She was thoroughly convinced that she’d never had less fun at a party in her life.
Pam was nowhere near drunk enough to find the humor in her current arrangement. As it was, she sat stiffly between Andy and Jim. She wasn’t entirely sure which made her more uncomfortable, Andy, with his ridiculous advances, or Jim…
She sighed quietly and tried to enjoy herself. Phyllis was singing along to the karaoke machine, blushing at the proud look Bob Vance was directing her way. Ryan was staring off into space as Kelly hammered on excitedly about something. A few other co-workers were in the kitchen, refilling drinks. And then, of course, there was Karen. Pam could just see her, out on the back porch, the fog of cool air spilling from her mouth as she spoke to Roy.
It was odd, sort of, to think that Roy and Karen had hit it off so well. After a few weeks of Jim’s waning attention and Pam’s complete disinterest in reuniting with Roy, Karen had simply decided to take things into hand. She’d made a clean break with Jim, and had begun to focus her formidable determination on the poor, unsuspecting warehouse worker. The party itself was, fundamentally, nothing more than an excuse Karen had invented to invite Roy over to her new place. The other Dunder-Mifflin employees were just invited as a makeshift buffer, should anything go wrong. Honestly, though, Pam was happy for her friend. She hoped things worked out for the two of them. She thought she might be able to forgive herself for what she’d done to Roy if she could see him happy with someone as great as Karen.
Pam felt Andy shift beside her, and she froze, her thoughts immediately redirected to the conversational minefields he kept trying to engage her in. She wanted nothing more than to turn completely away from him and make it as obvious as possible that she was uninterested, but there was nowhere else to turn. To the left, disaster, in the form of pig-latin, frisbee golf, and ass-kissery on steroids. To the right, heartbreak, in the form of a dream she had let slip through her fingers. She and Jim had gone back to a semi-normal state since his split with Karen, albeit an incredibly uncomfortable one. Neither really seemed to know how to deal with the other anymore. Their relationship right now was a badly xeroxed copy of the friendship they’d once had.
Resigned to a fate of awkward conversation with one or the other, she decided to take a gamble and speak to…hold on. What was that?
“Uhm…Jim?” she mumbled hesitantly. She’d been startled from her thoughts when something had distrurbed the fine hairs at the base of her neck. It was one of those strange sensations that can either be very ticklish, or very sensual, depending on the situation. She wondered, vaguely, which type of situation she was in.
“Hmm?” was his slow reply. Funny, she hadn’t known that one could slur a hmm. He must have been drunk before she’d arrived, as she hadn’t seen him do much more than sip a single beer since she’d gotten here.
“What, uhh…what are you doing?” She could hear the crack in her own voice, and she flinched at the sound. She felt him lean closer against her, bury his face in her hair and sniff deeply.
“Smelling your hair.” It was almost ridiculous how sexy his voice was when he spoke so low and close to her ear. It made the tiny hairs stand up on end, which only made them more sensitive, and once again, she found herself wondering which type of situation she was currently in.
“Why?” she whispered (a little breathlessly, she thought, but couldn’t quite bring herself to care).
“Smells nice.”
She nearly grinned, despite herself, and had to bite the inside of her lip to keep from doing so. “Uhm…thanks. I-I guess it’s my shampoo.”
“Your hair always smells so nice,” he continued. “I could always smell it when you’d lean over my desk to conspire with me. Sometimes, when you weren’t paying attention, I’d brush my fingers just along the ends of your hair so I could smell you on my fingers.”
Her breath hitched, and the situation made a mad dash towards sensual. He stopped, momentarily, and she could feel his head cock slightly to the side.
“That came out slightly naughtier than I’d intended,” he mused. He leaned back into the corner of the couch, away from her, and rested his head on the arm of it. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
“I guess that makes you kind of a perv,” she answered slowly, pausing for his reaction.
He hunched his shoulders in a makeshift shrug. “Come on, Beesly. You know me how well? And that’s the thing that tips the scale towards perv for you?”
Pam smiled, finally, and looked at him. He looked so peaceful. She relaxed into the couch, leaning ever-so-slightly towards him, and began to breathe easier for the first time in almost seven months.
She was thoroughly convinced that she’d never had more fun at a party in her life.
***
Pam stared at the sudoku grid on her computer screen as if her very life depended on it. If she could force herself to concentrate on something (anything) else, she just might be able to keep the laughter from bubbling out. Odds were slim, though.
Jim was a few minutes late, but all the better. He'd given her plenty of time to stop by the store before work, then get into the office early enough to prepare. She couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he finally arrived.
It was a completely unplanned, entirely spur-of-the-moment deal (she'd ironed out the details in the shower that morning), but she was looking forward to it just as much as any of the ridiculously complex pranks she'd helped him pull on Dwight over the years.
There were so many things about Jim that she loved, and a good percentage of those that she loved to tease him about, but when she'd discovered that he had limited control over his verbal faculties when he was tired...well, that was just downright endearing.
***
They'd gone to bed later than usual the night before, having stayed up to watch the latest season of "House" on dvd, so they were both exhausted when they finally climbed under her comfy heated blanket (with dual dials because, hey, Fancy New Beesly happens to appreciate a little luxury in her life). To be fair, Pam had warned him in the beginning that she was an "arranger".
("What the hell does that mean?" he laughed.
She blushed faintly before stumbling into an explanation. "It just means that I move around a lot at night. I can’t fall asleep until I’m *perfectly* comfortable. So I spend a lot of time arranging myself into just the right position…which, of course, varies considerably.”
He raised that damned eyebrow in cynical speculation, but it was obvious that he was desperately trying not laugh.
She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Oh, shut up.”)
She had slept deeply for a couple of hours before her body had declared that it was no longer comfortable on its back, and she had immediately lapsed into “arranger” mode. Half-asleep, she had brushed the fuzzy tendrils of hair from the back of her neck and rolled onto her right side. Not ten seconds later, she’d heard a deep grumble, followed by a sharp jab to her back. She turned, slowly, to face the perpetrator. His head was still buried in his pillow, facing away from her, but his arm was splayed out at an odd angle.
***
She looked up from her desk just in time to see him walk through the door. She wanted to stare at her computer, to ignore him, to pretend that she hadn’t seen him come in, because she was afraid she’d somehow give herself away. But she knew it would only make him more suspicious. He knew her too well. So she had to act as normal as possible. She glanced up at him, willing her heart to stop beating quite so fast, and welcomed him with a hearty “Morning, Halpert.”
He smiled slyly and returned the greeting as he hung up his coat, before walking over to his desk. She smiled deviously as soon as his back was facing her, and waited.
***
Her eyebrows shot up ino her hairline and her mouth dropped open. “Did you just elbow me?” she whispered.
“Mmm,” he mumbled.
“What for?”
“You’re stealing all the noodles,” he slurred sleepily, obviously irritated.
Pam remained shocked at his behavior only momentarily. Then his words registered. Her eyebrows came down a few degrees and she grinned slowly. “I’m sorry. Did you just say that I’m stealing all the noodles?”
***
She watched as he sat at his desk, calmly rolled his sleeves up to his forearms, and reached for the handle on his desk drawer. She hardly even noticed she was holding her breath.
***
There was silence for a few seconds, before he finally turned his head to look at her. Frustration colored his eyes, making them appear darker than usual. “I meant blankets.”
“But you said noodles,” she replied. She chewed on the inside of her lips in a desperate attempt to keep from laughing out loud.
“But I *meant* blankets, and you knew it.” He was still half-asleep, his eyes were barely open, and the effort to speak properly was leaking into his voice.
“Oh, really? So I *heard* you say noodles, but my awesome intellect deduced, from the mere inflection in your tone, that you had, in fact, been *referring* to blankets? Wow. I’m, like, really smart.”
His eyebrows came together as his sleep-addled brain tried to translate Sarcasm into English, but relaxed soon after as his brain decided to give up and go back to sleep. He’d been snoring in seconds, and she’d dozed off with love in her heart and mischief on her mind. She hoped he would remember, in the morning, how his own traitorous words had doomed him in the end.
***
It hadn’t occurred to him that the handle on his drawer was upside down, but he’d recall it later and wonder how he’d missed such an obvious detail. He pulled open the drawer, as he did every day, to grab the obligatory post-it pad and pencil, and time slowed as hundreds upon hundreds of stiff uncooked noodles cascaded from his inverted drawer.
He watched helplessly as they spilled out in a seemingly endless array of corkscrews and shells and bowties and long needles of various widths and thicknesses. He sat, stunned, for a few moments afterward, his hand still frozen on the handle of the offending drawer. A few stray noodles tumbled to the floor like forgotten remains in a series of aftershocks.
By the time his brain finally put the pieces together, recalling their late-night dispute, and he turned around to look at her in her moment of triumph, she was face-down on her desk, laughing so hard that no sound was coming out.
When she finally looked up, gasping for breath, he flashed her his patented “good-one-Beesly-but-I-hope-it-was-worth-it-because-you-*know*-I’m-getting-you-back-for-this” look. Her eyebrows raised slightly, a smile threatening to break out once more, as she shrugged at him in pleased resignation. Then she turned back to her computer and her completely unsalvageable sudoku game.
***