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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to Clare and Krissy for the beta-read!

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Home never looked quite so good before.

Jim parked in the driveway behind his roommate’s blue Focus and fell back heavily in his seat, unable to find the energy to move. The keys were still in the ignition; the speakers were still blasting the loudest, most obnoxious music he could find during the last desperate hour of driving. Rain fell against the hood like molten bullets and the windshield wipers continued to sweep away sheet after sheet of water. A full minute passed before he was able to work up the courage to glance at the radio clock.

“Shit.”

Swearing required the barest minimum of energy. Six and a half hours. He spent six and a half hours tonight fixing a mistake that Michael had made. Six and a half hours of his life spent driving from Scranton to New York City and back. He could have made it in four and a half if the weather hadn’t forced him to drive twenty miles under the speed limit for so much of the trip.

The night sky flashed as it had a thousand times during the past few hours, and several seconds later a clap of thunder followed. That morning over a breakfast of corn flakes, Jim had watched the local weather forecaster on CBS try and conceal raw excitement while predicting thunderstorms, flooding, and a possible tornado watch. It was amusing nine hours ago, before Michael begged him to hand-deliver an envelope to the courier in New York. Somehow, it didn’t come as a surprise that Michael forgot to FedEx important forms on the evening of the first storms of spring.

***

Only 90 miles left between him and Scranton.

90 miles and an obscene amount of rain, thunder, and lightning.

He made a weary attempt to focus on something besides the tiny mileage markers on the side of the road. A spokesperson on the radio finished a spiel about the latest weight loss miracle pill, and Jim waited suspiciously in the brief pause between advertisement and music.

“You have got to be kidding me.” His fingers clenched against the smooth leather of the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white. Every station he tuned to had at least one DJ who felt there was no better joke than to play “Soak Up The Sun” while the second great flood was underway. This was the fourth time Jim had heard it in as many hours and a combination of cabin fever and vapid song lyrics pushed him over the edge. He fished his cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open, reveling in an uncharacteristic black mood. Some poor schmuck at the radio station was going to have an earful.

Fortunately for the nineteen year old intern at WPLJ, Jim’s cell phone did nothing but display a blinking red battery icon and turn off. He searched blindly for the charger with one hand and found only change and grit and dusty jelly beans between the seat cushions.

With nothing to do but jab angrily at his presets every time a DJ felt ironic, Jim threw his useless cell phone into the glove box and squinted tiredly at the road ahead. Every few minutes a weather forecaster broadcasted giddy updates on the storm’s progress. “Morris County in New Jersey reported half an hour ago that a tornado touched down briefly and caused some minor damage, folks! Ah—as we’ve been saying all night—stay indoors. It’s dangerous out there.”

The road began to blur, and Jim realized with vague concern that it had more to do with exhaustion than the weather. The small corner of his mind still capable of rational thought ordered his fingers to tune into a heavy metal station and turn the volume up.


***

Safe in his driveway, Jim listened absently to the night sky while he considered a disturbing possibility. Would he forever associate Sheryl Crow with thunderstorms? He grimaced and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, determined not to spend the rest of his life hearing her voice whenever lightning flashed.

Thunderstorms made him think of his grandfather. And…Pam. He lowered his hands, watching explosions of color fade against the back of his eye lids.

Those were associations he could live with.

***

“It’s silly,” Pam said with a small smile, “but thunder still scares me sometimes.”

Jim glanced at her curiously, studying her profile from the driver’s seat of his car. Beyond Pam and the passenger window, the office building was a blurry rectangle, half-hidden by the pouring rain.

“Well, that much is obvious. Why else would we be eating lunch in my car during the worst thunderstorm of the summer?” Jim reached down with his left hand to tug at the lever that adjusted his seat. The few inches he gained by sliding backwards didn’t help much, but there was a little more room to work with. His soda balanced precariously between his thighs.

It had been her idea to eat lunch in his car. Thunder rocked the building just before noon, and Pam said something about wanting to be closer to the storm. A bit of a blush had crept over her cheeks and she toyed with her necklace until Jim caught her eye with a grin. “Okay. But if I get struck by lightning on the way to the car, I’m holding you responsible for making sure that Dwight provides absolutely no first-aid treatment.”

They ran across the parking lot without umbrellas in the drenching rain, laughing and shoving at one another like kids. There was a lot of fumbling and squealing and “OH MY GOD, HURRY UP!” when he had a hard time unlocking her door with slippery fingers. Now they sat in his car eating lunch, soaked and listening to the thunder grow louder as the hour passed by.

Pam took a spoonful of her yogurt and made a face at him. “I’m only nervous when it’s loud and right on top of me. Like now.” She waved her spoon at the windshield and the buckets of water sheeting off the side of the car. “It scares me, but I love it. My heart pounds and I get goosebumps, and—I don’t know. It just makes me feel…alive? To be so close.”

She laughed awkwardly and paused with the spoon halfway between the yogurt and her mouth. Jim could tell she was waiting for him to tease her, but he was distracted by an image of Pam standing barefoot and alone in the middle of a violent storm, curls plastered to her upturned face, drinking in the sound of thunder and breathing the electric charge in the air. Alive.

The spoon moved to her lips, and Pam’s shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly. “When I lived at home, I loved to sit out on our patio when there was thunder and rain.”

Jim reluctantly tamped down on his imagination and looked at her curiously. “Are you trying to tell me you’d rather be eating lunch out there? ‘Cause we’re gonna get kind of cold, and I left my NASA blanket at home. Shoot. And my waterproof matches.”

Pam smacked at his shoulder and groaned. “Dork. The patio was enclosed, like another room to the house. The best part was how the rain sounded like thousands of marbles being dropped over your head.”

She finished her yogurt and traded the empty container for a bag of chips from her lunch bag. “The only time I don’t like thunderstorms is when I’m home and someone I love isn’t. It makes me nervous to wonder where they are and if they’ll make it home safe.” The bag of chips pulled open slowly between her fingers, and Jim watched her lips twist into a slight frown. “I can remember lying in bed for hours with the blinds on my windows wide open, waiting for my ceiling to light up when my dad pulled into the driveway. I couldn’t sleep until he got home.”

Jim pulled his eyes away from her and looked out the window instead, listening to the rain pound against his car and thinking that it did sound a lot like marbles. They shared a comfortable silence for a few minutes, picking away at their lunches and jumping every so often when the thunder came too close.


***

The rain was miserably cold against his face, but Jim couldn’t bring himself to run to the front door. He didn’t know how he had gotten out of the car, but the headlights were off and he was trying hard not to drop his keys or his dead cell phone on the way to the front porch. For once, Mark’s absent-mindedness worked in Jim’s favor – the front door was unlocked. His shoes squelched angrily against the wood floor, leaving muddy prints in his wake. They flew unceremoniously off his feet and into the corner as he headed up the stairs and to his room.

A cell phone charger sat on the middle of his bed with a sticky note attached. “I borrowed this yesterday for my car and forgot to give it back. Thanks, buddy. –Mark.” The note crumpled in Jim’s fist and he dropped both it and the charger onto the floor. In three quick motions, Jim plugged his phone into the wall charger, turned off the light, and fell into bed still wearing his wet clothes.

***

“Do you like thunderstorms?”

Without knowing how he knew, Jim could tell that this was an important question. He glanced curiously at Pam, but her attention was focused on her chips. He knew, though.

“I used to hate them.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Eating lunch together in his car felt considerably more personal than eating lunch together in the break room. He wasn’t sure if it was their topic of conversation or the close quarters that made it seem more intimate. It shouldn’t matter where they ate lunch—they were just friends. Still… he was relieved that Roy wasn’t at work today to notice.

Not that she would have asked to eat lunch in his car if Roy
had been there.

“Used to?” she pressed, looking up from her chips.

Jim nodded and tried to ignore where his thoughts had wanted to take him. “When I was a little kid, they made me nervous. I couldn’t be convinced that the thunder wasn’t going to knock the walls down around me. It was so loud, you know? The windows rattled and the whole house shook.”

“You’re telling me you didn’t buy the line about all the angels in Heaven going bowling?” Pam gave him a look of mock disbelief, and Jim rolled his eyes to look out the window.

A raindrop slowly made its way down the outside of the glass, growing larger as it collected water. Jim absently traced its path with his index finger. “I have this memory of my grandfather,” he said slowly. “There aren’t too many of them to pick from, but it’s my favorite.”

“Your dad’s dad?” Pam shifted and tucked her legs up onto the seat so she could face him. Her knees knocked lightly against the gearshift.

“Yeah. I think I’m around five years old. We’re sitting on the couch at my house, and I’m leaning against him, kind of curled into a ball. We’re both looking out the big picture window on the wall to our right, and it’s pitch black outside except for when the sky lights up. Every time the lightning flashes, he tells me that the thunder’s coming so I won’t be scared." A smile tugged at his lips. "He makes a game of counting the seconds between the lightning and the thunder, and he screws up the numbers every once and a while to make me laugh, and I go crazy trying to get him to say the numbers ‘1, 2, 3’ in order. At some point, the thunder stops bothering me—and I kind of start looking forward to it because it means my grandpa has to start counting all over again.”

It sounded silly when he put it into words, and he wondered why he had told the whole stupid story. It was the kind of memory that only ever meant something to the person it belonged to.

He turned away from the window to look at Pam, and a little half-smile crossed her lips. “The storms never bothered you after that,” she finished. In the air above the office building, a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.


***

Ringing. He heard lots of ringing. He had just closed his eyes.

Jim tried to ignore his phone with the hope that whoever was drunk-dialing him in the middle of the night would give up when he didn’t answer. The ringing stopped for a few blessed moments only to interrupt the silence again, and this time Jim heard Mark groan from across the hall.

He rolled over in bed and grabbed the phone from his nightstand. The caller ID was hard to read with bleary vision. Pam. Pam? He flipped open the phone.

“Mmph.” Given the circumstances it was the best he could do.

“Jim?”

“Yes.”

“Oh… you’re home?”

“Yes.” A small voice in his head sounding suspiciously like his mother said something about being a grumpy Gus. “Sorry, I’m just a little … out of it … what time is it?”

“Did I wake you up? I’m sorry. It’s … oh, it’s midnight. I’m so sorry.”

“No, s’okay.” Something in the tone of her voice finally registered with his sleep-addled brain. He dragged himself up onto one elbow and turned on the eye-piercing bedside lamp. “Hey, what’s wrong? Everything okay?”

“Oh! Now—yeah, everything’s fine.” She sounded strange, but Jim couldn't focus on her words for very long. He shook his head and tried to concentrate.

“You called me?” His eyelids slowly grew heavy again, despite the light and his best efforts.

“Yeah, uh… I just… Michael’s an asshole.”

Jim blinked once, twice, and yawned loudly. “I thought we knew this. I know we knew this.”

“Yeah, but tonight was worse than usual. Making you drop off that envelope in New York when it was his fault to begin with. He should have brought it himself, but,” she dropped her voice accusingly, “he had a date.”

His eyes widened briefly before resuming their half-lidded state. “Okay, that I was not aware of.”

“Well, now you have a trump card to pull out the next time he tries to make you deliver mail during a nor’easter.” Somehow her smirk was audible over the phone, and he smiled back. His gaze fell to his chest and legs, noticing that his clothing was still damp from the fifteen seconds spent walking up the driveway and to the front door. The thought of changing out of them was appealing, but he couldn’t decide if he had the energy.

“I tried to call you a couple times, you know, to keep you company...” She spoke casually into the silence, but the smirk was gone and Jim couldn’t tell what it had been replaced with.

“Yeah, my cell phone died. It was a pretty horrible experience from beginning to end. I decided that Sheryl Crow needs to be barred from recording studios.”

“Oh?”

“Yea—” The word morphed into a yawn so loud that he held the phone away from his face to spare Pam the brunt of it. “Sorry, kind of falling asleep on you. I’ll email you all about it tomorrow—I’m not going to work.”

“I’ll be sure to let Michael know that you caught pneumonia from being out in the rain,” she said seriously. “Jim—I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“No problem,” he replied, stifling yet another yawn. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight.”

He set the phone to silent before rolling back over in bed. The rain still fell heavily against his window, and every so often a thunder clap rattled the windowpanes. Jim slept through all of it.

***

Pam hung up her cell phone with a sigh, staring at the rain through the living room window. A commercial on television started to scream the details of a car sale extravaganza until she unearthed the remote from under a pile of magazines and turned off the set. She yawned and stood up from the couch, wincing as the sensation of pins and needles pricked at her calf muscles.

The bedroom took a little bit longer to get to while limping. Pam crawled slowly under the covers and took a moment to carefully tuck herself into the blankets. The lightning cast mottled shadows across her bed as it flashed through the rain-pelted windows. Sleep claimed her quickly despite the storm, and Pam rested undisturbed although the thunder came close and often. She woke only once, briefly, when Roy got home from the bar and came to bed, unraveling her blanket cocoon.




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