Jesus Christ, she’d flinched from him. Jim couldn’t get the thought out of his mind for the next three days. Even as he joked with her to defuse the tension, even after they were joined by her fiancé—a loud, cheerful, boisterous version of the man from the warehouse, clearly already several sheets to the wind—even after he went home that night to an empty bed in his parents’ house and confusing dreams about squirrels and hospitals, he couldn’t banish the memory of that moment when he’d tried to compliment Pam for playing a joke on him and she’d flinched away.

It hadn’t been a big flinch. He didn’t think Darryl had even noticed it. But he’d been staring straight into her eyes—a habit he’d have to break now that he knew for a fact she was engaged, but one he’d fallen into immediately—and he’d seen her bracing herself, seen the microscopic movement away as she thought he’d react badly to the discovery. And it haunted him.

It haunted him when he went up to her desk and chatted about nothing in order to annoy Dwight. It haunted him when he bought grape soda in the break room for them both and they mock-toasted the success of the University of Scranton plan (Michael had been literally overjoyed, his eyes overwelling with tears). It haunted him when he met her eyes randomly during the day (well, randomly on her part; he realized he was spending more and more of every day just looking at her hoping to steal a “random” glance).

Because behind all of it he couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made her flinch. It couldn’t be him, could it? She didn’t know him that well, of course—well, scratch that, she knew him better than anyone it seemed, since their minds synched up like two cogs in a gear, but she hadn’t known him that long—and so maybe he’d given off some strange vibe. But he didn’t like to think of himself as the sort of man that women flinched from, and he’d started watching his interactions with other women and none of them flinched, and besides she spent so much time interacting with him herself and not-flinching that it had to be something else, right? But what? Was it her parents? Her fiancé? Some other kind of trauma?

He gently poked at the issue occasionally, not wanting to reinvoke any trauma or hurt her, but trying to ease his mind. He asked her about her parents, heard funny stories about her siblings, drew her out on the subjects of her fears and her hopes and her dreams. A house with a terrace (even though they didn’t make them like that in Scranton). Two or more kids. A loving husband, presumably Roy (though he didn’t press on that because it hurt him to ask, for reasons he knew very well but didn’t intend to explore). Art—watercolors for now, oils when she could afford them. Travel—Italy, France, Morocco.

“Morocco?”

“Yeah. Want to make something of it, Halpert?” Her eyes flashed and he matched her grin with his own.

“I don’t know, Beesly, it seems to me like you’re the one making something out of it.”

“I’m just telling it like it is!”

“But why Morocco? Did you watch Casablanca one too many times as a kid?”  He certainly had, it was his mom’s favorite movie.

“…Maybe…” She blushed, which was just the cutest thing ever and which he absolutely had to stop thinking of as the cutest thing ever for his own sanity if nothing else.

He put on a bad French accent. “I am shocked, shocked to find that there is gambling going on in here!”

She giggled and handed him a jellybean from the container she’d recently started stocking on her desk. “Your winnings, sir.”

“Thank you.” He popped it into his mouth.

She cocked her head to the side and tsked. “It’s ‘Oh, thank you. Everybody out at once.’” Good god, she could quote the movie better than he could. He didn’t think anyone but his mother had watched it enough to do that.

“I stand corrected. And in exchange, I’ll gracefully concede that Morocco is an excellent place to visit. Anywhere else?”

She blushed again, which intrigued him, and said something too low for him to hear. “What was that?”

“Wakanda.”

It took him a moment to place the reference. “Wakanda? Wait, are you a Marvel fan?”

Her face was burning. “Yeah. So what?”

“I’m not sure we can be friends anymore.” He made as if to leave, but grabbed a jellybean instead. “You know Marvel’s best heroes are all just copies of DCs.”

“You take that back.”

“Why should I? DC obviously has the best lineup. Batman, Superman…” he started ticking names off his fingers.

She scoffed. “Superman’s boring.”

“He is not!”

“Come on, he has like one flaw, and even that’s just a plot contrivance so that everyone doesn’t get bored because he’s perfect all the time. Some rock from his home planet? Please.”

“Hey now!” This had started as teasing, but now he felt the sting of real rejection, because Superman had always appealed to him. “Are you saying that believing in Truth, Justice, and the American Way is boring?”

“Compared to a gun-toting, intelligent raccoon? Kinda.” She grinned and popped a jellybean.

“A what-toting, intelligent what?” He was lost.

“Gun. Raccoon.” She sighed. “Rocket Raccoon, I know he’s a minor character, but…”

“Minor? I’m not sure I’d even believe he existed if you weren’t the one telling me.”

“I’ll prove it to you.” She reached down and pulled a comic book out her bag with the words The Sensational She-Hulk plastered across the front. “I borrowed one of my dad’s old comics to do figure-tracing.” She flipped the book open and pointed. “Gun. Toting. Intelligent. Raccoon.” Her eyes glinted with triumph and it was all he could do to tear his own away from hers to look down at the page.

“So I see.” He shook his head. “Beesly, your taste continues to amaze me.” He slid around to look at the page from her perspective, and as he did, he saw her eyes flinch again. What was it?

“Halpert.” A deep voice from what had been behind him and was now to his side distracted him from Pam. Roy had just come through the double doors and was bearing down on him. “He bothering you, Pammy?”

“I was just…” he started to gesture towards the comic book only to realize that Pam had whisked it out of sight. “Getting a jellybean,” he finished, turning the gesture into a grab at the dish.

“You can do that from your side of the desk, can’t you?” Roy glowered at him, then turned to Pam. “Pammy, lunch, now.”

“Oh, right? Is that the time?” Pam’s voice sounded high to his ears. She grabbed her bag and slipped out past him, carefully not touching him. “I’m coming.” She hurried past him and out the doors, followed by Roy.

Jim stared after them, unsure what had just happened, when Dwight piped up, startling him.

“DC and Marvel? Amateurs. You should read Dark Horse Comics.”

“Thanks, Dwight.” He sat back down, his mind still spinning. “I’ll look into that.”