Disclaimer: So, the characters aren't mine, yeah?
A/N: I don't actually watch this show . . . I was watching the S2 finale and was like, "These two need to be together." And then, guess what happened? So I found clips of them online, and now I know their entire story (so I've been told), and I'm planning on watching Thursday when it starts again. But this is actually the least angsty of all the pairings I like on my shows, because they aren't inherently so - it's just an awful situation for them. So I tried to capture that in here, the comfortableness and perfection of their relationship.
He had never really thought of himself as domestic; rather, he was a sort of perpetual bachelor. That wasn't to say he actively avoided the idea of domesticity, as a house and a wife and kids sounded, actually, great. He liked kids, and what was more, kids liked him. Pam said it was because he was really an overgrown boy, but she said it with a teasing smile and a glimmer of jealousy in her eyes. He knew she'd really wanted to make the kids like her on Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and he didn't know why she hadn't succeeded. Kids ought to love her; after all, he did.
And that was the difference. He'd been comfortable in his bachelordom, in his bedroom/home office, his non-existent decorating skills, his lava lamp in the bedroom. He liked that way of doing things. But she'd begun to change that.
At first, it was a nameless, faceless future. A nice brick house in the outskirts of Scranton where they could have a big yard, toys on the lawn, perhaps a dog. Soon he began decorating the inside, not even noticing that green (his favorite color) and blue (hers) were used equally throughout the house; the color combination just made sense to him. It wasn't until he added a terrace with flowerpots to their bedroom that he realized whose house this really was. But by then, the house had too firm a foundation to be torn down and begun again.
Every time he was with her, the house gained a new detail, a framed poster of the operahouse in Sydney (where she'd always wanted to go), or the perfect tea set (so she could always have tea), or small bowls of jellybeans scattered throughout the house (so he'd always have an excuse to talk to her). He was stocking the fridge with mixed-berry yogurt when he realized this had gone far enough. He wanted his home. And it wasn't possible without her, because she was the one who inspired his domesticity and the one who made his house a home and his office not a prison and the one who filled him with hope and despair and love. And she needed to know – no, he needed her to know. He could forget about Roy, at least for a little while, even if Pam couldn't, and though that would probably be his downfall it was also his salvation.
He was ready for either one.