Story Notes:
Thanks to xoxoxo and WhatAWaste for the once-over, and to Talkative for the title. Oh, and for the hours of awesome conversation. ;)
Standard disclaimers apply. No copyright infringement intended.
Standard disclaimers apply. No copyright infringement intended.
~~~
The honeymoon suite came equipped with a deep, round marble tub with jacuzzi jets, a cozy private balcony sporting a terrific view of the American Falls, and the best (and only) amenity they’d used thus far: a king-sized, four-poster bed, surrounded by heavy red tapestry hangings embroidered with gold roses. Warm amber light from the nightstand lamp cast shadows within as Pam trailed her fingers through Jim’s hair, smoothing it back from his temples.
“I flirted with you too,” she murmured, toying with a curl at the nape of his neck, her fingertips teasing without tickling, just light and firm enough to send delicious shivers up and down his spine.
Jim smiled against her skin without opening his eyes. He was in his new favorite place, his head in her lap, her stomach smooth and warm under his cheek. “You totally did,” he agreed.
She laughed. “Oh, so you knew?”
“ ‘No, no, Jim, third gear is here, feel it, see? Here, let me show you,’ ” he mimicked, opening his eyes to grin up at her.
“You kept missing the gears!” Pam objected, her eyes laughing.
“Totally flirting,” he repeated, closing his eyes again, sliding his hand down her arm to twine his fingers with hers, sighing with pleasure as he felt the cool metal of her wedding band.
“Well. Yeah.” She squeezed his fingers. “I liked holding your hand,” she said softly.
He smiled.
~~~~
Jim’s Corolla was in the shop. After four hours of listening to Dwight alternately railing against the unreliability of foreign cars and rolling his eyes at Jim’s ignorance of basic combustion engine principles, he couldn’t wait to escape, even if it meant heading to the bus stop twenty minutes early.
“How are you getting home?” Pam asked, twisting to look up at him as she slipped her left arm into the coat sleeve he held out for her. “We can give you a ride.”
“Oh, uh…” Jim reached up to scratch the back of his neck as she started on her buttons. We. Pam and Roy. Roy.
He’d rather walk.
“Or was somebody…?” A tiny frown creased her forehead, a spark of something (not jealousy, definitely not jealousy) flashing through her eyes.
“No.” He coughed. “I was, um, just gonna take the bus.”
Pam laughed. “Jim, it’s like twenty degrees.”
“But I have this manly scarf,” he grinned, pulling it off the coatrack and winding it around his neck.
“It is very manly,” she conceded, reaching up to tug on the ends, her knuckles resting lightly against his lapels. “But it’s too cold,” she said firmly, “and you’re right on our way. Come on.” Her eyes flicked up to his as she tapped his chest lightly, daring him to refuse.
He stared down into the clear green depths of her eyes, mesmerized, paralyzed. “Yeah,” he croaked finally. His throat felt very dry. “Um, yeah. Okay. Thanks.”
“Good.” She stepped back and turned to her desk to pick up her purse. “Let’s go.”
Roy was waiting in the truck, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to the tune of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine.’ He gave Jim his usual nod as Pam opened the door and climbed in, frowning a little in surprise as she moved to the center of the bench. “Jim’s car is in the shop,” she explained, turning back to beckon for Jim to get in. “I told him we’d give him a ride home?”
Roy’s eyes widened slightly, but he nodded amiably. “Sure.”
It was a tight squeeze. Jim’s right thigh was pressed into the door handle, his left leg tense with the effort not to press against Pam’s. “Thanks, man.”
“Yeah, sure. What’s wrong with your car?” Roy flicked on the windshield wipers; it had begun to flurry.
“Alternator.”
“Huh.” Roy glanced at him shrewdly. “How much they charging you?”
“Three hundred,” Jim said uncomfortably, avoiding Pam’s eyes. No, I can’t fix a car.
Roy chuckled. “Shit, you shoulda told me. I’d have done it for half that.”
Well, great. That would’ve been useful information yesterday.
“Well it’s too late now,” Pam said lightly. “Next time, though, you should give us a call. Roy’s really good with cars. I’ve never had to take mine to the shop.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Jim said dully.
They came to a red light. “So where are you at?” Roy asked.
“Olive and Wheeler?”
“Yeah, okay. That’s pretty close to us,” he remarked.
“We’ll pick you up tomorrow,” Pam offered. “Seriously, it’s right on the way.”
“That’s…” Jim glanced at her and couldn’t help smiling at her almost giddy expression. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” she said warmly.
~~~~
“I used to drive by your old house. After you left,” she admitted quietly.
He frowned. “Pam…”
“I’d park across the street and just stare at the windows. Like maybe you were still in there.” She smiled sadly. “I think Mark saw me once. He came out to get something from his car and just—stared at me for a minute. And he looked so – mad – I didn’t go anymore after that.” She traced his ear with her index finger, moving down to press her fingertip to the freckle on his neck. “I thought maybe he’d tell you? That he saw me? And I was so embarrassed…but then I started thinking about what if he did, tell you I mean, and for a week or two I had this whole fantasy going of how he’d call you and say that crazy girl was there looking for you, and then, you’d call me…”
“Pam,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t…”
Her fingers wandered back down to stroke the nape of his neck. “I guess he never did.”
“No,” he whispered, his voice gritty.
“He was a good friend, then.” Her hand stole back to his face, smoothed over his furrowed eyebrow. “Or maybe he didn’t recognize me.” She smiled, cradling his jaw in her small palm. “Don’t be sad, Mr. Halpert. I just… ” She paused, staring into his eyes. “Sometimes I have to remember how bad it was, so I never forget how…how much I have now. Is that weird?”
He swallowed over the golf ball in his throat. “You’re going to kill me, woman,” he said huskily.
“Well I don’t want to do that.” Her smile widened. “I’m Mrs. Halpert now. That’s just… really…” She shook her head slightly. “Wow.”
He licked his lips, blinking against the dangerous stinging in his eyes as he smiled. “Wow.”
~~~~
Pam and Roy were late. Seven forty-five became seven fifty and then eight and he was officially late for work. She forgot me. Forgot me. I’d never—
He shook his head angrily and flipped open his phone to call information for the number for a cab just as it rang.
Pam.
“Hey,” he greeted tersely.
“Jim, it’s Pam, I’m so sorry I’m late, I’m on my way right now I’ll be there in two minutes I promise,” she said all in one breath. “I’m really sorry but I woke up late, I’m on my way okay?”
He frowned, hurt and anger dissolving into concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah—I just—my alarm didn’t go off and…” Her voice trailed off, then came back. “Roy left early, I just forgot it’s Wednesday, he goes in at seven to unload the truck, Jim, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said gently.
“He didn’t—he turned off the alarm,” she said, angrily, but her voice sounded near tears. “He’s supposed to—”
“Hey,” he interrupted softly. “It’s okay. We’ll be a little late, no big deal.”
“I know, it’s just—” Pam broke off abruptly. “Okay I’m here.”
He peered out the window and saw her little Civic in front of his house. “What a coincidence, me too,” he joked. Lame.
It worked, though; she laughed, a little shaky but still a laugh, and the smile she gave him as he approached her car, both of them snapping their phones shut as their eyes met, was worth a thousand hours of Dwight’s lectures on the necessity of punctuality.
“Nice car, Beesly,” he teased, pulling his knees up practically to his chest as he groped under the seat for the adjustment knob. “Very, uh…dainty.”
She rolled her eyes. “Give it up, Halpert, the seat’s already back as far as it goes.” She grinned, putting the car in reverse and gunning it onto the street, sliding a bit on the slick pavement as she took the corner a little too fast.
“Pam, we’re already late. Don’t get us killed.” He glanced down at her hand on the gearshift and smiled in surprise. “You drive a stick?”
“Yeah. They get around so much better in the snow, don’t you think?” She glanced briefly into her rearview mirror before swinging abruptly into the left lane.
“Uh… I don’t know…”
“You don’t know how to drive a stick?” she laughed.
He grabbed onto the armrest as the car slewed half into the other lane on a patch of black ice, narrowly missing the bumper of a red pickup. “Jesus, Pam, slow down! Please!”
She let off the gas a little as she corrected. “Wow, it’s, um, a little icy,” she conceded, her face noticeably paler. “Sorry.”
His heart was still in his throat. “Just, take it easy,” he breathed. “Since when are you in such a hurry to get to work?”
She gave him a brief glance and a grim, tight-lipped smile. “I just don’t like being late.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “You didn’t have to—I could’ve just called a cab.”
“You are not the problem,” she assured him, gazing ahead stonily, her knuckles going white on the gearshift.
Well. Fuck. He couldn’t think of anything to say. His eyes were fixed on her fingers that looked so thin and cold on the shifter, and he had an overwhelming urge to put his hand over hers, to warm her, reassure her. He was always so careful not to touch her, even when she needed it…maybe just this once…
Slowly, cautiously, he covered her hand with his own, his ancient brown leather glove dwarfing her hand completely. She shot him a startled glance but didn’t pull back, and the way her face softened a little gave him the courage to squeeze her fingers lightly. “Don’t you have gloves?” he asked softly.
She nodded, her eyes on the road. “I, um, I forgot them.”
He nodded once, slowly, and left his hand on hers until she had to shift down to stop for a red light.
~~~~
“That was the first time you ever held my hand.” She pressed her thumb to his lower lip until his lips parted, and he bit her thumb lightly, holding her gaze with an intensity that made her feel weak and liquid with desire.
“Not the first time I wanted to,” he said quietly.
She slid her hand around to cradle the back of his head, urging him upward. “Come here.”
~~~~
Pam was tense and quiet all day. Jim thought he’d get a chance to cheer her up at lunch, but she disappeared ten minutes before her usual time and came back ten minutes late, her expression pinched and forbidding. He waited fifteen minutes before heading up to steal a jellybean and share a plot to fuck with Dwight, but he hadn’t made two steps toward her desk before she jumped up and walked very fast toward the bathroom.
He got a call from the shop at two telling him his car was ready, and that for two hundred and forty more dollars they’d service his transmission. “No,” he said curtly, wondering what it was about him that said sucker. Hazarding a glance at Pam, he found her frowning at her monitor, and making up his mind not to put her out any further, picked up his phone to call a taxi.
He was repeating the address and spelling his name for the third time when Pam’s shadow fell across his desk, her frown even more pronounced as she stared down at him with her arms crossed over her chest. “Yes, five o’clock, thanks,” he stammered, fumbling the receiver a little as he set the phone back in the cradle. “What’s up?”
“What are you doing?” she demanded, leaning against his desk, her gaze a strange mixture of stern and wounded.
“I’m, uh, my car? It’s ready.” He licked his lips. “What?”
“Are you--calling a cab?” Her eyebrows lifted in an expression of hurt disbelief.
“Well. Yeah. I mean, uh, yeah.” He frowned back at her. “What?” he repeated.
Pam uncrossed her arms, twisting her hands. “I thought—I can take you,” she said in a small voice. “I mean I have my car, and…” She trailed off, her eyes roaming his face uncertainly.
He swallowed nervously. “I didn’t want to bother you,” he said in a low voice.
Her frown softened, a tiny hint of a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “You’re just afraid to ride with me now,” she teased.
He grinned. “You’re on to me.”
Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “Well, I’ll make you a deal. You can drive. I’ll teach you how to drive a stick.”
He frowned. “Oh, I—” he began.
“You’re going to let a woman teach you to drive?” Dwight sneered.
Pam turned her head over her shoulder to roll her eyes at him. “Nice.”
“Yes,” Jim said decisively. “Yes I am.”
~~~~
“I absolutely did not lie to you!” he laughed, propping himself up on his elbow to watch her walk naked to the bathroom. From behind, she still didn’t look pregnant, but as she turned the corner he caught a glimpse of the small bump that had recently emerged. “I never once said I didn’t know how to drive a stick. You assumed.”
“A lie of omission, Jim. You didn’t correct me.” Her voice echoed hollowly off the tiles.
“Well…” He smiled to himself, falling back on the pillow and tucking his hands behind his head. “Fair enough.”
“This tub is amazing!” she exclaimed. “Look how deep it is! Wanna take a bath?”
“Now?”
The roar of running water was his answer. He flung the sheet aside with a grin and went to join her.
~~~~
For a few minutes, as he adjusted the seat and the mirrors and struggled to fold his long legs comfortably into the cramped space, the prickle of guilt at deceiving her was nearly strong enough to make him come clean. But then she was giggling at him with bright eyes and rosy cheeks and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to make that last a little longer. It was just a little prank, he told himself. Someday they’d laugh about it.
It was easier feigning ignorance than he’d expected. The fifth time he stalled the car, she gave up trying to hold back her laughter and put her hand over his on the shifter, grinning up at him with so much amusement and affection he wanted to kiss her, right there, just cradle her face in his hands and feel her lips soft and warm under his and her smooth smooth skin against his cheek and she would taste like green apples and chamomile tea and—
“Jim,” she tilted her head, still smiling.
He tore his eyes from hers, bringing himself back. “Um—sorry—what?”
“What time does the shop close?” she repeated patiently.
“Um. Six, I think?” He stared out the windshield, acutely aware of her hand still over his, his entire being focused upon the points where their skins became one. “What time is it?”
She picked her hand up to look at her watch. “Five thirty-five.” And for no reason that could be even remotely considered necessary, she put her hand back on his, rubbing his pinky briefly with her thumb. “I don’t know if you’re going to be, um, advanced enough to get there today,” she said with admirable diplomacy, but her voice was full of mocking laughter. He suppressed a smile as she continued, “Maybe I should just take you there today and we can do this again sometime? Till you get it down?”
He smiled. “I dunno, might take a while. I’m not a very good student.”
“Patience, grasshopper. You’ll get it.” She picked up her hand again, releasing her seat belt. “All right, trade me places.”
She waited for him at the shop while he paid, and then insisted on following him home to ensure his car was in good running order. As he waved, slinging his bag over his shoulder, she rolled down her window and beckoned for him to come over.
“Thanks again,” he said, leaning into her open window a little.
“Anytime. And you’re not off the hook yet, Halpert,” she said sternly. “You will learn to drive a stick. Wednesdays, you and me.”
You and me. His heart gave a funny lurch. “I will pencil it in,” he smiled. “Driving Lessons. Coming soon to a parking lot near you.”
Pam grinned. “I hear it’s the new sensation of the fall schedule.”
“See you tomorrow, Beesly.” He tapped her open window as he straightened up, and smiled to himself when she waited until he was in the house before driving away.
~~~~
“You stalled the car at least once every week until—spring,” she laughed, reaching behind her to dab bubbles on his nose.
Jim wrapped his arms more tightly around her, bending his head to place a soft kiss below her ear. “It was not easy on my manhood to keep up the ruse that long, I’ll have you know.”
“You burned out my clutch!”
He smiled against her shoulder. “Yeah…I’m sorry about that.”
“Sure you are,” she smirked, and suddenly caught her breath. “Oh! He’s kicking. Feel!” She moved to guide his hand to her belly but he was already there, holding his breath in anticipation. She’d been getting flutters for a few weeks, but he’d only felt the baby move himself for the first time a week ago and the sensation was… indescribable.
There. A quiver against his fingers. The life they’d created, stretching its limbs. “Oh, man,” he breathed against her neck.
“I know,” she murmured.
He kept his hand there for another minute, until the tremors subsided, and slowly moved up to cradle her breast, running his thumb over her nipple. “Pam,” he sighed.
“I know.” She smiled, arching a little into his touch. “Mmm.”
He slid his left hand up to mirror the movements of his right, kissing her ear and neck and jaw while her nipples tightened under his fingers. He pulled her earlobe between his teeth and she gasped. Slid his right hand down her belly and between her thighs, teasing, tickling, until she moaned please and he parted her with his fingers. She circled her hips, pushing back against him, thrusting against his fingers, her breath coming in sharp moans until his tongue in her ear made her cry out loud, his name echoing off the walls as she broke.
She slumped limply against his chest for a moment, breathing hard. “Jim,” she whispered, and he smiled against her neck as she pulled his hand back to her belly. The baby was kicking again. “We woke him up,” she laughed breathlessly, turning to face him.
“Just getting him back now for all those nights he’ll keep us awake,” he smiled.
She kissed him, sliding her tongue into his mouth as she gripped his shoulders and lifted herself to sit down on him, her eyes falling shut and a small mewling sound escaping her mouth into his as he filled her. He moaned, his hands sliding down to the small of her back, pressing her down to hold her still, only for a moment before she started moving fast and erratic, almost too soon and he tried to slow her down but she wouldn’t stop and when she whispered now, now, come on it was too much and he gave up, his groan uniting loudly with hers as she clenched around him.
When he opened his eyes again she was smiling at him, raining kisses all over his face, her hands tangling in his wet hair as she circled her hips once more before sliding off of him. He smiled back and recaptured her mouth with his, sucking on her lower lip before releasing her and moving his hands up into her hair. “So impatient,” he chuckled.
She smiled, smoothing his hair back. “To not waiting,” she grinned.
~
Chapter End Notes:
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed.
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