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The rest of dinner and drinks

“Pammy,” She heard Roy ask, silently fuming at how much she hated when he had called her that back in the day.

“Uh, hi Roy,” Pam said, forcing a smile – convinced that anyone would be able to take one look at her and tell it was fake.

“What are you doing here,” Roy gestured around to indicate the bar, “The Indian chick said you couldn’t come out tonight.”

Pam noticed Jim give her a quick look that she interpreted as ‘Is this guy for real?’ before he turned to address Roy, “You mean Constable Kapoor?”

“Kapoor, yeah,” Roy nodded, oblivious to the misstep, “So anyway, Pammy, what gives? I thought we were going on a date tonight,” he complained.

Pam wanted a way out of this encounter – fast. The last thing she ever wanted to do in her life was to go on another date with Roy Anderson, the last one hadn’t gone so well. Sure, it had been years since it happened, and he may have been young and stupid, but Pam wasn’t going to give him the benefit of the doubt here, he struck out as far as she was concerned. Pam looked over at Jim quickly to see if he could help her and noticed that hist left hand was resting on the table close to her right. Pam didn’t think that Jim would mind being her out, so she bumped his elbow lightly to get his attention and moved her hand to his, turning it over so that she could grasp it palm to palm.

Jim felt Pam nudge him and turned his head to look down at her when she surprised him by grabbing his hand. He had not been expecting that. When he met her eyes, he saw her beaming ‘Save me!’ into his brain for the second time that night. Evidently, she really didn’t like Anderson, and while he wasn’t Jim’s favourite person, he couldn’t say that he hated the guy, so he was a little confused as to why Pam was trying to get rid of him. Regardless, Jim realised that this must have been her half of the double date, and if she really didn’t want him around, Jim would happily oblige her if it meant he got to hold her hand a while longer.

“Sorry,” Pam sounded decidedly not sorry, “I had plans already,” she said as she not so subtly interlaced her fingers with Jim’s on the table in front of them and shot a nervous smile at Jim.

“Wow, I see how it is,” Roy scowled, “Way to get a guy’s hopes up,” he made to get out of the booth.

“Roy – I never agreed to,” Pam started before Roy cut her off.

“Whatever Pammy,” He exited the booth and started to stomp past Jim, pausing to clap him on the shoulder again, “She’s not worth the trouble Halpert,” he shot before stomping off in a huff towards the bar.

Jim’s head was spinning with how fast everything had just happened, and so he tried to slow his thoughts down and take stock of the revelations. First, Sheriff’s Officer Roy Anderson was apparently the other half of Pam’s double date. Second, Pam didn’t like Roy. Third, Pam and Roy had a history, maybe? Fourth, Pam disliked or was uncomfortable around Roy. Finally, Roy now evidently disliked Pam. Where all that left Jim, he had no idea, but he was pretty sure fake date was worse than friendzone, so he was going to have to try hard to get out of that one. Jim turned back in towards Pam, with so many questions whirring through his mind that he wasn’t sure where to start.

“What just happened,” He settled on, and Pam gave him a sheepish look as she blushed, colour creeping up her neck.

She hadn’t taken her hand back, so there was that small consolation Jim reckoned.

“Well that was Roy Anderson,” She trailed off, “You know he drives the prison van…”

“With you so far here Bees,” Jim nodded, giving her a faux-serious face, earning a little smile from her before she continued.

“What you don’t know is that him and I dated for a little back in high school,” she paused, “It was a disaster,” she said as rubbed her forehead with her free hand.

“Oh, this I have to hear,” Jim was genuinely curious to hear about high school Beesly, and this was too good to pass up.

“You have to promise not to laugh at me,” she looked him in the eyes, and he nodded solemnly with his right hand placed dramatically over his heart, “It’s really embarrassing, and in hindsight it was stupid, but I was young, and he was a football player…”

“Suffice it to say I was an artsy kid, so I didn’t garner a lot of male attention, so when the star football player asks you if you want to join them for a hockey game, well, I jumped at the opportunity, because hey, he was cute and… yeah,” She took a breath before continuing.

Jim in the meantime was trying to listen attentively, but she was making it really difficult with the nervous patterns she was rubbing against his hand. He was convinced that she wasn’t doing it consciously, but regardless it was really distracting. He made sure that he nodded and mhmm’d at all the right places though, so he was pretty sure he was safe so long as she didn’t ask him a question.

“So, we go to this hockey thing, and it’s not just him but his brother too, like way to kill the mood, right? Not only that but they managed to get a few beers without being carded, and didn’t share, not that I wanted any, but it’s the principle of the thing. Anyhow, it gets to the end of the game, and I have to go pee. So, I duck off, go do that and return, only to find out that they left me there,” Pam rolls her eyes.

“So I call my house and my dad answers the phone,” she piqued Jim’s interest, he’d never really heard too much about her father, “He had just gotten home from work, so he came to get me. When my dad pulls up, Roy and his brother Kenny finally make a re-appearance, and they get into a really vocal argument with my dad and then he threatened to have them arrested for underage drinking, so they went packing.”

“That is definitely a contender for worst first date ever,” Jim managed to focus long enough to comment.

“Oh, just you wait, there’s more, teenaged me agreed to go out for a second date after he bought me a bunch of cheap flowers to say sorry, and he spilt his drink down my shirt.”

Jim was struggling to hold in a chuckle, he had his right hand pressed over his mouth, but he knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. Pam just narrowed her eyes at him, seemingly daring him to laugh.

“That’s not even the best of it, so after all this goes down, he has the audacity to ask me on a third date about a week later. I turn him down, and I later find out that at the time he asked me he was already going on dates with one of the cheerleaders,” Pam finishes with a laugh of her own, and Jim takes this as permission to let out his own chuckle.

“Wow, Bees that was a ride,” Jim got out between chuckles, “At least he set the bar really low for first dates for the rest of your life.”

They passed the half hour or so with Jim retelling some of his worst dates, of which there were quite a few. Jim was a funny guy, and back in the day he hadn’t really been a looker, and so a lot of his dates had ended with the cliched ‘Let’s just be friends.’ Pam talked a bit about her art, and how she liked to take walks along the gravel roads just north of where she lived to the old dump hill, where she could look out over the prairie and farmland that surrounded Dunder Mifflin, with the occasional windbreak or bush interspersed. Jim had always thought that Pam was cute, funny, and just bright, but this was a whole other side of her that he never got to see in their stolen moments at work in the breakroom or meetings. Jim couldn’t help wanting to learn all he could about her.

Eventually, Pam started trying to stifle yawns, but as always Jim seemed to know anyway. She didn’t want this weirdly wonderful evening to end, but she reluctantly agreed that it was time to go sleep off the alcohol when he offered to drive her home and come back tomorrow to take her to her car. Jim was very gentlemanly, opening doors for her and then walking her to the door of her tiny bungalow, and she couldn’t help the smile on her face when she turned to bid him goodnight.

“Thanks for letting me come along tonight Jim,” She trailed off, unsure what else she should add, she didn’t want to misinterpret his attentiveness tonight.

This had been one of the best nights she’d had in a long time, sometimes it felt like she had just been coasting in life ever since her dad – Pam stopped that train of thought before she teared up, and thankfully Jim was speaking when she looked up again, and he didn’t seem to have noticed that she was a hairs breadth away from breaking down.

“Any time Beesly, I’d love to do that again,” He smirked, Pam loved the way his eyes lit up when he smiled like that, “Maybe we can even manage to do it without any disgruntled exes around,” he finished with a quirked eyebrow and Pam lost it, he always seemed to know how to make her laugh.

“Yeah, definitely,” She managed after her giggles had subsided.

Jim and Pam bid each other goodnight. Pam watched from her front window as his taillights disappeared down the street before losing sight of them, and then went to bed. Sleep found her quickly.

 

The next morning after some water and painkillers, Pam decided that she wanted pancakes, and so she mixed up some batter and warmed the stovetop. She had just finished mixing the batter when she remembered that the proportions that her dad had taught her all those years ago for their Sunday morning breakfasts made way more than she could eat, it fed her entire family. Pam texted Jim and asked if he had eaten breakfast yet, and when he answered no, she offered that he come over and eat some pancakes for the greater good, so that she wouldn’t have to eat leftovers all week. Jim texted back that he’d be right over. Pam couldn’t remember what part of town he lived in, so she quickly ran into her room to throw on clothes and pushed her hair back into a sloppy ponytail. She was somewhat presentable when she heard knocking at her front door. she hadn’t had a chance to put her contacts in, so she ran to open the door and greeted Jim wearing her glasses.

Morning Beesly was the latest in Jim’s internal catalogue of Pam, which had previously been filled with pages of Work Pam, with a few Work Function Pam’s sprinkled around like salt. Morning Beesly was definitely his favourite so far, as she greeted him at the door of her cute house wearing a t-shirt with ‘Faculty of Arts’ emblazoned in cracked white lettering on it, a pair of comfortable looking sweats, glasses, and her hair back in a ponytail which he had never had the pleasure of seeing before. Usually work and work function Pam wore her hair clipped back with a barrette, presumably to keep it away from her ears to make it easier to wear her headset. She invited him in and showed him to her small dining room kitchen combo.

There was a lot of Pancake batter, Jim observed, and so he suggested that they both get a pan and start flipping. Jim amused himself by observing how their techniques differed, Pam made her pancakes much flatter than him, spreading the batter all the way around the pan, whereas his ended up stout, as he usually just poured it and let nature take it’s course. By the end Jim estimated they had enough pancakes to feed four people, with Pam coming out in the lead for quantity as Jim’s took a bit longer to make.

“Beesly, you should have invited some more people over, there is no way we are finishing all these,” Jim gestured to the serving platter stacked with steaming pancakes, “Why didn’t you like, halve the recipe or something?”

“It was my dad’s recipe,” Pam said with a small shrug, as if that was all that needed to be said.

They ate their way through the stack of pancakes valiantly, but they only made it about halfway through. They finished drinking their mugs of coffee and tea respectively before Pam got up and insisted that she pack up some of the leftovers for him. Jim was encouraged by the small gesture when he noticed that all his pancakes had stayed behind with her, and with that they were on the road. When they pulled into the parking lot Jim decided that he was going to take a chance, and he hoped to god it didn’t backfire. Being best friends with Pam was great, but if there was any chance that they could be more than that, Jim was going to jump for it. He was at a point in his life where being an eligible bachelor just wasn’t what he wanted to be doing for the foreseeable future, and he could imagine a future with Pam in it, a very attractive and fun-filled one at that. So Jim pulled into a spot a row over from Pam’s car, and got out to open the door for her to that he could walk her over to her car.

“You know,” Jim ventured as they crossed the lot, “Some people might say that we had our first date last night,” he affected nonchalance, but inside he was dreading the possible repercussions of being so forward.

“No,” Pam said incredulously, and Jim’s heart dropped, he couldn’t bring himself to look at her face as he stopped a few paces from her car.

“You don’t get to do that,” she continued, “You cannot retroactively declare it a date, I won’t stand for it,” a hint of mischief snuck into her tone and Jim hazarded meeting her gaze.

“What,” he asked dumbly, seeing a hint of a smirk on her face and not quite sure how to take it. That was either really good, or really bad.

“I demand to be wooed, Halpert,” Pam declared, a smile finally lighting up her face as her eyes sparkled, “You are going to have to do better than that.”

“Oh, game on Beesly,” Jim said with a grin of his own breaking out, “Are you free for dinner tonight?”
Chapter End Notes:

Was I hungry while writing this chapter? You decide. So we found out some more about Roy and Pam’s history, hope that lived up to everyone’s expectations!

Thanks to everyone for expressing their interest and encouragement for this story! Your reviews and 'beans mean a lot to me!

Next up, back to the procedural police drama, with some character drama sprinkled in. 


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