hide inside while the harsh winds blow (angela/pam) pg13
title: hide inside while the harsh winds blow (or how pam and angela came to be that nice, cat-owning lesbian couple in your apartment building)
character(s)/pairing(s): angela/pam
rating: pg13
word count: 1722
prompt: under my skin, coffee, ballet
spoilers: slight s3
author's note: for
nalakaori_chanover at the Rare Pairings Exchange.
summary: season three au.
They start slow, like dripping molasses. Sweet and heavy and worth the wait.
*
“Pam.”
The one syllable rendition of her name punctures her monotonous stare down with her computer screen. Her eyes flicker to their corners , her neck still pivoted straight ahead, like if she doesn’t move the unexpected interruption won’t know she’s still there. She saw it on the nature channel once.
From her periphery she can just make out the slicked, corn-silk hair of the tiny accountant in the cubicle next to hers peeking over the divider, an unreadable expression pinching her face. She shoulders inexplicably relax and she turns her face toward Angela.
“Angela.”
The petite woman purses her lips, like she’s trying to compact the words in her mouth before releasing them to the world.
“I’m going out to get some coffee.”
Pam’s eyebrows bunch together like lovesick caterpillars.
“Okay…”
She waits.
“And… it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you were at the same coffee shop as well.”
Pam hides the smile that bubbles to her lips behind her hand before righting her mouth into a stern line of concentration.
“Are you saying you want us to go out for coffee?”
Angela frowns. Like, really deeply, as if she’s perturbed that the true meaning behind her words has been unearthed. But she gives a jerky little nod to her head and Pam takes that as a yes.
“But-“ Angela declares with a harshly pointed finger, “No whipped cream.”
So the ritual starts; every Tuesday at 11:15 on the dot. Pam. Angela. Coffee for two.
*
Pam taps her foot nervously against the carpet, a finicky little rhythm forming under her toes. She bites her lip and watches with wide, anxious eyes.
Angela slips one finger under the fold of the wrapping paper, her tapered, pale fingers hoisting the tape from the package with a soft suckling noise and peeling it away slowly. It is torture.
Her foot increases its pace.
Folding the evergreen-patterned paper into a neat little square on her thigh, Angela gives a little cough (maybe she is stalling after all) and lifts the lid.
Pam studies her face carefully, like an oceanographer would look for tremors on the Richter scale, her stern mouth a fault line. She holds her breath.
And she’s shocked to see a smile break out across Angela’s face, reserved and concealed, but it’s definitely there as Angela unearths the wide, hard-cover book from the shroud of tissue paper. A coffee table book about cats. For anyone else it would be a throwaway gift given to someone who you didn’t know well enough to give something worthwhile, but for Angela it’s like a long-lost treasure found in the tunnels of the pyramids.
Pam watches as Angela purses her lips, crinkling up her smile into the press of her lips to smooth out the joy, and when she releases her lips with a soft pluck it’s only her eyes that show her happiness.
Angela lays her palms flat against the cover of the book, stretching her pale fingers out wide and possessive, as she recrosses her ankles.
When she speaks her voice is dull but concealing an underlying delight.
“Thank you, Pam.”
Her answering smile is radiant.
*
Sunlight stretches lazy across the hardwood floors, splashing up to the scratched, leather arm rests of the overstuffed chair, warming Pam’s hand. She can feel her blood rushing quick-paced and hot in her veins, reminding her that no, she doesn’t have any right to be relaxed right now. The caffeine-infused drink in her hands certainly isn’t helping either.
The barista calls out Angela’s order and Pam takes a deep breath. Angela settles herself into the chair across from her, sunlight making her hair glow like an angel’s, and Pam’s momentarily dazed. The slick silkiness loosens the hinge of her jaw and she speaks without thinking, words slipping from her brain to her tongue unchecked.
“Is this a date?”
And despite the freezing shock chiseled onto Angela’s expression, despite the blazing heat in her pink cheeks, she’s glad she asked because, well… this is important.
She can’t put a finger on why this time feels different than all the others, can’t say in tactile language why Angela’s invitation to coffee had struggled with laden with implications as the words finally reached her ears that afternoon. But maybe the meaning had been there all along; maybe it had just taken her this long to hear the subtext in echoes.
Angela’s mouth opens just barely, just enough to allow her tiny, hobbled “okay” to slip through and drop to the floor.
And Pam isn’t sure what she’s agreeing to, if this is once or now or forever, but she feels warm inside and she finds herself nodding, saying yes to whatever she’s offering.
“Okay.”
*
Pam buries her nose in the crook of Angela’s neck and she can still smell the ocean air in Angela’s long blonde locks from the ferry they’d taken that afternoon, wind whipping fresh and chilled across their spread lips and bared teeth. Her hands smooth over her small hips, resisting the urge to grasp them tightly and bring them closer. With Angela everything is small steps.
With Roy, sex had been like a hunt. Quick. Instinctive. Destination-driven. She wouldn’t call it barbaric but a more experienced woman might. But this… this is more like ballet. Like give and take and have. And she can’t seem to get enough now that she knows what she’s missing.
It’s cool sheets in the summer and flannel in the winter; yellow strands spilling across the pillowcase and tangling with curly brown; lips trailing down the ravine between Angela’s two open shirttails (grey, always grey) and reaching the equator of her underwear. It’s breathy moans and mews like the cats that Pam has learned to love by extension and the slick sound of Pam’s tongue exploring her, mapping out her peaks and valleys.
It’s without explanation.
*
Pam curls her fingers into the metal grate, first knuckles turning white at the pressure of the firm grip her excitement has on the cage. Slitted eyes peer back at her from the shadows and she’s abruptly reminded of Rasputin; she removes her hand.
“That one gives me the willies.”
Angela manages to muster up a disapproving look at her ill-talk of their feline neighbor, like she shouldn’t be insulting the cat while still in its presence. But her eyes quickly return to the beehive of cages and their search for the perfect pet. Angela, as it turns out, is quite picky about the cats she chooses to adopt. This is the third shelter they’ve been to today.
Pam crouches down, scanning the bottom row for keepers. She’d like to take them all (or at least most; Rasputin is still giving her the evil eye from across the room), to bundle them all up in blankets, brave the November chill and give them a home. But their apartment, only half-unpacked and pebbled with packing peanuts, is only big enough for the two of them, Angela’s hoard, and one lucky kitty.
And then she sees her. Pure white, shaggy at the paws but pristine fur, face a picture of devilish innocence. It’s love at first sight. Now all she’s have to do is convince…
“We’ll take that one.” Pam glances up sharply to see Angela pointing at the cage Pam’s eying and looking sternly at the attendant, daring her to deny them the cat of their fancy.
“I’ll start the paperwork.”
Angela waits until the door clicks shut and the heel taps of the woman to fade down the hall before turning to Pam with a teacup smile.
“She’s beautiful.”
Pam grins in return.
*
The ballerinas onstage twirl around like tufts of cotton candy on scissor-legs as Angela sighs contentedly beside her.
“You like it?”
Angela’s eyes, wide with awe and enthrallment, don’t stray from the plie-ing dancers as she murmurs a response, her lips barely parting.
“It’s enchanting.”
There’s a point where watching Angela watch the show is more entertaining than the show itself, so Pam traces the shape of Angela’s face with her eyes, the slender dip of her nose and her long, elegant arch of her neck. Like a swan’s. Pam leans over, her hand landing subtle but suggestive on her upper thigh and her lips barely brushing against her earlobe as she whispers: “Do I have to start worrying about you leaving me for a ballerina?”
Angela’s lips quirk in a fleeting flutter, and for the first time her eyes leave the stage to ghost over Pam’s face in the hushed light of the theater. Her own soft palm settles over Pam’s, twining their fingers into a meshed weave of skin.
“Not a chance.”
*
The apartment is chilly and mute, the grayish-blue light from beyond the fluttery curtains casting ink-blot shadows on the carpet. If she listens hard enough, with her head tilted just so, Pam can almost hear the snow falling pillow-soft and powdery on the streets and lawns.
She tugs the blanket around her tighter against her shoulders, adjusting the dozing tuft of fur in her arms. Pia had fallen asleep on her chest at one that morning, and barely moved to make a whiney purr when she rose to watch the snow fall.
Scranton is silent, whether from the early hour or the white that blankets everything, and Pam nuzzles her nose against Pia’s ear, hiding a sleepy smile. Feeling a pressure at her side, Pam glances over to find a sleep-rumpled Angela nudging her boney elbow gently against her side. Pam breathes out her name before leaning down slightly.
Their lips touch like someone might pray, divinity singing in the press of their wetted skin and reverence hidden behind closed eyelids. They don’t need to see to know it’s there. Pia gets passed from one’s arms to the other, as Pam unfurls her blanket like a woken dove’s wings and folds all three of them within the fuzzy warmth. Angela fits perfectly in her arms, Pam’s hands splaying against her lower belly and pressing her front snugly against Angela’s back.
Like puzzle pieces. Like colors that stir together to make soft pink or mint green or robin’s egg blue.
Like cream and sugar in the perfect cup of coffee.
character(s)/pairing(s): angela/pam
rating: pg13
word count: 1722
prompt: under my skin, coffee, ballet
spoilers: slight s3
author's note: for
nalakaori_chanover at the Rare Pairings Exchange.
summary: season three au.
They start slow, like dripping molasses. Sweet and heavy and worth the wait.
*
“Pam.”
The one syllable rendition of her name punctures her monotonous stare down with her computer screen. Her eyes flicker to their corners , her neck still pivoted straight ahead, like if she doesn’t move the unexpected interruption won’t know she’s still there. She saw it on the nature channel once.
From her periphery she can just make out the slicked, corn-silk hair of the tiny accountant in the cubicle next to hers peeking over the divider, an unreadable expression pinching her face. She shoulders inexplicably relax and she turns her face toward Angela.
“Angela.”
The petite woman purses her lips, like she’s trying to compact the words in her mouth before releasing them to the world.
“I’m going out to get some coffee.”
Pam’s eyebrows bunch together like lovesick caterpillars.
“Okay…”
She waits.
“And… it wouldn’t be the worst thing if you were at the same coffee shop as well.”
Pam hides the smile that bubbles to her lips behind her hand before righting her mouth into a stern line of concentration.
“Are you saying you want us to go out for coffee?”
Angela frowns. Like, really deeply, as if she’s perturbed that the true meaning behind her words has been unearthed. But she gives a jerky little nod to her head and Pam takes that as a yes.
“But-“ Angela declares with a harshly pointed finger, “No whipped cream.”
So the ritual starts; every Tuesday at 11:15 on the dot. Pam. Angela. Coffee for two.
*
Pam taps her foot nervously against the carpet, a finicky little rhythm forming under her toes. She bites her lip and watches with wide, anxious eyes.
Angela slips one finger under the fold of the wrapping paper, her tapered, pale fingers hoisting the tape from the package with a soft suckling noise and peeling it away slowly. It is torture.
Her foot increases its pace.
Folding the evergreen-patterned paper into a neat little square on her thigh, Angela gives a little cough (maybe she is stalling after all) and lifts the lid.
Pam studies her face carefully, like an oceanographer would look for tremors on the Richter scale, her stern mouth a fault line. She holds her breath.
And she’s shocked to see a smile break out across Angela’s face, reserved and concealed, but it’s definitely there as Angela unearths the wide, hard-cover book from the shroud of tissue paper. A coffee table book about cats. For anyone else it would be a throwaway gift given to someone who you didn’t know well enough to give something worthwhile, but for Angela it’s like a long-lost treasure found in the tunnels of the pyramids.
Pam watches as Angela purses her lips, crinkling up her smile into the press of her lips to smooth out the joy, and when she releases her lips with a soft pluck it’s only her eyes that show her happiness.
Angela lays her palms flat against the cover of the book, stretching her pale fingers out wide and possessive, as she recrosses her ankles.
When she speaks her voice is dull but concealing an underlying delight.
“Thank you, Pam.”
Her answering smile is radiant.
*
Sunlight stretches lazy across the hardwood floors, splashing up to the scratched, leather arm rests of the overstuffed chair, warming Pam’s hand. She can feel her blood rushing quick-paced and hot in her veins, reminding her that no, she doesn’t have any right to be relaxed right now. The caffeine-infused drink in her hands certainly isn’t helping either.
The barista calls out Angela’s order and Pam takes a deep breath. Angela settles herself into the chair across from her, sunlight making her hair glow like an angel’s, and Pam’s momentarily dazed. The slick silkiness loosens the hinge of her jaw and she speaks without thinking, words slipping from her brain to her tongue unchecked.
“Is this a date?”
And despite the freezing shock chiseled onto Angela’s expression, despite the blazing heat in her pink cheeks, she’s glad she asked because, well… this is important.
She can’t put a finger on why this time feels different than all the others, can’t say in tactile language why Angela’s invitation to coffee had struggled with laden with implications as the words finally reached her ears that afternoon. But maybe the meaning had been there all along; maybe it had just taken her this long to hear the subtext in echoes.
Angela’s mouth opens just barely, just enough to allow her tiny, hobbled “okay” to slip through and drop to the floor.
And Pam isn’t sure what she’s agreeing to, if this is once or now or forever, but she feels warm inside and she finds herself nodding, saying yes to whatever she’s offering.
“Okay.”
*
Pam buries her nose in the crook of Angela’s neck and she can still smell the ocean air in Angela’s long blonde locks from the ferry they’d taken that afternoon, wind whipping fresh and chilled across their spread lips and bared teeth. Her hands smooth over her small hips, resisting the urge to grasp them tightly and bring them closer. With Angela everything is small steps.
With Roy, sex had been like a hunt. Quick. Instinctive. Destination-driven. She wouldn’t call it barbaric but a more experienced woman might. But this… this is more like ballet. Like give and take and have. And she can’t seem to get enough now that she knows what she’s missing.
It’s cool sheets in the summer and flannel in the winter; yellow strands spilling across the pillowcase and tangling with curly brown; lips trailing down the ravine between Angela’s two open shirttails (grey, always grey) and reaching the equator of her underwear. It’s breathy moans and mews like the cats that Pam has learned to love by extension and the slick sound of Pam’s tongue exploring her, mapping out her peaks and valleys.
It’s without explanation.
*
Pam curls her fingers into the metal grate, first knuckles turning white at the pressure of the firm grip her excitement has on the cage. Slitted eyes peer back at her from the shadows and she’s abruptly reminded of Rasputin; she removes her hand.
“That one gives me the willies.”
Angela manages to muster up a disapproving look at her ill-talk of their feline neighbor, like she shouldn’t be insulting the cat while still in its presence. But her eyes quickly return to the beehive of cages and their search for the perfect pet. Angela, as it turns out, is quite picky about the cats she chooses to adopt. This is the third shelter they’ve been to today.
Pam crouches down, scanning the bottom row for keepers. She’d like to take them all (or at least most; Rasputin is still giving her the evil eye from across the room), to bundle them all up in blankets, brave the November chill and give them a home. But their apartment, only half-unpacked and pebbled with packing peanuts, is only big enough for the two of them, Angela’s hoard, and one lucky kitty.
And then she sees her. Pure white, shaggy at the paws but pristine fur, face a picture of devilish innocence. It’s love at first sight. Now all she’s have to do is convince…
“We’ll take that one.” Pam glances up sharply to see Angela pointing at the cage Pam’s eying and looking sternly at the attendant, daring her to deny them the cat of their fancy.
“I’ll start the paperwork.”
Angela waits until the door clicks shut and the heel taps of the woman to fade down the hall before turning to Pam with a teacup smile.
“She’s beautiful.”
Pam grins in return.
*
The ballerinas onstage twirl around like tufts of cotton candy on scissor-legs as Angela sighs contentedly beside her.
“You like it?”
Angela’s eyes, wide with awe and enthrallment, don’t stray from the plie-ing dancers as she murmurs a response, her lips barely parting.
“It’s enchanting.”
There’s a point where watching Angela watch the show is more entertaining than the show itself, so Pam traces the shape of Angela’s face with her eyes, the slender dip of her nose and her long, elegant arch of her neck. Like a swan’s. Pam leans over, her hand landing subtle but suggestive on her upper thigh and her lips barely brushing against her earlobe as she whispers: “Do I have to start worrying about you leaving me for a ballerina?”
Angela’s lips quirk in a fleeting flutter, and for the first time her eyes leave the stage to ghost over Pam’s face in the hushed light of the theater. Her own soft palm settles over Pam’s, twining their fingers into a meshed weave of skin.
“Not a chance.”
*
The apartment is chilly and mute, the grayish-blue light from beyond the fluttery curtains casting ink-blot shadows on the carpet. If she listens hard enough, with her head tilted just so, Pam can almost hear the snow falling pillow-soft and powdery on the streets and lawns.
She tugs the blanket around her tighter against her shoulders, adjusting the dozing tuft of fur in her arms. Pia had fallen asleep on her chest at one that morning, and barely moved to make a whiney purr when she rose to watch the snow fall.
Scranton is silent, whether from the early hour or the white that blankets everything, and Pam nuzzles her nose against Pia’s ear, hiding a sleepy smile. Feeling a pressure at her side, Pam glances over to find a sleep-rumpled Angela nudging her boney elbow gently against her side. Pam breathes out her name before leaning down slightly.
Their lips touch like someone might pray, divinity singing in the press of their wetted skin and reverence hidden behind closed eyelids. They don’t need to see to know it’s there. Pia gets passed from one’s arms to the other, as Pam unfurls her blanket like a woken dove’s wings and folds all three of them within the fuzzy warmth. Angela fits perfectly in her arms, Pam’s hands splaying against her lower belly and pressing her front snugly against Angela’s back.
Like puzzle pieces. Like colors that stir together to make soft pink or mint green or robin’s egg blue.
Like cream and sugar in the perfect cup of coffee.