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i. “This could be the very minute I’m aware I’m alive. All these places feel like home.”
“I love you,” she whispers against his skin, and he smiles into his pillow.
Maybe he’ll propose like this, she thinks. As they lay in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, Jim sprawled on his stomach, and her lying half on top of him.
She loves him for his fake proposals, loves that it’s giving her a chance to get used to the idea. She loves that he knows her well enough to know that she might not have been ready for him to surprise her with a proposal.
She thinks about Roy’s proposal. As they sat at a red light in his truck. His hand was on her knee, bouncing along to some song on the radio. It was the middle of July, and her legs stuck to the vinyl seats.
“Hey, so I was thinking,” that was always Roy’s way of bringing up a serious conversation. “Maybe we should get married?” And all of a sudden there was a ring, sitting on her knee where his sweaty hand had just been.
She cried, tears dripping down her face, as she threw her arms around him and cars honked their horns behind them. Roy had this goofy look on his face, and he kept nodding and grinning like a lunatic.
It wasn’t all bad, and sometimes she had a hard time remembering that. There was a reason she had been with him for so long. It wasn’t all abandoning her to drink with his buddies or his brother Kenny, or leaving her at Hockey games, or talking her out of pursuing her budding art talent. It had been Roy who had sat with her for hours when her dad had his cancer scare, and who had held her hand during her grandfather’s funeral.
She feels bad for Roy, who, when you got down to it, was a good guy. A solid, stable guy. And she thinks in a different life, if she had never met Jim Halpert, she could have married Roy and been happy. Or, she supposes, content at the very least.
She doesn’t think about it very often, doesn’t think about Roy very often. Jim fills up her brain and leaves room for little else. She knows that once she met him, she was done.
Jim tells her things at night, whispers into the inky blackness that he loves her, that she’s it for him, for good. She thinks he might propose at night, when it’s just the two of them wrapped up in a tangle of limbs.
“I love you,” she’ll press kisses into his skin, flushed with heat.
“You too,” he’ll reply sleepily. Maybe the words will just tumble out of his mouth, when he opens it to say goodnight, a proposal will slip in there instead.
Pam wants to tell him that he doesn’t need to worry about kicking her ass; she just wants him to ask her. She just wants to be married to him.
She doesn’t know how to tell him this, tell him to hurry up, oh please, hurry up before she goes crazy. She doesn’t know how to sit him down and just tell him that he’s driving her to the brink of insanity.
So she waits until he’s ready, and it’s killing her.
ii. “You’re the only thing that I love, it scares me more every day.”
Sometimes he worries about losing her. He’s worried about her deciding she doesn’t really love him, or stops loving him, and he doesn’t know what he would do if she ever rejected him again.
But mostly he worries about things that aren’t in his control. Something will sweep in and take her away from him and he’ll never have a chance to stop it.
He worries about floods and snow storms, and freak accidents. He worries when she’s driving herself home from one of her classes, or when he’s away on a sales trip. He worries about salmonella in the food she eats, and he worries about burglars and car jackers and muggers. There are about a thousand possible scenarios of things that could take her away from him.
One morning he wakes to the smell of smoke through her apartment. Panic hits him immediately and he reaches for Pam and feels air next to him. His heart races as he jumps to his feet. He can hear the smoke detector blaring and why he never put fire on the top of his list of things to worry about, he’s not sure. His hands are shaking and he can hardly think, except her name is pounding in his head. Pam. Pam. Pam.
“Pam?” He calls through the apartment. “PAM?” He finds her in the kitchen, standing in front of a small fire on the stove. He pulls her back immediately, and surprises her. Jim grabs a bucket of water and douses the fire, ruining the pan of eggs on the stove.
“Oh,” she lets out a small disappointed sigh. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“Are you okay?” He asks, running his eyes up and down to make sure she’s fine.
“I’m fine,” she sighs a bit. “I wanted to make you breakfast. Epic fail, right?” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” He has a sudden need to touch her, and he pulls her to him. “I woke up and you weren’t next to me and I could smell smoke and…” He trails off, and she looks up at him, surprised that this has him so on edge, so upset.
“I’m fine,” she repeats. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
Jim doesn’t tell her about all the things he thinks about. His twisted game of “50 Ways to Leave your Lover.” It’s a conversation he doesn’t even begin to know how to start. By the way Pam, I think about you dying sometimes in horrific ways, and I can’t breathe for a little while and I think that if something happened to you I would die like immediately.
Instead he tells her to be more careful when she cooks, and he puts new snow tires on her car, and makes her call him as soon as she gets to class and on the rare nights when she doesn’t stay at his place as soon as she gets home.
iii. "Just because I'm sorry doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it at the time."
They don't talk very much about what came before.
It's just easier that way. They never sat down and talked about what happened, and all that lost time. They don't talk about his relationship with Karen, and how he felt about her. Pam doesn't talk about Roy and how ten years of memories are ridiculously hard to just forget. Long discussions about the past and their feelings aren't really their style.
Jim thinks about Karen though, from time to time. He doesn't really miss her, and he feels pretty guilty about that because she was his girlfriend for seven months, and his friend for a few months before that, and he should miss her at least a little. He does think about how she's doing, if she's doing okay.
He probably should tell Pam that Karen told him that she loved him. It happened right before the infamous beach day. They were lying in his bed, sweaty and satisfied and Karen ran her fingers down his chest and smiled at him, this brilliant, happy smile.
"I love you," she said. "I just wanted you to know that." He didn't say anything for a moment, because he wasn't sure what to say. He didn't love her. Not the way that she wanted him to. Even then, especially then, he was still madly in love with Pam. She sensed his hesitation, because Karen was always pretty good at that, and after the awkward silence settled she placed a kiss on his jaw line. "You don't have to say it yet, you don't have to say anything. I just wanted you to know." And Jim replied by kissing her soundly on the mouth. She moaned against his lips, and he thought that maybe he could love her.
Pam doesn't talk about Roy either. Doesn't tell Jim that she thinks about him sometimes. She does miss him, because you can't just cut out a person who was a part of your life for more than a decade and not miss them even a little bit. It's not even like when she missed Jim when he was in Stamford, that overwhelming feeling pressing down on her chest. But occasionally she thinks about Roy, and she thinks about maybe calling his mom to see how he's doing, but somehow that feels like cheating on Jim, and so she doesn't.
And Pam pretends that she doesn't see Jim flinch when someone brings up Casino night or Stamford. And Jim pretends that he doesn't notice the way that Pam's eyes linger sometimes where Karen's desk used to be. Pam wants to ask about how important Karen was to Jim, because she has no idea really. He knows what Roy meant to her, but Karen is sort of a mystery.
A thousand questions melt on her tongue. Did he love her? Did she love him? Did he miss her? When did they start dating? Did he have regrets?
But she's not sure if she wants to hear the answers.
iv. "What have I become? The truth is nothing yet."
Jim doesn't tell Pam how worried about his job he is. She knows about Ryan's formal warning, having pressed it out of him when they got back to his place that night. He waved it off, telling her that he wasn't worried about it, and she shouldn't be either.
But after she fell asleep, her arm slung around his waist, and his arms wrapped tightly around her, he stared at the stucco ceiling and worried about his job, worried about her saying no to his proposal, worried about the future. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life, but the thought of losing his job at Dunder Mifflin damn near terrified him. Dunder Mifflin was his back up, his safety net. He wanted to save up money so that eventually Pam could quit. He wanted to be able to support both of them, allow her to go back to school if she wanted.
Pam doesn't tell him about talking to the guy at the graphic design booth at the job fair. Jim was so happy when she got back to the office, picking her off the ground and pressing his lips to hers desperately, hungrily.
She knew that sale was important, although she didn't know how important, and she knew it was a big deal that he had landed it. She didn't want to bring down the mood by confessing that she was afraid that maybe all she was meant to be was a receptionist. Maybe she wasn't as good of an artist as her high school teachers would have her believe, as Jim would have her believe. Maybe she was putting all this stock in a dream that could never come to fruition. Maybe she should just be happy with where her life was, where she was. She had Jim, and she was crazy in love with him, and maybe she couldn't have it all. Maybe she had to choose, and she would choose Jim, over and over if she had to.
v. "But in truth I'm lost for words."
Her feet were up on the dashboard, tapping to the beat. She was filling out some quiz in her magazine, and she kept nodding and filling in the little boxes.
“What do you have there Beesly?” Jim asked as he glanced away from the road for a second to look over at her.
“How well do you and your mate communicate?” She read and then looked up at him.
“So what’s the verdict?” He asked with a grin. She started adding up the boxes.
“Well, apparently, for two people who like to talk, we aren’t very good at communicating,” Pam announced, but the statement is coupled with a grin.
“What does Vogue know?” Jim retorted.
“Please,” Pam feigned insult. “Do not insult Vogue.”
They are driving up to Jim's parents' for their annual Memorial Day picnic. This is Pam's second, and sometimes the fact that they've dating for a year blows her mind. Last year, Jim was nervous about introducing her to his family, and Pam was nervous about being introduced. This year Pam is calm, having been around the Halperts many times over the course of the year. Jim is still nervous, continually touching his pocket where a small box rested. He was going to propose to her this weekend. He had invited up her parents for the weekend, and he was hoping that he had managed to pull it off, that she had no idea.
Pam tosses the magazine aside and glances over at Jim. She studies the curve of his arms, as one rests on the steering wheel, the other on her knee. She memorizes the contours of his face, and the way that he barely mouths the words to the song on the radio. She loves him so much that she can hardly contain herself.
"I love you so much," she says suddenly, and Jim turns surprised, but with a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Yeah?" He grins. "Tell me something I don't know." And she does.
"I don't think I'm good enough to ever make a career out of art," she confesses. Jim's grin slips, and he contemplates pulling the car over.
"Um," Jim struggles for the right thing to say. He's pretty lost, and he stumbles over his next sentence. "I think you're an amazing artist."
"Well, love is blind," she teases, but it doesn't come off as lightly as she had hoped. She sighs. "I stopped by and talked to a graphic design firm at the job fair a few weeks ago. I'm really behind, there is so much that I don't know."
"So learn," Jim says. "If it's something you want to do, you should do it."
"And what? Just quit my job and go back to school? That's not very realistic."
"I want you to be able to go to school," Jim says. "And in order for me to be able to support both of us while you go to school, I need to have a job, and I'm worried about my job." It's her turn to be surprised.
"You didn't tell me that," she says softly.
"Maybe Vogue is right," Jim replies after a beat. "Maybe we are bad at communicating."
"Admitting is the first step," Pam says, and she's only half kidding. "Maybe we should just say what we're thinking more, and stop trying to protect the other one so much."
"I'm afraid of losing my job."
"I'm afraid of keeping mine forever." And somehow that's funny, and Pam is laughing and suddenly it doesn't seem so bad, this being her life. With Jim's hand warm on hers, and his laugh filling the small space in the car, she thinks she could live with this. Be happy with this.
"I'd still love you, you know, if you lose your job. If you were homeless, or had no arms or legs. I'd still love you," Pam says, and apparently it was the right thing to say, because relief passes quickly over his face, and he nods, once, twice.
"Good to know," he answers. And he thinks about asking her right then, since they're on an honesty kick, if she'll marry him, but instead he squeezes her hand, and she picks up the magazine again and frowns and furiously scratches something out.
When she looks up again, she's smiling.
"What?" He asks.
"I had to change some answers, in light of recent conversations, and by recent, of course I mean the ones we had just seconds ago," Pam says.
"And?"
"According to Vogue, we communicate just fine."
Story Notes:
This is my first Jim and Pam fic. I'm pretty nervous about it. The title and the lyrics are from the Snow Patrol song.
bashert is the author of 37 other stories.
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