Story Notes:
Title credit to Vanfan14. :)
Author's Chapter Notes:
Thanks to Talkative for looking this over. She's made of awesome. :)
I don't own these characters. No infringement intended.
I don't own these characters. No infringement intended.
~~~~
Don’t let the past remind us
Of what we are not now
I am not dreaming
August
Jim had been on the phone for nearly forty minutes on what should have been a routine resupply call to the Scranton School District. Less than two minutes in, he’d swiveled his chair toward the kitchen so she couldn’t catch his eye, but Pam could tell it wasn’t going well. The low warmth of his most beguiling salesman’s voice was belied by the tension in his shoulders, the anxious rubbing of his left hand over the back of his neck. Facing away from her like that, she couldn’t make out much of his end of the conversation, but when he switched the phone to his left hand and started tapping his pen against the desk in a sharp staccato rhythm, her heart sank; that was a bad sign.
She hated not being able to see his face. Those months he sat with his back to her had been torture, and she was still half-convinced that if he’d been able to look at her during that time, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long for things to become right between them.
Not that she needed to see his face to know his mood. His voice never betrayed the anxiety she saw in the drumming pen, in his jittery left knee; he effortlessly maintained a warm low register she found both soothing and deadly sexy. She’d always loved his voice, but now when he hit that certain low pitch it invariably made her think of… other things. His mouth in other places.
A flush warmed her cheeks and she forced herself to tear her gaze away, focusing on her half-completed office supply order form. Let’s see, we need paper clips…small binder clips…post-it notes…
Jim gave a low chuckle. “That’s right. Exactly.”
Pam’s eyes darted back up immediately. His voice had changed. The ‘closing’ tone: a very good sign.
“Yep. Perfect. Glad to hear it.” Jim swiveled around to his right and finally looked up to meet Pam’s eyes with a relieved smile. “Let me just get your order, then.”
She grinned and gave him an air high-five.
May
There was something undeniably exhilarating about keeping their relationship a secret.
Initially, of course, it was a necessity, out of respect for Karen. Dumping his crying girlfriend by a fountain in the city had not been one of Jim’s finer moments, and he and Pam agreed without discussion not to draw any undue attention to themselves. But even after Karen was gone, Kevin’s smirk as Jim moved back to his old desk was argument enough for continued secrecy.
“I’ve got her ahead by two points,” Kevin said knowingly when Jim wandered into the break room later that afternoon.
Jim stared at him blankly, one finger poised over D4, until Kevin pushed a sheet of paper across his table. Leaning over to take a look, Jim saw two columns labeled Pam and Karen and felt an unwilling smile tug at his lips. He’d completely forgotten giving out this little assignment.
“It was close. It was real close,” Kevin said gravely.
“Mmm hmm,” Jim murmured, scanning the list. “Two points, huh?”
Kevin pointed at Pam’s column with a slight frown. “Well, a lot of that stuff kinda evens out.”
Jim picked up the paper and gave it a closer look. Karen was listed as smarter and prettier. Pam was deemed nicer and funnier. Karen was “hot in those black pants.” Pam kept candy at her desk. Jim swallowed his smile into a cough and covered his mouth with his hand as he came to the bottom of the list, where Pam had one extra item in her column.
Called off her wedding for you.
Jim swallowed hard, his throat tightening as he stared down at Kevin’s messy scrawl.
“I figured that last one was worth an extra point,” Kevin nodded sagely.
“Y–yeah.” Jim cleared his throat. “Probably.”
Kevin grinned at him expectantly. “So. You were right to pick Pam.”
Jim tore his gaze from the paper and for a split second, considered telling him. Yes, yes I was.
Kevin continued, “I bet she’s like one of those librarians that looks all modest but is like, totally kinky in the sack,” he speculated, his dark beady eyes eager for details.
The impulse passed.
“Pam and I are just friends,” Jim said firmly, sliding the paper off the table and folding it into quarters before stuffing it into his back pocket.
Kevin gaped at him. “But you dumped Karen for her!”
Jim’s heart started pounding as he shook his head, half-certain the truth was written all over his face. “I just decided I didn’t want the job, that’s all.” He turned and went back to his desk at a studiedly casual pace, forgetting completely about the dollar he’d put in the vending machine until he saw Kevin emerge from the break room, ripping open a Milky Way.
June
So Kevin was definitely watching. It seemed Phyllis had an eye on them as well. Jim made sure to keep his visits to reception to a minimum, and although he and Pam started eating lunch together again, they took pains not to sit too close. They continued to take their own cars to work and often left for the day a few minutes apart, exchanging a friendly wave and goodbye. Jim had a three-second rule on eye contact. Any longer and the idiotically wide grin would take over and give him away.
On one occasion, convinced he was being followed, he took a detour into the Giant parking lot only to find his stalker was just a middle-aged woman with the same model car as Phyllis’. Paranoid much? he sighed ruefully, darting inside to grab a gallon of milk for Pam. Since he was there.
July/August
Home was sanctuary. It didn’t matter in which one they ended up; from the moment the door was safely locked behind them, they clung to each other like magnets. For more than a few weeks Jim felt a little overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all, that this was Pam draped across his chest, rubbing her bare feet lazily against his calves during the 11 o’clock news. Pam, climbing into his lap with a quirked eyebrow and an impish smile as she tugged his shirttails out of his pants. Pam, sleeping in his bed, her arm wrapped around his waist, her cheek nestled between his shoulderblades.
Sometimes he still dreamed that none of it had happened, that he was back in Connecticut, or worse, that he was here but she’d married Roy anyway. He’d jerk awake with a start and reach for her, and she’d make that soft sighing sound he loved so much and settle back against his chest, and he would lie awake for a while just listening to her breathe while his heartrate returned to normal. Usually that was enough but sometimes he felt like he had to have her or he’d die, and he’d kiss her and caress her until she stirred and responded under his hands, and she never, ever refused him. They didn’t talk about it, but he was pretty sure she understood, anyway.
~~~~
Turning it all off at work was a bittersweet kind of torture. Part of him hated returning to the charade of just friends, but in other ways it was a delicious challenge. They soon invented a game of finding surreptitious moments to make contact: a brush of his fingers on hers as he leaned over her desk; a feathery touch on his shoulder as she passed behind him; knees pressed gently together under the table in the conference room. Careful, always careful never to be seen. Years of long practice made them experts at the façade, and it was easy enough to keep Kevin guessing, even after he enlisted Oscar in his efforts.
It seemed fitting that an entire summer’s work should be unraveled with one unthinking, happy kiss of greeting.
He wasn’t sorry.
September
Pam had to admit she was relieved when they were finally caught. It was hard pretending to just be friends, having to measure out every glance, every smile. She’d been doing that for years and although it had been kind of fun, fooling everybody all summer, she was glad not to have to hide it any longer.
The Saturday after they were discovered, while Jim was out playing ball at the park with his “sad, abandoned friends,” she found herself going through the pictures they’d taken at the lake over Fourth of July. Jim in beige cargo shorts and bare feet, Pam in the two-piece she’d never had a chance to show off on Beach Day. Jim had commandeered the camera and nearly all the shots were of Pam, which didn’t suit her purpose, but she couldn’t help grinning as she remembered the way he’d leered at her, snapping close-ups of her breasts. Such a dork.
She had two pictures of him from before they were together. Three, counting the yearbook picture. That one had been in her wallet since the day he gave it to her, tucked carefully behind one of his slightly dog-eared business cards. During the six months he was in Stamford she stared at it nearly every night, her thumb hovering over speeddial 4, never quite able to press *send.*
The other two photos were taken years apart. The older one was a shot of him in front of a birch tree, his arm around Phyllis and a wide, goofy grin on his face. It was Jim’s second company picnic, her fourth. Roy had been helping his cousin move that Saturday and she’d spent the afternoon giggling with Jim, their height differences making a mockery of the three-legged race. When they inevitably fell into a tangled heap she’d turned her ankle a little, and the look on his face at her cry of pain had been the first time she recognized his heart in his eyes.
The other picture was one she’d snapped of him at his desk, two years earlier. He’d been surprised to see the camera in her hand, and his wide-eyed, closed-lipped smile was so full of amusement and affection that Pam hadn’t been able to look at it while he was gone.
Okay, Beesly…what are you up to?
Just taking, um…pictures, of everyone, she lied quickly, guiltily. New camera, see?
Digital, he nodded, smiling indulgently. Very twenty-first century of you, Pam.
She hadn’t wanted anyone else’s photo at all, actually. Just Jim’s. But she felt weird telling him that, and so she snapped a dozen more pictures of everyone else in the office except Meredith, who was out sick that day. She and Jim laughed in the break room over some of the expressions she’d captured, and when they walked out together at the end of the day she finally let him take a picture of her in the parking lot.
He turned the viewer to show her and she rolled her eyes. “I’m so not photogenic,” she groaned.
“Not true. This is just lovely, Beesly,” he remarked. “Very flattering.” His voice was teasing, but there was something soft and open in his eyes that made her stomach flutter. She held his gaze for a moment too long, until that increasingly familiar panic she couldn’t fully explain made her tear her eyes away and reach for the ‘delete’ button with a grin.
He pulled the camera away and easily held it up out of her reach, shaking his head as he clucked his tongue in reprimand. “No way. You have to send this to me.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said tartly. “May I have my camera back please?”
Jim’s smile faded. “Promise,” he insisted quietly.
His expression, so unexpectedly serious and almost sad, made her heart jump into her throat and her mouth go dry. She nodded, frowning up at him, anxious to erase the melancholy from his eyes. “I will,” she promised.
“All right then.” He smiled, handing the camera back to her, and suddenly he was Jim again and she could breathe.
~~~~
So much time wasted, she thought ruefully as she pulled the picture out of her bag the next Monday. She’d found a nice frame for it, cherry wood inlaid with tiny gold beads, and placed it beside her keyboard with a satisfied smile.
He’d never have his back to her again.
Jim was busy returning calls that morning, and it was more than an hour before he was wandering over for his first flirt session. His fingertips dangled lazily over the edge as he craned his neck to spy on her surfing activities, but his attention was quickly diverted by the photo next to her monitor. “What’s that?” he asked in a low voice, a small, pleased smile curving his lips.
“Oh, that’s my boyfriend,” she said casually. “Isn’t he cute?”
“Psft,” he scoffed. “Look at that clown. You’re way out of his league.”
She regarded the photo with a critical frown. “Hmm. Maybe you’re right. He is kind of dorky.”
He popped a jellybean in his mouth. “Well, I dunno. Maybe you should give him a chance. I hear dorky is the new cool.”
She lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
He shrugged and gave her a wink. “Some girls think so.”
“Some girls write to serial killers in prison,” she countered.
He rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t stop smiling. “Admit it, Beesly, you just can’t get enough of me.”
“So conceited,” she shook her head, but she couldn’t quite hide the smile that tugged at her lips as he sauntered back to his desk.
~~~~
The idiotic grin was just going to have its way with him today, it seemed. He couldn’t stop smiling.
That’s my boyfriend.
Such a seemingly small thing, a picture of him on her desk. Ridiculous, really. They sat less than ten feet away from each other. All she had to do to see him was look up. But that wasn’t really the point, as he well knew.
My boyfriend.
Ryan could have the corporate car and the New York nightlife. How could some random encounter with Vince Vaughan could possibly compare with what Jim had right here?
~~~~
He’d never had a picture of a girl on his desk. Family and friends, but never a girlfriend. None of them had ever deserved the distinction.
He already knew which one he wanted. Jim had two pictures of Pam from before they were together, which for a long time were kept in his nightstand, only relegated to the box of mementos that lived in the furthest corner of his closet after he fled to Stamford. Brokenhearted, resolute, he never opened it there. Moving on and all.
It hadn’t helped. He’d long since etched every line, every curve, into his memory.
The older of the two shots was from the 2004 office Christmas party. She’d gotten a little drunk that night and this flushed, giggling version of Pam was one he’d never seen before. She was so beautiful, so adorable. So palpably happy and carefree. Roy was bouncing back and forth between the office and the warehouse, where the alcohol wasn’t watered down into punch and, rumor had it, somebody had weed. As the evening wore on and Roy disappeared for longer and longer stretches, it was easy for Jim to forget about him altogether.
Phyllis had taken the picture of Pam and Angela in front of the window in the conference room. Pam had a red plastic cup of punch raised in one hand, her other arm looped around Angela’s waist. Angela’s perpetual expression of annoyance was tempered, for once, by the faintest of smiles; but it was nothing compared to Pam’s brilliant rosy grin. Her eyes were fixed not on the camera but on Jim, standing to Phyllis’ left.
That wide beautiful smile, all for him.
He was so far gone, even then. Smitten. Besotted. He knew it was impossible, of course, and at that point he wasn’t even harboring any delusions that she might actually be his someday. Not Pam herself. But a girl like her, definitely. There had to be another girl out there who was pretty and funny and sweet and just… got him. There had to be, because it would just be grossly unfair if there wasn’t, and Jim liked to believe that life was fair.
Phyllis gave him the print a week later with a wink and a smile that made him blush.
The second photo, the one he was going to put on his desk, was taken in the parking lot a few months before he left. She’d been taking pictures of everyone all day with her new camera, and when she finally submitted to a shot of herself, she’d protested that she looked terrible and tried to delete it. He made her promise not to before he gave her the camera back, but he couldn’t help being a little surprised when he got an email from her that night with the picture attached. He hadn’t really expected her to send it to him.
God, she had no idea how beautiful she was. She positively glowed. Her smile. Her eyes. The white column of her throat. Her auburn curls, cascading down over her shoulder. He’d go to his grave without confessing how many nights he’d lain awake staring at that picture, thinking, wishing, wanting.
“What’s that?” Pam slid into her place on the left side of the bed and reached for the photo, plucking it casually out of his hand. “Oh my God! You still have this?” she exclaimed, looking up at him with shining eyes and a touched, surprised expression that hurt his heart a little.
He cleared his throat but his voice was a little rough, just the same. “Of course.”
She stared at her picture for a long moment before handing it back to him, snuggling closer to press her face against his shoulder as he set the frame on the end table. “It’s sad that we’ve known each other for so long, but we don’t have any pictures together,” she said quietly, rubbing her cheek against the soft thin cotton of his shirt.
He clicked off the light and slid down under the blanket, slipping his arm under her shoulders to curl her into his chest. “We’ll take some.”
“Lots,” she murmured.
“Lots,” he agreed.
~~~~
Chapter End Notes:
callisto is the author of 22 other stories.
This story is a favorite of 23 members. Members who liked Desk Love also liked 3134 other stories.
