The office was oddly quiet these days.

A corporate paper products conference sent Stanley, Karen, Dwight, and Toby to Cleveland for a four day weekend starting on Wednesday night. With no desk clump bantering for Phyllis, no late night talks for Jim, and no one for Michael to bully, Dunder Mifflin Scranton was having an odd surge of productivity.

And quietness.

It was the quiet that made them all antsy. Clacking keyboards, phones shrieking to alert new business, even the drip drip drip of the coffee maker heard all the way from the kitchen. The noises crawled all over Jim like fleas, and it was that insistence that drove him to the breakroom for his second soda in as many hours. Without Karen around to nag him, he didn’t feel so badly selecting a Coke over a bottle of water.

“...guess I’m definitely happy not having to check if the toilet seat’s down anymore.”

Her back was to him as he walked in, but he was so well trained in all things Pam now, that even though he couldn’t see it, he could hear the roll of her eyes and the quirk of her brows that matched the subtle sarcasm in her voice. 

Pam thrived on subtleties. It was one of the things that attracted her to him so early and so fast. Their first encounter, when she’d promised that he would never forget meeting his deskmate Dwight, he’d quipped back, “Why? Is he going to haze me or something?” hoping to make a good impression on his new coworkers. When, without lifting her eyes from his new desk clump, she’d uttered, “He used the throwing stars on the last guy, so I’d put ten bucks on nunchucks for you, new guy,” he fell immediately for the subtle quirk of her lip, the subtle cock of her brow, the subtle pink in her cheeks when she caught him staring. It was how he ended up paying for Cugino’s on that first day. Nunchucks to the back of the knees. A formal write-up for Dwight and sensitivity counseling with Toby before he’d even made his first sale.

But before it all, he’d fallen head over heels for the receptionist with the pretty green eyes.

Subtle.

Pam was always subtle. 

Lately though, it was one of the facts about her that had come to annoy him. It ate away at him while he was in Stamford. The way she’d subtly led him on all those years--because there was absolutely no way she didn’t know how he felt. How she would oh so subtly flirty with him without ever crossing the line, treading the tightrope carefully so that to the casual outsider, they were just best friends, but to him, it shattered his heart further every time. The subtle way that, with every mile he gained towards Stamford, Connecticut, the bitterness towards her stacked higher and higher. 

It was floating away though. The bitterness towards her. Slowly but surely. It was hard to be so bitter when the smile on her face upon his return had been so damn glowing that he’d been momentarily blinded before her hug stole the air from his body. It was hard to let his anger linger when she still looked so hopeful; the glances that they stole now were far less often than before--for his own protection, he told himself every time he clamped onto the back of his neck to stop the habitual twitch from pulling his body in a circle towards her--but there was a glint each and every time that screamed hope from the jade green of her eyes.

It was hard to stay mad when she really was trying. Despite the fact that he’d made it vaguely clear that he was with Karen, she was putting in an effort to be back to who they were before. So he was too.

Up until Roy had tried to murder him, anyway. And at that point, all bets were off the table. 

Just last week, Roy had come in to pick up his last check. The coals were still burning hotly inside of Jim, but he refused to turn around, to watch their interaction as if it affected him in any way. Because it did. It pissed him off. It reminded him that she would choose Roy each and every time. That no matter what he did, what he said, there was no lifetime where Pam would ever break from this cyclical hell. He had no twitch, no desire at all since then, to turn towards her desk.

So why then, now, when all he’d wanted was a goddamn Wegman’s Coke, was he hanging on every eavesdropped word of this conversation?

She was so very clearly talking about Roy. It had started with the thing about the toilet seat, but in the twenty or so seconds since he’d poked his body through the doorway, she’d added stumbling home drunk, treating me like a nineteen-fifties housewife, and being stuck in his high school glory days to the list. With two quarters, two dimes, and a nickel jingling in his nervous hand, he hadn’t meant to announce his presence. Really, when neither woman noticed him at first, he’d become frozen to the spot as an involuntary peeping Tom. Both Phyllis’ and Pam’s heads snapped toward him, towards the percussion bells in his hands, and he knew without assessing his spike in body temperature that his face was scarlet.

He’d been caught. The conversation that the recessed parts of his memory had forced him to sit and listen to--like a moth to a flame because old habits die hard and every other cliche under the sun--was abruptly halted.

But not before she’d woefully admitted, “He didn’t see me, Phyllis. He never...he never really saw me, you know? Not like--”

He couldn’t have had a spare dollar bill in his pocket today, could he? 

Silencing the change in his hand, he stumbled over an excuse before eventually making out Just gonna grab a Coke, sorry. As he placed all five of his coins into the slot one by one, the hand on the back of his neck was there to steady the muscles that were screaming at him to whip around, look her dead in the eyes and ask Who? Who?! Not like who?!?

He couldn’t do that to himself though. He needed to get his Coke, pop an Excedrin or five, and focus on selling paper. 

Phyllis eased Pam back into the conversation, steering her away from the Jim lane that she’d been dangerously close to merging onto.

“But you two were high school sweethearts, right?”

Jim could hear the eye roll in her Please, though it was obvious that Pam was now keeping her voice lower, despite the heightened sounds in the office these days making the humming of the vending machines sound like a truck barreling down the highway. As he stalled over his soda choices, Jim pressed his forehead to the blue plastic, willing the rushing in his ears to stop as he hung on her every word.

“No it was...I mean, I guess. Roy worked for my dad growing up, so it kind of just happened.”

She did that little shrug, he mused, his eyes still clamped shut. The noncommittal one where she looks down at the table as she does it. 

“He ruined my senior prom though.”

She’s rolling her eyes. That short little roll. The one where she flicks them up towards the ceiling and down real quickly because she’s annoyed. 

“Got super wasted before we took pictures. Won prom king to Stacey Kerrigan’s prom queen.”

She’s starting to blush. 

“Did the whole ‘first dance’ thing with her, and then forgot about me…”

She’s starting to blush because she’s embarrassed.

“...until one: he started vomiting all over the bushes outside the gym doors and wanted to make sure I could drive him home and two…”

Jump in and save her, you idiot. She’s dying out there.

“...he tried to feel me up in the driveway under the pretenses that everyone loses their virginity on prom night, Pammy, come on.”

He’d had enough. He wasn’t supposed to be her life preserver anymore, but that little Jim in his brain, the one he’d spent months in Stamford beating down with a hammer, the one wearing the “Team Pam!” t-shirt was busting through brick walls and suddenly, he was turning around.

She was blushing. It was the embarrassed shade of pink. The same color her cheeks had tinted when he’d asked her why she’d turned down the corporate art internship offer from Jan. The same pink from the time that he’d picked her up at the dojo and his hands had burned prints onto the skin of her belly. The same pink color from the day she’d asked him for coffee when he moved back, and he’d turned her down.

“Wait, Beesly, you’re not saying that you didn’t dance at your own prom, are you?”

The teeny little Jim in the “Team Pam!” t-shirt was speaking now. He was afraid, momentarily, that if he ripped at the buttons of his oxford like Superman, he’d be wearing that same shirt underneath. 

Both women froze, much like they had when they’d noticed him standing like a deer in headlights as he cradled change for a soda. But now, they both looked taken aback, teetering on the edge of annoyance that he was inserting himself into their dialogue, and amusement that he cared so much about Valley View’s 1997 senior prom.

His soda clunked into the bin with the press of a button, the drumming echo sounding like an earthquake as Phyllis slowly turned to Pam with a look in her eye that said He asked, and now I want to know the answer. With an encouraging nod, Pam sighed and continued.

“I mean, I did the Electric Slide with some of my girlfriends, but in between cleaning vomit stains out of my dress and crying in the bathroom because my boyfriend had grabbed Stacey Kerrigan’s ass during their slow dance,  I wasn’t exactly dropping it to ‘No Diggity.’”

There it was. The subtle quirk of her smile. The subtle quirk of her left brow. The subtle glint in her eye that told him that she was dropping him a line.

“Is ‘No Diggity’ not your puke cleaning song? I mean, mine was personally ‘Pony,’ but I can see the appeal of Blackstreet.” There was a short laugh in the quirk of her lips as he shrugged. “I just always assumed that I like the way you work it was talking about a Tide pen.”

He shrugged, deciding that the effort that Pam was putting into stifling her laughter was his cue to pull out the empty chair at the table and do everything in his power to make her laugh for real. 

“Oh? And what about my saddle’s waiting, come and jump on it motivated you to scrub puke stains out of the backseat of your daddy’s ‘89 Corolla?”

“The tempo. Obviously.” His brows bunched together in the middle, spelling out the duh that he’d left on his tongue. “Slower tempos are great for thoroughly scrubbing out stains, Beesly. That song wasn’t only meant for a good slow grind.”

It built first in her nose buttoning up in a little scrunch. Then in her eyes, the brows tilting up as her eyes themselves bugged. Her grin split wide. But it wasn’t until the tip of her tongue poked through her teeth that he let himself smile smugly.

This was the Pam that he knew. His best friend. She was still in there somewhere.

In the bullpen, a desk phone rang, and Phyllis smiled, excusing herself politely as Pam answered the question that was already hammering in his brain with I have like, eight minutes left on my break still.

Jim wasn’t on his break. Jim, who was a salaried employee, took his hour for lunch most days at noon, and stretched his legs when he was feeling restless. On top of the sales he’d already closed this morning, he didn’t feel too poorly about spending the next eight minutes glued to this chair. 

“What was the big song at your senior prom?” her eyes sparkled as she asked, fidgeting with the tab of her own soda can.

“Oh, I think they played that goddam Spice Girls song like, at least eight times.”

“Ours was ‘The Macarena.’”

“Oh god, that one was so overplayed,” he chuckled, shaking his head as memories of his own lanky limbs flailing made him shudder.

They carried on, bantering back and forth about spiked punch bowls and flashy backgrounds with flower arches and giant shiny metallic silver stars taped to black fabric. 

“Oh, god, and that stupid Savage Garden song, what was it…?”

“You seriously forgot those lyrics?” he chuckled, his brows pinched incredulously. “How are they not carved into your soul by now?”

She shook her head, laughing as Jim leaned across the table with his head tilted.

“Do you not want to stand with me on a mountain, Pam? Don’t you want to bathe with me in the sea?”

The color that crept into her cheeks, as her laughs became pitchy and tearful, was a color he’d seen twice before. Once when he’d told her that he loved her for the first time. The second, about twenty minutes later, right after he’d stared into her big green eyes after kissing her, during the sliver of time he had before she had laced her fingers into his hair and pulled his body against her for that stolen moment in time. He had so many labels for it, but right now, that pink was the color that she turned when she was doing her best to deny her feelings, and though he had a Karen somewhere in Ohio right now, though he had bullied the teeny Jim with the “Team Pam!” shirt into a corner back in May, there was an inherent need to keep this vibrant pink on her palate for as long as he possibly could. 

“Oh-kay,” she chuckled, standing with her empty can as she turned her back to him, her laughter seeking him out like a siren no matter how hard she was trying to cover it as she walked towards the recycling bin. 

“Because, Pam--I can be your dream, your wish, and your fantasy.”

It was the charade he was after. The squeak in her laughter as she threw her head back and shoved her empty can into recycling. That’s what he was chasing as he pushed himself up from the table, coming almost flush with her body as she turned around to face him. He swayed his hips obnoxiously, wiggled his head back and forth and waved his arms in the air like his eighteen year old self  before perching his hands firmly on her shoulders.

“Can’t you see it? You don’t have to close your eyes, ‘cause it’s standing right in front of you.”

He was still singing with an over exaggerated tone, with his eyes closed and his lips pursed like Elvis as his hips swayed from side to side. 

It wasn’t until her body stiffened beneath his touch and her eyes widened and he watched her breath hitch that he realized his silly little dance wasn’t as silly as the words he was jiving to. When her hand snuck up between them to grasp the pendant on her necklace, her fingers brushed against his abdomen, and he inhaled sharply, letting the repressed parts of himself have this little moment before he removed his hands from her with a whispered Sorry.

She shook her head and put on a pained smile, her It’s okay but it’s not okay and I really just kind of want this moment to be over so that I can think clear as he palmed the back of his neck awkwardly and headed towards the soda machine. 

“Standing right before you.”

He pivoted slowly to face her, tilting his head as he did so.

“They lyric. You said it’s standing right in front of you. It’s standing right before you.”

She shrugged, one shoulderd. But it was that motion, and the subtle quirk of her lips, that told him he wasn’t entirely over the line just yet. The left side of his lips quirked.

“So you do have a Savage Garden tattoo somewhere on your body, right?”

“Oh, no. Tattoos were forbidden in the Beesly house,” she replied matter of factly. “I did, however, have a closet shrine to Darren Hayes. I was so devastated when he turned out to be gay.”

He shook his head and smiled, watching her waggle both brows just once before heading back out. The swing of the door closing hammered loudly as he reached down to pick up his can. 

In the heat of the moment, while he’d been so busy trying to distract himself from interjecting into Pam and Phyllis’s conversation, he’d pushed grape instead.

--

When he’d transferred to Stamford, his favorite thing about not having Pam around was lunch. Her absence forced him into making acquaintances out of people he would have immediately shoved to the wayside as coworkers. It was how he became so close with Karen. How he and Josh formed a fast, tight bond over cycling. How he decided that he would let up a little on Andy Bernard in the pranking, despite the fact that they guy was the prime candidate.

Now though, back in Scranton with their skeletal staff, Pam was here, and he had nowhere to hide in Karen. Most days, he used her as a human shield, placing her strategically between himself and Pam so that the temptation to peek into her lunch bag and see what she was having today--because something as trivial and as intimate about how she’d packed her lunch was almost as integral to him as breathing--was eradicated. But now, the break room was like Swiss cheese with its many missing parts. It would be obvious now if he ducked out and hid at his desk, what with everyone's eyes on him, the squeak of the door as he attempted escape would be deafening in their dead office. He had no choice but to slink into one of the many open seats and endure the next hour of torture.

Surprisingly, his presence didn’t exactly pique anyone’s interest. They were all so wrapped up in their own conversations that he was able to make it through almost his entire sandwich before he was asked to participate. 

They were talking about prom. Apparently Pam’s conversation from earlier had carried over.

“What about you, Tuna? Got any stories that would rival the ‘Nard Dog’s epic dance battle victory?”

First, of course, he had to push the mental image of Andy participating in a dance battle to Salt n Pepa’s “Push It” out of his head. Next, he had to make sure that he could speak without his lunch coming up.

“Uh...not really, man. My prom was pretty typical. Our dates ditched us by the third song and my buddies and I kind of hung out at the punch table until we were dragged out for slow dances.”

He shrugged, opening his bag of Ruffles as the conversation floated on without him. 

Phyllis went to prom with Richard Ward. They brought a flask full of whiskey and left early to have sex in the back of his car before having sex in the hotel room he’d booked for them.

Ryan, who was visiting from corporate for the day, was the one who spiked the punch. And "the guy" who had invited three separate dates, supposedly keeping all three of them separate all night before deciding which one he wanted to take back to his parent’s empty house.

Kelly shared no details of her own prom, but chose to spend her time whining about what a pig Ryan was before begging him to slow dance with her this weekend (“We could do it in my kitchen! I’ll pull up old songs on YouTube”) before he reminded her that he would be returning to New York before the workday was over.

Michael’s mother insisted that he take his cousin, who didn’t have a date. 

“Yeah, well, you’re not supposed to have a date as a freshman. She ditched me like two seconds into the dance for Dock Weber--who her mother totally disapproved of, by the way. I ended up slow dancing to ‘Time After Time’ with my biology teacher Mrs. Seymour, but I definitely brought down the house when they put on ‘Proud Mary.’” 

“Michael, your cousin Carrie tricked your mom into making you take her so that she could go with Dock Weber since her mother wouldn’t let her. The entire senior class knew about his taboo little relationship with the freshman skank.”

Michael responded to Phyllis in stutters and shakes of his head.

“What about you, Pam?” Andy asked. “Any juicy stories from your prom night?” 

Jim waggled his eyebrows, and it was in that moment that she first made eye contact with Jim since Savage Garden had broken up their earlier conversation. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, and he smiled and shook his in empathy, taking a bite of a carrot stick as she turned back towards the crowd.

“No I uh...prom was pretty stereotypical. We were there long enough for one glass of punch and for Roy to be crowned prom king before I had to drive his drunk ass home.”

She shrugged and took a sip of her Coke. Jim wondered for a moment if that was the can he’d been intended to have earlier, while the rest of their coworkers had appalled reactions to Pam’s story.

“You didn’t even dance at your own prom?”

“God, what a waste of a dress.”

“Ohmigod, Pam! You didn’t let some little slutty queen steal your man, did you?”

“I don’t know, Kelly. I think I might have been better off if I would have just let her have him that night.”

This time, the roll of her eyes was more exaggerated. This time, her eyes lingered on Jim’s with a whisper of both apology and wishful thinking.

“No, we were there for like an hour, and then Roy got alcohol poisoning all over the front of my dress. I spent most of that night in his basement bathroom shushing him so that his parents wouldn’t find out.”

Prom talk tapered after that, and one by one, the employees of Dunder Mifflin Scranton found themselves back at their desks, wasting time until they could all head to Thursday night happy hour. 

Back at his own desk, Jim thought about that night--the night of her prom. How the high schools in the area scattered their prom nights over different weekends so that the parks wouldn’t be overrun for photos and the late night diners wouldn’t be overrun by teenagers in formal wear for midnight pancakes. Jessica Ruthledge had dumped him after his own prom, and he’d spent the next following weekends of his senior year at home moping in his basement, longing for college to take him away for a fresh start. He wondered, then, if he hadn’t been brooding the nights away, would he have been able to save her?

The clacking of the keyboards hammered against his skull. The ringing of the front desk phone scratched his ear drums. Even her Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam squeezed his heart a little too tightly. He had to make it stop.

In an act that was contradictory to every urge in his body, he knocked on Michael’s office door.

“Jimbo! Come on on.” He clicked the door shut and closed the distance between the desk and the door with two even strides, settling himself into a chair. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. Moses Taylor is looking for a sole paper products provider, and I think with you on the account--”

“Hey, have we had a party yet this month?”

Michael, in the middle of a legitimate business meeting, paused mid sentence with his head tilted and his hand curved in thought. He furrowed his lips as he thought it over.

“You know, I don’t think we have yet. Let me just…” He checked his calendar, dragging his finger along the weeks until he reached the end of the month. “Beach day is in May, but so far nothing for April. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about prom…”

Over the course of the next hour, phone calls were made, deposits were locked down, and Jim had commandeered Michael’s computer to print out flyers in secret. When they both emerged from Michael’s office with wide grins and their hands behind their backs, Pam tilted her head, and Jim shrugged, letting Michael do all of the talking.

“Family! We all shared such harrowing stories about prom today. Some good. Some bad. Some ugly--like Phyllis’ dress. Blech. But we were never at prom together. Which, I think, is the greatest tragedy of all. We missed out on the opportunity to dance together, to drink spiked punch together, to puke in fountains together! Well, right now, we have that chance. Jimbo. Would you do the honors?”

Rolling his tongue rapidly, Michael gave Jim a drumroll as Jim unfurled the flyer from his fingers with a less dramatic Ta-da. Michael bent on one knee, stretching his arms widely and wiggling his fingers.

“You are all invited to the first annual Dunder Mifflin prom!” After he didn’t receive the round of applause that he’d been expecting, Michael stood, smoothing out his jacket. “Tomorrow evening, in the warehouse. Formal wear is expected. Prepare to Macarena into the weekend!”

As Jim handed out the flyers he’d hastily thrown together in Microsoft Paint, an excited chatter started up around the office. Even Ryan, who had been dead set on returning to New York, was considering extending his stay.

Five o’clock came quickly, and as Jim slid his messenger bag over his shoulder, he found himself stopping at Pam’s desk. It was something he hadn’t really done lately, but at the same time, she seemed to be anticipating him.

“Prom? Really Halpert?” With her eyebrows raised, she let a surprised little smile creep up her lips.

“What?” he shrugged, stealing a few jelly beans to pop into his mouth. “We could all use a little fun around here.”

“Oh-kay,” she trailed, shaking her head with a wide smile as she stood to fasten her purse to her shoulder. 

“I expect you to bring you A-game, you know,” Jim continued as he held the door for her and let her pass under his arm. “You’ve got quite a bit of ground to make up for.”

“I don’t even know where I’m gonna find a dress this late in the game,” she mused, pressing the down button on the elevator keypad.