What Was That?

Disclaimer: Seriously, how often do we have to say it? If we owned this, would we write fanfic?

Summary: In my "Who Does That?" and "That Again" AU, a third and final one-shot as we look at the Gilmore-Danes family dealing with the revival of a beloved, quirky show… (Winthrop Women returns! Sort of.)

AN: No spoilers. Because we really have no idea what's in store, do we? But I've had a few nightmares.

GG GG GG

Staggering under the weight of three duffel bags, six fishing poles, and a cooler of ice and fish, the Danes males fell through the front door of the beloved and hallowed Crap Shack.

Liam and Matt, fraternal twins now in their teens, continued to share coloring, trains of thought, and complaints. "Geez, Dad," both whined, dropping all the baggage at once. "Two trips," began Matt, and Liam finished, "Wouldn't kill us!"

"Neither did one," said Luke Danes sternly, although his own knees weren't quite as springy-backy as he'd like. "C'mon. We left them alone for a week, let's see the damage."

"Uh, Dad?" asked Liam, with a frown like his father's and a lip-bite like his mother's. "Shouldn't we already know?"

Matt scowled like his mother and confirmed tersely, "Yeah."

Luke looked around.

The living room was, well, lived in. That was its charm. A few Gilmore heirlooms had taken fatal hits over the years, mostly by accident. Baseballs, dogs' wagging tails, a few conveniently placed elbows… All that had trimmed the living room down to awards, trophies, photographs, DVDs, the Wii Luke wished never existed given the time his sons spent playing with the blasted thing, and sturdy comfortable furniture. A few magazines, Lorelai's favorite toy (her iPad), the clutter of a home.

Luke cherished that living room. He'd made love with Lorelai on the couch, watched ESPN while she leaned against him reading her Kindle, seen his sons take first steps and first falls on the worn carpet. That living room was, even more than the kitchen, the heart of the home.

The problem was, the three women who should occupy it were not present.

"Ah geez," said Luke in chorus with his sons as the implications sank in.

"Uh, Dad?" asked Liam. "Maybe we could, y'know, go back to the cabin for another week?"

Matt nodded, backing toward the door. "Me too."

Luke wanted to say, "Me three," but bravely shouted, "We're home!"

Nothing.

"Mom?" called Liam. "Loin-fruit!"

"Ew," muttered Matt.

"What?" grumped Liam. "It gets her attention."

"I know, but geez!"

"Knock it off," said Luke by rote, and edged closer to the kitchen. He heard no drips, sizzles, or other signs of Gilmores attempting to cook. That was good, as a rule. But he also didn't smell pizza, diner food, or Chinese. That was bad. Always.

"What was that?" exclaimed the twins, voices overlapping. Two dark heads turned, four blue eyes widening. "Dad?"

"Stay here," said Luke, rather unnecessarily, since they'd huddled up against the coat rack. "I'm checking the garage."

As a precaution, he picked up one of the four baseball bats in the umbrella stand. Matt insisted on aluminum, to his father's disgust, whereas Liam liked an old-fashioned Louisville slugger made of ash, and a third one was maple, with his wife's name carefully carved into it, because he didn't want Lorelai to feel left out. The final bat was his, an old hickory number. Its weight made it the best weapon of the four, in Luke's opinion.

"It's clean," hissed Liam to Matt. "Bro, the house is clean. Rory and April were here and it's clean!"

Matt shot back acidly, "Thanks for that, I wasn't worried yet."

Luke shut the door on their bicker-banter. Taken alone, each boy had the typical strengths and weaknesses. Taken together, they were the best and worst of himself and Lorelai combined. The result could, at times, resemble jars of nitroglycerine on a jouncing cart in an old film. One wrong bounce, and there would be a ka-boom, a dust cloud, and a lot of people wondering, "What was that?"

Much as he was. The thud from the garage did not sound like a normal thud. In fact, no thuds were normal.

Luke inhaled, exhaled, and prepared himself. Lorelai's jeep was in the driveway. The fishing boat lived at the cabin, and the closest he had to a seaworthy vessel was a picture of one in Lorelai's ever-mutating Wish Book. April had flown in for the Girl-Week Extravaganza. Rory took the train. By all logic, there would be no vehicles in the garage. The only thing that should be in the garage was boxes of stuff, neatly organized and labeled because the twins needed a good punishment for a stunt pulled on Taylor. Not to say Luke wasn't proud of them for figuring out how to short-circuit the soda fountain into flooding, but he had to appease Taylor and his paternal conscience. A thousand things could be in that garage, but not one should go thud.

Well, Luke amended mentally, unless Matt had a chemistry project in process. Those, however, tended to go fizz, splat, and-or bang.

He choked up a bit on the bat, planted his feet, and realized he couldn't open the garage door with his hands full.

He heard a clunk behind him, and then, after a moment, heard a hooted, "Dad! Button!"

Liam was far too like Lorelai at times, given he was named for Luke's father. Matt often irked the hair off Luke's head, with his silences and grumbles and resemblance to, well, Luke. But Liam just had to be like Lorelai, and push a button.

The garage door rumbled up with silky speed.

A blurring blob of something came right at him.

He held a bat. Therefore, he swung.

The old hickory bat smashed the incoming missile into a thousand spatters of brown-gray stickiness. Most landed on Luke. He spat a little out, wondering why it reminded him of Lorelai's over-priced pore-cleansing gunk.

April squealed, "Dad!"

Rory gasped, "Luke!"

Lorelai yelled, "Babe!" and hurtled toward him, tearing off some sort of lab coat thing. Then Luke's vision was full of his wife's cleavage, his breath was knocked out of him by her legs wrapped around his middle, and he had to drop the bat or drop her. Since losing Lorelai wasn't an option, even to gravity, he held tight to his wife while she rained kisses on his forehead. Slime and all.

Eventually, she wriggled, her signal for let me stand.

He let her legs slide down along his, wishing desperately neither of them were wearing jeans, until he heard a meaningful "Ahem" from his wife.

"Oh yeah, the boys," said Luke belatedly. "And, uh, the girls."

"They know how babies are made," said Lorelai gravely, sapphire eyes sparkling, "but I don't think we should show them."

Red to his despicably thinning hair, Luke sputtered, "Geez, Lorelai!"

"So sorry!" wailed Rory, with April chiming in behind her.

"What," asked Luke, "is going on here?"

"Come on in and see," invited Rory, putting goggles over her eyes.

Before Luke could object, he was yanked into the garage, and Lorelai had pressed a button operating the garage door. "Oh no," he groaned, and followed obediently to the far side of the garage. There, he saw all his five-gallon utility pails full of balls of gray-brown stuff, ranging in size from golf ball to grapefruit. April offered him one of the white vinyl coats, as well as gloves and goggles.

"Too late," said Luke, gesturing to his shirt. "What is all this?"

"That," corrected Rory, pointing, and hefting a mud-ball.

"It's actually sculpting stuff," said Lorelai, "April mixed it a little loose so we don't hurt anything."

Luke looked at the garage door's smeared interior. He heard a soft thud. A mud-ball broke apart, and slid down the slimed surface.

"Uh," he said, and reached to fidget with a ball cap his wife had knocked off in her greeting tackle. "What are you doing?"

April demonstrated with a sidelong hurl that caused Luke to cringe, but he managed not to call it a girly throw. It got the ball where it needed to be. That was the important part.

"That," snapped April haughtily of her target, "was a picture of the producer of Winthrop Women."

"Ah geez," said Luke under his voice. "And the other ones?"

"Co-producer, also creators, head writers, and the network exec who green-lighted the revival," snarled Rory, with a vengeful overhand. It missed everything but the floor. Given Rory's natural lack of athleticism, Luke was unsurprised.

Lorelai's mud-ball, however, hit dead on. "Ha! Take that! Witch! Wench! Uh…"

"Show-killer!" yelled Rory. "Dream-ruiners! Revival-wreckers!"

Eyebrows up, Luke stepped out of the way of the younger two women's wrath, and asked Lorelai quietly, "So, uh, good thing we left for the week?"

To his surprise, Lorelai burrowed into his chest, mud and all, with a sniffle and a nod. "It was awful. Oh, Luke, the first one, it was ninety minutes of total whiskey-tango-foxtrot, but we thought, okay, there's gotta be something to make sense of it in the second one, so that was the one on Tuesday night, and it sorta got better…"

"Breathe," murmured Luke gently, getting muck in her hair when he stroked it.

Lorelai sucked in air with a sad whimper. "The third night, that was Thursday, was like happy-land, y'know, it was great, we were so glad, it was all, y'know, sunshine, roses, happy middles, happy endings, happy happiness, and it just… So last night, the last one…" Her abdomen and chest both heaved. Luke shushed her with a soft sigh. "Oh, Luke, they had Duke and Laurie broken up after all, and she was moving in with that disgusting mother of hers to take care of this woman who never treated her like she was worth anything, and…"

"Easy," said Luke, under shouts of, "Haters! Cheaters! Money-sucking goons!"

"And the daughter? Every single episode-thingy had her with a different guy, and we still don't know who she ended up with, except maybe nobody!" Lorelai ranted on quietly, big blue eyes very hurt, and also very angry. "We waited years and years and thought and hoped and got all excited and do you know what happened? The last scene… The last scene…"

"Lorelai, it's a show, that's all," he attempted.

"Duke's holding hands with Aaron's wicked troll of a mother while Aaron gets a medical degree, but they weren't even talking for, like, the whole time since Winthrop Women ended! When did they all of a sudden end up okay in the last five minutes? They weren't even in the same building the first three installments! What was that?"

"Lorelai," Luke tried, wincing as mud-balls hit the garage door in thudding splashes.

"Oh, and just to make it really perfect?" Lorelai went on indignantly, hands fisted in his shirt. "That jerk Cass is offering to pay for Laurie's house so she can move in with her mom easier. What was that about? It was even crazier than the last couple seasons of the show were! And they owed us for that! To show us that it turned out okay and make us feel better, and…"

"Oh," comprehended Luke. The promise of the happy-ever-after balm to wounded hearts had been destroyed with what sounded, to him, like the same idiotic crap he'd avoided when the show was on originally, and disliked when he'd sat through the Gilmore binge on the show during the flu. "Okay, sweetheart, I get it, but the boys and I are home, and, uh, the garage door didn't do anything wrong…"

An off-track mud-ball the size of an orange veered into a box labeled Kid Stuff. That thump echoed.

"So why don't we order in some pizza, and I'll whip up some brownies with marshmallows and chocolate chips on top," promised Luke solemnly, smearing muck over her cheeks when he used his thumbs to wipe at her tears. "And I'll get the boys out here to scale the fish…"

"Why do you weigh them?"

Luke scrunched up his forehead, seeking patience.

Lorelai poked him, giggling. "I know what scaling means, silly, you've taken them fishing for forever. And while the boys are scraping yucky stuff off fish?"

"You three watch something that you know you'll like. To wallow."

Eyes gleaming at him with utter love, Lorelai asked, "What will you do?"

Luke pointed wordlessly at the gray-brown wall of sculpting slime all over the inside of the garage door, the floor and a few boxes. "Hose."

"Ah, monosyllable man, you always know what to say," purred Lorelai, kissing him soundly.

Before he could recover his wits, or re-think that evening plan by exiling the kids and taking his wife straight to bed, Lorelai yelled, "Hey! Cease-fire! Marshmallow brownies and Titanic!"

Luke blinked. "Not African Queen? Or, uh, the one where they have a leopard running around?"

"Nope. When you need to mock during a wallow, nothing beats 'the king of the world'," cheered Lorelai, arms flung wide, chin lifted into an imaginary arctic wind. "And we'll clean up. You know how I get when I'm all upset and…" She flapped her hands eloquently. "Brain-fluttered."

Over the years, Luke had seen brain-fluttered Lorelai several times. Her father's passing had triggered a two-week cleaning marathon, and her nesting stage with the twins was downright historic. At one point, she'd demanded he take the counters and cupboards out so she could clean the walls behind them, too.

"Go, bake gooey comfort, and you can do mean things to dead fish so we can eat them," urged Lorelai, and clapped her hands. "Ladies! Hey! Hose, water, cleaning!"

With a shout of, "Ha! Watery doom!", April ran for the hose. Rory stared cluelessly at a rack of lawn tools. Luke handed her a snow shovel as most appropriate for the task, advising, "Scrape gently."

He exited the garage through the side door, and found his sons fidgeting on the porch. "What was that?" asked Liam uneasily.

Luke opened his mouth, had no idea what to say, and went for, "I have no idea. What that was. Or is. Let's unload the gear, and, uh, I have to make brownies." He yanked a five out of his wallet. "Whoever gets a bag of marshmallows from Doose's…"

"Mine!" yelled Matt, snatching the bill and sprinting away.

"…gets to keep the change," said Luke, finishing the ritual phrase that had gotten errands quite literally run over the years.

Liam was staring at him, open-mouthed. He finally stuttered, "Marshmallows? You don't even let those in the house!"

"One day," said Luke gravely, remembering his own father with a wince for terms like karma, "you'll understand."

"Yeah, yeah," groused his son and slammed the door on the way into the house.

"Right around the time," mumbled Luke wearily, "you have teenagers and a crazy lady wife."

"I heard that!" yelled aforementioned crazy lady wife, head stuck out of the side door of the garage.

Luke let his head fall back with a muttered, "But she can't hear a word I say about decaf."

From Lorelai came a yodeled, "I choose to ignore it! Viva caffeine!"

Luke huffed to himself, "Ears like a bat."

"What was that?!"

Liam came out of the house, hand extended. Luke gave him a five-dollar bill.

Liam raised his eyebrows. "Seriously, Dad?"

Luke doled out his last twenty. "Daisies. And baking chocolate. But mostly daisies."

Liam snickered as he rattled down the porch steps. "Shouldn't've called her a bat."

"I said ears like a bat!" bellowed Luke after his rapidly departing son, and went inside to make wallow brownies, conciliatory coffee, and phone in the order for the pizza. "Stupid TV show," he said, and was very glad to hear absolutely no reply.

GG GG GG

AN: I had a vision of a very bad GG revival, and tried this. In case it will take wallowing, brownies and, possibly, a very MST3K-style watching of Titanic to recover. Hey, what can I say? For some, the love will go on. For me, it's the snark. Anyway, thus concludes the "That" trilogy I never intended: Who Does That?; That Again; and, What Was That?

For those unfamiliar with whiskey-tango-foxtrot… That's the radio shorthand for the letters W, T, and F.

Cheers.