It’s not often a night like this arises, but when it does, she takes care of him when he’s drunk.

He tries not to drink too much, and so does she. Truth be told, they both would rather be doing a million other things than drinking. On nights when they visit Mark, though, Jim tends to cut a little looser.

"Y-you," Horny!DrunkJim slurs, "Are the hottest chick in Scranton…No! The w[hic]-world!"

Tonight, he’s absolutely plastered. Normally, she stands around and talks with Mark’s girlfriend, watching the two of them get drunk and bother everyone else at the party. Tonight, Mark’s girlfriend and he ran off to the back bedroom, leaving DrunkJim to find his own entertainment.

He found it down Pam’s shirt. 

She makes sure he buckled in the middle seat in the back of his car so that he can lie down or throw up on the floorboard. That rarely happens, though, because she takes the back roads home. She can drive slower and take a little longer so he doesn’t get as dizzy. The problem with that, though, is that sometimes he’s asleep when they get home.

She’s always tempted to just leave him there overnight, since it’s always a Friday evening and he doesn’t really have anything to do the next day. After a few minutes of arguing with herself, she decides she’d rather him be terribly uncomfortable on the couch, where at least she could slip a bucket next to him and he’d be in the air-conditioning. So she wakes him up, and after a few minutes of Sad!DrunkJim’s groveling, she’s able to coax him into the house and onto their couch.

He’s so incredibly drunk that he doesn’t know the difference between the couch and the love-seat. She lays him across the latter, and he mumbles something about needing bigger furniture. She laughs to herself as she walks back into the room with the green bucket. He’s lying there, his head twisted towards the floor. His arms are flung across his body like limp noodles, and his legs are bent over the end of the seat at the knees.

She laughs again, wishing she had a camera. He stirs from his drunken slumber every time she giggles, but never really wakes. She makes him a glass of Sprite. By the time she walks back into the living room, he’s moaning and clutching at his sides.

He thanks her for the drink, as best as NotReallyHungoverYet!DrunkJim can. She remembers that he hadn’t eaten since before he started drinking tonight, so she runs and grabs a sleeve of saltines. He promptly devours the crackers and asks for a refill of Sprite, but she pours only enough water for him to hear the soft sloshing from the kitchen, because she knows – and is right – that he’ll be asleep again by the time she gets back to where he is. He won’t ask about it in the morning, and he won’t wake up overnight. She drinks the bit of water, grimacing at the overall plain taste.

She brushes his hair back from his face and kisses his temple. She giggles to herself when she notices that his mouth is hanging open, and he’s out like a light. She hates this part, but they’re his favorite sneakers. She takes his shoes off and puts them in their closet. Grabbing his favorite gray pajama-sweats from the bottom dresser drawer (she loves to watch him have to bend over and dig for his "play-clothes," as she calls them), she glances at the picture taken the night he proposed.

She can still smell her mother’s famous "Easter Roast."

She puts the sweats on the coffee table, just in case he should wake up. She knows he won’t tonight, but he’ll smile at the gesture in the morning when he smells her attempting to make chocolate-chip muffins from a mix.

She’ll tell him, then, that his partying days are numbered. He won’t mind, though. She knows in her heart.

She lies out on the couch with her favorite blanket and a Su Doku book. The soft glow of a muted infomercial on television is just enough light to do a few puzzles until she’s able to fall asleep. With her back to the TV, she gets just enough light and is able to watch PassedOut!DrunkJim sleep.

He doesn’t get it at first. "We don’t mind you having a good time…" She starts.

His eyebrows raise, and he gives her a blank look. "We?"

"Your partying days are numbered for the next eighteen years, or so…" She smiles.

And for the next two months, a night like that only arises once. She doesn’t mind, for now, because yes; she takes care of him when he’s drunk, but he’s taking care of her when she’s anything else.