Title: And Then One Step Forward
Author: allthingsholy
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Toby/Pam
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, Toby would be happy all the time and have harems of women dedicated to him and his house would be made of solid gold.
Notes: For otahyoni and the yankeeficswap challenge at LiveJournal, off the prompt, "Toby chases that feeling."
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In the summertime Toby likes to sleep with his windows open, splayed out on his back, sheets twisted around his ankles. Cathy used to close the windows and turn the air way down to 68 degrees starting in mid-May, but a lot of things have changed since then.
--
The morning Jim and Karen come into work together, pull up in Jim's Corolla as Pam and Toby are walking into the building talking about last night's "Scrubs," Pam sits with him at lunch, pushes food around on her plate while he chews mouthfuls of too-dry salad with flavorless dressing. Karen lets out a laugh from the break room and Toby puts his hand over Pam's and she doesn't pull away.
--
The night he spent in his car—95 degrees in June with all the windows cracked and sweat in a line at the top of his lip, Cathy in his home, in his bed, with his daughter, his future—he dreamt about drowning, gasping for air and water filling his lungs, clawing all around him with nothing to hold on to. He feels that panic sometimes, alone in the back of the office, Kelly's voice quick into the phone receiver, the walls around him pressing in like he's never done anything with his life but this, like he'll never do more than file complaints from Dwight and see his daughter every other weekend. He loosens his tie and leans his head back and his knees hit against the bottom of his desk and the hum of the air conditioner is too loud in his ears.
--
Their first date, Toby takes Pam to a restaurant that's too fancy and his tie doesn't quite match his shirt and Pam talks too fast about things he doesn't understand, the different techniques of shading to create depth and focus in a sketch. She chatters through the salad course and drinks her first glass of wine too quickly, until Toby interrupts her with his fingers over hers, their hands pressed up against the breadbasket.
"Pam, it's okay." His voice is quiet, his words gentle. "This doesn't have to be, you know." He clears his throat, draws back his hand. "We're just having dinner."
Pam swallows hard and nods twice, takes a deep breath and almost smiles. Their conversation comes easier and by the dessert course she's laughing, and Toby's world doesn't seem so small.
--
The night Cathy told him she wanted a divorce, that she was leaving him for Tom, the single father of two who lived down the street, he was finishing his tax returns, putting receipts and bank statements back into boxes.
His hands stilled, fists full of papers on their charitable donations, and his stomach dropped. She leaned against the doorframe, crossed her arms over herself and tilted her head to one side, eyes on the wall above his head.
"Cathy, I don't--"
"It's too hard, trying to love you all the time." It came out a whisper, but he felt it ring around the room, settle itself in his chest. Tears pricked at his eyes and his throat constricted, and Cathy stared at the floor.
"Does Sasha know?" He sounded strangled, far away. He set the papers on his desk, put his head in his hands. He heard Cathy shift, felt her move toward him.
"I didn't want to tell her until we had to." She cleared her throat, took another step closer. "She won't understand."
"I don't understand, Cathy." He sucked in a breath and ran his hands over his face, his wedding ring cold against his cheek. He finally looked up, saw the resignation and sadness in her eyes.
"Don't fight me on this, Toby, please." She put a hand on his shoulder, pressed a kiss to his head. "I'm not happy anymore." Toby sat still, his hands on his desk, and started packing his things a week later.
--
There's a month of dinners and a few movies, and another month of making out on the couch with his hands under Pam's blouse and one time like teenagers in the parking lot at Dunder Mifflin when she overhears Karen talking about Jim meeting her parents.
One night after dinner—three months in and things are nice and Pam told him about Dwight and Angela, so now they watch the two of them and it's something else to occupy the time—Pam invites Toby up to her apartment and her hands won't stop shaking long enough to open up the bottle of wine she's been working on for the better part of three minutes.
Toby walks up behind her, takes the corkscrew from her and puts his hands on her hips. She drops her arms to her sides, breathes in deep and her back presses against his chest.
"I was in love with Jim," she says without turning around. Toby takes his hands from her hips and places them flat on the counter around her, one on each side of her, a perverse kind of hug. Pam sways on her feet, rocks back against his chest and then away. Toby doesn't say anything. "Even when I wasn't, I think I was." Her voice is steady, her neck straight.
Toby drops his head, breathes out hard against her shoulder. He starts to pull back, says, "Pam, I don't—"
She grabs his hands, presses them back down into the counter, her nails hard against the tops of his hands. She turns her face over her shoulder enough to see him out of the corner of her eye. "I was in love with Jim." She moves a hand up to his wrist, pauses a moment before turning around to face him. They're close, too close, closer than they've ever been before. Her breath is hot against his cheek, her hands cold against his chest. "I was."
Toby swallows hard, looks over Pam's head to the pictures on her wall, prints of cities and people, black and white flowers and grasping hands. He looks down at her, opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off with a long, hard kiss and holds onto him so tightly he can't find it in himself to pull away.
A week later she buys him a toothbrush to keep at her place and when they come into work together and something in Jim's eyes shifts, Pam looks at Toby and almost doesn't notice.
--
At their wedding reception, Toby forgot a part of the poem Cathy had made him memorize to recite and she'd given him a look, a quick, hard look that he'd never seen before. He's decided that moment was important, maybe the most important one they ever had. He feels like he should've known better, should've been expecting it. He feels like he brings a lot of things upon himself.
--
On weekends Toby has Sasha, he and Pam take her to the park or the zoo or stay in and rent those Disney musicals she loves so much. Pam knows all the words to the songs and sits next to him while Sasha dances around the living room, hands over her head and blonde hair in a mess around her face. Pam's laugh is bright and Sasha doesn't stop smiling and a feeling Toby'd forgotten starts to spread in his chest. When Sasha finally settles down, collapses in a ball on her Disney princess blanket, Pam puts a hand on his thigh, lays her head on his shoulder. They stay like that, his breath easy, his fingers in her hair, all the way through the credits.
--
When Toby started working at Dunder Mifflin, it was as temporary thing, something to pass the time until a better job came along. Ten years later, when he qualified for the gold employee bonus, Jan called to congratulate him and thank him for all his years of service. Toby stopped her halfway through her call, told her he had important work to finish. After they hung up, he sat completely still for ten whole minutes, then put on his coat and left for the day.
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Toby walks into the break room one day to refill his coffee, sees Pam with a hand on Jim's arm, her head thrown back in laughter. Jim watches Pam's face, the lines of her smile and the bend of her neck, and there's a look in his eyes Toby's always been able to recognize.
When Pam sees Toby she draws her hand back but doesn't stop smiling and something in Toby catches, shifts. His eyes flicker down to the floor and he almost frowns until Pam says, "Toby, come listen to Jim's joke, it's hilarious." She walks across the kitchen and takes his wrist in her hand and her smile is brighter than anything he's ever seen. They stand that way, her fingers playing against his pulse, while Jim tells the joke with half a smile and a look like he could almost be happy for them.
They all laugh at the punch line until Michael comes in to pull Pam away, and then it's just Toby and Jim in the break room. Toby looks just over Jim's shoulder, sees Karen on a sales call, one hand at her temple. He looks back at Jim and smiles and Jim rocks back on his heels and doesn't say a word. The door closes behind Jim as Toby pours his coffee, and when he looks back into the main office, Jim's trailing a hand across the back of Karen's chair and he's almost—almost—smiling.
--
His first girlfriend, Janet Marshall, breaks up with him for Tim O'Dell. He's upset for twenty minutes, and then goes to baseball practice and has a crush on Bryan Smith's sister by the end of the day.
--
Jim and Karen finally break up some time in April, without loud words or dramatic scenes. Jim starts to eat by himself while Karen has lunch with Andy, or Phyllis, or Pam and Toby. He's shocked when three weeks later Jim's clearing out his desk, talking about accepting a job in New York for corporate, for the pay raise and the snotty new title. Pam hands him a bag of jelly beans and whispers something in his ear that Toby doesn't quite catch, and for a moment there's a stiffness in Toby's neck, but then Jim pulls his hand away from Pam's fingers and the feeling is gone.
Toby invites Jim out for drinks, a way to celebrate, commiserate, and they've had two drinks too many before Toby notices that Jim's unsteady in his seat and no longer smiling.
Jim looks at Toby, looks away, then takes a long pull from his drink and sighs hard. "I took the job in Stamford to get away from Pam," he says, fingers pulling at the soggy label on the bottle in his hands. He stares at the bar, head down, eyes drooping. "I was in love with Pam."
Toby stills in his seat and doesn't look at Jim. There are baseball highlights running on a TV in the corner, and tennis scores on the screen above the bar, and Jim's still playing with the label and Toby's breath is coming quicker and quicker. He thinks of Pam's hand on his chest, Cathy's eyes the first time she dropped off Sasha after the divorce was finalized. He thinks of Pam's face on Jim's last day at Scranton way back last May, thinks of the hesitancy in her smile the first time they kissed and the place in his mind where his certainty used to be. He thinks of water, quick, flowing waves and the desperation that comes with standing still for so long. Toby drains his beer, finally looks Jim in the face.
"We're happy, Jim." His words are clipped but not unkind, his jaw tight and eyes sincere. "I can make her happy."
Jim's eyes start to fill and his face drops even further, hands finally still against the wood of the table. "I might've loved Karen, too," he says, the need for it to be true in his eyes.
Toby smiles sadly, pulls out his wallet and drops some money on the table. He clears his throat, pauses at Jim's chair. "It's better, to move on." Jim laughs a quiet, bitter laugh, and sways forward. Toby puts a hand on his shoulder, says, "Come on, Jim, I'll drive you home."
The ride's long and silent, but when Toby drops Jim off he drives over to Pam's apartment, calls from the hallway at her front door. She's dressed in a too-big t-shirt, her sketchbook in one hand, her fingers black with lead. "How was the bar?" She leans against the doorframe, crosses her arms over herself and tilts her head to one side. Something in his memory flickers, but it's gone before he can name it, and he's through the door and in Pam's apartment before he answers.
"It was good, I think. Jim got a little drunk, but. You know how it is, to leave a place." Pam leans her back against the door, presses her sketchbook to her chest. He rests himself on the back of the couch, sees the sketch through the lines of her arms, Sasha's big smile in black and white, a man's hand mussing her hair.
Pam breathes out, rocks up off her heels and walks toward him. "I don't know, I don't do much moving forward," she says. She stops in front of him, pauses in the space between his knees. He takes the sketchbook from her hands, sets it on the couch, then brings a hand up to smooth the bangs away from her eyes.
Toby breathes in, then exhales hard and settles into himself. "You're happy, with me?" His words are quiet but sure, his hands steady on her arm, at her hip.
Pam narrows her eyes, smiles in confusion. "Toby, what're you—"
"I'm moving forward," he says.
Pam raises her hands, presses a kiss to his forehead, her fingers at his neck, thumbs at his jaw line. "I'm happy," she says, smile small but eyes bright, breath hot against his lips. She kisses him quick but steady, then grabs his wrists and pulls him upright. "To bed with you, Toby Flenderson," she says, and Toby follows her out of the living room, smile wide.
It's an unusually warm night for April, and a soft breeze comes in through the open window. Toby lays still, Pam's breath hot on his chest, her feet tangled with his. He closes his eyes, breathes out, presses a kiss to the top of her head and falls asleep to the hush of the curtains against the sill.