Not only had Dwight been unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend, but now he had to contend with Andy wanting to talk about his make-out sessions with Angela. And yeah, even Jim would admit there was a part of him that felt sorry for his co-worker.
That's probably why he felt a pang of sadness when he walked into the break room to see Andy and Dwight sitting at a table eating lunch. Andy looked happy, but Dwight? Not so much.
"Big Tuna!"
"Uh...heyyyyy," Jim replied without taking his eyes off of Dwight. "What's going on here?"
"I was just telling Dwight about my latest conquest." Andy looked over at Jim and gave him a mischievous smile. "I got to first base with Angela."
Jim tried to give Andy a positive look of surprise, hoping to cover the actual sympathy he had for Dwight. Sympathy for Dwight? Something was wrong with the world. "Wow...Andy, that's great."
"I know, right? I'm hoping to get to first-and-a-half by this weekend," Andy said before standing up to throw the remnants of his lunch in the trash.
"Um...Andy? It's Monday."
Andy walked up and whispered loudly to Jim, "Gives me plenty of time then, doesn't it, Big Tuna?"
And with that, Andy left, leaving Jim alone with Dwight, who was still sitting at the table. It was just the two of them in the break room, but Dwight didn't really seem to be all there. Jim turned back to the candy machine and started putting some quarters in, letting his co-worker sit in silence. His bag of M&Ms fell with a thud and he quickly grabbed them before heading for the door.
Then Jim stopped. He couldn't explain why he stopped or why he was about to do what he was about to do, but he truly did feel like he was on Dwight's side in this case.
"Dwight?" he asked without looking up for the bag of candy in his hand.
"What?" came a muffled reply from across the room.
"Did you see the grocery store ads in the paper this weekend?" he asked, looking up to see Dwight staring at him.
"We don't get the paper on the beet farm."
Jim nodded. Why was he making this hard? "Oh, because Pam gets the paper I was looking through it this weekend...and um...they have Jell-O on sale this week."
And there it was. He was about to help Dwight execute The Prank of All Pranks, the prank that was HIS prank. He was about to give Dwight the secret to everything.
"So?" Dwight asked sarcastically.
Maybe this was going to be harder than he thought. "Oh...um...well, there's a recipe on the back of the box for those Jell-O Jiggler things that you can eat with your hands."
"Gross. That just allows more small undisciplined children to put their sticky fingers everywhere."
"Right, yeah, I guess, but it also works well if you want to encase something in Jell-O, you know?"
Dwight looked him dead in the eye and, with a serious tone, replied, "Why would I care about that?"
"Oh, um...no reason." Jim turned and walked out, tossing the bag of M&Ms in hand and then catching it. No one could say he didn't try to help Dwight -- it was just that Dwight didn't want to pay attention to what he was saying.
xxx xxx xxx
Two weeks later, nothing had changed. Andy was still stuck at first base with Angela, Dwight was still depressed, and Jim was still cursing himself for leaking one of his most sacred work secrets to a guy who didn't even appreciate the sacrifice.
He and Pam got off the elevator and headed in for another menial day at work. As they walked in the door, they let go of each other's hands and Jim began fumbling with his coat. He almost made it to the coat rack before he ran right into Pam, who was standing completely still and staring at the office.
"Pam?"
She didn't answer, just continued to stare ahead. That's when Jim turned to see what she was gawking at. Across the room stood Andy, staring at his desk in disbelief, his pencil cup jiggling around in some Jell-O.
"Nice job," Jim whispered.
"What do you mean?" Pam replied in the same hushed tone without taking her eyes off of the shocked Andy.
Jim looked down at Pam and quietly explained, "I sort of hinted my super secret recipe to Dwight so he could get back at Andy for the whole Angela thing. And look what he did? Pencil cup in Jell-O."
"The pencil cup's in Jell-O, too? Holy crap!"
Too? Jim's head snapped up, his eyes scanning Andy's desk. Next to the pencil cup was Andy's stapler suspended in a tell-tale lemon concoction. Half of his mug from Cornell was sticking out of a red blob with the bottom half submerged below the surface. The mouse for his computer was encased in a sky blue gelatin that Jim suspected was that new blueberry flavor he had seen on the shelf a few weeks ago.
He was amazed.
"What's going on?" Dwight's monotone voice snapped him out of his haze.
Jim turned and smiled as Dwight pushed his way around the couple to hang up his coat. "Nice job, Dwight."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Jim pointed across the room at the stoic Andy. "Someone put all of Andy's stuff in Jell-O."
"How immature." Dwight grabbed his brief case from the couch and walked to his desk. He opened the case, grabbed some paperwork out, and quickly snapped the latches shut before sliding it under his desk.
Jim gave Pam his trademark "what the hell" look before following Dwight's lead and sitting down. Then he watched Andy slowly pull his chair out and sink into it without taking his eyes off the rainbow of gelatin on his desk. It was such a different reaction than the one in Stamford when Andy found his calculator in Jim's Jell-O mold. Andy was completely thrown for a loop with this one.
"How am I supposed to get any work done?" he asked in a quiet, shocked tone from his desk.
Dwight turned in his chair to face Andy and simply said, "Sucks to be you," before turning back and logging on to his computer.
Jim looked over at Pam and smiled. Today was gonna be awesome.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Back for another installment of the Dwim Chronicles.
Disclaimer: Still don't own them. Still want the writers to not be on strike since they write much better stuff than I do.
sharky is the author of 26 other stories.
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