Unfinished Ficathon!
I might be getting a job as an office assistant at the Pomona Athletic Building! WOO! Basically, I have an interview on Monday, but it's only 4 hours a week tops, so, seriously minimal pay, but. I need a job.
As a reward, I have decided to unload all of the fanfics that I have on my computer that have gone the way of the tubes. Not finished and probably never will be, but still deserve to known and loved for all they never were!
AN: Don't be alarmed. Some do end mid-sentence. Such is my fickle muse.
1. John/Rashida; Potential MA
He met her backstage at a show, around the time when he’d just moved to L.A. and was in the networking stage of his career, which basically meant that he went to a lot of parties, drank a lot of beer, met a lot of people, and hoped that some of them liked him.
She had definitely liked him.
She brought him a drink from across the room and introduced herself, kissing his cheek like she was some kind of royalty, and that’s just what she was used to doing. He was a bit taken aback by her, her dark good looks and her mellow laugh as she talked about how she’d gotten here late, missed the show, caught the party. Telling him as if he’d been waiting for her.
When she would laugh, he laughed along with her because she made it easy, and it was kind of like slipping back into something that used to be a habit.
He’d wondered if she’d come with anyone, since she was spending a lot of time clinging to him, he even maybe wondered if she knew anyone here.
About an hour into their meeting, and a few drinks later, she excused herself to the bathroom, told him to wait for her (liked he’d even considered leaving). It was that distinct moment that it occurred to him this was a lot like a date.
They were both fuzzy from alcohol and laughing a bit too loud when she turned to him and said, “let’s go,” a wicked gleam in her eye.
He wasn’t the type for casual hookups. Okay, so that was a new rule. He’d decided that when he’d first arrived in California. It was different in college where even people that you didn’t know, you kind of did. This was different situation; this wasn’t “your dorm or mine?” This was “where do you live and can we walk there?”
2. Five Times Angela Wanted to be Pam, and Five Times She Took it Back, Angela; M
Angela doesn’t dislike Pam, but at this point, it’s doubtful they’d ever end up exchanging recipes over tea. For one, she had lived in sin for God knows how long, but on the other hand, now that she was single, she seemed to have turned into a much stronger woman, which Angela admired. She’s always considered herself to be a strong woman, so it wasn’t too hard to extend a modicum of respect to Pam for abandoning her sinful lifestyle (and Angela was almost able to overlook the fact that Pam had in the process abandoned that handsome warehouse fellow… almost).
But there were always going to be a few things that Angela would be unable to overlook.
Five Times Angela Wanted to be Pam, and Five Times She Took it Back
1. Angela lived too far away from Dunder-Mifflin to run home and back before any six o’clock parties started, especially when there was rush-hour traffic. Scranton wasn’t Los Angeles, but sitting in traffic wasn’t an activity that Angela enjoyed. So, on the morning of Casino Night, she’d gotten up an hour earlier to do her hair, couldn’t be anything too fancy or inappropriate since she’d have to wear it through the workday, and taken the automatic feeder from her linen closed and filled up for the cats. She hid a few treats around the house and kissed them each a few extra times before grabbing her dress from the closet and heading in to work.
Since she’d never left, she’d gotten to the party earlier than everyone else had. She hadn’t planned this party, but whoever had had done a fabulous job, even if it was a little garish for her taste. Pam and Roy arrived not long after her. They lived in the same direction as Angela, but not nearly as far and had obviously been able to go home first.
Pam had curled her hair into loose spirals and pinned it back into a relaxed version of her usual style. She’d picked out a really pretty dress, too. It was colorful but it wasn’t showy, and Angela happened to really like blue and purple. It wasn’t a good color for her, she preferred her neutral tones, but Pam seemed to glow. Everyone knew that jealousy was a sin, but she wasn’t taken to believing she was perfect.
The night had been winding down when Pam came to her, a little shaken and disheveled. She said she’d had another fight with Roy and needed a ride home. In retrospect, if Angela had kept track of the number of times she’d driven Pam home after a fight with Roy, she might have guessed that it wasn’t going to work out. On the way, Pam sniffled a few times, once too loudly to be well-mannered in the least.
“Are you okay?” Angela tried to keep the annoyed tone out of her voice.
“I don’t know.” The more Angela looked at her, the more confused she’d become. She’d never seen Pam so broken up over a fight with Roy before, and Angela really wanted to believe that it had nothing to do with Jim moping around with red-rimmed eyes. But she was realistic and she’d worked with the two of them for too long. Angela was not the type to associate with adulterers, and she hoped not to make a liar out of herself, but nothing in this moment was congruent with any others.
“Did you fight with Jim?” Angela noticed Pam balk a bit at her frankness. She wasn’t one for gossip, but sitting quietly and observing had led her to know a thing or two about her co-workers that others hadn’t a clue about.
Pam didn’t answer, but Angela glanced over and saw her eyes swimming with new tears. Her hair still looked perfect and her makeup wasn’t running, and even heartbroken she looked beautiful.
+++
1. It was one o’clock on a Tuesday and Angela had taken an early lunch. Now, there was an unsettling rumbling in her stomach that was too low to be her stomach and even though Angela prayed and prayed that it was just indigestion, she found herself in the women’s restroom trying not to curse the fact that she’d forgotten for the third month in a row to restock the first-aid box with Tampax. She was almost ready to just say to heck with it and run to the grocery store down the street, even though she’d already taken her break, when she heard the bathroom door creak open and the sink start to run. Angela emerged from the stall cautiously and saw Pam trying to wash scuffs of highlighter and newspaper ink off her fingers.
“Uh, Pam?”
“Yeah,” Pam looked at her through the mirror and smiled, only politely, and Angela noticed, like usual.
“Do you happen to have a tampon?” She wasn’t one to discuss her lady business in public, but it was either ask Pam now, or wait till she was desperate and, God forbid, have to ask Dwight for help. She most definitely wasn’t one to discuss her lady business in public with men.
“Oh, uh, sure.” She seemed genuinely flustered and for a moment, Angela even heard the helpfulness in her voice. “In my purse. I can run get one. Wait here?” Angela nodded, like there was anywhere else she was going to go.
Pam was back in only a few seconds and handed Angela the tube. Angela thanked her and Pam smiled and backed out the door.
When she was gone, Angela looked down in her hand at the store-brand Super-Plus tampon. She never needed anything beyond a Regular and she knew what her mother and the women in her church said about Super-Plus tampons. And the women who used them.
“Figures,” she scoffed to herself. Angela threw the whole thing unused in the trashcan and ended up heading out early, ignoring one of the few sincere smiles Pam ever gave her.
3. Parts of the Final Chapter of Sketching From Life, Pam/Karen; MA
“Well it’s no fair, you just sitting there fully clothed while I’m about to strip down to less than my skivvies for you!”
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want to see some skin, Beesly! Off with that t-shirt, at least. Maybe even the shorts. You can sketch in underwear.”
Pam giggled, arraigning her pencils on the tray of the easel. She pulled two stools from her breakfast bar (just about the fanciest part of her apartment) and set one up behind the easel and the other a five or six feet in front of it. After a moment’s contemplation, she moved the stool a bit closer.
Karen pulled Pam’s robe around herself tighter, but it was a thin silk material, and didn’t do much to stave off the goosebumps.
“Okay, if it’ll make you feel more comfortable,” Pam leaned on one leg, her hip popped out the side, her hands resting on them, “I’ll draw in my underwear.”
Karen blushed as Pam unceremoniously unbuttoned her jean shorts and slipped them down her legs. Karen’s eyes followed along the length of Pam’s leg, and she looked away quickly when Pam tossed the bottoms on the couch.
Karen’s eyes followed again as Pam’s hands fell to the hem of her oversized shirt and lifted it up and off, where it joined the shorts on the couch. Karen tried not to look; she stared at Pam’s face, trying to read the peripheral. She could tell that Pam’s bra was black, and her underwear a coral or beige. Her eyes skipped lower quickly. Coral.
“Are you looking at my bruise?” Pam smirked. “It’s nasty, I know. I slammed into the dining table one night trying to get a glass of water. It was forever ago and I’m still waiting for it to go away.” Pam rubbed her fingers over a pale green discoloration near the top of her thigh. Karen accepted the invitation to look.
“Yeah, I know. I don’t bruise easy, really, but it takes forever for them to go away. But I’ve always remembered this one thing I heard about one of my sister’s friends? She hit her calf on her coffee table before her wedding and some masseuse was able to, like, massage the bruise away somehow. I’ve always wondered how that was possible. Or if it really was true.”
“Sounds a little weird.” Pam rubbed her fingers over the spot on her leg. “And seems like it would hurt if it wasn’t an old bruise.”
“Yeah, probably,” Karen watched as Pam’s fingers pressed into the flesh of her thigh.
“Okay, well. Let’s start this now so I don’t have to keep you naked in my living room all day.” Karen laughed. Uncomfortably.
_________________
She untied the slippery sash and let it fall. Part of her wanted to hold Pam’s gaze while she did it, but it was unarming enough to be naked in the middle of the day, with a floor lamp shining on her, in someone else’s apartment, she elected to just, stare past Pam.
The robe fell open quickly; Karen shrugged it off and tossed it over the back of the couch. She sat on the stool, hunching a bit. It was when Pam cleared her throat she finally looked up and at something.
“Here, can I just? I have to pose you a little.” Pam rose from her stool and walked over to Karen. She paused halfway and fiddled with the lighting a little (possibly unnecessarily, Karen noted) before she was next to Karen.
It was possible Pam was as deliciously uncomfortable with the situation as Karen was, but she appeared all professional.
Her right hand slipped across the skin of Karen’s chest, straightening her pose. Then her left hand fell in the small of Karen’s back, her right across her stomach, arching her slightly outward.
“With my arms?” Karen noted that her voice had broken slightly. Pam smiled at her, and Karen wasn’t sure if she had noticed.
“Howabout, just, at your sides?” Pam pushed at Karen’s shoulders and she let out a breath when she realized how close she was to the nude woman she hadn’t properly seen yet. “Kind of like…” Pam rested Karen’s palms on the edge of the stool, slightly behind her, which arched her back more until she was pulled into a long, lean line. “And your legs maybe, out in front of you? Can you rest them on the floor? You can totally cross them, by the way,” they both blushed a bit. “Yeah, that’s… okay,” Pam primped Karen’s hair, pulling it from where it rested on her back, over her shoulders. She moved Karen’s bangs out of her eyes and tucked them behind her ears, but some of the short strands fell back across her face. “Is that, are you comfortable?”
“Yeah,” Karen practically whispered.
“Okay,” Pam walked back to her easel slowly, Karen watched her. She shut her eyes tightly once she realized she was staring and opened them slowly, ready for whatever was to come next.
When Pam sat down, she busied herself unnecessarily with her art supplies, examining the sharpness of the pencils, the cleanliness of her eraser, until she finally felt ready to look up at the woman in front of her.
Karen hadn’t moved from how she’d posed her. Her bronze skin reflected light back in a way Pam’s knew hers never would, and she was dotted with freckles across her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. Her back arched slightly out with the positions of her hands, and be it from nervousness or the stir of the wind from the fan, (maybe something else…?), she took in the tightness of Karen’s dark nipples perfectly placed in the center of her small, round breasts.
Her arms stretched behind her, long lines, framing her taut stomach. Her hips rested on the edge of the stool, rounding her, creating curves. A small, sculpted patch of soft, dark curls was hidden somewhat by the position of her legs, crossed at the knees, the tops of her thighs dotted sparsely with more freckles that diminished in number down the length of her legs and the sturdy calves supporting her weight on the floor.
Pam licked her lips (she always did that before starting a drawing… didn’t she?) and picked up her lightest lead.
Karen closed her eyes and listened to the krrrrssshhh sounds the pencil made across the paper. She could almost swear that she could feel Pam’s eyes on her.
“Really?” Pam’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts.
“Huh?”
“You said that you could feel my eyes on you,” Pam smirked.
“Oh, I didn’t realize I’d said that out loud.” She could feel her face grow hot. Pam watched the blush travel down Karen’s neck, to her chest.
“Close your eyes again,” Pam demanded. Karen did as she was told. She felt her nipples harden even more and cursed them for it. “Where am I looking?”
“Um…,” Karen furrowed her brow and tried to concentrate. A tiny wave of goosebumps rose on her arms. “Arms?”
“Close, but no. Feet.” Pam laughed.
“That’s not close!” Karen protested.
“Not locationally no, but… kind of functionally?”
“No, my feet are not the same as my arms,” Karen stuck out her tongue and laughed.
“Whatever,” Pam started sketching again.
4. Jim/Pam; Potential MA (The Soto)
“Okay, how about this. I dare you.”
“You dare me Halpert? Are you twelve?”
“Wow. What kind of twelve year olds have you known?”
She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side.
“Okay, how about this. I’ll do it, but you’ll owe me back.”
“Interesting...,” Jim leaned on the counter and ran his hand through his hair. “Or, care to make this a challenge?”
+++
He walked into the break room and found her sitting at the table, leafing through a magazine and drinking her tea.
He walked up behind her, unnoticed until his mouth was at her ear. She sucked in a breath when he began to speak.
“Thanks for this morning.” She blushed a deep red and smiled up at him. “I think it might be your turn, though.”
Pam lifted her eyes to the ceiling and pretended to consider the idea meticulously. “Hmmm... ok.” Her eyes shone wickedly.
“Okay, the rules of the challenge are as follows. All summer long, in alternating turns, one person will name a place and the other person must successfully get off in said place without being noticed.”
5. Ryan/Karen; Potential MA
Karen is reclining in her bedroom in front of the TV when her cell phone starts vibrating on her nightstand.
11 o’clock was fairly early for her to be in bed, but her roommates were out drinking (she thought, they hadn’t exactly invited her) and she hadn’t actually had time to watch TV since she started the new job. She’d hidden it away in bedroom since she was the only one that paid the cable bill and she wasn’t about to let anyone else enjoy it more than her.
She glances at the screen. ‘Ryan.’ Karen smiles to herself and flips the phone open.
“Hello!”
“Hey! I didn’t think you’d answer, I was going to leave a message.”
“I didn’t think you were going to call.”
“Why, you got a hot date?”
“Oh yeah, me and Christopher Meloni, we’ve had this thing set up for weeks.” He laughs. “I thought you were going out with Greg,” as she says it, she can hear Greg in the background. It’s becoming increasingly clear that neither of them are exactly sober.
“I was out with Greg! Now we’re back!” He’s shouting and she laughs.
“Wow! Okay! Enthusiasm!”
“Sorry, I’m a little out of it.” She hears Greg yelling something about smoke in the background and she clicks down the volume of the TV to hear him.
“You’re totally stoned, aren’t you,” she can almost hear his guilty smile.
“Don’t worry though, I’m drunk, too. That’s completely legal.”
6. Things Pam didn’t know about Jim until they started dating.
I. He admits to her that he never really cared about his relationship with Karen, that he was just looking for something to cling to when he had to come back to face her. Maybe he thinks it’s supposed to be sweet or that she’ll feel sorry for him, or he’s just being honest about a moment of weakness, but whether or not he’s proud of that, Pam is a little upset that he’d hurt someone so deliberately.
II. He doesn’t always know when it’s not a good time for jokes. She’s not one of those people who always worries about their body, but it’s not exactly fun when she notices that some of her skirts are getting a little tighter and she changes clothes maybe three times that morning before she starts feeling like she wants to cry. And when he sees her standing in front of the mirror holding up
7. Jim/Pam; Potential MA (Basketball)
She can tell that Roy is steaming mad. He stalks over to her and just stands there, swaying from one foot to another and she’s worried for a minute that he’s going to hit her, but instead he drops his head to hands and yells something she can’t understand.
Everyone is watching them, even Jim, who’s standing over in a corner, paper towel held to his lip. She can feel them judging Roy, which hurts a little, but not as much as it hurts that she just saw him purposefully elbow Jim in the mouth.
“Shit,” she mutters under her breath, Angela shoots her a glare. This is really not the time. She stands up and leads Roy outside to the loading bay.
He’s almost hyperventilating.
“Pam, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That was, shit I don’t know. I just, I’m sorry.” It’s not what she’s expecting. “I could fucking kill that guy, you know!” That’s more what she was expecting.
“Roy,” she reaches out to put her hand on his shoulder and he jerks away.
“Don’t fucking touch me Pam, don’t!” She suddenly feels about three feet tall the way he’s yelling and standing over her. “You’re fucking leading him on!”
“Roy, I’m--,”
“No! You are! He’s fucking all over you and you just let him! He better be a goddamned fag or something or you should be telling him off!” His eyes are big and his face is bright red. “Are you fucking him?”
“What?! NO!”
“I want an honest fucking answer, Pam! I’m not joking! Are you fucking him?”
“I am not cheating on you Roy! Not with him, not with anyone! We’ve had this conversation and I am so over it, okay?”
“You better not be lying to me, I swear I’ll kill him if you’re lying to me.”
“No, you know what? Fuck you, Roy. I’m not doing this right now. Not in the middle of a goddamned work day, okay? Go home.”
“No, Pam, I’m not gonna leave in the middle of day.”
“Just go home, pack for the lake and get the hell out of the house. I can’t even look at you right now. Accusing me of all this shit, I’m done with it. Just go.”
It’s interesting sometimes that Roy is the one that keeps her in her shell, and the one that brings her out of it. Never at a good time, though. It’s usually when he’s being irrational and she has to bring him back to earth.
“Fuck,” she watches him drop to his knees in the middle of the parking lot and wonders when this became her life.
“Roy, you just need a vacation, okay?” She tries to keep the anger out of her voice, just sound comforting, but she only sounds accusatory. “Go to lake this weekend without me. Take Kenny. I just, I need to not be around you right now and you need to not be around me and we can talk about this later.”
He punches the asphalt and they both wince, but he doesn’t react other than that.
Finally: “Fine. I’ll go.”
___________
Jim is in the bathroom, holding a wet paper towel to his lip. The window is open just a crack and bits of Pam’s conversation with Roy float through the window.
Hearing him say those things to her hurts a hell of a lot more than anything Roy could ever physically do to him.
He’s ready to go out there and tell him off when he hears Pam go off on him, telling him to leave. She’s cursing up a storm and he’s never heard her that way before. His stomach curls pleasantly and he looks at himself in the mirror, scoffs at the reflection. Getting off on her yelling at her fiancé might just be the lowest moment yet.
He turns to look out the window and sees her coming back inside. When she passes by the bathroom, the door opened just a crack, he sees her peek in and look at him, but she doesn’t stop.
As a reward, I have decided to unload all of the fanfics that I have on my computer that have gone the way of the tubes. Not finished and probably never will be, but still deserve to known and loved for all they never were!
AN: Don't be alarmed. Some do end mid-sentence. Such is my fickle muse.
1. John/Rashida; Potential MA
He met her backstage at a show, around the time when he’d just moved to L.A. and was in the networking stage of his career, which basically meant that he went to a lot of parties, drank a lot of beer, met a lot of people, and hoped that some of them liked him.
She had definitely liked him.
She brought him a drink from across the room and introduced herself, kissing his cheek like she was some kind of royalty, and that’s just what she was used to doing. He was a bit taken aback by her, her dark good looks and her mellow laugh as she talked about how she’d gotten here late, missed the show, caught the party. Telling him as if he’d been waiting for her.
When she would laugh, he laughed along with her because she made it easy, and it was kind of like slipping back into something that used to be a habit.
He’d wondered if she’d come with anyone, since she was spending a lot of time clinging to him, he even maybe wondered if she knew anyone here.
About an hour into their meeting, and a few drinks later, she excused herself to the bathroom, told him to wait for her (liked he’d even considered leaving). It was that distinct moment that it occurred to him this was a lot like a date.
They were both fuzzy from alcohol and laughing a bit too loud when she turned to him and said, “let’s go,” a wicked gleam in her eye.
He wasn’t the type for casual hookups. Okay, so that was a new rule. He’d decided that when he’d first arrived in California. It was different in college where even people that you didn’t know, you kind of did. This was different situation; this wasn’t “your dorm or mine?” This was “where do you live and can we walk there?”
2. Five Times Angela Wanted to be Pam, and Five Times She Took it Back, Angela; M
Angela doesn’t dislike Pam, but at this point, it’s doubtful they’d ever end up exchanging recipes over tea. For one, she had lived in sin for God knows how long, but on the other hand, now that she was single, she seemed to have turned into a much stronger woman, which Angela admired. She’s always considered herself to be a strong woman, so it wasn’t too hard to extend a modicum of respect to Pam for abandoning her sinful lifestyle (and Angela was almost able to overlook the fact that Pam had in the process abandoned that handsome warehouse fellow… almost).
But there were always going to be a few things that Angela would be unable to overlook.
Five Times Angela Wanted to be Pam, and Five Times She Took it Back
1. Angela lived too far away from Dunder-Mifflin to run home and back before any six o’clock parties started, especially when there was rush-hour traffic. Scranton wasn’t Los Angeles, but sitting in traffic wasn’t an activity that Angela enjoyed. So, on the morning of Casino Night, she’d gotten up an hour earlier to do her hair, couldn’t be anything too fancy or inappropriate since she’d have to wear it through the workday, and taken the automatic feeder from her linen closed and filled up for the cats. She hid a few treats around the house and kissed them each a few extra times before grabbing her dress from the closet and heading in to work.
Since she’d never left, she’d gotten to the party earlier than everyone else had. She hadn’t planned this party, but whoever had had done a fabulous job, even if it was a little garish for her taste. Pam and Roy arrived not long after her. They lived in the same direction as Angela, but not nearly as far and had obviously been able to go home first.
Pam had curled her hair into loose spirals and pinned it back into a relaxed version of her usual style. She’d picked out a really pretty dress, too. It was colorful but it wasn’t showy, and Angela happened to really like blue and purple. It wasn’t a good color for her, she preferred her neutral tones, but Pam seemed to glow. Everyone knew that jealousy was a sin, but she wasn’t taken to believing she was perfect.
The night had been winding down when Pam came to her, a little shaken and disheveled. She said she’d had another fight with Roy and needed a ride home. In retrospect, if Angela had kept track of the number of times she’d driven Pam home after a fight with Roy, she might have guessed that it wasn’t going to work out. On the way, Pam sniffled a few times, once too loudly to be well-mannered in the least.
“Are you okay?” Angela tried to keep the annoyed tone out of her voice.
“I don’t know.” The more Angela looked at her, the more confused she’d become. She’d never seen Pam so broken up over a fight with Roy before, and Angela really wanted to believe that it had nothing to do with Jim moping around with red-rimmed eyes. But she was realistic and she’d worked with the two of them for too long. Angela was not the type to associate with adulterers, and she hoped not to make a liar out of herself, but nothing in this moment was congruent with any others.
“Did you fight with Jim?” Angela noticed Pam balk a bit at her frankness. She wasn’t one for gossip, but sitting quietly and observing had led her to know a thing or two about her co-workers that others hadn’t a clue about.
Pam didn’t answer, but Angela glanced over and saw her eyes swimming with new tears. Her hair still looked perfect and her makeup wasn’t running, and even heartbroken she looked beautiful.
+++
1. It was one o’clock on a Tuesday and Angela had taken an early lunch. Now, there was an unsettling rumbling in her stomach that was too low to be her stomach and even though Angela prayed and prayed that it was just indigestion, she found herself in the women’s restroom trying not to curse the fact that she’d forgotten for the third month in a row to restock the first-aid box with Tampax. She was almost ready to just say to heck with it and run to the grocery store down the street, even though she’d already taken her break, when she heard the bathroom door creak open and the sink start to run. Angela emerged from the stall cautiously and saw Pam trying to wash scuffs of highlighter and newspaper ink off her fingers.
“Uh, Pam?”
“Yeah,” Pam looked at her through the mirror and smiled, only politely, and Angela noticed, like usual.
“Do you happen to have a tampon?” She wasn’t one to discuss her lady business in public, but it was either ask Pam now, or wait till she was desperate and, God forbid, have to ask Dwight for help. She most definitely wasn’t one to discuss her lady business in public with men.
“Oh, uh, sure.” She seemed genuinely flustered and for a moment, Angela even heard the helpfulness in her voice. “In my purse. I can run get one. Wait here?” Angela nodded, like there was anywhere else she was going to go.
Pam was back in only a few seconds and handed Angela the tube. Angela thanked her and Pam smiled and backed out the door.
When she was gone, Angela looked down in her hand at the store-brand Super-Plus tampon. She never needed anything beyond a Regular and she knew what her mother and the women in her church said about Super-Plus tampons. And the women who used them.
“Figures,” she scoffed to herself. Angela threw the whole thing unused in the trashcan and ended up heading out early, ignoring one of the few sincere smiles Pam ever gave her.
3. Parts of the Final Chapter of Sketching From Life, Pam/Karen; MA
“Well it’s no fair, you just sitting there fully clothed while I’m about to strip down to less than my skivvies for you!”
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want to see some skin, Beesly! Off with that t-shirt, at least. Maybe even the shorts. You can sketch in underwear.”
Pam giggled, arraigning her pencils on the tray of the easel. She pulled two stools from her breakfast bar (just about the fanciest part of her apartment) and set one up behind the easel and the other a five or six feet in front of it. After a moment’s contemplation, she moved the stool a bit closer.
Karen pulled Pam’s robe around herself tighter, but it was a thin silk material, and didn’t do much to stave off the goosebumps.
“Okay, if it’ll make you feel more comfortable,” Pam leaned on one leg, her hip popped out the side, her hands resting on them, “I’ll draw in my underwear.”
Karen blushed as Pam unceremoniously unbuttoned her jean shorts and slipped them down her legs. Karen’s eyes followed along the length of Pam’s leg, and she looked away quickly when Pam tossed the bottoms on the couch.
Karen’s eyes followed again as Pam’s hands fell to the hem of her oversized shirt and lifted it up and off, where it joined the shorts on the couch. Karen tried not to look; she stared at Pam’s face, trying to read the peripheral. She could tell that Pam’s bra was black, and her underwear a coral or beige. Her eyes skipped lower quickly. Coral.
“Are you looking at my bruise?” Pam smirked. “It’s nasty, I know. I slammed into the dining table one night trying to get a glass of water. It was forever ago and I’m still waiting for it to go away.” Pam rubbed her fingers over a pale green discoloration near the top of her thigh. Karen accepted the invitation to look.
“Yeah, I know. I don’t bruise easy, really, but it takes forever for them to go away. But I’ve always remembered this one thing I heard about one of my sister’s friends? She hit her calf on her coffee table before her wedding and some masseuse was able to, like, massage the bruise away somehow. I’ve always wondered how that was possible. Or if it really was true.”
“Sounds a little weird.” Pam rubbed her fingers over the spot on her leg. “And seems like it would hurt if it wasn’t an old bruise.”
“Yeah, probably,” Karen watched as Pam’s fingers pressed into the flesh of her thigh.
“Okay, well. Let’s start this now so I don’t have to keep you naked in my living room all day.” Karen laughed. Uncomfortably.
_________________
She untied the slippery sash and let it fall. Part of her wanted to hold Pam’s gaze while she did it, but it was unarming enough to be naked in the middle of the day, with a floor lamp shining on her, in someone else’s apartment, she elected to just, stare past Pam.
The robe fell open quickly; Karen shrugged it off and tossed it over the back of the couch. She sat on the stool, hunching a bit. It was when Pam cleared her throat she finally looked up and at something.
“Here, can I just? I have to pose you a little.” Pam rose from her stool and walked over to Karen. She paused halfway and fiddled with the lighting a little (possibly unnecessarily, Karen noted) before she was next to Karen.
It was possible Pam was as deliciously uncomfortable with the situation as Karen was, but she appeared all professional.
Her right hand slipped across the skin of Karen’s chest, straightening her pose. Then her left hand fell in the small of Karen’s back, her right across her stomach, arching her slightly outward.
“With my arms?” Karen noted that her voice had broken slightly. Pam smiled at her, and Karen wasn’t sure if she had noticed.
“Howabout, just, at your sides?” Pam pushed at Karen’s shoulders and she let out a breath when she realized how close she was to the nude woman she hadn’t properly seen yet. “Kind of like…” Pam rested Karen’s palms on the edge of the stool, slightly behind her, which arched her back more until she was pulled into a long, lean line. “And your legs maybe, out in front of you? Can you rest them on the floor? You can totally cross them, by the way,” they both blushed a bit. “Yeah, that’s… okay,” Pam primped Karen’s hair, pulling it from where it rested on her back, over her shoulders. She moved Karen’s bangs out of her eyes and tucked them behind her ears, but some of the short strands fell back across her face. “Is that, are you comfortable?”
“Yeah,” Karen practically whispered.
“Okay,” Pam walked back to her easel slowly, Karen watched her. She shut her eyes tightly once she realized she was staring and opened them slowly, ready for whatever was to come next.
When Pam sat down, she busied herself unnecessarily with her art supplies, examining the sharpness of the pencils, the cleanliness of her eraser, until she finally felt ready to look up at the woman in front of her.
Karen hadn’t moved from how she’d posed her. Her bronze skin reflected light back in a way Pam’s knew hers never would, and she was dotted with freckles across her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. Her back arched slightly out with the positions of her hands, and be it from nervousness or the stir of the wind from the fan, (maybe something else…?), she took in the tightness of Karen’s dark nipples perfectly placed in the center of her small, round breasts.
Her arms stretched behind her, long lines, framing her taut stomach. Her hips rested on the edge of the stool, rounding her, creating curves. A small, sculpted patch of soft, dark curls was hidden somewhat by the position of her legs, crossed at the knees, the tops of her thighs dotted sparsely with more freckles that diminished in number down the length of her legs and the sturdy calves supporting her weight on the floor.
Pam licked her lips (she always did that before starting a drawing… didn’t she?) and picked up her lightest lead.
Karen closed her eyes and listened to the krrrrssshhh sounds the pencil made across the paper. She could almost swear that she could feel Pam’s eyes on her.
“Really?” Pam’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts.
“Huh?”
“You said that you could feel my eyes on you,” Pam smirked.
“Oh, I didn’t realize I’d said that out loud.” She could feel her face grow hot. Pam watched the blush travel down Karen’s neck, to her chest.
“Close your eyes again,” Pam demanded. Karen did as she was told. She felt her nipples harden even more and cursed them for it. “Where am I looking?”
“Um…,” Karen furrowed her brow and tried to concentrate. A tiny wave of goosebumps rose on her arms. “Arms?”
“Close, but no. Feet.” Pam laughed.
“That’s not close!” Karen protested.
“Not locationally no, but… kind of functionally?”
“No, my feet are not the same as my arms,” Karen stuck out her tongue and laughed.
“Whatever,” Pam started sketching again.
4. Jim/Pam; Potential MA (The Soto)
“Okay, how about this. I dare you.”
“You dare me Halpert? Are you twelve?”
“Wow. What kind of twelve year olds have you known?”
She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side.
“Okay, how about this. I’ll do it, but you’ll owe me back.”
“Interesting...,” Jim leaned on the counter and ran his hand through his hair. “Or, care to make this a challenge?”
+++
He walked into the break room and found her sitting at the table, leafing through a magazine and drinking her tea.
He walked up behind her, unnoticed until his mouth was at her ear. She sucked in a breath when he began to speak.
“Thanks for this morning.” She blushed a deep red and smiled up at him. “I think it might be your turn, though.”
Pam lifted her eyes to the ceiling and pretended to consider the idea meticulously. “Hmmm... ok.” Her eyes shone wickedly.
“Okay, the rules of the challenge are as follows. All summer long, in alternating turns, one person will name a place and the other person must successfully get off in said place without being noticed.”
5. Ryan/Karen; Potential MA
Karen is reclining in her bedroom in front of the TV when her cell phone starts vibrating on her nightstand.
11 o’clock was fairly early for her to be in bed, but her roommates were out drinking (she thought, they hadn’t exactly invited her) and she hadn’t actually had time to watch TV since she started the new job. She’d hidden it away in bedroom since she was the only one that paid the cable bill and she wasn’t about to let anyone else enjoy it more than her.
She glances at the screen. ‘Ryan.’ Karen smiles to herself and flips the phone open.
“Hello!”
“Hey! I didn’t think you’d answer, I was going to leave a message.”
“I didn’t think you were going to call.”
“Why, you got a hot date?”
“Oh yeah, me and Christopher Meloni, we’ve had this thing set up for weeks.” He laughs. “I thought you were going out with Greg,” as she says it, she can hear Greg in the background. It’s becoming increasingly clear that neither of them are exactly sober.
“I was out with Greg! Now we’re back!” He’s shouting and she laughs.
“Wow! Okay! Enthusiasm!”
“Sorry, I’m a little out of it.” She hears Greg yelling something about smoke in the background and she clicks down the volume of the TV to hear him.
“You’re totally stoned, aren’t you,” she can almost hear his guilty smile.
“Don’t worry though, I’m drunk, too. That’s completely legal.”
6. Things Pam didn’t know about Jim until they started dating.
I. He admits to her that he never really cared about his relationship with Karen, that he was just looking for something to cling to when he had to come back to face her. Maybe he thinks it’s supposed to be sweet or that she’ll feel sorry for him, or he’s just being honest about a moment of weakness, but whether or not he’s proud of that, Pam is a little upset that he’d hurt someone so deliberately.
II. He doesn’t always know when it’s not a good time for jokes. She’s not one of those people who always worries about their body, but it’s not exactly fun when she notices that some of her skirts are getting a little tighter and she changes clothes maybe three times that morning before she starts feeling like she wants to cry. And when he sees her standing in front of the mirror holding up
7. Jim/Pam; Potential MA (Basketball)
She can tell that Roy is steaming mad. He stalks over to her and just stands there, swaying from one foot to another and she’s worried for a minute that he’s going to hit her, but instead he drops his head to hands and yells something she can’t understand.
Everyone is watching them, even Jim, who’s standing over in a corner, paper towel held to his lip. She can feel them judging Roy, which hurts a little, but not as much as it hurts that she just saw him purposefully elbow Jim in the mouth.
“Shit,” she mutters under her breath, Angela shoots her a glare. This is really not the time. She stands up and leads Roy outside to the loading bay.
He’s almost hyperventilating.
“Pam, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That was, shit I don’t know. I just, I’m sorry.” It’s not what she’s expecting. “I could fucking kill that guy, you know!” That’s more what she was expecting.
“Roy,” she reaches out to put her hand on his shoulder and he jerks away.
“Don’t fucking touch me Pam, don’t!” She suddenly feels about three feet tall the way he’s yelling and standing over her. “You’re fucking leading him on!”
“Roy, I’m--,”
“No! You are! He’s fucking all over you and you just let him! He better be a goddamned fag or something or you should be telling him off!” His eyes are big and his face is bright red. “Are you fucking him?”
“What?! NO!”
“I want an honest fucking answer, Pam! I’m not joking! Are you fucking him?”
“I am not cheating on you Roy! Not with him, not with anyone! We’ve had this conversation and I am so over it, okay?”
“You better not be lying to me, I swear I’ll kill him if you’re lying to me.”
“No, you know what? Fuck you, Roy. I’m not doing this right now. Not in the middle of a goddamned work day, okay? Go home.”
“No, Pam, I’m not gonna leave in the middle of day.”
“Just go home, pack for the lake and get the hell out of the house. I can’t even look at you right now. Accusing me of all this shit, I’m done with it. Just go.”
It’s interesting sometimes that Roy is the one that keeps her in her shell, and the one that brings her out of it. Never at a good time, though. It’s usually when he’s being irrational and she has to bring him back to earth.
“Fuck,” she watches him drop to his knees in the middle of the parking lot and wonders when this became her life.
“Roy, you just need a vacation, okay?” She tries to keep the anger out of her voice, just sound comforting, but she only sounds accusatory. “Go to lake this weekend without me. Take Kenny. I just, I need to not be around you right now and you need to not be around me and we can talk about this later.”
He punches the asphalt and they both wince, but he doesn’t react other than that.
Finally: “Fine. I’ll go.”
___________
Jim is in the bathroom, holding a wet paper towel to his lip. The window is open just a crack and bits of Pam’s conversation with Roy float through the window.
Hearing him say those things to her hurts a hell of a lot more than anything Roy could ever physically do to him.
He’s ready to go out there and tell him off when he hears Pam go off on him, telling him to leave. She’s cursing up a storm and he’s never heard her that way before. His stomach curls pleasantly and he looks at himself in the mirror, scoffs at the reflection. Getting off on her yelling at her fiancé might just be the lowest moment yet.
He turns to look out the window and sees her coming back inside. When she passes by the bathroom, the door opened just a crack, he sees her peek in and look at him, but she doesn’t stop.