“Sometimes I just don’t get Roy.” 

The deck rocks beneath their feet, the lull of waves lapping at the edges of the boat reminds him that they’re on unsteady ground. It’s nothing new. He’s always on unsteady ground when it comes to Pam lately. 

She gazes at him expectantly, eyes bright and cheeks pink. She looks especially beautiful tonight. The lights from the shore float behind her head, a glowing halo tangling in her curls. 

His heart clenches tightly in his chest. 

Something about the half-light and her murmured confession he takes for an invitation, and his mouth opens, the truth spilling from his lips before he has time to apply his usual filter. 

“Sometimes I don’t get him either.”

The honesty drips from his tone. There are few things he is certain of with the same raw conviction. It’s a truth he knows deep in his heart of hearts. He does not understand Roy Anderson. 

He may not know what love is, but he sure knows what it isn’t. 

And it isn’t Roy Anderson. 

It isn’t last month when he promised to buy Pam an iPod for Christmas and then… didn’t. It isn’t getting engaged and never setting a date. It isn't having the best person in the entire world in front of you and not realizing her worth each and every day. 

“What does that mean?” 

He doesn’t miss the way her eyes narrow. She’s always so defensive of him. Time has taught him that Pam can offer a criticism of Roy, but his honesty will only bring trouble. In the past, when he’s agreed too enthusiastically with critiques on Roy’s behavior Pam crosses her arms across her chest like she’s holding herself together and glares at him. She’s an injured, cornered animal, quick to bite back and seek an exit.  

He’s learnt to let her say her piece, offer a placid agreement and shrug off Roy’s inadequacies. 

He can’t tonight. 

“He has...he just doesn’t seem to understand how lucky he is.” 

They say in the moment before your life ends that it flashes before your eyes. This is the moment he blows his own chance with Pam and it feels a lot like his life is ending. 

He sees her. He only sees her. 

In the background of seeing her, he sees Roy. Impatient and snappy. Quick to jump on her flaws - of which there is only one as far as Jim is concerned and it’s her blatant inability to see Roy for what he is. He sees the times Pam’s face has crumpled and she’s painted on that fake smile that appeases Michael and no one else. 

He sees the day her car broke down and Roy wasn’t answering his phone. 

He sees her, eyes flickering to the door on Valentine’s Day only to dim with every delivery she directed onwards to others. 

He sees her now. 

“Jim…”

Her cheeks are pinker still. He thinks maybe it’s not so much the cold any longer. A flush of red rises up her neck. 

She rubs her hands together. She’s nervous. 

Her eyes say the usual when it comes not Roy. Not, you’re wrong, but please don’t bring this up. 

Her utterance of his name echoes that intention. It’s like she knows Roy’s failings and accepts them. She shouldn’t have to. He wants her to know that she shouldn’t have to. 

“Maybe I don’t know what love is, but the way Roy treats you, that’s not…” 

He can’t seem to finish a sentence. 

She inhales a sharp breath at his half formed truths. Her expression is stricken. Her mouth drops open. 

“Don’t…” 

It’s a whisper. She knows he hears her, because he recoils slightly like she’s physically pushed him away.  

And maybe she has. She’s pushed him away in every other way possible, she may as well have actually stepped forwards and shoved him. 

The boat rocks unsteadily beneath her feet, paralleling Jim’s words. Her eyes plead with him to stop, to not disrupt the careful status quo she’s built her life around. 

“Pam.” 

Her name is a desperate plea. The last breath of a drowning man. She can’t. 

She can’t be what he wants. 

Her life is tethered to Roy’s. They’re stitched together with a permanency she doesn’t know how to unpick. It just is.

Even if she wanted something different, she can’t. 

There is a lot of good to Roy, even if Jim doesn’t see it. There’s steadiness and predictability. That’s supposed to be part of it all, right? 

“Don’t. Please.” 

The mask that Jim wears so carefully slips. In his place, there’s a burning man who stares at her with pure agony flaming across his face. 

He blinks slowly, deliberately and then he’s back. 

Friend Jim, the version of him that doesn’t make her question her choices. 

She watches the gears turning in his head. His mouth drops open and she decides that this is already too much said. They don’t do this. 

Roy belongs in that quiet corner of their friendship of that remains unspoken. 

Jim has tried to pull him out, but she needs to shove him back in, down so very deep. 

She cuts Jim off before he has a chance to unbalance them further. 

“I’m cold.”

It’s an apology. It’s an excuse. She’s going back into the safe confines of inside, where Jim and his confrontations remain silent. 

He offers her a resigned frown. And then that facade wears thin once again and he reaches out a hand. He’s shaking and she’s not sure if it’s the motion of the waves beneath them or his own nerves. 

She freezes in place. Her body locking down by default. She’s never been one to fight, or even flight, freezing stock still in place is the only reaction she understands. 

It’s how she lives her life, stuck motionless living the same day over and over again with Roy. 

She watches his chest shudder with a gulping breath and then the back of his hand brushes against her cheek. 

The burn is instant. She melts. Her head cants towards him, chasing his retreating fingers. 

“You’re everything, Pam. I wish he treated you like that.” 

He says it so softly that she wonders if he meant to say it aloud at all. 

Her gaze has been fixed on his hand and his words force her eyes back to his face. 

He looks so sincere that her heart stutters painfully in her chest. He really thinks that? 

The desire to lean forward and kiss him courses through her. It’s not new, it’s swept through her before and she’s written it off as curiosity. She’s only kissed Roy and in some moments with some men (Jim, and only Jim her heart whispers) she’s had that sort of morbid I wonder… moment where she considers what it would be like. 

The ferocity of it in this moment takes her by surprise. Every nerve ending screams at her to close the gap between them and just see. 

Her eyes flicker shut. 

“I -”

She’s not sure why she’s speaking. She pauses, her tongue darting out to wet her lips. 

She takes half a step forward. The anticipation pooling low in her guts eggs her on. 

There’s a rush of warm air and the buzz of activity in the background is suddenly far louder than before. 

There’s a giggle and then the door clatters shut, they’re still alone on the deck, but the moment closes with the door. 

She wrenches her eyes open. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Her voice is strained. The spell is broken. She can’t kiss Jim on a booze cruise with all their colleagues and her fiancé. 

Her fiancé. 

She can’t kiss Jim. 

She offers him a wide eyed and panicked apology and then she flees. 

He stares at the horizon for a long moment. 

He said too much. He didn’t say enough. 

The rail she was leaning against suddenly seems too empty. 

He could have sworn she was about to kiss him. His emotions dart up and down and side to side. He never gets seasick and yet his stomach is churning. 

He makes his way back inside because what else can he do. She’s back at their table. Katy is chattering at her, she’s frowning at her hands, spinning her ring in that way she always does when she’s feeling out of sorts. 

Before he can make his way over to her and throw himself at her feet once again, Michael is grabbing his arm and tugging him into the argument he’s having with their boat’s captain. 

“Suppose your office building is on fire, who would you save?” 

He knows his answer without a moment’s hesitation. Michael rambles on about salesmen and profit centers. 

His answer beats through him, a steady pulse, constant and life affirming. 

He doesn’t stop to think about who he stands next to. He shows his hand. 

He’s never been that great at poker. It’s no big secret. He knows that Angela’s game in the office is counting the times he goes to her desk. 

Even Roy isn’t blind to it. There was that one time he lost it a little at Jim crowded over Pam’s desk, his chest warmed with the almost press of her hand in his. 

There’s something about tonight that has him dropping his guard all over the place. 

It doesn’t matter that Roy is beside him. 

He speaks his truth. 

“I would save the receptionist.” 

His words smother the conversation. Michael breaks off mid sentence to gape at him. 

The bulky man at his side processes his response slowly. 

Jim is still looking at Michael, but he feels Roy shift towards him. 

It’s an old psychology trick, that whoever someone’s feet are directed towards in group conversation indicates who they are the most interested in. 

He stares at his hands and notices that all feet in the circle shuffle slightly towards him. 

“What’s that supposed to mean, Halpert?” 

Roy’s tone is curious, and maybe a little puzzled. It’s like he expects Jim to placate him as normal. He considers the ways he could cover his true intentions and say something about how she’s his best friend in the office or he could give an answer that pacifies Michael like how she knows the most about the clients. Hell, he could even appease Dwight by saying something about getting the woman and children out first. 

Instead he shrugs. 

He lets them fill in their own blanks. 

Captain Jack is oblivious to the tension swelling around them. 

“This guy gets it. When I was in the Navy I almost died. I wasn’t thinking about profit centers. I was thinking about my first wife. The day I got back to shore, I married her.” 

Roy glowers at his side. He seems to expand to his full-size, somehow taller and stockier than he was before the Captain’s mouth had opened.  

He rounds on Jim, the earlier alcohol induced exuberance fizzling out of his gaze. 

Captain Jack doesn’t understand that Jim’s proclamation was kindling that his words have dosed with accelerant. 

“I meant what I said. I would save the receptionist.” 

Jim’s voice is steady. If Roy wants to beat him to a pulp, Roy can beat him to a pulp. So be it. He’s done pretending this is all okay. 

Roy wouldn’t save the receptionist. 

She would be an afterthought. 

Roy would be celebrating making it out of the building with his warehouse buddies and Darryl or someone would have to mention Pam before Roy would even think to look for her. 

“Would you?” 

It’s a demand. He already knows the answer. He’s already watched the whole thing play out like a haunting noir film in his mind. 

There’s a fire burning inside of Roy now and it isn’t about saving Pam, it’s about pummelling Jim. 

And then before Roy can wind his fist back and put it through Jim’s skull, his world narrows to the sharp intake of air that fills the space over his shoulder. 

He recognizes her from gasp alone. He doesn’t need to turn. 

Roy doesn’t seem to hear it. 

The axis of Roy’s world isn’t balanced on her very presence like his is. 

“Roy.”

The hiss of his name is what gets his attention. 

Her hand settles on his arm, a warning to reign it in. 

This isn’t Roy’s first rodeo. And by rodeo he most definitely means drunken brawl. 

This isn’t Pam’s first time of pulling him back from the brink either, he can see the weariness in her glare. 

She tugs him away, out to the deck. It pinches at his heart a little because the deck feels like it belongs to them now.

Pam retreating with Roy our the same door tarnishes the memory. 

She doesn’t speak, she just pulls him out to the cold, fresh air and crosses her fingers that it’s enough to start to sober him up.

“Pammy.” 

His grumbling isn’t enough to get her speaking. 

He knows how much she hates it when he has too much to drink at these things. 

She didn’t catch the full conversation, she just saw Roy’s posture change in response to something Jim had said and it was enough to pull her from her seat and towards them. 

“Fucking Halpert.” 

She takes stock of him carefully. He’s pissed off. That much is clear. 

“You’re my girlfriend.” 

His words are ice to her veins. Fiancé her heart bemoans, but it’s not worth the air in her lungs to repeat aloud. If he doesn’t get it now, when will he ever? 

At least there’s some hint of possessiveness to his words. That has to mean something, right? 

What does it say if he only seems to notice her when another man does… 

“What did he say?” 

Roy rounds on her now. Eyes already slightly bloodshot. 

He still drinks like he’s nineteen. His body responds with far less good natured youth.

Her heart picks up speed and it’s so different to the last time she’d been out in this salty air. 

Her heart had fluttered in her chest then, frantic and wistful. 

Now, there’s adrenaline and a hint of fear. Roy isn’t violent. Not towards her. But, his unpredictability is enough to set her pulse to jittery. She’s not scared, she’s just a little nervous. It’s the same mantra she’s repeated for more years than she cares to remember. 

“He said that he would save you. It’s bullshit. Not to mention fucking embarrassing. He basically said that I was too chicken shit to do it.” 

Ah. This is a side of Roy she knows all too well. 

He’s annoyed that Jim has implied that he is weak. 

He doesn’t hear what Jim is really saying. She does. The warmth creeps up her cheeks and keeps the wind at bay. 

What is she being saved from? Is this ship sinking. It sure feels like it tonight. She feels the grounding beneath her feet losing more and more stability as the evening wears on.

Jim is saying too much and Roy isn’t saying enough.

She’d like to think she could swim for the land all on her own if she had to. 

“What are you saving me from?”

She keeps her tone even and slightly disinterested. 

Deescalating Roy is second nature. She knows which buttons to push and when not to. 

She tries not to think about the whole Jim declaring he would save her thing. He’s filterless tonight and it terrifies her more than she cares to admit, even to herself. 

It makes her slightly more honest too and it troubles her deep in her soul how much she’s twisting the truth of her life for herself. 

“If there was a fire in the office.” 

Oh. 

Her heart thuds again. She’s glad she’s not hooked up to one of those hospital machines. She’d have nurses running in and out all night to check on her if that was the case. 

Jim would save her. He would. She believes the sincerity of it without a shadow of a doubt. 

She closes her eyes for a moment and pictures it playing out. 

She can see it so clearly, the way that Jim would grab her hand and pull her away from the burning building. 

The truth hits her like a sharpened blade, severing her connection to Roy as it slices through her body. 

If their office building was on fire, she would save Jim. There’s a flicker of guilt for the fact that Roy wouldn’t cross her mind until sometime later in the parking lot. 

Her mouth opens before the finality can truly set in. 

“I think we should call off the wedding.” 

“I think we should call off the wedding.”

The air hangs heavy between them.

Earlier the lights hanging over the horizon had sparkled like they were draped over a Christmas tree.

Jim’s face had glowed with the same anticipation.

Now, the shine is muted. The lights bounce over Roy’s frown and all she feels are the looming ominous shadows.

“Fine.”

The lights on the horizon blink and for a moment there is only darkness.

When the world spins back into focus, she watches as the ends of Roy’s lips twist upwards in the makings of a smile.

If she wasn’t frozen into place, the pain would have her doubling over.

Her vision swims. Her stomach twists.

She knew she wasn’t Roy’s priority. But this? His easy reaction? The grin?

She —

She never could have predicted this. Even in her darkest moments she never thought it had come to this… indifference.

It hurts. It hurts in a way she didn’t know it could.

Roy can cast her aside in a moment.

“What’s a wedding anyway? Just a waste of money. We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing, babe. It’s worked fine until now.”

His misunderstanding restarts her lungs.

The dark spots at the edges of her vision recede.

She has to do it again. The hardest eight words of her life and she has to repeat them.

There’s a thought… it’s fleeting. She could… not?

The ache of feeling like she doesn’t matter to him is so very raw. Any patron would send it back to the kitchen if it arrived on their plate.

They don’t understand each other. He misinterprets far too much of their relationship.

He doesn’t know her.

Jim’s right. He doesn’t love her.

In his mind, she’s perpetually sixteen. She can’t be sixteen forever.

“No. I… Break up. I want to break up.”

And there’s the Roy she knows and expects. A stick of dynamite with a fiery string.

The jovial grin slips and in its place is the boy who furiously keyed the car of West Scranton’s star quarterback after a humiliating defeat.

The same boy who her mother had pursed her lips at and murmured that boyfriend of yours has quite the temper, Pamela when he had thrown a punch at his brother at their joint graduation party.

“You fucking what?!”

His bellow is loud enough to wake the dead.

It strikes her that maybe she should have waited until they were off the boat with all their colleagues on to do this.

But, that’s nothing compared to the surge of relief. Somehow this - the expected - is better than the apathetic Roy of a moment ago.

Anger she can work with. Anger she understands. Anger means this whole decade of her life wasn’t for nothing.

“Fuck you! Have you been cheating on me?”

He lunges, hands roughly landing on her shoulders. He clutches her far too tightly.

She feels small compared to Roy and it’s always something she’s romanticized. Her hulking protector. Now she just feels vulnerable.

His beefy hands cover the entirety of her upper arms. His fingers press sharply into her skin.

She bruises easily. She’s marked for trouble here.

He shakes her roughly back and forth, like he expects the answers to explode from her if he can mix her up enough.

“No! Roy, of course not!”

He rattles the truth through her clenched teeth.

She wants to scream let me go but her instincts tell her that it will only cause him to dig his heels - and hands - in further.

And then there’s another voice speaking her mind.

“Let her go.”

Jim’s voice is low and even. She’s never heard him sound so serious. There’s a flicker of steel through his tone, a hint of venom that screams danger.

As they step closer, she realizes it isn’t just Jim. He’s flanked by Darryl and Captain Jack. Dwight and Michael linger in the wings, looking every bit as serious as Jim sounds.

Darryl’s hand settles on Roy’s shoulder - a suggestion. Roy drops his arms in a show of defeat.

His eyes still burn with open fire.

“To the brig.”

It’s not a suggestion. Captain Jack and Darryl tug him further into the darkness.

Pam sinks on shaking knees.

The deck beneath her legs is cool, she presses her hands to it and bows her head.

Voices buzz around her, Michael and Dwight hiss empty threats that Roy can’t possibly hear.

Her world centers on the rhythmic thudding of water against wood.

The waves continue lapping at the boat. Her life as she knows it is over. And yet the waves keep coming.

She concentrates all her energy on timing her breathing with the current.

This is her constant now. This is what she can count on.

And then a hand settles soothingly on her shoulder and maybe there are other things in her life she can still depend on.

“Pam, are you okay?”

He tries to keep the terrified edge from creeping into his tone which leaves him sounding clipped and a little more brusque than he’d like.

Is stupidity asking questions you don’t want to know the answer to? Or maybe it’s asking questions you already know the answer to.

Either way, Jim is screwed.

He’s never seen Pam like this. The way she crumpled to the floor, like Roy’s hands had been holding her to the surface of the earth.

She looks defeated.

He hates that he’s played a part in making her look this way. He hates that he’s to blame.

If he had just kept his stupid mouth shut.

If he had just left things the way they had always been.

If he hadn’t rocked the damn boat.

“No… But, I will be.”

It seems almost like she’s telling herself and not so much answering him.

Her head rises from staring brokenly at the wooden deck beneath her hands as she speaks, her chin jutting out in stubborn determination.

She starts to push herself back up, almost losing her balance as the next wave hits.

He doesn’t think. His hand rises without his conscious permission and settles under her elbow, holding her steady.

He tries to tell himself he’s just being a good friend, but his frantic pulse at being so close to her betrays him.

“Thanks Jim.”

She turns to face him, his hand dropping limply back to his side.

The sincerity ringing through her words has him thinking that maybe she means for more than just steadying her.

Surely she wouldn’t be thanking him for causing trouble in her relationship.

Accusing her of cheating? Roy is scum. Worthless scum. He doesn’t know her at all.

Jim knows her. She would never. Her loyalty, her consistency, they’re the very traits that make Pam, Pam.

He didn’t hear the whole conversation, just that when Roy started hollering and cursing, respecting their privacy seemed less important than it had seconds earlier.

Darryl shooting nervous glances at the door had only solidified that he needed to check that Pam was okay.

“Jim?”

He furrows his brow in confusion at Pam for a moment because her lips haven’t opened and it’s not her voice.

It takes him far longer than it should to process the familiar voice. Katy. Right.

His date. Girlfriend seems too strong a term. He can’t bring himself to think it.

Pam frowns. Deeply.

It’s an answer to a question he hasn’t had the courage to ask.

“I should get back inside.”

Oh. Don’t go he wants to say, but Katy has settled at his side. She’s beaming brightly and has somehow missed everything that has recently transpired.

She can’t see how tightly Jim is bound to the woman stepping around them with downcast eyes.

Pam disappears back into the cabin along with Jim’s patience.

Katy clutches at his arm and he rounds on her without preamble.

“I think we should break up.”

Her wide eyes flicker from shock before settling on anger.

He knows he’s not being the best version of himself. He knows that he will become the villain she tipsily bemoans about with her girlfriends.

He knows that he’s not much better than the man he so despises in this moment.

He knows, but it’s not enough to have him reconsidering.

He needs this to be over.

It’s not fair to anyone.

He can’t date when his heart belongs to someone else.

“Whoa. What?”

It takes her one glance at his stony expression to know he’s serious.

She glares at him and storms over to the other side of the deck, arms folded tightly over her chest as she settles against the railing.

He rubs his hand roughly over the nape of his neck with a breathy sigh.

He’s an ass. There’s no sugar coating it.

There’s also nothing else to be gained by staying on this deck. It seems everything starts and ends in this spot tonight.

There’s some sort of magnetic pull buried deep in the soles of his feet that tugs him back towards Pam’s orbit.

He makes his inevitable way back towards her.

“Okay folks. Last call for drinks. We will be returning to dock shortly.”

The grainy speaker booms to life as he settles back at their table.

Pam offers him a tentative smile before shifting her gaze to her hands.

“I kind of forgot about Katy.”

Her gentle admission as she chews nervously on her bottom lip sends small sparks of hope careening through his bloodstream.

He clears his throat.

“I kind of did too. I, umm, broke up with her.”

His words are punctuated with the woman in question returning to the cabin.

She offers him another fierce glare before settling at the bar, her back to them.

He feels his lips twist into an awkward grimace.

“I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t sound sorry. Her eyes are brighter than they were a moment before.

Her tone is placation mixed with pure pleasure.

It makes him bold. It makes him honest.

“I’m not.”

A smile hints at the edges of her lips.

He feels himself mirroring her.

He’s available. She’s available. Or at the very least he thinks she might be. She’s more available than she’s ever been.

There might just be a chance.

It feels more tangible than it’s ever felt before.

“Me too.”

His chest expands with possibility. It stretches with such speed he’s terrified for a moment that it may just explode.

Instead, it bends and twists and somehow the capacity is greater than it ever has been before.

He stretches an unsteady hand across the table towards her.

She lets his fingers brush over the back of her hand for a moment before she pulls them gently back to her lap.

An apologetic smile graces her lips.

“I need some time.”

It’s enough. For now. His fingertips still burn with the heat from her hand. He feels the warmth settle deep in his chest, a purring cat on a slow Sunday morning.

If there’s one thing Jim has perfected in his years at Dunder Mifflin, it’s patience.

He can wait. He can out wait a statue.

He can transform himself into one of those giant mechanical men if he has to.

The boat docks.

A day passes, and then a week, and then a month.

He remains the same.

Pam changes. She murmurs excitedly about her new apartment and her art classes at the community center.

He had thought his heart had already stretched to capacity, but with each new accomplishment, the pride coursing through him expands it further still.

He remains friend Jim, but friend Jim starts to exist outside of the office.

He’s the one helping her shuffle her new - well, new to her, slightly preloved - sofa through her front door on a Saturday afternoon.

He’s who she calls when a light flickers on on the dash of her new car.

He shows up.

He may not be an expert at relationships, or love, but he always shows up.

“You said you didn’t know what it was…”

Her mouth is open, the words spilling out before she really thinks them through.

It’s a nondescript Tuesday and she just knows.

It hits her like a bow of a boat breaking through the waves, constant and sure.

They’re in the break room.

She’s eating a bag of French Onion SunChips that had not so mysteriously appeared on her desk a few moments earlier.

She’s sipping from a mug of grape soda, the other half still swishing in the can clasped in Jim’s hand.

“It?”

He doesn’t sense the shift, doesn’t feel the current pulling her under and redirecting the course of her life.

He grins as he speaks, stretching his fingers forward to nab a chip from her bag.

It’s a game they play all the more often these days. Usually she offers a weak glare and threatens to bat his hand away.

Today, she ignores it and tastes the way the word feels rolling from her lips.

“Love.”

He gasps sharply and shards of chip dust vacuum into his lungs, leaving him coughing and choking.

She gives him a moment to compose himself.

He’s all frantic wide eyes and heaving breaths.

She shuffles her chair closer to him and rubs a hand over his back, smoothing the last of the crumbs from his airway.

He nods his thanks.

His breathing evens out and she figures it’s safe to continue.

“I think maybe I do.”

She’s nervous. She knows exactly how this ends and yet she’s still shaking.

She twines her fingers together and tries to channel her twitchy energy into courage.

Jim’s eyes are on her, there’s an intensity there that hasn’t quite returned since she glimpsed it the night of the booze cruise.

He’s been patient. And careful. So careful.

Only taking what she’s been offering and not pushing for more.

She wants more.

“I would save the paper salesman.”

She watches awareness and understanding build in his gaze.

They haven’t talked about that night.

The recognition flares. His words return to him.

Roy had said enough, but she in her own roundabout way had coaxed Dwight to recount the entire conversation gathered around snorkel shots over by the bar to her.

Jim had said he would save the receptionist.

She knows without a shadow of a doubt who she would save.

It’s him. Only him.

She wants him to know.

She wants him to know how she feels.

It makes her braver still.

She slides her hand under the table and finds his. She slips her hand into his and tangles their fingers together.

He beams widely at her and says the very last thing she expects.

“Dwight?”

She’s laughing as he covers her lips with his own. All it takes is joy, Jim and grape soda kisses that fizz and tingle through every inch of her body for her to know exactly what love is.