This is just a test. I'm thinking of including this in "Tolerance" later, but seeing as I'm only into S2 on that one—and I desperately need feedback now—I am posting "Caught" as a separate piece.
To be continued later…
CAUGHT
"I just want to know what it's like," she said, leaning against the tree.
He kissed her with resolute tenderness. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she said, hiding her nervousness with a throaty whisper. "Yes."
She knew it wasn't about love; this wasn't about anything more than sex. She denied that it was about another boy but, deep down, she suspected it was…wondering what it would be like to kiss him…to touch him. She had been fighting back the impulse for months, throwing herself into yet another entanglement—anything to divert herself from thinking about what was, what wasn't and what could or should be.
She heard the ragged tear of a zipper and quickly replaced his hands with hers as she lifted his soft penis from its bondage in briefs. It became alert to her touch and she stared, fascinated by the sensation she was able to evoke with a slight movement along the hardening shaft.
Of course she had seen penises before. Growing up, strip poker had been an illicit, conscious-raising activity during nighttime excursions into the woods with her two best pals. For some reason, the boys always seemed to lose—and she knew she wasn't that good of a player. One boy loved to strut his stuff, howling in the wind and conjuring up ancient Indian spirits. The other was more shy and withdrawn, holding out until she at least had lost her top. Boys will be boys.
Still, she was much less of a tomboy than either her sister or their parents knew. She was eleven years old and curious even before the hormones officially kicked in. She had decided a long time ago—six months at least—that she was glad she'd been born a girl, and one look …or two…or three at that male appendage, its misshapen form hanging awkwardly there, only convinced her further.
Now she was sixteen and less repulsed, decidedly more intrigued. What did she know about men? What could she learn about them?
She took his tip in her hand and encircled it with the pad of her thumb. He disguised a moan with a studious cough. Her hand slid again down the shaft, this time investigating the fleshy scrotum beneath.
"Oh, baby. Oh, baby," he groaned.
"Hmm?"
"That feels so…oh my…oh, good!"
He whispered his delight as her hand traveled up and down his erect penis, gaining momentum as involuntary responses took over. Unable to control himself, he began to thrust back and forth in her hand to speed things along. He wanted to articulate all sorts of expletives, dangerous naughtiness; fearing offense, however, he stuck to a less vivid vocabulary.
He grunted acquiescence when her other hand snaked down to the target testicles. On the verge of orgasm, he startled her by grabbing her left breast through her Easter sweater, kneading desperately.
"Stop, stop," he cried out.
"Why?" she panted in response.
He opened his eyes, squinting to look deeper into the woods. "Oh Jesus. Shit. I'm coming, Jo!"
She let go of his penis as he jerked and twitched in orgasmic spasm. Once again, she couldn't help looking, mesmerized by the visible fruit of her labor.
zzzzzzzzzz
"What the hell?"
Joey turned around in surprise, tactfully blocking A.J. from full view. "Bessie."
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Nothing…much," she insisted as her sister surveyed the situation.
Accessing, quite correctly, that "nothing much" was definitely not "nothing at all", Bessie became indignant. "I thought you were going out to post more signs—not feel up the damn pole!"
"Bessie? Mind your own business."
"I'm the guardian and you're still my younger sister, Joey. Go inside and we'll talk about this later."
"I am not…"
"Go inside!" Bessie screamed.
Joey looked back at A.J., who by now was decently covered and rearranged. He nodded with resignation. Knowing further resistance was futile, Joey strode forcefully ahead as she walked back to the B&B.
"Bess…"
"I want you packed up and out of here within the hour."
"Perhaps…"
"No, A.J. You overstepped the line. My sister is just sixteen—if she doesn't know any better, you should. Go back to Boston. I think we can handle the protest just fine without you."
"Can I call…"
"We'll see, A.J. I want to talk to Joey first."
zzzzzzzzzz
She shouldn't have called him, but she felt compelled to. A.J. was gone and both Bodi and her sister were mad at her, threatening to ground her if either one caught them again. She needed to talk to someone who would understand.
"Hello, Mrs. Witter. Is Pacey home?"
Mrs. Witter covered the phone, announcing to anyone in the 617 area code that it was "that girl". Pacey tore the phone away from her.
"Hey, Jo. What's up?"
"Can you get away? I need to talk."
"Sure. I'll meet you at the diner in…ten minutes."
"It's kinda private."
"Okay. I'll pick you up in five. We can drive around."
For once, Pacey arrived exactly when promised. Joey was already outside, nervously pacing up and down her newly-redecorated front yard. She ran up to the car as soon as she saw the headlights.
"Thank God," she exclaimed, getting in. Pacey looked at her intently, concerned less about throwing the Wagoneer into gear than hearing what Joey had to say.
"Can we go? Now?" she pleaded.
"At your service, Miss Daisy," he joked as he maneuvered the car into a speedy U-turn and headed back down the country road with residue dust in their wake. "So…what's up? What was the rush all about?"
"This is not going to be as easy as I thought," Joey admitted. "I don't know where to start."
"Not to sound like a cliché, but how about the beginning?"
"There is no real beginning. There are paths taken and others not taken, dead-end roads…a plethora of what-ifs…"
"You've got my undivided attention, Jo. Tell me the first what-if."
"What if I hadn't expected so much of Dawson? What if we had stayed together and explored the things that scared us?"
"Like?"
She was quiet for a moment. "Sex."
"You didn't? I mean, I know you didn't, but why didn't you?"
"You really want to hear this? I thought Dawson would have…"
"Dawson didn't say much at all. Except that he wanted you and you…I guess you weren't ready."
Joey felt her cheeks burning. "I don't know if I can do this. I'm sorry, Pace," she apologized.
"It's personal. I understand. We can go back, if you want."
"No, no."
"Why did you call me, Jo?"
"Because I thought…I mean, you being a man and all…I uh…Well, you've had…experience."
"I see," he chuckled lightly.
"Don't laugh!"
"I'm not, Joey. Why don't you tell me what scared you?"
"Maybe scared is too strong a word. We liked making out. Kissing him after all those years of thinking about it was…exciting. Sometimes he would try and touch me, mostly my breasts…"
"Yeah. The guy is definitely a breast man."
Joey smirked. "Anyway…" she said with emphasis. "I don't know why but I rarely thought of touching him. I mean, below the waist."
"I thought you guys had some kind of sex pact."
"He told you that? That's the weird thing…because we settled on that long before we ever got involved. We were just joking around, talking about all the milestones we were now facing. Neither one of us wanted to lose our virginities to just anyone…so we agreed if there was no one special, no one it felt right with…"
"You would be each other's first."
"Yeah. Stupid, eh?"
"No, not so stupid."
"But every time we would get close, every time he would, you know, get on top and I could…um, feel it…it…It just didn't seem right. I loved him, you know. I really did."
"Of course you did." Wait a minute. She did it again. Did she say loved—past tense?
"We were still too much like friends, not lovers. It felt weird. I never let him…" Pacey put his hand on her knee. "…touch me anywhere that was too intimate."
"So the groping thing was pretty much off-limits. What about with Jack?"
Joey shot him a look. Of course, thanks to the sinister machinations of the "dearly" departed—meaning Abby Morgan—their inner circle knew that they'd almost "done the dirty deed" but backed off in a reconsidered minute.
"We did a lot of groping. The first time, at least. I guess it was the thrill of something new, the unexpected…yet another case of hormones run amuck, encouraged by our stellar role reversal on the nude scene from Titanic."
She paused for a moment, seemingly lost in the memory, then continued forward. "I'd never seen a boy with an actual erection before. I thought maybe…Well, if I could inspire him in that way, just talking about sex and first times, maybe the rules didn't apply. Maybe it was the right thing to do because it was the right time and place."
"But it wasn't?"
"Nope. He got a hard-on talking about it, but he couldn't do it. Pretty soon, I was back in the same place that I had been with Dawson. We had a great time making out…and rarely ventured anywhere else."
"So that was another path not taken. Were there any paths taken?"
"That would be last night."
"Huh?" Pacey blurted out, momentarily stunned.
"A.J. stayed after the volunteer meeting and we…" Joey stalled, and for the first time Pacey was grateful for her inarticulateness. "We…uh…" She looked down at her hands; Pacey looked at them too, recalling the surprise he had planned for her involving a brush, a wall and a pair of paint cans he had in the back of the car.
"We went walking in the woods and…"
Her voice trailed off into nothingness. He finished her declaration for her. "You did it?"
"Not quite."
"How not quite?"
"Gawd…this is embarrassing."
"Potter, you're talking to the King of Embarrassing Missteps."
"That's true. You're one up on me there, Witter."
"So?"
"I just wanted to touch him—touch it—see what it felt like to make him…hard and…"
"You naughty girl! You wanted to make him cum."
"Sorta."
"And?"
"Bessie caught us." Pacey couldn't help laughing out loud. "Pacey, you promised you wouldn't!"
"I'm sorry, Jo. It's just that you have the worst luck with men and sex."
"I did make him cum, anyway," she reported, proudly.
"Good girl. I wouldn't have expected any less."
"Why did he want me to stop?"
"I don't know. You'll have to ask College Guy. Maybe he felt awkward doing it out in the open like that. Maybe he felt vulnerable…embarrassed about what was about to happen. The guy's kinda put you on a pedestal, Jo. Maybe it was too real-life messy for him."
"You think? I don't know…maybe." Her eyes focused on Pacey's hand on her knee and again she became quiet. Pacey rubbed inside her knee. It felt nice, reassuring, and yet strangely non-threatening. She knew he wasn't putting the moves on her, but still…
Joey cleared her throat and looked out onto the road. Darkness surrounded them. Her voice dropped down into hushed tones. "How come I can't stop thinking about it? Why can't I control these…urges?"
"You're a teenager, Jo. It's all perfectly natural, normal even. Welcome to the wonderful animal kingdom."
Her eyes returned again to the hand on her knee. "Can we go back?" she queried.
"How about I buy you a milkshake?"
"Isn't it too late at night for a milkshake, Pace?"
"Potter, it is never too late at night for a milkshake."
zzzzzzzzzz
"Do you think I'm doing anything wrong?"
"That's a loaded question, Jo," Pacey said as he watched Joey stirring her vanilla shake for the umpeenth time.
"Why?"
"Well, it depends on what you mean. Are you doing anything wrong in terms of exploring sex or…"
"Shh! I think there are at least a couple of patrons in the corner who didn't hear you!"
Pacey lowered his voice. "Sorry."
Joey responded in equally hushed tones. "I meant the other thing."
"Hmm. I don't know. You'd have to show what you were doing in order for me to assess if you were doing anything…ahem…wrong."
"Yeah. Keep hope alive there, Pace!"
"I do, believe me, Jo. I do."
They both shrugged off innuendo with nervous laughter. Pacey studied Joey's anxious posture. Even as he felt himself stirring, he willed himself to stand down. It was becoming increasingly obvious that he was fantasizing about the unthinkable…yet why the discomfort from the opposite side of the booth? Pacey knew why he was nervous—why was she?
"Sometimes I just don't get Bessie," Joey said. "I mean, does she want to be my sister, my friend, my mother? What?"
"She's probably trying to be a bit of each," Pacey reasoned. "There are no rulebooks for 20-somethings raising their own siblings."
"It's just that sometimes she's there with all these rules—rules that never existed between her and Mom, by the way—and other times, she so caught up in Bodi and the rest of her world…I don't see her for days. Does she care?"
"Of course, she does."
Joey smirked. "When Dawson and I first got together, she grilled me, almost gleefully, about whether or not I touched him and if we were going to do it. She wanted every lascivious detail. It was like we were in the girl's locker room comparing notes about who scored last night. With Jack, she hardly asked me anything. Not where I was that night, what we did…no curfews, no ultimatums, no nothing. But when she sees me with A.J., doing something I hear her doing with Bodi practically every night, she goes ballistic."
"What would you say if you walked in on your little sister having sex?"
"I wasn't having sex!" Joey said determinedly in a harsh whisper.
"Jo, you didn't inhale but you most certainly were enjoying the weed," Pacey clarified, inexplicably looking up in time to see another young couple entering the diner. "Illicit…well, let's say intimacy."
Casting her eyes downward, Joey nodded and blushed simultaneously. Pacey tapped his fork on the yellow formica table as he continued to watch the high schoolers now seating themselves on the other side of the diner.
"What are you looking at?"
"Dawson and Nikki Green, eleven o'clock."
Joey stole a look over her shoulder, then slunk down in the booth. "Shit. Pacey, I can't talk to him tonight. Can you get me out of here?"
Suspicions confirmed, Pacey nodded in the affirmative. "Why don't you sneak out the side door while I go to the register? I'll come around for you."
"Thanks," she said, placing her hand on his. Pacey felt an attack of butterflies as her eyes smiled back at him. He waited, sure that she was about to say something else. Instead, she removed her hand and slid further down in the booth. Pacey got up and charged across the diner.
"Dawson, man, what are you doing here?"
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"Were you thinking about somebody else?" he asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.
"What do you mean?"
"When you were doing College Guy, were you thinking about someone else?"
Joey didn't answer, preferring to focus on the moonlight dancing across the bay.
"You were, weren't you?" Pacey turned to her, briefly resting his hand on her shoulder. "That's the thing you have to be careful about, Jo. If you're gonna do it, do it for the right reasons. Do it with the one you're thinking about, not with somebody else—that's just not fair."
"Did you always do it for all the right reasons, Pace?"
"That's different, Joey. It's different for guys."
"No, it's not."
"Yeah, it generally is. I mean, let's face it: emotionally, we're just not on the same planet when it comes to sex."
"Why not?"
"It's the rules of the road, Jo. Men don't have to worry about the consequences…"
"Yes, they do!"
"Not in the same way. Our bodies betray us in terms of the wanting, but in terms of the having…and the keeping…the nurturing, that's female terrain."
"So were your reasons for pursuing sex always the same? Was it simply the lustful call of the wild? A blatant booty call?"
"No, of course not," he insisted.
"So? What was it?" Joey asked.
Pacey stopped for a moment to admire how skillfully she had managed—more than once this evening—to deflect the conversation from delving into her true feelings. 'She is so lost and she doesn't even know it,' he thought.
"Is this constructive?"
"I think the term would be instructive, Pace. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. I just thought…"
But Pacey found himself wanting to share this insight. "With Tamara, it was all about the learning process."
"Well, she was your teacher…"
"It wasn't that at all, Jo. School was just an incidental detail concerning how we met. That attraction was something I had never felt before—to physically want somebody."
"Other than your inflatable doll."
"Ha, very funny. But you know what I mean. This game of flirtation we'd initiated became a combustible one. Regardless of what anyone else thought, there was real chemistry there. And the fact that she was an older woman who knew exactly what she wanted, and was patient in showing me…"
Joey closed her eyes. She wasn't sure if she wanted to hear this.
"That made it addictive. I was definitely infatuated."
"Infatuated, huh?" she said, nudging him.
"Careful, Jo. Hipchecks are not a good idea in a moving car. Unless you want me to stop so we can 'check' it out…"
"As if, Pacey." They both chuckled. "But you did love Andie, right? I mean, you wouldn't have done it if…"
"Yes, I loved her. In a way, I think I still love her. But I realize now that it wasn't a love that could sustain our relationship…that I was too eager to be the hero, and that there were other…I mean…I'm not sure our reasons were good enough."
"What do you mean?"
"I wanted to be her first. She was clearly giving signals that she was thinking about it, wanted it. She had this whole scenario constructed in her head about the perfect first-time…"
"Sounds like Dawson."
"I guess, yeah. But the thing is reality never works out that way. She was so fragile…trying so hard to be the mature young woman…I started to imagine how crushed she would be if the illusion was destroyed. I wanted the fantasy to become her reality."
"So that's why you did it?"
"It became my fantasy, too, Jo. It felt right to share that intimacy with her."
"So it wasn't about sex."
"Of course, it was about sex," he said as he pulled into her driveway and put the Wagoneer into park. "But the fantasy element made it that much more incredible. There was a deeper bond there, a commitment."
"Pacey Witter, you just proved my point."
"How so, Josephine?"
"Here you're talking animal kingdoms and different needs for the different sexes…and yet you've done nothing but talk about the emotional connections you made that not only heightened but justified the sexual one."
"So?"
"I thought you were all typical male, but again you surprise me." She wiggled a little closer and leaned on him. "Your mind is much more powerful than your groin, Pace."
Pacey looked at her suspiciously. 'Have you seen my groin lately?' he thought. 'Because I know I've lost my mind. I am falling head over heels…'
"Do you think Dawson is similarly enlightened?"
Way to break the spell, Potter!
"I think I would pencil the big D in on the side of the decidedly unenlightened," he said. And now he had his answer: she had been thinking of Dawson when diddling with A.J. The lucky stiff (pun intended—though not desired).
"Do you want to come in?" Joey asked as she scooted back towards the door.
"No, I think the Wagoneer's getting a little low. I need to gas it up before the station closes."
"Okay. Well, thanks, Pacey. You were a real help tonight." She raised her hand as if to touch his cheek, but then seemed to think better of it and affectionately slapped his chest instead. For an instant, their eyes connected, but both shied away from allowing it to be a moment and looked away.
"See ya," she said, getting out of the car.
"See ya, Jo."
zzzzzzzzzz
Two days later, Joey sat down with Pacey at the lunch break. "So I got this invitation…"
"Yeah?"
"A.J. invited me to this event on campus. He wants me to be his date."
"Mmm hmm…"
"Bessie and I had a talk and she's agreed to let me go—surprisingly, since it's an over-nighter."
What?
"It's this coming Saturday. Do you think you could drive me to the train station?
"On one condition."
"Which is?"
"That you meet me outside Chandler's Market tonight."
"Why?"
"It's a surprise, Potter. You can tolerate a little distraction, can't you?"
" 'K, deal."
The truth was that Pacey didn't know how much more of a Joey Potter distraction he could tolerate.