A/N: Finally able to post this given the date! =) Wrote this one a whiiiile ago. Something stupid and fun for the holiday. Redoing Halloween. I'm trying to upload all the chapters at once, hope it works. If it doesn't, I'll submit the rest tonight. Enjoy. =)

Disclaimer: Nothing's mine.


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When I set the phone back onto the receiver, and I hear her giggle at my Michael impression (and my heart breaks with the sound), and the cameras see her beautiful smile and our quiet triumph in a high five that spans the room, what they don't know is that she almost kissed me last night.

She's breaking me apart, piece by piece, just like she always is. She remembered the kiss from the Dundies at Chili's, and I wasn't so sure she would. She was pretty drunk. But she didn't think of it as a kiss, the kind that made me fall asleep with my hand against my lips that particular night. She gave her friend a hug and her lips bumped his; sometimes I think that's what she believes happened.

But she mentioned it to me the other night, right after she almost kissed me. It was at the same stupid bar, after we'd all gone out for the "closing ceremonies." I'm all for a drink here and there if it means my boss doesn't find out I spent half the day playing stupid games with my coworkers and falling even more in love with a girl who's engaged. She had a stupid little pink drink in front of her that I was teasing her mercilessly about, but the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed about it did me in. It meant that every time she left our table, I had to go up and by her another one, just so I could see it match the flush of her cheeks again. She laughed every time.

I just nursed a beer, I wanted to be able to drive her home, since she'd asked me when Roy wouldn't come along. I felt like maybe I should have something a lot stronger, because Pam was a little tipsy and giggly and everything perfect that I needed in my life. But that kind of thinking is probably what makes you an alcoholic, and for some reason, my buzzed mind thought, your mother would be so disappointed.

I was drunk on her and she was drunk on pink drinks, and neither of us noticed that almost all of our coworkers were gone. We had a booth in the back to ourselves, seated in the same side because at one point the other was where Ryan and Toby were, but they'd been gone for hours. Once in a while, she'd laugh and put her hand on my thigh and I'd have a brief moment of indecision -- should I lay her down across the table and lower my body on top of hers? Or do I shove her away and remind her she's supposed to be loving someone more than me, that she doesn't get to lead us both on? You know, normal stuff.

When I felt my cheeks burning a little, I ordered a Coke and so did she. I poked her little nose and smirked at her, and the smile she gave me was enough to make my day. I know without those beers I would have never touched her like that. When I looked back up at her, I almost did a double take, because the smile was fading away and she was staring at my lips and I had an overwhelming sense of being in trouble.

She leaned in, and I remember thinking oh no, oh no, okay, okay exactly like that. When I knew for sure she was about to kiss me, I parted my lips slightly, and so did she, and it got a lot warmer in the room. But she just stopped short, her lips twitching a little, finally bearing her teeth and smiling tersely. She was not even an inch from my mouth, enough to feel her breathing on my lips, and her hand on my chest as she held herself against me.

I poured that Coke down my throat and was ready to leave. She wanted to finish hers at the the table, and she wouldn't look at me, but I told her to just take the glass into my car. She giggled and said, "That's stealing," but I didn't feel like giggling with her. That was a thing that made me happy, and that wasn't what I wanted to feel just then.

I dropped her off at her house and she tried to give me a really big hug, the kind that girls always give their go-to guy friends. I wouldn't let myself fall into that, because the kind of big hugs I would want to give her are the ones where I bury my nose in her hair and pick her up off the ground and never let her go. So, obviously... Yeah. I laughed and patted her on the back and told her I'd see her tomorrow.

And when did, it was just like nothing happened. And as much as I do not understand this girl sometimes, I'm a sucker for everything about her, and that smile brings me back to life. We are back to what we have always been today and if I'm happy just to see her giggle, the drawn whiskers stretching on her pretty face, then I guess I'm doomed. But, you know, look at her.




How do I feel ultimately rejected since this girl that I'm nearly in love with is basically saying she'd be okay with me leaving? I guess since she's done this kiss me or almost kiss me thing twice, I assume she likes me back just a little. Ultimate rejection is definitely when the girl says, "You should move out of state!" I mean, I wouldn't even say that to my friends, so... what am I to her?

I think it's the first time I've ever walked away from her even when her voice quietly calls my name, and it makes me feel weak and powerful at the same time. A little stubborn, like a little kid with his fingers in his ears. But at the same time, I'm already missing having fun with her as I sulk back to my desk.

She's twisting that damn ring on her finger, I can tell by the way she's looking down at her desk. Twist it until it comes off, please please please.

I wonder if she wasn't engaged, when I would've asked her out. Nope. Nope, that hurts.

Disclaimer: Nothing's mine, still.


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When I walk out of Michael's office later, actually feeling relieved to have this shitty job still, she's tugging on my hand and I turn to face her. I love our height difference sometimes, she doesn't make me feel awkward and lanky (unless she's teasing me about that directly, but I love it still). I feel like sometimes she's looking up at me and I feel a little protective. Right now, her big eyes are searching mine, probably wanting to know what happened --

"What happened?" she asks, her fingers curling around mine.

I'm totally aware that I need to brush her off right now. Thought you didn't want me around? is all I think, and even that thought makes me feel like a dick. Stop it, look how cute she is and she's holding your hand, and aren't you pretty much hopelessly in love with this girl yet?

I soak up the feeling of her small hand around mine and then snag it away while she's still talking. I win Ass of the Day award when I make my way toward the kitchen.

I can't help it. I just like her way too much, to the point where I'm starting to wonder if I really do just love her yet. Because for me, the feeling of her going anywhere -- that includes her being married -- physically hurts. It physically affects me, and that makes me so nervous. When did I let it get this far? Why is she always teasing me like this? I've always been a sucker when I like a girl, yeah, but I'm a smooth guy usually. She makes me trip on myself, and all these little things about her, and as much as I can enjoy just having a crush on a girl, that's not what this is anymore. Every time I see that damn ring on her finger or her buffoon of a fiance, I feel like it's just a matter of time before... No, it's not a matter of time because she's with him right now. Someone already has her...

And as much as I'm hopeful, eternally optimistic about things that maybe I shouldn't be, I have to be smart at some point. Sometimes to get me to sleep, I have to remind myself that there are billions of women in the world and if Pam's not it, then there's someone else out there or maybe hundreds that are right for me. Somehow, it's enough to get me to sleep, but Pam's always in my mind last.

I see her standing in the middle of the room, dumbfounded after I leave her there, and she's twisting the ring on her finger and looking around. Just twist it until it falls off, breaks in half, rubs the gold away, melts away, disappears, something.

This feels like the first time I've ever been close to mad at her. I just want something from her that she can't give me, I guess. I want her completely, and you don't get that with friends, because friends eventually do marry off and love someone more than you. And that's totally fine, but not with this one. I need all of her and someone else found it first.

I just want something unexpected, that's what it would have to be. She's nowhere near leaving him so I'm nowhere near having her. Something unexpected. My mind starts to hurt from it all.

Disclaimer: Nothing's ever mine...



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"If you left here, I would seriously blow my brains out." Then she holds her hands out like, "Come on, it's so obvious, isn't it?"

I think maybe she means it and I still will always want to kiss her. She'll go home to someone else tonight, but I think we both know about what she and I have. She bends her fingers a little and acts nervously, shrugging helplessly, and she just knows. She has to. I give in, and I know then it's because if I ever had to leave her, I'd blow my brains out, too.

"Hey, is... Do you think Roy's going to want to--"

"Oh!" Pam starts, juggling her purse and coat in the lobby, trying to find out how to put her arms in the sleeves. "I--"

I wait for her answer, taking her coat from her and holding it up for her to put on without thinking.

She holds still for a second, noticing what I'm doing. She slinks one arm all the way in, puts the purse in the other hand and shakes her head. "Um, no, I asked him, he's not coming."

"When did you..." I trail off, pointing towards the office, and I feel stupid asking, but it's the first thought that comes into my head. When would she have called him, I've been with her every second since Devon left the building in a huff.

She licks her lips and looks at my hand that's gesturing towards upstairs. "Oh, I texted him?"

I raise my eyebrows and nod. "Ah, okay. Ride then?"

"Sure," she nods.

It's only quiet in the car for the first five minutes, but after that we're back to our normal selves. I have to admit, I've missed her laughing more than I thought I had. Her smile is still a little off.

"Are you okay?" I ask, glancing over at her as we slide through the damp streets.

"Hmm?" she murmurs with a smile, jerking her head. "Yeah, why?"

"Just wondering," I shrug.

I see her chest heave in an apprehensiveness I've never seen from her before. "This is going to sound weird... You'd never leave right? You'd never leave... you're not leaving, right?"

I breathe out a short laugh. "Huh?"

"You'd never leave?"

She's leaving out something, or at least I wish she was. She'd make my day if she asked me never to leave her. And I wouldn't.

"Well," I sigh evenly, "eventually I will. Dunder-Mifflin, you mean, right?" Stupid, what else would she mean? Quit being transparent.

"Yeah," she says just as evenly.

"Yeah, I don't know, I don't want to be there forever."

"Yeah."

We sound so stupid around each other sometimes, I want to hold her hand for that. You make me mess up my words, I feel like my mouth should be on yours; don't you think so? The car slows at a yellow light that I could've easily made it through. I want more time like this, more time just the two of us.

"Not any time soon, Pam. I'm not going to Maryland or anything." I pick at the sticker my nephew put on the dashboard. It's leaving that sticky stuff behind, so I smooth it back over, the corner flipping back a lost cause. "You're stuck with me for a while." What a copout.

She beams, but doesn't look at me, and that big smile is condensed into a grin with her lips rolled in and under her teeth.

"Good."

That makes me way more hopeful than it should, but as I pull into the parking lot at Poor Richard's, I feel a small weight off my shoulders. If nothing else, she's happy to be with me here and right now. I might as well enjoy that. We're going to have drinks and she'll be a little flirty again, maybe. I try to tell myself to just enjoy it. One day she'll be married and this will be all you ever had. That thought breaks my heart a little again, but I try and shake it off as I round the car to open her door.

Her smile is different, gorgeous and thanking me, when she steps out of the car.

"Watch out for your tail," I say, pointing towards the door. She smirks and shakes her body to the side to avoid catching it in the door.

She fiddles with her purse and sheds her coat to the passenger seat, not wanting to bother with it inside. She tucks something into her purse and zips it shut. I open my mouth to say something to her about pink drinks, but it's lost when she snakes her hand into mine.

What? We have absolutely zero, zilch, nothing in our systems yet, and she's already touching me?

She yanks on my hand and I turn toward her. I'll give you anything.

"I'm really, really glad you're not leaving Jim." Her eyes are almost sad but her growing smile isn't.

"Okay," I laugh, breathless and confused.

"I just wanted you to know that. For sure." She tugs on my hand for emphasis.

I nod. "Okay," I repeat.


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I know these are just the dumbest cliffhangers, but I wrote these little parts one a time, so I wanted to post it this way. =)

Disclaimer: Nothing's mine!


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We're inside again, same booth as last time or maybe the one behind it, I'm not sure. I order her another one of those girly drinks and it's setting in front of her when she comes back from a phone call she made in the bathroom. She pushes her lips together, smiles and breaks it into a wide grin. One of those pretty smiles is going to push me into oblivion, and I'll be in love and I'll never come back from it. Just realizing that thought makes me wonder if maybe I already am.

It's not long until we're to the point that we were last night, and then a little while longer and we're past that. I'm supposed to drive her home, but I don't want this to stop. We can split a cab home, and I'll foot the bill just like I'm doing with all these girly drinks, though I don't think she knows that yet.

We're starting to get goofy, making jokes about other costumes in the bar (she points to a giant baby and says, "ooh, the president!" and I point to a girl in a cosmopolitan outfit and suggest Michael's looking for his drink). Her eyes are glazed and her shoulders are shaking from laughing when we both spot the man dressed as a pig way across the room.

We both look at each other, excitedly coming up with our insults. We're dorks. She clamps her hand over my mouth and I'm laughing into it as she says, nearly stuttering as if it's the most clever thing she's ever said, "Your mom!"

When she says her words, mine come out muffled under her hand. The alcohol makes me say them, it's not totally my choice, and it also makes me feel proud to say it. Her eyes are unreadable, but I know she heard me say, "your fiance" as muffled as it was.

Her fingers graze my lips as she pulls her hands away and I feel like I made a colossal mistake. Now I've done it, I've really made this irreversible now, finally fucked things up past the point of no return. I won't be invited to the wedding, shit would I even go anyway? She'll never laugh with me again --

Her hand is curling in front of my chest as she looks on, and her lips look like they can't decide if they should smile or not.

"I... don't have one of those anymore," she says quietly. At least quietly for a bar.

I glance down at her hand. Shit. "What? Wh-Why are you saying that?"

She looks around in confusion and pulls her hands up to show me. Shit. What? "I don't... Because I don't. We aren't -- we aren't that anymore."

Why do we have to be drunk while we have this conversation? My mind can't keep up at all and the lights are too bright and all I notice is that there is one less noticeable glare in the room, lack of diamond and everything.

"When?" I say, a little out of breath.

"Last night. Last night," she says it twice with a nod. "Jim, do you know I almost kissed you?"

Why do we have to be so drunk right now?

"Yeah, it wasn't subtle at all Pam," I say, looking her right in the eye.

"Oh, yeah," she nods, biting her lip, looking away. She starts suddenly, her eyes meeting mine in a haste. "Oh god, this is embarrassing. You don't..."

I don't catch on. I'm so drunk. Dammit, why do potentially good things always happen while I'm drinking? Heavily?

"I don't what, Pam?" My hands shrug and she looks so adorably frustrated, her lips scrunched up and forehead wrinkled.

She heaves a big sigh and -- okay, she's too cute, it's just not even a question anymore -- slaps her palm on the table next to her drink. "Jim, do you like me? I mean like, like... Like -- ugh, oh my god--"

Oh.



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One more after this.

Disclaimer: Nothing's miiiiine.


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I laugh like an idiot, feeling everything fall off my shoulders and I feel a hundred pounds lighter when I reach for her face. I poke her little blackened nose.

She smiles this radiant smile that's full of light and it makes me want to die, I'm so happy in this moment. Drinking makes you feel like you're always sitting close to the person next to you, but being in love with someone who has a fiance makes you feel miles away from them all the time. So this... this is great.

Holy shit, I think again. What the hell just happened to my life in the last two minutes?

I hold up my finger and smirk, showing her the smudge of black left from her nose. I miss touching her already... You know how things linger when you're drunk? When she looks at my finger and is still just smiling, the clearest memory I have of my entire life right now is how warm the tip of her nose was.

She's clumsy as she puts one hand on the table and another on the back of the booth, on either side of me and juts forward to press her nose to mine, laughing the entire time. She's a dork. She's adorable and fucking perfect. When she pulls back, her nose is smudged, the face paint or ink or whatever the hell it is dashing up the bridge of her nose, her makeshift whiskers blurred against her red cheeks. She looks at my nose and giggles a little before biting her lip.

I'm turned towards her already, and she still has her hands on either side of me as she rests on her knees. I feel like I'm brand new at this, like I've never touched or kissed a girl before. Oh god, I'm about to kiss her, she's literally waiting for me to do that. Her lips part and she's breathing through them like Come on and I can't believe that twenty-four hours ago twenty-four minutes ago five minutes ago I was almost hating my life.

I gently rest my hands on her waist, still feeling her warm through the black sweater she wears and pull up. It's just about the prettiest, sexiest, most amazing thing that's ever happened to me. Her hair falling in a curtain all around me as she lowers her lips to mine and I push up. This is a real kiss, not like the Dundies and not anything like last night. I've imagined the kind of kisser she would be so many times, but I'm not thinking about that now, I just let it happen.

She's the kind of kisser that presses her lips into mine and stretches them into a smile before diving back in again. She's the type that lets her lips fall open and come back together in long, slow, agonizingly beautiful strides that I can barely keep up with, I'm so turned on and happy and surprised.

Her tongue is soft when I finally feel it, and she wraps her arms around me. It's a little miscalculated and she falls into me, so I have to grab onto the table to keep us upright. We just laugh and I kiss her some more, tugging on the sides of her sweater. I reach around and grip her stupid black tail and she shrieks into our kiss.

Her hands push up into my hair, fingers spreading through it and grazing from my ears to meet in the back of my head. I groan because it feels like my life is brand new and ten times better than it was... ever, and I don't know what to do except run my fingers up and down her back. I press them into her firmly, and it almost makes me shake when I realize that I'm getting to know her body. I've hugged her as a friend, what, maybe three times? I'm understanding her shape, her form, the way she feels now...

She pulls apart, and the sound our lips make when the kiss ends is something I'll never forget. Her hands trail down from behind my head to the sides of my face, her fingers almost tickling my cheeks. Our smiles burn our faces, our eyes looking at every facet of each other, just because we finally can.

I don't want her to think I'm going to take her home and try to fuck her. I don't want her to ever feel like that, but I want to get out of here. I don't want one of our coworkers -- the Sith lord, any of the cats, whatever -- to see us like this and talk.

I run my hands up and down her arms, capping her shoulders lightly.

"Hey, do you --"

She leans in and a new clumsy kiss falls against my lips. That one is more like the one from Chili's. Only it's so better.

She smiles that funny smile that says "oops" and composes herself. "Sorry."

I chuckle and look down, gripping her hands now. Not a single ring on any of those fingers. Who would've thought...

"Do you want to get out of here?" I ask, one eyebrow cocked. Wait, where is she even staying if she and Roy are -- "Wait, where are you staying?"

"A hotel."

"Do you want me to take you back there? I mean, I was going to call a cab, I don't think I can drive..."

"Yeah," she says.

"Or we could go to my place, I mean, well --" See, I don't want her to think I'm scum, okay? I don't want her to think that's what this is. "Not like that, I just, I just want to spend time with you. I'm not trying to be that guy, I promise. You know--"

"Yeah," she shakes her head and then nods, up and down, furiously and that awesome, wide grin on her face again kills me.

"Really?"

"Yeah, let's go, let's go," she says, searching for all of her stuff. "Is my coat in your car?"

"Yes," I say, stressing the 's' sound at the end, as I remember that moment, first feeling her hand tug on mine. Feels like hours ago and seconds ago at the same time.

When we're walking away, I pull on her hand this time. Please let this be real is all I can think.

"Are you sure? Pam, I'm not going to take you home to..." Whoa, that's awkward, even in this state of mind, while we wait for the cab. "You know that right?"

She nods and closes her eyes. "Yes," she says in that way that says, "you're a nice boy" or something like that.

"You know what, maybe we can just drop you off at the hotel --"

Her hands pull me down again and we're kissing and I'm trying to keep up, clutching onto the sides of her face and pressing pushing pulling my lips over and across hers.

"You're already trying to get rid of me?" she asks, that funny, amazing, beautiful, gorgeous, I've loved her from the first day I met her smile grazing her face...

I'm never leaving you.


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That's it! I know, it probably went a little too smoothly for Pam and Jim in this one, but eh, I don't care. They're good kids, they deserved it. ;) A girl loves feed back!