A/N: While the next chapter of Febrility is off to the cleaners, I had this to keep me busy. And totally realized while writing this how much I really love Jim and Pam.
Disclaimer: Nothing's mine.
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It's Thursday when he asks her out, on a date. A date, like they met in line at a Starbucks and the way she played with her hair was cute, and they flirted, and "it's a date."
No. He fell in love with her and it's been years and it's happening.
So it does. They do the dating thing, and she seems shaky and smiling, but so happy and excited. He guesses he just figured it would be like the old Pam, and is genuinely glad to see this new version is here to stay. They don't really touch each other, just laugh and talk, and he slowly lets her erase the bad day out of his brain and off his skin. If he's being perfectly honest, it's not his favorite time he's ever had with Pam, because he slept with Karen last night and kissed her this morning, so surely her scent is on him somewhere. Still. And he kind of hates that, and the fact that he's led a woman on for so long because of the pretty girl across from him now, and that he dumped Karen in the middle of a big city she doesn't live in.
So, it's not his favorite night. But his favorite girl, his favorite person in the entire world is sitting across from him, rolling her eyes at herself as she talks about how the one thing missing from her new apartment is a dog. She ticks off the reasons on her fingers and lists them all.
She's so cute and animated and everything he fell in love with, that her list becomes totally legitimate. And he lets her erase the bad day off his shoulders, still. She smiles around her straw when he nods at an older man across the restaurant (because they've always had this game about finding hairpieces out of in public, because she's convinced they don't exist, but his dad could prove her wrong).
He starts to think that all the soft rock is right. There is a woman that could make you feel like a better man, and that's why he sees her palm and waits to leave, just so he can slip his hand right there.
Pam is jittery. Nervous, anxious. All of it, sure. She limits it to everything under the table, because she's thinking he won't notice the way her heels click together and the way that her knees bounce.
The sun is setting, color stretching and lazy across the sky, while they eat their late dinner. Pam had wondered what kind of date Jim would take a girl on, and it's a nice place, but not too nice that she had to dress up. She changed into a different kind of shirt to go with her skirt, and he seemed to approve. They're almost instantly fancy when they walk out of the office in their work clothes, anyway.
Jim seems to love everything she talks about. He looks exhausted, and although she's sure it's from the day he's had, she feels responsible. Like, it's more the year he's had that has exhausted him. But it doesn't escape Pam that when Roy was tired, he didn't listen and all but asked Pam to stop talking and walk away. When Jim is tired and worn, eyes sagging, he listens intently. And asks questions, and wants to hear more all the time, and laughs like he might still love her.
She's only come to realize it in a process much too slow, but she wants to say it back. Now that they're on this date, Pam thinks she won't have to. Maybe it'll progress slowly and easily, and they can talk things out and be a normal couple. But she wants to lay it on thick, like butter on bread, how much she adores him and how much Jim changed her life. It's weighty and scary, so she doesn't.
He coughs, long and a little dry, and she looks concerned.
"Ouch," she says, curling her lip up.
Jim waves her away and smiles at the approaching waiter. "No big deal."
She nods and the waitress sets the bill next to Jim. Pam smiles up at her next and thanks her for the refill. Jim and Pam both watch her squint and nod at the window.
"Another day without rain. It's officially a drought."
Friday, he'd already arranged to take off, and when he and Pam separated the night before in the parking lot, he'd said he wasn't coming in. But now Jim feels like he's all limbs and uselessness on his couch, essentially waiting for Pam to get off of work. They didn't make plans really, but she hadn't said anything so he figured he would call her today. It's two when he shuts the television off and stares out the window.
The whole city, maybe the whole state, is dry and thirsty. The grass is a fading green and it's all his mom talks about.
Jim knows he should cool his jets and not think about everything, everything and everything else about Pam Beesly. But now that he's actually allowed to without feeling like a total jackass and Karen hasn't returned any of his phone calls to, you know, talk about things... It's nice. He thinks he can calm down, sit on his couch, and think about how she might even be his girlfriend soon.
It makes his mind buzz, because this is something he was so careful around for so long. Careful because he loved her from afar, careful because she shot him down, then careful because he had a girlfriend. And he has to flex his fingers in and out of fists against his bare knees because it doesn't seem like he should be so lucky, that Pam is answering the phones at work right now probably bored out of her mind, flicking the hair away from her face and doodling on the calendar, and she actually wants him back now.
Jim decides then to stop moping and stepping around things and enjoy it, her, them, all of it. He looks down and realizes he's in his t-shirt and his boxers, still, and grabs his laptop from the end table.
He's not going to wait around and be casual and call her only now and then. It's Pam. The sun shines outside in the afternoon and bakes the world around them while he pries the computer open and clicks on his instant messenger, smiles when he sees she's right there. Of course she is.
He decides they'll have fun, and he's not going to let much get in the way of that, anymore.
Pam fans herself at her desk and sips a glass of juice when Jim's IM sounds on her screen. She smiles and sets her drink down, because he wants to see her again tonight and can he pick her up from work?
Pam's index finger pokes at the keys, spelling out her affirmative in three taps. Yes. It's been so long since she's had that fluttery, smooth feeling all over. She thinks of Jim being next to her in his car, or hers. Last night he'd dropped her off with a nod at her door, a smile and a joke, too. But that was it. Now she's thinking about their hands stuck together, a hug, the way he might kiss her. Maybe tonight.
This sharp kind of impulse travels up the front of her as she imagines his lips sliding and moving over hers. It's been so long since the last time it happened that even though she wants to say it's something she's never forgotten, there are parts of it that are inevitably fading because of time. All she remembers is that he fit his mouth against hers perfectly, that it felt so good, and that she had wanted more.
This time she'll get it. More. She won't have to stop kissing him for anyone, or anything. He asks her if she's at a pausing point in her work, and she replies, it's like we've just met. She means it in a Of course I'm at a pausing point, don't you know me at all? kind of way, but she likes the double meaning.
While he starts out a session of mad libs, Pam imagines calling her mom about him. This one might be around for a while.
Jim picks her up and she isn't so flustered anymore. Which he appreciates, because he spent the whole afternoon alternating between talking himself away from anxiety and thinking of ways to joke her anxiety away. So all he's left with is a relatively calm Pam in his passenger seat, a slightly elevated heart rate, and a tight span of silence in between them. Nervous glances to the side, and that kind of thing.
He delights in it, because this is the beginning of a relationship, right? And that's okay. It might be his favorite thing, that they're going through this. So he keeps it all on that thread.
A soup and sandwich place is her choice, so that's where they have dinner and end up backed into corners of the booth on opposite sides, picking apart straw wrappers and napkins while they talk. Pam flirts a lot with her eyes, and he licks his lips, and he knows (he really, really knows) he could kiss her right now and she would (and could) kiss him back.
He doesn't. He's difficult like that, makes her wait.
They're at her door, after spending a walk holding hands and talking about slightly strained subjects. Like the tense email he'd received from Karen right before he picked Pam up about not wanting to talk to him, that he'd pushed out of his mind. And the way that they'd both kind of shot each other down and walked all over hearts, that stuff. It made them both slow and thorough, circling her building many times and grasping each other's hands. Sometimes, stopping just to look at each other while they talked.
Jim thinks he could kiss her while he's standing under the light at the door, but he doesn't. The moment calls for a different kind of connection, and the serious shift of the evening continues. While Pam is smiling up at him, a wish behind her eyes, he reaches down and circles his arm around her waist. If he's honest, it's possible that kissing her isn't even on his mind right now. To hug her is to know that she's still completely real, to catch himself up with the times and remember how she's still right here. She lets her arms creep back up around him and he tucks his nose into the hair at her neck. She sighs. It's the most intimate they've ever been.
"I missed you," he says, almost a question, pleading and tightening his grip on her.
Jim feels her shake her head lightly. "I'm so glad you're back."
When he pulls away from her, a breeze runs through her hair and he kisses her cheek.
It's been a couple of days and he won't kiss her. Now it's a game. Because she's sitting at her desk looking up at him with a laugh in her expression. Jim knows she's frustrated.
At the grocery store, while they fill her cart up with the intention of stocking her fridge and freezer, he bends down and goes to kiss her on the lips but swerves at the last second and catches her chin.
She tosses the bread she's holding into the cart and looks up at him, frustrated but beaming, wide and bright.
"Why won't you kiss me?" she says, lips smooshed together in mock frustration.
He rolls his eyes, grinning and shrugs. "I need to work on my technique."
Pam laughs and reaches over to shove him in the sholder. "You're horrible. You're horrible. Just..." She looks around. No one's there. "Just, here -- just come here."
Pam puts on her best sexy-innocent-kiss me kind of face but he's not having it. She stomps her foot a little and nudges the cart again.
"Geesh, brat," Jim says, before he pulls a package of hamburger buns off of the shelf. "By the way, I'm making dinner for us tomorrow on the new grill. Do you want hamburgers or hot dogs?"
She hates, but really loves, that he's so casual about this right now. "Whatever you're having," she murmurs and then steps in front of him. "Will you? Please?"
There's a glimmer in Jim's expression that she really wants to kiss her.
"When it rains," he says easily.
Pam scoffs. "We're in a drought."
He pretends to strain, look over miles of canned food and see out the windows. "What...?"
She shoves him again and tugs on his hand. Jim bends down to kiss her and swerves, right on schedule, lips meeting her nose. They stay close like that, and she doesn't know how much more close proximity she can take, because Jim pulls her close and kisses her ear.
"Stop," Pam says suddenly and pushes him away. "You're a tease."
He follows her all around the store and talks and listens. Even if he won't kiss her, his attentiveness is an affection all alone. One that she never realized how much she was missing until he came along.
He buys it and that's when he really shakes. It's real. It's right there.
There's one time she thinks she almost has him. Jim has his arm slung low at her waist, something he does all the time now whenever they're not in the office (that makes her feel wonderfully his and his possessive side surprises her). She pulls him close and says his name softly, waits for him to come closer, and she almost has him...
But then she pulls away suddenly, "Ha!" and smiles, wide and glorious at him, like she just won something. Instead, she really just denied herself what she's been waiting for for some time. While Pam calculates this mistake in her head Jim watches and laughs.
"You totally would've had me, too," Jim says, dropping his arm from her back and smiling down at her. "Now I'm conditioned. I'm never falling for that again."
That was stupid, she thinks. She purses her lips. Pam realizes again how much she loves him and wonders how long she'll really go without saying it. She taps her cheek. "Fine, then just give me one right here."
He nods, and obliges, touching his lips to the side of her face. Whenever he kisses her like that, she wonders how. His lips are soft, infinitely so, and just a subtle push on her skin. Moist, and then he's gone. A quiet noise that's different from the way other boys have kissed her there. Other men, rather. Because Jim is a man. Oh, god.
Her face is pink, at least Pam's sure she can feel the heat turning it that color. And he looks so, so pleased with that.
She takes Jim's hand and kisses the back of it, raises her eyes like a challenge. He raises his back at her.
"You'll kiss me one day," she says, and wonders if she's starting to like the game they have going on.
He nods, like it's common sense. She grins at his reply. "It'll rain."
It's there all the time, it never really leaves him. Well, except when he's with her, because he's paranoid that she'll find it. Hmm.
On their one-week anniversary he has it tucked into his pocket because they went straight from work to her apartment.
They meant to get ready and go somewhere nice for dinner, and she got a little excited at the forecasted rain on the news while they walked around her apartment. Jim doesn't act like he's noticed anything about the weather, and it's merely background noise anyway. He sticks his wallet into his pocket as she digs around in the couch cushions for the remote.
"What are you doing to that poor couch?"
Pam grunts, and it feels like the couch has easily swallowed up to her elbow. "The remote. Do you see it?"
He points at the television, casually walking over and shutting it off with one finger, his eyes never leaving hers.
"Well, I still need to know where it is," she says, rolling her eyes. "Oh!" She pulls it out triumphantly and turns it back on. He watches in confusion.
She shrugs. "Just... making sure. Something. I --" She gasps and points. "Let's leave quick so we can get back and watch that movie!"
Jim leans over her shoulder and squints at the screen. "It's a Wonderful Life? Why the hell are they playing that in May?"
Pam cocks her head and watches the rest of the titles slide up the screen. "I don't know, but I feel like I probably shouldn't ignore it."
He smiles behind her as she leans against the couch. Her mother taught her well. Pam knows you don't just pass up Christmas movies, the great ones, when they're on during any season. Late spring is no exception.
"Well, let's go then," Jim says, full of fake exasperation and she loves him even more.
Throughout dinner she manages to never mention anything about the weather, and finds that as much as she wants him to kiss her, they find other things to keep their minds occupied this time. Pam gets into the most intense discussion about her art aspirations to date, and each time she seems unsure about whether to continue, he nods and waits for more. He learns all about how she really doesn't know what she's going to do, just that she wants to have art in her life. Daily, would be a bonus. But the way she gets to that point, with all kinds of discussion about how she knows how to at least let other people know what she wants now, is really what surprises her.
Pam's so tired by the time they get back from the restaurant because wine (combined with the dry heat of the outside restaurant) usually has that affect on her. She's determined to stay up and watch the movie though, because it's one of her favorites. He settles into the couch and spreads an arm out on the back, and when she walks back into the living room in a t-shirt and pajama pants, her lips are tugged to one side.
"You can go home if you want to Jim," she says kindly, smiling. "I'm not going to make you sit here and watch this Christmas movie with me if you're tired. And you're still in your work clothes."
He looks down at his tie, dumbly staring at the pattern on it for a moment before he meets her eyes again. He points to the side, towards the screen, and keeps looking at her. "It's about to start."
Jim's eyes crinkle when he smiles, so she knows he's tired, but he wants to stay. Pam grins, this wide and uncontrollable Jim-enforced grin and climbs on the couch. He brings the arm around her shoulders, and they're only thirty minutes into the movie when she feels him sleeping on her shoulder. It's the closest they've ever been and she basks in it. In the process, she falls asleep.
It's four in the morning when she wakes up. She has a pain in her neck, stiff from leaning into the top of Jim's head.
Jim. They fell asleep on her couch, apparently, leaning against each other. It's been several hours like this. How have neither of them moved at all? He's still in his work clothes for God's sake.
Pam's body tightens and expands while she wakes up. He's snoring, and beautiful and all rumpled by sleep. While he's totally out, she thinks of things she wants to do that she's normally still to shy for. She settles on wrapping her arms completely around his torso and lying her body all along his frame. The best part about having a boyfriend again.
She's smiling into his work shirt like a little girl in a dream when she hears the noise. It's unmistakable, light and soft and summer-like on the window panes. Her head comes up swiftly, and then she can see the streaks on the glass, and the magnified shadows all over the walls.
Rain.
She bites her lip and feels that rush creep up her chest again. Rain and kissing. It's all she's thinking about, like she really is some little girl with an imaginary boyfriend.
Her palms spread out and she runs them up his sides, waking Jim slowly and quietly. He opens his eyes, blinking and confused before he hugs her back and speaks. He's groggy and rough, "Hey."
"Hey," she says softly, searching his face. "It's raining."
He grunts. "Is it?"
She can't wait any longer. It's not even just kissing. She needs to get the words of her tongue, and there's only two ways she knows how. Kissing him, and simply saying them out loud. She wants both.
Pam sets back on her knees, crouches and then she's standing above him and pulling on his hand. Jim unfolds himself from the couch, rubbing his eyes.
"What are we doing?" he mumbles, the heel of one palm shoved into his right eye, hair on end.
"Come on," she motions, nodding towards the door. She hears the faintest rumble of thunder and shivers. It's perfect.
Jim follows her to the door, still rubbing his eyes as he slips his shoes on when she does. She takes his hand and rushes down the stairs with him, ends up pulling him into the grass at the side of the building where it's all thirsty bushes, brick walls and sky.
He's fully awake, or at least as close as she is, the raindrops like freckles on his face and the bridge of his nose. She looks up at him and takes a step towards him.
"I just dragged you out here in the rain," she says, loud enough to be heard over the rain, and just suddenly realizing it. "I'm sorry, that wasn't very... It's like four in the morning."
He uses his forearm to push the hair away from his face when he smiles. She could melt.
She ignores the fact that her shoes are definitely in mud at the moment, her t-shirt is white and maybe not leaving much to the imagination and that her hair is probably less than gorgeous at the moment. Jim seems transfixed.
"Will you kiss me?" she asks, quiet and slow as she leans against the brick wall and pulls him closer to her.
The water is slowly soaking them, and heightens into a downpour (in the sudden, quick way that it always happens). There's another darkened wave of thunder and it's instantly the most romantic thing that's ever happened to her. How he might just finally cure this dry spell, make it all history, move on from late spring to early summer and be a season of his own in her life.
He nods and she tips her head up. The rain still falls between them even when his lips are finally on hers, his hand in her hair, and the sigh that's shared and loud between them. The rain adds friction, and the downpour makes them damp and thick against each other. His hands fall onto her waist, gripping the heavy material of her soaked t-shirt. She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him in the rain and he moans and she sighs and when his tongue touches hers, Pam only feels his mouth and the rain. There's a flash of lightning, the first one they've seen, and it's all so dramatic. The way that the light flashes while his hand touches her breasts, briefly and desperately before making his way up to her neck and holding on.
The thunder sounds again and he reaches under her, hoisting Pam up against the wall. He chuckles and smiles against her lips, tilting his head to the side so he never has to stop kissing her. When she wraps her body around his, up against the brick, she laughs, too. Because it's ridiculous. Four in the morning, sudden downpour, making out against this dirty brick wall of the building.
He detaches; it's a sound that's loud even in the rain. He presses his forehead against hers and smiles, breathes on her, feels their relationship climb a step.
He kisses her one more time. For good measure, and because her lips are right there.
"I love you," she murmurs. "I love you so much and I have for a really, really long time."
It comes out fast, and the way the water runs down her face makes her squint at him. She licks the water off of her lips and looks at his face, so close to her own. He breathes out heavily and nods, then nods more quickly and readjusts his hold on her, brings her up the wall and inch or two.
"I love you," he says, agreeing, smiling. The biggest smile she's ever seen on his face. Pam's heart beats a little harder as he kisses her again, deep and slow and wet before he pulls away.
"What else could we do in the rain?" She's cheeky as she says it, and he knows the newness of their situation limits her ideas: making out against this wall, touching a little bit here, maybe she imagines some kind of backseat-of-the-car during a downpour situation
-- and she does --
but he's leagues ahead of her. There's a bright simplicity about her sometimes, and it shines now. It's dark, it's early in the morning, his mind is cloudy. He forgets any concept of time, because all he knows is that he woke up to, basically, kiss Pam. She keeps changing his life. And it's like he doesn't even have the time to contemplate it all, because all he can think about is a future that's full of it.
He can feel the ring in his pocket, the velvet box pressing into the part of his thigh that's, thankfully, not against her right now. She breathes heavily and smiles down at him. He imagines asking her for forever in the rain.
Thinks maybe it's not so far away anymore.
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