W/N: Dawson's Creek doesn't belong to me, I'm just taking the characters out to play.

After this, there are only 2 more chapters.

Thank you! To smokeydog, LiZ457, shiney1983 for the time and care to review my first DC Fanfic. You kept me going when I was fighting with this chapter, because it just wasn't right. Nothing like having one of each - Pacey/Andie, Pacey/Joey and Dawson/Joey - fans telling you to keep going!

Please (beg, beg) as always, let me know what you think...!

…………………………
10PM

Pacey leaned against the wall, gagging. A second to catch his breath and try not to vomit up a gallon of bad coffee, after being slammed in the gut with about 180 pounds force in the shape of Dawson Leery's head.

Before he could swallow, Dawson brought a punch around. Hard, fast, and aimed for his face.

Pacey ducked.

Brought his knuckles up under Dawson's jaw with one hand and used his other as a shield.

Too little, too late.

They hit each other almost in the exact same moment, like boxers in a slow motion film.

Pacey felt Dawson's blow connect, slamming his own hand into the side of his nose. Felt the immediate throb that was impossible to ignore. The thick stabbing feeling immediately blooming below his eyes.

Damn.

Dawson himself stumbled back, his neck snapped back from the force of the hit. Pinwheeled his arms, tried to stop. Couldn't. Reached back to cushion his fall.

Dawson had fallen into the side of the stairs, a dull piercing on his cheek. He reached up and realized he'd caught a scratch. His fingers pink with a little blood. Started scrambling back up.

Pacey groaned and got ready to charge Dawson into the next century. Heard a buzzing sound and blinked. And then his phone began to vibrate on his thigh.

With a cautious eye on Dawson, he pulled the cell from his pocket.

"It's the hospital," he announced.

Dawson grunted and sat back down.

Pacey answered, and then found himself waiting for a doctor to speak to him. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"This is Pacey Witter," Pacey confirmed, once the doctor came on the line. He looked over at Dawson, who was rubbing his neck and staring at him expectantly.

He pressed the phone against his ear and walked into the kitchen. "What's happened?"

"Joey had some shortness of breath and chest pain," it was a new doctor, one whose voice Pacey didn't recognize. "Her EKG is normal. I've had her taken over to radiology for a CT pulmonary angiography, just to rule things out."

"Rule, uh, what, exactly…" Pacey didn't even know what to ask.

"With the kind of surgery she's just had, we'll want to exclude the possibility of an embolism. The scan is pretty straightforward, takes about 30 minutes."

"And she's having this now?"

"Yes."

"OK, I'm on my way," Pacey snapped the phone shut.

"What is it?" Dawson asked quietly from the doorway.

Pacey pulled the freezer door open. He dug out two bags of frozen peas and threw one at Dawson. Pressing the other into his face, he finally answered, "They think she might have an embolism, whatever the hell that is."

"A clot," Dawson replied, holding the other bag against his jaw. "We should…"

"Yeah," Pacey agreed, needing to move. He burst past Dawson and grabbed Joey's bag and scooped up his keys off the counter as he raced to the door out to the garage.

"Are you coming?" He demanded, snapping the garage door opener button and climbing back into the Cherokee.

"Yeah," Dawson answered, running to keep up.

As soon as Pacey had maneuvered back out to the main street to the hospital, he tucked his headset into his ear and pressed one of his speed dial numbers.

"Look, if you want to focus on driving – I can make any calls…"

"Dawson?" Pacey exhaled, the adrenaline pumping through him. "Shut up."

Andie answered on the third ring. "What's happened?" she asked, cutting right past the preliminaries.

"They've taken her for something called a CT pulmonary angiography," Pacey explained.

"What were her symptoms?"

"I don't know; I was at the damn townhouse. I wasn't there!"

"What did they say, Pace?"

"Shortness of breath, chest pain," he remembered, flipping on his blinkers for a turn. "Andie, is this… I mean…"

"Pacey, it's going to be all right," Andie soothed. "The CT will show one way or the other what's going on. The most probable diagnosis would be an embolism - which, yes, Joey's kind of surgery can cause. It can usually be treated with blood thinners. They did an EKG?"

"Yes, normal."

"OK, put that in the 'good' column. Where are you?"

"Almost there," Pacey looked both ways before crossing over to the street leading up to the hospital.

"See you soon," she answered. Before he could argue that she shouldn't go to the trouble – she hung up.

Pacey dropped the phone into the cup holder and grabbed the bag of peas back up. The throbbing was getting distracting.

He and Dawson didn't speak. A quiet that used to be comfortable, but they'd never really gotten that back.

It was a minute's jog from the parking spot back into the floodlit whiteness of the hospital. He didn't look back to see if Dawson followed.

"Josephine Potter," Pacey announced at the nurse's station.

"Yes, Mr. Witter," the nurse recognized him. "She hasn't been brought back up from radiology yet. I'll come find you," she promised.

"Is she all right?"

"She was breathing fine on her own when they took her down." She gave Pacey a reassuring smile. "Just have a seat, and I promise - you'll be the first to know when gets back on the floor."

"OK." He found his way back to the waiting area but didn't sit down. Just stared at the coffee machine.

Dawson was already standing there, absently rubbing his sore cheek.

"We have to…"

"We don't actually," Pacey interrupted, holding up a hand.

"She's in here somewhere," Dawson responded, his voice low and angry. "And you know as well as I do that the last thing that Joey would want is for us to be fighting. This isn't the time or place…"

"Then you shouldn't have come, Dawson. I mean, God, if this isn't the time or the place – why the hell are you here?"

"Whatever you may like to think, Pace, you don't get to be the only one who's worried about her, the only one who cares."

"You do understand that you're talking about the woman I live with. My girlfriend. Dawson, you kissed my girlfriend. The truckload of gall it takes for you to stand here, HERE, and try and tell me about Joey…"

"You can't still be fighting over her," Andie announced, her voice thick with frustration. "It's 10 years later. This is done."

They both swung around to look at her, standing in the hallway.

"Dawson…" she stepped closer. "You're bleeding. What…"

He wiped his cheek, and shrugged. She looked at Pacey, getting close to his nose, and sighed loudly. "You really have been fighting over her, haven't you?"

They both looked away.

"Dawson," she tugged his arm and pulled him towards the nurses station. "Get a Band-Aid. And some antiseptic cream. Go on."

He gave in and walked away down the hall. Andie returned to Pacey, unable to hide the motions playing out on her face.

"What happened?" she asked softly, tugging him down into a seat to get a closer look at the swelling on his face.

"She's still down having the scan."

"No, to start this."

"Oh, that. It seems Dawson had a renaissance when she was visiting. He kissed her, Andie. And now he's here, I don't know…" His voice broke a little, and he tried to find Andie's eyes.

She nodded, but didn't say anything. Pressed into a bruise with her finger.

Pacey winced but sat still.

"You'll live," she pronounced. "An ice pack will help, but you're probably going to have a black eye out of this in the morning."

Pacey nodded, leaning in and resting his head on her shoulder.

She patted his back and let him relax there for a long moment before pushing him away. "Pace…"

"Yeah?" He rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand and blinked a couple of times.

"I cheated on you."

Pacey glanced at her in confusion.

"In high school, I cheated on you. You were my first love. My first time in love. And most people … they don't get that. What we had. It was incredible. Extraordinary. And yet, I cheated on you…"

"You, uh, weren't exactly yourself, Andie…"

"No, I wasn't. In fact, it could be argued that I wasn't exactly myself until I got off the plane in Italy and shed all those expectations I'd been carrying around my whole life. But that's not the point. The point is I threw us away. One of the things I would change – if I could – would be to go back and undo that. Undo that moment when I got into bed with someone else. Because it ended our amazing relationship by breaking the trust you had in us."

Pacey wanted to interrupt, but Andie squeezed his arm and gently shook her head.

"It haunted me, for a long time. Even when I got back and started at Harvard. I mean, I'm glad we're friends. I am. There's a connection, it doesn't go away."

"I hope it never does."

She smiled. "But I had to figure out, if I could, why I did that, Pace. Why I sabotaged the best thing in my life. Luckily, I happened to be in therapy," she gave him a rueful look. "And what I found out is that people like us, kids who grow up with parents who drink, who are addicted, who carry around that chaos, we end up pretty much in two camps. Overachieving control freaks…" she pointed at herself.

"And irresponsible underachievers?"

"Pretty much," they shared a grin of understanding. "But there's one curse for both camps… we don't trust happiness. To the point that we sabotage it. When we get happy, that's a signal that the other shoe should be dropping. Even if we have to drive to the mall, find a shoe store, climb the ladder, and drop it ourselves."

"You're telling me that I made this thing with Dawson happen?"

"No. Not at all. See, the thing about a curse is – it can be broken. Just look at your life, Pace. You've already done it in so many ways. No one could even try to call Pacey Witter of Capeside either irresponsible or an underachiever. You run one of the most successful restaurants in town, you've got friends, your boat, and you live with the woman you have loved since you were in High School. I mean, Joey's health is a struggle – no one is arguing that. But overall, your life seems pretty good, Pace."

"It is. It was, until…"

"Dawson kissed her?"

He nodded.

"But she came home to you?"

He nodded again.

"Do you think she's in love with Dawson?"

He slowly shook his head.

"Then…" Andie gave him reserved smile. "Break the curse. Choose to be happy, Pace."

Pacey thought it over in his head for a few moments. Then he reached over and lightly kissed Andie's cheek. "I'm always saying thank you," he whispered. "But tonight, you really are a miracle."

Andie nodded and rested her forehead on his for a second.

"Sometimes, I wish..."

"If wishes were fishes, Pace..." She stood up and brushed her pants down. "I'll see if I can score you an ice pack while I see what's going on with Joey."

He watched her walk down the hallway with a kind of amazement - and a little melancholy.

Andie reached the nurses station at the same time as one of the doctors from earlier in the night. He recognized her, and turned to answer her questions.

Pacey rubbed his nose and fought back a yawn. The adrenaline was fading, and exhaustion and soreness and worry was pressing into him. He eyed the evil vending machine.

"Oh, no, Christine…even if you were the last coffee machine in hell…" he muttered.

"Sir?"

Pacey turned to see one of his busboys from the restaurant pushing a wheelchair towards him loaded with paper bags and about 10 carafes.

"I, uh, commandeered…"

"What IS all that?" Pacey demanded.

"The food you ordered, sir? And coffee?"

"How much coffee, exactly?"

The busboy looked down at the pile on the wheelchair and then back up at Pacey. "Um, all of it?"

Pacey shook his head. And then burst out laughing