Notes: no profit garnered, not mine. For the trope bingo spots: MEET THE PARENTS/FAMILY PRESUMED DEAD. Title and opening quote from Above Clouds or Sun by Nate Pritts. Also for the gwyo settings spot seen below. Thanks to A for beta help!
In the air, there are clouds
to remind us we're easily bruised or we're
drifting & permeable; things shoot right through us
like suffering does or like spring or a bird.
Memories of you are not you
& some idea of you is not you. Words often
kill us because it's blood that they're made of
& we're taking a stand & diminished each time.
"I have resolved," Pacey said. He was 100% drunk and he was supposed to be serving time with Doug but fuck that. Pacey said, "Joey?"
"You've made a resolution," Joey said. She was only a little bit smiling at him, which made him nervous.
"We're not breaking up," he said. "Look, I'm probably failing out of high school, and sometimes you make me feel unbelievably stupid and we both know I'm super insecure which is not a surprise, because you've met my parents, but Joey, we are not breaking up."
"I make you feel stupid?"
"Of course you do," he said. He squatted down next to her, she was sitting on the floor of his place. He didn't know why. "Why are you on the floor?"
"I had a crazy day," Joey said. "You're insecure, failing and you won't let us break up."
"It's not about letting, it's about resolving," Pacey said. "Triumph of will, Jo."
"That's a Nazi movie," Joey said.
"Okay, not a triumph of a will. Something else that isn't associated with anti-semitism and genocide."
Out of nowhere, Joey smiled at him. Like a flower blooming.
So they didn't break up.
That summer, after he did actually graduate, they went on a train trip. "It's romantic," Joey said.
Pacey ran his hand up her thigh, she was wearing a delightfully short skirt. She held his wrist before he pushed it up too high. She said, "That's not romantic, that's lecherous. We're not doing that in public."
Pacey looked around the cabin. "Hey, there's all of two other people in our cabin, and those guys are possibly the original train engineers from the 19th century."
"Doesn't matter," she said. She turned towards him and kissed him, her mouth as always a perfect fit to his. "We've got a whole summer in the woods, in a cabin, house-sitting for that friend of the Dean's."
"Who sends two 18 year olds to house sit a cabin in the woods? Does anyone even need to house sit that place? Is this just a set up for some scary horror movie?" He moved from reaching for her legs to skillfully groping her breasts. She was sighing against his mouth and then she pulled away.
"Seriously, Pacey, it's going to be great. You can fish in the lake, I can write and read and clean -"
"And in between, sex," Pacey said. "Just saying."
She grinned at him, another unexpected flower. "Absolutely."
The guy at the counter at the local store decided to tell them a ghost story. "See, the place you're staying, they need a house sitter because of all the idiots trying to see ghosts. There's a ghost in that cabin."
"Really?" Pacey smirked at the guy and loaded their basic goods into his backpack. "Let me guess, a revolutionary war hero or the war of 1812?"
"Nah," the guy said. "Back in the 30s, writers' retreat up at that cabin. One of the ladies just walked off. They never found a body but her shoes were at the side of the lake."
Joey walked up to the counter, which Pacey had hoped wouldn't happen. She said, "Why would she do that?"
"There's a lot of people with a lot of theories on that. Affair with a married man, affair with a married woman, in love with her brother, hallucinating on opium, take your pick," the guy said. "I can sell you a gun."
"To shoot at a lady ghost who wanted to date her brother? I don't see the need," Pacey said.
"Let me know next time you're here if you still think that," the guy said.
They had a 20 minute hike to the cabin and Pacey had a very heavy backpack and duffel bag on his back. Joey had lighter luggage and had shouldered less of the supplies so she wasn't weighed down. Therefore she could ask questions. "Do you think that story is true?"
"I think it probably makes him some extra money every year," Pacey said. "Besides, why assume she's dead? It's a forty minute walk to the train station. Maybe she had another pair of shoes with her. Maybe she just got sick of the company."
"That'll probably happen to us," Joey said, poking his forearm. "We can race to see which one makes it to the station first."
"I know you're joking, but we made it through all the time on the boat -"
"We were running on sexual tension, babe."
"Now there's no tension since we have sex? You like having sex with me," Pacey said.
"Actually, I do," Joey said, blushing. "I really do."
"Well, we're almost there, my beloved lustbunny, rein it in until then," he said.
The cabin was nice. It was set back from the trail but Pacey could see why the dean's friend wanted someone to watch it. The trail was popular and the cabin would look like a nice place to crash if you had no scruples.
They unpacked everything and put their stuff in the main bedroom. Pacey started unpacking their supplies in the kitchen while Joey explored every room. "Okay, there are so many books here. And scrapbooks. And a basement we have a key to."
"I hope it's a wine cellar," Pacey said, standing behind her as she opened the door to the cellar.
The lights didn't work, so Pacey got a flashlight. "I'll go first in case of any ghosts."
"Okay," Joey said. She was holding onto the hem of his t-shirt.
The stairs were well made and it looked like a simple fix to get the light working. Pacey smiled at the wine lining one wall. "Wine cellar, awesome."
"Like they won't check to see if we had any," Joey said.
The rest of the cellar had boxes piled up against the other walls. There was also a nice looking rocking chair. "I'll fix the light tomorrow," Pacey said. "Let's go upstairs, I'm exhausted."
"Are you saying you don't want to have sex?"
"Not in the slightest," Pacey said. "But I do need a nap."
"God, me, too," Joey said.
When Pacey woke up, Joey was already up and changing into her swimming suit. "We could shower and clean up from the train and hiking up here. Or we could swim in the lake 20 feet away."
"No skinny dipping?" Pacey took off his shirt and unbuttoned his shorts. "What are my chances of getting you to skinny dip?"
"Really low," Joey said. "Sorry, I'm only getting naked in this cabin."
"I can live with that," Pacey said. "But I will be trying to persuade you."
"Oh, we're not having sex in the lake," Joey said. She put on flip flops and grabbed the keys to the house. He trailed behind her, watching her pretty ass.
"You're on the pill, we don't need a condom. It could be very erotic," Pacey said.
"It's not about protection, it's about gross. That water is gross," Joey said. "I don't want it up in me." She shuddered.
"That's very clean water, actually, I checked the reports so I could figure out which fish were okay to catch," he said. "Fantastic water, just fantastic."
"Don't care," Joey said. They'd reached the lake and Joey started to wade in.
Pacey ran ahead of her and dived in. It was bracingly cold water for this time of the year. That was another reason not to have sex, Pacey thought.
Joey tapped him on the shoulder. "Race you to the other side?"
"I can't actually see the other side, Jo, I don't think we race to the other side unless we want to die," Pacey said.
"Race you in a diagonal to that shore over there?"
"Agreed," Pacey said. He pushed off, going as fast as he could. Naturally he beat her.
Joey looked at him panting, halfway up the shore. "I'll beat you back to the shore."
"Yes, you will," Pacey said.
He trailed behind her as they walked back to the cabin. There was an outside shower, just a little open hut on the lake side of the cabin. "This isn't the only shower, right?" Joey looked worried.
"No, there's an actual shower in both bathrooms back in the cabin. This place is a paradise, Jo. Also, does this count as inside the cabin?" He made a move to lower his swimming suit.
"There's no ceiling, ergo, we are not inside," Joey said. She pulled up his suit, nearly giving him a wedgie.
The minute they were inside, Pacey got his swim suit off so fast he nearly tripped on it. Joey was still ahead of him. She turned in the doorway to the bedroom and slowly took off her one piece swimsuit. Pacey loved bikinis more, but anything skin tight on Joey was absolutely the sexiest piece of clothing ever. Pacey held her waist and held her up close to him, then walked her back to the bed. He maneuvered her down to sitting on the bed and sunk to his knees. "I love these super tall beds," Pacey said. "I don't have to stoop too much." He was already touching her, fingers on her clit and circling her vagina.
"I like your tongue better on me," Joey said. He was sure she was blushing. She still blushed when she was talked dirty. She made tiny whimpering voices when he started tasting her. Joey was trembling, her legs trying to close on him, bring him closer. He paused and used his already wet fingers to press her thighs apart. "Please," she said. "Please."
"Always," Pacey said. He kept tasting her and licking her, pushing one, two fingers inside her even as she came, moaning. Then he kissed his way up stomach and to her breasts until he was on top of her. "We can be so loud," he said. "Cabin in the woods."
"You're always loud. You make tons of noise," she said, still smiling.
He pushed himself up and she reached down and guided him in. "I love you," he said. Then he was spectacularly loud, but so was she.
The next day they started on their actual work. Pacey was responsible for fixing everything up, plugging leaks and getting everything running so the dean's friend could start bringing people out again. He was also supposed to get the two kayaks and two rowboats lake-worthy and pretty to look at.
Joey got to catalog all the books and journals and photos and papers. She was not so secretly completely thrilled about that. They woke up whenever, they had sex, they showered and then had breakfast, then they both worked and then there was lunch, maybe sex, relaxing, dinner, definitely sex, watching TV or reading until they fell asleep.
After a week, Joey said, "It is possible to have too much sex?"
"Are you bored of me?" Pacey sat up in the bed and tried to look more interesting.
"I'm not, at all, shouldn't I be? I can't believe there's something I like doing so much I'm doing it to two to three times a day," Joey said.
"You read and write and draw four or five times a day and you're not surprised by that," Pacey said.
"Is something wrong with me? I mean, we are having a lot of sex," Joey said.
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with you," Pacey said. "Do you want to have less sex? Would that make you feel better?"
"God, no," Joey said. "This is what everyone thinks we did on the boat, isn't it?"
"They did for about five days but then it was super obvious we hadn't had sex, so, no, no one thinks that now. They did think that," Pacey said. "Look, I'm at my sexual peak, if the commercials on TV are anything to go by and I'm going to enjoy every minute of easy erections I can get and having sex with you is way better than my hand."
"I'm not sexually peaking, I'm years away from that," Joey said.
"Come hell or high water, by Viagra, my dear, I will be ready for you when you are, hopefully," Pacey said.
"You're such a dork," Joey said, blushing. It occurred to Pacey he'd basically just said he planned to be with Joey long into her 30s, but that wasn't a scary thought to him.
The satellite TV had been installed a week before they moved in. Joey insisted they watch at least one documentary every day. "Like summer school?" Pacey frowned at her.
"To balance out all our sinning," Joey said.
"I can't believe you're serious," Pacey said. But she was.
The only thing Pacey insisted on was that they separate for at least 20 minutes every day. Time alone was a good thing, even if it was very little time. He'd go for a swim, and she'd check her email and call Dawson. Not that she called Dawson every day, more like once a week. Sometimes he talked to Dawson after her. They were putting things together, healing things.
Joey finished cataloging the books in the first two weeks. She emailed the Dean's friend to figure out which to keep, which to ship back to Boston to be sold. He helped her carry the boxes down to the post office which was an hour walk. "We should have rented a car," Pacey said.
"Neither of us can rent a car," Joey said.
Pacey loved really getting to know Joey's body, for lack of a better way to describe it. Sex at home had often been furtive, slated in to a specific time before they had to be somewhere else. In the woods, in this cabin, they could spend 2 hours naked, figuring out every place and every way of touching each other that made them both extremely happy.
"I can't believe I like this so much," Joey said, sighing. Pacey had had time to get her really hot and wet and now had four fingers and half his thumb in her, moving slowly and then faster and then slow again as Joey just kept trembling and grabbing at his hair. When he had his whole hand in, he started touching her clit the way she loved with his other hand and she came like a rocket going off. She lay there spent, while he kissed her thighs and her stomach.
"Speaking of summer loving," Pacey said.
"Shut up," Joey said.
She started working on the boxes in the cellar. "This is the most boring journal I've ever read, it might be the most boring journal ever written."
"The lady who lived here," Pacey said.
"No, Mr. Sellers's grandmother lived here and owned the cabin, she was the one who invited in all the writers and bohemians. This is the journal of Miss Price, her cousin. She is super duper dull. She records everything, She writes down each bowel movement."
"So it's dull," Pacey said. "Any word about the disappearing presumed dead lady?"
"Yup. Miss Price records all the guests, what they wore and her opinion of their general demeanor and smell. Eliza Parkham stayed for ten days, was a great friend of Mrs. Sellers, seemed to dislike everyone else, wrote poetry of questionable morals and then one day disappeared, leaving nearly all her luggage here. Miss Price pawed through it and decided her underwear wasn't feminine enough," Joey said.
"So she's not dead, or she didn't die, she just ran off," Pacey said.
"She wrote poems about drowning herself but that's a pretty classic theme so who knows, she might have meant it metaphorically," Joey said.
"Was she secretly in love with anyone? Would Miss Priss notice?" Pacey was working on the window frames, making sure the seals were tight. It was supposed to rain for about a week in the next few days.
"She wouldn't notice," Joey said. "But mostly, Eliza hung out with Mrs. Sellers. Who was, for the record, widowed."
"So she was more likely to be lesbianing it up?"
"That's not the actual term, Pacey," Joey said. "I just mean, Mrs. Sellers wasn't neglecting her husband spending time with her friend."
"People neglecting their husbands? Joey, you have to take a break from reading that stuff," Pacey said.
"Agreed," Joey said. She slammed the journal closed. She went into their bedroom and turned on the TV in there.
He flopped down on the bed next to her. "Let's watch something stupid. You need a brain break," he said.
"Actually," she said, sitting up. "Actually, I'm going to do some research." She grabbed the laptop from the side table and connected to the internet. She started doing searches and looking around for information on Eliza Parkham. Pacey flipped through the channels until he found some hockey.
"Hmm," Joey said. "Eliza wrote two short stories before she disappeared. We should go to the library by the post office and see if we can find them."
"Find them where?"
"They were published in the New Yorker," Joey said. "I'm sure they have those. Or on microfiche."
"I'm so excited about microfiche!" Pacey even squealed and grabbed Joey in a bear hug.
"I guess I'm a nerd," Joey said.
"You guess?"
It did rain for a week. Joey stayed inside but Pacey went outside in his swimsuit and boots, checking for leaks in the foundation and how things were draining. "I am handy man," he grunted, as he poked at the foundation. "Handy man does handy things."
He went back inside and dried off. "I wonder what kind of job I'll be able to get in Boston," he said as he sat down next to Joey. He was definitely feeling morose.
"You can do a lot of things," Joey said, patting his leg. "Didn't Doug say he could get you a job?"
"I think it's as a dishwasher," Pacey said. "But I guess that's about the level I should be."
"Don't say things like that," Joey said. "There's nothing wrong with being a dishwasher, either. Maybe you can learn to cook, you're really good with a knife."
"Please don't be a cheerleader right now, sweetheart," Pacey said. "I want to wallow a little bit."
"I don't have to be a part of that," Joey said. "I'm not abetting your self-pity puddle. You can go to community college, you can be a dishwasher, you can do all those things or none of them. You're 18 years old, despite what all counselors kept saying, life isn't anything like decided. You're smart, Pacey, you're so smart, maybe now that everything isn't tied to grades and we're out of Capeside you can admit that."
"I told you not to do that," he said softly, pulling her close and kissing her hair. "You should respect what I say."
"Only sometimes," Joey said.
There were only a few leaks from the week of rain which was a good sign. Pacey patched up all of them as soon as it stopped raining. He'd finished getting the kayaks and boats seaworthy, so he started on getting the boatshed into better shape. Joey followed him out and sat outside on a blanket, skimmed through chapbooks and scrapbooks. She said, "They would fit 8 people in this cabin. 4 in the bedrooms, 3 in the living room, one in the basement. Usually they would have tents, too, and they could get another 8 people up here. 16 people sharing two bathrooms, that's awful."
"Where'd the tents go?"
"No idea. I think they were probably stolen, it sounds like they would just leave them out."
"Rich people are so careless," Pacey said. "You or me would have been careful about our tents, these guys just leave them out for anyone to take."
"Hey, up until a year or so ago you were definitely better off than me," Joey said.
"Ah, maybe my family is, but I'm the youngest and least liked of five. My sisters and Doug got all the college money, which I guess was sound investing for my dad, actually."
He could feel her glare on him. He said, "At your wish, I will change the subject."
After the end of the first month, Pacey told Joey, "We are basically done. All we're doing now is housesitting. Should we be getting paid for this?"
"I'm taking the money," Joey said. "Mr. Sellers said we can stay until the end of August."
"So I guess it's sex and satellite TV for the next three weeks. I can live with that," Pacey said.
"Tomorrow we're going to the library."
"I forgot, you're excited about microfiche."
They had sex in slow, perfect, intimate morning quiet. He played with her soft hair. He said, "What happens in September when you're in a dorm and I'm sleeping on the street?"
"You have a room with Grams, you won't be on the street," she said. "Yeah, I love this. Waking up with you, having all this time together."
"Naked time together," he said.
"Wearing clothes is going to be a sacrifice, that's true," Joey said. "But we have to today, it's library day."
"Library day is the best day, right?" He didn't want let go of her naked body. But he couldn't stand in the way of library day, he knew Joey well enough to know that.
Joey had found a picture of Eliza in the scrapbook, so she carried that with her, along with a notebook, three pens and her laptop. "I've got the microfiche to check. You hit the magazines and see if you can find her stories," Joey said.
"What do I do then?" Pacey smiled at her as he trailed behind her intent march to the reference sections so she knew which microfiche to acquire and read.
"Copy them for me," Joey said.
Pacey took his assignment over to the magazines. It was a pretty small library, but luckily they had back issues of the New Yorker going back 70 years. He grabbed the three relevant years and started flipping through to the contents page on each issue. He found Eliza's first story quickly. It was only two pages, and Pacey thought it was pretty good. He liked it more than most of the short stories he'd had to read in high school. It was pretty dark, too, which he preferred to the moralistic ones he'd also had to read in high school. He found the second one, which was also only 2 pages. He wasn't surprised he liked the second story, too.
He realized he'd grabbed the wrong year but when he looked over, Joey was already flipping through microfiche. He flipped through that volume to pass time.
"Hey, Jo," Pacey said. He handed her the copies of the two Eliza stories he'd made. He sat down next to her and opened the volume of the New Yorker from 5 years later. "Look at this," Pacey said. "This story's by Ellis Peckering and if you ask me, it's definitely the same writer as these two stories. I underlined the phrases that jumped out at me."
Joey looked at him with a ridiculously proud look. "Your surprise makes me feel stupid," Pacey said.
"Sorry, I'm just excited. Totally the same writer," Joey said. "Which makes sense because I found a few articles on Eliza and her disappearance but then nothing. No body, no corpses that match her. At least nothing that matched up with Eliza and made the papers."
"So she became a man," Pacey said.
"Or she stayed a woman and decided to use a male pseudonym, like George Eliot or 500 other writers," Joey said.
They found four other stories by Ellis, though Joey couldn't find much of a mention outside the stories published in the New Yorker. She even used the library computer to see if she could find more.
"You know, maybe she started writing under another name," Joey said, as they were walking back.
"Maybe," Pacey said. "Maybe it'll be a lot easier to put together when you're at Worthington with a huge college library and even more resources at your disposal. I bet there are rooms of microfiche."
"Ha ha," Joey said. "You really liked her stories."
"Or his," Pacey said. "Yes, there were better than the stuff I had to read and analyze to death."
"Maybe because you didn't have to read them?"
Pacey said, "Nope. We've been reading a lot of books I didn't have to read and lots of them I didn't like."
"Fine, sorry I didn't realize you wouldn't enjoy Henry James. He's brilliant, if you ask me."
"And I have no taste," Pacey said.
"We just have different taste," Joey said, taking his hand.
"I don't know," Pacey said. "I've only tasted you."
She still blushed when he talked dirty even though they'd now done some unbelievably filthy things in the confines of the cabin.
When she gave him blowjobs, she liked to use the lube he'd furtively ordered online on her fingers. She'd done research, she told him, and he really appreciated that about her. It felt amazing and given it was Joey's fingers up his butt, he therefore had only a momentary blush of gay panic. It was stupid panic, was it so bad if a guy had some gay thoughts?
He came like a motherfucker when she did that.
They were maniacs cleaning and finishing up projects when Mr. Sellers came to visit. They only had a few days left in the cabin and everything was basically done, but Joey was intent that they didn't look like slackers. "We weren't," Pacey said.
Mr. Sellers didn't stop gushing about everything they'd done, he just kept saying it was all perfect. "You two are amazing," he said. He went down to the wine cellar where Pacey'd cleaned everything and put down a rug with a cot and the silk screens they'd used to make the space a little private.
"You didn't open a bottle?"
"Joey said you'd be upset," Pacey said.
"You could have had one," Mr. Sellers said. He selected one, squinting at the label. "We'll have a glass of this tonight."
Pacey felt good about dinner. He'd caught the fish, cleaned and deboned it, cooked it outside on a grill. He let Joey do the rest and set the table. She was the former waitress. Mr. Sellers poured them each a glass of wine. "One glass each only, I have to drive home," Mr. Sellers said.
"This is an excellent meal," Mr. Sellers said.
"Went out in the rowboat, caught it myself. I checked, don't worry, the fish is okay and safe. Not endangered, doesn't have three eyes, just delicious," Pacey said.
"I think I would stick with just two eyes, because maybe the fish only had one eye," Joey said.
"Well, actually," Pacey said, making Mr. Sellers laugh.
"You know, when we first got here, we were told there was a ghost," Pacey said. "There isn't one, but we did perform a few rituals to cleanse the house just in case."
"We did not," Joey said, her eyes wide. "But I looked into it, and it turns out there's this whole urban legend sprung up around Eliza Perkham's disappearance and people around here thought she was dead. But she wasn't. It turns out, I think, she was writing under a different name into the early 60s."
"You're right," Mr. Sellers said, smiling. "You figured that out, huh. You are every bit as smart as the Dean said. Yes, that's my Gran."
"Your Gran?" Pacey sipped his wine. He was starting to believe all that hokum about certain wines going with certain foods.
"Yes. She and my grandmother were deeply in love. Right up until they died. It was pretty easy to get away with, since my grandmother was also incredibly rich. They basically raised my father and all his sisters. Gran was my favorite, honestly. She would read to me when I came to visit. She would only read me girly books because one time I dismissed them." Mr. Sellers laughed again. "She wrote under a few names. I think she had fun making them up."
"That's amazing," Joey said.
"That's my family," Mr. Sellers said.
"I really liked her stories," Pacey said. "There was something in them that really stayed with me. We only found six. How many were there?"
"You really liked them?" Mr. Sellers looked taken aback and happy. "I've never met a fan."
"I really did," Pacey said.
"Hey, you know, if you find yourself in need of a thesis, I can dig out her letters and stories," Mr. Sellers said.
"Really? That would be amazing," Joey said.
"A joint paper from the best housesitters ever," Mr. Sellers said.
"Oh, no, I'm pretty sure whatever community college lets me in won't care about theses," Pacey said. "If they let me in. I think I'm going to be a dishwasher."
"Sorry," Mr. Sellers said. "I was a dishwasher. I was a horrible, spoiled teenager. My father pulled me out of my private school and put me in the local public school. And he made me be a dishwasher at my aunt's restaurant after school, on the weekend, all summer. Of course, I was a rich asshole slumming, but it still made me more understanding than every single man I've worked with at the firm."
"I'm just an asshole, doing it to pay the rent," Pacey said.
Joey kicked him under the table but Mr. Sellers was still smiling.
"College isn't for everyone," Mr. Sellers said. "If you like my Gran's stories, you clearly have sophisticated taste."
"She really was your favorite," Pacey said.
"Absolutely," Mr. Sellers said. "Let me know if you need a reference for dishwashing, or anything else."
Their last day and night at the cabin they spent almost entirely naked. "I can't stand thinking about all the time we're going to have to spend with clothes on, not having sex with you."
"I know," Joey said. "This is the cruelest summer ever."
"This is the best summer ever," Pacey said. "After this we'll never get to spend 2 months in a cabin again where we can fuck all day."
"We'll make plans for when I'm at my sexual peak," Joey said. He smiled at her and played with her hair.
It was worse than coming home from the boat. He was basically sleeping on a couch in his ancestral home while the nieces ran rampant. He barely saw Joey as she packed up her life to go to Worthington. Pacey had very little to pack for his move into the smallest room in the new house at Grams corner.
He helped Joey move into her new room and left her so Bessie and Bodie could say their goodbyes. He steeled his shoulders and drove to the restaurant Dougie had the friend at. He was accepting his fate. He was learning to live down to who he was he meant be.
He remembered something E.P. had written, a line about all the places beauty existed. He heard Joey in his head doing her irritating cheerleader routine. He plastered a smile on his face and walked into the restaurant.