The Wind That Flies (Pam, Pam/Jim,Pam/Roy) PG
The Wind That Flies (Pam, Pam/Jim, Pam/Roy) PG
Title: The Wind That Flies
Author: aloneinthetown
Pairing/Character: Pam, Pam/Jim, Pam/Roy
Word Count: 1,445
Rating: PG
Summary: This is the first time in her life that just being
nice wasn't good enough.
Spoilers: Through Business School
Author's Notes: I haven't written anything creative in a long
ass time :((
The wind that flies through the open window smells like flash fried fast food, a signal she’s officially a block away from home. She knows they were right - her bland watercolors bled into the whitewashed wall and looked like water stains from a leaky pipe. “Courage.” Her tongue twists around air. “Honesty.” The words don’t sound real. This is the first time in her life that just being nice wasn’t good enough.
At two AM, up late with infomercials about sex toys and mattresses, she bites her knuckles and stares at the blue flashes that splash on the wall. Her teeth ache from chewing on her thumbnail. Her calves are blue from the lack of heat in the apartment. She scrunches her toes and curls closer to the side of the couch. She falls asleep without brushing her teeth that night, without turning off the television. Her eyes burn in the morning from the makeup that was never removed the night before. When she steps into the shower, she wonders if maybe that was the most courageous thing she’s ever done. Canceling a wedding doesn’t count when you take it back.
On her way to work, while it’s still dark and streetlamps are flashing past her in brilliant streaks, she opens the window and lets the dull, too-watery water colors fly. The sky is just barely beginning to bleed different hues, and the wind is at full force, and she sees them float, gliding and slicing through the morning. One gets stuck in a tree, another one hits the only other car on the lonely back road she’s chosen to take. The last one keeps flying - flapping its wings as it disappears into the mauve clouds, directly above her. She doesn’t say anything, but she thinks: courage and honesty, and she doesn’t close her window, even though it’s bitterly frozen outside.
When she’s at work, it takes her ten minutes to realize what’s been posted on the wall outside of Michael’s office. The soft colors, stark forms and rigid lines mock her. She likes it, but only because it complements the boring fluorescent lights, the gray carpet and the off white walls. But that’s not daring, that’s not unique; it’s just nice. She smoothes out her skirt and blames her mother (just a little) for making her such a pushover.
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Most of her first break is spent in the bathroom, as she studies herself. Plain hair. Washed and mousse’d. Left to dry. Eyes blank, wide, and green. Lips plain and pink, not shiny or any vibrant color. “I’m the most boring person in the world,” she mouths to that pushover, the one staring at her meekly from behind the mirror. It’s then that she thinks about the too-big smile, mop of hair, obscenely straight teeth. She thinks about the lumberjack beard, broad shoulders, vacant eyes surveying her work. She weighs the lack of options in her head with a nervous ferocity. Her nails are bitten down to the bone but she keeps them in her mouth anyway.
She eyes Karen discreetly from her desk during lunch. Things are still awkward between them, maybe even more awkward than things with Jim. She has a kind of envious energy sneaking up her spine that she hasn’t felt since high school. She’d never admit it, maybe not even to herself, but she’s jealous. Not just of Karen and Jim, but of everything Karen has: smart pantsuits, the ideal man, a sense of humor, confidence - courage. Maybe even honesty. She peeks out periodically from behind the floppy issue of some generic home-and-food magazine. She hates home decorating, and housewife magazines, but it’s a distraction. When Jim finally catches her eyes, she buries herself in ’10 ways to brighten a small space’ and hunches down beneath her desk.
At 5:45, she's crying in the bathroom. She grips onto the sink so hard that she thinks the porcelain might splinter. She looks into the mirror, staring right at her eyes, wondering what in her life made her backbone turn into boiled pasta. Why she can’t just tell him that this isn’t what they want? Why can't she tell her that she's still in love? She counts this as the second time in her life that being nice just isn’t enough. She waits until her eyes are only slightly pink, until the muted voices outside the door thin, then dissolve into nothing.
When she pushes the bathroom door open, maybe a little too hard, her shoulder crashes into a chest. Panic makes her wipe frantically at her face and suck in air to mask her tears. A hand grips her arm and she looks up. Her hand drops from her face, and a smile edges into his mouth. Whenever he smiles there’s this trip in her heartbeat, a palpitation. Right now her heart is thumping so hard she thinks it might pound up to her throat and out of her mouth.
“Hey, you’re still here?” His voice is soft, a little bit uncomfortable, and she can smell mint from his breath.
She clears her throat, maybe to make sure the wet sound of tears is gone from her voice. In the half light, he can’t tell yet that she’s been crying. “Yeah, had to use the bathroom. Where’s uh, where’s Karen?” Vulnerability vaguely stains her voice before she coughs to clear it away.
“She already took off,” he says briskly, and his smile fades. She remembers that she’s with Roy, and she’s sure he does too. She told Roy not to wait for her, though. She wishes she could tell him that. She wishes she could tell him a lot of things.
“Oh, cool,” she nods her head too furiously, and stares at the carpet. She shifts a little in their awkward silence and when she can see that he sees her, really sees her, she feels nervousness in her belly.
“Hey, is there something wrong?” He cocks his head in that Jim way. She leans back against the wall and lets out a puff of breath. She can feel it coming, that weird swollen feeling that happens in the throat, the buzzing at the temples, the burning in the eyes. The lights are off in the kitchen and his form is silhouetted by the fluorescent brilliance behind him.
“No, I’m fine - everything's fine,” she whispers, but her voice is soggy. They stand there for a minute, and he’s so still that she isn’t sure what she should do - he’s waiting for her. She thinks about her open window this morning, the paper flying in the wind, work that took hours and too many tries, taking risks.
She doesn’t grasp him suddenly. She shifts closer to him, and her arms slide around his waist, and her throat closes up. She swallows, and puts her head against him. She can hear the dim hum of electric lights all around her but as she closes her eyes, she hears the frisky drum of his heart through his shirt and her arms tighten. Her own heart is clamoring so hard that her ribs hurt. Her lips graze the cloth of his shirt before she feels his arms come up around her. She loves the weight of them, the long limbs stretched across her shoulders, curled around her back, the buttons of his cuffs scratching softly against her sweater. She doesn’t know how much time has passed before she pushes away.
The dried tears make her face feel itchy, but she smiles anyway. She doesn’t feel uncomfortable. She feels light, she feels like laughing. She feels different. She looks up at him, her back a little straighter.
“Thanks.” The whisper drifts gently away from her like smoke.
“Oh, yeah. You’re - you’re welcome.” That confused Jim look appears, but there’s an underlying tenderness that makes her grab his hand and squeeze. She says goodbye to him, and when she heads back to the reception desk, she dumps the magazine in the trash.
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She hates the desperation in his voice. She uses the obvious reasons and so does he: he’s changed, he will treat her right this time, he’ll invest more time in them. After fifteen minutes of trying to convince him (‘we’re just not right for each other’, ‘we need to see other people’), she tells him she’ll talk to him later and snaps the phone shut.
She feels something like power (courage? honesty?), an electric spark deep within her heart - some shifting of gears. She fixes her eyes on the colors before her: vivid red acrylics and pastoral green oils. She revels in names like ‘brilliant blue’ and ‘cadmium yellow’.