I.

When Ryan moves to the Annex it feels a little like a death sentence. And once he’s set up the few things he’s allowed himself to start keeping at work (like the picture frame that Kelly bought him because she wanted him to be reminded of her all day, as though they didn’t already work in the same office) it feels a little like resignation.

Sometimes he wonders if in ten years he could be Toby. Sometimes that thought keeps him awake at night.

When he calls Kelly it’s to tell her that he’s afraid, but he lets her interpret that as she will and doesn’t bother to correct her when she assumes that what he fears most is being murdered in his sleep, when really he might be more afraid of living. All he really wants is the sound of her voice to drown out all thoughts of the future that keeps eluding him.

Arguing with her is enough to get him through yet another work day, through another lost sale, because even when it’s about something completely ridiculous it still feels less absurd than the fact that he’s still here two years later. Plus, sometimes there’s the added bonus of her wanting to make out in their cubicle, which is kind of hot in its own twisted way. Sometimes he feels like he does it to prove to himself that he doesn’t take this place seriously. If he starts taking it seriously that could really be the end of him.

He almost doesn’t go into the break room because Jim is sitting in there alone and ever since Jim got back from Stamford he’s been a lot moodier and he could really use some sort of hair gel (or maybe less of? Ryan isn’t quite sure what the problem is there, but Kelly would probably be able to explain it to him if he asked).

When Jim says “Hey” he sounds tired, even though he’s swilling coffee like its going out of style. He doesn’t want to say anything, but ever since he’s started dating Kelly silence has begun to feel more like a black-hole and he finds himself asking about the thing with Roy. The thing that no one will shut up about since it happened.

“Yeah, that was crazy,” Jim says into his coffee. Jim’s leaning forward in that way that lets him know that he’s about to reveal something personal and Ryan tries to figure out if he can make it to the door before that happens.

“How do you apologize to someone who doesn’t want to hear it?”

Ryan wonders if Jim asks him these kinds of questions because he wants to hear what he thinks or because he’s just kind of there.

“Just… tell her you’re sorry,” he shrugs, even though he knows that Jim probably doesn’t mean Pam, but because maybe he should.

“Oh, no, I meant… Dwight. And I guess I didn’t mean apologize, I meant thank,” Jim says, although he’s not entirely convincing. It’s weird how someone can be reduced to a caricature of themselves. Ryan can’t help but wonder how long it’s been since Jim hasn’t just gone through the motions.

“Right,” he nods because there’s no sense in answering a question that someone doesn’t want to ask.

When he gets back to his desk he slides Kelly the Diet Coke that she didn’t have to ask for and he adjusts the picture frame so that it’s closer to his computer monitor.

It’s actually kind of a good picture. One of those where they’re both really smiling.

II.

The break room has always had sort of a heady feel to her. One that reminds her of him. That reminds her of her mistakes.

That reminds her of “you just can’t for some reason” and “I’m fine with my choices.”

Pam’s not fine with her choices. Her choices kind of suck, actually.

Even though she’d expect Karen not being there today to ease the tension between them, somehow it adds an extra layer of haze.

So now that they are sitting there together by default, eating yogurt and tuna fish respectively, she wants to say things that she can’t. She wishes Roy were here, or even Karen. It’s easier to pretend when they aren’t so… alone.

When they’re alone is when she starts babbling about REM cycles like a lunatic. It’s not a pretty sight.

It’s been a full minute of silence and she’s thisclose to asking him how the paper market is treating him. It’s that bad, really. But he manages to pick up the slack for her before she embarrasses herself again anyway.

“Hey, remember the last time we were in here? When Kelly was trying to get Ryan to say whether he thought the stripper was hot?” he chuckles, crunching on his Doritos (they didn’t share their chips anymore).

“Yeah,” she nods a little too enthusiastic to have something to talk about with him. “They are… bizarre.”

“I know, right?” his smile widens. “I seriously do not get that. I always think that he’s about two seconds away from drinking Liquid Draino or something.”

“I think Ryan would go with pills actually,” she giggles, delighted that they can still be morbid yet funny.

“Nah, too slow,” he shakes his head. “He’d have to listen to her talk for another few hours that way.”

“Handgun?” she offers and he laughs like he can’t believe what they’re talking about.

“Talk about dysfunction, those two,” he grins. “Why do they even stay--”

The door swings open and she covers her giggle, exchanging a long overdue sideways glance with him as Kelly and Ryan stroll into the room.

Kelly pulls out a pink, quilted lunch bag while Ryan is toting a crumpled paper sack. They sit down at the next table and spread out US Weekly and the Washington Post respectively.

Jim reaches his hand out and scribbles onto her paper towel/napkin:

Ten bucks says she’s talking about Britney Spears within five minutes.

His hand brushes against hers and she tries not to blush.

Pam watches as Kelly starts to chatter in her usual way, about Paris Hilton being such a slut and don’t you think so Ryan? And how Cameron Diaz looks so totally fierce with her new hair cut, right?

And Ryan mumbles yes and nods and shakes his head at the appropriate times, all without glancing up from his paper.

When she finally settles down he points to an article he’s reading, going off on a tangent about Bush and the four-year anniversary of the Iraq War fast approaching and what the fuck is this guy’s problem anyway?

Kelly nods and agrees and disagrees at all the appropriate times, her eyes never leaving the glossy pages of her magazine.

He finishes his sandwich and pulls out two string cheeses, handing one to her. She takes it without looking up and he takes a bite out of his own. She pushes a Tupperware container of baby carrots towards him and he chomps on a few willingly.

He’s saying something now about Obama while she rubs a perfume sample on her wrist and holds it out for him.

“I like the one you have on better,” he decides and goes back to reading.

“But I’m not wearing anything,” she’s smiling now, flipping the pages of the magazine from star to star.

“Well, I like that then,” he shrugs noncommittally before flashing her a grin so quick that she could have missed it if she blinked.

Pam looks at Jim, who was watching them as well, but is now picking determinately at the cuticle of his thumbnail.

“You want--?” he half-asks her, pushing his bag of chips in her direction.

She doesn’t, but she takes one anyway, clinging to just about anything he’ll offer.

The crunching in her mouth is louder than she expected and she’s unsure of why she is embarrassed by it. Maybe she’s preoccupied with whether any orange dust is lingering on her face. But it doesn’t really make a difference anyway because he’s not really looking at her, is he?

“I should probably go back to--” he gestures in the direction of his desk.

“Oh, yeah, me too,” she nods a little too enthusiastically. He offers to take her trash to the bin. It might be the nicest thing he’s done for her in a long time.

When he’s gone she lingers next to Toby’s empty desk. Maybe she can make up some stupid question to ask and buy herself some time before she has to go back to reception and resume staring at the back of his head, wishing that they were still close enough that she could offer up some much needed styling tips.

“They are so clueless,” she hears Kelly sigh in the break room, obviously thinking her to be out of earshot.

“Who?” Ryan asks, sounding like he’s only half-listening anyway.

“Jim and Pam.” Pam can practically hear Kelly roll her eyes. “They just don’t get it. We’re so lucky.”

Ryan doesn't respond for a few moments because he probably wasn’t listening very carefully in the first place, but then Pam sees him put his paper down on the table and turn to her, leaning his forehead against hers. They stay like that for a few brief seconds, just looking at each other in silence before he kisses her once and goes back to his paper.

Something in Pam’s stomach hurts and she suddenly feels horribly intrusive, wishing she could take back all the things she said a few minutes ago.

III.

When Kelly drinks she likes to reveal secrets, the things she normally might not tell him because he’ll think she’s weird or not perfect (he has to restrain himself from telling her that he’s never made the mistake of thinking that she was), so when she starts talking about last Valentine’s Day he starts bracing himself and asks her to pass him the bottle of Boone’s Farm that they’ve been sharing on the floor of his apartment.

His friends would probably divorce him if they ever saw him drinking Boone’s Farm, but Kelly likes it and it doesn’t make her the kind of drunk where he knows he’ll be holding her hair back later, but the kind of drunk where he knows that she’ll probably be pulling his clothes off in the next twenty minutes or so.

“It was weird seeing Jim again,” she is saying as he passes back the bottle. At least she lets him get the apple kind that he likes, because the strawberry kind is pretty revolting.

“What does that have to do with Valentine’s Day?” he asks even though he probably should know better by now. With Kelly everything can relate to anything if she wants it to.

“Ryan... Jim and I hooked up last Valentine’s Day,” she says, and it’s all that he can do to not spit malt liquor all over his carpet.

“Why are you laughing?” she’s folding her arms across her chest, obviously expecting a much different boyfriend reaction.

“I don’t know, it’s just… it’s Jim,” he’s laughing again and she doesn’t look very pleased.

“Why aren’t you jealous?”

“It was before we were dating,” he shrugs, hoping that she’ll leave it there.

“But our anniversary is totally February 13th Ryan, we decided that. So that would make it after we were dating.”

“Kelly, what did I say about--”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” she rolls her eyes before pulling out her mock-him voice. “’Anniversaries are for marriages.’ Whatever, Ryan, that’s totally our anniversary and you know it.”

“Fine, I’m jealous, are you happy now?” he crawls over to her, grabbing at her sides the way he knows will dissolve her into laughter. “Is he a better kisser than me? Huh? Huh? How big is his dick?”

“Ryan!” she scolds him amidst her giggles. “Don’t be gross!”

“Well, he’s pretty tall,” he shrugs without letting up on her. “Maybe I do have a reason to be jealous.”

“Ry-an,” her voice gets softer and now he’s lying on top of her and her thumb is running over his bottom lip. “I love you.”

“Yeah,” he smiles, because he doesn’t say it a lot, but she knows that he doesn’t need to to mean it.

As Kelly leads him into the bedroom he grabs the bottle just in case.

IV.

Ryan knows that Jim never went to Australia.

He knows because when Michael moves him over to Jim’s old desk (claiming that Dwight’s lonely, even though he’s pretty sure that he just wants him closer to his door) he finds the airline ticket in the otherwise empty top drawer.

Tucked in the ticket sleeve is a picture that Michael must of taken at last year’s Christmas disaster. It’s of Jim and Pam and they actually look happy, which for some reason is not how he remembers them being anymore. What is that called when you rework your old memories of things into your new framework of information? It’s probably not important, but it will nag at him the rest of the day.

He can feel Pam’s eyes on him so he slips the ticket and the picture into his jacket. There’s no reason to leave the past lying around for people to be hurt with, although it bothers him that he can’t remember when he actually started to care.

It's June and it’s the weekend and he’s out with his friends, but regretting that he let Kelly come along because she won’t shut up about the dress she bought for Pam’s wedding (even though he’s seen it in her closest and he’s already begged her twice to put it on for him just so he can take it off for her).

He’s a little tired of having to be so on guard when they are with his friends, because they get exasperated with her fairly easily, but even more so with the fact that their girlfriends are so enamored with her.

Some nights when he’s watching her giggle with the girls his friends are trying to go home with it makes him want to just grab her and push her up against a bathroom stall and just have at it right there, but tonight when she tells him that she’s tired he tells her that he wants to stay out a little later and that he’ll call her in the morning. She makes him promise that it will be before ten, but she compromises at eleven.

But once she’s gone the other girls seem to be ready to go and his buddies drift off one by one until he’s left by himself, wandering into Poor Richards because he’s not quite ready to call it a night.

When he finds Pam slumped over a cheap pint of beer at the bar he goes against his better judgment and slides onto the stool next to her.

“Rough night?” he asks, even though he can already tell that it was from the smudges of make-up around her eyes. He wonders why girls can’t just buy that waterproof kind (he’s pretty sure that Kelly doesn’t on purpose because when she cries she wants it to be as dramatic as possible).

She nods and he finds himself buying them each a beer instead of walking away like he probably should. It’s sort of irrational to feel responsible for someone you barely know, but maybe that’s the price of losing his temporary employee status.

When she kisses him he knows that he should take the high road and maybe get her a taxi so that she can go home to her fiancée, but instead he asks her if she wants to move to a booth. Her lips taste like the salt from tears instead of a mix of strawberry and vanilla lip gloss that Kelly seems to know is his favorite.

He should be the one to stop, but for some reason he wants to let her because maybe she needs to feel like she can make her own decisions tonight. He wonders if he could take her home if he just asked.

The first and only words that she says to him are against his lips. “I’m calling off the wedding.”

Somehow the first thought that jumps into his mind is that he won’t get to see Kelly in that dress that she bought, followed closely with the hope that Roy never finds out about this because he could almost surely kick his ass all the way to Wilkes Barre.

When she pulls away from him she’s crying again and for some reason he finds himself handing her that photo from Jim's desk.

“Are you going to call him?” he asks, but she just puts her head down on the table and continues to cry.

He lets her come back to his place and sleeps on the couch so that she can have the bed. She turns down his offers for a change of clothes and falls asleep with the photograph in her fingers.

In the morning he calls Kelly and she comes over without wasting an hour to get ready. He lets her go into his room and close the door and talk to Pam about whatever it is that girls talk about in these types of situations.

He thinks that he should remember later to tell Kelly how beautiful she looks when she doesn’t wear make-up.

V.

Once everyone realizes that Michael and Dwight aren’t coming back from that sales convention people start disappearing a little early. He’s not sure why he picks Australia. It’s probably the most expensive flight he could have booked, but at least they speak English there and he’d rather not orbit too far out of his comfort zone.

When he tells Pam she looks like he just killed her goldfish by slowly replacing all of the water in its bowl with vodka (no, seriously, it happened to a friend of his sophomore year and her face looked exactly like Pam’s does right now).

She doesn’t even let him take the goddamn invitations to the mailbox for her. She could at least give him that. What did he ever do to her anyway? She’s the one getting married, she’s the one rubbing it in his face all the time. All he wanted to do was get out of the country. What right did she have to make him feel bad about it?

By the time he gets into the elevator he’s angry enough that he knows there will be some serious road rage on the drive home.

“Hey, hold the door,” he hears someone say, and of course it’s Ryan . Probably the last asshole he wants to be stuck with in a confined space right now.

“Thanks,” Ryan says once he’s inside, but even that makes Jim sort of want to punch him.

“Getting out early is nice, huh?” Ryan tries to fill the silence with small talk, but all Jim can think about is “you really think you’re going to go” and “send me a postcard.”

“What is your problem, man?” he asks all of the sudden.

“Uh, excuse me?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” He’s surprised by the hint of anger in his voice, but at this point he can’t hold back any longer.

“Look, man, I was just saying that it’s not like you to, you know, break your routine. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Ryan shrugs because it’s obviously not a big deal to him.

He’s not sure what makes him do it, but all of the sudden he’s sort of furious and he punches that red “STOP” button, bringing the elevator to a grinding halt. They both falter on their feet a little and part of him can’t believe that actually works like it does in the movies.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks insistently, although he’s starting to feel a little ridiculous and kind of embarrassed with himself.

“I barely know you, okay? But if you really want to know then I’ll tell you. You eat the same boring lunch every day. You’ve worked at a job that you hate for how many years? And Pam---”

Jim isn’t sure why, but he kisses him to keep him from finishing that sentence. Ryan’s so surprised that he falls back against the wall of the elevator, but Jim just goes with him, pressing into him even harder until he starts to kiss him back.

He’s gathering fistfuls of Ryan’s hair in his hands and Ryan’s fingers are digging into his forearms like he’s trying to leave a mark. Jim jumps back suddenly, although he’s not sure if it’s because he realized that Ryan’s hard or because he realized that he is too.

Ryan staring at him, his lips flushed and his hair looking like he’s just been through a wind tunnel. They are both struggling to catch their breath. He probably should have just punched him instead.

Ryan hits the button again and the elevator shudders to life. They stand in opposite corners with their arms crossed and Jim lets him go first when the doors open. He blows past Pam, who obviously had taken the stairs down.

“Everything… okay?” Pam asks him, watching Ryan exit the building as quickly as possible.

“Yeah… its fine,” he says curtly and walks away from her as well.

When he finally gets to the car he hits his head against the steering wheel twice, wondering what the fuck this woman is doing to his life.

Maybe Australia isn't far enough away after all.