The skies around them were pitch black, barely even spotted with white stars. His headlights cut through the thick, inky atmosphere, touching nothing but empty road and cracked yellow paint.

Karen slept in the passenger's seat beside him, her head tilted away from him, her arms crossed in her lap, her hair covering her face. As he leaned over to turn the radio on softly, he heard the lyrics and thanked God she was asleep. She would have recognized the song, and it would have started something if he left it on, which he planned to.

This lass
Some fifteen odd years
Is widely known
To have spat
In her teacher's eye
And will not take it back
For now I see
How after all the cracks
So rightly, I kid you not

"Pam Berry", by The Shins. It was one of his favorite songs off the new album, but with Karen's touchiness over his...relationship with Pam, he avoided anything that might set her off. However, when she wasn't around, he enjoyed it. It didn't particularly remind him of Pam, (although the irony wasn't lost on him when he realized it was Pam B...,) but the short, sweet, unusual little thing was always able to make him smile.


After dropping Karen off with just the gentlest of goodnight kisses, he turned his car towards his place, his mind wandering. He'd heard rumblings around the office of an after-work bar run, something they'd done a lot when he first started but not as much lately. It had been tempting, but Karen wanted to go to the managers' thing and, well, it seemed easier to agree with her than to convince her to let him spend more time around Pam.

Pam again, he realized. He tried, he tried, to think about her less. He liked Karen. He might even love her, actually. But no matter how much he pretended, he would never, ever feel the same way about her as he did about Pam. He knew that was unfair, and really, really selfish, but it didn't stop him.

He thought about earlier, when she'd been "admitting" to seeing all those men at the party. When it came to Guy #32, (or whatever,) he was really...well, pissed off. Although he had to admit now that it was a pretty good gag, the paranoid side of him was thinking, "Is she getting me back for the Pam thing?"

"Fuck," he swore aloud. "Halpert, you're an asshole."

The realization made him laugh, and now he couldn't help but wonder if he was losing his mind completely. But as he pulled into his driveway, his lights swept over a figure cuddled on his front steps.

"...Pam?"

He'd barely pulled the keys out of the ignition when he shoved the door open and ran to her side. "Pam," he repeated, his voice breaking the silence of the still, cold night.

She looked up at him, her eyes shining with tears but as dull as the night sky. It wasn't a look he was used to on her, nor was it one he ever wanted to see again. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but her voice failed her, and he had to swallow as another sparkling tear slipped down her cheek.

"Jesus, don't do that, Pam." He crouched to pull her up and held her tightly against him. "Please, don't cry." He didn't force her to talk, instead letting her gather herself as she hid her face in his coat. "Whatever it is, you'll be okay."

As they stood there in the increasingly bitter cold, he took comfort and warmth from her strawberry-scented hair and her warm hands against his chest and her body pressed to his. For the first time in a very long time, all he was thinking about was her well-being - he didn't even think of her as being anything but a friend in need of help.

"I'm scared, Jim."

"Of what?" He didn't pull back, instead talking into her soft curls.

"Roy. I'm really scared of him right now."

Suddenly, they were Jim-and-Pam again, the couple that could have been but probably never would, the friends who couldn't settle on that. Except something had changed. Roy had done something bad, so bad Jim couldn't fathom what it could have been. Whatever it was, though, it had reduced Pam, his Pam, to a shivering, sobbing mess in his arms.

He was ready to murder Roy.

"Pam, did he touch you?" Finally, he moved to meet her eyes. "Did he hurt you?"

She was silent for a second, and the anger burned so hot in Jim's chest, he was afraid he might hurt her if she didn't answer. "No," she whispered. "But I'm so afraid he might try to hurt you."

His head reeling, Jim wrapped his arm tighter around her shoulders. "Come on. We need to get you inside before you freeze to death." He was glad when she moved with him, no hesitation in her steps.


She was settled on the couch, her tiny, frozen fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee before he sat beside her. "Now, take a couple of deep breaths and then tell me exactly what happened."

"We were at Poor Richard's," she said quietly. "Roy and I were doing okay. We were talking, laughing... It was like it used to be. But I... I wanted us to start fresh - no secrets, no lies. Just be honest with each other."

"Okay."

"So I told him about Casino Night." Jim's heart stopped. "I told him that... I told him that you told me you had feelings for me, and that you kissed me." She looked at him, her blue eyes still dark. "I admitted that I... I had some feelings for you, too, and that I kissed you back." Her face changed and he saw the fear and horror cross her delicate features. It took all his strength not to pull her into his arms and tell her that he'd never let anyone scare her like that again. "Roy just lost it. He started screaming, to the point that I stood up because I was scared. He started...throwing things. He smashed a mirror, and so many glasses. There was broken glass everywhere... And the whole time, he kept yelling at me - he made me feel... He made me feel like a whore, actually. There's no better word for it. I told him that we were over, for good, and as I was leaving, I could hear him still breaking things." Her hands were shaking so badly now she had to put the mug down. "I'm...I think he might come looking for you, Jim."

Jim didn't know how to respond to her. There was so much going through his head, like someone was tuning a radio but couldn't get a station. Clips of her story echoed over and over, drowning out all rational thought. "I had some feelings for you... I kissed you back... Made me feel like a whore... I think he might come looking for you..."

He closed his eyes, reaching over and pulling Pam back into his arms. "Pam, listen to me. I need you to trust me. Do you trust me?" She nodded against his chest, her breathing erratic. "First of all, you have to relax. Roy won't come here, and you and I are safe. And secondly, you are not a whore. Nowhere near it, actually. And if that piece of shit made you feel like that, then he needs some sense knocked into him. You're beautiful and smart and you're getting so independent - I love seeing you becoming the person you're meant to be. You don't need to be with him - or anyone - just because you're comfortable there. You need to do what's right for Pam Beesly." And if that means you can't be with me, I'll have to accept it, he added silently.

Pam sighed, trying to regain some semblance of control. "It's just... I've never seen him like that. I was terrified. I ran out of there, and all I could see were everyone's faces, everyone's eyes on me, like it was my fault."

"Stop thinking like that." Jim forced his voice to be stern, even though his heart was breaking for her. "None of this is your fault. You're the mature one here. You have to remember that. You tried to make it right."

"I admitted to being in love with someone else."

Outwardly, he ignored her statement - inwardly, he was ready to scream from the rooftop. "You're so brave, Pam. Don't fall back now because of this. Don't let him get control." He couldn't help but wonder - had their relationship always been this way? Was Roy abusive to Pam and he'd just never seen the signs? Had she denied it for all those years? Or was this his fault?

"It's not because of you," she murmured, as if she could read his thoughts. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if she could - they'd been so close for so long, it made perfect sense. "I think Roy was happy when I was good-old Predictable Pam. Go to work, come home, make dinner, watch TV, go to bed." She pulled away, brushed her palms over her cheeks. "Now, I have my life. I have my art classes and my friends and... And I'm not the Pam he fell in love with in high school. I'm growing up, and he doesn't like it."

Jim watched her as she spoke. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying, her cheeks flushed and stained with the remains of tears. The left side of her bottom lip was slightly swollen - a side-effect of her nervous habit of biting it. Despite all that, a very, very large part of him wanted nothing more than to kiss her, to make her forget Roy and Poor Richard's and too many beers and too little compassion. He wanted her to know she was special and incredible and sweet and perfectly flawed.

He couldn't, though. Not now that he'd been a major cause for the pain he now saw in her.

"Jim?"

Shaking off his semi-trance, he met her gaze again. "Yeah?"

"This is probably insane given the circumstances, but I think... Maybe I could stay here with you tonight?" Her cheeks turned redder. "I mean, I'm just... He might go to the apartment, and I can't deal with it right now. I'll sleep on the couch, and you don't even have to know I'm here..."

Unlikely, he laughed silently. "Of course you can stay," he replied. "I'll even stay right here with you to make sure you fall asleep." He smiled, trying to lighten the mood. "And as long as you don't drool, you can use one of my pillows."

"Jerk," she said, her lips curving for the first time all night. "Maybe now I'll drool on purpose."

"Of course you will."


A couple of hours later, after a viewing of Dazed & Confused to take her mind off...well, everything, Pam sat next to Jim, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed. By her (finally) steady breathing, he knew she was asleep. Part of him wanted to get up, to leave her alone to sleep off the effects of the beer and her emotions. But another, larger, slightly smarter part decided to stay - just to make sure she didn't have any nightmares.

As he was maneuvering a large blanket off the back of the couch, she groaned and shifted her body. He stopped, afraid to move, ready to act if she freaked. Instead, she mumbled his name. "Jim?"

"I'm here, Pam. I'm not going anywhere." He wasn't sure if she was conscious enough to understand him, but he felt that at least the sound of his voice might reassure her. "Just go back to sleep."

"Mmm," she replied. "Okay." He'd just gotten the blanket over her legs when she spoke again. "Jim, I love you."

This time, his heart skipped a beat. She was asleep, or mostly, anyway. She couldn't honestly mean it, right? It was a friendly thing - a way to thank him for the night. It didn't mean that she loved him. Again, his head was spinning.

"Did you hear me?" she asked, and he stopped breathing for a second.

"Yeah, Pam. I heard you."

"Okayyy," she yawned. "I just needed you to know." A tiny, sleepy giggle punctuated the sentence. "Once."

"Mocking me in your state of half-sleep now, are you, Beesly?" he said gently, meaning to tease but instead sounding awed.

She didn't answer. And as he started to drift off himself, her warm, finally peaceful body pressed against his ribs, he thought of Karen, of Roy, of what the morning might bring. He knew that when they woke up, alert and aware of everything that had happened, it could all change in an instant.

But at the same time, he knew that there was the possibility it could stay like this.

He couldn't help wondering if this was the start of something big.