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Author's Chapter Notes:
So this one is a story I’ve had the basics of in my drafts for a while, and the pressing deadline of the 15th anniversary of Casino Night has given me the push I needed to, you know, write it. Little different than my usual style, and it’s gone through a lot of versions since its original conception. Hope you like it, and are able to accept my stretching of the definition of “holiday.” And if you don’t, here’s a picture of a kitten hiding under a hat: https://www.rd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/GettyImages-145679137-scaled-e1619025176434.jpg.

The clock tells him it’s almost four in the morning, which means Jim’s been sitting here in the dark staring at this stupid box for more than an hour now.

Everything else is finished: he’s called Jan to let her know he’s accepting the transfer and he wants to make the move right away, he’s emailed the landlord Josh recommended and told him he’d take the one-bedroom in Harbor Point sight unseen, he’s cleared out his desk and cleaned up his client files. Now he just needs to throw away the box and send the email he’s drafted to folks in the office, and he’ll be done. Can leave this place behind. (Can avoid the consequences of his actions.)

It shouldn’t be this hard. It’s just… junk.

A few receipts.

Some sketches on old pink message slips.

A little chain of paper dolls holding hands.

A cootie catcher.

A print-out of a high scores list, gleefully labeled “SUCK IT!” in big red letters.

Three yogurt lids paperclipped together, one of them upside down.

Actual, literal trash. All of which Jim’s talked himself into assigning some weird significance to. Perfect symbol for the last three years of his life.

He won’t be mean. He’s… tempted, but he won’t be. He’ll toss it in the annex, somewhere she won’t see it. (Should he bother? It’s not like she’ll care.)

He needs to do it, though. It would defeat the whole goddamn purpose if he doesn’t. Clean break. Fresh start. No more tying himself in knots, obsessing over stupid little moments he has to know – he does know – didn’t matter much to her. No more sacrificing for a relationship he’s the only one in.

It's easy. It’s all conveniently stored in one place. Pick it up, cut through to Toby’s desk, drop it in his garbage can, put something from recycling over it so he won’t see… or hell, just take the damn garbage out himself on his way out the door. Simple.

Instead he keeps staring.

Jim’s at least been able to stop himself from running his hands over it, remembering the specific look or laugh or stuck-out tongue he’s associated with each piece of actual, literal trash. But he can’t get himself to stand up.

If he gets rid of it, that means he’s fleeing to Stamford with practically nothing of Pam. Which is stupid, because he is anyways, which is why he’s throwing it out.

But… without even the little things they’ve touched and shared, without even an artifact of this pocket of the world he pretended was theirs …

He’d be leaving without her.

But he is leaving without her.

Ridiculous, he thinks. Pathetic.

“You’re not pathetic.”

He doesn’t turn to look at her.

There’s no need, after all. He can picture her down to the last detail. How many hundreds of times has he stolen a glance over at Pam behind that desk?

And of course, she’d still be in that blue dress. He’s never going to stop seeing her in that blue dress. God, why did he tell her?

He’d been worried about how she was going to get home, but she’d made it very clear tonight she wasn’t his to worry about. Apparently she just… hadn’t left at all. He hadn’t even noticed her slip back in the room, how long has she been watching him moon over the scraps she’d thrown him?

“I really am. Look at this. I’ve been saving a box full of garbage.”

He gestures at the box, but he doesn’t break his stare. He won’t look at her. He can’t. He doesn’t want to.

“It’s sweet. I have some, too, you know.”

He wants to ask, but he knows better now. It doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean.

“I’m transferring. To Stamford. Effective immediately. So you don’t have anything to worry about. I’m not going to make things uncomfortable.” He tries to keep the edge out of his voice.

“I know. I mean, it’s the last thing I want, but I know.”

“I can’t. I have to stop, Pam,” and that feels a lot more honest, and why not be honest now? Not like his heart can break again.

“I know. You’ve given up a lot for me.”

“I’ve been living in a fantasy. Like me collecting garbage meant something when he gave you a ring. It’s childish,” he scoffs. He’s thought all this before, but there’s always been a butbutbut at the end. Not this time. “And I need to grow up. I thought we were making a life together because you doodle on my messages sometimes? Pa. The. Tic.”

“You’re not pathetic, and it’s not garbage. It’s important. It means so much to me that you kept all that. I mean, the receipt from the first time we had lunch, Jim… that you saved that? Who does that?”

“Losers. Creeps. Guys who can’t take ‘she’s marrying someone else’ for an answer.” Why is she doing this? Hasn’t she jerked him around enough? He’s gotten the message. He knows.

“Jim, look at me.” Seriously, does she think this is helping? “Look at me, Jim.”

Her voice is soft, but firm, and he can’t help but obey her command. He’s never learned how not to do that. God, he wishes he had.

“Stop talking about my best friend like that.”

CHRIST.

“I know you don’t want me to call you that right now. But you are my best friend. And you always will be.”

She’s in a wedding dress.

She’s in a wedding dress, because he’s fallen asleep at his desk and his brain won’t even let him escape in his dreams.

“Not a dream.”

It’s not even her real wedding dress, and how pitiful is it that he knows that? It’s got spaghetti straps, and none of the pretty lace over her shoulders and arms she’d been so excited about, and a sort of jewel belt, and instead of flowers in her hair she’s wearing…

“Your veil is torn,” he points out, stupidly.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, and rubs the ripped end between her fingers, almost fondly? “Kind of a funny story.”

The way she’s looking at him… he wants that. And she’s not turning away. She’s still gorgeous in the blue light of their computer screens, and it’s not fair. Because he’s going to remember this when he wakes up like it’s real, and it’s not real, and it’s not fair. This dream…

“Again, not a dream. You ever notice you never have to realize you’re dreaming when you’re in a dream? People talk about that, but I always either know on some level or don’t while it’s happening.”

He sighs. Dream Pam is giving him dorm-room stoner insights at 4:00 in the morning. It’d be funny if he could possibly find anything funny right now. “What is it, then?”

She considers that a moment, and settles on an answer. “A wish.”

He laughs. He’s never laughed like this with Pam. After leaving her… after watching her leave him at the end of the day, sometimes. Bitter. Cynical. The kind of laugh you laugh so you won’t scream or hit something. “Nothing about tonight is what I wished.”

But that’s wrong, isn’t it?

The press of her against her chest.

Her hands in his hair.

The look in her eyes when she’d said “me too.”

She smiles. Actually smiles at him, and honestly, how dare she…

“I didn’t say it was your wish, dork. Not everything’s about you, Halpert.” Her grin gets wider as she says his name.

“Why are you here, Pam?” And he’s trying, he’s really trying, but there’s a part of him that’s so mad at her, there’s a part of him that’s always been mad at her. She takes and takes and takes, and when he needs something in return she slaps his hands away. She’s happy to accept his promises, be his obligation, his priority, as long as he never, ever asks to be hers. How could she look at him like that, like he was scaring her, betraying her by telling her something he’s been telling her every day, tell him everything he saw was all in his head? And he’s never wanted to be that guy, he knows he’s not owed anything, but really, how could she not know? And she said “misinterpreted,” she said she was really marrying him, but she also said me too, she does want him back at least a little, how could she…

She shrugs. “I’m not, really.”

She catches him off guard with that. She’s done that a lot tonight.

“I’m sitting on a very ugly couch in my living room, curled up into a ball in my underwear. I’m not crying, because I’m a little too stunned for that, but I’m staring at that stupid periwinkle dress which I tore off the second I got in the door, and I hope it found a nice life at Goodwill, because I’m never going to wear it again.”

Jim did not need those images of Pam in his head, either in pain or her underwear, especially now that he knows what her body feels like moving under her dress. “Pam…”

“I’m here to say thank you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for being my friend while you were in love with me, because I know, Jim, I really do know how much that cost you every day. Thank you for being brave enough to tell me when…”

She’s suddenly by the coatrack, and had it really been less than 24 hours ago she’d used it to help him prank Dwight?

“And I’m here to tell you that I’m going to be brave too, eventually.”

She’s in his usual spot at reception, right by the jellybeans.

“I want you to know I’m in love with you, too. None of it was in your head. It was always real, way before I recognized what it was. I want you to know I’m sorry I wasn’t ready to hear it. And you don’t have anything to feel bad about, because I don’t think I ever would have been.  And it hasn’t hit me yet and it won’t for a while, but you changed the course of my life. None of it was worthless, Jim. All of it mattered.”

She’s leaning against the far corner of Dwight’s desk now.

“More than anything I want you to know that in exactly 370 days… really, not too long from now… I’m going to tell you that.”

She’s standing on the side of his.

“And in 371 days, you’re going to wake up next to me for the first time.”

She’s standing at her usual perch on his desk.

“And in 379 days, you’re going to buy me a wedding ring, and you won’t know it, but I’m already going to have to decided to say yes when you ask.”

She’s close now.

“I hurt you, Jim. And there’s more hurt ahead. But I hurt me, too. And I want you to know that everything you wanted is coming. It’s all coming, really, really soon.”

She’s so close.

Please don’t touch me, Pam. he thinks. I’m going to die if you touch me.

She touches him. Takes the tips of his fingers between hers, and puts his hand on her belly. He feels…

“You’re pregnant.”

She nods.

He wants to tell her she’s letting Roy ruin her life, but she’s saying things, and he’s so lost, so instead he just says “congratulations.”

“Congratulations to you, too, Halpert.” She smiles at him, and he thinks he’s crying again. She leans in, whispers to him. “One day, you’re going to use the things in that box to make a mobile for this baby’s crib.”

* * *

He jerks awake.

It’s past 5:00 now, and the sunrise is just starting to leak through the blinds in Michael’s office.

He’s been dreaming… and a nasty dream, from what he can remember. The details are fading fast. He’s sure his subconscious is going to be a rough place to be for a while.

He supposes he should be grateful for whatever woke him up. The last thing this night needs is to end with him getting caught snoozing at his empty desk when Angela shows up for work.

He reaches over and flicks one of Dwight’s bobbleheads absent-mindedly, looking around the office that in a moment will no longer be his. He sees Meredith has claimed the Homer doll for herself. Stanley has left tomorrow’s crossword out and ready to go with one word already filled in (“to make it easier to get started, Jim”). Phyllis has a new framed photo of her and Bob. Kevin is proudly displaying the hateball champion trophy Pam had made for him.

I fell in love here, he thinks, and he picks up the yogurt lids, remembers Pam chastising Creed for flipping his bronze medal to a gold.

For better or for worse, Pam has been at the center of his life since the first time she made him laugh. He’s defined himself by what he is to her, judged his days by how happy he’s made her, learned everything of her he possibly could and sweetly tortured himself with theories about the rest.

Loving her was the most adult thing he’d ever done. And as much as he's spent the last 38 months feeling like Pam had his balls in her purse, she’s also taught him how to be a man.

He’s leaving. But he can’t erase the last three years. They happened. They will always be a part of his story. All of it was his life. All of it mattered.

Maybe one day he’ll be able to look back on it without feeling sick.

This is what he has to do to make this okay. When he can’t spend 40 hours a week pretending, when he doesn’t have her in his life to compare every other woman to, he’ll be able to move on. He’ll fall in love again, and he’ll be better at it because of Pam. More gentle, more giving. More grateful. He’s sure he knows a little more about being a partner… and how not to be one.

Maybe one day when his son goes through his first serious breakup – his son who will not have curly hair or a knack for sketching – he’ll tell him about the person he loved so he could love his mother, about getting your heart broken and how to let it heal. About the people you meet who aren’t your soulmate but help lead you to them, make sure you’re ready for them.

Maybe he’ll want all of this to show him.

He does feel a little better. He did it. At least he did it. He told her. Finally, he said told her. He won’t have to live the rest of his life driving himself mad going back and forth, yes, no, it means nothing, it means everything. She felt something, not what he felt, but something. It wasn’t all in his head, and he didn’t chicken out again. He was man enough to say it once, to kiss her once.

Maybe he needs these reminders that there’s something to be won just by being a little braver.

He thinks of her hands in his, her lips, what her face looked like so close…

He’s making excuses, like always. He knows that. All of this is just rationalization for doing something he wants to do because he can’t accept that it’s over. She said me too, she said me too, she said me too.

I don’t *have* to keep it, he thinks. I can throw it out on my way out of town, or in Stamford. If I toss it right now, it’s gone. But I can always bring it and decide to get rid of it later.

He puts the box under his arm, hits send on the email, and shuts down his computer. He gives one last long look at reception, and shakes it off. It’s the damndest thing. He almost feels at peace.

And he walks out the front door of Dunder Mifflin Scranton for the final time.

* * *

Pam falls silent. For a moment they just lay there, curled together so they’re barely using a quarter of the big hotel bed, her head on his chest, their fingers and legs intertwined, touching as much as they possibly can.

The sunrise is leaking through the blinds. He should really tell the front desk to have someone fix that, but he only notices at moments like this, and he loves the way the light hits Pam. There’s something about the combination of the early morning Caribbean sun and her pregnancy that just makes his wife glow.

His wife.

His lovely, talented, giving, gorgeous, very strange wife.

“So that’s what you’d change?” He’s trying to keep the amusement out of his voice, he really is. “Out of everything?”

“Is that so crazy?”

“There are about a thousand things I would have done differently. I’ve got to admit, babe, trying to make you feel a tiny bit better that night would not have been on the list.”

“But we can’t control what any of that would do. And we needed to go through it all.”

Pam has always insisted on this, that the next year of her being alone and him punishing her (and completely screwing over a perfectly lovely woman just as an added bonus!) was necessary for them to make it work. That she needed to be on her own for a while, to learn who she was without Roy or Jim, that she needed to know what it was like to watch him choose someone else and he needed to know how hard it was to choose.

“If you told me that night we were going to end up like this, I wouldn’t have wanted to change a thing. I would have been terrified that even the smallest difference would mean we wouldn’t get here.”

He kisses her on the forehead. He has to. And he can.

“I’m happy, Jim. I’m so happy I can’t believe it’s my life. All I would’ve wanted is to be there to help you ice the wounds along the way, you know?”

She brushes a stray hair back from her face.

“I remember thinking that night on the couch, ‘I made Jim cry. He makes me laugh and I made him cry.’ I mean, this was way before I realized… I kept going over it in my head, what I should have said differently. Done better. Not hurt you so much, as much as I could.”

He thinks about how much he’d hated Pam then. That night and later that summer when the realization hit that she was never going to call and when he came back and she was always there, free and still out of reach, wanting her buddy back, not letting him move on, not leaving him alone…

He knows she was hurting, but he’s not sure comforting her would have ever occurred to him. And he’s damn sure that no matter how many times they’ve talked about this he wouldn’t be able to access her feelings from that night the way she did his.

She understands him. She knows him. She’s so much kinder than him, and…

“You’re so good, Pam,” and it’s lame and it doesn’t begin to convey how he feels. He briefly considers asking her to marry him a third time. “I don’t think I deserve you.”

She gives him a wry smile.

“Well, you’ve got me whether you do or not. So you better step up your game., Halpert.”

“I’ll do my best, Halpert.”

He kisses her again.

“Working in some of our vows was a nice touch.”

“Thank you, I thought so too.”

She raises her head off his chest and props herself up on her side next to him, looking a little smug.

“So, what did make you decide to take the box?”

“I mean… we’ve talked about this. I wasn’t ready to let go. Not really.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“Yeah, right.”

“What?”

“What? You’re taking credit for it!”

“I mean… in a way, yeah. Maybe I didn’t break the boundaries of space and time, but yeah. It was about me kissing you, me giving you just enough to see what was happening in my head. A little hope, you know?”

“Wow.”

“What???”

“You totally think you visited me in the past.”

“Shut up! I do not.”

“I don’t understand, you look so normal, no one would ever guess you’re completely Looney Tunes.”

“Oh my god!”

“What?”

“The kid’s awake. Here, feel!” She takes the tips of his fingers between hers, and puts his hand on her belly, and he feels the thump, thump, thump he’s fallen in love with.

“Hi, baby,” he says, and rests his cheek against her stomach to get as close as possible to their kid.

The life we made together, he thinks, and smiles.

Chapter End Notes:
There’s a (very minor) reference to an MTT underrated classic in here, along with a Jenna Fischer paraphrase. I will accept guesses in the form of reviews. I will also maintain this was totally finished and ready to post on May 11th, and I just couldn’t because the archive was down, and also that since technically it happens on May 12th it’s still being posted on the actual 15th anniversary.

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