Fic: Lost Weekend (Josh/Yessica, Josh/Yessica/Maggie)
I couldn't be more nervous, but, here we go none-the-less.
Title: Lost Weekend
Rating: R
Summary: Yessica had a sneaking suspicion that Josh called Maggie Sticks because he loved girls with long legs.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Where to start, where to start. Well, Happy late Birthday, arabella_hope. This was her idea, her fault. ;D This would be my very first RPS fic (so…keep that in mind) and, because I still can’t do porn, the rating is really what it is just because…well, there’s three of them.
Yessica had a sneaking suspicion that Josh called Maggie Sticks because he loved girls with long legs. She had seen him look before, and she had looked after him, but when she had brought the possibility up he had just chuckled and said, “I like your legs just fine, babe.”
And since his hands were on the insides of her thighs at the time, she had no reason to doubt that. Not that she would have to begin with. That just wasn’t what she meant. And she let him know so. He looked up at her and leaned down on his elbows, resting them comfortably on the comforter between her legs.
“Alright, then,” he replied. “What do you mean then?”
She opened her mouth to say exactly what she meant, but her head cocked to the side just a bit and she closed her mouth. Maybe later, but not today. “Nevermind, baby,” she replied, reaching down and grabbing a fist full of his tee-shirt. “Get up here.”
Ordering Josh around usually didn’t get people very far. He didn’t like it, and she completely understood why. She didn’t like it either. But whatever she told him to do, he seemed to do without question. Granted, she had never demanded something that she didn’t think he would be willing to give, but it still surprised her sometimes, the ease with which he bended to her will, the way he went where she pulled without question.
Having that kind of power over a man as powerful as Josh was…she’d be lying if she said that didn’t turn her on all the more. He was strong and powerful, he always had been, and knowing that a man like him was under her power, well, hell, wasn’t that what it was all about?
“Any particular reason you’re bringin’ up Mags in bed?” he asked, though his question was directed at her bellybutton more than anywhere else. She smirked down at the top of his head and he looked up at her through his eye lashes.
“I thought we were talking about my legs,” she replied, as innocently as possible. He narrowed his eyes at her, a mischievous smile on his lips, and soon there was one on hers as well.
She couldn’t see his hands from the angle her head is at, but she feels them slide back up her calves, her thighs, pushing them apart inch by inch as they go. “Are you going to get up here, already, or not?” she muttered, her head rolling back and her eyes shut tight. He laughed against her stomach, leaving one last kiss there before moving all of the way up her body to catch her lips.
Her small hands framed his face before slipping back, easily, into his hair, yanking at the blonde strands until he groaned into her mouth. God, she loved doing that.
*
Maggie was coming for the weekend. She was between filming and hitting up all of the castmates, one by one, staying for as long as she could spare before moving on. She played cards with Jorge, had dinner and joked around with Evi, and by the time she made it around to Josh and Yessica’s drive way, it was late Saturday night and her exhaustion was written plainly across her face.
“You’ve got too many friends for your own good,” Yessica joked, opening the front door and pulling Maggie into her arms. She was nearly as tall as Josh, so her face ended up somewhere around Maggie’s chest as her arms wound around her neck.
“I’m going to pass out, right here on your porch,” she said into Yessica’s hair.
“That’s what the couch is for,” Josh told her, appearing behind themselves with a beer in his hand and a smile on his face. “You look good, Sticks.”
Maggie rolled her eyes and shook her head, letting Yessica go as Josh pulled her into his arms. “Hey you.”
“So, how’s life been treatin’ you since you took a bullet to the gut?” he asked, letting go of Maggie so that she could come inside the house and collapse onto the nearest soft surface.
“I like Hawaii better than LA,” Maggie replied with a yawn.
“Who in their right mind don’t?” Josh replied, toppling onto the couch and pulling his wife down with him, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she leaned back into his chest.
“I get sunburned less, I guess there’s that,” she went on. “But I miss you guys.”
“We miss you,” Yessica told her. Josh nodded in agreement, leaning the top of his head against the back of hers. “You haven’t even seen the boat yet.”
“Ah, yes, the famous boat,” Maggie replied, opening her eyes and smirking at Josh. “It seems to come up in every single one of your interviews now. It must be something.”
“How ‘bout we take you out tomorrow,” Josh suggests. “You can see for yourself.”
“Do you have plans?” Yessica asked.
Maggie shook her head from side to side. “No,” she replied, yawning again. “I’m all yours.”
“Glad to hear it,” Josh says. “We can pack some food, some liquor, and have ourselves a party.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Maggie replied, nodding tiredly.
“I’ll grab you a blanket and some pillows,” Yessica said, tapping Josh’s hand so that he could let her get up. When she was released, she walked down the hall and pulled some extra linins from the hall closet.
“I hope this is-” She stops when she sees Maggie curled up in the chair she had fallen into, eyes closed serenely.
“I think she’s already out, babe,” Josh said, taking the blanket out of her hands and throwing it lightly over Maggie’s sleeping from. “Those guys must’ve really wore her out.”
Yessica shrugged and looked up at her husband. “We’ll get our chance tomorrow,” she told him. He looked back at her, thinking that if she were any other woman, if he didn't know her the way that he did, that sparkle in her eyes would have confused the hell out of him. But he knew Yessica, inside and out.
“We should get some rest, then,” he told her and she nodded in agreement, grabbing his hand and threading their fingers together. The sparkle in her eyes is still there, and it pulled him in, made reach out and hold her face in the palm of his hand before kissing her, pressing his body against hers and pulling her as close as she would go.
His stubble hurt, scratched, but she didn’t let it bother her now, preferring to grab at the hem of his shirt, ball it up in her fist with one hand while the other scratched down his back. He groaned into her mouth and that was when she realized where they were.
“Babe,” she said, in-between impatient, uncoordinated, but nonetheless amazing, kisses. He continued, unabated, kissing her until her hands made their way between them, pushing him back a bit. “Babe.” He rested his forehead against the top of her head, sucking in the air like a man drowning. “We have company.”
He turned to look at Maggie, slumbering in the middle of his favorite chair, then back to his wife. “Yeah,” he said, grabbing her hand once more and pulling it in the direction of their bedroom. She smiled back at him, following quickly after, pausing only to pull off her shirt along the way and shut the bedroom door with as quiet a ‘thud’ as possible.
*
They spent nearly an hour trying picking bathing suits. Josh occasionally yelled at them from the living room, tired of waiting on them, but his ass never left the couch, like he’d threatened several times. Yessica had as many bathing suits as she did dresses. You can never have too many of either, she believed.
Maggie forgot hers, packed everything but, so she had to borrow one of Yessica’s, at that was how the bulk of the hour was spent - picking which look the best. In the end, Yessica picked a white one, with silver rings in the middle of the top and at the sides of the bottom, holding the fabric together. Maggie picked a blue-trimmed bikini that had alternating yellow, pink, and white patterned fabric.
Yessica threw a sarong around her waist and Maggie pulled on a pair of jean shorts and they were ready to go. Josh said, “About damn time,” and threw away the three beer cans he’d emptied while waiting for them.
“Grab the cooler, Mags,” Josh threw over his shoulder as he made his way out into the back yard, down to the dock where his beloved boat sits, loaded and waiting. Maggie grabbed one of the handles and tried to lift it up. It went nowhere.
“What’s in here?” she asked Yessica, who still lingered by the door. “Bricks?”
With a small laugh, she approached, grabbed the other handle and they lifted it together. “Sandwiches, beer, a bottle of champagne, and about five pounds if ice,” Yessica replied as they followed Josh down to the boat, pausing only to lock the back door behind them.
“Damn,” Maggie said when they were standing in front of it, when Josh took the cooler off of them and, in a very manly display, carried it the rest of the way onto the boat all by himself. “That’s a boat.”
“You’re damn right it is,” Josh replied, his voice full of pride. “Now, you comin’ aboard or what?”
Maggie smiled and hopped onto the deck. “Sometimes I think he loves the boat more than he loves me,” Yessica replied, with a smirk that said she thought no such thing, that she was just trying to give Josh a hard time.
He responded by reaching out and grabbing her hands, helping her hop onto the boat with them, and saying, “I don’t love anything more than I love you.” It was almost a growl, and maybe if Maggie weren’t there, it would have been. He leaned with his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
“That’s good to hear,” she replied.
This wasn’t new, Josh being all over Yessica in front of her - or any of them. But it was the same with most of the boys and their wives. Matt hung all over Margherita, even more so when he was drunk, same with Harold and Brittney, Daniel and Mia. Maggie felt like the odd woman out, more often than not, because she didn’t have anyone, and as Josh was quick to point out, didn't have enough game to try. Josh teased her endlessly for being shy, and if her continuing single-status was any indication, it wasn't something that she had grown out of since they had last seen one another.
“Alright ladies, let’s get this show on the road,” Josh announced, letting go of his wife and heading toward the other side of the boat. Yessica watched him affectionately before turning back to Maggie, grinning like a woman very much in love, and heading for the cooler Josh had dropped off on the deck.
Pushing hand-fulls of ice aside, she dug around the cooler, searching until she grabbed the neck of a bottle and pulled it out. She smiled and went to work on the cork. “Champagne?” she asked, after it popped off. Maggie smiled, jerking forward a bit as the boat started to move, and walked unsteadily across the deck to join her friend on the other side.
*
It didn’t take a lot to get Maggie good and drunk. Her alcohol tolerance was low, and she usually preferred to watch everyone else get drunk and gather potential blackmail material. But she was on vacation, among good friends, so she took the bottle from Yessica and tipped it back.
After a while, Yessica left her with the bottle to indulge her husband in a little fishing. She got bored, however, and was back quickly, laying down on the deck next to Maggie, who handed her the bottle as soon as her back was against the adjoining towel. It was a beautiful day, as were most in Hawaii. Maggie missed that more than almost anything. Hawaii’s weather could be paradise compared to LA. The water sparkled and the sun peaked out from behind a few clouds, casting just enough light onto the deck of the boat for them to tan.
Yeah. It was a good day.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Yessica said, sitting up a bit. Maggie opened her eyes and smiled.
“Yeah,” she replied, with a nod. “I’ve missed you guys.”
“We’ve missed you,” Yessica answered. “It hasn’t been the same without you and Ian.”
Maggie tilted her head downwards, smiled. She remembered the days when the show was just beginning, when they would never be far from each other’s sides. It felt like a family from the very beginning, and even though she and Ian had both had to leave the nest and move on, it was nice to know that she was always welcome back home.
Josh gave a sudden cry of excitement and they both jerked around at the same time. “I guess he’s caught something,” Yessica said, like she knew that yell, that excitement, well. Maggie nodded, watching as Josh reeled in his fish eagerness. She smiled. It was adorable, the childlike glee all over his face. It was no wonder Yessica - and many, many women across the country - had fallen in love with him.
It was after they both turned back that everything seemed to slow down. Maybe it was just her, but she got the feeling that it might have been the same for Yessica. She felt a little dizzy, sensed the alcohol catching up with her and she tried to focus. Yessica leaned over a bit, trying to steady herself, trying to lay back down just like Maggie was.
But the champagne had made them both pretty uncoordinated, because Yessica leaned to the side instead of back, and Maggie’s arm slipped unceremoniously out from under her. The bottle in Yessica's hand tipped and Maggie felt the splash against her neck, smelled the fragrant liquid as it coated her skin and began to sink in.
Yessica’s first impulse wasn’t to apologize. That was her second instinct. But she felt even more dizzy, even more drunk than she had before, and the way that Maggie was looking up at her wasn’t helping. She tried to make the words come out of her mouth, but it just hung open, just watched as the drops of liquid trickled down Maggie's skin, rolled in drops down her arms and her neck and her chest. And Maggie watched her watch, and likewise, said nothing.
Maybe there was nothing to say.
Yessica’s mouth was on Maggie’s collarbone before she knew what she was doing, before she could think about her husband standing mere feet away, before she could stop to consider the fact that she might have been blowing an amazing friendship and a seven year relationship on a stupid, drunken impulse.
But Maggie’s head tilted back and her mouth opened slightly, emitted no sound. And Yessica’s thoughts drifted disorganized through her mind. She had seen the look in Josh’s eyes the night before, the way it had mirrored her own. They hadn’t planned this, not consciously, but the way that Maggie hadn’t yet pulled away convinced her that she wouldn’t be losing her friend in doing this, and the way that she had learned to read Josh - and him her - over their long time together told her that she wouldn’t be losing her husband either.
He wanted this. Her. Maggie. Her and Maggie. She was sure that she could give that to him, to herself, because a part of her wanted Maggie too. They would go their separate ways after this weekend, mostly likely never do this again, never speak of this again. But it would always be their’s and they would always have it.
All she could to do now was wait for Josh to find them and hope that she was right.
*
It was a big fish. And Josh dropped it flat on the deck, let it flop around until it found its way back into the ocean, back where it had come from. It was lucky, because it was going to be dinner. But all thoughts of food were driven, immediately, from Josh's mind in three seconds flat.
They hadn’t planned this, him and Yessica. It wasn’t like they’d sat down and thought up a plan or anything, but there was a though in her mind that he could practically see, the look he recognized in her eyes from time to time, when they would talk about Maggie, and especially lately, when they would talk about Maggie’s visit. It was there the night before, when they had watched her sleeping on their couch and run off to the bedroom as quick as they could to make love.
A lot of that was them, their inability to keep their hands off each other, even after seven years, but there was something else there. Someone.
Even though this may have been what he had wanted, he still thought seeing his wife sucking eagerly on the collarbone of someone else - woman or no - should have made him feel angry, betrayed, because they were married, because, as he had said before, he loved her more than anything. But it didn’t, somehow. Maybe it would have where it anyone else, but it didn’t. It didn’t because it was Maggie. Their Mags. And God, had they kissed her since she’d left.
Yessica noticed him and smiled. It was a sly smile, one that shot straight through him - always had. She looked strong and powerful and hot as hell when she smiled like that. “Hey baby,” she said, her voice low and sultry. Maggie’s eyes opened then and she looked up at him with a smile.
“Yessie spilled the champagne,” she said. She was drunk. Not too drunk, he’d seen her much more drunk than this (she was a notorious lightweight). He guessed that Yessica was drunk too, given that the bottle that had been in the cooler was now laying almost half empty with the cork forcibly crammed back into it. And the three beers he’d had at the house, plus the three since then were definitely going to work on him. Maybe he needed that, maybe they all did, as something they could pin it on so that they didn’t have to think about doing this, about how long they might have thought about it before this moment.
“Are you coming down here, or what?” Yessica asked, her eyes sparkling, and Maggie behind her. He didn’t know what this was going to do to his friendship or his marriage, if they really wanted this or if they thought they did. But he trusted the strength of both enough to try.
He was down by Yessica’s side as quickly as it was possible to be, kissing her as her arms wrapped around his neck, as her nails raked over the skin of his back. The broke apart, sure to hold each other’s eye long enough to send each other the message: This is okay. I want this. I love you.
They broke away from each other’s eyes, pulled their gazes apart. Josh kissed Maggie over Yessica’s shoulder as Yessica’s lips found his throat, his shoulder, leaving wet kisses there as she heard wet kisses over her shoulder. Josh had one hand on her waist, holding on tight, while she was sure that the other was in Maggie’s hair. The positioning was fairly awkward, but no one involved seemed to care.
Josh and Maggie broke apart, and it got more comfortable then, because Josh was kissing her once more, holding onto her waist as Maggie’s long, slender legs entwined with hers, her feet brushing against Josh’s calf as Josh kissed Yessica, and Maggie kissed her shoulder blades, ran her hands up Josh’s arms and along his neck until their lips found each other’s again and Yessica laid back, watched them, and let out a low groan.
She had never known it would be this way, that she would feel so warm in the best possible kind of way, sandwiched between two bodies, two people that she loved dearly (though in different ways). She had never known that it would feel this good, switching back and forth between Maggie and Josh, between being kissed and watching them kiss, between being the center of everything and being an outside observer.
This weekend would always be their’s, to think back on, to remember, to keep them connected, even if their lives took them apart for much longer than they would have liked. They wouldn’t have to look back and wonder, none of them, because Maggie would always have the way that Yessica’s hand, covered by Josh’s, hand run up her calf and her thigh, to her hip. And Yessica would always have the pressure of Maggie in back of her and Josh in front of her, of warm lips covering hers, and warm lips along the curve of her shoulders. And Josh would always have the look in his wife’s eyes as she had watched him kiss Maggie, the way they went dark, the way her hand raked up his back and gripped his hair tighter than she ever had before.
They would always have their memories, and because of that, they would always have each other.
*
They said their goodbyes the next day as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had changed, because nothing had. Maggie hugged them both, thanked them, and left to catch her flight home with tears in her eyes. Yessica stood on the porch of their house with her husband and they watched the car until it disappeared around the corner.
“So, burgers tonight?” Josh asked, looking down at her as they walked back into the house. She smiled and shut the door behind them, her arms around his waist.
“Sounds good to me,” she said, following him into the kitchen. A little teamwork had dinner done in no time flat. They ate the burgers and drank from their bottles of beer while sitting on the back patio. The sun set over the horizon, turning the water in front of them different shades of gold and brown and yellow.
Josh leaned his head against his wife’s shoulder, sipping periodically from his beer. She smiled.
“Good weekend,” she said, reaching up to run her hand through his hair loosely, letting the strands fall through her fingers. He yawned and nuzzled against her shoulder, which made her giggle. You sound like a cat, she had once told him. She wasn’t wrong.
It was a quiet end to one hell of a weekend, that was for sure. But he was with his wife, in their home, watching a perfect Hawaiian sunset. Everything was still the same as it had been before, and there was a satisfaction in that, in that their marriage and their friendship had been strong enough to get them back here, back where they all belonged. Home.
“Yeah,” he agreed, yawning again. “Yeah, it was.”
Title: Lost Weekend
Rating: R
Summary: Yessica had a sneaking suspicion that Josh called Maggie Sticks because he loved girls with long legs.
Disclaimer: I do not own Lost. At all. I wish but alas...
Author's Note: Where to start, where to start. Well, Happy late Birthday, arabella_hope. This was her idea, her fault. ;D This would be my very first RPS fic (so…keep that in mind) and, because I still can’t do porn, the rating is really what it is just because…well, there’s three of them.
Yessica had a sneaking suspicion that Josh called Maggie Sticks because he loved girls with long legs. She had seen him look before, and she had looked after him, but when she had brought the possibility up he had just chuckled and said, “I like your legs just fine, babe.”
And since his hands were on the insides of her thighs at the time, she had no reason to doubt that. Not that she would have to begin with. That just wasn’t what she meant. And she let him know so. He looked up at her and leaned down on his elbows, resting them comfortably on the comforter between her legs.
“Alright, then,” he replied. “What do you mean then?”
She opened her mouth to say exactly what she meant, but her head cocked to the side just a bit and she closed her mouth. Maybe later, but not today. “Nevermind, baby,” she replied, reaching down and grabbing a fist full of his tee-shirt. “Get up here.”
Ordering Josh around usually didn’t get people very far. He didn’t like it, and she completely understood why. She didn’t like it either. But whatever she told him to do, he seemed to do without question. Granted, she had never demanded something that she didn’t think he would be willing to give, but it still surprised her sometimes, the ease with which he bended to her will, the way he went where she pulled without question.
Having that kind of power over a man as powerful as Josh was…she’d be lying if she said that didn’t turn her on all the more. He was strong and powerful, he always had been, and knowing that a man like him was under her power, well, hell, wasn’t that what it was all about?
“Any particular reason you’re bringin’ up Mags in bed?” he asked, though his question was directed at her bellybutton more than anywhere else. She smirked down at the top of his head and he looked up at her through his eye lashes.
“I thought we were talking about my legs,” she replied, as innocently as possible. He narrowed his eyes at her, a mischievous smile on his lips, and soon there was one on hers as well.
She couldn’t see his hands from the angle her head is at, but she feels them slide back up her calves, her thighs, pushing them apart inch by inch as they go. “Are you going to get up here, already, or not?” she muttered, her head rolling back and her eyes shut tight. He laughed against her stomach, leaving one last kiss there before moving all of the way up her body to catch her lips.
Her small hands framed his face before slipping back, easily, into his hair, yanking at the blonde strands until he groaned into her mouth. God, she loved doing that.
*
Maggie was coming for the weekend. She was between filming and hitting up all of the castmates, one by one, staying for as long as she could spare before moving on. She played cards with Jorge, had dinner and joked around with Evi, and by the time she made it around to Josh and Yessica’s drive way, it was late Saturday night and her exhaustion was written plainly across her face.
“You’ve got too many friends for your own good,” Yessica joked, opening the front door and pulling Maggie into her arms. She was nearly as tall as Josh, so her face ended up somewhere around Maggie’s chest as her arms wound around her neck.
“I’m going to pass out, right here on your porch,” she said into Yessica’s hair.
“That’s what the couch is for,” Josh told her, appearing behind themselves with a beer in his hand and a smile on his face. “You look good, Sticks.”
Maggie rolled her eyes and shook her head, letting Yessica go as Josh pulled her into his arms. “Hey you.”
“So, how’s life been treatin’ you since you took a bullet to the gut?” he asked, letting go of Maggie so that she could come inside the house and collapse onto the nearest soft surface.
“I like Hawaii better than LA,” Maggie replied with a yawn.
“Who in their right mind don’t?” Josh replied, toppling onto the couch and pulling his wife down with him, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as she leaned back into his chest.
“I get sunburned less, I guess there’s that,” she went on. “But I miss you guys.”
“We miss you,” Yessica told her. Josh nodded in agreement, leaning the top of his head against the back of hers. “You haven’t even seen the boat yet.”
“Ah, yes, the famous boat,” Maggie replied, opening her eyes and smirking at Josh. “It seems to come up in every single one of your interviews now. It must be something.”
“How ‘bout we take you out tomorrow,” Josh suggests. “You can see for yourself.”
“Do you have plans?” Yessica asked.
Maggie shook her head from side to side. “No,” she replied, yawning again. “I’m all yours.”
“Glad to hear it,” Josh says. “We can pack some food, some liquor, and have ourselves a party.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Maggie replied, nodding tiredly.
“I’ll grab you a blanket and some pillows,” Yessica said, tapping Josh’s hand so that he could let her get up. When she was released, she walked down the hall and pulled some extra linins from the hall closet.
“I hope this is-” She stops when she sees Maggie curled up in the chair she had fallen into, eyes closed serenely.
“I think she’s already out, babe,” Josh said, taking the blanket out of her hands and throwing it lightly over Maggie’s sleeping from. “Those guys must’ve really wore her out.”
Yessica shrugged and looked up at her husband. “We’ll get our chance tomorrow,” she told him. He looked back at her, thinking that if she were any other woman, if he didn't know her the way that he did, that sparkle in her eyes would have confused the hell out of him. But he knew Yessica, inside and out.
“We should get some rest, then,” he told her and she nodded in agreement, grabbing his hand and threading their fingers together. The sparkle in her eyes is still there, and it pulled him in, made reach out and hold her face in the palm of his hand before kissing her, pressing his body against hers and pulling her as close as she would go.
His stubble hurt, scratched, but she didn’t let it bother her now, preferring to grab at the hem of his shirt, ball it up in her fist with one hand while the other scratched down his back. He groaned into her mouth and that was when she realized where they were.
“Babe,” she said, in-between impatient, uncoordinated, but nonetheless amazing, kisses. He continued, unabated, kissing her until her hands made their way between them, pushing him back a bit. “Babe.” He rested his forehead against the top of her head, sucking in the air like a man drowning. “We have company.”
He turned to look at Maggie, slumbering in the middle of his favorite chair, then back to his wife. “Yeah,” he said, grabbing her hand once more and pulling it in the direction of their bedroom. She smiled back at him, following quickly after, pausing only to pull off her shirt along the way and shut the bedroom door with as quiet a ‘thud’ as possible.
*
They spent nearly an hour trying picking bathing suits. Josh occasionally yelled at them from the living room, tired of waiting on them, but his ass never left the couch, like he’d threatened several times. Yessica had as many bathing suits as she did dresses. You can never have too many of either, she believed.
Maggie forgot hers, packed everything but, so she had to borrow one of Yessica’s, at that was how the bulk of the hour was spent - picking which look the best. In the end, Yessica picked a white one, with silver rings in the middle of the top and at the sides of the bottom, holding the fabric together. Maggie picked a blue-trimmed bikini that had alternating yellow, pink, and white patterned fabric.
Yessica threw a sarong around her waist and Maggie pulled on a pair of jean shorts and they were ready to go. Josh said, “About damn time,” and threw away the three beer cans he’d emptied while waiting for them.
“Grab the cooler, Mags,” Josh threw over his shoulder as he made his way out into the back yard, down to the dock where his beloved boat sits, loaded and waiting. Maggie grabbed one of the handles and tried to lift it up. It went nowhere.
“What’s in here?” she asked Yessica, who still lingered by the door. “Bricks?”
With a small laugh, she approached, grabbed the other handle and they lifted it together. “Sandwiches, beer, a bottle of champagne, and about five pounds if ice,” Yessica replied as they followed Josh down to the boat, pausing only to lock the back door behind them.
“Damn,” Maggie said when they were standing in front of it, when Josh took the cooler off of them and, in a very manly display, carried it the rest of the way onto the boat all by himself. “That’s a boat.”
“You’re damn right it is,” Josh replied, his voice full of pride. “Now, you comin’ aboard or what?”
Maggie smiled and hopped onto the deck. “Sometimes I think he loves the boat more than he loves me,” Yessica replied, with a smirk that said she thought no such thing, that she was just trying to give Josh a hard time.
He responded by reaching out and grabbing her hands, helping her hop onto the boat with them, and saying, “I don’t love anything more than I love you.” It was almost a growl, and maybe if Maggie weren’t there, it would have been. He leaned with his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. She wrapped her arms around his waist.
“That’s good to hear,” she replied.
This wasn’t new, Josh being all over Yessica in front of her - or any of them. But it was the same with most of the boys and their wives. Matt hung all over Margherita, even more so when he was drunk, same with Harold and Brittney, Daniel and Mia. Maggie felt like the odd woman out, more often than not, because she didn’t have anyone, and as Josh was quick to point out, didn't have enough game to try. Josh teased her endlessly for being shy, and if her continuing single-status was any indication, it wasn't something that she had grown out of since they had last seen one another.
“Alright ladies, let’s get this show on the road,” Josh announced, letting go of his wife and heading toward the other side of the boat. Yessica watched him affectionately before turning back to Maggie, grinning like a woman very much in love, and heading for the cooler Josh had dropped off on the deck.
Pushing hand-fulls of ice aside, she dug around the cooler, searching until she grabbed the neck of a bottle and pulled it out. She smiled and went to work on the cork. “Champagne?” she asked, after it popped off. Maggie smiled, jerking forward a bit as the boat started to move, and walked unsteadily across the deck to join her friend on the other side.
*
It didn’t take a lot to get Maggie good and drunk. Her alcohol tolerance was low, and she usually preferred to watch everyone else get drunk and gather potential blackmail material. But she was on vacation, among good friends, so she took the bottle from Yessica and tipped it back.
After a while, Yessica left her with the bottle to indulge her husband in a little fishing. She got bored, however, and was back quickly, laying down on the deck next to Maggie, who handed her the bottle as soon as her back was against the adjoining towel. It was a beautiful day, as were most in Hawaii. Maggie missed that more than almost anything. Hawaii’s weather could be paradise compared to LA. The water sparkled and the sun peaked out from behind a few clouds, casting just enough light onto the deck of the boat for them to tan.
Yeah. It was a good day.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Yessica said, sitting up a bit. Maggie opened her eyes and smiled.
“Yeah,” she replied, with a nod. “I’ve missed you guys.”
“We’ve missed you,” Yessica answered. “It hasn’t been the same without you and Ian.”
Maggie tilted her head downwards, smiled. She remembered the days when the show was just beginning, when they would never be far from each other’s sides. It felt like a family from the very beginning, and even though she and Ian had both had to leave the nest and move on, it was nice to know that she was always welcome back home.
Josh gave a sudden cry of excitement and they both jerked around at the same time. “I guess he’s caught something,” Yessica said, like she knew that yell, that excitement, well. Maggie nodded, watching as Josh reeled in his fish eagerness. She smiled. It was adorable, the childlike glee all over his face. It was no wonder Yessica - and many, many women across the country - had fallen in love with him.
It was after they both turned back that everything seemed to slow down. Maybe it was just her, but she got the feeling that it might have been the same for Yessica. She felt a little dizzy, sensed the alcohol catching up with her and she tried to focus. Yessica leaned over a bit, trying to steady herself, trying to lay back down just like Maggie was.
But the champagne had made them both pretty uncoordinated, because Yessica leaned to the side instead of back, and Maggie’s arm slipped unceremoniously out from under her. The bottle in Yessica's hand tipped and Maggie felt the splash against her neck, smelled the fragrant liquid as it coated her skin and began to sink in.
Yessica’s first impulse wasn’t to apologize. That was her second instinct. But she felt even more dizzy, even more drunk than she had before, and the way that Maggie was looking up at her wasn’t helping. She tried to make the words come out of her mouth, but it just hung open, just watched as the drops of liquid trickled down Maggie's skin, rolled in drops down her arms and her neck and her chest. And Maggie watched her watch, and likewise, said nothing.
Maybe there was nothing to say.
Yessica’s mouth was on Maggie’s collarbone before she knew what she was doing, before she could think about her husband standing mere feet away, before she could stop to consider the fact that she might have been blowing an amazing friendship and a seven year relationship on a stupid, drunken impulse.
But Maggie’s head tilted back and her mouth opened slightly, emitted no sound. And Yessica’s thoughts drifted disorganized through her mind. She had seen the look in Josh’s eyes the night before, the way it had mirrored her own. They hadn’t planned this, not consciously, but the way that Maggie hadn’t yet pulled away convinced her that she wouldn’t be losing her friend in doing this, and the way that she had learned to read Josh - and him her - over their long time together told her that she wouldn’t be losing her husband either.
He wanted this. Her. Maggie. Her and Maggie. She was sure that she could give that to him, to herself, because a part of her wanted Maggie too. They would go their separate ways after this weekend, mostly likely never do this again, never speak of this again. But it would always be their’s and they would always have it.
All she could to do now was wait for Josh to find them and hope that she was right.
*
It was a big fish. And Josh dropped it flat on the deck, let it flop around until it found its way back into the ocean, back where it had come from. It was lucky, because it was going to be dinner. But all thoughts of food were driven, immediately, from Josh's mind in three seconds flat.
They hadn’t planned this, him and Yessica. It wasn’t like they’d sat down and thought up a plan or anything, but there was a though in her mind that he could practically see, the look he recognized in her eyes from time to time, when they would talk about Maggie, and especially lately, when they would talk about Maggie’s visit. It was there the night before, when they had watched her sleeping on their couch and run off to the bedroom as quick as they could to make love.
A lot of that was them, their inability to keep their hands off each other, even after seven years, but there was something else there. Someone.
Even though this may have been what he had wanted, he still thought seeing his wife sucking eagerly on the collarbone of someone else - woman or no - should have made him feel angry, betrayed, because they were married, because, as he had said before, he loved her more than anything. But it didn’t, somehow. Maybe it would have where it anyone else, but it didn’t. It didn’t because it was Maggie. Their Mags. And God, had they kissed her since she’d left.
Yessica noticed him and smiled. It was a sly smile, one that shot straight through him - always had. She looked strong and powerful and hot as hell when she smiled like that. “Hey baby,” she said, her voice low and sultry. Maggie’s eyes opened then and she looked up at him with a smile.
“Yessie spilled the champagne,” she said. She was drunk. Not too drunk, he’d seen her much more drunk than this (she was a notorious lightweight). He guessed that Yessica was drunk too, given that the bottle that had been in the cooler was now laying almost half empty with the cork forcibly crammed back into it. And the three beers he’d had at the house, plus the three since then were definitely going to work on him. Maybe he needed that, maybe they all did, as something they could pin it on so that they didn’t have to think about doing this, about how long they might have thought about it before this moment.
“Are you coming down here, or what?” Yessica asked, her eyes sparkling, and Maggie behind her. He didn’t know what this was going to do to his friendship or his marriage, if they really wanted this or if they thought they did. But he trusted the strength of both enough to try.
He was down by Yessica’s side as quickly as it was possible to be, kissing her as her arms wrapped around his neck, as her nails raked over the skin of his back. The broke apart, sure to hold each other’s eye long enough to send each other the message: This is okay. I want this. I love you.
They broke away from each other’s eyes, pulled their gazes apart. Josh kissed Maggie over Yessica’s shoulder as Yessica’s lips found his throat, his shoulder, leaving wet kisses there as she heard wet kisses over her shoulder. Josh had one hand on her waist, holding on tight, while she was sure that the other was in Maggie’s hair. The positioning was fairly awkward, but no one involved seemed to care.
Josh and Maggie broke apart, and it got more comfortable then, because Josh was kissing her once more, holding onto her waist as Maggie’s long, slender legs entwined with hers, her feet brushing against Josh’s calf as Josh kissed Yessica, and Maggie kissed her shoulder blades, ran her hands up Josh’s arms and along his neck until their lips found each other’s again and Yessica laid back, watched them, and let out a low groan.
She had never known it would be this way, that she would feel so warm in the best possible kind of way, sandwiched between two bodies, two people that she loved dearly (though in different ways). She had never known that it would feel this good, switching back and forth between Maggie and Josh, between being kissed and watching them kiss, between being the center of everything and being an outside observer.
This weekend would always be their’s, to think back on, to remember, to keep them connected, even if their lives took them apart for much longer than they would have liked. They wouldn’t have to look back and wonder, none of them, because Maggie would always have the way that Yessica’s hand, covered by Josh’s, hand run up her calf and her thigh, to her hip. And Yessica would always have the pressure of Maggie in back of her and Josh in front of her, of warm lips covering hers, and warm lips along the curve of her shoulders. And Josh would always have the look in his wife’s eyes as she had watched him kiss Maggie, the way they went dark, the way her hand raked up his back and gripped his hair tighter than she ever had before.
They would always have their memories, and because of that, they would always have each other.
*
They said their goodbyes the next day as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had changed, because nothing had. Maggie hugged them both, thanked them, and left to catch her flight home with tears in her eyes. Yessica stood on the porch of their house with her husband and they watched the car until it disappeared around the corner.
“So, burgers tonight?” Josh asked, looking down at her as they walked back into the house. She smiled and shut the door behind them, her arms around his waist.
“Sounds good to me,” she said, following him into the kitchen. A little teamwork had dinner done in no time flat. They ate the burgers and drank from their bottles of beer while sitting on the back patio. The sun set over the horizon, turning the water in front of them different shades of gold and brown and yellow.
Josh leaned his head against his wife’s shoulder, sipping periodically from his beer. She smiled.
“Good weekend,” she said, reaching up to run her hand through his hair loosely, letting the strands fall through her fingers. He yawned and nuzzled against her shoulder, which made her giggle. You sound like a cat, she had once told him. She wasn’t wrong.
It was a quiet end to one hell of a weekend, that was for sure. But he was with his wife, in their home, watching a perfect Hawaiian sunset. Everything was still the same as it had been before, and there was a satisfaction in that, in that their marriage and their friendship had been strong enough to get them back here, back where they all belonged. Home.
“Yeah,” he agreed, yawning again. “Yeah, it was.”