#lorelai gilmore/max medina

[jomiddlemarch]

Reality has no place in our world

“Mom, stop. You can’t do this,” Rory said. She didn’t fold her arms in front of her chest or glare, two gestures Lorelai herself might have chosen to accompany giving an order, but then Rory was a better person that Lorelai would ever be and also, not nearly as accomplished at glaring; unlike Lorelai, she hadn’t spent the formative years of her facial expression life under the tutelage of Emily Gilmore and neither Luke nor Michel every gave Rory a hard time.

Rory didn’t look angry or exasperated or impatient. She looked a little frustrated, a little tired, and mostly, disappointed. Christ, it was so early, the sky still the dull dark of the moonless hour before dawn, and she’d already made Rory give her that look, the one that wasn’t a glare, and speak in that tone. 

“Do what? The cha-cha?” Lorelai shuffled a bit, shimmying a lot more. “Wake up before my alarm—check. Face the future without fear? On it—”

“You can’t leave Max. You can’t run away the day before your wedding,” Rory said. “You can’t do that to him.”

“No?” Lorelai said, as if she was going to add Try me or watch me or you’re not the boss of me, when it came out sounding like a real question and she was open to alternate suggestions, which as she said it she realized was, in fact, the truth.

“No. You can’t. Whatever’s going on inside your head, you can’t be that mean to him, to just leave. You can’t be cruel because you’re freaking out,” Rory said. “You’re freaking out, right?”

“So, I’m mean and cruel? Did you forget nasty?” Lorelai said, crossing her own arms in front of her. Someone ought to and it didn’t seem like Rory was going to. She carefully avoided answering the freak-out question, though it didn’t take a world-class genius to raise the hypothesis.

“I didn’t say any of that and you know it. This isn’t some cute rom-com, where you can ditch the guy at the altar and then there’s some montage of a roadtrip or a bunch of zany, over-caffeinated high-jinks,” Rory said.

“That sounds better than this,” Lorelai said. “A lot better. What’s the soundtrack?”

“It’s not. It’s not real,” Rory replied, ignoring her attempt at deflection. “You have to call Max. You have to talk to him, before you decide to do whatever you decide to do.” 

“I do?” They both heard the reference to wedding vows and Lorelai raised an eyebrow. Rory frowned.

“Don’t make this weirder, Mom. Call Max. I’ll get the phone,” Rory said.

“Okay. Fine. You’re obviously not going to let this go,” Lorelai said. Was she a little relieved that Rory had called out her imminent scarpering? Around 23% seemed fair. 

“I’m not,” Rory agreed. “You’ll thank me for it.”

“Don’t press your luck, kiddo—"

She called.

Max answered on the second ring, his voice the kind of growly that meant she’d woken him, which wasn’t a huge surprise because it was still hovering around 5 am. They didn’t talk for long. She asked him to come over and he said he’d be there in 20 min without asking any questions why, which was big of him given the time and date and she knew she herself would have expected some kind of explanation and probably would have taken more like 40 min to get to his apartment, because she damn well would have made a travel-mug of coffee even if she was heading over in yesterday’s jeans and the first tee-shirt she could put her hands on.

With only 20 min, she made a pot of coffee and put on fresh jeans. She didn’t change her tee-shirt. The coffee had been Rory’s idea. Lorelai recognized Rory was looking for other ways to keep her from bolting besides guilt and that coffee, naturally, was the best available approach. Lorelai sat at the kitchen table and waited for Max, letting Rory be the one to open the front door and then take herself off to Babette’s, since it was too early for anywhere else to be open.

“What’s wrong?” Max said, sitting across from her, a mug of coffee in front of him, untouched. Lorelai herself was also untouched, Max forgoing a hug or a kiss or even his hand on her shoulder or pushing back the loose hair by her cheek. She couldn’t be bitter about it, but she was, a little, even though she knew she was being unreasonable.

“Why do you think something’s wrong?” she countered, as if this would be some kind of ordinary sparring, like whether Al’s food could ever truly be called Chinese or if Brandy was a good name for a dog.

“Why do I—it’s 5:23, you called and asked me to come right over. There’s no good news you deliver that way,” he said, pretty calmly given that he could well be deeply frustrated, annoyed or outright enraged at her dancing around. He hadn’t even gotten to see her cha-cha.

“Maybe I do, maybe that’s something you don’t know about me—”

“Lora, enough,” he interrupted and she couldn’t have said whether it was hearing the nickname only he ever used or the brevity, just two words, or the tenderness in his voice, in his tired, dark eyes, but something in her broke.

“I don’t think I can marry you,” she said.

“Okay,” he said. “Why couldn’t you wait to tell me?”

“Okay? Okay?!” she repeated, screeching if she were being honest with herself, which is what this whole thing has been supposed to be about. 

“I didn’t mean I was happy to hear you say it. It was an acknowledgement, nor approval. Why couldn’t you wait until actual morning?” he said.

“I wasn’t planning this.” She took a sip of her coffee. It wasn’t as good as Luke’s but that was nothing new.

“You weren’t planning this—” he paused, looking at her with a degree of acuity that made her want to flee. Or squirm. She gripped the handle of the mug and hoped it wouldn’t break off in her hand. They sat there for like forever or 47 seconds, she couldn’t be sure. “This wasn’t your idea. This was Rory’s idea, us talking, she’s the only person you’d do this for—”

“I’d do it for you—”

“No, you wouldn’t,” he said. “You were going to leave. You were going to leave me a day before the wedding.”

Well, she’d known he was intelligent and good at reading her and quick, so fucking quick, that was why she’d fallen in love with him—

“Were you going to write a note? Call?” he asked. Lorelai sat, feeling lumpish and pathetic and all betrayal-y, and didn’t say a word. Max closed his eyes for a moment and let out a breath. “You weren’t going to do anything. You were going to run away and someone else was going to have to tell me. To deal with everything.”

“Sookie would’ve called you,” Lorelai said. She tried not to mumble, though she really felt like mumbling, more than she’d ever want to mumble in her whole life.

“You’d have called her from wherever you went,” Max said. “She’s making the wedding cake.”

“Five tiers,” Lorelai said. “All buttercream frosting. She has a thing against fondant.”

“It tastes like shit,” he said. It was quiet between them, so quiet a bird could have twittered or sung its cute little morning song so they could share a smile or the eye-part that went with a smile without actually moving their lips, but it was quiet and she wondered if Max would get up and walk out. 

“What’s wrong, Lora?” he said softly, which was a far cry from stomping out or shouting or making a snide, sarcastic remark about her, which were all the responses she would have expected from the other men in her life, Luke, her father, and Christopher respectively, and for the first time, she felt her eyes fill with tears.

“I don’t think I can do it. I’m not—you won’t want, I, I didn’t look at my dress every night,” she said in a rush.

“Is that a thing? Looking at your dress every night?” he said.

“My mother says it is.”

“But you think she’s wrong about almost everything,” he said. He made a good point.

“She said she wanted to, that’s how she knew she wanted to get married,” Lorelai said.

“Maybe that’s not how you’d know,” Max said. “In fact, I would bet good money that it’s not how you’d know, because I know you like your dress but it’s not even a distant second to coffee in your regard.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Lorelai said.

“Have you ever thought you don’t have to? That we don’t care about each other because it’s something we deserve, but because I want you and you want me?” he said.

“You don’t want me,” she said, before she could think twice, could stop herself or figure out something that would come after, some explanation about how there was a much better woman out there for him and he shouldn’t get derailed by her. She didn’t want to be his trainwreck.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” he snapped, then rubbed his face with his hand. “I’m sorry, this is hard. But I know what you expect. You expect me to walk out, plus or minus lashing out at you first.”

“What—”

“It’s what Christopher does. He leaves. It’s what Luke does. He walks away, he shuts down. It’s what you father does. He scolds you and he stalks out,” Max said. “Lora, I’m not going to do that.”

“But why?” she said. “Why not?”

“Because I love you. Because if loving you, I need to leave you, I’m not leaving like that,” he said.

“I was going to,” she said, almost under her breath.

“I know. But you listened to Rory and she wouldn’t let you,” he said and then he scrunched up his forehead in a way that was unfairly adorable. “She’s very insightful. And not here—is she next door at Babette’s?”

Lorelai could count on one hand the number of times Christopher had ever expressed concern about where Rory was, who was looking after her, or uttered a smidgen of praise that wasn’t of the generic “so pretty so smart” variety. 

“Yeah, she’s next door,” Lorelai said. “I still don’t think we should get married.”

“I know about Luke,” Max said. Lorelai suddenly understood the expression knocked over with a feather, though she didn’t know who was keeping feathers around for such a purpose. She felt herself goggle at Max and knew it was not her most attractive look, but needs must.

“What do you mean, you know about Luke?” 

“He hand-carved a chuppah for you to get married beneath. I can recognize when someone else cares about you. You never asked, but he must have,” Max said.

“Must have asked what?”

“He knows you’re not Jewish. He found out I am and he built a chuppah for you,” he said. “It sure as hell wasn’t for me.”

“You’re Jewish?” 

“Yeah,” he said. “My mother’s side. The side that counts. She was a Cohen before she married my father.”

“I had no idea—”

“I didn’t fall in love with you for your astonishing attention to detail and detective skills,” Max said. “I’m in love with you and I know Luke loves you and you love him, but are you going to throw away what we have when I’m not asking you to give him up?”

“What are you saying, Max?” Lorelai shook her head. “Despite what my mother thinks of me, I’m not…kinky.”

“Wow, that is a whole other conversation,” he said, laughing, which was not something she’d had on her bingo card for the discussion about breaking an engagement at the last minute. “I meant, you don’t have to stop caring about Luke, I don’t expect that. I don’t expect him to stop loving you—if there’s anything I can understand, it’s loving you. But not as a husband. Not as Rory’s stepfather—I want that and he doesn’t—”

“How do you know he doesn’t?” Lorelai said. It was the second time this night-into-morning that she’d said something that was intended as a challenge and realized she’d just asked a question of someone she trusted more than herself.

“Because you’ve lived here for over ten years and he’s never said anything, for all the breakfast, lunches and dinners he’s made for you. He’s never asked you out on a date or stayed for pizza or Al’s. He’s never been the one who ran out to the pharmacy to get Tylenol when Rory spiked a fever or needed posterboard for a school project at the last minute,” Max said. 

“Rory has never needed a school supply at the last minute,” Lorelai said. 

“He’s never made the cupcakes for the bake sale. Sookie did that and she still does,” Max said. He pushed his coffee mug away and left his right hand palm up on the table top. She’d held that hand, felt it cupped around her cheek, pressed against the small of her back and the curve of her ass. It was unclear whether she’d ever touch him again and she wished she could read the future in the creases and lines being picked out by the early morning sunlight. 

“Look, I’m not telling you you have to marry me and it’s not a contest and it’s not a guilt-trip. I’m only saying that I love you and I think you love me and what you’re worried about, about needing to choose, about not caring in the right way, the right amount, I think it’s bullshit. It’s partly your mother’s fucking bullshit and some of it is societal expectations and some is your own stuff going back to Christopher and the teenage rebellion that turned into being a teen mom. I want you to be happy, to do what makes you happy, but I want you to know where I stand. What I can live with. You’ll never stop loving Luke and Christopher will always be Rory’s father and I am okay with that, with all of that. Because I fucking love you, Lora.”

“I love you too,” she said. “But maybe, I don’t know if it’s the right way—”

“When has doing anything the right way ever mattered to you?” he replied and she had to laugh because it was true and because he understood her enough to know it and say it.

“I’m not sure it’s enough,” she said.

“What is enough? Is a thousand yellow daisies enough? Is agreeing to call me at 4:53 enough?” he pushed. “This isn’t a rom-com, it’s real life. And we’re not both sixteen, we’re adults. Let me ask you, why did you call me today? I know if was Rory’s idea but you did it, you could have refused, you could be driving to God knows where right now—”

“I wanted to,” she said. “I wanted to hear your voice. I didn’t call because I felt like I owed it to you. I’m not that good a person.”

“I want to talk to you first thing in the morning,” Max said. “I don’t ever want it to be too early.”

“What about too late?” Lorelai said. She’d done a fair job of royally fucking things up for all his protestations to the contrary. The caffeine and sun might be hitting him, he might think twice about sticking around.

“No such thing,” he said. He didn’t move, so she let go of her coffee and put her hand in his. “But maybe you want a new dress?”

“I can’t get a new dress the day before the wedding, Max,” she said, already thinking of that sweet little number she’d seen in a consignment store window in Hartford, all nipped in waist and Givenchy New Look attitude and the look Max would give her if she were walking toward him in it. She thought of Max watching her come closer and Luke watching her walk away until she was in the shadow of the chuppah he’d built. She thought it was impossible and that she’d heard worse ideas and not just from Kirk on any topic.

“Says who?”

She wore the new, second-hand dress.

Max stomped a glass wrapped in a cloth napkin in lieu of a rabbi. 

She didn’t take his name. In the receiving line, Luke kissed her cheek and called her Lorelai. Cutting Sookie’s masterpiece (Every tier a different flavor! Homemade quince preserves! Candied white violets!), she didn’t notice the weight of her wedding ring, but she couldn’t look away from the gold band on Max’s hand.

When she woke in the night from a dream full of dread, regret, the terrible mixture of mistake and failure, that hand lay gently on her hip and when she grew too tense, he murmured what’s wrong, Lora and then she could go back to sleep.

[zeroandvoid]

🎈 Lorelai & Max moodboard 🎈

[masteroftheblankstare]

Growing up is realizing Max Medina was the fucking WORST. God I cannot explain the rage that fills me anytime I see someone criticize Lorelai for this relationship not working. This man PROPOSED because they got into a fight. They hadn’t even been together a YEAR. He blamed Lorelai for everything when she has a fucking kid and a life and shouldn’t be expected to fit into whatever he wanted her to be. Did he not think it’s a red flag he’d never met her family? Did they ever celebrate a birthday, Christmas or fucking Arbor Day together? I’m not saying Lorelai was perfect in this relationship, but he was just as immature if not worse. I haven’t even touched on him being Rory’s teacher. I wish just one person could have told Lorelai thank god you didn’t go through with it! I was worried you were rushing into things. This guy seems a little immature, impulsive and demanding!

[bellzsad]

there's more but i can't fit them..

put reasonings in comments/reblogs!!

[twelvessa]

it'd be great if literate men existed in real life and not just the gilmore girls cinematic universe

[strawberrystainedheart]

Help, I think I have a little crush on Max Medina but I mean who wouldn't like a kind, beautiful man teaching English literature, who also cooks, is emotionally available, not scared of commitment and will fill your life with a thousand flowers?

[big-idiot-wolf-boys]

Something I'm thinking about today is how lorelai was fully disinterested in Max being involved in Rory's life as a parent and hated it when Luke wanted the same with her after April came into the picture. hm. 🤔

[notes-in-the-margins]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57580213/chapters/149495062

[cerebraljopper]

everyone always talks about this being so romantic but i don’t get it. she literally told him how she wanted her proposal, and he followed directions. like okay? bare minimum?

[annamatix]

AGAIN. LORELAI. YOU'RE DATING SOMEONE. WHY ARE YOU OPENLY KISSING YOUR EX. A GOODBYE KISS IS NOT IMPULSIVE THAT IS A THOUGHT-OUT ACTION.

[mot-hesbian]

I know everyone loves Max and all, and he's a good guy for the just part, but I feel like we don't talk enough about his... persistence.

Lorelai told him "no" on more than one occasion. She said she was uncomfortable with the idea of dating him more than once. She acknowledged she was attracted to him, but that it wasn't something she wanted to pursue.

And after all that, he kept going. No means no. If a woman says she's uncomfortable with you pursuing her for whatever reason, it means she doesn't want to go out with you. It does not matter if she is attracted to you, if she says she isn't interested in anything happening between you and doesn't want to act on that that's her prerogative.

If a woman says "no," "I'm not comfortable with this," and/or "I'm not interested in this dynamic," resect that and back off.

Especially given the power imbalance with him being her daughter's teacher.

What he did constitutes harassment.

Just because he eventually got a yes doesn't mean he didn't ignore boundaries that she tried to set with him.

Then, there's the proposal.

He thinks she dated Luke while they were broken up and starts a whole thing about her not wanting to fess up to it. When this continues to get heated he decides the best way to "fix" this is to propose mid argument, not because he thinks the timing is right. She essentially says that she won't dignify that with a proper answer, but it's not hard to figure out that it's a no. She tells him that's not how you propose to someone and lists off ways to actually go about it.

Mind you they had barely hit 2 months in their relationship before breaking up, were broken up for a while, and had just gotten back together when this happened. He couldn't even trust her when she said nothing had ever happened between her and Luke.

He then steals one of her ideas for an ideal proposal, and handles this over the phone. His motivations for proposing have not changed, he did not pull a 180 that fast, he just made it more romantic and hoped she'd forget that the whole reason he wanted to get married was because they had a fight and he was jealous.

I don't like her Max for that very reason, he's a good guy, but the fact he can't respect her boundaries makes me uncomfortable and gives me the ick.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

[emmafallsinlove]

sometimes, more often than i want to admit, i think max was lorelai’s first adult relationship in the last 16 years since she had rory. because i think of 16 years old lorelai running away, working as a maid, being a mom, learning towards a driving license and get one just so she could be able to drive rory from place to place and i think of how immature lorelai and max relationship has been at times and how for 16 years of rory’s existence, lorelai entire world was focused on rory, she doesn’t know who she is without being a mother to someone, that’s why in s6 when she and rory having the fight she adopts paul anka just so she could take care of someone who needs her. and yeah i know she had told rory she dated other men before max, but which 21 - 22 years old would want to date a 21 years old with a 4 years old daughter? because it isn’t just lorelai, it’s rory as well. lorelai life stopped the moment she had rory, she started learning in college when rory was 14 years old, she graduated when rory was 17. she stopped her personal life for rory and i think that max must have been her first serious relationship in years, maybe since christopher, and what she had with chrisopher was nearly a relationship because we know nothing about their shared past besides the fact that christopher wanted to go with richard’s plan and marry lorelai but lorelai had said no and it’s just. so heartbreaking to think about.

[catastrxblues]

wait, so that’s it?? we never get max’s first reaction when lorelai decided to call off the wedding less than a week before it was supposed to happen???? like that’s just it? lorelai called it off, ran away with rory, we see the town’s reaction, her mother’s reaction, but we’re never going to see max, the fiancé’s reaction??? not even a phone call, how did he know, their conversation, did lorelai tell him before she left or after, did he even know it from lorelai, or did he know it from the people in the town. like THAT’S IT??? now the semester’s starting and rory and max see each other in the hallway and it’s all awkward and we see they talked but never lorelai and max and that’s all???? like where’s the resolution between these two? i’m just a bit disappointed, and this is kinda irritating and i don’t know why 😭

[thestarlightforge]

Rewatching Gilmore Girls bc why not, lol. 1x05, “Cinnamon’s Wake.” Max and Lorelai have their coffee date. Max cozies up to her, gives a long speech about his uncle who didn’t go after a girl— “follow your gut, seize the moment,” etc. Lorelai resists, for Rory, but she’s tempted. (Maybe I’m just seeing more, being a director and intimacy choreographer now, but Lauren is brilliant here.) Max walks away. “If there's something in your gut that you know, you feel, is right, you gotta go after it, no matter what.”

AND THEN IT CUTS

TO (Sookie and)

LORELAI AT LUKE’S

[beatlebug987]

Just finished episode 10 s1 of Gilmore Girls and my question is WHY are Lorelai and Max a thing but not Lorelai and Luke I mean COME ON HES RIGHT THERE

[amorhedera6]

max and lorelai make me so angry. because they had so much potential but the writers don’t actually know what to do with it. they know that the two actually getting married would change the whole dynamic of the show, and they have a pretty rocky relationship, but they don’t show actual unrest in the relationship until the episode where they break up. this is not how arcs are done!! the first half of red light on a wedding night should come a few episodes before the leaving, the bachelorette party in between. spread it out. show us things growing, give us more time to understand the issues at hand.