“Dude. You’re snoring.”

The words couldn’t swirl around his ear canal fast enough to jog him awake, but the throw pillow to the face certainly did the truck. Apparently, this was becoming her MO. Throw pillows to the face, that is. He’d already gotten several, in fact, just tonight, despite his protest that I just drove all the way from Stamford to be with you; could you lay off the physical abuse?

To which he’d received a pillow chucked in his general direction, followed by a wide smile and giggling galore, and honestly, when she smiled like that, you’d have to be clinical to not show some teeth yourself.

It was all in good fun, anyway.

But this time, he genuinely hadn’t deserved it.

The others? Maybe.

He definitely deserved it when he’d snuck up behind her on his way back from the bathroom, all lights in her living room off, and the preview for Saw III taking up the commercial break. Probably a cruel prank, but it did give him an excuse to hold her tighter and whisper more promises in her ear about protecting her until the end of his days and how he’d never let her go again. So, generally, it evened out.

But right now, in the thick of a good falling-asleep-on-the-couch nap, cloaked in the midnight darkness of late July, with the love of his life tucked against his chest, in a place where dreams were no longer necessary because they had morphed into reality, he really, really didn’t appreciate being startled awake by a pillow to the face.

“Hey, what the--”

“You were snoring,” Pam mumbled drowisly, the pillow now hanging loosely from her fingers as she dropped it with a thud over the armrest of her small couch. Now more awake than asleep, he noticed the way that her body was curled into a tiny ball against him, doing her best to worm her way inside of him almost, as she buried her nose against his chest and resituated her fists over his heart.

He glanced over her head, over the mass of curls that had been russed both in sleep and by his own doing when she had climbed into his lap and kissed him silly for a good portion of the movie. The clock on her cable box read 1:09, and though he’d only been there a handful of times now, the thought of her bed sounded a hell of a lot more comfortable than this couch.

He kissed her forehead, leaving a faint wet ring, and picked her up weightlessly in his arms before carrying her to bed. Once she was tucked under her side of the comforter, he wound his hips, stretched his arms above his head, and cracked his neck a few times before joining her. She appeared to be knocked out entirely, not even moving when he’d carried her, but as soon as his body hit the mattress, she was scooting closely into his side despite the thin layer of humidity that creeped above her shoddy air conditioning.

He yawned in vain, knowing that his body would now be awake and restless for quite some time, but realized in his own selfishness that it was okay. It gave him more time to absorb this moment, the feel of her body pressed against his as she dreamed the night away.

It was these moments, when she was asleep or simply unaware, that he generally kept to himself. It was all still so surreal that he didn’t want to trouble her with his own self-consciousness. She was so happy, so genuinely alive in his eyes, in his arms; the sun revolved around her. But still, in the recesses of his mind, he was waiting for the bubble to pop. For her to wake up and realize that she had made a mistake.

For himself to wake up from some wonderful dream, back in Stamford, back in that parking lot, surrounded by I can’t and You’re really going to marry him?

It was so easy to tuck it all away when she was looking. It was constant smiles and laughter, and I love you’s over the simplest moments like in the middle of the grocery aisle or while he brushed his teeth. But when she was walking down the hallway, or tucked into an arm chair as she sketched, or here, asleep in his arms, he turned his focus up about a thousand notches and really took in all that she was.

The way that her brows furrowed together when she was concentrating, her lip forming a pout that was different than the one she would give Michael in the office, or even the one she would give Jim when she was doing her best to convince him not to go back to Stamford for five more days.

Her eyes were like Christmas lights, different shapes and colors depending on what it was that excited her. There was the thin twinkle lights when something made her giggle uncontrollably, the round wide-set bulbs when he surprised her, and the simple sparkle, subtle yet so omnipresent, when he told her that he loved her.

When she slept like this, tucked so closely against him, he was free to observe all of her intricacies, to file them each individually and memorize her every feature. In sleep, her lips parted just slightly in the middle, this little button of space that let a thin straw of air pass through. Sometimes, he bent to kiss it. Tonight, he just watched and listened, his ears perked for the faint whistling sound that let him know she was alive.

He traced his fingers over her skin, from the crook of her elbow where her skinny arm left the material of his old basketball shirt, the one with his last name on the back. Once she had dug it from his t-shirt drawer, she’d formed somewhat of an obsession with wearing his name. He didn’t mind in the slightest.

His eyes followed the dots of goosebumps in the dark, the ones that peaked her golden skin when his fingers trailed all the way down to her wrist and back up again. She was a heavy sleeper, in general. He knew that light touches wouldn’t bother her.

But apparently, snoring would.

No matter. He wouldn’t be doing much of that soon anyway.

His eyes met the connection of their bodies, her hand atop his chest in this weird little half-fist half-palmed hold. He liked to think, privately in his own mind, that she was always reaching for him, even in her dreams. So, when she was asleep, he would brush his own palm across her hand and flatten her fingers against his chest, over his heart. I’m here. Do you feel that? It only beats for you. It only ever has.

Knowing her this intimately gave him a new glimpse into the world that was Pam Beesly’s hair. He knew now that it air dried in spirals, but that she still used this green bottle of mousse to hold them in place. If she wanted them to be tighter locks, she would gather them on top of her head in a banana clip, leave it in while they ate breakfast, and then turn her head upside down to scrunch white foam all over.

He’d earned a pillow to the gut once for asking why she was putting whipped cream in her hair, but she giggled, and he made some sly comment about making her dessert, and then she was tackling him to the ground with tickling fingers.

So, all in all, not his worst joke ever.

In sleep, though, those curls broke free from the reigns, sliding all over his pillows and her pillows, the untamed mane that he wanted to bury himself in--and quite often did; there was an advantage to being the big spoon, after all.

Despite the mousse, there was a delicate softness to her curls when they were pressed against his chest and up under his neck and sometimes in his nose. He saw it as being comfortably surrounded by her, and drank it all up.

The alarm clock on her bedside table said something about two-o’clock, and he realized that he may have gotten a bit carried away in his staring. The numbers were like a shot of melatonin, and no sooner were his muscles dragging him downward than he was fighting with his lids to hold onto her for just one more second.

His side of the bed faced her, but it also faced the window, which typically had him rousing early enough to shower and then sneak back into bed. But as his muscles twitched around Pam’s body and he blinked himself awake, he realized that he wasn’t alone.

Her big green eyes were mapping him while her fingers tapped against his chest. When he stirred, she reddened. She’d been caught.

“Watcha doin’ there?” he asked, his voice sounding like a garbage disposal.

She began to try to hide herself, to worm her nose against his chest and pretend she was going back to sleep--it was, after all, only seven o’clock on a Saturday. But he saw those eyebrows pinch together, felt her inhale sharply, and watched as she shimmied herself in a way that, if she were standing, would be a pretty solid and confident posture. Laying down in bed, it did little more than bring her shoulders up to her ears, which, he had to admit, was kind of cute.

“Staring,” she admitted, raising a brow that challenged him. Yeah, I stare. Watcha gonna do about it Halpert?

“Oh really?” His own brow raised in defense as he wound his arms around her, his hand splayed solidly across her back as he threw a leg casually over hers and pulled her more tightly in.

“Yeah. Sometimes, I...I just want to remember that this is all still real. Does that make me lame?”

He bypassed the teasing Yes’s and the cheesy No, not at all’s for his lips slow and methodical on hers. Because they said it all.

I do it, too. It’s real. It’s here. We’re here, Pam. We’re here.

--

Since the accident, Jim had had many strange sleeping experiences. Waking in a stiff chair or a hospital waiting room couch was becoming commonplace. But feeling his muscles stir with somebody else wrapped against him hadn’t been so commonplace for some weeks now. And this bed was different too.

It took only a moment or two to remember that he was with Pam, in Pam’s childhood bed, in Pam’s childhood home. By that point, his eyes were finally adjusting to the lamp they must have left on after exhaustion had rendered them both useless and dragged them under. He blinked back sleep, doing his best to not jostle her. Until, that is, he realized that he was being watched.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her hands clutched into hesitant fists, not quite whispering against his chest, her cheeks red with embarrassment as she ducked her chin away from his line of sight.

Reluctantly, he placed his heavy hands on hers and scooted along the bed to put distance between them, just enough to quell her nerves, just enough to rip open fresh wounds on his own heart.

“It’s okay,” he chuckled, doing his best to be reassuring as she fidgeted.

“It’s just...you were snoring, and I woke up, and I really, really wanted to remember something. I figured, you know, looking at you might jog my memories.”

She shrugged and tucked her knees up along the mattress. When they bumped with his hand in the space between, she didn’t move it, so he stayed there, too.

She was trying to be serious, but her comment brought back too many good times, and he had to laugh, had to find the light in the situation, so he did, pinching the bridge of his nose when it became overbearing to do it alone.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. You, uh, you get on me for the snoring thing quite a bit. It’s just nice to see that, even after you lost your memories, you still held onto that. Nice one, Beesly.”

The tint in her cheeks settled into a pink as she gave him a small smile and bit her lip.

“We do the staring thing a lot, you know.”

It was bold to be this forward, but they were here, and his head was still stuffed to capacity with I feel it, Jim, so he figured he would do his best to help her along in any way that he could.

“Sometimes I...I can’t believe you get to be mine. It’s surreal still, Pam. And that’s why you do it, too, I think. You did tell me one time that you were only staring because my eyebrows were starting to look like a caterpillar, and you were trying to figure out where you wanted to start with the plucking, but I don’t buy it.”

His smile was sheepish but encouraging, and with a hint of laughter in his own admission, she felt comfortable enough laughing along, too, before all of his words finally hit their depth.

“Why is it so surreal though, Jim? I mean, what...I feel like there’s a lot to this story that I still don’t know.”

His sigh took half of the air out of the room, and she felt the mattress shimmy and shake as he turned onto his back, tented his knees, and ran both hands through his hair.

“I’m sorry. I--”

“No, don’t be sorry,” he interrupted, craning his neck to face her, reaching his hand between them to squeeze her fingers together. “It’s just a lot to process. And it’s late, and you’ve only been home from the hospital for, like, ten minutes. I don’t want to sit here and rush you back into...you know...all of this. It wouldn’t be fair to you, ya know?”

Even behind his words, ones that were so kind and caring, she felt her heart doing its best to rip itself from her chest and crawl deep inside this man who had put a foot of space between them. His shy smile, his soft touch, the intention behind his every word played the contrasting line to the truths that his eyes told.

The deep forest green was set with sadness, one that, by the looks of it, had been on its way out before their world came crashing down again. He looked weary, and not just from spending his every waking hour in her hospital room for the past two weeks. His body carried this dejectedness, in the hunch of his shoulders and the dark circles around his eyes. While watching him sleep, even, his body seemed to hold to her as if she would fly away without being anchored to him. Which is why she chose her words carefully.

“But it’s not fair to you, either.”

Carefully, but still timid. She knew he was right, knew that right now, she wasn’t ready for a rehashing of whatever trauma they’d been through. When he had said That’s why you do it, too, her whole focus had shifted.

Earlier, she had only been trying to jog her memories, to remember what it was about this man that made her chest swell to capacity. But now, with the knowledge that they both did this, as some sort of reminder that they finally got to be, her mind was only racing more.

A tear raced its way from the corner of her eye to follow the path of her nose, leaving a wet spot on her rumpled comforter.

“Hey, hey hey, don’t cry,” he shushed her, dragging his thumb across her cheek. “Don’t worry about me, okay? I’m...I’ll be fine, Pam. I promise you. I’ve had to fight for you before. I’d do it again a thousand times over.”

He was only trying to help, to bring her mind to a place of ease, but instead, the wheels in her head spun faster, the frustration only mounting, especially when they realized it was nearing eleven o’clock, and he was standing and stretching, and his t-shirt was pulling up his sides so that she could see the muscles and she really wanted to reach out and touch them and feel something solid but she sat on her hands instead because that would probably be inappropriate, especially under his advisement that We should probably stop cuddling together anyway, Beesly. I don’t want to give your father the wrong idea.

She asked if she could hug him at the door, and he was saying yes as she tucked her head against his chest, closing her eyes so tightly that it hurt in an effort to remember any piece of why he felt so right beneath her fingers. But it wouldn’t come. Soft shell crab was her dead end, and it was bugging the hell out of her.

She made him text that he was home safely, and despite his instructions for her to get some rest, she tossed and turned, wishing that she didn’t have to sleep in this big empty bed alone.