Bingo Blackout - Dawson's Creek - Pacey/Andie - Boom Boom
Title: Boom Boom
Fandom: Dawson's Creek
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Pacey/Andie
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: Years in the future, two hearts who have not forgotten each other, but who have each overcome a lot since, find themselves being reunited.
Word Count: 4,376
Written For: 1 Million Words Bingo 2023
Warnings: Future Fic, Cannon Character Death
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
She knew she shouldn't be there. She had known, the entire time her brother and his doting husband had been planning this anniversary celebration, that her attendance here would be a mistake. She had known it was going to hurt to see him again. She had known his mere presence would work hard, with but one single look, to bring all the walls she had worked so hard over the years after their relationship tumbling down. She had known what she was doing. She had known it was a mistake.
Yet still, she had done it. She had rearranged her schedule to make damn certain she could have not just tonight but the next night off as well from the hospital. She never asked for a day off. She had thrown herself first into her studies and then into her actual work, all the while telling herself that she loved what she was doing. She did love what she was doing, but that wasn't the reason why she allowed and even welcomed her job filling every corner of her life. The man standing before her now was. And he was also the biggest mistake, and the greatest experience, of her entire life.
His back was to her now, but she knew every inch of his face so well. She could see he was turning something small over and over in his hands and wondered how he was feeling this night. Did he also regret coming? Surely, he had known about Dawson and Joey, not that they hadn't all expected them to end up together. At least, in the beginning, they had, but she honestly had not thought that Joey would ever leave Pacey. She still didn't understand then why, but then, too, she still didn't fully comprehend why she had made the mistake she had years ago.
She could blame it on her medicine, on her fear, on so many things, but none of them made it right. She had taken a wonderful man, the most wonderous blessing God had ever placed into her life, and crushed his heart with one night of infidelity. She couldn't blame Pacey for leaving her. He had made it crystal clear that he still felt a good deal for her, having been there so many times after their breakup, but he had never taken her back, no matter how hard she had tried. It had taken Andie years, but eventually she had come to understand Pacey. She still could not understand, or forgive, her own foolishness.
But there was nothing more that she could possibly say tonight than she had said years ago. She had told him he was her world. She had told him time and again how much he meant to her, and indeed, he had meant everything to her. Their breakup had happened so many years ago. Yet, there were still times, like tonight, when it still felt achingly fresh. She didn't deserve forgiveness. There was nothing she could do to earn it --
Andie was startled out of her thoughts by a gentle jab. She cried out in surprise, and was even more surprised, when she turned to see not Jack but Joey standing there, grinning up at her. "Go to him," Joey whispered.
"What?" Andie had heard her clearly, but could not believe that she had. Why on Earth would Pacey's ex-wife, the girl whose admiration, if not love, had kept him from going back to her? No. That wasn't right, and it wasn't fair to Joey or Pacey either. Andie had been the one to break his heart. She had been unfaithful to him, had lied and deceived and utterly hurt him, while Pacey had fought against the feelings he'd felt for Joey that Summer in Andie's own absence. He had been true to her. Joey had not encouraged him to cheat on her, but had instead encouraged him to do what was needed to get Andie well -- and had also encouraged Andie not only to get well but to try to make things up with Pacey.
"Take it from someone who knows," Joey said, smiling gently at her. "You never get over your first love." She glanced back to where her new husband was clearly and patiently waiting for her, two glasses of champagne in his hands. She then looked over to where Pacey stood. "No one knows him better than I do," she whispered, prompting an argument to spur onto the tip of Andie's tongue. But Joey's next words drained away all the old anger that was rushing back into her, "He never got over you. That was why we never worked out." She shrugged. "That, and I never got over Dawson."
"She's right," another voice spoke from just behind Andie. "I don't know about her being the one who knows him best, but I do know she's right that he never got over you."
They were whispering, but Andie was still surprised. She was surprised that Pacey didn't hear them, but the ocean waves were lapping against the ship and, if she knew him at all, and she liked to think she still did, his mind was miles away. Pacey had always been a brooder, and when he was deep in thought as he was currently -- He was hurting, she knew. She heard Joey giggle jovially behind her as she began the long walk away from Pacey's brother and ex-wife to where he now stood. She didn't like the idea that Joey knew Pacey better than anyone else, but in the few feet that felt likes miles to her, she had to admit that, of everybody in the world, they surely were the ones closest to the man she had never once been able to stop loving.
Oh, she had dated. She had dated plenty until she had graduated and went to work at the hospital, and even here in Boston, she had dated a few guys, mostly doctors who any other girl in her right mind would have considered a grand catch. Of course, Andie had not been in her right mind, or, rather her mind had not been right since her brother, TIm's, passing. The closest she had ever come to feeling well had been the times she had spent in Pacey's loving, strong arms. She still remembered their embrace.
She had held to that memory not just throughout her time in the mental hospital, but ever since. Whenever things got bad, whenever she started to hurt again, or started to question her sanity again, she'd remember those arms encircling her so lovingly. His touch to her had always been gentle, and yet strong at the same time: gentle in that he had never hurt her until she'd given him no other choice (except for his bout of silence at the beginning of their relationship when he'd been working through matters and gathering his courage) and strong in that, whenever his arms had been around her, Andie had felt it impossible to be touched by the world.
Maybe that was why their relationship had never been able to work, maybe, in truth, that was why she had allowed herself to go to Mark. She'd been so terrified that their relationship was another figment of her cruel imagination, that Pacey could never possibly love her as much as she did him. They seemed so perfect together, he seemed so perfect that surely what she'd thought had been love could have been nothing more than a fairy tale. And when she'd returned from Boston that first time, she'd fully expected to find he had moved on without her. Why would anybody as sweet, adorable, and attractive as Pacey Witter wait for a twisted person to get out of the nuthouse?
But he had waited. She had pretended to move on with her life. She had found almost every excuse imaginable during that time. But the truth was that she had been afraid. She had been afraid that the doctors would not be able to "fix" her. She had been afraid that she would never stop seeing her dead brother, who had meant so much to her. Tim had, after all, been her life when he'd been alive. She had been afraid there could be no cure for her. But most of all, she had been afraid of losing Pacey's love.
So she had caused herself to lose it. She had driven him away by hurting him more than anybody else ever had. At that time in his life, she knew, he had been vulnerable and scared as well. His whole family had mistreated him terribly. He had questioned what friendships he'd thought he had. And then she had betrayed him. She had slept with another man, a boy who could never have amounted to half of what Pacey had already been then. There was no forgiving such a betrayal. But that had been years ago, Andie reminded herself sternly as she came to stand beside Pacey at the ship's railing.
She stood there in silence beside him, watching him out of the corner of her hazel eyes, until a crackling startled them both. Laughter sounded from the front of the ship, and Andie realized, suddenly, that they were alone and probably had been for a good, little while. All their friends, if they could still be called that, had gone to the front of the ship to watch the fireworks display, leaving her very much alone with Pacey for the first time in several, long years. They had not been alone since the hospital on the day that Jen Lindley had died, and that certainly had not been an appropriate time to discuss whatever feelings may or may not have been still between them.
Although they had come very close to having a genuine heart-to-heart. A ball of emotion clogged her throat, and she curled her hands around the hard, metal railing as she remembered how he had teased her about being his first. He had made her heart flutter so very much that day, and she had spent hours crying that night. Tears welled in her eyes now, just thinking about it all, just thinking about him. She was still battling against them when he acknowledged her presence with a curt nod of his head, as curly, dark, and handsome as it ever had been. "McPhee."
"Pacey." She was proud of herself, she thought, with a small, tremulous smile curving her lips. Her voice had stuttered when she had spoken his name. She had tried again, as unprofessional and inappropriate as it had been, at the hospital that day to tell him what he had meant to her. She had not only called him out on the fact that she was not his first, but had even admitted that she thought about him often. What she'd not said was that she thought him all the time. Even to this day, when her mind was not otherwise occupied with medical knowledge, learning new things, or dealing with patients, he still slipped in there -- and to this day, she also still called her brother, Jack, to check on him and see how he was doing.
She knew his life had been hard, and he had worked hard to mend himself. They'd both been broken when they'd been kids. That was a large part of why she had controlled herself that day at the hospital and refrained from spelling out to him just what he'd still meant to her. He'd finally been healing. His life had been progressing. He hadn't needed her, certainly hadn't wanted her, and she couldn't blame him. She had hurt him. She had helped him to mend, as he had her, but then she, her faithlessness, had broken him again. And that was exactly what it was, she recognized now, standing beside him years later: She had been faithless. He had been too good for her, and she'd expected him to hurt her. So, she had hurt him before he could hurt her. She had been untrue to him before he could leave her.
And she'd never once stopped regretting it. "I'm sorry." The words blurted out from her before she could stop them, before, in all honesty, she even knew she was thinking them.
"What?" he asked in surprise, turning to face her.
She pressed her lips together at first, but it was too late now. The words hung in the crisp air between them. It was a bit later in the year that was generally recommended for a cruise, but it was what Doug and Jack had both their hearts set upon. That, and getting the whole gang back together again as well as a few friends of theirs from the Capeside PD and High School. Who would have ever thought that her brother would end up being a teacher at the same school that had tried so hard to ban him for being gay, something against which Pacey had been willing to stand long before she herself had been? He was always doing things like that, standing up for the little guy and often getting hurt in the process.
Like now. He was here to celebrate Doug and Jack, yet was having to face Dawson being with his ex-wife. She knew Joey had encouraged her to come talk to Pacey about her feelings, but what if Joe had simply been trying to assuage her own guilt? It was quite selfish, actually, Andie realized, for her to think that Pacey still harbored feelings for her just because she had never stopped loving him. His life had progressed beyond their time together, as it should have, especially since she'd been the one to hurt him. She couldn't go back and undo what she had done, and he had made it perfectly clear that those sins were justly unforgivable. She didn't need to open up an old wound for him just because she was hurting.
"Hum, I'm sorry you're having to deal with all this," she said, waving a hand through the night air to indicate the people they could both hear laughing boisterously. They had never missed them when they had not been with them. "What's that?" she then asked, looking to the small object in his hands and desperately trying to change the subject before it was too late.
Pacey frowned, the corners of his beautiful, green eyes squinting slightly as they always had before. It was the same look he'd always worn when trying to understand something that was puzzling to him, trying to unravel some mystery. She knew it meant he wasn't buying her explanation in the slightest and suddenly felt very much like an organism underneath a microscope.
"This," he said, his eyes falling away from her and moving instead to gaze upon the small, metal key in his hand, "is the key to my boat."
"True Love?"
"Yeah." He was no longer facing her, but she could hear the genunine smile in his voice. "You know, Andie," he remarked softly, "that entire Summer I spent working on that boat, I kept thinking it was going to be our path to freedom." After a moment, he chuckled at himself. "Heh. Shows what I knew. But I still prefer the open sea to the ocean."
"And," she said, daring to reach out and place a hand on the side of his jacketed arm, "it is still your path to freedom." They had all dressed up tonight, and she realized again, touching him, how much he had grown. It wasn't just the hard muscle underneath her trembling fingertips. The man before her stood in a top-of-the-line business suit that the boy with whom she had fallen in love so many years ago would never have deigned to wear. He'd been so much comfortable in loose, flowing shirts and shorts.
"What?" he asked suddenly, surprising her. He turned to face her as she blinked in confusion. "You're smiling in that way of yours that means you're thinking about something funny."
"No, not funny," she said with a shake of her blonde head. Her hair had grown out long and beautiful, and it shone underneath the moonlight like her shorter bob had never done when they'd been younger. She took a deep, long, and steadying breath, her hand falling back to her side. It had to be her imagination that she thought she witnessed a pained expression flicker over his face when she removed her hand from his arm. "Just... There are some things, Pacey, about life that seem almost... whimsical when you look back. Some things about us stay the same while others change so much."
"Tell me about it," he mumbled, his gaze once more falling from hers. He frowned down at the key he'd been jingling and slipped it back into his pants pocket.
Andie cleared her throat, and he tried not to notice the way she licked her lips when she was nervous. "When was the last time you took her out?"
"It's been too long," he said. "It's not the same."
"As having Joey on it with you?"
He raised his eyes, and this time, they met hers fully. "As having you on her with me."
She blushed, lowered her eyes, and nervously bit her bottom lip as she'd done so many times when they'd been younger. He had always found that humble, shy expression so very becoming. Joey was bold, not at all shy like Andie. She didn't need him, not like Andie had. But nobody needed him these nights.
"Sorry," he said and lowered his eyes, his own cheeks darkening in a rare moment of humiliation. He knew she didn't love him, didn't want or need him. He'd sent her away far too many times in the past when he'd been trying to protect not just his heart but far more his pride. He'd always known Andie McPhee was far too good a woman for him. She surely didn't need him now that she was no longer broken. Why, she probably had doctors lining up --
"I'd love to go out with you sometime," Andie blurted, and then her face turned as bright red as it had that time she'd been so badly sunburned after being out with him on the boat. "I mean, I'd love to go sailing with you. Sometime. Any time. If you're free. If you mean it. If -- "
To her surprise, he was beaming when he looked back up at her. His eyes were shining, sparkling in a way they had not since they'd been kids. "Andie McPhee, are you asking me out on a date?"
"That depends," she said quickly.
"On what?"
"On if you're accepting or not. If you meant what you said."
"About?" His smile was turning sly now.
"About missing having me sailing with you. About missing having me on your boat. On -- " She blushing, and he was grinning broadly, and slowly, the years of pain, sorrow, and anger were beginning to fall away. "On wanting me to sail with you again. We don't have to... It doesn't have to be an actual date date, you know. We could -- We could sail as friends."
"McPhee," he spoke quietly and earnestly, "you and me, it's never just been friends between us."
She frowned, remembering all the times they had spent together as just friends, the moment in the hospital, the play she'd directed and in which he had actually done a fine job of acting (or at least, she had thought he had, but then she'd always been prejudiced in his favor), the times they'd both happened to be visiting her brother and his, all the times he'd helped her after she'd hurt him so terribly...
"I was too proud to forgive you back then, and still too hurt. But ever since that day in the hospital... Every time I think about you... Before and after," he admitted, gathering an increasing amount of courage to himself. He was trying hard to catch her eyes with his, to see what kind of impact his words were taking on her, but she would no longer face him. She was shaking, he realized, and he knew it wasn't because of the rising, cold wind. She was shaking because... Because...
Pacey reached out, crooked a finger underneath her chin, and lifted her face, forcing her to look at him. There were tears in her eyes, and in that moment, he knew she still felt as strongly about him as he had always felt about and for her. She still loved him. She didn't have to voice the words; he could see it so plainly in her beautiful eyes. How could he tell her? he wondered. He had spent so many nights dreaming of this moment, dreaming of a chance to get to be with her again, to tell her how he truly felt, how he'd always felt. He'd been such a fool to turn her away when she had done everything within her power to make things up to him. For God's sake, it wasn't like he had never made the mistake of cheating on someone -- but then, he'd never actually loved anyone else the way he had Andie McPhee almost since the moment they'd met.
There was so very much he wanted to tell her! He wanted to beg for her forgiveness for always rebuffing every attempt she'd made to earn his forgiveness. He wanted to tell her that he thought of her every hour of every day and night, that he still dreamed of her every night, that she had made such an enormous impact on his life that he could never forget her, or stop loving her. Hell, he owed the man he had finally become to her, to his inspiration, to the first and only person who had truly, completely believed in him! He loved her so!
And then he remembered. He remembered them both crying, tears pouring out of their eyes at a time he actually had not been too proud for his own damn good. He remembered other times when he'd had so much he'd wanted to say, so much to tell her of how she made him feel, but had never once been able to really find the words. One hand caressing her face, he moved his other hand over his heart. "Boom boom," he whispered, patting his chest. "Boom boom."
She was crying now, and he moved slowly closer in. "Boom boom." He expected her to push him away at any moment. She had her pride too after all, and so much more that her life could offer her than anything he could possibly give her. "Boom boom. Boom boom." His lips were angling just scant inches away from hers, and he knew they were both crying as the years of pain, sorrow, and regret fell away. Their pride was gone, and so, too, was the anger. All that remained was them, and the love they'd always felt for one another.
"Boom boom." She surged forward, closing the distance that remained between them and pressing her lips up against his. Pacey's arms fell around Andie, and once more, she felt safe, protected, loved, and cherished. He lifted her as his tongue dove into her mouth and was instantly welcomed by her warm, moist tongue. They kissed as he spun her, and from somewhere that seemed very far away, he again heard the crackling not of the campfire where he'd once courted her before, toasting marshmallows as children just beginning in their lives and just starting to figure out what love and dating and sex all really meant, or of their hearts which he'd feared might break with all the intensity he felt in his own but of fireworks and of people clapping, applauding them for finally shedding all the bad emotions of their pasts and just letting their love rule.
But he wasn't here for any of them. He had not, in truth, come for Jack or even his brother, Dougie. He had hoped, he could admit now, that Andie would be there, that she would come for her brother, and that he might at last be able to impress upon her how much he had changed. None of that mattered now, he realized, spinning and kissing her, for as much as had changed between them, far more had stayed the same. Except for one very important thing: he was no longer the fool he had been in his youth. He was still a fool, of course, he was certain, but he had learned the hard way, over years of missing this wonderful, amazing woman in his arms, that pride meant nothing when it came to love.
"I'll build you a house," he vowed, slowly lowering her but still holding tightly to her. "I'll buy a wing of the hospital and name it after you. I'll cook for you every night. I'll never hurt you. I'll -- " His words were tumbling over themselves with promises, but Andie was already shaking her head.
"Pacey -- "
"I'll -- "
"Pacey -- "
"I may not be a doctor, but I -- "
"I don't care if you're a doctor! I told you that all those years ago, and it's never changed! It never will change!"
"But Mark had -- "
"I don't give a damn what Mark had! I don't give a damn about Mark! I never did! I was afraid, and I hurt you out of fear and I'm sorry! I am so, so, so very sorry, Pacey," she cried, her hands clinging to his face as she finally let all her tears stream where he could see them again, "but if you've forgiven me, that is all I could ever ask for! I love you, Pacey Witter!"
"I love you, Andie McPhee!" he cried out, kissing her, lifting and spinning her again. As the fireworks sounded behind them again, the only thing that eclipsed the grand finale of the pyrotechnics show was the "boom boom"ing of his own heart for this amazing woman he had loved since he was a child, had never stopped loving, and would always, always love far pass the end of time itself.
The End