I've been lurking -- and loving -- so much of the stuff here on this site for quite some time. The fic here is so good, I never thought I'd try my hand at one myself, but at the sweet encouragement of those at the "I'm New" thread, I'm now tossing my own hat into the ring.
This fic takes place in Season 6, right after Episode #604, "Instant Karma!" when Joey bumped into Dawson for the first time after they slept together and when she kissed Eddie for the first time at Hell's Kitchen at the end of the episode. Meanwhile, Pacey got into the doghouse with Audrey when she caught him going to that strip club with his bosses after he bailed on a night out with her, Jack & Jen. Later on, he went to her dorm room, contrite, and then curled up next to her to just sleep.
I always wondered what would have happened when Joey got home from the bar -- what she was thinking after the kiss and how would she react upon finding Pacey there sleeping with Audrey when she returned to ther dorm room after such an eventful night. So I wrote this fic.
Thanks!
NOTE: 9/19/05 -- Much of this fic got lost in the Great EZ Board Crash of Spring 2005. Here's the link to the entire fic: Remembered Impulses @ FIC SNOBS.
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ETA: 4/7/05 -- xoneflypnayx made this AWESOME banner for this fic! She freakin' rocks!
An impulse propelled Joey to kiss Eddie, there, in the middle of the bar. Eddie may have been right about the harbored anger she retained toward Dawson after seeing him at that movie set, but those were feelings. Deep ones, sure; strong ones, certainly. But impulses were something entirely different. Impulses led to action.
So she had acted. And he spurned her, told her she was being reactive, that she was not the impulsive sort, that she would never stray beyond her own well-constructed plans and boundaries. But afterwards, there was a lull and a shared sense of new beginnings, when he kicked that damn song that reminded her of Dawson right off of the jukebox queue. Now, Eddie was dropping her off in front of her dorm at Worthington. Despite the sometimes uneasy silence between them during the ride home from Hell's Kitchen, Joey turned toward him now to give him a grateful smile and a quick squeeze on his arm before exiting the car.
"Thank you," she said. "And about what you said back there? You're probably not far off. So thank you for that too."
Eddie smiled back at her and shrugged. ''I'm known for dispensing a sage piece of advice on occasion. You were lucky enough to be on the receiving end this particular time."
That elicited a small laugh from Joey, a wider grin from Eddie, and then she was out on the sidewalk and he was driving away. As she watched the car disappear around a distant corner, she felt a jumble of emotions assail her. What a night. Seeing Dawson at the set, post-coitus romance, interrupted. Meeting Natasha, the girl he had been seeing, face-to-face. Having Eddie and Todd, that overbearing Brit-brat director, witness yet another incidental, disastrous reunion.
But she did manage to finally put some closure on that unnamed thing between her and Dawson. For two lifelong soulmates, they sure excelled at finding new and different ways to hurt each other. And she was exhausted now from too many rides on that specific merry-go-round.
As she slowly walked into her dormitory building, the conversation at the bar moved forefront to her memory Jack Kerouac and impulses and life. Eddie liked On the Road; she, not so much. But she had to admit that Eddie was sharp. He had called her out on the kiss, had tied it to her upset over seeing Dawson. He was developing a pretty good take on her, and challenging her perspectives. She was, despite her best intentions, beginning to like that about him. But he did not have a complete handle on her. Not yet.
For she had followed her impulses before. Several times, in fact, but was not willing to share such information with Eddie at this stage of their whatever-it-was that was evolving. An errant thought crossed over into her consciousness -- Eddie reminds me a little of Pacey.
Impulse is as impulse does, she remembered that smart-ass, cocky boy teasing her once, feelings may pass but impulses can drive you on to greater things. Sure, he was all of ten at the time and was ridiculing her fear of Grams, waving that damn dollar in her face and gleefully daring her to run up to the Ryan front porch to ring the doorbell on a dark, cold night, while Dawson looked on bemused. She was scared and he had goaded her, but in the end, she did not give in to an impulse in that moment -- her stubborn will choosing to defy his taunting rather than to prove her own courage -- but she certainly did several moments after that day and a number of occasions since.
Skipping classes during high school on an autumn day, against her best judgement, with that boy she grew up hating, simply because she was curious. Later that year, in the springtime, grabbing the hand of that same boy and kissing him, her unwitting soulmate barely a stone's throw away. And then, jumping on a boat with just the clothes on her back and sailing away for the summer with him.
That next year, she had seduced him on a winters night by a flickering fire in a quiet cabin, even though she had had no idea what she was doing, was merely following her intuitions and feelings and desires. And last year, despite getting her heart broken in a thousand pieces in the most public and awful way at the senior prom just a few months before, she had sought him out again, despite his purposeful non-communication. Barreling past the pain and tempered joy at seeing him again, she had followed the impulse to re-initiate their friendship.
That boy-that-was-now-her-friend-again brought out the Other Joey in her, and that girl that he once gleefully aggravated on playgrounds, in classrooms, and during makeshift movie projects in the Leery backyard, he now motivated to impulsively sing onstage with a band in crowded college clubs and shady bar-rooms, encouraged her to indulge in a brief mad fling with a bad boy wanna-be-rock-star trying to go good, and willingly jumped along when she ring-led them on a mad-dash escapade at the airport to chase wispy dreams and diverging hearts. Audrey and Dawson never knew what hit them.
Yes, she had followed her impulses before, to great effect, and even brought people along with her. Okay, brought him along with her. But then again, he had always been the one who had brought her along before -- she was only now just returning those favors.
As she slowly approached her dorm room, Joey stopped at the bench window, just outside, to sit down for a few moments, alone. Why was she thinking about Pacey right now? She thought back to another recent evening, when Pacey had come into Hell's Kitchen, looking weary and tired, in a dress shirt and tie, no less, looking so different from the boy she had always known. Maybe it was his clothes or the goatee, which she was still getting used to, but it startled her to see him come through the doorway like that, all grown up, reeking responsibility and, dare she say it, a sense of manhood.
After tossing up a furtive greeting in his general direction, she had moved to the bar immediately, suddenly feeling uncertain and shy in the face of it, leaving Audrey, Jen and Jack to greet him. Eddie threw her a quizzical look as he placed four bottles of non-alcoholic beer onto her platter and she had merely shrugged him off.
Turning to come back to the table, she saw Pacey walk past her to make his way to the bathroom, without a glance in her direction, a perturbed preoccupation etched on his face. She had let him go by without a word or a gesture toward him, sensing he did not want to be disturbed, and then asked Audrey what was wrong with him. Her roommate shrugged and professed that she had no hand in any of his probable upset.
Later, Audrey told her what happened on his first day at his new stockbroker job -- how his new boss, Rich Rinaldi, had snatched the credit for a particularly impressive client coup from Pacey -- and Joey was outraged. In fact, she probably bypassed any preceding thresholds of hate for any one being in the known universe. If she had a gun -- and knew how to shoot it -- she would have wanted to aim a bullet right between this Rinaldi character's eyes.
"Oh bunny! You are so sweet to get all worked up with me!" Audrey said, hugging her. "But Pacey insists on handling it by working harder. He won't quit! He says hes going to stick it out. I would've been so outta there! she had pronounced. "So now he plans to go in at the crack of dawn every day and stay late to study for some stupid exam-thingy and just do better. Which means I'll never see him now!" she whined, pouting her displeasure.
He was not going to run. That was what was different. And Joey had been so proud. She offered words of empathy to Audrey, made sympathetic noises in support of her new "predicament," and honestly felt for her roommate's temporary loss of 24/7 boyfriend-love, but deep down inside, she was so proud of that boy -- her friend, Pacey Witter. Her best friend, actually.
And when had that happened? For all of her life, Dawson Leery was her best friend, the one she always talked to, went for advice to, sought support from, whom she knew would always be there for her. And yet, they had not talked all summer, even after her impulsive trip to see him at the airport before he left for Los Angeles. Until tonight, they had not talked since the night they slept together.
But Pacey she talked to all of the time. Except for that one summer after senior year, when they both found words too painful to exchange for the first time in their lives, she never stopped talking to Pacey. Granted, he was also dating her roommate now, so that put him in closer proximity more frequently. But she knew that would never matter. Because it never did.
For Dawson Leery, the boy across the creek, everything mattered. It was always all-or-nothing. If they could not be boyfriend and girlfriend, they could not be friends. If they were going to be just friends, they could never be together romantically. There were no grays between them, no maneuvering any in-betweens, no straying into the margins. It was all textbook storyboards.
And that should have been perfect for a girl like her, Miss-Read-the-Ending-Before-Starting-the-Book, Play-By-the-Rules, Josephine Potter. Yet it was not. Perfection, though constantly yearned and striven for, just was not her forte. Nor should it be, she had finally realized, standing there in front of Dawson tonight, looking at the pain in his eyes, feeling her own pain balled up inside of her. Perfection just does not work in the real world. But when she turned to walk away from Dawson, toward the car where Eddie waited to drive her back to the bar, she only felt a sudden sense of relief.
Eddie Doling. Now there was an intriguing boy. A bit of a mystery, arch and rough around the edges, witty and smart, easy with the sarcastic banter, yet there was a streak of idealism running just below the surface -- maybe even a little bit of yearning for an unnamed dream. She sensed some fear there too -- of what, she could not tell at this point. But she was curious. And she had not been this curious in a very long time. He kissed her back earlier. She had felt it and, skittish as she often was with her emotions, her feelings were always true. He was interested in her. And he was also probably wary. Thus, the bantering. And it was banter, not pride, that goeth before the falling.
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This fic takes place in Season 6, right after Episode #604, "Instant Karma!" when Joey bumped into Dawson for the first time after they slept together and when she kissed Eddie for the first time at Hell's Kitchen at the end of the episode. Meanwhile, Pacey got into the doghouse with Audrey when she caught him going to that strip club with his bosses after he bailed on a night out with her, Jack & Jen. Later on, he went to her dorm room, contrite, and then curled up next to her to just sleep.
I always wondered what would have happened when Joey got home from the bar -- what she was thinking after the kiss and how would she react upon finding Pacey there sleeping with Audrey when she returned to ther dorm room after such an eventful night. So I wrote this fic.
Thanks!
NOTE: 9/19/05 -- Much of this fic got lost in the Great EZ Board Crash of Spring 2005. Here's the link to the entire fic: Remembered Impulses @ FIC SNOBS.
*************************
ETA: 4/7/05 -- xoneflypnayx made this AWESOME banner for this fic! She freakin' rocks!
Remembered Impulses
An impulse propelled Joey to kiss Eddie, there, in the middle of the bar. Eddie may have been right about the harbored anger she retained toward Dawson after seeing him at that movie set, but those were feelings. Deep ones, sure; strong ones, certainly. But impulses were something entirely different. Impulses led to action.
So she had acted. And he spurned her, told her she was being reactive, that she was not the impulsive sort, that she would never stray beyond her own well-constructed plans and boundaries. But afterwards, there was a lull and a shared sense of new beginnings, when he kicked that damn song that reminded her of Dawson right off of the jukebox queue. Now, Eddie was dropping her off in front of her dorm at Worthington. Despite the sometimes uneasy silence between them during the ride home from Hell's Kitchen, Joey turned toward him now to give him a grateful smile and a quick squeeze on his arm before exiting the car.
"Thank you," she said. "And about what you said back there? You're probably not far off. So thank you for that too."
Eddie smiled back at her and shrugged. ''I'm known for dispensing a sage piece of advice on occasion. You were lucky enough to be on the receiving end this particular time."
That elicited a small laugh from Joey, a wider grin from Eddie, and then she was out on the sidewalk and he was driving away. As she watched the car disappear around a distant corner, she felt a jumble of emotions assail her. What a night. Seeing Dawson at the set, post-coitus romance, interrupted. Meeting Natasha, the girl he had been seeing, face-to-face. Having Eddie and Todd, that overbearing Brit-brat director, witness yet another incidental, disastrous reunion.
But she did manage to finally put some closure on that unnamed thing between her and Dawson. For two lifelong soulmates, they sure excelled at finding new and different ways to hurt each other. And she was exhausted now from too many rides on that specific merry-go-round.
As she slowly walked into her dormitory building, the conversation at the bar moved forefront to her memory Jack Kerouac and impulses and life. Eddie liked On the Road; she, not so much. But she had to admit that Eddie was sharp. He had called her out on the kiss, had tied it to her upset over seeing Dawson. He was developing a pretty good take on her, and challenging her perspectives. She was, despite her best intentions, beginning to like that about him. But he did not have a complete handle on her. Not yet.
For she had followed her impulses before. Several times, in fact, but was not willing to share such information with Eddie at this stage of their whatever-it-was that was evolving. An errant thought crossed over into her consciousness -- Eddie reminds me a little of Pacey.
Impulse is as impulse does, she remembered that smart-ass, cocky boy teasing her once, feelings may pass but impulses can drive you on to greater things. Sure, he was all of ten at the time and was ridiculing her fear of Grams, waving that damn dollar in her face and gleefully daring her to run up to the Ryan front porch to ring the doorbell on a dark, cold night, while Dawson looked on bemused. She was scared and he had goaded her, but in the end, she did not give in to an impulse in that moment -- her stubborn will choosing to defy his taunting rather than to prove her own courage -- but she certainly did several moments after that day and a number of occasions since.
Skipping classes during high school on an autumn day, against her best judgement, with that boy she grew up hating, simply because she was curious. Later that year, in the springtime, grabbing the hand of that same boy and kissing him, her unwitting soulmate barely a stone's throw away. And then, jumping on a boat with just the clothes on her back and sailing away for the summer with him.
That next year, she had seduced him on a winters night by a flickering fire in a quiet cabin, even though she had had no idea what she was doing, was merely following her intuitions and feelings and desires. And last year, despite getting her heart broken in a thousand pieces in the most public and awful way at the senior prom just a few months before, she had sought him out again, despite his purposeful non-communication. Barreling past the pain and tempered joy at seeing him again, she had followed the impulse to re-initiate their friendship.
That boy-that-was-now-her-friend-again brought out the Other Joey in her, and that girl that he once gleefully aggravated on playgrounds, in classrooms, and during makeshift movie projects in the Leery backyard, he now motivated to impulsively sing onstage with a band in crowded college clubs and shady bar-rooms, encouraged her to indulge in a brief mad fling with a bad boy wanna-be-rock-star trying to go good, and willingly jumped along when she ring-led them on a mad-dash escapade at the airport to chase wispy dreams and diverging hearts. Audrey and Dawson never knew what hit them.
Yes, she had followed her impulses before, to great effect, and even brought people along with her. Okay, brought him along with her. But then again, he had always been the one who had brought her along before -- she was only now just returning those favors.
As she slowly approached her dorm room, Joey stopped at the bench window, just outside, to sit down for a few moments, alone. Why was she thinking about Pacey right now? She thought back to another recent evening, when Pacey had come into Hell's Kitchen, looking weary and tired, in a dress shirt and tie, no less, looking so different from the boy she had always known. Maybe it was his clothes or the goatee, which she was still getting used to, but it startled her to see him come through the doorway like that, all grown up, reeking responsibility and, dare she say it, a sense of manhood.
After tossing up a furtive greeting in his general direction, she had moved to the bar immediately, suddenly feeling uncertain and shy in the face of it, leaving Audrey, Jen and Jack to greet him. Eddie threw her a quizzical look as he placed four bottles of non-alcoholic beer onto her platter and she had merely shrugged him off.
Turning to come back to the table, she saw Pacey walk past her to make his way to the bathroom, without a glance in her direction, a perturbed preoccupation etched on his face. She had let him go by without a word or a gesture toward him, sensing he did not want to be disturbed, and then asked Audrey what was wrong with him. Her roommate shrugged and professed that she had no hand in any of his probable upset.
Later, Audrey told her what happened on his first day at his new stockbroker job -- how his new boss, Rich Rinaldi, had snatched the credit for a particularly impressive client coup from Pacey -- and Joey was outraged. In fact, she probably bypassed any preceding thresholds of hate for any one being in the known universe. If she had a gun -- and knew how to shoot it -- she would have wanted to aim a bullet right between this Rinaldi character's eyes.
"Oh bunny! You are so sweet to get all worked up with me!" Audrey said, hugging her. "But Pacey insists on handling it by working harder. He won't quit! He says hes going to stick it out. I would've been so outta there! she had pronounced. "So now he plans to go in at the crack of dawn every day and stay late to study for some stupid exam-thingy and just do better. Which means I'll never see him now!" she whined, pouting her displeasure.
He was not going to run. That was what was different. And Joey had been so proud. She offered words of empathy to Audrey, made sympathetic noises in support of her new "predicament," and honestly felt for her roommate's temporary loss of 24/7 boyfriend-love, but deep down inside, she was so proud of that boy -- her friend, Pacey Witter. Her best friend, actually.
And when had that happened? For all of her life, Dawson Leery was her best friend, the one she always talked to, went for advice to, sought support from, whom she knew would always be there for her. And yet, they had not talked all summer, even after her impulsive trip to see him at the airport before he left for Los Angeles. Until tonight, they had not talked since the night they slept together.
But Pacey she talked to all of the time. Except for that one summer after senior year, when they both found words too painful to exchange for the first time in their lives, she never stopped talking to Pacey. Granted, he was also dating her roommate now, so that put him in closer proximity more frequently. But she knew that would never matter. Because it never did.
For Dawson Leery, the boy across the creek, everything mattered. It was always all-or-nothing. If they could not be boyfriend and girlfriend, they could not be friends. If they were going to be just friends, they could never be together romantically. There were no grays between them, no maneuvering any in-betweens, no straying into the margins. It was all textbook storyboards.
And that should have been perfect for a girl like her, Miss-Read-the-Ending-Before-Starting-the-Book, Play-By-the-Rules, Josephine Potter. Yet it was not. Perfection, though constantly yearned and striven for, just was not her forte. Nor should it be, she had finally realized, standing there in front of Dawson tonight, looking at the pain in his eyes, feeling her own pain balled up inside of her. Perfection just does not work in the real world. But when she turned to walk away from Dawson, toward the car where Eddie waited to drive her back to the bar, she only felt a sudden sense of relief.
Eddie Doling. Now there was an intriguing boy. A bit of a mystery, arch and rough around the edges, witty and smart, easy with the sarcastic banter, yet there was a streak of idealism running just below the surface -- maybe even a little bit of yearning for an unnamed dream. She sensed some fear there too -- of what, she could not tell at this point. But she was curious. And she had not been this curious in a very long time. He kissed her back earlier. She had felt it and, skittish as she often was with her emotions, her feelings were always true. He was interested in her. And he was also probably wary. Thus, the bantering. And it was banter, not pride, that goeth before the falling.
************
