AUTHOR NOTE: An author's note is still a thing, right? Because here I am, dismally out of practice and writing for an ancient fandom.

The short answer as to why I wrote this: I cannot in good conscience let my fanfic career burn out completely without dedicating one story to the best fictional man of all time—Pacey Witter, friend to women.

Longer answer: One month into the pandemic I went crazy and re-started Dawson's Creek from the beginning. It took me 2+ years and much frustration to get through it because, wowww this show really has its narrative slumps. Inevitably, there were several moments in the back half where I just wanted SO MUCH MORE from the Pacey and Joey relationship post-season 4, but of course that's probably a given for anyone who opens this fic. Then in the midst of all my unsatisfied angst, Taylor Swift dropped evermore, and I quickly came to realize that gold rush just about SCREAMS Pacey/Joey to me (hello title inspiration), which is the origin story of how I began toying with the cobbled-together digressions you have here.

Much introspection (*confused* introspection on Joey's part, of course) to follow. Starts after S4, ends in the beloved Series Finale. When this show is good, it is SO good.

"I think I should probably go off and live my own life for a little while"

He's 18 and it's over.

It's an entire summer at sea without her. She's everywhere and nowhere. Of course she is. He'd expected as much, but it's the stabbing specificity of his melancholia that catches him off guard.

The back of his neck is fried from a combination of his own negligence and too much direct exposure to the blazing midday sun; she'd always notice he was burning before it got this bad.

The crew is welcoming, they even seem to enjoy his smartass quipping rather than simply tolerating it, but that can't hold a candle to navigating such small spaces with a first mate who is stunningly beautiful and positively brimming with raw affection. Last year, a wave would hit starboard a little too hard, a vicious storm rolling in without warning, and there she'd be—colliding into him and not letting go. Maybe she thought most of his jokes were corny, perhaps she spent far too much time rolling those magnificent eyes in mock exasperation, but the shape of her full mouth on his far exceeds anything his present company can provide.

And no one is offering a barnacle for his thoughts when he's all tangled up in his own metaphorical ropes. No one seems to realize—or care—that he's tangled at all.

In his better moods, he wants to trade witticisms, trade insults, trade kisses. There were moments last summer when he thought he'd literally, no exaggeration or hyperbole required, combust. To be constantly encircled in the visual parade of her endlessly tanned skin, to have her bending and stretching in close proximity all day every day as they completed the routine tasks that kept them afloat from one breath to the next, to kiss and kiss and kiss, and not—and not…

Now there's no such thing as not. He wants sex, he has sex. Willing bodies are not a scarcity. Each port seems to overflow with an assortment of flashy new options. But somehow, quite contrary to everything he'd believed at the naive age of fifteen, a lifestyle of unhindered philandering falls short of the utopia he'd once imagined it to be. Impossible as it may seem, he actually misses that perilous edge of unmet incineration, the act of rolling away too soon, lying flat on his back in the unoccupied sliver of True Love's tiny bow, gasping and yearning but never consummating. Or, ya know, repressing the physical demand for said consummation until he could finish the job alone.

Okay, to be fair, he does not miss the muffled solo act. He just misses her. His heart doesn't race like it used to, the faces blur together from one dalliance to the next, and maybe the stars don't feel quite as close as they did the last time he drifted down this same coastline.

There's a misguided impulse to retrace old patterns and hope for a different result. He channels all of his effort into wooing one woefully out-of-his-league woman, an alarmingly familiar blend of driven and brilliant and gorgeous, but of course you cannot simply throw those ingredients together and replicate something that's only meant to exist once in a lifetime. It's good, the chemistry is undeniable, but there's no electric shock to the system. His heart doesn't hammer into overdrive at a mere glimpse of her luminous smile. The compulsion to wow her, to make grandiose speeches, to plan for something that surpasses these three months, never arrives.

But maybe overblown speeches and gestures aren't meant to outlive the maelstrom of wrenching teenage hormones anyhow. Maybe this lowering of expectations is a sign of some much-needed maturity; a precursor to better things, lasting things.

Even so, it isn't enough to scrub away the tenacious chokehold of his past.

On one particularly scorching August day, a deckhand jokingly asks if someone could please accidentally shove him overboard into the bracing relief of the Caribbean, and a reckless whisper of reminiscence worms its way through Pacey's thick skull—You know what continually amazes me, Pace? How long you've lasted without being thrown off this boat.

Except she didn't actually throw him in as threatened. She went feet first with him, an abridged metaphor to encapsulate the story of that entire summer. They set sail together. Skipped town together. Jumped together.

For a long time afterwards, when the crush of academic failure and the screaming voices of not good enough had piled up around him, with all his old tethers lost or faded, it was the fairytale of that sweeping togetherness that kept him treading water. He clung to it like a rescue raft, but eventually, day by excruciating day, that raft lost all its air and he was sunk.

A year has come and gone, but every detail of their grand adventure is as near to him as the briny air that caresses his face each morning. It's simultaneously forever ago and yesterday. Maybe it had been foolish to ever believe they could survive on land. They didn't fit there, too young in some ways and too grown up in others, wayward yet fragile. A love so pure, a love so doomed.

He grows increasingly philosophical when the bow is aimed at true north for the first time, the return voyage looming large and unbidden in his personal horizon. Pacey looks around now, a breathtaking panorama of glittering water in every direction, and he remembers. The pain isn't quite so sharp anymore, so he grants himself a mental hall pass and does nothing but remember—a giggle against his ear, the provoking jolt of her fingertips along his spine as she slathered him in sunscreen, a hand laced through his as they wander from stall to stall in an open air market, the humid breeze teasing her dark hair, that first bleary-eyed smile each morning, a vulnerable request of not yet in the shimmering night.

And naturally, there's the one memory he instinctively knew would hit hardest—when he can't sleep and there's no book, no lilting voice, no intimate brush of skin as they exchange well-worn pages in the space between their hammocks. Against all odds, Josephine Potter really did get him hooked on phonics.

Realistically, he knows she's gone forever. He'd hardly stood a chance in Capeside, sure as hell barely skated away with her in the shadow of all things Dawson Leery. Add an immeasurable number of Worthington's most eligible to the equation and he's obviously out of the picture. As sweet as it is to treasure all the firsts that indelibly belong to him, to hold on to the aftershocks of that scorch-the-earth kind of love they'd shared for as long as two kids from the Cape could sustain such a thing, to revel in that last poignant promise—You wouldn't have to ask, Pace—he sees it for what it is: fantasy. She is climbing upward into a glorious future while he circles heedlessly through the past. They are ultimately destined to sail away from each other.

But as another long night passes without a single barnacle given for his thoughts, the notion of granting her permission to come aboard again someday is a damn good fantasy nonetheless.

"And don't tell me that you're not scared, because I know that you are"

She's 20 and it's over before it can ever truly begin.

One foot off the deck. Almost. She almost goes all in.

It's a horrible feeling, though—flying, falling, sinking. That's what it is with him. He looks different now, more polished, more adult, but it's a ruse and she knows it. The light catches his gaze just right and she sees the devilment that lurks at the bounds of this new shellacked exterior. Money and responsibility do nothing to dull his effect on her, and it certainly won't keep her safe from the jagged edge of heartbreak that surely waits on the other side of this precipice.

Jump. Don't jump. Jump. It's a continuous whirlwind of indecision, the weight of which is enough to make her scream. Her friend Pacey is possibly the most trustworthy person in the world. Her ex-boyfriend Pacey scares the absolute living hell out of her. When he smiles at her a certain way, so bright and confident and glowing, Joey finds herself leaning in, considering the plunge. She blinks, and it's a different Pacey berating her with a ferocity that shakes her to the core—When I'm with you, I feel like I'm nothing.

She doesn't know what to do, doesn't know which version of him to expect when it's all said and done, and that's how she arrives at her answer. She won't allow herself to be trapped in a futile adolescent vortex, to live in fear of the recurring nightmare that is her senior prom. The highs of their relationship were so impossibly high, but the lows were just too damn low.

Besides, she'd stumbled down memory lane with Dawson at the beginning of the year and look where that had gotten her. No more reliving high school, no scouring childish romances for new potential. It can't end well, can it?

And Dawson...he's supposed to be the one who makes her feel like herself. That's the relationship, friends or otherwise, she should slide back into naturally, easily, no matter the circumstances. Should being the operative word, because it's been nothing but landmines and misses between the two of them since they turned their tassels on the lawn of Capeside High.

That's the real curveball, isn't it? From that first twinkling night on the docks of Boston Harbor, Pacey has been a place of refuge for her in this turbulent new beginning. He's welcoming, open, supportive. He knows her so well, possessing the uncanny ability to allude to their past without getting mired in pain or resentment. He's even been known to let her talk through the Dawson Leery of it all, as if that hadn't been their worst hot button argument only a handful of months ago.

He's a better person than she is in so many ways. She's known that all along, though.

They touch and go, never pausing for too long, allowing all sorts of questionable behaviors to get scribbled in the margins of their ever-changing lives as they meander toward new goals, new prospects. She tells him things she probably shouldn't. He returns the favor when he uses her as a shield, a buffer, a confidante. Yes, occasionally she feels the niggling in her gut that they probably shouldn't circle each other too closely, that a romance between her ex and her roommate is a messy conflict of interests, but the thrumming pulse of campus life and city noise provides plenty of distraction to dull the buzz of their intrinsic chemistry. It's college, right? A time to be cavalier with boundaries if there ever was one.

She's tempted to label him as safe, like the wild, heart-throbbing rollercoaster of emotion and intimacy and—and the staggering attraction that was as surprising as it was indisputable—never happened at all. He's her human equivalent of comfort food, or at least that's how it feels most of the time. Until there's the magnetic brush of his arm in Grams' kitchen. The warm spark of firelight gleaming in his eyes as they swap scary stories with Jack. When he walks her home and it's just the two of them on the streets of Boston, talking and laughing, baring their souls to each other...following the exact plan he'd once outlined at the start of senior year, before it all went sour—I plan to be wherever you are.

When Joey lets herself think about that, about the fact that they both landed in the same city after all, that Pacey has spent the last two years trying on different careers in Boston, fumbling toward adulthood within arm's reach of her, the word 'safe' goes out the window. A long ago murmur of possibility replaces it, burning just beneath the skin, an ache to wonder—what if?

What if they had tried? What if her dream of Worthington was always meant to run parallel to Pacey's own journey of self-discovery? Why is he right there on the periphery at all times, humming in the background like her favorite song, flickering into focus right when she needs him, then sliding away to go live his life just a few T stops away from hers?

But, perhaps more tellingly, she defaults to the alternative—what if it's too late? What if they've inflicted too much damage to ever go there again? What if the relationships they've pursued in the meantime are too complicated, too close to home, too unresolved? What if encouraging these resuscitated sparks that flash in the here and now will only end with the whole house burning down around them in a devastating encore of their past?

Don't jump.

Except she does. Halfheartedly. Unsure. Wanting it, wanting him, wanting to soar amongst the stars, getting so close—

Stopping too short.

Disappointing him before he can disappoint her.

With Dawson, it's always fizzled out prematurely, confusingly unsustainable in defiance of what her head tells her should be a perfect match. For Pacey, the tide is just too damn uncertain regardless of how her heart thunders against her ribs, begging for reprise, for release. In the end, how can it be either of them? Why would she keep rehearsing the old lines of her Capeside self when she's been desperate to try on a new version of Joey Potter for as long as she can remember?

So she'll turn the page again. Swim to shore as fast as her limbs can carry her. Keep him in the margins, bury the anchor, whatever it takes to settle this monsoon of internal tumult. Only forward now, even if there's a nearly inaudible rustle of her innermost voice that says taking another chance on Eddie is as backward as backwards gets.

Despite the poetic lure of Pacey's pleas at a high school dance that's about 90 miles north and a lifetime away from their last, Joey lets him walk away from her for a second time.

"You know what, for the record, I don't want to be let off the hook."

She's 25 and she's always known it's not over.

Within an instant of her feet leaving the ground—body swung up against his as light as can be, gravity be damned in the face of his dumb joke—she remembers. There's no such thing as standing still with him. Pacey Witter is the creek moving at its strongest, its fastest, like it's been raining for a biblical forty days and forty nights, sweeping every loose bit of debris along with it. One glance at the enormous smile stretched across his face as he welcomes her home and Joey's also convinced that he's the sun. No mere mortal should be capable of such radiance.

He's the only one who does this to her, the only one who exudes a contagious sense of vitality in every word, every movement. He has this unmatched charisma, a roaring energy that fills her up and spills out in all directions. It overrides her worst traits, stomps out her own proclivity for hesitation. He's so natural, so instinctive, so effortlessly delighted by her. She basks in it, loses all footing and finds herself downstream in his effervescent joy.

He'd told her once, years ago now, that he knew about the other Joey Potter, the version of herself who takes chances, makes daring decisions, paints outside the lines. The detail he'd seemed to miss in his little motivational speech, under the pulsing lights of a college club she misses quite unexpectedly, was that 'other Joey' rarely appears without his prompting. Six years later and the verdict is unchanged. His enthusiasm is infectious. She already feels bolder, brighter, happier as he doles out a ridiculous amount of fanfare that would send her squirming away from literally anyone else.

Not that anyone else has ever attempted to rival his level of expertise in verbose adoration.

One day in Capeside and she's already doing this. Comparing Christopher—and all other men, for that matter—to her ex. Dammit.

And to think that this was all running through her head before the impromptu dance floor kiss that left her dazed and dumbstruck.

Everything goes to hell directly after that. There's his megawatt kiss, like something out of a summer blockbuster, the full-scale shock of it racing through her—the dramatic dip, the firm strength of his body, that electric hand balanced against her neck, his mouth so convincing she can't quite believe it's all for show. Doesn't even want to believe it despite the many reasons she should. But somewhere between the shrieking alertness in her veins and the foggy mush-for-brains astonishment that hasn't yet cleared when he presses a pliant kiss to her cheek, Jen faints.

Jen faints, and the world upends itself completely.

For as fleetingly as Joey has entertained the idea of anything more than friendship with Pacey in the last five years, it's unsurprising that he fulfills no less than three roles for her in the days that follow. He's solid, reassuring, a comforting shoulder of shared grief. He's the jester, their source of levity, a flicker of his old self-deprecating adolescence at play, making jokes that have her torn between a desire to launch him into the ocean or simply collapse into wavering hysteria. He's her steady hum of hope, a promise of stars and sailboats, a closely guarded longing that's like white noise, or the secret service or the threat of nuclear war. Always, always there.

Which is what makes these interruptions in the industrial kitchen of his dazzlingly successful Icehouse redux so infuriating. She's finally ready, and God is he ever stripping away every last bit of his lovelorn soul before her; it's so real to her that she's borrowing his lines, prepared to fight to the death for this thing that lives and breathes in every glance they share, every embrace, all the unfinished sentences she's never been brave enough to definitively punctuate once and for all.

Except there's Gail, then Bessie, and the wind has officially turned. Momentum gone, conversation paused.

But she knows herself, knows that this sort of courage does not usually come with a long shelf life, so she forces her ass onto a bench that faces the restaurant and waits. She declines a handful of offers for a ride home, her foot threatening to tap straight through the deck with impatience, when it occurs to her that this declaration will be better received if there's something else she takes care of first.

With a reluctant sigh, Joey pries her eyes from this beautiful thing he's built all on his own and sets off for the creek instead. It's Jen's dying wish, after all—no loose ends, not anymore.

"I am determined to be happy in this life"

He's 25 and it begins again.

There's a disappointed lurch in his chest, but that's all the more he allows himself as he does a final sweep of the Icehouse. Everything is prepped for a return to normalcy tomorrow. Dishes washed, counters clear, chairs straightened, tables reset.

As if there will ever be such a thing as normal again.

Jen is gone, as are the collected faces of those who loved her. Pacey wishes he could feel relieved that one such face is not in sight, because as much as he loves a good excuse to gamble, he really has no idea what his odds were in Joey's abandoned rebuttal speech. He can't turn off the fanatical part of his brain that furiously returns to her declaration of love ad nauseum. He wants—needs—to turn off the part that remembers a similar statement about Dawson following closely behind it, but of course that's impossible.

Maybe she'd been on her way to letting him down easy.

Except there's that thing about loving him. Joey Potter loves him, even now. It's very real. It's very real. She loves him, he knows that, and it's very real.

Does he drive to the Potter B&B and demand a conclusion to this cliffhanger? Or go find a can of spray paint and vandalize that damn wall with a revived plea, making promises to pay rent to whoever owns it these days as soon as he can form a full rational thought again?

No. He learned long ago to find some degree of restraint in all of this. He's worked too hard, proven too much, to go spinning off into a fit of stupidity that could very well land him in one of Dougie's jail cells before the night is over. His battered face is proof that he's not completely kicked the habit of impulsive self-sabotage, but that isn't an option when it comes to her. She can find him if she really wants to, she's demonstrated that a few times before. He'll be a man of his word—he isn't forcing anything, isn't holding onto the illusive possibility of her with clenched fists.

She's off the hook.

Except that's her voice ringing out across the waterfront right as he's made up his mind to leave it all behind him. "Pacey! Pacey, wait."

As if he'd do anything else when Joey Potter is the one calling his name. And maybe it's a trick of the sun, or the inherent mindfuck of this whole exhausting week, but he'd swear he's lived some version of this moment already. She isn't vibrating at quite the same frenzied clip as one of his fondest memories, and yet there is something so familiar in the way she strides across the wooden boards with fierce determination, unrelenting and sure.

I want to stop standing still, I want to move forward, I want to come with you.

The salt-laced breeze tugs at the ends of her hair and a smack of déjà vu nearly takes him out at the knees. Dear God, could a man really be lucky enough to see that look in her eyes twice?

"I was just on my way out," he calls over the wind, words hoarse for every number of very obvious reasons.

She's close enough now that he can read fear behind the bravado, a mental steeling of the anxieties lurking beneath her gaze, the renewed resolve. "Permission to come with you?"

Pacey releases a low chuckle, every ounce of it bittersweet. "There is no boat, Jo."

"Not the point, Pace."

He thinks of the emotional charge that throbbed like a savage undercurrent in his kitchen, how only a few hours ago they were begging each other to not miss the point. He may lose his mind if said point does not get clarified before the sun sets on this day.

He pretends to consider, huffs a long sigh, but he can't contain the smile that breaks through before the words are even out of him.

"Permission granted."

He very consciously does not touch her as he leads the way to his car. No brush of the elbows, no chivalrous reach across to pop open the passenger door, nothing. Sure as hell no hand holding. He's always felt freedom in the little physical intimacies with her, dating or not dating, in pursuit or miles from it, but that was before his chest became excruciatingly tight with the prospect of another crushing blow. A graze of her skin now may very well send him over the edge.

She's uncharacteristically quiet. The hum of his engine matches the jittering buzz in his limbs, but that's it, the only audible noise now that they've crunched past the gravel alley behind the restaurant. It's damn unsettling. No sarcastic repartee or quibbling, no familiar needling or curious inquiries. He's never ever thought of her as compliant or unquestioning, and his nerves get the better of him in a tactless imitation of his clumsily antagonistic fifteen-year-old self.

"What's the deal, Jo? Nowhere to be, nothing better to do? You didn't even ask where we're going."

She visibly fights the urge to roll her eyes at him, only marginally succeeding before a tentative grin overcomes her scorn. "This is where I want to be."

"Here?!" He's too loud, too incredulous, but his already meager filter is worn down to nothing. "In this car? It's not even a particularly good car. I've certainly owned better."

Her mouth twitches, suppressing what he suspects to be a laugh. "I want to be where you are."

"What does that even mean?"

"It's pretty self-explanatory, Pacey."

He swallows hard, presses the gas pedal with a bit more gusto than necessary. "At the risk of sounding obtuse, very few things in this life have explained themselves to me in a way that makes much sense. Especially when it comes to you."

His glance veers sideways just in time to see Joey bristle, her expression flickering between aggravation and sadness before settling into a shocking display of acceptance. She nods, fingers twisting together in her lap.

"I deserve that, I know I do, but Pace—"

"I'm sure Mr. New York Boyfriend would have some input as to where he wants you to be."

"It's Mr. New York Ex-Boyfriend, input no longer required."

The car lurches forward under his command, revving into a higher gear. Pacey focuses straight ahead, hoping to absorb some sense of calm in the unchanging landscape of twin yellow lines and unfurling macadam, the creek pulling taught at their side as the road curves away from downtown's last straggling shopfronts. "And am I to pretend ignorance as to which direction you were coming from when you flagged me down just now?"

"I don't think pretending such things has ever gotten us anywhere, has it?" She shoots that retort at him smugly, but there's a lilt in her voice that promises far better things than whatever half-cocked argument he's trying to wage with her. "I talked to Dawson. Watched Lilly run around the yard with Alexander. It was nice. Nostalgic to say the least."

"Ah, the next generation reigniting some old hopes? Present meets the past, the prologue of Dawson's show playing out in real time all over again? Life imitating art imitating life and all that."

"C'mon, Witter. I thought we'd moved beyond the tortured cynicism of our youth."

The way she stretches those words, infuses them with light and laughter, relaxes something inside of him. He manages a real grin this time, surrendering to that musical quality in her teasing tone.

"You and me, Potter? Beyond cynicism? God, no. Never."

He looks at her, feels himself cracking open at the unmasked happiness painted in broad strokes across her face. It's all he can do to reluctantly divert his attention back to the road, but she upsets his concentration a split-second later with a bombshell that may as well have split the pavement before them in two.

"It's you, Pacey. You want me to be happy, to be with someone who makes me feel the way you feel when you're with me? That's you. That's why I can't be let off the hook."

He swerves. Forgets to breathe. Brakes hard when he realizes he's practically in the shoulder.

"Just pull over, stop here."

"What?" He squeaks that word out, embarrassingly high and clamorous.

Joey squints through the windshield, spots something on the horizon that confirms it for her. "Yep, this will work. Close enough."

"Close enough to what!?" But she's already unbuckled her seatbelt and cranked the door open, giving him no choice but to follow. "Where are you going, woman?"

"Here." She inhales deeply, eyes wide and urgent as she comes to a stop at the nose of the car. "What was it you said all those years ago? You get tired of talking?"

It's beginning to click for him, but he's still processing the last fantastical minute of his life, attempting to sort her confounding words into a file of moments he wants to remember for as long as he lives. "Huh?"

"You stopped the car not far from here, got out, and—" she cradles his face in both palms as soon as he's within reach, and while it's a far more gentle nestling of noses and mingling of breaths, softer and slower than his hormonal meltdown of yesteryear, he's definitely sure of what she's doing now. "There. I love you, Pace. I love you like I've never loved anyone else, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia or regret. You see me and challenge me and never fail to send me head over heels no matter how much I try to fight it. So unless you're going to need some further elaboration on the topic, I don't want to talk anymore."

All it takes is a sly tilt of her head, then it's brilliant pyrotechnics. The warmth of her kiss dissolves over him, into him, breaks him down only to build him right back up. It's even better than his foolhardy spectacle on the dance floor, because it's astonishingly real, completely and deliberately hers. A promise, a flurry of confidence, a future.

Except the nagging insecurities of the past aren't quite done with him.

"We—we tried this once before," he mumbles, creating a fraction of space between them before he can lose his nerve. "The second shot thing. I—"

"You were ready and I convinced myself I wasn't." A mournful crease folds across her brow, one he wants to ease as soon as it appears. "I didn't know how to be honest with myself back then, let alone how to be honest with you. It…it was probably too soon, too fast. I'm sure that sounds like a copout—"

"It doesn't."

"I never really mourned us, you know? Not in the way I should have. I never let myself deal with it properly, and that all came screaming to the surface at the wrong time."

Time. There it is again, the specter that looms over them all, and yet, maybe—

"Pacey?"

It's a rarity to hear her sounding so alarmingly fragile, a phenomena he's only witnessed before or after a cataclysmic event that alters the delicate course of such things as destiny and fate. He leans in to soothe a lingering kiss against her forehead, straddling the chasm that separates his greatest happiness from every ghostly mistake that's bound to recur if he makes a single wrong move. His voice is nothing but a croaking low note of vulnerability, but he makes himself speak nonetheless.

"I don't want to go back, Jo. I don't want us to apologize for things that happened when we were 20, or worse yet, the sins committed at 17, 18. I just…I don't want to go in circles, don't want to waste time, not anymore. Not now."

"We want the same thing, then." Her eyes dart over his face quickly, racing at the same tempo as his thundering pulse. "Let me prove it to you, Pacey. Let's get it right this time, once and for all."

"Once and for all? I like the sound of that."

He isn't sure how she understands him for the roadblock of thick emotion built up in the back of his throat, but the glowing triumph of her smile says it all.

He's as hooked as he's ever been. What a relief to finally know the feeling is mutual.

The sun hasn't even begun its magnificent plunge toward twilight, but even so, with Pacey's next breath finding hers in a searing encore of a kiss, the stars feel pretty damn close.