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.
Author’s Note: My JAM muse has awoken from a summer nap, s5 approaches, my s4 DVDs have arrived and my soccer team won a huge game this afternoon. Today is a good day :) As such, I come bearing shamelessly cheerful fic. Seriously, please be sure to remove any jewellery to avoid snaring it on the excessive fluff.
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It’s a little ridiculous that after I’m in love with you and I can’t and Stamford and Karen and Roy and burnt feet and why didn’t any of you come to my art show?, it only takes an old yogurt lid and a hurried memo and are you free for dinner tonight? and they’re ridiculously happy, finally. Just like that.
Still, she can’t help but notice that Jim seems to get absurdly happy over the strangest of things.
The day after their first date, she runs out on her break to buy more candy for her desk, topping up just his favourite jellybeans because he’s already picked them all out on his frequent trips to her desk since yesterday. When he sees her refilling the container, he smiles in slow motion and excuses himself mid-way through a call to stroll up to her desk and smile at her in silence for so long that she has to shoo him away before their co-workers get suspicious. He obliges, wandering back over to his desk, changing his display to a picture of jellybeans and grinning at his monitor for another twenty minutes.
At lunch, she buys him a grape soda without asking if he wants one. He looks at it for a moment, then back at her and then around to check there’s no-one nearby. She begins to ask him what he’s doing but the words die in her throat when his hand settles, warm and solid on her thigh under the table. She jumps a mile and he just smiles, sipping his drink and creeping his hand upwards and downwards until Kelly interrupts them and Pam is forced to turn her most recent gasp into a cough.
At the movies, he buys the tickets and she buys the snacks in a perfectly co-ordinated system that needed no organisation, no words, just a jerk of the head in two directions and matching nods. When they settle into their seats, she shifts closer to him and he raises his arm without a word, allowing her to settle her head against him before lowering his arm to drape around her shoulders. He laughs a little after this but won’t tell her why, just shakes his head and drops a kiss into her curls.
That night, they sleep together for the first time and afterwards, even though everything has changed between them, even though she’s gasped his name and he’s moaned in her ear and it’s her fingernail marks in his back, they still slip into a normal, teasing conversation about nothing in particular. Later, when she feels herself falling asleep, she rolls over towards her dresser and asks him what time they should to set the alarm for the morning because she has art class. He is silent for a very long time and she lays back down, alarm clock in hand, turning to see if he’s asleep already. She can sense the smile on his face even if she can’t see it in the darkness of her bedroom. His eventual reply doesn’t even register because his voice has dropped three octaves and it’s deep and gravelly, dragging over her skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps that make her suddenly wide awake. He pulls her closer towards him and the next morning, she is very nearly late for class. They find the alarm clock, bleating feebly, lost under the covers with most of their clothes.
The next night, she turns up at his apartment after her classes and a trip to the mall because it’s stupid but after a day apart, she missed him. He seems to have been expecting her, or perhaps intending to call her, because wine is chilling and a dinner for two is being created in his kitchen. He tells her to make herself at home so she slips her shoes off and settles onto his sofa, watching his TV with her feet tucked in beside her. She sees him watching her in the mirror on his wall but he doesn’t move, just stares at her with a kind of lazy, punch drunk, half smile until something starts to burn in the kitchen and he tears his gaze away.
On Sunday morning, when they finally drag themselves from the comfort of his bed, she plans to shower while he promises to make them something sugary and indulgent for breakfast, even though it’s closer to lunch. In his bedroom she pulls off the t-shirt of his she’d ended up sleeping in and pads barefoot across his living room floor wrapped in the large blue towel he’d laid out for her. She smiles as she passes his little kitchen nook and his eyes seem to glaze over with something other than desire, something a bit like wonder. He follows her a little of the way to the bathroom and smiles like he’s been hit over the head and knocked silly. When she finally reaches the door she smiles slowly, deliberately, at him and steps inside, dropping the towel just outside the door. When he enters the bathroom, the dumbstruck look is gone and she recognises only desire in his eyes, suddenly shades darker than usual.
The next night after work he appears at her apartment door looking oddly pleased with himself. Pam lets him in, surprised at the broad grin that is stretched across his face. After facing Karen in work today, she’d been expecting him to be feeling sorry for himself given several of the things the entire office had heard Karen yell at him. She looks at him quizzically and his only reply is a quirk of his lips and the production, from his shirt pocket, of the map she’d drawn for him to show the way to her apartment last week. He smiles wider still and tells her he found his way without it tonight.
When he picks her up for a dinner date, she is wearing a dress she bought on Saturday at the mall, a simple pretty sun-dress that makes her feel like giggling. He tells her she looks beautiful and she tells him that it’s new, that she bought it because she thought he might like it. He lets out a sudden huff of breath, like an exclamation and visibly reels, like all the breath has gone out of him. Before she can ask him about it, he has her pressed up against the wall, one hand in her hair, one fiddling with the clasp on her new dress. They end up staying in for dinner.
The next night, when they finally escape the office and she picks him up around the corner, she kisses him without thinking about it. It’s just a quick brush of her lips against his, because he’s hers now and she can. When she pulls away and turns her attention to the road, he remains frozen, half turned towards her in his seat. It’s hardly the first time she’s kissed him but she sees him, out of the corner of her eye, reach a hand up and touch his lips for a second, his eyes shining. He blinks several times and just smiles at the traffic jam they end up stuck in.
In the morning, she heads back into his bedroom after her shower to find him sitting on his bed, the barrette she’d discarded last night in his hands. She watches him from the doorway for a moment as he turns it over in his hand and his lips quirk upwards slightly, into a half-smile that spreads warmth throughout her whole body. She announces her presence and he hands the barrette back to her, shaking his head and laughing quietly, like he can’t quite believe what’s happening.
She wonders if that’s what all these moments are, moments when the reality of what’s happening between them has hit him, if that’s why he’s looked like someone walking into a dream, why he’s smiled or laughed or kissed her without explanation.
It is Friday night when she finally has to ask.
It’s late and the credits to a movie they barely paid attention to are rolling on her TV screen. She is about to take his hand and lead him to her bedroom when something stops her.
“Jim,” she begins quietly, “I feel like I should warn you -”
“What is it Beesly?” He turns to her with mischief sparkling in his eyes. “Surely I’ve seen it all by now?”
She giggles in reply, throwing her head back against her couch. He leans forward and places a soft kiss against her throat, momentarily distracting her.
Somehow she manages to get out, “I’m not wearing matching underwear tonight.”
His movement against her neck stills immediately, and she lets out an involuntary moan of disappointment. He pulls his head back up level with hers and she loses all coherent thought. He is smiling vaguely, like he can’t help himself and the mixture of love and want in his suddenly dark eyes makes hot liquid pool in her stomach.
“Seriously,” she manages to say, “not at all matching.”
“And seriously,” he replies in that deep, gravelly voice that’s meant only for her, the one that she feels across her skin like a physical caress, “I don’t think I’ve ever loved you more than I do right now.”
Before she can reply or question him further, his lips are on hers and non-matching underwear and everything else flies out of her mind.
Later, when she’s lying in bed, contentedly wrapped up in his arms, she can’t help but ask about his earlier statement.
“What, you think I was just trying to get you into bed?” He jokes, shifting away from her slightly to she can see him raising his eyebrows. He holds it only momentarily, then gives in as though he hasn’t even the energy to hold his eyebrows up.
“It’s just - a - a wierd moment to say something like that,” she continues, turning onto her side to face him and threading her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. “I mean, some would say the passion’s gone when a girl stops wearing her car crash underwear to bed.”
His eyes are half asleep but at her words they fly open, amusement igniting a spark in their depths, mingling with the love that’s constantly there when he looks at her these days. “Car crash underwear?”
“You know, the underwear you really want to be wearing on the day you get into a car accident or hit by a bus or something so when they have to cut your clothes off in the ER, if nothing else, at least your underwear matches.”
He laughs and she’s close enough to him to feel it rumbling in his chest; she feels warm all over.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the car crash underwear,” he says, his voice suddenly close enough to her ear to send a shiver right down her spine, causing her to arch involuntarily closer to him, “-and when you do some laundry, I’d definitely be hoping that little black lace number made it in. But,” his voice lowers again, until it drags across her skin like earlier, “I meant what I said.”
“Why?” is all she can ask, and he is so close, his breath hot against her neck, that she knows he can feel her trembling.
“Because.” he sighs, suddenly seeming embarrassed. “You not really worrying about whether your underwear matches means this - us - is ... normal, you know? It’s real, it’s happening, it’s not a fantasy or anything, it’s just what my life is now. I like that.”
She pulls away slightly so she can see his face. The light from her lamps casts them in gold and shadows and he is blushing slightly, but smiling still, his eyes soft and full of everything that is between them.
“I get it,” she agrees, kissing him soundly to prove her point. Suddenly something that’s been hovering in the back of her mind starts to make sense. “So that’s what it’s been about...”
“What?”
“Oh just, this week I kept noticing weird stuff making you really, really happy; you kept getting this look like you’d been smacked in the face and you liked it.”
He laughs, a huff of breath that raises goose bumps all over her neck. “Yeah, that’s probably what that was.”
“I get it,” she repeats, snuggling closer to him still, until their limbs are tangled and her hand rests lightly on his chest, rising and falling with each breath.
The last thing she hears before sleep takes her is his voice. “I’d really like it if you didn’t get into any car accidents Beesly, matching underwear or not, I’m kind of attached to you.”
She smiles against his chest. “I love you too, Jim.”
The next morning she trips over his sneakers, carelessly discarded in her hallway and she really doesn’t care. Instead, she feels absurdly happy.
~
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Author's Chapter Notes:
He says he’s never loved her more than he does today, the first day she’s not wearing matching underwear.
shootingstars is the author of 10 other stories.
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