A/N: This story takes place in the summer between seasons 2 and 3 and references events from the first two seasons. There is no sexual identity crisis here, and though this perhaps makes the story slightly anachronistic, and slightly OOC, I really just wanted to write a slightly angsty, slightly porny fic about two characters whose relationship was never explored to the extent that I wanted it to be on screen. The focus was where I wanted it to be, and no further.
This story is rated for slightly-descriptive sex and for language.
I do not own these characters and am not making money off of this work.
x
Beginning of Junior year she stops giving a fuck.
Okay, maybe that's a bit late in the timeline of her life to place the moment beyond which no fucks were given. Maybe it was the moment Abby hit the water. Or in the pool at two in the morning with Chris Wolfe, his hand between her legs. Or when she told the barber to just chop it all off, all her hair, that sway-beneath-the-ears style she'd adopted right before she moved, before Capeside and Dawson, before her I'll be a good girl promise to herself. A slash and burn of her look, preparing the way for a slash and burn of her life.
Doesn't matter anyway. She spends the summer with Jack playing games like fuck marry kill with celebrity casts. Later they bring their friends into it. Dawson Pacey Joey. Fuck marry kill. It's harder than she would have thought. She's in a bad mood that day so she offs Dawson. For the others—
"Fuck Pacey," she declares. "A one off. Why not?"
"And marry Joey? Really?"
He's surprised. But she thinks about it. And the more she thinks, the more she's not.
She smiles and laughs it off, laughs everything off. "Well, since marrying you isn't an option."
"Ha ha. Very funny."
The topic drops easily.
x
Joey's working at the Marina this summer and in the afternoons, Jen stops by to watch her. It's the middle of her shift, her hair is falling out of its bun and the top buttons of her shirt are undone and she's sweating and sour and tired in the heat. Her long bare legs go on for fucking ever. Jen wonders if she's realized she's beautiful yet.
Joey asks her what she's doing here and tells her to go away, but she says nothing and no and by the end of July Joey's letting Jen buy her iced coffee after her shift ends. They aren't really friends. Never have been. But Dawson's in Philadelphia and Joey's avoiding the world, and so is Jen, has been for a while now, and it's not as hard as one would think, to curl one's fingers around another girl's wrist.
x
Joey tries to bring up Dawson, six thirty and still light because it's summer, and the days go on and on and on until Jen's just waiting for night (she'll kiss her after dark, she's already decided)—she says she's having second thoughts about hating him forever—but Jen imposes a no-Dawson rule. "Absolutely no Dawson," she repeats. "Just you and me."
Joey looks at her like she doesn't know what she's talking about. She says that limits their conversational opportunities severely. Jen just says, "Here," and moves her chair around the table and pulls Joey's hair free of its ponytail. She brushes it back from her face carefully. Joey's eyes grow wide and round and her pupils become black and open, and she doesn't smile, and she doesn't lean in, but the sun is still up, so it's okay, there's time. She doesn't pull away either. That's enough. Jen invites her home for dinner. She protests but eventually, inevitably, accepts.
x
Jen bribes Jack to make himself scarce.
x
They sit out on the porch and eat ice cream out of the box and it reminds her of months ago that feel like years ago, hazy other-person memories floating just out of reach. Her good-girl skin was so ill-fitting. How she wanted so much for Joey to like her. How she tried. Now Joey doesn't quite look at her, seems to feel something in the way their knees touch, in the way Jen looks at her half-smiling. She wants to lick ice cream off of Joey's fingers. She wants to give her a tongue-tangling kiss and lave at the cold spots on the inside of her cheeks, searching out the faint aftertaste of vanilla bean.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" Joey asks her.
She pretends she doesn't understand.
Summer moves too quickly and what will happen when it ends? She tells herself to stop being a coward. She tells herself she's never been scared like this before, even though that is a lie.
x
Their first kiss is at 10 to 2 in the afternoon, Joey's work shirt tied up to show her stomach, her sleazy boss watching them. He'd been hitting on Joey like a dirty old man, too tan and his hair cut too short. Little unreasonable things about him annoy her, annoy Joey too perhaps because when Jen says, Hey she's taken, in a tone of voice that so clearly implies by me and back off, Joey doesn't argue. She slides her arm around Jen's waist. Jen kisses her cheek. Joey kisses her mouth.
"Too much?" Joey asks once he's gone. "Ugh, too much. I knew it was. He probably got off on it."
"He wasn't the only one," Jen answers.
x
It becomes almost too easy. She stops by the Marina; Joey shows her a back room, hardly ever used; she's shy about it, long pauses between words as she asks, do you want to maybe, but still she does not hesitate to lock the door when Jen closes it behind them. Jen pushes her back against the wall. Joey stares at her with wide doe eyes.
Jen just wants to take her apart, wants to unwind her, wants to find that one loose thread and pull and pull and pull until she's utterly unraveled, incoherent, no more analyses and no more long, pretty words, only desperate moans and fingernails digging into skin. She kisses her neck first. Kisses, small bites—she is careful not to leave any marks—tongue over collarbone, teasing lower, and one hand squeezing her breast, thumb flicking over her nipple through her shirt.
Joey is saying her name and it sounds like a whimper. She's sensitive. Her hands are hesitant at Jen's waist.
This isn't the most graceful make out Jen has ever participated in, but it's hardly the least dignified either, and there is something lovely and sweet about the softness of Joey's skin and the curve of her hips and the press of her breasts against Jen's, the slight breathless noises she makes in Jen's ear. She could be a wild one, Jen's thinking, perhaps some day, but she's not there yet, not ready, and this is how Jen will love her, this is how Jen loves her, just as she is now, nervous and unsure and trembling. She is full of want, jumbled and confused want, and she does not know what to do with the feeling as it brims over in her. Jen tries to show her. She guides her hands, directs her lips, murmurs direction and encouragement and praise. They kiss again, and this meeting of lips against lips slows them, until finally the shaky movements of their bodies against each other all but still. Jen lets her entire world narrow to the slide of Joey's tongue against hers. It's never been quite like this before. It may never be again.
x
Jen knows that Joey Potter will not lose her virginity to her, and this, she thinks idly, is a shame. She would so enjoy skimming her palms down that long body, that not quite woman's body, teasing one of her fingers between Joey's lips, licking circles around her clit, making her clutch her sheets as she arches up into Jen's exquisite touch, bringing her to that edge with calm whispers, it's okay Joey it's okay. She wants to feel the wet folds of her, taste her, have her, all of her.
It's a shame. Jen would treat her better than any boy ever would.
Or at least she likes to think so.
x
They sit on Joey's dock watching the sun skim over the water, cataloguing the colors. Jen is talking about New York—not the people, not who she was there, that tired old story, but just about the feel of it: the pavement and the buildings and the smell of the air. So different from here. Joey swings her legs back and forth and looks out into the distance.
"Almost September," she says, as if she had been waiting a long time to say it. Her words are so forced; it's disgusting the way she tries to make them seem casual. Jen wonders if Joey was listening to a word she said.
"Yep."
A glance. Joey's hand twitches, as if about to reach out for hers. But it doesn't.
Then her words, her inevitable words, rush forth:
"So are we just a summer thing or what because I know we never said but then we never really put this thing, us, into words at all and I'm not really good with relationships that aren't put into words, with just doing instead of talking and describing and analyzing and—"
"Joey."
Jen has to say her name more than once to make her still. She takes Joey's face in her hands.
"Joey," she says, "love," a joke, "why do you ask me questions you already know the answer to?"