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wizened_cynicI don't have much to say about House tonight as I was too busy running up and down the stairs to talk to someone very important. Not Hu Jin Tao. I did see how House was an ass and broke Cuddy's heart and I AM VERY MAD DO NOT BE MEAN TO CUDDY ALL SHE WANTS IS A BABY WITH BLUE EYES DON'T YOU SEE?
Second, SVU. Dear fucking god, was this episode written by 12-year-old fangirls from SVUfiction.com? The case was boring. Everyone was boring. Everyone was boring and loves Olivia indiscriminantly, be they male, female, or PRISON DOCTORS. When does she have time to POLISH her halo?
Anyway, blah blah blah I had a rough few days back during American Thanksgiving but now I am having an EXCELLENT FEW DAYS and I am really, really, really happy, the kind of happy that makes your heart hurt and your stomach floppy and you can't believe this is actually true and maybe you just made it up and you are secretly dead, SHOT TO DEATH BY COLOMBIAN DRUGLORDS.
So I wrote fic.
It's snowy and as cold as Satan's testicles in Vancouver right now, so I had no choice but to write something disgustingly Christmasy. In fact, this fic is supposed to be in three parts, detailing three Christmases Alex spends with Lorelai. This is part one. The overall fic has no title yet; I am still waiting for the brilliant and esteemed Lo to pull one out of her ass.
For another, who knows me by heart. Away illusive wooly. Always.
part one: before the beginning
Overnight the Christmas decorations come up, and on her way to Luke's the next morning, Alex notices that even the birdhouses hung around the town square have little wreaths glued onto them. Babette and Morey have brought out their collection of ceramic elves, and even Taylor has set up a gigantic gingerbread mansion in the front window of his store, right next to a sign that details the necessity of brushing your teeth after meals and paying extra attention to the gum line.
Stars Hollow looks like the front of a Christmas card, like a Norman Rockwell painting, like one of those damn movies by Frank Capra that are already airing on repeat on TNT. Even the snow has a dreamlike quality to it: soft and powdery, like icing sugar falling from the sky. Alex finds herself with the strangest urge to stick out her tongue to catch a snowflake and taste it. She never would have even considered doing this in New York, where the snow probably tastes like diesel exhaust and acid rain, and you couldn't find a place to stand still anyway.
Lorelai's standing in the playground across from the diner, doing precisely what Alex is thinking about. Her head is tilted backward, her mouth open, brow furrowed in earnestness as she attempts to catch a snowflake with her tongue.
"The candy canes and Hershey kisses aren't sustaining you anymore?" Alex asks as she approaches. Lorelai has eaten her way through two Advent calendars already, claiming that it is her way of incorporating religion into the otherwise completely consumerist holiday that merely exists for an excuse to shop and eat.
Lorelai rubs her nose with a gloved hand. "A girl's gotta have variety, you know."
"Of course."
"That's why I bought those blue candy canes. We can't just stick to the good old red and white ones, or the red and green ones, or the red and white and green ones. Tradition is good, but we have to be adventurous, try new things. Imagine what a sad world we'd be in if people were satisfied with walking and never invented the car. Or if they were happy just to read books and never thought to come up with the brilliant idea of motion pictures."
"The rate of literary would go up?"
Lorelai makes a face. "Claire, you are officially on notice. One more Grinch-like word out of you and I'll have to put you in intensive Christmas therapy. Lots of eggnog, lots of carols. Repeated viewings of Miracle on 34th Street. The new version, with that annoying little girl from Mrs. Doubtfire."
The thing is, Alex is pretty sure Lorelai plans to inflict these things on her whether or not she adopts an enthusiastic attitude toward Christmasizing (Lorelai's word, not hers) the house.
This is Lorelai's first Christmas without Rory, and from what Alex has heard, Christmas is a major event in the Gilmore household. Apple tarts are rumored to be involved. Rory and Lorelai still have not mended their rift, which means Lorelai and her parents are still not on speaking terms, which means the responsibility of indulging Lorelai in her Christmas festivities falls squarely on Alex's shoulders.
Alex doesn't mind too much, if only because Lorelai seems so miserable without Rory that it's a relief to find her occupying herself with sticking adhesive stickers of snowmen and reindeer on the windows. Shortbread cookies and cans of instant-mix cocoa creep into the kitchen, the kind with the miniature freeze-dried marshmallows that Alex hates but Lorelai loves.
One afternoon, Alex comes home to a horrible rendition of Jingle Bells on the stereo. Just as she's about to snap the CD in half, Lorelai appears with a Santa hat perched on her head. "Hey, turn it back on! It's cute."
"It's annoying."
"But cute!"
"They're cats."
"More talented than the finalists on American Idol."
Alex concedes to John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over) and disappears into the sanctuary of her own room. At the foot of her bed is a felt stocking, at the top of which CLAIRE is spelled out in gold and silver glittery. It makes her smile and she forgets, momentarily, the tree at Rockefeller Center, the paper bags of roasted chestnuts that kept her hands warm all the way to the office.
Ten days into December they decide to get a tree. By which they mean, they pester Luke into taking them to a lot, where he curses at them below his frozen breath the entire time Alex and Lorelai bicker over which tree to get. Alex wants a small one, or at the very least, one that can conceivably fit inside their living room. Lorelai wants the mother of all Christmas trees that has probably spent its infancy providing shelter to woolly mammoths.
"Bigger is better!" Lorelai yells in between sips of hot chocolate. "Size does matter!"
"You just want an excuse to make more popcorn balls!" Alex yells back, and Luke says, tiredly, "Is it just me or is this conversation getting a tad dirty?"
They settle on a medium-sized pine that Lorelai names Llewellyn, which they pile in the back of Luke's truck and drive home.
Llewellyn stands naked in the living room for three days before Alex pokes around the garage and locates the boxes of ornaments. Everything is wound up in a cluster, bound by chains of gold beads and silver garlands. Once she has untangled the decorations, she sorts them out according to size and type so she can space them on the tree evenly. She comes across a construction-paper Santa Claus with Rory's kindergarten school picture glued onto the back. Then, a manger scene made of popsicle sticks, with a Styrofoam ball representing the Christ child. A clay bell, with a tiny handprint in the middle.
Alex sets those aside and leaves the generic ones --- the Homer Simpson, the singing Elvis, a particularly inappropriate one of Kris Kringle in his boxer-briefs --- in a separate box by the foot of the tree.
The tree is halfway trimmed when Alex returns from work the following afternoon. Lorelai never says anything about it. Alex tosses generous handfuls of tinsel on her side of the tree. She finds stray silver in her bedroom later; it's like the town itself, never goes away.
After a nutritious dinner of Chinese takeout ("There is pineapple in the sweet and sour, Claire, which qualifies as my required daily intake of fruits and vegetables."), Lorelai decides it's time to hang the Christmas lights along the roof.
"It's cold, it's dark, let's do it tomorrow." Alex just wants to crawl into bed and fall asleep in the middle of Margaret Atwood's latest novel.
Lorelai is not dissuaded. "What's the point of hanging them up in the day time?" she argues. "You can't see them all pretty and bright against the dark."
"I'm just making a wild guess here, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but let's see --- not falling off the roof because you're not able to see what you're doing could very possibly be a perk?"
"Wuss," and Lorelai gives her a grin that is more appropriate on a Halloween pumpkin.
Alex gives up. It's become a habit, giving up and giving in to Lorelai. "Fine. Just be careful. Don't fall off the roof. I won't call an ambulance."
Five minutes later there is a thump and a thud and a sickening crack. Alex dashes out into the yard in her pajamas, only to find Lorelai lying in the snow, motionless.
Of course, she fell off the roof.
Of course, Alex calls the ambulance.
Or she would have, if Stars Hollow had an ambulance.
Morey and Babette, having heard Alex's frantic attempts to shout Lorelai back into consciousness, come running out of their house. Morey carries Lorelai to her jeep and settles her into the backseat while Babette gives Alex directions to the nearest emergency room. Alex doesn't tell her that she hasn't driven since she was seventeen, or that she has never driven in snow, ever.
Somehow they manage to get to the hospital in one piece, but before Alex can fully process what has happened, a nurse shoves a fistful of forms into her hands and expects Alex to fill them out.
Name: Lorelai Gilmore
Insurance Number: no fucking clue
Emergency Contact:
Alex grimaces, and finally fills in her name after staring at the blank for ten minutes. Then she remembers Rory, that she should have put down Rory's information instead.
Rory.
Alex has to call her and tell her to get her ass down to the hospital. Rift or no rift, stolen yacht or whatever else, Lorelai is her mother. If Alex were in her place, she would want someone to call her and tell her what was going on.
Lorelai's cell phone is in the pocket of her coat. Alex finds the number, dials, leaves a message ordering Rory to come to the ER as soon as possible.
Then she waits. She holds onto Lorelai's jacket, which is still warm and smells like her, like cinnamon, and she waits.
Alex has only seen pictures of Rory, but her resemblance to Lorelai is more even striking in person. She is introducing herself as Lorelai's roommate when Emily Gilmore rushes in, demanding to know everything: what happened, who is in charge, who the hell is Alex and why is she living with Lorelai.
Emily Gilmore turns out to have been responsible for the Spanish Inquisition in her past life. She wrings the details out of Alex like an old dishtowel, spicing her interrogation with a fair amount of backhanded comments. Yes, Alex only knows Lorelai from an ad on Craigslist. Yes, Craiglist has something to do with the internet. Yes, there are sexual predators on the internet. Yes, Alex is clearly taking advantage of Lorelai's gullibility and bad, no, non-existent judgment, and it's Alex's fault Lorelai fell off the roof --- why, Alex practically pushed her off the roof.
A doctor emerges with Lorelai's diagnosis: a small concussion and a dislocated shoulder. "It's a good thing she landed on the snow," he says, and Alex wants to smirk even though it's inappropriate. Lorelai loves snow and snow apparently returns those feelings.
"Your mother is going to be all right, Rory," Emily reassures, as if she had made the diagnosis herself.
Rory shifts in her seat and mumbles about how she should go, even though Alex can see that she wants nothing more than to stay by Lorelai's side.
"Don't do this," Alex tells her. "Stop doing this to her. Do you have any idea ---"
"Any idea what?" Emily interrupts. "I suppose you would know more about my daughter than Rory and I do, a complete stranger who waltzed into her life only several months ago. From the internet."
"Any idea what it's like to have your daughter turned against you," Alex finishes, and then, as if a switch has been flipped and she can finally tell these strangers exactly how she feels about them, she turns to Rory and asks, "How old are you, Rory? Twenty-one? Aren't you a little old to let other people dictate what you're doing with your life? You're just going to let a few unfavorable circumstances push you around?"
Emily is flushed to the color of a vine-ripened tomato in early summer. "How dare you talk to my granddaughter like that? Who do you think you are, to insert yourself into our family affairs just like that?"
Rory raises her hands, her eyes bright and wet. "Stop it, you guys. Just stop."
Before Alex can say anything else, a nurse delivers the message that Lorelai has been brought upstairs for overnight observation, is awake and alert and would love some visitors.
Alex glances at Rory. "She'll go."
Rory enters the room, followed by Emily, and Alex sits outside in the hallway, folding her hands over Lorelai's jacket, which she realizes she's still carrying with her. She should leave it with a nurse and drive home. Call a cab home. Now that Lorelai is no longer in mortal danger, Alex doesn't feel the urge to risk her life on the icy highways.
She's about to leave when the door opens. "Mom is asking for you," Rory says.
Inside, Emily is simultaneously reprimanding Lorelai for her reckless behavior and inviting her to the annual family Christmas celebration next week, while Lorelai rolls her eyes backwards until only the whites are showing.
"Claire!" Lorelai reaches out to Alex with the arm that isn't in a sling. "Stay with me and tell these people to go away."
"Mom!"
"Sorry, baby, I love having you here, but you've got an early appointment tomorrow and I really need you to take your grandmother home. She's old. She needs her beauty sleep. Otherwise it's Botox for her."
"I am not old," Emily protests. "Lorelai, if you don't want me here, you could just say the word ---"
"Mom. Mom. I want you here. I'm really, really glad you came, and it means a lot to me, but I have this big lump on my head that makes it all hurty and your voice just encourages the lump to start break dancing to My Humps."
"My Humps? What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's a song," Rory supplies.
"It means," Lorelai sighs, "it means I adore you both and I am really happy we are doing this all-talking, no-hating thing again, and I'll see you next week by the table with the apple tarts, but please for the love of God, go home and get some rest. And let me get some rest. I just cracked my head open! I need rest!"
"I'm staying, Mom," Rory says. "You could fall off the bed and land on your head a second time and get another concussion. I must stay and prevent that from happening."
"If Rory's staying, so am I," says Emily, and Alex almost breaks up laughing at the look of despair on Lorelai's face.
"No. You two. Go home." Lorelai beckons Alex over and clings onto the cuff of her sleeve. "Claire will stay with me and protect me from future concussions. Won't you, Claire? Answer in the affirmative."
"Affirmative," Alex answers, because what other choice does she have?
Once Rory and Emily have gone, Lorelai regresses to her seven-year-old self and begins demanding food and coffee.
"I think you should lay off the coffee for now." The cafeteria's closed, so all Alex can offer Lorelai are two orange Tic Tacs.
Lorelai pops them into her mouth and crunches them between her teeth. "But coffee makes me bouncy! And bounciness is what saved my life. Bounciness and snow."
"Right," Alex deadpans. "I had nothing to do with it."
She's joking, of course, but Lorelai doesn't get it --- which is odd, considering --- and Lorelai pulls her close and says, soberly, "You saved me, Claire. You are more important than bounciness and snow." She startles Alex by putting her forehead against Alex's shoulder and pressing her weight down on it. "Thank you," Lorelai's voice comes out as a choked whisper, "for bringing her back to me."
Alex rests her hand on Lorelai's back, and when Lorelai finally leans back, Alex smiles at her and shrugs. "What'd I do?"
Lorelai reconsiders before she answers and bullies Alex into locating reading material for her instead. After scavenging the hallways for magazines and day-old newspapers, she returns with three choices: the Wall Street Journal, Schizophrenia Digest, or the Disney picture-book edition of A Christmas Carol.
Lorelai claps her hands together as much as she can, eyes sparkling like the snow when the first light of the morning sun reflects off it. "I have a confession. I've never read the actual novel, because Dickens depresses me too much, and reminds me off the oatmeal my mother used to make, which even Oliver Twist would've turned down. I would watch the movie sometimes but --- don't laugh at me, Claire. I can see your lips moving --- but the Disney version has ducks, and, well, you can't go wrong with ducks. It made Joshua Jackson's whole career."
"Who?"
"Never mind." Lorelai moves over to make a place for Alex on the bed, and Alex sits down, Lorelai's head finding a spot on her shoulder. "Read," she commands, and Alex does.
I'm still shamelessly pimping my Stars Hollow Christmas mix. Download and listen! (Except for Brandon, who is an IDIOT and a GIRL and I don't care about his opinion because Lo thinks this mix is awesome SO THERE SUCK THIS.)
Second, SVU. Dear fucking god, was this episode written by 12-year-old fangirls from SVUfiction.com? The case was boring. Everyone was boring. Everyone was boring and loves Olivia indiscriminantly, be they male, female, or PRISON DOCTORS. When does she have time to POLISH her halo?
Anyway, blah blah blah I had a rough few days back during American Thanksgiving but now I am having an EXCELLENT FEW DAYS and I am really, really, really happy, the kind of happy that makes your heart hurt and your stomach floppy and you can't believe this is actually true and maybe you just made it up and you are secretly dead, SHOT TO DEATH BY COLOMBIAN DRUGLORDS.
So I wrote fic.
It's snowy and as cold as Satan's testicles in Vancouver right now, so I had no choice but to write something disgustingly Christmasy. In fact, this fic is supposed to be in three parts, detailing three Christmases Alex spends with Lorelai. This is part one. The overall fic has no title yet; I am still waiting for the brilliant and esteemed Lo to pull one out of her ass.
For another, who knows me by heart. Away illusive wooly. Always.
Overnight the Christmas decorations come up, and on her way to Luke's the next morning, Alex notices that even the birdhouses hung around the town square have little wreaths glued onto them. Babette and Morey have brought out their collection of ceramic elves, and even Taylor has set up a gigantic gingerbread mansion in the front window of his store, right next to a sign that details the necessity of brushing your teeth after meals and paying extra attention to the gum line.
Stars Hollow looks like the front of a Christmas card, like a Norman Rockwell painting, like one of those damn movies by Frank Capra that are already airing on repeat on TNT. Even the snow has a dreamlike quality to it: soft and powdery, like icing sugar falling from the sky. Alex finds herself with the strangest urge to stick out her tongue to catch a snowflake and taste it. She never would have even considered doing this in New York, where the snow probably tastes like diesel exhaust and acid rain, and you couldn't find a place to stand still anyway.
Lorelai's standing in the playground across from the diner, doing precisely what Alex is thinking about. Her head is tilted backward, her mouth open, brow furrowed in earnestness as she attempts to catch a snowflake with her tongue.
"The candy canes and Hershey kisses aren't sustaining you anymore?" Alex asks as she approaches. Lorelai has eaten her way through two Advent calendars already, claiming that it is her way of incorporating religion into the otherwise completely consumerist holiday that merely exists for an excuse to shop and eat.
Lorelai rubs her nose with a gloved hand. "A girl's gotta have variety, you know."
"Of course."
"That's why I bought those blue candy canes. We can't just stick to the good old red and white ones, or the red and green ones, or the red and white and green ones. Tradition is good, but we have to be adventurous, try new things. Imagine what a sad world we'd be in if people were satisfied with walking and never invented the car. Or if they were happy just to read books and never thought to come up with the brilliant idea of motion pictures."
"The rate of literary would go up?"
Lorelai makes a face. "Claire, you are officially on notice. One more Grinch-like word out of you and I'll have to put you in intensive Christmas therapy. Lots of eggnog, lots of carols. Repeated viewings of Miracle on 34th Street. The new version, with that annoying little girl from Mrs. Doubtfire."
The thing is, Alex is pretty sure Lorelai plans to inflict these things on her whether or not she adopts an enthusiastic attitude toward Christmasizing (Lorelai's word, not hers) the house.
This is Lorelai's first Christmas without Rory, and from what Alex has heard, Christmas is a major event in the Gilmore household. Apple tarts are rumored to be involved. Rory and Lorelai still have not mended their rift, which means Lorelai and her parents are still not on speaking terms, which means the responsibility of indulging Lorelai in her Christmas festivities falls squarely on Alex's shoulders.
Alex doesn't mind too much, if only because Lorelai seems so miserable without Rory that it's a relief to find her occupying herself with sticking adhesive stickers of snowmen and reindeer on the windows. Shortbread cookies and cans of instant-mix cocoa creep into the kitchen, the kind with the miniature freeze-dried marshmallows that Alex hates but Lorelai loves.
One afternoon, Alex comes home to a horrible rendition of Jingle Bells on the stereo. Just as she's about to snap the CD in half, Lorelai appears with a Santa hat perched on her head. "Hey, turn it back on! It's cute."
"It's annoying."
"But cute!"
"They're cats."
"More talented than the finalists on American Idol."
Alex concedes to John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over) and disappears into the sanctuary of her own room. At the foot of her bed is a felt stocking, at the top of which CLAIRE is spelled out in gold and silver glittery. It makes her smile and she forgets, momentarily, the tree at Rockefeller Center, the paper bags of roasted chestnuts that kept her hands warm all the way to the office.
Ten days into December they decide to get a tree. By which they mean, they pester Luke into taking them to a lot, where he curses at them below his frozen breath the entire time Alex and Lorelai bicker over which tree to get. Alex wants a small one, or at the very least, one that can conceivably fit inside their living room. Lorelai wants the mother of all Christmas trees that has probably spent its infancy providing shelter to woolly mammoths.
"Bigger is better!" Lorelai yells in between sips of hot chocolate. "Size does matter!"
"You just want an excuse to make more popcorn balls!" Alex yells back, and Luke says, tiredly, "Is it just me or is this conversation getting a tad dirty?"
They settle on a medium-sized pine that Lorelai names Llewellyn, which they pile in the back of Luke's truck and drive home.
Llewellyn stands naked in the living room for three days before Alex pokes around the garage and locates the boxes of ornaments. Everything is wound up in a cluster, bound by chains of gold beads and silver garlands. Once she has untangled the decorations, she sorts them out according to size and type so she can space them on the tree evenly. She comes across a construction-paper Santa Claus with Rory's kindergarten school picture glued onto the back. Then, a manger scene made of popsicle sticks, with a Styrofoam ball representing the Christ child. A clay bell, with a tiny handprint in the middle.
Alex sets those aside and leaves the generic ones --- the Homer Simpson, the singing Elvis, a particularly inappropriate one of Kris Kringle in his boxer-briefs --- in a separate box by the foot of the tree.
The tree is halfway trimmed when Alex returns from work the following afternoon. Lorelai never says anything about it. Alex tosses generous handfuls of tinsel on her side of the tree. She finds stray silver in her bedroom later; it's like the town itself, never goes away.
After a nutritious dinner of Chinese takeout ("There is pineapple in the sweet and sour, Claire, which qualifies as my required daily intake of fruits and vegetables."), Lorelai decides it's time to hang the Christmas lights along the roof.
"It's cold, it's dark, let's do it tomorrow." Alex just wants to crawl into bed and fall asleep in the middle of Margaret Atwood's latest novel.
Lorelai is not dissuaded. "What's the point of hanging them up in the day time?" she argues. "You can't see them all pretty and bright against the dark."
"I'm just making a wild guess here, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but let's see --- not falling off the roof because you're not able to see what you're doing could very possibly be a perk?"
"Wuss," and Lorelai gives her a grin that is more appropriate on a Halloween pumpkin.
Alex gives up. It's become a habit, giving up and giving in to Lorelai. "Fine. Just be careful. Don't fall off the roof. I won't call an ambulance."
Five minutes later there is a thump and a thud and a sickening crack. Alex dashes out into the yard in her pajamas, only to find Lorelai lying in the snow, motionless.
Of course, she fell off the roof.
Of course, Alex calls the ambulance.
Or she would have, if Stars Hollow had an ambulance.
Morey and Babette, having heard Alex's frantic attempts to shout Lorelai back into consciousness, come running out of their house. Morey carries Lorelai to her jeep and settles her into the backseat while Babette gives Alex directions to the nearest emergency room. Alex doesn't tell her that she hasn't driven since she was seventeen, or that she has never driven in snow, ever.
Somehow they manage to get to the hospital in one piece, but before Alex can fully process what has happened, a nurse shoves a fistful of forms into her hands and expects Alex to fill them out.
Name: Lorelai Gilmore
Insurance Number: no fucking clue
Emergency Contact:
Alex grimaces, and finally fills in her name after staring at the blank for ten minutes. Then she remembers Rory, that she should have put down Rory's information instead.
Rory.
Alex has to call her and tell her to get her ass down to the hospital. Rift or no rift, stolen yacht or whatever else, Lorelai is her mother. If Alex were in her place, she would want someone to call her and tell her what was going on.
Lorelai's cell phone is in the pocket of her coat. Alex finds the number, dials, leaves a message ordering Rory to come to the ER as soon as possible.
Then she waits. She holds onto Lorelai's jacket, which is still warm and smells like her, like cinnamon, and she waits.
Alex has only seen pictures of Rory, but her resemblance to Lorelai is more even striking in person. She is introducing herself as Lorelai's roommate when Emily Gilmore rushes in, demanding to know everything: what happened, who is in charge, who the hell is Alex and why is she living with Lorelai.
Emily Gilmore turns out to have been responsible for the Spanish Inquisition in her past life. She wrings the details out of Alex like an old dishtowel, spicing her interrogation with a fair amount of backhanded comments. Yes, Alex only knows Lorelai from an ad on Craigslist. Yes, Craiglist has something to do with the internet. Yes, there are sexual predators on the internet. Yes, Alex is clearly taking advantage of Lorelai's gullibility and bad, no, non-existent judgment, and it's Alex's fault Lorelai fell off the roof --- why, Alex practically pushed her off the roof.
A doctor emerges with Lorelai's diagnosis: a small concussion and a dislocated shoulder. "It's a good thing she landed on the snow," he says, and Alex wants to smirk even though it's inappropriate. Lorelai loves snow and snow apparently returns those feelings.
"Your mother is going to be all right, Rory," Emily reassures, as if she had made the diagnosis herself.
Rory shifts in her seat and mumbles about how she should go, even though Alex can see that she wants nothing more than to stay by Lorelai's side.
"Don't do this," Alex tells her. "Stop doing this to her. Do you have any idea ---"
"Any idea what?" Emily interrupts. "I suppose you would know more about my daughter than Rory and I do, a complete stranger who waltzed into her life only several months ago. From the internet."
"Any idea what it's like to have your daughter turned against you," Alex finishes, and then, as if a switch has been flipped and she can finally tell these strangers exactly how she feels about them, she turns to Rory and asks, "How old are you, Rory? Twenty-one? Aren't you a little old to let other people dictate what you're doing with your life? You're just going to let a few unfavorable circumstances push you around?"
Emily is flushed to the color of a vine-ripened tomato in early summer. "How dare you talk to my granddaughter like that? Who do you think you are, to insert yourself into our family affairs just like that?"
Rory raises her hands, her eyes bright and wet. "Stop it, you guys. Just stop."
Before Alex can say anything else, a nurse delivers the message that Lorelai has been brought upstairs for overnight observation, is awake and alert and would love some visitors.
Alex glances at Rory. "She'll go."
Rory enters the room, followed by Emily, and Alex sits outside in the hallway, folding her hands over Lorelai's jacket, which she realizes she's still carrying with her. She should leave it with a nurse and drive home. Call a cab home. Now that Lorelai is no longer in mortal danger, Alex doesn't feel the urge to risk her life on the icy highways.
She's about to leave when the door opens. "Mom is asking for you," Rory says.
Inside, Emily is simultaneously reprimanding Lorelai for her reckless behavior and inviting her to the annual family Christmas celebration next week, while Lorelai rolls her eyes backwards until only the whites are showing.
"Claire!" Lorelai reaches out to Alex with the arm that isn't in a sling. "Stay with me and tell these people to go away."
"Mom!"
"Sorry, baby, I love having you here, but you've got an early appointment tomorrow and I really need you to take your grandmother home. She's old. She needs her beauty sleep. Otherwise it's Botox for her."
"I am not old," Emily protests. "Lorelai, if you don't want me here, you could just say the word ---"
"Mom. Mom. I want you here. I'm really, really glad you came, and it means a lot to me, but I have this big lump on my head that makes it all hurty and your voice just encourages the lump to start break dancing to My Humps."
"My Humps? What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's a song," Rory supplies.
"It means," Lorelai sighs, "it means I adore you both and I am really happy we are doing this all-talking, no-hating thing again, and I'll see you next week by the table with the apple tarts, but please for the love of God, go home and get some rest. And let me get some rest. I just cracked my head open! I need rest!"
"I'm staying, Mom," Rory says. "You could fall off the bed and land on your head a second time and get another concussion. I must stay and prevent that from happening."
"If Rory's staying, so am I," says Emily, and Alex almost breaks up laughing at the look of despair on Lorelai's face.
"No. You two. Go home." Lorelai beckons Alex over and clings onto the cuff of her sleeve. "Claire will stay with me and protect me from future concussions. Won't you, Claire? Answer in the affirmative."
"Affirmative," Alex answers, because what other choice does she have?
Once Rory and Emily have gone, Lorelai regresses to her seven-year-old self and begins demanding food and coffee.
"I think you should lay off the coffee for now." The cafeteria's closed, so all Alex can offer Lorelai are two orange Tic Tacs.
Lorelai pops them into her mouth and crunches them between her teeth. "But coffee makes me bouncy! And bounciness is what saved my life. Bounciness and snow."
"Right," Alex deadpans. "I had nothing to do with it."
She's joking, of course, but Lorelai doesn't get it --- which is odd, considering --- and Lorelai pulls her close and says, soberly, "You saved me, Claire. You are more important than bounciness and snow." She startles Alex by putting her forehead against Alex's shoulder and pressing her weight down on it. "Thank you," Lorelai's voice comes out as a choked whisper, "for bringing her back to me."
Alex rests her hand on Lorelai's back, and when Lorelai finally leans back, Alex smiles at her and shrugs. "What'd I do?"
Lorelai reconsiders before she answers and bullies Alex into locating reading material for her instead. After scavenging the hallways for magazines and day-old newspapers, she returns with three choices: the Wall Street Journal, Schizophrenia Digest, or the Disney picture-book edition of A Christmas Carol.
Lorelai claps her hands together as much as she can, eyes sparkling like the snow when the first light of the morning sun reflects off it. "I have a confession. I've never read the actual novel, because Dickens depresses me too much, and reminds me off the oatmeal my mother used to make, which even Oliver Twist would've turned down. I would watch the movie sometimes but --- don't laugh at me, Claire. I can see your lips moving --- but the Disney version has ducks, and, well, you can't go wrong with ducks. It made Joshua Jackson's whole career."
"Who?"
"Never mind." Lorelai moves over to make a place for Alex on the bed, and Alex sits down, Lorelai's head finding a spot on her shoulder. "Read," she commands, and Alex does.
I'm still shamelessly pimping my Stars Hollow Christmas mix. Download and listen! (Except for Brandon, who is an IDIOT and a GIRL and I don't care about his opinion because Lo thinks this mix is awesome SO THERE SUCK THIS.)
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Date: 2006-11-29 10:16 pm (UTC)Oh, no, what's the frowny face gonna do? Get the angry face to beat me up? I AM SO SCARED.
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Date: 2006-11-29 10:44 pm (UTC)>:O
>:O
<:))><
@>,'---
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Date: 2006-11-29 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-29 10:47 pm (UTC)Raw fish vomit? YOU ARE FOUL. (Clearly vomit face had an allergic reaction to the rose which led to the vomiting, except because this is an episode of House, they decide that it is NEUROLOGICAL and send vomit face in for an MRI.)
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Date: 2006-11-29 10:57 pm (UTC)(And... just for the record... you put LORELAI GILMORE and ALEX CABOT together... I think that makes you the impressive and deeply frightening one)
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Date: 2006-11-29 11:48 pm (UTC)Foreman disagrees with you. Foreman thinks it's okay that rose and vomit face be together, it's not their fault they have those feelings because they didn't know they were brother and brother, and it's never lupus. It's never lupus.
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Date: 2006-11-30 01:18 am (UTC)Oooh! Maybe Foreman can be the surrogate mommy for all their little sun allergic babies...
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Date: 2006-11-30 03:17 am (UTC)I think you should post your Rosario Dawson/You fic. IT COULD BE THE NEW ALEX/LORELAI.
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Date: 2006-11-30 04:30 pm (UTC)I don't mean to spoil the House season finale for you, but... Foreman gets pregnant... it turns out he's been hiding a uterus all this time and no one knew it.
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Date: 2006-11-30 05:25 pm (UTC)Aw, man, SPOILER!!!! Tell me, did they find out about his uterus because he got a rash on his back? Is that what clued them in?
And it's House's, right? Or Chase's? Or is he having TWINS?
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Date: 2006-11-30 06:42 pm (UTC)Who referred to herself as Fuckbucket...
I'm just not sure how my love, Rosario, fits into all of this. And I don't think either one of us is from Nantucket...
Twins. One is Chase's and one is Cuddy's, actually, but no one can tell the difference between the two love children... orgies can confuse things like that...
House and Wilson = True Love Forever
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Date: 2006-11-30 07:00 pm (UTC)THEY ARE SO OTP!!!!!
*fails at words and points to icon*