Title: Never Gonna Be Like All Those Fools
Fandom/ Pairing: Clueless, Cher/Josh
Rating: R
Word Count: 1917
Summary: When she glances up out of the corner of her eye he’s looking back at her, patient, like maybe he was just waiting for her to notice all this time.
Author's Note: Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about this since the porn battle. The heart wants what it wants.



Dionne and Murray get into another knock-down, drag-out on the ride home from Mr. Hall and Miss Geist’s wedding reception, which is how Cher winds up spending the first half of her summer trying, with limited success, to find Dee a new boyfriend.

“I don’t understand it,” she complains to Josh one Saturday, over gelato at this new place on Sunset. Well, Josh got gelato. Cher is trying to lose five pounds, so she just asked for an extra spoon. “It’s like every single Baldwin in Beverly Hills just packed up and left for three months. Present company excluded,” she adds hastily. “But I mean, I certainly can’t introduce her to any of your friends.”

“That’s a fact,” Josh mutters.

Cher ignores him. “I mean, none of them are even remotely acceptable for Dionne. They’re all eco-nerd philosophy majors with questionable hygiene.”

“Showering wastes water,” Josh points out, but he’s smiling. He nudges her hand away from his paper cup. “Oh, come on. I told you I’d get you your own.”

“I don’t want my own,” she says, digging out a massive spoonful. “Gelato is full of calories.”

Josh gives her this look like he suspects her logic is dubious at best, but he lets her have what she wants. He’s interning for the summer at some law firm Daddy hooked him up with, and it’s kind of equally hilarious and charming to see him come home in his suit every day, messenger bag slung over his shoulder. It feels old fashioned, like Nick at Nite kind of stuff. Not that Cher has any intention of spending her life vacuuming and waiting for her man to walk through the front door at night--God, as if. It’s just sort of nice, is all.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he asks now, pushing his lame mall-kiosk sunglasses up on his nose, “that Dionne might want to be in charge of her own romantic destiny?”

Well, duh. Of course it’s occurred to her. She learned a lesson or two about meddling last year, and it’s not like she’s a total bonehead or something. But left to her own devices, Dionne picks guys like, well, Murray, and anyway it’s not like Josh is asking for serious. It’s only a game he and Cher like to play.

“Nope,” she says primly, and finishes off the rest of his gelato. He puts his arm around her waist as they walk to the car.

*

In July Daddy has to spend two nights in San Francisco for work, so Cher packs his blood-pressure medicine up in his Louis Vuitton and sends him on his way. “No funny business,” he says sternly, before he goes. “I mean it, Josh. I love you like you are my own son, and I even loved your mother for a time, but so help me if I get even a whiff of funny business I will not hesitate to shoot you in your face.”

“Uh,” Josh says. He looks like he wishes someone would smother him with the oriental carpet. “Noted.”

“And you,” he says, turning on Cher. “You’re staying at Dionne’s while I’m gone.”

“Well, duh,” Cher says, although in actuality Daddy has nothing to worry about. Aside from the occasional PG-13 gropefest (Cher, to her surprise, does enjoy the occasional gropefest, assuming the groper knows what he’s doing--and this particular groper really, really does), things between her and Josh are still idling along in neutral. It’s almost insulting. “I had Lucy pick up a few new pairs of those Armani socks you like. And don’t forget to take your supplements!”

Daddy grimaces. “I mean it,” is all he says.

Cher smiles winningly. “So do I.”

*

Cher’s become a much better driver over the summer, and she only clips the curb once on the way over to Dionne’s. She’s almost to La Cienega, bopping along with Gwen Stefani on the tape deck, when the phone rings. “Dee?” she says, once she’s dug her mobile out of her handbag and pulled up the antenna with her teeth. “What up?”

“Don’t bug out,” Dionne says, in a voice like she totally thinks Cher’s going to. “But I think I’m back together with Murray.”

It turns out that not only are Dionne and Murray dating again, they’re still in the process of making up at this very moment, so does Cher mind if Dee takes a rain check? “Um,” Cher says, trying not to let Dee hear how she’s two seconds away from spewing at the very notion of whatever “in the process of making up” might mean. “No problem.” So much for the sisterhood. At least now she can stop wracking her brain for potential Romeos to sweep Dee off her platforms.

Once she hangs up, Cher flips the cassette back to side A and considers her options. She could stay the night at Tai’s, but frankly Tai’s mom is kind of a basket case in a way Cher finds incredibly stressful. Christian’s in Chicago with his dad. In the end she stops for a bag of Twizzlers, which are fat-free, and goes home.

The house is empty when she gets there--Lucy is off for the weekend, and Josh was supposed to go hear some undoubtedly suicidal singer-songwriter at a coffeehouse by the University. She changes into some shorts and a tank top and settles herself down in front of a Road Rules marathon, which is where she is two hours later when Josh turns up at her bedroom door, looking confused. “Dionne and Murray hopped the first RV back to Humpsville,” she explains.

“In a turn of events shocking to exactly no one,” he says, and nods at the TV . “If the Winnie’s a-rockin...”

Cher grins, she can’t help it. “I’m sorry, was that a Road Rules joke?”

Josh shrugs. “I like to keep up with what the kids are watching.” He hovers in her doorway like a goofball for another minute, hands curved around the jamb. He hardly ever comes up to this part of the house, let alone in her bedroom, which Cher guesses is the only way he can still live here without it getting totally intense and weird. Sometimes Josh looks at her like he’s frankly terrified, like he honestly has no idea what to make of her at all. Sometimes Cher doesn’t know what to make of him, either.

“You can come in here, you know,” she says finally, holding out the near-empty bag of Twizzlers for an instant before she realizes how uber-mortifying that is. Is this really what it’s come to? She needs to lure him in with candy like the witch in Hansel and Gretel? “You don’t have to lurk out there like a...creepy, lurking thing.”

Josh smiles all awkwardly, but he comes in and sits on the bed beside her. “You heard the man,” he says, a hint of warning in his voice. “No funny business.”

Oh, God. “You worried I might take advantage of you?”

“No,” Josh says immediately, in a tone she doesn’t entirely understand. He takes her Twizzler-sticky fingers and laces them with his and they watch in silence for a while, Cher’s cheek resting on his shoulder. She likes how he smells, coffee and boy. When she glances up out of the corner of her eye he’s looking back at her, patient, like maybe he was just waiting for her to notice all this time. She tilts her chin up, an invitation, until his lips come down on hers.

Josh is a good kisser--way better than she thought he’d be back when she used to wonder about stuff like that, which was occasionally. He knows what to do with his tongue. He pushes her back into the pillows, just a little, and she reaches up to tug at his curly dark hair. Her heart pounds like the inside of a dancehall. “No funny business,” she murmurs into his mouth.

“None,” Josh mutters back. One hand cups her face and the other splays over her rib cage, creeping higher until his thumb brushes her nipple through her shirt. Cher breathes in. Her legs open a little bit, like an instinct, and she pulls him closer until he’s nearly on top of her, supporting his weight on his knees. He’s hard; she can feel it. He groans low and quiet. “Cher,” he says.

“I want to,” she says, reaching up inside his button-down, her palms flat against the broad expanse of his back. Josh is deceivingly solid. “Do you not want to?”

He looks at her like she’s totally mental. “Are you kidding?” he asks. “I...yeah. I really want to.” He swallows; she sees his Adam’s apple move inside his throat. “But I also don’t want to be some gross guy that waits until the second we’re alone and then, like, jumps you.”

Is she kidding? Is he? “Josh,” she says, and her voice sounds a little panicky, and after everything she’s wearing boxers with little ponies on them and no makeup, and she wants this so much, and it’s Josh. It’s Josh. “I do not think you’re gross.” She considers, feels his heart tapping away beneath her palms. “You’ve done it before, right?”

“Yeah, Cher.” He half-smiles in that shy way he has, glancing down. “I’ve done it before.”

“Well, then,” she says. “Show me how.”

Josh doesn’t say anything for a moment, then: “Cher,” again, quiet. Cher’s used to guys looking at her like she’s beautiful but she’s always sort of unprepared when Josh does it, like the first moment it dawned on her that deep down he didn’t actually think she was a completely ridiculous person. It makes her feel strange and open, weirdly. It makes her feel glad. Josh takes a deep breath. “We’re gonna go slow, okay? We’re gonna go so slow.”

So they do go slow, steady: his thumb in the cup of her hipbone, his mouth in the crease of her thigh. He waits until she’s ready--and she’s ready, restless, moving--before he slides his fingers inside her, and--oh, wow. Cher gasps, her grip tightening on his shoulders. It’s not like she’s never touched herself before--she’s a modern woman, is she not?--but it’s. Um. Different. Wow. Yeah.

“Come up here,” Josh says finally, and his voice is softer than she’s ever heard it. “It’ll be better if you’re on top.”

Cher nods, concentrating. It takes her a minute to coordinate, bracing herself on his chest for balance. Josh holds her steady around her waist. She shifts around a minute, trying to get comfortable, and she doesn’t totally understand what the big deal is, it doesn’t really hurt but it doesn’t feel particularly mind-blowing either, not like before when he was using his--oh. Cher’s eyes fly open as he finds her with his thumb, and Josh grins. “You okay?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she says, and smiles. Her hair falls forward, a veil around their faces. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Afterward--after her breathing has evened, his whispered love you in her ear--they lie in her bed and talk for a while, his fingertips up and down her arm. She wants to go shopping in the morning. He says he’ll make her eggs. The AC swishes, near silent--the glow of the TV, the sounds of home.