Precious, and Few by Criss Moody

Date: October 7th, 2000
Disclaimer: Kevin Williamson and Sony and probably other people own Dawson's Creek and the characters. No infringement is intended. Don't sue.
Content Warning: Underage sexual activity, slash.
Summary: Dawson writes a letter to his friend.
Rating: Hard R. Notes: Blame a cute Josh Jackson, and an oddly appealing James Van Der Beek for this one. Please, do feedback, it's my first Dawson's Creek fic, and I think I've just started another series. Goddess, why me? The title comes from the song "The Letter" by Natalie Merchant. Feedback: I love feedback, even the flames. My muses like to sprinkle flames on their breakfast cereal.

Pacey -

I hated you.

Why?

Because you smiled.

And because when you smiled I knew why you were smiling.

And especially because you took her away from me and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I couldn't even really hate you for taking what I handed to you on a silver platter. In a heartbeat, I entrusted you with the emotional and physical well-being of my best friend. Where else could my best friend be better off than with my other best friend, right?

Pacey, why did you have to take her away from me?

I don't think you really know how much it hurt me. Yeah, you mouthed a few platitudes about it, but you don't love her the way I do. Honestly, I've known her for so long that she feels like an extension of my body. I almost don't know what to do without her nearby, even if I can't have her like I used to have her, smiling at me, trusting in me, loving me.

I shouldn't have been surprised. You could seduce the barnacles off of a rock. Poor metaphor, I know, but appropriate. If I'd been thinking straight, I wouldn't have let her go. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

Of course, almost everything I've done for the last year seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

I told you to take care of her. I ignored signs that you were in pain, that you had fallen more in love with her than I would have thought possible. I laughed off the idea that she would ever be romantically interested in you, the town lech, the legendary seducer. Not my sweet girl, not my boyhood best gal. She had too much sense to be interested in someone like you. Then, when my stupidity slapped my in the face, I reacted predictably.

At first, I jealously clung to her, sure that she would see the error of her ways and come back to me. Until I thought I could lose her, I wasn't sure I'd ever want her that way again, not as a love, a potential lover. Once I realized that she loved you, needed you in a way she never needed me, I flung out my jealousy and hatred and sour bile at her.

Then, I moved on to you.

My best male friend, bar none. You were my other half, my evil twin, the one who thought up all the crazy schemes that I never wanted to follow through on but always did. Why? I loved you.

Surprised that I would say that?

I do. Love you that is. Do you remember when we were barely 12 and spent most of the summer camping out in my yard? You were sick of being just one of the Witter kids, ignored by everyone except for when they had something for which to criticize you. The days sweltered with heat, the air thick and heavy with the dampness of salty sea air. You never could stand wearing clothes when you didn't have to and that summer was perfect for you. You could romp around in nothing but swim shorts, or less depending on where we were. In your sleeping bag, your silky bare skin lolled around against the cheap, but soft flannel inner lining. Night after night, you mocked me for my shyness, my white underwear with Superman on the elastic band covering up what you so freely let the world see.

Finally, on a positively boiling night in August, I let the world see me.

Accompanied by your movement-by-movement commentary on my actions, I first hesitantly slipped my thumbs into the waistband. As the whiteness of the shorts slipped over the golden globes of my ass, your sarcastic comments broke up, eventually halted. Startled, I looked up and into the most serious expression I'd ever seen shooting out of your eyes. Funny, mock-hurt, humorous, joking, sly, annoyed: this was the Pacey I'd been used to.

The look in your eyes was a far cry from funny. Bright, fluid chocolate eyes, burned with an emotion I didn't recognize.

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to jump in and flame up or douse the heat, fast. You made up my mind for me by sneaking one small hand under my shorts and on to my penis. I think I stopped breathing. No, I'm sure I stopped breathing. You hand just rested there, flat against the flaccid flesh there, until it moved. Nearly imperceptible, but still enough to be noticed, my penis jumped against your palm. Without expression except for the heat in your eyes, you moved your hand against my…well, my cock. Cock sounds more adult, more knowledgeable than 'penis'. The word penis makes it sound like I'm some kind of textbook.

Anyway, you rocked your small, smooth palm against my equally small, smooth cock, making me feel things I'd never felt. I'd touched myself down there, yeah, but not like this. This burst open windows and doorways in my head that I didn't even know that I had. I felt like the Coyote after getting blown up by the Roadrunner for the umpteenth time. You, Pacey Witter, my best friend, a guy had his hand on my cock. And I liked it. When you kept moving your hand, and my hips started rocking, and my cock kept twitching, and growing, I wanted to say something. But so soon, something happened, purple and black flashdanced behind my eyelids and a warm and sticky substance flooded your hand.

The aftermath of any awkward event is, well, awkward to deal with. Somehow, though, we managed to skip all that back then. You lifted your hand out of my shorts, wiped it on a swimming towel, and offered it to me. Shaking, I took it and you hauled me out of the tent. With a patented Witter grin, you took off for the dock, flailing your arms about and hooting. Like always, I followed you.

You never did tell me why you gave me my first handjob, before I even knew what a handjob was. Before anyone told me that guys liked girls, but guys shouldn't like guys, not like that.

Don't get me wrong - I will always want Joey. I couldn’t stop. Like I said, she's more important to me than I am to myself. Have you discovered the way her nipples perk up when she's hot and bothered but won't admit it? I told her knowing that you'd had her, that you'd loved her intimately would kill me, and I was only half-lying.

It would kill me to know that you both had what I wanted; that for once, I was the one sitting on the outside. I'm not the center of your world, and Joey will never cling to me again. It would rip me apart to see you kiss her, knowing how she tastes, how her tongue can dance against the top of a mouth, but not having tasted what she tastes when her mouth sips at yours.

You never kissed me.

Pace, I lost so much when I tossed you out of my life. I lost your friendship, I lost Joey's love as friend, and I lost whatever it was that we had, what the three of us might have had, but what no one never talked about.

Pacey, I think I love you.

-Dawson