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Author's Chapter Notes:
Adam 10 gives everyone a scare, and the troops go to a bar.

Jim was sitting in the parking lot of the station familiarizing himself with the interface on the ‘Mobile Data Terminal,’ otherwise known as a chunky old laptop, when he heard the radio squawk and listened actively just long enough to determine it wasn’t for him.

“Adam ten, what’s your status,” Pam’s voice intoned in the far reaches of his awareness.

Thanks to the funding boost that the television filming had brought the township, they had finally invested in the necessary equipment to make use of the computers and tracking equipment that came with the second-hand cruisers that they operated. The old Crown Victoria’s had come to the department outfitted with GPS tracking and the ability to link into a Computer Assisted Dispatch system, but until this last week the station apparently hadn’t had the infrastructure to take advantage of it. Last week Michael had done a series of lectures on the wonders of computer assisted dispatch, but Jim shut his brain off halfway through, losing track of Michael’s analogies.

What it really boiled down to was that now Pam could know where every unit was with GPS at all times, whether or not their lights or siren were on, and give them calls without having to use the radio. That was really the biggest change, now it was everyone’s responsibility to accept calls on their computers and change their status from off-duty to patrol or on break, etcetera. Needless to say Senior Constable Hudson, who had to be almost twice Jim’s age, was not adapting well to these changes, and had over the past week forgotten to change his status before going on break a few times, causing Pam to have to check up on him. The legitimate worry was that if a police car was sitting in one place for a while with no status change, something may have happened to the officer. Hence, Pam had to call out on the radio to check up on him. Usually this wasn’t a big deal, Stanley would just reply and say he was on break at the local bakery or something.

It was odd that Stanley hadn’t responded yet, but not cause for alarm quite yet, he could after all just be in the bathroom or something… or if Jim was channeling Dwight, the bakery could be held up by masked gunmen this very minute. What felt like a minute ticked by, but Jim registered it had only been twenty seconds, tops, before the radio sounded again.

“Adam one-zero, Adam one-zero, please respond,” Pam said, sounding a bit more worried now. When no response came and the seconds seemed to drag on, the radio beeped again.

“Adam twelve, are you clear,” Pam asked, causing Jim to realise that he had forgotten to mark himself on patrol, distracted by fiddling around with his MDT.

Jim grabbed the mic from its cradle in the car and responded, “Adam 12, I’m clear.”

 “Adam twelve, clear and a call, check up on Adam ten, last known one-two-four-seven Main street, cross of third and fourth, parking lot of Tony’s Bakery. Handle code 2.”

“Adam twelve roger, check up on Adam ten at Tony’s Bakery, show me enroute.”

Jim put the cruiser in reverse and pulled out of his space, as he reached the exit of the lot he heard his computer ding and looked over to see that Pam had put the call through to it and marked him as enroute already. There was also a portion of the page showing directions to the location via GPS, but Jim disregarded that as he knew well enough where to find Stanley’s favourite bakery, having made more than a few runs in his time to get in Stanley’s good graces.

Jim pulled into the parking lot, casting his eyes about for anything untoward, but only seeing some old folks sitting out front of the bakery on a bench, and Stanley’s white on grey with yellow high-vis cruiser parked right near the door. Jim pulled in beside his car and quickly set his status to ‘on scene’ before getting out and approaching the bakery. Seeing nothing alarming, Jim stepped up, opening the door and casting his eyes about, quickly landing on Stanley, sitting in the corner with a cinnamon bun, some coffee, and the morning paper. Jim let out a sigh of relief that he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding and walked over to him.

“Hey Stanley, what’s up,” Jim asked as he stood at the end of his booth.

Stanley raised his cinnamon bun in a sort of cheers motion, before taking a slow bite out of it and grunting.

“Pam’s been trying to reach you, she sent me over to check up on you,” Jim said, fishing for some sort of response from Stanley.

Stanley looked up at him, frowning, and reached around to his back to locate the volume knob on his radio. Jim heard the small click-squelch of the radio turning on and Stanley had the decency to grimace by way of apology.

“It must have gotten turned off by the toilet paper dispenser again,” Stanley grumbled, “I swear trying to fit these belts into the can gets harder every year, those stalls are shrinking.”

Jim figured it would be in his best interest not to comment on that, and instead he brought his had to the mic on his shoulder to tell Pam all was well, “Dispatch, Adam twelve here.”

“Go ahead Adam twelve,” Pam sounded a little stressed.

“Stanley’s fine, his radio just got turned off, we’re good here.”

“Copy that Adam twelve, mark yourself clear and proceed with patrol,” Pam sounded relieved and annoyed, Jim could only imagine how the situation must feel like with only dots on a map and the radio to paint a picture.

Jim waved goodbye to Stanley and started walking back to his patrol car.

“Adam ten, come in Adam ten,” Pam called from the speaker on his shoulder, and he heard it echo from Stanley’s booth.

“Go for Adam ten,” Came Stanley’s doubled response as Jim exited the doors.

“Adam ten, meet el ten on tac two,” Pam said coolly.

‘Uh oh,’ thought Jim, ‘Stanley’s in trouble,’ L-10 was Michael’s callsign, which meant that Stanley was probably about to be chewed out. Although, maybe not, as Michael seemed to be kind of scared of Stanley sometimes.

“Roger, switching to tac-two,” came Stanley’s bored reply.

Jim was glad for the department’s sake that the cameras were following Medic-1 around today, so they hadn’t just witnessed that embarrassing moment for Stanley.

The rest of watch passed quickly for Jim, he stole Dwight’s favourite spot at the bottom of the overpass and ran radar, pulling over a few speeders before it was time to pack it in and return to the station. Jim made a beeline for the locker room and took his time stowing his equipment in his locker, securing his sidearm and placing his radio on a charger near the door. It was a Friday, so Jim showered before changing out of uniform, as usually a group of people from the station went over to Kev’s. Pam usually didn’t join them, citing that she didn’t enjoy watching people get drunk, but Jim was hoping he could convince her to come along today as they didn’t get to spend much time together outside of work, and even at work it was limited to breaks with her being locked in the glass box that was dispatch.

Pam had been Jim’s dispatcher since he joined the police service. His parent’s had originally wanted him to take the LSAT’s and become a lawyer after he got his degree, but after dragging his feet for long enough and failing a couple, he finally got the courage up to go his own way and decided that he wanted to help people in a more impactful way. Somehow Jim found himself accepting a job offer from the DMPS and moving just over forty-five minutes away from his family home to live and work out of Dunder Mifflin. After a year partnered with salty old Stanley, Jim had been promoted to solo patrols, and that’s what he had been doing for the last five years. From what little Jim had been able to gleam of Pam’s personal life over the years, she had taken her first year of university before stopping to come back home to Dunder Mifflin to help with some family issue. She got a job working in dispatch somehow, Jim thought there might be some family connection with the way Stanley treated her sometimes, but he’d never been able to work up the nerve to ask what that was about. Jim was all too aware that the vacancy that he’d filled at the station that was a taboo subject to this day, no one talked about whatever had happened to the constable before him.

Jim was walking with his head down, deep in thought when he heard Pam’s voice off to his right. Jim looked up and was surprised to see that Pam was still in the office, usually she did dispatch handoff and snuck out. Jim barely registered that she was talking to Kelly as he turned on his heel to approach, determined to ask her to join them at Kev’s.

“Hey Pam,” Jim shot an apologetic look to Kelly as he realised that he had interrupted her, but pressed on, “Are you free for dinner and drink’s at Kev’s? A bun-”

Pam cut him off abruptly, “Yes,” before he could even finish asking the question, looking at him with the wide eyes that she usually reserved for miming ‘Save me!’ when Michael was particularly unbearable.

“Ok, cool, well I’m heading out now, did you want a ride?”

“Yup, sure,” Pam said cheerily as she practically skipped over to his side, leaving Kelly behind, mouth agape.

“We’d better get out of here before she recovers,” Jim said in a stage whisper as he made his way towards the door with Pam by his side.

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Pam said as she covered her mouth with her hand, eyes twinkling with mischief.

The drive to Kevin’s bar wasn’t too long, it was on Main Street about half a block up from Tony’s Bakery. Jim pulled out of the station lot and hooked a left on Dunder to head the one block over to Main. As he made the left onto Main Jim heard Pam clear her throat beside him and snuck a glance at her, she was staring intently out the passenger side and in the reflection on the window she didn’t look happy. Pam caught him and he was relieved when she shot a small smile at him via the reflection.

It was quiet in the car until they were coming up on Greenflower Ave, “Thanks for saving me from Kelly back there,” Jim was relieved to have the silence broken.

Jim looked over to give her an easy smile, “Any time Beesly,” he paused, weighing his next words, “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly did I save you from?”

“A double date with Kelly,” Pam sighed, “I’ve been trying to get out of it for weeks but tonight I finally ran out of excuses,” she finished with a small shrug.

“Why didn’t you go?” Jim wished he could kick himself; did he really just ask her why she didn’t go on a date? He fumbled momentarily, “Usually agreeing with Kelly is the quickest way out,” he added, rubbing the back of his neck and mentally crossed his fingers.

“Ask me again after a few drinks,” Pam said as he pulled into a parking space, looking up to see the neon sign for ‘Kevin’s Bar and Grill and Chilli’ flashing brightly before them.

Pam exited his car and headed for the doors before he could say anything else, although she did walk slowly enough for him to catch up, so at least there was that. Upon entering the bar Jim noted that their coworkers had already filled a table, so he and Pam moved to sit in the booth that was along the wall close to it. Jim sat next to her, justifying it in his head as leaving more room in the booth for any latecomers to sit. Of course the moment Jim’s mind fabricated that justification he also tore it to shreds, as he did a quick headcount and found that the usual end of watch gang was already there, including Phyllis the operator, Salty Stanley, Oscar who was a paramedic with a great dry wit about him, and Fire Chief Bernard who seemed to always be reliving the college glory days. All that was missing was Kelly, but Jim supposed that she was probably still going on the date that she tried to rope Pam into. There were also a few other firefighters sprinkled around, but they didn’t appear to be hanging out as part of the unit. After getting settled in the booth, Jim ordered a beer to start and Pam jumped straight to a vodka tonic.

Jim have her a look, raising his eyebrows, and she just stuck her tongue out at him before proceeding to drain the it before Jim was even halfway through his beer. Pam then ordered a lite beer and Jim couldn’t help but quirk an eyebrow at her again.

“What,” Pam defended, “The first one was to get me started, and now this is me drinking socially!”

Jim chuckled, “Ok, whatever you say Beesly,” and continued to sip his first beer.

Pam took her beer a lot slower, they passed the time chatting idly and teasing each other, falling into the easy rhythm that they had at the station. At some point Phyllis moved over to their table and Toby joined them as well a short while later. Pam had just ordered some of Kevin’s house chilli and Jim settled for a burger and fries when Phyllis excused herself to go home for the night and Toby wandered off towards the bathroom. While he was gone someone cleared away his glass and before he got back Stanley and Oscar decided to join them in the booth to get away from Andy. Jim didn’t say anything about Toby’s spot and Pam seemed very interested in conducting an archeological dig in her Chilli bowl. When Toby made his way back over, he didn’t say anything and went to sit quietly with the firefighters for a few minutes, before making his exit with little fanfare.

Jim chatted with Stanley and Oscar for a while, and Pam chimed in occasionally, it was clear she was pretty buzzed by this point. When Stanley made to leave, she nudged Jim out of the booth and gave Stanley a big hug, which Jim was surprised to see him return, before he bid them adieu. Jim thought he heard Pam scolding Stanley for giving them such a scare earlier. Oscar left shortly after and Pam got out to hug him too, and then they were alone in the booth again, sharing the lukewarm fries left over from Jim’s supper. There was a lull in conversation and for a while they just people watched, Pam pointing out things to giggle at, as Jim made faces at her, causing her to lose it all over again.

Pam was having a great time just sitting next to Jim and people watching, it helped that Jim made the best faces, she was a giggly drunk. Not that she was drunk yet, she had only had a vodka-something and a beer and a half. She was pleasantly tipsy, and in good company. She had almost forgotten about the double date of doom, when a reminder ambled along into her field of view and looked her way, changing course to intercept. Could you intercept a stationary object, Pam questioned herself, not that it really mattered; what did matter was that she was pretty sure the brute couldn’t see her hidden behind Jim in the back of the booth. That meant that he was coming over to talk to Jim – curse his charismatic personality, why did everyone need to talk to Jim? She braced herself as he stomped closer to the booth, looking to Jim to see if he noticed the approach. Jim turned his body outward as the man approached.

“Halpert,” the man exclaimed happily, clapping Jim on the shoulder as Pam tried to cower without looking like she was, pressing her back against the booth seat to narrow her profile.

“Anderson,” Jim acknowledged while he shook hands with the man – Sheriff’s Officer Roy Anderson.

‘Don’t sit down, don’t sit down, don’t sit down,’ Pam chanted in her head, tensing against Jim’s back.

Roy slid into the opposite side of the booth and set his drink down at the same time, before finally glancing over at her, recognition dawning on his face.

‘Oh my god, why does the world hate me,’ was all Pam could think before he spoke again.

“Pammy?”

Chapter End Notes:

Hope you enjoyed this! Thanks to everyone who read/reviewed the first chapter, I am humbled by the reception! 

Thanks to Warrior4 for being my technical consultant for the story.

How do Roy and Pam know eachother? What happened to Pam's family? Who was the other party to the double date? I have a vague idea of the answer to all of these questions, the rest of you will just have to wait and see.


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