Work Text:
Jionni wasn’t supposed to break up with her. He was supposed to marry her. He told her he was going to. Of course, he also told her he slept with someone else, so he’s not going to marry her, not now, obviously. And she knows this, but it’s hitting her like a new idea while Jenni tells her she deserves better in some bar bathroom. Nicole’s mouth tastes like pineapple juice and rum and then bile, and it’s been a week and a half, she shouldn’t still be feeling this sick.
“I’m going to have to go to Denise’s wedding by myself,” she wails, and that’s not important, not important at all, but it’s the most important thing she can face right now.
“I’ll go with you,” Jenni says, and Snooki responds, “I don’t want you,” and Jenni lets her, and hands her pieces of toilet paper, and is the best friend. Really and truly.
“I want Vinnie,” she says, and maybe she slurs it enough that it sounds like Jionni, or maybe Jenni knows it’s better to not reply and just keep Snooki’s hair off her neck.
Jenni says, “You’ll be okay. I promise, you’ll be okay,” and Snooki doesn’t believe it, but she wants to.
---
She asks him, two weeks later, surprisingly while she’s sober, if he wants to go, and it’s a stupid idea, she’s aware, but why not go after the things she wants while she’s on her way through this breakup haze.
And he says yes, and tells her he’ll actually rent a tux and chip in for the gift and not share with her parents about any of the things that didn’t make it to air on MTV.
So, for a few hours, she’s just genuinely happy, for the first time in way too long, before she starts to think about how this could all end with her feeling worse.
Jenni makes her a cocktail and lets the dogs sit with her and maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe this time will be different.
---
During the ceremony, he squeezed her hand when Joey lifted Denise’s veil, and outside the church while they’re waiting for the photographer to finish, Vinnie blows some bubbles ahead of time for her little cousins, acting like it’s a really big deal when they pop them.
She loves Vinnie and is in love with Vinnie and all of it, everything, but there’s only so many times she can say it without him doing something back. Before it’s sad and like she’s talking to herself.
He starts catching the bubbles on the wand, blowing them off again as soapy Siamese twins, and the kids shriek each time he does it, like it somehow remains surprising to them.
She cries when Joey carries Denise down the church steps and into the limousine, and it’s okay to cry at weddings. No one asks you why you are. Vinnie puts his arm around her shoulder, and she turns into the wool of his coat, as the bubbles remain fragile and bursting on her skin.
---
At the reception, she eats so much her trainer is going to kill her, but drinks just enough to take the edge off. And Vinnie laughs with her dad, and offers to get her mother a flute of champagne, and she wants this to be so many things besides him being her friend because her boyfriend left her in the lurch.
Her aunt keeps sending her looks that are asking, “is this the young man you’re in love with” and “what exactly is the problem” and right now, watching him loosen his tie while talking to her cousin Ryan about clubs in New York, Snooki can barely remember what the problem is.
“Just dance with me,” he says, holding out his hand after she’s refused him twice, and she knows it’s a bad idea, her family is here, and it’s not going to stop at a dance, but whatever, they’ve watched it all on their HD TVs from the comfort of their living rooms.
She waves her arms in the air, and throws her hips every way they’ll go, and the whole time he watches her like she’s something he’s studying.
---
She tears up again while they’re cutting the cake, she can’t even tell about what there’s just so much going on inside of her. “Have you ever noticed that weddings are really happy and kind of sad at the same time?” she asks him, and they are, they’re both, or at least they’ve always been both for her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he tells her, tugging just a little on her elbow, and every place his hand is feels warm.
“Where are we going to go?” and she’s having flashbacks to her senior prom and a grope fest in the front lobby that she’s pretty sure her Algebra II teacher witnessed at least a part of.
“I’ve got a room, come on, we’ll just say I’m taking you home.”
And she shouldn’t, she shouldn’t, but she let’s him lead her around the room, saying goodbyes. It’s like she’s on bad decision auto pilot.
Riding up in the elevator, he’s got his arm around her again, and is talking close in her ear, she doesn’t even know about what, it all sounds like white noise. An older woman gets on at the third floor, and then Vinnie snakes his hand down to grab her ass and she wants to make some sort of sound, or for the woman to turn around and look at them, shamefully, to give her a second to realize she should actually be heading home.
But the woman doesn’t notice at all, and Nicole’s already thinking about how good it’s going to feel to fuck him again, and she guesses it’s cute that she still thinks she has the ability to say no.
He has the key in his pocket, like it’s been there all night, and when she sees his duffel bag sitting on the dresser, she knows. “You were planning for this.”
“Well, I was going to stay with someone or alone.” He shrugs, throwing his jacket onto the desk. “I’m happy I’m not here by myself.”
He comes around and unzips her dress without her asking, and she feels his fingertips all the way down her spine. He kisses the juncture of her neck and shoulder, with his hands at her hips, and she has her own at her chest, trying to hold her dress up like it isn’t just a matter of time that she leaves it forgotten on the carpet. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she says, quietly, waiting for the confidence this situation needs to continue. Wondering why the lights seem so bright even though there’s only one on.
“You’re sure?” And the fact that he wants to clarify allows her to release her grip, and say, “Yeah,” as he eases the top all the way down. Pulls the shirt from his dress pants and unbutton it.
She turns so he can kiss her for real and she doesn’t know if it’s because she’s convinced him she’s fine, or he’s sure that she isn’t. Both scenarios would weirdly be okay with her.
She’s used to being drunk with Vinnie, barely aware of what’s really going on until things get so clearly black and white, that this feels strange, the slow way he’s kissing her. The way that she’s going to be able to remember all this tomorrow. He walks the back of her legs into the bed, and it’s weird to not just tumble down, a tangle of limbs and spastic laughter. To be lowered down casually and purposefully.
When Vinnie cups her breast, her heart underneath beats a little faster even though it’s not supposed to feel anything.
She wants this with Vinnie, all the time, but she knows he only does when it’s convenient. When she’s happy and not judging him and whatever else he wants her to be at that particular moment. There are some variables she hasn’t been able to identify.
He’s ripping the condom open with his teeth, and she doesn’t want to think about how many of those he put in the nightstand. Whether it was her he was thinking of using them with because he didn’t say “I’m happy you’re here”, just that he was happy not to be alone. But Vinnie looks her in the eyes while he’s slipping it on and she knows to take what she can get.
When he works his way inside, she feels like she’s just going to crack in two, split right up the middle. She gasps a little, and she knows he thinks it’s about his size, and he chuckles in this stupid self-important way that shouldn’t be enticing.
“Oh, stop, you’re not so great” she stutter breathes out and he says, “I know you don’t mean it,” and she does, some part of her does, but not a big enough part to be believable.
He’s still grinning as he pushes his thumbs into her pelvis, these two spots that send jolts right to where he’s moving in and out of her agonizingly slowly. Then he kisses her, mouth a little bit sloppy, but warm and familiar.
She likes being next to him like this, like she imagines married couples with children have sex, because there would be less to explain if anyone was to walk in following a nightmare, but she’s not someone’s mom, or someone’s wife, so she repositions them with her on top. If she can’t have the fantasy, she can have the control.
She knows that Vinnie is trying to set the tempo and tone with the way he’s running his hands up and down her torso, the appreciative noises he makes on her downward thrusts, but she’s not going to give him this. Not until she’s ready.
Or she’s telling herself that as each movement builds the pressure inside of her.
Her skin feels slick like days on the beach at Seaside or every moment in Miami and she wonders what he thinks about the show. If it was meant to be that they were the ones who ended up in those houses. That he was the person who was supposed to break her heart.
He finds her clit and it feels like about time and like she would have let the anticipation drag on indefinitely. She wants to make this last because once it’s over, it might actually be over. That’s the chance, every time. But there’s the chance that it’s more. It could be. This time, it could be.
That’s what’s she’s thinking when the orgasm crashes over her, and she doesn’t even make a sound while she wrenches her face towards the ceiling. Too used to there being an audience. Too worried she might disrupt something she hasn’t even identified.
She’s still in the midst of coming when he flips her onto her back, pumping into her just a little off tempo. “I love you, oh shit, Nicole, I love you so much,” he pants into her ear, and it seems like it’s only in bed that he uses her actual name, which is either very polite or very sad. She watches his jaw clench, feels the way his whole body goes tense, and then all of his weight is on top of her. For just a moment, there’s this nice, heavy fullness.
And then he rolls over to the other side of the bed, and she’s empty and this all already feels like a mistake she had no choice but to make.
He’s breathing more quickly than he even was when he was inside of her, and she listens to it, this ragged, desperate thing, while she hunts around for something to wear. His dress shirt is lying at the food of the bed, so she reaches for it.
She realizes they can see themselves in the mirror, and there he is, blissed out on his back, while she looks almost shamed.
“God, Nic, I’m gonna marry you some day,” he sighs, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, and she focuses instead on trying to button up his shirt over her breasts. Watching his smile in the reflection instead of on his face.
“Don’t say things like that,” she tells him. “If they’re not true, don’t say them.”
“How do you know it’s not true?”
“It’s a feeling.”
She can see him reaching for her and pulls away, his fingers just ghosting the cuff of the shirt. “Come on, come lay down with me.”
“I’ve got to get some air,” she tells him, stepping out onto the balcony, and her entire frame seems to be shaking like she’s cold, or like she just realized she brings all of this pain onto herself in trying to push away the hurt that came before.
She can hear him get up and turn the shower on, and she debates leaving while he’s in there, but just smokes four cigarettes instead.
If she calls Jenni, she’ll listen, but judge underneath, because you have no choice but to do that when your friends make the same mistakes over and over again. So, Nicole just tells herself one day she’ll get married and some other lonely girl with stupid dreams will cry at her wedding and probably sleep with someone she shouldn’t, but Nicole won’t even be bothered to notice because she’ll be happy then.