Where was she? Not that he was all that eager to deal with the awkwardness he knew was coming, but it was unlike P…Comms to be late. He and Kelly had been there early (Ice, given the nearness of the first Resurrection Day, was pulling extra shifts), Stanley had come in precisely on time as usual, and Kevin had strolled in a good ten minutes late humming a dirty song and then spent another twenty quizzing Jim about what he thought about the latest roller derby stats from Alpha Centauri. Kevin was currently leading their fantasy league, as he always did, but Jim’s team had made a strong push last year, so they’d made a friendly wager on the outcome of the season and Kevin took every chance to rub in his lead. Eventually he apparently felt he’d made his point, as he wandered over towards astrogation and started noisily doing something on the main screen (Jim strongly suspected it was fantasy-, not astrogation-related). That was ten minutes ago, and still no sign of Comms.

There was a soft thump by the far hatch. Jim looked up from very carefully not reading anything on his console to see Comms heave herself up from the ladder bay into primary command. She looked…

Well, it wasn’t his place to notice how she looked, was it? She looked damn gorgeous as always, of course, even though he was pretty sure she wouldn’t admit it, or at least not if he was the one who told her. Her hair, which was usually pulled back into a ponytail or a bun, was floating around her face, because she had clearly flung herself up into primary command without taking the time for her normal morning routine. It looked enchanting, like a nebula splayed out around the twin burning stars that were her eyes. She was wearing a regulation jumpsuit, just like everyone else on board, and yet somehow on her it looked like…not custom design, like Katy Moore had used to wear, but like the kind of personal clothing choice he remembered Pam wearing back before she was Comms, when they were still just a bunch of probationary potential crew members all getting to know each other and Captain Scott had insisted on numerous (probably too numerous—the rumor was that Admiral Levinson-Gould had called him on the carpet for cost overruns associated with training) social bonding events and exercises. He’d stored away all those glimpses of Pam-as-she-wished-to-be (or at least, he thought as he got to know her better and realized all the dreams she hadn’t had a chance to fulfill, Pam-as-she-saw-herself) as time went on and they started having to all dress alike—and so he still saw her as herself, not as Comms, not as a cog in the machine that was the DM Scranton, even as she wore generic regulation jumpsuits every day. And she looked beautiful.

Not the same kind of beautiful as Ice, who had also noticed Comms’s entrance and was billing and cooing over her (poor Comms! You look so tired! You must let me give you some of my anti-wrinkle cream, it’s designed for just this sort of thing. Not that I get wrinkles, mind you, but we are going to be on this cruise for years, and it never hurts to be ready. Do you think Ryan would like me if I got wrinkles? I think he would, because he’s so totally in love with me, you know, but at the same time like, girl, please, I ain’t gonna get no wrinkles and if he’s waiting around for me to get all old and wrinkly so he can have all the power in the relationship—because you know, it’s so unfair that when guys get wrinkles they just get handsomer and more distinguished, like that George Clooney you know—then he’s got another think coming because Kelly Kapoor wrinkles for no one) and who had somehow found a way to get permission to bring her custom-fitted uniform jumpsuits on board instead of the standard-issue (it’s an emergency! I look really good in them!) but a kind of beauty that welled out of her so easily and in such quantity that she didn’t even notice, like the ship didn’t notice the vacuum around it, or like he’d heard fish didn’t notice water (never having seen an actual fish, he couldn’t tell you).

But noticing how beautiful Comms was was not his job.

Making sure she did her job was. And if he was going to stop himself from mooning all over her, he had to do his job. Because the alternative, apparently, was falling to his knees and begging her to reconsider. He’d recently discovered (recently, as in in the five seconds or so since Pam had re-entered the primary command module) that, having confessed his love for her out loud to her for the first time, he no longer had a working filter. The habits he had worked so hard to establish over the past years of pining didn’t work. He didn’t have the ability to flash a smile at her and go about his day, clinging to the crumb of her answering smile as if it were real sustenance for his heart. If he smiled at her; if he joked with her; if he treated her as Pam and not as Comms, even for a moment, he was going to be either crying on the deck with a broken heart or pressing her up against a bulkhead kissing her the next. And the first was just distasteful, while the second she was clearly out of bounds. She’d said no. She’d said she couldn’t. He needed to move on.

“Comms, you are forty-one minutes late. I do hope you’re planning to get some work done this shift.”

He hated when he sounded like Dwight.

He hated more the way her eyes snapped to his with a shocked look, like he’d slapped her. He had to get out of there—he couldn’t even keep eye contact with her, because if he did that same terrible binary, crying or kissing, reared its head again. He couldn’t get off the bridge, because it was his duty station, his watch, his responsibility. But he could get as far away from her as possible—and he had the perfect tool to do it, because his console, which she was still logged into, was at one extreme end of primary command.

“Since you’re logged in on this console, you might as well work here.”

Her face, as he glanced at it involuntarily while turning away, was completely unreadable.

He strode to the central console and, with his back to her, began using the gesture interface to…well, he actually didn’t have a lot to do, since Ice was dealing with the Resurrection Day plans, Comms had authority over incoming and outgoing messages, Astrogation charted the course, and they were alone in deep space. But he tinkered with oxygen levels and power curves and generally made busywork for himself. Because for the first time since he’d come out of pilot school (and, if he was honest, the first time for a long time before that) Jim Halpert wanted something to do. He threw himself headlong into the work, tinkering with details, min-maxing outputs, stress-testing systems that had gone too long without review. And all the while deliberately not looking behind him. Not because he didn’t want to, but because the temptation was too great—because he knew that if he looked back, even for a moment, her eyes would be on him, and he’d have to say something.

And what could he say?

Hey was lame, and just committed him to a conversation without actually helping him navigate it at all. If anything, it was a dangerous opening, one that invited on the one hand the screaming invective that (while Pam was unlikely to actually indulge in it) he suspected he deserved for saying what he had said to an engaged woman, or on the other hand a soft hi that would do nothing but remind him of the day he’d spent not talking to her because of that stupid jinx, when he’d eventually had to synthesize Coke out of pure molecular substance (according to a template Comms had pulled out of the ether and nudged his way, of course) in order to fulfill his obligations. Another wasted opportunity, that day, and not what he needed to be thinking of now.

I’m in love with you was a proven loser. Used it last night, didn’t get a good response. Failed its stress test. Thank you, no.

Please love me back was just the same thing in more pathetic language. At least I’m in love with you was a strong statement of his own feelings, something he could be proud of and keep his head high about. He’d said it, he’d promised to move on, be the bigger man, not grovel and beg.

I’m sorry might cut it, but it wasn’t accurate. He wasn’t sorry. Well, he was sorry she hadn’t fallen into his arms last night, but “I’m sorry you did this” wasn’t really an apology, and he’d always hated fake apologies.

Normally this would be the place where he’d shy away from the next thought, but he was already in a desperate enough situation that he just let himself think it. He hated fake apologies because they reminded him of what Roy would say to Pam. The way he’d step on her feelings (like about that internship they’d offered where shipboard staff could become ship designers, which Comms had been about to jump at as an artistic opportunity before he’d discouraged her) and then not-really-apologize. “I’m sorry I’m being careful about saving credits for the wedding”—as if he was doing any wedding planning, or had even set a date at that point—or “I’m sorry, but we have to be realistic.” He wasn’t going to fake apologize to Pam. No way.

But that was a dangerous thought, because then he had to wonder: would his fake apology be like Roy’s? Was he too covering for something he shouldn’t have done, something he’d done to hurt Pam, by making it her fault?

Because, in all honesty, what did “I’m sorry you didn’t fall into my arms last night” mean?

The best version of it, the one he really hoped he meant, was just “I’m sorry you don’t feel the same way,” or maybe more accurately “I’m sorry circumstances are such that you can’t feel the same way about me that I feel about you.” Because he was pretty damn sure, or had been before last night, that she did feel the same way, but when he was being scrupulously fair, as he was trying his damnedest to be right now, he could see how it was harder for her to embrace that feeling than it was for him. Not that it was a picnic for him, but still.

But there were other versions of it lurking beneath that he was beginning to worry were if not dominant then more present than he would have preferred to admit. “I’m sorry you can’t be honest.” “I’m sorry you’re scared.” “I’m sorry you’re lying to yourself.” Those were unfair because they presupposed a mental state of Pam’s that he had no right to suppose, and because they cast legitimate difficulties on her part as moral failings. But beyond that loomed the worst one, the one that made him feel like a total asshole when he thought about it: “I’m sorry you didn’t overturn ten years in ten seconds.”

Because how long had he given her to decide? Ten seconds was maybe an overestimate, if you considered how absolutely shocked she’d looked when he’d confessed to being in love with her. And yes, he didn’t think she should have been so shocked, but she clearly was. And now he was giving her the silent treatment; literally giving her the cold shoulder since he’d positioned them so that he was standing with his back to her and refusing eye contact or conversation. He knew Pam. She wasn’t impulsive. She wasn’t rash. She took her time. And he’d insisted on an instant decision—not verbally, but through his actions.

Now, he could be fair to himself too: she hadn’t told him she needed time. Except she hadn’t said “I don’t.” She’d said “I can’t,” and that wasn’t the same thing. And she hadn’t paused—she’d answered him right out, and accused him of misinterpreting their friendship, which had hurt, a lot, and so it had been totally reasonable to leave, and even to avoid her now.

But he could still feel like a bit of an ass for trying to make it an instant decision.

Especially with her fiancé in the Warehouse. Because whatever else Pam was, she wasn’t an asshole. Even if she did love him, even if she did want to marry him instead of Roy, she wouldn’t do it while Roy was sleeping in the deep drowse of cryofreeze, waiting to wake up to a wedding.

What the hell had he been thinking?

He straightened his shoulders. It wouldn’t do to be too optimistic. She had turned him down. He had to assume she would continue to not love him, to not respond the way he’d thought she might, to insist he had it all wrong. But even so, he couldn’t be an ass to her. Well, not more than he had been already. He’d promised himself he’d make this wedding the best it damn well could be for her, but even before that he was going to have to be better than he’d been.

He couldn’t go back to the friendship they’d had. He wouldn’t. It just wasn’t possible without torturing himself beyond belief or collapsing in a heap at her feet. But if he was going to do right by her wedding, he could at least be civil to her.

Now he just had to figure out how.