Slow Burn
Disclaimer: Honestly, unless you're a real idiot, you don't actually think I own them... the lyric is from Hemorrage, by Fuel.
Spoilers: Anything's fair game. There are spoilers in my author's note, too. Ummm, so you're warned.
Author's Note: *deep breath* Soo, it's my first DC fic, and I'm thinking I may get flamed because it's not very clearly Dawson and Joey OR Pacey and Joey... it's really just one way of interpreting things, I guess. This is just kind of an unseen event, occuring sometime in the interval where Pacey knows Joey lied to Dawson, but he hasn't said anything about it. Again, it's my first DC fic. Please don't kill me, but constructive criticism is our friend. I love all reviews. :)
-o-
"Don't fall away, and leave me to myself..."
This was probably a mistake. His mouth was burning its searing path down her neck, savoring the bitter sweetness of her skin, and this was definitely a mistake. He should stop this right now and confront her. She was lying to him, lying to Dawson, lying to herself, and he shouldn't let her do it.
He shouldn't. But when he'd begun to feel this way about her, all those months ago, he'd known that he was abandoning any sense of right and wrong. He didn't know then, if it was better to leave her to her destiny, her safe future with the man she would inevitably love, or if he should follow his own passion and desire and damn the rest of it. And eventually, he'd done the selfish thing – because really, that's what he was. It was selfish to allow her to delude him into thinking she was all virtue. It was selfish to believe her when he knew better.
Now he was kissing her collarbone, laborously, and she shuddered slightly beneath the heat. God, he loved this woman.
She knew she should stop him. 'Fess up. Be strong. Pacey loved her; she knew he loved her more than was comfortable, more than was really safe. He wouldn't leave her now, not if she just told him the truth. That was the thing about Pacey, the thing that only a few other people knew – once he got involved, he wouldn't leave unless he was forced to. She knew he wouldn't leave over one small, almost inconsequential little untruth. Because really, it hadn't been any of Dawson's business. Had it?
The problem was that she didn't know. Because if she had slept with Pacey based solely on her feelings about Dawson – maybe it really was his business. She shoved the thought to the back of her mind and tried to concentrate on the feeling of making love to the man she loved. Because she did love him.
Everything else melted away. Outside, the rain began to fall.
-o-
The rain was still falling.
Now he was watching her sleep. Like a crazy man, like an obsessed fool, he was neurotically staring at her naked body and waiting to feel the afterglow. It wasn't coming. Sex had only served to stall his doubts, and make him feel more guilty.
He was falling deeper, deeper into his infatuation with her. He knew that if he let the relationship keep going under this false pretense – as though he didn't know she'd betrayed him – he was going to fall so far he wouldn't be able to walk away from it.
It was a wonderful, dirty, awful thing. But he'd loved her so long that he didn't know when he'd begun and couldn't ever see himself stopping. He had so much damn faith in her, and he knew it was wrong, he knew it was stupid, but he was going to follow her around like a little puppy dog and wait for her to tell him the truth. Because he knew she wouldn't, but he still believed she would.
This was going to kill him. He recognized that this was probably not normal, that high school relationships aren't supposed to be like this. They're supposed to be a few innocent kisses, a few good times in the back of your dad's Buick, an endless string of coursages and petty little fights over remote control privileges. They're not supposed to dominate your life. They're not supposed to disillusion you so much that you can't tell which way is up, because all you can see is her face.
It wasn't supposed to feel so damn desperate.
-o-
She felt desperate.
She didn't know precisely why she was pretending to be asleep. If she got up now, they could probably engage in some more of... that before Bessie and Bodie came home. Which wasn't an altogether unpleasant prospect.
But that would also entail looking at this man that loved her. It would mean looking in his eyes and sensing this feeling of hopelessness, and not knowing if it came from him or herself. If she could just stay here, curled in the fetal position, feeling his eyes on her... if she could just stay within herself until he left. Then maybe all this would go away. Because she could rationalize it now, but when she saw him looking at her that way – then she knew she couldn't.
She loved him. She knew that – God, she knew it. She'd spent a lot of restless hours determining that. But the thing was that she loved Dawson, too. And it hadn't taken any time at all to figure it out. It was elemental, inherent, intrinsic.
And when she took that hard, honest look at herself – then she knew. That everything she'd done with and for Pacey, every part of that had somehow been affected by her feelings for Dawson. She fell in love with Pacey because, for once in her life, Dawson hadn't been there. She loved having Pacey love her. She loved Pacey. She might even always love him, and if they had been planning to live in an isolated bubble for the rest of their lives, then maybe this would've worked a little better.
This was the result of a lot of choices, she reminded herself. Choices she had made. She'd chosen to get on the boat – it was an exciting, romantic adventure. She'd chosen to sleep with Pacey – because of something Dawson had said. She'd chosen to lie to Dawson about sleeping with Pacey – because she just wasn't ready to break down those bridges. She'd chosen to lie to Pacey about lying to Dawson – because he was all she had, and she couldn't bear to see her image tarnished in his eyes.
It wasn't supposed to hurt this much to love somebody.
Joey waited until she heard the door close behind him before she started to cry.
-o-