“All right, gather around!” Michael had, as Michael always did, shrugged off a degree of embarrassment that would have impeded a lesser mortal, and Pam could see him—now in an old Dunder Mifflin giveaway T-shirt that bore the long-abandoned tagline of their first recycled paper product, “Do the (Re)Write Thing”—gesturing to their colleagues to pay attention to him, as if they hadn’t been doing that in horror for the last five minutes as he and Dwight stripped down in public. She and Jim exchanged a glance and slid out of the break room to make two of the now-gathering crowd.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, now that we have a tree…”

“Courtesy of Schrute Farms: Nothing is UnBeetable! Now with Christmas trees.”

“Courtesy of Schrute Farms, thank you Dwight, as I was saying, now that we have a tree, it is time for our annual Ugly Sweater Party to commence!”

“Excuse me, Michael.” Angela stepped forward gingerly, visibly stepping around the discarded remnants of Michael’s dress shirt on the ground.

“Yes, Angela Lansbury!”

“If this is a party, shouldn’t the Party Planning Committee have been consulted?”

“You were consulted!” Angela raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. “When I told everyone about the party…just…now,” Michael ended weakly, but quickly rallied. “I mean, it’s not a party! It’s a…a…a…a competition! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, office-sirs and office-hers, welcome to our annual Ugly Sweater Competition.”

“How can it be annual if this is the first time we’ve had one?” Pam looked around, surprised Michael hadn’t reacted to the complaint, only to realize Jim had whispered it sotto voce just to her. She grinned up at him (how was he so tall? It was less obvious at her desk, when he was leaning over for a jellybean or, now, a candy cane, but it was extremely clear at the moment and very distracting. Because her neck had to strain, of course) and whispered back. “I’m afraid it means he’s planning another one next year.”

“Hmm…next year is very soon. Maybe he means in two weeks. There is that mystery event he keeps hinting about in the new year.”

Pam wondered if Jim was right. Certainly Michael had been throwing around a lot of references to the “most mind-blowing social event of the season” after the Christmas holidays, but she hadn’t put much stock into it. Still, it would be a new low even for Michael to redo a party they’d had only two weeks before…not that she put it past him, given that they were currently redoing the Christmas party from last week.

While she was musing Michael had gone on about the rules of the Ugly Sweater Competition, which were definitely more boring than listening to Jim make fun of them would be later, when they got a chance to talk alone. Now he was trying to pump up enthusiasm—even he could notice when no one was smiling, though this seemed to be a selective ability given that he was apparently surprised by the fact—and Pam tuned back into the conversation just in time to hear him flail around in search of someone he could claim was onboard. Fortunately, this time (this time) he didn’t choose her as his target.

“Stanley! Stan my man! Stan-nis Baratheon!”

“I have no idea who that is.”

“Come on Stanley, Game of Thrones? It’s only the hit book for hip young people like you and me!

“Michael, does this mean you read my blog post on the errors of medieval history in George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire universe?” Dwight looked like he was going to hyperventilate with excitement.

“What? Eww, no, that stuff’s for nerds! Not like me and Stan-iel here!” Michael nudged Stanley’s arm, smudging the crossword he was engaged in, but seeming oblivious to the death glare that this earned him. “Anyway, as I was saying, Stan-ley here is obviously ready and loaded for bear in the Ugly Sweater Competition! Look out everyone, here comes Stanley’s brown-and-red abomination, looking for first place!”

Stanley briefly looked up from erasing the smear Michael had caused in the crossword puzzle. “My wife knitted this for me. I happen to like it.” He bent his head back to the clues. “And I am not participating in this travesty.”

“Oh…uh…I…a round of applause, everyone, for Teri! She does great work, doesn’t she, folks?” Michael seemed determined to stick the landing, even if it required a full-180-degree twist in the middle of his thoughts. Pam decided it was time to intervene.

Before she could, however, Jim slipped around her and clapped a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Michael, my man, why don’t you let everyone here get themselves ready for the contest, while you,” and here Jim squeezed Michael’s shoulder and began steering him back towards Michael’s own private office “go find your sweater so you can wow us all.”

Michael let himself be led away, though not before Dwight insisted it was his responsibility as “assistant regional manager” to help Michael into his sweater, pushing Jim out of the way. Pam caught Jim’s eye as he mouthed “to the” but let Dwight take over, and he jerked his head towards her desk. They met up there, Pam sliding into her chair and Jim leaning over the desk with a candy cane in his hand. For a moment she was distracted by the ease with which he tore the plastic off the miniature cane and slid it into his mouth, and then she raised her eyes to his—which were, of course, already watching her. She fought the blush that threatened to rise above her collar and popped an eyebrow, waiting for him to speak.

He took his time about it, sliding the cane around until she leaned her head on her hand and cocked her head at him. When he finally did speak, it was far more banal than whatever it was she had expected him to say—not that she knew what that was, actually, but it definitely wasn’t “So, do you and Roy have new plans for the holiday? In town this time, maybe?”

She tried to remember what she’d already told him about their Christmas plans, then remembered that in the joyous conversation after she’d gone through the little “bonus gifts” in her teapot—a quick glance above Jim’s ear confirmed the teapot’s presence in the break room—she had gushed about the upcoming skiing trip to the Poconos, and put two and two together. Obviously, he knew she was not in the Poconos because she was here. But he had to know Roy wasn’t around—he hadn’t been upstairs to visit her all week.

It was a depressing moment when she realized there was no reason Jim would take that to mean Roy was out of town. He barely visited anymore when he was around (though when he did he had the worst timing—like when he gushed about the video iPod, or that time he blew up over nothing when she and Jim had just been celebrating pranking Dwight). So of course Jim would think she and Roy were on the same page. How would he know otherwise?

She must have taken too long to answer, because his eyes were searching hers insistently now. It was so easy to get lost in his eyes when he did this, because in the act of looking into hers it was like his lost any filters, any protection they might have had against her looking back. Not that she thought Jim had or needed protection from her  or anything…it was just that he seemed so open, so vulnerable at times like this. When he was searching her eyes she could almost see what it was that made Roy so jealous—but of course that was silly. Jim wasn’t interested in her, and she wasn’t interested in him. He was just her good friend, her best friend, and he was concerned about her because she still hadn’t answered him.

Oh god, she still hadn’t answered him.

“Um…no, we haven’t exactly made new plans,” she spat out. “He’s…uh, he’s up in the Poconos right now, so it’s kind of hard…”

She trailed off, but Jim picked up the conversational slack, although he headed in a direction she would definitely not have chosen for herself—not that he didn’t follow her own thoughts exactly. “Wait, he’s in the Poconos? Weren’t you two going together? Why didn’t he wait for you?”

“He…took his brother. Kenny. They’re up there now.”

Jim rolled his eyes, and Pam felt two contradictory feelings well up inside her. On the one hand, she wanted to be angry at Jim: what right did he have to judge Roy? To tell her…well, he hadn’t actually told her anything out loud, but his body language right now was screaming that Roy shouldn’t have done that. That Roy owed her more than that. Or maybe that was just her reading too much into it, because on the other hand she wanted nothing more than to take a picture of Jim’s face right now, send it to Roy somehow (did they have fax machines in the Poconos?) and then call him and yell “THAT! THAT! THAT’S HOW I FEEL ABOUT YOU GOING ON OUR VACATION WITHOUT ME.”  

It was easier to let the angry part win, because it would have been very hard to explain the other part to anyone. Except maybe Jim, but she definitely couldn’t explain it to Jim. Because she was pretty sure if she did his only response would be a cocked eyebrow that would tell her, with perfect silent clarity, that he understood. That whatever it was that was going on with Roy wasn’t just normal relationship stuff you worked through but stupid, terrible stuff you broke up over. That Roy’s inattention, his self-absorption, wasn’t “just a guy thing” but a Roy thing, and that she…couldn’t finish that sentence.

So instead she got mad at Jim.

Unfortunately, before she could apologize to him and get things back to normal—whatever that was anyway—Michael bounded back into the room with a light-up Home Alone II promotional sweater on (did the man own any clothes besides a suit that weren’t free promotional items? Except that on second thought he clearly had paid money for this particular monstrosity, because there was no way that was given away for free) and swept them all into his particular brand of inane insanity, giving Jim the perfect opportunity to slide away from her desk, avoiding her eyes.

“Pam! Pamaramala! Pam-in-a-can!”

“Yes, Michael?” She really didn’t have time for this. She needed to apologize to Jim. Who was…who had just snuck out the double doors while she turned around to answer Michael, her well-honed Jim-senses informed her. Before she had time to follow him, or to ask herself why she had well-honed Jim-senses that told her where he was at all times, Michael was right up in her face.

“Do you like my sweater?!?” he asked, pressing a little button on the hem of his sweater.

Oh god, it wasn’t just light-up. It had an audio component as well.

“Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!” crowed the shirt.

“Merry Christmas, Michael. Sure, I like the sweater fine,” she said, as she squatted down behind the counter (she knew better than to bend over with Michael right there) and retrieved her own ugly sweater. “Really gets the spirit of Christmas.”

“See Dwight! Pam likes it. I swear, sometimes she’s the only one of you who has a lick of Christmas spirit.” And Michael was off again, leaving her to her own devices. And her own thoughts.

Great.