Pam sighs, closing the door to their Subaru as she rounds the front of the car.

“I need to get out of this dress.”

“I need to get out of this dress.” 

Her husband, always finding a way to ease her tension, even though most of it now is in her sore muscles and her heel-clad feet. She wants to giggle, but she’s really just kind of tired and doesn’t exactly want to go inside and grab a new pair of shoes just to turn around and head back to the office for a PBS sponsored get together. She really just wants to pour herself a glass of wine, plop her tender feet into her husband’s lap, and let the magic work of his thumbs against her soles lull her into a miniature coma. 

All of that is interrupted when Carol Stills walks out their front door--an hour past the time she was supposed to be there--with the Jones’, the couple who was interested in an open house. If she hadn’t been dozing on the ride home, she might have noticed the two strange cars out on the curb.

“I’m sorry Pam.” Carol tries to bandage the damage, but it’s too late, because Jim is frozen on the driveway, his voice lilting as he asks, “Uhh, what’s going on?”

“Why are you still here?” It’s kind of rude, but a valid question. They’d scheduled the walkthrough specifically during Dwight and Angela’s reception. She’d even conned one more dance out of Jim to stall him a little. Not that she minded in the slightest.

“I’m so sorry. They were an hour late.”

“No, really what’s going on?”

Mouth agape, she turns frantically from her husband to the people standing in their doorway and back again, before approaching Jim to attempt some damage control. After all, this is his childhood home, and the one that he’d raised his family in. She does feel mildly guilty, especially now that she’s been caught.  

“Okay, okay, umm, sooo…” He’s looking in her eyes, over her head and back again. Admitting faults and being more open and honest with one another is something they’ve been working on, so she tries to spin what they used to do in therapy to this new territory of...going behind his back and selling the house. “This past year has been really great, and you’ve been great, and…”

The calm, cool, collect she had started with slips away so easily. It happens easily because, over the past year, she has seen him tirelessly make sacrifices. He loved her enough to drop his dream like a stone to the ocean in order to keep their family as a single unit. She’s watched him work behind a desk and sell paper when he is capable of so much more. And she has watched him do it all with a smile on his face. Because he loves her so much that none of those things mattered without her in the picture. So the cool, calm, collect melts into desperation and real feelings; she drops the therapy bullshit and just tells him how she’s really been feeling, about the one secret she’s kept from him: that she’s not fine with their choices, and needs to make a change. Long ago, she wouldn’t have been brave enough. Now, she’s ready.

“I just, I know that you had to make this choice and you had to give something up for me, but I never want you to have to give up anything… I just thought, if I could get us an offer then there wouldn’t be anything standing in our way, and I could come to you with this...big Jim gesture and show you all at once just how much I love you, and how much I really do believe in your future.”

She sees the emotions drive across his face like a tiny traffic jam. Confusion clashes with surprise and runs itself right past bashfulness when he drops his head and smiles. He is only warm love when he looks back into her eyes, his hands in his pockets. But, of course, still being new at this himself, he settles on avoidance as his own Jim gesture.

“Sorry, how long have you been showing the house?”

“About two months.”

“That’s why it’s so clean.”

“Yeah…”

He’s been staring over her head, around the front yard, his mind clogged with wiffle ball in the front yard with his brothers and stroller rides with Cece that first summer after she was born and Christmas morning where his parents were awake at the crack of dawn with a stuffed Christmas tree for their four children and laying on a blanket in the front yard with his infant son while his wife and daughter made chalk doodles on the front sidewalk.

He is too in shock to look down at his wife, to get lost in her big green eyes that are trying to drown him in belief and support and love. 

He tries to deflect, his nervous smile turning up as he places his hands on his hips and asks her, “I mean, you were gonna do this without me?”

But his brilliant, beautiful wife, the one whose confidence has been growing by the day, is ready right away with a challenge.

“Well, you, you bought the house without telling me, so I thought I could sell it without telling you.”

She bites her lip, still a little unfamiliar with the whole challenging her husband thing, especially since they’ve been communicating so well and haven’t had the real need to argue in so long. He smirks, secretly loving her spunk. 

“Oh. Okay. Where would we go?”

He knows what he wants her to say, but he doesn’t want to get his hopes up, because truth be told, his hopes and dreams are right here on this pavement, standing in front of him, smiling this nervous smile that he has vowed to smooth the wrinkles out of.

“Austin...maybe?”

She’s still a little wary, hoping that he doesn’t become angry or think that she’s doing this for the wrong reasons. She hopes that he still wants this. She hopes that he can see that, just like all those years ago, when she had to take time to find herself before she could be ready to love him, she needed to take her time to warm up to this idea of a new adventure for them. She is ready now. 

“I promise you...you don't have to do this for me.” He wants her to be sure. Absolutely sure. He doesn’t want her to sacrifice of herself to make him happy. So he baits her one more time.

“I’m doin’ it for us.”

She looks so sure, her eyes steady and her smile small but persistent. He tries one more time, a futile attempt to remind her that the only important thing in their lives is the that they continue to love each other.

“The last--”

“Okay, we’ll take it--”

He puts up his hand, motioning for the stranger on his porch to pipe down for just a second because he’s trying to have a moment here with his wife. 

“Hold on one second-- The last few months have meant the world to me, and all I care about--”

“Hold on, wait, what did you just say?”

But now, it’s his wife who is interrupting their moment. And as he realizes what all of these rude interruptions are for, the sun seems to spring back from the west and illuminate his entire world. 

“We wanna buy your house.”

Carol fist pumps, his wife giggles, and his entire world falls into slow motion when she turns back around beaming.

“You wanna do this?”

He has to hear her say it.

“I wanna do this.”

Somehow, he’s still kicking himself. He needs to hear it again.

“You really wanna do this?”

His smile expands, teeth shining as his wife mirrors his joy at the start of their new adventure. He opens his arms, already anticipating her next move.

“I really wanna do this!”

When she jumps into his arms, Hallelujah breaks out in his eardrums, and it’s all because of the piece of the puzzle fitting herself against his body. They could live in a box on the side of the road for all he cares. But the fact that she’s ready, that she believes in him enough to take their family to Austin and let him really try his hand at achieving his fullest potential makes his heart swell somehow into a love and admiration that he’s never felt before. He had heard that you could love your spouse more and more every day, and he’d certainly experienced that with each and every morning that they’d woken up next to each other. But this is different. This is like her very own Are you free for dinner tonight? moment, her own big Jim gesture where she’d finally figured it all out. This is her growth, her sacrifice, her love for him coming in the form of a For Sale sign and a cross country move.

Because she loves him that damn much.

It is a wonder that he doesn’t cry right here in the middle of his driveway, the engine of their car still warm because really, they’re only running home because she wants a change of shoes before they go to this stupid publicity event. He sets her down, hating the absence of her warmth, so he wraps an arm around her shoulder and she snuggles right in, one of her arms wrapping around the front of his waist while the other goes around the back so that her hands can join at his hip.

It’s a blurry, hazy few moments where they pass information with the realtor about getting in contact later in the week, and he really hopes that she remembers whatever plans they've just made, because his mind is only focused on one thing.

She waves goodbye to Carol and to Greg and Linda, holding onto him tightly. Three car doors finally click shut, and as engines turn on somewhere in the distance, he all but drags her to the front door that will soon no longer belong to a Halpert. His original plan was to get her through the front door at least, but with both cars on the curb now pulling away, she turns around and pulls him against her, her back hitting the storm door as she bows into him and kisses him with everything that she has in her.

Immediately, his knee is between her legs, his entire body suffocated by the grip that she has where her balled fists yank on his shirt. Her tongue is twisting around his as her hands wind around his neck and into his hair and along his belt; he’s just trying to get them in the house. But she gasps when his knee presses against her, arches her back, rubs herself just so, in a way that makes his body equally hard as stone and elastic as jello. 

It’s not that he forgets where they are. It's that he doesn’t care where they are. He doesn’t care that Mr. Wilkens likes to sit on his front porch in the evening with a beer and a keen eye for trouble-making kids. He doesn’t care that Peter and Annie from three houses down walk their puppy every night after dinner. He doesn’t care that, when his wife is this worked up, she gets loud. 

All he cares about is melting her into a puddle of goo so that when they move to Austin, she is still seeped into the pavement of this house.

So when she gasps and rubs herself on his kneecap, he has no choice but to push against her a little more aggressively. Her arms wind around his shoulders and she buries her face into his neck where she often likes to muffle her screams when they’re trying to undress each other before bed or early in the morning without waking their kids. But now, he can hear her Fuck, Jims in her throat, the ones that she is suppressing. And even though she is getting herself off on his leg, and it’s making him so hard right now that he almost can’t stand it, he stops. He pulls away. He keeps his knee pressed tightly up against her as he cups her face and wipes his thumbs along her flushed cheeks until she flutters her eyes open and looks at him like he’s a fucking lunatic.

He smirks, answering the question she hasn’t asked yet with one of his own. 

“Why are you being quiet?”

It’s a long running game with them. Early on, they were both kind of reserved. Quiet, tender love making was how they described their sexual relationship. But there was one week, where he was at the Y playing basketball one night and she had art class another and really by the time they finally saw each other outside of work they were both desperate. And desperately vocal. Which turned out to be a shared kink that they explored thoroughly even now. 

So he asks her Why are you being quiet? because sometimes, he can goad her into shattering his ear drums, and that is what makes him come the hardest: when her love and praise for him cannot be contained by her lips.

She’s drunk on his touch and the lack thereof, so she’s kind of incoherent when her reasons trip over themselves.

We’re...outside...front yard, babe...the kids--

“Your mother has the kids until tomorrow afternoon,” he reminds her, pressing his lips against her ear roughly as she wraps her arms around his back in a refusal to let him even think about leaving her body again. He kisses his way to her lips, sucking her lower lip in a way that will make sure she dots it with color tomorrow to hide the purple bruises he’s been known to leave behind. She whimpers, but it’s not quite enough for him, because it’s easy to swallow when she she’s pressed this closely. Drawing his face fractionally apart, he rubs his nose sensually against hers in a way that really shouldn’t be sexual but makes her almost growl as he makes his final request in her big Jim gesture.

“Baby, don’t get shy on me now. I want the neighbors to remember who lived here.”

With that, he captures her lips, his tongue invading as he picks her up, looping one arm beneath her ass as she instinctively wraps her legs around him. He yanks her away from the door and the tearing sound doesn't really register because while one of his hands holds her up, the other yanks open the door, and her back against the wall is only second to the way that she growls his name as his lips suction against her throat. 

He cups her waist, slides his hands up her sides, and palms both of her breasts, her nipples hard in his hands already when she pushes against him and reaches for his tie.

“I need to get you out of this dress.”

It’s so desperate, but he doesn’t care. He needs his mouth to cover every inch of her skin like he needs air in his lungs. She must understand, either by the look in his eyes or the years of knowing his tells, because soon they’re fighting for the zip on her dress. They both meet the sizable rip instead, and he connects the dots of that sound when he’d dragged her across the door and the screw that’s been sticking out of the storm screen since he was fourteen and the dress that she’s only worn a couple of times that she really wasn’t too attached to because she bought it at TJ Maxx for only fifteen bucks! or something like that. It isn’t important right now. Their laughs are more breathy and We’ll deal with this later than comical. He squeezes her fingers and brushes them away so that he can pull the zip. She shrugs her shoulders while he does, getting the damned thing off as quickly as they both can. It falls to the floor and she’s standing in the plain nude bra and a simple white lacy panties set that she really only put on because of the no-show line.

But he is staring at her like she both holds up the world and like he wants to devour her entirely and doesn’t know where to start. He gets that way a lot. It is her undoing.

She wants to tear his tie from his body and rip his clothes off and fuck him on the hallway runner but he picks her up by her biceps and her ass hits the dresser against the opposite wall of their front hallway and his lips begin their assault. He traces the path of her neck down along the outline of her bra, straight to the divot before he mirrors his actions on the other side. When he’s nipping at her other ear, he slinks down her body, peppering her stomach with little bites until he reaches the line of her panties. He notices the wet patch there and growls, reaching up to grab her breasts for balance as he tongues the lacy line along her abdomen. She flattens one arm straight out to the side, her palm making a resounding slam, rattling the decorative frames on the wall as she buries her other hand in his hair, trying her best to direct him. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” he chuckles, his tongue following the lace away from her wanting center, toward her upper thigh where he presses a chaste kiss before pulling away. “I want you to beg for it.”

The smile he flashes her is so devilish that she almost plunges her own fingers past the waistband in protest; she’s done it before, and the shock on his face, the way he palms himself and moans as he watches her with her fingers on herself, is always reward enough. But today, she wants him to feel the power that he has. The way that she believes in him and trusts him. Watching him with that control turns her on.

So he asks her to beg. And she does.

It starts with a simple Jim, breathy and deep, her fingers tightening in his hair. He returns his hands to her breasts, pulling the cups beneath each swell and kneading them as his lips turn back around and pucker on her inner thigh. His tongue sneaks out to taste the line of lace, tracing her skin torturously. He pinches both of her nipples, tugging, and she whines. 

Jim. Baby. Please.

It’s something, but it’s not enough.

He rolls her nipples between his thumb and pointer finger and squeezes her ass with his other hand, kneading her as he hoists that leg to hitch over his back.

God, Jim…

Her head rolls against the wall and she struggles to keep her eyes open when his lips begin terrorizing her inner thigh. When he bites down just a bit, a string of curses falls from her lips. But not loud enough to his liking.

He drags his nose along her damp panty covered slit; she bucks right into him, chasing the wetness of his tongue when it sneaks out for a taste.

Fuck, oh…

He smirks, kissing her there, over the slick material, pursing his lips just below where she’s craving.

Shit, Jim, god...

She’s getting louder, and more impatient, by the roll of her hips and the tightness of her hands in his hair. His tongue darts out, reaching her clit through her panties, and her squeal echoes out the front door where the storm door had rattled closed behind them but neither had been really too concerned about the main door, the one that would have closed them off into their own world.

“That a girl,” he encourages, doing it again, just lightly teasing her. “Come on, baby, tell me what you want.”

“Ahhh,” she moans, doing her best to squeeze him in place with her thighs. Sometimes he gives in, with nowhere else to go when she has him trapped there. But he’s being bucky tonight, and she knows she’s going to have to play his game.

He does it again, tongues against her clit, her panties still on. She growls and throws her head back, feeling him smirk against her, which isn’t quite what he’s supposed to be doing. Not when her skin is on fire and her nerves are all magnetized to his body. He switches his tactics, puckering his lips against her clit instead, just for a quick moment, before he pulls away. This Ohhh is louder than the last, so he does it again, ducking his head so that he can tease her. She’s making incoherent noises, and when he pulls away, it’s a death sentence that comes off his lips.

“What was it you told Cece the other day when she was throwing that tantrum?” His voice is gruff, and he kisses the insides of her thigh while she tries to remove herself from the decorative dresser in their entryway with her husband's tongue between her legs to our toddler pitching a fit because I gave her grape juice instead of apple. It isn’t as easy as her husband seems to think, and she’s a bit concerned that he’s able to remove himself right now. She’s debating taking control, reminding him that they’re alone and she’s basically naked when he finishes his thought.

“Use your words.”

She doesn’t know how she makes it between the moment that his eyes literally spiral into a dark want from between her legs and the moment that he shoves her panties to the side and touches her with his flat tongue and wiggles it against her without falling off the worn wood surface that she’s perched upon, but when he pulls away, she isn’t about to let him stay that way for very long.

“Fuck, Jim, just put your mouth back on my pussy--”

She feels him smirk against her this time, right before or right as or maybe during the process where he licks her from bottom to top and then parts her lips with his tongue. It doesn’t really matter which, because his tongue is so fucking devilish and it’s parting her and reaching deep inside her in a way that makes her see white. 

“Jesus, Jim.”

She palms the back of his head, and he thinks that the high he gets from his tongue in her pussy and her fingers knotted in his hair and his name on her lips like this is better than any street drug. He moves his tongue, out and in, exploring and tasting her like he’s a starved man. When he drags his tongue over her walls slowly and pulls out completely, she gasps and cries out. He presses his lips to her slit, kisses her in rapid pecks, before diving back in again. This time though, he’s barely entering her, dipping in and out quickly and teasingly. She’s mewling, in equal parts pleasure and protest; he knows that he can coax more from her.

He trades his tongue for a finger, moving in and out of her quickly as his lips are resigned to teasing around her with light pressure, quick pecks that are making her dizzy.

“Jim, baby please,” she whines, her head tipping back against the wall. “I wanna come.”

He growls, his lips vibrating against her. He bites the inside of her thigh.

“Say it again.” It’s essentially a demand as he sucks hard enough to leave a mark.

“I wanna come.” It’s breathier this time, and he moans, lapping around her clit. “I want you to make me come with your tongue, Jim.”

“God, you’re so sexy when you ask for it.” His words are low and sexy and she tightens the grip in his hair. He chances one quick swipe of his tongue over her clit, knowing that’s what she needs to open the flood gates.

“Do that again, oh fuck.”

“You like that?”

He complies, his tongue quickly there and gone again as his finger continues to tease her slowly.

“Yes, baby, do it again.”

He’s at her mercy, doing no more than a quick tease against her clit, despite every inherent need in him to lick her until she’s screaming. He’ll get there soon enough.

“Put your tongue back on me, Jim.”

Her hips are rolling against him and he moans, muttering something like So fucking sexy, Pam before he gives in a little with a couple of rapid swipes of his tongue, with a harder thrust and slight curl of his finger.

“Yes, oh fuck,” she whines, tightening her thighs. “Just like that baby.”

“Like this?” He adds a second finger, completely at her mercy now as her hips rock back and forth hard enough for the dresser to scrape along the tile floor. “You like fucking my fingers?”

She tilts her head to the side, her lips parted and her eyes closed as she bites down on her finger to stifle a scream. He sees, and snatches her hand, pressing a kiss to her fingers before putting her hand on her breast and squeezing. She takes the hint and takes her nipple between her fingers instead, earning him the cry of pleasure she’d just stolen from him.

“That a girl, Pam. I want you to be loud when you come.”

His tongue is flat against her clit, moving quickly back and forth as his fingers curl deeply inside her. She’s using her words now, but none of it makes any sense. Grammatically anyway. The way she’s groaning, Jim, fuck, oh god, so good, gonna come makes perfect damn sense in his head.

She locks her ankles around his upper back, and he has to grab onto her hips to gain some control of the rhythm. When he chances a glance up, he almost comes in his pants. She’s got her head tilted backwards, her lips parted as drunken words pour from them. She’s pulling at her nipple with one hand while the other is laced in her hair, tearing apart the curls she’d done up this morning. The sight of her hips tilting back and forth against his face is so erotic that he almost feels guilty watching. Almost. 

He switches tactics, swirling his tongue around her clit with an errant swipe or flick. Building her and building her straight to the top. His wrist is on fire but he doesn’t care. He knows what will get her there but holds off until the last possible moment because this, watching her like this, on the edge of pure bliss that she puts directly into his trusting hands, is too much of a drug. But when she’s literally begging, Jim, oh fuck please, Jim, make me come, oh my god, make me come, he has no choice.

He puckers his lips around her clit and sucks, his tongue thrusting in and out to edge her even further. As soon as he does, she’s loud. He isn’t sure if her Yes, Jim, yes, oh fuck or the shattering of the mirror on the wall is louder.

He freezes as glass shards tumble to the dresser top, to the floor. But she’s right there, I’m fine, don’t you dare stop and tight fingers in his hair while at the same time she’s trying to sneak her own fingers to her clit just in case. He’s barely able to get out a You sure? before her thighs tighten. He shoos her hands away and keeps sucking, keeps fucking her with his fingers, knowing that he can get her orgasms to last if he’s really determined. 

Her back arches and the squeaks have long since stopped forming his name as her body becomes erratic, her limbs equally clutching him and slamming into the wall and pounding the wooden dresser top. When she starts to come down, he kisses her thighs, her stomach, but keeps his fingers moving, knowing that her clit gets sensitive but she likes to draw the rest of it out. Her hands fall, gentle in his hair now, though he misses the roughness immediately. 

It takes her minutes to come down, to settle in a slump atop the dresser. As soon as she’s stopped moving, his kisses on literally any part of her skin stop. His fingers slide out of her and her panties fall back into place as he lifts her off the dresser and walks them into the kitchen, plopping her onto the counter.

“Are you okay?” His eyes are intense, his brows set in a firm line as he checks over her body. Her orgasm-drunk smile goes unnoticed because he is so diligently searching her body, so different than what he’d been doing minutes ago when that exploration was with his lips and tongue. “Shit. You’re bleeding.”

Really? She hadn’t even noticed. 

He’s digging under the sink for a first aid kit and she’s giggling at the fact that he’s actually still fully dressed, down to the tie. Before she can protest that it’s just a little cut and gravity is making it look worse than it is, babe, he has a damp paper towel to the back of her forearm, an alcohol wipe once he’s finished, and one large bandaid to cover the two-inch long surface wound that she really isn’t concerned about. Cece’s had worse scrapes on her knees. 

But watching this man, her husband, care for her so dutifully just minutes ago in their front hallway, and now, with his intense focus and a concern and care in eyes that were just heady and dark with desire, is like her own drug. He’s so calm and collect, packaging the kit back up, wiping the counter down with a Clorox wipe, before returning to her and kissing her so gently that she’s afraid if she presses any further that he’ll break, not quite so unlike their first kiss all those years ago where he did. 

“You okay?” he asks, his hands cupping her waist, his lips continuing to peck sweet, chaste kisses against hers. 

“Mmm, kinda.” She shrugs, giggles, as he tilts his head and furrows his brows. Her tongue pokes past her lips in a smile that only he knows, and she kisses his cheek, making her way to his ear. “I’d be better if you were less clothed and I had your cock in my mouth.”

He groans, snapping so easily from dutiful caretaker to hard again when her hands snake down his front, one undoing his belt while the other works on bringing him back to the full erection she’d felt against her stomach when he’d carried her into the kitchen. He works on his tie, his button down and undershirt shirt coming off by the time she’s got his dress pants around his ankles and him in her hand over his boxer briefs. 

He watches her, licking her lips as she jerks him off over his underwear. He knows this is her thing; she likes seeing him hard through his clothes. She’s never been shy about that either. He shrugged it off a long time ago and made it a point to get himself going before she walked into the bedroom every once in a while. It always ended well for both of them. He lets her take over, her tongue twisting around his before she switches it up and sucks his tongue instead. He growls, reaching around her back to remove the bra that had somehow stayed on through all of this. When he laps at first one nipple, then the next, before sucking softly, she wraps her legs around his waist. 

“God, your tits are perfect,” he moans, squeezing them together.

She’d let him play with her for hours, but he’s heavy in her hand, and when her thumb meets a damp spot in the cotton of his briefs from the precum that’s leaking from his tip, she really needs to taste him.

She shoves against him to get off the counter, turning him around as their teeth clash in a dizzying kiss where she’s got one hand on the back of his hair and the other pushing his underwear to the floor. He toes off his shoes and kicks away the rest of his clothing but she grabs his pants to kneel on instead of on the bare tile floor. His erection is standing straight out, and she moans before wrapping both hands around his shaft, pressing a kiss to his tip as he grips the counter behind him and tilts his head back. 

She pumps him with both fists, wrapping her lips around the tip in a soft sucking motion that leaves him breathless save for an errant gasp. His hips rock subtly, but the slack in his jaw and the way his mouth hangs open tells her that she is in control. When she removes one hand and slides more of his shaft into her mouth, he groans, loud enough for the neighbors to hear through the window above the sink. She runs her tongue over his ridge as her free hand feathers touches up and down the inside of his thigh.

“Yes, Pam, fuck.”

She starts a steadier rhythm, her lips meeting her fist as she hollows out her cheeks and speeds up.

“Ohhh, oh god, yes, like that baby, suck my cock just like that.”

She moans, and the vibrations around his cock make him thrust against her face. He’s about to apologize or still himself, but she grabs onto his hips and pulls them against her, so he speeds up, the hand in her hair tightening. He’s fucking her mouth and she purrs around his cock and her name on his lips is climbing the walls by the second.

“Pam, Pam....so good...oh god.”

She can tell that he’s about to come, and she wants nothing more than to taste him, so when he pulls her off of him with an audible pop, she’s rightfully a little bit upset. His dick bounces with the release from her lips, and the precum that she’d been tasting dribbles onto her chin. When she swipes her tongue out to taste it, he groans and picks her up under her arms.

“God, look at you,” he growls, his thumb swiping at her chin before sneaking past her lips until she sucks it off. Her teeth scrape against the pad of his thumb and he hisses before palming her cheeks and kissing her with a sheer force that could knock the wind out of the both of them. 

She’s in the air and wrapped around his waist in no time, and before he can make it to the stairs, he realizes that her panties and her shoes are still on by the material rubbing against his cock and the bite of her heels into his lower back. He sets her down less than gently and he puts a hand up between them. He takes in the sight of her; her plump lips are shining, her curls are in a wild mane about her shoulders. Her full tits and her flat stomach and the tone in her muscles from the shared workouts that they’d started doing together twice a week make him feel a strong sense of pride. The way that her long legs look somehow sexier in these heels that she’s been complaining about make his dick twitch as it stands out towards her, still hard and pulsing. He follows the lines of her body back up to her eyes, and there’s a large part of him that wants to break down and bend on his knee and thank God that she didn’t leave him a year ago, because this woman, this powerhouse standing in front of him? He doesn’t deserve her. 

When his lips press against hers this time, it’s to convey all of that: his love, admiration, the apologies that they’ve decided are redundant and unnecessary and irrelevant now that he’s all of a sudden decided he isn’t finished with. He’ll never be finished doing everything he can, every day of his life, to earn his place in hers, to prove that he can and will love her with every part of him. 

His tongue strokes hers, and her hands are warm on his back where she tickles his spine. He needs to get the rest of her clothes off yesterday, but when he tugs at her panties and she whimpers and bows into his touch, he can’t help himself.

Two fingers are inside her, and she’s still so slick from her last orgasm and this buildup that he knows she’ll come fast. He peppers her throat with kisses, and when he sucks the base of her throat, her moan is twined with a chuckle as she says, “You’re gonna...leave a mark...people will see...”

He curls his fingers inside of her and her back inches higher on the hallway wall as he says, “Guess I’ll have to leave one somewhere else then.”

His lips are on her collarbone, nipping along the delicate skin before he kisses the swells of her breasts that heave against him with every sharp breath. He leaves at least one puckering red mark before giving the underside of her other breast the same treatment, all while his fingers continue to drill inside her, his other hand gripped around her bicep to steady himself.

“Oh...god,” she screams, massaging his head when he takes a nipple between his teeth. “Jim, I’m gonna come...Jim….Jim.” 

Her fingernails are digging into his shoulders and he knows from past events that she’ll leave a mark, but he can’t blame her.

Her hips snap, and she holds on tightly. When her other fingers come to her clit, he doesn’t stop her, just lets her push the button that will intensify this pleasure tenfold for her. Her thighs are vibrating, and it’s honestly his favorite part, the fact that she’s going to come so hard that she can barely hold herself upright.

“Oh my god, OH my god, Jim.”

“So perfect, so fucking perfect,” he murmurs into her skin, soothing the now three marks he’s left with his lips that will be nicely hidden beneath her clothing, just like she’d asked. His fingers slip from her and as he kisses his way back up her neck, along her cheek, he feels her lips suction around them, moaning as she tastes herself. His large hand cradles her cheek and he presses his lips to her ear as his gravelly voice begs, insists, “I wanna bury myself inside you.”

She nods, captures his lips, and as their tongues meet in the middle he swears she says something like Please fuck me. They stumble up the stairs, stopping to kiss and caress. She wraps her hand around him on the fifth stair and he’s got his face buried between her tits when they reach the landing. It’s not that they haven’t ever fucked on the stairs. Or in the middle of the hallway. They’ve thoroughly abused the house he grew up in and he’s proud of that fact, and pretty sure she is too. But he doesn’t want to fuck her in the hallway. He wants to take her to bed and make love to her until that’s all she knows.

She’s flat on her back, and he takes another moment to stop, to realize and remember and give praise for the fact that she’s in their bed looking up at him like that. How did he ever almost let this go?

He starts at her ankles, kissing and licking and worshipping his way up her body. He pauses to lap at the dripping mess between her legs, to lose himself in his own high when she grips the sheets and praises his name, bouncing off their bedroom walls. But he stops short, kisses her stomach, squeezes her breasts together and trails his tongue over the swells before kissing the divot at the base of her throat. 

“Jim, baby, please,” she begs, and he smirks, inhaling her scent as he drags his nose up and down her throat. She reaches between them and wraps her fingers around his cock, tracing the head through her wetness. He grunts, pushing forward in her grasp before kissing her throat once more. 

He pushes fully inside her without warning, and he swears her muscles are clenching around him already; she squeals and her back arches off the bed and he groans loudly as he falls flush with her body and wraps an arm around her back, grinding his base against her just in case.

“God that’s so hot,” he says, pressing his forehead against hers. “You’re so ready for me.”

“Jim, move,” she begs, still reeling from the mini-orgasmic spasms. 

He smirks, rubbing his nose against hers as he moves slowly, all the way out before moving all the way in.

“God,” she groans, snapping her hips towards his in an attempt to get what she wants. But he drags himself in and out, moaning against her collarbone at how good it feels, how torturous his own movements are.

She hooks her legs around his thighs and clenches around him when he’s buried inside her to the hilt, and he can’t help the way that he whines.

“Pam, fuck, do it again.”

He picks up his speed, the first to give in, kissing her cheek as he raises on his forearms. When she clenches her slick muscles around him again, his cries and his Oh my god, Pam, yes, fuck Pam echo loudly, in perfect cadence with the slapping of his skin against hers.

“You’re so goddamn perfect,” he growls, kissing her with a loud pop before he rights himself and bends one of her legs to rest along his abdomen. “So perfect, Pam.”

He grabs her breast in his other hand, squeezing it, flicking her nipple back and forth with this thumb as she reaches between them and rubs her clit with her fingertips. 

“Harder, Jim,” she begs, reaching her other hand up to cup his hip. She digs her fingernails in and moans. “Please, baby.”

He drops her leg and cages himself over her face, his hips fitful as he grunts with their noses pressed together and her fingers smashed between them.

“Yes, like that, fuck me just like that Jim.” Her head rolls back on his pillow and he takes advantage of her exposed throat to kiss her there while he keeps pace, pounding his body against hers. “Don’t stop….don’t stop Jim…”

He’s about to explode himself, so he isn’t sure he could stop if he tried. In all that she has asked of him over the last year, after the yelling and the fighting and the silences and the near misses and the way that he almost lost her, this is the least that he could do.

“Come for me, Pam,” he begs her, needing to see the look in her eyes when she explodes around him. “Come on, Pam, come for me. You look so fucking gorgeous when you come.”

His hand cups her face, his thumb stroking her cheek as he pleads with her, drives into her relentlessly. He feels her fingers working between them, but the look in her eyes makes him take over. Pushing on her fingers with his own, he circles her clit rapidly.

“Come on baby, come all over me so I can come. I wanna feel you come all over my cock, Pam. I fucking love feeling you come.”

His words wrap around her nerve endings, and with a long string of expletives and his name and some sounds that are just incoherent, she bows up into his body, coming noisily. 

“Thatta girl, fuck,” Jim groans, pressing her fingers still, biting his bottom lip as he pounds his dick into her. “So...good…”

Sometimes he stops after she comes and waits for her to come down. Sometimes, she has to remind him that she needs a minute before he picks up again. But right now, he’s so close that she’s begging in his ear for him to fucking come inside me, Jim, let it go, babe and he doesn’t hold back.

“Pam, Pam, Jesus…”

He shoots inside of her in hot spurts, burrowing against her neck as he comes. She’s still whining breathlessly, her fingers still moving underneath his, like her high is still petering out. 

“Yes...yes,” is still coming from her in breathy pants, her knees still squeezing his sides. “Yes, Jim...god you feel...fuck…”

He says nothing, just groans and wraps both arms around her body before he buries himself against her chest and holds himself there.

They’re both panting, and after he situates them so that he’s wrapped around her side instead of crushing her, he kisses her cheek and rests his forehead against her temple. She stays on her back and he drapes his leg over hers, his foot resting between their legs on the comforter. His arms are still wrapped all the way around her, clasped around her bicep. She combs her fingers through his hair from his forehead to the back of his scalp before starting again, and again, and again. 

They’re silent for a little while before he huffs a laugh and nuzzles her ear.

“You sold me a house,” he smiles into her hair. “I bought you a house, and you sold me a house.”

She joins in his silent, breathy laughter.

“God, we've got a really fucked up way of trying to one-up each other with gifts.”

“Yeah we do,” he agrees, but pulls her impossibly closer. After cuddling for a little while longer he asks her the same question that started all of this. “Do you really wanna do this?”

She shifts, turning so that now they’re both on their sides, and strokes his face with the backs of her fingers before cupping his cheek, pulling them together in the middle to kiss him softly. 

“I do.”

She’d given him this big speech in their driveway earlier, and while he’s certain that they will talk more about this later, perhaps even tonight when they get home, those two words are the solidified promise that he needs. The same promise that they made years ago when they vowed to love each other. The one that he thinks about every morning when he remembers just how damn lucky he is to have her, to have the life they’ve built. She’s making that promise again, to stand by him, to believe in him. He kisses her fiercely, and their whispered I love you’s echo loudly between them.

He teases her for the fact that they'd only gone home in the first place to change her shoes and they'd stayed on the whole time. She teases him that the money to repair the dented wall where they took down the broken mirror will come out of his pocket. It looks like it might rain, so they split up to close the windows around the house that they'd let open, still wary of turning the air on just yet. They don't have to explain why they're both blushing when they finally close the front door.

They show up fashionably late, the party already in full swing when they finally walk through the doors. She had to change her outfit along with her shoes because the tear that her dress had suffered would have been awkward to explain. Her sweater covers the cut that he so sweetly helped her bandage, and the bruises from his fingers that are beginning to rise to the surface of her biceps. Later tonight, he’ll fret over the marks that he left, upset with himself almost to the point of tears; he’ll kiss her skin and be gentle until she reminds him that she more than liked it and that she’d be more than willing to give him a few marks of his own before sealing her lips to his neck and fulfilling that promise, his thighs more than marked when he reminds her that people will see this, baby.

--

A week later, once the paperwork is signed and a celebratory SOLD sign pops up across the street, Henry Sterling sighs over his morning coffee. His wife June comes up behind him on their front porch, resting her chin on his shoulder as she presses a soft kiss to his cheek.

“They’re moving?” she asks.

“Yeah. Thank god.”

She chuckles. “Will you let it go already?”

“I don’t know if I can!” He’s being sarcastic, dramatic. It’s what she loves about him. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get the names Jim and Pam out of my nightmares.”

While Jim was wary of Mr. Wilkens and Peter and Annie, he hadn't taken into account that his neighbors across the street liked to enjoy an evening outside every once in a while, too.

June shakes her head, letting her body fall into one of two padded porch chairs as the mid-morning Saturday sun lights up their Scranton neighborhood. After staring across the street at their neighbor’s house for a few minutes longer, her husband joins her.

When June chuckles, breaking their peaceful silence, he tilts his head towards her as if to say What’s so funny?

“I just realized, I didn’t know their names until last week.”

Henry smiles, his lips crawling slowly up his cheek until his own laughter springs from his chest, joining his wife in a small chorus that harmonizes with lawnmowers and chirping birds and the Harrison boys playing a game of driveway basketball at the end of the block.

“Should we tell them?” she asks once they’ve calmed down. When he quirks his eyebrow, she gestures across the street with her coffee mug to the Halpert home, the one that will soon be inhabited by others. “The new neighbors. Should we tell them about the reputation?”

Henry smiles, takes his wife’s hand, and kisses the back of it.

“Nah. Let them be. Maybe it’s good juju.”

“Good sex juju?” June chuckles, raising her brow.

Henry just shakes his head and sighs.

“I hope they don’t mind me calling them Jim and Pam until I know better.”