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Author's Chapter Notes:

Sorry for the delay in posting this; I had to rewatch Email Surveillance for the details of Jim and Mark's place. Hopefully I made it up to you with the extra-long chapter.

 Pam goes to Jim's apartment to get stuff. 

It felt completely surreal to be letting herself into Jim’s place alone, with the key Larissa had given her. Yet at the same time it felt right, somehow. A small part of her was bouncing along as she turned the key in the lock, saying “Home! Jim! Home!” She let herself imagine for that little moment what it would be like if this wasn’t the first time she’d done this, if it wasn’t an unusual occurrence at all—if this was just how she came home after art class, unlocking the door not because Jim wasn’t there, but because she lived there and it was an everyday sort of thing to do. What it would be like to have Jim waiting for her inside, listening for her at the door and smiling his gorgeous smile as she walked in. The little click of the door unlocking snapped her out of her reverie and she blushed, wondering what it said about her that she was letting herself get carried away with fantasies when the whole reason she was really here was that Jim was in the hospital, fighting for his life.

 

As she opened the French doors and stepped into the entryway, she realized that she had no good way of knowing what was his and what was Mark’s. The art on the walls was sort of schizophrenic: a crazy abstract like a ‘90s Jackson Pollock only a few feet away from a much more photorealistic piece, with a family photos in between. She figured it was best to play it safe, not giving in to the instinct that told her the Pollocky painting was so not Jim’s style, and grabbed a couple of family photos in which Larissa featured prominently—none with Jim, though, in case the accident had horribly scarred him or something. Oh god, was that possible? She still hadn’t seen him, and Larissa hadn’t exactly volunteered the option. Maybe it was just exhaustion, or a feeling that it wasn’t right for Pam—whom until this week had been going to marry another man—to see him when the rest of the family hadn’t been able to yet, but maybe it was something worse. Something horrible. Something disfiguring or permanently maiming.

 

She realized as she worried that she wasn’t actually afraid of seeing Jim in any of those circumstances, just worried what Jim himself would feel. Worried how she would get him to realize that even if he didn’t look like the Jim he had been, the real essence of Jim was inside of him. She loved his smile, but for all she was attracted (there, she’d admit it, even if only when no one else was around) to the lopsided look of it creeping across his face, it was the emotions that the smile conveyed that really stood out to her. That feeling of safety, of support, of deep-rooted affection that welled up out of his eyes and onto his face.

 

How had she been so stupid, so willfully ignorant for so long? She loved Jim’s smile because it said he loved her. Even when it was about something silly Michael had done, or the latest prank he had pulled on Dwight, he always smiled at her with that something in his eye that said “I’m sharing this moment with you. With you in particular. Because I love you.” How had that declaration a month ago come as a surprise? He’d been telling her he was in love with her for three years, multiple times a day.

 

Pull it together, Beesly. This was no time to dissolve into tears. She was in Jim’s apartment because she needed to do something for him. Not as payback or repayment—you don’t repay love, you return it, she thought, and she was rapidly realizing how much she did return his—but because she couldn’t not. It was Jim. He needed her, or rather, Larissa needed her for him. And so she would do what she was asked.

 

She had the family photos. What else? Decorations, entertainment—she was pretty sure the Xbox was Mark’s—medical records. OK. Those would be upstairs, in Jim’s room.

 

Jim’s room, where he’d found her last year at the barbecue he’d hosted—that some little part of her had told him she’d hosted for her, even if he’d claimed it was because Mark needed reassurance that Dwight was a real person. That barbecue where Phyllis had assumed she meant her and Jim when she’d started hinting about Dwight and Angela.

 

Seriously, how had she not noticed?

 

Anyway, at that barbecue she’d intentionally gotten “lost” on the tour and sat in Jim’s room with him. So she knew where that was. And what was in it. Time to deal with some old memories, she supposed. Memories that were somehow actually that much sweeter knowing how he felt about her—or how he had felt about her until a month ago at least. She wished she hadn’t led him on so much…or really, if she was honest—and when can you be honest except when you’re standing in the empty rental house of your best friend whose heart you broke a month ago and who’s lying in the hospital semiconscious with only his sister for company?—she wished she’d led him on a lot more and not been so afraid, so blatantly terrified, of what she was beginning to realize she’d felt for him for a lot longer than she’d let herself know. Imagine if those memories had been of making out with Jim in his room, instead of—no, in addition to—giggling over his yearbook photo? Yes, she thought, that would be a definite improvement. She’d have to work on that after this, if he’d let her.

 

These reflections brought her up the stairs and down the hallway (two bedrooms, one bathroom, no flash photography). She slipped into his room just as she had all those months ago, and started looking around for things to bring. CDs were easy—she just grabbed the top couple off the giant stacks by his TV, then sheepishly put them back when she realized that he actually had his iPod at the hospital already. The guitar was out; probably too big for a hospital bed, and what if his fingers were all mangled or something? She had a brief image of Jim asking the doctor “Doc, will I be able to play the guitar after my surgery?” and when the doctor said yes, grinning and saying “good, I never was before.” Kind of a dad joke, but then, Jim did like them corny.

 

To stop herself from dwelling too long on the nature of Jim’s injuries, she grabbed his laundry bag (realizing that she didn’t have anything else to carry things in) and started sliding in clothes. Sure, she reasoned, he was packed for Australia and Larissa probably had those bags, but Australia was in the southern hemisphere, wasn’t it? Completely different climate, opposite seasons, that sort of thing.

 

Oh my god, she realized. Jim was going to Australia in June. That’s midwinter. He was going to Australia at the exact wrong season just to get away from her wedding, from her. How could she have been so dense? She’d been imagining him sipping Mai-Tais and other froofy drinks on a beach while hot Australian women flung themselves at him and he forgot all about her—but he was really planning to go to rain and cold and wet, albeit probably still with hot Australian women throwing themselves at him, because, well, he’s Jim. Still, while she’d been thinking of him taking a pleasure cruise of sorts and ditching his best friend’s wedding, he’d really been fleeing as far as he could (literally, unless someone had a cruise to the uninhabited depths of the Indian Ocean) in the worst weather possible. Of course he had been in love with her. She hoped he still was.

 

She grabbed a pack of playing cards from his desk (home office, she thought sadly) and consciously did not take the Dunder Mifflin Inc folder beside it. She grabbed a couple more family photos and a poster with an equation for life that seemed tacky as hell and therefore probably entertaining to Jim. And besides, a little reminder that life was worth it wouldn’t be amiss. There was a stuffed penguin on his desk that she considered not packing (would it remind him too much of Australia?) but then inserted, because who didn’t love penguins? She also took down a bunch of notes from his family and friends that he had tacked up on a board by the desk. Larissa could help her sort those out later. On one she recognized her own loopy handwriting, and couldn’t resist the urge to look closer. It was a Valentine she’d written him his first year at Dunder Mifflin, when Michael had insisted they act like an elementary school classroom and have everyone give everyone else cards on Valentine’s. Had he really been interested in her that long, that he’d kept this, even as he covered it up on the board with other cards? She couldn’t quite process that right now, but she resolved to get him a new one at the first opportunity—even if it wasn’t February anymore. It was like February-ish in Australia, right? That would have to do. She bypassed the skeleton picture by the bed—skeletons in a hospital didn’t feel right—but found underneath the bed the treasure-trove that she’d been looking for.

 

Tax returns, social security card, all his important documents. Including a couple of recent receipts from hospital visits, one for (she glanced down the sheet) a pulled hamstring, one for a busted toe. She guessed basketball had been a little taxing on him recently. She grabbed those and the insurance information (which was the same as hers from Dunder Mifflin, so she recognized the folder as soon as she saw it) and scanned the room. A couple of books by the bedside completed her haul.

 

She headed down the hallway to the bathroom, grabbing the one pill bottle with Jim’s name on it (Claritin, it looked like, but hey, more medical information was probably better than less) and finding under the sink a spare toothbrush, toothpaste, and deodorant for Larissa. She was a little surprised that two bachelors had stocked up on those sorts of things, but the deodorant came in a threepack (she wasn’t sure whose it was—it looked like women’s deodorant, which gave her a flash of jealousy until she remembered Mark had a longer-term girlfriend, whom she had no qualms about temporarily stealing from) and the toothbrush and toothpaste were clearly the samples that the dentist handed out. She stuffed them in the bag, make a last sweep of the apartment for anything obvious she had missed, and slipped out the door, remembering to lock it behind her.

Chapter End Notes:
Thank you all for the reviews! They mean a lot to me, and it's good to know people are reading. I hope the writing lives up to the quality of the premise :).

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