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Author's Chapter Notes:
Jim's intentions, Pam's reactions.

His intentions? Pam is going to kill her friend. Isabel Poreba, died age twenty-six, daughter, sister, and traitor, deeply mourned by everyone but her best friend who murdered her when she damn well deserved it.

For a brief moment she almost wishes she were more like Dwight (she can hear her inner voice-of-Jim saying “bite your tongue!”) because she thinks that Dwight is the person she knows, for a given value of knows, who is most likely to be able to figure out a tactical weapon from the available materials. Maybe she could pummel Izzy to death with sugar packets, or stuff the change from the tip jar down her throat (…why are there so many nickels?), or slice her to death with papercuts from the novelty bookmarks that Michael apparently thought were the perfect advertising tool for a place that has exactly zero books in it at most times.

Actually, the coffee and especially the espresso machine probably could be deadly, but getting Izzy over there would be the difficulty. Pam knows from past experience (also known as “that time Pam wanted to drunk-dial her technically-abusive ex-fiancé and Izzy had her phone) that getting Izzy to move when she doesn’t want to is not something that is in Pam’s wheelhouse. So any options that involve moving her involuntarily to the other side of the counter are out, even if she would have Jim’s assistance.

Speaking of Jim’s assistance, or at least of Jim, she has apparently dithered too long plotting ways to kill her best friend (non-Jim division) to actually interrupt him and he’s…oh god, he’s actually answering Izzy.

Seriously.

Which, for Jim, is extremely unusual in Pam’s experience.

“That depends entirely on her.” Jim has this thing he does that Pam has never been able to replicate and has never really seen anyone else do before, where he makes eye contact with someone and it seems like he has his full attention on them and completely understands where they are coming from and what they are thinking about. It’s one of the things she finds really deeply attractive about him, but she also thinks it has to be part of his customer service face; in another life, perhaps, he’d make a great salesman, and it can’t hurt as a barista either. He doesn’t whip it out that often, but he’s definitely doing it now. His eyes are firmly on Izzy, not even darting aside to Pam, and he’s…still, in a way that Jim is rarely still. He’s almost always moving in some way, rocking to the beat of a song only he can hear or moving fluidly between the stations behind the counter since he seems to be the only real employee here and so does all the work.

But now he’s stationary, still, and immobile, as if moving while answering Izzy’s question would somehow detract from the sincerity of his reply. “My first priority is that Pam shouldn’t be uncomfortable, and I think your question is making her uncomfortable, so that’s all I have to say.”

And suddenly he’s moving again and she takes in a breath (for the first time in what she suddenly realizes feels like a long time) and Izzy is turning to her with this look of utter and complete glee on her face and Pam just cannot take it.

For the second time in five minutes, she runs for the bathroom.

And then runs right back out, because if she were Jim she would definitely totally one hundred percent take that as a rejection and while he didn’t actually, you know, explicitly say that he would like to ask her out it was kind of strongly implied in that and she would really like him to know that this is not a rejection, it’s a stress reaction.

…She may kind of have said all of that aloud. To his face. In front of Izzy.

But hey, honesty is a good quality, right? The sort of thing people look for in a partner?

She hopes?

Chapter End Notes:

Jim POV upcoming! See how Jim reacts to Pam's blurtings!

 Someday, when I next update.

 Thanks for reading! 


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