't working. It never will." The anger was fading, leaving exhaustion and a seeping pain that was too familiar, too intimate, residing in her bones, making her ache. This had to stop, it had to leave, and she would make it. She could.

"There's nothing to work. And you've just said there won't be anything, so—"

"You have no right to do this to me. You have no right."

"After all these years I thought I'd earned some sort of right—"

"You haven't. You really haven't, Chris. Especially not when you have another me waiting for you in another city. Maybe you should just try to work things out with her, because—"

"I'm sorry I exist when you're not around, Lorelai. I can't help it." He took a shaky breath, obviously reigning in his temper, calming himself and settling in for a discussion. "Please, be reason—"

"I think you should leave."

He looked like he was going to argue, but his jaw tightened and he swallowed the fight brewing behind his eyes. "Fine."

"I don't want you to come by here anymore."

His chair hit the floor. "Fine."

She watched him storm out, wondering whether it would be better if she wanted to call him back. After a few minutes, she made her way back to the reception desk. The girl was fine, because nobody had come in. Lorelai sent her back to cleaning, and wandered over to the window again. She wanted to leave.

It was hard to believe that Chris wouldn't be showing up anymore, out of the blue, out of the rain, asking for her. But there had to be a change. No more dreams.

She waited patiently to be relieved, watching the sky darken, flood with deep velvet-blue, even as the rain stopped.

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