Ménage à Trois Picspam Series Part IV
PART I ❦ PART II ❦ PART III
PREVIOUSLY
It's a story with which you're undoubtedly familiar: Prince Charming meets our heroine. He falls for her. His asshat of a sidekick/best friend barely tolerates the girl. Out of nowhere, the prince breaks up with the lovely lady and alienates himself from his friend. A sexual spark surprisingly blossoms between our heroine and the sidekick, who is still douchey but a surprisingly sexy one. The sidekick, now promoted as Love Interest #2, falls hard for the girl. The Prince eventually finds out and throws a tantrum. The girl and Love Interest #2 break up. She goes back to Love Interest #1, but may still have feelings for Love Interest #2. In this hotbed of betrayal and intrigue, the question remains: Who will our heroine end up with - the stoic good guy or the quintessential bad boy? After all, only one can win the girl.
Two is company, but three's a crowd. And this is definitely the case when the three of them unintentionally find themselves together. There are a few things in life more agonizing than being in a room with two recently reconciled friends hanging out with the girl they both still love and was the cause of their rift to begin with while one of them is still dating said girl. The air composition was 50% awkward, 25% stressful, 15% confusing and 10% forlorn, with a trace of carbon monoxide for good measure and suicidal tendencies.
Unfortunately, the dashing prince and his darling princess were not destined to last forever. They had grown apart. People change and so do their feelings. Even though they were madly in love just a season ago, television writers are a fickle bunch. Their euphoria of young love (which had become an unrealistic benchmark against which all future romances were to be judged) had not been as popular in ratings as TPTB would hope enough to keep them together. Nevertheless, they parted amicably, vowing to remain friends even through bankruptcy, a kidnapping, a political scandal and a near death experience.
With the golden boy out of the way, the former lovers started to cross the precipice left behind by their whirlwind romance. They reverted back to communicating in the only way they know how: friendly insults and teasing remarks fraught with pop culture references. It was like watching the Sampras and Agassi match in the 2001 US Open - rapid volleying back and forth, with one player not being able to break the other's serve. And as they carried on with their verbal sparring, it was clear that what was said was just as important as what wasn't. Witty banter had always been one of their relationships' defining characteristics.
Despite his memetic sex god reputation and bad boy persona, our Byronic hero was emotionally tortured and broken. She picked up the pieces and put him back together when his hard snarky exterior (which so rarely cracked) shattered, revealing his soft underbelly. And for his part, he became the one constant in her life when everything else was changing. If this were a romcom, the hero would perform a grand gesture so silly spectacular like hold a giant boom box over his head. But this is network TV, so it was dragged out to a slow burn as the two continued to find comfort in each other - another essential aspect of their bond.
Inevitably, their verbal foreplay and undeniable sexual chemistry would result into some steaming hot moments that could peel the wallpapers off the bedroom. With their emotions (and hormones) running wild, the two couldn't keep their hands off each other and even had some passionate "public declarations of love" in a K-Mart, a library, a Bar Mitzvah party and a cellar, to name but a few places. They had the perfect combination of raw sex and romance that characterized their relationship.
All you need is love. Ha. John Lennon obviously never met these two. Love would never really be straightforward, especially in TVland. No matter how hard they tried to be together, the star-crossed lovers were often thwarted by outside forces; be it irreconcilable differences and self-doubt, a lack of trust and an unforgivable tryst, an indecent proposal and a pact with God or a sire bond and abandonment. Fate was not their friend.
Even though their dynamic already has plenty of dramatic potential, TV writers seemed to always want to disturb the status quo. Thus, when the lovebirds were on the outs, a plethora of other viable love interests would be introduced, thereby transforming the original triangle to a pentagon, and sometimes even a parallelogram. Of course, one or two of these always presented a formidable challenge and, quite possibly, another intense shipping war.
They had been called many things - true love, EPIC, end game, meant to be. And like fairy tales, there were expectations of happily ever after, which meant that our (anti)hero and his lady love would embrace and kiss, and then the scene would fade to black. Theirs might be a tale as familiar as Arthur, Guinevere & Lancelot, but no one really knew how their story would end.
Dawson | Joey | Pacey
Duncan | Veronica | Logan
Nate | Blair | Chuck
Matt | Caroline | Tyler
Love is as much of an object as an obsession, everybody wants it, everybody seeks it, but few ever achieve it, those who do will cherish it, be lost in it, and among all, never... never forget it.
~ Curtis Judalet
Disclaimer: I do not necessarily ship the characters above, with the exception of LoVe.