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What went down after "Night Out?"
The car ride home is silent, tense. He keeps both hands on the wheel, at the ten and two positions he learned in drivers’ ed. She stares out her window, careful to not drop her gaze, afraid that if she does, she’ll see the outline of Toby’s palm on her skin.

Her apartment is closer to the office than his, and when he turns on to her street and parks in front of her building, she’s afraid he’s going to stay in the car, wait until she gets inside, and drive away.

But he gets out, coming around to shut her door behind her. And he walks with her to her door, close but not touching, still not talking, his hands in his pockets. She keeps her hands in hers, and she doesn’t talk either.

And she thinks maybe he’s just walking her to her door.

But he follows her in, drops his messenger bag to the floor as she flips on the light. They shrug their coats off in silence, his suit jacket going along with his overcoat. He places both over a chair as she hangs hers on a hook by the door.

“Well, that was a fun night,” he grouses, finally breaking the silence as he tugs the tie from around his neck and tosses it over his coat. It slithers to the floor, where neither of them bother to pick it up.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, and part of her hates that her voice sounds vulnerable and even a little bit weak, but there’s another, bigger part of her that knows it’s okay to be weak with him because that’s not the way he needs her to be. “I had no idea that he, that, you know…”

He shakes his head, cutting her off. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he tells her, and his tone is soft, a caress, but she knows him, she knows him and so she can hear the little hint of bitter that no one else would be able to detect. “I probably deserve it. It‘s not like I was exactly respectful of your last relationship. Why should I expect some other guy to…”

And now it’s her turn to cut him off. “Because it wasn’t right. He wasn’t right. For me.” She reaches up to run her palm over the roughness of his cheek and it’s the first time they’ve touched in more than an hour. “You are.”

But that’s not what’s bothering him. Not really. He isn’t threatened by Toby or his hand on Pam’s knee. Annoyed, sure, that something about him said “go ahead, touch my fian- right, girlfriend, while I’m sitting right here,” but not threatened. Pam loves him. If there’s one thing he’s sure about, it’s that.

It’s just right now, he’s not so sure she should.

He closes his eyes and leans his cheek into her palm, feeling the shape of her hand on his face. He remembers days wishing for her touch, nights craving it, and even later nights fighting off the guilt and torment of loving someone who wasn’t his, who would never be his.

And now she is. He wants to give her everything, needs to give her everything.

He turns his head so his mouth meets her skin, kisses her palm and sighs against it.

“What’s wrong?”

She follows him to the sofa, where he sits, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, fingertips massaging his aching temples. She slides into the space behind his back and spreads her knees around his shoulders, sitting up on top of the cushions, her feet next to his hips. He closes his eyes and breathes, feeling her hands kneading at his shoulders.

“Sometimes I worry I’m not good enough for you,” he confesses.

She stops massaging him and leans forward, her arms wrapping around him from behind, crossing over his chest. He can feel her breath on his neck, then his ear, but he keeps his eyes closed.

“Jim Halpert, that is,” she says evenly, “the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say.”

He knows he’s being a pain, but he just feels like what the hell is he doing. He can’t even handle something so basic and stupid, like being a competent manager for one fucking evening, how is he going to be… something real?

She deserves a guy who is something real.

“I never planned on staying there this long,” he admits. “I always thought that if I ever, you know, got you, that you’d be able to say something besides ‘this is my boyfriend, Jim. He sells paper.’”

“This is my girlfriend, Pam,” she parrots as she trails her fingers down his chest, unbuttoning his shirt. “She’s a receptionist.”

Oh, doesn’t she know how wrong she is? That she’s so much more than a receptionist? That he doesn’t care what she does for a living, if she answers phones or paints portraits or performs heart transplants on babies, that he loves her, will always love her, because she’s Pam?

“No.” He shakes his head as her palms sweep over his collarbones, pushing the shirt down his arms. He shrugs it off, into her hands and she tosses it carelessly aside. “No, you’re an artist.”

Her hands are strong and soft on his bare skin as she works at the knots that have formed around his neck and shoulders. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyelids and lets her take care of him.

“What’s really bothering you?” Her voice is soft, patient, like she can fix anything. The problem is, he’s not entirely sure what he needs to fix. Behind him, he can feel her coming closer and when her lips touch his neck, he sighs.

“This was supposed to be a stopgap,” he muses as she trails kisses over his skin. “It was supposed to be something to pay the rent until I figured out what I really wanted or something better came along.”

“Mmmm.”

“And if I can’t… if I’m failing at the stopgap, how am I going to be able to do something that really matters?”

Something like being a husband, or father. To her children, their children. But he doesn’t say that part out loud.

He hears a rustling, feels a stirring behind him, then movement as she slides down, wrapping herself around his torso. He feels the bare skin of her belly pressed against him, feels her cheek against his shoulder blade, and when he opens his eyes, her legs are smooth and bare around his waist.

“Jim,” she whispers, and he leans his head back until he can feel hers.

It’s been a long night, a long, long night for both of them, and he’s pretty sure she doesn’t need him whining and being filled with self-doubt like he’s a teenage girl. He’s not feeling sure of very much right now, but that seems like a safe bet.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs. He just can’t shake this feeling of uselessness.

“Don’t.” Her whisper is fierce and her arms tight around him. He can feel her lips tracing his spine. “Don’t apologize. Not for this. Not to me.”

He takes care of her, all the time, and without realizing how wonderful he is for it. The way he clears off her car when it snows in the winter, or the time he tried to fix her sink. He’d ended up making it worse and she’d ended up having to call a plumber to come out a do a $200 repair job, for which he’d insisted on paying. But she loved him, loves him, for how much he’d wanted to do for her, how much he always wants to do for her, wants to take care of her. So if he needs to be taken care of, there’s nothing she’d rather do.

“I’m an idiot.” He shakes his head. “I’m a fucking moron. I spend all these years rolling my eyes behind Michael’s back and it turns out I’m the incompetent one.”

“Hey,” she chides, climbing around and settling on his legs, her knees touching the sofa as she straddles him in her green and white striped underwear and white bra, “stop talking like that about my boyfriend.”

His hands move to her hips by instinct, smoothing over her curves. She moves in closer and it’s instinct again when his eyes close and his mouth opens under hers. Her kiss is trust and love and faith, faith in him, faith that he can’t help feeling unworthy of right now.

“No, really. Who makes people work late and then forgets to tell the security guard so we’re not locked out?”

“Um, none of us thought about that,” she points out.

“And then,” she kisses his forehead and massages his temples as he rants, “my multiple borderline racist stuttering.”

“You weren’t.”

“Hi,” he mimics himself, “are you the African American man whose name I haven’t bothered to learn in five years of seeing you every day? Come on Oscar, they’re cleaning people, they must speak Spanish.”

“Babe…”

But he’s on a roll. “And then, and then, Toby.”

She drops her forehead to his. “You know you have nothing to worry about. I would never…”

He knows. She hopes he knows. He has to know. If nothing else, he has to know that.

“I know.” He wraps his arms around her waist and brings her closer, their noses mushing together. “I can’t even really be mad at him for having a thing for you.”

“He doesn’t.”

“He has a thing for you.” It’s one of those things. Guys just know. Well, most guys.

“It’s just,” he continues, “I hate that there’s something about me that says ‘sure, go ahead and touch my girlfriend’s thigh in front of me.’ Am I really that impotent-seeming? ”

“Impotent?” She nibbles at him, her teeth gently scraping his jaw line. “Definitely, definitely not.”

“Pam…” He feels like he shouldn’t be in the mood for this, but as her lips make their way up his neck and he can feel the tip of her tongue at her earlobe, he feels his body start to relax more.

“Pam,” he says again, but different this time, almost whimpering it.

“Let me fix it,” she whispers in his ear. “Let me make everything better.”

She knows there’s nothing she can really say to bring him out of his funk. Everything true - that he’s smarter than everyone else there, herself included, that’s it’s okay to mess up once in a while, that she’s not going to stop loving him if he makes mistakes - she can tell him all of it.

But he doesn’t need words right now.

When she drops soft kisses over his cheeks and nose and closed eyelids, the swirling in his brain begins to settle. When she runs her fingers through his hair and kisses his lips, he moans quietly into her mouth. When she trails her lips down his chest, her nimble fingers working at his belt and the button of his trousers, he leans his head back into the sofa cushions, his fingertips stealing beneath what little clothing she’s wearing, and he whispers her name like an incantation.

By the time she is rolling her hips against his, smoothing her hands over his skin and her lips over his face and neck, whispering his name and her love, he feels warm and caramel colored, the evening slipping away into a past that doesn’t exist in this world of Pam’s skin and Pam’s lips and Pam’s hair tangling around his fingers.
Chapter End Notes:
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andtheivy is the author of 17 other stories.
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This story is part of the series, Let's Spend the Night Together. The previous story in the series is The walls start shaking, the earth was quaking.

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