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Author's Chapter Notes:
I had a few scenes in my head that I liked, and then I got to thinking about the differences between Jim and Roy, and lo and behold I found a way to tie it all together.
The Man, the Oath

a Jim/Pam fanfic by louisalorin.

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how much do I love you / i'll tell you no lie
how deep is the ocean / how high is the sky?

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oaths are but words, and words are but wind.

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Promises aren’t real: that’s what you learn when Roy backs his truck out of the driveway, pretending not to see you cry. Exhaust pours out of the tailpipe, stinging your throat.

Mom and Dad are out of town, so there is no one to hug you when you walk inside, sobbing, and drop onto the sofa, too skinny in your blue jeans, your white blouse with red buttons.

Eighteen years old and he said he’d love you no matter what happened. Then he left you at your parents’ house because you wouldn’t put out and now you don’t have a ride back to your dorm, only your old pink bicycle with flat tires that squeaks every time you brake.

We’re not babies anymore, Pam. I won’t wait forever.

You know his brother makes fun of him. You know that early on, he told his friends he’d gotten farther than he actually had.

Love means compromise, you tell yourself guiltily, sitting upside down on the sofa, legs flung over the back and hair dangling to the floor. That’s what Mom likes to say, when Dad puts beef on one side of the grill and turkey burgers on the other.

Problem is, no one ever taught you the difference between compromise and capitulation.

It’s been a year and a half, you think, in the silence of the living room. I owe it to him.

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Promises aren’t real, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy – but you forget that when he slides the engagement ring onto your finger and that big house with the terrace shines inside your mind, so brightly you can almost see it reflected in his eyes.

(Much later, remembering this, you will cry. But of course you have know way of knowing that now.)

You call your mom right there at the dinner table. Roy declines to call his parents: “They already knew I was going to ask you, babe.”

They didn’t know I would say yes, you want to point out.

“He owed it you,” a girlfriend says that weekend at Poor Richard’s, her tone matter-of-fact. “You’ve been dating for what, six years now?”

“Seven,” you mutter, then go quiet – you’re reminded of something unpleasant, but what you can’t remember.

You gather your things and leave early that night.

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Promises aren’t real: that’s what you know too well by the time the new guy arrives at the office, lanky and shy, his eyes somehow full of them.

In the beginning your voice went low and flat whenever you spoke to him, a sure sign that you were nervous. You might not have noticed otherwise – it had been a long time, after all.

A joke on your end, a smile on his, and it isn’t long before he’s filling your long days at Dunder Mifflin with his electric presence. You notice things about him, so many that it sometimes makes you nervous: large hands he often hides in his pockets; eyelashes that must be longer than your own; a smile so infectious you want to preserve it for all time, like Dwight’s stapler suspended in green jello.

Time has passed – years, though it doesn’t feel like it – and now you have to fight not to lift your head and smile the moment he stands up from his desk. He might not be on his way to talk to you, after all. But usually he is, and some days you’re laughing before he even opens his mouth.

We’re buddies, you think desperately. We have fun together. So much fun that it can’t all be contained inside you, you’re just one person, and eventually your Mom, visiting Dunder Mifflin, is leaning in close and whispering, “So which one is Jim?”

You blush: you know he can hear her from his desk. He must be smiling with the side of his mouth that you can’t see.

You can only fool yourself for so long. Promises may not be real, but heartbeats are.

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Promises aren’t real, because they’re too easily made. Anything can be a promise: a look, or a smile, or the gentle way Jim laughs sometimes when you make love.

(Especially that.)

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Promises aren’t real, but loving you is the nature of who Jim is. You realize this one night on the roof, when he tells you he likes how sincere you are.

“Or maybe you just like me when I’m being sincere,” you offer.

“It’s both,” he says, grinning.

Later, without thinking, he takes your hand in his. Fingers curl around each other and you stare down at his forearm. At his wrist, where it peeks out of his shirt, wisps of hair and faded freckles.

Promises aren’t real, but Jim is.

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it is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.

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End.

Chapter End Notes:
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llorin is the author of 3 other stories.
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