Story Notes:
Fluff. With a couple of backstories.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to Talkative. She knows why. :)
Spoilers for Michael's Birthday. Standard disclaimers apply. Just having fun.
Spoilers for Michael's Birthday. Standard disclaimers apply. Just having fun.
2006
Jim stepped out onto the ice first, and she stood back a little to watch him, surprised for some reason by his easy grace as he skated backward a few steps before gliding back to the edge and extending his hand with a smile. “C’mon, Beesly. I’ve got you.”
She hesitated only a moment before slipping her fingers into his huge gloved hand. His grip was firm, steady, and she found herself suddenly glad of an excuse to be close to him as she took a wobbly step onto the ice. “Don’t let me fall,” she said sternly.
He gripped her hand a little more tightly. “I’d never let you fall,” he replied in a low, quiet voice.
She glanced up at him gratefully and caught her breath at the warmth in his eyes, the deep and tender affection in his smile.
Nobody had ever looked at her the way Jim did. Sometimes it made her inexplicably nervous; today, it just made her feel warm all over.
He’s so…great.
I wonder…
She cut off the traitorous thought before it could go any further. She’d become quite good at doing that.
“Bend your knees a little,” Jim encouraged as they pushed off. “Relax, Pam. I won’t let you fall. Or at least, you’ll get to take me down with you.” He grinned.
She knew how to skate, or once had, anyway; she just hadn’t done it in a few years. But there was something so strong and sure in the way he held her hand, in his quiet assurance and the solidity of him; she didn’t want to let go. His proximity was thrilling, unnerving, and she couldn’t relax. Her legs were stiff as sticks as they made their way slowly around the rink.
“When did you learn to skate,” she asked, to keep him talking.
“Hmm. Long time ago. We went to the rinks all the time. My brother’s a pretty good hockey player.”
“Really? Tom?” She loved learning new things about Jim’s family. There was still so much she didn’t know about him.
Michael flew past them in a blur, unsettling Pam’s balance in his wake, and she grabbed at Jim’s arm to right herself as he reached over with his other hand to hold her steady. “Easy now,” he murmured, coming to a stop as she pressed herself against his side.
Her heart was pounding unreasonably hard as she looked up into his laughing smile. She hadn’t really been in any danger of falling, she knew that. But his teasing expression and the warmth in his eyes, which seemed very green today, were keeping her nerves at the forefront. Her stomach felt fluttery, her knees weak, and for a moment she felt so dizzy she thought she would fall; in an instant, his amusement vanished as she wobbled dangerously, and he swiveled around to catch both her forearms in his hands, bringing her close to his chest. She gripped his coatsleeves in both fists, fixing her gaze upon his scarf as she tried to catch her breath.
“You’re okay.” It was more a statement than a question, his voice low, soothing, from just over her hair.
She nodded, keeping her eyes on the knot of his tie.
“Pete,” he said.
She frowned, taking in a deep breath before she looked up into his face. He was very close, his scent more pronounced and complex than she’d ever detected before: deodorant, laundry soap, the two-in-one Pert shampoo/conditioner he used because he was too lazy to go through two steps. A lingering scent of infrequently used cologne clung to his coat. It was a little overwhelming and not helping her lightheadedness.
“What?” she managed hoarsely.
He released her right arm and slowly glided back around to her left side, sliding his hand down to close his palm around hers. “It was Pete that played hockey,” he said.
“Oh.” With difficulty, she managed to unlock her knees and start forward again in slow, choppy strides. His grip loosened a little as she got her feet back under her, but he didn’t let go.
“So that’s how you chipped your tooth,” she said finally, glancing up at him with a grin. “Mean ole’ Pete whacked you with his stick.”
“Mmm,” he returned noncommittally, smiling just a little. “That would be one way it could’ve happened.”
“Just tell me.” She squeezed his hand persuasively, edging closer to him as they went into the turn.
He shook his head. “Never.”
“You’re impossible,” she sighed. He’d told her a least half a dozen different stories about how he’d chipped his front tooth. Falling out of a tree. Hit in the face playing Frisbee. Sliding into home base in a Little League game. Caught in the middle when Pete’s girlfriend went to smack him with her purse. The only common thread was that he was ten years old when it happened, so Pam figured that part at least was true, but she had long since decided he would never tell her the real story. It was probably something embarrassing. Not that that would keep her from trying to ferret it out of him.
“Check out Oscar,” he said, nodding toward the center of the rink with his chin.
She followed his gaze to where Oscar was gliding in a graceful circle before pulling himself up into a dizzying spin. “Wow, he’s good,” she observed.
“Think you can do that spin move, Beesly?” He released her hand and watched with a huge smile as she flailed to keep her balance.
“No!” she exclaimed, taking a few smoother strides but quickly grabbing for him again. Her muscles just didn’t want to cooperate today. “Do I look like a gay Mexican to you?” she whispered, grinning up at him.
Jim’s eyes widened. “What?”
Oh, shit. She shrugged helplessly. For some reason she’d assumed Jim knew about Oscar.
“I was never sure,” he mused. “How’d you find out?”
“I don’t—I mean—” she stared at him, utterly flustered, before giving up with a sigh. “All I’ll say,” she said diplomatically, “is that his, um…his ‘roommate’… calls for him all the time. Like five or six times a day,” she confided. “And, he just…yeah. Pretty sure.” She nodded positively.
“Wow.” He grinned. “You’ve been holding out on me all this time, Pam? Honestly.”
“What? It’s not like it ever came up,” she said innocently.
He rolled his eyes, lame, Beesly, and slid a little further away from her. “All right, you got this?” he asked, the tips of her gloved fingers slipping out of his hand as he released her.
“No—” Don’t let go of me was on the tip of her tongue, but then Michael was zooming in, sending up a spray of snow as he came to a stop beside her to offer some of his well-meaning but appallingly inappropriate advice about the benefits of breast self-checkups.
Ticking timebags. She’d have to remember that one.
Jim had gone blank-faced and silent, as he often did when Michael was at his most obliviously offensive, but as Michael skated off and she glanced over at Jim in horrified amusement, he met her eyes and gave a sly smile. “Something to think about,” he mused, skating backward out of her reach.
“I’m never telling you anything again.” She struck out away from him, her legs still a bit shaky, but it was coming back to her now. She willed her knees to just bend already and they cooperated this time, taking her a few strides toward the edge of the rink as she made a show of independence. She didn’t have to look back to know he would follow.
Sure enough, he was at her side in a moment, mocking her with his long, effortlessly graceful strides. “You didn’t tell me that about Oscar,” he pointed out. “You were just assuming I knew.”
Damn his perceptiveness. She gave him a look to concede the point and shrugged. “You should’ve known.”
He glanced over at Oscar, assessing, and shook his head. “I don’t think it’s obvious at all. My gaydar must be down.”
“Your gaydar is spotty, at best,” she teased. “You didn’t believe me about Tammy, did you?”
“Who?”
“That blonde waitress at Poor Richard’s. She quit last year, moved to Indiana?”
“Oh, right.” He frowned. “I still say she was way too pretty. She had to have at least been bi,” he argued.
Pam arched an eyebrow at him. “So you’re saying a pretty girl has to like guys?”
He squinted thoughtfully. “…Yes?”
She smacked his arm. “Shut up. Now you sound like Roy.”
She wanted the words back the moment they left her mouth, but Jim said nothing, just looked at her with an unreadable expression.
She dropped her eyes down to her feet, suddenly feeling rigid and clumsy again. Swaying a bit, she started listing to the left and fought to right herself without grabbing onto Jim, but he was there in an instant anyway, a steadying hand on her elbow.
“I told Dwight you can buy gaydar in the store,” he confided in a low, conspiring tone.
Pam’s eyes shot up to his, a laugh already bubbling to her lips. “You didn’t.”
He lifted his eyebrows and shrugged faintly, and she giggled, the awkward moment quickly forgotten in the wake of his smile and her laughter.
2009
“Tell me how you chipped your tooth. The real story,” Pam clarified, craning her neck to look up at him briefly before settling back down against his chest, shifting her weight a little to get them rocking again.
He’d bought a hammock.
When he came home with it, declaring it was something he’d wanted since he was a kid, she stared at the box and at him for a long, surreal moment, visions of her future flashing before her eyes as vividly as if she’d already lived them. Jim building her up for whatever impulsive thing he’d bought or done with the hesitant, “so, I was thinking…” she’d already come to know well. Pam trying,unsuccessfully, not to grin at whatever it was because she really shouldn’t encourage him.
Many of Jim’s impulsive ideas were good ones, but she’d thought this utterly silly, something they’d never use, until he set it up. Catching her around the waist, he slipped into it and pulled her down on top of him, wrapping his arms and legs around her as they swayed under the linden trees in the dappled late-afternoon sunlight.
The hammock was definitely one of his better ideas.
“I already told you that story,” he said lazily, not opening his eyes.
“Tall tales. Tell me the true story.”
“I told you the truth.” He shifted slightly, bringing his hand up to stroke the nape of her neck.
She lifted her head to look up into his face. “You mean one of those was the right one?”
“Mmm.” He smiled a little. “Maybe.”
“Jim!” She pinched his arm.
“Pam,” he mimicked. His smile became a grin, but he still wouldn’t open his eyes.
“Hmph,” she muttered, disappointed. “I guess I’ll just have to ask your mother, then.”
One eye cracked open. “Low, Beesly.”
“You’re the one keeping secrets.”
“Not. I told you. I fell out of a tree.” He squinted at the tall birch near the back fence, gesturing toward it with his chin. “That tree.”
She twisted a little to see which one he’d indicated and turned back to him with a frown. “That’s the story? So you were telling the truth.”
“Not my fault you didn’t believe me.”
“You had that look on your face. Like you were playing a joke on me.” She reached up to stroke his jaw and he bared his teeth at her teasingly. She pressed her thumb to his lower lip and ran her nail over the slight slant of his incisor. “Why did you keep making up other stories?”
He smirked. “Sometimes a boy needs to have a little mystery about him, Pam.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s been driving me crazy for years. I thought it must be something really embarrassing.”
“It was, trust me.”
“You know what I mean.”
He smiled. “You want the whole story?”
“Yes please.”
“Well.” He carefully lifted one foot over the edge to give their flagging momentum another gentle push. “Once upon a time there was a boy named Jimmy, whose two older brothers were fond of picking on him and daring him to do things he probably shouldn’t.”
“Ooh.”
“Jimmy knew that nothing he ever did would please or impress them, but it didn’t keep him from trying.”
“Poor Jimmy.”
“So one day they dared him to climb that tree over there, because they knew he was afraid of heights.”
“You are?”
“Stop interrupting. I’m trying to tell a story here.”
“Sorry.”
“Where was I?”
“You’re afraid of heights. Ironically.”
He wrinkled his nose at her. “Right. So, Jimmy took up the gauntlet and climbed that tree, and thought he could maybe do them one better by going higher than they dared him, and, well, there you go. See that broken branch?” He took her hand and pointed.
“Yep.”
“That’s where I was when I fell. And that is how I broke my arm when I was ten.”
Pam lifted her head to glare at him. “Jim!”
He cocked an innocent eyebrow. “You wanted my broken-arm story, right?”
“I hate you,” she sighed, burying her face into his shoulder.
“Nope.”
She grinned into his t-shirt. “Nope.”
He hugged her shoulders. “When I fell out of the tree, I not only broke my arm, I hit my head on the way down, and chipped my tooth when I hit the ground,” he said quietly. “I had a mouthful of blood. My mom was pretty freaked out. As were my brothers,” he added thoughtfully.
The image of a small Jim, broken and bloody at the base of that tall tree, was more than she could bear. Pam squeezed her eyes shut, a shudder rippling down her spine. “Jim, that’s…” She looked up at him with a frown. “That’s it. We’re cutting down that tree when we have kids.”
His eyes went soft, as they did whenever she said anything about kids. “Nah,” he smiled. “It’s not the tree’s fault I was young and stupid.”
“Our boys won’t be mean to each other,” she said, tracing her fingertips over the creepy bear symbol in the center of his threadbare Radiohead t-shirt. “Right?”
“Girls, Pam. We need to have girls.”
“Girls grow up to hate their mothers.”
“And love their daddies,” he grinned. “You don’t hate your mom.”
“Not now, but things were not pretty during my teenage years.”
“We’ll have to have one of each, then, and they’ll take care of each other. A boy first, so he can look after his little sister.” Jim slid his hand down her side and pressed his palm against her belly. “You got all that, uterus?”
“Pretty sure it’s your boys that determine that. And please don’t say ‘uterus’ ever again.” She ran her hand down his stomach, amusedly watching his eyes grow wide as she toyed with the waistband of his khaki shorts. “Are you coming on to me?” he asked thickly.
She waggled her eyebrows at him. “Could be.”
“Don’t tease.” His voice was hoarse.
“I am…totally serious.” She reached under his shirt but stilled her hand there, flat against his stomach. “Nap first. Then sex.”
His chuckle reverberated through her. “That’s backwards.”
“Nap again after, then. Have I told you how much I love this hammock?” she murmured, closing her eyes.
“I believe your exact words were, ‘A hammock?’ In a distinctly mocking tone, as I recall.”
“I should never have doubted you.”
“You’d think you’d know better by now. O ye of little faith.”
“Nap now,” she mumbled against his shoulder.
“You mentioned sex.”
She reached up a floppy hand to pat his mouth. “Shh. Sleep now.”
“You owe me,” he grumbled, but in less than three minutes he was dozing, too.
~~~
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading! Reviews and comments are, as always, most welcome.
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