It was morning, the first morning after a drive across the east coast and showing up on his doorstep and falling asleep basked in sunlight and his t-shirt and in his love. Her body was on such a high that the buzzing itself woke her with the sun.

He was still curled around her, his grip tight even in sleep, like he thought that if he didn’t hold her down, she would disappear again. The thought made her pause, almost on the brink of tears before she remembered that there was no use for crying anymore, because she was here and they were here and her heart was finally at home.

She lifted her head from his chest, and took her sweet, sweet time to just stare.

His eyelids fluttered against his cheek. Breath stole in and out of his nose at a slow pace. His eyebrows were relaxed, which was atypical, and the first thing that she tucked away into the new Jim part of her brain, the part that was allowed to notice the little things without all of the guilt.

She tucked it safely away, along with the ridges of the slight dip in his skin, a scar she had always seen from afar. Now, up close, she noticed the small divot that veered outside the neat line; suddenly, she was hungry to know more about the story.

She scratched her fingernails lightly over his chest, feeling the ridges of his toned muscles as they outlined the cloth from beneath.

She mapped the flattened hairs at the nape of his neck, followed the finer hairs to where they eventually thinned into nothing. She followed his skin to an errant mole, peeking just out of the collar of his shirt, and for a heated moment, she was desperate to know what else was beyond his clothes.

The moment disappeared as she felt his body twitch, almost immediately wrapping himself around her before his eyes had even peeled open. She nuzzled her nose against his chest, kissing him there softly before craning her neck to meet his still sleepy gaze as his eyes cracked open.

“So, not a dream then, huh?” he said, his voice thick and garbled and rough with waking.

“No,” she shook her head, smiling, “not a dream.”

“Mmm, good,” he breathed, as one hand snaked around to palm her back, pulling them more flushly against one another.

It would have been so Jim of him to insert some kind of joke, and she waited with bated breath for it to come. Instead, though, he closed his eyes, touched his forehead to hers, and breathed her in, filling his lungs with her before exhaling into a smile.

When he opened his eyes again, she was smiling with her teeth, her hands flat as she pushed them up his chest, one resting on his shoulder while the other snuck its way into his bedhead.

He smushed their faces closer together at the nose, pressing his lips to hers like he was getting his first morning breath above water, sighing contentedly when their lips popped apart.

The quiet that followed was peppered with nervous breathing and stilted giggles and hands rubbing tentatively over backs and up chests.

She watched his eyes as they shined and ticked nervously from her chin to her forehead before meeting her stare. He bit the side of his lip as his hands tickled softly up and down her arms.

“I...I just…” he began. She steadied the nervous hitch in his voice with a light scratch of her fingers above his heart. “Is it really you, Pam?”

When her eyes pinched together, he pushed out a short, nervous laugh, that was mostly just a puff of air.

“I mean…” he squeezed his hand over hers. Dwarfing her fingers as he closed his eyes, he pushed their foreheads together. “I keep thinking I’m going to open my eyes and you’re going to be gone, and I can’t, I can't do that aga--”

His cheek was in her palm, and the pressure of the kiss that she planted on him was bruising, but when she pulled away, when she traced his jawbone with her fingertips, his hesitance slipped away.

“I’m right here,” she promised, her voice steady, her eyes unwavering as she directed his gaze, forcing him to look her in the eye. “We’re not going back there again, Jim. I promise you that.”

She smiled, egging on his own hesitant lips until his teeth were showing and the breath between them was a laughing one.

“Well, good,” he chuckled, his eyes watering a touch. “But you have to pinky promise me.”

“Oh?” she questioned, cocking an eyebrow as he closed all but one finger of his fist. “Are we twelve years old again?”

She chided him in a joking tone as she slid her toes along the outside of his calf in a bold move that had her body tingling and him visibly shuddering in the best way. Once he composed himself again, he shook his head, his lips still pursed in a grin.

“Hey, I’m trying to be serious here,” he said. Though his eyes and lips were set straight, she knew him well enough that his intentions were still underlined with her goofy Jim. “A pinky promise is stronger than marriage, Beesly. Are you up for the challenge?”

She wagged her eyebrows and pursed her lips, loving the look on his face, the nervous wavering that she was actually keeping him in suspense. He scratched his pinky lightly under her chin, catching her airy giggle before she set her expression as stark straight as his and locked their fingers together.

“Absolutely I am.”

--

He didn’t know what to do.

Standing in his driveway, it was ten minutes of her just clinging to his body before she let him pull away at all, even just enough so that he could look at her, to check to make sure she was breathing in between her wrecked sobs.

He dropped down to one knee in front of her, her hands gripped around his like a vice, just to get a better look at what was happening. Her eyelids were thick and red, the corners dried out. Her skin was pale. Her teeth chattered behind shaky lips, her body barely holding on shaky knees.

When he finally convinced her to let him take her inside, it was through a snotty, chopped, “O-o-okay,” and only under the pretenses that his arms were wrapped around her shoulders.

He had no choice, really, because she had buried herself under his arms, against his side, before he could even try.

They made it to the couch, where Pam collapsed into his arms, her bottom settling straight into his lap, her arms wrapped tightly around his middle, her knees pulled up underneath her chin so that they were digging uncomfortably into his chest.

But he wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t move her, wouldn’t shift her slightly or make a joke about how bony she was, because right now, it wouldn’t end with her poking him in the ribs, and him grabbing her by the finger to raise her arm above her head, and tickle her senseless while she squealed Jim! and squirmed to get the upper hand until they were both giggly and breathless.

Right now, her mind was quite possibly the most shattered it had been since the accident, and he had no idea what pieces were still in tact.

So instead, he held onto her, held her tightly, and when his ribs were complaining and snot was running from her nose down his arm and his legs were falling asleep under their weird position, he held her tighter, tucked her head roughly underneath his chin, and let his nails dig into her biceps to remind her that he wasn’t letting go.

The quiet was still and densely eerie; the sun setting cast an intrusive light directly into his eyes, the fan overhead whizzed with an occasional clicking, and every so often, she would sniffle against his body.

It was better than the alternative, he thought; at least she had stopped apologizing.

He couldn’t take it. The apologizing. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But he couldn’t get that fact through to her right now.

Before she could calm down, out in his front yard and as they walked up the stairs and when they were finally seated and stationery, the only words she was managing to get out were things like

I’m s-s-sorry, Jim

and

I...didn’t...see you

or his personal fucking favorite

Just d-don’t let me go

until he was finally so physically pained by her apologies, by the fact that she was actually afraid that he could ever let her go that he had to force her away from his body, force her to look him in his own bloodshot eyes, as he promised her, with their noses pushed together at the tip, “I’ve got you, Beesly. I’ve got you, and I’m not going anywhere. It’s okay. You’re okay. We're okay,” before burying her against him, selfishly, partly, for his own benefit, too.

But now, with her asleep in his arms, he didn’t know what to do, what to say, who to call.

There were more than several moments when he thought he should’ve taken her to the hospital. Now still, with her breathing steady, but her grip still strong even in what he could only assume to be a restless slumber, he itched to pull his phone from his pocket and call her parents, to ask them what was going on or why Roy was involved or at least to let them know that she was okay.

But then, she was stirring, and as her eyes tensed, she clutched her hands against his t-shirt like a reflex, as if she was afraid he would go. When her eyes blinked open in the twilight and his name, that, “Jim?” was so fucking afraid in her throat, like she was in trouble and anticipating the worst, he could do no more than cup the back of her head as he held his lips to her forehead.

When he pulled away, he did his best to crook his lips into a smile as he whispered, “Hey. I’m going to take you to bed now, okay?” and cradled her in his arms as soon as she nodded her head.

He had every intention of dragging an air mattress into his bedroom because he didn’t know what the boundaries were right now. He’d sit cross legged on top of it all night, because he sure as hell wasn’t about to get any sleep. But when he set her down on the bed and she wouldn’t let go, even when he tried to at least turn his back after offering her pajamas to change into, he stayed, and peeled her clothes away, and draped one of his old t-shirts over her head instead. When he pulled back the covers, she seemed to know what side of the bed was hers, and immediately curled into his him, laying her head as close to his heart as she possibly could.

--

It was all so familiar, this feeling of waking up here.

The rise and fall of the chest beneath her cheek.

The soft cotton blanket that wrapped around her, with its smell of spice and mint and Snuggle fabric softener.

The slight breeze coming from the overhead fan.

The pulse of the arms around her each time he inhaled.

The almost inaudible grunt that came with his every breath.

She twitched, the shock returning from the freight train that had barreled her over the night before.

It wasn’t that someone had come and deposited all of her memories back, not at all. But with that DVD of Roy’s, her mind had assaulted her with so much more than just memories of moving pictures in her head.

Sure, it was some of the memories, a lot of the memories.  

But it was also the smell of him after a basketball game, one years ago in the warehouse, and one weeks ago when he’d asked to use her shower so that he didn’t have to go home, and he smelled like her shampoo for the first time, complaining even though he secretly loved it.

The sound of him breathing, while hanging over her desk while he waited for her to look up and see him, under her cheeks as they rested together on the couch.

Now, as it tickled her ear.

In the parking lot that night, heavy with desperation after she had actually turned him down.

The taste of him, his kisses finally turning from sloppy and quick with a hint of salt and lime, to forceful and pleading and hanging on by a thread, to joy and bliss and finally.

The sight of him, all gangly and tall and not quite fitting into his big boy work clothes at the start, and then one day there was something undeniably different and she couldn’t put her finger on it until that night and he just looked so empty by the time she had it all figured out.

It was nothing compared to the way he looked when she showed up on his doorstep in Stamford, Connecticut and told him that she loved him and after the thirtieth confirmation or so, he still looked so elated that she thought she had to be dreaming.

But she wasn’t.

Because right now, the feel of him underneath her body, of his grip still so strong even though she knew he was asleep, was all the reassurance that she needed to squeeze the arms that she had tucked around him.

He stirred, flinching initially, asking, “Are you okay?” before his eyes were peeled open all the way.

She mumbled, “Mhm,” as he sat up just enough to see her, his eyes bloodshot, concerned, as he tried to quickly combat sleep and be here.

Once he had his bearings, his body relaxed a bit, his body weight rested on his elbow, hesitant to move a muscle because he still wasn’t sure what exactly was going on. He had a million questions, about her breakdown and Roy and if he should call her parents or drive her to the hospital or just back the hell off.

But she shifted with him, the large t-shirt slipping down her shoulder as she sat up and slid her hand along his jaw to cup his cheek. Immediately, he wrapped a hand around her forearm, closing his eyes as he breathed out quickly, the sensation so intimate, so missed in these past weeks, that he wanted to tattoo her fingertips to his skin.

Above all else, one question fought its way to his lips.

“Is it...is it really you, Pam?” he whispered. She was close enough to see the way his lips were trembling, his eyes pinched shut in anticipation as he held onto her tightly.

With his eyes closed, he felt her fingers trail over his jaw as they left, felt the absence of her touch, before a tiny finger was poking gently into his chest. It didn’t stop until he opened his eyes.

“I think I broke our last one,” she started softly, waiting for him to catch up as her pinky continued to prod.

His lips cracked into a smile, eyebrows tented upwards.

“I’m so--”

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry,” he breathed, chuckling nervously as he linked his own pinky with hers in a tight grip while his other hand palmed the back of her head and pushed their foreheads together.

She kissed his cheek, worming her leg between his to pull their bodies more closely together, and he held onto her even more.

“What happened last night?” he breathed into the space between them.

In not so many words, she explained the DVD that Roy brought over.

“And it’s not like...it didn’t all come back, Jim, but…”

He could see the frustration still in her eyes and sat up, pulling her with him so that their sides rested against his headboard. Their knees touched, and he clasped their hands together to rest on his thigh.

“Hey, it’s okay. Take your time.”

She rolled her gaze to the ceiling once before resting her eyes in her lap.

“I think...I’ve had this feeling since I woke up, that you were...that there was something there. And then I knew that we were together, and when Roy showed me those videos...Jim, I...I just can’t believe I ever hurt you that badly.”

That was the moment that she chose to look him in the eye, with her eyes still rimmed with apologies, her lip quivering, and Jim still wondering what exactly she knew and what she remembered.

“Pam, don’t--”

“No, let me do this,” she pleaded, pinching her eyes closed for a moment before she continued. “It was the feelings that came back yesterday. Like, yes, I could see parts of my life again, Jim, but it was...seeing us out on that boat, on my parents’ TV? God, Jim, it was written all over your face. It was...your eyes were so sad.”

It had only been a couple of months since they had started dating, but he thought that this was behind them. Now, in this new light, with her begging for the chance to get it all out, he braced himself.

“I remember feeling so conflicted that night. I remember feeling like you had something more to say, and I wanted so badly to know what it was that you were holding back. Fuck, Jim, I remember feeling so jealous of Katy that I didn’t even get to enjoy the fact that I had just set a wedding date.”

She was laughing, so he allowed himself to do the same, because her hands were still clasped in his, and she kept scooting closer to him as she talked, and she was still very much here.

“The feelings came back, Jim. They knocked me down. And I know that we’ve already talked about all of this but can I just...it all kind of piled up, with everything we’ve already had to go through, and then knowing that I've been pushing you ever since this stupid accident...I had to see you, because I was so afraid I was going to lose you again, and I’m so sorry baby if I scared you but--”

She had started crying in the middle of her speech, but her voice was starting to hitch, and the fat tears were starting to run down her cheeks again and he really, truly couldn’t take it anymore.

He tugged on her hands to pull her closer, catching her chin in his palm as he whispered, “Do you remember?”

The nod of her head was so small, but insistent as she breathed, “Jim, I love you so much,” as he brought her hands to wind around his body before spreading his palms wide across her back and pressing his lips to hers for the first time in far too long.