Jen chewed down on her bottom lip as she concentrated on Pacey, her hands joined together in a prayer-like fashion. With or without Dawson and Joey, the boy's life was decidedly harsh. Several cold weeks stretched out after the Leery's begged for an olive branch, but now, finally, no bad blood lay between them all.
People were learning to accept that the troika had long since fizzled out; Dawson avoided Pacey in the halls, sometimes offering a gentleman's nod, and Joey saved breath on nervous hello's that would only be lost on him anyway. Mitch and Gale would make the effort, they would still drop by Doug's, they still cared. Everyone still cared, but everyone accepted.
"Two, three... four," Jen counted, pinning Pacey with a encouraging glare as he balanced himself between the hand rails of their school nurse's wing.
She, herself, had given up on her friendship with Dawson and Joey. She remembered being furious with them because they had mentally paired her up with Pacey to make themselves feel justified in harbouring certain feelings, and to feel clever and in power.
However, she had managed to swallow her pride because in the great scheme of things, at the time, she was still adamant that Pacey getting his friendships back on track was the most important thing to be involving herself with. But the "friends" she still had a romanticised view of had put pay to that notion. So much so that it was only the McPhee siblings that bothered with either of them; and Dawson and Joey were only themselves rebuilding things, taking tentative steps towards redefining their own relationship, albeit a dangerous one.
"Five, Pacey, come on!" Jen squealed, beating her hands together with a surging excitement tickling through her.
Kate held onto Pacey from behind, feeling his whole body rock with giant expels of air as tiredness pulled at his leg, arm and back muscles. He dropped his head gracefully onto his chest and passed down onto his knees; a satisfied smile lighting his features that, for him, totally outweighed his exhaustion.
"Don't want to over-do things now do I, Kate?" Pacey cheered as she tossed a towel over his head playfully and positioned his wheelchair behind him. Jen skipped the short distance, assisted Kate in helping him back into the wheelchair and removed the towel to pat at his damp face. "I mean, after last night... there's nothing wrong with under-doing things, but God knows I just don't have the energy to over-do it these days."
"I don't want to know," Kate scorned with a disguised smirk. She touched Jen's arm and offered a supportive squeeze before moving off towards the door. "See you later, Pacey and thanks for coming down today, Jen, you really... motivate him," she accused teasingly.
Pacey waved her off with a content sigh, "I thought she'd never leave."
Jen traced the edges of the towel between her fingers before wrapping it up and looping it around his neck. She clung its either end and pulled him towards her, breaking the unwelcome distance between them. "Y'know Pace, one good thing came out of all of this."
"Mmmm, what's that now?" Pacey murmured, licking his lips as he anticipated dancing with hers.
"If it weren't for the star-crossed soulmates I never would have considered you."
"Never?" Pacey pushed out his bottom lip in a childish pout. "Aw, never say never."
Jen chuckled and dragged her fingers through her hair before forcing herself up against him with a vicious, sudden longing. They grappled at each other, needing to feel the other, to taste the other as necessary as breathing is to living. "Pacey," Jen wheezed, finally tearing herself backwards.
"What?" He asked desperately, dragging a sleeve across his mouth.
"I love - us."
Pacey giggled and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, "Is that all? We stopped kissing for that?" Jen whacked him upside the head playfully. His hands shot into the air in surrender before finding themselves laced around her neck, "I love us too."