Chapter Text
Night One: Stolen Kisses
They lay there, together but apart, in the old four poster bed, a garishly colored quilt draped over them, staring at the ceiling in silence. The only noises they could hear were the soft breathing and occasional snores of their friends on the floor alongside the bed and the quiet, consistent chirping of crickets outside. Silence.
It hadn’t been silence, but a whisper, that changed their worlds just two hours earlier. A single word, barely audible — “Pacey” — before she grabbed his hand, halting his dejected retreat, and paused for one second before bringing her lips to his for the first time ever. Not their first kiss — their third, actually — but he said he couldn’t keep kissing her, and so she had no choice but to initiate it if she wanted to kiss him again, which she did — desperately. So she finally asked herself the right questions, found her own answers, and — when he remained tense for a moment after their lips touched, when he didn’t embrace her, didn’t breathe, barely moved — she felt a moment of terror that she had waited too long. That he’d changed his mind.
He hadn’t, of course. He was just surprised, in the best possible way, but still — shocked. And nervous. For two weeks, she had been pushing back against the feelings that he was pretty sure matched his — pushing back hard — and he couldn’t help but doubt whether she was really accepting them now. But then her lips moved against his, and he crumbled — whether this was a dream or reality, whether it was the start of forever or it was just for this moment, whether she was still thinking of Dawson or she really wanted him — he didn’t care. He had Joey Potter in his arms, and he was in heaven. He buried his hands in her hair and drew her near and dove in, headfirst, to loving her.
But the moment didn’t last — it couldn’t, because her rare moments of impulsiveness, of risk-taking, rarely did. They’d kissed deeply, embraced tightly, even moved over into the shadows of the house for what he hoped would be the start of something beautiful. But then her eyes caught a shadow move behind a window and she suddenly tensed and pulled away. “We should go inside,” she whispered on an exhale, her heart pounding, and she turned and walked up to the porch and through the door, leaving him with one anguished glance back.
Pacey leaned against the wall of the house, hidden by the shadows, the fire still crackling just a few feet away, and brought his hands to his face. She had fought hard to resist that kiss, he knew — she’d been trying to get him out of her head, scared of her feelings for him and the massive implications for their fragile little universe — but he had hoped that, with the passion and desire and — could it really be? — love he’d poured into it, and that he thought he’d felt in return, her reservations might have melted away. Melted, or evaporated, or been incinerated in the fire of their kiss.
But they hadn’t. She had experienced what he had experienced, and still was able to walk away. That had been his best shot, and it had failed. He felt his heart constrict as he realized he’d probably never hold her like that again.
But he was Pacey Witter, friend to women, and so he inhaled deeply and composed himself and decided that he would never make her feel guilty about her choice, as heartbroken as he might be. He would give her her space. He hoped desperately that they could continue the deep friendship they’d built, because while he wanted, craved, so much more, he needed that. But he’d take a step back and swallow his feelings and his pride and be the upstanding guy — the true friend — that she needed him to be.
So he’d waited 15 minutes and put out the fire — definitely finding the metaphor in his own doused hopes — then gone inside and changed into his pajamas in the dark, quiet living room. He laid down on the couch and pulled a throw blanket over himself, unwilling to make Joey uncomfortable with his presence beside her in the small bed (he had a feeling the sleeping arrangements would be as they had been the night before). But as the minutes ticked by and, with them, the incredibly noisy grandfather clock, he realized he’d get no sleep downstairs. And if they really were going to have a friendship, he should be able to lie chastely next to her in bed — after all, that’s what she and Dawson had done all those years. Staying downstairs suggested that he was moping, or pining for her, and he didn’t want her to think that. He didn’t want her pity.
So he’d climbed the stairs and quietly entered the room. In the soft light of the moon, he saw her there in the bed — far over on one edge as she’d been the night before, clearly expecting that he’d take the other. She was curled up on her side, back toward the center, just as unwelcoming as she’d been last night, and he felt a vague sadness and longing for her snarky behavior of 24 hours ago, when at least possibility had still existed.
Tonight, possibility had become reality, and yet his best shot had failed, and now there was no possibility left.
He got into bed as quietly as he could, and laid there on his back, staring at the ceiling. After some time, she shifted positions, and he could sense that she was doing the same thing, her eyes tracing the shadows above them, awake and thinking, no doubt about Dawson.
He wanted to tell her that he understood — that he forgave her, that he wouldn’t hold a grudge, that he still wanted to be her friend. He recognized that Dawson was and would always be the most important person in her world, that she’d never hurt him just to be with Pacey, that even if she wanted Pacey a little bit — even if she couldn’t stop thinking of him, as she said — even if that kiss had been like fire — he would never mean as much to her as her first love. He wanted to tell her that, but he stayed quiet. He tucked his heart away, and his voice. A silent night.
~~~~
But then, movement. The slightest movement, with no sound attached, but he could feel the sheet shift the tiniest bit. And then, against his pinky finger, he felt the lightest brush of hers. The brush paused, then rested against him, and then it wasn’t a brush but an intentional contact, and then more, as she wrapped her pinky around his and tugged his hand over a bit closer, intertwining all their fingers.
He stayed quiet but his heart was pounding. What was she thinking right now? What was she feeling?
And then she was rolling onto her side again, but this time to face him, not face away, and he followed her lead, doing the same, their fingers still intertwined. In the dim light, he could see the answer to his questions in her eyes, even before she spoke, breaking the silence with the quietest of whispers.
“Pacey…I’m scared.”
Her eyes pleaded with him for his strength, his confidence, his reassurance, his faith. And he tried to share it with her, their gaze connecting their souls in the moonlight. And he said it with his eyes, and then, in a quiet voice, with his words:
“I’m here.”
She gave a silent nod of understanding, of gratitude, and they laid there, staring at each other in the silence, fingers laced together, so much being said in that most chaste of touches. He watched her long after she finally closed her eyes, long after her breath evened out and she slept. He watched her peaceful face, her slightly parted lips, and his heart fell into a rhythm that beat out “may-be, may-be, may-be” until he, too, drifted into a peaceful slumber.
~~~~
He awoke some hours later from a dream, in a dream, the two prepositions indistinguishable as he realized that the shadows he was seeing above him now weren’t formed by branches blowing in the moonlight, but by the morning sun shining through the cascade of brown hair that was falling alongside her face and his, the ends tickling his ears, his neck, his shoulders. She was leaning over him, and her lips were on his, whisper light, tiny little sparklers of desire in contrast to last night’s fireworks in the yard, but real, not a dream. A decision made and an action taken in the light of day. An answer — one that he hadn’t given her, but one that he’d given her the space, the silence, to find on her own.
He met her eyes and they were warm and grateful and full of love, and his heart began to pound a faster “may-be, may-be, may-be”, and he opened his mouth slightly to meet hers, and she deepened the kiss…then slowly wrapped it up, pulling away, but not far. And he looked up at her, questioning what it meant, what it all meant, and she smiled and said, “I couldn’t help it.”
And he smiled and said, “I’m glad.”
She murmured, “But no more right now…they’re all right downstairs.” And his mind latched onto “now”, and what that implied, and he sat up a bit to give her a slow, warm kiss that had her moaning a quiet moan of desire and need, deep in her throat, before he pulled back and said, in agreement, “No more now.”
They sat up next to each other on the bed in the streaming sunlight, the birds chirping outside, breakfast noises coming from below, the nighttime’s silence long gone, and she once again intertwined her fingers with his and gave him a shy, secret smile — only they knew, only them two — and said, “Thank you for last night. I just needed to know you were right there, next to me.”
His smile was warm and held all the promises of his heart. “I always will be, Jo.”
It was the morning following their first silent night together, and neither of them had ever felt so alive.