The office draws for Secret Santa the first week of December. Jim gets a name and doesn't immediately unfold it, because he knows that as soon as he unfolds the paper he'll look at whoever it is he got and then the "secret" in Secret Santa is ruined. He opens it later, when he's in the men's room, and he's glad he saved it because it says Pam. He lingers over it, lets the smile that comes from seeing her name on a tiny slip of paper stay on his face for a little longer than he would have otherwise. The thought of getting to buy a Christmas gift specially and specifically for Pam is...it's good. He's excited.
Pam's in the kitchen when he comes out of the restroom and he tries to not smile like an idiot so he doesn't give himself away. It doesn't work, of course, but he's always smiling like an idiot when she's around so she probably can't tell that this smile is a I got you in Secret Santa smile and not his usual you're amazing and gorgeous and I'm happy when I'm with you smile.
"Hey. Did you do your weird Secret Santa bathroom ritual?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. And why are you so interested in my bathroom rituals?"
She shrugs. "I know what you do in there, Halpert."
He loves it when she's like this, when she's in a fun mood and initiates the jokes and makes him feel like it's not a totally one sided thing. When she dances across the line in the same way he does. "Wow. Just...wow." She ducks her head down and grins up at him, and it looks like she's enjoying the game they're playing as much as he does. She's glowing, radiant, so bright that he can't keep looking at her because it's just too much, so he pulls open the refrigerator and reaches in to pull out his lunch, even though it's only 11:25.
Pam follows suit and pulls out her own lunch. She sits in the seat next to him and waits what he suspects she believes to be a polite amount of time before asking the question he knows she's been wanting to ask. "So who'd you get for Secret Santa?"
"Against the rules, Pam."
"Come on! I'll tell you who I got. I'm actually kind of excited about, they're one of the only people here that has said they like my art. Except for you, of course.”
"Meredith?" She gives him a surprised look and he knows that he's right. "You told me she was really interested in your sketchbook that time you brought it in." He takes a bite of his ham and cheese in what he hopes is a nonchalant way because he realizes he might have given himself away a little, let on just how much he hangs on every word she says.
He doesn't see it, but Pam's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "That...that was a long time ago. Good memory." She sounds pleased, though but also a little sad and it makes him wonder if Roy remembers things like that. Or if she even talks to Roy about things like that. She clears her throat and interrupts his thoughts with "Um, so yeah, you know who I got. Who did you get?"
"You'll never get it out of me. May as well give it up now."
She bumps his knee with hers underneath the table. "You're no fun. I bet you have all kinds of juicy secrets over there, Fort Knox."
Nope, he thinks. Just the one.
He goes that weekend to buy her gift, a teapot that he knows she wants because she told him so herself. It's something else he remembers, something she mentioned to him offhandedly about a week after Halloween. She'd been to the outlets the weekend before and raved about the cutest teal teapot that was the perfect size for brewing tea at her desk but how she didn't get it because they needed to save money and money was a little tighter because they were still paying on the jet-skis. At the time, Jim filed away the useful information (teapot) and tried to forget the frustrating information (jet-skis taking priority over more important things). He's relieved to find the teapot quickly and he has to laugh at how he was likely to have picked it out for her himself if he didn't know she wanted it; it was very Pam. The teapot itself isn't enough, though, so he spends the weeks before the Christmas party thinking up things to add to it: bonus gifts.
He knows immediately that he's going to add his yearbook photo, the one she thought was so dorky and funny (and hopefully kind of cute). When he can't track down any extra wallet size photos, he brings the yearbook into the office and covertly makes a copy when Michael has her distracted in his office. He also adds in a cassette tape that he'd made back in high school and that they'd listened to when she was teaching him to drive stick shift over lunch breaks--something that he'd known how to do for a good decade, but she'd offered and he'd jumped at the chance to spend some extra time with her. She'd good-naturedly ribbed him about his choice in music back at age 15, but by the end of the first week she'd been singing along at the top of her lungs to "Informer" (as much as anyone can sing along to that song) and "Better Man" (the irony of which was not lost on Jim). Another addition is the pencil that she threw at him after he soundly kicked her ass at team-building mini golf and gloated about it. He kept it and would occasionally hide it somewhere at her desk, which turned into an ongoing game of mini golf pencil hide-and-seek. He rounds the extra gifts out with the Boggle timer that Dwight had used to time Jim's cold calls back when he first started ("because if you can't make the sale in 3 minutes, you don't deserve it!") that Pam was thought was hilarious and one of the three Taco Bell hot sauce packets that she'd mistaken for ketchup. He's really satisfied with it; thinks that she'll like it. Hopes that she'll love it.
It isn't until the night before the party that he decides to include a card. Maybe it's because he worries that the gift is still lacking, isn't significant enough. He thinks that maybe the universe is throwing him a bone in letting him draw Pam's name, giving him an opportunity to come clean and lay all his cards on the table--or in this case, lay one card in a box with a Secret Santa gift. Maybe it's because Mark and his girlfriend are watching Love, Actually and the scene with the cue card confession is like a gut punch. At Christmas you tell the truth, according to Andrew Lincoln, and that's really all the prompting he needs.
So he digs out a mostly full box of generic Christmas cards from a few years ago and sits down at his desk to write one out. He writes "Pam-" below the pre-printed message and surprisingly enough, the words come on their own. He very quickly runs out of room and considers flipping to the back of the card, but he's got at least 15 more in the box so he just gets a new one and starts over. This time he starts at the top of the page, well above the cursive "Wishing you a joyous Christmas and a Happy New Year!" and runs out of room again. Third time's the charm he thinks, and starts a new one.
This time he fills up all the empty space the card has to offer. He tells her how much these memories they have together mean to him, that the best part of coming to work is getting to make new ones with her. He tells her in no uncertain terms how he feels about her, how she makes him feel. He writes that making her laugh is the thing he wants to do for the rest of his life and that he couldn't go another day without telling her how he feels just in case she feels it too, even just a little. He just has to take the chance. He signs it "Love always, Jim" and means it.
The doc crew call them all in for talking heads the next day, asking each person who they got as their Secret Santa and what they got them as a gift. He knows by now that they have a very strict "don't interfere" policy, just like he knows that they know, so he doesn't see the harm in showing them the card as he packs it in the box. It's nice, actually, to not have to pretend as much. To be kind of honest with somebody--multiple somebodies, as it were. He can tell by the sound guy's raised eyebrows that they're impressed, but he doesn't know if it's because of his bravado or because of his stupidity. He doesn't know which one he's impressed with, either.
When she opens it, there in the circle with everyone else looking around, he thinks he might throw up he's so nervous. The smile on her face is heart-stoppingly radiant when she see what it is, though, and her reaction is absolutely genuine. She knows immediately that it's from him and he loves her for it. It makes him feel hopeful.
So when Michael instigates Yankee Swap or Dirty Christmas or whatever the hell stupid name its called and the teapot (and the memories and the card, holy shit the card) make its way around the circle, his heart sinks. He feels like an idiot when Pam chooses the iPod over the teapot, because of course. It's a metaphor for his entire life: Pam chose something else other than him and it doesn't matter how many dumb jokes there are or how earnestly he writes in a card, she will choose something other than him every day for the rest of her life. It's plain as day and evidenced by the ring on her finger and the man she goes home with every day and the fact that she refers to Jim as her "best friend" and not something else.
And it's not Pam's fault. It's his. He's known for years that she's engaged but he's allowed his feelings for her to root and flourish and become such a concrete part of his reality. He feels like the biggest jerk in the world, looking for hidden meaning and secret signals in every interaction he has with a woman who is nothing but his close friend. Yeah, maybe Christmas is the time to tell people how you feel, but not when the people you're having feelings for don't have them back--and shouldn't. He needs to be honest with himself more than anybody, needs to get a fucking grip on reality and stop hanging so much responsibility on Pam, someone who never asked for it. Who isn't even aware of it.
So later, even though she's got the teapot back and that makes him happy, he stomps it down and picks the card back out of the box. They laugh about the yearbook picture and the hot sauce and she's excited about the mixtape, but he's having like, an out of body experience about it. Like a fly on the wall, watching their interaction. It's obvious, painfully obvious, that there is nothing more than friendship there.
He stands in the parking lot of Poor Richard's later and watches everyone's tail lights as they exit the parking lot. It's late and he's kind of sad and lonely and a drink away from getting good and emotional, which is always a bad combination. His inhibitions are lowered enough that he does something really stupid: pulls out his phone and sends a text.
hey
heyyyy u! wat ru up 2
poor rich
i cn come by?
i need a rie home
b there soon! :)
He waits outside, not feeling the cold as much as he would because of the amount of alcohol in his system. He doesn't have to wait long, a little less than ten minutes, before a car pulls up in front of him. The driver gets out and hugs him so excitedly that it would have knocked him to the ground if he weren't standing against the wall. "It's great to see you, Jim. You've been such a stranger. I thought I'd never hear from you again."
"'S good to see you too, Katy."
