Be wary: this incoporates some spoilers regarding future episodes beginning in Ch 6. The rating may be subject to change. Please review and thanks!

--the author

Disclaimer: I don't any of these characters or The Office. No copyright infringement intended.

♥

She smiled at him. This could work out, couldn’t it? She deserved happiness, didn’t she? Yes, it could all work out, but she had to tell him. She wasn’t honest with Jim, and that’s why things didn’t work out with them. Honesty, she reassured herself. Pam was hardly even nervous, eerily relaxed for what she was about to admit to Roy. He looked at her expectantly, his arms folded across the mahogany bar, and prepared to listen to whatever she had to tell him.

"Remember that Casino Night about a month before we were supposed to get married? I kissed Jim," she confessed. It came out much easier than she had thought it would. Smoothly: her vocal chords didn’t tremble, and the wording was fine.

"What?" He was shocked. She understood. At least the worst was over. Now, all she had to do was explain herself, but that wasn’t nearly as ominous as just getting the truth out there. Pam was actually kind of proud of herself for being so brave. Courage and honesty aren’t my strong points, huh? I’d like for them to see me now, she thought to herself.

"He told me how he felt, and I guess I had feelings too, and we kissed."

"Jim came onto you?" Roy interrupted. His eyebrows twisted into his forehead, and the softness of his brown eyes lost their previous sweetness. He was getting kind of angry, Pam knew the signs all too well.

"Just listen," Pam said to quell his growing temper.

"No, I am listening. That’s the problem, I’m listening!" he interjected. His sense of proper behavior in public was shrinking considerably and quickly. The drinks he had over the course of the evening probably weren’t helping, but he wasn’t even close to drunk yet.

"Don’t yell," she mumbled sternly.

"Don’t yell?!" he shouted in sputters, choking on the words like it was impossible for him to understand how she could possibly expect such cordial behavior from him in the face of what she was announcing.

Roy’s face flushed with fury. He could picture it now. That scrawny coward, Jim... he said he would keep an eye on her. He probably laughed to himself about that one, maybe even muttered under his breath, "Yeah, I’ll keep an eye on her, alright" in a sardonic tone. The fucking asshole might have even had the whole thing planned out: spend a romantic evening with Pam, flirt with her when Roy’s got his back turned, and as soon as he’s undoubtedly out of hearing range, tell her you love her as a last bout to steal her away. He hated the thought of it... Jim confessing his love to his fiancé, making a pass at his Pam. And Pam, being as impressionable as she is, crawling into his arms, and Jim ... kissing her.

He grabbed the glass in front of him, and threw it at the mirror. The glass shattered, and the words "Poor Richard’s Pub: Scranton, PA" splintered in the same way that he wanted to splinter Jim’s skull right now. Pam jumped off the bar stool out of instinct, and stared wide-eyed at the man she had trusted so intimately for the past ten years. He pressed his forehead into the heels of his palms, averting his eyes away from that look of stupefied disappointment.

"This is over," she whispered, hurrying past him with her coat folded over her arm.

"Yeah, you’re right. This is so over," he said, his voice gaining strength and momentum as he stood up and turned around to watch her leave him... again. Now he understood why Pam had left him before. It was over that Casino Night. And now she was leaving him again, because of that Casino Night. What had she expected him to say? Did she think he would hug her, tell her it doesn’t matter, smile? Did she think he wouldn’t want to knock a certain someone’s teeth in? "Are you KIDDING ME, PAM? C’MON!" he screamed at her in response to his own thoughts as she swung out the pub door.

He couldn't get past the image of Jim kissing her that was painting itself on his mental retina: Jim's eyebrows pinched in relief and desperate longing as his lips meet her's, Pam pulling him in with her arms wrapped around his neck, his hands against the small of her back, holding her steady to him. Roy couldn't stand it. All the thoughts of Jim and Pam holding each other and confessing love to each other invaded his mind, and they wouldn't let him go. Could it have gone farther than a kiss? Did they sleep together? At the very least, that conniving bastard had touched her, held her, and kissed her.

His rage was growing exponentially. It all made his blood boil. The jet ski money. Finding out that Jim and Pam kissed. And now, his girlfriend dumping him. He grabbed anything he could find, and smashed it without thinking. Kenny joined in as some strange show of support, and the two of them were breaking whatever was in front of them. Glasses, stools. Roy couldn’t even find the words to yell, only the energy to grunt in frustration. He cursed nonsensically, and had the incurable desire to break everything as a valve for the storm burning in his gut.

Eventually, the passion began to die down. Roy started to glance around him, and found dozens of unnamed faces giving him that same shocked expression Pam gave him just before she walked out the door. The bartender was standing a safe distance away, hurriedly trying to think of what to do. The last of Roy’s temper escaped in deep breaths. He grabbed his coat, and walked out the door.

It was cold out, but he was too distracted to focus on something as superficial as the weather. Now that his head was clear, the full implications of what Pam had confessed hit him hard, and it made him nauseous. He collapsed in a heap on the curb.

The most sickening part of it was that he now had no idea what the true extent of Jim and Pam’s relationship was. If he was capable of making a move on Pam a month before her wedding date, he was capable of anything. The two of them were together five days a week from 9 to 5 for... three years now? There was no telling what else Jim had done in that time span. The opportunities for him to have hit on her were innumerable.

Roy kept finding memories stored in his mind, moments he had deemed at the time as insignificant that he finally saw for what they really were. There was this one time a year or two ago... he came into the office to talk to Pam, and there was Jim. He was behind the reception desk, half-crooked over her, holding her hand. They were laughing and whispering together like a couple of love-sick teenagers. It had shocked him at the time, but Jim said it was nothing. Just something stupid. Office pranks. And Roy had believed him. Or what about the time that a rumor was going around the office that Jim once had a crush on Pam? Roy had even confronted him about that one, he remembered. He had told him that they were cool because Jim was a good guy, and that crush ended a long time ago. Son of a bitch probably had a hard time keeping a straight face during the conversation.

Roy had been so blind. So blind to the jerkoff who was spending forty hours a week a few yards away from Pam, hitting on her, making her laugh and smile, leaning over her desk and flirting shamelessly. The same jerkoff who was responsible for Pam breaking up with him, twice.

Kenny came outside, his hands deep in his pockets.

"Are they going to call the cops?" Roy asked.

"No, I paid them off," Kenny said.

"The jet ski money?"

"All of it."

The anger rose up again in Roy’s face, but it was a different kind of anger this time. It wasn’t passionate and fleeting. It wasn’t the kind of anger that you can let out by punching a pillow or screaming into something. It wasn’t something that just bubbles up, needs an immediate release, and then goes away. No, this was the kind of anger that bided, waited, and sought the opportune moment.

"I am going to kill Jim Halpert," Roy said. Musicality hung on that word: kill. Like an artistic declaration. His countenance remained still, and his hands didn’t roll into fists. It wasn’t a statement said meaninglessly when you lose your head. It was a statement said with an ominous tone of apathy, like a vow of premeditation, and it commanded respect.

"Does this guy Jim have a girlfriend? You could hook up with her if he does. Poetic justice," Kenny suggested as he kneeled down next to his brother.

"Poetic justice, my ass. I don’t want goddamn justice. I just want to bash his freaking head in." They sat together in silence, a comfortable silence shared between two brothers.

"So what are you going to do about it? Just go into work on Monday, and ‘bash his freaking head in?’ Probably get fired?"

"No," Roy said, staring off into the parking lot as he gently shook his head. A frown of distaste crossed his face. "I’m going to wait for the right time, and I’ll make him sweat first. He knows what he did, and I’d guess it’s worse than I can imagine. Yeah... I’ll make him real nervous first, make him afraid that I might know what he did on Casino Night. That’s when I’ll bash his freaking head in." Kenny nodded in agreement, and patted his brother on the back.

"I’m really sorry about all this, man," he said.

♥

Pam shut the front door behind her, and leaned against it for a moment. Her knees gave in, and she fell to the floor, crying and blubbering into her sleeves like a little girl. That hadn’t gone the way she expected. She always knew that Roy was the jealous, hotheaded type, but a reaction like that was more than her wafer of an emotional grip could handle.

Was it so wrong of her? She had fallen in love with Jim, and she kissed him back that night. But now, there was no hope for them being together, so she tried to move on with Roy. She was obligated to tell him what had happened if there was any chance of them making it. Well, there was no chance of that now.

Pam wiped her eyes, and collected herself. She was going to be stronger than this. Fancy New Beesly! She laughed at the thought, happily remembering that conversation all those months ago. Just thinking of Jim made her swoon, and now without the distraction of Roy, it was going to be harder for her to forget him. But those were worries for another time. She stood up, and made herself a cup of tea after changing into a pair of pajamas. She cuddled up on the couch, and resolved to watch a movie to distract her, just for a moment, from all the inescapable drama of her life.

Her collection of DVDs was rather sparse. Roy used to get them all the time, so she barely ever bothered. Once they broke up, he kept most of them. Fingering through the dozen or so DVDs, she finally decided on Moulin Rouge.

The tea was soothing, and the movie didn’t let her think of her own messed up love life since the messed up love lives of the characters were so engaging. Movies were always more romantic than real life, Pam thought to herself. Or at least, this story was: Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman’s characters were in love with each other, but Nicole Kidman, a courtesan named Satine, had to hide their affair from her high-paying suitor, the Duke. It wasn't the most realistic movie, especially evidenced by the random dance numbers every other scene which made her think for a moment what a musical out of Dunder Mifflin would be like. It made her laugh, a welcome relief.

About an hour and a half later, the Duke found out that Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor were in love, and told her that if she didn’t stop seeing him, he was going to kill her lover. Nicole Kidman decided to lie to him for his own good, and told him that she just didn’t love him anymore in order to save his life.

"Satine, what are you doing?!" Pam yelled at the TV. "Just tell him that the Duke is going to kill him!" Her sudden outburst brought Pam rushing back into reality.

Roy had smashed up that bar pretty badly, and as long as she’d known him, she couldn’t remember ever seeing him so angry. Should I warn Jim that Roy knows that we kissed? Pam asked herself. She sat on the couch, her tea mug in hand, and thought it over in silence as the movie became increasingly unimportant.

No, I don’t need to tell him, Pam decided. At most, Roy will just yell at me some more.