AUTHOR'S NOTE: An anon on Tumblr asked for this after reading my Literati New Year's Eve oneshot for Gilmore Girls. I've never written PJo as a pairing before but I'm always game to try new things (especially when I ship them as hard as I do), so here we are. It's post-canon fluff but with Jen still alive.

Enjoy, darlings!

xx Ashlee Bree

"It'll never work, Pace," she said as she sipped a hot toddy from her chair by the bonfire. Peering out at the creek instead of at his crunching approach, the sky starless but with air brisk enough to flake the lapping waves of the cape with snow if it so desired, Joey felt the drink's warmth soothe the chill in her mittened hands before it spread to her bones with a shiver she'd never catch. "Whatever you're planning, I admire the effort, I really do…"

"I sense a major but coming. Dawson, Jen, Jack, Dougie—" he corralled as amusement, firelight, and perhaps one too many merry whiskeys danced in his eyes. "Don't you hear the major but lurking in my wife's next words?"

"Sure do, little brother."

"She told me but was her favorite conjunction once," Jack said with a tip of his beer and a hiccup.

Amused, Jen exhaled. Shook her head. "Sometimes I forget how much I miss you people."

Gathered around the flames with good friends, warm blankets, and a combination of new and old memories, this group of twenty-somethings wouldn't trade a laidback small town holiday in Capeside for anything more extravagant tonight. This was comfort at its finest. This was fun amid freezing Massachusetts wind and temperatures cold enough to give them frostbite. This was quality family time.

"Your ingenuity's unmatched at the moment, however misguided it might be. I'll give you that much," Joey said as she hugged her knees and scowled in vain at the 'something' hidden beneath her husband's coat while her friends laughed. All of them seemingly in on the same joke.

"I'll take that back-handed compliment and raise you a nod in thanks," Pacey fired back.

She regarded him with an arched brow as he neared, pointing.

"Don't think I'm not onto you, by the way. I know that scheming look of yours all too well."

"You know," hand wagging, his tongue slid out over his bottom lip, "it's not nice to accuse my face of things. What's an innocent guy supposed to think?"

"Innocent? You?" Joey waved him off. Sighed long and well. Then she toasted with Dougie before taking another large swig from her mug. "Please, you haven't been innocent since we were seven and you tried to trick me into eating a bucket of sand so I could protect myself from the Loch Ness Cronster who lurked beneath the Leery's dock," she said.

"Wow." With a hand over his heart, he feigned stumbling backwards as if she'd shot him. "I can't believe you're still holding that against me. What is this, the second grade?"

Shrugging, "Potters are serious grudge-holders."

"Notorious in your case," Pacey added under his breath.

"Hey! Those are fighting words. Put up your dukes."

"I told you she wouldn't fall for any of your end of the year games this time, man," Dawson called out with a hearty chuckle, Jen looking on by his side. Her red knitted head rested against his shoulder while one arm curled around his middle and her lips lifted in a quiet smile. Observant as always.

"I suppose we'll have to see about that now, won't we?"

Looking up, Joey's eyes narrowed in challenge, "Oh, bite me Pacey."

He halted before her then, head cocked and knees stooping so he could pull her to her feet in one smooth motion. He spun her toward him with ease, thanks to their ballroom dance lessons all those years ago. It seemed time and trust and love had finally taught them how to move in sync. Or at least had kept them from bruising the hell out of each other's toes now that they could anticipate each other's steps better. (Sometimes, anyway. Yeah, sometimes was still the most accurate word.)

"Whoever said anything about biting, Potter?" he whispered against the shell of her ear.

"Nice try, Fred Astaire—but no."

"How are you objecting already?" She tried to push against his chest with fisted mittens but Pacey reeled her closer by the scarf strings. "You don't even know what I'm about to do," he said.

"Don't I?"

"I promised you, remember?" An arm slunk around her waist. It held her firm against his chest where she belonged. "No pranks to herald in the New Year."

"Oh, really?" Joey crossed her arms, playful, a little smirk forming at the corner of her mouth. "Then empty your pockets."

Appearing affronted for a moment, but only a moment, Pacey scratched a thumb across his chin as if in thought before he reached into his coat with that grin of his widening until it was on full display. It was the cheeky one, too. Not the regular obnoxious one he wielded for sarcastic purposes or provoking alone because he knew it drove her mad, and boy, did it ever! (The number of married years under their belts did nothing to appease how much he still plucked at the nerves under her skin at times). This grin, though…this one, he flashed only when some kind of raucous surprise or sweeping unexpectedness was on the horizon, and much to her eye-rolling chagrin, it usually was.

"This is how romanticism dies, I'll have you know," he said with a low grumble.

Joey pulled back.

"Why? You mean because I'm loath to accept that -" she swatted above them " - that thing as a lousy substitute?"

"Yep."

She humphed.

"Keats would be disappointed in you, my lady."

Caught somewhere between a snort and a scoff, she gaped up at the no-longer-hidden item in Pacey's hand before offering him a wry smile and wrapping her arms around his neck. Then she pressed their foreheads together, cupped his face in her palms, "Says the man who's currently dangling a stalk of produce above our heads like it's the most sentimental gesture in the history of sentimental gestures," she pointed out.

"Come on, Jo. It's romantic."

"Mmm…debatable," she said with a cute scrunch of her nose, with a shrug that caused their hips to bump. "Especially considering it's celery you've pilfered from the fridge, which you then tied with a little red bow before presenting it to me."

"That's only because I'm conscious of how every detail matters, you see."

"It does have green leaves, Joey. That's festive, right?" Jen cut in at the first stroke of twelve. "Also, it's fibrous in a non-poisonous way, so there's that added benefit."

"Yeah," Jack laughed, Dougie's hand on his knee. "It's not like anybody here cares if the leaves are brown and wilting off the damn thing already."

"Besides, it's not as if we don't all know Pacey completely ripped off this whole idea from Jacob Goldman with his broccoli mistletoe in Grumpy Old Men, anyway. So I think we can safely chalk up this amorous whim to borrowed creativity and an unspecified amount of liquor," Dawson added in that philosophical tone of his, but with a face which was as free of jealousy as it was unencumbered by any mulling forehead lines.

"Don't forget love, Leery," said the borrower in question before he leaned in to kiss his sharp-tongued, big-brown-eyed girl. Their lips met just before the final midnight chime. "You know it's about true love above all else with me."

It always was.

Since Dawson was liable to see the film angle in everything, big or small, it was no surprise to the rest of them later on to learn that he'd found Pacey and Joey's impromptu kiss beneath a shriveled stalk of celery in the last seconds of 2008 to be an inspiring slice of life for him. In his own words, or as he'd dubbed it in the bonus features of the Season 4 DVD, it was thereafter known as—

An absurd moment of affection, humor, and storytelling possibility.

Thoughts? Comments are always appreciated.

Thanks for reading!