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My first foray into Office fanfiction! My AU look at if Jim didn't transfer to Stamford. Takes place in between seasons 2 and 3, slight spoilers for Casino Night.
He doesn’t start packing until the night of June seventh, because he knows it’s over.

He comes from work and goes up to his room. Mark isn’t home, and he throws the radio against a wall. He doesn’t know what he’ll tell Mark. He doesn’t consider himself an angry man, a jealous man, but there’s a burning in the back of his throat like Listerine, and he can’t get rid of it.

He puts the save the date in the back pocket of his jeans, because he’s a masochist, after all.

You say you need proof? Look at how he spent the last four years of his life.

He doesn’t sleep, all night, even though he needs to get up at a ridiculously early hour for a ridiculously early flight. Last week when he stopped by his mom’s, she told him to call before she left. “Australia,” she’d said, with a note of satisfaction, “what a place. I’m glad you’re taking this trip for yourself, Jimmy, you’ve earned it.”

He doesn’t call, because sometimes he’s a jackass. But the nice guys never win.

He has to be at the Wilkes-Barre airport at 6 am for a 2 hour flight into Chicago. There, he’ll pick up a connection flight to San Francisco, which is nearly five hours. From there he’ll ride for fourteen and a half hours on a Boeing jet, where they’ll serve him dinner and breakfast in economy, and then he’ll be in Sydney.

Croiky.

He already arranged for a car to take him to the airport. When he gets it, it smells like hot dogs. The driver has long dreadlocks and sunglasses. “You mind music, man?” he asks.

Jim shakes his head no.

The man flips around his fuzzy radio. “So, where’re you going?”

Jim closes his eyes, laughs. “Away from here.”

--

His flight takes off twenty minutes behind schedule. He’s in an aisle seat, next to a couple who inform the flight attendants they’re newlyweds en route to their honeymoon. The attendant flashes pearly white teeth, offers congratulations. She brings them free champagne.

He knows he should say something nice, but instead he reaches for his sunglasses so they can’t see him cry.

The airport at Chicago is bustling. He buys a sandwich and a magazine. He can’t sit still. He walks around in circles, trying to tire himself out so he can sleep on the plane. He still wears his sunglasses and realizes he probably looks like a terrorist.

He puts his bags through the xray scanner, and fights the urge to climb in himself. What would they see, inside of him? A rib cage, devoid of lungs, of heart? A brain, slowly rotting away, dripping with her favorite day of the week (Thursday) her favorite yogurt (mixed berry) her shoe size (seven and a half on the left, eight on the right) She wants to paint her bathroom pink, but Roy says no (he’d say yes, yes, yes, paint it god damn fuchsia if it makes you happy forever) and grow ivy on their house, but she doesn’t know how to start. Most of all, it drips her name over and over, as his defunct heart beats out a relentless tattoo of pam pam pam.

He gets a window seat on the next flight, and somehow no seat mates. He listens to his iPod and tries to sleep behind his sunglasses. He fruitlessly wishes it would crash, and this would all be so much easier. He runs his fingers along the cloth of the seat, remembers how her dress felt as he left his fingerprints on it, as he felt her nipples press through the sheerness of the fabric, as she moaned into his mouth, a thousand lies.

By the time he gets into San Francisco, he’s tired and smells funny, and the time is confusing him because it should be dark out by now, and she’s probably at home sitting at her kitchen table, twisting a curl absently around her finger as she tries to make the most perfect day of her life more perfect.

And fourteen hours is a long way to go for wallabies and Steve Irwin and shrimp on the Barbie, whatever the hell that means.

He goes to customer service, takes a deep breath.

He reaches into his pants pocket, pulls out the save the date, the premium cardstock folded into the tiniest of squares.

She told him you can’t fold a piece of paper in half more than eight times. Did you know that, Jim?

Tell me more. Please.

“Sir?”
the woman in the window says, and he looks up.

She holds it up, that premium cardstock with thousands of little folds, identical boxes like toy soldiers. “I, um, need to see your ticket. This is a save the date.”

--

He re-enters Scranton as quietly as he left. He’s spent almost a thousand dollars to retrace his footsteps.

(He’s also wasted four years, though. This pales in comparison.)

He doesn’t bother to take his bag out of the trunk. What he needs isn’t in there.

He opens his closet. His suit is hanging in the green bag, still pressed and tidy from his father’s funeral.

Ironic. He swore he’d never wear it again, and when he opens the bag all he can smell is that day, that horrible horrible day, the overly stuffy smell of the flowers and his mother crying quietly and his brothers showing up drunk.

He will burn this thing, after the wedding. He swears.

There is still a dent in the wall, from the radio.

--

June 10, 2006, is slightly overcast. He turns on the news as he gets ready, and some weekend reporter he never took a liking to informs him not to fret, the sun will come out around three.

He flattens the save the date, and folds it. He gets to four. Dammit.

He puts it into the pocket, inside his sport coat. It pokes him in the chest through the thin fabric when he walks.

He drives, slowly. He’s tired, his eyes are bleary. He looks like hell.

He pulls over for a drink, even though he knows there will be booze at the wedding.

The bartender makes him a screwdriver. “All dressed up and nowhere to go?”

He takes a sip, and it burns him down. “My best friend’s wedding.”

“Big day.”

“For someone.”

--

The chapel is small and beautiful, and that’s fitting because that’s Pam.

He puts on his sunglasses.

He drives around to the back, and sighs with relief when he sees there’s a small back door. He doesn’t want to cause a scene. After all, he’s supposed to be in...

Where was he going again?

The back entrance of the church leads him to several identical halls, peach walls and green fuzzy carpet from the 70's. He finds her on the third try.

The bridal party is all outside, giggling and smiling. He thinks he sees her mom. He isn’t sure if he can just go in but what the hell, he isn’t supposed to be here anyway. He ducks his head and turns the knob.

He slams the door shut when he hears one of the bridesmaids suddenly starting to protest, and turns the lock quickly.

She’s sitting with her back to him, gazing into a mirror, and the gravity of it all hits him full force and he almost comes to his knees - the dress and the veil and her hair is in big curls.

She turns a little, slowly. “Mom?”

He opens his mouth, but there are no words.

“Jim?”

He takes off his sunglasses.

She stands up. She is radiant, glowing. She is a bride, she is his bride.

No, not his bride. Roy’s, of course. Don’t read between the lines, you’ll only hurt yourself, you know.

Masochist.

“How was –”

It takes eight hours to escape her, seven hours to come back, and two steps to reach her.

Her breath hitches and when he pulls back he sees that she’s crying.

“ – Australia?”


Erileen is the author of 2 other stories.
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