It was almost Christmas at Dunder Mifflin, Scranton. In his infinite wisdom, Michael had declared that this Christmas would need to be extra-specially good as Jan was bleeding him dry financially and this would be the only celebration he (or rather, the office,) could afford. So a week away from Christmas, as the last decorations were being hung by the Party Planning Committee in preparation for the party the next day. Phyllis and Angela bickered over where to put a single piece of tinsel, reflecting their usual level of cheerful cooperation. Pam, who was the third corner of the PPC triumvirate, stared blankly into space, as she stood a few feet away from them, holding several other unused decorations, and wondering when the madness would end.
After some minutes and no pause to the bickering, she was brought out of her daze by a low whisper in her ear.
“Hey Beesly. You look like you’re about to die of boredom.” Jim appeared behind her, catching her slightly off-guard. Just as an experiment, he’d decided to grow a beard, which he’d planned to shave off after New Year. A couple of weeks’ in and it was already impressive. Pam was already sold on it, even with, or maybe because of the friction burns all over her from where he’d been kissing her, and other things… She needed to snap out of the dirty thoughts already permeating her brain.
“Jim! They’ll hear you and somehow Angela will find a way to blame me,” she hissed back at him, although she couldn’t stop a small smile from forming. She thought back to the year before, the bright spot of an otherwise grim holiday season having teamed up with Karen to thwart Angela’s Event Dictator cosplay, during the darkest days when she and Jim had seemed a million miles apart. Then, everything changed, thanks to a fire walk, a small note, and a yogurt pot lid. The last few months had been magnificent. Especially the new beard. She wasn’t sure she was that keen to him to shave it off. This was going to be the Greatest Christmas Ever.
“Let me take you away from here,” he whispered again, this time more seductively. “I was thinking…” he paused, blowing gently against her ear, making her shudder just a little, especially as she could feel the brush of his beard, delicate against her skin. “We could get… Subway for lunch?”
“So romantic, Halpert.”
“Everyone knows the way to your heart is through their Turkey, Brie and Cranberry Christmas special on Italian, Pam.”
“This is true.”
“And we both know you prefer the footlong over the six-incher…”
The prod in the ribs that Pam gave Jim prompted him to make an “oof” sound, which was enough to make Angela and Phyllis pause in their bickering and turn to Jim and Pam. Phyllis’s look was a one of approval, Angela’s more like someone had just asked her to eat a lemon, so no change there from the norm. Jim winked at Phyllis, gave Angela his most earnest smile, before turning back to Pam with some anticipation.
“OK!” She relented. “I’ll meet you downstairs as soon as we’re done here.” Pam then gave Angela a hard stare as if to make the point that the decorations needed wrapping up. The accountant gave a sigh of irritation, but suggested they all take a break.
***
“I told you that you couldn’t resist my footlong,” Jim sniggered as they sat in his car, tucking in to their subs in the Dunder Mifflin parking lot, Pam having snagged a few bites of Jim’s Chicken Teriyaki on Wholewheat as well as her own.
“Hey, it looked as good as mine. I couldn’t help myself.”
They chatted a bit about their plans for the next couple of weeks. This year, taking the opportunity to spend Christmas and New Year together was something neither of them wanted to miss. They’d carefully arranged a few days off, logistics arranged with both families, so no one was missed, along with some planned time alone.
“Jim? You haven’t forgotten about the cookie baking tonight?”
“Nope, I will come straight over to yours after work and we will make them.” He smiled, she nodded… then looked back at him shyly.
“Are you staying tonight?”
“Would you like me to stay?” He teased her just a little, but they both knew the answer. They’d barely spent a night apart since they’d started dating. Sometimes Pam fleetingly worried that everything had moved too quickly; but honestly, she was so in love that when she analysed it properly, she didn’t really care. They’d skirted around the subject of marriage already and she already knew that Jim was it for her.
“What do you think, Jim?” There was a moment of that special eye contact, where everything else in the world faded away. They both leaned in; and Pam felt something hard pressing against her lap.
“Pam, you’re squashing my footlong.”
***
That night, Jim and Pam stood at Pam’s kitchen worktop, busily making Christmas cookies between sips of a quite delicious eggnog. The plan had initially been that they would they make home-made Father Christmas decorated cookies to take to the office party, but as they started to decorate them, Pam realised that they could make individually styled cookies for every one of their colleagues that would be a great gift for everyone. So they set to work, using Pam’s artistic talents and Jim’s helpful suggestions, making likenesses of everyone, all variations of the same Santa cookie cutter. Every cookie likeness had a big, droopy Santa hat on, but each taking into consideration the characteristics of every person to customise each one accordingly.
Kelly wore a pink tutu dress.
Darryl was wearing his Warehouse uniform.
Creed carried some mung beans.
Meredith had a drink.
Angela held a cat.
Oscar had a calculator.
Kevin had his drumsticks.
Toby wore his light coloured suit (and looked sad.)
Andy had a banjo.
Stanley carried his puzzle book.
Dwight carried a beet.
Michael held a Dundie.
At least, that’s what Jim and Pam *thought* they’d made, and they started well enough – the baking itself was straightforward, and the plain cookies were consistent; but the trouble was that the more eggnog they drank, the more erratic the cookie decoration became. This combined with the distraction of each other whilst they started decorating - feeding each other spare bits of cookie dough, leading to kissing, then some more intense fooling around, then clothes miraculously starting to fall off, and then an entire half an hour where they left the decorating altogether so they could satisfy the *other* appetite they’d built up. Pam got friction burns again from Jim’s enthusiastic need to show her just how much he liked her cookies.
By the time they’d enjoyed each other for long enough and realised they’d needed to finish the job they’d started, the ‘final touches’ they added in their inebriated state meant that most of the designs were not entirely as they’d originally intended. As they wrapped and packed up the cookies up ready for the morning, by some miracle, not breaking any, they were both too drunk to realise just quite what they’d done.
***
The day of the Christmas party arrived. Jim and Pam awoke with achy heads from the overenthusiastic eggnog the previous night, and took longer than normal to get showered and dressed as they both nursed mild hangovers. The drive to work was not helped by the wintery conditions and when they reached the office, Pam, clutching the wrapped biscuits in their Tupperware container, nearly slipped and fell on the ice and snow in the car park. She almost prat-falled in a way that Laurel and Hardy would have been proud of, but thankfully, Jim, aware of the ice and snow, had already made his way round to her door and she fell into Jim rather than face-first onto the concrete. He held her and the cookies up whilst she regained her balance. They grinned at each other as he held her in his arms, sneaking a quick kiss before very carefully making their way, arm-in-arm, to the downstairs reception.
As they finally arrived on their floor, the bullpen was already abuzz with excitement for the day ahead. Michael was dressed as Santa and Dwight had been tasked with elf duties, or as he had announced, ‘Santa’s Assistant Elf’, until Michael, in a fit of immaturity, even by his standards, spitefully corrected him to ‘Assistant Elf to Santa.’ Pam noticed that Dwight looked quite hurt for a moment, before schooling his features into a layer of defiance she’d seen before and recomposed himself. She also noticed Angela looking at him sympathetically from a distance, but clearly trying to avoid being seen doing so. Dwight of course called out Jim and Pam for being late and demanded they were punished; but Michael overruled him, although not before taking the opportunity to suggest some lascivious activity had taken place to make them so.
The morning went quickly enough, considering everyone was hyped for the party that afternoon. There was no lunch break as such that that day, as Pam helped the rest of the PPC get the food and drink ready for the festivities, which would take up most of the afternoon.
Around 2pm, Michael announced that work was over for the day and the festivities would begin. The CD player was pulled out of storage and Michael’s Christmas CD that he’d burned himself was put on, giving the office the melodious sounds of Mariah Carey, and… Mariah Carey. It turned out Michael had just burned a copy of the Mariah 1994 “Merry Christmas” album, and it would be put on repeat all afternoon, until Angela put everyone (except Michael and Kelly) out of their misery and unplugged it at the wall.
The staff milled about in the conference room, picking at the food, until Phyllis and Angela told everyone it was time to exchange any gifts.
Pam and Jim got out their cookies, and started to hand out the bags to each of their co-workers. At first, people seemed pleased with their gifts. That was, until they started to examine their allocated cookies more carefully. Sober Jim and Pam looked on horrified when they realised that the way that drunken Pam had finished decorating the cookies, egged on by an equally hammered Jim, was to add “jingle bells” to every Santa hat. Unfortunately, in every case, there had been some sort of decorating malfunction and… they all looked like women’s boobs.
Most saw the funny side, especially Michael, who decided that these were the greatest cookies ever. Kevin agreed with him. Phyllis and Kelly giggled. Oscar raised his eyebrows and gave a wry smile, and shared that with Darryl. Stanley rolled his eyes and went back to the buffet. Dwight was more critical, critiquing that the boobs were wonky and not realistic in proportionate size and shape, and did not represent any woman, or livestock, that he had ever come across. Angela looked disgusted, but that was nothing new. Toby just looked awkward, but was reassured by Jim and Pam that this hadn’t been their intention and to please not report them to Corporate for inappropriate behaviour.
The rest of the Christmas party went pretty much as expected. Todd Packer arrived whilst some of the cookies remained, and he had a field day with them. Thankfully by this point, the rest of the employees were over it, and more generally, Packer; but Michael took his opportunity to play up to Packer’s terrible sexist remarks. Jim and Pam decided they had somewhere else to be and they managed to sneak out whilst Michael and Packer had their backs turned.
***
That night, when Jim and Pam eventually got back to Pam’s apartment, Jim set a fire to combat the chill of the wintry weather outside, and draping a throw over them both, cuddled up on Pam’s sofa, as Pam lay with her head on Jim’s chest, arms wrapped around each other, gazing into the flames and pondering the weirdness of the day.
“So… that didn’t go as expected,” remarked Jim.
“No, that really didn’t.” agreed Pam.
“Do we know where we went wrong?” She knew he was not being sincere in the slightest, but of course, went along with it.
“Well, I think the eggnog had something to do with it,” she smirked, remembering how drunk they were the night before.
“And the sex, let’s not forget the sex.”
“The sex? How did that make the cookies worse?”
“Oh, no, I mean the sex wasn’t wrong in any way in the slightest. It was very right in fact.”
“Oh, really? Well, that’s reassuring to hear.”
“I just mean,” and at this point, Jim pulled Pam more on top of him, so she was facing him, pretty much nose-to-nose, “That the sex probably didn’t help us focus adequately on the cookies. However,” and Jim took this opportunity to kiss her sweetly on the nose, “The good news is that I have full focus now and I am happy to continue with the sex in the absence of making further cookies.”
“Well that’s good to know.”
“I’m glad to be able to help.” There was another kiss. Which turned into two kisses… And then the talking stopped altogether, and the focus was definitely not on any cookies for the rest of the evening.
