Thanks to Lori for the beta.
If anyone ever found out that her favorite color was mud brown, they would think she was crazy.
But her love of the color stemmed from when she was a girl, when she'd gone running through her backyard with her school friends, in the middle of a rainstorm and had fallen into a large puddle. Putting her hands down in the grass, she had curled them down in order to gain leverage and push herself up, but they just sunk into the mud.
And for a second, just a tiny fraction of a moment, she felt like she was being swallowed. And it was fantastic.
The color of mud reminded her of chocolate and of seduction but mostly, now, it just reminded her of the exact shade of Jim's favorite tie. And how when Jim looked at her she felt like she was being swallowed by something very, very warm.
It was weird-she knew-that she remembered things like that, like his favorite tie and how he couldn't eat slices of cheese unless they were whole slices. She knew things like... he love lime jellybeans and had split ends from the wax he used to hold his hair.
And Pam knew all of these things without ever having to ask; she knew from observation. Before him, she didn't know she was so observant, but now, after him, she found herself seeking out the most minute details of things. She saw things that she never saw before, remembered what colors were, appreciated the way shadows curved around corners, how cold smelled.
There were a lot of things that she could attribute to Jim, a lot of them small but a few of them large. It was because of him that her ring finger was bare, and it was because of him that she laid in bed at night and stared at the ceiling for hours.
It was because of him that he was hurt; it was because of him that he wore a large red welt on the side of his face. It was because of him that she sat in the break room while Karen assisted him in the men's room.
And it was because she couldn't face him that she'd told Michael that she had to go home, and had left without another word.
There were no tears and no hollow, frightened twisting in the pit of her stomach. In fact, to the contrary; she felt nothing as she maneuvered her small car along the back roads of Scranton to her ground-floor apartment. Pam felt nothing as she unlocked her door and toed off her sneakers. There was nothing as she moved through semi-darkness, to her bedroom, to retrieve her sweatpants.
Feeling didn't come until she opened her refrigerator in search of something (anything) and her eyes focused on a packet of ham; she lost it, slammed the door and took a giant step back until her hip hit the counter.
It was because of him that her life had gone from fractured fairytale to farce in a matter of moments. Fingers attempting to curl into the cold tile of the counter, her eyes slammed shut and she fended off the tears that threatened to seep out. There just wasn't any use in crying, about crying about anything anymore; it just made her feel worse.
All the times she had run the scenarios through her head-the contra of 'what ifs'-they'd all boiled down to one simple point-a reciprocation of feelings. But she, too deeply invested in a facade of a relationship, couldn't seem to estrange herself from the flimsy bonds that tied she and Roy together. A fake sense of duty, of loyalty, would have led to her becoming a fake wife in an unstable relationship.
So maybe she should have thanked Jim for his declaration instead of becoming nearly indignant.
But indignant worked when she was at a loss for words and the honesty was clogging her throat with a coating so thick that it almost smothered her.
The ham, beyond the plastic and metal of the refrigerator door taunted her and she glared menacingly at the white of the appliance. As her eyes focused on blowing it up with her mind, she thought about all of the interviews they were doing back at the office. How Dwight was probably showing off some more of the sweet moves he claimed could have taken out Roy with, how Stanley was probably staring straight forward with wide eyes, droning, "Wow, Roy is really strong," or how Angela was livid, going on about office procedure and protocol.
Pam squeezed her eyes shut and stomps (as well as one can stomp in socks) over to her sofa, plopping down onto the old piece of furniture with a gusto born of irritation. Grabbing her remote control, she stabbed the power button with her thumb and was rewarded with the placating image of Doctor Gregory House, performing some sort of batshit procedure that was sure to shock her.
She smiled.
Ankles crossed at the end of the couch, she slid down into the cushions and tried to focus on the storyline, but the thought of mud and ham and ice packs and that color red that had bloomed on his cheek ran through her mind at high speed, making her so dizzy she had to shut her eyes.
When the doorbell rang, Pam nearly fell off the sofa, she was literally that lost in her thoughts. She blinked at the television, wondering if she had imagined it, but on the screen a bee was trying to sell her allergy medicine. Slipping off the sofa, she walked slowly to the door, not bothering to fix her skewed ponytail.
Opening the door, she was only slightly mortified that it was Jim, the mortification passing as he stepped into her entryway. Pam went to say something; her lips moved but no sound came out so she gently shut the door and turned to rest her back against it. "Your face looks better," she said quietly, noting that the red had waned to a dull pink.
Soon his cheek would be smudged with purple and that mud brown that angry bruises turned just as guilt over what had caused it would set in for the long haul. "Yeah," he huffed a quiet laugh, "Who knew Dwight's first aid would come in handy?"
Pushing herself away from the door, she moved around him and back into the living room, standing in front of the television. "Yeah, uh, go figure." Neither could manage a wisecrack, a pun. "Look, I'm-"
"How could you forget to tell me about this? Did you..." Jim's hands fell slack at his side and he looked at her, eyes baleful, lost.
Her lips were a straight line, the sort of mask she wore when someone said something that hit far too close to home.
"Jim, I... I didn't think he would..."
Taking three steps towards her, he paused just as he crossed the threshold to the room. "What did you say to him?"
Wringing her hands, she blinked at the floor and then up at him, "I thought... I thought that this was my last chance and, I don't know but, I, I told him about what happened on casino night. Jim-"
"And he didn't, did you know?" His voice was raspy, almost harsh but rimmed with sadness. "Did you know what he was gonna do?"
Her head snapped up at that. "I would never-I know his temper, I didn't know that..."
Jim shook his head and smiled, again, too sadly for her liking. "You didn't know that he was going to... avenge your honor." The words sounded corny even to her, Pam, who was used to candy and flowers and other things of the cheesy variety.
"Wha, I'm sorry, what?"
Two more steps and he was just feet in front of her, "Fighting for you, it's chauvanistic, but, he loves you and, it all makes sense now."
Nothing had been linear, nothing had been linear since Roy's fist connected with his cheekbone; it was as though he'd somehow shifted the balance of the earth so the space-time continuum was just slightly skewed. "I'm... not following."
The air was crisp, like static was crackling between them and she couldn't keep her eyes off his damn cheek, where her ex-ex-ex had taken out his rage. "He may be," a laugh broke through then, an honest-to-goodness laugh that took some of the weight off of her shoulders, "A pretty big idiot, but he, he's willing to go to the extreme to prove... that he loves you."
Exhaling long and low, she wondered what he wanted her to say. She wondered and wondered until she realized that he didn't want her to say anything, he just needed her to listen.
"And I don't know what I need to do to prove it to you, you know?" That soothing, sweet tone he spoke him when she knew he meant something, it gripped her heart and squeezed, begged her to respond kindly, accept him in any way she could.
"I don't, I don't know..." She wished she did, wished upon wish, "Just kiss me." The last part was peeped out with the last of her courage and she moved back until her thighs were pressed against House's face, as he broke apart the supposedly unsolvable case... again.
"Kiss you?" he breathed, moving until his hands were on her hips and his breath moved his hair.
Pam nodded, surely, strongly.
"I can do that," and he did, proving intent, proving that when they were together all the colors blurred and mud wasn't mud, it was taupe and destiny and forever.
Then again, she just had an artist's soul and he was a man in love.